“No,” said Ting-a-ling, rather clearly. “Put me down!”
Restored to the floor, he sought a patch where the copper came through between two rugs, and licked it quietly.
“Mr. Aubrey Greene, ma’am!”
“H’m!” said Soames.
The painter came gliding and glowing in; his bright hair slipping back, his green eyes sliding off.
“Ah!” he said, pointing to the floor. “That’s what I’ve come about.”
Fleur followed his finger in amazement.
“Ting!” she said severely, “stop it! He will lick the copper, Aubrey.”
“But how perfectly Chinese! They do every thing we don’t.”
“Dad—Aubrey Greene. My father’s just brought me this picture, Aubrey—isn’t it a gem?”
The painter stood quite still, his eyes ceased sliding off, his hair ceased slipping back.
“Phew!” he said.
Soames rose. He had waited for the flippant; but he recognised in the tone something reverential, if not aghast.
“By George,” said Aubrey Greene, “those eyes! Where did you pick it up, sir?”
“It belonged to a cousin of mine—a racing man. It was his only picture.”
“Good for him! He must have had taste.”
Soames stared. The idea that George should have had taste almost appalled him.
“No,” he said, with a flash of inspiration: “What he liked about it was that it makes you feel uncomfortable.”
“Same thing! I don’t know where I’ve seen a more pungent satire on human life.”
“I don’t follow,” said Soames dryly.
“Why, it’s a perfect allegory, sir! Eat the fruits of life, scatter the rinds, and get copped doing it. When they’re still, a monkey’s eyes are the human tragedy incarnate. Look at them! He thinks there’s something beyond, and he’s sad or angry because he can’t get at it. That picture ought to be in the British Museum, sir, with the label: ‘Civilisation, caught out.’”
“Well, it won’t be,” said Fleur. “It’ll be here, labelled ‘The White Monkey.’”
“Same thing.”
“Cynicism,” said Soames abruptly, “gets you nowhere. If you’d said ‘MODERNITY caught out’—”
“I do, sir; but why be narrow? You don’t seriously suppose this age is worse than any other?”
“Don’t I?” said Soames. “In my belief the world reached its highest point in the ‘eighties, and will never reach it again.”
The painter stared.
“That’s frightfully interesting. I wasn’t born, and I suppose you were about my age then, sir. You believed in God and drove in DILIGENCES.”
DILIGENCES! The word awakened in Soames a memory which somehow seemed appropriate.
“Yes,” he said, “and I can tell you a story of those days that you can’t match in these. When I was a youngster in Switzerland with my people, two of my sisters had some black cherries. When they’d eaten about half a dozen they discovered that they all had little maggots in them. An English climber there saw how upset they were, and ate the whole of the rest of the cherries—about two pounds—maggots, stones and all, just to show them. That was the sort of men they were then.”
“Oh! Father!”
“Gee! He must have been gone on them.”
“No,” said Soames, “not particularly. His name was Powley; he wore side whiskers.”
“Talking of God and diligences; I saw a hansom yesterday.”
‘More to the point if you’d seen God,’ thought Soames, but he did not say so; indeed, the thought surprised him, it was not the sort of thing he had ever seen himself.
“You mayn’t know it, sir, but there’s more belief now than there was before the war—they’ve discovered that we’re not all body.”
“Oh!” said Fleur. “That reminds me, Aubrey. Do you know any mediums? Could I get one to come here? On our floor, with Michael outside the door, one would know there couldn’t be any hanky. Do the dark seance people ever go out? – they’re much more thrilling they say.”
“Spiritualism!” said Soames. “H’mph!” He could not in half an hour have expressed himself more clearly.
Aubrey Greene’s eyes slid off to Ting-a-ling. “I’ll see what I can do, if you’ll lend me your Peke for an hour or so tomorrow afternoon. I’d bring him back on a lead, and give him every luxury.”
“What do you want him for?”
“Michael sent me a most topping little model today. But, you see, she can’t smile.”
“Michael?”
“Yes. Something quite new; and I’ve got a scheme. Her smile’s like sunlight going off an Italian valley; but when you tell her to, she can’t. I thought your Peke could make her, perhaps.”
“May I come and see?” said Fleur.
“Yes, bring him tomorrow; but, if I can persuade her, it’ll be in the ‘altogether.’”
“Oh! Will you get me a seance, if I lend you Ting?”
“I will.”
“H’mph!” said Soames again. Seances, Italian sunlight, the ‘altogether!’ It was time he got back to Elderson, and what was to be done now, and left this fiddling while Rome burned.
“Good-bye, Mr. Greene,” he said; “I’ve got no time.”
“Quite, sir,” said Aubrey Greene.
“Quite!” mimicked Soames to himself, going out.
Aubrey Greene took his departure a few minutes later, crossing a lady in the hall who was delivering her name to the manservant.
Alone with her body, Fleur again passed her hands all over it. The ‘altogether’—was a reminder of the dangers of dramatic conduct.
Chapter V.
FLEUR’S SOUL
“Mrs. Val Dartie, ma’am.”
A name which could not be distorted even by Coaker affected her like a finger applied suddenly to the head of the sciatic nerve. Holly! Not seen since the day when she did not marry Jon. Holly! A flood of remembrance—Wansdon, the Downs, the gravel pit, the apple orchard, the river, the copse at Robin Hill! No! It was not a pleasant sensation—to see Holly, and she said: “How awfully nice of you to come!”
“I met your husband this afternoon at Green Street; he asked me. What a lovely room!”
“Ting! Come and be introduced! This is Ting-a-ling; isn’t he perfect? He’s a little upset because of the new monkey. How’s Val, and dear Wansdon? It was too wonderfully peaceful.”
“It’s a nice backwater. I don’t get tired of it.”
“And—” said Fleur, with a little laugh, “Jon?”
“He’s growing peaches in North Carolina. British Columbia didn’t do.”
“Oh! Is he married?”
“No.”
“I suppose he’ll marry an American.”
“He isn’t twenty-two, you know.”
“Good Lord!” said Fleur: “Am I only twenty-one? I feel forty-eight.”
“That’s living in the middle of things and seeing so many people—”
“And getting to know none.”
“But don’t you?”
“No, it isn’t done. I mean we all call each other by our Christian names; but apres—”
“I like your husband very much.”
“Oh! yes, Michael’s a dear. How’s June?”
“I saw her yesterday—she’s got a new painter, of course—Claud Brains. I believe he’s what they call a Vertiginist.”
Fleur bit her lip.
“Yes, they’re quite common. I suppose June thinks he’s the only one.”
“Well, she think’s he’s a genius.”
“She’s wonderful.”
“Yes,” said Holly, “the most loyal creature in the world while it lasts. It’s like poultry farming—once they’re hatched. You never saw Boris Strumolowski?”
“No.”
“Well, don’t.”
“I know his bust of Michael’s uncle. It’s rather sane.”
“Yes. June thought it a pot-boiler, and he never forgave her. Of course
it was. As soon as her swan makes money, she looks round for another. She’s a darling.”
“Yes,” murmured Fleur; “I liked June.”
Another flood of remembrance—from a tea-shop, from the river, from June’s little dining-room, from where in Green Street she had changed her wedding dress under the upward gaze of June’s blue eyes. She seized the monkey and held it up.
“Isn’t it a picture of ‘life’?” Would she have said that if Aubrey Greene hadn’t? Still it seemed very true at the moment.
“Poor monkey!” said Holly. “I’m always frightfully sorry for monkeys. But it’s marvellous, I think.”
“Yes. I’m going to hang it here. If I can get one more, I shall have done in this room; only people have so got on to Chinese things. This was luck—somebody died—George Forsyte, you know, the racing one.”
“Oh!” said Holly softly. She saw again her old kinsman’s japing eyes in the church when Fleur was being married, heard his throaty whisper, “Will she stay the course?” And was she staying it, this pretty filly? “Wish she could get a rest. If only there were a desert handy!” Well, one couldn’t ask a question so personal, and Holly took refuge in a general remark.
“What do all you smart young people feel about life, nowadays, Fleur! when one’s not of it and has lived twenty years in South Africa, one still feels out of it.”
“Life! Oh! well, we know it’s supposed to be a riddle, but we’ve given it up. We just want to have a good time because we don’t believe anything can last. But I don’t think we know how to have it. We just fly on, and hope for it. Of course, there’s art, but most of us aren’t artists; besides, expressionism—Michael says it’s got no inside. We gas about it, but I suppose it hasn’t. I see a frightful lot of writers and painters, you know; they’re supposed to be amusing.”
Holly listened, amazed. Who would have thought that this girl SAW? She might be seeing wrong, but anyway she saw!
“Surely,” she said, “you enjoy yourselves?”
“Well, I like getting hold of nice things, and interesting people; I like seeing everything that’s new and worth while, or seems so at the moment. But that’s just how it is—nothing lasts. You see, I’m not of the ‘Pan-joys,’ nor of the ‘new-faithfuls.’”
“The new-faithfuls?”
“Oh! don’t you know—it’s a sort of faith-healing done on oneself, not exactly the old ‘God-good, good-God!’ sort; but a kind of mixture of will-power, psycho-analysis, and belief that everything will be all right on the night if you say it will. You must have come across them. They’re frightfully in earnest.”
“I know,” said Holly; “their eyes shine.”
“I daresay. I don’t believe in them—I don’t believe in anyone; or anything—much. How can one?”
“How about simple people, and hard work?”
Fleur sighed. “I daresay. I will say for Michael—HE’S not spoiled. Let’s have tea? Tea, Ting?” and, turning up the lights, she rang the bell.
When her unexpected visitor had gone, she sat very still before the fire. To-day, when she had been so very nearly Wilfrid’s! So Jon was not married! Not that it made any odds! Things did not come round as they were expected to in books. And anyway sentiment was swosh! Cut it out! She tossed back her hair; and, getting hammer and nail, proceeded to hang the white monkey. Between the two tea-chests with their coloured pearl-shell figures, he would look his best. Since she couldn’t have Jon, what did it matter—Wilfrid or Michael, or both, or neither? Eat the orange in her hand, and throw away the rind! And suddenly she became aware that Michael was in the room. He had come in very quietly and was standing before the fire behind her. She gave him a quick look and said:
“I’ve had Aubrey Greene here about a model you sent him, and Holly—Mrs. Val Dartie—she said she’d seen you. Oh! and father’s brought us this. Isn’t it perfect?”
Michael did not speak.
“Anything the matter, Michael?”
“No, nothing.” He went up to the monkey. From behind him now Fleur searched his profile. Instinct told her of a change. Had he, after all, seen her going to Wilfrid’s—coming away?
“Some monkey!” he said. “By the way, have you any spare clothes you could give the wife of a poor snipe—nothing too swell?”
She answered mechanically: “Yes, of course!” while her brain worked furiously.
“Would you put them out, then? I’m going to make up a bunch for him myself—they could go together.”
Yes! He was quite unlike himself, as if the spring in him had run down. A sort of malaise overcame her. Michael not cheerful! It was like the fire going out on a cold day. And, perhaps for the first time, she was conscious that his cheerfulness was of real importance to her. She watched him pick up Ting-a-ling and sit down. And going up behind him, she bent over till her hair was against his cheek. Instead of rubbing his cheek on hers, he sat quite still, and her heart misgave her.
“What is it?” she said, coaxing.
“Nothing!”
She took hold of his ears.
“But there is. I suppose you know somehow that I went to see Wilfrid.”
He said stonily: “Why not?”
She let go, and stood up straight.
“It was only to tell him that I couldn’t see him again.”
That half-truth seemed to her the whole.
He suddenly looked up, a quiver went over his face; he look her hand.
“It’s all right, Fleur. You must do what you like, you know. That’s only fair. I had too much lunch.”
Fleur withdrew to the middle of the room.
“You’re rather an angel,” she said slowly, and went out.
Upstairs she looked out garments, confused in her soul.
Chapter VI.
MICHAEL GETS ‘WHAT-FOR’
After his Green Street quest Michael had wavered back down Piccadilly, and, obeying one of those impulses which make people hang around the centres of disturbance, on to Cork Street. He stood for a minute at the mouth of Wilfrid’s backwater.
‘No,’ he thought, at last, ‘ten to one he isn’t in; and if he is, twenty to one that I get any change except bad change!’
He was moving slowly on to Bond Street, when a little light lady, coming from the backwater, and reading as she went, ran into him from behind.
“Why don’t you look where you’re going! Oh! You? Aren’t you the young man who married Fleur Forsyte? I’m her cousin, June. I thought I saw her just now.” She waved a hand which held a catalogue with a gesture like the flirt of a bird’s wing. “Opposite my gallery. She went into a house, or I should have spoken to her—I’d like to have seen her again.”
Into a house! Michael dived for his cigarette-case. Hard-grasping it, he looked up. The little lady’s blue eyes were sweeping from side to side of his face with a searching candour.
“Are you happy together?” she said.
A cold sweat broke out on his forehead. A sense of general derangement afflicted him—hers, and his own.
“I beg your pardon?” he gasped.
“I hope you are. She ought to have married my little brother—but I hope you are. She’s a pretty child.”
In the midst of a dull sense of stunning blows, it staggered him that she seemed quite unconscious of inflicting them. He heard his teeth gritting, and said dully: “Your little brother, who was he?”
“What! Jon—didn’t you know Jon? He was too young, of course, and so was she. But they were head over—the family feud stopped that. Well! it’s all past. I was at your wedding. I hope you’re happy. Have you seen the Claud Brains show at my gallery? He’s a genius. I was going to have a bun in here; will you join me? You ought to know his work.”
She had paused at the door of a confectioner’s. Michael put his hand on his chest.
“Thank you,” he said, “I have just had a bun—two, in fact. Excuse me!”
The little lady grasped his other hand.
“Well, good-bye, young man! Gla
d to have met you. You’re not a beauty, but I like your face. Remember me to that child. You should go and see Claud Brains. He’s a real genius.”
Stock-still before the door, he watched her turn and enter, with a scattered motion, as of flying, and a disturbance among those seated in the pastry-cook’s. Then he moved on, the cigarette unlighted in his mouth, dazed, as a boxer from a blow which knocks him sideways, and another which knocks him straight again.
Fleur visiting Wilfrid—at this moment in his rooms up there—in his arms, perhaps! He groaned. A well-fed young man in a new hat skipped at the sound. Never! He could never stick that! He would have to clear out! He had believed Fleur honest! A double life! The night before last she had smiled on him. Oh! God! He dashed across into Green Park. Why hadn’t he stood still and let something go over him? And that lunatic’s little brother—John—family feud? Himself—a pis aller, then—taken without love at all—a makeshift! He remembered now her saying one night at Mapledurham: “Come again when I know I can’t get my wish.” So that was the wish she couldn’t get! A makeshift! ‘Jolly,’ he thought: ‘Oh! jolly!’ No wonder, then! What could she care? One man or another! Poor little devil! She had never let him know—never breathed a word! Was that decent of her—or was it treachery? ‘No,’ he thought, ‘if she HAD told me, it wouldn’t have made any difference—I’d have taken her at any price. It was decent of her not to tell me.’ But how was it he hadn’t heard from some one? Family feud? The Forsytes! Except ‘Old Forsyte,’ he never saw them; and ‘Old Forsyte’ was closer than a fish. Well! he had got what-for! And again he groaned, in the twilight spaces of the Park. Buckingham Palace loomed up unlighted, huge and dreary. Conscious of his cigarette at last, he stopped to strike a match, and drew the smoke deep into his lungs with the first faint sense of comfort.
“You couldn’t spare us a cigarette, Mister?”
A shadowy figure with a decent sad face stood beside the statue of Australia, so depressingly abundant!
“Of course!” said Michael; “take the lot.” He emptied the case into the man’s hand. “Take the case too—‘present from Westminster’—you’ll get thirty bob for it. Good luck!” He hurried on. A faint: “Hi, Mister!” pursued him unavailingly. Pity was pulp! Sentiment was bilge! Was he going home to wait till Fleur had—finished and come back? Not he! He turned towards Chelsea, batting along as hard as he could stride. Lighted shops, gloomy great Eaton Square, Chester Square, Sloane Square, the King’s Road—along, along! Worse than the trenches—far worse—this whipped and scorpioned sexual jealousy! Yes, and he would have felt even worse, but for that second blow. It made it less painful to know that Fleur had been in love with that cousin, and Wilfrid, too, perhaps, nothing to her. Poor little wretch! ‘Well, what’s the game now?’ he thought. The game of life—in bad weather, in stress? What was it? In the war—what had a fellow done? Somehow managed to feel himself not so dashed important; reached a condition of acquiescence, fatalism, “Who dies if England live” sort of sob-stuff state. The game of life? Was it different? “Bloody but unbowed” might be tripe; still—get up when you were knocked down! The whole was big, oneself was little! Passion, jealousy, ought they properly to destroy one’s sportsmanship, as Nazing and Sibley and Linda Frewe would have it? Was the word ‘gentleman’ a dud? Was it? Did one keep one’s form, or get down to squealing and kicking in the stomach?
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