“S. F.”
Knew what she was driving at! If only she did! And if only her father didn’t! That was the doubt in her mind when she tore up the letter and scattered it on Surrey through the window. He watched her like a lynx—like a lover; and she did not want to be watched just now.
She had no luggage, and at Victoria took a cab for Chiswick. June would at least know something about those two; whether they were still at Wansdon, or where they were.
How well she remembered the little house from the one visit she had paid to it—in the days when she and Jon—!
June was in the hall, on the point of going out.
“Oh! It’s you!” she said. “You didn’t come that Sunday!”
“No, I had too much to do before I went away.”
“Jon and Anne are staying here now. Harold is painting a beautiful thing of her. It’ll be quite unique. She’s a nice little thing, I think,” (she was several inches taller than June, according to Fleur’s recollection) “and pretty. I’m just going out to get him something he specially wants, but I shan’t be a quarter of an hour. If you’ll wait in the meal room till I come back, I’ll take you up, and then he’ll see you. He’s the only man who’s doing real work just now.”
“It’s so nice that there’s one,” said Fleur.
“Here’s an album of reproductions of his pictures”—and June opened a large book on a small dining-table. “Isn’t that lovely? But all his work has such quality. You look through it, and I’ll come back.” And, with a little squeeze of Fleur’s shoulder, she fled.
Fleur did not look through the album, she looked through the window and round the room. How she remembered it, and that round, dim mirror of very old glass wherein she had seen herself while she waited for Jon. And the stormy little scene they had been through together in this room too small for storms, seven years ago! Jon staying here! Her heart beat, and she stared at herself again in that dim mirror. Surely she was no worse to look at than she had been then! Nay! She was better! Her face had a stamp on it now, line on the roundness of youth! Couldn’t she let him know that she was here? Couldn’t she see him somehow just for a minute alone! That little one-eyed fanatic—for so in her thoughts Fleur looked on June—would be back directly. And quick mind took quick decision. If Jon were in, she would find him! Touching her hair at the sides, the pearls round her neck, and flicking an almost powderless puff over her nose, she went out into the hall and listened. No sound! And slowly she began mounting the stairs. In his bedroom he would be, or in the studio—there was no other covert. On the first landing, bedroom to right of her, bedroom to left of her, bathroom in front of her, the doors open. Blank! – and blank in her heart! The studio was all there was above. And there—as well as Jon, would be the painter and that girl, his wife. Was it worth it? She took two steps down, and then retraced them. Yes! It was. Slowly, very silently, she went. The studio door was open, for she could hear the quick, familiar shuffle of a painter to his canvas and away again. She closed her eyes a moment, and then again went up. On the landing, close to the open door, she stood still. No need to go further. For, in the room directly opposite to her, was a long, broad mirror, and in it—unseen herself—she could see. Jon was sitting on the end of a low divan with an unsmoked pipe in his hand, staring straight before him. On the dais that girl was standing, dressed in white; her hands held a long-stemmed lily whose flower reached to within an inch of her chin. Oh! she was pretty—pretty and brown, with those dark eyes and that dark hair framing her face. But Jon’s expression—deepset on the mask of his visage as the eyes in his head! She had seen lion cubs look like that, seeing nothing close to them, seeing—what? – in the distance. That girl’s eyes, what was it Holly had called them? – “best type of water-nymph’s”—slid round and looked at him, and at once his eyes left the distance and smiled back. Fleur turned then, hurried down the stairs, and out of the house. Wait for June—hear her rhapsodise—be introduced to the painter—have to control her face in front of that girl? No! Mounting to the top of her ‘bus, she saw June skimming round a corner, and thought with malicious pleasure of her disappointment—when one had been hurt, one wanted to hurt somebody. The ‘bus carried her away down the King’s Road, Hammersmith, sweating in the westering sunlight, away into the big town with its myriad lives and interests, untouchable, indifferent as Fate.
At Kensington Gardens she descended. If she could get her legs to ache, perhaps her heart would not. And she walked fast between the flowers and the nursemaids, the old ladies and the old gentlemen. But her legs were strong, and Hyde Park Corner came too soon for all but one old gentleman who had tried to keep pace with her because, at his age, it did him good to be attracted. She crossed to the Green Park and held on. And she despised herself while she walked. She despised herself. She—to whom the heart was such vieux jeu; who had learned, as she thought, to control or outspeed emotions!
She reached home, and it was empty—Michael not in. She went upstairs, ordered herself some Turkish coffee, got into a hot bath, and lay there smoking cigarettes. She experienced some alleviation. Among her friends the recipe had long been recognized. When she could steep herself no more, she put on a wrapper and went to Michael’s study. There was her “Golden Apple”—very nicely framed. The fruit looked to her extraordinarily uneatable at that moment. The smile in Jon’s eyes, answering that girl’s smile! Another woman’s leavings! The fruit was not worth eating. Sour apples—sour apples! Even the white monkey would refuse fruit like that. And for some minutes she stood staring instead, at the eyes of the ape in that Chinese painting—those almost human eyes that yet were not human because their owner had no sense of continuity. A modern painter could not have painted eyes like that. The Chinese artist of all those centuries ago had continuity and tradition in his blood; he had seen the creature’s restlessness at a sharper angle than people could see it now, and stamped it there for ever.
And Fleur—charming in her jade-green wrapper—tucked a corner of her lip behind a tooth, and went back to her room to finish dressing. She put on her prettiest frock. If she could not have the wish of her heart—the wish that she felt would give her calm and continuity—let her at least have pleasure, speed, distraction, grasp it with both hands, eat it with full lips. And she sat down before her glass to make herself as perfect as she could. She manicured her hands, titivated her hair, scented her eyebrows, smoothed her lips, put on no rouge, and the merest dusting of powder, save where the seaside sun had stained her neck.
Michael found her still seated there—a modern masterpiece—almost too perfect to touch.
“Fleur!” he said, and nothing more; but any more would have spoiled it.
“I thought I deserved a night out. Dress quickly, Michael, and let’s dine somewhere amusing, and do a theatre and a club afterwards. You needn’t go to the House this evening, need you?”
He had meant to go, but there was in her voice what would have stopped him from affairs even more serious.
Inhaling her, he said:
“Delicious! I’ve been in the slums. Shan’t be a jiffy, darling!” and he fled.
During the jiffy she thought of him and how good he was; and while she thought, she saw the eyes and the hair and the smile of Jon.
The “somewhere amusing” was a little restaurant full of theatrical folk. Fleur and Michael knew many of them, and they came up, as they passed out of their theatres, and said:
“How delightful to see you!” and looked as if they meant it—so strange! But then, theatre folk were like that! They looked things so easily. And they kept saying: “Have you seen our show? Oh! You must. It’s just too frightful!” or, “It’s a marvellous play!” And then, over the other shoulder they would see somebody else, and call out: “Ha! How delightful to see you!” There was no boring continuity about them. Fleur drank a cocktail and two glasses of champagne. She went out with her cheeks slightly flushed. “Dat Lubly Lady” had been in progress over half-an-hour before they reached her; but
this did not seem to matter, for what they saw conveyed to them no more than what they had not seen. The house was very full, and people were saying that the thing would “run for years.” It had a tune which had taken the town by storm, a male dancer whose legs could form the most acute angles, and no continuity whatever. Michael and Fleur went out humming the tune, and took a taxi to the dancing club to which they belonged because it was the thing, rather than because they ever went there. It was a select club, and contained among its members a Cabinet Minister who had considered it his duty. They found a Charleston in progress, seven couples wobbling weak knees at each other in various corners of the room.
“Gawd!” said Michael. “I do think it’s the limit of vacuity. What’s its attraction?”
“Vacuity, my dear. This is a vacuous age—didn’t you know?”
“Is there no limit?”
“A limit,” said Fleur, “is what you can’t go beyond; one can always become more vacuous.”
The words were nothing, for, after all, cynicism was in fashion, but the tone made Michael shiver; he felt in it a personal ring. Did she, then, feel her life so vacuous; and, if so, why?
“They say,” said Fleur, “there’s another American dance coming, called ‘The White Beam,’ that’s got even less in it.”
“Not possible,” muttered Michael; “for congenital idiocy this’ll never be surpassed. Look at those two!”
The two in question were wobbling towards them with their knees flexed as if their souls had slipped down into them; their eyes regarded Fleur and Michael with no more expression than could have been found in four first-class marbles. A strange earnestness radiated from them below the waist, but above that line they seemed to have passed away. The music stopped, and each of the seven couples stopped also and began to clap their hands, holding them low, as though afraid of disturbing the vacuity attained above.
“I refuse to believe it,” said Michael, suddenly.
“What?”
“That this represents our Age—no beauty, no joy, no skill, not even devil—just look a fool and wobble your knees.”
“You can’t do it, you see.”
“D’you mean you can?”
“Of course,” said Fleur; “one must keep up with things.”
“Well, for the land’s sake, don’t let me see you.”
At this moment the seven couples stopped clapping their hands—the band had broken into a tune to which the knee could not be flexed. Michael and Fleur began to dance. They danced together, two fox-trots and a waltz, then left.
“After all,” said Fleur, in the taxi, “dancing makes you forget yourself. That was the beauty of the canteen. Find me another job, Michael; I can bring Kit back in about a week.”
“How about joint secretaryship with me of our Slum Conversion Fund? You’d be invaluable to get up balls, bazaars, and matinees.”
“I wouldn’t mind. I suppose they’re worth converting.”
“Well, I think so. You don’t know Hilary; I must get him and Aunt May to lunch; after that you can judge for yourself.”
He slipped his hand under her bare arm, and added: “Fleur, you’re not quite tired of me, are you?”
The tone of his voice, humble and a little anxious, touched her, and she pressed his hand with her arm.
“I should never be tired of you, Michael.”
“You mean you’d never have a feeling so definite towards me.”
It was exactly what she had meant, and she hastened to deny it.
“No, dear boy; I mean I know a good thing, and even a good person, when I’ve got it.”
Michael sighed, and, taking up her hand, put it to his lips.
“I wish,” cried Fleur, “one wasn’t so complex. You’re lucky to be single-hearted. It’s the greatest gift. Only, don’t ever become serious, Michael. That’d be a misfortune.”
“No, after all, comedy’s the real thing.”
“Let’s hope so,” said Fleur, as the taxi stopped. “Delicious night!”
And Michael, having paid the driver, looked at her lighted up in the open doorway. Delicious night! Yes—for him.
Chapter XIII.
“ALWAYS”
The announcement by Michael on the following Monday that Fleur would be bringing Kit home the next morning, caused Soames to say:
“I’d like to have a look at that part of the world. I’ll take the car down this afternoon and drive them up tomorrow. Don’t say anything to Fleur. I’ll let her know when I get down to Nettlefold. There’s an hotel there, I’m told.”
“Quite a good one,” said Michael. “But it’ll be full for Goodwood.”
“I’ll telephone. They must find a room for me.”
He did, and they found for him a room which somebody else lost. He started about five—Riggs having informed him that it was a two-and-a-half hours’ drive. The day had been somewhat English in character, but by the time he reached Dorking had become fine enough to enjoy. He had seen little of the England that lay beyond the straight line between his river home and Westminster, for many years; and this late afternoon, less preoccupied than usual, he was able to give it a somewhat detached consideration. It was certainly a variegated and bumpy land, incorrigibly green and unlike India, Canada, and Japan. They said it had been jungle, heath and marsh not fifteen hundred years ago. What would it be fifteen hundred years hence? Jungle, heath and marsh again, or one large suburb—who could say? He had read somewhere that people would live underground, and come up to take the air in their flying machines on Sundays. He thought it was unlikely. The English would still want their windows down and a thorough draught, and so far as he could see, it would always be stuffy to play with a ball underground, and impossible to play with a ball up in the air. Those fellows who wrote prophetic articles and books, were always forgetting that people had passions. He would make a bet that the passions of the English in 3400 A.D. would still be: playing golf, cursing the weather, sitting in draughts, and revising the prayer-book.
And that reminded him that old Gradman was getting very old; he must look out for somebody who could take his place. There was nothing to do in the family trusts now—the only essential was perfect honesty. And where was he going to find it? Even if there was some about, it could only be tested by prolonged experiment. Must be a youngish man, too, because he himself couldn’t last very much longer. And, moving at forty miles an hour along the road to Billingshurst, he recalled being fetched by old Gradman at six miles an hour from Paddington Station to Park Lane in a growler with wet straw on the floor—over sixty years ago—when old Gradman himself was only a boy of twenty, trying to grow side-whiskers and writing round-hand all day. “Five Oaks” on a signpost; he couldn’t see the oaks! What a pace that chap Riggs was going! One of these days he would bring the whole thing to grief, and be sorry for it. But it was somehow infra dig. to pull him up for speed when there wasn’t a woman in the car; and Soames sat the stiller, with a slightly contemptuous expression as a kind of insurance against his own sensations. Through Pulborough, down a twisting hill, across a little bridge, a little river, into a different kind of country—something new to him—flat meadows all along, that would be marsh in the winter, he would wager, with large, dark red cattle, and black-and-white, and strawberry roan cattle; and over away to the south, high rising downs of a singularly cool green, as if they were white inside. Chalk—out-cropping here and there, and sheep up on those downs, no doubt—his father had always sworn by Southdown mutton. A very pretty light, a silvery look, a nice prospect altogether, that made you feel thinner at once and lighter in the head! So this was the sort of country his nephew had got hold of, and that young fellow Jon Forsyte. Well! It might have been worse—very individual; he didn’t remember anything just like it. And a sort of grudging fairness, latent in Soames’ nature, applauded slightly. How that chap Riggs was banging the car up this hill—the deuce of a hill, too, past chalk-pits and gravel-pits, and grassy down and dipping spurs of covert, past the lodge of
a park, into a great beech-wood. Very pretty—very still—no life but trees, spreading trees, very cool, very green! Past a monstrous great church thing, now, and a lot of high walls and towers—Arundel Castle, he supposed; huge, great place; would look better, no doubt, the further you got from it; then over another river and up another hill, banging along into this Nettlefold and the hotel, and the sea in front of you!
Soames got out.
“What time’s dinner?”
“Dinner is on, sir.”
“Do they dress?”
“Yes, sir. There’s a fancy dress dance, sir, this evening, before Goodwood.”
“What a thing to have! Get me a table; I’ll be down directly.”
He had once read in a Victorian novel that the mark of a gentleman was being able to dress for dinner in ten minutes, tying his own tie. He had never forgotten it. He was down in twelve. Most people had nearly finished, but there was no one in fancy dress. Soames ate leisurely, contemplating a garden with the sea beyond. He had not, like Fleur, an objection to the sea—had he not once lived at Brighton for seven years, going up and down to his work in town? That was the epoch when he had been living down the disgrace of being deserted by his first wife. Curious how the injured party was always the one in disgrace! People admired immorality, however much they said they didn’t. The deserted husband, the deserted wife, were looked on as poor things. Was it due to some thing still wild in human nature, or merely to reaction against the salaried morality of judges and parsons, and so forth? Morality you might respect, but salaried morality—no! He had seen it in people’s eyes after his own trouble; he had seen it in the Marjorie Ferrar case. The fact was, people took the protection of the law and secretly disliked it because it was protective. The same thing with taxes—you couldn’t do without them, but you avoided paying them when you could.
Having finished dinner, he sat with his cigar in a somewhat deserted lounge, turning over weekly papers full of ladies with children or dogs, ladies with clothes in striking attitudes, ladies with no clothes in still more striking attitudes; men with titles, men in aeroplanes, statesmen in trouble, racehorses; large houses prefaced with rows of people with the names printed clearly for each, and other evidences of the millennium. He supposed his fellow-guests were “dolling up” (as young Michael would put it) for this ball—fancy dressing up at their age! But people WERE weak-minded—no question of that! – Fleur would be surprised when he dropped in on her tomorrow early. Soon she would be coming down to him on the river—its best time of year—and perhaps he could take her for a motor trip into the west somewhere; it might divert her thoughts from this part of the country and that young man. He had often promised himself a visit to where the old Forsytes came from; only he didn’t suppose she would care to look at anything so rustic as genuine farmland. The magazine dropped from his fingers, and he sat staring out of the large windows at the flowers about to sleep. He hadn’t so many more years before him now, he supposed. They said that people lived longer than they used to, but how he was going to outlive the old Forsytes, he didn’t know—the ten of them had averaged eighty-seven years—a monstrous age! And yet he didn’t feel it would be natural to die in another sixteen years, with the flowers growing like that out there, and his grandson coming along nicely. With age one suffered from the feeling that one might have enjoyed things more. Cows, for instance, and rooks, and good smells. Curious how the country grew on you as you got older! But he didn’t know that it would ever grow on Fleur—she wanted people about her; still she might lose that when she found out once for all that there was so little in them. The light faded on the garden and his reverie. There were lots of people out on the sea front, and a band had begun to play. A band was playing behind him, too, in the hotel somewhere. They must be dancing! He might have a look at that before he went up. On his trip round the world with Fleur he had often put his nose out and watched the dancing on deck—funny business nowadays, shimmying, bunnyhugging, didn’t they call it? – dreadful! He remembered the academy of dancing where he had been instructed as a small boy in the polka, the mazurka, deportment and calisthenics. And a pale grin spread over his chaps—that little old Miss Shears, who had taught him and Winifred, what wouldn’t she have died of if she had lived to see these modern dances! People despised the old dances, and when he came to think of it, he had despised them himself, but compared with this modern walking about and shaking at the knees, they had been dances, after all. Look at the Highland schottische, where you spun round and howled, and the old galop to the tune “D’ye ken John Peel”—some stingo in them; and you had to change your collar. No changing collars nowadays—they just dawdled. For an age that prided itself on enjoying life, they had a funny idea of it. He remembered once, before his first marriage, going—by accident—to one of those old dancing clubs, the Athenians, and seeing George Forsyte and his cronies waltzing and swinging the girls round and round clean off their feet. The girls at those clubs, then, were all professional lights-o’-love. Very different now, he was told; but there it was—people posed nowadays, they posed as viveurs, and all the rest of it, but they didn’t vive; they thought too much about how to.
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