While she washed off powder and put it on again Fleur thought: ‘Dear Dad! Thank God! He’ll be far away!’
Now that her mind was thoroughly made up, it was comparatively easy to bluff, and keep her freshly-powdered face, smiling and serene, above the Chelsea dinner service.
“Where are you going to hang your portrait, when it’s done?” resumed Soames.
“Why! It’ll be yours, dear.”
“Mine? Well, of course; but you’ll hang it here; Michael’ll want it.”
Michael—unknowing! THAT gave her a twinge.
Well, she would be as good to him after, as ever. No old-fashioned squeamishness!
“Thank you, dear. I expect he’ll like it in the ‘parlour.’ The scheme IS silver and gold—my ‘Folly’ dress.”
“I remember it,” said Soames; “a thing with bells.”
“I think all that part of the picture’s very good.”
“What? Hasn’t he got your face?”
“Perhaps—but I don’t know that I approve of it frightfully.” After this morning’s sitting, indeed, she had wondered. Something avid had come into the face as if the Rafaelite had sensed the hardening of resolve within her.
“If he doesn’t do you justice I shan’t take it,” said Soames.
Fleur smiled. The Rafaelite would have something to say to that.
“Oh! I expect it’ll be all right. One never thinks one’s own effigies are marvellous, I suppose.”
“Don’t know,” said Soames, “never was painted.”
“You ought to be, dear.”
“Waste of time! Has he sent away the picture of that young woman?”
Fleur’s eyes did not flinch.
“Jon Forsyte’s wife? Oh! yes—long ago.”
She expected him to say: “Seen anything of them?” But it did not come. And that disturbed her more than if it had come.
“I had your cousin Val to see me today.”
Fleur’s heart stood still. Had they been talking?
“His name’s been forged.”
Thank heaven!
“Some people have no moral sense at all,” continued Soames. Involuntarily her white shoulder rose; but he wasn’t looking. “Common honesty, I don’t know where it is.”
“I heard the Marquess say to-night that ‘Honesty’s the best policy’ was a mere Victorianism, Dad.”
“Well, he’s ten years my senior, but I don’t know where he got that from. Everything’s twisted inside out, now-a-days.”
“But if it’s the best POLICY, there never was any particular virtue in it, was there?”
Soames took a sharp look at her smiling face.
“Why not?”
“Oh, I don’t know. These are Lippinghall partridges, Dad.”
Soames sniffed. “Not hung quite long enough. You ought to be able to swear by the leg of a partridge.”
“Yes, I’ve told cook, but she has her own views.”
“And the bread sauce should have a touch more onion in it. Victorianism, indeed! I suppose he’d call ME a Victorian?”
“Well, aren’t you, Dad? You had forty-six years of her.”
“I’ve had twenty-five without her, and hope to have a few more.”
“Many, many,” said Fleur, softly.
“Can’t expect that.”
“Oh, yes! But I’m glad you don’t consider yourself a Victorian; I don’t like them. They wore too many clothes.”
“Don’t you be too sure of that.”
“Well, tomorrow you’ll be among Georgians, anyway.”
“Yes,” said Soames. “There’s a graveyard there, they say. And that reminds me—I’ve bought that corner bit in the churchyard down at home. It’ll do for me as well as any other. Your mother will want to go to France to be buried, I expect.”
“Give Mr. Forsyte some sherry, Coaker.”
Soames took a long sniff.
“This is some of your grandfather’s. He lived to be ninety.”
If she and Jon lived to be ninety—would nobody still know?… She left him at ten o’clock, brushing his nose with her lips.
“I’m tired, Dad; and you’ll have a long day tomorrow. Good-night, dear!”
Thank God he would be among the Georgians tomorrow!
Chapter VIII.
FORBIDDEN FRUIT
Halting the car suddenly in the by-road between Gage’s farm and the Robin Hill coppice, Fleur said:
“Jon, dear, I’ve got a whim. Let’s get out and go in there. The potentate’s in Scotland.” He did not move, and she added: “I shan’t see you again for a long time, now your picture’s finished.”
Jon got out, then, and she unlatched the footpath gate. They stood a minute within, listening for sounds of anyone to interrupt their trespass. The fine September afternoon was dying fast. The last “sitting” had been long, and it was late; and in the coppice of larch and birch the dusk was deepening. Fleur slid her hand within his arm.
“Listen! Still, isn’t it? I feel as if we were back seven years, Jon. Do you wish we were? Babes in the wood once more?”
Gruffly he answered:
“No good looking back—things happen as they must.”
“The birds are going to bed. Used there to be owls?”
“Yes; we shall hear one soon, I expect.”
“How good it smells!”
“Trees and the cow-houses!”
“Vanilla and hay, as the poets have it. Are they close?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t let’s go further, then.”
“Here’s the old log,” said Jon. “We might sit down, and listen for an owl.”
On the old log seat they sat down, side by side.
“No dew,” said Fleur. “The weather will break soon, I expect. I love the scent of drought.”
“I love the smell of rain.”
“You and I never love the same thing, Jon. And yet—we’ve loved each other.” Against her arm it was as if he shivered.
“There goes the old clock! It’s awfully late, Fleur! Listen! The owl!”
Startlingly close through the thin-branched trees the call came. Fleur rose: “Let’s see if we can find him.”
She moved back from the old log.
“Aren’t you coming? Just a little wander, Jon.”
Jon got up and went along at her side among the larches.
“Up this way—wasn’t it? How quickly it’s got dark. Look! The birches are still white. I love birchtrees.” She put her hand on a pale stem. “The smoothness, Jon. It’s like skin.” And, leaning forward, she laid her cheek against the trunk. “There! feel my cheek, and then the bark. Could you tell the difference, except for warmth?”
Jon reached his hand up. She turned her lips and touched it.
“Jon—kiss me just once.”
“You know I couldn’t kiss you ‘just once,’ Fleur.”
“Then kiss me for ever, Jon.”
“No, no! No, no!”
“Things happen as they must—you said so.”
“Fleur—don’t! I can’t stand it.”
She laughed—very low, softly.
“I don’t want you to. I’ve waited seven years for this. No! Don’t cover your face! Look at me! I take it all on myself. The woman tempted you. But, Jon, you were always mine. There! That’s better. I can see your eyes. Poor Jon! Now, kiss me!” In that long kiss her very spirit seemed to leave her; she could not even see whether his eyes were open, or, like hers, closed. And again the owl hooted.
Jon tore his lips away. He stood there in her arms, trembling like a startled horse.
With her lips against his ear, she whispered:
“There’s nothing, Jon; there’s nothing.” She could hear him holding-in his breath, and her warm lips whispered on: “Take me in your arms, Jon; take me!” The light had failed completely now; stars were out between the dark feathering of the trees, and low down, from where the coppice sloped up towards the east, a creeping brightness seemed trembling towards them
through the wood from the moon rising. A faint rustle broke the silence, ceased, broke it again, Closer, closer—Fleur pressed against him.
“Not here, Fleur; not here. I can’t—I won’t—”
“Yes, Jon; here—now! I claim you.”
* * *
The moon was shining through the tree stems when they sat again side by side on the log seat.
Jon’s hands were pressed to his forehead, and she could not see his eyes.
“No one shall ever know, Jon.”
He dropped his hands, and faced her.
“I must tell her.”
“Jon!”
“I must!”
“You can’t unless I let you, and I don’t let you.”
“What have we done? Oh, Fleur, what HAVE we done?”
“It was written. When shall I see you again, Jon?”
He started up.
“Never, unless she knows. Never, Fleur—never! I can’t go on in secret!”
As quickly, too, Fleur was on her feet. They stood with their hands on each other’s arms, in a sort of struggle. Then Jon wrenched himself free, and, like one demented, rushed back into the coppice.
She stood trembling, not daring to call. Bewildered, she stood, waiting for him to come back to her, and he did not come.
Suddenly, she moaned, and sank on her knees; and again she moaned. He must hear, and come back! He could not have left her at such a moment—he could not!
“Jon!” No sound. She rose from her knees, and stood peering into the brightened dusk. The owl hooted; and, startled, she saw the moon caught among the tree tops, like a presence watching her. A shivering sob choked in her throat, became a whimper, like a hurt child’s. She stood, listening fearfully. No rustling; no footsteps; no hoot of owl—not a sound, save the distant whir of traffic on the London road! Had he gone to the car, or was he hiding from her in that coppice, all creepy now with shadows?
“Jon! Jon!” No answer! She ran towards the gate. There was the car—empty! She got into it, and sat leaning forward over the driving wheel, with a numb feeling in her limbs. What did it mean? Was she beaten in the very hour of victory? He could not—no, he could not mean to leave her thus? Mechanically she turned on the car’s lights. A couple on foot, a man on a bicycle, passed. And Fleur still sat there, numbed. This—fulfilment! The fulfilment she had dreamed of? A few moments of hasty and delirious passion—and this! And, to her chagrin, her consternation, were added humiliation that, after such a moment, he could thus have fled from her; and the fear that in winning him she had lost him!
At last she started the engine, and drove miserably on, watching the road, hoping against hope to come on him. Very slowly she drove, and only when she reached the Dorking road did she quite abandon hope. How she guided the car for the rest of the drive, she hardly knew. Life seemed suddenly to have gone out.
Chapter IX.
AFTERMATH
Jon, when he rushed back into the coppice, turned to the left, and, emerging past the pond, ran up through the field towards the house, as if it were still his own. It stood above its terrace and lawns unlighted, ghostly in the spreading moonlight. Behind a clump of rhododendrons, where as a little boy he had played hide and seek, or pursued the stag horn beetle with his bow and arrow, he sank down as if his legs had turned to water, pressing his fists against his cheeks, both burning hot. He had known and he had not known, had dreamed and never dreamed of this! Overwhelming, sudden, relentless! “It was written!” she had said. For her, every excuse, perhaps; but what excuse for him? Among those moonlit rhododendrons he could not find it. Yet the deed was done! Whose was he now? He stood up and looked at the house where he had been born, grown up, and played, as if asking for an answer. Whitened and lightless, it looked the ghost of a house, keeping secrets. “And I don’t let you tell!… When shall I see you again?” That meant she claimed a secret lover. Impossible! The one thing utterly impossible. He would belong to one or to the other—not to both. Torn in every fibre of his being, he clung to the fixity of that. Behind the rhododendrons stretching along the far end of the lawn he walked, crouching, till he came to the wall of the grounds, the wall he had often scrambled over as a boy; and, pulling himself up, dropped into the top roadway. No one saw him, and he hurried on. He had a dumb and muddled craving to get back to Wansdon, though what he would do when he got there he could not tell. He turned towards Kingston.
All through that two hours’ drive in a hired car Jon thought and thought. Whatever he did now, he must be disloyal to one or to the other. And with those passionate moments still rioting within him, he could get no grip on his position; and yet—he must!
He reached Wansdon at eleven, and, dismissing the car in the road, walked up to the house. Everyone had gone to bed, evidently assuming that he was staying the night at June’s for a further sitting. There was a light in his and Anne’s bedroom; and, at sight of it, the full shame of what he had done smote him. He could not bring himself to attract her attention, and he stole round the house, seeking for some way of breaking in. At last he spied a spare-room window open at the top, and fetching a garden ladder, climbed it and got in. The burglarious act restored some self-possession. He went down into the hall, and out of the house, replaced the ladder, came in again and stole upstairs. But outside their door he halted. No light, now, came from under. She must be in bed. And, suddenly, he could not face going in. He would feel like Judas, kissing her. Taking off his boots and carrying them, he stole downstairs again to the dining-room. Having had nothing but a cup of tea since lunch, he got himself some biscuits and a drink. They altered his mood—no man could have resisted Fleur’s kisses in that moonlit coppice—no man! Must he, then, hurt one or the other so terribly? Why not follow Fleur’s wish? Why not secrecy? By continuing her lover in secret, he would not hurt Fleur; by not telling Anne, he would not hurt Anne! Like a leopard in a cage, he paced the room. And all that was honest in him refused, and all that was sage. As if one could remain the husband of two women, when one of them knew! As if Fleur would stand that long! And lies, subterfuge! And—Michael Mont! – a decent chap! He had done him enough harm as it was! No! A clean cut one way or the other! He stopped by the hearth, and leaned his arms on the stone mantlepiece. How still! Only that old clock which had belonged to his grandfather, ticking away time—time that cured everything, that made so little of commotions, ticking men and things to their appointed ends. Just in front of him on the mantlepiece was a photograph of his grandfather, old Jolyon, taken in his eighties—the last record of that old face, its broad brow, and white moustache, its sunken cheeks, deep, steady eyes, and strong jaw. Jon looked at it long! “Take a course and stick to it!” the face, gazing back at him so deeply, seemed to say. He went to the bureau and sat down to write.
“I am sorry I rushed away to-night, but it was better, really. I had to think. I have thought. I’m only certain of one thing yet. To go on IN SECRET is impossible. I shan’t say a word about tonight, of course, until you let me. But, Fleur, unless I can tell everything, it must end. You wouldn’t wish it otherwise, would you? Please answer to the Post Office, Nettlefold.
“Jon.”
He sealed this up, addressed it to her at Dorking, and, pulling on his boots, again stole out and posted it. When he got back he felt so tired, that, wrapped in an old coat, he fell asleep in an armchair. The moonlight played tricks through the half-drawn curtains, the old clock ticked, but Jon slept, dreamless.
He woke at daybreak, stole up to the bathroom, bathed and shaved noiselessly, and went out through a window, so as not to leave the front door unfastened. He walked up through the gap past the old chalk pit, on to the Downs, by the path he had taken with Fleur seven years ago. Till he had heard from her he did not know what to do; and he dreaded Anne’s eyes, while his mind was still distraught. He went towards Chanctonbury Ring. There was a heavy dew, and the short turf was all spun over with it. All was infinitely beautiful, remote and stilly in the level sunlight. The beauty tore at his he
art. He had come to love the Downs—they had a special loveliness, like no other part of the world that he had seen. Did this mean that he must now leave them, leave England again—leave everything, and cleave to Fleur? If she claimed him, if she decided on declaring their act of union, he supposed it did. And Jon walked in confusion of heart, such as he had not thought possible to man. From the Ring he branched away, taking care to avoid the horses at their early exercise. And this first subterfuge brought him face to face with immediate decision. What should he do till he had heard from Fleur? Her answer could not reach Nettlefold till the evening, or even next morning. He decided, painfully, to go back to breakfast, and tell them he had missed his train, and entered in the night burglariously so as not to disturb them.
That day, with its anxiety and its watchfulness of self, was one of the most wretched he had ever spent; and he could not free himself from the feeling that Anne was reading his thoughts. It was as if each passed the day looking at the other unobserved—almost unbearable! In the afternoon he asked for a horse to ride over to Green Hill Farm, and said he would be back late. He rode on into Nettlefold and went to the post-office. There was a telegram: “Must see you. Will be at Green Hill Farm tomorrow at noon. Don’t fail me. – F.”
Jon destroyed it, and rode homewards. Wretchedness and strain for another eighteen hours! Was there anything in the world worse than indecision? He rode slowly so as to have the less time at home, dreading the night. He stopped at a wayside inn to eat, and again went by way of Green Hill Farm to save at least the letter of his tale. It was nearly ten and full moonlight before he got back.
“It’s a wonderful night,” he said, when he came into the drawing-room. “The moonlight’s simply marvellous.” It was Holly who answered; Anne, sitting by the fire, did not even look up. ‘She knows,’ thought Jon, ‘she knows something.’ Very soon after, she said she was sleepy, and went up. Jon stayed, talking to Holly. Val had gone on from town to Newmarket, and would not be back till Friday. They sat one on each side of the wood fire. And, looking at his sister’s face, charming and pensive, Jon was tempted. She was so wise, and sympathetic. It would be a relief to tell her everything. But Fleur’s command held him back—it was not his secret.
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