The Silver Spoon

Chapter I. ‘CIRCUSES’

In his early boyhood Soames had been given to the circus. He had outgrown it; ‘Circuses’ were now to him little short of an abomination. Jubilees and Pageants, that recurrent decimal, the Lord Mayor, Earl’s Court, Olympia, Wembley—he disliked them all. He could not stand a lot of people with their mouths open. Dressing up was to him a symptom of weak-mindedness, and the collective excitement of a crowd an extravagance which offended his reticent individualism. Though not deeply versed in history, he had an idea, too, that nations who went in for ‘circuses’ were decadent. Queen Victoria’s funeral, indeed, had impressed him—there had been a feeling in the air that day; but ever since, things had gone from bad to worse. They made everything into a ‘circus’ now! A man couldn’t commit a murder without the whole paper-reading population—himself included—looking over each other’s shoulders; and as to these football-matches, and rodeos—they interfered with the traffic and the normal course of conversation; people were so crazy about them!

Of course, ‘circuses’ had their use. They kept the people quiet. Violence by proxy, for instance, was obviously a political principle of some value. It was difficult to gape and shed blood at the same time; the more people stood in rows by day to see others being hurt, the less trouble would they take to hurt others themselves, and the sounder Soames could sleep by night. Still, sensation-hunting had become a disease, in his opinion, and no one was being inoculated for it, so far as he could see!

As the weeks went on and the cases before it in the List went off, the ‘circus’ they were proposing to make of his daughter appeared to him more and more monstrous. He had an instinctive distrust of Scotchmen—they called themselves Scotsmen nowadays, as if it helped their character! – they never let go, and he could not approve in other people a quality native to himself. Besides, ‘Scotchmen’ were so—so exuberant—always either dour or else hearty—extravagant chaps! Towards the middle of March, with the case in the list for the following week, he took an extreme step and entered the Lobby of the House of Commons. He had spoken to no one of his determination to make this last effort, for it seemed to him that all—Annette, Michael, Fleur herself—had done their best to spoil the chance of settlement.

Having sent in his card, he waited a long while in that lofty purlieu. ‘Lobbying,’ he knew the phrase, but had never realised the waste of time involved in it. The statues consoled him somewhat. Sir Stafford Northcote—a steady chap; at old Forsyte dinner-parties in the eighties his character had been as much a standby as the saddle of mutton. He found even ‘that fellow Gladstone’ bearable in stucco, or whatever it was up there. You might dislike, but you couldn’t sneeze at him, as at some of these modern chaps. He was sunk in coma before Lord Granville when at last he heard the words:

“Sir Alexander MacGown,” and saw a square man with a ruddy face, stiff black hair, and clipped moustache, coming between the railings, with a card in his hand.

“Mr. Forsyte?”

“Yes. Can we go anywhere that’s not quite so public?”

The ‘Scotchman’ nodded, and led him down a corridor to a small room.

“Well?”

Soames smoothed his hat. “This affair,” he said, “can’t be any more agreable to you than it is to me.”

“Are you the individual who was good enough to apply the word ‘traitress’ to the lady I’m engaged to?”

“That is so.”

“Then I don’t see how you have the impudence to come and speak to me.”

Soames bit his lips.

“I spoke under the provocation of hearing your fiancee call my daughter a snob, in her own house. Do you want this petty affair made public?”

“If you think that you and your daughter can get away with calling the lady I’m going to marry ‘a snake,’ ‘a traitress,’ ‘an immoral person,’ you’re more mistaken that you ever were in your life. An unqualified apology that her Counsel can announce in Court is your only way out.”

“That you won’t get; mutual regret is another thing. As to the question of damages—”

“Damn the damages!” said MacGown violently. And there was that in Soames which applauded.

“Well,” he said, “I’m sorry for you and her.”

“What the devil do you mean, sir?”

“You will know by the end of next week, unless you revise your views in between. If it comes into Court, we shall justify.”

The ‘Scotchman’ went so red that for a moment Soames was really afraid he would have an apoplectic fit.

“You’d better look out what you say in Court.”

“We pay no attention to bullies in Court.”

MacGown clenched his fists.

“Yes,” said Soames, “it’s a pity I’m not your age. Good evening!”

He passed the fellow and went out. He had noted his way in this ‘rabbit warren,’ and was soon back among the passionless statues. Well! He had turned the last stone and could do no more, except make that overbearing fellow and his young woman sorry they’d ever been born. He came out into the chilly mist of Westminster. Pride and temper! Sooner than admit themselves in the wrong, people would turn themselves into an expensive ‘circus’ for the gaping and the sneers, the japing and the jeers of half the town! To vindicate her ‘honour,’ that ‘Scotchman’ would have his young woman’s past dragged out! And fairly faced by the question whether to drag it out or not, Soames stood still. If he didn’t, she might get a verdict; if he did, and didn’t convince the jury, the damages would be shockingly increased. They might run into thousands. He felt the need of definite decision. One had been drifting in the belief that the thing wouldn’t come into Court! Four o’clock! Not too late, perhaps, to see Sir James Foskisson. He would telephone to very young Nicholas to arrange a conference at once, and if Michael was at South Square, he would take him down to it…

In his study, Michael had been staring with lugubrious relish at Aubrey Greene’s cartoon of himself in a Society paper. On one leg, like Guy—or was it Slingsby? – in the Edward Lear ‘Nonsense’ book, he was depicted crying in a wilderness where a sardonic smile was rising on the horizon. Out of his mouth the word ‘Foggartism’ wreathed like the smoke of a cigar. Above a hole in the middle distance, a meercat’s body supported the upturned face and applauding forepaws of Mr. Blythe. The thing was devastating in treatment and design—not unkind, merely killing. Michael’s face had been endowed with a sort of after-dinner rapture, as if he were enjoying the sound of his own voice. Ridicule! Not even a personal friend, an artist, could see that the wilderness was at least as deserving of ridicule as the pelican! The cartoon seemed to write the word futility large across his page. It recalled to him Fleur’s words at the outset: “And by the time the Tories go out you’ll have your licence.” She was a born realist! From the first she had foreseen for him the position of an eccentric, picturesquely beating a little private drum! A dashed good cartoon! And no one could appreciate it so deeply as its victim. But why did every one smile at Foggartism? Why? Because among a people who naturally walked, it leaped like a grasshopper; to a nation that felt its way in fog, it seemed a will-o’-the-wisp. Yes, he was a fool for his pains! And—just then, Soames arrived.

“I’ve been to see that Scotchman,” he said. “He means to take it into Court.”

“Oh! Not really, sir! I always thought you’d keep it out.”

“Only an unqualified apology will do that. Fleur can’t give it; she’s in the right. Can you come down with me now and see Sir James Foskisson?”

They set out in a taxi for the Temple.

The chambers of very young Nicholas Forsyte were in Paper Buildings. Chinny, mild and nearly forty, he succeeded within ten minutes in presenting to them every possible doubt.

“He seems to enjoy the prospect of getting tonked,” murmured Michael while they were going over to Sir James.

“A poor thing,” Soames responded; “but careful. Foskisson must attend to the case himself.”

After those necessary minutes during which the celebrated K. C. was regathering from very young Nicholas what it was all about, they were ushered into the presence of one with a large head garnished by small grey whiskers, and really obvious brains. Since selecting him, Soames had been keeping his eye on the great advocate; had watched him veiling his appeals to a jury with an air of scrupulous equity; very few—he was convinced—and those not on juries, could see Sir James Foskisson coming round a corner. Soames had specially remarked his success in cases concerned with morals or nationality—no one so apt at getting a co-respondent, a German, a Russian, or anybody at all bad, non-suited! At close quarters his whiskers seemed to give him an intensive respectability—difficult to imagine him dancing, gambling, or in bed. In spite of his practice, too, he enjoyed the reputation of being thorough; he might be relied on to know more than half the facts of any case by the time he went into Court, and to pick up the rest as he went along—or at least not to show that he hadn’t. Very young Nicholas, knowing all the facts, had seemed quite unable to see what line could possibly be taken. Sir James, on the other hand, appeared to know only just enough. Sliding his light eyes from Soames to Michael, he retailed them, and said: “Eminently a case for an amicable settlement.”

“Indeed!” said Soames.

Something in his voice seemed to bring Sir James to attention.

“Have you attempted that?”

“I have gone to the limit.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Forsyte, but what do you regard as the limit?”

“Fifteen hundred pounds, and a mutual expression of regret. They’d accept the money, but they ask for an unqualified apology.”

The great lawyer rested his chin. “Have you tried the unqualified apology without the money?”

“No.”

“I would almost be inclined. MacGown is a very rich man. The shadow and the substance, eh? The expressions in the letters are strong. What do you say, Mr. Mont?”

“Not so strong as those she used of my wife.”

Sir James Foskisson looked at very young Nicholas.

“Let me see,” he said, “those were—?”

“Lion-huntress, and snob,” said Michael, curtly.

Sir James wagged his head precisely as if it were a pair of scales.

“Immoral, snake, traitress, without charm—you think those weaker?”

“They don’t make you snigger, sir, the others do. In Society it’s the snigger that counts.”

Sir James smiled.

“The jury won’t be in Society, Mr. Mont.”

“My wife doesn’t feel like making an apology, anyway, unless there’s an expression of regret on the other side; and I don’t see why she should.”

Sir James Foskisson seemed to breathe more freely.

“In that case,” he said, “we have to consider whether to use the detective’s evidence or not. If we do, we shall need to subpoena the hall porter and the servants at Mr—er—Curfew’s flat.”

“Exactly,” said Soames; “that’s what we’re here to decide.” It was as if he had said: ‘The conference is now opened.’

Sir James perused the detective’s evidence for five silent minutes.

“If this is confirmed, even partially,” he said, at last, “we win.”

Michael had gone to the window. The trees in the garden had tiny buds; some pigeons were strutting on the grass below. He heard Soames say:

“I ought to tell you that they’ve been shadowing my daughter. There’s nothing, of course, except some visits to a young American dangerously ill of pneumonia at his hotel.”

“Of which I knew and approved,” said Michael, without turning round.

“Could we call him?”

“I believe he’s still at Bournemouth. But he was in love with Miss Ferrar.”

Sir James turned to Soames.

“If there’s no question of a settlement, we’d better go for the gloves. Merely to cross-examine as to books and play and clubs, is very inconclusive.”

“Have you read the dark scene in ‘The Plain Dealer’?” asked Soames; “and that novel, ‘Canthar’?”

“All very well, Mr. Forsyte, but impossible to say what a jury would make of impersonal evidence like that.”

Michael had come back to his seat.

“I’ve a horror,” he said, “of dragging in Miss Ferrar’s private life.”

“No doubt. But do you want me to win the case?”

“Not that way. Can’t we go into Court, say nothing, and pay up?”

Sir James Foskisson smiled and looked at Soames. ‘Really,’ he seemed to say, ‘why did you bring me this young man?’

Soames, however, had been pursuing his own thoughts.

“There’s too much risk about that flat; if we failed there, it might be a matter of twenty thousand pounds. Besides, they would certainly call my daughter. I want to prevent that at all costs. I thought you could turn the whole thing into an indictment of modern morality.”

Sir James Foskisson moved in his chair, and the pupils of his light-blue eyes became as pinpoints. He nodded almost imperceptibly three times, precisely as if he had seen the Holy Ghost.

“When shall we be reached?” he said to very young Nicholas.

“Probably next Thursday—Mr. Justice Brane.”

“Very well. I’ll see you again on Monday. Good evening.” And he sank back into an immobility, which neither Soames nor Michael felt equal to disturbing.

They went away silent—very young Nicholas tarrying in conversation with Sir James’ devil.

Turning at the Temple station, Michael murmured:

“It was just as if he’d said: ‘Some stunt!’ wasn’t it? I’m looking in at The Outpost, sir. If you’re going back to Fleur, will you tell her?”

Soames nodded. There it was! He had to do everything that was painful.

Chapter II. “NOT GOING TO HAVE IT”

In the office of The Outpost Mr. Blythe had just been in conversation with one of those great business men who make such deep impression on all to whom they voice their views in strict confidence. If Sir Thomas Lockit did not precisely monopolise the control of manufacture in Great Britain, he, like others, caused almost any one to think so—his knowledge was so positive and his emphasis so cold. In his view the Country must resume the position held before the Great War. It all hinged on coal—a question of this seven hours a day; and they were “not going to have it.” A shilling, perhaps two shillings, off the cost of coal. They were “not going to have” Europe doing without British produce. Very few people knew Sir Thomas Lockit’s mind; but nearly all who did were extraordinarily gratified.

Mr. Blythe, however, was biting his finger, and spitting out the result.

“Who was that fellow with the grey moustache?” asked Michael.

“Lockit. He’s ‘not going to have it.’”

“Oh!” said Michael, in some surprise.

“One sees more and more, Mont, that the really dangerous people are not the politicians, who want things with public passion—that is, mildly, slowly; but the big business men, who want things with private passion, strenuously, quickly. They know their own minds; and if we don’t look out they’ll wreck the country.”

“What are they up to now?” said Michael.

“Nothing for the moment; but it’s brewing. One sees in Lockit the futility of will-power. He’s not going to have what it’s entirely out of his power to prevent. He’d like to break Labour and make it work like a nigger from sheer necessity. Before that we shall be having civil war. Some of the Labour people, of course, are just as bad—they want to break everybody. It’s a bee nuisance. If we’re all to be plunged into industrial struggles again, how are we to get on with Foggartism?”

“I’ve been thinking about the Country,” said Michael. “Aren’t we beating the air, Blythe? Is it any good telling a man who’s lost a lung, that what he wants is a new one?”

Mr. Blythe puffed out one cheek.

“Yes,” he said, “the Country had a hundred very settled years—Waterloo to the War—to get into its present state; it’s got its line of life so fixed and its habits so settled that nobody—neither editors, politicians, nor business men—can think except in terms of its bloated town industrialism. The Country’s got beyond the point of balance in that hundred settled years, and it’ll want fifty settled years to get back to that point again. The real trouble is that we’re not going to get fifty settled years. Some bee thing or other—war with Turkey or Russia, trouble in India, civil ructions, to say nothing of another general flare-up—may knock the bottom out of any settled plans any time. We’ve struck a disturbed patch of history, and we know it in our bones, and live from hand to mouth, according.”

“Well, then!” said Michael, glumly, thinking of what the Minister had said to him at Lippinghall.

Mr. Blythe puffed out the other cheek.

“No backsliding, young man! In Foggartism we have the best goods we can see before us, and we must bee well deliver them, as best we can. We’ve outgrown all the old hats.”

“Have you seen Aubrey Greene’s cartoon?”

“I have.”

“Good—isn’t it? But what I realty came in to tell you, is that this beastly libel case of ours will be on next week.”

Mr. Blythe’s ears moved.

“I’m sorry for that. Win or lose—nothing’s worse for public life than private ructions. You’re not going to have it, are you?”

“We can’t help it. But our defence is to be confined to an attack on the new morality.”

“One can’t attack what isn’t,” said Mr. Blythe.

“D’you mean to say,” said Michael, grinning, “that you haven’t noticed the new morality?”

“Certainly not. Formulate it if you can.”

“‘Don’t be stupid, don’t be dull.’”

Mr. Blythe grunted. “The old morality used to be: ‘Behave like a gentleman.’”

“Yes! But in modern thought there ain’t no sich an animal.”

“There are fragments lying about; they reconstructed Neanderthal man from half a skull.”

“A word that’s laughed at can’t be used, Blythe.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Blythe. “The chief failings of your generation, young Mont, are sensitiveness to ridicule, and terror of being behind the times. It’s bee weakminded.”

Michael grinned.

“I know it. Come down to the House. Parsham’s Electrification Bill is due. We may get some lights on Unemployment.”

Having parted from Mr. Blythe in the Lobby, Michael came on his father walking down a corridor with a short bright old man in a trim grey beard.

“Ah! Michael, we’ve been seeking you. Marquess, my hopeful son! The marquess wants to interest you in electricity.”

Michael removed his hat.

“Will you come to the reading-room, sir?”

This, as he knew, was Marjorie Ferrar’s grandfather, and might be useful. In a remote corner of a room lighted so that nobody could see anyone else reading, they sat down in triangular formation.

“You know about electricity, Mr. Mont?” said the marquess.

“No, sir, except that more of it would be desirable in this room.”

“Everywhere, Mr. Mont. I’ve read about your Foggartism; if you’ll allow me to say so, it’s quite possibly the policy of the future; but nothing will be done with it till you’ve electrified the country. I should like you to start by supporting this Bill of Parsham’s.”

And, with an engaging distinction of syllable, the old peer proceeded to darken Michael’s mind.

“I see, sir,” said Michael, at last. “This Bill ought to add considerably to Unemployment.”

“Temporarily.”

“I wonder if I ought to take on any more temporary trouble. I’m finding it difficult enough to interest people in the future as it is—they seem to think the present so important.”

Sir Lawrence whinnied.

“You must give him time and pamphlets, Marquess. But, my dear fellow, while your Foggartism is confined to the stable, you’ll want a second horse.”

“I’ve been advised already to take up the state of the traffic or penny postage. And, by the way, sir, that case of ours is coming into Court, next week.”

Sir Lawrence’s loose eyebrow shot up:

“Oh!” he said. “Do you remember, Marquess—your granddaughter and my daughter-inlaw? I came to you about it.”

“Something to do with lions? A libel, was it?” said the old peer. “My aunt—”

While Michael was trying to decide whether this was an ejaculation or the beginning of a reminiscence, his father broke in:

“Ah! yes, an interesting case that, Marquess—it’s all in Betty Montecourt’s Memoirs.”

“Libels,” resumed the marquess, “had flavour in those days. The words complained of were: ‘Her crinoline covers her considerable obliquity.’”

“If anything’s to be done to save scandal,” muttered Michael, “it must be done now. We’re at a deadlock.”

“Could YOU put in a word, sir?” said Sir Lawrence.

The marquess’s beard quivered.

“I see from the papers that my granddaughter is marrying a man called MacGown, a Member of this House. Is he about?”

“Probably,” said Michael. “But I had a row with him. I think, sir, there would be more chance with her.”

The marquess rose. “I’ll ask her to breakfast. I dislike publicity. Well, I hope you’ll vote for this Bill, Mr. Mont, and think over the question of electrifying the Country. We want young men interested. I’m going to the Peers’ Gallery, now. Good-bye!”

When briskly he had gone, Michael said to his father: “If he’s not going to have it, I wish he’d ask Fleur to breakfast too. There are two parties to this quarrel.”

Chapter III. SOAMES DRIVES HOME

Soames in the meantime was seated with one of those parties in her ‘parlour.’ She had listened in silence, but with a stubborn and resentful face. What did he know of the loneliness and frustration she had been feeling? Could he tell that the thrown stone had starred her mirrored image of herself; that the words ‘snob,’ and ‘lion-huntress,’ had entered her very soul? He could not understand the spiritual injury she had received, the sudden deprivation of that self-importance, and hope of rising, necessary to all. Concerned by the expression on her face, preoccupied with the practical aspects of the ‘circus’ before them, and desperately involved in thoughts of how to keep her out of it as much as possible, Soames was reduced to the closeness of a fish.

“You’ll be sitting in front, next to me,” he said. “I shouldn’t wear anything too bright. Would you like your mother there, too?”

Fleur shrugged her shoulders.

“Just so,” said Soames. “But if she wants to come, she’d better, perhaps. Brane is not a joking judge, thank goodness. Have you ever been in a Court?”

“No.”

“The great thing is to keep still, and pay no attention to anything. They’ll all be behind you, except the jury—and there’s nothing in them really. If you look at them, don’t smile!”

“Why? Aren’t they safe, Dad?”

Soames put the levity aside.

“I should wear a small hat. Michael must sit on your left. Have you got over that—er—not telling each other things?”

“Yes.”

“I shouldn’t begin it again. He’s very fond of you.”

Fleur nodded.

“Is there anything you want to tell ME? You know I—I worry about you.”

Fleur got up and sat on the arm of his chair; he had at once a feeling of assuagement.

“I really don’t care now. The harm’s done. I only hope SHE’LL have a bad time.”

Soames, who had the same hope, was somewhat shocked by its expression.

He took leave of her soon after and got into his car for the dark drive back to Mapledurham.

The Spring evening was cold and he had the windows up. At first he thought of very little; and then of still less. He had passed a tiring afternoon, and was glad of the slight smell of stephanotis provided by Annette. The road was too familiar to rouse his thoughts, beyond wonder at the lot of people there always seemed to be in the world between six and seven. He dozed his way into the new cut, woke, and dozed again. What was this—Slough? Before going to Marlborough he had been at school there with young Nicholas and St. John Hayman, and after his time, some other young Forsytes. Nearly sixty years ago! He remembered his first day—a brand-new little boy in a brand-new little top-hat, with a playbox stored by his mother with things to eat, and blessed with the words: “There, Summy dear, that’ll make you popular.” He had reckoned on having command of that corruption for some weeks; but no sooner had he produced a bit of it, than they had taken the box, and suggested to him that it would be a good thing to eat the lot. In twenty-two minutes twenty-two boys had materially increased their weight, and he himself, in handing out the contents, had been obliged to eat less than a twenty-third. They had left him one packet of biscuits, and those had caraway seeds, for which he had constitutionally no passion whatever. Afterwards three other new boys had complained that he was a fool for having it all eaten up like that, instead of saving it for them, and he had been obliged to sit on their heads one by one. His popularity had lasted twenty-two minutes, and, so far as he knew, had never come back. He had been against Communism ever since.

Bounding a little on the cushioned seat, he remembered poignantly his own cousin St. John Hayman pushing him into a gorse-bush and holding him there for an appreciable minute. Horrid little brutes, boys! For a moment he felt quite grateful to Michael for trying to get them out of England. And yet—! He had some pleasant memories even of boys. There was his collection of butterflies—he had sold two Red Admirals in poor condition to a boy for one-and-threepence. To be a boy again—h’m—and shoot peas at passengers in a train that couldn’t stop, and drink cherry brandy going home, and win a prize by reciting two hundred lines of ‘The Lady of the Lake’ better than ‘Cherry–Tart’ Burroughes—Um? What had become of ‘Cherry–Tart’ Burroughes, who had so much money at school that his father went bankrupt! ‘Cherry–Tart’ Burroughes!

The loom of Slough faded. One was in rank country now, and he ground the handle of the window to get a little fresh air. A smell of trees and grass came in. Boys out of England! They had funny accents in those great places overseas. Well, they had funny accents here, too. The accent had been all right at Slough—if it wasn’t a boy got lammed. He remembered the first time his father and mother—James and Emily—came down; very genteel (before the word was flyblown), all whiskers and crinoline; the beastly boys had made personal remarks which had hurt him! Get ’em out of England! But in those days there had been nowhere for boys to go. He took a long breath of the wayside air. They said England was changed, spoiled, some even said ‘done for.’ Bosh! It still smelt the same! His great uncle ‘Superior Dosset’s’ brother Simon had gone as a boy to Bermuda at the beginning of the last century, and had he been heard of since? Not he. Young Jon Forsyte and his mother—his own first, unfaithful, still not quite forgotten wife—had gone to the States—would they be heard of again? He hoped not. England! Some day, when he had time and the car was free, he would go and poke round on the border of Dorset and Devon where the Forsytes came from. There was nothing there—he understood, and he wouldn’t care to let anybody know of his going; but the earth must be some sort of colour, and there would be a graveyard, and—ha! Maidenhead! These sprawling villas and hotels and gramophones spoiled the river. Funny that Fleur had never been very fond of the river; too slow and wet, perhaps—everything was quick and dry now, like America. But had they such a river as the Thames anywhere out of England? Not they! Nothing that ran green and clear and weedy, where you could sit in a punt and watch the cows, and those big elms, and the poplars. Nothing that was safe and quiet, where you called your soul your own and thought of Constable and Mason and Walker.

His car bumped something slightly, and came to a stand. That fellow Riggs was always bumping something! He looked out. The chauffeur had got down and was examining his mudguard.

“What was that?” said Soames.

“I think it was a pig, sir.”

“Where?”

“Shall I drive on, or see?”

Soames looked round. There seemed no habitations in sight.

“Better see.”

The chauffeur disappeared behind the car. Soames remained seated. He had never had any pigs. They said the pig was a clean animal. People didn’t treat pigs properly. It was very quiet! No cars on the road; in the silence the wind was talking a little in the hedgerow. He noticed some stars.

“It is a pig, sir; he’s breathing.”

“Oh!” said Soames. If a cat had nine, how many lives had a pig? He remembered his father James’ only riddle: “If a herring and a half cost three-a’pence, what’s the price of a gridiron?” When still very small, he had perceived that it was unanswerable.

“Where is he?” he said.

“In the ditch, sir.”

A pig was property, but if in the ditch, nobody would notice it till after he was home. “Drive on,” he said: “No! Wait.’” And, opening the near door, he got out. After all, the pig was in distress. “Show me,” he said, and moved in the tail-light of his car to where the chauffeur stood pointing. There, in the shallow ditch, was a dark object emitting cavernous low sounds, as of a man asleep in a Club chair.

“It must belong to one of them cottages we passed a bit back,” said the chauffeur.

Soames looked at the pig.

“Anything broken?”

“No, sir; the mudguard’s all right. I fancy it copped him pretty fair.”

“In the pig, I meant.”

The chauffeur touched the pig with his boot. It squealed, and Soames quivered. Some one would hear! Just like that fellow, drawing attention to it—no gumption whatever! But how, without touching, did you find out whether anything was broken in the pig? He moved a step and saw the pig’s eyes; and a sort of fellow-feeling stirred in him. What if it had a broken leg! Again the chauffeur touched it with his foot. The pig uttered a lamentable noise, and, upheaving its bulk, squealing and grunting, trotted off. Soames hastily resumed his seat. “Drive on!” he said. Pigs! They never thought of anything but themselves; and cottagers were just as bad—very unpleasant about cars. And he wasn’t sure they weren’t right—tearing great things! The pig’s eye seemed looking at him again from where his feet were resting. Should he keep some, now that he had those meadows on the other side of the river? Eat one’s own bacon, cure one’s own hams! After all, there was something in it—clean pigs, properly fed! That book of old Foggart said one must grow more food in England, and be independent if there were another war. He sniffed. Smell of baking—Reading, already! They still grew biscuits in England! Foreign countries growing his food—something unpleasant about living on sufferance like that! After all, English meat and English wheat—as for a potato, you couldn’t get one fit to eat in Italy, or France. And now they wanted to trade with Russia again! Those Bolshevists hated England. Eat their wheat and eggs, use their tallow and skins? Infra dig, he called it! The car swerved and he was jerked against the side cushions. The village church! – that fellow Riggs was always shying at something. Pretty little old affair, too, with its squat spire and its lichen—couldn’t see that out of England—graves, old names, yew-trees. And that reminded him: One would have to be buried, some day. Here, perhaps. Nothing flowery! Just his name, ‘Soames Forsyte,’ standing out on rough stone, like that grave he had sat on at Highgate; no need to put ‘Here lies’—of course he’d lie! As to a cross, he didn’t know. Probably they’d put one, whatever he wished. He’d like to be in a corner, though, away from people—with an apple-tree or something, over him. The less they remembered him, the better. Except Fleur—and she would have other things to think of!

The car turned down the last low hill to the level of the river. He caught a glimpse of it flowing dark between the poplars, like the soul of England, running hidden. The car rolled into the drive, and stopped before the door. He shouldn’t tell Annette yet about this case coming into Court—she wouldn’t feel as he did—she had no nerves!

Chapter IV. CATECHISM

Marjorie Ferrar’s marriage was fixed for the day of the Easter Recess; her honeymoon to Lugano; her trousseau with Clothilde; her residence in Eaton Square; her pin-money at two thousand a year; and her affections on nobody. When she received a telephone message: Would she come to breakfast at Shropshire House? she was surprised. What could be the matter with the old boy?

At five minutes past nine, however, on the following day she entered the ancestral precincts, having left almost all powder and pigment on her dressing-table. Was he going to disapprove of her marriage? Or to give her some of her grandmother’s lace, which was only fit to be in a museum?

The marquess was reading the paper in front of an electric fire. He bent on her his bright, shrewd glance.

“Well, Marjorie? Shall we sit down, or do you like to breakfast standing? There’s porridge, scrambled eggs, fish—ah! and grapefruit—very considerate of them! Pour out the coffee, will you?”

“What’ll you have, Grandfather?”

“Thank you, I’ll roam about and peck a bit. So you’re going to be married. Is that fortunate?”

“People say so.”

“He’s in Parliament, I see. Do you think you could interest him in this Electricity Bill of Parsham’s?”

“Oh! yes. He’s dead keen on electricity.”

“Sensible man. He’s got Works, I suppose. Are they electrified?”

“I expect so.”

The marquess gave her another glance.

“You know nothing about it,” he said. “But you’re looking very charming. What’s this I hear of a libel?”

She might have known! Grandfather was too frightfully spry! He missed nothing!

“It wouldn’t interest you, dear.”

“I disagree. My father and OLD Sir Lawrence Mont were great friends. Why do you want to wash linen in Court?”

“I don’t.”

“Are you the plaintiff?”

“Yes.”

“What do you complain of?”

“They’ve said things about me.”

“Who?”

“Fleur Mont and her father.”

“Ah! the relation of the tea-man. What have they said?”

“That I haven’t a moral about me.”

“Well, have you?”

“As much as most people.”

“Anything else?”

“That I’m a snake of the first water.”

“I don’t like that. What made them say so?”

“Only that I was heard calling her a snob; and so she is.”

The marquess, who had resigned a finished grapefruit, placed his foot on a chair, his elbow on his knee, his chin on his hand, and said:

“No divinity hedges our Order in these days, Marjorie; but we still stand for something. It’s a mistake to forget that.”

She sat very still. Everybody respected grandfather; even her father, to whom he did not speak. But to be told that she stood for something was really too dull for anything! All very well for grandfather at his age, and with his lack of temptations! Besides, SHE had no handle to her name, owing to the vaunted nature of British institutions. Even if she felt that—by Lord Charles out of Lady Ursula—she ought not to be dictated to, she had never put on frills—had always liked to be thought a mere Bohemian. And, after all, she did stand—for not being stuffy, and not being dull.

“Well, Grandfather, I tried to make it up, but she wouldn’t. Coffee?”

“Yes, coffee. But tell me, are you happy about yourself?”

Marjorie Ferrar handed him the cup. “No. Who is?”

“A hit,” said the marquess. “You’re going to be very well off, I hear. That means power. It’s worth using well, Marjorie. He’s a Scotsman, isn’t he? Do you like him?” Again the shrewd bright glance.

“At times.”

“I see. With your hair, you must be careful. Red hair is extraordinarily valuable on occasion. In the Eton and Harrow Match, or for speaking after dinner; but don’t let it run away with you after you’re married. Where are you going to live?”

“In Eaton Square. There’s a Scotch place, too.”

“Have your kitchens electrified. I’ve had it done here. It saves the cook’s temper. I get very equable food. But about this libel. Can’t you all say you’re sorry—why put money into the lawyers’ pockets?”

“She won’t, unless I do, and I won’t, unless she does.”

The marquess drank off his coffee.

“Then what is there in the way? I dislike publicity, Marjorie. Look at that suit the other day. Anything of this nature in Society, nowadays, is a nail in our coffins.”

“I’ll speak to Alec, if you like.”

“Do! Has he red hair?”

“No; black.”

“Ah! What would you like for a wedding-present—lace?”

“Oh! no, please, dear. Nobody’s wearing lace.”

With his head on one side, the marquess looked at her. “I can’t get that lace off,” he seemed to say.

“Perhaps you’d like a Colliery. Electrified, it would pay in no time.”

Marjorie Ferrar laughed. “I know you’re hard up, Grandfather; but I’d rather not have a Colliery, thanks. They’re so expensive. Just give me your blessing.”

“I wonder,” said the marquess, “if I could sell blessings? Your uncle Dangerfield has gone in for farming; he’s ruining me. If only he’d grow wheat by electricity; it’s the only way to make it pay at the present price. Well, if you’ve finished breakfast, good-bye. I must go to work.”

Marjorie Ferrar, who had indeed begun breakfast, stood up and pressed his hand. He was a dear old boy, if somewhat rapid!…

That same evening, in a box at the St. Anthony, she had her opportunity, when MacGown was telling her of Soames’ visit.

“Oh, dear! Why on earth didn’t you settle it, Alec? The whole thing’s a bore. I’ve had my grandfather at me about it.”

“If they’ll apologise,” said MacGown, “I’ll settle it tomorrow. But an apology they must make.”

“And what about me? I don’t want to stand up to be shot at.”

“There are some things one can’t sit down under, Marjorie. Their whole conduct has been infamous.”

Visited by a reckless impulse, she said:

“What d’you suppose I’m realty like, Alec?”

MacGown put his hand on her bare arm.

“I don’t suppose; I know.”

“Well?”

“Defiant.”

Curious summary! Strangely good in a way—only—!

“You mean that I like to irritate people till they think I’m—what I’m not. But suppose”—her eyes confronted his—“I really am.”

MacGown’s grasp tightened.

“You’re not; and I won’t have it said.”

“You think this case will whitewash my—defiance?”

“I know what gossip is; and I know it buzzes about you. People who say things are going to be taught, once for all, that they can’t.”

Marjorie Ferrar turned her gaze towards the still life on the dropped curtain, laughed and said:

“My dear man, you’re dangerously provincial.”

“I know a straight line when I see one.”

“Yes; but there aren’t any in London. You’d better hedge, Alec, or you’ll be taking a toss over me.”

MacGown said, simply: “I believe in you more than you believe in yourself.”

She was glad that the curtain rose just then, for she felt confused and rather touched.

Instead of confirming her desire to drop the case, that little talk gave her a feeling that by the case her marriage stood or fell. Alec would know where he was when it was over, and so would she! There would be precious little secret about her and she would either not be married to him, or at least not married under false pretences. Let it rip! It was, however, a terrible bore; especially the preparatory legal catechism she had now to undergo. What effect, for instance, had been produced among her friends and acquaintances by those letters? From the point of view of winning, the question was obviously not without importance. But how was she to tell? Two hostesses had cancelled week-end invitations: a rather prim Countess, and a Canadian millionairess married to a decaying baronet. It had not occurred to her before that this was the reason, but it might have been. Apart from them she would have to say she didn’t know, people didn’t tell you to your face what they heard or thought of you. They were going to try and make her out a piece of injured innocence! Good Lord! What if she declared her real faith in Court, and left them all in the soup! Her real faith—what was it? Not to let a friend down; not to give a man away; not to funk; to do things differently from other people; to be always on the go; not to be ‘stuffy’; not to be dull! The whole thing was topsy-turvy! Well, she must keep her head!

Chapter V. THE DAY

On the day of the case Soames rose, in Green Street, with a sort of sick impatience. Why wasn’t it the day after!

Renewed interviews with very young Nicholas and Sir James Foskisson had confirmed the idea of defence by attack on modern morality. Foskisson was evidently going to put his heart into that—perhaps he’d suffered from it; and if he was anything like old Bobstay, who had just published his reminiscences at the age of eighty-two, that cat would lose her hair and give herself away. Yesterday afternoon Soames had taken an hour’s look at Mr. Justice Brane, and been very favourably impressed; the learned judge, though younger than himself—he had often briefed him in other times—looked old-fashioned enough now for anything.

Having cleaned his teeth, put in his plate, and brushed his hair, Soames went into the adjoining room and told Annette she would be late. She always looked terribly young and well in bed, and this, though a satisfaction to him, he could never quite forgive. When he was gone, fifteen years hence, perhaps, she would still be under sixty, and might live another twenty years.

Having roused her sufficiently to say: “You will have plenty of time to be fussy in that Court, Soames,” he went back and looked out of his window. The air smelled of Spring—aggravating! He bathed and shaved with care—didn’t want to go into the Box with a cut on his chin! – then went back to see that Annette was not putting on anything bright. He found her in pink underclothes.

“I should wear black,” he said. Annette regarded him above her hand-mirror. “Whom do you want me to fascinate, Soames?”

“These people will bring their friends, I shouldn’t wonder; anything conspicuous—”

“Don’t be afraid; I shall not try to be younger than my daughter.”

Soames went out again. The French! Well, she had good taste in dress.

After breakfast he went off to Fleur’s. Winifred and Imogen would look after Annette—they too were going to the Court—as if there were anything to enjoy about this business!

Spruce in his silk hat, he walked across the Green Park, conning over his evidence. No buds on the trees—a late year; and the Royal Family out of town! Passing the Palace, he thought: ‘They’re very popular!’ He supposed they liked this great Empire group in front of them, all muscle and flesh and large animals! The Albert Memorial, and this—everybody ran them down; but, after all, peace and plenty—nothing modern about them! Emerging into Westminster, he cut his way through a smell of fried fish into the Parliamentary backwater of North Street, and, between its pleasant little houses, gazed steadily at the Wren Church. Never going inside any church except St. Paul’s, he derived a sort of strength from their outsides—churches were solid and stood back, and didn’t seem to care what people thought of them! He felt a little better, rounding into South Square. The Dandie met him in the hall. Though he was not over fond of dogs, the breadth and solidity of this one always affected Soames pleasurably—better than that little Chinese abortion they used to have! This dog was a character—masterful and tenacious—you would get very little out of HIM in a witness-box! Looking up from the dog, he saw Michael and Fleur coming down the stairs. After hurriedly inspecting Michael’s brown suit and speckled tie, his eyes came to anchor on his daughter’s face. Pale but creamy, nothing modern—thank goodness! – no rouge, salve, powder, or eye-blacking; perfectly made up for her part! In a blue dress, too, very good taste, which must have taken some finding! The desire that she should not feel nervous stilled Soames’ private qualms.

“Quite a smell of Spring!” he said: “Shall we start?”

While a cab was being summoned, he tried to put her at ease.

“I had a look at Brane yesterday; he’s changed a good deal from when I used to know him. I was one of the first to give him briefs.”

“That’s bad, isn’t it, sir?” said Michael.

“How?”

“He’ll be afraid of being thought grateful.”

Flippant, as usual!

“Our judges,” he said, “are a good lot, take them all round.”

“I’m sure they are. Do you know if he ever reads, sir?”

“How d’you mean—reads?”

“Fiction. We don’t, in Parliament.”

“Nobody reads novels, except women,” said Soames. And he felt Fleur’s dress. “You’ll want a fur; that’s flimsy.”

While she was getting the fur, he said to Michael: “How did she sleep?”

“Better than I did, sir.”

“That’s a comfort, anyway. Here’s the cab. Keep away from that Scotchman.”

“I see him every day in the House, you know.”

“Ah!” said Soames; “I forgot. You make nothing of that sort of thing there, I believe.” And taking his daughter’s arm, he led her forth.

“I wonder if old Blythe will turn up,” he heard Michael say, when they passed the office of The Outpost. It was the first remark made in the cab, and, calling for no response, it was the last.

The Law Courts had their customary air, and people, in black and blue, were hurrying into them. “Beetletrap!” muttered Michael. Soames rejected the simile with his elbow—for him they were just familiar echoing space, concealed staircases, stuffy corridors, and the square enclosures of one voice at a time.

Too early, they went slowly up the stairs. Really, it was weak-minded! Here they had come—they and the other side—to get—what? He was amazed at himself for not having insisted on Fleur’s apologising. Time and again in the case of others, all this had appeared quite natural—in the case of his own daughter, it now seemed almost incredibly idiotic. He hurried her on, however, past lingering lawyers’ clerks, witnesses, what not. A few low words to an usher, and they were inside, and sitting down. Very young Nicholas was already in his place, and Soames so adjusted himself that there would only be the thickness of Sir James, when he materialised, between them. Turning to confer, he lived for a cosey moment in the past again, as might some retired old cricketer taking block once more. Beyond young Nicholas he quartered the assemblage with his glance. Yes, people had got wind of it! He knew they would—with that cat always in the public eye—quite a lot of furbelows up there at the back, and more coming. He reversed himself abruptly; the Jury were filing in-special, but a common-looking lot! Why were juries always common-looking? He had never been on one himself. He glanced at Fleur. There she sat, and what she was feeling he couldn’t tell. As for young Michael, his ears looked very pointed. And just then he caught sight of Annette. She’d better not come and sit down here, after all—the more there were of them in front, the more conspicuous it would be! So he shook his head at her, and waved towards the back. Ah! She was going! She and Winifred and Imogen would take up room—all rather broad in the beam; but there were still gaps up there. And suddenly he saw the plaintiff and her lawyer and MacGown; very spry they looked, and that insolent cat was smiling! Careful not to glance in their direction, Soames saw them sit down, some six feet off. Ah! and here came Counsel—Foskisson and Bullfry together, thick as thieves. They’d soon be calling each other ‘my friend’ now, and cutting each other’s throats! He wondered if he wouldn’t have done better after all to have let the other side have Foskisson, and briefed Bullfry—an ugly-looking customer, broad, competent and leathery. He and Michael with Fleur between them, and behind—Foskisson and his junior; Settlewhite and the Scotchman with ‘that cat’ between them, and behind—Bullfry and his junior! Only the Judge wanted now to complete the pattern! And here he came! Soames gripped Fleur’s arm and raised her with himself. Bob! Down again! One side of Brane’s face seemed a little fuller than the other; Soames wondered if he had toothache, and how it would affect the proceedings.

And now came the usual ‘shivaree’ about such and such a case, and what would be taken next week, and so on. Well! that was over, and the judge was turning his head this way and that, as if to see where the field was placed. Now Bullfry was up:

“If it please Your Lordship—”

He was making the usual opening, with the usual flowery description of the plaintiff—granddaughter of a marquess, engaged to a future Prime Minister… or so you’d think!… prominent in the most brilliant circles, high-spirited, perhaps a thought too high-spirited… Baggage!… the usual smooth and sub-acid description of the defendant!… Rich and ambitious young married lady… Impudent beggar!… Jury would bear in mind that they were dealing in both cases with members of advanced Society, but they would bear in mind, too, that primary words had primary meanings and consequences, whatever the Society in which they were uttered. H’m! Very sketchy reference to the incident in Fleur’s drawing-room—minimised, of course—ha! an allusion to himself—man of property and standing—thank you for nothing! Reading the libellous letters now! Effect of them… very made-up, all that!… Plaintiff obliged to take action… Bunkum! “I shall now call Mrs. Ralph Ppynrryn.”

“How do you spell that name, Mr. Bullfry?”

“With two p’s, two y’s, two n’s and two r’s, my lord.”

“I see.”

Soames looked at the owner of the name. Good-looking woman of the flibberty-gibbet type! He listened to her evidence with close attention. Her account of the incident in Fleur’s drawing-room seemed substantially correct. She had received the libellous letter two days later; had thought it her duty, as a friend, to inform Miss Ferrar. Should say, as a woman in Society, that this incident and these letters had done Miss Ferrar harm. Had talked it over with a good many people. A public incident. Much feeling excited. Had shown her letter to Mrs. Maltese, and been shown one that she had received. Whole matter had become current gossip. H’m!

Bullfry down, and Foskisson up!

Soames adjusted himself. Now to see how the fellow shaped—the manner of a cross-examiner was so important! Well, he had seen worse—the eye, like frozen light, fixed on unoccupied space while the question was being asked, and coming round on to the witness for the answer; the mouth a little open, as if to swallow it; the tongue visible at times on the lower lip, the unoccupied hand clasping something under the gown behind.

“Now, Mrs. – er—Ppynrryn. This incident, as my friend has called it, happened at the house of Mrs. Mont, did it not? And how did you come there? As a friend. Quite so! And you have nothing against Mrs. Mont? No. And you thought it advisable and kind, madam, to show this letter to the plaintiff and to other people—in fact, to foment this little incident to the best of your ability?” Eyes round!

“If a friend of mine received such a letter about me, I should expect her to tell me that the writer was going about abusing me.”

“Even if your friend knew of the provocation and was also a friend of the letter-writer?”

“Yes.”

“Now, madam, wasn’t it simply that the sensation of this little quarrel was too precious to be burked? It would have been so easy, wouldn’t it, to have torn the letter up and said nothing about it? You don’t mean to suggest that it made you think any the worse of Miss Ferrar—you knew her too well, didn’t you?”

“Ye-es.”

“Exactly. As a friend of both parties you knew that these expressions were just spleen and not to be taken seriously.”

“I can’t say that.”

“Oh! You regarded them as serious? Am I to take it that you thought they touched the ham-bone? In other words, that they were true?”

“Certainly not.”

“Could they do Miss Ferrar any harm if they were palpably untrue?”

“I think they could.”

“Not with you—you were a friend?”

“Not with me.”

“But with other people, who would never have heard of them but for you. In fact, madam, you enjoyed the whole thing. Did you?”

“Enjoyed? No.”

“You regarded it as your duty to spread this letter? Don’t you enjoy doing your duty?”

The dry cackle within Soames stopped at his lips.

Foskisson down, and Bullfry up!

“It is, in fact, your experience, Mrs. Ppynrryn, as well as that of most of us not so well constituted, perhaps, as my learned friend, that duty is sometimes painful.”

“Yes.”

“Thank you. Mrs. Edward Maltese.”

During the examination of this other young woman, who seemed to be dark and solid, Soames tried to estimate the comparative effect produced by Fleur and ‘that cat’ on the four jurymen whose eyes seemed to stray towards beauty. He had come to no definite conclusion, when Sir James Foskisson rose to cross-examine.

“Tell me, Mrs. Maltese, which do you consider the most serious allegation among those complained of?”

“The word ‘treacherous’ in my letter, and the expression ‘a snake of the first water’ in the letter to Mrs. Ppynrryn.”

“More serious than the others?”

“Yes.”

“That is where you can help me, madam. The circle you move in is not exactly the plaintiff’s, perhaps?”

“Not exactly.”

“Intersecting, um?”

“Yes.”

“Now, in which section, yours or the plaintiff’s, would you say the expression ‘she hasn’t a moral about her’ would be the more, or shall we say the less, damning?”

“I can’t say.”

“I only want your opinion. Do you think your section of Society as advanced as Miss Ferrar’s?”

“Perhaps not.”

“It’s well known, isn’t it, that her circle is very free and easy?”

“I suppose so.”

“Still, YOUR section is pretty advanced—I mean, you’re not ‘stuffy’?”

“Not what, Sir James?”

“Stuffy, my lord; it’s an expression a good deal used in modern Society.”

“What does it mean?”

“Strait-laced, my lord.”

“I see. Well, he’s asking you if you’re stuffy?”

“No, my lord. I hope not.”

“You hope not. Go on, Sir James.”

“Not being stuffy, you wouldn’t be exactly worried if somebody said to you: ‘My dear, you haven’t a moral about you’?”

“Not if it was said as charmingly as that.”

“Now come, Mrs. Maltese, does such an expression, said charmingly or the reverse, convey any blame to you or to your friends?”

“If the reverse, yes.”

“Am I to take it that the conception of morality in your circle is the same as in-my lord’s?”

“How is the witness to answer that, Sir James?”

“Well, in your circle are you shocked when your friends are divorced, or when they go off together for a week in Paris, say, or wherever they find convenient?”

“Shocked? Well, I suppose one needn’t be shocked by what one wouldn’t do oneself.”

“In fact, you’re not shocked?”

“I don’t know that I’m shocked by anything.”

“That would be being stuffy, wouldn’t it?”

“Perhaps.”

“Well, will you tell me then—if that’s the state of mind in your circle; and you said, you know, that your circle is less free and easy than the plaintiff’s—how it is possible that such words as ‘she hasn’t a moral about her’ can have done the plaintiff any harm?”

“The whole world isn’t in our circles.”

“No. I suggest that only a very small portion of the world is in your circles. But do you tell me that you or the plaintiff pay any—?”

“How can she tell, Sir James, what the plaintiff pays?”

“That YOU, then, pay any attention to what people outside your circle think?”

Soames moved his head twice. The fellow was doing it well. And his eye caught Fleur’s face turned towards the witness; a little smile was curling her lip.

“I don’t personally pay much attention even to what anybody IN my circle thinks.”

“Have you more independence of character than the plaintiff, should you say?”

“I dare say I’ve got as much.”

“Is she notoriously independent?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Maltese.”

Foskisson down, Bullfry up!

“I call the plaintiff, my lord.”

Soames uncrossed his legs.

Chapter VI. IN THE BOX

Marjorie Ferrar stepped into the Box, not exactly nervous, and only just ‘made-up.’ The papers would record a black costume with chinchilla fur and a black hat. She kissed the air in front of the book, took a deep breath, and turned to Mr. Bullfry.

For the last five days she had resented more and more the way this case had taken charge of her. She had initiated it, and it had completely deprived her of initiative. She had, in fact, made the old discovery, that when the machinery of quarrel is once put in motion, much more than pressure of the starting button is required to stop its revolutions. She was feeling that it would serve Alec and the lawyers right if all went wrong.

The voice of Mr. Bullfry, carefully adjusted, soothed her. His questions were familiar, and with each answer her confidence increased, her voice sounded clear and pleasant in her ears. And she stood at ease, making her figure as boyish as she could. Her performance, she felt, was interesting to the judge, the jury, and all those people up there, whom she could dimly see. If only ‘that little snob’ had not been seated, expressionless, between her and her Counsel! When at length Mr. Bullfry sat down and Sir James Foskisson got up, she almost succumbed to the longing to powder her nose. Clasping the Box, she resisted it, and while he turned his papers, and hitched his gown, the first tremor of the morning passed down her spine. At least he might look at her when he spoke!

“Have you ever been party to an action before, Miss Ferrar?”

“No.”

“You quite understand, don’t you, that you are on your oath?”

“Quite.”

“You have told my friend that you had no animus against Mrs. Mont. Look at this marked paragraph in The Evening Sun of October 3rd. Did you write that?”

Marjorie Ferrar felt exactly as if she had stepped out of a conservatory into an East wind. Did they know everything, then?

“Yes; I wrote it.”

“It ends thus: ‘The enterprising little lady is losing no chance of building up her salon on the curiosity which ever surrounds any buccaneering in politics.’ Is the reference to Mrs. Mont?”

“Yes.”

“Not very nice, is it—of a friend?”

“I don’t see any harm in it.”

“The sort of thing, in fact, you’d like written about yourself?”

“The sort of thing I should expect if I were doing the same thing.”

“That’s not quite an answer, but let me put it like this: The sort of thing your father would like to read about you, is it?”

“My father would never read that column.”

“Then it surprises you to hear that Mrs. Mont’s father did? Do you write many of these cheery little paragraphs about your friends?”

“Not many.”

“Every now and then, eh? And do they remain your friends?”

“It’s not easy in Society to tell who’s a friend and who isn’t.”

“I quite agree, Miss Ferrar. You have admitted making one or two critical—that was your word, I think—remarks concerning Mrs. Mont, in her own house. Do you go to many houses and talk disparagingly of your hostess?”

“No; and in any case I don’t expect to be eavesdropped.”

“I see; so long as you’re not found out, it’s all right, eh? Now, on this first Wednesday in October last, at Mrs. Mont’s, in speaking to this gentleman, Mr. Philip—er—Quinsey, did you use the word ‘snob’ of your hostess?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Be careful. You heard the evidence of Mrs. Ppynrryn and Mrs. Maltese. Mrs. Maltese said, you remember, that Mr. Forsyte—that is Mrs. Mont’s father—said to you on that occasion: ‘You called my daughter a snob in her own house, madam—be so kind as to withdraw; you are a traitress.’ Is that a correct version?”

“Probably.”

“Do you suggest that he invented the word ‘snob’?”

“I suggest he was mistaken.”

“Not a nice word, is it—‘snob’? Was there any other reason why he should call you a traitress?”

“My remarks weren’t meant for his ears. I don’t remember exactly what I said.”

“Well, we shall have Mr. Forsyte in the box to refresh your memory as to exactly what you said. But I put it to you that you called her a snob, not once but twice, during that little conversation?”

“I’ve told you I don’t remember; he shouldn’t have listened.”

“Very well! So you feel quite happy about having written that paragraph and said nasty things of Mrs. Mont behind her back in her own drawing-room?”

Marjorie Ferrar grasped the Box till the blood tingled in her palms. His voice was maddening.

“Yet it seems, Miss Ferrar, that you object to others saying nasty things about you in return. Who advised you to bring this action?”

“My father first; and then my fiance.”

“Sir Alexander MacGown. Does he move in the same circles as you?”

“No; he moves in Parliamentary circles.”

“Exactly; and he wouldn’t know, would he, the canons of conduct that rule in your circle?”

“There are no circles so definite as that.”

“Always willing to learn, Miss Ferrar. But tell me, do you know what Sir Alexander’s Parliamentary friends think about conduct and morality?”

“I can guess. I don’t suppose there’s much difference.”

“Are you suggesting, Miss Ferrar, that responsible public men take the same light-hearted view of conduct and morals as you?”

“Aren’t you rather assuming, Sir James, that her view IS light-hearted?”

“As to conduct, my lord, I submit that her answers have shown the very light-hearted view she takes of the obligations incurred by the acceptance of hospitality, for instance. I’m coming to morals now.”

“I think you’d better, before drawing your conclusions. What have public men to do with it?”

“I’m suggesting, my lord, that this lady is making a great to-do about words which a public man, or any ordinary citizen, would have a perfect right to resent, but which she, with her views, has no right whatever to resent.”

“You must prove her views then. Go on!”

Marjorie Ferrar, relaxed for a moment, gathered herself again. Her views!

“Tell me, Miss Ferrar—we all know now the meaning of the word ‘stuffy’—are public men ‘stuffier’ than you?”

“They may say they are.”

“You think them hypocrites?”

“I don’t think anything at all about them.”

“Though you’re going to marry one? You are complaining of the words: ‘She hasn’t a moral about her.’ Have you read this novel ‘Can-thar’?” He was holding up a book.

“I think so.”

“Don’t you know?”

“I’ve skimmed it.”

“Taken off the cream, eh? Read it sufficiently to form an opinion?”

“Yes.”

“Would you agree with the view of it expressed in this letter to a journal? ‘The book breaks through the British “stuffiness,” which condemns any frank work of art—and a good thing too!’ It is a good thing?”

“Yes. I hate Grundyism.”

“‘It is undoubtedly Literature.’ The word is written with a large L. Should you say it was?”

“Literature—yes. Not great literature, perhaps.”

“But it ought to be published?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“You know that it is not published in England?”

“Yes.”

“But it ought to be?”

“It isn’t everybody’s sort of book, of course.”

“Don’t evade the question, please. In your opinion ought this novel ‘Canthar’ to be published in England?… Take your time, Miss Ferrar.”

The brute lost nothing! Just because she had hesitated a moment trying to see where he was leading her.

“Yes, I think literature should be free.”

“You wouldn’t sympathise with its suppression, if it were published?”

“No.”

“You wouldn’t approve of the suppression of any book on the ground of mere morals?”

“I can’t tell you unless I see the book. People aren’t bound to read books, you know.”

“And you think your opinion generally on this subject is that of public men and ordinary citizens?”

“No; I suppose it isn’t.”

“But your view would be shared by most of your own associates?”

“I should hope so.”

“A contrary opinion would be ‘stuffy,’ wouldn’t it?”

“If you like to call it so. It’s not my word.”

“What is your word, Miss Ferrar?”

“I think I generally say ‘ga-ga.’”

“Do you know, I’m afraid the Court will require a little elaboration of that.”

“Not for me, Sir James; I’m perfectly familiar with the word; it means ‘in your dotage.’”

“The Bench is omniscient, my lord. Then any one, Miss Ferrar, who didn’t share the opinion of yourself and your associates in the matter of this book would be ‘ga-ga,’ that is to say, in his or her dotage?”

“Aesthetically.”

“Ah! I thought we should arrive at that word. You, I suppose, don’t connect art with life?”

“No.”

“Don’t think it has any effect on life?”

“It oughtn’t to.”

“When a man’s theme in a book is extreme incontinence, depicted with all due emphasis, that wouldn’t have any practical effect on his readers, however young?”

“I can’t say about other people, it wouldn’t have any effect on me.”

“You are emancipated, in fact.”

“I don’t know what you mean by that.”

“Isn’t what you are saying about the divorce of art from life the merest claptrap; and don’t you know it?”

“I certainly don’t.”

“Let me put it another way: Is it possible for those who believe in current morality, to hold your view that art has no effect on life?”

“Quite possible; if they are cultured.”

“Cultured! Do you believe in current morality yourself?”

“I don’t know what you call current morality.”

“I will tell you, Miss Ferrar. I should say, for instance, it was current morality that women should not have liaisons before they’re married, and should not have them after.”

“What about men?”

“Thank you; I was coming to men. And that men should at least not have them after.”

“I shouldn’t say that was CURRENT morality at all.”

In yielding to that satiric impulse she knew at once she had made a mistake—the judge had turned his face towards her. He was speaking.

“Do I understand you to imply that in your view it is moral for women to have liaisons before marriage, and for men and women to have them after?”

“I think it’s current morality, my lord.”

“I’m not asking you about current morality; I’m asking whether in YOUR view it is moral?”

“I think many people think it’s all right, who don’t say it, yet.”

She was conscious of movement throughout the jury; and of a little flump in the well of the Court. Sir Alexander had dropped his hat. The sound of a nose being loudly blown broke the stillness; the face of Bullfry K. C. was lost to her view. She felt the blood mounting in her cheeks.

“Answer my question, please. Do YOU say it’s all right?”

“I—I think it depends.”

“On what?”

“On—on circumstances, environment, temperament; all sorts of things.”

“Would it be all right for you?”

Marjorie Ferrar became very still. “I can’t answer that question, my lord.”

“You mean—you don’t want to?”

“I mean I don’t know.”

And, with a feeling as if she had withdrawn her foot from a bit of breaking ice, she saw Bullfry’s face re-emerge from his handkerchief.

“Very well. Go on, Sir James!”

“Anyway, we may take it, Miss Ferrar, that those of us who say we don’t believe in these irregularities are hypocrites in your view?”

“Why can’t you be fair?”

He was looking at her now; and she didn’t like him any the better for it.

“I shall prove myself fair before I’ve done, Miss Ferrar.”

“You’ve got your work cut out, haven’t you?”

“Believe me, madam, it will be better for you not to indulge in witticism. According to you, there is no harm in a book like ‘Canthar’?”

“There ought to be none.”

“You mean if we were all as aesthetically cultured—as you.”—Sneering beast! – “But are we?”

“No.”

“Then there is harm. But you wouldn’t mind its being done. I don’t propose, my lord, to read from this extremely unpleasant novel. Owing apparently to its unsavoury reputation, a copy of it now costs nearly seven pounds. And I venture to think that is in itself an answer to the plaintiff’s contention that ‘art’ so called has no effect on life. We have gone to the considerable expense of buying copies, and I shall ask that during the luncheon interval the jury may read some dozen marked passages.”

“Have you a copy for me, Sir James?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“And one for Mr. Bullfry?… If there is any laughter, I shall have the Court cleared. Go on.”

“You know the ‘Ne Plus Ultra’ Play–Producing Society, Miss Ferrar? It exists to produce advanced plays, I believe.”

“Plays—I don’t know about ‘advanced.’”

“Russian plays, and the Restoration dramatists?”

“Yes.”

“And you have played in them?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do you remember a play called ‘The Plain Dealer,’ by Wycherley, given at a matinee on January 7th last—did you play in that the part of Olivia?”

“Yes.”

“A nice part?”

“A very good part?”

“I said ‘nice.’”

“I don’t like the word.”

“Too suggestive of ‘prunes and prisms,’ Miss Ferrar? Is it the part of a modest woman?”

“No.”

“Is it, toward the end, extremely immodest? I allude to the dark scene.”

“I don’t know about extremely.”

“Anyway, you felt no hesitation about undertaking and playing the part—a little thing like that doesn’t worry you?”

“I don’t know why it should. If it did, I shouldn’t act.”

“You don’t act for money?”

“No; for pleasure.”

“Then, of course, you can refuse any part you like?”

“If I did, I shouldn’t have any offered me.”

“Don’t quibble, please. You took the part of Olivia not for money but for pleasure. You enjoyed playing it?”

“Pretty well.”

“I’m afraid I shall have to ask the jury, my lord, to run their eyes over the dark scene in ‘The Plain Dealer.’”

“Are you saying, Sir James, that a woman who plays an immoral part is not moral—that would asperse a great many excellent reputations.”

“No, my lord; I’m saying that here is a young lady so jealous of her good name in the eyes of the world, that she brings a libel action because some one has said in a private letter that she ‘hasn’t a moral about her.’ And at the same time she is reading and approving books like this ‘Canthar,’ playing parts like that of Olivia in ‘The Plain Dealer,’ and, as I submit, living in a section of Society that really doesn’t know the meaning of the word morals, that looks upon morals, in fact, rather as we look upon measles. It’s my contention, my lord, that the saying in my client’s letter: ‘She hasn’t a moral about her,’ is rather a compliment to the plaintiff than otherwise.”

“Do you mean that it was intended as a compliment?”

“No, no, my lord.”

“Well, you want the jury to read that scene. You will have a busy luncheon interval, gentlemen. Go on, Sir James.”

“Now, Miss Ferrar—my friend made a point of the fact that you are engaged to a wealthy and highly respected Member of Parliament. How long have you been engaged to him?”

“Six months.”

“You have no secrets from him, I suppose?”

“Why should I answer that?”

“Why should she, Sir James?”

“I am quite content to leave it at her reluctance, my lord.”

Sneering brute! As if everybody hadn’t secrets from everybody!

“Your engagement was not made public till January, was it?”

“No.”

“May I take it that you were not sure of your own mind till then?”

“If you like.”

“Now, Miss Ferrar, did you bring this action because of your good name? Wasn’t it because you were hard up?”

She was conscious again of blood in her cheeks.

“No.”

“WERE you hard up when you brought it?”

“Yes.”

“Very?”

“Not worse than I have been before.”

“I put it to you that you owed a great deal of money, and were hard pressed.”

“If you like.”

“I’m glad you’ve admitted that, Miss Ferrar; otherwise I should have had to prove it. And you didn’t bring this action with a view to paying some of your debts?”

“No.”

“Did you in early January become aware that you were not likely to get any sum in settlement of this suit?”

“I believe I was told that an offer was withdrawn.”

“And do you know why?”

“Yes; because Mrs. Mont wouldn’t give the apology I asked for.”

“Exactly! And was it a coincidence that you thereupon made up your mind to marry Sir Alexander MacGown?”

“A coincidence?”

“I mean the announcement of your engagement, you know?”

Brute!

“It had nothing to do with this case.”

“Indeed! Now when you brought this action did you really care one straw whether people thought you moral or not?”

“I brought it chiefly because I was called ‘a snake.’”

“Please answer my question.”

“It isn’t so much what I cared, as what my friends cared.”

“But their view of morality is much what yours is—thoroughly accommodating?”

“Not my fiance’s.

“Ah! no. He doesn’t move in your circle, you said. But the rest of your friends. You’re not ashamed of your own accommodating philosophy, are you?”

“No.”

“Then why be ashamed of it for them?”

“How can I tell what THEIR philosophy is?”

“How can she, Sir James?”

“As your lordship pleases. Now, Miss Ferrar! You like to stand up for your views, I hope. Let me put your philosophy to you in a nutshell: You believe, don’t you, in the full expression of your personality; it would be your duty, wouldn’t it, to break through any convention—I don’t say law—but any so-called moral convention that cramped you?”

“I never said I had a philosophy.”

“Don’t run away from it, please.”

“I’m not in the habit of running away.”

“I’m so glad of that. You believe in being the sole judge of your own conduct?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not alone in that view, are you?”

“I shouldn’t think so.”

“It’s the view, in fact, of what may be called the forward wing of modern Society, isn’t it—the wing you belong to, and are proud of belonging to? And in that section of Society—so long as you don’t break the actual law—you think and do as you like, eh?”

“One doesn’t always act up to one’s principles.”

“Quite so. But among your associates, even if you and they don’t always act up to it, it IS a principle, isn’t it, to judge for yourselves and go your own ways without regard to convention?”

“More or less.”

“And, living in that circle, with that belief, you have the effrontery to think the words: ‘She hasn’t a moral about her,’ entitles you to damages?”

Her voice rang out angrily: “I have morals. They may not be yours, but they may be just as good, perhaps better. I’m not a hypocrite, anyway.”

Again she saw him look at her, there was a gleam in his eyes; and she knew she had made another mistake.

“We’ll leave my morals out of the question, Miss Ferrar. But we’ll go a little further into what you say are yours. In your own words, it should depend on temperament, circumstances, environment, whether you conform to morality or not?”

She stood silent, biting her lip.

“Answer, please.”

She inclined her head. “Yes.”

“Very good!” He had paused, turning over his papers, and she drew back in the box. She had lost her temper—had made him lose his; at all costs she must keep her head now! In this moment of search for her head she took in everything—expressions, gestures, even the atmosphere—the curious dramatic emanation from a hundred and more still faces; she noted the one lady juryman, the judge breaking the nib of a quill, with his eyes turned away from it as if looking at something that had run across the well of the Court. Yes, and down there, the lengthening lip of Mr. Settlewhite, Michael’s face turned up at her with a rueful frown, Fleur Mont’s mask with red spots in the cheeks, Alec’s clenched hands, and his eyes fixed on her. A sort of comic intensity about it all! If only she were the size of Alice in ‘Wonderland,’ and could take them all in her hands and shake them like a pack of cards—so motionless, there, at her expense! That sarcastic brute had finished fiddling with his papers, and she moved forward again to attention in the Box.

“Now, Miss Ferrar, his lordship put a general question to you which you did not feel able to answer. I am going to put it in a way that will be easier for you. Whether or no it was right for you to have one”—she saw Michael’s hand go up to his face—“have you IN FACT had a—liaison?” And from some tone in his voice, from the look on his face, she could tell for certain that he knew she had.

With her back to the wall, she had not even a wall to her back. Ten, twenty, thirty seconds—judge, jury, that old fox with his hand under the tail of his gown, and his eyes averted! Why did she not spit out the indignant: No! which she had so often rehearsed? Suppose he proved it—as he had said he would prove her debts?

“Take your time, Miss Ferrar. You know what a liaison is, of course.”

Brute! On the verge of denial, she saw Michael lean across, and heard his whisper: ‘Stop this!’ And then ‘that little snob’ looked up at her—the scrutiny was knowing and contemptuous: ‘Now hear her lie!’ it seemed to say. And she answered, quickly: “I consider your question insulting.”

“Oh! come, Miss Ferrar, after your own words! After what—”

“Well! I shan’t answer it.”

A rustle, a whispering in the Court.

“You won’t answer it?”

“No.”

“Thank you, Miss Ferrar.” Could a voice be more sarcastic?

The brute was sitting down.

Marjorie Ferrar stood defiant, with no ground under her feet. What next? Her counsel was beckoning. She descended from the Box, and, passing her adversaries, resumed her seat next her betrothed. How red and still he was! She heard the judge say:

“I shall break for lunch now, Mr. Bullfry,” saw him rise and go out, and the jury getting up. The whispering and rustling in the Court swelled to a buzz. She stood up. Mr. Settlewhite was speaking to her.

Chapter VII. ‘FED UP’

Guided by him into a room designed to shelter witnesses, Marjorie Ferrar looked at her lawyer.

“Well?”

“An unfortunate refusal, Miss Ferrar—very. I’m afraid the effect on the jury may be fatal. If we can settle it now, I should certainly say we’d better.”

“It’s all the same to me.”

“In that case you may take it I shall settle. I’ll go and see Sir Alexander and Mr. Bullfry at once.”

“How do I get out quietly?”

“Down those stairs. You’ll find cabs in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Excuse me,” he made her a grave little bow and stalked away.

Marjorie Ferrar did not take a cab; she walked. If her last answer had been fatal, on the whole she was content. She had told no lies to speak of, had stood up to ‘that sarcastic beast,’ and given him sometimes as good as she had got. Alec! Well, she couldn’t help it! He had insisted on her going into Court; she hoped he liked it now she’d been! Buying a newspaper, she went into a restaurant and read a description of herself, accompanied by a photograph. She ate a good lunch, and then continued her walk along Piccadilly. Passing into the Park, she sat down under a tree coming into bud, and drew the smoke of a cigarette quietly into her lungs. The Row was almost deserted. A few persons of little or no consequence occupied a few chairs. A riding mistress was teaching a small boy to trot. Some sparrows and a pigeon alone seemed to take a distant interest in her. The air smelled of Spring. She sat some time with the pleasant feeling that nobody in the world knew where she was. Odd, when you thought of it—millions of people every day, leaving their houses, offices, shops, on their way to the next place, were as lost to the world as stones in a pond! Would it be nice to disappear permanently, and taste life incognita? Bertie Curfew was going to Moscow again. Would he take her as secretary, and bonne amie? Bertie Curfew—she had only pretended to be tired of him! The thought brought her face to face with the future. Alec! Explanations! It was hardly the word! He had a list of her debts, and had said he would pay them as a wedding-present. But—if there wasn’t to be a wedding? Thank God, she had some ready money. The carefully ‘laid-up’ four-year-old in her father’s stable had won yesterday. She had dribbled ‘a pony’ on at a nice price. She rose and sauntered along, distending her bust—in defiance of the boylike fashion, which, after all, was on the wane—to take in the full of a sweet wind.

Leaving the Park, she came to South Kensington station and bought another paper. It had a full account under the headlines: ‘Modern Morality Attacked.’ ‘Miss Marjorie Ferrar in the Box.’ It seemed funny to stand there reading those words among people who were reading the same without knowing her from Eve, except, perhaps, by her clothes. Continuing her progress towards Wren Street, she turned her latch-key in the door, and saw a hat. Waiting for her already! She took her time; and, pale from powder, as though she had gone through much, entered the studio.

MacGown was sitting with his head in his hands. She felt real pity for him—too strong, too square, too vital for that attitude! He raised his face.

“Well, Alec!”

“Tell me the truth, Marjorie. I’m in torment.”

She almost envied him the depth of his feeling, however unreasonable after her warnings. But she said, ironically:

“Who was it knew me better than I knew myself?”

In the same dull voice he repeated:

“The truth, Marjorie, the truth!”

But why should she go into the confessional? Was he entitled to her past? His rights stopped at her future. It was the old business—men expecting more from women than they could give them. Inequality of the sexes. Something in that, perhaps, in the old days when women bore children, and men didn’t; but now that women knew all about sex and only bore children when they wanted to, and not always even then, why should men be freer?

And she said, slowly: “In exchange for your adventures I’ll tell you mine.”

“For God’s sake don’t mock me; I’ve had hell these last hours.”

His face showed it, and she said with feeling:

“I said you’d be taking a toss over me, Alec. Why on earth did you insist on my bringing this case? You’ve had your way, and now you don’t like it.”

“It’s true, then?”

“Yes. Why not?”

He uttered a groan, recoiling till his back was against the wall, as if afraid of being loose in the room.

“Who was he?”

“Oh! no! That I can’t possibly tell you. And how many affairs have you had?”

He paid no attention. He wouldn’t! He knew she didn’t love him; and such things only mattered if you loved! Ah! well! His agony was a tribute to her, after all!

“You’re well out of me,” she said, sullenly; and, sitting down, she lighted a cigarette. A scene! How hateful! Why didn’t he go? She’d rather he’d be violent than deaf and dumb and blind like this.

“Not that American fellow?”

She could not help a laugh.

“Oh! no, poor boy!”

“How long did it last?”

“Nearly a year.”

“My God!”

He had rushed to the door. If only he would open it and go! That he could feel so violently! That figure by the door was just not mad! His stuffy passions!

And then he did pull the door open and was gone.

She threw herself at full length on the divan; not from lassitude, exactly, nor despair—from a feeling rather as if nothing mattered. How stupid and pre-war! Why couldn’t he, like her, be free, be supple, take life as it came? Passions, prejudices, principles, pity—old-fashioned as the stuffy clothes worn when she was a tot. Well! Good riddance! Fancy living in the same house, sharing the same bed, with a man so full of the primitive that he could ‘go off his chump’ with jealousy about her! Fancy living with a man who took life so seriously that he couldn’t even see himself doing it! Life was a cigarette to be inhaled and thrown away, a dance to be danced out. On with that dance!… Yes, but she couldn’t let him pay her debts, now, even if he wanted to. Married, she would have repaid him with her body; as it was—no! Oh! why didn’t some one die and leave her something? What a bore it all was! And she lay still, listening to the tea-time sounds of a quiet street—taxis rounding the corner from the river; the dog next door barking at the postman; that one-legged man—ex-Service—who came most afternoons and played on a poor fiddle. He expected her shilling—unhappy fellow! – she’d have to get up and give it him. She went to the little side window that looked on to the street, and suddenly recoiled. Francis Wilmot in the doorway with his hand up to the bell! Another scene! No, really! This was too much! There went the bell! No time to say ‘Not at home’! Well, let them all come—round her past, like bees round a honey-pot!

“Mr. Francis Wilmot.”

He stood there, large as the life he had nearly resigned—a little thinner, that was all.

“Well, Francis,” she said, “I thought you were ‘through with that fool business’?”

Francis Wilmot came gravely up and took her hand. “I sail tomorrow.”

Sail! Well, she could put up with that. He seemed to her just a thin, pale young man with dark hair and eyes and no juices in his system.

“I read the evening papers. I wondered if, perhaps, you’d wish to see me.”

Was he mocking her? But he wore no smile; there was no bitterness in his voice; and, though he was looking at her intently, she could not tell from his face whether he still had any feeling.

“You think I owe you something? I know I treated you very badly.”

He looked rather as if she’d hit him.

“For heaven’s sake, Francis, don’t say you’ve come out of chivalry. That’d be too funny.”

“I don’t follow you; I just thought, perhaps, you didn’t like to answer that question about a love-affair—because of me.”

Marjorie Ferrar broke into hysterical laughter.

“Senor Don Punctilio! Because of you? No, no, my dear!”

Francis Wilmot drew back, and made her a little bow.

“I shouldn’t have come,” he said.

She had a sudden return of feeling for that slim unusual presence, with its grace and its dark eyes.

“I’m a free-lance again now, Francis, anyway.”

A long moment went by, and then he made her another little bow. It was a clear withdrawal.

“Then for God’s sake,” she said, “go away! I’m fed up!” And she turned her back on him.

When she looked round, he HAD gone, and that surprised her. He was a new variety, or a dead one, dug up! He didn’t know the rudiments of life—old-fashioned, a faire rire! And, back at full length on the divan, she brooded. Well, her courage was ‘not out’! To-morrow was Bella Magussie’s ‘At Home,’ to meet—some idiot. Everybody would be there, and so would she!

Chapter VIII. FANTOCHES

Michael, screwed towards Sir James Foskisson’s averted face, heard the words: “Well, I shan’t answer,” he spun round. It was just as if she had said: “Yes, I have.” The judge was looking at her, every one looking at her. Wasn’t Bullfry going to help her? No! He was beckoning her out of the Box. Michael half rose, as she passed him. By George! He was sorry for MacGown! There he sat, poor devil! – with every one getting up all round him, still, and red as a turkey-cock.

Fleur! Michael looked at her face, slightly flushed, her gloved hands clasped in her lap, her eyes fixed on the ground. Had his whisper: ‘Stop this!’ his little abortive bow, offended her? How could one have helped sympathising with the ‘Pet of the Panjoys’ in so tight a place! Fleur must see that! The Court was emptying—fine birds, many—he could see her mother and her aunt and cousin, and Old Forsyte, talking with Foskisson. Ah! he had finished; was speaking: “We can go now.”

They followed him along the corridor, down the stairs, into the air.

“We’ve time for a snack,” Soames was saying. “Come in here!”

In one of several kennels without roofs in a celebrated room with a boarded floor, they sat down.

“Three chump chops, sharp,” said Soames, and staring at the cruet-stand, added: “She’s cooked her goose. They’ll drop it like a hot potato. I’ve told Foskisson he can settle, with both sides paying their own costs. It’s more than they deserve.”

“He ought never to have asked that question, sir.”

Fleur looked up sharply.

“Really, Michael!”

“Well, darling, we agreed he shouldn’t. Why didn’t Bullfry help her out, sir?”

“Only too glad to get her out of the Box; the judge would have asked her himself in another minute. It’s a complete fiasco, thank God!”

“Then we’ve won?” said Fleur.

“Unless I’m a Dutchman,” answered Soames.

“I’m not so sure,” muttered Michael.

“I tell you it’s all over; Bullfry’ll never go on with it.”

“I didn’t mean that, sir.”

Fleur said acidly: “Then what DO you mean, Michael?”

“I don’t think we shall be forgiven, that’s all.”

“What for?”

“Well, I dare say I’m all wrong. Sauce, sir?”

“Worcester—yes. This is the only place in London where you can rely on a floury potato. Waiter—three glasses of port, quick!”

After fifteen minutes of concentrated mastication, they returned to the Court.

“Wait here,” said Soames, in the hall; “I’ll go up and find out.”

In that echoing space, where a man’s height was so inconsiderable, Fleur and Michael stood, not speaking, for some time.

“She couldn’t know that Foskisson had been told not to follow it up, of course,” he said, at last. “Still, she must have expected the question. She should have told a good one and have done with it. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her.”

“You’d feel sorry for a flea that bit you, Michael. What do you mean by our not being forgiven?”

“Well! The drama was all on her side, and it’s drama that counts. Besides, there’s her engagement!”

“That’ll be broken off.”

“Exactly! And if it is, she’ll have sympathy; while if it isn’t, he’ll have it. Anyway, we shan’t. Besides, you know, she stood up for what we all really believe nowadays.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Well, don’t we talk of every one being free?”

“Yes, but is there any connection between what we say and what we do?”

“No,” said Michael.

And just then Soames returned.

“Well, sir?”

“As I told you, Bullfry caught at it. They’ve settled. It’s a moral victory.”

“Oh! not moral, I hope, sir.”

“It’s cost a pretty penny, anyway,” said Soames, looking at Fleur. “Your mother’s quite annoyed—she’s no sense of proportion. Very clever the way Foskisson made that woman lose her temper.”

“He lost his, at the end. That’s his excuse, I suppose.”

“Well,” said Soames, “it’s all over! Your mother’s got the car; we’ll take a taxi.”

On the drive back to South Square, taking precisely the same route, there was precisely the same silence.

When a little later Michael went over to the House, he was edified by posters.

“Society Libel Action.”

“Marquess’s Granddaughter and K. C.”

“Dramatic Evidence.”

“Modern Morality!”

All over—was it? With publicity—in Michael’s opinion—it had but just begun! Morality! What was it—who had it, and what did they do with it? How would he have answered those questions himself? Who could answer them, nowadays, by rote or rule? Not he, or Fleur! They had been identified with the Inquisition, and what was their position, now? False, if not odious! He passed into the House. But, try as he would, he could not fix his attention on the Purity of Food, and passed out again. With a curious longing for his father, he walked rapidly down Whitehall. Drawing blank at ‘Snooks’’ and The Aeroplane, he tried the Parthenaeum as a last resort. Sir Lawrence was in a corner of a forbidden room, reading a life of Lord Palmerston. He looked up at his son.

“Ah! Michael! They don’t do justice to old Pam. A man without frills, who worked like a nigger. But we mustn’t talk here!” And he pointed to a member who seemed awake. “Shall we take a turn before the old gentleman over there has a fit? The books here are camouflage; it’s really a dormitory.”

He led the way, with Michael retailing the events of the morning.

“Foskisson?” said Sir Lawrence, entering the Green Park. “He was a nice little chap when I left Winchester. To be professionally in the right is bad for a man’s character—counsel, parsons, policemen, they all suffer from it. Judges, High Priests, Arch–Inspectors, aren’t so bad—they’ve suffered from it so long that they’ve lost consciousness.”

“It was a full house,” said Michael, glumly, “and the papers have got hold of it.”

“They would.” And Sir Lawrence pointed to the ornamental water. “These birds,” he said, “remind me of China. By the way, I met your friend Desert yesterday at The Aeroplane—he’s more interesting now that he’s dropped Poetry for the East. Everybody ought to drop something. I’m too old now, but if I’d dropped baronetcy in time, I could have made quite a good contortionist.”

“What would you recommend for us in the House?” asked Michael, with a grin.

“Postmanship, my dear—carrying on, you know; a certain importance, large bags, dogs to bark at you, no initiative, and conversation on every door-step. By the way, do you see Desert?”

“I have seen him.”

Sir Lawrence screwed up his eyes.

“The providential,” he said, “doesn’t happen twice.”

Michael coloured; he had not suspected his father of such shrewd observation. Sir Lawrence swung his cane.

“Your man Boddick,” he said, “has persuaded some of his hens to lay; he’s giving us quite good eggs.”

Michael admired his reticence. But somehow that unexpected slanting allusion to a past domestic crisis roused the feeling that for so long now had been curled like a sleepy snake in his chest, that another crisis was brewing and must soon be faced.

“Coming along for tea, sir? Kit had tummy-ache this morning. How’s your last book doing? Does old Danby advertise it properly?”

“No,” said Sir Lawrence, “no; he’s keeping his head wonderfully; the book is almost dead.”

“I’m glad I dropped HIM, anyway,” said Michael, with emphasis. “I suppose, sir, you haven’t a tip to give us, now this case is over?”

Sir Lawrence gazed at a bird with a long red bill.

“When victorious,” he said, at last, “lie doggo. The triumphs of morality are apt to recoil on those who achieve them.”

“That’s what I feel, sir. Heaven knows I didn’t want to achieve one. My father-inlaw says my hitting MacGown on the boko really brought it into Court.”

Sir Lawrence whinnied.

“The tax on luxuries. It gets you everywhere. I don’t think I will come along, Michael—Old Forsyte’s probably there. Your mother has an excellent recipe for child’s tummyache; you almost lived on it at one time. I’ll telephone it from Mount Street. Good-bye!”

Michael looked after that thin and sprightly figure moving North. Had he troubles of his own? If so, he disguised them wonderfully. Good old Bart! And he turned towards South Square.

Soames was just leaving.

“She’s excited,” he said, on the door-step. “It’s the reaction. Give her a Seidlitz powder tonight. Be careful, too; I shouldn’t talk about politics.”

Michael went in. Fleur was at the open window of the drawing-room.

“Oh! here you are!” she said. “Kit’s all right again. Take me to the Cafe Royal to-night, Michael, and if there’s anything funny anywhere, for goodness’ sake, let’s see it. I’m sick of feeling solemn. Oh! And, by the way, Francis Wilmot’s coming in to say good-bye. I’ve had a note. He says he’s all right again.”

At the window by her side, Michael sniffed the unaccountable scent of grass. There was a South–West wind, and slanting from over the housetops, sunlight was sprinkling the soil, the buds, the branches. A blackbird sang; a piano-organ round a corner was playing ‘Rigoletto.’ Against his own, her shoulder was soft, and to his lips her cheek was warm and creamy…

When Francis Wilmot left them that evening after dinner at the Cafe Royal, Fleur said to Michael:

“Poor Francis! Did you ever see any one so changed? He might be thirty. I’m glad he’s going home to his river and his darkies. What are live oaks? Well! Are we going anywhere?”

Michael cloaked her shoulders.

“‘Great Itch,’ I think; there’s no other scream so certain.”

After their scream they came out into a mild night. High up in red and green the bright signs fled along the air: ‘Tomber’s Tires for Speed and Safety,’ ‘Milkoh Makes Mothers Merry.’ Through Trafalgar Square they went and down Whitehall, all moonlight and Portland stone.

“The night’s unreal,” said Fleur. “‘Fantoches’!”

Michael caught her waist.

“Don’t. Suppose some Member saw you!”

“He’d only sympathise. How nice and solid you feel!”

“No! Fantoches have no substance.”

“Then give me shadow.”

“The substance is in Bethnal Green.”

Michael dropped his arm.

“That’s a strange thought.”

“I have intuitions, Michael.”

“Because I can admire a good woman, can I not love you?”

“I shall never be ‘good’; it isn’t in me.”

“Whatever you are’s enough for me.”

“Prettily said. The Square looks jolly, tonight! Open the doll’s house.”

The hall was dark, with just a glimmer coming through the fanlight. Michael took off her cloak and knelt down. He felt her fingers stir his hair; real fingers, and real all this within his arms; only the soul elusive. Soul?

“Fantoches!” came her voice, soft and mocking. “And so to bed!”

Chapter IX. ROUT AT MRS. MAGUSSIE’S

There are routs social, political, propagandic; and routs like Mrs. Magussie’s. In one of Anglo–American birth, inexhaustible wealth, unimpeachable widowhood, and catholic taste, the word hostess had found its highest expression. People might die, marry, and be born with impunity so long as they met, preferably in her house, one of the largest in Mayfair. If she called in a doctor, it was to meet another doctor; if she went to church, it was to get Canon Forant to meet Dean Kimble at lunch afterwards. Her cards of invitation had the words: “To meet” printed on them; and she never put “me.” She was selfless. Once in a way she had a real rout, because once in a way a personality was available, whose name everybody, from poets to prelates, must know. In her intimate belief people loved to meet anybody sufficiently distinguished; and this was where she succeeded, because almost without exception they did. Her two husbands had ‘passed on,’ having met in their time nearly everybody. They had both been distinguished, and had first met in her house; and she would never have a third, for Society was losing its landmarks, and she was too occupied. People were inclined to smile at mention of Bella Magussie, and yet, how do without one who performed the function of cement? Without her, bishops could not place their cheeks by the jowls of ballet-girls, or Home Secretaries be fertilised by disorderly dramatists. Except in her house, the diggers-up of old civilisations in Beluchistan never encountered the levellers of modern civilisation in London. Nor was there any chance for lights of the Palace to meet those lights of the Halls—Madame Nemesia and Top Nobby. Nowhere else could a Russian dancer go in to supper with Sir Walter Peddel, M.D., F.R.S.T.R., P.M.V.S., ‘R.I.P.,’ as Michael would add. Even a bowler with the finest collection of ducks’ eggs in first-class cricket was not without a chance of wringing the hand of the great Indian economist Sir Banerjee Bath Babore. Mrs. Magussie’s, in fine, was a house of chief consequence; and her long face, as of the guardian of some first principle, moving above the waters of celebrity, was wrinkled in a great cause. To meet or not to meet? She had answered the question for good and all.

The “meetee” as Michael always called it for her opening rout in 1925 was the great Italian violinist Luigi Sporza, who had just completed his remarkable tour of the world, having in half the time played more often than any two previous musicians. The prodigious feat had been noted in the Press of all countries with every circumstance—the five violins he had tired out, the invitation he had received to preside over a South American Republic, the special steamer he had chartered to keep an engagement in North America, and his fainting fit in Moscow after the Beethoven and Brahms concertos, the Bach chaconne, and seventeen encores. During the lingering year of his great effort, his fame had been established. As an artist he had been known to a few, as an athlete he was now known to all.

Michael and Fleur, passing up the centre stairway, saw a man ‘not ‘arf like a bull’—Michael muttered—whose hand people were seizing, one after the other, to move away with a look of pain.

“Only Italy can produce men like that,” Michael said in Fleur’s ear. “Give him the go-by. He’ll hurt you.”

But Fleur moved forward.

“Made of sterner stuff,” murmured Michael. It was not the part of his beloved to miss the hand of celebrity, however horny! No portion of her charming face quivered as the great athlete’s grip closed on hers, and his eyes, like those of a tired minotaur, traversed her gracefulness with a gleam of interest.

‘Hulking brute!’ thought Michael, disentangling his own grasp, and drifting with her over shining space. Since yesterday’s ordeal and its subsequent spring-running, he had kept his unacceptable misgivings to himself; he did not even know whether, at this rout, she was deliberately putting their position to the test, or merely, without forethought, indulging her liking to be in the swim. And what a swim! In that great pillared salon, Members of Parliament, poets, musicians, very dry in the smile, as who should say: ‘I could have done it better,’ or ‘Imagine doing that!’ peers, physicians, dancers, painters, Labour Leaders, cricketers, lawyers, critics, ladies of fashion, and ladies who ‘couldn’t bear it’—every mortal person that Michael knew or didn’t know, seemed present. He watched Fleur’s eyes quartering them, busy as bees beneath the white lids he had kissed last night. He envied her that social curiosity; to live in London without it was like being at the sea without bathing. She was quietly—he could tell—making up her mind whom she wanted to speak to among those she knew, and whom, among those she didn’t yet know, she wanted to speak to her. ‘I hope to God she’s not in for a snubbing,’ he thought, and as soon as she was engaged in talk, he slipped towards a pillar. A small voice behind him said: “Well, young Mont!” Mr. Blythe, looking like a Dover sole above Kew Bridge, was squeezed against the same pillar, his eyes goggling timorously above his beard.

“Stick to me!” he said. “These bees are too bee busy.”

“Were you in Court yesterday?” asked Michael.

“No; one read about it. You did well.”

“She did better.”

“H’m!” said Mr. Blythe. “By the way, The Evening Sun was at us again this afternoon. They compared us to kittens playing with their tails. It’s time for your second barrel, Mont.”

“I thought—on the agricultural estimates.”

“Good! Governmental purchase and control of wheat. Stress use of the present machinery. No more officials than are absolutely necessary.”

“Blythe,” said Michael suddenly, “where were you born?”

“Lincolnshire.”

“You’re English, then?”

“Pure,” said Mr. Blythe.

“So am I; so’s old Foggart—I looked him up in the stud-book. It’s lucky, because we shall certainly be assailed for lack of patriotism.”

“We ARE,” said Mr. Blythe. “‘People who can see no good in their own country… Birds who foul their own nest… Gentry never happy unless running England down in the eyes of the world… Calamity-mongers… Pessimists…’ You don’t mind that sort of gup, I hope?”

“Unfortunately,” said Michael, “I do; it hurts me inside. It’s so damned unjust. I simply can’t bear the idea of England being in a fix.”

Mr. Blythe’s eyes rolled.

“She’s bee well not going to be, if we can help it.”

“If only I amounted to something,” murmured Michael; “but I always feel as if I could creep into one of my back teeth.”

“Have it crowned. What you want is brass, Mont. And talking of brass: There’s your late adversary! SHE’S got brass all right. Look at her!”

Michael saw Marjorie Ferrar moving away from the great Italian, in not too much of a sea-green gown, with her red-gold head held high. She came to a stand a small room’s length from Fleur, and swept her eyes this way and that. Evidently she had taken up that position in deliberate challenge.

“I must go to Fleur.”

“So must I,” said Mr. Blythe, and Michael gave him a grateful look.

And now it would have been so interesting to one less interested than Michael. The long, the tapering nose of Society could be seen to twitch, move delicately upwards, and like the trunk of some wild elephant scenting man, writhe and snout this way and that, catching the whiff of sensation. Lips were smiling and moving closer to ears; eyes turning from that standing figure to the other; little reflective frowns appeared on foreheads, as if, beneath cropped and scented scalps, brains were trying to make choice. And Marjorie Ferrar stood smiling and composed; and Fleur talked and twisted the flower in her hand; and both went on looking their best. So began a battle without sign of war declared, without even seeming recognition of each other’s presence. Mr. Blythe, indeed, stood pat between the two of them. Bulky and tall, he was an effective screen. But Michael, on the other side of her, could see and grimly follow. The Nose was taking time to apprehend the full of the aroma; the Brain to make its choice. Tide seemed at balance, not moving in or out. And then, with the slow implacability of tides, the water moved away from Fleur and lapped round her rival. Michael chattered, Mr. Blythe goggled, using the impersonal pronoun with a sort of passion; Fleur smiled, talked, twisted the flower. And, over there, Marjorie Ferrar seemed to hold a little Court. Did people admire, commiserate, approve of, or sympathise with her? Or did they disapprove of himself and Fleur? Or was it just that the ‘Pet of the Panjoys’ was always the more sensational figure? Michael watched Fleur growing paler, her smile more nervous, the twitching of the flower spasmodic. And he dared not suggest going; for she would see in it an admission of defeat. But on the faces, turned their way, the expression became more and more informative. Sir James Foskisson had done his job too well; he had slavered his clients with his own self-righteousness. Better the confessed libertine than those who brought her to judgment! And Michael thought: ‘Dashed natural, after all! Why didn’t the fellow take my tip, and let us pay and look pleasant.’

And just then close to the great Italian he caught sight of a tall young man with his hair brushed back, who was looking at his fingers. By George! It was Bertie Curfew! And there, behind him, waiting for his turn ‘to meet,’ who but MacGown himself! The humour of the gods had run amok! Head in air, soothing his mangled fingers, Bertie Curfew passed them, and strayed into the group around his former flame. Her greeting of him was elaborately casual. But up went the tapering Nose, for here came MacGown! How the fellow had changed—grim, greyish, bitter? The great Italian had met his match for once. And he too, stepped into that throng.

A queer silence was followed by a burst of speech, and then by dissolution. In twos and threes they trickled off, and there were MacGown and his betrothed standing alone. Michael turned to Fleur.

“Let’s go.”

Silence reigned in their homing cab. He had chattered himself out on the field of battle, and must wait for fresh supplies of camouflage. But he slipped his hand along till it found hers, which did not return his pressure. The card he used to play at times of stress—the eleventh baronet—had failed for the last three months; Fleur seemed of late to resent his introduction as a remedy. He followed her into the dining-room, sore at heart, bewildered in mind. He had never seen her look so pretty as in that oyster-coloured frock, very straight and simply made, with a swing out above the ankles. She sat down at the narrow dining-table, and he seated himself opposite, with the costive feeling of one who cannot find words that will ring true. For social discomfiture he himself didn’t care a tinker’s curse; but she—!

And, suddenly, she said:

“And you don’t mind?”

“For myself—not a bit.”

“Yes, you’ve still got your Foggartism and your Bethnal Green.”

“If YOU care, Fleur, I care a lot.”

“IF I care!”

“How—exactly?”

“I’d rather not increase your feeling that I’m a snob.”

“I never had any such feeling.”

“Michael!”

“Hadn’t you better say what you mean by the word?”

“You know perfectly well.”

“I know that you appreciate having people about you, and like them to think well of you. That isn’t being a snob.”

“Yes; you’re very kind, but you don’t admire it.”

“I admire you.”

“You mean, desire me. You admire Norah Curfew.”

“Norah Curfew! For all I care, she might snuff out tomorrow.”

And from her face he had the feeling that she believed him.

“If it isn’t her, it’s what she stands for—all that I’m not.”

“I admire a lot in you,” said Michael, fervently; “your intelligence, your flair; I admire you with Kit and your father; your pluck; and the way you put up with me.”

“No, I admire you much more than you admire me. Only, you see, I’m not capable of devotion.”

“What about Kit?”

“I’m devoted to myself—that’s all.”

He reached across the table and touched her hand.

“Morbid, darling.”

“No. I see too clearly to be morbid.”

She was leaning back, and her throat, very white and round, gleamed in the alabaster-shaded light; little choky movements were occurring there.

“Michael, I want you to take me round the world.”

“And leave Kit?”

“He’s too young to mind. Besides, my mother would look after him.”

If she had got as far as that, this was a deliberate desire!

“But, your father—”

“He’s not really old yet, and he’d have Kit.”

“When we rise in August, perhaps—”

“No, now.”

“It’s only five months to wait. We’d have time in the vacation to do a lot of travelling.”

Fleur looked straight at him.

“I knew you cared more for Foggartism now than for me.”

“Be reasonable, Fleur.”

“For five months—with the feeling I’ve got here!” she put her hand to her breast. “I’ve had six months of it already. You don’t realise, I suppose, that I’m down and out?”

“But, Fleur, it’s all so—”

“Yes, it’s always petty to mind being a dead failure, isn’t it?”

“But, my child—”

“Oh! If you can’t feel it—”

“I can—I felt wild this evening. But all you’ve got to do is to let them see that you don’t care; and they’ll come buzzing round again like flies. It would be running away, Fleur.”

“No,” said Fleur, coldly, “it’s not that—I don’t try twice for the same prize. Very well, I’ll stay and be laughed at.”

Michael got up.

“I know you don’t think there’s anything to my job. But there is, Fleur, and I’ve put my hand to it. Oh! don’t look like that. Dash it! This is dreadful!”

“I suppose I could go by myself. That would be more thrilling.”

“Absurd! Of course you couldn’t! You’re seeing blue to-night, old thing. It’ll all seem different tomorrow.”

“To-morrow and tomorrow! No, Michael, mortification has set in, my funeral can take place any day you like!”

Michael’s hands went up. She meant what she was saying! To realise, he must remember how much store she had set on her powers as hostess; how she had worked for her collection and shone among it! Her house of cards all pulled about her ears! Cruel! But would going round the world help her? Yes! Her instinct was quite right. He had been round the world himself, nothing else would change her values in quite that way; nothing else would so guarantee oblivion in others and herself! Lippinghall, her father’s, the sea for the five months till vacation came—they wouldn’t meet her case! She needed what would give her back importance. And yet, how could he go until the vacation? Foggartism—that lean and lonely plant—unwatered and without its only gardener, would wither to its roots, if, indeed, it had any. There was some movement in it now, interest here and there—this Member and that was pecking at it. Private efforts in the same direction were gathering way. And time was going on—Big Ben had called no truce; unemployment swelling, trade dawdling, industrial trouble brewing—brewing, hope losing patience! And what would old Blythe say to his desertion now?

“Give me a week,” he muttered. “It’s not easy. I must think it over.”

Chapter X. THE NEW LEAF

When MacGown came up to her, Marjorie Ferrar thought: ‘Does he know about Bertie?’ Fresh from her triumph over ‘that little snob,’ fluttered by the sudden appearance of her past, and confronted with her present, she was not in complete possession of her head. When they had moved away into an empty side room, she faced him.

“Well, Alec, nothing’s changed. I still have a past as lurid as it was yesterday. I’m extremely sorry I ever kept it from you. But I did practically tell you, several times; only you wouldn’t take it.”

“Because it was hell to me. Tell me everything, Marjorie!”

“You want to revel in it?”

“Tell me everything, and I’ll marry you still.”

She shook her head. “Marry! Oh! no! I don’t go out of my depth any more. It was absurd anyway. I never loved you, Alec.”

“Then you loved that—you still—”

“My dear Alec, enough!”

He put his hands to his head, and swayed. And she was touched by genuine compassion.

“I’m awfully sorry, I really am. You’ve got to cut me out; that’s all.”

She had turned to leave him, but the misery in his face stopped her. She had not quite realised.

He was burnt up! He was—! And she said quickly:

“Marry you I won’t; but I’d like to pay up, if I could—”

He looked at her.

Quivering all over from that look, she shrugged her shoulders, and walked away. Men of an old fashion! Her own fault for stepping outside the charmed circle that took nothing too seriously. She walked over the shining floor, conscious of many eyes, slipped past her hostess, and soon was in a cab.

She lay awake, thinking. Even without announcement, the return of presents would set London by the ears and bring on her again an avalanche of bills. Five thousand pounds! She got up and rummaged out the list, duplicate of that which Alec had. He might still want to pay them! After all, it was he who had spilled the ink by making her go into Court! But then his eyes came haunting her. Out of the question! And, shivering a little, she got back into bed. Perhaps she would have a brain-wave in the morning. She had so many in the night, that she could not sleep. Moscow with Bertie Curfew? The stage? America and the ‘movies’? All three? She slept at last, and woke languid and pale. With her letters was one from Shropshire House.

What now? She looked at herself in the glass, and decided that she MUST make up a little. At eleven o’clock she was at Shropshire House. The marquess was in his workroom at the top, among a small forest of contraptions. With coat off, he was peering through a magnifying-glass at what looked like nothing.

“Sit down, Marjorie,” he said; “I’ll have done in a minute.”

Except the floor, there seemed nowhere to sit, so she remained standing.

“I thought so,” said the marquess; “the Italians are wrong.”

He put the spy-glass down, ran his hand through his silvery hair, and drew his ruffled beard into a peak. Then, taking an eyebrow between finger and thumb, he gave it an upward twist, and scratched himself behind one ear.

“They’re wrong; there’s no reaction whatever.”

Turning towards his granddaughter, he screwed up his eyes till they were bright as pins. “You’ve never been up here before. Sit in the window.”

She seated herself on a broad window-ledge covering some sort of battery, with her back to the light.

“So you brought that case, Marjorie?”

“I had to.”

“Now, why?” He was standing with his head a little to one side, his cheeks very pink, and his eyes very shrewd. And she thought: ‘After all, I’m his granddaughter. I’ll plunge.’

“Common honesty, if you want to know.”

The marquess pouted, as if trying to understand the words.

“I read your evidence,” he said, “if you mean that.”

“No. I meant that I wanted to find out where I stood.”

“And did you?”

“Very much so.”

“Are you still going to be married?”

Really, he was a spry old boy!

“No.”

“Whose doing? Yours or his?”

“He still says he’ll marry me if I tell him everything. But I don’t choose to.”

The marquess moved two steps, placed his foot on a box, and assumed his favourite attitude. He had a red silk tie this morning which floated loose; his tweed trousers were of a blue-green, his shirt of a green-blue. He looked wonderfully bright.

“Is there much to tell?”

“A good deal.”

“Well, Marjorie, you know what I said to you.”

“Yes, Grandfather, but I don’t quite see it. I don’t want to stand for anything.”

“Ah! you’re an exception in our class—luckily! But it’s the exceptions that do the harm.”

“If people took one as any better than themselves, perhaps. But they don’t nowadays.”

“Not quite honest, that,” interrupted the marquess; “what about the feeling in your bones?”

She smiled.

“It’s good to mortify oneself, Grandfather.”

“By having a better time than you ought, um? So your marriage is off?”

“Very much so.”

“Are you in debt?”

“Yes.”

“How much do you owe?”

Marjorie Ferrar hesitated. Should she compromise, or blurt it out?

“No heel-taps, Marjorie.”

“Well, then, five thousand about.”

The old peer screwed up his lips, and a melancholy little whistle escaped.

“A good deal of it, of course, is due to my engagement.”

“Your father won a race the other day, I see.”

The old boy knew everything!

“Yes; but I believe it’s all gone.”

“It would be,” said the marquess. “What are you going to do now?”

She had a strong desire to answer: “What are you?” but restrained it, and said:

“I thought of going on the stage.”

“Well, I suppose that might be suitable. Can you act?”

“I’m not a Duse.”

“Duse?” The marquess shook his head. “One must go back to Ristori for really great acting. Duse! Very talented, of course, but always the same. So you don’t choose to marry him now?” He looked at her intently. “That, I think, is right. Have you a list of your debts?”

Marjorie Ferrar rummaged in her vanity bag. “Here it is.”

She could see his nose wrinkling above it, but whether at its scent, or its contents, she could not tell.

“Your grandmother,” he said, “spent about a fifth of what you seem to on about five times the acreage of clothes. You wear nothing nowadays, and yet it costs all this.”

“The less there is, Grandfather, the better it has to be cut, you know.”

“Have you sent your presents back?”

“I’m having them packed.”

“They must all go,” said the marquess. “Keep nothing he or any one else gave you.”

“Of course not.”

“To frank you,” he said, suddenly, “I should have to sell the Gainsborough.”

“Oh, no!”

Gainsborough’s picture of his own grandmother as a little girl—that beautiful thing. She stretched out her hand for the list. Still holding it, he put his foot to the ground, and stood peering at her with his bright, intent old eyes.

“The question is, Marjorie, how far it’s possible to strike a bargain with you. Have you a ‘word’ to keep?”

She felt the blood mounting in her cheeks.

“I think so. It depends on what I’ve got to promise. But, Grandfather, I don’t WANT you to sell the Gainsborough.”

“Unfortunately,” said the marquess, “without doing your uncle Dangerfield in the eye, I’ve nothing else. It’s been my fault, I suppose, for having had expensive children. Other people don’t seem to have had them to the same degree.”

She stifled a smile.

“Times are hard,” went on the marquess. “Land costs money, collieries cost money, Shropshire House costs money; and where’s the money? I’ve got an invention here that ought to make my fortune, but nobody will look at it.”

The poor old boy—at his age! She said with a sigh:

“I really didn’t mean to bother you with this, Grandfather. I’ll manage somehow.”

The old peer took several somewhat hampered steps, and she noticed that his red slippers were heelless. He halted, a wonderfully bright spot among the contraptions.

“To come back to what we were saying, Marjorie. If your idea of life is simply to have a good time, how can you promise anything?”

“What do you want me to promise?”

He came and stood before her again, short and a little bent.

“You look as if you had stuff in you, too, with your hair. Do you really think you could earn your living?”

“I believe I can; I know a lot of people.”

“If I clear you, will you give me your word to pay ready money in future? Now don’t say ‘Yes,’ and go out and order yourself a lot of fallals. I want the word of a lady, if you understand what that implies.”

She stood up.

“I suppose you’ve every right to say that. But I don’t want you to clear me if you have to sell the Gainsborough.”

“You must leave that to me. I might manage, perhaps, to scrape it up without. About that promise?”

“Yes; I promise that.”

“Meaning to keep it?”

“Meaning to keep it.”

“Well, that’s something.”

“Anything else, Grandfather?”

“I should have liked to ask you not to cheapen our name any more, but I suppose that would be putting the clock back. The spirit of the age is against me.”

Turning from his face, she stood looking out of the window. The spirit of the age! It was all very well, but he didn’t understand what it was. Cheapen? Why! she had RAISED the price of the family name; hoicked it out of a dusty cupboard, and made of it current coin. People sat up when they read of her. Did they sit up when they read of grandfather? But he would never see that! And she murmured:

“All right, dear, I’ll be careful. I think I shall go to America.”

His eyes twinkled.

“And start a fashion of marrying American husbands? It’s not yet been done, I believe. Get one who’s interested in electricity, and bring him over. There are great things for an American to do here. Well, I’ll keep this list and work it off somehow. Just one thing, Marjorie: I’m eighty, and you’re—what are you—twenty-five? Don’t get through life so fast—you’ll be dreadfully bored by the time you’re fifty, and there’s no greater bore than a bored person. Good-bye!” He held out his hand.

She took a long breath. Free!

And, seizing his hand, she put it to her lips. Oh! He was gazing at it—oh! Had her lips come off? And she hurried out. The old boy! He was a darling to have kept that list! A new leaf! She would go at once to Bertie Curfew and get him to turn it over for her! The expression in his eye last night!

Chapter XI. OVER THE WINDMILL

During his period of indecision Michael struck no attitudes, and used practically no words; the thing was too serious. Perhaps Kit would change Fleur’s mood, or she would see other disadvantages, such as her father. The complete cessation, however, of any social behaviour on her part—no invitation issued, or received, no function attended, or even discussed, during that rather terrible week, proved that the iron had really seared her spirit. She was not sulky, but she was mum and listless. And she was always watching him, with a wistful expression on her face, and now and then a resentful look, as if she had made up her mind that he was going to refuse. He could consult no one, too, for to any who had not lived through this long episode, Fleur’s attitude would seem incomprehensible, even ridiculous. He could not give her away; could not even go to old Blythe, until he had decided. Complicating his mental conflict was the habitual doubt whether he was really essential to Foggartism. If only his head would swell! He had not even the comfort of feeling that a sturdy negative would impress Fleur; she thought his job a stunt, useful to make him conspicuous, but of no real importance to the country. She had the political cynicism of the woman in the street; only what threatened property or Kit would really ruffle her! He knew that his dilemma was comic. The future of England against the present of a young woman socially snubbed! But, after all, only Sir James Foggart and old Blythe so far seriously connected Foggartism with the future of England; and if, now, he went off round the world, even they would lose their faith.

On the last morning of that week, Michael, still in doubt, crossed Westminster Bridge and sought the heart of the Surrey side. It was unfamiliar, and he walked with interest. Here, he remembered, the Bickets had lived; the Bickets who had failed, and apparently were failing in Australia, too. Street after mean street! Breeding-ground of Bickets! Catch them early, catch them often, catch them before they were Bickets, spoiled for the land; make them men and women of property, give them air and give them sun—the most decent folk in the world, give them a chance! Ugly houses, ugly shops, ugly pubs! No, that wouldn’t do! Keep Beauty out of it; Beauty never went down in ‘the House’! No sentiment went down! At least, only such as was understood—‘British stock,’ ‘Patriotism,’ ‘Empire,’ ‘Moral Fibre.’ Thews and productive power—stick to the cliches! He stood listening outside a school to the dull hum of education. The English breed with its pluck and its sense of humour and its patience, all mewed-up in mean streets!

He had a sudden longing for the country. His motor-cycle! Since taking his seat in Parliament he had not been on a machine so inclined to bump his dignity. But he would have it out now, and go for a run—it might shake him into a decision!

Fleur was not in, and no lunch ordered. So he ate some ham, and by two o’clock had started.

With spit and bluster he ran out along the road past Chiswick, Slough, and Maidenhead; crossed the river and sputtered towards Reading. At Caversham he crossed again, and ran on to Pangbourne. By the towing path he tipped his machine into some bushes and sat down to smoke a pipe. Quite windless! The river between the bare poplars had a grey, untroubled look; the catkins were forming on the willows. He plucked a twig, and stirred it round the bowl of his pipe before pressing in tobacco. The shaking had done him good; his mind was working freely. The war! One had no hesitations then; but then—one had no Fleur. Besides, that was a clear, a simple issue. But now, beyond this ‘to stay or not to stay,’ Michael seemed seeing the future of his married life. The decision that he made would affect what might last another fifty years. To put your hand to the plough, and at the first request to take it off again! You might be ploughing crooked, and by twilight; but better plough by dim light than no light; a crooked furrow than none at all! Foggartism was the best course he could see, and he must stick to it! The future of England! A blackbird, close by, chuckled. Quite so! But, as old Blythe said, one must stand up to laughter! Oh! Surely in the long run Fleur would see that he couldn’t play fast and loose; see that if she wanted him to remain in Parliament—and she did—he must hang on to the line he had taken, however it amused the blackbirds. She wouldn’t like him to sink to the nonentity of a turntail. For after all she was his wife, and with his self-respect her own was bound up.

He watched the smoke from his pipe, and the low grey clouds, the white-faced Herefords grazing beyond the river, and a man fishing with a worm. He took up the twig and twirled it, admiring the yellowish-grey velvet of its budding catkins. He felt quiet in the heart, at last, but very sorry. How make up to Fleur? Beside this river, not two miles away, he had courted—queer word—if not won her! And now they had come to this snag. Well, it was up to her now, whether or no they should come to grief on it. And it seemed to him, suddenly, that he would like to tell Old Forsyte…

When he heard the splutter of Michael’s motorcycle, Soames was engaged in hanging the Fred Walker he had bought at the emporium next to Messrs. Settlewhite and Stark, memorialising his freedom from the worry of that case, and soothing his itch for the British School. Fred Walker! The fellow was old-fashioned; he and Mason had been succeeded by a dozen movements. But—like old fiddles, with the same agreeable glow—there they were, very good curiosities such as would always command a price.

Having detached a Courbet, early and about ripe, he was standing in his shirt-sleeves, with a coil of wire in his hand, when Michael entered.

“Where have you sprung from?” he said, surprised.

“I happened to be passing, sir, on my old bike. I see you’ve kept your word about the English School.”

Soames attached the wire.

“I shan’t be happy,” he said, “till I’ve got an old Crome—best of the English landscapists.”

“Awfully rare, isn’t he, old Crome?”

“Yes, that’s why I want him.”

The smile on Michael’s face, as if he were thinking: ‘You mean that’s why you consider him the best,’ was lost on Soames giving the wire a final twist.

“I haven’t seen your pictures for a long time, sir. Can I look round?”

Observing him sidelong, Soames remembered his appearance there one summer Sunday, after he had first seen Fleur in that Gallery off Cork Street. Only four years? It seemed an age! The young fellow had worn better than one had hoped; looked a good deal older, too, less flighty; an amiable chap, considering his upbringing, and that war! And suddenly he perceived that Michael was engaged in observing him. Wanted something, no doubt—wouldn’t have come down for nothing! He tried to remember when anybody had come to see him without wanting something; but could not. It was natural!

“Are you looking for a picture to go with that Fragonard?” he said. “There’s a Chardin in the corner.”

“No, no, sir; you’ve been much too generous to us already.”

Generous! How could one be generous to one’s only daughter?

“How is Fleur?”

“I wanted to tell you about her. She’s feeling awfully restless.”

Soames looked out of the window. The Spring was late!

“She oughtn’t to be, with that case out of the way.”

“That’s just it, sir.”

Soames gimleted the young man’s face. “I don’t follow you.”

“We’re being cold-shouldered.”

“How? You won.”

“Yes, but you see, people resent moral superiority.”

“What’s that? Who—?” Moral superiority—he resented it himself!

“Foskisson, you know; we’re tarred with his brush. I told you I was afraid of it. It’s the being laughed at Fleur feels so bitterly.”

“Laughed at? Who has the impudence—?”

“To attack modern morality was a good stunt, sir, with the judge and the jury, and any one professionally pompous; but it makes one ridiculous nowadays in Society, you know, when everybody prides himself on lack of prejudice.”

“Society!”

“Yes, sir; but it’s what we live in. I don’t mind, got used to it over Foggartism; but Fleur’s miserable. It’s natural, if you think of it—Society’s her game.”

“She ought to have more strength of mind,” said Soames. But he was gravely perturbed. First she’d been looked on as a snob, and now there was this!

“What with that German actor hanging himself at Lippinghall,” Michael went on, “and my Foggartism, and this Ferrar rumpus, our pitch is badly queered. We’ve had a wretched week of it since the case. Fleur feels so out of her plate, that she wants me to take her round the world.”

A bomb bursting on the dove-cote down there could not have been more startling. Round the world! He heard Michael murmuring on:

“She’s quite right, too. It might be the very best thing for her; but I simply can’t leave my job until the long vacation. I’ve taken up this thing, and I must stick to it while Parliament’s sitting.”

Sitting! As if it were a hen, addling its precious eggs! Round the world!

But Michael ran on:

“It’s only today I’ve quite decided. I should feel like a deserter, and that wouldn’t be good for either of us in the long run. But she doesn’t know yet.”

For Soames the dove-cote was solidifying again, now that he knew Michael was not going to take her away for goodness knew how long!

“Round the world!” he said. “Why not—er—Pontresina?”

“I think,” answered Michael, slowly, like a doctor diagnosing, “that she wants something dramatic. Round the world at twenty-three! She feels somehow that she’s lost caste.”

“How can she think of leaving that little chap?”

“Yes, that shows it’s pretty desperate with her. I wish to goodness I COULD go.”

Soames stared. The young fellow wasn’t expecting him to do anything about it, was he? Round the world? A crazy notion!

“I must see her,” he said. “Can you leave that thing of yours in the garage and come up with me in the car? I’ll be ready in twenty minutes. You’ll find tea going down-stairs.”

Left alone with the Fred Walker still unhung, Soames gazed at his pictures. He saw them with an added clarity, a more penetrating glance, a sort of ache in his heart, as if—Well! A good lot they were, better than he had thought, of late! SHE had gone in for collecting people! And now she’d lost her collection! Poor little thing! All nonsense, of course—as if there were any satisfaction in people! Suppose he took her up that Chardin? It was a good Chardin. Dumetrius had done him over the price, but not too much. And, before Chardin was finished with, he would do Dumetrius. Still—if it would give her any pleasure! He unhooked the picture, and, carrying it under his arm, went down-stairs.

Beyond certain allusions to the characteristics of the eleventh baronet, and the regrettable tendencies of the police to compel slow travelling over the new cut constructed to speed up traffic, little was said in the car. They arrived in South Square about six o’clock. Fleur had not been in since lunch; and they sat down uneasily to wait for her. The Dandie, having descended to look for strange legs, had almost immediately ascended again, and the house was very quiet. Michael was continually looking at his watch.

“Where do you think she’s got to?” said Soames, at last.

“Haven’t an idea, sir; that’s the worst of London, it swallows people up.”

He had begun to fidget; Soames, who also wanted to fidget, was thinking of saying: “Don’t!” when from the window Michael cried:

“Here she is!” and went quickly to the door.

Soames sat on, with the Chardin resting against his chair.

They were a long time out there! Minute after minute passed, and still they did not come.

At last Michael reappeared. He looked exceedingly grave.

“She’s in her little room up-stairs, sir. I’m afraid my decision has upset her awfully. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind going up.”

Soames grasped the Chardin.

“Let’s see, that’s the first door on the left, isn’t it?” He mounted slowly, his mind blank, and without waiting for her to answer his mild knock, went in.

Fleur was sitting at the satinwood bureau, with her face buried on her arms. Her hair, again in its more natural ‘bob,’ gleamed lustrously under the light. She seemed unconscious of his entry. This sight of private life affected Soames, unaccustomed to give or receive undefended glimpses of self, and he stood, uncertain. Had he the right to surprise her, with her ears muffled like that, and her feelings all upset? He would have gone out and come in again, but he was too concerned. And, moving to her side, he put his finger on her shoulder, and said:

“Tired, my child?”

Her face came round—queer, creased, not like her face; and Soames spoke the phrase of her childhood:

“See what I’ve brought you!”

He raised the Chardin; she gave it just a glance, and he felt hurt. After all, it was worth some hundreds of pounds! Very pale, she had crossed her arms on her chest, as if shutting herself up. He recognised the symptom. A spiritual crisis! The sort of thing his whole life had been passed in regarding as extravagant; like a case of appendicitis that will not wait decently.

“Michael,” he said, “tells me you want him to take you round the world.”

“Well, he can’t; so that ends it.”

“If she had said: ‘Yes, and why can’t he?’ Soames would have joined the opposition automatically. But her words roused his natural perversity. Here she was, and here was her heart’s desire—and she wasn’t getting it! He put the Chardin down, and took a walk over the soft carpet.

“Tell me,” he said, coming to a halt, “where do you feel it exactly?”

Fleur laughed: “In my head, and my eyes, and my ears, and my heart.”

“What business,” muttered Soames, “have they to look down their confounded noses!” And he set off again across the room. All the modern jackanapes whom from time to time he had been unable to avoid in her house, seemed to have come sniggering round him with lifted eyebrows, like a set of ghosts. The longing to put them in their places—a shallow lot—possessed him at that moment to the exclusion of a greater sanity.

“I—I don’t see how I can take you,” he said, and stopped short.

What was that he was saying? Who had asked him to take her? Her eyes, widely open, were fixed on him.

“But of course not, Dad!”

Of course not! He didn’t know about that!

“I shall get used to being laughed at, in time.” Soames growled.

“I don’t see why you should,” he said. “I suppose people do go round the world.”

Fleur’s pallor had gone, now.

“But not you, dear; why, it would bore you stiff! It’s very sweet of you, even to think of it; but of course I couldn’t let you—at your age!”

“At my age?” said Soames. “I’m not so very old.”

“No, no, Dad; I’ll just dree my weird.”

Soames took another walk, without a sound. Dree her weird, indeed!

“I won’t have it,” he ejaculated; “if people can’t behave to you, I—I’ll show them!”

She had got up, and was breathing deeply, with her lips parted, and her cheeks very flushed. So she had stood, before her first party, holding out her frock for him to see.

“We’ll go,” he said, gruffly. “Don’t make a fuss! That’s settled.”

Her arms were round his neck; his nose felt wet. What nonsense! as if—!…

He stood unbuttoning his braces that night in the most peculiar state of mind. Going round the world—was he? Preposterous! It had knocked that young fellow over anyway—he was to join them in August wherever they were by that time! Good Lord! It might be China! The thing was fantastic; and Fleur behaving like a kitten! The words of a comic ditty, sung by a clergyman, in his boyhood, kept up a tattoo within him:

Yes! Indeed! His affairs were in apple-pie order, luckily! There was nothing to do, in Timothy’s or Winifred’s Trusts—the only two he had on his hands now; but how things would get on without him, he couldn’t tell! As to Annette! She wouldn’t be sorry, he supposed. There was no one else to care, except Winifred, a little. It was, rather, an intangible presence that troubled his thoughts, about to forsake it for months on end! Still, the cliffs of Dover would be standing, he supposed, and the river still running past his lawn, when he came back, if he ever came back! You picked up all sorts of things out there—microbes, insects, snakes—never knew what you’d run into! Pretty business, steering Fleur clear of all that. And the sightseeing he would have to do! For SHE wouldn’t miss anything! Trust her! Going round among a lot of people with their mouths open—he couldn’t stand that; but he would have to! H’m! A relief when that young fellow could join them. And yet—to have her to himself; he hadn’t, for a long time now. But she would pick up with everybody, of course. He would have to make himself agreable to Tom, Dick, and Harry. A look at Egypt, then to India, and across to China and Japan, and back through that great sprawling America—God’s own country, didn’t they call it! She had it all mapped out. Thank goodness, no question of Russia! She hadn’t even proposed that—it was all to pieces now, they said! Communism! Who knew what would happen at home before they got back? It seemed to Soames as if England, too, must all go to pieces, if he left it. Well, he’d said he would take her! And she had cried over it. Phew! He threw the window up, and in the Jaeger dressing-gown kept there for stray occasions, leaned into the mild air. No Westminster Square did he seem to see out there, but his own river and its poplars, with the full moon behind them, a bright witness—the quiet beauty he had never put into words, the green tranquility he had felt for thirty years, and only permitted to seep into the back of his being. He would miss it—the scents, the sighs of the river under the wind, the chuckle down at the weir, the stars. They had stars out there, of course, but not English stars. And the grass—those great places had no grass, he believed! The blossom, too, was late this year—no blossom before they left! Well, the milk was spilled! And that reminded him: The dairyman would be certain to let the cows go out of milk—he was a ‘natural,’ that chap! He would have to warn Annette. Women never seemed to understand that a cow didn’t go on giving milk for ever, without being attended to. If he only had a man to rely on in the country, like old Gradman in Town! H’m! Old Gradman’s eyes would drop out when he heard this news! Bit of old England there; and wouldn’t be left long, now! It would be queer to come back and find old Gradman gone. One—Two—Three—Eleven! That clock! It had kept him awake before now; still—it was a fine old clock! That young fellow was to go on sitting under it. And was there anything in the notions that kept him sitting there, or were they just talk? Well, he was right to stick to his guns, anyway. But five months away from his young wife—great risk in that! ‘Youth’s a stuff’—Old Shakespeare knew the world. Well! Risk, or no risk, there it was! After all, Fleur had a good head; and young Michael had a good heart. Fleur had a good heart, too; he wouldn’t have it said that she hadn’t! She would feel leaving the baby when it came to the point. She didn’t realise, yet. And Soames felt within him the stir of a curious conflict, between hope that, after all, she might give it up, and apprehension lest she should. Funny—that! His habits, his comfort, his possessions… and here he was, flinging them all over the windmill! Absurd! And yet—!

Chapter XII. ENVOI

Away from Fleur five months at least!

Soames’ astounding conduct had indeed knocked Michael over. And yet, after all, they had come to a crisis in their life together, the more serious because concerned with workaday feelings. Perhaps out there she would become afflicted, like himself, with an enlarged prospect; lose her idea that the world consisted of some five thousand people of advanced tastes, of whom she knew at the outside five hundred. It was she who had pushed him into Parliament, and until he was hoofed therefrom as a failure, their path was surely conjoined along the crest of a large view. In the fortnight before her departure he suffered and kept smiling; wryly thankful that she was behaving ‘like a kitten,’ as her father called it. Her nerves had been on edge ever since the autumn over that wretched case—what more natural than this reaction? At least she felt for him sufficiently to be prodigal of kisses—great consolation to Michael while it lasted. Once or twice he caught her hanging with wet eyes over the eleventh baronet; once found her with a wet face when he awoke in the morning. These indications were a priceless assurance to him that she meant to come back. For there were moments when possibilities balled into a nightmare. Absurd! She was going with her father, that embodiment of care and prudence! Who would have thought Old Forsyte could uproot himself like this? He, too, was leaving a wife, though Michael saw no signs of it. One didn’t know much about Old Forsyte’s feelings, except that they centred round his daughter, and that he was continually asking questions about labels and insects. He had bought himself, too, a life-saving waistcoat and one for Fleur. Michael held with him only one important conversation.

“I want you,” Soames said, “to keep an eye on my wife, and see she doesn’t go getting into a mess with the cows. She’ll have her mother with her, but women are so funny. You’ll find her first-rate with the baby. How will you be off for money?”

“Perfectly all right, sir.”

“Well, if you want some for any good purpose, go to old Gradman in the City; you remember him, perhaps?”

“Yes, and I’m afraid he’ll remember me.”

“Never mind; he’s a faithful old fellow.” And Michael heard him sigh. “I’d like you to look in at Green Street, too, now and then. Your aunt-inlaw may feel my being away a little. I’ll let you have news of Fleur from time to time—now they’ve got this wireless she’ll want to know about the baby. I’m taking plenty of quinine. Fleur says she’s a good sailor. There’s nothing like champagne for that, I’m told. And, by the way, you know best, but I shouldn’t press your notions too far in Parliament; they’re easily bored there, I believe. We’ll meet you at Vancouver, at the end of August. She’ll be tired of travelling by then. She’s looking forward to Egypt and Japan, but I don’t know. Seems to me it’ll be all travelling.”

“Have you plenty of ducks, sir? You’ll want them at this time of year in the Red Sea; and I should take a helmet.”

“I’ve got one,” said Soames; “they’re heavy great things,” and, looking suddenly at Michael, he added:

“I shall look after her, and you’ll look after yourself, I hope.”

Michael understood him.

“Yes, sir. And thank you very much. I think it’s most frightfully sporting of you.”

“It’s to be hoped it’ll do her good; and that the little chap won’t miss her.”

“Not if I can help it.”

Soames, who was seated in front of ‘The White Monkey,’ seemed to go into a trance. At last he stirred in his chair, and said:

“The war’s left everything very unsettled. I suppose people believe in something nowadays, but I don’t know what it is.”

Michael felt a fearful interest.

“Do you mind telling me, sir, what you believe in yourself?”

“What was good enough for my fathers is good enough for me. They expect too much now; there’s no interest taken in being alive.”

“Interest taken in being alive!” The words were singularly comprehensive. Were they the answer to all modern doubt?

The last night, the last kiss came; and the glum journey to the Docks in Soames’ car. Michael alone went to see them off! The gloomy dockside, and the grey river; the bustle with baggage, and the crowded tender. An aching business! Even for her, he almost believed—an aching business. And the long desultory minutes on the ship; the initiation of Soames into its cramped, shining, strangely odoured mysteries. The ghastly smile one had to keep on the lips, the inane jokes one had to make. And then that moment, apart, when she pressed her breast to his and gave him a clinging kiss.

“Good-bye, Michael; it’s not for very long.”

“Good-bye, darling! Take care of yourself. You shall have all the news I can send you, and don’t worry about Kit.”

His teeth were clinched, and her eyes—he saw—were wet! And, then, once more:

“Good-bye!”

“Good-bye!”

Back on the tender, with the strip of grey water opening, spreading, between him and the ship’s side, and that high line of faces above the bulwark—Fleur’s face under the small fawn hat, her waving hand; and, away to the left, seen out of the tail of his eye, Old Forsyte’s face alone—withdrawn so that they might have their parting to themselves—long, chinny, grey-moustached, very motionless; absorbed and lonely, as might be that of some long-distance bird arrived on an unknown shore, and looking back towards the land of its departure. Smaller and smaller they grew, merged in blur, vanished.

For the whole journey back to Westminster, Michael smoked cigarette on cigarette, and read the same sentence over and over in the same journal, and the sentence was:

He went straight into the House of Commons. And all the afternoon sat listening and taking in a few words now and then, of a debate on education. What chance—what earthly chance—had his skyscraping in this place, where they still talked with calm disagreement, as if England were the England of 1906, and where the verdict on him was: ‘Amiable but very foolish young man!’ National unity—national movement! No jolly fear! The country wouldn’t have it! One was battering at a door which everybody said must be opened, but through which nobody could pass. And a long strip of grey water kept spreading between him and the talkers; the face under the fawn hat confused itself with that of the Member for Wasbaston; the face of Old Forsyte above the bulwark rail appeared suddenly between two Labour Leaders; and the lines of faces faded to a blur on a grey river where gulls were flighting.

Going out, he passed a face that had more reality—MacGown’s! Grim! It wasn’t the word. No one had got any change out of that affair. Multum ex parvo! Parvum ex multo! That was the modern comedy!

Going home to have a look at Kit and send Fleur a wireless, he passed four musicians playing four instruments with a sort of fury. They had able bodies in shabby clothes. ‘By Jove!’ thought Michael, ‘I know that chap’s face! – surely he was in my Company, in France!’ He watched till the cheeks collapsed. Yes! A good man, too! But they had all been good men. By George, they had been wonders! And here they were! And he within an ace of abandoning them! Though everybody had his nostrum, and one perhaps was as good as another, still one could only follow what light one had! And if the Future was unreadable, and Fate grinned, well—let it grin!

How empty the house felt! To-morrow Kit and the dog were to go down to ‘The Shelter’ in the car, and it would be still emptier. From room after room he tried to retrieve some sight or scent of Fleur. Too painful! His dressing-room, his study were the only places possible—in them he would abide.

He went to the nursery, and opened the door softly. Whiteness and dimity; the dog on his fat silver side, the Magicoal fire burning; the prints on the white walls so carefully selected for the moment when the eleventh baronet should begin to take notice—prints slightly comic, to avoid a moral; the high and shining fender-guard that even Magicoal might not be taken too seriously; the light coming in between bright chintz. A charming room! The nurse, in blue, was standing with her back to the door, and did not see him. And, in his little high chair, the eleventh baronet was at table; on his face, beneath its dark chestnut curls, was a slight frown; and in his tiny hand he held a silver spoon, with which over the bowl before him he was making spasmodic passes.

Michael heard the nurse saying:

“Now that mother’s gone, you must be a little man, Kit, and learn to use your spoon.”

Michael saw his offspring dip at the bowl and throw some of its contents into the air.

“That’s not the way at all.”

The eleventh baronet repeated the performance, and looked for applause, with a determined smile.

“Naughty!”

“A—a!” said the eleventh baronet, plopping the spoon. The contents spurted wastefully.

“Oh! you spoiled boy!”

“‘England, my England!’” thought Michael, “as the poet said.”