PART II

Chapter I. THE MARK FALLS

The state of the world had been getting more and more on Soames’ nerves ever since the general meeting of the P. P. R. S. It had gone off with that fatuity long associated by him with such gatherings—a watertight rigmarole from the chairman; butter from two reliable shareholders; vinegar from shareholders not so reliable; and the usual ‘gup’ over the dividend. He had gone there glum, come away glummer. From a notion once taken into his head Soames parted more slowly than a cheese parts from its mites. Two-sevenths of foreign business, nearly all German! And the mark falling! It had begun to fall from the moment that he decided to support the dividend. And why? What was in the wind? Contrary to his custom, he had taken to sniffing closely the political columns of his paper. The French—he had always mistrusted them, especially since his second marriage—the French were going to play old Harry, if he was not greatly mistaken! Their papers, he noticed, never lost a chance of having a dab at English policy; seemed to think they could always call the tune for England to pipe to! And the mark and the franc, and every other sort of money, falling. And, though in Soames was that which rejoiced in the thought that one of his country’s bits of paper could buy a great quantity of other countries’ bits of paper, there was also that which felt the whole thing silly and unreal, with an ever-growing consciousness that the P. P. R. S. would pay no dividend next year. The P. P. R. S. was a big concern; no dividend would be a sign, no small one, of bad management. Assurance was one of the few things on God’s earth which could and should be conducted without real risk. But for that he would never have gone on the Board. And to find assurance had not been so conducted and that by himself, was—well! He had caused Winifred to sell, anyway, though the shares had already fallen slightly. “I thought it was such a good thing, Soames,” she had said plaintively: “it’s rather a bore, losin’ money on the shares.” He had answered without mercy: “If you don’t sell, you’ll lose more.” And she had done it. If the Rogers and Nicholases who had followed him into it hadn’t sold too—well, it was their look out! He had made Winifred warn them. As for himself, he had nothing but his qualifying shares, and the missing of a dividend or two would not hurt one whose director’s fees more than compensated. It was not, therefore, private uneasiness so much as resentment at a state of things connected with foreigners and the slur on his infallibility.

Christmas had gone off quietly at Mapledurham. He abominated Christmas, and only observed it because his wife was French, and her national festival New Year’s Day. One could not go so far as to observe that, encouraging a foreign notion. But Christmas with no child about—he still remembered the holly and snapdragons of Park Lane in his own childhood—the family parties; and how disgusted he had been if he got anything symbolic—the thimble, or the ring—instead of the shilling. They had never gone in for Santa Claus at Park Lane, partly because they could see through the old gentleman, and partly because he was not at all a late thing. Emily, his mother, had seen to that. Yes; and, by the way, that William Gouldyng, Ingerer, had so stumped those fellows at the Heralds’ College, that Soames had dropped the enquiry—it was just encouraging them to spend his money for a sentimental satisfaction which did not materialise. That narrow-headed chap, ‘Old Mont,’ peacocked about his ancestry; all the more reason for having no ancestry to peacock about. The Forsytes and the Goldings were good English country stock—that was what mattered. And if Fleur and her child, if one came, had French blood in them—well, he couldn’t help it now.

In regard to the coming of a grandchild, Soames knew no more than in October. Fleur had spent Christmas with the Monts; she was promised to him, however, before long, and her mother must ask her a question or two!

The weather was extremely mild; Soames had even been out in a punt fishing. In a heavy coat he trailed a line for perch and dace, and caught now and then a roach—precious little good, the servants wouldn’t eat them, nowadays! His grey eyes would brood over the grey water under the grey sky; and in his mind the mark would fall. It fell with a bump on that eleventh of January when the French went and occupied the Ruhr. He said to Annette at breakfast: “Your country’s cracked! Look at the mark now!”

“What do I care about the mark?” she had answered over her coffee. “I care that they shall not come again into my country. I hope they will suffer a little what we have suffered.”

“You,” said Soames; “you never suffered anything.”

Annette put her hand where Soames sometimes doubted the existence of a heart.

“I suffered here,” she said.

“I didn’t notice it. You never went without butter. What do you suppose Europe’s going to be like now for the next thirty years! How about British trade?”

“We French see before our noses,” said Annette with warmth. “We see that the beaten must be kept the beaten, or he will take revenge. You English are so sloppy.”

“Sloppy, are we?” said Soames. “You’re talking like a child. Could a sloppy people ever have reached our position in the world?”

“That is your selfishness. You are cold and selfish.”

“Cold, selfish and sloppy—they don’t go together. Try again.”

“Your slop is in your thought and your talk; it is your instinct that gives you your success, and your English instinct is cold and selfish, Soames. You are a mixture, all of you, of hypocrisy, stupidity and egoism.”

Soames took some marmalade.

“Well,” he said, “and what are the French? – cynical, avaricious and revengeful. And the Germans are sentimental, heady and brutal. We can all abuse each other. There’s nothing for it but to keep clear. And that’s what you French won’t do.”

Annette’s handsome person stiffened.

“When you are tied to a person, as I am tied to you, Soames, or as we French are tied to the Germans, it is necessary to be top dog, or to be bottom dog.”

Soames stayed his toast.

“Do you suppose yourself top dog in this house?”

“Yes, Soames.”

“Oh! Then you can go back to France tomorrow.”

Annette’s eyebrows rose quizzically.

“I would wait a little longer, my friend; you are still too young.”

But Soames had already regretted his remark; he did not wish any such disturbance at his time of life, and he said more calmly:

“Compromise is the essence of any reasonable existence between individuals or nations. We can’t have the fat thrown into the fire every few years.”

“That is so English,” murmured Annette. “We others never know what you English will do. You always wait to see which way the cat jumps.”

However deeply sympathetic with such a reasonable characteristic, Soames would have denied it at any ordinary moment—to confess to temporising was not, as it were, done. But, with the mark falling like a cartload of bricks, he was heated to the point of standing by his nature.

“And why shouldn’t we? Rushing into things that you’ll have to rush out of! I don’t want to argue. French and English never did get on, and never will.”

Annette rose. “You speak the truth, my friend. Entente, mais pas cordiale. What are you doing today?”

“Going up to town,” said Soames glumly. “Your precious Government has put business into Queer Street with a vengeance.”

“Do you stay the night?”

“I don’t know.”

“Adieu, then, jusqu’ au revoir!” And she got up.

Soames remained brooding above his marmalade—with the mark falling in his mind—glad to see the last of her handsome figure, having no patience at the moment for French tantrums. An irritable longing to say to somebody “I told you so” possessed him. He would have to wait, however, till he found somebody to say it to.

A beautiful day, quite warm; and, taking his umbrella as an assurance against change, he set out for the station.

In the carriage going up they were talking about the Ruhr. Averse from discussion in public, Soames listened from behind his paper. The general sentiment was surprisingly like his own. In so far as it was unpleasant for the Huns—all right; in so far as it was unpleasant for British trade—all wrong; in so far as love of British trade was active and hate of Huns now passive—more wrong than right. A Francophil remark that the French were justified in making themselves safe at all costs, was coldly received. At Maidenhead a man got in whom Soames connected automatically with disturbance. He had much grey hair, a sanguine face, lively eyes, twisting eyebrows, and within five minutes had asked in a breezy voice whether anyone had heard of the League of Nations. Confirmed in his estimate, Soames looked round the corner of his paper. Yes, that chap would get off on some hobby-horse or other! And there he went! The question—said the newcomer—was not whether the Germans should get one in the eye, the British one in the pocket, or the French one in the heart, but whether the world should get peace and goodwill. Soames lowered his paper. If—this fellow said—they wanted peace, they must sink their individual interests, and think in terms of collective interest. The good of all was the good of one! Soames saw the flaw at once. That might be, but the good of one was not the good of all. He felt that if he did not take care he would be pointing this out. The man was a perfect stranger to him, and no good ever came of argument. Unfortunately his silence amid the general opinion that the League of Nations was ‘no earthly,’ seemed to cause the newcomer to regard him as a sympathiser; the fellow kept on throwing his eyebrows at him! To put up his paper again seemed too pointed, and his position was getting more and more false when the train ran in at Paddington. He hastened to a cab. A voice behind him said:

“Hopeless lot, sir, eh! Glad to see YOU saw my point.”

“Quite!” said Soames. “Taxi!”

“Unless the League of Nations functions, we’re all for Gehenna.”

Soames turned the handle of the cab door.

“Quite!” he said again. “Poultry!” and got in. He was not going to be drawn. The fellow was clearly a firebrand!

In the cab the measure of his disturbance was revealed. He had said ‘Poultry,’ an address that ‘Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte’ had abandoned two-and-twenty years ago when, merged with ‘Cuthcott, Holliday and Kingson,’ they became ‘Cuthcott, Kingson and Forsyte.’ Rectifying the error, he sat forward, brooding. Fall of the mark! The country was sound about it, yes—but when they failed to pay the next dividend, could they rely on resentment against the French instead of against the directors? Doubtful! The directors ought to have seen it coming! That might be said of the other directors, but not of himself—here was a policy that he personally never would have touched. If only he could discuss the whole thing with some one—but old Gradman would be out of his depth in a matter of this sort. And, on arrival at his office, he gazed with a certain impatience at that changeless old fellow, sitting in his swivel chair.

“Ah! Mr. Soames, I was hopin’ you might come in this morning. There’s a young man been round to see you from the P. P. R. S. Wouldn’t give his business, said he wanted to see you privately. Left his number on the ‘phone.”

“Oh!” said Soames.

“Quite a young feller—in the office.”

“What did he look like?”

“Nice, clean young man. I was quite favourably impressed—name of Butterfield.”

“Well, ring him up, and let him know I’m here.” And going over to the window, he stood looking out on to a perfectly blank wall.

Suited to a sleeping partner, his room was at the back, free from disturbance. Young man! The call was somewhat singular! And he said over his shoulder: “Don’t go when he comes, Gradman, I know nothing of him.”

The world changed, people died off, the mark fell, but Gradman was there—embodiment, faithful and grey, of service and integrity—an anchor.

Gradman’s voice, grating, ingratiating, rose.

“This French news—it’s not nice, Mr. Soames. They’re a hasty lot. I remember your father, Mr. James, coming into the office the morning the Franco–Prussian war was declared—quite in his prime then, hardly more than sixty, I should say. Why, I recall his very words: ‘There,’ he said, ‘I told them so.’ And here they are—at it still. The fact is, they’re cat and dog.”

Soames, who had half turned, resumed his contemplation of a void. Poor old Gradman dated! What would he say when he heard that they had been insuring foreign business? Stimulated by the old-time quality of Gradman’s presence, his mind ranged with sudden freedom. He himself had another twenty years, perhaps. What would he see in that time? Where would old England be at the end of it? ‘In spite of the papers, we’re not such fools as we look,’ he thought. ‘If only we can steer clear of flibberty-gibberting, and pay our way!’

“Mr. Butterfield, sir.” H’m! The young man had been very spry. Covered by Gradman’s bluff and greasy greeting, he “took a lunar,” as his Uncle Roger used to call it. The young fellow, in a neat suit, a turndown collar, with his hat in his hand, was a medium modest-looking chap. Soames nodded.

“You want to see me?”

“Alone, if I might, sir.”

“Mr. Gradman here is my right-hand man.”

Gradman’s voice purred gratingly: “You can state your business. Nothing goes outside these walls, young man.”

“I’m in the office of the P.P.R.S., sir. The fact is, accident has just put some information in my hands, and I’m not easy in my mind. Knowing you to be a solicitor, sir, I preferred to come to you, rather than go to the chairman. As a lawyer, would you tell me: Is my first duty to the Society, being in their employ?”

“Certainly,” said Soames.

“I don’t like this job, sir, and I hope you’ll understand that I’m not here for any personal motive—it’s just because I feel I ought to.”

Soames regarded him steadily. Though large and rather swimming, the young man’s eyes impressed him by their resemblance to a dog’s. “What’s it all about?” he said.

The young man moistened his lips.

“The insurance of our German business, sir.”

Soames pricked his ears, already slightly pointed by Nature.

“It’s a very serious matter,” the young man went on, “and I don’t know how it’ll affect me, but the fact is, this morning I overheard a private conversation.”

“Oh!” said Soames.

“Yes, sir. I quite understand your tone, but the very first words did it. I simply couldn’t make myself known after hearing them. I think you’ll agree, sir.”

“Who were the speakers?”

“The manager, and a man called Smith—I fancy by his accent his name’s a bit more foreign—who’s done most of the agenting for the German business.”

“What were the words?” said Soames.

“Well, sir, the manager was speaking, and then this Smith said: ‘Quite so, Mr. Elderson, but we haven’t paid you a commission on all this business for nothing; if the mark goes absolutely phut, you will have to see that your Society makes it good for us!’”

The intense longing, which at that moment came on Soames to emit a whistle, was checked by sight of Gradman’s face. The old fellow’s mouth had opened in the nest of his grizzly short beard; his eyes stared puglike, he uttered a prolonged: “A-ow!”

“Yes,” said the young man, “it was a knock-out!”

“Where were you?” asked Soames, sharply.

“In the lobby between the manager’s room and the board room. I’d just come from sorting some papers in the boardroom, and the manager’s door was open an inch or so. Of course I know the voices well.”

“What after?”

“I heard Mr. Elderson say, ‘H’ssh! Don’t talk like that!’ and I slipped back into the board room. I’d had more than enough, sir, I assure you.”

Suspicion and surmise clogged Soames’ thinking apparatus. Was this young fellow speaking the truth? A man like Elderson—the risk was monstrous! And, if true, what was the directors’ responsibility? But proof—proof? He stared at the young man, who looked upset and pale enough, but whose eyes did not waver. Shake him if he could! And he said sharply:

“Now mind what you’re saying! This is most serious!”

“I know that, sir. If I’d consulted my own interest, I’d never have come here. I’m not a sneak.”

The words rang true, but Soames did not drop his caution.

“Ever had any trouble in the office?”

“No, sir, you can make enquiry. I’ve nothing against Mr. Elderson, and he’s nothing against me.”

Soames thought suddenly: ‘Good heavens! He’s shifted it on to me, and in the presence of a witness! And I supplied the witness!’

“Have you any reason to suppose,” he said, “that they became aware of your being there?”

“They couldn’t have, I think.”

The implications of this news seemed every second more alarming. It was as if Fate, kept at bay all his life by clever wrist-work, had suddenly slipped a thrust under his guard. No good to get rattled, however—must think it out at leisure!

“Are you prepared, if necessary, to repeat this to the Board?”

The young man pressed his hands together.

“Well, sir, I’d much rather have held my tongue; but if you decide it’s got to be taken up, I suppose I must go through with it now. I’m sure I hope you’ll decide to leave it alone; perhaps it isn’t true—only why didn’t Mr. Elderson say: ‘You ruddy liar!’?”

Exactly! Why didn’t he? Soames gave a grunt of intense discomfort.

“Anything more?” he said.

“No, sir.”

“Very well. You’ve not told anyone?”

“No, sir.”

“Then don’t, and leave it to me.”

“I’ll be only too happy to, sir. Good-morning!”

“Good-morning!”

No—very bad morning! No satisfaction whatever in this sudden fulfilment of his prophetic feeling about Elderson. None!

“What d’you think of that young fellow, Gradman? Is he lying?”

Thus summoned, as it were, from stupor, Gradman thoughtfully rubbed a nose both thick and shining.

“It’s one word against another, Mr. Soames, unless you get more evidence. But I can’t see what the young man has to gain by it.”

“Nor I; but you never know. The trouble will be to get more evidence. Can I act without it?”

“It’s delicate,” said Gradman. And Soames knew that he was thrown back on himself. When Gradman said a thing was delicate, it meant that it was the sort of matter on which he was accustomed to wait for orders—presumptuous even to hold opinion! But had he got one? Well, one would never know! The old chap would sit and rub his nose over it till Kingdom Come.

“I shan’t act in a hurry,” he said, almost angrily: “I can’t see to the end of this.”

Every hour confirmed that statement. At lunch the tape of his city club showed the mark still falling—to unheard-of depths! How they could talk of golf, with this business on his mind, he could not imagine!

“I must go and see that fellow,” he said to himself. “I shall be guarded. He may throw some light.” He waited until three o’clock and repaired to the P. P. R. S.

Reaching the office, he sought the Board room. The chairman was there in conference with the manager. Soames sat down quietly to listen; and while he listened he watched that fellow’s face. It told him nothing. What nonsense people talked when they said you could tell character from faces! Only a perfect idiot’s face could be read like that. And here was a man of experience and culture, one who knew every rope of business life and polite society. The hairless, neat features exhibited no more concern than the natural mortification of one whose policy had met with such a nasty knock. The drop of the mark had already wiped out any possible profit on the next half-year. Unless the wretched thing recovered, they would be carrying a practically dead load of German insurance. Really it was criminal that no limit of liability had been fixed! How on earth could he ever have overlooked that when he came on the Board? But he had only known of it afterwards. And who could have foreseen anything so mad as this Ruhr business, or realised the slack confidence of his colleagues in this confounded fellow? The words “gross negligence” appeared ‘close up’ before his eyes. What if an action lay against the Board! Gross negligence! At his age and with his reputation! Why! The thing was plain as a pikestaff; for omitting a limit of liability this chap had got his commission! Ten per cent, probably, on all that business—he must have netted thousands! A man must be in Queer Street indeed to take a risk like that! But conscious that his fancy was running on, Soames rose, and turned his back. The action suggested another. Simulate anger, draw some sign from that fellow’s self-control! He turned again, and said pettishly: “What on earth were you about, Mr. Manager, when you allowed these contracts to go through without limit of liability? A man of your experience! What was your motive?”

A slight narrowing of the eyes, a slight compression of the lips. He had relied on the word ‘motive,’ but the fellow passed it by.

“For such high premiums as we have been getting, Mr. Forsyte, a limited liability was not possible. This is a most outrageous development, and I’m afraid it must be considered just bad luck.”

“Unfortunately,” said Soames, “there’s no such thing as luck in properly regulated assurance, as we shall find, or I’m much mistaken. I shouldn’t be surprised if an action lay against the Board for gross negligence!”

That had got the chairman’s goat! – Got his goat? What expressions they used nowadays! Or did it mean the opposite? One never knew! But as for Elderson—he seemed to Soames to be merely counterfeiting a certain flusteration. Futile to attempt to spring anything out of a chap like that. If the thing were true, the fellow must be entirely desperate, prepared for anything and everything. And since from Soames the desperate side of life—the real holes, the impossible positions which demand a gambler’s throw—had always been carefully barred by the habits of a prudent nature, he found it now impossible to imagine Elderson’s state of mind, or his line of conduct if he were guilty. For all he could tell, the chap might be carrying poison about with him; might be sitting on a revolver like a fellow on the film. The whole thing was too unpleasant, too worrying for words. And without saying any more he went away, taking nothing with him but the knowledge that their total liability on this German business, with the mark valueless, was over two hundred thousand pounds. He hastily reviewed the fortunes of his co-directors. Old Fontenoy was always in low water; the chairman a dark horse; Mont was in land, land right down in value, and mortgaged at that; old Cosey Mothergill had nothing but his name and his director’s fees; Meyricke must have a large income, but light come, light go, like most of those big counsel with irons in many fires and the certainty of a judgeship. Not a really substantial man among the lot, except himself! He ploughed his way along, head down. Public companies! Preposterous system! You had to trust somebody, and there you were! It was appalling!

“Balloons, sir—beautiful colours, five feet circumference. Take one, gentleman!”

“Good gad!” said Soames. As if the pricked bubble of German business were not enough!

Chapter II. VICTORINE

All through December balloons had been slack—hardly any movement about them, even in Christmas week, and from the Bickets Central Australia was as far as ever. The girl Victorine, restored to comparative health, had not regained her position in the blouse department of Messrs. Boney Blayds & Co. They had given her some odd sewing, but not of late, and she had spent much time trying to get work less uncertain. Her trouble was—had always been—her face. It was unusual. People did not know what to make of a girl who looked like that. Why employ one who without qualification of wealth, rank, fashion, or ability (so far as they knew) made them feel ordinary? For—however essential to such as Fleur and Michael—dramatic interest was not primary in the manufacture or sale of blouses, in the fitting-on of shoes, the addressing of envelopes, making-up of funeral wreaths, or the other ambitions of Victorine. Behind those large dark eyes and silent lips, what went on? It worried Boney Blayds & Co., and the more wholesale firms of commerce. The lurid professions—film-super, or mannequin—did not occur to one, of self-deprecating nature, born in Putney.

When Bicket had gone out of a morning with his tray and his balloons not yet blown up, she would stand biting her finger, as though to gnaw her way to some escape from this hand-to-mouth existence which kept her husband thin as a rail, tired as a rook, shabby as a tailless sparrow, and, at the expense of all caste feeling, brought them in no more than just enough to keep them living under a roof. It had long been clear to them both that there was no future in balloons, just a cadging present. And there smouldered in the silent, passive Victorine a fierce resentment. She wanted better things for herself, for him, chiefly for him.

On the morning when the mark was bumping down, she was putting on her velveteen jacket and toque (best remaining items of her wardrobe), having taken a resolve. Bicket never mentioned his old job, and his wife had subtly divined some cause beyond the ordinary for his loss of it. Why not see if she could get him taken back? He had often said: “Mr. Mont’s a gent and a sort o’ socialist; been through the war, too; no high-and-mighty about HIM.” If she could ‘get at’ this phenomenon! With the flush of hope and daring in her sallow cheeks, she took stock of her appearance from the window-glasses of the Strand. Her velveteen of jade-green always pleased one who had an eye for colour, but her black skirt—well, perhaps the wear and tear of it wouldn’t show if she kept behind the counter. Had she brass enough to say that she came about a manuscript? And she rehearsed with silent lips, pinching her accent: “Would you ask Mr. Mont, please, if I could see him; it’s about a manuscript.” Yes! and then would come the question: “What name, please?” “Mrs. Bicket?” Never! “Miss Victorine Collins?” All authoresses had maiden names. Victorine—yes! But Collins! It didn’t sound like. And no one would know what her maiden name had been. Why not choose one? They often chose. And she searched. Something Italian, like—like—Hadn’t their landlady said to them when they came in: “Is your wife Eyetalian?” Ah! Manuelli! That was certainly Italian—the ice-cream man in Little Ditch Street had it! She walked on practising beneath her breath. If only she could get to see this Mr. Mont!

She entered, trembling. All went exactly as foreseen, even to the pinching of her accent, till she stood waiting for them to bring an answer from the speaking tube, concealing her hands in their very old gloves. Had Miss Manuelli an appointment? There was no manuscript.

“No,” said Victorine, “I haven’t sent it yet. I wanted to see him first.” The young man at the counter was looking at her hard. He went again to the tube, then spoke.

“Will you wait a minute, please—Mr. Mont’s lady secretary is coming down.”

Victorine inclined her head towards her sinking heart. A lady secretary! She would never get there now! And there came on her the sudden dread of false pretences. But the thought of Tony standing at his corner, ballooned up to the eyes, as she had spied out more than once, fortified her desperation.

A girl’s voice said: “Miss Manuelli? Mr. Mont’s secretary, perhaps you could give me a message.”

A fresh-faced young woman’s eyes were travelling up and down her. Pinching her accent hard, she said: “Oh! I’m afraid I couldn’t do that.”

The travelling gaze stopped at her face. “If you’ll come with me, I’ll see if he can see you.”

Alone in a small waiting-room, Victorine sat without movement, till she saw a young man’s face poked through the doorway, and heard the words:

“Will you come in?”

She took a deep breath, and went. Once in the presence, she looked from Michael to his secretary and back again, subtly daring his youth, his chivalry, his sportsmanship, to refuse her a private interview. Through Michael passed at once the thought: ‘Money, I suppose. But what an interesting face!’ The secretary drew down the corners of her mouth and left the room,

“Well, Miss—er—Manuelli?”

“Not Manuelli, please—Mrs. Bicket; my husband used to be here.”

“What!” The chap that had snooped ‘Copper Coin!’ Phew! Bicket’s yarn—his wife—pneumonia! She looked as if she might have had it.

“He often spoke of you, sir. And, please, he hasn’t any work. Couldn’t you find room for him again, sir?”

Michael stood silent. Did this terribly interesting-looking girl know about the snooping?

“He just sells balloons in the street now; I can’t bear to see him. Over by St. Paul’s he stands, and there’s no money in it; and we do so want to get out to Australia. I know he’s very nervy, and gets wrong with people. But if you COULD take him back here…”

No! she did not know!

“Very sorry, Mrs. Bicket. I remember your husband well, but we haven’t a place for him. Are YOU all right again?”

“Oh! yes. Except that I can’t get work again either.”

What a face for wrappers! Sort of Mona Lisa-ish! Storbert’s novel! Ha!

“Well, I’ll have a talk with your husband. I suppose you wouldn’t like to sit to an artist for a book-wrapper? It might lead to work in that line if you want it. You’re just the type for a friend of mine. Do you know Aubrey Greene’s work?”

“No, sir.”

“It’s pretty good—in fact, very good in a decadent way. You wouldn’t mind sitting?”

“I wouldn’t mind anything to save some money. But I’d rather you didn’t tell my husband I’d been to see you. He might take it amiss.”

“All right! I’ll see him by accident. Near St. Paul’s, you said? But there’s no chance here, Mrs. Bicket. Besides, he couldn’t make two ends meet on this job, he told me.”

“When I was ill, sir.”

“Of course, that makes a difference.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, let me write you a note to Mr. Greene. Will you sit down a minute?”

He stole a look at her while she sat waiting. Really, her sallow, large-eyed face, with its dead-black, bobbed, frizzy-ended hair, was extraordinarily interesting—a little too refined and anaemic for the public; but, dash it all! the public couldn’t always have its Reckitt’s blue eyes, corn-coloured hair, and poppy cheeks. “She’s not a peach,” he wrote, “on the main tree of taste; but so striking in her way that she really might become a type, like Beardsley’s or Dana’s.”

When she had taken the note and gone, he rang for his secretary.

“No, Miss Perren, she didn’t take anything off me. But some type, eh?”

“I thought you’d like to see her. She wasn’t an authoress, was she?”

“Far from it.”

“Well, I hope she got what she wanted.”

Michael grinned. “Partly, Miss Perren—partly. You think I’m an awful fool, don’t you?”

“I’m sure I don’t; but I think you’re too soft-hearted.”

Michael ran his fingers through his hair.

“Would it surprise you to hear that I’ve done a stroke of business?”

“Yes, Mr. Mont.”

“Then I won’t tell you what it is. When you’ve done pouting, go on with that letter to my father about ‘Duet’: ‘We are sorry to say that in the present state of the trade we should not be justified in reprinting the dialogue between those two old blighters; we have already lost money by it!’ You must translate, of course. Now can we say something to cheer the old boy up? How about this? ‘When the French have recovered their wits, and the birds begin to sing—in short, when spring comes—we hope to reconsider the matter in the light of—of’—er—what, Miss Perren?”

“‘The experience we shall have gained.’ Shall I leave out about the French and the birds?”

“Excellent! ‘Yours faithfully, Danby and Winter.’ Don’t you think it was a scandalous piece of nepotism bringing the book here at all, Miss Perren?”

“What is ‘nepotism’?”

“Taking advantage of your son. He’s never made a sixpence by any of his books.”

“He’s a very distinguished writer, Mr. Mont.”

“And we pay for the distinction. Well, he’s a good old Bart. That’s all before lunch, and mind you have a good one. That girl’s figure wasn’t usual either, was it? She’s thin, but she stands up straight. There’s a question I always want to ask, Miss Perren: Why do modern girls walk in a curve with their heads poked forward? They can’t all be built like that.”

The secretary’s cheeks brightened.

“There IS a reason, Mr. Mont.”

“Good! What is it?”

The secretary’s cheeks continued to brighten. “I don’t really know whether I can—”

“Oh! sorry. I’ll ask my wife. Only she’s quite straight herself.”

“Well, Mr. Mont, it’s this, you see: They aren’t supposed to have anything be—behind, and, of course, they have, and they can’t get the proper effect unless they curve their chests in and poke their heads forward. It’s the fashion-plates and mannequins that do it.”

“I see,” said Michael; “thank you, Miss Perren; awfully good of you. It’s the limit, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I don’t hold with it, myself.”

“No, quite!”

The secretary lowered her eyelids and withdrew.

Michael sat down and drew a face on his blotting-paper. It was not Victorine’s…

Armed with the note to Aubrey Greene, Victorine had her usual lunch, a cup of coffee and a bit of heavy cake, and took the tube towards Chelsea. She had not succeeded, but the gentleman had been friendly and she felt cheered.

At the studio door was a young man inserting a key—very elegant in smoke-grey Harris tweeds, a sliding young man with no hat, beautifully brushed-back bright hair, and a soft voice.

“Model?” he said.

“Yes, sir, please. I have a note for you from Mr. Mont.”

“Michael? Come in.”

Victorine followed him in. It was ‘not half’ sea-green in there; a high room with rafters and a top light, and lots of pictures and drawings on the walls, and as if they had slipped off on to the floor. A picture on an easel of two ladies with their clothes sliding down troubled Victorine. She became conscious of the gentleman’s eyes, sea-green like the walls, sliding up and down her.

“Will you sit for anything?” he asked.

Victorine answered mechanically: “Yes, sir.”

“Do you mind taking your hat off?”

Victorine took off the toque, and shook out her hair.

“Ah!” said the gentleman. “I wonder.”

Victorine wondered what.

“Just sit down on the dais, will you?”

Victorine looked about her, uncertain. A smile seemed to fly up his forehead and over his slippery bright hair.

“This is your first shot, then?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All the better.” And he pointed to a small platform.

Victorine sat down on it in a black oak chair.

“You look cold.”

“Yes, sir.”

He went to a cupboard and returned with two small glasses of a brown fluid.

“Have a Grand Marnier?”

She noticed that he tossed his off in one gulp, and did the same. It was sweet, strong, very nice, and made her gasp.

“Take a cigarette.”

Victorine took one from a case he handed, and put it between her lips. He lit it. And again a smile slid up away over the top of his head.

“You draw it in,” he said. “Where were you born?”

“In Putney, sir.”

“That’s very interesting. Just sit still a minute. It’s not as bad as having a tooth out, but it takes longer. The great thing is to keep awake.”

“Yes, sir.”

He took a large piece of paper and a bit of dark stuff, and began to draw.

“Tell me,” he said, “Miss—”

“Collins, sir—Victorine Collins.” Some instinct made her give her maiden name. It seemed somehow more professional.

“Are you at large?” He paused, and again the smile slid up over his bright hair: “Or have you any other occupation?”

“Not at present, sir. I’m married, but nothing else.”

For some time after that the gentleman was silent. It was interesting to see him, taking a look, making a stroke on the paper, taking another look. Hundreds of looks, hundreds of strokes. At last he said: “All right! Now we’ll have a rest. Heaven sent you here, Miss Collins. Come and get warm.”

Victorine approached the fire.

“Do you know anything about expressionism?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, it means not troubling about the outside except in so far as it expresses the inside. Does that convey anything to you?”

“No, sir.”

“Quite! I think you said you’d sit for the—er—altogether?”

Victorine regarded the bright and sliding gentleman. She did not know what he meant, but she felt that he meant something out of the ordinary.

“Altogether what, sir?”

“Nude.”

“Oh!” She cast her eyes down, then raised them to the sliding clothes of the two ladies. “Like that?”

“No, I shouldn’t be treating you cubistically.”

A slow flush was burning out the sallow in her cheeks. She said slowly:

“Does it mean more money?”

“Yes, half as much again—more perhaps. I don’t want you to if you’d rather not. You can think it over and let me know next time.”

She raised her eyes again, and said: “Thank you, sir.”

“Righto! Only please don’t ‘sir’ me.”

Victorine smiled. It was the first time she had achieved this functional disturbance, and it seemed to have a strange effect. He said hurriedly: “By George! When you smile, Miss Collins, I see you impressionistically. If you’ve rested, sit up there again.”

Victorine went back.

The gentleman took a fresh piece of paper.

“Can you think of anything that will keep you smiling?”

She shook her head. That was a fact.

“Nothing comic at all? I suppose you’re not in love with your husband, for instance?”

“Oh! yes.”

“Well, try that.”

Victorine tried that, but she could only see Tony selling his balloons.

“That won’t do,” said the gentleman. “Don’t think of him! Did you ever see ‘L’apres midi d’un Faune’?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, I’ve got an idea. ‘L’apres midi d’une Dryade.’ About the nude you really needn’t mind. It’s quite impersonal. Think of art, and fifteen bob a day. Shades of Nijinsky, I see the whole thing!”

All the time that he was talking his eyes were sliding off and on to her, and his pencil off and on to the paper. A sort of infection began to ferment within Victorine. Fifteen shillings a day! Blue butterflies!

There was a profound silence. His eyes and hand slid off and on. A faint smile had come on Victorine’s face—she was adding up the money she might earn.

At last his eyes and hand ceased moving, and he stood looking at the paper.

“That’s all for today, Miss Collins. I’ve got to think it out. Will you give me your address?”

Victorine thought rapidly.

“Please, sir, will you write to me at the post office. I don’t want my husband to know that I’m—I’m—”

“Affiliated to art? Well! Name of post office?”

Victorine gave it and resumed her hat.

“An hour and a half, five shillings, thank you. And tomorrow, at half-past two, Miss Collins—not ‘sir.’”

“Yes, s—, thank you.”

Waiting for her ‘bus in the cold January air, the altogether appeared to Victorine improbable. To sit in front of a strange gentleman in her skin! If Tony knew! The slow flush again burned up the sallow in her cheeks. She climbed into the ‘bus. But fifteen shillings! Six days a week—why, it would be four pound ten! In four months she could earn their passage out. Judging by the pictures in there, lots must be doing it. Tony must know nothing, not even that she was sitting for her face. He was all nerves, and that fond of her! He would imagine things; she had heard him say those artists were just like cats. But that gentleman had been very nice, though he did seem as if he were laughing at everything. She wished he had shown her the drawing. Perhaps she would see herself in an exhibition some day. But without—oh! And suddenly she thought: ‘If I ate a bit more, I’d look nice like that, too!’ And as if to escape from the daring of that thought, she stared up into the face opposite. It had two chins, was calm and smooth and pink, with light eyes staring back at her. People had thoughts, but you couldn’t tell what they were! And the smile which Aubrey Greene desired crept out on his model’s face.

Chapter III. MICHAEL WALKS AND TALKS

The face Michael drew began by being Victorine’s, and ended by being Fleur’s. If physically Fleur stood up straight, was she morally as erect? This was the speculation for which he continually called himself a cad. He saw no change in her movements, and loyally refrained from enquiring into the movements he could not see. But his aroused attention made him more and more aware of a certain cynicism, as if she were continually registering the belief that all values were equal and none of much value.

Wilfrid, though still in London, was neither visible nor spoken of. “Out of sight and hearing, out of mind,” seemed to be the motto. It did not work with Michael—Wilfrid was constantly in his mind. If Wilfrid were not seeing Fleur, how could he bear to stay within such tantalising reach of her? If Fleur did not want Wilfrid to stay, why had she not sent him away? He was finding it difficult, too, to conceal from others the fact that Desert and he were no longer pals. Often the impetus to go and have it out with him surged up and was beaten back. Either there was nothing beyond what he already knew, or there was something—and Wilfrid would say there wasn’t. Michael accepted that without cavil; one did not give a woman away! But he wanted to hear no lies from a War comrade. Between Fleur and himself no word had passed; for words, he felt, would add no knowledge, merely imperil a hold weak enough already. Christmas at the ancestral manor of the Monts had been passed in covert-shooting. Fleur had come and stood with him at the last drive on the second day, holding Ting-a-ling on a lead. The Chinese dog had been extraordinarily excited, climbing the air every time a bird fell, and quite unaffected by the noise of guns. Michael, waiting to miss his birds—he was a poor shot—had watched her eager face emerging from grey fur, her form braced back against Ting-a-ling. Shooting was new to her; and under the stimulus of novelty she was always at her best. He had loved even her “Oh, Michaels!” when he missed. She had been the success of the gathering, which meant seeing almost nothing of her except a sleepy head on a pillow; but, at least, down there he had not suffered from lurking uneasiness.

Putting a last touch to the bobbed hair on the blotting paper, he got up. St. Paul’s, that girl had said. He might stroll up and have a squint at Bicket. Something might occur to him. Tightening the belt of his blue overcoat round his waist, he sallied forth, thin and sprightly, with a little ache in his heart.

Walking east, on that bright, cheerful day, nothing struck him so much as the fact that he was alive, well, and in work. So very many were dead, ill, or out of a job. He entered Covent Garden. Amazing place! A human nature which, decade after decade, could put up with Covent Garden was not in danger of extinction from its many ills. A comforting place—one needn’t take anything too seriously after walking through it. On this square island were the vegetables of the earth and the fruits of the world, bounded on the west by publishing, on the cast by opera, on the north and south by rivers of mankind. Among discharging carts and litter of paper, straw and men out of drawing, Michael walked and sniffed. Smell of its own, Covent Garden, earthy and just not rotten! He had never seen—even in the War—any place that so utterly lacked form. Extraordinarily English! Nobody looked as if they had anything to do with the soil—drivers, hangers-on, packers, and the salesmen inside the covered markets, seemed equally devoid of acquaintanceship with sun, wind, water, earth or air—town types all! And—Golly! – how their faces jutted, sloped, sagged and swelled, in every kind of featural disharmony. What was the English type amongst all this infinite variety of disproportion? There just wasn’t one! He came on the fruits, glowing piles, still and bright—foreigners from the land of the sun—globes all the same size and colour. They made Michael’s mouth water. ‘Something in the sun,’ he thought; ‘there really is.’ Look at Italy, at the Arabs, at Australia—the Australians came from England, and see the type now! Nevertheless—a Cockney for good temper! The more regular a person’s form and features, the more selfish they were! Those grape-fruit looked horribly self-satisfied, compared with the potatoes!

He emerged still thinking about the English. Well! They were now one of the plainest and most distorted races of the world; and yet was there any race to compare with them for good temper and for ‘guts’? And they needed those in their smoky towns, and their climate—remarkable instance of adaptation to environment, the modern English character! ‘I could pick out an Englishman anywhere,’ he thought, ‘and yet, physically, there’s no general type now!’ Astounding people! So ugly in the mass, yet growing such flowers of beauty, and such strange sprigs—like that little Mrs. Bicket; so unimaginative in bulk, yet with such a blooming lot of poets! How would old Danby like it, by the way, when Wilfrid took his next volume to some other firm; or rather what should he—Wilfrid’s particular friend! – say to old Danby? Aha! He knew what he should say:

“Yes, sir, but you should have let that poor blighter off who snooped the ‘Copper Coins.’ Desert hasn’t forgotten your refusal.” One for old Danby and his eternal inthe-rightness! ‘Copper Coin’ had done uncommonly well. Its successor would probably do uncommonly better. The book was a proof of what he—Michael—was always saying: The ‘cockyolly-bird period’ was passing. People wanted life again. Sibley, Walter Nazing, Linda—all those who had nothing to say except that they were superior to such as had—were already measured for their coffins. Not that they would know when they were in them; not blooming likely! They would continue to wave their noses and look down them!

‘I’M fed-up with them,’ thought Michael. ‘If only Fleur would see that looking down your nose is a sure sign of inferiority!’ And, suddenly, it came to him that she probably did. Wilfrid was the only one of the whole lot she had ever been thick with; the others were there because—well, because she was Fleur, and had the latest things about her. When, very soon, they were no longer the latest things, she would drop them. But Wilfrid she would not drop. No, he felt sure that she had not dropped, and would not drop Wilfrid.

He looked up. Ludgate Hill! “Near St. Paul’s—sells balloons?” And there—sure enough—the poor beggar was!

Bicket was deflating with a view to going off his stand for a cup of cocoa. Remembering that he had come on him by accident, Michael stood for a moment preparing the tones of surprise. Pity the poor chap couldn’t blow himself into one of those coloured shapes and float over St. Paul’s to Peter. Mournful little cuss he looked, squeezing out the air! Memory tapped sharply on his mind. Balloon—in the square—November the first—joyful night! Special! Fleur! Perhaps they brought luck. He moved and said in an astounded voice: “YOU, Bicket? Is this your stunt now?”

The large eyes of Bicket regarded him over a puce-coloured sixpennyworth.

“Mr. Mont! Often thought I’d like to see you again, sir.”

“Same here, Bicket. If you’re not doing anything, come and have some lunch.”

Bicket completed the globe’s collapse, and, closing his tray-lid, said: “Reelly, sir?”

“Rather! I was just going into a fish place.”

Bicket detached his tray.

“I’ll leave this with the crossing-sweeper.” He did so, and followed at Michael’s side.

“Any money in it, Bicket?”

“Bare livin’, sir.”

“How about this place? We’ll have oysters.”

A little saliva at the corner of Bicket’s mouth was removed by a pale tongue.

At a small table decorated with white oilcloth and a cruet stand, Michael sat down.

“Two dozen oysters, and all that; then two good soles, and a bottle of Chablis. Hurry up, please.”

When the white-aproned fellow had gone about it, Bicket said simply:

“My Gawd!”

“Yes, it’s a funny world, Bicket.”

“It is, and that’s a fact. This lunch’ll cost you a pound, I shouldn’t wonder. If I take twenty-five bob a week, it’s all I do.”

“You touch it there, Bicket. I eat my conscience every day.”

Bicket shook his head.

“No, sir, if you’ve got money, spend it. I would. Be ‘appy if you can—there yn’t too many that are.”

The white-aproned fellow began blessing them with oysters. He brought them fresh-opened, three at a time. Michael bearded them; Bicket swallowed them whole. Presently above twelve empty shells, he said:

“That’s where the Socialists myke their mistyke, sir. Nothing keeps me going but the sight of other people spendin’ money. It’s what we might all come to with a bit of luck. Reduce the world to a level of a pound a dy—and it won’t even run to that, they sy! It’s not good enough, sir. I’d rather ‘ave less with the ‘ope of more. Take awy the gamble, and life’s a frost. Here’s luck!”

“Almost thou persuadest me to be a capitalist, Bicket.”

A glow had come up in the thin and large-eyed face behind the greenish Chablis glass.

“I wish to Gawd I had my wife here, sir. I told you about her and the pneumonia. She’s all right agyne now, only thin. She’s the prize I drew. I don’t want a world where you can’t draw prizes. If it were all bloomin’ conscientious an’ accordin’ to merit, I’d never have got her. See?”

‘Me, too,’ thought Michael, mentally drawing that face again.

“We’ve all got our dreams; mine’s blue butterflies—Central Austrylia. The Socialists won’t ‘elp me to get there. Their ideas of ‘eaven don’t run beyond Europe.”

“Cripes!” said Michael. “Melted butter, Bicket?”

“Thank you, sir.”

Silence was not broken for some time, but the soles were.

“What made you think of balloons, Bicket?”

“You don’t ‘ave to advertise, they do it for you.”

“Saw too much of advertising with us, eh?”

“Well, sir, I did use to read the wrappers. Astonished me, I will sy—the number of gryte books.”

Michael ran his hands through his hair.

“Wrappers! The same young woman being kissed by the same young man with the same clean-cut jaw. But what can you do, Bicket? They WILL HAVE IT. I tried to make a break only this morning—I shall see what comes of it. “‘And I hope YOU won’t!’ he thought: ‘Fancy coming on Fleur outside a novel!’

“I did notice a tendency just before I left,” said Bicket, “to ‘ave cliffs or landskips and two sort of dolls sittin’ on the sand or in the grass lookin’ as if they didn’t know what to do with each other.”

“Yes,” murmured Michael, “we tried that. It was supposed not to be vulgar. But we soon exhausted the public’s capacity. What’ll you have now—cheese?”

“Thank you, sir; I’ve had too much already, but I won’t say ‘No.’”

“Two Stiltons,” said Michael.

“How’s Mr. Desert, sir?”

Michael reddened.

“Oh! He’s all right.”

Bicket had reddened also.

“I wish—I wish you’d let him know that it was quite a—an accident my pitchin’ on his book. I’ve always regretted it.”

“It’s usually an accident, I think,” said Michael slowly, “when we snoop other people’s goods. We never WANT to.”

Bicket looked up.

“No, sir, I don’t agree. ‘Alf mankind’s predytory—only, I’m not that sort, meself.”

In Michael loyalty tried to stammer “Nor is he.” He handed his cigarette case to Bicket.

“Thank you, sir, I’m sure.”

His eyes were swimming, and Michael thought: ‘Dash it! This is sentimental. Kiss me good-bye and go!’ He beckoned up the white-aproned fellow.

“Give us your address, Bicket. If integuments are any good to you, I might have some spare slops.”

Bicket backed the bill with his address and said, hesitating: “I suppose, sir, Mrs. Mont wouldn’t ‘ave anything to spare. My wife’s about my height.”

“I expect she would. We’ll send them along.” He saw the ‘little snipe’s’ lips quivering, and reached for his overcoat. “If anything blows in, I’ll remember you. Goodbye, Bicket, and good luck.”

Going east, because Bicket was going west, he repeated to himself the maxim: “Pity is tripe—pity is tripe!” Then getting on a ‘bus, he was borne back past St. Paul’s. Cautiously ‘taking a lunar’—as old Forsyte put it—he SAW Bicket inflating a balloon; little was visible of his face or figure behind that rosy circumference. Nearing Blake Street, he developed an invincible repugnance to work, and was carried on to Trafalgar Square. Bicket had stirred him up. The world was sometimes almost unbearably jolly. Bicket, Wilfrid, and the Ruhr!” Feeling is tosh! Pity is tripe!” He descended from his ‘bus, and passed the lions towards Pall Mall. Should he go into ‘Snooks’ and ask for Bart? No use—he would not find Fleur there. That was what he really wanted—to see Fleur in the daytime. But—where? She was everywhere to be found, and that was nowhere.

She was restless. Was that his fault? If he had been Wilfrid—would she be restless? ‘Yes,’ he thought stoutly, ‘Wilfrid’s restless, too.’ They were all restless—all the people he knew. At least all the young ones—in life and in letters. Look at their novels! Hardly one in twenty had any repose, any of that quality which made one turn back to a book as a corner of refuge. They dashed and sputtered and skidded and rushed by like motor cycles—violent, oh! and clever. How tired he was of cleverness! Sometimes he would take a manuscript home to Fleur for her opinion. He remembered her saying once: “This is exactly like life, Michael, it just rushes—it doesn’t dwell on anything long enough to mean anything anywhere. Of course the author didn’t mean it for satire, but if you publish it, I advise you to put: ‘This awful satire on modern life’ outside the cover.” And they had. At least, they had put: “This wonderful satire on modern life.” Fleur WAS like that! She could see the hurry, but, like the author of the wonderful satire, she didn’t know that she herself veered and hurried, or—did she know? Was she conscious of kicking at life, like a flame at air?

He had reached Piccadilly, and suddenly he remembered that he had not called on her aunt for ages. That was a possible draw. He bent his steps towards Green Street.

“Mrs. Dartie at home?”

“Yes, sir.”

Michael moved his nostrils. Fleur used—but he could catch no scent, except incense. Winifred burnt joss-sticks when she remembered what a distinguished atmosphere they produced.

“What name?”

“Mr. Mont. My wife’s not here, I suppose?”

“No, sir. Only Mrs. Val Dartie.”

Mrs. Val Dartie! Yes, he remembered, nice woman—but not a substitute for Fleur! Committed, however, he followed the maid.

In the drawing-room Michael found three people, one of them his father-inlaw, who had a grey and brooding aspect, and, from an Empire chair, was staring at blue Australian butterflies’ wings under glass on a round scarlet table. Winifred had jazzed the Empire foundations of her room with a superstructure more suitable to the age. She greeted Michael with fashionable warmth. It was good of him to come when he was so busy with all these young poets. “I thought ‘Copper Coin,’” she said—“what a NICE title! – such an intriguing little book. I do think Mr. Desert is clever! What is he doing now?”

Michael said: “I don’t know,” and dropped on to a settee beside Mrs. Val. Ignorant of the Forsyte family feud, he was unable to appreciate the relief he had brought in with him. Soames said something about the French, got up, and went to the window; Winifred joined him—their voices sounded confidential.

“How is Fleur?” said Michael’s neighbour.

“Thanks, awfully well.”

“Do you like your house?”

“Oh, fearfully. Won’t you come and see it?”

“I don’t know whether Fleur would—?”

“Why not?”

“Oh! Well!”

“She’s frightfully accessible.”

She seemed to be looking at him with more interest than he deserved, to be trying to make something out from his face, and he added:

“You’re a relation—by blood as well as marriage, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Then what’s the skeleton?”

“Oh! nothing. I’ll certainly come. Only—she has so many friends.”

Michael thought: ‘I like this woman!’ “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I came here this afternoon thinking I might find Fleur. I should like her to know you. With all the jazz there is about, she’d appreciate somebody restful.”

“Thank you.”

“You’ve never lived in London?”

“Not since I was six.”

“I wish she could get a rest—pity there isn’t a d-desert handy.” He had stuttered; the word was not pronounced the same—still! He glanced, disconcerted, at the butterflies. “I’ve just been talking to a little Cockney whose S. O. S. is ‘Central Austrylia.’ But what do you say—Have we got souls to save?”

“I used to think so, but now I’m not so sure—something’s struck me lately.”

“What was that?”

“Well, I notice that any one at all out of proportion, or whose nose is on one side, or whose eyes jut out, or even have a special shining look, always believes in the soul; people who are in proportion, and have no prominent physical features, don’t seem to be really interested.”

Michael’s ears moved.

“By Jove!” he said; “some thought! Fleur’s beautifully proportioned—SHE doesn’t seem to worry. I’m not—and I certainly do. The people in Covent Garden must have lots of soul. You think ‘the soul’s’ the result of loose-gearing in the organism—sort of special consciousness from not working in one piece.”

“Yes, rather like that—what’s called psychic power is, I’m almost sure.”

“I say, is your life safe? According to your theory, though, we’re in a mighty soulful era. I must think over my family. How about yours?”

“The Forsytes! Oh, they’re quite too well-proportioned.”

“I agree, they haven’t any special juts so far as I’ve seen. The French, too, are awfully close-knit. It really is an idea, only, of course, most people see it the other way. They’d say the soul produces the disproportion, makes the eyes shine, bends the nose, and all that; where the soul is small, it’s not trying to get out of the body, whence the barber’s block. I’ll think about it. Thanks for the tip. Well, do come and see us. Good-bye! I don’t think I’ll disturb them in the window. Would you mind saying I had to scoot?” Squeezing a slim, gloved hand, receiving and returning a smiling look, he slid out, thinking: ‘Dash the soul, where’s her body?’

Chapter IV. FLEUR’S BODY

Fleur’s body, indeed, was at the moment in one of those difficult positions which continually threaten the spirit of compromise. It was in fact in Wilfrid’s arms; sufficiently, at least, to make her say:

“No, Wilfrid—you promised to be good.”

It was a really remarkable tribute to her powers of skating on thin ice that the word ‘good’ should still have significance. For eleven weeks exactly this young man had danced on the edge of fulfilment, and was even now divided from her by two clenched hands pressed firmly against his chest, and the word ‘good’; and this after not having seen her for a fortnight.

When she said it, he let her go, with a sort of violence, and sat down on a piece of junk. Only the sense of damnable iteration prevented him from saying: “It can’t go on, Fleur.” She knew that! And yet it did! This was what perpetually amazed him. How a poor brute could hang on week after week saying to her and to himself: “Now or never!” when it wasn’t either. Subconsciousness, that, until the word ‘now’ had been reached, Fleur would not know her own mind, alone had kept him dancing. His own feelings were so intense that he almost hated her for indecision. And he was unjust. It was not exactly indecision. Fleur wanted the added richness and excitement which Wilfrid’s affection gave to life, but without danger and without loss. How natural! His frightful passionateness was making all the trouble. Neither by her wish, nor through her fault, was he passionate! And yet—it was both nice and proper to inspire passion; and, of course, she had the lurking sense that she was not ‘in the mode’ to cavil at a lover, especially since life owed her one.

Released, she smoothed herself and said: “Talk of something sensible; what have you been writing?”

“This.”

Fleur read. Flushing and biting her lips, she said:

“It’s frightfully bitter.”

“It’s frightfully true. Does HE ever ask you now whether you see me?”

“Never.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“What would you answer if he did?”

Fleur shrugged her shoulders.

Desert said quietly: “Yes, that’s your attitude. It can’t last, Fleur.” He was standing by the window. She put the sheets down on his desk and moved towards him. Poor Wilfrid! Now that he was quiet she was sorry.

He said suddenly: “Stop! Don’t move! HE’S down there in the street.”

Recoiling, she gasped: “Michael! Oh! But how—how could he have known?”

Desert said grimly: “Do you only know him as little as that? Do you suppose he’d be there if he knew you were here?”

Fleur winced.

“Why IS he there, then?”

“He probably wants to see me. He looks as if he couldn’t make up his mind. Don’t get the wind up, he won’t be let in.”

Fleur sat down; she felt weak in the legs. The ice seemed suddenly of an appalling thinness—the water appallingly cold.

“Has he seen you?” she said.

“No.”

The thought flashed through him: ‘If I were a blackguard, I could force her hand, by moving one step and crooking my finger.’ Pity one wasn’t a blackguard—at all events, not to that point—things would be so much simpler!

“Where is he now?” asked Fleur.

“Going away.”

In profound relief, she sighed out:

“But it’s queer, isn’t it, Wilfrid?”

“You don’t suppose he’s easy in his mind, do you?”

Fleur bit her lips. He was jeering, because she didn’t or couldn’t really love either of them. It was unjust. She COULD have loved—she HAD loved! Wilfrid and Michael—they might go to the deuce!

“I wish I had never come here,” she said suddenly: “and I’ll never come again!”

He went to the door, and held it open.

“You are right.”

Fleur stood quite still, her chin on the collar of her fur, her clear-glancing eyes fixed on his face, her lips set and mutinous.

“You think I’m a heartless beast,” she said slowly. “So I am—now. Good-bye!”

He neither took her hand nor spoke, he only bowed. His eyes were very tragic. Trembling with mortification, Fleur went out. She heard the door closed, while she was going down the stairs. At the bottom she stood uncertain. Suppose Michael had come back! Almost opposite was that gallery where she had first met him and—Jon. Slip across in there! If he were still hovering round the entrance of the little street, she could tell him with a good conscience where she had been. She peeped. Not in sight! Swiftly she slid across into the doorway opposite. They would be closing in a minute—just on four o’clock! She put down a shilling and slipped in. She must see—in case! She stood revolving—one-man show, the man—Claud Brains! She put down another shilling for a catalogue, and read as she went out. “No. 7. Woman getting the wind up.” It told her everything; and with a lighter heart she skimmed along, and took a taxi. Get home before Michael! She felt relieved, almost exhilarated. So much for skating on thin ice! It wasn’t good enough. Wilfrid must go. Poor Wilfrid! Well, he shouldn’t have sneered—what did he know of her? Nobody knew anything of her! She was alone in the world. She slipped her latch-key into the hall door. No Michael. She sat down in the drawing-room before the fire, and took up Walter Nazing’s last. She read a page three times. It meant no more with every reading—it meant less; he was the kind of author who must be read at a gallop, and given away lest a first impression of wind in the hair be lost in a sensation of wind lower down; but Wilfrid’s eyes came between her and the words. Pity! Nobody pitied her; why, then, should she pity them? Besides, pity was ‘pop,’ as Amabel would say. The situation demanded cast-iron sense. But Wilfrid’s eyes! Well—she wouldn’t be seeing them again! Beautiful eyes when they smiled or when—so much more often—they looked at her with longing, as now between her and the sentence: “Solemnly and with a delicious egoism he more than awfully desired her who snug and rosy in the pink shell of her involuted and so petulant social periphrasis—” Poor Wilfrid! Pity was ‘pop,’ but there was pride! Did she choose that he should go away thinking that she had ‘played him up’ just out of vanity, as Walter Nazing said American women did? Did she? Would it not be more in the mode, really dramatic—if one ‘went over the deep end,’ as they said, just once? Would that not be something they could both look back on—he in the East he was always talking of, she in this West? The proposition had a momentary popularity in that organism called Fleur too finely proportioned for a soul according to the theory which Michael was thinking over. Like all popularities, it did not last. First: Would she like it? She did not think she would; one man, without love, was quite enough. Then there was the danger of passing into Wilfrid’s power. He was a gentleman, but he was passionate; the cup once sipped, would he consent to put it down? But more than all was a physical doubt of the last two or three weeks which awaited verification, and which made her feel solemn. She stood up and passed her hands all over her, with a definite recoil from the thought of Wilfrid’s hands doing the same. No! To have his friendship, his admiration, but not at that price. She viewed him, suddenly, as a bomb set on her copper floor; and in fancy ran and seized and flung him out into the Square—poor Wilfrid! Pity was ‘pop!’ But one might be sorry for ONESELF, losing him; losing too that ideal of modern womanhood expounded to her one evening by Marjorie Ferrar, pet of the ‘panjoys,’ whose red-gold hair excited so much admiration: “My ambition—old thing—is to be the perfect wife of one man, the perfect mistress of another, and the perfect mother of a third, all at once. It’s perfectly possible—they do it in France.”

But was it really so perfectly possible—even if pity WAS posh? How be perfect to Michael, when the slightest slip might reveal to him that she was being perfect to Wilfrid; how be perfect to Wilfrid, when every time she was perfect to Michael would be a dagger in Wilfrid’s heart? And if—if her physical doubt should mature into certainty, how be perfect mother to the certainty, when she was either torturing two men, or lying to them like a trooperess? Not so perfectly possible as all that! ‘If only I were all French!’ thought Fleur…

The clicking door startled her—the reason that she was not all French was coming in. He looked very grey, as if he had been thinking too much. He kissed her, and sat down moodily before the fire.

“Have you come for the night, Dad?”

“If I may,” murmured Soames. “Business.”

“Anything unpleasant, ducky?”

Soames looked up as if startled.

“Unpleasant? Why should it be unpleasant?”

“I only thought from your face.”

Soames grunted. “This Ruhr!” he said. “I’ve brought you a picture. Chinese!”

“Oh, Dad! How jolly!”

“It isn’t,” said Soames; “it’s a monkey eating fruit.”

“But that’s perfect! Where is it—in the hall?”

Soames nodded.

Stripping the coverings off the picture, Fleur brought it in, and setting it up on the jade-green settee, stood away and looked at it. The large white monkey with its brown haunting eyes, as if she had suddenly wrested its interest from the orange-like fruit in its crisped paw, the grey background, the empty rinds all round—bright splashes in a general ghostliness of colour, impressed her at once.

“But, Dad, it’s a masterpiece—I’m sure it’s of a frightfully good period.”

“I don’t know,” said Soames. “I must look up the Chinese.”

“But you oughtn’t to give it to me, it must be worth any amount. You ought to have it in your collection.”

“They didn’t know its value,” said Soames, and a faint smile illumined his features. “I gave three hundred for it. It’ll be safer here.”

“Of course it’ll be safe. Only why safer?”

Soames turned towards the picture.

“I can’t tell. Anything may come of this.”

“Of what, dear?”

“Is ‘old Mont’ coming in to-night?”

“No, he’s at Lippinghall still.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter—he’s no good.”

Fleur took his hand and gave it a squeeze.

“Tell me!”

Soames’ tickled heart quivered. Fancy her wanting to know what was troubling him! But his sense of the becoming, and his fear of giving away his own alarm, forbade response.

“Nothing you’d understand,” he said. “Where are you going to hang it?”

“There, I think; but we must wait for Michael.”

Soames grumbled out:

“I saw him just now at your aunt’s. Is that the way he attends to business?”

‘Perhaps,’ thought Fleur, ‘he was only on his way back to the office. Cork Street IS more or less between! If he passed the end of it, he would think of Wilfrid, he might have been wanting to see him about books.’

“Oh, here’s Ting! Well, darling!”

The Chinese dog, let in, as it were, by Providence, seeing Soames, sat down suddenly with snub upturned and eyes brilliant. “The expression of your face,” he seemed to say, “pleases me. We belong to the past and could sing hymns together, old man.”

“Funny little chap,” said Soames; “he always knows me.”

Fleur lifted him. “Come and see the new monkey, ducky.”

“Don’t let him lick it.”

Held rather firmly by his jade-green collar and confronted by an inexplicable piece of silk smelling of the past, Ting-a-ling raised his head higher and higher to correspond with the action of his nostrils, and his little tongue appeared, tentatively savouring the emanation of his country.

“It’s a nice monkey, isn’t it, darling?”

“No,” said Ting-a-ling, rather clearly. “Put me down!”

Restored to the floor, he sought a patch where the copper came through between two rugs, and licked it quietly.

“Mr. Aubrey Greene, ma’am!”

“H’m!” said Soames.

The painter came gliding and glowing in; his bright hair slipping back, his green eyes sliding off.

“Ah!” he said, pointing to the floor. “That’s what I’ve come about.”

Fleur followed his finger in amazement.

“Ting!” she said severely, “stop it! He will lick the copper, Aubrey.”

“But how perfectly Chinese! They do every thing we don’t.”

“Dad—Aubrey Greene. My father’s just brought me this picture, Aubrey—isn’t it a gem?”

The painter stood quite still, his eyes ceased sliding off, his hair ceased slipping back.

“Phew!” he said.

Soames rose. He had waited for the flippant; but he recognised in the tone something reverential, if not aghast.

“By George,” said Aubrey Greene, “those eyes! Where did you pick it up, sir?”

“It belonged to a cousin of mine—a racing man. It was his only picture.”

“Good for him! He must have had taste.”

Soames stared. The idea that George should have had taste almost appalled him.

“No,” he said, with a flash of inspiration: “What he liked about it was that it makes you feel uncomfortable.”

“Same thing! I don’t know where I’ve seen a more pungent satire on human life.”

“I don’t follow,” said Soames dryly.

“Why, it’s a perfect allegory, sir! Eat the fruits of life, scatter the rinds, and get copped doing it. When they’re still, a monkey’s eyes are the human tragedy incarnate. Look at them! He thinks there’s something beyond, and he’s sad or angry because he can’t get at it. That picture ought to be in the British Museum, sir, with the label: ‘Civilisation, caught out.’”

“Well, it won’t be,” said Fleur. “It’ll be here, labelled ‘The White Monkey.’”

“Same thing.”

“Cynicism,” said Soames abruptly, “gets you nowhere. If you’d said ‘MODERNITY caught out’—”

“I do, sir; but why be narrow? You don’t seriously suppose this age is worse than any other?”

“Don’t I?” said Soames. “In my belief the world reached its highest point in the ‘eighties, and will never reach it again.”

The painter stared.

“That’s frightfully interesting. I wasn’t born, and I suppose you were about my age then, sir. You believed in God and drove in DILIGENCES.”

DILIGENCES! The word awakened in Soames a memory which somehow seemed appropriate.

“Yes,” he said, “and I can tell you a story of those days that you can’t match in these. When I was a youngster in Switzerland with my people, two of my sisters had some black cherries. When they’d eaten about half a dozen they discovered that they all had little maggots in them. An English climber there saw how upset they were, and ate the whole of the rest of the cherries—about two pounds—maggots, stones and all, just to show them. That was the sort of men they were then.”

“Oh! Father!”

“Gee! He must have been gone on them.”

“No,” said Soames, “not particularly. His name was Powley; he wore side whiskers.”

“Talking of God and diligences; I saw a hansom yesterday.”

‘More to the point if you’d seen God,’ thought Soames, but he did not say so; indeed, the thought surprised him, it was not the sort of thing he had ever seen himself.

“You mayn’t know it, sir, but there’s more belief now than there was before the war—they’ve discovered that we’re not all body.”

“Oh!” said Fleur. “That reminds me, Aubrey. Do you know any mediums? Could I get one to come here? On our floor, with Michael outside the door, one would know there couldn’t be any hanky. Do the dark seance people ever go out? – they’re much more thrilling they say.”

“Spiritualism!” said Soames. “H’mph!” He could not in half an hour have expressed himself more clearly.

Aubrey Greene’s eyes slid off to Ting-a-ling. “I’ll see what I can do, if you’ll lend me your Peke for an hour or so tomorrow afternoon. I’d bring him back on a lead, and give him every luxury.”

“What do you want him for?”

“Michael sent me a most topping little model today. But, you see, she can’t smile.”

“Michael?”

“Yes. Something quite new; and I’ve got a scheme. Her smile’s like sunlight going off an Italian valley; but when you tell her to, she can’t. I thought your Peke could make her, perhaps.”

“May I come and see?” said Fleur.

“Yes, bring him tomorrow; but, if I can persuade her, it’ll be in the ‘altogether.’”

“Oh! Will you get me a seance, if I lend you Ting?”

“I will.”

“H’mph!” said Soames again. Seances, Italian sunlight, the ‘altogether!’ It was time he got back to Elderson, and what was to be done now, and left this fiddling while Rome burned.

“Good-bye, Mr. Greene,” he said; “I’ve got no time.”

“Quite, sir,” said Aubrey Greene.

“Quite!” mimicked Soames to himself, going out.

Aubrey Greene took his departure a few minutes later, crossing a lady in the hall who was delivering her name to the manservant.

Alone with her body, Fleur again passed her hands all over it. The ‘altogether’—was a reminder of the dangers of dramatic conduct.

Chapter V. FLEUR’S SOUL

“Mrs. Val Dartie, ma’am.”

A name which could not be distorted even by Coaker affected her like a finger applied suddenly to the head of the sciatic nerve. Holly! Not seen since the day when she did not marry Jon. Holly! A flood of remembrance—Wansdon, the Downs, the gravel pit, the apple orchard, the river, the copse at Robin Hill! No! It was not a pleasant sensation—to see Holly, and she said: “How awfully nice of you to come!”

“I met your husband this afternoon at Green Street; he asked me. What a lovely room!”

“Ting! Come and be introduced! This is Ting-a-ling; isn’t he perfect? He’s a little upset because of the new monkey. How’s Val, and dear Wansdon? It was too wonderfully peaceful.”

“It’s a nice backwater. I don’t get tired of it.”

“And—” said Fleur, with a little laugh, “Jon?”

“He’s growing peaches in North Carolina. British Columbia didn’t do.”

“Oh! Is he married?”

“No.”

“I suppose he’ll marry an American.”

“He isn’t twenty-two, you know.”

“Good Lord!” said Fleur: “Am I only twenty-one? I feel forty-eight.”

“That’s living in the middle of things and seeing so many people—”

“And getting to know none.”

“But don’t you?”

“No, it isn’t done. I mean we all call each other by our Christian names; but apres—”

“I like your husband very much.”

“Oh! yes, Michael’s a dear. How’s June?”

“I saw her yesterday—she’s got a new painter, of course—Claud Brains. I believe he’s what they call a Vertiginist.”

Fleur bit her lip.

“Yes, they’re quite common. I suppose June thinks he’s the only one.”

“Well, she think’s he’s a genius.”

“She’s wonderful.”

“Yes,” said Holly, “the most loyal creature in the world while it lasts. It’s like poultry farming—once they’re hatched. You never saw Boris Strumolowski?”

“No.”

“Well, don’t.”

“I know his bust of Michael’s uncle. It’s rather sane.”

“Yes. June thought it a pot-boiler, and he never forgave her. Of course it was. As soon as her swan makes money, she looks round for another. She’s a darling.”

“Yes,” murmured Fleur; “I liked June.”

Another flood of remembrance—from a tea-shop, from the river, from June’s little dining-room, from where in Green Street she had changed her wedding dress under the upward gaze of June’s blue eyes. She seized the monkey and held it up.

“Isn’t it a picture of ‘life’?” Would she have said that if Aubrey Greene hadn’t? Still it seemed very true at the moment.

“Poor monkey!” said Holly. “I’m always frightfully sorry for monkeys. But it’s marvellous, I think.”

“Yes. I’m going to hang it here. If I can get one more, I shall have done in this room; only people have so got on to Chinese things. This was luck—somebody died—George Forsyte, you know, the racing one.”

“Oh!” said Holly softly. She saw again her old kinsman’s japing eyes in the church when Fleur was being married, heard his throaty whisper, “Will she stay the course?” And was she staying it, this pretty filly? “Wish she could get a rest. If only there were a desert handy!” Well, one couldn’t ask a question so personal, and Holly took refuge in a general remark.

“What do all you smart young people feel about life, nowadays, Fleur! when one’s not of it and has lived twenty years in South Africa, one still feels out of it.”

“Life! Oh! well, we know it’s supposed to be a riddle, but we’ve given it up. We just want to have a good time because we don’t believe anything can last. But I don’t think we know how to have it. We just fly on, and hope for it. Of course, there’s art, but most of us aren’t artists; besides, expressionism—Michael says it’s got no inside. We gas about it, but I suppose it hasn’t. I see a frightful lot of writers and painters, you know; they’re supposed to be amusing.”

Holly listened, amazed. Who would have thought that this girl SAW? She might be seeing wrong, but anyway she saw!

“Surely,” she said, “you enjoy yourselves?”

“Well, I like getting hold of nice things, and interesting people; I like seeing everything that’s new and worth while, or seems so at the moment. But that’s just how it is—nothing lasts. You see, I’m not of the ‘Pan-joys,’ nor of the ‘new-faithfuls.’”

“The new-faithfuls?”

“Oh! don’t you know—it’s a sort of faith-healing done on oneself, not exactly the old ‘God-good, good-God!’ sort; but a kind of mixture of will-power, psycho-analysis, and belief that everything will be all right on the night if you say it will. You must have come across them. They’re frightfully in earnest.”

“I know,” said Holly; “their eyes shine.”

“I daresay. I don’t believe in them—I don’t believe in anyone; or anything—much. How can one?”

“How about simple people, and hard work?”

Fleur sighed. “I daresay. I will say for Michael—HE’S not spoiled. Let’s have tea? Tea, Ting?” and, turning up the lights, she rang the bell.

When her unexpected visitor had gone, she sat very still before the fire. To-day, when she had been so very nearly Wilfrid’s! So Jon was not married! Not that it made any odds! Things did not come round as they were expected to in books. And anyway sentiment was swosh! Cut it out! She tossed back her hair; and, getting hammer and nail, proceeded to hang the white monkey. Between the two tea-chests with their coloured pearl-shell figures, he would look his best. Since she couldn’t have Jon, what did it matter—Wilfrid or Michael, or both, or neither? Eat the orange in her hand, and throw away the rind! And suddenly she became aware that Michael was in the room. He had come in very quietly and was standing before the fire behind her. She gave him a quick look and said:

“I’ve had Aubrey Greene here about a model you sent him, and Holly—Mrs. Val Dartie—she said she’d seen you. Oh! and father’s brought us this. Isn’t it perfect?”

Michael did not speak.

“Anything the matter, Michael?”

“No, nothing.” He went up to the monkey. From behind him now Fleur searched his profile. Instinct told her of a change. Had he, after all, seen her going to Wilfrid’s—coming away?

“Some monkey!” he said. “By the way, have you any spare clothes you could give the wife of a poor snipe—nothing too swell?”

She answered mechanically: “Yes, of course!” while her brain worked furiously.

“Would you put them out, then? I’m going to make up a bunch for him myself—they could go together.”

Yes! He was quite unlike himself, as if the spring in him had run down. A sort of malaise overcame her. Michael not cheerful! It was like the fire going out on a cold day. And, perhaps for the first time, she was conscious that his cheerfulness was of real importance to her. She watched him pick up Ting-a-ling and sit down. And going up behind him, she bent over till her hair was against his cheek. Instead of rubbing his cheek on hers, he sat quite still, and her heart misgave her.

“What is it?” she said, coaxing.

“Nothing!”

She took hold of his ears.

“But there is. I suppose you know somehow that I went to see Wilfrid.”

He said stonily: “Why not?”

She let go, and stood up straight.

“It was only to tell him that I couldn’t see him again.”

That half-truth seemed to her the whole.

He suddenly looked up, a quiver went over his face; he look her hand.

“It’s all right, Fleur. You must do what you like, you know. That’s only fair. I had too much lunch.”

Fleur withdrew to the middle of the room.

“You’re rather an angel,” she said slowly, and went out.

Upstairs she looked out garments, confused in her soul.

Chapter VI. MICHAEL GETS ‘WHAT-FOR’

After his Green Street quest Michael had wavered back down Piccadilly, and, obeying one of those impulses which make people hang around the centres of disturbance, on to Cork Street. He stood for a minute at the mouth of Wilfrid’s backwater.

‘No,’ he thought, at last, ‘ten to one he isn’t in; and if he is, twenty to one that I get any change except bad change!’

He was moving slowly on to Bond Street, when a little light lady, coming from the backwater, and reading as she went, ran into him from behind.

“Why don’t you look where you’re going! Oh! You? Aren’t you the young man who married Fleur Forsyte? I’m her cousin, June. I thought I saw her just now.” She waved a hand which held a catalogue with a gesture like the flirt of a bird’s wing. “Opposite my gallery. She went into a house, or I should have spoken to her—I’d like to have seen her again.”

Into a house! Michael dived for his cigarette-case. Hard-grasping it, he looked up. The little lady’s blue eyes were sweeping from side to side of his face with a searching candour.

“Are you happy together?” she said.

A cold sweat broke out on his forehead. A sense of general derangement afflicted him—hers, and his own.

“I beg your pardon?” he gasped.

“I hope you are. She ought to have married my little brother—but I hope you are. She’s a pretty child.”

In the midst of a dull sense of stunning blows, it staggered him that she seemed quite unconscious of inflicting them. He heard his teeth gritting, and said dully: “Your little brother, who was he?”

“What! Jon—didn’t you know Jon? He was too young, of course, and so was she. But they were head over—the family feud stopped that. Well! it’s all past. I was at your wedding. I hope you’re happy. Have you seen the Claud Brains show at my gallery? He’s a genius. I was going to have a bun in here; will you join me? You ought to know his work.”

She had paused at the door of a confectioner’s. Michael put his hand on his chest.

“Thank you,” he said, “I have just had a bun—two, in fact. Excuse me!”

The little lady grasped his other hand.

“Well, good-bye, young man! Glad to have met you. You’re not a beauty, but I like your face. Remember me to that child. You should go and see Claud Brains. He’s a real genius.”

Stock-still before the door, he watched her turn and enter, with a scattered motion, as of flying, and a disturbance among those seated in the pastry-cook’s. Then he moved on, the cigarette unlighted in his mouth, dazed, as a boxer from a blow which knocks him sideways, and another which knocks him straight again.

Fleur visiting Wilfrid—at this moment in his rooms up there—in his arms, perhaps! He groaned. A well-fed young man in a new hat skipped at the sound. Never! He could never stick that! He would have to clear out! He had believed Fleur honest! A double life! The night before last she had smiled on him. Oh! God! He dashed across into Green Park. Why hadn’t he stood still and let something go over him? And that lunatic’s little brother—John—family feud? Himself—a pis aller, then—taken without love at all—a makeshift! He remembered now her saying one night at Mapledurham: “Come again when I know I can’t get my wish.” So that was the wish she couldn’t get! A makeshift! ‘Jolly,’ he thought: ‘Oh! jolly!’ No wonder, then! What could she care? One man or another! Poor little devil! She had never let him know—never breathed a word! Was that decent of her—or was it treachery? ‘No,’ he thought, ‘if she HAD told me, it wouldn’t have made any difference—I’d have taken her at any price. It was decent of her not to tell me.’ But how was it he hadn’t heard from some one? Family feud? The Forsytes! Except ‘Old Forsyte,’ he never saw them; and ‘Old Forsyte’ was closer than a fish. Well! he had got what-for! And again he groaned, in the twilight spaces of the Park. Buckingham Palace loomed up unlighted, huge and dreary. Conscious of his cigarette at last, he stopped to strike a match, and drew the smoke deep into his lungs with the first faint sense of comfort.

“You couldn’t spare us a cigarette, Mister?”

A shadowy figure with a decent sad face stood beside the statue of Australia, so depressingly abundant!

“Of course!” said Michael; “take the lot.” He emptied the case into the man’s hand. “Take the case too—‘present from Westminster’—you’ll get thirty bob for it. Good luck!” He hurried on. A faint: “Hi, Mister!” pursued him unavailingly. Pity was pulp! Sentiment was bilge! Was he going home to wait till Fleur had—finished and come back? Not he! He turned towards Chelsea, batting along as hard as he could stride. Lighted shops, gloomy great Eaton Square, Chester Square, Sloane Square, the King’s Road—along, along! Worse than the trenches—far worse—this whipped and scorpioned sexual jealousy! Yes, and he would have felt even worse, but for that second blow. It made it less painful to know that Fleur had been in love with that cousin, and Wilfrid, too, perhaps, nothing to her. Poor little wretch! ‘Well, what’s the game now?’ he thought. The game of life—in bad weather, in stress? What was it? In the war—what had a fellow done? Somehow managed to feel himself not so dashed important; reached a condition of acquiescence, fatalism, “Who dies if England live” sort of sob-stuff state. The game of life? Was it different? “Bloody but unbowed” might be tripe; still—get up when you were knocked down! The whole was big, oneself was little! Passion, jealousy, ought they properly to destroy one’s sportsmanship, as Nazing and Sibley and Linda Frewe would have it? Was the word ‘gentleman’ a dud? Was it? Did one keep one’s form, or get down to squealing and kicking in the stomach?

‘I don’t know,’ he thought, ‘I don’t know what I shall do when I see her—I simply don’t know.’ Steel-blue of the fallen evening, bare plane-trees, wide river, frosty air! He turned towards home. He opened his front door, trembling, and trembling, went into the drawing-room…

When Fleur had gone upstairs and left him with Ting-a-ling he didn’t know whether he believed her or not. If she had kept that other thing from him all this time, she could keep anything! Had she understood his words: “You must do as you like, that’s only fair?” He had said them almost mechanically, but they were reasonable. If she had never loved him, even a little, he had never had any right to expect anything; he had been all the time in the position of one to whom she was giving alms. Nothing compelled a person to go on giving alms. And nothing compelled one to go on taking them—except—the ache of want, the ache, the ache!

“You little Djinn! You lucky little toad! Give me some of your complacency—you Chinese atom!” Ting-a-ling turned up his boot-buttons. “When you have been civilised as long as I,” they seemed to say: “In the meantime, scratch my chest.”

And scrattling in that yellow fur Michael thought: ‘Pull yourself together! Man at the South Pole with the first blizzard doesn’t sing: “Want to go home! Want to go home!”—he sticks it. Come, get going!’ He placed Ting-a-ling on the floor, and made for his study. Here were manuscripts, of which the readers to Danby and Winter had already said: “No money in this, but a genuine piece of work meriting consideration.” It was Michael’s business to give the consideration; Danby’s to turn the affair down with the words: “Write him (or her) a civil letter, say we were greatly interested, regret we do not see our way—hope to have the privilege of considering next effort, and so forth. What!”

He turned up his reading-lamp and pulled out a manuscript he had already begun.

“No retreat, no retreat; they must conquer or die who have no retreat;

No retreat, no retreat; they must conquer or die who have no retreat!”

The black footmen’s refrain from ‘Polly’ was all that happened in his mind. Dash it! He must read the thing! Somehow he finished the chapter. He remembered now. The manuscript was all about a man who, when he was a boy, had been so greatly impressed by the sight of a maidservant changing her clothes in a room over the way, that his married life was a continual struggle not to be unfaithful with his wife’s maids. They had just discovered his complex, and he was going to have it out. The rest of the manuscript no doubt would show how that was done. It went most conscientiously into all those precise bodily details which it was now so timorous and Victorian to leave out. Genuine piece of work, and waste of time to go on with it! Old Danby—Freud bored him stiff; and for once Michael did not mind old Danby being in the right. He put the thing back into the drawer. Seven o’clock! Tell Fleur what he had been told about that cousin? Why? Nothing could mend THAT! If only she were speaking the truth about Wilfrid! He went to the window—stars above, and stripes below, stripes of courtyard and back garden. “No retreat, no retreat; they must conquer or die who have no retreat!”

A voice said:

“When will your father be up?”

Old Forsyte! Lord! Lord!

“To-morrow, I believe, sir. Come in! You don’t know my den, I think.”

“No,” said Soames. “Snug! Caricatures. You go in for them—poor stuff!”

“But not modern, sir—a revived art.”

“Queering your neighbours—I never cared for them. They only flourish when the world’s in a mess and people have given up looking straight before them.”

“By Jove!” said Michael; “that’s good. Won’t you sit down, sir?”

Soames sat down, crossing his knees in his accustomed manner. Slim, grey, close—a sealed book, neatly bound! What was HIS complex? Whatever it was, he had never had it out. One could not even imagine the operation.

“I shan’t take away my Goya,” he said very unexpectedly; “consider it Fleur’s. In fact, if I only knew you were interested in the future, I should make more provision. In my opinion death duties will be prohibitive in a few years’ time.”

Michael frowned. “I’d like you to know sir, once for all, that what you do for Fleur, you do for Fleur. I can be Epicurus whenever I like—bread, and on feast days a little bit of cheese.”

Soames looked up with shrewdness in his glance. “I know that,” he said, “I always knew it.”

Michael bowed.

“With this land depression your father’s hard hit, I should think.”

“Well, he talks of being on the look out for soap or cars; but I shouldn’t be surprised if he mortgages again and lingers on.”

“A title without a place,” said Soames, “is not natural. He’d better wait for me to go, if I leave anything, that is. But listen to me: I’ve been thinking. Aren’t you happy together, you two, that you don’t have children?”

Michael hesitated.

“I don’t think,” he said slowly, “that we have ever had a scrap, or anything like it. I have been—I am—terribly fond of her, but you have known better than I that I only picked up the pieces.”

“Who told you that?”

“To-day—Miss June Forsyte.”

“THAT woman!” said Soames. “She can’t keep her foot out of anything. A boy and girl affair—over months before you married.”

“But deep, sir,” said Michael gently.

“Deep—who knows at that age? Deep?” Soames paused: “You’re a good fellow—I always knew. Be patient—take a long view.”

“Yes, sir,” said Michael, very still in his chair, “If I can.”

“She’s everything to me,” muttered Soames abruptly.

“And to me—which doesn’t make it easier.”

The line between Soames’ brows deepened.

“Perhaps not. But hold on! As gently as you like, but hold on! She’s young. She’ll flutter about; there’s nothing in it.”

‘Does he know about the other thing?’ thought Michael.

“I have my own worries,” went on Soames, “but they’re nothing to what I should feel if anything went wrong with her.”

Michael felt a twinge of sympathy, unusual towards that self-contained grey figure.

“I shall try my best,” he said quietly; “but I’m not naturally Solomon at six stone seven.”

“I’m not so sure,” said Soames, “I’m not so sure. Anyway, a child—well, a child would be—a—sort of insur—” He baulked, the word was not precisely—!

Michael froze.

“As to that, I can’t say anything.”

Soames got up.

“No,” he said wistfully, “I suppose not. It’s time to dress.”

To dress—to dine, and if to dine, to sleep—to sleep, to dream! And then what dreams might come!

On the way to his dressing-room Michael encountered Coaker; the man’s face was long.

“What’s up, Coaker?”

“The little dog, sir, has been sick in the drawing-room.”

“The deuce he has!”

“Yes, sir; it appears that some one left him there alone. He makes himself felt, sir. I always say: He’s an important little dog…”

During dinner, as if visited by remorse for having given them advice and two pictures worth some thousands of pounds, Soames pitched a tale like those of James in his palmy days. He spoke of the French—the fall of the mark—the rise in Consols—the obstinacy of Dumetrius, the picture-dealer, over a Constable skyscape which Soames wanted and Dumetrius did not, but to which the fellow held on just for the sake of a price which Soames did not mean to pay. He spoke of the trouble which he foresaw with the United States over their precious Prohibition. They were a headstrong lot. They took up a thing and ran their heads against a stone wall. He himself had never drunk anything to speak of, but he liked to feel that he could. The Americans liked to feel that he couldn’t, that was tyranny. They were overbearing. He shouldn’t be surprised if everybody took to drinking over there. As to the League of Nations, a man that morning had palavered it up. That cock wouldn’t fight—spend money, and arrange things which would have arranged themselves, but as for anything important, such as abolishing Bolshevism, or poison gas, they never would, and to pretend it was all-me-eye-and-Betty–Martin. It was almost a record for one habitually taciturn, and deeply useful to two young people only anxious that he should continue to talk, so that they might think of other things. The conduct of Ting-a-ling was the sole other subject of consideration. Fleur thought it due to the copper floor. Soames that he must have picked up something in the Square—dogs were always picking things up. Michael suggested that it was just Chinese—a protest against there being nobody to watch his self-sufficiency. In China there were four hundred million people to watch each other being self-sufficient. What would one expect of a Chinaman suddenly placed in the Gobi Desert? He would certainly be sick.

“No retreat, no retreat; they must conquer or die who have no retreat!”

When Fleur left them, both felt that they could not so soon again bear each other’s company, and Soames said: “I’ve got some figures to attend to—I’ll go to my room.”

Michael stood up. “Wouldn’t you like my den, sir?”

“No,” said Soames, “I must concentrate. Say goodnight to Fleur for me.”

Michael remained smoking above the porcelain effigies of Spanish fruits. That white monkey couldn’t eat those and throw away the rinds! Would the fruits of his life be porcelain in future? Live in the same house with Fleur, estranged? Live with Fleur as now, feeling a stranger, even an unwelcome stranger? Clear out, and join the Air Force, or the ‘Save the Children’ corps? Which of the three courses was least to be deplored? The ash of his cigar grew long, dropped incontinent, and grew again; the porcelain fruits mocked him with their sheen and glow; Coaker put his head in and took it away again. (The Governor had got the hump—good sort, the Governor!) Decision waited for him, somewhere, somewhen—Fleur’s, not his own. His mind was too miserable and disconcerted to be known; but she would know hers. She had the information which alone made decision possible about Wilfrid, that cousin, her own actions and feelings. Yes, decision would come, and would it matter in a world where pity was punk and only a Chinese philosophy of any use?

But not be sick in the drawing-room, try and keep one’s end up, even if there were no one to see one being important!…

He had been asleep and it was dark, or all but, in his bed-dressing-room. Something white by his bed. A fragrant faint warmth close to him; a voice saying low: “It’s only me. Let me come in your bed, Michael. “Like a child—like a child! Michael reached out his arms. The whiteness and the warmth came into them. Curls smothered his mouth, the voice said in his ear: “I wouldn’t have come, would I, if there’d—if there’d been anything?” Michael’s heart, wild, confused, beat against hers.

Chapter VII. THE ALTOGETHER

Tony Bicket, replete, was in vein that fine afternoon; his balloons left him freely, and he started for home in the mood of a conqueror.

Victorine, too, had colour in her cheeks. She requited the story of his afternoon with the story of hers. A false tale for a true—no word of Danby and Winter, the gentleman with the sliding smile, of the Grand Marnier, or ‘the altogether.’ She had no compunction. It was her secret, her surprise; if, by sitting in or out of ‘the altogether,’ not yet decided, she could make their passage money—well, she should tell him she had won it on a horse. That night she asked:

“Am I so very thin, Tony?” more than once. “I do so want to get fat.”

Bicket, still troubled that she had not shared that lunch, patted her tenderly, and said he would soon have her as fat as butter—he did not explain how.

They dreamed together of blue butterflies, and awoke to chilly gaslight and a breakfast of cocoa and bread-and-butter. Fog! Bicket was swallowed up before the eyes of Victorine ten yards from the door. She returned to the bedroom with anger in her heart. Who would buy balloons in a fog? She would do anything rather than let Tony go on standing out there all the choking days! Undressing again, she washed herself intensively, in case—! She had not long finished when her landlady announced the presence of a messenger boy. He bore an enormous parcel entitled “Mr. Bicket.”

There was a note inside. She read:

“DEAR BICKET, – Here are the togs. Hope they’ll be useful. – Yours, MICHAEL MONT.”

In a voice that trembled she said to the boy:

“Thank you, it’s O. K. Here’s twopence.”

When his rich whistle was heard writhing into the fog, she flung herself down before the ‘togs’ in ecstasy. The sexes were divided by tissue paper. A blue suit, a velour hat, some brown shoes, three pairs of socks with two holes in them, four shirts only a little frayed at the cuffs, two black-and-white ties, six collars, not too new, some handkerchiefs, two vests beautifully thick, two pairs of pants, and a brown overcoat with a belt and just two or three nice little stains. She held the blue suit up against her arms and legs, the trousers and sleeves would only need taking-in about two inches. She piled them in a pyramid, and turned with awe to the spoil beneath the tissue paper. A brown knitted frock with little clear yellow buttons—unsoiled, uncreased. How could anybody spare a thing like that! A brown velvet toque with a little tuft of goldeny-brown feathers. She put it on. A pair of pink stays ever so little faded, with only three inches of bone above the waist, and five inches of bone below, pink silk ribbons, and suspenders—a perfect dream. She could not resist putting them on also. Two pairs of brown stockings; brown shoes; two combinations, a knitted camisole. A white silk jumper with a hole in one sleeve, a skirt of lilac linen that had gone a little in the wash; a pair of pallid pink silk pants; and underneath them all an almost black-brown coat, long and warm and cosy, with great jet buttons, and in the pocket six small handkerchiefs. She took a deep breath of sweetness—geranium!

Her mind leaped forward. Clothed, trousseaued, fitted out—blue butterflies—the sun! Only the money for the tickets wanting. And suddenly she saw herself with nothing on standing before the gentleman with sliding eyes. Who cared! The money!

For the rest of the morning she worked feverishly, shortening Tony, mending the holes in his socks, turning the fray of his cuffs. She ate a biscuit, drank another cup of cocoa—it was fattening, and went for the hole in the white silk jumper. One o’clock. In panic she stripped once more, put on a new combination, pair of stockings, and the stays, then paused in superstition. No! Her own dress and hat—like yesterday! Keep the rest until—! She hastened to her ‘bus, overcome alternately by heat and cold. Perhaps he would give her another glass of that lovely stuff. If only she could go swimmy and not care for anything!

She reached the studio as two o’clock was striking, and knocked. It was lovely and warm in there, much warmer than yesterday, and the significance of this struck her suddenly. In front of the fire was a lady with a little dog.

“Miss Collins—Mrs. Michael Mont; she’s lending us her Peke, Miss Collins.”

The lady—only her own age, and ever so pretty—held out her hand. Geranium! This, then, was she whose clothes—!

She took the hand, but could not speak. If this lady were going to stay, it would be utterly impossible. Before her—so pretty, so beautifully covered—oh! no!

“Now, Ting, be good, and as amusing as you can. Goodbye, Aubrey! Good luck to the picture! Good-bye, Miss Collins; it ought to be wonderful.”

Gone! The scent of geranium fading; the little dog snuffling at the door. The sliding gentleman had two glasses in his hands.

‘Ah!’ thought Victorine, and drank hers at a gulp.

“Now, Miss Collins, you don’t mind, do you! You’ll find everything in there. It’s really nothing. I shall want you lying on your face just here with your elbows on the ground and your head up and a little turned this way; your hair as loose as it can be, and your eyes looking at this bone. You must imagine that it’s a faun or some other bit of all right. The dog’ll help you when he settles down to it. F-a-u-n, you know, not f-a-w-n.”

“Yes,” said Victorine faintly.

“Have another little tot?”

“Oh! please.”

He brought it.

“I quite understand; but you know, really, it’s absurd. You wouldn’t mind with a doctor. That’s right. Look here, I’ll put this little cow-bell on the ground. When you’re in position, give it a tinkle, and I’ll come out. That’ll help you.”

Victorine murmured:

“You ARE kind.”

“Not at all—it’s natural. Now will you start in? The light won’t last for ever. Fifteen bob a day, we said.”

Victorine saw him slide away behind a screen, and looked at the little cow-bell. Fifteen bob! And fifteen bob! And fifteen bob! Many, many fifteen bobs before—! But not more times of sitting than of Tony’s standing from foot to foot, offering balloons. And as if wound up by that thought, she moved like clockwork off the dais, into the model’s room. Cosy in there, too; warm, a green silk garment thrown on a chair. She took off her dress. The beauty of the pink stays struck her afresh. Perhaps the gentleman would like—no, that would be even worse—! A noise reached her—from Ting-a-ling complaining of solitude. If she delayed, she never would—! Stripping hastily, she stood looking at herself in a glass. If only that slim, ivory-white image could move out on to the dais and she could stay here! Oh! It was awful—awful! She couldn’t—no! she couldn’t. She caught up her final garment again. Fifteen bob! But fifteen bob! Before her eyes, wild and mournful, came a vision: Of a huge dome, and a tiny Tony, with little, little balloons in a hand held out! Something cold and steely formed over her heart as icicles form on a window. If that was all they would do for him, she would do better! She dropped the garment; and, confused, numb, stepped forth in the ‘altogether.’ Ting-a-ling growled at her above his bone. She reached the cow-bell and lay down on her face as she had been told, with feet in the air, crossed. Resting her chin on one hand, she wagged the bell. It made a sound like no bell she had ever heard; and the little dog barked—he did look funny!

“Perfect, Miss Collins! Hold that!”

Fifteen bob! and fifteen bob!

“Just point those left toes a bit more. That’s right! The flesh tone’s perfect! My God, why must one walk before one runs! Drawing’s a bore, Miss Collins; one ought to draw with a brush only; a sculptor draws with a chisel, at least when he’s a Michelangelo. How old are you?”

“Twenty-one,” came from lips that seemed to Victorine quite far away.

“I’m thirty-two. They say our generation was born so old that it can never get any older. Without illusions. Well! I never had any beliefs that I can remember. Had you?”

Victorine’s wits and senses were astray, but it did not matter, for he was rattling on:

“We don’t even believe in our ancestors. All the same, we’re beginning to copy them again. D’you know a book called ‘The Sobbing Turtle’ that’s made such a fuss? – sheer Sterne, very well done; but sheer Sterne, and the author’s tongue in his cheek. That’s it in a nutshell, Miss Collins—our tongues are in our cheeks—bad sign. Never mind; I’m going to out-Piero Cosimo with this. Your head an inch higher, and that curl out of your eye, please. Thanks! Hold that! By the way, have you Italian blood? What was your mother’s name, for instance?”

“Brown.”

“Ah! You can never tell with Browns. It may have been Brune—or Bruno—but very likely she was Iberian. Probably all the inhabitants of Britain left alive by the Saxons were called Brown. As a fact, that’s all tosh, though. Going back to Edward the Confessor, Miss Collins—a mere thirty generations—we each of us have one thousand and seventy-four million, five hundred and seventy-three thousand, nine hundred and eighty-four ancestors, and the population of this island was then well under a million. We’re as inbred as racehorses, but not so nice to look at, are we? I assure you, Miss Collins, you’re something to be grateful for. So is Mrs. Mont. Isn’t she pretty? Look at that dog?”

Ting-a-ling, indeed, with forelegs braced, and wrinkled nose, was glaring, as if under the impression that Victorine was another bone.

“He’s funny,” she said, and again her voice sounded far away. Would Mrs. Mont lie here if he’d asked her? SHE would look pretty! But SHE didn’t need the fifteen bob!

“Comfortable in that position?”

In alarm, she murmured:

“Oh! yes, thank you!”

“Warm enough?”

“Oh! yes, thank you!”

“That’s good. Just a little higher with the head.”

Slowly in Victorine the sense of the dreadfully unusual faded. Tony should never know. If he never knew, he couldn’t care. She could lie like this all day—fifteen bob, and fifteen bob! It was easy. She watched the quick, slim fingers moving, the blue smoke from the cigarette. She watched the little dog.

“Like a rest? You left your gown; I’ll get it for you.”

In that green silk gown, beautifully padded, she sat up, with her feet on the floor over the dais edge.

“Cigarette? I’m going to make some Turkish coffee. You’d better walk about.”

Victorine obeyed.

“You’re out of a dream, Miss Collins. I shall have to do a Mathew Maris of you in that gown.”

The coffee, like none she had ever tasted, gave her a sense of well-being. She said:

“It’s not like coffee.”

Aubrey Greene threw up his hands.

“You have said it. The British are a great race—nothing will ever do them in. If they could be destroyed, they must long ago have perished of their coffee. Have some more?”

“Please,” said Victorine. There was such a little in the cup.

“Ready, again?”

She lay down, and let the gown drop off.

“That’s right! Leave it there—you’re lying in long grass, and the green helps me. Pity it’s winter; I’d have hired a glade.”

Lying in long grass—flowers, too, perhaps. She did love flowers. As a little girl she used to lie in the grass, and make daisy-chains, in the field at the back of her grandmother’s lodge at Norbiton. Her grandmother kept the lodge. Every year, for a fortnight, she had gone down there—she had liked the country ever so. Only she had always had something on. It would be nicer with nothing. Were there flowers in Central Australia? With butterflies there must be! In the sun—she and Tony—like the Garden of Eden!…

“Thank you, that’s all for today. Half a day—ten bob. To-morrow morning at eleven. You’re a first-rate sitter, Miss Collins.”

Putting on the pink stays, Victorine had a feeling of elation. She had done it! Tony should never know! The thought that he never would gave her pleasure. And once more divested of the ‘altogether,’ she came forth.

Aubrey Greene was standing before his handiwork.

“Not yet, Miss Collins,” he said; “I don’t want to depress you. That hip-bone’s too high. We’ll put it right tomorrow. Forgive my hand, it’s all chalk. Au revoir! Eleven o’clock. And we shan’t need this chap. No, you don’t!”

For Ting-a-ling was showing signs of accompanying the larger bone. Victorine passed out smiling.

Chapter VIII. SOAMES TAKES THE MATTER UP

Soames had concentrated, sitting before the fire in his bedroom till Big Ben struck twelve. His reflections sum-totalled in a decision to talk it over with ‘old Mont’ after all. Though light-brained, the fellow was a gentleman, and the matter delicate. He got into bed and slept, but awoke at half-past two. There it was! ‘I WON’T think of it,’ he thought; and instantly began to. In a long life of dealings with money, he had never had such an experience. Perfectly straightforward conformity with the law—itself so often far from perfectly straightforward—had been the sine qua non of his career. Honesty, they said, was the best policy. But was it anything else? A normally honest man couldn’t keep out of a perfect penitentiary for a week. But then a perfect penitentiary had no relation to prison, or the Bankruptcy Court. The business of working honesty was to keep out of those two institutions. And so far he had never had any difficulty. What, besides the drawing of fees and the drinking of tea, were the duties of a director? That was the point. And how far, if he failed in them, was he liable? It was a director’s duty to be perfectly straightforward. But if a director were perfectly straightforward, he couldn’t be a director. That was clear. In the first place, he would have to tell his shareholders that he didn’t anything like earn his fees. For what did he do on his Boards? Well, he sat and signed his name and talked a little, and passed that which the general trend of business decided must be passed. Did he initiate? Once in a blue moon. Did he calculate? No, he read calculations. Did he check payments out and in? No, the auditors did that. There was policy! A comforting word, but—to be perfectly straightforward—a director’s chief business was to let the existing policy alone. Take his own case! If he had done his duty, he would have stopped this foreign insurance business which he had instinctively distrusted the moment he heard of it—within a month of sitting on the Board, or, having failed in doing so, resigned his seat. But he had not. Things had been looking better! It was not the moment, and so forth! If he had done his duty as a perfectly straightforward director, indeed, he would never have become a director of the P. P. R. S., because he would have looked into the policy of the Society much more closely than he had before accepting a position on the Board. But what with the names, and the prestige, and not looking a gift horse too closely in the mouth—there it had been! To be perfectly straightforward, he ought now to be circularising the shareholders, saying: “My laissez-faire has cost you two hundred odd thousand pounds. I have lodged this amount in the hands of trustees for your benefit, and am suing the rest of the directors for their quotas of the amount.” But he was not proposing to do so, because—well—because it wasn’t done, and the other directors wouldn’t like it. In sum: You waited till the shareholders found out the mess, and you hoped they wouldn’t. In fact, just like a Government, you confused the issues, and made the best case you could for yourselves. With a sense of comfort Soames thought of Ireland: The late Government had let the country in for all that mess in Ireland, and at the end taken credit for putting an end to what need never have been! The Peace, too, and the Air Force, and Agriculture, and Egypt—the five most important issues they’d had to deal with—they had put the chestnuts into the fire in every case! But had they confessed to it? Not they. One didn’t confess. One said: “The question of policy made it imperative at the time.” Or, better still, one said nothing; and trusted to the British character. With his chin resting on the sheet, Soames felt a momentary relief. The late Government weren’t sweating into THEIR sheets—not they—he was convinced of it! Fixing his eyes on the dying embers in the grate, he reflected on the inequalities and injustices of existence. Look at the chaps in politics and business, whose whole lives were passed in skating on thin ice, and getting knighted for it. They never turned a hair. And look at himself, for the first time in forty years on thin ice, and suffering confoundedly. There was a perfect cult of hoodwinking the public, a perfect cult of avoiding the consequences of administrative acts; and here was he, a man of the world, a man of the law, ignorant of those cults, and—and glad of it. From engrained caution and a certain pride, which had in it a touch of the fine, Soames shrank from that coarse-grained standard of honesty which conducted the affairs of the British public. In anything that touched money he was, he always had been, stiff-necked, stiff-kneed. Money was money, a pound a pound, and there was no way of pretending it wasn’t and keeping your self-respect. He got up, drank some water, took a number of deep breaths, and stamped his feet. Who was it said the other day that nothing had ever lost him five minutes’ sleep. The fellow must have the circulation of an ox, or the gift of Baron Munchausen. He took up a book. But his mind would only turn over and over the realisable value of his resources. Apart from his pictures, he decided that he could not be worth less than two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, and there was only Fleur—and she already provided for more or less. His wife had her settlement, and could live on it perfectly well in France. As for himself—what did he care? A room at his club near Fleur—he would be just as happy, perhaps happier! And suddenly he found that he had reached a way out of his disturbance and anxiety. By imagining the far-fetched, by facing the loss of his wealth, he had exorcised the demon. The book, ‘The Sobbing Turtle,’ of which he had not read one word, dropped from his hand; he slept…

His meeting with ‘Old Mont’ took place at ‘Snooks’ directly after lunch. The tape in the hall, at which he glanced on going in, recorded a further heavy drop in the mark. Just as he thought: The thing was getting valueless!

Sitting there, sipping coffee, the baronet looked to Soames almost offensively spry. Two to one he had realised nothing! ‘Well!’ thought Soames,’ as old Uncle Jolyon used to say, I shall astonish his weak nerves!’

And without preamble he began.

“How are you, Mont? This mark’s valueless. You realise we’ve lost the P. P. R. S. about a quarter of a million by that precious foreign policy of Elderson’s. I’m not sure an action won’t lie against us for taking unjustifiable risk. But what I’ve come to see you about is this.” He retailed the interview with the clerk, Butterfield, watching the eyebrows of his listener, and finished with the words: “What do you say?”

Sir Lawrence, whose foot was jerking his whole body, fixed his monocle.

“Hallucination, my dear Forsyte! I’ve known Elderson all my life. We were at Winchester together.”

Again! Again! Oh! Lord! Soames said slowly:

“You can’t tell from that. A man who was at Marlborough with me ran away with his mess fund and his colonel’s wife, and made a fortune in Chili out of canned tomatoes. The point is this: If the young man’s story’s true, we’re in the hands of a bad hat. It won’t do, Mont. Will you tackle him, and see what he says to it? You wouldn’t like a story of that sort about yourself. Shall we both go?”

“Yes,” said Sir Lawrence, suddenly. “You’re right. We’ll both go, Forsyte. I don’t like it, but we’ll both go. He ought to hear it.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

With solemnity they assumed top hats, and issued.

“I think, Forsyte, we’ll take a taxi.”

“Yes,” said Soames.

The cab ground its way slowly past the lions, then dashed on down to the Embankment. Side by side its occupants held their noses steadily before them.

“He was shooting with me a month ago,” said Sir Lawrence. “Do you know the hymn ‘O God, our help in ages past’? It’s very fine, Forsyte.”

Soames did not answer. The fellow was beginning to tittup!

“We had it that Sunday,” went on Sir Lawrence. “Elderson used to have a fine voice—sang solos. It’s a foghorn now, but a good delivery still.” He gave his little whinnying laugh.

‘Is it possible,’ thought Soames, ‘for this chap to be serious?’ and he said:

“If we find this is true of Elderson, and conceal it, we could all be put in the dock.”

Sir Lawrence refixed his monocle. “The deuce!” he said.

“Will you do the talking,” said Soames, “or shall I?”

“I think you had better, Forsyte; ought we to have the young man in?”

“Wait and see,” said Soames.

They ascended to the offices of the P. P. R. S. and entered the Board Room. There was no fire, the long table was ungarnished; an old clerk, creeping about like a fly on a pane, was filling inkstands out of a magnum.

Soames addressed him:

“Ask the manager to be so kind as to come and see Sir Lawrence Mont and Mr. Forsyte.”

The old clerk blinked, put down the magnum, and went out.

“Now,” said Soames in a low voice, “we must keep our heads. He’ll deny it, of course.”

“I should hope so, Forsyte; I should hope so. Elderson’s a gentleman.”

“No liar like a gentleman,” muttered Soames, below his breath.

After that they stood in their overcoats before the empty grate, staring at their top hats placed side by side on the table.

“One minute!” said Soames, suddenly, and crossing the room, he opened a door opposite. There, as the young clerk had said, was a sort of lobby between Board Room and Manager’s Room, with a door at the end into the main corridor. He stepped back, closed the door, and, rejoining Sir Lawrence, resumed his contemplation of the hats.

“Geography correct,” he said with gloom.

The entrance of the manager was marked by Sir Lawrence’s monocle dropping on to his coat-button with a tinkle. In cutaway black coat, clean-shaven, with grey eyes rather baggy underneath, a pink colour, every hair in place on a rather bald egg-shaped head, and lips alternately pouting, compressed, or smiling, the manager reminded Soames ridiculously of old Uncle Nicholas in his middle period. Uncle Nick was a clever fellow—“cleverest man in London,” some one had called him—but none had ever impugned his honesty. A pang of doubt and disinclination went through Soames. This seemed a monstrous thing to have to put to a man of his own age and breeding. But young Butterfield’s eyes—so honest and doglike! Invent a thing like that—was it possible? He said abruptly:

“Is that door shut?”

“Yes; do you feel a draught?” said the manager. “Would you like a fire?”

“No, thank you,” said Soames. “The fact is, Mr. Elderson, a young man in this office came to me yesterday with a very queer story. Mont and I think you should hear it.”

Accustomed to watching people’s eyes, Soames had the impression of a film (such as passes over the eyes of parrots) passing over the eyes of the manager. It was gone at once, if, indeed, it had ever been.

“By all means.”

Steadily, with that power he had over his nerves when it came to a point, and almost word for word, Soames repeated a story which he had committed to heart in the watches of the night. He concluded with:

“You’d like him in, no doubt. His name is Butterfield.”

During the recital Sir Lawrence had done nothing but scrutinise his finger nails; he now said:

“You had to be told, Elderson.”

“Naturally.”

The manager was crossing to the bell. The pink in his cheeks looked harder; his teeth showed, they had a pointed look.

“Ask Mr. Butterfield to come here.”

There followed a minute of elaborate inattention to each other. Then the young man came in, neat, commonplace, with his eyes on the manager’s face. Soames had a moment of compunction. This young fellow held his life in his hands, as it were—one of the great army who made their living out of self-suppression and respectability, with a hundred ready to step into his shoes at his first slip. What was that old tag of the provincial actor’s declamation—at which old Uncle Jolyon used to cackle so? “Like a pale martyr with his shirt on fire.”

“So, Mr. Butterfield, you have been good enough to exercise your imagination in my regard.”

“No, sir.”

“You stick to this fantastic story of eavesdropping?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We have no further use for your services then. Good morning!”

The young man’s eyes, doglike, sought the face of Soames; a string twitched in his throat, his lips moved without a sound. He turned and went out.

“So much for that,” said the manager’s voice; “HE’LL never get another job.”

The venom in those words affected Soames like the smell of Russian fat. At the same moment he had the feeling: This wants thinking out. Only if innocent, or guilty and utterly resolved, would Elderson have been so drastic. Which was he?

The manager went on:

“I thank you for drawing my attention to the matter, gentlemen. I have had my eye on that young man for some time. A bad hat all round.”

Soames said glumly:

“What do you make out he had to gain?”

“Foresaw dismissal, and thought he would get in first.”

“I see,” said Soames. But he did not. His mind was back in his own office with Gradman rubbing his nose, shaking his grey head, and Butterfield’s: “No, sir, I’ve nothing against Mr. Elderson, and he’s nothing against me.”

‘I shall require to know more about that young man,’ he thought.

The manager’s voice again cut through.

“I’ve been thinking over what you said yesterday, Mr. Forsyte, about an action lying against the Board for negligence. There’s nothing in that; our policy has been fully disclosed to the shareholders at two general meetings, and has passed without comment. The shareholders are just as responsible as the Board.”

“H’m!” said Soames, and took up his hat. “Are you coming, Mont?”

As if summoned from a long distance, Sir Lawrence galvanitically refixed his monocle.

“It’s been very distasteful,” he said; “you must forgive us, Elderson. You had to be told. I don’t think that young man can be quite all there—he had a peculiar look; but we can’t have this sort of thing, of course. Good-bye, Elderson.”

Placing their hats on their heads simultaneously the two walked out. They walked some way without speaking. Then Sir Lawrence said:

“Butterfield? My brother-inlaw has a head gardener called Butterfield—quite a good fellow. Ought we to look into that young man, Forsyte?”

“Yes,” said Soames, “leave him to me.”

“I shall be very glad to. The fact is, when one has been at school with a man, one has a feeling, don’t you know.”

Soames gave vent to a sudden outburst.

“You can’t trust anyone nowadays, it seems to me,” he said. “It comes of—well, I don’t know what it comes of. But I’ve not done with this matter yet.”

Chapter IX. SLEUTH

The Hotch-potch Club went back to the eighteen-sixties. Founded by a posse of young sparks, social and political, as a convenient place in which to smoulder, while qualifying for the hearths of ‘Snooks’, The Remove, The Wayfarers, Burton’s, Ostrich Feather, and other more permanent resorts, the Club had, chiefly owing to a remarkable chef in its early days, acquired a stability and distinction of its own. It still, however, retained a certain resemblance to its name, and this was its attraction to Michael—all sorts of people belonged. From Walter Nazing, and young semi-writers and patrons of the stage, who went to Venice, and talked of being amorous in gondolas, or of how so-and-so ought to be made love to; from such to bottle-brushed demi-generals, who had sat on courts-martial and shot men out of hand for the momentary weaknesses of human nature; from Wilfrid Desert (who never came there now) to Maurice Elderson, in the card-room, he could meet them all, and take the temperature of modernity. He was doing this in the Hotch-potch smoking-room, the late afternoon but one after Fleur had come into his bed, when he was informed:

“A Mr. Forsyte, sir, in the hall for you. Not the member we had here many years before he died; his cousin, I think.”

Conscious that his associates at the moment would not be his father-inlaw’s ‘dream,’ nor he theirs, Michael went out, and found Soames on the weighing machine.

“I don’t vary,” he said, looking up. “How’s Fleur?”

“Very well, thank you, sir.”

“I’m at Green Street. I stayed up about a young man. Have you any vacancy in your office for a clerk—used to figures. I want a job for him.”

“Come in here, sir,” said Michael, entering a small room.

Soames followed and looked round him.

“What do you call this?” he said.

“Well, we call it ‘the grave’; it’s nice and quiet. Will you have a sherry?”

“Sherry!” repeated Soames. “You young people think you’ve invented sherry; when I was a boy no one dreamed of dining without a glass of dry sherry with his soup, and a glass of fine old sherry with his sweet. Sherry!”

“I quite believe you, sir. There really is nothing new. Venice, for instance—wasn’t that the fashion, too; and knitting, and royalties? It’s all cyclic. Has your young man got the sack?”

Soames stared. “Yes,” he said, “he has. His name is Butterfield; he wants a job.”

“That’s frightfully rife; we get applications every day. I don’t want to be swanky, but ours is a rather specialised business. It has to do with books.”

“He strikes me as capable, orderly, and civil; I don’t see what more you want in a clerk. He writes a good hand, and, so far as I can see, he tells the truth.”

“That’s important, of course,” said Michael; “but is he a good liar as well? I mean, there’s more likely to be something in the travelling line; selling special editions, and that kind of thing. Could you open up about him a bit? Anything human is to the good—I don’t say old Danby would appreciate that, but he needn’t know.”

“H’m! Well—he—er—did his duty—quite against his interest—in fact, it’s ruination for him. He seems to be married and to have two children.”

“Ho, ho! Jolly! If I got him a place, would he—would he be doing his duty again, do you think?”

“I am serious,” said Soames; “the young man is on my mind.”

“Yes,” said Michael, ruminative, “the first thing in such a case is to get him on to some one else’s, sharp. Could I see him?”

“I told him to step round and see you to-night after dinner. I thought you’d prefer to look him over in private before considering him for your office.”

“Very thoughtful of you, sir! There’s just one thing. Don’t you think I ought to know the duty he did—in confidence? I don’t see how I can avoid putting my foot into my mouth without, do you?”

Soames stared at his son-inlaw’s face, where the mouth was wide; for the nth time it inspired in him a certain liking and confidence; it looked so honest.

“Well,” he said, going to the door and ascertaining that it was opaque, “this is matter for a criminal slander action, so for your own sake as well as mine you will keep it strictly to yourself”; and in a low voice he retailed the facts.

“As I expected,” he ended, “the young man came to me again this morning. He is naturally upset. I want to keep my hand on him. Without knowing more, I can’t make up my mind whether to go further or not. Besides”—Soames hesitated; to claim a good motive was repulsive to him: “I—it seems hard on him. He’s been getting three hundred and fifty.”

“Dashed hard!” said Michael. “I say, Elderson’s a member here.”

Soames looked with renewed suspicion at the door—it still seemed opaque, and he said: “The deuce he is! Do you know him?”

“I’ve played bridge with him,” said Michael; “he’s taken some of the best off me—snorting good player.”

“Ah!” said Soames—he never played cards himself. “I can’t take this young man into my own firm for obvious reasons; but I can trust you.”

Michael touched his forelock.

“Frightfully bucked, sir. Protection of the poor—some sleuth, too. I’ll see him to-night, and let you know what I can wangle.”

Soames nodded. ‘Good Gad!’ he thought; ‘what jargon!…’

The interview served Michael the good turn of taking his thoughts off himself. Temperamentally he sided already with the young man Butterfield; and, lighting a cigarette, he went into the card-room. Sitting on the high fender, he was impressed—the room was square, and within it were three square card tables, set askew to the walls, with three triangles of card players.

‘If only,’ thought Michael, ‘the fourth player sat under the table, the pattern would be complete. It’s having the odd player loose that spoils the cubes.’ And with something of a thrill he saw that Elderson was a fourth player! Sharp and impassive, he was engaged in applying a knife to the end of a cigar. Gosh! what sealed books faces were! Each with pages and pages of private thoughts, interests, schemes, fancies, passions, hopes and fears; and down came death—splosh! – and a creature wiped out, like a fly on a wall, and nobody any more could see its little close mechanism working away for its own ends, in its own privacy and its own importance; nobody any more could speculate on whether it was a clean or a dirty little bit of work. Hard to tell! They ran in all shapes! Elderson, for instance—was he a nasty mess, or just a lamb of God who didn’t look it? ‘Somehow,’ thought Michael, ‘I feel he’s a womaniser. Now why?’ He spread his hands out behind him to the fire, rubbing them together like a fly that has been in treacle. If one couldn’t tell what was passing in the mind of one’s own wife in one’s own house, how on earth could one tell anything from the face of a stranger, and he one of the closest bits of mechanism in the world—an English gentleman of business! If only life were like ‘The Idiot’ or ‘The Brothers Karamazov,’ and everybody went about turning out their inmost hearts at the tops of their voices! If only club card rooms had a dash of epilepsy in their composition! But—nothing! Nothing! The world was full of wonderful secrets which everybody kept to themselves without captions or close-ups to give them away!

A footman came in, looked at the fire, stood a moment expressionless as a stork, waiting for an order to ping out, staccato, through the hum, turned and went away.

Mechanism! Everywhere—mechanism! Devices for getting away from life so complete that there seemed no life to get away from.

‘It’s all,’ he thought, ‘awfully like a man sending a registered letter to himself. And perhaps it’s just as well. Is ‘life’ a good thing—is it? Do I want to see ‘life’ raw again?’

Elderson was seated now, and Michael had a perfect view of the back of his head. It disclosed nothing.

‘I’m no sleuth,’ he thought; ‘there ought to be something in the way he doesn’t part his hair behind.’ And, getting off the fender, he went home.

At dinner he caught one of his own looks at Fleur and didn’t like it. Sleuth! And yet how not try to know what were the real thoughts and feelings of one who held his heart, like an accordion, and made it squeak and groan at pleasure!

“I saw the model you sent Aubrey yesterday,” she said. “She didn’t say anything about the clothes, but she looked ever so! What a face, Michael! Where did you come across her?”

Through Michael sped the thought: ‘Could I make her jealous?’ And he was shocked at it. A low-down thought—mean and ornery! “She blew in,” he said. “Wife of a little packer we had who took to snooping—er—books. He sells balloons now; they want money badly.”

“I see. Did you know that Aubrey’s going to paint her in the nude?”

“Phew! No! I thought she’d look good on a wrapper. I say! Ought I to stop that?”

Fleur smiled. “It’s more money and her look-out. It doesn’t matter to you, does it?”

Again that thought; again the recoil from it!

“Only,” he said, “that her husband is a decent little snipe for a snooper, and I don’t want to be more sorry for him.”

“She won’t tell him, of course.”

She said it so naturally, so simply, that the words disclosed a whole attitude of mind. One didn’t tell one’s mate what would tease the poor brute! He saw by the flutter of her white eyelids that she also realised the give-away. Should he follow it up, tell her what June Forsyte had told him—have it all out—all out? But with what purpose—to what end? Would it change things, make her love him? Would it do anything but harass her a little more; and give him the sense that he had lost his wicket trying to drive her to the pavilion? No! Better adopt the principle of secrecy she had unwittingly declared her own, bite on it, and grin. He muttered:

“I’m afraid he’ll find her rather thin.”

Her eyes were bright and steady; and again he was worried by that low-down thought: ‘Could he make her—?’

“I’ve only seen her once,” he added, “and then she was dressed.”

“I’m not jealous, Michael.”

‘No,’ he thought, ‘I wish to heaven you were!’

The words: “A young man called Butterfill to see you, sir,” were like the turning of a key in a cell door.

In the hall the young man “called Butterfill” was engaged in staring at Ting-a-ling.

‘Judging by his eyes,’ thought Michael, ‘he’s more of a dog than that little Djinn!’

“Come up to my study,” he said, “it’s cold down here. My father-inlaw tells me you want a job.”

“Yes, sir,” said the young man, following up the stairs.

“Take a pew,” said Michael; “and a cigarette. Now then! I know all about the turmoil. From your moustache, you were in the war, I suppose, like me? As between fellow-sufferers: Is your story O. K.?”

“God’s truth, sir; I only wish it wasn’t. I’d nothing to gain and everything to lose. I’d have done better to hold my tongue. It’s his word against mine, and here I am in the street. That was my first job since the war, so I can whistle for a reference.”

“Wife and two children, I think?”

“Yes, and I’ve put them in the cart for the sake of my conscience! It’s the last time I’ll do that, I know. What did it matter to me, whether the Society was cheated? My wife’s quite right, I was a fool, sir.”

“Probably,” said Michael. “Do you know anything about books?”

“Yes, sir; I’m a good book-keeper.”

“Holy Moses! OUR job is getting rid of them. My firm are publishers. We were thinking of putting on an extra traveller. Is your tongue persuasive?”

The young man smiled wanly.

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Well, look here,” said Michael, carried away by the look in his eyes, “it’s all a question of a certain patter. But, of course, that’s got to be learned. I gather that you’re not a reader.”

“Well, sir, not a great reader.”

“That, perhaps, is fortunate. What you would have to do is to impress on the poor brutes who sell books that every one of the books on your list—say about thirty-five—is necessary in large numbers to his business. It’s lucky you’ve just chucked your conscience, because, as a matter of fact most of them won’t be. I’m afraid there’s nowhere you could go to to get lessons in persuasion, but you can imagine the sort of thing, and if you like to come here for an hour or two this week, I’ll put you wise about our authors, and ready you up to go before Peter.”

“Before Peter, sir?”

“The Johnny with the keys; luckily it’s Mr. Winter, not Mr. Danby; I believe I could get him to let you in for a month’s trial.”

“Sir, I’ll try my very best. My wife knows about books, she could help me a lot. I can’t tell you what I think of your kindness. The fact is, being out of a job has put the wind up me properly. I’ve not been able to save with two children; it’s like the end of the world.”

“Right-o, then! Come here tomorrow evening at nine, and I’ll stuff you. I believe you’ve got the face for the job, if you can get the patter. Only one book in twenty is a necessity really, the rest are luxuries. Your stunt will be to make them believe the nineteen are necessaries, and the twentieth a luxury that they need. It’s like food or clothes, or anything else in civilisation.”

“Yes, sir, I quite understand.”

“All right, then. Good-night, and good luck!”

Michael stood up and held out his hand. The young man took it with a queer reverential little bow. A minute later he was out in the street; and Michael in the hall was thinking: ‘Pity is tripe! Clean forgot I was a sleuth!’

Chapter X. FACE

When Michael rose from the refectory table, Fleur had risen, too. Two days and more since she left Wilfrid’s rooms, and she had not recovered zest. The rifling of the oyster Life, the garlanding of London’s rarer flowers which kept colour in her cheeks, seemed stale, unprofitable. Those three hours, when from shock off Cork Street she came straight to shocks in her own drawing-room, had dislocated her so that she had settled to nothing since. The wound re-opened by Holly had nearly healed again. Dead lion beside live donkey cuts but dim figure. But she could not get hold again of—what? That was the trouble: What? For two whole days she had been trying. Michael was still strange, Wilfrid still lost, Jon still buried alive, and nothing seemed novel under the sun. The only object that gave her satisfaction during those two dreary, disillusioned days was the new white monkey. The more she looked at it, the more Chinese it seemed. It summed up the satirical truth of which she was perhaps subconscious, that all her little modern veerings and flutterings and rushings after the future showed that she believed in nothing but the past. The age had overdone it and must go back to ancestry for faith. Like a little bright fish out of a warm bay, making a splash in chill, strange waters, Fleur felt a subtle nostalgia.

In her Spanish room, alone with her own feelings, she stared at the porcelain fruits. They glowed, cold, uneatable! She took one up. Meant for a passion fruit? Alas! Poor passion! She dropped it with a dull clink on to the pyramid, and shuddered a little. Had she blinded Michael with her kisses? Blinded him to—what? To her incapacity for passion?

‘But I’m not incapable,’ she thought; ‘I’m not. Some day I’ll show him; I’ll show them all.’ She looked up at ‘the Goya’ hanging opposite. What gripping determination in the painting—what intensity of life in the black eyes of a rather raddled dame! SHE would know what she wanted, and get it, too! No compromise and uncertainty there—no capering round life, wondering what it meant, and whether it was worth while, nothing but hard living for the sake of living!

Fleur put her hands where her flesh ended, and her dress began. Wasn’t she as warm and firm—yes, and ten times as pretty, as that fine and evil-looking Spanish dame, with the black eyes and the wonderful lace? And, turning her back on the picture, she went into the hall. Michael’s voice and another’s! They were coming down! She slipped across into the drawing-room and took up the manuscript of a book of poems, on which she was to give Michael her opinion. She sat, not reading, wondering if he were coming in. She heard the front door close. No! He had gone out! A relief, yet chilling! Michael not warm and cheerful in the house—if it were to go on, it would be wearing. She curled herself up and tried to read. Dreary poems—free verse, blank, introspective, all about the author’s inside! No lift, no lilt! Duds! She seemed to have read them a dozen times before. She lay quite still—listening to the click and flutter of the burning logs! If the light were out she might go to sleep. She turned it off, and came back to the settee. She could see herself sitting there, a picture in the firelight; see how lonely she looked, pretty, pathetic, with everything she wished for, and—nothing! Her lip curled. She could even see her own spoiled-child ingratitude. And what was worse, she could see herself seeing it—a triple-distilled modern, so subtly arranged in life-tight compartments that she could not be submerged. If only something would blow in out of the unkempt cold, out of the waste and wilderness of a London whose flowers she plucked. The firelight—soft, uncertain—searched out spots and corners of her Chinese room, as on a stage in one of those scenes, seductive and mysterious, where one waited, to the sound of tambourines, for the next moment of the plot. She reached out and took a cigarette. She could see herself lighting it, blowing out the smoke—her own half-curled fingers, her parted lips, her white rounded arm. She was decorative! Well, and wasn’t that all that mattered? To be decorative, and make little decorations; to be pretty in a world that wasn’t pretty! In ‘Copper Coin’ there was a poem of a flicker-lit room, and a spoiled Columbine before the fire, and a Harlequin hovering without, like ‘the spectre of the rose.’ And suddenly, without warning, Fleur’s heart ached. It ached definitely, rather horribly, and, slipping down on to the floor before the fire, she snuggled her face against Ting-a-ling. The Chinese dog raised his head—his black eyes lurid in the glow.

He licked her cheek, and turned his nose away. Huf! Powder! But Fleur lay like the dead. And she saw herself lying—the curve of her hip, the chestnut glow in her short hair; she heard the steady beat of her heart. Get up! Go out! Do something! But what—what was worth doing? What had any meaning in it? She saw herself doing—extravagant things; nursing sick women; tending pale babies; making a speech in Parliament; riding a steeplechase; hoeing turnips in knickerbockers—decorative. And she lay perfectly still, bound by the filaments of her self-vision. So long as she saw herself she would do nothing—she knew it—for nothing would be worth doing! And it seemed to her, lying there so still, that not to see herself would be worse than anything. And she felt that to feel this was to acknowledge herself caged for ever.

Ting-a-ling growled, turning his nose towards the windows. “In here,” he seemed to say, “we are cosy; we think of the past. We have no use for anything outside. Kindly go away—whoever it is out there!” And again he growled—a low, continuous sound.

“What is it, Ting?”

Ting-a-ling rose on his fore-legs, with muzzle pointed at the window.

“Do you want your walk?”

“No,” said the growl.

Fleur picked him up. “Don’t be so silly!” And she went to the window. The curtains were closely drawn; rich, Chinese, lined, they excluded the night. Fleur made a chink with one hand, and started back. Against the pane was a face, the forehead pressed against the glass, the eyes closed, as if it had been there a long time. In the dark it seemed featureless, vaguely pale. She felt the dog’s body stiffen under her arm—she felt his silence. Her heart pumped. It was ghastly—face without body.

Suddenly the forehead was withdrawn, the eyes opened. She saw—the face of Wilfrid. Could he see in-see her peering out from the darkened room? Quivering all over, she let the curtains fall to. Beckon? Let him in? Go out to him? Wave him away? Her heart beat furiously. How long had he been out there—like a ghost? What did he want of her? She dropped Ting-a-ling with a flump, and pressed her hands to her forehead, trying to clear confusion from her brain. And suddenly she stepped forward and flung the curtains apart. No face! Nothing! He was gone! The dark, draughty square—not a soul in it! Had he ever been—or was the face her fancy? But Ting-a-ling! Dogs had no fancies. He had gone back to the fire and settled down again.

‘It’s not my fault,’ she thought passionately. ‘It’s not! I didn’t want him to love me. I only wanted his—his—!’ Again she sank down before the fire. “Oh! Ting, have a feeling heart!” But the Chinese dog, mindful of the flump, made no response…

Chapter XI. COCKED HAT

After missing his vocation with the young man Butterfield, Michael had hesitated in the hall. At last he had not gone upstairs again, but quietly out. He walked past the Houses of Parliament and up Whitehall. In Trafalgar Square, it occurred to him that he had a father. Bart might be at ‘Snooks’, The Coffee House, The Aeroplane; and, with the thought, ‘He’d be restful,’ he sought the most modern of the three.

“Yes, Sir Lawrence Mont is in the lounge, sir.”

He was sitting with knees crossed, and a cigar between his finger-tips, waiting for some one to talk to.

“Ah! Michael! Can you tell me why I come here?”

“To wait for the end of the world, sir?”

Sir Lawrence sniggered. “An idea,” he said. “When the skies are wrecking civilisation, this will be the best-informed tape in London. The wish to be in at the death is perhaps the strongest of our passions, Michael. I should very much dislike being blown up, especially after dinner; but I should still more dislike missing the next show if it’s to be a really good one. The air raids were great fun, after all.”

Michael sighed.

“Yes,” he said, “the war got us used to thinking of the millennium, and then it went and stopped, and left the millennium hanging over us. Now we shall never be happy till we get it. Can I take one of your cigars, sir?”

“My dear fellow! I’ve been reading Frazer again. Extraordinary how remote all superstition seems, now that we’ve reached the ultimate truth: That enlightenment never can prevail.”

Michael stopped the lighting of his cigar.

“Do you really think that, sir?”

“What else can one think? Who can have any reasonable doubt now that with the aid of mechanics the headstrong part of man must do him in? It’s an unavoidable conclusion from all recent facts. ‘Per ardua ad astra,’ ‘Through hard knocks we shall see stars.’”

“But it’s always been like that, sir, and here we are alive?”

“They say so, but I doubt it. I fancy we’re really dead, Michael. I fancy we’re only living in the past. I don’t think—no, I don’t think we can be said to expect a future. We talk of it, but I hardly think we hope for one. Underneath our protestations we subconsciously deduce. From the mess we’ve made of it these last ten years, we can feel the far greater mess we shall make of it in the next thirty. Human nature can argue the hind leg off a donkey, but the donkey will be four-legged at the end of the discussion.”

Michael sat down suddenly and said:

“You’re a bad, bold Bart!”

Sir Lawrence smiled.

“I should be glad to think that men really believed in humanity, and all that, but you know they don’t—they believe in novelty and getting their own way. With rare exceptions they’re still monkeys, especially the scientific variety; and when you put gunpowder and a lighted match into the paws of monkeys, they blow themselves up to see the fun. Monkeys are only safe when deprived of means to be otherwise.”

“Lively, that!” said Michael.

“Not livelier than the occasion warrants, my dear boy. I’ve been thinking. We’ve got a member here who knows a trick worth twenty of any played in the war—an extraordinarily valuable fellow. The Government have got their eye on him. He’ll help the other valuable fellows in France and Germany and America and Russia to make history. Between them, they’ll do something really proud—something that’ll knock all the other achievements of man into a cocked hat. By the way, Michael, new device of ‘homo sapiens’—the cocked hat.”

“Well,” said Michael, “what are you going to do about it?”

Sir Lawrence’s eyebrow sought his hair.

“Do, my dear fellow? What should I do? Can I go out and grab him and the Government by the slack of their breeches; yes, and all the valuable fellows and Governments of the other countries? No! All I can do is to smoke my cigar and say: ‘God rest you, merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay!’ By hook or crook, they will come into their own, Michael; but in the normal course of things I shall be dead before they do.”

“I shan’t,” said Michael.

“No, my dear; but think of the explosions, the sights, the smells. By Jove, you’ve got something to live for, yet. Sometimes I wish I were your age. And sometimes,” Sir Lawrence relighted his cigar, “I don’t. Sometimes I think I’ve had enough of our pretences, and that there’s nothing left but to die like gentlemen.”

“Some Jeremiad, Dad!”

“Well,” said Sir Lawrence, with a twirl of his little grizzled moustache, “I hope I’m wrong. But we’re driving fast to a condition of things when millions can be killed by the pressing of a few buttons. What reason is there to suppose that our bumps of benevolence will increase in time to stop our using these great new toys of destruction, Michael!”

“‘Where you know little, place terrors.’”

“Very nice; where did you get that?”

“Out of a life of Christopher Columbus.”

“Old C. C.! I could bring myself to wish sometimes that he hadn’t been so deucedly inquisitive. We were snugger in the dark ages. There was something to be said for not discovering the Yanks.”

“Well,” said Michael, “I think we shall pedal through, yet. By the way, about this Elderson stunt: I’ve just seen the clerk—he doesn’t look to me the sort that would have made that up.”

“Ah! That! But if Elderson could do such a thing, well—really, anything might happen. It’s a complete stumper. He was such a pretty bat, always went in first wicket down. He and I put on fifty-four against Eton. I suppose old Forsyte told you?”

“Yes, he wanted me to find the chap a job.”

“Butterfield. Ask him if he’s related to old Butterfield the gardener? It would be something to go on. D’you find old Forsyte rather trying?”

Loyal to Fleur, Michael concealed his lips. “No, I get on very well with him.”

“He’s straight, I admit that.”

“Yes,” said Michael, “very straight.”

“But somewhat reticent.”

“Yes,” said Michael.

On this conclusion they were silent, as though terrors had been placed beyond it. And soon Michael rose. “Past ten, I’d better go home.”

Returning the way he came, he could think of nothing but Wilfrid. What wouldn’t he give to hear him say: “It’s all right, old man; I’ve got over it!”—to wring him by the hand again. Why should one catch this fatal disease called love? Why should one be driven half crazy by it? They said love was Nature’s provision against Bart’s terrors, against the valuable fellows. An insistent urge—lest the race die out. Prosaic, if true! Not that he cared whether Fleur had children. Queer how Nature camouflaged her schemes—leery old bird! But overreaching herself a bit, wasn’t she? Children might yet go clean out of fashion if Bart was right. A very little more would do it; who would have children for the mere pleasure of seeing them blown up, poisoned, starved to death? A few fanatics would hold on, the rest of the world go barren. The cocked hat! Instinctively Michael straightened his own, ready for crossing under Big Ben. He had reached the centre of Parliament Square, when a figure coming towards him swerved suddenly to its left and made in the direction of Victoria. Tall, with a swing in its walk. Wilfrid! Michael stood still. Coming from—South Square! And suddenly he gave chase. He did not run, but he walked his hardest. The blood beat in his temples, and he felt confused to a pitch past bearing. Wilfrid must have seen him, or he wouldn’t have swerved, wouldn’t be legging it away like a demon. Black! – black! He was not gaining, Wilfrid had the legs of him—to overtake him, he must run! But there rose in Michael a sort of exaltation. His best friend—his wife! There was a limit. One might be too proud to fight that. Let him go his ways! He stood still, watched the swift figure disappear, and slowly, head down under the now cocked hat, turned towards home. He walked quite quietly, and with a sense of finality. No use making a song about it! No fuss, but no retreat! In the few hundred yards before he reached his Square he was chiefly conscious of the tallness of houses, the shortness of men. Such midgets to have made this monstrous pile, lighted it so that it shone in an enormous glittering heap whose glow blurred the colour of the sky! What a vast business this midget activity! Absurd to think that his love for another midget mattered! He turned his key in the lock, took off his cocked hat and went into the drawing-room. Unlighted—empty? No. She and Ting-a-ling were on the floor before the fire! He sat down on the settee, and was abruptly conscious that he was trembling and sweating as if he had smoked a too strong cigar. Fleur had raised herself, cross-legged, and was staring up at him. He waited to get the better of his trembling. Why didn’t she speak? Why was she sitting there, in the dark? ‘She knows’; he thought: ‘we both know this is the end. O God, let me at least be a sport!’ He took a cushion, put it behind him, crossed his legs, and leaned back. His voice surprised him suddenly:

“May I ask you something, Fleur? And will you please answer me quite truly?”

“Yes.”

“It’s this: I know you didn’t love me when you married me. I don’t think you love me now. Do you want me to clear out?”

A long time seemed to pass.

“No.”

“Do you mean that?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t.”

Michael got up.

“Will you answer one thing more?”

“Yes.”

“Was Wilfrid here to-night?”

“Yes—no. That is—”

His hands clutched each other; he saw her eyes fix on them, and kept them still.

“Fleur, don’t!”

“I’m not. He came to the window there. I saw his face—that’s all. His face—it—Oh! Michael, don’t be unkind to-night!”

Unkind! Unkind! Michael’s heart swelled at that strange word.

“It’s all right,” he stammered: “So long as you tell me what it is you want.”

Fleur said, without moving:

“I want to be comforted.”

Ah! She knew exactly what to say, how to say it! And going on his knees, he began to comfort her.

Chapter XII. GOING EAST

He had not been on his knees many minutes before they suffered from reaction. To kneel there comforting Fleur brought him a growing discomfort. He believed her tonight, as he had not believed her for months past. But what was Wilfrid doing? Where wandering? The face at the window—face without voice, without attempt to reach her! Michael ached in that illegitimate organ the heart. Withdrawing his arms, he stood up.

“Would you like me to have a look for him? If it’s all over—he might—I might—”

Fleur, too, stood up. She was calm enough now.

“Yes, I’ll go to bed.” With Ting-a-ling in her arms, she went to the door; her face, between the dog’s chestnut fur and her own, was very pale, very still.

“By the way,” she said, “this is my second no go, Michael; I suppose it means—”

Michael gasped. Currents of emotion, welling, ebbing, swirling, rendered him incapable of speech.

“The night of the balloon,” she said: “Do you mind?”

“Mind? Good God! Mind!”

“That’s all right, then. I don’t. Good-night!”

She was gone. Without reason, Michael thought: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ And he stood, as if congealed, overcome by an uncontrollable sense of solidity. A child coming! It was as though the barque of his being, tossed and drifted, suddenly rode tethered—anchor down. He turned and tore at the curtains. Night of stars! Wonderful world! Jolly—jolly! And—Wilfrid! He flattened his face against the glass. Outside there Wilfrid’s had been flattened. He could see it if he shut his eyes. Not fair! Dog lost—man lost! S. O. S. He went into the hall, and from the mothless marble coffer rived his thickest coat. He took the first taxi that came by.

“Cork Street! Get along!” Needle in bundle of hay! Quarter past eleven by Big Ben! The intense relief of his whole being in that jolting cab seemed to him brutal. Salvation! It WAS—he had a strange certainty of that as though he saw Fleur suddenly ‘close-up’ in a very strong light, concrete beneath her graceful veerings. Family! Continuation! He had been unable to anchor her, for he was not of her! But her child could and would! And, perhaps, he would yet come in with the milk. Why did he love her so—it was not done! Wilfrid and he were donkeys—out of touch, out of tune with the times!

“Here you are, sir—what number?”

“All right! Cool your heels and wait for me! Have a cigarette!”

With one between his own lips which felt so dry, he went down the backwater.

A light in Wilfrid’s rooms! He rang the bell. The door was opened, the face of Wilfrid’s man looked forth.

“Yes, sir?”

“Mr. Desert in?”

“No, sir. Mr. Desert has just started for the East. His ship sails tomorrow.”

“Oh!” said Michael, blankly: “Where from?”

“Plymouth, sir. His train leaves Paddington at midnight. You might catch him yet.”

“It’s very sudden,” said Michael, “he never—”

“No, sir. Mr. Desert is a sudden gentleman.”

“Well, thanks; I’ll try and catch him.”

Back in the cab with the words: “Paddington—flick her along!” he thought: ‘A sudden gentleman!’ Perfect! He remembered the utter suddenness of that little interview beside the bust of Lionel Charwell. Sudden their friendship, sudden its end—sudden even Wilfrid’s poems—offspring of a sudden soul! Staring from window to window in that jolting, rattling cab, Michael suffered from St. Vitus’s dance. Was he a fool? Could he not let well alone? Pity was posh! And yet! With Wilfrid would go a bit of his heart, and in spite of all he would like him to know that. Upper Brook Street, Park Lane! Emptying streets, cold night, stark plane trees painted-up by the lamps against a bluish dark. And Michael thought: ‘We wander! What’s the end—the goal? To do one’s bit, and not worry! But what is my bit? What’s Wilfrid’s? Where will he end up, now?’

The cab rattled down the station slope and drew up under cover. Ten minutes to twelve, and a long heavy train on platform one!

‘What shall I do?’ thought Michael: ‘It’s so darned crude! Must I go down—carriage by carriage?” Couldn’t let you go, old man, without”—blurb!’

Bluejackets! If not drunk—as near as made no matter. Eight minutes still! He began slowly walking along the train. He had not passed four windows before he saw his quarry. Desert was sitting back to the engine in the near corner of an empty first. An unlighted cigarette was in his mouth, his fur collar turned up to his eyes, and his eves fixed on an unopened paper on his hip. He sat without movement; Michael stood looking at him. His heart beat fast. He struck a match, took two steps, and said:

“Light, old boy?”

Desert stared up at him.

“Thanks,” he said, and took the match. By its flare his face was dark, thin, drawn; his eyes dark, deep, tired. Michael leaned in the window. Neither spoke.

“Take your seat, if you’re going, sir.”

“I’m not,” said Michael. His whole inside seemed turning over.

“Where are you going, old man?” he said suddenly.

“Jericho.”

“God, Wilfrid, I’m sorry!”

Desert smiled.

“Cut it out!”

“Yes, I know! Shake hands?”

Desert held out his hand.

Michael squeezed it hard.

A whistle sounded.

Desert rose suddenly and turned to the rack above him. He took a parcel from a bag. “Here,” he said, “these wretched things! Publish them if you like.”

Something clicked in Michael’s throat.

“Thanks, old man! That’s great! Good-bye!”

A sort of beauty came into Desert’s face.

“So long!” he said.

The train moved. Michael withdrew his elbows; quite still, he stared at the motionless figure slowly borne along, away. Carriage after carriage went by him, full of bluejackets leaning out, clamouring, singing, waving handkerchiefs and bottles. Guard’s van now—the tail light—all spread—a crimson blur—setting East—going—going—gone!

And that was all—was it? He thrust the parcel into his coat pocket. Back to Fleur, now! Way of the world—one man’s meat, another’s poison! He passed his hand over his eyes. The dashed things were full of—blurb!

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