The Forsyte Saga, Volume 2 (6 page)

Leaving the concert hall on the Friday night, he had walked straight home to his rooms. And lying down full length on a monk's seat of the fifteenth century, restored with down cushions and silk of the twentieth, he crossed his hands behind
his head and delivered himself to these thoughts: ‘I am not going on like this. She has bewitched me. It doesn't mean anything to her. But it means hell to me. I'll finish with it on Sunday – Persia's a good place. Arabia's a good place – plenty of blood and sand! She's incapable of giving anything up. How has she hooked herself into me! By trick of eyes, and hair, by her walk, by the sound of her voice – by trick of warmth, scent, colour. Fling her cap over the windmill – not she! What then? Am I to hang about her Chinese fireside and her little Chinese dog; and have this ache and this fever because I can't be kissing her? I'd rather be flying again in the middle of Boche whizbangs! Sunday! How women like to drag out agonies! It'll be just this afternoon all over again. “How unkind of you to go, when your friendship is so precious to me! Stay, and be my tame cat, Wilfrid!” No, my dear, for once you're up against it! And – so am I, by the Lord!…'

When in that gallery which extends asylum to British art, those two young people met so accidentally on Sunday morning in front of Eve smelling at the flowers of the Garden of Eden, there were present also six mechanics in various stages of decomposition, a custodian and a couple from the provinces, none of whom seemed capable of observing anything whatever. And, indeed, that meeting was inexpressive. Two young people, of the disillusioned class, exchanging condemnations of the past. Desert with his off-hand speech, his smile, his well-tailored informality, suggested no aching heart. Of the two Fleur was the paler and more interesting. Desert kept saying to himself: ‘No melodrama – that's all it would be!' And Fleur was thinking: ‘If I can keep him ordinary like this, I shan't lose him, because he'll never go away without a proper outburst.'

It was not until they found themselves a second time before the Eve, that he said:

‘I don't know why you asked me to come, Fleur. It's playing the goat for no earthly reason. I quite understand your feeling. I'm a bit of “Ming” that you don't want to lose. But it's not good enough, my dear; and that's all about it.'

‘How horrible of you, Wilfrid!'

‘Well! Here we part! Give us your flipper.'

His eyes – rather beautiful – looked dark and tragic above the smile on his lips, and she said stammering:

‘Wilfrid – I – I don't know. I want time. I can't bear you to be unhappy. Don't go away! Perhaps I – I shall be unhappy, too; I – I don't know.'

Through Desert passed the bitter thought: ‘She
can't
let go – she doesn't know how.' But he said quite softly: ‘Cheer up, my child; you'll be over all that in a fortnight. I'll send you something to make up. Why shouldn't I make it China – one place is as good as another? I'll send you a bit of real “Ming”, of a better period than this.'

Fleur said passionately:

‘You're insulting! Don't!'

‘I beg your pardon. I don't want to leave you angry.'

‘What is it you want of me?'

‘Oh! no – come! This is going over it twice. Besides, since Friday I've been thinking. I want nothing, Fleur, except a blessing and your hand. Give it me! Come on!'

Fleur put her hand behind her back. It was too mortifying! He took her for a cold-blooded, collecting little cat – clutching and playing with mice that she didn't want to eat!

‘You think I'm made of ice,' she said, and her teeth caught her upper lip: ‘Well, I'm not!'

Desert looked at her; his eyes were very wretched. ‘I didn't mean to play up your pride,' he said. ‘Let's drop it, Fleur. It isn't any good.'

Fleur turned and fixed her eyes on the Eve – rumbustious-looking female, care-free, avid, taking her fill of flower perfume! Why not be care-free, take anything that came along? Not so much love in the world that one could afford to pass, leaving it unsmelled, unplucked. Run away! Go to the East! Of course, she couldn't do anything extravagant like that! But, perhaps – What did it matter? one man or another, when neither did you really love!

From under her drooped, white, dark-lashed eyelids she saw the expression on his face, and that he was standing stiller than
the statues. And suddenly she said: ‘You will be a fool to go. Wait!' And without another word or look, she walked away, leaving Desert breathless before the avid Eve.

‘OLD FORSYTE' AND ‘OLD MONT'

M
OVING
away, in the confusion of her mood, Fleur almost trod on the toes of a too-familiar figure standing before an Alma Tadema with a sort of grey anxiety, as if lost in the mutability of market values.

‘Father!
You
up in town? Come along to lunch, I have to get home quick.'

Hooking his arm and keeping between him and Eve, she guided him away, thinking: ‘Did he see us? Could he have seen us?'

‘Have you got enough on?' muttered Soames.

‘Heaps!'

‘That's what you women always say. East wind, and your neck like that! Well, I don't know.'

‘No, dear, but I do.'

The grey eyes appraised her from head to foot.

‘What are you doing here?' he said. And Fleur thought: ‘Thank God he didn't see. He'd never have asked if he had.' And she answered:

‘I take an interest in art, darling, as well as you.'

‘Well, I'm staying with your aunt in Green Street. This east wind has touched my liver. How's your – how's Michael?'

‘Oh, he's all right – a little cheap. We had a dinner last night.'

Anniversary! The realism of a Forsyte stirred in him, and he looked under her eyes. Thrusting his hand into his overcoat pocket, he said:

‘I was bringing you this.'

Fleur saw a flat substance wrapped in pink tissue paper.

‘Darling, what is it?'

Soames put it back into his pocket.

‘We'll see later. Anybody to lunch?'

‘Only Bart.'

‘Old Mont! Oh, Lord!'

‘Don't you like Bart, dear?'

‘Like him? He and I have nothing in common.'

‘I thought you fraternized rather over the state of things.'

‘He's a reactionary,' said Soames.

‘And what are you, ducky?'

‘I? What should
I
be?' With these words he affirmed that policy of non-commitment which, the older he grew, the more he perceived to be the only attitude for a sensible man.

‘How is Mother?'

‘Looks well. I see nothing of her – she's got her own mother down – they go gadding about.'

He never alluded to Madame Lamotte as Fleur's grandmother – the less his daughter had to do with her French side, the better.

‘Oh!' said Fleur. ‘There's Ting and a cat!' Ting-a-ling, out for a breath of air, and tethered by a lead in the hands of a maid, was snuffling horribly and trying to climb a railing whereon was perched a black cat, all hunch and eyes.

‘Give him to me, Ellen. Come with Mother, darling!'

Ting-a-ling came, indeed, but only because he couldn't go, bristling and snuffling and turning his head back.

‘I like to see him natural,' said Fleur.

‘Waste of money, a dog like that,' Soames commented. ‘You should have had a bull-dog and let him sleep in the hall. No end of burglaries. Your aunt had her knocker stolen.'

‘I wouldn't part with Ting for a hundred knockers.'

‘One of these days you'll be having
him
stolen – fashionable breed.'

Fleur opened her front door. ‘Oh!' she said, ‘Bart's here, already!'

A shiny hat was reposing on a marble coffer, present from Soames, intended to hold coats and discourage moth. Placing his hat alongside the other, Soames looked at them. They were too similar for words, tall, high, shiny, and with the same name inside. He had resumed the ‘tall hat' habit after the failure of the general and coal strikes in 1921, his instinct having told him that revolution would be at a discount for some considerable period.

‘About this thing,' he said, taking out the pink parcel, ‘I don't know what you'll do with it, but here it is.'

It was a curiously carved and coloured bit of opal in a ring of tiny brilliants.

‘Oh!' Fleur cried: ‘What a delicious thing!'

‘Venus floating on the waves or something,' murmured Soames. ‘Uncommon. You want a strong light on it.'

‘But it's lovely. I shall put it on at once.'

Venus! If Dad had known! She put her arms round his neck to disguise her sense of
à propos
. Soames received the rub of her cheek against his own well-shaved face with his usual stillness. Why demonstrate when they were both aware that his affection was double hers?

‘Put it on then,' he said, ‘and let's see.'

Fleur pinned it at her neck before an old lacquered mirror. ‘It's a jewel. Thank you, darling! Yes, your tie is straight. I like that white piping. You ought always to wear it with black. Now, come along!' And she drew him into her Chinese room. It was empty.

‘Bart must be up with Michael, talking about his new book.'

‘Writing at his age?' said Soames.

‘Well, ducky, he's a year younger than you.'

‘I don't write. Not such a fool. Got any more new-fangled friends?'

‘Just one – Gurdon Minho, the novelist.'

‘Another of the new school?'

‘Oh, no, dear! Surely you've heard of Gurdon Minho; he's older than the hills.'

‘They're all alike to me,' muttered Soames. ‘Is he well thought of?'

‘I should think his income is larger than yours. He's almost a classic – only waiting to die.'

‘I'll get one of his books and read it. What name did you say?'

‘Get
Big and Little Fishes
, by Gurdon Minho. You can remember that, can't you? Oh! here they are! Michael, look at what Father's given me.'

Taking his hand, she put it up to the opal at her neck. ‘Let them both see,' she thought, ‘what good terms we're on.' Though her father had not seen her with Wilfrid in the gallery, her conscience still said: ‘Strengthen your respectability, you don't quite know how much support you'll need for it in future.'

And out of the corner of her eye she watched those two. The meetings between ‘Old Mont' and ‘Old Forsyte' – as she knew Bart called her father when speaking of him to Michael – always made her want to laugh, but she never quite knew why. Bart knew everything, but his knowledge was beautifully bound, strictly edited by a mind tethered to the ‘eighteenth century'. Her father only knew what was of advantage to him, but the knowledge was unbound, and subject to no editorship. If he
was
late Victorian, he was not above profiting if necessary by even later periods. ‘Old Mont' had faith in tradition; ‘Old Forsyte' none. Fleur's acuteness had long perceived a difference which favoured her father. Yet ‘Old Mont's' talk was so much more up-to-date, rapid, glancing, garrulous, redolent of precise information; and ‘Old Forsyte's' was constricted, matter-of-fact. Really impossible to tell which of the two was the better museum specimen; and both so well-preserved!

They did not precisely shake hands; but Soames mentioned the weather. And almost at once they all four sought that Sunday food which by a sustained effort of will Fleur had at last deprived of reference to the British character. They partook, in fact, of lobster cocktails, and a mere risotto of chickens' livers, an omelette
au rhum
, and dessert trying to look as Spanish as it could.

‘I've been in the Tate,' Fleur said; ‘I do think it's touching.'

‘Touching?' queried Soames with a sniff.

‘Fleur means, sir, that to see so much old English art together is like looking at a baby show.'

‘I don't follow,' said Soames stiffly. ‘There's some very good work there.'

‘But not grown-up, sir.'

‘Ah! You young people mistake all this crazy cleverness for maturity.'

‘That's not what Michael means, Father. It's quite true that English painting has no wisdom teeth. You can see the difference in a moment, between it and any Continental painting.'

‘And thank God for it!' broke in Sir Lawrence. ‘The beauty of this country's art is its innocence. We're the oldest country in the world politically, and the youngest aesthetically. What do you say, Forsyte?'

‘Turner is old and wise enough for me,' said Soames curtly. ‘Are you coming to the P.P.R.S. Board on Tuesday?'

‘Tuesday? We were going to shoot the spinneys, weren't we, Michael?'

Soames grunted. ‘I should let them wait,' he said. ‘We settle the report.'

It was through ‘Old Mont's' influence that he had received a seat on the Board of that flourishing concern, the Providential Premium Reassurance Society, and, truth to tell, he was not sitting very easily in it. Though the law of averages was, perhaps, the most reliable thing in the world, there were circumstances which had begun to cause him disquietude. He looked round his nose. Light weight, this narrow-headed, twisting-eyebrowed baronet of a chap – like his son before him! And he added suddenly: ‘I'm not easy. If I'd realized how that chap Elderson ruled the roost, I doubt if I should have come on to that Board.'