“We’re being cold-shouldered.”
“How? You won.”
“Yes, but you see, people resent moral superiority.”
“What’s that? Who—?” Moral superiority—he resented it himself!
“Foskisson, you know; we’re tarred with his brush. I told you I was afraid of it. It’s the being laughed at Fleur feels so bitterly.”
“Laughed at? Who has the impudence—?”
“To attack modern morality was a good stunt, sir, with the judge and the jury, and any one professionally pompous; but it makes one ridiculous nowadays in Society, you know, when everybody prides himself on lack of prejudice.”
“Society!”
“Yes, sir; but it’s what we live in. I don’t mind, got used to it over Foggartism; but Fleur’s miserable. It’s natural, if you think of it—Society’s her game.”
“She ought to have more strength of mind,” said Soames. But he was gravely perturbed. First she’d been looked on as a snob, and now there was this!
“What with that German actor hanging himself at Lippinghall,” Michael went on, “and my Foggartism, and this Ferrar rumpus, our pitch is badly queered. We’ve had a wretched week of it since the case. Fleur feels so out of her plate, that she wants me to take her round the world.”
A bomb bursting on the dove-cote down there could not have been more startling. Round the world! He heard Michael murmuring on:
“She’s quite right, too. It might be the very best thing for her; but I simply can’t leave my job until the long vacation. I’ve taken up this thing, and I must stick to it while Parliament’s sitting.”
Sitting! As if it were a hen, addling its precious eggs! Round the world!
But Michael ran on:
“It’s only today I’ve quite decided. I should feel like a deserter, and that wouldn’t be good for either of us in the long run. But she doesn’t know yet.”
For Soames the dove-cote was solidifying again, now that he knew Michael was not going to take her away for goodness knew how long!
“Round the world!” he said. “Why not—er—Pontresina?”
“I think,” answered Michael, slowly, like a doctor diagnosing, “that she wants something dramatic. Round the world at twenty-three! She feels somehow that she’s lost caste.”
“How can she think of leaving that little chap?”
“Yes, that shows it’s pretty desperate with her. I wish to goodness I COULD go.”
Soames stared. The young fellow wasn’t expecting him to do anything about it, was he? Round the world? A crazy notion!
“I must see her,” he said. “Can you leave that thing of yours in the garage and come up with me in the car? I’ll be ready in twenty minutes. You’ll find tea going down-stairs.”
Left alone with the Fred Walker still unhung, Soames gazed at his pictures. He saw them with an added clarity, a more penetrating glance, a sort of ache in his heart, as if—Well! A good lot they were, better than he had thought, of late! SHE had gone in for collecting people! And now she’d lost her collection! Poor little thing! All nonsense, of course—as if there were any satisfaction in people! Suppose he took her up that Chardin? It was a good Chardin. Dumetrius had done him over the price, but not too much. And, before Chardin was finished with, he would do Dumetrius. Still—if it would give her any pleasure! He unhooked the picture, and, carrying it under his arm, went down-stairs.
Beyond certain allusions to the characteristics of the eleventh baronet, and the regrettable tendencies of the police to compel slow travelling over the new cut constructed to speed up traffic, little was said in the car. They arrived in South Square about six o’clock. Fleur had not been in since lunch; and they sat down uneasily to wait for her. The Dandie, having descended to look for strange legs, had almost immediately ascended again, and the house was very quiet. Michael was continually looking at his watch.
“Where do you think she’s got to?” said Soames, at last.
“Haven’t an idea, sir; that’s the worst of London, it swallows people up.”
He had begun to fidget; Soames, who also wanted to fidget, was thinking of saying: “Don’t!” when from the window Michael cried:
“Here she is!” and went quickly to the door.
Soames sat on, with the Chardin resting against his chair.
They were a long time out there! Minute after minute passed, and still they did not come.
At last Michael reappeared. He looked exceedingly grave.
“She’s in her little room up-stairs, sir. I’m afraid my decision has upset her awfully. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind going up.”
Soames grasped the Chardin.
“Let’s see, that’s the first door on the left, isn’t it?” He mounted slowly, his mind blank, and without waiting for her to answer his mild knock, went in.
Fleur was sitting at the satinwood bureau, with her face buried on her arms. Her hair, again in its more natural ‘bob,’ gleamed lustrously under the light. She seemed unconscious of his entry. This sight of private life affected Soames, unaccustomed to give or receive undefended glimpses of self, and he stood, uncertain. Had he the right to surprise her, with her ears muffled like that, and her feelings all upset? He would have gone out and come in again, but he was too concerned. And, moving to her side, he put his finger on her shoulder, and said:
“Tired, my child?”
Her face came round—queer, creased, not like her face; and Soames spoke the phrase of her childhood:
“See what I’ve brought you!”
He raised the Chardin; she gave it just a glance, and he felt hurt. After all, it was worth some hundreds of pounds! Very pale, she had crossed her arms on her chest, as if shutting herself up. He recognised the symptom. A spiritual crisis! The sort of thing his whole life had been passed in regarding as extravagant; like a case of appendicitis that will not wait decently.
“Michael,” he said, “tells me you want him to take you round the world.”
“Well, he can’t; so that ends it.”
“If she had said: ‘Yes, and why can’t he?’ Soames would have joined the opposition automatically. But her words roused his natural perversity. Here she was, and here was her heart’s desire—and she wasn’t getting it! He put the Chardin down, and took a walk over the soft carpet.
“Tell me,” he said, coming to a halt, “where do you feel it exactly?”
Fleur laughed: “In my head, and my eyes, and my ears, and my heart.”
“What business,” muttered Soames, “have they to look down their confounded noses!” And he set off again across the room. All the modern jackanapes whom from time to time he had been unable to avoid in her house, seemed to have come sniggering round him with lifted eyebrows, like a set of ghosts. The longing to put them in their places—a shallow lot—possessed him at that moment to the exclusion of a greater sanity.
“I—I don’t see how I can take you,” he said, and stopped short.
What was that he was saying? Who had asked him to take her? Her eyes, widely open, were fixed on him.
“But of course not, Dad!”
Of course not! He didn’t know about that!
“I shall get used to being laughed at, in time.” Soames growled.
“I don’t see why you should,” he said. “I suppose people do go round the world.”
Fleur’s pallor had gone, now.
“But not you, dear; why, it would bore you stiff! It’s very sweet of you, even to think of it; but of course I couldn’t let you—at your age!”
“At my age?” said Soames. “I’m not so very old.”
“No, no, Dad; I’ll just dree my weird.”
Soames took another walk, without a sound. Dree her weird, indeed!
“I won’t have it,” he ejaculated; “if people can’t behave to you, I—I’ll show them!”
She had got up, and was breathing deeply, with her lips parted, and her cheeks very flushed. So she had stood, before her first party, holding out her frock for him to see.
“We’ll go,” he said, gruffly. “Don’t make a fuss! That’s settled.”