Chapter LXXXII: Part I: I.—encounter (4)

After dinner his mother played; she seemed to play all the things
he liked best, and he sat with one knee clasped, and his hair
standing up where his fingers had run through it. He gazed at his
mother while she played, but he saw Fleur—Fleur in the moonlit
orchard, Fleur in the sunlit gravel-pit, Fleur in that fancy
dress, swaying, whispering, stooping, kissing his forehead. Once,
while he listened, he forgot himself and glanced at his father in
that other easy chair. What was Dad looking like that for? The
expression on his face was so sad and puzzling. It filled him
with a sort of remorse, so that he got up and went and sat on the
arm of his father's chair. From there he could not see his face;
and again he saw Fleur—in his mother's hands, slim and white on
the keys, in the profile of her face and her powdery hair; and
down the long room in the open window where the May night walked
outside.

When he went up to bed his mother came into his room. She stood
at the window, and said:

“Those cypresses your grandfather planted down there have done
wonderfully. I always think they look beautiful under a dropping
moon. I wish you had known your grandfather, Jon.”

“Were you married to father when he was alive?” asked Jon
suddenly.

“No, dear; he died in '92—very old—eighty-five, I think.”

“Is Father like him?”

“A little, but more subtle, and not quite so solid.”

“I know, from grandfather's portrait; who painted that?”

“One of June's 'lame ducks.' But it's quite good.”

Jon slipped his hand through his mother's arm. “Tell me about the
family quarrel, Mum.”

He felt her arm quivering. “No, dear; that's for your Father some
day, if he thinks fit.”

“Then it was serious,” said Jon, with a catch in his breath.

“Yes.” And there was a silence, during which neither knew whether
the arm or the hand within it were quivering most.

“Some people,” said Irene softly, “think the moon on her back is
evil; to me she's always lovely. Look at those cypress shadows!
Jon, Father says we may go to Italy, you and I, for two months.
Would you like?”

Jon took his hand from under her arm; his sensation was so sharp
and so confused. Italy with his mother! A fortnight ago it would
have been perfection; now it filled him with dismay; he felt that
the sudden suggestion had to do with Fleur. He stammered out:

“Oh! yes; only—I don't know. Ought I—now I've just begun? I'd
like to think it over.”

Her voice answered, cool and gentle:

“Yes, dear; think it over. But better now than when you've begun
farming seriously. Italy with you! It would be nice!”

Jon put his arm round her waist, still slim and firm as a girl's.

“Do you think you ought to leave Father?” he said feebly, feeling
very mean.

“Father suggested it; he thinks you ought to see Italy at least
before you settle down to anything.”

The sense of meanness died in Jon; he knew, yes—he knew—that his
father and his mother were not speaking frankly, no more than he
himself. They wanted to keep him from Fleur. His heart hardened.
And, as if she felt that process going on, his mother said:

“Good-night, darling. Have a good sleep and think it over. But it
would be lovely!”

She pressed him to her so quickly that he did not see her face.
Jon stood feeling exactly as he used to when he was a naughty
little boy; sore because he was not loving, and because he was
justified in his own eyes.

But Irene, after she had stood a moment in her own room, passed
through the dressing-room between it and her husband's.

“Well?”

“He will think it over, Jolyon.”

Watching her lips that wore a little drawn smile, Jolyon said
quietly:

“You had better let me tell him, and have done with it. After
all, Jon has the instincts of a gentleman. He has only to
understand—”

“Only! He can't understand; that's impossible.”

“I believe I could have at his age.”

Irene caught his hand. “You were always more of a realist than
Jon; and never so innocent.”

“That's true,” said Jolyon. “It's queer, isn't it? You and I
would tell our stories to the world without a particle of shame;
but our own boy stumps us.”

“We've never cared whether the world approves or not.”

“Jon would not disapprove of us!”

“Oh! Jolyon, yes. He's in love, I feel he's in love. And he'd
say: 'My mother once married without love! How could she have!'
It'll seem to him a crime! And so it was!”

Jolyon took her hand, and said with a wry smile:

“Ah! why on earth are we born young? Now, if only we were born
old and grew younger year by year, we should understand how
things happen, and drop all our cursed intolerance. But you know
if the boy is really in love, he won't forget, even if he goes to
Italy. We're a tenacious breed; and he'll know by instinct why
he's being sent. Nothing will really cure him but the shock of
being told.”

“Let me try, anyway.”

Jolyon stood a moment without speaking. Between this devil and
this deep sea—the pain of a dreaded disclosure and the grief of
losing his wife for two months—he secretly hoped for the devil;
yet if she wished for the deep sea he must put up with it. After
all, it would be training for that departure from which there
would be no return. And, taking her in his arms, he kissed her
eyes, and said:

“As you will, my love.”

XI.—DUET

That “small” emotion, love, grows amazingly when threatened with
extinction. Jon reached Paddington station half an hour before
his time and a full week after, as it seemed to him. He stood at
the appointed bookstall, amid a crowd of Sunday travellers, in a
Harris tweed suit exhaling, as it were, the emotion of his
thumping heart. He read the names of the novels on the
book-stall, and bought one at last, to avoid being regarded with
suspicion by the book-stall clerk. It was called “The Heart of
the Trail!” which must mean something, though it did not seem to.
He also bought “The Lady's Mirror” and “The Landsman.” Every
minute was an hour long, and full of horrid imaginings. After
nineteen had passed, he saw her with a bag and a porter wheeling
her luggage. She came swiftly; she came cool. She greeted him as
if he were a brother.

“First class,” she said to the porter, “corner seats; opposite.”

Jon admired her frightful self-possession.

“Can't we get a carriage to ourselves,” he whispered.

“No good; it's a stopping train. After Maidenhead perhaps. Look
natural, Jon.”

Jon screwed his features into a scowl. They got in—with two other
beasts!—oh! heaven! He tipped the porter unnaturally, in his
confusion. The brute deserved nothing for putting them in there,
and looking as if he knew all about it into the bargain.

Fleur hid herself behind “The Lady's Mirror.” Jon imitated her
behind “The Landsman.” The train started. Fleur let “The Lady's
Mirror” fall and leaned forward.

“Well?” she said.

“It's seemed about fifteen days.”

She nodded, and Jon's face lighted up at once.

“Look natural,” murmured Fleur, and went off into a bubble of
laughter. It hurt him. How could he look natural with Italy
hanging over him? He had meant to break it to her gently, but now
he blurted it out.

“They want me to go to Italy with Mother for two months.”

Fleur drooped her eyelids; turned a little pale, and bit her
lips. “Oh!” she said. It was all, but it was much.

That “Oh!” was like the quick drawback of the wrist in fencing
ready for riposte. It came.

“You must go!”

“Go?” said Jon in a strangled voice.

“Of course.”

“But—two months—it's ghastly.”

“No,” said Fleur, “six weeks. You'll have forgotten me by then.
We'll meet in the National Gallery the day after you get back.”

Jon laughed.

“But suppose you've forgotten me,” he muttered into the noise of
the train.

Fleur shook her head.

“Some other beast—” murmured Jon.

Her foot touched his.

“No other beast,” she said, lifting “The Lady's Mirror.”

The train stopped; two passengers got out, and one got in.

'I shall die,' thought Jon, 'if we're not alone at all.'

The train went on; and again Fleur leaned forward.

“I never let go,” she said; “do you?”

Jon shook his head vehemently.

“Never!” he said. “Will you write to me?”

“No; but you can—to my Club.”

She had a Club; she was wonderful!

“Did you pump Holly?” he muttered.

“Yes, but I got nothing. I didn't dare pump hard.”

“What can it be?” cried Jon.

“I shall find out all right.”

A long silence followed till Fleur said: “This is Maidenhead;
stand by, Jon!”

The train stopped. The remaining passenger got out. Fleur drew
down her blind.

“Quick!” she cried. “Hang out! Look as much of a beast as you
can.”

Jon blew his nose, and scowled; never in all his life had he
scowled like that! An old lady recoiled, a young one tried the
handle. It turned, but the door would not open. The train moved,
the young lady darted to another carriage.

“What luck!” cried Jon. “It Jammed.”

“Yes,” said Fleur; “I was holding it.”

The train moved out, and Jon fell on his knees.

“Look out for the corridor,” she whispered; “and—quick!”

Her lips met his. And though their kiss only lasted perhaps ten
seconds, Jon's soul left his body and went so far beyond, that,
when he was again sitting opposite that demure figure, he was
pale as death. He heard her sigh, and the sound seemed to him the
most precious he had ever heard—an exquisite declaration that he
meant something to her.

“Six weeks isn't really long,” she said; “and you can easily make
it six if you keep your head out there, and never seem to think
of me.”

Jon gasped.

“This is just what's really wanted, Jon, to convince them, don't
you see? If we're just as bad when you come back they'll stop
being ridiculous about it. Only, I'm sorry it's not Spain;
there's a girl in a Goya picture at Madrid who's like me, Father
says. Only she isn't—we've got a copy of her.”

It was to Jon like a ray of sunshine piercing through a fog.
“I'll make it Spain,” he said, “Mother won't mind; she's never
been there. And my Father thinks a lot of Goya.”

“Oh! yes, he's a painter—isn't he?”

“Only water-colour,” said Jon, with honesty.

“When we come to Reading, Jon, get out first and go down to
Caversham lock and wait for me. I'll send the car home and we'll
walk by the towing-path.”

Jon seized her hand in gratitude, and they sat silent, with the
world well lost, and one eye on the corridor. But the train
seemed to run twice as fast now, and its sound was almost lost in
that of Jon's sighing.

“We're getting near,” said Fleur; “the towing-path's awfully
exposed. One more! Oh! Jon, don't forget me.”

Jon answered with his kiss. And very soon, a flushed,
distracted-looking youth could have been seen—as they say—leaping
from the train and hurrying along the platform, searching his
pockets for his ticket.

When at last she rejoined him on the towing-path a little beyond
Caversham lock he had made an effort, and regained some measure
of equanimity. If they had to part, he would not make a scene! A
breeze by the bright river threw the white side of the willow
leaves up into the sunlight, and followed those two with its
faint rustle.

“I told our chauffeur that I was train-giddy,” said Fleur. “Did
you look pretty natural as you went out?”

“I don't know. What is natural?”

“It's natural to you to look seriously happy. When I first saw
you I thought you weren't a bit like other people.”

“Exactly what I thought when I saw you. I knew at once I should
never love anybody else.”

Fleur laughed.

“We're absurdly young. And love's young dream is out of date,
Jon. Besides, it's awfully wasteful. Think of all the fun you
might have. You haven't begun, even; it's a shame, really. And
there's me. I wonder!”

Confusion came on Jon's spirit. How could she say such things
just as they were going to part?

“If you feel like that,” he said, “I can't go. I shall tell
Mother that I ought to try and work. There's always the condition
of the world!”

“The condition of the world!”

Jon thrust his hands deep into his pockets.

“But there is,” he said; “think of the people starving!”

Fleur shook her head. “No, no, I never, never will make myself
miserable for nothing.”

“Nothing! But there's an awful state of things, and of course one
ought to help.”

“Oh! yes, I know all that. But you can't help people, Jon;
they're hopeless. When you pull them out they only get into
another hole. Look at them, still fighting and plotting and
struggling, though they're dying in heaps all the time. Idiots!”

“Aren't you sorry for them?”

“Oh! sorry—yes, but I'm not going to make myself unhappy about
it; that's no good.”

And they were silent, disturbed by this first glimpse of each
other's natures.

“I think people are brutes and idiots,” said Fleur stubbornly.

“I think they're poor wretches,” said Jon. It was as if they had
quarrelled—and at this supreme and awful moment, with parting
visible out there in that last gap of the willows!

“Well, go and help your poor wretches, and don't think of me.”

Jon stood still. Sweat broke out on his forehead, and his limbs
trembled. Fleur too had stopped, and was frowning at the river.

“I must believe in things,” said Jon with a sort of agony; “we're
all meant to enjoy life.”

Fleur laughed. “Yes; and that's what you won't do, if you don't
take care. But perhaps your idea of enjoyment is to make yourself
wretched. There are lots of people like that, of course.”

She was pale, her eyes had darkened, her lips had thinned. Was it
Fleur thus staring at the water? Jon had an unreal feeling as if
he were passing through the scene in a book where the lover has
to choose between love and duty. But just then she looked round
at him. Never was anything so intoxicating as that vivacious
look. It acted on him exactly as the tug of a chain acts on a
dog—brought him up to her with his tail wagging and his tongue
out.

“Don't let's be silly,” she said, “time's too short. Look, Jon,
you can just see where I've got to cross the river. There, round
the bend, where the woods begin.”

Jon saw a gable, a chimney or two, a patch of wall through the
trees—and felt his heart sink.

“I mustn't dawdle any more. It's no good going beyond the next
hedge, it gets all open. Let's get on to it and say good-bye.”

They went side by side, hand in hand, silently toward the hedge,
where the may-flower, both pink and white, was in full bloom.

“My Club's the 'Talisman,' Stratton Street, Piccadilly. Letters
there will be quite safe, and I'm almost always up once a week.”

Jon nodded. His face had become extremely set, his eyes stared
straight before him.

“To-day's the twenty-third of May,” said Fleur; “on the ninth of
July I shall be in front of the 'Bacchus and Ariadne' at three
o'clock; will you?”

“I will.”

“If you feel as bad as I it's all right. Let those people pass!”

A man and woman airing their children went by strung out in
Sunday fashion.

The last of them passed the wicket gate.

“Domesticity!” said Fleur, and blotted herself against the
hawthorn hedge. The blossom sprayed out above her head, and one
pink cluster brushed her cheek. Jon put up his hand jealously to
keep it off.

“Good-bye, Jon.” For a second they stood with hands hard clasped.
Then their lips met for the third time, and when they parted
Fleur broke away and fled through the wicket gate. Jon stood
where she had left him, with his forehead against that pink
cluster. Gone! For an eternity—for seven weeks all but two days!
And here he was, wasting the last sight of her! He rushed to the
gate. She was walking swiftly on the heels of the straggling
children. She turned her head, he saw her hand make a little
flitting gesture; then she sped on, and the trailing family
blotted her out from his view.

The words of a comic song—
“Paddington groan-worst ever known He gave a sepulchral
Paddington groan—”

came into his head, and he sped incontinently back to Reading
station. All the way up to London and down to Wansdon he sat with
“The Heart of the Trail” open on his knee, knitting in his head a
poem so full of feeling that it would not rhyme.

XII.—CAPRICE

Fleur sped on. She had need of rapid motion; she was late, and
wanted all her wits about her when she got in. She passed the
islands, the station, and hotel, and was about to take the ferry,
when she saw a skiff with a young man standing up in it, and
holding to the bushes.

“Miss Forsyte,” he said; “let me put you across. I've come on
purpose.”

She looked at him in blank amazement.

“It's all right, I've been having tea with your people. I thought
I'd save you the last bit. It's on my way, I'm just off back to
Pangbourne. My name's Mont. I saw you at the picture-gallery—you
remember—when your father invited me to see his pictures.”

“Oh!” said Fleur; “yes—the handkerchief.”

To this young man she owed Jon; and, taking his hand, she stepped
down into the skiff. Still emotional, and a little out of breath,
she sat silent; not so the young man. She had never heard any one
say so much in so short a time. He told her his age, twenty-four;
his weight, ten stone eleven; his place of residence, not far
away; described his sensations under fire, and what it felt like
to be gassed; criticized the Juno, mentioned his own conception
of that goddess; commented on the Goya copy, said Fleur was not
too awfully like it; sketched in rapidly the condition of
England; spoke of Monsieur Profond—or whatever his name was—as
“an awful sport”; thought her father had some “ripping” pictures
and some rather “dug-up”; hoped he might row down again and take
her on the river because he was quite trustworthy; inquired her
opinion of Tchekov, gave her his own; wished they could go to the
Russian ballet together some time—considered the name Fleur
Forsyte simply topping; cursed his people for giving him the name
of Michael on the top of Mont; outlined his father, and said that
if she wanted a good book she should read “Job”; his father was
rather like Job while Job still had land.

“But Job didn't have land,” Fleur murmured; “he only had flocks
and herds and moved on.”

“Ah!” answered Michael Mont, “I wish my gov'nor would move on.
Not that I want his land. Land's an awful bore in these days,
don't you think?”

“We never have it in my family,” said Fleur. “We have everything
else. I believe one of my great-uncles once had a sentimental
farm in Dorset, because we came from there originally, but it
cost him more than it made him happy.”

“Did he sell it?”

“No; he kept it.”

“Why?”

“Because nobody would buy it.”

“Good for the old boy!”

“No, it wasn't good for him. Father says it soured him. His name
was Swithin.”

“What a corking name!”

“Do you know that we're getting farther off, not nearer? This
river flows.”

“Splendid!” cried Mont, dipping his sculls vaguely; “it's good to
meet a girl who's got wit.”

“But better to meet a young man who's got it in the plural.”

Young Mont raised a hand to tear his hair.

“Look out!” cried Fleur. “Your scull!”

“All right! It's thick enough to bear a scratch.”

“Do you mind sculling?” said Fleur severely. “I want to get in.”

“Ah!” said Mont; “but when you get in, you see, I shan't see you
any more to-day. Fini, as the French girl said when she jumped on
her bed after saying her prayers. Don't you bless the day that
gave you a French mother, and a name like yours?”

“I like my name, but Father gave it me. Mother wanted me called
Marguerite.”

“Which is absurd. Do you mind calling me M. M. and letting me
call you F. F.? It's in the spirit of the age.”

“I don't mind anything, so long as I get in.”

Mont caught a little crab, and answered: “That was a nasty one!”

“Please row.”

“I am.” And he did for several strokes, looking at her with
rueful eagerness. “Of course, you know,” he ejaculated, pausing,
“that I came to see you, not your father's pictures.”

Fleur rose.

“If you don't row, I shall get out and swim.”

“Really and truly? Then I could come in after you.”

“Mr. Mont, I'm late and tired; please put me on shore at once.”

When she stepped out on to the garden landing-stage he rose, and
grasping his hair with both hands, looked at her.

Fleur smiled.

“Don't!” cried the irrepressible Mont. “I know you're going to
say: 'Out, damned hair!'”

Fleur whisked round, threw him a wave of her hand. “Good-bye, Mr.
M.M.!” she called, and was gone among the rose-trees. She looked
at her wrist-watch and the windows of the house. It struck her as
curiously uninhabited. Past six! The pigeons were just gathering
to roost, and sunlight slanted on the dovecot, on their snowy
feathers, and beyond in a shower on the top boughs of the woods.
The click of billiard-balls came from the ingle-nook—Jack
Cardigan, no doubt; a faint rustling, too, from an
eucalyptus-tree, startling Southerner in this old English garden.
She reached the verandah and was passing in, but stopped at the
sound of voices from the drawing-room to her left. Mother!
Monsieur Profond! From behind the verandah screen which fenced
the ingle-nook she heard these words:

“I don't, Annette.”

Did Father know that he called her mother “Annette”? Always on
the side of her Father—as children are ever on one side or the
other in houses where relations are a little strained—she stood,
uncertain. Her mother was speaking in her low, pleasing, slightly
metallic voice—one word she caught: “Demain.” And Profond's
answer: “All right.” Fleur frowned. A little sound came out into
the stillness. Then Profond's voice: “I'm takin' a small stroll.”

Fleur darted through the window into the morning-room. There he
came from the drawing-room, crossing the verandah, down the lawn;
and the click of billiard-balls which, in listening for other
sounds, she had ceased to hear, began again. She shook herself,
passed into the hall, and opened the drawing-room door. Her
mother was sitting on the sofa between the windows, her knees
crossed, her head resting on a cushion, her lips half parted, her
eyes half closed. She looked extraordinarily handsome.

“Ah! Here you are, Fleur! Your father is beginning to fuss.”

“Where is he?”

“In the picture-gallery. Go up!”

“What are you going to do to-morrow, Mother?”

“To-morrow? I go up to London with your aunt.”

“I thought you might be. Will you get me a quite plain parasol?”

“What colour?”

“Green. They're all going back, I suppose.”

“Yes, all; you will console your father. Kiss me, then.”

Fleur crossed the room, stooped, received a kiss on her forehead,
and went out past the impress of a form on the sofa-cushions in
the other corner. She ran up-stairs.

Fleur was by no means the old-fashioned daughter who demands the
regulation of her parents' lives in accordance with the standard
imposed upon herself. She claimed to regulate her own life, not
those of others; besides, an unerring instinct for what was
likely to advantage her own case was already at work. In a
disturbed domestic atmosphere the heart she had set on Jon would
have a better chance. None the less was she offended, as a flower
by a crisping wind. If that man had really been kissing her
mother it was—serious, and her father ought to know. “Demain!”
“All right!” And her mother going up to Town! She turned into her
bedroom and hung out of the window to cool her face, which had
suddenly grown very hot. Jon must be at the station by now! What
did her father know about Jon? Probably everything—pretty nearly!

She changed her dress, so as to look as if she had been in some
time, and ran up to the gallery.

Soames was standing stubbornly still before his Alfred
Stevens—the picture he loved best. He did not turn at the sound
of the door, but she knew he had heard, and she knew he was hurt.
She came up softly behind him, put her arms round his neck, and
poked her face over his shoulder till her cheek lay against his.
It was an advance which had never yet failed, but it failed her
now, and she augured the worst. “Well,” he said stonily, “so
you've come!”

“Is that all,” murmured Fleur, “from a bad parent?” And she
rubbed her cheek against his.

Soames shook his head so far as that was possible.

“Why do you keep me on tenterhooks like this, putting me off and
off?”

“Darling, it was very harmless.”

“Harmless! Much you know what's harmless and what isn't.”

Fleur dropped her arms.

“Well, then, dear, suppose you tell me; and be quite frank about
it.”

And she went over to the window-seat.

Her father had turned from his picture, and was staring at his
feet. He looked very grey. 'He has nice small feet,' she thought,
catching his eye, at once averted from her.

“You're my only comfort,” said Soames suddenly, “and you go on
like this.”

Fleur's heart began to beat.

“Like what, dear?”

Again Soames gave her a look which, but for the affection in it,
might have been called furtive.

“You know what I told you,” he said. “I don't choose to have
anything to do with that branch of our family.”

“Yes, ducky, but I don't know why I shouldn't.”

Soames turned on his heel.

“I'm not going into the reasons,” he said; “you ought to trust
me, Fleur!”

The way he spoke those words affected Fleur, but she thought of
Jon, and was silent, tapping her foot against the wainscot.
Unconsciously she had assumed a modern attitude, with one leg
twisted in and out of the other, with her chin on one bent wrist,
her other arm across her chest, and its hand hugging her elbow;
there was not a line of her that was not involuted, and yet—in
spite of all—she retained a certain grace.

“You knew my wishes,” Soames went on, “and yet you stayed on
there four days. And I suppose that boy came with you to-day.”

Fleur kept her eyes on him.

“I don't ask you anything,” said Soames; “I make no inquisition
where you're concerned.”

Fleur suddenly stood up, leaning out at the window with her chin
on her hands. The sun had sunk behind trees, the pigeons were
perched, quite still, on the edge of the dove-cot; the click of
the billiard-balls mounted, and a faint radiance shone out below
where Jack Cardigan had turned the light up.

“Will it make you any happier,” she said suddenly, “if I promise
you not to see him for say—the next six weeks?” She was not
prepared for a sort of tremble in the blankness of his voice.

“Six weeks? Six years—sixty years more like. Don't delude
yourself, Fleur; don't delude yourself!”

Fleur turned in alarm.

“Father, what is it?”

Soames came close enough to see her face.

“Don't tell me,” he said, “that you're foolish enough to have any
feeling beyond caprice. That would be too much!” And he laughed.

Fleur, who had never heard him laugh like that, thought: 'Then it
is deep! Oh! what is it?' And putting her hand through his arm
she said lightly:

“No, of course; caprice. Only, I like my caprices and I don't
like yours, dear.”

“Mine!” said Soames bitterly, and turned away.

The light outside had chilled, and threw a chalky whiteness on
the river. The trees had lost all gaiety of colour. She felt a
sudden hunger for Jon's face, for his hands, and the feel of his
lips again on hers. And pressing her arms tight across her breast
she forced out a little light laugh.

“O la! la! What a small fuss! as Profond would say. Father, I
don't like that man.”

She saw him stop, and take something out of his breast pocket.

“You don't?” he said. “Why?”

“Nothing,” murmured Fleur; “just caprice!”

“No,” said Soames; “not caprice!” And he tore what was in his
hands across. “You're right. I don't like him either!”

“Look!” said Fleur softly. “There he goes! I hate his shoes; they
don't make any noise.”

Down in the failing light Prosper Profond moved, his hands in his
side pockets, whistling softly in his beard; he stopped, and
glanced up at the sky, as if saying: “I don't think much of that
small moon.”

Fleur drew back. “Isn't he a great cat?” she whispered; and the
sharp click of the billiard-balls rose, as if Jack Cardigan had
capped the cat, the moon, caprice, and tragedy with: “In off the
red!”

Monsieur Profond had resumed his stroll, to a teasing little tune
in his beard. What was it? Oh! yes, from “Rigoletto”: “Donna a
mobile.” Just what he would think! She squeezed her father's arm.

“Prowling!” she muttered, as he turned the corner of the house.
It was past that disillusioned moment which divides the day and
night-still and lingering and warm, with hawthorn scent and lilac
scent clinging on the riverside air. A blackbird suddenly burst
out. Jon would be in London by now; in the Park perhaps, crossing
the Serpentine, thinking of her! A little sound beside her made
her turn her eyes; her father was again tearing the paper in his
hands. Fleur saw it was a cheque.

“I shan't sell him my Gauguin,” he said. “I don't know what your
aunt and Imogen see in him.”

“Or Mother.”

“Your mother!” said Soames.

'Poor Father!' she thought. 'He never looks happy—not really
happy. I don't want to make him worse, but of course I shall have
to, when Jon comes back. Oh! well, sufficient unto the night!'

“I'm going to dress,” she said.

In her room she had a fancy to put on her “freak” dress. It was
of gold tissue with little trousers of the same, tightly drawn in
at the ankles, a page's cape slung from the shoulders, little
gold shoes, and a gold-winged Mercury helmet; and all over her
were tiny gold bells, especially on the helmet; so that if she
shook her head she pealed. When she was dressed she felt quite
sick because Jon could not see her; it even seemed a pity that
the sprightly young man Michael Mont would not have a view. But
the gong had sounded, and she went down.

She made a sensation in the drawing-room. Winifred thought it
“Most amusing.” Imogen was enraptured. Jack Cardigan called it
“stunning,” “ripping,” “topping,” and “corking.”

Monsieur Profond, smiling with his eyes, said: “That's a nice
small dress!” Her mother, very handsome in black, sat looking at
her, and said nothing. It remained for her father to apply the
test of common sense. “What did you put on that thing for? You're
not going to dance.”

Fleur spun round, and the bells pealed.

“Caprice!”

Soames stared at her, and, turning away, gave his arm to
Winifred. Jack Cardigan took her mother. Prosper Profond took
Imogen. Fleur went in by herself, with her bells jingling....

The “small” moon had soon dropped down, and May night had fallen
soft and warm, enwrapping with its grape-bloom colour and its
scents the billion caprices, intrigues, passions, longings, and
regrets of men and women. Happy was Jack Cardigan who snored into
Imogen's white shoulder, fit as a flea; or Timothy in his
“mausoleum,” too old for anything but baby's slumber. For so many
lay awake, or dreamed, teased by the criss-cross of the world.

The dew fell and the flowers closed; cattle grazed on in the
river meadows, feeling with their tongues for the grass they
could not see; and the sheep on the Downs lay quiet as stones.
Pheasants in the tall trees of the Pangbourne woods, larks on
their grassy nests above the gravel-pit at Wansdon, swallows in
the eaves at Robin Hill, and the sparrows of Mayfair, all made a
dreamless night of it, soothed by the lack of wind. The Mayfly
filly, hardly accustomed to her new quarters, scraped at her
straw a little; and the few night-flitting things—bats, moths,
owls—were vigorous in the warm darkness; but the peace of night
lay in the brain of all day-time Nature, colourless and still.
Men and women, alone, riding the hobby-horses of anxiety or love,
burned their wavering tapers of dream and thought into the lonely
hours.

Fleur, leaning out of her window, heard the hall clock's muffled
chime of twelve, the tiny splash of a fish, the sudden shaking of
an aspen's leaves in the puffs of breeze that rose along the
river, the distant rumble of a night train, and time and again
the sounds which none can put a name to in the darkness, soft
obscure expressions of uncatalogued emotions from man and beast,
bird and machine, or, maybe, from departed Forsytes, Darties,
Cardigans, taking night strolls back into a world which had once
suited their embodied spirits. But Fleur heeded not these sounds;
her spirit, far from disembodied, fled with swift wing from
railway-carriage to flowery hedge, straining after Jon, tenacious
of his forbidden image, and the sound of his voice, which was
taboo. And she crinkled her nose, retrieving from the perfume of
the riverside night that moment when his hand slipped between the
mayflowers and her cheek. Long she leaned out in her freak dress,
keen to burn her wings at life's candle; while the moths brushed
her cheeks on their pilgrimage to the lamp on her dressing-table,
ignorant that in a Forsyte's house there is no open flame. But at
last even she felt sleepy, and, forgetting her bells, drew
quickly in.

Through the open window of his room, alongside Annette's, Soames,
wakeful too, heard their thin faint tinkle, as it might be shaken
from stars, or the dewdrops falling from a flower, if one could
hear such sounds.

'Caprice!' he thought. 'I can't tell. She's wilful. What shall I
do? Fleur!'

And long into the “small” night he brooded.