Chapter X: Soames Entertains the Future

It was full late for the river, but the weather was lovely, and
summer lingered below the yellowing leaves. Soames took many
looks at the day from his riverside garden near Mapledurham that
Sunday morning.

With his own hands he put flowers about his little house-boat,
and equipped the punt, in which, after lunch, he proposed to take
them on the river. Placing those Chinese-looking cushions, he
could not tell whether or no he wished to take Annette alone. She
was so very pretty—could he trust himself not to say irrevocable
words, passing beyond the limits of discretion? Roses on the
veranda were still in bloom, and the hedges ever-green, so that
there was almost nothing of middle-aged autumn to chill the mood;
yet was he nervous, fidgety, strangely distrustful of his powers
to steer just the right course. This visit had been planned to
produce in Annette and her mother a due sense of his possessions,
so that they should be ready to receive with respect any overture
he might later be disposed to make. He dressed with great care,
making himself neither too young nor too old, very thankful that
his hair was still thick and smooth and had no grey in it. Three
times he went up to his picture-gallery. If they had any
knowledge at all, they must see at once that his collection alone
was worth at least thirty thousand pounds. He minutely inspected,
too, the pretty bedroom overlooking the river where they would
take off their hats. It would be her bedroom if—if the matter
went through, and she became his wife. Going up to the
dressing-table he passed his hand over the lilac-coloured
pincushion, into which were stuck all kinds of pins; a bowl of
pot-pourri exhaled a scent that made his head turn just a little.
His wife! If only the whole thing could be settled out of hand,
and there was not the nightmare of this divorce to be gone
through first; and with gloom puckered on his forehead, he looked
out at the river shining beyond the roses and the lawn. Madame
Lamotte would never resist this prospect for her child; Annette
would never resist her mother. If only he were free! He drove to
the station to meet them. What taste Frenchwomen had! Madame
Lamotte was in black with touches of lilac colour, Annette in
greyish lilac linen, with cream coloured gloves and hat. Rather
pale she looked and Londony; and her blue eyes were demure.
Waiting for them to come down to lunch, Soames stood in the open
french-window of the diningroom moved by that sensuous delight in
sunshine and flowers and trees which only came to the full when
youth and beauty were there to share it with one. He had ordered
the lunch with intense consideration; the wine was a very special
Sauterne, the whole appointments of the meal perfect, the coffee
served on the veranda super-excellent. Madame Lamotte accepted
creme de menthe; Annette refused. Her manners were charming, with
just a suspicion of “the conscious beauty” creeping into them.
“Yes,” thought Soames, “another year of London and that sort of
life, and she’ll be spoiled.”

Madame was in sedate French raptures. “_Adorable! Le soleil est
si bon!_ How everything is _chic_, is it not, Annette? Monsieur
is a real Monte Cristo.” Annette murmured assent, with a look up
at Soames which he could not read. He proposed a turn on the
river. But to punt two persons when one of them looked so
ravishing on those Chinese cushions was merely to suffer from a
sense of lost opportunity; so they went but a short way towards
Pangbourne, drifting slowly back, with every now and then an
autumn leaf dropping on Annette or on her mother’s black
amplitude. And Soames was not happy, worried by the thought:
“How—when—where—can I say—what?” They did not yet even know that
he was married. To tell them he was married might jeopardise his
every chance; yet, if he did not definitely make them understand
that he wished for Annette’s hand, it would be dropping into some
other clutch before he was free to claim it.

At tea, which they both took with lemon, Soames spoke of the
Transvaal.

“There’ll be war,” he said.

Madame Lamotte lamented.

“_Ces pauvres gens bergers!_” Could they not be left to
themselves?

Soames smiled—the question seemed to him absurd.

Surely as a woman of business she understood that the British
could not abandon their legitimate commercial interests.

“Ah! that!” But Madame Lamotte found that the English were a
little hypocrite. They were talking of justice and the
Uitlanders, not of business. Monsieur was the first who had
spoken to her of that.

“The Boers are only half-civilised,” remarked Soames; “they stand
in the way of progress. It will never do to let our suzerainty
go.”

“What does that mean to say? Suzerainty!”

“What a strange word!” Soames became eloquent, roused by these
threats to the principle of possession, and stimulated by
Annette’s eyes fixed on him. He was delighted when presently she
said:

“I think Monsieur is right. They should be taught a lesson.” She
was sensible!

“Of course,” he said, “we must act with moderation. I’m no jingo.
We must be firm without bullying. Will you come up and see my
pictures?” Moving from one to another of these treasures, he soon
perceived that they knew nothing. They passed his last Mauve,
that remarkable study of a “Hay-cart going Home,” as if it were a
lithograph. He waited almost with awe to see how they would view
the jewel of his collection—an Israels whose price he had watched
ascending till he was now almost certain it had reached top
value, and would be better on the market again. They did not view
it at all. This was a shock; and yet to have in Annette a virgin
taste to form would be better than to have the silly, half-baked
predilections of the English middle-class to deal with. At the
end of the gallery was a Meissonier of which he was rather
ashamed—Meissonier was so steadily going down. Madame Lamotte
stopped before it.

“Meissonier! Ah! What a jewel!” Soames took advantage of that
moment. Very gently touching Annette’s arm, he said:

“How do you like my place, Annette?”

She did not shrink, did not respond; she looked at him full,
looked down, and murmured:

“Who would not like it? It is so beautiful!”

“Perhaps some day—” Soames said, and stopped.

So pretty she was, so self-possessed—she frightened him. Those
cornflower-blue eyes, the turn of that creamy neck, her delicate
curves—she was a standing temptation to indiscretion! No! No! One
must be sure of one’s ground—much surer! “If I hold off,” he
thought, “it will tantalise her.” And he crossed over to Madame
Lamotte, who was still in front of the Meissonier.

“Yes, that’s quite a good example of his later work. You must
come again, Madame, and see them lighted up. You must both come
and spend a night.”

Enchanted, would it not be beautiful to see them lighted? By
moonlight too, the river must be ravishing!

Annette murmured:

“Thou art sentimental, _Maman!_”

Sentimental! That black-robed, comely, substantial Frenchwoman of
the world! And suddenly he was certain as he could be that there
was no sentiment in either of them. All the better. Of what use
sentiment? And yet...!

He drove to the station with them, and saw them into the train.
To the tightened pressure of his hand it seemed that Annette’s
fingers responded just a little; her face smiled at him through
the dark.

He went back to the carriage, brooding. “Go on home, Jordan,” he
said to the coachman; “I’ll walk.” And he strode out into the
darkening lanes, caution and the desire of possession playing
see-saw within him. “_Bon soir, monsieur!_” How softly she had
said it. To know what was in her mind! The French—they were like
cats—one could tell nothing! But—how pretty! What a perfect young
thing to hold in one’s arms! What a mother for his heir! And he
thought, with a smile, of his family and their surprise at a
French wife, and their curiosity, and of the way he would play
with it and buffet it confound them!

The poplars sighed in the darkness; an owl hooted. Shadows
deepened in the water. “I will and must be free,” he thought. “I
won’t hang about any longer. I’ll go and see Irene. If you want
things done, do them yourself. I must live again—live and move
and have my being.” And in echo to that queer biblicality
church-bells chimed the call to evening prayer.