The Forsyte Saga, Volume 2 (46 page)

‘Money?' said the soft man.

‘Not so very much. Michael's such dead nuts on her that he's getting dull; though it's partly Parliament, of course. Have you heard them talk this Foggartism? All food, children, and the future – the very dregs of dullness.'

‘Novelty,' purred the soft man, ‘is the vice of our age.'

‘One resents a nobody like her climbing in on piffle like this Foggartism. Did you read the book?'

‘Hardly. Did you?'

‘No jolly fear! I'm sorry for Michael. He's being exploited by that little snob.'

Penned without an outlet, Soames had begun breathing hard. Feeling a draught, perhaps, the young woman turned to encounter a pair of eyes so grey, so cold, in a face so concentrated, that she moved away. ‘Who was that old buffer?' she asked of the soft man; ‘he gave me “the jim-jams.”'

The soft man thought it might be a poor relation – he didn't seem to know anybody.

But Soames had already gone across to Michael.

‘Who's the young woman with the red hair?'

‘Marjorie Ferrar.'

‘She's the traitresss – turn her out!'

Michael stared.

‘But we know her quite well – she's a daughter of Lord Charles Ferrar, and –'

‘Turn her out!' said Soames again.

‘How do you know that she's the traitresss, sir?'

‘I've just heard her use the very words of that paragraph, and worse.'

‘But she's our guest.'

‘Pretty guest!' growled Soames through his teeth.

‘One can't turn a guest out. Besides, she is the granddaughter of a marques and the pet of the Panjoys – it would make the deuce of a scandal.'

‘Make it, then!'

‘We won't ask her again; but really, that's all one can do.'

‘Is it?' said Soames; and walking past his son-in-law, he went towards the object of his denunciation. Michael followed, much perturbed. He had never yet seen his father-in-law with his teeth bared. He arrived in time to hear him say in a low but quite audible voice:

‘You were good enough, madam, to call my daughter a snob in her own house.'

Michael saw the de-shingled neck turn and rear, the hard blue eyes stare with a sort of outraged impudence; he heard her laugh, then Soames saying:

‘You are a traitresss; be so kind as to withdraw.'

Of the half-dozen people round, not a soul was missing it! Oh, hell! And he the master of the house! Stepping forward, he put his arm through that of Soames:

‘That'll do, sir,' he said, quietly; ‘this is not a Peace Conference.'

There was a horrid hush; and in all the group only the soft man's white hands, washing each other, moved.

Marjorie Ferrar took a step towards the door.

‘I don't know who this person is,' she said; ‘but he's a liar.'

‘I reckon not.'

At the edge of the little group was a dark young man. His eyes were fixed on Marjorie Ferrar's, whose eyes in turn were fixed on his.

And suddenly, Michael saw Fleur, very pale, standing just behind him. She must have heard it all! She smiled, waved her hand, and said:

‘Madame Carelli's going to play.'

Marjorie Ferrar walked on towards the door, and the soft man followed her, still washing those hands, as if trying to rid
them of the incident. Soames, like a slow dog making sure, walked after them; Michael walked after him. The words ‘How amusing!' floated back, and a soft echoing snigger. Slam ! Both outer door and incident were closed.

Michael wiped his forehead. One half of the brain behind admired his father-in-law; the other thought: ‘Well, the old man
has
gone and done it !' He went back into the drawing-room. Fleur was standing near the clavichord, as if nothing had happened. But Michael could see her fingers crisping at her dress; and his heart felt sore. He waited, quivering, for the last chord.

Soames had gone upstairs. Before ‘The White Monkey' in Michael's study, he reviewed his own conduct. He regretted nothing. Red-headed cat! ‘Born snob!' ‘Money? Not very much.' Ha! ‘A nobody like her!' Granddaughter of a marquess, was she? Well, he had shown the insolent baggage the door. All that was sturdy in his fibre, all that was acrid in his blood, all that resented patronage and privilege, the inherited spirit of his forefathers, moved within him. Who were the aristocracy, to give themselves airs? Jackanapes! Half of 'em descendants of those who had got what they had by robbery or jobbery! That one should call his daughter,
his
daughter, a snob! He wouldn't lift a finger, wouldn't cross a road, to meet the Duke of Seven Dials himself! If Fleur liked to amuse herself by having people round her, why shouldn't she? His blood ran suddenly a little cold. Would she say that he had spoiled her ‘salon'? Well! He couldn't help it if she did; better to have had the thing out, and got rid of that cat, and know where they all were. ‘I shan't wait up for her,' he thought. ‘Storm in a tea-cup!'

The thin strumming of the clavichord came up to him out on the landing, waiting to climb to his room. He wondered if these evenings woke the baby. A gruff sound at his feet made him jump. That dog lying outside the baby's door! He wished the little beggar had been downstairs just now – he would have known how to put his teeth through that red-haired cat's nude stockings. He passed' on up, looking at Francis Wilmot's door, which was opposite his own.

That young American chap must have overheard something too; but he shouldn't allude to the matter with him; not dignified. And, shutting his door on the strumming of the clavichord, Soames closed his eyes again as best he could.

SOUNDS IN THE NIGHT

M
ICHAEL
had never heard Fleur cry, and to see her, flung down across the bed, smothering her sobs in the quilt, gave him a feeling akin to panic. She stopped at his touch on her hair, and lay still.

‘Buck up, darling!' he said bendy. ‘If you aren't one, what does it matter?'

She struggled up, and sat cross-legged, her flushed face smudged with tears, her hair disordered.

‘Who cares what one is? It's what one's labelled.'

‘Well, we've labelled her “Traitress”.'

‘As if that made it better! We all talk behind people's backs. Who minds that? But how can I go on when everybody is sniggering and thinking me a lion-hunting snob? She'll cry it all over London in revenge. How can I have any more evenings?'

Was it for her career, or his, that she was sorrowing? Michael went round to the other side of the bed and put his arms about her from behind.

‘Never mind what people think, my child. Sooner or later one's got to face that, anyway.'

‘It's you who aren't facing it. If I'm not thought nice, I can't
be
nice.'

‘Only the people who really know one matter.'

‘Nobody knows one,' said Fleur sullenly. ‘The fonder they are, the less they know, and the less it matters what they think.'

Michael withdrew his arms.

She sat silent for so long that he went back to the other side of the bed to see if he could tell anything from her face resting moodily on her hands. The grace of her body thus cramped was such that his senses ached. And since caresses would only worry her, he ached the more.

‘I hate her,' she said at last; ‘and if I can hurt her, I will.'

He would have liked to hurt the ‘pet of the Panjoys' himself, but it did not console him to hear Fleur utter that sentiment; it meant more from her than from himself, who, when it came to the point, was a poor hand at hurting people.

‘Well, darling,' he said, ‘shall we sleep on it?'

‘I said I wouldn't have any more evenings; but I shall.'

‘Good!' said Michael; ‘that's the spirit.'

She laughed. It was a funny hard little sound in the night. And with it Michael had to remain discontented.

All through the house it was a wakeful night. Soames had the three o'clock tremors, which cigars and the fresh air wherein he was obliged to play his golf had subdued for some time past. He was disturbed, too, by that confounded great clock from hour to hour, and by a stealthy noise between three and four, as of someone at large in the house.

This was, in fact, Francis Wilmot. Ever since his impulsive denial that Soames was a liar, the young man had been in a peculiar state of mind. As Soames surmised, he too had overheard Marjorie Ferrar slandering her hostess; but in the very moment of his refutation, like Saul setting forth to attack the Christians, he had been smitten by blindness. Those blue eyes, pouring into his the light of defiance, had finished with a gleam which seemed to say: ‘Young man, you please me!' And it haunted him. That lissome nymph – with her white skin and red-gold hair, her blue eyes full of insolence, her red lips full of joy, her white neck fragrant as a pinewood in sunshine – the vision was abiding. He had been watching her all through the evening; but it was uncanny the way she had left her image on his senses in that one long moment, so that now he got no sleep. Though he had not been introduced, he knew her name to be
Marjorie Ferrar, and he thought it ‘fine'. Countryman that he was and with little knowledge of women – she was unlike any woman he had known. And he had given her the lie direct! This made him so restless that he drank the contents of his water-bottle, put on his clothes, and stole downstairs. Passing the Dandie, who stirred as though muttering: ‘Unusual! But I know those legs!' he reached the hall, where a milky glimmer came in through the fanlight. Lighting a cigarette, he sat down on the marble coat-sarcophagus. It cooled his anatomy, so that he got off it, turned up the light, saw a telephone directory resting beside him, and mechanically sought the letter ‘F'. There she was! ‘Ferrar, Marjorie, 3, River Studios, Wren Street.' Switching off the light, he slipped back the door-chain and stole out. He knew his way to the river, and went towards it.

It was the hour when sound, exhausted, has laid its head on the pillow, and one can hear a moth pass. London, in clear air, with no smoke going up, slept beneath the moon. Bridges, towers, water, all silvered, had a look as if withdrawn from man. Even the houses and the trees enjoyed their moony hour apart, and seemed to breathe out with Francis Wilmot a stanza from ‘The Ancient Mariner':

‘O Sleep, it is a gentle thing,

Beloved from pole to pole!
To Mary Queen the praise be given,
She sent the gentle sleep from heaven
That slid into my soul!'

He turned at random to the right along the river. Never in his life had he walked through a great city at the dead hour. Not a passion alive, nor a thought of gain; haste asleep, and terrors dreaming; here and there, no doubt, one turning on his bed; perhaps a soul passing. Down on the water lighters and barges lay shadowy and abandoned, with red lights burning; the lamps along the Embankment shone without purpose, as if they had been freed. Man was away. In the whole town only himself up and doing – what? Natively shrewd and resourceful in all active situations, the young Southerner had little power of diagnosis,
and certainly did not consider himself ridiculous wandering about like this at night, not even when he suddenly felt that if he could ‘locate' her windows, he could go home and sleep. He passed the Tate Gallery and saw a human being with moonlit buttons.

‘Pardon me, officer,' he said, ‘but where is Wren Street?'

‘Straight on and fifth to the right.'

Francis Wilmot resumed his march. The ‘moving' moon was heeling down, the stars were gaining light, the trees had begun to shiver. He found the fifth turning, walked down ‘the block', and was no wiser; it was too dark to read names or numbers. He passed another buttoned human effigy and said:

‘Pardon me, officer, but where are River Studios?'

‘Comin' away from them; last house on the right.'

Francis Wilmot retraced his steps. There it was, then – by itself, back from the street. He stood before it and gazed at dark windows. She might be behind any one of them! Well! He had ‘located' her, and, in the rising wind, he turned and walked home. He went upstairs stealthily as he had come down, past the Dandie, who again raised his head, muttered: ‘Still more unusual, but the same legs!' entered his room, lay down, and fell asleep like a baby.

ROUND AND ABOUT