“Do you know, Jon, you really have changed. You wouldn’t have said that, I believe, six years ago.”
“Perhaps not. Being out of England makes you believe in dams. Ideas can’t be left to swop around in the blue. In England they’re not, and that’s the beauty of it.”
“I don’t care what happens to ideas,” said Fleur, “but I don’t like stupidity. The Public Schools–”
“Oh, no; not really. Certain things get cut and dried there, of course; but then, they ought to.”
Fleur leaned forward, and with faint malice said: “Have you become a moralist, my dear?”
Jon answered glumly:
“Why, no–no more than reason!”
“Do you remember our walk by the river?”
“I told you before–I remember everything.”
Fleur restrained her hand from a heart which had given a jump.
“We nearly quarrelled because I said I hated people for their stupid cruelties, and wanted them to stew in their own juice.”
“Yes; and I said I pitied them. Well?”
“Repression is stupid, you know, Jon.” And, by instinct, added: “That’s why I doubt the Public Schools. They teach it.”
“They’re useful socially, Fleur,” and his eyes twinkled.
Fleur pursed her lips. She did not mind. But she would make him sorry for that; because his compunction would be a trump card in her hand.
“I know perfectly well,” she said, “that I’m a snob–I was called so publicly.”
“What!”
“Oh, yes; there was a case about it.”
“Who dared?”
“Oh! my dear, that’s ancient history. But of course you knew–Francis Wilmot must have–”
Jon made a horrified gesture.
“Fleur, you never thought I–”
“Oh, but, of course! Why not?” A trump, indeed!
Jon seized her hand.
“Fleur, say you knew I didn’t–”
Fleur shrugged her shoulders. “My dear, you have lived too long among the primitives. Over here we stab each other daily, and no harm done.”
He dropped her hand, and she looked at him from beneath her lids.
“I was only teasing, Jon. It’s good for primitives to have their legs pulled. Parlons d’autre chose. Have you found your place, to grow things, yet?”
“Practically.”
“Where?”
“About four miles from Wansdon, on the south side of the Downs–Green Hill Farm. Fruit–a lot of glass; and some arable.”
“Why, it must be close to where I’m going with Kit. That’s on the sea and only five miles from Wansdon. No, Jon; don’t be alarmed. We shall only be there three weeks at most.”
“Alarmed! It’s very jolly. We shall see you there. Perhaps we shall meet at Goodwood anyway.”
“I’ve been thinking–” Fleur paused, and again she stole a look. “We CAN be steady friends, Jon, can’t we?”
Jon answered, without looking up. “I hope so.”
If his face had cleared, and his voice had been hearty, how different–how much slower–would have been the beating of her heart!
“Then that’s all right,” she murmured. “I’ve been wanting to say that to you ever since Ascot. Here we are, and here we shall be–and anything else would be silly, wouldn’t it? This is not the romantic age.”
“H’m!”
“What do you mean by that unpleasant noise?”
“I always think it’s rot to talk about ages being this or that. Human feelings remain the same.”
“Do you really think they do? The sort of life we live affects them. Nothing’s worth more than a year or two, Jon. I found that out. But I forgot–you hate cynicism. Tell me about Anne. Is she still liking England?”
“Loving it. You see, she’s pure Southern, and the South’s old still, too, in a way–or some of it is. What she likes here is the grass, the birds, and the villages. She doesn’t feel homesick. And, of course, she loves the riding.”
“I suppose she’s picking up English fast?”
And to his stare she made her face quite candid.
“I should like you to like her,” he said, wistfully.
“Oh! of course I shall, when I know her.”
But a fierce little wave of contempt passed up from her heart. What did he think she was made of? Like her! A girl who lay in his arms, who would be the mother of his children. Like her! And she began to talk about the preservation of Box Hill. And all the rest of the way till Jon got out at Pulborough, she was more wary than a cat–casual and friendly, with clear candid eyes, and a little tremble up at him when she said:
“Au revoir, then, at Goodwood, if not before! This HAS been a jolly accident!”
But on the way to her hotel, driving in a station fly through air that smelled of oysters, she folded her lips between her teeth, and her eyes were damp beneath her frowning brows.
Chapter IX.
BUT–JON
But Jon, who had over five miles to walk, started with the words of the old English song beating a silent tattoo within him:
“How happy could I be with either,
Were t’other dear charmer away!”
To such confusion had he come, contrary to intention, but in accordance with the impulses of a loyal disposition. Fleur had been his first love, Anne his second. But Anne was his wife, and Fleur the wife of another. A man could not be in love with two women at once, so he was tempted to conclude that he was not in love with either. Why, then, the queer sensations of his circulatory system? Was popular belief in error? A French, or Old–English way of looking at his situation, did not occur to him. He had married Anne, he loved Anne–she was a darling! There it ended! Why, then, walking along a grassy strip beside the road, did he think almost exclusively of Fleur? However cynical, or casual, or just friendly she might seem, she no more deceived him than she at heart wished to. He knew she had her old feeling for him, just as he knew he had it, or some of it, for her. But then he had feeling for another, too. Jon was not more of a fool than other men, nor was he more self-deceiving. Like other men before him, he intended to face what was, and to do what he believed to be right; or, rather, not to do what he believed to be wrong. Nor had he any doubt as to what was wrong. His trouble was more simple. It consisted of not having a control of his thoughts and feelings greater than that with which any man has hitherto been endowed. After all, it had not been his fault that he had once been wholly in love with Fleur, nor that she had been wholly in love with him; not his fault that he had met her again, nor that she was still in love with him. Nor again was it his fault that he was in love with his native land and tired of being out of it.
It was not his fault that he had fallen in love a second time or married the object of his affections. Nor, so far as he could see, was it his fault that the sight and the sound and the scent and the touch of Fleur had revived some of his former feelings. He was none the less disgusted at his double-heartedness; and he walked now fast, now slow, while the sun shifted over and struck on a neck always sensitive since his touch of the sun in Granada. Presently, he stopped and leaned over a gate. He had not been long enough back in England to have got over its beauty on a fine day. He was always stopping and leaning over gates, or in other ways, as Val called it, mooning!
Though it was already the first day of the Eton and Harrow Match, which his father had been wont to attend so religiously, hay harvest was barely over, and the scent of stacked hay still in the air. The Downs lay before him to the south, lighted along their northern slopes. Red Sussex cattle were standing under some trees close to the gate, dribbling and slowly swishing their tails. And away over there he could see others lingering along the hill-side. Peace lay thick on the land. The corn in that next field had an unearthly tinge, neither green nor gold, under the slanting sunlight. And in the restful beauty of the evening Jon could well perceive the destructiveness of love–an emotion so sweet, restless, and thrilling, that it drained Nature of its colour and peace, made those who suffered from it bores to their fellows and useless to the life of everyday. To work–and behold Nature in her moods! Why couldn’t he get away to that, away from women? Why–like Holly’s story of the holiday slum girl, whose family came to see her off by train–why couldn’t he just get away and say: “Thank Gawd! I’m shut o’ that lot!”
The midges were biting, and he walked on. Should he tell Anne that he had come down with Fleur? Not to tell her was to stress the importance of the incident; but to tell her was somehow disagreeable to him. And then he came on Anne herself, without a hat, sitting on a gate, her hands in the pockets of her jumper. Very lissome and straight she looked.
“Lift me down, Jon!”
He lifted her down in a prolonged manner. And, almost instantly, said:
“Whom do you think I travelled with? Fleur Mont. We ran up against each other at Victoria. She’s taking her boy to Loring next week, to convalesce him.”
“Oh! I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m in love with you, Jon.” She tilted her chin, so that her straight and shapely nose looked a little more sudden.
“I don’t see–” began Jon.
“You see she’s another. I saw that at Ascot. I reckon I’m old-fashioned, Jon.”
“That’s all right, so am I.”
She turned her eyes on him, eyes not quite civilised, nor quite American, and put her arm round his waist.
“Rondavel’s off his feed. Greenwater’s very upset about it.”
“‘Very,’ Anne.”
“Well, you can’t pronounce ‘very’ as I pronounce it, any more than I can as you do.”
“Sorry. But you told me to remind you. It’s silly, though: why shouldn’t you speak your own lingo?”
“Because I want to speak like you.”
“Want, then, not waunt.”
“Damn!”
“All right, darling. But isn’t your lingo just as good?
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