“L’amour est enfant de Boheme; il n’a jamais jamais connu de loi; si tu ne m’aimes pas, je t’aime, et si je t’aime, prends garde a toil!” Spain, and the heartache of her honeymoon! “Voice in the night crying!” Close the shutters, muffle the ears–keep it out! She entered her bedroom and turned up the lights. It had never seemed to her so pretty, with its many mirrors, its lilac and green, its shining silver. She stood looking at her face, into which had come two patches of red, one in each cheek. Why wasn’t she Norah Curfew–dutiful, uncomplicated, selfless, who would give Jon eggs and bacon at half-past five tomorrow morning–Jon with a clean face! Quickly she undressed. Was that wife of his her equal undressed? To which would he award the golden apple if she stood side by side with Anne? And the red spots deepened in her cheeks. Overtired–she knew that feeling! She would not sleep! But the sheets were cool. Yes, she preferred the old smooth Irish linen to that new rough French grass-bleached stuff. Ah! Here was Michael coming in, coming up to her! Well! No use to be unkind to him–poor old Michael! And in his arms, she saw–Jon’s smile.
* * *
That first day spent in stoking an engine had been enough to make anyone smile. An engine-driver almost as youthful, but in private life partner in his own engineering works, had put Jon ‘wise’ to the mystery of getting level combustion. “A tricky job, and very tiring!” Their passengers had behaved well. One had even come up and thanked them. The engine-driver had winked at Jon. There had been some hectic moments. Supping pea soup, Jon thought of them with pleasure. It had been great sport, but his hands and arms felt wrenched. “Oil them tonight,” the engine-driver had said.
A young woman was handing him ‘jacket’ potatoes. She had marvellously clear, brown eyes, something like Anne’s–only Anne’s were like a water nymph’s. He took a potato, thanked her, and returned to a stoker’s dreams. Extraordinary pleasure in being up against it–being in England again, doing something for England! One had to leave one’s country to become conscious of it. Anne had telegraphed that she wanted to come over and join him. If he wired back “No,” she would come all the same. He knew that much after nearly two years of marriage. Well, she would see England at its best. Americans didn’t really know what England was. Her brother had seen nothing but London; he had spoken bitterly–a girl, Jon supposed, though nothing had been said of her. In Francis Wilmot’s history of England the gap accounted for the rest. But everybody ran down England, because she didn’t slop over, or blow her own trumpet.
“Butter?”
“Thanks, awfully. These potatoes are frightfully good.”
“So glad.”
“Who runs this canteen?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Michael Mont mostly; he’s a member of Parliament.”
Jon dropped his potato.
“Mrs. Mont? Gracious! She’s a cousin of mine. Is she here?”
“Was. Just gone, I think.”
Jon’s far-sighted eyes travelled round the large and dingy room. Fleur! How amazing!
“Treacle pudding?”
“No, thanks. Nothing more.”
“There’ll be coffee, tea, or cocoa, and eggs and bacon, tomorrow at 5.45.”
“Splendid! I think it’s wonderful.”
“It is, rather, in the time.”
“Thank you awfully. Good-night!”
Jon sought his coat. Outside were Val and Holly in their car.
“Hallo, young Jon! You’re a nice object.”
“What job have you caught, Val?”
“Motor lorry–begin tomorrow.”
“Fine!”
“This’ll knock out racing for a bit.”
“But not England.”
“England? Lord–no! What did you think?”
“Abroad they were saying so.”
“Abroad!” growled Val. “They would!”
And there was silence at thirty miles an hour.
From his bedroom door Jon said to his sister:
“They say Fleur runs that canteen. Is she really so old now?”
“Fleur has a very clear head, my dear. She saw you there. No second go of measles, Jon.”
Jon laughed.
“Aunt Winifred,” said Holly, “will be delighted to have Anne here on Friday, she told me to tell you.”
“Splendid! That’s awfully good of her.”
“Well, good-night; bless you. There’s still hot water in the bathroom.”
In his bath Jon lay luxuriously still. Sixty hours away from his young wife, he was already looking forward with impatience to her appearance on Friday. And so Fleur ran that canteen! A fashionable young woman with a clear and, no doubt, shingled head–he felt a great curiosity to see her again, but nothing more. Second go of measles! Not much! He had suffered too severely from the first. Besides, he was too glad to be back–result of long, half-acknowledged homesickness. His mother had been home-sick for Europe; but HE had felt no assuagement in Italy and France. It was England he had wanted. Something in the way people walked and talked; in the smell and the look of everything; some good-humoured, slow, ironic essence in the air, after the tension of America, the shrillness of Italy, the clarity of Paris. For the first time in five years his nerves felt coated. Even those features of his native land which offended the aesthetic soul, were comforting. The approaches to London, the countless awful little houses of brick and slate which his own great-grandfather, ‘Superior Dosset’ Forsyte, had helped, so his father had once told him, to build; the many little new houses, rather better, but still bent on compromise; the total absence of symmetry or plan; the ugly railway stations; the cockney voices, the lack of colour, taste, or pride in people’s dress–all seemed comfortable, a guarantee that England would always be England.
And so Fleur was running that canteen! He would be seeing her! He would like to see her! Oh, yes!
Chapter VI.
SNUFFBOX
In the next room Val was saying to Holly:
“Had a chap I knew at college to see me today. Wanted me to lend him money. I once did, when I was jolly hard up myself, and never got it back. He used to impress me frightfully–such an awfully good-looking, languid beggar. I thought him top notch as a ‘blood.’ You should see him now!”
“I did. I was coming in as he was going out; I wondered who he was. I never saw a more bitterly contemptuous expression on a face. Did you lend him money?”
“Only a fiver.”
“Well, don’t lend him any more.”
“Hardly. D’you know what he’s done? Gone off with that Louis Quinze snuffbox of Mother’s that’s worth about two hundred. There’s been nobody else in that room.”
“Good heavens!”
“Yes, it’s pretty thick. He had the reputation of being the fastest man up at the ‘Varsity in my time–in with the gambling set. Since I went out to the Boer war I’ve never heard of him.”
“Isn’t your mother very annoyed, Val?”
“She wants to prosecute–it belonged to my granddad. But how can we–a college pal!… Besides, we shouldn’t get the box back.”
Holly ceased to brush her hair.
“It’s rather a comfort to me–this,” she said.
“What is?”
“Why, everybody says the standard of honesty’s gone down. It’s nice to find someone belonging to our generation that had it even less.”
“Rum comfort!”
“Human nature doesn’t alter, Val. I believe in the young generation. We don’t understand them–brought up in too settled times.”
“That may be. My own dad wasn’t too particular. But what am I to do about this?”
“Do you know his address?”
“He said the Brummell Club would find him–pretty queer haunt, if I remember. To come to sneaking things like that! It’s upset me fright-fully.”
Holly looked at him lying on his back in bed. Catching her eyes on him, he said:
“But for you, old girl, I might have gone a holy mucker myself.”
“Oh, no, Val! You’re too open-air. It’s the indoor people who go really wrong.”
Val grinned.
“Something in that–the only exercise I ever saw that fellow take was in a punt. He used to bet like anything, but he didn’t know a horse from a hedge-hog. Well, Mother must put up with it, I can’t do anything.”
Holly came up to his bed.
“Turn over, and I’ll tuck you up.”
Getting into bed herself, she lay awake, thinking of the man who had gone a holy mucker, and the contempt on his face–lined, dark, well-featured, with prematurely greying hair, and prematurely faded rings round the irises of the eyes; of his clothes, too, so preternaturally preserved, and the worn, careful school tie. She felt she knew him. No moral sense, and ingrained contempt for those who had. Poor Val! HE hadn’t so much moral sense that he need be despised for it! And yet–! With a good many risky male instincts, Val had been a loyal comrade all these years. If in philosophic reach or aesthetic taste he was not advanced, if he knew more of horses than of poetry, was he any the worse? She sometimes thought he was the better. The horse didn’t change shape or colour every five years and start reviling its predecessor. The horse was a constant, kept you from going too fast, and had a nose to stroke–more than you could say of a poet. They had, indeed, only one thing in common–a liking for sugar. Since the publication of her novel Holly had become member of the 1930 Club. Fleur had put her up, and whenever she came to town, she studied modernity there. Modernity was nothing but speed! People who blamed it might as well blame telephone, wireless, flying machine, and quick lunch counter. Beneath that top-dressing of speed, modernity was old. Women had worn fewer clothes when Jane Austen began to write. Drawers–the historians said–were only nineteenth-century productions. And take modern talk! After South Africa the speed of it certainly took one’s wind away; but the thoughts expressed were much her own thoughts as a girl, cut into breathless lengths, by car and telephone bell.
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