They gave thanks not for what he was about to receive, but for what he was receiving. White as a turtle-dove, with pink toes, darker in eyes and hair than he would be presently, he grabbed at the soap, at his mother, at the bath-towelling–he seemed only to need a tail. Michael watched him, musing. This manikin, born with all that he could possibly wish for within his reach–how were they to bring him up? Were they fit to bring him up, they who had been born–like all their generation in the richer classes–emancipated, to parents properly broken-in to worship the fetich–Liberty? Born to everything they wanted, so that they were at wits’ end to invent something they could not get; driven to restive searching by having their own way? The war had deprived one of one’s own way, but the war had overdone it, and left one grasping at license. And for those, like Fleur, born a little late for the war, the tale of it had only lowered what respect they could have for anything. With veneration killed, and self-denial ‘off,’ with atavism buried, sentiment derided, and the future in the air, hardly a wonder that modernity should be a dance of gnats, taking itself damned seriously! Such were the reflections of Michael, sitting there above the steam, and frowning at his progeny. Without faith was one fit to be a parent? Well, people were looking for faith again. Only they were bound to hatch the egg of it so hard that it would be addled long before it was a chicken. ‘Too self-conscious!’ he thought. ‘That’s our trouble!’
Fleur had finished drying the eleventh baronet, and was dabbing powder over him; her eyes seemed penetrating his skin, as if to gauge the state of health behind it. He watched her take the feet and hands one by one and examine each nail, lost in her scrutiny, unselfconscious in her momentary devotion! And oppressed by the difficulty, as a Member of Parliament, of being devoted, Michael snapped his fingers at the baby and left the nursery. He went to his study and took down a volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica containing the word Poultry. He read about Leghorns, Orpingtons, White Sussex, Bramaputras, and was little the wiser. He remembered that if you drew a chalk-line to the beak of a hen, the hen thought it was tied up. He wished somebody would draw a chalk-line to his beak. Was Foggartism a chalk-line? A voice said:
“Tell Fleur I’m going to her aunt’s.”
“Leaving us, sir?”
“Yes, I’m not wanted.”
What had happened?
“You’ll see her before you go, sir?”
“No,” said Soames.
Had somebody rubbed out the chalk-line to Old Forsyte’s nose?
“Is there any money in poultry-farming, sir?”
“There’s no money in anything nowadays.”
“And yet the Income Tax returns continue to rise.”
“Yes,” said Soames; “there’s something wrong there.”
“You don’t think people make their incomes out more than they are?”
Soames blinked. Pessimistic though he felt at the moment, he could not take quite that low view of human nature.
“You’d better see that Fleur doesn’t go about abusing that red-haired baggage,” he said. “She was born with a silver spoon in her mouth; she thinks she can do what she likes.” And he shut Michael in again.
Silver spoon in her mouth! How apropos!…
After putting her baby into its cot Fleur had gone to the marqueterie bureau in the little sanctuary that would have been called a boudoir in old days. She sat there brooding. How could her father have made it all glaringly public? Couldn’t he have seen that it was nothing so long as it was not public, but everything the moment it was? She longed to pour out her heart, and tell people her opinion of Marjorie Ferrar.
She wrote three letters–one to Lady Alison, and two to women in the group who had overheard it all last night. She concluded her third letter with the words: “A woman like that, who pretends to be a friend and sneaks into one’s house to sting one behind one’s back, is a snake of the first water. How Society can stick her, I can’t think; she hasn’t a moral about her nor a decent impulse. As for her charm–Good Lord!” Yes! And there was Francis Wilmot! She had not said all she wanted to say to him.
“MY DEAR FRANCIS,” she wrote:
“I am so sorry you have to run away like this. I wanted to thank you for standing up for me last night. Marjorie Ferrar is just about the limit. But in London society one doesn’t pay attention to backbiting. It has been so jolly to know you. Don’t forget us; and do come and see me again when you come back from Paris.
“Your very good friend,
“FLEUR MONT.”
In future she would have nothing but men at her evenings! But would they come if there were no women? And men like Philip Quinsey were just as snakelike. Besides, it would look as if she were really hurt. No! She would have to go on as before, just dropping people who were ‘catty.’ But who wasn’t? Except Alison, and heavyweights like Mr. Blythe, the minor Ambassadors, and three or four earnest politicians, she couldn’t be sure about any of them. It was the thing to be ‘catty.’ They all scratched other people’s backs, and their faces too when they weren’t looking. Who in Society was exempt from scratches, and who didn’t scratch? Not to scratch a little was so dreadfully dull. She could not imagine a scratchless life except perhaps in Italy. Those Fra Angelico frescoes in the San Marco monastery! THERE was a man who did not scratch. St. Francis, too, talking to his birds, among his little flowers, with the sun and the moon and the stars for near relations. Ste. Claire! Ste. Fleur–little sister of St. Francis! To be unworldly and quite good! To be one who lived to make other people happy! How new! How exciting, even–for about a week; and how dull afterwards! She drew aside the curtains and looked out into the Square. Two cats were standing in the light of a lamp–narrow, marvellously graceful, with their heads turned towards each other. Suddenly they began uttering horrible noises, and became all claws. Fleur dropped the curtain.
Chapter X.
FRANCIS WILMOT REVERSES
About that moment Francis Wilmot sat down in the lounge of the Cosmopolis Hotel, and as suddenly sat up. In the middle of the parquet floor, sliding and lunging, backing and filling, twisting and turning in the arms of a man with a face like a mask, was she, to avoid whom, out of loyalty to Fleur and Michael, he had decided to go to Paris. Fate! For he could hardly know that she came there most afternoons during the dancing hours. She and her partner were easily the show couple; and, fond of dancing, Francis Wilmot knew he was looking at something special. When they stopped, quite close to him, he said in his soft drawl:
“That was beautiful.”
“How do you do, Mr. Wilmot?”
Why! She knew his name! This was the moment to exhibit loyalty! But she had sunk into a chair next his.
“And so you thought me a traitress last night?”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“Because I heard you call your hostess a snob.”
Marjorie Ferrar uttered an amused sound.
“My dear young man, if one never called one’s friends anything worse than that–! I didn’t mean you to hear, or that poptious old person with the chin!”
“He was her father,” said Francis Wilmot, gravely. “It hurt him.”
“Well! I’m sorry!”
A hand without a glove, warm but dry, was put into his. When it was withdrawn the whole of his hand and arm were tingling.
“Do you dance?”
“Yes, indeed, but I wouldn’t presume to dance with you.”
“Oh! but you must.”
Francis Wilmot’s head went round, and his body began going round too.
“You dance better than an Englishman, unless he’s professional,” said her lips six inches from his own.
“I’m proud to hear you say so, ma’am.”
“Don’t you know my name? or do you always call women ma’am? It’s ever so pretty.”
“Certainly I know your name and where you live. I wasn’t six yards from you this morning at four o’clock.”
“What were you doing there?”
“I just thought I’d like to be near you.”
Marjorie Ferrar said, as if to herself:
“The prettiest speech I ever heard. Come and have tea with me there tomorrow.”
Reversing, side-stepping, doing all he knew, Francis Wilmot said, slowly:
“I have to be in Paris.”
“Don’t be afraid, I won’t hurt you.”
“I’m not afraid, but–”
“Well, I shall expect you.” And, transferring herself again to her mask-faced partner, she looked back at him over her shoulder.
Francis Wilmot wiped his brow. An astonishing experience, another blow to his preconception of a stiff and formal race! If he had not known she was the daughter of a lord, he would have thought her an American. Would she ask him to dance with her again? But she left the lounge without another glance.
An up-to-date young man, a typical young man, would have felt the more jaunty. But he was neither. Six months’ training for the Air Service in 1918, one visit to New York, and a few trips to Charleston and Savannah, had left him still a countryman, with a tradition of good manners, work, and simple living. Women, of whom he had known few, were to him worthy of considerable respect. He judged them by his sister, or by the friends of his dead mother, in Savannah, who were all of a certain age. A Northern lady on the boat had told him that Southern girls measured life by the number of men they could attract; she had given him an amusing take-off of a Southern girl. It had been a surprise to this young Southerner. Anne was not like that; she had never had the chance to be, anyway, having married at nineteen the first young man who had asked her!
By the morning’s post he received Fleur’s little letter. ‘Limit!’ Limit of what? He felt indignant. He did not go to Paris, and at four o’clock he was at Wren Street.
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