Still, he admired her, she felt–oh! yes.
Well! What had he thought of the cartoons? Ought Michael to publish them, and with letterpress or without? Didn’t he think that the cubic called ‘Still Life’–of the Government, too frightfully funny–especially the ‘old bean’ representing the Prime? For answer she was conscious of a twisting, rapid noise; Sir Lawrence was telling her of his father’s collection of electioneering cartoons. She did wish Bart would not tell her about his father; he had been so distinguished, and he must have been so dull, paying all his calls on horseback, with trousers strapped under his boots. He and Lord Charles Cariboo and the Marquis of Forfar had been the last three ‘callers’ of that sort. If only they hadn’t, they’d have been clean forgot. She had that dress to try, and fourteen things to see to, and Hugo’s concert began at eight-fifteen! Why did people of the last generation always have so much time? And, suddenly, she looked down. Ting-a-ling was licking the copper floor. She took him up: “Not that, darling; nasty!” Ah! the spell was broken! Bart was going, reminiscent to the last. She waited at the foot of the stairs till Michael shut the door on him, then flew. Reaching her room, she turned on all the lights. Here was her own style–a bed which did not look like one, and many mirrors. The couch of Ting-a-ling occupied a corner, whence he could see himself in three. She put him down, and said: “Keep quiet, now!” His attitude to the other dogs in the room had long become indifferent; though of his own breed and precisely his colouring, they had no smell and no licking power in their tongues–nothing to be done with them, imitative creatures, incredibly unresponsive.
Stripping off her dress, Fleur held the new frock under her chin.
“May I kiss you?” said a voice, and there was Michael’s image behind her own reflection in the glass.
“My dear boy, there isn’t time! Help me with this.” She slipped the frock over her head. “Do those three top hooks. How do you like it? Oh! and–Michael! Gurdon Minho may be coming to dinner tomorrow–Wilfrid can’t. Have you read his things? Sit down and tell me something about them. All novels, aren’t they? What sort?”
“Well, he’s always had something to say. And his cats are good. He’s a bit romantic, of course.”
“Oh! Have I made a gaff?”
“Not a bit; jolly good shot. The vice of our lot is, they say it pretty well, but they’ve nothing to say. They won’t last.”
“But that’s just why they will last. They won’t date.”
“Won’t they? My gum!”
“Wilfrid will last.”
“Ah! Wilfrid has emotions, hates, pities, wants; at least, sometimes; when he has, his stuff is jolly good. Otherwise, he just makes a song about nothing–like the rest.”
Fleur tucked in the top of her undergarment.
“But, Michael, if that’s so, we–I’ve got the wrong lot.”
Michael grinned.
“My dear child! The lot of the hour is always right; only you’ve got to watch it, and change it quick enough.”
“But d’you mean to say that Sibley isn’t going to live?”
“Sib? Lord, no!”
“But he’s so perfectly sure that almost everybody else is dead or dying. Surely he has critical genius!”
“If I hadn’t more judgment than Sib, I’d go out of publishing tomorrow.”
“You–more than Sibley Swan?”
“Of course, I’ve more judgment than Sib. Why! Sib’s judgment is just his opinion of Sib–common or garden impatience of any one else. He doesn’t even read them. He’ll read one specimen of every author and say: ‘Oh! that fellow! He’s dull, or he’s moral, or he’s sentimental, or he dates, or he drivels’–I’ve heard him dozens of times. That’s if they’re alive. Of course, if they’re dead, it’s different. He’s always digging up and canonising the dead; that’s how he’s got his name. There’s always a Sib in literature. He’s a standing example of how people can get taken at their own valuation. But as to lasting–of course he won’t; he’s never creative, even by mistake.”
Fleur had lost the thread. Yes! It suited her–quite a nice line! Off with it! Must write those three notes before she dressed.
Michael had begun again.
“Take my tip, Fleur. The really big people don’t talk–and don’t bunch–they paddle their own canoes in what seem backwaters. But it’s the backwaters that make the main stream. By Jove, that’s a mot, or is it a bull; and are bulls mots or mots bulls?”
“Michael, if you were me, would you tell Frederic Wilmer that he’ll be meeting Hubert Marsland at lunch next week? Would it bring him or would it put him off?”
“Marsland’s rather an old duck, Wilmer’s rather an old goose–I don’t know.”
“Oh! do be serious, Michael–you never give me any help in arranging–No! Don’t maul my shoulders please.”
“Well, darling, I DON’T know. I’ve no genius for such things, like you. Marsland paints windmills, cliffs and things–I doubt if he’s heard of the future. He’s almost a Mathew Mans for keeping out of the swim. If you think he’d like to meet a Vertiginist–”
“I didn’t ask you if he’d like to meet Wilmer; I asked you if Wilmer would like to meet him.”
“Wilmer will just say: ‘I like little Mrs. Mont, she gives deuced good grub’–and so you do, ducky. A Vertiginist wants nourishing, you know, or it wouldn’t go to his head.”
Fleur’s pen resumed its swift strokes, already becoming slightly illegible. She murmured:
“I think Wilfrid would help–you won’t be there; one–two–three. What women?”
“For painters–pretty and plump; no intellect.”
Fleur said crossly:
“I can’t get them plump; they don’t go about now.” And her pen flowed on:
“DEAR WILFRID, – Wednesday–lunch; Wilmer, Hubert Marsland, two other women. Do help me live it down.
“Yours ever,
“FLEUR.”
“Michael, your chin is like a bootbrush.”
“Sorry, old thing; your shoulders shouldn’t be so smooth. Bart gave Wilfrid a tip as we were coming along.”
Fleur stopped writing. “Oh!”
“Reminded him that the state of love was a good stunt for poets.”
“A propos of what?”
“Wilfrid was complaining that he couldn’t turn it out now.”
“Nonsense! His last things are his best.”
“Well, that’s what I think. Perhaps he’s forestalled the tip. Has he, d’you know?”
Fleur turned her eyes towards the face behind her shoulder. No, it had its native look–frank, irresponsible, slightly faun-like, with its pointed ears, quick lips, and nostrils.
She said slowly:
“If YOU don’t know, nobody does.”
A snuffle interrupted Michael’s answer. Ting-a-ling, long, low, slightly higher at both ends, was standing between them, with black muzzle upturned. ‘My pedigree is long,’ he seemed to say; ‘but my legs are short–what about it?’
Chapter III.
MUSICAL
According to a great and guiding principle, Fleur and Michael Mont attended the Hugo Solstis concert, not because they anticipated pleasure, but because they knew Hugo. They felt, besides, that Solstis, an Englishman of Russo–Dutch extraction, was one of those who were restoring English music, giving to it a wide and spacious freedom from melody and rhythm, while investing it with literary and mathematical charms. And one never could go to a concert given by any of this school without using the word ‘interesting’ as one was coming away. To sleep to this restored English music, too, was impossible. Fleur, a sound sleeper, had never even tried. Michael had, and complained afterwards that it had been like a nap in Liege railway station. On this occasion they occupied those gangway seats in the front row of the dress circle of which Fleur had a sort of natural monopoly. There Hugo and the rest could see her taking her place in the English restoration movement. It was easy, too, to escape into the corridor and exchange the word ‘interesting’ with side-whiskered cognoscenti; or, slipping out a cigarette from the little gold case, wedding present of Cousin Imogen Cardigan, get a whiff or two’s repose. To speak quite honestly, Fleur had a natural sense of rhythm which caused her discomfort during those long and ‘interesting’ passages which evidenced, as it were, the composer’s rise and fall from his bed of thorns. She secretly loved a tune, and the impossibility of ever confessing this without losing hold of Solstis, Baff, Birdigal, MacLewis, Clorane, and other English restoration composers, sometimes taxed to its limit a nature which had its Spartan side. Even to Michael she would not ‘confess’; and it was additionally trying when, with his native disrespect of persons, accentuated by life in the trenches and a publisher’s office, he would mutter: “Gad! Get on with it!” or: “Cripes! Ain’t he took bad!” especially as she knew that Michael was really putting up with it better than herself, having a more literary disposition, and a less dancing itch in his toes.
The first movement of the new Solstis composition–‘Phantasmagoria Piemontesque’–to which they had especially come to listen, began with some drawn-out chords. “What oh!” said Michael’s voice in her ear: “Three pieces of furniture moved simultaneously on a parquet floor!”
In Fleur’s involuntary smile was the whole secret of why her marriage had not been intolerable. After all, Michael was a dear! Devotion and mercury–jesting and loyalty–combined, they piqued and touched even a heart given away before it was bestowed on him. ‘Touch’ without ‘pique’ would have bored; ‘pique’ without ‘touch’ would have irritated. At this moment he was at peculiar advantage! Holding on to his knees, with his ears standing up, eyes glassy from loyalty to Hugo, and tongue in cheek, he was listening to that opening in a way which evoked Fleur’s admiration.
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