The Forsyte Saga, Volume 2 (21 page)

‘What do all you smart young people feel about life, nowadays, Fleur! when one's not of it and has lived twenty years in South Africa, one still feels out of it.'

‘Life! Oh! well, we know it's supposed to be a riddle, but we've given it up. We just want to have a good time because we don't believe anything can last. But I don't think we know how to have it. We just fly on, and hope for it. Of course, there's art, but most of us aren't artists; besides, expressionism – Michael says it's got no inside. We gas about it, but I suppose it hasn't. I see a frightful lot of writers and painters, you know; they're supposed to be amusing.'

Holly listened, amazed. Who would have thought that this girl
saw
? She might be seeing wrong, but anyway she saw!

‘Surely,' she said, ‘you enjoy yourselves?'

‘Well, I like getting hold of nice things, and interesting people; I like seeing everything that's new and worth while, or seems so at the moment. But that's just how it is – nothing lasts. You see, I'm not of the “Pan-joys”, nor of the “new-faithfuls”.'

‘The new-faithfuls?'

‘Oh! don't you know – it's a sort of faith-healing done on oneself, not exactly the old “God-good, good-God!” sort; but a kind of mixture of will-power, psycho-analysis, and belief that everything will be all right on the night it you say it will. You must have come across them. They're frightfully in earnest.'

‘I know,' said Holly; ‘their eyes shine.'

‘I dare say. I don't believe in them – I don't believe in anyone; or anything – much. How can one?'

‘How about simple people, and hard work?'

Fleur sighed. ‘I dare say. I will say for Michael –
he's
not spoiled. Let's have tea? Tea, Ting?' and, turning up the lights, she rang the bell.

When her unexpected visitor had gone, she sat very still before the fire. Today, when she had been so very nearly Wilfrid's!
So Jon was not married! Not that it made any odds! Things did not come round as they were expected to in books. And anyway sentiment was swosh! Cut it out! She tossed back her hair; and, getting hammer and nail, proceeded to hang the white monkey. Between the two tea-chests with their coloured pearl-shell figures, he would look his best. Since she couldn't have Jon, what did it matter – Wilfrid or Michael, or both, or neither? Eat the orange in her hand, and throw away the rind! And suddenly she became aware that Michael was in the room. He had come in very quietly and was standing before the fire behind her. She gave him a quick look and said:

‘I've had Aubrey Greene here about a model you sent him, and Holly – Mrs Val Dartie – she said she's seen you. Oh! and father's brought us this. Isn't it perfect?'

Michael did not speak.

‘Anything the matter, Michael?'

‘No, nothing.' He went up to the monkey. From behind him now Fleur searched his profile. Instinct told her of a change. Had he, after all, seen her going to Wilfrid's – coming away?

‘Some monkey!' he said. ‘By the way, have you any spare clothes you could give the wife of a poor snipe – nothing too swell?'

She answered mechanically: ‘Yes, of course!' while her brain worked furiously.

‘Would you put them out, then? I'm going to make up a bunch for him myself–they could go together.'

Yes! He was quite unlike himself, as if the spring in him had run down. A sort of
malaise
overcame her. Michael not cheerful! It was like the fire going out on a cold day. And, perhaps for the first time, she was conscious that his cheerfulness was of real importance to her. She watched him pick up Ting-a-ling and sit down. And going up behind him, she bent over till her hair was against his cheek. Instead of rubbing his cheek on hers, he sat quite still, and her heart misgave her.

‘What is it?' she said, coaxing.

‘Nothing!'

She took hold of his ears.

‘But there is. I suppose you know somehow that I went to see Wilfrid.'

He said stonily: ‘Why not?'

She let go, and stood up straight.

‘It was only to tell him that I couldn't see him again.'

That half-truth seemed to her the whole.

He suddenly looked up, a quiver went over his face; he took her hand.

‘It's all right, Fleur. You must do what you like, you know. That's only fair. I had too much lunch.'

Fleur withdrew to the middle of the room.

‘You're rather an angel,' she said slowly, and went out.

Upstairs she looked out garments, confused in her soul.

MICHAEL GETS ‘WHAT-FOR'

A
FTER
his Green Street quest Michael had wavered back down Piccadilly, and, obeying one of those impulses which make people hang around the centres of disturbance, on to Cork Street. He stood for a minute at the mouth of Wilfrid's backwater.

‘No,' he thought at last, ‘ten to one he isn't in; and if he is, twenty to one that I get any change except bad change!'

He was moving slowly on to Bond Street, when a little light lady, coming from the backwater, and reading as she went, ran into him from behind.

‘Why don't you look where you're going! Oh! You? Aren't you the young man who married Fleur Forsyte? I'm her cousin, June. I thought I saw her just now.' She waved a hand which held a catalogue with a gesture like the flirt of a bird's wing. ‘Opposite my gallery. She went into a house, or I should have spoken to her – I'd like to have seen her again.'

Into a house! Michael dived for his cigarette-case. Hard-grasping it, he looked up. The little lady's blue eyes were sweeping from side to side of his face with a searching candour.

‘Are you happy together?' she said.

A cold sweat broke out on his forehead. A sense of general derangement afflicted him – hers, and his own.

‘I beg your pardon?' he gasped.

‘I hope you are. She ought to have married my little brother – but I hope you are. She's a pretty child.'

In the midst of a dull sense of stunning blows, it staggered him that she seemed quite unconscious of inflicting them. He heard his teeth gritting, and said dully: ‘Your little brother, who was he?'

‘What! Jon – didn't you know Jon? He was too young, of course, and so was she. But they were head over – the family feud stopped that. Well! it's all past. I was at your wedding. I hope you're happy. Have you seen the Claud Brains show at my gallery? He's a genius. I was going to have a bun in here; will you join me? You ought to know his work.'

She had paused at the door of a confectioner's. Michael put his hand on his chest.

‘Thank you,' he said, ‘I have just had a bun – two, in fact. Excuse me!'

The little lady grasped his other hand.

‘Well, good-bye, young man! Glad to have met you. You're not a beauty, but I like your face. Remember me to that child. You should go and see Claud Brains. He's a real genius.'

Stock-still before the door, he watched her turn and enter, with a scattered motion, as of flying, and a disturbance among those seated in the pastry-cook's. Then he moved on, the cigarette unlighted in his mouth, dazed, as a boxer from a blow which knocks him sideways, and another which knocks him straight again.

Fleur visiting Wilfrid – at this moment in his rooms up there – in his arms, perhaps! He groaned. A well-fed young man in a new hat skipped at the sound. Never! He could never stick that! He would have to clear out! He had believed Fleur
honest! A double life! The night before last she had smiled on him. Oh! God! He dashed across into Green Park. Why hadn't he stood still and let something go over him? And that lunatic's little brother – John – family feud? Himself – a
pis aller
, then – taken without love at all – a makeshift! He remembered now her saying one night at Mapledurham: ‘Come again when I know I can't get my wish.' So that was the wish she couldn't get! A makeshift! ‘Jolly,' he thought: ‘Oh! jolly!' No wonder, then! What could she care? One man or another! Poor little devil! She had never let him know – never breathed a word! Was that decent of her – or was it treachery? ‘No,' he thought, ‘if she
had
told me, it wouldn't have made any difference – I'd have taken her at any price. It was decent of her not to tell me.' But how was it he hadn't heard from someone? Family feud? The Forsytes! Except ‘Old Forsyte', he never saw them; and ‘Old Forsyte' was closer than a fish. Well! he had got what-for! And again he groaned, in the twilight spaces of the Park. Buckingham Palace loomed up unlighted, huge and dreary. Conscious of his cigarette at last, he stopped to strike a match, and drew the smoke deep into his lungs with the first faint sense of comfort.

‘You couldn't spare us a cigarette, Mister?'

A shadowy figure with a decent sad face stood beside the statue of Australia, so depressingly abundant!

‘Of course!' said Michael; ‘take the lot.' He emptied the case into the man's hand. ‘Take the case too – “present from Westminster” – you'll get thirty bob for it. Good luck!' He hurried on. A faint: ‘Hi, Mister!' pursued him unavailingly. Pity was pulp! Sentiment was bilge! Was he going home to wait till Fleur had – finished and come back? Not he! He turned towards Chelsea, batting along as hard as he could stride. Lighted shops, gloomy great Eaton Square, Chester Square, Sloane Square, the King's Road – along, along! Worse than the trenches – far worse – this whipped and scorpioned sexual jealousy! Yes, and he would have felt even worse, but for that second blow. It made it less painful to know that Fleur had been in love with that cousin, and Wilfrid, too, perhaps, nothing to her. Poor
little wretch! ‘Well, what's the game now?' he thought. The game of life – in bad weather, in stress? What was it? In the war – what had a fellow done? Somehow managed to feel himself not so dashed important; reached a condition of acquiescence, fatalism, ‘Who dies if England live' sort of sob-stuff state. The game of life? Was it different? ‘Bloody but unbowed' might be tripe; still – get up when you were knocked down! The whole was big, oneself was little! Passion, jealousy, ought they properly to destroy one's sportsmanship, as Nazing and Sibley and Linda Frewe would have it? Was the word ‘gentleman' a dud? Was it? Did one keep one's form, or get down to squealing and kicking in the stomach?

‘I don't know,' he thought, ‘I don't know what I shall do when I see her – I simply don't know.' Steel-blue of the fallen evening, bare plane trees, wide river, frosty air! He turned towards home. He opened his front door, trembling, and trembling, went into the drawing-room.…

When Fleur had gone upstairs and left him with Ting-a-ling he didn't know whether he believed her or not. If she had kept that other thing from him all this time, she could keep anything! Had she understood his words: ‘You must do as you like, that's only fair'? He had said them almost mechanically, but they were reasonable. If she had never loved him, even a little, he had never had any right to expect anything; he had been all the time in the position of one to whom she was giving alms. Nothing compelled a person to go on giving alms. And nothing compelled one to go on taking them – except – the ache of want, the ache, the ache!

‘You little Djinn! You lucky little toad! Give me some of your complacency – you Chinese atom!' Ting-a-ling turned up his boot-buttons. ‘When you have been civilized as long as I,' they seemed to say: ‘In the meantime, scratch my chest.'

And scrattling in that yellow fur Michael thought: ‘Pull yourself together! Man at the South Pole with the first blizzard doesn't sing “Want to go home! Want to go home!” – he sticks it. Come, get going!' He placed Ting-a-ling on the floor, and made for his study. Here were manuscripts, of which the readers
to Danby and Winter had already said: ‘No money in this, but a genuine piece of work meriting consideration.' It was Michael's business to give the consideration; Danby's to turn the affair down with the words: ‘Write him (or her) a civil letter, say we were greatly interested, regret we do not see our way – hope to have the privilege of considering next effort, and so forth. What!'

He turned up his reading-lamp and pulled out a manuscript he had already begun.

‘No retreat, no retreat; they must conquer or the who have no retreat;

No retreat, no retreat; they must conquer or the who have no retreat!'

The black footmen's refrain from
Polly
was all that happened in his mind. Dash it! He must read the thing! Somehow he finished the chapter. He remembered now. The manuscript was all about a man who, when he was a boy, had been so greatly impressed by the sight of a maidservant changing her clothes in a room over the way, that his married life was a continual struggle not to be unfaithful with his wife's maids. They had just discovered his complex, and he was going to have it out. The rest of the manuscript no doubt would show how that was done. It went most conscientiously into all those precise bodily details which it was now so timorous and Victorian to leave out. Genuine piece of work, and waste of time to go on with it! Old Danby – Freud bored him stiff; and for once Michael did not mind old Danby being in the right. He put the thing back into the drawer. Seven o'clock! Tell Fleur what he had been told about that cousin? Why? Nothing could mend
that!
If only she were speaking the truth about Wilfrid! He went to the window – stars above, and stripes below, stripes of courtyard and back garden. ‘No retreat, no retreat; they must conquer or die who have no retreat!'