Title:      The White Monkey
            (First Book in the Trilogy "A Modern Comedy")
            (Second part of the Forsyte Chronicles)
Author:     John Galsworthy
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Title:      The White Monkey
            (First Book in the Trilogy "A Modern Comedy")
            (Second part of the Forsyte Chronicles)
Author:     John Galsworthy



A MODERN COMEDY

BOOK I

THE WHITE MONKEY



TO MY WIFE WITHOUT WHOM I KNOW NOT WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN WRITTEN,
THIS SECOND TRILOGY OF THE FORSYTE CHRONICLES IS DEDICATED




PREFACE


In naming this second part of The Forsyte Chronicles 'A Modern
Comedy' the word comedy is stretched, perhaps, as far as the word
Saga was stretched to cover the first part.  And yet, what but a
comedic view can be taken, what but comedic significance gleaned,
of so restive a period as that in which we have lived since the
war?  An Age which knows not what it wants, yet is intensely
preoccupied with getting it, must evoke a smile, if rather a sad
one.

To render the forms and colours of an epoch is beyond the powers of
any novelist, and very far beyond the powers of this novelist; but
to try and express a little of its spirit was undoubtedly at the
back of his mind in penning this trilogy.  Like the Irishman's
chicken, our Present runs about so fast that it cannot be summed
up; it can at most be snapshotted while it hurries looking for its
Future without notion where, what, or when that Future will be.

The England of 1886, when the Forsyte Saga began, also had no
Future, for England then expected its Present to endure, and rode
its bicycle in a sort of dream, disturbed only by two bogles--Mr.
Gladstone and the Irish Members.

The England of 1926--when the Modern Comedy closes--with one foot
in the air and the other in a Morris Oxford, is going round and
round like a kitten after its tail, muttering:  "If one could only
see where one wants to stop!"

Everything being now relative, there is no longer absolute
dependence to be placed on God, Free Trade, Marriage, Consols,
Coal, or Caste.

Everywhere being now overcrowded, there is no place where anyone
can stay for long, except the mere depopulated countryside,
admittedly too dull, and certainly too unprofitable to dwell in.

Everyone, having been in an earthquake which lasted four years, has
lost the habit of standing still.

And yet, the English character has changed very little, if at all.
The General Strike of 1926, with which the last part of this
trilogy begins, supplied proof of that.  We are still a people that
cannot be rushed, distrustful of extremes, saved by the grace of
our defensive humour, well-tempered, resentful of interference,
improvident and wasteful, but endowed with a certain genius for
recovery.  If we believe in nothing much else, we still believe in
ourselves.  That salient characteristic of the English will bear
thinking about.  Why, for instance, do we continually run ourselves
down?  Simply because we have not got the inferiority complex and
are indifferent to what other people think of us.  No people in the
world seems openly less sure of itself; no people is secretly more
sure.  Incidentally, it might be worth the while of those who own
certain public mouths inclined to blow the British trumpet to
remember, that the blowing of one's own trumpet is the insidious
beginning of the inferiority complex.  Only those strong enough to
keep silent about self are strong enough to be sure of self.  The
epoch we are passing through is one which favours misjudgment of
the English character, and of the position of England.  There never
was a country where real deterioration of human fibre had less
chance than in this island, because there is no other country whose
climate is so changeable, so tempering to character, so formative
of grit, and so basically healthy.  What follows in this preface
should be read in the light of that remark.

In the present epoch, no Early Victorianism survives.  By Early
Victorianism is meant that of the old Forsytes, already on the wane
in 1886; what has survived, and potently, is the Victorianism of
Soames and his generation, more self-conscious, but not
sufficiently self-conscious to be either self-destructive or self-
forgetful.  It is against the background of this more or less fixed
quantity that we can best see the shape and colour of the present
intensely self-conscious and all-questioning generation.  The old
Forsytes--Old Jolyon, Swithin and James, Roger, Nicholas and
Timothy--lived their lives without ever asking whether life was
worth living.  They found it interesting, very absorbing from day
to day, and even if they had no very intimate belief in a future
life, they had very great faith in the progress of their own
positions, and in laying up treasure for their children.  Then came
Young Jolyon and Soames and their contemporaries, who, although
they had imbibed with Darwinism and the 'Varsities, definite doubts
about a future life, and sufficient introspection to wonder whether
they themselves were progressing, retained their sense of property
and their desire to provide for, and to live on in their progeny.
The generation which came in when Queen Victoria went out, through
new ideas about the treatment of children, because of new modes of
locomotion, and owing to the Great War, has decided that everything
requires re-valuation.  And, since there is, seemingly, very little
future before property, and less before life, is determined to live
now or never, without bothering about the fate of such offspring as
it may chance to have.  Not that the present generation is less
fond of its children than were past generations--human nature does
not change on points so elementary--but when everything is keyed to
such pitch of uncertainty, to secure the future at the expense of
the present no longer seems worth while.

This is really the fundamental difference between the present and
the past generations.  People will not provide against that which
they cannot see ahead.

All this, of course, refers only to that tenth or so of the
population whose eyes are above the property line; below that line
there are no Forsytes, and therefore no need for this preface to
dip.  What average Englishman, moreover, with less than three
hundred a year ever took thought for the future, even in Early
Victorian days?

This Modern Comedy, then, is staged against a background of that
more or less fixed quantity, Soames, and his co-father-in-law,
light weight and ninth baronet, Sir Lawrence Mont, with such
subsidiary neo-Victorians as the self-righteous Mr. Danby,
Elderson, Mr. Blythe, Sir James Foskisson, Wilfred Bentworth, and
Hilary Charwell.  Pooling their idiosyncrasies, qualities, and
mental attitudes, one gets a fairly comprehensive and steady past
against which to limn the features of the present--Fleur and
Michael, Wilfrid Desert, Aubrey Greene, Marjorie Ferrar, Norah
Curfew, Jon, the Rafaelite, and other minor characters.  The
multiple types and activities of to-day--even above the Plimsoll
line of property--would escape the confines of twenty novels, so
that this Modern Comedy is bound to be a gross under-statement of
the present generation, but not perhaps a libel on it.  Symbolism
is boring, so let us hope that a certain resemblance between the
case of Fleur and that of her generation chasing the serenity of
which it has been defrauded may escape notice.  The fact remains
that for the moment, at least, youth is balancing, twirling on the
tiptoes of uncertainty.  What is to come?  Will contentment yet be
caught?  How will it all settle down?  Will things ever again
settle down--who knows?  Are there to come fresh wars, and fresh
inventions hot-foot on those not yet mastered and digested?  Or
will Fate decree another pause, like that of Victorian times,
during which re-valuated life will crystallise, and give property
and its brood of definite beliefs a further innings?

But, however much or little "A Modern Comedy" may be deemed to
reflect the spirit of an Age, it continues in the main to relate
the tale of life which sprang from the meeting of Soames and Irene
in a Bournemouth drawing-room in 1881, a tale which could but end
when its spine snapped, and Soames 'took the ferry' forty-five
years later.

The chronicler, catechised (as he often is) concerning Soames,
knows not precisely what he stands for.  Taking him for all in all
he was honest, anyway.  He lived and moved and had his peculiar
being, and, now he sleeps.  His creator may be pardoned for
thinking there was something fitting about his end; for, however
far we have travelled from Greek culture and philosophy, there is
still truth in the old Greek proverb:  "That which a man most loves
shall in the end destroy him."

JOHN GALSWORTHY.




CONTENTS


BOOK I

THE WHITE MONKEY


PART I

I.  PROMENADE

II.  HOME

III.  MUSICAL

IV.  DINING

V.  EVE

VI.  'OLD FORSYTE' AND 'OLD MONT'

VII.  'OLD MONT' AND 'OLD FORSYTE'

VIII.  BICKET

IX.  CONFUSION

X.  PASSING OF A SPORTSMAN

XI.  VENTURE

XII.  FIGURES AND FACTS

XIII.  TENTERHOOKS


PART II

I.  THE MARK FALLS

II.  VICTORINE

III.  MICHAEL WALKS AND TALKS

IV.  FLEUR'S BODY

V.  FLEUR'S SOUL

VI.  MICHAEL GETS 'WHAT-FOR'

VII.  'THE ALTOGETHER'

VIII.  SOAMES TAKES THE MATTER UP

IX.  SLEUTH

X.  FACE

XI.  COCKED HAT

XII.  GOING EAST


PART III

I.  BANK HOLIDAY

II.  OFFICE WORK

III.  'AFTERNOON OF A DRYAD'

IV.  AFTERNOON OF A BICKET

V.  MICHAEL GIVES ADVICE

VI.  QUITTANCE

VII.  LOOKING INTO ELDERSON

VIII.  LEVANTED

IX.  SOAMES DOESN'T GIVE A DAMN

X.  BUT TAKES NO CHANCES

XI.  WITH A SMALL 'N'

XII.  ORDEAL BY SHAREHOLDER

XIII.  SOAMES AT BAY

XIV.  ON THE RACK

XV.  CALM





BOOK I

THE WHITE MONKEY


"No retreat, no retreat
They must conquer or die
Who have no retreat!"

Mr. Gay.




TO MAX BEERBOHM




PART I


CHAPTER I

PROMENADE


Coming down the steps of 'Snooks' Club, so nicknamed by George
Forsyte in the late eighties, on that momentous mid-October
afternoon of 1922, Sir Lawrence Mont, ninth baronet, set his fine
nose towards the east wind, and moved his thin legs with speed.
Political by birth rather than by nature, he reviewed the
revolution which had restored his Party to power with a detachment
not devoid of humour.  Passing the Remove Club, he thought:  'Some
sweating into shoes, there!  No more confectioned dishes.  A
woodcock--without trimmings, for a change!'

The captains and the kings had departed from 'Snooks' before he
entered it, for he was not of 'that catch-penny crew, now paid off,
no sir; fellows who turned their tails on the land the moment the
war was over.  Pah!'  But for an hour he had listened to echoes,
and his lively twisting mind, embedded in deposits of the past,
sceptical of the present and of all political protestations and
pronouncements, had recorded with amusement the confusion of
patriotism and personalities left behind by the fateful gathering.
Like most landowners, he distrusted doctrine.  If he had a
political belief, it was a tax on wheat; and so far as he could
see, he was now alone in it--but then he was not seeking election;
in other words, his principle was not in danger of extinction from
the votes of those who had to pay for bread.  Principles--he mused--
au fond were pocket; and he wished the deuce people wouldn't
pretend they weren't!  Pocket, in the deep sense of that word, of
course, self-interest as member of a definite community.  And how
the devil was this definite community, the English nation, to
exist, when all its land was going out of cultivation, and all its
ships and docks in danger of destruction by aeroplanes?  He had
listened that hour past for a single mention of the land.  Not one!
It was not practical politics!  Confound the fellows!  They had to
wear their breeches out--keeping seats or getting them.  No
connection between posteriors and posterity!  No, by George!  Thus
reminded of posterity, it occurred to him rather suddenly that his
son's wife showed no signs as yet.  Two years!  Time they were
thinking about children.  It was dangerous to get into the habit of
not having them, when a title and estate depended.  A smile twisted
his lips and eyebrows which resembled spinneys of dark pothooks.  A
pretty young creature, most taking; and knew it, too!  Whom was she
not getting to know?  Lions and tigers, monkeys and cats--her house
was becoming quite a menagerie of more or less celebrities.  There
was a certain unreality about that sort of thing!  And opposite a
British lion in Trafalgar Square Sir Lawrence thought:  'She'll be
getting these to her house next!  She's got the collecting habit.
Michael must look out--in a collector's house there's always a
lumber room for old junk, and husbands are liable to get into it.
That reminds me:  I promised her a Chinese Minister.  Well, she
must wait now till after the General Election.'

Down Whitehall, under the grey easterly sky, the towers of
Westminster came for a second into view.  'A certain unreality in
that, too,' he thought.  'Michael and his fads!  Well, it's the
fashion--Socialistic principles and a rich wife.  Sacrifice with
safety!  Peace with plenty!  Nostrums--ten a penny!'

Passing the newspaper hubbub of Charing Cross, frenzied by the
political crisis, he turned up to the left towards Danby and
Winter, publishers, where his son was junior partner.  A new theme
for a book had just begun to bend a mind which had already produced
a 'Life of Montrose,' 'Far Cathay,' that work of Eastern travel,
and a fanciful conversation between the shades of Gladstone and
Disraeli--entitled 'A Duet.'  With every step taken, from 'Snooks'
eastward, his erect thin figure in Astrakhan-collared coat, his
thin grey-moustached face, and tortoise-shell rimmed monocle under
the lively dark eyebrow, had seemed more rare.  It became almost a
phenomenon in this dingy back street, where carts stuck like winter
flies, and persons went by with books under their arms, as if
educated.

He had nearly reached the door of Danby's when he encountered two
young men.  One of them was clearly his son, better dressed since
his marriage, and smoking a cigar--thank goodness--instead of those
eternal cigarettes; the other--ah! yes--Michael's sucking poet and
best man, head in air, rather a sleek head under a velour hat!  He
said:

"Ha, Michael!"

"HALLO, Bart!  You know my governor, Wilfrid?  Wilfrid Desert.
'Copper Coin'--some poet, Bart, I tell you.  You must read him.
We're going home.  Come along!"

Sir Lawrence went along.

"What happened at 'Snooks'?"

"Le roi est mort.  Labour can start lying, Michael--election next
month."

"Bart was brought up, Wilfrid, in days that knew not Demos."

"Well, Mr. Desert, do you find reality in politics now?"

"Do you find reality in anything, sir?"

"In income tax, perhaps."

Michael grinned.

"Above knighthood," he said, "there's no such thing as simple
faith."

"Suppose your friends came into power, Michael--in some ways not a
bad thing, help 'em to grow up--what could they do, eh?  Could they
raise national taste?  Abolish the cinema?  Teach English people to
cook?  Prevent other countries from threatening war?  Make us grow
our own food?  Stop the increase of town life?  Would they hang
dabblers in poison gas?  Could they prevent flying in war-time?
Could they weaken the possessive instinct--anywhere?  Or do
anything, in fact, but alter the incidence of possession a little?
All party politics are top dressing.  We're ruled by the inventors,
and human nature; and we live in Queer Street, Mr. Desert."

"Much my sentiments, sir."

Michael flourished his cigar.

"Bad old men, you two!"

And removing their hats, they passed the Cenotaph.

"Curiously symptomatic--that thing," said Sir Lawrence; "monument
to the dread of swank--most characteristic.  And the dread of
swank--"

"Go on, Bart," said Michael.

"The fine, the large, the florid--all off!  No far-sighted views,
no big schemes, no great principles, no great religion, or great
art--aestheticism in cliques and backwaters, small men in small
hats."

"As panteth the heart after Byron, Wilberforce, and the Nelson
Monument.  My poor old Bart!  What about it, Wilfrid?"

"Yes, Mr. Desert--what about it?"

Desert's dark face contracted.

"It's an age of paradox," he said.  "We all kick up for freedom,
and the only institutions gaining strength are Socialism and the
Roman Catholic Church.  We're frightfully self-conscious about art--
and the only art development is the cinema.  We're nuts on peace--
and all we're doing about it is to perfect poison gas."

Sir Lawrence glanced sideways at a young man so bitter.

"And how's publishing, Michael?"

"Well, 'Copper Coin' is selling like hot cakes; and there's quite a
movement in 'A Duet.'  What about this for a new ad.:  'A Duet, by
Sir Lawrence Mont, Bart.  The most distinguished Conversation ever
held between the Dead.'  That ought to get the psychic.  Wilfrid
suggested 'G.O.M. and Dizzy--broadcasted from Hell.'  Which do you
like best?"

They had come, however, to a policeman holding up his hand against
the nose of a van horse, so that everything marked time.  The
engines of the cars whirred idly, their drivers' faces set towards
the space withheld from them; a girl on a bicycle looked vacantly
about her, grasping the back of the van, where a youth sat sideways
with his legs stretched out towards her.  Sir Lawrence glanced
again at young Desert.  A thin, pale-dark face, good-looking, but a
hitch in it, as if not properly timed; nothing outre in dress or
manner, and yet socially at large; less vivacious than that lively
rascal, his own son, but as anchorless, and more sceptical--might
feel things pretty deeply, though!  The policeman lowered his arm.

"You were in the war, Mr. Desert?"

"Oh, yes."

"Air service?"

"And line.  Bit of both."

"Hard on a poet."

"Not at all.  Poetry's only possible when you may be blown up at
any moment, or when you live in Putney."

Sir Lawrence's eyebrow rose.  "Yes?"

"Tennyson, Browning, Wordsworth, Swinburne--they could turn it out;
ils vivaient, mais si peu."

"Is there not a third condition favourable?"

"And that, sir?"

"How shall I express it--a certain cerebral agitation in connection
with women?"

Desert's face twitched, and seemed to darken.

Michael put his latchkey into the lock of his front door.



CHAPTER II

HOME


The house in South Square, Westminster, to which the young Monts
had come after their Spanish honeymoon two years before, might have
been called 'emancipated.'  It was the work of an architect whose
dream was a new house perfectly old, and an old house perfectly
new.  It followed, therefore, no recognised style or tradition, and
was devoid of structural prejudice; but it soaked up the smuts of
the metropolis with such special rapidity that its stone already
respectably resembled that of Wren.  Its windows and doors had
gently rounded tops.  The high-sloping roof, of a fine sooty pink,
was almost Danish, and two 'ducky little windows' looked out of it,
giving an impression that very tall servants lived up there.  There
were rooms on each side of the front door, which was wide and set
off by bay trees in black and gold bindings.  The house was thick
through, and the staircase, of a broad chastity, began at the far
end of a hall which had room for quite a number of hats and coats
and cards.  There were four bathrooms; and not even a cellar
underneath.  The Forsyte instinct for a house had co-operated in
its acquisition.  Soames had picked it up for his daughter,
undecorated, at that psychological moment when the bubble of
inflation was pricked, and the air escaping from the balloon of the
world's trade.  Fleur, however, had established immediate contact
with the architect--an element which Soames himself had never quite
got over--and decided not to have more than three styles in her
house:  Chinese, Spanish, and her own.  The room to the left of the
front door, running the breadth of the house, was Chinese, with
ivory panels, a copper floor, central heating, and cut glass
lustres.  It contained four pictures--all Chinese--the only school
in which her father had not yet dabbled.  The fireplace, wide and
open, had Chinese dogs with Chinese tiles for them to stand on.
The silk was chiefly of jade green.  There were two wonderful old
black-tea chests, picked up with Soames' money at Jobson's--not a
bargain.  There was no piano, partly because pianos were too
uncompromisingly occidental, and partly because it would have taken
up much room.  Fleur aimed at space-collecting people rather than
furniture or bibelots.  The light, admitted by windows at both
ends, was unfortunately not Chinese.  She would stand sometimes in
the centre of this room, thinking--how to 'bunch' her guests, how
to make her room more Chinese without making it uncomfortable; how
to seem to know all about literature and politics; how to accept
everything her father gave her, without making him aware that his
taste had no sense of the future; how to keep hold of Sibley Swan,
the new literary star, and to get hold of Gurdon Minho, the old; of
how Wilfrid Desert was getting too fond of her; of what was really
her style in dress; of why Michael had such funny ears; and
sometimes she stood not thinking at all--just aching a little.

When those three came in she was sitting before a red lacquer tea-
table, finishing a very good tea.  She always had tea brought in
rather early, so that she could have a good quiet preliminary
'tuck-in' all by herself, because she was not quite twenty-one, and
this was her hour for remembering her youth.  By her side Ting-a-
ling was standing on his hind feet, his tawny forepaws on a Chinese
footstool, his snubbed black and tawny muzzle turned up towards the
fruits of his philosophy.

"That'll do, Ting.  No more, ducky!  NO MORE!"

The expression of Ting-a-ling answered:

'Well, then, stop, too!  Don't subject me to torture!'

A year and three months old, he had been bought by Michael out of a
Bond Street shop window on Fleur's twentieth birthday, eleven
months ago.

Two years of married life had not lengthened her short dark
chestnut hair; had added a little more decision to her quick lips,
a little more allurement to her white-lidded, dark-lashed hazel
eyes, a little more poise and swing to her carriage, a little more
chest and hip measurement; had taken a little from waist and calf
measurement, a little colour from cheeks a little less round, and a
little sweetness from a voice a little more caressing.

She stood up behind the tray, holding out her white round arm
without a word.  She avoided unnecessary greetings or farewells.
She would have had to say them so often, and their purpose was
better served by look, pressure, and slight inclination of head to
one side.

With circular movement of her squeezed hand, she said:

"Draw up.  Cream, sir?  Sugar, Wilfrid?  Ting has had too much--
don't feed him!  Hand things, Michael.  I've heard all about the
meeting at 'Snooks.'  You're not going to canvass for Labour,
Michael--canvassing's so silly.  If any one canvassed me, I should
vote the other way at once."

"Yes, darling; but you're not the average elector."

Fleur looked at him.  Very sweetly put!  Conscious of Wilfrid
biting his lips, of Sir Lawrence taking that in, of the amount of
silk leg she was showing, of her black and cream teacups, she
adjusted these matters.  A flutter of her white lids--Desert ceased
to bite his lips; a movement of her silk legs--Sir Lawrence ceased
to look at him.  Holding out her cups, she said:

"I suppose I'm not modern enough?"

Desert, moving a bright little spoon round in his magpie cup, said
without looking up:

"As much more modern than the moderns, as you are more ancient."

"'Ware poetry!" said Michael.

But when he had taken his father to see the new cartoons by Aubrey
Greene, she said:

"Kindly tell me what you meant, Wilfrid."

Desert's voice seemed to leap from restraint.

"What does it matter?  I don't want to waste time with that."

"But I want to know.  It sounded like a sneer."

"A sneer?  From me?  Fleur!"

"Then tell me."

"I meant that you have all their restlessness and practical get-
thereness; but you have what they haven't, Fleur--power to turn
one's head.  And mine is turned.  You know it."

"How would Michael like that--from YOU, his best man?"

Desert moved quickly to the windows.

Fleur took Ting-a-ling on her lap.  Such things had been said to
her before; but from Wilfrid it was serious.  Nice to think she had
his heart, of course!  Only, where on earth could she put it, where
it wouldn't be seen except by her?  He was incalculable--did
strange things!  She was a little afraid--not of him, but of that
quality in him.  He came back to the hearth, and said:

"Ugly, isn't it?  Put that dam' dog down, Fleur; I can't see your
face.  If you were really fond of Michael--I swear I wouldn't; but
you're not, you know."

Fleur said coldly:

"You know very little; I AM fond of Michael."

Desert gave his little jerky laugh.

"Oh yes; not the sort that counts."

Fleur looked up.

"It counts quite enough to make one safe."

"A flower that I can't pick."

Fleur nodded.

"Quite sure, Fleur?  Quite, quite sure?"

Fleur stared; her eyes softened a little, her eyelids, so
excessively white, drooped over them; she nodded.  Desert said
slowly:

"The moment I believe that, I shall go East."

"East?"

"Not so stale as going West, but much the same--you don't come
back."

Fleur thought:  'The East?  I should love to know the East!  Pity
one can't manage that, too.  Pity!'

"You won't keep me in your Zoo, my dear.  I shan't hang around and
feed on crumbs.  You know what I feel--it means a smash of some
sort."

"It hasn't been my fault, has it?"

"Yes; you've collected me, as you collect everybody that comes near
you."

"I don't know what you mean."

Desert bent down, and dragged her hand to his lips.

"Don't be riled with me; I'm too unhappy."

Fleur let her hand stay against his hot lips.

"Sorry, Wilfrid."

"All right, dear.  I'll go."

"But you're coming to dinner to-morrow?"

Desert said violently:

"TO-MORROW?  Good God--no!  What d'you think I'm made of?"

He flung her hand away.

"I don't like violence, Wilfrid."

"Well, good-bye; I'd better go."

The words "And you'd better not come again" trembled up to her
lips, but were not spoken.  Part from Wilfrid--life would lose a
little warmth!  She waved her hand.  He was gone.  She heard the
door closing.  Poor Wilfrid!--nice to think of a flame at which to
warm her hands!  Nice but rather dreadful!  And suddenly, dropping
Ting-a-ling, she got up and began to walk about the room.  To-
morrow!  Second anniversary of her wedding-day!  Still an ache when
she thought of what it had not been.  But there was little time to
think--and she made less.  What good in thinking?  Only one life,
full of people, of things to do and have, of things wanted--a life
only void of--one thing, and that--well, if people had it, they
never had it long!  On her lids two tears, which had gathered,
dried without falling.  Sentimentalism!  No!  The last thing in the
world--the unforgivable offence!  Whom should she put next whom to-
morrow?  And whom should she get in place of Wilfrid, if Wilfrid
wouldn't come--silly boy!  One day--one night--what difference?
Who should sit on her right, and who on her left?  Was Aubrey
Greene more distinguished, or Sibley Swan?  Were they either as
distinguished as Walter Nazing or Charles Upshire?  Dinner of
twelve, exclusively literary and artistic, except for Michael and
Alison Charwell.  Ah!  Could Alison get her Gurdon Minho--just one
writer of the old school, one glass of old wine to mellow
effervescence?  He didn't publish with Danby and Winter; but he fed
out of Alison's hand.  She went quickly to one of the old tea
chests, and opened it.  Inside was a telephone.

"Can I speak to Lady Alison--Mrs. Michael Mont . . .  Yes . . .
That you, Alison? . . .  Fleur speaking.  Wilfrid has fallen
through to-morrow night . . .  Is there any chance of your bringing
Gurdon Minho?  I don't know him, of course; but he might be
interested.  You'll try? . . .  That'll be ever so delightful.
Isn't the 'Snooks' Club meeting rather exciting?  Bart says they'll
eat each other now they've split . . .  About Mr. Minho.  Could you
let me know to-night? Thanks--thanks awfully! . . .  Goodbye!"

Failing Minho, whom?  Her mind hovered over the names in her
address book.  At so late a minute it must be some one who didn't
stand on ceremony; but except Alison, none of Michael's relations
would be safe from Sibley Swan or Nesta Gorse, and their subversive
shafts; as to the Forsytes--out of the question; they had their own
sub-acid humour (some of them), but they were not modern, not
really modern.  Besides, she saw as little of them as she could--
they dated, belonged to the dramatic period, had no sense of life
without beginning or end.  No!  If Gurdon Minho was a frost, it
would have to be a musician, whose works were hieroglyphical with a
dash of surgery; or, better, perhaps, a psycho-analyst.  Her
fingers turned the pages till she came to those two categories.
Hugo Solstis?  A possibility; but suppose he wanted to play them
something recent?  There was only Michael's upright Grand, and that
would mean going to his study.  Better Gerald Hanks--he and Nesta
Gorse would get off together on dreams; still, if they did, there
would be no actual loss of life.  Yes, failing Gurdon Minho, Gerald
Hanks; he would be free--and put him between Alison and Nesta.  She
closed the book, and, going back to her jade-green settee, sat
gazing at Ting-a-ling.  The little dog's prominent round eyes gazed
back; bright, black, very old.  Fleur thought:  'I DON'T want
Wilfrid to drop off.'  Among all the crowd who came and went, here,
there and everywhere, she cared for nobody.  Keep up with them,
keep up with everything, of course!  It was all frightfully
amusing, frightfully necessary!  Only--only--what?

Voices!  Michael and Bart coming back.  Bart had noticed Wilfrid.
He WAS a noticing old Bart.  She was never very comfortable when he
was about--lively and twisting, but with something settled and
ancestral in him; a little like Ting-a-ling--something judgmatic,
ever telling her that she was fluttering and new.  He was anchored,
could only move to the length of his old-fashioned cord, but he
could drop on to things disconcertingly.  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
to-morrow--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 to-
morrow."

"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.  The piece would
be 'interesting'--she fell into the state of outer observation and
inner calculation very usual with her nowadays.  Over there was
L.S.D., the greater dramatist; she didn't know him--yet.  He looked
rather frightening, his hair stood up so straight.  And her eye
began picturing him on her copper floor against a Chinese picture.
And there--yes!  Gurdon Minho!  Imagine HIS coming to anything so
modern!  His profile WAS rather Roman--of the Aurelian period!
Passing on from that antique, with the pleased thought that by this
time to-morrow she might have collected it, she quartered the
assembly face by face--she did not want to miss any one important.

"The furniture" had come to a sudden standstill.

"Interesting!" said a voice over her shoulder.  Aubrey Greene!
Illusive, rather moonlit, with his silky fair hair brushed straight
back, and his greenish eyes--his smile always made her feel that he
was 'getting' at her.  But, after all, he was a cartoonist!

"Yes, isn't it?"

He curled away.  He might have stayed a little longer--there
wouldn't be time for any one else before those songs of Birdigal's!
Here came the singer Charles Powls!  How stout and efficient he
looked, dragging little Birdigal to the piano.

Charming accompaniment--rippling, melodious!

The stout, efficient man began to sing.  How different from the
accompaniment!  The song hit every note just off the solar plexus.
It mathematically prevented her from feeling pleasure.  Birdigal
must have written it in horror of some one calling it 'vocal.'
Vocal!  Fleur knew how catching the word was; it would run like a
measle round the ring, and Birdigal would be no more!  Poor
Birdigal!  But this was 'interesting.'  Only, as Michael was
saying:  "O, my Gawd!"

Three songs!  Powls was wonderful--so loyal!  Never one note hit so
that it rang out like music!  Her mind fluttered off to Wilfrid.
To him, of all the younger poets, people accorded the right to say
something; it gave him such a position--made him seem to come out
of life, instead of literature.  Besides, he had done things in the
war, was a son of Lord Mullyon, would get the Mercer Prize
probably, for 'Copper Coin.'  If Wilfrid abandoned her, a star
would fall from the firmament above her copper floor.  He had no
right to leave her in the lurch.  He must learn not to be violent--
not to think physically.  No! she couldn't let Wilfrid slip away;
nor could she have any more sob-stuff in her life, searing
passions, cul de sacs, aftermaths.  She had tasted of that; a
dulled ache still warned her.

Birdigal was bowing, Michael saying:  "Come out for a whiff!  The
next thing's a dud!"  Oh! ah! Beethoven.  Poor old Beethoven!  So
out of date--one did RATHER enjoy him!

The corridor, and refectory beyond, were swarming with the
restoration movement.  Young men and women with faces and heads of
lively and distorted character, were exchanging the word
'interesting.'  Men of more massive type, resembling sedentary
matadors, blocked all circulation.  Fleur and Michael passed a
little way along, stood against the wall, and lighted cigarettes.
Fleur smoked hers delicately--a very little one in a tiny amber
holder.  She had the air of admiring blue smoke rather than of
making it; there were spheres to consider beyond this sort of
crowd--one never knew who might be about!--the sphere, for
instance, in which Alison Charwell moved, politico-literary,
catholic in taste, but, as Michael always put it, "Convinced, like
a sanitary system, that it's the only sphere in the world; look at
the way they all write books of reminiscence about each other!"
They might, she always felt, disapprove of women smoking in public
halls.  Consorting delicately with iconoclasm, Fleur never forgot
that her feet were in two worlds at least.  Standing there,
observant of all to left and right, she noted against the wall one
whose face was screened by his programme.  'Wilfrid,' she thought,
'and doesn't mean to see me!'  Mortified, as a child from whom a
sixpence is filched, she said:

"There's Wilfrid!  Fetch him, Michael!"

Michael crossed, and touched his best man's sleeve; Desert's face
emerged, frowning.  She saw him shrug his shoulders, turn and walk
into the throng.  Michael came back.

"Wilfrid's got the hump to-night; says he's not fit for human
society--queer old son!"

How obtuse men were!  Because Wilfrid was his pal, Michael did not
see; and that was lucky!  So Wilfrid really meant to avoid her!
Well, she would see!  And she said:

"I'm tired, Michael; let's go home."

His hand slid round her arm.

"Sorry, old thing; come along!"

They stood a moment in a neglected doorway, watching Woomans, the
conductor, launched towards his orchestra.

"Look at him," said Michael; "guy hung out of an Italian window,
legs and arms all stuffed and flying!  And look at the Frapka and
her piano--that's a turbulent union!"

There was a strange sound.

"Melody, by George!" said Michael.

An attendant muttered in their ears:  "Now, sir, I'm going to shut
the door."  Fleur had a fleeting view of L.S.D. sitting upright as
his hair, with closed eyes.  The door was shut--they were outside
in the hall.

"Wait here, darling; I'll nick a rickshaw."

Fleur huddled her chin in her fur.  It was easterly and cold.

A voice behind her said:

"Well, Fleur, am I going East?"

Wilfrid!  His collar up to his ears, a cigarette between his lips,
hands in pockets, eyes devouring.

"You're very silly, Wilfrid!"

"Anything you like; am I going East?"

"No; Sunday morning--eleven o'clock at the Tate.  We'll talk it
out."

"Convenu!"  And he was gone.

Alone suddenly, like that, Fleur felt the first shock of reality.
Was Wilfrid truly going to be unmanageable? A taxicab ground up;
Michael beckoned; Fleur stepped in.

Passing a passionately lighted oasis of young ladies displaying to
the interested Londoner the acme of Parisian undress, she felt
Michael incline towards her.  If she were going to keep Wilfrid,
she must be nice to Michael.  Only:

"You needn't kiss me in Piccadilly Circus, Michael!"

"Sorry, duckie!  It's a little previous--I meant to get you
opposite the Partheneum."

Fleur remembered how he had slept on a Spanish sofa for the first
fortnight of their honeymoon; how he always insisted that she must
not spend anything on him, but must always let him give her what he
liked, though she had three thousand a year and he twelve hundred;
how jumpy he was when she had a cold--and how he always came home
to tea.  Yes, he was a dear!  But would she break her heart if he
went East or West to-morrow?

Snuggled against him, she was surprised at her own cynicism.

A telephone message written out, in the hall, ran:  "Please tell
Mrs. Mont I've got Mr. Gurding Minner.  Lady Alisson."

It was restful.  A real antique!  She turned on the lights in her
room, and stood for a moment admiring it.  Truly pretty!  A slight
snuffle from the corner--Ting-a-ling, tan on a black cushion, lay
like a Chinese lion in miniature; pure, remote, fresh from evening
communion with the Square railings.

"I see you," said Fleur.

Ting-a-ling did not stir; his round black eyes watched his mistress
undress.  When she returned from the bathroom he was curled into a
ball.  Fleur thought:  'Queer!  How does he know Michael won't be
coming?'  And slipping into her well warmed bed, she too curled
herself up and slept.

But in the night, contrary to her custom, she awoke.  A cry--long,
weird, trailing, from somewhere--the river--the slums at the back--
rousing memory--poignant, aching--of her honeymoon--Granada, its
roofs below, jet, ivory, gold; the watchman's cry, the lines in
Jon's letter:


     "Voice in the night crying, down in the old sleeping
      Spanish City darkened under her white stars.
      What says the voice--its clear, lingering anguish?
      Just the watchman, telling his dateless tale of safety?
      Just a road-man, flinging to the moon his song?
        No!  'Tis one deprived, whose lover's heart is weeping,
        Just his cry:  'How long?'"


A cry, or had she dreamed it?  Jon, Wilfrid, Michael!  No use to
have a heart!



CHAPTER IV

DINING


Lady Alison Charwell, born Heathfield, daughter of the first Earl
of Campden, and wife to Lionel Charwell, K.C., Michael's somewhat
young uncle, was a delightful Englishwoman brought up in a set
accepted as the soul of society.  Full of brains, energy, taste,
money, and tinctured in its politico-legal ancestry by blue blood,
this set was linked to, but apart from 'Snooks' and the duller
haunts of birth and privilege.  It was gay, charming, free-and-
easy, and, according to Michael, "Snobbish, old thing, aesthetically
and intellectually, but they'll never see it.  They think they're
the top notch--quick, healthy, up-to-date, well-bred, intelligent;
they simply can't imagine their equals.  But you see their
imagination is deficient.  Their really creative energy would go
into a pint pot.  Look at their books--they're always ON something--
philosophy, spiritualism, poetry, fishing, themselves; why, even
their sonnets dry up before they're twenty-five.  They know
everything--except mankind outside their own set.  Oh! they work--
they run the show--they have to; there's no one else with their
brains, and energy, and taste.  But they run it round and round in
their own blooming circle.  It's the world to them--and it might be
worse.  They've patented their own golden age; but it's a trifle
flyblown since the war."

Alison Charwell--in and of this world, so spryly soulful,
debonnaire, free, and cosy--lived within a stone's throw of Fleur,
in a house pleasant, architecturally, as any in London.  Forty
years old, she had three children and considerable beauty, wearing
a little fine from mental and bodily activity.  Something of an
enthusiast, she was fond of Michael, in spite of his strange
criticisms, so that his matrimonial venture had piqued her from the
start.  Fleur was dainty, had quick natural intelligence--this new
niece was worth cultivation.  But, though adaptable and
assimilative, Fleur had remained curiously unassimilated; she
continued to whet the curiosity of Lady Alison, accustomed to the
close borough of choice spirits, and finding a certain poignancy in
contact with the New Age on Fleur's copper floor.  She met with an
irreverence there, which, not taken too seriously, flipped her
mind.  On that floor she almost felt a back number.  It was
stimulating.

Receiving Fleur's telephonic enquiry about Gurdon Minho, she had
rung up the novelist.  She knew him, if not well.  Nobody seemed to
know him well; amiable, polite, silent, rather dull and austere;
but with a disconcerting smile, sometimes ironical, sometimes
friendly.  His books were now caustic, now sentimental.  On both
counts it was rather the fashion to run him down, though he still
seemed to exist.

She rang him up.  Would he come to a dinner to-morrow at her young
nephew, Michael Mont's, and meet the younger generation?  His
answer came, rather high-pitched:

"Rather!  Full fig, or dinner jacket?"

"How awfully nice of you! they'll be ever so pleased.  Full fig, I
believe.  It's the second anniversary of their wedding."  She hung
up the receiver with the thought:  'He must be writing a book about
them!'

Conscious of responsibility, she arrived early.

It was a grand night at her husband's Inn, so that she brought
nothing with her but the feeling of adventure, pleasant after a day
spent in fluttering over the decision at 'Snooks'.  She was
received only by Ting-a-ling, who had his back to the fire, and
took no notice beyond a stare.  Sitting down on the jade green
settee, she said:

"Well, you funny little creature, don't you know me after all this
time?"

Ting-a-ling's black shiny gaze seemed saying:  "You recur here, I
know; most things recur.  There is nothing new about the future."

Lady Alison fell into a train of thought:  The new generation!  Did
she want her own girls to be of it!  She would like to talk to Mr.
Minho about that--they had had a very nice talk down at Beechgroves
before the war.  Nine years ago--Sybil only six, Joan only four
then!  Time went, things changed!  A new generation!  And what was
the difference?  "I think we had more tradition!" she said to
herself softly.

A slight sound drew her eyes up from contemplation of her feet.
Ting-a-ling was moving his tail from side to side on the hearthrug,
as if applauding.  Fleur's voice, behind her, said:

"Well, darling, I'm awfully late.  It WAS good of you to get me Mr.
Minho.  I do hope they'll all behave.  He'll be between you and me,
anyway; I'm sticking him at the top, and Michael at the bottom,
between Pauline Upshire and Amabel Nazing.  You'll have Sibley on
your left, and I'll have Aubrey on my right, then Nesta Gorse and
Walter Nazing; opposite them Linda Frewe and Charles Upshire.
Twelve.  You know them all.  Oh! and you mustn't mind if the
Nazings and Nesta smoke between the courses.  Amabel will do it.
She comes from Virginia--it's the reaction.  I do hope she'll have
some clothes on; Michael always says it's a mistake when she has;
but having Mr. Minho makes one a little nervous.  Did you see
Nesta's skit in 'The Bouquet'?  Oh, too frightfully amusing--
clearly meant for L.S.D.!  Ting, my Ting, are you going to stay and
see all these people?  Well, then, get up here or you'll be trodden
on.  Isn't he Chinese?  He does so round off the room."

Ting-a-ling laid his nose on his paws, in the centre of a jade
green cushion.

"Mr. Gurding Minner!"

The well-known novelist looked pale and composed.  Shaking the two
extended hands, he gazed at Ting-a-ling, and said:

"How nice!  How are YOU, my little man?"

Ting-a-ling did not stir.  "You take me for a common English dog,
sir!" his silence seemed to say.

"Mr. and Mrs. Walter Nazon, Miss Lenda Frow."

Amabel Nazing came first, clear alabaster from her fair hair down
to the six inches of gleaming back above her waist-line, shrouded
alabaster from four inches below the knee to the gleaming toes of
her shoes; the eminent novelist mechanically ceased to commune with
Ting-a-ling.  Walter Nazing, who followed a long way up above his
wife, had a tiny line of collar emergent from swathes of black, and
a face, cut a hundred years ago, that slightly resembled Shelley's.
His literary productions were sometimes felt to be like the poetry
of that bard, and sometimes like the prose of Marcel Proust.  "What
oh!" as Michael said.

Linda Frewe, whom Fleur at once introduced to Gurdon Minho, was one
about whose work no two people in her drawing-room ever agreed.
Her works 'Trifles' and 'The Furious Don' had quite divided all
opinion.  Genius according to some, drivel according to others,
those books always roused an interesting debate whether a slight
madness enhanced or diminished the value of art.  She herself paid
little attention to criticism--she produced.

"THE Mr. Minho?  How interesting!  I've never read anything of
yours."

Fleur gave a little gasp.

"What--don't you know Mr. Minho's cats?  But they're wonderful.
Mr. Minho, I do want Mrs. Walter Nazing to know you.  Amabel--Mr.
Gurdon Minho."

"Oh!  Mr. Minho--how perfectly lovely!  I've wanted to know you
ever since my cradle."

Fleur heard the novelist say quietly:

"I could wish it had been longer;" and passed on in doubt to greet
Nesta Gorse and Sibley Swan, who came in, as if they lived
together, quarrelling over L.S.D., Nesta upholding him because of
his 'panache', Sibley maintaining that wit had died with the
Restoration; this fellow was alive!

Michael followed with the Upshires and Aubrey Greene, whom he had
encountered in the hall.  The party was complete.

Fleur loved perfection, and that evening was something of a
nightmare.  Was it a success?  Minho was so clearly the least
brilliant person there; even Alison talked better.  And yet he had
such a fine skull.  She did hope he would not go away early.  Some
one would be almost sure to say 'Dug up!' or 'Thick and bald!'
before the door closed behind him.  He was pathetically agreeable,
as if trying to be liked, or, at least, not despised too much.  And
there must, of course, be more in him than met the sense of
hearing.  After the crab souffle he did seem to be talking to
Alison, and all about youth.  Fleur listened with one ear.

"Youth feels . . . main stream of life . . . not giving it what it
wants.  Past and future getting haloes . . .  Quite!  Contemporary
life no earthly just now . . .  No . . .  Only comfort for us--
we'll be antiquated, some day, like Congreve, Sterne, Defoe . . .
have our chance again . . . WHY?  What IS driving them out of the
main current?  Oh!  Probably surfeit . . . newspapers . . .
photographs.  Don't see life itself, only reports . . .
reproductions of it; all seems shoddy, lurid, commercial . . .
Youth says 'Away with it, let's have the past or the future!'"

He took some salted almonds, and Fleur saw his eyes stray to the
upper part of Amabel Nazing.  Down there the conversation was like
Association football--no one kept the ball for more than one kick.
It shot from head to head.  And after every set of passes some one
would reach out and take a cigarette, and blow a blue cloud across
the unclothed refectory table.  Fleur enjoyed the glow of her
Spanish room--its tiled floor, richly coloured fruits in porcelain,
its tooled leather, copper articles, and Soames' Goya above a
Moorish divan.  She headed the ball promptly when it came her way,
but initiated nothing.  Her gift was to be aware of everything at
once.  "Mrs. Michael Mont presented" the brilliant irrelevancies of
Linda Frewe, the pricks and stimulations of Nesta Gorse, the
moonlit sliding innuendoes of Aubrey Greene, the upturning strokes
of Sibley Swan, Amabel Nazing's little cool American audacities,
Charles Upshire's curious bits of lore, Walter Nazing's subversive
contradictions, the critical intricacies of Pauline Upshire;
Michael's happy-go-lucky slings and arrows, even Alison's
knowledgeable quickness, and Gurdon Minho's silences--she presented
them all, showed them off, keeping her eyes and ears on the ball of
talk lest it should touch earth and rest.  Brilliant evening; but--
a success?

On the jade green settee, when the last of them had gone and
Michael was seeing Alison home, she thought of Minho's 'Youth--not
getting what it wants.'  No!  Things didn't fit.  "They don't fit,
do they, Ting!"  But Ting-a-ling was tired, only the tip of one ear
quivered.  Fleur leaned back and sighed.  Ting-a-ling uncurled
himself, and putting his forepaws on her thigh, looked up in her
face.  "Look at me," he seemed to say, "I'm all right.  I get what
I want, and I want what I get.  At present I want to go to bed."

"But I don't," said Fleur, without moving.

"Just take me up!" said Ting-a-ling.

"Well," said Fleur, "I suppose--It's a nice person, but not the
right person, Ting."

Ting-a-ling settled himself on her bare arms.

"It's all right," he seemed to say.  "There's a great deal too much
sentiment and all that, out of China.  Come on!"



CHAPTER V

EVE


The Honourable Wilfrid Desert's rooms were opposite a picture
gallery off Cork Street.  The only male member of the aristocracy
writing verse that any one would print, he had chosen them for
seclusion rather than for comfort.  His 'junk,' however, was not
devoid of the taste and luxury which overflows from the greater
houses of England.  Furniture from the Hampshire seat of the
Cornish nobleman, Lord Mullyon, had oozed into two vans, when
Wilfrid settled in.  He was seldom to be found, however, in his
nest, and was felt to be a rare bird, owing his rather unique
position among the younger writers partly to his migratory
reputation.  He himself hardly, perhaps, knew where he spent his
time, or did his work, having a sort of mental claustrophobia, a
dread of being hemmed in by people.  When the war broke out he had
just left Eton; when the war was over he was twenty-three, as old a
young man as ever turned a stave.  His friendship with Michael,
begun in hospital, had languished and renewed itself suddenly, when
in 1920 Michael joined Danby and Winter, publishers, of Blake
Street, Covent Garden.  The scattery enthusiasm of the sucking
publisher had been roused by Wilfrid's verse.  Hob-nobbing lunches
over the poems of one in need of literary anchorage, had been
capped by the firm's surrender to Michael's insistence.  The mutual
intoxication of the first book Wilfrid had written and the first
book Michael had sponsored was crowned at Michael's wedding.  Best
man!  Since then, so far as Desert could be tied to anything, he
had been tied to those two; nor, to do him justice, had he realised
till a month ago that the attraction was not Michael, but Fleur.
Desert never spoke of the war, it was not possible to learn from
his own mouth an effect which he might have summed up thus:  "I
lived so long with horror and death; I saw men so in the raw; I put
hope of anything out of my mind so utterly, that I can never more
have the faintest respect for theories, promises, conventions,
moralities, and principles.  I have hated too much the men who
wallowed in them while I was wallowing in mud and blood.  Illusion
is off.  No religion and no philosophy will satisfy me--words, all
words.  I have still my senses--no thanks to them; am still
capable--I find--of passion; can still grit my teeth and grin; have
still some feeling of trench loyalty, but whether real or just a
complex, I don't yet know.  I am dangerous, but not so dangerous as
those who trade in words, principles, theories, and all manner of
fanatical idiocy to be worked out in the blood and sweat of other
men.  The war's done one thing for me--converted life to comedy.
Laugh at it--there's nothing else to do!"

Leaving the concert hall on the Friday night, he had walked
straight home to his rooms.  And lying down full length on a monk's
seat of the fifteenth century, restored with down cushions and silk
of the twentieth, he crossed his hands behind his head and
delivered himself to these thoughts:  'I am not going on like this.
She has bewitched me.  It doesn't mean anything to her.  But it
means hell to me.  I'll finish with it on Sunday--Persia's a good
place.  Arabia's a good place--plenty of blood and sand!  She's
incapable of giving anything up.  How has she hooked herself into
me!  By trick of eyes, and hair, by her walk, by the sound of her
voice--by trick of warmth, scent, colour.  Fling her cap over the
windmill--not she!  What then?  Am I to hang about her Chinese
fireside and her little Chinese dog; and have this ache and this
fever because I can't be kissing her?  I'd rather be flying again
in the middle of Boche whiz-bangs!  Sunday!  How women like to drag
out agonies!  It'll be just this afternoon all over again.  "How
unkind of you to go, when your friendship is so precious to me!
Stay, and be my tame cat, Wilfrid!"  No, my dear, for once you're
up against it!  And--so am I, by the Lord! . . .'

When in that gallery which extends asylum to British art, those two
young people met so accidentally on Sunday morning in front of Eve
smelling at the flowers of the Garden of Eden, there were present
also six mechanics in various stages of decomposition, a custodian
and a couple from the provinces, none of whom seemed capable of
observing anything whatever.  And, indeed, that meeting was
inexpressive.  Two young people, of the disillusioned class,
exchanging condemnations of the past.  Desert with his off-hand
speech, his smile, his well-tailored informality, suggested no
aching heart.  Of the two Fleur was the paler and more interesting.
Desert kept saying to himself:  "No melodrama--that's all it would
be!"  And Fleur was thinking:  'If I can keep him ordinary like
this, I shan't lose him, because he'll never go away without a
proper outburst.'

It was not until they found themselves a second time before the
Eve, that he said:

"I don't know why you asked me to come, Fleur.  It's playing the
goat for no earthly reason.  I quite understand your feeling.  I'm
a bit of 'Ming' that you don't want to lose.  But it's not good
enough, my dear; and that's all about it."

"How horrible of you, Wilfrid!"

"Well!  Here we part!  Give us your flipper."

His eyes--rather beautiful--looked dark and tragic above the smile
on his lips, and she said stammering:

"Wilfrid--I--I don't know.  I want time.  I can't bear you to be
unhappy.  Don't go away!  Perhaps I--I shall be unhappy, too; I--I
don't know."

Through Desert passed the bitter thought:  'She CAN'T let go--she
doesn't know how.'  But he said quite softly:  "Cheer up, my child;
you'll be over all that in a fortnight.  I'll send you something to
make up.  Why shouldn't I make it China--one place is as good as
another?  I'll send you a bit of real 'Ming,' of a better period
than this."

Fleur said passionately:

"You're insulting!  Don't!"

"I beg your pardon.  I don't want to leave you angry."

"What is it you want of me?"

"Oh! no--come!  This is going over it twice.  Besides, since Friday
I've been thinking.  I want nothing, Fleur, except a blessing and
your hand.  Give it me!  Come on!"

Fleur put her hand behind her back.  It was too mortifying!  He
took her for a cold-blooded, collecting little cat--clutching and
playing with mice that she didn't want to eat!

"You think I'm made of ice," she said, and her teeth caught her
upper lip:  "Well, I'm not!"

Desert looked at her; his eyes were very wretched.  "I didn't mean
to play up your pride," he said.  "Let's drop it, Fleur.  It isn't
any good."

Fleur turned and fixed her eyes on the Eve--rumbustious-looking
female, care-free, avid, taking her fill of flower perfume!  Why
not be care-free, take anything that came along?  Not so much love
in the world that one could afford to pass, leaving it unsmelled,
unplucked.  Run away!  Go to the East!  Of course, she couldn't do
anything extravagant like that!  But, perhaps--What did it matter?
one man or another, when neither did you really love!

From under her drooped, white, dark-lashed eyelids she saw the
expression on his face, and that he was standing stiller than the
statues.  And suddenly she said:  "You will be a fool to go.
Wait!"  And without another word or look, she walked away, leaving
Desert breathless before the avid Eve.



CHAPTER VI

'OLD FORSYTE' AND 'OLD MONT'


Moving away, in the confusion of her mood, Fleur almost trod on the
toes of a too-familiar figure standing before an Alma Tadema with a
sort of grey anxiety, as if lost in the mutability of market
values.

"Father!  YOU up in town?  Come along to lunch, I have to get home
quick."

Hooking his arm and keeping between him and Eve, she guided him
away, thinking:  'Did he see us?  Could he have seen us?'

"Have you got enough on?" muttered Soames.

"Heaps!"

"That's what you women always say.  East wind, and your neck like
that!  Well, I don't know."

"No, dear, but I do."

The grey eyes appraised her from head to foot.

"What are you doing here?" he said.  And Flour thought:  'Thank
God he didn't see.  He'd never have asked if he had.'  And she
answered:

"I take an interest in art, darling, as well as you."

"Well, I'm staying with your aunt in Green Street.  This east wind
has touched my liver.  How's your--how's Michael?"

"Oh, he's all right--a little cheap.  We had a dinner last night."

Anniversary!  The realism of a Forsyte stirred in him, and he
looked under her eyes.  Thrusting his hand into his overcoat
pocket, he said:

"I was bringing you this."

Fleur saw a flat substance wrapped in pink tissue paper.

"Darling, what is it?"

Soames put it back into his pocket.

"We'll see later.  Anybody to lunch?"

"Only Bart."

"Old Mont!  Oh, Lord!"

"Don't you like Bart, dear?"

"Like him?  He and I have nothing in common."

"I thought you fraternised rather over the state of things."

"He's a reactionary," said Soames.

"And what are you, ducky?"

"I?  What should _I_ be?"  With these words he affirmed that policy
of non-commitment which, the older he grew, the more he perceived
to be the only attitude for a sensible man.

"How is Mother?"

"Looks well.  I see nothing of her--she's got her own mother down--
they go gadding about."

He never alluded to Madame Lamotte as Fleur's grandmother--the less
his daughter had to do with her French side, the better.

"Oh!" said Fleur.  "There's Ting and a cat!"  Ting-a-ling, out for
a breath of air, and tethered by a lead in the hands of a maid, was
snuffling horribly and trying to climb a railing whereon was
perched a black cat, all hunch and eyes.

"Give him to me, Ellen.  Come with Mother, darling!"

Ting-a-ling came, indeed, but only because he couldn't go,
bristling and snuffling and turning his head back.

"I like to see him natural," said Fleur.

"Waste of money, a dog like that," Soames commented.  "You should
have had a bull-dog and let him sleep in the hall.  No end of
burglaries.  Your aunt had her knocker stolen."

"I wouldn't part with Ting for a hundred knockers."

"One of these days you'll be having HIM stolen--fashionable breed."

Fleur opened her front door.  "Oh!" she said, "Bart's here,
already!"

A shiny hat was reposing on a marble coffer, present from Soames,
intended to hold coats and discourage moth.  Placing his hat
alongside the other, Soames looked at them.  They were too similar
for words, tall, high, shiny, and with the same name inside.  He
had resumed the 'tall hat' habit after the failure of the general
and coal strikes in 1921, his instinct having told him that
revolution would be at a discount for some considerable period.

"About this thing," he said, taking out the pink parcel, "I don't
know what you'll do with it, but here it is."

It was a curiously carved and coloured bit of opal in a ring of
tiny brilliants.

"Oh!" Fleur cried:  "What a delicious thing!"

"Venus floating on the waves, or something," murmured Soames.
"Uncommon.  You want a strong light on it."

"But it's lovely.  I shall put it on at once."

Venus!  If Dad had known!  She put her arms round his neck to
disguise her sense of a propos.  Soames received the rub of her
cheek against his own well-shaved face with his usual stillness.
Why demonstrate when they were both aware that his affection was
double hers?

"Put it on then," he said, "and let's see."

Fleur pinned it at her neck before an old lacquered mirror.

"It's a jewel.  Thank you, darling!  Yes, your tie is straight.  I
like that white piping.  You ought always to wear it with black.
Now, come along!"  And she drew him into her Chinese room.  It was
empty.

"Bart must be up with Michael, talking about his new book."

"Writing at his age?" said Soames.

"Well, ducky, he's a year younger than you."

"I don't write.  Not such a fool.  Got any more newfangled
friends?"

"Just one--Gurdon Minho, the novelist."

"Another of the new school?"

"Oh, no, dear!  Surely you've heard of Gurdon Minho; he's older
than the hills."

"They're all alike to me," muttered Soames.  "Is he well thought
of?"

"I should think his income is larger than yours.  He's almost a
classic--only waiting to die."

"I'll get one of his books and read it.  What name did you say?"

"Get 'Big and Little Fishes,' by Gurdon Minho.  You can remember
that, can't you?  Oh! here they are!  Michael, look at what
Father's given me."

Taking his hand, she put it up to the opal at her neck.  'Let them
both see,' she thought, 'what good terms we're on.'  Though her
father had not seen her with Wilfrid in the gallery, her conscience
still said:  "Strengthen your respectability, you don't quite know
how much support you'll need for it in future."

And out of the corner of her eye she watched those two.  The
meetings between 'Old Mont' and 'Old Forsyte'--as she knew Bart
called her father when speaking of him to Michael--always made her
want to laugh, but she never quite knew why.  Bart knew everything,
but his knowledge was beautifully bound, strictly edited by a mind
tethered to the 'eighteenth century.'  Her father only knew what
was of advantage to him, but the knowledge was unbound, and subject
to no editorship.  If he WAS late Victorian, he was not above
profiting if necessary by even later periods.  'Old Mont' had faith
in tradition; 'Old Forsyte' none.  Fleur's acuteness had long
perceived a difference which favoured her father.  Yet 'Old Mont's'
talk was so much more up-to-date, rapid, glancing, garrulous,
redolent of precise information; and 'Old Forsyte's' was
constricted, matter-of-fact.  Really impossible to tell which of
the two was the better museum specimen; and both so well-preserved!

They did not precisely shake hands; but Soames mentioned the
weather.  And almost at once they all four sought that Sunday food
which by a sustained effort of will Fleur had at last deprived of
reference to the British character.  They partook, in fact, of
lobster cocktails, and a mere risotto of chickens' livers, an
omelette au rhum, and dessert trying to look as Spanish as it
could.

"I've been in the Tate," Fleur said; "I do think it's touching."

"Touching?" queried Soames with a sniff.

"Fleur means, sir, that to see so much old English art together is
like looking at a baby show."

"I don't follow," said Soames stiffly.  "There's some very good
work there."

"But not grown-up, sir."

"Ah!  You young people mistake all this crazy cleverness for
maturity."

"That's not what Michael means, Father.  It's quite true that
English painting has no wisdom teeth.  You can see the difference
in a moment, between it and any Continental painting."

"And thank God for it!" broke in Sir Lawrence.  "The beauty of this
country's art is its innocence.  We're the oldest country in the
world politically, and the youngest aesthetically.  What do you
say, Forsyte?"

"Turner is old and wise enough for me," said Soames curtly.  "Are
you coming to the P.P.R.S. Board on Tuesday?"

"Tuesday?  We were going to shoot the spinneys, weren't we,
Michael?"

Soames grunted.  "I should let them wait," he said.  "We settle the
report."

It was through 'Old Mont's' influence that he had received a seat
on the Board of that flourishing concern, the Providential Premium
Reassurance Society, and, truth to tell, he was not sitting very
easily in it.  Though the law of averages was, perhaps, the most
reliable thing in the world, there were circumstances which had
begun to cause him disquietude.  He looked round his nose.  Light
weight, this narrow-headed, twisting-eyebrowed baronet of a chap--
like his son before him!  And he added suddenly:  "I'm not easy.
If I'd realised how that chap Elderson ruled the roost, I doubt if
I should have come on to that Board."

One side of 'Old Mont's' face seemed to try to leave the other.

"Elderson!" he said.  "His grandfather was my grandfather's
parliamentary agent at the time of the Reform Bill; he put him
through the most corrupt election ever fought--bought every vote--
used to kiss all the farmer's wives.  Great days, Forsyte, great
days!"

"And over," said Soames.  "I don't believe in trusting a man's
judgment as far as we trust Elderson's; I don't like this foreign
insurance."

"My dear Forsyte--first-rate head, Elderson; I've known him all my
life, we were at Winchester together."

Soames uttered a deep sound.  In that answer of 'Old Mont's' lay
much of the reason for his disquietude.  On the Board they had all,
as it were, been at Winchester together!  It was the very deuce!
They were all so honourable that they dared not scrutinise each
other, or even their own collective policy.  Worse than their dread
of mistake or fraud was their dread of seeming to distrust each
other.  And this was natural, for to distrust each other was an
immediate evil.  And, as Soames knew, immediate evils are those
which one avoids.  Indeed, only that tendency, inherited from his
father, James, to lie awake between the hours of two and four, when
the chrysalis of faint misgiving becomes so readily the butterfly
of panic, had developed his uneasiness.  The P.P.R.S. was so
imposing a concern, and he had been connected with it so short a
time, that it seemed presumptuous to smell a rat; especially as he
would have to leave the Board and the thousand a year he earned on
it if he raised smell of rat without rat or reason.  But what if
there were a rat?  That was the trouble!  And here sat 'Old Mont'
talking of his spinneys and his grandfather.  The fellow's head was
too small!  And visited by the cheerless thought:  'There's nobody
here, not even my own daughter, capable of taking a thing
seriously,' he kept silence.  A sound at his elbow roused him.
That marmoset of a dog, on a chair between him and his daughter,
was sitting up!  Did it expect him to give it something?  Its eyes
would drop out one of these days.  And he said:  "Well, what do YOU
want?"  The way the little beast stared with those boot-buttons!
"Here," he said, offering it a salted almond.  "You don't eat
these."

Ting-a-ling did.

"He has a passion for them, Dad.  Haven't you, darling?"

Ting-a-ling turned his eyes up at Soames, through whom a queer
sensation passed.  'Believe the little brute likes me,' he thought,
'he's always looking at me.'  He touched the dog's nose with the
tip of his finger.  Ting-a-ling gave it a slight lick with his
curly blackish tongue.

"Poor fellow!" muttered Soames involuntarily, and turned to 'Old
Mont.'

"Don't mention what I said."

"My dear Forsyte, what was that?"

Good Heavens!  And he was on a Board with a man like this!  What
had made him come on, when he didn't want the money, or any more
worries--goodness knew.  As soon as he had become a director,
Winifred and others of his family had begun to acquire shares to
neutralise their income tax--seven per cent, preference--nine per
cent, ordinary--instead of the steady five they ought to be content
with.  There it was, he couldn't move without people following him.
He had always been so safe, so perfect a guide in the money maze!
To be worried at his time of life!  His eyes sought comfort from
the opal at his daughter's neck--pretty thing, pretty neck!  Well!
She seemed happy enough--had forgotten her infatuation of two years
ago!  That was something to be thankful for.  What she wanted now
was a child to steady her in all this modern scrimmage of twopenny-
ha'penny writers and painters and musicians.  A loose lot, but she
had a good little head on her.  If she had a child, he would put
another twenty thousand into her settlement.  That was one thing
about her mother--steady in money matters, good French method.  And
Fleur--so far as he knew--cut her coat according to her cloth.
What was that?  The word 'Goya' had caught his ear.  New life of
him coming out?  H'm!  That confirmed his slowly growing conviction
that Goya had reached top point again.

"Think I shall part with that," he said, pointing to the picture.
"There's an Argentine over here."

"Sell your Goya, sir?"  It was Michael speaking.  "Think of the
envy with which you're now regarded!"

"One can't have everything," said Soames.

"That reproduction we've got for 'The New Life' has turned out
first-rate.  'Property of Soames Forsyte, Esquire.'  Let's get the
book out first, sir, anyway."

"Shadow or substance, eh, Forsyte?"

Narrow-headed baronet chap--was he mocking?

"I'VE no family place," he said.

"No, but we have, sir," murmured Michael; "you could leave it to
Fleur, you know."

"Well," said Soames, "we shall see if that's worth while."  And he
looked at his daughter.

Fleur seldom blushed, but she picked up Ting-a-ling and rose from
the Spanish table.  Michael followed suit.  "Coffee in the other
room," he said.  'Old Forsyte' and 'Old Mont' stood up, wiping
their moustaches.



CHAPTER VII

'OLD MONT' AND 'OLD FORSYTE'


The offices of the P.P.R.S. were not far from the College of Arms.
Soames, who knew that 'three dexter buckles on a sable ground
gules' and a 'pheasant proper' had been obtained there at some
expense by his Uncle Swithin in the 'sixties of the last century,
had always pooh-poohed the building, until, about a year ago, he
had been struck by the name Golding in a book which he had absently
taken up at the Connoisseurs' Club.  The affair purported to prove
that William Shakespeare was really Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford.
The mother of the earl was a Golding--so was the mother of Soames!
The coincidence struck him; and he went on reading.  The tome left
him with judgment suspended over the main issue, but a distinct
curiosity as to whether he was not of the same blood as
Shakespeare.  Even if the earl were not the bard, he felt that the
connection could only be creditable, though, so far as he could
make out, Oxford was a shady fellow.  Recently appointed on the
Board of the P.P.R.S., so that he passed the college every other
Tuesday, he had thought:  'Shan't go spending a lot of money on it,
but might look in one day.'  Having looked in, it was astonishing
how taken he had been by the whole thing.  Tracing his mother had
been quite like a criminal investigation, nearly as ramified and
fully as expensive.  Having begun, the tenacity of a Forsyte could
hardly bear to leave him short of the mother of Shakespeare de
Vere, even though she would be collateral; unfortunately, he could
not get past a certain William Gouldyng, Ingerer--whatever that
might be, and he was almost afraid to enquire--of the time of
Oliver Cromwell.  There were still four generations to be
unravelled, and he was losing money and the hope of getting
anything for it.  This it was which caused him to gaze askance at
the retired building while passing it on his way to the Board on
the Tuesday after the lunch at Fleur's.  Two more wakeful early
mornings had screwed him to the pitch of bringing his doubts to a
head and knowing where he stood in the matter of the P.P.R.S.; and
this sudden reminder that he was spending money here, there and
everywhere, when there was a possibility, however remote, of
financial liability somewhere else, sharpened the edge of a nerve
already stropped by misgivings.  Neglecting the lift and walking
slowly up the two flights of stairs, he 'went over' his fellow-
directors for the fifteenth time.  Old Lord Fontenoy was there for
his name, of course; seldom attended, and was what they called 'a
dud'--h'm!--nowadays; the chairman, Sir Luke Sharman, seemed always
to be occupied in not being taken for a Jew.  His nose was
straight, but his eyelids gave cause for doubt.  His surname was
impeccable, but his Christian dubious; his voice was reassuringly
roughened, but his clothes had a suspicious tendency towards gloss.
Altogether a man who, though shrewd, could not be trusted--Soames
felt--to be giving his whole mind to other business.  As for 'Old
Mont'--what was the good of a ninth baronet on a Board?  Guy
Meyricke, King's Counsel, last of the three who had been
'together,' was a good man in court, no doubt, but with no time for
business and no real sense of it!  Remained that converted Quaker,
old Cuthbert Mothergill--whose family name had been a by-word for
successful integrity throughout the last century, so that people
still put Mothergills on to boards almost mechanically--rather
deaf, nice clean old chap, and quite bland, but nothing more.  A
perfectly honest lot, no doubt, but perfunctory.  None of them
really giving their minds to the thing!  In Elderson's pocket, too,
except perhaps Sharman, and he on the wobble.  And Elderson
himself--clever chap, bit of an artist, perhaps; managing director
from the start, with everything at his finger-tips!  Yes!  That was
the mischief!  Prestige of superior knowledge, and years of
success--they all kowtowed to him, and no wonder!  Trouble with a
man like that was that if he once admitted to having made a mistake
he destroyed the legend of his infallibility.  Soames had enough
infallibility of his own to realise how powerful was its impetus
towards admitting nothing.  Ten months ago, when he had come on to
the Board, everything had seemed in full sail; exchanges had
reached bottom, so they all thought--the 'reassurance of foreign
contracts' policy, which Elderson had initiated about a year
before, had seemed, with rising exchanges, perhaps the brightest
feather in the cap of possibility.  And now, a twelvemonth later,
Soames suspected darkly that they did not know where they were--and
the general meeting only six weeks off!  Probably not even Elderson
knew; or, if he did, he was keeping knowledge which ought to belong
to the whole directorate severely to himself.

He entered the board room without a smile.  All there--even Lord
Fontenoy and 'Old Mont'--given up his spinneys, had he!  Soames
took his seat at the end on the fireside.  Staring at Elderson, he
saw, with sudden clearness, the strength of the fellow's position;
and, with equal clearness, the weakness of the P.P.R.S.  With this
rising and falling currency, they could never know exactly their
liability--they were just gambling.  Listening to the minutes and
other routine business, with his chin clasped in his hand, he let
his eyes move from face to face--old Mothergill, Elderson, Mont
opposite; Sharman at the head; Fontenoy, Meyricke, back to himself--
decisive board of the year.  He could not, must not, be placed in
any dubious position!  At his first general meeting on this
concern, he must not face the shareholders without knowing exactly
where he stood.  He looked again at Elderson--sweetish face, bald
head rather like Julius Caesar's, nothing to suggest irregularity
or excessive optimism--in fact, somewhat resembling that of old
Uncle Nicholas Forsyte, whose affairs had been such an example to
the last generation but one.  The managing director having
completed his exposition, Soames directed his gaze at the pink face
of dosey old Mothergill, and said:

"I'm not satisfied that these accounts disclose our true position.
I want the Board adjourned to this day week, Mr. Chairman, and
during the week I want every member of the Board furnished with
exact details of the foreign contract commitments which do NOT
mature during the present financial year.  I notice that those are
lumped under a general estimate of liability.  I am not satisfied
with that.  They ought to be separately treated."  Shifting his
gaze past Elderson to the face of 'Old Mont,' he went on:  "Unless
there's a material change for the better on the Continent, which I
don't anticipate (quite the contrary), I fully expect those
commitments will put us in Queer Street next year."

The scraping of feet, shifting of legs, clearing of throats which
accompany a slight sense of outrage greeted the words 'Queer
Street'; and a sort of satisfaction swelled in Soames; he had
rattled their complacency, made them feel a touch of the misgiving
from which he himself was suffering.

"We have always treated our commitments under one general estimate,
Mr. Forsyte."

Plausible chap!

"And to my mind wrongly.  This foreign contract business is a new
policy.  For all I can tell, instead of paying a dividend, we ought
to be setting this year's profits against a certain loss next
year."

Again that scrape and rustle.

"My dear sir, absurd!"

The bulldog in Soames snuffled.

"So you say!" he said.  "Am I to have those details?"

"The Board can have what details it likes, of course.  But permit
me to remark on the general question that it CAN only be a matter
of estimate.  A conservative basis has always been adopted."

"That is a matter of opinion," said Soames; "and in my view it
should be the Board's opinion after very careful discussion of the
actual figures."

'Old Mont' was speaking.

"My dear Forsyte, to go into every contract would take us a week,
and then get us no further; we can but average it out."

"What we have not got in these accounts," said Soames, "is the
relative proportion of foreign risk to home risk--in the present
state of things a vital matter."

The Chairman spoke.

"There will be no difficulty about that, I imagine, Elderson!  But
in any case, Mr. Forsyte, we should hardly be justified in
penalising the present year for the sake of eventualities which we
hope will not arise."

"I don't know," said Soames.  "We are here to decide policy
according to our common sense, and we must have the fullest
opportunity of exercising it.  That is my point.  We have not
enough information."

That 'plausible chap' was speaking again:

"Mr. Forsyte seems to be indicating a lack of confidence in the
management."  Taking the bull by the horns--was he?

"Am I to have that information?"

The voice of old Mothergill rose cosy in the silence.

"The Board could be adjourned, perhaps, Mr. Chairman; I could come
up myself at a pinch.  Possibly we could all attend.  The times are
very peculiar--we mustn't take any unnecessary risks.  The policy
of foreign contracts is undoubtedly somewhat new to us.  We have no
reason so far to complain of the results.  And I am sure we have
the utmost confidence in the judgment of our managing director.
Still, as Mr. Forsyte has asked for this information, I think
perhaps we ought to have it.  What do you say, my lord?"

"I can't come up next week.  I agree with the chairman that on
these accounts we couldn't burke this year's dividend.  No good
getting the wind up before we must.  When do the accounts go out,
Elderson?"

"Normally at the end of this week."

"These are not normal times," said Soames.  "To be quite plain,
unless I have that information I must tender my resignation."  He
saw very well what was passing in their minds.  A newcomer making
himself a nuisance--they would take his resignation readily--only
it would look awkward just before a general meeting unless they
could announce "wife's ill-health" or something satisfactory, which
he would take very good care they didn't.

The chairman said coldly:

"Well, we will adjourn the Board to this day week; you will be able
to get us those figures, Elderson?"

"Certainly."

Into Soames' mind flashed the thought:  'Ought to ask for an
independent scrutiny.'  But he looked round.  Going too far--
perhaps--if he intended to remain on the Board--and he had no wish
to resign--after all, it was a big thing, and a thousand a year!
No!  Mustn't overdo it!

Walking away, he savoured his triumph doubtfully, by no means sure
that he had done any good.  His attitude had only closed the 'all
together' attitude round Elderson.  The weakness of his position
was that he had nothing to go on, save an uneasiness, which when
examined was found to be simply a feeling that he hadn't enough
control himself.  And yet, there couldn't be two managers--you must
trust your manager!

A voice behind him tittupped:  "Well, Forsyte, you gave us quite a
shock with your alternative.  First time I remember anything of the
sort on that Board."

"Sleepy hollow," said Soames.

"Yes, I generally have a nap.  It gets very hot in there.  Wish I'd
stuck to my spinneys.  They come high, even as early as this."

Incurably frivolous, this tittupping baronet!

"By the way, Forsyte, I wanted to say:  With all this modern birth
control and the rest of it, one gets uneasy.  We're not the royal
family; but don't you feel with me it's time there was a movement
in heirs?"

Soames did, but he was not going to confess to anything so
indelicate about his own daughter.

"Plenty of time," he muttered.

"I don't like that dog, Forsyte."

Soames stared.

"Dog!" he said.  "What's that to do with it?"

"I like a baby to come before a dog.  Dogs and poets distract young
women.  My grandmother had five babies before she was twenty-seven.
She was a Montjoy; wonderful breeders, you remember them--the seven
Montjoy sisters--all pretty.  Old Montjoy had forty-seven
grandchildren.  You don't get it nowadays, Forsyte."

"Country's over-populated," said Soames grimly.

"By the wrong sort--less of them, more of ourselves.  It's almost a
matter for legislation."

"Talk to your son," said Soames.

"Ah! but they think us fogeys, you know.  If we could only point to
a reason for existence.  But it's difficult, Forsyte, it's
difficult."

"They've got everything they want," said Soames.

"Not enough, my dear Forsyte, not enough; the condition of the
world is on the nerves of the young.  England's dished, they say,
Europe's dished.  Heaven's dished, and so is Hell!  No future in
anything but the air.  You can't breed in the air; at least, I
doubt it--the difficulties are considerable."

Soames sniffed.

"If only the journalists would hold their confounded pens," he
said; for, more and more of late, with the decrescendo of scare in
the daily Press, he was regaining the old sound Forsyte feeling of
security.  "We've only to keep clear of Europe," he added.

"Keep clear and keep the ring!  Forsyte, I believe you've hit it.
Good friendly terms with Scandinavia, Holland, Spain, Italy,
Turkey--all the outlying countries that we can get at by sea.  And
let the others dree their weirds.  It's an idea!"  How the chap
rattled on!

"I'm no politician," said Soames.

"Keep the ring!  The new formula.  It's what we've been coming to
unconsciously!  And as to trade--to say we can't do without trading
with this country or with that--bunkum, my dear Forsyte.  The
world's large--we can."

"I don't know anything about that," said Soames.  "I only know we
must drop this foreign contract assurance."

"Why not confine it to the ring countries?  Instead of 'balance of
power,' 'keep the ring'!  Really, it's an inspiration!"

Thus charged with inspiration, Soames said hastily:

"I leave you here, I'm going to my daughter's."

"Ah!  I'm going to my son's.  Look at these poor devils!"

Down by the Embankment at Blackfriars a band of unemployed were
trailing dismally with money-boxes.

"Revolution in the bud!  There's one thing that's always forgotten,
Forsyte, it's a great pity."

"What's that?" said Soames, with gloom.  The fellow would tittup
all the way to Fleur's!

"Wash the working-class, put them in clean, pleasant-coloured
jeans, teach 'em to speak like you and me, and there'd be an end of
class feeling.  It's all a matter of the senses.  Wouldn't you
rather share a bedroom with a clean, neat-clothed plumber's
assistant who spoke and smelled like you than with a profiteer who
dropped his aitches and reeked of opoponax?  Of course you would."

"Never tried," said Soames, "so don't know."

"Pragmatist!  But believe me, Forsyte--if the working class would
concentrate on baths and accent instead of on their political and
economic tosh, equality would be here in no time."

"I don't want equality," said Soames, taking his ticket to
Westminster.

The 'tittupping' voice pursued him entering the tube lift.

"Aesthetic equality, Forsyte, if we had it, would remove the wish
for any other.  Did you ever catch an impecunious professor wishing
he was the King?"

"No," said Soames, opening his paper.



CHAPTER VIII

BICKET


Beneath its veneer of cheerful irresponsibility, the character of
Michael Mont had deepened during two years of anchorage and
continuity.  He had been obliged to think of others; and his time
was occupied.  Conscious, from the fall of the flag, that he was on
sufferance with Fleur, admitting as whole the half-truth:  'Il y a
toujours un qui baise, et l'autre qui tend la joue,' he had
developed real powers of domestic consideration; and yet he did not
seem to redress the balance in his public or publishing existence.
He found the human side of his business too strong for the
monetary.  Danby and Winter, however, were bearing up against him,
and showed, so far, no signs of the bankruptcy prophesied for them
by Soames on being told of the principles which his son-in-law
intended to introduce.  No more in publishing than in any other
walk of life was Michael finding it possible to work too much on
principle.  The field of action was so strewn with facts--human,
vegetable and mineral.

On this same Tuesday afternoon, having long tussled with the price
of those vegetable facts, paper and linen, he was listening with
his pointed ears to the plaint of a packer discovered with five
copies of 'Copper Coin' in his overcoat pocket, and the too obvious
intention of converting them to his own use.

Mr. Danby had 'given him the sack'--he didn't deny that he was
going to sell them, but what would Mr. Mont have done?  He owed
rent--and his wife wanted nourishing after pneumonia--wanted it
bad.  'Dash it!' thought Michael, 'I'd snoop an edition to nourish
Fleur after pneumonia!'

"And I can't live on my wages with prices what they are.  I can't,
Mr. Mont, so help me!"

Michael swivelled.  "But look here, Bicket, if we let you snoop
copies, all the packers will snoop copies; and if they do, where
are Danby and Winter?  In the cart.  And, if they're in the cart,
where are all of you?  In the street.  It's better that one of you
should be in the street than that all of you should, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir, I quite see your point--it's reason; but I can't live on
reason, the least thing knocks you out, when you're on the bread
line.  Ask Mr. Danby to give me another chance."

"Mr. Danby always says that a packer's work is particularly
confidential, because it's almost impossible to keep a check on
it."

"Yes, sir, I should feel that in future; but with all this
unemployment and no reference, I'll never get another job.  What
about my wife?"

To Michael it was as if he had said "What about Fleur?"  He began
to pace the room; and the young man Bicket looked at him with large
dolorous eyes.  Presently he came to a standstill, with his hands
deep plunged into his pockets and his shoulders hunched.

"I'll ask him," he said; "but I don't believe he will; he'll say it
isn't fair on the others.  You had five copies; it's pretty stiff,
you know--means you've had 'em before, doesn't it?  What?"

"Well, Mr. Mont, anything that'll give me a chance, I don't mind
confessin'.  I have 'ad a few previous, and it's just about kept my
wife alive.  You've no idea what that pneumonia's like for poor
people."

Michael pushed his fingers through his hair.

"How old's your wife?"

"Only a girl--twenty."

Twenty!  Just Fleur's age!

"I'll tell you what I'll do, Bicket; I'll put it up to Mr. Desert;
if he speaks for you, perhaps it may move Mr. Danby."

"Well, Mr. Mont, thank you--you're a gentleman, we all sy that."

"Oh! hang it!  But look here, Bicket, you were reckoning on those
five copies.  Take this to make up, and get your wife what's
necessary.  Only for goodness' sake don't tell Mr. Danby."

"Mr. Mont, I wouldn't deceive you for the world--I won't sy a word,
sir.  And my wife--well!"

A sniff, a shuffle--Michael was alone, with his hands plunged
deeper, his shoulders hunched higher.  And suddenly he laughed.
Pity!  Pity was pop!  It was all dam' funny.  Here he was rewarding
Bicket for snooping 'Copper Coin!'  A sudden longing possessed him
to follow the little packer and see what he did with the two
pounds--see whether 'the pneumonia' was real or a figment of the
brain behind those dolorous eyes.  Impossible, though!  Instead he
must ring up Wilfrid and ask him to put in a word with old Danby.
His own word was no earthly.  He had put it in too often!  Bicket!
Little one knew of anybody, life was deep and dark, and upside
down!  What was honesty?  Pressure of life versus power of
resistance--the result of that fight, when the latter won, was
honesty!  But why resist?  Love thy neighbour as thyself--but not
more!  And wasn't it a darned sight harder for Bicket on two pounds
a week to love him, than for him on twenty-four pounds a week to
love Bicket? . . .

"Hallo! . . .  That you, Wilfrid? . . .  Michael speaking. . . .
One of our packers has been sneaking copies of 'Copper Coin.'  He's
'got the sack'--poor devil!  I wondered if you'd mind putting in a
word for him--old Dan won't listen to me . . . yes, got a wife--
Fleur's age; pneumonia, so he says.  Won't do it again with yours
anyway, insurance by common gratitude--what! . . .  Thanks, old
man, awfully good of you--will you bob in, then?  We can go round
home together . . .  Oh!  Well!  You'll bob in anyway.  Aurev!"

Good chap, old Wilfrid!  Real good chap--underneath!  Underneath--
what?

Replacing the receiver, Michael saw a sudden great cloud of sights
and scents and sounds, so foreign to the principles of his firm
that he was in the habit of rejecting instantaneously every
manuscript which dealt with them.  The war might be 'off '; but it
was still 'on' within Wilfrid, and himself.  Taking up a tube, he
spoke:

"Mr. Danby in his room?  Right!  If he shows any signs of flitting,
let me know at once." . . .

Between Michael and his senior partner a gulf was fixed, not less
deep than that between two epochs, though partially filled in by
Winter's middle-age and accommodating temperament.  Michael had
almost nothing against Mr. Danby except that he was always right--
Philip Norman Danby, of Sky House, Campden Hill, a man of sixty and
some family, with a tall forehead, a preponderance of body to leg,
and an expression both steady and reflective.  His eyes were
perhaps rather close together, and his nose rather thin, but he
looked a handsome piece in his well-proportioned room.  He glanced
up from the formation of a correct judgment on a matter of
advertisement when Wilfrid Desert came in.

"Well, Mr. Desert, what can I do for you?  Sit down!"

Desert did not sit down, but looked at the engravings, at his
fingers, at Mr. Danby, and said:

"Fact is, I want you to let that packer chap off, Mr. Danby."

"Packer chap.  Oh!  Ah!  Bicket.  Mont told you, I suppose?"

"Yes; he's got a young wife down with pneumonia."

"They all go to our friend Mont with some tale or other, Mr.
Desert--he has a very soft heart.  But I'm afraid I can't keep this
man.  It's a most insidious thing.  We've been trying to trace a
leak for some time."

Desert leaned against the mantelpiece and stared into the fire.

"Well, Mr. Danby," he said, "your generation may like the soft in
literature, but you're precious hard in life.  Ours won't look at
softness in literature, but we're a deuced sight less hard in
life."

"I don't think it's hard," said Mr. Danby, "only just."

"Are you a judge of justice?"

"I hope so."

"Try four years' hell, and have another go."

"I really don't see the connection.  The experience you've been
through, Mr. Desert, was bound to be warping."

Wilfrid turned and stared at him.

"Forgive my saying so, but sitting here and being just is much more
warping.  Life is pretty good purgatory, to all except about thirty
per cent. of grown-up people."

Mr. Danby smiled.

"We simply couldn't conduct our business, my dear young man,
without scrupulous honesty in everybody.  To make no distinction
between honesty and dishonesty would be quite unfair.  You know
that perfectly well."

"I don't know anything perfectly well, Mr. Danby; and I mistrust
those who say they do."

"Well, let us put it that there are rules of the game which must be
observed, if society is to function at all."

Desert smiled, too:  "Oh! hang rules!  Do it as a favour to me.  I
wrote the rotten book."

No trace of struggle showed in Mr. Danby's face; but his deep-set,
close-together eyes shone a little.

"I should be only too glad, but it's a matter--well, of conscience,
if you like.  I'm not prosecuting the man.  He must leave--that's
all."

Desert shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, good-bye!" and he went out.

On the mat was Michael in two minds.

"Well?"

"No go.  The old blighter's too just."

Michael stivered his hair.

"Wait in my room five minutes while I let the poor beggar know,
then I'll come along."

"No," said Desert, "I'm going the other way."

Not the fact that Wilfrid was going the other way--he almost always
was--but something in the tone of his voice and the look on his
face obsessed Michael's imagination while he went downstairs to
seek Bicket.  Wilfrid was a rum chap--he went "dark" so suddenly!

In the nether regions he asked:

"Bicket gone?"

"No, sir, there he is."

There he was, in his shabby overcoat, with his pale narrow face,
and his disproportionately large eyes, and his sloping shoulders.

"Sorry, Bicket, Mr. Desert has been in, but it's no go."

"No, sir?"

"Keep your pecker up, you'll get something."

"I'm afryde not, sir.  Well, I thank you very 'eartily; and I thank
Mr. Desert.  Good-night, sir; and good-bye!"

Michael watched him down the corridor, saw him waver into the dusky
street.

"Jolly!" he said, and laughed. . . .

The natural suspicions of Michael and his senior partner that a
tale was being pitched were not in fact justified.  Neither the
wife nor the pneumonia had been exaggerated; and wavering away in
the direction of Blackfriars Bridge, Bicket thought not of his
turpitude nor of how just Mr. Danby had been, but of what he should
say to her.  He should not, of course, tell her that he had been
detected in stealing; he must say he had 'got the sack for cheeking
the foreman'; but what would she think of him for doing that, when
everything as it were depended on his not cheeking the foreman?
This was one of those melancholy cases of such affection that he
had been coming to his work day after day feeling as if he had
'left half his guts' behind him in the room where she lay, and when
at last the doctor said to him:

"She'll get on now, but it's left her very run down--you must feed
her up," his anxiety had hardened into a resolution to have no
more.  In the next three weeks he had 'pinched' eighteen 'Copper
Coins,' including the five found in his overcoat.  He had only
'pitched on' Mr. Desert's book because it was 'easy sold,' and he
was sorry now that he hadn't pitched on some one else's.  Mr.
Desert had been very decent.  He stopped at the corner of the
Strand, and went over his money.  With the two pounds given him by
Michael and his wages he had seventy-five shillings in the world,
and going into the Stores he bought a meat jelly and a tin of
Benger's food that could be made with water.  With pockets bulging
he took a 'bus, which dropped him at the corner of his little
street on the Surrey side.  His wife and he occupied the two ground
floor rooms, at eight shillings a week, and he owed for three
weeks.  'Py that!' he thought, 'and have a roof until she's well.'
It would help him over the news, too, to show her a receipt for the
rent and some good food.  How lucky they had been careful to have
no baby!  He sought the basement.  His landlady was doing the
week's washing.  She paused, in sheer surprise at such full and
voluntary payment, and inquired after his wife.

"Doing nicely, thank you."

"Well, I'm glad of that, it must be a relief to your mind."

"It is," said Bicket.

The landlady thought:  'He's a thread-paper--reminds me of a shrimp
before you bile it, with those eyes.'

"Here's your receipt, and thank you.  Sorry to 'ave seemed nervous
about it, but times are 'ard."

"They are," said Bicket.  "So long!"

With the receipt and the meat jelly in his left hand, he opened the
door of his front room.

His wife was sitting before a very little fire.  Her bobbed black
hair, crinkly towards the ends, had grown during her illness; it
shook when she turned her head and smiled.  To Bicket--not for the
first time--that smile seemed queer, 'pathetic-like,' mysterious--
as if she saw things that one didn't see oneself.  Her name was
Victorine, and he said:  "Well, Vic.?  This jelly's a bit of all
right, and I've pyde the rent."  He sat on the arm of the chair and
she put her hand on his knee--her thin arm emerging blue-white from
the dark dressing-gown.

"Well, Tony?"

Her face--thin and pale with those large dark eyes and beautifully
formed eyebrows--was one that "looked at you from somewhere; and
when it looked at you--well! it got you right inside!"

It got him now and he said:  "How've you been breathin'?"

"All right--much better.  I'll soon be out now."

Bicket twisted himself round and joined his lips to hers.  The kiss
lasted some time, because all the feelings which he had not been
able to express during the past three weeks to her or to anybody,
got into it.  He sat up again, "sort of exhausted," staring at the
fire, and said:  "News isn't bright--lost my job, Vic."

"Oh!  Tony!  Why?"

Bicket swallowed.

"Fact is, things are slack, and they're reducin'."

There had surged into his mind the certainty that sooner than tell
her the truth he would put his head under the gas!

"Oh! dear!  What shall we do, then?"

Bicket's voice hardened.

"Don't you worry--I'll get something"; and he whistled.

"But you liked that job."

"Did I?  I liked some o' the fellers; but as for the job--why, what
was it?  Wrappin' books up in a bysement all dy long.  Let's have
something to eat and get to bed early--I feel as if I could sleep
for a week, now I'm shut of it."

Getting their supper ready with her help, he carefully did not look
at her face for fear it might "get him agyne inside!"  They had
only been married a year, having made acquaintance on a tram, and
Bicket often wondered what had made her take to him, eight years
her senior and C3 during the war!  And yet she must be fond of him,
or she'd never look at him as she did.

"Sit down and try this jelly."

He himself ate bread and margarine and drank cocoa, he seldom had
any particular appetite.

"Shall I tell you what I'd like?" he said; "I'd like Central
Austrylia.  We had a book in there about it; they sy there's quite
a movement.  I'd like some sun.  I believe if we 'ad sun we'd both
be twice the size we are.  I'd like to see colour in your cheeks,
Vic."

"How much does it cost to get out there?"

"A lot more than we can ly hands on, that's the trouble.  But I've
been thinkin'.  England's about done.  There's too many like me."

"No," said Victorine; "there aren't enough."

Bicket looked at her face, then quickly at his plate.

"What myde you take a fancy to me?"

"Because you don't think first of yourself, that's why."

"Used to before I knew you.  But I'd do anything for you, Vic."

"Have some of this jelly, then, it's awful good."

Bicket shook his head.

"If we could wyke up in Central Austrylia," he said.  "But there's
only one thing certain, we'll wyke up in this blighted little room.
Never mind, I'll get a job and earn the money yet."

"Could we win it on a race?"

"Well, I've only got forty-seven bob all told, and if we lose it,
where'll you be?  You've got to feed up, you know.  No, I must get
a job."

"They'll give you a good recommend, won't they?"

Bicket rose and stacked his plate and cup.

"They would, but that job's off--overstocked."

Tell her the truth?  Never!  So help him!

In their bed, one of those just too wide for one and just not wide
enough for two, he lay, with her hair almost in his mouth, thinking
what to say to his Union, and how to go to work to get a job.  And
in his thoughts as the hours drew on he burned his boats.  To draw
his unemployment money he would have to tell his Union what the
trouble was.  Blow the Union!  He wasn't going to be accountable to
them!  HE knew why he'd pinched the books; but it was nobody else's
business, nobody else could understand his feelings, watching her
so breathless, pale and thin.  Strike out for himself!  And a
million and a half out o' work!  Well, he had a fortnight's keep,
and something would turn up--and he might risk a bob or two and win
some money, you never knew.  She turned in her sleep.  'Yes,' he
thought, 'I'd do it agyne . . .'

Next day, after some hours on foot, he stood under the grey
easterly sky in the grey street, before a plate-glass window
protecting an assortment of fruits and sheaves of corn, lumps of
metal, and brilliant blue butterflies, in the carefully golden
light of advertised Australia.  To Bicket, who had never been out
of England, not often out of London, it was like standing outside
Paradise.  The atmosphere within the office itself was not so
golden, and the money required considerable; but it brought
Paradise nearer to take away pamphlets which almost burned his
hands, they were so warm.

Later, he and she, sitting in the one armchair--advantage of being
thin--pored over these alchemised pages and inhaled their glamour.

"D'you think it's true, Tony?"

"If it's thirty per cent. true it's good enough for me.  We just
must get there somehow.  Kiss me."

From around the corner in the main road the rumbling of the trams
and carts, and the rattling of their window-pane in the draughty
dry easterly wind increased their feeling of escape into a gas-lit
Paradise.



CHAPTER IX

CONFUSION


Two hours behind Bicket, Michael wavered towards home.  Old Danby
was right as usual--if you couldn't trust your packers, you might
shut up shop!  Away from Bicket's eyes, he doubted.  Perhaps the
chap hadn't a wife at all!  Then Wilfrid's manner usurped the place
of Bicket's morals.  Old Wilfrid had been abrupt and queer the last
three times of meeting.  Was he boiling-up for verse?

He found Ting-a-ling at the foot of the stairs in a conservative
attitude.  "I am not going up," he seemed saying, "until some one
carries me--at the same time it is later than usual!"

"Where's your mistress, you heraldic little beast?"

Ting-a-ling snuffled.  "I could put up with it," he implied, "if
YOU carried me--these stairs are laborious!"

Michael took him up.  "Let's go and find her."

Squeezed under an arm harder than his mistress', Ting-a-ling stared
as if with black-glass eyes; and the plume of his emergent tail
quivered.

In the bedroom Michael dropped him so absent-mindedly that he went
to his corner plume pendent, and couched there in dudgeon.

Nearly dinner time and Fleur not in!  Michael went over his sketchy
recollection of her plans.  To-day she had been having Hubert
Marsland and that Vertiginist--what was his name?--to lunch.  There
would have been fumes to clear off.  Vertiginists--like milk--made
carbonic acid gas in the lungs!  Still!  Half-past seven!  What was
happening to-night?  Weren't they going to that play of L.S.D.'s?
No--that was to-morrow!  Was there conceivably nothing?  If so, of
course she would shorten her unoccupied time as much as possible.
He made that reflection humbly.  Michael had no illusions, he knew
himself to be commonplace, with only a certain redeeming
liveliness, and, of course, his affection for her.  He even
recognised that his affection was a weakness, tempting him to fussy
anxieties, which on principle he restrained.  To enquire, for
instance, of Coaker or Philps--their man and their maid--when she
had gone out, would be thoroughly against that principle.  The
condition of the world was such that Michael constantly wondered if
his own affairs were worth paying attention to; but then the
condition of the world was also such that sometimes one's own
affairs seemed all that were worth paying attention to.  And yet
his affairs were, practically speaking, Fleur; and if he paid too
much attention to them, he was afraid of annoying her.

He went into his dressing-room and undid his waistcoat.

'But no!' he thought; 'if she finds me "dressed" already, it'll put
too much point on it.'  So he did up his waistcoat and went
downstairs again.  Coaker was in the hall.

"Mr. Forsyte and Sir Lawrence looked in about six, sir.  Mrs. Mont
was out.  What time shall I serve dinner?"

"Oh! about a quarter past eight.  I don't think we're going out."

He went into the drawing-room and passing down its Chinese
emptiness, drew aside the curtain.  The square looked cold and dark
and draughty; and he thought:  'Bicket--pneumonia--I hope she's got
her fur coat.'  He took out a cigarette and put it back.  If she
saw him at the window she would think him fussy; and he went up
again to see if she had put on her fur!

Ting-a-ling, still couchant, greeted him plume dansetti arrested as
at disappointment.  Michael opened a wardrobe.  She had!  Good!  He
was taking a sniff round, when Ting-a-ling passed him trottant, and
her voice said:  "Well, my darling!"  Wishing that he was, Michael
emerged from behind the wardrobe door.  Heaven!  She looked pretty,
coloured by the wind!  He stood rather wistfully silent.

"Hallo, Michael!  I'm rather late.  Been to the Club and walked
home."

Michael had a quite unaccountable feeling that there was
suppression in that statement.  He also suppressed, and said:  "I
was just looking to see that you'd got your fur, it's beastly cold.
Your dad and Bart have been and went away fasting."

Fleur shed her coat and dropped into a chair.  "I'm tired.  Your
ears are sticking up so nicely to-night, Michael."

Michael went on his knees and joined his hands behind her waist.
Her eyes had a strange look, a scrutiny which held him in suspense,
a little startled.

"If YOU got pneumonia," he said, "I should go clean out of curl."

"Why on earth should I?"

"You don't know the connection--never mind, it wouldn't interest
you.  We're not going out, are we?"

"Of course we are.  It's Alison's monthly."

"Oh!  Lord!  If you're tired we could cut that."

"My dear!  Impos.!  She's got all sorts of people coming."

Stifling a disparagement, he sighed out:  "Right-o!  War-paint?"

"Yes, white waistcoat.  I like you in white waistcoats."

Cunning little wretch?  He squeezed her waist and rose.  Fleur laid
a light stroke on his hand, and he went into his dressing-room
comforted. . . .

But Fleur sat still for at least five minutes--not precisely 'a
prey to conflicting emotions,' but the victim of very considerable
confusion.  TWO men within the last hour had done this thing--knelt
at her knees and joined their fingers behind her waist.  Undoubtedly
she had been rash to go to Wilfrid's rooms.  The moment she got
there she had perceived how entirely unprepared she really was to
commit herself to what was physical.  True he had done no more than
Michael.  But--Goodness!--she had seen the fire she was playing
with, realised what torment he was in.  She had strictly forbidden
him to say a word to Michael, but intuitively she knew that in his
struggle between loyalties she could rely on nothing. Confused,
startled, touched, she could not help a pleasant warmth in being so
much loved by two men at once, nor an itch of curiosity about the
upshot.  And she sighed.  She had added to her collection of
experiences--but how to add further without breaking up the
collection, and even perhaps the collector, she could not see.

After her words to Wilfrid before the Eve:  "You will be a fool to
go--wait!" she had known he would expect something before long.
Often he had asked her to come and pass judgment on his 'junk.'  A
month, even a week, ago she would have gone without thinking more
than twice about it, and discussed his 'junk' with Michael
afterwards!  But now she thought it over many times, and but for
the fumes of lunch, and the feeling, engendered by the society of
the 'Vertiginist,' of Amabel Nazing, of Linda Frewe, that scruples
of any kind were 'stuffy,' sensations of all sorts 'the thing,' she
would probably still have been thinking it over now.  When they
departed, she had taken a deep breath and her telephone receiver
from the Chinese tea chest.

If Wilfrid were going to be in at half-past five, she would come
and see his 'junk.'

His answer:  "My God!  Will you?" almost gave her pause.  But
dismissing hesitation with the thought:  'I WILL be Parisian--
Proust!' she had started for her Club.  Three-quarters of an hour,
with no more stimulant than three cups of China tea, three back
numbers of the 'Glass of Fashion,' three back views of country
members 'dead in chairs,' had sent her forth a careful quarter of
an hour behind her time.

On the top floor Wilfrid was standing in his open doorway, pale as
a soul in purgatory.  He took her hand gently, and drew her in.
Fleur thought with a little thrill:  'Is this what it's like?  Du
cote de chez Swann!'  Freeing her hand, she began at once to
flutter round the 'junk,' clinging to it piece by piece.

Old English 'junk' rather manorial, with here and there an eastern
or First Empire bit, collected by some bygone Desert, nomadic, or
attached to the French court.  She was afraid to sit down, for fear
that he might begin to follow the authorities; nor did she want to
resume the intense talk of the Tate Gallery.  'Junk' was safe, and
she only looked at him in those brief intervals when he was not
looking at her.  She knew she was not playing the game according to
'La Garconne' and Amabel Nazing; that, indeed, she was in danger of
going away without having added to her sensations.  And she
couldn't help being sorry for Wilfrid; his eyes yearned after her,
his lips were bitter to look at.  When at last from sheer
exhaustion of 'junk' she sat down, he had flung himself at her
feet.  Half hypnotised, with her knees against his chest, as safe
as she could hope for, she really felt the tragedy of it--his
horror of himself, his passion for herself.  It was painful, deep;
it did not fit in with what she had been led to expect; it was not
in the period, and how--how was she to get away without more pain
to him and to herself?  When she HAD got away, with one kiss
received but not answered, she realised that she had passed through
a quarter of an hour of real life, and was not at all sure that she
liked it. . . .  But now, safe in her own room, undressing for
Alison's monthly, she felt curious as to what she would have been
feeling if things had gone as far as was proper according to the
authorities.  Surely she had not experienced one-tenth of the
thoughts or sensations that would have been assigned to her in any
advanced piece of literature!  It had been disillusioning, or else
she was deficient, and Fleur, could not bear to feel deficient.
And, lightly powdering her shoulders, she bent her thoughts towards
Alison's monthly.

               *     *     *     *     *     *

Though Lady Alison enjoyed an occasional encounter with the younger
generation, the Aubrey Greenes and Linda Frewes of this life were
not conspicuous by their presence at her gatherings.  Nesta Gorse,
indeed, had once attended, but one legal and two literary politicos
who had been in contact with her, had complained of it afterwards.
She had, it seemed, rent little spiked holes in the garments of
their self-esteem.  Sibley Swan would have been welcome, for his
championship of the past, but he seemed, so far, to have turned up
his nose and looked down it.  So it was not the intelligentsia, but
just intellectual society, which was gathered there when Fleur and
Michael entered, and the conversation had all the sparkle and all
the 'savoir faire' incidental to talk about art and letters by
those who--as Michael put it--"fortunately had not to faire"

"All the same, these are the guys," he muttered in Fleur's ear,
"who make the names of artists and writers.  What's the stunt, to-
night?"

It appeared to be the London debut of a lady who sang Balkan folk
songs.  But in a refuge to the right were four tables set out for
bridge.  They were already filled.  Among those who still stood
listening, were, here and there, a Gurdon Minho, a society painter
and his wife, a sculptor looking for a job.  Fleur, wedged between
Lady Feynte, the painter's wife, and Gurdon Minho himself, began
planning an evasion.  There--yes, there was Mr. Chalfont!  At Lady
Alison's, Fleur, an excellent judge of 'milieu' never wasted her
time on artists and writers--she could meet THEM anywhere.  Here
she intuitively picked out the biggest 'bug,' politico-literary,
and waited to pin him.  Absorbed in the idea of pinning Mr.
Chalfont, she overlooked a piece of drama passing without.

Michael had clung to the top of the stairway, in no mood for talk
and skirmish; and, leaning against the balustrade, wasp-thin in his
long white waistcoat, with hands deep thrust into his trousers'
pockets, he watched the turns and twists of Fleur's white neck, and
listened to the Balkan songs, with a sort of blankness in his
brain.  The word:  "Mont!" startled him.  Wilfrid was standing just
below.  Mont?  He had not been that to Wilfrid for two years!

"Come down here."

On that half-landing was a bust of Lionel Charwell, K.C., by Boris
Strumolowski, in the genre he had cynically adopted when June
Forsyte gave up supporting his authentic but unrewarded genius.  It
had been almost indistinguishable from any of the other busts in
that year's Academy, and was used by the young Charwells to chalk
moustaches on.

Beside this object Desert leaned against the wall with his eyes
closed.  His face was a study to Michael.

"What's wrong, Wilfrid?"

Desert did not move.  "You've got to know--I'm in love with Fleur."

"What!"

"I'm not going to play the snake.  You're up against me.  Sorry,
but there it is!  You can let fly!"  His face was death-pale, and
its muscles twitched.  In Michael, it was the mind, the heart that
twitched.  What a very horrible, strange, "too beastly" moment!
His best friend--his best man!  Instinctively he dived for his
cigarette case--instinctively handed it to Desert.  Instinctively
they both took cigarettes, and lighted each other's.  Then Michael
said:

"Fleur--knows?"

Desert nodded:  "She doesn't know I'm telling you--wouldn't have
let me.  You've nothing against her--yet."  And, still with closed
eyes, he added:  "I couldn't help it."

It was Michael's own subconscious thought!  Natural!  Natural!
Fool not to see how natural!  Then something shut-to within him,
and he said:  "Decent of you to tell me; but--aren't you going to
clear out?"

Desert's shoulders writhed against the wall.

"I thought so; but it seems not."

"Seems?  I don't understand."

"If I knew for certain I'd no chance--but I don't," and he suddenly
looked at Michael:  "Look here, it's no good keeping gloves on.
I'm desperate, and I'll take her from you if I can."

"Good God!" said Michael.  "It's the limit!"

"Ye