‘I suppose you think me a fool,’ she said, with quivering lips, ‘when it was to have been Jon. But what it does matter? Michael wants me and I don’t care. It’ll get me away from home.’ Diving her hand into the frills on her breast, she brought out a letter. ‘Jon wrote me this.’
June read: ‘Lake Okanagan, British Columbia. I’m not coming back to England. Bless you always. – Jon.’
‘She’s made safe, you see,’ said Fleur.
June handed back the letter.
‘That’s not fair to Irene,’ she said; ‘she always told Jon he could do as he wished.’
Fleur smiled bitterly. ‘Tell me, didn’t she spoil your life too?’
June looked up. ‘Nobody can spoil a life, my dear. That’s nonsense. Things happen, but we bob up.’
With a sort of terror she saw the girl sink on her knees and bury her face in the djibbah. A strangled sob mounted to June’s ears.
‘It’s all right – all right,’ she murmured. ‘Don’t! There, there!’
But the point of the girl’s chin was pressed ever closer into her thigh, and the sound was dreadful of her sobbing.
Well, well! It had to come. She would feel better afterward! June stroked the short hair of that shapely head; and all the scattered mother-sense in her focused itself and passed through the tips of her fingers into the girl’s brain.
‘Don’t sit down under it, my dear,’ she said at last. ‘We can’t control life, but we can fight it. Make the best of things. I’ve had to. I held on, like you; and I cried, as you’re crying now. And look at me!’
Fleur raised her head; a sob merged suddenly into a little choked laugh. In truth it was a thin and rather wild and wasted spirit she was looking at, but it had brave eyes.
‘All right!’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I shall forget him, I suppose, if I fly fast and far enough.’
And, scrambling to her feet, she went over to the wash-stand.
June watched her removing with cold water the traces of emotion. Save for a little becoming pinkness there was nothing left when she stood before the mirror. June got off the bed and took a pin-cushion in her hand. To put two pins into the wrong places was all the vent she found for sympathy.
‘Give me a kiss,’ she said when Fleur was ready, and dug her chin into the girl’s warm cheek.
‘I want a whiff,’ said Fleur; ‘don’t wait.’
June left her, sitting on the bed with a cigarette between her lips and her eyes half closed, and went downstairs. In the doorway of the drawing-room stood Soames as if unquiet at his daughter’s tardiness. June tossed her head and passed down on to the half-landing. Her cousin Francie was standing there.
‘Look!’ said June, pointing with her chin at Soames. ‘That man’s fatal!’
‘How do you mean,’ said Francie, ‘Fatal?’
June did not answer her. ‘I shan’t wait to see them off,’ she said. ‘Good-bye!’
‘Good-bye!’ said Francie, and her eyes, of a Celtic grey, goggled. That old feud! Really, it was quite romantic!
Soames, moving to the well of the staircase, saw June go, and drew a breath of satisfaction. Why didn’t Fleur come? They would miss their train. That train would bear her away from him, yet he could not help fidgeting at the thought that they would lose it. And then she did come, running down in her tancoloured frock and black velvet cap, and passed him into the drawing-room. He saw her kiss her mother, her aunt, Val’s wife, Imogen, and then come forth, quick and pretty as ever. How would she treat him at this last moment of her girlhood? He couldn’t hope for much!
Her lips pressed the middle of his cheek.
‘Daddy!’ she said, and was past and gone. Daddy! She hadn’t called him that for years. He drew a long breath and followed slowly down. There was all the folly with that confetti stuff and the rest of it to go through with, yet. But he would like just to catch her smile, if she leaned out, though they would hit her in the eye with the shoe, if they didn’t take care. Young Mont’s voice said fervently in his ear:
‘Good-bye, sir; and thank you! I’m so fearfully bucked.’
‘Good-bye,’ he said; ‘don’t miss your train.’
He stood on the bottom step but three, whence he could see above the heads – the silly hats and heads. They were in the car now; and there was that stuff, showering, and there went the shoe. A flood of something welled up in Soames, and – he didn’t know – he couldn’t see!
Chapter Eleven
THE LAST OF THE OLD FORSYTES
WHEN they came to prepare that terrific symbol Timothy Forsyte – the one pure individualist left, the only man who hadn’t heard of the Great War – they found him wonderful – not even death had undermined his soundness.