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 Six
‘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 Fleur 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 fraternized 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.