‘Yes, darling; but he was terribly ill.’
‘I dare say,’ said Soames; ‘so are lots of people.’
‘Besides, he was head over heels in love with her.’
‘D’you think he’s going to admit that, even if we could call him?’
Fleur was silent, thinking of Francis Wilmot’s face.
‘Oh! I don’t know,’ she said at last. ‘How horrid it all is!’
‘Of course it’s horrid,’ said Soames. ‘Have you had a quarrel with Michael?’
‘No; not a quarrel. Only he doesn’t tell me things.’
‘What things?’
‘How should I know, dear?’
Soames grunted. ‘Would he have minded your going?’
‘Of course not. He’d have minded if I hadn’t. He likes that boy.’
‘Well, then,’ said Soames, ‘either you or he, or both, will have to tell a lie, and say that he did know. I shall go up and talk to him. Thank goodness we can prove the illness. If I catch anybody coming down here after you –!’
He went up the following afternoon. Parliament being in recess, he sought the Hotch-Potch Club. He did not like a place always connected in his mind with his dead cousin, that fellow young Jolyon, and said to Michael at once: ‘Can we go somewhere else?’
‘Yes, sir; where would you like?’
‘To your place, if you can put me up for the night. I want to have a talk with you.’
Michael looked at him askance.
‘Now,’ said Soames, after dinner, ‘what’s this about Fleur – she says you don’t tell her things?’
Michael gazed into his glass of port.
‘Well, sir,’ he said slowly, ‘I’d be only too glad to, of course, but I don’t think they really interest her. She doesn’t feel that public things matter.’
‘Public! I meant private.’
‘There aren’t any private things. D’you mean that she thinks there are?’
Soames dropped his scrutiny.
‘I don’t know – she said “things”.’
‘Well, you can put that out of your head, and hers.’
‘H’m! Anyway, the result’s been that she’s been visiting that young American with pneumonia at the Cosmopolis Hotel, without letting you know. It’s a mercy she hasn’t picked it up.’
‘Francis Wilmot?’
‘Yes. He’s out of the wood, now. That’s not the point. She’s been shadowed.’
‘Good God!’ said Michael.
‘Exactly! This is what comes of not talking to your wife. Wives are funny – they don’t like it.’
Michael grinned.
‘Put yourself in my place, sir. It’s my profession, now, to fuss about the state of the country, and all that; and you know how it is – one gets keen. But to Fleur, it’s all a stunt. I quite understand that; but, you see, the keener I get, the more I’m afraid of boring her, and the less I feel I can talk to her about it. In a sort of way she’s jealous.’
Soames rubbed his chin. The state of the country was a curious sort of co-respondent. He himself was often worried by the state of the country, but as a source of division between husband and wife it seemed to him cold-blooded; he had known other sources in his time!
‘Well, you mustn’t let it go on,’ he said. ‘It’s trivial.’
Michael got up.
‘Trivial! Well, sir, I don’t know, but it seems to me very much the sort of thing that happened when the war came. Men had to leave their wives then.’
‘Wives put up with that,’ said Soames, ‘the country was in danger.’
‘Isn’t it in danger now?’
With his inveterate distrust of words, it seemed to Soames almost indecent for a young man to talk like that. Michael was a politician, of course; but politicians were there to keep the country quiet, not to go raising scares and talking through their hats.
‘When you’ve lived a little longer,’ he said, ‘you’ll know that there’s always something to fuss about if you like to fuss. There’s nothing in it really; the pound’s going up. Besides, it doesn’t matter what you tell Fleur, so long as you tell her something.’
‘She’s intelligent, sir,’ said Michael.
Soames was taken aback. He could not deny the fact, and answered:
‘Well, national affairs are too remote; you can’t expect a woman to be interested in them.’
‘Quite a lot of women are.’
‘Blue-stockings.’
‘No, sir; they nearly all wear “nude”.’
‘H’m! Those! As to interest in national affairs – put a tax on stockings, and see what happens!’