‘Coming along for tea, sir? Kit had tummy-ache this morning. How’s your last book doing? Does old Danby advertise it properly?’
‘No,’ said Sir Lawrence, ‘no; he’s keeping his head wonderfully; the book is almost dead.’
‘I’m glad I dropped him, anyway,’ said Michael, with emphasis. ‘I suppose, sir, you haven’t got a tip to give us, now this case is over?’
Sir Lawrence gazed at a bird with a long red bill.
‘When victorious,’ he said at last, ‘lie doggo. The triumphs of morality are apt to recoil on those who achieve them.’
‘That’s what I feel, sir. Heaven knows I didn’t want to achieve one. My father-in-law says my hitting MacGown on the boko really brought it into Court.’
Sir Lawrence whinnied.
‘The tax on luxuries. It gets you everywhere. I don’t think I will come along, Michael – Old Forsyte’s probably there. Your mother has an excellent recipe for child’s tummy-ache; you almost lived on it at one time. I’ll telephone it from Mount Street. Good-bye!’
Michael looked after that thin and sprightly figure moving North. Had he troubles of his own? If so, he disguised them wonderfully. Good old Bart! And he turned towards South Square.
Soames was just leaving.
‘She’s excited,’ he said, on the door-step. ‘It’s the reaction. Give her a Seidlitz powder to-night. Be careful, too; I shouldn’t talk about politics.’
Michael went in. Fleur was at the open window of the drawing-room.
‘Oh! here you are!’ she said. ‘Kit’s all right again. Take me to the Café Royal tonight, Michael, and if there’s anything funny anywhere, for goodness’ sake, let’s see it. I’m sick of feeling solemn. Oh! And, by the way, Francis Wilmot’s coming in to say good-bye. I’ve had a note. He says he’s all right again.’
At the window by her side, Michael sniffed the unaccountable scent of grass. There was a south-west wind, and slanting from over the house-tops, sunlight was sprinkling the soil, the buds, the branches. A blackbird sang; a piano-organ round a corner was playing ‘Rigoletto’. Against his own, her shoulder was soft, and to his lips her cheek was warm and creamy.…
When Francis Wilmot left them that evening after dinner at the Café Royal, Fleur said to Michael:
‘Poor Francis! Did you ever see anyone so changed? He might be thirty. I’m glad he’s going home to his river and his darkies. What are live oaks? Well! Are we going anywhere?’
Michael cloaked her shoulders.
‘ “Great Itch”, I think; there’s no other scream so certain.’
After their scream they came out into a mild night. High up in red and green the bright signs fled along the air: ‘Tomber’s Tires for Speed and Safety’, ‘Milkoh Makes Mothers Merry.’ Through Trafalgar Square they went and down Whitehall, all moonlight and Portland stone.
‘The night’s unreal,’ said Fleur. ‘“Fantoches”!’
Michael caught her waist.
‘Don’t! Suppose some Member saw you!’
‘He’d only sympathize. How nice and solid you feel!’
‘No. Fantoches have no substance.’
‘Then give me shadow.’
‘The substance is in Bethnal Green.’
Michael dropped his arm.
‘That’s a strange thought.’
‘I have intuitions, Michael.’
‘Because I can admire a good woman, can I not love you?’
‘I shall never be “good”; it isn’t in me.’
‘Whatever you are’s enough for me.’
‘Prettily said. The Square looks jolly to-night! Open the doll’s house.’
The hall was dark, with just a glimmer coming through the fanlight. Michael took off her cloak and knelt down. He felt her finger’s stir his hair; real fingers, and real all this within his arms; only the soul elusive. Soul?
‘Fantoches!’ came her voice, soft and mocking. ‘And so to bed!’
Chapter Nine
ROUT AT MRS MAGUSSIE’S
THERE are routs social, political, propagandic; and routs like Mrs Magussie’s. In one of Anglo-American birth, inexhaustible wealth, unimpeachable widowhood, and catholic taste, the word hostess had found its highest expression. People might die, marry, and be born with impunity so long as they met, preferably in her house, one of the largest in Mayfair. If she called in a doctor, it was to meet another doctor; if she went to church, it was to get Canon Forant to meet Dean Kimble at lunch afterwards. Her cards of invitation had the words: ‘To meet’ printed on them; and she never put ‘me’. She was selfless. Once in a way she had a real rout, because once in a way a personality was available, whose name everybody, from poets to prelates, must know. In her intimate belief people loved to meet anybody sufficiently distinguished; and this was where she succeeded, because almost without exception they did. Her two husbands had ‘passed on’, having met in their time nearly everybody. They had both been distinguished, and had first met in her house; and she would never have a third for Society was losing its landmarks, and she was too occupied. People were inclined to smile at mention of Bella Magussie, and yet, how do without one who performed the function of cement? Without her, bishops could not place their cheeks by the jowls of ballet girls, or Home Secretaries be fertilized by disorderly dramatists. Except in her house, the diggers-up of old civilization in Beluchistan never encountered the levellers of modern civilization in London. Nor was there any chance for lights of the Palace to meet those lights of the Halls – Madame Nemesia and Top Nobby. Nowhere else could a Russian dancer go to supper with Sir Walter Peddel, M.D., F.R.S.T.R., P.M.V.S., ‘R.I.P.’ as Michael would add. Even a bowler with the finest collection of ducks’ eggs in first-class cricket was not without a chance of wringing the hand of the great Indian economist Sir Banerjee Bath Babore. Mrs Magussie’s, in fine, was a house of chief consequence; and her long face, as of the guardian of some first principle, moving about the waters of celebrity, was wrinkled in a great cause. To meet or not to meet? She had answered the question for good and all.