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, tonight?’
It appeared to be the London début 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!’
‘Yes! Rub it in! But, I tell you, when I think of you going home with her, and of myself,’ he gave a dreadful little laugh, ‘I advise you not to rub it in.’
‘Well,’ said Michael, ‘as this isn’t a Dostoievsky novel, I suppose there’s no more to be said.’
Desert moved from the wall and laid his hand on the bust of Lionel Charwell.
‘You realize, at least, that I’ve gone out of my way – perhaps dished myself – by telling you. I’ve not bombed without declaring war.’