I had no idea you had kept up your water-colours. The drawing has considerable merit, though the subject is not clear to me. The fruit looks too soft and rich for apples. Still, I suppose you know what you were driving at. I am glad the news of Kit is so good, and that you are feeling the better for the sea air.
Ever your affectionate father,
S. F.
Knew what she was driving at! If only she did! And if only her father didn’t! That was the doubt in her mind when she tore up the letter and scattered it on Surrey through the window. He watched her like a lynx – like a lover; and she did not want to be watched just now.
She had no luggage, and at Victoria took a cab for Chiswick. June would at least know something about those two; whether they were still at Wansdon, or where they were.
How well she remembered the little house from the one visit she had paid to it – in the days when she and Jon –!
June was in the hall, on the point of going out.
‘Oh! it’s you!’ she said. ‘You didn’t come that Sunday!’
‘No, I had too much to do before I went away.’
‘Jon and Anne are staying here now. Harold is painting a beautiful thing of her. It’ll be quite unique. She’s a nice little thing, I think,’ (she was several inches taller than June, according to Fleur’s recollection) ‘and pretty. I’m just going out to get him something he specially wants, but I shan’t be a quarter of an hour. If you’ll wait in the meal-room till I come back, I’ll take you up, and then he’ll see you. He’s the only man who’s doing real work just now.’
‘It’s so nice that there’s one,’ said Fleur.
‘Here’s an album of reproductions of his pictures’ – and June opened a large book on a small dining-table. ‘Isn’t that lovely? But all his work has such quality. You must look through it, and I’ll come back.’ And with a little squeeze of Fleur’s shoulder, she fled.
Fleur did not look through the album, she looked through the window and round the room. How she remembered it, and that round, dim mirror of very old glass wherein she had seen herself while she waited for Jon. And the stormy little scene they had been through together in this room too small for storms, seven years ago! Jon staying here! Her heart beat, and she stared at herself again in that dim mirror. Surely she was no worse to look at than she had been then! Nay! She was better! Her face had a stamp on it now, line on the roundness of youth! Couldn’t she let him know that she was here? Couldn’t she see him somehow just for a minute alone! That little one-eyed fanatic – for so in her thoughts Fleur looked on June – would be back directly. And quick mind took quick decision. If Jon were in, she would find him! Touching her hair at the sides, the pearls round her neck, and flicking an almost powder-less puff over her nose, she went out into the hall and listened. No sound! And slowly she began mounting the stairs. In his bedroom he would be, or in the studio – there was no other covert. On the first landing, bedroom to right of her, bedroom to left of her, bathroom in front of her, the doors open. Blank! – and blank in her heart! The studio was all there was above. And there – as well as Jon, would be the painter and that girl, his wife. Was it worth it? She took two steps down, and then retraced them. Yes! It was. Slowly, very silently, she went. The studio door was open, for she could hear the quick, familiar shuffle of a painter to his canvas and away again. She closed her eyes a moment, and then again went up. On the landing, close to the open door, she stood still. No need to go farther. For, in the room directly opposite to her, was a long, broad mirror, and in it – unseen herself – she could see. Jon was sitting on the end of a low divan with an unsmoked pipe in his hand, staring straight before him. On the dais that girl was standing, dressed in white; her hands held a long-stemmed lily whose flower reached to within an inch of her chin. Oh! she was pretty – pretty and brown, with those dark eyes and that dark hair framing her face. But Jon’s expression – deepset on the mark of his visage as the eyes in his head! She had seen lion cubs look like that, seeing nothing close to them, seeing – what? – in the distance. That girl’s eyes, what was it Holly had called them? – ‘best type of water-nymph’s’ – slid round and looked at him, and at once his eyes left the distance and smiled back. Fleur turned then, hurried down the stairs, and out of the house. Wait for June – hear her rhapsodize – be introduced to the painter – have to control her face in front of that girl? No! Mounting to the top of her bus, she saw June skimming round a corner, and thought with malicious pleasure of her disappointment – when one had been hurt, one wanted to hurt somebody. The bus carried her away down the King’s Road, Hammersmith, sweating in the westering sunlight, away into the big town with its myriad lives and interests, untouchable, indifferent as Fate.