‘I call that silly.’
‘Perhaps. But more amusing.’
‘If you see through it, how can you be amused?’
‘Another hot potato. Let’s try again! I bet you don’t approve of women’s dress, these days?’
‘Why not? It’s jolly sensible.’
‘La, la! Are we coming together on that?’
‘Naturally, you’d all look better without hats. You can wash your heads easily now, you know.’
‘Oh! don’t cut us off hats, Jon. All our stoicism would go. If we hadn’t to find hats that suited us, life would be much too easy.’
‘But they don’t suit you.’
‘I agree, my dear; but I know the feminine character better than you. One must always give babies something to cut their teeth on.’
‘Fleur, you’re too intelligent to live in London.’
‘My dear boy, the modern young woman doesn’t live anywhere. She floats in an ether of her own.’
‘She touches earth sometimes, I suppose.’
Fleur did not answer for a minute; then, looking at him:
‘Yes; she touches earth sometimes, Jon.’ And in that look she seemed to say again: ‘Oh! what a pity we have to talk like this!’
She showed him the house in such a way that he might get the impression that she considered to some purpose the comfort of others. Even her momentary encounters with the denizens had that quality. Jon went away with a tingling in his palm, and the thought: ‘She likes to make herself out a butterfly, but at heart –!’ The memory of her clear eyes smiling at him, the half-comic quiver of her lips when she said: ‘Good-bye, bless you!’ blurred his vision of Sussex all the way home. And who shall say that she had not so intended?
Holly had come to meet him with a hired car.
‘I’m sorry, Jon, Val’s got the car. He won’t be able to drive you up and down tomorrow as he said he would. He’s had to go up to-day. And if he can get through his business in town, he’ll go on to Newmarket on Wednesday. Something rather beastly’s happened. His name’s been forged on a cheque for a hundred pounds by an old college friend to whom he’d been particularly decent.’
‘Very adequate reasons,’ said Jon. ‘What’s Val going to do?’
‘He doesn’t know yet; but this is the third time he’s played a dirty trick on Val.’
‘Is it quite certain?’
‘The bank described him unmistakably. He seems to think Val will stand anything; but it can’t be allowed to go on.’
‘I should say not.’
‘Yes, dear boy; but what would you do? Prosecute an old college friend? Val has a queer feeling that it’s only a sort of accident that he himself has kept straight.’
Jon started. Was it an accident that one kept straight?
‘Was this fellow in the war?’ he asked.
‘I doubt it. He seems to be an absolute rotter. I saw his face once – bone slack and bone selfish.’
‘Beastly for Val!’ said Jon.
‘He’s going to consult his uncle, Fleur’s father. By the way, have you seen Fleur lately?’
‘Yes. I saw her to-day. She brought me as far as Dorking, and showed me her house there.’
The look on Holly’s face, the reflective shadow between her eyes, were not lost on him.
‘Is there any objection to my seeing her?’ he said, abruptly.
‘Only you can know that, dear boy.’
Jon did not answer, but the moment he saw Anne he told her. She showed him nothing by face or voice, just asked how Fleur was and how he liked the house. That night, after she seemed asleep, he lay awake, gnawed by uncertainty. Was it an accident that one kept straight – was it?
Chapter Six
SOAMES HAS BRAIN-WAVES
THE first question Soames put to his nephew in Green Street, was: ‘How did he get hold of the cheque form? Do you keep your cheque-books lying about?’
‘I’m afraid I do, rather, in the country, Uncle Soames.’
‘Um,’ said Soames, ‘then you deserve all you get. What about your signature?’
‘He wrote from Brighton asking if he could see me.’
‘You should have made your wife sign your answer.’
Val groaned. ‘I didn’t think he’d run to forgery.’
‘They run to anything when they’re as far gone as that. I suppose when you said “No”, he came over from Brighton all the same?’
‘Yes, he did; but I wasn’t in.’
‘Exactly; and he sneaked a form. Well, if you want to stop him, you’d better prosecute. He’ll get three years.’
‘That’d kill him,’ said Val, ‘to judge by his looks.’