A verger passed, glancing at him curiously, as if unaccustomed to a raised chin; halting just behind, he made a little noise with his keys. Soames sneezed; and, reaching for his hat, got up. He had no intention of being taken round by that chap, and shown everything he didn’t want to see, for half-a-crown. And with a ‘No, thank you; not today,’ he passed the verger, and went out to the car.
‘You ought to have gone in,’ he said to Riggs; ‘they used to crown the kings of England there. To London now.’
The opened car travelled fast under a bright sun, and not until he was in the new cut, leading to Chiswick, did Soames have the idea which caused him to say: ‘Stop at that house, “The Poplars”, where you took us the other day.’
It was not yet lunch time, and in all probability Fleur would still be ‘sitting’; so why not pick her up and take her straight away with him for the week-end? She had clothes down at ‘The Shelter’. It would save some hours of fresh air for her. The foreign woman, however, who opened the door, informed him that the lady had not been to ‘sit’ today or yesterday.
‘Oh!’ said Soames. ‘How’s that?’
‘Nobody did know, sir. She ’ have not sent any message. Mr Blade is very decomposed.’
Soames chewed his thoughts a moment.
‘Is your mistress in?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then ask her if she’ll see me, please. Mr Soames Forsyte.’
‘Will you in the meal-room wait, sir.’
Soames waited uneasily in that very little room. Fleur had said she could not come with him because of her ‘sittings’; and she had not ‘sat’. Was she ill, then?
He was roused from disquiet contemplation of the poplar trees outside by the words:
‘Oh! It’s you. I’m not sorry you came.’
The cordiality of this greeting increased his uneasiness, and, stretching out his hand, he said:
‘How are you, June? I called for Fleur. When did she come last?’
‘Tuesday morning. I saw her late on Tuesday afternoon, too, in her car, outside –’ Soames could see her eyes moving from side to side, and knew that she was about to say something unpleasant. It came. ‘She picked up Jon.’
Feeling as if he had received a punch in his wind, Soames exclaimed:
‘What! Your young brother? What was he doing here?’
‘“Sitting”! of course.’
‘ “Sitting”! What business –!’ and checking the words, ‘had he to “sit”, he stared at his cousin, who, flushing a deep pink, said:
‘I told her she was not to see him here. I told Jon the same.’
‘Then she’d done it before?’
‘Yes, twice. She’s so spoiled, you see.’
‘Ah!’ The reality of the danger had disarmed him. Antagonism seemed to him, thus faced with a sort of ruin, too luxurious.
‘Where is she?’
‘On Tuesday morning she said she was going down to Dorking.’
‘And she picked him up?’ repeated Soames.
June nodded. ‘Yes, after his “sitting”. His picture’s finished. If you think that I want them to – any more than you –’
‘No one in their sense could want them to –’ said Soames, coldly. ‘But why did you make him “sit”, while she was coming here?’
June flushed a deeper pink.
‘You don’t know how hard it is for real artists. I had to think of Harold. If I hadn’t got Jon before he began his farming –’
‘Farming!’ said Soames. ‘For all we know they may –’ but again he checked his words. ‘I’ve been expecting something of this sort ever since I heard he was back. Well! I’d better get on to Dorking. D’you know where his mother is?’
‘In Paris.’
Ah! But not this time would he have to beg that woman to let her son belong to his daughter! No! It would be to beg her to stop his belonging – if at all.
‘Good-bye!’ he said.
‘Soames,’ said June, suddenly, ‘don’t let Fleur – it’s she who–’
‘I’ll hear nothing against her,’ said Soames.
June pressed her clenched hands to her flat breast.
‘I like you for that,’ she said; ‘and I’m sorry if–’
‘That’s all right,’ muttered Soames.
‘Good-bye!’ said June. ‘Shake hands!’
Soames put his hand in one which gave it a convulsive squeeze, then dropped it like a cold potato.
‘Down to Dorking,’ he said to Riggs, on regaining his car. The memory of Fleur’s face that night at Nettlefold, so close to the young man’s, so full of what he had never seen on her face before, haunted him the length of Hammersmith Bridge. Ah! what a wilful creature! Suppose – suppose she had flung her cap over the windmill! Suppose the worst? Good God! What should – what could he do, then? The calculating tenacity of her passion for this young man – the way she had kept it from him, from everyone, or tried to! Something deadly about it, and something that almost touched him, rousing the memory of his own pursuit of that boy’s mother – memory of a passion that would not, could not let go; that had won its ends, and destroyed in winning. He had often thought she had no continuity, that, like all these ‘fizz-gig’ young moderns, she was just fluttering without basic purpose or direction. And it was the irony of this moment that he perceived how she – when she knew what she wanted – had as much tenacity of will as himself and his generation.