But was it really so perfectly possible – even if pity was posh? How be perfect to Michael, when the slightest slip might reveal to him that she was being perfect to Wilfrid; how be perfect to Wilfrid, when every time she was perfect to Michael would be a dagger in Wilfrid’s heart? And if – if her physical doubt should mature into certainty, how be perfect mother to the certainty, when she was either torturing two men, or lying to them like a trooperess? Not so perfectly possible as all that! ‘If only I were all French!’ thought Fleur.…
The clicking door startled her – the reason that she was not all French was coming in. He looked very grey, as if he had been thinking too much. He kissed her, and sat down moodily before the fire.
‘Have you come for the night, Dad?’
‘If I may,’ murmured Soames. ‘Business.’
‘Anything unpleasant, ducky?’
Soames looked up as if startled.
‘Unpleasant? Why should it be unpleasant?’
‘I only thought from your face.’
Soames grunted. ‘This Ruhr!’ he said. ‘I’ve brought you a picture. Chinese!’
‘Oh, Dad! How jolly!’
‘It isn’t,’ said Soames; ‘it’s a monkey eating fruit.’
‘But that’s perfect! Where is it – in the hall?’
Soames nodded.
Stripping the coverings off the picture, Fleur brought it in, and setting it up on the jade-green settee, stood away and looked at it. The large white monkey with its brown haunting eyes, as if she had suddenly wrested its interest from the orange-like fruit in its crisped paw, the grey background, the empty rinds all round – bright splashes in a general ghostliness of colour, impressed her at once.
‘But, Dad, it’s a masterpiece – I’m sure it’s of a frightfully good period.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Soames. ‘I must look up the Chinese.’
‘But you oughtn’t to give it to me, it must be worth any amount. You ought to have it in your collection.’
‘They didn’t know its value,’ said Soames, and a faint smile illumined his features. ‘I gave three hundred for it. It’ll be safer here.’
‘Of course it’ll be safe. Only why safer?’
Soames turned towards the picture.
‘I can’t tell. Anything may come of this.’
‘Of what, dear?’
‘Is “old Mont” coming in tonight?’
‘No, he’s at Lippinghall still.’
‘Well, it doesn’t matter – he’s no good.’
Fleur took his hand and gave it a squeeze.
‘Tell me!’
Soames’s tickled heart quivered. Fancy her wanting to know what was troubling him! But his sense of the becoming, and his fear of giving away his own alarm, forbade response.
‘Nothing you’d understand,’ he said. ‘Where are you going to hang it?’
‘There, I think; but we must wait for Michael.’
Soames grumbled out:
‘I saw him just now at your aunt’s. Is that the way he attends to business?’
‘Perhaps,’ thought Fleur, ‘he was only on his way back to the office. Cork Street is more or less between! If he passed the end of it, he would think of Wilfrid, he might have been wanting to see him about books.’
‘Oh, here’s Ting! Well, darling!’
The Chinese dog, let in, as it were, by Providence, seeing Soames, sat down suddenly with snub upturned eyes brilliant. ‘The expression of your face,’ he seemed to say, ‘pleases me. We belong to the past and could sing hymns together, old man.’
‘Funny little chap,’ said Soames: ‘he always knows me.’
Fleur lifted him. ‘Come and see the new monkey, ducky.’
‘Don’t let him lick it.’
Held rather firmly by his jade-green collar and confronted by an inexplicable piece of silk smelling of the past, Ting-a-ling raised his head higher and higher to correspond with the action of his nostrils, and his little tongue appeared, tentatively savouring the emanation of his country.
‘It’s a nice monkey, isn’t it, darling?’
‘No,’ said Ting-a-ling, rather clearly. ‘Put me down!’
Restored to the floor, he sought a patch where the copper came through between two rugs, and licked it quietly.
‘Mr Aubrey Greene, ma’am!’
‘H’m!’ said Soames.
The painter came gliding and glowing in; his bright hair slipping back, his green eyes sliding off.
‘Ah!’ he said, pointing to the floor. ‘That’s what I’ve come about.’
Fleur followed his finger in amazement.
‘Ting!’ she said severely, ‘stop it! He will lick the copper, Aubrey.’