Holly listened, amazed. Who would have thought that this girl saw? She might be seeing wrong, but anyway she saw!
‘Surely,’ she said, ‘you enjoy yourselves?’
‘Well, I like getting hold of nice things, and interesting people; I like seeing everything that’s new and worth while, or seems so at the moment. But that’s just how it is – nothing lasts. You see, I’m not of the “Pan-joys”, nor of the “new-faithfuls”.’
‘The new-faithfuls?’
‘Oh! don’t you know – it’s a sort of faith-healing done on oneself, not exactly the old “God-good, good-God!” sort; but a kind of mixture of will-power, psycho-analysis, and belief that everything will be all right on the night it you say it will. You must have come across them. They’re frightfully in earnest.’
‘I know,’ said Holly; ‘their eyes shine.’
‘I dare say. I don’t believe in them – I don’t believe in anyone; or anything – much. How can one?’
‘How about simple people, and hard work?’
Fleur sighed. ‘I dare say. I will say for Michael – he’s not spoiled. Let’s have tea? Tea, Ting?’ and, turning up the lights, she rang the bell.
When her unexpected visitor had gone, she sat very still before the fire. Today, when she had been so very nearly Wilfrid’s! So Jon was not married! Not that it made any odds! Things did not come round as they were expected to in books. And anyway sentiment was swosh! Cut it out! She tossed back her hair; and, getting hammer and nail, proceeded to hang the white monkey. Between the two tea-chests with their coloured pearl-shell figures, he would look his best. Since she couldn’t have Jon, what did it matter – Wilfrid or Michael, or both, or neither? Eat the orange in her hand, and throw away the rind! And suddenly she became aware that Michael was in the room. He had come in very quietly and was standing before the fire behind her. She gave him a quick look and said:
‘I’ve had Aubrey Greene here about a model you sent him, and Holly – Mrs Val Dartie – she said she’s seen you. Oh! and father’s brought us this. Isn’t it perfect?’
Michael did not speak.
‘Anything the matter, Michael?’
‘No, nothing.’ He went up to the monkey. From behind him now Fleur searched his profile. Instinct told her of a change. Had he, after all, seen her going to Wilfrid’s – coming away?
‘Some monkey!’ he said. ‘By the way, have you any spare clothes you could give the wife of a poor snipe – nothing too swell?’
She answered mechanically: ‘Yes, of course!’ while her brain worked furiously.
‘Would you put them out, then? I’m going to make up a bunch for him myself–they could go together.’
Yes! He was quite unlike himself, as if the spring in him had run down. A sort of malaise overcame her. Michael not cheerful! It was like the fire going out on a cold day. And, perhaps for the first time, she was conscious that his cheerfulness was of real importance to her. She watched him pick up Ting-a-ling and sit down. And going up behind him, she bent over till her hair was against his cheek. Instead of rubbing his cheek on hers, he sat quite still, and her heart misgave her.
‘What is it?’ she said, coaxing.
‘Nothing!’
She took hold of his ears.
‘But there is. I suppose you know somehow that I went to see Wilfrid.’
He said stonily: ‘Why not?’
She let go, and stood up straight.
‘It was only to tell him that I couldn’t see him again.’
That half-truth seemed to her the whole.
He suddenly looked up, a quiver went over his face; he took her hand.
‘It’s all right, Fleur. You must do what you like, you know. That’s only fair. I had too much lunch.’
Fleur withdrew to the middle of the room.
‘You’re rather an angel,’ she said slowly, and went out.
Upstairs she looked out garments, confused in her soul.
Chapter Six
MICHAEL GETS ‘WHAT-FOR’
AFTER his Green Street quest Michael had wavered back down Piccadilly, and, obeying one of those impulses which make people hang around the centres of disturbance, on to Cork Street. He stood for a minute at the mouth of Wilfrid’s backwater.
‘No,’ he thought at last, ‘ten to one he isn’t in; and if he is, twenty to one that I get any change except bad change!’
He was moving slowly on to Bond Street, when a little light lady, coming from the backwater, and reading as she went, ran into him from behind.
‘Why don’t you look where you’re going! Oh! You? Aren’t you the young man who married Fleur Forsyte? I’m her cousin, June. I thought I saw her just now.’ She waved a hand which held a catalogue with a gesture like the flirt of a bird’s wing. ‘Opposite my gallery. She went into a house, or I should have spoken to her – I’d like to have seen her again.’