Into a house! Michael dived for his cigarette-case. Hard-grasping it, he looked up. The little lady’s blue eyes were sweeping from side to side of his face with a searching candour.
‘Are you happy together?’ she said.
A cold sweat broke out on his forehead. A sense of general derangement afflicted him – hers, and his own.
‘I beg your pardon?’ he gasped.
‘I hope you are. She ought to have married my little brother – but I hope you are. She’s a pretty child.’
In the midst of a dull sense of stunning blows, it staggered him that she seemed quite unconscious of inflicting them. He heard his teeth gritting, and said dully: ‘Your little brother, who was he?’
‘What! Jon – didn’t you know Jon? He was too young, of course, and so was she. But they were head over – the family feud stopped that. Well! it’s all past. I was at your wedding. I hope you’re happy. Have you seen the Claud Brains show at my gallery? He’s a genius. I was going to have a bun in here; will you join me? You ought to know his work.’
She had paused at the door of a confectioner’s. Michael put his hand on his chest.
‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘I have just had a bun – two, in fact. Excuse me!’
The little lady grasped his other hand.
‘Well, good-bye, young man! Glad to have met you. You’re not a beauty, but I like your face. Remember me to that child. You should go and see Claud Brains. He’s a real genius.’
Stock-still before the door, he watched her turn and enter, with a scattered motion, as of flying, and a disturbance among those seated in the pastry-cook’s. Then he moved on, the cigarette unlighted in his mouth, dazed, as a boxer from a blow which knocks him sideways, and another which knocks him straight again.
Fleur visiting Wilfrid – at this moment in his rooms up there – in his arms, perhaps! He groaned. A well-fed young man in a new hat skipped at the sound. Never! He could never stick that! He would have to clear out! He had believed Fleur honest! A double life! The night before last she had smiled on him. Oh! God! He dashed across into Green Park. Why hadn’t he stood still and let something go over him? And that lunatic’s little brother – John – family feud? Himself – a pis aller, then – taken without love at all – a makeshift! He remembered now her saying one night at Mapledurham: ‘Come again when I know I can’t get my wish.’ So that was the wish she couldn’t get! A makeshift! ‘Jolly,’ he thought: ‘Oh! jolly!’ No wonder, then! What could she care? One man or another! Poor little devil! She had never let him know – never breathed a word! Was that decent of her – or was it treachery? ‘No,’ he thought, ‘if she had told me, it wouldn’t have made any difference – I’d have taken her at any price. It was decent of her not to tell me.’ But how was it he hadn’t heard from someone? Family feud? The Forsytes! Except ‘Old Forsyte’, he never saw them; and ‘Old Forsyte’ was closer than a fish. Well! he had got what-for! And again he groaned, in the twilight spaces of the Park. Buckingham Palace loomed up unlighted, huge and dreary. Conscious of his cigarette at last, he stopped to strike a match, and drew the smoke deep into his lungs with the first faint sense of comfort.
‘You couldn’t spare us a cigarette, Mister?’
A shadowy figure with a decent sad face stood beside the statue of Australia, so depressingly abundant!
‘Of course!’ said Michael; ‘take the lot.’ He emptied the case into the man’s hand. ‘Take the case too – “present from Westminster” – you’ll get thirty bob for it. Good luck!’ He hurried on. A faint: ‘Hi, Mister!’ pursued him unavailingly. Pity was pulp! Sentiment was bilge! Was he going home to wait till Fleur had – finished and come back? Not he! He turned towards Chelsea, batting along as hard as he could stride. Lighted shops, gloomy great Eaton Square, Chester Square, Sloane Square, the King’s Road – along, along! Worse than the trenches – far worse – this whipped and scorpioned sexual jealousy! Yes, and he would have felt even worse, but for that second blow. It made it less painful to know that Fleur had been in love with that cousin, and Wilfrid, too, perhaps, nothing to her. Poor little wretch! ‘Well, what’s the game now?’ he thought. The game of life – in bad weather, in stress? What was it? In the war – what had a fellow done? Somehow managed to feel himself not so dashed important; reached a condition of acquiescence, fatalism, ‘Who dies if England live’ sort of sob-stuff state. The game of life? Was it different? ‘Bloody but unbowed’ might be tripe; still – get up when you were knocked down! The whole was big, oneself was little! Passion, jealousy, ought they properly to destroy one’s sportsmanship, as Nazing and Sibley and Linda Frewe would have it? Was the word ‘gentleman’ a dud? Was it? Did one keep one’s form, or get down to squealing and kicking in the stomach?