The Forsyte Saga Volume 2(6)

‘Michael, if you were me, would you tell Frederic Wilmer that he’ll be meeting Hubert Marsland at lunch next week? Would it bring him or would it put him off?’

‘Marsland’s rather an old duck, Wilmer’s rather an old goose – I don’t know.’

‘Oh! do be serious, Michael – you never give me any help in arranging – No! Don’t maul my shoulders please.’

‘Well, darling, I don’t know. I’ve no genius for such things, like you. Marsland paints windmills, cliffs and things – I doubt if he’s heard of the future. He’s almost a Mathew Maris for keeping out of the swim. If you think he’d like to meet a Vertiginist –’

‘I didn’t ask you if he’d like to meet Wilmer; I asked you if Wilmer would like to meet him.’

‘Wilmer will just say: “I like little Mrs Mont, she gives deuced good grub” – and so you do, ducky. A Vertiginist wants nourishing, you know, or it wouldn’t go to his head.’

Fleur’s pen resumed its swift strokes, already become slightly illegible. She murmured:

‘I think Wilfrid would help – you won’t be there; one – two – three. What women?’

‘Four painters – pretty and plump; no intellect,’

Fleur said crossly:

‘I can’t get them plump; they don’t go about now.’ And her pen flowed on:

DEAR WILFRID – Wednesday – lunch; Wilmer, Hubert Marsland, two other women. Do help me live it down.

Yours ever,

FLEUR

‘Michael, your chin is like a bootbrush.’

‘Sorry, old thing; your shoulders shouldn’t be so smooth. Bart gave Wilfrid a tip as we were coming along.’

Fleur stopped writing. ‘Oh!’

‘Reminded him that the state of love was a good stunt for poets.’

‘A propos of what?’

‘Wilfrid was complaining that he couldn’t turn it out now.’

‘Nonsense! His last things are his best.’

‘Well, that’s what I think. Perhaps he’s forestalled the tip. Has he, d’you know?’

Fleur turned her eyes towards the face behind her shoulder. No, it had its native look – frank, irresponsible, slightly faunlike, with its pointed ears, quick lips, and nostrils.

She said slowly,

‘If you don’t know, nobody does.’

A snuffle interrupted Michael’s answer. Ting-a-ling, long, low, slightly higher at both ends, was standing between them, with black muzzle upturned. ‘My pedigree is long,’ he seemed to say: ‘but my legs are short – what about it?’





Chapter Three



MUSICAL



ACCORDING to a great and guiding principle, Fleur and Michael Mont attended the Hugo Solstis concert, not because they anticipated pleasure, but because they knew Hugo. They felt, besides, that Solstis, an Englishman of Russo-Dutch extraction, was one of those who were restoring English music, giving to it a wide and spacious freedom from melody and rhythm, while investing it with literary and mathematical charms. And one never could go to a concert given by any of this school without using the word ‘interesting’ as one was coming away. To sleep to this restored English music, too, was impossible. Fleur, a sound sleeper, had never even tried. Michael had, and complained afterwards that it had been like a nap in Liège railway station. On this occasion they occupied those gangway seats in the front row of the dress circle of which Fleur had a sort of natural monopoly. There Hugo and the rest could see her taking her place in the English restoration movement. It was easy, too, to escape into the corridor and exchange the word ‘interesting’ with side-whiskered cognoscenti; or, slipping out a cigarette from the little gold case, wedding present of Cousin Imogen Cardigan, get a whiff or two’s repose. To speak quite honestly, Fleur had a natural sense of rhythm which caused her discomfort during those long and ‘interesting’ passages which evidenced, as it were, the composer’s rise and fall from his bed of thorns. She secretly loved a tune, and the impossibility of ever confessing this without losing hold of Solstis, Baff, Birdigal, MacLewis, Clorane, and other English restoration composers, sometimes taxed to its limits a nature which had its Spartan side. Even to Michael she would not ‘confess’; and it was additionally trying when, with his native disrespect of persons, accentuated by life in the trenches and a publisher’s office, he would mutter: ‘Gad! Get on with it!’ or: ‘Cripes! Ain’t he took bad!’ especially as she knew that Michael was really putting up with it better than herself, having a more literary disposition, and a less dancing itch in his toes.