‘If only,’ thought Michael, ‘the fourth player sat under the table, the pattern would be complete. It’s having the odd player loose that spoils the cubes.’ And with something of a thrill he saw that Elderson was a fourth player! Sharp and impassive, he was engaged in applying a knife to the end of a cigar. Gosh! what sealed books faces were! Each with pages and pages of private thoughts, interests, schemes, fancies, passions, hopes and fears; and down came death – splosh! – and a creature wiped out, like a fly on a wall, and nobody any more could see its little close mechanism working away for its own ends, in its own privacy and its own importance; nobody any more could speculate on whether it was a clean or a dirty little bit of work. Hard to tell! They ran in all shapes! Elderson, for instance – was he a nasty mess, or just a lamb of God who didn’t look it? ‘Somehow,’ thought Michael, ‘I feel he’s a womanizer. Now why?’ He spread his hands out behind him to the fire, rubbing them together like a fly that has been in treacle. If one couldn’t tell what was passing in the mind of one’s own wife in one’s own house, how on earth could one tell anything from the face of a stranger, and he one of the closest bits of mechanism in the world – an English gentleman of business! If only life were like The Idiot or The Brothers Karamazov, and everybody went about turning out their inmost hearts at the tops of their voices! If only club card-rooms had a dash of epilepsy in their composition! But – nothing! Nothing! The world was full of wonderful secrets which everybody kept to themselves without captions or close-ups to give them away!
A footman came in, looked at the fire, stood a moment expressionless as a stork, waiting for an order to ping out, staccato, through the hum, turned and went away.
Mechanism! Everywhere – mechanism! Devices for getting away from life so complete that there seemed no life to get away from.
‘It’s all,’ he thought, ‘awfully like a man sending a registered letter to himself. And perhaps it’s just as well. Is “life” a good thing – is it? Do I want to see “life” raw again?’
Elderson was seated now, and Michael had a perfect view of the back of his head. It disclosed nothing.
‘I’m no sleuth,’ he thought; ‘there ought to be something in the way he doesn’t part his hair behind.’ And, getting off the fender, he went home.
At dinner he caught one of his own looks at Fleur and didn’t like it. Sleuth! And yet how not try to know what were the real thoughts and feelings of one who held his heart, like an accordion, and made it squeak and groan at pleasure!
‘I saw the model you sent Aubrey yesterday,’ she said. ‘She didn’t say anything about the clothes, but she looked ever so! What a face, Michael! Where did you come across her?’
Through Michael sped the thought: ‘Could I make her jealous?’ And he was shocked at it. A low-down thought – mean and ornery! ‘She blew in,’ he said. ‘Wife of a little packer we had who took to snooping – er – books. He sells balloons now; they want money badly.’
‘I see. Did you know that Aubrey’s going to paint her in the nude?’
‘Phew! No! I thought she’d look good on a wrapper. I say! Ought I to stop that?’
Fleur smiled. ‘It’s more money and her look-out. It doesn’t matter to you, does it?’
Again that thought; again the recoil from it!
‘Only,’ he said, ‘that her husband is a decent little snipe for a snooper, and I don’t want to be more sorry for him.’
‘She won’t tell him, of course.’
She said it so naturally, so simply, that the words disclosed a whole attitude of mind. One didn’t tell one’s mate what would tease the poor brute! He saw by the flutter of her white eyelids that she also realized the give-away. Should he follow it up, tell her what June Forsyte had told him – have it all out – all out? But with what purpose – to what end? Would it change things, make her love him? Would it do anything but harass her a little more; and give him the sense that he had lost his wicket trying to drive her to the pavilion? No! Better adopt the principle of secrecy she had unwittingly declared her own, bite on it, and grin. He muttered:
‘I’m afraid he’ll find her rather thin.’
Her eyes were bright and steady; and again he was worried by that low-down thought: ‘Could he make her –?’
‘I’ve only seen her once,’ he added, ‘and then she was dressed.’
‘I’m not jealous, Michael.’
‘No,’ he thought, ‘I wish to heaven you were!’