“Good for him! He must have had taste.”
Soames stared. The idea that George should have had taste almost appalled him.
“No,” he said, with a flash of inspiration: “What he liked about it was that it makes you feel uncomfortable.”
“Same thing! I don’t know where I’ve seen a more pungent satire on human life.”
“I don’t follow,” said Soames dryly.
“Why, it’s a perfect allegory, sir! Eat the fruits of life, scatter the rinds, and get copped doing it. When they’re still, a monkey’s eyes are the human tragedy incarnate. Look at them! He thinks there’s something beyond, and he’s sad or angry because he can’t get at it. That picture ought to be in the British Museum, sir, with the labeclass="underline" ‘Civilisation, caught out.’”
“Well, it won’t be,” said Fleur. “It’ll be here, labelled ‘The White Monkey.’”
“Same thing.”
“Cynicism,” said Soames abruptly, “gets you nowhere. If you’d said ‘MODERNITY caught out’—”
“I do, sir; but why be narrow? You don’t seriously suppose this age is worse than any other?”
“Don’t I?” said Soames. “In my belief the world reached its highest point in the ‘eighties, and will never reach it again.”
The painter stared.
“That’s frightfully interesting. I wasn’t born, and I suppose you were about my age then, sir. You believed in God and drove in DILIGENCES.”
DILIGENCES! The word awakened in Soames a memory which somehow seemed appropriate.
“Yes,” he said, “and I can tell you a story of those days that you can’t match in these. When I was a youngster in Switzerland with my people, two of my sisters had some black cherries. When they’d eaten about half a dozen they discovered that they all had little maggots in them. An English climber there saw how upset they were, and ate the whole of the rest of the cherries—about two pounds—maggots, stones and all, just to show them. That was the sort of men they were then.”
“Oh! Father!”
“Gee! He must have been gone on them.”
“No,” said Soames, “not particularly. His name was Powley; he wore side whiskers.”
“Talking of God and diligences; I saw a hansom yesterday.”
‘More to the point if you’d seen God,’ thought Soames, but he did not say so; indeed, the thought surprised him, it was not the sort of thing he had ever seen himself.
“You mayn’t know it, sir, but there’s more belief now than there was before the war—they’ve discovered that we’re not all body.”
“Oh!” said Fleur. “That reminds me, Aubrey. Do you know any mediums? Could I get one to come here? On our floor, with Michael outside the door, one would know there couldn’t be any hanky. Do the dark seance people ever go out?—they’re much more thrilling they say.”
“Spiritualism!” said Soames. “H’mph!” He could not in half an hour have expressed himself more clearly.
Aubrey Greene’s eyes slid off to Ting-a-ling. “I’ll see what I can do, if you’ll lend me your Peke for an hour or so tomorrow afternoon. I’d bring him back on a lead, and give him every luxury.”
“What do you want him for?”
“Michael sent me a most topping little model today. But, you see, she can’t smile.”
“Michael?”
“Yes. Something quite new; and I’ve got a scheme. Her smile’s like sunlight going off an Italian valley; but when you tell her to, she can’t. I thought your Peke could make her, perhaps.”
“May I come and see?” said Fleur.
“Yes, bring him tomorrow; but, if I can persuade her, it’ll be in the ‘altogether.’”
“Oh! Will you get me a seance, if I lend you Ting?”
“I will.”
“H’mph!” said Soames again. Seances, Italian sunlight, the ‘altogether!’ It was time he got back to Elderson, and what was to be done now, and left this fiddling while Rome burned.
“Good-bye, Mr. Greene,” he said; “I’ve got no time.”
“Quite, sir,” said Aubrey Greene.
“Quite!” mimicked Soames to himself, going out.
Aubrey Greene took his departure a few minutes later, crossing a lady in the hall who was delivering her name to the manservant.
Alone with her body, Fleur again passed her hands all over it. The ‘altogether’—was a reminder of the dangers of dramatic conduct.
Chapter V.
FLEUR’S SOUL
“Mrs. Val Dartie, ma’am.”
A name which could not be distorted even by Coaker affected her like a finger applied suddenly to the head of the sciatic nerve. Holly! Not seen since the day when she did not marry Jon. Holly! A flood of remembrance—Wansdon, the Downs, the gravel pit, the apple orchard, the river, the copse at Robin Hill! No! It was not a pleasant sensation—to see Holly, and she said: “How awfully nice of you to come!”
“I met your husband this afternoon at Green Street; he asked me. What a lovely room!”
“Ting! Come and be introduced! This is Ting-a-ling; isn’t he perfect? He’s a little upset because of the new monkey. How’s Val, and dear Wansdon? It was too wonderfully peaceful.”
“It’s a nice backwater. I don’t get tired of it.”
“And—” said Fleur, with a little laugh, “Jon?”
“He’s growing peaches in North Carolina. British Columbia didn’t do.”
“Oh! Is he married?”
“No.”
“I suppose he’ll marry an American.”
“He isn’t twenty-two, you know.”
“Good Lord!” said Fleur: “Am I only twenty-one? I feel forty-eight.”
“That’s living in the middle of things and seeing so many people—”
“And getting to know none.”
“But don’t you?”
“No, it isn’t done. I mean we all call each other by our Christian names; but apres—”
“I like your husband very much.”
“Oh! yes, Michael’s a dear. How’s June?”
“I saw her yesterday—she’s got a new painter, of course—Claud Brains. I believe he’s what they call a Vertiginist.”
Fleur bit her lip.
“Yes, they’re quite common. I suppose June thinks he’s the only one.”
“Well, she think’s he’s a genius.”
“She’s wonderful.”
“Yes,” said Holly, “the most loyal creature in the world while it lasts. It’s like poultry farming—once they’re hatched. You never saw Boris Strumolowski?”
“No.”
“Well, don’t.”
“I know his bust of Michael’s uncle. It’s rather sane.”
“Yes. June thought it a pot-boiler, and he never forgave her. Of course it was. As soon as her swan makes money, she looks round for another. She’s a darling.”
“Yes,” murmured Fleur; “I liked June.”
Another flood of remembrance—from a tea-shop, from the river, from June’s little dining-room, from where in Green Street she had changed her wedding dress under the upward gaze of June’s blue eyes. She seized the monkey and held it up.
“Isn’t it a picture of ‘life’?” Would she have said that if Aubrey Greene hadn’t? Still it seemed very true at the moment.
“Poor monkey!” said Holly. “I’m always frightfully sorry for monkeys. But it’s marvellous, I think.”
“Yes. I’m going to hang it here. If I can get one more, I shall have done in this room; only people have so got on to Chinese things. This was luck—somebody died—George Forsyte, you know, the racing one.”
“Oh!” said Holly softly. She saw again her old kinsman’s japing eyes in the church when Fleur was being married, heard his throaty whisper, “Will she stay the course?” And was she staying it, this pretty filly? “Wish she could get a rest. If only there were a desert handy!” Well, one couldn’t ask a question so personal, and Holly took refuge in a general remark.
“What do all you smart young people feel about life, nowadays, Fleur! when one’s not of it and has lived twenty years in South Africa, one still feels out of it.”
“Life! Oh! well, we know it’s supposed to be a riddle, but we’ve given it up. We just want to have a good time because we don’t believe anything can last. But I don’t think we know how to have it. We just fly on, and hope for it. Of course, there’s art, but most of us aren’t artists; besides, expressionism—Michael says it’s got no inside. We gas about it, but I suppose it hasn’t. I see a frightful lot of writers and painters, you know; they’re supposed to be amusing.”