“I’m expecting Prosper,” said Winifred, “but he’s so busy with his yacht.”
Soames stole a glance. No movement in his wife’s face! Whether that fellow were coming or not, she evidently knew all about it. It did not escape him that Fleur, too, looked at her mother. If Annette didn’t respect his feelings, she might think of Fleur! The conversation, very desultory, was syncopated by Jack Cardigan talking about “mid-off.” He cited all the “great mid-offs” from the beginning of time, as if they had been a definite racial entity in the composition of the British people. Soames had finished his lobster, and was beginning on pigeon-pie, when he heard the words: “I’m a small bit late, Mrs. Dartie,” and saw that there was no longer any empty place. THAT FELLOW was sitting between Annette and Imogen. Soames ate steadily on, with an occasional word to Maud and Winifred. Conversation buzzed around him. He heard the voice of Profond say:
“I think you’re mistaken, Mrs. Forsyde I’ll — I’ll bet Miss Forsyde agrees with me.”
“In what?” came Fleur’s clear tones across the table.
“I was sayin’, young gurls are much the same as they always were — there’s very small difference.”
“Do you know so much about them?”
That sharp reply caught the ears of all, and Soames moved uneasily on his thin green chair.
“Well, I don’t know, I think they want their own small way, and I think they always did.”
“Indeed!”
“Oh, but — Prosper,” Winifred interjected comfortably, “the girls in the streets — the girls who’ve been in munitions, the little flappers in the shops; their manners now really quite hit you in the eye.”
At the word “hit” Jack Cardigan stopped his disquisition; and in the silence Monsieur Profond said:
“It was inside before, now it’s outside; that’s all.”
“But their morals!” cried Imogen.
“Just as moral as they ever were, Mrs. Cardigan, but they’ve got more opportunity.”
The saying, so cryptically cynical, received a little laugh from Imogen, a slight opening of Jack Cardigan’s mouth, and another creak from Soames’ chair.
Winifred said: “That’s too bad, Prosper.”
“What do you say, Mrs. Forsyde; don’t you think human nature’s always the same?”
Soames subdued a sudden longing to get up and kick the fellow. He heard his wife reply:
“Human nature is not the same in England as anywhere else.” That was her confounded mockery!
“Well, I don’t know much about this small country”—‘No, thank God!’ thought Soames —“but I should say the pot was boilin’ under the lid everywhere. We all want pleasure, and we always did.”
Damn the fellow! His cynicism was outrageous!
When lunch was over they broke up into couples for the digestive promenade. Too proud to notice, Soames knew perfectly that Annette and that fellow had gone prowling round together. Fleur was with Val; she had chosen him, no doubt, because he knew that boy. He himself had Winifred for partner. They walked in the bright, circling stream, a little flushed and sated, till Winifred sighed:
“I wish we were back forty years, old boy!”
Before the eyes of her spirit an interminable procession of her own “Lord’s” frocks was passing, paid for with the money of her father, to save a recurrent crisis. “It’s been very amusing, after all. Sometimes I even wish Monty was back. What do you think of people nowadays, Soames?”
“Precious little style. The thing began to go to pieces with bicycles and motor-cars; the war has finished it.”
“I wonder what’s coming?” said Winifred in a voice dreamy from pigeon-pie. “I’m not at all sure we shan’t go back to crinolines and pegtops. Look at that dress!” Soames shook his head.
“There’s money, but no faith in things. We don’t lay by for the future. These youngsters — it’s all a short life and a merry one with them.”
“There’s a hat!” said Winifred. “I don’t know — when you come to think of the people killed and all that in the war, it’s rather wonderful, I think. There’s no other country — Prosper says the rest are all bankrupt, except America; and of course her men always took their style in dress from us.”
“Is that chap,” said Soames, “really going to the South Seas?”
“Oh, one never knows where Prosper’s going!”
“HE’S a sign of the times,” muttered Soames, “if you like.”
Winifred’s hand gripped his arm.
“Don’t turn your head,” she said in a low voice, “but look to your right in the front row of the Stand.”
Soames looked as best he could under that limitation. A man in a grey top hat, grey-bearded, with thin brown, folded cheeks, and a certain elegance of posture, sat there with a woman in a lawn-coloured frock, whose dark eyes were fixed on himself. Soames looked quickly at his feet. How funnily feet moved, one after the other like that! Winifred’s voice said in his ear:
“Jolyon looks very ill, but he always had style. SHE doesn’t change — except her hair.”
“Why did you tell Fleur about that business?”
“I didn’t; she picked it up. I always knew she would.”
“Well, it’s a mess. She’s set her heart upon their boy.”
“The little wretch,” murmured Winifred. “She tried to take me in about that. What shall you do, Soames?”
“Be guided by events.”
They moved on, silent, in the almost solid crowd.
“Really,” said Winifred suddenly; “it almost seems like Fate. Only that’s so old-fashioned. Look! There are George and Eustace!”
George Forsyte’s lofty bulk had halted before them.
“Hallo, Soames!” he said. “Just met Profond and your wife. You’ll catch ’em if you put on steam. Did you ever go to see old Timothy?”
Soames nodded, and the streams forced them apart.
“I always liked old George,” said Winifred. “He’s so droll.”
“I never did,” said Soames. “Where’s your seat? I shall go to mine. Fleur may be back there.”
Having seen Winifred to her seat, he regained his own, conscious of small, white, distant figures running, the click of the bat, the cheers and counter-cheers. No Fleur, and no Annette! You could expect nothing of women nowadays! They had the vote. They were “emancipated,” and much good it was doing them. So Winifred would go back, would she, and put up with Dartie all over again? To have the past once more — to be sitting here as he had sat in ’83 and ’84, before he was certain that his marriage with Irene had gone all wrong, before her antagonism had become so glaring that with the best will in the world he could not overlook it. The sight of her with that fellow had brought all memory back. Even now he could not understand why she had been so impracticable. She could love other men; she had it in her! To himself, the one person she ought to have loved, she had chosen to refuse her heart. It seemed to him, fantastically, as he looked back, that all this modern relaxation of marriage — though its forms and laws were the same as when he married her — that all this modern looseness had come out of her revolt; it seemed to him, fantastically, that she had started it, till all decent ownership of anything had gone, or was on the point of going. All came from her! And now — a pretty state of things! Homes! How could you have them without mutual ownership? Not that he had ever had a real home! But had that been his fault? He had done his best. And his reward — those two sitting in that Stand! And this affair of Fleur’s!