Did Father know that he called her mother “Annette”? Always on the side of her father—as children are ever on one side or the other in houses where relations are a little strained—she stood, uncertain. Her mother was speaking in her low, pleasing, slightly metallic voice—one word she caught: “Demain.” And Profond’s answer: “All right.” Fleur frowned. A little sound came out into the stillness. Then Profond’s voice: “I’m takin’ a small stroll.”
Fleur darted through the window into the morning room. There he came—from the drawing-room, crossing the verandah, down the lawn; and the click of billiard-balls which, in listening for other sounds, she had ceased to hear, began again. She shook herself, passed into the hall, and opened the drawing-room door. Her mother was sitting on the sofa between the windows, her knees crossed, her head resting on a cushion, her lips half parted, her eyes half closed. She looked extraordinarily handsome.
“Ah! Here you are, Fleur! Your father is beginning to fuss.”
“Where is he?”
“In the picture-gallery. Go up!”
“What are you going to do tomorrow, Mother?”
“To-morrow? I go up to London with your aunt. Why?”
“I thought you might be. Will you get me a quite plain parasol?”
“What color?”
“Green. They’re all going back, I suppose.”
“Yes, all; you will console your father. Kiss me, then.”
Fleur crossed the room, stooped, received a kiss on her forehead, and went out past the impress of a form on the sofa-cushions in the other corner. She ran up-stairs.
Fleur was by no means the old-fashioned daughter who demands the regulation of her parents’ lives in accordance with the standard imposed on herself. She claimed to regulate her own life, not those of others; besides, an unerring instinct for what was likely to advantage her own case was already at work. In a disturbed domestic atmosphere the heart she had set on Jon would have a better chance. None the less was she offended, as a flower by a crisping wind. If that man had really been kissing her mother it was—serious, and her father ought to know.
“Demain!” “All right!” And her mother going up to Town! She turned in to her bedroom and hung out of the window to cool her face, which had suddenly grown very hot. Jon must be at the station by now! What did her father know about Jon! Probably everything—pretty nearly!
She changed her dress, so as to look as if she had been in some time, and ran up to the gallery.
Soames was standing stubbornly still before his Alfred Stevens—the picture he loved best. He did not turn at the sound of the door, but she knew he had heard, and she knew he was hurt. She came up softly behind him, put her arms round his neck, and poked her face over his shoulder, till her cheek lay against his. It was an advance which had never yet failed, but it failed her now, and she augured the worst.
“Well,” he said stonily, “so you’ve come!”
“Is that all,” murmured Fleur, “from a bad parent?” and rubbed her cheek against his.
Soames shook his head so far as that was possible.
“Why do you keep me on tenterhooks like this, putting me off and off?”
“Darling, it was very harmless.”
“Harmless! Much you know what’s harmless and what isn’t.”
Fleur dropped her arms.
“Well, then, dear, suppose you tell me; and be quite frank about it.”
And she went over to the window-seat.
Her father had turned from his picture, and was staring at his feet. He looked very grey. ‘He has nice small feet,’ she thought, catching his eye, at once averted from her.
“You’re my only comfort,” said Soames suddenly, “and you go on like this.”
Fleur’s heart began to beat.
“Like what, dear?”
Again Soames gave her a look which, but for the affection in it, might have been called furtive.
“You know what I told you,” he said. “I don’t choose to have anything to do with that branch of our family.”
“Yes, ducky, but I don’t know why I shouldn’t.”
Soames turned on his heel.
“I’m not going into the reasons,” he said; “you ought to trust me, Fleur!”
The way he spoke those words affected Fleur, but she thought of Jon, and was silent, tapping her foot against the wainscot. Unconsciously she had assumed a modern attitude, with one leg twisted in and out of the other, with her chin on one bent wrist, her other arm across her chest, and its hand hugging her elbow; there was not a line of her that was not involuted, and yet—in spite of all—she retained a certain grace.
“You knew my wishes,” Soames went on, “and yet you stayed on there four days. And I suppose that boy came with you today.”
Fleur kept her eyes on him.
“I don’t ask you anything,” said Soames; “I make no inquisition where you’re concerned.”
Fleur suddenly stood up, leaning out at the window with her chin on her hands. The sun had sunk behind trees, the pigeons were perched, quite still, on the edge of the dove-cot; the click of the billiard-balls mounted, and a faint radiance shone out below where Jack Cardigan had turned the light up.
“Will it make you any happier,” she said suddenly, “if I promise you not to see him for say—the next six weeks?” She was not prepared for a sort of tremble in the blankness of his voice.
“Six weeks? Six years—sixty years more like. Don’t delude yourself, Fleur; don’t delude yourself!”
Fleur turned in alarm.
“Father, what is it?”
Soames came close enough to see her face.
“Don’t tell me,” he said, “that you’re foolish enough to have any feeling beyond caprice. That would be too much!” And he laughed.
Fleur, who had never heard him laugh like that, thought: ‘Then it IS deep! Oh! what is it?’ And putting her hand through his arm she said lightly:
“No, of course; caprice. Only, I like my caprices and I don’t like yours, dear.”
“Mine!” said Soames bitterly, and turned away.
The light outside had chilled, and threw a chalky whiteness on the river. The trees had lost all gaiety of colour. She felt a sudden hunger for Jon’s face, for his hands, and the feel of his lips again on hers. And pressing her arms tight across her breast she forced out a little light laugh.
“O la! la! What a small fuss! as Profond would say. Father, I don’t like that man.”
She saw him stop, and take something out of his breast pocket.
“You don’t?” he said. “Why?”
“Nothing,” murmured Fleur; “just caprice!”
“No,” said Soames; “not caprice!” And he tore what was in his hands across. “You’re right. _I_ don’t like him either!”
“Look!” said Fleur softly. “There he goes! I hate his shoes; they don’t make any noise.”
Down in the failing light Prosper Profond moved, his hands in his side pockets, whistling softly in his beard; he stopped, and glanced up at the sky, as if saying: “I don’t think much of that small moon.”
Fleur drew back. “Isn’t he a great cat?” she whispered; and the sharp click of the billiard-balls rose, as if Jack Cardigan had capped the cat, the moon, caprice, and tragedy with: “In off the red!”
Monsieur Profond had resumed his strolling, to a teasing little tune in his beard. What was it? Oh! yes, from “Rigoletto”: “Donna e mobile.” Just what he would think! She squeezed her father’s arm.
“Prowling!” she muttered, as he turned the corner of the house. It was past that disillusioned moment which divides the day and night—still and lingering and warm, with hawthorn scent and lilac scent clinging on the riverside air. A blackbird suddenly burst out. Jon would be in London by now; in the Park perhaps, crossing the Serpentine, thinking of her! A little sound beside her made her turn her eyes; her father was again tearing the paper in his hands. Fleur saw it was a cheque.
“I shan’t sell him my Gauguin,” he said. “I don’t know what your aunt and Imogen see in him.”
“Or Mother.”
“Your mother!” said Soames.
‘Poor Father!’ she thought. ‘He never looks happy—not really happy. I don’t want to make him worse, but of course I shall have to, when Jon comes back. Oh! well, sufficient unto the night!’
“I’m going to dress,” she said.
In her room she had a fancy to put on her “freak” dress. It was of gold tissue with little trousers of the same, tightly drawn in at the ankles, a page’s cape slung from the shoulders, little gold shoes, and a gold-winged Mercury helmet; and all over her were tiny gold bells, especially on the helmet; so that if she shook her head she pealed. When she was dressed she felt quite sick because Jon could not see her; it even seemed a pity that the sprightly young man Michael Mont would not have a view. But the gong had sounded, and she went down.