His arm went round her, his lips sought her face. “Mind my dress; it’s the only decent one I’ve got.”
And, suddenly, not because she heard a noise, but because her senses were not absorbed like his, she perceived a figure in the open doorway. A woman’s voice said: “Oh! I beg your pardon; I thought–” Gone!
Marjorie Ferrar started up.
“Did you see that young woman?”
“Yes. Damn her!”
“She’s shadowing me.”
“What?”
“I don’t know her, and yet I know her perfectly. She had a good look at me down-stairs, when I was waiting.”
MacGown dashed to the door and flung it open. Nobody was there! He shut it, and came back.
“By heaven! Those people, I’ll–! Well, that ends it! Marjorie, I shall send our engagement to the papers tomorrow.”
Marjorie Ferrar, leaning her elbows on the mantelpiece, stared at her own face in the glass above it. ‘Not a moral about her!’ What did it matter? If only she could decide to marry Francis out of hand, slide away from them all–debts, lawyers, Alec! And then the ‘You be damned’ spirit in her blood revolted. The impudence of it! Shadowing her! No! She was not going to leave Miss Fleur triumphant–the little snob; and that old party with the chin!
MacGown raised her hand to his lips; and, somehow, the caress touched her.
“Oh! well,” she said, “I suppose you’d better.”
“Thank God!”
“Do you really think that to get me is a cause for gratitude?”
“I would go through Hell to get you.”
“And after? Well, as we’re public property, let’s go down and dance.”
For an hour she danced. She would not let him take her home, and in her cab she cried. She wrote to Francis when she got in. She went out again to post it. The bitter stars, the bitter wind, the bitter night! At the little slurred thump of her letter dropping, she laughed. To have played at children! It was too funny! So that was done with! ‘On with the dance!’
Extraordinary, the effect of a little paragraph in the papers! Credit, like new-struck oil, spurted sky-high. Her post contained, not bills for dresses, but solicitations to feed, frizz, fur, flower, feather, furbelow, and photograph her. London offered itself. To escape that cynical avalanche she borrowed a hundred pounds and flew to Paris. There, every night, she went to the theatre. She had her hair done in a new style, she ordered dresses, ate at places known to the few–living up to Michael’s nickname for her; and her heart was heavy.
She returned after a week, and burned the avalanche–fortunately all letters of congratulation contained the phrase ‘of course you won’t think of answering this.’ She didn’t. The weather was mild; she rode in the Row; she prepared to hunt. On the eve of departure, she received an anonymous communication.
“Francis Wilmot is very ill with pneumonia at the Cosmopolis Hotel. He is not expected to live.”
Her heart flurried round within her breast and flumped; her knees felt weak; her hand holding the note shook; only her head stayed steady. The handwriting was ‘that little snob’s.’ Had Francis caused this message to be sent? Was it his appeal? Poor boy! And must she go and see him if he were going to die? She so hated death. Did this mean that it was up to her to save him? What did it mean? But indecision was not her strong point. In ten minutes she was in a cab, in twenty at the Hotel. Handing her card, she said:
“You have a Mr. Wilmot here–a relative of mine. I’ve just heard of his serious illness. Can I go up and see the nurse?”
The Management looked at the card, inquisitively at her face, touched a bell, and said:
“Certainly, madam… Here, you–take this lady up to Room–er–209.”
Led by what poor Francis called a ‘bell-boy’ into the lift, she walked behind his buttons along a pale-gray river of corridor carpet, between pale-grey walls, past cream-coloured after cream-coloured door in the bright electric light, with her head a little down.
The ‘bell-boy’ knocked ruthlessly on a door.
It was opened, and in the lobby of the suite stood Fleur…
Chapter XII.
DEEPENING
However untypically American according to Soames, Francis Wilmot seemed to have the national passion for short cuts.
In two days from Fleur’s first visit he had reached the crisis, hurrying towards it like a man to his bride. Yet, compared with the instinct to live, the human will is limited, so that he failed to die. Fleur, summoned by telephone, went home cheered by the doctor’s words: “He’ll do now, if we can coax a little strength into him.” That, however, was the trouble. For three afternoons she watched his exhausted indifference seeming to increase. And she was haunted by cruel anxiety. On the fourth day she had been sitting for more than an hour when his eyes opened.
“Yes, Francis?”
“I’m going to quit all right, after all.”
“Don’t talk like that–it’s not American. Of course you’re not going to quit.”
He smiled, and shut his eyes. She made up her mind then.
Next day he was about the same, more dead than alive. But her mind was at rest; her messenger had brought back word that Miss Ferrar would be in at four o’clock. She would have had the note by now; but would she come? How little one knew of other people, even when they were enemies!
He was drowsing, white and strengthless, when she heard the ‘bell-boy’s’ knock. Passing into the lobby, she closed the door softly behind her, and opened the outer door. So she HAD come!
If this meeting of two declared enemies had in it something dramatic, neither perceived it at the moment. It was just intensely unpleasant to them both. They stood for a moment looking at each other’s chins. Then Fleur said:
“He’s extremely weak. Will you sit down while I tell him you’re here?”
Having seen her settled where Francis Wilmot put his clothes out to be valeted in days when he had worn them, Fleur passed back into the bedroom, and again closed the door.
“Francis,” she said, “some one is waiting to see you.”
Francis Wilmot did not stir, but his eyes opened and cleared strangely. To Fleur they seemed suddenly the eyes she had known; as if all these days they had been ‘out,’ and some one had again put a match to them.
“You understand what I mean?”
The words came clear and feeble: “Yes; but if I wasn’t good enough for her before, I surely am not now. Tell her I’m through with that fool business.”
A lump rose in Fleur’s throat.
“Thank her for coming!” said Francis Wilmot, and closed his eyes again.
Fleur went back into the lobby. Marjorie Ferrar was standing against the wall with an unlighted cigarette between her lips.
“He thanks you for coming; but he doesn’t want to see you. I’m sorry I brought you down.”
Marjorie Ferrar took out the cigarette. Fleur could see her lips quivering. “Will he get well?”
“I don’t know. I think so–now. He says he’s ‘through with that fool business.’”
Marjorie Ferrar’s lips tightened. She opened the outer door, turned suddenly, and said:
“Will you make it up?”
“No,” said Fleur.
There was a moment of complete stillness; then Marjorie Ferrar gave a little laugh, and slipped out.
Fleur went back. He was asleep. Next day he was stronger. Three days later Fleur ceased her visits; he was on the road to recovery. She had become conscious, moreover, that she had a little lamb which, wherever Mary went, was sure to go. She was being shadowed! How amusing! And what a bore that she couldn’t tell Michael; because she had not yet begun again to tell him anything.
On the day that she ceased her visits he came in while she was dressing for dinner, with ‘a weekly’ in his hand.
“Listen to this,” he said:
‘When to God’s fondouk the donkeys are taken–
Donkeys of Africa, Sicily, Spain–
If peradventure the Deity waken,
He shall not easily slumber again.
Where in the sweet of God’s straw they have laid them,
Broken and dead of their burdens and sores,
He, for a change, shall remember He made them–
One of the best of His numerous chores–
Order from some one a sigh of repentance–
Donkeys of Araby, Syria, Greece–
Over the fondouk distemper the sentence:
“God’s own forsaken–the stable of Peace.’”
“Who’s that by?”
“It sounds like Wilfrid.”
“It is by Wilfrid,” said Michael, and did not look at her. “I met him at the ‘Hotch–Potch.’”
“And how is he?”
“Very fit.”
“Have you asked him here?”
“No. He’s going East again soon.”
Was he fishing? Did he know that she had seen him? And she said:
“I’m going down to father’s, Michael. He’s written twice.”
Michael put her hand to his lips.
“All right, darling.”
Fleur reddened; her strangled confidences seemed knotted in her throat. She went next day with Kit and Dandie. The ‘little lamb’ would hardly follow to ‘The Shelter.’
Annette had gone with her mother to Cannes for a month; and Soames was alone with the English winter. He was paying little attention to it, for the ‘case’ was in the list, and might be reached in a few weeks’ time. Deprived of French influence, he was again wavering towards compromise. The announcement of Marjorie Ferrar’s engagement to McGown had materially changed the complexion of affairs. In the eyes of a British Jury, the character of a fast young lady, and the character of the same young lady publicly engaged to a Member of Parliament, with wealth and a handle to his name, would not be at all the same thing. They were now virtually dealing with Lady MacGown, and nothing, Soames knew, was so fierce as a man about to be married. To libel his betrothed was like approaching a mad dog.
He looked very grave when Fleur told him of her ‘little lamb.’ It was precisely the retaliation he had feared; nor could he tell her that he had ‘told her so,’ because he hadn’t. He had certainly urged her to come down to him, but delicacy had forbidden him to give her the reason. So far as he could tell through catechism, there had been nothing ‘suspect’ in her movements since Lippinghall, except those visits to the Cosmopolis Hotel. But they were bad enough. Who was going to believe that she went to this sick man out of pure kindness? Such a motive was not current in a Court of Law. He was staggered when she told him that Michael didn’t know of them. Why not?
“I didn’t feel like telling him.”
“Feel? Don’t you see what a position you’ve put yourself in? Here you are, running to a young man’s bedside, without your husband’s knowledge.”
“Yes, darling; but he was terribly ill.”
“I dare say,” said Soames; “so are lots of people.”
“Besides, he was over head and ears in love with HER.”
“D’you think he’s going to admit that, even if we could call him?”
Fleur was silent, thinking of Francis Wilmot’s face.
“Oh! I don’t know,” she said at last. “How horrid it all is!”
“Of course it’s horrid,” said Soames. “Have you had a quarrel with Michael?”
“No; not a quarrel. Only he doesn’t tell ME things.”
“What things?”
“How should I know, dear?”
Soames grunted. “Would he have minded your going?”
“Of course not. He’d have minded if I hadn’t. He likes that boy.”
“Well, then,” said Soames, “either you or he, or both, will have to tell a lie, and say that he did know. I shall go up and talk to him. Thank goodness we can prove the illness. If I catch anybody coming down here after you–!”
He went up the following afternoon. Parliament being in recess, he sought the ‘Hotch–Potch’ Club. He did not like a place always connected in his mind with his dead cousin, that fellow young Jolyon, and said to Michael at once:
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And, suddenly, not because she heard a noise, but because her senses were not absorbed like his, she perceived a figure in the open doorway. A woman’s voice said: “Oh! I beg your pardon; I thought–” Gone!
Marjorie Ferrar started up.
“Did you see that young woman?”
“Yes. Damn her!”
“She’s shadowing me.”
“What?”
“I don’t know her, and yet I know her perfectly. She had a good look at me down-stairs, when I was waiting.”
MacGown dashed to the door and flung it open. Nobody was there! He shut it, and came back.
“By heaven! Those people, I’ll–! Well, that ends it! Marjorie, I shall send our engagement to the papers tomorrow.”
Marjorie Ferrar, leaning her elbows on the mantelpiece, stared at her own face in the glass above it. ‘Not a moral about her!’ What did it matter? If only she could decide to marry Francis out of hand, slide away from them all–debts, lawyers, Alec! And then the ‘You be damned’ spirit in her blood revolted. The impudence of it! Shadowing her! No! She was not going to leave Miss Fleur triumphant–the little snob; and that old party with the chin!
MacGown raised her hand to his lips; and, somehow, the caress touched her.
“Oh! well,” she said, “I suppose you’d better.”
“Thank God!”
“Do you really think that to get me is a cause for gratitude?”
“I would go through Hell to get you.”
“And after? Well, as we’re public property, let’s go down and dance.”
For an hour she danced. She would not let him take her home, and in her cab she cried. She wrote to Francis when she got in. She went out again to post it. The bitter stars, the bitter wind, the bitter night! At the little slurred thump of her letter dropping, she laughed. To have played at children! It was too funny! So that was done with! ‘On with the dance!’
Extraordinary, the effect of a little paragraph in the papers! Credit, like new-struck oil, spurted sky-high. Her post contained, not bills for dresses, but solicitations to feed, frizz, fur, flower, feather, furbelow, and photograph her. London offered itself. To escape that cynical avalanche she borrowed a hundred pounds and flew to Paris. There, every night, she went to the theatre. She had her hair done in a new style, she ordered dresses, ate at places known to the few–living up to Michael’s nickname for her; and her heart was heavy.
She returned after a week, and burned the avalanche–fortunately all letters of congratulation contained the phrase ‘of course you won’t think of answering this.’ She didn’t. The weather was mild; she rode in the Row; she prepared to hunt. On the eve of departure, she received an anonymous communication.
“Francis Wilmot is very ill with pneumonia at the Cosmopolis Hotel. He is not expected to live.”
Her heart flurried round within her breast and flumped; her knees felt weak; her hand holding the note shook; only her head stayed steady. The handwriting was ‘that little snob’s.’ Had Francis caused this message to be sent? Was it his appeal? Poor boy! And must she go and see him if he were going to die? She so hated death. Did this mean that it was up to her to save him? What did it mean? But indecision was not her strong point. In ten minutes she was in a cab, in twenty at the Hotel. Handing her card, she said:
“You have a Mr. Wilmot here–a relative of mine. I’ve just heard of his serious illness. Can I go up and see the nurse?”
The Management looked at the card, inquisitively at her face, touched a bell, and said:
“Certainly, madam… Here, you–take this lady up to Room–er–209.”
Led by what poor Francis called a ‘bell-boy’ into the lift, she walked behind his buttons along a pale-gray river of corridor carpet, between pale-grey walls, past cream-coloured after cream-coloured door in the bright electric light, with her head a little down.
The ‘bell-boy’ knocked ruthlessly on a door.
It was opened, and in the lobby of the suite stood Fleur…
Chapter XII.
DEEPENING
However untypically American according to Soames, Francis Wilmot seemed to have the national passion for short cuts.
In two days from Fleur’s first visit he had reached the crisis, hurrying towards it like a man to his bride. Yet, compared with the instinct to live, the human will is limited, so that he failed to die. Fleur, summoned by telephone, went home cheered by the doctor’s words: “He’ll do now, if we can coax a little strength into him.” That, however, was the trouble. For three afternoons she watched his exhausted indifference seeming to increase. And she was haunted by cruel anxiety. On the fourth day she had been sitting for more than an hour when his eyes opened.
“Yes, Francis?”
“I’m going to quit all right, after all.”
“Don’t talk like that–it’s not American. Of course you’re not going to quit.”
He smiled, and shut his eyes. She made up her mind then.
Next day he was about the same, more dead than alive. But her mind was at rest; her messenger had brought back word that Miss Ferrar would be in at four o’clock. She would have had the note by now; but would she come? How little one knew of other people, even when they were enemies!
He was drowsing, white and strengthless, when she heard the ‘bell-boy’s’ knock. Passing into the lobby, she closed the door softly behind her, and opened the outer door. So she HAD come!
If this meeting of two declared enemies had in it something dramatic, neither perceived it at the moment. It was just intensely unpleasant to them both. They stood for a moment looking at each other’s chins. Then Fleur said:
“He’s extremely weak. Will you sit down while I tell him you’re here?”
Having seen her settled where Francis Wilmot put his clothes out to be valeted in days when he had worn them, Fleur passed back into the bedroom, and again closed the door.
“Francis,” she said, “some one is waiting to see you.”
Francis Wilmot did not stir, but his eyes opened and cleared strangely. To Fleur they seemed suddenly the eyes she had known; as if all these days they had been ‘out,’ and some one had again put a match to them.
“You understand what I mean?”
The words came clear and feeble: “Yes; but if I wasn’t good enough for her before, I surely am not now. Tell her I’m through with that fool business.”
A lump rose in Fleur’s throat.
“Thank her for coming!” said Francis Wilmot, and closed his eyes again.
Fleur went back into the lobby. Marjorie Ferrar was standing against the wall with an unlighted cigarette between her lips.
“He thanks you for coming; but he doesn’t want to see you. I’m sorry I brought you down.”
Marjorie Ferrar took out the cigarette. Fleur could see her lips quivering. “Will he get well?”
“I don’t know. I think so–now. He says he’s ‘through with that fool business.’”
Marjorie Ferrar’s lips tightened. She opened the outer door, turned suddenly, and said:
“Will you make it up?”
“No,” said Fleur.
There was a moment of complete stillness; then Marjorie Ferrar gave a little laugh, and slipped out.
Fleur went back. He was asleep. Next day he was stronger. Three days later Fleur ceased her visits; he was on the road to recovery. She had become conscious, moreover, that she had a little lamb which, wherever Mary went, was sure to go. She was being shadowed! How amusing! And what a bore that she couldn’t tell Michael; because she had not yet begun again to tell him anything.
On the day that she ceased her visits he came in while she was dressing for dinner, with ‘a weekly’ in his hand.
“Listen to this,” he said:
‘When to God’s fondouk the donkeys are taken–
Donkeys of Africa, Sicily, Spain–
If peradventure the Deity waken,
He shall not easily slumber again.
Where in the sweet of God’s straw they have laid them,
Broken and dead of their burdens and sores,
He, for a change, shall remember He made them–
One of the best of His numerous chores–
Order from some one a sigh of repentance–
Donkeys of Araby, Syria, Greece–
Over the fondouk distemper the sentence:
“God’s own forsaken–the stable of Peace.’”
“Who’s that by?”
“It sounds like Wilfrid.”
“It is by Wilfrid,” said Michael, and did not look at her. “I met him at the ‘Hotch–Potch.’”
“And how is he?”
“Very fit.”
“Have you asked him here?”
“No. He’s going East again soon.”
Was he fishing? Did he know that she had seen him? And she said:
“I’m going down to father’s, Michael. He’s written twice.”
Michael put her hand to his lips.
“All right, darling.”
Fleur reddened; her strangled confidences seemed knotted in her throat. She went next day with Kit and Dandie. The ‘little lamb’ would hardly follow to ‘The Shelter.’
Annette had gone with her mother to Cannes for a month; and Soames was alone with the English winter. He was paying little attention to it, for the ‘case’ was in the list, and might be reached in a few weeks’ time. Deprived of French influence, he was again wavering towards compromise. The announcement of Marjorie Ferrar’s engagement to McGown had materially changed the complexion of affairs. In the eyes of a British Jury, the character of a fast young lady, and the character of the same young lady publicly engaged to a Member of Parliament, with wealth and a handle to his name, would not be at all the same thing. They were now virtually dealing with Lady MacGown, and nothing, Soames knew, was so fierce as a man about to be married. To libel his betrothed was like approaching a mad dog.
He looked very grave when Fleur told him of her ‘little lamb.’ It was precisely the retaliation he had feared; nor could he tell her that he had ‘told her so,’ because he hadn’t. He had certainly urged her to come down to him, but delicacy had forbidden him to give her the reason. So far as he could tell through catechism, there had been nothing ‘suspect’ in her movements since Lippinghall, except those visits to the Cosmopolis Hotel. But they were bad enough. Who was going to believe that she went to this sick man out of pure kindness? Such a motive was not current in a Court of Law. He was staggered when she told him that Michael didn’t know of them. Why not?
“I didn’t feel like telling him.”
“Feel? Don’t you see what a position you’ve put yourself in? Here you are, running to a young man’s bedside, without your husband’s knowledge.”
“Yes, darling; but he was terribly ill.”
“I dare say,” said Soames; “so are lots of people.”
“Besides, he was over head and ears in love with HER.”
“D’you think he’s going to admit that, even if we could call him?”
Fleur was silent, thinking of Francis Wilmot’s face.
“Oh! I don’t know,” she said at last. “How horrid it all is!”
“Of course it’s horrid,” said Soames. “Have you had a quarrel with Michael?”
“No; not a quarrel. Only he doesn’t tell ME things.”
“What things?”
“How should I know, dear?”
Soames grunted. “Would he have minded your going?”
“Of course not. He’d have minded if I hadn’t. He likes that boy.”
“Well, then,” said Soames, “either you or he, or both, will have to tell a lie, and say that he did know. I shall go up and talk to him. Thank goodness we can prove the illness. If I catch anybody coming down here after you–!”
He went up the following afternoon. Parliament being in recess, he sought the ‘Hotch–Potch’ Club. He did not like a place always connected in his mind with his dead cousin, that fellow young Jolyon, and said to Michael at once:
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