‘I shan’t wait up for her,’ he thought. ‘Storm in a teacup!’
The thin strumming of the clavichord came up to him out on the landing, waiting to climb to his room. He wondered if these evenings woke the baby. A gruff sound at his feet made him jump. That dog lying outside the baby’s door! He wished the little beggar had been down-stairs just now–he would have known how to put his teeth through that red-haired cat’s nude stockings. He passed on up, looking at Francis Wilmot’s door, which was opposite his own.
That young American chap must have overheard something too; but he shouldn’t allude to the matter with him; not dignified. And, shutting his door on the strumming of the clavichord, Soames closed his eyes again as best he could.
Chapter VII.
SOUNDS IN THE NIGHT
Michael had never heard Fleur cry, and to see her, flung down across the bed, smothering her sobs in the quilt, gave him a feeling akin to panic. She stopped at his touch on her hair, and lay still.
“Buck up, darling!” he said, gently. “If you aren’t one, what does it matter?”
She struggled up, and sat cross-legged, her flushed face smudged with tears, her hair disordered.
“Who cares what one is? It’s what one’s labelled.”
“Well, we’ve labelled her ‘Traitress.’”
“As if that made it better! We all talk behind people’s backs. Who minds that? But how can I go on when everybody is sniggering and thinking me a lion-hunting snob? She’ll cry it all over London in revenge. How can I have any more evenings?”
Was it for her career, or his, that she was sorrowing? Michael went round to the other side of the bed and put his arms about her from behind.
“Never mind what people think, my child. Sooner or later one’s got to face that anyway.”
“It’s you who aren’t facing it. If I’m not thought nice, I can’t BE nice.”
“Only the people who really know one matter.”
“Nobody knows one,” said Fleur, sullenly. “The fonder they are, the less they know, and the less it matters what they think.”
Michael withdrew his arms.
She sat silent for so long that he went back to the other side of the bed to see if he could tell anything from her face resting moodily on her hands. The grace of her body thus cramped was such that his senses ached. And since caresses would only worry her, they ached the more.
“I hate her,” she said, at last; “and if I can hurt her, I will.”
He would have liked to hurt the ‘pet of the Panjoys’ himself, but it did not console him to hear Fleur utter that sentiment; it meant more from her than from himself, who, when it came to the point, was a poor hand at hurting people.
“Well, darling,” he said, “shall we sleep on it?”
“I said I wouldn’t have any more evenings; but I shall.”
“Good!” said Michael; “that’s the spirit.”
She laughed. It was a funny hard little sound in the night. And with it Michael had to remain discontented.
All through the house it was a wakeful night. Soames had the three o’clock tremors, which cigars and the fresh air wherein he was obliged to play his golf had subdued for some time past. He was disturbed, too, by that confounded great clock from hour to hour, and by a stealthy noise between three and four, as of some one at large in the house.
This was, in fact, Francis Wilmot. Ever since his impulsive denial that Soames was a liar, the young man had been in a peculiar state of mind. As Soames surmised, he too had overheard Marjorie Ferrar slandering her hostess; but in the very moment of his refutation, like Saul setting forth to attack the Christians, he had been smitten by blindness. Those blue eyes, pouring into his the light of defiance, had finished with a gleam which seemed to say: ‘Young man, you please me!’ And it haunted him. That lissome nymph–with her white skin and red-gold hair, her blue eyes full of insolence, her red lips full of joy, her white neck fragrant as a pine-wood in sunshine–the vision was abiding. He had been watching her all through the evening; but it was uncanny the way she had left her image on his senses in that one long moment, so that now he got no sleep. Though he had not been introduced, he knew her name to be Marjorie Ferrar, and he thought it ‘fine.’ Countryman that he was and with little knowledge of women–she was unlike any woman he had known. And he had given her the lie direct! This made him so restless that he drank the contents of his water-bottle, put on his clothes, and stole down-stairs. Passing the Dandie, who stirred as though muttering: ‘Unusual! But I know those legs!’ he reached the hall, where a milky glimmer came in through the fanlight. Lighting a cigarette, he sat down on the marble coat-sarcophagus. It cooled his anatomy, so that he got off it, turned up the light, saw a telephone directory resting beside him, and mechanically sought the letter ‘F.’ There she was! “Ferrar, Marjorie, 3, River Studios, Wren Street.” Switching off the light, he slipped back the door-chain, and stole out. He knew his way to the river, and went towards it.
It was the hour when sound, exhausted, has trailed away, and one can hear a moth pass. London, in clear air, with no smoke going up, slept beneath the moon. Bridges, towers, water, all silvered, had a look as if withdrawn from man. Even the houses and the trees enjoyed their moony hour apart, and seemed to breathe out with Francis Wilmot a stanza from “The Ancient Mariner”:
‘O Sleep, it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole!
To Mary Queen the praise be given,
She sent the gentle sleep from heaven
That slid into my soul!’
He turned at random to the right along the river. Never in his life had he walked through a great city at the dead hour. Not a passion alive, nor a thought of gain; haste asleep, and terrors dreaming; here and there would be one turning on his bed; perchance a soul passing. Down on the water lighters and barges lay shadowy and abandoned, with red lights burning; the lamps along the Embankment shone without purpose, as if they had been freed. Man was away. In the whole town only himself up and doing–what? Natively shrewd and resourceful in all active situations, the young Southerner had little power of diagnosis, and certainly did not consider himself ridiculous wandering about like this at night, not even when he suddenly felt that if he could ‘locate’ her windows, he could go home and sleep. He passed the Tate Gallery and saw a human being with moonlit buttons.
“Pardon me, officer,” he said, “but where is Wren Street?”
“Straight on and fifth to the right.”
Francis Wilmot resumed his march. The ‘moving’ moon was heeling down, the stars were gaining light, the trees had begun to shiver. He found the fifth turning, walked down ‘the block,’ and was no wiser; it was too dark to read names or numbers. He passed another buttoned human effigy and said:
“Pardon me, officer, but where are River Studios?”
“Comin’ away from them; last house on the right.”
Francis Wilmot retraced his steps. There it was, then–by itself, back from the street. He stood before it and gazed at dark windows. She might be behind any one of them! Well! He had ‘located’ her; and, in the rising wind, he turned and walked home. He went up-stairs stealthily as he had come down, past the Dandie, who again raised his head, muttered: ‘Still more unusual, but the same legs!’ entered his room, lay down, and fell asleep like a baby.
Chapter VIII.
ROUND AND ABOUT
General reticence at breakfast concerning the incident of the night before, made little impression on Soames, because the young American was present, before whom, naturally, one would not discuss it; but he noted that Fleur was pale. In his early-morning vigil legal misgivings had assailed him. Could one call even a red-haired baggage ‘traitress’ in the hearing of some half-dozen persons with impunity? He went off to his sister Winifred’s after breakfast, and told her the whole story.
“Quite right, my dear boy,” was her comment. “They tell me that young woman is as fast as they’re made. Her father, you know, owned the horse that didn’t beat the French horse–I never can remember its name–in that race, the Something Stakes, at–dear me! what was the meeting?”
“I know nothing about racing,” said Soames.
But that afternoon at ‘The Connoisseurs Club’ a card was brought to him:
LORD CHARLES FERRAR
High Marshes,
Nr. Newmarket. Burton’s Club.
For a moment his knees felt a little weak; but the word ‘snob’ coming to his assistance, he said drily: “Show him into the strangers’ room.” He was not going to hurry himself for this fellow, and finished his tea before repairing to that forlorn corner.
A tallish man was standing in the middle of the little room, thin and upright, with a moustache brushed arrogantly off his lips, and a single eyeglass which seemed to have grown over the right eye, so unaided was it. There were corrugations in his thin weathered cheeks, and in his thick hair flecked at the sides with grey. Soames had no difficulty in disliking him at sight.
“Mr. Forsyte, I believe?”
Soames inclined his head.
“You made use of an insulting word to my daughter last night in the presence of several people.”
“Yes; it was richly deserved.”
“You were not drunk, then?”
“Not at all,” said Soames.
His dry precision seemed to disconcert the visitor, who twisted his moustache, frowned his eyeglass closer to his eye, and said:
“I have the names of those who overheard it. You will be good enough to write to each of them separately withdrawing your expression unreservedly.”
“I shall do nothing of the kind.”
A moment’s silence ensued.
“You are an attorney, I believe?”
“A solicitor.”
“Then you know the consequences of refusal.”
“If your daughter likes to go into Court, I shall be happy to meet her there.”
“You refuse to withdraw?”
“Absolutely.”
“Good evening, then!”
“Good evening!”
For two pins he would have walked round the fellow, the bristles rising on his back, but, instead, he stood a little to one side to let him out. Insolent brute! He could so easily hear again the voice of old Uncle Jolyon, characterising some person of the eighties as ‘a pettifogging little attorney.’ And he felt that, somehow or other, he must relieve his mind. ‘Old Mont’ would know about this fellow–he would go across and ask him.
At ‘The Aeroplane’ he found not only Sir Lawrence Mont, looking almost grave, but Michael, who had evidently been detailing to his father last evening’s incident. This was a relief to Soames, who felt the insults to his daughter too bitterly to talk of them. Describing the visit he had just received, he ended with the words:
“This fellow–Ferrar–what’s his standing?”
“Charlie Ferrar? He owes money everywhere, has some useful horses, and is a very good shot.”
“He didn’t strike me as a gentleman,” said Soames.
Sir Lawrence cocked his eyebrow, as if debating whether he ought to answer this remark about one who had ancestors, from one who had none.
“And his daughter,” said Soames, “isn’t a lady.”
Sir Lawrence wagged his head.
“Single-minded, Forsyte, single-minded; but you’re right; there’s a queer streak in that blood. Old Shropshire’s a dear old man; it skipped his generation, but it’s there–it’s there. His aunt–”
“He called me an attorney,” said Soames with a grim smile, “and she called me a liar. I don’t know which is worse.”
Sir Lawrence got up and looked into St. James’s Street. Soames had the feeling that the narrow head perched up on that straight thin back counted for more than his own, in this affair.
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The thin strumming of the clavichord came up to him out on the landing, waiting to climb to his room. He wondered if these evenings woke the baby. A gruff sound at his feet made him jump. That dog lying outside the baby’s door! He wished the little beggar had been down-stairs just now–he would have known how to put his teeth through that red-haired cat’s nude stockings. He passed on up, looking at Francis Wilmot’s door, which was opposite his own.
That young American chap must have overheard something too; but he shouldn’t allude to the matter with him; not dignified. And, shutting his door on the strumming of the clavichord, Soames closed his eyes again as best he could.
Chapter VII.
SOUNDS IN THE NIGHT
Michael had never heard Fleur cry, and to see her, flung down across the bed, smothering her sobs in the quilt, gave him a feeling akin to panic. She stopped at his touch on her hair, and lay still.
“Buck up, darling!” he said, gently. “If you aren’t one, what does it matter?”
She struggled up, and sat cross-legged, her flushed face smudged with tears, her hair disordered.
“Who cares what one is? It’s what one’s labelled.”
“Well, we’ve labelled her ‘Traitress.’”
“As if that made it better! We all talk behind people’s backs. Who minds that? But how can I go on when everybody is sniggering and thinking me a lion-hunting snob? She’ll cry it all over London in revenge. How can I have any more evenings?”
Was it for her career, or his, that she was sorrowing? Michael went round to the other side of the bed and put his arms about her from behind.
“Never mind what people think, my child. Sooner or later one’s got to face that anyway.”
“It’s you who aren’t facing it. If I’m not thought nice, I can’t BE nice.”
“Only the people who really know one matter.”
“Nobody knows one,” said Fleur, sullenly. “The fonder they are, the less they know, and the less it matters what they think.”
Michael withdrew his arms.
She sat silent for so long that he went back to the other side of the bed to see if he could tell anything from her face resting moodily on her hands. The grace of her body thus cramped was such that his senses ached. And since caresses would only worry her, they ached the more.
“I hate her,” she said, at last; “and if I can hurt her, I will.”
He would have liked to hurt the ‘pet of the Panjoys’ himself, but it did not console him to hear Fleur utter that sentiment; it meant more from her than from himself, who, when it came to the point, was a poor hand at hurting people.
“Well, darling,” he said, “shall we sleep on it?”
“I said I wouldn’t have any more evenings; but I shall.”
“Good!” said Michael; “that’s the spirit.”
She laughed. It was a funny hard little sound in the night. And with it Michael had to remain discontented.
All through the house it was a wakeful night. Soames had the three o’clock tremors, which cigars and the fresh air wherein he was obliged to play his golf had subdued for some time past. He was disturbed, too, by that confounded great clock from hour to hour, and by a stealthy noise between three and four, as of some one at large in the house.
This was, in fact, Francis Wilmot. Ever since his impulsive denial that Soames was a liar, the young man had been in a peculiar state of mind. As Soames surmised, he too had overheard Marjorie Ferrar slandering her hostess; but in the very moment of his refutation, like Saul setting forth to attack the Christians, he had been smitten by blindness. Those blue eyes, pouring into his the light of defiance, had finished with a gleam which seemed to say: ‘Young man, you please me!’ And it haunted him. That lissome nymph–with her white skin and red-gold hair, her blue eyes full of insolence, her red lips full of joy, her white neck fragrant as a pine-wood in sunshine–the vision was abiding. He had been watching her all through the evening; but it was uncanny the way she had left her image on his senses in that one long moment, so that now he got no sleep. Though he had not been introduced, he knew her name to be Marjorie Ferrar, and he thought it ‘fine.’ Countryman that he was and with little knowledge of women–she was unlike any woman he had known. And he had given her the lie direct! This made him so restless that he drank the contents of his water-bottle, put on his clothes, and stole down-stairs. Passing the Dandie, who stirred as though muttering: ‘Unusual! But I know those legs!’ he reached the hall, where a milky glimmer came in through the fanlight. Lighting a cigarette, he sat down on the marble coat-sarcophagus. It cooled his anatomy, so that he got off it, turned up the light, saw a telephone directory resting beside him, and mechanically sought the letter ‘F.’ There she was! “Ferrar, Marjorie, 3, River Studios, Wren Street.” Switching off the light, he slipped back the door-chain, and stole out. He knew his way to the river, and went towards it.
It was the hour when sound, exhausted, has trailed away, and one can hear a moth pass. London, in clear air, with no smoke going up, slept beneath the moon. Bridges, towers, water, all silvered, had a look as if withdrawn from man. Even the houses and the trees enjoyed their moony hour apart, and seemed to breathe out with Francis Wilmot a stanza from “The Ancient Mariner”:
‘O Sleep, it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole!
To Mary Queen the praise be given,
She sent the gentle sleep from heaven
That slid into my soul!’
He turned at random to the right along the river. Never in his life had he walked through a great city at the dead hour. Not a passion alive, nor a thought of gain; haste asleep, and terrors dreaming; here and there would be one turning on his bed; perchance a soul passing. Down on the water lighters and barges lay shadowy and abandoned, with red lights burning; the lamps along the Embankment shone without purpose, as if they had been freed. Man was away. In the whole town only himself up and doing–what? Natively shrewd and resourceful in all active situations, the young Southerner had little power of diagnosis, and certainly did not consider himself ridiculous wandering about like this at night, not even when he suddenly felt that if he could ‘locate’ her windows, he could go home and sleep. He passed the Tate Gallery and saw a human being with moonlit buttons.
“Pardon me, officer,” he said, “but where is Wren Street?”
“Straight on and fifth to the right.”
Francis Wilmot resumed his march. The ‘moving’ moon was heeling down, the stars were gaining light, the trees had begun to shiver. He found the fifth turning, walked down ‘the block,’ and was no wiser; it was too dark to read names or numbers. He passed another buttoned human effigy and said:
“Pardon me, officer, but where are River Studios?”
“Comin’ away from them; last house on the right.”
Francis Wilmot retraced his steps. There it was, then–by itself, back from the street. He stood before it and gazed at dark windows. She might be behind any one of them! Well! He had ‘located’ her; and, in the rising wind, he turned and walked home. He went up-stairs stealthily as he had come down, past the Dandie, who again raised his head, muttered: ‘Still more unusual, but the same legs!’ entered his room, lay down, and fell asleep like a baby.
Chapter VIII.
ROUND AND ABOUT
General reticence at breakfast concerning the incident of the night before, made little impression on Soames, because the young American was present, before whom, naturally, one would not discuss it; but he noted that Fleur was pale. In his early-morning vigil legal misgivings had assailed him. Could one call even a red-haired baggage ‘traitress’ in the hearing of some half-dozen persons with impunity? He went off to his sister Winifred’s after breakfast, and told her the whole story.
“Quite right, my dear boy,” was her comment. “They tell me that young woman is as fast as they’re made. Her father, you know, owned the horse that didn’t beat the French horse–I never can remember its name–in that race, the Something Stakes, at–dear me! what was the meeting?”
“I know nothing about racing,” said Soames.
But that afternoon at ‘The Connoisseurs Club’ a card was brought to him:
LORD CHARLES FERRAR
High Marshes,
Nr. Newmarket. Burton’s Club.
For a moment his knees felt a little weak; but the word ‘snob’ coming to his assistance, he said drily: “Show him into the strangers’ room.” He was not going to hurry himself for this fellow, and finished his tea before repairing to that forlorn corner.
A tallish man was standing in the middle of the little room, thin and upright, with a moustache brushed arrogantly off his lips, and a single eyeglass which seemed to have grown over the right eye, so unaided was it. There were corrugations in his thin weathered cheeks, and in his thick hair flecked at the sides with grey. Soames had no difficulty in disliking him at sight.
“Mr. Forsyte, I believe?”
Soames inclined his head.
“You made use of an insulting word to my daughter last night in the presence of several people.”
“Yes; it was richly deserved.”
“You were not drunk, then?”
“Not at all,” said Soames.
His dry precision seemed to disconcert the visitor, who twisted his moustache, frowned his eyeglass closer to his eye, and said:
“I have the names of those who overheard it. You will be good enough to write to each of them separately withdrawing your expression unreservedly.”
“I shall do nothing of the kind.”
A moment’s silence ensued.
“You are an attorney, I believe?”
“A solicitor.”
“Then you know the consequences of refusal.”
“If your daughter likes to go into Court, I shall be happy to meet her there.”
“You refuse to withdraw?”
“Absolutely.”
“Good evening, then!”
“Good evening!”
For two pins he would have walked round the fellow, the bristles rising on his back, but, instead, he stood a little to one side to let him out. Insolent brute! He could so easily hear again the voice of old Uncle Jolyon, characterising some person of the eighties as ‘a pettifogging little attorney.’ And he felt that, somehow or other, he must relieve his mind. ‘Old Mont’ would know about this fellow–he would go across and ask him.
At ‘The Aeroplane’ he found not only Sir Lawrence Mont, looking almost grave, but Michael, who had evidently been detailing to his father last evening’s incident. This was a relief to Soames, who felt the insults to his daughter too bitterly to talk of them. Describing the visit he had just received, he ended with the words:
“This fellow–Ferrar–what’s his standing?”
“Charlie Ferrar? He owes money everywhere, has some useful horses, and is a very good shot.”
“He didn’t strike me as a gentleman,” said Soames.
Sir Lawrence cocked his eyebrow, as if debating whether he ought to answer this remark about one who had ancestors, from one who had none.
“And his daughter,” said Soames, “isn’t a lady.”
Sir Lawrence wagged his head.
“Single-minded, Forsyte, single-minded; but you’re right; there’s a queer streak in that blood. Old Shropshire’s a dear old man; it skipped his generation, but it’s there–it’s there. His aunt–”
“He called me an attorney,” said Soames with a grim smile, “and she called me a liar. I don’t know which is worse.”
Sir Lawrence got up and looked into St. James’s Street. Soames had the feeling that the narrow head perched up on that straight thin back counted for more than his own, in this affair.
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