It was wax white, movingly listless, above a pair of hands sewing at a garment. ‘That,’ he thought, ‘is my “obedient humble” and her needle.’ He entered the shop below, a hair-dresser’s, containing a dirty basin below a dusty mirror, suspicious towels, bottles, and two dingy chairs. In his shirt-sleeves, astride one of them, reading The Daily Mail, sat a shadowy fellow with pale hollow cheeks, twisted moustache, lank hair, and the eyes, at once knowing and tragic, of a philosopher.
“Hair cut, sir?”
Michael shook his head.
“Do Mr. and Mrs. Bergfeld live here?”
“Up-stairs, top floor.”
“How do I get up?”
“Through there.”
Passing through a curtained aperture, Michael found a stairway, and at its top, stood, hesitating. His conscience was echoing Fleur’s comment on Anna Bergfeld’s letter: “Yes, I dare say; but what’s the good?” when the door was opened, and it seemed to him almost as if a corpse were standing there, with a face as though some one had come knocking on its grave, so eager and so white.
“Mrs. Bergfeld? My name’s Mont. You wrote to me.”
The woman trembled so, that Michael thought she was going to faint.
“Will you excuse me, sir, that I sit down?” And she dropped on to the end of the bed. The room was spotless, but, besides the bed, held only a small deal wash-stand, a pot of geranium, a tin trunk with a pair of trousers folded on it, a woman’s hat on a peg, and a chair in the window covered with her sewing.
The woman stood up again. She seemed not more than thirty, thin but prettily formed; and her oval face, without colour except in her dark eyes, suggested Rafael rather than Sapper’s Row.
“It is like seeing an angel,” she said. “Excuse me, sir.”
“Queer angel, Mrs. Bergfeld. Your husband not in?”
“No, sir. Fritz has gone to walk.”
“Tell me, Mrs. Bergfeld. If I pay your passages to Germany, will you go?”
“We cannot hope from that now, Fritz has been here twenty years, and never back; he has lost his German nationality, sir; they do not want people like us, you know.”
Michael stivered up his hair.
“Where are you from yourself?”
“From Salzburg.”
“What about going back there?”
“I would like to, but what would we do? In Austria every one is poor now, and I have no relative left. Here at least we have my sewing.”
“How much is that a week?”
“Sometimes a pound; sometimes fifteen shillings. It is bread and the rent.”
“Don’t you get the dole?”
“No, sir. We are not registered.”
Michael took out a five-pound note and laid it with his card on the wash-stand. “I’ve got to think this over, Mrs. Bergfeld. Perhaps your husband will come and see me.” He went out quickly, for the ghostly woman had flushed pink.
Repassing through the curtained aperture, he caught the hair-dresser wiping out the basin.
“Find em in, sir?”
“The lady.”
“Ah! Seen better days, I should say. The ‘usband’s a queer customer; ‘alf off his nut. Wanted to come in here with me, but I’ve got to give this job up.”
“Oh! How’s that?”
“I’ve got to have fresh air–only got one lung, and that’s not very gaudy. I’ll have to find something else.”
“That’s bad, in these days.”
The hair-dresser shrugged his bony shoulders. “Ah!” he said. “I’ve been a hair-dresser from a boy, except for the war. Funny place this, to fetch up in after where I’ve been. The war knocked me out.” He twisted his little thin moustache.
“No pension?” said Michael.
“Not a bob. What I want to keep me alive is something in the open.”
Michael took him in from head to foot. Shadowy, narrow-headed, with one lung.
“But do you know anything about country life?”
“Not a blessed thing. Still, I’ve got to find something, or peg out.”
His tragic and knowing eyes searched Michael’s face.
“I’m awfully sorry,” said Michael. “Good-bye!”
The hair-dresser made a queer jerky little movement.
Emerging from Sapper’s Row into the crowded, roaring thoroughfare, Michael thought of a speech in a play he had seen a year or two before. “The condition of the people leaves much to be desired. I shall make a point of taking up the cudgels in the House. I shall move–!” The condition of the people! What a remote thing! The sportive nightmare of a few dreaming nights, the skeleton in a well-locked cupboard, the discomforting rare howl of a hungry dog! And probably no folk in England less disturbed by it than the gallant six hundred odd who sat with him in ‘that House.’ For to improve the condition of the people was their job, and that relieved them of a sense of nightmare. Since Oliver Cromwell some sixteen thousand, perhaps, had sat there before them, to the same end. And was the trick done–not bee likely! Still THEY were really working for it, and other people were only looking on and telling them how to do it!
Thus was he thinking when a voice said:
“Not got a job about you, sir?”
Michael quickened his steps, then stood still. He saw that the man who had spoken, having cast his eyes down again, had missed this sign of weakness; and he went back to him. They were black eyes in a face round and pasty like a mince pie. Decent and shabby, quiet and forlorn, he wore an ex-Service-man’s badge.
“You spoke to me?” said Michael.
“I’m sure I don’t know why, sir; it just hopped out of me.”
“No work?”
“No; and pretty low.”
“Married?”
“Widower, sir; two children.”
“Dole?”
“Yes; and fair sick of it.”
“In the war, I see?”
“Yes, Mespot.”
“What sort of job do you want?”
“Any mortal thing.”
“Give me your name and address.”
“Henry Boddick, 94 Waltham Buildings, Gunnersbury.”
Michael took it down.
“Can’t promise anything,” he said.
“No, sir.”
“Good luck, anyway. Have a cigar?”
“Thank you, and good luck to you, sir.”
Michael saluted, and resumed his progress; once out of sight of Henry Boddick, he took a taxi. A little more of this, and he would lose the sweet reasonableness without which one could not sit in ‘that House’!
‘For Sale or to Let’ recorded recurrently in Portland Place, somewhat restored his sense of balance.
That same afternoon he took Francis Wilmot with him to the House, and leaving him at the foot of the Distinguished Strangers’ stairway, made his way on to the floor.
He had never been in Ireland, so that the debate had for him little relation to reality. It seemed to illustrate, however, the obstacles in the way of agreement on any mortal subject. Almost every speech emphasized the paramount need for a settlement, but declared the impossibility of ‘going back’ on this, that, or the other factor which precluded such settlement. Still, for a debate on Ireland it seemed good-tempered; and presently they would all go out and record the votes they had determined on before it all began. He remembered the thrill with which he had listened to the first debates after his election; the impression each speech had given him that somebody must certainly be converted to something; and the reluctance with which he had discovered that nobody ever was. Some force was at work far stronger than any eloquence, however striking or sincere. The clothes were washed elsewhere; in here they were but aired before being put on. Still, until people put thoughts into words, they didn’t know what they thought, and sometimes they didn’t know afterwards. And for the hundredth time Michael was seized by a weak feeling in his legs. In a few weeks he himself must rise on them. Would the House accord him its ‘customary indulgence’; or would it say: ‘Young fellow–teaching your grandmother to suck eggs–shut up!’
He looked around him.
His fellow members were sitting in all shapes. Chosen of the people, they confirmed the doctrine that human nature did not change, or so slowly that one could not see the process–he had seen their prototypes in Roman statues, in mediaeval pictures… ‘Plain but pleasant,’ he thought, unconsciously reproducing George Forsyte’s description of himself in his palmy days. But did they take themselves seriously, as under Burke, as under Gladstone even?
The words ‘customary indulgence’ roused him from reverie; for they meant a maiden speech. Ha! yes! The member for Cornmarket. He composed himself to listen. Delivering himself with restraint and clarity, the speaker seemed suggesting that the doctrine ‘Do unto others as you would they should do unto you’ need not be entirely neglected, even in Ireland; but it was long–too long–Michael watched the House grow restive. ‘Alas! poor brother!’ he thought, as the speaker somewhat hastily sat down. A very handsome man rose in his place. He congratulated his honourable friend on his able and well-delivered effort, he only regretted that it had nothing to do with the business in hand. Exactly! Michael slipped out. Recovering his ‘distinguished stranger,’ he walked away with him to South Square.
Francis Wilmot was in a state of some enthusiasm.
“That was fine,” he said. “Who was the gentleman under the curtains?”
“The Speaker?”
“No; I mean the one who didn’t speak.”
“Exactly; he’s the dignity of the House.”
“They ought to feed him oxygen; it must be sleepy under there. I liked the delegate who spoke last but one. He would ‘go’ in America; he had big ideas.”
“The idealism which keeps you out of the League of Nations, eh?” said Michael with a grin.
Francis Wilmot turned his head rather sharply.
“Well,” he said, “we’re like any other people when it comes down to bed-rock.”
“Quite so,” said Michael. “Idealism is just a by-product of geography–it’s the haze that lies in the middle distance. The farther you are from bed-rock, the less quick you need be to see it. We’re twenty sea-miles more idealistic about the European situation than the French are. And you’re three thousand sea-miles more idealistic than we are. But when it’s a matter of niggers, we’re three thousand sea-miles more idealistic than you; isn’t that so?”
Francis Wilmot narrowed his dark eyes.
“It is,” he said. “The farther North we go in the States, the more idealistic we get about the negro. Anne and I’ve lived all our life with darkies, and never had trouble; we love them, and they love us; but I wouldn’t trust myself not to join in lynching one that laid his hands on her. I’ve talked that over many times with Jon. He doesn’t see it that way; he says a darky should be tried like a white man; but he doesn’t know the real South. His mind is still three thousand sea-miles away.”
Michael was silent. Something within him always closed up at mention of a name which he still spelt mentally with an h.
Francis Wilmot added ruminatively: “There are a few saints in every country proof against your theory; but the rest of us, I reckon, aren’t above human nature.”
“Talking of human nature,” said Michael, “here’s my father-inlaw!”
Chapter VI.
SOAMES KEEPS HIS EYES OPEN
Soames, having prolonged his week-end visit, had been spending the afternoon at the Zoological Gardens, removing his great-nephews, the little Cardigans, from the too close proximity of monkeys and cats. After standing them once more in Imogen’s hall, he had roosted at his Club till, idly turning his evening paper, he had come on this paragraph, in the “Chiff-chaff” column:
“A surprise for the coming Session is being confectioned at the Wednesday gatherings of a young hostess not a hundred miles from Westminster. Her husband, a prospective baronet lately connected with literature, is to be entrusted with the launching in Parliament of a policy which enjoys the peculiar label of Foggartism, derived from Sir James Foggart’s book called “The Parlous State of England.” This amusing alarum is attributed to the somewhat fantastic brain which guides a well-known weekly. We shall see what comes of it. In the meantime the enterprising little lady in question is losing no chance of building up her ‘salon’ on the curiosity which ever surrounds any buccaneering in politics.”
Soames rubbed his eyes; then read it again with rising anger. ‘Enterprising little lady is losing no chance of building up her “salon.”’ Who had written that? He put the paper in his pocket–almost the first theft he had ever committed–and all the way across St. James’s Park in the gathering twilight he brooded on that anonymous paragraph. The allusion seemed to him unmistakable, and malicious into the bargain. ‘Lion-hunter’ would not have been plainer. Unfortunately, in a primary sense ‘lion-hunter’ was a compliment, and Soames doubted whether its secondary sense had ever been ‘laid down’ as libellous. He was still brooding deeply, when the young men ranged alongside.
“Well, sir?”
“Ah!” said Soames. “I want to speak to you. You’ve got a traitor in the camp.” And, without meaning to at all, he looked angrily at Francis Wilmot.
“Now, sir?” said Michael, when they were in his study.
Soames held out the folded paper.
Michael read the paragraph and made a face.
“Whoever wrote that comes to your evenings,” said Soames; “that’s clear. Who is he?”
“Very likely a she.”
“D’you mean to say they print such things by women?”
Michael did not answer. Old Forsyte was behind the times.
“Will they tell me who it is, if I go down to them?” asked Soames.
“No, fortunately.”
“How d’you mean ‘fortunately’?”
“Well, sir, the Press is a sensitive plant. I’m afraid you might make it curl up. Besides, it’s always saying nice things that aren’t deserved.”
“But this–” began Soames; he stopped in time, and substituted: “Do you mean that we’ve got to sit down under it?”
“To lie down, I’m afraid.”
“Fleur has an evening tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
“I shall stay up for it, and keep my eyes open.”
Michael had a vision of his father-inlaw, like a plainclothes man in the neighbourhood of wedding-presents.
But in spite of assumed levity, Michael had been hit. The knowledge that his adored one had the collector’s habit, and flitted, alluring, among the profitable, had, so far, caused him only indulgent wonder. But now it seemed more than an amusing foible. The swiftness with which she turned her smile off and on as though controlled by a switch under her shingled hair; the quick turns of her neck, so charming and exposed; the clever roving, disguised so well but not quite well enough, of the pretty eyes; the droop and flutter of their white lids; the expressive hands grasping, if one could so call such slim and dainty apprehensions, her career–all this suddenly caused Michael pain. Still she was doing it for him and Kit! French women, they said, co-operated with their husbands in the family career. It was the French blood in her. Or perhaps just idealism, the desire to have and be the best of whatever bunch there was about! Thus Michael, loyally. But his uneasy eyes roved from face to face of the Wednesday gathering, trying to detect signs of quizzicality.
Soames followed another method. His mind, indeed, was uncomplicated by the currents awash in that of one who goes to bed with the object of his criticism. For him there was no reason why Fleur should not know as many aristocrats, Labour members, painters, ambassadors, young fools, and even writing fellows, as might flutter her fancy. The higher up they were, the less likely, he thought with a certain naivete would they be to borrow money or get her into a mess. His daughter was as good or better than any of them, and his deep pride was stung to the quick by the notion that people should think she had to claw and scrape to get them round her. It was not she who was after them, but they who were after her! Standing under the Fragonard which he had given her, grizzled, neatly moustached, close-faced, chinny, with a gaze concentrated on nothing in particular, as of one who has looked over much and found little in it, he might have been one of her ambassadors.
A young woman, with red-gold hair, about an inch long on her de-shingled neck, came and stood with her back to him, beside a soft man, who kept washing his hands. Soames could hear every word of their talk.
“Isn’t the little Mont amusing? Look at her now, with ‘Don Fernando’–you’d think he was her only joy. Ah! There’s young Rashly! Off she goes. She’s a born little snob. But that doesn’t make this a ‘salon,’ as she thinks. To found a ‘salon’ you want personality, and wit, and the ‘don’t care a damn’ spirit. She hasn’t got a scrap. Besides, who is she?”
“Money?” said the soft man.
“Not so very much. Michael’s such dead nuts on her that he’s getting dull; though it’s partly Parliament, of course. Have you heard them talk this Foggartism? All food, children, and the future–the very dregs of dulness.”
“Novelty,” purred the soft man, “is the vice of our age.”
“One resents a nobody like her climbing in on piffle like this Foggartism. Did you read the book?”
“Hardly. Did you?”
“No jolly fear! I’m sorry for Michael. He’s being exploited by that little snob.”
Penned without an outlet, Soames had begun breathing hard. Feeling a draught, perhaps, the young woman turned to encounter a pair of eyes so grey, so cold, in a face so concentrated, that she moved away. “Who was that old buffer?” she asked of the soft man; “he gave me ‘the jim-jams.’”
The soft man thought it might be a poor relation–he didn’t seem to know anybody.
But Soames had already gone across to Michael.
“Who’s that young woman with the red hair?”
“Marjorie Ferrar.”
“She’s the traitress–turn her out!”
Michael stared.
“But we know her quite well–she’s a daughter of Lord Charles Ferrar, and–”
“Turn her out!” said Soames again.
“How do you know that she’s the traitress, sir?”
“I’ve just heard her use the very words of that paragraph, and worse.”
“But she’s our guest.”
“Pretty guest!” growled Soames through his teeth.
“One can’t turn a guest out. Besides, she’s the grand-daughter of a marquess and the pet of the Panjoys–it would make the deuce of a scandal.”
“Make it, then!”
“We won’t ask her again; but really, that’s all one can do.”
“Is it?” said Soames; and walking past his son-inlaw, he went towards the object of his denunciation. Michael followed, much perturbed. He had never yet seen his father-inlaw with his teeth bared. He arrived in time to hear him say in a low but quite audible voice:
“You were good enough, madam, to call my daughter a snob in her own house.”
Michael saw the de-shingled neck turn and rear, the hard blue eyes stare with a sort of outraged impudence; he heard her laugh, then Soames saying:
“You are a traitress; be so kind as to withdraw.”
Of the half-dozen people round, not a soul was missing it! Oh, hell! And he the master of the house! Stepping forward, he put his arm through that of Soames:
“That’ll do, sir,” he said, quietly; “this is not a Peace Conference.”
There was a horrid hush; and in all the group only the soft man’s white hands, washing each other, moved.
Marjorie Ferrar took a step towards the door.
“I don’t know who this person is,” she said; “but he’s a liar.”
“I reckon not.”
At the edge of the little group was a dark young man. His eyes were fixed on Marjorie Ferrar’s, whose eyes in turn were fixed on his.
And, suddenly, Michael saw Fleur, very pale, standing just behind him. She must have heard it all! She smiled, waved her hand, and said:
“Madame Carelli’s going to play.”
Marjorie Ferrar walked on towards the door, and the soft man followed her, still washing those hands, as if trying to rid them of the incident. Soames, like a slow dog making sure, walked after them; Michael walked after him. The words “How amusing!” floated back, and a soft echoing snigger. Slam! Both outer door and incident were closed.
Michael wiped his forehead. One half of the brain behind admired his father-inlaw; the other thought: ‘Well, the old man HAS gone and done it!’ He went back into the drawing-room. Fleur was standing near the clavichord, as if nothing had happened. But Michael could see her fingers crisping at her dress; and his heart felt sore. He waited, quivering, for the last chord.
Soames had gone up-stairs. Before “The White Monkey” in Michael’s study, he reviewed his own conduct. He regretted nothing. Red-headed cat! ‘Born snob!’ ‘Money? Not very much.’ Ha! ‘A nobody like her!’ Grand-daughter of a marquess, was she? Well, he had shown the insolent baggage the door. All that was sturdy in his fibre, all that was acrid in his blood, all that resented patronage and privilege, the inherited spirit of his forefathers, moved within him. Who were the aristocracy, to give themselves airs? Jackanapes! Half of ’em descendants of those who had got what they had by robbery or jobbery! That one of them should call his daughter, HIS daughter, a snob! He wouldn’t lift a finger, wouldn’t cross a road, to meet the Duke of Seven Dials himself! If Fleur liked to amuse herself by having people round her, why shouldn’t she? His blood ran suddenly a little cold. Would she say that he had spoiled her ‘salon’? Well! He couldn’t help it if she did; better to have had the thing out, and got rid of that cat, and know where they all were. ‘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.
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