But it’s marvellous, I think.”
“Yes. I’m going to hang it here. If I can get one more, I shall have done in this room; only people have so got on to Chinese things. This was luck–somebody died–George Forsyte, you know, the racing one.”
“Oh!” said Holly softly. She saw again her old kinsman’s japing eyes in the church when Fleur was being married, heard his throaty whisper, “Will she stay the course?” And was she staying it, this pretty filly? “Wish she could get a rest. If only there were a desert handy!” Well, one couldn’t ask a question so personal, and Holly took refuge in a general remark.
“What do all you smart young people feel about life, nowadays, Fleur! when one’s not of it and has lived twenty years in South Africa, one still feels out of it.”
“Life! Oh! well, we know it’s supposed to be a riddle, but we’ve given it up. We just want to have a good time because we don’t believe anything can last. But I don’t think we know how to have it. We just fly on, and hope for it. Of course, there’s art, but most of us aren’t artists; besides, expressionism–Michael says it’s got no inside. We gas about it, but I suppose it hasn’t. I see a frightful lot of writers and painters, you know; they’re supposed to be amusing.”
Holly listened, amazed. Who would have thought that this girl SAW? She might be seeing wrong, but anyway she saw!
“Surely,” she said, “you enjoy yourselves?”
“Well, I like getting hold of nice things, and interesting people; I like seeing everything that’s new and worth while, or seems so at the moment. But that’s just how it is–nothing lasts. You see, I’m not of the ‘Pan-joys,’ nor of the ‘new-faithfuls.’”
“The new-faithfuls?”
“Oh! don’t you know–it’s a sort of faith-healing done on oneself, not exactly the old ‘God-good, good-God!’ sort; but a kind of mixture of will-power, psycho-analysis, and belief that everything will be all right on the night if you say it will. You must have come across them. They’re frightfully in earnest.”
“I know,” said Holly; “their eyes shine.”
“I daresay. I don’t believe in them–I don’t believe in anyone; or anything–much. How can one?”
“How about simple people, and hard work?”
Fleur sighed. “I daresay. I will say for Michael–HE’S not spoiled. Let’s have tea? Tea, Ting?” and, turning up the lights, she rang the bell.
When her unexpected visitor had gone, she sat very still before the fire. To-day, when she had been so very nearly Wilfrid’s! So Jon was not married! Not that it made any odds! Things did not come round as they were expected to in books. And anyway sentiment was swosh! Cut it out! She tossed back her hair; and, getting hammer and nail, proceeded to hang the white monkey. Between the two tea-chests with their coloured pearl-shell figures, he would look his best. Since she couldn’t have Jon, what did it matter–Wilfrid or Michael, or both, or neither? Eat the orange in her hand, and throw away the rind! And suddenly she became aware that Michael was in the room. He had come in very quietly and was standing before the fire behind her. She gave him a quick look and said:
“I’ve had Aubrey Greene here about a model you sent him, and Holly–Mrs. Val Dartie–she said she’d seen you. Oh! and father’s brought us this. Isn’t it perfect?”
Michael did not speak.
“Anything the matter, Michael?”
“No, nothing.” He went up to the monkey. From behind him now Fleur searched his profile. Instinct told her of a change. Had he, after all, seen her going to Wilfrid’s–coming away?
“Some monkey!” he said. “By the way, have you any spare clothes you could give the wife of a poor snipe–nothing too swell?”
She answered mechanically: “Yes, of course!” while her brain worked furiously.
“Would you put them out, then? I’m going to make up a bunch for him myself–they could go together.”
Yes! He was quite unlike himself, as if the spring in him had run down. A sort of malaise overcame her. Michael not cheerful! It was like the fire going out on a cold day. And, perhaps for the first time, she was conscious that his cheerfulness was of real importance to her. She watched him pick up Ting-a-ling and sit down. And going up behind him, she bent over till her hair was against his cheek. Instead of rubbing his cheek on hers, he sat quite still, and her heart misgave her.
“What is it?” she said, coaxing.
“Nothing!”
She took hold of his ears.
“But there is. I suppose you know somehow that I went to see Wilfrid.”
He said stonily: “Why not?”
She let go, and stood up straight.
“It was only to tell him that I couldn’t see him again.”
That half-truth seemed to her the whole.
He suddenly looked up, a quiver went over his face; he look her hand.
“It’s all right, Fleur. You must do what you like, you know. That’s only fair. I had too much lunch.”
Fleur withdrew to the middle of the room.
“You’re rather an angel,” she said slowly, and went out.
Upstairs she looked out garments, confused in her soul.
Chapter VI.
MICHAEL GETS ‘WHAT-FOR’
After his Green Street quest Michael had wavered back down Piccadilly, and, obeying one of those impulses which make people hang around the centres of disturbance, on to Cork Street. He stood for a minute at the mouth of Wilfrid’s backwater.
‘No,’ he thought, at last, ‘ten to one he isn’t in; and if he is, twenty to one that I get any change except bad change!’
He was moving slowly on to Bond Street, when a little light lady, coming from the backwater, and reading as she went, ran into him from behind.
“Why don’t you look where you’re going! Oh! You? Aren’t you the young man who married Fleur Forsyte? I’m her cousin, June. I thought I saw her just now.” She waved a hand which held a catalogue with a gesture like the flirt of a bird’s wing. “Opposite my gallery. She went into a house, or I should have spoken to her–I’d like to have seen her again.”
Into a house! Michael dived for his cigarette-case. Hard-grasping it, he looked up. The little lady’s blue eyes were sweeping from side to side of his face with a searching candour.
“Are you happy together?” she said.
A cold sweat broke out on his forehead. A sense of general derangement afflicted him–hers, and his own.
“I beg your pardon?” he gasped.
“I hope you are. She ought to have married my little brother–but I hope you are. She’s a pretty child.”
In the midst of a dull sense of stunning blows, it staggered him that she seemed quite unconscious of inflicting them. He heard his teeth gritting, and said dully: “Your little brother, who was he?”
“What! Jon–didn’t you know Jon? He was too young, of course, and so was she. But they were head over–the family feud stopped that. Well! it’s all past. I was at your wedding. I hope you’re happy. Have you seen the Claud Brains show at my gallery? He’s a genius. I was going to have a bun in here; will you join me? You ought to know his work.”
She had paused at the door of a confectioner’s. Michael put his hand on his chest.
“Thank you,” he said, “I have just had a bun–two, in fact. Excuse me!”
The little lady grasped his other hand.
“Well, good-bye, young man! Glad to have met you. You’re not a beauty, but I like your face. Remember me to that child. You should go and see Claud Brains. He’s a real genius.”
Stock-still before the door, he watched her turn and enter, with a scattered motion, as of flying, and a disturbance among those seated in the pastry-cook’s. Then he moved on, the cigarette unlighted in his mouth, dazed, as a boxer from a blow which knocks him sideways, and another which knocks him straight again.
Fleur visiting Wilfrid–at this moment in his rooms up there–in his arms, perhaps! He groaned. A well-fed young man in a new hat skipped at the sound. Never! He could never stick that! He would have to clear out! He had believed Fleur honest! A double life! The night before last she had smiled on him. Oh! God! He dashed across into Green Park. Why hadn’t he stood still and let something go over him? And that lunatic’s little brother–John–family feud? Himself–a pis aller, then–taken without love at all–a makeshift! He remembered now her saying one night at Mapledurham: “Come again when I know I can’t get my wish.” So that was the wish she couldn’t get! A makeshift! ‘Jolly,’ he thought: ‘Oh! jolly!’ No wonder, then! What could she care? One man or another! Poor little devil! She had never let him know–never breathed a word! Was that decent of her–or was it treachery? ‘No,’ he thought, ‘if she HAD told me, it wouldn’t have made any difference–I’d have taken her at any price. It was decent of her not to tell me.’ But how was it he hadn’t heard from some one? Family feud? The Forsytes! Except ‘Old Forsyte,’ he never saw them; and ‘Old Forsyte’ was closer than a fish. Well! he had got what-for! And again he groaned, in the twilight spaces of the Park. Buckingham Palace loomed up unlighted, huge and dreary. Conscious of his cigarette at last, he stopped to strike a match, and drew the smoke deep into his lungs with the first faint sense of comfort.
“You couldn’t spare us a cigarette, Mister?”
A shadowy figure with a decent sad face stood beside the statue of Australia, so depressingly abundant!
“Of course!” said Michael; “take the lot.” He emptied the case into the man’s hand. “Take the case too–‘present from Westminster’–you’ll get thirty bob for it. Good luck!” He hurried on. A faint: “Hi, Mister!” pursued him unavailingly. Pity was pulp! Sentiment was bilge! Was he going home to wait till Fleur had–finished and come back? Not he! He turned towards Chelsea, batting along as hard as he could stride. Lighted shops, gloomy great Eaton Square, Chester Square, Sloane Square, the King’s Road–along, along! Worse than the trenches–far worse–this whipped and scorpioned sexual jealousy! Yes, and he would have felt even worse, but for that second blow. It made it less painful to know that Fleur had been in love with that cousin, and Wilfrid, too, perhaps, nothing to her. Poor little wretch! ‘Well, what’s the game now?’ he thought. The game of life–in bad weather, in stress? What was it? In the war–what had a fellow done? Somehow managed to feel himself not so dashed important; reached a condition of acquiescence, fatalism, “Who dies if England live” sort of sob-stuff state. The game of life? Was it different? “Bloody but unbowed” might be tripe; still–get up when you were knocked down! The whole was big, oneself was little! Passion, jealousy, ought they properly to destroy one’s sportsmanship, as Nazing and Sibley and Linda Frewe would have it? Was the word ‘gentleman’ a dud? Was it? Did one keep one’s form, or get down to squealing and kicking in the stomach?
‘I don’t know,’ he thought, ‘I don’t know what I shall do when I see her–I simply don’t know.’ Steel-blue of the fallen evening, bare plane-trees, wide river, frosty air! He turned towards home. He opened his front door, trembling, and trembling, went into the drawing-room…
When Fleur had gone upstairs and left him with Ting-a-ling he didn’t know whether he believed her or not. If she had kept that other thing from him all this time, she could keep anything! Had she understood his words: “You must do as you like, that’s only fair?” He had said them almost mechanically, but they were reasonable. If she had never loved him, even a little, he had never had any right to expect anything; he had been all the time in the position of one to whom she was giving alms. Nothing compelled a person to go on giving alms. And nothing compelled one to go on taking them–except–the ache of want, the ache, the ache!
“You little Djinn! You lucky little toad! Give me some of your complacency–you Chinese atom!” Ting-a-ling turned up his boot-buttons. “When you have been civilised as long as I,” they seemed to say: “In the meantime, scratch my chest.”
And scrattling in that yellow fur Michael thought: ‘Pull yourself together! Man at the South Pole with the first blizzard doesn’t sing: “Want to go home! Want to go home!”–he sticks it. Come, get going!’ He placed Ting-a-ling on the floor, and made for his study. Here were manuscripts, of which the readers to Danby and Winter had already said: “No money in this, but a genuine piece of work meriting consideration.” It was Michael’s business to give the consideration; Danby’s to turn the affair down with the words: “Write him (or her) a civil letter, say we were greatly interested, regret we do not see our way–hope to have the privilege of considering next effort, and so forth. What!”
He turned up his reading-lamp and pulled out a manuscript he had already begun.
“No retreat, no retreat; they must conquer or die who have no retreat;
No retreat, no retreat; they must conquer or die who have no retreat!”
The black footmen’s refrain from ‘Polly’ was all that happened in his mind. Dash it! He must read the thing! Somehow he finished the chapter. He remembered now. The manuscript was all about a man who, when he was a boy, had been so greatly impressed by the sight of a maidservant changing her clothes in a room over the way, that his married life was a continual struggle not to be unfaithful with his wife’s maids. They had just discovered his complex, and he was going to have it out. The rest of the manuscript no doubt would show how that was done. It went most conscientiously into all those precise bodily details which it was now so timorous and Victorian to leave out. Genuine piece of work, and waste of time to go on with it! Old Danby–Freud bored him stiff; and for once Michael did not mind old Danby being in the right. He put the thing back into the drawer. Seven o’clock! Tell Fleur what he had been told about that cousin? Why? Nothing could mend THAT! If only she were speaking the truth about Wilfrid! He went to the window–stars above, and stripes below, stripes of courtyard and back garden. “No retreat, no retreat; they must conquer or die who have no retreat!”
A voice said:
“When will your father be up?”
Old Forsyte! Lord! Lord!
“To-morrow, I believe, sir. Come in! You don’t know my den, I think.”
“No,” said Soames. “Snug! Caricatures. You go in for them–poor stuff!”
“But not modern, sir–a revived art.”
“Queering your neighbours–I never cared for them. They only flourish when the world’s in a mess and people have given up looking straight before them.”
“By Jove!” said Michael; “that’s good. Won’t you sit down, sir?”
Soames sat down, crossing his knees in his accustomed manner. Slim, grey, close–a sealed book, neatly bound! What was HIS complex? Whatever it was, he had never had it out. One could not even imagine the operation.
“I shan’t take away my Goya,” he said very unexpectedly; “consider it Fleur’s. In fact, if I only knew you were interested in the future, I should make more provision. In my opinion death duties will be prohibitive in a few years’ time.”
Michael frowned. “I’d like you to know sir, once for all, that what you do for Fleur, you do for Fleur. I can be Epicurus whenever I like–bread, and on feast days a little bit of cheese.”
Soames looked up with shrewdness in his glance. “I know that,” he said, “I always knew it.”
Michael bowed.
“With this land depression your father’s hard hit, I should think.”
“Well, he talks of being on the look out for soap or cars; but I shouldn’t be surprised if he mortgages again and lingers on.”
“A title without a place,” said Soames, “is not natural. He’d better wait for me to go, if I leave anything, that is. But listen to me: I’ve been thinking. Aren’t you happy together, you two, that you don’t have children?”
Michael hesitated.
“I don’t think,” he said slowly, “that we have ever had a scrap, or anything like it. I have been–I am–terribly fond of her, but you have known better than I that I only picked up the pieces.”
“Who told you that?”
“To-day–Miss June Forsyte.”
“THAT woman!” said Soames. “She can’t keep her foot out of anything. A boy and girl affair–over months before you married.”
“But deep, sir,” said Michael gently.
“Deep–who knows at that age? Deep?” Soames paused: “You’re a good fellow–I always knew. Be patient–take a long view.”
“Yes, sir,” said Michael, very still in his chair, “If I can.”
“She’s everything to me,” muttered Soames abruptly.
“And to me–which doesn’t make it easier.”
The line between Soames’ brows deepened.
“Perhaps not. But hold on! As gently as you like, but hold on! She’s young. She’ll flutter about; there’s nothing in it.”
‘Does he know about the other thing?’ thought Michael.
“I have my own worries,” went on Soames, “but they’re nothing to what I should feel if anything went wrong with her.”
Michael felt a twinge of sympathy, unusual towards that self-contained grey figure.
“I shall try my best,” he said quietly; “but I’m not naturally Solomon at six stone seven.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Soames, “I’m not so sure. Anyway, a child–well, a child would be–a–sort of insur–” He baulked, the word was not precisely–!
Michael froze.
“As to that, I can’t say anything.”
Soames got up.
“No,” he said wistfully, “I suppose not. It’s time to dress.”
To dress–to dine, and if to dine, to sleep–to sleep, to dream! And then what dreams might come!
On the way to his dressing-room Michael encountered Coaker; the man’s face was long.
“What’s up, Coaker?”
“The little dog, sir, has been sick in the drawing-room.”
“The deuce he has!”
“Yes, sir; it appears that some one left him there alone. He makes himself felt, sir. I always say: He’s an important little dog…”
During dinner, as if visited by remorse for having given them advice and two pictures worth some thousands of pounds, Soames pitched a tale like those of James in his palmy days. He spoke of the French–the fall of the mark–the rise in Consols–the obstinacy of Dumetrius, the picture-dealer, over a Constable skyscape which Soames wanted and Dumetrius did not, but to which the fellow held on just for the sake of a price which Soames did not mean to pay. He spoke of the trouble which he foresaw with the United States over their precious Prohibition. They were a headstrong lot. They took up a thing and ran their heads against a stone wall. He himself had never drunk anything to speak of, but he liked to feel that he could. The Americans liked to feel that he couldn’t, that was tyranny. They were overbearing. He shouldn’t be surprised if everybody took to drinking over there. As to the League of Nations, a man that morning had palavered it up. That cock wouldn’t fight–spend money, and arrange things which would have arranged themselves, but as for anything important, such as abolishing Bolshevism, or poison gas, they never would, and to pretend it was all-me-eye-and-Betty–Martin. It was almost a record for one habitually taciturn, and deeply useful to two young people only anxious that he should continue to talk, so that they might think of other things. The conduct of Ting-a-ling was the sole other subject of consideration. Fleur thought it due to the copper floor. Soames that he must have picked up something in the Square–dogs were always picking things up. Michael suggested that it was just Chinese–a protest against there being nobody to watch his self-sufficiency. In China there were four hundred million people to watch each other being self-sufficient. What would one expect of a Chinaman suddenly placed in the Gobi Desert? He would certainly be sick.
“No retreat, no retreat; they must conquer or die who have no retreat!”
When Fleur left them, both felt that they could not so soon again bear each other’s company, and Soames said: “I’ve got some figures to attend to–I’ll go to my room.”
Michael stood up. “Wouldn’t you like my den, sir?”
“No,” said Soames, “I must concentrate. Say goodnight to Fleur for me.”
Michael remained smoking above the porcelain effigies of Spanish fruits. That white monkey couldn’t eat those and throw away the rinds! Would the fruits of his life be porcelain in future? Live in the same house with Fleur, estranged? Live with Fleur as now, feeling a stranger, even an unwelcome stranger? Clear out, and join the Air Force, or the ‘Save the Children’ corps? Which of the three courses was least to be deplored? The ash of his cigar grew long, dropped incontinent, and grew again; the porcelain fruits mocked him with their sheen and glow; Coaker put his head in and took it away again. (The Governor had got the hump–good sort, the Governor!) Decision waited for him, somewhere, somewhen–Fleur’s, not his own. His mind was too miserable and disconcerted to be known; but she would know hers. She had the information which alone made decision possible about Wilfrid, that cousin, her own actions and feelings. Yes, decision would come, and would it matter in a world where pity was punk and only a Chinese philosophy of any use?
But not be sick in the drawing-room, try and keep one’s end up, even if there were no one to see one being important!…
He had been asleep and it was dark, or all but, in his bed-dressing-room. Something white by his bed. A fragrant faint warmth close to him; a voice saying low: “It’s only me. Let me come in your bed, Michael. “Like a child–like a child! Michael reached out his arms. The whiteness and the warmth came into them. Curls smothered his mouth, the voice said in his ear: “I wouldn’t have come, would I, if there’d–if there’d been anything?” Michael’s heart, wild, confused, beat against hers.
Chapter VII.
THE ALTOGETHER
Tony Bicket, replete, was in vein that fine afternoon; his balloons left him freely, and he started for home in the mood of a conqueror.
Victorine, too, had colour in her cheeks. She requited the story of his afternoon with the story of hers. A false tale for a true–no word of Danby and Winter, the gentleman with the sliding smile, of the Grand Marnier, or ‘the altogether.’ She had no compunction. It was her secret, her surprise; if, by sitting in or out of ‘the altogether,’ not yet decided, she could make their passage money–well, she should tell him she had won it on a horse. That night she asked:
“Am I so very thin, Tony?” more than once. “I do so want to get fat.”
Bicket, still troubled that she had not shared that lunch, patted her tenderly, and said he would soon have her as fat as butter–he did not explain how.
They dreamed together of blue butterflies, and awoke to chilly gaslight and a breakfast of cocoa and bread-and-butter. Fog! Bicket was swallowed up before the eyes of Victorine ten yards from the door. She returned to the bedroom with anger in her heart. Who would buy balloons in a fog? She would do anything rather than let Tony go on standing out there all the choking days! Undressing again, she washed herself intensively, in case–! She had not long finished when her landlady announced the presence of a messenger boy. He bore an enormous parcel entitled “Mr. Bicket.”
There was a note inside. She read:
“DEAR BICKET, – Here are the togs. Hope they’ll be useful. – Yours, MICHAEL MONT.”
In a voice that trembled she said to the boy:
“Thank you, it’s O. K. Here’s twopence.”
When his rich whistle was heard writhing into the fog, she flung herself down before the ‘togs’ in ecstasy. The sexes were divided by tissue paper. A blue suit, a velour hat, some brown shoes, three pairs of socks with two holes in them, four shirts only a little frayed at the cuffs, two black-and-white ties, six collars, not too new, some handkerchiefs, two vests beautifully thick, two pairs of pants, and a brown overcoat with a belt and just two or three nice little stains. She held the blue suit up against her arms and legs, the trousers and sleeves would only need taking-in about two inches. She piled them in a pyramid, and turned with awe to the spoil beneath the tissue paper. A brown knitted frock with little clear yellow buttons–unsoiled, uncreased. How could anybody spare a thing like that! A brown velvet toque with a little tuft of goldeny-brown feathers. She put it on. A pair of pink stays ever so little faded, with only three inches of bone above the waist, and five inches of bone below, pink silk ribbons, and suspenders–a perfect dream. She could not resist putting them on also. Two pairs of brown stockings; brown shoes; two combinations, a knitted camisole. A white silk jumper with a hole in one sleeve, a skirt of lilac linen that had gone a little in the wash; a pair of pallid pink silk pants; and underneath them all an almost black-brown coat, long and warm and cosy, with great jet buttons, and in the pocket six small handkerchiefs. She took a deep breath of sweetness–geranium!
Her mind leaped forward. Clothed, trousseaued, fitted out–blue butterflies–the sun! Only the money for the tickets wanting. And suddenly she saw herself with nothing on standing before the gentleman with sliding eyes. Who cared! The money!
For the rest of the morning she worked feverishly, shortening Tony, mending the holes in his socks, turning the fray of his cuffs. She ate a biscuit, drank another cup of cocoa–it was fattening, and went for the hole in the white silk jumper. One o’clock. In panic she stripped once more, put on a new combination, pair of stockings, and the stays, then paused in superstition. No! Her own dress and hat–like yesterday! Keep the rest until–! She hastened to her ‘bus, overcome alternately by heat and cold. Perhaps he would give her another glass of that lovely stuff. If only she could go swimmy and not care for anything!
She reached the studio as two o’clock was striking, and knocked. It was lovely and warm in there, much warmer than yesterday, and the significance of this struck her suddenly. In front of the fire was a lady with a little dog.
“Miss Collins–Mrs. Michael Mont; she’s lending us her Peke, Miss Collins.”
The lady–only her own age, and ever so pretty–held out her hand. Geranium! This, then, was she whose clothes–!
She took the hand, but could not speak. If this lady were going to stay, it would be utterly impossible. Before her–so pretty, so beautifully covered–oh! no!
“Now, Ting, be good, and as amusing as you can. Goodbye, Aubrey! Good luck to the picture! Good-bye, Miss Collins; it ought to be wonderful.”
Gone! The scent of geranium fading; the little dog snuffling at the door. The sliding gentleman had two glasses in his hands.
‘Ah!’ thought Victorine, and drank hers at a gulp.
“Now, Miss Collins, you don’t mind, do you! You’ll find everything in there. It’s really nothing. I shall want you lying on your face just here with your elbows on the ground and your head up and a little turned this way; your hair as loose as it can be, and your eyes looking at this bone. You must imagine that it’s a faun or some other bit of all right. The dog’ll help you when he settles down to it. F-a-u-n, you know, not f-a-w-n.”
“Yes,” said Victorine faintly.
“Have another little tot?”
“Oh! please.”
He brought it.
“I quite understand; but you know, really, it’s absurd. You wouldn’t mind with a doctor. That’s right. Look here, I’ll put this little cow-bell on the ground. When you’re in position, give it a tinkle, and I’ll come out. That’ll help you.”
Victorine murmured:
“You ARE kind.”
“Not at all–it’s natural. Now will you start in? The light won’t last for ever. Fifteen bob a day, we said.”
Victorine saw him slide away behind a screen, and looked at the little cow-bell. Fifteen bob! And fifteen bob! And fifteen bob! Many, many fifteen bobs before–! But not more times of sitting than of Tony’s standing from foot to foot, offering balloons. And as if wound up by that thought, she moved like clockwork off the dais, into the model’s room. Cosy in there, too; warm, a green silk garment thrown on a chair. She took off her dress. The beauty of the pink stays struck her afresh. Perhaps the gentleman would like–no, that would be even worse–! A noise reached her–from Ting-a-ling complaining of solitude. If she delayed, she never would–! Stripping hastily, she stood looking at herself in a glass. If only that slim, ivory-white image could move out on to the dais and she could stay here! Oh! It was awful–awful! She couldn’t–no! she couldn’t. She caught up her final garment again. Fifteen bob! But fifteen bob! Before her eyes, wild and mournful, came a vision: Of a huge dome, and a tiny Tony, with little, little balloons in a hand held out! Something cold and steely formed over her heart as icicles form on a window. If that was all they would do for him, she would do better! She dropped the garment; and, confused, numb, stepped forth in the ‘altogether.’ Ting-a-ling growled at her above his bone. She reached the cow-bell and lay down on her face as she had been told, with feet in the air, crossed.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
“Yes. I’m going to hang it here. If I can get one more, I shall have done in this room; only people have so got on to Chinese things. This was luck–somebody died–George Forsyte, you know, the racing one.”
“Oh!” said Holly softly. She saw again her old kinsman’s japing eyes in the church when Fleur was being married, heard his throaty whisper, “Will she stay the course?” And was she staying it, this pretty filly? “Wish she could get a rest. If only there were a desert handy!” Well, one couldn’t ask a question so personal, and Holly took refuge in a general remark.
“What do all you smart young people feel about life, nowadays, Fleur! when one’s not of it and has lived twenty years in South Africa, one still feels out of it.”
“Life! Oh! well, we know it’s supposed to be a riddle, but we’ve given it up. We just want to have a good time because we don’t believe anything can last. But I don’t think we know how to have it. We just fly on, and hope for it. Of course, there’s art, but most of us aren’t artists; besides, expressionism–Michael says it’s got no inside. We gas about it, but I suppose it hasn’t. I see a frightful lot of writers and painters, you know; they’re supposed to be amusing.”
Holly listened, amazed. Who would have thought that this girl SAW? She might be seeing wrong, but anyway she saw!
“Surely,” she said, “you enjoy yourselves?”
“Well, I like getting hold of nice things, and interesting people; I like seeing everything that’s new and worth while, or seems so at the moment. But that’s just how it is–nothing lasts. You see, I’m not of the ‘Pan-joys,’ nor of the ‘new-faithfuls.’”
“The new-faithfuls?”
“Oh! don’t you know–it’s a sort of faith-healing done on oneself, not exactly the old ‘God-good, good-God!’ sort; but a kind of mixture of will-power, psycho-analysis, and belief that everything will be all right on the night if you say it will. You must have come across them. They’re frightfully in earnest.”
“I know,” said Holly; “their eyes shine.”
“I daresay. I don’t believe in them–I don’t believe in anyone; or anything–much. How can one?”
“How about simple people, and hard work?”
Fleur sighed. “I daresay. I will say for Michael–HE’S not spoiled. Let’s have tea? Tea, Ting?” and, turning up the lights, she rang the bell.
When her unexpected visitor had gone, she sat very still before the fire. To-day, when she had been so very nearly Wilfrid’s! So Jon was not married! Not that it made any odds! Things did not come round as they were expected to in books. And anyway sentiment was swosh! Cut it out! She tossed back her hair; and, getting hammer and nail, proceeded to hang the white monkey. Between the two tea-chests with their coloured pearl-shell figures, he would look his best. Since she couldn’t have Jon, what did it matter–Wilfrid or Michael, or both, or neither? Eat the orange in her hand, and throw away the rind! And suddenly she became aware that Michael was in the room. He had come in very quietly and was standing before the fire behind her. She gave him a quick look and said:
“I’ve had Aubrey Greene here about a model you sent him, and Holly–Mrs. Val Dartie–she said she’d seen you. Oh! and father’s brought us this. Isn’t it perfect?”
Michael did not speak.
“Anything the matter, Michael?”
“No, nothing.” He went up to the monkey. From behind him now Fleur searched his profile. Instinct told her of a change. Had he, after all, seen her going to Wilfrid’s–coming away?
“Some monkey!” he said. “By the way, have you any spare clothes you could give the wife of a poor snipe–nothing too swell?”
She answered mechanically: “Yes, of course!” while her brain worked furiously.
“Would you put them out, then? I’m going to make up a bunch for him myself–they could go together.”
Yes! He was quite unlike himself, as if the spring in him had run down. A sort of malaise overcame her. Michael not cheerful! It was like the fire going out on a cold day. And, perhaps for the first time, she was conscious that his cheerfulness was of real importance to her. She watched him pick up Ting-a-ling and sit down. And going up behind him, she bent over till her hair was against his cheek. Instead of rubbing his cheek on hers, he sat quite still, and her heart misgave her.
“What is it?” she said, coaxing.
“Nothing!”
She took hold of his ears.
“But there is. I suppose you know somehow that I went to see Wilfrid.”
He said stonily: “Why not?”
She let go, and stood up straight.
“It was only to tell him that I couldn’t see him again.”
That half-truth seemed to her the whole.
He suddenly looked up, a quiver went over his face; he look her hand.
“It’s all right, Fleur. You must do what you like, you know. That’s only fair. I had too much lunch.”
Fleur withdrew to the middle of the room.
“You’re rather an angel,” she said slowly, and went out.
Upstairs she looked out garments, confused in her soul.
Chapter VI.
MICHAEL GETS ‘WHAT-FOR’
After his Green Street quest Michael had wavered back down Piccadilly, and, obeying one of those impulses which make people hang around the centres of disturbance, on to Cork Street. He stood for a minute at the mouth of Wilfrid’s backwater.
‘No,’ he thought, at last, ‘ten to one he isn’t in; and if he is, twenty to one that I get any change except bad change!’
He was moving slowly on to Bond Street, when a little light lady, coming from the backwater, and reading as she went, ran into him from behind.
“Why don’t you look where you’re going! Oh! You? Aren’t you the young man who married Fleur Forsyte? I’m her cousin, June. I thought I saw her just now.” She waved a hand which held a catalogue with a gesture like the flirt of a bird’s wing. “Opposite my gallery. She went into a house, or I should have spoken to her–I’d like to have seen her again.”
Into a house! Michael dived for his cigarette-case. Hard-grasping it, he looked up. The little lady’s blue eyes were sweeping from side to side of his face with a searching candour.
“Are you happy together?” she said.
A cold sweat broke out on his forehead. A sense of general derangement afflicted him–hers, and his own.
“I beg your pardon?” he gasped.
“I hope you are. She ought to have married my little brother–but I hope you are. She’s a pretty child.”
In the midst of a dull sense of stunning blows, it staggered him that she seemed quite unconscious of inflicting them. He heard his teeth gritting, and said dully: “Your little brother, who was he?”
“What! Jon–didn’t you know Jon? He was too young, of course, and so was she. But they were head over–the family feud stopped that. Well! it’s all past. I was at your wedding. I hope you’re happy. Have you seen the Claud Brains show at my gallery? He’s a genius. I was going to have a bun in here; will you join me? You ought to know his work.”
She had paused at the door of a confectioner’s. Michael put his hand on his chest.
“Thank you,” he said, “I have just had a bun–two, in fact. Excuse me!”
The little lady grasped his other hand.
“Well, good-bye, young man! Glad to have met you. You’re not a beauty, but I like your face. Remember me to that child. You should go and see Claud Brains. He’s a real genius.”
Stock-still before the door, he watched her turn and enter, with a scattered motion, as of flying, and a disturbance among those seated in the pastry-cook’s. Then he moved on, the cigarette unlighted in his mouth, dazed, as a boxer from a blow which knocks him sideways, and another which knocks him straight again.
Fleur visiting Wilfrid–at this moment in his rooms up there–in his arms, perhaps! He groaned. A well-fed young man in a new hat skipped at the sound. Never! He could never stick that! He would have to clear out! He had believed Fleur honest! A double life! The night before last she had smiled on him. Oh! God! He dashed across into Green Park. Why hadn’t he stood still and let something go over him? And that lunatic’s little brother–John–family feud? Himself–a pis aller, then–taken without love at all–a makeshift! He remembered now her saying one night at Mapledurham: “Come again when I know I can’t get my wish.” So that was the wish she couldn’t get! A makeshift! ‘Jolly,’ he thought: ‘Oh! jolly!’ No wonder, then! What could she care? One man or another! Poor little devil! She had never let him know–never breathed a word! Was that decent of her–or was it treachery? ‘No,’ he thought, ‘if she HAD told me, it wouldn’t have made any difference–I’d have taken her at any price. It was decent of her not to tell me.’ But how was it he hadn’t heard from some one? Family feud? The Forsytes! Except ‘Old Forsyte,’ he never saw them; and ‘Old Forsyte’ was closer than a fish. Well! he had got what-for! And again he groaned, in the twilight spaces of the Park. Buckingham Palace loomed up unlighted, huge and dreary. Conscious of his cigarette at last, he stopped to strike a match, and drew the smoke deep into his lungs with the first faint sense of comfort.
“You couldn’t spare us a cigarette, Mister?”
A shadowy figure with a decent sad face stood beside the statue of Australia, so depressingly abundant!
“Of course!” said Michael; “take the lot.” He emptied the case into the man’s hand. “Take the case too–‘present from Westminster’–you’ll get thirty bob for it. Good luck!” He hurried on. A faint: “Hi, Mister!” pursued him unavailingly. Pity was pulp! Sentiment was bilge! Was he going home to wait till Fleur had–finished and come back? Not he! He turned towards Chelsea, batting along as hard as he could stride. Lighted shops, gloomy great Eaton Square, Chester Square, Sloane Square, the King’s Road–along, along! Worse than the trenches–far worse–this whipped and scorpioned sexual jealousy! Yes, and he would have felt even worse, but for that second blow. It made it less painful to know that Fleur had been in love with that cousin, and Wilfrid, too, perhaps, nothing to her. Poor little wretch! ‘Well, what’s the game now?’ he thought. The game of life–in bad weather, in stress? What was it? In the war–what had a fellow done? Somehow managed to feel himself not so dashed important; reached a condition of acquiescence, fatalism, “Who dies if England live” sort of sob-stuff state. The game of life? Was it different? “Bloody but unbowed” might be tripe; still–get up when you were knocked down! The whole was big, oneself was little! Passion, jealousy, ought they properly to destroy one’s sportsmanship, as Nazing and Sibley and Linda Frewe would have it? Was the word ‘gentleman’ a dud? Was it? Did one keep one’s form, or get down to squealing and kicking in the stomach?
‘I don’t know,’ he thought, ‘I don’t know what I shall do when I see her–I simply don’t know.’ Steel-blue of the fallen evening, bare plane-trees, wide river, frosty air! He turned towards home. He opened his front door, trembling, and trembling, went into the drawing-room…
When Fleur had gone upstairs and left him with Ting-a-ling he didn’t know whether he believed her or not. If she had kept that other thing from him all this time, she could keep anything! Had she understood his words: “You must do as you like, that’s only fair?” He had said them almost mechanically, but they were reasonable. If she had never loved him, even a little, he had never had any right to expect anything; he had been all the time in the position of one to whom she was giving alms. Nothing compelled a person to go on giving alms. And nothing compelled one to go on taking them–except–the ache of want, the ache, the ache!
“You little Djinn! You lucky little toad! Give me some of your complacency–you Chinese atom!” Ting-a-ling turned up his boot-buttons. “When you have been civilised as long as I,” they seemed to say: “In the meantime, scratch my chest.”
And scrattling in that yellow fur Michael thought: ‘Pull yourself together! Man at the South Pole with the first blizzard doesn’t sing: “Want to go home! Want to go home!”–he sticks it. Come, get going!’ He placed Ting-a-ling on the floor, and made for his study. Here were manuscripts, of which the readers to Danby and Winter had already said: “No money in this, but a genuine piece of work meriting consideration.” It was Michael’s business to give the consideration; Danby’s to turn the affair down with the words: “Write him (or her) a civil letter, say we were greatly interested, regret we do not see our way–hope to have the privilege of considering next effort, and so forth. What!”
He turned up his reading-lamp and pulled out a manuscript he had already begun.
“No retreat, no retreat; they must conquer or die who have no retreat;
No retreat, no retreat; they must conquer or die who have no retreat!”
The black footmen’s refrain from ‘Polly’ was all that happened in his mind. Dash it! He must read the thing! Somehow he finished the chapter. He remembered now. The manuscript was all about a man who, when he was a boy, had been so greatly impressed by the sight of a maidservant changing her clothes in a room over the way, that his married life was a continual struggle not to be unfaithful with his wife’s maids. They had just discovered his complex, and he was going to have it out. The rest of the manuscript no doubt would show how that was done. It went most conscientiously into all those precise bodily details which it was now so timorous and Victorian to leave out. Genuine piece of work, and waste of time to go on with it! Old Danby–Freud bored him stiff; and for once Michael did not mind old Danby being in the right. He put the thing back into the drawer. Seven o’clock! Tell Fleur what he had been told about that cousin? Why? Nothing could mend THAT! If only she were speaking the truth about Wilfrid! He went to the window–stars above, and stripes below, stripes of courtyard and back garden. “No retreat, no retreat; they must conquer or die who have no retreat!”
A voice said:
“When will your father be up?”
Old Forsyte! Lord! Lord!
“To-morrow, I believe, sir. Come in! You don’t know my den, I think.”
“No,” said Soames. “Snug! Caricatures. You go in for them–poor stuff!”
“But not modern, sir–a revived art.”
“Queering your neighbours–I never cared for them. They only flourish when the world’s in a mess and people have given up looking straight before them.”
“By Jove!” said Michael; “that’s good. Won’t you sit down, sir?”
Soames sat down, crossing his knees in his accustomed manner. Slim, grey, close–a sealed book, neatly bound! What was HIS complex? Whatever it was, he had never had it out. One could not even imagine the operation.
“I shan’t take away my Goya,” he said very unexpectedly; “consider it Fleur’s. In fact, if I only knew you were interested in the future, I should make more provision. In my opinion death duties will be prohibitive in a few years’ time.”
Michael frowned. “I’d like you to know sir, once for all, that what you do for Fleur, you do for Fleur. I can be Epicurus whenever I like–bread, and on feast days a little bit of cheese.”
Soames looked up with shrewdness in his glance. “I know that,” he said, “I always knew it.”
Michael bowed.
“With this land depression your father’s hard hit, I should think.”
“Well, he talks of being on the look out for soap or cars; but I shouldn’t be surprised if he mortgages again and lingers on.”
“A title without a place,” said Soames, “is not natural. He’d better wait for me to go, if I leave anything, that is. But listen to me: I’ve been thinking. Aren’t you happy together, you two, that you don’t have children?”
Michael hesitated.
“I don’t think,” he said slowly, “that we have ever had a scrap, or anything like it. I have been–I am–terribly fond of her, but you have known better than I that I only picked up the pieces.”
“Who told you that?”
“To-day–Miss June Forsyte.”
“THAT woman!” said Soames. “She can’t keep her foot out of anything. A boy and girl affair–over months before you married.”
“But deep, sir,” said Michael gently.
“Deep–who knows at that age? Deep?” Soames paused: “You’re a good fellow–I always knew. Be patient–take a long view.”
“Yes, sir,” said Michael, very still in his chair, “If I can.”
“She’s everything to me,” muttered Soames abruptly.
“And to me–which doesn’t make it easier.”
The line between Soames’ brows deepened.
“Perhaps not. But hold on! As gently as you like, but hold on! She’s young. She’ll flutter about; there’s nothing in it.”
‘Does he know about the other thing?’ thought Michael.
“I have my own worries,” went on Soames, “but they’re nothing to what I should feel if anything went wrong with her.”
Michael felt a twinge of sympathy, unusual towards that self-contained grey figure.
“I shall try my best,” he said quietly; “but I’m not naturally Solomon at six stone seven.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Soames, “I’m not so sure. Anyway, a child–well, a child would be–a–sort of insur–” He baulked, the word was not precisely–!
Michael froze.
“As to that, I can’t say anything.”
Soames got up.
“No,” he said wistfully, “I suppose not. It’s time to dress.”
To dress–to dine, and if to dine, to sleep–to sleep, to dream! And then what dreams might come!
On the way to his dressing-room Michael encountered Coaker; the man’s face was long.
“What’s up, Coaker?”
“The little dog, sir, has been sick in the drawing-room.”
“The deuce he has!”
“Yes, sir; it appears that some one left him there alone. He makes himself felt, sir. I always say: He’s an important little dog…”
During dinner, as if visited by remorse for having given them advice and two pictures worth some thousands of pounds, Soames pitched a tale like those of James in his palmy days. He spoke of the French–the fall of the mark–the rise in Consols–the obstinacy of Dumetrius, the picture-dealer, over a Constable skyscape which Soames wanted and Dumetrius did not, but to which the fellow held on just for the sake of a price which Soames did not mean to pay. He spoke of the trouble which he foresaw with the United States over their precious Prohibition. They were a headstrong lot. They took up a thing and ran their heads against a stone wall. He himself had never drunk anything to speak of, but he liked to feel that he could. The Americans liked to feel that he couldn’t, that was tyranny. They were overbearing. He shouldn’t be surprised if everybody took to drinking over there. As to the League of Nations, a man that morning had palavered it up. That cock wouldn’t fight–spend money, and arrange things which would have arranged themselves, but as for anything important, such as abolishing Bolshevism, or poison gas, they never would, and to pretend it was all-me-eye-and-Betty–Martin. It was almost a record for one habitually taciturn, and deeply useful to two young people only anxious that he should continue to talk, so that they might think of other things. The conduct of Ting-a-ling was the sole other subject of consideration. Fleur thought it due to the copper floor. Soames that he must have picked up something in the Square–dogs were always picking things up. Michael suggested that it was just Chinese–a protest against there being nobody to watch his self-sufficiency. In China there were four hundred million people to watch each other being self-sufficient. What would one expect of a Chinaman suddenly placed in the Gobi Desert? He would certainly be sick.
“No retreat, no retreat; they must conquer or die who have no retreat!”
When Fleur left them, both felt that they could not so soon again bear each other’s company, and Soames said: “I’ve got some figures to attend to–I’ll go to my room.”
Michael stood up. “Wouldn’t you like my den, sir?”
“No,” said Soames, “I must concentrate. Say goodnight to Fleur for me.”
Michael remained smoking above the porcelain effigies of Spanish fruits. That white monkey couldn’t eat those and throw away the rinds! Would the fruits of his life be porcelain in future? Live in the same house with Fleur, estranged? Live with Fleur as now, feeling a stranger, even an unwelcome stranger? Clear out, and join the Air Force, or the ‘Save the Children’ corps? Which of the three courses was least to be deplored? The ash of his cigar grew long, dropped incontinent, and grew again; the porcelain fruits mocked him with their sheen and glow; Coaker put his head in and took it away again. (The Governor had got the hump–good sort, the Governor!) Decision waited for him, somewhere, somewhen–Fleur’s, not his own. His mind was too miserable and disconcerted to be known; but she would know hers. She had the information which alone made decision possible about Wilfrid, that cousin, her own actions and feelings. Yes, decision would come, and would it matter in a world where pity was punk and only a Chinese philosophy of any use?
But not be sick in the drawing-room, try and keep one’s end up, even if there were no one to see one being important!…
He had been asleep and it was dark, or all but, in his bed-dressing-room. Something white by his bed. A fragrant faint warmth close to him; a voice saying low: “It’s only me. Let me come in your bed, Michael. “Like a child–like a child! Michael reached out his arms. The whiteness and the warmth came into them. Curls smothered his mouth, the voice said in his ear: “I wouldn’t have come, would I, if there’d–if there’d been anything?” Michael’s heart, wild, confused, beat against hers.
Chapter VII.
THE ALTOGETHER
Tony Bicket, replete, was in vein that fine afternoon; his balloons left him freely, and he started for home in the mood of a conqueror.
Victorine, too, had colour in her cheeks. She requited the story of his afternoon with the story of hers. A false tale for a true–no word of Danby and Winter, the gentleman with the sliding smile, of the Grand Marnier, or ‘the altogether.’ She had no compunction. It was her secret, her surprise; if, by sitting in or out of ‘the altogether,’ not yet decided, she could make their passage money–well, she should tell him she had won it on a horse. That night she asked:
“Am I so very thin, Tony?” more than once. “I do so want to get fat.”
Bicket, still troubled that she had not shared that lunch, patted her tenderly, and said he would soon have her as fat as butter–he did not explain how.
They dreamed together of blue butterflies, and awoke to chilly gaslight and a breakfast of cocoa and bread-and-butter. Fog! Bicket was swallowed up before the eyes of Victorine ten yards from the door. She returned to the bedroom with anger in her heart. Who would buy balloons in a fog? She would do anything rather than let Tony go on standing out there all the choking days! Undressing again, she washed herself intensively, in case–! She had not long finished when her landlady announced the presence of a messenger boy. He bore an enormous parcel entitled “Mr. Bicket.”
There was a note inside. She read:
“DEAR BICKET, – Here are the togs. Hope they’ll be useful. – Yours, MICHAEL MONT.”
In a voice that trembled she said to the boy:
“Thank you, it’s O. K. Here’s twopence.”
When his rich whistle was heard writhing into the fog, she flung herself down before the ‘togs’ in ecstasy. The sexes were divided by tissue paper. A blue suit, a velour hat, some brown shoes, three pairs of socks with two holes in them, four shirts only a little frayed at the cuffs, two black-and-white ties, six collars, not too new, some handkerchiefs, two vests beautifully thick, two pairs of pants, and a brown overcoat with a belt and just two or three nice little stains. She held the blue suit up against her arms and legs, the trousers and sleeves would only need taking-in about two inches. She piled them in a pyramid, and turned with awe to the spoil beneath the tissue paper. A brown knitted frock with little clear yellow buttons–unsoiled, uncreased. How could anybody spare a thing like that! A brown velvet toque with a little tuft of goldeny-brown feathers. She put it on. A pair of pink stays ever so little faded, with only three inches of bone above the waist, and five inches of bone below, pink silk ribbons, and suspenders–a perfect dream. She could not resist putting them on also. Two pairs of brown stockings; brown shoes; two combinations, a knitted camisole. A white silk jumper with a hole in one sleeve, a skirt of lilac linen that had gone a little in the wash; a pair of pallid pink silk pants; and underneath them all an almost black-brown coat, long and warm and cosy, with great jet buttons, and in the pocket six small handkerchiefs. She took a deep breath of sweetness–geranium!
Her mind leaped forward. Clothed, trousseaued, fitted out–blue butterflies–the sun! Only the money for the tickets wanting. And suddenly she saw herself with nothing on standing before the gentleman with sliding eyes. Who cared! The money!
For the rest of the morning she worked feverishly, shortening Tony, mending the holes in his socks, turning the fray of his cuffs. She ate a biscuit, drank another cup of cocoa–it was fattening, and went for the hole in the white silk jumper. One o’clock. In panic she stripped once more, put on a new combination, pair of stockings, and the stays, then paused in superstition. No! Her own dress and hat–like yesterday! Keep the rest until–! She hastened to her ‘bus, overcome alternately by heat and cold. Perhaps he would give her another glass of that lovely stuff. If only she could go swimmy and not care for anything!
She reached the studio as two o’clock was striking, and knocked. It was lovely and warm in there, much warmer than yesterday, and the significance of this struck her suddenly. In front of the fire was a lady with a little dog.
“Miss Collins–Mrs. Michael Mont; she’s lending us her Peke, Miss Collins.”
The lady–only her own age, and ever so pretty–held out her hand. Geranium! This, then, was she whose clothes–!
She took the hand, but could not speak. If this lady were going to stay, it would be utterly impossible. Before her–so pretty, so beautifully covered–oh! no!
“Now, Ting, be good, and as amusing as you can. Goodbye, Aubrey! Good luck to the picture! Good-bye, Miss Collins; it ought to be wonderful.”
Gone! The scent of geranium fading; the little dog snuffling at the door. The sliding gentleman had two glasses in his hands.
‘Ah!’ thought Victorine, and drank hers at a gulp.
“Now, Miss Collins, you don’t mind, do you! You’ll find everything in there. It’s really nothing. I shall want you lying on your face just here with your elbows on the ground and your head up and a little turned this way; your hair as loose as it can be, and your eyes looking at this bone. You must imagine that it’s a faun or some other bit of all right. The dog’ll help you when he settles down to it. F-a-u-n, you know, not f-a-w-n.”
“Yes,” said Victorine faintly.
“Have another little tot?”
“Oh! please.”
He brought it.
“I quite understand; but you know, really, it’s absurd. You wouldn’t mind with a doctor. That’s right. Look here, I’ll put this little cow-bell on the ground. When you’re in position, give it a tinkle, and I’ll come out. That’ll help you.”
Victorine murmured:
“You ARE kind.”
“Not at all–it’s natural. Now will you start in? The light won’t last for ever. Fifteen bob a day, we said.”
Victorine saw him slide away behind a screen, and looked at the little cow-bell. Fifteen bob! And fifteen bob! And fifteen bob! Many, many fifteen bobs before–! But not more times of sitting than of Tony’s standing from foot to foot, offering balloons. And as if wound up by that thought, she moved like clockwork off the dais, into the model’s room. Cosy in there, too; warm, a green silk garment thrown on a chair. She took off her dress. The beauty of the pink stays struck her afresh. Perhaps the gentleman would like–no, that would be even worse–! A noise reached her–from Ting-a-ling complaining of solitude. If she delayed, she never would–! Stripping hastily, she stood looking at herself in a glass. If only that slim, ivory-white image could move out on to the dais and she could stay here! Oh! It was awful–awful! She couldn’t–no! she couldn’t. She caught up her final garment again. Fifteen bob! But fifteen bob! Before her eyes, wild and mournful, came a vision: Of a huge dome, and a tiny Tony, with little, little balloons in a hand held out! Something cold and steely formed over her heart as icicles form on a window. If that was all they would do for him, she would do better! She dropped the garment; and, confused, numb, stepped forth in the ‘altogether.’ Ting-a-ling growled at her above his bone. She reached the cow-bell and lay down on her face as she had been told, with feet in the air, crossed.
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