"Highgate." He counted on his fingers. "It'll make twelve of them there, including wives. How do you think Fleur looks?""Remarkably well."Soames nodded. He had never seen her look prettier, yet he could not rid himself of the impression that this business was unnatural--remembering still that crushed figure burrowing into the corner of the sofa. From that night to this day he had received from her no confidences. He knew from his chauffeur that she had made one more attempt on Robin Hill and drawn blank--an empty house, no one at home. He knew that she had received a letter, but not what was in it, except that it had made her hide herself and cry. He had remarked that she looked at him sometimes when she thought he wasn't noticing, as if she were wondering still what he had done--forsooth--to make those people hate him so. Well, there it was! Annette had come back, and things had worn on through the summer--very miserable, till suddenly Fleur had said she was going to marry young Mont. She had shown him a little more affection when she told him that. And he had yielded--what was the good of opposing it? God knew that he had never wished to thwart her in anything! And the young man seemed quite delirious about her. No doubt she was in a reckless mood, and she was young, absurdly young. But if he opposed her, he didn't know what she would do; for all he could tell she might want to take up a profession, become a doctor or solicitor, some nonsense. She had no aptitude for painting, writing, music, in his view the legitimate occupations of unmarried women, if they must do something in these days. On the whole, she was safer married, for he could see too well how feverish and restless she was at home. Annette, too, had been in favour of it--Annette, from behind the veil of his refusal to know what she was about, if she was about anything. Annette had said:
"Let her marry this young man. He is a nice boy--not so highty-flighty as he seems." Where she got her expressions, he didn't know--but her opinion soothed his doubts. His wife, whatever her conduct, had clear eyes and an almost depressing amount of common sense. He had settled fifty thousand on Fleur, taking care that there was no cross settlement in case it didn't turn out well. Could it turn out well? She had not got over that other boy--he knew. They were to go to Spain for the honeymoon. He would be even lonelier when she was gone. But later, perhaps, she would forget, and turn to him again!
Winifred's voice broke on his reverie.
"Why! Of all wonders-June!"
There, in a djibbah--what things she wore!--with her hair straying from under a fillet, Soames saw his cousin, and Fleur going forward to greet her. The two passed from their view out on to the stairway.
"Really," said Winifred, "she does the most impossible things! Fancy her coming!""What made you ask her?" muttered Soames.
1
And she had changed her mind.
When Fleur came forward and said to her, "Do come up while I'm changing my dress," she had followed up the stairs. The girl led the way into Imogen's old bedroom, set ready for her toilet.
June sat down on the bed, thin and upright, like a little spirit in the sear and yellow. Fleur locked the door.
The girl stood before her divested of her wedding dress. What a pretty thing she was "I suppose you think me a fool," she said, with quivering lips, "when it was to have been Jon. But what does it matter? Michael wants me, and I don't care. It'll get me away from home." Diving her hand into the frills on her breast, she brought out a letter. "Jon wrote me this."June read: "Lake Okanagen, British Columbia. I'm not coming back to England. Bless you always. Jon.""She's made safe, you see," said Fleur.
June handed back the letter.
"That's not fair to Irene," she said, "she always told Jon he could do as he wished."Fleur smiled bitterly. "Tell me, didn't she spoil your life too?"June looked up. "Nobody can spoil a life, my dear. That's nonsense.
Things happen, but we bob up."
With a sort of terror she saw the girl sink on her knees and bury her face in the djibbah. A strangled sob mounted to June's ears.
"It's all right--all right," she murmured, "Don't! There, there!"But the point of the girl's chin was pressed ever closer into her thigh, and the sound was dreadful of her sobbing.
Well, well! It had to come. She would feel better afterward! June stroked the short hair of that shapely head; and all the scattered mother-sense in her focussed itself and passed through the tips of her fingers into the girl's brain.
"Don't sit down under it, my dear," she said at last. "We can't control life, but we can fight it. Make the best of things. I've had to. I held on, like you; and I cried, as you're crying now. And look at me!"Fleur raised her head; a sob merged suddenly into a little choked laugh. In truth it was a thin and rather wild and wasted spirit she was looking at, but it had brave eyes.
"All right!" she said. "I'm sorry. I shall forget him, I suppose, if I fly fast and far enough."And, scrambling to her feet, she went over to the wash-stand.
June watched her removing with cold water the traces of emotion.
Save for a little becoming pinkness there was nothing left when she stood before the mirror. June got off the bed and took a pin-cushion in her hand. To put two pins into the wrong places was all the vent she found for sympathy.
"Give me a kiss," she said when Fleur was ready, and dug her chin into the girl's warm cheek.
"I want a whiff," said Fleur; "don't wait."June left her, sitting on the bed with a cigarette between her lips and her eyes half closed, and went down-stairs. In the doorway of the drawing-room stood Soames as if unquiet at his daughter's tardiness. June tossed her head and passed down on to the half-landing. Her cousin Francie was standing there.
"Look!" said June, pointing with her chin at Soames. "That man's fatal!""How do you mean," said Francie, "fatal?"June did not answer her. "I shan't wait to see them off," she said.
"Good-bye!"
"Good-bye!" said Francie, and her eyes, of a Celtic grey, goggled.
