"Whom have you got at 'The Shelter' next week?"Annette went on touching her lips delicately with salve--he always wished she wouldn't do that.
"Your sister Winifred, and the Car-r-digans"--she took up a tiny stick of black--"and Prosper Profond.""That Belgian chap? Why him?"Annette turned her neck lazily, touched one eyelash, and said:
"He amuses Winifred."
"I want some one to amuse Fleur; she's restive.""R-restive?" repeated Annette. "Is it the first time you see that, my friend? She was born r-restive, as you call it."Would she never get that affected roll out of her r's?
He touched the dress she had taken off, and asked:
"What have you been doing?"
Annette looked at him, reflected in her glass. Her just-brightened lips smiled, rather full, rather ironical.
"Enjoying myself," she said.
"Oh!" answered Soames glumly. "Ribbandry, I suppose."It was his word for all that incomprehensible running in and out of shops that women went in for. "Has Fleur got her summer dresses?""You don't ask if I have mine.""You don't care whether I do or not."
"Quite right. Well, she has; and I have mine--terribly expensive.""H'm!" said Soames. "What does that chap Profond do in England?"Annette raised the eyebrows she had just finished.
"He yachts."
"Ah!" said Soames; "he's a sleepy chap."
"Sometimes," answered Annette, and her face had a sort of quiet enjoyment. "But sometimes very amusing.""He's got a touch of the tar-brush about him."Annette stretched herself.
"Tar-brush?" she said. "What is that? His mother was Armenienne.""That's it, then," muttered Soames. "Does he know anything about pictures?""He knows about everything--a man of the world.""Well, get some one for Fleur. I want to distract her. She's going off on Saturday to Val Dartie and his wife; I don't like it.""Why not?"Since the reason could not be explained without going into family history, Soames merely answered:
"Racketing about. There's too much of it.""I like that little Mrs. Val; she is very quiet and clever.""I know nothing of her except-- This thing's new." And Soames took up a creation from the bed.
Annette received it from him.
"Would you hook me?" she said.
Soames hooked. Glancing once over her shoulder into the glass, he saw the expression on her face, faintly amused, faintly contemptuous, as much as to say: "Thanks! You will never learn!" No, thank God, he wasn't a Frenchman! He finished with a jerk, and the words: "It's too low here." And he went to the door, with the wish to get away from her and go down to Fleur again.
Annette stayed a powder-puff, and said with startling suddenness "Que to es grossier!"He knew the expression--he had reason to. The first time she had used it he had thought it meant "What a grocer you are!" and had not known whether to be relieved or not when better informed. He resented the word--he was not coarse! If he was coarse, what was that chap in the room beyond his, who made those horrible noises in the morning when he cleared his throat, or those people in the Lounge who thought it well-bred to say nothing but what the whole world could hear at the top of their voices--quacking inanity! Coarse, because he had said her dress was low! Well, so it was! He went out without reply.
Coming into the Lounge from the far end, he at once saw Fleur where he had left her. She sat with crossed knees, slowly balancing a foot in silk stocking and grey shoe, sure sign that she was dreaming. Her eyes showed it too--they went off like that sometimes. And then, in a moment, she would come to life, and be as quick and restless as a monkey. And she knew so much, so self-assured, and not yet nineteen.
What was that odious word? Flapper! Dreadful young creatures--squealing and squawking and showing their legs! The worst of them bad dreams, the best of them powdered angels! Fleur was not a flapper, not one of those slangy, ill-bred young females. And yet she was frighteningly self-willed, and full of life, and determined to enjoy it. Enjoy! The word brought no puritan terror to Soames;but it brought the terror suited to his temperament. He had always been afraid to enjoy to-day for fear he might not enjoy tomorrow so much. And it was terrifying to feel that his daughter was divested of that safeguard. The very way she sat in that chair showed it--lost in her dream. He had never been lost in a dream himself--there was nothing to be had out of it; and where she got it from he did not know! Certainly not from Annette! And yet Annette, as a young girl, when he was hanging about her, had once had a flowery look. Well, she had lost it now!
Fleur rose from her chair-swiftly, restlessly; and flung herself down at a writing-table. Seizing ink and writing paper, she began to write as if she had not time to breathe before she got her letter written. And suddenly she saw him. The air of desperate absorption vanished, she smiled, waved a kiss, made a pretty face as if she were a little puzzled and a little bored.
Ah! She was "fine"--"fine!"
III
AT ROBIN HILL
Jolyon Forsyte had spent his boy's nineteenth birthday at Robin Hill, quietly going into his affairs. He did everything quietly now, because his heart was in a poor way, and, like all his family, he disliked the idea of dying. He had never realised how much till one day, two years ago, he had gone to his doctor about certain symptoms, and been told:
"At any moment, on any overstrain."
