"If you feel like that," he said, "I can't go. I shall tell Mother that I ought to try and work. There's always the condition of the world!""The condition of the world!"Jon thrust his hands deep into his pockets.
"But there is," he said; "think of the people starving!"Fleur shook her head. "No, no, I never, never will make myself miserable for nothing.""Nothing! But there's an awful state of things, and of course one ought to help.""Oh! yes, I know all that. But you can't help people, Jon; they're hopeless. When you pull them out they only get into another hole.
Look at them, still fighting and plotting and struggling, though they're dying in heaps all the time. Idiots!""Aren't you sorry for them?""Oh! sorry--yes, but I'm not going to make myself unhappy about it;that's no good."And they were silent, disturbed by this first glimpse of each other's natures.
"I think people are brutes and idiots," said Fleur stubbornly.
"I think they're poor wretches," said Jon. It was as if they had quarrelled--and at this supreme and awful moment, with parting visible out there in that last gap of the willows!
"Well, go and help your poor wretches, and don't think of me."Jon stood still. Sweat broke out on his forehead, and his limbs trembled. Fleur too had stopped, and was frowning at the river.
"I must believe in things," said Jon with a sort of agony; "we're all meant to enjoy life."Fleur laughed. "Yes; and that's what you won't do, if you don't take care. But perhaps your idea of enjoyment is to make yourself wretched. There are lots of people like that, of course."She was pale, her eyes had darkened, her lips had thinned. Was it Fleur thus staring at the water? Jon had an unreal feeling as if he were passing through the scene in a book where the lover has to choose between love and duty. But just then she looked round at him.
Never was anything so intoxicating as that vivacious look. It acted on him exactly as the tug of a chain acts on a dog--brought him up to her with his tail wagging and his tongue out.
"Don't let's be silly," she said, "time's too short. Look, Jon, you can just see where I've got to cross the river. There, round the bend, where the woods begin."Jon saw a gable, a chimney or two, a patch of wall through the trees--and felt his heart sink.
"I mustn't dawdle any more. It's no good going beyond the next hedge, it gets all open. Let's get on to it and say good-bye."They went side by side, hand in hand, silently toward the hedge, where the may-flower, both pink and white, was in full bloom.
"My Club's the 'Talisman,' Stratton Street, Piccadilly. Letters there will be quite safe, and I'm almost always up once a week."Jon nodded. His face had become extremely set, his eyes stared straight before him.
"To-day's the twenty-third of May," said Fleur; "on the ninth of July I shall be in front of the 'Bacchus and Ariadne' at three o'clock;will you?""I will."
"If you feel as bad as I it's all right. Let those people pass!"A man and woman airing their children went by strung out in Sunday fashion.
The last of them passed the wicket gate.
"Domesticity!" said Fleur, and blotted herself against the hawthorn hedge. The blossom sprayed out above her head, and one pink cluster brushed her cheek. Jon put up his hand jealously to keep it off.
"Good-bye, Jon." For a second they stood with hands hard clasped.
Then their lips met for the third time, and when they parted Fleur broke away and fled through the wicket gate. Jon stood where she had left him, with his forehead against that pink cluster. Gone! For an eternity--for seven weeks all but two days! And here he was, wasting the last sight of her! He rushed to the gate. She was walking swiftly on the heels of the straggling children. She turned her head, he saw her hand make a little flitting gesture; then she sped on, and the trailing family blotted her out from his view.
The words of a comic song--
"Paddington groan-worst ever known--
He gave a sepulchral Paddington groan--"
came into his head, and he sped incontinently back to Reading station. All the way up to London and down to Wansdon he sat with "The Heart of the Trail" open on his knee, knitting in his head a poem so full of feeling that it would not rhyme.
XII
CAPRICE
Fleur sped on. She had need of rapid motion; she was late, and wanted all her wits about her when she got in. She passed the islands, the station, and hotel, and was about to take the ferry, when she saw a skiff with a young man standing up in it, and holding to the bushes.
"Miss Forsyte," he said; "let me put you across. I've come on purpose."She looked at him in blank amazement.
