第12章

"Mrs.Heron,Mam'zelle Beauce.Well,Mam'zelle--good sermon?"For,now that he had not much more time before him,the only part of the service connected with this world absorbed what interest in church remained to him.Mam'zelle Beauce stretched out a spidery hand clad in a black kid glove--she had been in the best families--and the rather sad eyes of her lean yellowish face seemed to ask:

"Are you well-brrred?"Whenever Holly or Jolly did anything unpleasing to her--a not uncommon occurrence he would say to them:

"The little Tayleurs never did that--they were such well-brrred little children."Jolly hated the little Tayleurs;Holly wondered dreadfully how it was she fell so short of them.'A thin rum little soul,'old Jolyon thought her--Mam'zelle Beauce.

Luncheon was a successful meal,the mushrooms which he himself had picked in the mushroom house,his chosen strawberries,and another bottle of the Steinberg cabinet filled him with a certain aromatic spirituality,and a conviction that he would have a touch of eczema to-morrow.

After lunch they sat under the oak tree drinking Turkish coffee.

It was no matter of grief to him when Mademoiselle Beauce withdrew to write her Sunday letter to her sister,whose future had been endangered in the past by swallowing a pin--an event held up daily in warning to the children to eat slowly and digest what they had eaten.At the foot of the bank,on a carriage rug,Holly and the dog Balthasar teased and loved each other,and in the shade old Jolyon with his legs crossed and his cigar luxuriously savoured,gazed at Irene sitting in the swing.A light,vaguely swaying,grey figure with a fleck of sunlight here and there upon it,lips just opened,eyes dark and soft under lids a little drooped.She looked content;surely it did her good to come and see him!The selfishness of age had not set its proper grip on him,for he could still feel pleasure in the pleasure of others,realising that what he wanted,though much,was not quite all that mattered.

"It's quiet here,"he said;"you mustn't come down if you find it dull.But it's a pleasure to see you.My little sweet's is the only face which gives me any pleasure,except yours.">From her smile he knew that she was not beyond liking to be appreciated,and this reassured him."That's not humbug,"he said.

"I never told a woman I admired her when I didn't.In fact Idon't know when I've told a woman I admired her,except my wife in the old days;and wives are funny."He was silent,but resumed abruptly:

"She used to expect me to say it more often than I felt it,and there we were."Her face looked mysteriously troubled,and,afraid that he had said something painful,he hurried on:"When my little sweet marries,I hope she'll find someone who knows what women feel.I shan't be here to see it,but there's too much topsy-turvydom in marriage;I don't want her to pitch up against that."And,aware that he had made bad worse,he added:"That dog will scratch."A silence followed.Of what was she thinking,this pretty creature whose life was spoiled;who had done with love,and yet was made for love?Some day when he was gone,perhaps,she would find another mate--not so disorderly as that young fellow who had got himself run over.Ah!but her husband?

"Does Soames never trouble you?"he asked.

She shook her head.Her face had closed up suddenly.For all her softness there was something irreconcilable about her.And a glimpse of light on the inexorable nature of sex antipathies strayed into a brain which,belonging to early Victorian civil-isation--so much older than this of his old age--had never thought about such primitive things.

"That's a comfort,"he said."You can see the Grand Stand to-day.

Shall we take a turn round?"

Through the flower and fruit garden,against whose high outer walls peach trees and nectarines were trained to the sun,through the stables,the vinery,the mushroom house,the asparagus beds,the rosery,the summer-house,he conducted her--even into the kitchen garden to see the tiny green peas which Holly loved to scoop out of their pods with her finger,and lick up from the palm of her little brown hand.Many delightful things he showed her,while Holly and the dog Balthasar danced ahead,or came to them at intervals for attention.It was one of the happiest afternoons he had ever spent,but it tired him and he was glad to sit down in the music room and let her give him tea.A special little friend of Holly's had come in--a fair child with short hair like a boy's.And the two sported in the distance,under the stairs,on the stairs,and up in the gallery.Old Jolyon begged for Chopin.She played studies,mazurkas,waltzes,till the two children,creeping near,stood at the foot of the piano their dark and golden heads bent forward,listening.Old Jolyon watched.

"Let's see you dance,you two!"

Shyly,with a false start,they began.Bobbing and circling,earnest,not very adroit,they went past and past his chair to the strains of that waltz.He watched them and the face of her who was playing turned smiling towards those little dancers thinking:

'Sweetest picture I've seen for ages.'

A voice said:

"Hollee!Mais enfin--quest-ce que tu fais la--danser,le dimanche!

Viens,donc!"

But the children came close to old Jolyon,knowing that he would save them,and gazed into a face which was decidedly 'caught out.'