"You didn't try--you didn't--I was a fool! Iwon't believe he could--he ever could! Only yesterday he--! Oh! why did I ask you?""Yes," said Soames, quietly, "why did you? I swallowed my feelings;I did my best for you, against my judgment--and this is my reward.
Good-night!"
With every nerve in his body twitching he went toward the door.
Fleur darted after him.
"He gives me up? You mean that? Father!"Soames turned and forced himself to answer:
"Yes."
"Oh!" cried Fleur. "What did you--what could you have done in those old days?"The breathless sense of really monstrous injustice cut the power of speech in Soames' throat. What had he done! What had they done to him!
And with quite unconscious dignity he put his hand on his breast, and looked at her.
"It's a shame!" cried Fleur passionately.
Soames went out. He mounted, slow and icy, to his picture gallery, and paced among his treasures. Outrageous! Oh! Outrageous! She was spoiled! Ah! and who had spoiled her? He stood still before the Goya copy. Accustomed to her own way in everything. Flower of his life! And now that she couldn't have it! He turned to the window for some air. Daylight was dying, the moon rising, gold behind the poplars! What sound was that? Why! That piano thing! A dark tune, with a thrum and a throb! She had set it going--what comfort could she get from that? His eyes caught movement down there beyond the lawn, under the trellis of rambler roses and young acacia-trees, where the moonlight fell. There she was, roaming up and down. His heart gave a little sickening jump. What would she do under this blow? How could he tell? What did he know of her--he had only loved her all his life--looked on her as the apple of his eye! He knew nothing--had no notion. There she was--and that dark tune--and the river gleaming in the moonlight!
'I must go out,' he thought.
He hastened down to the drawing-room, lighted just as he had left it, with the piano thrumming out that waltz, or fox-trot, or whatever they called it in these days, and passed through on to the verandah.
Where could he watch, without her seeing him? And he stole down through the fruit garden to the boat-house. He was between her and the river now, and his heart felt lighter. She was his daughter, and Annette's--she wouldn't do anything foolish; but there it was--he didn't know! From the boat house window he could see the last acacia and the spin of her skirt when she turned in her restless march.
That tune had run down at last--thank goodness! He crossed the floor and looked through the farther window at the water slow-flowing past the lilies. It made little bubbles against them, bright where a moon-streak fell. He remembered suddenly that early morning when he had slept on the house-boat after his father died, and she had just been born--nearly nineteen years ago! Even now he recalled the unaccustomed world when he woke up, the strange feeling it had given him. That day the second passion of his life began--for this girl of his, roaming under the acacias. What a comfort she had been to him!
And all the soreness and sense of outrage left him. If he could make her happy again, he didn't care! An owl flew, queeking, queeking; a bat flitted by; the moonlight brightened and broadened on the water.
How long was she going to roam about like this! He went back to the window, and suddenly saw her coming down to the bank. She stood quite close, on the landing-stage. And Soames watched, clenching his hands. Should he speak to her? His excitement was intense. The stillness of her figure, its youth, its absorption in despair, in longing, in--itself. He would always remember it, moonlit like that;and the faint sweet reek of the river and the shivering of the willow leaves. She had everything in the world that he could give her, except the one thing that she could not have because of him! The perversity of things hurt him at that moment, as might a fish-bone in his throat.
Then, with an infinite relief, he saw her turn back toward the house.
What could he give her to make amends? Pearls, travel, horses, other young men--anything she wanted--that he might lose the memory of her young figure lonely by the water! There! She had set that tune going again! Why--it was a mania! Dark, thrumming, faint, travelling from the house. It was as though she had said: "If Ican't have something to keep me going, I shall die of this!" Soames dimly understood. Well, if it helped her, let her keep it thrumming on all night! And, mousing back through the fruit garden, he regained the verandah. Though he meant to go in and speak to her now, he still hesitated, not knowing what to say, trying hard to recall how it felt to be thwarted in love. He ought to know, ought to remember--and he could not! Gone--all real recollection; except that it had hurt him horribly. In this blankness he stood passing his handkerchief over hands and lips, which were very dry. By craning his head he could just see Fleur, standing with her back to that piano still grinding out its tune, her arms tight crossed on her breast, a lighted cigarette between her lips, whose smoke half veiled her face. The expression on it was strange to Soames, the eyes shone and stared, and every feature was alive with a sort of wretched scorn and anger. Once or twice he had seen Annette look like that--the face was too vivid, too naked, not his daughter's at that moment.
And he dared not go in, realising the futility of any attempt at consolation. He sat down in the shadow of the ingle-nook.
Monstrous trick, that Fate had played him! Nemesis! That old unhappy marriage! And in God's name-why? How was he to know, when he wanted Irene so violently, and she consented to be his, that she would never love him? The tune died and was renewed, and died again, and still Soames sat in the shadow, waiting for he knew not what.
The fag of Fleur's cigarette, flung through the window, fell on the grass; he watched it glowing, burning itself out. The moon had freed herself above the poplars, and poured her unreality on the garden.