Swan Song

Fleur laughed. “No fear!” And her eyes, hazel, clear, glancing, met her cousin’s eyes, deep, steady, grey.

“Michael’s waiting for you with the car,” said Holly.

“All right! Can you carry on till they’ve finished? Norah Curfew’s on duty at five tomorrow morning. I shall be round at nine, before you start for Harridge’s. If you think of anything else, stick it on the list—I’ll make them stump up somehow. Good-night, Holly.”

“Good-night, my dear.”

Was there a gleam of pity in those grey eyes? Pity, indeed!

“Give Jon my love. I do wonder how he likes stoking! We must get some more washbasins in.”

Sitting beside Michael, who was driving their car, she saw again, as it were, Jon’s smile in the glass of the wind-screen, and in the dark her lips pouted as if reaching for it. Measles—they spotted you, and raised your temperature! How empty the streets were, now that the taxis were on strike! Michael looked round at her.

“Well, how’s it going?”

“The beetle man was a caution, Michael. He had a face like a ravaged wedge, a wave of black hair, and the eyes of a lost soul; but he was frightfully efficient.”

“Look! There’s a tank; I was told of them. They’re going down to the docks. Rather provocative! Just as well there are no papers for them to get into.”

Fleur laughed.

“Father’ll be at home. He’s come up to protect me. If there really was shooting, I wonder what he’d do—take his umbrella?”

“Instinct. How about you and Kit? It’s the same thing.”

Fleur did not answer. And when, after seeing her father, she went up-stairs, she stood at the nursery door. The tune that had excited Soames’ surprise made a whiffling sound in the empty passage. “L’amour est enfant de Boheme; il n’a jamais jamais co

That first day spent in stoking an engine had been enough to make anyone smile. An engine-driver almost as youthful, but in private life partner in his own engineering works, had put Jon ‘wise’ to the mystery of getting level combustion. “A tricky job, and very tiring!” Their passengers had behaved well. One had even come up and thanked them. The engine-driver had winked at Jon. There had been some hectic moments. Supping pea soup, Jon thought of them with pleasure. It had been great sport, but his hands and arms felt wrenched. “Oil them tonight,” the engine-driver had said.

A young woman was handing him ‘jacket’ potatoes. She had marvellously clear, brown eyes, something like A

“Butter?”

“Thanks, awfully. These potatoes are frightfully good.”

“So glad.”

“Who runs this canteen?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Michael Mont mostly; he’s a member of Parliament.”

Jon dropped his potato.

“Mrs. Mont? Gracious! She’s a cousin of mine. Is she here?”

“Was. Just gone, I think.”

Jon’s far-sighted eyes travelled round the large and dingy room. Fleur! How amazing!

“Treacle pudding?”

“No, thanks. Nothing more.”

“There’ll be coffee, tea, or cocoa, and eggs and bacon, tomorrow at 5.45.”

“Splendid! I think it’s wonderful.”

“It is, rather, in the time.”

“Thank you awfully. Good-night!”

Jon sought his coat. Outside were Val and Holly in their car.

“Hallo, young Jon! You’re a nice object.”

“What job have you caught, Val?”

“Motor lorry—begin tomorrow.”

“Fine!”

“This’ll knock out racing for a bit.”

“But not England.”

“England? Lord—no! What did you think?”

“Abroad they were saying so.”

“Abroad!” growled Val. “They would!”

And there was silence at thirty miles an hour.

From his bedroom door Jon said to his sister:

“They say Fleur runs that canteen. Is she really so old now?”

“Fleur has a very clear head, my dear. She saw you there. No second go of measles, Jon.”

Jon laughed.

“Aunt Winifred,” said Holly, “will be delighted to have A

“Splendid! That’s awfully good of her.”

“Well, good-night; bless you. There’s still hot water in the bathroom.”

In his bath Jon lay luxuriously still. Sixty hours away from his young wife, he was already looking forward with impatience to her appearance on Friday. And so Fleur ran that canteen! A fashionable young woman with a clear and, no doubt, shingled head—he felt a great curiosity to see her again, but nothing more. Second go of measles! Not much! He had suffered too severely from the first. Besides, he was too glad to be back—result of long, half-acknowledged homesickness. His mother had been home-sick for Europe; but HE had felt no assuagement in Italy and France. It was England he had wanted. Something in the way people walked and talked; in the smell and the look of everything; some good-humoured, slow, ironic essence in the air, after the tension of America, the shrillness of Italy, the clarity of Paris. For the first time in five years his nerves felt coated. Even those features of his native land which offended the aesthetic soul, were comforting. The approaches to London, the countless awful little houses of brick and slate which his own great-grandfather, ‘Superior Dosset’ Forsyte, had helped, so his father had once told him, to build; the many little new houses, rather better, but still bent on compromise; the total absence of symmetry or plan; the ugly railway stations; the cockney voices, the lack of colour, taste, or pride in people’s dress—all seemed comfortable, a guarantee that England would always be England.

And so Fleur was ru