Enquiring for her at tea time Soames learned that Fleur had been out in
the car since two. Three hours! Where had she gone? Up to London without
a word to him? He had never become quite reconciled with cars. He had
embraced them in principle--like the born empiricist, or Forsyte, that
he was--adopting each symptom of progress as it came along with: "Well,
we couldn't do without them now." But in fact he found them tearing,
great, smelly things. Obliged by Annette to have one--a Rollhard with
pearl-grey cushions, electric light, little mirrors, trays for the ashes
of cigarettes, flower vases--all smelling of petrol and stephanotis--he
regarded it much as he used to regard his brother-in-law, Montague
Dartie. The thing typified all that was fast, insecure, and
subcutaneously oily in modern life. As modern life became faster,
looser, younger, Soames was becoming older, slower, tighter, more and
more in thought and language like his father James before him. He was
almost aware of it himself. Pace and progress pleased him less and
less; there was an ostentation, too, about a car which he considered
provocative in the prevailing mood of Labour. On one occasion that
fellow Sims had driven over the only vested interest of a working man.
Soames had not forgotten the behaviour of its master, when not many
people would have stopped to put up with it. He had been sorry for
the dog, and quite prepared to take its part against the car, if that
ruffian hadn't been so outrageous. With four hours fast becoming five,
and still no Fleur, all the old car-wise feelings he had experienced in
person and by proxy balled within him, and sinking sensations troubled
the pit of his stomach. At seven he telephoned to Winifred by trunk
call. No! Fleur had not been to Green Street. Then where was she?
Visions of his beloved daughter rolled up in her pretty frills, all
blood and dust-stained, in some hideous catastrophe, began to haunt
him. He went to her room and spied among her things. She had taken
nothing--no dressing-case, no Jewellery. And this, a relief in one
sense, increased his fears of an accident. Terrible to be helpless when
his loved one was missing, especially when he couldn't bear fuss
or publicity of any kind! What should he do if she were not back by
nightfall?
At a quarter to eight he heard the car. A great weight lifted from off
his heart; he hurried down. She was getting out--pale and tired-looking,
but nothing wrong. He met her in the hall.
"You've frightened me. Where have you been?"
"To Robin Hill. I'm sorry, dear. I had to go; I'll tell you afterward."
And, with a flying kiss, she ran up-stairs.