Fleur tore herself from his grasp.
"You didn't you--couldn't have tried. You--you betrayed me, Father!"
Bitterly wounded, Soames gazed at her passionate figure writhing there
in front of him.
"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.