Title: To Let
Author: Galsworthy, John, 1867-1933
Language: English
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TO LET


by

John Galsworthy



AUTHOR'S NOTE

With this volume, The Forsyte Saga--that series comprising "The Man of
Property," "Indian Summer of a Forsyte" (from the volume "Five Tales"),
"In Chancery," and "Awakening"--comes to an end. J. G.



CONTENTS

PART I

    I. ENCOUNTER
   II. FINE FLEUR FORSYTE
  III. AT ROBIN HILL
   IV. THE MAUSOLEUM
    V. THE NATIVE HEATH
   VI. JON
  VII. FLEUR
 VIII. IDYLL ON GRASS
   IX. GOYA
    X. TRIO
   XI. DUET
  XII. CAPRICE

PART II

    I. MOTHER AND SON
   II. FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS
  III. MEETINGS
   IV. IN GREEN STREET
    V. PURELY FORSYTE AFFAIRS
   VI. SOAMES' PRIVATE LIFE
  VII. JUNE TAKES A HAND
 VIII. THE BIT BETWEEN THE TEETH
   IX. FAT IN THE FIRE
    X. DECISION
   XI. TIMOTHY PROPHESIES

PART III

    I. OLD JOLYON WALKS
   II. CONFESSION
  III. IRENE!
   IV. SOAMES COGITATES
    V. THE FIXED IDEA
   VI. DESPERATE
  VII. EMBASSY
 VIII. THE DARK TUNE
   IX. UNDER THE OAK-TREE
    X. FLEUR'S WEDDING
   XI. THE LAST OF THE FORSYTES



PART I



I

ENCOUNTER


Soames Forsyte emerged from the Knightsbridge Hotel, where he was
staying, in the afternoon of the 12th of May, 1920, with the intention
of visiting a collection of pictures in a Gallery off Cork Street, and
looking into the Future. He walked. Since the War he never took a cab
if he could help it. Their drivers were, in his view, an uncivil lot,
though, now that the War was over and supply beginning to exceed demand
again, getting more civil in accordance with the custom of human
nature. Still, he had not forgiven them, deeply identifying them with
gloomy memories and, now dimly, like all members of their class, with
revolution. The considerable anxiety he had passed through during the
War, and the more considerable anxiety he had since undergone in the
Peace, had produced psychological consequences in a tenacious nature.
He had, mentally, so frequently experienced ruin, that he had ceased to
believe in its material probability. Paying away four thousand a year
in income and super-tax, one could not very well be worse off! A
fortune of a quarter of a million, encumbered only by a wife and one
daughter, and very diversely invested, afforded substantial guarantee
even against that "wildcat notion"--a levy on capital. And as to
confiscation of war profits, he was entirely in favor of it, for he had
none, and "serve the beggars right!" The price of pictures, moreover,
had, if anything, gone up, and he had done better with his collection
since the War began than ever before. Air-raids, also, had acted
beneficially on a spirit congenitally cautious, and hardened a
character already dogged. To be in danger of being entirely dispersed
inclined one to be less apprehensive of the more partial dispersions
involved in levies and taxation, while the habit of condemning the
impudence of the Germans had led naturally to condemning that of Labor,
if not openly at least in the sanctuary of his soul.

He walked. There was, moreover, time to spare, for Fleur was to meet
him at the Gallery at four o'clock, and it was as yet but half past
two. It was good for him to walk--his liver was a little constricted
and his nerves rather on edge. His wife was always out when she was in
Town, and his daughter WOULD flibberty-gibbet all over the place like
most young women since the War. Still, he must be thankful that she had
been too young to do anything in that War itself. Not, of course, that
he had not supported the War from its inception, with all his soul, but
between that and supporting it with the bodies of his wife and
daughter, there had been a gap fixed by something old-fashioned within
him which abhorred emotional extravagance. He had, for instance,
strongly objected to Annette, so attractive, and in 1914 only
thirty-five, going to her native France, her "chere patrie" as, under
the stimulus of war, she had begun to call it, to nurse her "braves
poilus," forsooth! Ruining her health and her looks! As if she were
really a nurse! He had put a stopper on it. Let her do needlework for
them at home, or knit! She had not gone, therefore, and had never been
quite the same woman since. A bad tendency of hers to mock at him, not
openly, but in continual little ways, had grown. As for Fleur, the War
had resolved the vexed problem whether or not she should go to school.
She was better away from her mother in her war mood, from the chance of
air-raids, and the impetus to do extravagant things; so he had placed
her in a seminary as far West as had seemed to him compatible with
excellence, and had missed her horribly. Fleur! He had never regretted
the somewhat outlandish name by which at her birth he had decided so
suddenly to call her--marked concession though it had been to the
French. Fleur! A pretty name--a pretty child! But restless--too
restless; and wilful! Knowing her power too over her father! Soames
often reflected on the mistake it was to dote on his daughter. To get
old and dote! Sixty-five! He was getting on; but he didn't feel it,
for, fortunately perhaps, considering Annette's youth and good looks,
his second marriage had turned out a cool affair. He had known but one
real passion in his life--for that first wife of his--Irene. Yes, and
that fellow, his Cousin Jolyon, who had gone off with her, was looking
very shaky, they said. No wonder, at seventy-two, after twenty years of
a third marriage!

Soames paused a moment in his march to lean over the railings of the
Row. A suitable spot for reminiscence, half-way between that house in
Park Lane which had seen his birth and his parents' deaths, and the
little house in Montpellier Square where thirty-five years ago he had
enjoyed his first edition of matrimony. Now, after twenty years of his
second edition, that old tragedy seemed to him like a previous
existence--which had ended when Fleur was born in place of the son he
had hoped for. For many years he had ceased regretting, even vaguely,
the son who had not been born; Fleur filled the bill in his heart.
After all, she bore his name; and he was not looking forward at all to
the time when she would change it. Indeed, if he ever thought of such a
calamity, it was seasoned by the vague feeling that he could make her
rich enough to purchase perhaps and extinguish the name of the fellow
who married her--why not, since, as it seemed, women were equal to men
nowadays? And Soames, secretly convinced that they were not, passed his
curved hand over his face vigorously, till it reached the comfort of
his chin. Thanks to abstemious habits, he had not grown fat and flabby;
his nose was pale and thin, his grey moustache close-clipped, his
eyesight unimpaired. A slight stoop closened and corrected the
expansion given to his face by the heightening of his forehead in the
recession of his grey hair. Little change had Time wrought in the
"warmest" of the young Forsytes, as the last of the old
Forsytes--Timothy--now in his hundred and first year, would have
phrased it.

The shade from the plane-trees fell on his neat Homburg hat; he had
given up top hats--it was no use attracting attention to wealth in days
like these. Plane-trees! His thoughts travelled sharply to Madrid--the
Easter before the War, when, having to make up his mind about that Goya
picture, he had taken a voyage of discovery to study the painter on his
spot. The fellow had impressed him--great range, real genius! Highly as
the chap ranked, he would rank even higher before they had finished
with him. The second Goya craze would be greater even than the first;
oh, yes! And he had bought. On that visit he had--as never
before--commissioned a copy of a fresco painting called "La Vendimia,"
wherein was the figure of a girl with an arm akimbo, who had reminded
him of his daughter. He had it now in the Gallery at Mapledurham, and
rather poor it was--you couldn't copy Goya. He would still look at it,
however, if his daughter were not there, for the sake of something
irresistibly reminiscent in the light, erect balance of the figure, the
width between the arching eyebrows, the eager dreaming of the dark
eyes. Curious that Fleur should have dark eyes, when his own were
grey--no pure Forsyte had brown eyes--and her mother's blue! But of
course her grandmother Lamotte's eyes were dark as treacle!

He began to walk on again towards Hyde Park Corner. No greater change
in all England than in the Row! Born almost within hail of it, he could
remember it from 1860 on. Brought there as a child between the
crinolines to stare at tight-trousered dandies in whiskers, riding with
a cavalry seat; to watch the doffing of curly-brimmed and white top
hats; the leisurely air of it all, and the little bow-legged man in a
long red waistcoat who used to come among the fashion with dogs on
several strings, and try to sell one to his mother: King Charles
spaniels, Italian greyhounds, affectionate to her crinoline--you never
saw them now. You saw no quality of any sort, indeed, just working
people sitting in dull rows with nothing to stare at but a few young
bouncing females in pot hats, riding astride, or desultory Colonials
charging up and down on dismal-looking hacks; with, here and there,
little girls on ponies, or old gentlemen jogging their livers, or an
orderly trying a great galumphing cavalry horse; no thoroughbreds, no
grooms, no bowing, no scraping, no gossip--nothing; only the trees the
same--the trees indifferent to the generations and declensions of
mankind. A democratic England--dishevelled, hurried, noisy, and
seemingly without an apex. And that something fastidious in the soul of
Soames turned over within him. Gone for ever, the close borough of rank
and polish! Wealth there was--oh, yes! wealth--he himself was a richer
man than his father had ever been; but manners, flavour, quality, all
gone, engulfed in one vast, ugly, shoulder-rubbing, petrol-smelling
Cheerio. Little half-beaten pockets of gentility and caste lurking here
and there, dispersed and chetif, as Annette would say; but nothing ever
again firm and coherent to look up to. And into this new hurly-burly of
bad manners and loose morals his daughter--flower of his life--was
flung! And when those Labour chaps got power--if they ever did--the
worst was yet to come!

He passed out under the archway, at last no longer--thank
goodness!--disfigured by the gun-grey of its search-light. 'They'd
better put a search-light on to where they're all going,' he thought,
'and light up their precious democracy!' And he directed his steps
along the Club fronts of Piccadilly. George Forsyte, of course, would
be sitting in the bay window of the Iseeum. The chap was so big now
that he was there nearly all his time, like some immovable, sardonic,
humorous eye noting the decline of men and things. And Soames hurried,
ever constitutionally uneasy beneath his cousin's glance. George, who,
as he had heard, had written a letter signed "Patriot" in the middle of
the War, complaining of the Government's hysteria in docking the oats
of race-horses. Yes, there he was, tall, ponderous, neat, clean-shaven,
with his smooth hair, hardly thinned, smelling, no doubt, of the best
hair-wash, and a pink paper in his hand. Well, he didn't change! And
for perhaps the first time in his life Soames felt a kind of sympathy
tapping in his waistcoat for that sardonic kinsman. With his weight,
his perfectly parted hair, and bull-like gaze, he was a guarantee that
the old order would take some shifting yet. He saw George move the pink
paper as if inviting him to ascend--the chap must want to ask something
about his property. It was still under Soames's control; for in the
adoption of a sleeping partnership at that painful period twenty years
back when he had divorced Irene, Soames had found himself almost
insensibly retaining control of all purely Forsyte affairs.

Hesitating for just a moment, he nodded and went in. Since the death of
his brother-in-law Montague Dartie, in Paris, which no one had quite
known what to make of, except that it was certainly not suicide--the
Iseeum Club had seemed more respectable to Soames. George, too, he
knew, had sown the last of his wild oats, and was committed definitely
to the joys of the table, eating only of the very best so as to keep
his weight down, and owning, as he said, "just one or two old screws to
give me an interest in life." He joined his cousin, therefore, in the
bay window without the embarrassing sense of indiscretion he had been
used to feel up there. George put out a well-kept hand.

"Haven't seen you since the War," he said. "How's your wife?"

"Thanks," said Soames coldly, "well enough."

Some hidden jest curved, for a moment, George's fleshy face, and
gloated from his eye.

"That Belgian chap, Profond," he said, "is a member here now. He's a
rum customer."

"Quite!" muttered Soames. "What did you want to see me about?"

"Old Timothy; he might go off the hooks at any moment. I suppose he's
made his Will."

"Yes."

"Well, you or somebody ought to give him a look up--last of the old
lot; he's a hundred, you know. They say he's like a mummy. Where are
you goin' to put him? He ought to have a pyramid by rights."

Soames shook his head. "Highgate, the family vault."

"Well, I suppose the old girls would miss him, if he was anywhere else.
They say he still takes an interest in food. He might last on, you
know. Don't we GET anything for the old Forsytes? Ten of them--average
age eighty-eight--I worked it out. That ought to be equal to triplets."

"Is that all?" said Soames. "I must be getting on."

'You unsociable devil,' George's eyes seemed to answer.

"Yes, that's all: Look him up in his mausoleum--the old chap might want
to prophesy." The grin died on the rich curves of his face, and he
added: "Haven't you attorneys invented a way yet of dodging this damned
income tax? It hits the fixed inherited income like the very deuce. I
used to have two thousand five hundred a year; now I've got a beggarly
fifteen hundred, and the price of living doubled."

"Ah!" murmured Soames, "the turf's in danger."

Over George's face moved a gleam of sardonic self-defence.

"Well," he said, "they brought me up to do nothing, and here I am in
the sere and yellow, getting poorer every day. These Labour chaps mean
to have the lot before they've done. What are you going to do for a
living when it comes? I shall work a six-hour day teaching politicians
how to see a joke. Take my tip, Soames; go into Parliament, make sure
of your four hundred--and employ me."

And, as Soames retired, he resumed his seat in the bay window.

Soames moved along Piccadilly deep in reflections excited by his
cousin's words. He himself had always been a worker and a saver, George
always a drone and a spender; and yet, if confiscation once began, it
was he--the worker and the saver--who would be looted! That was the
negation of all virtue, the overturning of all Forsyte principles.
Could civilisation be built on any other? He did not think so. Well,
they wouldn't confiscate his pictures, for they wouldn't know their
worth. But what would they be worth, if these maniacs once began to
milk capital? A drug on the market. 'I don't care about myself,' he
thought; 'I could live on five hundred a year, and never know the
difference, at my age.' But Fleur! This fortune, so wisely invested,
these treasures so carefully chosen and amassed, were all for her. And
if it should turn out that he couldn't give or leave them to her--well,
life had no meaning, and what was the use of going in to look at this
crazy, futuristic stuff with the view of seeing whether it had any
future?

Arriving at the Gallery off Cork Street, however, he paid his shilling,
picked up a catalogue, and entered. Some ten persons were prowling
round. Soames took steps and came on what looked to him like a
lamp-post bent by collision with a motor omnibus. It was advanced some
three paces from the wall, and was described in his catalogue as
"Jupiter." He examined it with curiosity, having recently turned some
of his attention to sculpture. 'If that's Jupiter,' he thought, 'I
wonder what Juno's like.' And suddenly he saw her, opposite. She
appeared to him like nothing so much as a pump with two handles,
lightly clad in snow. He was still gazing at her, when two of the
prowlers halted on his left. "Epatant!" he heard one say.

"Jargon!" growled Soames to himself.

The other's boyish voice replied:

"Missed it, old bean; he's pulling your leg. When Jove and Juno created
he them, he was saying: 'I'll see how much these fools will swallow.'
And they've lapped up the lot."

"You young duffer! Vospovitch is an innovator. Don't you see that he's
brought satire into sculpture? The future of plastic art, of music,
painting, and even architecture, has set in satiric. It was bound to.
People are tired--the bottom's tumbled out of sentiment."

"Well, I'm quite equal to taking a little interest in beauty. I was
through the War. You've dropped your handkerchief, sir."

Soames saw a handkerchief held out in front of him. He took it with
some natural suspicion, and approached it to his nose. It had the right
scent--of distant Eau de Cologne--and his initials in a corner.
Slightly reassured, he raised his eyes to the young man's face. It had
rather fawn-like ears, a laughing mouth, with half a toothbrush growing
out of it on each side, and small lively eyes, above a normally dressed
appearance.

"Thank you," he said; and moved by a sort of irritation, added: "Glad
to hear you like beauty; that's rare, nowadays."

"I dote on it," said the young man; "but you and I are the last of the
old guard, sir."

Soames smiled.

"If you really care for pictures," he said, "here's my card. I can show
you some quite good ones any Sunday, if you're down the river and care
to look in."

"Awfully nice of you, sir. I'll drop in like a bird. My name's
Mont-Michael." And he took off his hat.

Soames, already regretting his impulse, raised his own slightly in
response, with a downward look at the young man's companion, who had a
purple tie, dreadful little slug-like whiskers, and a scornful look--as
if he were a poet!

It was the first indiscretion he had committed for so long that he went
and sat down in an alcove. What had possessed him to give his card to a
rackety young fellow, who went about with a thing like that? And Fleur,
always at the back of his thoughts, started out like a filagree figure
from a clock when the hour strikes. On the screen opposite the alcove
was a large canvas with a great many square tomato-colored blobs on it,
and nothing else, so far as Soames could see from where he sat. He
looked at his catalogue: "No. 32--'The Future Town'--Paul Post." 'I
suppose that's satiric too,' he thought. 'What a thing!' But his second
impulse was more cautious. It did not do to condemn hurriedly. There
had been those stripey, streaky creations of Monet's, which had turned
out such trumps; and then the stippled school; and Gauguin. Why, even
since the Post-Impressionists there had been one or two painters not to
be sneezed at. During the thirty-eight years of his connoisseur's life,
indeed, he had marked so many "movements," seen the tides of taste and
technique so ebb and flow, that there was really no telling anything
except that there was money to be made out of every change of fashion.
This too might quite well be a case where one must subdue primordial
instinct, or lose the market. He got up and stood before the picture,
trying hard to see it with the eyes of other people. Above the tomato
blobs was what he took to be a sunset, till some one passing said:
"He's got the airplanes wonderfully, don't you think!" Below the tomato
blobs was a band of white with vertical black stripes, to which he
could assign no meaning whatever, till some one else came by,
murmuring: "What expression he gets with his foreground!" Expression?
Of what? Soames went back to his seat. The thing was "rich," as his
father would have said, and he wouldn't give a damn for it. Expression!
Ah! they were all Expressionists now, he had heard, on the Continent.
So it was coming here too, was it? He remembered the first wave of
influenza in 1887--or 8--hatched in China, so they said. He wondered
where this--this Expressionism--had been hatched. The thing was a
regular disease!

He had become conscious of a woman and a youth standing between him and
the "Future Town." Their backs were turned; but very suddenly Soames
put his catalogue before his face, and drawing his hat forward, gazed
through the slit between. No mistaking that back, elegant as ever
though the hair above had gone grey. Irene! His divorced wife--Irene!
And this, no doubt, was her son--by that fellow Jolyon Forsyte--their
boy, six months older than his own girl! And mumbling over in his mind
the bitter days of his divorce, he rose to get out of sight, but
quickly sat down again. She had turned her head to speak to her boy;
her profile was still so youthful that it made her grey hair seem
powdery, as if fancy-dressed; and her lips were smiling as Soames,
first possessor of them, had never seen them smile. Grudgingly he
admitted her still beautiful, and in figure almost as young as ever.
And how that boy smiled back at her! Emotion squeezed Soames' heart.
The sight infringed his sense of justice. He grudged her that boy's
smile--it went beyond what Fleur gave him, and it was undeserved. Their
son might have been his son; Fleur might have been her daughter, if she
had kept straight! He lowered his catalogue. If she saw him, all the
better! A reminder of her conduct in the presence of her son, who
probably knew nothing of it, would be a salutary touch from the finger
of that Nemesis which surely must soon or late visit her! Then,
half-conscious that such a thought was extravagant for a Forsyte of his
age, Soames took out his watch. Past four! Fleur was late. She had gone
to his niece Imogen Cardigan's, and there they would keep her smoking
cigarettes and gossiping, and that. He heard the boy laugh, and say
eagerly: "I say, Mum, is this one of Auntie June's lame ducks?"

"Paul Post--I believe it is, darling."

The word produced a little shock in Soames; he had never heard her use
it. And then she saw him. His eyes must have had in them something of
George Forsyte's sardonic look; for her gloved hand crisped the folds
of her frock, her eyebrows rose, her face went stony. She moved on.

"It IS a caution," said the boy, catching her arm again.

Soames stared after them. That boy was good-looking, with a Forsyte
chin, and eyes deep-grey, deep in; but with something sunny, like a
glass of old sherry spilled over him; his smile perhaps, his hair.
Better than they deserved--those two! They passed from his view into
the next room, and Soames continued to regard the Future Town, but saw
it not. A little smile snarled up his lips. He was despising the
vehemence of his own feelings after all these years. Ghosts! And yet as
one grew old--was there anything but what was ghost-like left? Yes,
there was Fleur! He fixed his eyes on the entrance. She was due; but
she would keep him waiting, of course! And suddenly he became aware of
a sort of human breeze--a short, slight form clad in a sea-green
djibbah with a metal belt and a fillet binding unruly red-gold hair all
streaked with grey. She was talking to the Gallery attendants, and
something familiar riveted his gaze--in her eyes, her chin, her hair,
her spirit--something which suggested a thin Skye terrier just before
its dinner. Surely June Forsyte! His cousin June--and coming straight
to his recess! She sat down beside him, deep in thought, took out a
tablet, and made a pencil note. Soames sat unmoving. A confounded thing
cousinship! "Disgusting!" he heard her murmur; then, as if resenting
the presence of an overhearing stranger, she looked at him. The worst
had happened.

"Soames!"

Soames turned his head a very little.

"How are YOU?" he said. "Haven't seen you for twenty years."

"No. Whatever made YOU come here?"

"My sins," said Soames. "What stuff!"

"Stuff? Oh, yes--of course; it hasn't ARRIVED yet."

"It never will," said Soames; "it must be making a dead loss."

"Of course it is."

"How d'you know?"

"It's my Gallery."

Soames sniffed from sheer surprise.

"Yours? What on earth makes you run a show like this?"

"_I_ don't treat Art as if it were grocery."

Soames pointed to the Future Town. "Look at that! Who's going to live
in a town like that, or with it on his walls?"

June contemplated the picture for a moment. "It's a vision," she said.

"The deuce!"

There was silence, then June rose. 'Crazy-looking creature!' he thought.

"Well," he said, "you'll find your young stepbrother here with a woman
I used to know. If you take my advice, you'll close this exhibition."

June looked back at him. "Oh! You Forsyte!" she said, and moved on.
About her light, fly-away figure, passing so suddenly away, was a look
of dangerous decisions. Forsyte! Of course, he was a Forsyte! And so
was she! But from the time when, as a mere girl, she brought Bosinney
into his life to wreck it, he had never hit it off with June--and never
would! And here she was, unmarried to this day, owning a Gallery!...
And suddenly it came to Soames how little he knew now of his own
family. The old aunts at Timothy's had been dead so many years; there
was no clearing-house for news. What had they all done in the War?
Young Roger's boy had been wounded, St. John Hayman's second son
killed; young Nicholas' eldest had got an O. B. E., or whatever they
gave them. They had all joined up somehow, he believed. That boy of
Jolyon's and Irene's, he supposed, had been too young; his own
generation, of course, too old, though Giles Hayman had driven a car
for the Red Cross--and Jesse Hayman been a special constable--those
"Dromios" had always been of a sporting type! As for himself, he had
given a motor ambulance, read the papers till he was sick of them,
passed through much anxiety, invested in War Bonds, bought no clothes,
lost seven pounds in weight; he didn't know what more he could have
done at his age. Indeed, it struck him that he and his family had taken
this war very differently to that affair with the Boers, which had been
supposed to tax all the resources of the Empire. In that old war, of
course, his nephew Val Dartie had been wounded, that fellow Jolyon's
first son had died of enteric, "the Dromios" had gone out on horses,
and June had been a nurse; but all that had seemed in the nature of a
portent, while in THIS war everybody had done "their bit," so far as he
could make out, as a matter of course. It seemed to show the growth of
something or other--or perhaps the decline of something else. Had the
Forsytes become less individual, or more Imperial, or less provincial?
Or was it simply that one hated Germans?... Why didn't Fleur come, so
that he could get away? He saw those three return together from the
other room and pass back along the far side of the screen. The boy was
standing before the Juno now. And, suddenly, on the other side of her,
Soames saw--his daughter with eyebrows raised, as well they might be.
He could see her eyes glint sideways at the boy, and the boy look back
at her. Then Irene slipped her hand through his arm, and drew him on.
Soames saw him glancing round, and Fleur looking after them as the
three went out.

A voice said cheerfully: "Bit thick, isn't it, sir?"

The young man who had handed him his handkerchief was again passing.
Soames nodded.

"I don't know what we're coming to."

"Oh! That's all right, sir," answered the young man cheerfully; "they
don't either."

Fleur's voice said, precisely as if he had been keeping her waiting:

"Hallo, Father! There you are!"

The young man, snatching off his hat, passed on.

"Well," said Soames, looking her up and down, "you're a punctual sort
of young woman!"

This treasured possession of his life was of medium height and color,
with short, dark-chestnut hair; her wide-apart brown eyes were set in
whites so clear that they glinted when they moved, and yet in repose
were almost dreamy under very white, black-lashed lids, held over them
in a sort of suspense. She had a charming profile, and nothing of her
father in her face save a decided chin. Aware that his expression was
softening as he looked at her, Soames frowned to preserve the
unemotionalism proper to a Forsyte. He knew she was only too inclined
to take advantage of his weakness.

Slipping her hand under his arm, she said:

"Who was that?"

"He picked up my handkerchief. We talked about the pictures."

"You're not going to buy THAT, Father?"

"No," said Soames grimly; "nor that Juno you've been looking at."

Fleur dragged at his arm. "Oh! Let's go! It's a ghastly show."

In the doorway they passed the young man called Mont and his partner.
But Soames had hung out a board marked "Trespassers will be
prosecuted," and he barely acknowledged the young fellow's salute.

"Well," he said in the street, "whom did you meet at Imogen's?"

"Aunt Winifred, and that Monsieur Profond."

"Oh!" muttered Soames; "that chap! What does your aunt see in him?"

"I don't know. He looks pretty deep--mother says she likes him."

Soames grunted.

"Cousin Val and his wife were there, too."

"What!" said Soames. "I thought they were back in South Africa."

"Oh, no! They've sold their farm. Cousin Val is going to train
race-horses on the Sussex Downs. They've got a jolly old manor-house;
they asked me down there."

Soames coughed: the news was distasteful to him. "What's his wife like
now?"

"Very quiet, but nice, I think."

Soames coughed again. "He's a rackety chap, your cousin Val."

"Oh! no, Father; they're awfully devoted. I promised to go--Saturday to
Wednesday next."

"Training race-horses!" said Soames. It was bad enough, but not the
reason for his distaste. Why the deuce couldn't his nephew have stayed
out in South Africa? His own divorce had been bad enough, without his
nephew's marriage to the daughter of the co-respondent; a half-sister
too of June, and of that boy whom Fleur had just been looking at from
under the pump-handle. If he didn't look out, Fleur would come to know
all about that old disgrace! Unpleasant things! They were round him
this afternoon like a swarm of bees!

"I don't like it!" he said.

"I want to see the race-horses," murmured Fleur; "and they've promised
I shall ride. Cousin Val can't walk much, you know; but he can ride
perfectly. He's going to show me their gallops."

"Racing!" said Soames. "It's a pity the War didn't knock that on the
head. He's taking after his father, I'm afraid."

"I don't know anything about his father."

"No," said Soames grimly. "He took an interest in horses and broke his
neck in Paris, walking down-stairs. Good riddance for your aunt." He
frowned, recollecting the inquiry into those stairs which he had
attended in Paris six years ago, because Montague Dartie could not
attend it himself--perfectly normal stairs in a house where they played
baccarat. Either his winnings or the way he had celebrated them had
gone to his brother-in-law's head. The French procedure had been very
loose; he had had a lot of trouble with it.

A sound from Fleur distracted his attention. "Look! The people who were
in the Gallery with us."

"What people?" muttered Soames, who knew perfectly well.

"I think that woman's beautiful."

"Come into this pastry-cook's," said Soames abruptly, and tightening
his grip on her arm, he turned into a confectioner's. It was--for
him--a surprising thing to do, and he said rather anxiously: "What will
you have?"

"Oh! I don't want anything. I had a cocktail and a tremendous lunch."

"We MUST have something now we're here," muttered Soames, keeping hold
of her arm.

"Two teas," he said; "and two of those nougat things."

But no sooner was his body seated than his soul sprang up. Those
three--those three were coming in! He heard Irene say something to her
boy, and his answer:

"Oh! no, Mum; this place is all right. My stunt." And the three sat
down.

At that moment, most awkward of his existence, crowded with ghosts and
shadows from his past, in presence of the only two women he had ever
loved--his divorced wife and his daughter by her successor--Soames was
not so much afraid of THEM as of his cousin June. She might make a
scene--she might introduce those two children--she was capable of
anything. He bit too hastily at the nougat, and it stuck to his plate.
Working at it with his finger, he glanced at Fleur. She was masticating
dreamily, but her eyes were on the boy. The Forsyte in him said:
"Think, feel, and you're done for!" And he wiggled his finger
desperately. Plate! Did Jolyon wear a plate? Did that woman wear a
plate? Time had been when he had seen her wearing nothing! That was
something, anyway, which had never been stolen from him. And she knew
it, though she might sit there calm and self-possessed, as if she had
never been his wife. An acid humor stirred in his Forsyte blood; a
subtle pain divided by hair's-breadth from pleasure. If only June did
not suddenly bring her hornets about his ears! The boy was talking.

"Of course, Auntie June,"--so he called his half-sister "Auntie," did
he?--well, she must be fifty, if she was a day!--"it's jolly good of
you to encourage them. Only--hang it all!" Soames stole a glance.
Irene's startled eyes were bent watchfully on her boy. She--she had
these devotions--for Bosinney--for that boy's father--for this boy! He
touched Fleur's arm, and said:

"Well, have you had enough?"

"One more, Father, please."

She would be sick! He went to the counter to pay. When he turned round
again he saw Fleur standing near the door, holding a handkerchief which
the boy had evidently just handed to her.

"F.F.," he heard her say. "Fleur Forsyte--it's mine all right. Thank
you ever so."

Good God! She had caught the trick from what he'd told her in the
Gallery--monkey!

"Forsyte? Why--that's my name too. Perhaps we're cousins."

"Really! We must be. There aren't any others. I live at Mapledurham;
where do you?"

"Robin Hill."

Question and answer had been so rapid that all was over before he could
lift a finger. He saw Irene's face alive with startled feeling, gave
the slightest shake of his head, and slipped his arm through Fleur's.

"Come along!" he said.

She did not move.

"Didn't you hear, Father? Isn't it queer--our name's the same. Are we
cousins?"

"What's that?" he said. "Forsyte? Distant, perhaps."

"My name's Jolyon, sir. Jon, for short."

"Oh! Ah!" said Soames. "Yes. Distant. How are you? Very good of you.
Good-bye!"

He moved on.

"Thanks awfully," Fleur was saying. "Au revoir!"

"Au revoir!" he heard the boy reply.



II

FINE FLEUR FORSYTE


Emerging from the "pastry-cook's," Soames' first impulse was to vent
his nerves by saying to his daughter: "Dropping your handkerchief!" to
which her reply might well be: "I picked that up from you!" His second
impulse therefore was to let sleeping dogs lie. But she would surely
question him. He gave her a sidelong look, and found she was giving him
the same. She said softly:

"Why don't you like those cousins, Father?"

Soames lifted the corner of his lip.

"What made you think that?"

"Cela se voit."

'That sees itself!' What a way of putting it!

After twenty years of a French wife Soames had still little sympathy
with her language; a theatrical affair and connected in his mind with
all the refinements of domestic irony.

"How?" he asked.

"You MUST know them; and you didn't make a sign. I saw them looking at
you."

"I've never seen the boy in my life," replied Soames with perfect truth.

"No; but you've seen the others, dear."

Soames gave her another look. What had she picked up? Had her Aunt
Winifred, or Imogen, or Val Dartie and his wife, been talking? Every
breath of the old scandal had been carefully kept from her at home, and
Winifred warned many times that he wouldn't have a whisper of it reach
her for the world. So far as she ought to know, he had never been
married before. But her dark eyes, whose southern glint and clearness
often almost frightened him, met his with perfect innocence.

"Well," he said, "your grandfather and his brother had a quarrel. The
two families don't know each other."

"How romantic!"

'Now, what does she mean by that?' he thought. The word was to him
extravagant and dangerous--it was as if she had said: "How jolly!"

"And they'll continue not to know each other," he added, but instantly
regretted the challenge in those words. Fleur was smiling. In this age,
when young people prided themselves on going their own ways and paying
no attention to any sort of decent prejudice, he had said the very
thing to excite her wilfulness. Then, recollecting the expression on
Irene's face, he breathed again.

"What sort of a quarrel?" he heard Fleur say.

"About a house. It's ancient history for you. Your grandfather died the
day you were born. He was ninety."

"Ninety? Are there many Forsytes besides those in the Red Book?"

"I don't know," said Soames. "They're all dispersed now. The old ones
are dead, except Timothy."

Fleur clasped her hands.

"Timothy? Isn't that delicious?"

"Not at all," said Soames. It offended him that she should think
"Timothy" delicious--a kind of insult to his breed. This new generation
mocked at anything solid and tenacious. "You go and see the old boy. He
might want to prophesy." Ah! If Timothy could see the disquiet England
of his greatnephews and greatnieces, he would certainly give tongue.
And involuntarily he glanced up at the Iseeum; yes--George was still in
the window, with the same pink paper in his hand.

"Where is Robin Hill, Father?"

Robin Hill! Robin Hill, round which all that tragedy had centred! What
did she want to know for?

"In Surrey," he muttered; "not far from Richmond, Why?"

"Is the house there?"

"What house?"

"That they quarrelled about."

"Yes. But what's all that to do with you? We're going home
to-morrow--you'd better be thinking about your frocks."

"Bless you! They're all thought about. A family feud? It's like the
Bible, or Mark Twain--awfully exciting. What did YOU do in the feud,
Father?"

"Never you mind."

"Oh! But if I'm to keep it up?"

"Who said you were to keep it up?"

"You, darling."

"I? I said it had nothing to do with you."

"Just what _I_ think, you know; so that's all right."

She was too sharp for him; FINE, as Annette sometimes called her.
Nothing for it but to distract her attention.

"There's a bit of rosaline point in here," he said, stopping before a
shop, "that I thought you might like."

When he had paid for it and they had resumed their progress, Fleur said:

"Don't you think that boy's mother is the most beautiful woman of her
age you've ever seen?"

Soames shivered. Uncanny, the way she stuck to it!

"I don't know that I noticed her."

"Dear, I saw the corner of your eye."

"You see everything--and a great deal more, it seems to me!"

"What's her husband like? He must be your first cousin, if your fathers
were brothers."

"Dead, for all I know," said Soames, with sudden vehemence. "I haven't
seen him for twenty years."

"What was he?"

"A painter."

"That's quite jolly."

The words: "If you want to please me you'll put those people out of
your head," sprang to Soames's lips, but he choked them back--he must
NOT let her see his feelings.

"He once insulted me," he said.

Her quick eyes rested on his face.

"I see! You didn't avenge it, and it rankles. Poor Father! You let me
have a go!"

It was really like lying in the dark with a mosquito hovering above his
face. Such pertinacity in Fleur was new to him, and, as they reached
the hotel, he said grimly:

"I did my best. And that's enough about these people. I'm going up till
dinner."

"I shall sit here."

With a parting look at her extended in a chair--a look half-resentful,
half-adoring--Soames moved into the lift and was transported to their
suite on the fourth floor. He stood by the window of the sitting-room
which gave view over Hyde Park, and drummed a finger on its pane. His
feelings were confused, tetchy, troubled. The throb of that old wound,
scarred over by Time and new interests, was mingled with displeasure
and anxiety, and a slight pain in his chest where that nougat stuff had
disagreed. Had Annette come in? Not that she was any good to him in
such a difficulty. Whenever she had questioned him about his first
marriage, he had always shut her up; she knew nothing of it, save that
it had been the great passion of his life, and his marriage with
herself but domestic makeshift. She had always kept the grudge of that
up her sleeve, as it were, and used it commercially. He listened. A
sound--the vague murmur of a woman's movements--was coming through the
door. She was in. He tapped.

"Who?"

"I," said Soames.

She had been changing her frock, and was still imperfectly clothed; a
striking figure before her glass. There was a certain magnificence
about her arms, shoulders, hair, which had darkened since he first knew
her, about the turn of her neck, the silkiness of her garments, her
dark-lashed, grey-blue eyes--she was certainly as handsome at forty as
she had ever been. A fine possession, an excellent housekeeper, a
sensible and affectionate enough mother. If only she weren't always so
frankly cynical about the relations between them! Soames, who had no
more real affection for her than she had for him, suffered from a kind
of English grievance, in that she had never dropped even the thinnest
veil of sentiment over their partnership. Like most of his countrymen
and women, he held the view that marriage should be based on mutual
love, but that when from a marriage love had disappeared, or been found
never to have really existed--so that it was manifestly not based on
love--you must not admit it. There it was, and the love was not--but
there you were, and must continue to be! Thus you had it both ways, and
were not tarred with cynicism, realism, and immorality, like the
French. Moreover, it was necessary in the interests of propriety. He
knew that she knew that they both knew there was no love between them,
but he still expected her not to admit in words or conduct such a
thing, and he could never understand what she meant when she talked of
the hypocrisy of the English. He said:

"Whom have you got at 'The Shelter' next week?"

Annette went on touching her lips delicately with salve--he always
wished she wouldn't do that.

"Your sister Winifred, and the Car-r-digans"--she took up a tiny stick
of black--"and Prosper Profond."

"That Belgian chap? Why him?"

Annette turned her neck lazily, touched one eyelash, and said:

"He amuses Winifred."

"I want some one to amuse Fleur; she's restive."

"R-restive?" repeated Annette. "Is it the first time you see that, my
friend? She was born r-restive, as you call it."

Would she never get that affected roll out of her r's?

He touched the dress she had taken off, and asked:

"What have you been doing?"

Annette looked at him, reflected in her glass. Her just-brightened lips
smiled, rather full, rather ironical.

"Enjoying myself," she said.

"Oh!" answered Soames glumly. "Ribbandry, I suppose."

It was his word for all that incomprehensible running in and out of
shops that women went in for. "Has Fleur got her summer dresses?"

"You don't ask if I have mine."

"You don't care whether I do or not."

"Quite right. Well, she has; and I have mine--terribly expensive."

"H'm!" said Soames. "What does that chap Profond do in England?"

Annette raised the eyebrows she had just finished.

"He yachts."

"Ah!" said Soames; "he's a sleepy chap."

"Sometimes," answered Annette, and her face had a sort of quiet
enjoyment. "But sometimes very amusing."

"He's got a touch of the tar-brush about him."

Annette stretched herself.

"Tar-brush?" she said; "what is that? His mother was Armenienne."

"That's it, then," muttered Soames. "Does he know anything about
pictures?"

"He knows about everything--a man of the world."

"Well, get some one for Fleur. I want to distract her. She's going off
on Saturday to Val Dartie and his wife; I don't like it."

"Why not?"

Since the reason could not be explained without going into family
history, Soames merely answered:

"Racketing about. There's too much of it."

"I like that little Mrs. Val; she is very quiet and clever."

"I know nothing of her except--This thing's new." And Soames took up a
creation from the bed.

Annette received it from him.

"Would you hook me?" she said.

Soames hooked. Glancing once over her shoulder into the glass, he saw
the expression on her face, faintly amused, faintly contemptuous, as
much as to say: 'Thanks! You will never learn!' No, thank God, he
wasn't a Frenchman! He finished with a jerk, and the words:

"It's too low here." And he went to the door, with the wish to get away
from her and go down to Fleur again.

Annette stayed a powder-puff, and said with startling suddenness:

"Que tu es grossier!"

He knew the expression--he had reason to. The first time she had used
it he had thought it meant "What a grocer you are!" and had not known
whether to be relieved or not when better informed. He resented the
word--he was NOT coarse! If he was coarse, what was that chap in the
room beyond his, who made those horrible noises in the morning when he
cleared his throat, or those people in the Lounge who thought it
well-bred to say nothing but what the whole world could hear at the top
of their voices--quacking inanity! Coarse, because he had said her
dress was low! Well, so it was! He went out without reply.

Coming into the Lounge from the far end, he at once saw Fleur where he
had left her. She sat with crossed knees, slowly balancing a foot in
silk stocking and grey shoe, sure sign that she was dreaming. Her eyes
showed it too--they went off like that sometimes. And then, in a
moment, she would come to life, and be as quick and restless as a
monkey. And she knew so much, so self-assured, and not yet nineteen.
What was that odious word? Flapper! Dreadful young creatures--squealing
and squawking and showing their legs! The worst of them bad dreams, the
best of them powdered angels! Fleur was NOT a flapper, NOT one of those
slangy, ill-bred young females. And yet she was frighteningly
self-willed, and full of life, and determined to enjoy it. Enjoy! The
word brought no puritan terror to Soames; but it brought the terror
suited to his temperament. He had always been afraid to enjoy to-day
for fear he might not enjoy to-morrow so much. And it was terrifying to
feel that his daughter was divested of that safeguard. The very way she
sat in that chair showed it--lost in her dream. He had never been lost
in a dream himself--there was nothing to be had out of it; and where
she got it from he did not know! Certainly not from Annette! And yet
Annette, as a young girl, when he was hanging about her, had once had a
flowery look. Well, she had lost it now!

Fleur rose from her chair--swiftly, restlessly, and flung herself down
at a writing-table. Seizing ink and writing-paper, she began to write
as if she had not time to breathe before she got her letter written.
And suddenly she saw him. The air of desperate absorption vanished, she
smiled, waved a kiss, made a pretty face as if she were a little
puzzled and a little bored.

Ah! She was "fine"--"fine!"



III

AT ROBIN HILL


Jolyon Forsyte had spent his boy's nineteenth birthday at Robin Hill,
quietly going into his affairs. He did everything quietly now, because
his heart was in a poor way, and, like all his family, he disliked the
idea of dying. He had never realised how much till one day, two years
ago, he had gone to his doctor about certain symptoms, and been told:

"At any moment, on any overstrain."

He had taken it with a smile--the natural Forsyte reaction against an
unpleasant truth. But with an increase of symptoms in the train on the
way home, he had realised to the full the sentence hanging over him. To
leave Irene, his boy, his home, his work--though he did little enough
work now! To leave them for unknown darkness, for the unimaginable
state, for such nothingness that he would not even be conscious of wind
stirring leaves above his grave, nor of the scent of earth and grass.
Of such nothingness that, however hard he might try to conceive it, he
never could, and must still hover on the hope that he might see again
those he loved! To realise this was to endure very poignant spiritual
anguish. Before he reached home that day, he had determined to keep it
from Irene. He would have to be more careful than man had ever been,
for the least thing would give it away and make her as wretched as
himself, almost. His doctor had passed him sound in other respects, and
seventy was nothing of an age--he would last a long time yet, IF HE
COULD!

Such a conclusion, followed out for nearly two years, develops to the
full the subtler side of character. Naturally not abrupt, except when
nervously excited, Jolyon had become control incarnate. The sad
patience of old people who cannot exert themselves was masked by a
smile which his lips preserved even in private. He devised continually
all manner of cover to conceal his enforced lack of exertion. Mocking
himself for so doing, he counterfeited conversion to the Simple Life;
gave up wine and cigars, drank a special kind of coffee with no coffee
in it. In short, he made himself as safe as a Forsyte in his condition
could, under the rose of his mild irony. Secure from discovery, since
his wife and son had gone up to Town, he had spent the fine May day
quietly arranging his papers, that he might die to-morrow without
inconveniencing any one, giving in fact a final polish to his
terrestrial state. Having docketed and enclosed it in his father's old
Chinese cabinet, he put the key into an envelope, wrote the words
outside: "Key of the Chinese cabinet, wherein will be found the exact
state of me. J.F.," and put it in his breast-pocket, where it would be,
always about him, in case of accident. Then, ringing for tea, he went
out to have it under the old oak-tree.

All are under sentence of death; Jolyon, whose sentence was but a
little more precise and pressing, had become so used to it, that he
thought habitually, like other people, of other things. He thought of
his son now.

Jon was nineteen that day, and Jon had come of late to a decision.
Educated neither at Eton like his father, nor at Harrow, like his dead
half-brother, but at one of those establishments which, designed to
avoid the evil and contain the good of the Public School system, may or
may not contain the evil and avoid the good, Jon had left in April
perfectly ignorant of what he wanted to become. The War, which had
promised to go on for ever, had ended just as he was about to join the
army, six months before his time. It had taken him ever since to get
used to the idea that he could now choose for himself. He had held with
his father several discussions, from which, under a cheery show of
being ready for anything--except, of course, the Church, Army, Law,
Stage, Stock Exchange, Medicine, Business, and Engineering--Jolyon had
gathered rather clearly that Jon wanted to go in for nothing. He
himself had felt exactly like that at the same age. With him that
pleasant vacuity had soon been ended by an early marriage, and its
unhappy consequences. Forced to become an underwriter at Lloyd's he had
regained prosperity before his artistic talent had outcropped. But
having--as the simple say--"learned" his boy to draw pigs and other
animals, he knew that Jon would never be a painter, and inclined to the
conclusion that his aversion from everything else meant that he was
going to be a writer. Holding, however, the view that experience was
necessary even for that profession, there seemed to Jolyon nothing in
the meantime, for Jon, but University, travel, and perhaps the eating
of dinners for the Bar. After that one would see, or more probably one
would not. In face of these proffered allurements, however, Jon had
remained undecided.

Such discussions with his son had confirmed in Jolyon a doubt whether
the world had really changed. People said that it was a new age. With
the profundity of one not too long for any age, Jolyon perceived that
under slightly different surfaces, the era was precisely what it had
been. Mankind was still divided into two species: The few who had
"speculation" in their souls, and the many who had none, with a belt of
hybrids like himself in the middle. Jon appeared to have speculation;
it seemed to his father a bad lookout.

With something deeper, therefore, than his usual smile, he had heard
the boy say, a fortnight ago: "I should like to try farming, Dad; if it
won't cost you too much. It seems to be about the only sort of life
that doesn't hurt anybody; except art, and of course that's out of the
question for me."

Jolyon subdued his smile, and answered:

"All right; you shall skip back to where we were under the first Jolyon
in 1760. It'll prove the cycle theory, and incidentally, no doubt, you
may grow a better turnip than he did."

A little dashed, Jon had answered:

"But don't you think it's a good scheme, Dad?"

"Twill serve, my dear; and if you should really take to it, you'll do
more good than most men, which is little enough."

To himself, however, he had said: "But he won't take to it. I give him
four years. Still, it's healthy, and harmless."

After turning the matter over and consulting with Irene, he wrote to
his daughter Mrs. Val Dortie, asking if they knew of a farmer near them
on the Downs who would take Jon as an apprentice. Holly's answer had
been enthusiastic. There was an excellent man quite close; she and Val
would love Jon to live with them.

The boy was due to go to-morrow.

Sipping weak tea with lemon in it, Jolyon gazed through the leaves of
the old oak-tree at that view which had appeared to him desirable for
thirty-two years. The tree beneath which he sat seemed not a day older!
So young, the little leaves of brownish gold; so old, the
whitey-grey-green of its thick rough trunk, A tree of memories, which
would live on hundreds of years yet, unless some barbarian cut it
down--would see old England out at the pace things were going! He
remembered a night three years before, when, looking from his window,
with his arm close round Irene, he had watched a German aeroplane
hovering, it seemed, right over the old tree. Next day they had found a
bomb hole in a field on Gage's farm. That was before he knew that he
was under sentence of death. He could almost have wished the bomb had
finished him. It would have saved a lot of hanging about, many hours of
cold fear in the pit of his stomach. He had counted on living to the
normal Forsyte age of eighty-five or more, when Irene would be seventy.
As it was, she would miss him. Still there was Jon, more important in
her life than himself; Jon, who adored his mother.

Under that tree, where old Jolyon--waiting for Irene to come to him
across the lawn--had breathed his last, Jolyon wondered, whimsically,
whether, having put everything in such perfect order, he had not better
close his own eyes and drift away. There was something undignified in
parasitically clinging on to the effortless close of a life wherein he
regretted two things only--the long division between his father and
himself when he was young, and the lateness of his union with Irene.

From where he sat he could see a cluster of apple-trees in blossom.
Nothing in Nature moved him so much as fruit-trees in blossom; and his
heart ached suddenly because he might never see them flower again.
Spring! Decidedly no man ought to have to die while his heart was still
young enough to love beauty! Blackbirds sang recklessly in the
shrubbery, swallows were flying high, the leaves above him glistened;
and over the fields was every imaginable tint of early foliage,
burnished by the level sunlight, away to where the distant 'smoke-bush'
blue was trailed along the horizon. Irene's flowers in their narrow
beds had startling individuality that evening, little deep assertions
of gay life. Only Chinese and Japanese painters, and perhaps Leonardo,
had known how to get that startling little ego into each painted
flower, and bird, and beast--the ego, yet the sense of species, the
universality of life as well. They were the fellows! 'I've made nothing
that will live!' thought Jolyon; 'I've been an amateur--a mere lover,
not a creator. Still, I shall leave Jon behind me when I go.' What luck
that the boy had not been caught by that ghastly war! He might so
easily have been killed, like poor Jolly twenty years ago out in the
Transvaal. Jon would do something some day--if the Age didn't spoil
him--an imaginative chap! His whim to take up farming was but a bit of
sentiment, and about as likely to last. And just then he saw them
coming up the field: Irene and the boy, walking from the station, with
their arms linked. And, getting up, he strolled down through the new
rose garden to meet them....

Irene came into his room that night and sat down by the window. She sat
there without speaking till he said:

"What is it, my love?"

"We had an encounter to-day."

"With whom?"

"Soames."

Soames! He had kept that name out of his thoughts these last two years;
conscious that it was bad for him. And, now, his heart moved in a
disconcerting manner, as if it had side-slipped within his chest.

Irene went on quietly:

"He and his daughter were in the Gallery, and afterwards at the
confectioner's where we had tea."

Jolyon went over and put his hand on her shoulder.

"How did he look?"

"Grey; but otherwise much the same."

"And the daughter?"

"Pretty. At least, Jon thought so."

Jolyon's heart side-slipped again. His wife's face had a strained and
puzzled look.

"You didn't--?" he began.

"No; but Jon knows their name. The girl dropped her handkerchief and he
picked it up."

Jolyon sat down on his bed. An evil chance!

"June was with you. Did she put her foot into it?"

"No; but it was all very queer and strained, and Jon could see it was."

Jolyon drew a long breath, and said:

"I've often wondered whether we've been right to keep it from him.
He'll find out some day."

"The later the better, Jolyon; the young have such cheap, hard
judgment. When you were nineteen what would you have thought of YOUR
mother if she had done what I have?" Yes! There it was! Jon worshipped
his mother; and knew nothing of the tragedies, the inexorable
necessities of life, nothing of the prisoned grief in an unhappy
marriage, nothing of jealousy, or passion--knew nothing at all, as yet!

"What have you told him?" he said at last.

"That they were relations, but we didn't know them; that you had never
cared much for your family, or they for you. I expect he will be asking
YOU."

Jolyon smiled. "This promises to take the place of air-raids," he said.
"After all, one misses them."

Irene looked up at him.

"We've known it would come some day."

He answered her with sudden energy:

"I could never stand seeing Jon blame you. He shan't do that, even in
thought. He has imagination; and he'll understand if it's put to him
properly. I think I had better tell him before he gets to know
otherwise."

"Not yet, Jolyon."

That was like her--she had no foresight, and never went to meet
trouble. Still--who knew?--she might be right. It was ill going against
a mother's instinct. It might be well to let the boy go on, if
possible, till experience had given him some touchstone by which he
could judge the values of that old tragedy; till love, jealousy,
longing, had deepened his charity. All the same, one must take
precautions--every precaution possible! And, long after Irene had left
him, he lay awake turning over those precautions. He must write to
Holly, telling her that Jon knew nothing as yet of family history.
Holly was discreet, she would make sure of her husband, she would see
to it! Jon could take the letter with him when he went to-morrow.

And so the day on which he had put the polish on his material estate
died out with the chiming of the stable clock; and another began for
Jolyon in the shadow of a spiritual disorder which could not be so
rounded off and polished....

But Jon, whose room had once been his day nursery, lay awake too, the
prey of a sensation disputed by those who have never known it, "love at
first sight!" He had felt it beginning in him with the glint of those
dark eyes gazing into his athwart the Juno--a conviction that this was
his 'dream'; so that what followed had seemed to him at once natural
and miraculous. Fleur! Her name alone was almost enough for one who was
terribly susceptible to the charm of words. In a homoeopathic age, when
boys and girls were coeducated, and mixed up in early life till sex was
almost abolished, Jon was singularly old-fashioned. His modern school
took boys only, and his holidays had been spent at Robin Hill with boy
friends, or his parents alone. He had never, therefore, been inoculated
against the germs of love by small doses of the poison. And now in the
dark his temperature was mounting fast. He lay awake, featuring
Fleur--as they called it--recalling her words, especially that "Au
revoir!" so soft and sprightly.

He was still so wide-awake at dawn that he got up, slipped on tennis
shoes, trousers, and a sweater, and in silence crept down-stairs and
out through the study window. It was just light; there was a smell of
grass. 'Fleur!' he thought; 'Fleur!' It was mysteriously white
out-of-doors, with nothing awake except the birds just beginning to
chirp. 'I'll go down into the coppice,' he thought. He ran down through
the fields, reached the pond just as the sun rose, and passed into the
coppice. Bluebells carpeted the ground there; among the larch-trees
there was mystery--the air, as it were, composed of that romantic
quality. Jon sniffed its freshness, and stared at the bluebells in the
sharpening light. Fleur! It rhymed with her! And she lived at
Mapledurham--a jolly name, too, on the river somewhere. He could find
it in the atlas presently. He would write to her. But would she answer?
Oh! She must. She had said "Au revoir!" Not good-bye! What luck that
she had dropped her handkerchief. He would never have known her but for
that. And the more he thought of that handkerchief, the more amazing
his luck seemed. Fleur! It certainly rhymed with her! Rhythm thronged
his head; words jostled to be joined together; he was on the verge of a
poem.

Jon remained in this condition for more than half an hour, then
returned to the house, and getting a ladder, climbed in at his bedroom
window out of sheer exhilaration. Then, remembering that the study
window was open, he went down and shut it, first removing the ladder,
so as to obliterate all traces of his feeling. The thing was too deep
to be revealed to mortal soul--even to his mother.



IV

THE MAUSOLEUM


There are houses whose souls have passed into the limbo of Time,
leaving their bodies in the limbo of London. Such was not quite the
condition of "Timothy's" on the Bayswater Road, for Timothy's soul
still had one foot in Timothy Forsyte's body, and Smither kept the
atmosphere unchanging, of camphor and port wine and house whose windows
are only opened to air it twice a day.

To Forsyte imagination that house was now a sort of Chinese pill-box, a
series of layers in the last of which was Timothy. One did not reach
him, or so it was reported by members of the family who, out of
old-time habit or absent-mindedness, would drive up once in a blue moon
and ask after their surviving uncle. Such were Francie, now quite
emancipated from God (she frankly avowed atheism), Euphemia,
emancipated from old Nicholas, and Winifred Dartie from her "man of the
world." But, after all, everybody was emancipated now, or said they
were--perhaps not quite the same thing!

When Soames, therefore, took it on his way to Paddington station on the
morning after that encounter, it was hardly with the expectation of
seeing Timothy in the flesh. His heart made a faint demonstration
within him while he stood in full south sunlight on the newly whitened
doorstep of that little house where four Forsytes had once lived, and
now but one dwelt on like a winter fly; the house into which Soames had
come and out of which he had gone times without number, divested of, or
burdened with, fardels of family gossip; the house of the "old people"
of another century, another age.

The sight of Smither--still corseted up to the armpits because the new
fashion which came in as they were going out about 1903 had never been
considered "nice" by Aunts Juley and Hester--brought a pale
friendliness to Soames's lips; Smither, still faithfully arranged to
old pattern in every detail, an invaluable servant--none such
left--smiling back at him, with the words: "Why! it's Mr. Soames, after
all this time! And how are YOU, sir? Mr. Timothy will be so pleased to
know you've been."

"How is he?"

"Oh! he keeps fairly bobbish for his age, sir; but of course he's a
wonderful man. As I said to Mrs. Dartie when she was here last: It
WOULD please Miss Forsyte and Mrs. Juley and Miss Hester to see how he
relishes a baked apple still. But he's quite deaf. And a mercy, I
always think. For what we should have done with him in the air-raids, I
don't know."

"Ah!" said Soames. "What DID you do with him?"

"We just left him in his bed, and had the bell run down into the
cellar, so that Cook and I could hear him if he rang. It would never
have done to let him know there was a war on. As I said to Cook, 'If
Mr. Timothy rings, they may do what they like--I'm going up. My dear
mistresses would have a fit if they could see him ringing and nobody
going to him.' But he slept through them all beautiful. And the one in
the daytime he was having his bath. It WAS a mercy, because he might
have noticed the people in the street all looking up--he often looks
out of the window."

"Quite!" murmured Soames. Smither was getting garrulous! "I just want
to look round and see if there's anything to be done."

"Yes, sir. I don't think there's anything except a smell of mice in the
dining-room that we don't know how to get rid of. It's funny they
should be there, and not a crumb, since Mr. Timothy took to not coming
down, just before the war. But they're nasty little things; you never
know where they'll take you next."

"Does he leave his bed?"

"Oh! yes, sir; he takes nice exercise between his bed and the window in
the morning, not to risk a change of air. And he's quite comfortable in
himself; has his Will out every day regular. It's a great consolation
to him--that."

"Well, Smither, I want to see him, if I can; in case he has anything to
say to me."

Smither coloured up above her corsets.

"It WILL be an occasion!" she said. "Shall I take you round the house,
sir, while I send Cook to break it to him?"

"No, you go to him," said Soames. "I can go round the house by myself."

One could not confess to sentiment before another, and Soames felt that
he was going to be sentimental nosing round those rooms so saturated
with the past. When Smither, creaking with excitement, had left him,
Soames entered the dining-room and sniffed. In his opinion it wasn't
mice, but incipient wood-rot, and he examined the panelling. Whether it
was worth a coat of paint, at Timothy's age, he was not sure. The room
had always been the most modern in the house; and only a faint smile
curled Soames's lips and nostrils. Walls of a rich green surmounted the
oak dado; a heavy metal chandelier hung by a chain from a ceiling
divided by imitation beams. The pictures had been bought by Timothy, a
bargain, one day at Jobson's sixty years ago--three Snyder "still
lifes," two faintly coloured drawings of a boy and a girl, rather
charming, which bore the initials "J.R."--Timothy had always believed
they might turn out to be Joshua Reynolds, but Soames, who admired
them, had discovered that they were only John Robinson; and a doubtful
Morland of a white pony being shod. Deep-red plush curtains, ten
high-backed dark mahogany chairs with deep-red plush seats, a Turkey
carpet, and a mahogany dining-table as large as the room was small,
such was an apartment which Soames could remember unchanged in soul or
body since he was four years old. He looked especially at the two
drawings, and thought: 'I shall buy those at the sale.'

From the dining-room he passed into Timothy's study. He did not
remember ever having been in that room. It was lined from floor to
ceiling with volumes, and he looked at them with curiosity. One wall
seemed devoted to educational books, which Timothy's firm had published
two generations back--sometimes as many as twenty copies of one book.
Soames read their titles and shuddered. The middle wall had precisely
the same books as used to be in the library at his own father's in Park
Lane, from which he deduced the fancy that James and his youngest
brother had gone out together one day and bought a brace of small
libraries. The third wall he approached with more excitement. Here,
surely, Timothy's own taste would be found. It was. The books were
dummies. The fourth wall was all heavily curtained window. And turned
towards it was a large chair with a mahogany reading-stand attached, on
which a yellowish and folded copy of The Times, dated July 6, 1914, the
day Timothy first failed to come down, as if in preparation for the
war, seemed waiting for him still. In a corner stood a large globe of
that world never visited by Timothy, deeply convinced of the unreality
of everything but England, and permanently upset by the sea, on which
he had been very sick one Sunday afternoon in 1836, out of a pleasure
boat off the pier at Brighton, with Juley and Hester, Swithin and Hatty
Chessman; all due to Swithin, who was always taking things into his
head, and who, thank goodness, had been sick too. Soames knew all about
it, having heard the tale fifty times at least from one or other of
them. He went up to the globe, and gave it a spin; it emitted a faint
creak and moved about an inch, bringing into his purview a
daddy-long-legs which had died on it in latitude 44.

'Mausoleum!' he thought. 'George was right!' And he went out and up the
stairs. On the half landing he stopped before the case of stuffed
humming-birds which had delighted his childhood. They looked not a day
older, suspended on wires above pampas-grass. If the case were opened
the birds would not begin to hum, but the whole thing would crumble, he
suspected. It wouldn't be worth putting that into the sale! And
suddenly he was caught by a memory of Aunt Ann--dear old Aunt
Ann--holding him by the hand in front of that case and saying: "Look,
Soamey! Aren't they bright and pretty, dear little humming-birds!"
Soames remembered his own answer: "They don't hum, Auntie." He must
have been six, in a black velveteen suit with a light-blue collar--he
remembered that suit well! Aunt Ann with her ringlets, and her spidery
kind hands, and her grave old aquiline smile--a fine old lady, Aunt
Ann! He moved on up to the drawing-room door. There on each side of it
were the groups of miniatures. Those he would certainly buy in! The
miniatures of his four aunts, one of his uncle Swithin adolescent, and
one of his uncle Nicholas as a boy. They had all been painted by a
young lady friend of the family at a time, 1830, about, when miniatures
were considered very genteel, and lasting too, painted as they were on
ivory. Many a time had he heard the tale of that young lady: "Very
talented, my dear; she had quite a weakness for Swithin, and very soon
after she went into a consumption and died: so like Keats--we often
spoke of it."

Well, there they were! Ann, Juley, Hester, Susan--quite a small child;
Swithin, with sky-blue eyes, pink cheeks, yellow curls, white
waistcoat--large as life; and Nicholas, like Cupid with an eye on
heaven. Now he came to think of it, Uncle Nick had always been rather
like that--a wonderful man to the last. Yes, she must have had talent,
and miniatures had a certain back-watered cachet of their own, little
subject to the currents of competition on aesthetic Change. Soames
opened the drawing-room door. The room was dusted, the furniture
uncovered, the curtains drawn back, precisely as if his aunts still
dwelt there patiently waiting. And a thought came to him: When Timothy
died--why not? Would it not be almost a duty to preserve this
house--like Carlyle's--and put up a tablet, and show it? "Specimen of
mid-Victorian abode--entrance, one shilling, with catalogue." After
all, it was the completest thing, and perhaps the deadest in the London
of to-day. Perfect in its special taste and culture, if, that is, he
took down and carried over to his own collection the four Barbizon
pictures he had given them. The still sky-blue walls, the green
curtains patterned with red flowers and ferns; the crewel-worked
fire-screen before the cast-iron grate; the mahogany cupboard with
glass windows, full of little knick-knacks; the beaded footstools;
Keats, Shelley, Southey, Cowper, Coleridge, Byron's "Corsair" (but
nothing else), and the Victorian poets in a bookshelf row; the
marqueterie cabinet lined with dim red plush, full of family relics;
Hester's first fan; the buckles of their mother's father's shoes; three
bottled scorpions; and one very yellow elephant's tusk, sent home from
India by Great-uncle Edgar Forsyte, who had been in jute; a yellow bit
of paper propped up, with spidery writing on it, recording God knew
what! And the pictures crowding on the walls--all water-colours save
those four Barbizons looking like the foreigners they were, and
doubtful customers at that--pictures bright and illustrative, "Telling
the Bees," "Hey for the Ferry!" and two in the style of Frith, all
thimblerig and crinolines, given them by Swithin. Oh! many, many
pictures at which Soames had gazed a thousand times in supercilious
fascination; a marvellous collection of bright, smooth gilt frames.

And the boudoir-grand piano, beautifully dusted, hermetically sealed as
ever; and Aunt Juley's album of pressed seaweed on it. And the
gilt-legged chairs, stronger than they looked. And on one side of the
fireplace the sofa of crimson silk, where Aunt Ann, and after her Aunt
Juley, had been wont to sit, facing the light and bolt upright. And on
the other side of the fire the one really easy chair, back to the
light, for Aunt Hester. Soames screwed up his eyes; he seemed to see
them sitting there. Ah! and the atmosphere--even now, of too many
stuffs and washed lace curtains, lavender in bags, and dried bee's
wings. 'No,' he thought, 'there's nothing like it left; it ought to be
preserved.' And, by George, they might laugh at it, but for a standard
of gentle life never departed from, for fastidiousness of skin and eye
and nose and feeling, it beat to-day hollow--to-day with its Tubes and
cars, its perpetual smoking, its cross-legged, bare-necked girls
visible up to the knees and down to the waist if you took the trouble
(agreeable to the satyr within each Forsyte but hardly his idea of a
lady), with their feet, too, screwed round the legs of their chairs
while they ate, and their "So longs," and their "Old Beans," and their
laughter--girls who gave him the shudders whenever he thought of Fleur
in contact with them; and the hard-eyed, capable, older women who
managed life and gave him the shudders too. No! his old aunts, if they
never opened their minds, their eyes, or very much their windows, at
least had manners, and a standard, and reverence for past and future.

With rather a choky feeling he closed the door and went tiptoeing
up-stairs. He looked in at a place on the way: H'm! in perfect order of
the eighties, with a sort of yellow oilskin paper on the walls. At the
top of the stairs he hesitated between four doors. Which of them was
Timothy's? And he listened. A sound as of a child slowly dragging a
hobby-horse about, came to his ears. That must be Timothy! He tapped,
and a door was opened by Smither very red in the face.

Mr. Timothy was taking his walk, and she had not been able to get him
to attend. If Mr. Soames would come into the back room, he could see
him through the door.

Soames went into the back room and stood watching.

The last of the old Forsytes was on his feet, moving with the most
impressive slowness, and an air of perfect concentration on his own
affairs, backward and forward between the foot of his bed and the
window, a distance of some twelve feet. The lower part of his square
face, no longer clean-shaven, was covered with snowy beard clipped as
short as it could be, and his chin looked as broad as his brow where
the hair was also quite white, while nose and cheeks and brow were a
good yellow. One hand held a stout stick, and the other grasped the
skirt of his Jaeger dressing-gown, from under which could be seen his
bed-socked ankles and feet thrust into Jaeger slippers. The expression
on his face was that of a crossed child, intent on something that he
has not got. Each time he turned he stumped the stick, and then dragged
it, as if to show that he could do without it.

"He still looks strong," said Soames under his breath.

"Oh! yes, sir. You should see him take his bath--it's wonderful; he
does enjoy it so."

Those quite loud words gave Soames an insight. Timothy had resumed his
babyhood.

"Does he take any interest in things generally?" he said, also aloud.

"Oh! yes, sir; his food and his Will. It's quite a sight to see him
turn it over and over, not to read it, of course; and every now and
then he asks the price of Consols, and I write it on a slate for
him--very large. Of course, I always write the same, what they were
when he last took notice, in 1914. We got the doctor to forbid him to
read the paper when the war broke out. Oh! he did take on about that at
first. But he soon came round, because he knew it tired him; and he's a
wonder to conserve energy as he used to call it when my dear mistresses
were alive, bless their hearts! How he did go on at them about that;
they were always so active, if you remember, Mr. Soames."

"What would happen if I were to go in?" asked Soames. "Would he
remember me? I made his Will, you know, after Miss Hester died in 1907."

"Oh! that, sir," replied Smither doubtfully, "I couldn't take on me to
say. I think he might; he really is a wonderful man for his age."

Soames moved into the doorway, and, waiting for Timothy to turn, said
in a loud voice: "Uncle Timothy!"

Timothy trailed back half-way, and halted.

"Eh?" he said.

"Soames," cried Soames at the top of his voice, holding out his hand,
"Soames Forsyte!"

"No!" said Timothy, and stumping his stick loudly on the floor, he
continued his walk.

"It doesn't seem to work," said Soames.

"No, sir," replied Smither, rather crestfallen; "you see, he hasn't
finished his walk. It always was one thing at a time with him. I expect
he'll ask me this afternoon if you came about the gas, and a pretty job
I shall have to make him understand."

"Do you think he ought to have a man about him?"

Smither held up her hands. "A man! Oh! no. Cook and me can manage
perfectly. A strange man about would send him crazy in no time. And my
mistresses wouldn't like the idea of a man in the house. Besides, we're
so proud of him."

"I suppose the doctor comes?"

"Every morning. He makes special terms for such a quantity, and Mr.
Timothy's so used, he doesn't take a bit of notice, except to put out
his tongue."

"Well," said Soames, turning away, "it's rather sad and painful to me."

"Oh! sir," returned Smither anxiously, "you mustn't think that. Now
that he can't worry about things, he quite enjoys his life, really he
does. As I say to Cook, Mr. Timothy is more of a man than he ever was.
You see, when he's not walkin', or takin' his bath, he's eatin', and
when he's not eatin', he's sleeping and there it is. There isn't an
ache or a care about him anywhere."

"Well," said Soames, "there's something in that. I'll go down. By the
way, let me see his Will."

"I should have to take my time about that, sir; he keeps it under his
pillow, and he'd see me, while he's active."

"I only want to know if it's the one I made," said Soames; "you take a
look at its date some time, and let me know."

"Yes, sir; but I'm sure it's the same, because me and Cook witnessed,
you remember, and there's our names on it still, and we've only done it
once."

"Quite!" said Soames. He did remember. Smither and Jane had been proper
witnesses, having been left nothing in the Will that they might have no
interest in Timothy's death. It had been--he fully admitted--an almost
improper precaution, but Timothy had wished it, and, after all, Aunt
Hester had provided for them amply.

"Very well," he said; "good-bye, Smither. Look after him, and if he
should say anything at any time, put it down, and let me know."

"Oh! yes, Mr. Soames; I'll be sure to do that. It's been such a
pleasant change to see you. Cook will be quite excited when I tell her."

Soames shook her hand and went down-stairs. He stood for fully two
minutes by the hat-stand whereon he had hung his hat so many times. 'So
it all passes,' he was thinking; 'passes and begins again. Poor old
chap!' And he listened, if perchance the sound of Timothy trailing his
hobby-horse might come down the well of the stairs; or some ghost of an
old face show over the banisters, and an old voice say: "Why, it's dear
Soames, and we were only saying that we hadn't seen him for a week!"

Nothing--nothing! Just the scent of camphor, and dust-motes in a
sunbeam through the fanlight over the door. The little old house! A
mausoleum! And, turning on his heel, he went out, and caught his train.



V

THE NATIVE HEATH


    "His foot's upon his native heath,
    His name's--Val Dartie."

With some such feeling did Val Dartie, in the fortieth year of his age,
set out that same Thursday morning very early from the old manor-house
he had taken on the north side of the Sussex Downs. His destination was
Newmarket, and he had not been there since the autumn of 1899, when he
stole over from Oxford for the Cambridgeshire. He paused at the door to
give his wife a kiss, and put a flask of port into his pocket.

"Don't overtire your leg, Val, and don't bet too much."

With the pressure of her chest against his own, and her eyes looking
into his, Val felt both leg and pocket safe. He should be moderate;
Holly was always right--she had a natural aptitude. It did not seem so
remarkable to him, perhaps, as it might to others, that--half Dartie as
he was--he should have been perfectly faithful to his young first
cousin during the twenty years since he married her romantically out in
the Boer War; and faithful without any feeling of sacrifice or
boredom--she was so quick, so slyly always a little in front of his
mood. Being first cousins they had decided, or rather Holly had, to
have no children; and, though a little sallower, she had kept her
looks, her slimness, and the colour of her dark hair. Val particularly
admired the life of her own she carried on, besides carrying on his,
and riding better every year. She kept up her music, she read an awful
lot--novels, poetry, all sorts of stuff. Out on their farm in Cape
Colony she had looked after all the "nigger" babies and women in a
miraculous manner. She was, in fact,--clever; yet made no fuss about
it, and had no "side." Though not remarkable for humility, Val had come
to have the feeling that she was his superior, and he did not grudge
it--a great tribute. It might be noted that he never looked at Holly
without her knowing of it, but that she looked at him sometimes
unawares.

He has kissed her in the porch because he should not be doing so on the
platform, though she was going to the station with him, to drive the
car back. Tanned and wrinkled by Colonial weather and the wiles
inseparable from horses, and handicapped by the leg which, weakened in
the Boer War, had probably saved his life in the war just past, Val was
still much as he had been in the days of his courtship; his smile as
wide and charming, his eyelashes, if anything, thicker and darker, his
eyes screwed up under them, as bright a grey, his freckles rather
deeper, his hair a little grizzled at the sides. He gave the impression
of one who has lived actively WITH HORSES in a sunny climate.

Twisting the car sharp round at the gate, he said:

"When is young Jon coming?"

"To-day."

"Is there anything you want for him? I could bring it down on Saturday."

"No; but you might come by the same train as Fleur--one forty."

Val gave the Ford full rein; he still drove like a man in a new country
on bad roads, who refuses to compromise, and expects heaven at every
hole.

"That's a young woman who knows her way about," he said. "I say, has it
struck you?"

"Yes," said Holly.

"Uncle Soames and your dad--bit awkward, isn't it?"

"She won't know, and he won't know, and nothing must be said, of
course. It's only for five days, Val."

"Stable secret! Righto!" If Holly thought it safe, it was. Glancing
slyly round at him, she said: "Did you notice how beautifully she asked
herself?"

"No!"

"Well, she did. What do you think of her, Val?"

"Pretty, and clever; but she might run out at any corner if she got her
monkey up, I should say."

"I'm wondering," Holly murmured, "whether she is the modern young
woman. One feels at sea coming home into all this."

"You? You get the hang of things so quick."

Holly slid her hand into his coat-pocket.

"You keep one in the know," said Val, encouraged. "What do you think of
that Belgian fellow, Profond?"

"I think he's rather 'a good devil.'"

Val grinned.

"He seems to me a queer fish for a friend of our family. In fact, our
family is in pretty queer waters, with Uncle Soames marrying a
Frenchwoman, and your dad marrying Soames's first. Our grandfathers
would have had fits!"

"So would anybody's, my dear."

"This car," said Val suddenly, "wants rousing; she doesn't get her hind
legs under her up-hill. I shall have to give her her head on the slope
if I'm to catch that train."

There was that about horses which had prevented him from ever really
sympathising with a car, and the running of the Ford under his
guidance, compared with its running under that of Holly, was always
noticeable. He caught the train.

"Take care going home; she'll throw you down if she can. Good-bye,
darling."

"Good-bye," called Holly, and kissed her hand.

In the train, after quarter of an hour's indecision between thoughts of
Holly, his morning paper, the look of the bright day, and his dim
memory of Newmarket, Val plunged into the recesses of a small square
book, all names, pedigrees, tap-roots, and notes about the make and
shape of horses. The Forsyte in him was bent on the acquisition of a
certain strain of blood, and he was subduing resolutely as yet the
Dartie hankering for a flutter. On getting back to England, after the
profitable sale of his South African farm and stud, and observing that
the sun seldom shone, Val had said to himself: "I've absolutely got to
have an interest in life, or this country will give me the blues.
Hunting's not enough, I'll breed and I'll train." With just that extra
pinch of shrewdness and decision imparted by long residence in a new
country, Val had seen the weak point of modern breeding. They were all
hypnotised by fashion and high price. He should buy for looks, and let
names go hang! And, here he was already, hypnotised by the prestige of
a certain strain of blood! Half consciously, he thought: 'There's
something in this damned climate which makes one go round in a ring.
All the same, I must have a strain of Mayfly blood.'

In this mood he reached the Mecca of his hopes. It was one of those
quiet meetings favorable to such as wish to look into horses, rather
than into the mouths of bookmakers; and Val clung to the paddock. His
twenty years of Colonial life, divesting him of the dandyism in which
he had been bred, had left him the essential neatness of the horseman,
and given him a queer and rather blighting eye over what he called "the
silly haw-haw" of some Englishmen, the 'flapping cockatoory' of some
Englishwomen--Holly had none of that and Holly was his model.
Observant, quick, resourceful, Val went straight to the heart of a
transaction, a horse, a drink; and he was on his way to the heart of a
Mayfly filly, when a slow voice said at his elbow:

"Mr. Val Dartie? How's Mrs. Val Dartie? She's well, I hope." And he saw
beside him the Belgian he had met at his sister Imogen's.

"Prosper Profond--I met you at lunch," added the voice. "How are you?"
murmured Val.

"I'm very well," replied Monsieur Profond, smiling with a certain
inimitable slowness. "A good devil" Holly had called him. Well! He
looked a little like a devil, with his dark, clipped, pointed beard; a
sleepy one though, and good-humoured, with fine eyes, unexpectedly
intelligent.

"Here's a gentleman wants to know you--cousin of yours--Mr. George
Forsyde."

Val saw a large form, and a face clean-shaven, bull-like, a little
lowering, with sardonic humour bubbling behind a full grey eye; he
remembered it dimly from old days when he used to dine with his father
at the Iseeum Club.

"I was a racing pal of your father's," George was saying. "How's the
stud? Like to buy one of my screws?"

Val grinned, to hide the sudden feeling that the bottom had fallen out
of breeding. They believed in nothing over here, not even in horses.
George Forsyte, Prosper Profond! The devil himself was not more
disillusioned than those two.

"Didn't know you were a racing man," he said to Monsieur Profond.

"I'm not. I don' care for it. I'm a yachtin' man. I don' care for
yachtin' either, but I like to see my friends. I've got some lunch, Mr.
Val Dartie, just a small lunch, if you'd like to 'ave some; not
much--just a small one--in my car."

"Thanks," said Val; "very good of you. I'll come along in about quarter
of an hour."

"Over there. Mr. Forsyde's comin'," and Monsieur Profond "poinded" with
a yellow-gloved finger; "small car, with a small lunch"; he moved on,
groomed, sleepy, and remote, George Forsyte following, neat, huge, and
with his jesting air.

Val remained gazing at the Mayfly filly. George Forsyte, of course, was
an old chap, but this Profond might be about his own age; Val felt
extremely young, as if the Mayfly filly were a toy at which those two
had laughed. The animal had lost reality.

"That 'small' mare"--he seemed to hear the voice of Monsieur
Profond--"what do you see in her--we must all die!"

And George Forsyte, crony of his father, racing still! The Mayfly
strain--was it any better than any other? He might just as well have a
flutter with his money instead.

"No, by gum!" he muttered suddenly, "if it's no good breeding horses,
it's no good doing anything. What did I come for? I'll buy her."

He stood back and watched the ebb of the paddock visitors towards the
stand. Natty old chips, shrewd portly fellows, Jews, trainers looking
as if they had never been guilty of seeing a horse in their lives;
tall, flapping, languid women, or brisk, loud-voiced women; young men
with an air as if trying to take it seriously--two or three of them
with only one arm!

'Life over here's a game!' thought Val. 'Muffin bell rings, horses run,
money changes hands; ring again, run again, money changes back.'

But, alarmed at his own philosophy, he went to the paddock gate to
watch the Mayfly filly canter down. She moved well; and he made his way
over to the "small" car. The "small" lunch was the sort a man dreams of
but seldom gets; and when it was concluded Monsieur Profond walked back
with him to the paddock.

"Your wife's a nice woman," was his surprising remark.

"Nicest woman I know," returned Val dryly.

"Yes," said Monsieur Profond; "she has a nice face. I admire nice
women."

Val looked at him suspiciously, but something kindly and direct in the
heavy diabolism of his companion disarmed him for the moment.

"Any time you like to come on my yacht, I'll give her a small cruise."

"Thanks," said Val, in arms again, "she hates the sea."

"So do I," said Monsieur Profond.

"Then why do you yacht?"

The Belgian's eyes smiled. "Oh! I don' know. I've done everything; it's
the last thing I'm doin'."

"It must be d--d expensive. I should want more reason than that."

Monsieur Prosper Profond raised his eyebrows, and puffed out a heavy
lower lip.

"I'm an easy-goin' man," he said.

"Were you in the war?" asked Val.

"Ye-es. I've done that too. I was gassed; it was a small bit
unpleasant." He smiled with a deep and sleepy air of prosperity, as if
he had caught it from his name. Whether his saying "small" when he
ought to have said "little" was genuine mistake or affectation, Val
could not decide; the fellow was evidently capable of anything. Among
the ring of buyers round the Mayfly filly who had won her race,
Monsieur Profond said: "You goin' to bid?"

Val nodded. With this sleepy Satan at his elbow, he felt in need of
faith. Though placed above the ultimate blows of Providence by the
forethought of a grandfather who had tied him up a thousand a year to
which was added the thousand a year tied up for Holly by HER
grand-father, Val was not flush of capital that he could touch, having
spent most of what he had realised from his South African farm on his
establishment in Sussex. And very soon he was thinking: 'Dash it! she's
going beyond me!' His limit--six hundred--exceeded, he dropped out of
the bidding. The Mayfly filly passed under the hammer at seven hundred
and fifty guineas. He was turning away vexed when the slow voice of
Monsieur Profond said in his ear:

"Well, I've bought that small filly, but I don't want her; you take her
and give her to your wife."

Val looked at the fellow with renewed suspicion, but the good humour in
his eyes was such that he really could not take offence.

"I made a small lot of money in the war," began Monsieur Profond in
answer to that look. "I 'ad armament shares. I like to give it away.
I'm always makin' money. I want very small lot myself. I like my
friends to 'ave it."

"I'll buy her of you at the price you gave," said Val with sudden
resolution.

"No," said Monsieur Profond. "You take her. I don' want her."

"Hang it! One doesn't--"

"Why not?" smiled Monsieur Profond. "I'm a friend of your family."

"Seven hundred and fifty guineas is not a box of cigars," said Val
impatiently.

"All right; you keep her for me till I want her, and do what you like
with her."

"So long as she's yours," said Val, "I don't mind that." "That's all
right," murmured Monsieur Profond, and moved away.

Val watched; he might be "a good devil," but then again he might not.
He saw him rejoin George Forsyte, and thereafter saw him no more.

He spent those nights after racing at his mother's house in Green
Street.

Winifred Dartie at sixty-two was marvellously preserved, considering
the three-and-thirty years during which she had put up with Montague
Dartie, till almost happily released by a French staircase. It was to
her a vehement satisfaction to have her favourite son back from South
Africa after all this time, to feel him so little changed, and to have
taken a fancy to his wife. Winifred, who in the late seventies, before
her marriage, had been in the vanguard of freedom, pleasure, and
fashion, confessed her youth outclassed by the donzellas of the day.
They seemed, for instance, to regard marriage as an incident, and
Winifred sometimes regretted that she had not done the same; a second,
third, fourth incident might have secured her a partner of less
dazzling inebriety; though, after all, he had left her Val, Imogen,
Maud, Benedict (almost a colonel and unharmed by the war)--none of whom
had been divorced as yet. The steadiness of her children often amazed
one who remembered their father; but, as she was fond of believing,
they were really all Forsytes, favouring herself, with the exception
perhaps of Imogen. Her brother's "little girl" Fleur frankly puzzled
Winifred. The child was as restless as any of these modern young
women--"She's a small flame in a draught," Prosper Profond had said one
day after dinner--but she did not flop, or talk at the top of her
voice. The steady Forsyteism in Winifred's own character instinctively
resented the feeling in the air, the modern girl's habits and her
motto: "All's much of a muchness! Spend! To-morrow we shall be poor!"
She found it a saving grace in Fleur that having set her heart on a
thing, she had no change of heart until she got it--though what
happened after, Fleur was, of course, too young to have made evident.
The child was a "very pretty little thing," too, and quite a credit to
take about, with her mother's French taste and gift for wearing
clothes; everybody turned to look at Fleur--great consideration to
Winifred, a lover of the style and distinction which had so cruelly
deceived her in the case of Montague Dartie.

In discussing her with Val, at breakfast on Saturday morning, Winifred
dwelt on the family skeleton.

"That little affair of your father-in-law and your Aunt Irene,
Val--it's old as the hills, of course, Fleur need know nothing about
it--making a fuss. Your Uncle Soames is very particular about that. So
you'll be careful."

"Yes! But it's dashed awkward--Holly's young half-brother is coming to
live with us while he learns farming. He's there already."

"Oh!" said Winifred. "That is a gaff! What is he like?"

"Only saw him once--at Robin Hill, when we were home in 1909; he was
naked and painted blue and yellow in stripes--a jolly little chap."

Winifred thought that "rather nice," and added comfortably: "Well,
Holly's sensible; she'll know how to deal with it. I shan't tell your
uncle. It'll only bother him. It's a great comfort to have you back, my
dear boy, now that I'm getting on."

"Getting on! Why! you're as young as ever. By the way, that chap
Profond, Mother, is he all right?"

"Prosper Profond! Oh! the most amusing man I know."

Val grunted, and recounted the story of the Mayfly filly.

"That's SO like him," murmured Winifred. "He does all sorts of things."

"Well," said Val shrewdly, "our family haven't been too lucky with that
kind of cattle; they're too light-hearted for us."

It was true, and Winifred's blue study lasted a full minute before she
answered:

"Oh! well! He's a foreigner, Val; one must make allowances."

"All right, I'll use his filly and make it up to him, somehow."

And soon after he gave her his blessing, received a kiss, and left her
for his bookmaker's, the Iseeum Club, and Victoria station.



VI

JON


Mrs. Val Dartie, after twenty years of South Africa, had fallen deeply
in love, fortunately with something of her own, for the object of her
passion was the prospect in front of her windows, the cool clear light
on the green Downs. It was England again, at last! England more
beautiful than she had dreamed. Chance had, in fact, guided the Val
Darties to a spot where the South Downs had real charm when the sun
shone. Holly had enough of her father's eye to apprehend the rare
quality of their outlines and chalky radiance; to go up there by the
ravine-like lane and wander along towards Chanctonbury or Amberley, was
still a delight which she hardly attempted to share with Val, whose
admiration of Nature was confused by a Forsyte's instinct for getting
something out of it, such as the condition of the turf for his horses'
exercise.

Driving the Ford home with a certain humouring smoothness, she promised
herself that the first use she would make of Jon would be to take him
up there, and show him "the view" under this May-day sky.

She was looking forward to her young half-brother with a motherliness
not exhausted by Val. A three-day visit to Robin Hill, soon after their
arrival home, had yielded no sight of him--he was still at school; so
that her recollection, like Val's, was of a little sunny-haired boy
striped blue and yellow, down by the pond.

Those three days at Robin Hill had been exciting, sad, embarrassing.
Memories of her dead brother, memories of Val's courtship; the aging of
her father, not seen for twenty years, something funereal in his ironic
gentleness which did not escape one who had much subtle instinct; above
all, the presence of her stepmother, whom she could still vaguely
remember as the "lady in grey" of days when she was little and
grandfather alive and Mademoiselle Beauce so cross because that
intruder gave her music lessons--all these confused and tantalised a
spirit which had longed to find Robin Hill untroubled. But Holly was
adept at keeping things to herself, and all had seemed to go quite well.

Her father had kissed her when she left him, with lips which she was
sure had trembled.

"Well, my dear," he said, "the war hasn't changed Robin Hill, has it?
If only you could have brought Jolly back with you! I say, can you
stand this spiritualistic racket? When the oak-tree dies, it dies, I'm
afraid."

From the warmth of her embrace he probably divined that he had let the
cat out of his bag, for he rode off at once on irony.

"Spiritualism--queer word, when the more they manifest the more they
prove that they've got hold of matter."

"How?" said Holly.

"Why! Look at their photographs of auric presences. You must have
something material for light and shade to fall on before you can take a
photograph. No, it'll end in our calling all matter spirit, or all
spirit matter--I don't know which."

"But don't you believe in survival, Dad?"

Jolyon had looked at her, and the sad whimsicality of his face
impressed her deeply.

"Well, my dear, I should like to get something out of death. I've been
looking into it a bit. But for the life of me I can't find anything
that telepathy, subconsciousness, and emanation from the storehouse of
this world can't account for just as well. Wish I could! Wishes father
thoughts but they don't breed evidence."

Holly had pressed her lips again to his forehead with a feeling that it
confirmed his theory that all matter was becoming spirit--his brow felt
somehow so insubstantial.

But the most poignant memory of that little visit had been watching,
unobserved, her stepmother reading to herself a letter from Jon. It
was--she decided--the prettiest sight she had ever seen. Irene, lost as
it were in the letter of her boy, stood at a window where the light
fell on her face and her fine grey hair; her lips were moving, smiling,
her dark eyes laughing, dancing, and the hand which did not hold the
letter was pressed against her breast. Holly withdrew as from a vision
of perfect love, convinced that Jon must be nice.

When she saw him coming out of the station with a kit-bag in either
hand, she was confirmed in her predisposition. He was a little like
Jolly, that long-lost idol of her childhood, but eager-looking and less
formal, with deeper eyes and brighter-coloured hair, for he wore no
hat; altogether a very interesting "little" brother!

His tentative politeness charmed one who was accustomed to assurance in
the youthful manner; he was disturbed because she was to drive him
home, instead of his driving her. Shouldn't he have a shot? They hadn't
a car at Robin Hill since the war, of course, and he had only driven
once, and landed up a bank, so she oughtn't to mind his trying. His
laugh, soft and infectious, was very attractive, though that word, she
had heard, was now quite old-fashioned. When they reached the house he
pulled out a crumpled letter which she read while he was washing--a
quite short letter, which must have cost her father many a pang to
write.


"MY DEAR,

"You and Val will not forget, I trust, that Jon knows nothing of family
history. His mother and I think he is too young at present. The boy is
very dear, and the apple of her eye. Verbum sapientibus.

Your loving father, J. F."


That was all; but it renewed in Holly an uneasy regret that Fleur was
coming.

After tea she fulfilled that promise to herself and took Jon up the
hill. They had a long talk, sitting above an old chalk-pit grown over
with brambles and goosepenny. Milkwort and liverwort starred the green
slope, the larks sang, and thrushes in the brake, and now and then a
gull flighting inland would wheel very white against the paling sky,
where the vague moon was coming up. Delicious fragrance came to them,
as if little invisible creatures were running and treading scent out of
the blades of grass.

Jon, who had fallen silent, said rather suddenly: "I say, this is
wonderful! There's no fat on it at all. Gull's flight and sheep-bells--"

"Gull's flight and sheep-bells! You're a poet, my dear!"

Jon sighed.

"Oh, Golly! No go!"

"Try! I used to at your age."

"Did you? Mother says 'try' too; but I'm so rotten. Have you any of
yours for me to see?"

"My dear," Holly murmured, "I've been married nineteen years. I only
wrote verses when I wanted to be."

"Oh!" said Jon, and turned over on to his face: the one cheek she could
see was a charming colour. Was Jon "touched in the wind," then, as Val
would have called it? Already? But, if so, all the better, he would
take no notice of young Fleur. Besides, on Monday he would begin his
farming. And she smiled. Was it Burns who followed the plough, or only
Piers Plowman? Nearly every young man and most young women seemed to be
poets nowadays, from the number of their books she had read out in
South Africa, importing them from Hatchus and Bumphards; and quite
good--oh! quite; much better than she had been herself! But then poetry
had only really come in since her day--with motor-cars. Another long
talk after dinner over a wood fire in the low hall, and there seemed
little left to know about Jon except anything of real importance. Holly
parted from him at his bedroom door, having seen twice over that he had
everything, with the conviction that she would love him, and Val would
like him. He was eager, but did not gush; he was a splendid listener,
sympathetic, reticent about himself. He evidently loved their father,
and adored his mother. He liked riding, rowing, and fencing, better
than games. He saved moths from candles, and couldn't bear spiders, but
put them out of doors in screws of paper sooner than kill them. In a
word, he was amiable. She went to sleep, thinking that he would suffer
horribly if anybody hurt him; but who would hurt him?

Jon, on the other hand, sat awake at his window with a bit of paper and
a pencil, writing his first "real poem" by the light of a candle
because there was not enough moon to see by, only enough to make the
night seem fluttery and as if engraved on silver. Just the night for
Fleur to walk, and turn her eyes, and lead on--over the hills and far
away. And Jon, deeply furrowed in his ingenuous brow, made marks on the
paper and rubbed them out and wrote them in again, and did all that was
necessary for the completion of a work of art; and he had a feeling
such as the winds of Spring must have, trying their first songs among
the coming blossom. Jon was one of those boys (not many) in whom a
home-trained love of beauty had survived school life. He had had to
keep it to himself, of course, so that not even the drawing-master knew
of it; but it was there, fastidious and clear within him. And his poem
seemed to him as lame and stilted as the night was winged. But he kept
it all the same. It was a "beast," but better than nothing as an
expression of the inexpressible. And he thought with a sort of
discomfiture: 'I shan't be able to show it to Mother.' He slept
terribly well, when he did sleep, overwhelmed by novelty.



VII

FLEUR


To avoid the awkwardness of questions which could not be answered, all
that had been told Jon was: "There's a girl coming down with Val for
the week-end."

For the same reason, all that had been told Fleur was: "We've got a
youngster staying with us."

The two yearlings, as Val called them in his thoughts, met therefore in
a manner which for unpreparedness left nothing to be desired. They were
thus introduced by Holly:

"This is Jon, my little brother; Fleur's a cousin of ours, Jon."

Jon, who was coming in through a French window out of strong sunlight,
was so confounded by the providential nature of this miracle, that he
had time to hear Fleur say calmly: "Oh, how do you do?" as if he had
never seen her, and to understand dimly from the quickest imaginable
little movement of her head that he never HAD seen her. He bowed
therefore over her hand in an intoxicated manner, and became more
silent than the grave. He knew better than to speak. Once in his early
life, surprised reading by a night-light, he had said fatuously "I was
just turning over the leaves, Mum," and his mother had replied: "Jon,
never tell stories, because of your face--nobody will ever believe
them."

The saying had permanently undermined the confidence necessary to the
success of spoken untruth. He listened therefore to Fleur's swift and
rapt allusions to the jolliness of everything, plied her with scones
and jam, and got away as soon as might be. They say that in delirium
tremens you see a fixed object, preferably dark, which suddenly changes
shape and position. Jon saw the fixed object; it had dark eyes and
passably dark hair, and changed its position, but never its shape. The
knowledge that between him and that object there was already a secret
understanding (however impossible to understand) thrilled him so that
he waited feverishly, and began to copy out his poem--which of course
he would never dare to show her--till the sound of horses' hoofs roused
him, and, leaning from his window, he saw her riding forth with Val. It
was clear that she wasted no time; but the sight filled him with grief.
He wasted his. If he had not bolted, in his fearful ecstasy, he might
have been asked to go too. From his window he watched them disappear,
appear again in the chine of the road, vanish, and emerge once more for
a minute clear on the outline of the Down. 'Silly brute!' he thought;
'I always miss my chances.'

Why couldn't he be self-confident and ready? And, leaning his chin on
his hands, he imagined the ride he might have had with her. A week-end
was but a week-end, and he had missed three hours of it. Did he know
any one except himself who would have been such a flat? He did not.

He dressed for dinner early, and was first down. He would miss no more.
But he missed Fleur, who came down last. He sat opposite her at dinner,
and it was terrible--impossible to say anything for fear of saying the
wrong thing, impossible to keep his eyes fixed on her in the only
natural way; in sum, impossible to treat normally one with whom in
fancy he had already been over the hills and far away; conscious, too,
all the time, that he must seem to her, to all of them, a dumb gawk.
Yes, it was terrible! And she was talking so well--swooping with swift
wing this way and that. Wonderful how she had learned an art which he
found so disgustingly difficult. She must think him hopeless indeed!

His sister's eyes fixed on him with a certain astonishment, obliged him
at last to look at Fleur; but instantly her eyes, very wide and eager,
seeming to say: "Oh! for goodness' sake!" obliged him to look at Val;
where a grin obliged him to look at his cutlet--that, at least, had no
eyes, and no grin, and he ate it hastily.

"Jon is going to be a farmer," he heard Holly say; "a farmer and a
poet."

He glanced up reproachfully, caught the comic lift of her eyebrow just
like their father's, laughed, and felt better.

Val recounted the incident of Monsieur Prosper Profond; nothing could
have been more favourable, for, in relating it, he regarded Holly, who
in turn regarded him, while Fleur seemed to be regarding with a slight
frown some thought of her own, and Jon was really free to look at her
at last. She had on a white frock, very simple and well made; her arms
were bare, and her hair had a white rose in it. In just that swift
moment of free vision, after such intense discomfort, Jon saw her
sublimated, as one sees in the dark a slender white fruit-tree; caught
her like a verse of poetry flashed before the eyes of the mind, or a
tune which floats out in the distance and dies.

He wondered giddily how old she was--she seemed so much more
self-possessed and experienced than himself. Why mustn't he say they
had met? He remembered suddenly his mother's face; puzzled,
hurt-looking, when she answered: "Yes, they're relations, but we don't
know them." Impossible that his mother, who loved beauty, should not
admire Fleur if she did know her!

Alone with Val after dinner, he sipped port deferentially and answered
the advances of this new-found brother-in-law. As to riding (always the
first consideration with Val) he could have the young chestnut, saddle
and unsaddle it himself, and generally look after it when he brought it
in. Jon said he was accustomed to all that at home, and saw that he had
gone up one in his host's estimation.

"Fleur," said Val, "can't ride much yet, but she's keen. Of course, her
father doesn't know a horse from a cartwheel. Does your dad ride?"

"He used to; but now he's--you know, he's--" He stopped, so hating the
word old. His father was old, and yet not old; no--never!

"Quite!" muttered Val. "I used to know your brother up at Oxford, ages
ago, the one who died in the Boer War. We had a fight in New College
Gardens. That was a queer business," he added, musing; "a good deal
came out of it."

Jon's eyes opened wide; all was pushing him towards historical
research, when his sister's voice said gently from the doorway:

"Come along, you two," and he rose, his heart pushing him towards
something far more modern.

Fleur having declared that it was "simply too wonderful to stay
indoors," they all went out. Moonlight was frosting the dew, and an old
sun-dial threw a long shadow. Two box hedges at right angles, dark and
square, barred off the orchard. Fleur turned through that angled
opening.

"Come on!" she called. Jon glanced at the others, and followed. She was
running among the trees like a ghost. All was lovely and foamlike above
her, and there was a scent of old trunks, and of nettles. She vanished.
He thought he had lost her, then almost ran into her standing quite
still.

"Isn't it jolly?" she cried, and Jon answered:

"Rather!"

She reached up, twisted off a blossom, and, twirling it in her fingers,
said:

"I suppose I can call you Jon?"

"I should think so just."

"All right! But you know there's a feud between our families?"

Jon stammered: "Feud? Why?"

"It's ever so romantic and silly? That's why I pretended we hadn't met.
Shall we get up early to-morrow morning and go for a walk before
breakfast and have it out? I hate being slow about things, don't you?"

Jon murmured a rapturous assent.

"Six o'clock, then. I think your mother's beautiful."

Jon said fervently: "Yes, she is."

"I love all kinds of beauty," went on Fleur, "when it's exciting. I
don't like Greek things a bit."

"What! Not Euripides?"

"Euripides? Oh! no, I can't bear Greek plays; they're so long. I think
beauty's always swift. I like to look at ONE picture, for instance, and
then run off. I can't bear a lot of things together. Look!" She held up
her blossom in the moonlight. "That's better than all the orchard, I
think."

And, suddenly, with her other hand she caught Jon's. "Of all things in
the world, don't you think caution's the most awful? Smell the
moonlight!"

She thrust the blossom against his face; Jon agreed giddily that of all
things in the world caution was the worst, and bending over, kissed the
hand which held his.

"That's nice and old-fashioned," said Fleur calmly. "You're frightfully
silent, Jon. Still I like silence when it's swift." She let go his
hand. "Did you think I dropped my handkerchief on purpose?"

"No!" cried Jon, intensely shocked.

"Well, I did, of course. Let's get back, or they'll think we're doing
this on purpose too." And again she ran like a ghost among the trees.
Jon followed, with love in his heart, Spring in his heart, and over all
the moonlit white unearthly blossom. They came out where they had gone
in, Fleur walking demurely.

"It's quite wonderful in there," she said dreamily to Holly.

Jon preserved silence, hoping against hope that she might be thinking
it swift.

She bade him a casual and demure good-night, which made him think he
had been dreaming....

In her bedroom Fleur had flung off her gown, and, wrapped in a
shapeless garment, with the white flower still in her hair, she looked
like a mousme, sitting cross-legged on her bed, writing by candlelight.


"DEAREST CHERRY:

"I believe I'm in love. I've got it in the neck, only the feeling is
really lower down. He's a second cousin--such a child, about six months
older and ten years younger than I am. Boys always fall in love with
their seniors, and girls with their juniors or with old men of forty.
Don't laugh, but his eyes are the truest things I ever saw; and he's
quite divinely silent! We had a most romantic first meeting in London
under the Vospovitch 'Juno.' And now he's sleeping in the next room and
the moonlight's on the blossom; and to-morrow morning, before anybody's
awake, we're going to walk off into Down fairyland. There's a feud
between our families, which makes it really exciting. Yes! and I may
have to use subterfuge and come on you for invitations--if so, you'll
know why! My father doesn't want us to know each other, but I can't
help that. Life's too short. He's got the most beautiful mother, with
lovely silvery hair and a young face with dark eyes. I'm staying with
his sister--who married my cousin; it's all mixed up, but I mean to
pump her to-morrow. We've often talked about love being a spoil-sport;
well, that's all tosh, it's the beginning of sport, and the sooner you
feel it, my dear, the better for you.

"Jon (not simplified spelling, but short for Jolyon, which is a name in
my family, they say) is the sort that lights up and goes out; about
five feet ten, still growing, and I believe he's going to be a poet. If
you laugh at me I've done with you for ever. I perceive all sorts of
difficulties, but you know when I really want a thing I get it. One of
the chief effects of love is that you see the air sort of inhabited,
like seeing a face in the moon; and you feel--you feel dancey and soft
at the same time, with a funny sensation--like a continual first sniff
of orange blossom--just above your stays. This is my first, and I feel
as if it were going to be my last, which is absurd, of course, by all
the laws of Nature and morality. If you mock me I will smite you, and
if you tell anybody I will never forgive you. So much so, that I almost
don't think I'll send this letter. Anyway, I'll sleep over it. So
good-night, my Cherry--oh!

Your FLEUR."



VIII

IDYLL ON GRASS


When those two young Forsytes emerged from the chine lane, and set
their faces East towards the sun, there was not a cloud in heaven, and
the Downs were dewy. They had come at a good bat up the slope and were
a little out of breath; if they had anything to say they did not say
it, but marched in the early awkwardness of unbreakfasted morning under
the songs of the larks. The stealing out had been fun, but with the
freedom of the tops the sense of conspiracy ceased, and gave place to
dumbness.

"We've made one blooming error," said Fleur, when they had gone half a
mile. "I'm hungry."

Jon produced a stick of chocolate. They shared it and their tongues
were loosened. They discussed the nature of their homes and previous
existences, which had a kind of fascinating unreality up on that lonely
height. There remained but one thing solid in Jon's past--his mother;
but one thing solid in Fleur's--her father; and of these figures, as
though seen in the distance with disapproving faces, they spoke little.

The Down dipped and rose again towards Chanctonbury Ring; a sparkle of
far sea came into view, a sparrowhawk hovered in the sun's eye so that
the blood-nourished brown of his wings gleamed nearly red. Jon had a
passion for birds, and an aptitude for sitting very still to watch
them; keen-sighted, and with a memory for what interested him, on birds
he was almost worth listening to. But in Chanctonbury Ring there were
none--its great beech temple was empty of life, and almost chilly at
this early hour; they came out willingly again into the sun on the far
side. It was Fleur's turn now. She spoke of dogs, and the way people
treated them. It was wicked to keep them on chains! She would like to
flog people who did that. Jon was astonished to find her so
humanitarian. She knew a dog, it seemed, which some farmer near her
home kept chained up at the end of his chicken run, in all weathers
till it had almost lost its voice from barking!

"And the misery is," she said vehemently, "that if the poor thing
didn't bark at every one who passes it wouldn't be kept there. I do
think men are cunning brutes. I've let it go twice, on the sly; it's
nearly bitten me both times, and then it goes simply mad with joy; but
it always runs back home at last, and they chain it up again. If I had
my way, I'd chain that man up."

Jon saw her teeth and her eyes gleam. "I'd brand him on his forehead
with the word 'Brute'; that would teach him!"

Jon agreed that it would be a good remedy. "It's their sense of
property," he said, "which makes people chain things. The last
generation thought of nothing but property; and that's why there was
the war."

"Oh!" said Fleur, "I never thought of that. Your people and mine
quarrelled about property. And anyway we've all got it--at least, I
suppose your people have."

"Oh! yes, luckily; I don't suppose I shall be any good at making money."

"If you were, I don't believe I should like you."

Jon slipped his hand tremulously under her arm.

Fleur looked straight before her, and chanted:

    "Jon, Jon, the farmer's son,
    Stole a pig, and away he run!"

Jon's arm crept round her waist.

"This is rather sudden," said Fleur calmly; "do you often do it?"

Jon dropped his arm. But when she laughed, his arm stole back again;
and Fleur began to sing:

   "O who will o'er the downs so free,
    O who will with me ride?
    O who will up and follow me--"

"Sing, Jon!"

Jon sang. The larks joined in, sheep-bells, and an early morning church
far away over in Steyning. They went on from tune to tune, till Fleur
said:

"My God! I am hungry now!"

"Oh! I AM sorry!"

She looked round into his face.

"Jon, you're rather a darling."

And she pressed his hand against her waist. Jon almost reeled with
happiness. A yellow-and-white dog coursing a hare startled them apart.
They watched the two vanish down the slope, till Fleur said with a
sigh: "He'll never catch it, thank goodness! What's the time? Mine's
stopped. I never wound it."

Jon looked at his watch. "By Jove!" he said, "mine's stopped, too."

They walked on again, but only hand in hand.

"If the grass is dry," said Fleur, "let's sit down for half a minute."

Jon took off his coat, and they shared it.

"Smell! Actually wild thyme!"

With his arm round her waist again, they sat some minutes in silence.

"We are goats!" cried Fleur, jumping up; "we shall be most fearfully
late, and look so silly, and put them on their guard. Look here, Jon!
We only came out to get an appetite for breakfast, and lost our way.
See?"

"Yes," said Jon.

"It's serious; there'll be a stopper put on us. Are you a good liar?"

"I believe not very; but I can try." Fleur frowned.

"You know," she said, "I realise that they don't mean us to be friends."

"Why not?"

"I told you why."

"But that's silly."

"Yes; but you don't know my father!"

"I suppose he's fearfully fond of you."

"You see, I'm an only child. And so are you--of your mother. Isn't it a
bore? There's so much expected of one. By the time they've done
expecting, one's as good as dead."

"Yes," muttered Jon, "life's beastly short. One wants to live for ever,
and know everything."

"And love everybody?"

"No," cried Jon; "I only want to love once--you."

"Indeed! You're coming on! Oh! Look! There's the chalk-pit; we can't be
very far now. Let's run."

Jon followed, wondering fearfully if he had offended her.

The chalk-pit was full of sunshine and the murmuration of bees. Fleur
flung back her hair.

"Well," she said, "in case of accidents, you may give me one kiss,
Jon," and she pushed her cheek forward. With ecstasy he kissed that hot
soft cheek.

"Now, remember! We lost our way; and leave it to me as much as you can.
I'm going to be rather beastly to you; it's safer; try and be beastly
to me!"

Jon shook his head. "That's impossible."

"Just to please me; till five o'clock, at all events."

"Anybody will be able to see through it," said Jon gloomily.

"Well, do your best. Look! There they are! Wave your hat! Oh! you
haven't got one. Well, I'll cooee! Get a little away from me, and look
sulky."

Five minutes later, entering the house and, doing his utmost to look
sulky, Jon heard her clear voice in the dining-room:

"Oh! I'm simply RAVENOUS! He's going to be a farmer--and he loses his
way! The boy's an idiot!"



IX

GOYA


Lunch was over and Soames mounted to the picture-gallery in his house
near Mapledurham. He had what Annette called "a grief." Fleur was not
yet home. She had been expected on Wednesday; had wired that it would
be Friday; and again on Friday that it would be Sunday afternoon; and
here were her aunt, and her cousins the Cardigans, and this fellow
Profond, and everything flat as a pancake for the want of her. He stood
before his Gauguin--sorest point of his collection. He had bought the
ugly great thing with two early Matisses before the war, because there
was such a fuss about those Post-Impressionist chaps. He was wondering
whether Profond would take them off his hands--the fellow seemed not to
know what to do with his money--when he heard his sister's voice say:
"I think that's a horrid thing, Soames." and saw that Winifred had
followed him up.

"Oh! you DO?" he said dryly; "I gave five hundred for it."

"Fancy! Women aren't made like that even if they are black."

Soames uttered a glum laugh. "You didn't come up to tell me that."

"No. Do you know that Jolyon's boy is staying with Val and his wife?"

Soames spun round.

"What?"

"Yes," drawled Winifred; "he's gone to live with them there while he
learns farming."

Soames had turned away, but her voice pursued him as he walked up and
down. "I warned Val that neither of them was to be spoken to about old
matters."

"Why didn't you tell me before?"

Winifred shrugged her substantial shoulders.

"Fleur does what she likes. You've always spoiled her. Besides, my dear
boy, what's the harm?"

"The harm!" muttered Soames. "Why, she--" he checked himself. The Juno,
the handkerchief, Fleur's eyes, her questions, and now this delay in
her return--the symptoms seemed to him so sinister that, faithful to
his nature, he could not part with them.

"I think you take too much care," said Winifred; "if I were you, I
should tell her of that old matter. It's no good thinking that girls in
these days are as they used to be. Where they pick up their knowledge I
can't tell, but they seem to know everything."

Over Soames's face, closely composed, passed a sort of spasm, and
Winifred added hastily:

"If you don't like to speak of it, I could for you." Soames shook his
head. Unless there was absolute necessity the thought that his adored
daughter should learn of that old scandal hurt his pride too much.

"No," he said, "not yet. Never if I can help it."

"Nonsense, my dear. Think what people are!"

"Twenty years is a long time," muttered Soames, "outside our family,
who's likely to remember?"

Winifred was silenced. She inclined more and more to that peace and
quietness of which Montague Dartie had deprived her in her youth. And,
since pictures always depressed her, she soon went down again.

Soames passed into the corner where, side by side, hung his real Goya,
and the copy of the fresco "La Vendimia." His acquisition of the real
Goya rather beautifully illustrated the cobweb of vested interests and
passions, which mesh the bright-winged fly of human life. The real
Goya's noble owner's ancestor had come into possession of it during
some Spanish war--it was in a word loot. The noble owner had remained
in ignorance of its value until in the nineties an enterprising critic
discovered that a Spanish painter named Goya was a genius. It was only
a fair Goya, but almost unique in England, and the noble owner became a
marked man. Having many possessions and that aristocratic culture
which, independent of mere sensuous enjoyment, is founded on the
sounder principle that one must know everything and be fearfully
interested in life, he had fully intended to keep an article which
contributed to his reputation while he was alive, and to leave it to
the nation after he was dead. Fortunately for Soames, the House of
Lords was violently attacked in 1909, and the noble owner became
alarmed and angry. "If," he said to himself, "they think they can have
it both ways they are very much mistaken. So long as they leave me in
quiet enjoyment the nation can have some of my pictures at my death.
But if the nation is going to bait me, and rob me like this, I'm damned
if I won't sell the--lot. They can't have my private property and my
public spirit--both." He brooded in this fashion for several months
till one morning, after reading the speech of a certain statesman, he
telegraphed to his agent to come down and bring Bodkin. On going over
the collection Bodkin, than whose opinion on market values none was
more sought, pronounced that with a free hand to sell to America,
Germany, and other places where there was an interest in art, a lot
more money could be made than by selling in England. The noble owner's
public spirit--he said--was well known but the pictures were unique.
The noble owner put this opinion in his pipe and smoked it for a year.
At the end of that time he read another speech by the same statesman,
and telegraphed to his agents: "Give Bodkin a free hand." It was at
this juncture that Bodkin conceived the idea which salved the Goya and
two other unique pictures for the native country of the noble owner.
With one hand Bodkin proffered the pictures to the foreign market, with
the other he formed a list of private British collectors. Having
obtained what he considered the highest possible bids from across the
seas, he submitted pictures and bids to the private British collectors,
and invited them, of their public spirit, to outbid. In three instances
(including the Goya) out of twenty-one he was successful. And why? One
of the private collectors made buttons--he had made so many that he
desired that his wife should be called Lady "Buttons." He therefore
bought an unique picture at great cost, and gave it to the nation. It
was "part," his friends said, "of his general game." The second of the
private collectors was an Americo-phobe, and bought a unique picture to
"spite the damned Yanks." The third of the private collectors was
Soames, who--more sober than either of the others--bought after a visit
to Madrid, because he was certain that Goya was still on the up grade.
Goya was not booming at the moment, but he would come again; and,
looking at that portrait, Hogarthian, Manetesque in its directness, but
with its own queer sharp beauty of paint, he was perfectly satisfied
still that he had made no error, heavy though the price had
been--heaviest he had ever paid. And next to it was hanging the copy of
"La Vendimia." There she was--the little wretch--looking back at him in
her dreamy mood, the mood he loved best because he felt so much safer
when she looked like that.

He was still gazing when the scent of a cigar impinged on his nostrils,
and a voice said: "Well, Mr. Forsyde, what you goin' to do with this
small lot?"

That Belgian chap, whose mother--as if Flemish blood were not
enough--had been Armenian! Subduing a natural irritation, he said: "Are
you a judge of pictures?"

"Well, I've got a few myself."

"Any Post-Impressionists?"

"Ye-es, I rather like them."

"What do you think of this?" said Soames, pointing to the Gauguin.

Monsieur Profond protruded his lower lip and short pointed beard.
"Rather fine, I think," he said; "do you want to sell it?"

Soames checked his instinctive "Not particularly"--he would not chaffer
with this alien.

"Yes," he said.

"What do you want for it?"

"What I gave."

"All right," said Monsieur Profond. "I'll be glad to take that small
picture. Post-Impressionists--they're awful dead, but they're amusin'.
I don' care for pictures much, but I've got some, just a small lot."

"What DO you care for?"

Monsieur Profond shrugged his shoulders. "Life's awful like a lot of
monkeys scramblin' for empty nuts."

"You're young," said Soames. If the fellow must make a generalisation,
he needn't suggest that the forms of property lacked solidity!

"I don' worry," replied Monsieur Profond smiling; "we're born, and we
die. Half the world's starvin'. I feed a small lot of babies out in my
mother's country; but what's the use? Might as well throw my money in
the river."

Soames looked at him, and turned back towards his Goya. He didn't know
what the fellow wanted.

"What shall I make my cheque for?" pursued Monsieur Profond.

"Five hundred," said Soames shortly; "but I don't want you to take it
if you don't care for it more than that."

"That's all right," said Monsieur Profond; "I'll be 'appy to 'ave that
picture."

He wrote a cheque with a fountain-pen heavily chased with gold. Soames
watched the process uneasily. How on earth had the fellow known that he
wanted to sell that picture? Monsieur Profond held out the cheque.

"The English are awful funny about pictures," he said. "So are the
French, so are my people. They're all awful funny."

"I don't understand you," said Soames stiffly.

"It's like hats," said Monsieur Profond enigmatically, "small or large,
turnin' up or down--just the fashion. Awful funny." And, smiling, he
drifted out of the gallery again, blue and solid like the smoke of his
excellent cigar.

Soames had taken the cheque, feeling as if the intrinsic value of
ownership had been called in question. 'He's a cosmopolitan,' he
thought, watching Profond emerge from under the verandah with Annette,
and saunter down the lawn towards the river. What his wife saw in the
fellow he didn't know, unless it was that he could speak her language;
and there passed in Soames what Monsieur Profond would have called a
"small doubt" whether Annette was not too handsome to be walking with
any one so "cosmopolitan." Even at that distance he could see the blue
fumes from Profond's cigar wreathe out in the quiet sunlight; and his
grey buckskin shoes, and his grey hat--the fellow was a dandy! And he
could see the quick turn of his wife's head, so very straight on her
desirable neck and shoulders. That turn of her neck always seemed to
him a little too showy, and in the "Queen of all I survey" manner--not
quite distinguished. He watched them walk along the path at the bottom
of the garden. A young man in flannels joined them down there--a Sunday
caller no doubt, from up the river. Soames went back to his Goya. He
was still staring at that replica of Fleur, and worrying over
Winifred's news, when his wife's voice said:

"Mr. Michael Mont, Soames. You invited him to see your pictures."

There was the cheerful young man of the Gallery off Cork Street!

"Turned up, you see, sir; I live only four miles from Pangbourne. Jolly
day, isn't it?"

Confronted with the results of his expansiveness, Soames scrutinised
his visitor. The young man's mouth was excessively large and curly--he
seemed always grinning. Why didn't he grow the rest of those idiotic
little moustaches, which made him look like a music-hall buffoon? What
on earth were young men about, deliberately lowering their class with
these tooth-brushes, or little slug whiskers? Ugh! Affected young
idiots! In other respects he was presentable, and his flannels very
clean.

"Happy to see you!" he said.

The young man, who had been turning his head from side to side, became
transfixed. "I say!" he said, "'some' picture!"

Soames saw, with mixed sensations, that he had addressed the remark to
the Goya copy.

"Yes," he said dryly, "that's not a Goya. It's a copy. I had it painted
because it reminded me of my daughter."

"By Jove! I thought I knew the face, sir. Is she here?"

The frankness of his interest almost disarmed Soames.

"She'll be in after tea," he said. "Shall we go round the gallery?"

And Soames began that round which never tired him. He had not
anticipated much intelligence from one who had mistaken a copy for an
original, but as they passed from section to section, period to period,
he was startled by the young man's frank and relevant remarks. Natively
shrewd himself, and even sensuous beneath his mask, Soames had not
spent thirty-eight years over his one hobby without knowing something
more about pictures than their market values. He was, as it were, the
missing link between the artist and the commercial public. Art for
art's sake and all that, of course, was cant. But aesthetics and good
taste were necessary. The appreciation of enough persons of good taste
was what gave a work of art its permanent market value, or in other
words made it "a work of art." There was no real cleavage. And he was
sufficiently accustomed to sheep-like and unseeing visitors, to be
intrigued by one who did not hesitate to say of Mauve: "Good old
haystacks!" or of James Maris: "Didn't he just paint and paper 'em!
Mathew was the real swell, sir; you could dig into his surfaces!" It
was after the young man had whistled before a Whistler, with the words:
"D'you think he ever really saw a naked woman, sir?" that Soames
remarked:

"What ARE you, Mr. Mont, if I may ask?"

"I, sir? I WAS going to be a painter, but the War knocked that. Then in
the trenches, you know, I used to dream of the Stock Exchange, snug and
warm and just noisy enough. But the Peace knocked that; shares seem
off, don't they? I've only been demobbed about a year. What do you
recommend, sir?"

"Have you got money?"

"Well," answered the young man; "I've got a father, I kept him alive
during the War, so he's bound to keep me alive now. Though, of course,
there's the question whether he ought to be allowed to hang on to his
property. What do you think about that, sir?"

Soames, pale and defensive, smiled.

"The old man has fits when I tell him he may have to work yet. He's got
land, you know; it's a fatal disease."

"This is my real Goya," said Soames dryly.

"By George! He WAS a swell. I saw a Goya in Munich once that bowled me
middle stump. A most evil-looking old woman in the most gorgeous lace.
HE made no compromise with the public taste. That old boy was 'some'
explosive; he must have smashed up a lot of convention in his day.
Couldn't he just paint! He makes Velasquez stiff, don't you think?"

"I have no Velasquez," said Soames.

The young man stared. "No," he said; "only nations or profiteers can
afford him, I suppose. I say, why shouldn't all the bankrupt nations
sell their Velasquezes and Titians and other swells to the profiteers
by force, and then pass a law that any one who holds a picture by an
Old Master--see schedule--must hang it in a public gallery? There seems
something in that."

"Shall we go down to tea?" said Soames.

The young man's ears seemed to droop on his skull. 'He's not dense,'
thought Soames, following him off the premises.

Goya, with his satiric and surpassing precision, his original "line,"
and the daring of his light and shade, could have reproduced to
admiration the group assembled round Annette's tea-tray in the
ingle-nook below. He alone, perhaps, of painters would have done
justice to the sunlight filtering through a screen of creeper, to the
lovely pallor of brass, the old cut glasses, the thin slices of lemon
in pale amber tea; justice to Annette in her black lacey dress; there
was something of the fair Spaniard in her beauty, though it lacked the
spirituality of that rare type; to Winifred's grey-haired, corseted
solidity; to Soames, of a certain grey and flat-cheeked distinction; to
the vivacious Michael Mont, pointed in ear and eye; to Imogen, dark,
luscious of glance, growing a little stout; to Prosper Profond, with
his expression as who should say: "Well, Mr. Goya, what's the use of
paintin' this small party?" finally, to Jack Cardigan, with his shining
stare and tanned sanguinity betraying the moving principle: "I'm
English, and I live to be fit."

Curious, by the way, that Imogen, who as a girl had declared solemnly
one day at Timothy's that she would never marry a good man--they were
so dull--should have married Jack Cardigan, in whom health had so
destroyed all traces of original sin, that she might have retired to
rest with ten thousand other Englishmen without knowing the difference
from the one she had chosen to repose beside. "Oh!" she would say of
him, in her "amusing" way; "Jack keeps himself so fearfully fit; he's
never had a day's illness in his life. He went right through the war
without a finger-ache. You really can't imagine how fit he is!" Indeed,
he was so "fit" that he couldn't see when she was flirting, which was
such a comfort in a way. All the same she was quite fond of him, so far
as one could be of a sports-machine, and of the two little Cardigans
made after his pattern. Her eyes just then were comparing him
maliciously with Prosper Profond. There was no "small" sport or game
which Monsieur Profond had not played at too, it seemed, from skittles
to harpon-fishing, and worn out every one. Imogen would sometimes wish
that they had worn out Jack, who continued to play at them and talk of
them with the simple zeal of a schoolgirl learning hockey; at the age
of Great-uncle Timothy she well knew that Jack would be playing carpet
golf in her bedroom, and "wiping somebody's eye."

He was telling them now how he had "pipped the pro--a charmin' fellow,
playin' a very good game," at the last hole this morning; and how he
had pulled down to Caversham since lunch, and trying to incite Prosper
Profond to play him a set of tennis after tea--do him good--"keep him
fit."

"But what's the use of keepin' fit?" said Monsieur Profond.

"Yes, sir," murmured Michael Mont, "what do you keep fit for?"

"Jack," cried Imogen, enchanted, "what do you keep fit for?"

Jack Cardigan stared with all his health. The questions were like the
buzz of a mosquito, and he put up his hand to wipe them away. During
the War, of course, he had kept fit to kill Germans; now that it was
over he either did not know, or shrank in delicacy from explanation of
his moving principle.

"But he's right," said Monsieur Profond unexpectedly, "there's nothin'
left but keepin' fit."

The saying, too deep for Sunday afternoon, would have passed
unanswered, but for the mercurial nature of young Mont.

"Good!" he cried. "That's the great discovery of the war. We all
thought we were progressing--now we know we're only changing."

"For the worse," said Monsieur Profond genially.

"How you are cheerful, Prosper!" murmured Annette.

"You come and play tennis!" said Jack Cardigan; "you've got the hump.
We'll soon take that down. D'you play, Mr. Mont?"

"I hit the ball about, sir."

At this juncture Soames rose, ruffled in that deep instinct of
preparation for the future which guided his existence.

"When Fleur comes--" he heard Jack Cardigan say.

Ah! and why didn't she come? He passed through drawing-room, hall, and
porch out onto the drive, and stood there listening for the car. All
was still and Sunday-fied; the lilacs in full flower scented the air.
There were white clouds, like the feathers of ducks gilded by the
sunlight. Memory of the day when Fleur was born, and he had waited in
such agony with her life and her mother's balanced in his hands, came
to him sharply. He had saved her then, to be the flower of his life.
And now! Was she going to give him trouble--pain--give him trouble? He
did not like the look of things! A blackbird broke in on his reverie
with an evening song--a great big fellow up in that acacia-tree. Soames
had taken quite an interest in his birds of late years; he and Fleur
would walk round and watch them; her eyes were sharp as needles, and
she knew every nest. He saw her dog, a retriever, lying on the drive in
a patch of sunlight, and called to him, "Hallo, old fellow--waiting for
her too!" The dog came slowly with a grudging tail, and Soames
mechanically laid a pat on his head. The dog, the bird, the lilac all
were part of Fleur for him; no more, no less. 'Too fond of her!' he
thought, 'too fond!' He was like a man uninsured, with his ships at
sea. Uninsured again--as in that other time, so long ago, when he would
wander dumb and jealous in the wilderness of London, longing for that
woman--his first wife--he mother of this infernal boy. Ah! There was
the car at last! It drew up, it had luggage, but no Fleur.

"Miss Fleur is walking up, sir, by the towing-path"

Walking all those miles? Soames stared. The man's face had the
beginning of a smile on it. What was he grinning at? And very quickly
he turned, saying: "All right, Sims!" and went into the house. He
mounted to the picture-gallery once more. He had from there a view of
the river bank, and stood with his eyes fixed on it, oblivious of the
fact that it would be an hour at least before her figure showed there.
Walking up! And that fellow's grin! The boy--! He turned abruptly from
the window. He couldn't spy on her. If she wanted to keep things from
him--she must; he could not spy on her. His heart felt empty; and
bitterness mounted from it into his very mouth. The staccato shouts of
Jack Cardigan pursuing the ball, the laugh of young Mont rose in the
stillness and came in. He hoped they were making that chap Profond run.
And the girl in "La Vendimia" stood with her arm akimbo and her dreamy
eyes looking past him. 'I've done all I could for you,' he thought,
'since you were no higher than my knee. You aren't going to--to--hurt
me, are you?'

But the Goya copy answered not, brilliant in colour just beginning to
tone down. 'There's no real life in it,' thought Soames. 'Why doesn't
she come?'



X

TRIO


Among those four Forsytes of the third, and, as one might say, fourth
generation, at Wansdon under the Downs, a week-end prolonged unto the
ninth day had stretched the crossing threads of tenacity almost to
snapping-point. Never had Fleur been so "FINE," Holly so watchful, Val
so stable-secretive, Jon so silent and disturbed. What he learned of
farming in that week might have been balanced on the point of a
pen-knife and puffed off. He, whose nature was essentially averse to
intrigue, and whose adoration of Fleur disposed him to think that any
need for concealing it was "skittles," chafed and fretted, yet obeyed,
taking what relief he could in the few moments when they were alone. On
Thursday, while they were standing in the bay window of the
drawing-room, dressed for dinner, she said to him:

"Jon, I'm going home on Sunday by the 3.40 from Paddington; if you were
to go home on SATURDAY you could come up on Sunday and take me down,
and just get back here by the last train, after. You WERE going home
anyway, weren't you?"

Jon nodded.

"Anything to be with you," he said; "only why need I pretend--"

Fleur slipped her little finger into his palm:

"You have no instinct, Jon; you MUST leave things to me. It's serious
about our people. We've simply got to be secret at present, if we want
to be together." The door was opened, and she added loudly: "You ARE a
duffer, Jon."

Something turned over within Jon; he could not bear this subterfuge
about a feeling so natural, so overwhelming, and so sweet.

On Friday night about eleven he had packed his bag, and was leaning out
of his window, half miserable and half lost in a dream of Paddington
station, when he heard a tiny sound, as of a finger-nail tapping on his
door. He rushed to it and listened. Again the sound. It WAS a nail. He
opened. Oh! What a lovely thing came in!

"I wanted to show you my fancy dress," it said, and struck an attitude
at the foot of his bed. Jon drew a long breath and leaned against the
door. The apparition wore white muslin on its head, a fichu round its
bare neck over a wine-coloured dress, fulled out below its slender
waist. It held one arm akimbo, and the other raised right-angled
holding a fan which touched its head.

"This ought to be a basket of grapes," it whispered, "but I haven't got
it here. It's my Goya dress. And this is the attitude in the picture.
Do you like it?"

"It's a dream."

The apparition pirouetted. "Touch it, and see."

Jon knelt down and took the skirt reverently.

"Grape colour," came the whisper, "all grapes--La Vendimia--the
vintage."

Jon's fingers scarcely touched each side of the waist; he looked up,
with adoring eyes.

"Oh! Jon," it whispered; bent, kissed his forehead, pirouetted again,
and,--gliding out, was gone.

Jon stayed on his knees, and his head fell forward against the bed. How
long he stayed like that he did not know. The little noises of the
tapping nail, the feet, the skirts rustling--as in a dream--went on
about him; and before his closed eyes the figure stood and smiled and
whispered, a faint perfume of narcissus lingering in the air. And his
forehead where it had been kissed had a little cool place between the
brows, like the imprint of a flower. Love filled his soul, that love of
boy for girl which knows so little, hopes so much, would not brush the
down off for the world, and must become in time a fragrant memory--a
searing passion--a humdrum mateship--or, once in many times, vintage
full and sweet with sunset colour on the grapes.

Enough has been said about Jon Forsyte here and in another place to
show what long marches lay between him and his great-great-grandfather,
the first Jolyon, in Dorset down by the sea. Jon was sensitive as a
girl, more sensitive than nine out of ten girls of the day; imaginative
as one of his half-sister June's "lame duck" painters; affectionate as
a son of his father and his mother naturally would be. And yet, in his
inner tissue, there was something of the old founder of his family, a
secret tenacity of soul, a dread of showing his feelings, a
determination not to know when he was beaten. Sensitive, imaginative,
affectionate boys get a bad time at school, but Jon had instinctively
kept his nature dark, and been but normally unhappy there. Only with
his mother had he, up till then, been absolutely frank and natural; and
when he went home to Robin Hill that Saturday his heart was heavy
because Fleur had said that he must not be frank and natural with her
from whom he had never yet kept anything, must not even tell her that
they had met again, unless he found that she knew already. So
intolerable did this seem to him that he was very near to telegraphing
an excuse and staying up in London. And the first thing his mother said
to him was:

"So you've had our little friend of the confectioner's there, Jon. What
is she like on second thoughts?"

With relief, and a high colour, Jon answered:

"Oh! awfully jolly, Mum."

Her arm pressed his.

Jon had never loved her so much as in that minute which seemed to
falsify Fleur's fears and to release his soul. He turned to look at
her, but something in her smiling face--something which only he perhaps
would have caught--stopped the words bubbling up in him. Could fear go
with a smile? If so, there was fear in her face. And out of Jon tumbled
quite other words, about farming, Holly, and the Downs. Talking fast,
he waited for her to come back to Fleur. But she did not. Nor did his
father mention her, though of course he, too, must know. What
deprivation, and killing of reality was in this silence about
Fleur--when he was so full of her, when his mother was so full of Jon,
and his father so full of his mother! And so the trio spent the evening
of that Saturday.

After dinner his mother played; she seemed to play all the things he
liked best, and he sat with one knee clasped, and his hair standing up
where his fingers had run through it. He gazed at his mother while she
played, but he saw Fleur--Fleur in the moonlit orchard, Fleur in the
sunlit gravel-pit, Fleur in that fancy dress, swaying, whispering,
stooping, kissing his forehead. Once, while he listened, he forgot
himself and glanced at his father in that other easy chair. What was
Dad looking like that for? The expression on his face was so sad and
puzzling. It filled him with a sort of remorse, so that he got up and
went and sat on the arm of his father's chair. From there he could not
see his face; and again he saw Fleur--in his mother's hands, slim and
white on the keys, in the profile of her face and her powdery hair; and
down the long room in the open window where the May night walked
outside.

When he went up to bed his mother came into his room. She stood at the
window, and said:

"Those cypresses your grandfather planted down there have done
wonderfully. I always think they look beautiful under a dropping moon.
I wish you had known your grandfather, Jon."

"Were you married to Father, when he was alive?" asked Jon suddenly.

"No, dear; he died in '92--very old--eighty-five, I think."

"Is Father like him?"

"A little, but more subtle, and not quite so solid."

"I know, from Grandfather's portrait; who painted that?"

"One of June's 'lame ducks.' But it's quite good."

Jon slipped his hand through his Mother's arm. "Tell me about the
family quarrel, Mum."

He felt her arm quivering. "No, dear; that's for your father some day,
if he thinks fit."

"Then it WAS serious," said Jon, with a catch in his breath.

"Yes." And there was a silence, during which neither knew whether the
arm or the hand within it were quivering most.

"Some people," said Irene softly, "think the moon on her back is evil;
to me she's always lovely. Look at those cypress shadows! Jon, Father
says we may go to Italy, you and I, for two months. Would you like?"

Jon took his hand from under her arm; his sensation was so sharp and so
confused. Italy with his Mother! A fortnight ago it would have been
perfection; now it filled him with dismay; he felt that the sudden
suggestion had to do with Fleur. He stammered out:

"Oh! yes; only--I don't know. Ought I--now I've just begun? I'd like to
think it over."

Her voice answered, cool and gentle:

"Yes, dear; think it over. But better now than when you've begun
farming seriously. Italy with you--! It would be nice!"

Jon put his arm round her waist, still slim and firm as a girl's.

"Do you think you ought to leave Father?" he said feebly, feeling very
mean.

"Father suggested it; he thinks you ought to see Italy at least before
you settle down to anything."

The sense of meanness died in Jon; he knew, yes--he knew--that his
father and his mother were not speaking frankly, no more than he
himself. They wanted to keep him from Fleur! His heart hardened. And,
as if she felt that process going on, his mother said:

"Good-night, darling. Have a good sleep and think it over. But it would
be lovely!"

She pressed him to her so quickly that he did not see her face. Jon
stood feeling exactly as he used to when he was a naughty little boy;
sore because he was not loving, and because he was justified in his own
eyes.

But Irene, after she had stood a moment in her own room, passed through
the dressing-room between it and her husband's.

"Well?"

"He will think it over, Jolyon."

Watching her lips that wore a little drawn smile, Jolyon said quietly:

"You had better let me tell him, and have done with it. After all, Jon
has the instincts of a gentleman. He has only to understand--"

"Only! He can't understand; that's impossible."

"I believe I could have at his age."

Irene caught his hand. "You were always more of a realist than Jon; and
never so innocent."

"That's true," said Jolyon. "It's queer, isn't it? You and I would tell
our stories to the world without a particle of shame; but our own boy
stumps us."

"We've never cared whether the world approves or not."

"Jon would not disapprove of US!"

"Oh! Jolyon, yes. He's in love, I feel he's in love. And he'd say: 'My
mother once married WITHOUT LOVE! How could she have!' It'll seem to
him a crime! And so it was!"

Jolyon took her hand, and said with a wry smile:

"Ah! why on earth are we born young? Now, if only we were born old and
grew younger year by year we should understand how things happen, and
drop all our cursed intolerance. But you know if the boy is really in
love, he won't forget, even if he goes to Italy. We're a tenacious
breed; and he'll know by instinct why he's being sent. Nothing will
really cure him but the shock of being told."

"Let me try, anyway."

Jolyon stood a moment without speaking. Between this devil and this
deep sea--the pain of a dreaded disclosure and the grief of losing his
wife for two months--he secretly hoped for the devil; yet if she wished
for the deep sea he must put up with it. After all, it would be
training for that departure from which there would be no return. And,
taking her in his arms, he kissed her eyes, and said:

"As you will, my love."



XI

DUET


That "small" emotion, love, grows amazingly when threatened with
extinction. Jon reached Paddington station half an hour before his time
and a full week after, as it seemed to him. He stood at the appointed
book-stall amid a crowd of Sunday travellers, in a Harris tweed suit
exhaling, as it were, the emotion of his thumping heart. He read the
names of the novels on the bookstall, and bought one at last, to avoid
being regarded with suspicion by the book-stall clerk. It was called
"The Heart of the Trail" which must mean something, though it did not
seem to. He also bought "The Lady's Mirror" and "The Landsman." Every
minute was an hour long, and full of horrid imaginings. After nineteen
had passed, he saw her with a bag and a porter wheeling her luggage.
She came swiftly; she came cool. She greeted him as if he were a
brother.

"First class," she said to the porter, "corner seats; opposite."

Jon admired her frightful self-possession.

"Can't we get a carriage to ourselves?" he whispered.

"No good; it's a stopping train. After Maidenhead perhaps. Look
natural, Jon."

Jon screwed his features into a scowl. They got in--with two other
beasts!--oh! heaven! He tipped the porter unnaturally, in his
confusion. The brute deserved nothing for putting them in there, and
looking as if he knew all about it into the bargain.

Fleur hid herself behind "The Lady's Mirror." Jon imitated her behind
"The Landsman." The train started. Fleur let "The Lady's Mirror" fall
and leaned forward. "Well?" she said.

"It's seemed about fifteen days."

She nodded, and Jon's face lighted up at once.

"Look natural," murmured Fleur, and went off into a bubble of laughter.
It hurt him. How could he look natural with Italy hanging over him? He
had meant to break it to her gently, but now he blurted it out.

"They want me to go to Italy with Mother for two months."

Fleur drooped her eyelids; turned a little pale, and bit her lips.

"Oh!" she said. It was all, but it was much.

That "Oh!" was like the quick drawback of the wrist in fencing ready
for riposte. It came.

"You must go!"

"Go?" said Jon in a strangled voice.

"Of course."

"But--two months--it's ghastly."

"No," said Fleur, "six weeks. You'll have forgotten me by then. We'll
meet in the National Gallery the day after you get back."

Jon laughed.

"But suppose you've forgotten ME," he muttered into the noise of the
train.

Fleur shook her head.

"Some other beast--" murmured Jon.

Her foot touched his.

"No other beast," she said, lifting the "Lady's Mirror."

The train stopped; two passengers got out, and one got in.

'I shall die,' thought Jon, 'if we're not alone at all.'

The train went on; and again Fleur leaned forward.

"I never let go," she said; "do you?"

Jon shook his head vehemently.

"Never!" he said. "Will you write to me?"

"No; but YOU can--to my club."

She had a Club; she was wonderful!

"Did you pump Holly?" he muttered.

"Yes, but got nothing. I didn't dare pump hard."

"What can it be?" cried Jon.

"I shall find out all right."

A long silence followed till Fleur said: "This is Maidenhead, stand by,
Jon!"

The train stopped. The remaining passenger got out. Fleur drew down her
blind.

"Quick!" she cried. "Hang out! Look as much of a beast as you can."

Jon blew his nose, and scowled; never in all his life had he scowled
like that! An old lady recoiled, a young one tried the handle. It
turned, but the lock would not open. The train moved, the young lady
darted to another carriage.

"What luck!" cried Jon. "It jammed."

"Yes," said Fleur; "I was holding it."

The train moved out, and Jon fell on his knees.

"Look out for the corridor," she whispered; "and--quick!"

Her lips met his. And though their kiss only lasted perhaps ten seconds
Jon's soul left his body and went so far beyond that, when he was again
sitting opposite that demure figure, he was pale as death. He heard her
sigh, and the sound seemed to him the most precious he had ever
heard--an exquisite declaration that he meant something to her.

"Six weeks isn't really long," she said; "and you can easily make it
six if you keep your head out there, and never seem to think of me."

Jon gasped.

"This is just what's really wanted, Jon, to convince them, don't you
see? If we're just as bad when you come back they'll stop being
ridiculous about it. Only, I'm sorry it's not Spain; there's a girl in
a Goya picture at Madrid who's like me, Father says. Only she
isn't--we've got a copy of her."

It was to Jon like a ray of sunshine piercing through a fog. "I'll make
it Spain," he said, "Mother won't mind; she's never been there. And my
father thinks a lot of Goya."

"Oh! yes, he's a painter--isn't he?"

"Only water-colour," said Jon, with honesty.

"When we come to Reading, Jon, get out first and go down to Caversham
lock and wait for me. I'll send the car home and we'll walk by the
towing-path."

Jon seized her hand in gratitude, and they sat silent, with the world
well lost, and one eye on the corridor. But the train seemed to run
twice as fast now, and its sound was almost lost in that of Jon's
sighing.

"We're getting near," said Fleur; "the towing-path's awfully exposed.
One more! Oh! Jon, don't forget me."

Jon answered with his kiss. And very soon, a flushed,
distracted-looking youth could have been seen--as they say--leaping
from the train and hurrying along the platform, searching his pockets
for his ticket.

When at last she rejoined him on the towing-path a little beyond
Caversham lock he had made an effort, and regained some measure of
equanimity. If they had to part, he would not make a scene! A breeze by
the bright river threw the white side of the willow leaves up into the
sunlight, and followed those two with its faint rustle.

"I told our chauffeur that I was train-giddy," said Fleur. "Did you
look pretty natural as you went out?" "I don't know. What is natural?"

"It's natural to you to look seriously happy. When I first saw you I
thought you weren't a bit like other people."

"Exactly what I thought when I saw you. I knew at once I should never
love anybody else."

Fleur laughed.

"We're absurdly young. And love's young dream is out of date, Jon.
Besides, it's awfully wasteful. Think of all the fun you might have.
You haven't begun, even; it's a shame, really. And there's me. I
wonder!"

Confusion came on Jon's spirit. How could she say such things just as
they were going to part?

"If you feel like that," he said, "I can't go. I shall tell Mother that
I ought to try and work. There's always the condition of the world!"

"The condition of the world!"

Jon thrust his hands deep into his pockets.

"But there is," he said; "think of the people starving!"

Fleur shook her head. "No, no, I never, never will make myself
miserable for nothing."

"Nothing! But there's an awful state of things, and of course one ought
to help."

"Oh! yes, I know all that. But you can't help people, Jon; they're
hopeless. When you pull them out of a hole they only get into another.
Look at them, still fighting and plotting and struggling, though
they're dying in heaps all the time. Idiots!"

"Aren't you sorry for them?"

"Oh! sorry--yes, but I'm not going to make myself unhappy about it;
that's no good."

And they were silent, disturbed by this first glimpse of each other's
natures.

"I think people are brutes and idiots," said Fleur stubbornly.

"I think they're poor wretches," said Jon. It was as if they had
quarrelled--and at this supreme and awful moment, with parting visible
out there in that last gap of the willows!

"Well, go and help your poor wretches, and don't think of me."

Jon stood still. Sweat broke out on his forehead, and his limbs
trembled. Fleur too had stopped, and was frowning at the river.

"I MUST believe in things," said Jon with a sort of agony; "we're all
meant to enjoy life."

Fleur laughed: "Yes; and that's what you won't do, if you don't take
care. But perhaps your idea of enjoyment is to make yourself wretched.
There are lots of people like that, of course."

She was pale, her eyes had darkened, her lips had thinned. Was it Fleur
thus staring at the water? Jon had an unreal feeling as if he were
passing through the scene in a book where the lover has to choose
between love and duty. But just then she looked round at him. Never was
anything so intoxicating as that vivacious look. It acted on him
exactly as the tug of a chain acts on a dog--brought him up to her with
his tail wagging and his tongue out.

"Don't let's be silly," she said, "time's too short. Look, Jon, you can
just see where I've got to cross the river. There, round the bend,
where the woods begin."

Jon saw a gable, a chimney or two, a patch of wall through the
trees--and felt his heart sink.

"I mustn't dawdle any more. It's no good going beyond the next hedge,
it gets all open. Let's get on to it and say good-bye."

They went side by side, hand in hand, silently towards the hedge, where
the mayflower, both pink and white, was in full bloom.

"My Club's the 'Talisman,' Stratton Street, Piccadilly. Letters there
will be quite safe, and I'm almost always up once a week."

Jon nodded. His face had become extremely set, his eyes stared straight
before him.

"To-day's the twenty-third of May," said Fleur; "on the ninth of July I
shall be in front of the 'Bacchus and Ariadne' at three o'clock; will
you?"

"I will."

"If you feel as bad as I it's all right. Let those people pass!"

A man and woman airing their children went by strung out in Sunday
fashion.

The last of them passed the wicket gate.

"Domesticity!" said Fleur, and blotted herself against the hawthorn
hedge. The blossom sprayed out above her head, and one pink cluster
brushed her cheek. Jon put up his hand jealously to keep it off.

"Good-bye, Jon!" For a second they stood with hands hard clasped. Then
their lips met for the third time, and when they parted Fleur broke
away and fled through the wicket gate. Jon stood where she had left
him, with his forehead against that pink cluster. Gone! For an
eternity--for seven weeks all but two days! And here he was, wasting
the last sight of her! He rushed to the gate. She was walking swiftly
on the heels of the straggling children. She turned her head, he saw
her hand make a little flitting gesture; then she sped on, and the
trailing family blotted her out from his view.

The words of a comic song--

    "Paddington groan--worst ever known--
    He gave a sepulchral Paddington groan--"

came into his head, and he sped incontinently back to Reading station.
All the way up to London and down to Wansdon he sat with "The Heart of
the Trail" open on his knee, knitting in his head a poem so full of
feeling that it would not rhyme.



XII

CAPRICE


Fleur sped on. She had need of rapid motion; she was late, and wanted
all her wits about her when she got in. She passed the islands, the
station, and hotel, and was about to take the ferry, when she saw a
skiff with a young man standing up in it, and holding to the bushes.

"Miss Forsyte," he said; "let me put you across. I've come on purpose."

She looked at him in blank amazement.

"It's all right, I've been having tea with your people. I thought I'd
save you the last bit. It's on my way, I'm just off back to Pangbourne.
My name's Mont. I saw you at the picture-gallery--you remember--when
your father invited me to see his pictures."

"Oh!" said Fleur; "yes--the handkerchief."

To this young man she owed Jon; and, taking his hand, she stepped down
into the skiff. Still emotional, and a little out of breath, she sat
silent; not so the young man. She had never heard any one say so much
in so short a time. He told her his age, twenty-four, his weight, ten
stone eleven; his place of residence, not far away; described his
sensations under fire, and what it felt like to be gassed; criticised
the Juno, mentioned his own conception of that goddess; commented on
the Goya copy, said Fleur was not too awfully like it; sketched in
rapidly the condition of England; spoke of Monsieur Profond--or
whatever his name was--as "an awful sport"; thought her father had some
ripping pictures and some rather "dug-up"; hoped he might row down
again and take her on the river because he was quite trustworthy;
inquired her opinion of Tchekov, gave her his own; wished they could go
to the Russian ballet together some time--considered the name Fleur
Forsyte simply topping; cursed his people for giving him the name of
Michael on the top of Mont; outlined his father, and said that if she
wanted a good book she should read "Job"; his father was rather like
Job while Job still had land.

"But Job didn't have land," Fleur murmured; "he only had flocks and
herds and moved on."

"Ah!" answered Michael Mont, "I wish my gov'nor would move on. Not that
I want his land. Land's an awful bore in these days, don't you think?"

"We never have it in my family," said Fleur. "We have everything else.
I believe one of my great-uncles once had a sentimental farm in Dorset,
because we came from there originally, but it cost him more than it
made him happy."

"Did he sell it?"

"No; he kept it."

"Why?"

"Because nobody would buy it."

"Good for the old boy!"

"No, it wasn't good for him. Father says it soured him. His name was
Swithin."

"What a corking name!"

"Do you know," said Fleur, "that we're getting farther off, not nearer?
This river flows."

"Splendid!" cried Mont, dipping his sculls vaguely; "it's good to meet
a girl who's got wit."

"But better to meet a young man who's got it in the plural."

Young Mont raised a hand to tear his hair.

"Look out!" cried Fleur. "Your scull!"

"All right! It's thick enough to bear a scratch."

"Do you mind sculling?" said Fleur severely, "I want to get in."

"Ah! but when you get in, you see, I shan't see you any more to-day.
Fini, as the French girl said when she jumped on her bed after saying
her prayers. Don't you bless the day that gave you a French mother, and
a name like yours?"

"I like my name, but Father gave it me. Mother wanted me called
Marguerite."

"Which is absurd. Do you mind calling me M. M. and letting me call you
F. F.? It's in the spirit of the age."

"I don't mind anything, so long as I get in." Mont caught a little
crab, and answered: "That was a nasty one!"

"Please row."

"I am." And he did for several strokes, looking at her with rueful
eagerness. "Of course, you know," he ejaculated, pausing, "that I came
to see you, not your father's pictures."

Fleur rose.

"If you don't row, I shall get out and swim."

"Really and truly? Then I could come in after you."

"Mr. Mont, I'm late and tired; please put me on shore at once."

When she stepped out on to the garden landing-stage he rose, and
grasping his hair with both hands, looked at her.

Fleur smiled.

"Don't!" cried the irrepressible Mont. "I know you're going to say:
'Out, damned hair!'"

Fleur whisked round, threw him a wave of her hand. "Good-bye, Mr. M.
M.!" she called, and was gone among the rose-trees. She looked at her
wrist-watch and the windows of the house. It struck her as curiously
uninhabited. Past six! The pigeons were just gathering to roost, and
sunlight slanted on the dove-cot, on their snowy feathers, and beyond
in a shower on the top boughs of the woods. The click of billiard-balls
came from the ingle-nook--Jack Cardigan, no doubt; a faint rustling,
too, from an eucalyptus-tree, startling Southerner in this old English
garden. She reached the verandah, and was passing in, but stopped at
the sound of voices from the drawing-room to her left. Mother! Profond!
From behind the verandah screen which fenced the ingle-nook she heard
these words!

"I don't, Annette."

Did Father know that he called her mother "Annette"? Always on the side
of her father--as children are ever on one side or the other in houses
where relations are a little strained--she stood, uncertain. Her mother
was speaking in her low, pleasing, slightly metallic voice--one word
she caught: "Demain." And Profond's answer: "All right." Fleur frowned.
A little sound came out into the stillness. Then Profond's voice: "I'm
takin' a small stroll."

Fleur darted through the window into the morning room. There he
came--from the drawing-room, crossing the verandah, down the lawn; and
the click of billiard-balls which, in listening for other sounds, she
had ceased to hear, began again. She shook herself, passed into the
hall, and opened the drawing-room door. Her mother was sitting on the
sofa between the windows, her knees crossed, her head resting on a
cushion, her lips half parted, her eyes half closed. She looked
extraordinarily handsome.

"Ah! Here you are, Fleur! Your father is beginning to fuss."

"Where is he?"

"In the picture-gallery. Go up!"

"What are you going to do to-morrow, Mother?"

"To-morrow? I go up to London with your aunt. Why?"

"I thought you might be. Will you get me a quite plain parasol?"

"What color?"

"Green. They're all going back, I suppose."

"Yes, all; you will console your father. Kiss me, then."

Fleur crossed the room, stooped, received a kiss on her forehead, and
went out past the impress of a form on the sofa-cushions in the other
corner. She ran up-stairs.

Fleur was by no means the old-fashioned daughter who demands the
regulation of her parents' lives in accordance with the standard
imposed on herself. She claimed to regulate her own life, not those of
others; besides, an unerring instinct for what was likely to advantage
her own case was already at work. In a disturbed domestic atmosphere
the heart she had set on Jon would have a better chance. None the less
was she offended, as a flower by a crisping wind. If that man had
really been kissing her mother it was--serious, and her father ought to
know.

"Demain!" "All right!" And her mother going up to Town! She turned in
to her bedroom and hung out of the window to cool her face, which had
suddenly grown very hot. Jon must be at the station by now! What did
her father know about Jon! Probably everything--pretty nearly!

She changed her dress, so as to look as if she had been in some time,
and ran up to the gallery.

Soames was standing stubbornly still before his Alfred Stevens--the
picture he loved best. He did not turn at the sound of the door, but
she knew he had heard, and she knew he was hurt. She came up softly
behind him, put her arms round his neck, and poked her face over his
shoulder, till her cheek lay against his. It was an advance which had
never yet failed, but it failed her now, and she augured the worst.

"Well," he said stonily, "so you've come!"

"Is that all," murmured Fleur, "from a bad parent?" and rubbed her
cheek against his.

Soames shook his head so far as that was possible.

"Why do you keep me on tenterhooks like this, putting me off and off?"

"Darling, it was very harmless."

"Harmless! Much you know what's harmless and what isn't."

Fleur dropped her arms.

"Well, then, dear, suppose you tell me; and be quite frank about it."

And she went over to the window-seat.

Her father had turned from his picture, and was staring at his feet. He
looked very grey. 'He has nice small feet,' she thought, catching his
eye, at once averted from her.

"You're my only comfort," said Soames suddenly, "and you go on like
this."

Fleur's heart began to beat.

"Like what, dear?"

Again Soames gave her a look which, but for the affection in it, might
have been called furtive.

"You know what I told you," he said. "I don't choose to have anything
to do with that branch of our family."

"Yes, ducky, but I don't know why _I_ shouldn't."

Soames turned on his heel.

"I'm not going into the reasons," he said; "you ought to trust me,
Fleur!"

The way he spoke those words affected Fleur, but she thought of Jon,
and was silent, tapping her foot against the wainscot. Unconsciously
she had assumed a modern attitude, with one leg twisted in and out of
the other, with her chin on one bent wrist, her other arm across her
chest, and its hand hugging her elbow; there was not a line of her that
was not involuted, and yet--in spite of all--she retained a certain
grace.

"You knew my wishes," Soames went on, "and yet you stayed on there four
days. And I suppose that boy came with you to-day."

Fleur kept her eyes on him.

"I don't ask you anything," said Soames; "I make no inquisition where
you're concerned."

Fleur suddenly stood up, leaning out at the window with her chin on her
hands. The sun had sunk behind trees, the pigeons were perched, quite
still, on the edge of the dove-cot; the click of the billiard-balls
mounted, and a faint radiance shone out below where Jack Cardigan had
turned the light up.

"Will it make you any happier," she said suddenly, "if I promise you
not to see him for say--the next six weeks?" She was not prepared for a
sort of tremble in the blankness of his voice.

"Six weeks? Six years--sixty years more like. Don't delude yourself,
Fleur; don't delude yourself!"

Fleur turned in alarm.

"Father, what is it?"

Soames came close enough to see her face.

"Don't tell me," he said, "that you're foolish enough to have any
feeling beyond caprice. That would be too much!" And he laughed.

Fleur, who had never heard him laugh like that, thought: 'Then it IS
deep! Oh! what is it?' And putting her hand through his arm she said
lightly:

"No, of course; caprice. Only, I like my caprices and I don't like
yours, dear."

"Mine!" said Soames bitterly, and turned away.

The light outside had chilled, and threw a chalky whiteness on the
river. The trees had lost all gaiety of colour. She felt a sudden
hunger for Jon's face, for his hands, and the feel of his lips again on
hers. And pressing her arms tight across her breast she forced out a
little light laugh.

"O la! la! What a small fuss! as Profond would say. Father, I don't
like that man."

She saw him stop, and take something out of his breast pocket.

"You don't?" he said. "Why?"

"Nothing," murmured Fleur; "just caprice!"

"No," said Soames; "not caprice!" And he tore what was in his hands
across. "You're right. _I_ don't like him either!"

"Look!" said Fleur softly. "There he goes! I hate his shoes; they don't
make any noise."

Down in the failing light Prosper Profond moved, his hands in his side
pockets, whistling softly in his beard; he stopped, and glanced up at
the sky, as if saying: "I don't think much of that small moon."

Fleur drew back. "Isn't he a great cat?" she whispered; and the sharp
click of the billiard-balls rose, as if Jack Cardigan had capped the
cat, the moon, caprice, and tragedy with: "In off the red!"

Monsieur Profond had resumed his strolling, to a teasing little tune in
his beard. What was it? Oh! yes, from "Rigoletto": "Donna e mobile."
Just what he would think! She squeezed her father's arm.

"Prowling!" she muttered, as he turned the corner of the house. It was
past that disillusioned moment which divides the day and night--still
and lingering and warm, with hawthorn scent and lilac scent clinging on
the riverside air. A blackbird suddenly burst out. Jon would be in
London by now; in the Park perhaps, crossing the Serpentine, thinking
of her! A little sound beside her made her turn her eyes; her father
was again tearing the paper in his hands. Fleur saw it was a cheque.

"I shan't sell him my Gauguin," he said. "I don't know what your aunt
and Imogen see in him."

"Or Mother."

"Your mother!" said Soames.

'Poor Father!' she thought. 'He never looks happy--not really happy. I
don't want to make him worse, but of course I shall have to, when Jon
comes back. Oh! well, sufficient unto the night!'

"I'm going to dress," she said.

In her room she had a fancy to put on her "freak" dress. It was of gold
tissue with little trousers of the same, tightly drawn in at the
ankles, a page's cape slung from the shoulders, little gold shoes, and
a gold-winged Mercury helmet; and all over her were tiny gold bells,
especially on the helmet; so that if she shook her head she pealed.
When she was dressed she felt quite sick because Jon could not see her;
it even seemed a pity that the sprightly young man Michael Mont would
not have a view. But the gong had sounded, and she went down.

She made a sensation in the drawing-room. Winifred thought it "Most
amusing." Imogen was enraptured. Jack Cardigan called it "stunning,"
"ripping," "topping," and "corking." Monsieur Profond, smiling with his
eyes, said: "That's a nice small dress!" Her mother, very handsome in
black, sat looking at her, and said nothing. It remained for her father
to apply the test of common sense. "What did you put on that thing for?
You're not going to dance."

Fleur spun round, and the bells pealed.

"Caprice!"

Soames stared at her, and, turning away, gave his arm to Winifred. Jack
Cardigan took her mother. Prosper Profond took Imogen. Fleur went in by
herself, with her bells jingling....

The "small" moon had soon dropped down, and May night had fallen soft
and warm, enwrapping with its grape-bloom colour and its scents the
billion caprices, intrigues, passions, longings, and regrets of men and
women. Happy was Jack Cardigan who snored into Imogen's white shoulder,
fit as a flea; or Timothy in his "mausoleum," too old for anything but
baby's slumber. For so many lay awake, or dreamed, teased by the
crisscross of the world.

The dew fell and the flowers closed; cattle grazed on in the river
meadows, feeling with their tongues for the grass they could not see;
and the sheep on the Downs lay quiet as stones. Pheasants in the tall
trees of the Pangbourne woods, larks on their grassy nests above the
gravel-pit at Wansdon, swallows in the eaves at Robin Hill, and the
sparrows of Mayfair, all made a dreamless night of it, soothed by the
lack of wind. The Mayfly filly, hardly accustomed to her new quarters,
scraped at her straw a little; and the few night-flitting things--bats,
moths, owls--were vigorous in the warm darkness; but the peace of night
lay in the brain of all day-time Nature, colourless and still. Men and
women, alone, riding the hobbyhorses of anxiety or love, burned their
wavering tapers of dream and thought into the lonely hours.

Fleur, leaning out of her window, heard the hall clock's muffled chime
of twelve, the tiny splash of a fish, the sudden shaking of an aspen's
leaves in the puffs of breeze that rose along the river, the distant
rumble of a night train, and time and again the sounds which none can
put a name to in the darkness, soft obscure expressions of uncatalogued
emotions from man and beast, bird and machine, or, maybe, from departed
Forsytes, Darties, Cardigans, taking night strolls back into a world
which had once suited their embodied spirits. But Fleur heeded not
these sounds, her spirit, far from disembodied, fled with swift wing
from railway-carriage to flowery hedge, straining after Jon, tenacious
of his forbidden image, and the sound of his voice which was taboo. And
she crinkled her nose, retrieving from the perfume of the riverside
night that moment when his hand slipped between the mayflowers and her
cheek. Long she leaned out in her freak dress, keen to burn her wings
at life's candle; while the moths brushed her cheeks on their
pilgrimage to the lamp on her dressing-table, ignorant that in a
Forsyte's house there is no open flame. But at last even she felt
sleepy, and, forgetting her bells, drew quickly in.

Through the open window of his room, alongside Annette's, Soames,
wakeful too, heard their thin faint tinkle, as it might be shaken from
stars, or the dewdrops falling from a flower, if one could hear such
sounds.

'Caprice!' he thought. 'I can't tell. She's wilful. What shall I do?
Fleur!'

And long into the "small" night he brooded.



PART II


I

MOTHER AND SON


To say that Jon Forsyte accompanied his mother to Spain unwillingly
would scarcely have been adequate. He went as a well-natured dog goes
for a walk with its mistress, leaving a choice mutton-bone on the lawn.
He went looking back at it. Forsytes deprived of their mutton-bones are
wont to sulk. But Jon had little sulkiness in his composition. He
adored his mother, and it was his first travel. Spain had become Italy
by his simply saying: "I'd rather go to Spain, Mum; you've been to
Italy so many times; I'd like it new to both of us."

The fellow was subtle besides being naif. He never forgot that he was
going to shorten the proposed two months into six weeks, and must
therefore show no sign of wishing to do so. For one with so enticing a
mutton-bone and so fixed an idea, he made a good enough travelling
companion, indifferent to where or when he arrived, superior to food,
and thoroughly appreciative of a country strange to the most travelled
Englishman. Fleur's wisdom in refusing to write to him was profound,
for he reached each new place entirely without hope or fever, and could
concentrate immediate attention on the donkeys and tumbling bells, the
priests, patios, beggars, children, crowing cocks, sombreros, cactus
hedges, old high white villages, goats, olive-trees, greening plains,
singing birds in tiny cages, water-sellers, sunsets, melons, mules,
great churches, pictures, and swimming grey-brown mountains of a
fascinating land.

It was already hot, and they enjoyed an absence of their compatriots.
Jon, who, so far as he knew, had blood in him which was not English,
was often innately unhappy in the presence of his own countrymen. He
felt they had no nonsense about them, and took a more practical view of
things than himself. He confided to his mother that he must be an
unsociable beast--it was jolly to be away from everybody who could talk
about the things people did talk about. To which Irene had replied
simply: "Yes, Jon, I know."

In this isolation he had unparalleled opportunities of appreciating
what few sons can apprehend, the whole-heartedness of a mother's love.
Knowledge of something kept from her made him, no doubt, unduly
sensitive; and a Southern people stimulated his admiration for her type
of beauty, which he had been accustomed to hear called Spanish, but
which he now perceived to be no such thing. Her beauty was neither
English, French, Spanish, nor Italian--it was special! He appreciated,
too, as never before, his mother's subtlety of instinct. He could not
tell, for instance, whether she had noticed his absorption in that Goya
picture, "La Vendimia," or whether she knew that he had slipped back
there after lunch and again next morning, to stand before it full half
an hour, a second and third time. It was not Fleur, of course, but like
enough to give him heartache--so dear to lovers--remembering her
standing at the foot of his bed with her hand held above her head. To
keep a postcard reproduction of this picture in his pocket and slip it
out to look at became for Jon one of those bad habits which soon or
late disclose themselves to eyes sharpened by love, fear, or jealousy.
And his mother's were sharpened by all three. In Granada he was fairly
caught, sitting on a sun-warmed stone bench in a little battlemented
garden on the Alhambra hill, whence he ought to have been looking at
the view. His mother, he had thought, was examining the potted stocks
between the polled acacias, when her voice said:

"Is that your favourite Goya, Jon?"

He checked, too late, a movement such as he might have made at school
to conceal some surreptitious document, and answered: "Yes."

"It certainly is most charming; but I think I prefer the 'Quitasol.'
Your father would go crazy about Goya; I don't believe he saw them when
he was in Spain in '92."

In '92--nine years before he had been born! What had been the previous
existences of his father and his mother? If they had a right to share
in his future, surely he had a right to share in their pasts. He looked
up at her. But something in her face--a look of life hard-lived, the
mysterious impress of emotions, experience, and suffering--seemed with
its incalculable depth, its purchased sanctity, to make curiosity
impertinent. His mother must have had a wonderfully interesting life;
she was so beautiful, and so--so--but he could not frame what he felt
about her. He got up, and stood gazing down at the town, at the plain
all green with crops, and the ring of mountains glamorous in sinking
sunlight. Her life was like the past of this old Moorish city, full,
deep, remote--his own life as yet such a baby of a thing, hopelessly
ignorant and innocent! They said that in those mountains to the west,
which rose sheer from the blue-green plain, as if out of a sea,
Phoenicians had dwelt--a dark, strange, secret race, above the land!
His mother's life was as unknown to him, as secret, as that Phoenician
past was to the town down there, whose cocks crowed and whose children
played and clamoured so gaily, day in, day out. He felt aggrieved that
she should know all about him and he nothing about her except that she
loved him and his father, and was beautiful. His callow ignorance--he
had not even had the advantage of the war, like nearly everybody
else!--made him small in his own eyes.

That night, from the balcony of his bedroom, he gazed down on the roof
of the town--as if inlaid with honey-comb of jet, ivory, and gold; and,
long after, he lay awake, listening to the cry of the sentry as the
hours struck, and forming in his head these lines:

    "Voice in the night crying, down in the old sleeping
    Spanish city darkened under her white stars!
    What says the voice--its clear--lingering anguish?

    Just the watchman, telling his dateless tale of safety?
    Just a roadman, flinging to the moon his song?
    No! 'Tis one deprived, whose lover's heart is weeping.
    Just his cry: 'How long?'"

The word "deprived" seemed to him cold and unsatisfactory, but bereaved
was too final, and no other word of two syllables short-long came to
him, which would enable him to keep "whose lover's heart is weeping."
It was past two by the time he had finished it, and past three before
he went to sleep, having said it over to himself at least twenty-four
times. Next day he wrote it out and enclosed it in one of those letters
to Fleur, which he always finished before he went down, so as to have
his mind free and companionable.

About noon that same day, on the tiled terrace of their hotel, he felt
a sudden dull pain in the back of his head, a queer sensation in the
eyes, and sickness. The sun had touched him too affectionately. The
next three days were passed in semi-darkness, and a dulled, aching
indifference to all except the feel of ice on his forehead and his
mother's smile. She never moved from his room, never relaxed her
noiseless vigilance, which seemed to Jon angelic. But there were
moments when he was extremely sorry for himself, and wished terribly
that Fleur could see him. Several times he took a poignant imaginary
leave of her and of the earth, tears oozing out of his eyes. He even
prepared the message he would send to her by his mother--who would
regret to her dying day that she had ever sought to separate them--his
poor mother! He was not slow, however, in perceiving that he had now
his excuse for going home.

Towards half past six each evening came a "gasgacha" of bells--a
cascade of tumbling chimes, mounting from the city below and falling
back chime on chime. After listening to them on the fourth day he said
suddenly:

"I'd like to be back in England, Mum, the sun's too hot."

"Very well, darling. As soon as you're fit to travel." And at once he
felt better, and--meaner.

They had been out five weeks when they turned towards home. Jon's head
was restored to its pristine clarity, but he was confined to a hat
lined by his mother with many layers of orange and green silk, and he
still walked from choice in the shade. As the long struggle of
discretion between them drew to its close, he wondered more and more
whether she could see his eagerness to get back to that which she had
brought him away from. Condemned by Spanish Providence to spend a day
in Madrid between their trains, it was but natural to go again to the
Prado. Jon was elaborately casual this time before his Goya girl. Now
that he was going back to her, he could afford a lesser scrutiny. It
was his mother who lingered before the picture, saying:

"The face and figure of the girl are exquisite."

Jon heard her uneasily. Did she understand? But he felt once more that
he was no match for her in self-control and subtlety. She could, in
some supersensitive way, of which he had not the secret, feel the pulse
of his thoughts; she knew by instinct what he hoped and feared and
wished. It made him terribly uncomfortable and guilty, having, beyond
most boys, a conscience. He wished she would be frank with him; he
almost hoped for an open struggle. But none came, and steadily,
silently, they travelled north. Thus did he first learn how much better
than men women play a waiting game. In Paris they had again to pause
for a day. Jon was grieved because it lasted two, owing to certain
matters in connection with a dressmaker; as if his mother, who looked
beautiful in anything, had any need of dresses! The happiest moment of
his travel was that when he stepped on to the Folkestone boat.

Standing by the bulwark rail, with her arm in his, she said:

"I'm afraid you haven't enjoyed it much, Jon. But you've been very
sweet to me."

Jon squeezed her arm.

"Oh! yes, I've enjoyed it awfully--except for my head lately."

And now that the end had come, he really had, feeling a sort of glamour
over the past weeks--a kind of painful pleasure, such as he had tried
to screw into those lines about the voice in the night crying; a
feeling such as he had known as a small boy listening avidly to Chopin,
yet wanting to cry. And he wondered why it was that he couldn't say to
her quite simply what she had said to him:

"You were very sweet to me." Odd--one never could be nice and natural
like that! He substituted the words: "I expect we shall be sick."

They were, and reached London somewhat attenuated, having been away six
weeks and two days, without a single allusion to the subject which had
hardly ever ceased to occupy their minds.



II

FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS


Deprived of his wife and son by the Spanish adventure, Jolyon found the
solitude at Robin Hill intolerable. A philosopher when he has all that
he wants is different from a philosopher when he has not. Accustomed,
however, to the idea, if not to the reality of resignation, he would
perhaps have faced it out but for his daughter June. He was a "lame
duck" now, and on her conscience. Having achieved--momentarily--the
rescue of an etcher in low circumstances, which she happened to have in
hand, she appeared at Robin Hill a fortnight after Irene and Jon had
gone. The little lady was living now in a tiny house with a big studio
at Chiswick. A Forsyte of the best period, so far as the lack of
responsibility was concerned, she had overcome the difficulty of a
reduced income in a manner satisfactory to herself and her father. The
rent of the Gallery off Cork Street which he had bought for her, and
her increased income tax happening to balance, it had been quite
simple--she no longer paid him the rent. The Gallery might be expected
now at any time, after eighteen years of barren usufruct, to pay its
way, so that she was sure her father would not feel it. Through this
device she still had twelve hundred a year, and by reducing what she
ate, and, in place of two Belgians in a poor way, employing one
Austrian in a poorer, practically the same surplus for the relief of
genius. After three days at Robin Hill she carried her father back with
her to Town. In those three days she had stumbled on the secret he had
kept for two years, and had instantly decided to cure him. She knew, in
fact, the very man. He had done wonders with Paul Post--that painter a
little in advance of Futurism; and she was impatient with her father
because his eyebrows would go up, and because he had heard of neither.
Of course, if he hadn't "faith" he would never get well! It was absurd
not to have faith in the man who had healed Paul Post so that he had
only just relapsed, from having overworked, or overlived, himself
again. The great thing about this healer was that he relied on Nature.
He had made a special study of the symptoms of Nature--when his patient
failed in any natural symptom he supplied the poison which caused
it--and there you were! She was extremely hopeful. Her father had
clearly not been living a natural life at Robin Hill, and she intended
to provide the symptoms. He was--she felt--out of touch with the times,
which was not natural; his heart wanted stimulating. In the little
Chiswick house she and the Austrian--a grateful soul, so devoted to
June for rescuing her that she was in danger of decease from
overwork--stimulated Jolyon in all sorts of ways, preparing him for his
cure. But they could not keep his eyebrows down; as--for example--when
the Austrian woke him at eight o'clock just as he was going to sleep or
June took The Times away from him, because it was unnatural to read
"that stuff" when he ought to be taking an interest in "life." He never
failed, indeed, to be astonished at her resource, especially in the
evenings. For his benefit, as she declared, though he suspected that
she also got something out of it, she assembled the Age so far as it
was satellite to genius; and with some solemnity it would move up and
down the studio before him in the Fox-trot, and that more mental form
of dancing--the One-step--which so pulled against the music, that
Jolyon's eyebrows would be almost lost in his hair from wonder at the
strain it must impose on the dancers' will-power. Aware that, hung on
the line in the Water Colour Society, he was a back number to those
with any pretension to be called artists, he would sit in the darkest
corner he could find, and wonder about rhythm, on which so long ago he
had been raised. And when June brought some girl or young man up to
him, he would rise humbly to their level so far as that was possible,
and think: 'Dear me! This is very dull for them!' Having his father's
perennial sympathy with Youth, he used to get very tired from entering
into their points of view. But it was all stimulating, and he never
failed in admiration of his daughter's indomitable spirit. Even genius
itself attended these gatherings now and then, with its nose on one
side; and June always introduced it to her father. This, she felt, was
exceptionally good for him, for genius was a natural symptom he had
never had--fond as she was of him.

Certain as a man can be that she was his own daughter, he often
wondered whence she got herself--her red-gold hair, now greyed into a
special colour; her direct, spirited face, so different from his own
rather folded and subtilised countenance, her little light figure, when
he and most of the Forsytes were tall. And he would dwell on the origin
of species, and debate whether she might be Danish or Celtic. Celtic,
he thought, from her pugnacity, and her taste in fillets and djibbahs.
It was not too much to say that he preferred her to the Age with which
she was surrounded, youthful though, for the greater part, it was. She
took, however, too much interest in his teeth, for he still had some of
those natural symptoms. Her dentist at once found "staphylococcus
aureus present in pure culture" (which might cause boils, of course)
and wanted to take out all the teeth he had and supply him with two
complete sets of unnatural symptoms. Jolyon's native tenacity was
roused, and in the studio that evening he developed his objections. He
had never had any boils, and his own teeth would last his time. Of
course--June admitted--they would last his time if he didn't have them
out! But if he had more teeth he would have a better heart and his time
would be longer. His recalcitrance--she said--was a symptom of his
whole attitude; he was taking it lying down. He ought to be fighting.
When was he going to see the man who had cured Paul Post? Jolyon was
very sorry, but the fact was he was not going to see him. June chafed.
Pondridge--she said--the healer, was such a fine man, and he had such
difficulty in making two ends meet and getting his theories recognised.
It was just such indifference and prejudice as her father manifested
which was keeping him back. It would be so splendid for both of them!

"I perceive," said Jolyon, "that you are trying to kill two birds with
one stone."

"To cure, you mean!" cried June.

"My dear, it's the same thing."

June protested. It was unfair to say that without a trial.

Jolyon thought he might not have the chance of saying it after.

"Dad!" cried June, "you're hopeless."

"That," said Jolyon, "is a fact, but I wish to remain hopeless as long
as possible. I shall let sleeping dogs lie, my child. They are quiet at
present."

"That's not giving science a chance," cried June. "You've no idea how
devoted Pondridge is. He puts his science before everything."

"Just," replied Jolyon, puffing the mild cigarette to which he was
reduced, "as Mr. Paul Post puts his art, eh? Art for Art's
sake--Science for the sake of Science. I know those enthusiastic
egomaniac gentry. They vivisect you without blinking. I'm enough of a
Forsyte to give them the go-by, June."

"Dad," said June, "if you only knew how old-fashioned that sounds!
Nobody can afford to be half-hearted nowadays."

"I'm afraid," murmured Jolyon, with his smile, "that's the only natural
symptom with which Mr. Pondridge need not supply me. We are born to be
extreme or to be moderate, my dear; though if you'll forgive my saying
so, half the people nowadays who believe they're extreme are really
very moderate. I'm getting on as well as I can expect, and I must leave
it at that."

June was silent, having experienced in her time the inexorable
character of her father's amiable obstinacy so far as his own freedom
of action was concerned.

How he came to let her know why Irene had taken Jon to Spain puzzled
Jolyon, for he had little confidence in her discretion. After she had
brooded on the news, it brought a rather sharp discussion, during which
he perceived to the full the fundamental opposition between her active
temperament and his wife's passivity. He even gathered that a little
soreness still remained from that generation-old struggle between them
over the body of Philip Bosinney, in which the passive had so signally
triumphed over the active principle.

According to June, it was foolish and even cowardly to hide the past
from Jon. Sheer opportunism, she called it.

"Which," Jolyon put in mildly, "is the working principle of real life,
my dear."

"Oh!" cried June, "YOU don't really defend her for not telling Jon,
Dad. If it were left to you, you would."

"I might, but simply because I know he must find out, which will be
worse than if we told him."

"Then why DON'T you tell him? It's just sleeping dogs again."

"My dear," said Jolyon, "I wouldn't for the world go against Irene's
instinct. He's her boy."

"Yours too," cried June.

"What is a man's instinct compared with a mother's?"

"Well, I think it's very weak of you."

"I dare say," said Jolyon, "I dare say."

And that was all she got from him; but the matter rankled in her brain.
She could not bear sleeping dogs. And there stirred in her a tortuous
impulse to push the matter towards decision. Jon ought to be told, so
that either his feeling might be nipped in the bud, or, flowering in
spite of the past, come to fruition. And she determined to see Fleur,
and judge for herself. When June determined on anything, delicacy
became a somewhat minor consideration. After all, she was Soames'
cousin, and they were both interested in pictures. She would go and
tell him that he ought to buy a Paul Post, or perhaps a piece of
sculpture by Boris Strumolowski, and of course she would say nothing to
her father. She went on the following Sunday, looking so determined
that she had some difficulty in getting a cab at Reading station. The
river country was lovely in those days of her own month, and June ached
at its loveliness. She who had passed through this life without knowing
what union was had a love of natural beauty which was almost madness.
And when she came to that choice spot where Soames had pitched his
tent, she dismissed her cab, because, business over, she wanted to
revel in the bright water and the woods. She appeared at his front
door, therefore, as a mere pedestrian, and sent in her card. It was in
June's character to know that when her nerves were fluttering she was
doing something worth while. If one's nerves did not flutter, she was
taking the line of least resistance, and knew that nobleness was not
obliging her. She was conducted to a drawing-room, which, though not in
her style, showed every mark of fastidious elegance. Thinking: 'Too
much taste--too many knick-knacks,' she saw in an old lacquer-framed
mirror the figure of a girl coming in from the verandah. Clothed in
white, and holding some white roses in her hand, she had, reflected in
that silvery-grey pool of glass, a vision-like appearance, as if a
pretty ghost had come out of the green garden.

"How do you do?" said June, turning round. "I'm a cousin of your
father's."

"Oh, yes; I saw you in that confectioner's."

"With my young stepbrother. Is your father in?"

"He will be directly. He's only gone for a little walk."

June slightly narrowed her blue eyes, and lifted her decided chin.

"Your name's Fleur, isn't it? I've heard of you from Holly. What do you
think of Jon?"

The girl lifted the roses in her hand, looked at them, and answered
calmly:

"He's quite a nice boy."

"Not a bit like Holly or me, is he?"

"Not a bit."

'She's cool,' thought June.

And suddenly the girl said: "I wish you'd tell me why our families
don't get on?"

Confronted with the question she had advised her father to answer, June
was silent; either because this girl was trying to get something out of
her, or simply because what one would do theoretically is not always
what one will do when it comes to the point.

"You know," said the girl, "the surest way to make people find out the
worst is to keep them ignorant. My father's told me it was a quarrel
about property. But I don't believe it; we've both got heaps. They
wouldn't have been so bourgeois as all that."

June flushed. The word applied to her grandfather and father offended
her.

"My grandfather," she said, "was very generous, and my father is, too;
neither of them was in the least bourgeois."

"Well, what was it then?" repeated the girl. Conscious that this young
Forsyte meant having what she wanted, June at once determined to
prevent her, and to get something for herself instead.

"Why do you want to know?"

The girl smelled at her roses. "I only want to know because they won't
tell me."

"Well, it WAS about property, but there's more than one kind."

"That makes it worse. Now I really MUST know."

June's small and resolute face quivered. She was wearing a round cap,
and her hair had fluffed out under it. She looked quite young at that
moment, rejuvenated by encounter.

"You know," she said, "I saw you drop your handkerchief. Is there
anything between you and Jon? Because, if so, you'd better drop that
too."

The girl grew paler, but she smiled.

"If there were, that isn't the way to make me."

At the gallantry of that reply June held out her hand.

"I like you; but I don't like your father; I never have. We may as well
be frank."

"Did you come down to tell him that?"

June laughed. "No; I came down to see YOU."

"How delightful of you!"

This girl could fence.

"I'm two-and-a-half times your age," said June, "but I quite
sympathise. It's horrid not to have one's own way."

The girl smiled again. "I really think you MIGHT tell me."

How the child stuck to her point!

"It's not my secret. But I'll see what I can do, because I think both
you and Jon OUGHT to be told. And now I'll say good-bye."

"Won't you wait and see Father?"

June shook her head. "How can I get over to the other side?"

"I'll row you across."

"Look!" said June impulsively, "next time you're in London, come and
see me. This is where I live. I generally have young people in the
evening. But I shouldn't tell your father that you're coming."

The girl nodded.

Watching her scull the skiff across, June thought: 'She's awfully
pretty and well made. I never thought Soames would have a daughter as
pretty as this. She and Jon would make a lovely couple.'

The instinct to couple, starved within herself, was always at work in
June. She stood watching Fleur row back; the girl took her hand off a
scull to wave farewell; and June walked languidly on between the
meadows and the river, with an ache in her heart. Youth to youth, like
the dragon-flies chasing each other, and love like the sun warming them
through and through. Her youth! So long ago--when Phil and she--! And
since? Nothing--no one had been quite what she had wanted. And so she
had missed it all. But what a coil was round those two young things, if
they really were in love, as Holly would have it--as her father, and
Irene, and Soames himself seemed to dread. What a coil, and what a
barrier! And the itch for the future, the contempt, as it were, for
what was overpast, which forms the active principle, moved in the heart
of one who ever believed that what one wanted was more important than
what other people did not want. From the bank, awhile, in the warm
summer stillness, she watched the water-lily plants and willow leaves,
the fishes rising; sniffed the scent of grass and meadow-sweet,
wondering how she could force everybody to be happy. Jon and Fleur! Two
little lame ducks--charming callow yellow little ducks! A great pity!
Surely something could be done! One must not take such situations lying
down. She walked on, and reached a station, hot and cross.

That evening, faithful to the impulse towards direct action, which made
many people avoid her, she said to her father:

"Dad, I've been down to see young Fleur. I think she's very attractive.
It's no good hiding our heads under our wings, is it?"

The startled Jolyon set down his barley water, and began crumbling his
bread.

"It's what you appear to be doing," he said: "Do you realise whose
daughter she is?"

"Can't the dead past bury its dead?"

Jolyon rose.

"Certain things can never be buried."

"I disagree," said June. "It's that which stands in the way of all
happiness and progress. You don't understand the Age, Dad. It's got no
use for outgrown things. Why do you think it matters so terribly that
Jon should know about his mother? Who pays any attention to that sort
of thing now? The marriage laws are just as they were when Soames and
Irene couldn't get a divorce, and you had to come in. We've moved, and
they haven't. So nobody cares. Marriage without a decent chance of
relief is only a sort of slave-owning; people oughtn't to own each
other. Everybody sees that now. If Irene broke such laws, what does it
matter?"

"It's not for me to disagree there," said Jolyon; "but that's all quite
beside the mark. This is a matter of human feeling."

"Of course, it is," cried June, "the human feeling of those two young
things."

"My dear," said Jolyon with gentle exasperation, "you're talking
nonsense."

"I'm not. If they prove to be really fond of each other, why should
they be made unhappy because of the past?"

"YOU haven't lived that past. I have--through the feelings of my wife;
through my own nerves and my imagination, as only one who is devoted
can."

June, too, rose, and began to wander restlessly.

"If," she said suddenly, "she were the daughter of Phil Bosinney, I
could understand you better. Irene loved him, she never loved Soames."

Jolyon uttered a deep sound--the sort of noise an Italian peasant woman
utters to her mule. His heart had begun beating furiously, but he paid
no attention to it, quite carried away by his feelings.

"That shows how little you understand. Neither I nor Jon, if I know
him, would mind a love-past. It's the brutality of a union without
love. This girl is the daughter of the man who once owned Jon's mother
as a negro-slave was owned. You can't lay that ghost; don't try to,
June! It's asking us to see Jon joined to the flesh and blood of the
man who possessed Jon's mother against her will. It's no good mincing
words; I want it clear once for all. And now I mustn't talk any more,
or I shall have to sit up with this all night." And, putting his hand
over his heart, Jolyon turned his back on his daughter and stood
looking at the river Thames.

June, who by nature never saw a hornets' nest until she had put her
head into it, was seriously alarmed. She came and slipped her arm
through his. Not convinced that he was right, and she herself wrong,
because that was not natural to her, she was yet profoundly impressed
by the obvious fact that the subject was very bad for him. She rubbed
her cheek against his shoulder, and said nothing.

After taking her elderly cousin across, Fleur did not land at once, but
pulled in among the reeds, into the sunshine. The peaceful beauty of
the afternoon seduced for a little one not much given to the vague and
poetic. In the field beyond the bank where her skiff lay up, a machine
drawn by a grey horse was turning an early field of hay. She watched
the grass cascading over and behind the light wheels with
fascination--it looked so green and fresh. The click and swish blended
with the rustle of the willows and the poplars, and the cooing of a
wood-pigeon, in a true river song. Alongside, in the grey-green water,
weeds like yellow snakes were writhing and nosing with the current;
pied cattle on the farther side stood in the shade lazily swishing
their tails. It was an afternoon to dream. And she took out Jon's
letters--not flowery effusions, but haunted in their recital of things
seen and done by a longing very agreeable to her, and all ending "Your
devoted J." Fleur was not sentimental, her desires were ever concrete
and concentrated, but what poetry there was in the daughter of Soames
and Annette had certainly in those weeks of waiting gathered round her
memories of Jon. They all belonged to grass and blossom, flowers and
running water. She enjoyed him in the scents absorbed by her crinkling
nose. The stars could persuade her that she was standing beside him in
the centre of the map of Spain; and of an early morning the dewy
cobwebs, the hazy sparkle and promise of the day down in the garden,
were Jon personified to her.

Two white swans came majestically by, while she was reading his
letters, followed by their brood of six young swans in a line, with
just so much space between each tail and head, a flotilla of grey
destroyers. Fleur thrust her letters back, got out her sculls, and
pulled up to the landing-stage. Crossing the lawn, she wondered whether
she should tell her father of June's visit. If he learned of it from
the butler, he might think it odd if she did not. It gave her, too,
another chance to startle out of him the reason of the feud. She went,
therefore, up the road to meet him.

Soames had gone to look at a patch of ground on which the Local
Authorities were proposing to erect a Sanatorium for people with weak
lungs. Faithful to his native individualism, he took no part in local
affairs, content to pay the rates which were always going up. He could
not, however, remain indifferent to this new and dangerous scheme. The
site was not half a mile from his own house. He was quite of opinion
that the country should stamp out tuberculosis; but this was not the
place. It should be done farther away. He took, indeed, an attitude
common to all true Forsytes, that disability of any sort in other
people was not his affair, and the State should do its business without
prejudicing in any way the natural advantages which he had acquired or
inherited. Francie, the most free-spirited Forsyte of his generation
(except perhaps that fellow Jolyon) had once asked him in her malicious
way: "Did you ever see the name Forsyte in a subscription list,
Soames?" That was as it might be, but a Sanatorium would depreciate the
neighbourhood, and he should certainly sign the petition which was
being got up against it. Returning with this decision fresh within him,
he saw Fleur coming.

She was showing him more affection of late, and the quiet time down
here with her in this summer weather had been making him feel quite
young; Annette was always running up to Town for one thing or another,
so that he had Fleur to himself almost as much as he could wish. To be
sure, young Mont had formed a habit of appearing on his motor-cycle
almost every other day. Thank goodness, the young fellow had shaved off
his half-toothbrushes, and no longer looked like a mountebank! With a
girl friend of Fleur's who was staying in the house, and a neighbouring
youth or so, they made two couples after dinner, in the hall, to the
music of the electric pianola which performed Fox-trots unassisted,
with a surprised shine on its expressive surface. Annette, even, now
and then passed gracefully up and down in the arms of one or other of
the young men. And Soames, coming to the drawing-room door, would lift
his nose a little sideways, and watch them, waiting to catch a smile
from Fleur; then move back to his chair by the drawing-room hearth, to
peruse The Times or some other collector's price-list. To his
ever-anxious eyes Fleur showed no sign of remembering that caprice of
hers.

When she reached him on the dusty road, he slipped his hand within her
arm.

"Who, do you think, has been to see you, Dad? She couldn't wait! Guess!"

"I never guess," said Soames uneasily. "Who?"

"Your cousin, June Forsyte."

Quite unconsciously Soames gripped her arm. "What did SHE want?"

"I don't know. But it was rather breaking through the feud, wasn't it?"

"Feud? What feud?"

"The one that exists in your imagination, dear."

Soames dropped her arm. Was she mocking, or trying to draw him on?

"I suppose she wanted me to buy a picture," he said at last.

"I don't think so. Perhaps it was just family affection."

"She's only a first cousin once removed," muttered Soames.

"And the daughter of your enemy."

"What d'you mean by that?"

"I beg your pardon, dear; I thought he was."

"Enemy!" repeated Soames. "It's ancient history. I don't know where you
get your notions."

"From June Forsyte."

It had come to her as an inspiration that if he thought she knew, or
were on the edge of knowledge, he would tell her.

Soames was startled, but she had underrated his caution and tenacity.

"If you know," he said coldly, "why do you plague me?"

Fleur saw that she had overreached herself.

"I don't want to plague you, darling. As you say, why want to know
more? Why want to know anything of that 'small' mystery--Je m'en fiche,
as Profond says."

"That chap!" said Soames profoundly.

That chap, indeed, played a considerable, if invisible, part this
summer--for he had not turned up again. Ever since the Sunday when
Fleur had drawn attention to him prowling on the lawn, Soames had
thought of him a good deal, and always in connection with Annette, for
no reason, except that she was looking handsomer than for some time
past. His possessive instinct, subtler, less formal, more elastic since
the war, kept all misgiving underground. As one looks on some American
river, quiet and pleasant, knowing that an alligator perhaps is lying
in the mud with his snout just raised and indistinguishable from a snag
of wood--so Soames looked on the river of his own existence,
subconscious of Monsieur Profond, refusing to see more than the
suspicion of his snout. He had at this epoch in his life practically
all he wanted, and was as nearly happy as his nature would permit. His
senses were at rest; his affections found all the vent they needed in
his daughter; his collection was well known, his money well invested;
his health excellent, save for a touch of liver now and again; he had
not yet begun to worry seriously about what would happen after death,
inclining to think that nothing would happen. He resembled one of his
own gilt-edged securities, and to knock the gilt off by seeing anything
he could avoid seeing, would be, he felt instinctively, perverse and
retrogressive. Those two crumpled rose-leaves, Fleur's caprice and
Monsieur Profond's snout, would level away if he lay on them
industriously.

That evening Chance, which visits the lives of even the best-invested
Forsytes, put a clue into Fleur's hands. Her father came down to dinner
without a handkerchief, and had occasion to blow his nose.

"I'll get you one, dear," she had said, and run upstairs. In the sachet
where she sought for it--an old sachet of very faded silk--there were
two compartments: one held handkerchiefs; the other was buttoned, and
contained something flat and hard. By some childish impulse Fleur
unbuttoned it. There was a frame and in it a photograph of herself as a
little girl. She gazed at it, fascinated, as one is by one's own
presentment. It slipped under her fidgeting thumb, and she saw that
another photograph was behind. She pressed her own down further, and
perceived a face, which she seemed to know, of a young woman, very
good-looking, in a very old style of evening dress. Slipping her own
photograph up over it again, she took out a handkerchief and went down.
Only on the stairs did she identify that face. Surely--surely Jon's
mother! The conviction came as a shock. And she stood still in a flurry
of thought. Why, of course! Jon's father had married the woman her
father had wanted to marry, had cheated him out of her, perhaps. Then,
afraid of showing by her manner that she had lighted on his secret, she
refused to think further, and, shaking out the silk handkerchief,
entered the dining-room.

"I chose the softest, Father."

"H'm!" said Soames; "I only use those after a cold. Never mind!"

That evening passed for Fleur in putting two and two together;
recalling the look on her father's face in the confectioner's shop--a
look strange, and coldly intimate, a queer look. He must have loved
that woman very much to have kept her photograph all this time, in
spite of having lost her. Unsparing and matter-of-fact, her mind darted
to his relations with her own mother. Had he ever really loved HER? She
thought not. Jon was the son of the woman he had really loved. Surely,
then, he ought not to mind his daughter loving him; it only wanted
getting used to. And a sigh of sheer relief was caught in the folds of
her nightgown slipping over her head.



III

MEETINGS


Youth only recognises Age by fits and starts. Jon, for one, had never
really seen his father's age till he came back from Spain. The face of
the fourth Jolyon, worn by waiting, gave him quite a shock--it looked
so wan and old. His father's mask had been forced awry by the emotion
of the meeting, so that the boy suddenly realised how much he must have
felt their absence. He summoned to his aid the thought: 'Well, I didn't
want to go!' It was out of date for Youth to defer to Age. But Jon was
by no means typically modern. His father had always been "so jolly" to
him, and to feel that one meant to begin again at once the conduct
which his father had suffered six weeks' loneliness to cure, was not
agreeable.

At the question, "Well, old man, how did the great Goya strike you?"
his conscience pricked him badly. The great Goya only existed because
he had created a face which resembled Fleur's.

On the night of their return he went to bed full of compunction; but
awoke full of anticipation. It was only the fifth of July, and no
meeting was fixed with Fleur until the ninth. He was to have three days
at home before going back to farm. Somehow he must contrive to see her!

In the lives of men an inexorable rhythm, caused by the need for
trousers, not even the fondest parents can deny. On the second day,
therefore, Jon went to Town, and having satisfied his conscience by
ordering what was indispensable in Conduit Street, turned his face
towards Piccadilly. Stratton Street, where her Club was, adjoined
Devonshire House. It would be the merest chance that she should be at
her Club. But he dawdled down Bond Street with a beating heart,
noticing the superiority of all other young men to himself. They wore
their clothes with such an air; they had assurance; they were OLD. He
was suddenly overwhelmed by the conviction that Fleur must have
forgotten him. Absorbed in his own feeling for her all these weeks, he
had mislaid that possibility. The corners of his mouth drooped, his
hands felt clammy. Fleur with the pick of youth at the beck of her
smile--Fleur incomparable! It was an evil moment. Jon, however, had a
great idea that one must be able to face anything. And he braced
himself with that dour reflection in front of a bric-a-brac shop. At
this high-water mark of what was once the London season, there was
nothing to mark it out from any other except a grey top hat or two, and
the sun. Jon moved on, and turning the corner into Piccadilly, ran into
Val Dartie moving towards the Iseeum Club, to which he had just been
elected.

"Hallo! young man! Where are you off to?"

Jon flushed. "I've just been to my tailor's."

Val looked him up and down. "That's good! I'm going in here to order
some cigarettes, then come and have some lunch."

Jon thanked him. He might get news of HER from Val. The condition of
England, that nightmare of its Press and Public men, was seen in
different perspective within the tobacconist's which they now entered.

"Yes, sir; precisely the cigarette I used to supply your father with.
Bless me! Mr. Montague Dartie was a customer here from--let me see--the
year Melton won the Derby. One of my very best customers he was." And a
faint smile illumined the tobacconist's face. "Many's the tip he's
given me, to be sure! I suppose he took a couple of hundred of these
every week, year in, year out, and never changed his cigarette. Very
affable gentleman, brought me a lot of custom. I was sorry he met with
that accident. One misses an old customer like him."

Val smiled. His father's decease had closed an account which had been
running longer, probably, than any other; and in a ring of smoke puffed
out from that time-honoured cigarette he seemed to see again his
father's face, dark, good-looking, moustachioed, a little puffy, in the
only halo it had earned. His father had his fame here, anyway--a man
who smoked two hundred cigarettes a week, who could give tips, and run
accounts for ever! To his tobacconist a hero! Even that was some
distinction to inherit!

"I pay cash," he said; "how much?"

"To HIS son, sir, and cash--ten and six. I shall never forget Mr.
Montague Dartie. I've known him stand talkin' to me half an hour. We
don't get many like him now, with everybody in such a hurry. The war
was bad for manners, sir--it was bad for manners. You were in it, I
see."

"No," said Val, tapping his knee, "I got this in the war before. Saved
my life, I expect. Do you want any cigarettes, Jon?"

Rather ashamed, Jon murmured: "I don't smoke, you know," and saw the
tobacconist's lips twisted, as if uncertain whether to say "Good God!"
or "Now's your chance, sir!"

"That's right," said Val; "keep off it while you can. You'll want it
when you take a knock. This is really the same tobacco, then?"

"Identical, sir; a little dearer, that's all. Wonderful staying
power--the British Empire, I always say."

"Send me down a hundred a week to this address, and invoice it monthly.
Come on, Jon."

Jon entered the Iseeum with curiosity. Except to lunch now and then at
the Hotch-potch with his father, he had never been in a London Club.
The Iseeum, comfortable and unpretentious, did not move, could not, so
long as George Forsyte sat on its Committee, where his culinary acumen
was almost the controlling force. The Club had made a stand against the
newly rich, and it had taken all George Forsyte's prestige, and praise
of him as a "good sportsman," to bring in Prosper Profond.

The two were lunching together when the half-brothers-in-law entered
the dining-room, and attracted by George's forefinger, sat down at
their table, Val with his shrewd eyes and charming smile, Jon with
solemn lips and an attractive shyness in his glance. There was an air
of privilege around that corner table, as though past masters were
eating there. Jon was fascinated by the hypnotic atmosphere. The
waiter, lean in the chaps, pervaded with such freemasonical deference.
He seemed to hang on George Forsyte's lips, to watch the gloat in his
eye with a kind of sympathy, to follow the movements of the heavy
club-marked silver fondly. His liveried arm and confidential voice
alarmed Jon, they came so secretly over one's shoulder.

Except for George's: "Your grandfather tipped me once; he was a deuced
good judge of a cigar!" neither he nor the other past master took any
notice of him, and he was grateful for this. The talk was all about the
breeding, points, and prices of horses, and he listened to it vaguely
at first, wondering how it was possible to retain so much knowledge in
a head. He could not take his eyes off the dark past master--what he
said was so deliberate and discouraging--such heavy, queer, smiled-out
words. Jon was thinking of butterflies, when he heard him say:

"I want to see Mr. Soames Forsyde take an interest in 'orses."

"Old Soames! He's too dry a file!"

With all his might Jon tried not to grow red, while the dark past
master went on.

"His daughter's an attractive small girl. Mr. Soames Forsyde is a bit
old-fashioned. I want to see him have a pleasure some day."

George Forsyte grinned. "Don't you worry; he's not so miserable as he
looks. He'll never show he's enjoying anything--they might try and take
it from him. Old Soames! Once bit, twice shy!"

"Well, Jon," said Val hastily, "if you've finished, we'll go and have
coffee."

"Who were those?" Jon asked on the stairs: "I didn't quite--"

"Old George Forsyte is a first cousin of your father's, and of my uncle
Soames. He's always been here. The other chap, Profond, is a queer
fish. I think he's hanging round Soames' wife, if you ask me!"

Jon looked at him, startled. "But that's awful," he said: "I mean--for
Fleur."

"Don't suppose Fleur cares very much; she's very up-to-date."

"Her mother!"

"You're very green, Jon."

Jon grew red. "Mothers," he stammered angrily, "are different."

"You're right," said Val suddenly; "but things aren't what they were
when I was your age. There's a 'Tomorrow we die' feeling. That's what
old George meant about my uncle Soames. HE doesn't mean to die
tomorrow."

Jon said quickly: "What's the matter between him and my father?"

"Stable secret, Jon. Take my advice, and bottle up. You'll do no good
by knowing. Have a liqueur?"

Jon shook his head.

"I hate the way people keep things from one," he muttered, "and then
sneer at one for being green."

"Well, you can ask Holly. If SHE won't tell you, you'll believe it's
for your own good, I suppose."

Jon got up. "I must go now; thanks awfully for the lunch."

Val smiled up at him, half-sorry and yet amused. The boy looked so
upset.

"All right! See you on Friday."

"I don't know," murmured Jon.

And he did not. This conspiracy of silence made him desperate. It was
humiliating to be treated like a child. He retraced his moody steps to
Stratton Street. But he would go to her Club now, and find out the
worst. To his inquiry the reply was that Miss Forsyte was not in the
Club. She might be in perhaps later. She was often in on Monday--they
could not say. Jon said he would call again, and, crossing into the
Green Park, flung himself down under a tree. The sun was bright, and a
breeze fluttered the leaves of the young lime-tree beneath which he
lay; but his heart ached. Such darkness seemed gathered round his
happiness. He heard Big Ben chime "Three" above the traffic. The sound
moved something in him, and taking out a piece of paper, he began to
scribble on it with a pencil. He had jotted a stanza, and was searching
the grass for another verse, when something hard touched his
shoulder--a green parasol. There above him stood Fleur!

"They told me you'd been, and were coming back. So I thought you might
be out here; and you are--it's rather wonderful!"

"Oh, Fleur! I thought you'd have forgotten me."

"When I told you that I shouldn't!"

Jon seized her arm.

"It's too much luck! Let's get away from this side."

He almost dragged her on through that too thoughtfully regulated Park,
to find some cover where they could sit and hold each other's hands.

"Hasn't anybody cut in?" he said, gazing round at her lashes, in
suspense above her cheeks.

"There IS a young idiot, but he doesn't count."

Jon felt a twitch of compassion for the--young idiot.

"You know I've had sunstroke, I didn't tell you."

"Really! Was it interesting?"

"No. Mother was an angel. Has anything happened to YOU?"

"Nothing. Except that I think I've found out what's wrong between our
families, Jon."

His heart began beating very fast.

"I believe my father wanted to marry your mother, and your father got
her instead."

"Oh!"

"I came on a photo of her; it was in a frame behind a photo of me. Of
course, if he was very fond of her, that would have made him pretty
mad, wouldn't it?"

Jon thought for a minute. "Not if she loved my father best."

"But suppose they were engaged?"

"If we were engaged, and you found you loved somebody better, I might
go cracked, but I shouldn't grudge it you."

"I should. You mustn't ever do that with me, Jon."

"My God! Not much!"

"I don't believe that he's ever really cared for my mother."

Jon was silent. Val's words, the two past masters in the Club!

"You see, we don't know," went on Fleur; "it may have been a great
shock. She may have behaved badly to him. People do."

"My mother wouldn't."

Fleur shrugged her shoulders. "I don't think we know much about our
fathers and mothers. We just see them in the light of the way they
treat US; but they've treated other people, you know, before we were
born--plenty, I expect. You see, they're both old. Look at your father,
with three separate families!"

"Isn't there any place," cried Jon, "in all this beastly London where
we can be alone?"

"Only a taxi."

"Let's get one, then."

When they were installed, Fleur asked suddenly: "Are you going back to
Robin Hill? I should like to see where you live, Jon. I'm staying with
my aunt for the night, but I could get back in time for dinner. I
wouldn't come to the house, of course."

Jon gazed at her enraptured.

"Splendid! I can show it you from the copse, we shan't meet anybody.
There's a train at four."

The god of property and his Forsytes great and small, leisured,
official, commercial, or professional, unlike the working classes,
still worked their seven hours a day, so that those two of the fourth
generation travelled down to Robin Hill in an empty first-class
carriage, dusty and sun-warmed, of that too early train. They travelled
in blissful silence, holding each other's hands.

At the station they saw no one except porters, and a villager or two
unknown to Jon, and walked out up the lane, which smelled of dust and
honeysuckle.

For Jon--sure of her now, and without separation before him--it was a
miraculous dawdle, more wonderful than those on the Downs, or along the
river Thames. It was love-in-a-mist--one of those illumined pages of
Life, where every word and smile, and every light touch they gave each
other were as little gold and red and blue butterflies and flowers and
birds scrolled in among the text--a happy communing, without
afterthought, which lasted twenty-seven minutes. They reached the
coppice at the milking-hour. Jon would not take her as far as the
farmyard; only to where she could see the field leading up to the
gardens, and the house beyond. They turned in among the larches, and
suddenly, at the winding of the path, came on Irene, sitting on an old
log seat.

There are various kinds of shocks: to the vertebrae; to the nerves; to
moral sensibility; and, more potent and permanent, to personal dignity.
This last was the shock Jon received, coming thus on his mother. He
became suddenly conscious that he was doing an indelicate thing. To
have brought Fleur down openly--yes! But to sneak her in like this!
Consumed with shame, he put on a front as brazen as his nature would
permit.

Fleur was smiling a little defiantly; his mother's startled face was
changing quickly to the impersonal and gracious. It was she who uttered
the first words:

"I'm very glad to see you. It was nice of Jon to think of bringing you
down to us."

"We weren't coming to the house," Jon blurted out. "I just wanted Fleur
to see where I lived."

His mother said quietly: "Won't you come up and have tea?"

Feeling that he had but aggravated his breach of breeding, he heard
Fleur answer: "Thanks very much; I have to get back to dinner. I met
Jon by accident, and we thought it would be rather jolly just to see
his home."

How self-possessed she was!

"Of course; but you MUST have tea. We'll send you down to the station.
My husband will enjoy seeing you."

The expression of his mother's eyes, resting on him for a moment, cast
Jon down level with the ground--a true worm. Then she led on, and Fleur
followed her. He felt like a child, trailing after those two, who were
talking so easily about Spain and Wansdon, and the house up there
beyond the trees and the grassy slope. He watched the fencing of their
eyes, taking each other in--the two beings he loved most in the world.

He could see his father sitting under the oak-tree; and suffered in
advance all the loss of caste he must go through in the eyes of that
tranquil figure, with his knees crossed, thin, old, and elegant;
already he could feel the faint irony which would come into his voice
and smile.

"This is Fleur Forsyte, Jolyon; Jon brought her down to see the house.
Let's have tea at once--she has to catch a train. Jon, tell them, dear,
and telephone to the Dragon for a car."

To leave her alone with them was strange, and yet, as no doubt his
mother had foreseen, the least of evils at the moment; so he ran up
into the house. Now he would not see Fleur alone again--not for a
minute, and they had arranged no further meeting! When he returned
under cover of the maids and teapots, there was not a trace of
awkwardness beneath the tree; it was all within himself, but not the
less for that. They were talking of the Gallery off Cork Street.

"We back-numbers," his father was saying, "are awfully anxious to find
out why we can't appreciate the new stuff; you and Jon must tell us."

"It's supposed to be satiric, isn't it?" said Fleur.

He saw his father's smile.

"Satiric? Oh! I think it's more than that. What do you say, Jon?"

"I don't know at all," stammered Jon. His father's face had a sudden
grimness.

"The young are tired of us, our gods and our ideals. Off with their
heads, they say--smash their idols! And let's get back to--nothing!
And, by Jove, they've done it! Jon's a poet. He'll be going in, too,
and stamping on what's left of us. Property, beauty, sentiment--all
smoke. We mustn't own anything nowadays, not even our feelings. They
stand in the way of--Nothing."

Jon listened, bewildered, almost outraged by his father's words, behind
which he felt a meaning that he could not reach. He didn't want to
stamp on anything!

"Nothing's the god of to-day," continued Jolyon; "we're back where the
Russians were sixty years ago, when they started Nihilism."

"No, Dad," cried Jon suddenly; "we only want to LIVE, and we don't know
how, because of the Past--that's all!"

"By George!" said Jolyon, "that's profound, Jon. Is it your own? The
Past! Old ownerships, old passions, and their aftermath. Let's have
cigarettes."

Conscious that his mother had lifted her hand to her lips, quickly, as
if to hush something, Jon handed the cigarettes. He lighted his
father's and Fleur's, then one for himself. Had he taken the knock that
Val had spoken of? The smoke was blue when he had not puffed, grey when
he had; he liked the sensation in his nose, and the sense of equality
it gave him. He was glad no one said: "So you've begun!" He felt less
young.

Fleur looked at her watch, and rose. His mother went with her into the
house. Jon stayed with his father, puffing at the cigarette.

"See her into the car, old man," said Jolyon; "and when she's gone, ask
your mother to come back to me."

Jon went. He waited in the hall. He saw her into the car. There was no
chance for any word; hardly for a pressure of the hand. He waited all
that evening for something to be said to him. Nothing was said. Nothing
might have happened. He went up to bed; and in the mirror on his
dressing-table met himself. He did not speak, nor did the image; but
both looked as if they thought the more.



IV

IN GREEN STREET


Uncertain, whether the impression that Prosper Profond was dangerous
should be traced to his attempt to give Val the Mayfly filly; to the
remark of Fleur's: "Isn't he a great cat? Prowling!" to his
preposterous inquiry of Jack Cardigan: "What's the use of keepin' fit?"
or, more simply, to the fact that he was a foreigner, or alien as it
was now called. Certain that Annette was looking particularly handsome,
and that Soames had sold him a Gauguin and then torn up the cheque, so
that Monsieur Profond himself had said: "I didn't get that small
picture I bought from Mr. Forsyde."

However suspiciously regarded, he still frequented Winifred's evergreen
little house in Green Street, with a good-natured obtuseness which no
one mistook for naivete; a word hardly applicable to Monsieur Prosper
Profond. Winifred still found him "amusing," and would write him little
notes saying: "Come and have a 'jolly' with us"--it was breath of life
to her to keep up with the phrases of the day.

The mystery, with which all felt him to be surrounded, was due to his
having done, seen, heard, and known everything, and found nothing in
it--which was unnatural. The English type of disillusionment was
familiar enough to Winifred, who had always moved in fashionable
circles. It gave a certain cachet or distinction, so that one got
something out of it. But to see nothing in anything, not as a pose, but
because there WAS nothing in anything, was not English; and that which
was not English one could not help secretly feeling dangerous, if not
precisely bad form. It was like having the mood which the war had left,
seated--dark, heavy, smiling, indifferent--in your Empire chair; it was
like listening to that mood talking through thick pink lips above a
little diabolic beard. It was, as Jack Cardigan expressed it--for the
English character at large--"a bit too thick"--for if nothing was
really worth getting excited about, there were always games, and one
could make it so! Even Winifred, ever a Forsyte at heart, felt that
there was nothing to be had out of a mood of disillusionment; it really
ought not to be there. Monsieur Profond, in fact, made the mood too
plain, in a country which decently veiled such realities.

When Fleur, after her hurried return from Robin Hill, came down to
dinner that evening, the mood was standing at the window of Winifred's
little drawing-room, looking out into Green Street, with an air of
seeing nothing in it. And Fleur gazed promptly into the fireplace with
an air of seeing a fire which was not there.

Monsieur Profond came from the window. He was in full fig, with a white
waistcoat and a white flower in his buttonhole.

"Well, Miss Forsyde," he said, "I'm awful pleased to see you. Mr.
Forsyde well? I was sayin' to-day I want to see him have some pleasure.
He worries."

"You think so?" said Fleur shortly.

"Worries," repeated Monsieur Profond, burring the r's.

Fleur spun round. "Shall I tell you," she said, "what would give him
pleasure?" But the words: "To hear that you had cleared out" died at
the expression on his face. All his fine white teeth were showing.

"I was hearin' at the Club to-day, about his old trouble."

"What do you mean?"

Monsieur Profond moved his sleek head as if to minimise his statement.

"Before you were born," he said; "that small business."

Though conscious that he had cleverly diverted her from his own share
in her father's worry, Fleur could not withstand a rush of nervous
curiosity. "What did you hear?"

"Why!" murmured Monsieur Profond, "you know all that."

"I expect I do. But I should like to know that you haven't heard it all
wrong."

"His first wife," murmured Monsieur Profond.

Choking back the words: "He was never married before"; she said: "Well,
what about her?"

"Mr. George Forsyde was tellin' me about your father's first wife
marryin' his cousin Jolyon afterwards. It was a small bit unpleasant, I
should think. I saw their boy--nice boy!"

Fleur looked up. Monsieur Profond was swimming, heavily diabolical,
before her. That--the reason! With the most heroic effort of her life
so far, she managed to arrest that swimming figure. She could not tell
whether he had noticed. And just then Winifred came in.

"Oh! here you both are already! Imogen and I have had the most amusing
afternoon at the Babies' bazaar."

"What babies?" said Fleur mechanically.

"The 'Save the Babies.' I got such a bargain, my dear. A piece of old
Armenian work--from before the flood. I want your opinion on it,
Prosper."

"Auntie," whispered Fleur suddenly.

At the tone in the girl's voice Winifred closed in on her.

"What's the matter? Aren't you well?"

Monsieur Profond had withdrawn into the window, where he was
practically out of hearing.

"Auntie, he told me that father has been married before. Is it true
that he divorced her, and she married Jon Forsyte's father?"

Never in all the life of the mother of four little Darties had Winifred
felt more seriously embarrassed. Her niece's face was so pale, her eyes
so dark, her voice so whispery and strained.

"Your Father didn't wish you to hear," she said, with all the aplomb
she could muster. "These things will happen. I've often told him he
ought to let you know."

"Oh!" said Fleur, and that was all, but it made Winifred pat her
shoulder--a firm little shoulder, nice and white! She never could help
an appraising eye and touch in the matter of her niece, who would have
to be married, of course--though not to that boy Jon.

"We've forgotten all about it years and years ago," she said
comfortably. "Come and have dinner!"

"No, Auntie. I don't feel very well. May I go upstairs?"

"My dear!" murmured Winifred, concerned; "you're not taking this to
heart? Why, you haven't properly come out yet! That boy's a child!"

"What boy? I've only got a headache. But I can't stand that man
to-night."

"Well, well," said Winifred; "go and lie down. I'll send you some
bromide, and I shall talk to Prosper Profond. What business had he to
gossip? Though I must say I think it's much better you should know."

Fleur smiled. "Yes," she said, and slipped from the room.

She went up with her head whirling, a dry sensation in her throat, a
fluttered, frightened feeling in her breast. Never in her life as yet
had she suffered from even momentary fear that she would not get what
she had set her heart on. The sensations of the afternoon had been
full, and poignant, and this gruesome discovery coming on the top of
them had really made her head ache. No wonder her father had hidden
that photograph so secretly behind her own--ashamed of having kept it!
But could he hate Jon's mother and yet keep her photograph? She pressed
her hands over her forehead, trying to see things clearly. Had they
told Jon--had her visit to Robin Hill forced them to tell him?
Everything now turned on that! She knew, they all knew,
except--perhaps--Jon!

She walked up and down, biting her lip and thinking desperately hard.
Jon loved his mother. If they had told him, what would he do? She could
not tell. But if they had not told him, should she not--could she not
get him for herself--get married to him, before he knew? She searched
her memories of Robin Hill. His mother's face so passive--with its dark
eyes and as if powdered hair, its reserve, its smile--baffled her; and
his father's--kindly, sunken, ironic. Instinctively she felt they would
shrink from telling Jon, even now, shrink from hurting him--for of
course it would hurt him awfully to know!

Her aunt must be made not to tell her father that she knew. So long as
neither she herself nor Jon were supposed to know, there was still a
chance--freedom to cover one's tracks, and get what her heart was set
on. But she was almost overwhelmed by her isolation. Every one's hand
was against her--every one's! It was as Jon had said--he and she just
wanted to live and the past was in their way, a past they hadn't shared
in, and didn't understand! Oh! What a shame! And suddenly she thought
of June. Would she help them? For somehow June had left on her the
impression that she would be sympathetic with their love, impatient of
obstacle. Then, instinctively, she thought: 'I won't give anything
away, though, even to her. I daren't! I mean to have Jon; in spite of
them all.'

Soup was brought up to her, and one of Winifred's pet headache cachets.
She swallowed both. Then Winifred herself appeared. Fleur opened her
campaign with the words:

"You know, Auntie, I do wish people wouldn't think I'm in love with
that boy. Why, I've hardly seen him!"

Winifred, though experienced, was not 'fine'. She accepted the remark
with considerable relief. Of course, it was not pleasant for the girl
to hear of the family scandal, and she set herself to minimise the
matter, a task for which she was eminently qualified, raised
fashionably under a comfortable mother and a father whose nerves might
not be shaken, and for many years the wife of Montague Dartie. Her
description was a masterpiece of understatement. Fleur's father's first
wife had been very foolish. There had been a young man who had got run
over, and she had left Fleur's father. Then, years after, when it might
all have come right again, she had taken up with their cousin Jolyon;
and, of course, her father had been obliged to have a divorce. Nobody
remembered anything of it now, except just the family. And, perhaps, it
had all turned out for the best; her father had Fleur; and Jolyon and
Irene had been quite happy, they said, and their boy was a nice boy.
"Val having Holly, too, is a sort of plaster, don't you know?" With
these soothing words, Winifred patted her niece's shoulder, thought:
"She's a nice, plump little thing!" and went back to Prosper Profond,
who, in spite of his indiscretion, was very "amusing" this evening.

For some minutes after her aunt had gone Fleur remained under influence
of bromide material and spiritual. But then reality came back. Her aunt
had left out all that mattered--all the feeling, the hate, the love,
the unforgivingness of passionate hearts. She, who knew so little of
life, and had touched only the fringe of love, was yet aware by
instinct that words have as little relation to fact and feeling as coin
to the bread it buys. 'Poor Father!' she thought. 'Poor me! Poor Jon!
But I don't care, I mean to have him!' From the window of her darkened
room she saw "that man" issue from the door below and "prowl" away. If
he and her mother--how would that affect her chance? Surely it must
make her father cling to her more closely, so that he would consent in
the end to anything she wanted, or become reconciled the sooner to what
she did without his knowledge.

She took some earth from the flower-box in the window, and with all her
might flung it after that disappearing figure. It fell short, but the
action did her good.

And a little puff of air came up from Green Street, smelling of petrol,
not sweet.



V

PURELY FORSYTE AFFAIRS


Soames, coming up to the City, with the intention of calling in at
Green Street at the end of his day and taking Fleur back home with him,
suffered from rumination. Sleeping partner that he was, he seldom
visited the City now, but he still had a room of his own at Cuthcott
Kingson & Forsyte's, and one special clerk and a half assigned to the
management of purely Forsyte affairs. They were somewhat in flux just
now--an auspicious moment for the disposal of house property. And
Soames was unloading the estates of his father and uncle Roger, and to
some extent of his uncle Nicholas. His shrewd and matter-of-course
probity in all money concerns had made him something of an autocrat in
connection with these trusts. If Soames thought this or thought that,
one had better save oneself the bother of thinking too. He guaranteed,
as it were, irresponsibility to numerous Forsytes of the third and
fourth generations. His fellow trustees, such as his cousins Roger or
Nicholas, his cousins-in-law Tweetyman and Spender, or his sister
Cicely's husband all trusted him; he signed first, and where he signed
first they signed after, and nobody was a penny the worse. Just now
they were all a good many pennies the better, and Soames was beginning
to see the close of certain trusts, except for distribution of the
income from securities as gilt-edged as was compatible with the period.

Passing the more feverish parts of the City towards the most perfect
backwater in London, he ruminated. Money was extraordinarily tight; and
morality extraordinarily loose! The War had done it. Banks were not
lending; people breaking contracts all over the place. There was a
feeling in the air and a look on faces that he did not like. The
country seemed in for a spell of gambling and bankruptcies. There was
satisfaction in the thought that neither he nor his trusts had an
investment which could be affected by anything less maniacal than
national repudiation or a levy on capital. If Soames had faith, it was
in what he called "English common sense"--or the power to have things,
if not one way then another. He might--like his father James before
him--say he didn't know what things were coming to, but he never in his
heart believed they were. If it rested with him, they wouldn't--and,
after all, he was only an Englishman like any other, so quietly
tenacious of what he had that he knew he would never really part with
it without something more or less equivalent in exchange. Take his own
case, for example! He was well off. Did that do anybody harm? He did
not eat ten meals a day; he ate no more than, perhaps not so much as, a
poor man. He spent no money on vice; breathed no more air, used no more
water to speak of than the mechanic or the porter. He certainly had
pretty things about him, but they had given employment in the making,
and somebody must use them. He bought pictures, but Art must be
encouraged. He was, in fact, an accidental channel through which money
flowed, employing labour. What was there objectionable in that? In his
charge money was in quicker and more useful flux than it would be in
charge of the State and a lot of slow-fly money-sucking officials. And
as to what he saved each year--it was just as much in flux as what he
didn't save, going into Water Board or Council Stocks, or something
sound and useful. The State paid him no salary for being trustee of his
own or other people's money--HE DID ALL THAT FOR NOTHING. Therein lay
the whole case against nationalisation--owners of private property were
unpaid, and yet had every incentive to quicken up the flux. Under
nationalisation--just the opposite! In a country smarting from
officialism he felt that he had a strong case.

It particularly annoyed him, entering that backwater of perfect peace,
to think that a lot of unscrupulous Trusts and Combinations had been
cornering the market in goods of all kinds, and keeping prices at an
artificial height. Such abusers of the individualistic system were the
ruffians who caused all the trouble, and it was some satisfaction to
see them getting into a stew at last lest the whole thing might come
down with a run-and land in the soup.

The offices of Cuthcott Kingson & Forsyte occupied the ground and first
floors of a house on the right-hand side; and, ascending to his room,
Soames thought: 'Time we had a coat of paint.'

His old clerk Gradman was seated, where he always was, at a huge bureau
with countless pigeonholes. Half-the-clerk stood beside him, with a
broker's note recording investment of the proceeds from sale of the
Bryanston Square house, in Roger Forsyte's estate. Soames took it, and
said:

"Vancouver City Stock. H'm! It's down to-day!"

With a sort of grating ingratiation old Gradman answered him:

"Ye-es; but everything's down, Mr. Soames." And half-the-clerk withdrew.

Soames skewered the document onto a number of other papers and hung up
his hat.

"I want to look at my Will and Marriage Settlement, Gradman."

Old Gradman, moving to the limit of his swivel chair, drew out two
drafts from the bottom left-hand drawer. Recovering his body, he raised
his grizzle-haired face, very red from stooping.

"Copies, sir."

Soames took them. It struck him suddenly how like Gradman was to the
stout brindled yard dog they had been wont to keep on his chain at 'The
Shelter,' till one day Fleur had come and insisted it should be let
loose, so that it had at once bitten the cook and been destroyed. If
you let Gradman off his chair, would he bite the cook?

Checking this frivolous fancy, Soames unfolded his Marriage Settlement.
He had not looked at it for over eighteen years, not since he remade
his Will when his father died and Fleur was born. He wanted to see
whether the words "during coverture" were in. Yes, they were--odd
expression, when you thought of it, and derived perhaps from
horse-breeding! Interest on fifteen thousand pounds (which he paid her
without deducting income tax) so long as she remained his wife, and
afterwards during widowhood "dum casta"--old-fashioned and rather
pointed words, put in to insure the conduct of Fleur's mother. His Will
made it up to an annuity of a thousand under the same conditions. All
right! He returned the copies to Gradman, who took them without looking
up, swung the chair, restored the papers to their drawer, and went on
casting up.

"Gradman! I don't like the condition of the country; there are a lot of
people about without any common sense. I want to find a way by which I
can safeguard Miss Fleur against anything which might arise."

Gradman wrote the figure "2" on his blotting-paper.

"Ye-es," he said; "there's a nahsty spirit."

"The ordinary restraint against anticipation doesn't meet the case."

"Nao," said Gradman.

"Suppose those Labour fellows come in, or worse! It's these people with
fixed ideas who are the danger. Look at Ireland!"

"Ah!" said Gradman.

"Suppose I were to make a settlement on her at once with myself as
beneficiary for life, they couldn't take anything but the interest from
me, unless of course they alter the law."

Gradman moved his head and smiled.

"Aoh!" he said, "they wouldn't do tha-at!"

"I don't know," muttered Soames; "I don't trust them."

"It'll take two years, sir, to be valid against death duties."

Soames sniffed. Two years! He was only sixty-five!

"That's not the point. Draw a form of settlement that passes all my
property to Miss Fleur's children in equal shares, with antecedent
life-interests first to myself and then to her without power of
anticipation, and add a clause that in the event of anything happening
to divert her life-interest, that interest passes to the trustees, to
apply for her benefit, in their absolute discretion."

Gradman grated: "Rather extreme at your age, sir; you lose control."

"That's my business," said Soames sharply.

Gradman wrote on a piece of paper. "Life-interest--anticipation--divert
interest--absolute discretion..." and said:

"What trustees? There's young Mr. Kingson, he's a nice steady young
fellow."

"Yes, he might do for one. I must have three. There isn't a Forsyte now
who appeals to me."

"Not young Mr. Nicholas? He's at the Bar. We've given 'im briefs."

"He'll never set the Thames on fire," said Soames.

A smile oozed out on Gradman's face, greasy with countless
mutton-chops, the smile of a man who sits all day.

"You can't expect it, at his age, Mr. Soames."

"Why? What is he? Forty?"

"Ye-es, quite a young fellow."

"Well, put him in; but I want somebody who'll take a personal interest.
There's no one that I can see."

"What about Mr. Valerius, now he's come home?"

"Val Dartie? With that father?"

"We-ell," murmured Gradman, "he's been dead seven years--the Statute
runs against him."

"No," said Soames. "I don't like the connection."

He rose. Gradman said suddenly:

"If they were makin' a levy on capital, they could come on the
trustees, sir. So there you'd be just the same. I'd think it over, if I
were you."

"That's true," said Soames, "I will. What have you done about that
dilapidation notice in Vere Street?"

"I 'aven't served it yet. The party's very old. She won't want to go
out at her age."

"I don't know. This spirit of unrest touches every one."

"Still, I'm lookin' at things broadly, sir. She's eighty-one."

"Better serve it," said Soames, "and see what she says. Oh! and Mr.
Timothy? Is everything in order in case of accidents."

"I've got the inventory of his estate all ready; had the furniture and
pictures valued so that we know what reserves to put on. I shall be
sorry when he goes, though. Dear me! It is a time since I first saw Mr.
Timothy!"

"We can't live for ever," said Soames, taking down his hat.

"Nao," said Gradman; "but it'll be a pity--the last of the old family!
Shall I take up the matter of that nuisance in Old Compton Street?
Those organs--they're nahsty things."

"Do. I must call for Miss Fleur and catch the four o'clock. Good-day,
Gradman."

"Good-day, Mr. Soames. I hope Miss Fleur--"

"Well enough, but gads about too much."

"Ye-es," grated Gradman; "she's young."

Soames went out, musing: "Old Gradman! If he were younger I'd put him
in the trust. There's nobody I can depend on to take a real interest."

Leaving the bilious and mathematical exactitude, the preposterous peace
of that backwater, he thought suddenly: 'During coverture! Why can't
they exclude fellows like Profond, instead of a lot of hard-working
Germans?' and was surprised at the depth of uneasiness which could
provoke so unpatriotic a thought. But there it was! One never got a
moment of real peace. Always something at the back of everything! And
he made his way towards Green Street.

Two hours later by his watch, Thomas Gradman, stirring in his swivel
chair, closed the last drawer of his bureau, and putting into his
waistcoat pocket a bunch of keys so fat that they gave him a
protuberance on the liver side, brushed his old top hat round with his
sleeve, took his umbrella, and descended. Thick, short, and buttoned
closely into his old frock coat, he walked towards Covent Garden
market. He never missed that daily promenade to the Tube for Highgate,
and seldom some critical transaction on the way in connection with
vegetables and fruit. Generations might be born, and hats might change,
wars be fought, and Forsytes fade away, but Thomas Gradman, faithful
and grey, would take his daily walk and buy his daily vegetable. Times
were not what they were, and his son had lost a leg, and they never
gave him those nice little plaited baskets to carry the stuff in now,
and these Tubes were convenient things--still he mustn't complain; his
health was good considering his time of life, and after fifty-four
years in the Law he was getting a round eight hundred a year and a
little worried of late, because it was mostly collector's commission on
the rents, and with all this conversion of Forsyte property going on,
it looked like drying up, and the price of living still so high; but it
was no good worrying--"The good God made us all"--as he was in the
habit of saying; still, house property in London--he didn't know what
Mr. Roger or Mr. James would say if they could see it being sold like
this--seemed to show a lack of faith; but Mr. Soames--he worried. Life
and lives in being and twenty-one years after--beyond that you couldn't
go; still, he kept his health wonderfully--and Miss Fleur was a pretty
little thing--she was; she'd marry; but lots of people had no children
nowadays--he had had his first child at twenty-two; and Mr. Jolyon,
married while he was at Cambridge, had his child the same
year--gracious Peter! That was back in '70, a long time before old Mr.
Jolyon--fine judge of property--had taken his Will away from Mr.
James--dear, yes! Those were the days when they were buyin' property
right and left, and none of this khaki and fallin' over one another to
get out of things; and cucumbers at twopence; and a melon--the old
melons, that made your mouth water! Fifty years since he went into Mr.
James' office, and Mr. James had said to him: "Now, Gradman, you're
only a shaver--you pay attention, and you'll make your five hundred a
year before you've done." And he had, and feared God, and served the
Forsytes, and kept a vegetable diet at night. And, buying a copy of
John Bull--not that he approved of it, an extravagant affair--he
entered the Tube elevator with his mere brown-paper parcel, and was
borne down into the bowels of the earth.



VI

SOAMES' PRIVATE LIFE


On his way to Green Street it occurred to Soames that he ought to go
into Dumetrius' in Suffolk Street about the possibility of the Bolderby
Old Crome. Almost worth while to have fought the War to have the
Bolderby Old Crome, as it were, in flux! Old Bolderby had died, his son
and grandson had been killed--a cousin was coming into the estate, who
meant to sell it, some said because of the condition of England, others
said because he had asthma.

If Dumetrius once got hold of it the price would become prohibitive; it
was necessary for Soames to find out whether Dumetrius had got it,
before he tried to get it himself. He therefore confined himself to
discussing with Dumetrius whether Monticellis would come again now that
it was the fashion for a picture to be anything except a picture; and
the future of Johns, with a side-slip into Buxton Knights. It was only
when leaving that he added: "So they're not selling the Bolderby Old
Crome, after all?" In sheer pride of racial superiority, as he had
calculated would be the case, Dumetrius replied:

"Oh! I shall get it, Mr. Forsyte, sir."

The flutter of his eyelid fortified Soames in a resolution to write
direct to the new Bolderby, suggesting that the only dignified way of
dealing with an Old Crome was to avoid dealers. He therefore said:
"Well, good-day!" and went, leaving Dumetrius the wiser.

At Green Street he found that Fleur was out and would be all the
evening; she was staying one more night in London. He cabbed on
dejectedly, and caught his train.

He reached his house about six o'clock. The air was heavy, midges
biting, thunder about. Taking his letters he went up to his
dressing-room to cleanse himself of London.

An uninteresting post. A receipt, a bill for purchases on behalf of
Fleur. A circular about an exhibition of etchings. A letter beginning:


"SIR,

"I feel it my duty--"


That would be an appeal or something unpleasant. He looked at once for
the signature. There was none! Incredulously he turned the page over
and examined each corner. Not being a public man, Soames had never yet
had an anonymous letter, and his first impulse was to tear it up, as a
dangerous thing; his second to read it, as a thing still more dangerous.


"SIR,

"I feel it my duty to inform you that having no interest in the matter
your lady is carrying on with a foreigner--"


Reaching that word Soames stopped mechanically and examined the
post-mark. So far as he could pierce the impenetrable disguise in which
the Post Office had wrapped it, there was something with a "sea" at the
end and a "t" in it. Chelsea? No! Battersea? Perhaps! He read on.


"These foreigners are all the same. Sack the lot! This one meets your
lady twice a week. I know it of my own knowledge--and to see an
Englishman put on goes against the grain. You watch it and see if what
I say isn't true. I shouldn't meddle if it wasn't a dirty foreigner
that's in it. Yours obedient."


The sensation with which Soames dropped the letter was similar to that
he would have had entering his bedroom and finding it full of
black-beetles. The meanness of anonymity gave a shuddering obscenity to
the moment. And the worst of it was that this shadow had been at the
back of his mind ever since the Sunday evening when Fleur had pointed
down at Prosper Profond strolling on the lawn, and said: "Prowling
cat!" Had he not in connection therewith, this very day, perused his
Will and Marriage Settlement? And now this anonymous ruffian, with
nothing to gain, apparently, save the venting of his spite against
foreigners, had wrenched it out of the obscurity in which he had hoped
and wished it would remain. To have such knowledge forced on him, at
his time of life, about Fleur's mother! He picked the letter up from
the carpet, tore it across, and then, when it hung together by just the
fold at the back, stopped tearing, and re-read it. He was taking at
that moment one of the decisive resolutions of his life. He would NOT
be forced into another scandal. No! However he decided to deal with
this matter--and it required the most far-sighted and careful
consideration--he would do nothing that might injure Fleur. That
resolution taken, his mind answered the helm again, and he made his
ablutions. His hands trembled as he dried them. Scandal he would not
have, but something must be done to stop this sort of thing! He went
into his wife's room and stood looking round him. The idea of searching
for anything which would incriminate, and entitle him to hold a menace
over her, did not even come to him. There would be nothing--she was
much too practical. The idea of having her watched had been dismissed
before it came--too well he remembered his previous experience of that.
No! He had nothing but this torn-up letter from some anonymous ruffian,
whose impudent intrusion into his private life he so violently
resented. It was repugnant to him to make use of it, but he might have
to. What a mercy Fleur was not at home to-night! A tap on the door
broke up his painful cogitations.

"Mr. Michael Mont, sir, is in the drawing-room. Will you see him?"

"No," said Soames; "yes. I'll come down."

Anything that would take his mind off for a few minutes!

Michael Mont in flannels stood on the verandah, smoking a cigarette. He
threw it away as Soames came up, and ran his hand through his hair.

Soames' feeling towards this young man was singular. He was no doubt a
rackety, irresponsible young fellow according to old standards, yet
somehow likeable, with his extraordinarily cheerful way of blurting out
his opinions.

"Come in," he said; "have you had tea?"

Mont came in.

"I thought Fleur would have been back, sir; but I'm glad she isn't. The
fact is, I--I'm fearfully gone on her; so fearfully gone that I thought
you'd better know. It's old-fashioned, of course, coming to fathers
first, but I thought you'd forgive that. I went to my own dad, and he
says if I settle down he'll see me through. He rather cottons to the
idea, in fact. I told him about your Goya."

"Oh!" said Soames, inexpressibly dry. "He rather cottons?"

"Yes, sir; do you?"

Soames smiled faintly. "You see," resumed Mont, twiddling his straw
hat, while his hair, ears, eyebrows, all seemed to stand up from
excitement, "when you've been through the War you can't help being in a
hurry."

"To get married; and unmarried afterwards," said Soames slowly.

"Not from Fleur, sir. Imagine, if you were me!"

Soames cleared his throat. That way of putting it was forcible enough.

"Fleur's too young," he said.

"Oh! no, sir. We're awfully old nowadays. My dad seems to me a perfect
babe; his thinking apparatus hasn't turned a hair. But he's a
Baronight, of course; that keeps him back."

"Baronight," repeated Soames; "what may that be?"

"Bart, sir. I shall be a Bart some day. But I shall live it down, you
know."

"Go away and live this down," said Soames.

Young Mont said imploringly: "Oh! no, sir. I simply must hang round, or
I shouldn't have a dog's chance. You'll let Fleur do what she likes, I
suppose, anyway. Madame passes me."

"Indeed!" said Soames frigidly.

"You don't really bar me, do you?" and the young man looked so doleful
that Soames smiled.

"You may think you're very old," he said; "but you strike me as
extremely young. To rattle ahead of everything is not a proof of
maturity."

"All right, sir; I give you our age. But to show you I mean
business--I've got a job."

"Glad to hear it."

"Joined a publisher; my governor is putting up the stakes."

Soames put his hand over his mouth--he had so very nearly said: "God
help the publisher." His grey eyes scrutinised the agitated young man.

"I don't dislike you, Mr. Mont, but Fleur is everything to me.
Everything--do you understand?"

"Yes, sir, I know; but so she is to me."

"That's as may be. I'm glad you've told me, however. And now I think
there's nothing more to be said."

"I know it rests with her, sir."

"It will rest with her a long time, I hope."

"You aren't cheering," said Mont suddenly.

"No," said Soames; "my experience of life has not made me anxious to
couple people in a hurry. Good-night, Mr. Mont. I shan't tell Fleur
what you've said."

"Oh!" murmured Mont blankly; "I really could knock my brains out for
want of her. She knows that perfectly well."

"I dare say," and Soames held out his hand. A distracted squeeze, a
heavy sigh, and, soon after, sounds from the young man's motor-cycle
called up visions of flying dust and broken bones.

'The younger generation!' he thought heavily, and went out on to the
lawn. The gardeners had been mowing, and there was still the smell of
fresh-cut grass--the thundery air kept all scents close to earth. The
sky was of a purplish hue--the poplars black. Two or three boats passed
on the river, scuttling, as it were, for shelter before the storm.
'Three days fine weather,' thought Soames, 'and then a storm!' Where
was Annette? With that chap, for all he knew--she was a young woman!
Impressed with the queer charity of that thought, he entered the
summer-house and sat down. The fact was--and he admitted it--Fleur was
so much to him that his wife was very little--very little; French--had
hardly been more than a mistress, and he was getting indifferent to
that side of things! It was odd how, with all his ingrained care for
moderation and secure investment, Soames ever put his emotional eggs
into one basket. First Irene--now Fleur. He was just conscious of it,
sitting there, conscious of its odd dangerousness. It had brought him
to wreck and scandal once, but now--now it should save him! He cared so
much for Fleur that he would have no further scandal. If only he could
get at that anonymous letter writer, he would teach the fellow not to
meddle and stir up mud at the bottom of water which he wished should
remain stagnant!... A distant flash, a low rumble, and large drops of
rain spattered on the thatch above him. He remained indifferent,
tracing a pattern with his finger on the dusty surface of a little
rustic table. Fleur's future! 'I want fair sailing for her,' he
thought. 'Nothing else matters at my time of life.' A lonely
business--life! What you had you never could keep to yourself! As you
warned one off, you let another in. One could make sure of nothing! He
reached up and pulled a red rambler rose from a cluster which blocked
the window. Flowers grew and dropped--you couldn't keep them! The
thunder rumbled and crashed, travelling east along the river, the
paling flashes flicked his eyes; the poplar tops showed sharp and dense
against the sky, a heavy shower rustled and rattled and veiled in the
little house wherein he sat, indifferent, thinking.

When the storm was over, he left his retreat and went down the wet path
to the river bank.

Two swans had come, sheltering in among the reeds. He knew the birds
well, and stood watching the dignity in the curve of those white necks
and formidable snake-like heads. 'Not dignified--what I have to do!' he
thought. And yet it must be tackled, lest worse befell. Annette must be
back by now from wherever she had gone, for it was nearly dinner-time,
and as the moment for seeing her approached, the difficulty of knowing
what to say and how to say it had increased. A new and scaring thought
occurred to him. Suppose she wanted her liberty to marry this fellow!
Well, if she did, she couldn't have it. He had not married her for
that. The image of Prosper Profond dawdled before him reassuringly. Not
a marrying man! No, no! Anger replaced that momentary scare. 'He had
better not come my way,' he thought. The mongrel represented--! Ah!
what did Prosper Profond represent? Nothing that mattered surely. And
yet something real enough in the world--unmorality let off its chain,
disillusionment on the prowl! That expression Annette had caught from
him: "Je m'en fiche!" A fatalistic chap! A Continental--a
cosmopolitan--a product of the age! If there were condemnation more
complete, Soames felt that he did not know it.

The swans had turned their heads, and were looking past him into some
distance of their own. One of them uttered a little hiss, wagged its
tail, turned as if answering to a rudder, and swam away. The other
followed. Their white bodies, their stately necks, passed out of his
sight, and he went towards the house.

Annette was in the drawing-room, dressed for dinner, and he thought as
he went up-stairs: 'Handsome is as handsome does.' Handsome! Except for
remarks about the curtains in the drawing-room, and the storm, there
was practically no conversation during a meal distinguished by
exactitude of quantity and perfection of quality. Soames drank nothing.
He followed her into the drawing-room afterwards, and found her smoking
a cigarette on the sofa between the two French windows. She was leaning
back, almost upright, in a low black frock, with her knees crossed and
her blue eyes half closed; grey-blue smoke issued from her red, rather
full lips, a fillet bound her chestnut hair, she wore the thinnest silk
stockings, and shoes with very high heels showing off her instep. A
fine piece in any room! Soames, who held that torn letter in a hand
thrust deep into the side-pocket of his dinner-jacket, said:

"I'm going to shut the window; the damp's lifting in."

He did so, and stood looking at a David Cox adorning the cream-panelled
wall close by.

What was she thinking of? He had never understood a woman in his
life--except Fleur--and Fleur not always! His heart beat fast. But if
he meant to do it, now was the moment. Turning from the David Cox, he
took out the torn letter.

"I've had this."

Her eyes widened, stared at him, and hardened.

Soames handed her the letter.

"It's torn, but you can read it." And he turned back to the David
Cox--a seapiece, of good tone but without movement enough. 'I wonder
what that chap's doing at this moment?' he thought. 'I'll astonish him
yet.' Out of the corner of his eye he saw Annette holding the letter
rigidly; her eyes moved from side to side under her darkened lashes and
frowning darkened eyebrows. She dropped the letter, gave a little
shiver, smiled, and said:

"Dirrty!"

"I quite agree," said Soames; "degrading. Is it true?"

A tooth fastened on her red lower lip. "And what if it were?"

She was brazen!

"Is that all you have to say?"

"No."

"Well, speak out!"

"What is the good of talking?"

Soames said icily: "So you admit it?"

"I admit nothing. You are a fool to ask. A man like you should not ask.
It is dangerous."

Soames made a tour of the room, to subdue his rising anger.

"Do you remember," he said, halting in front of her, "what you were
when I married you? Working at accounts in a restaurant."

"Do you remember that I was not half your age?"

Soames broke off the hard encounter of their eyes, and went back to the
David Cox.

"I am not going to bandy words. I require you to give up
this--friendship. I think of the matter entirely as it affects Fleur."

"Ah!--Fleur!"

"Yes," said Soames stubbornly; "Fleur. She is your child as well as
mine."

"It is kind to admit that!"

"Are you going to do what I say?"

"I refuse to tell you."

"Then I must make you."

Annette smiled.

"No, Soames," she said. "You are helpless. Do not say things that you
will regret."

Anger swelled the veins on his forehead. He opened his mouth to vent
that emotion, and--could not. Annette went on:

"There shall be no more such letters, I promise you. That is enough."

Soames writhed. He had a sense of being treated like a child by this
woman who had deserved he did not know what.

"When two people have married, and lived like us, Soames, they had
better be quiet about each other. There are things one does not drag up
into the light for people to laugh at. You will be quiet, then; not for
my sake--for your own. You are getting old; I am not, yet. You have
made me ver-ry practical." Soames, who had passed through all the
sensations of being choked, repeated dully:

"I require you to give up this friendship."

"And if I do not?"

"Then--then I will cut you out of my Will."

Somehow it did not seem to meet the case. Annette laughed.

"You will live a long time, Soames."

"You--you are a bad woman," said Soames suddenly.

Annette shrugged her shoulders.

"I do not think so. Living with you has killed things in me, it is
true; but I am not a bad woman. I am sensible--that is all. And so will
you be when you have thought it over."

"I shall see this man," said Soames sullenly, "and warn him off."

"Mon cher, you are funny. You do not want me, you have as much of me as
you want; and you wish the rest of me to be dead. I admit nothing, but
I am not going to be dead, Soames, at my age; so you had better be
quiet, I tell you. I myself will make no scandal; none. Now, I am not
saying any more, whatever you do."

She reached out, took a French novel off a little table, and opened it.
Soames watched her, silenced by the tumult of his feelings. The thought
of that man was almost making him want her, and this was a revelation
of their relationship, startling to one little given to introspective
philosophy. Without saying another word he went out and up to the
picture-gallery. This came of marrying a Frenchwoman! And yet, without
her there would have been no Fleur! She had served her purpose.

'She's right,' he thought; 'I can do nothing. I don't even KNOW that
there's anything in it.' The instinct of self-preservation warned him
to batten down his hatches, to smother the fire with want of air.
Unless one believed there was something in a thing, there wasn't.

That night he went into her room. She received him in the most
matter-of-fact way, as if there had been no scene between them. And he
returned to his own room with a curious sense of peace. If one didn't
choose to see, one needn't. And he did not choose--in future he did not
choose. There was nothing to be gained by it--nothing! Opening the
drawer he took from the sachet a handkerchief, and the framed
photograph of Fleur. When he had looked at it a little he slipped it
down, and there was that other one--that old one of Irene. An owl
hooted while he stood in his window gazing at it. The owl hooted, the
red climbing roses seemed to deepen in colour, there came a scent of
lime-blossom. God! That had been a different thing! Passion--Memory!
Dust!



VII

JUNE TAKES A HAND


One who was a sculptor, a Slav, a sometime resident in New York, an
egoist, and impecunious, was to be found of an evening in June
Forsyte's studio on the bank of the Thames at Chiswick. On the evening
of July 6, Boris Strumolowski--several of whose works were on show
there because they were as yet too advanced to be on show anywhere
else--had begun well, with that aloof and rather Christlike silence
which admirably suited his youthful, round, broad-cheekboned
countenance framed in bright hair banged like a girl's. June had known
him three weeks, and he still seemed to her the principal embodiment of
genius, and hope of the future; a sort of Star of the East which had
strayed into an unappreciative West. Until that evening he had
conversationally confined himself to recording his impressions of the
United States, whose dust he had just shaken from off his feet--a
country, in his opinion, so barbarous in every way that he had sold
practically nothing there, and become an object of suspicion to the
police; a country, as he said, without a race of its own, without
liberty, equality, or fraternity, without principles, traditions,
taste, without--in a word--a soul. He had left it for his own good, and
come to the only other country where he could live well. June had dwelt
unhappily on him in her lonely moments, standing before his
creations--frightening, but powerful and symbolic once they had been
explained! That he, haloed by bright hair like an early Italian
painting, and absorbed in his genius to the exclusion of all else--the
only sign of course by which real genius could be told--should still be
a "lame duck" agitated her warm heart almost to the exclusion of Paul
Post. And she had begun to take steps to clear her Gallery, in order to
fill it with Strumolowski masterpieces. She had at once encountered
trouble. Paul Post had kicked; Vospovitch had stung. With all the
emphasis of a genius which she did not as yet deny them, they had
demanded another six weeks at least of her Gallery. The American
stream, still flowing in, would soon be flowing out. The American
stream was their right, their only hope, their salvation--since nobody
in this "beastly" country cared for Art. June had yielded to the
demonstration. After all Boris would not mind their having the full
benefit of an American stream, which he himself so violently despised.

This evening she had put that to Boris with nobody else present, except
Hannah Hobdey, the mediaeval black-and-whitist, and Jimmy Portugal,
editor of the Neo-Artist. She had put it to him with that sudden
confidence which continual contact with the neo-artistic world had
never been able to dry up in her warm and generous nature. He had not
broken his Christlike silence, however, for more than two minutes
before she began to move her blue eyes from side to side, as a cat
moves its tail. This--he said--was characteristic of England, the most
selfish country in the world; the country which sucked the blood of
other countries; destroyed the brains and hearts of Irishmen, Hindus,
Egyptians, Boers, and Burmese, all the finest races in the world;
bullying, hypocritical England! This was what he had expected, coming
to such a country, where the climate was all fog, and the people all
tradesmen perfectly blind to Art, and sunk in profiteering and the
grossest materialism. Conscious that Hannah Hobdey was murmuring:
"Hear, hear!" and Jimmy Portugal sniggering, June grew crimson, and
suddenly rapped out:

"Then why did you ever come? We didn't ask you." The remark was so
singularly at variance with all that she had led him to expect from
her, that Strumolowski stretched out his hand and took a cigarette.

"England never wants an idealist," he said.

But in June something primitively English was thoroughly upset; old
Jolyon's sense of justice had risen, as it were, from bed. "You come
and sponge on us," she said, "and then abuse us. If you think that's
playing the game, I don't."

She now discovered that which others had discovered before her--the
thickness of hide beneath which the sensibility of genius is sometimes
veiled. Strumolowski's young and ingenuous face became the incarnation
of a sneer.

"Sponge, one does not sponge, one takes what is owing--a tenth part of
what is owing. You will repent to say that, Miss Forsyte."

"Oh, no," said June, "I shan't."

"Ah! We know very well, we artists--you take us to get what you can out
of us. I want nothing from you"--and he blew out a cloud of June's
smoke.

Decision rose in an icy puff from the turmoil of insulted shame within
her. "Very well, then, you can take your things away."

And, almost in the same moment, she thought: 'Poor boy! He's only got a
garret, and probably not a taxi fare. In front of these people, too;
it's positively disgusting!'

Young Strumolowski shook his head violently; his hair, thick, smooth,
close as a golden plate, did not fall off.

"I can live on nothing," he said shrilly; "I have often had to for the
sake of my Art. It is you bourgeois who force us to spend money."

The words hit June like a pebble, in the ribs. After all she had done
for Art, all her identification with its troubles and lame ducks. She
was struggling for adequate words when the door was opened, and her
Austrian murmured:

"A young lady, gnadiges fraulein."

"Where?"

"In the little meal-room."

With a glance at Boris Strumolowski, at Hannah Hobdey, at Jimmy
Portugal, June said nothing, and went out, devoid of equanimity.
Entering the "little meal-room," she perceived the young lady to be
Fleur--looking very pretty, if pale. At this disenchanted moment a lame
duck of her own breed was welcome to June, so homoeopathic by instinct.

The girl must have come, of course, because of Jon; or, if not, at
least to get something out of her. And June felt just then that to
assist somebody was the only bearable thing.

"So you've remembered to come," she said.

"Yes. What a jolly little duck of a house! But please don't let me
bother you, if you've got people."

"Not at all," said June. "I want to let them stew in their own juice
for a bit. Have you come about Jon?"

"You said you thought we ought to be told. Well, I've found out."

"Oh!" said June blankly. "Not nice, is it?"

They were standing one on each side of the little bare table at which
June took her meals. A vase on it was full of Iceland poppies; the girl
raised her hand and touched them with a gloved finger. To her
new-fangled dress, frilly about the hips and tight below the knees,
June took a sudden liking--a charming colour, flax-blue.

'She makes a picture,' thought June. Her little room, with its
whitewashed walls, its floor and hearth of old pink brick, its black
paint, and latticed window athwart which the last of the sunlight was
shining, had never looked so charming, set off by this young figure,
with the creamy, slightly frowning face. She remembered with sudden
vividness how nice she herself had looked in those old days when HER
heart was set on Philip Bosinney, that dead lover, who had broken from
her to destroy for ever Irene's allegiance to this girl's father. Did
Fleur know of that, too?

"Well," she said, "what are you going to do?"

It was some seconds before Fleur answered.

"I don't want Jon to suffer. I must see him once more to put an end to
it."

"You're going to put an end to it!"

"What else is there to do?"

The girl seemed to June, suddenly, intolerably spiritless.

"I suppose you're right," she muttered. "I know my father thinks so;
but--I should never have done it myself. I can't take things lying
down."

How poised and watchful that girl looked; how unemotional her voice
sounded!

"People WILL assume that I'm in love."

"Well, aren't you?"

Fleur shrugged her shoulders. 'I might have known it,' thought June;
'she's Soames' daughter--fish! And yet--he!'

"Well, what do you want ME to do?" she said with a sort of disgust.

"Could I see Jon here to-morrow on his way down to Holly's? He'd come
if you sent him a line to-night, and perhaps afterwards you'd let them
know quietly at Robin Hill that it's all over, and that they needn't
tell Jon about his mother."

"All right!" said June abruptly. "I'll write now, and you can post it.
Half-past two to-morrow. I shan't be in, myself."

She sat down at the tiny bureau which filled one corner. When she
looked round with the finished note Fleur was still touching the
poppies with her gloved finger.

June licked a stamp. "Well, here it is. If you're not in love, of
course, there's no more to be said. Jon's lucky."

Fleur took the note. "Thanks awfully!"

'Cold-blooded little baggage!' thought June. Jon, son of her father, to
love, and not to be loved by the daughter of--Soames! It was
humiliating!

"Is that all?"

Fleur nodded; her frills shook and trembled as she swayed towards the
door.

"Good-bye!"

"Good-bye! ... Little piece of fashion!" muttered June, closing the
door. "That family!" And she marched back towards her studio. Boris
Strumolowski had regained his Christlike silence, and Jimmy Portugal
was damning everybody, except the group in whose behalf he ran the
Neo-Artist. Among the condemned were Eric Cobbley, and several other
"lame-duck" genii who at one time or another had held first place in
the repertoire of June's aid and adoration. She experienced a sense of
futility and disgust, and went to the window to let the river-wind blow
those squeaky words away.

But when at length Jimmy Portugal had finished, and gone with Hannah
Hobdey, she sat down and mothered young Strumolowski for half an hour,
promising him a month, at least, of the American stream; so that he
went away with his halo in perfect order. 'In spite of all,' June
thought, 'Boris IS wonderful.'



VIII

THE BIT BETWEEN THE TEETH


To know that your hand is against every one's is--for some natures--to
experience a sense of moral release. Fleur felt no remorse when she
left June's house. Reading condemnatory resentment in her little
kinswoman's blue eyes--she was glad that she had fooled her, despising
June because that elderly idealist had not seen what she was after.

End it, forsooth! She would soon show them all that she was only just
beginning. And she smiled to herself on the top of the 'bus which
carried her back to Mayfair. But the smile died, squeezed out by spasms
of anticipation and anxiety. Would she be able to manage Jon? She had
taken the bit between her teeth, but could she make him take it too?
She knew the truth and the real danger of delay--he knew neither;
therein lay all the difference in the world.

'Suppose I tell him,' she thought; 'wouldn't it really be safer?' This
hideous luck had no right to spoil their love; he must see that! They
could not let it! People always accepted an accomplished fact, in time!
From that piece of philosophy--profound enough at her age--she passed
to another consideration less philosophic. If she persuaded Jon to a
quick and secret marriage, and he found out afterwards that she had
known the truth! What then? Jon hated subterfuge. Again, then, would it
not be better to tell him? But the memory of his mother's face kept
intruding on that impulse. Fleur was afraid. His mother had power over
him; more power perhaps than she herself. Who could tell? It was too
great a risk. Deep-sunk in these instinctive calculations she was
carried on past Green Street as far as the Ritz Hotel. She got down
there, and walked back on the Green Park side. The storm had washed
every tree; they still dripped. Heavy drops fell on to her frills, and
to avoid them she crossed over under the eyes of the Iseeum Club.
Chancing to look up she saw Monsieur Profond with a tall stout man in
the bay window. Turning into Green Street she heard her name called,
and saw "that prowler" coming up. He took off his hat--a glossy
"bowler" such as she particularly detested:

"Good-evenin'! Miss Forsyde. Isn't there a small thing I can do for
you?"

"Yes, pass by on the other side."

"I say! Why do you dislike me?"

"It looks like it."

"Well, then, because you make me feel life isn't worth living."

Monsieur Profond smiled.

"Look here, Miss Forsyde, don't worry. It'll be all right. Nothing
lasts."

"Things do last," cried Fleur; "with me anyhow--especially likes and
dislikes."

"Well, that makes me a bit un'appy."

"I should have thought nothing could ever make you happy or unhappy."

"I don't like to annoy other people. I'm goin' on my yacht."

Fleur looked at him, startled.

"Where?"

"Small voyage to the South Seas or somewhere," said Monsieur Profond.

Fleur suffered relief and a sense of insult. Clearly he meant to convey
that he was breaking with her mother. How dared he have anything to
break, and yet how dared he break it?

"Good-night, Miss Forsyde! Remember me to Mrs. Dartie. I'm not so bad,
really. Good-night!" Fleur left him standing there with his hat raised.
Stealing a look round, she saw him stroll--immaculate and heavy--back
towards his Club.

'He can't even love with conviction,' she thought. 'What will Mother
do?'

Her dreams that night were endless and uneasy; she rose heavy and
unrested, and went at once to the study of Whitaker's Almanac. A
Forsyte is instinctively aware that facts are the real crux of any
situation. She might conquer Jon's prejudice, but without exact
machinery to complete their desperate resolve, nothing would happen.
From the invaluable tome she learned that they must each be twenty-one;
or some one's consent would be necessary, which of course was
unobtainable; then she became lost in directions concerning licenses,
certificates, notices, districts, coming finally to the word "perjury."
But that was nonsense! Who would really mind their giving wrong ages in
order to be married for love! She ate hardly any breakfast, and went
back to Whitaker. The more she studied the less sure she became; till,
idly turning the pages, she came to Scotland. People could be married
there without any of this nonsense. She had only to go and stay there
twenty-one days, then Jon could come, and in front of two people they
could declare themselves married. And what was more--they would be! It
was far the best way; and at once she ran over her school-fellows.
There was Mary Lambe who lived in Edinburgh and was "quite a sport!"
She had a brother too. She could stay with Mary Lambe, who with her
brother would serve for witnesses. She well knew that some girls would
think all this unnecessary, and that all she and Jon need do was to go
away together for a week-end and then say to their people: "We are
married by Nature, we must now be married by Law." But Fleur was
Forsyte enough to feel such a proceeding dubious, and to dread her
father's face when he heard of it. Besides, she did not believe that
Jon would do it; he had an opinion of her such as she could not bear to
diminish. No! Mary Lambe was preferable, and it was just the time of
year to go to Scotland. More at ease now, she packed, avoided her aunt,
and took a 'bus to Chiswick. She was too early and went on to Kew
Gardens. She found no peace among its flower-beds, labelled trees, and
broad green spaces, and having lunched off anchovy-paste sandwiches and
coffee, returned to Chiswick and rang June's bell. The Austrian
admitted her to the "little meal-room." Now that she knew what she and
Jon were up against, her longing for him had increased tenfold, as if
he were a toy with sharp edges or dangerous paint such as they had
tried to take from her as a child. If she could not have her way, and
get Jon for good and all, she felt like dying of privation. By hook or
crook she must and would get him! A round dim mirror of very old glass
hung over the pink brick hearth. She stood looking at herself reflected
in it, pale, and rather dark under the eyes; little shudders kept
passing through her nerves. Then she heard the bell ring, and, stealing
to the window, saw him standing on, the doorstep smoothing his hair and
lips, as if he too were trying to subdue the fluttering of his nerves.

She was sitting on one of the two rush-seated chairs, with her back to
the door, when he came in, and she said at once:

"Sit down, Jon, I want to talk seriously."

Jon sat on the table by her side, and without looking at him she went
on:

"If you don't want to lose me, we must get married."

Jon gasped.

"Why? Is there anything new?"

"No, but I felt it at Robin Hill, and among my people."

"But--" stammered Jon, "at Robin Hill--it was all smooth--and they've
said nothing to me."

"But they mean to stop us. Your mother's face was enough. And my
father's."

"Have you seen him since?"

Fleur nodded. What mattered a few supplementary lies?

"But," said Jon eagerly, "I can't see how they can feel like that after
all these years."

Fleur looked up at him.

"Perhaps you don't love me enough."

"Not love you enough! Why-I--"

"Then make sure of me"

"Without telling them?"

"Not till after."

Jon was silent. How much older he looked than on that day, barely two
months ago, when she first saw him--quite two years older!

"It would hurt Mother awfully," he said.

Fleur drew her hand away.

"You've got to choose."

Jon slid off the table onto his knees.

"But why not tell them? They can't really stop us, Fleur!"

"They can! I tell you, they can."

"How?"

"We're utterly dependent--by putting money pressure, and all sorts of
other pressure. I'm not patient, Jon."

"But it's deceiving them."

Fleur got up.

"You can't really love me, or you wouldn't hesitate. 'He either fears
his fate too much--!'"

Lifting his hands to her waist, Jon forced her to sit down again. She
hurried on:

"I've planned it all out. We've only to go to Scotland. When we're
married they'll soon come round. People always come round to facts.
Don't you SEE, Jon?"

"But to hurt them so awfully!"

So he would rather hurt her than those people of his!

"All right, then; let me go!"

Jon got up and put his back against the door. "I expect you're right,"
he said slowly; "but I want to think it over."

She could see that he was seething with feelings he wanted to express;
but she did not mean to help him. She hated herself at this moment, and
almost hated him.

Why had she to do all the work to secure their love? It wasn't fair.
And then she saw his eyes, adoring and distressed.

"Don't look like that! I only don't want to lose you, Jon."

"You can't lose me so long as you want me."

"Oh, yes, I can."

Jon put his hands on her shoulders.

"Fleur, do you know anything you haven't told me?"

It was the point-blank question she had dreaded. She looked straight at
him, and answered: "No." She had burnt her boats; but what did it
matter, if she got him? He would forgive her. And throwing her arms
round his neck, she kissed him on the lips. She was winning! She felt
it in the beating of his heart against her, in the closing of his eyes.
"I want to make sure! I want to make sure!" she whispered. "Promise!"

Jon did not answer. His face had the stillness of extreme trouble. At
last he said:

"It's like hitting them. I must think a little, Fleur. I really must."

Fleur slipped out of his arms.

"Oh! Very well!" And suddenly she burst into tears of disappointment,
shame, and overstrain. Followed five minutes of acute misery. Jon's
remorse and tenderness knew no bounds; but he did not promise. Despite
her will to cry: "Very well, then, if you don't love me
enough--good-bye!" she dared not. From birth accustomed to her own way,
this check from one so young, so tender, so devoted, baffled and
surprised her. She wanted to push him away from her, to try what anger
and coldness would do, and again she dared not. The knowledge that she
was scheming to rush him blindfold into the irrevocable weakened
everything--weakened the sincerity of pique, and the sincerity of
passion; even her kisses had not the lure she wished for them. That
stormy little meeting ended inconclusively.

"Will you some tea, gnadiges Fraulein?"

Pushing Jon from her, she cried out:

"No--no, thank you! I'm just going."

And before he could prevent her she was gone.

She went stealthily, mopping her flushed, stained cheeks, frightened,
angry, very miserable. She had stirred Jon up so fearfully, yet nothing
definite was promised or arranged! But the more uncertain and hazardous
the future, the more "the will to have" worked its tentacles into the
flesh of her heart--like some burrowing tick!

No one was at Green Street. Winifred had gone with Imogen to see a play
which some said was allegorical, and others "very exciting, don't you
know?" It was because of what others said that Winifred and Imogen had
gone. Fleur went on to Paddington. Through the carriage the air from
the brick-kilns of West Drayton and the late hay-fields fanned her
still-flushed cheeks. Flowers had seemed to be had for the picking; now
they were all thorned and prickled. But the golden flower within the
crown of spikes seemed to her tenacious spirit all the fairer and more
desirable.



IX

FAT IN THE FIRE


On reaching home Fleur found an atmosphere so peculiar that it
penetrated even the perplexed aura of her own private life. Her mother
was in blue stockingette and a brown study; her father in a white felt
hat and the vinery. Neither of them had a word to throw to a dog. 'Is
it because of me?' thought Fleur. 'Or because of Profond?' To her
mother she said:

"What's the matter with Father?"

Her mother answered with a shrug of her shoulders.

To her father:

"What's the matter with Mother?"

Her father answered:

"Matter? What should be the matter?" and gave her a sharp look.

"By the way," murmured Fleur, "Monsieur Profond is going a 'small'
voyage on his yacht, to the South Seas."

Soames examined a branch on which no grapes were growing.

"This vine's a failure," he said. "I've had young Mont here. He asked
me something about you."

"Oh! How do you like him, Father?"

"He--he's a product--like all these young people."

"What were you at his age, dear?"

Soames smiled grimly.

"We went to work, and didn't play about--flying and motoring, and
making love."

"Didn't you ever make love?"

She avoided looking at him while she said that, but she saw him well
enough. His pale face had reddened, his eyebrows, where darkness was
still mingled with the grey, had come close together.

"I had no time or inclination to philander."

"Perhaps you had a grand passion."

Soames looked at her intently.

"Yes--if you want to know--and much good it did me." He moved away,
along by the hot-water pipes. Fleur tiptoed silently after him.

"Tell me about it, Father!"

Soames became very still.

"What should you want to know about such things, at your age?"

"Is she alive?"

He nodded.

"And married?"

"Yes."

"It's Jon Forsyte's mother, isn't it? And she was your wife first."

It was said in a flash of intuition. Surely his opposition came from
his anxiety that she should not know of that old wound to his pride.
But she was startled. To see some one so old and calm wince as if
struck, to hear so sharp a note of pain in his voice!

"Who told you that? If your aunt--! I can't bear the affair talked of."

"But, darling," said Fleur, softly, "it's so long ago."

"Long ago or not, I--"

Fleur stood stroking his arm.

"I've tried to forget," he said suddenly; "I don't wish to be
reminded." And then, as if venting some long and secret irritation, he
added: "In these days people don't understand. Grand passion, indeed!
No one knows what it is."

"I do," said Fleur, almost in a whisper.

Soames, who had turned his back on her, spun round.

"What are you talking of--a child like you!"

"Perhaps I've inherited it, Father."

"What?"

"For her son, you see."

He was pale as a sheet, and she knew that she was as bad. They stood
staring at each other in the steamy heat, redolent of the mushy scent
of earth, of potted geranium, and of vines coming along fast.

"This is crazy," said Soames at last, between dry lips.

Scarcely moving her own, she murmured:

"Don't be angry, Father. I can't help it."

But she could see he wasn't angry; only scared, deeply scared.

"I thought that foolishness," he stammered, "was all forgotten."

"Oh, no! It's ten times what it was."

Soames kicked at the hot-water pipe. The hapless movement touched her,
who had no fear of her father--none.

"Dearest!" she said: "What must be, must, you know."

"Must!" repeated Soames. "You don't know what you're talking of. Has
that boy been told?"

The blood rushed into her cheeks.

"Not yet."

He had turned from her again, and, with one shoulder a little raised,
stood staring fixedly at a joint in the pipes.

"It's most distasteful to me," he said suddenly; "nothing could be more
so. Son of that fellow--It's--it's--perverse!"

She had noted, almost unconsciously, that he did not say "son of that
woman," and again her intuition began working.

Did the ghost of that grand passion linger in some corner of his heart?

She slipped her hand under his arm.

"Jon's father is quite ill and old; I saw him."

"You--?"

"Yes, I went there with Jon; I saw them both."

"Well, and what did they say to you?"

"Nothing. They were very polite."

"They would be." He resumed his contemplation of the pipe-joint, and
then said suddenly: "I must think this over--I'll speak to you again
to-night."

She knew this was final for the moment, and stole away, leaving him
still looking at the pipe-joint. She wandered into the fruit-garden,
among the raspberry and currant bushes, without impetus to pick and
eat. Two months ago--she was light-hearted! Even two days
ago--light-hearted, before Prosper Profond told her. Now she felt
tangled in a web--of passions, vested rights, oppressions and revolts,
the ties of love and hate. At this dark moment of discouragement there
seemed, even to her hold-fast nature, no way out. How deal with it--how
sway and bend things to her will, and get her heart's desire? And,
suddenly, round the corner of the high box hedge, she came plump on her
mother, walking swiftly, with an open letter in her hand. Her bosom was
heaving, her eyes dilated, her cheeks flushed. Instantly Fleur thought:
"The yacht! Poor Mother!"

Annette gave her a wide startled look, and said:

"J'ai la migraine."

"I'm awfully sorry, Mother."

"Oh; yes! you and your father--sorry!"

"But, Mother--I am. I know what it feels like."

Annette's startled eyes grew wide, till the whites showed above them.
"You innocent!" she said.

Her mother--so self-possessed, and commonsensical--to look and speak
like this! It was all frightening! Her father, her mother, herself! And
only two months back they had seemed to have everything they wanted in
this world.

Annette crumpled the letter in her hand. Fleur knew that she must
ignore the sight.

"Can't I do anything for your head, Mother?"

Annette shook that head and walked on, swaying her hips.

'It's cruel,' thought Fleur, 'and I was glad! That man! What do men
come prowling for, disturbing everything! I suppose he's tired of her.
What business has he to be tired of my mother? What business!' And at
that thought, so natural and so peculiar, she uttered a little choked
laugh.

She ought, of course, to be delighted, but what was there to be
delighted at? Her father didn't really care! Her mother did, perhaps?
She entered the orchard, and sat down under a cherry-tree. A breeze
sighed in the higher boughs; the sky seen through their green was very
blue and very white in cloud--those heavy white clouds almost always
present in river landscape. Bees, sheltering out of the wind, hummed
softly, and over the lush grass fell the thick shade from those
fruit-trees planted by her father five-and-twenty years ago. Birds were
almost silent, the cuckoos had ceased to sing, but wood-pigeons were
cooing. The breath and drone and cooing of high summer were not for
long a sedative to her excited nerves. Crouched over her knees she
began to scheme. Her father must be made to back her up. Why should he
mind so long as she was happy? She had not lived for nearly nineteen
years without knowing that her future was all he really cared about.
She had, then, only to convince him that her future could not be happy
without Jon. He thought it a mad fancy. How foolish the old were,
thinking they could tell what the young felt! Had not he confessed that
he--when young--had loved with a grand passion! He ought to understand.
'He piles up his money for me,' she thought; 'but what's the use, if
I'm not going to be happy?' Money, and all it bought, did not bring
happiness. Love only brought that. The ox-eyed daisies in this orchard,
which gave it such a moony look sometimes, grew wild and happy, and had
their hour. 'They oughtn't to have called me Fleur,' she mused, 'if
they didn't mean me to have my hour, and be happy while it lasts.'
Nothing real stood in the way, like poverty, or disease--sentiment
only, a ghost from the unhappy past! Jon was right. They wouldn't let
you live, these old people! They made mistakes, committed crimes, and
wanted their children to go on paying! The breeze died away; midges
began to bite. She got up, plucked a piece of honeysuckle, and went in.

It was hot that night. Both she and her mother had put on thin, pale
low frocks. The dinner flowers were pale. Fleur was struck with the
pale look of everything: her father's face, her mother's shoulders; the
pale panelled walls, the pale-grey velvety carpet, the lamp-shade, even
the soup was pale. There was not one spot of colour in the room, not
even wine in the pale glasses, for no one drank it. What was not pale
was black--her father's clothes, the butler's clothes, her retriever
stretched out exhausted in the window, the curtains black with a cream
pattern. A moth came in, and that was pale. And silent was that
half-mourning dinner in the heat.

Her father called her back as she was following her mother out.

She sat down beside him at the table, and, unpinning the pale
honeysuckle, put it to her nose.

"I've been thinking," he said.

"Yes, dear?"

"It's extremely painful for me to talk, but there's no help for it. I
don't know if you understand how much you are to me--I've never spoken
of it, I didn't think it necessary; but--but you're everything. Your
mother--" he paused, staring at his finger-bowl of Venetian glass.

"Yes?"

"I've only you to look to. I've never had--never wanted anything else,
since you were born."

"I know," Fleur murmured.

Soames moistened his lips.

"You may think this a matter I can smooth over and arrange for you.
You're mistaken. I--I'm helpless."

Fleur did not speak.

"Quite apart from my own feelings," went on Soames with more
resolution, "those two are not amenable to anything I can say.
They--they hate me, as people always hate those whom they have injured."

"But he--Jon--"

"He's their flesh and blood, her only child. Probably he means to her
what you mean to me. It's a deadlock."

"No," cried Fleur, "no, Father!"

Soames leaned back, the image of pale patience, as if resolved on the
betrayal of no emotion.

"Listen!" he said. "You're putting the feelings of two months--two
months--against the feelings of thirty-five years! What chance do you
think you have? Two months--your very first love-affair, a matter of
half a dozen meetings, a few walks and talks, a few kisses--against,
against what you can't imagine, what no one could who hasn't been
through it. Come, be reasonable, Fleur! It's midsummer madness!"

Fleur tore the honeysuckle into little, slow bits. "The madness is in
letting the past spoil it all. What do we care about the past? It's our
lives, not yours."

Soames raised his hand to his forehead, where suddenly she saw moisture
shining.

"Whose child are you?" he said. "Whose child is he? The present is
linked with the past, the future with both. There's no getting away
from that."

She had never heard philosophy pass those lips before. Impressed even
in her agitation, she leaned her elbows on the table, her chin on her
hands.

"But, Father, consider it practically. We want each other. There's ever
so much money, and nothing whatever in the way but sentiment. Let's
bury the past, Father."

Soames shook his head. "Impossible!"

"Besides," said Fleur gently, "you can't prevent us."

"I don't suppose," said Soames, "that if left to myself I should try to
prevent you; I must put up with things, I know, to keep your affection.
But it's not I who control this matter. That's what I want you to
realise before it's too late. If you go on thinking you can get your
way, and encourage this feeling, the blow will be much heavier when you
find you can't."

"Oh!" cried Fleur, "help me, Father; you CAN help me, you know."

Soames made a startled movement of negation.

"I?" he said bitterly. "Help? I am the impediment--the just cause and
impediment--isn't that the jargon? You have my blood in your veins."

He rose.

"Well, the fat's in the fire. If you persist in your wilfulness you'll
have yourself to blame. Come! Don't be foolish, my child--my only
child!"

Fleur laid her forehead against his shoulder.

All was in such turmoil within her. But no good to show it! No good at
all! She broke away from him, and went out into the twilight,
distraught, but unconvinced. All was indeterminate and vague within
her, like the shapes and shadows in the garden, except--her will to
have. A poplar pierced up into the dark-blue sky and touched a white
star there. The dew wetted her shoes, and chilled her bare shoulders.
She went down to the river bank, and stood gazing at a moonstreak on
the darkening water. Suddenly she smelled tobacco smoke, and a white
figure emerged as if created by the moon. It was young Mont in
flannels, standing in his boat. She heard the tiny hiss of his
cigarette extinguished in the water.

"Fleur," came his voice, "don't be hard on a poor devil! I've been
waiting hours."

"For what?"

"Come in my boat!"

"Not I."

"Why not?"

"I'm not a water-nymph."

"Haven't you ANY romance in you? Don't be modern, Fleur!"

He appeared on the path within a yard of her.

"Go away!"

"Fleur, I love you. Fleur!"

Fleur uttered a short laugh.

"Come again," she said, "when I haven't got my wish."

"What is your wish?"

"Ask another."

"Fleur," said Mont, and his voice sounded strange, "don't mock me! Even
vivisected dogs are worth decent treatment before they're cut up for
good."

Fleur shook her head; but her lips were trembling.

"Well, you shouldn't make me jump. Give me a cigarette."

Mont gave her one, lighted it, and another for himself.

"I don't want to talk rot," he said, "but please imagine all the rot
that all the lovers that ever were have talked, and all my special rot
thrown in."

"Thank you, I have imagined it. Good-night!"

They stood for a moment facing each other in the shadow of an
acacia-tree with very moonlit blossoms, and the smoke from their
cigarettes mingled in the air between them.

"Also ran: 'Michael Mont'?" he said. Fleur turned abruptly towards the
house. On the lawn she stopped to look back. Michael Mont was whirling
his arms above him; she could see them dashing at his head, then waving
at the moonlit blossoms of the acacia. His voice just reached her.
"Jolly--jolly!" Fleur shook herself. She couldn't help him, she had too
much trouble of her own! On the verandah she stopped very suddenly
again. Her mother was sitting in the drawing-room at her writing
bureau, quite alone. There was nothing remarkable in the expression of
her face except its utter immobility. But she looked desolate! Fleur
went up-stairs. At the door of her room she paused. She could hear her
father walking up and down, up and down the picture-gallery.

'Yes,' she thought, jolly! Oh, Jon!'



X

DECISION


When Fleur left him Jon stared at the Austrian. She was a thin woman
with a dark face and the concerned expression of one who has watched
every little good that life once had slip from her, one by one.

"No tea?" she said.

Susceptible to the disappointment in her voice, Jon murmured:

"No, really; thanks."

"A lil cup--it ready. A lil cup and cigarette."

Fleur was gone! Hours of remorse and indecision lay before him! And
with a heavy sense of disproportion he smiled, and said:

"Well--thank you!"

She brought in a little pot of tea with two cups, and a silver box of
cigarettes on a little tray.

"Sugar? Miss Forsyte has much sugar--she buy my sugar, my friend's
sugar also. Miss Forsyte is a veree kind lady. I am happy to serve her.
You her brother?"

"Yes," said Jon, beginning to puff the second cigarette of his life.

"Very young brother," said the Austrian, with a little anxious smile,
which reminded him of the wag of a dog's tail.

"May I give you some?" he said. "And won't you sit down?"

The Austrian shook her head.

"Your father a very nice man--the most nice old man I ever see. Miss
Forsyte tell me all about him. Is he better?"

Her words fell on Jon like a reproach. "Oh! I think he's all right."

"I like to see him again," said the Austrian, putting a hand on her
heart; "he have veree kind heart."

"Yes," said Jon. And again her words seemed to him a reproach.

"He never give no trouble to no one, and smile so gentle."

"Yes! doesn't he?"

"He look at Miss Forsyte so funny sometimes. I tell him all my story;
he so sympatisch. Your mother--she nice and well?"

"Very."

"He have her photograph on his dressing-table. Veree beautiful."

Jon gulped down his tea. This woman, with her concerned face and her
reminding words, was like the first and second murderers.

"Thank you," he said; "I must go now. May--may I leave this with you?"

He put a ten-shilling note on the tray with a doubting hand and gained
the door. He heard the Austrian gasp, and hurried out. He had just time
to catch his train, and all the way to Victoria looked at every face
that passed, as lovers will, hoping against hope. On reaching Worthing
he put his luggage into the local train, and set out across the Downs
for Wansdon, trying to walk off his aching irresolution. So long as he
went full bat, he could enjoy the beauty of those green slopes,
stopping now and again to sprawl on the grass, admire the perfection of
a wild rose, or listen to a lark's song. But the war of motives within
him was but postponed--the longing for Fleur, and the hatred of
deception. He came to the old chalk-pit above Wansdon with his mind no
more made up than when he started. To see both sides of a question
vigorously was at once Jon's strength and weakness. He tramped in, just
as the first dinner-bell rang. His things had already been brought up.
He had a hurried bath and came down to find Holly alone--Val had gone
to Town and would not be back till the last train.

Since Val's advice to him to ask his sister what was the matter between
the two families, so much had happened--Fleur's disclosure in the Green
Park, her visit to Robin Hill, to-day's meeting--that there seemed
nothing to ask. He talked of Spain, his sunstroke, Val's horses, their
father's health. Holly startled him by saying that she thought their
father not at all well. She had been twice to Robin Hill for the
week-end. He had seemed fearfully languid, sometimes even in pain, but
had always refused to talk about himself.

"He's awfully dear and unselfish--don't you think, Jon?"

Feeling far from dear and unselfish himself, Jon answered: "Rather!"

"I think, he's been a simply perfect father, so long as I can remember."

"Yes," answered Jon, very subdued.

"He's never interfered, and he's always seemed to understand. I've not
forgotten how he let me go out to South Africa in the Boer War when I
was in love with Val."

"That was before he married Mother, wasn't it?" said Jon suddenly.

"Yes. Why?"

"Oh! nothing. Only, wasn't she engaged to Fleur's father first?"

Holly put down the spoon she was using, and raised her eyes. Her stare
was circumspect. What did the boy know? Enough to make it better to
tell him? She could not decide. He looked strained and worried,
altogether older, but that might be the sunstroke.

"There WAS something," she said. "Of course we were out there, and got
no news of anything." She could not take the risk. It was not her
secret. Besides, she was in the dark about his feelings now. Before
Spain she had made sure he was in love; but boys were boys; that was
seven weeks ago, and all Spain between.

She saw that he knew she was putting him off, and added:

"Have you heard anything of Fleur?"

"Yes."

His face told her more than the most elaborate explanations. He had not
forgotten!

She said very quietly: "Fleur is awfully attractive, Jon, but you
know--Val and I don't really like her very much."

"Why?"

"We think she's got rather a 'having' nature."

"'Having?' I don't know what you mean. She--she--" he pushed his
dessert plate away, got up, and went to the window.

Holly, too, got up, and put her arm round his waist.

"Don't be angry, Jon dear. We can't all see people in the same light,
can we? I believe each of us only has about one or two people who can
see the best that's in us, and bring it out. For you I think it's your
mother. I once saw her looking at a letter of yours; it was wonderful
to see her face. I think she's the most beautiful woman I ever saw--Age
doesn't seem to touch her."

Jon's face softened, then again became tense. He recognised the
intention of those words. Everybody was against him and Fleur! It all
strengthened her appeal:

"Make sure of me--marry me, Jon!"

Here, where he had passed that wonderful week with her--the tug of her
enchantment, the ache in his heart increased with every minute that she
was not there to make the room, the garden, the very air magical. Would
he ever be able to live down here, not seeing her? And he closed up
utterly, going early to bed. It would not make him healthy, wealthy,
and wise, but it closeted him with memory of Fleur in her fancy frock.
He heard Val's arrival--the Ford discharging cargo, then the stillness
of the summer night stole back--with only the bleating of very distant
sheep, and a night-jar's harsh purring. He leaned far out. Cold
moon--warm air--the Downs like silver! Small wings, a stream bubbling,
the rambler roses! God-how empty all of it without her! In the Bible it
was written: Thou shalt leave father and mother and cleave to--Fleur!

Let him have pluck, and go and tell them! They couldn't stop him
marrying her--they wouldn't want to stop him when they knew how he
felt. Yes! He would go! Bold and open--Fleur was wrong!

The night-jar ceased, the sheep were silent; the only sound in the
darkness was the bubbling of the stream. And Jon in his bed slept,
freed from the worst of life's evils--indecision.



XI

TIMOTHY PROPHESIES


On the day of the cancelled meeting at the National Gallery, began the
second anniversary of the resurrection of England's pride and
glory--or, more shortly, the top hat. "Lord's"--that festival which the
war had driven from the field--raised its light and dark blue flags for
the second time, displaying almost every feature of a glorious past.
Here, in the luncheon interval, were all species of female and one
species of male hat, protecting the multiple types of face associated
with "the classes" The observing Forsyte might discern in the free or
unconsidered seats a certain number of the squash-hatted, but they
hardly ventured on the grass; the old school--or schools--could still
rejoice that the proletariat was not yet paying the necessary
half-crown. Here was still a close borough, the only one left on a
large scale--for the papers were about to estimate the attendance at
ten thousand. And the ten thousand, all animated by one hope, were
asking each other one question: "Where are you lunching?" Something
wonderfully uplifting and reassuring in that query and the sight of so
many people like themselves voicing it! What reserve power in the
British realm--enough pigeons, lobsters, lamb, salmon mayonnaise,
strawberries, and bottles of champagne, to feed the lot! No miracle in
prospect--no case of seven loaves and a few fishes--faith rested on
surer foundations. Six thousand top hats, four thousand parasols would
be doffed and furled, ten thousand mouths all speaking the same English
would be filled. There was life in the old dog yet! Tradition! And
again Tradition! How strong and how elastic! Wars might rage, taxation
prey, Trades Unions take toll, and Europe perish of starvation; but the
ten thousand would be fed; and, within their ring fence, stroll upon
green turf, wear their top hats, and meet--themselves. The heart was
sound, the pulse still regular. E-ton! E-ton! Har-r-o-o-o-w!

Among the many Forsytes present, on a hunting-ground theirs, by
personal prescriptive right, or proxy, was Soames, with his wife and
daughter. He had not been at either school, he took no interest in
cricket, but he wanted Fleur to show her frock, and he wanted to wear
his top hat--parade it again in peace and plenty among his peers. He
walked sedately with Fleur between him and Annette. No women equalled
them, so far as he could see. They could walk, and hold themselves up;
there was substance in their good looks; the modern woman had no build,
no chest, no anything! He remembered suddenly with what intoxication of
pride he had walked round with Irene in the first years of his first
marriage. And how they used to lunch on the drag which his mother WOULD
make his father have, because it was so "chic"--all drags and carriages
in those days, not these lumbering great Stands! And how consistently
Montague Dartie had drunk too much. He supposed that people drank too
much still, but there was not the scope for it there used to be. He
remembered George Forsyte--whose brothers Roger and Eustace had been at
Harrow and Eton--towering up on the top of the drag waving a light-blue
flag with one hand and a dark-blue flag with the other, and shouting:
"Etroow--Harrton!" just when everybody was silent, like the buffoon he
had always been; and Eustace got up to the nines below, too dandified
to wear any colour or take any notice. H'm! Old days, and Irene in grey
silk shot with palest green. He looked, sideways, at Fleur's face.
Rather colourless--no light, no eagerness! That love affair was preying
on her--a bad business! He looked beyond, at his wife's face, rather
more touched up than usual, a little disdainful--not that she had any
business to disdain, so far as he could see. She was taking Profond's
defection with curious quietude; or was his "small" voyage just a
blind? If so, he should refuse to see it! After promenading round the
pitch and in front of the pavilion, they sought Winifred's table in the
Bedouin Club tent. This Club--a new "cock and hen"--had been founded in
the interests of travel, and of a gentleman with an old Scottish name,
whose father had somewhat strangely been called Levi. Winifred had
joined, not because she had travelled, but because instinct told her
that a Club with such a name and such a founder was bound to go far; if
one didn't join at once one might never have the chance. Its tent, with
a text from the Koran on an orange ground, and a small green camel
embroidered over the entrance, was the most striking on the ground.
Outside it they found Jack Cardigan in a dark-blue tie (he had once
played for Harrow), batting with a Malacca cane to show how that fellow
ought to have hit that ball. He piloted them in. Assembled in
Winifred's corner were Imogen, Benedict with his young wife, Val Dartie
without Holly, Maud and her husband, and, after Soames and his two were
seated, one empty place.

"I'm expecting Prosper," said Winifred, "but he's so busy with his
yacht."

Soames stole a glance. No movement in his wife's face! Whether that
fellow were coming or not, she evidently knew all about it. It did not
escape him that Fleur, too, looked at her mother. If Annette didn't
respect his feelings, she might think of Fleur! The conversation, very
desultory, was syncopated by Jack Cardigan talking about "mid-off." He
cited all the "great mid-offs" from the beginning of time, as if they
had been a definite racial entity in the composition of the British
people. Soames had finished his lobster, and was beginning on
pigeon-pie, when he heard the words: "I'm a small bit late, Mrs.
Dartie," and saw that there was no longer any empty place. THAT FELLOW
was sitting between Annette and Imogen. Soames ate steadily on, with an
occasional word to Maud and Winifred. Conversation buzzed around him.
He heard the voice of Profond say:

"I think you're mistaken, Mrs. Forsyde I'll--I'll bet Miss Forsyde
agrees with me."

"In what?" came Fleur's clear tones across the table.

"I was sayin', young gurls are much the same as they always
were--there's very small difference."

"Do you know so much about them?"

That sharp reply caught the ears of all, and Soames moved uneasily on
his thin green chair.

"Well, I don't know, I think they want their own small way, and I think
they always did."

"Indeed!"

"Oh, but--Prosper," Winifred interjected comfortably, "the girls in the
streets--the girls who've been in munitions, the little flappers in the
shops; their manners now really quite hit you in the eye."

At the word "hit" Jack Cardigan stopped his disquisition; and in the
silence Monsieur Profond said:

"It was inside before, now it's outside; that's all."

"But their morals!" cried Imogen.

"Just as moral as they ever were, Mrs. Cardigan, but they've got more
opportunity."

The saying, so cryptically cynical, received a little laugh from
Imogen, a slight opening of Jack Cardigan's mouth, and another creak
from Soames' chair.

Winifred said: "That's too bad, Prosper."

"What do you say, Mrs. Forsyde; don't you think human nature's always
the same?"

Soames subdued a sudden longing to get up and kick the fellow. He heard
his wife reply:

"Human nature is not the same in England as anywhere else." That was
her confounded mockery!

"Well, I don't know much about this small country"--'No, thank God!'
thought Soames--"but I should say the pot was boilin' under the lid
everywhere. We all want pleasure, and we always did."

Damn the fellow! His cynicism was outrageous!

When lunch was over they broke up into couples for the digestive
promenade. Too proud to notice, Soames knew perfectly that Annette and
that fellow had gone prowling round together. Fleur was with Val; she
had chosen him, no doubt, because he knew that boy. He himself had
Winifred for partner. They walked in the bright, circling stream, a
little flushed and sated, till Winifred sighed:

"I wish we were back forty years, old boy!"

Before the eyes of her spirit an interminable procession of her own
"Lord's" frocks was passing, paid for with the money of her father, to
save a recurrent crisis. "It's been very amusing, after all. Sometimes
I even wish Monty was back. What do you think of people nowadays,
Soames?"

"Precious little style. The thing began to go to pieces with bicycles
and motor-cars; the war has finished it."

"I wonder what's coming?" said Winifred in a voice dreamy from
pigeon-pie. "I'm not at all sure we shan't go back to crinolines and
pegtops. Look at that dress!" Soames shook his head.

"There's money, but no faith in things. We don't lay by for the future.
These youngsters--it's all a short life and a merry one with them."

"There's a hat!" said Winifred. "I don't know--when you come to think
of the people killed and all that in the war, it's rather wonderful, I
think. There's no other country--Prosper says the rest are all
bankrupt, except America; and of course her men always took their style
in dress from us."

"Is that chap," said Soames, "really going to the South Seas?"

"Oh, one never knows where Prosper's going!"

"HE'S a sign of the times," muttered Soames, "if you like."

Winifred's hand gripped his arm.

"Don't turn your head," she said in a low voice, "but look to your
right in the front row of the Stand."

Soames looked as best he could under that limitation. A man in a grey
top hat, grey-bearded, with thin brown, folded cheeks, and a certain
elegance of posture, sat there with a woman in a lawn-coloured frock,
whose dark eyes were fixed on himself. Soames looked quickly at his
feet. How funnily feet moved, one after the other like that! Winifred's
voice said in his ear:

"Jolyon looks very ill, but he always had style. SHE doesn't
change--except her hair."

"Why did you tell Fleur about that business?"

"I didn't; she picked it up. I always knew she would."

"Well, it's a mess. She's set her heart upon their boy."

"The little wretch," murmured Winifred. "She tried to take me in about
that. What shall you do, Soames?"

"Be guided by events."

They moved on, silent, in the almost solid crowd.

"Really," said Winifred suddenly; "it almost seems like Fate. Only
that's so old-fashioned. Look! There are George and Eustace!"

George Forsyte's lofty bulk had halted before them.

"Hallo, Soames!" he said. "Just met Profond and your wife. You'll catch
'em if you put on steam. Did you ever go to see old Timothy?"

Soames nodded, and the streams forced them apart.

"I always liked old George," said Winifred. "He's so droll."

"I never did," said Soames. "Where's your seat? I shall go to mine.
Fleur may be back there."

Having seen Winifred to her seat, he regained his own, conscious of
small, white, distant figures running, the click of the bat, the cheers
and counter-cheers. No Fleur, and no Annette! You could expect nothing
of women nowadays! They had the vote. They were "emancipated," and much
good it was doing them. So Winifred would go back, would she, and put
up with Dartie all over again? To have the past once more--to be
sitting here as he had sat in '83 and '84, before he was certain that
his marriage with Irene had gone all wrong, before her antagonism had
become so glaring that with the best will in the world he could not
overlook it. The sight of her with that fellow had brought all memory
back. Even now he could not understand why she had been so
impracticable. She could love other men; she had it in her! To himself,
the one person she ought to have loved, she had chosen to refuse her
heart. It seemed to him, fantastically, as he looked back, that all
this modern relaxation of marriage--though its forms and laws were the
same as when he married her--that all this modern looseness had come
out of her revolt; it seemed to him, fantastically, that she had
started it, till all decent ownership of anything had gone, or was on
the point of going. All came from her! And now--a pretty state of
things! Homes! How could you have them without mutual ownership? Not
that he had ever had a real home! But had that been his fault? He had
done his best. And his reward--those two sitting in that Stand! And
this affair of Fleur's!

And overcome by loneliness he thought: 'Shan't wait any longer! They
must find their own way back to the hotel--if they mean to come!'
Hailing a cab outside the ground, he said:

"Drive me to the Bayswater Road." His old aunts had never failed him.
To them he had meant an everwelcome visitor. Though they were gone,
there, still, was Timothy!

Smither was standing in the open doorway.

"Mr. Soames! I was just taking the air. Cook will be so pleased."

"How is Mr. Timothy?"

"Not himself at all these last few days, sir; he's been talking a great
deal. Only this morning he was saying: 'My brother James, he's getting
old.' His mind wanders, Mr. Soames, and then he will talk of them. He
troubles about their investments. The other day he said: 'There's my
brother Jolyon won't look at Consols'--he seemed quite down about it.
Come in, Mr. Soames, come in! It's such a pleasant change!"

"Well," said Soames, "just for a few minutes."

"No," murmured Smither in the hall, where the air had the singular
freshness of the outside day, "we haven't been very satisfied with him,
not all this week. He's always been one to leave a titbit to the end;
but ever since Monday he's been eating it first. If you notice a dog,
Mr. Soames, at its dinner, it eats the meat first. We've always thought
it such a good sign of Mr. Timothy at his age to leave it to the last,
but now he seems to have lost all his self-control; and, of course, it
makes him leave the rest. The doctor doesn't make anything of it,
but"--Smither shook her head--"he seems to think he's got to eat it
first, in case he shouldn't get to it. That and his talking makes us
anxious."

"Has he said anything important?"

"I shouldn't like to say that, Mr. Soames; but he's turned against his
Will. He gets quite pettish--and after having had it out every morning
for years, it does seem funny. He said the other day: 'They want my
money.' It gave me such a turn, because, as I said to him, nobody wants
his money, I'm sure. And it does seem a pity he should be thinking
about money at his time of life. I took my courage in my 'ands. 'You
know, Mr. Timothy,' I said, 'my dear mistress'--that's Miss Forsyte,
Mr. Soames, Miss Ann that trained me--'SHE never thought about money,'
I said, 'it was all CHARACTER with her.' He looked at me, I can't tell
you how funny, and he said quite dry: 'Nobody wants my character.'
Think of his saying a thing like that! But sometimes he'll say
something as sharp and sensible as anything."

Soames, who had been staring at an old print by the hat-rack, thinking,
'That's got value!' murmured: "I'll go up and see him, Smither."

"Cook's with him," answered Smither above her corsets; "she will be
pleased to see you."

He mounted slowly, with the thought: 'Shan't care to live to be that
age.'

On the second floor, he paused, and tapped. The door was opened, and he
saw the round homely face of a woman about sixty.

"Mr. Soames!" she said: "Why! Mr. Soames!"

Soames nodded. "All right, Cook!" and entered.

Timothy was propped up in bed, with his hands joined before his chest,
and his eyes fixed on the ceiling, where a fly was standing upside
down. Soames stood at the foot of the bed, facing him.

"Uncle Timothy," he said, raising his voice; "Uncle Timothy!"

Timothy's eyes left the fly, and levelled themselves on his visitor.
Soames could see his pale tongue passing over his darkish lips.

"Uncle Timothy," he said again, "is there anything I can do for you? Is
there anything you'd like to say?"

"Ha!" said Timothy.

"I've come to look you up and see that everything's all right."

Timothy nodded. He seemed trying to get used to the apparition before
him.

"Have you got everything you want?"

"No," said Timothy.

"Can I get you anything?"

"No," said Timothy.

"I'm Soames, you know; your nephew, Soames Forsyte. Your brother James'
son."

Timothy nodded.

"I shall be delighted to do anything I can for you."

Timothy beckoned. Soames went close to him.

"You--" said Timothy in a voice which seemed to have outlived tone,
"you tell them all from me--you tell them all--" and his finger tapped
on Soames' arm, "to hold on--hold on--Consols are goin' up," and he
nodded thrice.

"All right!" said Soames; "I will."

"Yes," said Timothy, and, fixing his eyes again on the ceiling, he
added: "That fly!"

Strangely moved, Soames looked at the Cook's pleasant fattish face, all
little puckers from staring at fires.

"That'll do him a world of good, sir," she said.

A mutter came from Timothy, but he was clearly speaking to himself, and
Soames went out with the cook.

"I wish I could make you a pink cream, Mr. Soames, like in old days;
you did so relish them. Good-bye, sir; it HAS been a pleasure."

"Take care of him, Cook, he is old."

And, shaking her crumpled hand, he went down-stairs. Smither was still
taking the air in the doorway.

"What do you think of him, Mr. Soames?"

"H'm!" Soames murmured: "He's lost touch."

"Yes," said Smither, "I was afraid you'd think that, coming fresh out
of the world to see him like."

"Smither," said Soames, "we're all indebted to you."

"Oh, no, Mr. Soames, don't say that! It's a pleasure--he's such a
wonderful man."

"Well, good-bye!" said Soames, and got into his taxi.

'Going up!' he thought; 'going up!'

Reaching the hotel at Knightsbridge he went to their sitting-room, and
rang for tea. Neither of them were in. And again that sense of
loneliness came over him. These hotels! What monstrous great places
they were now! He could remember when there was nothing bigger than
Long's or Brown's, Morley's or the Tavistock, and the heads that were
shaken over the Langham and the Grand. Hotels and Clubs--Clubs and
Hotels; no end to them now! And Soames, who had just been watching at
Lord's a miracle of tradition and continuity, fell into reverie over
the changes in that London where he had been born five-and-sixty years
before. Whether Consols were going up or not, London had become a
terrific property. No such property in the world, unless it were New
York! There was a lot of hysteria in the papers nowadays; but any one
who, like himself, could remember London sixty years ago, and see it
now, realised the fecundity and elasticity of wealth. They had only to
keep their heads, and go at it steadily. Why! he remembered
cobble-stones, and stinking straw on the floor of your cab. And old
Timothy--what could HE not tell them, if he had kept his memory! Things
were unsettled, people in a funk or in a hurry, but here were London
and the Thames, and out there the British Empire, and the ends of the
earth. "Consols are goin' up!" He shouldn't be a bit surprised. It was
the breed that counted. And all that was bull-dogged in Soames stared
for a moment out of his grey eyes, till diverted by the print of a
Victorian picture on the walls. The hotel had bought three dozen of
that little lot! The old hunting or "Rake's Progress" prints in the old
inns were worth looking at--but this sentimental stuff--well,
Victorianism had gone! "Tell them to hold on!" old Timothy had said.
But to what were they to hold on in this modern welter of the
"democratic principle"? Why, even privacy was threatened! And at the
thought that privacy might perish, Soames pushed back his teacup and
went to the window. Fancy owning no more of Nature than the crowd out
there owned of the flowers and trees and waters of Hyde Park! No, no!
Private possession underlay everything worth having. The world had
slipped its sanity a bit, as dogs now and again at full moon slipped
theirs and went off for a night's rabbiting; but the world, like the
dog, knew where its bread was buttered and its bed warm, and would come
back sure enough to the only home worth having--to private ownership.
The world was in its second childhood for the moment, like old
Timothy--eating its titbit first!

He heard a sound behind him, and saw that his wife and daughter had
come in.

"So you're back!" he said.

Fleur did not answer; she stood for a moment looking at him and her
mother, then passed into her bedroom. Annette poured herself out a cup
of tea.

"I am going to Paris, to my mother, Soames."

"Oh! To your mother?"

"Yes."

"For how long?"

"I do not know."

"And when are you going?"

"On Monday."

Was she really going to her mother? Odd, how indifferent he felt! Odd,
how clearly she had perceived the indifference he would feel so long as
there was no scandal. And suddenly between her and himself he saw
distinctly the face he had seen that afternoon--Irene's.

"Will you want money?"

"Thank you; I have enough."

"Very well. Let us know when you are coming back."

Annette put down the cake she was fingering, and, looking up through
darkened lashes, said:

"Shall I give Maman any message?"

"My regards."

Annette stretched herself, her hands on her waist, and said in French:

"What luck that you have never loved me, Soames!" Then rising, she too
left the room. Soames was glad she had spoken it in French--it seemed
to require no dealing with. Again that other face--pale, dark-eyed,
beautiful still! And there stirred far down within him the ghost of
warmth, as from sparks lingering beneath a mound of flaky ash. And
Fleur infatuated with her boy! Queer chance! Yet, was there such a
thing as chance? A man went down a street, a brick fell on his head.
Ah! that was chance, no doubt. But this! "Inherited," his girl had
said. She--she was "holding on!"



PART III


I

OLD JOLYON WALKS


Twofold impulse had made Jolyon say to his wife at breakfast: "Let's go
up to Lord's!"

"Wanted"--something to abate the anxiety in which those two had lived
during the sixty hours since Jon had brought Fleur down. "Wanted"--too,
that which might assuage the pangs of memory in one who knew he might
lose them any day!

Fifty-eight years ago Jolyon had become an Eton boy, for old Jolyon's
whim had been that he should be canonised at the greatest possible
expense. Year after year he had gone to Lord's from Stanhope Gate with
a father whose youth in the eighteen-twenties had been passed without
polish in the game of cricket. Old Jolyon would speak quite openly of
swipes, full tosses, half and three-quarter balls; and young Jolyon
with the guileless snobbery of youth had trembled lest his sire should
be overheard. Only in this supreme matter of cricket he had been
nervous, for his father--in Crimean whiskers then--had ever impressed
him as the beau ideal. Though never canonised himself, old Jolyon's
natural fastidiousness and balance had saved him from the errors of the
vulgar. How delicious, after howling in a top hat and a sweltering
heat, to go home with his father in a hansom cab, bathe, dress, and
forth to the "Disunion" Club, to dine off whitebait, cutlets, and a
tart, and go--two "swells," old and young, in lavender kid gloves--to
the opera or play. And on Sunday, when the match was over, and his top
hat duly broken, down with his father in a special hansom to the "Crown
and Sceptre," and the terrace above the river--the golden sixties when
the world was simple, dandies glamorous, Democracy not born, and the
books of Whyte Melville coming thick and fast.

A generation later, with his own boy, Jolly, Harrow--buttonholed with
cornflowers--by old Jolyon's whim his grandson had been canonised at a
trifle less expense--again Jolyon had experienced the heat and
counter-passions of the day, and come back to the cool and the
strawberry beds of Robin Hill, and billiards after dinner, his boy
making the most heart-breaking flukes and trying to seem languid and
grown-up. Those two days each year he and his son had been alone
together in the world, one on each side--and Democracy just born!

And so, he had unearthed a grey top hat, borrowed a tiny bit of
light-blue ribbon from Irene, and gingerly, keeping cool, by car and
train and taxi, had reached Lord's Ground. There, beside her in a
lawn-coloured frock with narrow black edges, he had watched the game,
and felt the old thrill stir within him.

When Soames passed, the day was spoiled, and Irene's face distorted by
compression of the lips. No good to go on sitting here with Soames or
perhaps his daughter recurring in front of them, like decimals. And he
said:

"Well, dear, if you've had enough--let's go!"

That evening Jolyon felt exhausted. Not wanting her to see him thus, he
waited till she had begun to play, and stole off to the little study.
He opened the long window for air, and the door, that he might still
hear her music drifting in; and, settled in his father's old armchair,
closed his eyes, with his head against the worn brown leather. Like
that passage of the Cesar Franck Sonata--so had been his life with her,
a divine third movement. And now this business of Jon's--this bad
business! Drifted to the edge of consciousness, he hardly knew if it
were in sleep that he smelled the scent of a cigar, and seemed to see a
shape in the blackness before his closed eyes. That shape formed, went,
and formed again; as if in the very chair where he himself was sitting,
he saw his father, black-coated, with knees crossed, glasses balanced
between thumb and finger; saw the big white moustaches, and the deep
eyes looking up below a dome of forehead, seeming to search his own;
seeming to speak. "Are you facing it, Jo? It's for you to decide. She's
only a woman!" How well he knew his father in that phrase; how all the
Victorian Age came up with it!--And his answer "No, I've funked
it--funked hurting her and Jon and myself. I've got a heart; I've
funked it." But the old eyes, so much older, so much younger than his
own, kept at it: "It's your wife, your son, your past. Tackle it, my
boy!" Was it a message from walking spirit; or but the instinct of his
sire living on within him? And again came that scent of cigar
smoke--from the old saturated leather. Well! he would tackle it, write
to Jon, and put the whole thing down in black and white! And suddenly
he breathed with difficulty, with a sense of suffocation, as if his
heart were swollen. He got up and went out into the air. Orion's Belt
was very bright. He passed along the terrace round the corner of the
house, till, through the window of the music-room, he could see Irene
at the piano, with lamplight falling on her powdery hair; withdrawn
into herself she seemed, her dark eyes staring straight before her, her
hands idle. Jolyon saw her raise those hands and clasp them over her
breast. 'It's Jon, with her,' he thought; 'all Jon! I'm dying out of
her--it's natural!'

And, careful not to be seen, he stole back.

Next day, after a bad night, he sat down to his task. He wrote with
difficulty and many erasures.


"MY DEAREST BOY,

"You are old enough to understand how very difficult it is for elders
to give themselves away to their young. Especially when--like your
mother and myself, though I shall never think of her as anything but
young--their hearts are altogether set on him to whom they must
confess. I cannot say we are conscious of having sinned exactly--people
in real life very seldom are, I believe, but most persons would say we
had, and at all events our conduct, righteous or not, has found us out.
The truth is, my dear, we both have pasts, which it is now my task to
make known to you, because they so grievously and deeply affect your
future. Many, very many years ago, as far back indeed as 1883, when she
was only twenty, your mother had the great and lasting misfortune to
make an unhappy marriage--no, not with me, Jon. Without money of her
own, and with only a stepmother--closely related to Jezebel--she was
very unhappy in her home life. IT WAS FLEUR'S FATHER THAT SHE MARRIED,
my cousin Soames Forsyte. He had pursued her very tenaciously and to do
him justice was deeply in love with her. Within a week she knew the
fearful mistake she had made. It was not his fault; it was her error of
judgment--her misfortune."


So far Jolyon had kept some semblance of irony, but now his subject
carried him away.


"Jon, I want to explain to you if I can--and it's very hard--how it is
that an unhappy marriage such as this can so easily come about. You
will of course say: 'If she didn't really love him how could she ever
have married him?' You would be quite right if it were not for one or
two rather terrible considerations. From this initial mistake of hers
all the subsequent trouble, sorrow, and tragedy have come, and so I
must make it clear to you if I can. You see, Jon, in those days and
even to this day--indeed, I don't see, for all the talk of
enlightenment, how it can well be otherwise--most girls are married
ignorant of the sexual side of life. Even if they know what it means
they have not EXPERIENCED it. That's the crux. It is this actual lack
of experience, whatever verbal knowledge they have, which makes all the
difference and all the trouble. In a vast number of marriages--and your
mother's was one--girls are not and CANNOT be certain whether they love
the man they marry or not; they do not know until after that act of
union which makes the reality of marriage. Now, in many, perhaps in
most doubtful cases, this act cements and strengthens the attachment,
but in other cases, and your mother's was one, it is a revelation of
mistake, a destruction of such attraction as there was. There is
nothing more tragic in a woman's life than such a revelation, growing
daily, nightly clearer. Coarse-grained and unthinking people are apt to
laugh at such a mistake, and say 'what a fuss about nothing!' Narrow
and self-righteous people, only capable of judging the lives of others
by their own, are apt to condemn those who make this tragic error, to
condemn them for life to the dungeons they have made for themselves.
You know the expression: 'She has made her bed, she must lie on it!' It
is a hard-mouthed saying, quite unworthy of a gentleman or lady in the
best sense of those words; and I can use no stronger condemnation. I
have not been what is called a moral man, but I wish to use no words to
you, my dear, which will make you think lightly of ties or contracts
into which you enter. Heaven forbid! But with the experience of a life
behind me I do say that those who condemn the victims of these tragic
mistakes, condemn them and hold out no hands to help them, are inhuman
or rather they would be if they had the understanding to know what they
are doing. But they haven't! Let them go! They are as much anathema to
me as I, no doubt, am to them. I have had to say all this, because I am
going to put you into a position to judge your mother, and you are very
young, without experience of what life is. To go on with the story.
After three years of effort to subdue her shrinking--I was going to say
her loathing and it's not too strong a word, for shrinking soon becomes
loathing under such circumstances--three years of what to a sensitive,
beauty-loving nature like your mother's, Jon, was torment, she met a
young man who fell in love with her. He was the architect of this very
house that we live in now, he was building it for her and Fleur's
father to live in, a new prison to hold her, in place of the one she
inhabited with him in London. Perhaps that fact played some part in
what came of it. But in any case she, too, fell in love with him. I
know it's not necessary to explain to you that one does not precisely
choose with whom one will fall in love. It comes. Very well! It came. I
can imagine--though she never said much to me about it--the struggle
that then took place in her, because, Jon, she was brought up strictly
and was not light in her ideas--not at all. However, this was an
overwhelming feeling, and it came to pass that they loved in deed as
well as in thought. Then came a fearful tragedy. I must tell you of it
because if I don't you will never understand the real situation that
you have now to face. The man whom she had married--Soames Forsyte, the
father of Fleur--one night, at the height of her passion for this young
man, forcibly reasserted his rights over her. The next day she met her
lover and told him of it. Whether he committed suicide or whether he
was accidentally run over in his distraction, we never knew; but so it
was. Think of your mother as she was that evening when she heard of his
death. I happened to see her. Your grand-father sent me to help her if
I could. I only just saw her, before the door was shut against me by
her husband. But I have never forgotten her face, I can see it now. I
was not in love with her then, nor for twelve years after, but I have
never forgotten. My dear boy--it is not easy to write like this. But
you see, I must. Your mother is wrapped up in you, utterly, devotedly.
I don't wish to write harshly of Soames Forsyte. I don't think harshly
of him. I have long been sorry for him; perhaps I was sorry even then.
As the world judges she was in error, he was within his rights. He
loved her--in his way. SHE WAS HIS PROPERTY. That is the view he holds
of life--of human feelings and hearts--property. It's not his fault--so
was he born! To me it is a view that has always been abhorrent--so was
I born! Knowing you as I do, I feel it cannot be otherwise than
abhorrent to you. Let me go on with the story. Your mother fled from
his house that night; for twelve years she lived quietly alone without
companionship of any sort, until, in 1899 her husband--you see, he was
still her husband, for he did not attempt to divorce her, and she of
course had no right to divorce him, became conscious, it seems, of the
want of children, and commenced a long attempt to induce her to go back
to him and give him a child. I was her trustee then, under your
grandfather's Will, and I watched this going on. While watching, I
became devotedly attached to her. His pressure increased, till one day
she came to me here and practically put herself under my protection.
Her husband, who was kept informed of all her movements, attempted to
force us apart by bringing a divorce suit, or at all events by
threatening one; anyway our names were publicly joined. That decided
us, and we became united in fact. She was divorced, married me, and you
were born. We have lived in perfect happiness, at least I have, and I
believe your mother also. Soames, soon after the divorce, married
Fleur's mother, and she was born. That is the story, Jon. I have told
it you, because by the affection which we see you have formed for this
man's daughter you are blindly moving towards what must utterly destroy
your mother's happiness, if not your own. I don't wish to speak of
myself, because at my age there's no use supposing I shall cumber the
ground much longer, besides, what I should suffer would be mainly on
her account, and on yours. But what I want you to realise is that
feelings of horror and aversion such as those can never be buried or
forgotten. They are alive in her to-day. Only yesterday at Lord's we
happened to see Soames Forsyte. Her face, if you had seen it, would
have convinced you. The idea that you should marry his daughter is a
nightmare to her, Jon. I have nothing to say against Fleur save that
she IS his daughter. But your children, if you married her, would be
the grandchildren of Soames, as much as of your mother, of a man who
once owned your mother as a man might own a slave. Think what that
would mean. By such a marriage you enter the camp which held your
mother prisoner and wherein she ate her heart out. You are just on the
threshold of life, you have only known this girl two months, and
however deeply you think you love her, I appeal to you to break it off
at once. Don't give your mother this rankling pain and humiliation
during the rest of her life. Young though she will always seem to me,
she is fifty-seven. Except for us two she has no one in the world. She
will soon have only you. Pluck up your spirit, Jon, and break away.
Don't put this cloud and barrier between you. Don't break her heart!
Bless you, my dear boy, and again forgive me for all the pain this
letter must bring you--we tried to spare it you, but Spain--it
seems--was no good.

Ever your devoted father

JOLYON FORSYTE."


Having finished his confession, Jolyon sat with a thin cheek on his
hand, re-reading. There were things in it which hurt him so much, when
he thought of Jon reading them--that he nearly tore the letter up. To
speak of such things at all to a boy--his own boy--to speak of them in
relation to his own wife and the boy's own mother, seemed dreadful to
the reticence of his Forsyte soul. And yet without speaking of them how
make Jon understand the reality, the deep cleavage, the ineffaceable
scar? Without them, how justify this stifling of the boy's love? He
might just as well not write at all!

He folded the confession, and put it in his pocket. It was--thank
heaven!--Saturday; he had till Sunday evening to think it over; for
even if posted now it could not reach Jon till Monday. He felt a
curious relief at this delay, and at the fact that, whether sent or
not, it was written.

In the rose garden, which had taken the place of the old fernery, he
could see Irene snipping and pruning, with a little basket on her arm.
She was never idle, it seemed to him, and he envied her now that he
himself was idle nearly all his time. He went down to her. She held up
a stained glove and smiled. A piece of lace tied under her chin
concealed her hair, and her oval face with its still dark brows looked
very young.

"The green fly are awful this year, and yet it's cold. You look tired,
Jolyon."

Jolyon took the confession from his pocket. "I've been writing this. I
think you ought to see it."

"To Jon?" Her whole face had changed, in that instant, becoming almost
haggard.

"Yes; the murder's out."

He gave it her, and walked away among the roses. Presently, seeing that
she had finished reading and was standing quite still with the sheets
of the letter against her skirt, he came back to her.

"Well?"

"It's wonderfully put. I don't see how it could be put better. Thank
you, dear."

"Is there anything you would like left out?"

She shook her head.

"No; he must know all, if he's to understand."

"That's what I thought, but I hate it like the devil!"

He had the feeling that he hated it more than she--to him sex was so
much easier to mention between man and woman than between man and man;
and she had always been more natural and frank, not deeply secretive
like his Forsyte self.

"I wonder if he will understand, even now, Jolyon? He's so young; and
he shrinks from the physical."

"He gets that shrinking from my father, he was as fastidious as a girl
in all such matters. Would it be better to rewrite the whole thing, and
just say you hated Soames?"

Irene shook her head.

"Hate's only a word. It conveys nothing. No, better as it is."

"Very well. It shall go to-morrow."



II

CONFESSION


Late that same afternoon, Jolyon had a nap in the old armchair. Face
down on his knee was La Rotisserie de la Reine Pedaugue, and just
before he fell asleep he had been thinking: 'As a people shall we ever
really like the French? Will they ever really like us?' He himself had
always liked the French, feeling at home with their wit, their taste,
their cooking. Irene and he had paid many visits to France before the
war, when Jon had been at his private school. His romance with her had
begun in Paris--his last and most enduring romance. But the French--no
Englishman could like them who could not see them in some sort with the
detached aesthetic eye! And with that melancholy conclusion he had
nodded off.

When he woke he saw Jon standing between him and the window. The boy
had evidently come in from the garden and was waiting for him to wake.
Jolyon smiled, still half asleep. How nice the chap looked-sensitive,
affectionate, straight! Then his heart gave a nasty jump; and a quaking
sensation overcame him. That confession! He controlled himself with an
effort. "Why, Jon, where did you spring from?"

Jon bent over and kissed his forehead.

Only then he noticed the look on the boy's face.

"I came home to tell you something, Dad."

With all his might Jolyon tried to get the better of the jumping,
gurgling sensations within his chest.

"Well, sit down, old man. Have you seen your mother?"

"No." The boy's flushed look gave place to pallor; he sat down on the
arm of the old chair, as, in old days, Jolyon himself used to sit
beside his own father, installed in its recesses. Right up to the time
of the rupture in their relations he had been wont to perch there--had
he now reached such a moment with his own son? All his life he had
hated scenes like poison, avoided rows, gone on his own way quietly and
let others go on theirs. But now--it seemed--at the very end of things,
he had a scene before him more painful than any he had avoided. He drew
a visor down over his emotion, and waited for his son to speak.

"Father," said Jon slowly, "Fleur and I are engaged."

'Exactly!' thought Jolyon, breathing with difficulty.

"I know that you and Mother don't like the idea. Fleur says that Mother
was engaged to her father before you married her. Of course I don't
know what happened, but it must be ages ago. I'm devoted to her, Dad,
and she says she is to me."

Jolyon uttered a queer sound, half laugh, half groan.

"You are nineteen, Jon, and I am seventy-two. How are we to understand
each other in a matter like this, eh?"

"You love Mother, Dad; you must know what we feel. It isn't fair to us
to let old things spoil our happiness, is it?"

Brought face to face with his confession, Jolyon resolved to do without
it if by any means he could. He laid his hand on the boy's arm.

"Look, Jon! I might put you off with talk about your both being too
young and not knowing your own minds, and all that, but you wouldn't
listen; besides, it doesn't meet the case--Youth, unfortunately, cures
itself. You talk lightly about 'old things like that,' knowing
nothing--as you say truly--of what happened. Now, have I ever given you
reason to doubt my love for you, or my word?"

At a less anxious moment he might have been amused by the conflict his
words aroused--the boy's eager clasp, to reassure him on these points,
the dread on his face of what that reassurance would bring forth; but
he could only feel grateful for the squeeze.

"Very well, you can believe what I tell you. If you don't give up this
love affair, you will make Mother wretched to the end of her days.
Believe me, my dear, the past, whatever it was, can't be buried--it
can't indeed."

Jon got off the arm of the chair.

'The girl--' thought Jolyon--'there she goes--starting up before
him--life itself--eager, pretty, loving!'

"I can't, Father; how can I--just because you say that? Of course I
can't!"

"Jon, if you knew the story you would give this up without hesitation;
you would have to! Can't you believe me?"

"How can you tell what I should think? Why, I love her better than
anything in the world."

Jolyon's face twitched, and he said with painful slowness:

"Better than your mother, Jon?"

From the boy's face, and his clenched fists Jolyon realised the stress
and struggle he was going through.

"I don't know," he burst out, "I don't know! But to give Fleur up for
nothing--for something I don't understand, for something that I don't
believe can really matter half so much, will make me--make me--"

"Make you feel us unjust, put a barrier--yes. But that's better than
going on with this."

"I can't. Fleur loves me, and I love her. You want me to trust you; why
don't you trust me, Father? We wouldn't want to know anything--we
wouldn't let it make any difference. It'll only make us both love you
and Mother all the more."

Jolyon put his hand into his breast pocket, but brought it out again
empty, and sat, clucking his tongue against his teeth.

"Think what your mother's been to you, Jon! She has nothing but you; I
shan't last much longer."

"Why not? It isn't fair to--Why not?"

"Well," said Jolyon, rather coldly, "because the doctors tell me I
shan't; that's all."

"Oh! Dad!" cried Jon, and burst into tears.

This downbreak of his son, whom he had not seen cry since he was ten,
moved Jolyon terribly. He recognised to the full how fearfully soft the
boy's heart was, how much he would suffer in this business, and in life
generally. And he reached out his hand helplessly--not wishing, indeed
not daring to get up.

"Dear man," he said, "don't--or you'll make me!"

Jon smothered down his paroxysm, and stood with face averted, very
still.

'What now?' thought Jolyon; 'what can I say to move him?'

"By the way, don't speak of that to Mother," he said; "she has enough
to scare her with this affair of yours. I know how you feel. But, Jon,
you know her and me well enough to be sure we wouldn't wish to spoil
your happiness lightly. Why, my dear boy, we don't care for anything
but your happiness--at least, with me it's just yours and Mother's and
with her just yours. It's all the future for you both that's at stake."

Jon turned. His face was deadly pale; his eyes, deep in his head,
seemed to burn.

"What is it? What is it? Don't keep me like this!"

Jolyon, who knew that he was beaten, thrust his hand again into his
breast pocket, and sat for a full minute, breathing with difficulty,
his eyes closed. The thought passed through his mind: 'I've had a good
long innings--some pretty bitter moments--this is the worst!' Then he
brought his hand out with the letter, and said with a sort of fatigue:
"Well, Jon, if you hadn't come to-day, I was going to send you this. I
wanted to spare you--I wanted to spare your mother and myself, but I
see it's no good. Read it, and I think I'll go into the garden." He
reached forward to get up.

Jon, who had taken the letter, said quickly: "No, I'll go"; and was
gone.

Jolyon sank back in his chair. A blue-bottle chose that moment to come
buzzing round him with a sort of fury; the sound was homely, better
than nothing.... Where had the boy gone to read his letter? The
wretched letter--the wretched story! A cruel business--cruel to her--to
Soames--to those two children--to himself!... His heart thumped and
pained him. Life--its loves--its work--its beauty--its aching, and--its
end! A good time; a fine time in spite of all; until--you regretted
that you had ever been born. Life--it wore you down, yet did not make
you want to die--that was the cunning evil! Mistake to have a heart!
Again the blue-bottle came buzzing--bringing in all the heat and hum
and scent of summer--yes, even the scent--as of ripe fruits, dried
grasses, sappy shrubs, and the vanilla breath of cows. And out there
somewhere in the fragrance Jon would be reading that letter, turning
and twisting its pages in his trouble, his bewilderment and
trouble-breaking his heart about it! The thought made Jolyon acutely
miserable. Jon was such a tender-hearted chap, affectionate to his
bones, and conscientious, too--it was so damned unfair! He remembered
Irene saying to him once: "Never was any one born more loving and
lovable than Jon." Poor little Jon! His world gone up the spout, all of
a summer afternoon! Youth took things so hard! And stirred, tormented
by that vision of Youth taking things hard, Jolyon got out of his
chair, and went to the window. The boy was nowhere visible. And he
passed out. If one could take any help to him now--one must!

He traversed the shrubbery, glanced into the walled garden--no Jon! Nor
where the peaches and the apricots were beginning to swell and colour.
He passed the Cupressus-trees, dark and spiral, into the meadow. Where
had the boy got to? Had he rushed down to the coppice--his old
hunting-ground? Jolyon crossed the rows of hay. They would cock it on
Monday and be carrying the day after, if rain held off. Often they had
crossed this field together--hand in hand, when Jon was a little chap.
Dash it! The golden age was over by the time one was ten! He came to
the pond, where flies and gnats were dancing over a bright reedy
surface; and on into the coppice. It was cool there, fragrant of
larches. Still no Jon! He called. No answer! On the log seat he sat
down, nervous, anxious, forgetting his own physical sensations. He had
been wrong to let the boy get away with that letter; he ought to have
kept him under his eye from the start! Greatly troubled, he got up to
retrace his steps. At the farm-buildings he called again, and looked
into the dark cow-house. There in the cool, and the scent of vanilla
and ammonia, away from flies, the three Alderneys were chewing the
quiet cud; just milked, waiting for evening, to be turned out again
into the lower field. One turned a lazy head, a lustrous eye; Jolyon
could see the slobber on its grey lower lip. He saw everything with
passionate clearness, in the agitation of his nerves--all that in his
time he had adored and tried to paint--wonder of light and shade and
colour. No wonder the legend put Christ into a manger--what more
devotional than the eyes and moon-white horns of a chewing cow in the
warm dusk! He called again. No answer! And he hurried away out of the
coppice, past the pond, up the hill. Oddly ironical--now he came to
think of it--if Jon had taken the gruel of his discovery down in the
coppice where his mother and Bosinney in those old days had made the
plunge of acknowledging their love. Where he himself, on the log seat
the Sunday morning he came back from Paris, had realised to the full
that Irene had become the world to him. That would have been the place
for Irony to tear the veil from before the eyes of Irene's boy! But he
was not here! Where had he got to? One must find the poor chap!

A gleam of sun had come, sharpening to his hurrying senses all the
beauty of the afternoon, of the tall trees and lengthening shadows, of
the blue, and the white clouds, the scent of the hay, and the cooing of
the pigeons; and the flower shapes standing tall. He came to the
rosary, and the beauty of the roses in that sudden sunlight seemed to
him unearthly. "Rose, you Spaniard!" Wonderful three words! There she
had stood by that bush of dark red roses; had stood to read and decide
that Jon must know it all! He knew all now! Had she chosen wrong? He
bent and sniffed a rose, its petals brushed his nose and trembling
lips; nothing so soft as a rose-leaf's velvet, except her neck--Irene!
On across the lawn he went, up the slope, to the oak-tree. Its top
alone was glistening, for the sudden sun was away over the house; the
lower shade was thick, blessedly cool--he was greatly overheated. He
paused a minute with his hand on the rope of the swing--Jolly,
Holly--Jon! The old swing! And, suddenly, he felt horribly--deadly ill.
'I've overdone it!' he thought: 'by Jove. I've overdone it--after all!'
He staggered up towards the terrace, dragged himself up the steps, and
fell against the wall of the house. He leaned there gasping, his face
buried in the honeysuckle that he and she had taken such trouble with
that it might sweeten the air which drifted in. Its fragrance mingled
with awful pain. 'My Love!' he thought; 'the boy!' And with a great
effort he tottered in through the long window, and sank into old
Jolyon's chair. The book was there, a pencil in it; he caught it up,
scribbled a word on the open page.... His hand dropped.... So it was
like this--was it?...

There was a great wrench; and darkness....



III

IRENE!


When Jon rushed away with the letter in his hand, he ran along the
terrace and round the corner of the house, in fear and confusion.
Leaning against the creepered wall he tore open the letter. It was
long--very long! This added to his fear, and he began reading. When he
came to the underlined words: "It was Fleur's father that she married,"
everything swam before him. He was close to a window, and entering by
it, he passed, through music-room and hall, up to his bedroom. Dipping
his face in cold water, he sat on his bed, and went on reading,
dropping each finished page on the bed beside him. His father's writing
was easy to read--he knew it so well, though he had never had a letter
from him one quarter so long. He read with a dull feeling--imagination
only half at work. He best grasped, on that first reading, the pain his
father must have had in writing such a letter. He let the last sheet
fall, and in a sort of mental, moral helplessness he began to read the
first again. It all seemed to him disgusting--dead and disgusting.
Then, suddenly, a hot wave of horrified emotion tingled through him. He
buried his face in his hands. His mother! Fleur's father! He took up
the letter again, and read on mechanically. And again came the feeling
that it was all dead and disgusting; his own love so different! This
letter said his mother--and her father! An awful letter!

Property! Could there be men who looked on women as their property?
Faces seen in street and countryside came thronging up before him--red,
stock-fish faces; hard, dull faces; prim, dry faces; violent faces;
hundreds, thousands of them! How could he know what men who had such
faces thought and did? He held his head in his hands and groaned. His
mother! He caught up the letter and read on again: "horror and
aversion--alive in her to-day ... your children ... grandchildren ...
of a man who once owned your mother as a man might own a slave...." He
got up from his bed. This cruel shadowy past, lurking there to murder
his love and Fleur's, was true, or his father could never have written
it. 'Why didn't they tell me the first thing,' he thought, 'the day I
first saw Fleur? They knew I'd seen her. They were afraid,
and--now--I've--got it!' Overcome by misery too acute for thought or
reason, he crept into a dusky corner of the room and sat down on the
floor. He sat there, like some unhappy little animal. There was comfort
in dusk, and in the floor--as if he were back in those days when he
played his battles sprawling all over it. He sat there huddled, his
hair ruffled, his hands clasped round his knees, for how long he did
not know. He was wrenched from his blank wretchedness by the sound of
the door opening from his mother's room. The blinds were down over the
windows of his room, shut up in his absence, and from where he sat he
could only hear a rustle, her footsteps crossing, till beyond the bed
he saw her standing before his dressing-table. She had something in her
hand. He hardly breathed, hoping she would not see him, and go away. He
saw her touch things on the table as if they had some virtue in them,
then face the window--grey from head to foot like a ghost. The least
turn of her head, and she must see him! Her lips moved: "Oh! Jon!" She
was speaking to herself; the tone of her voice troubled Jon's heart. He
saw in her hand a little photograph. She held it towards the light,
looking at it--very small. He knew it--one of himself as a tiny boy,
which she always kept in her bag. His heart beat fast. And, suddenly,
as if she had heard it, she turned her eyes and saw him. At the gasp
she gave, and the movement of her hands pressing the photograph against
her breast, he said:

"Yes, it's me."

She moved over to the bed, and sat down on it, quite close to him, her
hands still clasping her breast, her feet among the sheets of the
letter which had slipped to the floor. She saw them, and her hands
grasped the edge of the bed. She sat very upright, her dark eyes fixed
on him. At last she spoke.

"Well, Jon, you know, I see."

"Yes."

"You've seen Father?"

"Yes."

There was a long silence, till she said:

"Oh! my darling!"

"It's all right." The emotions in him were so violent and so mixed that
he dared not move--resentment, despair, and yet a strange yearning for
the comfort of her hand on his forehead.

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know."

There was another long silence, then she got up. She stood a moment,
very still, made a little movement with her hand, and said: "My darling
boy, my most darling boy, don't think of me--think of yourself." And,
passing round the foot of the bed, went back into her room.

Jon turned--curled into a sort of ball, as might a hedgehog--into the
corner made by the two walls.

He must have been twenty minutes there before a cry roused him. It came
from the terrace below. He got up, scared. Again came the cry: "Jon!"
His mother was calling! He ran out and down the stairs, through the
empty dining-room into the study. She was kneeling before the old
armchair, and his father was lying back quite white, his head on his
breast, one of his hands resting on an open book, with a pencil
clutched in it--more strangely still than anything he had ever seen.
She looked round wildly, and said:

"Oh! Jon--he's dead--he's dead!"

Jon flung himself down, and reaching over the arm of the chair, where
he had lately been sitting, put his lips to the forehead. Icy cold! How
could--how could Dad be dead, when only an hour ago--His mother's arms
were round the knees; pressing her breast against them. "Why--why
wasn't I with him?" he heard her whisper. Then he saw the tottering
word "Irene" pencilled on the open page, and broke down himself. It was
his first sight of human death, and its unutterable stillness blotted
from him all other emotion; all else, then, was but preliminary to
this! All love and life, and joy, anxiety, and sorrow, all movement,
light and beauty, but a beginning to this terrible white stillness. It
made a dreadful mark on him; all seemed suddenly little, futile, short.
He mastered himself at last, got up, and raised her.

"Mother! don't cry--Mother!"

Some hours later, when all was done that had to be, and his mother was
lying down, he saw his father alone, on the bed, covered with a white
sheet. He stood for a long time gazing at that face which had never
looked angry--always whimsical, and kind. "To be kind and keep your end
up--there's nothing else in it," he had once heard his father say. How
wonderfully Dad had acted up to that philosophy! He understood now that
his father had known for a long time past that this would come
suddenly--known, and not said a word. He gazed with an awed and
passionate reverence. The loneliness of it--just to spare his mother
and himself! His own trouble seemed small while he was looking at that
face. The word scribbled on the page! The farewell word! Now his mother
had no one but himself! He went up close to the dead face--not changed
at all, and yet completely changed. He had heard his father say once
that he did not believe in consciousness surviving death, or that if it
did it might be just survival till the natural age-limit of the body
had been reached--the natural term of its inherent vitality; so that if
the body were broken by accident, excess, violent disease,
consciousness might still persist till, in the course of Nature
uninterfered with, it would naturally have faded out. The whimsical
conceit had struck him. When the heart failed like this--surely it was
not quite natural! Perhaps his father's consciousness was in the room
with him. Above the bed hung a picture of his father's father. Perhaps
HIS consciousness, too, was still alive; and his brother's--his
half-brother, who had died in the Transvaal. Were they all gathered
round this bed? Jon kissed the forehead, and stole back to his own
room. The door between it and his mother's was ajar; she had evidently
been in--everything was ready for him, even some biscuits and hot milk,
and the letter no longer on the floor. He ate and drank, watching the
last light fade. He did not try to see into the future--just stared at
the dark branches of the oak-tree, level with his window, and felt as
if life had stopped. Once in the night, turning in his heavy sleep, he
was conscious of something white and still, beside his bed, and started
up. His mother's voice said:

"It's only I, Jon dear!" Her hand pressed his forehead gently back; her
white figure disappeared.

Alone! He fell heavily asleep again, and dreamed he saw his mother's
name crawling on his bed.



IV

SOAMES COGITATES


The announcement in THE TIMES of his cousin Jolyon's death affected
Soames quite simply. So that chap was gone! There had never been a time
in their two lives when love had not been lost between them. That
quick-blooded sentiment hatred had run its course long since in Soames'
heart, and he had refused to allow any recrudescence, but he considered
this early decease a piece of poetic justice. For twenty years the
fellow had enjoyed the reversion of his wife and house, and--he was
dead! The obituary notice, which appeared a little later, paid
Jolyon--he thought--too much attention. It spoke of that "diligent and
agreeable painter whose work we have come to look on as typical of the
best late-Victorian water-colour art." Soames, who had almost
mechanically preferred Mole, Morpin, and Caswell Baye, and had always
sniffed quite audibly when he came to one of his cousin's on the line,
turned THE TIMES with a crackle.

He had to go up to Town that morning on Forsyte affairs, and was fully
conscious of Gradman's glance sidelong over his spectacles. The old
clerk had about him an aura of regretful congratulation. He smelled, as
it were, of old days. One could almost hear him thinking: "Mr. Jolyon,
ye-es--just my age, and gone--dear, dear! I dare say she feels it. She
was a naice-lookin' woman. Flesh is flesh! They've given 'im a notice
in the papers. Fancy!" His atmosphere in fact caused Soames to handle
certain leases and conversions with exceptional swiftness.

"About that settlement on Miss Fleur, Mr. Soames?"

"I've thought better of that," answered Soames shortly.

"Aoh! I'm glad of that. I thought you were a little hasty. The times do
change."

How this death would affect Fleur had begun to trouble Soames. He was
not certain that she knew of it--she seldom looked at the paper, never
at the births, marriages, and deaths.

He pressed matters on, and made his way to Green Street for lunch.
Winifred was almost doleful. Jack Cardigan had broken a splashboard, so
far as one could make out, and would not be "fit" for some time. She
could not get used to the idea.

"Did Profond ever get off?" he said suddenly.

"He got off," replied Winifred, "but where--I don't know."

Yes, there it was--impossible to tell anything! Not that he wanted to
know. Letters from Annette were coming from Dieppe, where she and her
mother were staying.

"You saw that fellow's death, I suppose?"

"Yes," said Winifred. "I'm sorry for his children. He was very amiable."

Soames uttered a rather queer sound. A suspicion of the old deep
truth--that men were judged in this world rather by what they were than
by what they did--crept and knocked resentfully at the back door of his
mind.

"I know there was a superstition to that effect," he muttered.

"One must do him justice now he's dead."

"I should like to have done him justice before," said Soames; "but I
never had the chance. Have you got a 'Baronetage' here?"

"Yes; in that bottom row."

Soames took out a fat red book, and ran over the leaves.

"Mont--Sir Lawrence, 9th Bt. cr. 1620. e.s. of Geoffrey 8th Bt. and
Lavinia daur. of Sir Charles Muskham Bt. of Muskham Hall, Shrops: marr.
1890 Emily, daur. of Conway Charwell Esq. of Condaford Grange, co.
Oxon; 1 son, heir Michael Conway, b. 1895, 2 daurs. Residence:
Lippinghall Manor, Folwell, Bucks: Clubs: Snooks: Coffee House:
Aeroplane. See Bidlicott."

"H'm!" he said: "Did you ever know a publisher?"

"Uncle Timothy."

"Alive, I mean."

"Monty knew one at his Club. He brought him here to dinner once. Monty
was always thinking of writing a book, you know, about how to make
money on the turf. He tried to interest that man."

"Well?"

"He put him on to a horse--for the Two Thousand. We didn't see him
again. He was rather smart, if I remember."

"Did it win?"

"No; it ran last, I think. You know Monty really was quite clever in
his way.".

"Was he?" said Soames. "Can you see any connection between a sucking
baronet and publishing?"

"People do all sorts of things nowadays," replied Winifred. "The great
stunt seems not to be idle--so different from our time. To do nothing
was the thing then. But I suppose it'll come again."

"This young Mont that I'm speaking of is very sweet on Fleur. If it
would put an end to that other affair I might encourage it."

"Has he got style?" asked Winifred.

"He's no beauty; pleasant enough, with some scattered brains. There's a
good deal of land, I believe. He seems genuinely attached. But I don't
know."

"No," murmured Winifred; "it's very difficult. I always found it best
to do nothing. It IS such a bore about Jack; now we shan't get away
till after Bank holiday. Well, the people are always amusing, I shall
go into the Park and watch them."

"If I were you," said Soames, "I should have a country cottage, and be
out of the way of holidays and strikes when you want."

"The country bores me," answered Winifred, "and I found the railway
strike quite exciting."

Winifred had always been noted for sang-froid.

Soames took his leave. All the way down to Reading he debated whether
he should tell Fleur of that boy's father's death. It did not alter the
situation except that he would be independent now, and only have his
mother's opposition to encounter. He would come into a lot of money, no
doubt, and perhaps the house--the house built for Irene and
himself--the house whose architect had wrought his domestic ruin. His
daughter--mistress of that house! That would be poetic justice! Soames
uttered a little mirthless laugh. He had designed that house to
re-establish his failing union, meant it for the seat of his
descendants, if he could have induced Irene to give him one! Her son
and Fleur! Their children would be, in some sort, offspring of the
union between himself and her!

The theatricality in that thought was repulsive to his sober sense. And
yet--it would be the easiest and wealthiest way out of the impasse, now
that Jolyon was gone. The juncture of two Forsyte fortunes had a kind
of conservative charm. And she--Irene--would be linked to him once
more. Nonsense! Absurd! He put the notion from his head.

On reaching home he heard the click of billiard-balls; and through the
window saw young Mont sprawling over the table. Fleur, with her cue
akimbo, was watching with a smile. How pretty she looked! No wonder
that young fellow was out of his mind about her. A title--land! There
was little enough in land, these days; perhaps less in a title. The old
Forsytes had always had a kind of contempt for titles, rather remote
and artificial things--not worth the money they cost, and having to do
with the Court. They had all had that feeling in differing
measure--Soames remembered. Swithin, indeed, in his most expansive days
had once attended a Levee. He had come away saying he shouldn't go
again--"All that small fry!" It was suspected that he had looked too
big in knee-breeches. Soames remembered how his own mother had wished
to be presented because of the fashionable nature of the performance,
and how his father had put his foot down with unwonted decision. What
did she want with such peacocking--wasting time and money; there was
nothing in it!

The instinct which had made and kept the British Commons the chief
power in the State, a feeling that their own world was good enough and
a little better than any other because it was THEIR world, had kept the
old Forsytes singularly free of "flummery," as Nicholas had been wont
to call it when he had the gout. Soames' generation, more
self-conscious and ironical, had been saved by a sense of Swithin in
knee-breeches. While the third and the fourth generation, as it seemed
to him, laughed at everything.

However, there was no harm in the young fellow's being heir to a title
and estate--a thing one couldn't help. He entered quietly, as Mont
missed his shot. He noted the young man's eyes, fixed on Fleur bending
over in her turn; and the adoration in them almost touched him.

She paused with the cue poised on the bridge of her slim hand, and
shook her crop of short dark chestnut hair.

"I shall never do it."

"'Nothing venture!'"

"All right!" The cue struck, the ball rolled. "There!"

"Bad luck! Never mind!"

Then they saw him, and Soames said: "I'll mark for you."

He sat down on the raised seat beneath the marker, trim and tired,
furtively studying those two young faces. When the game was over Mont
came up to him. "I've started in, sir. Rum game, business, isn't it? I
suppose you saw a lot of human nature as a solicitor."

"I did."

"Shall I tell you what I've noticed: People are quite on the wrong
track in offering less than they can afford to give; they ought to
offer more, and work backward."

Soames raised his eyebrows. "Suppose the more is accepted?"

"That doesn't matter a little bit," said Mont; "it's much more paying
to abate a price than to increase it. For instance, say we offer an
author good terms--he naturally takes them. Then we go into it, find we
can't publish at a decent profit and tell him so. He's got confidence
in us because we've been generous to him, and he comes down like a
lamb, and bears us no malice. But if we offer him poor terms at the
start, he doesn't take them, so we have to advance them to get him, and
he thinks us damned screws into the bargain."

"Try buying pictures on that system"; said Soames, "an offer accepted
is a contract--haven't you learned that?"

Young Mont turned his head to where Fleur was standing in the window.

"No," he said, "I wish I had. Then there's another thing. Always let a
man off a bargain if he wants to be let off."

"As advertisement?" said Soames dryly.

"Of course it IS; but I meant on principle."

"Does your firm work on those lines?"

"Not yet," said Mont, "but it'll come."

"And they will go."

"No, really, sir. I'm making any number of observations, and they all
confirm my theory. Human nature is consistently underrated in business,
people do themselves out of an awful lot of pleasure and profit by
that. Of course, you must be perfectly genuine and open, but that's
easy if you feel it. The more human and generous you are the better
chance you've got in business."

Soames rose.

"Are you a partner?"

"Not for six months, yet."

"The rest of the firm had better make haste and retire."

Mont laughed.

"You'll see," he said. "There's going to be a big change. The
possessive principle has got its shutters up."

"What?" said Soames.

"The house is to let! Good-bye, sir; I'm off now."

Soames watched his daughter give her hand, saw her wince at the squeeze
it received, and distinctly heard the young man's sigh as he passed
out. Then she came from the window, trailing her finger along the
mahogany edge of the billiard-table. Watching her, Soames knew that she
was going to ask him something. Her finger felt round the last pocket,
and she looked up.

"Have you done anything to stop Jon writing to me, Father?"

Soames shook his head.

"You haven't seen, then?" he said. "His father died just a week ago
to-day."

"Oh!"

In her startled, frowning face, he saw the instant struggle to
apprehend what this would mean.

"Poor Jon! Why didn't you tell me, Father?"

"I never know!" said Soames slowly; "you don't confide in me."

"I would, if you'd help me, dear."

"Perhaps I shall."

Fleur clasped her hands. "Oh! darling--when one wants a thing
fearfully, one doesn't think of other people. Don't be angry with me."

Soames put out his hand, as if pushing away an aspersion.

"I'm cogitating," he said. What on earth had made him use a word like
that! "Has young Mont been bothering you again?"

Fleur smiled. "Oh! Michael! He's always bothering; but he's such a good
sort--I don't mind him."

"Well," said Soames, "I'm tired; I shall go and have a nap before
dinner."

He went up to his picture-gallery, lay down on the couch there, and
closed his eyes. A terrible responsibility this girl of his--whose
mother was--ah! what was she? A terrible responsibility! Help her--how
could he help her? He could not alter the fact that he was her father.
Or that Irene--! What was it young Mont had said--some nonsense about
the possessive instinct--shutters up--To let? Silly!

The sultry air, charged with a scent of meadow-sweet, of river and
roses, closed on his senses, drowsing them.



V

THE FIXED IDEA


"The fixed idea," which has outrun more constables than any other form
of human disorder, has never more speed and stamina than when it takes
the avid guise of love. To hedges and ditches, and doors, to humans
without ideas fixed or otherwise, to perambulators and the contents
sucking their fixed ideas, even to the other sufferers from this fast
malady--the fixed idea of love pays no attention. It runs with eyes
turned inward to its own light, oblivious of all other stars. Those
with the fixed ideas that human happiness depends on their art, on
vivisecting dogs, on hating foreigners, on paying supertax, on
remaining Ministers, on making wheels go round, on preventing their
neighbours from being divorced, on conscientious objection, Greek
roots, Church dogma, paradox and superiority to everybody else, with
other forms of ego-mania--all are unstable compared with him or her
whose fixed idea is the possession of some her or him. And though
Fleur, those chilly summer days, pursued the scattered life of a little
Forsyte whose frocks are paid for, and whose business is pleasure, she
was--as Winifred would have said in the latest fashion of
speech--'honest-to-God' indifferent to it all. She wished and wished
for the moon, which sailed in cold skies above the river or the Green
Park when she went to Town. She even kept Jon's letters covered with
pink silk, on her heart, than which in days when corsets were so low,
sentiment so despised, and chests so out of fashion, there could,
perhaps, have been no greater proof of the fixity of her idea.

After hearing of his father's death, she had written to Jon, and
received his answer three days later on her return from a river picnic.
It was his first letter since their meeting at June's. She opened it
with misgiving, and read it with dismay.

"Since I saw you I've heard everything about the past. I won't tell it
you--I think you knew when we met at June's. She says you did. If you
did, Fleur, you ought to have told me. I expect you only heard your
father's side of it. I have heard my mother's. It's dreadful. Now that
she's so sad I can't do anything to hurt her more. Of course, I long
for you all day, but I don't believe now that we shall ever come
together--there's something too strong pulling us apart."

Her deception had found her out. But Jon--she felt--had forgiven that.
It was what he said of his mother which caused the fluttering in her
heart and the weak sensation in her legs.

Her first impulse was to reply--her second, not to reply. These
impulses were constantly renewed in the days which followed, while
desperation grew within her. She was not her father's child for
nothing. The tenacity, which had at once made and undone Soames, was
her backbone, too, frilled and embroidered by French grace and
quickness. Instinctively she conjugated the verb "to have" always with
the pronoun "I." She concealed, however, all signs of her growing
desperation, and pursued such river pleasures as the winds and rain of
a disagreeable July permitted, as if she had no care in the world; nor
did any "sucking baronet" ever neglect the business of a publisher more
consistently than her attendant spirit, Michael Mont.

To Soames she was a puzzle. He was almost deceived by this careless
gaiety. Almost--because he did not fail to mark her eyes often fixed on
nothing, and the film of light shining from her bedroom window late at
night. What was she thinking and brooding over into small hours when
she ought to have been asleep? But he dared not ask what was in her
mind; and, since that one little talk in the billiard-room, she said
nothing to him.

In this taciturn condition of affairs it chanced that Winifred invited
them to lunch and to go afterwards to "a most amusing little play, 'The
Beggar's Opera,'" and would they bring a man to make four? Soames,
whose attitude towards theatres was to go to nothing, accepted, because
Fleur's attitude was to go to everything. They motored up, taking
Michael Mont, who, being in his seventh heaven, was found by Winifred
"very amusing." "The Beggar's Opera" puzzled Soames. The people were
unpleasant, the whole thing cynical. Winifred was "intrigued"--by the
dresses. The music too did not displease her. At the Opera, the night
before, she had arrived too early for the Russian Ballet, and found the
stage occupied by singers, for a whole hour pale or apoplectic from
terror lest by some dreadful inadvertence they might drop into a tune.
Michael Mont was enraptured with the whole thing. And all three
wondered what Fleur was thinking of it. But Fleur was not thinking of
it. Her fixed idea stood on the stage and sang with Polly Peachum,
mimed with Filch, danced with Jenny Diver, postured with Lucy Lockit,
kissed, trolled, and cuddled with Macheath. Her lips might smile, her
hands applaud, but the comic old masterpiece made no more impression on
her than if it had been pathetic, like a modern "Revue." When they
embarked in the car to return, she ached because Jon was not sitting
next her instead of Michael Mont. When, at some jolt, the young man's
arm touched hers as if by accident, she only thought: 'If that were
Jon's arm!' When his cheerful voice, tempered by her proximity,
murmured above the sound of the car's progress, she smiled and
answered, thinking: 'If that were Jon's voice!' and when once he said:
"Fleur, you look a perfect angel in that dress!" she answered: "Oh, do
you like it?" thinking: 'If only Jon could see it!'

During this drive she took a resolution. She would go to Robin Hill and
see him--alone; she would take the car, without word beforehand to him
or to her father. It was nine days since his letter, and she could wait
no longer. On Monday she would go! The decision made her well disposed
towards young Mont. With something to look forward to she could afford
to tolerate and respond. He might stay to dinner; propose to her as
usual; dance with her, press her hand, sigh--do what he liked. He was
only a nuisance when he interfered with her fixed idea. She was even
sorry for him so far as it was possible to be sorry for anybody but
herself just now. At dinner he seemed to talk more wildly than usual
about what he called 'the death of the close borough'--she paid little
attention, but her father seemed paying a good deal, with a smile on
his face which meant opposition, if not anger.

"The younger generation doesn't think as you do, sir; does it, Fleur?"

Fleur shrugged her shoulders--the younger generation was just Jon, and
she did not know what he was thinking.

"Young people will think as I do when they're my age, Mr. Mont. Human
nature doesn't change."

"I admit that, sir; but the forms of thought change with the times. The
pursuit of self-interest is a form of thought that's going out."

"Indeed! To mind one's own business is not a form of thought, Mr. Mont,
it's an instinct."

Yes, when Jon was the business!

"But what is one's business, sir? That's the point, EVERYBODY'S
business is going to be one's business. Isn't it, Fleur?"

Fleur only smiled.

"If not," added young Mont, "there'll be blood."

"People have talked like that from time immemorial."

"But you'll admit, sir, that the sense of property is dying out?"

"I should say increasing among those who have none."

"Well, look at me! I'm heir to an entailed estate. I don't want the
thing; I'd cut the entail to-morrow."

"You're not married, and you don't know what you're talking about."

Fleur saw the young man's eyes turn rather piteously upon her.

"Do you really mean that marriage--?" he began.

"Society is built on marriage," came from between her father's close
lips; "marriage and its consequences. Do you want to do away with it?"

Young Mont made a distracted gesture. Silence brooded over the
dinner-table, covered with spoons bearing the Forsyte crest--a pheasant
proper--under the electric light in an alabaster globe. And outside,
the river evening darkened, charged with heavy moisture and sweet
scents.

'Monday,' thought Fleur; 'Monday!'



VI

DESPERATE


The weeks which followed the death of his father were sad and empty to
the only Jolyon Forsyte left. The necessary forms and ceremonies--the
reading of the Will, valuation of the estate, distribution of the
legacies--were enacted over the head, as it were, of one not yet of
age. Jolyon was cremated. By his special wish no one attended that
ceremony, or wore black for him. The succession of his property,
controlled to some extent by old Jolyon's Will, left his widow in
possession of Robin Hill, with two thousand five hundred pounds a year
for life. Apart from this the two Wills worked together in some
complicated way to insure that each of Jolyon's three children should
have an equal share in their grandfather's and father's property in the
future as in the present, save only that Jon, by virtue of his sex,
would have control of his capital when he was twenty-one, while June
and Holly would only have the spirit of theirs, in order that their
children might have the body after them. If they had no children, it
would all come to Jon if he outlived them; and since June was fifty,
and Holly nearly forty, it was considered in Lincoln's Inn Fields that
but for the cruelty of income tax, young Jon would be as warm a man as
his grandfather when he died. All this was nothing to Jon, and little
enough to his mother. It was June who did everything needful for one
who had left his affairs in perfect order. When she had gone, and those
two were alone again in the great house, alone with death drawing them
together, and love driving them apart, Jon passed very painful days
secretly disgusted and disappointed with himself. His mother would look
at him with a patient sadness which yet had in it an instinctive pride,
as if she were reserving her defence. If she smiled he was angry that
his answering smile should be so grudging and unnatural. He did not
judge or condemn her; that was all too remote--indeed, the idea of
doing so had never come to him. No! he was grudging and unnatural
because he couldn't have what he wanted because of her. There was one
alleviation--much to do in connection with his father's career, which
could not be safely intrusted to June, though she had offered to
undertake it. Both Jon and his mother had felt that if she took his
portfolios, unexhibited drawings and unfinished matter, away with her,
the work would encounter such icy blasts from Paul Post and other
frequenters of her studio, that it would soon be frozen out even of her
warm heart. On its old-fashioned plane and of its kind the work was
good, and they could not bear the thought of its subjection to
ridicule. A one-man exhibition of his work was the least testimony they
could pay to one they had loved; and on preparation for this they spent
many hours together. Jon came to have a curiously increased respect for
his father. The quiet tenacity with which he had converted a mediocre
talent into something really individual was disclosed by these
researches. There was a great mass of work with a rare continuity of
growth in depth and reach of vision. Nothing certainly went very deep,
or reached very high--but such as the work was, it was thorough,
conscientious, and complete. And, remembering his father's utter
absence of "side" or self-assertion, the chaffing humility with which
he had always spoken of his own efforts, ever calling himself "an
amateur," Jon could not help feeling that he had never really known his
father. To take himself seriously, yet never bore others by letting
them know that he did so, seemed to have been his ruling principle.
There was something in this which appealed to the boy, and made him
heartily indorse his mother's comment: "He had true refinement; he
couldn't help thinking of others, whatever he did. And when he took a
resolution which went counter, he did it with the minimum of
defiance--not like the Age, is it? Twice in his life he had to go
against everything; and yet it never made him bitter." Jon saw tears
running down her face, which she at once turned away from him. She was
so quiet about her loss that sometimes he had thought she didn't feel
it much. Now, as he looked at her, he felt how far he fell short of the
reserve power and dignity in both his father and his mother. And,
stealing up to her, he put his arm round her waist. She kissed him
swiftly, but with a sort of passion, and went out of the room.

The studio, where they had been sorting and labelling, had once been
Holly's schoolroom, devoted to her silk-worms, dried lavender, music,
and other forms of instruction. Now, at the end of July, despite its
northern and eastern aspects, a warm and slumberous air came in between
the long-faded lilac linen curtains. To redeem a little the departed
glory, as of a field that is golden and gone, clinging to a room which
its master has left, Irene had placed on the paint-stained table a bowl
of red roses. This, and Jolyon's favourite cat, who still clung to the
deserted habitat, were the pleasant spots in that dishevelled, sad
workroom. Jon, at the north window, sniffing air mysteriously scented
with warm strawberries, heard a car drive up. The lawyers again about
some nonsense! Why did that scent so make one ache? And where did it
come from--there were no strawberry beds on this side of the house.
Instinctively he took a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket, and
wrote down some broken words. A warmth began spreading in his chest; he
rubbed the palms of his hands together. Presently he had jotted this:

    "If I could make a little song--
    A little song to soothe my heart!
    I'd make it all of little things--
    The plash of water, rub of wings,
    The puffing-off of dandie's crown,
    The hiss of raindrop spilling down,
    The purr of cat, the trill of bird,
    And ev'ry whispering I've heard
    From willy wind in leaves and grass,
    And all the distant drones that pass.
    A song, as tender and as light
    As flower, or butterfly in flight;
    And when I saw it opening
    I'd let it fly, and sing!"

He was still muttering it over to himself at the window, when he heard
his name called, and, turning round, saw Fleur. At that amazing
apparition, he made at first no movement and no sound, while her clear
vivid glance ravished his heart. Then he went forward to the table,
saying: "How nice of you to come!" and saw her flinch as if he had
thrown something at her.

"I asked for you," she said, "and they showed me up here. But I can go
away again."

Jon clutched the paint-stained table. Her face and figure in its frilly
frock, photographed itself with such startling vividness upon his eyes,
that if she had sunk through the floor he must still have seen her.

"I know I told you a lie, Jon. But I told it out of love."

"Oh! yes! That's nothing!"

"I didn't answer your letter. What was the use--there wasn't anything
to answer. I wanted to see you instead." She held out both her hands,
and Jon grasped them across the table. He tried to say something, but
all his attention was given to trying not to hurt her hands. His own
felt so hard and hers so soft. She said almost defiantly:

"That old story--was it so very dreadful?"

"Yes." In his voice, too, there was a note of defiance.

She dragged her hands away. "I didn't think in these days boys were
tied to their mothers' apron-strings."

Jon's chin went up as if he had been struck.

"Oh! I didn't mean it, Jon. What a horrible thing to say!" Swiftly she
came close to him. "Jon, dear; I didn't mean it."

"All right."

She had put her two hands on his shoulder, and her forehead down on
them; the brim of her hat touched his neck, and he felt it quivering.
But, in a sort of paralysis, he made no response. She let go of his
shoulder and drew away.

"Well, I'll go, if you don't want me. But I never thought you'd have
given me up."

"I HAVEN'T," cried Jon, coming suddenly to life. "I can't. I'll try
again."

She swayed towards him. "Jon--I love you! Don't give me up! If you do,
I don't know what I shall do--I feel so desperate. What does it
matter--all that past--compared with THIS?"

She clung to him. He kissed her eyes, her cheeks, her lips. But while
he kissed her he saw the sheets of that letter fallen down on the floor
of his bedroom--his father's white dead face--his mother kneeling
before it. Fleur's whisper: "Make her! Promise! Oh! Jon, try!" seemed
childish in his ear. He felt curiously old.

"I promise!" he muttered. "Only, you don't understand."

"She wants to spoil our lives, just because--"

"Yes, of what?"

Again that challenge in his voice, and she did not answer. Her arms
tightened round him, and he returned her kisses; but even while he
yielded, the poison worked in him, the poison of the letter. Fleur did
not know, she did not understand--she misjudged his mother; she came
from the enemy's camp! So lovely, and he loved her so--yet, even in her
embrace, he could not help the memory of Holly's words: "I think she
has a 'having' nature," and his mother's: "My darling boy; don't think
of me--think of yourself."

When she was gone like a passionate dream, leaving her image on his
eyes, her kisses on his lips, such an ache in his heart, Jon leaned in
the window, listening to the car bearing her away. Still the scent as
of warm strawberries, still the little summer sounds that should make
his song; still all the promise of youth and happiness in sighing,
floating, fluttering July--and his heart torn; yearning strong in him;
hope high in him, yet with its eyes cast down, as if ashamed. The
miserable task before him! If Fleur was desperate, so was he--watching
the poplars swaying, the white clouds passing, the sunlight on the
grass.

He waited till evening, till after their almost silent dinner, till his
mother had played to him--and still he waited, feeling that she knew
what he was waiting to say. She kissed him and went up-stairs, and
still he lingered, watching the moonlight and the moths, and that
unreality of colouring which steals along and stains a summer night.
And he would have given anything to be back in the past--barely three
months back; or away forward, years, in the future. The present with
this stark cruelty of a decision, one way or the other, seemed
impossible. He realised now so much more keenly what his mother felt
than he had at first; as if the story in that letter had been a
poisonous germ producing a kind of fever of partisanship, so that he
really felt there were two camps, his mother's and his--Fleur's and her
father's. It might be a dead thing, that old tragic ownership and
enmity, but dead things were poisonous till Time had cleaned them away.
Even his love felt tainted, less illusioned, more of the earth, and
with a treacherous lurking doubt lest Fleur, like her father, might
want to OWN; not articulate, just a stealing haunt, horribly unworthy,
which crept in and about the ardour of his memories, touched with its
tarnishing breath the vividness and grace of that charmed face and
figure--a doubt, not real enough to convince him of its presence, just
real enough to deflower a perfect faith. And perfect faith, to Jon, not
yet twenty, was essential. He still had Youth's eagerness to give with
both hands, to take with neither--to give lovingly to one who had his
own impulsive generosity. Surely she had! He got up from the
window-seat and roamed in the big grey ghostly room, whose walls were
hung with silvered canvas. This house--his father said in that
death-bed letter--had been built for his mother to live in--with
Fleur's father! He put out his hand in the half-dark, as if to grasp
the shadowy hand of the dead. He clenched, trying to feel the thin
vanished fingers of his father; to squeeze them, and reassure him that
he--he was on his father's side. Tears, prisoned within him, made his
eyes feel dry and hot. He went back to the window. It was warmer, not
so eerie, more comforting outside, where the moon hung golden, three
days off full; the freedom of the night was comforting. If only Fleur
and he had met on some desert island without a past--and Nature for
their house! Jon had still his high regard for desert islands, where
breadfruit grew, and the water was blue above the coral. The night was
deep, was free--there was enticement in it; a lure, a promise, a refuge
from entanglement, and love! Milksop tied to his mother's--! His cheeks
burned. He shut the window, drew curtains over it, switched off the
lighted sconce, and went up-stairs.

The door of his room was open, the light turned up; his mother, still
in her evening gown, was standing at the window. She turned, and said:

"Sit down, Jon; let's talk." She sat down on the window-seat, Jon on
his bed. She had her profile turned to him, and the beauty and grace of
her figure, the delicate line of the brow, the nose, the neck, the
strange and as it were remote refinement of her, moved him. His mother
never belonged to her surroundings. She came into them from
somewhere--as it were! What was she going to say to him, who had in his
heart such things to say to her?

"I know Fleur came to-day. I'm not surprised." It was as though she had
added: "She is her father's daughter!" And Jon's heart hardened. Irene
went on quietly:

"I have Father's letter. I picked it up that night and kept it. Would
you like it back, dear?"

Jon shook his head.

"I had read it, of course, before he gave it to you. It didn't quite do
justice to my criminality."

"Mother!" burst from Jon's lips.

"He put it very sweetly, but I know that in marrying Fleur's father
without love I did a dreadful thing. An unhappy marriage, Jon, can play
such havoc with other lives besides one's own. You are fearfully young,
my darling, and fearfully loving. Do you think you can possibly be
happy with this girl?"

Staring at her dark eyes, darker now from pain, Jon answered:

"Yes; oh! yes--if YOU could be."

Irene smiled.

"Admiration of beauty, and longing for possession are not love. If
yours were another case like mine, Jon--where the deepest things are
stifled; the flesh joined, and the spirit at war!"

"Why should it, Mother? You think she must be like her father, but
she's not. I've seen him."

Again the smile came on Irene's lips, and in Jon something wavered;
there was such irony and experience in that smile.

"You are a giver, Jon; she is a taker."

That unworthy doubt, that haunting uncertainty again! He said with
vehemence:

"She isn't--she isn't. It's only because I can't bear to make you
unhappy, Mother, now that Father--" He thrust his fists against his
forehead.

Irene got up.

"I told you that night, dear, not to mind me. I meant it. Think of
yourself and your own happiness! I can stand what's left--I've brought
it on myself."

Again the word: "Mother!" burst from Jon's lips.

She came over to him and put her hands over his.

"Do you feel your head, darling?"

Jon shook it. What he felt was in his chest--a sort of tearing asunder
of the tissue there, by the two loves.

"I shall always love you the same, Jon, whatever you do. You won't lose
anything." She smoothed his hair gently, and walked away.

He heard the door shut; and, rolling over on the bed, lay, stifling his
breath, with an awful held-up feeling within him.



VII

EMBASSY


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
afterwards." And, with a flying kiss, she ran up-stairs.

Soames waited in the drawing-room. To Robin Hill! What did that portend?

It was not a subject they could discuss at dinner--consecrated to the
susceptibilities of the butler. The agony of nerves Soames had been
through, the relief he felt at her safety, softened his power to
condemn what she had done, or resist what she was going to do; he
waited in a relaxed stupor for her revelation. Life was a queer
business. There he was at sixty-five and no more in command of things
than if he had not spent forty years in building up security--always
something one couldn't get on terms with! In the pocket of his
dinner-jacket was a letter from Annette. She was coming back in a
fortnight. He knew nothing of what she had been doing out there. And he
was glad that he did not. Her absence had been a relief. Out of sight
was out of mind! And now she was coming back. Another worry! And the
Bolderby Old Crome was gone--Dumetrius had got it--all because that
anonymous letter had put it out of his thoughts. He furtively remarked
the strained look on his daughter's face, as if she too were gazing at
a picture that she couldn't buy. He almost wished the war back. Worries
didn't seem, then, quite so worrying. From the caress in her voice, the
look on her face, he became certain that she wanted something from him,
uncertain whether it would be wise of him to give it her. He pushed his
savoury away uneaten, and even joined her in a cigarette.

After dinner she set the electric piano-player going. And he augured
the worst when she sat down on a cushion footstool at his knee, and put
her hand on his.

"Darling, be nice to me. I had to see Jon--he wrote to me. He's going
to try what he can do with his mother. But I've been thinking. But it's
really in YOUR hands, Father. If you'd persuade her that it doesn't
mean renewing the past in any way! That I shall stay yours, and Jon
will stay hers; that you need never see him or her, and she need never
see you or me! Only you could persuade her, dear, because only you
could promise. One can't promise for other people. Surely it wouldn't
be too awkward for you to see her just this once--now that Jon's father
is dead?"

"Too awkward?" Soames repeated. "The whole thing's preposterous."

"You know," said Fleur, without looking up, "you wouldn't mind seeing
her, really."

Soames was silent. Her words had expressed a truth too deep for him to
admit. She slipped her fingers between his own--hot, slim, eager, they
clung there. This child of his would corkscrew her way into a brick
wall!

"What am I to do, if you won't, Father?" she said very softly.

"I'll do anything for your happiness," said Soames; "but this isn't for
your happiness."

"Oh! it is; it is!"

"It'll only stir things up," he said grimly.

"But they are stirred up. The thing is to quiet them. To make her feel
that this is just OUR lives, and has nothing to do with yours or hers.
You can do it, Father, I know you can."

"You know a great deal, then," was Soames' glum answer.

"If you will, Jon and I will wait a year--two years if you like."

"It seems to me," murmured Soames, "that you care nothing about what I
feel."

Fleur pressed his hand against her cheek.

"I do, darling. But you wouldn't like me to be awfully miserable." How
she wheedled to get her ends! And trying with all his might to think
she really cared for him--he was not sure--not sure. All she cared for
was this boy! Why should he help her to get this boy, who was killing
her affection for himself? Why should he? By the laws of the Forsytes
it was foolish! There was nothing to be had out of it--nothing! To give
her to that boy! To pass her into the enemy's camp, under the influence
of the woman who had injured him so deeply! Slowly--inevitably--he
would lose this flower of his life! And suddenly he was conscious that
his hand was wet. His heart gave a little painful jump. He couldn't
bear her to cry. He put his other hand quickly over hers, and a tear
dropped on that, too. He couldn't go on like this! "Well, well," he
said, "I'll think it over, and do what I can. Come, come!" If she must
have it for her happiness--she must; he couldn't refuse to help her.
And lest she should begin to thank him he got out of his chair and went
up to the piano-player--making that noise! It ran down, as he reached
it, with a faint buzz. That musical box of his nursery days: "The
Harmonious Blacksmith," "Glorious Port"--the thing had always made him
miserable when his mother set it going on Sunday afternoons. Here it
was again--the same thing, only larger, more expensive, and now it
played: "The Wild Wild Women" and "The Policeman's Holiday," and he was
no longer in black velvet with a sky-blue collar. 'Profond's right,' he
thought, 'there's nothing in it! We're all progressing to the grave!'
And with that surprising mental comment he walked out.

He did not see Fleur again that night. But, at breakfast, her eyes
followed him about with an appeal he could not escape--not that he
intended to try. No! He had made up his mind to the nerve-racking
business. He would go to Robin Hill--to that house of memories. A
pleasant memory--the last! Of going down to keep that boy's father and
Irene apart by threatening divorce. He had often thought, since, that
it had clenched their union. And, now, he was going to clench the union
of that boy with his girl. 'I don't know what I've done,' he thought,
'to have such things thrust on me!' He went up by train and down by
train, and from the station walked by the long rising lane, still very
much as he remembered it over thirty years ago. Funny--so near London!
Some one evidently was holding on to the land there. This speculation
soothed him, moving between the high hedges slowly, so as not to get
overheated, though the day was chill enough. After all was said and
done there was something real about land, it didn't shift. Land, and
good pictures! The values might fluctuate a bit, but on the whole they
were always going up--worth holding on to, in a world where there was
such a lot of unreality, cheap building, changing fashions, such a
"Here to-day and gone to-morrow" spirit. The French were right,
perhaps, with their peasant proprietorship, though he had no opinion of
the French. One's bit of land! Something solid in it! He had heard
peasant-proprietors described as a pig-headed lot; had heard young Mont
call his father a pig-headed Morning Poster--disrespectful young devil.
Well, there were worse things than being pig-headed or reading The
Morning Post. There was Profond and his tribe, and all these Labour
chaps, and loud-mouthed politicians, and "wild, wild women"! A lot of
worse things! And, suddenly, Soames became conscious of feeling weak,
and hot, and shaky. Sheer nerves at the meeting before him! As Aunt
Juley might have said--quoting "Superior Dosset"--his nerves were "in a
proper fantigue." He could see the house now among its trees, the house
he had watched being built, intending it for himself and this woman,
who, by such strange fate, had lived in it with another after all! He
began to think of Dumetrius, Local Loans, and other forms of
investment. He could not afford to meet her with his nerves all
shaking; he who represented the Day of Judgment for her on earth as it
was in heaven; he, legal ownership, personified, meeting lawless
beauty, incarnate. His dignity demanded impassivity during this embassy
designed to link their offspring, who, if she had behaved herself,
would have been brother and sister. That wretched tune: "The Wild Wild
Women" kept running in his head, perversely, for tunes did not run
there as a rule. Passing the poplars in front of the house, he thought:
'How they've grown; I had them planted!'

A maid answered his ring.

"Will you say--Mr. Forsyte, on a very special matter."

If she realised who he was, quite probably she would not see him. 'By
George!' he thought, hardening as the tug came: 'It's a topsyturvy
affair!'

The maid came back. Would the gentleman state his business, please?

"Say it concerns Mr. Jon," said Soames.

And once more he was alone in that hall with the pool of grey-white
marble designed by her first lover. Ah! she had been a bad lot--had
loved two men, and not himself! He must remember that when he came face
to face with her once more. And suddenly he saw her in the opening
chink between the long heavy purple curtains, swaying, as if in
hesitation; the old perfect poise and line, the old startled dark-eyed
gravity; the old calm defensive voice: "Will you come in, please?"

He passed through that opening. As in the picture-gallery and the
confectioner's shop, she seemed to him still beautiful. And this was
the first time--the very first--since he married her five and thirty
years ago, that he was speaking to her without the legal right to call
her his. She was not wearing black--one of that fellow's radical
notions, he supposed.

"I apologise for coming," he said glumly; "but this business must be
settled one way or the other."

"Won't you sit down?"

"No, thank you."

Anger at his false position, impatience of ceremony between them,
mastered him, and words came tumbling out:

"It's an infernal mischance; I've done my best to discourage it. I
consider my daughter crazy, but I've got into the habit of indulging
her; that's why I'm here. I suppose you're fond of your son."

"Devotedly."

"Well?"

"It rests with him."

He had a sense of being met and baffled. Always--always she had baffled
him, even in those old first married days.

"It's a mad notion," he said.

"It is."

"If you had only--! Well--they might have been--" he did not finish
that sentence "brother and sister and all this saved," but he saw her
shudder as if he had, and stung by the sight, he crossed over to the
window. Out THERE the trees had not grown--they couldn't, they were old!

"So far as I'm concerned," he said, "you may make your mind easy. I
desire to see neither you nor your son if this marriage comes about.
Young people in these days are--are unaccountable. But I can't bear to
see my daughter unhappy. What am I to say to her when I go back?"

"Please say to her, as I said to you, that it rests with Jon."

"You don't oppose it?"

"With all my heart; not with my lips."

Soames stood, biting his finger.

"I remember an evening--" he said suddenly; and was silent. What was
there--what was there in this woman that would not fit into the four
comers of his hate or condemnation? "Where is he--your son?"

"Up in his father's studio, I think."

"Perhaps you'd have him down."

He watched her ring the bell, he watched the maid come in.

"Please tell Mr. Jon that I want him."

"If it rests with him," said Soames hurriedly, when the maid was gone,
"I suppose I may take it for granted that this unnatural marriage will
take place: in that case there'll be formalities. Whom do I deal
with--Herring's?" Irene nodded.

"You don't propose to live with them?"

Irene shook her head.

"What happens to this house?"

"It will be as Jon wishes."

"This house," said Soames suddenly: "I had hopes when I began it. If
THEY live in it--their children! They say there's such a thing as
Nemesis. Do you believe in it?"

"Yes."

"Oh! You do!" He had come back from the window, and was standing close
to her, who, in the curve of her grand piano, was, as it were, embayed.

"I'm not likely to see you again," he said slowly: "Will you shake
hands," his lip quivered, the words came out jerkily, "and let the past
die?" He held out his hand. Her pale face grew paler, her eyes so dark,
rested immovably on his, but her hands remained clasped in front of
her. He heard a sound and turned. That boy was standing in the opening
of the curtains. Very queer he looked, hardly recognisable as the young
fellow he had seen in the Gallery off Cork Street--very queer; much
older, no youth in the face at all--haggard, rigid, his hair ruffled,
his eyes deep in his head. Soames made an effort, and said with a lift
of his lip, not quite a smile nor quite a sneer:

"Well, young man! I'm here for my daughter; it rests with you, it
seems--this matter. Your mother leaves it in your hands."

The boy continued staring at his mother's face, and made no answer.

"For my daughter's sake I've brought myself to come," said Soames.
"What am I to say to her when I go back?"

Still looking at his mother, the boy said, quietly:

"Tell Fleur that it's no good, please; I must do as my father wished
before he died."

"Jon!"

"It's all right, Mother."

In a kind of stupefaction Soames looked from one to the other; then,
taking up hat and umbrella, which he had put down on a chair, he walked
towards the curtains. The boy stood aside for him to go by. He passed
through and heard the grate of the rings as the curtains were drawn
behind him. The sound liberated something in his chest.

'So that's that!' he thought, and passed out of the front door.



VIII

THE DARK TUNE


As Soames walked away from the house at Robin Hill the sun broke
through the grey of that chill afternoon, in smoky radiance. So
absorbed in landscape-painting that he seldom looked seriously for
effects of Nature out-of-doors, he was struck by that moody
effulgence--it mourned with a triumph suited to his own feeling.
Victory in defeat! His embassy had come to naught. But he was rid of
those people, had regained his daughter at the expense of--her
happiness. What would Fleur say to him? Would she believe he had done
his best? And under that sunlight flaring on the elms, hazels, hollies
of the lane and those unexploited fields, Soames felt dread. She would
be terribly upset! He must appeal to her pride. That boy had given her
up, declared part and lot with the woman who so long ago had given her
father up! Soames clenched his hands. Given him up, and why? What had
been wrong with him? And once more he felt the malaise of one who
contemplates himself as seen by another--like a dog who chances on his
reflection in a mirror, and is intrigued and anxious at the unseizable
thing.

Not in a hurry to get home, he dined in town at the Connoisseurs. While
eating a pear it suddenly occurred to him that, if he had not gone down
to Robin Hill, the boy might not have so decided. He remembered the
expression on his face while his mother was refusing the hand he had
held out. A strange, an awkward thought! Had Fleur cooked her own goose
by trying to make too sure?

He reached home at half-past nine. While the car was passing in at one
drive gate he heard the grinding sputter of a motor-cycle passing out
by the other. Young Mont, no doubt, so Fleur had not been lonely. But
he went in with a sinking heart. In the cream-panelled drawing-room she
was sitting with her elbows on her knees, and her chin on her clasped
hands, in front of a white camellia plant which filled the fireplace.
That glance at her before she saw him renewed his dread. What was she
seeing among those white camellias?

"Well, Father!"

Soames shook his head. His tongue failed him. This was murderous work!
He saw her eyes dilate, her lips quivering.

"What? What? Quick, Father!"

"My dear," said Soames, "I--I did my best, but--" And again he shook
his head.

Fleur ran to him and put a hand on each of his shoulders.

"She?"

"No," muttered Soames; "he. I was to tell you that it was no use; he
must do what his father wished before he died." He caught her by the
waist. "Come, child, don't let them hurt you. They're not worth your
little finger."

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--I won'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 towards 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 in this boat-house 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 towards 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 I can'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. Comfortless light, mysterious,
withdrawn--like the beauty of that woman who had never loved
him--dappling the nemesias and the stocks with a vesture not of earth.
Flowers! And his flower so unhappy! Ah, why could one not put happiness
into Local Loans, gild its edges, insure it against going down? Light
had ceased to flow out now from the drawing-room window. All was silent
and dark in there. Had she gone up? He rose, and, tiptoeing, peered in.
It seemed so! He entered. The verandah kept the moonlight out; and at
first he could see nothing but the outlines of furniture blacker than
the darkness. He groped towards the farther window to shut it. His foot
struck a chair, and he heard a gasp. There she was, curled and crushed
into the corner of the sofa! His hand hovered. Did she want his
consolation? He stood, gazing at that ball of crushed frills and hair
and graceful youth, trying to burrow its way out of sorrow. How leave
her there? At last he touched her hair, and said: "Come, darling,
better go to bed. I'll make it up to you, somehow." How fatuous! But
what could he have said?



IX

UNDER THE OAK-TREE


When their visitor had disappeared Jon and his mother stood without
speaking, till he said suddenly: "I ought to have seen him out." But
Soames was already walking down the drive, and Jon went up-stairs to
his father's studio, not trusting himself to go back. The expression on
his mother's face confronting the man she had once been married to, had
sealed a resolution growing within him ever since she left him the
night before. It had put the finishing touch of reality. To marry Fleur
would be to hit his mother in the face; to betray his dead father! It
was no good! Jon had the least resentful of natures. He bore his
parents no grudge in this hour of his distress. For one so young there
was a rather strange power in him of seeing things in some sort of
proportion. It was worse for Fleur, worse for his mother even, than it
was for him. Harder than to give up was to be given up, or to be the
cause of some one you loved giving up for you. He must not, would not
behave grudgingly! While he stood watching the tardy sunlight, he had
again that sudden vision of the world which had come to him the night
before. Sea on sea, country on country, millions on millions of people,
all with their own lives, energies, joys, griefs, and suffering--all
with things they had to give up, and separate struggles for existence.
Even though he might be willing to give up all else for the one thing
he couldn't have, he would be a fool to think his feelings mattered
much in so vast a world, and to behave like a cry-baby or a cad. He
pictured the people who had nothing--the millions who had given up life
in the war, the millions whom the war had left with life and little
else; the hungry children he had read of, the shattered men; people in
prison, every kind of unfortunate. And--they did not help him much. If
one had to miss a meal, what comfort in the knowledge that many others
had to miss it too? There was more distraction in the thought of
getting away out into this vast world of which he knew nothing yet. He
could not go on staying here, walled in and sheltered, with everything
so slick and comfortable, and nothing to do but brood and think what
might have been. He could not go back to Wansdon, and the memories of
Fleur. If he saw her again he could not trust himself; and if he stayed
here or went back there, he would surely see her. While they were
within reach of each other that must happen. To go far away and
quickly, was the only thing to do. But, however much he loved his
mother, he did not want to go away with her. Then feeling that was
brutal, he made up his mind desperately to propose that they should go
to Italy. For two hours in that melancholy room he tried to master
himself; then dressed solemnly for dinner.

His mother had done the same. They ate little, at some length, and
talked of his father's catalogue. The Show was arranged for October,
and beyond clerical detail there was nothing more to do.

After dinner she put on a cloak and they went out; walked a little,
talked a little, till they were standing silent at last beneath the
oak-tree. Ruled by the thought: 'If I show anything, I show all,' Jon
put his arm through hers and said quite casually:

"Mother, let's go to Italy."

Irene pressed his arm, and said as casually:

"It would be very nice; but I've been thinking you ought to see and do
more than you would if I were with you."

"But then you'd be alone."

"I was once alone for more than twelve years. Besides, I should like to
be here for the opening of Father's show."

Jon's grip tightened round her arm; he was not deceived.

"You couldn't stay here all by yourself; it's too big."

"Not here, perhaps. In London, and I might go to Paris, after the show
opens. You ought to have a year at least, Jon, and see the world."

"Yes, I'd like to see the world and rough it. But I don't want to leave
you all alone."

"My dear, I owe you that at least. If it's for your good, it'll be for
mine. Why not start to-morrow? You've got your passport."

"Yes; if I'm going it had better be at once. Only--Mother--if--if I
wanted to stay out somewhere--America or anywhere, would you mind
coming presently?"

"Wherever and whenever you send for me. But don't send until you really
want me."

Jon drew a deep breath.

"I feel England's choky."

They stood a few minutes longer under the oak-tree--looking out to
where the grand stand at Epsom was veiled in evening. The branches kept
the moonlight from them, so that it only fell everywhere else--over the
fields and far away, and on the windows of the creepered house behind,
which soon would be to let.



X

FLEUR'S WEDDING


The October paragraphs describing the wedding of Fleur Forsyte to
Michael Mont hardly conveyed the symbolic significance of this event.
In the union of the great-granddaughter of "Superior Dosset" with the
heir of a ninth baronet was the outward and visible sign of that merger
of class in class which buttresses the political stability of a realm.
The time had come when the Forsytes might resign their natural
resentment against a "flummery" not theirs by birth, and accept it as
the still more natural due of their possessive instincts. Besides, they
really had to mount to make room for all those so much more newly rich.
In that quiet but tasteful ceremony in Hanover Square, and afterwards
among the furniture in Green Street, it had been impossible for those
not in the know to distinguish the Forsyte troop from the Mont
contingent--so far away was "Superior Dosset" now. Was there, in the
crease of his trousers, the expression of his moustache, his accent, or
the shine on his top hat, a pin to choose between Soames and the ninth
baronet himself? Was not Fleur as self-possessed, quick, glancing,
pretty, and hard as the likeliest Muskham, Mont, or Charwell filly
present? If anything, the Forsytes had it in dress and looks and
manners. They had become "upper class" and now their name would be
formally recorded in the Stud Book, their money joined to land. Whether
this was a little late in the day, and those rewards of the possessive
instinct, lands and money destined for the melting-pot--was still a
question so moot that it was not mooted. After all, Timothy had said
Consols were goin' up. Timothy, the last, the missing link; Timothy in
extremis on the Bayswater Road--so Francie had reported. It was
whispered, too, that this young Mont was a sort of socialist--strangely
wise of him, and in the nature of insurance, considering the days they
lived in. There was no uneasiness on that score. The landed classes
produced that sort of amiable foolishness at times, turned to safe uses
and confined to theory. As George remarked to his sister Francie:
"They'll soon be having puppies--that'll give him pause."

The church with white flowers and something blue in the middle of the
East window, looked extremely chaste, as though endeavouring to
counteract the somewhat lurid phraseology of a Service calculated to
keep the thoughts of all on puppies. Forsytes, Haymans, Tweetymans, sat
in the left aisle; Monts, Charwells, Muskhams in the right; while a
sprinkling of Fleur's fellow-sufferers at school, and of Mont's
fellow-sufferers in the war, gaped indiscriminately from either side,
and three maiden ladies, who had dropped in on their way from
Skyward's, brought up the rear, together with two Mont retainers and
Fleur's old nurse. In the unsettled state of the country as full a
house as could be expected.

Mrs. Val Dartie, who sat with her husband in the third row, squeezed
his hand more than once during the performance. To her, who knew the
plot of this tragi-comedy, its most dramatic moment was well-nigh
painful. 'I wonder if Jon knows by instinct,' she thought--Jon, out in
British Columbia. She had received a letter from him only that morning
which had made her smile and say:

"Jon's in British Columbia, Val, because he wants to be in California.
He thinks it's too nice there."

"Oh!" said Val, "so he's beginning to see a joke again."

"He's bought some land and sent for his mother."

"What on earth will she do out there?"

"All she cares about is Jon. Do you still think it a happy release?"

Val's shrewd eyes narrowed to grey pin-points between their dark lashes.

"Fleur wouldn't have suited him a bit. She's not bred right."

"Poor little Fleur!" sighed Holly. Ah! it was strange--this marriage!
The young man, Mont, had caught her on the rebound, of course, in the
reckless mood of one whose ship has just gone down. Such a plunge could
not but be--as Val put it--an outside chance. There was little to be
told from the back view of her young cousin's veil, and Holly's eyes
reviewed the general aspect of this Christian wedding. She who had made
a love-match which had been successful, had a horror of unhappy
marriages. This might not be one in the end--but it was clearly a
toss-up; and to consecrate a toss-up in this fashion with manufactured
unction before a crowd of fashionable free-thinkers--for who thought
otherwise than freely, or not at all, when they were 'dolled'
up--seemed to her as near a sin as one could find in an age which had
abolished them. Her eyes wandered from the prelate in his robes (a
Charwell--the Forsytes had not as yet produced a prelate) to Val,
beside her, thinking--she was certain of--the Mayfly filly at fifteen
to one for the Cambridgeshire. They passed on and caught the profile of
the ninth baronet, in counterfeitment of the kneeling process. She
could just see the neat ruck above his knees where he had pulled his
trousers up, and thought: 'Val's forgotten to pull up his!' Her eyes
passed to the pew in front of her, where Winifred's substantial form
was gowned with passion, and on again to Soames and Annette kneeling
side by side. A little smile came on her lips--Prosper Profond, back
from the South Seas of the Channel, would be kneeling too, about six
rows behind. Yes! This was a funny "small" business, however it turned
out; still it was in a proper church and would be in the proper papers
to-morrow morning.

They had begun a hymn; she could hear the ninth baronet across the
aisle, singing of the hosts of Midian. Her little finger touched Val's
thumb--they were holding the same hymn-book--and a tiny thrill passed
through her, preserved from twenty years ago. He stooped and whispered:

"I say, d'you remember the rat?" The rat at their wedding in Cape
Colony, which had cleaned its whiskers behind the table at the
Registrar's! And between her little and third finger she squeezed his
thumb hard.

The hymn was over, the prelate had begun to deliver his discourse. He
told them of the dangerous times they lived in, and the awful conduct
of the House of Lords in connection with divorce. They were all
soldiers--he said--in the trenches under the poisonous gas of the
Prince of Darkness, and must be manful. The purpose of marriage was
children, not mere sinful happiness.

An imp danced in Holly's eyes--Val's eyelashes were meeting. Whatever
happened, he must NOT snore. Her finger and thumb closed on his thigh;
till he stirred uneasily.

The discourse was over, the danger past. They were signing in the
vestry; and general relaxation had set in.

A voice behind her said:

"Will she stay the course?"

"Who's that?" she whispered.

"Old George Forsyte!"

Holly demurely scrutinised one of whom she had often heard. Fresh from
South Africa, and ignorant of her kith and kin, she never saw one
without an almost childish curiosity. He was very big, and very dapper;
his eyes gave her a funny feeling of having no particular clothes.

"They're off!" she heard him say.

They came, stepping from the chancel. Holly looked first in young
Mont's face. His lips and ears were twitching, his eyes, shifting from
his feet to the hand within his arm, stared suddenly before them as if
to face a firing party. He gave Holly the feeling that he was
spiritually intoxicated. But Fleur! Ah! That was different. The girl
was perfectly composed, prettier than ever, in her white robes and veil
over her banged dark chestnut hair; her eyelids hovered demure over her
dark hazel eyes. Outwardly, she seemed all there. But, inwardly, where
was she? As those two passed, Fleur raised her eyelids--the restless
glint of those clear whites remained on Holly's vision as might the
flutter of a caged bird's wings.

In Green Street Winifred stood to receive, just a little less composed
than usual. Soames' request for the use of her house had come on her at
a deeply psychological moment. Under the influence of a remark of
Prosper Profond, she had begun to exchange her Empire for
Expressionistic furniture. There were the most amusing arrangements,
with violet, green, and orange blobs and scriggles, to be had at
Mealard's. Another month and the change would have been complete. Just
now, the very "intriguing" recruits she had enlisted did not march too
well with the old guard. It was as if her regiment were half in khaki,
half in scarlet and bearskins. But her strong and comfortable character
made the best of it in a drawing-room which typified, perhaps, more
perfectly than she imagined, the semi-bolshevised imperialism of her
country. After all, this was a day of merger, and you couldn't have too
much of it! Her eyes travelled indulgently among her guests. Soames had
gripped the back of a buhl chair; young Mont was behind that "awfully
amusing" screen, which no one as yet had been able to explain to her.
The ninth baronet had shied violently at a round scarlet table, inlaid
tinder glass with blue Australian butterflies' wings, and was clinging
to her Louis-Quinze cabinet; Francie Forsyte had seized the new
mantel-board, finely carved with little purple grotesques on an ebony
ground; George, over by the old spinet, was holding a little sky-blue
book as if about to enter bets; Prosper Profond was twiddling the knob
of the open door, black with peacock-blue panels; and Annette's hands,
close by, were grasping her own waist; two Muskhams clung to the
balcony among the plants, as if feeling ill; Lady Mont, thin and
brave-looking, had taken up her long-handled glasses and was gazing at
the central light shade, of ivory and orange dashed with deep magenta,
as if the heavens had opened. Everybody, in fact, seemed holding on to
something. Only Fleur, still in her bridal dress, was detached from all
support, flinging her words and glances to left and right.

The room was full of the bubble and the squeak of conversation. Nobody
could hear anything that anybody said; which seemed of little
consequence, since no one waited for anything so slow as an answer.
Modern conversation seemed to Winifred so different from the days of
her prime, when a drawl was all the vogue. Still it was diverting,
which, of course, was all that mattered. Even the Forsytes were talking
with extreme rapidity--Fleur and Christopher, and Imogen, and young
Nicholas's youngest, Patrick. Soames, of course, was silent; but
George, by the spinet, kept up a running commentary, and Francie, by
her mantel-shelf. Winifred drew nearer to the ninth baronet. He seemed
to promise a certain repose; his nose was fine and drooped a little,
his grey moustaches too; and she said, drawling through her smile;

"It's rather nice, isn't it?"

His reply shot out of his smile like a snipped bread pellet:

"D'you remember, in Frazer, the tribe that buries the bride up to the
waist?"

He spoke as fast as anybody! He had dark, lively little eyes, too, all
crinkled round like a Catholic priest's. Winifred felt suddenly he
might say things she would regret.

"They're always so diverting--weddings," she murmured, and moved on to
Soames. He was curiously still, and Winifred saw at once what was
dictating his immobility. To his right was George Forsyte, to his left
Annette and Prosper Profond. He could not move without either seeing
those two together, or the reflection of them in George Forsyte's
japing eyes. He was quite right not to be taking notice.

"They say Timothy's sinking," he said glumly.

"Where will you put him, Soames?"

"Highgate." And counted on his fingers. "It'll make twelve of them
there, including wives. How do you think Fleur looks?"

"Remarkably well."

Soames nodded. He had never seen her look prettier, yet he could not
rid himself of the impression that this business was
unnatural--remembering still that crushed figure burrowing into the
corner of the sofa. From that night to this day he had received from
her no confidences. He knew from his chauffeur that she had made one
more attempt on Robin Hill and drawn blank--an empty house, no one at
home. He knew that she had received a letter, but not what was in it,
except that it had made her hide herself and cry. He had remarked that
she looked at him sometimes when she thought he wasn't noticing, as if
she were wondering still what he had done--forsooth--to make those
people hate him so. Well, there it was! Annette had come back, and
things had worn on through the summer--very miserable, till suddenly
Fleur had said she was going to marry young Mont. She had shown him a
little more affection when she told Soames that. And he had
yielded--what was the good of opposing it? God knew that he had never
wished to thwart her in anything! And the young man seemed quite
delirious about her. No doubt she was in a reckless mood, and she was
young, absurdly young. But if he opposed her, he didn't know what she
would do; for all he could tell she might want to take up a profession,
become a doctor or solicitor, some nonsense. She had no aptitude for
painting, writing, music, in his view the legitimate occupations of
unmarried women, if they must do something in these days. On the whole,
she was safer married, for he could see too well how feverish and
restless she was at home. Annette, too, had been in favour of
it--Annette, from behind the veil of his refusal to know what she was
about, if she was about anything. Annette had said: "Let her marry this
young man. He is a nice boy--not so highty-flighty as he seems." Where
she got her expressions, he didn't know--but her opinion soothed his
doubts. His wife, whatever her conduct, had clear eyes and an almost
depressing amount of common sense. He had settled fifty thousand on
Fleur, taking care that there was no cross settlement in case it didn't
turn out well. Could it turn out well? She had not got over that other
boy--he knew. They were to go to Spain for the honeymoon. He would be
even lonelier when she was gone. But later, perhaps, she would forget,
and turn to him again!

Winifred's voice broke on his reverie.

"Why! Of all wonders--June!"

There, in a djibbah--what things she wore!--with her hair straying from
under a fillet, Soames saw his cousin, and Fleur going forward to greet
her. The two passed from their view out on to the stairway.

"Really," said Winifred, "she does the most impossible things! Fancy
HER coming!"

"What made you ask her?" muttered Soames.

"Because I thought she wouldn't accept, of course."

Winifred had forgotten that behind conduct lies the main trend of
character; or, in other words, omitted to remember that Fleur was now a
"lame duck."

On receiving her invitation, June had first thought: 'I wouldn't go
near them for the world!' and then, one morning, had awakened from a
dream of Fleur waving to her from a boat with a wild unhappy gesture.
And she had changed her mind.

When Fleur came forward and said to her:

"Do come up while I'm changing my dress"; she had followed up the
stairs. The girl led the way into Imogen's old bedroom, set ready for
her toilet.

June sat down on the bed, thin and upright, like a little spirit in the
sere and yellow. Fleur locked the door.

The girl stood before her divested of her wedding-dress. What a pretty
thing she was!

"I suppose you think me a fool," she said, with quivering lips, "when
it was to have been Jon. But what does it matter? Michael wants me, and
I don't care. It'll get me away from home." Diving her hand into the
frills on her breast, she brought out a letter. "Jon wrote me this."

June read: "Lake Okanagen, British Columbia. I'm not coming back to
England. Bless you always. Jon."

"She's made safe, you see," said Fleur.

June handed back the letter.

"That's not fair to Irene; she always told Jon he could do as he
wished."

Fleur smiled bitterly. "Didn't she spoil your life too?"

"Nobody can spoil a life, my dear. That's nonsense. Things happen, but
we bob up."

Then with a sort of terror she saw the girl sink on her knees and bury
her face in the djibbah, with a strangled sob.

"It's all right--all right," June murmured: "Don't! There, there!"

But the point of the girl's chin was pressed ever closer into her
thigh, and the sound was dreadful of her sobbing. Well, well! It had to
come. She would feel better afterwards! June stroked the short hair of
that shapely head and all the scattered mother-sense in her focussed
itself and passed through the tips of her fingers into the girl's brain.

"Don't sit down under it, my dear," she said at last. "We can't control
life, but we can fight it. Make the best of things. I've had to. I held
on, like you; and I cried, as you're crying now. And look at me!"

Fleur raised her head; a sob merged suddenly into a little choked
laugh. In truth it was a thin and rather wild and wasted spirit she was
looking at, but it had brave eyes.

"All right!" she said. "I'm sorry. I shall forget him, I suppose, if I
fly fast and far enough."

And, scrambling to her feet, she went over to the washstand.

June watched her removing with cold water the traces of emotion. Save
for a little becoming pinkness there was nothing left when she stood
before the mirror. June got off the bed and took a pin-cushion in her
hand. To put two pins into the wrong places was all the vent she found
for sympathy.

"Give me a kiss," she said when Fleur was ready, and dug her chin into
the girl's warm cheek.

"I want a whiff," said Fleur; "don't wait."

June left her, sitting on the bed with a cigarette between her lips and
her eyes half closed, and went down-stairs. In the doorway of the
drawing-room stood Soames as if unquiet at his daughter's tardiness.
June tossed her head and passed down on to the half landing. Her cousin
Francie was standing there.

"Look!" said June, pointing with her chin at Soames. "That man's fatal!"

"How do you mean," said Francie, "fatal?"

June did not answer her. "I shan't wait to see them off," she said.
"Good-bye!"

"Good-bye!" And Francie's eyes, of a Celtic grey, goggled. That old
feud! Really, it was quite romantic!

Soames, moving to the well of the staircase, saw June go, and drew a
breath of satisfaction. But why didn't Fleur come? They would miss
their train. That train would bear her away from him, yet he could not
help fidgeting at the thought that they would lose it. And then she did
come, running down in her tan-coloured frock and black velvet cap, and
passed him into the drawing-room. He saw her kiss her mother, her aunt,
Val's wife, Imogen, and then come forth, quick and pretty as ever. How
would she treat him at this last moment of her girlhood? He couldn't
hope for much!

Her lips pressed the middle of his cheek.

"Daddy!" she said, and was past and gone. Daddy! She hadn't called him
that for years. He drew a long breath and followed slowly down. There
was all the folly with that confetti stuff and the rest of it to go
through with, yet. But he would like just to catch her smile, if she
leaned out, though they would hit her in the eye with the shoe, if they
didn't take care. Young Mont's voice said fervently in his ear:

"Good-bye, sir; and thank you! I'm so fearfully bucked."

"Good-bye," he said; "don't miss your train."

He stood on the bottom step but three, whence he could see above the
heads--the silly hats and heads. They were in the car now; and there
was that stuff, showering, and there went the shoe. A flood of
something welled up in Soames, and--he didn't know--he couldn't see!



XI

THE LAST OF THE FORSYTES


When they came to prepare that terrific symbol Timothy Forsyte--the one
pure individualist left, the only man who hadn't heard of the Great
War--they found him wonderful--not even death had undermined his
soundness.

To Smither and Cook that preparation came like final evidence of what
they had never believed possible--the end of the old Forsyte family on
earth. Poor Mr. Timothy must now take a harp and sing in the company of
Miss Forsyte, Mrs. Julia, Miss Hester; with Mr. Jolyon, Mr. Swithin,
Mr. James, Mr. Roger, and Mr. Nicholas of the party. Whether Mrs.
Hayman would be there was more doubtful, seeing that she had been
cremated. Secretly Cook thought that Mr. Timothy would be upset--he had
always been so set against barrel organs. How many times had she not
said: "Drat the thing! There it is again! Smither, you'd better run up
and see what you can do." And in her heart she would so have enjoyed
the tunes, if she hadn't known that Mr. Timothy would ring the bell in
a minute and say: "Here, take him a halfpenny and tell him to move on."
Often they had been obliged to add threepence of their own before the
man would go--Timothy had ever underrated the value of emotion. Luckily
he had taken the organs for blue-bottles in his last years, which had
been a comfort, and they had been able to enjoy the tunes. But a harp!
Cook wondered. It WAS a change! And Mr. Timothy had never liked change.
But she did not speak of this to Smither, who did so take a line of her
own in regard to heaven that it quite put one about sometimes.

She cried while Timothy was being prepared, and they all had sherry
afterwards out of the yearly Christmas bottle, which would not be
needed now. Ah! dear! She had been there five-and-forty years and
Smither nine-and-thirty! And now they would be going to a tiny house in
Tooting, to live on their savings and what Miss Hester had so kindly
left them--for to take fresh service after the glorious past--No! But
they WOULD like just to see Mr. Soames again, and Mrs. Dartie, and Miss
Francie, and Miss Euphemia. And even if they had to take their own cab,
they felt they must go to the funeral. For six years Mr. Timothy had
been their baby, getting younger and younger every day, till at last he
had been too young to live.

They spent the regulation hours of waiting in polishing and dusting, in
catching the one mouse left, and asphyxiating the last beetle, so as to
leave it nice, discussing with each other what they would buy at the
sale. Miss Ann's work-box; Miss Juley's (that is Mrs. Julia's) seaweed
album; the fire-screen Miss Hester had crewelled; and Mr. Timothy's
hair--little golden curls, glued into a black frame. Oh! they must have
those--only the price of things had gone up so!

It fell to Soames to issue invitations for the funeral. He had them
drawn up by Gradman in his office--only blood relations, and no
flowers. Six carriages were ordered. The Will would be read afterwards
at the house.

He arrived at eleven o'clock to see that all was ready. At a quarter
past old Gradman came in black gloves and crape on his hat. He and
Soames stood in the drawing-room waiting. At half-past eleven the
carriages drew up in a long row. But no one else appeared. Gradman said:

"It surprises me, Mr. Soames. I posted them myself."

"I don't know," said Soames; "he'd lost touch with the family."

Soames had often noticed in old days how much more neighbourly his
family were to the dead than to the living. But, now, the way they had
flocked to Fleur's wedding and abstained from Timothy's funeral, seemed
to show some vital change. There might, of course, be another reason;
for Soames felt that if he had not known the contents of Timothy's
Will, he might have stayed away himself through delicacy. Timothy had
left a lot of money, with nobody in particular to leave it to. They
mightn't like to seem to expect something.

At twelve o'clock the procession left the door; Timothy alone in the
first carriage under glass. Then Soames alone; then Gradman alone; then
Cook and Smither together. They started at a walk, but were soon
trotting under a bright sky. At the entrance to Highgate Cemetery they
were delayed by service in the Chapel. Soames would have liked to stay
outside in the sunshine. He didn't believe a word of it; on the other
hand, it was a form of insurance which could not safely be neglected,
in case there might be something in it after all.

They walked up two and two--he and Gradman, Cook and Smither--to the
family vault. It was not very distinguished for the funeral of the last
old Forsyte.

He took Gradman into his carriage on the way back to the Bayswater Road
with a certain glow in his heart. He had a surprise in pickle for the
old chap who had served the Forsytes four-and-fifty years--a treat that
was entirely his doing. How well he remembered saying to Timothy the
day after Aunt Hester's funeral: "Well, Uncle Timothy, there's Gradman.
He's taken a lot of trouble for the family. What do you say to leaving
him five thousand?" and his surprise, seeing the difficulty there had
been in getting Timothy to leave anything, when Timothy had nodded. And
now the old chap would be as pleased as Punch, for Mrs. Gradman, he
knew, had a weak heart, and their son had lost a leg in the war. It was
extraordinarily gratifying to Soames to have left him five thousand
pounds of Timothy's money. They sat down together in the little
drawing-room, whose walls--like a vision of heaven--were sky-blue and
gold, with every picture-frame unnaturally bright, and every speck of
dust removed from every piece of furniture, to read that little
masterpiece,--the Will of Timothy. With his back to the light in Aunt
Hester's chair, Soames faced Gradman with his face to the light on Aunt
Ann's sofa; and, crossing his legs, began:

"This is the last Will and Testament of me Timothy Forsyte of The Bower
Bayswater Road London I appoint my nephew Soames Forsyte of The Shelter
Mapledurham and Thomas Gradman of 159 Folly Road Highgate (hereinafter
called my Trustees) to be the trustees and executors of this my Will.
To the said Soames Forsyte I leave the sum of one thousand pounds free
of legacy duty and to the said Thomas Gradman I leave the sum of five
thousand pounds free of legacy duty."

Soames paused. Old Gradman was leaning forward, convulsively gripping a
stout black knee with each of his thick hands; his mouth had fallen
open so that the gold fillings of three teeth gleamed; his eyes were
blinking; two tears rolled slowly out of them. Soames read hastily on.

"All the rest of my property of whatsoever description I bequeath to my
Trustees upon Trust to convert and hold the same upon the following
trusts namely. To pay thereout all my debts funeral expenses and
outgoings of any kind in connection with my Will and to hold the
residue thereof in trust for that male lineal descendant of my father
Jolyon Forsyte by his marriage with Ann Pierce who after the decease of
all lineal descendants whether male or female of my said father by his
said marriage in being at the time of my death shall last attain the
age of twenty-one years absolutely it being my desire that my property
shall be nursed to the extreme limit permitted by the laws of England
for the benefit of such male lineal descendant as aforesaid."

Soames read the investment and attestation clauses, and, ceasing,
looked at Gradman. The old fellow was wiping his brow with a large
handkerchief, whose brilliant colour supplied a sudden festive tinge to
the proceedings.

"My word, Mr. Soames!" he said, and it was clear that the lawyer in him
had utterly wiped out the man: "My word! Why, there are two babies now,
and some quite young children--if one of them lives to be eighty--it's
not a great age--and add twenty-one--that's a hundred years; and Mr.
Timothy worth a hundred and fifty thousand pound if he's worth a penny.
Compound interest at five per cent doubles you in fourteen years. In
fourteen years three hundred thousand--six hundred thousand in
twenty-eight--twelve hundred thousand in forty-two--twenty-four hundred
thousand in fifty-six--four million eight hundred thousand in
seventy--nine million six hundred thousand in eighty-four--Why, in a
hundred years it'll be twenty million! And we shan't live to see it! It
IS a Will!"

Soames said dryly: "Anything may happen. The State might take the lot;
they're capable of anything in these days."

"And carry five," said Gradman to himself. "I forgot--Mr. Timothy's in
Consols; we shan't get more than two per cent with this income tax. To
be on the safe side, say seven million. Still, that's a pretty penny."

Soames rose and handed him the Will. "You're going into the City. Take
care of that, and do what's necessary. Advertise; but there are no
debts. When's the sale?"

"Tuesday week," said Gradman. "Life or lives in bein' and twenty-one
years afterwards--it's a long way off. But I'm glad he's left it in the
family." ...

The sale--not at Jobson's, in view of the Victorian nature of the
effects--was far more freely attended than the funeral, though not by
Cook and Smither, for Soames had taken it on himself to give them their
hearts' desires. Winifred was present, Euphemia, and Francie, and
Eustace had come in his car. The miniatures, Barbizons, and J. R.
drawings had been bought in by Soames; and relics of no marketable
value were set aside in an off-room for members of the family who cared
to have mementos. These were the only restrictions upon bidding
characterised by an almost tragic langour. Not one piece of furniture,
no picture or porcelain figure appealed to modern taste. The
humming-birds had fallen like autumn leaves when taken from where they
had not hummed for sixty years. It was painful to Soames to see the
chairs his aunts had sat on, the little grand piano they had
practically never played, the books whose outsides they had gazed at,
the china they had dusted, the curtains they had drawn, the hearth-rug
which had warmed their feet; above all, the beds they had lain and died
in--sold to little dealers, and the housewives of Fulham. And yet--what
could one do? Buy them and stick them in a lumber-room? No; they had to
go the way of all flesh and furniture, and be worn out. But when they
put up Aunt Ann's sofa and were going to knock it down for thirty
shillings, he cried out, suddenly: "Five pounds!" The sensation was
considerable, and the sofa his.

When that little sale was over in the fusty saleroom, and those
Victorian ashes scattered, he went out into the misty October sunshine
feeling as if cosiness had died out of the world, and the board "To
Let" was up, indeed. Revolutions on the horizon; Fleur in Spain; no
comfort in Annette; no Timothy's on the Bayswater Road. In the
irritable desolation of his soul he went into the Goupenor Gallery.
That chap Jolyon's water-colours were on view there. He went in to look
down his nose at them--it might give him some faint satisfaction. The
news had trickled through from June to Val's wife, from her to Val,
from Val to his mother, from her to Soames, that the house--the fatal
house at Robin Hill--was for sale, and Irene going to join her boy out
in British Columbia, or some such place. For one wild moment the
thought had come to Soames: 'Why shouldn't I buy it back? I meant it
for my--!' No sooner come than gone. Too lugubrious a triumph; with two
many humiliating memories for himself and Fleur. She would never live
there after what had happened. No, the place must go its way to some
peer or profiteer. It had been a bone of contention from the first, the
shell of the feud and with the woman gone, it was an empty shell. "For
Sale or To Let." With his mind's eye he could see that board raised
high above the ivied wall which he had built.

He passed through the first of the two rooms in the Gallery. There was
certainly a body of work! And now that the fellow was dead it did not
seem so trivial. The drawings were pleasing enough, with quite a sense
of atmosphere, and something individual in the brush work. 'His father
and my father; he and I; his child and mine!' thought Soames. So it had
gone on! And all about that woman! Softened by the events of the past
week, affected by the melancholy beauty of the autumn day, Soames came
nearer than he had ever been to realisation of that truth--passing the
understanding of a Forsyte pure--that the body of Beauty has a
spiritual essence, uncapturable save by a devotion which thinks not of
self. After all, he was near that truth in his devotion to his
daughter; perhaps that made him understand a little how he had missed
the prize. And there, among the drawings of his kinsman, who had
attained to that which he had found beyond his reach, he thought of him
and her with a tolerance which surprised him. But he did not buy a
drawing.

Just as he passed the seat of custom on his return to the outer air he
met with a contingency which had not been entirely absent from his mind
when he went into the Gallery--Irene, herself, coming in. So she had
not gone yet, and was still paying farewell visits to that fellow's
remains! He subdued the little involuntary leap of his
subconsciousness, the mechanical reaction of his senses to the charm of
this once-owned woman, and passed her with averted eyes. But when he
had gone by he could not for the life of him help looking back. This,
then, was finality--the heat and stress of his life, the madness and
the longing thereof, the long, the only defeat he had known, would be
over when she faded from his view this time; even such memories had
their own queer aching value. She, too, was looking back. Suddenly she
lifted her gloved hand, her lips smiled faintly, her dark eyes seemed
to speak. It was the turn of Soames to make no answer to that smile and
that little farewell wave; he went out into the fashionable street
quivering from head to foot. He knew what she had meant to say: "Now
that I am going for ever out of the reach of you and yours--forgive me;
I wish you well." That was the meaning; last sign of that terrible
reality--passing morality, duty, common sense--her aversion from him
who had owned her body but had never touched her spirit or her heart.
It hurt; yes--more than if she had kept her mask unmoved, her hand
unlifted.

Three days later, in that fast-yellowing October, Soames took a
taxi-cab to Highgate Cemetery and mounted through its white forest to
the Forsyte vault. Close to the cedar, above catacombs and columbaria,
tall, ugly, and individual, it looked like an apex of the competitive
system. He could remember a discussion wherein Swithin had advocated
the addition to its face of the pheasant proper. The proposal had been
rejected in favour of a wreath in stone, above the stark words: "The
family vault of Jolyon Forsyte: 1850." It was in good order. All trace
of the recent interment had been removed, and its sober grey gloomed
reposefully in the sunshine. The whole family lay there now, except old
Jolyon's wife, who had gone back under a contract to her own family
vault in Suffolk; old Jolyon himself lying at Robin Hill; and Susan
Hayman, cremated so that none knew where she might be. Soames gazed at
it with satisfaction--massive, needing little attention; and this was
important, for he was well aware that no one would attend to it when he
himself was gone, and he would have to be looking out for lodgings
soon. He might have twenty years before him, but one never knew. Twenty
years without an aunt or uncle, with a wife of whom one had better not
know anything, with a daughter gone from home. His mood inclined to
melancholy and retrospection. This cemetery was quite full now--of
people with extraordinary names, buried in extraordinary taste. Still,
they had a fine view up here, right over London. Annette had once given
him a story to read by that Frenchman, Maupassant--a most lugubrious
concern, where all the skeletons emerged from their graves one night,
and all the pious inscriptions on the stones were altered to
descriptions of their sins. Not a true story at all. He didn't know
about the French, but there was not much real harm in English people
except their teeth and their taste, which were certainly deplorable.
"The family vault of Jolyon Forsyte, 1850." A lot of people had been
buried here since then--a lot of English life crumbled to mould and
dust! The boom of an airplane passing under the gold-tinted clouds
caused him to lift his eyes. The deuce of a lot of expansion had gone
on. But it all came back to a cemetery--to a name and a date on a tomb.
And he thought with a curious pride that he and his family had done
little or nothing to help this feverish expansion. Good solid
middlemen, they had gone to work with dignity to manage and possess.
"Superior Dosset," indeed, had built, in a dreadful, and Jolyon
painted, in a doubtful period, but so far as he remembered not another
of them all had soiled his hands by creating anything--unless you
counted Val Dartie and his horse-breeding. Collectors, solicitors,
barristers, merchants, publishers, accountants, directors, land agents,
even soldiers--there they had been! The country had expanded, as it
were, in spite of them. They had checked, controlled, defended, and
taken advantage of the process--and when you considered how "Superior
Dosset" had begun life with next to nothing, and his lineal descendants
already owned what old Gradman estimated at between a million and a
million and a half, it was not so bad! And yet he sometimes felt as if
the family bolt was shot, their possessive instinct dying out. They
seemed unable to make money--this fourth generation; they were going
into art, literature, farming, or the army; or just living on what was
left them--they had no push and no tenacity. They would die out if they
didn't take care.

Soames turned from the vault and faced towards the breeze. The air up
here would be delicious if only he could rid his nerves of the feeling
that mortality was in it. He gazed restlessly at the crosses and the
urns, the angels, the "immortelles," the flowers, gaudy or withering;
and suddenly he noticed a spot which seemed so different from anything
else up there that he was obliged to walk the few necessary yards and
look at it. A sober corner, with a massive queer-shaped cross of grey
rough-hewn granite, guarded by four dark yew-trees. The spot was free
from the pressure of the other graves, having a little box-hedged
garden on the far side, arid in front a goldening birch-tree. This
oasis in the desert of conventional graves appealed to the aesthetic
sense of Soames, and he sat down there in the sunshine. Through those
trembling gold birch leaves he gazed out at London, and yielded to the
waves of memory. He thought of Irene in Montpellier Square, when her
hair was rusty-golden and her white shoulders his--Irene, the prize of
his love--passion, resistant to his ownership. He saw Bosinney's body
lying in that white mortuary, and Irene sitting on the sofa looking at
her picture with the eyes of a dying bird. Again he thought of her by
the little green Niobe in the Bois de Boulogne, once more rejecting
him. His fancy took him on beside his drifting river on the November
day when Fleur was to be born, took him to the dead leaves floating on
the green-tinged water and the snake-headed weed for ever swaying and
nosing, sinuous, blind, tethered. And on again to the window opened to
the cold starry night above Hyde Park, with his father lying dead. His
fancy darted to that picture of "The Future Town," to that boy's and
Fleur's first meeting; to the blueish trail of Prosper Profond's cigar,
and Fleur in the window pointing down to where the fellow prowled. To
the sight of Irene and that dead fellow sitting side by side in the
Stand at Lord's. To her and that boy at Robin Hill. To the sofa, where
Fleur lay crushed up in the corner; to her lips pressed into his cheek,
and her farewell "Daddy." And suddenly he saw again Irene's grey-gloved
hand waving its last gesture of release.

He sat there a long time dreaming his career, faithful to the scut of
his possessive instinct, warming himself even with its failures.

"To Let"--the Forsyte age and way of life, when a man owned his soul,
his investments, and his woman, without check or question. And now the
State had, or would have, his investments, his woman had herself, and
God knew who had his soul. "To Let"--that sane and simple creed!

The waters of change were foaming in, carrying the promise of new forms
only when their destructive flood should have passed its full. He sat
there, subconscious of them, but with his thoughts resolutely set on
the past--as a man might ride into a wild night with his face to the
tail of his galloping horse. Athwart the Victorian dykes the waters
were rolling on property, manners, and morals, on melody and the old
forms of art--waters bringing to his mouth a salt taste as of blood,
lapping to the foot of this Highgate Hill where Victorianism lay
buried. And sitting there, high up on its most individual spot,
Soames--like a figure of Investment--refused their restless sounds.
Instinctively he would not fight them--there was in him too much
primeval wisdom, of Man the possessive animal. They would quiet down
when they had fulfilled their tidal fever of dispossessing and
destroying; when the creations and the properties of others were
sufficiently broken and dejected--they would lapse and ebb, and fresh
forms would rise based on an instinct older than the fever of
change--the instinct of Home.

"Je m'en fiche," said Prosper Profond. Soames did not say "Je m'en
fiche"--it was French, and the fellow was a thorn in his side--but deep
down he knew that change was only the interval of death between two
forms of life, destruction necessary to make room for fresher property.
What though the board was up, and cosiness to let?--some one would come
along and take it again some day.

And only one thing really troubled him, sitting there--the melancholy
craving in his heart--because the sun was like enchantment on his face
and on the clouds and on the golden birch leaves, and the wind's rustle
was so gentle, and the yew-tree green so dark, and the sickle of a moon
pale in the sky.

Ah! He might wish and wish and never get it--the beauty and the loving
in the world!



THE END





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "To Let" ***

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