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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Forsyte Saga, Complete, by John
+Galsworthy
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost
+no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use
+it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
+eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Forsyte Saga, Awakening and To Let
+
+Author: John Galsworthy
+
+Release Date: June 14, 2006 [EBook #2596]
+Last Updated: February 22, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AWAKENING AND TO LET ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
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+FORSYTE SAGA AWAKENING AND TO LET
+
+
+By John Galsworthy
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+
+AWAKENING
+
+
+TO LET
+
+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.—THE 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 OLD FORSYTES
+
+
+
+
+
+
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+
+THE FORSYTE SAGA—VOLUME III. By John Galsworthy
+
+
+
+
+
+AWAKENING
+
+
+TO CHARLES SCRIBNER
+
+
+
+
+
+AWAKENING
+
+Through the massive skylight illuminating the hall at Robin Hill, the
+July sunlight at five o'clock fell just where the broad stairway turned;
+and in that radiant streak little Jon Forsyte stood, blue-linen-suited.
+His hair was shining, and his eyes, from beneath a frown, for he was
+considering how to go downstairs, this last of innumerable times, before
+the car brought his father and mother home. Four at a time, and five
+at the bottom? Stale! Down the banisters? But in which fashion? On his
+face, feet foremost? Very stale. On his stomach, sideways? Paltry! On
+his back, with his arms stretched down on both sides? Forbidden! Or on
+his face, head foremost, in a manner unknown as yet to any but himself?
+Such was the cause of the frown on the illuminated face of little
+Jon....
+
+In that Summer of 1909 the simple souls who even then desired to
+simplify the English tongue, had, of course, no cognizance of little
+Jon, or they would have claimed him for a disciple. But one can be too
+simple in this life, for his real name was Jolyon, and his living father
+and dead half-brother had usurped of old the other shortenings, Jo and
+Jolly. As a fact little Jon had done his best to conform to convention
+and spell himself first Jhon, then John; not till his father had
+explained the sheer necessity, had he spelled his name Jon.
+
+Up till now that father had possessed what was left of his heart by the
+groom, Bob, who played the concertina, and his nurse “Da,” who wore
+the violet dress on Sundays, and enjoyed the name of Spraggins in that
+private life lived at odd moments even by domestic servants. His mother
+had only appeared to him, as it were in dreams, smelling delicious,
+smoothing his forehead just before he fell asleep, and sometimes docking
+his hair, of a golden brown colour. When he cut his head open against
+the nursery fender she was there to be bled over; and when he had
+nightmare she would sit on his bed and cuddle his head against her neck.
+She was precious but remote, because “Da” was so near, and there is
+hardly room for more than one woman at a time in a man's heart. With his
+father, too, of course, he had special bonds of union; for little
+Jon also meant to be a painter when he grew up—with the one small
+difference, that his father painted pictures, and little Jon intended to
+paint ceilings and walls, standing on a board between two step-ladders,
+in a dirty-white apron, and a lovely smell of whitewash. His father also
+took him riding in Richmond Park, on his pony, Mouse, so-called because
+it was so-coloured.
+
+Little Jon had been born with a silver spoon in a mouth which was rather
+curly and large. He had never heard his father or his mother speak in an
+angry voice, either to each other, himself, or anybody else; the groom,
+Bob, Cook, Jane, Bella and the other servants, even “Da,” who alone
+restrained him in his courses, had special voices when they talked to
+him. He was therefore of opinion that the world was a place of perfect
+and perpetual gentility and freedom.
+
+A child of 1901, he had come to consciousness when his country, just
+over that bad attack of scarlet fever, the Boer War, was preparing for
+the Liberal revival of 1906. Coercion was unpopular, parents had exalted
+notions of giving their offspring a good time. They spoiled their rods,
+spared their children, and anticipated the results with enthusiasm. In
+choosing, moreover, for his father an amiable man of fifty-two, who had
+already lost an only son, and for his mother a woman of thirty-eight,
+whose first and only child he was, little Jon had done well and wisely.
+What had saved him from becoming a cross between a lap dog and a little
+prig, had been his father's adoration of his mother, for even little Jon
+could see that she was not merely just his mother, and that he played
+second fiddle to her in his father's heart: What he played in his
+mother's heart he knew not yet. As for “Auntie” June, his half-sister
+(but so old that she had grown out of the relationship) she loved him,
+of course, but was too sudden. His devoted “Da,” too, had a Spartan
+touch. His bath was cold and his knees were bare; he was not encouraged
+to be sorry for himself. As to the vexed question of his education,
+little Jon shared the theory of those who considered that children
+should not be forced. He rather liked the Mademoiselle who came for two
+hours every morning to teach him her language, together with history,
+geography and sums; nor were the piano lessons which his mother gave him
+disagreeable, for she had a way of luring him from tune to tune, never
+making him practise one which did not give him pleasure, so that he
+remained eager to convert ten thumbs into eight fingers. Under his
+father he learned to draw pleasure-pigs and other animals. He was not a
+highly educated little boy. Yet, on the whole, the silver spoon stayed
+in his mouth without spoiling it, though “Da” sometimes said that other
+children would do him a “world of good.”
+
+It was a disillusionment, then, when at the age of nearly seven she held
+him down on his back, because he wanted to do something of which she did
+not approve. This first interference with the free individualism of a
+Forsyte drove him almost frantic. There was something appalling in the
+utter helplessness of that position, and the uncertainty as to whether
+it would ever come to an end. Suppose she never let him get up any more!
+He suffered torture at the top of his voice for fifty seconds. Worse
+than anything was his perception that “Da” had taken all that time
+to realise the agony of fear he was enduring. Thus, dreadfully, was
+revealed to him the lack of imagination in the human being.
+
+When he was let up he remained convinced that “Da” had done a dreadful
+thing. Though he did not wish to bear witness against her, he had been
+compelled, by fear of repetition, to seek his mother and say: “Mum,
+don't let 'Da' hold me down on my back again.”
+
+His mother, her hands held up over her head, and in them two plaits of
+hair—“couleur de feuille morte,” as little Jon had not yet learned to
+call it—had looked at him with eyes like little bits of his brown velvet
+tunic, and answered:
+
+“No, darling, I won't.”
+
+She, being in the nature of a goddess, little Jon was satisfied;
+especially when, from under the dining-table at breakfast, where he
+happened to be waiting for a mushroom, he had overheard her say to his
+father:
+
+“Then, will you tell 'Da,' dear, or shall I? She's so devoted to him”;
+and his father's answer:
+
+“Well, she mustn't show it that way. I know exactly what it feels like
+to be held down on one's back. No Forsyte can stand it for a minute.”
+
+Conscious that they did not know him to be under the table, little Jon
+was visited by the quite new feeling of embarrassment, and stayed where
+he was, ravaged by desire for the mushroom.
+
+Such had been his first dip into the dark abysses of existence. Nothing
+much had been revealed to him after that, till one day, having gone down
+to the cow-house for his drink of milk fresh from the cow, after Garratt
+had finished milking, he had seen Clover's calf, dead. Inconsolable,
+and followed by an upset Garratt, he had sought “Da”; but suddenly
+aware that she was not the person he wanted, had rushed away to find his
+father, and had run into the arms of his mother.
+
+“Clover's calf's dead! Oh! Oh! It looked so soft!”
+
+His mother's clasp, and her:
+
+“Yes, darling, there, there!” had stayed his sobbing. But if Clover's
+calf could die, anything could—not only bees, flies, beetles and
+chickens—and look soft like that! This was appalling—and soon forgotten!
+
+The next thing had been to sit on a bumble bee, a poignant experience,
+which his mother had understood much better than “Da”; and nothing of
+vital importance had happened after that till the year turned; when,
+following a day of utter wretchedness, he had enjoyed a disease composed
+of little spots, bed, honey in a spoon, and many Tangerine oranges.
+It was then that the world had flowered. To “Auntie” June he owed that
+flowering, for no sooner was he a little lame duck than she came rushing
+down from London, bringing with her the books which had nurtured her
+own Berserker spirit, born in the noted year of 1869. Aged, and of many
+colours, they were stored with the most formidable happenings. Of
+these she read to little Jon, till he was allowed to read to himself;
+whereupon she whisked back to London and left them with him in a heap.
+Those books cooked his fancy, till he thought and dreamed of nothing but
+midshipmen and dhows, pirates, rafts, sandal-wood traders, iron horses,
+sharks, battles, Tartars, Red Indians, balloons, North Poles and other
+extravagant delights. The moment he was suffered to get up, he rigged
+his bed fore and aft, and set out from it in a narrow bath across green
+seas of carpet, to a rock, which he climbed by means of its mahogany
+drawer knobs, to sweep the horizon with his drinking tumbler screwed to
+his eye, in search of rescuing sails. He made a daily raft out of the
+towel stand, the tea tray, and his pillows. He saved the juice from his
+French plums, bottled it in an empty medicine bottle, and provisioned
+the raft with the rum that it became; also with pemmican made out of
+little saved-up bits of chicken sat on and dried at the fire; and with
+lime juice against scurvy, extracted from the peel of his oranges and a
+little economised juice. He made a North Pole one morning from the whole
+of his bedclothes except the bolster, and reached it in a birch-bark
+canoe (in private life the fender), after a terrible encounter with a
+polar bear fashioned from the bolster and four skittles dressed up
+in “Da's” nightgown. After that, his father, seeking to steady his
+imagination, brought him Ivanhoe, Bevis, a book about King Arthur, and
+Tom Brown's Schooldays. He read the first, and for three days built,
+defended and stormed Front de Boeuf's castle, taking every part in the
+piece except those of Rebecca and Rowena; with piercing cries of: “En
+avant, de Bracy!” and similar utterances. After reading the book about
+King Arthur he became almost exclusively Sir Lamorac de Galis, because,
+though there was very little about him, he preferred his name to that of
+any other knight; and he rode his old rocking-horse to death, armed
+with a long bamboo. Bevis he found tame; besides, it required woods and
+animals, of which he had none in his nursery, except his two cats, Fitz
+and Puck Forsyte, who permitted no liberties. For Tom Brown he was as
+yet too young. There was relief in the house when, after the fourth
+week, he was permitted to go down and out.
+
+The month being March the trees were exceptionally like the masts of
+ships, and for little Jon that was a wonderful Spring, extremely hard
+on his knees, suits, and the patience of “Da,” who had the washing and
+reparation of his clothes. Every morning the moment his breakfast was
+over, he could be viewed by his mother and father, whose windows looked
+out that way, coming from the study, crossing the terrace, climbing the
+old oak tree, his face resolute and his hair bright. He began the day
+thus because there was not time to go far afield before his lessons. The
+old tree's variety never staled; it had mainmast, foremast, top-gallant
+mast, and he could always come down by the halyards—or ropes of the
+swing. After his lessons, completed by eleven, he would go to
+the kitchen for a thin piece of cheese, a biscuit and two French
+plums—provision enough for a jolly-boat at least—and eat it in some
+imaginative way; then, armed to the teeth with gun, pistols, and sword,
+he would begin the serious climbing of the morning, encountering by the
+way innumerable slavers, Indians, pirates, leopards, and bears. He was
+seldom seen at that hour of the day without a cutlass in his teeth (like
+Dick Needham) amid the rapid explosion of copper caps. And many were the
+gardeners he brought down with yellow peas shot out of his little gun.
+He lived a life of the most violent action.
+
+“Jon,” said his father to his mother, under the oak tree, “is terrible.
+I'm afraid he's going to turn out a sailor, or something hopeless. Do
+you see any sign of his appreciating beauty?”
+
+“Not the faintest.”
+
+“Well, thank heaven he's no turn for wheels or engines! I can bear
+anything but that. But I wish he'd take more interest in Nature.”
+
+“He's imaginative, Jolyon.”
+
+“Yes, in a sanguinary way. Does he love anyone just now?”
+
+“No; only everyone. There never was anyone born more loving or more
+lovable than Jon.”
+
+“Being your boy, Irene.”
+
+At this moment little Jon, lying along a branch high above them, brought
+them down with two peas; but that fragment of talk lodged, thick, in his
+small gizzard. Loving, lovable, imaginative, sanguinary!
+
+The leaves also were thick by now, and it was time for his birthday,
+which, occurring every year on the twelfth of May, was always memorable
+for his chosen dinner of sweetbread, mushrooms, macaroons, and ginger
+beer.
+
+Between that eighth birthday, however, and the afternoon when he stood
+in the July radiance at the turning of the stairway, several important
+things had happened.
+
+“Da,” worn out by washing his knees, or moved by that mysterious
+instinct which forces even nurses to desert their nurslings, left the
+very day after his birthday in floods of tears “to be married”—of
+all things—“to a man.” Little Jon, from whom it had been kept, was
+inconsolable for an afternoon. It ought not to have been kept from him!
+Two large boxes of soldiers and some artillery, together with The Young
+Buglers, which had been among his birthday presents, cooperated with
+his grief in a sort of conversion, and instead of seeking adventures in
+person and risking his own life, he began to play imaginative games, in
+which he risked the lives of countless tin soldiers, marbles, stones and
+beans. Of these forms of “chair a canon” he made collections, and, using
+them alternately, fought the Peninsular, the Seven Years, the Thirty
+Years, and other wars, about which he had been reading of late in a big
+History of Europe which had been his grandfather's. He altered them to
+suit his genius, and fought them all over the floor in his day nursery,
+so that nobody could come in, for fearing of disturbing Gustavus
+Adolphus, King of Sweden, or treading on an army of Austrians. Because
+of the sound of the word he was passionately addicted to the Austrians,
+and finding there were so few battles in which they were successful
+he had to invent them in his games. His favourite generals were
+Prince Eugene, the Archduke Charles and Wallenstein. Tilly and Mack
+(“music-hall turns” he heard his father call them one day, whatever that
+might mean) one really could not love very much, Austrian though they
+were. For euphonic reasons, too, he doted on Turenne.
+
+This phase, which caused his parents anxiety, because it kept him
+indoors when he ought to have been out, lasted through May and half of
+June, till his father killed it by bringing home to him Tom Sawyer and
+Huckleberry Finn. When he read those books something happened in him,
+and he went out of doors again in passionate quest of a river. There
+being none on the premises at Robin Hill, he had to make one out of
+the pond, which fortunately had water lilies, dragonflies, gnats,
+bullrushes, and three small willow trees. On this pond, after his father
+and Garratt had ascertained by sounding that it had a reliable bottom
+and was nowhere more than two feet deep, he was allowed a little
+collapsible canoe, in which he spent hours and hours paddling, and lying
+down out of sight of Indian Joe and other enemies. On the shore of the
+pond, too, he built himself a wigwam about four feet square, of old
+biscuit tins, roofed in by boughs. In this he would make little fires,
+and cook the birds he had not shot with his gun, hunting in the coppice
+and fields, or the fish he did not catch in the pond because there were
+none. This occupied the rest of June and that July, when his father
+and mother were away in Ireland. He led a lonely life of “make believe”
+during those five weeks of summer weather, with gun, wigwam, water and
+canoe; and, however hard his active little brain tried to keep the
+sense of beauty away, she did creep in on him for a second now and then,
+perching on the wing of a dragon-fly, glistening on the water lilies, or
+brushing his eyes with her blue as he lay on his back in ambush.
+
+“Auntie” June, who had been left in charge, had a “grown-up” in the
+house, with a cough and a large piece of putty which he was making
+into a face; so she hardly ever came down to see him in the pond. Once,
+however, she brought with her two other “grown-ups.” Little Jon, who
+happened to have painted his naked self bright blue and yellow in
+stripes out of his father's water-colour box, and put some duck's
+feathers in his hair, saw them coming, and—ambushed himself among the
+willows. As he had foreseen, they came at once to his wigwam and knelt
+down to look inside, so that with a blood-curdling yell he was able to
+take the scalps of “Auntie” June and the woman “grown-up” in an almost
+complete manner before they kissed him. The names of the two grown-ups
+were “Auntie” Holly and “Uncle” Val, who had a brown face and a little
+limp, and laughed at him terribly. He took a fancy to “Auntie” Holly,
+who seemed to be a sister too; but they both went away the same
+afternoon and he did not see them again. Three days before his father
+and mother were to come home “Auntie” June also went off in a great
+hurry, taking the “grown-up” who coughed and his piece of putty; and
+Mademoiselle said: “Poor man, he was veree ill. I forbid you to go into
+his room, Jon.” Little Jon, who rarely did things merely because he was
+told not to, refrained from going, though he was bored and lonely. In
+truth the day of the pond was past, and he was filled to the brim of
+his soul with restlessness and the want of something—not a tree, not a
+gun—something soft. Those last two days had seemed months in spite of
+Cast Up by the Sea, wherein he was reading about Mother Lee and her
+terrible wrecking bonfire. He had gone up and down the stairs perhaps a
+hundred times in those two days, and often from the day nursery, where
+he slept now, had stolen into his mother's room, looked at everything,
+without touching, and on into the dressing-room; and standing on one leg
+beside the bath, like Slingsby, had whispered:
+
+“Ho, ho, ho! Dog my cats!” mysteriously, to bring luck. Then, stealing
+back, he had opened his mother's wardrobe, and taken a long sniff which
+seemed to bring him nearer to—he didn't know what.
+
+He had done this just before he stood in the streak of sunlight,
+debating in which of the several ways he should slide down the
+banisters. They all seemed silly, and in a sudden languor he began
+descending the steps one by one. During that descent he could remember
+his father quite distinctly—the short grey beard, the deep eyes
+twinkling, the furrow between them, the funny smile, the thin figure
+which always seemed so tall to little Jon; but his mother he couldn't
+see. All that represented her was something swaying with two dark eyes
+looking back at him; and the scent of her wardrobe.
+
+Bella was in the hall, drawing aside the big curtains, and opening the
+front door. Little Jon said, wheedling,
+
+“Bella!”
+
+“Yes, Master Jon.”
+
+“Do let's have tea under the oak tree when they come; I know they'd like
+it best.”
+
+“You mean you'd like it best.”
+
+Little Jon considered.
+
+“No, they would, to please me.”
+
+Bella smiled. “Very well, I'll take it out if you'll stay quiet here and
+not get into mischief before they come.”
+
+Little Jon sat down on the bottom step, and nodded. Bella came close,
+and looked him over.
+
+“Get up!” she said.
+
+Little Jon got up. She scrutinized him behind; he was not green, and his
+knees seemed clean.
+
+“All right!” she said. “My! Aren't you brown? Give me a kiss!”
+
+And little Jon received a peck on his hair.
+
+“What jam?” he asked. “I'm so tired of waiting.”
+
+“Gooseberry and strawberry.”
+
+Num! They were his favourites!
+
+When she was gone he sat still for quite a minute. It was quiet in the
+big hall open to its East end so that he could see one of his trees,
+a brig sailing very slowly across the upper lawn. In the outer hall
+shadows were slanting from the pillars. Little Jon got up, jumped one of
+them, and walked round the clump of iris plants which filled the pool
+of grey-white marble in the centre. The flowers were pretty, but only
+smelled a very little. He stood in the open doorway and looked out.
+Suppose!—suppose they didn't come! He had waited so long that he felt he
+could not bear that, and his attention slid at once from such finality
+to the dust motes in the bluish sunlight coming in: Thrusting his hand
+up, he tried to catch some. Bella ought to have dusted that piece of
+air! But perhaps they weren't dust—only what sunlight was made of, and
+he looked to see whether the sunlight out of doors was the same. It was
+not. He had said he would stay quiet in the hall, but he simply couldn't
+any more; and crossing the gravel of the drive he lay down on the grass
+beyond. Pulling six daisies he named them carefully, Sir Lamorac, Sir
+Tristram, Sir Lancelot, Sir Palimedes, Sir Bors, Sir Gawain, and fought
+them in couples till only Sir Lamorac, whom he had selected for a
+specially stout stalk, had his head on, and even he, after three
+encounters, looked worn and waggly. A beetle was moving slowly in the
+grass, which almost wanted cutting. Every blade was a small tree,
+round whose trunk the beetle had to glide. Little Jon stretched out
+Sir Lamorac, feet foremost, and stirred the creature up. It scuttled
+painfully. Little Jon laughed, lost interest, and sighed. His heart felt
+empty. He turned over and lay on his back. There was a scent of honey
+from the lime trees in flower, and in the sky the blue was beautiful,
+with a few white clouds which looked and perhaps tasted like lemon ice.
+He could hear Bob playing: “Way down upon de Suwannee ribber” on his
+concertina, and it made him nice and sad. He turned over again and put
+his ear to the ground—Indians could hear things coming ever so far—but
+he could hear nothing—only the concertina! And almost instantly he did
+hear a grinding sound, a faint toot. Yes! it was a car—coming—coming!
+Up he jumped. Should he wait in the porch, or rush upstairs, and as
+they came in, shout: “Look!” and slide slowly down the banisters, head
+foremost? Should he? The car turned in at the drive. It was too late!
+And he only waited, jumping up and down in his excitement. The car came
+quickly, whirred, and stopped. His father got out, exactly like life. He
+bent down and little Jon bobbed up—they bumped. His father said,
+
+“Bless us! Well, old man, you are brown!” Just as he would; and the
+sense of expectation—of something wanted—bubbled unextinguished in
+little Jon. Then, with a long, shy look he saw his mother, in a blue
+dress, with a blue motor scarf over her cap and hair, smiling. He jumped
+as high as ever he could, twined his legs behind her back, and hugged.
+He heard her gasp, and felt her hugging back. His eyes, very dark blue
+just then, looked into hers, very dark brown, till her lips closed on
+his eyebrow, and, squeezing with all his might, he heard her creak and
+laugh, and say:
+
+“You are strong, Jon!”
+
+He slid down at that, and rushed into the hall, dragging her by the
+hand.
+
+While he was eating his jam beneath the oak tree, he noticed things
+about his mother that he had never seemed to see before, her cheeks for
+instance were creamy, there were silver threads in her dark goldy hair,
+her throat had no knob in it like Bella's, and she went in and out
+softly. He noticed, too, some little lines running away from the corners
+of her eyes, and a nice darkness under them. She was ever so beautiful,
+more beautiful than “Da” or Mademoiselle, or “Auntie” June or even
+“Auntie” Holly, to whom he had taken a fancy; even more beautiful than
+Bella, who had pink cheeks and came out too suddenly in places. This new
+beautifulness of his mother had a kind of particular importance, and he
+ate less than he had expected to.
+
+When tea was over his father wanted him to walk round the gardens.
+He had a long conversation with his father about things in general,
+avoiding his private life—Sir Lamorac, the Austrians, and the emptiness
+he had felt these last three days, now so suddenly filled up. His father
+told him of a place called Glensofantrim, where he and his mother had
+been; and of the little people who came out of the ground there when it
+was very quiet. Little Jon came to a halt, with his heels apart.
+
+“Do you really believe they do, Daddy?” “No, Jon, but I thought you
+might.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“You're younger than I; and they're fairies.” Little Jon squared the
+dimple in his chin.
+
+“I don't believe in fairies. I never see any.” “Ha!” said his father.
+
+“Does Mum?”
+
+His father smiled his funny smile.
+
+“No; she only sees Pan.”
+
+“What's Pan?”
+
+“The Goaty God who skips about in wild and beautiful places.”
+
+“Was he in Glensofantrim?”
+
+“Mum said so.”
+
+Little Jon took his heels up, and led on.
+
+“Did you see him?”
+
+“No; I only saw Venus Anadyomene.”
+
+Little Jon reflected; Venus was in his book about the Greeks and
+Trojans. Then Anna was her Christian and Dyomene her surname?
+
+But it appeared, on inquiry, that it was one word, which meant rising
+from the foam.
+
+“Did she rise from the foam in Glensofantrim?”
+
+“Yes; every day.”
+
+“What is she like, Daddy?”
+
+“Like Mum.”
+
+“Oh! Then she must be...” but he stopped at that, rushed at a wall,
+scrambled up, and promptly scrambled down again. The discovery that his
+mother was beautiful was one which he felt must absolutely be kept to
+himself. His father's cigar, however, took so long to smoke, that at
+last he was compelled to say:
+
+“I want to see what Mum's brought home. Do you mind, Daddy?”
+
+He pitched the motive low, to absolve him from unmanliness, and was a
+little disconcerted when his father looked at him right through, heaved
+an important sigh, and answered:
+
+“All right, old man, you go and love her.”
+
+He went, with a pretence of slowness, and then rushed, to make up. He
+entered her bedroom from his own, the door being open. She was still
+kneeling before a trunk, and he stood close to her, quite still.
+
+She knelt up straight, and said:
+
+“Well, Jon?”
+
+“I thought I'd just come and see.”
+
+Having given and received another hug, he mounted the window-seat, and
+tucking his legs up under him watched her unpack. He derived a pleasure
+from the operation such as he had not yet known, partly because she was
+taking out things which looked suspicious, and partly because he liked
+to look at her. She moved differently from anybody else, especially from
+Bella; she was certainly the refinedest-looking person he had ever seen.
+She finished the trunk at last, and knelt down in front of him.
+
+“Have you missed us, Jon?”
+
+Little Jon nodded, and having thus admitted his feelings, continued to
+nod.
+
+“But you had 'Auntie' June?”
+
+“Oh! she had a man with a cough.”
+
+His mother's face changed, and looked almost angry. He added hastily:
+
+“He was a poor man, Mum; he coughed awfully; I—I liked him.”
+
+His mother put her hands behind his waist.
+
+“You like everybody, Jon?”
+
+Little Jon considered.
+
+“Up to a point,” he said: “Auntie June took me to church one Sunday.”
+
+“To church? Oh!”
+
+“She wanted to see how it would affect me.” “And did it?”
+
+“Yes. I came over all funny, so she took me home again very quick. I
+wasn't sick after all. I went to bed and had hot brandy and water, and
+read The Boys of Beechwood. It was scrumptious.”
+
+His mother bit her lip.
+
+“When was that?”
+
+“Oh! about—a long time ago—I wanted her to take me again, but she
+wouldn't. You and Daddy never go to church, do you?”
+
+“No, we don't.”
+
+“Why don't you?”
+
+His mother smiled.
+
+“Well, dear, we both of us went when we were little. Perhaps we went
+when we were too little.”
+
+“I see,” said little Jon, “it's dangerous.”
+
+“You shall judge for yourself about all those things as you grow up.”
+
+Little Jon replied in a calculating manner:
+
+“I don't want to grow up, much. I don't want to go to school.” A sudden
+overwhelming desire to say something more, to say what he really felt,
+turned him red. “I—I want to stay with you, and be your lover, Mum.”
+
+Then with an instinct to improve the situation, he added quickly “I
+don't want to go to bed to-night, either. I'm simply tired of going to
+bed, every night.”
+
+“Have you had any more nightmares?”
+
+“Only about one. May I leave the door open into your room to-night,
+Mum?”
+
+“Yes, just a little.” Little Jon heaved a sigh of satisfaction.
+
+“What did you see in Glensofantrim?”
+
+“Nothing but beauty, darling.”
+
+“What exactly is beauty?”
+
+“What exactly is—Oh! Jon, that's a poser.”
+
+“Can I see it, for instance?” His mother got up, and sat beside him.
+“You do, every day. The sky is beautiful, the stars, and moonlit nights,
+and then the birds, the flowers, the trees—they're all beautiful. Look
+out of the window—there's beauty for you, Jon.”
+
+“Oh! yes, that's the view. Is that all?”
+
+“All? no. The sea is wonderfully beautiful, and the waves, with their
+foam flying back.”
+
+“Did you rise from it every day, Mum?”
+
+His mother smiled. “Well, we bathed.”
+
+Little Jon suddenly reached out and caught her neck in his hands.
+
+“I know,” he said mysteriously, “you're it, really, and all the rest is
+make-believe.”
+
+She sighed, laughed, said: “Oh! Jon!”
+
+Little Jon said critically:
+
+“Do you think Bella beautiful, for instance? I hardly do.”
+
+“Bella is young; that's something.”
+
+“But you look younger, Mum. If you bump against Bella she hurts.”
+
+“I don't believe 'Da' was beautiful, when I come to think of it; and
+Mademoiselle's almost ugly.”
+
+“Mademoiselle has a very nice face.” “Oh! yes; nice. I love your little
+rays, Mum.”
+
+“Rays?”
+
+Little Jon put his finger to the outer corner of her eye.
+
+“Oh! Those? But they're a sign of age.”
+
+“They come when you smile.”
+
+“But they usen't to.”
+
+“Oh! well, I like them. Do you love me, Mum?”
+
+“I do—I do love you, darling.”
+
+“Ever so?”
+
+“Ever so!”
+
+“More than I thought you did?”
+
+“Much—much more.”
+
+“Well, so do I; so that makes it even.”
+
+Conscious that he had never in his life so given himself away, he felt
+a sudden reaction to the manliness of Sir Lamorac, Dick Needham, Huck
+Finn, and other heroes.
+
+“Shall I show you a thing or two?” he said; and slipping out of her
+arms, he stood on his head. Then, fired by her obvious admiration, he
+mounted the bed, and threw himself head foremost from his feet on to
+his back, without touching anything with his hands. He did this several
+times.
+
+That evening, having inspected what they had brought, he stayed up to
+dinner, sitting between them at the little round table they used when
+they were alone. He was extremely excited. His mother wore a French-grey
+dress, with creamy lace made out of little scriggly roses, round her
+neck, which was browner than the lace. He kept looking at her, till at
+last his father's funny smile made him suddenly attentive to his slice
+of pineapple. It was later than he had ever stayed up, when he went to
+bed. His mother went up with him, and he undressed very slowly so as to
+keep her there. When at last he had nothing on but his pyjamas, he said:
+
+“Promise you won't go while I say my prayers!”
+
+“I promise.”
+
+Kneeling down and plunging his face into the bed, little Jon hurried
+up, under his breath, opening one eye now and then, to see her standing
+perfectly still with a smile on her face. “Our Father”—so went his last
+prayer, “which art in heaven, hallowed be thy Mum, thy Kingdom Mum—on
+Earth as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily Mum and forgive us
+our trespasses on earth as it is in heaven and trespass against us, for
+thine is the evil the power and the glory for ever and ever. Amum! Look
+out!” He sprang, and for a long minute remained in her arms. Once in
+bed, he continued to hold her hand.
+
+“You won't shut the door any more than that, will you? Are you going to
+be long, Mum?”
+
+“I must go down and play to Daddy.”
+
+“Oh! well, I shall hear you.”
+
+“I hope not; you must go to sleep.”
+
+“I can sleep any night.”
+
+“Well, this is just a night like any other.”
+
+“Oh! no—it's extra special.”
+
+“On extra special nights one always sleeps soundest.”
+
+“But if I go to sleep, Mum, I shan't hear you come up.”
+
+“Well, when I do, I'll come in and give you a kiss, then if you're awake
+you'll know, and if you're not you'll still know you've had one.”
+
+Little Jon sighed, “All right!” he said: “I suppose I must put up with
+that. Mum?”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“What was her name that Daddy believes in? Venus Anna Diomedes?”
+
+“Oh! my angel! Anadyomene.”
+
+“Yes! but I like my name for you much better.”
+
+“What is yours, Jon?”
+
+Little Jon answered shyly:
+
+“Guinevere! it's out of the Round Table—I've only just thought of it,
+only of course her hair was down.”
+
+His mother's eyes, looking past him, seemed to float.
+
+“You won't forget to come, Mum?”
+
+“Not if you'll go to sleep.”
+
+“That's a bargain, then.” And little Jon screwed up his eyes.
+
+He felt her lips on his forehead, heard her footsteps; opened his eyes
+to see her gliding through the doorway, and, sighing, screwed them up
+again.
+
+Then Time began.
+
+For some ten minutes of it he tried loyally to sleep, counting a great
+number of thistles in a row, “Da's” old recipe for bringing slumber. He
+seemed to have been hours counting. It must, he thought, be nearly time
+for her to come up now. He threw the bedclothes back. “I'm hot!” he
+said, and his voice sounded funny in the darkness, like someone else's.
+Why didn't she come? He sat up. He must look! He got out of bed, went to
+the window and pulled the curtain a slice aside. It wasn't dark, but he
+couldn't tell whether because of daylight or the moon, which was very
+big. It had a funny, wicked face, as if laughing at him, and he did not
+want to look at it. Then, remembering that his mother had said moonlit
+nights were beautiful, he continued to stare out in a general way. The
+trees threw thick shadows, the lawn looked like spilt milk, and a long,
+long way he could see; oh! very far; right over the world, and it all
+looked different and swimmy. There was a lovely smell, too, in his open
+window.
+
+'I wish I had a dove like Noah!' he thought.
+
+“The moony moon was round and bright, It shone and shone and made it
+light.”
+
+After that rhyme, which came into his head all at once, he became
+conscious of music, very soft-lovely! Mum playing! He bethought himself
+of a macaroon he had, laid up in his chest of drawers, and, getting it,
+came back to the window. He leaned out, now munching, now holding his
+jaws to hear the music better. “Da” used to say that angels played on
+harps in heaven; but it wasn't half so lovely as Mum playing in the
+moony night, with him eating a macaroon. A cockchafer buzzed by, a moth
+flew in his face, the music stopped, and little Jon drew his head in.
+She must be coming! He didn't want to be found awake. He got back into
+bed and pulled the clothes nearly over his head; but he had left a
+streak of moonlight coming in. It fell across the floor, near the foot
+of the bed, and he watched it moving ever so slowly towards him, as if
+it were alive. The music began again, but he could only just hear it
+now; sleepy music, pretty—sleepy—music—sleepy—slee.....
+
+And time slipped by, the music rose, fell, ceased; the moonbeam crept
+towards his face. Little Jon turned in his sleep till he lay on his
+back, with one brown fist still grasping the bedclothes. The corners of
+his eyes twitched—he had begun to dream. He dreamed he was drinking milk
+out of a pan that was the moon, opposite a great black cat which watched
+him with a funny smile like his father's. He heard it whisper: “Don't
+drink too much!” It was the cat's milk, of course, and he put out his
+hand amicably to stroke the creature; but it was no longer there; the
+pan had become a bed, in which he was lying, and when he tried to get
+out he couldn't find the edge; he couldn't find it—he—he—couldn't get
+out! It was dreadful!
+
+He whimpered in his sleep. The bed had begun to go round too; it was
+outside him and inside him; going round and round, and getting fiery,
+and Mother Lee out of Cast up by the Sea was stirring it! Oh! so
+horrible she looked! Faster and faster!—till he and the bed and Mother
+Lee and the moon and the cat were all one wheel going round and round
+and up and up—awful—awful—awful!
+
+He shrieked.
+
+A voice saying: “Darling, darling!” got through the wheel, and he awoke,
+standing on his bed, with his eyes wide open.
+
+There was his mother, with her hair like Guinevere's, and, clutching
+her, he buried his face in it.
+
+“Oh! oh!”
+
+“It's all right, treasure. You're awake now. There! There! It's
+nothing!”
+
+But little Jon continued to say: “Oh! oh!”
+
+Her voice went on, velvety in his ear:
+
+“It was the moonlight, sweetheart, coming on your face.”
+
+Little Jon burbled into her nightgown
+
+“You said it was beautiful. Oh!”
+
+“Not to sleep in, Jon. Who let it in? Did you draw the curtains?”
+
+“I wanted to see the time; I—I looked out, I—I heard you playing, Mum;
+I—I ate my macaroon.” But he was growing slowly comforted; and the
+instinct to excuse his fear revived within him.
+
+“Mother Lee went round in me and got all fiery,” he mumbled.
+
+“Well, Jon, what can you expect if you eat macaroons after you've gone
+to bed?”
+
+“Only one, Mum; it made the music ever so more beautiful. I was waiting
+for you—I nearly thought it was to-morrow.”
+
+“My ducky, it's only just eleven now.”
+
+Little Jon was silent, rubbing his nose on her neck.
+
+“Mum, is Daddy in your room?”
+
+“Not to-night.”
+
+“Can I come?”
+
+“If you wish, my precious.”
+
+Half himself again, little Jon drew back.
+
+“You look different, Mum; ever so younger.”
+
+“It's my hair, darling.”
+
+Little Jon laid hold of it, thick, dark gold, with a few silver threads.
+
+“I like it,” he said: “I like you best of all like this.”
+
+Taking her hand, he had begun dragging her towards the door. He shut it
+as they passed, with a sigh of relief.
+
+“Which side of the bed do you like, Mum?”
+
+“The left side.”
+
+“All right.”
+
+Wasting no time, giving her no chance to change her mind, little Jon got
+into the bed, which seemed much softer than his own. He heaved another
+sigh, screwed his head into the pillow and lay examining the battle of
+chariots and swords and spears which always went on outside blankets,
+where the little hairs stood up against the light.
+
+“It wasn't anything, really, was it?” he said.
+
+From before her glass his mother answered:
+
+“Nothing but the moon and your imagination heated up. You mustn't get so
+excited, Jon.”
+
+But, still not quite in possession of his nerves, little Jon answered
+boastfully:
+
+“I wasn't afraid, really, of course!” And again he lay watching the
+spears and chariots. It all seemed very long.
+
+“Oh! Mum, do hurry up!”
+
+“Darling, I have to plait my hair.”
+
+“Oh! not to-night. You'll only have to unplait it again to-morrow. I'm
+sleepy now; if you don't come, I shan't be sleepy soon.”
+
+His mother stood up white and flowey before the winged mirror: he could
+see three of her, with her neck turned and her hair bright under the
+light, and her dark eyes smiling. It was unnecessary, and he said:
+
+“Do come, Mum; I'm waiting.”
+
+“Very well, my love, I'll come.”
+
+Little Jon closed his eyes. Everything was turning out most
+satisfactory, only she must hurry up! He felt the bed shake, she was
+getting in. And, still with his eyes closed, he said sleepily: “It's
+nice, isn't it?”
+
+He heard her voice say something, felt her lips touching his nose, and,
+snuggling up beside her who lay awake and loved him with her thoughts,
+he fell into the dreamless sleep, which rounded off his past.
+
+
+
+
+
+TO LET
+
+“From out the fatal loins of those two foes A pair of star-crossed
+lovers take their life.” —Romeo and Juliet.
+
+TO CHARLES SCRIBNER
+
+
+
+
+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 favour 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 Labour, 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-four, 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 gabby; 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 toward 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 forever, 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 gungrey 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' 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
+sear 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
+civilization 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 widely 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 sluglike 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 filigree figure
+from a clock when the hour strikes. On the screen opposite the alcove
+was a large canvas with a great many square tomato-coloured 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 by
+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. 'Crazylooking 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, bought
+no clothes, lost seven pounds in weight; he didn't know what more he
+could have done at his age. Indeed, thinking it over, 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: “Hallo, Father! Here you are!” precisely as if he
+had been keeping her waiting.
+
+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 colour,
+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 extravagant, 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, she 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 humour
+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 hand-kerchief!' 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 great-nephews and great-nieces, 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' 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, greyblue 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 property. 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 tomorrow 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 Dartie, 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 afterward 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 co-educated, 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 downstairs 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 Mapleduram—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 absentmindedness, 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' 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' 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 toward 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 always 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, tile 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 knickknacks; 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 bees' 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
+upstairs. 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 loud.
+
+“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 sleepin'. 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 bannisters, 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, rather needlessly, 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 had 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,” Val said suddenly, “wants rousing; she doesn't get her hind
+legs under her uphill. 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 Nutter. 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 favourable 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
+English-women—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,” said 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 would dine with his father at
+the Iseeum Club.
+
+“I used to go racing with your father,” 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't care for it. I'm a yachtin' man. I don't 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 toward 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't 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 grand-father 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-was 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 flap, 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. 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 toward 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 ageing 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 the 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, sub-consciousness, and emanation from the storehouse of
+this world can't account for just as well. Wish I could! Wishes father
+thought but they don't breed evidence.” Holly had pressed her lips again
+to his forehead with the 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 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
+now, judging 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 nightlight, 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. And from his window he sat and 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 cart-wheel. 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 toward historical research,
+when his sister's voice said gently from the doorway:
+
+“Come along, you two,” and he rose, his heart pushing him toward
+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
+sundial 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 forever. 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 toward 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 toward Chanctonbury Ring; a sparkle of
+far sea came into view, a sparrow-hawk 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 oer 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 from
+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 realize 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 forever,
+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 Mapleduram. 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' 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
+saved 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 a 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 Americophobe, and
+bought an 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 generalization,
+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 toward 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 toward 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 wreath 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. He 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 scrutinized 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 pictures?”
+
+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 Velasquez 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 inglenook
+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
+tarpon-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 school-girl 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 on to the drive, and stood there listening for the car. All
+was still and Sundayfied; 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—the
+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 penknife
+and puffed off. He, whose nature was essentially averse from 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 his 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
+bookstall, 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 book-stall, 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 I 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 door 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 they only get into another hole. 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 toward the hedge, where
+the may-flower, 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; criticized 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 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!” said Mont; “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 dovecot, 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! Monsieur
+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.”
+
+“I thought you might be. Will you get me a quite plain parasol?”
+
+“What colour?”
+
+“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
+upon 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
+into 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 she 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 stroll, to a teasing little tune in his
+beard. What was it? Oh! yes, from “Rigoletto”: “Donna a 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
+criss-cross 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 hobby-horses 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 naive. 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, watersellers, 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 no 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 honeycomb 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 road-man, 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.
+
+Toward 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 toward 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 the 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.
+June 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 dancer's 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 lithe 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 toward 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; whether 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 sympathize.
+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 toward 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 Philip 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 hornet's 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 cool 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 deep 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
+water 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 signs 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, subtle, 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 ran 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
+toward 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 toward
+the Iseeum Club, to which he had just been elected.
+
+“Hallo! young man! Where are you off to?”
+
+Jon gushed. “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.” 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 free-masonical 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 his 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 'To-morrow we die' feeling. That's
+what old George meant about my Uncle Soames. He doesn't mean to die
+to-morrow.”
+
+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 enquiry 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, like 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 thirty-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 oaktree; 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 a
+remark of Fleur's: “He's like the hosts of Midian—he prowls and prowls
+around”; 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 such
+a mood of disillusionment, so that 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.” Fleur opened
+her eyes. “What do you mean?”
+
+Monsieur Profond moved his sleek head as if to minimize 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 was unable to withstand a rush of nervous
+curiosity. “Tell me what you heard.”
+
+“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 afterward. 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-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
+guttered 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; against 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 and 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 toward 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. His mind was essentially
+equilibristic in material matters, and his way of putting the national
+situation difficult to refute in a world composed of human beings. 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 them in the soup.
+
+The offices of Cuthcott, Kingson and 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 today!”
+
+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 on to 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 lefthand 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 chain, 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 afterward 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.
+
+“Ah!” 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 from 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—”
+
+“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. There was always something at the back of
+everything! And he made his way toward 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 toward 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
+'69, 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
+postmark. 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 reread 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 around 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 toward 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 afterward,” 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 around, 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
+summerhouse 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 never
+been much more than a mistress, and he was getting indifferent to
+that side of things! It was odd how, with all this ingrained care for
+moderation and secure investment, Soames ever put his emotional eggs
+into one basket. First Irene—now Fleur. He was dimly 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 him 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—Nature was a queer
+thing! The thunder rumbled and crashed, travelling east along a 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—-! But 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 toward 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 afterward, 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
+sea-piece, 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 eyes. 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 Christ-like silence which admirably
+suited his youthful, round, broad cheek-boned 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 Christ-like 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 best 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 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 little
+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!'
+
+“What do you want me to do then?” 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 afterward 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 tomorrow. 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 toward the
+door.
+
+“Good-bye!”
+
+“Good-bye!... Little piece of fashion!” muttered June, closing the
+door. “That family!” And she marched back toward her studio. Boris
+Strumolowski had regained his Christ-like 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 afterward 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?”
+
+“Do I?”
+
+“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
+toward 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 schoolfellows. 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 weekend 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—!”
+
+“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 on to 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-goodbye!”
+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 gushed, 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 hayfields fanned her still
+gushed 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.—THE 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 inaccessibly entrenched in a brown study; her father contemplating
+fate in 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.
+
+“Poor 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'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.”
+
+His answer was a sigh.
+
+“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 toward 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
+upstairs. 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 little 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, please?”
+
+The Austrian shook her head.
+
+“Your father a very nice old 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 Yes, 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?”
+
+“Yes, 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 shall
+never forget his letting me go 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, then, more than the most elaborate explanations. So
+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? You know, 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. Everybody—everybody was
+against him and Fleur! It all strengthened the appeal of her words:
+“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! Having promenaded 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's! 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 voice 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 a 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—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, for some minutes, 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 pace. 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 rewards
+were—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 ever-welcome 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 cobblestones, and stinking straw on the
+floor of your cab. And old Timothy—what could he not have told 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 should
+n'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 bowling 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 white bait, 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
+corn-flowers—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. Irene's face was 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 his father
+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 and seeming to search his own,
+seeming to speak. “Are you facing it, Jo? It's for you to decide. She's
+only a woman!” Ah! 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. The stars were 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
+lamp-light 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 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 grandfather 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, not 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 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 attached to her, devotedly attached.
+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 possibly he really meant it, I don't know; but 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 toward
+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 stiffing 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 to 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!”
+
+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.”
+
+She raised her face to his, and in sight of the big house's many
+creepered windows, he kissed her.
+
+
+
+
+
+II.—CONFESSION
+
+Late that same afternoon, Jolyon had a nap in the old armchair. Face
+down on his knee was La Rotisserie de la Refine Pedauque, 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. Jon! 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? Father, 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
+frighten 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
+unfair, 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 rosery,
+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 over done it!' he
+thought: 'by Jove! I've overdone it—after all!' He staggered up toward
+the terrace, dragged himself up the steps, and fell against the wall of
+the house. He leaned there gasping, his face buried in the honey-suckle
+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 words: “It was Fleur's father that she married,” everything
+seemed to spin 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 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 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 toward 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. It had struck him because he had never heard
+any one else suggest it. 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 nice-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.
+
+“Ah! 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—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 doors 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 Bidicott.”
+
+“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 arriving 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 that peacocking—wasting time and money; there was nothing in
+it!
+
+The instinct which had made and kept the English 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 tack
+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 wrote 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.”
+
+So! Her deception had found her out. But Jon—she felt—had forgiven that.
+It was what he said of his mother which caused the guttering 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 afterward to “a most amusing little play, 'The
+Beggar's Opera'” and would they bring a man to make four? Soames,
+whose attitude toward 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 very unpleasant, the whole thing very 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
+toward 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 the 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 such 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 entrusted
+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 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 endorse 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 silkworms, 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 dandies 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.”
+
+“Yes, 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.”
+
+Her eyes gleamed, she swayed toward him. “Jon—I love you! Don't give
+me up! If you do, I don't know what—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 whispered, “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 again in the past—barely three months
+back; or away forward, years, in the future. The present with this
+dark 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 afterward.”
+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. 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 Soanies; “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. 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
+clinched their union. And, now, he was going to clinch 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
+pigheaded 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 fautigue.” 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 topsy-turvy
+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 seven-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
+corners 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, 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
+toward 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 faring
+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 refection 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 toward the door.
+
+Fleur darted after him.
+
+“He gives me up? You mean that? Father!”
+
+Soames turned and forced himself to answer:
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Oh!” cried Fleur. “What did you—what could you have done in those old
+days?”
+
+The breathless sense of really monstrous injustice cut the power of
+speech in Soames' throat. What had he done! What had they done to him!
+
+And with quite unconscious dignity he put his hand on his breast, and
+looked at her.
+
+“It's a shame!” cried Fleur passionately.
+
+Soames went out. He mounted, slow and icy, to his picture gallery, and
+paced among his treasures. Outrageous! Oh! Outrageous! She was spoiled!
+Ah! and who had spoiled her? He stood still before the Goya copy.
+Accustomed to her own way in everything. Flower of his life! And
+now that she couldn't have it! He turned to the window for some air.
+Daylight was dying, the moon rising, gold behind the poplars! What sound
+was that? Why! That piano thing! A dark tune, with a thrum and a throb!
+She had set it going—what comfort could she get from that? His eyes
+caught movement down there beyond the lawn, under the trellis of rambler
+roses and young acacia-trees, where the moonlight fell. There she was,
+roaming up and down. His heart gave a little sickening jump. What would
+she do under this blow? How could he tell? What did he know of her—he
+had only loved her all his life—looked on her as the apple of his eye!
+He knew nothing—had no notion. There she was—and that dark tune—and the
+river gleaming in the moonlight!
+
+'I must go out,' he thought.
+
+He hastened down to the drawing-room, lighted just as he had left it,
+with the piano thrumming out that waltz, or fox-trot, or whatever they
+called it in these days, and passed through on to the verandah.
+
+Where could he watch, without her seeing him? And he stole down through
+the fruit garden to the boat-house. He was between her and the river
+now, and his heart felt lighter. She was his daughter, and Annette's—she
+wouldn't do anything foolish; but there it was—he didn't know! From the
+boat house window he could see the last acacia and the spin of her
+skirt when she turned in her restless march. That tune had run down at
+last—thank goodness! He crossed the floor and looked through the farther
+window at the water slow-flowing past the lilies. It made little bubbles
+against them, bright where a moon-streak fell. He remembered suddenly
+that early morning when he had slept on the house-boat after his father
+died, and she had just been born—nearly nineteen years ago! Even now he
+recalled the unaccustomed world when he woke up, the strange feeling it
+had given him. That day the second passion of his life began—for this
+girl of his, roaming under the acacias. What a comfort she had been to
+him! And all the soreness and sense of outrage left him. If he could
+make her happy again, he didn't care! An owl flew, queeking, queeking; a
+bat flitted by; the moonlight brightened and broadened on the water. How
+long was she going to roam about like this! He went back to the window,
+and suddenly saw her coming down to the bank. She stood quite close, on
+the landing-stage. And Soames watched, clenching his hands. Should he
+speak to her? His excitement was intense. The stillness of her figure,
+its youth, its absorption in despair, in longing, in—itself. He would
+always remember it, moonlit like that; and the faint sweet reek of the
+river and the shivering of the willow leaves. She had everything in the
+world that he could give her, except the one thing that she could not
+have because of him! The perversity of things hurt him at that moment,
+as might a fish-bone in his throat.
+
+Then, with an infinite relief, he saw her turn back toward the house.
+What could he give her to make amends? Pearls, travel, horses, other
+young men—anything she wanted—that he might lose the memory of her young
+figure lonely by the water! There! She had set that tune going again!
+Why—it was a mania! Dark, thrumming, faint, travelling from the house.
+It was as though she had said: “If 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 toward 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 upstairs 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 tomorrow? 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 had to
+mount to make room for all those so much more newly rich. In that
+quiet but tasteful ceremony in Hanover Square, and afterward 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 forgers 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 scrutinized 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
+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-bolshevized 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
+under glass with blue Australian butteries' 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 “amusing,” 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 amusing—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.” He 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 him 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
+sear 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 said, “she always told Jon he could do
+as he wished.”
+
+Fleur smiled bitterly. “Tell me, didn't she spoil your life too?” June
+looked up. “Nobody can spoil a life, my dear. That's nonsense. Things
+happen, but we bob up.”
+
+With a sort of terror she saw the girl sink on her knees and bury her
+face in the djibbah. A strangled sob mounted to June's ears.
+
+“It's all right—all right,” she 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 afterward! 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 wash-stand.
+
+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!” said Francie, and her 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. 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 OLD 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
+afterward out of the yearly Christmas bottle, which would not be needed
+now. Ah! dear! She had been there five-and-forty years and Smither
+three-and-forty! 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 workbox; 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 afterward 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
+Mapleduram 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 net 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 use 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 eight millions. 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 afterward—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 heart's 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 mementoes. These were the only restrictions upon bidding
+characterised by an almost tragic languor. 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 watercolours 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 too 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 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 full, they said—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, 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 was
+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 toward 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, and 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 space
+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 bluish 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 defected—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 yewtree green so dark, and the sickle of a moon
+pale in the sky.
+
+He might wish and wish and never get it—the beauty and the loving in the
+world!
+
+
+
+cutpages (132K)” src=
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Forsyte Saga, Awakening and To Let, by
+John Galsworthy
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