initial commit of ebook 3817HEADmain

1 files changed, 11248 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/3817.txt b/3817.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dae9773
--- /dev/null
+++ b/3817.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11248 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of To Let, 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: To Let
+
+Author: John Galsworthy
+
+Posting Date: May 28, 2009 [EBook #3817]
+Release Date: March, 2003
+First Posted: September 23, 2001
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TO LET ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Franks, Robert Rowe and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TO LET
+
+
+by
+
+John Galsworthy
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S NOTE
+
+With this volume, The Forsyte Saga--that series comprising "The Man of
+Property," "Indian Summer of a Forsyte" (from the volume "Five Tales"),
+"In Chancery," and "Awakening"--comes to an end. J. G.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+PART I
+
+    I. ENCOUNTER
+   II. FINE FLEUR FORSYTE
+  III. AT ROBIN HILL
+   IV. THE MAUSOLEUM
+    V. THE NATIVE HEATH
+   VI. JON
+  VII. FLEUR
+ VIII. IDYLL ON GRASS
+   IX. GOYA
+    X. TRIO
+   XI. DUET
+  XII. CAPRICE
+
+PART II
+
+    I. MOTHER AND SON
+   II. FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS
+  III. MEETINGS
+   IV. IN GREEN STREET
+    V. PURELY FORSYTE AFFAIRS
+   VI. SOAMES' PRIVATE LIFE
+  VII. JUNE TAKES A HAND
+ VIII. THE BIT BETWEEN THE TEETH
+   IX. FAT IN THE FIRE
+    X. DECISION
+   XI. TIMOTHY PROPHESIES
+
+PART III
+
+    I. OLD JOLYON WALKS
+   II. CONFESSION
+  III. IRENE!
+   IV. SOAMES COGITATES
+    V. THE FIXED IDEA
+   VI. DESPERATE
+  VII. EMBASSY
+ VIII. THE DARK TUNE
+   IX. UNDER THE OAK-TREE
+    X. FLEUR'S WEDDING
+   XI. THE LAST OF THE FORSYTES
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+
+
+I
+
+ENCOUNTER
+
+
+Soames Forsyte emerged from the Knightsbridge Hotel, where he was
+staying, in the afternoon of the 12th of May, 1920, with the intention
+of visiting a collection of pictures in a Gallery off Cork Street, and
+looking into the Future. He walked. Since the War he never took a cab
+if he could help it. Their drivers were, in his view, an uncivil lot,
+though, now that the War was over and supply beginning to exceed demand
+again, getting more civil in accordance with the custom of human
+nature. Still, he had not forgiven them, deeply identifying them with
+gloomy memories and, now dimly, like all members of their class, with
+revolution. The considerable anxiety he had passed through during the
+War, and the more considerable anxiety he had since undergone in the
+Peace, had produced psychological consequences in a tenacious nature.
+He had, mentally, so frequently experienced ruin, that he had ceased to
+believe in its material probability. Paying away four thousand a year
+in income and super-tax, one could not very well be worse off! A
+fortune of a quarter of a million, encumbered only by a wife and one
+daughter, and very diversely invested, afforded substantial guarantee
+even against that "wildcat notion"--a levy on capital. And as to
+confiscation of war profits, he was entirely in favor of it, for he had
+none, and "serve the beggars right!" The price of pictures, moreover,
+had, if anything, gone up, and he had done better with his collection
+since the War began than ever before. Air-raids, also, had acted
+beneficially on a spirit congenitally cautious, and hardened a
+character already dogged. To be in danger of being entirely dispersed
+inclined one to be less apprehensive of the more partial dispersions
+involved in levies and taxation, while the habit of condemning the
+impudence of the Germans had led naturally to condemning that of Labor,
+if not openly at least in the sanctuary of his soul.
+
+He walked. There was, moreover, time to spare, for Fleur was to meet
+him at the Gallery at four o'clock, and it was as yet but half past
+two. It was good for him to walk--his liver was a little constricted
+and his nerves rather on edge. His wife was always out when she was in
+Town, and his daughter WOULD flibberty-gibbet all over the place like
+most young women since the War. Still, he must be thankful that she had
+been too young to do anything in that War itself. Not, of course, that
+he had not supported the War from its inception, with all his soul, but
+between that and supporting it with the bodies of his wife and
+daughter, there had been a gap fixed by something old-fashioned within
+him which abhorred emotional extravagance. He had, for instance,
+strongly objected to Annette, so attractive, and in 1914 only
+thirty-five, going to her native France, her "chere patrie" as, under
+the stimulus of war, she had begun to call it, to nurse her "braves
+poilus," forsooth! Ruining her health and her looks! As if she were
+really a nurse! He had put a stopper on it. Let her do needlework for
+them at home, or knit! She had not gone, therefore, and had never been
+quite the same woman since. A bad tendency of hers to mock at him, not
+openly, but in continual little ways, had grown. As for Fleur, the War
+had resolved the vexed problem whether or not she should go to school.
+She was better away from her mother in her war mood, from the chance of
+air-raids, and the impetus to do extravagant things; so he had placed
+her in a seminary as far West as had seemed to him compatible with
+excellence, and had missed her horribly. Fleur! He had never regretted
+the somewhat outlandish name by which at her birth he had decided so
+suddenly to call her--marked concession though it had been to the
+French. Fleur! A pretty name--a pretty child! But restless--too
+restless; and wilful! Knowing her power too over her father! Soames
+often reflected on the mistake it was to dote on his daughter. To get
+old and dote! Sixty-five! He was getting on; but he didn't feel it,
+for, fortunately perhaps, considering Annette's youth and good looks,
+his second marriage had turned out a cool affair. He had known but one
+real passion in his life--for that first wife of his--Irene. Yes, and
+that fellow, his Cousin Jolyon, who had gone off with her, was looking
+very shaky, they said. No wonder, at seventy-two, after twenty years of
+a third marriage!
+
+Soames paused a moment in his march to lean over the railings of the
+Row. A suitable spot for reminiscence, half-way between that house in
+Park Lane which had seen his birth and his parents' deaths, and the
+little house in Montpellier Square where thirty-five years ago he had
+enjoyed his first edition of matrimony. Now, after twenty years of his
+second edition, that old tragedy seemed to him like a previous
+existence--which had ended when Fleur was born in place of the son he
+had hoped for. For many years he had ceased regretting, even vaguely,
+the son who had not been born; Fleur filled the bill in his heart.
+After all, she bore his name; and he was not looking forward at all to
+the time when she would change it. Indeed, if he ever thought of such a
+calamity, it was seasoned by the vague feeling that he could make her
+rich enough to purchase perhaps and extinguish the name of the fellow
+who married her--why not, since, as it seemed, women were equal to men
+nowadays? And Soames, secretly convinced that they were not, passed his
+curved hand over his face vigorously, till it reached the comfort of
+his chin. Thanks to abstemious habits, he had not grown fat and flabby;
+his nose was pale and thin, his grey moustache close-clipped, his
+eyesight unimpaired. A slight stoop closened and corrected the
+expansion given to his face by the heightening of his forehead in the
+recession of his grey hair. Little change had Time wrought in the
+"warmest" of the young Forsytes, as the last of the old
+Forsytes--Timothy--now in his hundred and first year, would have
+phrased it.
+
+The shade from the plane-trees fell on his neat Homburg hat; he had
+given up top hats--it was no use attracting attention to wealth in days
+like these. Plane-trees! His thoughts travelled sharply to Madrid--the
+Easter before the War, when, having to make up his mind about that Goya
+picture, he had taken a voyage of discovery to study the painter on his
+spot. The fellow had impressed him--great range, real genius! Highly as
+the chap ranked, he would rank even higher before they had finished
+with him. The second Goya craze would be greater even than the first;
+oh, yes! And he had bought. On that visit he had--as never
+before--commissioned a copy of a fresco painting called "La Vendimia,"
+wherein was the figure of a girl with an arm akimbo, who had reminded
+him of his daughter. He had it now in the Gallery at Mapledurham, and
+rather poor it was--you couldn't copy Goya. He would still look at it,
+however, if his daughter were not there, for the sake of something
+irresistibly reminiscent in the light, erect balance of the figure, the
+width between the arching eyebrows, the eager dreaming of the dark
+eyes. Curious that Fleur should have dark eyes, when his own were
+grey--no pure Forsyte had brown eyes--and her mother's blue! But of
+course her grandmother Lamotte's eyes were dark as treacle!
+
+He began to walk on again towards Hyde Park Corner. No greater change
+in all England than in the Row! Born almost within hail of it, he could
+remember it from 1860 on. Brought there as a child between the
+crinolines to stare at tight-trousered dandies in whiskers, riding with
+a cavalry seat; to watch the doffing of curly-brimmed and white top
+hats; the leisurely air of it all, and the little bow-legged man in a
+long red waistcoat who used to come among the fashion with dogs on
+several strings, and try to sell one to his mother: King Charles
+spaniels, Italian greyhounds, affectionate to her crinoline--you never
+saw them now. You saw no quality of any sort, indeed, just working
+people sitting in dull rows with nothing to stare at but a few young
+bouncing females in pot hats, riding astride, or desultory Colonials
+charging up and down on dismal-looking hacks; with, here and there,
+little girls on ponies, or old gentlemen jogging their livers, or an
+orderly trying a great galumphing cavalry horse; no thoroughbreds, no
+grooms, no bowing, no scraping, no gossip--nothing; only the trees the
+same--the trees indifferent to the generations and declensions of
+mankind. A democratic England--dishevelled, hurried, noisy, and
+seemingly without an apex. And that something fastidious in the soul of
+Soames turned over within him. Gone for ever, the close borough of rank
+and polish! Wealth there was--oh, yes! wealth--he himself was a richer
+man than his father had ever been; but manners, flavour, quality, all
+gone, engulfed in one vast, ugly, shoulder-rubbing, petrol-smelling
+Cheerio. Little half-beaten pockets of gentility and caste lurking here
+and there, dispersed and chetif, as Annette would say; but nothing ever
+again firm and coherent to look up to. And into this new hurly-burly of
+bad manners and loose morals his daughter--flower of his life--was
+flung! And when those Labour chaps got power--if they ever did--the
+worst was yet to come!
+
+He passed out under the archway, at last no longer--thank
+goodness!--disfigured by the gun-grey of its search-light. 'They'd
+better put a search-light on to where they're all going,' he thought,
+'and light up their precious democracy!' And he directed his steps
+along the Club fronts of Piccadilly. George Forsyte, of course, would
+be sitting in the bay window of the Iseeum. The chap was so big now
+that he was there nearly all his time, like some immovable, sardonic,
+humorous eye noting the decline of men and things. And Soames hurried,
+ever constitutionally uneasy beneath his cousin's glance. George, who,
+as he had heard, had written a letter signed "Patriot" in the middle of
+the War, complaining of the Government's hysteria in docking the oats
+of race-horses. Yes, there he was, tall, ponderous, neat, clean-shaven,
+with his smooth hair, hardly thinned, smelling, no doubt, of the best
+hair-wash, and a pink paper in his hand. Well, he didn't change! And
+for perhaps the first time in his life Soames felt a kind of sympathy
+tapping in his waistcoat for that sardonic kinsman. With his weight,
+his perfectly parted hair, and bull-like gaze, he was a guarantee that
+the old order would take some shifting yet. He saw George move the pink
+paper as if inviting him to ascend--the chap must want to ask something
+about his property. It was still under Soames's control; for in the
+adoption of a sleeping partnership at that painful period twenty years
+back when he had divorced Irene, Soames had found himself almost
+insensibly retaining control of all purely Forsyte affairs.
+
+Hesitating for just a moment, he nodded and went in. Since the death of
+his brother-in-law Montague Dartie, in Paris, which no one had quite
+known what to make of, except that it was certainly not suicide--the
+Iseeum Club had seemed more respectable to Soames. George, too, he
+knew, had sown the last of his wild oats, and was committed definitely
+to the joys of the table, eating only of the very best so as to keep
+his weight down, and owning, as he said, "just one or two old screws to
+give me an interest in life." He joined his cousin, therefore, in the
+bay window without the embarrassing sense of indiscretion he had been
+used to feel up there. George put out a well-kept hand.
+
+"Haven't seen you since the War," he said. "How's your wife?"
+
+"Thanks," said Soames coldly, "well enough."
+
+Some hidden jest curved, for a moment, George's fleshy face, and
+gloated from his eye.
+
+"That Belgian chap, Profond," he said, "is a member here now. He's a
+rum customer."
+
+"Quite!" muttered Soames. "What did you want to see me about?"
+
+"Old Timothy; he might go off the hooks at any moment. I suppose he's
+made his Will."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, you or somebody ought to give him a look up--last of the old
+lot; he's a hundred, you know. They say he's like a mummy. Where are
+you goin' to put him? He ought to have a pyramid by rights."
+
+Soames shook his head. "Highgate, the family vault."
+
+"Well, I suppose the old girls would miss him, if he was anywhere else.
+They say he still takes an interest in food. He might last on, you
+know. Don't we GET anything for the old Forsytes? Ten of them--average
+age eighty-eight--I worked it out. That ought to be equal to triplets."
+
+"Is that all?" said Soames. "I must be getting on."
+
+'You unsociable devil,' George's eyes seemed to answer.
+
+"Yes, that's all: Look him up in his mausoleum--the old chap might want
+to prophesy." The grin died on the rich curves of his face, and he
+added: "Haven't you attorneys invented a way yet of dodging this damned
+income tax? It hits the fixed inherited income like the very deuce. I
+used to have two thousand five hundred a year; now I've got a beggarly
+fifteen hundred, and the price of living doubled."
+
+"Ah!" murmured Soames, "the turf's in danger."
+
+Over George's face moved a gleam of sardonic self-defence.
+
+"Well," he said, "they brought me up to do nothing, and here I am in
+the sere and yellow, getting poorer every day. These Labour chaps mean
+to have the lot before they've done. What are you going to do for a
+living when it comes? I shall work a six-hour day teaching politicians
+how to see a joke. Take my tip, Soames; go into Parliament, make sure
+of your four hundred--and employ me."
+
+And, as Soames retired, he resumed his seat in the bay window.
+
+Soames moved along Piccadilly deep in reflections excited by his
+cousin's words. He himself had always been a worker and a saver, George
+always a drone and a spender; and yet, if confiscation once began, it
+was he--the worker and the saver--who would be looted! That was the
+negation of all virtue, the overturning of all Forsyte principles.
+Could civilisation be built on any other? He did not think so. Well,
+they wouldn't confiscate his pictures, for they wouldn't know their
+worth. But what would they be worth, if these maniacs once began to
+milk capital? A drug on the market. 'I don't care about myself,' he
+thought; 'I could live on five hundred a year, and never know the
+difference, at my age.' But Fleur! This fortune, so wisely invested,
+these treasures so carefully chosen and amassed, were all for her. And
+if it should turn out that he couldn't give or leave them to her--well,
+life had no meaning, and what was the use of going in to look at this
+crazy, futuristic stuff with the view of seeing whether it had any
+future?
+
+Arriving at the Gallery off Cork Street, however, he paid his shilling,
+picked up a catalogue, and entered. Some ten persons were prowling
+round. Soames took steps and came on what looked to him like a
+lamp-post bent by collision with a motor omnibus. It was advanced some
+three paces from the wall, and was described in his catalogue as
+"Jupiter." He examined it with curiosity, having recently turned some
+of his attention to sculpture. 'If that's Jupiter,' he thought, 'I
+wonder what Juno's like.' And suddenly he saw her, opposite. She
+appeared to him like nothing so much as a pump with two handles,
+lightly clad in snow. He was still gazing at her, when two of the
+prowlers halted on his left. "Epatant!" he heard one say.
+
+"Jargon!" growled Soames to himself.
+
+The other's boyish voice replied:
+
+"Missed it, old bean; he's pulling your leg. When Jove and Juno created
+he them, he was saying: 'I'll see how much these fools will swallow.'
+And they've lapped up the lot."
+
+"You young duffer! Vospovitch is an innovator. Don't you see that he's
+brought satire into sculpture? The future of plastic art, of music,
+painting, and even architecture, has set in satiric. It was bound to.
+People are tired--the bottom's tumbled out of sentiment."
+
+"Well, I'm quite equal to taking a little interest in beauty. I was
+through the War. You've dropped your handkerchief, sir."
+
+Soames saw a handkerchief held out in front of him. He took it with
+some natural suspicion, and approached it to his nose. It had the right
+scent--of distant Eau de Cologne--and his initials in a corner.
+Slightly reassured, he raised his eyes to the young man's face. It had
+rather fawn-like ears, a laughing mouth, with half a toothbrush growing
+out of it on each side, and small lively eyes, above a normally dressed
+appearance.
+
+"Thank you," he said; and moved by a sort of irritation, added: "Glad
+to hear you like beauty; that's rare, nowadays."
+
+"I dote on it," said the young man; "but you and I are the last of the
+old guard, sir."
+
+Soames smiled.
+
+"If you really care for pictures," he said, "here's my card. I can show
+you some quite good ones any Sunday, if you're down the river and care
+to look in."
+
+"Awfully nice of you, sir. I'll drop in like a bird. My name's
+Mont-Michael." And he took off his hat.
+
+Soames, already regretting his impulse, raised his own slightly in
+response, with a downward look at the young man's companion, who had a
+purple tie, dreadful little slug-like whiskers, and a scornful look--as
+if he were a poet!
+
+It was the first indiscretion he had committed for so long that he went
+and sat down in an alcove. What had possessed him to give his card to a
+rackety young fellow, who went about with a thing like that? And Fleur,
+always at the back of his thoughts, started out like a filagree figure
+from a clock when the hour strikes. On the screen opposite the alcove
+was a large canvas with a great many square tomato-colored blobs on it,
+and nothing else, so far as Soames could see from where he sat. He
+looked at his catalogue: "No. 32--'The Future Town'--Paul Post." 'I
+suppose that's satiric too,' he thought. 'What a thing!' But his second
+impulse was more cautious. It did not do to condemn hurriedly. There
+had been those stripey, streaky creations of Monet's, which had turned
+out such trumps; and then the stippled school; and Gauguin. Why, even
+since the Post-Impressionists there had been one or two painters not to
+be sneezed at. During the thirty-eight years of his connoisseur's life,
+indeed, he had marked so many "movements," seen the tides of taste and
+technique so ebb and flow, that there was really no telling anything
+except that there was money to be made out of every change of fashion.
+This too might quite well be a case where one must subdue primordial
+instinct, or lose the market. He got up and stood before the picture,
+trying hard to see it with the eyes of other people. Above the tomato
+blobs was what he took to be a sunset, till some one passing said:
+"He's got the airplanes wonderfully, don't you think!" Below the tomato
+blobs was a band of white with vertical black stripes, to which he
+could assign no meaning whatever, till some one else came by,
+murmuring: "What expression he gets with his foreground!" Expression?
+Of what? Soames went back to his seat. The thing was "rich," as his
+father would have said, and he wouldn't give a damn for it. Expression!
+Ah! they were all Expressionists now, he had heard, on the Continent.
+So it was coming here too, was it? He remembered the first wave of
+influenza in 1887--or 8--hatched in China, so they said. He wondered
+where this--this Expressionism--had been hatched. The thing was a
+regular disease!
+
+He had become conscious of a woman and a youth standing between him and
+the "Future Town." Their backs were turned; but very suddenly Soames
+put his catalogue before his face, and drawing his hat forward, gazed
+through the slit between. No mistaking that back, elegant as ever
+though the hair above had gone grey. Irene! His divorced wife--Irene!
+And this, no doubt, was her son--by that fellow Jolyon Forsyte--their
+boy, six months older than his own girl! And mumbling over in his mind
+the bitter days of his divorce, he rose to get out of sight, but
+quickly sat down again. She had turned her head to speak to her boy;
+her profile was still so youthful that it made her grey hair seem
+powdery, as if fancy-dressed; and her lips were smiling as Soames,
+first possessor of them, had never seen them smile. Grudgingly he
+admitted her still beautiful, and in figure almost as young as ever.
+And how that boy smiled back at her! Emotion squeezed Soames' heart.
+The sight infringed his sense of justice. He grudged her that boy's
+smile--it went beyond what Fleur gave him, and it was undeserved. Their
+son might have been his son; Fleur might have been her daughter, if she
+had kept straight! He lowered his catalogue. If she saw him, all the
+better! A reminder of her conduct in the presence of her son, who
+probably knew nothing of it, would be a salutary touch from the finger
+of that Nemesis which surely must soon or late visit her! Then,
+half-conscious that such a thought was extravagant for a Forsyte of his
+age, Soames took out his watch. Past four! Fleur was late. She had gone
+to his niece Imogen Cardigan's, and there they would keep her smoking
+cigarettes and gossiping, and that. He heard the boy laugh, and say
+eagerly: "I say, Mum, is this one of Auntie June's lame ducks?"
+
+"Paul Post--I believe it is, darling."
+
+The word produced a little shock in Soames; he had never heard her use
+it. And then she saw him. His eyes must have had in them something of
+George Forsyte's sardonic look; for her gloved hand crisped the folds
+of her frock, her eyebrows rose, her face went stony. She moved on.
+
+"It IS a caution," said the boy, catching her arm again.
+
+Soames stared after them. That boy was good-looking, with a Forsyte
+chin, and eyes deep-grey, deep in; but with something sunny, like a
+glass of old sherry spilled over him; his smile perhaps, his hair.
+Better than they deserved--those two! They passed from his view into
+the next room, and Soames continued to regard the Future Town, but saw
+it not. A little smile snarled up his lips. He was despising the
+vehemence of his own feelings after all these years. Ghosts! And yet as
+one grew old--was there anything but what was ghost-like left? Yes,
+there was Fleur! He fixed his eyes on the entrance. She was due; but
+she would keep him waiting, of course! And suddenly he became aware of
+a sort of human breeze--a short, slight form clad in a sea-green
+djibbah with a metal belt and a fillet binding unruly red-gold hair all
+streaked with grey. She was talking to the Gallery attendants, and
+something familiar riveted his gaze--in her eyes, her chin, her hair,
+her spirit--something which suggested a thin Skye terrier just before
+its dinner. Surely June Forsyte! His cousin June--and coming straight
+to his recess! She sat down beside him, deep in thought, took out a
+tablet, and made a pencil note. Soames sat unmoving. A confounded thing
+cousinship! "Disgusting!" he heard her murmur; then, as if resenting
+the presence of an overhearing stranger, she looked at him. The worst
+had happened.
+
+"Soames!"
+
+Soames turned his head a very little.
+
+"How are YOU?" he said. "Haven't seen you for twenty years."
+
+"No. Whatever made YOU come here?"
+
+"My sins," said Soames. "What stuff!"
+
+"Stuff? Oh, yes--of course; it hasn't ARRIVED yet."
+
+"It never will," said Soames; "it must be making a dead loss."
+
+"Of course it is."
+
+"How d'you know?"
+
+"It's my Gallery."
+
+Soames sniffed from sheer surprise.
+
+"Yours? What on earth makes you run a show like this?"
+
+"_I_ don't treat Art as if it were grocery."
+
+Soames pointed to the Future Town. "Look at that! Who's going to live
+in a town like that, or with it on his walls?"
+
+June contemplated the picture for a moment. "It's a vision," she said.
+
+"The deuce!"
+
+There was silence, then June rose. 'Crazy-looking creature!' he thought.
+
+"Well," he said, "you'll find your young stepbrother here with a woman
+I used to know. If you take my advice, you'll close this exhibition."
+
+June looked back at him. "Oh! You Forsyte!" she said, and moved on.
+About her light, fly-away figure, passing so suddenly away, was a look
+of dangerous decisions. Forsyte! Of course, he was a Forsyte! And so
+was she! But from the time when, as a mere girl, she brought Bosinney
+into his life to wreck it, he had never hit it off with June--and never
+would! And here she was, unmarried to this day, owning a Gallery!...
+And suddenly it came to Soames how little he knew now of his own
+family. The old aunts at Timothy's had been dead so many years; there
+was no clearing-house for news. What had they all done in the War?
+Young Roger's boy had been wounded, St. John Hayman's second son
+killed; young Nicholas' eldest had got an O. B. E., or whatever they
+gave them. They had all joined up somehow, he believed. That boy of
+Jolyon's and Irene's, he supposed, had been too young; his own
+generation, of course, too old, though Giles Hayman had driven a car
+for the Red Cross--and Jesse Hayman been a special constable--those
+"Dromios" had always been of a sporting type! As for himself, he had
+given a motor ambulance, read the papers till he was sick of them,
+passed through much anxiety, invested in War Bonds, bought no clothes,
+lost seven pounds in weight; he didn't know what more he could have
+done at his age. Indeed, it struck him that he and his family had taken
+this war very differently to that affair with the Boers, which had been
+supposed to tax all the resources of the Empire. In that old war, of
+course, his nephew Val Dartie had been wounded, that fellow Jolyon's
+first son had died of enteric, "the Dromios" had gone out on horses,
+and June had been a nurse; but all that had seemed in the nature of a
+portent, while in THIS war everybody had done "their bit," so far as he
+could make out, as a matter of course. It seemed to show the growth of
+something or other--or perhaps the decline of something else. Had the
+Forsytes become less individual, or more Imperial, or less provincial?
+Or was it simply that one hated Germans?... Why didn't Fleur come, so
+that he could get away? He saw those three return together from the
+other room and pass back along the far side of the screen. The boy was
+standing before the Juno now. And, suddenly, on the other side of her,
+Soames saw--his daughter with eyebrows raised, as well they might be.
+He could see her eyes glint sideways at the boy, and the boy look back
+at her. Then Irene slipped her hand through his arm, and drew him on.
+Soames saw him glancing round, and Fleur looking after them as the
+three went out.
+
+A voice said cheerfully: "Bit thick, isn't it, sir?"
+
+The young man who had handed him his handkerchief was again passing.
+Soames nodded.
+
+"I don't know what we're coming to."
+
+"Oh! That's all right, sir," answered the young man cheerfully; "they
+don't either."
+
+Fleur's voice said, precisely as if he had been keeping her waiting:
+
+"Hallo, Father! There you are!"
+
+The young man, snatching off his hat, passed on.
+
+"Well," said Soames, looking her up and down, "you're a punctual sort
+of young woman!"
+
+This treasured possession of his life was of medium height and color,
+with short, dark-chestnut hair; her wide-apart brown eyes were set in
+whites so clear that they glinted when they moved, and yet in repose
+were almost dreamy under very white, black-lashed lids, held over them
+in a sort of suspense. She had a charming profile, and nothing of her
+father in her face save a decided chin. Aware that his expression was
+softening as he looked at her, Soames frowned to preserve the
+unemotionalism proper to a Forsyte. He knew she was only too inclined
+to take advantage of his weakness.
+
+Slipping her hand under his arm, she said:
+
+"Who was that?"
+
+"He picked up my handkerchief. We talked about the pictures."
+
+"You're not going to buy THAT, Father?"
+
+"No," said Soames grimly; "nor that Juno you've been looking at."
+
+Fleur dragged at his arm. "Oh! Let's go! It's a ghastly show."
+
+In the doorway they passed the young man called Mont and his partner.
+But Soames had hung out a board marked "Trespassers will be
+prosecuted," and he barely acknowledged the young fellow's salute.
+
+"Well," he said in the street, "whom did you meet at Imogen's?"
+
+"Aunt Winifred, and that Monsieur Profond."
+
+"Oh!" muttered Soames; "that chap! What does your aunt see in him?"
+
+"I don't know. He looks pretty deep--mother says she likes him."
+
+Soames grunted.
+
+"Cousin Val and his wife were there, too."
+
+"What!" said Soames. "I thought they were back in South Africa."
+
+"Oh, no! They've sold their farm. Cousin Val is going to train
+race-horses on the Sussex Downs. They've got a jolly old manor-house;
+they asked me down there."
+
+Soames coughed: the news was distasteful to him. "What's his wife like
+now?"
+
+"Very quiet, but nice, I think."
+
+Soames coughed again. "He's a rackety chap, your cousin Val."
+
+"Oh! no, Father; they're awfully devoted. I promised to go--Saturday to
+Wednesday next."
+
+"Training race-horses!" said Soames. It was bad enough, but not the
+reason for his distaste. Why the deuce couldn't his nephew have stayed
+out in South Africa? His own divorce had been bad enough, without his
+nephew's marriage to the daughter of the co-respondent; a half-sister
+too of June, and of that boy whom Fleur had just been looking at from
+under the pump-handle. If he didn't look out, Fleur would come to know
+all about that old disgrace! Unpleasant things! They were round him
+this afternoon like a swarm of bees!
+
+"I don't like it!" he said.
+
+"I want to see the race-horses," murmured Fleur; "and they've promised
+I shall ride. Cousin Val can't walk much, you know; but he can ride
+perfectly. He's going to show me their gallops."
+
+"Racing!" said Soames. "It's a pity the War didn't knock that on the
+head. He's taking after his father, I'm afraid."
+
+"I don't know anything about his father."
+
+"No," said Soames grimly. "He took an interest in horses and broke his
+neck in Paris, walking down-stairs. Good riddance for your aunt." He
+frowned, recollecting the inquiry into those stairs which he had
+attended in Paris six years ago, because Montague Dartie could not
+attend it himself--perfectly normal stairs in a house where they played
+baccarat. Either his winnings or the way he had celebrated them had
+gone to his brother-in-law's head. The French procedure had been very
+loose; he had had a lot of trouble with it.
+
+A sound from Fleur distracted his attention. "Look! The people who were
+in the Gallery with us."
+
+"What people?" muttered Soames, who knew perfectly well.
+
+"I think that woman's beautiful."
+
+"Come into this pastry-cook's," said Soames abruptly, and tightening
+his grip on her arm, he turned into a confectioner's. It was--for
+him--a surprising thing to do, and he said rather anxiously: "What will
+you have?"
+
+"Oh! I don't want anything. I had a cocktail and a tremendous lunch."
+
+"We MUST have something now we're here," muttered Soames, keeping hold
+of her arm.
+
+"Two teas," he said; "and two of those nougat things."
+
+But no sooner was his body seated than his soul sprang up. Those
+three--those three were coming in! He heard Irene say something to her
+boy, and his answer:
+
+"Oh! no, Mum; this place is all right. My stunt." And the three sat
+down.
+
+At that moment, most awkward of his existence, crowded with ghosts and
+shadows from his past, in presence of the only two women he had ever
+loved--his divorced wife and his daughter by her successor--Soames was
+not so much afraid of THEM as of his cousin June. She might make a
+scene--she might introduce those two children--she was capable of
+anything. He bit too hastily at the nougat, and it stuck to his plate.
+Working at it with his finger, he glanced at Fleur. She was masticating
+dreamily, but her eyes were on the boy. The Forsyte in him said:
+"Think, feel, and you're done for!" And he wiggled his finger
+desperately. Plate! Did Jolyon wear a plate? Did that woman wear a
+plate? Time had been when he had seen her wearing nothing! That was
+something, anyway, which had never been stolen from him. And she knew
+it, though she might sit there calm and self-possessed, as if she had
+never been his wife. An acid humor stirred in his Forsyte blood; a
+subtle pain divided by hair's-breadth from pleasure. If only June did
+not suddenly bring her hornets about his ears! The boy was talking.
+
+"Of course, Auntie June,"--so he called his half-sister "Auntie," did
+he?--well, she must be fifty, if she was a day!--"it's jolly good of
+you to encourage them. Only--hang it all!" Soames stole a glance.
+Irene's startled eyes were bent watchfully on her boy. She--she had
+these devotions--for Bosinney--for that boy's father--for this boy! He
+touched Fleur's arm, and said:
+
+"Well, have you had enough?"
+
+"One more, Father, please."
+
+She would be sick! He went to the counter to pay. When he turned round
+again he saw Fleur standing near the door, holding a handkerchief which
+the boy had evidently just handed to her.
+
+"F.F.," he heard her say. "Fleur Forsyte--it's mine all right. Thank
+you ever so."
+
+Good God! She had caught the trick from what he'd told her in the
+Gallery--monkey!
+
+"Forsyte? Why--that's my name too. Perhaps we're cousins."
+
+"Really! We must be. There aren't any others. I live at Mapledurham;
+where do you?"
+
+"Robin Hill."
+
+Question and answer had been so rapid that all was over before he could
+lift a finger. He saw Irene's face alive with startled feeling, gave
+the slightest shake of his head, and slipped his arm through Fleur's.
+
+"Come along!" he said.
+
+She did not move.
+
+"Didn't you hear, Father? Isn't it queer--our name's the same. Are we
+cousins?"
+
+"What's that?" he said. "Forsyte? Distant, perhaps."
+
+"My name's Jolyon, sir. Jon, for short."
+
+"Oh! Ah!" said Soames. "Yes. Distant. How are you? Very good of you.
+Good-bye!"
+
+He moved on.
+
+"Thanks awfully," Fleur was saying. "Au revoir!"
+
+"Au revoir!" he heard the boy reply.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+FINE FLEUR FORSYTE
+
+
+Emerging from the "pastry-cook's," Soames' first impulse was to vent
+his nerves by saying to his daughter: "Dropping your handkerchief!" to
+which her reply might well be: "I picked that up from you!" His second
+impulse therefore was to let sleeping dogs lie. But she would surely
+question him. He gave her a sidelong look, and found she was giving him
+the same. She said softly:
+
+"Why don't you like those cousins, Father?"
+
+Soames lifted the corner of his lip.
+
+"What made you think that?"
+
+"Cela se voit."
+
+'That sees itself!' What a way of putting it!
+
+After twenty years of a French wife Soames had still little sympathy
+with her language; a theatrical affair and connected in his mind with
+all the refinements of domestic irony.
+
+"How?" he asked.
+
+"You MUST know them; and you didn't make a sign. I saw them looking at
+you."
+
+"I've never seen the boy in my life," replied Soames with perfect truth.
+
+"No; but you've seen the others, dear."
+
+Soames gave her another look. What had she picked up? Had her Aunt
+Winifred, or Imogen, or Val Dartie and his wife, been talking? Every
+breath of the old scandal had been carefully kept from her at home, and
+Winifred warned many times that he wouldn't have a whisper of it reach
+her for the world. So far as she ought to know, he had never been
+married before. But her dark eyes, whose southern glint and clearness
+often almost frightened him, met his with perfect innocence.
+
+"Well," he said, "your grandfather and his brother had a quarrel. The
+two families don't know each other."
+
+"How romantic!"
+
+'Now, what does she mean by that?' he thought. The word was to him
+extravagant and dangerous--it was as if she had said: "How jolly!"
+
+"And they'll continue not to know each other," he added, but instantly
+regretted the challenge in those words. Fleur was smiling. In this age,
+when young people prided themselves on going their own ways and paying
+no attention to any sort of decent prejudice, he had said the very
+thing to excite her wilfulness. Then, recollecting the expression on
+Irene's face, he breathed again.
+
+"What sort of a quarrel?" he heard Fleur say.
+
+"About a house. It's ancient history for you. Your grandfather died the
+day you were born. He was ninety."
+
+"Ninety? Are there many Forsytes besides those in the Red Book?"
+
+"I don't know," said Soames. "They're all dispersed now. The old ones
+are dead, except Timothy."
+
+Fleur clasped her hands.
+
+"Timothy? Isn't that delicious?"
+
+"Not at all," said Soames. It offended him that she should think
+"Timothy" delicious--a kind of insult to his breed. This new generation
+mocked at anything solid and tenacious. "You go and see the old boy. He
+might want to prophesy." Ah! If Timothy could see the disquiet England
+of his greatnephews and greatnieces, he would certainly give tongue.
+And involuntarily he glanced up at the Iseeum; yes--George was still in
+the window, with the same pink paper in his hand.
+
+"Where is Robin Hill, Father?"
+
+Robin Hill! Robin Hill, round which all that tragedy had centred! What
+did she want to know for?
+
+"In Surrey," he muttered; "not far from Richmond, Why?"
+
+"Is the house there?"
+
+"What house?"
+
+"That they quarrelled about."
+
+"Yes. But what's all that to do with you? We're going home
+to-morrow--you'd better be thinking about your frocks."
+
+"Bless you! They're all thought about. A family feud? It's like the
+Bible, or Mark Twain--awfully exciting. What did YOU do in the feud,
+Father?"
+
+"Never you mind."
+
+"Oh! But if I'm to keep it up?"
+
+"Who said you were to keep it up?"
+
+"You, darling."
+
+"I? I said it had nothing to do with you."
+
+"Just what _I_ think, you know; so that's all right."
+
+She was too sharp for him; FINE, as Annette sometimes called her.
+Nothing for it but to distract her attention.
+
+"There's a bit of rosaline point in here," he said, stopping before a
+shop, "that I thought you might like."
+
+When he had paid for it and they had resumed their progress, Fleur said:
+
+"Don't you think that boy's mother is the most beautiful woman of her
+age you've ever seen?"
+
+Soames shivered. Uncanny, the way she stuck to it!
+
+"I don't know that I noticed her."
+
+"Dear, I saw the corner of your eye."
+
+"You see everything--and a great deal more, it seems to me!"
+
+"What's her husband like? He must be your first cousin, if your fathers
+were brothers."
+
+"Dead, for all I know," said Soames, with sudden vehemence. "I haven't
+seen him for twenty years."
+
+"What was he?"
+
+"A painter."
+
+"That's quite jolly."
+
+The words: "If you want to please me you'll put those people out of
+your head," sprang to Soames's lips, but he choked them back--he must
+NOT let her see his feelings.
+
+"He once insulted me," he said.
+
+Her quick eyes rested on his face.
+
+"I see! You didn't avenge it, and it rankles. Poor Father! You let me
+have a go!"
+
+It was really like lying in the dark with a mosquito hovering above his
+face. Such pertinacity in Fleur was new to him, and, as they reached
+the hotel, he said grimly:
+
+"I did my best. And that's enough about these people. I'm going up till
+dinner."
+
+"I shall sit here."
+
+With a parting look at her extended in a chair--a look half-resentful,
+half-adoring--Soames moved into the lift and was transported to their
+suite on the fourth floor. He stood by the window of the sitting-room
+which gave view over Hyde Park, and drummed a finger on its pane. His
+feelings were confused, tetchy, troubled. The throb of that old wound,
+scarred over by Time and new interests, was mingled with displeasure
+and anxiety, and a slight pain in his chest where that nougat stuff had
+disagreed. Had Annette come in? Not that she was any good to him in
+such a difficulty. Whenever she had questioned him about his first
+marriage, he had always shut her up; she knew nothing of it, save that
+it had been the great passion of his life, and his marriage with
+herself but domestic makeshift. She had always kept the grudge of that
+up her sleeve, as it were, and used it commercially. He listened. A
+sound--the vague murmur of a woman's movements--was coming through the
+door. She was in. He tapped.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"I," said Soames.
+
+She had been changing her frock, and was still imperfectly clothed; a
+striking figure before her glass. There was a certain magnificence
+about her arms, shoulders, hair, which had darkened since he first knew
+her, about the turn of her neck, the silkiness of her garments, her
+dark-lashed, grey-blue eyes--she was certainly as handsome at forty as
+she had ever been. A fine possession, an excellent housekeeper, a
+sensible and affectionate enough mother. If only she weren't always so
+frankly cynical about the relations between them! Soames, who had no
+more real affection for her than she had for him, suffered from a kind
+of English grievance, in that she had never dropped even the thinnest
+veil of sentiment over their partnership. Like most of his countrymen
+and women, he held the view that marriage should be based on mutual
+love, but that when from a marriage love had disappeared, or been found
+never to have really existed--so that it was manifestly not based on
+love--you must not admit it. There it was, and the love was not--but
+there you were, and must continue to be! Thus you had it both ways, and
+were not tarred with cynicism, realism, and immorality, like the
+French. Moreover, it was necessary in the interests of propriety. He
+knew that she knew that they both knew there was no love between them,
+but he still expected her not to admit in words or conduct such a
+thing, and he could never understand what she meant when she talked of
+the hypocrisy of the English. He said:
+
+"Whom have you got at 'The Shelter' next week?"
+
+Annette went on touching her lips delicately with salve--he always
+wished she wouldn't do that.
+
+"Your sister Winifred, and the Car-r-digans"--she took up a tiny stick
+of black--"and Prosper Profond."
+
+"That Belgian chap? Why him?"
+
+Annette turned her neck lazily, touched one eyelash, and said:
+
+"He amuses Winifred."
+
+"I want some one to amuse Fleur; she's restive."
+
+"R-restive?" repeated Annette. "Is it the first time you see that, my
+friend? She was born r-restive, as you call it."
+
+Would she never get that affected roll out of her r's?
+
+He touched the dress she had taken off, and asked:
+
+"What have you been doing?"
+
+Annette looked at him, reflected in her glass. Her just-brightened lips
+smiled, rather full, rather ironical.
+
+"Enjoying myself," she said.
+
+"Oh!" answered Soames glumly. "Ribbandry, I suppose."
+
+It was his word for all that incomprehensible running in and out of
+shops that women went in for. "Has Fleur got her summer dresses?"
+
+"You don't ask if I have mine."
+
+"You don't care whether I do or not."
+
+"Quite right. Well, she has; and I have mine--terribly expensive."
+
+"H'm!" said Soames. "What does that chap Profond do in England?"
+
+Annette raised the eyebrows she had just finished.
+
+"He yachts."
+
+"Ah!" said Soames; "he's a sleepy chap."
+
+"Sometimes," answered Annette, and her face had a sort of quiet
+enjoyment. "But sometimes very amusing."
+
+"He's got a touch of the tar-brush about him."
+
+Annette stretched herself.
+
+"Tar-brush?" she said; "what is that? His mother was Armenienne."
+
+"That's it, then," muttered Soames. "Does he know anything about
+pictures?"
+
+"He knows about everything--a man of the world."
+
+"Well, get some one for Fleur. I want to distract her. She's going off
+on Saturday to Val Dartie and his wife; I don't like it."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Since the reason could not be explained without going into family
+history, Soames merely answered:
+
+"Racketing about. There's too much of it."
+
+"I like that little Mrs. Val; she is very quiet and clever."
+
+"I know nothing of her except--This thing's new." And Soames took up a
+creation from the bed.
+
+Annette received it from him.
+
+"Would you hook me?" she said.
+
+Soames hooked. Glancing once over her shoulder into the glass, he saw
+the expression on her face, faintly amused, faintly contemptuous, as
+much as to say: 'Thanks! You will never learn!' No, thank God, he
+wasn't a Frenchman! He finished with a jerk, and the words:
+
+"It's too low here." And he went to the door, with the wish to get away
+from her and go down to Fleur again.
+
+Annette stayed a powder-puff, and said with startling suddenness:
+
+"Que tu es grossier!"
+
+He knew the expression--he had reason to. The first time she had used
+it he had thought it meant "What a grocer you are!" and had not known
+whether to be relieved or not when better informed. He resented the
+word--he was NOT coarse! If he was coarse, what was that chap in the
+room beyond his, who made those horrible noises in the morning when he
+cleared his throat, or those people in the Lounge who thought it
+well-bred to say nothing but what the whole world could hear at the top
+of their voices--quacking inanity! Coarse, because he had said her
+dress was low! Well, so it was! He went out without reply.
+
+Coming into the Lounge from the far end, he at once saw Fleur where he
+had left her. She sat with crossed knees, slowly balancing a foot in
+silk stocking and grey shoe, sure sign that she was dreaming. Her eyes
+showed it too--they went off like that sometimes. And then, in a
+moment, she would come to life, and be as quick and restless as a
+monkey. And she knew so much, so self-assured, and not yet nineteen.
+What was that odious word? Flapper! Dreadful young creatures--squealing
+and squawking and showing their legs! The worst of them bad dreams, the
+best of them powdered angels! Fleur was NOT a flapper, NOT one of those
+slangy, ill-bred young females. And yet she was frighteningly
+self-willed, and full of life, and determined to enjoy it. Enjoy! The
+word brought no puritan terror to Soames; but it brought the terror
+suited to his temperament. He had always been afraid to enjoy to-day
+for fear he might not enjoy to-morrow so much. And it was terrifying to
+feel that his daughter was divested of that safeguard. The very way she
+sat in that chair showed it--lost in her dream. He had never been lost
+in a dream himself--there was nothing to be had out of it; and where
+she got it from he did not know! Certainly not from Annette! And yet
+Annette, as a young girl, when he was hanging about her, had once had a
+flowery look. Well, she had lost it now!
+
+Fleur rose from her chair--swiftly, restlessly, and flung herself down
+at a writing-table. Seizing ink and writing-paper, she began to write
+as if she had not time to breathe before she got her letter written.
+And suddenly she saw him. The air of desperate absorption vanished, she
+smiled, waved a kiss, made a pretty face as if she were a little
+puzzled and a little bored.
+
+Ah! She was "fine"--"fine!"
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+AT ROBIN HILL
+
+
+Jolyon Forsyte had spent his boy's nineteenth birthday at Robin Hill,
+quietly going into his affairs. He did everything quietly now, because
+his heart was in a poor way, and, like all his family, he disliked the
+idea of dying. He had never realised how much till one day, two years
+ago, he had gone to his doctor about certain symptoms, and been told:
+
+"At any moment, on any overstrain."
+
+He had taken it with a smile--the natural Forsyte reaction against an
+unpleasant truth. But with an increase of symptoms in the train on the
+way home, he had realised to the full the sentence hanging over him. To
+leave Irene, his boy, his home, his work--though he did little enough
+work now! To leave them for unknown darkness, for the unimaginable
+state, for such nothingness that he would not even be conscious of wind
+stirring leaves above his grave, nor of the scent of earth and grass.
+Of such nothingness that, however hard he might try to conceive it, he
+never could, and must still hover on the hope that he might see again
+those he loved! To realise this was to endure very poignant spiritual
+anguish. Before he reached home that day, he had determined to keep it
+from Irene. He would have to be more careful than man had ever been,
+for the least thing would give it away and make her as wretched as
+himself, almost. His doctor had passed him sound in other respects, and
+seventy was nothing of an age--he would last a long time yet, IF HE
+COULD!
+
+Such a conclusion, followed out for nearly two years, develops to the
+full the subtler side of character. Naturally not abrupt, except when
+nervously excited, Jolyon had become control incarnate. The sad
+patience of old people who cannot exert themselves was masked by a
+smile which his lips preserved even in private. He devised continually
+all manner of cover to conceal his enforced lack of exertion. Mocking
+himself for so doing, he counterfeited conversion to the Simple Life;
+gave up wine and cigars, drank a special kind of coffee with no coffee
+in it. In short, he made himself as safe as a Forsyte in his condition
+could, under the rose of his mild irony. Secure from discovery, since
+his wife and son had gone up to Town, he had spent the fine May day
+quietly arranging his papers, that he might die to-morrow without
+inconveniencing any one, giving in fact a final polish to his
+terrestrial state. Having docketed and enclosed it in his father's old
+Chinese cabinet, he put the key into an envelope, wrote the words
+outside: "Key of the Chinese cabinet, wherein will be found the exact
+state of me. J.F.," and put it in his breast-pocket, where it would be,
+always about him, in case of accident. Then, ringing for tea, he went
+out to have it under the old oak-tree.
+
+All are under sentence of death; Jolyon, whose sentence was but a
+little more precise and pressing, had become so used to it, that he
+thought habitually, like other people, of other things. He thought of
+his son now.
+
+Jon was nineteen that day, and Jon had come of late to a decision.
+Educated neither at Eton like his father, nor at Harrow, like his dead
+half-brother, but at one of those establishments which, designed to
+avoid the evil and contain the good of the Public School system, may or
+may not contain the evil and avoid the good, Jon had left in April
+perfectly ignorant of what he wanted to become. The War, which had
+promised to go on for ever, had ended just as he was about to join the
+army, six months before his time. It had taken him ever since to get
+used to the idea that he could now choose for himself. He had held with
+his father several discussions, from which, under a cheery show of
+being ready for anything--except, of course, the Church, Army, Law,
+Stage, Stock Exchange, Medicine, Business, and Engineering--Jolyon had
+gathered rather clearly that Jon wanted to go in for nothing. He
+himself had felt exactly like that at the same age. With him that
+pleasant vacuity had soon been ended by an early marriage, and its
+unhappy consequences. Forced to become an underwriter at Lloyd's he had
+regained prosperity before his artistic talent had outcropped. But
+having--as the simple say--"learned" his boy to draw pigs and other
+animals, he knew that Jon would never be a painter, and inclined to the
+conclusion that his aversion from everything else meant that he was
+going to be a writer. Holding, however, the view that experience was
+necessary even for that profession, there seemed to Jolyon nothing in
+the meantime, for Jon, but University, travel, and perhaps the eating
+of dinners for the Bar. After that one would see, or more probably one
+would not. In face of these proffered allurements, however, Jon had
+remained undecided.
+
+Such discussions with his son had confirmed in Jolyon a doubt whether
+the world had really changed. People said that it was a new age. With
+the profundity of one not too long for any age, Jolyon perceived that
+under slightly different surfaces, the era was precisely what it had
+been. Mankind was still divided into two species: The few who had
+"speculation" in their souls, and the many who had none, with a belt of
+hybrids like himself in the middle. Jon appeared to have speculation;
+it seemed to his father a bad lookout.
+
+With something deeper, therefore, than his usual smile, he had heard
+the boy say, a fortnight ago: "I should like to try farming, Dad; if it
+won't cost you too much. It seems to be about the only sort of life
+that doesn't hurt anybody; except art, and of course that's out of the
+question for me."
+
+Jolyon subdued his smile, and answered:
+
+"All right; you shall skip back to where we were under the first Jolyon
+in 1760. It'll prove the cycle theory, and incidentally, no doubt, you
+may grow a better turnip than he did."
+
+A little dashed, Jon had answered:
+
+"But don't you think it's a good scheme, Dad?"
+
+"Twill serve, my dear; and if you should really take to it, you'll do
+more good than most men, which is little enough."
+
+To himself, however, he had said: "But he won't take to it. I give him
+four years. Still, it's healthy, and harmless."
+
+After turning the matter over and consulting with Irene, he wrote to
+his daughter Mrs. Val Dortie, asking if they knew of a farmer near them
+on the Downs who would take Jon as an apprentice. Holly's answer had
+been enthusiastic. There was an excellent man quite close; she and Val
+would love Jon to live with them.
+
+The boy was due to go to-morrow.
+
+Sipping weak tea with lemon in it, Jolyon gazed through the leaves of
+the old oak-tree at that view which had appeared to him desirable for
+thirty-two years. The tree beneath which he sat seemed not a day older!
+So young, the little leaves of brownish gold; so old, the
+whitey-grey-green of its thick rough trunk, A tree of memories, which
+would live on hundreds of years yet, unless some barbarian cut it
+down--would see old England out at the pace things were going! He
+remembered a night three years before, when, looking from his window,
+with his arm close round Irene, he had watched a German aeroplane
+hovering, it seemed, right over the old tree. Next day they had found a
+bomb hole in a field on Gage's farm. That was before he knew that he
+was under sentence of death. He could almost have wished the bomb had
+finished him. It would have saved a lot of hanging about, many hours of
+cold fear in the pit of his stomach. He had counted on living to the
+normal Forsyte age of eighty-five or more, when Irene would be seventy.
+As it was, she would miss him. Still there was Jon, more important in
+her life than himself; Jon, who adored his mother.
+
+Under that tree, where old Jolyon--waiting for Irene to come to him
+across the lawn--had breathed his last, Jolyon wondered, whimsically,
+whether, having put everything in such perfect order, he had not better
+close his own eyes and drift away. There was something undignified in
+parasitically clinging on to the effortless close of a life wherein he
+regretted two things only--the long division between his father and
+himself when he was young, and the lateness of his union with Irene.
+
+From where he sat he could see a cluster of apple-trees in blossom.
+Nothing in Nature moved him so much as fruit-trees in blossom; and his
+heart ached suddenly because he might never see them flower again.
+Spring! Decidedly no man ought to have to die while his heart was still
+young enough to love beauty! Blackbirds sang recklessly in the
+shrubbery, swallows were flying high, the leaves above him glistened;
+and over the fields was every imaginable tint of early foliage,
+burnished by the level sunlight, away to where the distant 'smoke-bush'
+blue was trailed along the horizon. Irene's flowers in their narrow
+beds had startling individuality that evening, little deep assertions
+of gay life. Only Chinese and Japanese painters, and perhaps Leonardo,
+had known how to get that startling little ego into each painted
+flower, and bird, and beast--the ego, yet the sense of species, the
+universality of life as well. They were the fellows! 'I've made nothing
+that will live!' thought Jolyon; 'I've been an amateur--a mere lover,
+not a creator. Still, I shall leave Jon behind me when I go.' What luck
+that the boy had not been caught by that ghastly war! He might so
+easily have been killed, like poor Jolly twenty years ago out in the
+Transvaal. Jon would do something some day--if the Age didn't spoil
+him--an imaginative chap! His whim to take up farming was but a bit of
+sentiment, and about as likely to last. And just then he saw them
+coming up the field: Irene and the boy, walking from the station, with
+their arms linked. And, getting up, he strolled down through the new
+rose garden to meet them....
+
+Irene came into his room that night and sat down by the window. She sat
+there without speaking till he said:
+
+"What is it, my love?"
+
+"We had an encounter to-day."
+
+"With whom?"
+
+"Soames."
+
+Soames! He had kept that name out of his thoughts these last two years;
+conscious that it was bad for him. And, now, his heart moved in a
+disconcerting manner, as if it had side-slipped within his chest.
+
+Irene went on quietly:
+
+"He and his daughter were in the Gallery, and afterwards at the
+confectioner's where we had tea."
+
+Jolyon went over and put his hand on her shoulder.
+
+"How did he look?"
+
+"Grey; but otherwise much the same."
+
+"And the daughter?"
+
+"Pretty. At least, Jon thought so."
+
+Jolyon's heart side-slipped again. His wife's face had a strained and
+puzzled look.
+
+"You didn't--?" he began.
+
+"No; but Jon knows their name. The girl dropped her handkerchief and he
+picked it up."
+
+Jolyon sat down on his bed. An evil chance!
+
+"June was with you. Did she put her foot into it?"
+
+"No; but it was all very queer and strained, and Jon could see it was."
+
+Jolyon drew a long breath, and said:
+
+"I've often wondered whether we've been right to keep it from him.
+He'll find out some day."
+
+"The later the better, Jolyon; the young have such cheap, hard
+judgment. When you were nineteen what would you have thought of YOUR
+mother if she had done what I have?" Yes! There it was! Jon worshipped
+his mother; and knew nothing of the tragedies, the inexorable
+necessities of life, nothing of the prisoned grief in an unhappy
+marriage, nothing of jealousy, or passion--knew nothing at all, as yet!
+
+"What have you told him?" he said at last.
+
+"That they were relations, but we didn't know them; that you had never
+cared much for your family, or they for you. I expect he will be asking
+YOU."
+
+Jolyon smiled. "This promises to take the place of air-raids," he said.
+"After all, one misses them."
+
+Irene looked up at him.
+
+"We've known it would come some day."
+
+He answered her with sudden energy:
+
+"I could never stand seeing Jon blame you. He shan't do that, even in
+thought. He has imagination; and he'll understand if it's put to him
+properly. I think I had better tell him before he gets to know
+otherwise."
+
+"Not yet, Jolyon."
+
+That was like her--she had no foresight, and never went to meet
+trouble. Still--who knew?--she might be right. It was ill going against
+a mother's instinct. It might be well to let the boy go on, if
+possible, till experience had given him some touchstone by which he
+could judge the values of that old tragedy; till love, jealousy,
+longing, had deepened his charity. All the same, one must take
+precautions--every precaution possible! And, long after Irene had left
+him, he lay awake turning over those precautions. He must write to
+Holly, telling her that Jon knew nothing as yet of family history.
+Holly was discreet, she would make sure of her husband, she would see
+to it! Jon could take the letter with him when he went to-morrow.
+
+And so the day on which he had put the polish on his material estate
+died out with the chiming of the stable clock; and another began for
+Jolyon in the shadow of a spiritual disorder which could not be so
+rounded off and polished....
+
+But Jon, whose room had once been his day nursery, lay awake too, the
+prey of a sensation disputed by those who have never known it, "love at
+first sight!" He had felt it beginning in him with the glint of those
+dark eyes gazing into his athwart the Juno--a conviction that this was
+his 'dream'; so that what followed had seemed to him at once natural
+and miraculous. Fleur! Her name alone was almost enough for one who was
+terribly susceptible to the charm of words. In a homoeopathic age, when
+boys and girls were coeducated, and mixed up in early life till sex was
+almost abolished, Jon was singularly old-fashioned. His modern school
+took boys only, and his holidays had been spent at Robin Hill with boy
+friends, or his parents alone. He had never, therefore, been inoculated
+against the germs of love by small doses of the poison. And now in the
+dark his temperature was mounting fast. He lay awake, featuring
+Fleur--as they called it--recalling her words, especially that "Au
+revoir!" so soft and sprightly.
+
+He was still so wide-awake at dawn that he got up, slipped on tennis
+shoes, trousers, and a sweater, and in silence crept down-stairs and
+out through the study window. It was just light; there was a smell of
+grass. 'Fleur!' he thought; 'Fleur!' It was mysteriously white
+out-of-doors, with nothing awake except the birds just beginning to
+chirp. 'I'll go down into the coppice,' he thought. He ran down through
+the fields, reached the pond just as the sun rose, and passed into the
+coppice. Bluebells carpeted the ground there; among the larch-trees
+there was mystery--the air, as it were, composed of that romantic
+quality. Jon sniffed its freshness, and stared at the bluebells in the
+sharpening light. Fleur! It rhymed with her! And she lived at
+Mapledurham--a jolly name, too, on the river somewhere. He could find
+it in the atlas presently. He would write to her. But would she answer?
+Oh! She must. She had said "Au revoir!" Not good-bye! What luck that
+she had dropped her handkerchief. He would never have known her but for
+that. And the more he thought of that handkerchief, the more amazing
+his luck seemed. Fleur! It certainly rhymed with her! Rhythm thronged
+his head; words jostled to be joined together; he was on the verge of a
+poem.
+
+Jon remained in this condition for more than half an hour, then
+returned to the house, and getting a ladder, climbed in at his bedroom
+window out of sheer exhilaration. Then, remembering that the study
+window was open, he went down and shut it, first removing the ladder,
+so as to obliterate all traces of his feeling. The thing was too deep
+to be revealed to mortal soul--even to his mother.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE MAUSOLEUM
+
+
+There are houses whose souls have passed into the limbo of Time,
+leaving their bodies in the limbo of London. Such was not quite the
+condition of "Timothy's" on the Bayswater Road, for Timothy's soul
+still had one foot in Timothy Forsyte's body, and Smither kept the
+atmosphere unchanging, of camphor and port wine and house whose windows
+are only opened to air it twice a day.
+
+To Forsyte imagination that house was now a sort of Chinese pill-box, a
+series of layers in the last of which was Timothy. One did not reach
+him, or so it was reported by members of the family who, out of
+old-time habit or absent-mindedness, would drive up once in a blue moon
+and ask after their surviving uncle. Such were Francie, now quite
+emancipated from God (she frankly avowed atheism), Euphemia,
+emancipated from old Nicholas, and Winifred Dartie from her "man of the
+world." But, after all, everybody was emancipated now, or said they
+were--perhaps not quite the same thing!
+
+When Soames, therefore, took it on his way to Paddington station on the
+morning after that encounter, it was hardly with the expectation of
+seeing Timothy in the flesh. His heart made a faint demonstration
+within him while he stood in full south sunlight on the newly whitened
+doorstep of that little house where four Forsytes had once lived, and
+now but one dwelt on like a winter fly; the house into which Soames had
+come and out of which he had gone times without number, divested of, or
+burdened with, fardels of family gossip; the house of the "old people"
+of another century, another age.
+
+The sight of Smither--still corseted up to the armpits because the new
+fashion which came in as they were going out about 1903 had never been
+considered "nice" by Aunts Juley and Hester--brought a pale
+friendliness to Soames's lips; Smither, still faithfully arranged to
+old pattern in every detail, an invaluable servant--none such
+left--smiling back at him, with the words: "Why! it's Mr. Soames, after
+all this time! And how are YOU, sir? Mr. Timothy will be so pleased to
+know you've been."
+
+"How is he?"
+
+"Oh! he keeps fairly bobbish for his age, sir; but of course he's a
+wonderful man. As I said to Mrs. Dartie when she was here last: It
+WOULD please Miss Forsyte and Mrs. Juley and Miss Hester to see how he
+relishes a baked apple still. But he's quite deaf. And a mercy, I
+always think. For what we should have done with him in the air-raids, I
+don't know."
+
+"Ah!" said Soames. "What DID you do with him?"
+
+"We just left him in his bed, and had the bell run down into the
+cellar, so that Cook and I could hear him if he rang. It would never
+have done to let him know there was a war on. As I said to Cook, 'If
+Mr. Timothy rings, they may do what they like--I'm going up. My dear
+mistresses would have a fit if they could see him ringing and nobody
+going to him.' But he slept through them all beautiful. And the one in
+the daytime he was having his bath. It WAS a mercy, because he might
+have noticed the people in the street all looking up--he often looks
+out of the window."
+
+"Quite!" murmured Soames. Smither was getting garrulous! "I just want
+to look round and see if there's anything to be done."
+
+"Yes, sir. I don't think there's anything except a smell of mice in the
+dining-room that we don't know how to get rid of. It's funny they
+should be there, and not a crumb, since Mr. Timothy took to not coming
+down, just before the war. But they're nasty little things; you never
+know where they'll take you next."
+
+"Does he leave his bed?"
+
+"Oh! yes, sir; he takes nice exercise between his bed and the window in
+the morning, not to risk a change of air. And he's quite comfortable in
+himself; has his Will out every day regular. It's a great consolation
+to him--that."
+
+"Well, Smither, I want to see him, if I can; in case he has anything to
+say to me."
+
+Smither coloured up above her corsets.
+
+"It WILL be an occasion!" she said. "Shall I take you round the house,
+sir, while I send Cook to break it to him?"
+
+"No, you go to him," said Soames. "I can go round the house by myself."
+
+One could not confess to sentiment before another, and Soames felt that
+he was going to be sentimental nosing round those rooms so saturated
+with the past. When Smither, creaking with excitement, had left him,
+Soames entered the dining-room and sniffed. In his opinion it wasn't
+mice, but incipient wood-rot, and he examined the panelling. Whether it
+was worth a coat of paint, at Timothy's age, he was not sure. The room
+had always been the most modern in the house; and only a faint smile
+curled Soames's lips and nostrils. Walls of a rich green surmounted the
+oak dado; a heavy metal chandelier hung by a chain from a ceiling
+divided by imitation beams. The pictures had been bought by Timothy, a
+bargain, one day at Jobson's sixty years ago--three Snyder "still
+lifes," two faintly coloured drawings of a boy and a girl, rather
+charming, which bore the initials "J.R."--Timothy had always believed
+they might turn out to be Joshua Reynolds, but Soames, who admired
+them, had discovered that they were only John Robinson; and a doubtful
+Morland of a white pony being shod. Deep-red plush curtains, ten
+high-backed dark mahogany chairs with deep-red plush seats, a Turkey
+carpet, and a mahogany dining-table as large as the room was small,
+such was an apartment which Soames could remember unchanged in soul or
+body since he was four years old. He looked especially at the two
+drawings, and thought: 'I shall buy those at the sale.'
+
+From the dining-room he passed into Timothy's study. He did not
+remember ever having been in that room. It was lined from floor to
+ceiling with volumes, and he looked at them with curiosity. One wall
+seemed devoted to educational books, which Timothy's firm had published
+two generations back--sometimes as many as twenty copies of one book.
+Soames read their titles and shuddered. The middle wall had precisely
+the same books as used to be in the library at his own father's in Park
+Lane, from which he deduced the fancy that James and his youngest
+brother had gone out together one day and bought a brace of small
+libraries. The third wall he approached with more excitement. Here,
+surely, Timothy's own taste would be found. It was. The books were
+dummies. The fourth wall was all heavily curtained window. And turned
+towards it was a large chair with a mahogany reading-stand attached, on
+which a yellowish and folded copy of The Times, dated July 6, 1914, the
+day Timothy first failed to come down, as if in preparation for the
+war, seemed waiting for him still. In a corner stood a large globe of
+that world never visited by Timothy, deeply convinced of the unreality
+of everything but England, and permanently upset by the sea, on which
+he had been very sick one Sunday afternoon in 1836, out of a pleasure
+boat off the pier at Brighton, with Juley and Hester, Swithin and Hatty
+Chessman; all due to Swithin, who was always taking things into his
+head, and who, thank goodness, had been sick too. Soames knew all about
+it, having heard the tale fifty times at least from one or other of
+them. He went up to the globe, and gave it a spin; it emitted a faint
+creak and moved about an inch, bringing into his purview a
+daddy-long-legs which had died on it in latitude 44.
+
+'Mausoleum!' he thought. 'George was right!' And he went out and up the
+stairs. On the half landing he stopped before the case of stuffed
+humming-birds which had delighted his childhood. They looked not a day
+older, suspended on wires above pampas-grass. If the case were opened
+the birds would not begin to hum, but the whole thing would crumble, he
+suspected. It wouldn't be worth putting that into the sale! And
+suddenly he was caught by a memory of Aunt Ann--dear old Aunt
+Ann--holding him by the hand in front of that case and saying: "Look,
+Soamey! Aren't they bright and pretty, dear little humming-birds!"
+Soames remembered his own answer: "They don't hum, Auntie." He must
+have been six, in a black velveteen suit with a light-blue collar--he
+remembered that suit well! Aunt Ann with her ringlets, and her spidery
+kind hands, and her grave old aquiline smile--a fine old lady, Aunt
+Ann! He moved on up to the drawing-room door. There on each side of it
+were the groups of miniatures. Those he would certainly buy in! The
+miniatures of his four aunts, one of his uncle Swithin adolescent, and
+one of his uncle Nicholas as a boy. They had all been painted by a
+young lady friend of the family at a time, 1830, about, when miniatures
+were considered very genteel, and lasting too, painted as they were on
+ivory. Many a time had he heard the tale of that young lady: "Very
+talented, my dear; she had quite a weakness for Swithin, and very soon
+after she went into a consumption and died: so like Keats--we often
+spoke of it."
+
+Well, there they were! Ann, Juley, Hester, Susan--quite a small child;
+Swithin, with sky-blue eyes, pink cheeks, yellow curls, white
+waistcoat--large as life; and Nicholas, like Cupid with an eye on
+heaven. Now he came to think of it, Uncle Nick had always been rather
+like that--a wonderful man to the last. Yes, she must have had talent,
+and miniatures had a certain back-watered cachet of their own, little
+subject to the currents of competition on aesthetic Change. Soames
+opened the drawing-room door. The room was dusted, the furniture
+uncovered, the curtains drawn back, precisely as if his aunts still
+dwelt there patiently waiting. And a thought came to him: When Timothy
+died--why not? Would it not be almost a duty to preserve this
+house--like Carlyle's--and put up a tablet, and show it? "Specimen of
+mid-Victorian abode--entrance, one shilling, with catalogue." After
+all, it was the completest thing, and perhaps the deadest in the London
+of to-day. Perfect in its special taste and culture, if, that is, he
+took down and carried over to his own collection the four Barbizon
+pictures he had given them. The still sky-blue walls, the green
+curtains patterned with red flowers and ferns; the crewel-worked
+fire-screen before the cast-iron grate; the mahogany cupboard with
+glass windows, full of little knick-knacks; the beaded footstools;
+Keats, Shelley, Southey, Cowper, Coleridge, Byron's "Corsair" (but
+nothing else), and the Victorian poets in a bookshelf row; the
+marqueterie cabinet lined with dim red plush, full of family relics;
+Hester's first fan; the buckles of their mother's father's shoes; three
+bottled scorpions; and one very yellow elephant's tusk, sent home from
+India by Great-uncle Edgar Forsyte, who had been in jute; a yellow bit
+of paper propped up, with spidery writing on it, recording God knew
+what! And the pictures crowding on the walls--all water-colours save
+those four Barbizons looking like the foreigners they were, and
+doubtful customers at that--pictures bright and illustrative, "Telling
+the Bees," "Hey for the Ferry!" and two in the style of Frith, all
+thimblerig and crinolines, given them by Swithin. Oh! many, many
+pictures at which Soames had gazed a thousand times in supercilious
+fascination; a marvellous collection of bright, smooth gilt frames.
+
+And the boudoir-grand piano, beautifully dusted, hermetically sealed as
+ever; and Aunt Juley's album of pressed seaweed on it. And the
+gilt-legged chairs, stronger than they looked. And on one side of the
+fireplace the sofa of crimson silk, where Aunt Ann, and after her Aunt
+Juley, had been wont to sit, facing the light and bolt upright. And on
+the other side of the fire the one really easy chair, back to the
+light, for Aunt Hester. Soames screwed up his eyes; he seemed to see
+them sitting there. Ah! and the atmosphere--even now, of too many
+stuffs and washed lace curtains, lavender in bags, and dried bee's
+wings. 'No,' he thought, 'there's nothing like it left; it ought to be
+preserved.' And, by George, they might laugh at it, but for a standard
+of gentle life never departed from, for fastidiousness of skin and eye
+and nose and feeling, it beat to-day hollow--to-day with its Tubes and
+cars, its perpetual smoking, its cross-legged, bare-necked girls
+visible up to the knees and down to the waist if you took the trouble
+(agreeable to the satyr within each Forsyte but hardly his idea of a
+lady), with their feet, too, screwed round the legs of their chairs
+while they ate, and their "So longs," and their "Old Beans," and their
+laughter--girls who gave him the shudders whenever he thought of Fleur
+in contact with them; and the hard-eyed, capable, older women who
+managed life and gave him the shudders too. No! his old aunts, if they
+never opened their minds, their eyes, or very much their windows, at
+least had manners, and a standard, and reverence for past and future.
+
+With rather a choky feeling he closed the door and went tiptoeing
+up-stairs. He looked in at a place on the way: H'm! in perfect order of
+the eighties, with a sort of yellow oilskin paper on the walls. At the
+top of the stairs he hesitated between four doors. Which of them was
+Timothy's? And he listened. A sound as of a child slowly dragging a
+hobby-horse about, came to his ears. That must be Timothy! He tapped,
+and a door was opened by Smither very red in the face.
+
+Mr. Timothy was taking his walk, and she had not been able to get him
+to attend. If Mr. Soames would come into the back room, he could see
+him through the door.
+
+Soames went into the back room and stood watching.
+
+The last of the old Forsytes was on his feet, moving with the most
+impressive slowness, and an air of perfect concentration on his own
+affairs, backward and forward between the foot of his bed and the
+window, a distance of some twelve feet. The lower part of his square
+face, no longer clean-shaven, was covered with snowy beard clipped as
+short as it could be, and his chin looked as broad as his brow where
+the hair was also quite white, while nose and cheeks and brow were a
+good yellow. One hand held a stout stick, and the other grasped the
+skirt of his Jaeger dressing-gown, from under which could be seen his
+bed-socked ankles and feet thrust into Jaeger slippers. The expression
+on his face was that of a crossed child, intent on something that he
+has not got. Each time he turned he stumped the stick, and then dragged
+it, as if to show that he could do without it.
+
+"He still looks strong," said Soames under his breath.
+
+"Oh! yes, sir. You should see him take his bath--it's wonderful; he
+does enjoy it so."
+
+Those quite loud words gave Soames an insight. Timothy had resumed his
+babyhood.
+
+"Does he take any interest in things generally?" he said, also aloud.
+
+"Oh! yes, sir; his food and his Will. It's quite a sight to see him
+turn it over and over, not to read it, of course; and every now and
+then he asks the price of Consols, and I write it on a slate for
+him--very large. Of course, I always write the same, what they were
+when he last took notice, in 1914. We got the doctor to forbid him to
+read the paper when the war broke out. Oh! he did take on about that at
+first. But he soon came round, because he knew it tired him; and he's a
+wonder to conserve energy as he used to call it when my dear mistresses
+were alive, bless their hearts! How he did go on at them about that;
+they were always so active, if you remember, Mr. Soames."
+
+"What would happen if I were to go in?" asked Soames. "Would he
+remember me? I made his Will, you know, after Miss Hester died in 1907."
+
+"Oh! that, sir," replied Smither doubtfully, "I couldn't take on me to
+say. I think he might; he really is a wonderful man for his age."
+
+Soames moved into the doorway, and, waiting for Timothy to turn, said
+in a loud voice: "Uncle Timothy!"
+
+Timothy trailed back half-way, and halted.
+
+"Eh?" he said.
+
+"Soames," cried Soames at the top of his voice, holding out his hand,
+"Soames Forsyte!"
+
+"No!" said Timothy, and stumping his stick loudly on the floor, he
+continued his walk.
+
+"It doesn't seem to work," said Soames.
+
+"No, sir," replied Smither, rather crestfallen; "you see, he hasn't
+finished his walk. It always was one thing at a time with him. I expect
+he'll ask me this afternoon if you came about the gas, and a pretty job
+I shall have to make him understand."
+
+"Do you think he ought to have a man about him?"
+
+Smither held up her hands. "A man! Oh! no. Cook and me can manage
+perfectly. A strange man about would send him crazy in no time. And my
+mistresses wouldn't like the idea of a man in the house. Besides, we're
+so proud of him."
+
+"I suppose the doctor comes?"
+
+"Every morning. He makes special terms for such a quantity, and Mr.
+Timothy's so used, he doesn't take a bit of notice, except to put out
+his tongue."
+
+"Well," said Soames, turning away, "it's rather sad and painful to me."
+
+"Oh! sir," returned Smither anxiously, "you mustn't think that. Now
+that he can't worry about things, he quite enjoys his life, really he
+does. As I say to Cook, Mr. Timothy is more of a man than he ever was.
+You see, when he's not walkin', or takin' his bath, he's eatin', and
+when he's not eatin', he's sleeping and there it is. There isn't an
+ache or a care about him anywhere."
+
+"Well," said Soames, "there's something in that. I'll go down. By the
+way, let me see his Will."
+
+"I should have to take my time about that, sir; he keeps it under his
+pillow, and he'd see me, while he's active."
+
+"I only want to know if it's the one I made," said Soames; "you take a
+look at its date some time, and let me know."
+
+"Yes, sir; but I'm sure it's the same, because me and Cook witnessed,
+you remember, and there's our names on it still, and we've only done it
+once."
+
+"Quite!" said Soames. He did remember. Smither and Jane had been proper
+witnesses, having been left nothing in the Will that they might have no
+interest in Timothy's death. It had been--he fully admitted--an almost
+improper precaution, but Timothy had wished it, and, after all, Aunt
+Hester had provided for them amply.
+
+"Very well," he said; "good-bye, Smither. Look after him, and if he
+should say anything at any time, put it down, and let me know."
+
+"Oh! yes, Mr. Soames; I'll be sure to do that. It's been such a
+pleasant change to see you. Cook will be quite excited when I tell her."
+
+Soames shook her hand and went down-stairs. He stood for fully two
+minutes by the hat-stand whereon he had hung his hat so many times. 'So
+it all passes,' he was thinking; 'passes and begins again. Poor old
+chap!' And he listened, if perchance the sound of Timothy trailing his
+hobby-horse might come down the well of the stairs; or some ghost of an
+old face show over the banisters, and an old voice say: "Why, it's dear
+Soames, and we were only saying that we hadn't seen him for a week!"
+
+Nothing--nothing! Just the scent of camphor, and dust-motes in a
+sunbeam through the fanlight over the door. The little old house! A
+mausoleum! And, turning on his heel, he went out, and caught his train.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE NATIVE HEATH
+
+
+    "His foot's upon his native heath,
+    His name's--Val Dartie."
+
+With some such feeling did Val Dartie, in the fortieth year of his age,
+set out that same Thursday morning very early from the old manor-house
+he had taken on the north side of the Sussex Downs. His destination was
+Newmarket, and he had not been there since the autumn of 1899, when he
+stole over from Oxford for the Cambridgeshire. He paused at the door to
+give his wife a kiss, and put a flask of port into his pocket.
+
+"Don't overtire your leg, Val, and don't bet too much."
+
+With the pressure of her chest against his own, and her eyes looking
+into his, Val felt both leg and pocket safe. He should be moderate;
+Holly was always right--she had a natural aptitude. It did not seem so
+remarkable to him, perhaps, as it might to others, that--half Dartie as
+he was--he should have been perfectly faithful to his young first
+cousin during the twenty years since he married her romantically out in
+the Boer War; and faithful without any feeling of sacrifice or
+boredom--she was so quick, so slyly always a little in front of his
+mood. Being first cousins they had decided, or rather Holly had, to
+have no children; and, though a little sallower, she had kept her
+looks, her slimness, and the colour of her dark hair. Val particularly
+admired the life of her own she carried on, besides carrying on his,
+and riding better every year. She kept up her music, she read an awful
+lot--novels, poetry, all sorts of stuff. Out on their farm in Cape
+Colony she had looked after all the "nigger" babies and women in a
+miraculous manner. She was, in fact,--clever; yet made no fuss about
+it, and had no "side." Though not remarkable for humility, Val had come
+to have the feeling that she was his superior, and he did not grudge
+it--a great tribute. It might be noted that he never looked at Holly
+without her knowing of it, but that she looked at him sometimes
+unawares.
+
+He has kissed her in the porch because he should not be doing so on the
+platform, though she was going to the station with him, to drive the
+car back. Tanned and wrinkled by Colonial weather and the wiles
+inseparable from horses, and handicapped by the leg which, weakened in
+the Boer War, had probably saved his life in the war just past, Val was
+still much as he had been in the days of his courtship; his smile as
+wide and charming, his eyelashes, if anything, thicker and darker, his
+eyes screwed up under them, as bright a grey, his freckles rather
+deeper, his hair a little grizzled at the sides. He gave the impression
+of one who has lived actively WITH HORSES in a sunny climate.
+
+Twisting the car sharp round at the gate, he said:
+
+"When is young Jon coming?"
+
+"To-day."
+
+"Is there anything you want for him? I could bring it down on Saturday."
+
+"No; but you might come by the same train as Fleur--one forty."
+
+Val gave the Ford full rein; he still drove like a man in a new country
+on bad roads, who refuses to compromise, and expects heaven at every
+hole.
+
+"That's a young woman who knows her way about," he said. "I say, has it
+struck you?"
+
+"Yes," said Holly.
+
+"Uncle Soames and your dad--bit awkward, isn't it?"
+
+"She won't know, and he won't know, and nothing must be said, of
+course. It's only for five days, Val."
+
+"Stable secret! Righto!" If Holly thought it safe, it was. Glancing
+slyly round at him, she said: "Did you notice how beautifully she asked
+herself?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Well, she did. What do you think of her, Val?"
+
+"Pretty, and clever; but she might run out at any corner if she got her
+monkey up, I should say."
+
+"I'm wondering," Holly murmured, "whether she is the modern young
+woman. One feels at sea coming home into all this."
+
+"You? You get the hang of things so quick."
+
+Holly slid her hand into his coat-pocket.
+
+"You keep one in the know," said Val, encouraged. "What do you think of
+that Belgian fellow, Profond?"
+
+"I think he's rather 'a good devil.'"
+
+Val grinned.
+
+"He seems to me a queer fish for a friend of our family. In fact, our
+family is in pretty queer waters, with Uncle Soames marrying a
+Frenchwoman, and your dad marrying Soames's first. Our grandfathers
+would have had fits!"
+
+"So would anybody's, my dear."
+
+"This car," said Val suddenly, "wants rousing; she doesn't get her hind
+legs under her up-hill. I shall have to give her her head on the slope
+if I'm to catch that train."
+
+There was that about horses which had prevented him from ever really
+sympathising with a car, and the running of the Ford under his
+guidance, compared with its running under that of Holly, was always
+noticeable. He caught the train.
+
+"Take care going home; she'll throw you down if she can. Good-bye,
+darling."
+
+"Good-bye," called Holly, and kissed her hand.
+
+In the train, after quarter of an hour's indecision between thoughts of
+Holly, his morning paper, the look of the bright day, and his dim
+memory of Newmarket, Val plunged into the recesses of a small square
+book, all names, pedigrees, tap-roots, and notes about the make and
+shape of horses. The Forsyte in him was bent on the acquisition of a
+certain strain of blood, and he was subduing resolutely as yet the
+Dartie hankering for a flutter. On getting back to England, after the
+profitable sale of his South African farm and stud, and observing that
+the sun seldom shone, Val had said to himself: "I've absolutely got to
+have an interest in life, or this country will give me the blues.
+Hunting's not enough, I'll breed and I'll train." With just that extra
+pinch of shrewdness and decision imparted by long residence in a new
+country, Val had seen the weak point of modern breeding. They were all
+hypnotised by fashion and high price. He should buy for looks, and let
+names go hang! And, here he was already, hypnotised by the prestige of
+a certain strain of blood! Half consciously, he thought: 'There's
+something in this damned climate which makes one go round in a ring.
+All the same, I must have a strain of Mayfly blood.'
+
+In this mood he reached the Mecca of his hopes. It was one of those
+quiet meetings favorable to such as wish to look into horses, rather
+than into the mouths of bookmakers; and Val clung to the paddock. His
+twenty years of Colonial life, divesting him of the dandyism in which
+he had been bred, had left him the essential neatness of the horseman,
+and given him a queer and rather blighting eye over what he called "the
+silly haw-haw" of some Englishmen, the 'flapping cockatoory' of some
+Englishwomen--Holly had none of that and Holly was his model.
+Observant, quick, resourceful, Val went straight to the heart of a
+transaction, a horse, a drink; and he was on his way to the heart of a
+Mayfly filly, when a slow voice said at his elbow:
+
+"Mr. Val Dartie? How's Mrs. Val Dartie? She's well, I hope." And he saw
+beside him the Belgian he had met at his sister Imogen's.
+
+"Prosper Profond--I met you at lunch," added the voice. "How are you?"
+murmured Val.
+
+"I'm very well," replied Monsieur Profond, smiling with a certain
+inimitable slowness. "A good devil" Holly had called him. Well! He
+looked a little like a devil, with his dark, clipped, pointed beard; a
+sleepy one though, and good-humoured, with fine eyes, unexpectedly
+intelligent.
+
+"Here's a gentleman wants to know you--cousin of yours--Mr. George
+Forsyde."
+
+Val saw a large form, and a face clean-shaven, bull-like, a little
+lowering, with sardonic humour bubbling behind a full grey eye; he
+remembered it dimly from old days when he used to dine with his father
+at the Iseeum Club.
+
+"I was a racing pal of your father's," George was saying. "How's the
+stud? Like to buy one of my screws?"
+
+Val grinned, to hide the sudden feeling that the bottom had fallen out
+of breeding. They believed in nothing over here, not even in horses.
+George Forsyte, Prosper Profond! The devil himself was not more
+disillusioned than those two.
+
+"Didn't know you were a racing man," he said to Monsieur Profond.
+
+"I'm not. I don' care for it. I'm a yachtin' man. I don' care for
+yachtin' either, but I like to see my friends. I've got some lunch, Mr.
+Val Dartie, just a small lunch, if you'd like to 'ave some; not
+much--just a small one--in my car."
+
+"Thanks," said Val; "very good of you. I'll come along in about quarter
+of an hour."
+
+"Over there. Mr. Forsyde's comin'," and Monsieur Profond "poinded" with
+a yellow-gloved finger; "small car, with a small lunch"; he moved on,
+groomed, sleepy, and remote, George Forsyte following, neat, huge, and
+with his jesting air.
+
+Val remained gazing at the Mayfly filly. George Forsyte, of course, was
+an old chap, but this Profond might be about his own age; Val felt
+extremely young, as if the Mayfly filly were a toy at which those two
+had laughed. The animal had lost reality.
+
+"That 'small' mare"--he seemed to hear the voice of Monsieur
+Profond--"what do you see in her--we must all die!"
+
+And George Forsyte, crony of his father, racing still! The Mayfly
+strain--was it any better than any other? He might just as well have a
+flutter with his money instead.
+
+"No, by gum!" he muttered suddenly, "if it's no good breeding horses,
+it's no good doing anything. What did I come for? I'll buy her."
+
+He stood back and watched the ebb of the paddock visitors towards the
+stand. Natty old chips, shrewd portly fellows, Jews, trainers looking
+as if they had never been guilty of seeing a horse in their lives;
+tall, flapping, languid women, or brisk, loud-voiced women; young men
+with an air as if trying to take it seriously--two or three of them
+with only one arm!
+
+'Life over here's a game!' thought Val. 'Muffin bell rings, horses run,
+money changes hands; ring again, run again, money changes back.'
+
+But, alarmed at his own philosophy, he went to the paddock gate to
+watch the Mayfly filly canter down. She moved well; and he made his way
+over to the "small" car. The "small" lunch was the sort a man dreams of
+but seldom gets; and when it was concluded Monsieur Profond walked back
+with him to the paddock.
+
+"Your wife's a nice woman," was his surprising remark.
+
+"Nicest woman I know," returned Val dryly.
+
+"Yes," said Monsieur Profond; "she has a nice face. I admire nice
+women."
+
+Val looked at him suspiciously, but something kindly and direct in the
+heavy diabolism of his companion disarmed him for the moment.
+
+"Any time you like to come on my yacht, I'll give her a small cruise."
+
+"Thanks," said Val, in arms again, "she hates the sea."
+
+"So do I," said Monsieur Profond.
+
+"Then why do you yacht?"
+
+The Belgian's eyes smiled. "Oh! I don' know. I've done everything; it's
+the last thing I'm doin'."
+
+"It must be d--d expensive. I should want more reason than that."
+
+Monsieur Prosper Profond raised his eyebrows, and puffed out a heavy
+lower lip.
+
+"I'm an easy-goin' man," he said.
+
+"Were you in the war?" asked Val.
+
+"Ye-es. I've done that too. I was gassed; it was a small bit
+unpleasant." He smiled with a deep and sleepy air of prosperity, as if
+he had caught it from his name. Whether his saying "small" when he
+ought to have said "little" was genuine mistake or affectation, Val
+could not decide; the fellow was evidently capable of anything. Among
+the ring of buyers round the Mayfly filly who had won her race,
+Monsieur Profond said: "You goin' to bid?"
+
+Val nodded. With this sleepy Satan at his elbow, he felt in need of
+faith. Though placed above the ultimate blows of Providence by the
+forethought of a grandfather who had tied him up a thousand a year to
+which was added the thousand a year tied up for Holly by HER
+grand-father, Val was not flush of capital that he could touch, having
+spent most of what he had realised from his South African farm on his
+establishment in Sussex. And very soon he was thinking: 'Dash it! she's
+going beyond me!' His limit--six hundred--exceeded, he dropped out of
+the bidding. The Mayfly filly passed under the hammer at seven hundred
+and fifty guineas. He was turning away vexed when the slow voice of
+Monsieur Profond said in his ear:
+
+"Well, I've bought that small filly, but I don't want her; you take her
+and give her to your wife."
+
+Val looked at the fellow with renewed suspicion, but the good humour in
+his eyes was such that he really could not take offence.
+
+"I made a small lot of money in the war," began Monsieur Profond in
+answer to that look. "I 'ad armament shares. I like to give it away.
+I'm always makin' money. I want very small lot myself. I like my
+friends to 'ave it."
+
+"I'll buy her of you at the price you gave," said Val with sudden
+resolution.
+
+"No," said Monsieur Profond. "You take her. I don' want her."
+
+"Hang it! One doesn't--"
+
+"Why not?" smiled Monsieur Profond. "I'm a friend of your family."
+
+"Seven hundred and fifty guineas is not a box of cigars," said Val
+impatiently.
+
+"All right; you keep her for me till I want her, and do what you like
+with her."
+
+"So long as she's yours," said Val, "I don't mind that." "That's all
+right," murmured Monsieur Profond, and moved away.
+
+Val watched; he might be "a good devil," but then again he might not.
+He saw him rejoin George Forsyte, and thereafter saw him no more.
+
+He spent those nights after racing at his mother's house in Green
+Street.
+
+Winifred Dartie at sixty-two was marvellously preserved, considering
+the three-and-thirty years during which she had put up with Montague
+Dartie, till almost happily released by a French staircase. It was to
+her a vehement satisfaction to have her favourite son back from South
+Africa after all this time, to feel him so little changed, and to have
+taken a fancy to his wife. Winifred, who in the late seventies, before
+her marriage, had been in the vanguard of freedom, pleasure, and
+fashion, confessed her youth outclassed by the donzellas of the day.
+They seemed, for instance, to regard marriage as an incident, and
+Winifred sometimes regretted that she had not done the same; a second,
+third, fourth incident might have secured her a partner of less
+dazzling inebriety; though, after all, he had left her Val, Imogen,
+Maud, Benedict (almost a colonel and unharmed by the war)--none of whom
+had been divorced as yet. The steadiness of her children often amazed
+one who remembered their father; but, as she was fond of believing,
+they were really all Forsytes, favouring herself, with the exception
+perhaps of Imogen. Her brother's "little girl" Fleur frankly puzzled
+Winifred. The child was as restless as any of these modern young
+women--"She's a small flame in a draught," Prosper Profond had said one
+day after dinner--but she did not flop, or talk at the top of her
+voice. The steady Forsyteism in Winifred's own character instinctively
+resented the feeling in the air, the modern girl's habits and her
+motto: "All's much of a muchness! Spend! To-morrow we shall be poor!"
+She found it a saving grace in Fleur that having set her heart on a
+thing, she had no change of heart until she got it--though what
+happened after, Fleur was, of course, too young to have made evident.
+The child was a "very pretty little thing," too, and quite a credit to
+take about, with her mother's French taste and gift for wearing
+clothes; everybody turned to look at Fleur--great consideration to
+Winifred, a lover of the style and distinction which had so cruelly
+deceived her in the case of Montague Dartie.
+
+In discussing her with Val, at breakfast on Saturday morning, Winifred
+dwelt on the family skeleton.
+
+"That little affair of your father-in-law and your Aunt Irene,
+Val--it's old as the hills, of course, Fleur need know nothing about
+it--making a fuss. Your Uncle Soames is very particular about that. So
+you'll be careful."
+
+"Yes! But it's dashed awkward--Holly's young half-brother is coming to
+live with us while he learns farming. He's there already."
+
+"Oh!" said Winifred. "That is a gaff! What is he like?"
+
+"Only saw him once--at Robin Hill, when we were home in 1909; he was
+naked and painted blue and yellow in stripes--a jolly little chap."
+
+Winifred thought that "rather nice," and added comfortably: "Well,
+Holly's sensible; she'll know how to deal with it. I shan't tell your
+uncle. It'll only bother him. It's a great comfort to have you back, my
+dear boy, now that I'm getting on."
+
+"Getting on! Why! you're as young as ever. By the way, that chap
+Profond, Mother, is he all right?"
+
+"Prosper Profond! Oh! the most amusing man I know."
+
+Val grunted, and recounted the story of the Mayfly filly.
+
+"That's SO like him," murmured Winifred. "He does all sorts of things."
+
+"Well," said Val shrewdly, "our family haven't been too lucky with that
+kind of cattle; they're too light-hearted for us."
+
+It was true, and Winifred's blue study lasted a full minute before she
+answered:
+
+"Oh! well! He's a foreigner, Val; one must make allowances."
+
+"All right, I'll use his filly and make it up to him, somehow."
+
+And soon after he gave her his blessing, received a kiss, and left her
+for his bookmaker's, the Iseeum Club, and Victoria station.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+JON
+
+
+Mrs. Val Dartie, after twenty years of South Africa, had fallen deeply
+in love, fortunately with something of her own, for the object of her
+passion was the prospect in front of her windows, the cool clear light
+on the green Downs. It was England again, at last! England more
+beautiful than she had dreamed. Chance had, in fact, guided the Val
+Darties to a spot where the South Downs had real charm when the sun
+shone. Holly had enough of her father's eye to apprehend the rare
+quality of their outlines and chalky radiance; to go up there by the
+ravine-like lane and wander along towards Chanctonbury or Amberley, was
+still a delight which she hardly attempted to share with Val, whose
+admiration of Nature was confused by a Forsyte's instinct for getting
+something out of it, such as the condition of the turf for his horses'
+exercise.
+
+Driving the Ford home with a certain humouring smoothness, she promised
+herself that the first use she would make of Jon would be to take him
+up there, and show him "the view" under this May-day sky.
+
+She was looking forward to her young half-brother with a motherliness
+not exhausted by Val. A three-day visit to Robin Hill, soon after their
+arrival home, had yielded no sight of him--he was still at school; so
+that her recollection, like Val's, was of a little sunny-haired boy
+striped blue and yellow, down by the pond.
+
+Those three days at Robin Hill had been exciting, sad, embarrassing.
+Memories of her dead brother, memories of Val's courtship; the aging of
+her father, not seen for twenty years, something funereal in his ironic
+gentleness which did not escape one who had much subtle instinct; above
+all, the presence of her stepmother, whom she could still vaguely
+remember as the "lady in grey" of days when she was little and
+grandfather alive and Mademoiselle Beauce so cross because that
+intruder gave her music lessons--all these confused and tantalised a
+spirit which had longed to find Robin Hill untroubled. But Holly was
+adept at keeping things to herself, and all had seemed to go quite well.
+
+Her father had kissed her when she left him, with lips which she was
+sure had trembled.
+
+"Well, my dear," he said, "the war hasn't changed Robin Hill, has it?
+If only you could have brought Jolly back with you! I say, can you
+stand this spiritualistic racket? When the oak-tree dies, it dies, I'm
+afraid."
+
+From the warmth of her embrace he probably divined that he had let the
+cat out of his bag, for he rode off at once on irony.
+
+"Spiritualism--queer word, when the more they manifest the more they
+prove that they've got hold of matter."
+
+"How?" said Holly.
+
+"Why! Look at their photographs of auric presences. You must have
+something material for light and shade to fall on before you can take a
+photograph. No, it'll end in our calling all matter spirit, or all
+spirit matter--I don't know which."
+
+"But don't you believe in survival, Dad?"
+
+Jolyon had looked at her, and the sad whimsicality of his face
+impressed her deeply.
+
+"Well, my dear, I should like to get something out of death. I've been
+looking into it a bit. But for the life of me I can't find anything
+that telepathy, subconsciousness, and emanation from the storehouse of
+this world can't account for just as well. Wish I could! Wishes father
+thoughts but they don't breed evidence."
+
+Holly had pressed her lips again to his forehead with a feeling that it
+confirmed his theory that all matter was becoming spirit--his brow felt
+somehow so insubstantial.
+
+But the most poignant memory of that little visit had been watching,
+unobserved, her stepmother reading to herself a letter from Jon. It
+was--she decided--the prettiest sight she had ever seen. Irene, lost as
+it were in the letter of her boy, stood at a window where the light
+fell on her face and her fine grey hair; her lips were moving, smiling,
+her dark eyes laughing, dancing, and the hand which did not hold the
+letter was pressed against her breast. Holly withdrew as from a vision
+of perfect love, convinced that Jon must be nice.
+
+When she saw him coming out of the station with a kit-bag in either
+hand, she was confirmed in her predisposition. He was a little like
+Jolly, that long-lost idol of her childhood, but eager-looking and less
+formal, with deeper eyes and brighter-coloured hair, for he wore no
+hat; altogether a very interesting "little" brother!
+
+His tentative politeness charmed one who was accustomed to assurance in
+the youthful manner; he was disturbed because she was to drive him
+home, instead of his driving her. Shouldn't he have a shot? They hadn't
+a car at Robin Hill since the war, of course, and he had only driven
+once, and landed up a bank, so she oughtn't to mind his trying. His
+laugh, soft and infectious, was very attractive, though that word, she
+had heard, was now quite old-fashioned. When they reached the house he
+pulled out a crumpled letter which she read while he was washing--a
+quite short letter, which must have cost her father many a pang to
+write.
+
+
+"MY DEAR,
+
+"You and Val will not forget, I trust, that Jon knows nothing of family
+history. His mother and I think he is too young at present. The boy is
+very dear, and the apple of her eye. Verbum sapientibus.
+
+Your loving father, J. F."
+
+
+That was all; but it renewed in Holly an uneasy regret that Fleur was
+coming.
+
+After tea she fulfilled that promise to herself and took Jon up the
+hill. They had a long talk, sitting above an old chalk-pit grown over
+with brambles and goosepenny. Milkwort and liverwort starred the green
+slope, the larks sang, and thrushes in the brake, and now and then a
+gull flighting inland would wheel very white against the paling sky,
+where the vague moon was coming up. Delicious fragrance came to them,
+as if little invisible creatures were running and treading scent out of
+the blades of grass.
+
+Jon, who had fallen silent, said rather suddenly: "I say, this is
+wonderful! There's no fat on it at all. Gull's flight and sheep-bells--"
+
+"Gull's flight and sheep-bells! You're a poet, my dear!"
+
+Jon sighed.
+
+"Oh, Golly! No go!"
+
+"Try! I used to at your age."
+
+"Did you? Mother says 'try' too; but I'm so rotten. Have you any of
+yours for me to see?"
+
+"My dear," Holly murmured, "I've been married nineteen years. I only
+wrote verses when I wanted to be."
+
+"Oh!" said Jon, and turned over on to his face: the one cheek she could
+see was a charming colour. Was Jon "touched in the wind," then, as Val
+would have called it? Already? But, if so, all the better, he would
+take no notice of young Fleur. Besides, on Monday he would begin his
+farming. And she smiled. Was it Burns who followed the plough, or only
+Piers Plowman? Nearly every young man and most young women seemed to be
+poets nowadays, from the number of their books she had read out in
+South Africa, importing them from Hatchus and Bumphards; and quite
+good--oh! quite; much better than she had been herself! But then poetry
+had only really come in since her day--with motor-cars. Another long
+talk after dinner over a wood fire in the low hall, and there seemed
+little left to know about Jon except anything of real importance. Holly
+parted from him at his bedroom door, having seen twice over that he had
+everything, with the conviction that she would love him, and Val would
+like him. He was eager, but did not gush; he was a splendid listener,
+sympathetic, reticent about himself. He evidently loved their father,
+and adored his mother. He liked riding, rowing, and fencing, better
+than games. He saved moths from candles, and couldn't bear spiders, but
+put them out of doors in screws of paper sooner than kill them. In a
+word, he was amiable. She went to sleep, thinking that he would suffer
+horribly if anybody hurt him; but who would hurt him?
+
+Jon, on the other hand, sat awake at his window with a bit of paper and
+a pencil, writing his first "real poem" by the light of a candle
+because there was not enough moon to see by, only enough to make the
+night seem fluttery and as if engraved on silver. Just the night for
+Fleur to walk, and turn her eyes, and lead on--over the hills and far
+away. And Jon, deeply furrowed in his ingenuous brow, made marks on the
+paper and rubbed them out and wrote them in again, and did all that was
+necessary for the completion of a work of art; and he had a feeling
+such as the winds of Spring must have, trying their first songs among
+the coming blossom. Jon was one of those boys (not many) in whom a
+home-trained love of beauty had survived school life. He had had to
+keep it to himself, of course, so that not even the drawing-master knew
+of it; but it was there, fastidious and clear within him. And his poem
+seemed to him as lame and stilted as the night was winged. But he kept
+it all the same. It was a "beast," but better than nothing as an
+expression of the inexpressible. And he thought with a sort of
+discomfiture: 'I shan't be able to show it to Mother.' He slept
+terribly well, when he did sleep, overwhelmed by novelty.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+FLEUR
+
+
+To avoid the awkwardness of questions which could not be answered, all
+that had been told Jon was: "There's a girl coming down with Val for
+the week-end."
+
+For the same reason, all that had been told Fleur was: "We've got a
+youngster staying with us."
+
+The two yearlings, as Val called them in his thoughts, met therefore in
+a manner which for unpreparedness left nothing to be desired. They were
+thus introduced by Holly:
+
+"This is Jon, my little brother; Fleur's a cousin of ours, Jon."
+
+Jon, who was coming in through a French window out of strong sunlight,
+was so confounded by the providential nature of this miracle, that he
+had time to hear Fleur say calmly: "Oh, how do you do?" as if he had
+never seen her, and to understand dimly from the quickest imaginable
+little movement of her head that he never HAD seen her. He bowed
+therefore over her hand in an intoxicated manner, and became more
+silent than the grave. He knew better than to speak. Once in his early
+life, surprised reading by a night-light, he had said fatuously "I was
+just turning over the leaves, Mum," and his mother had replied: "Jon,
+never tell stories, because of your face--nobody will ever believe
+them."
+
+The saying had permanently undermined the confidence necessary to the
+success of spoken untruth. He listened therefore to Fleur's swift and
+rapt allusions to the jolliness of everything, plied her with scones
+and jam, and got away as soon as might be. They say that in delirium
+tremens you see a fixed object, preferably dark, which suddenly changes
+shape and position. Jon saw the fixed object; it had dark eyes and
+passably dark hair, and changed its position, but never its shape. The
+knowledge that between him and that object there was already a secret
+understanding (however impossible to understand) thrilled him so that
+he waited feverishly, and began to copy out his poem--which of course
+he would never dare to show her--till the sound of horses' hoofs roused
+him, and, leaning from his window, he saw her riding forth with Val. It
+was clear that she wasted no time; but the sight filled him with grief.
+He wasted his. If he had not bolted, in his fearful ecstasy, he might
+have been asked to go too. From his window he watched them disappear,
+appear again in the chine of the road, vanish, and emerge once more for
+a minute clear on the outline of the Down. 'Silly brute!' he thought;
+'I always miss my chances.'
+
+Why couldn't he be self-confident and ready? And, leaning his chin on
+his hands, he imagined the ride he might have had with her. A week-end
+was but a week-end, and he had missed three hours of it. Did he know
+any one except himself who would have been such a flat? He did not.
+
+He dressed for dinner early, and was first down. He would miss no more.
+But he missed Fleur, who came down last. He sat opposite her at dinner,
+and it was terrible--impossible to say anything for fear of saying the
+wrong thing, impossible to keep his eyes fixed on her in the only
+natural way; in sum, impossible to treat normally one with whom in
+fancy he had already been over the hills and far away; conscious, too,
+all the time, that he must seem to her, to all of them, a dumb gawk.
+Yes, it was terrible! And she was talking so well--swooping with swift
+wing this way and that. Wonderful how she had learned an art which he
+found so disgustingly difficult. She must think him hopeless indeed!
+
+His sister's eyes fixed on him with a certain astonishment, obliged him
+at last to look at Fleur; but instantly her eyes, very wide and eager,
+seeming to say: "Oh! for goodness' sake!" obliged him to look at Val;
+where a grin obliged him to look at his cutlet--that, at least, had no
+eyes, and no grin, and he ate it hastily.
+
+"Jon is going to be a farmer," he heard Holly say; "a farmer and a
+poet."
+
+He glanced up reproachfully, caught the comic lift of her eyebrow just
+like their father's, laughed, and felt better.
+
+Val recounted the incident of Monsieur Prosper Profond; nothing could
+have been more favourable, for, in relating it, he regarded Holly, who
+in turn regarded him, while Fleur seemed to be regarding with a slight
+frown some thought of her own, and Jon was really free to look at her
+at last. She had on a white frock, very simple and well made; her arms
+were bare, and her hair had a white rose in it. In just that swift
+moment of free vision, after such intense discomfort, Jon saw her
+sublimated, as one sees in the dark a slender white fruit-tree; caught
+her like a verse of poetry flashed before the eyes of the mind, or a
+tune which floats out in the distance and dies.
+
+He wondered giddily how old she was--she seemed so much more
+self-possessed and experienced than himself. Why mustn't he say they
+had met? He remembered suddenly his mother's face; puzzled,
+hurt-looking, when she answered: "Yes, they're relations, but we don't
+know them." Impossible that his mother, who loved beauty, should not
+admire Fleur if she did know her!
+
+Alone with Val after dinner, he sipped port deferentially and answered
+the advances of this new-found brother-in-law. As to riding (always the
+first consideration with Val) he could have the young chestnut, saddle
+and unsaddle it himself, and generally look after it when he brought it
+in. Jon said he was accustomed to all that at home, and saw that he had
+gone up one in his host's estimation.
+
+"Fleur," said Val, "can't ride much yet, but she's keen. Of course, her
+father doesn't know a horse from a cartwheel. Does your dad ride?"
+
+"He used to; but now he's--you know, he's--" He stopped, so hating the
+word old. His father was old, and yet not old; no--never!
+
+"Quite!" muttered Val. "I used to know your brother up at Oxford, ages
+ago, the one who died in the Boer War. We had a fight in New College
+Gardens. That was a queer business," he added, musing; "a good deal
+came out of it."
+
+Jon's eyes opened wide; all was pushing him towards historical
+research, when his sister's voice said gently from the doorway:
+
+"Come along, you two," and he rose, his heart pushing him towards
+something far more modern.
+
+Fleur having declared that it was "simply too wonderful to stay
+indoors," they all went out. Moonlight was frosting the dew, and an old
+sun-dial threw a long shadow. Two box hedges at right angles, dark and
+square, barred off the orchard. Fleur turned through that angled
+opening.
+
+"Come on!" she called. Jon glanced at the others, and followed. She was
+running among the trees like a ghost. All was lovely and foamlike above
+her, and there was a scent of old trunks, and of nettles. She vanished.
+He thought he had lost her, then almost ran into her standing quite
+still.
+
+"Isn't it jolly?" she cried, and Jon answered:
+
+"Rather!"
+
+She reached up, twisted off a blossom, and, twirling it in her fingers,
+said:
+
+"I suppose I can call you Jon?"
+
+"I should think so just."
+
+"All right! But you know there's a feud between our families?"
+
+Jon stammered: "Feud? Why?"
+
+"It's ever so romantic and silly? That's why I pretended we hadn't met.
+Shall we get up early to-morrow morning and go for a walk before
+breakfast and have it out? I hate being slow about things, don't you?"
+
+Jon murmured a rapturous assent.
+
+"Six o'clock, then. I think your mother's beautiful."
+
+Jon said fervently: "Yes, she is."
+
+"I love all kinds of beauty," went on Fleur, "when it's exciting. I
+don't like Greek things a bit."
+
+"What! Not Euripides?"
+
+"Euripides? Oh! no, I can't bear Greek plays; they're so long. I think
+beauty's always swift. I like to look at ONE picture, for instance, and
+then run off. I can't bear a lot of things together. Look!" She held up
+her blossom in the moonlight. "That's better than all the orchard, I
+think."
+
+And, suddenly, with her other hand she caught Jon's. "Of all things in
+the world, don't you think caution's the most awful? Smell the
+moonlight!"
+
+She thrust the blossom against his face; Jon agreed giddily that of all
+things in the world caution was the worst, and bending over, kissed the
+hand which held his.
+
+"That's nice and old-fashioned," said Fleur calmly. "You're frightfully
+silent, Jon. Still I like silence when it's swift." She let go his
+hand. "Did you think I dropped my handkerchief on purpose?"
+
+"No!" cried Jon, intensely shocked.
+
+"Well, I did, of course. Let's get back, or they'll think we're doing
+this on purpose too." And again she ran like a ghost among the trees.
+Jon followed, with love in his heart, Spring in his heart, and over all
+the moonlit white unearthly blossom. They came out where they had gone
+in, Fleur walking demurely.
+
+"It's quite wonderful in there," she said dreamily to Holly.
+
+Jon preserved silence, hoping against hope that she might be thinking
+it swift.
+
+She bade him a casual and demure good-night, which made him think he
+had been dreaming....
+
+In her bedroom Fleur had flung off her gown, and, wrapped in a
+shapeless garment, with the white flower still in her hair, she looked
+like a mousme, sitting cross-legged on her bed, writing by candlelight.
+
+
+"DEAREST CHERRY:
+
+"I believe I'm in love. I've got it in the neck, only the feeling is
+really lower down. He's a second cousin--such a child, about six months
+older and ten years younger than I am. Boys always fall in love with
+their seniors, and girls with their juniors or with old men of forty.
+Don't laugh, but his eyes are the truest things I ever saw; and he's
+quite divinely silent! We had a most romantic first meeting in London
+under the Vospovitch 'Juno.' And now he's sleeping in the next room and
+the moonlight's on the blossom; and to-morrow morning, before anybody's
+awake, we're going to walk off into Down fairyland. There's a feud
+between our families, which makes it really exciting. Yes! and I may
+have to use subterfuge and come on you for invitations--if so, you'll
+know why! My father doesn't want us to know each other, but I can't
+help that. Life's too short. He's got the most beautiful mother, with
+lovely silvery hair and a young face with dark eyes. I'm staying with
+his sister--who married my cousin; it's all mixed up, but I mean to
+pump her to-morrow. We've often talked about love being a spoil-sport;
+well, that's all tosh, it's the beginning of sport, and the sooner you
+feel it, my dear, the better for you.
+
+"Jon (not simplified spelling, but short for Jolyon, which is a name in
+my family, they say) is the sort that lights up and goes out; about
+five feet ten, still growing, and I believe he's going to be a poet. If
+you laugh at me I've done with you for ever. I perceive all sorts of
+difficulties, but you know when I really want a thing I get it. One of
+the chief effects of love is that you see the air sort of inhabited,
+like seeing a face in the moon; and you feel--you feel dancey and soft
+at the same time, with a funny sensation--like a continual first sniff
+of orange blossom--just above your stays. This is my first, and I feel
+as if it were going to be my last, which is absurd, of course, by all
+the laws of Nature and morality. If you mock me I will smite you, and
+if you tell anybody I will never forgive you. So much so, that I almost
+don't think I'll send this letter. Anyway, I'll sleep over it. So
+good-night, my Cherry--oh!
+
+Your FLEUR."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+IDYLL ON GRASS
+
+
+When those two young Forsytes emerged from the chine lane, and set
+their faces East towards the sun, there was not a cloud in heaven, and
+the Downs were dewy. They had come at a good bat up the slope and were
+a little out of breath; if they had anything to say they did not say
+it, but marched in the early awkwardness of unbreakfasted morning under
+the songs of the larks. The stealing out had been fun, but with the
+freedom of the tops the sense of conspiracy ceased, and gave place to
+dumbness.
+
+"We've made one blooming error," said Fleur, when they had gone half a
+mile. "I'm hungry."
+
+Jon produced a stick of chocolate. They shared it and their tongues
+were loosened. They discussed the nature of their homes and previous
+existences, which had a kind of fascinating unreality up on that lonely
+height. There remained but one thing solid in Jon's past--his mother;
+but one thing solid in Fleur's--her father; and of these figures, as
+though seen in the distance with disapproving faces, they spoke little.
+
+The Down dipped and rose again towards Chanctonbury Ring; a sparkle of
+far sea came into view, a sparrowhawk hovered in the sun's eye so that
+the blood-nourished brown of his wings gleamed nearly red. Jon had a
+passion for birds, and an aptitude for sitting very still to watch
+them; keen-sighted, and with a memory for what interested him, on birds
+he was almost worth listening to. But in Chanctonbury Ring there were
+none--its great beech temple was empty of life, and almost chilly at
+this early hour; they came out willingly again into the sun on the far
+side. It was Fleur's turn now. She spoke of dogs, and the way people
+treated them. It was wicked to keep them on chains! She would like to
+flog people who did that. Jon was astonished to find her so
+humanitarian. She knew a dog, it seemed, which some farmer near her
+home kept chained up at the end of his chicken run, in all weathers
+till it had almost lost its voice from barking!
+
+"And the misery is," she said vehemently, "that if the poor thing
+didn't bark at every one who passes it wouldn't be kept there. I do
+think men are cunning brutes. I've let it go twice, on the sly; it's
+nearly bitten me both times, and then it goes simply mad with joy; but
+it always runs back home at last, and they chain it up again. If I had
+my way, I'd chain that man up."
+
+Jon saw her teeth and her eyes gleam. "I'd brand him on his forehead
+with the word 'Brute'; that would teach him!"
+
+Jon agreed that it would be a good remedy. "It's their sense of
+property," he said, "which makes people chain things. The last
+generation thought of nothing but property; and that's why there was
+the war."
+
+"Oh!" said Fleur, "I never thought of that. Your people and mine
+quarrelled about property. And anyway we've all got it--at least, I
+suppose your people have."
+
+"Oh! yes, luckily; I don't suppose I shall be any good at making money."
+
+"If you were, I don't believe I should like you."
+
+Jon slipped his hand tremulously under her arm.
+
+Fleur looked straight before her, and chanted:
+
+    "Jon, Jon, the farmer's son,
+    Stole a pig, and away he run!"
+
+Jon's arm crept round her waist.
+
+"This is rather sudden," said Fleur calmly; "do you often do it?"
+
+Jon dropped his arm. But when she laughed, his arm stole back again;
+and Fleur began to sing:
+
+   "O who will o'er the downs so free,
+    O who will with me ride?
+    O who will up and follow me--"
+
+"Sing, Jon!"
+
+Jon sang. The larks joined in, sheep-bells, and an early morning church
+far away over in Steyning. They went on from tune to tune, till Fleur
+said:
+
+"My God! I am hungry now!"
+
+"Oh! I AM sorry!"
+
+She looked round into his face.
+
+"Jon, you're rather a darling."
+
+And she pressed his hand against her waist. Jon almost reeled with
+happiness. A yellow-and-white dog coursing a hare startled them apart.
+They watched the two vanish down the slope, till Fleur said with a
+sigh: "He'll never catch it, thank goodness! What's the time? Mine's
+stopped. I never wound it."
+
+Jon looked at his watch. "By Jove!" he said, "mine's stopped, too."
+
+They walked on again, but only hand in hand.
+
+"If the grass is dry," said Fleur, "let's sit down for half a minute."
+
+Jon took off his coat, and they shared it.
+
+"Smell! Actually wild thyme!"
+
+With his arm round her waist again, they sat some minutes in silence.
+
+"We are goats!" cried Fleur, jumping up; "we shall be most fearfully
+late, and look so silly, and put them on their guard. Look here, Jon!
+We only came out to get an appetite for breakfast, and lost our way.
+See?"
+
+"Yes," said Jon.
+
+"It's serious; there'll be a stopper put on us. Are you a good liar?"
+
+"I believe not very; but I can try." Fleur frowned.
+
+"You know," she said, "I realise that they don't mean us to be friends."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I told you why."
+
+"But that's silly."
+
+"Yes; but you don't know my father!"
+
+"I suppose he's fearfully fond of you."
+
+"You see, I'm an only child. And so are you--of your mother. Isn't it a
+bore? There's so much expected of one. By the time they've done
+expecting, one's as good as dead."
+
+"Yes," muttered Jon, "life's beastly short. One wants to live for ever,
+and know everything."
+
+"And love everybody?"
+
+"No," cried Jon; "I only want to love once--you."
+
+"Indeed! You're coming on! Oh! Look! There's the chalk-pit; we can't be
+very far now. Let's run."
+
+Jon followed, wondering fearfully if he had offended her.
+
+The chalk-pit was full of sunshine and the murmuration of bees. Fleur
+flung back her hair.
+
+"Well," she said, "in case of accidents, you may give me one kiss,
+Jon," and she pushed her cheek forward. With ecstasy he kissed that hot
+soft cheek.
+
+"Now, remember! We lost our way; and leave it to me as much as you can.
+I'm going to be rather beastly to you; it's safer; try and be beastly
+to me!"
+
+Jon shook his head. "That's impossible."
+
+"Just to please me; till five o'clock, at all events."
+
+"Anybody will be able to see through it," said Jon gloomily.
+
+"Well, do your best. Look! There they are! Wave your hat! Oh! you
+haven't got one. Well, I'll cooee! Get a little away from me, and look
+sulky."
+
+Five minutes later, entering the house and, doing his utmost to look
+sulky, Jon heard her clear voice in the dining-room:
+
+"Oh! I'm simply RAVENOUS! He's going to be a farmer--and he loses his
+way! The boy's an idiot!"
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+GOYA
+
+
+Lunch was over and Soames mounted to the picture-gallery in his house
+near Mapledurham. He had what Annette called "a grief." Fleur was not
+yet home. She had been expected on Wednesday; had wired that it would
+be Friday; and again on Friday that it would be Sunday afternoon; and
+here were her aunt, and her cousins the Cardigans, and this fellow
+Profond, and everything flat as a pancake for the want of her. He stood
+before his Gauguin--sorest point of his collection. He had bought the
+ugly great thing with two early Matisses before the war, because there
+was such a fuss about those Post-Impressionist chaps. He was wondering
+whether Profond would take them off his hands--the fellow seemed not to
+know what to do with his money--when he heard his sister's voice say:
+"I think that's a horrid thing, Soames." and saw that Winifred had
+followed him up.
+
+"Oh! you DO?" he said dryly; "I gave five hundred for it."
+
+"Fancy! Women aren't made like that even if they are black."
+
+Soames uttered a glum laugh. "You didn't come up to tell me that."
+
+"No. Do you know that Jolyon's boy is staying with Val and his wife?"
+
+Soames spun round.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Yes," drawled Winifred; "he's gone to live with them there while he
+learns farming."
+
+Soames had turned away, but her voice pursued him as he walked up and
+down. "I warned Val that neither of them was to be spoken to about old
+matters."
+
+"Why didn't you tell me before?"
+
+Winifred shrugged her substantial shoulders.
+
+"Fleur does what she likes. You've always spoiled her. Besides, my dear
+boy, what's the harm?"
+
+"The harm!" muttered Soames. "Why, she--" he checked himself. The Juno,
+the handkerchief, Fleur's eyes, her questions, and now this delay in
+her return--the symptoms seemed to him so sinister that, faithful to
+his nature, he could not part with them.
+
+"I think you take too much care," said Winifred; "if I were you, I
+should tell her of that old matter. It's no good thinking that girls in
+these days are as they used to be. Where they pick up their knowledge I
+can't tell, but they seem to know everything."
+
+Over Soames's face, closely composed, passed a sort of spasm, and
+Winifred added hastily:
+
+"If you don't like to speak of it, I could for you." Soames shook his
+head. Unless there was absolute necessity the thought that his adored
+daughter should learn of that old scandal hurt his pride too much.
+
+"No," he said, "not yet. Never if I can help it."
+
+"Nonsense, my dear. Think what people are!"
+
+"Twenty years is a long time," muttered Soames, "outside our family,
+who's likely to remember?"
+
+Winifred was silenced. She inclined more and more to that peace and
+quietness of which Montague Dartie had deprived her in her youth. And,
+since pictures always depressed her, she soon went down again.
+
+Soames passed into the corner where, side by side, hung his real Goya,
+and the copy of the fresco "La Vendimia." His acquisition of the real
+Goya rather beautifully illustrated the cobweb of vested interests and
+passions, which mesh the bright-winged fly of human life. The real
+Goya's noble owner's ancestor had come into possession of it during
+some Spanish war--it was in a word loot. The noble owner had remained
+in ignorance of its value until in the nineties an enterprising critic
+discovered that a Spanish painter named Goya was a genius. It was only
+a fair Goya, but almost unique in England, and the noble owner became a
+marked man. Having many possessions and that aristocratic culture
+which, independent of mere sensuous enjoyment, is founded on the
+sounder principle that one must know everything and be fearfully
+interested in life, he had fully intended to keep an article which
+contributed to his reputation while he was alive, and to leave it to
+the nation after he was dead. Fortunately for Soames, the House of
+Lords was violently attacked in 1909, and the noble owner became
+alarmed and angry. "If," he said to himself, "they think they can have
+it both ways they are very much mistaken. So long as they leave me in
+quiet enjoyment the nation can have some of my pictures at my death.
+But if the nation is going to bait me, and rob me like this, I'm damned
+if I won't sell the--lot. They can't have my private property and my
+public spirit--both." He brooded in this fashion for several months
+till one morning, after reading the speech of a certain statesman, he
+telegraphed to his agent to come down and bring Bodkin. On going over
+the collection Bodkin, than whose opinion on market values none was
+more sought, pronounced that with a free hand to sell to America,
+Germany, and other places where there was an interest in art, a lot
+more money could be made than by selling in England. The noble owner's
+public spirit--he said--was well known but the pictures were unique.
+The noble owner put this opinion in his pipe and smoked it for a year.
+At the end of that time he read another speech by the same statesman,
+and telegraphed to his agents: "Give Bodkin a free hand." It was at
+this juncture that Bodkin conceived the idea which salved the Goya and
+two other unique pictures for the native country of the noble owner.
+With one hand Bodkin proffered the pictures to the foreign market, with
+the other he formed a list of private British collectors. Having
+obtained what he considered the highest possible bids from across the
+seas, he submitted pictures and bids to the private British collectors,
+and invited them, of their public spirit, to outbid. In three instances
+(including the Goya) out of twenty-one he was successful. And why? One
+of the private collectors made buttons--he had made so many that he
+desired that his wife should be called Lady "Buttons." He therefore
+bought an unique picture at great cost, and gave it to the nation. It
+was "part," his friends said, "of his general game." The second of the
+private collectors was an Americo-phobe, and bought a unique picture to
+"spite the damned Yanks." The third of the private collectors was
+Soames, who--more sober than either of the others--bought after a visit
+to Madrid, because he was certain that Goya was still on the up grade.
+Goya was not booming at the moment, but he would come again; and,
+looking at that portrait, Hogarthian, Manetesque in its directness, but
+with its own queer sharp beauty of paint, he was perfectly satisfied
+still that he had made no error, heavy though the price had
+been--heaviest he had ever paid. And next to it was hanging the copy of
+"La Vendimia." There she was--the little wretch--looking back at him in
+her dreamy mood, the mood he loved best because he felt so much safer
+when she looked like that.
+
+He was still gazing when the scent of a cigar impinged on his nostrils,
+and a voice said: "Well, Mr. Forsyde, what you goin' to do with this
+small lot?"
+
+That Belgian chap, whose mother--as if Flemish blood were not
+enough--had been Armenian! Subduing a natural irritation, he said: "Are
+you a judge of pictures?"
+
+"Well, I've got a few myself."
+
+"Any Post-Impressionists?"
+
+"Ye-es, I rather like them."
+
+"What do you think of this?" said Soames, pointing to the Gauguin.
+
+Monsieur Profond protruded his lower lip and short pointed beard.
+"Rather fine, I think," he said; "do you want to sell it?"
+
+Soames checked his instinctive "Not particularly"--he would not chaffer
+with this alien.
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+"What do you want for it?"
+
+"What I gave."
+
+"All right," said Monsieur Profond. "I'll be glad to take that small
+picture. Post-Impressionists--they're awful dead, but they're amusin'.
+I don' care for pictures much, but I've got some, just a small lot."
+
+"What DO you care for?"
+
+Monsieur Profond shrugged his shoulders. "Life's awful like a lot of
+monkeys scramblin' for empty nuts."
+
+"You're young," said Soames. If the fellow must make a generalisation,
+he needn't suggest that the forms of property lacked solidity!
+
+"I don' worry," replied Monsieur Profond smiling; "we're born, and we
+die. Half the world's starvin'. I feed a small lot of babies out in my
+mother's country; but what's the use? Might as well throw my money in
+the river."
+
+Soames looked at him, and turned back towards his Goya. He didn't know
+what the fellow wanted.
+
+"What shall I make my cheque for?" pursued Monsieur Profond.
+
+"Five hundred," said Soames shortly; "but I don't want you to take it
+if you don't care for it more than that."
+
+"That's all right," said Monsieur Profond; "I'll be 'appy to 'ave that
+picture."
+
+He wrote a cheque with a fountain-pen heavily chased with gold. Soames
+watched the process uneasily. How on earth had the fellow known that he
+wanted to sell that picture? Monsieur Profond held out the cheque.
+
+"The English are awful funny about pictures," he said. "So are the
+French, so are my people. They're all awful funny."
+
+"I don't understand you," said Soames stiffly.
+
+"It's like hats," said Monsieur Profond enigmatically, "small or large,
+turnin' up or down--just the fashion. Awful funny." And, smiling, he
+drifted out of the gallery again, blue and solid like the smoke of his
+excellent cigar.
+
+Soames had taken the cheque, feeling as if the intrinsic value of
+ownership had been called in question. 'He's a cosmopolitan,' he
+thought, watching Profond emerge from under the verandah with Annette,
+and saunter down the lawn towards the river. What his wife saw in the
+fellow he didn't know, unless it was that he could speak her language;
+and there passed in Soames what Monsieur Profond would have called a
+"small doubt" whether Annette was not too handsome to be walking with
+any one so "cosmopolitan." Even at that distance he could see the blue
+fumes from Profond's cigar wreathe out in the quiet sunlight; and his
+grey buckskin shoes, and his grey hat--the fellow was a dandy! And he
+could see the quick turn of his wife's head, so very straight on her
+desirable neck and shoulders. That turn of her neck always seemed to
+him a little too showy, and in the "Queen of all I survey" manner--not
+quite distinguished. He watched them walk along the path at the bottom
+of the garden. A young man in flannels joined them down there--a Sunday
+caller no doubt, from up the river. Soames went back to his Goya. He
+was still staring at that replica of Fleur, and worrying over
+Winifred's news, when his wife's voice said:
+
+"Mr. Michael Mont, Soames. You invited him to see your pictures."
+
+There was the cheerful young man of the Gallery off Cork Street!
+
+"Turned up, you see, sir; I live only four miles from Pangbourne. Jolly
+day, isn't it?"
+
+Confronted with the results of his expansiveness, Soames scrutinised
+his visitor. The young man's mouth was excessively large and curly--he
+seemed always grinning. Why didn't he grow the rest of those idiotic
+little moustaches, which made him look like a music-hall buffoon? What
+on earth were young men about, deliberately lowering their class with
+these tooth-brushes, or little slug whiskers? Ugh! Affected young
+idiots! In other respects he was presentable, and his flannels very
+clean.
+
+"Happy to see you!" he said.
+
+The young man, who had been turning his head from side to side, became
+transfixed. "I say!" he said, "'some' picture!"
+
+Soames saw, with mixed sensations, that he had addressed the remark to
+the Goya copy.
+
+"Yes," he said dryly, "that's not a Goya. It's a copy. I had it painted
+because it reminded me of my daughter."
+
+"By Jove! I thought I knew the face, sir. Is she here?"
+
+The frankness of his interest almost disarmed Soames.
+
+"She'll be in after tea," he said. "Shall we go round the gallery?"
+
+And Soames began that round which never tired him. He had not
+anticipated much intelligence from one who had mistaken a copy for an
+original, but as they passed from section to section, period to period,
+he was startled by the young man's frank and relevant remarks. Natively
+shrewd himself, and even sensuous beneath his mask, Soames had not
+spent thirty-eight years over his one hobby without knowing something
+more about pictures than their market values. He was, as it were, the
+missing link between the artist and the commercial public. Art for
+art's sake and all that, of course, was cant. But aesthetics and good
+taste were necessary. The appreciation of enough persons of good taste
+was what gave a work of art its permanent market value, or in other
+words made it "a work of art." There was no real cleavage. And he was
+sufficiently accustomed to sheep-like and unseeing visitors, to be
+intrigued by one who did not hesitate to say of Mauve: "Good old
+haystacks!" or of James Maris: "Didn't he just paint and paper 'em!
+Mathew was the real swell, sir; you could dig into his surfaces!" It
+was after the young man had whistled before a Whistler, with the words:
+"D'you think he ever really saw a naked woman, sir?" that Soames
+remarked:
+
+"What ARE you, Mr. Mont, if I may ask?"
+
+"I, sir? I WAS going to be a painter, but the War knocked that. Then in
+the trenches, you know, I used to dream of the Stock Exchange, snug and
+warm and just noisy enough. But the Peace knocked that; shares seem
+off, don't they? I've only been demobbed about a year. What do you
+recommend, sir?"
+
+"Have you got money?"
+
+"Well," answered the young man; "I've got a father, I kept him alive
+during the War, so he's bound to keep me alive now. Though, of course,
+there's the question whether he ought to be allowed to hang on to his
+property. What do you think about that, sir?"
+
+Soames, pale and defensive, smiled.
+
+"The old man has fits when I tell him he may have to work yet. He's got
+land, you know; it's a fatal disease."
+
+"This is my real Goya," said Soames dryly.
+
+"By George! He WAS a swell. I saw a Goya in Munich once that bowled me
+middle stump. A most evil-looking old woman in the most gorgeous lace.
+HE made no compromise with the public taste. That old boy was 'some'
+explosive; he must have smashed up a lot of convention in his day.
+Couldn't he just paint! He makes Velasquez stiff, don't you think?"
+
+"I have no Velasquez," said Soames.
+
+The young man stared. "No," he said; "only nations or profiteers can
+afford him, I suppose. I say, why shouldn't all the bankrupt nations
+sell their Velasquezes and Titians and other swells to the profiteers
+by force, and then pass a law that any one who holds a picture by an
+Old Master--see schedule--must hang it in a public gallery? There seems
+something in that."
+
+"Shall we go down to tea?" said Soames.
+
+The young man's ears seemed to droop on his skull. 'He's not dense,'
+thought Soames, following him off the premises.
+
+Goya, with his satiric and surpassing precision, his original "line,"
+and the daring of his light and shade, could have reproduced to
+admiration the group assembled round Annette's tea-tray in the
+ingle-nook below. He alone, perhaps, of painters would have done
+justice to the sunlight filtering through a screen of creeper, to the
+lovely pallor of brass, the old cut glasses, the thin slices of lemon
+in pale amber tea; justice to Annette in her black lacey dress; there
+was something of the fair Spaniard in her beauty, though it lacked the
+spirituality of that rare type; to Winifred's grey-haired, corseted
+solidity; to Soames, of a certain grey and flat-cheeked distinction; to
+the vivacious Michael Mont, pointed in ear and eye; to Imogen, dark,
+luscious of glance, growing a little stout; to Prosper Profond, with
+his expression as who should say: "Well, Mr. Goya, what's the use of
+paintin' this small party?" finally, to Jack Cardigan, with his shining
+stare and tanned sanguinity betraying the moving principle: "I'm
+English, and I live to be fit."
+
+Curious, by the way, that Imogen, who as a girl had declared solemnly
+one day at Timothy's that she would never marry a good man--they were
+so dull--should have married Jack Cardigan, in whom health had so
+destroyed all traces of original sin, that she might have retired to
+rest with ten thousand other Englishmen without knowing the difference
+from the one she had chosen to repose beside. "Oh!" she would say of
+him, in her "amusing" way; "Jack keeps himself so fearfully fit; he's
+never had a day's illness in his life. He went right through the war
+without a finger-ache. You really can't imagine how fit he is!" Indeed,
+he was so "fit" that he couldn't see when she was flirting, which was
+such a comfort in a way. All the same she was quite fond of him, so far
+as one could be of a sports-machine, and of the two little Cardigans
+made after his pattern. Her eyes just then were comparing him
+maliciously with Prosper Profond. There was no "small" sport or game
+which Monsieur Profond had not played at too, it seemed, from skittles
+to harpon-fishing, and worn out every one. Imogen would sometimes wish
+that they had worn out Jack, who continued to play at them and talk of
+them with the simple zeal of a schoolgirl learning hockey; at the age
+of Great-uncle Timothy she well knew that Jack would be playing carpet
+golf in her bedroom, and "wiping somebody's eye."
+
+He was telling them now how he had "pipped the pro--a charmin' fellow,
+playin' a very good game," at the last hole this morning; and how he
+had pulled down to Caversham since lunch, and trying to incite Prosper
+Profond to play him a set of tennis after tea--do him good--"keep him
+fit."
+
+"But what's the use of keepin' fit?" said Monsieur Profond.
+
+"Yes, sir," murmured Michael Mont, "what do you keep fit for?"
+
+"Jack," cried Imogen, enchanted, "what do you keep fit for?"
+
+Jack Cardigan stared with all his health. The questions were like the
+buzz of a mosquito, and he put up his hand to wipe them away. During
+the War, of course, he had kept fit to kill Germans; now that it was
+over he either did not know, or shrank in delicacy from explanation of
+his moving principle.
+
+"But he's right," said Monsieur Profond unexpectedly, "there's nothin'
+left but keepin' fit."
+
+The saying, too deep for Sunday afternoon, would have passed
+unanswered, but for the mercurial nature of young Mont.
+
+"Good!" he cried. "That's the great discovery of the war. We all
+thought we were progressing--now we know we're only changing."
+
+"For the worse," said Monsieur Profond genially.
+
+"How you are cheerful, Prosper!" murmured Annette.
+
+"You come and play tennis!" said Jack Cardigan; "you've got the hump.
+We'll soon take that down. D'you play, Mr. Mont?"
+
+"I hit the ball about, sir."
+
+At this juncture Soames rose, ruffled in that deep instinct of
+preparation for the future which guided his existence.
+
+"When Fleur comes--" he heard Jack Cardigan say.
+
+Ah! and why didn't she come? He passed through drawing-room, hall, and
+porch out onto the drive, and stood there listening for the car. All
+was still and Sunday-fied; the lilacs in full flower scented the air.
+There were white clouds, like the feathers of ducks gilded by the
+sunlight. Memory of the day when Fleur was born, and he had waited in
+such agony with her life and her mother's balanced in his hands, came
+to him sharply. He had saved her then, to be the flower of his life.
+And now! Was she going to give him trouble--pain--give him trouble? He
+did not like the look of things! A blackbird broke in on his reverie
+with an evening song--a great big fellow up in that acacia-tree. Soames
+had taken quite an interest in his birds of late years; he and Fleur
+would walk round and watch them; her eyes were sharp as needles, and
+she knew every nest. He saw her dog, a retriever, lying on the drive in
+a patch of sunlight, and called to him, "Hallo, old fellow--waiting for
+her too!" The dog came slowly with a grudging tail, and Soames
+mechanically laid a pat on his head. The dog, the bird, the lilac all
+were part of Fleur for him; no more, no less. 'Too fond of her!' he
+thought, 'too fond!' He was like a man uninsured, with his ships at
+sea. Uninsured again--as in that other time, so long ago, when he would
+wander dumb and jealous in the wilderness of London, longing for that
+woman--his first wife--he mother of this infernal boy. Ah! There was
+the car at last! It drew up, it had luggage, but no Fleur.
+
+"Miss Fleur is walking up, sir, by the towing-path"
+
+Walking all those miles? Soames stared. The man's face had the
+beginning of a smile on it. What was he grinning at? And very quickly
+he turned, saying: "All right, Sims!" and went into the house. He
+mounted to the picture-gallery once more. He had from there a view of
+the river bank, and stood with his eyes fixed on it, oblivious of the
+fact that it would be an hour at least before her figure showed there.
+Walking up! And that fellow's grin! The boy--! He turned abruptly from
+the window. He couldn't spy on her. If she wanted to keep things from
+him--she must; he could not spy on her. His heart felt empty; and
+bitterness mounted from it into his very mouth. The staccato shouts of
+Jack Cardigan pursuing the ball, the laugh of young Mont rose in the
+stillness and came in. He hoped they were making that chap Profond run.
+And the girl in "La Vendimia" stood with her arm akimbo and her dreamy
+eyes looking past him. 'I've done all I could for you,' he thought,
+'since you were no higher than my knee. You aren't going to--to--hurt
+me, are you?'
+
+But the Goya copy answered not, brilliant in colour just beginning to
+tone down. 'There's no real life in it,' thought Soames. 'Why doesn't
+she come?'
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+TRIO
+
+
+Among those four Forsytes of the third, and, as one might say, fourth
+generation, at Wansdon under the Downs, a week-end prolonged unto the
+ninth day had stretched the crossing threads of tenacity almost to
+snapping-point. Never had Fleur been so "FINE," Holly so watchful, Val
+so stable-secretive, Jon so silent and disturbed. What he learned of
+farming in that week might have been balanced on the point of a
+pen-knife and puffed off. He, whose nature was essentially averse to
+intrigue, and whose adoration of Fleur disposed him to think that any
+need for concealing it was "skittles," chafed and fretted, yet obeyed,
+taking what relief he could in the few moments when they were alone. On
+Thursday, while they were standing in the bay window of the
+drawing-room, dressed for dinner, she said to him:
+
+"Jon, I'm going home on Sunday by the 3.40 from Paddington; if you were
+to go home on SATURDAY you could come up on Sunday and take me down,
+and just get back here by the last train, after. You WERE going home
+anyway, weren't you?"
+
+Jon nodded.
+
+"Anything to be with you," he said; "only why need I pretend--"
+
+Fleur slipped her little finger into his palm:
+
+"You have no instinct, Jon; you MUST leave things to me. It's serious
+about our people. We've simply got to be secret at present, if we want
+to be together." The door was opened, and she added loudly: "You ARE a
+duffer, Jon."
+
+Something turned over within Jon; he could not bear this subterfuge
+about a feeling so natural, so overwhelming, and so sweet.
+
+On Friday night about eleven he had packed his bag, and was leaning out
+of his window, half miserable and half lost in a dream of Paddington
+station, when he heard a tiny sound, as of a finger-nail tapping on his
+door. He rushed to it and listened. Again the sound. It WAS a nail. He
+opened. Oh! What a lovely thing came in!
+
+"I wanted to show you my fancy dress," it said, and struck an attitude
+at the foot of his bed. Jon drew a long breath and leaned against the
+door. The apparition wore white muslin on its head, a fichu round its
+bare neck over a wine-coloured dress, fulled out below its slender
+waist. It held one arm akimbo, and the other raised right-angled
+holding a fan which touched its head.
+
+"This ought to be a basket of grapes," it whispered, "but I haven't got
+it here. It's my Goya dress. And this is the attitude in the picture.
+Do you like it?"
+
+"It's a dream."
+
+The apparition pirouetted. "Touch it, and see."
+
+Jon knelt down and took the skirt reverently.
+
+"Grape colour," came the whisper, "all grapes--La Vendimia--the
+vintage."
+
+Jon's fingers scarcely touched each side of the waist; he looked up,
+with adoring eyes.
+
+"Oh! Jon," it whispered; bent, kissed his forehead, pirouetted again,
+and,--gliding out, was gone.
+
+Jon stayed on his knees, and his head fell forward against the bed. How
+long he stayed like that he did not know. The little noises of the
+tapping nail, the feet, the skirts rustling--as in a dream--went on
+about him; and before his closed eyes the figure stood and smiled and
+whispered, a faint perfume of narcissus lingering in the air. And his
+forehead where it had been kissed had a little cool place between the
+brows, like the imprint of a flower. Love filled his soul, that love of
+boy for girl which knows so little, hopes so much, would not brush the
+down off for the world, and must become in time a fragrant memory--a
+searing passion--a humdrum mateship--or, once in many times, vintage
+full and sweet with sunset colour on the grapes.
+
+Enough has been said about Jon Forsyte here and in another place to
+show what long marches lay between him and his great-great-grandfather,
+the first Jolyon, in Dorset down by the sea. Jon was sensitive as a
+girl, more sensitive than nine out of ten girls of the day; imaginative
+as one of his half-sister June's "lame duck" painters; affectionate as
+a son of his father and his mother naturally would be. And yet, in his
+inner tissue, there was something of the old founder of his family, a
+secret tenacity of soul, a dread of showing his feelings, a
+determination not to know when he was beaten. Sensitive, imaginative,
+affectionate boys get a bad time at school, but Jon had instinctively
+kept his nature dark, and been but normally unhappy there. Only with
+his mother had he, up till then, been absolutely frank and natural; and
+when he went home to Robin Hill that Saturday his heart was heavy
+because Fleur had said that he must not be frank and natural with her
+from whom he had never yet kept anything, must not even tell her that
+they had met again, unless he found that she knew already. So
+intolerable did this seem to him that he was very near to telegraphing
+an excuse and staying up in London. And the first thing his mother said
+to him was:
+
+"So you've had our little friend of the confectioner's there, Jon. What
+is she like on second thoughts?"
+
+With relief, and a high colour, Jon answered:
+
+"Oh! awfully jolly, Mum."
+
+Her arm pressed his.
+
+Jon had never loved her so much as in that minute which seemed to
+falsify Fleur's fears and to release his soul. He turned to look at
+her, but something in her smiling face--something which only he perhaps
+would have caught--stopped the words bubbling up in him. Could fear go
+with a smile? If so, there was fear in her face. And out of Jon tumbled
+quite other words, about farming, Holly, and the Downs. Talking fast,
+he waited for her to come back to Fleur. But she did not. Nor did his
+father mention her, though of course he, too, must know. What
+deprivation, and killing of reality was in this silence about
+Fleur--when he was so full of her, when his mother was so full of Jon,
+and his father so full of his mother! And so the trio spent the evening
+of that Saturday.
+
+After dinner his mother played; she seemed to play all the things he
+liked best, and he sat with one knee clasped, and his hair standing up
+where his fingers had run through it. He gazed at his mother while she
+played, but he saw Fleur--Fleur in the moonlit orchard, Fleur in the
+sunlit gravel-pit, Fleur in that fancy dress, swaying, whispering,
+stooping, kissing his forehead. Once, while he listened, he forgot
+himself and glanced at his father in that other easy chair. What was
+Dad looking like that for? The expression on his face was so sad and
+puzzling. It filled him with a sort of remorse, so that he got up and
+went and sat on the arm of his father's chair. From there he could not
+see his face; and again he saw Fleur--in his mother's hands, slim and
+white on the keys, in the profile of her face and her powdery hair; and
+down the long room in the open window where the May night walked
+outside.
+
+When he went up to bed his mother came into his room. She stood at the
+window, and said:
+
+"Those cypresses your grandfather planted down there have done
+wonderfully. I always think they look beautiful under a dropping moon.
+I wish you had known your grandfather, Jon."
+
+"Were you married to Father, when he was alive?" asked Jon suddenly.
+
+"No, dear; he died in '92--very old--eighty-five, I think."
+
+"Is Father like him?"
+
+"A little, but more subtle, and not quite so solid."
+
+"I know, from Grandfather's portrait; who painted that?"
+
+"One of June's 'lame ducks.' But it's quite good."
+
+Jon slipped his hand through his Mother's arm. "Tell me about the
+family quarrel, Mum."
+
+He felt her arm quivering. "No, dear; that's for your father some day,
+if he thinks fit."
+
+"Then it WAS serious," said Jon, with a catch in his breath.
+
+"Yes." And there was a silence, during which neither knew whether the
+arm or the hand within it were quivering most.
+
+"Some people," said Irene softly, "think the moon on her back is evil;
+to me she's always lovely. Look at those cypress shadows! Jon, Father
+says we may go to Italy, you and I, for two months. Would you like?"
+
+Jon took his hand from under her arm; his sensation was so sharp and so
+confused. Italy with his Mother! A fortnight ago it would have been
+perfection; now it filled him with dismay; he felt that the sudden
+suggestion had to do with Fleur. He stammered out:
+
+"Oh! yes; only--I don't know. Ought I--now I've just begun? I'd like to
+think it over."
+
+Her voice answered, cool and gentle:
+
+"Yes, dear; think it over. But better now than when you've begun
+farming seriously. Italy with you--! It would be nice!"
+
+Jon put his arm round her waist, still slim and firm as a girl's.
+
+"Do you think you ought to leave Father?" he said feebly, feeling very
+mean.
+
+"Father suggested it; he thinks you ought to see Italy at least before
+you settle down to anything."
+
+The sense of meanness died in Jon; he knew, yes--he knew--that his
+father and his mother were not speaking frankly, no more than he
+himself. They wanted to keep him from Fleur! His heart hardened. And,
+as if she felt that process going on, his mother said:
+
+"Good-night, darling. Have a good sleep and think it over. But it would
+be lovely!"
+
+She pressed him to her so quickly that he did not see her face. Jon
+stood feeling exactly as he used to when he was a naughty little boy;
+sore because he was not loving, and because he was justified in his own
+eyes.
+
+But Irene, after she had stood a moment in her own room, passed through
+the dressing-room between it and her husband's.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"He will think it over, Jolyon."
+
+Watching her lips that wore a little drawn smile, Jolyon said quietly:
+
+"You had better let me tell him, and have done with it. After all, Jon
+has the instincts of a gentleman. He has only to understand--"
+
+"Only! He can't understand; that's impossible."
+
+"I believe I could have at his age."
+
+Irene caught his hand. "You were always more of a realist than Jon; and
+never so innocent."
+
+"That's true," said Jolyon. "It's queer, isn't it? You and I would tell
+our stories to the world without a particle of shame; but our own boy
+stumps us."
+
+"We've never cared whether the world approves or not."
+
+"Jon would not disapprove of US!"
+
+"Oh! Jolyon, yes. He's in love, I feel he's in love. And he'd say: 'My
+mother once married WITHOUT LOVE! How could she have!' It'll seem to
+him a crime! And so it was!"
+
+Jolyon took her hand, and said with a wry smile:
+
+"Ah! why on earth are we born young? Now, if only we were born old and
+grew younger year by year we should understand how things happen, and
+drop all our cursed intolerance. But you know if the boy is really in
+love, he won't forget, even if he goes to Italy. We're a tenacious
+breed; and he'll know by instinct why he's being sent. Nothing will
+really cure him but the shock of being told."
+
+"Let me try, anyway."
+
+Jolyon stood a moment without speaking. Between this devil and this
+deep sea--the pain of a dreaded disclosure and the grief of losing his
+wife for two months--he secretly hoped for the devil; yet if she wished
+for the deep sea he must put up with it. After all, it would be
+training for that departure from which there would be no return. And,
+taking her in his arms, he kissed her eyes, and said:
+
+"As you will, my love."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+DUET
+
+
+That "small" emotion, love, grows amazingly when threatened with
+extinction. Jon reached Paddington station half an hour before his time
+and a full week after, as it seemed to him. He stood at the appointed
+book-stall amid a crowd of Sunday travellers, in a Harris tweed suit
+exhaling, as it were, the emotion of his thumping heart. He read the
+names of the novels on the bookstall, and bought one at last, to avoid
+being regarded with suspicion by the book-stall clerk. It was called
+"The Heart of the Trail" which must mean something, though it did not
+seem to. He also bought "The Lady's Mirror" and "The Landsman." Every
+minute was an hour long, and full of horrid imaginings. After nineteen
+had passed, he saw her with a bag and a porter wheeling her luggage.
+She came swiftly; she came cool. She greeted him as if he were a
+brother.
+
+"First class," she said to the porter, "corner seats; opposite."
+
+Jon admired her frightful self-possession.
+
+"Can't we get a carriage to ourselves?" he whispered.
+
+"No good; it's a stopping train. After Maidenhead perhaps. Look
+natural, Jon."
+
+Jon screwed his features into a scowl. They got in--with two other
+beasts!--oh! heaven! He tipped the porter unnaturally, in his
+confusion. The brute deserved nothing for putting them in there, and
+looking as if he knew all about it into the bargain.
+
+Fleur hid herself behind "The Lady's Mirror." Jon imitated her behind
+"The Landsman." The train started. Fleur let "The Lady's Mirror" fall
+and leaned forward. "Well?" she said.
+
+"It's seemed about fifteen days."
+
+She nodded, and Jon's face lighted up at once.
+
+"Look natural," murmured Fleur, and went off into a bubble of laughter.
+It hurt him. How could he look natural with Italy hanging over him? He
+had meant to break it to her gently, but now he blurted it out.
+
+"They want me to go to Italy with Mother for two months."
+
+Fleur drooped her eyelids; turned a little pale, and bit her lips.
+
+"Oh!" she said. It was all, but it was much.
+
+That "Oh!" was like the quick drawback of the wrist in fencing ready
+for riposte. It came.
+
+"You must go!"
+
+"Go?" said Jon in a strangled voice.
+
+"Of course."
+
+"But--two months--it's ghastly."
+
+"No," said Fleur, "six weeks. You'll have forgotten me by then. We'll
+meet in the National Gallery the day after you get back."
+
+Jon laughed.
+
+"But suppose you've forgotten ME," he muttered into the noise of the
+train.
+
+Fleur shook her head.
+
+"Some other beast--" murmured Jon.
+
+Her foot touched his.
+
+"No other beast," she said, lifting the "Lady's Mirror."
+
+The train stopped; two passengers got out, and one got in.
+
+'I shall die,' thought Jon, 'if we're not alone at all.'
+
+The train went on; and again Fleur leaned forward.
+
+"I never let go," she said; "do you?"
+
+Jon shook his head vehemently.
+
+"Never!" he said. "Will you write to me?"
+
+"No; but YOU can--to my club."
+
+She had a Club; she was wonderful!
+
+"Did you pump Holly?" he muttered.
+
+"Yes, but got nothing. I didn't dare pump hard."
+
+"What can it be?" cried Jon.
+
+"I shall find out all right."
+
+A long silence followed till Fleur said: "This is Maidenhead, stand by,
+Jon!"
+
+The train stopped. The remaining passenger got out. Fleur drew down her
+blind.
+
+"Quick!" she cried. "Hang out! Look as much of a beast as you can."
+
+Jon blew his nose, and scowled; never in all his life had he scowled
+like that! An old lady recoiled, a young one tried the handle. It
+turned, but the lock would not open. The train moved, the young lady
+darted to another carriage.
+
+"What luck!" cried Jon. "It jammed."
+
+"Yes," said Fleur; "I was holding it."
+
+The train moved out, and Jon fell on his knees.
+
+"Look out for the corridor," she whispered; "and--quick!"
+
+Her lips met his. And though their kiss only lasted perhaps ten seconds
+Jon's soul left his body and went so far beyond that, when he was again
+sitting opposite that demure figure, he was pale as death. He heard her
+sigh, and the sound seemed to him the most precious he had ever
+heard--an exquisite declaration that he meant something to her.
+
+"Six weeks isn't really long," she said; "and you can easily make it
+six if you keep your head out there, and never seem to think of me."
+
+Jon gasped.
+
+"This is just what's really wanted, Jon, to convince them, don't you
+see? If we're just as bad when you come back they'll stop being
+ridiculous about it. Only, I'm sorry it's not Spain; there's a girl in
+a Goya picture at Madrid who's like me, Father says. Only she
+isn't--we've got a copy of her."
+
+It was to Jon like a ray of sunshine piercing through a fog. "I'll make
+it Spain," he said, "Mother won't mind; she's never been there. And my
+father thinks a lot of Goya."
+
+"Oh! yes, he's a painter--isn't he?"
+
+"Only water-colour," said Jon, with honesty.
+
+"When we come to Reading, Jon, get out first and go down to Caversham
+lock and wait for me. I'll send the car home and we'll walk by the
+towing-path."
+
+Jon seized her hand in gratitude, and they sat silent, with the world
+well lost, and one eye on the corridor. But the train seemed to run
+twice as fast now, and its sound was almost lost in that of Jon's
+sighing.
+
+"We're getting near," said Fleur; "the towing-path's awfully exposed.
+One more! Oh! Jon, don't forget me."
+
+Jon answered with his kiss. And very soon, a flushed,
+distracted-looking youth could have been seen--as they say--leaping
+from the train and hurrying along the platform, searching his pockets
+for his ticket.
+
+When at last she rejoined him on the towing-path a little beyond
+Caversham lock he had made an effort, and regained some measure of
+equanimity. If they had to part, he would not make a scene! A breeze by
+the bright river threw the white side of the willow leaves up into the
+sunlight, and followed those two with its faint rustle.
+
+"I told our chauffeur that I was train-giddy," said Fleur. "Did you
+look pretty natural as you went out?" "I don't know. What is natural?"
+
+"It's natural to you to look seriously happy. When I first saw you I
+thought you weren't a bit like other people."
+
+"Exactly what I thought when I saw you. I knew at once I should never
+love anybody else."
+
+Fleur laughed.
+
+"We're absurdly young. And love's young dream is out of date, Jon.
+Besides, it's awfully wasteful. Think of all the fun you might have.
+You haven't begun, even; it's a shame, really. And there's me. I
+wonder!"
+
+Confusion came on Jon's spirit. How could she say such things just as
+they were going to part?
+
+"If you feel like that," he said, "I can't go. I shall tell Mother that
+I ought to try and work. There's always the condition of the world!"
+
+"The condition of the world!"
+
+Jon thrust his hands deep into his pockets.
+
+"But there is," he said; "think of the people starving!"
+
+Fleur shook her head. "No, no, I never, never will make myself
+miserable for nothing."
+
+"Nothing! But there's an awful state of things, and of course one ought
+to help."
+
+"Oh! yes, I know all that. But you can't help people, Jon; they're
+hopeless. When you pull them out of a hole they only get into another.
+Look at them, still fighting and plotting and struggling, though
+they're dying in heaps all the time. Idiots!"
+
+"Aren't you sorry for them?"
+
+"Oh! sorry--yes, but I'm not going to make myself unhappy about it;
+that's no good."
+
+And they were silent, disturbed by this first glimpse of each other's
+natures.
+
+"I think people are brutes and idiots," said Fleur stubbornly.
+
+"I think they're poor wretches," said Jon. It was as if they had
+quarrelled--and at this supreme and awful moment, with parting visible
+out there in that last gap of the willows!
+
+"Well, go and help your poor wretches, and don't think of me."
+
+Jon stood still. Sweat broke out on his forehead, and his limbs
+trembled. Fleur too had stopped, and was frowning at the river.
+
+"I MUST believe in things," said Jon with a sort of agony; "we're all
+meant to enjoy life."
+
+Fleur laughed: "Yes; and that's what you won't do, if you don't take
+care. But perhaps your idea of enjoyment is to make yourself wretched.
+There are lots of people like that, of course."
+
+She was pale, her eyes had darkened, her lips had thinned. Was it Fleur
+thus staring at the water? Jon had an unreal feeling as if he were
+passing through the scene in a book where the lover has to choose
+between love and duty. But just then she looked round at him. Never was
+anything so intoxicating as that vivacious look. It acted on him
+exactly as the tug of a chain acts on a dog--brought him up to her with
+his tail wagging and his tongue out.
+
+"Don't let's be silly," she said, "time's too short. Look, Jon, you can
+just see where I've got to cross the river. There, round the bend,
+where the woods begin."
+
+Jon saw a gable, a chimney or two, a patch of wall through the
+trees--and felt his heart sink.
+
+"I mustn't dawdle any more. It's no good going beyond the next hedge,
+it gets all open. Let's get on to it and say good-bye."
+
+They went side by side, hand in hand, silently towards the hedge, where
+the mayflower, both pink and white, was in full bloom.
+
+"My Club's the 'Talisman,' Stratton Street, Piccadilly. Letters there
+will be quite safe, and I'm almost always up once a week."
+
+Jon nodded. His face had become extremely set, his eyes stared straight
+before him.
+
+"To-day's the twenty-third of May," said Fleur; "on the ninth of July I
+shall be in front of the 'Bacchus and Ariadne' at three o'clock; will
+you?"
+
+"I will."
+
+"If you feel as bad as I it's all right. Let those people pass!"
+
+A man and woman airing their children went by strung out in Sunday
+fashion.
+
+The last of them passed the wicket gate.
+
+"Domesticity!" said Fleur, and blotted herself against the hawthorn
+hedge. The blossom sprayed out above her head, and one pink cluster
+brushed her cheek. Jon put up his hand jealously to keep it off.
+
+"Good-bye, Jon!" For a second they stood with hands hard clasped. Then
+their lips met for the third time, and when they parted Fleur broke
+away and fled through the wicket gate. Jon stood where she had left
+him, with his forehead against that pink cluster. Gone! For an
+eternity--for seven weeks all but two days! And here he was, wasting
+the last sight of her! He rushed to the gate. She was walking swiftly
+on the heels of the straggling children. She turned her head, he saw
+her hand make a little flitting gesture; then she sped on, and the
+trailing family blotted her out from his view.
+
+The words of a comic song--
+
+    "Paddington groan--worst ever known--
+    He gave a sepulchral Paddington groan--"
+
+came into his head, and he sped incontinently back to Reading station.
+All the way up to London and down to Wansdon he sat with "The Heart of
+the Trail" open on his knee, knitting in his head a poem so full of
+feeling that it would not rhyme.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+CAPRICE
+
+
+Fleur sped on. She had need of rapid motion; she was late, and wanted
+all her wits about her when she got in. She passed the islands, the
+station, and hotel, and was about to take the ferry, when she saw a
+skiff with a young man standing up in it, and holding to the bushes.
+
+"Miss Forsyte," he said; "let me put you across. I've come on purpose."
+
+She looked at him in blank amazement.
+
+"It's all right, I've been having tea with your people. I thought I'd
+save you the last bit. It's on my way, I'm just off back to Pangbourne.
+My name's Mont. I saw you at the picture-gallery--you remember--when
+your father invited me to see his pictures."
+
+"Oh!" said Fleur; "yes--the handkerchief."
+
+To this young man she owed Jon; and, taking his hand, she stepped down
+into the skiff. Still emotional, and a little out of breath, she sat
+silent; not so the young man. She had never heard any one say so much
+in so short a time. He told her his age, twenty-four, his weight, ten
+stone eleven; his place of residence, not far away; described his
+sensations under fire, and what it felt like to be gassed; criticised
+the Juno, mentioned his own conception of that goddess; commented on
+the Goya copy, said Fleur was not too awfully like it; sketched in
+rapidly the condition of England; spoke of Monsieur Profond--or
+whatever his name was--as "an awful sport"; thought her father had some
+ripping pictures and some rather "dug-up"; hoped he might row down
+again and take her on the river because he was quite trustworthy;
+inquired her opinion of Tchekov, gave her his own; wished they could go
+to the Russian ballet together some time--considered the name Fleur
+Forsyte simply topping; cursed his people for giving him the name of
+Michael on the top of Mont; outlined his father, and said that if she
+wanted a good book she should read "Job"; his father was rather like
+Job while Job still had land.
+
+"But Job didn't have land," Fleur murmured; "he only had flocks and
+herds and moved on."
+
+"Ah!" answered Michael Mont, "I wish my gov'nor would move on. Not that
+I want his land. Land's an awful bore in these days, don't you think?"
+
+"We never have it in my family," said Fleur. "We have everything else.
+I believe one of my great-uncles once had a sentimental farm in Dorset,
+because we came from there originally, but it cost him more than it
+made him happy."
+
+"Did he sell it?"
+
+"No; he kept it."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because nobody would buy it."
+
+"Good for the old boy!"
+
+"No, it wasn't good for him. Father says it soured him. His name was
+Swithin."
+
+"What a corking name!"
+
+"Do you know," said Fleur, "that we're getting farther off, not nearer?
+This river flows."
+
+"Splendid!" cried Mont, dipping his sculls vaguely; "it's good to meet
+a girl who's got wit."
+
+"But better to meet a young man who's got it in the plural."
+
+Young Mont raised a hand to tear his hair.
+
+"Look out!" cried Fleur. "Your scull!"
+
+"All right! It's thick enough to bear a scratch."
+
+"Do you mind sculling?" said Fleur severely, "I want to get in."
+
+"Ah! but when you get in, you see, I shan't see you any more to-day.
+Fini, as the French girl said when she jumped on her bed after saying
+her prayers. Don't you bless the day that gave you a French mother, and
+a name like yours?"
+
+"I like my name, but Father gave it me. Mother wanted me called
+Marguerite."
+
+"Which is absurd. Do you mind calling me M. M. and letting me call you
+F. F.? It's in the spirit of the age."
+
+"I don't mind anything, so long as I get in." Mont caught a little
+crab, and answered: "That was a nasty one!"
+
+"Please row."
+
+"I am." And he did for several strokes, looking at her with rueful
+eagerness. "Of course, you know," he ejaculated, pausing, "that I came
+to see you, not your father's pictures."
+
+Fleur rose.
+
+"If you don't row, I shall get out and swim."
+
+"Really and truly? Then I could come in after you."
+
+"Mr. Mont, I'm late and tired; please put me on shore at once."
+
+When she stepped out on to the garden landing-stage he rose, and
+grasping his hair with both hands, looked at her.
+
+Fleur smiled.
+
+"Don't!" cried the irrepressible Mont. "I know you're going to say:
+'Out, damned hair!'"
+
+Fleur whisked round, threw him a wave of her hand. "Good-bye, Mr. M.
+M.!" she called, and was gone among the rose-trees. She looked at her
+wrist-watch and the windows of the house. It struck her as curiously
+uninhabited. Past six! The pigeons were just gathering to roost, and
+sunlight slanted on the dove-cot, on their snowy feathers, and beyond
+in a shower on the top boughs of the woods. The click of billiard-balls
+came from the ingle-nook--Jack Cardigan, no doubt; a faint rustling,
+too, from an eucalyptus-tree, startling Southerner in this old English
+garden. She reached the verandah, and was passing in, but stopped at
+the sound of voices from the drawing-room to her left. Mother! Profond!
+From behind the verandah screen which fenced the ingle-nook she heard
+these words!
+
+"I don't, Annette."
+
+Did Father know that he called her mother "Annette"? Always on the side
+of her father--as children are ever on one side or the other in houses
+where relations are a little strained--she stood, uncertain. Her mother
+was speaking in her low, pleasing, slightly metallic voice--one word
+she caught: "Demain." And Profond's answer: "All right." Fleur frowned.
+A little sound came out into the stillness. Then Profond's voice: "I'm
+takin' a small stroll."
+
+Fleur darted through the window into the morning room. There he
+came--from the drawing-room, crossing the verandah, down the lawn; and
+the click of billiard-balls which, in listening for other sounds, she
+had ceased to hear, began again. She shook herself, passed into the
+hall, and opened the drawing-room door. Her mother was sitting on the
+sofa between the windows, her knees crossed, her head resting on a
+cushion, her lips half parted, her eyes half closed. She looked
+extraordinarily handsome.
+
+"Ah! Here you are, Fleur! Your father is beginning to fuss."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"In the picture-gallery. Go up!"
+
+"What are you going to do to-morrow, Mother?"
+
+"To-morrow? I go up to London with your aunt. Why?"
+
+"I thought you might be. Will you get me a quite plain parasol?"
+
+"What color?"
+
+"Green. They're all going back, I suppose."
+
+"Yes, all; you will console your father. Kiss me, then."
+
+Fleur crossed the room, stooped, received a kiss on her forehead, and
+went out past the impress of a form on the sofa-cushions in the other
+corner. She ran up-stairs.
+
+Fleur was by no means the old-fashioned daughter who demands the
+regulation of her parents' lives in accordance with the standard
+imposed on herself. She claimed to regulate her own life, not those of
+others; besides, an unerring instinct for what was likely to advantage
+her own case was already at work. In a disturbed domestic atmosphere
+the heart she had set on Jon would have a better chance. None the less
+was she offended, as a flower by a crisping wind. If that man had
+really been kissing her mother it was--serious, and her father ought to
+know.
+
+"Demain!" "All right!" And her mother going up to Town! She turned in
+to her bedroom and hung out of the window to cool her face, which had
+suddenly grown very hot. Jon must be at the station by now! What did
+her father know about Jon! Probably everything--pretty nearly!
+
+She changed her dress, so as to look as if she had been in some time,
+and ran up to the gallery.
+
+Soames was standing stubbornly still before his Alfred Stevens--the
+picture he loved best. He did not turn at the sound of the door, but
+she knew he had heard, and she knew he was hurt. She came up softly
+behind him, put her arms round his neck, and poked her face over his
+shoulder, till her cheek lay against his. It was an advance which had
+never yet failed, but it failed her now, and she augured the worst.
+
+"Well," he said stonily, "so you've come!"
+
+"Is that all," murmured Fleur, "from a bad parent?" and rubbed her
+cheek against his.
+
+Soames shook his head so far as that was possible.
+
+"Why do you keep me on tenterhooks like this, putting me off and off?"
+
+"Darling, it was very harmless."
+
+"Harmless! Much you know what's harmless and what isn't."
+
+Fleur dropped her arms.
+
+"Well, then, dear, suppose you tell me; and be quite frank about it."
+
+And she went over to the window-seat.
+
+Her father had turned from his picture, and was staring at his feet. He
+looked very grey. 'He has nice small feet,' she thought, catching his
+eye, at once averted from her.
+
+"You're my only comfort," said Soames suddenly, "and you go on like
+this."
+
+Fleur's heart began to beat.
+
+"Like what, dear?"
+
+Again Soames gave her a look which, but for the affection in it, might
+have been called furtive.
+
+"You know what I told you," he said. "I don't choose to have anything
+to do with that branch of our family."
+
+"Yes, ducky, but I don't know why _I_ shouldn't."
+
+Soames turned on his heel.
+
+"I'm not going into the reasons," he said; "you ought to trust me,
+Fleur!"
+
+The way he spoke those words affected Fleur, but she thought of Jon,
+and was silent, tapping her foot against the wainscot. Unconsciously
+she had assumed a modern attitude, with one leg twisted in and out of
+the other, with her chin on one bent wrist, her other arm across her
+chest, and its hand hugging her elbow; there was not a line of her that
+was not involuted, and yet--in spite of all--she retained a certain
+grace.
+
+"You knew my wishes," Soames went on, "and yet you stayed on there four
+days. And I suppose that boy came with you to-day."
+
+Fleur kept her eyes on him.
+
+"I don't ask you anything," said Soames; "I make no inquisition where
+you're concerned."
+
+Fleur suddenly stood up, leaning out at the window with her chin on her
+hands. The sun had sunk behind trees, the pigeons were perched, quite
+still, on the edge of the dove-cot; the click of the billiard-balls
+mounted, and a faint radiance shone out below where Jack Cardigan had
+turned the light up.
+
+"Will it make you any happier," she said suddenly, "if I promise you
+not to see him for say--the next six weeks?" She was not prepared for a
+sort of tremble in the blankness of his voice.
+
+"Six weeks? Six years--sixty years more like. Don't delude yourself,
+Fleur; don't delude yourself!"
+
+Fleur turned in alarm.
+
+"Father, what is it?"
+
+Soames came close enough to see her face.
+
+"Don't tell me," he said, "that you're foolish enough to have any
+feeling beyond caprice. That would be too much!" And he laughed.
+
+Fleur, who had never heard him laugh like that, thought: 'Then it IS
+deep! Oh! what is it?' And putting her hand through his arm she said
+lightly:
+
+"No, of course; caprice. Only, I like my caprices and I don't like
+yours, dear."
+
+"Mine!" said Soames bitterly, and turned away.
+
+The light outside had chilled, and threw a chalky whiteness on the
+river. The trees had lost all gaiety of colour. She felt a sudden
+hunger for Jon's face, for his hands, and the feel of his lips again on
+hers. And pressing her arms tight across her breast she forced out a
+little light laugh.
+
+"O la! la! What a small fuss! as Profond would say. Father, I don't
+like that man."
+
+She saw him stop, and take something out of his breast pocket.
+
+"You don't?" he said. "Why?"
+
+"Nothing," murmured Fleur; "just caprice!"
+
+"No," said Soames; "not caprice!" And he tore what was in his hands
+across. "You're right. _I_ don't like him either!"
+
+"Look!" said Fleur softly. "There he goes! I hate his shoes; they don't
+make any noise."
+
+Down in the failing light Prosper Profond moved, his hands in his side
+pockets, whistling softly in his beard; he stopped, and glanced up at
+the sky, as if saying: "I don't think much of that small moon."
+
+Fleur drew back. "Isn't he a great cat?" she whispered; and the sharp
+click of the billiard-balls rose, as if Jack Cardigan had capped the
+cat, the moon, caprice, and tragedy with: "In off the red!"
+
+Monsieur Profond had resumed his strolling, to a teasing little tune in
+his beard. What was it? Oh! yes, from "Rigoletto": "Donna e mobile."
+Just what he would think! She squeezed her father's arm.
+
+"Prowling!" she muttered, as he turned the corner of the house. It was
+past that disillusioned moment which divides the day and night--still
+and lingering and warm, with hawthorn scent and lilac scent clinging on
+the riverside air. A blackbird suddenly burst out. Jon would be in
+London by now; in the Park perhaps, crossing the Serpentine, thinking
+of her! A little sound beside her made her turn her eyes; her father
+was again tearing the paper in his hands. Fleur saw it was a cheque.
+
+"I shan't sell him my Gauguin," he said. "I don't know what your aunt
+and Imogen see in him."
+
+"Or Mother."
+
+"Your mother!" said Soames.
+
+'Poor Father!' she thought. 'He never looks happy--not really happy. I
+don't want to make him worse, but of course I shall have to, when Jon
+comes back. Oh! well, sufficient unto the night!'
+
+"I'm going to dress," she said.
+
+In her room she had a fancy to put on her "freak" dress. It was of gold
+tissue with little trousers of the same, tightly drawn in at the
+ankles, a page's cape slung from the shoulders, little gold shoes, and
+a gold-winged Mercury helmet; and all over her were tiny gold bells,
+especially on the helmet; so that if she shook her head she pealed.
+When she was dressed she felt quite sick because Jon could not see her;
+it even seemed a pity that the sprightly young man Michael Mont would
+not have a view. But the gong had sounded, and she went down.
+
+She made a sensation in the drawing-room. Winifred thought it "Most
+amusing." Imogen was enraptured. Jack Cardigan called it "stunning,"
+"ripping," "topping," and "corking." Monsieur Profond, smiling with his
+eyes, said: "That's a nice small dress!" Her mother, very handsome in
+black, sat looking at her, and said nothing. It remained for her father
+to apply the test of common sense. "What did you put on that thing for?
+You're not going to dance."
+
+Fleur spun round, and the bells pealed.
+
+"Caprice!"
+
+Soames stared at her, and, turning away, gave his arm to Winifred. Jack
+Cardigan took her mother. Prosper Profond took Imogen. Fleur went in by
+herself, with her bells jingling....
+
+The "small" moon had soon dropped down, and May night had fallen soft
+and warm, enwrapping with its grape-bloom colour and its scents the
+billion caprices, intrigues, passions, longings, and regrets of men and
+women. Happy was Jack Cardigan who snored into Imogen's white shoulder,
+fit as a flea; or Timothy in his "mausoleum," too old for anything but
+baby's slumber. For so many lay awake, or dreamed, teased by the
+crisscross of the world.
+
+The dew fell and the flowers closed; cattle grazed on in the river
+meadows, feeling with their tongues for the grass they could not see;
+and the sheep on the Downs lay quiet as stones. Pheasants in the tall
+trees of the Pangbourne woods, larks on their grassy nests above the
+gravel-pit at Wansdon, swallows in the eaves at Robin Hill, and the
+sparrows of Mayfair, all made a dreamless night of it, soothed by the
+lack of wind. The Mayfly filly, hardly accustomed to her new quarters,
+scraped at her straw a little; and the few night-flitting things--bats,
+moths, owls--were vigorous in the warm darkness; but the peace of night
+lay in the brain of all day-time Nature, colourless and still. Men and
+women, alone, riding the hobbyhorses of anxiety or love, burned their
+wavering tapers of dream and thought into the lonely hours.
+
+Fleur, leaning out of her window, heard the hall clock's muffled chime
+of twelve, the tiny splash of a fish, the sudden shaking of an aspen's
+leaves in the puffs of breeze that rose along the river, the distant
+rumble of a night train, and time and again the sounds which none can
+put a name to in the darkness, soft obscure expressions of uncatalogued
+emotions from man and beast, bird and machine, or, maybe, from departed
+Forsytes, Darties, Cardigans, taking night strolls back into a world
+which had once suited their embodied spirits. But Fleur heeded not
+these sounds, her spirit, far from disembodied, fled with swift wing
+from railway-carriage to flowery hedge, straining after Jon, tenacious
+of his forbidden image, and the sound of his voice which was taboo. And
+she crinkled her nose, retrieving from the perfume of the riverside
+night that moment when his hand slipped between the mayflowers and her
+cheek. Long she leaned out in her freak dress, keen to burn her wings
+at life's candle; while the moths brushed her cheeks on their
+pilgrimage to the lamp on her dressing-table, ignorant that in a
+Forsyte's house there is no open flame. But at last even she felt
+sleepy, and, forgetting her bells, drew quickly in.
+
+Through the open window of his room, alongside Annette's, Soames,
+wakeful too, heard their thin faint tinkle, as it might be shaken from
+stars, or the dewdrops falling from a flower, if one could hear such
+sounds.
+
+'Caprice!' he thought. 'I can't tell. She's wilful. What shall I do?
+Fleur!'
+
+And long into the "small" night he brooded.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+I
+
+MOTHER AND SON
+
+
+To say that Jon Forsyte accompanied his mother to Spain unwillingly
+would scarcely have been adequate. He went as a well-natured dog goes
+for a walk with its mistress, leaving a choice mutton-bone on the lawn.
+He went looking back at it. Forsytes deprived of their mutton-bones are
+wont to sulk. But Jon had little sulkiness in his composition. He
+adored his mother, and it was his first travel. Spain had become Italy
+by his simply saying: "I'd rather go to Spain, Mum; you've been to
+Italy so many times; I'd like it new to both of us."
+
+The fellow was subtle besides being naif. He never forgot that he was
+going to shorten the proposed two months into six weeks, and must
+therefore show no sign of wishing to do so. For one with so enticing a
+mutton-bone and so fixed an idea, he made a good enough travelling
+companion, indifferent to where or when he arrived, superior to food,
+and thoroughly appreciative of a country strange to the most travelled
+Englishman. Fleur's wisdom in refusing to write to him was profound,
+for he reached each new place entirely without hope or fever, and could
+concentrate immediate attention on the donkeys and tumbling bells, the
+priests, patios, beggars, children, crowing cocks, sombreros, cactus
+hedges, old high white villages, goats, olive-trees, greening plains,
+singing birds in tiny cages, water-sellers, sunsets, melons, mules,
+great churches, pictures, and swimming grey-brown mountains of a
+fascinating land.
+
+It was already hot, and they enjoyed an absence of their compatriots.
+Jon, who, so far as he knew, had blood in him which was not English,
+was often innately unhappy in the presence of his own countrymen. He
+felt they had no nonsense about them, and took a more practical view of
+things than himself. He confided to his mother that he must be an
+unsociable beast--it was jolly to be away from everybody who could talk
+about the things people did talk about. To which Irene had replied
+simply: "Yes, Jon, I know."
+
+In this isolation he had unparalleled opportunities of appreciating
+what few sons can apprehend, the whole-heartedness of a mother's love.
+Knowledge of something kept from her made him, no doubt, unduly
+sensitive; and a Southern people stimulated his admiration for her type
+of beauty, which he had been accustomed to hear called Spanish, but
+which he now perceived to be no such thing. Her beauty was neither
+English, French, Spanish, nor Italian--it was special! He appreciated,
+too, as never before, his mother's subtlety of instinct. He could not
+tell, for instance, whether she had noticed his absorption in that Goya
+picture, "La Vendimia," or whether she knew that he had slipped back
+there after lunch and again next morning, to stand before it full half
+an hour, a second and third time. It was not Fleur, of course, but like
+enough to give him heartache--so dear to lovers--remembering her
+standing at the foot of his bed with her hand held above her head. To
+keep a postcard reproduction of this picture in his pocket and slip it
+out to look at became for Jon one of those bad habits which soon or
+late disclose themselves to eyes sharpened by love, fear, or jealousy.
+And his mother's were sharpened by all three. In Granada he was fairly
+caught, sitting on a sun-warmed stone bench in a little battlemented
+garden on the Alhambra hill, whence he ought to have been looking at
+the view. His mother, he had thought, was examining the potted stocks
+between the polled acacias, when her voice said:
+
+"Is that your favourite Goya, Jon?"
+
+He checked, too late, a movement such as he might have made at school
+to conceal some surreptitious document, and answered: "Yes."
+
+"It certainly is most charming; but I think I prefer the 'Quitasol.'
+Your father would go crazy about Goya; I don't believe he saw them when
+he was in Spain in '92."
+
+In '92--nine years before he had been born! What had been the previous
+existences of his father and his mother? If they had a right to share
+in his future, surely he had a right to share in their pasts. He looked
+up at her. But something in her face--a look of life hard-lived, the
+mysterious impress of emotions, experience, and suffering--seemed with
+its incalculable depth, its purchased sanctity, to make curiosity
+impertinent. His mother must have had a wonderfully interesting life;
+she was so beautiful, and so--so--but he could not frame what he felt
+about her. He got up, and stood gazing down at the town, at the plain
+all green with crops, and the ring of mountains glamorous in sinking
+sunlight. Her life was like the past of this old Moorish city, full,
+deep, remote--his own life as yet such a baby of a thing, hopelessly
+ignorant and innocent! They said that in those mountains to the west,
+which rose sheer from the blue-green plain, as if out of a sea,
+Phoenicians had dwelt--a dark, strange, secret race, above the land!
+His mother's life was as unknown to him, as secret, as that Phoenician
+past was to the town down there, whose cocks crowed and whose children
+played and clamoured so gaily, day in, day out. He felt aggrieved that
+she should know all about him and he nothing about her except that she
+loved him and his father, and was beautiful. His callow ignorance--he
+had not even had the advantage of the war, like nearly everybody
+else!--made him small in his own eyes.
+
+That night, from the balcony of his bedroom, he gazed down on the roof
+of the town--as if inlaid with honey-comb of jet, ivory, and gold; and,
+long after, he lay awake, listening to the cry of the sentry as the
+hours struck, and forming in his head these lines:
+
+    "Voice in the night crying, down in the old sleeping
+    Spanish city darkened under her white stars!
+    What says the voice--its clear--lingering anguish?
+
+    Just the watchman, telling his dateless tale of safety?
+    Just a roadman, flinging to the moon his song?
+    No! 'Tis one deprived, whose lover's heart is weeping.
+    Just his cry: 'How long?'"
+
+The word "deprived" seemed to him cold and unsatisfactory, but bereaved
+was too final, and no other word of two syllables short-long came to
+him, which would enable him to keep "whose lover's heart is weeping."
+It was past two by the time he had finished it, and past three before
+he went to sleep, having said it over to himself at least twenty-four
+times. Next day he wrote it out and enclosed it in one of those letters
+to Fleur, which he always finished before he went down, so as to have
+his mind free and companionable.
+
+About noon that same day, on the tiled terrace of their hotel, he felt
+a sudden dull pain in the back of his head, a queer sensation in the
+eyes, and sickness. The sun had touched him too affectionately. The
+next three days were passed in semi-darkness, and a dulled, aching
+indifference to all except the feel of ice on his forehead and his
+mother's smile. She never moved from his room, never relaxed her
+noiseless vigilance, which seemed to Jon angelic. But there were
+moments when he was extremely sorry for himself, and wished terribly
+that Fleur could see him. Several times he took a poignant imaginary
+leave of her and of the earth, tears oozing out of his eyes. He even
+prepared the message he would send to her by his mother--who would
+regret to her dying day that she had ever sought to separate them--his
+poor mother! He was not slow, however, in perceiving that he had now
+his excuse for going home.
+
+Towards half past six each evening came a "gasgacha" of bells--a
+cascade of tumbling chimes, mounting from the city below and falling
+back chime on chime. After listening to them on the fourth day he said
+suddenly:
+
+"I'd like to be back in England, Mum, the sun's too hot."
+
+"Very well, darling. As soon as you're fit to travel." And at once he
+felt better, and--meaner.
+
+They had been out five weeks when they turned towards home. Jon's head
+was restored to its pristine clarity, but he was confined to a hat
+lined by his mother with many layers of orange and green silk, and he
+still walked from choice in the shade. As the long struggle of
+discretion between them drew to its close, he wondered more and more
+whether she could see his eagerness to get back to that which she had
+brought him away from. Condemned by Spanish Providence to spend a day
+in Madrid between their trains, it was but natural to go again to the
+Prado. Jon was elaborately casual this time before his Goya girl. Now
+that he was going back to her, he could afford a lesser scrutiny. It
+was his mother who lingered before the picture, saying:
+
+"The face and figure of the girl are exquisite."
+
+Jon heard her uneasily. Did she understand? But he felt once more that
+he was no match for her in self-control and subtlety. She could, in
+some supersensitive way, of which he had not the secret, feel the pulse
+of his thoughts; she knew by instinct what he hoped and feared and
+wished. It made him terribly uncomfortable and guilty, having, beyond
+most boys, a conscience. He wished she would be frank with him; he
+almost hoped for an open struggle. But none came, and steadily,
+silently, they travelled north. Thus did he first learn how much better
+than men women play a waiting game. In Paris they had again to pause
+for a day. Jon was grieved because it lasted two, owing to certain
+matters in connection with a dressmaker; as if his mother, who looked
+beautiful in anything, had any need of dresses! The happiest moment of
+his travel was that when he stepped on to the Folkestone boat.
+
+Standing by the bulwark rail, with her arm in his, she said:
+
+"I'm afraid you haven't enjoyed it much, Jon. But you've been very
+sweet to me."
+
+Jon squeezed her arm.
+
+"Oh! yes, I've enjoyed it awfully--except for my head lately."
+
+And now that the end had come, he really had, feeling a sort of glamour
+over the past weeks--a kind of painful pleasure, such as he had tried
+to screw into those lines about the voice in the night crying; a
+feeling such as he had known as a small boy listening avidly to Chopin,
+yet wanting to cry. And he wondered why it was that he couldn't say to
+her quite simply what she had said to him:
+
+"You were very sweet to me." Odd--one never could be nice and natural
+like that! He substituted the words: "I expect we shall be sick."
+
+They were, and reached London somewhat attenuated, having been away six
+weeks and two days, without a single allusion to the subject which had
+hardly ever ceased to occupy their minds.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS
+
+
+Deprived of his wife and son by the Spanish adventure, Jolyon found the
+solitude at Robin Hill intolerable. A philosopher when he has all that
+he wants is different from a philosopher when he has not. Accustomed,
+however, to the idea, if not to the reality of resignation, he would
+perhaps have faced it out but for his daughter June. He was a "lame
+duck" now, and on her conscience. Having achieved--momentarily--the
+rescue of an etcher in low circumstances, which she happened to have in
+hand, she appeared at Robin Hill a fortnight after Irene and Jon had
+gone. The little lady was living now in a tiny house with a big studio
+at Chiswick. A Forsyte of the best period, so far as the lack of
+responsibility was concerned, she had overcome the difficulty of a
+reduced income in a manner satisfactory to herself and her father. The
+rent of the Gallery off Cork Street which he had bought for her, and
+her increased income tax happening to balance, it had been quite
+simple--she no longer paid him the rent. The Gallery might be expected
+now at any time, after eighteen years of barren usufruct, to pay its
+way, so that she was sure her father would not feel it. Through this
+device she still had twelve hundred a year, and by reducing what she
+ate, and, in place of two Belgians in a poor way, employing one
+Austrian in a poorer, practically the same surplus for the relief of
+genius. After three days at Robin Hill she carried her father back with
+her to Town. In those three days she had stumbled on the secret he had
+kept for two years, and had instantly decided to cure him. She knew, in
+fact, the very man. He had done wonders with Paul Post--that painter a
+little in advance of Futurism; and she was impatient with her father
+because his eyebrows would go up, and because he had heard of neither.
+Of course, if he hadn't "faith" he would never get well! It was absurd
+not to have faith in the man who had healed Paul Post so that he had
+only just relapsed, from having overworked, or overlived, himself
+again. The great thing about this healer was that he relied on Nature.
+He had made a special study of the symptoms of Nature--when his patient
+failed in any natural symptom he supplied the poison which caused
+it--and there you were! She was extremely hopeful. Her father had
+clearly not been living a natural life at Robin Hill, and she intended
+to provide the symptoms. He was--she felt--out of touch with the times,
+which was not natural; his heart wanted stimulating. In the little
+Chiswick house she and the Austrian--a grateful soul, so devoted to
+June for rescuing her that she was in danger of decease from
+overwork--stimulated Jolyon in all sorts of ways, preparing him for his
+cure. But they could not keep his eyebrows down; as--for example--when
+the Austrian woke him at eight o'clock just as he was going to sleep or
+June took The Times away from him, because it was unnatural to read
+"that stuff" when he ought to be taking an interest in "life." He never
+failed, indeed, to be astonished at her resource, especially in the
+evenings. For his benefit, as she declared, though he suspected that
+she also got something out of it, she assembled the Age so far as it
+was satellite to genius; and with some solemnity it would move up and
+down the studio before him in the Fox-trot, and that more mental form
+of dancing--the One-step--which so pulled against the music, that
+Jolyon's eyebrows would be almost lost in his hair from wonder at the
+strain it must impose on the dancers' will-power. Aware that, hung on
+the line in the Water Colour Society, he was a back number to those
+with any pretension to be called artists, he would sit in the darkest
+corner he could find, and wonder about rhythm, on which so long ago he
+had been raised. And when June brought some girl or young man up to
+him, he would rise humbly to their level so far as that was possible,
+and think: 'Dear me! This is very dull for them!' Having his father's
+perennial sympathy with Youth, he used to get very tired from entering
+into their points of view. But it was all stimulating, and he never
+failed in admiration of his daughter's indomitable spirit. Even genius
+itself attended these gatherings now and then, with its nose on one
+side; and June always introduced it to her father. This, she felt, was
+exceptionally good for him, for genius was a natural symptom he had
+never had--fond as she was of him.
+
+Certain as a man can be that she was his own daughter, he often
+wondered whence she got herself--her red-gold hair, now greyed into a
+special colour; her direct, spirited face, so different from his own
+rather folded and subtilised countenance, her little light figure, when
+he and most of the Forsytes were tall. And he would dwell on the origin
+of species, and debate whether she might be Danish or Celtic. Celtic,
+he thought, from her pugnacity, and her taste in fillets and djibbahs.
+It was not too much to say that he preferred her to the Age with which
+she was surrounded, youthful though, for the greater part, it was. She
+took, however, too much interest in his teeth, for he still had some of
+those natural symptoms. Her dentist at once found "staphylococcus
+aureus present in pure culture" (which might cause boils, of course)
+and wanted to take out all the teeth he had and supply him with two
+complete sets of unnatural symptoms. Jolyon's native tenacity was
+roused, and in the studio that evening he developed his objections. He
+had never had any boils, and his own teeth would last his time. Of
+course--June admitted--they would last his time if he didn't have them
+out! But if he had more teeth he would have a better heart and his time
+would be longer. His recalcitrance--she said--was a symptom of his
+whole attitude; he was taking it lying down. He ought to be fighting.
+When was he going to see the man who had cured Paul Post? Jolyon was
+very sorry, but the fact was he was not going to see him. June chafed.
+Pondridge--she said--the healer, was such a fine man, and he had such
+difficulty in making two ends meet and getting his theories recognised.
+It was just such indifference and prejudice as her father manifested
+which was keeping him back. It would be so splendid for both of them!
+
+"I perceive," said Jolyon, "that you are trying to kill two birds with
+one stone."
+
+"To cure, you mean!" cried June.
+
+"My dear, it's the same thing."
+
+June protested. It was unfair to say that without a trial.
+
+Jolyon thought he might not have the chance of saying it after.
+
+"Dad!" cried June, "you're hopeless."
+
+"That," said Jolyon, "is a fact, but I wish to remain hopeless as long
+as possible. I shall let sleeping dogs lie, my child. They are quiet at
+present."
+
+"That's not giving science a chance," cried June. "You've no idea how
+devoted Pondridge is. He puts his science before everything."
+
+"Just," replied Jolyon, puffing the mild cigarette to which he was
+reduced, "as Mr. Paul Post puts his art, eh? Art for Art's
+sake--Science for the sake of Science. I know those enthusiastic
+egomaniac gentry. They vivisect you without blinking. I'm enough of a
+Forsyte to give them the go-by, June."
+
+"Dad," said June, "if you only knew how old-fashioned that sounds!
+Nobody can afford to be half-hearted nowadays."
+
+"I'm afraid," murmured Jolyon, with his smile, "that's the only natural
+symptom with which Mr. Pondridge need not supply me. We are born to be
+extreme or to be moderate, my dear; though if you'll forgive my saying
+so, half the people nowadays who believe they're extreme are really
+very moderate. I'm getting on as well as I can expect, and I must leave
+it at that."
+
+June was silent, having experienced in her time the inexorable
+character of her father's amiable obstinacy so far as his own freedom
+of action was concerned.
+
+How he came to let her know why Irene had taken Jon to Spain puzzled
+Jolyon, for he had little confidence in her discretion. After she had
+brooded on the news, it brought a rather sharp discussion, during which
+he perceived to the full the fundamental opposition between her active
+temperament and his wife's passivity. He even gathered that a little
+soreness still remained from that generation-old struggle between them
+over the body of Philip Bosinney, in which the passive had so signally
+triumphed over the active principle.
+
+According to June, it was foolish and even cowardly to hide the past
+from Jon. Sheer opportunism, she called it.
+
+"Which," Jolyon put in mildly, "is the working principle of real life,
+my dear."
+
+"Oh!" cried June, "YOU don't really defend her for not telling Jon,
+Dad. If it were left to you, you would."
+
+"I might, but simply because I know he must find out, which will be
+worse than if we told him."
+
+"Then why DON'T you tell him? It's just sleeping dogs again."
+
+"My dear," said Jolyon, "I wouldn't for the world go against Irene's
+instinct. He's her boy."
+
+"Yours too," cried June.
+
+"What is a man's instinct compared with a mother's?"
+
+"Well, I think it's very weak of you."
+
+"I dare say," said Jolyon, "I dare say."
+
+And that was all she got from him; but the matter rankled in her brain.
+She could not bear sleeping dogs. And there stirred in her a tortuous
+impulse to push the matter towards decision. Jon ought to be told, so
+that either his feeling might be nipped in the bud, or, flowering in
+spite of the past, come to fruition. And she determined to see Fleur,
+and judge for herself. When June determined on anything, delicacy
+became a somewhat minor consideration. After all, she was Soames'
+cousin, and they were both interested in pictures. She would go and
+tell him that he ought to buy a Paul Post, or perhaps a piece of
+sculpture by Boris Strumolowski, and of course she would say nothing to
+her father. She went on the following Sunday, looking so determined
+that she had some difficulty in getting a cab at Reading station. The
+river country was lovely in those days of her own month, and June ached
+at its loveliness. She who had passed through this life without knowing
+what union was had a love of natural beauty which was almost madness.
+And when she came to that choice spot where Soames had pitched his
+tent, she dismissed her cab, because, business over, she wanted to
+revel in the bright water and the woods. She appeared at his front
+door, therefore, as a mere pedestrian, and sent in her card. It was in
+June's character to know that when her nerves were fluttering she was
+doing something worth while. If one's nerves did not flutter, she was
+taking the line of least resistance, and knew that nobleness was not
+obliging her. She was conducted to a drawing-room, which, though not in
+her style, showed every mark of fastidious elegance. Thinking: 'Too
+much taste--too many knick-knacks,' she saw in an old lacquer-framed
+mirror the figure of a girl coming in from the verandah. Clothed in
+white, and holding some white roses in her hand, she had, reflected in
+that silvery-grey pool of glass, a vision-like appearance, as if a
+pretty ghost had come out of the green garden.
+
+"How do you do?" said June, turning round. "I'm a cousin of your
+father's."
+
+"Oh, yes; I saw you in that confectioner's."
+
+"With my young stepbrother. Is your father in?"
+
+"He will be directly. He's only gone for a little walk."
+
+June slightly narrowed her blue eyes, and lifted her decided chin.
+
+"Your name's Fleur, isn't it? I've heard of you from Holly. What do you
+think of Jon?"
+
+The girl lifted the roses in her hand, looked at them, and answered
+calmly:
+
+"He's quite a nice boy."
+
+"Not a bit like Holly or me, is he?"
+
+"Not a bit."
+
+'She's cool,' thought June.
+
+And suddenly the girl said: "I wish you'd tell me why our families
+don't get on?"
+
+Confronted with the question she had advised her father to answer, June
+was silent; either because this girl was trying to get something out of
+her, or simply because what one would do theoretically is not always
+what one will do when it comes to the point.
+
+"You know," said the girl, "the surest way to make people find out the
+worst is to keep them ignorant. My father's told me it was a quarrel
+about property. But I don't believe it; we've both got heaps. They
+wouldn't have been so bourgeois as all that."
+
+June flushed. The word applied to her grandfather and father offended
+her.
+
+"My grandfather," she said, "was very generous, and my father is, too;
+neither of them was in the least bourgeois."
+
+"Well, what was it then?" repeated the girl. Conscious that this young
+Forsyte meant having what she wanted, June at once determined to
+prevent her, and to get something for herself instead.
+
+"Why do you want to know?"
+
+The girl smelled at her roses. "I only want to know because they won't
+tell me."
+
+"Well, it WAS about property, but there's more than one kind."
+
+"That makes it worse. Now I really MUST know."
+
+June's small and resolute face quivered. She was wearing a round cap,
+and her hair had fluffed out under it. She looked quite young at that
+moment, rejuvenated by encounter.
+
+"You know," she said, "I saw you drop your handkerchief. Is there
+anything between you and Jon? Because, if so, you'd better drop that
+too."
+
+The girl grew paler, but she smiled.
+
+"If there were, that isn't the way to make me."
+
+At the gallantry of that reply June held out her hand.
+
+"I like you; but I don't like your father; I never have. We may as well
+be frank."
+
+"Did you come down to tell him that?"
+
+June laughed. "No; I came down to see YOU."
+
+"How delightful of you!"
+
+This girl could fence.
+
+"I'm two-and-a-half times your age," said June, "but I quite
+sympathise. It's horrid not to have one's own way."
+
+The girl smiled again. "I really think you MIGHT tell me."
+
+How the child stuck to her point!
+
+"It's not my secret. But I'll see what I can do, because I think both
+you and Jon OUGHT to be told. And now I'll say good-bye."
+
+"Won't you wait and see Father?"
+
+June shook her head. "How can I get over to the other side?"
+
+"I'll row you across."
+
+"Look!" said June impulsively, "next time you're in London, come and
+see me. This is where I live. I generally have young people in the
+evening. But I shouldn't tell your father that you're coming."
+
+The girl nodded.
+
+Watching her scull the skiff across, June thought: 'She's awfully
+pretty and well made. I never thought Soames would have a daughter as
+pretty as this. She and Jon would make a lovely couple.'
+
+The instinct to couple, starved within herself, was always at work in
+June. She stood watching Fleur row back; the girl took her hand off a
+scull to wave farewell; and June walked languidly on between the
+meadows and the river, with an ache in her heart. Youth to youth, like
+the dragon-flies chasing each other, and love like the sun warming them
+through and through. Her youth! So long ago--when Phil and she--! And
+since? Nothing--no one had been quite what she had wanted. And so she
+had missed it all. But what a coil was round those two young things, if
+they really were in love, as Holly would have it--as her father, and
+Irene, and Soames himself seemed to dread. What a coil, and what a
+barrier! And the itch for the future, the contempt, as it were, for
+what was overpast, which forms the active principle, moved in the heart
+of one who ever believed that what one wanted was more important than
+what other people did not want. From the bank, awhile, in the warm
+summer stillness, she watched the water-lily plants and willow leaves,
+the fishes rising; sniffed the scent of grass and meadow-sweet,
+wondering how she could force everybody to be happy. Jon and Fleur! Two
+little lame ducks--charming callow yellow little ducks! A great pity!
+Surely something could be done! One must not take such situations lying
+down. She walked on, and reached a station, hot and cross.
+
+That evening, faithful to the impulse towards direct action, which made
+many people avoid her, she said to her father:
+
+"Dad, I've been down to see young Fleur. I think she's very attractive.
+It's no good hiding our heads under our wings, is it?"
+
+The startled Jolyon set down his barley water, and began crumbling his
+bread.
+
+"It's what you appear to be doing," he said: "Do you realise whose
+daughter she is?"
+
+"Can't the dead past bury its dead?"
+
+Jolyon rose.
+
+"Certain things can never be buried."
+
+"I disagree," said June. "It's that which stands in the way of all
+happiness and progress. You don't understand the Age, Dad. It's got no
+use for outgrown things. Why do you think it matters so terribly that
+Jon should know about his mother? Who pays any attention to that sort
+of thing now? The marriage laws are just as they were when Soames and
+Irene couldn't get a divorce, and you had to come in. We've moved, and
+they haven't. So nobody cares. Marriage without a decent chance of
+relief is only a sort of slave-owning; people oughtn't to own each
+other. Everybody sees that now. If Irene broke such laws, what does it
+matter?"
+
+"It's not for me to disagree there," said Jolyon; "but that's all quite
+beside the mark. This is a matter of human feeling."
+
+"Of course, it is," cried June, "the human feeling of those two young
+things."
+
+"My dear," said Jolyon with gentle exasperation, "you're talking
+nonsense."
+
+"I'm not. If they prove to be really fond of each other, why should
+they be made unhappy because of the past?"
+
+"YOU haven't lived that past. I have--through the feelings of my wife;
+through my own nerves and my imagination, as only one who is devoted
+can."
+
+June, too, rose, and began to wander restlessly.
+
+"If," she said suddenly, "she were the daughter of Phil Bosinney, I
+could understand you better. Irene loved him, she never loved Soames."
+
+Jolyon uttered a deep sound--the sort of noise an Italian peasant woman
+utters to her mule. His heart had begun beating furiously, but he paid
+no attention to it, quite carried away by his feelings.
+
+"That shows how little you understand. Neither I nor Jon, if I know
+him, would mind a love-past. It's the brutality of a union without
+love. This girl is the daughter of the man who once owned Jon's mother
+as a negro-slave was owned. You can't lay that ghost; don't try to,
+June! It's asking us to see Jon joined to the flesh and blood of the
+man who possessed Jon's mother against her will. It's no good mincing
+words; I want it clear once for all. And now I mustn't talk any more,
+or I shall have to sit up with this all night." And, putting his hand
+over his heart, Jolyon turned his back on his daughter and stood
+looking at the river Thames.
+
+June, who by nature never saw a hornets' nest until she had put her
+head into it, was seriously alarmed. She came and slipped her arm
+through his. Not convinced that he was right, and she herself wrong,
+because that was not natural to her, she was yet profoundly impressed
+by the obvious fact that the subject was very bad for him. She rubbed
+her cheek against his shoulder, and said nothing.
+
+After taking her elderly cousin across, Fleur did not land at once, but
+pulled in among the reeds, into the sunshine. The peaceful beauty of
+the afternoon seduced for a little one not much given to the vague and
+poetic. In the field beyond the bank where her skiff lay up, a machine
+drawn by a grey horse was turning an early field of hay. She watched
+the grass cascading over and behind the light wheels with
+fascination--it looked so green and fresh. The click and swish blended
+with the rustle of the willows and the poplars, and the cooing of a
+wood-pigeon, in a true river song. Alongside, in the grey-green water,
+weeds like yellow snakes were writhing and nosing with the current;
+pied cattle on the farther side stood in the shade lazily swishing
+their tails. It was an afternoon to dream. And she took out Jon's
+letters--not flowery effusions, but haunted in their recital of things
+seen and done by a longing very agreeable to her, and all ending "Your
+devoted J." Fleur was not sentimental, her desires were ever concrete
+and concentrated, but what poetry there was in the daughter of Soames
+and Annette had certainly in those weeks of waiting gathered round her
+memories of Jon. They all belonged to grass and blossom, flowers and
+running water. She enjoyed him in the scents absorbed by her crinkling
+nose. The stars could persuade her that she was standing beside him in
+the centre of the map of Spain; and of an early morning the dewy
+cobwebs, the hazy sparkle and promise of the day down in the garden,
+were Jon personified to her.
+
+Two white swans came majestically by, while she was reading his
+letters, followed by their brood of six young swans in a line, with
+just so much space between each tail and head, a flotilla of grey
+destroyers. Fleur thrust her letters back, got out her sculls, and
+pulled up to the landing-stage. Crossing the lawn, she wondered whether
+she should tell her father of June's visit. If he learned of it from
+the butler, he might think it odd if she did not. It gave her, too,
+another chance to startle out of him the reason of the feud. She went,
+therefore, up the road to meet him.
+
+Soames had gone to look at a patch of ground on which the Local
+Authorities were proposing to erect a Sanatorium for people with weak
+lungs. Faithful to his native individualism, he took no part in local
+affairs, content to pay the rates which were always going up. He could
+not, however, remain indifferent to this new and dangerous scheme. The
+site was not half a mile from his own house. He was quite of opinion
+that the country should stamp out tuberculosis; but this was not the
+place. It should be done farther away. He took, indeed, an attitude
+common to all true Forsytes, that disability of any sort in other
+people was not his affair, and the State should do its business without
+prejudicing in any way the natural advantages which he had acquired or
+inherited. Francie, the most free-spirited Forsyte of his generation
+(except perhaps that fellow Jolyon) had once asked him in her malicious
+way: "Did you ever see the name Forsyte in a subscription list,
+Soames?" That was as it might be, but a Sanatorium would depreciate the
+neighbourhood, and he should certainly sign the petition which was
+being got up against it. Returning with this decision fresh within him,
+he saw Fleur coming.
+
+She was showing him more affection of late, and the quiet time down
+here with her in this summer weather had been making him feel quite
+young; Annette was always running up to Town for one thing or another,
+so that he had Fleur to himself almost as much as he could wish. To be
+sure, young Mont had formed a habit of appearing on his motor-cycle
+almost every other day. Thank goodness, the young fellow had shaved off
+his half-toothbrushes, and no longer looked like a mountebank! With a
+girl friend of Fleur's who was staying in the house, and a neighbouring
+youth or so, they made two couples after dinner, in the hall, to the
+music of the electric pianola which performed Fox-trots unassisted,
+with a surprised shine on its expressive surface. Annette, even, now
+and then passed gracefully up and down in the arms of one or other of
+the young men. And Soames, coming to the drawing-room door, would lift
+his nose a little sideways, and watch them, waiting to catch a smile
+from Fleur; then move back to his chair by the drawing-room hearth, to
+peruse The Times or some other collector's price-list. To his
+ever-anxious eyes Fleur showed no sign of remembering that caprice of
+hers.
+
+When she reached him on the dusty road, he slipped his hand within her
+arm.
+
+"Who, do you think, has been to see you, Dad? She couldn't wait! Guess!"
+
+"I never guess," said Soames uneasily. "Who?"
+
+"Your cousin, June Forsyte."
+
+Quite unconsciously Soames gripped her arm. "What did SHE want?"
+
+"I don't know. But it was rather breaking through the feud, wasn't it?"
+
+"Feud? What feud?"
+
+"The one that exists in your imagination, dear."
+
+Soames dropped her arm. Was she mocking, or trying to draw him on?
+
+"I suppose she wanted me to buy a picture," he said at last.
+
+"I don't think so. Perhaps it was just family affection."
+
+"She's only a first cousin once removed," muttered Soames.
+
+"And the daughter of your enemy."
+
+"What d'you mean by that?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, dear; I thought he was."
+
+"Enemy!" repeated Soames. "It's ancient history. I don't know where you
+get your notions."
+
+"From June Forsyte."
+
+It had come to her as an inspiration that if he thought she knew, or
+were on the edge of knowledge, he would tell her.
+
+Soames was startled, but she had underrated his caution and tenacity.
+
+"If you know," he said coldly, "why do you plague me?"
+
+Fleur saw that she had overreached herself.
+
+"I don't want to plague you, darling. As you say, why want to know
+more? Why want to know anything of that 'small' mystery--Je m'en fiche,
+as Profond says."
+
+"That chap!" said Soames profoundly.
+
+That chap, indeed, played a considerable, if invisible, part this
+summer--for he had not turned up again. Ever since the Sunday when
+Fleur had drawn attention to him prowling on the lawn, Soames had
+thought of him a good deal, and always in connection with Annette, for
+no reason, except that she was looking handsomer than for some time
+past. His possessive instinct, subtler, less formal, more elastic since
+the war, kept all misgiving underground. As one looks on some American
+river, quiet and pleasant, knowing that an alligator perhaps is lying
+in the mud with his snout just raised and indistinguishable from a snag
+of wood--so Soames looked on the river of his own existence,
+subconscious of Monsieur Profond, refusing to see more than the
+suspicion of his snout. He had at this epoch in his life practically
+all he wanted, and was as nearly happy as his nature would permit. His
+senses were at rest; his affections found all the vent they needed in
+his daughter; his collection was well known, his money well invested;
+his health excellent, save for a touch of liver now and again; he had
+not yet begun to worry seriously about what would happen after death,
+inclining to think that nothing would happen. He resembled one of his
+own gilt-edged securities, and to knock the gilt off by seeing anything
+he could avoid seeing, would be, he felt instinctively, perverse and
+retrogressive. Those two crumpled rose-leaves, Fleur's caprice and
+Monsieur Profond's snout, would level away if he lay on them
+industriously.
+
+That evening Chance, which visits the lives of even the best-invested
+Forsytes, put a clue into Fleur's hands. Her father came down to dinner
+without a handkerchief, and had occasion to blow his nose.
+
+"I'll get you one, dear," she had said, and run upstairs. In the sachet
+where she sought for it--an old sachet of very faded silk--there were
+two compartments: one held handkerchiefs; the other was buttoned, and
+contained something flat and hard. By some childish impulse Fleur
+unbuttoned it. There was a frame and in it a photograph of herself as a
+little girl. She gazed at it, fascinated, as one is by one's own
+presentment. It slipped under her fidgeting thumb, and she saw that
+another photograph was behind. She pressed her own down further, and
+perceived a face, which she seemed to know, of a young woman, very
+good-looking, in a very old style of evening dress. Slipping her own
+photograph up over it again, she took out a handkerchief and went down.
+Only on the stairs did she identify that face. Surely--surely Jon's
+mother! The conviction came as a shock. And she stood still in a flurry
+of thought. Why, of course! Jon's father had married the woman her
+father had wanted to marry, had cheated him out of her, perhaps. Then,
+afraid of showing by her manner that she had lighted on his secret, she
+refused to think further, and, shaking out the silk handkerchief,
+entered the dining-room.
+
+"I chose the softest, Father."
+
+"H'm!" said Soames; "I only use those after a cold. Never mind!"
+
+That evening passed for Fleur in putting two and two together;
+recalling the look on her father's face in the confectioner's shop--a
+look strange, and coldly intimate, a queer look. He must have loved
+that woman very much to have kept her photograph all this time, in
+spite of having lost her. Unsparing and matter-of-fact, her mind darted
+to his relations with her own mother. Had he ever really loved HER? She
+thought not. Jon was the son of the woman he had really loved. Surely,
+then, he ought not to mind his daughter loving him; it only wanted
+getting used to. And a sigh of sheer relief was caught in the folds of
+her nightgown slipping over her head.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+MEETINGS
+
+
+Youth only recognises Age by fits and starts. Jon, for one, had never
+really seen his father's age till he came back from Spain. The face of
+the fourth Jolyon, worn by waiting, gave him quite a shock--it looked
+so wan and old. His father's mask had been forced awry by the emotion
+of the meeting, so that the boy suddenly realised how much he must have
+felt their absence. He summoned to his aid the thought: 'Well, I didn't
+want to go!' It was out of date for Youth to defer to Age. But Jon was
+by no means typically modern. His father had always been "so jolly" to
+him, and to feel that one meant to begin again at once the conduct
+which his father had suffered six weeks' loneliness to cure, was not
+agreeable.
+
+At the question, "Well, old man, how did the great Goya strike you?"
+his conscience pricked him badly. The great Goya only existed because
+he had created a face which resembled Fleur's.
+
+On the night of their return he went to bed full of compunction; but
+awoke full of anticipation. It was only the fifth of July, and no
+meeting was fixed with Fleur until the ninth. He was to have three days
+at home before going back to farm. Somehow he must contrive to see her!
+
+In the lives of men an inexorable rhythm, caused by the need for
+trousers, not even the fondest parents can deny. On the second day,
+therefore, Jon went to Town, and having satisfied his conscience by
+ordering what was indispensable in Conduit Street, turned his face
+towards Piccadilly. Stratton Street, where her Club was, adjoined
+Devonshire House. It would be the merest chance that she should be at
+her Club. But he dawdled down Bond Street with a beating heart,
+noticing the superiority of all other young men to himself. They wore
+their clothes with such an air; they had assurance; they were OLD. He
+was suddenly overwhelmed by the conviction that Fleur must have
+forgotten him. Absorbed in his own feeling for her all these weeks, he
+had mislaid that possibility. The corners of his mouth drooped, his
+hands felt clammy. Fleur with the pick of youth at the beck of her
+smile--Fleur incomparable! It was an evil moment. Jon, however, had a
+great idea that one must be able to face anything. And he braced
+himself with that dour reflection in front of a bric-a-brac shop. At
+this high-water mark of what was once the London season, there was
+nothing to mark it out from any other except a grey top hat or two, and
+the sun. Jon moved on, and turning the corner into Piccadilly, ran into
+Val Dartie moving towards the Iseeum Club, to which he had just been
+elected.
+
+"Hallo! young man! Where are you off to?"
+
+Jon flushed. "I've just been to my tailor's."
+
+Val looked him up and down. "That's good! I'm going in here to order
+some cigarettes, then come and have some lunch."
+
+Jon thanked him. He might get news of HER from Val. The condition of
+England, that nightmare of its Press and Public men, was seen in
+different perspective within the tobacconist's which they now entered.
+
+"Yes, sir; precisely the cigarette I used to supply your father with.
+Bless me! Mr. Montague Dartie was a customer here from--let me see--the
+year Melton won the Derby. One of my very best customers he was." And a
+faint smile illumined the tobacconist's face. "Many's the tip he's
+given me, to be sure! I suppose he took a couple of hundred of these
+every week, year in, year out, and never changed his cigarette. Very
+affable gentleman, brought me a lot of custom. I was sorry he met with
+that accident. One misses an old customer like him."
+
+Val smiled. His father's decease had closed an account which had been
+running longer, probably, than any other; and in a ring of smoke puffed
+out from that time-honoured cigarette he seemed to see again his
+father's face, dark, good-looking, moustachioed, a little puffy, in the
+only halo it had earned. His father had his fame here, anyway--a man
+who smoked two hundred cigarettes a week, who could give tips, and run
+accounts for ever! To his tobacconist a hero! Even that was some
+distinction to inherit!
+
+"I pay cash," he said; "how much?"
+
+"To HIS son, sir, and cash--ten and six. I shall never forget Mr.
+Montague Dartie. I've known him stand talkin' to me half an hour. We
+don't get many like him now, with everybody in such a hurry. The war
+was bad for manners, sir--it was bad for manners. You were in it, I
+see."
+
+"No," said Val, tapping his knee, "I got this in the war before. Saved
+my life, I expect. Do you want any cigarettes, Jon?"
+
+Rather ashamed, Jon murmured: "I don't smoke, you know," and saw the
+tobacconist's lips twisted, as if uncertain whether to say "Good God!"
+or "Now's your chance, sir!"
+
+"That's right," said Val; "keep off it while you can. You'll want it
+when you take a knock. This is really the same tobacco, then?"
+
+"Identical, sir; a little dearer, that's all. Wonderful staying
+power--the British Empire, I always say."
+
+"Send me down a hundred a week to this address, and invoice it monthly.
+Come on, Jon."
+
+Jon entered the Iseeum with curiosity. Except to lunch now and then at
+the Hotch-potch with his father, he had never been in a London Club.
+The Iseeum, comfortable and unpretentious, did not move, could not, so
+long as George Forsyte sat on its Committee, where his culinary acumen
+was almost the controlling force. The Club had made a stand against the
+newly rich, and it had taken all George Forsyte's prestige, and praise
+of him as a "good sportsman," to bring in Prosper Profond.
+
+The two were lunching together when the half-brothers-in-law entered
+the dining-room, and attracted by George's forefinger, sat down at
+their table, Val with his shrewd eyes and charming smile, Jon with
+solemn lips and an attractive shyness in his glance. There was an air
+of privilege around that corner table, as though past masters were
+eating there. Jon was fascinated by the hypnotic atmosphere. The
+waiter, lean in the chaps, pervaded with such freemasonical deference.
+He seemed to hang on George Forsyte's lips, to watch the gloat in his
+eye with a kind of sympathy, to follow the movements of the heavy
+club-marked silver fondly. His liveried arm and confidential voice
+alarmed Jon, they came so secretly over one's shoulder.
+
+Except for George's: "Your grandfather tipped me once; he was a deuced
+good judge of a cigar!" neither he nor the other past master took any
+notice of him, and he was grateful for this. The talk was all about the
+breeding, points, and prices of horses, and he listened to it vaguely
+at first, wondering how it was possible to retain so much knowledge in
+a head. He could not take his eyes off the dark past master--what he
+said was so deliberate and discouraging--such heavy, queer, smiled-out
+words. Jon was thinking of butterflies, when he heard him say:
+
+"I want to see Mr. Soames Forsyde take an interest in 'orses."
+
+"Old Soames! He's too dry a file!"
+
+With all his might Jon tried not to grow red, while the dark past
+master went on.
+
+"His daughter's an attractive small girl. Mr. Soames Forsyde is a bit
+old-fashioned. I want to see him have a pleasure some day."
+
+George Forsyte grinned. "Don't you worry; he's not so miserable as he
+looks. He'll never show he's enjoying anything--they might try and take
+it from him. Old Soames! Once bit, twice shy!"
+
+"Well, Jon," said Val hastily, "if you've finished, we'll go and have
+coffee."
+
+"Who were those?" Jon asked on the stairs: "I didn't quite--"
+
+"Old George Forsyte is a first cousin of your father's, and of my uncle
+Soames. He's always been here. The other chap, Profond, is a queer
+fish. I think he's hanging round Soames' wife, if you ask me!"
+
+Jon looked at him, startled. "But that's awful," he said: "I mean--for
+Fleur."
+
+"Don't suppose Fleur cares very much; she's very up-to-date."
+
+"Her mother!"
+
+"You're very green, Jon."
+
+Jon grew red. "Mothers," he stammered angrily, "are different."
+
+"You're right," said Val suddenly; "but things aren't what they were
+when I was your age. There's a 'Tomorrow we die' feeling. That's what
+old George meant about my uncle Soames. HE doesn't mean to die
+tomorrow."
+
+Jon said quickly: "What's the matter between him and my father?"
+
+"Stable secret, Jon. Take my advice, and bottle up. You'll do no good
+by knowing. Have a liqueur?"
+
+Jon shook his head.
+
+"I hate the way people keep things from one," he muttered, "and then
+sneer at one for being green."
+
+"Well, you can ask Holly. If SHE won't tell you, you'll believe it's
+for your own good, I suppose."
+
+Jon got up. "I must go now; thanks awfully for the lunch."
+
+Val smiled up at him, half-sorry and yet amused. The boy looked so
+upset.
+
+"All right! See you on Friday."
+
+"I don't know," murmured Jon.
+
+And he did not. This conspiracy of silence made him desperate. It was
+humiliating to be treated like a child. He retraced his moody steps to
+Stratton Street. But he would go to her Club now, and find out the
+worst. To his inquiry the reply was that Miss Forsyte was not in the
+Club. She might be in perhaps later. She was often in on Monday--they
+could not say. Jon said he would call again, and, crossing into the
+Green Park, flung himself down under a tree. The sun was bright, and a
+breeze fluttered the leaves of the young lime-tree beneath which he
+lay; but his heart ached. Such darkness seemed gathered round his
+happiness. He heard Big Ben chime "Three" above the traffic. The sound
+moved something in him, and taking out a piece of paper, he began to
+scribble on it with a pencil. He had jotted a stanza, and was searching
+the grass for another verse, when something hard touched his
+shoulder--a green parasol. There above him stood Fleur!
+
+"They told me you'd been, and were coming back. So I thought you might
+be out here; and you are--it's rather wonderful!"
+
+"Oh, Fleur! I thought you'd have forgotten me."
+
+"When I told you that I shouldn't!"
+
+Jon seized her arm.
+
+"It's too much luck! Let's get away from this side."
+
+He almost dragged her on through that too thoughtfully regulated Park,
+to find some cover where they could sit and hold each other's hands.
+
+"Hasn't anybody cut in?" he said, gazing round at her lashes, in
+suspense above her cheeks.
+
+"There IS a young idiot, but he doesn't count."
+
+Jon felt a twitch of compassion for the--young idiot.
+
+"You know I've had sunstroke, I didn't tell you."
+
+"Really! Was it interesting?"
+
+"No. Mother was an angel. Has anything happened to YOU?"
+
+"Nothing. Except that I think I've found out what's wrong between our
+families, Jon."
+
+His heart began beating very fast.
+
+"I believe my father wanted to marry your mother, and your father got
+her instead."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"I came on a photo of her; it was in a frame behind a photo of me. Of
+course, if he was very fond of her, that would have made him pretty
+mad, wouldn't it?"
+
+Jon thought for a minute. "Not if she loved my father best."
+
+"But suppose they were engaged?"
+
+"If we were engaged, and you found you loved somebody better, I might
+go cracked, but I shouldn't grudge it you."
+
+"I should. You mustn't ever do that with me, Jon."
+
+"My God! Not much!"
+
+"I don't believe that he's ever really cared for my mother."
+
+Jon was silent. Val's words, the two past masters in the Club!
+
+"You see, we don't know," went on Fleur; "it may have been a great
+shock. She may have behaved badly to him. People do."
+
+"My mother wouldn't."
+
+Fleur shrugged her shoulders. "I don't think we know much about our
+fathers and mothers. We just see them in the light of the way they
+treat US; but they've treated other people, you know, before we were
+born--plenty, I expect. You see, they're both old. Look at your father,
+with three separate families!"
+
+"Isn't there any place," cried Jon, "in all this beastly London where
+we can be alone?"
+
+"Only a taxi."
+
+"Let's get one, then."
+
+When they were installed, Fleur asked suddenly: "Are you going back to
+Robin Hill? I should like to see where you live, Jon. I'm staying with
+my aunt for the night, but I could get back in time for dinner. I
+wouldn't come to the house, of course."
+
+Jon gazed at her enraptured.
+
+"Splendid! I can show it you from the copse, we shan't meet anybody.
+There's a train at four."
+
+The god of property and his Forsytes great and small, leisured,
+official, commercial, or professional, unlike the working classes,
+still worked their seven hours a day, so that those two of the fourth
+generation travelled down to Robin Hill in an empty first-class
+carriage, dusty and sun-warmed, of that too early train. They travelled
+in blissful silence, holding each other's hands.
+
+At the station they saw no one except porters, and a villager or two
+unknown to Jon, and walked out up the lane, which smelled of dust and
+honeysuckle.
+
+For Jon--sure of her now, and without separation before him--it was a
+miraculous dawdle, more wonderful than those on the Downs, or along the
+river Thames. It was love-in-a-mist--one of those illumined pages of
+Life, where every word and smile, and every light touch they gave each
+other were as little gold and red and blue butterflies and flowers and
+birds scrolled in among the text--a happy communing, without
+afterthought, which lasted twenty-seven minutes. They reached the
+coppice at the milking-hour. Jon would not take her as far as the
+farmyard; only to where she could see the field leading up to the
+gardens, and the house beyond. They turned in among the larches, and
+suddenly, at the winding of the path, came on Irene, sitting on an old
+log seat.
+
+There are various kinds of shocks: to the vertebrae; to the nerves; to
+moral sensibility; and, more potent and permanent, to personal dignity.
+This last was the shock Jon received, coming thus on his mother. He
+became suddenly conscious that he was doing an indelicate thing. To
+have brought Fleur down openly--yes! But to sneak her in like this!
+Consumed with shame, he put on a front as brazen as his nature would
+permit.
+
+Fleur was smiling a little defiantly; his mother's startled face was
+changing quickly to the impersonal and gracious. It was she who uttered
+the first words:
+
+"I'm very glad to see you. It was nice of Jon to think of bringing you
+down to us."
+
+"We weren't coming to the house," Jon blurted out. "I just wanted Fleur
+to see where I lived."
+
+His mother said quietly: "Won't you come up and have tea?"
+
+Feeling that he had but aggravated his breach of breeding, he heard
+Fleur answer: "Thanks very much; I have to get back to dinner. I met
+Jon by accident, and we thought it would be rather jolly just to see
+his home."
+
+How self-possessed she was!
+
+"Of course; but you MUST have tea. We'll send you down to the station.
+My husband will enjoy seeing you."
+
+The expression of his mother's eyes, resting on him for a moment, cast
+Jon down level with the ground--a true worm. Then she led on, and Fleur
+followed her. He felt like a child, trailing after those two, who were
+talking so easily about Spain and Wansdon, and the house up there
+beyond the trees and the grassy slope. He watched the fencing of their
+eyes, taking each other in--the two beings he loved most in the world.
+
+He could see his father sitting under the oak-tree; and suffered in
+advance all the loss of caste he must go through in the eyes of that
+tranquil figure, with his knees crossed, thin, old, and elegant;
+already he could feel the faint irony which would come into his voice
+and smile.
+
+"This is Fleur Forsyte, Jolyon; Jon brought her down to see the house.
+Let's have tea at once--she has to catch a train. Jon, tell them, dear,
+and telephone to the Dragon for a car."
+
+To leave her alone with them was strange, and yet, as no doubt his
+mother had foreseen, the least of evils at the moment; so he ran up
+into the house. Now he would not see Fleur alone again--not for a
+minute, and they had arranged no further meeting! When he returned
+under cover of the maids and teapots, there was not a trace of
+awkwardness beneath the tree; it was all within himself, but not the
+less for that. They were talking of the Gallery off Cork Street.
+
+"We back-numbers," his father was saying, "are awfully anxious to find
+out why we can't appreciate the new stuff; you and Jon must tell us."
+
+"It's supposed to be satiric, isn't it?" said Fleur.
+
+He saw his father's smile.
+
+"Satiric? Oh! I think it's more than that. What do you say, Jon?"
+
+"I don't know at all," stammered Jon. His father's face had a sudden
+grimness.
+
+"The young are tired of us, our gods and our ideals. Off with their
+heads, they say--smash their idols! And let's get back to--nothing!
+And, by Jove, they've done it! Jon's a poet. He'll be going in, too,
+and stamping on what's left of us. Property, beauty, sentiment--all
+smoke. We mustn't own anything nowadays, not even our feelings. They
+stand in the way of--Nothing."
+
+Jon listened, bewildered, almost outraged by his father's words, behind
+which he felt a meaning that he could not reach. He didn't want to
+stamp on anything!
+
+"Nothing's the god of to-day," continued Jolyon; "we're back where the
+Russians were sixty years ago, when they started Nihilism."
+
+"No, Dad," cried Jon suddenly; "we only want to LIVE, and we don't know
+how, because of the Past--that's all!"
+
+"By George!" said Jolyon, "that's profound, Jon. Is it your own? The
+Past! Old ownerships, old passions, and their aftermath. Let's have
+cigarettes."
+
+Conscious that his mother had lifted her hand to her lips, quickly, as
+if to hush something, Jon handed the cigarettes. He lighted his
+father's and Fleur's, then one for himself. Had he taken the knock that
+Val had spoken of? The smoke was blue when he had not puffed, grey when
+he had; he liked the sensation in his nose, and the sense of equality
+it gave him. He was glad no one said: "So you've begun!" He felt less
+young.
+
+Fleur looked at her watch, and rose. His mother went with her into the
+house. Jon stayed with his father, puffing at the cigarette.
+
+"See her into the car, old man," said Jolyon; "and when she's gone, ask
+your mother to come back to me."
+
+Jon went. He waited in the hall. He saw her into the car. There was no
+chance for any word; hardly for a pressure of the hand. He waited all
+that evening for something to be said to him. Nothing was said. Nothing
+might have happened. He went up to bed; and in the mirror on his
+dressing-table met himself. He did not speak, nor did the image; but
+both looked as if they thought the more.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+IN GREEN STREET
+
+
+Uncertain, whether the impression that Prosper Profond was dangerous
+should be traced to his attempt to give Val the Mayfly filly; to the
+remark of Fleur's: "Isn't he a great cat? Prowling!" to his
+preposterous inquiry of Jack Cardigan: "What's the use of keepin' fit?"
+or, more simply, to the fact that he was a foreigner, or alien as it
+was now called. Certain that Annette was looking particularly handsome,
+and that Soames had sold him a Gauguin and then torn up the cheque, so
+that Monsieur Profond himself had said: "I didn't get that small
+picture I bought from Mr. Forsyde."
+
+However suspiciously regarded, he still frequented Winifred's evergreen
+little house in Green Street, with a good-natured obtuseness which no
+one mistook for naivete; a word hardly applicable to Monsieur Prosper
+Profond. Winifred still found him "amusing," and would write him little
+notes saying: "Come and have a 'jolly' with us"--it was breath of life
+to her to keep up with the phrases of the day.
+
+The mystery, with which all felt him to be surrounded, was due to his
+having done, seen, heard, and known everything, and found nothing in
+it--which was unnatural. The English type of disillusionment was
+familiar enough to Winifred, who had always moved in fashionable
+circles. It gave a certain cachet or distinction, so that one got
+something out of it. But to see nothing in anything, not as a pose, but
+because there WAS nothing in anything, was not English; and that which
+was not English one could not help secretly feeling dangerous, if not
+precisely bad form. It was like having the mood which the war had left,
+seated--dark, heavy, smiling, indifferent--in your Empire chair; it was
+like listening to that mood talking through thick pink lips above a
+little diabolic beard. It was, as Jack Cardigan expressed it--for the
+English character at large--"a bit too thick"--for if nothing was
+really worth getting excited about, there were always games, and one
+could make it so! Even Winifred, ever a Forsyte at heart, felt that
+there was nothing to be had out of a mood of disillusionment; it really
+ought not to be there. Monsieur Profond, in fact, made the mood too
+plain, in a country which decently veiled such realities.
+
+When Fleur, after her hurried return from Robin Hill, came down to
+dinner that evening, the mood was standing at the window of Winifred's
+little drawing-room, looking out into Green Street, with an air of
+seeing nothing in it. And Fleur gazed promptly into the fireplace with
+an air of seeing a fire which was not there.
+
+Monsieur Profond came from the window. He was in full fig, with a white
+waistcoat and a white flower in his buttonhole.
+
+"Well, Miss Forsyde," he said, "I'm awful pleased to see you. Mr.
+Forsyde well? I was sayin' to-day I want to see him have some pleasure.
+He worries."
+
+"You think so?" said Fleur shortly.
+
+"Worries," repeated Monsieur Profond, burring the r's.
+
+Fleur spun round. "Shall I tell you," she said, "what would give him
+pleasure?" But the words: "To hear that you had cleared out" died at
+the expression on his face. All his fine white teeth were showing.
+
+"I was hearin' at the Club to-day, about his old trouble."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+Monsieur Profond moved his sleek head as if to minimise his statement.
+
+"Before you were born," he said; "that small business."
+
+Though conscious that he had cleverly diverted her from his own share
+in her father's worry, Fleur could not withstand a rush of nervous
+curiosity. "What did you hear?"
+
+"Why!" murmured Monsieur Profond, "you know all that."
+
+"I expect I do. But I should like to know that you haven't heard it all
+wrong."
+
+"His first wife," murmured Monsieur Profond.
+
+Choking back the words: "He was never married before"; she said: "Well,
+what about her?"
+
+"Mr. George Forsyde was tellin' me about your father's first wife
+marryin' his cousin Jolyon afterwards. It was a small bit unpleasant, I
+should think. I saw their boy--nice boy!"
+
+Fleur looked up. Monsieur Profond was swimming, heavily diabolical,
+before her. That--the reason! With the most heroic effort of her life
+so far, she managed to arrest that swimming figure. She could not tell
+whether he had noticed. And just then Winifred came in.
+
+"Oh! here you both are already! Imogen and I have had the most amusing
+afternoon at the Babies' bazaar."
+
+"What babies?" said Fleur mechanically.
+
+"The 'Save the Babies.' I got such a bargain, my dear. A piece of old
+Armenian work--from before the flood. I want your opinion on it,
+Prosper."
+
+"Auntie," whispered Fleur suddenly.
+
+At the tone in the girl's voice Winifred closed in on her.
+
+"What's the matter? Aren't you well?"
+
+Monsieur Profond had withdrawn into the window, where he was
+practically out of hearing.
+
+"Auntie, he told me that father has been married before. Is it true
+that he divorced her, and she married Jon Forsyte's father?"
+
+Never in all the life of the mother of four little Darties had Winifred
+felt more seriously embarrassed. Her niece's face was so pale, her eyes
+so dark, her voice so whispery and strained.
+
+"Your Father didn't wish you to hear," she said, with all the aplomb
+she could muster. "These things will happen. I've often told him he
+ought to let you know."
+
+"Oh!" said Fleur, and that was all, but it made Winifred pat her
+shoulder--a firm little shoulder, nice and white! She never could help
+an appraising eye and touch in the matter of her niece, who would have
+to be married, of course--though not to that boy Jon.
+
+"We've forgotten all about it years and years ago," she said
+comfortably. "Come and have dinner!"
+
+"No, Auntie. I don't feel very well. May I go upstairs?"
+
+"My dear!" murmured Winifred, concerned; "you're not taking this to
+heart? Why, you haven't properly come out yet! That boy's a child!"
+
+"What boy? I've only got a headache. But I can't stand that man
+to-night."
+
+"Well, well," said Winifred; "go and lie down. I'll send you some
+bromide, and I shall talk to Prosper Profond. What business had he to
+gossip? Though I must say I think it's much better you should know."
+
+Fleur smiled. "Yes," she said, and slipped from the room.
+
+She went up with her head whirling, a dry sensation in her throat, a
+fluttered, frightened feeling in her breast. Never in her life as yet
+had she suffered from even momentary fear that she would not get what
+she had set her heart on. The sensations of the afternoon had been
+full, and poignant, and this gruesome discovery coming on the top of
+them had really made her head ache. No wonder her father had hidden
+that photograph so secretly behind her own--ashamed of having kept it!
+But could he hate Jon's mother and yet keep her photograph? She pressed
+her hands over her forehead, trying to see things clearly. Had they
+told Jon--had her visit to Robin Hill forced them to tell him?
+Everything now turned on that! She knew, they all knew,
+except--perhaps--Jon!
+
+She walked up and down, biting her lip and thinking desperately hard.
+Jon loved his mother. If they had told him, what would he do? She could
+not tell. But if they had not told him, should she not--could she not
+get him for herself--get married to him, before he knew? She searched
+her memories of Robin Hill. His mother's face so passive--with its dark
+eyes and as if powdered hair, its reserve, its smile--baffled her; and
+his father's--kindly, sunken, ironic. Instinctively she felt they would
+shrink from telling Jon, even now, shrink from hurting him--for of
+course it would hurt him awfully to know!
+
+Her aunt must be made not to tell her father that she knew. So long as
+neither she herself nor Jon were supposed to know, there was still a
+chance--freedom to cover one's tracks, and get what her heart was set
+on. But she was almost overwhelmed by her isolation. Every one's hand
+was against her--every one's! It was as Jon had said--he and she just
+wanted to live and the past was in their way, a past they hadn't shared
+in, and didn't understand! Oh! What a shame! And suddenly she thought
+of June. Would she help them? For somehow June had left on her the
+impression that she would be sympathetic with their love, impatient of
+obstacle. Then, instinctively, she thought: 'I won't give anything
+away, though, even to her. I daren't! I mean to have Jon; in spite of
+them all.'
+
+Soup was brought up to her, and one of Winifred's pet headache cachets.
+She swallowed both. Then Winifred herself appeared. Fleur opened her
+campaign with the words:
+
+"You know, Auntie, I do wish people wouldn't think I'm in love with
+that boy. Why, I've hardly seen him!"
+
+Winifred, though experienced, was not 'fine'. She accepted the remark
+with considerable relief. Of course, it was not pleasant for the girl
+to hear of the family scandal, and she set herself to minimise the
+matter, a task for which she was eminently qualified, raised
+fashionably under a comfortable mother and a father whose nerves might
+not be shaken, and for many years the wife of Montague Dartie. Her
+description was a masterpiece of understatement. Fleur's father's first
+wife had been very foolish. There had been a young man who had got run
+over, and she had left Fleur's father. Then, years after, when it might
+all have come right again, she had taken up with their cousin Jolyon;
+and, of course, her father had been obliged to have a divorce. Nobody
+remembered anything of it now, except just the family. And, perhaps, it
+had all turned out for the best; her father had Fleur; and Jolyon and
+Irene had been quite happy, they said, and their boy was a nice boy.
+"Val having Holly, too, is a sort of plaster, don't you know?" With
+these soothing words, Winifred patted her niece's shoulder, thought:
+"She's a nice, plump little thing!" and went back to Prosper Profond,
+who, in spite of his indiscretion, was very "amusing" this evening.
+
+For some minutes after her aunt had gone Fleur remained under influence
+of bromide material and spiritual. But then reality came back. Her aunt
+had left out all that mattered--all the feeling, the hate, the love,
+the unforgivingness of passionate hearts. She, who knew so little of
+life, and had touched only the fringe of love, was yet aware by
+instinct that words have as little relation to fact and feeling as coin
+to the bread it buys. 'Poor Father!' she thought. 'Poor me! Poor Jon!
+But I don't care, I mean to have him!' From the window of her darkened
+room she saw "that man" issue from the door below and "prowl" away. If
+he and her mother--how would that affect her chance? Surely it must
+make her father cling to her more closely, so that he would consent in
+the end to anything she wanted, or become reconciled the sooner to what
+she did without his knowledge.
+
+She took some earth from the flower-box in the window, and with all her
+might flung it after that disappearing figure. It fell short, but the
+action did her good.
+
+And a little puff of air came up from Green Street, smelling of petrol,
+not sweet.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+PURELY FORSYTE AFFAIRS
+
+
+Soames, coming up to the City, with the intention of calling in at
+Green Street at the end of his day and taking Fleur back home with him,
+suffered from rumination. Sleeping partner that he was, he seldom
+visited the City now, but he still had a room of his own at Cuthcott
+Kingson & Forsyte's, and one special clerk and a half assigned to the
+management of purely Forsyte affairs. They were somewhat in flux just
+now--an auspicious moment for the disposal of house property. And
+Soames was unloading the estates of his father and uncle Roger, and to
+some extent of his uncle Nicholas. His shrewd and matter-of-course
+probity in all money concerns had made him something of an autocrat in
+connection with these trusts. If Soames thought this or thought that,
+one had better save oneself the bother of thinking too. He guaranteed,
+as it were, irresponsibility to numerous Forsytes of the third and
+fourth generations. His fellow trustees, such as his cousins Roger or
+Nicholas, his cousins-in-law Tweetyman and Spender, or his sister
+Cicely's husband all trusted him; he signed first, and where he signed
+first they signed after, and nobody was a penny the worse. Just now
+they were all a good many pennies the better, and Soames was beginning
+to see the close of certain trusts, except for distribution of the
+income from securities as gilt-edged as was compatible with the period.
+
+Passing the more feverish parts of the City towards the most perfect
+backwater in London, he ruminated. Money was extraordinarily tight; and
+morality extraordinarily loose! The War had done it. Banks were not
+lending; people breaking contracts all over the place. There was a
+feeling in the air and a look on faces that he did not like. The
+country seemed in for a spell of gambling and bankruptcies. There was
+satisfaction in the thought that neither he nor his trusts had an
+investment which could be affected by anything less maniacal than
+national repudiation or a levy on capital. If Soames had faith, it was
+in what he called "English common sense"--or the power to have things,
+if not one way then another. He might--like his father James before
+him--say he didn't know what things were coming to, but he never in his
+heart believed they were. If it rested with him, they wouldn't--and,
+after all, he was only an Englishman like any other, so quietly
+tenacious of what he had that he knew he would never really part with
+it without something more or less equivalent in exchange. Take his own
+case, for example! He was well off. Did that do anybody harm? He did
+not eat ten meals a day; he ate no more than, perhaps not so much as, a
+poor man. He spent no money on vice; breathed no more air, used no more
+water to speak of than the mechanic or the porter. He certainly had
+pretty things about him, but they had given employment in the making,
+and somebody must use them. He bought pictures, but Art must be
+encouraged. He was, in fact, an accidental channel through which money
+flowed, employing labour. What was there objectionable in that? In his
+charge money was in quicker and more useful flux than it would be in
+charge of the State and a lot of slow-fly money-sucking officials. And
+as to what he saved each year--it was just as much in flux as what he
+didn't save, going into Water Board or Council Stocks, or something
+sound and useful. The State paid him no salary for being trustee of his
+own or other people's money--HE DID ALL THAT FOR NOTHING. Therein lay
+the whole case against nationalisation--owners of private property were
+unpaid, and yet had every incentive to quicken up the flux. Under
+nationalisation--just the opposite! In a country smarting from
+officialism he felt that he had a strong case.
+
+It particularly annoyed him, entering that backwater of perfect peace,
+to think that a lot of unscrupulous Trusts and Combinations had been
+cornering the market in goods of all kinds, and keeping prices at an
+artificial height. Such abusers of the individualistic system were the
+ruffians who caused all the trouble, and it was some satisfaction to
+see them getting into a stew at last lest the whole thing might come
+down with a run-and land in the soup.
+
+The offices of Cuthcott Kingson & Forsyte occupied the ground and first
+floors of a house on the right-hand side; and, ascending to his room,
+Soames thought: 'Time we had a coat of paint.'
+
+His old clerk Gradman was seated, where he always was, at a huge bureau
+with countless pigeonholes. Half-the-clerk stood beside him, with a
+broker's note recording investment of the proceeds from sale of the
+Bryanston Square house, in Roger Forsyte's estate. Soames took it, and
+said:
+
+"Vancouver City Stock. H'm! It's down to-day!"
+
+With a sort of grating ingratiation old Gradman answered him:
+
+"Ye-es; but everything's down, Mr. Soames." And half-the-clerk withdrew.
+
+Soames skewered the document onto a number of other papers and hung up
+his hat.
+
+"I want to look at my Will and Marriage Settlement, Gradman."
+
+Old Gradman, moving to the limit of his swivel chair, drew out two
+drafts from the bottom left-hand drawer. Recovering his body, he raised
+his grizzle-haired face, very red from stooping.
+
+"Copies, sir."
+
+Soames took them. It struck him suddenly how like Gradman was to the
+stout brindled yard dog they had been wont to keep on his chain at 'The
+Shelter,' till one day Fleur had come and insisted it should be let
+loose, so that it had at once bitten the cook and been destroyed. If
+you let Gradman off his chair, would he bite the cook?
+
+Checking this frivolous fancy, Soames unfolded his Marriage Settlement.
+He had not looked at it for over eighteen years, not since he remade
+his Will when his father died and Fleur was born. He wanted to see
+whether the words "during coverture" were in. Yes, they were--odd
+expression, when you thought of it, and derived perhaps from
+horse-breeding! Interest on fifteen thousand pounds (which he paid her
+without deducting income tax) so long as she remained his wife, and
+afterwards during widowhood "dum casta"--old-fashioned and rather
+pointed words, put in to insure the conduct of Fleur's mother. His Will
+made it up to an annuity of a thousand under the same conditions. All
+right! He returned the copies to Gradman, who took them without looking
+up, swung the chair, restored the papers to their drawer, and went on
+casting up.
+
+"Gradman! I don't like the condition of the country; there are a lot of
+people about without any common sense. I want to find a way by which I
+can safeguard Miss Fleur against anything which might arise."
+
+Gradman wrote the figure "2" on his blotting-paper.
+
+"Ye-es," he said; "there's a nahsty spirit."
+
+"The ordinary restraint against anticipation doesn't meet the case."
+
+"Nao," said Gradman.
+
+"Suppose those Labour fellows come in, or worse! It's these people with
+fixed ideas who are the danger. Look at Ireland!"
+
+"Ah!" said Gradman.
+
+"Suppose I were to make a settlement on her at once with myself as
+beneficiary for life, they couldn't take anything but the interest from
+me, unless of course they alter the law."
+
+Gradman moved his head and smiled.
+
+"Aoh!" he said, "they wouldn't do tha-at!"
+
+"I don't know," muttered Soames; "I don't trust them."
+
+"It'll take two years, sir, to be valid against death duties."
+
+Soames sniffed. Two years! He was only sixty-five!
+
+"That's not the point. Draw a form of settlement that passes all my
+property to Miss Fleur's children in equal shares, with antecedent
+life-interests first to myself and then to her without power of
+anticipation, and add a clause that in the event of anything happening
+to divert her life-interest, that interest passes to the trustees, to
+apply for her benefit, in their absolute discretion."
+
+Gradman grated: "Rather extreme at your age, sir; you lose control."
+
+"That's my business," said Soames sharply.
+
+Gradman wrote on a piece of paper. "Life-interest--anticipation--divert
+interest--absolute discretion..." and said:
+
+"What trustees? There's young Mr. Kingson, he's a nice steady young
+fellow."
+
+"Yes, he might do for one. I must have three. There isn't a Forsyte now
+who appeals to me."
+
+"Not young Mr. Nicholas? He's at the Bar. We've given 'im briefs."
+
+"He'll never set the Thames on fire," said Soames.
+
+A smile oozed out on Gradman's face, greasy with countless
+mutton-chops, the smile of a man who sits all day.
+
+"You can't expect it, at his age, Mr. Soames."
+
+"Why? What is he? Forty?"
+
+"Ye-es, quite a young fellow."
+
+"Well, put him in; but I want somebody who'll take a personal interest.
+There's no one that I can see."
+
+"What about Mr. Valerius, now he's come home?"
+
+"Val Dartie? With that father?"
+
+"We-ell," murmured Gradman, "he's been dead seven years--the Statute
+runs against him."
+
+"No," said Soames. "I don't like the connection."
+
+He rose. Gradman said suddenly:
+
+"If they were makin' a levy on capital, they could come on the
+trustees, sir. So there you'd be just the same. I'd think it over, if I
+were you."
+
+"That's true," said Soames, "I will. What have you done about that
+dilapidation notice in Vere Street?"
+
+"I 'aven't served it yet. The party's very old. She won't want to go
+out at her age."
+
+"I don't know. This spirit of unrest touches every one."
+
+"Still, I'm lookin' at things broadly, sir. She's eighty-one."
+
+"Better serve it," said Soames, "and see what she says. Oh! and Mr.
+Timothy? Is everything in order in case of accidents."
+
+"I've got the inventory of his estate all ready; had the furniture and
+pictures valued so that we know what reserves to put on. I shall be
+sorry when he goes, though. Dear me! It is a time since I first saw Mr.
+Timothy!"
+
+"We can't live for ever," said Soames, taking down his hat.
+
+"Nao," said Gradman; "but it'll be a pity--the last of the old family!
+Shall I take up the matter of that nuisance in Old Compton Street?
+Those organs--they're nahsty things."
+
+"Do. I must call for Miss Fleur and catch the four o'clock. Good-day,
+Gradman."
+
+"Good-day, Mr. Soames. I hope Miss Fleur--"
+
+"Well enough, but gads about too much."
+
+"Ye-es," grated Gradman; "she's young."
+
+Soames went out, musing: "Old Gradman! If he were younger I'd put him
+in the trust. There's nobody I can depend on to take a real interest."
+
+Leaving the bilious and mathematical exactitude, the preposterous peace
+of that backwater, he thought suddenly: 'During coverture! Why can't
+they exclude fellows like Profond, instead of a lot of hard-working
+Germans?' and was surprised at the depth of uneasiness which could
+provoke so unpatriotic a thought. But there it was! One never got a
+moment of real peace. Always something at the back of everything! And
+he made his way towards Green Street.
+
+Two hours later by his watch, Thomas Gradman, stirring in his swivel
+chair, closed the last drawer of his bureau, and putting into his
+waistcoat pocket a bunch of keys so fat that they gave him a
+protuberance on the liver side, brushed his old top hat round with his
+sleeve, took his umbrella, and descended. Thick, short, and buttoned
+closely into his old frock coat, he walked towards Covent Garden
+market. He never missed that daily promenade to the Tube for Highgate,
+and seldom some critical transaction on the way in connection with
+vegetables and fruit. Generations might be born, and hats might change,
+wars be fought, and Forsytes fade away, but Thomas Gradman, faithful
+and grey, would take his daily walk and buy his daily vegetable. Times
+were not what they were, and his son had lost a leg, and they never
+gave him those nice little plaited baskets to carry the stuff in now,
+and these Tubes were convenient things--still he mustn't complain; his
+health was good considering his time of life, and after fifty-four
+years in the Law he was getting a round eight hundred a year and a
+little worried of late, because it was mostly collector's commission on
+the rents, and with all this conversion of Forsyte property going on,
+it looked like drying up, and the price of living still so high; but it
+was no good worrying--"The good God made us all"--as he was in the
+habit of saying; still, house property in London--he didn't know what
+Mr. Roger or Mr. James would say if they could see it being sold like
+this--seemed to show a lack of faith; but Mr. Soames--he worried. Life
+and lives in being and twenty-one years after--beyond that you couldn't
+go; still, he kept his health wonderfully--and Miss Fleur was a pretty
+little thing--she was; she'd marry; but lots of people had no children
+nowadays--he had had his first child at twenty-two; and Mr. Jolyon,
+married while he was at Cambridge, had his child the same
+year--gracious Peter! That was back in '70, a long time before old Mr.
+Jolyon--fine judge of property--had taken his Will away from Mr.
+James--dear, yes! Those were the days when they were buyin' property
+right and left, and none of this khaki and fallin' over one another to
+get out of things; and cucumbers at twopence; and a melon--the old
+melons, that made your mouth water! Fifty years since he went into Mr.
+James' office, and Mr. James had said to him: "Now, Gradman, you're
+only a shaver--you pay attention, and you'll make your five hundred a
+year before you've done." And he had, and feared God, and served the
+Forsytes, and kept a vegetable diet at night. And, buying a copy of
+John Bull--not that he approved of it, an extravagant affair--he
+entered the Tube elevator with his mere brown-paper parcel, and was
+borne down into the bowels of the earth.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+SOAMES' PRIVATE LIFE
+
+
+On his way to Green Street it occurred to Soames that he ought to go
+into Dumetrius' in Suffolk Street about the possibility of the Bolderby
+Old Crome. Almost worth while to have fought the War to have the
+Bolderby Old Crome, as it were, in flux! Old Bolderby had died, his son
+and grandson had been killed--a cousin was coming into the estate, who
+meant to sell it, some said because of the condition of England, others
+said because he had asthma.
+
+If Dumetrius once got hold of it the price would become prohibitive; it
+was necessary for Soames to find out whether Dumetrius had got it,
+before he tried to get it himself. He therefore confined himself to
+discussing with Dumetrius whether Monticellis would come again now that
+it was the fashion for a picture to be anything except a picture; and
+the future of Johns, with a side-slip into Buxton Knights. It was only
+when leaving that he added: "So they're not selling the Bolderby Old
+Crome, after all?" In sheer pride of racial superiority, as he had
+calculated would be the case, Dumetrius replied:
+
+"Oh! I shall get it, Mr. Forsyte, sir."
+
+The flutter of his eyelid fortified Soames in a resolution to write
+direct to the new Bolderby, suggesting that the only dignified way of
+dealing with an Old Crome was to avoid dealers. He therefore said:
+"Well, good-day!" and went, leaving Dumetrius the wiser.
+
+At Green Street he found that Fleur was out and would be all the
+evening; she was staying one more night in London. He cabbed on
+dejectedly, and caught his train.
+
+He reached his house about six o'clock. The air was heavy, midges
+biting, thunder about. Taking his letters he went up to his
+dressing-room to cleanse himself of London.
+
+An uninteresting post. A receipt, a bill for purchases on behalf of
+Fleur. A circular about an exhibition of etchings. A letter beginning:
+
+
+"SIR,
+
+"I feel it my duty--"
+
+
+That would be an appeal or something unpleasant. He looked at once for
+the signature. There was none! Incredulously he turned the page over
+and examined each corner. Not being a public man, Soames had never yet
+had an anonymous letter, and his first impulse was to tear it up, as a
+dangerous thing; his second to read it, as a thing still more dangerous.
+
+
+"SIR,
+
+"I feel it my duty to inform you that having no interest in the matter
+your lady is carrying on with a foreigner--"
+
+
+Reaching that word Soames stopped mechanically and examined the
+post-mark. So far as he could pierce the impenetrable disguise in which
+the Post Office had wrapped it, there was something with a "sea" at the
+end and a "t" in it. Chelsea? No! Battersea? Perhaps! He read on.
+
+
+"These foreigners are all the same. Sack the lot! This one meets your
+lady twice a week. I know it of my own knowledge--and to see an
+Englishman put on goes against the grain. You watch it and see if what
+I say isn't true. I shouldn't meddle if it wasn't a dirty foreigner
+that's in it. Yours obedient."
+
+
+The sensation with which Soames dropped the letter was similar to that
+he would have had entering his bedroom and finding it full of
+black-beetles. The meanness of anonymity gave a shuddering obscenity to
+the moment. And the worst of it was that this shadow had been at the
+back of his mind ever since the Sunday evening when Fleur had pointed
+down at Prosper Profond strolling on the lawn, and said: "Prowling
+cat!" Had he not in connection therewith, this very day, perused his
+Will and Marriage Settlement? And now this anonymous ruffian, with
+nothing to gain, apparently, save the venting of his spite against
+foreigners, had wrenched it out of the obscurity in which he had hoped
+and wished it would remain. To have such knowledge forced on him, at
+his time of life, about Fleur's mother! He picked the letter up from
+the carpet, tore it across, and then, when it hung together by just the
+fold at the back, stopped tearing, and re-read it. He was taking at
+that moment one of the decisive resolutions of his life. He would NOT
+be forced into another scandal. No! However he decided to deal with
+this matter--and it required the most far-sighted and careful
+consideration--he would do nothing that might injure Fleur. That
+resolution taken, his mind answered the helm again, and he made his
+ablutions. His hands trembled as he dried them. Scandal he would not
+have, but something must be done to stop this sort of thing! He went
+into his wife's room and stood looking round him. The idea of searching
+for anything which would incriminate, and entitle him to hold a menace
+over her, did not even come to him. There would be nothing--she was
+much too practical. The idea of having her watched had been dismissed
+before it came--too well he remembered his previous experience of that.
+No! He had nothing but this torn-up letter from some anonymous ruffian,
+whose impudent intrusion into his private life he so violently
+resented. It was repugnant to him to make use of it, but he might have
+to. What a mercy Fleur was not at home to-night! A tap on the door
+broke up his painful cogitations.
+
+"Mr. Michael Mont, sir, is in the drawing-room. Will you see him?"
+
+"No," said Soames; "yes. I'll come down."
+
+Anything that would take his mind off for a few minutes!
+
+Michael Mont in flannels stood on the verandah, smoking a cigarette. He
+threw it away as Soames came up, and ran his hand through his hair.
+
+Soames' feeling towards this young man was singular. He was no doubt a
+rackety, irresponsible young fellow according to old standards, yet
+somehow likeable, with his extraordinarily cheerful way of blurting out
+his opinions.
+
+"Come in," he said; "have you had tea?"
+
+Mont came in.
+
+"I thought Fleur would have been back, sir; but I'm glad she isn't. The
+fact is, I--I'm fearfully gone on her; so fearfully gone that I thought
+you'd better know. It's old-fashioned, of course, coming to fathers
+first, but I thought you'd forgive that. I went to my own dad, and he
+says if I settle down he'll see me through. He rather cottons to the
+idea, in fact. I told him about your Goya."
+
+"Oh!" said Soames, inexpressibly dry. "He rather cottons?"
+
+"Yes, sir; do you?"
+
+Soames smiled faintly. "You see," resumed Mont, twiddling his straw
+hat, while his hair, ears, eyebrows, all seemed to stand up from
+excitement, "when you've been through the War you can't help being in a
+hurry."
+
+"To get married; and unmarried afterwards," said Soames slowly.
+
+"Not from Fleur, sir. Imagine, if you were me!"
+
+Soames cleared his throat. That way of putting it was forcible enough.
+
+"Fleur's too young," he said.
+
+"Oh! no, sir. We're awfully old nowadays. My dad seems to me a perfect
+babe; his thinking apparatus hasn't turned a hair. But he's a
+Baronight, of course; that keeps him back."
+
+"Baronight," repeated Soames; "what may that be?"
+
+"Bart, sir. I shall be a Bart some day. But I shall live it down, you
+know."
+
+"Go away and live this down," said Soames.
+
+Young Mont said imploringly: "Oh! no, sir. I simply must hang round, or
+I shouldn't have a dog's chance. You'll let Fleur do what she likes, I
+suppose, anyway. Madame passes me."
+
+"Indeed!" said Soames frigidly.
+
+"You don't really bar me, do you?" and the young man looked so doleful
+that Soames smiled.
+
+"You may think you're very old," he said; "but you strike me as
+extremely young. To rattle ahead of everything is not a proof of
+maturity."
+
+"All right, sir; I give you our age. But to show you I mean
+business--I've got a job."
+
+"Glad to hear it."
+
+"Joined a publisher; my governor is putting up the stakes."
+
+Soames put his hand over his mouth--he had so very nearly said: "God
+help the publisher." His grey eyes scrutinised the agitated young man.
+
+"I don't dislike you, Mr. Mont, but Fleur is everything to me.
+Everything--do you understand?"
+
+"Yes, sir, I know; but so she is to me."
+
+"That's as may be. I'm glad you've told me, however. And now I think
+there's nothing more to be said."
+
+"I know it rests with her, sir."
+
+"It will rest with her a long time, I hope."
+
+"You aren't cheering," said Mont suddenly.
+
+"No," said Soames; "my experience of life has not made me anxious to
+couple people in a hurry. Good-night, Mr. Mont. I shan't tell Fleur
+what you've said."
+
+"Oh!" murmured Mont blankly; "I really could knock my brains out for
+want of her. She knows that perfectly well."
+
+"I dare say," and Soames held out his hand. A distracted squeeze, a
+heavy sigh, and, soon after, sounds from the young man's motor-cycle
+called up visions of flying dust and broken bones.
+
+'The younger generation!' he thought heavily, and went out on to the
+lawn. The gardeners had been mowing, and there was still the smell of
+fresh-cut grass--the thundery air kept all scents close to earth. The
+sky was of a purplish hue--the poplars black. Two or three boats passed
+on the river, scuttling, as it were, for shelter before the storm.
+'Three days fine weather,' thought Soames, 'and then a storm!' Where
+was Annette? With that chap, for all he knew--she was a young woman!
+Impressed with the queer charity of that thought, he entered the
+summer-house and sat down. The fact was--and he admitted it--Fleur was
+so much to him that his wife was very little--very little; French--had
+hardly been more than a mistress, and he was getting indifferent to
+that side of things! It was odd how, with all his ingrained care for
+moderation and secure investment, Soames ever put his emotional eggs
+into one basket. First Irene--now Fleur. He was just conscious of it,
+sitting there, conscious of its odd dangerousness. It had brought him
+to wreck and scandal once, but now--now it should save him! He cared so
+much for Fleur that he would have no further scandal. If only he could
+get at that anonymous letter writer, he would teach the fellow not to
+meddle and stir up mud at the bottom of water which he wished should
+remain stagnant!... A distant flash, a low rumble, and large drops of
+rain spattered on the thatch above him. He remained indifferent,
+tracing a pattern with his finger on the dusty surface of a little
+rustic table. Fleur's future! 'I want fair sailing for her,' he
+thought. 'Nothing else matters at my time of life.' A lonely
+business--life! What you had you never could keep to yourself! As you
+warned one off, you let another in. One could make sure of nothing! He
+reached up and pulled a red rambler rose from a cluster which blocked
+the window. Flowers grew and dropped--you couldn't keep them! The
+thunder rumbled and crashed, travelling east along the river, the
+paling flashes flicked his eyes; the poplar tops showed sharp and dense
+against the sky, a heavy shower rustled and rattled and veiled in the
+little house wherein he sat, indifferent, thinking.
+
+When the storm was over, he left his retreat and went down the wet path
+to the river bank.
+
+Two swans had come, sheltering in among the reeds. He knew the birds
+well, and stood watching the dignity in the curve of those white necks
+and formidable snake-like heads. 'Not dignified--what I have to do!' he
+thought. And yet it must be tackled, lest worse befell. Annette must be
+back by now from wherever she had gone, for it was nearly dinner-time,
+and as the moment for seeing her approached, the difficulty of knowing
+what to say and how to say it had increased. A new and scaring thought
+occurred to him. Suppose she wanted her liberty to marry this fellow!
+Well, if she did, she couldn't have it. He had not married her for
+that. The image of Prosper Profond dawdled before him reassuringly. Not
+a marrying man! No, no! Anger replaced that momentary scare. 'He had
+better not come my way,' he thought. The mongrel represented--! Ah!
+what did Prosper Profond represent? Nothing that mattered surely. And
+yet something real enough in the world--unmorality let off its chain,
+disillusionment on the prowl! That expression Annette had caught from
+him: "Je m'en fiche!" A fatalistic chap! A Continental--a
+cosmopolitan--a product of the age! If there were condemnation more
+complete, Soames felt that he did not know it.
+
+The swans had turned their heads, and were looking past him into some
+distance of their own. One of them uttered a little hiss, wagged its
+tail, turned as if answering to a rudder, and swam away. The other
+followed. Their white bodies, their stately necks, passed out of his
+sight, and he went towards the house.
+
+Annette was in the drawing-room, dressed for dinner, and he thought as
+he went up-stairs: 'Handsome is as handsome does.' Handsome! Except for
+remarks about the curtains in the drawing-room, and the storm, there
+was practically no conversation during a meal distinguished by
+exactitude of quantity and perfection of quality. Soames drank nothing.
+He followed her into the drawing-room afterwards, and found her smoking
+a cigarette on the sofa between the two French windows. She was leaning
+back, almost upright, in a low black frock, with her knees crossed and
+her blue eyes half closed; grey-blue smoke issued from her red, rather
+full lips, a fillet bound her chestnut hair, she wore the thinnest silk
+stockings, and shoes with very high heels showing off her instep. A
+fine piece in any room! Soames, who held that torn letter in a hand
+thrust deep into the side-pocket of his dinner-jacket, said:
+
+"I'm going to shut the window; the damp's lifting in."
+
+He did so, and stood looking at a David Cox adorning the cream-panelled
+wall close by.
+
+What was she thinking of? He had never understood a woman in his
+life--except Fleur--and Fleur not always! His heart beat fast. But if
+he meant to do it, now was the moment. Turning from the David Cox, he
+took out the torn letter.
+
+"I've had this."
+
+Her eyes widened, stared at him, and hardened.
+
+Soames handed her the letter.
+
+"It's torn, but you can read it." And he turned back to the David
+Cox--a seapiece, of good tone but without movement enough. 'I wonder
+what that chap's doing at this moment?' he thought. 'I'll astonish him
+yet.' Out of the corner of his eye he saw Annette holding the letter
+rigidly; her eyes moved from side to side under her darkened lashes and
+frowning darkened eyebrows. She dropped the letter, gave a little
+shiver, smiled, and said:
+
+"Dirrty!"
+
+"I quite agree," said Soames; "degrading. Is it true?"
+
+A tooth fastened on her red lower lip. "And what if it were?"
+
+She was brazen!
+
+"Is that all you have to say?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, speak out!"
+
+"What is the good of talking?"
+
+Soames said icily: "So you admit it?"
+
+"I admit nothing. You are a fool to ask. A man like you should not ask.
+It is dangerous."
+
+Soames made a tour of the room, to subdue his rising anger.
+
+"Do you remember," he said, halting in front of her, "what you were
+when I married you? Working at accounts in a restaurant."
+
+"Do you remember that I was not half your age?"
+
+Soames broke off the hard encounter of their eyes, and went back to the
+David Cox.
+
+"I am not going to bandy words. I require you to give up
+this--friendship. I think of the matter entirely as it affects Fleur."
+
+"Ah!--Fleur!"
+
+"Yes," said Soames stubbornly; "Fleur. She is your child as well as
+mine."
+
+"It is kind to admit that!"
+
+"Are you going to do what I say?"
+
+"I refuse to tell you."
+
+"Then I must make you."
+
+Annette smiled.
+
+"No, Soames," she said. "You are helpless. Do not say things that you
+will regret."
+
+Anger swelled the veins on his forehead. He opened his mouth to vent
+that emotion, and--could not. Annette went on:
+
+"There shall be no more such letters, I promise you. That is enough."
+
+Soames writhed. He had a sense of being treated like a child by this
+woman who had deserved he did not know what.
+
+"When two people have married, and lived like us, Soames, they had
+better be quiet about each other. There are things one does not drag up
+into the light for people to laugh at. You will be quiet, then; not for
+my sake--for your own. You are getting old; I am not, yet. You have
+made me ver-ry practical." Soames, who had passed through all the
+sensations of being choked, repeated dully:
+
+"I require you to give up this friendship."
+
+"And if I do not?"
+
+"Then--then I will cut you out of my Will."
+
+Somehow it did not seem to meet the case. Annette laughed.
+
+"You will live a long time, Soames."
+
+"You--you are a bad woman," said Soames suddenly.
+
+Annette shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"I do not think so. Living with you has killed things in me, it is
+true; but I am not a bad woman. I am sensible--that is all. And so will
+you be when you have thought it over."
+
+"I shall see this man," said Soames sullenly, "and warn him off."
+
+"Mon cher, you are funny. You do not want me, you have as much of me as
+you want; and you wish the rest of me to be dead. I admit nothing, but
+I am not going to be dead, Soames, at my age; so you had better be
+quiet, I tell you. I myself will make no scandal; none. Now, I am not
+saying any more, whatever you do."
+
+She reached out, took a French novel off a little table, and opened it.
+Soames watched her, silenced by the tumult of his feelings. The thought
+of that man was almost making him want her, and this was a revelation
+of their relationship, startling to one little given to introspective
+philosophy. Without saying another word he went out and up to the
+picture-gallery. This came of marrying a Frenchwoman! And yet, without
+her there would have been no Fleur! She had served her purpose.
+
+'She's right,' he thought; 'I can do nothing. I don't even KNOW that
+there's anything in it.' The instinct of self-preservation warned him
+to batten down his hatches, to smother the fire with want of air.
+Unless one believed there was something in a thing, there wasn't.
+
+That night he went into her room. She received him in the most
+matter-of-fact way, as if there had been no scene between them. And he
+returned to his own room with a curious sense of peace. If one didn't
+choose to see, one needn't. And he did not choose--in future he did not
+choose. There was nothing to be gained by it--nothing! Opening the
+drawer he took from the sachet a handkerchief, and the framed
+photograph of Fleur. When he had looked at it a little he slipped it
+down, and there was that other one--that old one of Irene. An owl
+hooted while he stood in his window gazing at it. The owl hooted, the
+red climbing roses seemed to deepen in colour, there came a scent of
+lime-blossom. God! That had been a different thing! Passion--Memory!
+Dust!
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+JUNE TAKES A HAND
+
+
+One who was a sculptor, a Slav, a sometime resident in New York, an
+egoist, and impecunious, was to be found of an evening in June
+Forsyte's studio on the bank of the Thames at Chiswick. On the evening
+of July 6, Boris Strumolowski--several of whose works were on show
+there because they were as yet too advanced to be on show anywhere
+else--had begun well, with that aloof and rather Christlike silence
+which admirably suited his youthful, round, broad-cheekboned
+countenance framed in bright hair banged like a girl's. June had known
+him three weeks, and he still seemed to her the principal embodiment of
+genius, and hope of the future; a sort of Star of the East which had
+strayed into an unappreciative West. Until that evening he had
+conversationally confined himself to recording his impressions of the
+United States, whose dust he had just shaken from off his feet--a
+country, in his opinion, so barbarous in every way that he had sold
+practically nothing there, and become an object of suspicion to the
+police; a country, as he said, without a race of its own, without
+liberty, equality, or fraternity, without principles, traditions,
+taste, without--in a word--a soul. He had left it for his own good, and
+come to the only other country where he could live well. June had dwelt
+unhappily on him in her lonely moments, standing before his
+creations--frightening, but powerful and symbolic once they had been
+explained! That he, haloed by bright hair like an early Italian
+painting, and absorbed in his genius to the exclusion of all else--the
+only sign of course by which real genius could be told--should still be
+a "lame duck" agitated her warm heart almost to the exclusion of Paul
+Post. And she had begun to take steps to clear her Gallery, in order to
+fill it with Strumolowski masterpieces. She had at once encountered
+trouble. Paul Post had kicked; Vospovitch had stung. With all the
+emphasis of a genius which she did not as yet deny them, they had
+demanded another six weeks at least of her Gallery. The American
+stream, still flowing in, would soon be flowing out. The American
+stream was their right, their only hope, their salvation--since nobody
+in this "beastly" country cared for Art. June had yielded to the
+demonstration. After all Boris would not mind their having the full
+benefit of an American stream, which he himself so violently despised.
+
+This evening she had put that to Boris with nobody else present, except
+Hannah Hobdey, the mediaeval black-and-whitist, and Jimmy Portugal,
+editor of the Neo-Artist. She had put it to him with that sudden
+confidence which continual contact with the neo-artistic world had
+never been able to dry up in her warm and generous nature. He had not
+broken his Christlike silence, however, for more than two minutes
+before she began to move her blue eyes from side to side, as a cat
+moves its tail. This--he said--was characteristic of England, the most
+selfish country in the world; the country which sucked the blood of
+other countries; destroyed the brains and hearts of Irishmen, Hindus,
+Egyptians, Boers, and Burmese, all the finest races in the world;
+bullying, hypocritical England! This was what he had expected, coming
+to such a country, where the climate was all fog, and the people all
+tradesmen perfectly blind to Art, and sunk in profiteering and the
+grossest materialism. Conscious that Hannah Hobdey was murmuring:
+"Hear, hear!" and Jimmy Portugal sniggering, June grew crimson, and
+suddenly rapped out:
+
+"Then why did you ever come? We didn't ask you." The remark was so
+singularly at variance with all that she had led him to expect from
+her, that Strumolowski stretched out his hand and took a cigarette.
+
+"England never wants an idealist," he said.
+
+But in June something primitively English was thoroughly upset; old
+Jolyon's sense of justice had risen, as it were, from bed. "You come
+and sponge on us," she said, "and then abuse us. If you think that's
+playing the game, I don't."
+
+She now discovered that which others had discovered before her--the
+thickness of hide beneath which the sensibility of genius is sometimes
+veiled. Strumolowski's young and ingenuous face became the incarnation
+of a sneer.
+
+"Sponge, one does not sponge, one takes what is owing--a tenth part of
+what is owing. You will repent to say that, Miss Forsyte."
+
+"Oh, no," said June, "I shan't."
+
+"Ah! We know very well, we artists--you take us to get what you can out
+of us. I want nothing from you"--and he blew out a cloud of June's
+smoke.
+
+Decision rose in an icy puff from the turmoil of insulted shame within
+her. "Very well, then, you can take your things away."
+
+And, almost in the same moment, she thought: 'Poor boy! He's only got a
+garret, and probably not a taxi fare. In front of these people, too;
+it's positively disgusting!'
+
+Young Strumolowski shook his head violently; his hair, thick, smooth,
+close as a golden plate, did not fall off.
+
+"I can live on nothing," he said shrilly; "I have often had to for the
+sake of my Art. It is you bourgeois who force us to spend money."
+
+The words hit June like a pebble, in the ribs. After all she had done
+for Art, all her identification with its troubles and lame ducks. She
+was struggling for adequate words when the door was opened, and her
+Austrian murmured:
+
+"A young lady, gnadiges fraulein."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"In the little meal-room."
+
+With a glance at Boris Strumolowski, at Hannah Hobdey, at Jimmy
+Portugal, June said nothing, and went out, devoid of equanimity.
+Entering the "little meal-room," she perceived the young lady to be
+Fleur--looking very pretty, if pale. At this disenchanted moment a lame
+duck of her own breed was welcome to June, so homoeopathic by instinct.
+
+The girl must have come, of course, because of Jon; or, if not, at
+least to get something out of her. And June felt just then that to
+assist somebody was the only bearable thing.
+
+"So you've remembered to come," she said.
+
+"Yes. What a jolly little duck of a house! But please don't let me
+bother you, if you've got people."
+
+"Not at all," said June. "I want to let them stew in their own juice
+for a bit. Have you come about Jon?"
+
+"You said you thought we ought to be told. Well, I've found out."
+
+"Oh!" said June blankly. "Not nice, is it?"
+
+They were standing one on each side of the little bare table at which
+June took her meals. A vase on it was full of Iceland poppies; the girl
+raised her hand and touched them with a gloved finger. To her
+new-fangled dress, frilly about the hips and tight below the knees,
+June took a sudden liking--a charming colour, flax-blue.
+
+'She makes a picture,' thought June. Her little room, with its
+whitewashed walls, its floor and hearth of old pink brick, its black
+paint, and latticed window athwart which the last of the sunlight was
+shining, had never looked so charming, set off by this young figure,
+with the creamy, slightly frowning face. She remembered with sudden
+vividness how nice she herself had looked in those old days when HER
+heart was set on Philip Bosinney, that dead lover, who had broken from
+her to destroy for ever Irene's allegiance to this girl's father. Did
+Fleur know of that, too?
+
+"Well," she said, "what are you going to do?"
+
+It was some seconds before Fleur answered.
+
+"I don't want Jon to suffer. I must see him once more to put an end to
+it."
+
+"You're going to put an end to it!"
+
+"What else is there to do?"
+
+The girl seemed to June, suddenly, intolerably spiritless.
+
+"I suppose you're right," she muttered. "I know my father thinks so;
+but--I should never have done it myself. I can't take things lying
+down."
+
+How poised and watchful that girl looked; how unemotional her voice
+sounded!
+
+"People WILL assume that I'm in love."
+
+"Well, aren't you?"
+
+Fleur shrugged her shoulders. 'I might have known it,' thought June;
+'she's Soames' daughter--fish! And yet--he!'
+
+"Well, what do you want ME to do?" she said with a sort of disgust.
+
+"Could I see Jon here to-morrow on his way down to Holly's? He'd come
+if you sent him a line to-night, and perhaps afterwards you'd let them
+know quietly at Robin Hill that it's all over, and that they needn't
+tell Jon about his mother."
+
+"All right!" said June abruptly. "I'll write now, and you can post it.
+Half-past two to-morrow. I shan't be in, myself."
+
+She sat down at the tiny bureau which filled one corner. When she
+looked round with the finished note Fleur was still touching the
+poppies with her gloved finger.
+
+June licked a stamp. "Well, here it is. If you're not in love, of
+course, there's no more to be said. Jon's lucky."
+
+Fleur took the note. "Thanks awfully!"
+
+'Cold-blooded little baggage!' thought June. Jon, son of her father, to
+love, and not to be loved by the daughter of--Soames! It was
+humiliating!
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+Fleur nodded; her frills shook and trembled as she swayed towards the
+door.
+
+"Good-bye!"
+
+"Good-bye! ... Little piece of fashion!" muttered June, closing the
+door. "That family!" And she marched back towards her studio. Boris
+Strumolowski had regained his Christlike silence, and Jimmy Portugal
+was damning everybody, except the group in whose behalf he ran the
+Neo-Artist. Among the condemned were Eric Cobbley, and several other
+"lame-duck" genii who at one time or another had held first place in
+the repertoire of June's aid and adoration. She experienced a sense of
+futility and disgust, and went to the window to let the river-wind blow
+those squeaky words away.
+
+But when at length Jimmy Portugal had finished, and gone with Hannah
+Hobdey, she sat down and mothered young Strumolowski for half an hour,
+promising him a month, at least, of the American stream; so that he
+went away with his halo in perfect order. 'In spite of all,' June
+thought, 'Boris IS wonderful.'
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE BIT BETWEEN THE TEETH
+
+
+To know that your hand is against every one's is--for some natures--to
+experience a sense of moral release. Fleur felt no remorse when she
+left June's house. Reading condemnatory resentment in her little
+kinswoman's blue eyes--she was glad that she had fooled her, despising
+June because that elderly idealist had not seen what she was after.
+
+End it, forsooth! She would soon show them all that she was only just
+beginning. And she smiled to herself on the top of the 'bus which
+carried her back to Mayfair. But the smile died, squeezed out by spasms
+of anticipation and anxiety. Would she be able to manage Jon? She had
+taken the bit between her teeth, but could she make him take it too?
+She knew the truth and the real danger of delay--he knew neither;
+therein lay all the difference in the world.
+
+'Suppose I tell him,' she thought; 'wouldn't it really be safer?' This
+hideous luck had no right to spoil their love; he must see that! They
+could not let it! People always accepted an accomplished fact, in time!
+From that piece of philosophy--profound enough at her age--she passed
+to another consideration less philosophic. If she persuaded Jon to a
+quick and secret marriage, and he found out afterwards that she had
+known the truth! What then? Jon hated subterfuge. Again, then, would it
+not be better to tell him? But the memory of his mother's face kept
+intruding on that impulse. Fleur was afraid. His mother had power over
+him; more power perhaps than she herself. Who could tell? It was too
+great a risk. Deep-sunk in these instinctive calculations she was
+carried on past Green Street as far as the Ritz Hotel. She got down
+there, and walked back on the Green Park side. The storm had washed
+every tree; they still dripped. Heavy drops fell on to her frills, and
+to avoid them she crossed over under the eyes of the Iseeum Club.
+Chancing to look up she saw Monsieur Profond with a tall stout man in
+the bay window. Turning into Green Street she heard her name called,
+and saw "that prowler" coming up. He took off his hat--a glossy
+"bowler" such as she particularly detested:
+
+"Good-evenin'! Miss Forsyde. Isn't there a small thing I can do for
+you?"
+
+"Yes, pass by on the other side."
+
+"I say! Why do you dislike me?"
+
+"It looks like it."
+
+"Well, then, because you make me feel life isn't worth living."
+
+Monsieur Profond smiled.
+
+"Look here, Miss Forsyde, don't worry. It'll be all right. Nothing
+lasts."
+
+"Things do last," cried Fleur; "with me anyhow--especially likes and
+dislikes."
+
+"Well, that makes me a bit un'appy."
+
+"I should have thought nothing could ever make you happy or unhappy."
+
+"I don't like to annoy other people. I'm goin' on my yacht."
+
+Fleur looked at him, startled.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Small voyage to the South Seas or somewhere," said Monsieur Profond.
+
+Fleur suffered relief and a sense of insult. Clearly he meant to convey
+that he was breaking with her mother. How dared he have anything to
+break, and yet how dared he break it?
+
+"Good-night, Miss Forsyde! Remember me to Mrs. Dartie. I'm not so bad,
+really. Good-night!" Fleur left him standing there with his hat raised.
+Stealing a look round, she saw him stroll--immaculate and heavy--back
+towards his Club.
+
+'He can't even love with conviction,' she thought. 'What will Mother
+do?'
+
+Her dreams that night were endless and uneasy; she rose heavy and
+unrested, and went at once to the study of Whitaker's Almanac. A
+Forsyte is instinctively aware that facts are the real crux of any
+situation. She might conquer Jon's prejudice, but without exact
+machinery to complete their desperate resolve, nothing would happen.
+From the invaluable tome she learned that they must each be twenty-one;
+or some one's consent would be necessary, which of course was
+unobtainable; then she became lost in directions concerning licenses,
+certificates, notices, districts, coming finally to the word "perjury."
+But that was nonsense! Who would really mind their giving wrong ages in
+order to be married for love! She ate hardly any breakfast, and went
+back to Whitaker. The more she studied the less sure she became; till,
+idly turning the pages, she came to Scotland. People could be married
+there without any of this nonsense. She had only to go and stay there
+twenty-one days, then Jon could come, and in front of two people they
+could declare themselves married. And what was more--they would be! It
+was far the best way; and at once she ran over her school-fellows.
+There was Mary Lambe who lived in Edinburgh and was "quite a sport!"
+She had a brother too. She could stay with Mary Lambe, who with her
+brother would serve for witnesses. She well knew that some girls would
+think all this unnecessary, and that all she and Jon need do was to go
+away together for a week-end and then say to their people: "We are
+married by Nature, we must now be married by Law." But Fleur was
+Forsyte enough to feel such a proceeding dubious, and to dread her
+father's face when he heard of it. Besides, she did not believe that
+Jon would do it; he had an opinion of her such as she could not bear to
+diminish. No! Mary Lambe was preferable, and it was just the time of
+year to go to Scotland. More at ease now, she packed, avoided her aunt,
+and took a 'bus to Chiswick. She was too early and went on to Kew
+Gardens. She found no peace among its flower-beds, labelled trees, and
+broad green spaces, and having lunched off anchovy-paste sandwiches and
+coffee, returned to Chiswick and rang June's bell. The Austrian
+admitted her to the "little meal-room." Now that she knew what she and
+Jon were up against, her longing for him had increased tenfold, as if
+he were a toy with sharp edges or dangerous paint such as they had
+tried to take from her as a child. If she could not have her way, and
+get Jon for good and all, she felt like dying of privation. By hook or
+crook she must and would get him! A round dim mirror of very old glass
+hung over the pink brick hearth. She stood looking at herself reflected
+in it, pale, and rather dark under the eyes; little shudders kept
+passing through her nerves. Then she heard the bell ring, and, stealing
+to the window, saw him standing on, the doorstep smoothing his hair and
+lips, as if he too were trying to subdue the fluttering of his nerves.
+
+She was sitting on one of the two rush-seated chairs, with her back to
+the door, when he came in, and she said at once:
+
+"Sit down, Jon, I want to talk seriously."
+
+Jon sat on the table by her side, and without looking at him she went
+on:
+
+"If you don't want to lose me, we must get married."
+
+Jon gasped.
+
+"Why? Is there anything new?"
+
+"No, but I felt it at Robin Hill, and among my people."
+
+"But--" stammered Jon, "at Robin Hill--it was all smooth--and they've
+said nothing to me."
+
+"But they mean to stop us. Your mother's face was enough. And my
+father's."
+
+"Have you seen him since?"
+
+Fleur nodded. What mattered a few supplementary lies?
+
+"But," said Jon eagerly, "I can't see how they can feel like that after
+all these years."
+
+Fleur looked up at him.
+
+"Perhaps you don't love me enough."
+
+"Not love you enough! Why-I--"
+
+"Then make sure of me"
+
+"Without telling them?"
+
+"Not till after."
+
+Jon was silent. How much older he looked than on that day, barely two
+months ago, when she first saw him--quite two years older!
+
+"It would hurt Mother awfully," he said.
+
+Fleur drew her hand away.
+
+"You've got to choose."
+
+Jon slid off the table onto his knees.
+
+"But why not tell them? They can't really stop us, Fleur!"
+
+"They can! I tell you, they can."
+
+"How?"
+
+"We're utterly dependent--by putting money pressure, and all sorts of
+other pressure. I'm not patient, Jon."
+
+"But it's deceiving them."
+
+Fleur got up.
+
+"You can't really love me, or you wouldn't hesitate. 'He either fears
+his fate too much--!'"
+
+Lifting his hands to her waist, Jon forced her to sit down again. She
+hurried on:
+
+"I've planned it all out. We've only to go to Scotland. When we're
+married they'll soon come round. People always come round to facts.
+Don't you SEE, Jon?"
+
+"But to hurt them so awfully!"
+
+So he would rather hurt her than those people of his!
+
+"All right, then; let me go!"
+
+Jon got up and put his back against the door. "I expect you're right,"
+he said slowly; "but I want to think it over."
+
+She could see that he was seething with feelings he wanted to express;
+but she did not mean to help him. She hated herself at this moment, and
+almost hated him.
+
+Why had she to do all the work to secure their love? It wasn't fair.
+And then she saw his eyes, adoring and distressed.
+
+"Don't look like that! I only don't want to lose you, Jon."
+
+"You can't lose me so long as you want me."
+
+"Oh, yes, I can."
+
+Jon put his hands on her shoulders.
+
+"Fleur, do you know anything you haven't told me?"
+
+It was the point-blank question she had dreaded. She looked straight at
+him, and answered: "No." She had burnt her boats; but what did it
+matter, if she got him? He would forgive her. And throwing her arms
+round his neck, she kissed him on the lips. She was winning! She felt
+it in the beating of his heart against her, in the closing of his eyes.
+"I want to make sure! I want to make sure!" she whispered. "Promise!"
+
+Jon did not answer. His face had the stillness of extreme trouble. At
+last he said:
+
+"It's like hitting them. I must think a little, Fleur. I really must."
+
+Fleur slipped out of his arms.
+
+"Oh! Very well!" And suddenly she burst into tears of disappointment,
+shame, and overstrain. Followed five minutes of acute misery. Jon's
+remorse and tenderness knew no bounds; but he did not promise. Despite
+her will to cry: "Very well, then, if you don't love me
+enough--good-bye!" she dared not. From birth accustomed to her own way,
+this check from one so young, so tender, so devoted, baffled and
+surprised her. She wanted to push him away from her, to try what anger
+and coldness would do, and again she dared not. The knowledge that she
+was scheming to rush him blindfold into the irrevocable weakened
+everything--weakened the sincerity of pique, and the sincerity of
+passion; even her kisses had not the lure she wished for them. That
+stormy little meeting ended inconclusively.
+
+"Will you some tea, gnadiges Fraulein?"
+
+Pushing Jon from her, she cried out:
+
+"No--no, thank you! I'm just going."
+
+And before he could prevent her she was gone.
+
+She went stealthily, mopping her flushed, stained cheeks, frightened,
+angry, very miserable. She had stirred Jon up so fearfully, yet nothing
+definite was promised or arranged! But the more uncertain and hazardous
+the future, the more "the will to have" worked its tentacles into the
+flesh of her heart--like some burrowing tick!
+
+No one was at Green Street. Winifred had gone with Imogen to see a play
+which some said was allegorical, and others "very exciting, don't you
+know?" It was because of what others said that Winifred and Imogen had
+gone. Fleur went on to Paddington. Through the carriage the air from
+the brick-kilns of West Drayton and the late hay-fields fanned her
+still-flushed cheeks. Flowers had seemed to be had for the picking; now
+they were all thorned and prickled. But the golden flower within the
+crown of spikes seemed to her tenacious spirit all the fairer and more
+desirable.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+FAT IN THE FIRE
+
+
+On reaching home Fleur found an atmosphere so peculiar that it
+penetrated even the perplexed aura of her own private life. Her mother
+was in blue stockingette and a brown study; her father in a white felt
+hat and the vinery. Neither of them had a word to throw to a dog. 'Is
+it because of me?' thought Fleur. 'Or because of Profond?' To her
+mother she said:
+
+"What's the matter with Father?"
+
+Her mother answered with a shrug of her shoulders.
+
+To her father:
+
+"What's the matter with Mother?"
+
+Her father answered:
+
+"Matter? What should be the matter?" and gave her a sharp look.
+
+"By the way," murmured Fleur, "Monsieur Profond is going a 'small'
+voyage on his yacht, to the South Seas."
+
+Soames examined a branch on which no grapes were growing.
+
+"This vine's a failure," he said. "I've had young Mont here. He asked
+me something about you."
+
+"Oh! How do you like him, Father?"
+
+"He--he's a product--like all these young people."
+
+"What were you at his age, dear?"
+
+Soames smiled grimly.
+
+"We went to work, and didn't play about--flying and motoring, and
+making love."
+
+"Didn't you ever make love?"
+
+She avoided looking at him while she said that, but she saw him well
+enough. His pale face had reddened, his eyebrows, where darkness was
+still mingled with the grey, had come close together.
+
+"I had no time or inclination to philander."
+
+"Perhaps you had a grand passion."
+
+Soames looked at her intently.
+
+"Yes--if you want to know--and much good it did me." He moved away,
+along by the hot-water pipes. Fleur tiptoed silently after him.
+
+"Tell me about it, Father!"
+
+Soames became very still.
+
+"What should you want to know about such things, at your age?"
+
+"Is she alive?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"And married?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It's Jon Forsyte's mother, isn't it? And she was your wife first."
+
+It was said in a flash of intuition. Surely his opposition came from
+his anxiety that she should not know of that old wound to his pride.
+But she was startled. To see some one so old and calm wince as if
+struck, to hear so sharp a note of pain in his voice!
+
+"Who told you that? If your aunt--! I can't bear the affair talked of."
+
+"But, darling," said Fleur, softly, "it's so long ago."
+
+"Long ago or not, I--"
+
+Fleur stood stroking his arm.
+
+"I've tried to forget," he said suddenly; "I don't wish to be
+reminded." And then, as if venting some long and secret irritation, he
+added: "In these days people don't understand. Grand passion, indeed!
+No one knows what it is."
+
+"I do," said Fleur, almost in a whisper.
+
+Soames, who had turned his back on her, spun round.
+
+"What are you talking of--a child like you!"
+
+"Perhaps I've inherited it, Father."
+
+"What?"
+
+"For her son, you see."
+
+He was pale as a sheet, and she knew that she was as bad. They stood
+staring at each other in the steamy heat, redolent of the mushy scent
+of earth, of potted geranium, and of vines coming along fast.
+
+"This is crazy," said Soames at last, between dry lips.
+
+Scarcely moving her own, she murmured:
+
+"Don't be angry, Father. I can't help it."
+
+But she could see he wasn't angry; only scared, deeply scared.
+
+"I thought that foolishness," he stammered, "was all forgotten."
+
+"Oh, no! It's ten times what it was."
+
+Soames kicked at the hot-water pipe. The hapless movement touched her,
+who had no fear of her father--none.
+
+"Dearest!" she said: "What must be, must, you know."
+
+"Must!" repeated Soames. "You don't know what you're talking of. Has
+that boy been told?"
+
+The blood rushed into her cheeks.
+
+"Not yet."
+
+He had turned from her again, and, with one shoulder a little raised,
+stood staring fixedly at a joint in the pipes.
+
+"It's most distasteful to me," he said suddenly; "nothing could be more
+so. Son of that fellow--It's--it's--perverse!"
+
+She had noted, almost unconsciously, that he did not say "son of that
+woman," and again her intuition began working.
+
+Did the ghost of that grand passion linger in some corner of his heart?
+
+She slipped her hand under his arm.
+
+"Jon's father is quite ill and old; I saw him."
+
+"You--?"
+
+"Yes, I went there with Jon; I saw them both."
+
+"Well, and what did they say to you?"
+
+"Nothing. They were very polite."
+
+"They would be." He resumed his contemplation of the pipe-joint, and
+then said suddenly: "I must think this over--I'll speak to you again
+to-night."
+
+She knew this was final for the moment, and stole away, leaving him
+still looking at the pipe-joint. She wandered into the fruit-garden,
+among the raspberry and currant bushes, without impetus to pick and
+eat. Two months ago--she was light-hearted! Even two days
+ago--light-hearted, before Prosper Profond told her. Now she felt
+tangled in a web--of passions, vested rights, oppressions and revolts,
+the ties of love and hate. At this dark moment of discouragement there
+seemed, even to her hold-fast nature, no way out. How deal with it--how
+sway and bend things to her will, and get her heart's desire? And,
+suddenly, round the corner of the high box hedge, she came plump on her
+mother, walking swiftly, with an open letter in her hand. Her bosom was
+heaving, her eyes dilated, her cheeks flushed. Instantly Fleur thought:
+"The yacht! Poor Mother!"
+
+Annette gave her a wide startled look, and said:
+
+"J'ai la migraine."
+
+"I'm awfully sorry, Mother."
+
+"Oh; yes! you and your father--sorry!"
+
+"But, Mother--I am. I know what it feels like."
+
+Annette's startled eyes grew wide, till the whites showed above them.
+"You innocent!" she said.
+
+Her mother--so self-possessed, and commonsensical--to look and speak
+like this! It was all frightening! Her father, her mother, herself! And
+only two months back they had seemed to have everything they wanted in
+this world.
+
+Annette crumpled the letter in her hand. Fleur knew that she must
+ignore the sight.
+
+"Can't I do anything for your head, Mother?"
+
+Annette shook that head and walked on, swaying her hips.
+
+'It's cruel,' thought Fleur, 'and I was glad! That man! What do men
+come prowling for, disturbing everything! I suppose he's tired of her.
+What business has he to be tired of my mother? What business!' And at
+that thought, so natural and so peculiar, she uttered a little choked
+laugh.
+
+She ought, of course, to be delighted, but what was there to be
+delighted at? Her father didn't really care! Her mother did, perhaps?
+She entered the orchard, and sat down under a cherry-tree. A breeze
+sighed in the higher boughs; the sky seen through their green was very
+blue and very white in cloud--those heavy white clouds almost always
+present in river landscape. Bees, sheltering out of the wind, hummed
+softly, and over the lush grass fell the thick shade from those
+fruit-trees planted by her father five-and-twenty years ago. Birds were
+almost silent, the cuckoos had ceased to sing, but wood-pigeons were
+cooing. The breath and drone and cooing of high summer were not for
+long a sedative to her excited nerves. Crouched over her knees she
+began to scheme. Her father must be made to back her up. Why should he
+mind so long as she was happy? She had not lived for nearly nineteen
+years without knowing that her future was all he really cared about.
+She had, then, only to convince him that her future could not be happy
+without Jon. He thought it a mad fancy. How foolish the old were,
+thinking they could tell what the young felt! Had not he confessed that
+he--when young--had loved with a grand passion! He ought to understand.
+'He piles up his money for me,' she thought; 'but what's the use, if
+I'm not going to be happy?' Money, and all it bought, did not bring
+happiness. Love only brought that. The ox-eyed daisies in this orchard,
+which gave it such a moony look sometimes, grew wild and happy, and had
+their hour. 'They oughtn't to have called me Fleur,' she mused, 'if
+they didn't mean me to have my hour, and be happy while it lasts.'
+Nothing real stood in the way, like poverty, or disease--sentiment
+only, a ghost from the unhappy past! Jon was right. They wouldn't let
+you live, these old people! They made mistakes, committed crimes, and
+wanted their children to go on paying! The breeze died away; midges
+began to bite. She got up, plucked a piece of honeysuckle, and went in.
+
+It was hot that night. Both she and her mother had put on thin, pale
+low frocks. The dinner flowers were pale. Fleur was struck with the
+pale look of everything: her father's face, her mother's shoulders; the
+pale panelled walls, the pale-grey velvety carpet, the lamp-shade, even
+the soup was pale. There was not one spot of colour in the room, not
+even wine in the pale glasses, for no one drank it. What was not pale
+was black--her father's clothes, the butler's clothes, her retriever
+stretched out exhausted in the window, the curtains black with a cream
+pattern. A moth came in, and that was pale. And silent was that
+half-mourning dinner in the heat.
+
+Her father called her back as she was following her mother out.
+
+She sat down beside him at the table, and, unpinning the pale
+honeysuckle, put it to her nose.
+
+"I've been thinking," he said.
+
+"Yes, dear?"
+
+"It's extremely painful for me to talk, but there's no help for it. I
+don't know if you understand how much you are to me--I've never spoken
+of it, I didn't think it necessary; but--but you're everything. Your
+mother--" he paused, staring at his finger-bowl of Venetian glass.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I've only you to look to. I've never had--never wanted anything else,
+since you were born."
+
+"I know," Fleur murmured.
+
+Soames moistened his lips.
+
+"You may think this a matter I can smooth over and arrange for you.
+You're mistaken. I--I'm helpless."
+
+Fleur did not speak.
+
+"Quite apart from my own feelings," went on Soames with more
+resolution, "those two are not amenable to anything I can say.
+They--they hate me, as people always hate those whom they have injured."
+
+"But he--Jon--"
+
+"He's their flesh and blood, her only child. Probably he means to her
+what you mean to me. It's a deadlock."
+
+"No," cried Fleur, "no, Father!"
+
+Soames leaned back, the image of pale patience, as if resolved on the
+betrayal of no emotion.
+
+"Listen!" he said. "You're putting the feelings of two months--two
+months--against the feelings of thirty-five years! What chance do you
+think you have? Two months--your very first love-affair, a matter of
+half a dozen meetings, a few walks and talks, a few kisses--against,
+against what you can't imagine, what no one could who hasn't been
+through it. Come, be reasonable, Fleur! It's midsummer madness!"
+
+Fleur tore the honeysuckle into little, slow bits. "The madness is in
+letting the past spoil it all. What do we care about the past? It's our
+lives, not yours."
+
+Soames raised his hand to his forehead, where suddenly she saw moisture
+shining.
+
+"Whose child are you?" he said. "Whose child is he? The present is
+linked with the past, the future with both. There's no getting away
+from that."
+
+She had never heard philosophy pass those lips before. Impressed even
+in her agitation, she leaned her elbows on the table, her chin on her
+hands.
+
+"But, Father, consider it practically. We want each other. There's ever
+so much money, and nothing whatever in the way but sentiment. Let's
+bury the past, Father."
+
+Soames shook his head. "Impossible!"
+
+"Besides," said Fleur gently, "you can't prevent us."
+
+"I don't suppose," said Soames, "that if left to myself I should try to
+prevent you; I must put up with things, I know, to keep your affection.
+But it's not I who control this matter. That's what I want you to
+realise before it's too late. If you go on thinking you can get your
+way, and encourage this feeling, the blow will be much heavier when you
+find you can't."
+
+"Oh!" cried Fleur, "help me, Father; you CAN help me, you know."
+
+Soames made a startled movement of negation.
+
+"I?" he said bitterly. "Help? I am the impediment--the just cause and
+impediment--isn't that the jargon? You have my blood in your veins."
+
+He rose.
+
+"Well, the fat's in the fire. If you persist in your wilfulness you'll
+have yourself to blame. Come! Don't be foolish, my child--my only
+child!"
+
+Fleur laid her forehead against his shoulder.
+
+All was in such turmoil within her. But no good to show it! No good at
+all! She broke away from him, and went out into the twilight,
+distraught, but unconvinced. All was indeterminate and vague within
+her, like the shapes and shadows in the garden, except--her will to
+have. A poplar pierced up into the dark-blue sky and touched a white
+star there. The dew wetted her shoes, and chilled her bare shoulders.
+She went down to the river bank, and stood gazing at a moonstreak on
+the darkening water. Suddenly she smelled tobacco smoke, and a white
+figure emerged as if created by the moon. It was young Mont in
+flannels, standing in his boat. She heard the tiny hiss of his
+cigarette extinguished in the water.
+
+"Fleur," came his voice, "don't be hard on a poor devil! I've been
+waiting hours."
+
+"For what?"
+
+"Come in my boat!"
+
+"Not I."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I'm not a water-nymph."
+
+"Haven't you ANY romance in you? Don't be modern, Fleur!"
+
+He appeared on the path within a yard of her.
+
+"Go away!"
+
+"Fleur, I love you. Fleur!"
+
+Fleur uttered a short laugh.
+
+"Come again," she said, "when I haven't got my wish."
+
+"What is your wish?"
+
+"Ask another."
+
+"Fleur," said Mont, and his voice sounded strange, "don't mock me! Even
+vivisected dogs are worth decent treatment before they're cut up for
+good."
+
+Fleur shook her head; but her lips were trembling.
+
+"Well, you shouldn't make me jump. Give me a cigarette."
+
+Mont gave her one, lighted it, and another for himself.
+
+"I don't want to talk rot," he said, "but please imagine all the rot
+that all the lovers that ever were have talked, and all my special rot
+thrown in."
+
+"Thank you, I have imagined it. Good-night!"
+
+They stood for a moment facing each other in the shadow of an
+acacia-tree with very moonlit blossoms, and the smoke from their
+cigarettes mingled in the air between them.
+
+"Also ran: 'Michael Mont'?" he said. Fleur turned abruptly towards the
+house. On the lawn she stopped to look back. Michael Mont was whirling
+his arms above him; she could see them dashing at his head, then waving
+at the moonlit blossoms of the acacia. His voice just reached her.
+"Jolly--jolly!" Fleur shook herself. She couldn't help him, she had too
+much trouble of her own! On the verandah she stopped very suddenly
+again. Her mother was sitting in the drawing-room at her writing
+bureau, quite alone. There was nothing remarkable in the expression of
+her face except its utter immobility. But she looked desolate! Fleur
+went up-stairs. At the door of her room she paused. She could hear her
+father walking up and down, up and down the picture-gallery.
+
+'Yes,' she thought, jolly! Oh, Jon!'
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+DECISION
+
+
+When Fleur left him Jon stared at the Austrian. She was a thin woman
+with a dark face and the concerned expression of one who has watched
+every little good that life once had slip from her, one by one.
+
+"No tea?" she said.
+
+Susceptible to the disappointment in her voice, Jon murmured:
+
+"No, really; thanks."
+
+"A lil cup--it ready. A lil cup and cigarette."
+
+Fleur was gone! Hours of remorse and indecision lay before him! And
+with a heavy sense of disproportion he smiled, and said:
+
+"Well--thank you!"
+
+She brought in a little pot of tea with two cups, and a silver box of
+cigarettes on a little tray.
+
+"Sugar? Miss Forsyte has much sugar--she buy my sugar, my friend's
+sugar also. Miss Forsyte is a veree kind lady. I am happy to serve her.
+You her brother?"
+
+"Yes," said Jon, beginning to puff the second cigarette of his life.
+
+"Very young brother," said the Austrian, with a little anxious smile,
+which reminded him of the wag of a dog's tail.
+
+"May I give you some?" he said. "And won't you sit down?"
+
+The Austrian shook her head.
+
+"Your father a very nice man--the most nice old man I ever see. Miss
+Forsyte tell me all about him. Is he better?"
+
+Her words fell on Jon like a reproach. "Oh! I think he's all right."
+
+"I like to see him again," said the Austrian, putting a hand on her
+heart; "he have veree kind heart."
+
+"Yes," said Jon. And again her words seemed to him a reproach.
+
+"He never give no trouble to no one, and smile so gentle."
+
+"Yes! doesn't he?"
+
+"He look at Miss Forsyte so funny sometimes. I tell him all my story;
+he so sympatisch. Your mother--she nice and well?"
+
+"Very."
+
+"He have her photograph on his dressing-table. Veree beautiful."
+
+Jon gulped down his tea. This woman, with her concerned face and her
+reminding words, was like the first and second murderers.
+
+"Thank you," he said; "I must go now. May--may I leave this with you?"
+
+He put a ten-shilling note on the tray with a doubting hand and gained
+the door. He heard the Austrian gasp, and hurried out. He had just time
+to catch his train, and all the way to Victoria looked at every face
+that passed, as lovers will, hoping against hope. On reaching Worthing
+he put his luggage into the local train, and set out across the Downs
+for Wansdon, trying to walk off his aching irresolution. So long as he
+went full bat, he could enjoy the beauty of those green slopes,
+stopping now and again to sprawl on the grass, admire the perfection of
+a wild rose, or listen to a lark's song. But the war of motives within
+him was but postponed--the longing for Fleur, and the hatred of
+deception. He came to the old chalk-pit above Wansdon with his mind no
+more made up than when he started. To see both sides of a question
+vigorously was at once Jon's strength and weakness. He tramped in, just
+as the first dinner-bell rang. His things had already been brought up.
+He had a hurried bath and came down to find Holly alone--Val had gone
+to Town and would not be back till the last train.
+
+Since Val's advice to him to ask his sister what was the matter between
+the two families, so much had happened--Fleur's disclosure in the Green
+Park, her visit to Robin Hill, to-day's meeting--that there seemed
+nothing to ask. He talked of Spain, his sunstroke, Val's horses, their
+father's health. Holly startled him by saying that she thought their
+father not at all well. She had been twice to Robin Hill for the
+week-end. He had seemed fearfully languid, sometimes even in pain, but
+had always refused to talk about himself.
+
+"He's awfully dear and unselfish--don't you think, Jon?"
+
+Feeling far from dear and unselfish himself, Jon answered: "Rather!"
+
+"I think, he's been a simply perfect father, so long as I can remember."
+
+"Yes," answered Jon, very subdued.
+
+"He's never interfered, and he's always seemed to understand. I've not
+forgotten how he let me go out to South Africa in the Boer War when I
+was in love with Val."
+
+"That was before he married Mother, wasn't it?" said Jon suddenly.
+
+"Yes. Why?"
+
+"Oh! nothing. Only, wasn't she engaged to Fleur's father first?"
+
+Holly put down the spoon she was using, and raised her eyes. Her stare
+was circumspect. What did the boy know? Enough to make it better to
+tell him? She could not decide. He looked strained and worried,
+altogether older, but that might be the sunstroke.
+
+"There WAS something," she said. "Of course we were out there, and got
+no news of anything." She could not take the risk. It was not her
+secret. Besides, she was in the dark about his feelings now. Before
+Spain she had made sure he was in love; but boys were boys; that was
+seven weeks ago, and all Spain between.
+
+She saw that he knew she was putting him off, and added:
+
+"Have you heard anything of Fleur?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+His face told her more than the most elaborate explanations. He had not
+forgotten!
+
+She said very quietly: "Fleur is awfully attractive, Jon, but you
+know--Val and I don't really like her very much."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"We think she's got rather a 'having' nature."
+
+"'Having?' I don't know what you mean. She--she--" he pushed his
+dessert plate away, got up, and went to the window.
+
+Holly, too, got up, and put her arm round his waist.
+
+"Don't be angry, Jon dear. We can't all see people in the same light,
+can we? I believe each of us only has about one or two people who can
+see the best that's in us, and bring it out. For you I think it's your
+mother. I once saw her looking at a letter of yours; it was wonderful
+to see her face. I think she's the most beautiful woman I ever saw--Age
+doesn't seem to touch her."
+
+Jon's face softened, then again became tense. He recognised the
+intention of those words. Everybody was against him and Fleur! It all
+strengthened her appeal:
+
+"Make sure of me--marry me, Jon!"
+
+Here, where he had passed that wonderful week with her--the tug of her
+enchantment, the ache in his heart increased with every minute that she
+was not there to make the room, the garden, the very air magical. Would
+he ever be able to live down here, not seeing her? And he closed up
+utterly, going early to bed. It would not make him healthy, wealthy,
+and wise, but it closeted him with memory of Fleur in her fancy frock.
+He heard Val's arrival--the Ford discharging cargo, then the stillness
+of the summer night stole back--with only the bleating of very distant
+sheep, and a night-jar's harsh purring. He leaned far out. Cold
+moon--warm air--the Downs like silver! Small wings, a stream bubbling,
+the rambler roses! God-how empty all of it without her! In the Bible it
+was written: Thou shalt leave father and mother and cleave to--Fleur!
+
+Let him have pluck, and go and tell them! They couldn't stop him
+marrying her--they wouldn't want to stop him when they knew how he
+felt. Yes! He would go! Bold and open--Fleur was wrong!
+
+The night-jar ceased, the sheep were silent; the only sound in the
+darkness was the bubbling of the stream. And Jon in his bed slept,
+freed from the worst of life's evils--indecision.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+TIMOTHY PROPHESIES
+
+
+On the day of the cancelled meeting at the National Gallery, began the
+second anniversary of the resurrection of England's pride and
+glory--or, more shortly, the top hat. "Lord's"--that festival which the
+war had driven from the field--raised its light and dark blue flags for
+the second time, displaying almost every feature of a glorious past.
+Here, in the luncheon interval, were all species of female and one
+species of male hat, protecting the multiple types of face associated
+with "the classes" The observing Forsyte might discern in the free or
+unconsidered seats a certain number of the squash-hatted, but they
+hardly ventured on the grass; the old school--or schools--could still
+rejoice that the proletariat was not yet paying the necessary
+half-crown. Here was still a close borough, the only one left on a
+large scale--for the papers were about to estimate the attendance at
+ten thousand. And the ten thousand, all animated by one hope, were
+asking each other one question: "Where are you lunching?" Something
+wonderfully uplifting and reassuring in that query and the sight of so
+many people like themselves voicing it! What reserve power in the
+British realm--enough pigeons, lobsters, lamb, salmon mayonnaise,
+strawberries, and bottles of champagne, to feed the lot! No miracle in
+prospect--no case of seven loaves and a few fishes--faith rested on
+surer foundations. Six thousand top hats, four thousand parasols would
+be doffed and furled, ten thousand mouths all speaking the same English
+would be filled. There was life in the old dog yet! Tradition! And
+again Tradition! How strong and how elastic! Wars might rage, taxation
+prey, Trades Unions take toll, and Europe perish of starvation; but the
+ten thousand would be fed; and, within their ring fence, stroll upon
+green turf, wear their top hats, and meet--themselves. The heart was
+sound, the pulse still regular. E-ton! E-ton! Har-r-o-o-o-w!
+
+Among the many Forsytes present, on a hunting-ground theirs, by
+personal prescriptive right, or proxy, was Soames, with his wife and
+daughter. He had not been at either school, he took no interest in
+cricket, but he wanted Fleur to show her frock, and he wanted to wear
+his top hat--parade it again in peace and plenty among his peers. He
+walked sedately with Fleur between him and Annette. No women equalled
+them, so far as he could see. They could walk, and hold themselves up;
+there was substance in their good looks; the modern woman had no build,
+no chest, no anything! He remembered suddenly with what intoxication of
+pride he had walked round with Irene in the first years of his first
+marriage. And how they used to lunch on the drag which his mother WOULD
+make his father have, because it was so "chic"--all drags and carriages
+in those days, not these lumbering great Stands! And how consistently
+Montague Dartie had drunk too much. He supposed that people drank too
+much still, but there was not the scope for it there used to be. He
+remembered George Forsyte--whose brothers Roger and Eustace had been at
+Harrow and Eton--towering up on the top of the drag waving a light-blue
+flag with one hand and a dark-blue flag with the other, and shouting:
+"Etroow--Harrton!" just when everybody was silent, like the buffoon he
+had always been; and Eustace got up to the nines below, too dandified
+to wear any colour or take any notice. H'm! Old days, and Irene in grey
+silk shot with palest green. He looked, sideways, at Fleur's face.
+Rather colourless--no light, no eagerness! That love affair was preying
+on her--a bad business! He looked beyond, at his wife's face, rather
+more touched up than usual, a little disdainful--not that she had any
+business to disdain, so far as he could see. She was taking Profond's
+defection with curious quietude; or was his "small" voyage just a
+blind? If so, he should refuse to see it! After promenading round the
+pitch and in front of the pavilion, they sought Winifred's table in the
+Bedouin Club tent. This Club--a new "cock and hen"--had been founded in
+the interests of travel, and of a gentleman with an old Scottish name,
+whose father had somewhat strangely been called Levi. Winifred had
+joined, not because she had travelled, but because instinct told her
+that a Club with such a name and such a founder was bound to go far; if
+one didn't join at once one might never have the chance. Its tent, with
+a text from the Koran on an orange ground, and a small green camel
+embroidered over the entrance, was the most striking on the ground.
+Outside it they found Jack Cardigan in a dark-blue tie (he had once
+played for Harrow), batting with a Malacca cane to show how that fellow
+ought to have hit that ball. He piloted them in. Assembled in
+Winifred's corner were Imogen, Benedict with his young wife, Val Dartie
+without Holly, Maud and her husband, and, after Soames and his two were
+seated, one empty place.
+
+"I'm expecting Prosper," said Winifred, "but he's so busy with his
+yacht."
+
+Soames stole a glance. No movement in his wife's face! Whether that
+fellow were coming or not, she evidently knew all about it. It did not
+escape him that Fleur, too, looked at her mother. If Annette didn't
+respect his feelings, she might think of Fleur! The conversation, very
+desultory, was syncopated by Jack Cardigan talking about "mid-off." He
+cited all the "great mid-offs" from the beginning of time, as if they
+had been a definite racial entity in the composition of the British
+people. Soames had finished his lobster, and was beginning on
+pigeon-pie, when he heard the words: "I'm a small bit late, Mrs.
+Dartie," and saw that there was no longer any empty place. THAT FELLOW
+was sitting between Annette and Imogen. Soames ate steadily on, with an
+occasional word to Maud and Winifred. Conversation buzzed around him.
+He heard the voice of Profond say:
+
+"I think you're mistaken, Mrs. Forsyde I'll--I'll bet Miss Forsyde
+agrees with me."
+
+"In what?" came Fleur's clear tones across the table.
+
+"I was sayin', young gurls are much the same as they always
+were--there's very small difference."
+
+"Do you know so much about them?"
+
+That sharp reply caught the ears of all, and Soames moved uneasily on
+his thin green chair.
+
+"Well, I don't know, I think they want their own small way, and I think
+they always did."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"Oh, but--Prosper," Winifred interjected comfortably, "the girls in the
+streets--the girls who've been in munitions, the little flappers in the
+shops; their manners now really quite hit you in the eye."
+
+At the word "hit" Jack Cardigan stopped his disquisition; and in the
+silence Monsieur Profond said:
+
+"It was inside before, now it's outside; that's all."
+
+"But their morals!" cried Imogen.
+
+"Just as moral as they ever were, Mrs. Cardigan, but they've got more
+opportunity."
+
+The saying, so cryptically cynical, received a little laugh from
+Imogen, a slight opening of Jack Cardigan's mouth, and another creak
+from Soames' chair.
+
+Winifred said: "That's too bad, Prosper."
+
+"What do you say, Mrs. Forsyde; don't you think human nature's always
+the same?"
+
+Soames subdued a sudden longing to get up and kick the fellow. He heard
+his wife reply:
+
+"Human nature is not the same in England as anywhere else." That was
+her confounded mockery!
+
+"Well, I don't know much about this small country"--'No, thank God!'
+thought Soames--"but I should say the pot was boilin' under the lid
+everywhere. We all want pleasure, and we always did."
+
+Damn the fellow! His cynicism was outrageous!
+
+When lunch was over they broke up into couples for the digestive
+promenade. Too proud to notice, Soames knew perfectly that Annette and
+that fellow had gone prowling round together. Fleur was with Val; she
+had chosen him, no doubt, because he knew that boy. He himself had
+Winifred for partner. They walked in the bright, circling stream, a
+little flushed and sated, till Winifred sighed:
+
+"I wish we were back forty years, old boy!"
+
+Before the eyes of her spirit an interminable procession of her own
+"Lord's" frocks was passing, paid for with the money of her father, to
+save a recurrent crisis. "It's been very amusing, after all. Sometimes
+I even wish Monty was back. What do you think of people nowadays,
+Soames?"
+
+"Precious little style. The thing began to go to pieces with bicycles
+and motor-cars; the war has finished it."
+
+"I wonder what's coming?" said Winifred in a voice dreamy from
+pigeon-pie. "I'm not at all sure we shan't go back to crinolines and
+pegtops. Look at that dress!" Soames shook his head.
+
+"There's money, but no faith in things. We don't lay by for the future.
+These youngsters--it's all a short life and a merry one with them."
+
+"There's a hat!" said Winifred. "I don't know--when you come to think
+of the people killed and all that in the war, it's rather wonderful, I
+think. There's no other country--Prosper says the rest are all
+bankrupt, except America; and of course her men always took their style
+in dress from us."
+
+"Is that chap," said Soames, "really going to the South Seas?"
+
+"Oh, one never knows where Prosper's going!"
+
+"HE'S a sign of the times," muttered Soames, "if you like."
+
+Winifred's hand gripped his arm.
+
+"Don't turn your head," she said in a low voice, "but look to your
+right in the front row of the Stand."
+
+Soames looked as best he could under that limitation. A man in a grey
+top hat, grey-bearded, with thin brown, folded cheeks, and a certain
+elegance of posture, sat there with a woman in a lawn-coloured frock,
+whose dark eyes were fixed on himself. Soames looked quickly at his
+feet. How funnily feet moved, one after the other like that! Winifred's
+voice said in his ear:
+
+"Jolyon looks very ill, but he always had style. SHE doesn't
+change--except her hair."
+
+"Why did you tell Fleur about that business?"
+
+"I didn't; she picked it up. I always knew she would."
+
+"Well, it's a mess. She's set her heart upon their boy."
+
+"The little wretch," murmured Winifred. "She tried to take me in about
+that. What shall you do, Soames?"
+
+"Be guided by events."
+
+They moved on, silent, in the almost solid crowd.
+
+"Really," said Winifred suddenly; "it almost seems like Fate. Only
+that's so old-fashioned. Look! There are George and Eustace!"
+
+George Forsyte's lofty bulk had halted before them.
+
+"Hallo, Soames!" he said. "Just met Profond and your wife. You'll catch
+'em if you put on steam. Did you ever go to see old Timothy?"
+
+Soames nodded, and the streams forced them apart.
+
+"I always liked old George," said Winifred. "He's so droll."
+
+"I never did," said Soames. "Where's your seat? I shall go to mine.
+Fleur may be back there."
+
+Having seen Winifred to her seat, he regained his own, conscious of
+small, white, distant figures running, the click of the bat, the cheers
+and counter-cheers. No Fleur, and no Annette! You could expect nothing
+of women nowadays! They had the vote. They were "emancipated," and much
+good it was doing them. So Winifred would go back, would she, and put
+up with Dartie all over again? To have the past once more--to be
+sitting here as he had sat in '83 and '84, before he was certain that
+his marriage with Irene had gone all wrong, before her antagonism had
+become so glaring that with the best will in the world he could not
+overlook it. The sight of her with that fellow had brought all memory
+back. Even now he could not understand why she had been so
+impracticable. She could love other men; she had it in her! To himself,
+the one person she ought to have loved, she had chosen to refuse her
+heart. It seemed to him, fantastically, as he looked back, that all
+this modern relaxation of marriage--though its forms and laws were the
+same as when he married her--that all this modern looseness had come
+out of her revolt; it seemed to him, fantastically, that she had
+started it, till all decent ownership of anything had gone, or was on
+the point of going. All came from her! And now--a pretty state of
+things! Homes! How could you have them without mutual ownership? Not
+that he had ever had a real home! But had that been his fault? He had
+done his best. And his reward--those two sitting in that Stand! And
+this affair of Fleur's!
+
+And overcome by loneliness he thought: 'Shan't wait any longer! They
+must find their own way back to the hotel--if they mean to come!'
+Hailing a cab outside the ground, he said:
+
+"Drive me to the Bayswater Road." His old aunts had never failed him.
+To them he had meant an everwelcome visitor. Though they were gone,
+there, still, was Timothy!
+
+Smither was standing in the open doorway.
+
+"Mr. Soames! I was just taking the air. Cook will be so pleased."
+
+"How is Mr. Timothy?"
+
+"Not himself at all these last few days, sir; he's been talking a great
+deal. Only this morning he was saying: 'My brother James, he's getting
+old.' His mind wanders, Mr. Soames, and then he will talk of them. He
+troubles about their investments. The other day he said: 'There's my
+brother Jolyon won't look at Consols'--he seemed quite down about it.
+Come in, Mr. Soames, come in! It's such a pleasant change!"
+
+"Well," said Soames, "just for a few minutes."
+
+"No," murmured Smither in the hall, where the air had the singular
+freshness of the outside day, "we haven't been very satisfied with him,
+not all this week. He's always been one to leave a titbit to the end;
+but ever since Monday he's been eating it first. If you notice a dog,
+Mr. Soames, at its dinner, it eats the meat first. We've always thought
+it such a good sign of Mr. Timothy at his age to leave it to the last,
+but now he seems to have lost all his self-control; and, of course, it
+makes him leave the rest. The doctor doesn't make anything of it,
+but"--Smither shook her head--"he seems to think he's got to eat it
+first, in case he shouldn't get to it. That and his talking makes us
+anxious."
+
+"Has he said anything important?"
+
+"I shouldn't like to say that, Mr. Soames; but he's turned against his
+Will. He gets quite pettish--and after having had it out every morning
+for years, it does seem funny. He said the other day: 'They want my
+money.' It gave me such a turn, because, as I said to him, nobody wants
+his money, I'm sure. And it does seem a pity he should be thinking
+about money at his time of life. I took my courage in my 'ands. 'You
+know, Mr. Timothy,' I said, 'my dear mistress'--that's Miss Forsyte,
+Mr. Soames, Miss Ann that trained me--'SHE never thought about money,'
+I said, 'it was all CHARACTER with her.' He looked at me, I can't tell
+you how funny, and he said quite dry: 'Nobody wants my character.'
+Think of his saying a thing like that! But sometimes he'll say
+something as sharp and sensible as anything."
+
+Soames, who had been staring at an old print by the hat-rack, thinking,
+'That's got value!' murmured: "I'll go up and see him, Smither."
+
+"Cook's with him," answered Smither above her corsets; "she will be
+pleased to see you."
+
+He mounted slowly, with the thought: 'Shan't care to live to be that
+age.'
+
+On the second floor, he paused, and tapped. The door was opened, and he
+saw the round homely face of a woman about sixty.
+
+"Mr. Soames!" she said: "Why! Mr. Soames!"
+
+Soames nodded. "All right, Cook!" and entered.
+
+Timothy was propped up in bed, with his hands joined before his chest,
+and his eyes fixed on the ceiling, where a fly was standing upside
+down. Soames stood at the foot of the bed, facing him.
+
+"Uncle Timothy," he said, raising his voice; "Uncle Timothy!"
+
+Timothy's eyes left the fly, and levelled themselves on his visitor.
+Soames could see his pale tongue passing over his darkish lips.
+
+"Uncle Timothy," he said again, "is there anything I can do for you? Is
+there anything you'd like to say?"
+
+"Ha!" said Timothy.
+
+"I've come to look you up and see that everything's all right."
+
+Timothy nodded. He seemed trying to get used to the apparition before
+him.
+
+"Have you got everything you want?"
+
+"No," said Timothy.
+
+"Can I get you anything?"
+
+"No," said Timothy.
+
+"I'm Soames, you know; your nephew, Soames Forsyte. Your brother James'
+son."
+
+Timothy nodded.
+
+"I shall be delighted to do anything I can for you."
+
+Timothy beckoned. Soames went close to him.
+
+"You--" said Timothy in a voice which seemed to have outlived tone,
+"you tell them all from me--you tell them all--" and his finger tapped
+on Soames' arm, "to hold on--hold on--Consols are goin' up," and he
+nodded thrice.
+
+"All right!" said Soames; "I will."
+
+"Yes," said Timothy, and, fixing his eyes again on the ceiling, he
+added: "That fly!"
+
+Strangely moved, Soames looked at the Cook's pleasant fattish face, all
+little puckers from staring at fires.
+
+"That'll do him a world of good, sir," she said.
+
+A mutter came from Timothy, but he was clearly speaking to himself, and
+Soames went out with the cook.
+
+"I wish I could make you a pink cream, Mr. Soames, like in old days;
+you did so relish them. Good-bye, sir; it HAS been a pleasure."
+
+"Take care of him, Cook, he is old."
+
+And, shaking her crumpled hand, he went down-stairs. Smither was still
+taking the air in the doorway.
+
+"What do you think of him, Mr. Soames?"
+
+"H'm!" Soames murmured: "He's lost touch."
+
+"Yes," said Smither, "I was afraid you'd think that, coming fresh out
+of the world to see him like."
+
+"Smither," said Soames, "we're all indebted to you."
+
+"Oh, no, Mr. Soames, don't say that! It's a pleasure--he's such a
+wonderful man."
+
+"Well, good-bye!" said Soames, and got into his taxi.
+
+'Going up!' he thought; 'going up!'
+
+Reaching the hotel at Knightsbridge he went to their sitting-room, and
+rang for tea. Neither of them were in. And again that sense of
+loneliness came over him. These hotels! What monstrous great places
+they were now! He could remember when there was nothing bigger than
+Long's or Brown's, Morley's or the Tavistock, and the heads that were
+shaken over the Langham and the Grand. Hotels and Clubs--Clubs and
+Hotels; no end to them now! And Soames, who had just been watching at
+Lord's a miracle of tradition and continuity, fell into reverie over
+the changes in that London where he had been born five-and-sixty years
+before. Whether Consols were going up or not, London had become a
+terrific property. No such property in the world, unless it were New
+York! There was a lot of hysteria in the papers nowadays; but any one
+who, like himself, could remember London sixty years ago, and see it
+now, realised the fecundity and elasticity of wealth. They had only to
+keep their heads, and go at it steadily. Why! he remembered
+cobble-stones, and stinking straw on the floor of your cab. And old
+Timothy--what could HE not tell them, if he had kept his memory! Things
+were unsettled, people in a funk or in a hurry, but here were London
+and the Thames, and out there the British Empire, and the ends of the
+earth. "Consols are goin' up!" He shouldn't be a bit surprised. It was
+the breed that counted. And all that was bull-dogged in Soames stared
+for a moment out of his grey eyes, till diverted by the print of a
+Victorian picture on the walls. The hotel had bought three dozen of
+that little lot! The old hunting or "Rake's Progress" prints in the old
+inns were worth looking at--but this sentimental stuff--well,
+Victorianism had gone! "Tell them to hold on!" old Timothy had said.
+But to what were they to hold on in this modern welter of the
+"democratic principle"? Why, even privacy was threatened! And at the
+thought that privacy might perish, Soames pushed back his teacup and
+went to the window. Fancy owning no more of Nature than the crowd out
+there owned of the flowers and trees and waters of Hyde Park! No, no!
+Private possession underlay everything worth having. The world had
+slipped its sanity a bit, as dogs now and again at full moon slipped
+theirs and went off for a night's rabbiting; but the world, like the
+dog, knew where its bread was buttered and its bed warm, and would come
+back sure enough to the only home worth having--to private ownership.
+The world was in its second childhood for the moment, like old
+Timothy--eating its titbit first!
+
+He heard a sound behind him, and saw that his wife and daughter had
+come in.
+
+"So you're back!" he said.
+
+Fleur did not answer; she stood for a moment looking at him and her
+mother, then passed into her bedroom. Annette poured herself out a cup
+of tea.
+
+"I am going to Paris, to my mother, Soames."
+
+"Oh! To your mother?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"For how long?"
+
+"I do not know."
+
+"And when are you going?"
+
+"On Monday."
+
+Was she really going to her mother? Odd, how indifferent he felt! Odd,
+how clearly she had perceived the indifference he would feel so long as
+there was no scandal. And suddenly between her and himself he saw
+distinctly the face he had seen that afternoon--Irene's.
+
+"Will you want money?"
+
+"Thank you; I have enough."
+
+"Very well. Let us know when you are coming back."
+
+Annette put down the cake she was fingering, and, looking up through
+darkened lashes, said:
+
+"Shall I give Maman any message?"
+
+"My regards."
+
+Annette stretched herself, her hands on her waist, and said in French:
+
+"What luck that you have never loved me, Soames!" Then rising, she too
+left the room. Soames was glad she had spoken it in French--it seemed
+to require no dealing with. Again that other face--pale, dark-eyed,
+beautiful still! And there stirred far down within him the ghost of
+warmth, as from sparks lingering beneath a mound of flaky ash. And
+Fleur infatuated with her boy! Queer chance! Yet, was there such a
+thing as chance? A man went down a street, a brick fell on his head.
+Ah! that was chance, no doubt. But this! "Inherited," his girl had
+said. She--she was "holding on!"
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+
+I
+
+OLD JOLYON WALKS
+
+
+Twofold impulse had made Jolyon say to his wife at breakfast: "Let's go
+up to Lord's!"
+
+"Wanted"--something to abate the anxiety in which those two had lived
+during the sixty hours since Jon had brought Fleur down. "Wanted"--too,
+that which might assuage the pangs of memory in one who knew he might
+lose them any day!
+
+Fifty-eight years ago Jolyon had become an Eton boy, for old Jolyon's
+whim had been that he should be canonised at the greatest possible
+expense. Year after year he had gone to Lord's from Stanhope Gate with
+a father whose youth in the eighteen-twenties had been passed without
+polish in the game of cricket. Old Jolyon would speak quite openly of
+swipes, full tosses, half and three-quarter balls; and young Jolyon
+with the guileless snobbery of youth had trembled lest his sire should
+be overheard. Only in this supreme matter of cricket he had been
+nervous, for his father--in Crimean whiskers then--had ever impressed
+him as the beau ideal. Though never canonised himself, old Jolyon's
+natural fastidiousness and balance had saved him from the errors of the
+vulgar. How delicious, after howling in a top hat and a sweltering
+heat, to go home with his father in a hansom cab, bathe, dress, and
+forth to the "Disunion" Club, to dine off whitebait, cutlets, and a
+tart, and go--two "swells," old and young, in lavender kid gloves--to
+the opera or play. And on Sunday, when the match was over, and his top
+hat duly broken, down with his father in a special hansom to the "Crown
+and Sceptre," and the terrace above the river--the golden sixties when
+the world was simple, dandies glamorous, Democracy not born, and the
+books of Whyte Melville coming thick and fast.
+
+A generation later, with his own boy, Jolly, Harrow--buttonholed with
+cornflowers--by old Jolyon's whim his grandson had been canonised at a
+trifle less expense--again Jolyon had experienced the heat and
+counter-passions of the day, and come back to the cool and the
+strawberry beds of Robin Hill, and billiards after dinner, his boy
+making the most heart-breaking flukes and trying to seem languid and
+grown-up. Those two days each year he and his son had been alone
+together in the world, one on each side--and Democracy just born!
+
+And so, he had unearthed a grey top hat, borrowed a tiny bit of
+light-blue ribbon from Irene, and gingerly, keeping cool, by car and
+train and taxi, had reached Lord's Ground. There, beside her in a
+lawn-coloured frock with narrow black edges, he had watched the game,
+and felt the old thrill stir within him.
+
+When Soames passed, the day was spoiled, and Irene's face distorted by
+compression of the lips. No good to go on sitting here with Soames or
+perhaps his daughter recurring in front of them, like decimals. And he
+said:
+
+"Well, dear, if you've had enough--let's go!"
+
+That evening Jolyon felt exhausted. Not wanting her to see him thus, he
+waited till she had begun to play, and stole off to the little study.
+He opened the long window for air, and the door, that he might still
+hear her music drifting in; and, settled in his father's old armchair,
+closed his eyes, with his head against the worn brown leather. Like
+that passage of the Cesar Franck Sonata--so had been his life with her,
+a divine third movement. And now this business of Jon's--this bad
+business! Drifted to the edge of consciousness, he hardly knew if it
+were in sleep that he smelled the scent of a cigar, and seemed to see a
+shape in the blackness before his closed eyes. That shape formed, went,
+and formed again; as if in the very chair where he himself was sitting,
+he saw his father, black-coated, with knees crossed, glasses balanced
+between thumb and finger; saw the big white moustaches, and the deep
+eyes looking up below a dome of forehead, seeming to search his own;
+seeming to speak. "Are you facing it, Jo? It's for you to decide. She's
+only a woman!" How well he knew his father in that phrase; how all the
+Victorian Age came up with it!--And his answer "No, I've funked
+it--funked hurting her and Jon and myself. I've got a heart; I've
+funked it." But the old eyes, so much older, so much younger than his
+own, kept at it: "It's your wife, your son, your past. Tackle it, my
+boy!" Was it a message from walking spirit; or but the instinct of his
+sire living on within him? And again came that scent of cigar
+smoke--from the old saturated leather. Well! he would tackle it, write
+to Jon, and put the whole thing down in black and white! And suddenly
+he breathed with difficulty, with a sense of suffocation, as if his
+heart were swollen. He got up and went out into the air. Orion's Belt
+was very bright. He passed along the terrace round the corner of the
+house, till, through the window of the music-room, he could see Irene
+at the piano, with lamplight falling on her powdery hair; withdrawn
+into herself she seemed, her dark eyes staring straight before her, her
+hands idle. Jolyon saw her raise those hands and clasp them over her
+breast. 'It's Jon, with her,' he thought; 'all Jon! I'm dying out of
+her--it's natural!'
+
+And, careful not to be seen, he stole back.
+
+Next day, after a bad night, he sat down to his task. He wrote with
+difficulty and many erasures.
+
+
+"MY DEAREST BOY,
+
+"You are old enough to understand how very difficult it is for elders
+to give themselves away to their young. Especially when--like your
+mother and myself, though I shall never think of her as anything but
+young--their hearts are altogether set on him to whom they must
+confess. I cannot say we are conscious of having sinned exactly--people
+in real life very seldom are, I believe, but most persons would say we
+had, and at all events our conduct, righteous or not, has found us out.
+The truth is, my dear, we both have pasts, which it is now my task to
+make known to you, because they so grievously and deeply affect your
+future. Many, very many years ago, as far back indeed as 1883, when she
+was only twenty, your mother had the great and lasting misfortune to
+make an unhappy marriage--no, not with me, Jon. Without money of her
+own, and with only a stepmother--closely related to Jezebel--she was
+very unhappy in her home life. IT WAS FLEUR'S FATHER THAT SHE MARRIED,
+my cousin Soames Forsyte. He had pursued her very tenaciously and to do
+him justice was deeply in love with her. Within a week she knew the
+fearful mistake she had made. It was not his fault; it was her error of
+judgment--her misfortune."
+
+
+So far Jolyon had kept some semblance of irony, but now his subject
+carried him away.
+
+
+"Jon, I want to explain to you if I can--and it's very hard--how it is
+that an unhappy marriage such as this can so easily come about. You
+will of course say: 'If she didn't really love him how could she ever
+have married him?' You would be quite right if it were not for one or
+two rather terrible considerations. From this initial mistake of hers
+all the subsequent trouble, sorrow, and tragedy have come, and so I
+must make it clear to you if I can. You see, Jon, in those days and
+even to this day--indeed, I don't see, for all the talk of
+enlightenment, how it can well be otherwise--most girls are married
+ignorant of the sexual side of life. Even if they know what it means
+they have not EXPERIENCED it. That's the crux. It is this actual lack
+of experience, whatever verbal knowledge they have, which makes all the
+difference and all the trouble. In a vast number of marriages--and your
+mother's was one--girls are not and CANNOT be certain whether they love
+the man they marry or not; they do not know until after that act of
+union which makes the reality of marriage. Now, in many, perhaps in
+most doubtful cases, this act cements and strengthens the attachment,
+but in other cases, and your mother's was one, it is a revelation of
+mistake, a destruction of such attraction as there was. There is
+nothing more tragic in a woman's life than such a revelation, growing
+daily, nightly clearer. Coarse-grained and unthinking people are apt to
+laugh at such a mistake, and say 'what a fuss about nothing!' Narrow
+and self-righteous people, only capable of judging the lives of others
+by their own, are apt to condemn those who make this tragic error, to
+condemn them for life to the dungeons they have made for themselves.
+You know the expression: 'She has made her bed, she must lie on it!' It
+is a hard-mouthed saying, quite unworthy of a gentleman or lady in the
+best sense of those words; and I can use no stronger condemnation. I
+have not been what is called a moral man, but I wish to use no words to
+you, my dear, which will make you think lightly of ties or contracts
+into which you enter. Heaven forbid! But with the experience of a life
+behind me I do say that those who condemn the victims of these tragic
+mistakes, condemn them and hold out no hands to help them, are inhuman
+or rather they would be if they had the understanding to know what they
+are doing. But they haven't! Let them go! They are as much anathema to
+me as I, no doubt, am to them. I have had to say all this, because I am
+going to put you into a position to judge your mother, and you are very
+young, without experience of what life is. To go on with the story.
+After three years of effort to subdue her shrinking--I was going to say
+her loathing and it's not too strong a word, for shrinking soon becomes
+loathing under such circumstances--three years of what to a sensitive,
+beauty-loving nature like your mother's, Jon, was torment, she met a
+young man who fell in love with her. He was the architect of this very
+house that we live in now, he was building it for her and Fleur's
+father to live in, a new prison to hold her, in place of the one she
+inhabited with him in London. Perhaps that fact played some part in
+what came of it. But in any case she, too, fell in love with him. I
+know it's not necessary to explain to you that one does not precisely
+choose with whom one will fall in love. It comes. Very well! It came. I
+can imagine--though she never said much to me about it--the struggle
+that then took place in her, because, Jon, she was brought up strictly
+and was not light in her ideas--not at all. However, this was an
+overwhelming feeling, and it came to pass that they loved in deed as
+well as in thought. Then came a fearful tragedy. I must tell you of it
+because if I don't you will never understand the real situation that
+you have now to face. The man whom she had married--Soames Forsyte, the
+father of Fleur--one night, at the height of her passion for this young
+man, forcibly reasserted his rights over her. The next day she met her
+lover and told him of it. Whether he committed suicide or whether he
+was accidentally run over in his distraction, we never knew; but so it
+was. Think of your mother as she was that evening when she heard of his
+death. I happened to see her. Your grand-father sent me to help her if
+I could. I only just saw her, before the door was shut against me by
+her husband. But I have never forgotten her face, I can see it now. I
+was not in love with her then, nor for twelve years after, but I have
+never forgotten. My dear boy--it is not easy to write like this. But
+you see, I must. Your mother is wrapped up in you, utterly, devotedly.
+I don't wish to write harshly of Soames Forsyte. I don't think harshly
+of him. I have long been sorry for him; perhaps I was sorry even then.
+As the world judges she was in error, he was within his rights. He
+loved her--in his way. SHE WAS HIS PROPERTY. That is the view he holds
+of life--of human feelings and hearts--property. It's not his fault--so
+was he born! To me it is a view that has always been abhorrent--so was
+I born! Knowing you as I do, I feel it cannot be otherwise than
+abhorrent to you. Let me go on with the story. Your mother fled from
+his house that night; for twelve years she lived quietly alone without
+companionship of any sort, until, in 1899 her husband--you see, he was
+still her husband, for he did not attempt to divorce her, and she of
+course had no right to divorce him, became conscious, it seems, of the
+want of children, and commenced a long attempt to induce her to go back
+to him and give him a child. I was her trustee then, under your
+grandfather's Will, and I watched this going on. While watching, I
+became devotedly attached to her. His pressure increased, till one day
+she came to me here and practically put herself under my protection.
+Her husband, who was kept informed of all her movements, attempted to
+force us apart by bringing a divorce suit, or at all events by
+threatening one; anyway our names were publicly joined. That decided
+us, and we became united in fact. She was divorced, married me, and you
+were born. We have lived in perfect happiness, at least I have, and I
+believe your mother also. Soames, soon after the divorce, married
+Fleur's mother, and she was born. That is the story, Jon. I have told
+it you, because by the affection which we see you have formed for this
+man's daughter you are blindly moving towards what must utterly destroy
+your mother's happiness, if not your own. I don't wish to speak of
+myself, because at my age there's no use supposing I shall cumber the
+ground much longer, besides, what I should suffer would be mainly on
+her account, and on yours. But what I want you to realise is that
+feelings of horror and aversion such as those can never be buried or
+forgotten. They are alive in her to-day. Only yesterday at Lord's we
+happened to see Soames Forsyte. Her face, if you had seen it, would
+have convinced you. The idea that you should marry his daughter is a
+nightmare to her, Jon. I have nothing to say against Fleur save that
+she IS his daughter. But your children, if you married her, would be
+the grandchildren of Soames, as much as of your mother, of a man who
+once owned your mother as a man might own a slave. Think what that
+would mean. By such a marriage you enter the camp which held your
+mother prisoner and wherein she ate her heart out. You are just on the
+threshold of life, you have only known this girl two months, and
+however deeply you think you love her, I appeal to you to break it off
+at once. Don't give your mother this rankling pain and humiliation
+during the rest of her life. Young though she will always seem to me,
+she is fifty-seven. Except for us two she has no one in the world. She
+will soon have only you. Pluck up your spirit, Jon, and break away.
+Don't put this cloud and barrier between you. Don't break her heart!
+Bless you, my dear boy, and again forgive me for all the pain this
+letter must bring you--we tried to spare it you, but Spain--it
+seems--was no good.
+
+Ever your devoted father
+
+JOLYON FORSYTE."
+
+
+Having finished his confession, Jolyon sat with a thin cheek on his
+hand, re-reading. There were things in it which hurt him so much, when
+he thought of Jon reading them--that he nearly tore the letter up. To
+speak of such things at all to a boy--his own boy--to speak of them in
+relation to his own wife and the boy's own mother, seemed dreadful to
+the reticence of his Forsyte soul. And yet without speaking of them how
+make Jon understand the reality, the deep cleavage, the ineffaceable
+scar? Without them, how justify this stifling of the boy's love? He
+might just as well not write at all!
+
+He folded the confession, and put it in his pocket. It was--thank
+heaven!--Saturday; he had till Sunday evening to think it over; for
+even if posted now it could not reach Jon till Monday. He felt a
+curious relief at this delay, and at the fact that, whether sent or
+not, it was written.
+
+In the rose garden, which had taken the place of the old fernery, he
+could see Irene snipping and pruning, with a little basket on her arm.
+She was never idle, it seemed to him, and he envied her now that he
+himself was idle nearly all his time. He went down to her. She held up
+a stained glove and smiled. A piece of lace tied under her chin
+concealed her hair, and her oval face with its still dark brows looked
+very young.
+
+"The green fly are awful this year, and yet it's cold. You look tired,
+Jolyon."
+
+Jolyon took the confession from his pocket. "I've been writing this. I
+think you ought to see it."
+
+"To Jon?" Her whole face had changed, in that instant, becoming almost
+haggard.
+
+"Yes; the murder's out."
+
+He gave it her, and walked away among the roses. Presently, seeing that
+she had finished reading and was standing quite still with the sheets
+of the letter against her skirt, he came back to her.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"It's wonderfully put. I don't see how it could be put better. Thank
+you, dear."
+
+"Is there anything you would like left out?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"No; he must know all, if he's to understand."
+
+"That's what I thought, but I hate it like the devil!"
+
+He had the feeling that he hated it more than she--to him sex was so
+much easier to mention between man and woman than between man and man;
+and she had always been more natural and frank, not deeply secretive
+like his Forsyte self.
+
+"I wonder if he will understand, even now, Jolyon? He's so young; and
+he shrinks from the physical."
+
+"He gets that shrinking from my father, he was as fastidious as a girl
+in all such matters. Would it be better to rewrite the whole thing, and
+just say you hated Soames?"
+
+Irene shook her head.
+
+"Hate's only a word. It conveys nothing. No, better as it is."
+
+"Very well. It shall go to-morrow."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+CONFESSION
+
+
+Late that same afternoon, Jolyon had a nap in the old armchair. Face
+down on his knee was La Rotisserie de la Reine Pedaugue, and just
+before he fell asleep he had been thinking: 'As a people shall we ever
+really like the French? Will they ever really like us?' He himself had
+always liked the French, feeling at home with their wit, their taste,
+their cooking. Irene and he had paid many visits to France before the
+war, when Jon had been at his private school. His romance with her had
+begun in Paris--his last and most enduring romance. But the French--no
+Englishman could like them who could not see them in some sort with the
+detached aesthetic eye! And with that melancholy conclusion he had
+nodded off.
+
+When he woke he saw Jon standing between him and the window. The boy
+had evidently come in from the garden and was waiting for him to wake.
+Jolyon smiled, still half asleep. How nice the chap looked-sensitive,
+affectionate, straight! Then his heart gave a nasty jump; and a quaking
+sensation overcame him. That confession! He controlled himself with an
+effort. "Why, Jon, where did you spring from?"
+
+Jon bent over and kissed his forehead.
+
+Only then he noticed the look on the boy's face.
+
+"I came home to tell you something, Dad."
+
+With all his might Jolyon tried to get the better of the jumping,
+gurgling sensations within his chest.
+
+"Well, sit down, old man. Have you seen your mother?"
+
+"No." The boy's flushed look gave place to pallor; he sat down on the
+arm of the old chair, as, in old days, Jolyon himself used to sit
+beside his own father, installed in its recesses. Right up to the time
+of the rupture in their relations he had been wont to perch there--had
+he now reached such a moment with his own son? All his life he had
+hated scenes like poison, avoided rows, gone on his own way quietly and
+let others go on theirs. But now--it seemed--at the very end of things,
+he had a scene before him more painful than any he had avoided. He drew
+a visor down over his emotion, and waited for his son to speak.
+
+"Father," said Jon slowly, "Fleur and I are engaged."
+
+'Exactly!' thought Jolyon, breathing with difficulty.
+
+"I know that you and Mother don't like the idea. Fleur says that Mother
+was engaged to her father before you married her. Of course I don't
+know what happened, but it must be ages ago. I'm devoted to her, Dad,
+and she says she is to me."
+
+Jolyon uttered a queer sound, half laugh, half groan.
+
+"You are nineteen, Jon, and I am seventy-two. How are we to understand
+each other in a matter like this, eh?"
+
+"You love Mother, Dad; you must know what we feel. It isn't fair to us
+to let old things spoil our happiness, is it?"
+
+Brought face to face with his confession, Jolyon resolved to do without
+it if by any means he could. He laid his hand on the boy's arm.
+
+"Look, Jon! I might put you off with talk about your both being too
+young and not knowing your own minds, and all that, but you wouldn't
+listen; besides, it doesn't meet the case--Youth, unfortunately, cures
+itself. You talk lightly about 'old things like that,' knowing
+nothing--as you say truly--of what happened. Now, have I ever given you
+reason to doubt my love for you, or my word?"
+
+At a less anxious moment he might have been amused by the conflict his
+words aroused--the boy's eager clasp, to reassure him on these points,
+the dread on his face of what that reassurance would bring forth; but
+he could only feel grateful for the squeeze.
+
+"Very well, you can believe what I tell you. If you don't give up this
+love affair, you will make Mother wretched to the end of her days.
+Believe me, my dear, the past, whatever it was, can't be buried--it
+can't indeed."
+
+Jon got off the arm of the chair.
+
+'The girl--' thought Jolyon--'there she goes--starting up before
+him--life itself--eager, pretty, loving!'
+
+"I can't, Father; how can I--just because you say that? Of course I
+can't!"
+
+"Jon, if you knew the story you would give this up without hesitation;
+you would have to! Can't you believe me?"
+
+"How can you tell what I should think? Why, I love her better than
+anything in the world."
+
+Jolyon's face twitched, and he said with painful slowness:
+
+"Better than your mother, Jon?"
+
+From the boy's face, and his clenched fists Jolyon realised the stress
+and struggle he was going through.
+
+"I don't know," he burst out, "I don't know! But to give Fleur up for
+nothing--for something I don't understand, for something that I don't
+believe can really matter half so much, will make me--make me--"
+
+"Make you feel us unjust, put a barrier--yes. But that's better than
+going on with this."
+
+"I can't. Fleur loves me, and I love her. You want me to trust you; why
+don't you trust me, Father? We wouldn't want to know anything--we
+wouldn't let it make any difference. It'll only make us both love you
+and Mother all the more."
+
+Jolyon put his hand into his breast pocket, but brought it out again
+empty, and sat, clucking his tongue against his teeth.
+
+"Think what your mother's been to you, Jon! She has nothing but you; I
+shan't last much longer."
+
+"Why not? It isn't fair to--Why not?"
+
+"Well," said Jolyon, rather coldly, "because the doctors tell me I
+shan't; that's all."
+
+"Oh! Dad!" cried Jon, and burst into tears.
+
+This downbreak of his son, whom he had not seen cry since he was ten,
+moved Jolyon terribly. He recognised to the full how fearfully soft the
+boy's heart was, how much he would suffer in this business, and in life
+generally. And he reached out his hand helplessly--not wishing, indeed
+not daring to get up.
+
+"Dear man," he said, "don't--or you'll make me!"
+
+Jon smothered down his paroxysm, and stood with face averted, very
+still.
+
+'What now?' thought Jolyon; 'what can I say to move him?'
+
+"By the way, don't speak of that to Mother," he said; "she has enough
+to scare her with this affair of yours. I know how you feel. But, Jon,
+you know her and me well enough to be sure we wouldn't wish to spoil
+your happiness lightly. Why, my dear boy, we don't care for anything
+but your happiness--at least, with me it's just yours and Mother's and
+with her just yours. It's all the future for you both that's at stake."
+
+Jon turned. His face was deadly pale; his eyes, deep in his head,
+seemed to burn.
+
+"What is it? What is it? Don't keep me like this!"
+
+Jolyon, who knew that he was beaten, thrust his hand again into his
+breast pocket, and sat for a full minute, breathing with difficulty,
+his eyes closed. The thought passed through his mind: 'I've had a good
+long innings--some pretty bitter moments--this is the worst!' Then he
+brought his hand out with the letter, and said with a sort of fatigue:
+"Well, Jon, if you hadn't come to-day, I was going to send you this. I
+wanted to spare you--I wanted to spare your mother and myself, but I
+see it's no good. Read it, and I think I'll go into the garden." He
+reached forward to get up.
+
+Jon, who had taken the letter, said quickly: "No, I'll go"; and was
+gone.
+
+Jolyon sank back in his chair. A blue-bottle chose that moment to come
+buzzing round him with a sort of fury; the sound was homely, better
+than nothing.... Where had the boy gone to read his letter? The
+wretched letter--the wretched story! A cruel business--cruel to her--to
+Soames--to those two children--to himself!... His heart thumped and
+pained him. Life--its loves--its work--its beauty--its aching, and--its
+end! A good time; a fine time in spite of all; until--you regretted
+that you had ever been born. Life--it wore you down, yet did not make
+you want to die--that was the cunning evil! Mistake to have a heart!
+Again the blue-bottle came buzzing--bringing in all the heat and hum
+and scent of summer--yes, even the scent--as of ripe fruits, dried
+grasses, sappy shrubs, and the vanilla breath of cows. And out there
+somewhere in the fragrance Jon would be reading that letter, turning
+and twisting its pages in his trouble, his bewilderment and
+trouble-breaking his heart about it! The thought made Jolyon acutely
+miserable. Jon was such a tender-hearted chap, affectionate to his
+bones, and conscientious, too--it was so damned unfair! He remembered
+Irene saying to him once: "Never was any one born more loving and
+lovable than Jon." Poor little Jon! His world gone up the spout, all of
+a summer afternoon! Youth took things so hard! And stirred, tormented
+by that vision of Youth taking things hard, Jolyon got out of his
+chair, and went to the window. The boy was nowhere visible. And he
+passed out. If one could take any help to him now--one must!
+
+He traversed the shrubbery, glanced into the walled garden--no Jon! Nor
+where the peaches and the apricots were beginning to swell and colour.
+He passed the Cupressus-trees, dark and spiral, into the meadow. Where
+had the boy got to? Had he rushed down to the coppice--his old
+hunting-ground? Jolyon crossed the rows of hay. They would cock it on
+Monday and be carrying the day after, if rain held off. Often they had
+crossed this field together--hand in hand, when Jon was a little chap.
+Dash it! The golden age was over by the time one was ten! He came to
+the pond, where flies and gnats were dancing over a bright reedy
+surface; and on into the coppice. It was cool there, fragrant of
+larches. Still no Jon! He called. No answer! On the log seat he sat
+down, nervous, anxious, forgetting his own physical sensations. He had
+been wrong to let the boy get away with that letter; he ought to have
+kept him under his eye from the start! Greatly troubled, he got up to
+retrace his steps. At the farm-buildings he called again, and looked
+into the dark cow-house. There in the cool, and the scent of vanilla
+and ammonia, away from flies, the three Alderneys were chewing the
+quiet cud; just milked, waiting for evening, to be turned out again
+into the lower field. One turned a lazy head, a lustrous eye; Jolyon
+could see the slobber on its grey lower lip. He saw everything with
+passionate clearness, in the agitation of his nerves--all that in his
+time he had adored and tried to paint--wonder of light and shade and
+colour. No wonder the legend put Christ into a manger--what more
+devotional than the eyes and moon-white horns of a chewing cow in the
+warm dusk! He called again. No answer! And he hurried away out of the
+coppice, past the pond, up the hill. Oddly ironical--now he came to
+think of it--if Jon had taken the gruel of his discovery down in the
+coppice where his mother and Bosinney in those old days had made the
+plunge of acknowledging their love. Where he himself, on the log seat
+the Sunday morning he came back from Paris, had realised to the full
+that Irene had become the world to him. That would have been the place
+for Irony to tear the veil from before the eyes of Irene's boy! But he
+was not here! Where had he got to? One must find the poor chap!
+
+A gleam of sun had come, sharpening to his hurrying senses all the
+beauty of the afternoon, of the tall trees and lengthening shadows, of
+the blue, and the white clouds, the scent of the hay, and the cooing of
+the pigeons; and the flower shapes standing tall. He came to the
+rosary, and the beauty of the roses in that sudden sunlight seemed to
+him unearthly. "Rose, you Spaniard!" Wonderful three words! There she
+had stood by that bush of dark red roses; had stood to read and decide
+that Jon must know it all! He knew all now! Had she chosen wrong? He
+bent and sniffed a rose, its petals brushed his nose and trembling
+lips; nothing so soft as a rose-leaf's velvet, except her neck--Irene!
+On across the lawn he went, up the slope, to the oak-tree. Its top
+alone was glistening, for the sudden sun was away over the house; the
+lower shade was thick, blessedly cool--he was greatly overheated. He
+paused a minute with his hand on the rope of the swing--Jolly,
+Holly--Jon! The old swing! And, suddenly, he felt horribly--deadly ill.
+'I've overdone it!' he thought: 'by Jove. I've overdone it--after all!'
+He staggered up towards the terrace, dragged himself up the steps, and
+fell against the wall of the house. He leaned there gasping, his face
+buried in the honeysuckle that he and she had taken such trouble with
+that it might sweeten the air which drifted in. Its fragrance mingled
+with awful pain. 'My Love!' he thought; 'the boy!' And with a great
+effort he tottered in through the long window, and sank into old
+Jolyon's chair. The book was there, a pencil in it; he caught it up,
+scribbled a word on the open page.... His hand dropped.... So it was
+like this--was it?...
+
+There was a great wrench; and darkness....
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+IRENE!
+
+
+When Jon rushed away with the letter in his hand, he ran along the
+terrace and round the corner of the house, in fear and confusion.
+Leaning against the creepered wall he tore open the letter. It was
+long--very long! This added to his fear, and he began reading. When he
+came to the underlined words: "It was Fleur's father that she married,"
+everything swam before him. He was close to a window, and entering by
+it, he passed, through music-room and hall, up to his bedroom. Dipping
+his face in cold water, he sat on his bed, and went on reading,
+dropping each finished page on the bed beside him. His father's writing
+was easy to read--he knew it so well, though he had never had a letter
+from him one quarter so long. He read with a dull feeling--imagination
+only half at work. He best grasped, on that first reading, the pain his
+father must have had in writing such a letter. He let the last sheet
+fall, and in a sort of mental, moral helplessness he began to read the
+first again. It all seemed to him disgusting--dead and disgusting.
+Then, suddenly, a hot wave of horrified emotion tingled through him. He
+buried his face in his hands. His mother! Fleur's father! He took up
+the letter again, and read on mechanically. And again came the feeling
+that it was all dead and disgusting; his own love so different! This
+letter said his mother--and her father! An awful letter!
+
+Property! Could there be men who looked on women as their property?
+Faces seen in street and countryside came thronging up before him--red,
+stock-fish faces; hard, dull faces; prim, dry faces; violent faces;
+hundreds, thousands of them! How could he know what men who had such
+faces thought and did? He held his head in his hands and groaned. His
+mother! He caught up the letter and read on again: "horror and
+aversion--alive in her to-day ... your children ... grandchildren ...
+of a man who once owned your mother as a man might own a slave...." He
+got up from his bed. This cruel shadowy past, lurking there to murder
+his love and Fleur's, was true, or his father could never have written
+it. 'Why didn't they tell me the first thing,' he thought, 'the day I
+first saw Fleur? They knew I'd seen her. They were afraid,
+and--now--I've--got it!' Overcome by misery too acute for thought or
+reason, he crept into a dusky corner of the room and sat down on the
+floor. He sat there, like some unhappy little animal. There was comfort
+in dusk, and in the floor--as if he were back in those days when he
+played his battles sprawling all over it. He sat there huddled, his
+hair ruffled, his hands clasped round his knees, for how long he did
+not know. He was wrenched from his blank wretchedness by the sound of
+the door opening from his mother's room. The blinds were down over the
+windows of his room, shut up in his absence, and from where he sat he
+could only hear a rustle, her footsteps crossing, till beyond the bed
+he saw her standing before his dressing-table. She had something in her
+hand. He hardly breathed, hoping she would not see him, and go away. He
+saw her touch things on the table as if they had some virtue in them,
+then face the window--grey from head to foot like a ghost. The least
+turn of her head, and she must see him! Her lips moved: "Oh! Jon!" She
+was speaking to herself; the tone of her voice troubled Jon's heart. He
+saw in her hand a little photograph. She held it towards the light,
+looking at it--very small. He knew it--one of himself as a tiny boy,
+which she always kept in her bag. His heart beat fast. And, suddenly,
+as if she had heard it, she turned her eyes and saw him. At the gasp
+she gave, and the movement of her hands pressing the photograph against
+her breast, he said:
+
+"Yes, it's me."
+
+She moved over to the bed, and sat down on it, quite close to him, her
+hands still clasping her breast, her feet among the sheets of the
+letter which had slipped to the floor. She saw them, and her hands
+grasped the edge of the bed. She sat very upright, her dark eyes fixed
+on him. At last she spoke.
+
+"Well, Jon, you know, I see."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You've seen Father?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+There was a long silence, till she said:
+
+"Oh! my darling!"
+
+"It's all right." The emotions in him were so violent and so mixed that
+he dared not move--resentment, despair, and yet a strange yearning for
+the comfort of her hand on his forehead.
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+There was another long silence, then she got up. She stood a moment,
+very still, made a little movement with her hand, and said: "My darling
+boy, my most darling boy, don't think of me--think of yourself." And,
+passing round the foot of the bed, went back into her room.
+
+Jon turned--curled into a sort of ball, as might a hedgehog--into the
+corner made by the two walls.
+
+He must have been twenty minutes there before a cry roused him. It came
+from the terrace below. He got up, scared. Again came the cry: "Jon!"
+His mother was calling! He ran out and down the stairs, through the
+empty dining-room into the study. She was kneeling before the old
+armchair, and his father was lying back quite white, his head on his
+breast, one of his hands resting on an open book, with a pencil
+clutched in it--more strangely still than anything he had ever seen.
+She looked round wildly, and said:
+
+"Oh! Jon--he's dead--he's dead!"
+
+Jon flung himself down, and reaching over the arm of the chair, where
+he had lately been sitting, put his lips to the forehead. Icy cold! How
+could--how could Dad be dead, when only an hour ago--His mother's arms
+were round the knees; pressing her breast against them. "Why--why
+wasn't I with him?" he heard her whisper. Then he saw the tottering
+word "Irene" pencilled on the open page, and broke down himself. It was
+his first sight of human death, and its unutterable stillness blotted
+from him all other emotion; all else, then, was but preliminary to
+this! All love and life, and joy, anxiety, and sorrow, all movement,
+light and beauty, but a beginning to this terrible white stillness. It
+made a dreadful mark on him; all seemed suddenly little, futile, short.
+He mastered himself at last, got up, and raised her.
+
+"Mother! don't cry--Mother!"
+
+Some hours later, when all was done that had to be, and his mother was
+lying down, he saw his father alone, on the bed, covered with a white
+sheet. He stood for a long time gazing at that face which had never
+looked angry--always whimsical, and kind. "To be kind and keep your end
+up--there's nothing else in it," he had once heard his father say. How
+wonderfully Dad had acted up to that philosophy! He understood now that
+his father had known for a long time past that this would come
+suddenly--known, and not said a word. He gazed with an awed and
+passionate reverence. The loneliness of it--just to spare his mother
+and himself! His own trouble seemed small while he was looking at that
+face. The word scribbled on the page! The farewell word! Now his mother
+had no one but himself! He went up close to the dead face--not changed
+at all, and yet completely changed. He had heard his father say once
+that he did not believe in consciousness surviving death, or that if it
+did it might be just survival till the natural age-limit of the body
+had been reached--the natural term of its inherent vitality; so that if
+the body were broken by accident, excess, violent disease,
+consciousness might still persist till, in the course of Nature
+uninterfered with, it would naturally have faded out. The whimsical
+conceit had struck him. When the heart failed like this--surely it was
+not quite natural! Perhaps his father's consciousness was in the room
+with him. Above the bed hung a picture of his father's father. Perhaps
+HIS consciousness, too, was still alive; and his brother's--his
+half-brother, who had died in the Transvaal. Were they all gathered
+round this bed? Jon kissed the forehead, and stole back to his own
+room. The door between it and his mother's was ajar; she had evidently
+been in--everything was ready for him, even some biscuits and hot milk,
+and the letter no longer on the floor. He ate and drank, watching the
+last light fade. He did not try to see into the future--just stared at
+the dark branches of the oak-tree, level with his window, and felt as
+if life had stopped. Once in the night, turning in his heavy sleep, he
+was conscious of something white and still, beside his bed, and started
+up. His mother's voice said:
+
+"It's only I, Jon dear!" Her hand pressed his forehead gently back; her
+white figure disappeared.
+
+Alone! He fell heavily asleep again, and dreamed he saw his mother's
+name crawling on his bed.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+SOAMES COGITATES
+
+
+The announcement in THE TIMES of his cousin Jolyon's death affected
+Soames quite simply. So that chap was gone! There had never been a time
+in their two lives when love had not been lost between them. That
+quick-blooded sentiment hatred had run its course long since in Soames'
+heart, and he had refused to allow any recrudescence, but he considered
+this early decease a piece of poetic justice. For twenty years the
+fellow had enjoyed the reversion of his wife and house, and--he was
+dead! The obituary notice, which appeared a little later, paid
+Jolyon--he thought--too much attention. It spoke of that "diligent and
+agreeable painter whose work we have come to look on as typical of the
+best late-Victorian water-colour art." Soames, who had almost
+mechanically preferred Mole, Morpin, and Caswell Baye, and had always
+sniffed quite audibly when he came to one of his cousin's on the line,
+turned THE TIMES with a crackle.
+
+He had to go up to Town that morning on Forsyte affairs, and was fully
+conscious of Gradman's glance sidelong over his spectacles. The old
+clerk had about him an aura of regretful congratulation. He smelled, as
+it were, of old days. One could almost hear him thinking: "Mr. Jolyon,
+ye-es--just my age, and gone--dear, dear! I dare say she feels it. She
+was a naice-lookin' woman. Flesh is flesh! They've given 'im a notice
+in the papers. Fancy!" His atmosphere in fact caused Soames to handle
+certain leases and conversions with exceptional swiftness.
+
+"About that settlement on Miss Fleur, Mr. Soames?"
+
+"I've thought better of that," answered Soames shortly.
+
+"Aoh! I'm glad of that. I thought you were a little hasty. The times do
+change."
+
+How this death would affect Fleur had begun to trouble Soames. He was
+not certain that she knew of it--she seldom looked at the paper, never
+at the births, marriages, and deaths.
+
+He pressed matters on, and made his way to Green Street for lunch.
+Winifred was almost doleful. Jack Cardigan had broken a splashboard, so
+far as one could make out, and would not be "fit" for some time. She
+could not get used to the idea.
+
+"Did Profond ever get off?" he said suddenly.
+
+"He got off," replied Winifred, "but where--I don't know."
+
+Yes, there it was--impossible to tell anything! Not that he wanted to
+know. Letters from Annette were coming from Dieppe, where she and her
+mother were staying.
+
+"You saw that fellow's death, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes," said Winifred. "I'm sorry for his children. He was very amiable."
+
+Soames uttered a rather queer sound. A suspicion of the old deep
+truth--that men were judged in this world rather by what they were than
+by what they did--crept and knocked resentfully at the back door of his
+mind.
+
+"I know there was a superstition to that effect," he muttered.
+
+"One must do him justice now he's dead."
+
+"I should like to have done him justice before," said Soames; "but I
+never had the chance. Have you got a 'Baronetage' here?"
+
+"Yes; in that bottom row."
+
+Soames took out a fat red book, and ran over the leaves.
+
+"Mont--Sir Lawrence, 9th Bt. cr. 1620. e.s. of Geoffrey 8th Bt. and
+Lavinia daur. of Sir Charles Muskham Bt. of Muskham Hall, Shrops: marr.
+1890 Emily, daur. of Conway Charwell Esq. of Condaford Grange, co.
+Oxon; 1 son, heir Michael Conway, b. 1895, 2 daurs. Residence:
+Lippinghall Manor, Folwell, Bucks: Clubs: Snooks: Coffee House:
+Aeroplane. See Bidlicott."
+
+"H'm!" he said: "Did you ever know a publisher?"
+
+"Uncle Timothy."
+
+"Alive, I mean."
+
+"Monty knew one at his Club. He brought him here to dinner once. Monty
+was always thinking of writing a book, you know, about how to make
+money on the turf. He tried to interest that man."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"He put him on to a horse--for the Two Thousand. We didn't see him
+again. He was rather smart, if I remember."
+
+"Did it win?"
+
+"No; it ran last, I think. You know Monty really was quite clever in
+his way.".
+
+"Was he?" said Soames. "Can you see any connection between a sucking
+baronet and publishing?"
+
+"People do all sorts of things nowadays," replied Winifred. "The great
+stunt seems not to be idle--so different from our time. To do nothing
+was the thing then. But I suppose it'll come again."
+
+"This young Mont that I'm speaking of is very sweet on Fleur. If it
+would put an end to that other affair I might encourage it."
+
+"Has he got style?" asked Winifred.
+
+"He's no beauty; pleasant enough, with some scattered brains. There's a
+good deal of land, I believe. He seems genuinely attached. But I don't
+know."
+
+"No," murmured Winifred; "it's very difficult. I always found it best
+to do nothing. It IS such a bore about Jack; now we shan't get away
+till after Bank holiday. Well, the people are always amusing, I shall
+go into the Park and watch them."
+
+"If I were you," said Soames, "I should have a country cottage, and be
+out of the way of holidays and strikes when you want."
+
+"The country bores me," answered Winifred, "and I found the railway
+strike quite exciting."
+
+Winifred had always been noted for sang-froid.
+
+Soames took his leave. All the way down to Reading he debated whether
+he should tell Fleur of that boy's father's death. It did not alter the
+situation except that he would be independent now, and only have his
+mother's opposition to encounter. He would come into a lot of money, no
+doubt, and perhaps the house--the house built for Irene and
+himself--the house whose architect had wrought his domestic ruin. His
+daughter--mistress of that house! That would be poetic justice! Soames
+uttered a little mirthless laugh. He had designed that house to
+re-establish his failing union, meant it for the seat of his
+descendants, if he could have induced Irene to give him one! Her son
+and Fleur! Their children would be, in some sort, offspring of the
+union between himself and her!
+
+The theatricality in that thought was repulsive to his sober sense. And
+yet--it would be the easiest and wealthiest way out of the impasse, now
+that Jolyon was gone. The juncture of two Forsyte fortunes had a kind
+of conservative charm. And she--Irene--would be linked to him once
+more. Nonsense! Absurd! He put the notion from his head.
+
+On reaching home he heard the click of billiard-balls; and through the
+window saw young Mont sprawling over the table. Fleur, with her cue
+akimbo, was watching with a smile. How pretty she looked! No wonder
+that young fellow was out of his mind about her. A title--land! There
+was little enough in land, these days; perhaps less in a title. The old
+Forsytes had always had a kind of contempt for titles, rather remote
+and artificial things--not worth the money they cost, and having to do
+with the Court. They had all had that feeling in differing
+measure--Soames remembered. Swithin, indeed, in his most expansive days
+had once attended a Levee. He had come away saying he shouldn't go
+again--"All that small fry!" It was suspected that he had looked too
+big in knee-breeches. Soames remembered how his own mother had wished
+to be presented because of the fashionable nature of the performance,
+and how his father had put his foot down with unwonted decision. What
+did she want with such peacocking--wasting time and money; there was
+nothing in it!
+
+The instinct which had made and kept the British Commons the chief
+power in the State, a feeling that their own world was good enough and
+a little better than any other because it was THEIR world, had kept the
+old Forsytes singularly free of "flummery," as Nicholas had been wont
+to call it when he had the gout. Soames' generation, more
+self-conscious and ironical, had been saved by a sense of Swithin in
+knee-breeches. While the third and the fourth generation, as it seemed
+to him, laughed at everything.
+
+However, there was no harm in the young fellow's being heir to a title
+and estate--a thing one couldn't help. He entered quietly, as Mont
+missed his shot. He noted the young man's eyes, fixed on Fleur bending
+over in her turn; and the adoration in them almost touched him.
+
+She paused with the cue poised on the bridge of her slim hand, and
+shook her crop of short dark chestnut hair.
+
+"I shall never do it."
+
+"'Nothing venture!'"
+
+"All right!" The cue struck, the ball rolled. "There!"
+
+"Bad luck! Never mind!"
+
+Then they saw him, and Soames said: "I'll mark for you."
+
+He sat down on the raised seat beneath the marker, trim and tired,
+furtively studying those two young faces. When the game was over Mont
+came up to him. "I've started in, sir. Rum game, business, isn't it? I
+suppose you saw a lot of human nature as a solicitor."
+
+"I did."
+
+"Shall I tell you what I've noticed: People are quite on the wrong
+track in offering less than they can afford to give; they ought to
+offer more, and work backward."
+
+Soames raised his eyebrows. "Suppose the more is accepted?"
+
+"That doesn't matter a little bit," said Mont; "it's much more paying
+to abate a price than to increase it. For instance, say we offer an
+author good terms--he naturally takes them. Then we go into it, find we
+can't publish at a decent profit and tell him so. He's got confidence
+in us because we've been generous to him, and he comes down like a
+lamb, and bears us no malice. But if we offer him poor terms at the
+start, he doesn't take them, so we have to advance them to get him, and
+he thinks us damned screws into the bargain."
+
+"Try buying pictures on that system"; said Soames, "an offer accepted
+is a contract--haven't you learned that?"
+
+Young Mont turned his head to where Fleur was standing in the window.
+
+"No," he said, "I wish I had. Then there's another thing. Always let a
+man off a bargain if he wants to be let off."
+
+"As advertisement?" said Soames dryly.
+
+"Of course it IS; but I meant on principle."
+
+"Does your firm work on those lines?"
+
+"Not yet," said Mont, "but it'll come."
+
+"And they will go."
+
+"No, really, sir. I'm making any number of observations, and they all
+confirm my theory. Human nature is consistently underrated in business,
+people do themselves out of an awful lot of pleasure and profit by
+that. Of course, you must be perfectly genuine and open, but that's
+easy if you feel it. The more human and generous you are the better
+chance you've got in business."
+
+Soames rose.
+
+"Are you a partner?"
+
+"Not for six months, yet."
+
+"The rest of the firm had better make haste and retire."
+
+Mont laughed.
+
+"You'll see," he said. "There's going to be a big change. The
+possessive principle has got its shutters up."
+
+"What?" said Soames.
+
+"The house is to let! Good-bye, sir; I'm off now."
+
+Soames watched his daughter give her hand, saw her wince at the squeeze
+it received, and distinctly heard the young man's sigh as he passed
+out. Then she came from the window, trailing her finger along the
+mahogany edge of the billiard-table. Watching her, Soames knew that she
+was going to ask him something. Her finger felt round the last pocket,
+and she looked up.
+
+"Have you done anything to stop Jon writing to me, Father?"
+
+Soames shook his head.
+
+"You haven't seen, then?" he said. "His father died just a week ago
+to-day."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+In her startled, frowning face, he saw the instant struggle to
+apprehend what this would mean.
+
+"Poor Jon! Why didn't you tell me, Father?"
+
+"I never know!" said Soames slowly; "you don't confide in me."
+
+"I would, if you'd help me, dear."
+
+"Perhaps I shall."
+
+Fleur clasped her hands. "Oh! darling--when one wants a thing
+fearfully, one doesn't think of other people. Don't be angry with me."
+
+Soames put out his hand, as if pushing away an aspersion.
+
+"I'm cogitating," he said. What on earth had made him use a word like
+that! "Has young Mont been bothering you again?"
+
+Fleur smiled. "Oh! Michael! He's always bothering; but he's such a good
+sort--I don't mind him."
+
+"Well," said Soames, "I'm tired; I shall go and have a nap before
+dinner."
+
+He went up to his picture-gallery, lay down on the couch there, and
+closed his eyes. A terrible responsibility this girl of his--whose
+mother was--ah! what was she? A terrible responsibility! Help her--how
+could he help her? He could not alter the fact that he was her father.
+Or that Irene--! What was it young Mont had said--some nonsense about
+the possessive instinct--shutters up--To let? Silly!
+
+The sultry air, charged with a scent of meadow-sweet, of river and
+roses, closed on his senses, drowsing them.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE FIXED IDEA
+
+
+"The fixed idea," which has outrun more constables than any other form
+of human disorder, has never more speed and stamina than when it takes
+the avid guise of love. To hedges and ditches, and doors, to humans
+without ideas fixed or otherwise, to perambulators and the contents
+sucking their fixed ideas, even to the other sufferers from this fast
+malady--the fixed idea of love pays no attention. It runs with eyes
+turned inward to its own light, oblivious of all other stars. Those
+with the fixed ideas that human happiness depends on their art, on
+vivisecting dogs, on hating foreigners, on paying supertax, on
+remaining Ministers, on making wheels go round, on preventing their
+neighbours from being divorced, on conscientious objection, Greek
+roots, Church dogma, paradox and superiority to everybody else, with
+other forms of ego-mania--all are unstable compared with him or her
+whose fixed idea is the possession of some her or him. And though
+Fleur, those chilly summer days, pursued the scattered life of a little
+Forsyte whose frocks are paid for, and whose business is pleasure, she
+was--as Winifred would have said in the latest fashion of
+speech--'honest-to-God' indifferent to it all. She wished and wished
+for the moon, which sailed in cold skies above the river or the Green
+Park when she went to Town. She even kept Jon's letters covered with
+pink silk, on her heart, than which in days when corsets were so low,
+sentiment so despised, and chests so out of fashion, there could,
+perhaps, have been no greater proof of the fixity of her idea.
+
+After hearing of his father's death, she had written to Jon, and
+received his answer three days later on her return from a river picnic.
+It was his first letter since their meeting at June's. She opened it
+with misgiving, and read it with dismay.
+
+"Since I saw you I've heard everything about the past. I won't tell it
+you--I think you knew when we met at June's. She says you did. If you
+did, Fleur, you ought to have told me. I expect you only heard your
+father's side of it. I have heard my mother's. It's dreadful. Now that
+she's so sad I can't do anything to hurt her more. Of course, I long
+for you all day, but I don't believe now that we shall ever come
+together--there's something too strong pulling us apart."
+
+Her deception had found her out. But Jon--she felt--had forgiven that.
+It was what he said of his mother which caused the fluttering in her
+heart and the weak sensation in her legs.
+
+Her first impulse was to reply--her second, not to reply. These
+impulses were constantly renewed in the days which followed, while
+desperation grew within her. She was not her father's child for
+nothing. The tenacity, which had at once made and undone Soames, was
+her backbone, too, frilled and embroidered by French grace and
+quickness. Instinctively she conjugated the verb "to have" always with
+the pronoun "I." She concealed, however, all signs of her growing
+desperation, and pursued such river pleasures as the winds and rain of
+a disagreeable July permitted, as if she had no care in the world; nor
+did any "sucking baronet" ever neglect the business of a publisher more
+consistently than her attendant spirit, Michael Mont.
+
+To Soames she was a puzzle. He was almost deceived by this careless
+gaiety. Almost--because he did not fail to mark her eyes often fixed on
+nothing, and the film of light shining from her bedroom window late at
+night. What was she thinking and brooding over into small hours when
+she ought to have been asleep? But he dared not ask what was in her
+mind; and, since that one little talk in the billiard-room, she said
+nothing to him.
+
+In this taciturn condition of affairs it chanced that Winifred invited
+them to lunch and to go afterwards to "a most amusing little play, 'The
+Beggar's Opera,'" and would they bring a man to make four? Soames,
+whose attitude towards theatres was to go to nothing, accepted, because
+Fleur's attitude was to go to everything. They motored up, taking
+Michael Mont, who, being in his seventh heaven, was found by Winifred
+"very amusing." "The Beggar's Opera" puzzled Soames. The people were
+unpleasant, the whole thing cynical. Winifred was "intrigued"--by the
+dresses. The music too did not displease her. At the Opera, the night
+before, she had arrived too early for the Russian Ballet, and found the
+stage occupied by singers, for a whole hour pale or apoplectic from
+terror lest by some dreadful inadvertence they might drop into a tune.
+Michael Mont was enraptured with the whole thing. And all three
+wondered what Fleur was thinking of it. But Fleur was not thinking of
+it. Her fixed idea stood on the stage and sang with Polly Peachum,
+mimed with Filch, danced with Jenny Diver, postured with Lucy Lockit,
+kissed, trolled, and cuddled with Macheath. Her lips might smile, her
+hands applaud, but the comic old masterpiece made no more impression on
+her than if it had been pathetic, like a modern "Revue." When they
+embarked in the car to return, she ached because Jon was not sitting
+next her instead of Michael Mont. When, at some jolt, the young man's
+arm touched hers as if by accident, she only thought: 'If that were
+Jon's arm!' When his cheerful voice, tempered by her proximity,
+murmured above the sound of the car's progress, she smiled and
+answered, thinking: 'If that were Jon's voice!' and when once he said:
+"Fleur, you look a perfect angel in that dress!" she answered: "Oh, do
+you like it?" thinking: 'If only Jon could see it!'
+
+During this drive she took a resolution. She would go to Robin Hill and
+see him--alone; she would take the car, without word beforehand to him
+or to her father. It was nine days since his letter, and she could wait
+no longer. On Monday she would go! The decision made her well disposed
+towards young Mont. With something to look forward to she could afford
+to tolerate and respond. He might stay to dinner; propose to her as
+usual; dance with her, press her hand, sigh--do what he liked. He was
+only a nuisance when he interfered with her fixed idea. She was even
+sorry for him so far as it was possible to be sorry for anybody but
+herself just now. At dinner he seemed to talk more wildly than usual
+about what he called 'the death of the close borough'--she paid little
+attention, but her father seemed paying a good deal, with a smile on
+his face which meant opposition, if not anger.
+
+"The younger generation doesn't think as you do, sir; does it, Fleur?"
+
+Fleur shrugged her shoulders--the younger generation was just Jon, and
+she did not know what he was thinking.
+
+"Young people will think as I do when they're my age, Mr. Mont. Human
+nature doesn't change."
+
+"I admit that, sir; but the forms of thought change with the times. The
+pursuit of self-interest is a form of thought that's going out."
+
+"Indeed! To mind one's own business is not a form of thought, Mr. Mont,
+it's an instinct."
+
+Yes, when Jon was the business!
+
+"But what is one's business, sir? That's the point, EVERYBODY'S
+business is going to be one's business. Isn't it, Fleur?"
+
+Fleur only smiled.
+
+"If not," added young Mont, "there'll be blood."
+
+"People have talked like that from time immemorial."
+
+"But you'll admit, sir, that the sense of property is dying out?"
+
+"I should say increasing among those who have none."
+
+"Well, look at me! I'm heir to an entailed estate. I don't want the
+thing; I'd cut the entail to-morrow."
+
+"You're not married, and you don't know what you're talking about."
+
+Fleur saw the young man's eyes turn rather piteously upon her.
+
+"Do you really mean that marriage--?" he began.
+
+"Society is built on marriage," came from between her father's close
+lips; "marriage and its consequences. Do you want to do away with it?"
+
+Young Mont made a distracted gesture. Silence brooded over the
+dinner-table, covered with spoons bearing the Forsyte crest--a pheasant
+proper--under the electric light in an alabaster globe. And outside,
+the river evening darkened, charged with heavy moisture and sweet
+scents.
+
+'Monday,' thought Fleur; 'Monday!'
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+DESPERATE
+
+
+The weeks which followed the death of his father were sad and empty to
+the only Jolyon Forsyte left. The necessary forms and ceremonies--the
+reading of the Will, valuation of the estate, distribution of the
+legacies--were enacted over the head, as it were, of one not yet of
+age. Jolyon was cremated. By his special wish no one attended that
+ceremony, or wore black for him. The succession of his property,
+controlled to some extent by old Jolyon's Will, left his widow in
+possession of Robin Hill, with two thousand five hundred pounds a year
+for life. Apart from this the two Wills worked together in some
+complicated way to insure that each of Jolyon's three children should
+have an equal share in their grandfather's and father's property in the
+future as in the present, save only that Jon, by virtue of his sex,
+would have control of his capital when he was twenty-one, while June
+and Holly would only have the spirit of theirs, in order that their
+children might have the body after them. If they had no children, it
+would all come to Jon if he outlived them; and since June was fifty,
+and Holly nearly forty, it was considered in Lincoln's Inn Fields that
+but for the cruelty of income tax, young Jon would be as warm a man as
+his grandfather when he died. All this was nothing to Jon, and little
+enough to his mother. It was June who did everything needful for one
+who had left his affairs in perfect order. When she had gone, and those
+two were alone again in the great house, alone with death drawing them
+together, and love driving them apart, Jon passed very painful days
+secretly disgusted and disappointed with himself. His mother would look
+at him with a patient sadness which yet had in it an instinctive pride,
+as if she were reserving her defence. If she smiled he was angry that
+his answering smile should be so grudging and unnatural. He did not
+judge or condemn her; that was all too remote--indeed, the idea of
+doing so had never come to him. No! he was grudging and unnatural
+because he couldn't have what he wanted because of her. There was one
+alleviation--much to do in connection with his father's career, which
+could not be safely intrusted to June, though she had offered to
+undertake it. Both Jon and his mother had felt that if she took his
+portfolios, unexhibited drawings and unfinished matter, away with her,
+the work would encounter such icy blasts from Paul Post and other
+frequenters of her studio, that it would soon be frozen out even of her
+warm heart. On its old-fashioned plane and of its kind the work was
+good, and they could not bear the thought of its subjection to
+ridicule. A one-man exhibition of his work was the least testimony they
+could pay to one they had loved; and on preparation for this they spent
+many hours together. Jon came to have a curiously increased respect for
+his father. The quiet tenacity with which he had converted a mediocre
+talent into something really individual was disclosed by these
+researches. There was a great mass of work with a rare continuity of
+growth in depth and reach of vision. Nothing certainly went very deep,
+or reached very high--but such as the work was, it was thorough,
+conscientious, and complete. And, remembering his father's utter
+absence of "side" or self-assertion, the chaffing humility with which
+he had always spoken of his own efforts, ever calling himself "an
+amateur," Jon could not help feeling that he had never really known his
+father. To take himself seriously, yet never bore others by letting
+them know that he did so, seemed to have been his ruling principle.
+There was something in this which appealed to the boy, and made him
+heartily indorse his mother's comment: "He had true refinement; he
+couldn't help thinking of others, whatever he did. And when he took a
+resolution which went counter, he did it with the minimum of
+defiance--not like the Age, is it? Twice in his life he had to go
+against everything; and yet it never made him bitter." Jon saw tears
+running down her face, which she at once turned away from him. She was
+so quiet about her loss that sometimes he had thought she didn't feel
+it much. Now, as he looked at her, he felt how far he fell short of the
+reserve power and dignity in both his father and his mother. And,
+stealing up to her, he put his arm round her waist. She kissed him
+swiftly, but with a sort of passion, and went out of the room.
+
+The studio, where they had been sorting and labelling, had once been
+Holly's schoolroom, devoted to her silk-worms, dried lavender, music,
+and other forms of instruction. Now, at the end of July, despite its
+northern and eastern aspects, a warm and slumberous air came in between
+the long-faded lilac linen curtains. To redeem a little the departed
+glory, as of a field that is golden and gone, clinging to a room which
+its master has left, Irene had placed on the paint-stained table a bowl
+of red roses. This, and Jolyon's favourite cat, who still clung to the
+deserted habitat, were the pleasant spots in that dishevelled, sad
+workroom. Jon, at the north window, sniffing air mysteriously scented
+with warm strawberries, heard a car drive up. The lawyers again about
+some nonsense! Why did that scent so make one ache? And where did it
+come from--there were no strawberry beds on this side of the house.
+Instinctively he took a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket, and
+wrote down some broken words. A warmth began spreading in his chest; he
+rubbed the palms of his hands together. Presently he had jotted this:
+
+    "If I could make a little song--
+    A little song to soothe my heart!
+    I'd make it all of little things--
+    The plash of water, rub of wings,
+    The puffing-off of dandie's crown,
+    The hiss of raindrop spilling down,
+    The purr of cat, the trill of bird,
+    And ev'ry whispering I've heard
+    From willy wind in leaves and grass,
+    And all the distant drones that pass.
+    A song, as tender and as light
+    As flower, or butterfly in flight;
+    And when I saw it opening
+    I'd let it fly, and sing!"
+
+He was still muttering it over to himself at the window, when he heard
+his name called, and, turning round, saw Fleur. At that amazing
+apparition, he made at first no movement and no sound, while her clear
+vivid glance ravished his heart. Then he went forward to the table,
+saying: "How nice of you to come!" and saw her flinch as if he had
+thrown something at her.
+
+"I asked for you," she said, "and they showed me up here. But I can go
+away again."
+
+Jon clutched the paint-stained table. Her face and figure in its frilly
+frock, photographed itself with such startling vividness upon his eyes,
+that if she had sunk through the floor he must still have seen her.
+
+"I know I told you a lie, Jon. But I told it out of love."
+
+"Oh! yes! That's nothing!"
+
+"I didn't answer your letter. What was the use--there wasn't anything
+to answer. I wanted to see you instead." She held out both her hands,
+and Jon grasped them across the table. He tried to say something, but
+all his attention was given to trying not to hurt her hands. His own
+felt so hard and hers so soft. She said almost defiantly:
+
+"That old story--was it so very dreadful?"
+
+"Yes." In his voice, too, there was a note of defiance.
+
+She dragged her hands away. "I didn't think in these days boys were
+tied to their mothers' apron-strings."
+
+Jon's chin went up as if he had been struck.
+
+"Oh! I didn't mean it, Jon. What a horrible thing to say!" Swiftly she
+came close to him. "Jon, dear; I didn't mean it."
+
+"All right."
+
+She had put her two hands on his shoulder, and her forehead down on
+them; the brim of her hat touched his neck, and he felt it quivering.
+But, in a sort of paralysis, he made no response. She let go of his
+shoulder and drew away.
+
+"Well, I'll go, if you don't want me. But I never thought you'd have
+given me up."
+
+"I HAVEN'T," cried Jon, coming suddenly to life. "I can't. I'll try
+again."
+
+She swayed towards him. "Jon--I love you! Don't give me up! If you do,
+I don't know what I shall do--I feel so desperate. What does it
+matter--all that past--compared with THIS?"
+
+She clung to him. He kissed her eyes, her cheeks, her lips. But while
+he kissed her he saw the sheets of that letter fallen down on the floor
+of his bedroom--his father's white dead face--his mother kneeling
+before it. Fleur's whisper: "Make her! Promise! Oh! Jon, try!" seemed
+childish in his ear. He felt curiously old.
+
+"I promise!" he muttered. "Only, you don't understand."
+
+"She wants to spoil our lives, just because--"
+
+"Yes, of what?"
+
+Again that challenge in his voice, and she did not answer. Her arms
+tightened round him, and he returned her kisses; but even while he
+yielded, the poison worked in him, the poison of the letter. Fleur did
+not know, she did not understand--she misjudged his mother; she came
+from the enemy's camp! So lovely, and he loved her so--yet, even in her
+embrace, he could not help the memory of Holly's words: "I think she
+has a 'having' nature," and his mother's: "My darling boy; don't think
+of me--think of yourself."
+
+When she was gone like a passionate dream, leaving her image on his
+eyes, her kisses on his lips, such an ache in his heart, Jon leaned in
+the window, listening to the car bearing her away. Still the scent as
+of warm strawberries, still the little summer sounds that should make
+his song; still all the promise of youth and happiness in sighing,
+floating, fluttering July--and his heart torn; yearning strong in him;
+hope high in him, yet with its eyes cast down, as if ashamed. The
+miserable task before him! If Fleur was desperate, so was he--watching
+the poplars swaying, the white clouds passing, the sunlight on the
+grass.
+
+He waited till evening, till after their almost silent dinner, till his
+mother had played to him--and still he waited, feeling that she knew
+what he was waiting to say. She kissed him and went up-stairs, and
+still he lingered, watching the moonlight and the moths, and that
+unreality of colouring which steals along and stains a summer night.
+And he would have given anything to be back in the past--barely three
+months back; or away forward, years, in the future. The present with
+this stark cruelty of a decision, one way or the other, seemed
+impossible. He realised now so much more keenly what his mother felt
+than he had at first; as if the story in that letter had been a
+poisonous germ producing a kind of fever of partisanship, so that he
+really felt there were two camps, his mother's and his--Fleur's and her
+father's. It might be a dead thing, that old tragic ownership and
+enmity, but dead things were poisonous till Time had cleaned them away.
+Even his love felt tainted, less illusioned, more of the earth, and
+with a treacherous lurking doubt lest Fleur, like her father, might
+want to OWN; not articulate, just a stealing haunt, horribly unworthy,
+which crept in and about the ardour of his memories, touched with its
+tarnishing breath the vividness and grace of that charmed face and
+figure--a doubt, not real enough to convince him of its presence, just
+real enough to deflower a perfect faith. And perfect faith, to Jon, not
+yet twenty, was essential. He still had Youth's eagerness to give with
+both hands, to take with neither--to give lovingly to one who had his
+own impulsive generosity. Surely she had! He got up from the
+window-seat and roamed in the big grey ghostly room, whose walls were
+hung with silvered canvas. This house--his father said in that
+death-bed letter--had been built for his mother to live in--with
+Fleur's father! He put out his hand in the half-dark, as if to grasp
+the shadowy hand of the dead. He clenched, trying to feel the thin
+vanished fingers of his father; to squeeze them, and reassure him that
+he--he was on his father's side. Tears, prisoned within him, made his
+eyes feel dry and hot. He went back to the window. It was warmer, not
+so eerie, more comforting outside, where the moon hung golden, three
+days off full; the freedom of the night was comforting. If only Fleur
+and he had met on some desert island without a past--and Nature for
+their house! Jon had still his high regard for desert islands, where
+breadfruit grew, and the water was blue above the coral. The night was
+deep, was free--there was enticement in it; a lure, a promise, a refuge
+from entanglement, and love! Milksop tied to his mother's--! His cheeks
+burned. He shut the window, drew curtains over it, switched off the
+lighted sconce, and went up-stairs.
+
+The door of his room was open, the light turned up; his mother, still
+in her evening gown, was standing at the window. She turned, and said:
+
+"Sit down, Jon; let's talk." She sat down on the window-seat, Jon on
+his bed. She had her profile turned to him, and the beauty and grace of
+her figure, the delicate line of the brow, the nose, the neck, the
+strange and as it were remote refinement of her, moved him. His mother
+never belonged to her surroundings. She came into them from
+somewhere--as it were! What was she going to say to him, who had in his
+heart such things to say to her?
+
+"I know Fleur came to-day. I'm not surprised." It was as though she had
+added: "She is her father's daughter!" And Jon's heart hardened. Irene
+went on quietly:
+
+"I have Father's letter. I picked it up that night and kept it. Would
+you like it back, dear?"
+
+Jon shook his head.
+
+"I had read it, of course, before he gave it to you. It didn't quite do
+justice to my criminality."
+
+"Mother!" burst from Jon's lips.
+
+"He put it very sweetly, but I know that in marrying Fleur's father
+without love I did a dreadful thing. An unhappy marriage, Jon, can play
+such havoc with other lives besides one's own. You are fearfully young,
+my darling, and fearfully loving. Do you think you can possibly be
+happy with this girl?"
+
+Staring at her dark eyes, darker now from pain, Jon answered:
+
+"Yes; oh! yes--if YOU could be."
+
+Irene smiled.
+
+"Admiration of beauty, and longing for possession are not love. If
+yours were another case like mine, Jon--where the deepest things are
+stifled; the flesh joined, and the spirit at war!"
+
+"Why should it, Mother? You think she must be like her father, but
+she's not. I've seen him."
+
+Again the smile came on Irene's lips, and in Jon something wavered;
+there was such irony and experience in that smile.
+
+"You are a giver, Jon; she is a taker."
+
+That unworthy doubt, that haunting uncertainty again! He said with
+vehemence:
+
+"She isn't--she isn't. It's only because I can't bear to make you
+unhappy, Mother, now that Father--" He thrust his fists against his
+forehead.
+
+Irene got up.
+
+"I told you that night, dear, not to mind me. I meant it. Think of
+yourself and your own happiness! I can stand what's left--I've brought
+it on myself."
+
+Again the word: "Mother!" burst from Jon's lips.
+
+She came over to him and put her hands over his.
+
+"Do you feel your head, darling?"
+
+Jon shook it. What he felt was in his chest--a sort of tearing asunder
+of the tissue there, by the two loves.
+
+"I shall always love you the same, Jon, whatever you do. You won't lose
+anything." She smoothed his hair gently, and walked away.
+
+He heard the door shut; and, rolling over on the bed, lay, stifling his
+breath, with an awful held-up feeling within him.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+EMBASSY
+
+
+Enquiring for her at tea time Soames learned that Fleur had been out in
+the car since two. Three hours! Where had she gone? Up to London
+without a word to him? He had never become quite reconciled with cars.
+He had embraced them in principle--like the born empiricist, or
+Forsyte, that he was--adopting each symptom of progress as it came
+along with: "Well, we couldn't do without them now." But in fact he
+found them tearing, great, smelly things. Obliged by Annette to have
+one--a Rollhard with pearl-grey cushions, electric light, little
+mirrors, trays for the ashes of cigarettes, flower vases--all smelling
+of petrol and stephanotis--he regarded it much as he used to regard his
+brother-in-law, Montague Dartie. The thing typified all that was fast,
+insecure, and subcutaneously oily in modern life. As modern life became
+faster, looser, younger, Soames was becoming older, slower, tighter,
+more and more in thought and language like his father James before him.
+He was almost aware of it himself. Pace and progress pleased him less
+and less; there was an ostentation, too, about a car which he
+considered provocative in the prevailing mood of Labour. On one
+occasion that fellow Sims had driven over the only vested interest of a
+working man. Soames had not forgotten the behaviour of its master, when
+not many people would have stopped to put up with it. He had been sorry
+for the dog, and quite prepared to take its part against the car, if
+that ruffian hadn't been so outrageous. With four hours fast becoming
+five, and still no Fleur, all the old car-wise feelings he had
+experienced in person and by proxy balled within him, and sinking
+sensations troubled the pit of his stomach. At seven he telephoned to
+Winifred by trunk call. No! Fleur had not been to Green Street. Then
+where was she? Visions of his beloved daughter rolled up in her pretty
+frills, all blood-and-dust-stained, in some hideous catastrophe, began
+to haunt him. He went to her room and spied among her things. She had
+taken nothing--no dressing-case, no jewellery. And this, a relief in
+one sense, increased his fears of an accident. Terrible to be helpless
+when his loved one was missing, especially when he couldn't bear fuss
+or publicity of any kind! What should he do, if she were not back by
+nightfall?
+
+At a quarter to eight he heard the car. A great weight lifted from off
+his heart; he hurried down. She was getting out--pale and
+tired-looking, but nothing wrong. He met her in the hall.
+
+"You've frightened me. Where have you been?"
+
+"To Robin Hill. I'm sorry, dear. I had to go; I'll tell you
+afterwards." And, with a flying kiss, she ran up-stairs.
+
+Soames waited in the drawing-room. To Robin Hill! What did that portend?
+
+It was not a subject they could discuss at dinner--consecrated to the
+susceptibilities of the butler. The agony of nerves Soames had been
+through, the relief he felt at her safety, softened his power to
+condemn what she had done, or resist what she was going to do; he
+waited in a relaxed stupor for her revelation. Life was a queer
+business. There he was at sixty-five and no more in command of things
+than if he had not spent forty years in building up security--always
+something one couldn't get on terms with! In the pocket of his
+dinner-jacket was a letter from Annette. She was coming back in a
+fortnight. He knew nothing of what she had been doing out there. And he
+was glad that he did not. Her absence had been a relief. Out of sight
+was out of mind! And now she was coming back. Another worry! And the
+Bolderby Old Crome was gone--Dumetrius had got it--all because that
+anonymous letter had put it out of his thoughts. He furtively remarked
+the strained look on his daughter's face, as if she too were gazing at
+a picture that she couldn't buy. He almost wished the war back. Worries
+didn't seem, then, quite so worrying. From the caress in her voice, the
+look on her face, he became certain that she wanted something from him,
+uncertain whether it would be wise of him to give it her. He pushed his
+savoury away uneaten, and even joined her in a cigarette.
+
+After dinner she set the electric piano-player going. And he augured
+the worst when she sat down on a cushion footstool at his knee, and put
+her hand on his.
+
+"Darling, be nice to me. I had to see Jon--he wrote to me. He's going
+to try what he can do with his mother. But I've been thinking. But it's
+really in YOUR hands, Father. If you'd persuade her that it doesn't
+mean renewing the past in any way! That I shall stay yours, and Jon
+will stay hers; that you need never see him or her, and she need never
+see you or me! Only you could persuade her, dear, because only you
+could promise. One can't promise for other people. Surely it wouldn't
+be too awkward for you to see her just this once--now that Jon's father
+is dead?"
+
+"Too awkward?" Soames repeated. "The whole thing's preposterous."
+
+"You know," said Fleur, without looking up, "you wouldn't mind seeing
+her, really."
+
+Soames was silent. Her words had expressed a truth too deep for him to
+admit. She slipped her fingers between his own--hot, slim, eager, they
+clung there. This child of his would corkscrew her way into a brick
+wall!
+
+"What am I to do, if you won't, Father?" she said very softly.
+
+"I'll do anything for your happiness," said Soames; "but this isn't for
+your happiness."
+
+"Oh! it is; it is!"
+
+"It'll only stir things up," he said grimly.
+
+"But they are stirred up. The thing is to quiet them. To make her feel
+that this is just OUR lives, and has nothing to do with yours or hers.
+You can do it, Father, I know you can."
+
+"You know a great deal, then," was Soames' glum answer.
+
+"If you will, Jon and I will wait a year--two years if you like."
+
+"It seems to me," murmured Soames, "that you care nothing about what I
+feel."
+
+Fleur pressed his hand against her cheek.
+
+"I do, darling. But you wouldn't like me to be awfully miserable." How
+she wheedled to get her ends! And trying with all his might to think
+she really cared for him--he was not sure--not sure. All she cared for
+was this boy! Why should he help her to get this boy, who was killing
+her affection for himself? Why should he? By the laws of the Forsytes
+it was foolish! There was nothing to be had out of it--nothing! To give
+her to that boy! To pass her into the enemy's camp, under the influence
+of the woman who had injured him so deeply! Slowly--inevitably--he
+would lose this flower of his life! And suddenly he was conscious that
+his hand was wet. His heart gave a little painful jump. He couldn't
+bear her to cry. He put his other hand quickly over hers, and a tear
+dropped on that, too. He couldn't go on like this! "Well, well," he
+said, "I'll think it over, and do what I can. Come, come!" If she must
+have it for her happiness--she must; he couldn't refuse to help her.
+And lest she should begin to thank him he got out of his chair and went
+up to the piano-player--making that noise! It ran down, as he reached
+it, with a faint buzz. That musical box of his nursery days: "The
+Harmonious Blacksmith," "Glorious Port"--the thing had always made him
+miserable when his mother set it going on Sunday afternoons. Here it
+was again--the same thing, only larger, more expensive, and now it
+played: "The Wild Wild Women" and "The Policeman's Holiday," and he was
+no longer in black velvet with a sky-blue collar. 'Profond's right,' he
+thought, 'there's nothing in it! We're all progressing to the grave!'
+And with that surprising mental comment he walked out.
+
+He did not see Fleur again that night. But, at breakfast, her eyes
+followed him about with an appeal he could not escape--not that he
+intended to try. No! He had made up his mind to the nerve-racking
+business. He would go to Robin Hill--to that house of memories. A
+pleasant memory--the last! Of going down to keep that boy's father and
+Irene apart by threatening divorce. He had often thought, since, that
+it had clenched their union. And, now, he was going to clench the union
+of that boy with his girl. 'I don't know what I've done,' he thought,
+'to have such things thrust on me!' He went up by train and down by
+train, and from the station walked by the long rising lane, still very
+much as he remembered it over thirty years ago. Funny--so near London!
+Some one evidently was holding on to the land there. This speculation
+soothed him, moving between the high hedges slowly, so as not to get
+overheated, though the day was chill enough. After all was said and
+done there was something real about land, it didn't shift. Land, and
+good pictures! The values might fluctuate a bit, but on the whole they
+were always going up--worth holding on to, in a world where there was
+such a lot of unreality, cheap building, changing fashions, such a
+"Here to-day and gone to-morrow" spirit. The French were right,
+perhaps, with their peasant proprietorship, though he had no opinion of
+the French. One's bit of land! Something solid in it! He had heard
+peasant-proprietors described as a pig-headed lot; had heard young Mont
+call his father a pig-headed Morning Poster--disrespectful young devil.
+Well, there were worse things than being pig-headed or reading The
+Morning Post. There was Profond and his tribe, and all these Labour
+chaps, and loud-mouthed politicians, and "wild, wild women"! A lot of
+worse things! And, suddenly, Soames became conscious of feeling weak,
+and hot, and shaky. Sheer nerves at the meeting before him! As Aunt
+Juley might have said--quoting "Superior Dosset"--his nerves were "in a
+proper fantigue." He could see the house now among its trees, the house
+he had watched being built, intending it for himself and this woman,
+who, by such strange fate, had lived in it with another after all! He
+began to think of Dumetrius, Local Loans, and other forms of
+investment. He could not afford to meet her with his nerves all
+shaking; he who represented the Day of Judgment for her on earth as it
+was in heaven; he, legal ownership, personified, meeting lawless
+beauty, incarnate. His dignity demanded impassivity during this embassy
+designed to link their offspring, who, if she had behaved herself,
+would have been brother and sister. That wretched tune: "The Wild Wild
+Women" kept running in his head, perversely, for tunes did not run
+there as a rule. Passing the poplars in front of the house, he thought:
+'How they've grown; I had them planted!'
+
+A maid answered his ring.
+
+"Will you say--Mr. Forsyte, on a very special matter."
+
+If she realised who he was, quite probably she would not see him. 'By
+George!' he thought, hardening as the tug came: 'It's a topsyturvy
+affair!'
+
+The maid came back. Would the gentleman state his business, please?
+
+"Say it concerns Mr. Jon," said Soames.
+
+And once more he was alone in that hall with the pool of grey-white
+marble designed by her first lover. Ah! she had been a bad lot--had
+loved two men, and not himself! He must remember that when he came face
+to face with her once more. And suddenly he saw her in the opening
+chink between the long heavy purple curtains, swaying, as if in
+hesitation; the old perfect poise and line, the old startled dark-eyed
+gravity; the old calm defensive voice: "Will you come in, please?"
+
+He passed through that opening. As in the picture-gallery and the
+confectioner's shop, she seemed to him still beautiful. And this was
+the first time--the very first--since he married her five and thirty
+years ago, that he was speaking to her without the legal right to call
+her his. She was not wearing black--one of that fellow's radical
+notions, he supposed.
+
+"I apologise for coming," he said glumly; "but this business must be
+settled one way or the other."
+
+"Won't you sit down?"
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+Anger at his false position, impatience of ceremony between them,
+mastered him, and words came tumbling out:
+
+"It's an infernal mischance; I've done my best to discourage it. I
+consider my daughter crazy, but I've got into the habit of indulging
+her; that's why I'm here. I suppose you're fond of your son."
+
+"Devotedly."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"It rests with him."
+
+He had a sense of being met and baffled. Always--always she had baffled
+him, even in those old first married days.
+
+"It's a mad notion," he said.
+
+"It is."
+
+"If you had only--! Well--they might have been--" he did not finish
+that sentence "brother and sister and all this saved," but he saw her
+shudder as if he had, and stung by the sight, he crossed over to the
+window. Out THERE the trees had not grown--they couldn't, they were old!
+
+"So far as I'm concerned," he said, "you may make your mind easy. I
+desire to see neither you nor your son if this marriage comes about.
+Young people in these days are--are unaccountable. But I can't bear to
+see my daughter unhappy. What am I to say to her when I go back?"
+
+"Please say to her, as I said to you, that it rests with Jon."
+
+"You don't oppose it?"
+
+"With all my heart; not with my lips."
+
+Soames stood, biting his finger.
+
+"I remember an evening--" he said suddenly; and was silent. What was
+there--what was there in this woman that would not fit into the four
+comers of his hate or condemnation? "Where is he--your son?"
+
+"Up in his father's studio, I think."
+
+"Perhaps you'd have him down."
+
+He watched her ring the bell, he watched the maid come in.
+
+"Please tell Mr. Jon that I want him."
+
+"If it rests with him," said Soames hurriedly, when the maid was gone,
+"I suppose I may take it for granted that this unnatural marriage will
+take place: in that case there'll be formalities. Whom do I deal
+with--Herring's?" Irene nodded.
+
+"You don't propose to live with them?"
+
+Irene shook her head.
+
+"What happens to this house?"
+
+"It will be as Jon wishes."
+
+"This house," said Soames suddenly: "I had hopes when I began it. If
+THEY live in it--their children! They say there's such a thing as
+Nemesis. Do you believe in it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Oh! You do!" He had come back from the window, and was standing close
+to her, who, in the curve of her grand piano, was, as it were, embayed.
+
+"I'm not likely to see you again," he said slowly: "Will you shake
+hands," his lip quivered, the words came out jerkily, "and let the past
+die?" He held out his hand. Her pale face grew paler, her eyes so dark,
+rested immovably on his, but her hands remained clasped in front of
+her. He heard a sound and turned. That boy was standing in the opening
+of the curtains. Very queer he looked, hardly recognisable as the young
+fellow he had seen in the Gallery off Cork Street--very queer; much
+older, no youth in the face at all--haggard, rigid, his hair ruffled,
+his eyes deep in his head. Soames made an effort, and said with a lift
+of his lip, not quite a smile nor quite a sneer:
+
+"Well, young man! I'm here for my daughter; it rests with you, it
+seems--this matter. Your mother leaves it in your hands."
+
+The boy continued staring at his mother's face, and made no answer.
+
+"For my daughter's sake I've brought myself to come," said Soames.
+"What am I to say to her when I go back?"
+
+Still looking at his mother, the boy said, quietly:
+
+"Tell Fleur that it's no good, please; I must do as my father wished
+before he died."
+
+"Jon!"
+
+"It's all right, Mother."
+
+In a kind of stupefaction Soames looked from one to the other; then,
+taking up hat and umbrella, which he had put down on a chair, he walked
+towards the curtains. The boy stood aside for him to go by. He passed
+through and heard the grate of the rings as the curtains were drawn
+behind him. The sound liberated something in his chest.
+
+'So that's that!' he thought, and passed out of the front door.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE DARK TUNE
+
+
+As Soames walked away from the house at Robin Hill the sun broke
+through the grey of that chill afternoon, in smoky radiance. So
+absorbed in landscape-painting that he seldom looked seriously for
+effects of Nature out-of-doors, he was struck by that moody
+effulgence--it mourned with a triumph suited to his own feeling.
+Victory in defeat! His embassy had come to naught. But he was rid of
+those people, had regained his daughter at the expense of--her
+happiness. What would Fleur say to him? Would she believe he had done
+his best? And under that sunlight flaring on the elms, hazels, hollies
+of the lane and those unexploited fields, Soames felt dread. She would
+be terribly upset! He must appeal to her pride. That boy had given her
+up, declared part and lot with the woman who so long ago had given her
+father up! Soames clenched his hands. Given him up, and why? What had
+been wrong with him? And once more he felt the malaise of one who
+contemplates himself as seen by another--like a dog who chances on his
+reflection in a mirror, and is intrigued and anxious at the unseizable
+thing.
+
+Not in a hurry to get home, he dined in town at the Connoisseurs. While
+eating a pear it suddenly occurred to him that, if he had not gone down
+to Robin Hill, the boy might not have so decided. He remembered the
+expression on his face while his mother was refusing the hand he had
+held out. A strange, an awkward thought! Had Fleur cooked her own goose
+by trying to make too sure?
+
+He reached home at half-past nine. While the car was passing in at one
+drive gate he heard the grinding sputter of a motor-cycle passing out
+by the other. Young Mont, no doubt, so Fleur had not been lonely. But
+he went in with a sinking heart. In the cream-panelled drawing-room she
+was sitting with her elbows on her knees, and her chin on her clasped
+hands, in front of a white camellia plant which filled the fireplace.
+That glance at her before she saw him renewed his dread. What was she
+seeing among those white camellias?
+
+"Well, Father!"
+
+Soames shook his head. His tongue failed him. This was murderous work!
+He saw her eyes dilate, her lips quivering.
+
+"What? What? Quick, Father!"
+
+"My dear," said Soames, "I--I did my best, but--" And again he shook
+his head.
+
+Fleur ran to him and put a hand on each of his shoulders.
+
+"She?"
+
+"No," muttered Soames; "he. I was to tell you that it was no use; he
+must do what his father wished before he died." He caught her by the
+waist. "Come, child, don't let them hurt you. They're not worth your
+little finger."
+
+Fleur tore herself from his grasp.
+
+"You didn't--you couldn't have tried. You--you betrayed me, Father!"
+
+Bitterly wounded, Soames gazed at her passionate figure writhing there
+in front of him.
+
+"You didn't try--you didn't--I was a fool--I won't believe he could--he
+ever could! Only yesterday he--! Oh! why did I ask you?"
+
+"Yes," said Soames quietly, "why did you? I swallowed my feelings; I
+did my best for you, against my judgment--and this is my reward.
+Good-night!"
+
+With every nerve in his body twitching he went towards the door.
+
+Fleur darted after him.
+
+"He gives me up? You mean that? Father!"
+
+Soames turned and forced himself to answer:
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Oh!" cried Fleur. "What did you--what could you have done in those old
+days?"
+
+The breathless sense of really monstrous injustice cut the power of
+speech in Soames' throat. What had HE done! What had they done to him!
+And with quite unconscious dignity he put his hand on his breast, and
+looked at her.
+
+"It's a shame!" cried Fleur passionately.
+
+Soames went out. He mounted, slow and icy, to his picture-gallery, and
+paced among his treasures. Outrageous! Oh! Outrageous! She was spoiled!
+Ah! and who had spoiled her? He stood still before the Goya copy.
+Accustomed to her own way in everything--Flower of his life! And now
+that she couldn't have it. He turned to the window for some air.
+Daylight was dying, the moon rising, gold behind the poplars! What
+sound was that? Why! That piano thing! A dark tune, with a thrum and a
+throb! She had set it going--what comfort could she get from that? His
+eyes caught movement down there beyond the lawn, under the trellis of
+rambler roses and young acacia-trees, where the moonlight fell. There
+she was, roaming up and down. His heart gave a little sickening jump.
+What would she do under this blow? How could he tell? What did he know
+of her--he had only loved her all his life--looked on her as the apple
+of his eye! He knew nothing--had no notion. There she was--and that
+dark tune--and the river gleaming in the moonlight!
+
+'I must go out,' he thought. He hastened down to the drawing-room,
+lighted just as he had left it, with the piano thrumming out that
+waltz, or fox-trot, or whatever they called it in these days, and
+passed through on to the verandah. Where could he watch, without her
+seeing him? And he stole down through the fruit garden to the
+boat-house. He was between her and the river now, and his heart felt
+lighter. She was his daughter, and Annette's--she wouldn't do anything
+foolish; but there it was--he didn't know! From the boat-house window
+he could see the last acacia and the spin of her skirt when she turned
+in her restless march. That tune had run down at last--thank goodness!
+He crossed the floor and looked through the farther window at the water
+slow-flowing past the lilies. It made little bubbles against them,
+bright where a moon-streak fell. He remembered suddenly that early
+morning when he had slept in this boat-house after his father died, and
+she had just been born--nearly nineteen years ago! Even now he recalled
+the unaccustomed world when he woke up, the strange feeling it had
+given him. That day the second passion of his life began--for this girl
+of his, roaming under the acacias. What a comfort she had been to him!
+And all the soreness and sense of outrage left him. If he could make
+her happy again, he didn't care! An owl flew, queeking, queeking; a bat
+flitted by; the moonlight brightened and broadened on the water. How
+long was she going to roam about like this! He went back to the window,
+and suddenly saw her coming down to the bank. She stood quite close, on
+the landing-stage. And Soames watched, clenching his hands. Should he
+speak to her? His excitement was intense. The stillness of her figure,
+its youth, its absorption in despair, in longing, in--itself. He would
+always remember it, moonlit like that; and the faint sweet reek of the
+river and the shivering of the willow leaves. She had everything in the
+world that he could give her, except the one thing that she could not
+have because of him! The perversity of things hurt him at that moment,
+as might a fish-bone in his throat. Then, with an infinite relief, he
+saw her turn back towards the house. What could he give her to make
+amends? Pearls, travel, horses, other young men--anything she
+wanted--that he might lose the memory of her young figure lonely by the
+water! There! She had set that tune going again! Why--it was a mania!
+Dark, thrumming, faint, travelling from the house. It was as though she
+had said: "If I can't have something to keep me going, I shall die of
+this!" Soames dimly understood. Well, if it helped her, let her keep it
+thrumming on all night! And, mousing back through the fruit garden, he
+regained the verandah. Though he meant to go in and speak to her now,
+he still hesitated, not knowing what to say, trying hard to recall how
+it felt to be thwarted in love. He ought to know, ought to
+remember--and he could not! Gone--all real recollection; except that it
+had hurt him horribly. In this blankness he stood passing his
+handkerchief over hands and lips, which were very dry. By craning his
+head he could just see Fleur, standing with her back to that piano
+still grinding out its tune, her arms tight crossed on her breast, a
+lighted cigarette between her lips, whose smoke half veiled her face.
+The expression on it was strange to Soames, the eyes shone and stared,
+and every feature was alive with a sort of wretched scorn and anger.
+Once or twice he had seen Annette look like that--the face was too
+vivid, too naked, not HIS daughter's at that moment. And he dared not
+go in, realising the futility of any attempt at consolation. He sat
+down in the shadow of the ingle-nook. Monstrous trick, that Fate had
+played him! Nemesis! That old unhappy marriage! And in God's name--why?
+How was he to know, when he wanted Irene so violently, and she
+consented to be his, that she would never love him? The tune died and
+was renewed, and died again, and still Soames sat in the shadow,
+waiting for he knew not what. The fag of Fleur's cigarette, flung
+through the window, fell on the grass; he watched it glowing, burning
+itself out. The moon had freed herself above the poplars, and poured
+her unreality on the garden. Comfortless light, mysterious,
+withdrawn--like the beauty of that woman who had never loved
+him--dappling the nemesias and the stocks with a vesture not of earth.
+Flowers! And his flower so unhappy! Ah, why could one not put happiness
+into Local Loans, gild its edges, insure it against going down? Light
+had ceased to flow out now from the drawing-room window. All was silent
+and dark in there. Had she gone up? He rose, and, tiptoeing, peered in.
+It seemed so! He entered. The verandah kept the moonlight out; and at
+first he could see nothing but the outlines of furniture blacker than
+the darkness. He groped towards the farther window to shut it. His foot
+struck a chair, and he heard a gasp. There she was, curled and crushed
+into the corner of the sofa! His hand hovered. Did she want his
+consolation? He stood, gazing at that ball of crushed frills and hair
+and graceful youth, trying to burrow its way out of sorrow. How leave
+her there? At last he touched her hair, and said: "Come, darling,
+better go to bed. I'll make it up to you, somehow." How fatuous! But
+what could he have said?
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+UNDER THE OAK-TREE
+
+
+When their visitor had disappeared Jon and his mother stood without
+speaking, till he said suddenly: "I ought to have seen him out." But
+Soames was already walking down the drive, and Jon went up-stairs to
+his father's studio, not trusting himself to go back. The expression on
+his mother's face confronting the man she had once been married to, had
+sealed a resolution growing within him ever since she left him the
+night before. It had put the finishing touch of reality. To marry Fleur
+would be to hit his mother in the face; to betray his dead father! It
+was no good! Jon had the least resentful of natures. He bore his
+parents no grudge in this hour of his distress. For one so young there
+was a rather strange power in him of seeing things in some sort of
+proportion. It was worse for Fleur, worse for his mother even, than it
+was for him. Harder than to give up was to be given up, or to be the
+cause of some one you loved giving up for you. He must not, would not
+behave grudgingly! While he stood watching the tardy sunlight, he had
+again that sudden vision of the world which had come to him the night
+before. Sea on sea, country on country, millions on millions of people,
+all with their own lives, energies, joys, griefs, and suffering--all
+with things they had to give up, and separate struggles for existence.
+Even though he might be willing to give up all else for the one thing
+he couldn't have, he would be a fool to think his feelings mattered
+much in so vast a world, and to behave like a cry-baby or a cad. He
+pictured the people who had nothing--the millions who had given up life
+in the war, the millions whom the war had left with life and little
+else; the hungry children he had read of, the shattered men; people in
+prison, every kind of unfortunate. And--they did not help him much. If
+one had to miss a meal, what comfort in the knowledge that many others
+had to miss it too? There was more distraction in the thought of
+getting away out into this vast world of which he knew nothing yet. He
+could not go on staying here, walled in and sheltered, with everything
+so slick and comfortable, and nothing to do but brood and think what
+might have been. He could not go back to Wansdon, and the memories of
+Fleur. If he saw her again he could not trust himself; and if he stayed
+here or went back there, he would surely see her. While they were
+within reach of each other that must happen. To go far away and
+quickly, was the only thing to do. But, however much he loved his
+mother, he did not want to go away with her. Then feeling that was
+brutal, he made up his mind desperately to propose that they should go
+to Italy. For two hours in that melancholy room he tried to master
+himself; then dressed solemnly for dinner.
+
+His mother had done the same. They ate little, at some length, and
+talked of his father's catalogue. The Show was arranged for October,
+and beyond clerical detail there was nothing more to do.
+
+After dinner she put on a cloak and they went out; walked a little,
+talked a little, till they were standing silent at last beneath the
+oak-tree. Ruled by the thought: 'If I show anything, I show all,' Jon
+put his arm through hers and said quite casually:
+
+"Mother, let's go to Italy."
+
+Irene pressed his arm, and said as casually:
+
+"It would be very nice; but I've been thinking you ought to see and do
+more than you would if I were with you."
+
+"But then you'd be alone."
+
+"I was once alone for more than twelve years. Besides, I should like to
+be here for the opening of Father's show."
+
+Jon's grip tightened round her arm; he was not deceived.
+
+"You couldn't stay here all by yourself; it's too big."
+
+"Not here, perhaps. In London, and I might go to Paris, after the show
+opens. You ought to have a year at least, Jon, and see the world."
+
+"Yes, I'd like to see the world and rough it. But I don't want to leave
+you all alone."
+
+"My dear, I owe you that at least. If it's for your good, it'll be for
+mine. Why not start to-morrow? You've got your passport."
+
+"Yes; if I'm going it had better be at once. Only--Mother--if--if I
+wanted to stay out somewhere--America or anywhere, would you mind
+coming presently?"
+
+"Wherever and whenever you send for me. But don't send until you really
+want me."
+
+Jon drew a deep breath.
+
+"I feel England's choky."
+
+They stood a few minutes longer under the oak-tree--looking out to
+where the grand stand at Epsom was veiled in evening. The branches kept
+the moonlight from them, so that it only fell everywhere else--over the
+fields and far away, and on the windows of the creepered house behind,
+which soon would be to let.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+FLEUR'S WEDDING
+
+
+The October paragraphs describing the wedding of Fleur Forsyte to
+Michael Mont hardly conveyed the symbolic significance of this event.
+In the union of the great-granddaughter of "Superior Dosset" with the
+heir of a ninth baronet was the outward and visible sign of that merger
+of class in class which buttresses the political stability of a realm.
+The time had come when the Forsytes might resign their natural
+resentment against a "flummery" not theirs by birth, and accept it as
+the still more natural due of their possessive instincts. Besides, they
+really had to mount to make room for all those so much more newly rich.
+In that quiet but tasteful ceremony in Hanover Square, and afterwards
+among the furniture in Green Street, it had been impossible for those
+not in the know to distinguish the Forsyte troop from the Mont
+contingent--so far away was "Superior Dosset" now. Was there, in the
+crease of his trousers, the expression of his moustache, his accent, or
+the shine on his top hat, a pin to choose between Soames and the ninth
+baronet himself? Was not Fleur as self-possessed, quick, glancing,
+pretty, and hard as the likeliest Muskham, Mont, or Charwell filly
+present? If anything, the Forsytes had it in dress and looks and
+manners. They had become "upper class" and now their name would be
+formally recorded in the Stud Book, their money joined to land. Whether
+this was a little late in the day, and those rewards of the possessive
+instinct, lands and money destined for the melting-pot--was still a
+question so moot that it was not mooted. After all, Timothy had said
+Consols were goin' up. Timothy, the last, the missing link; Timothy in
+extremis on the Bayswater Road--so Francie had reported. It was
+whispered, too, that this young Mont was a sort of socialist--strangely
+wise of him, and in the nature of insurance, considering the days they
+lived in. There was no uneasiness on that score. The landed classes
+produced that sort of amiable foolishness at times, turned to safe uses
+and confined to theory. As George remarked to his sister Francie:
+"They'll soon be having puppies--that'll give him pause."
+
+The church with white flowers and something blue in the middle of the
+East window, looked extremely chaste, as though endeavouring to
+counteract the somewhat lurid phraseology of a Service calculated to
+keep the thoughts of all on puppies. Forsytes, Haymans, Tweetymans, sat
+in the left aisle; Monts, Charwells, Muskhams in the right; while a
+sprinkling of Fleur's fellow-sufferers at school, and of Mont's
+fellow-sufferers in the war, gaped indiscriminately from either side,
+and three maiden ladies, who had dropped in on their way from
+Skyward's, brought up the rear, together with two Mont retainers and
+Fleur's old nurse. In the unsettled state of the country as full a
+house as could be expected.
+
+Mrs. Val Dartie, who sat with her husband in the third row, squeezed
+his hand more than once during the performance. To her, who knew the
+plot of this tragi-comedy, its most dramatic moment was well-nigh
+painful. 'I wonder if Jon knows by instinct,' she thought--Jon, out in
+British Columbia. She had received a letter from him only that morning
+which had made her smile and say:
+
+"Jon's in British Columbia, Val, because he wants to be in California.
+He thinks it's too nice there."
+
+"Oh!" said Val, "so he's beginning to see a joke again."
+
+"He's bought some land and sent for his mother."
+
+"What on earth will she do out there?"
+
+"All she cares about is Jon. Do you still think it a happy release?"
+
+Val's shrewd eyes narrowed to grey pin-points between their dark lashes.
+
+"Fleur wouldn't have suited him a bit. She's not bred right."
+
+"Poor little Fleur!" sighed Holly. Ah! it was strange--this marriage!
+The young man, Mont, had caught her on the rebound, of course, in the
+reckless mood of one whose ship has just gone down. Such a plunge could
+not but be--as Val put it--an outside chance. There was little to be
+told from the back view of her young cousin's veil, and Holly's eyes
+reviewed the general aspect of this Christian wedding. She who had made
+a love-match which had been successful, had a horror of unhappy
+marriages. This might not be one in the end--but it was clearly a
+toss-up; and to consecrate a toss-up in this fashion with manufactured
+unction before a crowd of fashionable free-thinkers--for who thought
+otherwise than freely, or not at all, when they were 'dolled'
+up--seemed to her as near a sin as one could find in an age which had
+abolished them. Her eyes wandered from the prelate in his robes (a
+Charwell--the Forsytes had not as yet produced a prelate) to Val,
+beside her, thinking--she was certain of--the Mayfly filly at fifteen
+to one for the Cambridgeshire. They passed on and caught the profile of
+the ninth baronet, in counterfeitment of the kneeling process. She
+could just see the neat ruck above his knees where he had pulled his
+trousers up, and thought: 'Val's forgotten to pull up his!' Her eyes
+passed to the pew in front of her, where Winifred's substantial form
+was gowned with passion, and on again to Soames and Annette kneeling
+side by side. A little smile came on her lips--Prosper Profond, back
+from the South Seas of the Channel, would be kneeling too, about six
+rows behind. Yes! This was a funny "small" business, however it turned
+out; still it was in a proper church and would be in the proper papers
+to-morrow morning.
+
+They had begun a hymn; she could hear the ninth baronet across the
+aisle, singing of the hosts of Midian. Her little finger touched Val's
+thumb--they were holding the same hymn-book--and a tiny thrill passed
+through her, preserved from twenty years ago. He stooped and whispered:
+
+"I say, d'you remember the rat?" The rat at their wedding in Cape
+Colony, which had cleaned its whiskers behind the table at the
+Registrar's! And between her little and third finger she squeezed his
+thumb hard.
+
+The hymn was over, the prelate had begun to deliver his discourse. He
+told them of the dangerous times they lived in, and the awful conduct
+of the House of Lords in connection with divorce. They were all
+soldiers--he said--in the trenches under the poisonous gas of the
+Prince of Darkness, and must be manful. The purpose of marriage was
+children, not mere sinful happiness.
+
+An imp danced in Holly's eyes--Val's eyelashes were meeting. Whatever
+happened, he must NOT snore. Her finger and thumb closed on his thigh;
+till he stirred uneasily.
+
+The discourse was over, the danger past. They were signing in the
+vestry; and general relaxation had set in.
+
+A voice behind her said:
+
+"Will she stay the course?"
+
+"Who's that?" she whispered.
+
+"Old George Forsyte!"
+
+Holly demurely scrutinised one of whom she had often heard. Fresh from
+South Africa, and ignorant of her kith and kin, she never saw one
+without an almost childish curiosity. He was very big, and very dapper;
+his eyes gave her a funny feeling of having no particular clothes.
+
+"They're off!" she heard him say.
+
+They came, stepping from the chancel. Holly looked first in young
+Mont's face. His lips and ears were twitching, his eyes, shifting from
+his feet to the hand within his arm, stared suddenly before them as if
+to face a firing party. He gave Holly the feeling that he was
+spiritually intoxicated. But Fleur! Ah! That was different. The girl
+was perfectly composed, prettier than ever, in her white robes and veil
+over her banged dark chestnut hair; her eyelids hovered demure over her
+dark hazel eyes. Outwardly, she seemed all there. But, inwardly, where
+was she? As those two passed, Fleur raised her eyelids--the restless
+glint of those clear whites remained on Holly's vision as might the
+flutter of a caged bird's wings.
+
+In Green Street Winifred stood to receive, just a little less composed
+than usual. Soames' request for the use of her house had come on her at
+a deeply psychological moment. Under the influence of a remark of
+Prosper Profond, she had begun to exchange her Empire for
+Expressionistic furniture. There were the most amusing arrangements,
+with violet, green, and orange blobs and scriggles, to be had at
+Mealard's. Another month and the change would have been complete. Just
+now, the very "intriguing" recruits she had enlisted did not march too
+well with the old guard. It was as if her regiment were half in khaki,
+half in scarlet and bearskins. But her strong and comfortable character
+made the best of it in a drawing-room which typified, perhaps, more
+perfectly than she imagined, the semi-bolshevised imperialism of her
+country. After all, this was a day of merger, and you couldn't have too
+much of it! Her eyes travelled indulgently among her guests. Soames had
+gripped the back of a buhl chair; young Mont was behind that "awfully
+amusing" screen, which no one as yet had been able to explain to her.
+The ninth baronet had shied violently at a round scarlet table, inlaid
+tinder glass with blue Australian butterflies' wings, and was clinging
+to her Louis-Quinze cabinet; Francie Forsyte had seized the new
+mantel-board, finely carved with little purple grotesques on an ebony
+ground; George, over by the old spinet, was holding a little sky-blue
+book as if about to enter bets; Prosper Profond was twiddling the knob
+of the open door, black with peacock-blue panels; and Annette's hands,
+close by, were grasping her own waist; two Muskhams clung to the
+balcony among the plants, as if feeling ill; Lady Mont, thin and
+brave-looking, had taken up her long-handled glasses and was gazing at
+the central light shade, of ivory and orange dashed with deep magenta,
+as if the heavens had opened. Everybody, in fact, seemed holding on to
+something. Only Fleur, still in her bridal dress, was detached from all
+support, flinging her words and glances to left and right.
+
+The room was full of the bubble and the squeak of conversation. Nobody
+could hear anything that anybody said; which seemed of little
+consequence, since no one waited for anything so slow as an answer.
+Modern conversation seemed to Winifred so different from the days of
+her prime, when a drawl was all the vogue. Still it was diverting,
+which, of course, was all that mattered. Even the Forsytes were talking
+with extreme rapidity--Fleur and Christopher, and Imogen, and young
+Nicholas's youngest, Patrick. Soames, of course, was silent; but
+George, by the spinet, kept up a running commentary, and Francie, by
+her mantel-shelf. Winifred drew nearer to the ninth baronet. He seemed
+to promise a certain repose; his nose was fine and drooped a little,
+his grey moustaches too; and she said, drawling through her smile;
+
+"It's rather nice, isn't it?"
+
+His reply shot out of his smile like a snipped bread pellet:
+
+"D'you remember, in Frazer, the tribe that buries the bride up to the
+waist?"
+
+He spoke as fast as anybody! He had dark, lively little eyes, too, all
+crinkled round like a Catholic priest's. Winifred felt suddenly he
+might say things she would regret.
+
+"They're always so diverting--weddings," she murmured, and moved on to
+Soames. He was curiously still, and Winifred saw at once what was
+dictating his immobility. To his right was George Forsyte, to his left
+Annette and Prosper Profond. He could not move without either seeing
+those two together, or the reflection of them in George Forsyte's
+japing eyes. He was quite right not to be taking notice.
+
+"They say Timothy's sinking," he said glumly.
+
+"Where will you put him, Soames?"
+
+"Highgate." And counted on his fingers. "It'll make twelve of them
+there, including wives. How do you think Fleur looks?"
+
+"Remarkably well."
+
+Soames nodded. He had never seen her look prettier, yet he could not
+rid himself of the impression that this business was
+unnatural--remembering still that crushed figure burrowing into the
+corner of the sofa. From that night to this day he had received from
+her no confidences. He knew from his chauffeur that she had made one
+more attempt on Robin Hill and drawn blank--an empty house, no one at
+home. He knew that she had received a letter, but not what was in it,
+except that it had made her hide herself and cry. He had remarked that
+she looked at him sometimes when she thought he wasn't noticing, as if
+she were wondering still what he had done--forsooth--to make those
+people hate him so. Well, there it was! Annette had come back, and
+things had worn on through the summer--very miserable, till suddenly
+Fleur had said she was going to marry young Mont. She had shown him a
+little more affection when she told Soames that. And he had
+yielded--what was the good of opposing it? God knew that he had never
+wished to thwart her in anything! And the young man seemed quite
+delirious about her. No doubt she was in a reckless mood, and she was
+young, absurdly young. But if he opposed her, he didn't know what she
+would do; for all he could tell she might want to take up a profession,
+become a doctor or solicitor, some nonsense. She had no aptitude for
+painting, writing, music, in his view the legitimate occupations of
+unmarried women, if they must do something in these days. On the whole,
+she was safer married, for he could see too well how feverish and
+restless she was at home. Annette, too, had been in favour of
+it--Annette, from behind the veil of his refusal to know what she was
+about, if she was about anything. Annette had said: "Let her marry this
+young man. He is a nice boy--not so highty-flighty as he seems." Where
+she got her expressions, he didn't know--but her opinion soothed his
+doubts. His wife, whatever her conduct, had clear eyes and an almost
+depressing amount of common sense. He had settled fifty thousand on
+Fleur, taking care that there was no cross settlement in case it didn't
+turn out well. Could it turn out well? She had not got over that other
+boy--he knew. They were to go to Spain for the honeymoon. He would be
+even lonelier when she was gone. But later, perhaps, she would forget,
+and turn to him again!
+
+Winifred's voice broke on his reverie.
+
+"Why! Of all wonders--June!"
+
+There, in a djibbah--what things she wore!--with her hair straying from
+under a fillet, Soames saw his cousin, and Fleur going forward to greet
+her. The two passed from their view out on to the stairway.
+
+"Really," said Winifred, "she does the most impossible things! Fancy
+HER coming!"
+
+"What made you ask her?" muttered Soames.
+
+"Because I thought she wouldn't accept, of course."
+
+Winifred had forgotten that behind conduct lies the main trend of
+character; or, in other words, omitted to remember that Fleur was now a
+"lame duck."
+
+On receiving her invitation, June had first thought: 'I wouldn't go
+near them for the world!' and then, one morning, had awakened from a
+dream of Fleur waving to her from a boat with a wild unhappy gesture.
+And she had changed her mind.
+
+When Fleur came forward and said to her:
+
+"Do come up while I'm changing my dress"; she had followed up the
+stairs. The girl led the way into Imogen's old bedroom, set ready for
+her toilet.
+
+June sat down on the bed, thin and upright, like a little spirit in the
+sere and yellow. Fleur locked the door.
+
+The girl stood before her divested of her wedding-dress. What a pretty
+thing she was!
+
+"I suppose you think me a fool," she said, with quivering lips, "when
+it was to have been Jon. But what does it matter? Michael wants me, and
+I don't care. It'll get me away from home." Diving her hand into the
+frills on her breast, she brought out a letter. "Jon wrote me this."
+
+June read: "Lake Okanagen, British Columbia. I'm not coming back to
+England. Bless you always. Jon."
+
+"She's made safe, you see," said Fleur.
+
+June handed back the letter.
+
+"That's not fair to Irene; she always told Jon he could do as he
+wished."
+
+Fleur smiled bitterly. "Didn't she spoil your life too?"
+
+"Nobody can spoil a life, my dear. That's nonsense. Things happen, but
+we bob up."
+
+Then with a sort of terror she saw the girl sink on her knees and bury
+her face in the djibbah, with a strangled sob.
+
+"It's all right--all right," June murmured: "Don't! There, there!"
+
+But the point of the girl's chin was pressed ever closer into her
+thigh, and the sound was dreadful of her sobbing. Well, well! It had to
+come. She would feel better afterwards! June stroked the short hair of
+that shapely head and all the scattered mother-sense in her focussed
+itself and passed through the tips of her fingers into the girl's brain.
+
+"Don't sit down under it, my dear," she said at last. "We can't control
+life, but we can fight it. Make the best of things. I've had to. I held
+on, like you; and I cried, as you're crying now. And look at me!"
+
+Fleur raised her head; a sob merged suddenly into a little choked
+laugh. In truth it was a thin and rather wild and wasted spirit she was
+looking at, but it had brave eyes.
+
+"All right!" she said. "I'm sorry. I shall forget him, I suppose, if I
+fly fast and far enough."
+
+And, scrambling to her feet, she went over to the washstand.
+
+June watched her removing with cold water the traces of emotion. Save
+for a little becoming pinkness there was nothing left when she stood
+before the mirror. June got off the bed and took a pin-cushion in her
+hand. To put two pins into the wrong places was all the vent she found
+for sympathy.
+
+"Give me a kiss," she said when Fleur was ready, and dug her chin into
+the girl's warm cheek.
+
+"I want a whiff," said Fleur; "don't wait."
+
+June left her, sitting on the bed with a cigarette between her lips and
+her eyes half closed, and went down-stairs. In the doorway of the
+drawing-room stood Soames as if unquiet at his daughter's tardiness.
+June tossed her head and passed down on to the half landing. Her cousin
+Francie was standing there.
+
+"Look!" said June, pointing with her chin at Soames. "That man's fatal!"
+
+"How do you mean," said Francie, "fatal?"
+
+June did not answer her. "I shan't wait to see them off," she said.
+"Good-bye!"
+
+"Good-bye!" And Francie's eyes, of a Celtic grey, goggled. That old
+feud! Really, it was quite romantic!
+
+Soames, moving to the well of the staircase, saw June go, and drew a
+breath of satisfaction. But why didn't Fleur come? They would miss
+their train. That train would bear her away from him, yet he could not
+help fidgeting at the thought that they would lose it. And then she did
+come, running down in her tan-coloured frock and black velvet cap, and
+passed him into the drawing-room. He saw her kiss her mother, her aunt,
+Val's wife, Imogen, and then come forth, quick and pretty as ever. How
+would she treat him at this last moment of her girlhood? He couldn't
+hope for much!
+
+Her lips pressed the middle of his cheek.
+
+"Daddy!" she said, and was past and gone. Daddy! She hadn't called him
+that for years. He drew a long breath and followed slowly down. There
+was all the folly with that confetti stuff and the rest of it to go
+through with, yet. But he would like just to catch her smile, if she
+leaned out, though they would hit her in the eye with the shoe, if they
+didn't take care. Young Mont's voice said fervently in his ear:
+
+"Good-bye, sir; and thank you! I'm so fearfully bucked."
+
+"Good-bye," he said; "don't miss your train."
+
+He stood on the bottom step but three, whence he could see above the
+heads--the silly hats and heads. They were in the car now; and there
+was that stuff, showering, and there went the shoe. A flood of
+something welled up in Soames, and--he didn't know--he couldn't see!
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE LAST OF THE FORSYTES
+
+
+When they came to prepare that terrific symbol Timothy Forsyte--the one
+pure individualist left, the only man who hadn't heard of the Great
+War--they found him wonderful--not even death had undermined his
+soundness.
+
+To Smither and Cook that preparation came like final evidence of what
+they had never believed possible--the end of the old Forsyte family on
+earth. Poor Mr. Timothy must now take a harp and sing in the company of
+Miss Forsyte, Mrs. Julia, Miss Hester; with Mr. Jolyon, Mr. Swithin,
+Mr. James, Mr. Roger, and Mr. Nicholas of the party. Whether Mrs.
+Hayman would be there was more doubtful, seeing that she had been
+cremated. Secretly Cook thought that Mr. Timothy would be upset--he had
+always been so set against barrel organs. How many times had she not
+said: "Drat the thing! There it is again! Smither, you'd better run up
+and see what you can do." And in her heart she would so have enjoyed
+the tunes, if she hadn't known that Mr. Timothy would ring the bell in
+a minute and say: "Here, take him a halfpenny and tell him to move on."
+Often they had been obliged to add threepence of their own before the
+man would go--Timothy had ever underrated the value of emotion. Luckily
+he had taken the organs for blue-bottles in his last years, which had
+been a comfort, and they had been able to enjoy the tunes. But a harp!
+Cook wondered. It WAS a change! And Mr. Timothy had never liked change.
+But she did not speak of this to Smither, who did so take a line of her
+own in regard to heaven that it quite put one about sometimes.
+
+She cried while Timothy was being prepared, and they all had sherry
+afterwards out of the yearly Christmas bottle, which would not be
+needed now. Ah! dear! She had been there five-and-forty years and
+Smither nine-and-thirty! And now they would be going to a tiny house in
+Tooting, to live on their savings and what Miss Hester had so kindly
+left them--for to take fresh service after the glorious past--No! But
+they WOULD like just to see Mr. Soames again, and Mrs. Dartie, and Miss
+Francie, and Miss Euphemia. And even if they had to take their own cab,
+they felt they must go to the funeral. For six years Mr. Timothy had
+been their baby, getting younger and younger every day, till at last he
+had been too young to live.
+
+They spent the regulation hours of waiting in polishing and dusting, in
+catching the one mouse left, and asphyxiating the last beetle, so as to
+leave it nice, discussing with each other what they would buy at the
+sale. Miss Ann's work-box; Miss Juley's (that is Mrs. Julia's) seaweed
+album; the fire-screen Miss Hester had crewelled; and Mr. Timothy's
+hair--little golden curls, glued into a black frame. Oh! they must have
+those--only the price of things had gone up so!
+
+It fell to Soames to issue invitations for the funeral. He had them
+drawn up by Gradman in his office--only blood relations, and no
+flowers. Six carriages were ordered. The Will would be read afterwards
+at the house.
+
+He arrived at eleven o'clock to see that all was ready. At a quarter
+past old Gradman came in black gloves and crape on his hat. He and
+Soames stood in the drawing-room waiting. At half-past eleven the
+carriages drew up in a long row. But no one else appeared. Gradman said:
+
+"It surprises me, Mr. Soames. I posted them myself."
+
+"I don't know," said Soames; "he'd lost touch with the family."
+
+Soames had often noticed in old days how much more neighbourly his
+family were to the dead than to the living. But, now, the way they had
+flocked to Fleur's wedding and abstained from Timothy's funeral, seemed
+to show some vital change. There might, of course, be another reason;
+for Soames felt that if he had not known the contents of Timothy's
+Will, he might have stayed away himself through delicacy. Timothy had
+left a lot of money, with nobody in particular to leave it to. They
+mightn't like to seem to expect something.
+
+At twelve o'clock the procession left the door; Timothy alone in the
+first carriage under glass. Then Soames alone; then Gradman alone; then
+Cook and Smither together. They started at a walk, but were soon
+trotting under a bright sky. At the entrance to Highgate Cemetery they
+were delayed by service in the Chapel. Soames would have liked to stay
+outside in the sunshine. He didn't believe a word of it; on the other
+hand, it was a form of insurance which could not safely be neglected,
+in case there might be something in it after all.
+
+They walked up two and two--he and Gradman, Cook and Smither--to the
+family vault. It was not very distinguished for the funeral of the last
+old Forsyte.
+
+He took Gradman into his carriage on the way back to the Bayswater Road
+with a certain glow in his heart. He had a surprise in pickle for the
+old chap who had served the Forsytes four-and-fifty years--a treat that
+was entirely his doing. How well he remembered saying to Timothy the
+day after Aunt Hester's funeral: "Well, Uncle Timothy, there's Gradman.
+He's taken a lot of trouble for the family. What do you say to leaving
+him five thousand?" and his surprise, seeing the difficulty there had
+been in getting Timothy to leave anything, when Timothy had nodded. And
+now the old chap would be as pleased as Punch, for Mrs. Gradman, he
+knew, had a weak heart, and their son had lost a leg in the war. It was
+extraordinarily gratifying to Soames to have left him five thousand
+pounds of Timothy's money. They sat down together in the little
+drawing-room, whose walls--like a vision of heaven--were sky-blue and
+gold, with every picture-frame unnaturally bright, and every speck of
+dust removed from every piece of furniture, to read that little
+masterpiece,--the Will of Timothy. With his back to the light in Aunt
+Hester's chair, Soames faced Gradman with his face to the light on Aunt
+Ann's sofa; and, crossing his legs, began:
+
+"This is the last Will and Testament of me Timothy Forsyte of The Bower
+Bayswater Road London I appoint my nephew Soames Forsyte of The Shelter
+Mapledurham and Thomas Gradman of 159 Folly Road Highgate (hereinafter
+called my Trustees) to be the trustees and executors of this my Will.
+To the said Soames Forsyte I leave the sum of one thousand pounds free
+of legacy duty and to the said Thomas Gradman I leave the sum of five
+thousand pounds free of legacy duty."
+
+Soames paused. Old Gradman was leaning forward, convulsively gripping a
+stout black knee with each of his thick hands; his mouth had fallen
+open so that the gold fillings of three teeth gleamed; his eyes were
+blinking; two tears rolled slowly out of them. Soames read hastily on.
+
+"All the rest of my property of whatsoever description I bequeath to my
+Trustees upon Trust to convert and hold the same upon the following
+trusts namely. To pay thereout all my debts funeral expenses and
+outgoings of any kind in connection with my Will and to hold the
+residue thereof in trust for that male lineal descendant of my father
+Jolyon Forsyte by his marriage with Ann Pierce who after the decease of
+all lineal descendants whether male or female of my said father by his
+said marriage in being at the time of my death shall last attain the
+age of twenty-one years absolutely it being my desire that my property
+shall be nursed to the extreme limit permitted by the laws of England
+for the benefit of such male lineal descendant as aforesaid."
+
+Soames read the investment and attestation clauses, and, ceasing,
+looked at Gradman. The old fellow was wiping his brow with a large
+handkerchief, whose brilliant colour supplied a sudden festive tinge to
+the proceedings.
+
+"My word, Mr. Soames!" he said, and it was clear that the lawyer in him
+had utterly wiped out the man: "My word! Why, there are two babies now,
+and some quite young children--if one of them lives to be eighty--it's
+not a great age--and add twenty-one--that's a hundred years; and Mr.
+Timothy worth a hundred and fifty thousand pound if he's worth a penny.
+Compound interest at five per cent doubles you in fourteen years. In
+fourteen years three hundred thousand--six hundred thousand in
+twenty-eight--twelve hundred thousand in forty-two--twenty-four hundred
+thousand in fifty-six--four million eight hundred thousand in
+seventy--nine million six hundred thousand in eighty-four--Why, in a
+hundred years it'll be twenty million! And we shan't live to see it! It
+IS a Will!"
+
+Soames said dryly: "Anything may happen. The State might take the lot;
+they're capable of anything in these days."
+
+"And carry five," said Gradman to himself. "I forgot--Mr. Timothy's in
+Consols; we shan't get more than two per cent with this income tax. To
+be on the safe side, say seven million. Still, that's a pretty penny."
+
+Soames rose and handed him the Will. "You're going into the City. Take
+care of that, and do what's necessary. Advertise; but there are no
+debts. When's the sale?"
+
+"Tuesday week," said Gradman. "Life or lives in bein' and twenty-one
+years afterwards--it's a long way off. But I'm glad he's left it in the
+family." ...
+
+The sale--not at Jobson's, in view of the Victorian nature of the
+effects--was far more freely attended than the funeral, though not by
+Cook and Smither, for Soames had taken it on himself to give them their
+hearts' desires. Winifred was present, Euphemia, and Francie, and
+Eustace had come in his car. The miniatures, Barbizons, and J. R.
+drawings had been bought in by Soames; and relics of no marketable
+value were set aside in an off-room for members of the family who cared
+to have mementos. These were the only restrictions upon bidding
+characterised by an almost tragic langour. Not one piece of furniture,
+no picture or porcelain figure appealed to modern taste. The
+humming-birds had fallen like autumn leaves when taken from where they
+had not hummed for sixty years. It was painful to Soames to see the
+chairs his aunts had sat on, the little grand piano they had
+practically never played, the books whose outsides they had gazed at,
+the china they had dusted, the curtains they had drawn, the hearth-rug
+which had warmed their feet; above all, the beds they had lain and died
+in--sold to little dealers, and the housewives of Fulham. And yet--what
+could one do? Buy them and stick them in a lumber-room? No; they had to
+go the way of all flesh and furniture, and be worn out. But when they
+put up Aunt Ann's sofa and were going to knock it down for thirty
+shillings, he cried out, suddenly: "Five pounds!" The sensation was
+considerable, and the sofa his.
+
+When that little sale was over in the fusty saleroom, and those
+Victorian ashes scattered, he went out into the misty October sunshine
+feeling as if cosiness had died out of the world, and the board "To
+Let" was up, indeed. Revolutions on the horizon; Fleur in Spain; no
+comfort in Annette; no Timothy's on the Bayswater Road. In the
+irritable desolation of his soul he went into the Goupenor Gallery.
+That chap Jolyon's water-colours were on view there. He went in to look
+down his nose at them--it might give him some faint satisfaction. The
+news had trickled through from June to Val's wife, from her to Val,
+from Val to his mother, from her to Soames, that the house--the fatal
+house at Robin Hill--was for sale, and Irene going to join her boy out
+in British Columbia, or some such place. For one wild moment the
+thought had come to Soames: 'Why shouldn't I buy it back? I meant it
+for my--!' No sooner come than gone. Too lugubrious a triumph; with two
+many humiliating memories for himself and Fleur. She would never live
+there after what had happened. No, the place must go its way to some
+peer or profiteer. It had been a bone of contention from the first, the
+shell of the feud and with the woman gone, it was an empty shell. "For
+Sale or To Let." With his mind's eye he could see that board raised
+high above the ivied wall which he had built.
+
+He passed through the first of the two rooms in the Gallery. There was
+certainly a body of work! And now that the fellow was dead it did not
+seem so trivial. The drawings were pleasing enough, with quite a sense
+of atmosphere, and something individual in the brush work. 'His father
+and my father; he and I; his child and mine!' thought Soames. So it had
+gone on! And all about that woman! Softened by the events of the past
+week, affected by the melancholy beauty of the autumn day, Soames came
+nearer than he had ever been to realisation of that truth--passing the
+understanding of a Forsyte pure--that the body of Beauty has a
+spiritual essence, uncapturable save by a devotion which thinks not of
+self. After all, he was near that truth in his devotion to his
+daughter; perhaps that made him understand a little how he had missed
+the prize. And there, among the drawings of his kinsman, who had
+attained to that which he had found beyond his reach, he thought of him
+and her with a tolerance which surprised him. But he did not buy a
+drawing.
+
+Just as he passed the seat of custom on his return to the outer air he
+met with a contingency which had not been entirely absent from his mind
+when he went into the Gallery--Irene, herself, coming in. So she had
+not gone yet, and was still paying farewell visits to that fellow's
+remains! He subdued the little involuntary leap of his
+subconsciousness, the mechanical reaction of his senses to the charm of
+this once-owned woman, and passed her with averted eyes. But when he
+had gone by he could not for the life of him help looking back. This,
+then, was finality--the heat and stress of his life, the madness and
+the longing thereof, the long, the only defeat he had known, would be
+over when she faded from his view this time; even such memories had
+their own queer aching value. She, too, was looking back. Suddenly she
+lifted her gloved hand, her lips smiled faintly, her dark eyes seemed
+to speak. It was the turn of Soames to make no answer to that smile and
+that little farewell wave; he went out into the fashionable street
+quivering from head to foot. He knew what she had meant to say: "Now
+that I am going for ever out of the reach of you and yours--forgive me;
+I wish you well." That was the meaning; last sign of that terrible
+reality--passing morality, duty, common sense--her aversion from him
+who had owned her body but had never touched her spirit or her heart.
+It hurt; yes--more than if she had kept her mask unmoved, her hand
+unlifted.
+
+Three days later, in that fast-yellowing October, Soames took a
+taxi-cab to Highgate Cemetery and mounted through its white forest to
+the Forsyte vault. Close to the cedar, above catacombs and columbaria,
+tall, ugly, and individual, it looked like an apex of the competitive
+system. He could remember a discussion wherein Swithin had advocated
+the addition to its face of the pheasant proper. The proposal had been
+rejected in favour of a wreath in stone, above the stark words: "The
+family vault of Jolyon Forsyte: 1850." It was in good order. All trace
+of the recent interment had been removed, and its sober grey gloomed
+reposefully in the sunshine. The whole family lay there now, except old
+Jolyon's wife, who had gone back under a contract to her own family
+vault in Suffolk; old Jolyon himself lying at Robin Hill; and Susan
+Hayman, cremated so that none knew where she might be. Soames gazed at
+it with satisfaction--massive, needing little attention; and this was
+important, for he was well aware that no one would attend to it when he
+himself was gone, and he would have to be looking out for lodgings
+soon. He might have twenty years before him, but one never knew. Twenty
+years without an aunt or uncle, with a wife of whom one had better not
+know anything, with a daughter gone from home. His mood inclined to
+melancholy and retrospection. This cemetery was quite full now--of
+people with extraordinary names, buried in extraordinary taste. Still,
+they had a fine view up here, right over London. Annette had once given
+him a story to read by that Frenchman, Maupassant--a most lugubrious
+concern, where all the skeletons emerged from their graves one night,
+and all the pious inscriptions on the stones were altered to
+descriptions of their sins. Not a true story at all. He didn't know
+about the French, but there was not much real harm in English people
+except their teeth and their taste, which were certainly deplorable.
+"The family vault of Jolyon Forsyte, 1850." A lot of people had been
+buried here since then--a lot of English life crumbled to mould and
+dust! The boom of an airplane passing under the gold-tinted clouds
+caused him to lift his eyes. The deuce of a lot of expansion had gone
+on. But it all came back to a cemetery--to a name and a date on a tomb.
+And he thought with a curious pride that he and his family had done
+little or nothing to help this feverish expansion. Good solid
+middlemen, they had gone to work with dignity to manage and possess.
+"Superior Dosset," indeed, had built, in a dreadful, and Jolyon
+painted, in a doubtful period, but so far as he remembered not another
+of them all had soiled his hands by creating anything--unless you
+counted Val Dartie and his horse-breeding. Collectors, solicitors,
+barristers, merchants, publishers, accountants, directors, land agents,
+even soldiers--there they had been! The country had expanded, as it
+were, in spite of them. They had checked, controlled, defended, and
+taken advantage of the process--and when you considered how "Superior
+Dosset" had begun life with next to nothing, and his lineal descendants
+already owned what old Gradman estimated at between a million and a
+million and a half, it was not so bad! And yet he sometimes felt as if
+the family bolt was shot, their possessive instinct dying out. They
+seemed unable to make money--this fourth generation; they were going
+into art, literature, farming, or the army; or just living on what was
+left them--they had no push and no tenacity. They would die out if they
+didn't take care.
+
+Soames turned from the vault and faced towards the breeze. The air up
+here would be delicious if only he could rid his nerves of the feeling
+that mortality was in it. He gazed restlessly at the crosses and the
+urns, the angels, the "immortelles," the flowers, gaudy or withering;
+and suddenly he noticed a spot which seemed so different from anything
+else up there that he was obliged to walk the few necessary yards and
+look at it. A sober corner, with a massive queer-shaped cross of grey
+rough-hewn granite, guarded by four dark yew-trees. The spot was free
+from the pressure of the other graves, having a little box-hedged
+garden on the far side, arid in front a goldening birch-tree. This
+oasis in the desert of conventional graves appealed to the aesthetic
+sense of Soames, and he sat down there in the sunshine. Through those
+trembling gold birch leaves he gazed out at London, and yielded to the
+waves of memory. He thought of Irene in Montpellier Square, when her
+hair was rusty-golden and her white shoulders his--Irene, the prize of
+his love--passion, resistant to his ownership. He saw Bosinney's body
+lying in that white mortuary, and Irene sitting on the sofa looking at
+her picture with the eyes of a dying bird. Again he thought of her by
+the little green Niobe in the Bois de Boulogne, once more rejecting
+him. His fancy took him on beside his drifting river on the November
+day when Fleur was to be born, took him to the dead leaves floating on
+the green-tinged water and the snake-headed weed for ever swaying and
+nosing, sinuous, blind, tethered. And on again to the window opened to
+the cold starry night above Hyde Park, with his father lying dead. His
+fancy darted to that picture of "The Future Town," to that boy's and
+Fleur's first meeting; to the blueish trail of Prosper Profond's cigar,
+and Fleur in the window pointing down to where the fellow prowled. To
+the sight of Irene and that dead fellow sitting side by side in the
+Stand at Lord's. To her and that boy at Robin Hill. To the sofa, where
+Fleur lay crushed up in the corner; to her lips pressed into his cheek,
+and her farewell "Daddy." And suddenly he saw again Irene's grey-gloved
+hand waving its last gesture of release.
+
+He sat there a long time dreaming his career, faithful to the scut of
+his possessive instinct, warming himself even with its failures.
+
+"To Let"--the Forsyte age and way of life, when a man owned his soul,
+his investments, and his woman, without check or question. And now the
+State had, or would have, his investments, his woman had herself, and
+God knew who had his soul. "To Let"--that sane and simple creed!
+
+The waters of change were foaming in, carrying the promise of new forms
+only when their destructive flood should have passed its full. He sat
+there, subconscious of them, but with his thoughts resolutely set on
+the past--as a man might ride into a wild night with his face to the
+tail of his galloping horse. Athwart the Victorian dykes the waters
+were rolling on property, manners, and morals, on melody and the old
+forms of art--waters bringing to his mouth a salt taste as of blood,
+lapping to the foot of this Highgate Hill where Victorianism lay
+buried. And sitting there, high up on its most individual spot,
+Soames--like a figure of Investment--refused their restless sounds.
+Instinctively he would not fight them--there was in him too much
+primeval wisdom, of Man the possessive animal. They would quiet down
+when they had fulfilled their tidal fever of dispossessing and
+destroying; when the creations and the properties of others were
+sufficiently broken and dejected--they would lapse and ebb, and fresh
+forms would rise based on an instinct older than the fever of
+change--the instinct of Home.
+
+"Je m'en fiche," said Prosper Profond. Soames did not say "Je m'en
+fiche"--it was French, and the fellow was a thorn in his side--but deep
+down he knew that change was only the interval of death between two
+forms of life, destruction necessary to make room for fresher property.
+What though the board was up, and cosiness to let?--some one would come
+along and take it again some day.
+
+And only one thing really troubled him, sitting there--the melancholy
+craving in his heart--because the sun was like enchantment on his face
+and on the clouds and on the golden birch leaves, and the wind's rustle
+was so gentle, and the yew-tree green so dark, and the sickle of a moon
+pale in the sky.
+
+Ah! He might wish and wish and never get it--the beauty and the loving
+in the world!
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of To Let, by John Galsworthy
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TO LET ***
+
+***** This file should be named 3817.txt or 3817.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/3/8/1/3817/
+
+Produced by Charles Franks, Robert Rowe and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines.
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+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
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.