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

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....

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