On her return to Nettlefold from her night in town, Fleur had continued to ‘eat her heart out’ by ‘the sad sea wave.’ For still neither Jon nor his wife came to see her. Clearly she was labelled “poison.” Twice she had walked over to Green Hill Farm hoping for another “jolly accident.” She had seen there an attractive old house with aged farm buildings flanked by a hill and a wide prospect towards the sea. Calm, broad, and homelike, the place roused hostility in her. It could never be HER home, and so was inimical, part of the forces working against her. Loose ends in Jon’s life were all in her favour. In exploitation of those calm acres he would be secured to that girl his wife, out of her reach again, this time for good—the twice-burnt child! And yet, with all her heartache, she was still uncertain what, precisely, she wanted. Not having to grapple with actual decision, things seemed possible which, in her bones, she knew might not be possible. Even to fling her ‘cap over the windmill,’ did not seem like rank and staring madness. To retrieve Spain with Jon! Her hands clenched and her lips loosened at the thought of it—an Odyssey together, till in the shifting, tolerant, modern world, all was forgotten, if not forgiven! Every form of companionship with him from decorous and platonic friendship to the world well lost; from guilty and secret liaison to orderly and above-board glimpses of him at not too long-intervals. According to the tides in her blood, all seemed possible, if not exactly probable, so long as she did not lose him again altogether.
To these feverish veerings of her spirit, a letter from her Aunt Winifred supplied a point of anchorage:
“I hear from Val that they are not going to Goodwood after all—their nice two-year-old is not in form. Such a bore. It’s the most comfortable meeting of the year. They seem to be very busy settling about the farm that Jon Forsyte is going to take. It will be pleasant for Val and Holly to have them so close, though I’m afraid that American child will find it dull. Holly writes that they are going to an amusing little fancy dress affair at the hotel in Nettlefold. Anne is to go as a water-nymph—she will make quite a good one with her nice straight legs. Holly is to be Madame Vigee le Brun; and Val says he’ll go as a tipster or not at all. I do hope he won’t redden his nose. Young Jon Forsyte has an Arab dress he brought from Egypt.”
‘And I,’ thought Fleur, ‘have the dress I wore the night I went to his room at Wansdon.’ How she had wished now that she had come out of that room his wife; after that nothing could have divided them. But they had been such innocents then!
For at once she had made up her mind to go to that dance herself. She was there first, and with malicious pleasure watched the faces of those two when she met them at the entrance of the room. Her grape-dress. She could see that Jon remembered it, and quickly she began to praise Anne’s. A water-nymph to the life! As for Jon—another wife or two was all he needed to be perfect! She was discretion itself until that waltz; and even then she had tried to be discreet to all but Jon. For him she kept (or so she hoped) the closeness, the clinging, and the languor of her eyes; but in those few minutes she let him know quite surely that love ran in her veins.
“‘Always,’” was all she said when at last they stopped.
And, after that dance, she stole away; having no heart to see him dance with his water-nymph. She crept up to her small bedroom trembling, and on her bed fell into a passion of silent weeping. And the water-nymph’s browned face and eyes and legs flitted torturingly in the tangled glades of her vision. She quieted down at last. At least, for a few minutes, she had had him to herself, heart against heart. That was something.
She rose late, pale and composed again. At ten o’clock the startling appearance of her father’s car completed the masking of her face. She greeted him with an emphatic gratitude quite unfelt.
“Dad! How lovely! Where have you sprung from?”
“Nettlefold. I spent the night there.”
“At the hotel?”
“Yes.”
“Why! I was there myself last night at a dance!”
“Oh!” said Soames, “that fancy dress affair—they told me of it. Pleasant?”
“Not very; I left early. If I’d known you were there! Why didn’t you tell me you were coming down to fetch us home?”
“It just came into my mind that it was better for the boy than the train.”
And Fleur could not tell what he had seen, or if, indeed, he had seen anything.
Fortunately, during the journey up, Kit had much to say, and Soames dozed, very tired after a night of anxiety, indecision, and little sleep. The aspect of the South Square house, choice and sophisticated, and the warmth of Michael’s greeting, quite beautifully returned by Fleur, restored to him at least a measure of equanimity. Here, at all events, was no unhappy home; that counted much in the equation of a future into which he could no longer see.
After lunch he went up to Michael’s study to discuss slum conversion. Confronted, while they were talking, with Fleur’s water-colour, Soames rediscovered the truth that individuals are more interesting than the collection of them called the State. Not national welfare, but the painter of those passion fruits, possessed his mind. How prevent her from eating them?
“Yes, sir. That’s really quite good, isn’t it? I wish Fleur would take seriously to water-colour work.”
Soames started.
“I wish she’d take seriously to anything, and keep her mind occupied.”
Michael looked at him. ‘Rather like a dog,’ Soames thought, ‘trying to understand.’ Suddenly, he saw the young man wet his lips.
“You’ve got something to tell me, sir, I believe. I remember what you said to me some weeks ago. Is it anything to do with that?”
“Yes,” answered Soames, watching his eyes. “Don’t take it too much to heart, but I’ve reason to believe she’s never properly got over the feeling she used to have. I don’t know how much you’ve heard about that boy and girl affair.”
“Pretty well all, I think.” Again he saw Michael moisten his lips.
“Oh! From her?”
“No. Fleur’s never said a word. From Miss June Forsyte.”
“That woman! SHE’S sure to have plumped it all out. But Fleur’s fond of you.”
“I belong.”
It seemed to Soames a queer way of putting it; pathetic, somehow!
“Well,” he said, “I’ve not made a sign. Perhaps you’d like to know how I formed my view.”
“No, sir.”
Soames glanced quickly at him and away again. This was a bitter moment, no doubt, for young Michael! Was one precipitating a crisis which one felt, deeply yet vaguely, had to be reached and passed? He himself knew how to wait, but did this modern young man, so feather-pated and scattery? Still, he was a gentleman. That at least had become a cardinal belief with Soames. And it was a comfort to him, looking at the “White Monkey,” on the wall, who had so slender a claim to such a title.
“The only thing,” he muttered, “is to wait—”
“Not ‘and see,’ sir; anything but that. I can wait and not see, or I can have the whole thing out.”
“No,” said Soames, with emphasis, “don’t have it out! I may be mistaken. There’s everything against it; she knows which side her bread is buttered.”
“Don’t!” said Michael, and got up.
“Now, now,” murmured Soames, “I’ve upset you. Everything depends on keeping your head.”
Michael emitted an unhappy little laugh.
“YOU can’t go round the world again, sir. Perhaps I’D better, this time, and alone.”
Soames looked at him. “This won’t do,” he said. “She’s got a strong affection for you; it’s just feverishness, if it’s anything. Take it like a man, and keep quiet.” He was talking to the young man’s back now, and found it easier. “She was always a spoiled child, you know; spoiled children get things into their heads, but it doesn’t amount to anything. Can’t you get her interested in these slums?”
Michael turned round.
“How far has it gone?”
“There you go!” said Soames. “Not any way so far as I know. I only happened to see her dancing with him last night at that hotel, and noticed her—her expression.”
The word “eyes” had seemed somehow too extravagant.
“There’s always his wife,” he added, quickly, “she’s an attractive little thing; and he’s going to farm down there—they tell me. That’ll take him all his time. How would it be if I took Fleur to Scotland for August and September? With this strike on there’ll be some places in the market still.”
“No, sir. That’s only putting off the evil day. It must go to a finish, one way or the other.”
Soames did not answer for some time.
“It’s never any good to meet trouble half way,” he said at last. “You young people are always in a hurry. One can do things, but one can’t undo them. It’s not,” he went on, shyly, “as if this were anything new—an unfortunate old business revived for the moment; it’ll die away again as it did before, if it’s properly left alone. Plenty of exercise, and keep her mind well occupied.”
The young man’s expression was peculiar.
“And have you found that successful, sir, in your experience?” it seemed to say. That woman June had been blurting out his past, he shouldn’t wonder!
“Promise me, anyway, to keep what I’ve said to yourself, and do nothing rash.”
Michael shook his head. “I can’t promise anything; it must depend, but I’ll remember your advice, sir.”
And with this Soames had to be content.
Acting on that instinct, born of love, which guided him in his dealings with Fleur, he bade her an almost casual farewell, and next day returned to Mapledurham. He detailed to Annette everything that was not of importance, for to tell her what was would never do.
His home on these last days of July was pleasurable; and almost at once he went out fishing in the punt. There, in contemplation of his line and the gliding water, green with reflection, he felt rested. Bullrushes, water lilies, dragon flies, and the cows in his own fields, the incessant cooing of the wood pigeons—with their precious “Take TWO cows, David!”—the distant buzz of his gardener’s lawn mower, the splash of a water rat, shadows lengthening out from the poplars and the willow-trees, the scent of grass and of elder flowers bright along the banks, and the slow drift of the white river clouds—peaceful—very peaceful; and something of Nature’s calm entered his soul, so that the disappearance of his float recalled him to reality with a jerk.
‘It’ll be uneatable,’ he thought, winding at his line.
Comedy the real thing? Was it? Michael wondered. In saying to Soames that he could not wait and see, he had expressed a very natural abhorrence. Watch, spy, calculate—impossible! To go to Fleur and ask for a frank exposure of her feelings was what he would have liked to do; but he could not help knowing the depth of his father-inlaw’s affection and concern, and the length of his head; and he had sufficient feeling to hesitate before imperilling what was as much ‘old Forsyte’s’ happiness as his own. The ‘old boy’ had behaved so decently in pulling up his roots and going round the world with Fleur, that every consideration was due to him. It remained, then, to wait without attempting to see—hardest of all courses because least active. “Keep her mind well occupied!” So easy! Recollecting his own prenuptial feelings, he did not see how it was to be done. And Fleur’s was a particularly difficult mind to occupy with anything except that on which she had set her heart. The slums? No! She possessed one of those eminently sane natures which rejected social problems, as fruitless and incalculable. An immediate job, like the canteen, in which she could shine a little—she would perform beautifully; but she would never work for a remote object, without shining! He could see her clear eyes looking at the slums as they had looked at Foggartism, and his experiment with the out-of-works. He might take her to see Hilary and Aunt May, but it would be futile in the end.
Night brought the first acute trouble. What were to be his relations with her, if her feelings were really engaged elsewhere? To wait and not see meant continuation of the married state. He suspected Soames of having wished to counsel that. Whipped by longing, stung and half numbed by a jealousy he must not show, and unwishful to wound her, he waited for a sign, feeling as if she must know why he was waiting. He received it, and was glad, but it did not convince him. Still!
He woke much lighter in spirit.
At breakfast he asked her what she would like to do, now that she was back and the season over. Did this slum scheme amuse her at all, because, if so, there was a lot to do in it; she would find Hilary and May great sports.
“Rather! Anything really useful, Michael!”
He took her round to the Meads. The result was better than he had hoped.
For his uncle and aunt were human buildings the like of which Fleur had not yet encountered—positively fashioned, concreted in tradition, but freely exposed to sun and air, tiled with taste, and windowed with humour. Michael, with something of their ‘make-up,’ had neither their poise, nor active certainty. Fleur recognized at once that those two dwelt in unity unlike any that she knew, as if, in their twenty odd years together, they had welded a single instrument to carry out a new discovery—the unselfconscious day. They were not fools, yet cleverness in their presence seemed jejune, and as if unrelated to reality. They knew—especially Hilary—a vast deal about flowers, printing, architecture, mountains, drains, electricity, the price of living, Italian cities; they knew how to treat the ailments of dogs, play musical instruments, administer first and even second aid, amuse children, and cause the aged to laugh. They could discuss anything from religion to morality with fluency, and the tolerance that came from experience of the trials of others and forgetfulness of their own. With her natural intelligence Fleur admired them. They were good, but they were not dull—very odd! Admiring them, she could not help making up to them. Their attitude in life—she recognised—was superior to her own, and she was prepared to pay at least lip-service. But lip-service ‘cut no ice’ in the Meads. Hand, foot, intellect and heart were the matter-of-course requirements. To occupy her mind, however, she took the jobs given her. Then trouble began. The jobs were not her own, and there was no career in them. Try as she would, she could not identify herself with Mrs. Corrigan or the little Topmarshes. The girls, who served at Petter and Poplins and kept their clothes in paper bags, bored her when they talked and when they didn’t. Each new type amused her for a day, and then just seemed unlovely. She tried hard, however, for her own sake, and in order to deceive Michael. She had been at it more than a week before she had an idea.
“You know, Michael, I feel I should be ever so much more interested if I ran a place of my own in the country—a sort of rest-house that I could make attractive for girls who wanted air and that.”
To Michael, remembering the canteen, it seemed “an idea” indeed. To Fleur it seemed more—a “lease and release,” as her father might have put it. Her scheming mind had seen the possibilities. She would be able to go there without let or cavil, and none would know what she did with her time. A base of operations with a fool-proof title was essential for a relationship, however innocent, with Jon. She began at once to learn to drive the car; for the “rest-house” must not be so near him as to excite suspicion. She approached her father on the finance of the matter. At first doubtfully, and then almost cordially, Soames approved. If he would pay the rent and rates of the house, she would manage the rest out of her own pocket. She could not have bettered such a policy by way of convincing him that her interest was genuine; for he emphatically distrusted the interest of people in anything that did not cost them money. A careful study of the map suggested to her the neighbourhood of Dorking. Box Hill had a reputation for air and beauty, and was within an hour’s fast drive of Wansdon. In the next three weeks she found and furnished a derelict house, rambling and cheap, close to the road on the London side of Box Hill, with a good garden and stables that could be converted easily. She completed her education with the car, and engaged a couple who could be left in charge with impunity. She consulted Michael and the Hilarys freely. In fact, like a mother cat, who carefully misleads the household as to where she is going to ‘lay’ her kittens, so Fleur, by the nature of her preparations, disguised her roundabout design. The Meads “Rest House,” as it was called, was opened at the end of August.
All this time she possessed her soul with only the scantiest news of Jon. A letter from Holly told her that negotiations for Green Hill Farm were ‘hanging fire’ over the price, though Jon was more and more taken with it; and Anne daily becoming more rural and more English. Rondavel was in great form again, and expected to win at Doncaster. Val had already taken a long shot about him for the Derby next year.
Fleur replied in a letter so worded as to give the impression that she had no other interest in the world just then but her new scheme. They must all drive over and see whether her “Rest House” didn’t beat the canteen. The people were “such dears”—it was all “terribly amusing.” She wished to convey the feeling that she had no fears of herself, no alarm in the thought of Jon; and that her work in life was serious. Michael, never wholly deserted by the naivete of a good disposition, was more and more deceived. To him her mind seemed really occupied; and certainly her body, for she ran up from Dorking almost daily and spent the week-ends with him either at “The Shelter,” where Kit was installed with his grandparents, or at Lippinghall, where they always made a fuss of Fleur. Rowing her on the river in bland weather, Michael recaptured a feeling of security. “Old Forsyte” must have let his imagination run away with him; the old boy WAS rather like a hen where Fleur was concerned, clucking and turning an inflamed eye on everything that came near!
Parliament had risen, and slum conversion work was now all that he was doing. These days on that river, which he ever associated with his wooing, were the happiest he had spent since the strike began—the strike that in narrowed form dragged wearyingly on, so that people ceased to mention it, the weather being warm.
And Soames? By his daughter’s tranquil amiability, he, too, was tranquilised. He would look at Michael and say nothing, in accordance with the best English traditions, and his own dignity. It was he who revived the idea of Fleur’s being painted by June’s “lame duck.” He felt it would occupy her mind still further. He would like, however, to see the fellow’s work first, though he supposed it would mean a visit to June’s.
“If she were to be out,” he said to Fleur, “I shouldn’t mind having a look round her studio.”
“Shall I arrange that, then, Dad?”
“Not too pointedly,” said Soames; “or she’ll get into a fantod.”
Accordingly at the following week-end Fleur said to him:
“If you’ll come up with me on Monday, dear, we’ll go round. The Rafaelite will be in, but June won’t. She doesn’t want to see you any more than you want to see her.”
“H’m!” said Soames. “She always spoke her mind.”
They went up, in his car. After forming his opinion Soames was to return, and Fleur to go on home. The Rafaelite met them at the head of the stairs. To Soames he suggested a bullfighter (not that he had ever seen one in the flesh), with his short whiskers, and his broad, pale face which wore the expression: “If you suppose yourself capable of appreciating my work, you make a mistake.” Soames’ face, on the other hand, wore the expression: “If you suppose that I want to see your work, you make a greater.” And, leaving him to Fleur, he began to look round. In truth he was not unfavourably impressed. The work had turned its back on modernity. The surfaces were smooth, the drawing in perspective, and the colouring full. He perceived a new note, or rather the definite revival of an old one. The chap had undoubted talent; whether it would go down in these days he did not know, but its texture was more agreeable to live with than any he had seen for some time. When he came to the portrait of June he stood for a minute, with his head on one side, and then said, with a pale smile:
“You’ve got her to the life.” It pleased him to think that June had evidently not seen in it what he saw. But when his eyes fell on the picture of Anne, his face fell, too, and he looked quickly at Fleur, who said:
“Yes, Dad? What do you think of that?”
The thought had flashed through Soames’ mind: ‘Is it to get in touch with HIM that she’s ready to be painted?’
“Finished?” he asked.
The Rafaelite answered:
“Yes. Going down to them tomorrow.”
Soames’ face rose again. That risk was over then!
“Quite clever!” he murmured. “The lily’s excellent.” And he passed on to a sketch of the woman who had opened the door to them.
“That’s recognisable! Not at all bad.”
In these quiet ways he made it clear that, while he approved on the whole, he was not going to pay any extravagant price. He took an opportunity when Fleur was out of hearing, and said:
“So you want to paint my daughter. What’s your figure?”
“A hundred and fifty.”
“Rather tall for these days—you’re a young man. However—so long as you make a good thing of it!”
The Rafaelite bowed ironically.
“Yes,” said Soames, “I daresay; you think all your geese are swans—never met a painter who didn’t. You won’t keep her sitting long, I suppose—she’s busy. That’s agreed, then. Goodbye! Don’t come down!”
As they went out he said to Fleur:
“I’ve fixed that. You can begin sitting when you like. His work’s better than you’d think from the look of him. Forbidding chap, I call him.”
“A painter has to be forbidding, Dad; otherwise people would think he was cadging.”
“Something in that,” said Soames. “I’ll get back now, as you won’t let me take you home. Good-bye! Take care of yourself, and don’t overdo it.” And, receiving her kiss, he got into the car.
Fleur began to walk towards her eastward-bound ‘bus as his car moved west, nor did he see her stop, give him some law, then retrace her steps to June’s.
Just as in a very old world to find things or people of pure descent is impossible, so with actions; and the psychologist who traces them to single motives is like Soames, who believed that his daughter wanted to be painted in order that she might see herself hanging on a wall. Everybody, he knew, had themselves hung sooner or later, and generally sooner. Yet Fleur, though certainly not averse to being hung, had motives that were hardly so single as all that. In the service of this complexity, she went back to June’s. That little lady, who had been lurking in her bedroom so as not to meet her kinsman, was in high feather.
“Of course the price is nominal,” she said. “Harold ought really to be getting every bit as much for his portraits as Thom or Lippen. Still, it’s so important for him to be making something while he’s waiting to take his real place. What have you come back for?
“Partly for the pleasure of seeing you,” said Fleur, “and partly because we forgot to arrange for the first sitting. I think my best time would be three o’clock.”
“Yes,” murmured June, doubtfully, not so much from doubt as from not having suggested it herself. “I think Harold could manage that. Isn’t his work exquisite?”
“I particularly like the thing he’s done of Anne. It’s going down to them tomorrow, I hear.”
“Yes; Jon’s coming to fetch it.”
Fleur looked hastily into the little dim mirror to see that she was keeping expression off her face.
“What do you think I ought to wear?”
June’s gaze swept her from side to side.
“Oh! I expect he’ll want an artificial scheme with you.”
“Exactly! But what colour? One must come in something.”
“We’ll go up and ask him.”
The Rafaelite was standing before his picture of Anne. He turned and looked at them, without precisely saying: “Good Lord! These women!” and nodded, gloomily, at the suggestion of three o’clock.
“What do you want her in?” asked June.
The Rafaelite stared at Fleur as if determining where her ribs left off and her hip bones began.
“Gold and silver,” he said, at last.
June clasped her hands.
“Now, isn’t that extraordinary? He’s seen through you at once. Your gold and silver room. Harold, how DID you?”
“I happen to have an old ‘Folly’ dress,” said Fleur, “silver and gold, with bells, that I haven’t worn since I was married.”
“A ‘Folly’!” cried June. “The very thing. If it’s pretty. Some are hideous, of course.”
“Oh! it’s pretty, and makes a charming sound.”
“He can’t paint that,” said June. Then added dreamily: “But you could suggest it, Harold—like Leonardo.”
“Leonardo!”
“Oh! Of course! I know, he wasn’t—”
The Rafaelite interrupted.
“Don’t make your face up,” he said to Fleur.
“No,” murmured Fleur. “June, I do so like that of Anne. Has it struck you that she’s sure to want Jon painted now?”
“Of course, I’ll make him promise when he comes tomorrow.”
“He’s going to begin farming, you know; he’ll make that an excuse. Men hate being painted.”
“Oh, that’s all nonsense,” said June. “In old days they loved it. Anyway, Jon must sit before he begins. They’ll make a splendid pair.”
Behind the Rafaelite’s back Fleur bit her lip.
“He must wear a turn-down shirt. Blue, don’t you think, Harold—to go with his hair?”
“Pink, with green spots,” muttered the Rafaelite.
“Then three o’clock tomorrow?” said Fleur, hastily.
June nodded. “Jon’s coming to lunch, so he’ll be gone before you come.”
“All right, then. Au revoir!”
She held her hand out to the Rafaelite, who seemed surprised at the gesture.
“Good-bye, June!”
June came suddenly close and kissed her on the chin. At that moment the little lady’s face looked soft and pink, and her eyes soft; her lips were warm, too, as if she were warm all through.
Fleur went away thinking: ‘Ought I to have asked her not to tell Jon I was going to be painted?’ But surely June, the warm, the single-eyed, would never tell Jon anything that might stop him being useful to her Rafaelite. She stood, noting the geography around “the Poplars.” The only approach to this backwater was by a road that dipped into it and came out again. Just here, she would not be seen from the house, and could see Jon leaving after lunch whichever way he went. But then he would have to take a taxi, for the picture. It struck her bitterly that she, who had been his first-adored, should have to scheme to see him. But if she didn’t, she would never see him! Ah! what a ninny she had been at Wansdon in those old days when her room was next to his. One little act, and nothing could have kept him from her for all time, not his mother nor the old feud; not her father; nothing; and then there had been no vows of hers or his, no Michael, no Kit, no nymph-eyed girl in barrier between them; nothing but youth and innocence. And it seemed to her that youth and innocence were over-rated.
She lit on no plan by which she could see him without giving away the fact that she had schemed. She would have to possess her soul a little longer. Let him once get his head into the painter’s noose, and there would be not one but many chances.
She arrived at three o’clock with her Folly’s dress, and was taken into June’s bedroom to put it on.
“It’s just right,” said June; “delightfully artificial. Harold will love it.”
“I wonder,” said Fleur. The Rafaelite’s temperament had not yet struck her as very loving. They went up to the studio without having mentioned Jon.
The portrait of Anne was gone. And when June went to fetch “the exact thing” to cover a bit of background, Fleur said at once:
“Well? Are you going to paint my cousin Jon?”
The Rafaelite nodded.
“He didn’t want to be, but SHE made him.”
“When do you begin?”
“To-morrow,” said the Rafaelite. “He’s coming every morning for a week. What’s the good of a week?”
“If he’s only got a week I should have thought he’d better stay here.”
“He won’t without his wife, and his wife’s got a cold.”
“Oh!” said Fleur, and she thought rapidly. “Wouldn’t it be more convenient, then, for him to sit early in the afternoons? I could come in the mornings; in fact, I’d rather—one feels fresher. June could give him a trunk call.”
The Rafaelite uttered what she judged to be an approving sound. When she left, she said to June: “I want to come at ten every morning, then I get my afternoons free for my ‘Rest House’ down at Dorking. Couldn’t you get Jon to come in the afternoons instead? It would suit him better. Only don’t let him know I’m being painted—my picture won’t be recognisable for a week, anyway.”
“Oh!” said June, “you’re quite wrong, there. Harold always gets an unmistakable likeness at once; but of course he’ll put it face to the wall, he always does while he’s at work on a picture.”
“Good! He’s made quite a nice start. Then if you’ll telephone to Jon, I’ll come tomorrow at ten.” And for yet another day she possessed her soul. On the day after, she nodded at a canvas whose face was to the wall, and asked:
“Do you find my cousin a good sitter?”
“No,” said the Rafaelite; “he takes no interest. Got something on his mind, I should think.”
“He’s a poet, you know,” said Fleur.
The Rafaelite gave her an epileptic stare. “Poet! His head’s the wrong shape—too much jaw, and the eyes too deep in.”
“But his hair! Don’t you find him an attractive subject?”
“Attractive!” replied the Rafaelite—“I paint anything, whether it’s pretty or ugly as sin. Look at Rafael’s Pope—did you ever see a better portrait, or an uglier man? Ugliness is not attractive, but it’s there.”
“That’s obvious,” said Fleur.
“I state the obvious. The only real novelties now are platitudes. That’s why my work is important and seems new. People have got so far away from the obvious that the obvious startles them, and nothing else does. I advise you to think that over.”
“I’m sure there’s a lot in it,” said Fleur.
“Of course,” said the Rafaelite, “a platitude has to be stated with force and clarity. If you can’t do that, you’d better go on slopping around and playing parlour tricks like the Ga-gaists. They’re a bathetic lot, trying to prove that cocktails are a better drink than old brandy. I met a man last night who told me he’d spent four years writing twenty-two lines of poetry that nobody can understand. How’s that for bathos? But it’ll make him quite a reputation, till somebody writes twenty-three lines in five years still more unintelligible. Hold your head up… Your cousin’s a silent beggar.”
“Silence is quite a quality,” said Fleur.
The Rafaelite grinned. “I suppose you think I haven’t got it. But you’re wrong, madam. Not long ago I went a fortnight without opening my lips except to eat and say yes or no. SHE got quite worried.”
“I don’t think you’re very nice to her,” said Fleur.
“No, I’m not. She’s after my soul. That’s the worst of women—saving your presence—they’re not content with their own.”
“Perhaps they haven’t any,” said Fleur.
“The Mohammedan view—well, there’s certainly something in it. A woman’s always after the soul of a man, a child, or a dog. Men are content with wanting bodies.”
“I’m more interested in your platitudinal theory, Mr. Blade.”
“Can’t afford to be interested in the other? Eh! Strikes home? Turn your shoulder a bit, will you? No, to the left… Well, it’s a platitude that a woman always wants some other soul—only people have forgotten it. Look at the Sistine Madonna! The baby has a soul of its own, and the Madonna’s floating on the soul of the baby. That’s what makes it a great picture, apart from the line and colour. It states a great platitude; but nobody sees it, now. None of the cognoscenti, anyway—they’re too far gone.”
“What platitude are you going to state in your picture of me?”
“Don’t you worry,” said the Rafaelite. “There’ll be one all right when it’s finished, though I shan’t know what it is while I’m at it. Character will out, you know. Like a rest?”
“Enormously. What platitude did you express in the portrait of my cousin’s wife?”
“Coo Lummy!” said the Rafaelite. “Some catechism!”
“You surely didn’t fail with that picture? Wasn’t it platitudinous?”
“It got her all right. She’s not a proper American.”
“How?”
“Throws back to something—Irish, perhaps, or Breton. There’s nymph in her.”
“She was brought up in the backwoods, I believe,” said Fleur, acidly.
The Rafaelite eyed her.
“You don’t like the lady?”
“Certainly I do, but haven’t you noticed that picturesque people are generally tame? And my cousin—what’s his platitude to be?”
“Conscience,” said the Rafaelite; “that young man will go far on the straight and narrow. He worries.”
A sharp movement shook all Fleur’s silver bells.
“What a dreadful prophecy! Shall I stand again?”
For yet one more day Fleur possessed her soul; then, at the morning’s sitting, accidentally left her vanity bag, behind her, in the studio. She called for it the same afternoon. Jon had not gone. Just out of the sitter’s chair, he was stretching himself and yawning.
“Go on, Jon! Every morning I wish I had your mouth. Mr. Blade, I left my bag; it’s got my cheque book in it, and I shall want it down at Dorking to-night: By the way, I shall be half an hour late for my sitting tomorrow, I’m afraid. Did you know I was your fellow victim, Jon? We’ve been playing ‘Box and Cox.’ How are you? I hear Anne’s got a cold. Give her my sympathy. Is the picture going well? Might I have a peep, Mr. Blade, and see how the platitude is coming out? Oh! It’s going to be splendid! I can quite see the line.”
“Can you?” said the Rafaelite: “I can’t.”
“Here’s my wretched bag! If you’ve finished, Jon, I could run you out as far as Dorking; you’d catch an earlier train. Do come and cheer me on my way. Haven’t seen you for such ages!”
Threading over Hammersmith Bridge, Fleur regained the self-possession she had never seemed to lose. She spoke lightly of light matters, letting Jon grow accustomed to proximity.
“I go down every evening about this time, to see to my chores, and drive up in the morning early. So any afternoon you like I can take you as far as Dorking. Why shouldn’t we see a little of each other in a friendly way, Jon?”
“When we do, it doesn’t seem to make for happiness, Fleur.”
“My dear boy, what is happiness? Surely life should be as harmlessly full as it can be?”
“Harmlessly!”
“The Rafaelite says you have a terrible conscience, Jon.”
“The Rafaelite’s a bounder.”
“Yes; but a clever one. You HAVE changed, you usen’t to have that line between your eyes, and your jaw’s getting too strong. Look, Jon dear, be a friend to me—as they say, and we won’t think of anything else. I always like Wimbledon Common—it hasn’t been caught up yet. Have you bought that farm?”
“Not quite.”
“Let’s go by way of Robin Hill, and look at it through the trees? It might inspire you to a poem.”
“I shall never write any more verse. It’s quite gone.”
“Nonsense, Jon. You only want stirring up. Don’t I drive well, considering I’ve only been at it five weeks?”
“You do everything well, Fleur.”
“You say that as if you disapproved. Do you know we’d never danced together before that night at Nettlefold? Shall we ever dance together again?”
“Probably not.”
“Optimistic Jon! That’s right—smile! Look! Is that the church where you were baptized?”
“I wasn’t.”
“Oh! No. That was the period, of course, when people were serious about those things. I believe I was done twice over—R.C. and Anglican. That’s why I’m not so religious as you, Jon.”
“Religious? I’m not religious.”
“I fancy you ARE. You have moral backbone, anyway.”
“Really!”
“Jon, you remind me of American notices outside their properties—‘Stop—look—take care—keep out!’ I suppose you think me a frightful butterfly.”
“No, Fleur. Far from it. The butterfly has no knowledge of a straight line between two points.”
“Now what do you mean by that?”
“That you set your heart on things.”
“Did you get that from the Rafaelite?”
“No, but he confirmed it.”
“He did—did he? That young man talks too much. Has he expounded to you his theory that a woman must possess the soul of someone else, and that a man is content with bodies?”
“He has.”
“Is it true?”
“I hate to agree with him, but I think it is, in a way.”
“Well, I can tell you there are plenty of women about now who keep their own souls and are content with other people’s bodies.”
“Are you one of them, Fleur?”
“Ask me another! There’s Robin Hill!”
The fount of Forsyte song and story stood grey and imposing among its trees, with the sinking sun aslant on a front where green sunblinds were still down.
Jon sighed. “I had a lovely time there.”
“Till I came and spoiled it.”
“No; that’s blasphemy.”
Fleur touched his arm.
“That’s nice of you, dear Jon. You always were nice, and I shall always love you—in a harmless way. The coppice looks jolly. God had a brain-wave when he invented larches.”
“Yes, Holly says that the coppice was my grandfather’s favourite spot.”
“Old Jolyon—who wouldn’t marry his beloved, because she was consumptive?”
“I never heard that. But he was a great old fellow, my mother and father adored him.”
“I’ve seen his photograph—don’t get a chin like his, Jon! The Forsytes all have such chins. June’s frightens me.”
“June is one of the best people on earth.”
“Oh! Jon, you are horribly loyal.”
“Is that an offence?”
“It makes everything terribly earnest in a world that isn’t worth it. No, don’t quote Longfellow. When you get home, shall you tell Anne you’ve been driving with me?”
“Why not?”
“She’s uneasy about me as it is, isn’t she? You needn’t answer, Jon. But I think it’s unfair of her. I want so little, and you’re so safe.”
“Safe?” It seemed to Fleur that he closed his teeth on the word, and for a moment she was happy.
“Now you’ve got your lion-cub look. Do lion-cubs have consciences? It’s going to be rather interesting for the Rafaelite. I think your conscience might stop before telling Anne, though. It’s a pity to worry her if she has a talent for uneasiness.” Then, by the silence at her side, she knew she had made a mistake.
“This is where I put in my clutch,” she said, “as they say in the ‘bloods!’” And through Epsom and Leatherhead they travelled in silence.
“Do you love England as much as ever, Jon?”
“More.”
“It IS a gorgeous country.”
“The last word I should have used—a great and lovely country.”
“Michael says its soul is grass.”
“Yes, and if I get my farm, I’ll break some up, all right.”
“I can’t see you as a real farmer.”
“You can’t see me as a real anything—I suppose. – Just an amateur.”
“Don’t be horrid! I mean you’re too sensitive to be a farmer.”
“No. I want to get down to the earth, and I will.”
“You must be a throw-back, Jon. The primeval Forsytes were farmers. My father wants to take me down and show me where they lived.”
“Have you jumped at it?”
“I’m not sentimental; haven’t you realised that? I wonder if you’ve realised anything about me?” And drooping forward over her wheel, she murmured: “Oh! it’s a pity we have to talk like this!”
“I said it wouldn’t work!”
“No, you’ve got to let me see you sometimes, Jon. This is harmless enough. I must and will see you now and then. It’s owed to me!”
Tears stood in her eyes, and rolled slowly down. She felt Jon touch her arm.
“Oh! Fleur, don’t!”
“I’ll put you out at North Dorking now, you’ll just catch the five forty-six. That’s my house. Next time I must show you over it. I’m trying to be good, Jon; and you must help me… Well, here we are! Good-bye, dear Jon; and don’t worry Anne about me, I beseech you!”
A hard handgrip, and he was gone. Fleur turned from the station and drove slowly back along the road.
She put away the car, and entered her “Rest House.” It was full, late holiday time still, and seven young women were resting limbs, tired out in the service of “Petter, Poplin,” and their like.
They were at supper, and a cheery buzz assailed Fleur’s ears. These girls had nothing, and she had everything, except—the one thing that she chiefly wanted. For a moment she felt ashamed, listening to their talk and laughter. No! She would not change with them—and yet without that one thing she felt as if she could not live. And, while she went about the house, sifting the flowers, ordering for tomorrow, inspecting the bedrooms, laughter, cheery and uncontrolled, floated up and seemed to mock her.
Jon had too little sense of his own importance to be simultaneously loved with comfort to himself by two pretty and attractive young women. He drove home from Pulborough, where now daily he parked Val’s car, with a sore heart and a mind distraught. He had seen Fleur six times since his return to England, in a sort of painful crescendo. That dance with her had disclosed to him her state of heart, but still he did not suspect her of consciously pursuing him; and no amount of heart-searching seemed to make his own feelings clearer. Ought he to tell Anne about today’s meeting? In many small and silent ways she had shown that she was afraid of Fleur. Why add to her fears without real cause? The portrait was not his own doing, and only for the next few days was he likely to be seeing Fleur. After that they would meet, perhaps, two or three times a year. “Don’t tell Anne—I beseech you!” Could he tell her after that? Surely he owed Fleur that much consideration. She had never consented to give him up; she had not fallen in love with Michael, as he with Anne. Still undecided, he reached Wansdon. His mother had once said to him: “You must never tell a lie, Jon, your face will always give you away.” And so, though he did not tell Anne, her eyes following him about noted that he was keeping something from her. Her cold was in the bronchial stage, so that she was still upstairs, and tense from lack of occupation. Jon came up early again after dinner, and began to read to her. He read from ‘The Worst Journey in the World,’ and on her side she lay with her face pillowed on her arm and watched him over it. The smoke of a wood fire, the scent of balsamic remedies, the drone of his own voice, retailing that epic of a penguin’s egg, drowsed him till the book dropped from his hand.
“Have a snooze Jon, you’re tired.” Jon lay back, but he did not snooze. He thought instead. In this girl, his wife, he knew well that there was what her brother, Francis Wilmot, called ‘sand.’ She knew how to be silent when shoes pinched. He had watched her making up her mind that she was in danger; and now it seemed to him that she was biding her time. Anne always knew what she wanted. She had a singleness of purpose not confused like Fleur’s by the currents of modernity, and she was resolute. Youth in her South Carolinian home had been simple and self-reliant; and unlike most American girls, she had not had too good a time. It had been a shock to her, he knew, that she was not his first love and that his first love was still in love with him. She had shown her uneasiness at once, but now, he felt, she had closed her guard. And Jon could not help knowing, too, that she was still deeply in love with him for all that they had been married two years. He had often heard that American girls seldom really knew the men they married; but it seemed to him sometimes that Anne knew him better than he knew himself. If so, what did she know? What was he? He wanted to do something useful with his life; he wanted to be loyal and kind. But was it all just wanting? Was he a fraud? Not what she thought him? It was all confused and heavy in his mind, like the air in the room. No use thinking! Better to snooze, as Anne said—better to snooze! He woke and said:
“Hallo! Was I snoring?”
“No. But you were twitching like a dog, Jon.”
Jon got up and went to the window.
“I was dreaming. It’s a beautiful night. A fine September’s the pick of the year.”
“Yes; I love the ‘fall.’ Is your mother coming over soon?”
“Not until we’re settled in. I believe she thinks we’re better without her.”
“Your mother would always feel she was de trop before she was.”
“That’s on the right side, anyway.”
“Yes, I wonder if I should.”
Jon turned. She was sitting up, staring in front of her, frowning. He went over and kissed her.
“Careful of your chest, darling!” and he pulled up the clothes.
She lay back, gazing up at him; and again he wondered what she saw…
He was met next day by June’s: “So Fleur was here yesterday and gave you a lift! I told her what I thought this morning.”
“What DID you think?” said Jon.
“That it mustn’t begin again. She’s a spoiled child not to be trusted.”
His eyes moved angrily.
“You’d better leave Fleur alone.”
“I always leave people alone,” said June; “but this is my house, and I had to speak my mind.”
“I’d better stop sitting then.”
“Now, don’t be silly, Jon. Of course you can’t stop sitting—neither of you. Harold would be frightfully upset.”
“Damn Harold!”
June took hold of his lapel.
“That’s not what I mean at all. The pictures are going to be splendid. I only meant that you mustn’t meet here.”
“Did you tell Fleur that?”
“Yes.”
Jon laughed, and the sound of the laugh was hard.
“We’re not children, June.”
“Have you told Anne?”
“No.”
“There, you see!”
“What?”
His face had become stubborn and angry.
“You’re very like your father and grandfather, Jon—they couldn’t bear to be told anything.”
“Can YOU?”
“Of course, when it’s necessary.”
“Then please don’t interfere.”
Pink rushed into June’s cheeks, tears into her eyes; she winked them away, shook herself, and said coldly:
“I never interfere.”
“No?”
She went more pink, and suddenly stroked his sleeve. That touched Jon, and he smiled.
He “sat” disturbed all that afternoon, while the Rafaelite painted, and June hovered, sometimes with a frown, and sometimes with yearning in her face. He wondered what he should do if Fleur called for him again. But Fleur did not call, and he went home alone. The next day was Sunday, and he did not go up; but on Monday when he came out of “The Poplars,” after “sitting,” he saw Fleur’s car standing by the curb.
“I do want to show you my house today. I suppose June spoke to you, but I’m a reformed character, Jon. Get in!” And Jon got in.
The day was dull, neither lighted nor staged for emotion, and the “reformed character” played her part to perfection. Not a word suggested that they were other than best friends. She talked of America, its language and books. Jon maintained that America was violent in its repressions and in its revolt against repressions.
“In a word,” said Fleur, “young.”
“Yes; but so far as I can make out, it’s getting younger every year.”
“I liked America.”
“Oh! I liked it all right. I made quite a profit, too, on my orchard when I sold.”
“I wonder you came back, Jon. The fact is—you’re old-fashioned.”
“How?”
“Take sex—I couldn’t discuss sex with you.”
“Can you with other people?”
“Oh! with nearly anyone. Don’t frown like that! You’d be awfully out of it, my dear, in London, or New York, for that matter.”
“I hate fluffy talk about sex,” said Jon gruffly. “The French are the only people who understand sex. It isn’t to be talked about as they do here and in America; it’s much too real.”
Fleur stole another look.
“Then let us drop that hot potato. I’m not sure whether I could even discuss art with you.”
“Did you see that St. Gaudens statue at Washington?”
“Yes; but that’s vieux jeu nowadays.”
“Is it?” growled Jon. “What do they want, then?”
“You know as well as I.”
“You mean it must be unintelligible?”
“Put it that way if you like. The point is that art now is just a subject for conversation; and anything that anybody can understand at first sight is not worth talking about and therefore not art.”
“I call that silly,” said Jon.
“Perhaps. But more amusing.”
“If you see through it, how can you be amused?”
“Another hot potato. Let’s try again! I bet you don’t approve of women’s dress, these days?”
“Why not? It’s jolly sensible.”
“La, la! Are we coming together on that?”
“Naturally, you’d all look better without hats. You can wash your heads easily now, you know.”
“Oh! don’t cut us off hats, Jon. All our stoicism would go. If we hadn’t to find hats that suited us, life would be much too easy.”
“But they don’t suit you.”
“I agree, my dear; but I know the feminine character better than you. One must always give babies something to cut their teeth on.”
“Fleur, you’re too intelligent to live in London.”
“My dear boy, the modern young woman doesn’t live anywhere. She floats in an ether of her own.”
“She touches earth sometimes, I suppose.”
Fleur did not answer for a minute; then, looking at him:
“Yes; she touches earth sometimes, Jon.” And in that look she seemed to say again: “Oh! what a pity we have to talk like this!”
She showed him the house in such a way that he might get the impression that she considered to some purpose the comfort of others. Even her momentary encounters with the denizens had that quality. Jon went away with a tingling in his palm, and the thought: ‘She likes to make herself out a butterfly, but at heart—!’ The memory of her clear eyes smiling at him, the half-comic quiver of her lips when she said: “Good-bye, bless you!” blurred his vision of Sussex all the way home. And who shall say that she had not so intended?
Holly had come to meet him with a hired car.
“I’m sorry, Jon, Val’s got the car. He won’t be able to drive you up and down tomorrow as he said he would. He’s had to go up today. And if he can get through his business in town, he’ll go on to Newmarket on Wednesday. Something rather beastly’s happened. His name’s been forged on a cheque for a hundred pounds by an old college friend to whom he’d been particularly decent.”
“Very adequate reasons,” said Jon. “What’s Val going to do?”
“He doesn’t know yet; but this is the third time he’s played a dirty trick on Val.”
“Is it quite certain?”
“The Bank described him unmistakably. He seems to think Val will stand anything; but it can’t be allowed to go on.”
“I should say not.”
“Yes, dear boy; but what would you do? Prosecute an old College friend? Val has a queer feeling that it’s only a sort of accident that he himself has kept straight.”
Jon stared. WAS it an accident that one kept straight?
“Was this fellow in the war?” he asked.
“I doubt it. He seems to be an absolute rotter. I saw his face once—bone slack and bone selfish.”
“Beastly for Val!” said Jon.
“He’s going to consult his uncle, Fleur’s father. By the way, have you seen Fleur lately?”
“Yes. I saw her today. She brought me as far as Dorking, and showed me her house there.”
The look on Holly’s face, the reflective shadow between her eyes, were not lost on him.
“Is there any objection to my seeing her?” he said, abruptly.
“Only you can know that, dear boy.”
Jon did not answer, but the moment he saw Anne he told her. She showed him nothing by face or voice, just asked how Fleur was and how he liked the house. That night, after she seemed asleep, he lay awake, gnawed by uncertainty. WAS it an accident that one kept straight—was it?
The first question Soames put to his nephew in Green Street, was: “How did he get hold of the cheque form? Do you keep your cheque books lying about?”
“I’m afraid I do, rather, in the country, Uncle Soames.”
“Um,” said Soames, “then you deserve all you get. What about your signature?”
“He wrote from Brighton asking if he could see me.”
“You should have made your wife sign your answer.”
Val groaned. “I didn’t think he’d run to forgery.”
“They run to anything when they’re as far gone as that. I suppose when you said ‘No,’ he came over from Brighton all the same?”
“Yes, he did; but I wasn’t in.”
“Exactly; and he sneaked a form. Well, if you want to stop him, you’d better prosecute. He’ll get three years.”
“That’d kill him,” said Val, “to judge by his looks.”
Soames shook his head. “Improve his health—very likely. Has he ever been in prison?”
“Not that I know of.”
“H’m!”
Silence followed this profound remark.
“I can’t prosecute,” said Val suddenly. “College pal. There, but for the grace of God and all that, don’t you know; one might have gone to the dogs oneself.”
Soames stared at him.
“Well,” he said, “I suppose you might. Your father was always in some scrape or other.”
Val frowned. He had suddenly remembered an evening at the Pandemonium, when, in company with another College friend, he had seen his own father, drunk.
“But somehow,” he said, “I’ve got to see that he doesn’t do it again. If he didn’t look such a ‘heart’ subject, one could give him a hiding.”
Soames shook his head. “Personal violence—besides, he’s probably out of England by now.”
“No; I called at his club on the way here—he’s in town all right.”
“You didn’t see him?”
“No. I wanted to see you first.”
Flattered in spite of himself, Soames said sardonically:
“Perhaps he’s got what they call a better nature?”
“By Jove, Uncle Soames, I believe that’s a brain wave!”
Soames shook his head. “Not to judge by his face.”
“I don’t know,” said Val. “After all, he was born a gentleman.”
“That means nothing nowadays. And, apropos, before I forget it: Do you remember a young fellow called Butterfield, in the Elderson affair—no, you wouldn’t. Well, I’m going to take him out of his publishing firm, and put him under old Gradman, to learn about your mother’s and the other family Trusts. Old Gradman’s on his last legs, and this young man can step into his shoes—it’s a permanent job, and better pay than he’s getting now. I can rely on him, and that’s something in these days. I thought I’d tell you.”
“Another brain wave, Uncle Soames. But about your first. Could you see Stainford, and follow that up?”
“Why should I see him?”
“You carry so much more weight than I do.”
“H’m! Seems to me I always have to do the unpleasant thing. However, I expect it’s better than your seeing him.”
Val grinned. “I shall feel much happier if you do it.”
“I shan’t,” said Soames. “That Bank cashier hasn’t made a mistake, I suppose?”
“Who could mistake Stainford?”
“Nobody,” said Soames. “Well, if you won’t prosecute, you’d better leave it to me.”
When Val was gone he remained in thought. Here he was, still keeping the family affairs straight; he wondered what they would do without him some day. That young Butterfield might be a brain wave, but who could tell—the fellow was attached to him, though, in a curious sort of way, with his eyes of a dog! He should put that in hand at once, before old Gradman dropped off. Must give old Gradman a bit of plate, too, with his name engraved, while he could still appreciate it. Most people only got them when they were dead or dotty. Young Butterfield knew Michael, too, and that would make him interested in Fleur’s affairs. But as to this infernal Stainford? How was he going to set about it? He had better get the fellow here if possible, rather than go to his club. If he’d had the brass to stay in England after committing such a bare-faced forgery, he would have the brass to come here again and see what more he could get. And, smiling sourly, Soames went to the telephone.
“Mr. Stainford in the club? Ask him if he’d be good enough to step over and see Mr. Forsyte at Green Street.”
After a look round to see that there were no ornaments within reach, he seated himself in the dining-room and had Smither in.
“I’m expecting that Mr. Stainford, Smither. If I ring, while he’s here, pop out and get a policeman.”
At the expression on Smither’s face he added:
“I don’t anticipate it, but one never knows.”
“There’s no danger, I hope, Mr. Soames?”
“Nothing of the sort, Smither; I may want him arrested—that’s all.”
“Do you expect him to take something again, sir?”
Soames smiled, and waved his hand at the lack of ornaments. “Very likely he won’t come, but if he does, show him in here.”
When she had gone, he settled down with the clock—a Dutch piece too heavy to take away; it had been ‘picked up’ by James, chimed every thing, and had a moon and a lot of stars on its face. He did not feel so ‘bobbish’ before this third encounter with that fellow; the chap had scored twice, and so far as he could see, owing to Val’s reluctance to prosecute, was going to score a third time. And yet there was a sort of fascination in dealing with what they called ‘the limit,’ and a certain quality about the fellow which raised him almost to the level of romance. It was as if the idolised maxim of his own youth ‘Show no emotion,’ and all the fashionableness that, under the aegis of his mother Emily, had clung about Park Lane, were revisiting him in the shape of this languid beggar. And probably the chap wouldn’t come!
“Mr. Stainford, sir.”
When Smither—very red—had withdrawn, Soames did not know how to begin, the fellow’s face, like old parchment, was as if it had come from some grave or other. At last he said:
“I wanted to see you about a cheque. My nephew’s name’s been forged.”
The eyebrows rose, the eyelids drooped still further.
“Yes. Dartie won’t prosecute.”
Soames’ gorge rose.
“You seem very cocksure,” he said; “my nephew has by no means made up his mind.”
“We were at college together, Mr. Forsyte.”
“You trade on that, do you? There’s a limit, Mr. Stainford. That was a very clever forgery, for a first.”
There was just a flicker of the face; and Soames drew the forged cheque from his pocket. Inadequately protected, of course, not even automatically crossed! Val’s cheques would have to have the words “Not negotiable; Credit payee” stamped on them in future. But how could he give this fellow a thorough scare?
“I have a detective at hand,” he said, “only waiting for me to ring. This sort of thing must stop. As you don’t seem to understand that—” and he took a step towards the bell.
A faint and bitter smile had come on those pale lips.
“You’ve never been down and out, I imagine, Mr. Forsyte?”
“No,” answered Soames, with a certain disgust.
“I always am. It’s very wearing.”
“In that case,” said Soames, “you’ll find prison a rest.” But even as he spoke them, the words seemed futile and a little brutal. The fellow wasn’t a man at all—he was a shade, a languid bitter shade. It was as if one were bullying a ghost.
“Look here!” he said. “As a gentleman by birth, give me your word not to try it on again with my nephew, or any of my family, and I won’t ring.”
“Very well, you have my word—such as it is!”
“We’ll leave it at that, then,” said Soames. “But this is the last time. I shall keep the evidence of this.”
“One must live, Mr. Forsyte.”
“I don’t agree,” said Soames.
The “Shade” uttered a peculiar sound—presumably a laugh, and Soames was alone again. He went hastily to the door, and watched the fellow into the street. Live? Must one? Wouldn’t a fellow like that be better dead? Wouldn’t most people be better dead? And, astonished at so extravagant a thought, he went up to the drawing room. Forty-five years since he had laid its foundations, and there it was, as full of marqueterie as ever. On the mantlepiece was a little old daguerreotype, slightly pinked in the cheeks, of his grandfather—‘Superior Dosset’ set in a deep, enamelled frame. Soames contemplated it. The chin of the founder of the Forsyte clan was settled comfortably between the widely separated points of an old-fashioned collar. The eyes—with thick under-lids, were light and shrewd and rather japing; the side-whiskers grey; the mouth looked as if it could swallow a lot; the old-time tail-coat was of broadcloth; the hands those of a man of affairs. A stocky old boy, with a certain force, and a deal of character! Well-nigh a hundred years since that was taken of him. Refreshing to look at character, after that languid seedy specimen! He would like to see where that old chap had been born and bred before he emerged at the end of the eighteenth century and built the house of Forsyte. He would take Riggs, and go down, and if Fleur wouldn’t come—perhaps all the better! Be dull for her! Roots were nothing to young people. Yes, he would go and look at his roots while the weather was still fine. But first to put old Gradman in order. It would do him good to see the old fellow after this experience—he never left the office till half-past five. And, replacing the daguerreotype, Soames took a taxi to the Poultry, reflecting as he went. How difficult it was to keep things secure, with chaps like Elderson and this fellow Stainford always on the look-out. There was the country too, – no sooner was it out of one than it was into another mess; the coal strike would end when people began to feel the winter pinch, but something else would crop up, some war or disturbance or other. And then there was Fleur—she had fifty thousand of her own. Had he been wrong to make her so independent? And yet—the idea of controlling her through money had always been repulsive to him. Whatever she did—she was his only child, one might say his only love. If she couldn’t keep straight for love of her infant and himself, to say nothing of her husband—he couldn’t do it for her by threat of cutting her off or anything like that! Anyway, things were looking better with her, and perhaps he had been wrong.
The City had just begun to disgorge its daily life. Its denizens were scurrying out like rabbits; they didn’t scurry in like that, he would bet—work-shy, nowadays! Ten where it used to be nine; five where it used to be six. Still, with the telephone and one thing and another, they got through as much perhaps; and didn’t drink all the beer and sherry and eat all the chops they used to—a skimpier breed altogether, compared with that old boy whose effigy he had just been gazing at, a shadowy, narrow-headed lot, with a nervy, anxious look, as if they’d invested in life and found it a dropping stock. And not a tailcoat or a silk hat to be seen. Settling his own more firmly on his head, he got out at the familiar backwater off the Poultry, and entered the offices of Cuthcott, Kingson and Forsyte.
Old Gradman was still there, his broad, bent back just divested of its workaday coat.
“Ah! Mr. Soames, I was just going. Excuse me while I put on my coat.”
A frock-coat made in the year one, to judge by the cut of it!
“I go at half-past five now. There isn’t much to do as a rule. I like to get a nap before supper. It’s a pleasure to see you; you’re quite a stranger.”
“Yes,” said Soames. “I don’t come in much, but I’ve been thinking. If anything should happen to either or both of us, things would soon be in Queer Street, Gradman.”
“Aow! We won’t think about tha-at!”
“But we must; we’re neither of us young men.”
“Well, I’m not a chicken, but you’re NO age, Mr. Soames.”
“Seventy-one.”
“Dear, dear! It seems only the other day since I took you down to school at Slough. I remember what happened then better than I do what happened yesterday.”
“So do I, Gradman; and that’s a sign of age. Do you recollect that young chap who came here and told me about Elderson?”
“Aow, yes! Nice young feller. Buttermilk or some such name.”
“Butterfield. Well, I’m going to put him under you here, and I want you to get him au fait with everything.”
The old fellow seemed standing very still; his face, in its surround of grey beard and hair, was quite expressionless. Soames hurried on:
“It’s just precautionary. Some day you’ll be wanting to retire.”
Gradman lifted his hand with a heavy gesture.
“I’ll die in ‘arness, I ‘ope,” he said.
“That’s as you like, Gradman. You’ll remain as you always have been—in full charge; but you’ll have someone to rely on if you don’t feel well or want a holiday or what not.”
“I’d rather not, Mr. Soames. To have a young man about the place—“
“A good young fellow, Gradman. And, for some reason, grateful to me and to my son-inlaw. He won’t give you any trouble. We none of us live for ever, you know.”
The old chap’s face had puckered queerly, his voice grated more than usual.
“It seems going to meet trouble. I’m quite up to the work, Mr. Soames.”
“Oh! I know how you feel,” said Soames. “I feel much the same myself, but Time stands still for no man, and we must look to the future.”
A sigh escaped from its grizzled prison.
“Well, Mr. Soames, if you’ve made up your mind, we’ll say no more; but I don’t like it.”
“Let me give you a lift to your station.”
“I’d rather walk, thank you; I like the air. I’ll just lock up.”
Soames perceived that not only drawers but feeling required locking-up, and went out.
Faithful old chap! One might go round to Polkingford’s and see if one could pick up that bit of plate.
In that emporium, so lined with silver and gold, that a man wondered whether anything had ever been sold there, Soames stood considering. Must be something that a man could swear by—nothing arty or elegant. He supposed the old chap didn’t drink punch—a chapel-goer! How about those camels in silvergilt with two humps each and candles coming out of them? “Joseph Gradman, in gratitude from the Forsyte family” engraved between the humps? Gradman lived somewhere near the Zoo. M’m! Camels? No! A bowl was better. If he didn’t drink punch he could put rose-leaves or flowers into it.
“I want a bowl,” he said, “a really good one.”
“Yes, sir, I think we have the very article.”
They always had the very article!
“How about this, sir—massive silver—a very chaste design.”
“Chaste!” said Soames. “I wouldn’t have it at a gift.”
“No, sir; it isn’t perhaps EXACTLY what you require. Now, this is a nice little bowl.”
“No, no; something plain and solid that would hold about a gallon.”
“Mr. Bankwait—come here a minute. This gentleman wants an old-fashioned bowl.”
“Yes, sir; I think we have the very thing.”
Soames uttered an indistinguishable sound.
“There isn’t much demand for the old-fashioned bowl; but we have a very fine second-hand, that used to be in the Rexborough family.”
“With arms on?” said Soames. “That won’t do. It must be new, or free from arms, anyway.”
“Ah! Then this will be what you want, sir.”
“My Lord!” said Soames; and raising his umbrella he pointed in the opposite direction. “What’s that thing?”
With a slightly chagrined air the shopman brought the article from its case.
Upon a swelling base, with a waist above, a silver bowl sprang generously forth. Soames flipped it with his finger.
“Pure silver, sir; and, as you see, very delicate edging; not too bacchanalian in design; the best gilt within. I should say the very thing you want.”
“It might do. What’s the price?”
The shopman examined a cabalistic sign.
“Thirty-five pounds, sir.”
“Quite enough,” said Soames. Whether it would please old Gradman, he didn’t know, but the thing was in good taste, and would not do the family discredit. “I’ll have that, then,” he said. “Engrave these words on it,” and he wrote them down. “Send it to that address, and the account to me; and don’t be long about it.”
“Very good, sir. You wouldn’t like those goblets? – they’re perfect in their way.”
“Nothing more!” said Soames. “Good evening!” And, handing the shopman his card, with a cold circular glance, he went out. That was off his mind!
September sun sprinkled him, threading his way West along Piccadilly into the Green Park. These gentle autumn days were very pleasant. He didn’t get hot, and he didn’t feel cold. And the plane-trees looked their best, just making up their minds to turn; nice trees, shapely. And, crossing the grassy spaces, Soames felt almost mellow. A rather more rapid step behind impinged on his consciousness. A voice said:
“Ah! Forsyte! Bound for the meeting at Michael’s? Might we go along together?”
Old Mont, perky and talkative as ever! There he went—off at once!
“What’s your view of all these London changes, Forsyte? You remember the peg-top trouser, and the crinoline—Leech in his prime—Old Pam on his horse—September makes one reminiscent.”
“It’s all on the surface,” said Soames.
“On the surface? I sometimes have that feeling. But there is a real change. It’s the difference between the Austen and Trollope novels and these modern fellows. There are no parishes left. Classes? Yes, but divided by man, not by God, as in Trollope’s day.”
Soames sniffed. The chap was always putting things in that sort of way!
“At the rate we’re going, they’ll soon not be divided at all,” he said.
“I think you’re wrong there, Forsyte. I should never be surprised to see the horse come back.”
“The horse,” muttered Soames; “what he got to do with it?”
“What we must look for,” said Sir Lawrence, swinging his cane, “is the millennium. Then we shall soon be developing individuality again. And the millennium’s nearly here.”
“I don’t in the least follow you,” said Soames.
“Education’s free; women have the vote; even the workman has or soon will have his car; the slums are doomed—thanks to you, Forsyte; amusement and news are in every home; the liberal Party’s up the spout; Free Trade’s a moveable feast; sport’s cheap and plentiful; dogma’s got the knock; so has the General Strike; Boy Scouts are increasing rapidly; dress is comfortable; and hair is short—it’s all millennial.”
“What’s all that got to do with the horse?”
“A symbol, my dear Forsyte. It’s impossible to standardize or socialize the horse. We’re beginning to react against uniformity. A little more millennium and we shall soon be cultivating our souls and driving tandem again.”
“What’s that noise?” said Soames. “Sounds like a person in distress.”
Sir Lawrence cocked his eyebrow.
“It’s a vacuum cleaner, in Buckingham Palace. Very human things those.”
Soames grunted—the fellow couldn’t be serious! Well! He might HAVE to be before long. If Fleur—! But he would not contemplate that “if.”
“What I admire about the Englishman,” said Sir Lawrence, suddenly, “is his evolutionary character. He flows and ebbs, and flows again. Foreigners may think him a stick-inthe-mud, but he’s got continuity—a great quality, Forsyte. What are you going to do with your pictures when you take the ferry? Leave them to the nation?”
“Depends on how they treat me. If they’re going to clap on any more Death duties, I shall revoke the bequest.”
“The principle of our ancestors, eh? Voluntary service, or none. Great fellows, our ancestors.”
“I don’t know about yours,” said Soames; “mine were just yeomen. I’m going down to have a look at them tomorrow,” he added defiantly.
“Splendid! I hope you’ll find them at home.”
“We’re late,” said Soames, glancing in at the dining-room window, where the committee were glancing out: “Half-past six! What a funny lot they look!”
“We always look a funny lot,” said Sir Lawrence, following him into the house, “except to ourselves. That’s the first principle of existence, Forsyte.”
Fleur met them in the hall. After dropping Jon at Dorking she had exceeded the limit homewards, that she might appear to have nothing in her thoughts but the welfare of the slums. “The Squire” being among his partridges, the Bishop was in the chair. Fleur went to the sideboard, and, while Michael was reading the minutes, began pouring out the tea. The Bishop, Sir Godfrey Bedwin, Mr. Montross, her father-inlaw, and herself drank China tea; Sir Timothy—whisky and soda; Michael nothing; the Marquess, Hilary, and her father Indian tea; and each maintained that the others were destroying their digestions. Her father, indeed, was always telling her that she only drank China tea because it was the fashion—she couldn’t possibly like it. While she apportioned their beverages she wondered what they would think if they knew what, besides tea, was going on within her. To-morrow was Jon’s last sitting and she was going ‘over the top!’ All the careful possessing of her soul these two months since she had danced with him at Nettlefold would by this time tomorrow be ended. To-morrow at this hour she would claim her own. The knowledge that there must be two parties to any contact did not trouble her. She had the faith of a pretty woman in love. What she willed would be accomplished, but none should know of it! And, handing her cups, she smiled, pitying the ignorance of these wise old men. They should not know, nor anyone else, least of all the young man who last night had held her in his arms. And, thinking of one not yet so holding her, she sat down by the hearth, with her tea and her tables, while her pulses throbbed and her half-closed eyes saw Jon’s face turned round to her from the station door. Fulfilment! She, like Jacob, had served seven years—for the fulfilment of her love—seven long, long years! And—while she sat there listening to the edgeless booming of the Bishop and Sir Godfrey, to the random ejaculations of Sir Timothy, to her father’s close and cautious comments—that something clear, precise, unflinching woven into her nature with French blood, silently perfected the machinery of the stolen life, that should begin tomorrow after they had eaten of forbidden fruit. A stolen life was a safe life if there were no chicken-hearted hesitation, no squeamishness, and no remorse! She might have experienced a dozen stolen lives already, from the certainty she felt about that. She alone would arrange—Jon should be spared all. And no one should know!
“Fleur, would you take a note of that?”
“Yes.”
And she wrote down on her tablets: “Ask Michael what I was to take a note of.”
“Mrs. Mont!”
“Yes, Sir Timothy?”
“Could you get up one of those what d’you call ‘ems for us?”
“Matinees?”
“No, no—jumble sales, don’t they call ’em?”
“Certainly.”
The more she got up for them the more impeccable her reputation, the greater her freedom, and the more she would deserve, and ironically enjoy, her stolen life.
Hilary speaking now. What would HE think if he knew?
“But I think we OUGHT to have a matinee, Fleur. The public are so good, they’ll always pay a guinea to go to what most of them would give a guinea any day not to go to. What so you say, Bishop?”
“A matinee—by all means!”
“Matinees—dreadful things!”
“Not if we got a pleasant play, Mr. Forsyte—something a little old-fashioned—one of L.S.D.‘s. It would advertise us, you know. What do you think, Marquess?”
“My granddaughter Marjorie would get one up for you. It would do her good.”
“H’m. If SHE gets it up, it won’t be old-fashioned.” And Fleur saw her father’s face turning towards her, as he spoke. If only he knew how utterly she was beyond all that; how trivial to her seemed that heart-burning of the past.
“Mr. Montross, have you a theatre in your pocket?”
“I can get you one, Mr. Charwell.”
“First rate! Then, will you and the Marquess and my nephew here take that under your wings? Fleur, tell us how your Rest–House is doing?”
“Perfectly, Uncle Hilary. It’s quite full. The girls are delightful.”
“Wild lot, I should think—aren’t they?”
“Oh! no, Sir Timothy; they’re quite model.”
If only the old gentleman could see over his moustache into the model lady who controlled them!
“Well then, that’s that. If there’s nothing more, Mr. Chairman, will you excuse me? I’ve got to meet an American about ants. We aren’t properly shaking up these landlords in my opinion. Good-night to you all!”
Motioning to Michael to stay behind, Fleur rose to see Sir Timothy out.
“Which umbrella is yours, Sir Timothy?”
“I don’t know; that looks the best. If you get up a jumble sale, Mrs. Mont, I wish you’d sell the Bishop at it. I can’t stand a fellow with a plum in his mouth, especially in the Chair.”
Fleur smiled, and the “old boy” cocked his hat at her. They all cocked their hats at her, and that was pleasant! But would they if they knew! Dusk among the trees of the Square Garden, the lights just turned up—what luck to have such weather—dry and warm! She stood in the doorway, taking long breaths. By this time tomorrow she meant to be a dishonest wife! Well, not more than she had always been in secret aspiration.
‘I’m glad Kit’s down at “The Shelter”,’ she thought. HE should never know, no one should! There would be no change—no change in anything except in her and Jon. The Life Force would break bounds in a little secret river, which would flow—ah, where? Who cared?
“My dear Mont, honesty was never the best policy from a material point of view. The sentiment is purely Victorian. The Victorians were wonderful fellows for squaring circles.”
“I agree, Marquess, I agree; they could think what they wanted better than anybody. When times are fat, you can.”
Those two in the hall behind her—dried-up and withered! Fleur turned to them with her smile.
“My dear young lady—the evening air! You won’t take cold?”
“No thank you, sir; I’m warm all through.”
“How nice that is!”
“May I give you a lift, Marquess?”
“Thank you, Mr. Montross. Wish I could afford a car myself. Are you coming our way, Mont? Do you know that song, Mr. Montross: ‘We’ll all go round to Alice’s house’? It seems to have a fascination for my milk boy. I often wonder who Alice is? I have a suspicion she may not be altogether proper. Good-night to you, Mrs. Mont. How charming your house is!”
“Good-night, sir!”
His hand; “the walrus’s”; her father-inlaw’s.
“Kit all right, Fleur?”
“First rate.”
“Good-night, my dear!”
His dear—the mother of his grandson! ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow!’
The rug wrapped round the cargo of age, the door shut—what, a smooth and silent car! Voices again:
“Will you have a taxi, Uncle Hilary?”
“No, thank you, Michael, the Bishop and I will walk.”
“Then I’ll come with you as far as the corner. Coming, Sir Godfrey? By-bye, darling. Your Dad’s staying to dinner. I’ll be back from old Blythe’s about ten.”
The animals went out four by four!
“Don’t stand there; you’ll get cold!” Her father’s voice! The one person whose eyes she feared. She must keep her mask on now.
“Well, Dad, what have you been doing today? Come into the ‘parlour’—we’ll have dinner quite soon.”
“How’s your picture? Is this fellow taking care not to exaggerate? I think I’d better have a look at it.”
“Not just yet, dear. He’s a very touchy gentleman.”
“They’re all that. I thought of going down West tomorrow to see where the Forsytes sprang from. I suppose you couldn’t take a rest and come?”
Fleur heard, without giving a sign of her relief.
“How long will you be away, Dad?”
“Back on the third day. ‘Tisn’t two hundred miles.”
“I’m afraid it would put my painter out.”
“Well, I didn’t think you’d care to. There’s no kudos there. But I’ve meant to for a long time; and the weather’s fine.”
“I’m sure it will be frightfully interesting, dear; you must tell me all about it. But what with the portrait and my Rest–House, I’m very tied, just now.”
“Well, then, I’ll look for you at the week-end. Your mother’s gone to some friends—they do nothing but play bridge; she’ll be away till Monday. I always want you, you know,” he added, simply. And to avoid his eyes she got up.
“I’ll just run up now, Dad, and change. Those Slum Committee Meetings always make me feel grubby. I don’t know why.”
“They’re a waste of time,” said Soames. “There’ll always be slums. Still, it’s something for you both to do.”
“Yes, Michael’s quite happy about it.”
“That old fool, Sir Timothy!” And Soames went up to the Fragonard. “I’ve hung that Morland. The Marquess is an amiable old chap. I suppose you know I’m leaving my pictures to the Nation? You’ve no use for them. You’ll have to live at that place Lippinghall some day. Pictures’d be no good there. Ancestors and stags’ horns and horses—that sort of thing. M’ff!”
A secret life and Lippinghall! Long, long might that conjunction be deferred!
“Oh, Bart will live for ever, Dad!’
“M’yes! He’s spry enough. Well, you run up!”
While she washed off powder and put it on again Fleur thought: ‘Dear Dad! Thank God! He’ll be far away!’
Now that her mind was thoroughly made up, it was comparatively easy to bluff, and keep her freshly-powdered face, smiling and serene, above the Chelsea dinner service.
“Where are you going to hang your portrait, when it’s done?” resumed Soames.
“Why! It’ll be yours, dear.”
“Mine? Well, of course; but you’ll hang it here; Michael’ll want it.”
Michael—unknowing! THAT gave her a twinge.
Well, she would be as good to him after, as ever. No old-fashioned squeamishness!
“Thank you, dear. I expect he’ll like it in the ‘parlour.’ The scheme IS silver and gold—my ‘Folly’ dress.”
“I remember it,” said Soames; “a thing with bells.”
“I think all that part of the picture’s very good.”
“What? Hasn’t he got your face?”
“Perhaps—but I don’t know that I approve of it frightfully.” After this morning’s sitting, indeed, she had wondered. Something avid had come into the face as if the Rafaelite had sensed the hardening of resolve within her.
“If he doesn’t do you justice I shan’t take it,” said Soames.
Fleur smiled. The Rafaelite would have something to say to that.
“Oh! I expect it’ll be all right. One never thinks one’s own effigies are marvellous, I suppose.”
“Don’t know,” said Soames, “never was painted.”
“You ought to be, dear.”
“Waste of time! Has he sent away the picture of that young woman?”
Fleur’s eyes did not flinch.
“Jon Forsyte’s wife? Oh! yes—long ago.”
She expected him to say: “Seen anything of them?” But it did not come. And that disturbed her more than if it had come.
“I had your cousin Val to see me today.”
Fleur’s heart stood still. Had they been talking?
“His name’s been forged.”
Thank heaven!
“Some people have no moral sense at all,” continued Soames. Involuntarily her white shoulder rose; but he wasn’t looking. “Common honesty, I don’t know where it is.”
“I heard the Marquess say to-night that ‘Honesty’s the best policy’ was a mere Victorianism, Dad.”
“Well, he’s ten years my senior, but I don’t know where he got that from. Everything’s twisted inside out, now-a-days.”
“But if it’s the best POLICY, there never was any particular virtue in it, was there?”
Soames took a sharp look at her smiling face.
“Why not?”
“Oh, I don’t know. These are Lippinghall partridges, Dad.”
Soames sniffed. “Not hung quite long enough. You ought to be able to swear by the leg of a partridge.”
“Yes, I’ve told cook, but she has her own views.”
“And the bread sauce should have a touch more onion in it. Victorianism, indeed! I suppose he’d call ME a Victorian?”
“Well, aren’t you, Dad? You had forty-six years of her.”
“I’ve had twenty-five without her, and hope to have a few more.”
“Many, many,” said Fleur, softly.
“Can’t expect that.”
“Oh, yes! But I’m glad you don’t consider yourself a Victorian; I don’t like them. They wore too many clothes.”
“Don’t you be too sure of that.”
“Well, tomorrow you’ll be among Georgians, anyway.”
“Yes,” said Soames. “There’s a graveyard there, they say. And that reminds me—I’ve bought that corner bit in the churchyard down at home. It’ll do for me as well as any other. Your mother will want to go to France to be buried, I expect.”
“Give Mr. Forsyte some sherry, Coaker.”
Soames took a long sniff.
“This is some of your grandfather’s. He lived to be ninety.”
If she and Jon lived to be ninety—would nobody still know?… She left him at ten o’clock, brushing his nose with her lips.
“I’m tired, Dad; and you’ll have a long day tomorrow. Good-night, dear!”
Thank God he would be among the Georgians tomorrow!
Halting the car suddenly in the by-road between Gage’s farm and the Robin Hill coppice, Fleur said:
“Jon, dear, I’ve got a whim. Let’s get out and go in there. The potentate’s in Scotland.” He did not move, and she added: “I shan’t see you again for a long time, now your picture’s finished.”
Jon got out, then, and she unlatched the footpath gate. They stood a minute within, listening for sounds of anyone to interrupt their trespass. The fine September afternoon was dying fast. The last “sitting” had been long, and it was late; and in the coppice of larch and birch the dusk was deepening. Fleur slid her hand within his arm.
“Listen! Still, isn’t it? I feel as if we were back seven years, Jon. Do you wish we were? Babes in the wood once more?”
Gruffly he answered:
“No good looking back—things happen as they must.”
“The birds are going to bed. Used there to be owls?”
“Yes; we shall hear one soon, I expect.”
“How good it smells!”
“Trees and the cow-houses!”
“Vanilla and hay, as the poets have it. Are they close?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t let’s go further, then.”
“Here’s the old log,” said Jon. “We might sit down, and listen for an owl.”
On the old log seat they sat down, side by side.
“No dew,” said Fleur. “The weather will break soon, I expect. I love the scent of drought.”
“I love the smell of rain.”
“You and I never love the same thing, Jon. And yet—we’ve loved each other.” Against her arm it was as if he shivered.
“There goes the old clock! It’s awfully late, Fleur! Listen! The owl!”
Startlingly close through the thin-branched trees the call came. Fleur rose: “Let’s see if we can find him.”
She moved back from the old log.
“Aren’t you coming? Just a little wander, Jon.”
Jon got up and went along at her side among the larches.
“Up this way—wasn’t it? How quickly it’s got dark. Look! The birches are still white. I love birchtrees.” She put her hand on a pale stem. “The smoothness, Jon. It’s like skin.” And, leaning forward, she laid her cheek against the trunk. “There! feel my cheek, and then the bark. Could you tell the difference, except for warmth?”
Jon reached his hand up. She turned her lips and touched it.
“Jon—kiss me just once.”
“You know I couldn’t kiss you ‘just once,’ Fleur.”
“Then kiss me for ever, Jon.”
“No, no! No, no!”
“Things happen as they must—you said so.”
“Fleur—don’t! I can’t stand it.”
She laughed—very low, softly.
“I don’t want you to. I’ve waited seven years for this. No! Don’t cover your face! Look at me! I take it all on myself. The woman tempted you. But, Jon, you were always mine. There! That’s better. I can see your eyes. Poor Jon! Now, kiss me!” In that long kiss her very spirit seemed to leave her; she could not even see whether his eyes were open, or, like hers, closed. And again the owl hooted.
Jon tore his lips away. He stood there in her arms, trembling like a startled horse.
With her lips against his ear, she whispered:
“There’s nothing, Jon; there’s nothing.” She could hear him holding-in his breath, and her warm lips whispered on: “Take me in your arms, Jon; take me!” The light had failed completely now; stars were out between the dark feathering of the trees, and low down, from where the coppice sloped up towards the east, a creeping brightness seemed trembling towards them through the wood from the moon rising. A faint rustle broke the silence, ceased, broke it again, Closer, closer—Fleur pressed against him.
“Not here, Fleur; not here. I can’t—I won’t—”
“Yes, Jon; here—now! I claim you.”
The moon was shining through the tree stems when they sat again side by side on the log seat.
Jon’s hands were pressed to his forehead, and she could not see his eyes.
“No one shall ever know, Jon.”
He dropped his hands, and faced her.
“I must tell her.”
“Jon!”
“I must!”
“You can’t unless I let you, and I don’t let you.”
“What have we done? Oh, Fleur, what HAVE we done?”
“It was written. When shall I see you again, Jon?”
He started up.
“Never, unless she knows. Never, Fleur—never! I can’t go on in secret!”
As quickly, too, Fleur was on her feet. They stood with their hands on each other’s arms, in a sort of struggle. Then Jon wrenched himself free, and, like one demented, rushed back into the coppice.
She stood trembling, not daring to call. Bewildered, she stood, waiting for him to come back to her, and he did not come.
Suddenly, she moaned, and sank on her knees; and again she moaned. He must hear, and come back! He could not have left her at such a moment—he could not!
“Jon!” No sound. She rose from her knees, and stood peering into the brightened dusk. The owl hooted; and, startled, she saw the moon caught among the tree tops, like a presence watching her. A shivering sob choked in her throat, became a whimper, like a hurt child’s. She stood, listening fearfully. No rustling; no footsteps; no hoot of owl—not a sound, save the distant whir of traffic on the London road! Had he gone to the car, or was he hiding from her in that coppice, all creepy now with shadows?
“Jon! Jon!” No answer! She ran towards the gate. There was the car—empty! She got into it, and sat leaning forward over the driving wheel, with a numb feeling in her limbs. What did it mean? Was she beaten in the very hour of victory? He could not—no, he could not mean to leave her thus? Mechanically she turned on the car’s lights. A couple on foot, a man on a bicycle, passed. And Fleur still sat there, numbed. This—fulfilment! The fulfilment she had dreamed of? A few moments of hasty and delirious passion—and this! And, to her chagrin, her consternation, were added humiliation that, after such a moment, he could thus have fled from her; and the fear that in winning him she had lost him!
At last she started the engine, and drove miserably on, watching the road, hoping against hope to come on him. Very slowly she drove, and only when she reached the Dorking road did she quite abandon hope. How she guided the car for the rest of the drive, she hardly knew. Life seemed suddenly to have gone out.
Jon, when he rushed back into the coppice, turned to the left, and, emerging past the pond, ran up through the field towards the house, as if it were still his own. It stood above its terrace and lawns unlighted, ghostly in the spreading moonlight. Behind a clump of rhododendrons, where as a little boy he had played hide and seek, or pursued the stag horn beetle with his bow and arrow, he sank down as if his legs had turned to water, pressing his fists against his cheeks, both burning hot. He had known and he had not known, had dreamed and never dreamed of this! Overwhelming, sudden, relentless! “It was written!” she had said. For her, every excuse, perhaps; but what excuse for him? Among those moonlit rhododendrons he could not find it. Yet the deed was done! Whose was he now? He stood up and looked at the house where he had been born, grown up, and played, as if asking for an answer. Whitened and lightless, it looked the ghost of a house, keeping secrets. “And I don’t let you tell!… When shall I see you again?” That meant she claimed a secret lover. Impossible! The one thing utterly impossible. He would belong to one or to the other—not to both. Torn in every fibre of his being, he clung to the fixity of that. Behind the rhododendrons stretching along the far end of the lawn he walked, crouching, till he came to the wall of the grounds, the wall he had often scrambled over as a boy; and, pulling himself up, dropped into the top roadway. No one saw him, and he hurried on. He had a dumb and muddled craving to get back to Wansdon, though what he would do when he got there he could not tell. He turned towards Kingston.
All through that two hours’ drive in a hired car Jon thought and thought. Whatever he did now, he must be disloyal to one or to the other. And with those passionate moments still rioting within him, he could get no grip on his position; and yet—he must!
He reached Wansdon at eleven, and, dismissing the car in the road, walked up to the house. Everyone had gone to bed, evidently assuming that he was staying the night at June’s for a further sitting. There was a light in his and Anne’s bedroom; and, at sight of it, the full shame of what he had done smote him. He could not bring himself to attract her attention, and he stole round the house, seeking for some way of breaking in. At last he spied a spare-room window open at the top, and fetching a garden ladder, climbed it and got in. The burglarious act restored some self-possession. He went down into the hall, and out of the house, replaced the ladder, came in again and stole upstairs. But outside their door he halted. No light, now, came from under. She must be in bed. And, suddenly, he could not face going in. He would feel like Judas, kissing her. Taking off his boots and carrying them, he stole downstairs again to the dining-room. Having had nothing but a cup of tea since lunch, he got himself some biscuits and a drink. They altered his mood—no man could have resisted Fleur’s kisses in that moonlit coppice—no man! Must he, then, hurt one or the other so terribly? Why not follow Fleur’s wish? Why not secrecy? By continuing her lover in secret, he would not hurt Fleur; by not telling Anne, he would not hurt Anne! Like a leopard in a cage, he paced the room. And all that was honest in him refused, and all that was sage. As if one could remain the husband of two women, when one of them knew! As if Fleur would stand that long! And lies, subterfuge! And—Michael Mont! – a decent chap! He had done him enough harm as it was! No! A clean cut one way or the other! He stopped by the hearth, and leaned his arms on the stone mantlepiece. How still! Only that old clock which had belonged to his grandfather, ticking away time—time that cured everything, that made so little of commotions, ticking men and things to their appointed ends. Just in front of him on the mantlepiece was a photograph of his grandfather, old Jolyon, taken in his eighties—the last record of that old face, its broad brow, and white moustache, its sunken cheeks, deep, steady eyes, and strong jaw. Jon looked at it long! “Take a course and stick to it!” the face, gazing back at him so deeply, seemed to say. He went to the bureau and sat down to write.
“I am sorry I rushed away to-night, but it was better, really. I had to think. I have thought. I’m only certain of one thing yet. To go on IN SECRET is impossible. I shan’t say a word about tonight, of course, until you let me. But, Fleur, unless I can tell everything, it must end. You wouldn’t wish it otherwise, would you? Please answer to the Post Office, Nettlefold.
“Jon.”
He sealed this up, addressed it to her at Dorking, and, pulling on his boots, again stole out and posted it. When he got back he felt so tired, that, wrapped in an old coat, he fell asleep in an armchair. The moonlight played tricks through the half-drawn curtains, the old clock ticked, but Jon slept, dreamless.
He woke at daybreak, stole up to the bathroom, bathed and shaved noiselessly, and went out through a window, so as not to leave the front door unfastened. He walked up through the gap past the old chalk pit, on to the Downs, by the path he had taken with Fleur seven years ago. Till he had heard from her he did not know what to do; and he dreaded Anne’s eyes, while his mind was still distraught. He went towards Chanctonbury Ring. There was a heavy dew, and the short turf was all spun over with it. All was infinitely beautiful, remote and stilly in the level sunlight. The beauty tore at his heart. He had come to love the Downs—they had a special loveliness, like no other part of the world that he had seen. Did this mean that he must now leave them, leave England again—leave everything, and cleave to Fleur? If she claimed him, if she decided on declaring their act of union, he supposed it did. And Jon walked in confusion of heart, such as he had not thought possible to man. From the Ring he branched away, taking care to avoid the horses at their early exercise. And this first subterfuge brought him face to face with immediate decision. What should he do till he had heard from Fleur? Her answer could not reach Nettlefold till the evening, or even next morning. He decided, painfully, to go back to breakfast, and tell them he had missed his train, and entered in the night burglariously so as not to disturb them.
That day, with its anxiety and its watchfulness of self, was one of the most wretched he had ever spent; and he could not free himself from the feeling that Anne was reading his thoughts. It was as if each passed the day looking at the other unobserved—almost unbearable! In the afternoon he asked for a horse to ride over to Green Hill Farm, and said he would be back late. He rode on into Nettlefold and went to the post-office. There was a telegram: “Must see you. Will be at Green Hill Farm tomorrow at noon. Don’t fail me. – F.”
Jon destroyed it, and rode homewards. Wretchedness and strain for another eighteen hours! Was there anything in the world worse than indecision? He rode slowly so as to have the less time at home, dreading the night. He stopped at a wayside inn to eat, and again went by way of Green Hill Farm to save at least the letter of his tale. It was nearly ten and full moonlight before he got back.
“It’s a wonderful night,” he said, when he came into the drawing-room. “The moonlight’s simply marvellous.” It was Holly who answered; Anne, sitting by the fire, did not even look up. ‘She knows,’ thought Jon, ‘she knows something.’ Very soon after, she said she was sleepy, and went up. Jon stayed, talking to Holly. Val had gone on from town to Newmarket, and would not be back till Friday. They sat one on each side of the wood fire. And, looking at his sister’s face, charming and pensive, Jon was tempted. She was so wise, and sympathetic. It would be a relief to tell her everything. But Fleur’s command held him back—it was not his secret.
“Well, Jon, is it all right about the farm?”
“I’ve got some new figures; I’m going into them to-night.”
“I do wish it were settled, and we knew you were going to be near for certain. I shall be awfully disappointed if you’re not.”
“Yes; but I must make sure this time.”
“Anne’s very set on it. She doesn’t say much, but she really is. It’s such a charming old place.”
“I don’t want a better, but it must pay its way.”
“Is that your real reason, Jon?”
“Why not?”
“I thought perhaps you were secretly afraid of settling again. But you’re the head of the family, Jon—you ought to settle.”
“Head of the family!”
“Yes, the only son of the only son of the eldest son right back to the primeval Jolyon.”
“Nice head!” said Jon, bitterly.
“Yes—a nice head.” And, suddenly rising, Holly bent over and kissed the top of it.
“Bless you! Don’t sit up too late. Anne’s rather in the dumps.”
Jon turned out the lamp and stayed, huddled in his chair before the fire. Head of the family!
He had done them proud! And if—! Ha! That would, indeed, be illustrious! What would the old fellow whose photograph he had been looking at last night, think, if he knew? Ah, what a coil! For in his inmost heart he knew that Anne was more his mate, more her with whom he could live and work and have his being, than ever Fleur could be. Madness, momentary madness, coming on him from the past—the past, and the potency of her will to have and hold him! He got up, and drew aside the curtains. There, between two elm trees, the moon, mysterious and powerful, shone, and all was moving with its light up to the crest of the Downs. What beauty, what stillness! He threw the window up, and stepped out; like some dark fluid spilled on the whitened grass, the ragged shadow of one elm tree reached almost to his feet. From their window above a light shone. He must go up and face it. He had not been alone with her since—! If only he knew for certain what he was going to do! And he realised now that in obeying that impulse to rush away from Fleur he had been wrong; he ought to have stayed and threshed it out there and then. And yet, who could have behaved reasonably, sanely, feeling as he had felt? He stepped back to the window, and stopped with his heart in his mouth. There between firelight and moonlight stood Anne! Slender, in a light wrapper drawn close, she was gazing towards him. Jon closed the window and drew the curtain.
“Sorry, darling, you’ll catch cold—the moonlight got me.” She moved to the far side of the hearth, and stood looking at him.
“Jon, I’m going to have a child.”
“You—!”
“Yes. I didn’t tell you last month because I wanted to be sure.”
“Anne!”
She was holding up her hand.
“Wait a minute!”
Jon gripped the back of a chair, he knew what was coming.
“Something’s happened between you and Fleur.”
Jon held his breath, staring at her eyes; dark, unflinching, startled, they stared back at him.
“Everything’s happened, hasn’t it?”
Jon bent his head.
“Yesterday? Don’t explain, don’t excuse yourself or her. Only—what does it mean?”
Without raising his head, Jon answered:
“That depends on you.”
“On me?”
“After what you’ve just told me. Oh! Anne, why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“Yes; I kept it too long!”
He understood what she meant—she had kept it as a weapon of defence. And, seeming to himself unforgiveable, he said:
“Forgive me, Anne—forgive me!”
“Oh! Jon, I don’t just know.”
“I swear that I will never see her again.”
He raised his eyes now, and saw that she had sunk on her knees by the fire, holding a hand out to it, as if cold. He dropped on his knees beside her.
“I think,” he said, “love is the cruellest thing in the world.”
“Yes.”
She had covered her eyes with her hand; and it seemed hours that he knelt there, waiting for a movement, a sign, a word. At last she dropped her hand.
“All right. It’s over. But don’t kiss me—yet.”
Life revived in Fleur while she went about her business in the morning. Standing in sunshine before the hollyhocks and sunflowers of the “rest-house” garden, she reviewed past and future with feverish vigour. Of course Jon was upset! She had taken him by storm! He was old-fashioned, conscientious; he couldn’t take things lightly. But since already he had betrayed his conscience, he would realise that what had happened outweighed what more could happen. It was the first step that counted! They had always belonged to each other. She felt no remorse; then why should he—when his confusion was over? It was for the best, perhaps, that he had run away from her till he could see the inexorability of his position. Her design was quite unshaken by the emotions she had been through. Jon was hers now, he could not betray their secret unless she gave him leave. He must and would conform to the one course possible—secrecy. Infidelity had been achieved—one act or many, what did it matter? Ah! But she would make up to him for the loss of self-respect with her love, and with her wisdom. She would make him a success. In spite of that American chit he should succeed with his farming, become important to his county, to his country, perhaps. She would be circumspection itself—for his sake, for her own, for Michael’s, Kit’s, her father’s.
With a great bunch of autumn flowers to which was clinging one bee, she went back into the house to put them in water. On the table in the hall were a number of little bags of bitter-apple prepared by her caretaker’s wife against the moth, which were all over a house that had been derelict for a year. She busied herself with stowing them in drawers. The second post brought her Jon’s letter.
She read it, and spots of burning colour became fixed in her cheeks. He had written this before he slept—it was all part of his confusion. But she must see him at once—at once! She got out the car, and, driving to a village where she was not known, sent a telegram to the post-office at Nettlefold. Dreadful to have to wait over the night! But she knew it might be evening or even next morning before he could call for it.
Never did time go so slowly. For now she was shaken again. Was she overestimating her power, relying too much on her sudden victory in a moment of passion, underestimating Jon’s strength after resolve taken? She remembered how in those old days she had failed to move him from renunciation. And, unable to keep still, she went up lonely on to Box Hill, and wandered among its yew trees and spindleberry bushes, till she was tired out and the sun was nearly down. With the sinking light the loneliness up there repelled her, for she was not a real nature-lover, and for an anxious heart Nature has little comfort. She was glad to be back, listening to the chatter of the supper-eating girls. It had no interest for her, but at least it was not melancholy like the space and shadows of the open. She suddenly remembered that she had missed her “sitting” and had sent no word. The Rafaelite would gnash his teeth; perhaps he had set her “Folly” dress up on a dummy, to paint the sound from its silver bells. Bells! Michael! Poor Michael! But was he to be pitied, who had owned her for years while at heart she belonged to another? She went up to bed early. If only she could sleep till it was time to start! This force that played with hearts, tore them open, left them quivering—made them wait and ache, and ache and wait! Had the Victorian Miss, whom they had taken to praising again, ever to go through what she had gone through since first she saw her fate in front of that grotesque Juno—or was it Venus? – in the gallery off Cork Street? The disciplined Victorian Miss? Admit—oh! freely—that she, Fleur Mont, was undisciplined; still, she hadn’t worn her heart upon her sleeve. She hadn’t kicked and screamed. Surely she deserved a spell of happiness! Not more than a spell—she wouldn’t ask for more than that! Things wore out, hearts wore out! But, to have the heart she wanted against her own, as last night, and then to lose it straightway? It could not be! And so at last she slept, and the moon that had watched over her victory came by, to look in through the curtain chinks, and make her dream.
She woke and lay thinking with the preternatural intensity of early morning thought. People would blame her if they knew; and was there any real possibility that they would not come to know? Suppose Jon remained immovably opposed to secrecy. What then? Was she prepared to give up all and follow him? It would mean more than in the ordinary case. It would mean isolation. For always, in the background, was the old barrier of the family feud; her father and his mother, and their abhorrence of union between her and Jon. And all the worldly sense in Fleur, brought to the edge of hard reality, shivered and recoiled. Money! It was not that they would lack money. But position, approval, appreciation, where in the world could they ever regain all that? And Kit? He would be lost to her. The Monts would claim him. She sat up in bed, seeing with utter clearness in the dark a truth she had never before seen naked—that the condition of conquest is sacrifice. Then she revolted. No! Jon would be reasonable, Jon would come round! In secret they would, they must, be happy, or if not happy, at least not starved. She would have to share him, he to share her; but they would each know that the other only pretended to belong elsewhere. But would it be pretence with him? Was he at heart all hers? Was he not, at least, as much his wife’s? Horribly clear she could see that girl’s face, its dark, eager eyes, with the something strange and so attractive in their setting. No! She would not think of her! It only weakened her power to win Jon over. Dawn opened a sleepy eye. A bird cheeped, and daylight crept in. She lay back, resigned again to the dull ache of waiting. She rose unrested. A fine morning, dry as ever—save for the dew on the grass! At ten she would start! It would be easier to wait in motion even if she had to drive dead slow. She gave her morning orders, got out the car, and left. She drove by the clock so as to arrive at noon. The leaves were turning already, it would be an early fall. Had she put on the right frock? Would he like this soft russet, the colour of gone-off apples? The red was prettier; but red caught the eye. And the eye must not be caught today. She drove the last mile at a foot’s pace, and drew up in the wooded lane just where the garden of Green Hill Farm ended in orchard, and the fields began. Very earnestly she scrutinized her face in the small mirror of her vanity bag. Where had she read that one always looked one’s worst in a mirror? If so, it was a mercy. She remembered that Jon had once said he hated the look of lip salve; and, not touching her lips, she put away the mirror and got out. She walked slowly towards the entrance gate. From there a lane divided the house from the straw yards and farm buildings sloping up behind it. In the fine autumn sunlight they ranged imposing, dry and deserted—no stock, not so much as a hen. Even Fleur’s unlearned mind realised the stiff job before anyone who took this farm. Had she not often heard Michael say that farming was more of a man’s job than any other in the England of today! She would let him take it, then that wretched conscience of his would be at rest on one score at least. She passed the gate and stood before the old house, gabled and red with Virginia creeper. Twelve had struck down in the village as she passed through. Surely he had not failed her! Five minutes she waited that seemed like five hours. Then, with her heart beating fast, she went up and rang the bell. It sounded far away in the empty house. Footsteps—a woman’s!
“Yes, ma’am?”
“I was to meet Mr. Forsyte here at noon about the farm.”
“Oh, yes, ma’am; Mr. Forsyte came early. He was very sorry he had to go away. He left this note for you.”
“He’s not coming back?”
“No, ma’am, he was very sorry, but he couldn’t come back today.”
“Thank you.”
Fleur went back to the gate. She stood there, turning the note over and over. Suddenly she broke the seal and read:
“Last night Anne told me of her own accord that she knew what had happened. She told me, too, that she is to have a child. I have promised her not to see you again. Forgive me and forget me, as I must forget you.
“JON.”
Slowly, as if not knowing, she tore the sheet of paper and the envelope into tiny fragments and buried them in the hedge. Then she walked slowly, as if not seeing, to her car, and got in. She sat there stonily, alongside the orchard with the sunlight on her neck and scent from wind-fallen rotting apples in her nostrils. For four months, since in the canteen she saw Jon’s tired smile, he had been one long thought in her mind. And this was the end! Oh! Let her get away—away from here!
She started the car, and, once out of the lane, drove at a great pace. If she broke her neck, all the better! But Providence, which attends the drunk and desperate, was about her—spying out her ways; and she did not break her neck. For more than two hours she drove, hardly knowing where. At three in the afternoon she had her first sane impulse—a craving to smoke, a longing for tea. She got some at an inn, and turned her car towards Dorking. Driving more slowly now, she arrived between four and five. She had been at the wheel for nearly six hours. And the first thing she saw outside the “rest-house” was her father’s car. He! What had HE come for? Why did people pester her? On the point of starting the engine again, she saw him come out of the front door, and stand looking up and down the road. Something groping in that look of his touched her, and, leaving the car, she walked towards him.
On the morning after the Slum Conversion Committee meeting Soames had started early. It was his intention to spend the night somewhere “down there,” look at his roots the following morning, and motor part of the way home. On the day after, he would return to town and see if he couldn’t carry Fleur back with him to Mapledurham for a long weekend. He reached a seaside hostel ten miles from his origin about six o’clock, ate a damp dinner, smoked his own cigar, and went to a bed in which, for insurance sake, he placed a camel’s hair shawl.
He had thought things out, and was provided with an ordinance map on an inordinate scale. He meant to begin his investigation by seeing the church. For he had little to go by except a memory that his father James had once been down, and had returned speaking of a church by the sea, and supposing that there might be “parish entries and that, but it was a long time back and he didn’t know.”
After an early breakfast he directed Riggs towards the church. As James had said, it was close to the sea, and it was open. Soames went in. A little old grey church with funny pews, and a damp smell. There wouldn’t be any tablets to his name, he supposed. There were not, and he went out again, to wander among the gravestones, overcome by a sense of unreality—everything underground, and each gravestone, older than the last century, undecipherable. He was about to turn away when he stumbled. Looking down in disapproval at a flat stone, he saw on the worn and lichened surface a capital F. He stood for a minute, scrutinizing, then went down on his knees with a sort of thrill. Two names—the first had an undoubted capital J, a y, and an n; the second name began with that capital F, and had what looked like an s in the middle, and the remains of a tall letter last but one! The date? By George—the date was legible! 1777. Scraping gingerly at the first name, he disinterred an o. Four letters out of the six in Jolyon; three letters out of Forsyte. There could hardly be a doubt that he had stumbled over his great-great-grandfather! Supposing the old chap had lived to the ordinary age of a Forsyte, his birth would be near the beginning of the eighteenth century! His eyes gimletted the stone with a hard grey glance as though to pierce to the bones beneath—clean as a whistle long since, no doubt! Then he rose from his knees and dusted them. He had a date now. And, singularly fortified, he emerged from the graveyard, and cast a suspicious look at Riggs. Had he been seen on his knees? But the fellow was seated, as usual, with his back to everything, smoking his eternal cigarette. Soames got into the car.
“I want the vicarage now, or whatever it is.”
“Yes, sir.”
He was always saying “Yes, sir,” without having an idea of where places were.
“You’d better ask,” he said, as the car moved up the rutted lane. Sooner than ask, the fellow would go back to London! Not that there was anyone to ask. Soames was impressed, indeed, by the extreme emptiness of this parish where his roots lay. It seemed terribly hilly, and full of space, with large fields, some woods in the coombe to the left, and a soil that you couldn’t swear by—not red and not white and not brown exactly; the sea was blue, however, and the cliffs, so far as he could judge, streaky. The lane bent to the right, past a blacksmith’s forge.
“Hi!” said Soames, “pull up!” He himself got out to ask. That fellow never made head or tail of what he was told.
The blacksmith was hammering at a wheel, and Soames waited till his presence was observed.
“Where’s the vicarage?”
“Up the lane, third ’ouse on the right.”
“Thank you,” said Soames, and, looking at the man suspiciously, added:
“Is the name Forsyte known hereabouts nowadays?”
“What’s that?”
“Have you ever heard the name Forsyte?”
“Farsyt? Noa.”
Soames heard him with a disappointed relief, and resumed his seat. What if he’d said: “Yes, it’s mine!”
A blacksmith’s was a respectable occupation, but he felt that he could do without it in the family. The car moved on.
The vicarage was smothered in creeper. Probably the Vicar would be, too! He rang a rusty bell and waited. The door was opened by a red-cheeked girl. It was all very rustic.
“I want the Vicar,” said Soames. “Is he in?”
“Yes, sir. What name?”
But at this moment a thin man in a thin suit and a thin beard came out from a doorway, saying:
“Am I wanted, Mary?”
“Yes,” said Soames; “here’s my card.”
There ought—he felt—to be a way of enquiring about one’s origin that would be distinguished; but, not finding it, he added simply:
“My family came from hereabouts some generations back; I just wanted to have a look at the place, and ask you a question or two.”
“Forsyte?” said the Vicar, gazing at the card: “I don’t know the name, but I daresay we shall find something.”
His clothes were extremely well worn, and Soames had the impression that his eyes would have been glad if they could. ‘Smells a fee,’ he thought; ‘poor devil!’
“Will you come in?” said the Vicar. “I’ve got some records and an old tythe map. We might have a look at them. The registers go back to 1580. I could make a search for you.”
“I don’t know if that’s worth while,” said Soames, following him into a room that impressed him as dismal beyond words.
“Do sit down,” said the Vicar. “I’ll get that map. Forsyte? I seem to remember the name now.”
The fellow was agreeable, and looked as if he could do with an honest penny!
“I’ve been up to the church,” said Soames: “it seems very close to the sea.”
“Yes; they used to use the pulpit, I’m afraid, to hide their smuggled brandy.”
“I got a date in the graveyard—1777; the stones are very much let down.”
“Yes,” said the Vicar, who was groping in a cupboard; “one’s difficulty is the sea air. Here’s the map I spoke of”; and, unrolling a large and dingy map, he laid it on the table, weighting down the corners with a tin of tobacco, an inkstand, a book of sermons, and a dog whip. The latter was not heavy enough, and the map curled slowly away from Soames.
“Sometimes,” said the Vicar, restoring the corner, and looking round for something to secure it, “we get very useful information from these old maps.”
“I’ll keep it down,” said Soames, bending over the map. “I suppose you get a lot of Americans, fishing for ancestors?”
“Not a lot,” said the Vicar, with a sideway glance that Soames did not quite like. “I can remember two. Ah! here,” and his finger came down on the map, “I THOUGHT I remembered the name—it’s unusual. Look! This field close to the sea is marked ‘Great Forsyte!’”
Again Soames felt a thrill.
“What size is that field?”
“Twenty-four acres. There was the ruin of an old house, I remember, just there; they took the stones away in the war to make our shooting range. ‘Great Forsyte’—isn’t that interesting?”
“More interesting to me,” said Soames, “if they’d left the stones.”
“The spot is still marked with an old cross—the cattle use it for a rubbing stone. It’s close to the hedge on the right hand side of the coombe.”
“Could I get to it with the car?”
“Oh, yes; by going round the head of the coombe. Would you like me to come?”
“No, thanks,” said Soames. The idea of being overlooked while inspecting his roots was unpleasant to him. “But if you’d kindly make a search in the register while I’m gone, I could call back after lunch and see the result. My great-grandfather, Jolyon Forsyte, died at Studmouth. The stone I found was Jolyon Forsyte, buried in 1777—he’d be my great-great-grandfather, no doubt. I daresay you could pick up his birth, and perhaps HIS father’s—I fancy they were a long-lived lot. The name Jolyon seems to have been a weakness with them.”
“I could make a search at once. It would take some hours. What would you think reasonable?”
“Five guineas?” hazarded Soames.
“Oh! That would be generous. I’ll make a very thorough search. Now, let me come and tell you how to get to it.” With a slight pang Soames followed him—a gentleman in trousers shiny behind.
“You go up this road to the fork, take the left-hand branch past the post-office, and right on round the head of the coombe, always bearing to the left, till you pass a farm called ‘Uphays.’ Then on till the lane begins to drop; there’s a gate on the right, and if you go through it you’ll find yourself at the top of that field with the sea before you. I’m so pleased to have found something. Won’t you have a little lunch with us when you come back?”
“Thank you,” said Soames, “very good of you, but I’ve got my lunch with me,” and was instantly ashamed of his thought. ‘Does he think I’m going to make off without paying?’ Raising his hat slightly, he got into the car, with his umbrella in his hand, so as to poke Riggs in the back when the fellow took his wrong turnings.
He sat, contented, using the umbrella gingerly now and then. So! To get baptized and buried, they used to cross the coombe. Twenty-four acres was quite a field. “Great Forsyte”; there must have been “Little Forsytes,” too.
The farm the Vicar had spoken of appeared to be a rambling place of old buildings, pigs and poultry.
“Keep on,” he said to Riggs, “until the lane drops, and go slow, I want a gate on the right.”
The fellow was rushing along as usual, and the lane already dropping downhill.
“Hold hard! There it is!” The car came to a standstill at a rather awkward bend.
“You’ve overshot it!” said Soames, and got out. “Wait here! I may be some time.”
Taking off his overcoat and carrying it on his arm, he went back to the gate, and passed through into a field of grass. He walked downwards to the hedge on the left, followed it round, and presently came in view of the sea, bright, peaceful, hazy, with a trail of smoke in the distance. The air beat in from the sea, fresh air, strong and salt. Ancestral! Soames took some deep breaths, savouring it, as one might an old wine. Its freshness went a little to his head, so impregnated with ozone or iodine, or whatever it was nowadays. And then, below him, perhaps a hundred yards away, above a hollow near the hedge he saw the stone, and again felt that thrill. He looked back. Yes! He was out of sight of the lane, and had his feelings to himself! And going up to the stone, he gazed down at the hollow between him and the hedge. Below it the field sloped to the beach, and what looked like the ghost of a lane ran up towards the hollow from the coombe. In that hollow then, the house had been; and there they’d lived, the old Forsytes, for generations, pickled in this air, without another house in sight—nothing but this expanse of grass in view and the sea beyond, and the gulls on that rock, and the waves beating over it. There they’d lived, tilling the land, and growing rheumatic, and crossing the coombe to church, and getting their brandy free, perhaps. He went up and examined the stone—upright, with another bit across the top—lintel of a barn, perhaps—nothing on it. Descending into the hollow, he poked about with his umbrella. During the war—the parson had said—they had removed the ruins. Only twelve years ago, but not a sign! Grassed over utterly, not even the shape visible. He explored up to the hedge. They’d made a clean sweep all right—nothing but grass now and a scrubble of fern and young gorse, such as would seize on a hollow for their growing. And, sitting on his overcoat with his back against the stone, Soames pondered. Had his forbears themselves built the house there in this lonely place—been the first to seat themselves on this bit of wind-swept soil? And something moved in him, as if the salty independence of that lonely spot were still in his bones. Old Jolyon and his own father and the rest of his uncles—no wonder they’d been independent, with this air and loneliness in their blood; and crabbed with the pickling of it—unable to give up, to let go, to die. For a moment he seemed to understand even himself. Southern spot, south aspect, not any of your northern roughness, but free, and salt, and solitary from sunrise to sunset, year in, year out, like that lonely rock with the gulls on it, for ever and for ever. And drawing the air deep into his lungs, he thought: ‘I’m not surprised old Timothy lived to be a hundred!’ A long time he sat there, nostalgically bemused, strangely unwilling to move. Never had he breathed anything quite like that air; or so, at least, it seemed to him. It had been the old England, when they lived down here—the England of pack-horses and very little smoke, of peat and wood fires, and wives who never left you, because they couldn’t, probably. A static England, that dug and wove, where your parish was your world, and you were a churchwarden if you didn’t take care. His own grandfather—begotten and born one hundred and fifty-six years ago, in the best bed, not two dozen paces from where he was sitting. What a change since then! For the better? Who could say? But here was this grass, and rock and sea, and the air and the gulls, and the old church over there beyond the coombe, precisely as they had been, only more so. If this field were in the market, he wouldn’t mind buying it as a curiosity. Only, if he did, nobody would come and sit here! They’d want to play golf over it or something. And, uneasy at having verged on the sentimental, Soames put his hand down and felt the grass. But it wasn’t damp, and he couldn’t conscientiously feel that he was catching rheumatism; and still he sat there, with the sunlight warming his cheeks, and his eyes fixed on the sea. The ships went up and down, far out—steamers; no smugglers nowadays, and you paid the deuce of a price for brandy! In the old time here, without newspapers, with nothing from the outer world, you’d grow up without any sense of the State or that sort of thing. There’d be the church and your Bible, he supposed, and the market some miles away, and you’d work and eat and sleep and breathe the air and drink your cider and embrace your wife and watch your children, from June to June; and a good thing, too! What more did you do now that brought you any satisfaction? ‘Change, it’s all on the surface,’ thought Soames; ‘the roots are the same. You can’t get beyond them—try as you will!’ Progress, civilization, what were they for? Unless, indeed, to foster hobbies—collecting pictures, or what not? He didn’t see how the old chaps down here could have had hobbies—except for bees, perhaps. Hobbies? Just for that—just to give people a chance to have hobbies? He’d had a lot of amusement out of his own; and but for progress would never have had it. No! He’d have been down here still, perhaps, shearing his sheep or following a plough, and his daughter would be a girl with sturdy ankles and one new hat. Perhaps it was just as well that you couldn’t stop the clock! Ah! and it was time he was getting back to the lane before that chap came to look for him. And, getting up, Soames descended once more into the hollow. This time, close to the hedge, an object caught his eye, a very old boot—a boot so old that you could hardly swear by it. His lips became contorted in a faint smile. He seemed to hear his dead cousin George with his wry Forsytean humour cackling: “The ancestral boot! What ho, my wild ones! Let the portcullis fall!” Yes! They would laugh at him in the family if they knew he’d been looking at their roots. He shouldn’t say anything about it. And suddenly he went up to the boot, and, hooking the point of his umbrella under what was left of the toecap, flung it pettishly over the hedge. It defiled the loneliness—the feeling he had known, drinking-in that air. And very slowly he went back to the lane, so as not to get hot, and have to sit all damp in the car. But at the gate he stood, transfixed. What was all this? Two large, hairy horses were attached tandem to the back of his car with ropes, and beside them were three men, one of whom was Riggs, and two dogs, one of whom was lame. Soames perceived at once that it was all “that fellow!” In trying to back up the hill, which he ought never to have gone down, he had jammed the car so that it couldn’t move. He was always doing something! At this moment, however, “the fellow” mounted the car and moved the wheel; while one of the men cracked a whip. “Haup!” The hairy horses moved. Something in that slow, strong movement affected Soames. Progress! They had been obliged to fetch horses to drag Progress up the hill!
“That’s a good horse!” he said, pointing to the biggest.
“Ah! We call ’im Lion—’e can pull, Haup!”
The car passed on to the level ground, and the horses were detached. Soames went up to the man who had said “Haup!”
“Are you from the farm back there?”
“Yes.”
“Do you own this field?”
“I farm it.”
“What do you call it?”
“Call it? The big field.”
“It’s marked ‘Great Forsyte’ on the tithe map. D’you know that name?”
“Farsyt? There’s none of the name now. My grandmother was called Farsyt.”
“Was she?” said Soames, and again felt the thrill.
“Ah!” said the farmer.
Soames controlled himself.
“And what’s YOUR name, if I may ask?”
“Beer.”
Soames looked at him rather long, and took out his note case.
“You must allow me,” he said, “for your horses and your trouble.” And he offered a pound note. The farmer shook his head.
“That’s naught,” he said; “you’re welcome. We’re always haulin’ cars off this ‘ill.”
“I really can’t take something for nothing,” said Soames. “You’ll oblige me!”
“Well,” said the farmer, “I thank yeou,” and he took the note. “Haup!”
The released horses moved forward and the men and dogs followed after them. Soames got into the car, and, opening his packet of sandwiches, began to eat.
“Drive back to the vicarage—slowly.” And, while he ate, he wondered why he had felt a thrill on discovering that some of his own blood ran in a hard-bitten looking chap called Beer—if, indeed, that WAS his name.
It was two o’clock when he reached the vicarage, and the Vicar came to him with his mouth full.
“I find a great may entries, Mr. Forsyte; the name goes back to the beginning of the register. I shall have to take my time to give you the complete list. That Jolyon seems to have been born in 1710, son of Jolyon and Mary; he didn’t pay his tithes in 1757. There was another Jolyon born in 1680, evidently the father—he was church-warden from 1715 on; described as ‘Yeoman of Hays—’ he married a Bere.”
Soames gazed at him, and took out his note case. “How do you spell it?” he said.
“B-e-r-e.”
“Oh! The farmer up there said that was his name, too. I thought he was gammoning me. It seems his grandmother was called Forsyte, and she was the last of them here. Perhaps you could send me the Bere entries, too, for an inclusive seven guineas?”
“Oh! Six will be ample.”
“No. We’ll make it seven. You’ve got my card. I saw the stone. A healthy spot, right away from everything.” He laid the seven guineas on the table, and again had an impression, as of glad eyes. “I must be getting back to London now. Good-bye!”
“Good-bye, Mr. Forsyte. Anything I can find out I shall make a point of sending you.”
Soames shook his hand and went out to the car with the feeling that his roots would be conscientiously pulled up. After all, it was something to be dealing with a parson.
“Go on,” he said to Riggs; “we’ll get the best part of the way home.”
And, lying back in the car, thoroughly tired, he mused. Great Forsyte! Well! He was glad he had come down.
Soames spent the night at Winchester, a place he had often heard of but never seen. The Monts had been at school there, and Kit’s name had been put down automatically. He himself would prefer his own Marlborough, or Harrow, perhaps—some school that played at Lords—but not Eton, where young Jolyon had been. But then one wouldn’t be alive to see Kit play; so perhaps it didn’t matter.
The town seemed an old place. There was something in a cathedral, too; and after breakfast he went to it. The chancel was in activity—some choir practice or other. He entered noiselessly, for his boots were rubbered against damp, and sat down at the point of balance. With chin uplifted, he contemplated the arches and the glass. The place was rather dark, but very rich—like a Christmas pudding! These old buildings certainly gave one a feeling. He had always had it with St. Paul’s. One must admit at least a continuity of purpose somewhere. Up to a point—after that he wasn’t sure. You had a great thing, like this, almost perfect; and then an earthquake or an air-raid, and down it went! Nothing permanent about anything, so far as he could see, not even about the best examples of ingenuity and beauty. The same with landscape! You had a perfect garden of a country, and then an ice-age came along. There was continuity, but it was always changing. That was why it seemed to him extremely unlikely that he would live after he was dead. He had read somewhere—though not in The Times—that life was just animated shape, and that when shape was broken it was no longer animated. Death broke your shape and there you were, he supposed. The fact was, people couldn’t bear their own ends; they tried to dodge them with soft sawder. They were weak-minded. And Soames lowered his chin. They had lighted some candles up there in the chancel, insignificant in the daylight. Presently they would blow them out. There you were again, everything was blown out sooner or later. And it was no good pretending it wasn’t. He had read the other day, again not in The Times, that the world was coming to an end in 1928, when the earth got between the moon and the sun—it had been predicted in the Pyramids—some such scientific humbug! Well, if it did, he, for one, wouldn’t much mind. The thing had never been a great success, and if it were wiped out at one stroke there would be nothing left behind anyway; what was objectionable about death was leaving things that you were fond of behind. The moment, too, that the world came to an end, it would begin again in some other shape, anyway—that, no doubt, was why they called it “world without end, Amen.” Ah! They were singing now. Sometimes he wished he had an ear. In spite of the lack, he could tell that this was good singing. Boys’ voices! Psalms, too, and he knew the words. Funny! Fifty years since his church-going days, yet he remembered them as if it were yesterday! “He sendeth the springs into the rivers; which run among the hills.” “All beasts of the fields drink thereof; and the wild asses quench their thirst.” “Beside them shall the fowls of the air have their habitation; and sing among the branches.” They were flinging the verses at each other across the aisle, like a ball. It was lively, and good, vigorous English, too. “So is the great and wide sea also, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts.” “There go the ships, and there is that Leviathan, whom Thou hast made to take his pastime therein.” Leviathan! That word used to please him. “Man goeth forth to his work, and to his labour, until the evening.” He certainly went forth, but whether he did any work, any labour, was the question, nowadays. “I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live; I will praise my God while I have my being.” Would he? He wondered. “Praise thou the Lord, O my soul, praise the Lord.” The singing ceased, and Soames again lifted up his chin. He sat very still—not thinking now; lost, as it were, among the arches, and the twilight of the roof. He was experiencing a peculiar sensation, not unpleasant. To be in here was like being within a jewelled and somewhat scented box. The world might roar and stink and buzz outside, strident and vulgar, childish and sensational, cheap and nasty—all jazz and cockney accent, but here—not a trace of it heard or felt or seen. This great box—God-box the Americans would call it—had been made centuries before the world became industrialised; it didn’t belong to the modern world at all. In here everyone spoke and sang the King’s English; it smelt faintly of age and incense; and nothing was unbeautiful. He sat with a sense of escape.
A verger passed, glancing at him curiously, as if unaccustomed to a raised chin; halting just behind, he made a little noise with his keys. Soames sneezed; and, reaching for his hat, got up. He had no intention of being taken round by that chap, and shown everything he didn’t want to see, for half-a-crown. And with a “No, thank you; not today,” he passed the verger, and went out to the car.
“You ought to have gone in,” he said to Riggs; “they used to crown the kings of England there. To London now.”
The opened car travelled fast under a bright sun, and not until he was in the new cut, leading to Chiswick, did Soames have the idea which caused him to say: “Stop at that house, ‘The Poplars,’ where you took us the other day.”
It was not yet lunch time, and in all probability Fleur would still be “sitting”; so why not pick her up and take her straight away with him for the week-end? She had clothes down at “The Shelter.” It would save some hours of fresh air for her. The foreign woman, however, who opened the door, informed him that the lady had not been to “sit” today or yesterday.
“Oh!” said Soames. “How’s that?”
“Nobody did know, sir. She ‘ave not sent any message. Mr. Blade is very decomposed.”
Soames chewed his thoughts a moment.
“Is your mistress in?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then ask her if she’ll see me, please. Mr. Soames Forsyte.”
“Will you in the meal room wait, sir.”
Soames waited uneasily in that very little room. Fleur had said she could not come with him because of her “sittings”; and she had not “sat.” Was she ill, then?
He was roused from disquiet contemplation of the poplar trees outside by the words:
“Oh! It’s you. I’m not sorry you came.”
The cordiality of this greeting increased his uneasiness, and stretching out his hand, he said:
“How are you, June? I called for Fleur. When did she come last?”
“Tuesday morning. I saw her late on Tuesday afternoon, too, in her car, outside—” Soames could see her eyes moving from side to side, and knew that she was about to say something unpleasant. It came. “She picked up Jon.”
Feeling as if he had received a punch in his wind, Soames exclaimed:
“What! Your young brother? What was he doing here?”
“‘Sitting,’ of course.”
“‘Sitting’? What business—!” and, checking the words, “had he to ‘sit,’” he stared at his cousin, who, flushing a deep pink, said:
“I told her she was not to see him here. I told Jon the same.”
“Then she’d done it before?”
“Yes, twice. She’s so spoiled, you see.”
“Ah!” The reality of the danger had disarmed him. Antagonism seemed to him, thus faced with a sort of ruin, too luxurious.
“Where is she?”
“On Tuesday morning she said she was going down to Dorking.”
“And she picked him up?” repeated Soames.
June nodded. “Yes, after his ‘sitting.’ His picture’s finished. If you think that I want them to—any more than you—”
“No one in their senses could want them to—” said Soames, coldly. “But why did you make him ‘sit,’ while she was coming here?”
June flushed a deeper pink.
“YOU don’t know how hard it is for real artists. I HAD to think of Harold. If I hadn’t got Jon before he began his farming—”
“Farming!” said Soames. “For all we know they may—” but again he checked his words. “I’ve been expecting something of this sort ever since I heard he was back. Well! I’d better get on to Dorking. D’you know where his mother is?”
“In Paris.”
Ah! But not this time would he have to beg that woman to let her son belong to his daughter? No! It would be to beg her to stop his belonging—if at all.
“Good-bye!” he said.
“Soames,” said June, suddenly, “don’t let Fleur—it’s she who—”
“I’ll hear nothing against her,” said Soames.
June pressed her clenched hands to her flat breast.
“I like you for that,” she said; “and I’m sorry if—”
“That’s all right,” muttered Soames.
“Good-bye!” said June. “Shake hands!”
Soames put his hand in one which gave it a convulsive squeeze, then dropped it like a cold potato.
“Down to Dorking,” he said to Riggs, on regaining his car. The memory of Fleur’s face that night at Nettlefold, so close to the young man’s, so full of what he had never seen on her face before, haunted him the length of Hammersmith Bridge. Ah! What a wilful creature! Suppose—suppose she had flung her cap over the windmill! Suppose the worst! Good God! What should—what COULD he do, then? The calculating tenacity of her passion for this young man—the way she had kept it from him, from everyone, or tried to! Something deadly about it, and something that almost touched him, rousing the memory of his own pursuit of that boy’s mother—memory of a passion that would not, could not let go; that had won its ends, and destroyed in winning. He had often thought she had no continuity, that, like all these “fizz-gig” young moderns, she was just fluttering without basic purpose or direction. And it was the irony of this moment that he perceived how she—when she knew what she wanted—had as much tenacity of will as himself and his generation.
It didn’t do, it seemed, to judge by appearances! Beneath the surface passions remained what they had been, and in the draughty corridors and spaces there was the old hot stillness when they woke and breathed…
That fellow was taking the Kingston road! Soon they would be passing Robin Hill. How all this part had changed since the day he went down with Bosinney to choose the site. Forty years—not more—but what a change! “Plus ca change—” Annette would say—“plus c’est la meme chose!” Love and hate—no end to that, anyway! The beat of life went on beneath the wheels and whirr of traffic and the jazzy music of the band. Fate on its drum, or just the human heart? God knew! God? Convenient word. What did one mean by it? He didn’t know, and never would! In the cathedral that morning he had thought—and then—that verger! There were the poplars, and the stable clock-tower, just visible, of the house he had built and never inhabited. If he could have foreseen a stream of cars like this passing day after day, not a quarter of a mile off, he would not have built it, and that tragedy might never—And yet—did it matter what you did? – some way, somehow life took you up and put you where it would. He leaned forward and touched his chauffeur’s back.
“Which way are you going?”
“Through Esher, sir, and off to the left.”
“Well,” said Soames, “it’s all the same to me.”
It was past lunch time, but he wasn’t hungry. He wouldn’t be hungry till he knew the worst. But that chap would be, he supposed.
“Better stop somewhere,” he said, “and have a snack, and a cigarette.”
“Yes, sir.”
He wasn’t long in stopping. Soames sat on in the car, gazing idly at the sign—“Red Lions, Angels and White Horses”—nothing killed them off. One of these days they’d try and bring in Prohibition, he shouldn’t wonder; but that cock wouldn’t fight in England—too extravagant! Treating people like children wasn’t the way to make them grow up; as if they weren’t childish enough as it was. Look at this coal strike, that went on and on—perfectly childish, hurting everybody and doing good to none! Weak-minded! To reflect on the weak-mindedness of his fellow-citizens was restful to Soames, faced with a future that might prove disastrous. For, in view of her infatuation, what could taking that young man about in her car mean—except disaster? What a time Riggs was! He got out, and walked up and down. Not that there was anything he could do—he supposed—when he did get there. No matter how much you loved a person, how anxious you were about her, you had no power—perhaps less power in proportion to your love. But he must speak his mind at last, if he had the chance. Couldn’t let her go over the edge without putting out a hand! The sun struck on his face, and he lifted it a little blindly, as if grateful for the warmth. All humbug about the world coming to an end, of course, but he’d be glad enough for it to come before he was brought down in sorrow to the grave. He saw with hideous clearness how complete disaster must be. If Fleur ran off, there’d be nothing left to him that he really cared about, for the Monts would take Kit. He’d be stranded among his pictures and his cows, without heart for either, till he died. ‘I won’t have it,’ he thought. ‘If it hasn’t happened, I won’t have it.’ Yes! But how prevent it? And with the futility of his own resolution staring him in the face, he went back to the car. There was the fellow, at last, smoking his cigarette.
“Let’s start!” he said. “Push along!”
He arrived at three o’clock to hear that Fleur had gone out with the car at ten. It was an immense relief to learn that at least she had been there overnight. And at once he began to make trunk calls. They renewed his anxiety. She was not at home; nor at June’s. Where, then, if not with that young man? But at least she had taken no things with her—this he ascertained, and it gave him strength to drink some tea, and wait. He had gone out into the road for the fourth time to peer up and down when at last he saw her coming towards him.
The expression on her face—hungry and hard and feverish—had the most peculiar effect on Soames; his heart ached, and leaped with relief at the same time. That was not the face of victorious passion! It was tragically unhappy, arid, wrenched. Every feature seemed to have sharpened since he saw her last. And, instinctively, he remained silent, poking his face forward for a kiss. She gave it—hard and parched.
“So you’re back,” she said.
“Yes; and when you’ve had your tea, I want you to come straight on with me to ‘The Shelter’—Riggs’ll put your car away.”
She shrugged her shoulders and passed him into the house. It seemed to him that she did not care what he saw in her, or what he thought of her. And this was so strange in Fleur that he was confounded. Had she tried and failed? Could it mean anything so good? He searched his memory to recall how she had looked when he brought her back the news of failure six years ago. Yes! Only then she was so young, her face so round—not like this hardened, sharpened, burnt-up face, that frightened him. Get her away to Kit! Get her away, and quickly! And with that saving instinct of his where Fleur only was concerned, he summoned Riggs, told him to close the car and bring it round.
She had gone up to her room. He sent up a message presently that the car was ready. Soon she came down. She had coated her face with powder and put salve on her lips; and again Soames was shocked by that white mask with compressed red line of mouth, and the live and tortured eyes. And again he said nothing, and got out a map.
“That fellow will go wrong unless I sit beside him. It’s cross country;” and he mounted the front of the car. He knew she couldn’t talk, and that he couldn’t bear to see her face. So they started. An immense time they travelled thus, it seemed to him. Once or twice only he looked round to see her sitting like something dead, so white and motionless. And, within him, the two feelings—relief and pity, continued to struggle. Surely it was the end—she had played her hand and lost! How, where, when—he felt would always be unknown to him; but she had lost! Poor little thing! Not her fault that she had loved this boy, that she couldn’t get him out of her head—no more her fault than it had been his own for loving that boy’s mother! Only everyone’s misfortune! It was as if that passion, born of an ill-starred meeting in a Bournemouth drawing-room forty-six years before, and transmitted with his blood into her being, were singing its swan song of death, through the silent crimsoned lips of that white-faced girl behind him in the cushioned car. “Praise thou the Lord, O my soul! Praise the Lord!” Um! How could one! They were crossing the river at Staines—from now on that fellow knew his road. When they got home, how should he bring some life into her face again! Thank goodness her mother was away! Surely Kit would be some use! And her old dog, perhaps. And yet, tired though he was after his three long days, Soames dreaded the moment when the car should stop. To drive on and on, perhaps, was the thing for her. Perhaps, for all the world, now. To get away from something that couldn’t be got away from—ever since the war—driving on! When you couldn’t have what you wanted, and yet couldn’t let go; and drove, on and on, to dull the aching. Resignation—like painting—was a lost art; or so it seemed to Soames, as they passed the graveyard where he expected to be buried someday.
Close home now, and what was he going to say to her when they got out? Words were so futile. He put his head out of the window and took some deep breaths. It smelled better down here by the river than elsewhere, he always thought—more sap in the trees, more savour in the grass. Not the equal of the air on “Great Forsyte,” but more of the earth, more cosy. The gables and the poplars, the scent of a wood fire, the last flight of the doves—here they were! And with a long sigh, he got out.
He went round to the stables and released her old dog. It might want a run before being let into the house; and he took it down towards the river. A thin daylight lingered though the sun had set some time, and while the dog freshened himself among the bushes, Soames stood looking at the water. The swans passed over to their islet while he gazed. The young ones were growing up—were almost white. Rather ghostly in the dusk, the flotilla passed—graceful things and silent. He had often thought of going in for a peacock or two, they put a finish on a garden, but they were noisy; he had never forgotten an early morning in Montpellier Square, hearing their cry, as of lost passion, from Hyde Park. No! The swan was better; just as graceful, and didn’t sing. That dog was ruining his dwarf arbutus.
“Come along to your mistress!” he said, and turned back towards the lighted house. He went up into the picture gallery. On the bureau were laid a number of letters and things to be attended to. For half an hour he laboured at them. He had never torn up things with greater satisfaction. Then the bell rang, and he went down to be lonely, as he supposed.
But Fleur came down again. And there began for Soames the most confused evening he had ever spent. For in his heart were great gladness and great pity, and he must not show a sign of either. He wished now that he had stopped to look at Fleur’s portrait; it would have given him something to talk of. He fell back feebly on her Dorking house. “It seems a useful place,” he said; “the girls—”
“I always feel they hate me. And why not? They have nothing, and I have everything.”
Her laugh cut Soames to the quick.
She was only pretending to eat, too. But he was afraid to ask if she had taken her temperature. She would only laugh again. He began, instead, an account of how he had found a field by the sea where the Forsytes came from, and how he had visited Winchester Cathedral; and, while he went on and on, he thought: ‘She hasn’t heard a word.’
The idea that she would go up to bed consumed by this smouldering fire at which he could not get, distressed and alarmed him greatly. She looked as if—as if she might do something to herself! She had no veronal, or anything of that sort, he hoped. And all the time he was wondering what had happened. If the issue were still doubtful—if she were still waiting, she might be restless, feverish, but surely she would not look like this! No! It was defeat. But how? And was it final, and he freed for ever from the carking anxiety of these last months? His eyes kept questioning her face, where her fevered mood had crept through the coating of powder, so that she looked theatrical and unlike herself. Its expression, hard and hopeless, went to his heart. If only she would cry, and blurt everything out! But he recognised that in coming down at all, and facing him, she was practically saying, “NOTHING has happened!” And he compressed his lips. A dumb thing, affection—one couldn’t put it into words! The more deeply he felt the more dumb he had always been. Those glib people who poured themselves out and got rid of the feelings they had in their chests, he didn’t know how they could do it!
Dinner dragged to its end, with little bursts of talk from Fleur, and more of that laughter which hurt him, and afterwards they went to the drawing-room.
“It’s hot to-night,” she said, and opened the French window. The moon was just rising, low and far behind the river bushes; and a waft of light was already floating down the water.
“Yes, it’s warm,” said Soames, “but you oughtn’t to be in the air if you’ve got a chill.”
And, taking her arm, he led her within. He had a dread of her wandering outside to-night, so near the water.
She went over to the piano.
“Do you mind if I strum, Dad?”
“Not at all. Your mother’s got some French songs there.” He didn’t mind what she did, if only she could get that look off her face. But music was emotional stuff, and French songs always about love! It was to be hoped she wouldn’t light on the one Annette was for ever singing:
That young man’s hair! In the old days, beside his mother! What hair SHE’D had! What bright hair and what dark eyes! And for a moment it was as if, not Fleur, but Irene sat there at the piano. Music! Mysterious how it could mean to anyone what it had meant to her. Yes! More than men and more than money—music! A thing that had never moved him, that he didn’t understand! What a mischance! There she was, above the piano, as he used to see her in the little drawing-room in Montpellier Square; there, as he had seen her last in that Washington hotel. There she would sit until she died, he supposed, beautiful, he shouldn’t wonder, even then. Music!
He came to himself.
Fleur’s thin, staccato voice tickled his ears, where he sat in the fume of his cigar. Painful! She was making a brave fight. He wanted her to break down, and he didn’t want her to. For if she broke down he didn’t know what he would do!
She stopped in the middle of a song and closed the piano. She looked almost old—so she would look, perhaps, when she was forty. Then she came and sat down on the other side of the hearth. She was in red, and he wished she wasn’t—the colour increased his feeling that she was on fire beneath that mask of powder on her face and neck. She sat there very still, pretending to read. And he who had The Times in his hand, tried not to notice her. Was there nothing he could do to divert her attention? What about his pictures? Which—he asked—was her favourite? The Constable, the Stevens, the Corot, or the Daumier?
“I’m leaving the lot to the Nation,” he said. “But I shall want you to take your pick of four or so; and, of course, that copy of Goya’s ‘Vendimia’ belongs to you.” Then, remembering she had worn the ‘Vendimia’ dress at the dance in the Nettlefold hotel, he hurried on:
“With all this modern taste the Nation mayn’t want them; in that case I don’t know. Dumetrius might take them off your hands! he’s had a good deal out of most of them already. If you chose the right moment, clear of strikes and things, they ought to fetch money in a good sale. They stand me in at well over seventy thousand pounds—they ought to make a hundred thousand at least.”
She seemed to be listening, but he couldn’t tell.
“In my belief,” he went on, desperately, “there’ll be none of this modern painting in ten years’ time—they can’t go on for ever juggling in the air. They’ll be sick of experiments by then, unless we have another war.”
“It wasn’t the war.”
“How d’you mean—not the war? The war brought in ugliness, and put everyone into a hurry. You don’t remember before the war.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“I won’t say,” continued Soames, “that it hadn’t begun before. I remember the first shows in London of those post-impressionists and early Cubist chaps. But they ran riot with the war, catching at things they couldn’t get.”
He stopped. It was exactly what she—!
“I think I’ll go to bed, Dad.”
“Ah!” said Soames. “And take some aspirin. Don’t you play about with a chill.”
A chill! If only it were! He himself went again to the open window, and stood watching the moonlight. From the staff’s quarters came the strains of a gramophone. How they loved to turn on that caterwauling, or the loud speaker! He didn’t know which he disliked most.
Moving to the edge of the verandah, he held out his palm. No dew! Dry as ever—remarkable weather! A dog began howling from over the river. Some people would take that for a banshee, he shouldn’t wonder! The more he saw of people the more weak-minded they seemed; for ever looking for the sensational, or covering up their eyes and ears. The garden was looking pretty in the moonlight—pretty and unreal. That border of sunflowers and Michaelmas daisies and the late roses in the little round beds, and the low wall of very old brick—he’d had a lot of trouble to get that brick! – even the grass—the moon-light gave them all a stage-like quality. Only the poplars queered the dream-like values, dark and sharply outlined by the moon behind them. Soames moved out on to the lawn. The face of the house, white and creepered, with a light in her bedroom, looked unreal, too, and as if powdered. Thirty-two years he’d been here. One had got attached to the place, especially since he’d bought the land over the river, so that no one could ever build and overlook him. To be overlooked, body or soul—on the whole he’d avoided that in life—at least, he hoped so.
He finished his cigar out there and threw the butt away. He would have liked to see her light go out before he went to bed—to feel that she was sleeping as when, a little thing, she went to bed with toothache. But he was very tired. Motoring was hard on the liver. Well! He’d go in and shut up. After all, he couldn’t do any good by staying down, couldn’t do any good in any way. The old couldn’t help the young—nobody could help anyone, if it came to that, at least where the heart was concerned. Queer arrangement—the heart! And to think that everybody had one. There ought to be some comfort in that, and yet there wasn’t. No comfort to him, when he’d suffered, night in, day out, over that boy’s mother, that she had suffered, too! No satisfaction to Fleur now, that the young man and his wife, too, very likely, were suffering as well! And, closing the window, Soames went up. He listened at her door, but could hear nothing; and, having undressed, took up Vasari’s “Lives of the Painters,” and, propped against his pillows, began to read. Two pages of that book always sent him to sleep, and generally the same two, for he knew them so well that he never remembered where he had left off.
He was awakened presently by he couldn’t tell what, and lay listening. It seemed that there was movement in the house. But if he got up to see he would certainly begin to worry again, and he didn’t want to. Besides, in seeing to whether Fleur was asleep he might wake her up. Turning over, he dozed off, but again he woke, and lay drowsily thinking: ‘I’m not sleeping well—I want exercise.’ Moonlight was coming through the curtains not quite drawn. And, suddenly, his nostrils twitched. Surely a smell of burning! He sat up, sniffing. It WAS! Had there been a short circuit, or was the thatch of the pigeon-house on fire? Getting out of bed, he put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and went to the window.
A reddish, fitful light was coming from a window above. Great God! His picture gallery! He ran to the foot of the stairs that led up to it. A stealthy sound, a scent of burning much more emphatic, staggered him. He hurried up the stairs and pulled open the door. Heavens! The far end of the gallery, at the extreme left corner of the house, was on fire. Little red flames were licking round the wood-work; the curtains of the far window were already a blackened mass, and the waste paper basket, between them and his writing bureau, was a charred wreck! On the parquet floor he saw some cigarette ash. Someone had been up here smoking! The flames crackled as he stood there aghast. He rushed downstairs, and threw open the door of Fleur’s room. She was lying on her bed asleep, but fully dressed! Fully dressed! Was it—? Had she—? She opened her eyes, staring up at him.
“Get up!” he said, “there’s a fire in the picture gallery. Get Kit and the servants out at once—at once! Send for Riggs! Telephone to Reading for the engines—quick! Get everyone out of the house!” Only waiting to see her on her feet, he ran back to the foot of the gallery stairs and seized a fire extinguisher. He carried it up, a heavy, great thing. He knew vaguely that you dashed the knob on the floor and sprayed the flames. Through the open doorway he could see that they had spread considerably. Good God! They were licking at his Fred Walker, and the two David Coxes. They had caught the beam, too, that ran round the gallery, dividing the upper from the lower tier of pictures; yes, and the upper beam was on fire, also. The Constable! For a moment he hesitated. Should he rush at that, and save it, anyway? The extinguisher mightn’t work! He dropped it, and, running the length of the gallery, seized the Constable just as the flames reached the woodwork above it. The hot breath of them scorched his face as he wrenched the picture from the wall, and, running back, flung open the window opposite the door, and placed it on the sill. Then, seizing the extinguisher again, he dashed it, knob down, against the floor. A stream of stuff came out, and, picking the thing up, he directed that stream against the flames. The room was full of smoke now, and he felt rather giddy. The stuff was good, and he saw with relief that the flames didn’t like it. He was making a distinct impression on them. But the Walker was ruined—ah! and the Coxes! He had beaten the fire back to the window-wall, when the stream ceased, and he saw that the beams had broken into flame beyond where he had started spraying. The writing bureau, too, was on fire now—its papers had caught! Should he run down and get another of these things, all the way to the hall! Where was that fellow Riggs? The “Alfred Stevens”! By heaven! He was not going to lose his Stevens nor his Gauguins, nor his Corots!
And a sort of demon entered into Soames. His taste, his trouble, his money, and his pride—all consumed? By the Lord, no! And through the smoke he dashed again up to the far wall. Flame licked at his sleeve as he tore away the “Stevens”; he could smell the singed stuff when he propped the picture in the window beside the Constable.
A lick of flame crossed the Daubigny, and down came its glass with a clatter—there was the picture exposed and fire creeping and flaring over it! He rushed back and grasped at a “Gauguin”—a South Sea girl with nothing on. She wouldn’t come away from the wall; he caught hold of the wire, but dropped it—red hot; seizing the frame he gave a great wrench. Away it came, and over he went, backwards. But he’d got it, his favourite Gauguin! He stacked that against the others, and ran back to the Corot nearest the flames. The silvery, cool picture was hot to his touch, but he got that, too! Now for the Monet! The engines would be twenty minutes at least. If that fellow Riggs didn’t come soon—! They must spread a blanket down there, and he would throw the pictures out. And then he uttered a groan. The flames had got the other Corot! The poor thing! Wrenching off the Monet, he ran to the head of the stairs. Two frightened maids in coats over their nightgowns, and their necks showing, were half way up.
“Here!” he cried. “Take this picture, and keep your heads. Miss Fleur and the boy out?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you telephoned?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get me an extinguisher; and all of you hold a blanket spread beneath the window down there, to catch the pictures as I throw them out. Don’t be foolish—there’s no danger! Where’s Riggs?”
He went back into the gallery. Oh—h! There went his precious little Degas! And with rage in his heart Soames ran again at the wall, and snatched at his other Gauguin. If ever he had beaten Dumetrius, it was over that highly-coloured affair. As if grateful to him, the picture came away neatly in his scorched and trembling hands. He stacked it, and stood for a moment choked and breathless. So long as he could breathe up here in the draught between the opened door and window, he must go on getting them off the wall.
It wouldn’t take long to throw them out. The Bonnington and the Turner—that fellow Turner wouldn’t have been so fond of sunsets if he’d known what fire was like. Each time now that he went to the wall his lungs felt as if they couldn’t stand another journey. But they must!
“Dad!”
Fleur with an extinguisher!
“Go down! Go out!” he cried. “D’you hear! Go out of the house! Get that blanket spread, and make them hold it tight.”
“Dad! Let me! I must!”
“Go down!” cried Soames again, and pushed her to the stairs. He watched her to the bottom, then dashed the knob of the extinguisher on the floor and again sprayed the fire. He put out the bureau, and attacked the flames on the far wall. He could hardly hold the heavy thing, and when it dropped empty, he could barely see. But again he had gained on the fire. If only he could hold on!
And then he saw that his Harpignies was gone—such a beauty! That wanton loss gave him strength. And rushing up to the wall—the long wall now—he detached picture after picture. But the flames were creeping back again, persistent as hell itself. He couldn’t reach the Sisley and the Picasso, high in the corner there, couldn’t face the flames so close, for if he slipped against the wall he would be done. They must go! But he’d have the Daumier! His favourite—perhaps his very favourite. Safe! Gasping, and avidly drinking the fresher air, he could see from the window that they had the blanket down there now stretched between four maids, holding each a corner.
“Hold tight!” he cried; and tipped the Daumier out. He watched it falling. What a thing to do to a picture! The blanket dipped with the weight, but held.
“Hold it tighter!” he shouted. “Look out!” And over went the Gauguin South Sea Girl. Picture after picture, they took them from the blanket, and laid them on the grass. When he had tipped them all, he turned to take the situation in. The flames had caught the floor now, in the corner, and were spreading fast along the beams.
The engines would be in time to save the right hand wall. The left hand wall was hopeless, but most of the pictures there he’d saved. It was the long wall where the flames were beginning to get hold; he must go for that now. He ran as near to the corner as he dared, and seized the Morland. It was hot to his touch, but he got it—six hundred pounds’ worth of white pony. He had promised it a good home! He tipped it from the window and saw it pitch headlong into the blanket.
“My word!”
Behind him, in the doorway, that fellow Riggs at last, in shirt and trousers, with two extinguishers, and an open mouth!
“Shut your mouth!” he gasped, “and spray that wall!”
He watched the stream and the flames recoiling from it. How he hated those inexorable red tongues. Ah! That was giving them pause!
“Now the other! Save the Courbet! Sharp!”
Again the stream spurted and the flames recoiled. Soames dashed for the Courbet. The glass had gone, but the picture was not harmed yet; he wrenched it away.
“That’s the last of the bloomin’ extinguishers, sir,” he heard Riggs mutter.
“Here, then!” he called. “Pull the pictures off that wall and tip them out of the window one by one. Mind you hit the blanket. Stir your stumps!”
He, too, stirred his stumps, watching the discouraged flames regaining their lost ground. The two of them ran breathless to the wall, wrenched, ran back to the window, and back again—and the flames gained all the time.
“That top one,” said Soames; “I must have that! Get on that chair. Quick! No, I’ll do it. Lift me! – I can’t reach!”
Uplifted in the grip of that fellow, Soames detached his James Maris, bought the very day the whole world broke into flames. “Murder of the Archduke!” he could hear them at it now. A fine day; the sunlight coming in at the window of his cab, and he lighthearted, with that bargain on his knee. And there it went, pitching down! Ah! What a way to treat pictures!
“Come on!” he gasped.
“Better go down, sir! It’s gettin’ too thick now.”
“No!” said Soames. “Come on!”
Three more pictures saived.
“If you don’t go down, sir, I’ll have to carry you—you been up ’ere too long.”
“Nonsense!” gasped Soames. “Come on!”
“‘Ooray! The engines!”
Soames stood still; besides the pumping of his heart and lungs he could hear another sound. Riggs seized his arm.
“Come along, sir; when they begin to play there’ll be a proper smother.”
Soames pointed through the smoke.
“I must have that one,” he gasped. “Help me. It’s heavy.”
The “Vendimia” copy stood on an easel.
Soames staggered up to it. Half carrying and half dragging, he bore that Spanish effigy of Fleur towards the window.
“Now lift!” They lifted till it balanced on the sill.
“Come away there!” called a voice from the doorway.
“Tip!” gasped Soames, but arms seized him, he was carried to the door, down the stairs, into the air half-conscious. He came to himself in a chair on the verandah. He could see the helmets of firemen and hear a hissing sound. His lungs hurt him, his eyes smarted terribly, and his hands were scorched, but he felt drugged and drowsy and triumphant in spite of his aches and smarting.
The grass, the trees, the cool river under the moon! What a nightmare it had been up there among his pictures—his poor pictures! But he had saved them! The cigarette ash! The waste paper basket! Fleur! No doubt about the cause! What on earth had induced him to put his pictures into her head that evening of all others, when she didn’t know what she was doing? What awful luck! Mustn’t let her know—unless—unless she did know? The shock—however! The shock might do her good! His Degas! The Harpignies! He closed his eyes to listen to the hissing of the water. Good! A good noise! They’d save the rest! It might have been worse! Something cold was thrust against his drooped hand. A dog’s nose. They shouldn’t have let him out. And, suddenly, it seemed to Soames that he must see to things again. They’d go the wrong way to work with all that water! He staggered to his feet. He could see better now. Fleur! Ah! There she was, standing by herself—too near the house! And what a mess on the lawn—firemen—engines—maids, that fellow Riggs—the hose laid to the river—plenty of water, anyway! They mustn’t hurt the pictures with that water! Fools! He knew it! Why! They were squirting the untouched wall. Squirting through both windows. There was no need of that? The right hand window only—only! He stumbled up to the fireman.
“Not that wall! Not that! That wall’s all right. You’ll spoil my pictures! Shoot at the centre!” The fireman shifted the angle of his arm, and Soames saw the jet strike the right-hand corner of the sill. The Vendimia! There went its precious—! Dislodged by the stream of water, it was tilting forward! And Fleur! Good God! Standing right under, looking up. She must see it, and she wasn’t moving! It flashed through Soames that she wanted to be killed.
“It’s falling!” he cried. “Look out! Look out!” And, just as if he had seen her about to throw herself under a car, he darted forward, pushed her with his outstretched arms, and fell.
The thing had struck him to the earth.
Old Gradman, off the Poultry, eating his daily chop, took up the early edition of the evening paper, brought to him with that collation:
“FIRE IN A PICTURE GALLERY.”
“WELL-KNOWN CONNOISSEUR SEVERELY INJURED.”
“A fire, the cause of which is unknown, broke out last night in the picture gallery of Mr. Soames Forsyte’s house at Mapledurham. It was extinguished by fire engines from Reading, and most of the valuable pictures were saved. Mr. Forsyte, who was in residence, fought the fire before the firemen were on the spot, and, single-handed, rescued many of the pictures, throwing them out of the window of the gallery into a blanket which was held stretched out on the lawn below. Unfortunately, after the engines had arrived, he was struck on the head by the frame of a picture falling from the window of the gallery, which is on the second floor, and rendered unconscious. In view of his age and his exertions during the fire, very little hope is entertained of his recovery. Nobody else was injured, and no other part of the mansion was reached by the flames.”
Laying down his fork, old Gradman took his napkin, and passed it over a brow which had grown damp. Replacing it on the table, he pushed away his chop, and took up the paper again. You never knew what to believe, nowadays, but the paragraph was uncommonly sober; and he dropped it with a gesture singularly like the wringing of hands.
‘Mr. Soames,’ he thought. ‘Mr. Soames!’ His two wives, his daughter, his grandson, the Forsyte family, himself! He stood up, grasping the table. An accidental thing like that! Mr. Soames! Why—he was a young man, comparatively! But perhaps they’d got hold of the wrong stick! Mechanically he went to the telephone. He found the number with difficulty, his eyes being misty.
“Is that Mrs. Dartie’s—Gradman speaking. Is it true, ma’am… Not ‘opeless, I do trust? Aow! Saving Miss Fleur’s life? You don’t say! You’re goin’ down? I think I’d better, too. Everything’s in order, but he might want something, if he comes to… Dear, dear!… Ah! I’m sure… Dreadful shock—dreadful!” He hung up the receiver, and stood quite still. Who would look after things now? There wasn’t one of the family with any sense of business, compared with Mr. Soames, not one who remembered the old days, and could handle house property as they used to, then. No, he couldn’t relish any more chop—that was flat! Miss Fleur! Saving her life? Well, what a thing! She’d always been first with him. What must she be feelin’! He remembered her as a little girl; yes, and at her wedding. To think of it. She’d be a rich woman now. He took his hat. Must go home first and get some things—might have to wait there days! But for a full three minutes he still stood, as if stunned—a thick-set figure with a puggy face, in a round grey beard—confirming his uneasy grief. If the Bank of England had gone he couldn’t have felt it more. That he couldn’t.
When he reached “The Shelter” in a station fly, with a bag full of night things and papers, it was getting on for six o’clock. He was met in the hall by that young man, Mr. Michael Mont, whom he remembered as making jokes about serious things—it was to be hoped he wouldn’t do it now!
“Ah! Mr. Gradman; so good of you to come! No! They hardly expect him to recover consciousness; it was a terrible knock. But if he does, he’s sure to want to see you, even if he can’t speak. We’ve got your room ready. Will you have some tea?”
Yes, he could relish a cup of tea—he could indeed! “Miss Fleur?”
The young man shook his head, his eyes looked distressed.
“He saved her life.”
Gradman nodded. “So they say. Tt, tt! To think that he—! His father lived to be ninety, and Mr. Soames was always careful. Dear, dear!”
He had drunk a nice hot cup of tea when he saw a figure in the doorway—Miss Fleur herself. Why! What a face! She came forward and took his hand. And, almost unconsciously, old Gradman lifted his other hand and imprisoned hers between his two.
“My dear,” he said, “I feel for you. I remember you as a little girl.”
She only answered: “Yes, Mr. Gradman,” and it seemed to him funny. She took him to his room, and left him there. He had never been in such a pleasant bedroom, with flowers and a nice smell, and a bathroom all to himself—really quite unnecessary. And to think that two doors off Mr. Soames was lying as good as gone!
“Just breathing,” she had said, passing the door. “They daren’t operate. My mother’s there.”
What a face she had on her—so white, so hurt-looking—poor young thing! He stood at the open window, gazing out. It was warm—very warm for the end of September. A pleasant air—a smell of grass. It must be the river down there. Peaceful—and to think—! Moisture blurred the river out; he winked it away. Only the other day they’d been talking about something happening; and now it hadn’t happened to him, but to Mr. Soames himself. The ways of Providence! For Jesus Christ’s sake—Our Lord! Dear, dear! To think of it! He would cut up a very warm man. Richer than his father. There were some birds out there on the water—geese or swans or something—ye-es! Swans! What a lot! In a row, floating along. He hadn’t seen a swan since he took Mrs. G. to Golder’s Hill Park the year after the war. And they said—hopeless! A dreadful thing—sudden like that, with no time to say your prayers. Lucky the Will was quite straightforward. Annuity to Mrs. F., and the rest to his daughter for life, remainder to her children in equal shares. Only one child at present, but there’d be others, no doubt, with all that money. Dear! What a sight of money there was in the family altogether, and yet, of the present generation, Mr. Soames was the only warm man. It was all divided up now, and none of the young ones seemed to make any. He would have to keep a tight hand on the estates, or they’d be wanting their capital out, and Mr. Soames wouldn’t approve of that! To think of outliving Mr. Soames! And something incorruptibly faithful within that puggy face and thick figure, something that for two generations had served and never expected more than it had got, so moved old Graham that he subsided on the window seat with the words: “I’m quite upset!”
He was still sitting there with his head on his hand, and darkness thickening outside, when, with a knock on the door, that young man said:
“Mr. Gradman, will you come down for dinner, or would you like it up here?”
“Up here, if it’s all the same to you. Cold beef and pickles or anything there is, and a glass of stout, if it’s quite convenient.”
The young man drew nearer.
“You must feel it awfully, Mr. Gradman, having known him so long. Not an easy man to know, but one felt—”
Something gave way in Gradman and he spoke:
“Ah! I knew him from a little boy—took him to his first school—taught him how to draw a lease—never knew him to do a shady thing; very reserved man, Mr. Soames, but no better judge of an investment, except his uncle Nicholas. He had his troubles, but he never said anything of them; good son to his father—good brother to his sisters—good father to his child, as you know, young man.”
“Yes, indeed! And very good to me.”
“Not much of a church-goer, I’m afraid, but straight as a die. Never one to wear his ’eart on his sleeve; a little uncomfortable sometimes, maybe, but you could depend on him. I’m sorry for your young wife, young man—I am that! ‘Ow did it ‘appen?”
“She was standing below the window when the picture fell, and didn’t seem to realise. He pushed her out of the way, and it hit him instead.”
“Why! What a thing!”
“Yes. She can’t get over it.”
Gradman looked up at the young man’s face in the twilight.
“You mustn’t be down-‘earted,” he said. “She’ll come round. Misfortunes will happen. The family’s been told, I suppose. There’s just one thing, Mr. Michael—his first wife, Mrs. Irene, that married Mr. Jolyon after; she’s still living, they say; she might like to send a message that byegones were byegones, in case he came round.”
“I don’t know, Mr. Gradman, I don’t know.”
“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass—‘e was greatly attached to ‘er at one time.”
“So I believe, but there are things that—. Still, Mrs. Dartie knows her address, if you like to ask her. She’s here, you know.”
“I’ll turn it over. I remember Mrs. Irene’s wedding—very pale she was; a beautiful young woman, too.”
“I believe so.”
“The present one—being French, I suppose, she shows her feelings. However—if he’s unconscious—” It seemed to him that the young man’s face looked funny, and he added: “I’ve never heard much of her. Not very happy with his wives, I’m afraid, he hasn’t been.”
“Some men aren’t, you know, Mr. Gradman. It’s being too near, I suppose.”
“Ah!” said Gradman: “It’s one thing or the other, and that’s a fact. Mrs. G. and I have never had a difference—not to speak of, in fifty-two years, and that’s going back, as the saying is. Well, I mustn’t keep you from Miss Fleur. She’ll need cossetting. Just cold beef and a pickle. You’ll let me know if I’m wanted—any time, day or night. And if Mrs. Dartie’d like to see me I’m at her service.”
The talk had done him good. That young man was a nicer young fellow than he’d thought. He felt that he could almost relish a pickle. After he had done so a message came: Would he go to Mrs. Dartie in the drawing room?
“Wait for me, my dear,” he said to the maid; “I’m strange here.”
Having washed his hands and passed a towel over his face, he followed her down the stairs of the hushed house. What a room to be sure! Rather empty, but in apple-pie order, with its cream-coloured panels, and its china, and its grand piano. Winifred Dartie was sitting on a sofa before a wood fire. She rose and took his hand.
“Such a comfort to see you, Gradman,” she said. “You’re the oldest friend we have.”
Her face looked strange, as if she wanted to cry and had forgotten how. He had known her as a child, as a fashionable young woman, had helped to draw her marriage settlement, and shaken his head over her husband many a time—the trouble he’d had in finding out exactly what that gentleman owed, after he fell down the staircase in Paris and broke his neck! And every year still he prepared her income tax return.
“A good cry,” he said, “would do you good, and I shouldn’t blame you. But we mustn’t say ‘die’; Mr. Soames has a good constitution, and it’s not as if he drank; perhaps he’ll pull round after all.”
She shook her head. Her face had a square grim look that reminded him of her old Aunt Ann. Underneath all her fashionableness she’d borne a lot—she had, when you came to think of it.
“It struck him here,” she said; “a slanting blow on the right of the head. I shall miss him terribly; he’s the only—” Gradman patted her hand.
“Ye-es, ye-es! But we must look on the bright side. If he comes round, I shall be there.” What exact comfort he thought this was, he could not have made clear. “I did wonder whether he would like Mrs. Irene told. I don’t like the idea of his going with a grudge on his mind. It’s an old story, of course, but at the Judgment Day—”
A faint smile was lost in the square lines round Winifred’s mouth.
“We needn’t bother him with that, Gradman; it’s out of fashion.”
Gradman emitted a sound, as though, within him, faith and respect for the family he had served for sixty years had bumped against each other.
“Well, you know best,” he said, “I shouldn’t like him to go with anything on his conscience.”
“On HER conscience, Gradman.”
Gradman stared at a Dresden shepherdess.
“In a case of forgivin’, you never know. I wanted to speak to him too, about his steel shares; they’re not all they might be. But we must just take our chance, I suppose. I’m glad your father was spared, Mr. James WOULD have taken on. It won’t be like the same world again, if Mr. Soames—”
She had put her hand up to her mouth and turned away. Fashion had dropped from her thickened figure. Much affected, Gradman turned to the door.
“Shan’t leave my clothes off, in case I’m wanted. I’ve got everything here. Good-night!”
He went upstairs again, tiptoeing past the door, and, entering his room, switched on the light. They had taken away the pickles; turned his bed down, laid his flannel nightgown out. They took a lot of trouble! And, sinking on his knees, he prayed in a muffled murmur, varying the usual words, and ending: “And for Mr. Soames, O Lord, I specially commend him body and soul. Forgive him his trespasses, and deliver him from all ‘ardness of ’eart and impurities, before he goes ‘ence, and make him as a little lamb again, that he may find favour in Thy sight. They faithful servant. Amen.” And, for some time after he had finished, he remained kneeling on the very soft carpet, breathing-in the familiar reek of flannel and old times. He rose easier in his mind. Removing his boots, laced and square-toed, and his old frock coat, he put on his Jaeger gown, and shut the window, to keep out the night air. Then taking the eiderdown, he placed a large handkerchief over his bald head, and, switching off the light, sat down in the armchair, with the eiderdown over his knees.
What an ‘ush after London, to be sure, so quiet you could hear yourself think! For some reason he thought of Queen Victoria’s first Jubilee, when he was a youngster of forty, and Mr. James had given him and Mrs. G. two seats. They had seen the whole thing—first chop! – the Guards and the procession, the carriages, the horses, the Queen and the Royal family. A beautiful summer day—a real summer that; not like the summers lately. And everything going on, as if it’d go on for ever, with three per cents at nearly par if he remembered, and all going to church regular. And only that same year, a bit later, Mr. Soames had had his first upset. And another memory came. Queer he should remember that to-night, with Mr. Soames lying there—must have been quite soon after the Jubilee, too! Going with a lease that wouldn’t bear to wait to Mr. Soames’s private house, Montpellier Square, and being shown into the dining-room, and hearing some one singing and playing on the “pianner.” He had opened the door to listen. Why—he could remember the words now! About “laying on the grass,” “I die, I faint, I fail,” “the champaign odours,” something “on your cheek” and something “pale.” Fancy that! And, suddenly, the door had opened and out she’d come—Mrs. Irene—in a frock—ah!
“Are you waiting for Mr. Forsyte? Won’t you come in and have some tea?” And he’d gone in and had tea, sitting on the edge of a chair that didn’t look too firm, all gilt and spindley. And she on the sofa in that frock, pouring it out, and saying:
“Are you fond of music, then, Mr. Gradman?” Soft, a soft look, with her dark eyes and her hair—not red and not what you’d call gold—but like a turned leaf—um? – a beautiful young woman, sad and sort of sympathetic in the face. He’d often thought of her—he could see her now! And then Mr. Soames coming in, and her face all closing up like—like a book. Queer to remember that to-night!… Dear me!… How dark and quiet it was! That poor young daughter, that it was all about! It was to be ‘oped she’d sleep! Ye-es! And what would Mrs. G. say if she could see HIM sitting in a chair like this, with his teeth in, too. Ah! Well—she’d never seen Mr. Soames, never seen the family—Maria hadn’t! But what an ‘ush! And slowly but surely old Gradman’s mouth fell open, and he broke the hush.
Beyond the closed window the moon rode up, a full and brilliant moon, so that the stilly darkened country dissolved into shape and shadow, and the owls hooted, and, far off, a dog bayed; and flowers in the garden became each a little presence in a night-time carnival graven into stillness; and on the gleaming river every fallen leaf that drifted down carried a moonbeam; while, above, the trees stayed, quiet, measured and illumined, quiet as the very sky, for the wind stirred not.
There was only just life in Soames. Two nights and two days they had waited, watching the unmoving bandaged head. Specialists had come, given their verdict: “Nothing to be done by way of operation”; and gone again. The doctor who had presided over Fleur’s birth was in charge. Though never quite forgiven by Soames for the anxiety he had caused on that occasion, “the fellow” had hung on, attending the family. By his instructions they watched the patient’s eyes; at any sign, they were to send for him at once.
Michael, from whom Fleur seemed inconsolably caught away, gave himself up to Kit, walking and talking and trying to keep the child unaware. He did not visit the still figure, not from indifference, but because he felt an intruder there. He had removed all the pictures left in the gallery, and, storing them with those which Soames had thrown from the window, had listed them carefully. The fire had destroyed eleven out of the eighty-four.
Annette had cried, and was feeling better. The thought of life without Soames was for her strange and—possible; precisely, in fact, like the thought of life with him. She wished him to recover, but if he didn’t she would live in France.
Winifred, who shared the watches, lived much and sadly in the past. Soames had been her mainstay throughout thirty-four years chequered by Montague Dartie, had continued her mainstay in the thirteen unchequered years since. She did not see how things could ever be cosy again. She had a heart, and could not look at that still figure without trying to remember how to cry. Letters came to her from the family worded with a sort of anxious astonishment that Soames should have had such a thing happen to him.
Gradman, who had taken a bath, and changed his trousers to black, was deep in calculations and correspondence with the Insurance firm. He walked, too, in the kitchen garden, out of sight of the house; for he could not get over the fact that Mr. James had lived to be ninety, and Mr. Timothy a hundred, to say nothing of the others. And, stopping mournfully before the seakail or the Brussels sprouts he would shake his head.
Smither had come down to be with Winifred, but was of little use, except to say: “Poor Mr. Soames! Poor dear Mr. Soames! To think of it! And he so careful of himself, and everybody!”
For that was it! Ignorant of the long and stealthy march of passion, and of the state to which it had reduced Fleur; ignorant of how Soames had watched her, seen that beloved young part of his very self fail, reach the edge of things and stand there balancing; ignorant of Fleur’s reckless desperation beneath that falling picture, and her father’s knowledge thereof—ignorant of all this everybody felt aggrieved. It seemed to them that a mere bolt from the blue, rather than the inexorable secret culmination of an old, old story, had striken one who of all men seemed the least liable to accident. How should they tell that it was not so accidental as all that!
But Fleur knew well enough that her desperate mood had destroyed her father, just as surely as if she had flung herself into the river and he had been drowned in saving her. Only too well she knew that on that night she had been capable of slipping down into the river, of standing before a rushing car, of anything not too deliberate and active, that would have put her out of her aching misery. She knew well enough that she had recklessly stood rooted when the picture toppled above her. And now, sobered to the very marrow by the shock, she could not forgive herself.
With her mother, her aunt and the two trained nurses she divided the watches, so that there were never less than two, of whom she was nearly always one, in Annette’s bedroom where Soames lay. She would sit hour after hour, almost as still as her father, with her eyes wistful and dark-circled, fixed on his face. Passion and fever had quite died out of her. It was as if, with his infallible instinct where she was concerned, Soames had taken the one step that could rid her of the fire which had been consuming her. Jon was remote from her in that room darkened by sun blinds and her remorse.
Yes! She had meant to be killed by that picture, ironically that of the Goya girl whose dress she had worn when she visited Jon’s room at Wansdon, and when she danced with him at Nettlefold! Distraught that desperate night, she did not even now realise that she had caused the fire, by a cigarette flung down still lighted, not even perhaps that she had smoked up there. But only too well she realised that because she had wanted to die, had stood welcoming sudden extinction, her father was now lying there so nearly dead. How good he had always been to her! Incredible that he should die and take that goodness away, that she should never hear his flat-toned voice again, or feel the touch of his moustache on her cheeks or forehead. Incredible that he should never give her a chance to show that she had really loved him—yes really, beneath all the fret and self-importance of her life. While watching him now, the little rather than the great things came back to her. How he would pitch a new doll down in the nursery and say: “Well, I don’t know if you’ll care for this one; I just picked her up.” How once, after her mother had whipped her, he had come in, taken her hand and said: “There, there. Let’s go and see if there are some raspberries!” How he had stood on the stairs at Green Street after her wedding, watching, pale and unobtrusive, above the guests clustered in the hall, for a turn of her head and her last look back. Unobtrusive! That was the word—unobtrusive, always! Why, if he went, there would be no portrait—hardly even a photograph, to remember him by! Just one of him as a baby, in his mother’s arms; one as a little boy, looking sceptically at his velvet knickers; one in ‘76 as a young man in a full-tailed coat and short whiskers; and a snapshot or two taken unawares. Had any man ever been less photographed? He had never seemed to wish to be appreciated, or even remembered, by any one. To Fleur, so avid of appreciation, it seemed marvellously strange. What secret force within that spare form, lying there inert, had made him thus self-sufficing? He had been brought up as luxuriously as herself, had never known want or the real need for effort, but somehow had preserved a sort of stoic independence of others, and what they thought of him. And yet, as none knew better than herself, he had longed to be loved. This hurt her most, watching him. He had longed for her affection, and she had not shown him enough. But she had felt it—really felt it all the time. Something in him had repelled feeling, dried up his manifestation. There had been no magnet in his “makeup.” And stealing to the bed—her mother’s bed where she herself had been conceived and born—she would stand beside that almost deserted body and drawn dun face, feeling so hollow and miserable that she could hardly restrain herself.
So the days and nights passed. On the third day about three o’clock, while she stood there beside him, she saw the eyes open—a falling apart of the lids, indeed, rather than an opening, and no speculation in the gaps; but her heart beat fast. The nurse, summoned by her finger, came, looked, and went quickly out to the telephone. And Fleur stood there with her soul in her eyes, trying to summon his. It did not come, the lids drooped again. She drew up a chair and sat down, not taking her eyes off his face. The nurse came back to say that the doctor was on his rounds; as soon as he came in he would be sent to them post-haste. As her father would have said: “Of course, ‘the fellow’ wasn’t in when he was wanted!” But it would make no difference. They knew what to do. It was nearly four when again the lids were raised, and this time something looked forth. Fleur could not be sure he saw anything particular, recognised her or any other object, but there was something there, some flickering light, trying for focus. Slowly it strengthened, then went out again between the lids. They gave him stimulant. And again she sat down to watch. In half an hour his eyes reopened. This time he SAW! And for torturing minutes Fleur watched a being trying to BE, a mind striving to obey the mandate of instinctive will power. Bending so that those eyes, which she now knew recognised her, should have the least possible effort, she waited with her lips trembling, as if in a kiss. The extraordinary tenacity of that struggle to come back terrified her. He MEANT to be a mind, he MEANT to know and hear and speak. It was as if he must die from the sheer effort of it. She murmured to him. She put her hand under his cold hand, so that if he made the faintest pressure she would feel it. She watched his lips desperately. At last that struggle for coherence ceased, the half-blank, half-angry look yielded to something deeper, the lips moved. They said nothing, but they moved, and the faintest tremor passed from his finger into hers.
“You know me, darling?”
His eyes said: “Yes.”
“You remember?”
Again his eyes said: “Yes.”
His lips were twitching all the time, as if rehearsing for speech, and the look in his eyes deepening. She saw his brows frown faintly, as if her face were too close; drew back a little and the frown relaxed.
“Darling, you are going to be all right.”
His eyes said: “No”; and his lips moved, but she could not distinguish the sound. For a moment she lost control, and said with a sob:
“Dad, forgive me!”
His eyes softened; and this time she caught what sounded like:
“Forgive? Nonsense!”
“I love you so.”
He seemed to abandon the effort to speak then, and centred all the life of him in his eyes. Deeper and deeper grew the colour and the form and the meaning in them, as if to compel something from her. And suddenly, like a little girl, she said:
“Yes, Dad; I will be good!”
A tremor from his finger passed into her palm; his lips seemed trying to smile, his head moved as if he had meant to nod, and always that look deepened in his eyes.
“Gradman is here, darling, and Mother, and Aunt Winifred, and Kit and Michael. Is there anyone you would like to see?”
His lips shaped: “No—you!”
“I am here all the time.” Again she felt the tremor from his fingers, saw his lips whispering:
“That’s all.”
And suddenly, his eyes went out. There was nothing there! For some time longer he breathed, but before “that fellow” came, he had lost hold—was gone.
In accordance with all that was implicit in Soames there was no fuss over his funeral. For a long time now, indeed, he had been the only one of the family at all interested in obsequies.
It was then, a very quiet affair, only men attending.
Sir Lawrence had come down, graver than Michael had ever known him.
“I respected old Forsyte,” he said to his son, while they returned on foot from the churchyard, where, in the corner selected by himself, Soames now lay, under a crab-apple tree: “He dated, and he couldn’t express himself; but there was no humbug about him—an honest man. How is Fleur bearing up?”
Michael shook his head. “It’s terrible for her to think that he—”
“My dear boy, there’s no better death than dying to save the one you’re fondest of. As soon as you can, let us have Fleur at Lippinghall—where her father and her family never were. I’ll get Hilary and his wife down for a holiday—she likes THEM.”
“I’m very worried about her, Dad—something’s broken.”
“That happens to most of us, before we’re thirty. Some spring or other goes; but presently we get our second winds. It’s what happened to the Age—something broke and it hasn’t yet got its second wind. But it’s getting it, and so will she. What sort of a stone are you going to put up?”
“A cross, I suppose.”
“I think he’d prefer a flat stone with that crab-apple at the head and yew trees round, so that he’s not overlooked. No ‘Beloved’ or ‘Regretted.’ Has he got the freehold of that corner? He’d like to belong to his descendants in perpetuity. We’re all more Chinese than you’d think, only with them it’s the ancestors who do the owning. Who was the old chap who cried into his hat?”
“Old Mr. Gradman—sort of business nurse to the family.”
“Faithful old dog! Well! I certainly never thought Forsyte would take the ferry before me. He looked permanent, but it’s an ironical world. Can I do anything for you and Fleur? Talk to the Nation about the pictures? The Marquess and I could fix that for you. He had quite a weakness for old Forsyte, and his Morland’s saved. By the way, that must have been a considerable contest between him and the fire up there all alone. It’s the sort of thing one would never have suspected him of.”
“Yes,” said Michael: “I’ve been talking to Riggs. He’s full of it.”
“He saw it, then?”
Michael nodded. “Here he comes!”
They slackened their pace, and the chauffeur, touching his hat, came alongside.
“Ah! Riggs,” said Sir Lawrence, “you were up there at the fire, I’m told.”
“Yes, Sir Lawrence. Mr. Forsyte was a proper wonder—went at it like a two-year old, we fair had to carry him away. So particular as a rule about not getting his coat wet or sitting in a draught, but the way he stuck it—at his age… ‘Come on!’ he kept saying to me all through that smoke—a proper champion! Never so surprised in all my life, Sir Lawrence—nervous gentleman like him. And what a bit o’ luck! If he hadn’t insisted on saving that last picture, it’d never have fallen and got ’im.”
“How did the fire begin?”
“Nobody knows, Sir Lawrence, unless Mr. Forsyte did, and he never said nothing. Wish I’d got there sooner, but I was puttin’ the petrol out of action. What that old gentleman did by ‘imself up there; and after the day we’d had! Why! We came from Winchester that morning to London, on to Dorking, picked up Mrs. Mont, and on here. And now he’ll never tell me I’ve gone wrong again.”
A grimace passed over his thin face, seamed and shadowed by traffic and the insides of his car; and, touching his hat, he left them at the gate.
“‘A proper champion,’” Sir Lawrence repeated, softly: “You might almost put that on the stone. Yes, it’s an ironical world!”
In the hall they parted, for Sir Lawrence was going back to Town by car. He took Gradman with him, the provisions of the will having been quietly disclosed. Michael found Smither crying and drawing up the blinds, and in the library Winifred and Val, who had come, with Holly, for the funeral, dealing with condolences, such as they were. Annette was with Kit in the nursery. Michael went up to Fleur in the room she used to have as a little girl—a single room, so that he had been sleeping elsewhere.
She was lying on her bed, graceful, and as if without life.
The eyes she turned on Michael seemed to make of him no less, but no more, than they were making of the ceiling. It was not so much that the spirit behind them was away somewhere, as that there was nowhere for it to go. He went up to the bed, and put his hand on hers.
“Dear Heart!”
Fleur turned her eyes on him again, but of the look in them he could make nothing.
“The moment you wish, darling, we’ll take Kit home.”
“Any time, Michael.”
“I know exactly how you feel,” said Michael, knowing well that he did not: “Riggs has been telling us how splendid your father was, up there with the fire.”
“Don’t!”
There was that in her face which baffled him completely—something not natural, however much she might be mourning for her father. Suddenly she said:
“Give me time, Michael. Nothing matters, I suppose, in the long run. And don’t worry about me—I’m not worth it.”
More conscious than he had ever been in his life that words were of no use, Michael put his lips to her forehead and left her lying there.
He went out and down to the river and stood watching it flow, tranquil and bright in this golden autumn weather, which had lasted so long. Soames’s cows were feeding opposite. They would come under the hammer, now; all that had belonged to him would come under the hammer, he supposed. Annette was going to her mother in France, and Fleur did not wish to keep it on. He looked back at the house, still marked and dishevelled by fire and water. And melancholy brooded in his heart, as if the dry grey spirit of its late owner were standing beside him looking at the passing away of his possessions, of all that on which he had lavished so much time and trouble. ‘Change,’ thought Michael, ‘there’s nothing but change. It’s the one constant. Well! Who wouldn’t have a river rather than a pond!’ He went towards the flower border under the kitchen garden wall. The hollyhocks and sunflowers were in bloom there, and he turned to them as if for warmth. In the little summer-house at the corner he saw some one sitting. Mrs. Val Dartie! Holly—a nice woman! And, suddenly, in Michael, out of the bafflement he had felt in Fleur’s presence, the need to ask a question shaped itself timidly, ashamedly at first, then boldly, insistently. He went up to her. She had a book, but was not reading.
“How is Fleur?” she said.
Michael shook his head and sat down.
“I want to ask you a question. Don’t answer if you don’t want; but I feel I’ve got to ask. Can you—will you tell me: How are things between your young brother and her? I know what there was in the past. Is there anything in the present? I’m asking for her sake—not my own. Whatever you say shan’t hurt her.”
She looked straight at him, and Michael searched her face. There was that in it from which he knew that whatever she did say, if indeed she said anything, would be the truth.
“Whatever there has been between them,” she said, at last, “and there HAS been something since he came back, is over for good. I know that for certain. It ended the day before the fire.”
“I see,” said Michael, very still: “Why do you say it is over FOR GOOD?”
“Because I know my young brother. He has given his wife his word never to see Fleur again. He must have blundered into something, I know there has been a crisis; but once Jon gives his word—nothing—NOTHING will make him go back on it. Whatever it was is over for good, and Fleur knows it.”
And again Michael said: “I see.” And then, as if to himself: “Whatever it was.”
She put out her hand and laid it on his.
“All right,” he said: “I shall get my second wind in a minute. You needn’t be afraid that I shall go back on my word, either. I know I’ve always played second fiddle. It shan’t hurt her.”
The pressure on his hand increased; and, looking up, he saw tears in her eyes.
“Thank you very much,” he said; “I understand now. It’s when you don’t understand that you feel such a dud. Thank you very much.”
He withdrew his hand gently and got up. Looking down at her still sitting there with tears in her eyes, he smiled.
“It’s pretty hard sometimes to remember that it’s all comedy; but one gets there, you know.”
“Good luck!” said Holly. And Michael answered: “Good luck to all of us!”…
That evening when the house was shuttered, he lit his pipe and stole out again. He had got his second wind. Whether he would have, but for Soames’s death, he did not know. It was as if, by lying in that shadowy corner under a crab-apple tree, ‘old Forsyte’ were still protecting his beloved. For her, Michael felt nothing but compassion. The bird had been shot with both barrels, and still lived; no one with any sporting instinct could hurt it further. Nothing for it but to pick her up and mend the wings as best he could. Something strong in Michael, so strong that he hadn’t known of its existence, had rallied to his aid. Sportsmanship—chivalry? No! It was nameless; it was an instinct, a feeling that there was something beyond self to be considered, even when self was bruised and cast down. All his life he had detested the ebullient egoism of the ‘crime passionel’, the wronged spouse, honour, vengeance, “all that tommy-rot and naked savagery.” To be excused from being a decent man! One was never excused from that. Otherwise life was just where it was in the reindeer age, the pure tragedy of the primeval hunters, before civilisation and comedy began.
Whatever had been between those two—and he felt it had been all—it was over, and she, ‘down and out.’ He must stand by her and keep his mouth shut. If he couldn’t do that now, he ought never to have married her, lukewarm as he had known her to be. And, drawing deeply at his pipe, he went down the dark garden to the river.
The sky was starry, and with the first touch of cold, a slight mist was rising, filming the black water so that it scarcely seemed to move. Now and then in the stillness he could hear the drone of a distant car, and somewhere a little beast squeaking. Starlight, and the odour of bushes and the earth, the hoot of an owl, bats flitting, and those tall poplar shapes, darker than the darkness—what better setting for his mood just then!
An ironical world, his father had said! Yes, queerly ironical, with shape melting into shape, mood into mood, sound into sound, and nothing fixed anywhere, unless it were that starlight, and the instinct within all living things which said: “Go on!”
A drift of music came down the river. There would be a party at some house. They were dancing probably, as he had seen the gnats dancing that afternoon! And then something out of the night seemed to catch him by the throat. God! It was beautiful, amazing! Breathing, in this darkness, as many billion shapes as there were stars above, all living, and all different! What a world! The Eternal Mood at work! And if you died, like that old boy, and lay forever beneath a crab-apple tree—well, it was the Mood resting a moment in your still shape—no! not even resting, moving on in the mysterious rhythm that one called Life. Who could arrest the moving Mood—who wanted to? And if some pale possessor like that poor old chap, tried and succeeded for a moment, the stars twinkled just a little more when he was gone. To have and to hold! As though you could!
And Michael drew in his breath. A sound of singing came down the water to him, trailing, distant, high, and sweet. It was as if a swan had sung!