“What more do I need? and what more do three-quarters of the

women who are married get from the men who marry them?” And if

the enquirer had pursued his query, “And do you think it was fair

to have tempted this girl to give herself to you for life unless

you have really touched her heart?” he would have answered: “The

French see these things differently from us. They look at

marriage from the point of view of establishments and children;

and, from my own experience, I am not at all sure that theirs is

not the sensible view. I shall not expect this time more than I

can get, or she can give. Years hence I shouldn’t be surprised if

I have trouble with her; but I shall be getting old, I shall have

children by then. I shall shut my eyes. I have had my great

passion; hers is perhaps to come—I don’t suppose it will be for

me. I offer her a great deal, and I don’t expect much in return,

except children, or at least a son. But one thing I am sure

of—she has very good sense!”

And if, insatiate, the enquirer had gone on, “You do not look,

then, for spiritual union in this marriage?” Soames would have

lifted his sideway smile, and rejoined: “That’s as it may be. If

I get satisfaction for my senses, perpetuation of myself; good

taste and good humour in the house; it is all I can expect at my

age. I am not likely to be going out of my way towards any

far-fetched sentimentalism.” Whereon, the enquirer must in good

taste have ceased enquiry.

The Queen was dead, and the air of the greatest city upon earth

grey with unshed tears. Fur-coated and top-hatted, with Annette

beside him in dark furs, Soames crossed Park Lane on the morning

of the funeral procession, to the rails in Hyde Park. Little

moved though he ever was by public matters, this event, supremely

symbolical, this summing-up of a long rich period, impressed his

fancy. In ’37, when she came to the throne, “Superior Dosset” was

still building houses to make London hideous; and James, a

stripling of twenty-six, just laying the foundations of his

practice in the Law. Coaches still ran; men wore stocks, shaved

their upper lips, ate oysters out of barrels; “tigers” swung

behind cabriolets; women said, “La!” and owned no property; there

were manners in the land, and pigsties for the poor; unhappy

devils were hanged for little crimes, and Dickens had but just

begun to write. Well-nigh two generations had slipped by—of

steamboats, railways, telegraphs, bicycles, electric light,

telephones, and now these motorcars—of such accumulated wealth,

that eight per cent. had become three, and Forsytes were numbered

by the thousand! Morals had changed, manners had changed, men had

become monkeys twice-removed, God had become Mammon—Mammon so

respectable as to deceive himself: Sixty-four years that favoured

property, and had made the upper middle class; buttressed,

chiselled, polished it, till it was almost indistinguishable in

manners, morals, speech, appearance, habit, and soul from the

nobility. An epoch which had gilded individual liberty so that if

a man had money, he was free in law and fact, and if he had not

money he was free in law and not in fact. An era which had

canonised hypocrisy, so that to seem to be respectable was to be.

A great Age, whose transmuting influence nothing had escaped save

the nature of man and the nature of the Universe.

And to witness the passing of this Age, London—its pet and

fancy—was pouring forth her citizens through every gate into Hyde

Park, hub of Victorianism, happy hunting-ground of Forsytes.

Under the grey heavens, whose drizzle just kept off, the dark

concourse gathered to see the show. The “good old” Queen, full of

years and virtue, had emerged from her seclusion for the last

time to make a London holiday. From Houndsditch, Acton, Ealing,

Hampstead, Islington, and Bethnal Green; from Hackney, Hornsey,

Leytonstone, Battersea, and Fulham; and from those green pastures

where Forsytes flourish—Mayfair and Kensington, St. James’ and

Belgravia, Bayswater and Chelsea and the Regent’s Park, the

people swarmed down on to the roads where death would presently

pass with dusky pomp and pageantry. Never again would a Queen

reign so long, or people have a chance to see so much history

buried for their money. A pity the war dragged on, and that the

Wreath of Victory could not be laid upon her coffin! All else

would be there to follow and commemorate—soldiers, sailors,

foreign princes, half-masted bunting, tolling bells, and above

all the surging, great, dark-coated crowd, with perhaps a simple

sadness here and there deep in hearts beneath black clothes put

on by regulation. After all, more than a Queen was going to her

rest, a woman who had braved sorrow, lived well and wisely

according to her lights.

Out in the crowd against the railings, with his arm hooked in

Annette’s, Soames waited. Yes! the Age was passing! What with

this Trade Unionism, and Labour fellows in the House of Commons,

with continental fiction, and something in the general feel of

everything, not to be expressed in words, things were very

different; he recalled the crowd on Mafeking night, and George

Forsyte saying: “They’re all socialists, they want our goods.”

Like James, Soames didn’t know, he couldn’t tell—with Edward on

the throne! Things would never be as safe again as under good old

Viccy! Convulsively he pressed his young wife’s arm. There, at

any rate, was something substantially his own, domestically

certain again at last; something which made property worth

while—a real thing once more. Pressed close against her and

trying to ward others off, Soames was content. The crowd swayed

round them, ate sandwiches and dropped crumbs; boys who had

climbed the plane-trees chattered above like monkeys, threw twigs

and orange-peel. It was past time; they should be coming soon!

And, suddenly, a little behind them to the left, he saw a tallish

man with a soft hat and short grizzling beard, and a tallish

woman in a little round fur cap and veil. Jolyon and Irene

talking, smiling at each other, close together like Annette and

himself! They had not seen him; and stealthily, with a very queer

feeling in his heart, Soames watched those two. They looked

happy! What had they come here for—inherently illicit creatures,

rebels from the Victorian ideal? What business had they in this

crowd? Each of them twice exiled by morality—making a boast, as

it were, of love and laxity! He watched them fascinated;

admitting grudgingly even with his arm thrust through Annette’s

that—that she—Irene—No! he would _not_ admit it; and he turned

his eyes away. He would _not_ see them, and let the old

bitterness, the old longing rise up within him! And then Annette

turned to him and said: “Those two people, Soames; they know you,

I am sure. Who are they?”

Soames nosed sideways.

“What people?”

“There, you see them; just turning away. They know you.”

“No,” Soames answered; “a mistake, my dear.”

“A lovely face! And how she walk! _Elle est très distinguée!_”

Soames looked then. Into his life, out of his life she had walked

like that swaying and erect, remote, unseizable; ever eluding the

contact of his soul! He turned abruptly from that receding vision

of the past.

“You’d better attend,” he said, “they’re coming now!”

But while he stood, grasping her arm, seemingly intent on the

head of the procession, he was quivering with the sense of always

missing something, with instinctive regret that he had not got

them both.

Slow came the music and the march, till, in silence, the long

line wound in through the Park gate. He heard Annette whisper,

“How sad it is and beautiful!” felt the clutch of her hand as she

stood up on tiptoe; and the crowd’s emotion gripped him. There it

was—the bier of the Queen, coffin of the Age slow passing! And as

it went by there came a murmuring groan from all the long line of

those who watched, a sound such as Soames had never heard, so

unconscious, primitive, deep and wild, that neither he nor any

knew whether they had joined in uttering it. Strange sound,

indeed! Tribute of an Age to its own death.... Ah! Ah!... The

hold on life had slipped. That which had seemed eternal was gone!

The Queen—God bless her!

It moved on with the bier, that travelling groan, as a fire moves

on over grass in a thin line; it kept step, and marched alongside

down the dense crowds mile after mile. It was a human sound, and

yet inhuman, pushed out by animal subconsciousness, by intimate

knowledge of universal death and change. None of us—none of us

can hold on for ever!

It left silence for a little—a very little time, till tongues

began, eager to retrieve interest in the show. Soames lingered

just long enough to gratify Annette, then took her out of the

Park to lunch at his father’s in Park Lane....

James had spent the morning gazing out of his bedroom window. The

last show he would see, last of so many! So she was gone! Well,

she was getting an old woman. Swithin and he had seen her

crowned—slim slip of a girl, not so old as Imogen! She had got

very stout of late. Jolyon and he had seen her married to that

German chap, her husband—he had turned out all right before he

died, and left her with that son of his. And he remembered the

many evenings he and his brothers and their cronies had wagged

their heads over their wine and walnuts and that fellow in his

salad days. And now he had come to the throne. They said he had

steadied down—he didn’t know—couldn’t tell! He’d make the money

fly still, he shouldn’t wonder. What a lot of people out there!

It didn’t seem so very long since he and Swithin stood in the

crowd outside Westminster Abbey when she was crowned, and Swithin

had taken him to Cremorne afterwards—racketty chap, Swithin; no,

it didn’t seem much longer ago than Jubilee Year, when he had

joined with Roger in renting a balcony in Piccadilly.

Jolyon, Swithin, Roger all gone, and he would be ninety in

August! And there was Soames married again to a French girl. The

French were a queer lot, but they made good mothers, he had

heard. Things changed! They said this German Emperor was here for

the funeral, his telegram to old Kruger had been in shocking

taste. He should not be surprised if that chap made trouble some

day. Change! H’m! Well, they must look after themselves when he

was gone: he didn’t know where he’d be! And now Emily had asked

Dartie to lunch, with Winifred and Imogen, to meet Soames’

wife—she was always doing something. And there was Irene living

with that fellow Jolyon, they said. He’d marry her now, he

supposed.

“My brother Jolyon,” he thought, “what would he have said to it

all?” And somehow the utter impossibility of knowing what his

elder brother, once so looked up to, would have said, so worried

James that he got up from his chair by the window, and began

slowly, feebly to pace the room.

“She was a pretty thing, too,” he thought; “I was fond of her.

Perhaps Soames didn’t suit her—I don’t know—I can’t tell. We

never had any trouble with _our_ wives.” Women had changed

everything had changed! And now the Queen was dead—well, there it

was! A movement in the crowd brought him to a standstill at the

window, his nose touching the pane and whitening from the chill

of it. They had got her as far as Hyde Park Corner—they were

passing now! Why didn’t Emily come up here where she could see,

instead of fussing about lunch. He missed her at that

moment—missed her! Through the bare branches of the plane-trees

he could just see the procession, could see the hats coming off

the people’s heads—a lot of them would catch colds, he shouldn’t

wonder! A voice behind him said:

“You’ve got a capital view here, James!”

“_There_ you are!” muttered James; “why didn’t you come before?

You might have missed it!”

And he was silent, staring with all his might.

“What’s the noise?” he asked suddenly.

“There’s no noise,” returned Emily; “what are you thinking

of?—they wouldn’t cheer.”

“I can hear it.”

“Nonsense, James!”

No sound came through those double panes; what James heard was

the groaning in his own heart at sight of his Age passing.

“Don’t you ever tell me where I’m buried,” he said suddenly. “I

shan’t want to know.” And he turned from the window. There she

went, the old Queen; she’d had a lot of anxiety—she’d be glad to

be out of it, he should think!

Emily took up the hair-brushes.

“There’ll be just time to brush your head,” she said, “before

they come. You must look your best, James.”

“Ah!” muttered James; “they say she’s pretty.”

The meeting with his new daughter-in-law took place in the

dining-room. James was seated by the fire when she was brought

in. He placed, his hands on the arms of the chair and slowly

raised himself. Stooping and immaculate in his frock-coat, thin

as a line in Euclid, he received Annette’s hand in his; and the

anxious eyes of his furrowed face, which had lost its colour now,

doubted above her. A little warmth came into them and into his

cheeks, refracted from her bloom.

“How are you?” he said. “You’ve been to see the Queen, I suppose?

Did you have a good crossing?”

In this way he greeted her from whom he hoped for a grandson of

his name.

Gazing at him, so old, thin, white, and spotless, Annette

murmured something in French which James did not understand.

“Yes, yes,” he said, “you want your lunch, I expect. Soames, ring

the bell; we won’t wait for that chap Dartie.” But just then they

arrived. Dartie had refused to go out of his way to see “the old

girl.” With an early cocktail beside him, he had taken a “squint”

from the smoking-room of the Iseeum, so that Winifred and Imogen

had been obliged to come back from the Park to fetch him thence.

His brown eyes rested on Annette with a stare of almost startled

satisfaction. The second beauty that fellow Soames had picked up!

What women could see in him! Well, she would play him the same

trick as the other, no doubt; but in the meantime he was a lucky

devil! And he brushed up his moustache, having in nine months of

Green Street domesticity regained almost all his flesh and his

assurance. Despite the comfortable efforts of Emily, Winifred’s

composure, Imogen’s enquiring friendliness, Dartie’s showing-off,

and James’ solicitude about her food, it was not, Soames felt, a

successful lunch for his bride. He took her away very soon.

“That Monsieur Dartie,” said Annette in the cab, “_je n’aime pas

ce type-là!_”

“No, by George!” said Soames.

“Your sister is veree amiable, and the girl is pretty. Your

father is veree old. I think your mother has trouble with him; I

should not like to be her.”

Soames nodded at the shrewdness, the clear hard judgment in his

young wife; but it disquieted him a little. The thought may have

just flashed through him, too: “When I’m eighty she’ll be

fifty-five, having trouble with me!”

“There’s just one other house of my relations I must take you

to,” he said; “you’ll find it funny, but we must get it over; and

then we’ll dine and go to the theatre.”

In this way he prepared her for Timothy’s. But Timothy’s was

different. They were _delighted_ to see dear Soames after this

long long time; and so this was Annette!

“You are _so_ pretty, my dear; almost too young and pretty for

dear Soames, aren’t you? But he’s very attentive and careful—such

a good hush....” Aunt Juley checked herself, and placed her lips

just under each of Annette’s eyes—she afterwards described them

to Francie, who dropped in, as: “Cornflower-blue, so pretty, I

quite wanted to kiss them. I must say dear Soames is a perfect

connoisseur. In her French way, and not so very French either, I

think she’s as pretty—though not so distinguished, not so

alluring—as Irene. Because she was alluring, wasn’t she? with

that white skin and those dark eyes, and that hair, _couleur

de_—what was it? I always forget.”

“_Feuille morte_,” Francie prompted.

“Of course, dead leaves—so strange. I remember when I was a girl,

before we came to London, we had a foxhound puppy—to ‘walk’ it

was called then; it had a tan top to its head and a white chest,

and beautiful dark brown eyes, and it was a lady.”

“Yes, auntie,” said Francie, “but I don’t see the connection.”

“Oh!” replied Aunt Juley, rather flustered, “it was so alluring,

and her eyes and hair, you know....” She was silent, as if

surprised in some indelicacy. “_Feuille morte_,” she added

suddenly; “Hester—do remember that!”....

Considerable debate took place between the two sisters whether

Timothy should or should not be summoned to see Annette.

“Oh, don’t bother!” said Soames.

“But it’s no trouble, only of course Annette’s being French might

upset him a little. He was so scared about Fashoda. I think

perhaps we had better not run the risk, Hester. It’s nice to have

her all to ourselves, isn’t it? And how are you, Soames? Have you

quite got over your....”

Hester interposed hurriedly:

“What do you think of London, Annette?”

Soames, disquieted, awaited the reply. It came, sensible,

composed: “Oh! I know London. I have visited before.”

He had never ventured to speak to her on the subject of the

restaurant. The French had different notions about gentility, and

to shrink from connection with it might seem to her ridiculous;

he had waited to be married before mentioning it; and now he

wished he hadn’t.

“And what part do you know best?” said Aunt Juley.

“Soho,” said Annette simply.

Soames snapped his jaw.

“Soho?” repeated Aunt Juley; “Soho?”

“That’ll go round the family,” thought Soames.

“It’s very French, and interesting,” he said.

“Yes,” murmured Aunt Juley, “your Uncle Roger had some houses

there once; he was always having to turn the tenants out, I

remember.”

Soames changed the subject to Mapledurham.

“Of course,” said Aunt Juley, “you will be going down there soon

to settle in. We are all so looking forward to the time when

Annette has a dear little....”

“Juley!” cried Aunt Hester desperately, “ring tea!”

Soames dared not wait for tea, and took Annette away.

“I shouldn’t mention Soho if I were you,” he said in the cab.

“It’s rather a shady part of London; and you’re altogether above

that restaurant business now; I mean,” he added, “I want you to

know nice people, and the English are fearful snobs.”

Annette’s clear eyes opened; a little smile came on her lips.

“Yes?” she said.

“H’m!” thought Soames, “that’s meant for me!” and he looked at

her hard. “She’s got good business instincts,” he thought. “I

must make her grasp it once for all!”

“Look here, Annette! it’s very simple, only it wants

understanding. Our professional and leisured classes still think

themselves a cut above our business classes, except of course the

very rich. It may be stupid, but there it is, you see. It isn’t

advisable in England to let people know that you ran a restaurant

or kept a shop or were in any kind of trade. It may have been

extremely creditable, but it puts a sort of label on you; you

don’t have such a good time, or meet such nice people—that’s

all.”

“I see,” said Annette; “it is the same in France.”

“Oh!” murmured Soames, at once relieved and taken aback. “Of

course, class is everything, really.”

“Yes,” said Annette; “_comme vous êtes sage_.”

“That’s all right,” thought Soames, watching her lips, “only

she’s pretty cynical.” His knowledge of French was not yet such

as to make him grieve that she had not said “tu.” He slipped his

arm round her, and murmured with an effort:

“_Et vous êtes ma belle femme_.”

Annette went off into a little fit of laughter.

“_Oh, non!_” she said. “_Oh, non! ne parlez pas Français_,

Soames. What is that old lady, your aunt, looking forward to?”

Soames bit his lip. “God knows!” he said; “she’s always saying

something;” but he knew better than God.

CHAPTER XI SUSPENDED ANIMATION

The war dragged on. Nicholas had been heard to say that it would

cost three hundred millions if it cost a penny before they’d done

with it! The income-tax was seriously threatened. Still, there

would be South Africa for their money, once for all. And though

the possessive instinct felt badly shaken at three o’clock in the

morning, it recovered by breakfast-time with the recollection

that one gets nothing in this world without paying for it. So, on

the whole, people went about their business much as if there were

no war, no concentration camps, no slippery de Wet, no feeling on

the Continent, no anything unpleasant. Indeed, the attitude of

the nation was typified by Timothy’s map, whose animation was

suspended—for Timothy no longer moved the flags, and they could

not move themselves, not even backwards and forwards as they

should have done.

Suspended animation went further; it invaded Forsyte ’Change, and

produced a general uncertainty as to what was going to happen

next. The announcement in the marriage column of _The Times_,

“Jolyon Forsyte to Irene, only daughter of the late Professor

Heron,” had occasioned doubt whether Irene had been justly

described. And yet, on the whole, relief was felt that she had

not been entered as “Irene, late the wife,” or “the divorced

wife,” “of Soames Forsyte.” Altogether, there had been a kind of

sublimity from the first about the way the family had taken that

“affair.” As James had phrased it, “There it was!” No use to

fuss! Nothing to be had out of admitting that it had been a

“nasty jar”—in the phraseology of the day.

But what would happen now that both Soames and Jolyon were

married again? That was very intriguing. George was known to have

laid Eustace six to four on a little Jolyon before a little

Soames. George was so droll! It was rumoured, too, that he and

Dartie had a bet as to whether James would attain the age of

ninety, though which of them had backed James no one knew.

Early in May, Winifred came round to say that Val had been

wounded in the leg by a spent bullet, and was to be discharged.

His wife was nursing him. He would have a little limp—nothing to

speak of. He wanted his grandfather to buy him a farm out there

where he could breed horses. Her father was giving Holly eight

hundred a year, so they could be quite comfortable, because his

grandfather would give Val five, he had said; but as to the farm,

he didn’t know—couldn’t tell: he didn’t want Val to go throwing

away his money.

“But you know,” said Winifred, “he must do something.”

Aunt Hester thought that perhaps his dear grandfather was wise,

because if he didn’t buy a farm it couldn’t turn out badly.

“But Val loves horses,” said Winifred. “It’d be such an

occupation for him.”

Aunt Juley thought that horses were very uncertain, had not

Montague found them so?

“Val’s different,” said Winifred; “he takes after me.”

Aunt Juley was sure that dear Val was very clever. “I always

remember,” she added, “how he gave his bad penny to a beggar. His

dear grandfather was so pleased. He thought it showed such

presence of mind. I remember his saying that he ought to go into

the Navy.”

Aunt Hester chimed in: Did not Winifred think that it was much

better for the young people to be secure and not run any risk at

their age?

“Well,” said Winifred, “if they were in London, perhaps; in

London it’s amusing to do nothing. But out there, of course,

he’ll simply get bored to death.”

Aunt Hester thought that it would be nice for him to work, if he

were quite sure not to lose by it. It was not as if they had no

money. Timothy, of course, had done so well by retiring. Aunt

Juley wanted to know what Montague had said.

Winifred did not tell her, for Montague had merely remarked:

“Wait till the old man dies.”

At this moment Francie was announced. Her eyes were brimming with

a smile.

“Well,” she said, “what do you think of it?”

“Of what, dear?”

“In _The Times_ this morning.”

“We haven’t seen it, we always read it after dinner; Timothy has

it till then.”

Francie rolled her eyes.

“Do you think you _ought_ to tell us?” said Aunt Juley. “What

_was_ it?”

“Irene’s had a son at Robin Hill.”

Aunt Juley drew in her breath. “But,” she said, “they were only

married in March!”

“Yes, Auntie; isn’t it interesting?”

“Well,” said Winifred, “I’m glad. I was sorry for Jolyon losing

his boy. It might have been Val.”

Aunt Juley seemed to go into a sort of dream. “I wonder,” she

murmured, “what dear Soames will think? He has so wanted to have

a son himself. A little bird has always told me that.”

“Well,” said Winifred, “he’s going to—bar accidents.”

Gladness trickled out of Aunt Juley’s eyes.

“How delightful!” she said. “When?”

“November.”

Such a lucky month! But she did wish it could be sooner. It was a

long time for James to wait, at his age!

To wait! They dreaded it for James, but they were used to it

themselves. Indeed, it was their great distraction. To wait! For

_The Times_ to read; for one or other of their nieces or nephews

to come in and cheer them up; for news of Nicholas’ health; for

that decision of Christopher’s about going on the stage; for

information concerning the mine of Mrs. MacAnder’s nephew; for

the doctor to come about Hester’s inclination to wake up early in

the morning; for books from the library which were always out;

for Timothy to have a cold; for a nice quiet warm day, not too

hot, when they could take a turn in Kensington Gardens. To wait,

one on each side of the hearth in the drawing-room, for the clock

between them to strike; their thin, veined, knuckled hands plying

knitting-needles and crochet-hooks, their hair ordered to

stop—like Canute’s waves—from any further advance in colour. To

wait in their black silks or satins for the Court to say that

Hester might wear her dark green, and Juley her darker maroon. To

wait, slowly turning over and over, in their old minds the little

joys and sorrows, events and expectancies, of their little family

world, as cows chew patient cuds in a familiar field. And this

new event was so well worth waiting for. Soames had always been

their pet, with his tendency to give them pictures, and his

almost weekly visits which they missed so much, and his need for

their sympathy evoked by the wreck of his first marriage. This

new event—the birth of an heir to Soames—was so important for

him, and for his dear father, too, that James might not have to

die without some certainty about things. James did so dislike

uncertainty; and with Montague, of course, he could not feel

really satisfied to leave no grand-children but the young

Darties. After all, one’s own name did count! And as James’

ninetieth birthday neared they wondered what precautions he was

taking. He would be the first of the Forsytes to reach that age,

and set, as it were, a new standard in holding on to life. That

was so important, they felt, at their ages eighty-seven and

eighty-five; though they did not want to think of themselves when

they had Timothy, who was not yet eighty-two, to think of. There

was, of course, a better world. “In my Father’s house are many

mansions” was one of Aunt Juley’s favourite sayings—it always

comforted her, with its suggestion of house property, which had

made the fortune of dear Roger. The Bible was, indeed, a great

resource, and on _very_ fine Sundays there was church in the

morning; and sometimes Juley would steal into Timothy’s study

when she was sure he was out, and just put an open New Testament

casually among the books on his little table—he was a great

reader, of course, having been a publisher. But she had noticed

that Timothy was always cross at dinner afterwards. And Smither

had told her more than once that she had picked books off the

floor in doing the room. Still, with all that, they did feel that

heaven could not be quite so cosy as the rooms in which they and

Timothy had been waiting so long. Aunt Hester, especially, could

not bear the thought of the exertion. Any change, or rather the

thought of a change—for there never _was_ any—always upset her

very much. Aunt Juley, who had more spirit, sometimes thought it

would be quite exciting; she had so enjoyed that visit to

Brighton the year dear Susan died. But then Brighton one knew was

nice, and it was so difficult to tell what heaven would be like,

so on the whole she was more than content to wait.

On the morning of James’ birthday, August the 5th, they felt

extraordinary animation, and little notes passed between them by

the hand of Smither while they were having breakfast in their

beds. Smither must go round and take their love and little

presents and find out how Mr. James was, and whether he had

passed a good night with all the excitement. And on the way back

would Smither call in at Green Street—it was a little out of her

way, but she could take the bus up Bond Street afterwards; it

would be a nice little change for her—and ask dear Mrs. Dartie to

be sure and look in before she went out of town.

All this Smither did—an undeniable servant trained many years ago

under Aunt Ann to a perfection not now procurable. Mr. James, so

Mrs. James said, had passed an excellent night, he sent his love;

Mrs. James had said he was very funny and had complained that he

didn’t know what all the fuss was about. Oh! and Mrs. Dartie sent

her love, and she would come to tea.

Aunts Juley and Hester, rather hurt that their presents had not

received special mention—they forgot every year that James could

not bear to receive presents, “throwing away their money on him,”

as he always called it—were “delighted”; it showed that James was

in good spirits, and that was so important for him. And they

began to wait for Winifred. She came at four, bringing Imogen,

and Maud, just back from school, and “getting such a pretty girl,

too,” so that it was extremely difficult to ask for news about

Annette. Aunt Juley, however, summoned courage to enquire whether

Winifred had heard anything, and if Soames was anxious.

“Uncle Soames is always anxious, Auntie,” interrupted Imogen; “he

can’t be happy now he’s got it.”

The words struck familiarly on Aunt Juley’s ears. Ah! yes; that

funny drawing of George’s, which had _not_ been shown them! But

what did Imogen mean? That her uncle always wanted more than he

could have? It was not at all nice to think like that.

Imogen’s voice rose clear and clipped:

“Imagine! Annette’s only two years older than me; it must be

awful for her, married to Uncle Soames.”

Aunt Juley lifted her hands in horror.

“My dear,” she said, “you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Your Uncle Soames is a match for anybody. He’s a very clever man,

and good-looking and wealthy, and most considerate and careful,

and not at all old, considering everything.”

Imogen, turning her luscious glance from one to the other of the

“old dears,” only smiled.

“I hope,” said Aunt Juley quite severely, “that _you_ will marry

as good a man.”

“_I_ shan’t marry a good man, Auntie,” murmured Imogen; “they’re

dull.”

“If you go on like this,” replied Aunt Juley, still very much

upset, “you won’t marry anybody. We’d better not pursue the

subject;” and turning to Winifred, she said: “How is Montague?”

That evening, while they were waiting for dinner, she murmured:

“I’ve told Smither to get up half a bottle of the sweet

champagne, Hester. I think we ought to drink dear James’ health,

and—and the health of Soames’ wife; only, let’s keep that quite

secret. I’ll just say like this, ‘And _you know_, Hester!’ and

then we’ll drink. It might upset Timothy.”

“It’s more likely to upset us,” said Aunt Nester. “But we must, I

suppose; for such an occasion.”

“Yes,” said Aunt Juley rapturously, “it _is_ an occasion! Only

fancy if he has a dear little boy, to carry the family on! I do

feel it so important, now that Irene has had a son. Winifred says

George is calling Jolyon ‘The Three-Decker,’ because of his three

families, you know! George _is_ droll. And fancy! Irene is living

after all in the house Soames had built for them both. It does

seem hard on dear Soames; and he’s always been so regular.”

That night in bed, excited and a little flushed still by her

glass of wine and the secrecy of the second toast, she lay with

her prayer-book opened flat, and her eyes fixed on a ceiling

yellowed by the light from her reading-lamp. Young things! It was

so nice for them all! And she would be so happy if she could see

dear Soames happy. But, of course, he must be now, in spite of

what Imogen had said. He would have all that he wanted: property,

and wife, and children! And he would live to a green old age,

like his dear father, and forget all about Irene and that

dreadful case. If only she herself could be here to buy his

children their first rocking-horse! Smither should choose it for

her at the stores, nice and dappled. Ah! how Roger used to rock

her until she fell off! Oh dear! that was a long time ago! It

_was!_ “In my Father’s house are many mansions—”A little

scrattling noise caught her ear—“but no mice!” she thought

mechanically. The noise increased. There! it _was_ a mouse! How

naughty of Smither to say there wasn’t! It would be eating

through the wainscot before they knew where they were, and they

would have to have the builders in. They were such destructive

things! And she lay, with her eyes just moving, following in her

mind that little scrattling sound, and waiting for sleep to

release her from it.

CHAPTER XII BIRTH OF A FORSYTE

Soames walked out of the garden door, crossed the lawn, stood on

the path above the river, turned round and walked back to the

garden door, without having realised that he had moved. The sound

of wheels crunching the drive convinced him that time had passed,

and the doctor gone. What, exactly, had he said?

“This is the position, Mr. Forsyte. I can make pretty certain of

her life if I operate, but the baby will be born dead. If I don’t

operate, the baby will most probably be born alive, but it’s a

great risk for the mother—a great risk. In either case I don’t

think she can ever have another child. In her state she obviously

can’t decide for herself, and we can’t wait for her mother. It’s

for you to make the decision, while I’m getting what’s necessary.

I shall be back within the hour.”

The decision! What a decision! No time to get a specialist down!

No time for anything!

The sound of wheels died away, but Soames still stood intent;

then, suddenly covering his ears, he walked back to the river. To

come before its time like this, with no chance to foresee

anything, not even to get her mother here! It was for her mother

to make that decision, and she couldn’t arrive from Paris till

to-night! If only he could have understood the doctor’s jargon,

the medical niceties, so as to be sure he was weighing the

chances properly; but they were Greek to him—like a legal problem

to a layman. And yet he _must_ decide! He brought his hand away

from his brow wet, though the air was chilly. These sounds which

came from her room! To go back there would only make it more

difficult. He must be calm, clear. On the one hand life, nearly

certain, of his young wife, death quite certain, of his child;

and—no more children afterwards! On the other, death _perhaps_ of

his wife, nearly certain life for the child; and—no more children

afterwards! Which to choose?.... It had rained this last

fortnight—the river was very full, and in the water, collected

round the little house-boat moored by his landing-stage, were

many leaves from the woods above, brought off by a frost. Leaves

fell, lives drifted down—Death! To decide about death! And no one

to give him a hand. Life lost was lost for good. Let nothing go

that you could keep; for, if it went, you couldn’t get it back.

It left you bare, like those trees when they lost their leaves;

barer and barer until you, too, withered and came down. And, by a

queer somersault of thought, he seemed to see not Annette lying

up there behind that window-pane on which the sun was shining,

but Irene lying in their bedroom in Montpellier Square, as it

might conceivably have been her fate to lie, sixteen years ago.

Would he have hesitated then? Not a moment! Operate, operate!

Make certain of her life! No decision—a mere instinctive cry for

help, in spite of his knowledge, even then, that she did not love

him! But this! Ah! there was nothing overmastering in his feeling

for Annette! Many times these last months, especially since she

had been growing frightened, he had wondered. She had a will of

her own, was selfish in her French way. And yet—so pretty! What

would she wish—to take the risk. “I know she wants the child,” he

thought. “If it’s born dead, and no more chance afterwards—it’ll

upset her terribly. No more chance! All for nothing! Married life

with her for years and years without a child. Nothing to steady

her! She’s too young. Nothing to look forward to, for her—for me!

_For me!_” He struck his hands against his chest! Why couldn’t he

think without bringing himself in—get out of himself and see what

he ought to do? The thought hurt him, then lost edge, as if it

had come in contact with a breastplate. Out of oneself!

Impossible! Out into soundless, scentless, touchless, sightless

space! The very idea was ghastly, futile! And touching there the

bedrock of reality, the bottom of his Forsyte spirit, Soames

rested for a moment. When one ceased, all ceased; it might go on,

but there’d be nothing in it!

He looked at his watch. In half an hour the doctor would be back.

He _must_ decide! If against the operation and she died, how face

her mother and the doctor afterwards? How face his own

conscience? It was _his_ child that she was having. If for the

operation—then he condemned them both to childlessness. And for

what else had he married her but to have a lawful heir? And his

father—at death’s door, waiting for the news! “It’s cruel!” he

thought; “I ought never to have such a thing to settle! It’s

cruel!” He turned towards the house. Some deep, simple way of

deciding! He took out a coin, and put it back. If he spun it, he

knew he would not abide by what came up! He went into the

dining-room, furthest away from that room whence the sounds

issued. The doctor had said there was a chance. In here that

chance seemed greater; the river did not flow, nor the leaves

fall. A fire was burning. Soames unlocked the tantalus. He hardly

ever touched spirits, but now—he poured himself out some whisky

and drank it neat, craving a faster flow of blood. “That fellow

Jolyon,” he thought; “he had children already. He has the woman I

really loved; and now a son by her! And I—I’m asked to destroy my

only child! Annette _can’t_ die; it’s not possible. She’s

strong!”

He was still standing sullenly at the sideboard when he heard the

doctor’s carriage, and went out to him. He had to wait for him to

come downstairs.

“Well, doctor?”

“The situation’s the same. Have you decided?”

“Yes,” said Soames; “don’t operate!”

“Not? You understand—the risk’s great?”

In Soames’ set face nothing moved but the lips.

“You said there was a chance?”

“A chance, yes; not much of one.”

“You say the baby _must_ be born dead if you do?”

“Yes.”

“Do you still think that in any case she can’t have another?”

“One can’t be absolutely sure, but it’s most unlikely.”

“She’s strong,” said Soames; “we’ll take the risk.”

The doctor looked at him very gravely. “It’s on your shoulders,”

he said; “with my own wife, I couldn’t.”

Soames’ chin jerked up as if someone had hit him.

“Am I of any use up there?” he asked.

“No; keep away.”

“I shall be in my picture-gallery, then; you know where.”

The doctor nodded, and went upstairs.

Soames continued to stand, listening. “By this time to-morrow,”

he thought, “I may have her death on my hands.” No! it was

unfair—monstrous, to put it that way! Sullenness dropped on him

again, and he went up to the gallery. He stood at the window. The

wind was in the north; it was cold, clear; very blue sky, heavy

ragged white clouds chasing across; the river blue, too, through

the screen of goldening trees; the woods all rich with colour,

glowing, burnished—an early autumn. If it were his own life,

would he be taking that risk? “But _she’d_ take the risk of

losing me,” he thought, “sooner than lose her child! She doesn’t

really love me!” What could one expect—a girl and French? The one

thing really vital to them both, vital to their marriage and

their futures, was a child! “I’ve been through a lot for this,”

he thought, “I’ll hold on—hold on. There’s a chance of keeping

both—a chance!” One kept till things were taken—one naturally

kept! He began walking round the gallery. He had made one

purchase lately which he knew was a fortune in itself, and he

halted before it—a girl with dull gold hair which looked like

filaments of metal gazing at a little golden monster she was

holding in her hand. Even at this tortured moment he could just

feel the extraordinary nature of the bargain he had made—admire

the quality of the table, the floor, the chair, the girl’s

figure, the absorbed expression on her face, the dull gold

filaments of her hair, the bright gold of the little monster.

Collecting pictures; growing richer, richer! What use, if...! He

turned his back abruptly on the picture, and went to the window.

Some of his doves had flown up from their perches round the

dovecot, and were stretching their wings in the wind. In the

clear sharp sunlight their whiteness almost flashed. They flew

far, making a flung-up hieroglyphic against the sky. Annette fed

the doves; it was pretty to see her. They took it out of her

hand; they knew she was matter-of-fact. A choking sensation came

into his throat. She would not—could not die! She was too—too

sensible; and she was strong, really strong, like her mother, in

spite of her fair prettiness.

It was already growing dark when at last he opened the door, and

stood listening. Not a sound! A milky twilight crept about the

stairway and the landings below. He had turned back when a sound

caught his ear. Peering down, he saw a black shape moving, and

his heart stood still. What was it? Death? The shape of Death

coming from her door? No! only a maid without cap or apron. She

came to the foot of his flight of stairs and said breathlessly:

“The doctor wants to see you, sir.”

He ran down. She stood flat against the wall to let him pass, and

said:

“Oh, Sir! it’s over.”

“Over?” said Soames, with a sort of menace; “what d’you mean?”

“It’s born, sir.”

He dashed up the four steps in front of him, and came suddenly on

the doctor in the dim passage. The man was wiping his brow.

“Well?” he said; “quick!”

“Both living; it’s all right, I think.”

Soames stood quite still, covering his eyes.

“I congratulate you,” he heard the doctor say; “it was touch and

go.”

Soames let fall the hand which was covering his face.

“Thanks,” he said; “thanks very much. What is it?”

“Daughter—luckily; a son would have killed her—the head.”

A daughter!

“The utmost care of both,” he hears the doctor say, “and we shall

do. When does the mother come?”

“To-night, between nine and ten, I hope.”

“I’ll stay till then. Do you want to see them?”

“Not now,” said Soames; “before you go. I’ll have dinner sent up

to you.” And he went downstairs.

Relief unspeakable, and yet—a daughter! It seemed to him unfair.

To have taken that risk—to have been through this agony—and what

agony!—for a daughter! He stood before the blazing fire of wood

logs in the hall, touching it with his toe and trying to readjust

himself. “My father!” he thought. A bitter disappointment, no

disguising it! One never got all one wanted in this life! And

there was no other—at least, if there was, it was no use!

While he was standing there, a telegram was brought him.

“Come up at once, your father sinking fast.—MOTHER.”

He read it with a choking sensation. One would have thought he

couldn’t feel anything after these last hours, but he felt this.

Half-past seven, a train from Reading at nine, and madame’s

train, if she had caught it, came in at eight-forty—he would meet

that, and go on. He ordered the carriage, ate some dinner

mechanically, and went upstairs. The doctor came out to him.

“They’re sleeping.”

“I won’t go in,” said Soames with relief. “My father’s dying; I

have to—go up. Is it all right?”

The doctor’s face expressed a kind of doubting admiration. “If

they were all as unemotional” he might have been saying.

“Yes, I think you may go with an easy mind. You’ll be down soon?”

“To-morrow,” said Soames. “Here’s the address.”

The doctor seemed to hover on the verge of sympathy.

“Good-night!” said Soames abruptly, and turned away. He put on

his fur coat. Death! It was a chilly business. He smoked a

cigarette in the carriage—one of his rare cigarettes. The night

was windy and flew on black wings; the carriage lights had to

search out the way. His father! That old, old man! A comfortless

night—to die!

The London train came in just as he reached the station, and

Madame Lamotte, substantial, dark-clothed, very yellow in the

lamplight, came towards the exit with a dressing-bag.

“This all you have?” asked Soames.

“But yes; I had not the time. How is my little one?”

“Doing well—both. A girl!”

“A girl! What joy! I had a frightful crossing!”

Her black bulk, solid, unreduced by the frightful crossing,

climbed into the brougham.

“And you, _mon cher?_”

“My father’s dying,” said Soames between his teeth. “I’m going

up. Give my love to Annette.”

“_Tiens!_” murmured Madame Lamotte; “_quel malheur!_”

Soames took his hat off, and moved towards his train. “The

French!” he thought.

CHAPTER XIII JAMES IS TOLD

A simple cold, caught in the room with double windows, where the

air and the people who saw him were filtered, as it were, the

room he had not left since the middle of September—and James was

in deep waters. A little cold, passing his little strength and

flying quickly to his lungs. “He mustn’t catch cold,” the doctor

had declared, and he had gone and caught it. When he first felt

it in his throat he had said to his nurse—for he had one

now—“There, I knew how it would be, airing the room like that!”

For a whole day he was highly nervous about himself and went in

advance of all precautions and remedies; drawing every breath

with extreme care and having his temperature taken every hour.

Emily was not alarmed.

But next morning when she went in the nurse whispered: “He won’t

have his temperature taken.”

Emily crossed to the side of the bed where he was lying, and said

softly, “How do you feel, James?” holding the thermometer to his

lips. James looked up at her.

“What’s the good of that?” he murmured huskily; “I don’t want to

know.”

Then she _was_ alarmed. He breathed with difficulty, he looked

terribly frail, white, with faint red discolorations. She had

“had trouble” with him, Goodness knew; but he was James, had been

James for nearly fifty years; she couldn’t remember or imagine

life without James—James, behind all his fussiness, his

pessimism, his crusty shell, deeply affectionate, really kind and

generous to them all!

All that day and the next he hardly uttered a word, but there was

in his eyes a noticing of everything done for him, a look on his

face which told her he was fighting; and she did not lose hope.

His very stillness, the way he conserved every little scrap of

energy, showed the tenacity with which he was fighting. It

touched her deeply; and though her face was composed and

comfortable in the sick-room, tears ran down her cheeks when she

was out of it.

About tea-time on the third day—she had just changed her dress,

keeping her appearance so as not to alarm him, because he noticed

everything—she saw a difference. “It’s no use; I’m tired,” was

written plainly across that white face, and when she went up to

him, he muttered: “Send for Soames.”

“Yes, James,” she said comfortably; “all right—at once.” And she

kissed his forehead. A tear dropped there, and as she wiped it

off she saw that his eyes looked grateful. Much upset, and

without hope now, she sent Soames the telegram.

When he entered out of the black windy night, the big house was

still as a grave. Warmson’s broad face looked almost narrow; he

took the fur coat with a sort of added care, saying:

“Will you have a glass of wine, sir?”

Soames shook his head, and his eyebrows made enquiry.

Warmson’s lips twitched. “He’s asking for you, sir;” and suddenly

he blew his nose. “It’s a long time, sir,” he said, “that I’ve

been with Mr. Forsyte—a long time.”

Soames left him folding the coat, and began to mount the stairs.

This house, where he had been born and sheltered, had never

seemed to him so warm, and rich, and cosy, as during this last

pilgrimage to his father’s room. It was not his taste; but in its

own substantial, lincrusta way it was the acme of comfort and

security. And the night was so dark and windy; the grave so cold

and lonely!

He paused outside the door. No sound came from within. He turned

the handle softly and was in the room before he was perceived.

The light was shaded. His mother and Winifred were sitting on the

far side of the bed; the nurse was moving away from the near side

where was an empty chair. “For me!” thought Soames. As he moved

from the door his mother and sister rose, but he signed with his

hand and they sat down again. He went up to the chair and stood

looking at his father. James’ breathing was as if strangled; his

eyes were closed. And in Soames, looking on his father so worn

and white and wasted, listening to his strangled breathing, there

rose a passionate vehemence of anger against Nature, cruel,

inexorable Nature, kneeling on the chest of that wisp of a body,

slowly pressing out the breath, pressing out the life of the

being who was dearest to him in the world. His father, of all

men, had lived a careful life, moderate, abstemious, and this was

his reward—to have life slowly, painfully squeezed out of him!

And, without knowing that he spoke, he said: “It’s cruel!”

He saw his mother cover her eyes and Winifred bow her face

towards the bed. Women! They put up with things so much better

than men. He took a step nearer to his father. For three days

James had not been shaved, and his lips and chin were covered

with hair, hardly more snowy than his forehead. It softened his

face, gave it a queer look already not of this world. His eyes

opened. Soames went quite close and bent over. The lips moved.

“Here I am, Father:”

“Um—what—what news? They never tell....” the voice died, and a

flood of emotion made Soames’ face work so that he could not

speak. Tell him?—yes. But what? He made a great effort, got his

lips together, and said:

“Good news, dear, good—Annette, a son.”

“Ah!” It was the queerest sound, ugly, relieved, pitiful,

triumphant—like the noise a baby makes getting what it wants. The

eyes closed, and that strangled sound of breathing began again.

Soames recoiled to the chair and stonily sat down. The lie he had

told, based, as it were, on some deep, temperamental instinct

that after death James would not know the truth, had taken away

all power of feeling for the moment. His arm brushed against

something. It was his father’s naked foot. In the struggle to

breathe he had pushed it out from under the clothes. Soames took

it in his hand, a cold foot, light and thin, white, very cold.

What use to put it back, to wrap up that which must be colder

soon! He warmed it mechanically with his hand, listening to his

father’s laboured breathing; while the power of feeling rose

again within him. A little sob, quickly smothered, came from

Winifred, but his mother sat unmoving with her eyes fixed on

James. Soames signed to the nurse.

“Where’s the doctor?” he whispered.

“He’s been sent for.”

“Can’t you do anything to ease his breathing?”

“Only an injection; and he can’t stand it. The doctor said, while

he was fighting....”

“He’s not fighting,” whispered Soames, “he’s being slowly

smothered. It’s awful.”

James stirred uneasily, as if he knew what they were saying.

Soames rose and bent over him. James feebly moved his two hands,

and Soames took them.

“He wants to be pulled up,” whispered the nurse.

Soames pulled. He thought he pulled gently, but a look almost of

anger passed over James’ face. The nurse plumped the pillows.

Soames laid the hands down, and bending over kissed his father’s

forehead. As he was raising himself again, James’ eyes bent on

him a look which seemed to come from the very depths of what was

left within. “I’m done, my boy,” it seemed to say, “take care of

them, take care of yourself; take care—I leave it all to you.”

“Yes, Yes,” Soames whispered, “yes, yes.”

Behind him the nurse did he knew not what, for his father made a

tiny movement of repulsion as if resenting that interference; and

almost at once his breathing eased away, became quiet; he lay

very still. The strained expression on his face passed, a curious

white tranquillity took its place. His eyelids quivered, rested;

the whole face rested; at ease. Only by the faint puffing of his

lips could they tell that he was breathing. Soames sank back on

his chair, and fell to cherishing the foot again. He heard the

nurse quietly crying over there by the fire; curious that she, a

stranger, should be the only one of them who cried! He heard the

quiet lick and flutter of the fire flames. One more old Forsyte

going to his long rest—wonderful, they were!—wonderful how he had

held on! His mother and Winifred were leaning forward, hanging on

the sight of James’ lips. But Soames bent sideways over the feet,

warming them both; they gave him comfort, colder and colder

though they grew. Suddenly he started up; a sound, a dreadful

sound such as he had never heard, was coming from his father’s

lips, as if an outraged heart had broken with a long moan. What a

strong heart, to have uttered that farewell! It ceased. Soames

looked into the face. No motion; no breath! Dead! He kissed the

brow, turned round and went out of the room. He ran upstairs to

the bedroom, his old bedroom, still kept for him; flung himself

face down on the bed, and broke into sobs which he stilled with

the pillow....

A little later he went downstairs and passed into the room. James

lay alone, wonderfully calm, free from shadow and anxiety, with

the gravity on his ravaged face which underlies great age, the

worn fine gravity of old coins.

Soames looked steadily at that face, at the fire, at all the room

with windows thrown open to the London night.

“Good-bye!” he whispered, and went out.

CHAPTER XIV HIS

He had much to see to, that night and all next day. A telegram at

breakfast reassured him about Annette, and he only caught the

last train back to Reading, with Emily’s kiss on his forehead and

in his ears her words:

“I don’t know what I should have done without you, my dear boy.”

He reached his house at midnight. The weather had changed, was

mild again, as though, having finished its work and sent a

Forsyte to his last account, it could relax. A second telegram,

received at dinner-time, had confirmed the good news of Annette,

and, instead of going in, Soames passed down through the garden

in the moonlight to his houseboat. He could sleep there quite

well. Bitterly tired, he lay down on the sofa in his fur coat and

fell asleep. He woke soon after dawn and went on deck. He stood

against the rail, looking west where the river swept round in a

wide curve under the woods. In Soames, appreciation of natural

beauty was curiously like that of his farmer ancestors, a sense

of grievance if it wasn’t there, sharpened, no doubt, and

civilised, by his researches among landscape painting. But dawn

has power to fertilise the most matter-of-fact vision, and he was

stirred. It was another world from the river he knew, under that

remote cool light; a world into which man had not entered, an

unreal world, like some strange shore sighted by discovery. Its

colour was not the colour of convention, was hardly colour at

all; its shapes were brooding yet distinct; its silence stunning;

it had no scent. Why it should move him he could not tell, unless

it were that he felt so alone in it, bare of all relationship and

all possessions. Into such a world his father might be voyaging,

for all resemblance it had to the world he had left. And Soames

took refuge from it in wondering what painter could have done it

justice. The white-grey water was like—like the belly of a fish!

Was it possible that this world on which he looked was all

private property, except the water—and even that was tapped! No

tree, no shrub, not a blade of grass, not a bird or beast, not

even a fish that was not owned. And once on a time all this was

jungle and marsh and water, and weird creatures roamed and

sported without human cognizance to give them names; rotting

luxuriance had rioted where those tall, carefully planted woods

came down to the water, and marsh-misted reeds on that far side

had covered all the pasture. Well! they had got it under,

kennelled it all up, labelled it, and stowed it in lawyers’

offices. And a good thing too! But once in a way, as now, the

ghost of the past came out to haunt and brood and whisper to any

human who chanced to be awake: “Out of my unowned loneliness you

all came, into it some day you will all return.”

And Soames, who felt the chill and the eeriness of that world—new

to him and so very old: the world, unowned, visiting the scene of

its past—went down and made himself tea on a spirit-lamp. When he

had drunk it, he took out writing materials and wrote two

paragraphs:

“On the 20th instant at his residence in Park Lane, James

Forsyte, in his ninety-first year. Funeral at noon on the 24th at

Highgate. No flowers by request.”

“On the 20th instant at The Shelter; Mapledurham, Annette, wife

of Soames Forsyte, of a daughter.” And underneath on the

blottingpaper he traced the word “son.”

It was eight o’clock in an ordinary autumn world when he went

across to the house. Bushes across the river stood round and

bright-coloured out of a milky haze; the wood-smoke went up blue

and straight; and his doves cooed, preening their feathers in the

sunlight.

He stole up to his dressing-room, bathed, shaved, put on fresh

linen and dark clothes.

Madame Lamotte was beginning her breakfast when he went down.

She looked at his clothes, said, “Don’t tell me!” and pressed his

hand. “Annette is prettee well. But the doctor say she can never

have no more children. You knew that?” Soames nodded. “It’s a

pity. _Mais la petite est adorable. Du café?_”

Soames got away from her as soon as he could. She offended

him—solid, matter-of-fact, quick, clear—_French_. He could not

bear her vowels, her “r’s”. he resented the way she had looked at

him, as if it were his fault that Annette could never bear him a

son! His fault! He even resented her cheap adoration of the

daughter he had not yet seen.

Curious how he jibbed away from sight of his wife and child!

One would have thought he must have rushed up at the first

moment. On the contrary, he had a sort of physical shrinking from

it—fastidious possessor that he was. He was afraid of what

Annette was thinking of him, author of her agonies, afraid of the

look of the baby, afraid of showing his disappointment with the

present and—the future.

He spent an hour walking up and down the drawing-room before he

could screw his courage up to mount the stairs and knock on the

door of their room.

Madame Lamotte opened it.

“Ah! At last you come! _Elle vous attend!_” She passed him, and

Soames went in with his noiseless step, his jaw firmly set, his

eyes furtive.

Annette was very pale and very pretty lying there. The baby was

hidden away somewhere; he could not see it. He went up to the

bed, and with sudden emotion bent and kissed her forehead.

“Here you are then, Soames,” she said. “I am not so bad now. But

I suffered terribly, terribly. I am glad I cannot have any more.

Oh! how I suffered!”

Soames stood silent, stroking her hand; words of endearment, of

sympathy, absolutely would not come; the thought passed through

him: “An English girl wouldn’t have said that!” At this moment he

knew with certainty that he would never be near to her in spirit

and in truth, nor she to him. He had collected her—that was all!

And Jolyon’s words came rushing into his mind: “I should imagine

you will be glad to have your neck out of chancery.” Well, he had

got it out! Had he got it in again?

“We must feed you up,” he said, “you’ll soon be strong.”

“Don’t you want to see baby, Soames? She is asleep.”

“Of course,” said Soames, “very much.”

He passed round the foot of the bed to the other side and stood

staring. For the first moment what he saw was much what he had

expected to see—a baby. But as he stared and the baby breathed

and made little sleeping movements with its tiny features, it

seemed to assume an individual shape, grew to be like a picture,

a thing he would know again; not repulsive, strangely bud-like

and touching. It had dark hair. He touched it with his finger, he

wanted to see its eyes. They opened, they were dark—whether blue

or brown he could not tell. The eyes winked, stared, they had a

sort of sleepy depth in them. And suddenly his heart felt queer,

warm, as if elated.

“_Ma petite fleur!_” Annette said softly.

“Fleur,” repeated Soames: “Fleur! we’ll call her that.”

The sense of triumph and renewed possession swelled within him.

By God! this—this thing was his! By God! this—this thing was

_his!_

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THE FORSYTE SAGA—VOLUME III.

By John Galsworthy

AWAKENING

TO CHARLES SCRIBNER

AWAKENING

Through the massive skylight illuminating the hall at Robin Hill,

the July sunlight at five o'clock fell just where the broad

stairway turned; and in that radiant streak little Jon Forsyte

stood, blue-linen-suited. His hair was shining, and his eyes,

from beneath a frown, for he was considering how to go

downstairs, this last of innumerable times, before the car

brought his father and mother home. Four at a time, and five at

the bottom? Stale! Down the banisters? But in which fashion? On

his face, feet foremost? Very stale. On his stomach, sideways?

Paltry! On his back, with his arms stretched down on both sides?

Forbidden! Or on his face, head foremost, in a manner unknown as

yet to any but himself? Such was the cause of the frown on the

illuminated face of little Jon....

In that Summer of 1909 the simple souls who even then desired to

simplify the English tongue, had, of course, no cognizance of

little Jon, or they would have claimed him for a disciple. But

one can be too simple in this life, for his real name was Jolyon,

and his living father and dead half-brother had usurped of old

the other shortenings, Jo and Jolly. As a fact little Jon had

done his best to conform to convention and spell himself first

Jhon, then John; not till his father had explained the sheer

necessity, had he spelled his name Jon.

Up till now that father had possessed what was left of his heart

by the groom, Bob, who played the concertina, and his nurse “Da,”

who wore the violet dress on Sundays, and enjoyed the name of

Spraggins in that private life lived at odd moments even by

domestic servants. His mother had only appeared to him, as it

were in dreams, smelling delicious, smoothing his forehead just

before he fell asleep, and sometimes docking his hair, of a

golden brown colour. When he cut his head open against the

nursery fender she was there to be bled over; and when he had

nightmare she would sit on his bed and cuddle his head against

her neck. She was precious but remote, because “Da” was so near,

and there is hardly room for more than one woman at a time in a

man's heart. With his father, too, of course, he had special

bonds of union; for little Jon also meant to be a painter when he

grew up—with the one small difference, that his father painted

pictures, and little Jon intended to paint ceilings and walls,

standing on a board between two step-ladders, in a dirty-white

apron, and a lovely smell of whitewash. His father also took him

riding in Richmond Park, on his pony, Mouse, so-called because it

was so-coloured.

Little Jon had been born with a silver spoon in a mouth which was

rather curly and large. He had never heard his father or his

mother speak in an angry voice, either to each other, himself, or

anybody else; the groom, Bob, Cook, Jane, Bella and the other

servants, even “Da,” who alone restrained him in his courses, had

special voices when they talked to him. He was therefore of

opinion that the world was a place of perfect and perpetual

gentility and freedom.

A child of 1901, he had come to consciousness when his country,

just over that bad attack of scarlet fever, the Boer War, was

preparing for the Liberal revival of 1906. Coercion was

unpopular, parents had exalted notions of giving their offspring

a good time. They spoiled their rods, spared their children, and

anticipated the results with enthusiasm. In choosing, moreover,

for his father an amiable man of fifty-two, who had already lost

an only son, and for his mother a woman of thirty-eight, whose

first and only child he was, little Jon had done well and wisely.

What had saved him from becoming a cross between a lap dog and a

little prig, had been his father's adoration of his mother, for

even little Jon could see that she was not merely just his

mother, and that he played second fiddle to her in his father's

heart: What he played in his mother's heart he knew not yet. As

for “Auntie” June, his half-sister (but so old that she had grown

out of the relationship) she loved him, of course, but was too

sudden. His devoted “Da,” too, had a Spartan touch. His bath was

cold and his knees were bare; he was not encouraged to be sorry

for himself. As to the vexed question of his education, little

Jon shared the theory of those who considered that children

should not be forced. He rather liked the Mademoiselle who came

for two hours every morning to teach him her language, together

with history, geography and sums; nor were the piano lessons

which his mother gave him disagreeable, for she had a way of

luring him from tune to tune, never making him practise one which

did not give him pleasure, so that he remained eager to convert

ten thumbs into eight fingers. Under his father he learned to

draw pleasure-pigs and other animals. He was not a highly

educated little boy. Yet, on the whole, the silver spoon stayed

in his mouth without spoiling it, though “Da” sometimes said that

other children would do him a “world of good.”

It was a disillusionment, then, when at the age of nearly seven

she held him down on his back, because he wanted to do something

of which she did not approve. This first interference with the

free individualism of a Forsyte drove him almost frantic. There

was something appalling in the utter helplessness of that

position, and the uncertainty as to whether it would ever come to

an end. Suppose she never let him get up any more! He suffered

torture at the top of his voice for fifty seconds. Worse than

anything was his perception that “Da” had taken all that time to

realise the agony of fear he was enduring. Thus, dreadfully, was

revealed to him the lack of imagination in the human being.

When he was let up he remained convinced that “Da” had done a

dreadful thing. Though he did not wish to bear witness against

her, he had been compelled, by fear of repetition, to seek his

mother and say: “Mum, don't let 'Da' hold me down on my back

again.”

His mother, her hands held up over her head, and in them two

plaits of hair—“couleur de feuille morte,” as little Jon had not

yet learned to call it—had looked at him with eyes like little

bits of his brown velvet tunic, and answered:

“No, darling, I won't.”

She, being in the nature of a goddess, little Jon was satisfied;

especially when, from under the dining-table at breakfast, where

he happened to be waiting for a mushroom, he had overheard her

say to his father:

“Then, will you tell 'Da,' dear, or shall I? She's so devoted to

him”; and his father's answer:

“Well, she mustn't show it that way. I know exactly what it feels

like to be held down on one's back. No Forsyte can stand it for a

minute.”

Conscious that they did not know him to be under the table,

little Jon was visited by the quite new feeling of embarrassment,

and stayed where he was, ravaged by desire for the mushroom.

Such had been his first dip into the dark abysses of existence.

Nothing much had been revealed to him after that, till one day,

having gone down to the cow-house for his drink of milk fresh

from the cow, after Garratt had finished milking, he had seen

Clover's calf, dead. Inconsolable, and followed by an upset

Garratt, he had sought “Da”; but suddenly aware that she was not

the person he wanted, had rushed away to find his father, and had

run into the arms of his mother.

“Clover's calf's dead! Oh! Oh! It looked so soft!”

His mother's clasp, and her:

“Yes, darling, there, there!” had stayed his sobbing. But if

Clover's calf could die, anything could—not only bees, flies,

beetles and chickens—and look soft like that! This was

appalling—and soon forgotten!

The next thing had been to sit on a bumble bee, a poignant

experience, which his mother had understood much better than

“Da”; and nothing of vital importance had happened after that

till the year turned; when, following a day of utter

wretchedness, he had enjoyed a disease composed of little spots,

bed, honey in a spoon, and many Tangerine oranges. It was then

that the world had flowered. To “Auntie” June he owed that

flowering, for no sooner was he a little lame duck than she came

rushing down from London, bringing with her the books which had

nurtured her own Berserker spirit, born in the noted year of

1869. Aged, and of many colours, they were stored with the most

formidable happenings. Of these she read to little Jon, till he

was allowed to read to himself; whereupon she whisked back to

London and left them with him in a heap. Those books cooked his

fancy, till he thought and dreamed of nothing but midshipmen and

dhows, pirates, rafts, sandal-wood traders, iron horses, sharks,

battles, Tartars, Red Indians, balloons, North Poles and other

extravagant delights. The moment he was suffered to get up, he

rigged his bed fore and aft, and set out from it in a narrow bath

across green seas of carpet, to a rock, which he climbed by means

of its mahogany drawer knobs, to sweep the horizon with his

drinking tumbler screwed to his eye, in search of rescuing sails.

He made a daily raft out of the towel stand, the tea tray, and

his pillows. He saved the juice from his French plums, bottled it

in an empty medicine bottle, and provisioned the raft with the

rum that it became; also with pemmican made out of little

saved-up bits of chicken sat on and dried at the fire; and with

lime juice against scurvy, extracted from the peel of his oranges

and a little economised juice. He made a North Pole one morning

from the whole of his bedclothes except the bolster, and reached

it in a birch-bark canoe (in private life the fender), after a

terrible encounter with a polar bear fashioned from the bolster

and four skittles dressed up in “Da's” nightgown. After that, his

father, seeking to steady his imagination, brought him Ivanhoe,

Bevis, a book about King Arthur, and Tom Brown's Schooldays. He

read the first, and for three days built, defended and stormed

Front de Boeuf's castle, taking every part in the piece except

those of Rebecca and Rowena; with piercing cries of: “En avant,

de Bracy!” and similar utterances. After reading the book about

King Arthur he became almost exclusively Sir Lamorac de Galis,

because, though there was very little about him, he preferred his

name to that of any other knight; and he rode his old

rocking-horse to death, armed with a long bamboo. Bevis he found

tame; besides, it required woods and animals, of which he had

none in his nursery, except his two cats, Fitz and Puck Forsyte,

who permitted no liberties. For Tom Brown he was as yet too

young. There was relief in the house when, after the fourth week,

he was permitted to go down and out.

The month being March the trees were exceptionally like the masts

of ships, and for little Jon that was a wonderful Spring,

extremely hard on his knees, suits, and the patience of “Da,” who

had the washing and reparation of his clothes. Every morning the

moment his breakfast was over, he could be viewed by his mother

and father, whose windows looked out that way, coming from the

study, crossing the terrace, climbing the old oak tree, his face

resolute and his hair bright. He began the day thus because there

was not time to go far afield before his lessons. The old tree's

variety never staled; it had mainmast, foremast, top-gallant

mast, and he could always come down by the halyards—or ropes of

the swing. After his lessons, completed by eleven, he would go to

the kitchen for a thin piece of cheese, a biscuit and two French

plums—provision enough for a jolly-boat at least—and eat it in

some imaginative way; then, armed to the teeth with gun, pistols,

and sword, he would begin the serious climbing of the morning,

encountering by the way innumerable slavers, Indians, pirates,

leopards, and bears. He was seldom seen at that hour of the day

without a cutlass in his teeth (like Dick Needham) amid the rapid

explosion of copper caps. And many were the gardeners he brought

down with yellow peas shot out of his little gun. He lived a life

of the most violent action.

“Jon,” said his father to his mother, under the oak tree, “is

terrible. I'm afraid he's going to turn out a sailor, or

something hopeless. Do you see any sign of his appreciating

beauty?”

“Not the faintest.”

“Well, thank heaven he's no turn for wheels or engines! I can

bear anything but that. But I wish he'd take more interest in

Nature.”

“He's imaginative, Jolyon.”

“Yes, in a sanguinary way. Does he love anyone just now?”

“No; only everyone. There never was anyone born more loving or

more lovable than Jon.”

“Being your boy, Irene.”

At this moment little Jon, lying along a branch high above them,

brought them down with two peas; but that fragment of talk

lodged, thick, in his small gizzard. Loving, lovable,

imaginative, sanguinary!

The leaves also were thick by now, and it was time for his

birthday, which, occurring every year on the twelfth of May, was

always memorable for his chosen dinner of sweetbread, mushrooms,

macaroons, and ginger beer.

Between that eighth birthday, however, and the afternoon when he

stood in the July radiance at the turning of the stairway,

several important things had happened.

“Da,” worn out by washing his knees, or moved by that mysterious

instinct which forces even nurses to desert their nurslings, left

the very day after his birthday in floods of tears “to be

married”—of all things—“to a man.” Little Jon, from whom it had

been kept, was inconsolable for an afternoon. It ought not to

have been kept from him! Two large boxes of soldiers and some

artillery, together with The Young Buglers, which had been among

his birthday presents, cooperated with his grief in a sort of

conversion, and instead of seeking adventures in person and

risking his own life, he began to play imaginative games, in

which he risked the lives of countless tin soldiers, marbles,

stones and beans. Of these forms of “chair a canon” he made

collections, and, using them alternately, fought the Peninsular,

the Seven Years, the Thirty Years, and other wars, about which he

had been reading of late in a big History of Europe which had

been his grandfather's. He altered them to suit his genius, and

fought them all over the floor in his day nursery, so that nobody

could come in, for fearing of disturbing Gustavus Adolphus, King

of Sweden, or treading on an army of Austrians. Because of the

sound of the word he was passionately addicted to the Austrians,

and finding there were so few battles in which they were

successful he had to invent them in his games. His favourite

generals were Prince Eugene, the Archduke Charles and

Wallenstein. Tilly and Mack (“music-hall turns” he heard his

father call them one day, whatever that might mean) one really

could not love very much, Austrian though they were. For euphonic

reasons, too, he doted on Turenne.

This phase, which caused his parents anxiety, because it kept him

indoors when he ought to have been out, lasted through May and

half of June, till his father killed it by bringing home to him

Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. When he read those books

something happened in him, and he went out of doors again in

passionate quest of a river. There being none on the premises at

Robin Hill, he had to make one out of the pond, which fortunately

had water lilies, dragonflies, gnats, bullrushes, and three small

willow trees. On this pond, after his father and Garratt had

ascertained by sounding that it had a reliable bottom and was

nowhere more than two feet deep, he was allowed a little

collapsible canoe, in which he spent hours and hours paddling,

and lying down out of sight of Indian Joe and other enemies. On

the shore of the pond, too, he built himself a wigwam about four

feet square, of old biscuit tins, roofed in by boughs. In this he

would make little fires, and cook the birds he had not shot with

his gun, hunting in the coppice and fields, or the fish he did

not catch in the pond because there were none. This occupied the

rest of June and that July, when his father and mother were away

in Ireland. He led a lonely life of “make believe” during those

five weeks of summer weather, with gun, wigwam, water and canoe;

and, however hard his active little brain tried to keep the sense

of beauty away, she did creep in on him for a second now and

then, perching on the wing of a dragon-fly, glistening on the

water lilies, or brushing his eyes with her blue as he lay on his

back in ambush.

“Auntie” June, who had been left in charge, had a “grown-up” in

the house, with a cough and a large piece of putty which he was

making into a face; so she hardly ever came down to see him in

the pond. Once, however, she brought with her two other

“grown-ups.” Little Jon, who happened to have painted his naked

self bright blue and yellow in stripes out of his father's

water-colour box, and put some duck's feathers in his hair, saw

them coming, and—ambushed himself among the willows. As he had

foreseen, they came at once to his wigwam and knelt down to look

inside, so that with a blood-curdling yell he was able to take

the scalps of “Auntie” June and the woman “grown-up” in an almost

complete manner before they kissed him. The names of the two

grown-ups were “Auntie” Holly and “Uncle” Val, who had a brown

face and a little limp, and laughed at him terribly. He took a

fancy to “Auntie” Holly, who seemed to be a sister too; but they

both went away the same afternoon and he did not see them again.

Three days before his father and mother were to come home

“Auntie” June also went off in a great hurry, taking the

“grown-up” who coughed and his piece of putty; and Mademoiselle

said: “Poor man, he was veree ill. I forbid you to go into his

room, Jon.” Little Jon, who rarely did things merely because he

was told not to, refrained from going, though he was bored and

lonely. In truth the day of the pond was past, and he was filled

to the brim of his soul with restlessness and the want of

something—not a tree, not a gun—something soft. Those last two

days had seemed months in spite of Cast Up by the Sea, wherein he

was reading about Mother Lee and her terrible wrecking bonfire.

He had gone up and down the stairs perhaps a hundred times in

those two days, and often from the day nursery, where he slept

now, had stolen into his mother's room, looked at everything,

without touching, and on into the dressing-room; and standing on

one leg beside the bath, like Slingsby, had whispered:

“Ho, ho, ho! Dog my cats!” mysteriously, to bring luck. Then,

stealing back, he had opened his mother's wardrobe, and taken a

long sniff which seemed to bring him nearer to—he didn't know

what.

He had done this just before he stood in the streak of sunlight,

debating in which of the several ways he should slide down the

banisters. They all seemed silly, and in a sudden languor he

began descending the steps one by one. During that descent he

could remember his father quite distinctly—the short grey beard,

the deep eyes twinkling, the furrow between them, the funny

smile, the thin figure which always seemed so tall to little Jon;

but his mother he couldn't see. All that represented her was

something swaying with two dark eyes looking back at him; and the

scent of her wardrobe.

Bella was in the hall, drawing aside the big curtains, and

opening the front door. Little Jon said, wheedling,

“Bella!”

“Yes, Master Jon.”

“Do let's have tea under the oak tree when they come; I know

they'd like it best.”

“You mean you'd like it best.”

Little Jon considered.

“No, they would, to please me.”

Bella smiled. “Very well, I'll take it out if you'll stay quiet

here and not get into mischief before they come.”

Little Jon sat down on the bottom step, and nodded. Bella came

close, and looked him over.

“Get up!” she said.

Little Jon got up. She scrutinized him behind; he was not green,

and his knees seemed clean.

“All right!” she said. “My! Aren't you brown? Give me a kiss!”

And little Jon received a peck on his hair.

“What jam?” he asked. “I'm so tired of waiting.”

“Gooseberry and strawberry.”

Num! They were his favourites!

When she was gone he sat still for quite a minute. It was quiet

in the big hall open to its East end so that he could see one of

his trees, a brig sailing very slowly across the upper lawn. In

the outer hall shadows were slanting from the pillars. Little Jon

got up, jumped one of them, and walked round the clump of iris

plants which filled the pool of grey-white marble in the centre.

The flowers were pretty, but only smelled a very little. He stood

in the open doorway and looked out. Suppose!—suppose they didn't

come! He had waited so long that he felt he could not bear that,

and his attention slid at once from such finality to the dust

motes in the bluish sunlight coming in: Thrusting his hand up, he

tried to catch some. Bella ought to have dusted that piece of

air! But perhaps they weren't dust—only what sunlight was made

of, and he looked to see whether the sunlight out of doors was

the same. It was not. He had said he would stay quiet in the

hall, but he simply couldn't any more; and crossing the gravel of

the drive he lay down on the grass beyond. Pulling six daisies he

named them carefully, Sir Lamorac, Sir Tristram, Sir Lancelot,

Sir Palimedes, Sir Bors, Sir Gawain, and fought them in couples

till only Sir Lamorac, whom he had selected for a specially stout

stalk, had his head on, and even he, after three encounters,

looked worn and waggly. A beetle was moving slowly in the grass,

which almost wanted cutting. Every blade was a small tree, round

whose trunk the beetle had to glide. Little Jon stretched out Sir

Lamorac, feet foremost, and stirred the creature up. It scuttled

painfully. Little Jon laughed, lost interest, and sighed. His

heart felt empty. He turned over and lay on his back. There was a

scent of honey from the lime trees in flower, and in the sky the

blue was beautiful, with a few white clouds which looked and

perhaps tasted like lemon ice. He could hear Bob playing: “Way

down upon de Suwannee ribber” on his concertina, and it made him

nice and sad. He turned over again and put his ear to the

ground—Indians could hear things coming ever so far—but he could

hear nothing—only the concertina! And almost instantly he did

hear a grinding sound, a faint toot. Yes! it was a

car—coming—coming! Up he jumped. Should he wait in the porch, or

rush upstairs, and as they came in, shout: “Look!” and slide

slowly down the banisters, head foremost? Should he? The car

turned in at the drive. It was too late! And he only waited,

jumping up and down in his excitement. The car came quickly,

whirred, and stopped. His father got out, exactly like life. He

bent down and little Jon bobbed up—they bumped. His father said,

“Bless us! Well, old man, you are brown!” Just as he would; and

the sense of expectation—of something wanted—bubbled

unextinguished in little Jon. Then, with a long, shy look he saw

his mother, in a blue dress, with a blue motor scarf over her cap

and hair, smiling. He jumped as high as ever he could, twined his

legs behind her back, and hugged. He heard her gasp, and felt her

hugging back. His eyes, very dark blue just then, looked into

hers, very dark brown, till her lips closed on his eyebrow, and,

squeezing with all his might, he heard her creak and laugh, and

say:

“You are strong, Jon!”

He slid down at that, and rushed into the hall, dragging her by

the hand.

While he was eating his jam beneath the oak tree, he noticed

things about his mother that he had never seemed to see before,

her cheeks for instance were creamy, there were silver threads in

her dark goldy hair, her throat had no knob in it like Bella's,

and she went in and out softly. He noticed, too, some little

lines running away from the corners of her eyes, and a nice

darkness under them. She was ever so beautiful, more beautiful

than “Da” or Mademoiselle, or “Auntie” June or even “Auntie”

Holly, to whom he had taken a fancy; even more beautiful than

Bella, who had pink cheeks and came out too suddenly in places.

This new beautifulness of his mother had a kind of particular

importance, and he ate less than he had expected to.

When tea was over his father wanted him to walk round the

gardens. He had a long conversation with his father about things

in general, avoiding his private life—Sir Lamorac, the Austrians,

and the emptiness he had felt these last three days, now so

suddenly filled up. His father told him of a place called

Glensofantrim, where he and his mother had been; and of the

little people who came out of the ground there when it was very

quiet. Little Jon came to a halt, with his heels apart.

“Do you really believe they do, Daddy?” “No, Jon, but I thought

you might.”

“Why?”

“You're younger than I; and they're fairies.” Little Jon squared

the dimple in his chin.

“I don't believe in fairies. I never see any.” “Ha!” said his

father.

“Does Mum?”

His father smiled his funny smile.

“No; she only sees Pan.”

“What's Pan?”

“The Goaty God who skips about in wild and beautiful places.”

“Was he in Glensofantrim?”

“Mum said so.”

Little Jon took his heels up, and led on.

“Did you see him?”

“No; I only saw Venus Anadyomene.”

Little Jon reflected; Venus was in his book about the Greeks and

Trojans. Then Anna was her Christian and Dyomene her surname?

But it appeared, on inquiry, that it was one word, which meant

rising from the foam.

“Did she rise from the foam in Glensofantrim?”

“Yes; every day.”

“What is she like, Daddy?”

“Like Mum.”

“Oh! Then she must be...” but he stopped at that, rushed at a

wall, scrambled up, and promptly scrambled down again. The

discovery that his mother was beautiful was one which he felt

must absolutely be kept to himself. His father's cigar, however,

took so long to smoke, that at last he was compelled to say:

“I want to see what Mum's brought home. Do you mind, Daddy?”

He pitched the motive low, to absolve him from unmanliness, and

was a little disconcerted when his father looked at him right

through, heaved an important sigh, and answered:

“All right, old man, you go and love her.”

He went, with a pretence of slowness, and then rushed, to make

up. He entered her bedroom from his own, the door being open. She

was still kneeling before a trunk, and he stood close to her,

quite still.

She knelt up straight, and said:

“Well, Jon?”

“I thought I'd just come and see.”

Having given and received another hug, he mounted the

window-seat, and tucking his legs up under him watched her

unpack. He derived a pleasure from the operation such as he had

not yet known, partly because she was taking out things which

looked suspicious, and partly because he liked to look at her.

She moved differently from anybody else, especially from Bella;

she was certainly the refinedest-looking person he had ever seen.

She finished the trunk at last, and knelt down in front of him.

“Have you missed us, Jon?”

Little Jon nodded, and having thus admitted his feelings,

continued to nod.

“But you had 'Auntie' June?”

“Oh! she had a man with a cough.”

His mother's face changed, and looked almost angry. He added

hastily:

“He was a poor man, Mum; he coughed awfully; I—I liked him.”

His mother put her hands behind his waist.

“You like everybody, Jon?”

Little Jon considered.

“Up to a point,” he said: “Auntie June took me to church one

Sunday.”

“To church? Oh!”

“She wanted to see how it would affect me.” “And did it?”

“Yes. I came over all funny, so she took me home again very

quick. I wasn't sick after all. I went to bed and had hot brandy

and water, and read The Boys of Beechwood. It was scrumptious.”

His mother bit her lip.

“When was that?”

“Oh! about—a long time ago—I wanted her to take me again, but she

wouldn't. You and Daddy never go to church, do you?”

“No, we don't.”

“Why don't you?”

His mother smiled.

“Well, dear, we both of us went when we were little. Perhaps we

went when we were too little.”

“I see,” said little Jon, “it's dangerous.”

“You shall judge for yourself about all those things as you grow

up.”

Little Jon replied in a calculating manner:

“I don't want to grow up, much. I don't want to go to school.” A

sudden overwhelming desire to say something more, to say what he

really felt, turned him red. “I—I want to stay with you, and be

your lover, Mum.”

Then with an instinct to improve the situation, he added quickly

“I don't want to go to bed to-night, either. I'm simply tired of

going to bed, every night.”

“Have you had any more nightmares?”

“Only about one. May I leave the door open into your room

to-night, Mum?”

“Yes, just a little.” Little Jon heaved a sigh of satisfaction.

“What did you see in Glensofantrim?”

“Nothing but beauty, darling.”

“What exactly is beauty?”

“What exactly is—Oh! Jon, that's a poser.”

“Can I see it, for instance?” His mother got up, and sat beside

him. “You do, every day. The sky is beautiful, the stars, and

moonlit nights, and then the birds, the flowers, the

trees—they're all beautiful. Look out of the window—there's

beauty for you, Jon.”

“Oh! yes, that's the view. Is that all?”

“All? no. The sea is wonderfully beautiful, and the waves, with

their foam flying back.”

“Did you rise from it every day, Mum?”

His mother smiled. “Well, we bathed.”

Little Jon suddenly reached out and caught her neck in his hands.

“I know,” he said mysteriously, “you're it, really, and all the

rest is make-believe.”

She sighed, laughed, said: “Oh! Jon!”

Little Jon said critically:

“Do you think Bella beautiful, for instance? I hardly do.”

“Bella is young; that's something.”

“But you look younger, Mum. If you bump against Bella she hurts.”

“I don't believe 'Da' was beautiful, when I come to think of it;

and Mademoiselle's almost ugly.”

“Mademoiselle has a very nice face.” “Oh! yes; nice. I love your

little rays, Mum.”

“Rays?”

Little Jon put his finger to the outer corner of her eye.

“Oh! Those? But they're a sign of age.”

“They come when you smile.”

“But they usen't to.”

“Oh! well, I like them. Do you love me, Mum?”

“I do—I do love you, darling.”

“Ever so?”

“Ever so!”

“More than I thought you did?”

“Much—much more.”

“Well, so do I; so that makes it even.”

Conscious that he had never in his life so given himself away, he

felt a sudden reaction to the manliness of Sir Lamorac, Dick

Needham, Huck Finn, and other heroes.

“Shall I show you a thing or two?” he said; and slipping out of

her arms, he stood on his head. Then, fired by her obvious

admiration, he mounted the bed, and threw himself head foremost

from his feet on to his back, without touching anything with his

hands. He did this several times.

That evening, having inspected what they had brought, he stayed

up to dinner, sitting between them at the little round table they

used when they were alone. He was extremely excited. His mother

wore a French-grey dress, with creamy lace made out of little

scriggly roses, round her neck, which was browner than the lace.

He kept looking at her, till at last his father's funny smile

made him suddenly attentive to his slice of pineapple. It was

later than he had ever stayed up, when he went to bed. His mother

went up with him, and he undressed very slowly so as to keep her

there. When at last he had nothing on but his pyjamas, he said:

“Promise you won't go while I say my prayers!”

“I promise.”

Kneeling down and plunging his face into the bed, little Jon

hurried up, under his breath, opening one eye now and then, to

see her standing perfectly still with a smile on her face. “Our

Father”—so went his last prayer, “which art in heaven, hallowed

be thy Mum, thy Kingdom Mum—on Earth as it is in heaven, give us

this day our daily Mum and forgive us our trespasses on earth as

it is in heaven and trespass against us, for thine is the evil

the power and the glory for ever and ever. Amum! Look out!” He

sprang, and for a long minute remained in her arms. Once in bed,

he continued to hold her hand.

“You won't shut the door any more than that, will you? Are you

going to be long, Mum?”

“I must go down and play to Daddy.”

“Oh! well, I shall hear you.”

“I hope not; you must go to sleep.”

“I can sleep any night.”

“Well, this is just a night like any other.”

“Oh! no—it's extra special.”

“On extra special nights one always sleeps soundest.”

“But if I go to sleep, Mum, I shan't hear you come up.”

“Well, when I do, I'll come in and give you a kiss, then if

you're awake you'll know, and if you're not you'll still know

you've had one.”

Little Jon sighed, “All right!” he said: “I suppose I must put up

with that. Mum?”

“Yes?”

“What was her name that Daddy believes in? Venus Anna Diomedes?”

“Oh! my angel! Anadyomene.”

“Yes! but I like my name for you much better.”

“What is yours, Jon?”

Little Jon answered shyly:

“Guinevere! it's out of the Round Table—I've only just thought of

it, only of course her hair was down.”

His mother's eyes, looking past him, seemed to float.

“You won't forget to come, Mum?”

“Not if you'll go to sleep.”

“That's a bargain, then.” And little Jon screwed up his eyes.

He felt her lips on his forehead, heard her footsteps; opened his

eyes to see her gliding through the doorway, and, sighing,

screwed them up again.

Then Time began.

For some ten minutes of it he tried loyally to sleep, counting a

great number of thistles in a row, “Da's” old recipe for bringing

slumber. He seemed to have been hours counting. It must, he

thought, be nearly time for her to come up now. He threw the

bedclothes back. “I'm hot!” he said, and his voice sounded funny

in the darkness, like someone else's. Why didn't she come? He sat

up. He must look! He got out of bed, went to the window and

pulled the curtain a slice aside. It wasn't dark, but he couldn't

tell whether because of daylight or the moon, which was very big.

It had a funny, wicked face, as if laughing at him, and he did

not want to look at it. Then, remembering that his mother had

said moonlit nights were beautiful, he continued to stare out in

a general way. The trees threw thick shadows, the lawn looked

like spilt milk, and a long, long way he could see; oh! very far;

right over the world, and it all looked different and swimmy.

There was a lovely smell, too, in his open window.

'I wish I had a dove like Noah!' he thought.

“The moony moon was round and bright, It shone and shone and made

it light.”

After that rhyme, which came into his head all at once, he became

conscious of music, very soft-lovely! Mum playing! He bethought

himself of a macaroon he had, laid up in his chest of drawers,

and, getting it, came back to the window. He leaned out, now

munching, now holding his jaws to hear the music better. “Da”

used to say that angels played on harps in heaven; but it wasn't

half so lovely as Mum playing in the moony night, with him eating

a macaroon. A cockchafer buzzed by, a moth flew in his face, the

music stopped, and little Jon drew his head in. She must be

coming! He didn't want to be found awake. He got back into bed

and pulled the clothes nearly over his head; but he had left a

streak of moonlight coming in. It fell across the floor, near the

foot of the bed, and he watched it moving ever so slowly towards

him, as if it were alive. The music began again, but he could

only just hear it now; sleepy music,

pretty—sleepy—music—sleepy—slee.....

And time slipped by, the music rose, fell, ceased; the moonbeam

crept towards his face. Little Jon turned in his sleep till he

lay on his back, with one brown fist still grasping the

bedclothes. The corners of his eyes twitched—he had begun to

dream. He dreamed he was drinking milk out of a pan that was the

moon, opposite a great black cat which watched him with a funny

smile like his father's. He heard it whisper: “Don't drink too

much!” It was the cat's milk, of course, and he put out his hand

amicably to stroke the creature; but it was no longer there; the

pan had become a bed, in which he was lying, and when he tried to

get out he couldn't find the edge; he couldn't find

it—he—he—couldn't get out! It was dreadful!

He whimpered in his sleep. The bed had begun to go round too; it

was outside him and inside him; going round and round, and

getting fiery, and Mother Lee out of Cast up by the Sea was

stirring it! Oh! so horrible she looked! Faster and faster!—till

he and the bed and Mother Lee and the moon and the cat were all

one wheel going round and round and up and up—awful—awful—awful!

He shrieked.

A voice saying: “Darling, darling!” got through the wheel, and he

awoke, standing on his bed, with his eyes wide open.

There was his mother, with her hair like Guinevere's, and,

clutching her, he buried his face in it.

“Oh! oh!”

“It's all right, treasure. You're awake now. There! There! It's

nothing!”

But little Jon continued to say: “Oh! oh!”

Her voice went on, velvety in his ear:

“It was the moonlight, sweetheart, coming on your face.”

Little Jon burbled into her nightgown

“You said it was beautiful. Oh!”

“Not to sleep in, Jon. Who let it in? Did you draw the curtains?”

“I wanted to see the time; I—I looked out, I—I heard you playing,

Mum; I—I ate my macaroon.” But he was growing slowly comforted;

and the instinct to excuse his fear revived within him.

“Mother Lee went round in me and got all fiery,” he mumbled.

“Well, Jon, what can you expect if you eat macaroons after you've

gone to bed?”

“Only one, Mum; it made the music ever so more beautiful. I was

waiting for you—I nearly thought it was to-morrow.”

“My ducky, it's only just eleven now.”

Little Jon was silent, rubbing his nose on her neck.

“Mum, is Daddy in your room?”

“Not to-night.”

“Can I come?”

“If you wish, my precious.”

Half himself again, little Jon drew back.

“You look different, Mum; ever so younger.”

“It's my hair, darling.”

Little Jon laid hold of it, thick, dark gold, with a few silver

threads.

“I like it,” he said: “I like you best of all like this.”

Taking her hand, he had begun dragging her towards the door. He

shut it as they passed, with a sigh of relief.

“Which side of the bed do you like, Mum?”

“The left side.”

“All right.”

Wasting no time, giving her no chance to change her mind, little

Jon got into the bed, which seemed much softer than his own. He

heaved another sigh, screwed his head into the pillow and lay

examining the battle of chariots and swords and spears which

always went on outside blankets, where the little hairs stood up

against the light.

“It wasn't anything, really, was it?” he said.

From before her glass his mother answered:

“Nothing but the moon and your imagination heated up. You mustn't

get so excited, Jon.”

But, still not quite in possession of his nerves, little Jon

answered boastfully:

“I wasn't afraid, really, of course!” And again he lay watching

the spears and chariots. It all seemed very long.

“Oh! Mum, do hurry up!”

“Darling, I have to plait my hair.”

“Oh! not to-night. You'll only have to unplait it again

to-morrow. I'm sleepy now; if you don't come, I shan't be sleepy

soon.”

His mother stood up white and flowey before the winged mirror: he

could see three of her, with her neck turned and her hair bright

under the light, and her dark eyes smiling. It was unnecessary,

and he said:

“Do come, Mum; I'm waiting.”

“Very well, my love, I'll come.”

Little Jon closed his eyes. Everything was turning out most

satisfactory, only she must hurry up! He felt the bed shake, she

was getting in. And, still with his eyes closed, he said

sleepily: “It's nice, isn't it?”

He heard her voice say something, felt her lips touching his

nose, and, snuggling up beside her who lay awake and loved him

with her thoughts, he fell into the dreamless sleep, which

rounded off his past.

TO LET

“From out the fatal loins of those two foes A pair of star-crossed

lovers take their life.” —Romeo and Juliet.

TO CHARLES SCRIBNER

PART I

I.—ENCOUNTER

Soames Forsyte emerged from the Knightsbridge Hotel, where he was

staying, in the afternoon of the 12th of May, 1920, with the

intention of visiting a collection of pictures in a Gallery off

Cork Street, and looking into the Future. He walked. Since the

War he never took a cab if he could help it. Their drivers were,

in his view, an uncivil lot, though now that the War was over and

supply beginning to exceed demand again, getting more civil in

accordance with the custom of human nature. Still, he had not

forgiven them, deeply identifying them with gloomy memories, and

now, dimly, like all members, of their class, with revolution.

The considerable anxiety he had passed through during the War,

and the more considerable anxiety he had since undergone in the

Peace, had produced psychological consequences in a tenacious

nature. He had, mentally, so frequently experienced ruin, that he

had ceased to believe in its material probability. Paying away

four thousand a year in income and super tax, one could not very

well be worse off! A fortune of a quarter of a million,

encumbered only by a wife and one daughter, and very diversely

invested, afforded substantial guarantee even against that

“wildcat notion” a levy on capital. And as to confiscation of war

profits, he was entirely in favour of it, for he had none, and

“serve the beggars right!” The price of pictures, moreover, had,

if anything, gone up, and he had done better with his collection

since the War began than ever before. Air-raids, also, had acted

beneficially on a spirit congenitally cautious, and hardened a

character already dogged. To be in danger of being entirely

dispersed inclined one to be less apprehensive of the more

partial dispersions involved in levies and taxation, while the

habit of condemning the impudence of the Germans had led

naturally to condemning that of Labour, if not openly at least in

the sanctuary of his soul.

He walked. There was, moreover, time to spare, for Fleur was to

meet him at the Gallery at four o'clock, and it was as yet but

half-past two. It was good for him to walk—his liver was a little

constricted, and his nerves rather on edge. His wife was always

out when she was in Town, and his daughter would flibberty-gibbet

all over the place like most young women since the War. Still, he

must be thankful that she had been too young to do anything in

that War itself. Not, of course, that he had not supported the

War from its inception, with all his soul, but between that and

supporting it with the bodies of his wife and daughter, there had

been a gap fixed by something old-fashioned within him which

abhorred emotional extravagance. He had, for instance, strongly

objected to Annette, so attractive, and in 1914 only thirty-four,

going to her native France, her “chere patrie” as, under the

stimulus of war, she had begun to call it, to nurse her “braves

poilus,” forsooth! Ruining her health and her looks! As if she

were really a nurse! He had put a stopper on it. Let her do

needlework for them at home, or knit! She had not gone,

therefore, and had never been quite the same woman since. A bad

tendency of hers to mock at him, not openly, but in continual

little ways, had grown. As for Fleur, the War had resolved the

vexed problem whether or not she should go to school. She was

better away from her mother in her war mood, from the chance of

air-raids, and the impetus to do extravagant things; so he had

placed her in a seminary as far West as had seemed to him

compatible with excellence, and had missed her horribly. Fleur!

He had never regretted the somewhat outlandish name by which at

her birth he had decided so suddenly to call her—marked

concession though it had been to the French. Fleur! A pretty

name—a pretty child! But restless—too restless; and wilful!

Knowing her power too over her father! Soames often reflected on

the mistake it was to dote on his daughter. To get old and dote!

Sixty-five! He was getting on; but he didn't feel it, for,

fortunately perhaps, considering Annette's youth and good looks,

his second marriage had turned out a cool affair. He had known

but one real passion in his life—for that first wife of

his—Irene. Yes, and that fellow, his cousin Jolyon, who had gone

off with her, was looking very shaky, they said. No wonder, at

seventy-two, after twenty years of a third marriage!

Soames paused a moment in his march to lean over the railings of

the Row. A suitable spot for reminiscence, half-way between that

house in Park Lane which had seen his birth and his parents'

deaths, and the little house in Montpellier Square where

thirty-five years ago he had enjoyed his first edition of

matrimony. Now, after twenty years of his second edition, that

old tragedy seemed to him like a previous existence—which had

ended when Fleur was born in place of the son he had hoped for.

For many years he had ceased regretting, even vaguely, the son

who had not been born; Fleur filled the bill in his heart. After

all, she bore his name; and he was not looking forward at all to

the time when she would change it. Indeed, if he ever thought of

such a calamity, it was seasoned by the vague feeling that he

could make her rich enough to purchase perhaps and extinguish the

name of the fellow who married her—why not, since, as it seemed,

women were equal to men nowadays? And Soames, secretly convinced

that they were not, passed his curved hand over his face

vigorously, till it reached the comfort of his chin. Thanks to

abstemious habits, he had not grown fat and gabby; his nose was

pale and thin, his grey moustache close-clipped, his eyesight

unimpaired. A slight stoop closened and corrected the expansion

given to his face by the heightening of his forehead in the

recession of his grey hair. Little change had Time wrought in the

“warmest” of the young Forsytes, as the last of the old

Forsytes—Timothy-now in his hundred and first year, would have

phrased it.

The shade from the plane-trees fell on his neat Homburg hat; he

had given up top hats—it was no use attracting attention to

wealth in days like these. Plane-trees! His thoughts travelled

sharply to Madrid—the Easter before the War, when, having to make

up his mind about that Goya picture, he had taken a voyage of

discovery to study the painter on his spot. The fellow had

impressed him—great range, real genius! Highly as the chap

ranked, he would rank even higher before they had finished with

him. The second Goya craze would be greater even than the first;

oh, yes! And he had bought. On that visit he had—as never

before—commissioned a copy of a fresco painting called “La

Vendimia,” wherein was the figure of a girl with an arm akimbo,

who had reminded him of his daughter. He had it now in the

Gallery at Mapledurham, and rather poor it was—you couldn't copy

Goya. He would still look at it, however, if his daughter were

not there, for the sake of something irresistibly reminiscent in

the light, erect balance of the figure, the width between the

arching eyebrows, the eager dreaming of the dark eyes. Curious

that Fleur should have dark eyes, when his own were grey—no pure

Forsyte had brown eyes—and her mother's blue! But of course her

grandmother Lamotte's eyes were dark as treacle!

He began to walk on again toward Hyde Park Corner. No greater

change in all England than in the Row! Born almost within hail of

it, he could remember it from 1860 on. Brought there as a child

between the crinolines to stare at tight-trousered dandies in

whiskers, riding with a cavalry seat; to watch the doffing of

curly-brimmed and white top hats; the leisurely air of it all,

and the little bow-legged man in a long red waistcoat who used to

come among the fashion with dogs on several strings, and try to

sell one to his mother: King Charles spaniels, Italian

greyhounds, affectionate to her crinoline—you never saw them now.

You saw no quality of any sort, indeed, just working people

sitting in dull rows with nothing to stare at but a few young

bouncing females in pot hats, riding astride, or desultory

Colonials charging up and down on dismal-looking hacks; with,

here and there, little girls on ponies, or old gentlemen jogging

their livers, or an orderly trying a great galumphing cavalry

horse; no thoroughbreds, no grooms, no bowing, no scraping, no

gossip—nothing; only the trees the same—the trees indifferent to

the generations and declensions of mankind. A democratic

England—dishevelled, hurried, noisy, and seemingly without an

apex. And that something fastidious in the soul of Soames turned

over within him. Gone forever, the close borough of rank and

polish! Wealth there was—oh, yes! wealth—he himself was a richer

man than his father had ever been; but manners, flavour, quality,

all gone, engulfed in one vast, ugly, shoulder-rubbing,

petrol-smelling Cheerio. Little half-beaten pockets of gentility

and caste lurking here and there, dispersed and chetif, as

Annette would say; but nothing ever again firm and coherent to

look up to. And into this new hurly-burly of bad manners and

loose morals his daughter—flower of his life—was flung! And when

those Labour chaps got power—if they ever did—the worst was yet

to come.

He passed out under the archway, at last no longer—thank

goodness!—disfigured by the gungrey of its search-light. 'They'd

better put a search-light on to where they're all going,' he

thought, 'and light up their precious democracy!' And he directed

his steps along the Club fronts of Piccadilly. George Forsyte, of

course, would be sitting in the bay window of the Iseeum. The

chap was so big now that he was there nearly all his time, like

some immovable, sardonic, humorous eye noting the decline of men

and things. And Soames hurried, ever constitutionally uneasy

beneath his cousin's glance. George, who, as he had heard, had

written a letter signed “Patriot” in the middle of the War,

complaining of the Government's hysteria in docking the oats of

race-horses. Yes, there he was, tall, ponderous, neat,

clean-shaven, with his smooth hair, hardly thinned, smelling, no

doubt, of the best hair-wash, and a pink paper in his hand. Well,

he didn't change! And for perhaps the first time in his life

Soames felt a kind of sympathy tapping in his waistcoat for that

sardonic kinsman. With his weight, his perfectly parted hair, and

bull-like gaze, he was a guarantee that the old order would take

some shifting yet. He saw George move the pink paper as if

inviting him to ascend—the chap must want to ask something about

his property. It was still under Soames' control; for in the

adoption of a sleeping partnership at that painful period twenty

years back when he had divorced Irene, Soames had found himself

almost insensibly retaining control of all purely Forsyte

affairs.

Hesitating for just a moment, he nodded and went in. Since the

death of his brother-in-law Montague Dartie, in Paris, which no

one had quite known what to make of, except that it was certainly

not suicide—the Iseeum Club had seemed more respectable to

Soames. George, too, he knew, had sown the last of his wild oats,

and was committed definitely to the joys of the table, eating

only of the very best so as to keep his weight down, and owning,

as he said, “just one or two old screws to give me an interest in

life.” He joined his cousin, therefore, in the bay window without

the embarrassing sense of indiscretion he had been used to feel

up there. George put out a well-kept hand.

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

“Thanks,” said Soames coldly, “well enough.”

Some hidden jest curved, for a moment, George's fleshy face, and

gloated from his eye.

“That Belgian chap, Profond,” he said, “is a member here now.

He's a rum customer.”

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

“Old Timothy; he might go off the hooks at any moment. I suppose

he's made his Will.”

“Yes.”

“Well, you or somebody ought to give him a look up—last of the

old lot; he's a hundred, you know. They say he's like a mummy.

Where are you goin' to put him? He ought to have a pyramid by

rights.”

Soames shook his head. “Highgate, the family vault.”

“Well, I suppose the old girls would miss him, if he was anywhere

else. They say he still takes an interest in food. He might last

on, you know. Don't we get anything for the old Forsytes? Ten of

them—average age eighty-eight—I worked it out. That ought to be

equal to triplets.”

“Is that all?” said Soames, “I must be getting on.”

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

that's all: Look him up in his mausoleum—the old chap might want

to prophesy.” The grin died on the rich curves of his face, and

he added: “Haven't you attorneys invented a way yet of dodging

this damned income tax? It hits the fixed inherited income like

the very deuce. I used to have two thousand five hundred a year;

now I've got a beggarly fifteen hundred, and the price of living

doubled.”

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

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

“Well,” he said, “they brought me up to do nothing, and here I am

in the sear and yellow, getting poorer every day. These Labour

chaps mean to have the lot before they've done. What are you

going to do for a living when it comes? I shall work a six-hour

day teaching politicians how to see a joke. Take my tip, Soames;

go into Parliament, make sure of your four hundred—and employ

me.”

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

Soames moved along Piccadilly deep in reflections excited by his

cousin's words. He himself had always been a worker and a saver,

George always a drone and a spender; and yet, if confiscation

once began, it was he—the worker and the saver—who would be

looted! That was the negation of all virtue, the overturning of

all Forsyte principles. Could civilization be built on any other?

He did not think so. Well, they wouldn't confiscate his pictures,

for they wouldn't know their worth. But what would they be worth,

if these maniacs once began to milk capital? A drug on the

market. 'I don't care about myself,' he thought; 'I could live on

five hundred a year, and never know the difference, at my age.'

But Fleur! This fortune, so widely invested, these treasures so

carefully chosen and amassed, were all for—her. And if it should

turn out that he couldn't give or leave them to her—well, life

had no meaning, and what was the use of going in to look at this

crazy, futuristic stuff with the view of seeing whether it had

any future?

Arriving at the Gallery off Cork Street, however, he paid his

shilling, picked up a catalogue, and entered. Some ten persons

were prowling round. Soames took steps and came on what looked to

him like a lamp-post bent by collision with a motor omnibus. It

was advanced some three paces from the wall, and was described in

his catalogue as “Jupiter.” He examined it with curiosity, having

recently turned some of his attention to sculpture. 'If that's

Jupiter,' he thought, 'I wonder what Juno's like.' And suddenly

he saw her, opposite. She appeared to him like nothing so much as

a pump with two handles, lightly clad in snow. He was still

gazing at her, when two of the prowlers halted on his left.

“Epatant!” he heard one say.

“Jargon!” growled Soames to himself.

The other's boyish voice replied

“Missed it, old bean; he's pulling your leg. When Jove and Juno

created he them, he was saying: 'I'll see how much these fools

will swallow.' And they've lapped up the lot.”

“You young duffer! Vospovitch is an innovator. Don't you see that

he's brought satire into sculpture? The future of plastic art, of

music, painting, and even architecture, has set in satiric. It

was bound to. People are tired—the bottom's tumbled out of

sentiment.”

“Well, I'm quite equal to taking a little interest in beauty. I

was through the War. You've dropped your handkerchief, sir.”

Soames saw a handkerchief held out in front of him. He took it

with some natural suspicion, and approached it to his nose. It

had the right scent—of distant Eau de Cologne—and his initials in

a corner. Slightly reassured, he raised his eyes to the young

man's face. It had rather fawn-like ears, a laughing mouth, with

half a toothbrush growing out of it on each side, and small

lively eyes, above a normally dressed appearance.

“Thank you,” he said; and moved by a sort of irritation, added:

“Glad to hear you like beauty; that's rare, nowadays.”

“I dote on it,” said the young man; “but you and I are the last

of the old guard, sir.”

Soames smiled.

“If you really care for pictures,” he said, “here's my card. I

can show you some quite good ones any Sunday, if you're down the

river and care to look in.”

“Awfully nice of you, sir. I'll drop in like a bird. My name's

Mont-Michael.” And he took off his hat.

Soames, already regretting his impulse, raised his own slightly

in response, with a downward look at the young man's companion,

who had a purple tie, dreadful little sluglike whiskers, and a

scornful look—as if he were a poet!

It was the first indiscretion he had committed for so long that

he went and sat down in an alcove. What had possessed him to give

his card to a rackety young fellow, who went about with a thing

like that? And Fleur, always at the back of his thoughts, started

out like a filigree figure from a clock when the hour strikes. On

the screen opposite the alcove was a large canvas with a great

many square tomato-coloured blobs on it, and nothing else, so far

as Soames could see from where he sat. He looked at his

catalogue: “No. 32 'The Future Town'—Paul Post.” 'I suppose

that's satiric too,' he thought. 'What a thing!' But his second

impulse was more cautious. It did not do to condemn hurriedly.

There had been those stripey, streaky creations of Monet's, which

had turned out such trumps; and then the stippled school; and

Gauguin. Why, even since the Post-Impressionists there had been

one or two painters not to be sneezed at. During the thirty-eight

years of his connoisseur's life, indeed, he had marked so many

“movements,” seen the tides of taste and technique so ebb and

flow, that there was really no telling anything except that there

was money to be made out of every change of fashion. This too

might quite well be a case where one must subdue primordial

instinct, or lose the market. He got up and stood before the

picture, trying hard to see it with the eyes of other people.

Above the tomato blobs was what he took to be a sunset, till some

one passing said: “He's got the airplanes wonderfully, don't you

think!” Below the tomato blobs was a band of white with vertical

black stripes, to which he could assign no meaning whatever, till

some one else came by, murmuring: “What expression he gets with

his foreground!” Expression? Of what? Soames went back to his

seat. The thing was “rich,” as his father would have said, and he

wouldn't give a damn for it. Expression! Ah! they were all

Expressionists now, he had heard, on the Continent. So it was

coming here too, was it? He remembered the first wave of

influenza in 1887—or '8—hatched in China, so they said. He

wondered where this—this Expressionism had been hatched. The

thing was a regular disease!

He had become conscious of a woman and a youth standing between

him and the “Future Town.” Their backs were turned; but very

suddenly Soames put his catalogue before his face, and drawing

his hat forward, gazed through the slit between. No mistaking

that back, elegant as ever though the hair above had gone grey.

Irene! His divorced wife—Irene! And this, no doubt, was—her

son—by that fellow Jolyon Forsyte—their boy, six months older

than his own girl! And mumbling over in his mind the bitter days

of his divorce, he rose to get out of sight, but quickly sat down

again. She had turned her head to speak to her boy; her profile

was still so youthful that it made her grey hair seem powdery, as

if fancy-dressed; and her lips were smiling as Soames, first

possessor of them, had never seen them smile. Grudgingly he

admitted her still beautiful and in figure almost as young as

ever. And how that boy smiled back at her! Emotion squeezed

Soames' heart. The sight infringed his sense of justice. He

grudged her that boy's smile—it went beyond what Fleur gave him,

and it was undeserved. Their son might have been his son; Fleur

might have been her daughter, if she had kept straight! He

lowered his catalogue. If she saw him, all the better! A reminder

of her conduct in the presence of her son, who probably knew

nothing of it, would be a salutary touch from the finger of that

Nemesis which surely must soon or late visit her! Then,

half-conscious that such a thought was extravagant for a Forsyte

of his age, Soames took out his watch. Past four! Fleur was late.

She had gone to his niece Imogen Cardigan's, and there they would

keep her smoking cigarettes and gossiping, and that. He heard the

boy laugh, and say eagerly: “I say, Mum, is this by one of Auntie

June's lame ducks?”