“Paul Post—I believe it is, darling.”

The word produced a little shock in Soames; he had never heard

her use it. And then she saw him. His eyes must have had in them

something of George Forsyte's sardonic look; for her gloved hand

crisped the folds of her frock, her eyebrows rose, her face went

stony. She moved on.

“It is a caution,” said the boy, catching her arm again.

Soames stared after them. That boy was good-looking, with a

Forsyte chin, and eyes deep-grey, deep in; but with something

sunny, like a glass of old sherry spilled over him; his smile

perhaps, his hair. Better than they deserved—those two! They

passed from his view into the next room, and Soames continued to

regard the Future Town, but saw it not. A little smile snarled up

his lips. He was despising the vehemence of his own feelings

after all these years. Ghosts! And yet as one grew old—was there

anything but what was ghost-like left? Yes, there was Fleur! He

fixed his eyes on the entrance. She was due; but she would keep

him waiting, of course! And suddenly he became aware of a sort of

human breeze—a short, slight form clad in a sea-green djibbah

with a metal belt and a fillet binding unruly red-gold hair all

streaked with grey. She was talking to the Gallery attendants,

and something familiar riveted his gaze—in her eyes, her chin,

her hair, her spirit—something which suggested a thin Skye

terrier just before its dinner. Surely June Forsyte! His cousin

June—and coming straight to his recess! She sat down beside him,

deep in thought, took out a tablet, and made a pencil note.

Soames sat unmoving. A confounded thing, cousinship!

“Disgusting!” he heard her murmur; then, as if resenting the

presence of an overhearing stranger, she looked at him. The worst

had happened.

“Soames!”

Soames turned his head a very little.

“How are you?” he said. “Haven't seen you for twenty years.”

“No. Whatever made you come here?”

“My sins,” said Soames. “What stuff!”

“Stuff? Oh, yes—of course; it hasn't arrived yet.

“It never will,” said Soames; “it must be making a dead loss.”

“Of course it is.”

“How d'you know?”

“It's my Gallery.”

Soames sniffed from sheer surprise.

“Yours? What on earth makes you run a show like this?”

“I don't treat Art as if it were grocery.”

Soames pointed to the Future Town. “Look at that! Who's going to

live in a town like that, or with it on his walls?”

June contemplated the picture for a moment.

“It's a vision,” she said.

“The deuce!”

There was silence, then June rose. 'Crazylooking creature!' he

thought.

“Well,” he said, “you'll find your young stepbrother here with a

woman I used to know. If you take my advice, you'll close this

exhibition.”

June looked back at him. “Oh! You Forsyte!” she said, and moved

on. About her light, fly-away figure, passing so suddenly away,

was a look of dangerous decisions. Forsyte! Of course, he was a

Forsyte! And so was she! But from the time when, as a mere girl,

she brought Bosinney into his life to wreck it, he had never hit

it off with June and never would! And here she was, unmarried to

this day, owning a Gallery!... And suddenly it came to Soames how

little he knew now of his own family. The old aunts at Timothy's

had been dead so many years; there was no clearing-house for

news. What had they all done in the War? Young Roger's boy had

been wounded, St. John Hayman's second son killed; young

Nicholas' eldest had got an O. B. E., or whatever they gave them.

They had all joined up somehow, he believed. That boy of Jolyon's

and Irene's, he supposed, had been too young; his own generation,

of course, too old, though Giles Hayman had driven a car for the

Red Cross—and Jesse Hayman been a special constable—those

“Dromios” had always been of a sporting type! As for himself, he

had given a motor ambulance, read the papers till he was sick of

them, passed through much anxiety, bought no clothes, lost seven

pounds in weight; he didn't know what more he could have done at

his age. Indeed, thinking it over, it struck him that he and his

family had taken this war very differently to that affair with

the Boers, which had been supposed to tax all the resources of

the Empire. In that old war, of course, his nephew Val Dartie had

been wounded, that fellow Jolyon's first son had died of enteric,

“the Dromios” had gone out on horses, and June had been a nurse;

but all that had seemed in the nature of a portent, while in this

war everybody had done “their bit,” so far as he could make out,

as a matter of course. It seemed to show the growth of something

or other—or perhaps the decline of something else. Had the

Forsytes become less individual, or more Imperial, or less

provincial? Or was it simply that one hated Germans?... Why

didn't Fleur come, so that he could get away? He saw those three

return together from the other room and pass back along the far

side of the screen. The boy was standing before the Juno now.

And, suddenly, on the other side of her, Soames saw—his daughter,

with eyebrows raised, as well they might be. He could see her

eyes glint sideways at the boy, and the boy look back at her.

Then Irene slipped her hand through his arm, and drew him on.

Soames saw him glancing round, and Fleur looking after them as

the three went out.

A voice said cheerfully: “Bit thick, isn't it, sir?”

The young man who had handed him his handkerchief was again

passing. Soames nodded.

“I don't know what we're coming to.”

“Oh! That's all right, sir,” answered the young man cheerfully;

“they don't either.”

Fleur's voice said: “Hallo, Father! Here you are!” precisely as

if he had been keeping her waiting.

The young man, snatching off his hat, passed on.

“Well,” said Soames, looking her up and down, “you're a punctual

sort of young woman!”

This treasured possession of his life was of medium height and

colour, with short, dark chestnut hair; her wide-apart brown eyes

were set in whites so clear that they glinted when they moved,

and yet in repose were almost dreamy under very white,

black-lashed lids, held over them in a sort of suspense. She had

a charming profile, and nothing of her father in her face save a

decided chin. Aware that his expression was softening as he

looked at her, Soames frowned to preserve the unemotionalism

proper to a Forsyte. He knew she was only too inclined to take

advantage of his weakness.

Slipping her hand under his arm, she said:

“Who was that?”

“He picked up my handkerchief. We talked about the pictures.”

“You're not going to buy that, Father?”

“No,” said Soames grimly; “nor that Juno you've been looking at.”

Fleur dragged at his arm. “Oh! Let's go! It's a ghastly show.”

In the doorway they passed the young man called Mont and his

partner. But Soames had hung out a board marked “Trespassers will

be prosecuted,” and he barely acknowledged the young fellow's

salute.

“Well,” he said in the street, “whom did you meet at Imogen's?”

“Aunt Winifred, and that Monsieur Profond.”

“Oh!” muttered Soames; “that chap! What does your aunt see in

him?”

“I don't know. He looks pretty deep—mother says she likes him.”

Soames grunted.

“Cousin Val and his wife were there, too.”

“What!” said Soames. “I thought they were back in South Africa.”

“Oh, no! They've sold their farm. Cousin Val is going to train

race-horses on the Sussex Downs. They've got a jolly old

manor-house; they asked me down there.”

Soames coughed: the news was distasteful to him. “What's his wife

like now?”

“Very quiet, but nice, I think.”

Soames coughed again. “He's a rackety chap, your Cousin Val.”

“Oh! no, Father; they're awfully devoted. I promised to

go—Saturday to Wednesday next.”

“Training race-horses!” said Soames. It was extravagant, but not

the reason for his distaste. Why the deuce couldn't his nephew

have stayed out in South Africa? His own divorce had been bad

enough, without his nephew's marriage to the daughter of the

co-respondent; a half-sister too of June, and of that boy whom

Fleur had just been looking at from under the pump-handle. If he

didn't look out, she would come to know all about that old

disgrace! Unpleasant things! They were round him this afternoon

like a swarm of bees!

“I don't like it!” he said.

“I want to see the race-horses,” murmured Fleur; “and they've

promised I shall ride. Cousin Val can't walk much, you know; but

he can ride perfectly. He's going to show me their gallops.”

“Racing!” said Soames. “It's a pity the War didn't knock that on

the head. He's taking after his father, I'm afraid.”

“I don't know anything about his father.”

“No,” said Soames, grimly. “He took an interest in horses and

broke his neck in Paris, walking down-stairs. Good riddance for

your aunt.” He frowned, recollecting the inquiry into those

stairs which he had attended in Paris six years ago, because

Montague Dartie could not attend it himself—perfectly normal

stairs in a house where they played baccarat. Either his winnings

or the way he had celebrated them had gone to his

brother-in-law's head. The French procedure had been very loose;

he had had a lot of trouble with it.

A sound from Fleur distracted his attention. “Look! The people

who were in the Gallery with us.”

“What people?” muttered Soames, who knew perfectly well.

“I think that woman's beautiful.”

“Come into this pastry-cook's,” said Soames abruptly, and

tightening his grip on her arm he turned into a confectioner's.

It was—for him—a surprising thing to do, and he said rather

anxiously: “What will you have?”

“Oh! I don't want anything. I had a cocktail and a tremendous

lunch.”

“We must have something now we're here,” muttered Soames, keeping

hold of her arm.

“Two teas,” he said; “and two of those nougat things.”

But no sooner was his body seated than his soul sprang up. Those

three—those three were coming in! He heard Irene say something to

her boy, and his answer:

“Oh! no, Mum; this place is all right. My stunt.” And the three

sat down.

At that moment, most awkward of his existence, crowded with

ghosts and shadows from his past, in presence of the only two

women he had ever loved—his divorced wife and his daughter by her

successor—Soames was not so much afraid of them as of his cousin

June. She might make a scene—she might introduce those two

children—she was capable of anything. He bit too hastily at the

nougat, and it stuck to his plate. Working at it with his finger,

he glanced at Fleur. She was masticating dreamily, but her eyes

were on the boy. The Forsyte in him said: “Think, feel, and

you're done for!” And he wiggled his finger desperately. Plate!

Did Jolyon wear a plate? Did that woman wear a plate? Time had

been when he had seen her wearing nothing! That was something,

anyway, which had never been stolen from him. And she knew it,

though she might sit there calm and self-possessed, as if she had

never been his wife. An acid humour stirred in his Forsyte blood;

a subtle pain divided by hair's breadth from pleasure. If only

June did not suddenly bring her hornets about his ears! The boy

was talking.

“Of course, Auntie June”—so he called his half-sister “Auntie,”

did he?—well, she must be fifty, if she was a day!—“it's jolly

good of you to encourage them. Only—hang it all!” Soames stole a

glance. Irene's startled eyes were bent watchfully on her boy.

She—she had these devotions—for Bosinney—for that boy's

father—for this boy! He touched Fleur's arm, and said:

“Well, have you had enough?”

“One more, Father, please.”

She would be sick! He went to the counter to pay. When he turned

round again he saw Fleur standing near the door, holding a

handkerchief which the boy had evidently just handed to her.

“F. F.,” he heard her say. “Fleur Forsyte—it's mine all right.

Thank you ever so.”

Good God! She had caught the trick from what he'd told her in the

Gallery—monkey!

“Forsyte? Why—that's my name too. Perhaps we're cousins.”

“Really! We must be. There aren't any others. I live at

Mapledurham; where do you?”

“Robin Hill.”

Question and answer had been so rapid that all was over before he

could lift a finger. He saw Irene's face alive with startled

feeling, gave the slightest shake of his head, and slipped his

arm through Fleur's.

“Come along!” he said.

She did not move.

“Didn't you hear, Father? Isn't it queer—our name's the same. Are

we cousins?”

“What's that?” he said. “Forsyte? Distant, perhaps.”

“My name's Jolyon, sir. Jon, for short.”

“Oh! Ah!” said Soames. “Yes. Distant. How are you? Very good of

you. Good-bye!”

He moved on.

“Thanks awfully,” Fleur was saying. “Au revoir!”

“Au revoir!” he heard the boy reply.

II.—FINE FLEUR FORSYTE

Emerging from the “pastry-cook's,” Soames' first impulse was to

vent his nerves by saying to his daughter: 'Dropping your

hand-kerchief!' to which her reply might well be: 'I picked that

up from you!' His second impulse therefore was to let sleeping

dogs lie. But she would surely question him. He gave her a

sidelong look, and found she was giving him the same. She said

softly:

“Why don't you like those cousins, Father?” Soames lifted the

corner of his lip.

“What made you think that?”

“Cela se voit.”

'That sees itself!' What a way of putting it! After twenty years

of a French wife Soames had still little sympathy with her

language; a theatrical affair and connected in his mind with all

the refinements of domestic irony.

“How?” he asked.

“You must know them; and you didn't make a sign. I saw them

looking at you.”

“I've never seen the boy in my life,” replied Soames with perfect

truth.

“No; but you've seen the others, dear.”

Soames gave her another look. What had she picked up? Had her

Aunt Winifred, or Imogen, or Val Dartie and his wife, been

talking? Every breath of the old scandal had been carefully kept

from her at home, and Winifred warned many times that he wouldn't

have a whisper of it reach her for the world. So far as she ought

to know, he had never been married before. But her dark eyes,

whose southern glint and clearness often almost frightened him,

met his with perfect innocence.

“Well,” he said, “your grandfather and his brother had a quarrel.

The two families don't know each other.”

“How romantic!”

'Now, what does she mean by that?' he thought. The word was to

him extravagant and dangerous—it was as if she had said: “How

jolly!”

“And they'll continue not to know each, other,” he added, but

instantly regretted the challenge in those words. Fleur was

smiling. In this age, when young people prided themselves on

going their own ways and paying no attention to any sort of

decent prejudice, he had said the very thing to excite her

wilfulness. Then, recollecting the expression on Irene's face, he

breathed again.

“What sort of a quarrel?” he heard Fleur say.

“About a house. It's ancient history for you. Your grandfather

died the day you were born. He was ninety.”

“Ninety? Are there many Forsytes besides those in the Red Book?”

“I don't know,” said Soames. “They're all dispersed now. The old

ones are dead, except Timothy.”

Fleur clasped her hands.

“Timothy? Isn't that delicious?”

“Not at all,” said Soames. It offended him that she should think

“Timothy” delicious—a kind of insult to his breed. This new

generation mocked at anything solid and tenacious. “You go and

see the old boy. He might want to prophesy.” Ah! If Timothy could

see the disquiet England of his great-nephews and great-nieces,

he would certainly give tongue. And involuntarily he glanced up

at the Iseeum; yes—George was still in the window, with the same

pink paper in his hand.

“Where is Robin Hill, Father?”

Robin Hill! Robin Hill, round which all that tragedy had centred!

What did she want to know for?

“In Surrey,” he muttered; “not far from Richmond. Why?”

“Is the house there?”

“What house?”

“That they quarrelled about.”

“Yes. But what's all that to do with you? We're going home

to-morrow—you'd better be thinking about your frocks.”

“Bless you! They're all thought about. A family feud? It's like

the Bible, or Mark Twain—awfully exciting. What did you do in the

feud, Father?”

“Never you mind.”

“Oh! But if I'm to keep it up?”

“Who said you were to keep it up?”

“You, darling.”

“I? I said it had nothing to do with you.”

“Just what I think, you know; so that's all right.”

She was too sharp for him; fine, as Annette sometimes called her.

Nothing for it but to distract her attention.

“There's a bit of rosaline point in here,” he said, stopping

before a shop, “that I thought you might like.”

When he had paid for it and they had resumed their progress,

Fleur said:

“Don't you think that boy's mother is the most beautiful woman of

her age you've ever seen?”

Soames shivered. Uncanny, the way she stuck to it!

“I don't know that I noticed her.”

“Dear, I saw the corner of your eye.”

“You see everything—and a great deal more, it seems to me!”

“What's her husband like? He must be your first cousin, if your

fathers were brothers.”

“Dead, for all I know,” said Soames, with sudden vehemence. “I

haven't seen him for twenty years.”

“What was he?”

“A painter.”

“That's quite jolly.”

The words: “If you want to please me you'll put those people out

of your head,” sprang to Soames' lips, but he choked them back—he

must not let her see his feelings.

“He once insulted me,” he said.

Her quick eyes rested on his face.

“I see! You didn't avenge it, and it rankles. Poor Father! You

let me have a go!”

It was really like lying in the dark with a mosquito hovering

above his face. Such pertinacity in Fleur was new to him, and, as

they reached the hotel, he said grimly:

“I did my best. And that's enough about these people. I'm going

up till dinner.”

“I shall sit here.”

With a parting look at her extended in a chair—a look

half-resentful, half-adoring—Soames moved into the lift and was

transported to their suite on the fourth floor. He stood by the

window of the sitting-room which gave view over Hyde Park, and

drummed a finger on its pane. His feelings were confused, tetchy,

troubled. The throb of that old wound, scarred over by Time and

new interests, was mingled with displeasure and anxiety, and a

slight pain in his chest where that nougat stuff had disagreed.

Had Annette come in? Not that she was any good to him in such a

difficulty. Whenever she had questioned him about his first

marriage, he had always shut her up; she knew nothing of it, save

that it had been the great passion of his life, and his marriage

with herself but domestic makeshift. She had always kept the

grudge of that up her sleeve, as it were, and used it

commercially. He listened. A sound—the vague murmur of a woman's

movements—was coming through the door. She was in. He tapped.

“Who?”

“I,” said Soames.

She had been changing her frock, and was still imperfectly

clothed; a striking figure before her glass. There was a certain

magnificence about her arms, shoulders, hair, which had darkened

since he first knew her, about the turn of her neck, the

silkiness of her garments, her dark-lashed, greyblue eyes—she was

certainly as handsome at forty as she had ever been. A fine

possession, an excellent housekeeper, a sensible and affectionate

enough mother. If only she weren't always so frankly cynical

about the relations between them! Soames, who had no more real

affection for her than she had for him, suffered from a kind of

English grievance in that she had never dropped even the thinnest

veil of sentiment over their partnership. Like most of his

countrymen and women, he held the view that marriage should be

based on mutual love, but that when from a marriage love had

disappeared, or, been found never to have really existed—so that

it was manifestly not based on love—you must not admit it. There

it was, and the love was not—but there you were, and must

continue to be! Thus you had it both ways, and were not tarred

with cynicism, realism, and immorality like the French. Moreover,

it was necessary in the interests of property. He knew that she

knew that they both knew there was no love between them, but he

still expected her not to admit in words or conduct such a thing,

and he could never understand what she meant when she talked of

the hypocrisy of the English. He said:

“Whom have you got at 'The Shelter' next week?”

Annette went on touching her lips delicately with salve—he always

wished she wouldn't do that.

“Your sister Winifred, and the Car-r-digans”—she took up a tiny

stick of black—“and Prosper Profond.”

“That Belgian chap? Why him?”

Annette turned her neck lazily, touched one eyelash, and said:

“He amuses Winifred.”

“I want some one to amuse Fleur; she's restive.”

“R-restive?” repeated Annette. “Is it the first time you see

that, my friend? She was born r-restive, as you call it.”

Would she never get that affected roll out of her r's?

He touched the dress she had taken off, and asked:

“What have you been doing?”

Annette looked at him, reflected in her glass. Her

just-brightened lips smiled, rather full, rather ironical.

“Enjoying myself,” she said.

“Oh!” answered Soames glumly. “Ribbandry, I suppose.”

It was his word for all that incomprehensible running in and out

of shops that women went in for. “Has Fleur got her summer

dresses?”

“You don't ask if I have mine.”

“You don't care whether I do or not.”

“Quite right. Well, she has; and I have mine—terribly expensive.”

“H'm!” said Soames. “What does that chap Profond do in England?”

Annette raised the eyebrows she had just finished.

“He yachts.”

“Ah!” said Soames; “he's a sleepy chap.”

“Sometimes,” answered Annette, and her face had a sort of quiet

enjoyment. “But sometimes very amusing.”

“He's got a touch of the tar-brush about him.”

Annette stretched herself.

“Tar-brush?” she said. “What is that? His mother was Armenienne.”

“That's it, then,” muttered Soames. “Does he know anything about

pictures?”

“He knows about everything—a man of the world.”

“Well, get some one for Fleur. I want to distract her. She's

going off on Saturday to Val Dartie and his wife; I don't like

it.”

“Why not?”

Since the reason could not be explained without going into family

history, Soames merely answered:

“Racketing about. There's too much of it.”

“I like that little Mrs. Val; she is very quiet and clever.”

“I know nothing of her except—This thing's new.” And Soames took

up a creation from the bed.

Annette received it from him.

“Would you hook me?” she said.

Soames hooked. Glancing once over her shoulder into the glass, he

saw the expression on her face, faintly amused, faintly

contemptuous, as much as to say: “Thanks! You will never learn!”

No, thank God, he wasn't a Frenchman! He finished with a jerk,

and the words: “It's too low here.” And he went to the door, with

the wish to get away from her and go down to Fleur again.

Annette stayed a powder-puff, and said with startling suddenness

“Que tu es grossier!”

He knew the expression—he had reason to. The first time she had

used it he had thought it meant “What a grocer you are!” and had

not known whether to be relieved or not when better informed. He

resented the word—he was not coarse! If he was coarse, what was

that chap in the room beyond his, who made those horrible noises

in the morning when he cleared his throat, or those people in the

Lounge who thought it well-bred to say nothing but what the whole

world could hear at the top of their voices—quacking inanity!

Coarse, because he had said her dress was low! Well, so it was!

He went out without reply.

Coming into the Lounge from the far end, he at once saw Fleur

where he had left her. She sat with crossed knees, slowly

balancing a foot in silk stocking and grey shoe, sure sign that

she was dreaming. Her eyes showed it too—they went off like that

sometimes. And then, in a moment, she would come to life, and be

as quick and restless as a monkey. And she knew so much, so

self-assured, and not yet nineteen. What was that odious word?

Flapper! Dreadful young creatures—squealing and squawking and

showing their legs! The worst of them bad dreams, the best of

them powdered angels! Fleur was not a flapper, not one of those

slangy, ill-bred young females. And yet she was frighteningly

self-willed, and full of life, and determined to enjoy it. Enjoy!

The word brought no puritan terror to Soames; but it brought the

terror suited to his temperament. He had always been afraid to

enjoy to-day for fear he might not enjoy tomorrow so much. And it

was terrifying to feel that his daughter was divested of that

safeguard. The very way she sat in that chair showed it—lost in

her dream. He had never been lost in a dream himself—there was

nothing to be had out of it; and where she got it from he did not

know! Certainly not from Annette! And yet Annette, as a young

girl, when he was hanging about her, had once had a flowery look.

Well, she had lost it now!

Fleur rose from her chair-swiftly, restlessly; and flung herself

down at a writing-table. Seizing ink and writing paper, she began

to write as if she had not time to breathe before she got her

letter written. And suddenly she saw him. The air of desperate

absorption vanished, she smiled, waved a kiss, made a pretty face

as if she were a little puzzled and a little bored.

Ah! She was “fine”—“fine!”

III.—AT ROBIN HILL

Jolyon Forsyte had spent his boy's nineteenth birthday at Robin

Hill, quietly going into his affairs. He did everything quietly

now, because his heart was in a poor way, and, like all his

family, he disliked the idea of dying. He had never realised how

much till one day, two years ago, he had gone to his doctor about

certain symptoms, and been told:

“At any moment, on any overstrain.”

He had taken it with a smile—the natural Forsyte reaction against

an unpleasant truth. But with an increase of symptoms in the

train on the way home, he had realised to the full the sentence

hanging over him. To leave Irene, his boy, his home, his

work—though he did little enough work now! To leave them for

unknown darkness, for the unimaginable state, for such

nothingness that he would not even be conscious of wind stirring

leaves above his grave, nor of the scent of earth and grass. Of

such nothingness that, however hard he might try to conceive it,

he never could, and must still hover on the hope that he might

see again those he loved! To realise this was to endure very

poignant spiritual anguish. Before he reached home that day he

had determined to keep it from Irene. He would have to be more

careful than man had ever been, for the least thing would give it

away and make her as wretched as himself, almost. His doctor had

passed him sound in other respects, and seventy was nothing of an

age—he would last a long time yet, if he could.

Such a conclusion, followed out for nearly two years, develops to

the full the subtler side of character. Naturally not abrupt,

except when nervously excited, Jolyon had become control

incarnate. The sad patience of old people who cannot exert

themselves was masked by a smile which his lips preserved even in

private. He devised continually all manner of cover to conceal

his enforced lack of exertion.

Mocking himself for so doing, he counterfeited conversion to the

Simple Life; gave up wine and cigars, drank a special kind of

coffee with no coffee in it. In short, he made himself as safe as

a Forsyte in his condition could, under the rose of his mild

irony. Secure from discovery, since his wife and son had gone up

to Town, he had spent the fine May day quietly arranging his

papers, that he might die to-morrow without inconveniencing any

one, giving in fact a final polish to his terrestrial state.

Having docketed and enclosed it in his father's old Chinese

cabinet, he put the key into an envelope, wrote the words

outside: “Key of the Chinese cabinet, wherein will be found the

exact state of me, J. F.,” and put it in his breast-pocket, where

it would be always about him, in case of accident. Then, ringing

for tea, he went out to have it under the old oak-tree.

All are under sentence of death; Jolyon, whose sentence was but a

little more precise and pressing, had become so used to it that

he thought habitually, like other people, of other things. He

thought of his son now.

Jon was nineteen that day, and Jon had come of late to a

decision. Educated neither at Eton like his father, nor at

Harrow, like his dead half-brother, but at one of those

establishments which, designed to avoid the evil and contain the

good of the Public School system, may or may not contain the evil

and avoid the good, Jon had left in April perfectly ignorant of

what he wanted to become. The War, which had promised to go on

for ever, had ended just as he was about to join the Army, six

months before his time. It had taken him ever since to get used

to the idea that he could now choose for himself. He had held

with his father several discussions, from which, under a cheery

show of being ready for anything—except, of course, the Church,

Army, Law, Stage, Stock Exchange, Medicine, Business, and

Engineering—Jolyon had gathered rather clearly that Jon wanted to

go in for nothing. He himself had felt exactly like that at the

same age. With him that pleasant vacuity had soon been ended by

an early marriage, and its unhappy consequences. Forced to become

an underwriter at Lloyd's, he had regained prosperity before his

artistic talent had outcropped. But having—as the simple

say—“learned” his boy to draw pigs and other animals, he knew

that Jon would never be a painter, and inclined to the conclusion

that his aversion from everything else meant that he was going to

be a writer. Holding, however, the view that experience was

necessary even for that profession, there seemed to Jolyon

nothing in the meantime, for Jon, but University, travel, and

perhaps the eating of dinners for the Bar. After that one would

see, or more probably one would not. In face of these proffered

allurements, however, Jon had remained undecided.

Such discussions with his son had confirmed in Jolyon a doubt

whether the world had really changed. People said that it was a

new age. With the profundity of one not too long for any age,

Jolyon perceived that under slightly different surfaces the era

was precisely what it had been. Mankind was still divided into

two species: The few who had “speculation” in their souls, and

the many who had none, with a belt of hybrids like himself in the

middle. Jon appeared to have speculation; it seemed to his father

a bad lookout.

With something deeper, therefore, than his usual smile, he had

heard the boy say, a fortnight ago: “I should like to try

farming, Dad; if it won't cost you too much. It seems to be about

the only sort of life that doesn't hurt anybody; except art, and

of course that's out of the question for me.”

Jolyon subdued his smile, and answered:

“All right; you shall skip back to where we were under the first

Jolyon in 1760. It'll prove the cycle theory, and incidentally,

no doubt, you may grow a better turnip than he did.”

A little dashed, Jon had answered:

“But don't you think it's a good scheme, Dad?”

“'Twill serve, my dear; and if you should really take to it,

you'll do more good than most men, which is little enough.”

To himself, however, he had said: 'But he won't take to it. I

give him four years. Still, it's healthy, and harmless.'

After turning the matter over and consulting with Irene, he wrote

to his daughter, Mrs. Val Dartie, asking if they knew of a farmer

near them on the Downs who would take Jon as an apprentice.

Holly's answer had been enthusiastic. There was an excellent man

quite close; she and Val would love Jon to live with them.

The boy was due to go to-morrow.

Sipping weak tea with lemon in it, Jolyon gazed through the

leaves of the old oak-tree at that view which had appeared to him

desirable for thirty-two years. The tree beneath which he sat

seemed not a day older! So young, the little leaves of brownish

gold; so old, the whitey-grey-green of its thick rough trunk. A

tree of memories, which would live on hundreds of years yet,

unless some barbarian cut it down—would see old England out at

the pace things were going! He remembered a night three years

before, when, looking from his window, with his arm close round

Irene, he had watched a German aeroplane hovering, it seemed,

right over the old tree. Next day they had found a bomb hole in a

field on Gage's farm. That was before he knew that he was under

sentence of death. He could almost have wished the bomb had

finished him. It would have saved a lot of hanging about, many

hours of cold fear in the pit of his stomach. He had counted on

living to the normal Forsyte age of eighty-five or more, when

Irene would be seventy. As it was, she would miss him. Still

there was Jon, more important in her life than himself; Jon, who

adored his mother.

Under that tree, where old Jolyon—waiting for Irene to come to

him across the lawn—had breathed his last, Jolyon wondered,

whimsically, whether, having put everything in such perfect

order, he had not better close his own eyes and drift away. There

was something undignified in parasitically clinging on to the

effortless close of a life wherein he regretted two things

only—the long division between his father and himself when he was

young, and the lateness of his union with Irene.

From where he sat he could see a cluster of apple-trees in

blossom. Nothing in Nature moved him so much as fruit-trees in

blossom; and his heart ached suddenly because he might never see

them flower again. Spring! Decidedly no man ought to have to die

while his heart was still young enough to love beauty! Blackbirds

sang recklessly in the shrubbery, swallows were flying high, the

leaves above him glistened; and over the fields was every

imaginable tint of early foliage, burnished by the level

sunlight, away to where the distant “smoke-bush” blue was trailed

along the horizon. Irene's flowers in their narrow beds had

startling individuality that evening, little deep assertions of

gay life. Only Chinese and Japanese painters, and perhaps

Leonardo, had known how to get that startling little ego into

each painted flower, and bird, and beast—the ego, yet the sense

of species, the universality of life as well. They were the

fellows! 'I've made nothing that will live!' thought Jolyon;

'I've been an amateur—a mere lover, not a creator. Still, I shall

leave Jon behind me when I go.' What luck that the boy had not

been caught by that ghastly war! He might so easily have been

killed, like poor Jolly twenty years ago out in the Transvaal.

Jon would do something some day—if the Age didn't spoil him—an

imaginative chap! His whim to take up farming was but a bit of

sentiment, and about as likely to last. And just then he saw them

coming up the field: Irene and the boy; walking from the station,

with their arms linked. And getting up, he strolled down through

the new rose garden to meet them....

Irene came into his room that night and sat down by the window.

She sat there without speaking till he said:

“What is it, my love?”

“We had an encounter to-day.”

“With whom?”

“Soames.”

Soames! He had kept that name out of his thoughts these last two

years; conscious that it was bad for him. And, now, his heart

moved in a disconcerting manner, as if it had side-slipped within

his chest.

Irene went on quietly:

“He and his daughter were in the Gallery, and afterward at the

confectioner's where we had tea.”

Jolyon went over and put his hand on her shoulder.

“How did he look?”

“Grey; but otherwise much the same.”

“And the daughter?”

“Pretty. At least, Jon thought so.”

Jolyon's heart side-slipped again. His wife's face had a strained

and puzzled look.

“You didn't-?” he began.

“No; but Jon knows their name. The girl dropped her handkerchief

and he picked it up.”

Jolyon sat down on his bed. An evil chance!

“June was with you. Did she put her foot into it?”

“No; but it was all very queer and strained, and Jon could see it

was.”

Jolyon drew a long breath, and said:

“I've often wondered whether we've been right to keep it from

him. He'll find out some day.”

“The later the better, Jolyon; the young have such cheap, hard

judgment. When you were nineteen what would you have thought of

your mother if she had done what I have?”

Yes! There it was! Jon worshipped his mother; and knew nothing of

the tragedies, the inexorable necessities of life, nothing of the

prisoned grief in an unhappy marriage, nothing of jealousy or

passion—knew nothing at all, as yet!

“What have you told him?” he said at last.

“That they were relations, but we didn't know them; that you had

never cared much for your family, or they for you. I expect he

will be asking you.”

Jolyon smiled. “This promises to take the place of air-raids,” he

said. “After all, one misses them.”

Irene looked up at him.

“We've known it would come some day.”

He answered her with sudden energy:

“I could never stand seeing Jon blame you. He shan't do that,

even in thought. He has imagination; and he'll understand if it's

put to him properly. I think I had better tell him before he gets

to know otherwise.”

“Not yet, Jolyon.”

That was like her—she had no foresight, and never went to meet

trouble. Still—who knew?—she might be right. It was ill going

against a mother's instinct. It might be well to let the boy go

on, if possible, till experience had given him some touchstone by

which he could judge the values of that old tragedy; till love,

jealousy, longing, had deepened his charity. All the same, one

must take precautions—every precaution possible! And, long after

Irene had left him, he lay awake turning over those precautions.

He must write to Holly, telling her that Jon knew nothing as yet

of family history. Holly was discreet, she would make sure of her

husband, she would see to it! Jon could take the letter with him

when he went to-morrow.

And so the day on which he had put the polish on his material

estate died out with the chiming of the stable clock; and another

began for Jolyon in the shadow of a spiritual disorder which

could not be so rounded off and polished....

But Jon, whose room had once been his day nursery, lay awake too,

the prey of a sensation disputed by those who have never known

it, “love at first sight!” He had felt it beginning in him with

the glint of those dark eyes gazing into his athwart the Juno—a

conviction that this was his 'dream'. so that what followed had

seemed to him at once natural and miraculous. Fleur! Her name

alone was almost enough for one who was terribly susceptible to

the charm of words. In a homoeopathic Age, when boys and girls

were co-educated, and mixed up in early life till sex was almost

abolished, Jon was singularly old-fashioned. His modern school

took boys only, and his holidays had been spent at Robin Hill

with boy friends, or his parents alone. He had never, therefore,

been inoculated against the germs of love by small doses of the

poison. And now in the dark his temperature was mounting fast. He

lay awake, featuring Fleur—as they called it—recalling her words,

especially that “Au revoir!” so soft and sprightly.

He was still so wide awake at dawn that he got up, slipped on

tennis shoes, trousers, and a sweater, and in silence crept

downstairs and out through the study window. It was just light;

there was a smell of grass. 'Fleur!' he thought; 'Fleur!' It was

mysteriously white out of doors, with nothing awake except the

birds just beginning to chirp. 'I'll go down into the coppice,'

he thought. He ran down through the fields, reached the pond just

as the sun rose, and passed into the coppice. Bluebells carpeted

the ground there; among the larch-trees there was mystery—the

air, as it were, composed of that romantic quality. Jon sniffed

its freshness, and stared at the bluebells in the sharpening

light. Fleur! It rhymed with her! And she lived at Mapleduram—a

jolly name, too, on the river somewhere. He could find it in the

atlas presently. He would write to her. But would she answer? Oh!

She must. She had said “Au revoir!” Not good-bye! What luck that

she had dropped her handkerchief! He would never have known her

but for that. And the more he thought of that handkerchief, the

more amazing his luck seemed. Fleur! It certainly rhymed with

her! Rhythm thronged his head; words jostled to be joined

together; he was on the verge of a poem.

Jon remained in this condition for more than half an hour, then

returned to the house, and getting a ladder, climbed in at his

bedroom window out of sheer exhilaration. Then, remembering that

the study window was open, he went down and shut it, first

removing the ladder, so as to obliterate all traces of his

feeling. The thing was too deep to be revealed to mortal

soul-even-to his mother.

IV.—THE MAUSOLEUM

There are houses whose souls have passed into the limbo of Time,

leaving their bodies in the limbo of London. Such was not quite

the condition of “Timothy's” on the Bayswater Road, for Timothy's

soul still had one foot in Timothy Forsyte's body, and Smither

kept the atmosphere unchanging, of camphor and port wine and

house whose windows are only opened to air it twice a day.

To Forsyte imagination that house was now a sort of Chinese

pill-box, a series of layers in the last of which was Timothy.

One did not reach him, or so it was reported by members of the

family who, out of old-time habit or absentmindedness, would

drive up once in a blue moon and ask after their surviving uncle.

Such were Francie, now quite emancipated from God (she frankly

avowed atheism), Euphemia, emancipated from old Nicholas, and

Winifred Dartie from her “man of the world.” But, after all,

everybody was emancipated now, or said they were—perhaps not

quite the same thing!

When Soames, therefore, took it on his way to Paddington station

on the morning after that encounter, it was hardly with the

expectation of seeing Timothy in the flesh. His heart made a

faint demonstration within him while he stood in full south

sunlight on the newly whitened doorstep of that little house

where four Forsytes had once lived, and now but one dwelt on like

a winter fly; the house into which Soames had come and out of

which he had gone times without number, divested of, or burdened

with, fardels of family gossip; the house of the “old people” of

another century, another age.

The sight of Smither—still corseted up to the armpits because the

new fashion which came in as they were going out about 1903 had

never been considered “nice” by Aunts Juley and Hester—brought a

pale friendliness to Soames' lips; Smither, still faithfully

arranged to old pattern in every detail, an invaluable

servant—none such left—smiling back at him, with the words: “Why!

it's Mr. Soames, after all this time! And how are you, sir? Mr.

Timothy will be so pleased to know you've been.”

“How is he?”

“Oh! he keeps fairly bobbish for his age, sir; but of course he's

a wonderful man. As I said to Mrs. Dartie when she was here last:

It would please Miss Forsyte and Mrs. Juley and Miss Hester to

see how he relishes a baked apple still. But he's quite deaf. And

a mercy, I always think. For what we should have done with him in

the air-raids, I don't know.”

“Ah!” said Soames. “What did you do with him?”

“We just left him in his bed, and had the bell run down into the

cellar, so that Cook and I could hear him if he rang. It would

never have done to let him know there was a war on. As I said to

Cook, 'If Mr. Timothy rings, they may do what they like—I'm going

up. My dear mistresses would have a fit if they could see him

ringing and nobody going to him.' But he slept through them all

beautiful. And the one in the daytime he was having his bath. It

was a mercy, because he might have noticed the people in the

street all looking up—he often looks out of the window.”

“Quite!” murmured Soames. Smither was getting garrulous! “I just

want to look round and see if there's anything to be done.”

“Yes, sir. I don't think there's anything except a smell of mice

in the dining-room that we don't know how to get rid of. It's

funny they should be there, and not a crumb, since Mr. Timothy

took to not coming down, just before the War. But they're nasty

little things; you never know where they'll take you next.”

“Does he leave his bed?”—

“Oh! yes, sir; he takes nice exercise between his bed and the

window in the morning, not to risk a change of air. And he's

quite comfortable in himself; has his Will out every day regular.

It's a great consolation to him—that.”

“Well, Smither, I want to see him, if I can; in case he has

anything to say to me.”

Smither coloured up above her corsets.

“It will be an occasion!” she said. “Shall I take you round the

house, sir, while I send Cook to break it to him?”

“No, you go to him,” said Soames. “I can go round the house by

myself.”

One could not confess to sentiment before another, and Soames

felt that he was going to be sentimental nosing round those rooms

so saturated with the past. When Smither, creaking with

excitement, had left him, Soames entered the dining-room and

sniffed. In his opinion it wasn't mice, but incipient wood-rot,

and he examined the panelling. Whether it was worth a coat of

paint, at Timothy's age, he was not sure. The room had always

been the most modern in the house; and only a faint smile curled

Soames' lips and nostrils. Walls of a rich green surmounted the

oak dado; a heavy metal chandelier hung by a chain from a ceiling

divided by imitation beams. The pictures had been bought by

Timothy, a bargain, one day at Jobson's sixty years ago—three

Snyder “still lifes,” two faintly coloured drawings of a boy and

a girl, rather charming, which bore the initials “J. R.”—Timothy

had always believed they might turn out to be Joshua Reynolds,

but Soames, who admired them, had discovered that they were only

John Robinson; and a doubtful Morland of a white pony being shod.

Deep-red plush curtains, ten high-backed dark mahogany chairs

with deep-red plush seats, a Turkey carpet, and a mahogany

dining-table as large as the room was small, such was an

apartment which Soames could remember unchanged in soul or body

since he was four years old. He looked especially at the two

drawings, and thought: 'I shall buy those at the sale.'

From the dining-room he passed into Timothy's study. He did not

remember ever having been in that room. It was lined from floor

to ceiling with volumes, and he looked at them with curiosity.

One wall seemed devoted to educational books, which Timothy's

firm had published two generations back-sometimes as many as

twenty copies of one book. Soames read their titles and

shuddered. The middle wall had precisely the same books as used

to be in the library at his own father's in Park Lane, from which

he deduced the fancy that James and his youngest brother had gone

out together one day and bought a brace of small libraries. The

third wall he approached with more excitement. Here, surely,

Timothy's own taste would be found. It was. The books were

dummies. The fourth wall was all heavily curtained window. And

turned toward it was a large chair with a mahogany reading-stand

attached, on which a yellowish and folded copy of The Times,

dated July 6, 1914, the day Timothy first failed to come down, as

if in preparation for the War, seemed waiting for him still. In a

corner stood a large globe of that world never visited by

Timothy, deeply convinced of the unreality of everything but

England, and permanently upset by the sea, on which he had been

very sick one Sunday afternoon in 1836, out of a pleasure boat

off the pier at Brighton, with Juley and Hester, Swithin and

Hatty Chessman; all due to Swithin, who was always taking things

into his head, and who, thank goodness, had been sick too. Soames

knew all about it, having heard the tale fifty times at least

from one or other of them. He went up to the globe, and gave it a

spin; it emitted a faint creak and moved about an inch, bringing

into his purview a daddy-long-legs which had died on it in

latitude 44.

'Mausoleum!' he thought. 'George was right!' And he went out and

up the stairs. On the half-landing he stopped before the case of

stuffed humming-birds which had delighted his childhood. They

looked not a day older, suspended on wires above pampas-grass. If

the case were opened the birds would not begin to hum, but the

whole thing would crumble, he suspected. It wouldn't be worth

putting that into the sale! And suddenly he was caught by a

memory of Aunt Ann—dear old Aunt Ann—holding him by the hand in

front of that case and saying: “Look, Soamey! Aren't they bright

and pretty, dear little humming-birds!” Soames remembered his own

answer: “They don't hum, Auntie.” He must have been six, in a

black velveteen suit with a light-blue collar-he remembered that

suit well! Aunt Ann with her ringlets, and her spidery kind

hands, and her grave old aquiline smile—a fine old lady, Aunt

Ann! He moved on up to the drawing-room door. There on each side

of it were the groups of miniatures. Those he would certainly buy

in! The miniatures of his four aunts, one of his Uncle Swithin

adolescent, and one of his Uncle Nicholas as a boy. They had all

been painted by a young lady friend of the family at a time,

1830, about, when miniatures were considered very genteel, and

lasting too, painted as they were on ivory. Many a time had he

heard the tale of that young lady: “Very talented, my dear; she

had quite a weakness for Swithin, and very soon after she went

into a consumption and died: so like Keats—we often spoke of it.”

Well, there they were! Ann, Juley, Hester, Susan—quite a small

child; Swithin, with sky-blue eyes, pink cheeks, yellow curls,

white waistcoat-large as life; and Nicholas, like Cupid with an

eye on heaven. Now he came to think of it, Uncle Nick had always

been rather like that—a wonderful man to the last. Yes, she must

have had talent, and miniatures always had a certain back-watered

cachet of their own, little subject to the currents of

competition on aesthetic Change. Soames opened the drawing-room

door. The room was dusted, the furniture uncovered, the curtains

drawn back, precisely as if his aunts still dwelt there patiently

waiting. And a thought came to him: When Timothy died—why not?

Would it not be almost a duty to preserve this house—like

Carlyle's—and put up a tablet, and show it? “Specimen of

mid-Victorian abode—entrance, one shilling, with catalogue.”

After all, it was the completest thing, and perhaps the deadest

in the London of to-day. Perfect in its special taste and

culture, if, that is, he took down and carried over to his own

collection the four Barbizon pictures he had given them. The

still sky-blue walls, tile green curtains patterned with red

flowers and ferns; the crewel-worked fire-screen before the

cast-iron grate; the mahogany cupboard with glass windows, full

of little knickknacks; the beaded footstools; Keats, Shelley,

Southey, Cowper, Coleridge, Byron's Corsair (but nothing else),

and the Victorian poets in a bookshelf row; the marqueterie

cabinet lined with dim red plush, full of family relics: Hester's

first fan; the buckles of their mother's father's shoes; three

bottled scorpions; and one very yellow elephant's tusk, sent home

from India by Great-uncle Edgar Forsyte, who had been in jute; a

yellow bit of paper propped up, with spidery writing on it,

recording God knew what! And the pictures crowding on the

walls—all water-colours save those four Barbizons looking like

the foreigners they were, and doubtful customers at that—pictures

bright and illustrative, “Telling the Bees,” “Hey for the Ferry!”

and two in the style of Frith, all thimblerig and crinolines,

given them by Swithin. Oh! many, many pictures at which Soames

had gazed a thousand times in supercilious fascination; a

marvellous collection of bright, smooth gilt frames.

And the boudoir-grand piano, beautifully dusted, hermetically

sealed as ever; and Aunt Juley's album of pressed seaweed on it.

And the gilt-legged chairs, stronger than they looked. And on one

side of the fireplace the sofa of crimson silk, where Aunt Ann,

and after her Aunt Juley, had been wont to sit, facing the light

and bolt upright. And on the other side of the fire the one

really easy chair, back to the light, for Aunt Hester. Soames

screwed up his eyes; he seemed to see them sitting there. Ah! and

the atmosphere—even now, of too many stuffs and washed lace

curtains, lavender in bags, and dried bees' wings. 'No,' he

thought, 'there's nothing like it left; it ought to be

preserved.' And, by George, they might laugh at it, but for a

standard of gentle life never departed from, for fastidiousness

of skin and eye and nose and feeling, it beat to-day

hollow—to-day with its Tubes and cars, its perpetual smoking, its

cross-legged, bare-necked girls visible up to the knees and down

to the waist if you took the trouble (agreeable to the satyr

within each Forsyte but hardly his idea of a lady), with their

feet, too, screwed round the legs of their chairs while they ate,

and their “So longs,” and their “Old Beans,” and their

laughter—girls who gave him the shudders whenever he thought of

Fleur in contact with them; and the hard-eyed, capable, older

women who managed life and gave him the shudders too. No! his old

aunts, if they never opened their minds, their eyes, or very much

their windows, at least had manners, and a standard, and

reverence for past and future.

With rather a choky feeling he closed the door and went tiptoeing

upstairs. He looked in at a place on the way: H'm! in perfect

order of the eighties, with a sort of yellow oilskin paper on the

walls. At the top of the stairs he hesitated between four doors.

Which of them was Timothy's? And he listened. A sound, as of a

child slowly dragging a hobby-horse about, came to his ears. That

must be Timothy! He tapped, and a door was opened by Smither,

very red in the face.

Mr. Timothy was taking his walk, and she had not been able to get

him to attend. If Mr. Soames would come into the back-room, he

could see him through the door.

Soames went into the back-room and stood watching.

The last of the old Forsytes was on his feet, moving with the

most impressive slowness, and an air of perfect concentration on

his own affairs, backward and forward between the foot of his bed

and the window, a distance of some twelve feet. The lower part of

his square face, no longer clean-shaven, was covered with snowy

beard clipped as short as it could be, and his chin looked as

broad as his brow where the hair was also quite white, while nose

and cheeks and brow were a good yellow. One hand held a stout

stick, and the other grasped the skirt of his Jaeger

dressing-gown, from under which could be seen his bed-socked

ankles and feet thrust into Jaeger slippers. The expression on

his face was that of a crossed child, intent on something that he

has not got. Each time he turned he stumped the stick, and then

dragged it, as if to show that he could do without it:

“He still looks strong,” said Soames under his breath.

“Oh! yes, sir. You should see him take his bath—it's wonderful;

he does enjoy it so.”

Those quite loud words gave Soames an insight. Timothy had

resumed his babyhood.

“Does he take any interest in things generally?” he said, also

loud.

“Oh! yes, sir; his food and his Will. It's quite a sight to see

him turn it over and over, not to read it, of course; and every

now and then he asks the price of Consols, and I write it on a

slate for him—very large. Of course, I always write the same,

what they were when he last took notice, in 1914. We got the

doctor to forbid him to read the paper when the War broke out.

Oh! he did take on about that at first. But he soon came round,

because he knew it tired him; and he's a wonder to conserve

energy as he used to call it when my dear mistresses were alive,

bless their hearts! How he did go on at them about that; they

were always so active, if you remember, Mr. Soames.”

“What would happen if I were to go in?” asked Soames: “Would he

remember me? I made his Will, you know, after Miss Hester died in

1907.”

“Oh! that, sir,” replied Smither doubtfully, “I couldn't take on

me to say. I think he might; he really is a wonderful man for his

age.”

Soames moved into the doorway, and waiting for Timothy to turn,

said in a loud voice: “Uncle Timothy!”

Timothy trailed back half-way, and halted.

“Eh?” he said.

“Soames,” cried Soames at the top of his voice, holding out his

hand, “Soames Forsyte!”

“No!” said Timothy, and stumping his stick loudly on the floor,

he continued his walk.

“It doesn't seem to work,” said Soames.

“No, sir,” replied Smither, rather crestfallen; “you see, he

hasn't finished his walk. It always was one thing at a time with

him. I expect he'll ask me this afternoon if you came about the

gas, and a pretty job I shall have to make him understand.”

“Do you think he ought to have a man about him?”

Smither held up her hands. “A man! Oh! no. Cook and me can manage

perfectly. A strange man about would send him crazy in no time.

And my mistresses wouldn't like the idea of a man in the house.

Besides, we're so—proud of him.”

“I suppose the doctor comes?”

“Every morning. He makes special terms for such a quantity, and

Mr. Timothy's so used, he doesn't take a bit of notice, except to

put out his tongue.”

“Well,” said Soames, turning away, “it's rather sad and painful

to me.”

“Oh! sir,” returned Smither anxiously, “you mustn't think that.

Now that he can't worry about things, he quite enjoys his life,

really he does. As I say to Cook, Mr. Timothy is more of a man

than he ever was. You see, when he's not walkin', or takin' his

bath, he's eatin', and when he's not eatin', he's sleepin'. and

there it is. There isn't an ache or a care about him anywhere.”

“Well,” said Soames, “there's something in that. I'll go down. By

the way, let me see his Will.”

“I should have to take my time about that, sir; he keeps it under

his pillow, and he'd see me, while he's active.”

“I only want to know if it's the one I made,” said Soames; “you

take a look at its date some time, and let me know.”

“Yes, sir; but I'm sure it's the same, because me and Cook

witnessed, you remember, and there's our names on it still, and

we've only done it once.”

“Quite,” said Soames. He did remember. Smither and Jane had been

proper witnesses, having been left nothing in the Will that they

might have no interest in Timothy's death. It had been—he fully

admitted—an almost improper precaution, but Timothy had wished

it, and, after all, Aunt Hester had provided for them amply.

“Very well,” he said; “good-bye, Smither. Look after him, and if

he should say anything at any time, put it down, and let me

know.”

“Oh! yes, Mr. Soames; I'll be sure to do that. It's been such a

pleasant change to see you. Cook will be quite excited when I

tell her.”

Soames shook her hand and went down-stairs. He stood for fully

two minutes by the hat-stand whereon he had hung his hat so many

times. 'So it all passes,' he was thinking; 'passes and begins

again. Poor old chap!' And he listened, if perchance the sound of

Timothy trailing his hobby-horse might come down the well of the

stairs; or some ghost of an old face show over the bannisters,

and an old voice say: 'Why, it's dear Soames, and we were only

saying that we hadn't seen him for a week!'

Nothing—nothing! Just the scent of camphor, and dust-motes in a

sunbeam through the fanlight over the door. The little old house!

A mausoleum! And, turning on his heel, he went out, and caught

his train.

V.—THE NATIVE HEATH

“His foot's upon his native heath, His name's—Val Dartie.”

With some such feeling did Val Dartie, in the fortieth year of

his age, set out that same Thursday morning very early from the

old manor-house he had taken on the north side of the Sussex

Downs. His destination was Newmarket, and he had not been there

since the autumn of 1899, when he stole over from Oxford for the

Cambridgeshire. He paused at the door to give his wife a kiss,

and put a flask of port into his pocket.

“Don't overtire your leg, Val, and don't bet too much.”

With the pressure of her chest against his own, and her eyes

looking into his, Val felt both leg and pocket safe. He should be

moderate; Holly was always right—she had a natural aptitude. It

did not seem so remarkable to him, perhaps, as it might to

others, that—half Dartie as he was—he should have been perfectly

faithful to his young first cousin during the twenty years since

he married her romantically out in the Boer War; and faithful

without any feeling of sacrifice or boredom—she was so quick, so

slyly always a little in front of his mood. Being first cousins

they had decided, rather needlessly, to have no children; and,

though a little sallower, she had kept her looks, her slimness,

and the colour of her dark hair. Val particularly admired the

life of her own she carried on, besides carrying on his, and

riding better every year. She kept up her music, she read an

awful lot—novels, poetry, all sorts of stuff. Out on their farm

in Cape colony she had looked after all the “nigger” babies and

women in a miraculous manner. She was, in fact, clever; yet made

no fuss about it, and had no “side.” Though not remarkable for

humility, Val had come to have the feeling that she was his

superior, and he did not grudge it—a great tribute. It might be

noted that he never looked at Holly without her knowing of it,

but that she looked at him sometimes unawares.

He had kissed her in the porch because he should not be doing so

on the platform, though she was going to the station with him, to

drive the car back. Tanned and wrinkled by Colonial weather and

the wiles inseparable from horses, and handicapped by the leg

which, weakened in the Boer War, had probably saved his life in

the War just past, Val was still much as he had been in the days

of his courtship; his smile as wide and charming, his eyelashes,

if anything, thicker and darker, his eyes screwed up under them,

as bright a grey, his freckles rather deeper, his hair a little

grizzled at the sides. He gave the impression of one who has

lived actively with horses in a sunny climate.

Twisting the car sharp round at the gate, he said:

“When is young Jon coming?”

“To-day.”

“Is there anything you want for him? I could bring it down on

Saturday.”

“No; but you might come by the same train as Fleur—one-forty.”

Val gave the Ford full rein; he still drove like a man in a new

country on bad roads, who refuses to compromise, and expects

heaven at every hole.

“That's a young woman who knows her way about,” he said. “I say,

has it struck you?”

“Yes,” said Holly.

“Uncle Soames and your Dad—bit awkward, isn't it?”

“She won't know, and he won't know, and nothing must be said, of

course. It's only for five days, Val.”

“Stable secret! Righto!” If Holly thought it safe, it was.

Glancing slyly round at him, she said: “Did you notice how

beautifully she asked herself?”

“No!”

“Well, she did. What do you think of her, Val?”

“Pretty and clever; but she might run out at any corner if she

got her monkey up, I should say.”

“I'm wondering,” Holly murmured, “whether she is the modern young

woman. One feels at sea coming home into all this.”

“You? You get the hang of things so quick.”

Holly slid her hand into his coat-pocket.

“You keep one in the know,” said Val encouraged. “What do you

think of that Belgian fellow, Profond?”

“I think he's rather 'a good devil.'”

Val grinned.

“He seems to me a queer fish for a friend of our family. In fact,

our family is in pretty queer waters, with Uncle Soames marrying

a Frenchwoman, and your Dad marrying Soames's first. Our

grandfathers would have had fits!”

“So would anybody's, my dear.”

“This car,” Val said suddenly, “wants rousing; she doesn't get

her hind legs under her uphill. I shall have to give her her head

on the slope if I'm to catch that train.”

There was that about horses which had prevented him from ever

really sympathising with a car, and the running of the Ford under

his guidance compared with its running under that of Holly was

always noticeable. He caught the train.

“Take care going home; she'll throw you down if she can.

Good-bye, darling.”

“Good-bye,” called Holly, and kissed her hand.

In the train, after quarter of an hour's indecision between

thoughts of Holly, his morning paper, the look of the bright day,

and his dim memory of Newmarket, Val plunged into the recesses of

a small square book, all names, pedigrees, tap-roots, and notes

about the make and shape of horses. The Forsyte in him was bent

on the acquisition of a certain strain of blood, and he was

subduing resolutely as yet the Dartie hankering for a Nutter. On

getting back to England, after the profitable sale of his South

African farm and stud, and observing that the sun seldom shone,

Val had said to himself: “I've absolutely got to have an interest

in life, or this country will give me the blues. Hunting's not

enough, I'll breed and I'll train.” With just that extra pinch of

shrewdness and decision imparted by long residence in a new

country, Val had seen the weak point of modern breeding. They

were all hypnotised by fashion and high price. He should buy for

looks, and let names go hang! And here he was already, hypnotised

by the prestige of a certain strain of blood! Half-consciously,

he thought: 'There's something in this damned climate which makes

one go round in a ring. All the same, I must have a strain of

Mayfly blood.'

In this mood he reached the Mecca of his hopes. It was one of

those quiet meetings favourable to such as wish to look into

horses, rather than into the mouths of bookmakers; and Val clung

to the paddock. His twenty years of Colonial life, divesting him

of the dandyism in which he had been bred, had left him the

essential neatness of the horseman, and given him a queer and

rather blighting eye over what he called “the silly haw-haw” of

some Englishmen, the “flapping cockatoory” of some

English-women—Holly had none of that and Holly was his model.

Observant, quick, resourceful, Val went straight to the heart of

a transaction, a horse, a drink; and he was on his way to the

heart of a Mayfly filly, when a slow voice said at his elbow:

“Mr. Val Dartie? How's Mrs. Val Dartie? She's well, I hope.” And

he saw beside him the Belgian he had met at his sister Imogen's.

“Prosper Profond—I met you at lunch,” said the voice.

“How are you?” murmured Val.

“I'm very well,” replied Monsieur Profond, smiling with a certain

inimitable slowness. “A good devil,” Holly had called him. Well!

He looked a little like a devil, with his dark, clipped, pointed

beard; a sleepy one though, and good-humoured, with fine eyes,

unexpectedly intelligent.

“Here's a gentleman wants to know you—cousin of yours—Mr. George

Forsyde.”

Val saw a large form, and a face clean-shaven, bull-like, a

little lowering, with sardonic humour bubbling behind a full grey

eye; he remembered it dimly from old days when he would dine with

his father at the Iseeum Club.

“I used to go racing with your father,” George was saying: “How's

the stud? Like to buy one of my screws?”

Val grinned, to hide the sudden feeling that the bottom had

fallen out of breeding. They believed in nothing over here, not

even in horses. George Forsyte, Prosper Profond! The devil

himself was not more disillusioned than those two.

“Didn't know you were a racing man,” he said to Monsieur Profond.

“I'm not. I don't care for it. I'm a yachtin' man. I don't care

for yachtin' either, but I like to see my friends. I've got some

lunch, Mr. Val Dartie, just a small lunch, if you'd like to 'ave

some; not much—just a small one—in my car.”

“Thanks,” said Val; “very good of you. I'll come along in about

quarter of an hour.”

“Over there. Mr. Forsyde's comin',” and Monsieur Profond

“poinded” with a yellow-gloved finger; “small car, with a small

lunch”; he moved on, groomed, sleepy, and remote, George Forsyte

following, neat, huge, and with his jesting air.

Val remained gazing at the Mayfly filly. George Forsyte, of

course, was an old chap, but this Profond might be about his own

age; Val felt extremely young, as if the Mayfly filly were a toy

at which those two had laughed. The animal had lost reality.

“That 'small' mare”—he seemed to hear the voice of Monsieur

Profond—“what do you see in her?—we must all die!”

And George Forsyte, crony of his father, racing still! The Mayfly

strain—was it any better than any other? He might just as well

have a flutter with his money instead.

“No, by gum!” he muttered suddenly, “if it's no good breeding

horses, it's no good doing anything. What did I come for? I'll

buy her.”

He stood back and watched the ebb of the paddock visitors toward

the stand. Natty old chips, shrewd portly fellows, Jews, trainers

looking as if they had never been guilty of seeing a horse in

their lives; tall, flapping, languid women, or brisk, loud-voiced

women; young men with an air as if trying to take it

seriously—two or three of them with only one arm.

'Life over here's a game!' thought Val. 'Muffin bell rings,

horses run, money changes hands; ring again, run again, money

changes back.'

But, alarmed at his own philosophy, he went to the paddock gate

to watch the Mayfly filly canter down. She moved well; and he

made his way over to the “small” car. The “small” lunch was the

sort a man dreams of but seldom gets; and when it was concluded

Monsieur Profond walked back with him to the paddock.

“Your wife's a nice woman,” was his surprising remark.

“Nicest woman I know,” returned Val dryly.

“Yes,” said Monsieur Profond; “she has a nice face. I admire nice

women.”

Val looked at him suspiciously, but something kindly and direct

in the heavy diabolism of his companion disarmed him for the

moment.

“Any time you like to come on my yacht, I'll give her a small

cruise.”

“Thanks,” said Val, in arms again, “she hates the sea.”

“So do I,” said Monsieur Profond.

“Then why do you yacht?”

The Belgian's eyes smiled. “Oh! I don't know. I've done

everything; it's the last thing I'm doin'.”

“It must be d-d expensive. I should want more reason than that.”

Monsieur Prosper Profond raised his eyebrows, and puffed out a

heavy lower lip.

“I'm an easy-goin' man,” he said.

“Were you in the War?” asked Val.

“Ye-es. I've done that too. I was gassed; it was a small bit

unpleasant.” He smiled with a deep and sleepy air of prosperity,

as if he had caught it from his name.

Whether his saying “small” when he ought to have said “little”

was genuine mistake or affectation Val could not decide; the

fellow was evidently capable of anything.

Among the ring of buyers round the Mayfly filly who had won her

race, Monsieur Profond said:

“You goin' to bid?”

Val nodded. With this sleepy Satan at his elbow, he felt in need

of faith. Though placed above the ultimate blows of Providence by

the forethought of a grand-father who had tied him up a thousand

a year to which was added the thousand a year tied up for Holly

by her grand-father, Val was not flush of capital that he could

touch, having spent most of what he had realised from his South

African farm on his establishment in Sussex. And very soon he was

thinking: 'Dash it! she's going beyond me!' His limit-six

hundred-was exceeded; he dropped out of the bidding. The Mayfly

filly passed under the hammer at seven hundred and fifty guineas.

He was turning away vexed when the slow voice of Monsieur Profond

said in his ear:

“Well, I've bought that small filly, but I don't want her; you

take her and give her to your wife.”

Val looked at the fellow with renewed suspicion, but the good

humour in his eyes was such that he really could not take

offence.

“I made a small lot of money in the War,” began Monsieur Profond

in answer to that look. “I 'ad armament shares. I like to give it

away. I'm always makin' money. I want very small lot myself. I

like my friends to 'ave it.”

“I'll buy her of you at the price you gave,” said Val with sudden

resolution.

“No,” said Monsieur Profond. “You take her. I don' want her.”

“Hang it! one doesn't—”

“Why not?” smiled Monsieur Profond. “I'm a friend of your

family.”

“Seven hundred and fifty guineas is not a box of cigars,” said

Val impatiently.

“All right; you keep her for me till I want her, and do what you

like with her.”

“So long as she's yours,” said Val. “I don't mind that.”

“That's all right,” murmured Monsieur Profond, and moved away.

Val watched; he might be “a good devil,” but then again he might

not. He saw him rejoin George Forsyte, and thereafter saw him no

more.

He spent those nights after racing at his mother's house in Green

Street.

Winifred Dartie at sixty-two was marvellously preserved,

considering the three-and-thirty years during which she had put

up with Montague Dartie, till almost happily released by a French

staircase. It was to her a vehement satisfaction to have her

favourite son back from South Africa after all this time, to feel

him so little changed, and to have taken a fancy to his wife.

Winifred, who in the late seventies, before her marriage, had

been in the vanguard of freedom, pleasure, and fashion, confessed

her youth outclassed by the donzellas of the day. They seemed,

for instance, to regard marriage as an incident, and Winifred

sometimes regretted that she had not done the same; a second,

third, fourth incident might have secured her a partner of less

dazzling inebriety; though, after all, he had left her Val,

Imogen, Maud, Benedict (almost a colonel and unharmed by the

War)—none of whom had been divorced as yet. The steadiness of her

children often amazed one who remembered their father; but, as

she was fond of believing, they were really all Forsytes,

favouring herself, with the exception, perhaps, of Imogen. Her

brother's “little girl” Fleur frankly puzzled Winifred. The child

was as restless as any of these modern young women—“She's a small

flame in a draught,” Prosper Profond had said one day after

dinner—but she did not flap, or talk at the top of her voice. The

steady Forsyteism in Winifred's own character instinctively

resented the feeling in the air, the modern girl's habits and her

motto: “All's much of a muchness! Spend, to-morrow we shall be

poor!” She found it a saving grace in Fleur that, having set her

heart on a thing, she had no change of heart until she got

it—though—what happened after, Fleur was, of course, too young to

have made evident. The child was a “very pretty little thing,”

too, and quite a credit to take about, with her mother's French

taste and gift for wearing clothes; everybody turned to look at

Fleur—great consideration to Winifred, a lover of the style and

distinction which had so cruelly deceived her in the case of

Montague Dartie.

In discussing her with Val, at breakfast on Saturday morning,

Winifred dwelt on the family skeleton.

“That little affair of your father-in-law and your Aunt Irene,

Val—it's old as the hills, of course, Fleur need know nothing

about it—making a fuss. Your Uncle Soames is very particular

about that. So you'll be careful.”

“Yes! But it's dashed awkward—Holly's young half-brother is

coming to live with us while he learns farming. He's there

already.”

“Oh!” said Winifred. “That is a gaff! What is he like?”

“Only saw him once—at Robin Hill, when we were home in 1909; he

was naked and painted blue and yellow in stripes—a jolly little

chap.”

Winifred thought that “rather nice,” and added comfortably:

“Well, Holly's sensible; she'll know how to deal with it. I

shan't tell your uncle. It'll only bother him. It's a great

comfort to have you back, my dear boy, now that I'm getting on.”

“Getting on! Why! you're as young as ever. That chap Profond,

Mother, is he all right?”

“Prosper Profond! Oh! the most amusing man I know.”

Val grunted, and recounted the story of the Mayfly filly.

“That's so like him,” murmured Winifred. “He does all sorts of

things.”

“Well,” said Val shrewdly, “our family haven't been too lucky

with that kind of cattle; they're too light-hearted for us.”

It was true, and Winifred's blue study lasted a full minute

before she answered:

“Oh! well! He's a foreigner, Val; one must make allowances.”

“All right, I'll use his filly and make it up to him, somehow.”

And soon after he gave her his blessing, received a kiss, and

left her for his bookmaker's, the Iseeum Club, and Victoria

station.

VI.—JON

Mrs. Val Dartie, after twenty years of South Africa, had fallen

deeply in love, fortunately with something of her own, for the

object of her passion was the prospect in front of her windows,

the cool clear light on the green Downs. It was England again, at

last! England more beautiful than she had dreamed. Chance had, in

fact, guided the Val Darties to a spot where the South Downs had

real charm when the sun shone. Holly had enough of her father's

eye to apprehend the rare quality of their outlines and chalky

radiance; to go up there by the ravine-like lane and wander along

toward Chanctonbury or Amberley, was still a delight which she

hardly attempted to share with Val, whose admiration of Nature

was confused by a Forsyte's instinct for getting something out of

it, such as the condition of the turf for his horses' exercise.

Driving the Ford home with a certain humouring, smoothness, she

promised herself that the first use she would make of Jon would

be to take him up there, and show him “the view” under this

May-day sky.

She was looking forward to her young half-brother with a

motherliness not exhausted by Val. A three-day visit to Robin

Hill, soon after their arrival home, had yielded no sight of

him—he was still at school; so that her recollection, like Val's,

was of a little sunny-haired boy, striped blue and yellow, down

by the pond.

Those three days at Robin Hill had been exciting, sad,

embarrassing. Memories of her dead brother, memories of Val's

courtship; the ageing of her father, not seen for twenty years,

something funereal in his ironic gentleness which did not escape

one who had much subtle instinct; above all, the presence of her

stepmother, whom she could still vaguely remember as the “lady in

grey” of days when she was little and grandfather alive and

Mademoiselle Beauce so cross because that intruder gave her music

lessons—all these confused and tantalised a spirit which had

longed to find Robin Hill untroubled. But Holly was adept at

keeping things to herself, and all had seemed to go quite well.

Her father had kissed her when she left him, with lips which she

was sure had trembled.

“Well, my dear,” he said, “the War hasn't changed Robin Hill, has

it? If only you could have brought Jolly back with you! I say,

can you stand this spiritualistic racket? When the oak-tree dies,

it dies, I'm afraid.”

From the warmth of her embrace he probably divined that he had

let the cat out of the bag, for he rode off at once on irony.

“Spiritualism—queer word, when the more they manifest the more

they prove that they've got hold of matter.”

“How?” said Holly.

“Why! Look at their photographs of auric presences. You must have

something material for light and shade to fall on before you can

take a photograph. No, it'll end in our calling all matter

spirit, or all spirit matter—I don't know which.”

“But don't you believe in survival, Dad?”

Jolyon had looked at her, and the sad whimsicality of his face

impressed her deeply.

“Well, my dear, I should like to get something out of death. I've

been looking into it a bit. But for the life of me I can't find

anything that telepathy, sub-consciousness, and emanation from

the storehouse of this world can't account for just as well. Wish

I could! Wishes father thought but they don't breed evidence.”

Holly had pressed her lips again to his forehead with the feeling

that it confirmed his theory that all matter was becoming

spirit—his brow felt, somehow, so insubstantial.

But the most poignant memory of that little visit had been

watching, unobserved, her stepmother reading to herself a letter

from Jon. It was—she decided—the prettiest sight she had ever

seen. Irene, lost as it were in the letter of her boy, stood at a

window where the light fell on her face and her fine grey hair;

her lips were moving, smiling, her dark eyes laughing, dancing,

and the hand which did not hold the letter was pressed against

her breast. Holly withdrew as from a vision of perfect love,

convinced that Jon must be nice.

When she saw him coming out of the station with a kit-bag in

either hand, she was confirmed in her predisposition. He was a

little like Jolly, that long-lost idol of her childhood, but

eager-looking and less formal, with deeper eyes and

brighter-coloured hair, for he wore no hat; altogether a very

interesting “little” brother!

His tentative politeness charmed one who was accustomed to

assurance in the youthful manner; he was disturbed because she

was to drive him home, instead of his driving her. Shouldn't he

have a shot? They hadn't a car at Robin Hill since the War, of

course, and he had only driven once, and landed up a bank, so she

oughtn't to mind his trying. His laugh, soft and infectious, was

very attractive, though that word, she had heard, was now quite

old-fashioned. When they reached the house he pulled out a

crumpled letter which she read while he was washing—a quite short

letter, which must have cost her father many a pang to write.

“MY DEAR,

“You and Val will not forget, I trust, that Jon knows nothing of

family history. His mother and I think he is too young at

present. The boy is very dear, and the apple of her eye. Verbum

sapientibus,

“Your loving father,

“J. F.”

That was all; but it renewed in Holly an uneasy regret that Fleur

was coming.

After tea she fulfilled that promise to herself and took Jon up

the hill. They had a long talk, sitting above an old chalk-pit

grown over with brambles and goosepenny. Milkwort and liverwort

starred the green slope, the larks sang, and thrushes in the

brake, and now and then a gull flighting inland would wheel very

white against the paling sky, where the vague moon was coming up.

Delicious fragrance came to them, as if little invisible

creatures were running and treading scent out of the blades of

grass.

Jon, who had fallen silent, said rather suddenly:

“I say, this is wonderful! There's no fat on it at all. Gull's

flight and sheep-bells.”

“'Gull's flight and sheep-bells'. You're a poet, my dear!”

Jon sighed.

“Oh, Golly! No go!”

“Try! I used to at your age.”

“Did you? Mother says 'try' too; but I'm so rotten. Have you any

of yours for me to see?”

“My dear,” Holly murmured, “I've been married nineteen years. I

only wrote verses when I wanted to be.”

“Oh!” said Jon, and turned over on his face: the one cheek she

could see was a charming colour. Was Jon “touched in the wind,”

then, as Val would have called it? Already? But, if so, all the

better, he would take no notice of young Fleur. Besides, on

Monday he would begin his farming. And she smiled. Was it Burns

who followed the plough, or only Piers Plowman? Nearly every

young man and most young women seemed to be poets now, judging

from the number of their books she had read out in South Africa,

importing them from Hatchus and Bumphards; and quite good—oh!

quite; much better than she had been herself! But then poetry had

only really come in since her day—with motor-cars. Another long

talk after dinner over a wood fire in the low hall, and there

seemed little left to know about Jon except anything of real

importance. Holly parted from him at his bedroom door, having

seen twice over that he had everything, with the conviction that

she would love him, and Val would like him. He was eager, but did

not gush; he was a splendid listener, sympathetic, reticent about

himself. He evidently loved their father, and adored his mother.

He liked riding, rowing, and fencing better than games. He saved

moths from candles, and couldn't bear spiders, but put them out

of doors in screws of paper sooner than kill them. In a word, he

was amiable. She went to sleep, thinking that he would suffer

horribly if anybody hurt him; but who would hurt him?

Jon, on the other hand, sat awake at his window with a bit of

paper and a pencil, writing his first “real poem” by the light of

a candle because there was not enough moon to see by, only enough

to make the night seem fluttery and as if engraved on silver.

Just the night for Fleur to walk, and turn her eyes, and lead

on-over the hills and far away. And Jon, deeply furrowed in his

ingenuous brow, made marks on the paper and rubbed them out and

wrote them in again, and did all that was necessary for the

completion of a work of art; and he had a feeling such as the

winds of Spring must have, trying their first songs among the

coming blossom. Jon was one of those boys (not many) in whom a

home-trained love of beauty had survived school life. He had had

to keep it to himself, of course, so that not even the

drawing-master knew of it; but it was there, fastidious and clear

within him. And his poem seemed to him as lame and stilted as the

night was winged. But he kept it, all the same. It was a “beast,”

but better than nothing as an expression of the inexpressible.

And he thought with a sort of discomfiture: 'I shan't be able to

show it to Mother.' He slept terribly well, when he did sleep,

overwhelmed by novelty.

VII.—FLEUR

To avoid the awkwardness of questions which could not be

answered, all that had been told Jon was:

“There's a girl coming down with Val for the week-end.”

For the same reason, all that had been told Fleur was: “We've got

a youngster staying with us.”

The two yearlings, as Val called them in his thoughts, met

therefore in a manner which for unpreparedness left nothing to be

desired. They were thus introduced by Holly:

“This is Jon, my little brother; Fleur's a cousin of ours, Jon.”

Jon, who was coming in through a French window out of strong

sunlight, was so confounded by the providential nature of this

miracle, that he had time to hear Fleur say calmly: “Oh, how do

you do?” as if he had never seen her, and to understand dimly

from the quickest imaginable little movement of her head that he

never had seen her. He bowed therefore over her hand in an

intoxicated manner, and became more silent than the grave. He

knew better than to speak. Once in his early life, surprised

reading by a nightlight, he had said fatuously “I was just

turning over the leaves, Mum,” and his mother had replied: “Jon,

never tell stories, because of your face nobody will ever believe

them.”

The saying had permanently undermined the confidence necessary to

the success of spoken untruth. He listened therefore to Fleur's

swift and rapt allusions to the jolliness of everything, plied

her with scones and jam, and got away as soon as might be. They

say that in delirium tremens you see a fixed object, preferably

dark, which suddenly changes shape and position. Jon saw the

fixed object; it had dark eyes and passably dark hair, and

changed its position, but never its shape. The knowledge that

between him and that object there was already a secret

understanding (however impossible to understand) thrilled him so

that he waited feverishly, and began to copy out his poem—which

of course he would never dare to—show her—till the sound of

horses' hoofs roused him, and, leaning from his window, he saw

her riding forth with Val. It was clear that she wasted no time,

but the sight filled him with grief. He wasted his. If he had not

bolted, in his fearful ecstasy, he might have been asked to go

too. And from his window he sat and watched them disappear,

appear again in the chine of the road, vanish, and emerge once

more for a minute clear on the outline of the Down. 'Silly

brute!' he thought; 'I always miss my chances.'

Why couldn't he be self-confident and ready? And, leaning his

chin on his hands, he imagined the ride he might have had with

her. A week-end was but a week-end, and he had missed three hours

of it. Did he know any one except himself who would have been

such a flat? He did not.

He dressed for dinner early, and was first down. He would miss no

more. But he missed Fleur, who came down last. He sat opposite

her at dinner, and it was terrible—impossible to say anything for

fear of saying the wrong thing, impossible to keep his eyes fixed

on her in the only natural way; in sum, impossible to treat

normally one with whom in fancy he had already been over the

hills and far away; conscious, too, all the time, that he must

seem to her, to all of them, a dumb gawk. Yes, it was terrible!

And she was talking so well—swooping with swift wing this way and

that. Wonderful how she had learned an art which he found so

disgustingly difficult. She must think him hopeless indeed!

His sister's eyes, fixed on him with a certain astonishment,

obliged him at last to look at Fleur; but instantly her eyes,

very wide and eager, seeming to say, “Oh! for goodness' sake!”

obliged him to look at Val, where a grin obliged him to look at

his cutlet—that, at least, had no eyes, and no grin, and he ate

it hastily.

“Jon is going to be a farmer,” he heard Holly say; “a farmer and

a poet.”

He glanced up reproachfully, caught the comic lift of her eyebrow

just like their father's, laughed, and felt better.

Val recounted the incident of Monsieur Prosper Profond; nothing

could have been more favourable, for, in relating it, he regarded

Holly, who in turn regarded him, while Fleur seemed to be

regarding with a slight frown some thought of her own, and Jon

was really free to look at her at last. She had on a white frock,

very simple and well made; her arms were bare, and her hair had a

white rose in it. In just that swift moment of free vision, after

such intense discomfort, Jon saw her sublimated, as one sees in

the dark a slender white fruit-tree; caught her like a verse of

poetry flashed before the eyes of the mind, or a tune which

floats out in the distance and dies. He wondered giddily how old

she was—she seemed so much more self-possessed and experienced

than himself. Why mustn't he say they had met? He remembered

suddenly his mother's face; puzzled, hurt-looking, when she

answered: “Yes, they're relations, but we don't know them.”

Impossible that his mother, who loved beauty, should not admire

Fleur if she did know her.

Alone with Val after dinner, he sipped port deferentially and

answered the advances of this new-found brother-in-law. As to

riding (always the first consideration with Val) he could have

the young chestnut, saddle and unsaddle it himself, and generally

look after it when he brought it in. Jon said he was accustomed

to all that at home, and saw that he had gone up one in his

host's estimation.

“Fleur,” said Val, “can't ride much yet, but she's keen. Of

course, her father doesn't know a horse from a cart-wheel. Does

your Dad ride?”

“He used to; but now he's—you know, he's—” He stopped, so hating

the word “old.” His father was old, and yet not old; no—never!

“Quite,” muttered Val. “I used to know your brother up at Oxford,

ages ago, the one who died in the Boer War. We had a fight in New

College Gardens. That was a queer business,” he added, musing; “a

good deal came out of it.”

Jon's eyes opened wide; all was pushing him toward historical

research, when his sister's voice said gently from the doorway:

“Come along, you two,” and he rose, his heart pushing him toward

something far more modern.

Fleur having declared that it was “simply too wonderful to stay

indoors,” they all went out. Moonlight was frosting the dew, and

an old sundial threw a long shadow. Two box hedges at right

angles, dark and square, barred off the orchard. Fleur turned

through that angled opening.

“Come on!” she called. Jon glanced at the others, and followed.

She was running among the trees like a ghost. All was lovely and

foamlike above her, and there was a scent of old trunks, and of

nettles. She vanished. He thought he had lost her, then almost

ran into her standing quite still.

“Isn't it jolly?” she cried, and Jon answered:

“Rather!”

She reached up, twisted off a blossom and, twirling it in her

fingers, said:

“I suppose I can call you Jon?”

“I should think so just.”

“All right! But you know there's a feud between our families?”

Jon stammered: “Feud? Why?”

“It's ever so romantic and silly. That's why I pretended we

hadn't met. Shall we get up early to-morrow morning and go for a

walk before breakfast and have it out? I hate being slow about

things, don't you?”

Jon murmured a rapturous assent.

“Six o'clock, then. I think your mother's beautiful”

Jon said fervently: “Yes, she is.”

“I love all kinds of beauty,” went on Fleur, “when it's exciting.

I don't like Greek things a bit.”

“What! Not Euripides?”

“Euripides? Oh! no, I can't bear Greek plays; they're so long. I

think beauty's always swift. I like to look at one picture, for

instance, and then run off. I can't bear a lot of things

together. Look!” She held up her blossom in the moonlight.

“That's better than all the orchard, I think.”

And, suddenly, with her other hand she caught Jon's.

“Of all things in the world, don't you think caution's the most

awful? Smell the moonlight!”

She thrust the blossom against his face; Jon agreed giddily that

of all things in the world caution was the worst, and bending

over, kissed the hand which held his.

“That's nice and old-fashioned,” said Fleur calmly. “You're

frightfully silent, Jon. Still I like silence when it's swift.”

She let go his hand. “Did you think I dropped my handkerchief on

purpose?”

“No!” cried Jon, intensely shocked.

“Well, I did, of course. Let's get back, or they'll think we're

doing this on purpose too.” And again she ran like a ghost among

the trees. Jon followed, with love in his heart, Spring in his

heart, and over all the moonlit white unearthly blossom. They

came out where they had gone in, Fleur walking demurely.

“It's quite wonderful in there,” she said dreamily to Holly.

Jon preserved silence, hoping against hope that she might be

thinking it swift.

She bade him a casual and demure good-night, which made him think

he had been dreaming....

In her bedroom Fleur had flung off her gown, and, wrapped in a

shapeless garment, with the white flower still in her hair, she

looked like a mousme, sitting cross-legged on her bed, writing by

candlelight.

“DEAREST CHERRY,

“I believe I'm in love. I've got it in the neck, only the feeling

is really lower down. He's a second cousin-such a child, about

six months older and ten years younger than I am. Boys always

fall in love with their seniors, and girls with their juniors or

with old men of forty. Don't laugh, but his eyes are the truest

things I ever saw; and he's quite divinely silent! We had a most

romantic first meeting in London under the Vospovitch Juno. And

now he's sleeping in the next room and the moonlight's on the

blossom; and to-morrow morning, before anybody's awake, we're

going to walk off into Down fairyland. There's a feud between our

families, which makes it really exciting. Yes! and I may have to

use subterfuge and come on you for invitations—if so, you'll know

why! My father doesn't want us to know each other, but I can't

help that. Life's too short. He's got the most beautiful mother,

with lovely silvery hair and a young face with dark eyes. I'm

staying with his sister—who married my cousin; it's all mixed up,

but I mean to pump her to-morrow. We've often talked about love

being a spoil-sport; well, that's all tosh, it's the beginning of

sport, and the sooner you feel it, my dear, the better for you.

“Jon (not simplified spelling, but short for Jolyon, which is a

name in my family, they say) is the sort that lights up and goes

out; about five feet ten, still growing, and I believe he's going

to be a poet. If you laugh at me I've done with you forever. I

perceive all sorts of difficulties, but you know when I really

want a thing I get it. One of the chief effects of love is that

you see the air sort of inhabited, like seeing a face in the

moon; and you feel—you feel dancey and soft at the same time,

with a funny sensation—like a continual first sniff of

orange—blossom—Just above your stays. This is my first, and I

feel as if it were going to be my last, which is absurd, of

course, by all the laws of Nature and morality. If you mock me I

will smite you, and if you tell anybody I will never forgive you.

So much so, that I almost don't think I'll send this letter.

Anyway, I'll sleep over it. So good-night, my Cherry—oh!

“Your,

“FLEUR.”

VIII.—IDYLL ON GRASS

When those two young Forsytes emerged from the chine lane, and

set their faces east toward the sun, there was not a cloud in

heaven, and the Downs were dewy. They had come at a good bat up

the slope and were a little out of breath; if they had anything

to say they did not say it, but marched in the early awkwardness

of unbreakfasted morning under the songs of the larks. The

stealing out had been fun, but with the freedom of the tops the

sense of conspiracy ceased, and gave place to dumbness.

“We've made one blooming error,” said Fleur, when they had gone

half a mile. “I'm hungry.”

Jon produced a stick of chocolate. They shared it and their

tongues were loosened. They discussed the nature of their homes

and previous existences, which had a kind of fascinating

unreality up on that lonely height. There remained but one thing

solid in Jon's past—his mother; but one thing solid in

Fleur's—her father; and of these figures, as though seen in the

distance with disapproving faces, they spoke little.

The Down dipped and rose again toward Chanctonbury Ring; a

sparkle of far sea came into view, a sparrow-hawk hovered in the

sun's eye so that the blood-nourished brown of his wings gleamed

nearly red. Jon had a passion for birds, and an aptitude for

sitting very still to watch them; keen-sighted, and with a memory

for what interested him, on birds he was almost worth listening

to. But in Chanctonbury Ring there were none—its great beech

temple was empty of life, and almost chilly at this early hour;

they came out willingly again into the sun on the far side. It

was Fleur's turn now. She spoke of dogs, and the way people

treated them. It was wicked to keep them on chains! She would

like to flog people who did that. Jon was astonished to find her

so humanitarian. She knew a dog, it seemed, which some farmer

near her home kept chained up at the end of his chicken run, in

all weathers, till it had almost lost its voice from barking!

“And the misery is,” she said vehemently, “that if the poor thing

didn't bark at every one who passes it wouldn't be kept there. I

do think men are cunning brutes. I've let it go twice, on the

sly; it's nearly bitten me both times, and then it goes simply

mad with joy; but it always runs back home at last, and they

chain it up again. If I had my way, I'd chain that man up.” Jon

saw her teeth and her eyes gleam. “I'd brand him on his forehead

with the word 'Brute'. that would teach him!”

Jon agreed that it would be a good remedy.

“It's their sense of property,” he said, “which makes people

chain things. The last generation thought of nothing but

property; and that's why there was the War.”

“Oh!” said Fleur, “I never thought of that. Your people and mine

quarrelled about property. And anyway we've all got it—at least,

I suppose your people have.”

“Oh! yes, luckily; I don't suppose I shall be any good at making

money.”

“If you were, I don't believe I should like you.”

Jon slipped his hand tremulously under her arm. Fleur looked

straight before her and chanted:

“Jon, Jon, the farmer's son, Stole a pig, and away he run!”

Jon's arm crept round her waist.

“This is rather sudden,” said Fleur calmly; “do you often do it?”

Jon dropped his arm. But when she laughed his arm stole back

again; and Fleur began to sing:

“O who will oer the downs so free, O who will with me ride? O who

will up and follow me—-”

“Sing, Jon!”

Jon sang. The larks joined in, sheep-bells, and an early morning

church far away over in Steyning. They went on from tune to tune,

till Fleur said:

“My God! I am hungry now!”

“Oh! I am sorry!”

She looked round into his face.

“Jon, you're rather a darling.”

And she pressed his hand against her waist. Jon almost reeled

from happiness. A yellow-and-white dog coursing a hare startled

them apart. They watched the two vanish down the slope, till

Fleur said with a sigh: “He'll never catch it, thank goodness!

What's the time? Mine's stopped. I never wound it.”

Jon looked at his watch. “By Jove!” he said, “mine's stopped;

too.”

They walked on again, but only hand in hand.

“If the grass is dry,” said Fleur, “let's sit down for half a

minute.”

Jon took off his coat, and they shared it.

“Smell! Actually wild thyme!”

With his arm round her waist again, they sat some minutes in

silence.

“We are goats!” cried Fleur, jumping up; “we shall be most

fearfully late, and look so silly, and put them on their guard.

Look here, Jon We only came out to get an appetite for breakfast,

and lost our way. See?”

“Yes,” said Jon.

“It's serious; there'll be a stopper put on us. Are you a good

liar?”

“I believe not very; but I can try.”

Fleur frowned.

“You know,” she said, “I realize that they don't mean us to be

friends.”

“Why not?”

“I told you why.”

“But that's silly.”

“Yes; but you don't know my father!”

“I suppose he's fearfully fond of you.”

“You see, I'm an only child. And so are you—of your mother. Isn't

it a bore? There's so much expected of one. By the time they've

done expecting, one's as good as dead.”

“Yes,” muttered Jon, “life's beastly short. One wants to live

forever, and know everything.”

“And love everybody?”

“No,” cried Jon; “I only want to love once—you.”

“Indeed! You're coming on! Oh! Look! There's the chalk-pit; we

can't be very far now. Let's run.”

Jon followed, wondering fearfully if he had offended her.

The chalk-pit was full of sunshine and the murmuration of bees.

Fleur flung back her hair.

“Well,” she said, “in case of accidents, you may give me one

kiss, Jon,” and she pushed her cheek forward. With ecstasy he

kissed that hot soft cheek.

“Now, remember! We lost our way; and leave it to me as much as

you can. I'm going to be rather beastly to you; it's safer; try

and be beastly to me!”

Jon shook his head. “That's impossible.”

“Just to please me; till five o'clock, at all events.”

“Anybody will be able to see through it,” said Jon gloomily.

“Well, do your best. Look! There they are! Wave your hat! Oh! you

haven't got one. Well, I'll cooee! Get a little away from me, and

look sulky.”

Five minutes later, entering the house and doing his utmost to

look sulky, Jon heard her clear voice in the dining-room:

“Oh! I'm simply ravenous! He's going to be a farmer—and he loses

his way! The boy's an idiot!”

IX. GOYA

Lunch was over and Soames mounted to the picture-gallery in his

house near Mapleduram. He had what Annette called “a grief.”

Fleur was not yet home. She had been expected on Wednesday; had

wired that it would be Friday; and again on Friday that it would

be Sunday afternoon; and here were her aunt, and her cousins the

Cardigans, and this fellow Profond, and everything flat as a

pancake for the want of her. He stood before his Gauguin—sorest

point of his collection. He had bought the ugly great thing with

two early Matisses before the War, because there was such a fuss

about those Post-Impressionist chaps. He was wondering whether

Profond would take them off his hands—the fellow seemed not to

know what to do with his money—when he heard his sister's voice

say: “I think that's a horrid thing, Soames,” and saw that

Winifred had followed him up.

“Oh! you do?” he said dryly; “I gave five hundred for it.”

“Fancy! Women aren't made like that even if they are black.”

Soames uttered a glum laugh. “You didn't come up to tell me

that.”

“No. Do you know that Jolyon's boy is staying with Val and his

wife?”

Soames spun round.

“What?”

“Yes,” drawled Winifred; “he's gone to live with them there while

he learns farming.”

Soames had turned away, but her voice pursued him as he walked up

and down. “I warned Val that neither of them was to be spoken to

about old matters.”

“Why didn't you tell me before?”

Winifred shrugged her substantial shoulders.

“Fleur does what she likes. You've always spoiled her. Besides,

my dear boy, what's the harm?”

“The harm!” muttered Soames. “Why, she—” he checked himself. The

Juno, the handkerchief, Fleur's eyes, her questions, and now this

delay in her return—the symptoms seemed to him so sinister that,

faithful to his nature, he could not part with them.

“I think you take too much care,” said Winifred. “If I were you,

I should tell her of that old matter. It's no good thinking that

girls in these days are as they used to be. Where they pick up

their knowledge I can't tell, but they seem to know everything.”

Over Soames' face, closely composed, passed a sort of spasm, and

Winifred added hastily:

“If you don't like to speak of it, I could for you.”

Soames shook his head. Unless there was absolute necessity the

thought that his adored daughter should learn of that old scandal

hurt his pride too much.

“No,” he said, “not yet. Never if I can help it.

“Nonsense, my dear. Think what people are!”

“Twenty years is a long time,” muttered Soames. “Outside our

family, who's likely to remember?”

Winifred was silenced. She inclined more and more to that peace

and quietness of which Montague Dartie had deprived her in her

youth. And, since pictures always depressed her, she soon went

down again.

Soames passed into the corner where, side by side, hung his real

Goya and the copy of the fresco “La Vendimia.” His acquisition of

the real Goya rather beautifully illustrated the cobweb of vested

interests and passions which mesh the bright-winged fly of human

life. The real Goya's noble owner's ancestor had come into

possession of it during some Spanish war—it was in a word loot.

The noble owner had remained in ignorance of its value until in

the nineties an enterprising critic discovered that a Spanish

painter named Goya was a genius. It was only a fair Goya, but

almost unique in England, and the noble owner became a marked

man. Having many possessions and that aristocratic culture which,

independent of mere sensuous enjoyment, is founded on the sounder

principle that one must know everything and be fearfully

interested in life, he had fully intended to keep an article

which contributed to his reputation while he was alive, and to

leave it to the nation after he was dead. Fortunately for Soames,

the House of Lords was violently attacked in 1909, and the noble

owner became alarmed and angry. 'If,' he said to himself, 'they

think they can have it both ways they are very much mistaken. So

long as they leave me in quiet enjoyment the nation can have some

of my pictures at my death. But if the nation is going to bait

me, and rob me like this, I'm damned if I won't sell the lot.

They can't have my private property and my public spirit-both.'

He brooded in this fashion for several months till one morning,

after reading the speech of a certain statesman, he telegraphed

to his agent to come down and bring Bodkin. On going over the

collection Bodkin, than whose opinion on market values none was

more sought, pronounced that with a free hand to sell to America,

Germany, and other places where there was an interest in art, a

lot more money could be made than by selling in England. The

noble owner's public spirit—he said—was well known but the

pictures were unique. The noble owner put this opinion in his

pipe and smoked it for a year. At the end of that time he read

another speech by the same statesman, and telegraphed to his

agents: “Give Bodkin a free hand.” It was at this juncture that

Bodkin conceived the idea which saved the Goya and two other

unique pictures for the native country of the noble owner. With

one hand Bodkin proffered the pictures to the foreign market,

with the other he formed a list of private British collectors.

Having obtained what he considered the highest possible bids from

across the seas, he submitted pictures and bids to the private

British collectors, and invited them, of their public spirit, to

outbid. In three instances (including the Goya) out of twenty-one

he was successful. And why? One of the private collectors made

buttons—he had made so many that he desired that his wife should

be called Lady “Buttons.” He therefore bought a unique picture at

great cost, and gave it to the nation. It was “part,” his friends

said, “of his general game.” The second of the private collectors

was an Americophobe, and bought an unique picture to “spite the

damned Yanks.” The third of the private collectors was Soames,

who—more sober than either of the, others—bought after a visit to

Madrid, because he was certain that Goya was still on the up

grade. Goya was not booming at the moment, but he would come

again; and, looking at that portrait, Hogarthian, Manetesque in

its directness, but with its own queer sharp beauty of paint, he

was perfectly satisfied still that he had made no error, heavy

though the price had been—heaviest he had ever paid. And next to

it was hanging the copy of “La Vendimia.” There she was—the

little wretch—looking back at him in her dreamy mood, the mood he

loved best because he felt so much safer when she looked like

that.

He was still gazing when the scent of a cigar impinged on his

nostrils, and a voice said:

“Well, Mr. Forsyde, what you goin' to do with this small lot?”

That Belgian chap, whose mother—as if Flemish blood were not

enough—had been Armenian! Subduing a natural irritation, he said:

“Are you a judge of pictures?”

“Well, I've got a few myself.”

“Any Post-Impressionists?”

“Ye-es, I rather like them.”

“What do you think of this?” said Soames, pointing to the

Gauguin.

Monsieur Profond protruded his lower lip and short pointed beard.

“Rather fine, I think,” he said; “do you want to sell it?”

Soames checked his instinctive “Not particularly”—he would not

chaffer with this alien.

“Yes,” he said.

“What do you want for it?”

“What I gave.”

“All right,” said Monsieur Profond. “I'll be glad to take that

small picture. Post-Impressionists—they're awful dead, but

they're amusin'. I don' care for pictures much, but I've got

some, just a small lot.”

“What do you care for?”

Monsieur Profond shrugged his shoulders.

“Life's awful like a lot of monkeys scramblin' for empty nuts.”

“You're young,” said Soames. If the fellow must make a

generalization, he needn't suggest that the forms of property

lacked solidity!

“I don' worry,” replied Monsieur Profond smiling; “we're born,

and we die. Half the world's starvin'. I feed a small lot of

babies out in my mother's country; but what's the use? Might as

well throw my money in the river.”

Soames looked at him, and turned back toward his Goya. He didn't

know what the fellow wanted.

“What shall I make my cheque for?” pursued Monsieur Profond.

“Five hundred,” said Soames shortly; “but I don't want you to

take it if you don't care for it more than that.”

“That's all right,” said Monsieur Profond; “I'll be 'appy to 'ave

that picture.”

He wrote a cheque with a fountain-pen heavily chased with gold.

Soames watched the process uneasily. How on earth had the fellow

known that he wanted to sell that picture? Monsieur Profond held

out the cheque.

“The English are awful funny about pictures,” he said. “So are

the French, so are my people. They're all awful funny.”

“I don't understand you,” said Soames stiffly.

“It's like hats,” said Monsieur Profond enigmatically, “small or

large, turnin' up or down—just the fashion. Awful funny.” And,

smiling, he drifted out of the gallery again, blue and solid like

the smoke of his excellent cigar.

Soames had taken the cheque, feeling as if the intrinsic value of

ownership had been called in question. 'He's a cosmopolitan,' he

thought, watching Profond emerge from under the verandah with

Annette, and saunter down the lawn toward the river. What his

wife saw in the fellow he didn't know, unless it was that he

could speak her language; and there passed in Soames what

Monsieur Profond would have called a “small doubt” whether

Annette was not too handsome to be walking with any one so

“cosmopolitan.” Even at that distance he could see the blue fumes

from Profond's cigar wreath out in the quiet sunlight; and his

grey buckskin shoes, and his grey hat—the fellow was a dandy! And

he could see the quick turn of his wife's head, so very straight

on her desirable neck and shoulders. That turn of her neck always

seemed to him a little too showy, and in the “Queen of all I

survey” manner—not quite distinguished. He watched them walk

along the path at the bottom of the garden. A young man in

flannels joined them down there—a Sunday caller no doubt, from up

the river. He went back to his Goya. He was still staring at that

replica of Fleur, and worrying over Winifred's news, when his

wife's voice said:

“Mr. Michael Mont, Soames. You invited him to see your pictures.”

There was the cheerful young man of the Gallery off Cork Street!

“Turned up, you see, sir; I live only four miles from Pangbourne.

Jolly day, isn't it?”

Confronted with the results of his expansiveness, Soames

scrutinized his visitor. The young man's mouth was excessively

large and curly—he seemed always grinning. Why didn't he grow the

rest of those idiotic little moustaches, which made him look like

a music-hall buffoon? What on earth were young men about,

deliberately lowering their class with these tooth-brushes, or

little slug whiskers? Ugh! Affected young idiots! In other

respects he was presentable, and his flannels very clean.

“Happy to see you!” he said.

The young man, who had been turning his head from side to side,

became transfixed. “I say!” he said, “'some' picture!”

Soames saw, with mixed sensations, that he had addressed the

remark to the Goya copy.

“Yes,” he said dryly, “that's not a Goya. It's a copy. I had it

painted because it reminded me of my daughter.”

“By Jove! I thought I knew the face, sir. Is she here?”

The frankness of his interest almost disarmed Soames.

“She'll be in after tea,” he said. “Shall we go round the

pictures?”

And Soames began that round which never tired him. He had not

anticipated much intelligence from one who had mistaken a copy

for an original, but as they passed from section to section,

period to period, he was startled by the young man's frank and

relevant remarks. Natively shrewd himself, and even sensuous

beneath his mask, Soames had not spent thirty-eight years over

his one hobby without knowing something more about pictures than

their market values. He was, as it were, the missing link between

the artist and the commercial public. Art for art's sake and all

that, of course, was cant. But aesthetics and good taste were

necessary. The appreciation of enough persons of good taste was

what gave a work of art its permanent market value, or in other

words made it “a work of art.” There was no real cleavage. And he

was sufficiently accustomed to sheep-like and unseeing visitors,

to be intrigued by one who did not hesitate to say of Mauve:

“Good old haystacks!” or of James Maris: “Didn't he just paint

and paper 'em! Mathew was the real swell, sir; you could dig into

his surfaces!” It was after the young man had whistled before a

Whistler, with the words, “D'you think he ever really saw a naked

woman, sir?” that Soames remarked:

“What are you, Mr. Mont, if I may ask?”

“I, sir? I was going to be a painter, but the War knocked that.

Then in the trenches, you know, I used to dream of the Stock

Exchange, snug and warm and just noisy enough. But the Peace

knocked that, shares seem off, don't they? I've only been

demobbed about a year. What do you recommend, sir?”

“Have you got money?”