Not the first time she had used that curious expression! Yet her life

was far from dull, so far as he could see; with the new interests created

by the war, and the constant calls on her time made by the perfection of

their home life, she had a useful and busy existence. Again the random

thought passed through him: 'But she never tells me anything!' And

suddenly that lugubrious khaki-clad figure started up among the rose

bushes. "We've got a lot to be thankful for!" he said abruptly. "I must

go to work!" His wife, raising one eyebrow, smiled. "And I to weep!"

Mr. Bosengate laughed--she had a pretty wit! And stroking his comely

moustache where it had been kissed, he moved out into the sunshine. All

the evening, throughout his labours, not inconsiderable, for this jury

business had put him behind time, he was afflicted by that restless

pleasure in his surroundings; would break off in mowing the lower lawn to

look at the house through the trees; would leave his study and committee

papers, to cross into the drawing-room and sniff its dainty fragrance;

paid a special good-night visit to the children having supper in the

schoolroom; pottered in and out from his dressing room to admire his wife

while she was changing for dinner; dined with his mind perpetually on the

next course; talked volubly of the war; and in the billiard room

afterwards, smoking the pipe which had taken the place of his cigar,

could not keep still, but roamed about, now in conservatory, now in the

drawing-room, where his wife and the governess were still making swabs.

It seemed to him that he could not have enough of anything. About eleven

o'clock he strolled out beautiful night, only just dark enough--under the

new arrangement with Time--and went down to the little round fountain

below the terrace. His wife was playing the piano. Mr. Bosengate looked

at the water and the flat dark water lily leaves which floated there;

looked up at the house, where only narrow chinks of light showed, because

of the Lighting Order. The dreamy music drifted out; there was a scent

of heliotrope. He moved a few steps back, and sat in the children's

swing under an old lime tree. Jolly--blissful--in the warm, bloomy dark!

Of all hours of the day, this before going to bed was perhaps the

pleasantest. He saw the light go up in his wife's bed room, unscreened

for a full minute, and thought: 'Aha! If I did my duty as a special, I

should "strafe" her for that.' She came to the window, her figure

lighted, hands up to the back of her head, so that her bare arms gleamed.

Mr. Bosengate wafted her a kiss, knowing he could not be seen. 'Lucky

chap!' he mused; 'she's a great joy!' Up went her arm, down came the

blind the house was dark again. He drew a long breath. 'Another ten

minutes,' he thought, 'then I'll go in and shut up. By Jove! The limes

are beginning to smell already!' And, the better to take in that acme of

his well-being, he tilted the swing, lifted his feet from the ground, and

swung himself toward the scented blossoms. He wanted to whelm his senses

in their perfume, and closed his eyes. But instead of the domestic

vision he expected, the face of the little Welsh soldier, hare-eyed,

shadowy, pinched and dark and pitiful, started up with such disturbing

vividness that he opened his eyes again at once. Curse! The fellow

almost haunted one! Where would he be now poor little devil!--lying in

his cell, thinking--thinking of his wife! Feeling suddenly morbid, Mr.

Bosengate arrested the swing and stood up. Absurd!--all his well-being

and mood of warm anticipation had deserted him! 'A d---d world!' he

thought. 'Such a lot of misery! Why should I have to sit in judgment on

that poor beggar, and condemn him?' He moved up on to the terrace and

walked briskly, to rid himself of this disturbance before going in.

'That commercial traveller chap,' he thought, 'the rest of those

fellows--they see nothing!' And, abruptly turning up the three stone

steps, he entered the conservatory, locked it, passed into the billiard

room, and drank his barley water. One of the pictures was hanging

crooked; he went up to put it straight. Still life. Grapes and apples,

and--lobsters! They struck him as odd for the first time. Why lobsters?

The whole picture seemed dead and oily. He turned off the light, and

went upstairs, passed his wife's door, into his own room, and undressed.

Clothed in his pyjamas he opened the door between the rooms. By the

light coming from his own he could see her dark head on the pillow. Was

she asleep? No--not asleep, certainly. The moment of fruition had come;

the crowning of his pride and pleasure in his home. But he continued to

stand there. He had suddenly no pride, no pleasure, no desire; nothing

but a sort of dull resentment against everything. He turned back; shut

the door, and slipping between the heavy curtains and his open window,

stood looking out at the night. 'Full of misery!' he thought. 'Full of

d---d misery!'

II

Filing into the jury box next morning, Mr. Bosengate collided slightly

with a short juryman, whose square figure and square head of stiff

yellow-red hair he had only vaguely noticed the day before. The man

looked angry, and Mr. Bosengate thought: 'An ill-bred dog, that!'

He sat down quickly, and, to avoid further recognition of his fellows,

gazed in front of him. His appearance on Saturdays was always military,

by reason of the route march of his Volunteer Corps in the afternoon.

Gentleman Fox, who belonged to the corps too, was also looking square;

but that commercial traveller on his other side seemed more louche, and

as if surprised in immorality, than ever; only the proximity of Gentleman

Fox on the other side kept Mr. Bosengate from shrinking. Then he saw the

prisoner being brought in, shadowy and dark behind the brightness of his

buttons, and he experienced a sort of shock, this figure was so exactly

that which had several times started up in his mind. Somehow he had

expected a fresh sight of the fellow to dispel and disprove what had been

haunting him, had expected to find him just an outside phenomenon, not,

as it were, a part of his own life. And he gazed at the carven

immobility of the judge's face, trying to steady himself, as a drunken

man will, by looking at a light. The regimental doctor, unabashed by the

judge's comment on his absence the day before, gave his evidence like a

man who had better things to do, and the case for the prosecution was

forthwith rounded in by a little speech from counsel. The matter--he

said--was clear as daylight. Those who wore His Majesty's uniform,

charged with the responsibility and privilege of defending their country,

were no more entitled to desert their regiments by taking their own lives

than they were entitled to desert in any other way. He asked for a

conviction. Mr. Bosengate felt a sympathetic shuffle passing through all

feet; the judge was speaking:

"Prisoner, you can either go into the witness box and make your statement

on oath, in which case you may be cross-examined on it; or you can make

your statement there from the dock, in which case you will not be

cross-examined. Which do you elect to do?"

"From here, my lord."

Seeing him now full face, and, as it might be, come to life in the effort

to convey his feelings, Mr. Bosengate had suddenly a quite different

impression of the fellow. It was as if his khaki had fallen off, and he

had stepped out of his own shadow, a live and quivering creature. His

pinched clean-shaven face seemed to have an irregular, wilder, hairier

look, his large nervous brown eyes darkened and glowed; he jerked his

shoulders, his arms, his whole body, like a man suddenly freed from cramp

or a suit of armour.

He spoke, too, in a quick, crisp, rather high voice, pinching his

consonants a little, sharpening his vowels, like a true Welshman.

"My lord and misters the jury," he said: "I was a hairdresser when the

call came on me to join the army. I had a little home and a wife. I

never thought what it would be like to be away from them, I surely never

did; and I'm ashamed to be speaking it out like this--how it can squeeze

and squeeze a man, how it can prey on your mind, when you're nervous like

I am. 'Tis not everyone that cares for his home--there's lots o' them

never wants to see their wives again. But for me 'tis like being shut up

in a cage, it is!" Mr. Bosengate saw daylight between the skinny fingers

of the man's hand thrown out with a jerk. "I cannot bear it shut up away

from wife and home like what you are in the army. So when I took my

razor that morning I was wild--an' I wouldn't be here now but for that

man catching my hand. There was no reason in it, I'm willing to confess.

It was foolish; but wait till you get feeling like what I was, and see

how it draws you. Misters the jury, don't send me back to prison; it is

worse still there. If you have wives you will know what it is like for

lots of us; only some is more nervous than others. I swear to you, sirs,

I could not help it---?" Again the little man flung out his hand, his

whole thin body shook and Mr. Bosengate felt the same sensation as when

he drove his car over a dog--"Misters the jury, I hope you may never in

your lives feel as I've been feeling."

The little man ceased, his eyes shrank back into their sockets, his

figure back into its mask of shadowy brown and gleaming buttons, and Mr.

Bosengate was conscious that the judge was making a series of remarks;

and, very soon, of being seated at a mahogany table in the jury's

withdrawing room, hearing the, voice of the man with hair like an Irish

terrier's saying: "Didn't he talk through his hat, that little blighter!"

Conscious, too, of the commercial traveller, still on his left--always on

his left!--mopping his brow, and muttering: "Phew! It's hot in there

to-day!" while an effluvium, as of an inside accustomed to whisky came

from him. Then the man with the underlip and the three plastered wisps

of hair said:

"Don't know why we withdrew, Mr. Foreman!"

Mr. Bosengate looked round to where, at the head of the table, Gentleman

Fox sat, in defensive gentility and the little white piping to his

waistcoat saying blandly:

"I shall be happy to take the sense of the jury."

There was a short silence, then the chemist murmured:

"I should say he must have what they call claustrophobia."

"Clauster fiddlesticks! The feller's a shirker, that's all. Missed his

wife--pretty excuse! Indecent, I call it!"

The speaker was the little wire-haired man; and emotion, deep and angry,

stirred in Mr. Bosengate. That ill-bred little cur! He gripped the edge

of the table with both hands.

"I think it's d-----d natural!" he muttered. But almost before the

words had left his lips he felt dismay. What had he said--he, nearly a

colonel of volunteers--endorsing such a want of patriotism! And hearing

the commercial traveller murmuring: "'Ear, 'ear!" he reddened violently.

The wire-headed man said roughly:

"There's too many of these blighted shirkers, and too much pampering of

them."

The turmoil in Mr. Bosengate increased; he remarked in an icy voice:

"I agree to no verdict that'll send the man back to prison."

At this a real tremor seemed to go round the table, as if they all saw

themselves sitting there through lunch time. Then the large grey-haired

man given to winking, said:

"Oh! Come, sir--after what the judge said! Come, sir! What do you say,

Mr. Foreman?"

Gentleman Fox--as who should say 'This is excellent value, but I don't

wish to press it on you!'--answered:

"We are only concerned with the facts. Did he or did he not try to

shorten his life?"

"Of course he did--said so himself," Mr. Bosengate heard the wire-haired

man snap out, and from the following murmur of assent he alone abstained.

Guilty! Well--yes! There was no way out of admitting that, but his

feelings revolted against handing "that poor little beggar" over to the

tender mercy of his country's law. His whole soul rose in arms against

agreeing with that ill-bred little cur, and the rest of this job-lot. He

had an impulse to get up and walk out, saying: "Settle it your own way.

Good morning."

"It seems, sir," Gentleman Fox was saying, "that we're all agreed to

guilty, except yourself. If you will allow me, I don't see how you can

go behind what the prisoner himself admitted."

Thus brought up to the very guns, Mr. Bosengate, red in the face, thrust

his hands deep into the side pockets of his tunic, and, staring straight

before him, said:

"Very well; on condition we recommend him to mercy."

"What do you say, gentlemen; shall we recommend him to mercy?"

"'Ear, 'ear!" burst from the commercial traveller, and from the chemist

came the murmur:

"No harm in that."

"Well, I think there is. They shoot deserters at the front, and we let

this fellow off. I'd hang the cur."

Mr. Bosengate stared at that little wire-haired brute. "Haven't you any

feeling for others?" he wanted to say. "Can't you see that this poor

devil suffers tortures?" But the sheer impossibility of doing this

before ten other men brought a slight sweat out on his face and hands;

and in agitation he smote the table a blow with his fist. The effect was

instantaneous. Everybody looked at the wire-haired man, as if saying:

"Yes, you've gone a bit too far there!" The "little brute" stood it for

a moment, then muttered surlily:

"Well, commend 'im to mercy if you like; I don't care."

"That's right; they never pay any attention to it," said the grey-haired

man, winking heartily. And Mr. Bosengate filed back with the others into

court.

But when from the jury box his eyes fell once more on the hare-eyed

figure in the dock, he had his worst moment yet. Why should this poor

wretch suffer so--for no fault, no fault; while he, and these others, and

that snapping counsel, and the Caesar-like judge up there, went off to

their women and their homes, blithe as bees, and probably never thought

of him again? And suddenly he was conscious of the judge's voice:

"You will go back to your regiment, and endeavour to serve your country

with better spirit. You may thank the jury that you are not sent to

prison, and your good fortune that you were not at the front when you

tried to commit this cowardly act. You are lucky to be alive."

A policeman pulled the little soldier by the arm; his drab figure with

eyes fixed and lustreless, passed down and away. From his very soul Mr.

Bosengate wanted to lean out and say: "Cheer up, cheer up! I understand."

It was nearly ten o'clock that evening before he reached home, motoring

back from the route march. His physical tiredness was abated, for he had

partaken of a snack and a whisky and soda at the hotel; but mentally he

was in a curious mood. His body felt appeased, his spirit hungry.

Tonight he had a yearning, not for his wife's kisses, but for her

understanding. He wanted to go to her and say: "I've learnt a lot

to-day-found out things I never thought of. Life's a wonderful thing,

Kate, a thing one can't live all to oneself; a thing one shares with

everybody, so that when another suffers, one suffers too. It's come to

me that what one has doesn't matter a bit--it's what one does, and how

one sympathises with other people. It came to me in the most

extraordinary vivid way, when I was on that jury, watching that poor

little rat of a soldier in his trap; it's the first time I've ever

felt--the--the spirit of Christ, you know. It's a wonderful thing,

Kate--wonderful! We haven't been close--really close, you and I, so that

we each understand what the other is feeling. It's all in that, you

know; understanding--sympathy--it's priceless. When I saw that poor

little devil taken down and sent back to his regiment to begin his

sorrows all over again--wanting his wife, thinking and thinking of her

just as you know I would be thinking and wanting you, I felt what an

awful outside sort of life we lead, never telling each other what we

really think and feel, never being really close. I daresay that little

chap and his wife keep nothing from each other--live each other's lives.

That's what we ought to do. Let's get to feeling that what really

matters is--understanding and loving, and not only just saying it as we

all do, those fellows on the jury, and even that poor devil of a

judge--what an awful life judging one's fellow-creatures.

"When I left that poor little Tommy this morning, and ever since, I've

longed to get back here quietly to you and tell you about it, and make a

beginning. There's something wonderful in this, and I want you to feel

it as I do, because you mean such a lot to me."

This was what he wanted to say to his wife, not touching, or kissing her,

just looking into her eyes, watching them soften and glow as they surely

must, catching the infection of his new ardour. And he felt unsteady,

fearfully unsteady with the desire to say it all as it should be said:

swiftly, quietly, with the truth and fervour of his feeling.

The hall was not lit up, for daylight still lingered under the new

arrangement. He went towards the drawing-room, but from the very door

shied off to his study and stood irresolute under the picture of a "Man

catching a flea" (Dutch school), which had come down to him from his

father. The governess would be in there with his wife! He must wait.

Essential to go straight to Kathleen and pour it all out, or he would

never do it. He felt as nervous as an undergraduate going up for his

viva' voce. This thing was so big, so astoundingly and unexpectedly

important. He was suddenly afraid of his wife, afraid of her coolness

and her grace, and that something Japanese about her--of all those

attributes he had been accustomed to admire most; afraid, as it were, of

her attraction. He felt young to-night, almost boyish; would she see

that he was not really fifteen years older than herself, and she not

really a part of his collection, of all the admirable appointments of his

home; but a companion spirit to one who wanted a companion badly. In

this agitation of his soul he could keep still no more than he could last

night in the agitation of his senses; and he wandered into the

dining-room. A dainty supper was set out there, sandwiches, and cake,

whisky and the cigarettes--even an early peach. Mr. Bosengate looked at

this peach with sorrow rather than disgust. The perfection of it was of

a piece with all that had gone before this new and sudden feeling. Its

delicious bloom seemed to heighten his perception of the hedge around

him, that hedge of the things he so enjoyed, carefully planted and tended

these many years. He passed it by uneaten, and went to the window. Out

there all was darkening, the fountain, the lime tree, the flower-beds,

and the fields below, with the Jersey cows who would come to your call;

darkening slowly, losing form, blurring into soft blackness, vanishing,

but there none the less--all there--the hedge of his possessions. He

heard the door of the drawing-room open, the voices of his wife and the

governess in the hall, going up to bed. If only they didn't look in here!

If only! The voices ceased. He was safe now--had but to follow in a few

minutes, to make sure of Kathleen alone. He turned round and stared down

the length of the dark dining-room, over the rosewood table, to where in

the mirror above the sideboard at the far end, his figure bathed, a

stain, a mere blurred shadow; he made his way down to it along the table

edge, and stood before himself as close as he could get. His throat and

the roof of his mouth felt dry with nervousness; he put out his finger

and touched his face in the glass. 'You're an ass!' he thought. 'Pull

yourself together, and get it over. She will see; of course she will!'

He swallowed, smoothed his moustache, and walked out. Going up the

stairs, his heart beat painfully; but he was in for it now, and marched

straight into her room. Dressed only in a loose blue wrapper, she was

brushing her dark hair before the glass. Mr. Bosengate went up to her

and stood there silent, looking down. The words he had thought of were

like a swarm of bees buzzing in his head, yet not one would fly from

between his lips. His wife went on brushing her hair under the light

which shone on her polished elbows. She looked up at him from beneath

one lifted eyebrow.

"Well, dear--tired?"

With a sort of vehemence the single word "No" passed out. A faint, a

quizzical smile flitted over her face; she shrugged her shoulders ever so

gently. That gesture--he had seen it before! And in desperate desire to

make her understand, he put his hand on her lifted arm.

"Kathleen, stop--listen to me!" His fingers tightened in his agitation

and eagerness to make his great discovery known. But before he could get

out a word he became conscious of that cool round arm, conscious of her

eyes half-closed, sliding round at him, of her half-smiling lips, of her

neck under the wrapper. And he stammered:

"I want--I must--Kathleen, I---"

She lifted her shoulders again in that little shrug. "Yes--I know; all

right!"

A wave of heat and shame, and of God knows what came over Mr. Bosengate;

he fell on his knees and pressed his forehead to her arm; and he was

silent, more silent than the grave. Nothing--nothing came from him but

two long sighs. Suddenly he felt her hand stroke his

cheek--compassionately, it seemed to him. She made a little movement

towards him; her lips met his, and he remembered nothing but that....

In his own room Mr. Bosengate sat at his wide open window, smoking a

cigarette; there was no light. Moths went past, the moon was creeping

up. He sat very calm, puffing the smoke out in to the night air.

Curious thing-life! Curious world! Curious forces in it--making one do

the opposite of what one wished; always--always making one do the

opposite, it seemed! The furtive light from that creeping moon was

getting hold of things down there, stealing in among the boughs of the

trees. 'There's something ironical,' he thought, 'which walks about.

Things don't come off as you think they will. I meant, I tried but one

doesn't change like that all of a sudden, it seems. Fact is, life's too

big a thing for one! All the same, I'm not the man I was yesterday--not

quite!' He closed his eyes, and in one of those flashes of vision which

come when the senses are at rest, he saw himself as it were far down

below--down on the floor of a street narrow as a grave, high as a

mountain, a deep dark slit of a street walking down there, a black midget

of a fellow, among other black midgets--his wife, and the little soldier,

the judge, and those jury chaps--fantoches straight up on their tiny

feet, wandering down there in that dark, infinitely tall, and narrow

street. 'Too much for one!' he thought; 'Too high for one--no getting on

top of it. We've got to be kind, and help one another, and not expect too

much, and not think too much. That's--all!' And, squeezing out his

cigarette, he took six deep breaths of the night air, and got into bed.

INDIAN SUMMER OF A FORSYTE

"And Summer's lease hath all

too short a date."

--Shakespeare

I

In the last day of May in the early 'nineties, about six o'clock of the

evening, old Jolyon Forsyte sat under the oak tree below the terrace of

his house at Robin Hill. He was waiting for the midges to bite him,

before abandoning the glory of the afternoon. His thin brown hand, where

blue veins stood out, held the end of a cigar in its tapering,

long-nailed fingers--a pointed polished nail had survived with him from

those earlier Victorian days when to touch nothing, even with the tips of

the fingers, had been so distinguished. His domed forehead, great white

moustache, lean cheeks, and long lean jaw were covered from the westering

sunshine by an old brown Panama hat. His legs were crossed; in all his

attitude was serenity and a kind of elegance, as of an old man who every

morning put eau de Cologne upon his silk handkerchief. At his feet lay a

woolly brown-and-white dog trying to be a Pomeranian--the dog Balthasar

between whom and old Jolyon primal aversion had changed into attachment

with the years. Close to his chair was a swing, and on the swing was

seated one of Holly's dolls--called 'Duffer Alice'--with her body fallen

over her legs and her doleful nose buried in a black petticoat. She was

never out of disgrace, so it did not matter to her how she sat. Below

the oak tree the lawn dipped down a bank, stretched to the fernery, and,

beyond that refinement, became fields, dropping to the pond, the coppice,

and the prospect--'Fine, remarkable'--at which Swithin Forsyte, from

under this very tree, had stared five years ago when he drove down with

Irene to look at the house. Old Jolyon had heard of his brother's

exploit--that drive which had become quite celebrated on Forsyte 'Change.

Swithin! And the fellow had gone and died, last November, at the age of

only seventy-nine, renewing the doubt whether Forsytes could live for

ever, which had first arisen when Aunt Ann passed away. Died! and left

only Jolyon and James, Roger and Nicholas and Timothy, Julia, Hester,

Susan! And old Jolyon thought: 'Eighty-five! I don't feel it--except

when I get that pain.'

His memory went searching. He had not felt his age since he had bought

his nephew Soames' ill-starred house and settled into it here at Robin

Hill over three years ago. It was as if he had been getting younger

every spring, living in the country with his son and his

grandchildren--June, and the little ones of the second marriage, Jolly

and Holly; living down here out of the racket of London and the cackle of

Forsyte 'Change,' free of his boards, in a delicious atmosphere of no

work and all play, with plenty of occupation in the perfecting and

mellowing of the house and its twenty acres, and in ministering to the

whims of Holly and Jolly. All the knots and crankiness, which had

gathered in his heart during that long and tragic business of June,

Soames, Irene his wife, and poor young Bosinney, had been smoothed out.

Even June had thrown off her melancholy at last--witness this travel in

Spain she was taking now with her father and her stepmother. Curiously

perfect peace was left by their departure; blissful, yet blank, because

his son was not there. Jo was never anything but a comfort and a

pleasure to him nowadays--an amiable chap; but women, somehow--even the

best--got a little on one's nerves, unless of course one admired them.

Far-off a cuckoo called; a wood-pigeon was cooing from the first elm-tree

in the field, and how the daisies and buttercups had sprung up after the

last mowing! The wind had got into the sou' west, too--a delicious air,

sappy! He pushed his hat back and let the sun fall on his chin and cheek.

Somehow, to-day, he wanted company--wanted a pretty face to look at.

People treated the old as if they wanted nothing. And with the

un-Forsytean philosophy which ever intruded on his soul, he thought:

'One's never had enough. With a foot in the grave one'll want something,

I shouldn't be surprised!' Down here--away from the exigencies of

affairs--his grandchildren, and the flowers, trees, birds of his little

domain, to say nothing of sun and moon and stars above them, said, 'Open,

sesame,' to him day and night. And sesame had opened--how much, perhaps,

he did not know. He had always been responsive to what they had begun to

call 'Nature,' genuinely, almost religiously responsive, though he had

never lost his habit of calling a sunset a sunset and a view a view,

however deeply they might move him. But nowadays Nature actually made him

ache, he appreciated it so. Every one of these calm, bright, lengthening

days, with Holly's hand in his, and the dog Balthasar in front looking

studiously for what he never found, he would stroll, watching the roses

open, fruit budding on the walls, sunlight brightening the oak leaves and

saplings in the coppice, watching the water-lily leaves unfold and

glisten, and the silvery young corn of the one wheat field; listening to

the starlings and skylarks, and the Alderney cows chewing the cud,

flicking slow their tufted tails; and every one of these fine days he

ached a little from sheer love of it all, feeling perhaps, deep down,

that he had not very much longer to enjoy it. The thought that some

day--perhaps not ten years hence, perhaps not five--all this world would

be taken away from him, before he had exhausted his powers of loving it,

seemed to him in the nature of an injustice brooding over his horizon. If

anything came after this life, it wouldn't be what he wanted; not Robin

Hill, and flowers and birds and pretty faces--too few, even now, of those

about him! With the years his dislike of humbug had increased; the

orthodoxy he had worn in the 'sixties, as he had worn side-whiskers out

of sheer exuberance, had long dropped off, leaving him reverent before

three things alone--beauty, upright conduct, and the sense of property;

and the greatest of these now was beauty. He had always had wide

interests, and, indeed could still read The Times, but he was liable at

any moment to put it down if he heard a blackbird sing. Upright conduct,

property--somehow, they were tiring; the blackbirds and the sunsets never

tired him, only gave him an uneasy feeling that he could not get enough

of them. Staring into the stilly radiance of the early evening and at

the little gold and white flowers on the lawn, a thought came to him:

This weather was like the music of 'Orfeo,' which he had recently heard

at Covent Garden. A beautiful opera, not like Meyerbeer, nor even quite

Mozart, but, in its way, perhaps even more lovely; something classical

and of the Golden Age about it, chaste and mellow, and the Ravogli

'almost worthy of the old days'--highest praise he could bestow. The

yearning of Orpheus for the beauty he was losing, for his love going down

to Hades, as in life love and beauty did go--the yearning which sang and

throbbed through the golden music, stirred also in the lingering beauty

of the world that evening. And with the tip of his cork-soled,

elastic-sided boot he involuntarily stirred the ribs of the dog

Balthasar, causing the animal to wake and attack his fleas; for though he

was supposed to have none, nothing could persuade him of the fact. When

he had finished he rubbed the place he had been scratching against his

master's calf, and settled down again with his chin over the instep of

the disturbing boot. And into old Jolyon's mind came a sudden

recollection--a face he had seen at that opera three weeks ago--Irene,

the wife of his precious nephew Soames, that man of property! Though he

had not met her since the day of the 'At Home' in his old house at

Stanhope Gate, which celebrated his granddaughter June's ill-starred

engagement to young Bosinney, he had remembered her at once, for he had

always admired her--a very pretty creature. After the death of young

Bosinney, whose mistress she had so reprehensibly become, he had heard

that she had left Soames at once. Goodness only knew what she had been

doing since. That sight of her face--a side view--in the row in front,

had been literally the only reminder these three years that she was still

alive. No one ever spoke of her. And yet Jo had told him something

once--something which had upset him completely. The boy had got it from

George Forsyte, he believed, who had seen Bosinney in the fog the day he

was run over--something which explained the young fellow's distress--an

act of Soames towards his wife--a shocking act. Jo had seen her, too,

that afternoon, after the news was out, seen her for a moment, and his

description had always lingered in old Jolyon's mind--'wild and lost' he

had called her. And next day June had gone there--bottled up her

feelings and gone there, and the maid had cried and told her how her

mistress had slipped out in the night and vanished. A tragic business

altogether! One thing was certain--Soames had never been able to lay

hands on her again. And he was living at Brighton, and journeying up and

down--a fitting fate, the man of property! For when he once took a

dislike to anyone--as he had to his nephew--old Jolyon never got over it.

He remembered still the sense of relief with which he had heard the news

of Irene's disappearance. It had been shocking to think of her a

prisoner in that house to which she must have wandered back, when Jo saw

her, wandered back for a moment--like a wounded animal to its hole after

seeing that news, 'Tragic death of an Architect,' in the street. Her

face had struck him very much the other night--more beautiful than he had

remembered, but like a mask, with something going on beneath it. A young

woman still--twenty-eight perhaps. Ah, well! Very likely she had another

lover by now. But at this subversive thought--for married women should

never love: once, even, had been too much--his instep rose, and with it

the dog Balthasar's head. The sagacious animal stood up and looked into

old Jolyon's face. 'Walk?' he seemed to say; and old Jolyon answered:

"Come on, old chap!"

Slowly, as was their wont, they crossed among the constellations of

buttercups and daisies, and entered the fernery. This feature, where

very little grew as yet, had been judiciously dropped below the level of

the lawn so that it might come up again on the level of the other lawn

and give the impression of irregularity, so important in horticulture.

Its rocks and earth were beloved of the dog Balthasar, who sometimes

found a mole there. Old Jolyon made a point of passing through it

because, though it was not beautiful, he intended that it should be, some

day, and he would think: 'I must get Varr to come down and look at it;

he's better than Beech.' For plants, like houses and human complaints,

required the best expert consideration. It was inhabited by snails, and

if accompanied by his grandchildren, he would point to one and tell them

the story of the little boy who said: 'Have plummers got leggers, Mother?

'No, sonny.' 'Then darned if I haven't been and swallowed a snileybob.'

And when they skipped and clutched his hand, thinking of the snileybob

going down the little boy's 'red lane,' his eyes would twinkle. Emerging

from the fernery, he opened the wicket gate, which just there led into

the first field, a large and park-like area, out of which, within brick

walls, the vegetable garden had been carved. Old Jolyon avoided this,

which did not suit his mood, and made down the hill towards the pond.

Balthasar, who knew a water-rat or two, gambolled in front, at the gait

which marks an oldish dog who takes the same walk every day. Arrived at

the edge, old Jolyon stood, noting another water-lily opened since

yesterday; he would show it to Holly to-morrow, when 'his little sweet'

had got over the upset which had followed on her eating a tomato at

lunch--her little arrangements were very delicate. Now that Jolly had

gone to school--his first term--Holly was with him nearly all day long,

and he missed her badly. He felt that pain too, which often bothered him

now, a little dragging at his left side. He looked back up the hill.

Really, poor young Bosinney had made an uncommonly good job of the house;

he would have done very well for himself if he had lived! And where was

he now? Perhaps, still haunting this, the site of his last work, of his

tragic love affair. Or was Philip Bosinney's spirit diffused in the

general? Who could say? That dog was getting his legs muddy! And he

moved towards the coppice. There had been the most delightful lot of

bluebells, and he knew where some still lingered like little patches of

sky fallen in between the trees, away out of the sun. He passed the

cow-houses and the hen-houses there installed, and pursued a path into

the thick of the saplings, making for one of the bluebell plots.

Balthasar, preceding him once more, uttered a low growl. Old Jolyon

stirred him with his foot, but the dog remained motionless, just where

there was no room to pass, and the hair rose slowly along the centre of

his woolly back. Whether from the growl and the look of the dog's

stivered hair, or from the sensation which a man feels in a wood, old

Jolyon also felt something move along his spine. And then the path

turned, and there was an old mossy log, and on it a woman sitting. Her

face was turned away, and he had just time to think: 'She's

trespassing--I must have a board put up!' before she turned. Powers

above! The face he had seen at the opera--the very woman he had just

been thinking of! In that confused moment he saw things blurred, as if a

spirit--queer effect--the slant of sunlight perhaps on her violet-grey

frock! And then she rose and stood smiling, her head a little to one

side. Old Jolyon thought: 'How pretty she is!' She did not speak,

neither did he; and he realized why with a certain admiration. She was

here no doubt because of some memory, and did not mean to try and get out

of it by vulgar explanation.

"Don't let that dog touch your frock," he said; "he's got wet feet. Come

here, you!"

But the dog Balthasar went on towards the visitor, who put her hand down

and stroked his head. Old Jolyon said quickly:

"I saw you at the opera the other night; you didn't notice me."

"Oh, yes! I did."

He felt a subtle flattery in that, as though she had added: 'Do you think

one could miss seeing you?'

"They're all in Spain," he remarked abruptly. "I'm alone; I drove up for

the opera. The Ravogli's good. Have you seen the cow-houses?"

In a situation so charged with mystery and something very like emotion he

moved instinctively towards that bit of property, and she moved beside

him. Her figure swayed faintly, like the best kind of French figures;

her dress, too, was a sort of French grey. He noticed two or three silver

threads in her amber-coloured hair, strange hair with those dark eyes of

hers, and that creamy-pale face. A sudden sidelong look from the velvety

brown eyes disturbed him. It seemed to come from deep and far, from

another world almost, or at all events from some one not living very much

in this. And he said mechanically:

"Where are you living now?"

"I have a little flat in Chelsea."

He did not want to hear what she was doing, did not want to hear

anything; but the perverse word came out:

"Alone?"

She nodded. It was a relief to know that. And it came into his mind

that, but for a twist of fate, she would have been mistress of this

coppice, showing these cow-houses to him, a visitor.

"All Alderneys," he muttered; "they give the best milk. This one's a

pretty creature. Woa, Myrtle!"

The fawn-coloured cow, with eyes as soft and brown as Irene's own, was

standing absolutely still, not having long been milked. She looked round

at them out of the corner of those lustrous, mild, cynical eyes, and from

her grey lips a little dribble of saliva threaded its way towards the

straw. The scent of hay and vanilla and ammonia rose in the dim light of

the cool cow-house; and old Jolyon said:

"You must come up and have some dinner with me. I'll send you home in

the carriage."

He perceived a struggle going on within her; natural, no doubt, with her

memories. But he wanted her company; a pretty face, a charming figure,

beauty! He had been alone all the afternoon. Perhaps his eyes were

wistful, for she answered: "Thank you, Uncle Jolyon. I should like to."

He rubbed his hands, and said:

"Capital! Let's go up, then!" And, preceded by the dog Balthasar, they

ascended through the field. The sun was almost level in their faces now,

and he could see, not only those silver threads, but little lines, just

deep enough to stamp her beauty with a coin-like fineness--the special

look of life unshared with others. "I'll take her in by the terrace," he

thought: "I won't make a common visitor of her."

"What do you do all day?" he said.

"Teach music; I have another interest, too."

"Work!" said old Jolyon, picking up the doll from off the swing, and

smoothing its black petticoat. "Nothing like it, is there? I don't do

any now. I'm getting on. What interest is that?"

"Trying to help women who've come to grief." Old Jolyon did not quite

understand. "To grief?" he repeated; then realised with a shock that she

meant exactly what he would have meant himself if he had used that

expression. Assisting the Magdalenes of London! What a weird and

terrifying interest! And, curiosity overcoming his natural shrinking, he

asked:

"Why? What do you do for them?"

"Not much. I've no money to spare. I can only give sympathy and food

sometimes."

Involuntarily old Jolyon's hand sought his purse. He said hastily: "How

d'you get hold of them?"

"I go to a hospital."

"A hospital! Phew!"

"What hurts me most is that once they nearly all had some sort of

beauty."

Old Jolyon straightened the doll. "Beauty!" he ejaculated: "Ha! Yes! A

sad business!" and he moved towards the house. Through a French window,

under sun-blinds not yet drawn up, he preceded her into the room where he

was wont to study The Times and the sheets of an agricultural magazine,

with huge illustrations of mangold wurzels, and the like, which provided

Holly with material for her paint brush.

"Dinner's in half an hour. You'd like to wash your hands! I'll take you

to June's room."

He saw her looking round eagerly; what changes since she had last visited

this house with her husband, or her lover, or both perhaps--he did not

know, could not say! All that was dark, and he wished to leave it so.

But what changes! And in the hall he said:

"My boy Jo's a painter, you know. He's got a lot of taste. It isn't

mine, of course, but I've let him have his way."

She was standing very still, her eyes roaming through the hall and music

room, as it now was--all thrown into one, under the great skylight. Old

Jolyon had an odd impression of her. Was she trying to conjure somebody

from the shades of that space where the colouring was all pearl-grey and

silver? He would have had gold himself; more lively and solid. But Jo

had French tastes, and it had come out shadowy like that, with an effect

as of the fume of cigarettes the chap was always smoking, broken here and

there by a little blaze of blue or crimson colour. It was not his dream!

Mentally he had hung this space with those gold-framed masterpieces of

still and stiller life which he had bought in days when quantity was

precious. And now where were they? Sold for a song! That something

which made him, alone among Forsytes, move with the times had warned him

against the struggle to retain them. But in his study he still had

'Dutch Fishing Boats at Sunset.'

He began to mount the stairs with her, slowly, for he felt his side.

"These are the bathrooms," he said, "and other arrangements. I've had

them tiled. The nurseries are along there. And this is Jo's and his

wife's. They all communicate. But you remember, I expect."

Irene nodded. They passed on, up the gallery and entered a large room

with a small bed, and several windows.

"This is mine," he said. The walls were covered with the photographs of

children and watercolour sketches, and he added doubtfully:

"These are Jo's. The view's first-rate. You can see the Grand Stand at

Epsom in clear weather."

The sun was down now, behind the house, and over the 'prospect' a

luminous haze had settled, emanation of the long and prosperous day. Few

houses showed, but fields and trees faintly glistened, away to a loom of

downs.

"The country's changing," he said abruptly, "but there it'll be when

we're all gone. Look at those thrushes--the birds are sweet here in the

mornings. I'm glad to have washed my hands of London."

Her face was close to the window pane, and he was struck by its mournful

look. 'Wish I could make her look happy!' he thought. 'A pretty face,

but sad!' And taking up his can of hot water he went out into the

gallery.

"This is June's room," he said, opening the next door and putting the can

down; "I think you'll find everything." And closing the door behind her

he went back to his own room. Brushing his hair with his great ebony

brushes, and dabbing his forehead with eau de Cologne, he mused. She had

come so strangely--a sort of visitation; mysterious, even romantic, as if

his desire for company, for beauty, had been fulfilled by whatever it was

which fulfilled that sort of thing. And before the mirror he

straightened his still upright figure, passed the brushes over his great

white moustache, touched up his eyebrows with eau de Cologne, and rang

the bell.

"I forgot to let them know that I have a lady to dinner with me. Let cook

do something extra, and tell Beacon to have the landau and pair at

half-past ten to drive her back to Town to-night. Is Miss Holly asleep?"

The maid thought not. And old Jolyon, passing down the gallery, stole on

tiptoe towards the nursery, and opened the door whose hinges he kept

specially oiled that he might slip in and out in the evenings without

being heard.

But Holly was asleep, and lay like a miniature Madonna, of that type

which the old painters could not tell from Venus, when they had completed

her. Her long dark lashes clung to her cheeks; on her face was perfect

peace--her little arrangements were evidently all right again. And old

Jolyon, in the twilight of the room, stood adoring her! It was so

charming, solemn, and loving--that little face. He had more than his

share of the blessed capacity of living again in the young. They were to

him his future life--all of a future life that his fundamental pagan

sanity perhaps admitted. There she was with everything before her, and

his blood--some of it--in her tiny veins. There she was, his little

companion, to be made as happy as ever he could make her, so that she

knew nothing but love. His heart swelled, and he went out, stilling the

sound of his patent-leather boots. In the corridor an eccentric notion

attacked him: To think that children should come to that which Irene had

told him she was helping! Women who were all, once, little things like

this one sleeping there! 'I must give her a cheque!' he mused; 'Can't

bear to think of them!' They had never borne reflecting on, those poor

outcasts; wounding too deeply the core of true refinement hidden under

layers of conformity to the sense of property--wounding too grievously

the deepest thing in him--a love of beauty which could give him, even

now, a flutter of the heart, thinking of his evening in the society of a

pretty woman. And he went downstairs, through the swinging doors, to the

back regions. There, in the wine-cellar, was a hock worth at least two

pounds a bottle, a Steinberg Cabinet, better than any Johannisberg that

ever went down throat; a wine of perfect bouquet, sweet as a

nectarine--nectar indeed! He got a bottle out, handling it like a baby,

and holding it level to the light, to look. Enshrined in its coat of

dust, that mellow coloured, slender-necked bottle gave him deep pleasure.

Three years to settle down again since the move from Town--ought to be in

prime condition! Thirty-five years ago he had bought it--thank God he had

kept his palate, and earned the right to drink it. She would appreciate

this; not a spice of acidity in a dozen. He wiped the bottle, drew the

cork with his own hands, put his nose down, inhaled its perfume, and went

back to the music room.

Irene was standing by the piano; she had taken off her hat and a lace

scarf she had been wearing, so that her gold-coloured hair was visible,

and the pallor of her neck. In her grey frock she made a pretty picture

for old Jolyon, against the rosewood of the piano.

He gave her his arm, and solemnly they went. The room, which had been

designed to enable twenty-four people to dine in comfort, held now but a

little round table. In his present solitude the big dining-table

oppressed old Jolyon; he had caused it to be removed till his son came

back. Here in the company of two really good copies of Raphael Madonnas

he was wont to dine alone. It was the only disconsolate hour of his day,

this summer weather. He had never been a large eater, like that great

chap Swithin, or Sylvanus Heythorp, or Anthony Thornworthy, those cronies

of past times; and to dine alone, overlooked by the Madonnas, was to him

but a sorrowful occupation, which he got through quickly, that he might

come to the more spiritual enjoyment of his coffee and cigar. But this

evening was a different matter! His eyes twinkled at her across the

little table and he spoke of Italy and Switzerland, telling her stories

of his travels there, and other experiences which he could no longer

recount to his son and grand-daughter because they knew them. This fresh

audience was precious to him; he had never become one of those old men

who ramble round and round the fields of reminiscence. Himself quickly

fatigued by the insensitive, he instinctively avoided fatiguing others,

and his natural flirtatiousness towards beauty guarded him specially in

his relations with a woman. He would have liked to draw her out, but

though she murmured and smiled and seemed to be enjoying what he told

her, he remained conscious of that mysterious remoteness which

constituted half her fascination. He could not bear women who threw

their shoulders and eyes at you, and chattered away; or hard-mouthed

women who laid down the law and knew more than you did. There was only

one quality in a woman that appealed to him--charm; and the quieter it

was, the more he liked it. And this one had charm, shadowy as afternoon

sunlight on those Italian hills and valleys he had loved. The feeling,

too, that she was, as it were, apart, cloistered, made her seem nearer to

himself, a strangely desirable companion. When a man is very old and

quite out of the running, he loves to feel secure from the rivalries of

youth, for he would still be first in the heart of beauty. And he drank

his hock, and watched her lips, and felt nearly young. But the dog

Balthasar lay watching her lips too, and despising in his heart the

interruptions of their talk, and the tilting of those greenish glasses

full of a golden fluid which was distasteful to him.

The light was just failing when they went back into the music-room. And,

cigar in mouth, old Jolyon said:

"Play me some Chopin."

By the cigars they smoke, and the composers they love, ye shall know the

texture of men's souls. Old Jolyon could not bear a strong cigar or

Wagner's music. He loved Beethoven and Mozart, Handel and Gluck, and

Schumann, and, for some occult reason, the operas of Meyerbeer; but of

late years he had been seduced by Chopin, just as in painting he had

succumbed to Botticelli. In yielding to these tastes he had been

conscious of divergence from the standard of the Golden Age. Their

poetry was not that of Milton and Byron and Tennyson; of Raphael and

Titian; Mozart and Beethoven. It was, as it were, behind a veil; their

poetry hit no one in the face, but slipped its fingers under the ribs and

turned and twisted, and melted up the heart. And, never certain that

this was healthy, he did not care a rap so long as he could see the

pictures of the one or hear the music of the other.

Irene sat down at the piano under the electric lamp festooned with

pearl-grey, and old Jolyon, in an armchair, whence he could see her,

crossed his legs and drew slowly at his cigar. She sat a few moments

with her hands on the keys, evidently searching her mind for what to give

him. Then she began and within old Jolyon there arose a sorrowful

pleasure, not quite like anything else in the world. He fell slowly into

a trance, interrupted only by the movements of taking the cigar out of

his mouth at long intervals, and replacing it. She was there, and the

hock within him, and the scent of tobacco; but there, too, was a world of

sunshine lingering into moonlight, and pools with storks upon them, and

bluish trees above, glowing with blurs of wine-red roses, and fields of

lavender where milk-white cows were grazing, and a woman all shadowy,

with dark eyes and a white neck, smiled, holding out her arms; and

through air which was like music a star dropped and was caught on a cow's

horn. He opened his eyes. Beautiful piece; she played well--the touch

of an angel! And he closed them again. He felt miraculously sad and

happy, as one does, standing under a lime-tree in full honey flower. Not

live one's own life again, but just stand there and bask in the smile of

a woman's eyes, and enjoy the bouquet! And he jerked his hand; the dog

Balthasar had reached up and licked it.

"Beautiful!" He said: "Go on--more Chopin!"

She began to play again. This time the resemblance between her and

'Chopin' struck him. The swaying he had noticed in her walk was in her

playing too, and the Nocturne she had chosen and the soft darkness of her

eyes, the light on her hair, as of moonlight from a golden moon.

Seductive, yes; but nothing of Delilah in her or in that music. A long

blue spiral from his cigar ascended and dispersed. 'So we go out!' he

thought. 'No more beauty! Nothing?'

Again Irene stopped.

"Would you like some Gluck? He used to write his music in a sunlit

garden, with a bottle of Rhine wine beside him."

"Ah! yes. Let's have 'Orfeo.'" Round about him now were fields of gold

and silver flowers, white forms swaying in the sunlight, bright birds

flying to and fro. All was summer. Lingering waves of sweetness and

regret flooded his soul. Some cigar ash dropped, and taking out a silk

handkerchief to brush it off, he inhaled a mingled scent as of snuff and

eau de Cologne. 'Ah!' he thought, 'Indian summer--that's all!' and he

said: "You haven't played me 'Che faro.'"

She did not answer; did not move. He was conscious of something--some

strange upset. Suddenly he saw her rise and turn away, and a pang of

remorse shot through him. What a clumsy chap! Like Orpheus, she of

course--she too was looking for her lost one in the hall of memory! And

disturbed to the heart, he got up from his chair. She had gone to the

great window at the far end. Gingerly he followed. Her hands were

folded over her breast; he could just see her cheek, very white. And,

quite emotionalized, he said:

"There, there, my love!" The words had escaped him mechanically, for

they were those he used to Holly when she had a pain, but their effect

was instantaneously distressing. She raised her arms, covered her face

with them, and wept.

Old Jolyon stood gazing at her with eyes very deep from age. The

passionate shame she seemed feeling at her abandonment, so unlike the

control and quietude of her whole presence was as if she had never before

broken down in the presence of another being.

"There, there--there, there!" he murmured, and putting his hand out

reverently, touched her. She turned, and leaned the arms which covered

her face against him. Old Jolyon stood very still, keeping one thin hand

on her shoulder. Let her cry her heart out--it would do her good.

And the dog Balthasar, puzzled, sat down on his stern to examine them.

The window was still open, the curtains had not been drawn, the last of

daylight from without mingled with faint intrusion from the lamp within;

there was a scent of new-mown grass. With the wisdom of a long life old

Jolyon did not speak. Even grief sobbed itself out in time; only Time

was good for sorrow--Time who saw the passing of each mood, each emotion

in turn; Time the layer-to-rest. There came into his mind the words: 'As

panteth the hart after cooling streams'--but they were of no use to him.

Then, conscious of a scent of violets, he knew she was drying her eyes.

He put his chin forward, pressed his moustache against her forehead, and

felt her shake with a quivering of her whole body, as of a tree which

shakes itself free of raindrops. She put his hand to her lips, as if

saying: "All over now! Forgive me!"

The kiss filled him with a strange comfort; he led her back to where she

had been so upset. And the dog Balthasar, following, laid the bone of

one of the cutlets they had eaten at their feet.

Anxious to obliterate the memory of that emotion, he could think of

nothing better than china; and moving with her slowly from cabinet to

cabinet, he kept taking up bits of Dresden and Lowestoft and Chelsea,

turning them round and round with his thin, veined hands, whose skin,

faintly freckled, had such an aged look.

"I bought this at Jobson's," he would say; "cost me thirty pounds. It's

very old. That dog leaves his bones all over the place. This old

'ship-bowl' I picked up at the sale when that precious rip, the Marquis,

came to grief. But you don't remember. Here's a nice piece of Chelsea.

Now, what would you say this was?" And he was comforted, feeling that,

with her taste, she was taking a real interest in these things; for,

after all, nothing better composes the nerves than a doubtful piece of

china.

When the crunch of the carriage wheels was heard at last, he said:

"You must come again; you must come to lunch, then I can show you these

by daylight, and my little sweet--she's a dear little thing. This dog

seems to have taken a fancy to you."

For Balthasar, feeling that she was about to leave, was rubbing his side

against her leg. Going out under the porch with her, he said:

"He'll get you up in an hour and a quarter. Take this for your

protegees," and he slipped a cheque for fifty pounds into her hand. He

saw her brightened eyes, and heard her murmur: "Oh! Uncle Jolyon!" and a

real throb of pleasure went through him. That meant one or two poor

creatures helped a little, and it meant that she would come again. He

put his hand in at the window and grasped hers once more. The carriage

rolled away. He stood looking at the moon and the shadows of the trees,

and thought: 'A sweet night! She......!'

II

Two days of rain, and summer set in bland and sunny. Old Jolyon walked

and talked with Holly. At first he felt taller and full of a new vigour;

then he felt restless. Almost every afternoon they would enter the

coppice, and walk as far as the log. 'Well, she's not there!' he would

think, 'of course not!' And he would feel a little shorter, and drag his

feet walking up the hill home, with his hand clapped to his left side.

Now and then the thought would move in him: 'Did she come--or did I dream

it?' and he would stare at space, while the dog Balthasar stared at him.

Of course she would not come again! He opened the letters from Spain

with less excitement. They were not returning till July; he felt, oddly,

that he could bear it. Every day at dinner he screwed up his eyes and

looked at where she had sat. She was not there, so he unscrewed his eyes

again.

On the seventh afternoon he thought: 'I must go up and get some boots.'

He ordered Beacon, and set out. Passing from Putney towards Hyde Park he

reflected: 'I might as well go to Chelsea and see her.' And he called

out: "Just drive me to where you took that lady the other night." The

coachman turned his broad red face, and his juicy lips answered: "The

lady in grey, sir?"

"Yes, the lady in grey." What other ladies were there! Stodgy chap!

The carriage stopped before a small three-storied block of flats,

standing a little back from the river. With a practised eye old Jolyon

saw that they were cheap. 'I should think about sixty pound a year,' he

mused; and entering, he looked at the name-board. The name 'Forsyte' was

not on it, but against 'First Floor, Flat C' were the words: 'Mrs. Irene

Heron.' Ah! She had taken her maiden name again! And somehow this

pleased him. He went upstairs slowly, feeling his side a little. He

stood a moment, before ringing, to lose the feeling of drag and

fluttering there. She would not be in! And then--Boots! The thought

was black. What did he want with boots at his age? He could not wear out

all those he had.

"Your mistress at home?"

"Yes, sir."

"Say Mr. Jolyon Forsyte."

"Yes, sir, will you come this way?"

Old Jolyon followed a very little maid--not more than sixteen one would

say--into a very small drawing-room where the sun-blinds were drawn. It

held a cottage piano and little else save a vague fragrance and good

taste. He stood in the middle, with his top hat in his hand, and

thought: 'I expect she's very badly off!' There was a mirror above the

fireplace, and he saw himself reflected. An old-looking chap! He heard

a rustle, and turned round. She was so close that his moustache almost

brushed her forehead, just under her hair.

"I was driving up," he said. "Thought I'd look in on you, and ask you

how you got up the other night."

And, seeing her smile, he felt suddenly relieved. She was really glad to

see him, perhaps.

"Would you like to put on your hat and come for a drive in the Park?"

But while she was gone to put her hat on, he frowned. The Park! James

and Emily! Mrs. Nicholas, or some other member of his precious family

would be there very likely, prancing up and down. And they would go and

wag their tongues about having seen him with her, afterwards. Better

not! He did not wish to revive the echoes of the past on Forsyte

'Change. He removed a white hair from the lapel of his

closely-buttoned-up frock coat, and passed his hand over his cheeks,

moustache, and square chin. It felt very hollow there under the

cheekbones. He had not been eating much lately--he had better get that

little whippersnapper who attended Holly to give him a tonic. But she

had come back and when they were in the carriage, he said:

"Suppose we go and sit in Kensington Gardens instead?" and added with a

twinkle: "No prancing up and down there," as if she had been in the

secret of his thoughts.

Leaving the carriage, they entered those select precincts, and strolled

towards the water.

"You've gone back to your maiden name, I see," he said: "I'm not sorry."

She slipped her hand under his arm: "Has June forgiven me, Uncle Jolyon?"

He answered gently: "Yes--yes; of course, why not?"

"And have you?"

"I? I forgave you as soon as I saw how the land really lay." And

perhaps he had; his instinct had always been to forgive the beautiful.

She drew a deep breath. "I never regretted--I couldn't. Did you ever

love very deeply, Uncle Jolyon?"

At that strange question old Jolyon stared before him. Had he? He did

not seem to remember that he ever had. But he did not like to say this

to the young woman whose hand was touching his arm, whose life was

suspended, as it were, by memory of a tragic love. And he thought: 'If I

had met you when I was young I--I might have made a fool of myself,

perhaps.' And a longing to escape in generalities beset him.

"Love's a queer thing," he said, "fatal thing often. It was the

Greeks--wasn't it?--made love into a goddess; they were right, I dare

say, but then they lived in the Golden Age."

"Phil adored them."

Phil! The word jarred him, for suddenly--with his power to see all round

a thing, he perceived why she was putting up with him like this. She

wanted to talk about her lover! Well! If it was any pleasure to her!

And he said: "Ah! There was a bit of the sculptor in him, I fancy."

"Yes. He loved balance and symmetry; he loved the whole-hearted way the

Greeks gave themselves to art."

Balance! The chap had no balance at all, if he remembered; as for

symmetry--clean-built enough he was, no doubt; but those queer eyes of

his, and high cheek-bones--Symmetry?

"You're of the Golden Age, too, Uncle Jolyon."

Old Jolyon looked round at her. Was she chaffing him? No, her eyes were

soft as velvet. Was she flattering him? But if so, why? There was

nothing to be had out of an old chap like him.

"Phil thought so. He used to say: 'But I can never tell him that I

admire him.'"

Ah! There it was again. Her dead lover; her desire to talk of him! And

he pressed her arm, half resentful of those memories, half grateful, as

if he recognised what a link they were between herself and him.

"He was a very talented young fellow," he murmured. "It's hot; I feel

the heat nowadays. Let's sit down."

They took two chairs beneath a chestnut tree whose broad leaves covered

them from the peaceful glory of the afternoon. A pleasure to sit there

and watch her, and feel that she liked to be with him. And the wish to

increase that liking, if he could, made him go on:

"I expect he showed you a side of him I never saw. He'd be at his best

with you. His ideas of art were a little new--to me "--he had stiffed

the word 'fangled.'

"Yes: but he used to say you had a real sense of beauty." Old Jolyon

thought: 'The devil he did!' but answered with a twinkle: "Well, I have,

or I shouldn't be sitting here with you." She was fascinating when she

smiled with her eyes, like that!

"He thought you had one of those hearts that never grow old. Phil had

real insight."

He was not taken in by this flattery spoken out of the past, out of a

longing to talk of her dead lover--not a bit; and yet it was precious to

hear, because she pleased his eyes and heart which--quite true!--had

never grown old. Was that because--unlike her and her dead lover, he had

never loved to desperation, had always kept his balance, his sense of

symmetry. Well! It had left him power, at eighty-four, to admire beauty.

And he thought, 'If I were a painter or a sculptor! But I'm an old chap.

Make hay while the sun shines.'

A couple with arms entwined crossed on the grass before them, at the edge

of the shadow from their tree. The sunlight fell cruelly on their pale,

squashed, unkempt young faces. "We're an ugly lot!" said old Jolyon

suddenly. "It amazes me to see how--love triumphs over that."

"Love triumphs over everything!"

"The young think so," he muttered.

"Love has no age, no limit, and no death."

With that glow in her pale face, her breast heaving, her eyes so large

and dark and soft, she looked like Venus come to life! But this

extravagance brought instant reaction, and, twinkling, he said: "Well, if

it had limits, we shouldn't be born; for by George! it's got a lot to put

up with."

Then, removing his top hat, he brushed it round with a cuff. The great

clumsy thing heated his forehead; in these days he often got a rush of

blood to the head--his circulation was not what it had been.

She still sat gazing straight before her, and suddenly she murmured:

"It's strange enough that I'm alive."

Those words of Jo's 'Wild and lost' came back to him.

"Ah!" he said: "my son saw you for a moment--that day."

"Was it your son? I heard a voice in the hall; I thought for a second it

was--Phil."

Old Jolyon saw her lips tremble. She put her hand over them, took it

away again, and went on calmly: "That night I went to the Embankment; a

woman caught me by the dress. She told me about herself. When one knows

that others suffer, one's ashamed."

"One of those?"

She nodded, and horror stirred within old Jolyon, the horror of one who

has never known a struggle with desperation. Almost against his will he

muttered: "Tell me, won't you?"

"I didn't care whether I lived or died. When you're like that, Fate

ceases to want to kill you. She took care of me three days--she never

left me. I had no money. That's why I do what I can for them, now."

But old Jolyon was thinking: 'No money!' What fate could compare with

that? Every other was involved in it.

"I wish you had come to me," he said. "Why didn't you?" But Irene did

not answer.

"Because my name was Forsyte, I suppose? Or was it June who kept you

away? How are you getting on now?" His eyes involuntarily swept her

body. Perhaps even now she was--! And yet she wasn't thin--not really!

"Oh! with my fifty pounds a year, I make just enough." The answer did

not reassure him; he had lost confidence. And that fellow Soames! But

his sense of justice stifled condemnation. No, she would certainly have

died rather than take another penny from him. Soft as she looked, there

must be strength in her somewhere--strength and fidelity. But what

business had young Bosinney to have got run over and left her stranded

like this!

"Well, you must come to me now," he said, "for anything you want, or I

shall be quite cut up." And putting on his hat, he rose. "Let's go and

get some tea. I told that lazy chap to put the horses up for an hour,

and come for me at your place. We'll take a cab presently; I can't walk

as I used to."

He enjoyed that stroll to the Kensington end of the gardens--the sound of

her voice, the glancing of her eyes, the subtle beauty of a charming form

moving beside him. He enjoyed their tea at Ruffel's in the High Street,

and came out thence with a great box of chocolates swung on his little

finger. He enjoyed the drive back to Chelsea in a hansom, smoking his

cigar. She had promised to come down next Sunday and play to him again,

and already in thought he was plucking carnations and early roses for her

to carry back to town. It was a pleasure to give her a little pleasure,

if it WERE pleasure from an old chap like him! The carriage was already

there when they arrived. Just like that fellow, who was always late when

he was wanted! Old Jolyon went in for a minute to say good-bye. The

little dark hall of the flat was impregnated with a disagreeable odour of

patchouli, and on a bench against the wall--its only furniture--he saw a

figure sitting. He heard Irene say softly: "Just one minute." In the

little drawing-room when the door was shut, he asked gravely: "One of

your protegees?"

"Yes. Now thanks to you, I can do something for her."

He stood, staring, and stroking that chin whose strength had frightened

so many in its time. The idea of her thus actually in contact with this

outcast grieved and frightened him. What could she do for them? Nothing.

Only soil and make trouble for herself, perhaps. And he said: "Take

care, my dear! The world puts the worst construction on everything."

"I know that."

He was abashed by her quiet smile. "Well then--Sunday," he murmured:

"Good-bye."

She put her cheek forward for him to kiss.

"Good-bye," he said again; "take care of yourself." And he went out, not

looking towards the figure on the bench. He drove home by way of

Hammersmith; that he might stop at a place he knew of and tell them to

send her in two dozen of their best Burgundy. She must want picking-up

sometimes! Only in Richmond Park did he remember that he had gone up to

order himself some boots, and was surprised that he could have had so

paltry an idea.

III

The little spirits of the past which throng an old man's days had never

pushed their faces up to his so seldom as in the seventy hours elapsing

before Sunday came. The spirit of the future, with the charm of the

unknown, put up her lips instead. Old Jolyon was not restless now, and

paid no visits to the log, because she was coming to lunch. There is

wonderful finality about a meal; it removes a world of doubts, for no one

misses meals except for reasons beyond control. He played many games

with Holly on the lawn, pitching them up to her who was batting so as to

be ready to bowl to Jolly in the holidays. For she was not a Forsyte,

but Jolly was--and Forsytes always bat, until they have resigned and

reached the age of eighty-five. The dog Balthasar, in attendance, lay on

the ball as often as he could, and the page-boy fielded, till his face

was like the harvest moon. And because the time was getting shorter,

each day was longer and more golden than the last. On Friday night he

took a liver pill, his side hurt him rather, and though it was not the

liver side, there is no remedy like that. Anyone telling him that he had

found a new excitement in life and that excitement was not good for him,

would have been met by one of those steady and rather defiant looks of

his deep-set iron-grey eyes, which seemed to say: 'I know my own business

best.' He always had and always would.

On Sunday morning, when Holly had gone with her governess to church, he

visited the strawberry beds. There, accompanied by the dog Balthasar, he

examined the plants narrowly and succeeded in finding at least two dozen

berries which were really ripe. Stooping was not good for him, and he

became very dizzy and red in the forehead. Having placed the

strawberries in a dish on the dining-table, he washed his hands and

bathed his forehead with eau de Cologne. There, before the mirror, it

occurred to him that he was thinner. What a 'threadpaper' he had been

when he was young! It was nice to be slim--he could not bear a fat chap;

and yet perhaps his cheeks were too thin! She was to arrive by train at

half-past twelve and walk up, entering from the road past Drage's farm at

the far end of the coppice. And, having looked into June's room to see

that there was hot water ready, he set forth to meet her, leisurely, for

his heart was beating. The air smelled sweet, larks sang, and the Grand

Stand at Epsom was visible. A perfect day! On just such a one, no

doubt, six years ago, Soames had brought young Bosinney down with him to

look at the site before they began to build. It was Bosinney who had

pitched on the exact spot for the house--as June had often told him. In

these days he was thinking much about that young fellow, as if his spirit

were really haunting the field of his last work, on the chance of

seeing--her. Bosinney--the one man who had possessed her heart, to whom

she had given her whole self with rapture! At his age one could not, of

course, imagine such things, but there stirred in him a queer vague

aching--as it were the ghost of an impersonal jealousy; and a feeling,

too, more generous, of pity for that love so early lost. All over in a

few poor months! Well, well! He looked at his watch before entering the

coppice--only a quarter past, twenty-five minutes to wait! And then,

turning the corner of the path, he saw her exactly where he had seen her

the first time, on the log; and realised that she must have come by the

earlier train to sit there alone for a couple of hours at least. Two

hours of her society missed! What memory could make that log so dear to

her? His face showed what he was thinking, for she said at once:

"Forgive me, Uncle Jolyon; it was here that I first knew."

"Yes, yes; there it is for you whenever you like. You're looking a

little Londony; you're giving too many lessons."

That she should have to give lessons worried him. Lessons to a parcel of

young girls thumping out scales with their thick fingers.

"Where do you go to give them?" he asked.

"They're mostly Jewish families, luckily."

Old Jolyon stared; to all Forsytes Jews seem strange and doubtful.

"They love music, and they're very kind."

"They had better be, by George!" He took her arm--his side always hurt

him a little going uphill--and said:

"Did you ever see anything like those buttercups? They came like that in

a night."

Her eyes seemed really to fly over the field, like bees after the flowers

and the honey. "I wanted you to see them--wouldn't let them turn the

cows in yet." Then, remembering that she had come to talk about

Bosinney, he pointed to the clock-tower over the stables:

"I expect he wouldn't have let me put that there--had no notion of time,

if I remember."

But, pressing his arm to her, she talked of flowers instead, and he knew

it was done that he might not feel she came because of her dead lover.

"The best flower I can show you," he said, with a sort of triumph, "is my

little sweet. She'll be back from Church directly. There's something

about her which reminds me a little of you," and it did not seem to him

peculiar that he had put it thus, instead of saying: "There's something

about you which reminds me a little of her." Ah! And here she was!

Holly, followed closely by her elderly French governess, whose digestion

had been ruined twenty-two years ago in the siege of Strasbourg, came

rushing towards them from under the oak tree. She stopped about a dozen

yards away, to pat Balthasar and pretend that this was all she had in her

mind. Old Jolyon, who knew better, said:

"Well, my darling, here's the lady in grey I promised you."

Holly raised herself and looked up. He watched the two of them with a

twinkle, Irene smiling, Holly beginning with grave inquiry, passing into

a shy smile too, and then to something deeper. She had a sense of

beauty, that child--knew what was what! He enjoyed the sight of the kiss

between them.

"Mrs. Heron, Mam'zelle Beauce. Well, Mam'zelle--good sermon?"

For, now that he had not much more time before him, the only part of the

service connected with this world absorbed what interest in church

remained to him. Mam'zelle Beauce stretched out a spidery hand clad in a

black kid glove--she had been in the best families--and the rather sad

eyes of her lean yellowish face seemed to ask: "Are you well-brrred?"

Whenever Holly or Jolly did anything unpleasing to her--a not uncommon

occurrence--she would say to them: "The little Tayleurs never did

that--they were such well-brrred little children." Jolly hated the

little Tayleurs; Holly wondered dreadfully how it was she fell so short

of them. 'A thin rum little soul,' old Jolyon thought her--Mam'zelle

Beauce.

Luncheon was a successful meal, the mushrooms which he himself had picked

in the mushroom house, his chosen strawberries, and another bottle of the

Steinberg cabinet filled him with a certain aromatic spirituality, and a

conviction that he would have a touch of eczema to-morrow.

After lunch they sat under the oak tree drinking Turkish coffee. It was

no matter of grief to him when Mademoiselle Beauce withdrew to write her

Sunday letter to her sister, whose future had been endangered in the past

by swallowing a pin--an event held up daily in warning to the children to

eat slowly and digest what they had eaten. At the foot of the bank, on a

carriage rug, Holly and the dog Balthasar teased and loved each other,

and in the shade old Jolyon with his legs crossed and his cigar

luxuriously savoured, gazed at Irene sitting in the swing. A light,

vaguely swaying, grey figure with a fleck of sunlight here and there upon

it, lips just opened, eyes dark and soft under lids a little drooped. She

looked content; surely it did her good to come and see him! The

selfishness of age had not set its proper grip on him, for he could still

feel pleasure in the pleasure of others, realising that what he wanted,

though much, was not quite all that mattered.

"It's quiet here," he said; "you mustn't come down if you find it dull.

But it's a pleasure to see you. My little sweet is the only face which

gives me any pleasure, except yours."

From her smile he knew that she was not beyond liking to be appreciated,

and this reassured him. "That's not humbug," he said. "I never told a

woman I admired her when I didn't. In fact I don't know when I've told a

woman I admired her, except my wife in the old days; and wives are

funny." He was silent, but resumed abruptly:

"She used to expect me to say it more often than I felt it, and there we

were." Her face looked mysteriously troubled, and, afraid that he had

said something painful, he hurried on: "When my little sweet marries, I

hope she'll find someone who knows what women feel. I shan't be here to

see it, but there's too much topsy-turvydom in marriage; I don't want her

to pitch up against that." And, aware that he had made bad worse, he

added: "That dog will scratch."

A silence followed. Of what was she thinking, this pretty creature whose

life was spoiled; who had done with love, and yet was made for love? Some

day when he was gone, perhaps, she would find another mate--not so

disorderly as that young fellow who had got himself run over. Ah! but

her husband?

"Does Soames never trouble you?" he asked.

She shook her head. Her face had closed up suddenly. For all her

softness there was something irreconcilable about her. And a glimpse of

light on the inexorable nature of sex antipathies strayed into a brain

which, belonging to early Victorian civilisation--so much older than this

of his old age--had never thought about such primitive things.

"That's a comfort," he said. "You can see the Grand Stand to-day. Shall

we take a turn round?"

Through the flower and fruit garden, against whose high outer walls peach

trees and nectarines were trained to the sun, through the stables, the

vinery, the mushroom house, the asparagus beds, the rosery, the

summer-house, he conducted her--even into the kitchen garden to see the

tiny green peas which Holly loved to scoop out of their pods with her

finger, and lick up from the palm of her little brown hand. Many

delightful things he showed her, while Holly and the dog Balthasar danced

ahead, or came to them at intervals for attention. It was one of the

happiest afternoons he had ever spent, but it tired him and he was glad

to sit down in the music room and let her give him tea. A special little

friend of Holly's had come in--a fair child with short hair like a boy's.

And the two sported in the distance, under the stairs, on the stairs, and

up in the gallery. Old Jolyon begged for Chopin. She played studies,

mazurkas, waltzes, till the two children, creeping near, stood at the

foot of the piano their dark and golden heads bent forward, listening.

Old Jolyon watched.

"Let's see you dance, you two!"

Shyly, with a false start, they began. Bobbing and circling, earnest,

not very adroit, they went past and past his chair to the strains of that

waltz. He watched them and the face of her who was playing turned

smiling towards those little dancers thinking:

'Sweetest picture I've seen for ages.'

A voice said:

"Hollee! Mais enfin--qu'est-ce que tu fais la--danser, le dimanche!

Viens, donc!"

But the children came close to old Jolyon, knowing that he would save

them, and gazed into a face which was decidedly 'caught out.'

"Better the day, better the deed, Mam'zelle. It's all my doing. Trot

along, chicks, and have your tea."

And, when they were gone, followed by the dog Balthasar, who took every

meal, he looked at Irene with a twinkle and said:

"Well, there we are! Aren't they sweet? Have you any little ones among

your pupils?"

"Yes, three--two of them darlings."

"Pretty?"

"Lovely!"

Old Jolyon sighed; he had an insatiable appetite for the very young. "My

little sweet," he said, "is devoted to music; she'll be a musician some

day. You wouldn't give me your opinion of her playing, I suppose?"

"Of course I will."

"You wouldn't like--" but he stifled the words "to give her lessons." The

idea that she gave lessons was unpleasant to him; yet it would mean that

he would see her regularly. She left the piano and came over to his

chair.

"I would like, very much; but there is--June. When are they coming

back?"

Old Jolyon frowned. "Not till the middle of next month. What does that

matter?"

"You said June had forgiven me; but she could never forget, Uncle

Jolyon."

Forget! She must forget, if he wanted her to.

But as if answering, Irene shook her head. "You know she couldn't; one

doesn't forget."

Always that wretched past! And he said with a sort of vexed finality:

"Well, we shall see."

He talked to her an hour or more, of the children, and a hundred little

things, till the carriage came round to take her home. And when she had

gone he went back to his chair, and sat there smoothing his face and

chin, dreaming over the day.

That evening after dinner he went to his study and took a sheet of paper.

He stayed for some minutes without writing, then rose and stood under the

masterpiece 'Dutch Fishing Boats at Sunset.' He was not thinking of that

picture, but of his life. He was going to leave her something in his

Will; nothing could so have stirred the stilly deeps of thought and

memory. He was going to leave her a portion of his wealth, of his

aspirations, deeds, qualities, work--all that had made that wealth; going

to leave her, too, a part of all he had missed in life, by his sane and

steady pursuit of wealth. All! What had he missed? 'Dutch Fishing

Boats' responded blankly; he crossed to the French window, and drawing

the curtain aside, opened it. A wind had got up, and one of last year's

oak leaves which had somehow survived the gardener's brooms, was dragging

itself with a tiny clicking rustle along the stone terrace in the

twilight. Except for that it was very quiet out there, and he could

smell the heliotrope watered not long since. A bat went by. A bird

uttered its last 'cheep.' And right above the oak tree the first star

shone. Faust in the opera had bartered his soul for some fresh years of

youth. Morbid notion! No such bargain was possible, that was real

tragedy! No making oneself new again for love or life or anything.

Nothing left to do but enjoy beauty from afar off while you could, and

leave it something in your Will. But how much? And, as if he could not

make that calculation looking out into the mild freedom of the country

night, he turned back and went up to the chimney-piece. There were his

pet bronzes--a Cleopatra with the asp at her breast; a Socrates; a

greyhound playing with her puppy; a strong man reining in some horses.

'They last!' he thought, and a pang went through his heart. They had a

thousand years of life before them!

'How much?' Well! enough at all events to save her getting old before her

time, to keep the lines out of her face as long as possible, and grey

from soiling that bright hair. He might live another five years. She

would be well over thirty by then. 'How much?' She had none of his

blood in her! In loyalty to the tenor of his life for forty years and

more, ever since he married and founded that mysterious thing, a family,

came this warning thought--None of his blood, no right to anything! It

was a luxury then, this notion. An extravagance, a petting of an old

man's whim, one of those things done in dotage. His real future was

vested in those who had his blood, in whom he would live on when he was

gone. He turned away from the bronzes and stood looking at the old

leather chair in which he had sat and smoked so many hundreds of cigars.

And suddenly he seemed to see her sitting there in her grey dress,

fragrant, soft, dark-eyed, graceful, looking up at him. Why! She cared

nothing for him, really; all she cared for was that lost lover of hers.

But she was there, whether she would or no, giving him pleasure with her

beauty and grace. One had no right to inflict an old man's company, no

right to ask her down to play to him and let him look at her--for no

reward! Pleasure must be paid for in this world. 'How much?' After

all, there was plenty; his son and his three grandchildren would never

miss that little lump. He had made it himself, nearly every penny; he

could leave it where he liked, allow himself this little pleasure. He

went back to the bureau. 'Well, I'm going to,' he thought, 'let them

think what they like. I'm going to!' And he sat down.

'How much?' Ten thousand, twenty thousand--how much? If only with his

money he could buy one year, one month of youth. And startled by that

thought, he wrote quickly:

'DEAR HERRING,--Draw me a codicil to this effect: "I leave to my niece

Irene Forsyte, born Irene Heron, by which name she now goes, fifteen

thousand pounds free of legacy duty." 'Yours faithfully, 'JOLYON

FORSYTE.'

When he had sealed and stamped the envelope, he went back to the window

and drew in a long breath. It was dark, but many stars shone now.

IV

He woke at half-past two, an hour which long experience had taught him

brings panic intensity to all awkward thoughts. Experience had also

taught him that a further waking at the proper hour of eight showed the

folly of such panic. On this particular morning the thought which

gathered rapid momentum was that if he became ill, at his age not

improbable, he would not see her. From this it was but a step to

realisation that he would be cut off, too, when his son and June returned

from Spain. How could he justify desire for the company of one who had

stolen--early morning does not mince words--June's lover? That lover was

dead; but June was a stubborn little thing; warm-hearted, but stubborn as

wood, and--quite true--not one who forgot! By the middle of next month

they would be back. He had barely five weeks left to enjoy the new

interest which had come into what remained of his life. Darkness showed

up to him absurdly clear the nature of his feeling. Admiration for

beauty--a craving to see that which delighted his eyes.

Preposterous, at his age! And yet--what other reason was there for asking

June to undergo such painful reminder, and how prevent his son and his

son's wife from thinking him very queer? He would be reduced to sneaking

up to London, which tired him; and the least indisposition would cut him

off even from that. He lay with eyes open, setting his jaw against the

prospect, and calling himself an old fool, while his heart beat loudly,

and then seemed to stop beating altogether. He had seen the dawn

lighting the window chinks, heard the birds chirp and twitter, and the

cocks crow, before he fell asleep again, and awoke tired but sane. Five

weeks before he need bother, at his age an eternity! But that early

morning panic had left its mark, had slightly fevered the will of one who

had always had his own way. He would see her as often as he wished! Why

not go up to town and make that codicil at his solicitor's instead of

writing about it; she might like to go to the opera! But, by train, for

he would not have that fat chap Beacon grinning behind his back. Servants

were such fools; and, as likely as not, they had known all the past

history of Irene and young Bosinney--servants knew everything, and

suspected the rest. He wrote to her that morning:

"MY DEAR IRENE,--I have to be up in town to-morrow. If you would like to

have a look in at the opera, come and dine with me quietly ...."

But where? It was decades since he had dined anywhere in London save at

his Club or at a private house. Ah! that new-fangled place close to

Covent Garden....

"Let me have a line to-morrow morning to the Piedmont Hotel whether to

expect you there at 7 o'clock." "Yours affectionately, "JOLYON FORSYTE."

She would understand that he just wanted to give her a little pleasure;

for the idea that she should guess he had this itch to see her was

instinctively unpleasant to him; it was not seemly that one so old should

go out of his way to see beauty, especially in a woman.

The journey next day, short though it was, and the visit to his lawyer's,

tired him. It was hot too, and after dressing for dinner he lay down on

the sofa in his bedroom to rest a little. He must have had a sort of

fainting fit, for he came to himself feeling very queer; and with some

difficulty rose and rang the bell. Why! it was past seven! And there he

was and she would be waiting. But suddenly the dizziness came on again,

and he was obliged to relapse on the sofa. He heard the maid's voice

say:

"Did you ring, sir?"

"Yes, come here"; he could not see her clearly, for the cloud in front of

his eyes. "I'm not well, I want some sal volatile."

"Yes, sir." Her voice sounded frightened.

Old Jolyon made an effort.

"Don't go. Take this message to my niece--a lady waiting in the hall--a

lady in grey. Say Mr. Forsyte is not well--the heat. He is very sorry;

if he is not down directly, she is not to wait dinner."

When she was gone, he thought feebly: 'Why did I say a lady in grey--she

may be in anything. Sal volatile!' He did not go off again, yet was not

conscious of how Irene came to be standing beside him, holding smelling

salts to his nose, and pushing a pillow up behind his head. He heard her

say anxiously: "Dear Uncle Jolyon, what is it?" was dimly conscious of

the soft pressure of her lips on his hand; then drew a long breath of

smelling salts, suddenly discovered strength in them, and sneezed.

"Ha!" he said, "it's nothing. How did you get here? Go down and

dine--the tickets are on the dressing-table. I shall be all right in a

minute."

He felt her cool hand on his forehead, smelled violets, and sat divided

between a sort of pleasure and a determination to be all right.

"Why! You are in grey!" he said. "Help me up." Once on his feet he gave

himself a shake.

"What business had I to go off like that!" And he moved very slowly to

the glass. What a cadaverous chap! Her voice, behind him, murmured:

"You mustn't come down, Uncle; you must rest."

"Fiddlesticks! A glass of champagne'll soon set me to rights. I can't

have you missing the opera."

But the journey down the corridor was troublesome. What carpets they had

in these newfangled places, so thick that you tripped up in them at every

step! In the lift he noticed how concerned she looked, and said with the

ghost of a twinkle:

"I'm a pretty host."

When the lift stopped he had to hold firmly to the seat to prevent its

slipping under him; but after soup and a glass of champagne he felt much

better, and began to enjoy an infirmity which had brought such solicitude

into her manner towards him.

"I should have liked you for a daughter," he said suddenly; and watching

the smile in her eyes, went on:

"You mustn't get wrapped up in the past at your time of life; plenty of

that when you get to my age. That's a nice dress--I like the style."

"I made it myself."

Ah! A woman who could make herself a pretty frock had not lost her

interest in life.

"Make hay while the sun shines," he said; "and drink that up. I want to

see some colour in your cheeks. We mustn't waste life; it doesn't do.

There's a new Marguerite to-night; let's hope she won't be fat. And

Mephisto--anything more dreadful than a fat chap playing the Devil I

can't imagine."

But they did not go to the opera after all, for in getting up from dinner

the dizziness came over him again, and she insisted on his staying quiet

and going to bed early. When he parted from her at the door of the

hotel, having paid the cabman to drive her to Chelsea, he sat down again

for a moment to enjoy the memory of her words: "You are such a darling to

me, Uncle Jolyon!" Why! Who wouldn't be! He would have liked to stay up

another day and take her to the Zoo, but two days running of him would

bore her to death. No, he must wait till next Sunday; she had promised

to come then. They would settle those lessons for Holly, if only for a

month. It would be something. That little Mam'zelle Beauce wouldn't

like it, but she would have to lump it. And crushing his old opera hat

against his chest he sought the lift.

He drove to Waterloo next morning, struggling with a desire to say:

'Drive me to Chelsea.' But his sense of proportion was too strong.

Besides, he still felt shaky, and did not want to risk another aberration

like that of last night, away from home. Holly, too, was expecting him,

and what he had in his bag for her. Not that there was any cupboard love

in his little sweet--she was a bundle of affection. Then, with the

rather bitter cynicism of the old, he wondered for a second whether it

was not cupboard love which made Irene put up with him. No, she was not

that sort either. She had, if anything, too little notion of how to

butter her bread, no sense of property, poor thing! Besides, he had not

breathed a word about that codicil, nor should he--sufficient unto the

day was the good thereof.

In the victoria which met him at the station Holly was restraining the

dog Balthasar, and their caresses made 'jubey' his drive home. All the

rest of that fine hot day and most of the next he was content and

peaceful, reposing in the shade, while the long lingering sunshine

showered gold on the lawns and the flowers. But on Thursday evening at

his lonely dinner he began to count the hours; sixty-five till he would

go down to meet her again in the little coppice, and walk up through the

fields at her side. He had intended to consult the doctor about his

fainting fit, but the fellow would be sure to insist on quiet, no

excitement and all that; and he did not mean to be tied by the leg, did

not want to be told of an infirmity--if there were one, could not afford

to hear of it at his time of life, now that this new interest had come.

And he carefully avoided making any mention of it in a letter to his son.

It would only bring them back with a run! How far this silence was due

to consideration for their pleasure, how far to regard for his own, he

did not pause to consider.

That night in his study he had just finished his cigar and was dozing

off, when he heard the rustle of a gown, and was conscious of a scent of

violets. Opening his eyes he saw her, dressed in grey, standing by the

fireplace, holding out her arms. The odd thing was that, though those

arms seemed to hold nothing, they were curved as if round someone's neck,

and her own neck was bent back, her lips open, her eyes closed. She

vanished at once, and there were the mantelpiece and his bronzes. But

those bronzes and the mantelpiece had not been there when she was, only

the fireplace and the wall! Shaken and troubled, he got up. 'I must

take medicine,' he thought; 'I can't be well.' His heart beat too fast,

he had an asthmatic feeling in the chest; and going to the window, he

opened it to get some air. A dog was barking far away, one of the dogs

at Gage's farm no doubt, beyond the coppice. A beautiful still night,

but dark. 'I dropped off,' he mused, 'that's it! And yet I'll swear my

eyes were open!' A sound like a sigh seemed to answer.

"What's that?" he said sharply, "who's there?"

Putting his hand to his side to still the beating of his heart, he

stepped out on the terrace. Something soft scurried by in the dark.

"Shoo!" It was that great grey cat. 'Young Bosinney was like a great

cat!' he thought. 'It was him in there, that she--that she was--He's got

her still!' He walked to the edge of the terrace, and looked down into

the darkness; he could just see the powdering of the daisies on the

unmown lawn. Here to-day and gone to-morrow! And there came the moon,

who saw all, young and old, alive and dead, and didn't care a dump! His

own turn soon. For a single day of youth he would give what was left!

And he turned again towards the house. He could see the windows of the

night nursery up there. His little sweet would be asleep. 'Hope that

dog won't wake her!' he thought. 'What is it makes us love, and makes us

die! I must go to bed.'

And across the terrace stones, growing grey in the moonlight, he passed

back within.

How should an old man live his days if not in dreaming of his well-spent

past? In that, at all events, there is no agitating warmth, only pale

winter sunshine. The shell can withstand the gentle beating of the

dynamos of memory. The present he should distrust; the future shun. From

beneath thick shade he should watch the sunlight creeping at his toes.

If there be sun of summer, let him not go out into it, mistaking it for

the Indian-summer sun! Thus peradventure he shall decline softly,

slowly, imperceptibly, until impatient Nature clutches his wind-pipe and

he gasps away to death some early morning before the world is aired, and

they put on his tombstone: 'In the fulness of years!' yea! If he

preserve his principles in perfect order, a Forsyte may live on long

after he is dead.

Old Jolyon was conscious of all this, and yet there was in him that which

transcended Forsyteism. For it is written that a Forsyte shall not love

beauty more than reason; nor his own way more than his own health. And

something beat within him in these days that with each throb fretted at

the thinning shell. His sagacity knew this, but it knew too that he

could not stop that beating, nor would if he could. And yet, if you had

told him he was living on his capital, he would have stared you down. No,

no; a man did not live on his capital; it was not done! The shibboleths

of the past are ever more real than the actualities of the present. And

he, to whom living on one's capital had always been anathema, could not

have borne to have applied so gross a phrase to his own case. Pleasure is

healthful; beauty good to see; to live again in the youth of the

young--and what else on earth was he doing!

Methodically, as had been the way of his whole life, he now arranged his

time. On Tuesdays he journeyed up to town by train; Irene came and dined

with him. And they went to the opera. On Thursdays he drove to town,

and, putting that fat chap and his horses up, met her in Kensington

Gardens, picking up the carriage after he had left her, and driving home

again in time for dinner. He threw out the casual formula that he had

business in London on those two days. On Wednesdays and Saturdays she

came down to give Holly music lessons. The greater the pleasure he took

in her society, the more scrupulously fastidious he became, just a

matter-of-fact and friendly uncle. Not even in feeling, really, was he

more--for, after all, there was his age. And yet, if she were late he

fidgeted himself to death. If she missed coming, which happened twice,

his eyes grew sad as an old dog's, and he failed to sleep.

And so a month went by--a month of summer in the fields, and in his

heart, with summer's heat and the fatigue thereof. Who could have

believed a few weeks back that he would have looked forward to his son's

and his grand-daughter's return with something like dread! There was such

a delicious freedom, such recovery of that independence a man enjoys

before he founds a family, about these weeks of lovely weather, and this

new companionship with one who demanded nothing, and remained always a

little unknown, retaining the fascination of mystery. It was like a

draught of wine to him who has been drinking water for so long that he

has almost forgotten the stir wine brings to his blood, the narcotic to

his brain. The flowers were coloured brighter, scents and music and the

sunlight had a living value--were no longer mere reminders of past

enjoyment. There was something now to live for which stirred him

continually to anticipation. He lived in that, not in retrospection; the

difference is considerable to any so old as he. The pleasures of the

table, never of much consequence to one naturally abstemious, had lost

all value. He ate little, without knowing what he ate; and every day

grew thinner and more worn to look at. He was again a 'threadpaper'; and

to this thinned form his massive forehead, with hollows at the temples,

gave more dignity than ever. He was very well aware that he ought to see

the doctor, but liberty was too sweet. He could not afford to pet his

frequent shortness of breath and the pain in his side at the expense of

liberty. Return to the vegetable existence he had led among the

agricultural journals with the life-size mangold wurzels, before this new

attraction came into his life--no! He exceeded his allowance of cigars.

Two a day had always been his rule. Now he smoked three and sometimes

four--a man will when he is filled with the creative spirit. But very

often he thought: 'I must give up smoking, and coffee; I must give up

rattling up to town.' But he did not; there was no one in any sort of

authority to notice him, and this was a priceless boon.

The servants perhaps wondered, but they were, naturally, dumb. Mam'zelle

Beauce was too concerned with her own digestion, and too 'wellbrrred' to

make personal allusions. Holly had not as yet an eye for the relative

appearance of him who was her plaything and her god. It was left for

Irene herself to beg him to eat more, to rest in the hot part of the day,

to take a tonic, and so forth. But she did not tell him that she was the

a cause of his thinness--for one cannot see the havoc oneself is working.

A man of eighty-five has no passions, but the Beauty which produces

passion works on in the old way, till death closes the eyes which crave

the sight of Her.

On the first day of the second week in July he received a letter from his

son in Paris to say that they would all be back on Friday. This had

always been more sure than Fate; but, with the pathetic improvidence

given to the old, that they may endure to the end, he had never quite

admitted it. Now he did, and something would have to be done. He had

ceased to be able to imagine life without this new interest, but that

which is not imagined sometimes exists, as Forsytes are perpetually

finding to their cost. He sat in his old leather chair, doubling up the

letter, and mumbling with his lips the end of an unlighted cigar. After

to-morrow his Tuesday expeditions to town would have to be abandoned. He

could still drive up, perhaps, once a week, on the pretext of seeing his

man of business. But even that would be dependent on his health, for now

they would begin to fuss about him. The lessons! The lessons must go

on! She must swallow down her scruples, and June must put her feelings

in her pocket. She had done so once, on the day after the news of

Bosinney's death; what she had done then, she could surely do again now.

Four years since that injury was inflicted on her--not Christian to keep

the memory of old sores alive. June's will was strong, but his was

stronger, for his sands were running out. Irene was soft, surely she

would do this for him, subdue her natural shrinking, sooner than give him

pain! The lessons must continue; for if they did, he was secure. And

lighting his cigar at last, he began trying to shape out how to put it to

them all, and explain this strange intimacy; how to veil and wrap it away

from the naked truth--that he could not bear to be deprived of the sight

of beauty. Ah! Holly! Holly was fond of her, Holly liked her lessons.

She would save him--his little sweet! And with that happy thought he

became serene, and wondered what he had been worrying about so fearfully.

He must not worry, it left him always curiously weak, and as if but half

present in his own body.

That evening after dinner he had a return of the dizziness, though he did

not faint. He would not ring the bell, because he knew it would mean a

fuss, and make his going up on the morrow more conspicuous. When one

grew old, the whole world was in conspiracy to limit freedom, and for

what reason?--just to keep the breath in him a little longer. He did not

want it at such cost. Only the dog Balthasar saw his lonely recovery

from that weakness; anxiously watched his master go to the sideboard and

drink some brandy, instead of giving him a biscuit. When at last old

Jolyon felt able to tackle the stairs he went up to bed. And, though

still shaky next morning, the thought of the evening sustained and

strengthened him. It was always such a pleasure to give her a good

dinner--he suspected her of undereating when she was alone; and, at the

opera to watch her eyes glow and brighten, the unconscious smiling of her

lips. She hadn't much pleasure, and this was the last time he would be

able to give her that treat. But when he was packing his bag he caught

himself wishing that he had not the fatigue of dressing for dinner before

him, and the exertion, too, of telling her about June's return.

The opera that evening was 'Carmen,' and he chose the last entr'acte to

break the news, instinctively putting it off till the latest moment.

She took it quietly, queerly; in fact, he did not know how she had taken

it before the wayward music lifted up again and silence became necessary.

The mask was down over her face, that mask behind which so much went on

that he could not see. She wanted time to think it over, no doubt! He

would not press her, for she would be coming to give her lesson to-morrow

afternoon, and he should see her then when she had got used to the idea.

In the cab he talked only of the Carmen; he had seen better in the old

days, but this one was not bad at all. When he took her hand to say

good-night, she bent quickly forward and kissed his forehead.

"Good-bye, dear Uncle Jolyon, you have been so sweet to me."

"To-morrow then," he said. "Good-night. Sleep well." She echoed

softly: "Sleep well" and from the cab window, already moving away, he saw

her face screwed round towards him, and her hand put out in a gesture

which seemed to linger.

He sought his room slowly. They never gave him the same, and he could

not get used to these 'spick-and-spandy' bedrooms with new furniture and

grey-green carpets sprinkled all over with pink roses. He was wakeful

and that wretched Habanera kept throbbing in his head.

His French had never been equal to its words, but its sense he knew, if

it had any sense, a gipsy thing--wild and unaccountable. Well, there was

in life something which upset all your care and plans--something which

made men and women dance to its pipes. And he lay staring from deep-sunk

eyes into the darkness where the unaccountable held sway. You thought

you had hold of life, but it slipped away behind you, took you by the

scruff of the neck, forced you here and forced you there, and then,

likely as not, squeezed life out of you! It took the very stars like

that, he shouldn't wonder, rubbed their noses together and flung them

apart; it had never done playing its pranks. Five million people in this

great blunderbuss of a town, and all of them at the mercy of that

Life-Force, like a lot of little dried peas hopping about on a board when

you struck your fist on it. Ah, well! Himself would not hop much

longer--a good long sleep would do him good!

How hot it was up here!--how noisy! His forehead burned; she had kissed

it just where he always worried; just there--as if she had known the very

place and wanted to kiss it all away for him. But, instead, her lips

left a patch of grievous uneasiness. She had never spoken in quite that

voice, had never before made that lingering gesture or looked back at him

as she drove away.

He got out of bed and pulled the curtains aside; his room faced down over

the river. There was little air, but the sight of that breadth of water

flowing by, calm, eternal, soothed him. 'The great thing,' he thought

'is not to make myself a nuisance. I'll think of my little sweet, and go

to sleep.' But it was long before the heat and throbbing of the London

night died out into the short slumber of the summer morning. And old

Jolyon had but forty winks.

When he reached home next day he went out to the flower garden, and with

the help of Holly, who was very delicate with flowers, gathered a great

bunch of carnations. They were, he told her, for 'the lady in grey'--a

name still bandied between them; and he put them in a bowl in his study

where he meant to tackle Irene the moment she came, on the subject of

June and future lessons. Their fragrance and colour would help. After

lunch he lay down, for he felt very tired, and the carriage would not

bring her from the station till four o'clock. But as the hour approached

he grew restless, and sought the schoolroom, which overlooked the drive.

The sun-blinds were down, and Holly was there with Mademoiselle Beauce,

sheltered from the heat of a stifling July day, attending to their

silkworms. Old Jolyon had a natural antipathy to these methodical

creatures, whose heads and colour reminded him of elephants; who nibbled

such quantities of holes in nice green leaves; and smelled, as he

thought, horrid. He sat down on a chintz-covered windowseat whence he

could see the drive, and get what air there was; and the dog Balthasar

who appreciated chintz on hot days, jumped up beside him. Over the

cottage piano a violet dust-sheet, faded almost to grey, was spread, and

on it the first lavender, whose scent filled the room. In spite of the

coolness here, perhaps because of that coolness the beat of life

vehemently impressed his ebbed-down senses. Each sunbeam which came

through the chinks had annoying brilliance; that dog smelled very strong;

the lavender perfume was overpowering; those silkworms heaving up their

grey-green backs seemed horribly alive; and Holly's dark head bent over

them had a wonderfully silky sheen. A marvellous cruelly strong thing

was life when you were old and weak; it seemed to mock you with its

multitude of forms and its beating vitality. He had never, till those

last few weeks, had this curious feeling of being with one half of him

eagerly borne along in the stream of life, and with the other half left

on the bank, watching that helpless progress. Only when Irene was with

him did he lose this double consciousness.

Holly turned her head, pointed with her little brown fist to the

piano--for to point with a finger was not 'well-brrred'--and said slyly:

"Look at the 'lady in grey,' Gran; isn't she pretty to-day?"

Old Jolyon's heart gave a flutter, and for a second the room was clouded;

then it cleared, and he said with a twinkle:

"Who's been dressing her up?"

"Mam'zelle."

"Hollee! Don't be foolish!"

That prim little Frenchwoman! She hadn't yet got over the music lessons

being taken away from her. That wouldn't help. His little sweet was the

only friend they had. Well, they were her lessons. And he shouldn't

budge shouldn't budge for anything. He stroked the warm wool on

Balthasar's head, and heard Holly say: "When mother's home, there won't

be any changes, will there? She doesn't like strangers, you know."

The child's words seemed to bring the chilly atmosphere of opposition

about old Jolyon, and disclose all the menace to his new-found freedom.

Ah! He would have to resign himself to being an old man at the mercy of

care and love, or fight to keep this new and prized companionship; and to

fight tired him to death. But his thin, worn face hardened into

resolution till it appeared all Jaw. This was his house, and his affair;

he should not budge! He looked at his watch, old and thin like himself;

he had owned it fifty years. Past four already! And kissing the top of

Holly's head in passing, he went down to the hall. He wanted to get hold

of her before she went up to give her lesson. At the first sound of

wheels he stepped out into the porch, and saw at once that the victoria

was empty.

"The train's in, sir; but the lady 'asn't come."

Old Jolyon gave him a sharp upward look, his eyes seemed to push away

that fat chap's curiosity, and defy him to see the bitter disappointment

he was feeling.

"Very well," he said, and turned back into the house. He went to his

study and sat down, quivering like a leaf. What did this mean? She might

have lost her train, but he knew well enough she hadn't. 'Good-bye, dear

Uncle Jolyon.' Why 'Good-bye' and not 'Good-night'? And that hand of

hers lingering in the air. And her kiss. What did it mean? Vehement

alarm and irritation took possession of him. He got up and began to pace

the Turkey carpet, between window and wall. She was going to give him

up! He felt it for certain--and he defenceless. An old man wanting to

look on beauty! It was ridiculous! Age closed his mouth, paralysed his

power to fight. He had no right to what was warm and living, no right to

anything but memories and sorrow. He could not plead with her; even an

old man has his dignity. Defenceless! For an hour, lost to bodily

fatigue, he paced up and down, past the bowl of carnations he had

plucked, which mocked him with its scent. Of all things hard to bear,

the prostration of will-power is hardest, for one who has always had his

way. Nature had got him in its net, and like an unhappy fish he turned

and swam at the meshes, here and there, found no hole, no breaking point.

They brought him tea at five o'clock, and a letter. For a moment hope

beat up in him. He cut the envelope with the butter knife, and read:

"DEAREST UNCLE JOLYON,--I can't bear to write anything that may

disappoint you, but I was too cowardly to tell you last night. I feel I

can't come down and give Holly any more lessons, now that June is coming

back. Some things go too deep to be forgotten. It has been such a joy

to see you and Holly. Perhaps I shall still see you sometimes when you

come up, though I'm sure it's not good for you; I can see you are tiring

yourself too much. I believe you ought to rest quite quietly all this

hot weather, and now you have your son and June coming back you will be

so happy. Thank you a million times for all your sweetness to me.

"Lovingly your IRENE."

So, there it was! Not good for him to have pleasure and what he chiefly

cared about; to try and put off feeling the inevitable end of all things,

the approach of death with its stealthy, rustling footsteps. Not good

for him! Not even she could see how she was his new lease of interest in

life, the incarnation of all the beauty he felt slipping from him.

His tea grew cold, his cigar remained unlit; and up and down he paced,

torn between his dignity and his hold on life. Intolerable to be

squeezed out slowly, without a say of your own, to live on when your will

was in the hands of others bent on weighing you to the ground with care

and love. Intolerable! He would see what telling her the truth would

do--the truth that he wanted the sight of her more than just a lingering

on. He sat down at his old bureau and took a pen. But he could not

write. There was something revolting in having to plead like this; plead

that she should warm his eyes with her beauty. It was tantamount to

confessing dotage. He simply could not. And instead, he wrote:

"I had hoped that the memory of old sores would not be allowed to stand

in the way of what is a pleasure and a profit to me and my little

grand-daughter. But old men learn to forego their whims; they are

obliged to, even the whim to live must be foregone sooner or later; and

perhaps the sooner the better. "My love to you, "JOLYON FORSYTE."

'Bitter,' he thought, 'but I can't help it. I'm tired.' He sealed and

dropped it into the box for the evening post, and hearing it fall to the

bottom, thought: 'There goes all I've looked forward to!'

That evening after dinner which he scarcely touched, after his cigar

which he left half-smoked for it made him feel faint, he went very slowly

upstairs and stole into the night-nursery. He sat down on the

window-seat. A night-light was burning, and he could just see Holly's

face, with one hand underneath the cheek. An early cockchafer buzzed in

the Japanese paper with which they had filled the grate, and one of the

horses in the stable stamped restlessly. To sleep like that child! He

pressed apart two rungs of the venetian blind and looked out. The moon

was rising, blood-red. He had never seen so red a moon. The woods and

fields out there were dropping to sleep too, in the last glimmer of the

summer light. And beauty, like a spirit, walked. 'I've had a long life,'

he thought, 'the best of nearly everything. I'm an ungrateful chap; I've

seen a lot of beauty in my time. Poor young Bosinney said I had a sense

of beauty. There's a man in the moon to-night!' A moth went by,

another, another. 'Ladies in grey!' He closed his eyes. A feeling that

he would never open them again beset him; he let it grow, let himself

sink; then, with a shiver, dragged the lids up. There was something

wrong with him, no doubt, deeply wrong; he would have to have the doctor

after all. It didn't much matter now! Into that coppice the moon-light

would have crept; there would be shadows, and those shadows would be the

only things awake. No birds, beasts, flowers, insects; Just the

shadows--moving; 'Ladies in grey!' Over that log they would climb; would

whisper together. She and Bosinney! Funny thought! And the frogs and

little things would whisper too! How the clock ticked, in here! It was

all eerie--out there in the light of that red moon; in here with the

little steady night-light and, the ticking clock and the nurse's

dressing-gown hanging from the edge of the screen, tall, like a woman's

figure. 'Lady in grey!' And a very odd thought beset him: Did she

exist? Had she ever come at all? Or was she but the emanation of all

the beauty he had loved and must leave so soon? The violet-grey spirit

with the dark eyes and the crown of amber hair, who walks the dawn and

the moonlight, and at blue-bell time? What was she, who was she, did she

exist? He rose and stood a moment clutching the window-sill, to give him

a sense of reality again; then began tiptoeing towards the door. He

stopped at the foot of the bed; and Holly, as if conscious of his eyes

fixed on her, stirred, sighed, and curled up closer in defence. He

tiptoed on and passed out into the dark passage; reached his room,

undressed at once, and stood before a mirror in his night-shirt. What a

scarecrow--with temples fallen in, and thin legs! His eyes resisted his

own image, and a look of pride came on his face. All was in league to

pull him down, even his reflection in the glass, but he was not

down--yet! He got into bed, and lay a long time without sleeping, trying

to reach resignation, only too well aware that fretting and

disappointment were very bad for him.

He woke in the morning so unrefreshed and strengthless that he sent for

the doctor. After sounding him, the fellow pulled a face as long as your

arm, and ordered him to stay in bed and give up smoking. That was no

hardship; there was nothing to get up for, and when he felt ill, tobacco

always lost its savour. He spent the morning languidly with the

sun-blinds down, turning and re-turning The Times, not reading much, the

dog Balthasar lying beside his bed. With his lunch they brought him a

telegram, running thus:

'Your letter received coming down this afternoon will be with you at

four-thirty. Irene.'

Coming down! After all! Then she did exist--and he was not deserted.

Coming down! A glow ran through his limbs; his cheeks and forehead felt

hot. He drank his soup, and pushed the tray-table away, lying very quiet

until they had removed lunch and left him alone; but every now and then

his eyes twinkled. Coming down! His heart beat fast, and then did not

seem to beat at all. At three o'clock he got up and dressed

deliberately, noiselessly. Holly and Mam'zelle would be in the

schoolroom, and the servants asleep after their dinner, he shouldn't

wonder. He opened his door cautiously, and went downstairs. In the hall

the dog Balthasar lay solitary, and, followed by him, old Jolyon passed

into his study and out into the burning afternoon. He meant to go down

and meet her in the coppice, but felt at once he could not manage that in

this heat. He sat down instead under the oak tree by the swing, and the

dog Balthasar, who also felt the heat, lay down beside him. He sat there

smiling. What a revel of bright minutes! What a hum of insects, and

cooing of pigeons! It was the quintessence of a summer day. Lovely! And

he was happy--happy as a sand-boy, whatever that might be. She was

coming; she had not given him up! He had everything in life he

wanted--except a little more breath, and less weight--just here! He

would see her when she emerged from the fernery, come swaying just a

little, a violet-grey figure passing over the daisies and dandelions and

'soldiers' on the lawn--the soldiers with their flowery crowns. He would

not move, but she would come up to him and say: 'Dear Uncle Jolyon, I am

sorry!' and sit in the swing and let him look at her and tell her that he

had not been very well but was all right now; and that dog would lick her

hand. That dog knew his master was fond of her; that dog was a good dog.

It was quite shady under the tree; the sun could not get at him, only

make the rest of the world bright so that he could see the Grand Stand at

Epsom away out there, very far, and the cows cropping the clover in the

field and swishing at the flies with their tails. He smelled the scent

of limes, and lavender. Ah! that was why there was such a racket of

bees. They were excited--busy, as his heart was busy and excited.

Drowsy, too, drowsy and drugged on honey and happiness; as his heart was

drugged and drowsy. Summer--summer--they seemed saying; great bees and

little bees, and the flies too!

The stable clock struck four; in half an hour she would be here. He would

have just one tiny nap, because he had had so little sleep of late; and

then he would be fresh for her, fresh for youth and beauty, coming

towards him across the sunlit lawn--lady in grey! And settling back in

his chair he closed his eyes. Some thistle-down came on what little air

there was, and pitched on his moustache more white than itself. He did

not know; but his breathing stirred it, caught there. A ray of sunlight

struck through and lodged on his boot. A bumble-bee alighted and

strolled on the crown of his Panama hat. And the delicious surge of

slumber reached the brain beneath that hat, and the head swayed forward

and rested on his breast. Summer--summer! So went the hum.

The stable clock struck the quarter past. The dog Balthasar stretched

and looked up at his master. The thistledown no longer moved. The dog

placed his chin over the sunlit foot. It did not stir. The dog withdrew

his chin quickly, rose, and leaped on old Jolyon's lap, looked in his

face, whined; then, leaping down, sat on his haunches, gazing up. And

suddenly he uttered a long, long howl.

But the thistledown was still as death, and the face of his old master.

Summer--summer--summer! The soundless footsteps on the grass!

1917

THE END.

STUDIES AND ESSAYS, Complete

By John Galsworthy

CONTENTS:

CONCERNING LIFE, Part 1.

INN OF TRANQUILITY

MAGPIE OVER THE HILL

SHEEP-SHEARING

EVOLUTION

RIDING IN THE MIST

THE PROCESSION

A CHRISTIAN

WIND IN THE ROCKS

MY DISTANT RELATIVE

THE BLACK GODMOTHER

CONCERNING LIFE, Part 2.

QUALITY

THE GRAND JURY

GONE

THRESHING

THAT OLD-TIME PLACE

ROMANCE--THREE GLEAMS

MEMORIES

FELICITY

CONCERNING LETTERS

A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY

SOME PLATITUDES CONCERNING DRAMA

MEDITATION ON FINALITY

WANTED--SCHOOLING

ON OUR DISLIKE OF THINGS AS THEY ARE

THE WINDLESTRAW

CENSORSHIP AND ART

ABOUT CENSORSHIP

VAGUE THOUGHTS ON ART

"Je vous dirai que l'exces est toujours un mal."

--ANATOLE FRANCE

CONCERNING LIFE

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

INN OF TRANQUILITY

MAGPIE OVER THE HILL

SHEEP-SHEARING

EVOLUTION

RIDING IN THE MIST

THE PROCESSION

A CHRISTIAN

WIND IN THE ROCKS

MY DISTANT RELATIVE

THE BLACK GODMOTHER

THE INN OF TRANQUILLITY

Under a burning blue sky, among the pine-trees and junipers, the

cypresses and olives of that Odyssean coast, we came one afternoon on a

pink house bearing the legend: "Osteria di Tranquillita,"; and, partly

because of the name, and partly because we did not expect to find a house

at all in those goat-haunted groves above the waves, we tarried for

contemplation. To the familiar simplicity of that Italian building there

were not lacking signs of a certain spiritual change, for out of the

olive-grove which grew to its very doors a skittle-alley had been formed,

and two baby cypress-trees were cut into the effigies of a cock and hen.

The song of a gramophone, too, was breaking forth into the air, as it

were the presiding voice of a high and cosmopolitan mind. And, lost in

admiration, we became conscious of the odour of a full-flavoured cigar.

Yes--in the skittle-alley a gentleman was standing who wore a bowler hat,

a bright brown suit, pink tie, and very yellow boots. His head was

round, his cheeks fat and well-coloured, his lips red and full under a

black moustache, and he was regarding us through very thick and

half-closed eyelids.

Perceiving him to be the proprietor of the high and cosmopolitan mind, we

accosted him.

"Good-day!" he replied: "I spik English. Been in Amurrica yes."

"You have a lovely place here."

Sweeping a glance over the skittle-alley, he sent forth a long puff of

smoke; then, turning to my companion (of the politer sex) with the air of

one who has made himself perfect master of a foreign tongue, he smiled,

and spoke.

"Too-quiet!"

"Precisely; the name of your inn, perhaps, suggests----"

"I change all that--soon I call it Anglo-American hotel."

"Ah! yes; you are very up-to-date already."

He closed one eye and smiled.

Having passed a few more compliments, we saluted and walked on; and,

coming presently to the edge of the cliff, lay down on the thyme and the

crumbled leaf-dust. All the small singing birds had long been shot and

eaten; there came to us no sound but that of the waves swimming in on a

gentle south wind. The wanton creatures seemed stretching out white arms

to the land, flying desperately from a sea of such stupendous serenity;

and over their bare shoulders their hair floated back, pale in the

sunshine. If the air was void of sound, it was full of scent--that

delicious and enlivening perfume of mingled gum, and herbs, and sweet

wood being burned somewhere a long way off; and a silky, golden warmth

slanted on to us through the olives and umbrella pines. Large wine-red

violets were growing near. On such a cliff might Theocritus have lain,

spinning his songs; on that divine sea Odysseus should have passed. And

we felt that presently the goat-god must put his head forth from behind a

rock.

It seemed a little queer that our friend in the bowler hat should move

and breathe within one short flight of a cuckoo from this home of Pan.

One could not but at first feelingly remember the old Boer saying: "O

God, what things man sees when he goes out without a gun!" But soon the

infinite incongruity of this juxtaposition began to produce within one a

curious eagerness, a sort of half-philosophical delight. It began to seem

too good, almost too romantic, to be true. To think of the gramophone

wedded to the thin sweet singing of the olive leaves in the evening wind;

to remember the scent of his rank cigar marrying with this wild incense;

to read that enchanted name, "Inn of Tranquillity," and hear the bland

and affable remark of the gentleman who owned it--such were, indeed,

phenomena to stimulate souls to speculation. And all unconsciously one

began to justify them by thoughts of the other incongruities of

existence--the strange, the passionate incongruities of youth and age,

wealth and poverty, life and death; the wonderful odd bedfellows of this

world; all those lurid contrasts which haunt a man's spirit till

sometimes he is ready to cry out: "Rather than live where such things can

be, let me die!"

Like a wild bird tracking through the air, one's meditation wandered on,

following that trail of thought, till the chance encounter became

spiritually luminous. That Italian gentleman of the world, with his

bowler hat, his skittle-alley, his gramophone, who had planted himself

down in this temple of wild harmony, was he not Progress itself--the

blind figure with the stomach full of new meats and the brain of raw

notions? Was he not the very embodiment of the wonderful child,

Civilisation, so possessed by a new toy each day that she has no time to

master its use--naive creature lost amid her own discoveries! Was he not

the very symbol of that which was making economists thin, thinkers pale,

artists haggard, statesmen bald--the symbol of Indigestion Incarnate!

Did he not, delicious, gross, unconscious man, personify beneath his

Americo-Italian polish all those rank and primitive instincts, whose

satisfaction necessitated the million miseries of his fellows; all those

thick rapacities which stir the hatred of the humane and thin-skinned!

And yet, one's meditation could not stop there--it was not convenient to

the heart!

A little above us, among the olive-trees, two blue-clothed peasants, man

and woman, were gathering the fruit--from some such couple, no doubt, our

friend in the bowler hat had sprung; more "virile" and adventurous than

his brothers, he had not stayed in the home groves, but had gone forth to

drink the waters of hustle and commerce, and come back--what he was. And

he, in turn, would beget children, and having made his pile out of his

'Anglo-American hotel' would place those children beyond the coarser

influences of life, till they became, perhaps, even as our selves, the

salt of the earth, and despised him. And I thought: "I do not despise

those peasants--far from it. I do not despise myself--no more than

reason; why, then, despise my friend in the bowler hat, who is, after

all, but the necessary link between them and me?" I did not despise the

olive-trees, the warm sun, the pine scent, all those material things

which had made him so thick and strong; I did not despise the golden,

tenuous imaginings which the trees and rocks and sea were starting in my

own spirit. Why, then, despise the skittle-alley, the gramophone, those

expressions of the spirit of my friend in the billy-cock hat? To despise

them was ridiculous!

And suddenly I was visited by a sensation only to be described as a sort

of smiling certainty, emanating from, and, as it were, still tingling

within every nerve of myself, but yet vibrating harmoniously with the

world around. It was as if I had suddenly seen what was the truth of

things; not perhaps to anybody else, but at all events to me. And I felt

at once tranquil and elated, as when something is met with which rouses

and fascinates in a man all his faculties.

"For," I thought, "if it is ridiculous in me to despise my friend--that

perfect marvel of disharmony--it is ridiculous in me to despise anything.

If he is a little bit of continuity, as perfectly logical an expression

of a necessary phase or mood of existence as I myself am, then, surely,

there is nothing in all the world that is not a little bit of continuity,

the expression of a little necessary mood. Yes," I thought, "he and I,

and those olive-trees, and this spider on my hand, and everything in the

Universe which has an individual shape, are all fit expressions of the

separate moods of a great underlying Mood or Principle, which must be

perfectly adjusted, volving and revolving on itself. For if It did not

volve and revolve on Itself, It would peter out at one end or the other,

and the image of this petering out no man with his mental apparatus can

conceive. Therefore, one must conclude It to be perfectly adjusted and

everlasting. But if It is perfectly adjusted and everlasting, we are all

little bits of continuity, and if we are all little bits of continuity it

is ridiculous for one of us to despise another. So," I thought, "I have

now proved it from my friend in the billy-cock hat up to the Universe,

and from the Universe down, back again to my friend."

And I lay on my back and looked at the sky. It seemed friendly to my

thought with its smile, and few white clouds, saffron-tinged like the

plumes of a white duck in sunlight. "And yet," I wondered, "though my

friend and I may be equally necessary, I am certainly irritated by him,

and shall as certainly continue to be irritated, not only by him, but by

a thousand other men and so, with a light heart, you may go on being

irritated with your friend in the bowler hat, you may go on loving those

peasants and this sky and sea. But, since you have this theory of life,

you may not despise any one or any thing, not even a skittle-alley, for

they are all threaded to you, and to despise them would be to blaspheme

against continuity, and to blaspheme against continuity would be to deny

Eternity. Love you cannot help, and hate you cannot help; but contempt

is--for you--the sovereign idiocy, the irreligious fancy!"

There was a bee weighing down a blossom of thyme close by, and underneath

the stalk a very ugly little centipede. The wild bee, with his little

dark body and his busy bear's legs, was lovely to me, and the creepy

centipede gave me shudderings; but it was a pleasant thing to feel so

sure that he, no less than the bee, was a little mood expressing himself

out in harmony with Designs tiny thread on the miraculous quilt. And I

looked at him with a sudden zest and curiosity; it seemed to me that in

the mystery of his queer little creepings I was enjoying the Supreme

Mystery; and I thought: "If I knew all about that wriggling beast, then,

indeed, I might despise him; but, truly, if I knew all about him I should

know all about everything--Mystery would be gone, and I could not bear to

live!"

So I stirred him with my finger and he went away.

"But how"--I thought "about such as do not feel it ridiculous to despise;

how about those whose temperaments and religions show them all things so

plainly that they know they are right and others wrong? They must be in a

bad way!" And for some seconds I felt sorry for them, and was

discouraged. But then I thought: "Not at all--obviously not! For if

they do not find it ridiculous to feel contempt, they are perfectly right

to feel contempt, it being natural to them; and you have no business to

be sorry for them, for that is, after all, only your euphemism for

contempt. They are all right, being the expressions of contemptuous

moods, having religions and so forth, suitable to these moods; and the

religion of your mood would be Greek to them, and probably a matter for

contempt. But this only makes it the more interesting. For though to

you, for instance, it may seem impossible to worship Mystery with one

lobe of the brain, and with the other to explain it, the thought that

this may not seem impossible to others should not discourage you; it is

but another little piece of that Mystery which makes life so wonderful

and sweet."

The sun, fallen now almost to the level of the cliff, was slanting upward

on to the burnt-red pine boughs, which had taken to themselves a quaint

resemblance to the great brown limbs of the wild men Titian drew in his

pagan pictures, and down below us the sea-nymphs, still swimming to

shore, seemed eager to embrace them in the enchanted groves. All was

fused in that golden glow of the sun going down-sea and land gathered

into one transcendent mood of light and colour, as if Mystery desired to

bless us by showing how perfect was that worshipful adjustment, whose

secret we could never know. And I said to myself: "None of those

thoughts of yours are new, and in a vague way even you have thought them

before; but all the same, they have given you some little feeling of

tranquillity."

And at that word of fear I rose and invited my companion to return toward

the town. But as we stealthy crept by the "Osteria di Tranquillita," our

friend in the bowler hat came out with a gun over his shoulder and waved

his hand toward the Inn.

"You come again in two week--I change all that! And now," he added, "I

go to shoot little bird or two," and he disappeared into the golden haze

under the olive-trees.

A minute later we heard his gun go off, and returned homeward with a

prayer.

1910.

MAGPIE OVER THE HILL

I lay often that summer on a slope of sand and coarse grass, close to the

Cornish sea, trying to catch thoughts; and I was trying very hard when I

saw them coming hand in hand.

She was dressed in blue linen, and a little cloud of honey-coloured hair;

her small face had serious eyes the colour of the chicory flowers she was

holding up to sniff at--a clean sober little maid, with a very touching

upward look of trust. Her companion was a strong, active boy of perhaps

fourteen, and he, too, was serious--his deep-set, blacklashed eyes looked

down at her with a queer protective wonder; the while he explained in a

soft voice broken up between two ages, that exact process which bees

adopt to draw honey out of flowers. Once or twice this hoarse but

charming voice became quite fervent, when she had evidently failed to

follow; it was as if he would have been impatient, only he knew he must

not, because she was a lady and younger than himself, and he loved her.

They sat down just below my nook, and began to count the petals of a

chicory flower, and slowly she nestled in to him, and he put his arm

round her. Never did I see such sedate, sweet lovering, so trusting on

her part, so guardianlike on his. They were like, in miniature---though

more dewy,--those sober couples who have long lived together, yet whom

one still catches looking at each other with confidential tenderness, and

in whom, one feels, passion is atrophied from never having been in use.

Long I sat watching them in their cool communion, half-embraced, talking

a little, smiling a little, never once kissing. They did not seem shy of

that; it was rather as if they were too much each other's to think of

such a thing. And then her head slid lower and lower down his shoulder,

and sleep buttoned the lids over those chicory-blue eyes. How careful he

was, then, not to wake her, though I could see his arm was getting stiff!

He still sat, good as gold, holding her, till it began quite to hurt me

to see his shoulder thus in chancery. But presently I saw him draw his

arm away ever so carefully, lay her head down on the grass, and lean

forward to stare at something. Straight in front of them was a magpie,

balancing itself on a stripped twig of thorn-tree. The agitating bird,

painted of night and day, was making a queer noise and flirting one wing,

as if trying to attract attention. Rising from the twig, it circled,

vivid and stealthy, twice round the tree, and flew to another a dozen

paces off. The boy rose; he looked at his little mate, looked at the

bird, and began quietly to move toward it; but uttering again its queer

call, the bird glided on to a third thorn-tree. The boy hesitated

then--but once more the bird flew on, and suddenly dipped over the hill.

I saw the boy break into a run; and getting up quickly, I ran too.

When I reached the crest there was the black and white bird flying low

into a dell, and there the boy, with hair streaming back, was rushing

helter-skelter down the hill. He reached the bottom and vanished into

the dell. I, too, ran down the hill. For all that I was prying and must

not be seen by bird or boy, I crept warily in among the trees to the edge

of a pool that could know but little sunlight, so thickly arched was it

by willows, birch-trees, and wild hazel. There, in a swing of boughs

above the water, was perched no pied bird, but a young, dark-haired girl

with, dangling, bare, brown legs. And on the brink of the black water

goldened, with fallen leaves, the boy was crouching, gazing up at her

with all his soul. She swung just out of reach and looked down at him

across the pool. How old was she, with her brown limbs, and her gleaming,

slanting eyes? Or was she only the spirit of the dell, this elf-thing

swinging there, entwined with boughs and the dark water, and covered with

a shift of wet birch leaves. So strange a face she had, wild, almost

wicked, yet so tender; a face that I could not take my eyes from. Her

bare toes just touched the pool, and flicked up drops of water that fell

on the boy's face.

From him all the sober steadfastness was gone; already he looked as wild

as she, and his arms were stretched out trying to reach her feet. I

wanted to cry to him: "Go back, boy, go back!" but could not; her elf

eyes held me dumb-they looked so lost in their tender wildness.

And then my heart stood still, for he had slipped and was struggling in

deep water beneath her feet. What a gaze was that he was turning up to

her--not frightened, but so longing, so desperate; and hers how

triumphant, and how happy!

And then he clutched her foot, and clung, and climbed; and bending down,

she drew him up to her, all wet, and clasped him in the swing of boughs.

I took a long breath then. An orange gleam of sunlight had flamed in

among the shadows and fell round those two where they swung over the dark

water, with lips close together and spirits lost in one another's, and in

their eyes such drowning ecstasy! And then they kissed! All round me

pool, and leaves, and air seemed suddenly to swirl and melt--I could see

nothing plain! . . . What time passed--I do not know--before their

faces slowly again became visible! His face the sober boy's--was turned

away from her, and he was listening; for above the whispering of leaves a

sound of weeping came from over the hill. It was to that he listened.

And even as I looked he slid down from out of her arms; back into the

pool, and began struggling to gain the edge. What grief and longing in

her wild face then! But she did not wail. She did not try to pull him

back; that elfish heart of dignity could reach out to what was coming, it

could not drag at what was gone. Unmoving as the boughs and water, she

watched him abandon her.

Slowly the struggling boy gained land, and lay there, breathless. And

still that sound of lonely weeping came from over the hill.

Listening, but looking at those wild, mourning eyes that never moved from

him, he lay. Once he turned back toward the water, but fire had died

within him; his hands dropped, nerveless--his young face was all

bewilderment.

And the quiet darkness of the pool waited, and the trees, and those lost

eyes of hers, and my heart. And ever from over the hill came the little

fair maiden's lonely weeping.

Then, slowly dragging his feet, stumbling, half-blinded, turning and

turning to look back, the boy groped his way out through the trees toward

that sound; and, as he went, that dark spirit-elf, abandoned, clasping

her own lithe body with her arms, never moved her gaze from him.

I, too, crept away, and when I was safe outside in the pale evening

sunlight, peered back into the dell. There under the dark trees she was

no longer, but round and round that cage of passion, fluttering and

wailing through the leaves, over the black water, was the magpie,

flighting on its twilight wings.

I turned and ran and ran till I came over the hill and saw the boy and

the little fair, sober maiden sitting together once more on the open

slope, under the high blue heaven. She was nestling her tear-stained

face against his shoulder and speaking already of indifferent things.

And he--he was holding her with his arm and watching over her with eyes

that seemed to see something else.

And so I lay, hearing their sober talk and gazing at their sober little

figures, till I awoke and knew I had dreamed all that little allegory of

sacred and profane love, and from it had returned to reason, knowing no

more than ever which was which.

1912.

SHEEP-SHEARING

From early morning there had been bleating of sheep in the yard, so that

one knew the creatures were being sheared, and toward evening I went

along to see. Thirty or forty naked-looking ghosts of sheep were penned

against the barn, and perhaps a dozen still inhabiting their coats. Into

the wool of one of these bulky ewes the farmer's small, yellow-haired

daughter was twisting her fist, hustling it toward Fate; though pulled

almost off her feet by the frightened, stubborn creature, she never let

go, till, with a despairing cough, the ewe had passed over the threshold

and was fast in the hands of a shearer. At the far end of the barn,

close by the doors, I stood a minute or two before shifting up to watch

the shearing. Into that dim, beautiful home of age, with its great

rafters and mellow stone archways, the June sunlight shone through

loopholes and chinks, in thin glamour, powdering with its very

strangeness the dark cathedraled air, where, high up, clung a fog of old

grey cobwebs so thick as ever were the stalactites of a huge cave. At

this end the scent of sheep and wool and men had not yet routed that home

essence of the barn, like the savour of acorns and withering beech

leaves.

They were shearing by hand this year, nine of them, counting the postman,

who, though farm-bred, "did'n putt much to the shearin'," but had come to

round the sheep up and give general aid.

Sitting on the creatures, or with a leg firmly crooked over their heads,

each shearer, even the two boys, had an air of going at it in his own

way. In their white canvas shearing suits they worked very steadily,

almost in silence, as if drowsed by the "click-clip, click-clip" of the

shears. And the sheep, but for an occasional wriggle of legs or head,

lay quiet enough, having an inborn sense perhaps of the fitness of

things, even when, once in a way, they lost more than wool; glad too,

mayhap, to be rid of their matted vestments. From time to time the

little damsel offered each shearer a jug and glass, but no man drank till

he had finished his sheep; then he would get up, stretch his cramped

muscles, drink deep, and almost instantly sit down again on a fresh

beast. And always there was the buzz of flies swarming in the sunlight

of the open doorway, the dry rustle of the pollarded lime-trees in the

sharp wind outside, the bleating of some released ewe, upset at her own

nakedness, the scrape and shuffle of heels and sheep's limbs on the

floor, together with the "click-clip, click-clip" of the shears.

As each ewe, finished with, struggled up, helped by a friendly shove, and

bolted out dazedly into the pen, I could not help wondering what was

passing in her head--in the heads of all those unceremoniously treated

creatures; and, moving nearer to the postman, I said:

"They're really very good, on the whole."

He looked at me, I thought, queerly.

"Yaas," he answered; "Mr. Molton's the best of them."

I looked askance at Mr. Molton; but, with his knee crooked round a young

ewe, he was shearing calmly.

"Yes," I admitted, "he is certainly good."

"Yaas," replied the postman.

Edging back into the darkness, away from that uncomprehending youth, I

escaped into the air, and passing the remains of last year's stacks under

the tall, toppling elms, sat down in a field under the bank. It seemed to

me that I had food for thought. In that little misunderstanding between

me and the postman was all the essence of the difference between that

state of civilisation in which sheep could prompt a sentiment, and that

state in which sheep could not.

The heat from the dropping sun, not far now above the moorline, struck

full into the ferns and long grass of the bank where I was sitting, and

the midges rioted on me in this last warmth. The wind was barred out, so

that one had the full sweetness of the clover, fast becoming hay, over

which the swallows were wheeling and swooping after flies. And far up,

as it were the crown of Nature's beautiful devouring circle, a buzzard

hawk, almost stationary on the air, floated, intent on something pleasant

below him. A number of little hens crept through the gate one by one,

and came round me. It seemed to them that I was there to feed them; and

they held their neat red or yellow heads to one side and the other,

inquiring with their beady eyes, surprised at my stillness. They were

pretty with their speckled feathers, and as it seemed to me, plump and

young, so that I wondered how many of them would in time feed me.

Finding, however, that I gave them nothing to eat, they went away, and

there arose, in place of their clucking, the thin singing of air passing

through some long tube. I knew it for the whining of my dog, who had

nosed me out, but could not get through the padlocked gate. And as I

lifted him over, I was glad the postman could not see me--for I felt that

to lift a dog over a gate would be against the principles of one for whom

the connection of sheep with good behaviour had been too strange a

thought. And it suddenly rushed into my mind that the time would no doubt

come when the conduct of apples, being plucked from the mother tree,

would inspire us, and we should say: "They're really very good!" And I

wondered, were those future watchers of apple-gathering farther from me

than I, watching sheep-shearing, from the postman? I thought, too, of the

pretty dreams being dreamt about the land, and of the people who dreamed

them. And I looked at that land, covered with the sweet pinkish-green of

the clover, and considered how much of it, through the medium of sheep,

would find its way into me, to enable me to come out here and be eaten by

midges, and speculate about things, and conceive the sentiment of how

good the sheep were. And it all seemed queer. I thought, too, of a world

entirely composed of people who could see the sheen rippling on that

clover, and feel a sort of sweet elation at the scent of it, and I

wondered how much clover would be sown then? Many things I thought of,

sitting there, till the sun sank below the moor line, the wind died off

the clover, and the midges slept. Here and there in the iris-coloured

sky a star crept out; the soft-hooting owls awoke. But still I lingered,

watching how, one after another, shapes and colours died into twilight;

and I wondered what the postman thought of twilight, that inconvenient

state, when things were neither dark nor light; and I wondered what the

sheep were thinking this first night without their coats. Then, slinking

along the hedge, noiseless, unheard by my sleeping spaniel, I saw a tawny

dog stealing by. He passed without seeing us, licking his lean chops.

"Yes, friend," I thought, "you have been after something very unholy; you

have been digging up buried lamb, or some desirable person of that kind!"

Sneaking past, in this sweet night, which stirred in one such sentiment,

that ghoulish cur was like the omnivorousness of Nature. And it came to

me, how wonderful and queer was a world which embraced within it, not

only this red gloating dog, fresh from his feast on the decaying flesh of

lamb, but all those hundreds of beings in whom the sight of a fly with

one leg shortened produced a quiver of compassion. For in this savage,

slinking shadow, I knew that I had beheld a manifestation of divinity no

less than in the smile of the sky, each minute growing more starry. With

what Harmony--I thought--can these two be enwrapped in this round world

so fast that it cannot be moved! What secret, marvellous, all-pervading

Principle can harmonise these things! And the old words 'good' and

'evil' seemed to me more than ever quaint.

It was almost dark, and the dew falling fast; I roused my spaniel to go

in.

Over the high-walled yard, the barns, the moon-white porch, dusk had

brushed its velvet. Through an open window came a roaring sound. Mr.

Molton was singing "The Happy Warrior," to celebrate the finish of the

shearing. The big doors into the garden, passed through, cut off the

full sweetness of that song; for there the owls were already masters of

night with their music.

On the dew-whitened grass of the lawn, we came on a little dark beast.

My spaniel, liking its savour, stood with his nose at point; but, being

called off, I could feel him obedient, still quivering, under my hand.

In the field, a wan huddle in the blackness, the dismantled sheep lay

under a holly hedge. The wind had died; it was mist-warm.

1910

EVOLUTION

Coming out of the theatre, we found it utterly impossible to get a

taxicab; and, though it was raining slightly, walked through Leicester

Square in the hope of picking one up as it returned down Piccadilly.

Numbers of hansoms and four-wheelers passed, or stood by the curb,

hailing us feebly, or not even attempting to attract our attention, but

every taxi seemed to have its load. At Piccadilly Circus, losing

patience, we beckoned to a four-wheeler and resigned ourselves to a long,

slow journey. A sou'-westerly air blew through the open windows, and

there was in it the scent of change, that wet scent which visits even the

hearts of towns and inspires the watcher of their myriad activities with

thought of the restless Force that forever cries: "On, on!" But

gradually the steady patter of the horse's hoofs, the rattling of the

windows, the slow thudding of the wheels, pressed on us so drowsily that

when, at last, we reached home we were more than half asleep. The fare

was two shillings, and, standing in the lamplight to make sure the coin

was a half-crown before handing it to the driver, we happened to look up.

This cabman appeared to be a man of about sixty, with a long, thin face,

whose chin and drooping grey moustaches seemed in permanent repose on the

up-turned collar of his old blue overcoat. But the remarkable features

of his face were the two furrows down his cheeks, so deep and hollow that

it seemed as though that face were a collection of bones without coherent

flesh, among which the eyes were sunk back so far that they had lost

their lustre. He sat quite motionless, gazing at the tail of his horse.

And, almost unconsciously, one added the rest of one's silver to that

half-crown. He took the coins without speaking; but, as we were turning

into the garden gate, we heard him say:

"Thank you; you've saved my life."

Not knowing, either of us, what to reply to such a curious speech, we

closed the gate again and came back to the cab.

"Are things so very bad?"

"They are," replied the cabman. "It's done with--is this job. We're not

wanted now." And, taking up his whip, he prepared to drive away.

"How long have they been as bad as this?"

The cabman dropped his hand again, as though glad to rest it, and

answered incoherently:

"Thirty-five year I've been drivin' a cab."

And, sunk again in contemplation of his horse's tail, he could only be

roused by many questions to express himself, having, as it seemed, no

knowledge of the habit.

"I don't blame the taxis, I don't blame nobody. It's come on us, that's

what it has. I left the wife this morning with nothing in the house.

She was saying to me only yesterday: 'What have you brought home the last

four months?' 'Put it at six shillings a week,' I said. 'No,' she said,

'seven.' Well, that's right--she enters it all down in her book."

"You are really going short of food?"

The cabman smiled; and that smile between those two deep hollows was

surely as strange as ever shone on a human face.

"You may say that," he said. "Well, what does it amount to? Before I

picked you up, I had one eighteen-penny fare to-day; and yesterday I took

five shillings. And I've got seven bob a day to pay for the cab, and

that's low, too. There's many and many a proprietor that's broke and

gone--every bit as bad as us. They let us down as easy as ever they can;

you can't get blood from a stone, can you?" Once again he smiled. "I'm

sorry for them, too, and I'm sorry for the horses, though they come out

best of the three of us, I do believe."

One of us muttered something about the Public.

The cabman turned his face and stared down through the darkness.

"The Public?" he said, and his voice had in it a faint surprise. "Well,

they all want the taxis. It's natural. They get about faster in them,

and time's money. I was seven hours before I picked you up. And then you

was lookin' for a taxi. Them as take us because they can't get better,

they're not in a good temper, as a rule. And there's a few old ladies

that's frightened of the motors, but old ladies aren't never very free

with their money--can't afford to be, the most of them, I expect."

"Everybody's sorry for you; one would have thought that----"

He interrupted quietly: "Sorrow don't buy bread . . . . I never had

nobody ask me about things before." And, slowly moving his long face

from side to side, he added: "Besides, what could people do? They can't

be expected to support you; and if they started askin' you questions

they'd feel it very awkward. They know that, I suspect. Of course,

there's such a lot of us; the hansoms are pretty nigh as bad off as we

are. Well, we're gettin' fewer every day, that's one thing."

Not knowing whether or no to manifest sympathy with this extinction, we

approached the horse. It was a horse that "stood over" a good deal at

the knee, and in the darkness seemed to have innumerable ribs. And

suddenly one of us said: "Many people want to see nothing but taxis on

the streets, if only for the sake of the horses."

The cabman nodded.

"This old fellow," he said, "never carried a deal of flesh. His grub

don't put spirit into him nowadays; it's not up to much in quality, but

he gets enough of it."

"And you don't?"

The cabman again took up his whip.

"I don't suppose," he said without emotion, "any one could ever find

another job for me now. I've been at this too long. It'll be the

workhouse, if it's not the other thing."

And hearing us mutter that it seemed cruel, he smiled for the third time.

"Yes," he said slowly, "it's a bit 'ard on us, because we've done nothing

to deserve it. But things are like that, so far as I can see. One thing

comes pushin' out another, and so you go on. I've thought about it--you

get to thinkin' and worryin' about the rights o' things, sittin' up here

all day. No, I don't see anything for it. It'll soon be the end of us

now--can't last much longer. And I don't know that I'll be sorry to have

done with it. It's pretty well broke my spirit."

"There was a fund got up."

"Yes, it helped a few of us to learn the motor-drivin'; but what's the

good of that to me, at my time of life? Sixty, that's my age; I'm not

the only one--there's hundreds like me. We're not fit for it, that's the

fact; we haven't got the nerve now. It'd want a mint of money to help

us. And what you say's the truth--people want to see the end of us.

They want the taxis--our day's over. I'm not complaining; you asked me

about it yourself."

And for the third time he raised his whip.

"Tell me what you would have done if you had been given your fare and

just sixpence over?"

The cabman stared downward, as though puzzled by that question.

"Done? Why, nothing. What could I have done?"

"But you said that it had saved your life."

"Yes, I said that," he answered slowly; "I was feelin' a bit low. You

can't help it sometimes; it's the thing comin' on you, and no way out of

it--that's what gets over you. We try not to think about it, as a rule."

And this time, with a "Thank you, kindly!" he touched his horse's flank

with the whip. Like a thing aroused from sleep the forgotten creature

started and began to draw the cabman away from us. Very slowly they

travelled down the road among the shadows of the trees broken by

lamplight. Above us, white ships of cloud were sailing rapidly across

the dark river of sky on the wind which smelled of change. And, after

the cab was lost to sight, that wind still brought to us the dying sound

of the slow wheels.

1910.

RIDING IN MIST

Wet and hot, having her winter coat, the mare exactly matched the

drenched fox-coloured beech-leaf drifts. As was her wont on such misty

days, she danced along with head held high, her neck a little arched, her

ears pricked, pretending that things were not what they seemed, and now

and then vigorously trying to leave me planted on the air. Stones which

had rolled out of the lane banks were her especial goblins, for one such

had maltreated her nerves before she came into this ball-room world, and

she had not forgotten.

There was no wind that day. On the beech-trees were still just enough of

coppery leaves to look like fires lighted high-up to air the eeriness;

but most of the twigs, pearled with water, were patterned very naked

against universal grey. Berries were few, except the pink spindle one,

so far the most beautiful, of which there were more than Earth generally

vouchsafes. There was no sound in the deep lanes, none of that sweet,

overhead sighing of yesterday at the same hour, but there was a quality

of silence--a dumb mist murmuration. We passed a tree with a proud

pigeon sitting on its top spire, quite too heavy for the twig delicacy

below; undisturbed by the mare's hoofs or the creaking of saddle leather,

he let us pass, absorbed in his world of tranquil turtledoves. The mist

had thickened to a white, infinitesimal rain-dust, and in it the trees

began to look strange, as though they had lost one another. The world

seemed inhabited only by quick, soundless wraiths as one trotted past.

Close to a farm-house the mare stood still with that extreme suddenness

peculiar to her at times, and four black pigs scuttled by and at once

became white air. By now we were both hot and inclined to cling closely

together and take liberties with each other; I telling her about her

nature, name, and appearance, together with comments on her manners; and

she giving forth that sterterous, sweet snuffle, which begins under the

star on her forehead. On such days she did not sneeze, reserving those

expressions of her joy for sunny days and the crisp winds. At a forking

of the ways we came suddenly on one grey and three brown ponies, who

shied round and flung away in front of us, a vision of pretty heads and

haunches tangled in the thin lane, till, conscious that they were beyond

their beat, they faced the bank and, one by one, scrambled over to join

the other ghosts out on the dim common.

Dipping down now over the road, we passed hounds going home. Pied,

dumb-footed shapes, padding along in that soft-eyed, remote world of

theirs, with a tall riding splash of red in front, and a tall splash of

riding red behind. Then through a gate we came on to the moor, amongst

whitened furze. The mist thickened. A curlew was whistling on its

invisible way, far up; and that wistful, wild calling seemed the very

voice of the day. Keeping in view the glint of the road, we galloped;

rejoicing, both of us, to be free of the jog jog of the lanes.

And first the voice of the curlew died; then the glint of the road

vanished; and we were quite alone. Even the furze was gone; no shape of

anything left, only the black, peaty ground, and the thickening mist. We

might as well have been that lonely bird crossing up there in the blind

white nothingness, like a human spirit wandering on the undiscovered moor

of its own future.

The mare jumped a pile of stones, which appeared, as it were, after we

had passed over; and it came into my mind that, if we happened to strike

one of the old quarry pits, we should infallibly be killed. Somehow,

there was pleasure in this thought, that we might, or might not, strike

that old quarry pit. The blood in us being hot, we had pure joy in

charging its white, impalpable solidity, which made way, and at once

closed in behind us. There was great fun in this yard-by-yard discovery

that we were not yet dead, this flying, shelterless challenge to whatever

might lie out there, five yards in front. We felt supremely above the

wish to know that our necks were safe; we were happy, panting in the

vapour that beat against our faces from the sheer speed of our galloping.

Suddenly the ground grew lumpy and made up-hill. The mare slackened

pace; we stopped. Before us, behind, to right and left, white vapour.

No sky, no distance, barely the earth. No wind in our faces, no wind

anywhere. At first we just got our breath, thought nothing, talked a

little. Then came a chillness, a faint clutching over the heart. The

mare snuffled; we turned and made down-hill. And still the mist

thickened, and seemed to darken ever so little; we went slowly, suddenly

doubtful of all that was in front. There came into our minds visions, so

distant in that darkening vapour, of a warm stall and manger of oats; of

tea and a log fire. The mist seemed to have fingers now, long, dark

white, crawling fingers; it seemed, too, to have in its sheer silence a

sort of muttered menace, a shuddery lurkingness, as if from out of it

that spirit of the unknown, which in hot blood we had just now so

gleefully mocked, were creeping up at us, intent on its vengeance. Since

the ground no longer sloped, we could not go down-hill; there were no

means left of telling in what direction we were moving, and we stopped to

listen. There was no sound, not one tiny noise of water, wind in trees,

or man; not even of birds or the moor ponies. And the mist darkened. The

mare reached her head down and walked on, smelling at the heather; every

time she sniffed, one's heart quivered, hoping she had found the way.

She threw up her head, snorted, and stood still; and there passed just in

front of us a pony and her foal, shapes of scampering dusk, whisked like

blurred shadows across a sheet. Hoof-silent in the long heather--as ever

were visiting ghosts--they were gone in a flash. The mare plunged

forward, following. But, in the feel of her gallop, and the feel of my

heart, there was no more that ecstasy of facing the unknown; there was

only the cold, hasty dread of loneliness. Far asunder as the poles were

those two sensations, evoked by this same motion. The mare swerved

violently and stopped. There, passing within three yards, from the same

direction as before, the soundless shapes of the pony and her foal flew

by again, more intangible, less dusky now against the darker screen.

Were we, then, to be haunted by those bewildering uncanny ones, flitting

past ever from the same direction? This time the mare did not follow, but

stood still; knowing as well as I that direction was quite lost. Soon,

with a whimper, she picked her way on again, smelling at the heather.

And the mist darkened!

Then, out of the heart of that dusky whiteness, came a tiny sound; we

stood, not breathing, turning our heads. I could see the mare's eye

fixed and straining at the vapour. The tiny sound grew till it became

the muttering of wheels. The mare dashed forward. The muttering ceased

untimely; but she did not stop; turning abruptly to the left, she slid,

scrambled, and dropped into a trot. The mist seemed whiter below us; we

were on the road. And involuntarily there came from me a sound, not

quite a shout, not quite an oath. I saw the mare's eye turn back,

faintly derisive, as who should say: Alone I did it! Then slowly,

comfortably, a little ashamed, we jogged on, in the mood of men and

horses when danger is over. So pleasant it seemed now, in one short

half-hour, to have passed through the circle-swing of the emotions, from

the ecstasy of hot recklessness to the clutching of chill fear. But the

meeting-point of those two sensations we had left out there on the

mysterious moor! Why, at one moment, had we thought it finer than

anything on earth to risk the breaking of our necks; and the next,

shuddered at being lost in the darkening mist with winter night fast

coming on?

And very luxuriously we turned once more into the lanes, enjoying the

past, scenting the future. Close to home, the first little eddy of wind

stirred, and the song of dripping twigs began; an owl hooted, honey-soft,

in the fog. We came on two farm hands mending the lane at the turn of

the avenue, and, curled on the top of the bank, their cosy red collie

pup, waiting for them to finish work for the day. He raised his sharp

nose and looked at us dewily. We turned down, padding softly in the wet

fox-red drifts under the beechtrees, whereon the last leaves still

flickered out in the darkening whiteness, that now seemed so little

eerie. We passed the grey-green skeleton of the farm-yard gate. A hen

ran across us, clucking, into the dusk. The maze drew her long,

home-coming snuffle, and stood still.

1910.

THE PROCESSION

In one of those corners of our land canopied by the fumes of blind

industry, there was, on that day, a lull in darkness. A fresh wind had

split the customary heaven, or roof of hell; was sweeping long drifts of

creamy clouds across a blue still pallid with reek. The sun even

shone--a sun whose face seemed white and wondering. And under that rare

sun all the little town, among its slag heaps and few tall chimneys, had

an air of living faster. In those continuous courts and alleys, where

the women worked, smoke from each little forge rose and dispersed into

the wind with strange alacrity; amongst the women, too, there was that

same eagerness, for the sunshine had crept in and was making pale all

those dark-raftered, sooted ceilings which covered them in, together with

their immortal comrades, the small open furnaces. About their work they

had been busy since seven o'clock; their feet pressing the leather lungs

which fanned the conical heaps of glowing fuel, their hands poking into

the glow a thin iron rod till the end could be curved into a fiery hook;

snapping it with a mallet; threading it with tongs on to the chain;

hammering, closing the link; and; without a second's pause, thrusting the

iron rod again into the glow. And while they worked they chattered,

laughed sometimes, now and then sighed. They seemed of all ages and all

types; from her who looked like a peasant of Provence, broad, brown, and

strong, to the weariest white consumptive wisp; from old women of

seventy, with straggling grey hair, to fifteen-year-old girls. In the

cottage forges there would be but one worker, or two at most; in the shop

forges four, or even five, little glowing heaps; four or five of the

grimy, pale lung-bellows; and never a moment without a fiery hook about

to take its place on the growing chains, never a second when the thin

smoke of the forges, and of those lives consuming slowly in front of

them, did not escape from out of the dingy, whitewashed spaces past the

dark rafters, away to freedom.

But there had been in the air that morning something more than the white

sunlight. There had been anticipation. And at two o'clock began

fulfilment. The forges were stilled, and from court and alley forth came

the women. In their ragged working clothes, in their best clothes--so

little different; in bonnets, in hats, bareheaded; with babies born and

unborn, they swarmed into the high street and formed across it behind the

band. A strange, magpie, jay-like flock; black, white, patched with

brown and green and blue, shifting, chattering, laughing, seeming

unconscious of any purpose. A thousand and more of them, with faces

twisted and scored by those myriad deformings which a desperate

town-toiling and little food fasten on human visages; yet with hardly a

single evil or brutal face. Seemingly it was not easy to be evil or

brutal on a wage that scarcely bound soul and body. A thousand and more

of the poorest-paid and hardest-worked human beings in the world.

On the pavement alongside this strange, acquiescing assembly of revolt,

about to march in protest against the conditions of their lives, stood a

young woman without a hat and in poor clothes, but with a sort of beauty

in her rough-haired, high cheek-boned, dark-eyed face. She was not one

of them; yet, by a stroke of Nature's irony, there was graven on her face

alone of all those faces, the true look of rebellion; a haughty, almost

fierce, uneasy look--an untamed look. On all the other thousand faces

one could see no bitterness, no fierceness, not even enthusiasm; only a

half-stolid, half-vivacious patience and eagerness as of children going

to a party.

The band played; and they began to march.

Laughing, talking, waving flags, trying to keep step; with the same

expression slowly but surely coming over every face; the future was not;

only the present--this happy present of marching behind the discordance

of a brass band; this strange present of crowded movement and laughter in

open air.

We others--some dozen accidentals like myself, and the tall, grey-haired

lady interested in "the people," together with those few kind spirits in

charge of "the show"--marched too, a little self-conscious, desiring with

a vague military sensation to hold our heads up, but not too much, under

the eyes of the curious bystanders. These--nearly all men--were

well-wishers, it was said, though their faces, pale from their own work

in shop or furnace, expressed nothing but apathy. They wished well, very

dumbly, in the presence of this new thing, as if they found it queer that

women should be doing something for themselves; queer and rather

dangerous. A few, indeed, shuffled along between the column and the

little hopeless shops and grimy factory sheds, and one or two accompanied

their women, carrying the baby. Now and then there passed us some

better-to-do citizen-a housewife, or lawyer's clerk, or ironmonger, with

lips pressed rather tightly together and an air of taking no notice of

this disturbance of traffic, as though the whole thing were a rather poor

joke which they had already heard too often.

So, with laughter and a continual crack of voices our jay-like crew swung

on, swaying and thumping in the strange ecstasy of irreflection, happy to

be moving they knew not where, nor greatly why, under the visiting sun,

to the sound of murdered music. Whenever the band stopped playing,

discipline became as tatterdemalion as the very flags and garments; but

never once did they lose that look of essential order, as if indeed they

knew that, being the worst-served creatures in the Christian world, they

were the chief guardians of the inherent dignity of man.