Swan Song

Chapter I. INITIATION OF THE CANTEEN

In modern Society, one thing after another, this spice on that, ensures a kind of memoristic vacuum, and Fleur Mont’s passage of arms with Marjorie Ferrar was, by the spring of 1926, well-nigh forgotten. Moreover, she gave Society’s memory no encouragement, for, after her tour round the world, she was interested in the Empire—a bent so out of fashion as to have all the flavour and excitement of novelty with a sort of impersonality guaranteed.

Colonials, Americans, and Indian students, people whom nobody could suspect of being lions, now encountered each other in the ‘bimetallic parlour,’ and were found by Fleur ‘very interesting,’ especially the Indian students, so supple and enigmatic, that she could never tell whether she were ‘using’ them or they were ‘using’ her.

Perceiving the extraordinarily uphill nature of Foggartism, she had been looking for a second string to Michael’s Parliamentary bow, and, with her knowledge of India, where she had spent six weeks of her tour, she believed that she had found it in the idea of free entrance for the Indians into Kenya. In her talks with these Indian students, she learned that it was impossible to walk in a direction unless you knew what it was. These young men might be complicated and unpractical, meditative and secret, but at least they appeared to be convinced that the molecules in an organism mattered less than the organism itself—that they, in fact, mattered less than India. Fleur, it seemed, had encountered faith—a new and “intriguing” experience. She mentioned the fact to Michael.

“It’s all very well,” he answered, “but our Indian friends didn’t live for four years in the trenches, or the fear thereof, for the sake of their faith. If they had, they couldn’t possibly have the feeling that it matters as much as they think it does. They might want to, but their feelers would be blunted. That’s what the war really did to all of us in Europe who were in the war.”

“That doesn’t make ‘faith’ any less interesting,” said Fleur, drily.

“Well, my dear, the prophets abuse us for being at loose ends, but can you have faith in a life force so darned extravagant that it makes mince-meat of you by the million? Take it from me, Victorian times fostered a lot of very cheap and easy faith, and our Indian friends are in the same case—their India has lain doggo since the Mutiny, and that was only a surface upheaval. So you needn’t take ’em too seriously.”

“I don’t; but I like the way they believe they’re serving India.”

And at his smile she frowned, seeing that he thought she was only increasing her collection.

Her father-inlaw, who had really made some study of orientalism, lifted his eyebrow over these new acquaintances.

“My oldest friend,” he said, on the first of May, “is a judge in India. He’s been there forty years. When he’d been there two, he wrote to me that he was beginning to know something about the Indians. When he’d been there ten, he wrote that he knew all about them. I had a letter from him yesterday, and he says that after forty years he knows nothing about them. And they know as little about us. East and West—the circulation of the blood is different.”

“Hasn’t forty years altered the circulation of your friend’s blood?”

“Not a jot,” replied Sir Lawrence. “It takes forty generations. Give me another cup of your nice Turkish coffee, my dear. What does Michael say about the general strike?”

“That the Government won’t budge unless the T. U. C. withdraw the notice unreservedly.”

“Exactly! And but for the circulation of English blood there’d be ‘a pretty mess,’ as old Forsyte would say.”

“Michael’s sympathies are with the miners.”

“So are mine, young lady. Excellent fellow, the miner—but unfortunately cursed with leaders. The mine-owners are in the same case. Those precious leaders are going to grind the country’s nose before they’ve done. Inconvenient product—coal; it’s blackened our faces, and now it’s going to black our eyes. Not a merry old soul! Well, good-bye! My love to Kit, and tell Michael to keep his head.”

This was precisely what Michael was trying to do. When ‘the Great War’ broke out, though just old enough to fight, he had been too young to appreciate the fatalism which creeps over human nature with the approach of crisis. He was appreciating it now before ‘the Great Strike,’ together with the peculiar value which the human being attaches to saving face. He noticed that both sides had expressed the intention of meeting the other side in every way, without, of course, making any concessions whatever; that the slogans, ‘Longer hours, less wages,’ ‘Not a minute more, not a bob off,’ curtsied, and got more and more distant as they neared each other. And now, with the ill-disguised impatience of his somewhat mercurial nature, Michael was watching the sober and tentative approaches of the typical Britons in whose hands any chance of mediation lay. When, on that memorable Monday, not merely the faces of the gentlemen with slogans, but the very faces of the typical Britons, were suddenly confronted with the need for being saved, he knew that all was up; and, returning from the House of Commons at midnight, he looked at his sleeping wife. Should he wake Fleur and tell her that the country was “for it,” or should he not? Why spoil her beauty sleep? She would know soon enough. Besides, she wouldn’t take it seriously. Passing into his dressing-room, he stood looking out of the window at the dark square below. A general strike at twelve hours’ notice! ‘Some’ test of the British character! The British character? Suspicion had been dawning on Michael for years that its appearances were deceptive; that members of Parliament, theatre-goers, trotty little ladies with dresses tight blown about trotty little figures, plethoric generals in armchairs, pettish and petted poets, parsons in pulpits, posters in the street—above all, the Press, were not representative of the national disposition. If the papers were not to come out, one would at least get a chance of feeling and seeing British character; owing to the papers, one never had seen or felt it clearly during the war, at least not in England. In the trenches, of course, one had—there, sentiment and hate, advertisement and moonshine, had been ‘taboo,’ and with a grim humour the Briton had just ‘carried on,’ unornamental and sublime, in the mud and the blood, the stink and the racket, and the endless nightmare of being pitchforked into fire without rhyme or reason! The Briton’s defiant humour that grew better as things grew worse, would—he felt—get its chance again now. And, turning from the window, he undressed and went back into the bedroom.

Fleur was awake.

“Well, Michael?”

“The strike’s on.”

“What a bore!”

“Yes; we shall have to exert ourselves.”

“What did they appoint that Commission for, and pay all that subsidy, if not to avoid this?”

“My clear girl, that’s mere common-sense—no good at all.”

“Why can’t they come to an agreement?”

“Because they’ve got to save face. Saving face is the strongest motive in the world.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, it caused the war; it’s causing the strike now; without ‘saving face’ there’d probably be no life on the earth at all by this time.”

“Don’t be absurd!”

Michael kissed her.

“I suppose you’ll have to do something,” she said, sleepily. “There won’t be much to talk about in the House while this is on.”

“No; we shall sit and glower at each other, and use the word ‘formula’ at stated intervals.”

“I wish we had a Mussolini.”

“I don’t. You pay for him in the long run. Look at Diaz and Mexico; or Lenin and Russia; or Napoleon and France; or Cromwell and England, for the matter of that.”

“Charles the Second,” murmured Fleur into her pillow, “was rather a dear.”

Michael stayed awake a little, disturbed by the kiss, slept a little, woke again. To save face! No one would make a move because of their faces. For nearly an hour he lay trying to think out a way of saving them all, then fell asleep. He woke at seven with the feeling that he had wasted his time. Under the appearance of concern for the country, and professions of anxiety to find a ‘formula,’ too many personal feelings, motives, and prejudices were at work. As before the war, there was a profound longing for the humiliation and dejection of the adversary; each wished his face saved at the expense of the other fellow’s!

He went out directly after breakfast.

People and cars were streaming in over Westminster Bridge, no ‘buses ran, no trams; but motor lorries, full or empty, rumbled past. Some ‘specials’ were out already, and emaciated men were selling an emaciated print called The British Gazette. Everybody wore an air of defiant jollity. Michael moved on towards Hyde Park. Over night had sprung up this amazing ordered mish-mash of lorries and cans and tents! In the midst of all the mental and imaginative lethargy which had produced this national crisis—what a wonderful display of practical and departmental energy! ‘They say we can’t organise!’ thought Michael; ‘can’t we just—AFTER THE EVENT!’

He went on to a big railway station. It was picketed, but they were running trains already, with volunteer labour. Poking round, he talked here and there among the volunteers. ‘By George!’ he thought, ‘these fellows’ll want feeding! What about a canteen?’ And he returned post haste to South Square.

Fleur was in.

“Will you help me run a railway canteen for volunteers?” He saw the expression, ‘Is that a good stunt?’ rise on her face, and hurried on:

“It’ll mean frightfully hard work; and getting anybody we can to help. I daresay I could rope in Norah Curfew and her gang from Bethnal Green for a start. But it’s your quick head that’s wanted, and your way with men.”

Fleur smiled. “All right,” she said.

They took the car—a present from Soames on their return from round the world—and went about, picking people up and dropping them again. They recruited Norah Curfew and ‘her gang’ in Bethnal Green; and during this first meeting of Fleur with one whom she had been inclined to suspect as something of a rival, Michael noted how, within five minutes, she had accepted Norah Curfew as too ‘good’ to be dangerous. He left them at South Square in conference over culinary details, and set forth to sap the natural opposition of officialdom. It was like cutting barbed wire on a dark night before an ‘operation.’ He cut a good deal, and went down to the ‘House.’ Humming with unformulated ‘formulas,’ it was, on the whole, the least cheerful place he had been in that day. Everyone was talking of the ‘menace to the Constitution.’ The Government’s long face was longer than ever, and nothing—they said—could be done until it had been saved. The expressions ‘Freedom of the Press’ and ‘At the pistol’s mouth,’ were being used to the point of tautology! He ran across Mr. Blythe brooding in the Lobby on the temporary decease of his beloved Weekly, and took him over to South Square ‘for a bite’ at nine o’clock. Fleur had come in for the same purpose. According to Mr. Blythe, the solution was to ‘form a group’ of right-thinking opinion.

“Exactly, Blythe! But what is right-thinking, at ‘the present time of speaking’?”

“It all comes back to Foggartism,” said Mr. Blythe.

“Oh!” said Fleur, “I do wish you’d both drop that. Nobody will have anything to say to it. You might as well ask the people of today to live like St. Francis d’Assisi.”

“My dear young lady, suppose St. Francis d’Assisi had said that, we shouldn’t be hearing today of St. Francis.”

“Well, what real effect has he had? He’s just a curiosity. All those great spiritual figures are curiosities. Look at Tolstoi now, or Christ, for that matter!”

“Fleur’s rather right, Blythe.”

“Blasphemy!” said Mr. Blythe.

“I don’t know, Blythe; I’ve been looking at the gutters lately, and I’ve come to the conclusion that they put a stopper on Foggartism. Watch the children there, and you’ll see how attractive gutters are! So long as a child can have a gutter, he’ll never leave it. And, mind you, gutters are a great civilising influence. We have more gutters here than any other country and more children brought up in them; and we’re the most civilised people in the world. This strike’s going to prove that. There’ll be less bloodshed and more good humour than there could be anywhere else; all due to the gutter.”

“Renegade!” said Mr. Blythe.

“Well,” said Michael, “Foggartism, like all religions, is the over-expression of a home truth. We’ve been too wholesale, Blythe. What converts have we made?”

“None,” said Mr. Blythe. “But if we can’t take children from the gutter, Foggartism is no more.”

Michael wriggled; and Fleur said promptly: “What never was can’t be no more. Are you coming with me to see the kitchens, Michael—they’ve been left in a filthy state. How does one deal with beetles on a large scale?”

“Get a beetle-man—sort of pied piper, who lures them to their fate.”

Arrived on the premises of the canteen-to-be, they were joined by Ruth La Fontaine, of Norah Curfew’s ‘gang,’ and descended to the dark and odorous kitchen. Michael struck a match, and found the switch. Gosh! In the light, surprised, a brown-black scuttling swarm covered the floor, the walls, the tables. Michael had just sufficient control of his nerves to take in the faces of those three—Fleur’s shuddering frown, Mr. Blythe’s open mouth, the dark and pretty Ruth La Fontaine’s nervous smile. He felt Fleur clutch his arm.

“How DISGUSTING!”

The disturbed creatures were finding their holes or had ceased to scuttle; here and there, a large one, isolated, seemed to watch them.

“Imagine!” cried Fleur. “And food’s been cooked here all these years! Ugh!”

“After all,” said Ruth La Fontaine, with a shivery giggle, “they’re not so b-bad as b-bugs.”

Mr. Blythe puffed hard at his cigar. Fleur muttered:

“What’s to be done, Michael?”

Her face was pale; she was drawing little shuddering breaths; and Michael was thinking: ‘It’s too bad; I must get her out of this!’ when suddenly she seized a broom and rushed at a large beetle on the wall. In a minute they were all at it—swabbing and sweeping, and flinging open doors and windows.

Chapter II. ON THE ‘PHONE

Winifred Dartie had not received her Morning Post. Now in her sixty-eighth year, she had not followed too closely the progress of events which led up to the general strike—they were always saying things in the papers, and you never knew what was true; those Trades Union people, too, were so interfering, that really one had no patience. Besides, the Government always did something in the end. Acting, however, on the advice of her brother Soames, she had filled her cellars with coal and her cupboards with groceries, and by ten o’clock on the second morning of the strike, was seated comfortably at the telephone.

“Is that you, Imogen? Are you and Jack coming for me this evening?”

“No, Mother. Jack’s sworn in, of course. He has to be on duty at five. Besides, they say the theatres will close. We’ll go later. ‘Dat Lubly Lady’s’ sure to run.”

“Very well, dear. But what a fuss it all is! How are the boys?”

“Awfully fit. They’re both going to be little ‘specials.’ I’ve made them tiny badges. D’you think the child’s department at Harridge’s would have toy truncheons?”

“Sure to, if it goes on. I shall be there today; I’ll suggest it. They’d look too sweet, wouldn’t they? Are you all right for coal?”

“Oh, yes. Jack says we mustn’t hoard. He’s fearfully patriotic.”

“Well, good-bye, dear! My love to the boys!”

She had just begun to consider whom she should call up next when the telephone bell rang.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Val Dartie living there?”

“No. Who is it speaking?”

“My name is Stainford. I’m an old college friend of his. Could you give me his address, please?”

Stainford? It conveyed nothing.

“I’m his mother. My son is not in town; but I dare say he will be before long. Can I give him any message?”

“Well, thanks! I want to see him. I’ll ring up again; or take my chance later. Thanks!”

Winifred replaced the receiver.

Stainford! The voice was distinguished. She hoped it had nothing to do with money. Odd, how often distinction was connected with money! Or, rather, with the lack of it. In the old Park Lane days they had known so many fashionables who had ended in the bankruptcy or divorce courts. Emily—her mother—had never been able to resist distinction. That had been the beginning of Monty—he had worn such perfect waistcoats and gardenias, and had known so much about all that was fast—impossible not to be impressed by him. Ah, well! She did not regret him now. Without him she would never have had Val, or Imogen’s two boys, or Benedict (almost a colonel), though she never saw him now, living, as he did, in Guernsey, to grow cucumbers, away from the income tax. They might say what they liked about the age, but could it really be more up-to-date than it was in the ‘nineties and the early years of the century, when income tax was at a shilling, and that considered high! People now just ran about and talked, to disguise the fact that they were not so ‘chic’ and up-to-date as they used to be.

Again the telephone bell rang. “Will you take a trunk call from Wansdon?…”

“Hallo! That you, Mother?”

“Oh, Val, how nice! Isn’t this strike absurd?”

“Silly asses! I say: we’re coming up.”

“Really, dear. But why? You’ll be so much more comfortable in the country.”

“Holly says we’ve got to do things. Who d’you think turned up last night? – her brother—young Jon Forsyte. Left his wife and mother in Paris—said he’d missed the war and couldn’t afford to miss this. Been travelling all the winter—Egypt, Italy, and that—chucked America, I gather. Says he wants to do something dirty—going to stoke an engine. We’re driving up to the Bristol this afternoon.”

“Oh, but why not come to me, dear, I’ve got plenty of everything?”

“Well, there’s young Jon—I don’t think—”

“But he’s a nice boy, isn’t he?”

“Uncle Soames isn’t with you, is he?”

“No, dear. He’s at Mapledurham. Oh, and by the way, Val, someone has just rung up for you—a Mr. Stainford.”

“Stainford? What! Aubrey Stainford—I haven’t seen him since Oxford.”

“He said he would ring up again or take his chance of finding you here.”

“Oh, I’d love to see old Stainford again. Well, if you don’t mind putting us up, Mother. Can’t leave young Jon out, you know—he and Holly are very thick after six years; but I expect he’ll be out all the time.”

“Oh, that’ll be quite all right, dear; and how is Holly?”

“Topping.”

“And the horses?”

“All right. I’ve got a snorting two-year-old, rather backward. Shan’t run him till Goodwood, but he ought to win then.”

“That’ll be delightful. Well, dear boy, I’ll expect you. But you won’t be doing anything rash, with your leg?”

“No; just drive a ‘bus, perhaps. Won’t last, you know. The Government’s all ready. Pretty hot stuff. We’ve GOT ’em this time.”

“I’m so glad. It’ll be such a good thing to have it over; it’s dreadfully bad for the season. Your uncle will be very upset.”

An indistinguishable sound; then Val’s voice again:

“I say, Holly says SHE’LL want a job—you might ask young Mont. He’s in with people. See you soon, then—good-bye!”

Replacing the receiver, Winifred had scarcely risen from the satinwood chair on which she had been seated, when the bell rang again.

“Mrs. Dartie?… That you, Winifred? Soames speaking. What did I tell you?”

“Yes; it’s very annoying, dear. But Val says it’ll soon be over.”

“What’s he know about it?”

“He’s very shrewd.”

“Shrewd? H’m! I’m coming up to Fleur’s.”

“But, why, Soames? I should have thought—”

“Must be on the spot, in case of—accidents. Besides, the car’ll be eating its head off down here—may as well be useful. Do that fellow Riggs good to be sworn in. This thing may lead to anything.”

“Oh! Do you think—”

“Think? It’s no joke. Comes of playing about with subsidies.”

“But you told me last summer—”

“They don’t look ahead. They’ve got no more nous than a tom-cat. Annette wants to go to her mother’s in France. I shan’t stop her. She can’t gad about while this is on. I shall take her to Dover with the car today, and come up tomorrow.”

“Ought one to sell anything, Soames?”

“Certainly not.”

“People seem dreadfully busy about it all. Val’s going to drive a ‘bus. Oh! and, Soames—that young Jon Forsyte is back. He’s left his wife and mother in Paris, and come over to be a stoker.”

A deep sound, and then:

“What’s he want to do that for? Much better keep out of England.”

“Ye-es. I suppose Fleur—”

“Don’t you go putting things into HER head!”

“Of course not, Soames. So I shall see you? Good-bye.”

Dear Soames was always so fussy about Fleur! Young Jon Forsyte and she—of course—but that was ages ago! Calf love! And Winifred smiled, sitting very still. This strike was really most ‘intriguing.’ So long as they didn’t break any windows—because, of course, the milk supply would be all right, the Government always saw to that; and as to the newspapers—well, after all, they were a luxury! It would be very nice to have Val and Holly. The strike was really something to talk about; there had been nothing so exciting since the war. And, obeying an obscure instinct to do something about it, Winifred again took up the receiver. “Give me Westminster 0000… Is that Mrs. Michael Mont’s? Fleur? Aunt Winifred speaking. How are you, dear?”

The voice which answered had that quick little way of shaping words that was so amusing to Winifred, who in her youth had perfected a drawl, which effectually dominated both speed and emotion. All the young women in Society nowadays spoke like Fleur, as if they had found the old way of speaking English slow and flat, and were gingering it with little pinches.

“Perfectly all right, thanks. Anything I can do for you, Auntie?”

“Yes, my dear—your cousin Val and Holly are coming up to me about this strike. And Holly—I think it’s very unnecessary, but she wants to DO something. She thought perhaps Michael would know—”

“Oh, well, of course there are lots of things. We’ve started a canteen for railway workers; perhaps she’d like to help in that.”

“My dear, that would be awfully nice.”

“It won’t, Aunt Winifred; it’s pretty strenuous.”

“It can’t last, dear, of course. Parliament are bound to do something about it. It must be a great comfort to you to have all the news at first-hand. Then, may I send Holly to you?”

“But of course. She’ll be very useful. At her age she’d better do supplies, I think, instead of standing about, serving. I get on with her all right. The great thing is to have people that get on together, and don’t fuss. Have you heard from Father?”

“Yes; he’s coming up to you tomorrow.”

“Oh! But why?”

“He says he must be on the spot, in case of—”

“That’s so silly. Never mind. It’ll make two cars.”

“Holly will have hers, too. Val’s going to drive a ‘bus, he says—and—er—young—well, dear, that’s all! My love to Kit. There are a tremendous lot of milk-cans in the Park already, Smither says. She went out this morning into Park Lane to have a look. It’s all rather thrilling, don’t you think?”

“At the House they say it’ll mean another shilling on the income tax before it’s over.”

“Oh, dear!”

At this moment a voice said: “Have they answered?” And, replacing the receiver, Winifred again sat, placid. Park Lane! From the old house there—home of her youth—one would have had a splendid view of everything—quite the headquarters! But how dreadfully the poor old Pater would have felt it! James! She seemed to see him again with his plaid over his shoulders, and his nose glued to a window-pane, trying to cure with the evidence of his old grey eyes the fatal habit they all had of not telling him anything. She still had some of his wine. And Warmson, their old butler, still kept ‘The Pouter Pigeon,’ on the river at Moulsbridge. He always sent her a Stilton cheese at Christmas, with a memorandum of the exact amount of the old Park Lane port she was to pour into it. His last letter had ended thus:

The old sort of servant! And now she had Smither, from Timothy’s, Cook having died—so mysteriously, or, as Smither put it: “Of hornwee, ma’am, I verily believe, missing Mr. Timothy as we did”—Smither as a sort of supercargo—didn’t they call it, on ships? – and really very capable, considering she was sixty, if a day, and the way her corsets creaked. After all, to be with the family again was a great comfort to the poor old soul—eight years younger than Winifred, who, like a true Forsyte, looked down on the age of others from the platform of perennial youth. And a comfort, too, to have about the house one who remembered Monty in his prime—Montague Dartie, so long dead now, that he had a halo as yellow as his gills had so often been. Poor, dear Monty! Was it really forty-seven years since she married him, and came to live in Green Street? How well those satinwood chairs with the floral green design on their top rails, had worn—furniture of times before this seven-hour day and all the rest of it! People thought about their work then, and not about the cinema! And Winifred, who had never had any work to think about, sighed. It had all been great fun—and, if they could only get this little fuss over, the coming season would be most enjoyable. She had seats already for almost everything. Her hand slipped down to what she was sitting on. Yes, she had only had those chairs re-covered twice in all her forty-seven years in Green Street, and, really, they were quite respectable still. True! no one ever sat on them now, because they were straight up without arms; and in these days, of course, everybody sprawled, so restless, too, that no chair could stand it. She rose to judge the degree of respectability beneath her, tilting the satinwood chair forward. The year Monty died they had been re-covered last—1913, just before the war. Really that had been a marvellous piece of grey-green silk!

Chapter III. HOME-COMING

Jon Forsyte’s sensations on landing at Newhaven, by the last possible boat, after five and a half years’ absence, had been most peculiar. All the way by car to Wansdon under the Sussex Downs he was in a sort of excited dream. England! What wonderful chalk, what wonderful green! What an air of having been there for ever! The sudden dips into villages, the old bridges, the sheep, the beech clumps! And the cuckoo—not heard for six years! A poet, somewhat dormant of late, stirred within this young man. Delicious old country! Anne would be crazy about this countryside—it was so beautifully finished. When the general strike was over she could come along, and he would show her everything. In the meantime she would be all right with his mother in Paris, and he would be free for any job he could get. He remembered this bit, and Chanctonbury Ring up there, and his walk over from Worthing. He remembered very well. Fleur! His brother-inlaw, Francis Wilmot, had come back from England with much to say about Fleur; she was very modern now, and attractive, and had a boy. How deeply one could be in love; and how completely get over it! Considering what his old feelings down here had been, it was strange but pleasant to be just simply eager to see Holly and ‘old Val.’

Beyond a telegram from Dieppe he had made no announcement of his coming; but they would surely be here because of the horses. He would like to have a look at Val’s racing stable, and get a ride, perhaps, on the Downs before taking on a strike job. If only Anne were with him, and they could have that ride together! And Jon thought of his first ride with Anne in the South Carolinian woods—that ride from which they had neither of them recovered. There it was! The jolly old house! And here at the door—Holly herself! And at sight of his half-sister, slim and dark-haired in a lilac dress, Jon was visited by a stabbing memory of their father as he had looked that dreadful afternoon, lying dead in the old armchair at Robin Hill. Dad—always lovable—and so good to him!

“Jon! How wonderful to see you!”

Her kiss, he remembered, had always lighted on his eyebrow—she hadn’t changed a bit. A half-sister was nicer than a full-sister, after all. With full-sisters you were almost bound to fight a little.

“What a pity you couldn’t bring Anne and your mother! But perhaps it’s just as well, till this is over. You look quite English still, Jon; and your mouth’s as nice and wide as ever. Why do Americans and naval men have such small mouths?”

“Sense of duty, I think. How’s Val?”

“Oh, Val’s all right. You haven’t lost your smile. D’you remember your old room?”

“Rather. And how are you, Holly?”

“So-so. I’ve become a writer, Jon.”

“Splendid!”

“Not at all. Hard labour and no reward.”

“Oh!”

“The first book was born too still for anything. A sort of ‘African Farm,’ without the spiritual frills—if you remember it.”

“Rather! But I always left the frills out.”

“Yes, we get our objection to frills from the Dad, Jon. He said to me once, ‘It’ll end in our calling all matter spirit or all spirit matter—I don’t know which.’”

“It won’t,” said Jon; “people love to divide things up. I say, I remember every stick in this room. How are the horses? Can I have a look at them and a ride tomorrow?”

“We’ll go forth early and see them at exercise. We’ve only got three two-year-olds, but one of them’s most promising.”

“Fine! After that I must go up and get a good, dirty job. I should like to stoke an engine. I’ve always wanted to know how stokers feel.”

“We’ll all go. We can stay with Val’s mother. It is so lovely to see you, Jon. Dinner’s in half an hour.”

Jon lingered five minutes at his window. That orchard in full bloom—not mathematically planted, like his just-sold North Carolinian peach-trees—was as lovely as on that long-ago night when he chased Fleur therein. That was the beauty of England—nothing was planned! How home-sick he had been over there; yes, and his mother, too! He would never go back! How wonderful that sea of apple blossom! Cuckoo again!… That alone was worth coming home for. He would find a place and grow fruit, down in the West, Worcestershire or Somerset, or near here—they grew a lot of figs and things at Worthing, he remembered. Turning out his suit-case, he began to dress. Just where he was sitting now, pulling on his American socks, had he sat when Fleur was showing him her Goya dress. Who would have believed then that, six years later, he would want Anne, not Fleur, beside him on this bed! The gong! Dabbing at his hair, bright and stivery, he straightened his tie and ran down.

Val’s views on the strike, Val’s views on everything, shrewd and narrow as his horseman’s face! Those Labour johnnies were up against it this time with a vengeance; they’d have to heel up before it was over. How had Jon liked the Yanks? Had he seen ‘Man of War’? No? Good Lord! The thing best worth seeing in America! Was the grass in Kentucky really blue? Only from the distance? Oh! What were they going to abolish over there next? Wasn’t there a place down South where you were only allowed to cohabit under the eyes of the town watch? Parliament here were going to put a tax on betting; why not introduce the ‘Tote’ and have done with it? Personally he didn’t care, he’d given up betting! And he glanced at Holly. Jon, too, glanced at her lifted brows and slightly parted lips—a charming face—ironical and tolerant! She drove Val with silken reins!

Val went on: Good job Jon had given up America; if he must farm out of England, why not South Africa, under the poor old British flag; though the Dutch weren’t done with yet! A tough lot! They had gone out there, of course, so bright and early that they were real settlers—none of your adventurers, failures-at-home, remittancemen. He didn’t like the beggars, but they were stout fellows, all the same. Going to stay in England? Good! What about coming in with them and breeding racing stock?

After an awkward little silence, Holly said slyly:

“Jon doesn’t think that’s quite a man’s job, Val.”

“Why not?”

“Luxury trade.”

“Blood stock—where would horses be without it?”

“Very tempting,” said Jon. “I’d like an interest in it. But I’d want to grow fruit and things for a main line.”

“All right, my son; you can grow the apples they eat on Sundays.”

“You see, Jon,” said Holly, “nobody believes in growing anything in England. We talk about it more and more, and do it less and less. Do you see any change in Jon, Val?”

The cousins exchanged a stare.

“A bit more solid; nothing American, anyway.”

Holly murmured thoughtfully: “Why can one always tell an American?”

“Why can one always tell an Englishman?” said Jon.

“Something guarded, my dear. But a national look’s the most difficult thing in the world to define. Still, you can’t mistake the American expression.”

“I don’t believe you’ll take Anne for one.”

“Describe her, Jon.”

“No. Wait till you see her.”

When, after dinner, Val was going his last round of the stables, Jon said:

“Do you ever see Fleur, Holly?”

“I haven’t for eighteen months, I should think. I like her husband; he’s an awfully good sort. You were well out of that, Jon. She isn’t your kind—not that she isn’t charming; but she has to be plumb centre of the stage. I suppose you knew that, really.”

Jon looked at her and did not answer. “Of course,” murmured Holly, “when one’s in love, one doesn’t know much.”

Up in his room again, the house began to be haunted. Into it seemed to troop all his memories, of Fleur, of Robin Hill—old trees of his boyhood, his father’s cigars, his mother’s flowers and music; the nursery of his games, Holly’s nursery before him, with its window looking out over the clock tower above the stables, the room where latterly he had struggled with rhyme. In through his open bedroom window came the sweet-scented air—England’s self—from the loom of the Downs in the moon-scattered dusk, this first night of home for more than two thousand nights. With Robin Hill sold, this was the nearest he had to home in England now. But they must make one of their own—he and Anne. Home! On the English liner he had wanted to embrace the stewards and stewardesses just because they spoke an English accent. It was, still, as music to his ears. Anne would pick it up faster now—she was very receptive! He had liked the Americans, but he was glad Val had said there was nothing American about him. An owl hooted. What a shadow that barn cast—how soft and old its angle! He got into bed. Sleep—if he wanted to be up to see the horses exercised! Once before, here, he had got up early—for another purpose! And soon he slept; and a form—was it Anne’s, was it Fleur’s, – wandered in the corridors of his dreams.

Chapter IV. SOAMES GOES UP TO TOWN

Having seen his wife off from Dover on the Wednesday, Soames Forsyte motored towards town. On the way he decided to make a considerable detour and enter London over Hammersmith, the furthest westerly bridge in reason. There was for him a fixed connection between unpleasantness and the East End, in times of industrial disturbance. And feeling that, if he encountered a threatening proletariat, he would insist on going through with it, he acted in accordance with the other side of a Forsyte’s temperament, and looked ahead. Thus it was that he found his car held up in Hammersmith Broadway by the only threatening conduct of the afternoon. A number of persons had collected to interfere with a traffic of which they did not seem to approve. After sitting forward, to say to his chauffeur, “You’d better go round, Riggs,” Soames did nothing but sit back. The afternoon was fine, and the car—a landaulette—open, so that he had a good view of the total impossibility of “going round.” Just like that fellow Riggs to have run bang into this! A terrific pack of cars crammed with people trying to run out of town; a few cars like his own, half empty, trying to creep past them into town; a motor-omnibus, not overturned precisely, but with every window broken, standing half across the road; and a number of blank-looking people eddying and shifting before a handful of constables! Such were the phenomena which Soames felt the authorities ought to be handling better.

The words, “Look at the blighted plutocrat!” assailed his ears; and in attempting to see the plutocrat in question, he became aware that it was himself. The epithets were unjust! He was modestly attired in a brown overcoat and soft felt hat; that fellow Riggs was plain enough in all conscience, and the car was an ordinary blue. True, he was alone in it, and all the other cars seemed full of people; but he did not see how he was to get over that, short of carrying into London persons desirous of going in the opposite direction. To shut the car, at all events, would look too pointed—so there was nothing for it but to sit still and take no notice! For this occupation no one could have been better framed by Nature than Soames, with his air of slightly despising creation. He sat, taking in little but his own nose, with the sun shining on his neck behind, and the crowd eddying round the police. Such violence as had been necessary to break the windows of the ‘bus had ceased, and the block was rather what might have been caused by the Prince of Wales. With every appearance of not encouraging it by seeming to take notice, Soames was observing the crowd. And a vacant-looking lot they were, in his opinion; neither their eyes nor their hands had any of that close attention to business which alone made revolutionary conduct formidable. Youths, for the most part, with cigarettes drooping from their lips—they might have been looking at a fallen horse.

People were born gaping nowadays. And a good thing, too! Cinemas, fags, and football matches—there would be no real revolution while they were on hand; and as there seemed to be more and more on hand every year, he was just feeling that the prospect was not too bleak, when a young woman put her head over the window of his car.

“Could you take me in to town?”

Soames automatically consulted his watch. The hands pointing to seven o’clock gave him extraordinarily little help. Rather a smartly-dressed young woman, with a slight cockney accent and powder on her nose! That fellow Riggs would never have done grinning. And yet he had read in the British Gazette that everybody was doing it. Rather gruffly he said:

“I suppose so. Where do you want to go?”

“Oh, Leicester Square would do me all right.”

Great Scott!

The young woman seemed to sense his emotion. “You see,” she said, “I got to get something to eat before my show.”

Moreover, she was getting in! Soames nearly got out. Restraining himself, he gave her a sidelong look; actress or something—young—round face, made up, naturally—nose a little snub—eyes grey, rather goggly—‘mouth—h’m, pretty mouth, slightly common! Shingled—of course.

“It’s awfly kind of you!”

“Not at all!” said Soames; and the car moved.

“Think it’s going to last, the strike?”

Soames leaned forward.

“Go on, Riggs,” he said; “and put this young lady down in-er—Coventry Street.”

“It’s frightf’ly awk for us, all this,” said the young lady. “I should never’ve got there in time. You seen our show, ‘Dat Lubly Lady’?”

“No.”

“It’s rather good.”

“Oh!”

“We shall have to close, though, if this lasts.”

“Ah!”

The young lady was silent, seeming to recognise that she was not in the presence of a conversationalist.

Soames re-crossed his legs. It was so long since he had spoken to a strange young woman, that he had almost forgotten how it was done. He did not want to encourage her, and yet was conscious that it was his car.

“Comfortable?” he said, suddenly.

The young lady smiled.

“What d’you think?” she said. “It’s a lovely car.”

“I don’t like it,” said Soames.

The young lady’s mouth opened.

“Why?”

Soames shrugged his shoulders; he had only been carrying on the conversation.

“I think it’s rather fun, don’t you?” said the young lady. “Carrying on—you know, like we’re all doing.”

The car was now going at speed, and Soames began to calculate the minutes necessary to put an end to this juxtaposition.

The Albert Memorial, already; he felt almost an affection for it—so guiltless of the times!

“You MUST come and see our show,” said the young lady.

Soames made an effort and looked into her face.

“What do you do in it?” he said.

“Sing and dance.”

“I see.”

“I’ve rather a good bit in the third act, where we’re all in our nighties.”

Soames smiled faintly.

“You’ve got no one like Kate Vaughan now,” he said.

“Kate Vaughan? Who was she?”

“Who was Kate Vaughan?” repeated Soames; “greatest dancer that was ever in burlesque. Dancing was graceful in those days; now it’s all throwing your legs about. The faster you can move your legs, the more you think you’re dancing.” And, disconcerted by an outburst that was bound to lead to something, he averted his eyes.

“You don’t like jazz?” queried the young lady.

“I do not,” said Soames.

“Well, I don’t either—not reely; it’s getting old-fashioned, too.”

Hyde Park Corner already! And the car going a good twenty!

“My word! Look at the lorries; it’s marvellous, isn’t it?”

Soames emitted a confirmatory grunt. The young lady was powdering her nose now, and touching up her lips, with an almost staggering frankness. ‘Suppose anyone sees me?’ thought Soames. And he would never know whether anyone had or not. Turning up the high collar of his overcoat, he said:

“Draughty things, these cars! Shall I put you down at Scott’s?”

“Oh, no. Lyons, please; I’ve only time f’r a snack; got to be on the stage at eight. It’s been awf’ly kind of you. I only hope somebody’ll take me home!” Her eyes rolled suddenly, and she added: “If you know what I mean.”

“Quite!” said Soames, with a certain delicacy of perception. “Here you are. Stop—Riggs!”

The car stopped, and the young lady extended her hand to Soames.

“Good-bye, and thank you!”

“Good-bye!” said Soames. Nodding and smiling, she got out.

“Go on, Riggs, sharp! South Square.”

The car moved on. Soames did not look back; in his mind the thought formed like a bubble on the surface of water: ‘In the old days anyone who looked and talked like that would have left me her address.’ And she hadn’t! He could not decide whether or no this marked an advance.

At South Square, on discovering that Michael and Fleur were out, he did not dress for dinner, but went to the nursery. His grandson, now nearly three years old, was still awake, and said: “Hallo!”

“Hallo!” replied Soames, producing a toy watchman’s rattle. There followed five minutes of silent and complete absorption, broken fitfully by guttural sounds from the rattle. Then his grandson lay back in his cot, fixed his blue eyes on Soames, and said, “Hallo!”

“Hallo!” replied Soames.

“Ta, ta!” said his grandson.

“Ta, ta!” said Soames, backing to the door, and nearly falling over the silver dog. The interview then terminated, and Soames went downstairs. Fleur had telephoned to say he was not to wait dinner.

Opposite the Goya he sat down. No good saying he remembered the Chartist riots of ‘48, because he had been born in ‘55; but he knew his uncle Swithin had been a ‘special’ at the time. This general strike was probably the most serious internal disturbance that had happened since; and, sitting over his soup, he bored further and further into its possibilities. Bolshevism round the corner—that was the trouble! That and the fixed nature of ideas in England. Because a thing like coal had once been profitable, they thought it must always be profitable. Political leaders, Trades Unionists, newspaper chaps—they never looked an inch before their noses! They’d had since last August to do something about it, and what had they done? Drawn up a report that nobody would look at!

“White wine, sir, or claret?”

“Anything that’s open.” To have said that in the ‘eighties, or even the ‘nineties, would have given his father a fit! The idea of drinking claret already opened was then almost equivalent to atheism. Another sign of the slump in ideals.

“What do YOU think about this strike, Coaker?”

The almost hairless man lowered the Sauterne.

“Got no body in it, sir, if you ask me.”

“What makes you say that?”

“If it had any body in it, sir, they’d have had the railings of Hyde Park up by now.”

Soames poised a bit of his sole. “Shouldn’t be surprised if you were right,” he said, with a certain approval.

“They make a lot of fuss, but no—there’s nothing to it. The dole—that was a clever dodge, sir. Pannus et circesses, as Mr. Mont says, sir.”

“Ha! Have you seen this canteen they’re running?”

“No, sir; I believe they’ve got the beetle man in this evening. I’m told there’s a proper lot of beetles.”

“Ugh!”

“Yes, sir; it’s a nahsty insect.”

Having finished dinner, Soames lighted the second of his two daily cigars, and took up the earpieces of the wireless. He had resisted this invention as long as he could—but in times like these! “London calling!” Yes, and the British Isles listening! Trouble in Glasgow? There would be—lot of Irish there! More ‘specials’ wanted? There’d soon be plenty of those. He must tell that fellow Riggs to enlist. This butler chap, too, could well be spared. Trains! They seemed to be running a lot of trains already. After listening with some attention to the Home Secretary, Soames put the earpieces down and took up The British Gazette. It was his first sustained look at this tenuous production, and he hoped it would be his last. The paper and printing were deplorable. Still, he supposed it was something to have got it out at all. Tampering with the freedom of the Press! Those fellows were not finding it so easy as they thought. They had tampered, and the result was a Press much more definitely against them than the Press they had suppressed. Burned their fingers there! And quite unnecessary—old-fashioned notion now—influence of the Press. The war had killed it. Without confidence in truth there was no influence. Politicians or the Press—if you couldn’t believe them, they didn’t count! Perhaps they would re-discover that some day. In the meantime the papers were like cocktails—tittilators mostly of the appetite and the nerves. How sleepy he was! He hoped Fleur wouldn’t be very late coming in. Mad thing, this strike, making everybody do things they weren’t accustomed to, just as Industry, too, was beginning—or at least pretending—to recover. But that was it! With every year, in these times, it was more difficult to do what you said you would. Always something or other turning up! The world seemed to live from hand to mouth, and at such a pace, too! Sitting back in the Spanish chair, Soames covered his eyes from the light, and the surge of sleep mounted to his brain; strike or no strike, the soft, inexorable tide washed over him.

A tickling, and over his hand, thin and rather brown, the fringe of a shawl came dangling. Why! With an effort he climbed out of an abyss of dreams. Fleur was standing beside him. Pretty, bright, her eyes shining, speaking quickly, excitedly, it seemed to him.

“Here you are, then, Dad!” Her lips felt hot and soft on his forehead, and her eyes—What was the matter with her? She looked so young—she looked so—how express it?

“So you’re in!” he said. “Kit’s getting talkative. Had anything to eat?”

“Heaps!”

“This canteen—”

She flung off her shawl.

“I’m enjoying it frightfully.”

Soames noted with surprise the rise and fall of her breast, as if she had been running. Her cheeks, too, were very pink.

“You haven’t caught anything, have you—in that place?”

Fleur laughed. A sound—delicious and unwarranted.

“How funny you are, Dad! I hope the strike lasts!”

“Don’t be foolish!” said Soames. “Where’s Michael?”

“Gone up. He called for me, after the House. Nothing doing there, he says.”

“What’s the time?”

“Past twelve, dear. You must have had a real good sleep.”

“Just nodding.”

“We saw a tank pass, on the Embankment—going East. It looked awfully queer. Didn’t you hear it?”

“No,” said Soames.

“Well, don’t be alarmed if you hear another. They’re on their way to the docks, Michael says.”

“Glad to hear it—shows the Government means business. But you must go up. You’re overtired.”

She gazed at him over the Spanish shawl on her arm—whistling some tune.

“Good-night!” he said. “I shall be coming up in a minute.”

She blew him a kiss, twirled round, and went.

“I don’t like it,” murmured Soames to himself; “I don’t know why, but I don’t like it.”

She had looked too young. Had the strike gone to her head? He rose to squirt some soda-water into a glass—that nap had left a taste in his mouth.

Um—dum—bom—um—dum—bom—um—dum—bom! A grunching noise! Another of those tanks? He would like to see one of those great things! For the idea that they were going down to the docks gave him a feeling almost of exhilaration. With them on the spot the country was safe enough. Putting on his motoring coat and hat, he went out, crossed the empty Square, and stood in the street, whence he could see the Embankment. There it came! Like a great primeval monster in the lamplit darkness, growling and gruntling along, a huge, fantastic tortoise—like an embodiment of inexorable power. ‘That’ll astonish their weak nerves!’ thought Soames, as the tank crawled, grunching, out of sight. He could hear another coming; but with a sudden feeling that it would be too much of a good thing, he turned on his heel. A sort of extravagance about them, when he remembered the blank-looking crowd around his car that afternoon, not a weapon among the lot, nor even a revolutionary look in their eyes!

“No BODY in the strike!” These great crawling monsters! Were the Government trying to pretend that there was? Playing the strong man! Something in Soames revolted slightly. Hang it! This was England, not Russia, or Italy! They might be right, but he didn’t like it! Too—too military! He put his latchkey into the keyhole. Um—dum—bom—um—dum—bom! Well, not many people would see or hear them—this time of night! He supposed they had got here from the country somewhere—he wouldn’t care to meet them wandering about in the old lanes and places. Father and mother and baby tanks—like—like a family of mastodons, m—m? No sense of proportion in things like that! And no sense of humour! He stood on the stairs listening. It was to be hoped they wouldn’t wake the baby!

Chapter V. JEOPARDY

When, looking down the row of faces at her canteen table, Fleur saw Jon Forsyte’s, it was within her heart as if, in winter, she had met with honeysuckle. Recovering from that faint intoxication, she noted his appearance from further off. He was sitting seemingly indifferent to food; and on his face, which was smudged with coal-dust and sweat, was such a smile as men wear after going up a mountain or at the end of a long run—tired, charming, and as if they have been through something worth while. His lashes—long and dark as in her memory—concealed his eyes, and quarrelled with his brighter hair, touzled to the limit of its shortness.

Continuing to issue her instructions to Ruth La Fontaine, Fleur thought rapidly. Jon! Dropped from the skies into her canteen, stronger-looking, better knit; with more jaw, and deeper set eyes, but frightfully like Jon! What was to be done about it? If only she could turn out the lights, steal up behind, lean over and kiss him on that smudge above his left eye! Yes! And then—what? Silly! And now, suppose he came out of his far-away smile and saw her! As likely as not he would never come into her canteen again. She remembered his conscience! And she took a swift decision. Not to-night! Holly would know where he was staying. At her chosen time, on her chosen ground, if—on second thoughts, she wanted to play with fire. And, giving a mandate to Ruth La Fontaine concerning buns, she looked back over her shoulder at Jon’s absorbed and smiling face, and passed out into her little office.

And second thoughts began. Michael, Kit, her father; the solid security of virtue and possessions; the peace of mind into which she had passed of late! All jeopardised for the sake of a smile, and a scent of honeysuckle! No! That account was closed. To reopen it was to tempt Providence. And if to tempt Providence was the practice of Modernity, she wasn’t sure whether she was modern. Besides, who knew whether she COULD reopen that account? And she was seized by a gust of curiosity to see that wife of his—that substitute for herself. Was she in England? Was she dark, like her brother Francis? Fleur took up her list of purchases for the morrow. With so much to do, it was idiotic even to think about such things! The telephone! All day its bell had been ringing; since nine o’clock that morning she had been dancing to its pipe.

“Yes…? Mrs. Mont speaking. What? But I’ve ordered them… Oh! But really I MUST give them bacon and eggs in the morning. They can’t start on cocoa only… How? The Company can’t afford?… Well! Do you want an effective service or not?… Come round to see you about it? I really haven’t time… Yes, yes… now please do be nice to me and tell the manager that they simply must be properly fed. They look so tired. He’ll understand… Yes… Thank you ever so!” She hung up the receiver. “Damn!”

Someone laughed. “Oh! It’s you, Holly! Cheese-paring and red tape as usual! This is the fourth time today. Well, I don’t care—I’m going ahead. Look! Here’s Harridge’s list for tomorrow. It’s terrific, but it’s got to be. Buy it all; I’ll take the risk, if I have to go round and slobber on him.” And beyond the ironic sympathy on Holly’s face she seemed to see Jon’s smile. He should be properly fed—all of them should! And, without looking at her cousin, she said:

“I saw Jon in there. Where has he dropped from?”

“Paris. He’s putting up with us in Green Street.”

Fleur stuck her chin forward, and gave a little laugh.

“Quaint to see him again, all smudgy like that! His wife with him?”

“Not yet,” said Holly; “she’s in Paris still, with his mother.”

“Oh! It’d be fun to see him some time!”

“He’s stoking an engine on the local service—goes out at six, and doesn’t get in till about midnight.”

“Of course; I meant after, if the strike ever ends.”

Holly nodded. “His wife wants to come over and help; would you like her in the canteen?”

“If she’s the right sort.”

“Jon says: Very much so.”

“I don’t see why an American should worry herself. Are they going to live in England?”

“Yes.”

“Oh! Well, we’re both over the measles.”

“If you get them again grown-up, Fleur, they’re pretty bad.”

Fleur laughed. “No fear!” And her eyes, hazel, clear, glancing, met her cousin’s eyes, deep, steady, grey.

“Michael’s waiting for you with the car,” said Holly.

“All right! Can you carry on till they’ve finished? Norah Curfew’s on duty at five tomorrow morning. I shall be round at nine, before you start for Harridge’s. If you think of anything else, stick it on the list—I’ll make them stump up somehow. Good-night, Holly.”

“Good-night, my dear.”

Was there a gleam of pity in those grey eyes? Pity, indeed!

“Give Jon my love. I do wonder how he likes stoking! We must get some more washbasins in.”

Sitting beside Michael, who was driving their car, she saw again, as it were, Jon’s smile in the glass of the wind-screen, and in the dark her lips pouted as if reaching for it. Measles—they spotted you, and raised your temperature! How empty the streets were, now that the taxis were on strike! Michael looked round at her.

“Well, how’s it going?”

“The beetle man was a caution, Michael. He had a face like a ravaged wedge, a wave of black hair, and the eyes of a lost soul; but he was frightfully efficient.”

“Look! There’s a tank; I was told of them. They’re going down to the docks. Rather provocative! Just as well there are no papers for them to get into.”

Fleur laughed.

“Father’ll be at home. He’s come up to protect me. If there really was shooting, I wonder what he’d do—take his umbrella?”

“Instinct. How about you and Kit? It’s the same thing.”

Fleur did not answer. And when, after seeing her father, she went up-stairs, she stood at the nursery door. The tune that had excited Soames’ surprise made a whiffling sound in the empty passage. “L’amour est enfant de Boheme; il n’a jamais jamais connu de loi; si tu ne m’aimes pas, je t’aime, et si je t’aime, prends garde a toil!” Spain, and the heartache of her honeymoon! “Voice in the night crying!” Close the shutters, muffle the ears—keep it out! She entered her bedroom and turned up the lights. It had never seemed to her so pretty, with its many mirrors, its lilac and green, its shining silver. She stood looking at her face, into which had come two patches of red, one in each cheek. Why wasn’t she Norah Curfew—dutiful, uncomplicated, selfless, who would give Jon eggs and bacon at half-past five tomorrow morning—Jon with a clean face! Quickly she undressed. Was that wife of his her equal undressed? To which would he award the golden apple if she stood side by side with Anne? And the red spots deepened in her cheeks. Overtired—she knew that feeling! She would not sleep! But the sheets were cool. Yes, she preferred the old smooth Irish linen to that new rough French grass-bleached stuff. Ah! Here was Michael coming in, coming up to her! Well! No use to be unkind to him—poor old Michael! And in his arms, she saw—Jon’s smile.

That first day spent in stoking an engine had been enough to make anyone smile. An engine-driver almost as youthful, but in private life partner in his own engineering works, had put Jon ‘wise’ to the mystery of getting level combustion. “A tricky job, and very tiring!” Their passengers had behaved well. One had even come up and thanked them. The engine-driver had winked at Jon. There had been some hectic moments. Supping pea soup, Jon thought of them with pleasure. It had been great sport, but his hands and arms felt wrenched. “Oil them tonight,” the engine-driver had said.

A young woman was handing him ‘jacket’ potatoes. She had marvellously clear, brown eyes, something like Anne’s—only Anne’s were like a water nymph’s. He took a potato, thanked her, and returned to a stoker’s dreams. Extraordinary pleasure in being up against it—being in England again, doing something for England! One had to leave one’s country to become conscious of it. Anne had telegraphed that she wanted to come over and join him. If he wired back “No,” she would come all the same. He knew that much after nearly two years of marriage. Well, she would see England at its best. Americans didn’t really know what England was. Her brother had seen nothing but London; he had spoken bitterly—a girl, Jon supposed, though nothing had been said of her. In Francis Wilmot’s history of England the gap accounted for the rest. But everybody ran down England, because she didn’t slop over, or blow her own trumpet.

“Butter?”

“Thanks, awfully. These potatoes are frightfully good.”

“So glad.”

“Who runs this canteen?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Michael Mont mostly; he’s a member of Parliament.”

Jon dropped his potato.

“Mrs. Mont? Gracious! She’s a cousin of mine. Is she here?”

“Was. Just gone, I think.”

Jon’s far-sighted eyes travelled round the large and dingy room. Fleur! How amazing!

“Treacle pudding?”

“No, thanks. Nothing more.”

“There’ll be coffee, tea, or cocoa, and eggs and bacon, tomorrow at 5.45.”

“Splendid! I think it’s wonderful.”

“It is, rather, in the time.”

“Thank you awfully. Good-night!”

Jon sought his coat. Outside were Val and Holly in their car.

“Hallo, young Jon! You’re a nice object.”

“What job have you caught, Val?”

“Motor lorry—begin tomorrow.”

“Fine!”

“This’ll knock out racing for a bit.”

“But not England.”

“England? Lord—no! What did you think?”

“Abroad they were saying so.”

“Abroad!” growled Val. “They would!”

And there was silence at thirty miles an hour.

From his bedroom door Jon said to his sister:

“They say Fleur runs that canteen. Is she really so old now?”

“Fleur has a very clear head, my dear. She saw you there. No second go of measles, Jon.”

Jon laughed.

“Aunt Winifred,” said Holly, “will be delighted to have Anne here on Friday, she told me to tell you.”

“Splendid! That’s awfully good of her.”

“Well, good-night; bless you. There’s still hot water in the bathroom.”

In his bath Jon lay luxuriously still. Sixty hours away from his young wife, he was already looking forward with impatience to her appearance on Friday. And so Fleur ran that canteen! A fashionable young woman with a clear and, no doubt, shingled head—he felt a great curiosity to see her again, but nothing more. Second go of measles! Not much! He had suffered too severely from the first. Besides, he was too glad to be back—result of long, half-acknowledged homesickness. His mother had been home-sick for Europe; but HE had felt no assuagement in Italy and France. It was England he had wanted. Something in the way people walked and talked; in the smell and the look of everything; some good-humoured, slow, ironic essence in the air, after the tension of America, the shrillness of Italy, the clarity of Paris. For the first time in five years his nerves felt coated. Even those features of his native land which offended the aesthetic soul, were comforting. The approaches to London, the countless awful little houses of brick and slate which his own great-grandfather, ‘Superior Dosset’ Forsyte, had helped, so his father had once told him, to build; the many little new houses, rather better, but still bent on compromise; the total absence of symmetry or plan; the ugly railway stations; the cockney voices, the lack of colour, taste, or pride in people’s dress—all seemed comfortable, a guarantee that England would always be England.

And so Fleur was running that canteen! He would be seeing her! He would like to see her! Oh, yes!

Chapter VI. SNUFFBOX

In the next room Val was saying to Holly:

“Had a chap I knew at college to see me today. Wanted me to lend him money. I once did, when I was jolly hard up myself, and never got it back. He used to impress me frightfully—such an awfully good-looking, languid beggar. I thought him top notch as a ‘blood.’ You should see him now!”

“I did. I was coming in as he was going out; I wondered who he was. I never saw a more bitterly contemptuous expression on a face. Did you lend him money?”

“Only a fiver.”

“Well, don’t lend him any more.”

“Hardly. D’you know what he’s done? Gone off with that Louis Quinze snuffbox of Mother’s that’s worth about two hundred. There’s been nobody else in that room.”

“Good heavens!”

“Yes, it’s pretty thick. He had the reputation of being the fastest man up at the ‘Varsity in my time—in with the gambling set. Since I went out to the Boer war I’ve never heard of him.”

“Isn’t your mother very annoyed, Val?”

“She wants to prosecute—it belonged to my granddad. But how can we—a college pal!… Besides, we shouldn’t get the box back.”

Holly ceased to brush her hair.

“It’s rather a comfort to me—this,” she said.

“What is?”

“Why, everybody says the standard of honesty’s gone down. It’s nice to find someone belonging to our generation that had it even less.”

“Rum comfort!”

“Human nature doesn’t alter, Val. I believe in the young generation. We don’t understand them—brought up in too settled times.”

“That may be. My own dad wasn’t too particular. But what am I to do about this?”

“Do you know his address?”

“He said the Brummell Club would find him—pretty queer haunt, if I remember. To come to sneaking things like that! It’s upset me fright-fully.”

Holly looked at him lying on his back in bed. Catching her eyes on him, he said:

“But for you, old girl, I might have gone a holy mucker myself.”

“Oh, no, Val! You’re too open-air. It’s the indoor people who go really wrong.”

Val grinned.

“Something in that—the only exercise I ever saw that fellow take was in a punt. He used to bet like anything, but he didn’t know a horse from a hedge-hog. Well, Mother must put up with it, I can’t do anything.”

Holly came up to his bed.

“Turn over, and I’ll tuck you up.”

Getting into bed herself, she lay awake, thinking of the man who had gone a holy mucker, and the contempt on his face—lined, dark, well-featured, with prematurely greying hair, and prematurely faded rings round the irises of the eyes; of his clothes, too, so preternaturally preserved, and the worn, careful school tie. She felt she knew him. No moral sense, and ingrained contempt for those who had. Poor Val! HE hadn’t so much moral sense that he need be despised for it! And yet—! With a good many risky male instincts, Val had been a loyal comrade all these years. If in philosophic reach or aesthetic taste he was not advanced, if he knew more of horses than of poetry, was he any the worse? She sometimes thought he was the better. The horse didn’t change shape or colour every five years and start reviling its predecessor. The horse was a constant, kept you from going too fast, and had a nose to stroke—more than you could say of a poet. They had, indeed, only one thing in common—a liking for sugar. Since the publication of her novel Holly had become member of the 1930 Club. Fleur had put her up, and whenever she came to town, she studied modernity there. Modernity was nothing but speed! People who blamed it might as well blame telephone, wireless, flying machine, and quick lunch counter. Beneath that top-dressing of speed, modernity was old. Women had worn fewer clothes when Jane Austen began to write. Drawers—the historians said—were only nineteenth-century productions. And take modern talk! After South Africa the speed of it certainly took one’s wind away; but the thoughts expressed were much her own thoughts as a girl, cut into breathless lengths, by car and telephone bell. Take modern courtships! They resulted in the same thing as under George the Second, but took longer to reach it, owing to the motor-cycle and the standing lunch. Take modern philosophy! People had no less real philosophy than Martin Tupper or Izaak Walton; only, unlike those celebrated ancients, they had no time to formulate it. As to a future life—modernity lived in hope, and not too much of that, as everyone had, from immemorial time. In fact, as a novelist naturally would, Holly jumped to conclusions. Scratch—she thought—the best of modern youth, and you would find Charles James Fox and Perdita in golf sweaters! A steady sound retrieved her thoughts. Val was asleep. How long and dark his eyelashes still were, but his mouth was open!

“Val,” she said, very softly; “Val! Don’t snore, dear!”

A snuffbox may be precious, not so much for its enamel, its period, and its little brilliants, as because it has belonged to one’s father. Winifred, though her sense of property had been well proved by her retention of Montague Dartie ‘for poorer,’ throughout so many years, did not possess her brother Soames’ collecting instinct, nor, indeed, his taste in objects which George Forsyte had been the first to call ‘of bigotry and virtue.’ But the further Time removed her father James—a quarter of a century by now—the more she revered his memory. As some ancient general or philosopher, secured by age from competition, is acclaimed year by year a greater genius, so with James! His objection to change, his perfect domesticity, his power of saving money for his children, and his dread of not being told anything, were haloed for her more and more with every year that he spent underground. Her fashionable aspirations waning with the increase of adipose, the past waxed and became a very constellation of shining memories. The removal of this snuffbox—so tangible a reminder of James and Emily—tried her considerable equanimity more than anything that had happened to her for years. The thought that she had succumbed to the distinction of a voice on the telephone, caused her positive discomfort. With all her experience of distinction, she ought to have known better! She was, however, one of those women who, when a thing is done, admit the fact with a view to having it undone as soon as possible; and, having failed with Val, who merely said, “Awfully sorry, Mother, but there it is—jolly bad luck!” she summoned her brother.

Soames was little less than appalled. He remembered seeing James buy the box at Jobson’s for hardly more than one-tenth of what it would fetch now. Everything seemed futile if, in such a way, one could lose what had been nursed for forty years into so really magnificent a state of unearned increment. And the fellow who had taken it was of quite good family, or so his nephew said! Whether the honesty of the old Forsytes, in the atmosphere of which he had been brought up and turned out into the world, had been inherited or acquired—derived from their blood or their Banks—he had never considered. It had been in their systems just as the proverb “Honesty is the best policy” was in that of the private banking which then obtained. A slight reverie on banking was no uncommon affection of the mind in one who could recall the repercussion of “Understart and Darnett’s” failure, and the disappearance one by one of all the little, old Banks with legendary names. These great modern affairs were good for credit and bad for novelists—run on a Bank—there had been no better reading! Such monster concerns couldn’t ‘go broke,’ no matter what their clients did; but whether they made for honesty in the individual, Soames couldn’t tell. The snuffbox was gone, however; and if Winifred didn’t take care, she wouldn’t get it back. How, precisely, she was to take care he could not at present see; but he should advise her to put it into the hands of somebody at once.

“But whose, Soames?”

“There’s Scotland Yard,” answered Soames, gloomily. “I believe they’re very little good, except to make a fuss. There’s that fellow I employed in the Ferrar case. He charges very high.”

“I shouldn’t care so much,” said Winifred, “if it hadn’t belonged to the dear Dad.”

“Ruffians like that,” muttered Soames, “oughtn’t to be at large.”

“And to think,” said Winifred, “that it was especially to see him that Val came to stay here.”

“Was it?” said Soames, gloomily. “I suppose you’re sure that fellow took it?”

“Quite. I’d had it out to polish only a quarter of an hour before. After he went, I came back into the room at once, to put it away, and it was gone. Val had been in the room the whole time.”

Soames dwelled for a moment, then rejected a doubt about his nephew, for, though connected by blood with that precious father of his, Montague Dartie, and a racing man to boot, he was half a Forsyte after all.

“Well,” he said, “shall I send you this man—his name’s Becroft—always looks as if he’d over-shaved himself, but he’s got a certain amount of nous. I should suggest his getting in touch with that fellow’s club.”

“Suppose he’s already sold the box?” said Winifred.

“Yesterday afternoon? Should doubt that; but it wants immediate handling. I’ll see Becroft as I go away. Fleur’s overdoing it, with this canteen of hers.”

“They say she’s running it very well. I do think all these young women are so smart.”

“Quick enough,” grumbled Soames, “but steady does it in the long run.”

At that phrase—a maxim never far away from the lips of the old Forsytes in her youthful days—Winifred blinked her rather too light eyelashes.

“That was always rather a bore, you know, Soames. And in these days, if you’re not quick, things move past you, so.”

Soames gathered his hat. “That snuffbox will, if we don’t look sharp.”

“Well, thank you, dear boy. I do hope we get it back. The dear Pater was so proud of it, and when he died it wasn’t worth half what it is now.”

“Not a quarter,” said Soames, and the thought bored into him as he walked away. What was the use of having judgment, if anybody could come along and pocket the results! People sneered at property nowadays; but property was a proof of good judgment—it was one’s amour propre half the time. And he thought of the amour propre Bosinney had stolen from him in those far-off days of trouble. Yes, even marriage—was an exercise of judgment—a pitting of yourself against other people. You ‘spotted a winner,’ as they called it, or you didn’t—Irene hadn’t been ‘a winner’—not exactly! Ah! And he had forgotten to ask Winifred about that young Jon Forsyte who had suddenly come back into the wind. But about this snuffbox! The Brummell Club was some sort of betting place, he had heard; full of gamblers, and people who did and sold things on commission, he shouldn’t wonder. That was the vice of the day; that and the dole. Work? No! Sell things on commission—motor-cars, for choice. Brummell Club! Yes! This was the place! It had a window—he remembered. No harm, anyway, in asking if the fellow really belonged there! And entering, he enquired:

“Mr. Stainford a member here?”

“Yes. Don’t know if he’s in. Mr. Stainford been in, Bob?”

“Just come in.”

“Oh!” said Soames, rather taken aback.

“Gentleman to see him, Bob.”

A rather sinking sensation occurred within Soames.

“Come with me, sir.”

Soames took a deep breath, and his legs moved. In an alcove off the entrance—somewhat shabby and constricted—he could see a man lolling in an old armchair, smoking a cigarette through a holder. He had a little red book in one hand and a small pencil in the other, and held them as still as if he were about to jot down a conviction that he had not got. He wore a dark suit with little lines; his legs were crossed, and Soames noted that one foot in a worn brown shoe, treed and polished against age to the point of pathos, was slowly moving in a circle.

“Gemman to see you, sir.”

Soames now saw the face. Its eyebrows were lifted in a V reversed, its eyelids nearly covered its eyes. Together with the figure, it gave an impression of really remarkable languor. Thin to a degree, oval and pale, it seemed all shadow and slightly aquiline feature. The foot had become still, the whole affair still. Soames had the curious feeling of being in the presence of something arrogantly dead. Without time for thought, he began:

“Mr. Stainford, I think? Don’t disturb yourself. My name is Forsyte. You called at my sister’s in Green Street yesterday afternoon.”

A slight contraction of the lines round that small mouth was followed by the words:

“Will you sit down?”

The eyes had opened now, and must once have been beautiful. They narrowed again, so that Soames could not help feeling that their owner had outlived everything except himself. He swallowed a qualm and resumed:

“I just wanted to ask you a question. During your call, did you by any chance happen to notice a Louis Quinze snuffbox on the table? It’s—er—disappeared, and we want to fix the time of its loss.”

As a ghost might have smiled, so did the man in the chair; his eyes disappeared still further.

“Afraid not.”

With the thought, ‘He’s got it!’ Soames went on:

“I’m sorry—the thing had virtue as an heirloom. It has obviously been stolen. I wanted to narrow down the issue. If you’d noticed it, we could have fixed the exact hour—on the little table just where you were sitting—blue enamel.”

The thin shoulders wriggled slightly, as though resenting this attempt to place responsibility on them.

“Sorry I can’t help you; I noticed nothing but some rather good marqueterie.”

‘Coolest card I ever saw,’ thought Soames. ‘Wonder if it’s in his pocket.’

“The thing’s unique,” he said slowly. “The police won’t have much difficulty. Well, thanks very much. I apologise for troubling you. You knew my nephew at college, I believe. Good-morning.”

“Good-morning.”

From the door Soames took a stealthy glance. The figure was perfectly motionless, the legs still crossed, and above the little red book the pale forehead was poised under the smooth grizzling hair. Nothing to be made of that! But the fellow had it, he was sure.

He went out and down to the Green Park with a most peculiar feeling. Sneak thief! A gentleman to come to that! The Elderson affair had been bad, but somehow not pitiful like this. The whitened seams of the excellent suit, the traversing creases in the once admirable shoes, the faded tie exactly tied, were evidences of form preserved, day by day, from hand to mouth. They afflicted Soames. That languid figure! What DID a chap do when he had no money and couldn’t exert himself to save his life? Incapable of shame—that was clear! He must talk to Winifred again. And, turning on his heel, Soames walked back towards Green Street. Debouching from the Park, he saw on the opposite side of Piccadilly the languid figure. It, too, was moving in the direction of Green Street. Phew! He crossed over and followed. The chap had an air. He was walking like someone who had come into the world from another age—an age which set all its store on ‘form.’ He felt that ‘this chap’ would sooner part with life itself than exhibit interest in anything. Form! Could you carry contempt for emotion to such a pitch that you could no longer feel emotion? Could the lifted eyebrow become more important to you than all the movements of the heart and brain? Threadbare peacock’s feathers walking, with no peacock inside! To show feeling was perhaps the only thing of which that chap would be ashamed. And, a little astonished at his own powers of diagnosis, Soames followed round corner after corner, till he was actually in Green Street. By George! The chap WAS going to Winifred’s! ‘I’ll astonish his weak nerves!’ thought Soames. And, suddenly hastening, he said, rather breathlessly, on his sister’s very doorstep:

“Ah! Mr. Stainford! Come to return the snuffbox?”

With a sigh, and a slight stiffening of his cane on the pavement, the figure turned. Soames felt a sudden compunction—as of one who has jumped out at a child in the dark. The face, unmoved, with eyebrows still raised and lids still lowered, was greenishly pale, like that of a man whose heart is affected; a faint smile struggled on the lips. There was fully half a minute’s silence, then the pale lips spoke.

“Depends. How much?”

What little breath was in Soames’ body left him. The impudence! And again the lips moved.

“You can have it for ten pounds.”

“I can have it for nothing,” said Soames, “by asking a policeman to step here.”

The smile returned. “You won’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Not done.”

“Not done!” repeated Soames. “Why on earth not? Most barefaced thing I ever knew.”

“Ten pounds,” said the lips. “I want them badly.”

Soames stood and stared. The thing was so sublime; the fellow as easy as if asking for a match; not a flicker on a face which looked as if it might pass into death at any moment. Great art! He perceived that it was not the slightest use to indulge in moral utterance. The choice was between giving him the ten pounds or calling a policeman. He looked up and down the street.

“No—there isn’t one in sight. I have the box here—ten pounds.”

Soames began to stammer. The fellow was exercising on him a sort of fascination. And suddenly the whole thing tickled him. It was rich!

“Well!” he said, taking out two five-pound notes. “For brass—!”

A thin hand removed a slight protuberance from a side pocket.

“Thanks very much. Here it is! Good-morning!”

The fellow was moving away. He moved with the same incomparable languor; he didn’t look back. Soames stood with the snuffbox in his hand, staring after him.

“Well,” he said, aloud, “that’s a specimen they can’t produce now,” and he rang Winifred’s bell.

Chapter VII. MICHAEL HAS QUALMS

During the eight days of the General Strike Michael’s somewhat hectic existence was relieved only by the hours spent in a House of Commons so occupied in meditating on what it could do, that it could do nothing. He had formed his own opinion of how to settle the matter, but as no one else had formed it, the result was inconspicuous. He watched, however, with a very deep satisfaction the stock of British character daily quoted higher at home and abroad; and with a certain uneasiness the stock of British intelligence becoming almost unsaleable. Mr. Blythe’s continual remark: “What the bee aitch are they all about?” met with no small response in his soul. What WERE they about? He had one conversation with his father-inlaw on the subject.

Over his egg Soames had said:

“Well, the Budget’s dished.”

Over his marmalade Michael answered:

“Used you to have this sort of thing in your young days, sir?”

“No,” said Soames; “no Trade Unionism then, to speak of.”

“People are saying this’ll be the end of it. What’s your opinion of the strike as a weapon, sir?”

“For the purposes of suicide, perfect. It’s a wonder they haven’t found that out long ago.”

“I rather agree, but what’s the alternative?”

“Well,” said Soames, “they’ve got the vote.”

“Yes, that’s always said. But somehow Parliament seems to matter less and less; there’s a directive sense in the country now, which really settles things before we get down to them in Parliament. Look at this strike, for instance; we can do nothing about it.”

“There must be government,” said Soames.

“Administration—of course. But all we seem able to do in Parliament is to discuss administration afterwards without much effect. The fact is, things swoop around too quick for us nowadays.”

“Well,” said Soames, “you know your own business best. Parliament always was a talking shop.” And with that unconscious quotation from Carlyle—an extravagant writer whom he curiously connected with revolution—he looked up at the Goya, and added: “I shouldn’t like to see Parliament done away with, though. Ever heard any more of that red-haired young woman?”

“Marjorie Ferrar? Oddly enough, I saw her yesterday in Whitehall. She told me she was driving for Downing Street.”

“She spoke to you?”

“Oh, yes. No ill-feeling.”

“H’m!” said Soames. “I don’t understand this generation. Is she married?”

“No.”

“That chap MacGown had a lucky escape—not that he deserved it. Fleur doesn’t miss her evenings?”

Michael did not answer. He did not know. Fleur and he were on such perfect terms that they had no real knowledge of each other’s thoughts. Then, feeling his father-inlaw’s grey eye gimletting into him, he said hastily:

“Fleur’s all right, sir.”

Soames nodded. “Don’t let her overdo this canteen.”

“She’s thoroughly enjoying it—gives her head a chance.”

“Yes,” said Soames, “she’s got a good little head, when she doesn’t lose it.” He seemed again to consult the Goya, and added:

“By the way, that young Jon Forsyte is over here—they tell me—staying at Green Street, and stoking an engine or something. A boy-and-girl affair; but I thought you ought to know.”

“Oh!” said Michael, “thanks. I hadn’t heard he was back.”

“I don’t suppose she’s heard, either,” said Soames guardedly; “I told them not to tell her. D’you remember, in America, up at Mount Vernon, when I was taken ill?”

“Yes, sir; very well.”

“Well, I wasn’t. Fact is, I saw that young man and his wife talking to you on the stairs. Thought it better that Fleur shouldn’t run up against them. These things are very silly, but you never can tell.”

“No,” said Michael, drily; “you never can tell. I remember liking the look of him a good deal.”

“H’m!” muttered Soames: “He’s the son of his father, I expect.”

And, from the expression on his face, Michael formed the notion that this was a doubtful advantage.

No more was said, because of Soames’ lifelong conviction that one did not say any more than one need say; and of Michael’s prejudice against discussing Fleur seriously, even with her father. She had seemed to him quite happy lately. After five-and-a-half years of marriage, he was sure that mentally Fleur liked him, that physically she had no objection to him, and that a man was not sensible if he expected much more. She consistently declined, of course, to duplicate Kit, but only because she did not want to be put out of action again for months at a time. The more active, the happier she was—over this canteen for instance, she was in her glory. If, indeed, he had realised that Jon Forsyte was being fed there, Michael would have been troubled; as it was, the news of the young man’s reappearance in England made no great impression. The Country held the field of one’s attention those strenuous days. The multiple evidence of patriotism exhilarated him—undergraduates at the docks, young women driving cars, shopfolk walking cheerfully to their work, the swarm of ‘specials,’ the general ‘carrying-on.’ Even the strikers were good-humoured. A secret conviction of his own concerning England was being reinforced day by day, in refutation of the pessimists. And there was no place so unEnglish at the moment, he felt, as the House of Commons, where people had nothing to do but pull long faces and talk over ‘the situation.’

The news of the General Strike’s collapse caught him as he was going home after driving Fleur to the canteen. A fizz and bustle in the streets, and the words: “Strike Over” scrawled extempore at street corners, preceded the “End of the Strike—Official” of the hurrying news-vendors. Michael stopped his car against the curb and bought a news-sheet. There it was! For a minute he sat motionless with a choky feeling, such as he had felt when the news of the Armistice came through. A sword lifted from over the head of England! A source of pleasure to her enemies dried up! People passed and passed him, each with a news-sheet, or a look in the eye. They were taking it almost as soberly as they had taken the strike itself. ‘Good old England! We’re a great people when we’re up against it!’ he thought, driving his car slowly on into Trafalgar Square. A group of men, who had obviously been strikers, stood leaning against the parapet. He tried to read their faces. Glad, sorry, ashamed, resentful, relieved? For the life of him he could not tell. Some defensive joke seemed going the round of them.

‘No wonder we’re a puzzle to foreigners!’ thought Michael: ‘The least understood people in the world!’

He moved on slowly round the square, into Whitehall. Here were some slight evidences of feeling. The block was thick around the Cenotaph and the entrance to Downing Street; and little cheers kept breaking out. A ‘special’ was escorting a lame man across the street. As he came back, Michael saw his face. Why, it was Uncle Hilary! His mother’s youngest brother, Hilary Charwell, Vicar of St. Augustine’s-inthe-Meads.

“Hallo, Michael!”

“You a ‘special,’ Uncle Hilary? Where’s your cloth?”

“My dear! Are you one of those who think the Church debarred from mundane pleasure? You’re not getting old-fashioned, Michael?”

Michael grinned. He had a real affection for Uncle Hilary, based on admiration for his thin, long face, so creased and humorous, on boyish recollection of a jolly uncle, on a suspicion that in Hilary Charwell had been lost a Polar explorer, or other sort of first-rate adventurer.

“That reminds me, Michael; when are you coming round to see us? I’ve got a topping scheme for airing ‘The Meads’.”

“Ah!” said Michael; “overcrowding’s at the bottom of everything, even this strike.”

“Right you are, my son. Come along, then, as soon as you can. You fellows in Parliament ought always to see things at first hand. You suffer from auto-intoxication in that House. And now pass on, young man, you’re impeding the traffic.”

Michael passed on, grinning. Good old Uncle Hilary! Humanising religion, and living dangerously—had climbed all the worst peaks in Europe; no sense of his own importance and a real sense of humour. Quite the best type of Englishman! They had tried to make him a dignitary, but he had jibbed at the gaiters and hat-ropes. He was what they called a ‘live wire’ and often committed the most dreadful indiscretions; but everybody liked him, even his own wife. Michael dwelt for a moment on his Aunt May. Forty—he supposed—with three children and fourteen hundred things to attend to every day; shingled, and cheerful as a sandboy. Nice-looking woman, Aunt May!

Having garaged his car, he remembered that he had not lunched. It was three o’clock. Munching a biscuit, he drank a glass of sherry, and walked over to the House of Commons. He found it humming in anticipation of a statement. Sitting back, with his legs stretched out, he had qualms. What things had been done in here! The abolitions of Slavery and of Child Labour, the Married Woman’s Property Act, Repeal of the Corn Laws; but could they be done nowadays? And if not—was it a life? He had said to Fleur that you couldn’t change your vocation twice and survive. But did he want to survive? Failing Foggartism—and Foggartism hadn’t failed only because it hadn’t started—what did he really care about?

Leaving the world better than he found it? Sitting there, he couldn’t help perceiving a certain vagueness about such an aspiration, even when confined to England. It was the aspiration of the House of Commons; but in the ebb and flow of Party, it didn’t seem to make much progress. Better to fix on some definite bit of administrative work, stick to it, and get something done. Fleur wanted him to concentrate on Kenya for the Indians. Again rather remote, and having little to do with England. What definite work was most needed in connection with England? Education? Bunkered again! How tell what was the best direction into which to turn education? When they brought in State Education, for instance, they had thought the question settled. Now people were saying that State education had ruined the State. Emigration? Attractive, but negative. Revival of agriculture? Well, the two combined were Foggartism, and he knew by now that nothing but bitter hardship would teach those lessons; you might talk till you were blue in the face without convincing anyone but yourself.

What then?

“I’ve got a topping scheme for airing ‘The Meads’.” The Meads was one of the worst slum parishes in London. ‘Clear the slums!’ thought Michael; ‘that’s practical anyway!’ You could smell the slums, and feel them. They stank and bit and bred corruption. And yet the dwellers therein loved them; or at least preferred them to slums they knew not of! And slum-dwellers were such good sorts! Too bad to play at shuttlecock with them! He must have a talk with Uncle Hilary. Lots of vitality in England still—numbers of red-haired children! But the vitality got sooted as it grew up—like plants in a back garden. Slum clearance, smoke abolition, industrial peace, emigration, agriculture, and safety in the air! ‘Them’s my sentiments!’ thought Michael. ‘And if that isn’t a large enough policy for any man, I’m—!’

He turned his face towards the Statement, and thought of his uncle’s words about this ‘House.’ Were they all really in a state of auto-intoxication here—continual slow poisoning of the tissues? All these chaps around him thought they were doing things. And he looked at the chaps. He knew most of them, and had great respect for many, but collectively he could not deny that they looked a bit dazed. His neighbour to the right was showing his front teeth in an asphyxiated smile. ‘Really,’ he thought; ‘it’s heroic how we all keep awake day after day!’

Chapter VIII. SECRET

It would not have been natural that Fleur should rejoice in the collapse of the General Strike. A national outlook over such a matter was hardly in her character. Her canteen was completing the re-establishment in her of the social confidence which the Marjorie Ferrar affair had so severely shaken; and to be thoroughly busy with practical matters suited her. Recruited by Norah Curfew, by herself, Michael, and his Aunt Lady Alison Charwell, she had a first-rate crew of helpers of all ages, most of them in Society. They worked in the manner popularly attributed to negroes; they craned at nothing—not even beetles. They got up at, or stayed up to, all hours. They were never cross and always cheery. In a word, they seemed inspired. The difference they had made in the appearance of the railway’s culinary premises was startling to the Company. Fleur herself was ‘on the bridge’ all the time. On her devolved the greasing of the official wheels, the snipping off of red tape in numberless telephonic duels, and the bearding of the managerial face. She had even opened her father’s pocket to supplement the shortcomings she encountered. The volunteers were fed to repletion, and—on Michael’s inspiration—she had undermined the pickets with surreptitious coffee dashed with rum, at odd hours of their wearisome vigils. Her provisioning car, entrusted to Holly, ran the blockade, by leaving and arriving, as though Harridge’s, whence she drew her supplies, were the last place in its thoughts.

“Let us give the strikers,” said Michael, “every possible excuse to wink the other eye.”

The canteen, in fact, was an unqualified success. She had not seen Jon again, but she lived in that peculiar mixture of fear and hope which signifies a real interest in life. On the Friday Holly announced to her that Jon’s wife had arrived—might she bring her down next morning?

“Oh! yes,” said Fleur: “What is she like?”

“Attractive—with eyes like a water-nymph’s or so Jon thinks; but it’s quite the best type of water-nymph.”

“M-m!” said Fleur.

She was checking a list on the telephone next day when Holly brought Anne. About Fleur’s own height, straight and slim, darker in the hair, browner in complexion, browner in the eye (Fleur could see what Holly had meant by “water-nymph”) her nose a little too sudden, her chin pointed and her teeth very white, her successor stood. Did she know that Jon and she—?

And stretching out her free hand, Fleur said:

“I think it’s awfully sporting of you as an American. How’s your brother Francis?”

The hand she squeezed was brown, dry, warm; the voice she heard only faintly American, as if Jon had been at it.

“You were just too good to Francis. He always talks of you. If it hadn’t been for you—”

“That’s nothing. Excuse me… Ye-es?… No! If the Princess comes, ask her to be good enough to come when they’re feeding. Yes—yes—thank you! To-morrow? Certainly… Did you have a good crossing?”

“Frightful! I was glad Jon wasn’t with me. I do so hate being green, don’t you?”

“I never am,” said Fleur.

That girl had Jon to bend above her when she was green! Pretty? Yes. The browned face was very alive—rather like Francis Wilmot’s, but with those enticing eyes, much more eager. What was it about those eyes that made them so unusual and attractive? – surely the suspicion of a squint! She had a way of standing, too—a trick of the neck, the head was beautifully poised. Lovely clothes, of course! Fleur’s glance swept swiftly down to calves and ankles. Not thick, not crooked! No luck!

“I think it’s just wonderful of you to let me come and help.”

“Not a bit. Holly will put you wise.”

“That sounds nice and homey.”

“Oh! We all use your expressions now. Will you take her provisioning, Holly?”

When the girl had gone, under Holly’s wing, Fleur bit her lip. By the uncomplicated glance of Jon’s wife she guessed that Jon had not told her. How awfully young! Fleur felt suddenly as if she herself had never had a youth. Ah! If Jon had not been caught away from her! Her bitten lip quivered, and she buried it in the mouthpiece of the telephone.

Whenever again—three or four times—before the canteen was closed, she saw the girl, she forced herself to be cordial. Instinctively she felt that she must shut no doors on life just now. What Jon’s reappearance meant to her she could not tell; but no one should put a finger this time in whatever pie she chose to make. She was mistress of her face and movements now, as she had never been when she and Jon were babes in the wood. With a warped pleasure she heard Holly’s: “Anne thinks you wonderful, Fleur!” No! Jon had not told his wife about her. It was like him, for the secret had not been his alone! But how long would that girl be left in ignorance? On the day the canteen closed she said to Holly:

“No one has told Jon’s wife that he and I were once in love, I suppose?”

Holly shook her head.

“I’d rather they didn’t, then.”

“Of course not, my dear. I’ll see to it. The child’s nice, I think.”

“Nice,” said Fleur, “but not important.”

“You’ve got to allow for the utter strangeness of everything. Americans are generally important, sooner or later.”

“To themselves,” said Fleur, and saw Holly smile. Feeling that she had revealed a corner of her feelings, she smiled too.

“Well, so long as they get on. They do, I suppose?”

“My dear, I’ve hardly seen Jon, but I should say it’s perfectly successful. Now the strike’s over they’re coming down to us at Wansdon.”

“Good! Well, this is the end of the old canteen. Let’s powder our noses and get out; Father’s waiting for me with the car. Can we drop you?”

“No, thanks; I’ll walk.”

“What? The old gene? Funny how hard things die!”

“Yes; when you’re a Forsyte,” murmured Holly: “You see, we don’t show our feelings. It’s airing them that kills feelings.”

“Ah!” said Fleur: “Well, God bless you, as they say, and give Jon my love. I’d ask them to lunch, but you’re off to Wansdon?”

“The day after tomorrow.”

In the little round mirror Fleur saw her face mask itself more thoroughly, and turned to the door.

“I MAY look in at Aunt Winifred’s, if I’ve time. So long!”

Going down the stairs she thought: ‘So it’s air that kills feelings!’

Soames, in the car, was gazing at Rigg’s back. The fellow was as lean as a rail.

“Finished with that?” he said to her.

“Yes, dear.”

“Good job, too. Wearing yourself to a shadow.”

“Why? Do I look thin, Dad?”

“No,” said Soames, “no. That’s your mother. But you can’t keep on at that rate. Would you like some air? Into the Park, Riggs.”

Passing into that haven, he murmured:

“I remember when your grandmother drove here every day, regular as clockwork. People had habits, then. Shall we stop and have a look at that Memorial affair they made such a fuss about?”

“I’ve seen it, Dad.”

“So have I,” said Soames. “Stunt sculpture! Now, that St. Gaudens statue at Washington WAS something.” And he looked at her sidelong. Thank goodness she didn’t know of the way he had fended her off from young Jon Forsyte over there. She must have heard by now that the fellow was in London, and staying at her Aunt’s too! And now the strike was off, and normal railway services beginning again, he would be at a loose end! But perhaps he would go back to Paris; his mother was there still, he understood. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask. Instinct, however, potent only in his dealings with Fleur, stopped him. If she had seen the young man, she wouldn’t tell him of it. She was looking somehow secret—or was that just imagination?

No! He couldn’t see her thoughts. Good thing, perhaps! Who could afford to have his thoughts seen? The recesses, ramifications, excesses of thought! Only when sieved and filtered was thought fit for exposure. And again Soames looked sidelong at his daughter.

She was thinking, indeed, to purposes that would have upset him. How was she going to see Jon alone before he left for Wansdon? She could call tomorrow, of course, openly at Green Street, and probably NOT see him. She could ask him to lunch in South Square, but hardly without his wife or her own husband. There was, in fact, no way of seeing him alone except by accident. And she began trying to plan one. On the point of perceiving that the essence of an accident was that it could not be planned, she planned it. She would go to Green Street at nine in the morning to consult Holly and Anne on the canteen accounts. After such strenuous days Holly and Anne might surely be breakfasting in bed. Val had gone back to Wansdon, Aunt Winifred never got up! Jon MIGHT be alone! And she turned to Soames:

“Awfully sweet of you, Dad, to be airing me; I AM enjoying it.”

“Like to get out and have a look at the ducks? The swans have got a brood at Mapledurham again this year.”

The swans! How well she remembered the six little grey destroyers following the old swans over the green-tinged water, that six-year-gone summer of her love! Crossing the grass down to the Serpentine, she felt a sort of creeping sweetness. But nobody—nobody should know of what went on inside her. Whatever happened—and, after all, most likely nothing would happen—she would save face this time—strongest motive in the world, as Michael said.

“Your grandfather used to bring me here when I was a shaver,” said her father’s voice beside her. It did not add: “And I used to bring that wife of mine when we were first married.” Irene! She had liked water and trees. She had liked all beauty, and she hadn’t liked him!

“Eton jackets. Sixty years ago and more. Who’d have thought it then?”

“Who’d have thought what, Dad? That Eton jackets would still be in?”

“That chap—Tennyson, wasn’t it? – ‘The old order changeth, giving place to new.’ I can’t see you in high necks and skirts down to your feet, to saying nothing of bustles. Women then were defended up to the nines, but you knew just as much about them as you do now—and that’s precious little.”

“I wonder. Do you think people’s passions are what they used to be, Dad?”

Soames brooded into his hand. Now, why had she said that? He had once told her that a grand passion was a thing of the past, and she had replied that she had one. And suddenly he was back in steamy heat, redolent of earth and potted pelargonium, kicking a hot water pipe in a greenhouse at Mapledurham. Perhaps she’d been right; there was always a lot of human nature about.

“Passions!” he said: “Well, you still read of people putting their heads under the gas. In old days they used to drown themselves. Let’s go and have tea, at that kiosk place.”

When they were seated, and the pigeons were enjoying his cake, he took a long look at her. She had her legs crossed—and very nice they were! – and just that difference in her body from the waist up, from so many young women he saw about. She didn’t sit in a curve, but with a slight hollow in her back, giving the impression of backbone and a poise to her head and neck. She was shingled again—the custom had unexpected life—but, after all, her neck was remarkably white and round. Her face—short, with its firm rounded chin, very little powder and no rouge, with its dark-lashed white lids, clear-glancing hazel eyes, short, straight nose and broad low brow, with the chestnut hair over its ears, and its sensibly kissable mouth—really it was a credit!

“I should think,” he said, “you’d be glad to have more time for Kit again. He’s a rascal. What d’you think he asked me for yesterday—a hammer!”

“Yes; he’s always breaking things up. I smack him as little as possible, but it’s unavoidable at times—nobody else is allowed to. Mother got him used to it while we were away, so he looks on it as all in the day’s work.”

“Children,” said Soames, “are funny things. We weren’t made such a fuss of when I was young.”

“Forgive me, Dad, but I think YOU make more fuss of him than anybody.”

“What?” said Soames: “I?”

“You do exactly as he tells you. Did you give him the hammer?”

“Hadn’t one—what should I carry hammers about for?”

Fleur laughed. “No; but you take him so seriously. Michael takes him ironically.”

“The little chap’s got a twinkle,” said Soames.

“Mercifully. Didn’t you spoil ME, Dad?”

Soames gaped at a pigeon.

“Can’t tell,” he said. “Do you feel spoiled?”

“When I want things, I want things.”

He knew that; but so long as she wanted the right things!

“And when I don’t get them, I’m not safe.”

“Who says that?”

“No one ever says it, but I know it.”

H’m! What was she wanting now? Should he ask? And, as if attending to the crumbs on his lapel, he took ‘a lunar.’ That face of hers, whose eyes for a moment were off guard, was dark with some deep—he couldn’t tell! Secret! That’s what it was!

Chapter IX. RENCOUNTER

With the canteen accounts in her hand, Fleur stepped out between her tubbed bay-trees. A quarter to nine by Big Ben! Twenty odd minutes to walk across the Green Park! She had drunk her coffee in bed, to elude questions—and there, of course, was Dad with his nose glued to the dining-room window. She waved the accounts, and he withdrew his face as if they had flicked him. He was ever so good, but he shouldn’t always be dusting her—she wasn’t a piece of china!

She walked briskly. She had no honeysuckle sensations this morning, but felt hard and bright. If Jon had come back to England to stay, she must get him over. The sooner the better, without fuss! Passing the geraniums in front of Buckingham Palace, just out and highly scarlet, she felt her blood heating. Not walk so fast or she would arrive damp! The trees were far advanced; the Green Park, under breeze and sun, smelled of grass and leaves. Spring had not smelled so good for years. A longing for the country seized on Fleur. Grass and trees and water—her hours with Jon had been passed among them—one hour in this very Park, before he took her down to Robin Hill! Robin Hill had been sold to some peer or other, and she wished him joy of it—she knew its history as of some unlucky ship! That house had ‘done in’ her father, and Jon’s father, yes—and his grandfather, she believed, to say nothing of herself. One would not be ‘done in’ again so easily! And, passing into Piccadilly, Fleur smiled at her green youth. In the early windows of the Club nicknamed by George Forsyte the ‘Iseeum,’ no one of his compeers sat as yet, above the moving humours of the street, sipping from glass or cup, and puffing his conclusions out in smoke. Fleur could just remember him, her old Cousin George Forsyte, who used to sit there, fleshy and sardonic behind the curving panes; Cousin George, who had owned the ‘White Monkey’ up in Michael’s study. Uncle Montague Dartie, too, whom she remembered because the only time she had seen him he had pinched her in a curving place, saying: “What are little girls made of?” so that she had clapped her hands when she heard that he had broken his neck, soon after; a horrid man, with fat cheeks and a dark moustache, smelling of scent and cigars. Rounding the last corner, she felt breathless. Geraniums were in her Aunt’s window boxes—but not the fuchsias yet. Was THEIR room the one she herself used to have? And, taking her hand from her heart, she rang the bell.

“Ah! Smither, anybody down?”

“Only Mr. Jon’s down yet, Miss Fleur.”

Why did hearts wobble? Sickening—when one was perfectly cool!

“He’ll do for the moment, Smither. Where is he?”

“Having breakfast, Miss Fleur.”

“All right; show me in. I don’t mind having another cup myself.”

Under her breath, she declined the creaking noun who was preceding her to the dining-room: “Smither: O Smither: Of a Smither: To a Smither: A Smither.” Silly!

“Mrs. Michael Mont, Mr. Jon. Shall I get you some fresh coffee, Miss Fleur?”

“No, thank you, Smither.” Stays creaked, the door was shut. Jon was standing up.

“Fleur!”

“Well, Jon?”

She could hold his hand and keep her pallor, though the blood was in HIS cheeks, no longer smudged.

“Did I feed you nicely?”

“Splendidly. How are you, Fleur? Not tired after all that?”

“Not a bit. How did you like stoking?”

“Fine! My engine-driver was a real brick. Anne will be so disappointed; she’s having a lie-off.”

“She was quite a help. Nearly six years, Jon; you haven’t changed much.”

“Nor you.”

“Oh! I have. Out of knowledge.”

“Well, I don’t see it. Have you had breakfast?”

“Yes. Sit down and go on with yours. I came round to see Holly about some accounts. Is she in bed, too?”

“I expect so.”

“Well, I’ll go up directly. How does England feel, Jon?”

“Topping. Can’t leave it again. Anne says she doesn’t mind.”

“Where are you going to settle?”

“Somewhere near Val and Holly, if we can get a place, to grow things.”

“Still on growing things?”

“More than ever.”

“How’s the poetry?”

“Pretty dud.”

Fleur quoted:

“‘Voice in the night crying, down in the old sleeping Spanish city darkened under her white stars.’”

“Good Lord! Do you remember that?”

“Yes.”

His eyes were as straight, his lashes as dark as ever.

“Would you like to meet Michael, Jon, and see my infant?”

“Rather!”

“When do you go down to Wansdon?”

“To-morrow or the day after.”

“Then, won’t you both come and lunch tomorrow?”

“We’d love to.”

“Half-past one. Holly and Aunt Winifred, too. Is your mother still in Paris?”

“Yes. She thinks of settling there.”

“Well, Jon—things fall on their feet, don’t they?”

“They do.”

“Shall I give you some more coffee? Aunt Winifred prides herself on her coffee.”

“Fleur, you do look splendid.”

“Thank you! Have you been down to see Robin Hill?”

“Not yet. Some potentate’s got it now.”

“Does your—does Anne find things amusing here?”

“She’s terribly impressed—says we’re a nation of gentlemen. Did you ever think that?”

“Positively—no; comparatively—perhaps.”

“It all smells so good here.”

“The poet’s nose. D’you remember our walk at Wansdon?”

“I remember everything, Fleur.”

“That’s honest. So do I. It took me some time to remember that I’d forgotten. How long did it take you?”

“Still longer, I expect.”

“Well, Michael’s the best male I know.”

“Anne’s the best female.”

“How fortunate—isn’t it? How old is she?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Just right for you. Even if we hadn’t been star-crossed, I was always too old for you. God! Weren’t we young fools?”

“I don’t see that. It was natural—it was beautiful.”

“Still got ideals? Marmalade? It’s Oxford.”

“Yes. They can’t make marmalade out of Oxford.”

“Jon, your hair grows exactly as it used to. Have you noticed mine?”

“I’ve been trying to.”

“Don’t you like it?”

“Not so much, quite; and yet—”

“You mean I shouldn’t look well out of the fashion. Very acute! You don’t mind HER being shingled, apparently.”

“It suits Anne.”

“Did her brother tell you much about me?”

“He said you had a lovely house; and nursed him like an angel.”

“Not like an angel; like a young woman of fashion. There’s still a difference.”

“Anne was awfully grateful for that. She’s told you?”

“Yes. But I’m afraid, between us, we sent Francis home rather cynical. Cynicism grows here; d’you notice it in me?”

“I think you put it on.”

“My dear! I take it off when I talk to you. You were always an innocent. Don’t smile—you were! That’s why you were well rid of me. Well, I never thought I should see you again.”

“Nor I. I’m sorry Anne’s not down.”

“You’ve never told her about me.”

“How did you know that?”

“By the way she looks at me.”

“Why should I tell her?”

“No reason in the world. Let the dead past—It’s fun to see you again, though. Shake hands. I’m going up to Holly now.”

Their hands joined over the marmalade on his plate.

“We’re not children now, Jon. Till tomorrow, then! You’ll like my house. A revederci!”

Going up the stairs she thought with resolution about nothing.

“Can I come in, Holly?”

“Fleur! My dear!”

That thin, rather sallow face, so charmingly intelligent, was propped against a pillow. Fleur had the feeling that, of all people, it was most difficult to keep one’s thoughts from Holly.

“These accounts,” she said. “I’m to see that official ass at ten. Did you order all these sides of bacon?”

The thin sallow hand took the accounts, and between the large grey eyes came a furrow.

“Nine? No—yes; that’s right. Have you seen Jon?”

“Yes; he’s the only early bird. Will you all come to lunch with us tomorrow?”

“If you think it’ll be wise, Fleur.”

“I think it’ll be pleasant.”

She met the search of the grey eyes steadily, and with secret anger. No one should see into her—no one should interfere!

“All right then, we’ll expect you all four at one-thirty. I must run now.”

She did run; but since she really had no appointment with any “official ass,” she went back into the Green Park and sat down.

So that was Jon—now! Terribly like Jon—then! His eyes deeper, his chin more obstinate—that perhaps was all the difference. He still had his sunny look; he still believed in things. He still—admired her. Ye-es! A little wind talked above her in a tree. The day was surprisingly fine—the first really fine day since Easter! What should she give them for lunch? How should she deal with Dad? He must not be there! To have perfect command of oneself was all very well; to have perfect command of one’s father was not so easy. A pattern of leaves covered her short skirt, the sun warmed her knees; she crossed them and leaned back. Eve’s first costume—a pattern of leaves… “Wise?” Holly had said, Who knew? Shrimp cocktails? No! English food. Pancakes—certainly!… To get rid of Dad, she must propose herself with Kit at Mapledurham for the day after; then he would go, to prepare for them. Her mother was still in France. The others would be gone to Wansdon. Nothing to wait for in town. A nice warm sun on her neck. A scent of grass—of honeysuckle! Oh! dear!

Chapter X. AFTER LUNCH

That the most pregnant function of human life is the meal, will be admitted by all who take part in these recurrent crises. The impossibility of getting down from table renders it the most formidable of human activities among people civilised to the point of swallowing not only their food but their feelings.

Such a conclusion at least was present to Fleur during that lunch. That her room was Spanish, reminded her that it was not with Jon she had spent her honeymoon in Spain. There had been a curious moment, too, before lunch; for, the first words Jon had spoken on seeing Michael, had been:

“Hallo! This is queer! Was Fleur with you that day at Mount Vernon?”

What was this? Had she been kept in the dark?

Then Michael had said:

“You remember, Fleur? The young Englishman I met at Mount Vernon.”

“‘Ships that pass in the night!’” said Fleur.

Mount Vernon! So THEY had met there! And she had not!

“Mount Vernon is lovely. But you ought to see Richmond, Anne. We could go after lunch. You haven’t been to Richmond for ages, I expect, Aunt Winifred. We could take Robin Hill on the way home, Jon.”

“Your old home, Jon? Oh! Do let’s!”

At that moment she hated the girl’s eager face at which Jon was looking.

“There’s the potentate,” he said.

“Oh!” said Fleur, quickly, “He’s at Monte Carlo. I read it yesterday. Could you come, Michael?”

“Afraid I’ve got a Committee. And the car can only manage five.”

“It would be just too lovely!”

Oh! that American enthusiasm! It was comforting to hear her Aunt’s flat voice opining that it would be a nice little run—the chestnuts would be out in the Park.

Had Michael really a Committee? She often knew what Michael really had, she generally knew more or less what he was thinking, but now she did not seem to know. In telling him last night of this invitation to lunch, she had carefully obliterated the impression by an embrace warmer than usual—he must not get any nonsense into his head about Jon! When, too, to her father she had said:

“Couldn’t Kit and I come down to you the day after tomorrow; but you’ll want a day there first, I’m afraid, if Mother’s not there,” how carefully she had listened to the tone of his reply:

“H’m! Ye—es! I’ll go down tomorrow morning.”

Had he scented anything; had Michael scented anything? She turned to Jon.

“Well, Jon, what d’you think of my house?”

“It’s very like you.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“To the house? Of course.”

“Francis didn’t exaggerate then?”

“Not a bit.”

“You haven’t seen Kit yet. We’ll have him down. Coaker, please ask Nurse to bring Kit down, unless he’s asleep… He’ll be three in July; quite a good walker already. It makes one frightfully old!”

The entrance of Kit and his silver dog caused a sort of cooing sound, speedily checked, for three of the women were of Forsyte stock, and the Forsytes did not coo. He stood there, blue and rather Dutch, with a slight frown and his hair bright, staring at the company.

“Come here, my son. This is Jon—your second cousin once removed.”

Kit advanced.

“S’all I bwing my ‘orse in?”

“Horse, Kit. No; shake hands.”

The small hand went up; Jon’s hand came down.

“You got dirty nails.”

She saw Jon flush, heard Anne’s: “Isn’t he just too cunning?” and said:

“Kit, you’re very rude. So would you have, if you’d been stoking an engine.”

“Yes, old man, I’ve been washing them ever since, but I can’t get them clean.”

“Why?”

“It’s got into the skin.”

“Le’ me see.”

“Go and shake hands with your great-aunt, Kit.”

“No.”

“Dear little chap,” said Winifred. “Such a bore, isn’t it, Kit?”

“Very well, then, go out again, and get your manners, and bring them in.”

“All wight.”

His exit, closed in by the silver dog, was followed by a general laugh; Fleur said, softly:

“Little wretch—poor Jon!” And through her lashes she saw Jon give her a grateful look…

In this mid-May fine weather the view from Richmond Hill had all the width and leafy charm which had drawn so many Forsytes in phaetons and barouches, in hansom cabs and motor cars from immemorial time, or at least from the days of George the Fourth. The winding river shone discreetly, far down there; and the trees of the encompassing landscape, though the oaks were still goldened, had just begun to have a brooding look; in July they would be heavy and blueish. Curiously, few houses showed among the trees and fields; very scanty evidence of man, within twelve miles of London! The spirit of an older England seemed to have fended jerry-builders from a prospect sacred to the ejaculations of four generations.

Of those five on the terrace Winifred best expressed that guarding spirit, with her:

“Really, it’s a very pretty view!”

A view—a view! And yet a view was not what it had been when old Jolyon travelled the Alps with that knapsack of brown leather and square shape, still in his grandson Jon’s possession; or Swithin above his greys, rolling his neck with consequence toward the lady by his side, had pointed with his whip down at the river and pouted: “A pooty little view!” Or James, crouched over his long knees in some gondola, had examined the Grand Canal at Venice with doubting eyes, and muttered: “They never told me the water was this colour!” Or Nicholas, taking his constitutional at Matlock, had opined that the gorge was the finest in England. No, a view was not what it had been! George Forsyte and Montague Dartie, with their backs to it, quizzically contemplating the Liberty ladies brought down to be fed, had started that rot; and now the young folk didn’t use the expression, but just ejaculated: “Christ!” or words to that effect.

But there was Anne, of course, like an American, with clasped hands, and:

“Isn’t it too lovely, Jon? It’s sort of romantic!”

And so to the Park, where Winifred chanted automatically at sight of the chestnuts, and every path and patch of fern and fallen tree drew from Holly or Jon some riding recollection.

“Look, Anne, that’s where I threw myself off my pony as a kid when I lost my stirrup and got so bored with being bumped.”

Or: “Look, Jon! Val and I had a race down that avenue. Oh! and there’s the log we used to jump. Still there!”

And Anne was in ecstasies over the deer and the grass, so different from the American varieties.

To Fleur the Park meant nothing.

“Jon,” she said, suddenly, “what are you going to do to get in at Robin Hill?”

“Tell the lodge-keeper that I want to show my wife where I lived as a boy; and give him a couple of good reasons. I don’t want to see the house, all new furniture and that.”

“Couldn’t we go in at the bottom, through the coppice?” and her eyes added: “As we did that day.”

“We might come on someone, and get turned back.”

The couple of good reasons secured their top entrance to the grounds; the ‘family’ was not ‘in residence.’

Bosinney’s masterpiece wore its mellowest aspect. The sun-blinds were down, for the sun was streaming on its front, past the old oak tree, where was now no swing. In Irene’s rose-garden, which had replaced old Jolyon’s fernery, buds were forming, but only one rose was out.

“‘Rose, you Spaniard!’” Something clutched Fleur’s heart. What was Jon thinking—what remembering, with those words and that frown? Just here she had sat between his father and his mother, believing that she and Jon would live here some day; together watch the roses bloom, the old oak drop its leaves; together say to their guests: “Look! There’s the Grand Stand at Epsom—see? Just above those poplars!”

And now she could not even walk beside him, who was playing guide to that girl, his wife! Beside her aunt she walked instead. Winifred was extremely intrigued. She had never yet seen this house, which Soames had built with the brains of young Bosinney; which Irene, with ‘that unfortunate little affair of hers’ had wrecked; this house where Old Uncle Jolyon, and Cousin Jolyon had died; and Irene, so ironically, had lived and had this boy Jon—a nice boy, too; this house of Forsyte song and story. It was very distinguished and belonged to a peer now, which, since it had gone out of the family, seemed suitable. In the walled fruit-garden, she said to Fleur:

“Your grandfather came down here once, to see how it was getting on. I remember his saying: ‘It’ll cost a pretty penny to keep up.’ And I should think it does. But it was a pity to sell it. Irene’s doing, of course! She never cared for the family. Now, if only—” But she stopped short of the words: “you and Jon had made a match of it.”

“What on earth would Jon have done, Auntie, with a great place like this so near London? He’s a poet.”

“Yes,” murmured Winifred—not very quick, because in her youth quickness had not been fashionable. “There’s too much glass, perhaps.” And they went down through the meadow.

The coppice! Still there at the bottom of the field. But Fleur lingered now, stood by the fallen log, waited till she could say:

“Listen! The cuckoo, Jon!”

The cuckoo’s song, and the sight of bluebells under the larch trees! Beside her Jon stood still! Yes, and the Spring stood still. There went the song—over and over!

“It was HERE we came on your mother, Jon, and our stars were crossed. Oh, Jon!”

Could so short a sound mean so much, say so much, be so startling? His face! She jumped on to the log at once.

“No ghosts, my dear!”

And, with a start, Jon looked up at her.

She put her hands on his shoulders and jumped down. And among the bluebells they went on. And the bird sang after them.

“That bird repeats himself,” said Fleur.

Chapter XI. PERAMBULATION

The instinct in regard to his daughter, which by now formed part of his protective covering against the machinations of Fate, had warned Soames, the day before, that Fleur was up to something when she went out while he was having breakfast. Seen through the window waving papers at him, she had an air of unreality, or at least an appearance of not telling him anything. As something not quite genuine in the voice warns a dog that he is about to be left, so was Soames warned by the ostentation of those papers. He finished his breakfast, therefore, too abruptly for one constitutionally given to marmalade, and set forth to Green Street. Since that young fellow Jon was staying there, this fashionable locality was the seat of any reasonable uneasiness. If, moreover, there was a place in the world where Soames could still unbutton his soul, it was his sister Winifred’s drawing-room, on which in 1879 he himself had impressed so deeply the personality of Louis Quinze that, in spite of jazz and Winifred’s desire to be in the heavier modern fashion, that monarch’s incurable levity was still to be observed.

Taking a somewhat circuitous course and looking in at the Connoisseurs’ Club on the way, Soames did not arrive until after Fleur’s departure. The first remark from Smither confirmed the uneasiness which had taken him forth.

“Mr. Soames! Oh! What a pity—Miss Fleur’s just gone! And nobody down yet but Mr. Jon.”

“Oh!” said Soames. “Did she see him?”

“Yes, sir. He’s in the dining-room, if you’d like to go in.”

Soames shook his head.

“How long are they staying, Smither?”

“Well, I did hear Mrs. Val say they were all going back to Wansdon the day after tomorrow. We shall be all alone again in case you were thinking of coming to us, Mr. Soames.”

Again Soames shook his head. “Too busy,” he said.

“What a beautiful young lady Miss Fleur ‘as grown, to be sure; such a colour she ‘ad this morning!”

Soames gave vent to an indeterminate sound. The news was not to his liking, but he could hardly say so in front of an institution. One could never tell how much Smither knew. She had creaked her way through pretty well every family secret in her time, from the days which his own matrimonial relations supplied Timothy’s with more than all the gossip it required. Yes, and were not his matrimonial relations, twice-laid, still supplying the raw material? Curiously sinister it seemed to him just then, that the son of his supplanter Jolyon should be here in this house, the nearest counterfeit of that old homing centre of the Forsytes, Timothy’s in the Bayswater Road. What a perversity there was in things! And, repeating the indeterminate sound, he said:

“By the way, I suppose that Mr. Stainford never came here again?”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Soames; he called yesterday to see Mr. Val; but Mr. Val was gone.”

“He did—did he?” said Soames, round-eyed. “What did he take this time?”

“Oh! Of course I knew better than to let him in.”

“You didn’t give him Mr. Val’s address in the country?”

“Oh, no, sir; he knew it.”

“Deuce he did!”

“Shall I tell the mistress you’re here, Mr. Soames? She must be nearly down by now.”

“No; don’t disturb her.”

“I am that sorry, sir; it’s always such a pleasure to her to see you.”

Old Smither bridling! A good soul! No such domestics nowadays! And, putting on his hat, Soames touched its brim, murmuring:

“Well, good-bye, Smither. Give her my love!” and went out.

‘So!’ he thought, ‘Fleur’s seen that boy!’ The whole thing would begin over again! He had known it! And, very slowly, with his hat rather over his eyes, he made for Hyde Park Corner. This was for him a moment in deep waters, when the heart must be hardened to this dangerous decision or to that. With the tendency for riding past the hounds inherited from his father James in all matters which threatened the main securities of life, Soames rushed on in thought to the ruin of his daughter’s future, wherein so sacredly was embalmed his own.

“Such a colour she ‘ad this morning!” When she waved those papers at him, she was pale enough—too pale! A confounded chance! Breakfast time, too—worst time in the day—most intimate! His naturally realistic nature apprehended all the suggestions that lay in breakfast. Those who breakfasted alone together, slept together as often as not. Putting things into her head! Yes; and they were not boy and girl now! Well, it all depended on what their feelings were, if they still had any. And who was to know? Who, in heaven’s name, was to know? Automatically he had begun to encompass the Artillery Memorial. A great white thing which he had never yet taken in properly, and didn’t know that he wanted to. Yet somehow it was very real, and suited to his mood—faced things; nothing high-flown about that gun—short, barking brute of a thing; or those dark men—drawn and devoted under their steel hats! Nothing pretty-pretty about that memorial—no angels’ wings there! No Georges and no dragons, nor horses on the prance; no panoply, and no panache! There it ‘sot’—as they used to say—squatted like a great white toad on the nation’s life. Concreted thunder. Not an illusion about it! Good thing to look at once a day, and see what you’d got to avoid. ‘I’d like to rub the noses of those Crown Princes and military cocks-o’-the-walk on it,’ thought Soames, ‘with their—what was it? – “fresh and merry wars!”’ And, crossing the road in the sunshine, he passed into the Park, moving towards Knightsbridge.

But about Fleur? Was he going to take the bull by the horns, or to lie low? Must be one thing or the other. He walked rapidly now, concentrated in face and movement, stalking as it were his own thoughts with a view to finality. He passed out at Knightsbridge, and after unseeing scrutiny of two or three small shops where in his time he had picked up many a bargain, for himself or shopman, he edged past Tattersall’s. That hung on—they still sold horses there, he believed! Horses had never been in his line, but he had not lived in Montpellier Square without knowing the habitues of Tattersall’s by sight. Like everything else that was crusted, they’d be pulling it down before long, he shouldn’t wonder, and putting up some motor place or cinema!

Suppose he talked to Michael? No! Worse than useless. Besides, he couldn’t talk about Fleur and that boy to anyone—thereby hung too long a tale; and the tale was his own. Montpellier Square! He had turned into the very place, whether by design he hardly knew. It hadn’t changed—but was all slicked up since he was last there, soon after the war. Builders and decorators must have done well lately—about the only people who had. He walked along the right side of the narrow square, where he had known turbulence and tragedy. There the house was, looking much as it used to, not quite so neat, and a little more florid. Why had he ever married that woman? What had made him so set on it? Well! She had done her best to deter him. But—God! – how he had wanted her! To this day he could recognise that. And at first—at first, he had thought, and perhaps she had thought—but who could tell? – HE never could! And then slowly—or was it quickly? – the end; a ghastly business! He stood still by the square railings, and stared at the doorway that had been his own, as if from its green paint and its brass number he might receive inspiration how to choke love in his own daughter for the son of his own wife—yes, how to choke it before it spread and choked her?

And as, on those days and nights of his first married life, returning home, he had sought in vain for inspiration how to awaken love, so now no inspiration came to tell him how to strangle love. And, doggedly, he turned out of the little square.

In a way it was ridiculous to be fussing about the matter; for, after all, Michael was a good young fellow, and her marriage far from unhappy, so far as he could see. As for young Jon, presumably he had married for love; there hadn’t been anything else to marry for, he believed—unless he had been misinformed, the girl and her brother had been museum pieces, two Americans without money to speak of. And yet—there was the moon, and he could not forget how Fleur had always wanted it. A desire to have what she hadn’t yet got was her leading characteristic. Impossible, too, to blink his memory of her, six years ago—to forget her body crumpled and crushed into the sofa in the dark that night when he came back from Robin Hill and broke the news to her. Perusing with his mind the record since, Soames had an acute and comfortless feeling that she had, as it were, been marking time, that all her fluttering activities, even the production of Kit, had been in the nature of a makeshift. Like the age to which she belonged, she had been lifting her feet up and down without getting anywhere, because she didn’t know where she wanted to get. And yet, of late, since she had been round the world, he had seemed to notice something quieter and more solid in her conduct, as if settled purposes were pushing up, and she were coming to terms at last with her daily life. Look, for instance, at the way she had tackled this canteen! And, turning his face homeward, Soames had a vision of a common not far from Mapledurham, where some fool had started a fire which had burned the gorse, and of the grass pushing up, almost impudently green and young, through the charred embers of that conflagration. Rather like things generally, when you thought of it! The war had burned them all out, but things, yes, and people, too—one noticed—were beginning to sprout a bit, as if they felt again it might be worth while. Why, even he himself had regained some of his old connoisseur’s desire to have nice things! It all depended on what you saw ahead, on whether you could eat and drink because tomorrow you didn’t die. With this Dawes Settlement and Locarno business, and the General Strike broken, there might even be another long calm, like the Victorian, which would make things possible. He was seventy-one, but one could always dwell on Timothy, who had lived to be a hundred, fixed star in shifting skies. And Fleur—only twenty-four—might almost outlive the century if she, or, rather the century, took care and bottled up its unruly passions, its disordered longings, and all that silly rushing along to nowhere in particular. If they steadied down, the age might yet become a golden, or a platinum, age at any rate. Even he might live to see the income tax at half-a-crown. ‘No,’ he thought, confused between his daughter and the age; ‘she mustn’t go throwing her cap over the windmill. It’s short-sighted!’ And, his blood warmed by perambulation, he became convinced that he would not speak to her, but lie low, and trust to that common-sense, of which she surely had her share—oh, yes! ‘Just keep my eyes open, and speak to no one,’ he thought; ‘least said, soonest mended.’

He had come again to the Artillery Memorial; and for the second time he moved around it. No! A bit of a blot—it seemed to him, now—so literal and heavy! Would that great white thing help Consols to rise? Some thing with wings might, after all, have been preferable. Some encouragement to people to take shares or go into domestic service; help, in fact, to make life liveable, instead of reminding them all the time that they had already once been blown to perdition and might again be. Those Artillery fellows—he had read somewhere—loved their guns, and wanted to be reminded of them. But did anybody else love their guns, or want reminder? Not those Artillery fellows would look at this every day outside St. George’s Hospital, but Tom, Dick, Harry, Peter, Gladys, Joan and Marjorie. ‘Mistake!’ thought Soames; ‘and a pretty heavy one. Something sedative, statue of Vulcan, or somebody on a horse; that’s what’s wanted!’ And remembering George III on a horse, he smiled grimly. Anyway, there the thing was, and would have to stay! But it was high time artists went back to nymphs and dolphins, and other evidences of a settled life.

When at lunch Fleur suggested that he would want a day’s law at Mapledurham before she and Kit came down, he again felt there was something behind; but, relieved enough at getting her, he let ‘the sleeping dog’ lie; nor did he mention his visit to Green Street.

“The weather looks settled,” he said. “You want some sun after that canteen. They talk about these ultra-violet rays. Plain sunshine used to be good enough. The doctors’ll be finding something extra-pink before long. If they’d only let things alone!”

“Darling, it amuses them.”

“Re-discovering what our grandmothers knew so well that we’ve forgotten ’em, and calling ’em by fresh names! A thing isn’t any more wholesome to eat, for instance, because they’ve invented the word ‘vitamin.’ Why, your grandfather ate an orange every day of his life, because his old doctor told him to, at the beginning of the last century. Vitamins! Don’t you let Kit get faddy about his food. It’s a long time before he’ll go to school—that’s one comfort. School feeding!”

“Did they feed you so badly, Dad?”

“Badly! How we grow up, I don’t know. We ate out principal meal in twenty minutes, and were playing football ten minutes after. But nobody thought about digestion, then.”

“Isn’t that an argument for thinking of it now?”

“A good digestion,” said Soames, “is the whole secret of life.” And he looked at his daughter. Thank God! SHE wasn’t peaky. So far as he knew, her digestion was excellent. She might fancy herself in love, or out of it; but so long as she was unconscious of her digestion, she would come through. “The thing is to walk as much as you can, in these days of cars,” he added.

“Yes,” said Fleur, “I had a nice walk this morning.”

Was she challenging him over her apple charlotte? If so, he wasn’t going to rise.

“So did I,” he said. “I went all about. We’ll have some golf down there.”

She looked at him for a second, then said a surprising thing:

“Yes, I believe I’m getting middle-aged enough for golf.”

Now what did she mean by that?

Chapter XII. PRIVATE FEELINGS

On the day of the lunch party and the drive to Robin Hill, Michael really had a Committee, but he also had his private feelings and wanted to get on terms with them. There are natures in which discovery of what threatens happiness perverts to prejudice all judgment of the disturbing object. Michael’s was not such. He had taken a fancy to the young Englishman met at the home of that old American George Washington, partly, indeed, because he WAS English; and, seeing him now seated next to Fleur, – second cousin and first love—he was unable to revise the verdict. The boy had a nice face, and was better-looking than himself; he had attractive hair, a strong chin, straight eyes, and a modest bearing; there was no sense in blinking facts like those. The Free Trade in love, which obtained amongst pleasant people, forbade Michael to apply the cruder principles of Protection even in thoughts. Fortunately, the boy was married to this slim and attractive girl, who looked at one—as Mrs. Val had put it to him—like a guaranteed-pure water-nymph! Michael’s private feelings were therefore more concerned with Fleur than with the young man himself. But hers was a difficult face to read, a twisting brain to follow, a heart hard to get at; and—was Jon Forsyte the reason why? He remembered how in Cork Street this boy’s elderly half-sister—that fly-away little lady, June Forsyte—had blurted out to him that Fleur ought to have married her younger brother—first he had ever heard of it. How painfully it had affected him with its intimation that he played but second fiddle in the life of his beloved! He remembered, too, some cautious and cautionary allusions by “old Forsyte.” Coming from that model of secrecy and suppressed feelings, they, too, had made on Michael a deep and lasting impression, reinforced by his own failure to get at the bottom of Fleur’s heart. He went to his Committee with but half his mind on public matters. What had nipped that early love affair in the bud and given him his chance? Not sudden dislike, lack of health, or lack of money—not relationship, for Mrs. Val Dartie had married her second cousin apparently with everyone’s consent. Michael, it will be seen, had remained quite ignorant of the skeleton in Soames’ cupboard. Such Forsytes as he had met, reticent about family affairs, had never mentioned it; and Fleur had never even spoken of her first love, much less of the reason why it had come to naught. Yet, there must have been some reason; and it was idle to try and understand her present feelings without knowing what it was!

His Committee was on birth control in connection with the Ministry of Health; and, while listening to arguments why he should not support for other people what he practised himself, he was visited by an idea. Why not go and ask Jane Forsyte? He could find her in the telephone book—there could be but one with such a name.

“What do YOU say, Mont?”

“Well, sir, if we won’t export children to the Colonies or speed up emigration somehow, there’s nothing for it but birth control. In the upper and middle classes we’re doing it all the time, and blinking the moral side, if there is one; and I really don’t see how we can insist on a moral side for those who haven’t a quarter of our excuse for having lots of children.”

“My dear Mont,” said the chairman, with a grin, “aren’t you cutting there at the basis of all privilege?”

“Very probably,” said Michael, with an answering grin. “I think, of course, that child emigration is much better, but nobody else does, apparently.”

Everybody knew that ‘young Mont’ had a ‘bee in his bonnet’ about child emigration, and there was little disposition to encourage it to buzz. And, since no one was more aware than Michael of being that crank in politics, one who thought you could not eat your cake and have it, he said no more. Presently, feeling that they would go round and round the mulberry bush for some time yet, and sit on the fence after, he excused himself and went away.

He found the address he wanted: “Miss June Forsyte, Poplar House, Chiswick,” and mounted a Hammersmith ‘bus.

How fast things seemed coming back to the normal! Extraordinarily difficult to upset anything so vast, intricate, and elastic as a nation’s life. The ‘bus swung along among countless vehicles and pedestrian myriads, and Michael realised how firm were those two elements of stability in the modern state, the common need for eating, drinking, and getting about; and the fact that so many people could drive cars. ‘Revolution?’ he thought: ‘There never was a time when it had less chance. Machinery’s dead agin it.’ Machinery belonged to the settled state of things, and every day saw its reinforcement. The unskilled multitude and the Communistic visionaries, their leaders, only had a chance now where machinery and means of communication were still undeveloped, as in Russia. Brains, ability, and technical skill were by nature on the side of capital and individual enterprise, and were gaining ever more power.

“Poplar House” took some finding, and, when found, was a little house supporting a large studio with a north light. It stood, behind two poplar trees, tall, thin, white, like a ghost. A foreign woman opened to him. Yes. Miss Forsyte was in the studio with Mr. Blade! Michael sent up his card, and waited in a draught, extremely ill at ease; for now that he was here he could not imagine why he had come. How to get the information he wanted without seeming to have come for it, passed his comprehension; for it was the sort of knowledge that could only be arrived at by crude questioning.

Finding that he was to go up, he went, perfecting his first lie. On entering the studio, a large room with green-canvassed walls, pictures hung or stacked, the usual dais, a top light half curtained, and some cats, he was conscious of a fluttering movement. A little light lady in flowing green, with short silver hair, had risen from a footstool, and was coming towards him.

“How do you do? You know Harold Blade, of course?”

The young man, at whose feet she had been sitting, rose and stood before Michael, square, somewhat lowering, with a dun-coloured complexion and heavily charged eyes.

“You must know his wonderful Rafaelite work.”

“Oh, yes!” said Michael, whose conscience was saying: “Oh, no!”

The young man said, grimly: “He doesn’t know me from Adam.”

“No, really,” muttered Michael. “But do tell me, why Rafaelite? I’ve always wanted to know.”

“Why?” exclaimed June. “Because he’s the only man who’s giving us the old values; he’s rediscovered them.”

“Forgive me, I’m such a dud in art matters—I thought the academicians were still in perspective!”

“THEY!” cried June, and Michael winced at the passion in the word. “Oh, well—if you still believe in them—”

“But I don’t,” said Michael.

“Harold is the only Rafaelite; people are grouping round him, of course, but he’ll be the last, too. It’s always like that. A great painter makes a school, but the schools never amount to anything.”

Michael looked with added interest at the first and last Rafaelite. He did not like the face, but it had a certain epileptic quality.

“Might I look round? Does my father-inlaw know your work, I wonder? He’s a great collector, and always on the look-out.”

“Soames!” said June, and again Michael winced. “He’ll be collecting Harold when we’re all dead. Look at that!”

Michael turned from the Rafaelite, who was shrugging his thick shoulders. He saw what was clearly a portrait of June. It was entirely recognisable, very smooth, all green and silver, with a suggestion of halo round the head.

“Pure primary line and colour—d’you think they’d hang THAT in the Academy?”

‘Seems to me exactly what they would hang,’ thought Michael, careful to keep the conclusion out of his face.

“I like the suggestion of a halo,” he murmured.

The Rafaelite uttered a short, sharp laugh.

“I’m going for a walk,” he said; “I’ll be in to supper. Good-bye!”

“Good-bye!” said Michael, with a certain relief.

“Of course,” said June when they were alone, “he’s the ONLY person who could paint Fleur. He’d get her modern look so perfectly. Would she sit to him? With everybody against him, you know, he has SUCH a struggle.”

“I’ll ask her. But do tell me—why is everybody against him?”

“Because he’s been through all these empty modern crazes, and come back to pure form and colour. They think he’s a traitor, and call him academic. It’s always the way when a man has the grit to fly against fashion and follow his own genius. I can see exactly what he’d do with Fleur. It would be a great chance for him, because he’s very proud, and this would be a proper commission from Soames. Splendid for her, too, of course. She ought to jump at it—in ten years’ time he’ll be THE man.”

Michael, who doubted if Fleur would “jump at it,” or Soames give the commission, replied cautiously: “I’ll sound her… By the way, your sister Holly and your young brother and his wife were lunching with us today.”

“Oh!” said June, “I haven’t seen Jon yet.” And, looking at Michael with her straight blue eyes, she added:

“Why did you come to see me?”

Under that challenging stare Michael’s diplomacy wilted.

“Well,” he said, “frankly, I want you to tell me why Fleur and your young brother came to an end with each other.”

“Sit down,” said June, and resting her pointed chin on her hand, she looked at him with eyes moving a little from side to side, as might a cat’s.

“I’m glad you asked me straight out; I hate people who beat about the bush. Don’t you know about Jon’s mother? She was Soames’ first wife, of course.”

“Oh!” said Michael.

“Irene,” and, as she spoke the name, Michael was aware of something deep and primitive stirring in that little figure. “Very beautiful—they didn’t get on; she left him—and years later she married my father, and Soames divorced her. I mean Soames divorced her and she married my father. They had Jon. And then, when Jon and Fleur fell in love, Irene and my father were terribly upset, and so was Soames—at least, he ought to have been.”

“And then?” asked Michael, for she was silent.

“The children were told; and my father died in the middle of it all; and Jon sacrificed himself and took his mother away, and Fleur married you.”

So that was it! In spite of the short, sharp method of the telling, he could feel tragic human emotion heavy in the tale. Poor little devils!

“I always thought it was too bad,” said June, suddenly. “Irene ought to have put up with it. Only—only—” and she stared at Michael, “they wouldn’t have been happy. Fleur’s too selfish. I expect she saw that.”

Michael raised an indignant voice.

“Yes,” said June; “you’re a good sort, I know—too good for her.”

“I’m not,” said Michael, sharply.

“Oh, yes, you are. She isn’t bad, but she’s a selfish little creature.”

“I wish you’d remember—”

“Sit down! Don’t mind what I say. I only speak the truth, you know. Of course, it was all horrible; Soames and my father were first cousins. And those children were awfully in love.”

Again Michael was conscious of the deep and private feeling within the little figure; conscious, too, of something deep and private stirring within himself.

“Painful!” he said.

“I don’t know,” June went on, abruptly, “I don’t know; perhaps it was all for the best. You’re happy, aren’t you?”

With that pistol to his head, he stood and delivered.

“I am. But is she?”

The little green-and-silver figure straightened up. She caught his hand and gave it a squeeze. There was something almost terribly warmhearted about the action, and Michael was touched. He had only seen her twice before!

“After all, Jon’s married. What’s his wife like?”

“Looks charming—nice, I think.”

“An American!” said June, deeply. “Well, Fleur’s half French. I’m glad you’ve got a boy.”

Never had Michael known anyone whose words conveyed so much unintended potency of discomfort! Why was she glad he had a boy? Because it was an insurance—against what?

“Well,” he mumbled, “I’m very glad to know at last what it was all about.”

“You ought to have been told before; but you don’t know still. Nobody can know what family feuds and feelings are like, who hasn’t had them. Though I was angry about those children, I admit that. You see, I was the first to back Irene against Soames in the old days. I wanted her to leave him at the beginning of everything. She had a beastly time; he was such a—such a slug about his precious rights, and no proper pride either. Fancy forcing yourself on a woman who didn’t want you!”

“Ah!” Michael muttered. “Fancy!”

“People in the ‘eighties and ‘nineties didn’t understand how disgusting it was. Thank goodness, they do now!”

“Do they?” murmured Michael. “I wonder!”

“Of course they do.”

Michael sat corrected.

“Things are much better in that way than they were—not nearly so stuffy and farmyardy. I wonder Fleur hasn’t told you all about it.”

“She’s never said a word.”

“Oh!”

That sound was as discomforting as any of her more elaborate remarks. Clearly she was thinking what he himself was thinking: that it had gone too deep with Fleur to be spoken of. He was not even sure that Fleur knew whether he had ever heard of her affair with Jon.

And, with a sudden shrinking from any more discomforting sounds, he rose.

“Thanks awfully for telling me. I must buzz off now, I’m afraid.”

“I shall come and see Fleur about sitting to Harold. It’s too good a chance for him to miss. He simply must get commissions.”

“Of course!” said Michael; he could trust Fleur’s powers of refusal better than his own.

“Good-bye, then!”

But when he got to the door and looked back at her standing alone in that large room, he felt a pang—she seemed so light, so small, so flyaway, with her silver hair and her little intent face—still young from misjudged enthusiasm. He had got something out of her, too, left nothing with her; and he had stirred up some private feeling of her past, some feeling as strong, perhaps stronger, than his own.

She looked dashed lonely! He waved his hand to her.

Fleur had returned when he got home, and Michael realised suddenly, that in calling on June Forsyte he had done a thing inexplicable, save in relation to her and Jon!

‘I must write and ask that little lady not to mention it,’ he thought. To let Fleur know that he had been fussing about her past would never do.

“Had a good time?” he said.

“Very. Young Anne reminds me of Francis, except for her eyes.”

“Yes; I liked the looks of those two when I saw them at Mount Vernon. That was a queer meeting, wasn’t it?”

“The day father was unwell?”

He felt that she knew the meeting had been kept from her. If only he could talk to her freely; if only she would blurt out everything!

But all she said was: “I feel at a bad loose end, Michael, without the canteen.”

Chapter XIII. SOAMES IN WAITING

To say that Soames preferred his house by the river when his wife was not there, would be a crude way of expressing a far from simple equation. He was glad to be still married to a handsome woman and very good housekeeper, who really could not help being French and twenty-five years younger than himself. But the fact was, that when she was away from him, he could see her good points so much better than when she was not. Though fond of mocking him in her French way, she had, he knew, lived into a certain regard for his comfort, and her own position as his wife. Affection? No, he did not suppose she had affection for him, but she liked her home, her bridge, her importance in the neighbourhood, and doing things about the house and garden. She was like a cat. And with money she was admirable—making it go further and buy more than most people. She was getting older, too, all the time, so that he had lost serious fear that she would overdo some friendship or other, and let him know it. That Prosper Profund business of six years ago, which had been such a squeak, had taught her discretion.

It had been quite unnecessary really for him to go down a day before Fleur’s arrival; his household ran on wheels too well geared and greased. On his fifteen acres, with the new dairy and cows across the river, he grew everything now except flour, fish, and meat of which he was but a sparing eater. Fifteen acres, if hardly “land,” represented a deal of produce. The establishment was, in fact, typical of countless residences of the unlanded well-to-do.

Soames had taste, and Annette, if anything, had more, especially in food, so that a better fed household could scarcely have been found.

In this bright weather, the leaves just full, the mayflower in bloom, bulbs not yet quite over, and the river relearning its summer smile, the beauty of the prospect was not to be sneezed at. And Soames on his green lawn walked a little and thought of why gardeners seemed always on the move from one place to another. He couldn’t seem to remember ever having seen an English gardener otherwise than about to work. That was, he supposed, why people so often had Scotch gardeners. Fleur’s dog came out and joined him. The fellow was getting old, and did little but attack imaginary fleas. Soames was very particular about real fleas, and the animal was washed so often that his skin had become very thin—a golden brown retriever, so rare that he was always taken for a mongrel. The head gardener came by with a spud in his hand.

“Good afternoon, sir.”

“Good afternoon,” replied Soames. “So the strike’s over!”

“Yes, sir. If they’d attend to their business, it’d be better.”

“It would. How’s your asparagus?”

“Well, I’m trying to make a third bed, but I can’t get the extra labour.”

Soames gazed at his gardener, who had a narrow face, rather on one side, owing to the growth of flowers. “What?” he said. “When there are about a million and a half people out of employment?”

“And where they get to, I can’t think,” said the gardener.

“Most of them,” said Soames, “are playing instruments in the streets.”

“That’s right, sir—my sister lives in London. I could get a boy, but I can’t trust him.”

“Why don’t you do it yourself?”

“Well, sir, I expect it’ll come to that; but I don’t want to let the garden down, you know.” And he moved the spud uneasily.

“What have you got that thing for? There isn’t a weed about the place.”

The gardener smiled. “It’s something cruel,” he said, “the way they spring up when you’re not about.”

“Mrs. Mont will be down tomorrow,” muttered Soames; “I shall want some good flowers in the house.”

“Very little at this time of year, sir.”

“I never knew a time of year when there was much. You must stir your stumps and find something.”

“Very good, sir,” said the gardener, and walked away.

‘Where’s he going now?’ thought Soames. ‘I never knew such a chap. But they’re all the same.’ He supposed they did work some time or other; in the small hours, perhaps—precious small hours! Anyway, he had to pay ’em a pretty penny for it! And, noticing the dog’s head on one side, he said: “Want a walk?”

They went out of the gate together, away from the river. The birds were in varied song, and the cuckoos obstreperous.

They walked up to a bit of common land where there had been a conflagration in the exceptionally fine Easter weather. From there one could look down at the river winding among poplars and willows. The prospect was something like that in a long river landscape by Daubigny which he had seen in an American’s private collection—a very fine landscape, he never remembered seeing a finer. He could mark the smoke from his own kitchen chimney, and was more pleased than he would have been marking the smoke from any other. He had missed it a lot last year—all those months, mostly hot—touring the world with Fleur from one unhomelike place to another. Young Michael’s craze for emigration! Soames was Imperialist enough to see the point of it in theory; but in practice every place out of England seemed to him so raw, or so extravagant. An Englishman was entitled to the smoke of his own kitchen chimney. Look at the Ganges—monstrous great thing, compared with that winding silvery thread down there! The St. Lawrence, the Hudson, the PO-tomac—as he still called it in thought—had all pleased him, but, comparatively, they were sprawling pieces of water. And the people out there were a sprawling lot. They had to be, in those big places. He moved down from the common through a narrow bit of wood where rooks were in a state of some excitement. He knew little about the habits of birds, not detached enough from self for the study of creatures quite unconnected with him; but he supposed they would be holding a palaver about food—worm-currency would be depressed, or there had been some inflation or other—fussy as the French over their wretched franc. Emerging, he came down opposite the lock-keeper’s cottage. There, with the scent of the wood-smoke threading from its low and humble chimney, the weir murmuring, the blackbirds and the cuckoos calling, Soames experienced something like asphyxiation of the proprietary instincts. Opening the handle of his shooting-stick, he sat down on it, to contemplate the oozy green on the sides of the emptied lock and dabble one hand in the air. Ingenious things—locks! Why not locks in the insides of men and women, so that their passions could be damned to the proper moment, then used, under control, for the main traffic of life, instead of pouring to waste over weirs and down rapids? The tongue of Fleur’s dog licking his dabbled hand interrupted this somewhat philosophic reflection. Animals were too human nowadays, always wanting to have notice taken of them; only that afternoon he had seen Annette’s black cat look up into the plaster face of his Naples Psyche, and mew faintly—wanting to be taken up into its lap, he supposed—only the thing hadn’t one.

The lock-keeper’s daughter came out to take some garments off a line. Women in the country seemed to do nothing but hang clothes on lines and take them off again! Soames watched her, neat-handed, neat-ankled, in neat light-blue print, with a face like a Botticelli—lots of faces like that in England! She would have a young man, or perhaps two—and they would walk in that wood, and sit in damp places and all the rest of it, and imagine themselves happy, he shouldn’t wonder; or she would get up behind him on one of those cycle things and go tearing about the country with her dress up to her knees. And her name would be Gladys or Doris, or what not! She saw him, and smiled. She had a full mouth that looked pretty when it smiled. Soames raised his hat slightly.

“Nice evening!” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

Very respectful!

“River’s still high.”

“Yes, sir.”

Rather a pretty girl! Suppose he had been a lock-keeper, and Fleur had been a lock-keeper’s daughter—hanging clothes on a line, and saying “Yes, sir!” Well, he would as soon be a lock-keeper as anything else in a humble walk of life—watching water go up and down, and living in that pretty cottage, with nothing to worry about, except—except his daughter! And he checked an impulse to say to the girl: “Are you a good daughter?” Was there such a thing nowadays—a daughter that thought of you first, and herself after?

“These cuckoos!” he said, heavily.

“Yes, sir.”

She was taking a somewhat suggestive garment off the line now, and Soames lowered his eyes, he did not want to embarrass the girl—not that he saw any signs. Probably you couldn’t embarrass a girl nowadays! And, rising, he closed the handle of his shooting-stick.

“Well, it’ll keep fine, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good evening.”

“Good evening, sir.”

Followed by the dog, he moved along towards home. Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth; but how would she talk to her young man? Humiliating to be old! On an evening like this, one should be young again, and walk in a wood with a girl like that; and all that had been faun-like in his nature pricked ears for a moment, licked lips, and with a shrug and a slight sense of shame, died down.

It had always been characteristic of Soames, who had his full share of the faun, to keep the fact carefully hidden. Like all his family, except, perhaps, his cousin George and his uncle Swithin, he was secretive in matters of sex; no Forsyte talked sex, or liked to hear others talk it; and when they felt its call, they gave no outward sign. Not the Puritan spirit, but a certain refinement in them forbade the subject, and where they got it from they did not know!

After his lonely dinner he lit his cigar and strolled out again. It was really warm for May, and still light enough for him to see his cows in the meadow beyond the river. They would soon be sheltering for the night, under that hawthorn hedge. And here came the swans, with their grey brood in tow; handsome birds, going to bed on the island!

The river was whitening; the dusk seemed held in the trees, waiting to spread and fly up into a sky just drained of sunset. Very peaceful, and a little eerie—the hour between! Those starlings made a racket—disagreeable beggars; there could be no real self-respect with such short tails! The swallows went by, taking ‘night-caps’ of gnats and early moths; and the poplars stood so still—just as if listening—that Soames put up his hand to feel for breeze. Not a breath! And then, all at once—no swallows flying, no starlings; a chalky hue over river, over sky! The lights sprang up in the house. A night-flying beetle passed him, booming. The dew was falling—he felt it; must go in. And, as he turned, quickly, dusk softened the trees, the sky, the river. And Soames thought: ‘Hope to goodness there’ll be no mysteries when she comes down tomorrow. I don’t want to be worried!’ Just she and the little chap; it might be so pleasant, if that old love trouble with its gnarled roots in the past and its bitter fruits in the future were not present, to cast a gloom…

He slept well, and next morning could settle to nothing but the arrangement of things already arranged. Several times he stopped dead in the middle of this task to listen for the car and remind himself that he must not fuss, or go asking things. No doubt she had seen young Jon again yesterday, but he must not ask.

He went up to his picture gallery and unhooked from the wall a little Watteau, which he had once heard her admire. He took it downstairs and stood it on an easel in her bedroom—a young man in full plum-coloured skirts and lace ruffles, playing a tambourine to a young lady in blue, with a bare bosom, behind a pet lamb. Charming thing! She could take it away when she went, and hang it with the Fragonards and Chardin in her drawing-room. Standing by the double-poster, he bent down and sniffed at the bed linen. Not quite as fragrant as it ought to be. That woman, Mrs. Edger—his housekeeper—had forgotten the potpourri bags; he knew there would be something! And, going to a store closet, he took four little bags with tiny mauve ribbons from a shelf, and put them into the bed. He wandered thence into the bathroom. He didn’t know whether she would like those salts—they were Annette’s new speciality, and smelt too strong for HIS taste. Otherwise it seemed all right; the soap was “Roger and Gallet,” and the waste worked. All these new gadgets—half of them didn’t; there was nothing like the old-fashioned thing that pulled up with a chain! Great change in washing during his lifetime. He couldn’t quite remember pre-bathroom days; but he could well recall how his father used to say regularly: “They never gave me a bath when I was a boy. First house of my own, I had one put in-people used to come and stare at it—in 1840. They tell me the doctors are against washing now; but I don’t know.” James had been dead a quarter of a century, and the doctors had turned their coats several times since. Fact was, people enjoyed baths; so it didn’t really matter what view the doctors took! Kit enjoyed them—some children didn’t. And, leaving the bathroom, Soames stood in front of the flowers the gardener had brought in-among them, three special early roses. Roses were the fellow’s forte, or rather his weak point—he cared for nothing else; that was the worst of people nowadays, they specialized so that there was no relativity between things, in spite of its being the fashionable philosophy, or so they told him. He took up a rose and sniffed at it deeply. So many different kinds now—he had lost track! In his young days one could tell them—La France, Marechal Niel, and Gloire de Dijon—nothing else to speak of; you never heard of THEM now. And at this reminder of the mutability of flowers and the ingenuity of human beings, Soames felt slightly exhausted. There was no end to things!

She was late, too! That fellow Riggs—for he had left the car to bring her down, and had come by train himself—would have got punctured, of course; he was always getting punctured if there was any reason why he shouldn’t. And for the next half-hour Soames fidgeted about so that he was deep in nothing in his picture gallery at the very top of the house and did not hear the car arrive. Fleur’s voice roused him from thoughts of her.

“Hallo!” he said, peering down the stairs, “where have YOU sprung from? I expected you an hour ago.”

“Yes, dear, we had to get some things on the way. How lovely it all looks! Kit’s in the garden.”

“Ah!” said Soames, descending. “Did you get a rest yester—” and he pulled up in front of her.

She bent her face forward for a kiss, and her eyes looked beyond him. Soames put his lips on the edge of her cheekbone. She was away, somewhere! And, as his lips mumbled her soft skin slightly, he thought: ‘She’s not thinking of me—why should she? She’s young.’