Chapter LXXXIV: Part II: I.—mother and Son (2)

“Isn't there any place,” cried Jon, “in all this beastly London
where we can be alone?”

“Only a taxi.”

“Let's get one, then.”

When they were installed, Fleur asked suddenly: “Are you going
back to Robin Hill? I should like to see where you live, Jon. I'm
staying with my aunt for the night, but I could get back in time
for dinner. I wouldn't come to the house, of course.”

Jon gazed at her enraptured.

“Splendid! I can show it you from the copse, we shan't meet
anybody. There's a train at four.”

The god of property and his Forsytes great and small, leisured,
official, commercial, or professional, like the working classes,
still worked their seven hours a day, so that those two of the
fourth generation travelled down to Robin Hill in an empty
first-class carriage, dusty and sun-warmed, of that too early
train. They travelled in blissful silence, holding each other's
hands.

At the station they saw no one except porters, and a villager or
two unknown to Jon, and walked out up the lane, which smelled of
dust and honeysuckle.

For Jon—sure of her now, and without separation before him—it was
a miraculous dawdle, more wonderful than those on the Downs, or
along the river Thames. It was love-in-a-mist—one of those
illumined pages of Life, where every word and smile, and every
light touch they gave each other were as little gold and red and
blue butterflies and flowers and birds scrolled in among the
text—a happy communing, without afterthought, which lasted
thirty-seven minutes. They reached the coppice at the milking
hour. Jon would not take her as far as the farmyard; only to
where she could see the field leading up to the gardens, and the
house beyond. They turned in among the larches, and suddenly, at
the winding of the path, came on Irene, sitting on an old log
seat.

There are various kinds of shocks: to the vertebrae; to the
nerves; to moral sensibility; and, more potent and permanent, to
personal dignity. This last was the shock Jon received, coming
thus on his mother. He became suddenly conscious that he was
doing an indelicate thing. To have brought Fleur down openly—yes!
But to sneak her in like this! Consumed with shame, he put on a
front as brazen as his nature would permit.

Fleur was smiling, a little defiantly; his mother's startled face
was changing quickly to the impersonal and gracious. It was she
who uttered the first words:

“I'm very glad to see you. It was nice of Jon to think of
bringing you down to us.”

“We weren't coming to the house,” Jon blurted out. “I just wanted
Fleur to see where I lived.”

His mother said quietly:

“Won't you come up and have tea?”

Feeling that he had but aggravated his breach of breeding, he
heard Fleur answer:

“Thanks very much; I have to get back to dinner. I met Jon by
accident, and we thought it would be rather jolly just to see his
home.”

How self-possessed she was!

“Of course; but you must have tea. We'll send you down to the
station. My husband will enjoy seeing you.”

The expression of his mother's eyes, resting on him for a moment,
cast Jon down level with the ground—a true worm. Then she led on,
and Fleur followed her. He felt like a child, trailing after
those two, who were talking so easily about Spain and Wansdon,
and the house up there beyond the trees and the grassy slope. He
watched the fencing of their eyes, taking each other in—the two
beings he loved most in the world.

He could see his father sitting under the oaktree; and suffered
in advance all the loss of caste he must go through in the eyes
of that tranquil figure, with his knees crossed, thin, old, and
elegant; already he could feel the faint irony which would come
into his voice and smile.

“This is Fleur Forsyte, Jolyon; Jon brought her down to see the
house. Let's have tea at once—she has to catch a train. Jon, tell
them, dear, and telephone to the Dragon for a car.”

To leave her alone with them was strange, and yet, as no doubt
his mother had foreseen, the least of evils at the moment; so he
ran up into the house. Now he would not see Fleur alone again—not
for a minute, and they had arranged no further meeting! When he
returned under cover of the maids and teapots, there was not a
trace of awkwardness beneath the tree; it was all within himself,
but not the less for that. They were talking of the Gallery off
Cork Street.

“We back numbers,” his father was saying, “are awfully anxious to
find out why we can't appreciate the new stuff; you and Jon must
tell us.”

“It's supposed to be satiric, isn't it?” said Fleur.

He saw his father's smile.

“Satiric? Oh! I think it's more than that. What do you say, Jon?”

“I don't know at all,” stammered Jon. His father's face had a
sudden grimness.

“The young are tired of us, our gods and our ideals. Off with
their heads, they say—smash their idols! And let's get back
to-nothing! And, by Jove, they've done it! Jon's a poet. He'll be
going in, too, and stamping on what's left of us. Property,
beauty, sentiment—all smoke. We mustn't own anything nowadays,
not even our feelings. They stand in the way of—Nothing.”

Jon listened, bewildered, almost outraged by his father's words,
behind which he felt a meaning that he could not reach. He didn't
want to stamp on anything!

“Nothing's the god of to-day,” continued Jolyon; “we're back
where the Russians were sixty years ago, when they started
Nihilism.”

“No, Dad,” cried Jon suddenly, “we only want to live, and we
don't know how, because of the Past—that's all!”

“By George!” said Jolyon, “that's profound, Jon. Is it your own?
The Past! Old ownerships, old passions, and their aftermath.
Let's have cigarettes.”

Conscious that his mother had lifted her hand to her lips,
quickly, as if to hush something, Jon handed the cigarettes. He
lighted his father's and Fleur's, then one for himself. Had he
taken the knock that Val had spoken of? The smoke was blue when
he had not puffed, grey when he had; he liked the sensation in
his nose, and the sense of equality it gave him. He was glad no
one said: “So you've begun!” He felt less young.

Fleur looked at her watch, and rose. His mother went with her
into the house. Jon stayed with his father, puffing at the
cigarette.

“See her into the car, old man,” said Jolyon; “and when she's
gone, ask your mother to come back to me.”

Jon went. He waited in the hall. He saw her into the car. There
was no chance for any word; hardly for a pressure of the hand. He
waited all that evening for something to be said to him. Nothing
was said. Nothing might have happened. He went up to bed, and in
the mirror on his dressing-table met himself. He did not speak,
nor did the image; but both looked as if they thought the more.

IV.—IN GREEN STREET

Uncertain whether the impression that Prosper Profond was
dangerous should be traced to his attempt to give Val the Mayfly
filly; to a remark of Fleur's: “He's like the hosts of Midian—he
prowls and prowls around”; to his preposterous inquiry of Jack
Cardigan: “What's the use of keepin' fit?” or, more simply, to
the fact that he was a foreigner, or alien as it was now called.
Certain, that Annette was looking particularly handsome, and that
Soames—had sold him a Gauguin and then torn up the cheque, so
that Monsieur Profond himself had said: “I didn't get that small
picture I bought from Mr. Forsyde.”

However suspiciously regarded, he still frequented Winifred's
evergreen little house in Green Street, with a good-natured
obtuseness which no one mistook for naivete, a word hardly
applicable to Monsieur Prosper Profond. Winifred still found him
“amusing,” and would write him little notes saying: “Come and
have a 'jolly' with us”—it was breath of life to her to keep up
with the phrases of the day.

The mystery, with which all felt him to be surrounded, was due to
his having done, seen, heard, and known everything, and found
nothing in it—which was unnatural. The English type of
disillusionment was familiar enough to Winifred, who had always
moved in fashionable circles. It gave a certain cachet or
distinction, so that one got something out of it. But to see
nothing in anything, not as a pose, but because there was nothing
in anything, was not English; and that which was not English one
could not help secretly feeling dangerous, if not precisely bad
form. It was like having the mood which the War had left,
seated—dark, heavy, smiling, indifferent—in your Empire chair; it
was like listening to that mood talking through thick pink lips
above a little diabolic beard. It was, as Jack Cardigan expressed
it—for the English character at large—“a bit too thick”—for if
nothing was really worth getting excited about, there were always
games, and one could make it so! Even Winifred, ever a Forsyte at
heart, felt that there was nothing to be had out of such a mood
of disillusionment, so that it really ought not to be there.
Monsieur Profond, in fact, made the mood too plain in a country
which decently veiled such realities.

When Fleur, after her hurried return from Robin Hill, came down
to dinner that evening, the mood was standing at the window of
Winifred's little drawing-room, looking out into Green Street,
with an air of seeing nothing in it. And Fleur gazed promptly
into the fireplace with an air of seeing a fire which was not
there.

Monsieur Profond came from the window. He was in full fig, with a
white waistcoat and a white flower in his buttonhole.

“Well, Miss Forsyde,” he said, “I'm awful pleased to see you. Mr.
Forsyde well? I was sayin' to-day I want to see him have some
pleasure. He worries.”

“You think so?” said Fleur shortly.

“Worries,” repeated Monsieur Profond, burring the r's.

Fleur spun round. “Shall I tell you,” she said, “what would give
him pleasure?” But the words, “To hear that you had cleared out,”
died at the expression on his face. All his fine white teeth were
showing.

“I was hearin' at the Club to-day about his old trouble.” Fleur
opened her eyes. “What do you mean?”

Monsieur Profond moved his sleek head as if to minimize his
statement.

“Before you were born,” he said; “that small business.”

Though conscious that he had cleverly diverted her from his own
share in her father's worry, Fleur was unable to withstand a rush
of nervous curiosity. “Tell me what you heard.”

“Why!” murmured Monsieur Profond, “you know all that.”

“I expect I do. But I should like to know that you haven't heard
it all wrong.”

“His first wife,” murmured Monsieur Profond.

Choking back the words, “He was never married before,” she said:
“Well, what about her?”

“Mr. George Forsyde was tellin' me about your father's first wife
marryin' his cousin Jolyon afterward. It was a small bit
unpleasant, I should think. I saw their boy—nice boy!”

Fleur looked up. Monsieur Profond was swimming, heavily
diabolical, before her. That—the reason! With the most heroic
effort of her life so far, she managed to arrest that swimming
figure. She could not tell whether he had noticed. And just then
Winifred came in.

“Oh! here you both are already; Imogen and I have had the most
amusing afternoon at the Babies' bazaar.”

“What babies?” said Fleur mechanically.

“The 'Save the Babies.' I got such a bargain, my dear. A piece of
old Armenian work—from before the Flood. I want your opinion on
it, Prosper.”

“Auntie,” whispered Fleur suddenly.

At the tone in the girl's voice Winifred closed in on her.'

“What's the matter? Aren't you well?”

Monsieur Profond had withdrawn into the window, where he was
practically out of hearing.

“Auntie, he-he told me that father has been married before. Is it
true that he divorced her, and she married Jon Forsyte's father?”

Never in all the life of the mother of four little Darties had
Winifred felt more seriously embarrassed. Her niece's face was so
pale, her eyes so dark, her voice so whispery and strained.

“Your father didn't wish you to hear,” she said, with all the
aplomb she could muster. “These things will happen. I've often
told him he ought to let you know.”

“Oh!” said Fleur, and that was all, but it made Winifred pat her
shoulder—a firm little shoulder, nice and white! She never could
help an appraising eye and touch in the matter of her niece, who
would have to be married, of course—though not to that boy Jon.

“We've forgotten all about it years and years ago,” she said
comfortably. “Come and have dinner!”

“No, Auntie. I don't feel very well. May I go upstairs?”

“My dear!” murmured Winifred, concerned, “you're not taking this
to heart? Why, you haven't properly come out yet! That boy's a
child!”

“What boy? I've only got a headache. But I can't stand that man
to-night.”

“Well, well,” said Winifred, “go and lie down. I'll send you some
bromide, and I shall talk to Prosper Profond. What business had
he to gossip? Though I must say I think it's much better you
should know.”

Fleur smiled. “Yes,” she said, and slipped from the room.

She went up with her head whirling, a dry sensation in her
throat, a guttered frightened feeling in her breast. Never in her
life as yet had she suffered from even momentary fear that she
would not get what she had set her heart on. The sensations of
the afternoon had been full and poignant, and this gruesome
discovery coming on the top of them had really made her head
ache. No wonder her father had hidden that photograph, so
secretly behind her own-ashamed of having kept it! But could he
hate Jon's mother and yet keep her photograph? She pressed her
hands over her forehead, trying to see things clearly. Had they
told Jon—had her visit to Robin Hill forced them to tell him?
Everything now turned on that! She knew, they all knew,
except—perhaps—Jon!

She walked up and down, biting her lip and thinking desperately
hard. Jon loved his mother. If they had told him, what would he
do? She could not tell. But if they had not told him, should she
not—could she not get him for herself—get married to him, before
he knew? She searched her memories of Robin Hill. His mother's
face so passive—with its dark eyes and as if powdered hair, its
reserve, its smile—baffled her; and his father's—kindly, sunken,
ironic. Instinctively she felt they would shrink from telling
Jon, even now, shrink from hurting him—for of course it would
hurt him awfully to know!

Her aunt must be made not to tell her father that she knew. So
long as neither she herself nor Jon were supposed to know, there
was still a chance—freedom to cover one's tracks, and get what
her heart was set on. But she was almost overwhelmed by her
isolation. Every one's hand was against her—every one's! It was
as Jon had said—he and she just wanted to live and the past was
in their way, a past they hadn't shared in, and didn't
understand! Oh! What a shame! And suddenly she thought of June.
Would she help them? For somehow June had left on her the
impression that she would be sympathetic with their love,
impatient of obstacle. Then, instinctively, she thought: 'I won't
give anything away, though, even to her. I daren't. I mean to
have Jon; against them all.'

Soup was brought up to her, and one of Winifred's pet headache
cachets. She swallowed both. Then Winifred herself appeared.
Fleur opened her campaign with the words:

“You know, Auntie, I do wish people wouldn't think I'm in love
with that boy. Why, I've hardly seen him!”

Winifred, though experienced, was not “fine.” She accepted the
remark with considerable relief. Of course, it was not pleasant
for the girl to hear of the family scandal, and she set herself
to minimise the matter, a task for which she was eminently
qualified, “raised” fashionably under a comfortable mother and a
father whose nerves might not be shaken, and for many years the
wife of Montague Dartie. Her description was a masterpiece of
understatement. Fleur's father's first wife had been very
foolish. There had been a young man who had got run over, and she
had left Fleur's father. Then, years after, when it might all
have come—right again, she had taken up with their cousin Jolyon;
and, of course, her father had been obliged to have a divorce.
Nobody remembered anything of it now, except just the family.
And, perhaps, it had all turned out for the best; her father had
Fleur; and Jolyon and Irene had been quite happy, they said, and
their boy was a nice boy. “Val having Holly, too, is a sort of
plaster, don't you know?” With these soothing words, Winifred
patted her niece's shoulder; thought: 'She's a nice, plump little
thing!' and went back to Prosper Profond, who, in spite of his
indiscretion, was very “amusing” this evening.

For some minutes after her aunt had gone Fleur remained under
influence of bromide material and spiritual. But then reality
came back. Her aunt had left out all that mattered—all the
feeling, the hate, the love, the unforgivingness of passionate
hearts. She, who knew so little of life, and had touched only the
fringe of love, was yet aware by instinct that words have as
little relation to fact and feeling as coin to the bread it buys.
'Poor Father!' she thought. 'Poor me! Poor Jon! But I don't care,
I mean to have him!' From the window of her darkened room she saw
“that man” issue from the door below and “prowl” away. If he and
her mother—how would that affect her chance? Surely it must make
her father cling to her more closely, so that he would consent in
the end to anything she wanted, or become reconciled the sooner
to what she did without his knowledge.

She took some earth from the flower-box in the window, and with
all her might flung it after that disappearing figure. It fell
short, but the action did her good.

And a little puff of air came up from Green Street, smelling of
petrol, not sweet.

V.—PURELY FORSYTE AFFAIRS

Soames, coming up to the City, with the intention of calling in
at Green Street at the end of his day and taking Fleur back home
with him, suffered from rumination. Sleeping partner that he was,
he seldom visited the City now, but he still had a room of his
own at Cuthcott, Kingson and Forsyte's, and one special clerk and
a half assigned to the management of purely Forsyte affairs. They
were somewhat in flux just now—an auspicious moment for the
disposal of house property. And Soames was unloading the estates
of his father and Uncle Roger, and to some extent of his Uncle
Nicholas. His shrewd and matter-of-course probity in all money
concerns had made him something of an autocrat in connection with
these trusts. If Soames thought this or thought that, one had
better save oneself the bother of thinking too. He guaranteed, as
it were, irresponsibility to numerous Forsytes of the third and
fourth generations. His fellow trustees, such as his cousins
Roger or Nicholas, his cousins-in-law Tweetyman and Spender, or
his sister Cicely's husband, all trusted him; he signed first,
and where he signed first they signed after, and nobody was a
penny the worse. Just now they were all a good many pennies the
better, and Soames was beginning to see the close of certain
trusts, except for distribution of the income from securities as
gilt-edged as was compatible with the period.

Passing the more feverish parts of the City toward the most
perfect backwater in London, he ruminated. Money was
extraordinarily tight; and morality extraordinarily loose! The
War had done it. Banks were not lending; people breaking
contracts all over the place. There was a feeling in the air and
a look on faces that he did not like. The country seemed in for a
spell of gambling and bankruptcies. There was satisfaction in the
thought that neither he nor his trusts had an investment which
could be affected by anything less maniacal than national
repudiation or a levy on capital. If Soames had faith, it was in
what he called “English common sense”—or the power to have
things, if not one way then another. He might—like his father
James before him—say he didn't know what things were coming to,
but he never in his heart believed they were. If it rested with
him, they wouldn't—and, after all, he was only an Englishman like
any other, so quietly tenacious of what he had that he knew he
would never really part with it without something more or less
equivalent in exchange. His mind was essentially equilibristic in
material matters, and his way of putting the national situation
difficult to refute in a world composed of human beings. Take his
own case, for example! He was well off. Did that do anybody harm?
He did not eat ten meals a day; he ate no more than, perhaps not
so much as, a poor man. He spent no money on vice; breathed no
more air, used no more water to speak of than the mechanic or the
porter. He certainly had pretty things about him, but they had
given employment in the making, and somebody must use them. He
bought pictures, but Art must be encouraged. He was, in fact, an
accidental channel through which money flowed, employing labour.
What was there objectionable in that? In his charge money was in
quicker and more useful flux than it would be in charge of the
State and a lot of slow-fly money-sucking officials. And as to
what he saved each year—it was just as much in flux as what he
didn't save, going into Water Board or Council Stocks, or
something sound and useful. The State paid him no salary for
being trustee of his own or other people's money he did all that
for nothing. Therein lay the whole case against
nationalisation—owners of private property were unpaid, and yet
had every incentive to quicken up the flux. Under
nationalisation—just the opposite! In a country smarting from
officialism he felt that he had a strong case.

It particularly annoyed him, entering that backwater of perfect
peace, to think that a lot of unscrupulous Trusts and
Combinations had been cornering the market in goods of all kinds,
and keeping prices at an artificial height. Such abusers of the
individualistic system were the ruffians who caused all the
trouble, and it was some satisfaction to see them getting into a
stew at last lest the whole thing might come down with a run—and
land them in the soup.

The offices of Cuthcott, Kingson and Forsyte occupied the ground
and first floors of a house on the right-hand side; and,
ascending to his room, Soames thought: 'Time we had a coat of
paint.'

His old clerk Gradman was seated, where he always was, at a huge
bureau with countless pigeonholes. Half-the-clerk stood beside
him, with a broker's note recording investment of the proceeds
from sale of the Bryanston Square house, in Roger Forsyte's
estate. Soames took it, and said:

“Vancouver City Stock. H'm. It's down today!”

With a sort of grating ingratiation old Gradman answered him:

“Ye-es; but everything's down, Mr. Soames.” And half-the-clerk
withdrew.

Soames skewered the document on to a number of other papers and
hung up his hat.

“I want to look at my Will and Marriage Settlement, Gradman.”

Old Gradman, moving to the limit of his swivel chair, drew out
two drafts from the bottom lefthand drawer. Recovering his body,
he raised his grizzle-haired face, very red from stooping.

“Copies, Sir.”

Soames took them. It struck him suddenly how like Gradman was to
the stout brindled yard dog they had been wont to keep on his
chain at The Shelter, till one day Fleur had come and insisted it
should be let loose, so that it had at once bitten the cook and
been destroyed. If you let Gradman off his chain, would he bite
the cook?

Checking this frivolous fancy, Soames unfolded his Marriage
Settlement. He had not looked at it for over eighteen years, not
since he remade his Will when his father died and Fleur was born.
He wanted to see whether the words “during coverture” were in.
Yes, they were—odd expression, when you thought of it, and
derived perhaps from horse-breeding! Interest on fifteen thousand
pounds (which he paid her without deducting income tax) so long
as she remained his wife, and afterward during widowhood “dum
casta”—old-fashioned and rather pointed words, put in to insure
the conduct of Fleur's mother. His Will made it up to an annuity
of a thousand under the same conditions. All right! He returned
the copies to Gradman, who took them without looking up, swung
the chair, restored the papers to their drawer, and went on
casting up.

“Gradman! I don't like the condition of the country; there are a
lot of people about without any common sense. I want to find a
way by which I can safeguard Miss Fleur against anything which
might arise.”

Gradman wrote the figure “2” on his blotting-paper.

“Ye-es,” he said; “there's a nahsty spirit.”

“The ordinary restraint against anticipation doesn't meet the
case.”

“Nao,” said Gradman.

“Suppose those Labour fellows come in, or worse! It's these
people with fixed ideas who are the danger. Look at Ireland!”

“Ah!” said Gradman.

“Suppose I were to make a settlement on her at once with myself
as beneficiary for life, they couldn't take anything but the
interest from me, unless of course they alter the law.”

Gradman moved his head and smiled.

“Ah!” he said, “they wouldn't do tha-at!”

“I don't know,” muttered Soames; “I don't trust them.”

“It'll take two years, sir, to be valid against death duties.”

Soames sniffed. Two years! He was only sixty-five!

“That's not the point. Draw a form of settlement that passes all
my property to Miss Fleur's children in equal shares, with
antecedent life-interests first to myself and then to her without
power of anticipation, and add a clause that in the event of
anything happening to divert her life-interest, that interest
passes to the trustees, to apply for her benefit, in their
absolute discretion.”

Gradman grated: “Rather extreme at your age, sir; you lose
control.”

“That's my business,” said Soames sharply.

Gradman wrote on a piece of paper:
“Life-interest—anticipation—divert interest—absolute
discretion....” and said:

“What trustees? There's young Mr. Kingson; he's a nice steady
young fellow.”

“Yes, he might do for one. I must have three. There isn't a
Forsyte now who appeals to me.”

“Not young Mr. Nicholas? He's at the Bar. We've given 'im
briefs.”

“He'll never set the Thames on fire,” said Soames.

A smile oozed out on Gradman's face, greasy from countless
mutton-chops, the smile of a man who sits all day.

“You can't expect it, at his age, Mr. Soames.”

“Why? What is he? Forty?”

“Ye-es, quite a young fellow.”

“Well, put him in; but I want somebody who'll take a personal
interest. There's no one that I can see.”

“What about Mr. Valerius, now he's come home?”

“Val Dartie? With that father?”

“We-ell,” murmured Gradman, “he's been dead seven years—the
Statute runs against him.”

“No,” said Soames. “I don't like the connection.” He rose.
Gradman said suddenly:

“If they were makin' a levy on capital, they could come on the
trustees, sir. So there you'd be just the same. I'd think it
over, if I were you.”

“That's true,” said Soames. “I will. What have you done about
that dilapidation notice in Vere Street?”

“I 'aven't served it yet. The party's very old. She won't want to
go out at her age.”

“I don't know. This spirit of unrest touches every one.”

“Still, I'm lookin' at things broadly, sir. She's eighty-one.”

“Better serve it,” said Soames, “and see what she says. Oh! and
Mr. Timothy? Is everything in order in case of—”

“I've got the inventory of his estate all ready; had the
furniture and pictures valued so that we know what reserves to
put on. I shall be sorry when he goes, though. Dear me! It is a
time since I first saw Mr. Timothy!”

“We can't live for ever,” said Soames, taking down his hat.

“Nao,” said Gradman; “but it'll be a pity—the last of the old
family! Shall I take up the matter of that nuisance in Old
Compton Street? Those organs—they're nahsty things.”

“Do. I must call for Miss Fleur and catch the four o'clock.
Good-day, Gradman.”

“Good-day, Mr. Soames. I hope Miss Fleur—”

“Well enough, but gads about too much.”

“Ye-es,” grated Gradman; “she's young.”

Soames went out, musing: “Old Gradman! If he were younger I'd put
him in the trust. There's nobody I can depend on to take a real
interest.”

Leaving the bilious and mathematical exactitude, the preposterous
peace of that backwater, he thought suddenly: 'During coverture!
Why can't they exclude fellows like Profond, instead of a lot of
hard-working Germans?' and was surprised at the depth of
uneasiness which could provoke so unpatriotic a thought. But
there it was! One never got a moment of real peace. There was
always something at the back of everything! And he made his way
toward Green Street.

Two hours later by his watch, Thomas Gradman, stirring in his
swivel chair, closed the last drawer of his bureau, and putting
into his waistcoat pocket a bunch of keys so fat that they gave
him a protuberance on the liver side, brushed his old top hat
round with his sleeve, took his umbrella, and descended. Thick,
short, and buttoned closely into his old frock coat, he walked
toward Covent Garden market. He never missed that daily promenade
to the Tube for Highgate, and seldom some critical transaction on
the way in connection with vegetables and fruit. Generations
might be born, and hats might change, wars be fought, and
Forsytes fade away, but Thomas Gradman, faithful and grey, would
take his daily walk and buy his daily vegetable. Times were not
what they were, and his son had lost a leg, and they never gave
him those nice little plaited baskets to carry the stuff in now,
and these Tubes were convenient things—still he mustn't complain;
his health was good considering his time of life, and after
fifty-four years in the Law he was getting a round eight hundred
a year and a little worried of late, because it was mostly
collector's commission on the rents, and with all this conversion
of Forsyte property going on, it looked like drying up, and the
price of living still so high; but it was no good worrying—“The
good God made us all”—as he was in the habit of saying; still,
house property in London—he didn't know what Mr. Roger or Mr.
James would say if they could see it being sold like this—seemed
to show a lack of faith; but Mr. Soames—he worried. Life and
lives in being and twenty-one years after—beyond that you
couldn't go; still, he kept his health wonderfully—and Miss Fleur
was a pretty little thing—she was; she'd marry; but lots of
people had no children nowadays—he had had his first child at
twenty-two; and Mr. Jolyon, married while he was at Cambridge,
had his child the same year—gracious Peter! That was back in '69,
a long time before old Mr. Jolyon—fine judge of property—had
taken his Will away from Mr. James—dear, yes! Those were the days
when they were buyin' property right and left, and none of this
khaki and fallin' over one another to get out of things; and
cucumbers at twopence; and a melon—the old melons, that made your
mouth water! Fifty years since he went into Mr. James' office,
and Mr. James had said to him: “Now, Gradman, you're only a
shaver—you pay attention, and you'll make your five hundred a
year before you've done.” And he had, and feared God, and served
the Forsytes, and kept a vegetable diet at night. And, buying a
copy of John Bull—not that he approved of it, an extravagant
affair—he entered the Tube elevator with his mere brown-paper
parcel, and was borne down into the bowels of the earth.

VI.—SOAMES' PRIVATE LIFE

On his way to Green Street it occurred to Soames that he ought to
go into Dumetrius' in Suffolk Street about the possibility of the
Bolderby Old Crome. Almost worth while to have fought the war to
have the Bolderby Old Crome, as it were, in flux! Old Bolderby
had died, his son and grandson had been killed—a cousin was
coming into the estate, who meant to sell it, some said because
of the condition of England, others said because he had asthma.

If Dumetrius once got hold of it the price would become
prohibitive; it was necessary for Soames to find out whether
Dumetrius had got it, before he tried to get it himself. He
therefore confined himself to discussing with Dumetrius whether
Monticellis would come again now that it was the fashion for a
picture to be anything except a picture; and the future of Johns,
with a side-slip into Buxton Knights. It was only when leaving
that he added: “So they're not selling the Bolderby Old Crome,
after all?” In sheer pride of racial superiority, as he had
calculated would be the case, Dumetrius replied:

“Oh! I shall get it, Mr. Forsyte, sir!”

The flutter of his eyelid fortified Soames in a resolution to
write direct to the new Bolderby, suggesting that the only
dignified way of dealing with an Old Crome was to avoid dealers.
He therefore said, “Well, good-day!” and went, leaving Dumetrius
the wiser.

At Green Street he found that Fleur was out and would be all the
evening; she was staying one more night in London. He cabbed on
dejectedly, and caught his train.

He reached his house about six o'clock. The air was heavy, midges
biting, thunder about. Taking his letters he went up to his
dressing-room to cleanse himself of London.

An uninteresting post. A receipt, a bill for purchases on behalf
of Fleur. A circular about an exhibition of etchings. A letter
beginning:

“SIR,

“I feel it my duty...”

That would be an appeal or something unpleasant. He looked at
once for the signature. There was none! Incredulously he turned
the page over and examined each corner. Not being a public man,
Soames had never yet had an anonymous letter, and his first
impulse was to tear it up, as a dangerous thing; his second to
read it, as a thing still more dangerous.

“SIR,

“I feel it my duty to inform you that having no interest in the
matter your lady is carrying on with a foreigner—”

Reaching that word Soames stopped mechanically and examined the
postmark. So far as he could pierce the impenetrable disguise in
which the Post Office had wrapped it, there was something with a
“sea” at the end and a “t” in it. Chelsea? No! Battersea?
Perhaps! He read on.

“These foreigners are all the same. Sack the lot. This one meets
your lady twice a week. I know it of my own knowledge—and to see
an Englishman put on goes against the grain. You watch it and see
if what I say isn't true. I shouldn't meddle if it wasn't a dirty
foreigner that's in it.

“Yours obedient.”

The sensation with which Soames dropped the letter was similar to
that he would have had entering his bedroom and finding it full
of black-beetles. The meanness of anonymity gave a shuddering
obscenity to the moment. And the worst of it was that this shadow
had been at the back of his mind ever since the Sunday evening
when Fleur had pointed down at Prosper Profond strolling on the
lawn, and said: “Prowling cat!” Had he not in connection
therewith, this very day, perused his Will and Marriage
Settlement? And now this anonymous ruffian, with nothing to gain,
apparently, save the venting of his spite against foreigners, had
wrenched it out of the obscurity in which he had hoped and wished
it would remain. To have such knowledge forced on him, at his
time of life, about Fleur's mother! He picked the letter up from
the carpet, tore it across, and then, when it hung together by
just the fold at the back, stopped tearing, and reread it. He was
taking at that moment one of the decisive resolutions of his
life. He would not be forced into another scandal. No! However he
decided to deal with this matter—and it required the most
far-sighted and careful consideration he would do nothing that
might injure Fleur. That resolution taken, his mind answered the
helm again, and he made his ablutions. His hands trembled as he
dried them. Scandal he would not have, but something must be done
to stop this sort of thing! He went into his wife's room and
stood looking around him. The idea of searching for anything
which would incriminate, and entitle him to hold a menace over
her, did not even come to him. There would be nothing—she was
much too practical. The idea of having her watched had been
dismissed before it came—too well he remembered his previous
experience of that. No! He had nothing but this torn-up letter
from some anonymous ruffian, whose impudent intrusion into his
private life he so violently resented. It was repugnant to him to
make use of it, but he might have to. What a mercy Fleur was not
at home to-night! A tap on the door broke up his painful
cogitations.

“Mr. Michael Mont, sir, is in the drawing-room. Will you see
him?”

“No,” said Soames; “yes. I'll come down.”

Anything that would take his mind off for a few minutes!

Michael Mont in flannels stood on the verandah smoking a
cigarette. He threw it away as Soames came up, and ran his hand
through his hair.

Soames' feeling toward this young man was singular. He was no
doubt a rackety, irresponsible young fellow according to old
standards, yet somehow likeable, with his extraordinarily
cheerful way of blurting out his opinions.

“Come in,” he said; “have you had tea?”

Mont came in.

“I thought Fleur would have been back, sir; but I'm glad she
isn't. The fact is, I—I'm fearfully gone on her; so fearfully
gone that I thought you'd better know. It's old-fashioned, of
course, coming to fathers first, but I thought you'd forgive
that. I went to my own Dad, and he says if I settle down he'll
see me through. He rather cottons to the idea, in fact. I told
him about your Goya.”

“Oh!” said Soames, inexpressibly dry. “He rather cottons?”

“Yes, sir; do you?”

Soames smiled faintly.

“You see,” resumed Mont, twiddling his straw hat, while his hair,
ears, eyebrows, all seemed to stand up from excitement, “when
you've been through the War you can't help being in a hurry.”

“To get married; and unmarried afterward,” said Soames slowly.

“Not from Fleur, sir. Imagine, if you were me!”

Soames cleared his throat. That way of putting it was forcible
enough.

“Fleur's too young,” he said.

“Oh! no, sir. We're awfully old nowadays. My Dad seems to me a
perfect babe; his thinking apparatus hasn't turned a hair. But
he's a Baronight, of course; that keeps him back.”

“Baronight,” repeated Soames; “what may that be?”

“Bart, sir. I shall be a Bart some day. But I shall live it down,
you know.”

“Go away and live this down,” said Soames.

Young Mont said imploringly: “Oh! no, sir. I simply must hang
around, or I shouldn't have a dog's chance. You'll let Fleur do
what she likes, I suppose, anyway. Madame passes me.”

“Indeed!” said Soames frigidly.

“You don't really bar me, do you?” and the young man looked so
doleful that Soames smiled.

“You may think you're very old,” he said; “but you strike me as
extremely young. To rattle ahead of everything is not a proof of
maturity.”

“All right, sir; I give you our age. But to show you I mean
business—I've got a job.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“Joined a publisher; my governor is putting up the stakes.”

Soames put his hand over his mouth—he had so very nearly said:
“God help the publisher!” His grey eyes scrutinised the agitated
young man.

“I don't dislike you, Mr. Mont, but Fleur is everything to me:
Everything—do you understand?”

“Yes, sir, I know; but so she is to me.”

“That's as may be. I'm glad you've told me, however. And now I
think there's nothing more to be said.”

“I know it rests with her, sir.”

“It will rest with her a long time, I hope.”

“You aren't cheering,” said Mont suddenly.

“No,” said Soames, “my experience of life has not made me anxious
to couple people in a hurry. Good-night, Mr. Mont. I shan't tell
Fleur what you've said.”

“Oh!” murmured Mont blankly; “I really could knock my brains out
for want of her. She knows that perfectly well.”

“I dare say.” And Soames held out his hand. A distracted squeeze,
a heavy sigh, and soon after sounds from the young man's
motor-cycle called up visions of flying dust and broken bones.

'The younger generation!' he thought heavily, and went out on to
the lawn. The gardeners had been mowing, and there was still the
smell of fresh-cut grass—the thundery air kept all scents close
to earth. The sky was of a purplish hue—the poplars black. Two or
three boats passed on the river, scuttling, as it were, for
shelter before the storm. 'Three days' fine weather,' thought
Soames, 'and then a storm!' Where was Annette? With that chap,
for all he knew—she was a young woman! Impressed with the queer
charity of that thought, he entered the summerhouse and sat down.
The fact was—and he admitted it—Fleur was so much to him that his
wife was very little—very little; French—had never been much more
than a mistress, and he was getting indifferent to that side of
things! It was odd how, with all this ingrained care for
moderation and secure investment, Soames ever put his emotional
eggs into one basket. First Irene—now Fleur. He was dimly
conscious of it, sitting there, conscious of its odd
dangerousness. It had brought him to wreck and scandal once, but
now—now it should save him! He cared so much for Fleur that he
would have no further scandal. If only he could get at that
anonymous letter-writer, he would teach him not to meddle and
stir up mud at the bottom of water which he wished should remain
stagnant!... A distant flash, a low rumble, and large drops of
rain spattered on the thatch above him. He remained indifferent,
tracing a pattern with his finger on the dusty surface of a
little rustic table. Fleur's future! 'I want fair sailing for
her,' he thought. 'Nothing else matters at my time of life.' A
lonely business—life! What you had you never could keep to
yourself! As you warned one off, you let another in. One could
make sure of nothing! He reached up and pulled a red rambler rose
from a cluster which blocked the window. Flowers grew and
dropped—Nature was a queer thing! The thunder rumbled and
crashed, travelling east along a river, the paling flashes
flicked his eyes; the poplar tops showed sharp and dense against
the sky, a heavy shower rustled and rattled and veiled in the
little house wherein he sat, indifferent, thinking.

When the storm was over, he left his retreat and went down the
wet path to the river bank.

Two swans had come, sheltering in among the reeds. He knew the
birds well, and stood watching the dignity in the curve of those
white necks and formidable snake-like heads. 'Not dignified—what
I have to do!' he thought. And yet it must be tackled, lest worse
befell. Annette must be back by now from wherever she had gone,
for it was nearly dinner-time, and as the moment for seeing her
approached, the difficulty of knowing what to say and how to say
it had increased. A new and scaring thought occurred to him.
Suppose she wanted her liberty to marry this fellow! Well, if she
did, she couldn't have it. He had not married her for that. The
image of Prosper Profond dawdled before him reassuringly. Not a
marrying man! No, no! Anger replaced that momentary scare. 'He
had better not come my way,' he thought. The mongrel
represented—-! But what did Prosper Profond represent? Nothing
that mattered surely. And yet something real enough in the
world—unmorality let off its chain, disillusionment on the prowl!
That expression Annette had caught from him: “Je m'en fiche!” A
fatalistic chap! A continental—a cosmopolitan—a product of the
age! If there were condemnation more complete, Soames felt that
he did not know it.

The swans had turned their heads, and were looking past him into
some distance of their own. One of them uttered a little hiss,
wagged its tail, turned as if answering to a rudder, and swam
away. The other followed. Their white bodies, their stately
necks, passed out of his sight, and he went toward the house.

Annette was in the drawing-room, dressed for dinner, and he
thought as he went up-stairs 'Handsome is as handsome does.'
Handsome! Except for remarks about the curtains in the
drawing-room, and the storm, there was practically no
conversation during a meal distinguished by exactitude of
quantity and perfection of quality. Soames drank nothing. He
followed her into the drawing-room afterward, and found her
smoking a cigarette on the sofa between the two French windows.
She was leaning back, almost upright, in a low black frock, with
her knees crossed and her blue eyes half-closed; grey-blue smoke
issued from her red, rather full lips, a fillet bound her
chestnut hair, she wore the thinnest silk stockings, and shoes
with very high heels showing off her instep. A fine piece in any
room! Soames, who held that torn letter in a hand thrust deep
into the side-pocket of his dinner-jacket, said:

“I'm going to shut the window; the damp's lifting in.”

He did so, and stood looking at a David Cox adorning the
cream-panelled wall close by.

What was she thinking of? He had never understood a woman in his
life—except Fleur—and Fleur not always! His heart beat fast. But
if he meant to do it, now was the moment. Turning from the David
Cox, he took out the torn letter.

“I've had this.”

Her eyes widened, stared at him, and hardened.

Soames handed her the letter.

“It's torn, but you can read it.” And he turned back to the David
Cox—a sea-piece, of good tone—but without movement enough. 'I
wonder what that chap's doing at this moment?' he thought. 'I'll
astonish him yet.' Out of the corner of his eye he saw Annette
holding the letter rigidly; her eyes moved from side to side
under her darkened lashes and frowning darkened eyes. She dropped
the letter, gave a little shiver, smiled, and said:

“Dirrty!”

“I quite agree,” said Soames; “degrading. Is it true?”

A tooth fastened on her red lower lip. “And what if it were?”

She was brazen!

“Is that all you have to say?”

“No.”

“Well, speak out!”

“What is the good of talking?”

Soames said icily: “So you admit it?”

“I admit nothing. You are a fool to ask. A man like you should
not ask. It is dangerous.”

Soames made a tour of the room, to subdue his rising anger.

“Do you remember,” he said, halting in front of her, “what you
were when I married you? Working at accounts in a restaurant.”

“Do you remember that I was not half your age?”

Soames broke off the hard encounter of their eyes, and went back
to the David Cox.

“I am not going to bandy words. I require you to give up
this—friendship. I think of the matter entirely as it affects
Fleur.”

“Ah!—Fleur!”

“Yes,” said Soames stubbornly; “Fleur. She is your child as well
as mine.”

“It is kind to admit that!”

“Are you going to do what I say?”

“I refuse to tell you.”

“Then I must make you.”

Annette smiled.

“No, Soames,” she said. “You are helpless. Do not say things that
you will regret.”

Anger swelled the veins on his forehead. He opened his mouth to
vent that emotion, and could not. Annette went on:

“There shall be no more such letters, I promise you. That is
enough.”

Soames writhed. He had a sense of being treated like a child by
this woman who had deserved he did not know what.

“When two people have married, and lived like us, Soames, they
had better be quiet about each other. There are things one does
not drag up into the light for people to laugh at. You will be
quiet, then; not for my sake for your own. You are getting old; I
am not, yet. You have made me ver-ry practical”

Soames, who had passed through all the sensations of being
choked, repeated dully:

“I require you to give up this friendship.”

“And if I do not?”

“Then—then I will cut you out of my Will.”

Somehow it did not seem to meet the case. Annette laughed.

“You will live a long time, Soames.”

“You—you are a bad woman,” said Soames suddenly.

Annette shrugged her shoulders.

“I do not think so. Living with you has killed things in me, it
is true; but I am not a bad woman. I am sensible—that is all. And
so will you be when you have thought it over.”

“I shall see this man,” said Soames sullenly, “and warn him off.”

“Mon cher, you are funny. You do not want me, you have as much of
me as you want; and you wish the rest of me to be dead. I admit
nothing, but I am not going to be dead, Soames, at my age; so you
had better be quiet, I tell you. I myself will make no scandal;
none. Now, I am not saying any more, whatever you do.”

She reached out, took a French novel off a little table, and
opened it. Soames watched her, silenced by the tumult of his
feelings. The thought of that man was almost making him want her,
and this was a revelation of their relationship, startling to one
little given to introspective philosophy. Without saying another
word he went out and up to the picture-gallery. This came of
marrying a Frenchwoman! And yet, without her there would have
been no Fleur! She had served her purpose.

'She's right,' he thought; 'I can do nothing. I don't even know
that there's anything in it.' The instinct of self-preservation
warned him to batten down his hatches, to smother the fire with
want of air. Unless one believed there was something in a thing,
there wasn't.

That night he went into her room. She received him in the most
matter-of-fact way, as if there had been no scene between them.
And he returned to his own room with a curious sense of peace. If
one didn't choose to see, one needn't. And he did not choose—in
future he did not choose. There was nothing to be gained by
it—nothing! Opening the drawer he took from the sachet a
handkerchief, and the framed photograph of Fleur. When he had
looked at it a little he slipped it down, and there was that
other one—that old one of Irene. An owl hooted while he stood in
his window gazing at it. The owl hooted, the red climbing roses
seemed to deepen in colour, there came a scent of lime-blossom.
God! That had been a different thing! Passion—Memory! Dust!

VII.—JUNE TAKES A HAND