Chapter LXXXVII: Part III: I.—old Jolyon Walks (1)

Twofold impulse had made Jolyon say to his wife at breakfast
“Let's go up to Lord's!”

“Wanted”—something to abate the anxiety in which those two had
lived during the sixty hours since Jon had brought Fleur down.
“Wanted”—too, that which might assuage the pangs of memory in one
who knew he might lose them any day!

Fifty-eight years ago Jolyon had become an Eton boy, for old
Jolyon's whim had been that he should be canonised at the
greatest possible expense. Year after year he had gone to Lord's
from Stanhope Gate with a father whose youth in the
eighteen-twenties had been passed without polish in the game of
cricket. Old Jolyon would speak quite openly of swipes, full
tosses, half and three-quarter balls; and young Jolyon with the
guileless snobbery of youth had trembled lest his sire should be
overheard. Only in this supreme matter of cricket he had been
nervous, for his father—in Crimean whiskers then—had ever
impressed him as the beau ideal. Though never canonised himself,
Old Jolyon's natural fastidiousness and balance had saved him
from the errors of the vulgar. How delicious, after bowling in a
top hat and a sweltering heat, to go home with his father in a
hansom cab, bathe, dress, and forth to the “Disunion” Club, to
dine off white bait, cutlets, and a tart, and go—two “swells,”
old and young, in lavender kid gloves—to the opera or play. And
on Sunday, when the match was over, and his top hat duly broken,
down with his father in a special hansom to the “Crown and
Sceptre,” and the terrace above the river—the golden sixties when
the world was simple, dandies glamorous, Democracy not born, and
the books of Whyte Melville coming thick and fast.

A generation later, with his own boy, Jolly, Harrow-buttonholed
with corn-flowers—by old Jolyon's whim his grandson had been
canonised at a trifle less expense—again Jolyon had experienced
the heat and counter-passions of the day, and come back to the
cool and the strawberry beds of Robin Hill, and billiards after
dinner, his boy making the most heart-breaking flukes and trying
to seem languid and grown-up. Those two days each year he and his
son had been alone together in the world, one on each side—and
Democracy just born!

And so, he had unearthed a grey top hat, borrowed a tiny bit of
light-blue ribbon from Irene, and gingerly, keeping cool, by car
and train and taxi, had reached Lord's Ground. There, beside her
in a lawn-coloured frock with narrow black edges, he had watched
the game, and felt the old thrill stir within him.

When Soames passed, the day was spoiled. Irene's face was
distorted by compression of the lips. No good to go on sitting
here with Soames or perhaps his daughter recurring in front of
them, like decimals. And he said:

“Well, dear, if you've had enough—let's go!”

That evening Jolyon felt exhausted. Not wanting her to see him
thus, he waited till she had begun to play, and stole off to the
little study. He opened the long window for air, and the door,
that he might still hear her music drifting in; and, settled in
his father's old armchair, closed his eyes, with his head against
the worn brown leather. Like that passage of the Cesar Franck
Sonata—so had been his life with her, a divine third movement.
And now this business of Jon's—this bad business! Drifted to the
edge of consciousness, he hardly knew if it were in sleep that he
smelled the scent of a cigar, and seemed to see his father in the
blackness before his closed eyes. That shape formed, went, and
formed again; as if in the very chair where he himself was
sitting, he saw his father, black-coated, with knees crossed,
glasses balanced between thumb and finger; saw the big white
moustaches, and the deep eyes looking up below a dome of forehead
and seeming to search his own, seeming to speak. “Are you facing
it, Jo? It's for you to decide. She's only a woman!” Ah! how well
he knew his father in that phrase; how all the Victorian Age came
up with it! And his answer “No, I've funked it—funked hurting her
and Jon and myself. I've got a heart; I've funked it.” But the
old eyes, so much older, so much younger than his own, kept at
it; “It's your wife, your son; your past. Tackle it, my boy!” Was
it a message from walking spirit; or but the instinct of his sire
living on within him? And again came that scent of cigar
smoke-from the old saturated leather. Well! he would tackle it,
write to Jon, and put the whole thing down in black and white!
And suddenly he breathed with difficulty, with a sense of
suffocation, as if his heart were swollen. He got up and went out
into the air. The stars were very bright. He passed along the
terrace round the corner of the house, till, through the window
of the music-room, he could see Irene at the piano, with
lamp-light falling on her powdery hair; withdrawn into herself
she seemed, her dark eyes staring straight before her, her hands
idle. Jolyon saw her raise those hands and clasp them over her
breast. 'It's Jon, with her,' he thought; 'all Jon! I'm dying out
of her—it's natural!'

And, careful not to be seen, he stole back.

Next day, after a bad night, he sat down to his task. He wrote
with difficulty and many erasures.

“MY DEAREST BOY,

“You are old enough to understand how very difficult it is for
elders to give themselves away to their young. Especially
when—like your mother and myself, though I shall never think of
her as anything but young—their hearts are altogether set on him
to whom they must confess. I cannot say we are conscious of
having sinned exactly—people in real life very seldom are, I
believe—but most persons would say we had, and at all events our
conduct, righteous or not, has found us out. The truth is, my
dear, we both have pasts, which it is now my task to make known
to you, because they so grievously and deeply affect your future.
Many, very many years ago, as far back indeed as 1883, when she
was only twenty, your mother had the great and lasting misfortune
to make an unhappy marriage—no, not with me, Jon. Without money
of her own, and with only a stepmother—closely related to
Jezebel—she was very unhappy in her home life. It was Fleur's
father that she married, my cousin Soames Forsyte. He had pursued
her very tenaciously and to do him justice was deeply in love
with her. Within a week she knew the fearful mistake she had
made. It was not his fault; it was her error of judgment—her
misfortune.”

So far Jolyon had kept some semblance of irony, but now his
subject carried him away.

“Jon, I want to explain to you if I can—and it's very hard—how it
is that an unhappy marriage such as this can so easily come
about. You will of course say: 'If she didn't really love him how
could she ever have married him?' You would be right if it were
not for one or two rather terrible considerations. From this
initial mistake of hers all the subsequent trouble, sorrow, and
tragedy have come, and so I must make it clear to you if I can.
You see, Jon, in those days and even to this day—indeed, I don't
see, for all the talk of enlightenment, how it can well be
otherwise—most girls are married ignorant of the sexual side of
life. Even if they know what it means they have not experienced
it. That's the crux. It is this actual lack of experience,
whatever verbal knowledge they have, which makes all the
difference and all the trouble. In a vast number of marriages-and
your mother's was one—girls are not and cannot be certain whether
they love the man they marry or not; they do not know until after
that act of union which makes the reality of marriage. Now, in
many, perhaps in most doubtful cases, this act cements and
strengthens the attachment, but in other cases, and your mother's
was one, it is a revelation of mistake, a destruction of such
attraction as there was. There is nothing more tragic in a
woman's life than such a revelation, growing daily, nightly
clearer. Coarse-grained and unthinking people are apt to laugh at
such a mistake, and say, 'What a fuss about nothing!' Narrow and
self-righteous people, only capable of judging the lives of
others by their own, are apt to condemn those who make this
tragic error, to condemn them for life to the dungeons they have
made for themselves. You know the expression: 'She has made her
bed, she must lie on it!' It is a hard-mouthed saying, quite
unworthy of a gentleman or lady in the best sense of those words;
and I can use no stronger condemnation. I have not been what is
called a moral man, but I wish to use no words to you, my dear,
which will make you think lightly of ties or contracts into which
you enter. Heaven forbid! But with the experience of a life
behind me I do say that those who condemn the victims of these
tragic mistakes, condemn them and hold out no hands to help them,
are inhuman, or rather they would be if they had the
understanding to know what they are doing. But they haven't! Let
them go! They are as much anathema to me as I, no doubt, am to
them. I have had to say all this, because I am going to put you
into a position to judge your mother, and you are very young,
without experience of what life is. To go on with the story.
After three years of effort to subdue her shrinking—I was going
to say her loathing and it's not too strong a word, for shrinking
soon becomes loathing under such circumstances—three years of
what to a sensitive, beauty-loving nature like your mother's,
Jon, was torment, she met a young man who fell in love with her.
He was the architect of this very house that we live in now, he
was building it for her and Fleur's father to live in, a new
prison to hold her, in place of the one she inhabited with him in
London. Perhaps that fact played some part in what came of it.
But in any case she, too, fell in love with him. I know it's not
necessary to explain to you that one does not precisely choose
with whom one will fall in love. It comes. Very well! It came. I
can imagine—though she never said much to me about it—the
struggle that then took place in her, because, Jon, she was
brought up strictly and was not light in her ideas—not at all.
However, this was an overwhelming feeling, and it came to pass
that they loved in deed as well as in thought. Then came a
fearful tragedy. I must tell you of it because if I don't you
will never understand the real situation that you have now to
face. The man whom she had married—Soames Forsyte, the father of
Fleur one night, at the height of her passion for this young man,
forcibly reasserted his rights over her. The next day she met her
lover and told him of it. Whether he committed suicide or whether
he was accidentally run over in his distraction, we never knew;
but so it was. Think of your mother as she was that evening when
she heard of his death. I happened to see her. Your grandfather
sent me to help her if I could. I only just saw her, before the
door was shut against me by her husband. But I have never
forgotten her face, I can see it now. I was not in love with her
then, not for twelve years after, but I have never forgotten. My
dear boy—it is not easy to write like this. But you see, I must.
Your mother is wrapped up in you, utterly, devotedly. I don't
wish to write harshly of Soames Forsyte. I don't think harshly of
him. I have long been sorry for him; perhaps I was sorry even
then. As the world judges she was in error, he within his rights.
He loved her—in his way. She was his property. That is the view
he holds of life—of human feelings and hearts—property. It's not
his fault—so was he born. To me it is a view that has always been
abhorrent—so was I born! Knowing you as I do, I feel it cannot be
otherwise than abhorrent to you. Let me go on with the story.
Your mother fled from his house that night; for twelve years she
lived quietly alone without companionship of any sort, until in
1899 her husband—you see, he was still her husband, for he did
not attempt to divorce her, and she of course had no right to
divorce him—became conscious, it seems, of the want of children,
and commenced a long attempt to induce her to go back to him and
give him a child. I was her trustee then, under your
Grandfather's Will, and I watched this going on. While watching,
I became attached to her, devotedly attached. His pressure
increased, till one day she came to me here and practically put
herself under my protection. Her husband, who was kept informed
of all her movements, attempted to force us apart by bringing a
divorce suit, or possibly he really meant it, I don't know; but
anyway our names were publicly joined. That decided us, and we
became united in fact. She was divorced, married me, and you were
born. We have lived in perfect happiness, at least I have, and I
believe your mother also. Soames, soon after the divorce, married
Fleur's mother, and she was born. That is the story, Jon. I have
told it you, because by the affection which we see you have
formed for this man's daughter you are blindly moving toward what
must utterly destroy your mother's happiness, if not your own. I
don't wish to speak of myself, because at my age there's no use
supposing I shall cumber the ground much longer, besides, what I
should suffer would be mainly on her account, and on yours. But
what I want you to realise is that feelings of horror and
aversion such as those can never be buried or forgotten. They are
alive in her to-day. Only yesterday at Lord's we happened to see
Soames Forsyte. Her face, if you had seen it, would have
convinced you. The idea that you should marry his daughter is a
nightmare to her, Jon. I have nothing to say against Fleur save
that she is his daughter. But your children, if you married her,
would be the grandchildren of Soames, as much as of your mother,
of a man who once owned your mother as a man might own a slave.
Think what that would mean. By such a marriage you enter the camp
which held your mother prisoner and wherein she ate her heart
out. You are just on the threshold of life, you have only known
this girl two months, and however deeply you think you love her,
I appeal to you to break it off at once. Don't give your mother
this rankling pain and humiliation during the rest of her life.
Young though she will always seem to me, she is fifty-seven.
Except for us two she has no one in the world. She will soon have
only you. Pluck up your spirit, Jon, and break away. Don't put
this cloud and barrier between you. Don't break her heart! Bless
you, my dear boy, and again forgive me for all the pain this
letter must bring you—we tried to spare it you, but Spain—it
seems—-was no good.

“Ever your devoted father,

“JOLYON FORSYTE.”

Having finished his confession, Jolyon sat with a thin cheek on
his hand, re-reading. There were things in it which hurt him so
much, when he thought of Jon reading them, that he nearly tore
the letter up. To speak of such things at all to a boy—his own
boy—to speak of them in relation to his own wife and the boy's
own mother, seemed dreadful to the reticence of his Forsyte soul.
And yet without speaking of them how make Jon understand the
reality, the deep cleavage, the ineffaceable scar? Without them,
how justify this stiffing of the boy's love? He might just as
well not write at all!

He folded the confession, and put it in his pocket. It was—thank
Heaven!—Saturday; he had till Sunday evening to think it over;
for even if posted now it could not reach Jon till Monday. He
felt a curious relief at this delay, and at the fact that,
whether sent or not, it was written.

In the rose garden, which had taken the place of the old fernery,
he could see Irene snipping and pruning, with a little basket on
her arm. She was never idle, it seemed to him, and he envied her
now that he himself was idle nearly all his time. He went down to
her. She held up a stained glove and smiled. A piece of lace tied
under her chin concealed her hair, and her oval face with its
still dark brows looked very young.

“The green-fly are awful this year, and yet it's cold. You look
tired, Jolyon.”

Jolyon took the confession from his pocket. “I've been writing
this. I think you ought to see it?”

“To Jon?” Her whole face had changed, in that instant, becoming
almost haggard.

“Yes; the murder's out.”

He gave it to her, and walked away among the roses. Presently,
seeing that she had finished reading and was standing quite still
with the sheets of the letter against her skirt, he came back to
her.

“Well?”

“It's wonderfully put. I don't see how it could be put better.
Thank you, dear.”

“Is there anything you would like left out?”

She shook her head.

“No; he must know all, if he's to understand.”

“That's what I thought, but—I hate it!”

He had the feeling that he hated it more than she—to him sex was
so much easier to mention between man and woman than between man
and man; and she had always been more natural and frank, not
deeply secretive like his Forsyte self.

“I wonder if he will understand, even now, Jolyon? He's so young;
and he shrinks from the physical.”

“He gets that shrinking from my father, he was as fastidious as a
girl in all such matters. Would it be better to rewrite the whole
thing, and just say you hated Soames?”

Irene shook her head.

“Hate's only a word. It conveys nothing. No, better as it is.”

“Very well. It shall go to-morrow.”

She raised her face to his, and in sight of the big house's many
creepered windows, he kissed her.

II.—CONFESSION

Late that same afternoon, Jolyon had a nap in the old armchair.
Face down on his knee was La Rotisserie de la Refine Pedauque,
and just before he fell asleep he had been thinking: 'As a people
shall we ever really like the French? Will they ever really like
us!' He himself had always liked the French, feeling at home with
their wit, their taste, their cooking. Irene and he had paid many
visits to France before the War, when Jon had been at his private
school. His romance with her had begun in Paris—his last and most
enduring romance. But the French—no Englishman could like them
who could not see them in some sort with the detached aesthetic
eye! And with that melancholy conclusion he had nodded off.

When he woke he saw Jon standing between him and the window. The
boy had evidently come in from the garden and was waiting for him
to wake. Jolyon smiled, still half asleep. How nice the chap
looked—sensitive, affectionate, straight! Then his heart gave a
nasty jump; and a quaking sensation overcame him. Jon! That
confession! He controlled himself with an effort. “Why, Jon,
where did you spring from?”

Jon bent over and kissed his forehead.

Only then he noticed the look on the boy's face.

“I came home to tell you something, Dad.”

With all his might Jolyon tried to get the better of the jumping,
gurgling sensations within his chest.

“Well, sit down, old man. Have you seen your mother?”

“No.” The boy's flushed look gave place to pallor; he sat down on
the arm of the old chair, as, in old days, Jolyon himself used to
sit beside his own father, installed in its recesses. Right up to
the time of the rupture in their relations he had been wont to
perch there—had he now reached such a moment with his own son?
All his life he had hated scenes like poison, avoided rows, gone
on his own way quietly and let others go on theirs. But now—it
seemed—at the very end of things, he had a scene before him more
painful than any he had avoided. He drew a visor down over his
emotion, and waited for his son to speak.

“Father,” said Jon slowly, “Fleur and I are engaged.”

'Exactly!' thought Jolyon, breathing with difficulty.

“I know that you and Mother don't like the idea. Fleur says that
Mother was engaged to her father before you married her. Of
course I don't know what happened, but it must be ages ago. I'm
devoted to her, Dad, and she says she is to me.”

Jolyon uttered a queer sound, half laugh, half groan.

“You are nineteen, Jon, and I am seventy-two. How are we to
understand each other in a matter like this, eh?”

“You love Mother, Dad; you must know what we feel. It isn't fair
to us to let old things spoil our happiness, is it?”

Brought face to face with his confession, Jolyon resolved to do
without it if by any means he could. He laid his hand on the
boy's arm.

“Look, Jon! I might put you off with talk about your both being
too young and not knowing your own minds, and all that, but you
wouldn't listen, besides, it doesn't meet the case—Youth,
unfortunately, cures itself. You talk lightly about 'old things
like that,' knowing nothing—as you say truly—of what happened.
Now, have I ever given you reason to doubt my love for you, or my
word?”

At a less anxious moment he might have been amused by the
conflict his words aroused—the boy's eager clasp, to reassure him
on these points, the dread on his face of what that reassurance
would bring forth; but he could only feel grateful for the
squeeze.

“Very well, you can believe what I tell you. If you don't give up
this love affair, you will make Mother wretched to the end of her
days. Believe me, my dear, the past, whatever it was, can't be
buried—it can't indeed.”

Jon got off the arm of the chair.

'The girl'—thought Jolyon—'there she goes—starting up before
him—life itself—eager, pretty, loving!'

“I can't, Father; how can I—just because you say that? Of course,
I can't!”

“Jon, if you knew the story you would give this up without
hesitation; you would have to! Can't you believe me?”

“How can you tell what I should think? Father, I love her better
than anything in the world.”

Jolyon's face twitched, and he said with painful slowness:

“Better than your mother, Jon?”

From the boy's face, and his clenched fists Jolyon realised the
stress and struggle he was going through.

“I don't know,” he burst out, “I don't know! But to give Fleur up
for nothing—for something I don't understand, for something that
I don't believe can really matter half so much, will make me—make
me....”

“Make you feel us unjust, put a barrier—yes. But that's better
than going on with this.”

“I can't. Fleur loves me, and I love her. You want me to trust
you; why don't you trust me, Father? We wouldn't want to know
anything—we wouldn't let it make any difference. It'll only make
us both love you and Mother all the more.”

Jolyon put his hand into his breast pocket, but brought it out
again empty, and sat, clucking his tongue against his teeth.

“Think what your mother's been to you, Jon! She has nothing but
you; I shan't last much longer.”

“Why not? It isn't fair to—Why not?”

“Well,” said Jolyon, rather coldly, “because the doctors tell me
I shan't; that's all.”

“Oh, Dad!” cried Jon, and burst into tears.

This downbreak of his son, whom he had not seen cry since he was
ten, moved Jolyon terribly. He recognised to the full how
fearfully soft the boy's heart was, how much he would suffer in
this business, and in life generally. And he reached out his hand
helplessly—not wishing, indeed not daring to get up.

“Dear man,” he said, “don't—or you'll make me!”

Jon smothered down his paroxysm, and stood with face averted,
very still.

'What now?' thought Jolyon. 'What can I say to move him?'

“By the way, don't speak of that to Mother,” he said; “she has
enough to frighten her with this affair of yours. I know how you
feel. But, Jon, you know her and me well enough to be sure we
wouldn't wish to spoil your happiness lightly. Why, my dear boy,
we don't care for anything but your happiness—at least, with me
it's just yours and Mother's and with her just yours. It's all
the future for you both that's at stake.”

Jon turned. His face was deadly pale; his eyes, deep in his head,
seemed to burn.

“What is it? What is it? Don't keep me like this!”

Jolyon, who knew that he was beaten, thrust his hand again into
his breast pocket, and sat for a full minute, breathing with
difficulty, his eyes closed. The thought passed through his mind:
'I've had a good long innings—some pretty bitter moments—this is
the worst!' Then he brought his hand out with the letter, and
said with a sort of fatigue: “Well, Jon, if you hadn't come
to-day, I was going to send you this. I wanted to spare you—I
wanted to spare your mother and myself, but I see it's no good.
Read it, and I think I'll go into the garden.” He reached forward
to get up.

Jon, who had taken the letter, said quickly, “No, I'll go”; and
was gone.

Jolyon sank back in his chair. A blue-bottle chose that moment to
come buzzing round him with a sort of fury; the sound was homely,
better than nothing.... Where had the boy gone to read his
letter? The wretched letter—the wretched story! A cruel
business—cruel to her—to Soames—to those two children—to
himself!... His heart thumped and pained him. Life—its loves—its
work—its beauty—its aching, and—its end! A good time; a fine time
in spite of all; until—you regretted that you had ever been born.
Life—it wore you down, yet did not make you want to die—that was
the cunning evil! Mistake to have a heart! Again the blue-bottle
came buzzing—bringing in all the heat and hum and scent of
summer—yes, even the scent—as of ripe fruits, dried grasses,
sappy shrubs, and the vanilla breath of cows. And out there
somewhere in the fragrance Jon would be reading that letter,
turning and twisting its pages in his trouble, his bewilderment
and trouble—breaking his heart about it! The thought made Jolyon
acutely miserable. Jon was such a tender-hearted chap,
affectionate to his bones, and conscientious, too—it was so
unfair, so damned unfair! He remembered Irene saying to him once:
“Never was any one born more loving and lovable than Jon.” Poor
little Jon! His world gone up the spout, all of a summer
afternoon! Youth took things so hard! And stirred, tormented by
that vision of Youth taking things hard, Jolyon got out of his
chair, and went to the window. The boy was nowhere visible. And
he passed out. If one could take any help to him now—one must!

He traversed the shrubbery, glanced into the walled garden—no
Jon! Nor where the peaches and the apricots were beginning to
swell and colour. He passed the Cupressus trees, dark and spiral,
into the meadow. Where had the boy got to? Had he rushed down to
the coppice—his old hunting-ground? Jolyon crossed the rows of
hay. They would cock it on Monday and be carrying the day after,
if rain held off. Often they had crossed this field together—hand
in hand, when Jon was a little chap. Dash it! The golden age was
over by the time one was ten! He came to the pond, where flies
and gnats were dancing over a bright reedy surface; and on into
the coppice. It was cool there, fragrant of larches. Still no
Jon! He called. No answer! On the log seat he sat down, nervous,
anxious, forgetting his own physical sensations. He had been
wrong to let the boy get away with that letter; he ought to have
kept him under his eye from the start! Greatly troubled, he got
up to retrace his steps. At the farm-buildings he called again,
and looked into the dark cow-house. There in the cool, and the
scent of vanilla and ammonia, away from flies, the three
Alderneys were chewing the quiet cud; just milked, waiting for
evening, to be turned out again into the lower field. One turned
a lazy head, a lustrous eye; Jolyon could see the slobber on its
grey lower lip. He saw everything with passionate clearness, in
the agitation of his nerves—all that in his time he had adored
and tried to paint—wonder of light and shade and colour. No
wonder the legend put Christ into a manger—what more devotional
than the eyes and moon-white horns of a chewing cow in the warm
dusk! He called again. No answer! And he hurried away out of the
coppice, past the pond, up the hill. Oddly ironical—now he came
to think of it—if Jon had taken the gruel of his discovery down
in the coppice where his mother and Bosinney in those old days
had made the plunge of acknowledging their love. Where he
himself, on the log seat the Sunday morning he came back from
Paris, had realised to the full that Irene had become the world
to him. That would have been the place for Irony to tear the veil
from before the eyes of Irene's boy! But he was not here! Where
had he got to? One must find the poor chap!

A gleam of sun had come, sharpening to his hurrying senses all
the beauty of the afternoon, of the tall trees and lengthening
shadows, of the blue, and the white clouds, the scent of the hay,
and the cooing of the pigeons; and the flower shapes standing
tall. He came to the rosery, and the beauty of the roses in that
sudden sunlight seemed to him unearthly. “Rose, you Spaniard!”
Wonderful three words! There she had stood by that bush of dark
red roses; had stood to read and decide that Jon must know it
all! He knew all now! Had she chosen wrong? He bent and sniffed a
rose, its petals brushed his nose and trembling lips; nothing so
soft as a rose-leaf's velvet, except her neck—Irene! On across
the lawn he went, up the slope, to the oak-tree. Its top alone
was glistening, for the sudden sun was away over the house; the
lower shade was thick, blessedly cool—he was greatly overheated.
He paused a minute with his hand on the rope of the swing—Jolly,
Holly—Jon! The old swing! And suddenly, he felt horribly—deadly
ill. 'I've over done it!' he thought: 'by Jove! I've overdone
it—after all!' He staggered up toward the terrace, dragged
himself up the steps, and fell against the wall of the house. He
leaned there gasping, his face buried in the honey-suckle that he
and she had taken such trouble with that it might sweeten the air
which drifted in. Its fragrance mingled with awful pain. 'My
love!' he thought; 'the boy!' And with a great effort he tottered
in through the long window, and sank into old Jolyon's chair. The
book was there, a pencil in it; he caught it up, scribbled a word
on the open page.... His hand dropped.... So it was like this—was
it?...

There was a great wrench; and darkness....

III.—IRENE

When Jon rushed away with the letter in his hand, he ran along
the terrace and round the corner of the house, in fear and
confusion. Leaning against the creepered wall he tore open the
letter. It was long—very long! This added to his fear, and he
began reading. When he came to the words: “It was Fleur's father
that she married,” everything seemed to spin before him. He was
close to a window, and entering by it, he passed, through
music-room and hall, up to his bedroom. Dipping his face in cold
water, he sat on his bed, and went on reading, dropping each
finished page on the bed beside him. His father's writing was
easy to read—he knew it so well, though he had never had a letter
from him one quarter so long. He read with a dull
feeling—imagination only half at work. He best grasped, on that
first reading, the pain his father must have had in writing such
a letter. He let the last sheet fall, and in a sort of mental,
moral helplessness began to read the first again. It all seemed
to him disgusting—dead and disgusting. Then, suddenly, a hot wave
of horrified emotion tingled through him. He buried his face in
his hands. His mother! Fleur's father! He took up the letter
again, and read on mechanically. And again came the feeling that
it was all dead and disgusting; his own love so different! This
letter said his mother—and her father! An awful letter!

Property! Could there be men who looked on women as their
property? Faces seen in street and countryside came thronging up
before him—red, stock-fish faces; hard, dull faces; prim, dry
faces; violent faces; hundreds, thousands of them! How could he
know what men who had such faces thought and did? He held his
head in his hands and groaned. His mother! He caught up the
letter and read on again: “horror and aversion-alive in her
to-day.... your children.... grandchildren.... of a man who once
owned your mother as a man might own a slave....” He got up from
his bed. This cruel shadowy past, lurking there to murder his
love and Fleur's, was true, or his father could never have
written it. 'Why didn't they tell me the first thing,' he
thought, 'the day I first saw Fleur? They knew I'd seen her. They
were afraid, and—now—I've—got it!' Overcome by misery too acute
for thought or reason, he crept into a dusky corner of the room
and sat down on the floor. He sat there, like some unhappy little
animal. There was comfort in dusk, and the floor—as if he were
back in those days when he played his battles sprawling all over
it. He sat there huddled, his hair ruffled, his hands clasped
round his knees, for how long he did not know. He was wrenched
from his blank wretchedness by the sound of the door opening from
his mother's room. The blinds were down over the windows of his
room, shut up in his absence, and from where he sat he could only
hear a rustle, her footsteps crossing, till beyond the bed he saw
her standing before his dressing-table. She had something in her
hand. He hardly breathed, hoping she would not see him, and go
away. He saw her touch things on the table as if they had some
virtue in them, then face the window-grey from head to foot like
a ghost. The least turn of her head, and she must see him! Her
lips moved: “Oh! Jon!” She was speaking to herself; the tone of
her voice troubled Jon's heart. He saw in her hand a little
photograph. She held it toward the light, looking at it—very
small. He knew it—one of himself as a tiny boy, which she always
kept in her bag. His heart beat fast. And, suddenly as if she had
heard it, she turned her eyes and saw him. At the gasp she gave,
and the movement of her hands pressing the photograph against her
breast, he said:

“Yes, it's me.”

She moved over to the bed, and sat down on it, quite close to
him, her hands still clasping her breast, her feet among the
sheets of the letter which had slipped to the floor. She saw
them, and her hands grasped the edge of the bed. She sat very
upright, her dark eyes fixed on him. At last she spoke.

“Well, Jon, you know, I see.”

“Yes.”

“You've seen Father?”

“Yes.”

There was a long silence, till she said:

“Oh! my darling!”

“It's all right.” The emotions in him were so, violent and so
mixed that he dared not move—resentment, despair, and yet a
strange yearning for the comfort of her hand on his forehead.

“What are you going to do?”

“I don't know.”

There was another long silence, then she got up. She stood a
moment, very still, made a little movement with her hand, and
said: “My darling boy, my most darling boy, don't think of
me—think of yourself,” and, passing round the foot of the bed,
went back into her room.

Jon turned—curled into a sort of ball, as might a hedgehog—into
the corner made by the two walls.

He must have been twenty minutes there before a cry roused him.
It came from the terrace below. He got up, scared. Again came the
cry: “Jon!” His mother was calling! He ran out and down the
stairs, through the empty dining-room into the study. She was
kneeling before the old armchair, and his father was lying back
quite white, his head on his breast, one of his hands resting on
an open book, with a pencil clutched in it—more strangely still
than anything he had ever seen. She looked round wildly, and
said:

“Oh! Jon—he's dead—he's dead!”

Jon flung himself down, and reaching over the arm of the chair,
where he had lately been sitting, put his lips to the forehead.
Icy cold! How could—how could Dad be dead, when only an hour
ago—! His mother's arms were round the knees; pressing her breast
against them. “Why—why wasn't I with him?” he heard her whisper.
Then he saw the tottering word “Irene” pencilled on the open
page, and broke down himself. It was his first sight of human
death, and its unutterable stillness blotted from him all other
emotion; all else, then, was but preliminary to this! All love
and life, and joy, anxiety, and sorrow, all movement, light and
beauty, but a beginning to this terrible white stillness. It made
a dreadful mark on him; all seemed suddenly little, futile,
short. He mastered himself at last, got up, and raised her.

“Mother! don't cry—Mother!”

Some hours later, when all was done that had to be, and his
mother was lying down, he saw his father alone, on the bed,
covered with a white sheet. He stood for a long time gazing at
that face which had never looked angry—always whimsical, and
kind. “To be kind and keep your end up—there's nothing else in
it,” he had once heard his father say. How wonderfully Dad had
acted up to that philosophy! He understood now that his father
had known for a long time past that this would come
suddenly—known, and not said a word. He gazed with an awed and
passionate reverence. The loneliness of it—just to spare his
mother and himself! His own trouble seemed small while he was
looking at that face. The word scribbled on the page! The
farewell word! Now his mother had no one but himself! He went up
close to the dead face—not changed at all, and yet completely
changed. He had heard his father say once that he did not believe
in consciousness surviving death, or that if it did it might be
just survival till the natural age limit of the body had been
reached—the natural term of its inherent vitality; so that if the
body were broken by accident, excess, violent disease,
consciousness might still persist till, in the course of Nature
uninterfered with, it would naturally have faded out. It had
struck him because he had never heard any one else suggest it.
When the heart failed like this—surely it was not quite natural!
Perhaps his father's consciousness was in the room with him.
Above the bed hung a picture of his father's father. Perhaps his
consciousness, too, was still alive; and his brother's—his
half-brother, who had died in the Transvaal. Were they all
gathered round this bed? Jon kissed the forehead, and stole back
to his own room. The door between it and his mother's was ajar;
she had evidently been in—everything was ready for him, even some
biscuits and hot milk, and the letter no longer on the floor. He
ate and drank, watching the last light fade. He did not try to
see into the future—just stared at the dark branches of the
oak-tree, level with his window, and felt as if life had stopped.
Once in the night, turning in his heavy sleep, he was conscious
of something white and still, beside his bed, and started up.

His mother's voice said:

“It's only I, Jon dear!” Her hand pressed his forehead gently
back; her white figure disappeared.

Alone! He fell heavily asleep again, and dreamed he saw his
mother's name crawling on his bed.

IV.—SOAMES COGITATES

The announcement in The Times of his cousin Jolyon's death
affected Soames quite simply. So that chap was gone! There had
never been a time in their two lives when love had not been lost
between them. That quick-blooded sentiment hatred had run its
course long since in Soames' heart, and he had refused to allow
any recrudescence, but he considered this early decease a piece
of poetic justice. For twenty years the fellow had enjoyed the
reversion of his wife and house, and—he was dead! The obituary
notice, which appeared a little later, paid Jolyon—he thought—too
much attention. It spoke of that “diligent and agreeable painter
whose work we have come to look on as typical of the best
late-Victorian water-colour art.” Soames, who had almost
mechanically preferred Mole, Morpin, and Caswell Baye, and had
always sniffed quite audibly when he came to one of his cousin's
on the line, turned The Times with a crackle.

He had to go up to Town that morning on Forsyte affairs, and was
fully conscious of Gradman's glance sidelong over his spectacles.
The old clerk had about him an aura of regretful congratulation.
He smelled, as it were, of old days. One could almost hear him
thinking: “Mr. Jolyon, ye-es—just my age, and gone—dear, dear! I
dare say she feels it. She was a nice-lookin' woman. Flesh is
flesh! They've given 'im a notice in the papers. Fancy!” His
atmosphere in fact caused Soames to handle certain leases and
conversions with exceptional swiftness.

“About that settlement on Miss Fleur, Mr. Soames?”

“I've thought better of that,” answered Soames shortly.

“Ah! I'm glad of that. I thought you were a little hasty. The
times do change.”

How this death would affect Fleur had begun to trouble Soames. He
was not certain that she knew of it—she seldom looked at the
paper, never at the births, marriages, and deaths.

He pressed matters on, and made his way to Green Street for
lunch. Winifred was almost doleful. Jack Cardigan had broken a
splashboard, so far as one could make out, and would not be “fit”
for some time. She could not get used to the idea.

“Did Profond ever get off?” he said suddenly.

“He got off,” replied Winifred, “but where—I don't know.”

Yes, there it was—impossible to tell anything! Not that he wanted
to know. Letters from Annette were coming from Dieppe, where she
and her mother were staying.

“You saw that fellow's death, I suppose?”

“Yes,” said Winifred. “I'm sorry for—for his children. He was
very amiable.” Soames uttered a rather queer sound. A suspicion
of the old deep truth—that men were judged in this world rather
by what they were than by what they did—crept and knocked
resentfully at the back doors of his mind.

“I know there was a superstition to that effect,” he muttered.

“One must do him justice now he's dead.”

“I should like to have done him justice before,” said Soames;
“but I never had the chance. Have you got a 'Baronetage' here?”

“Yes; in that bottom row.”

Soames took out a fat red book, and ran over the leaves.

“Mont-Sir Lawrence, 9th Bt., cr. 1620, e. s. of Geoffrey, 8th
Bt., and Lavinia, daur. of Sir Charles Muskham, Bt., of Muskham
Hall, Shrops: marr. 1890 Emily, daur. of Conway Charwell, Esq.,
of Condaford Grange, co. Oxon; 1 son, heir Michael Conway, b.
1895, 2 daurs. Residence: Lippinghall Manor, Folwell, Bucks.
Clubs: Snooks'. Coffee House: Aeroplane. See Bidicott.”

“H'm!” he said. “Did you ever know a publisher?”

“Uncle Timothy.”

“Alive, I mean.”

“Monty knew one at his Club. He brought him here to dinner once.
Monty was always thinking of writing a book, you know, about how
to make money on the turf. He tried to interest that man.”

“Well?”

“He put him on to a horse—for the Two Thousand. We didn't see him
again. He was rather smart, if I remember.”

“Did it win?”

“No; it ran last, I think. You know Monty really was quite clever
in his way.”

“Was he?” said Soames. “Can you see any connection between a
sucking baronet and publishing?”

“People do all sorts of things nowadays,” replied Winifred. “The
great stunt seems not to be idle—so different from our time. To
do nothing was the thing then. But I suppose it'll come again.”

“This young Mont that I'm speaking of is very sweet on Fleur. If
it would put an end to that other affair I might encourage it.”

“Has he got style?” asked Winifred.

“He's no beauty; pleasant enough, with some scattered brains.
There's a good deal of land, I believe. He seems genuinely
attached. But I don't know.”

“No,” murmured Winifred; “it's—very difficult. I always found it
best to do nothing. It is such a bore about Jack; now we shan't
get away till after Bank Holiday. Well, the people are always
amusing, I shall go into the Park and watch them.”

“If I were you,” said Soames, “I should have a country cottage,
and be out of the way of holidays and strikes when you want.”

“The country bores me,” answered Winifred, “and I found the
railway strike quite exciting.”

Winifred had always been noted for sang-froid.

Soames took his leave. All the way down to Reading he debated
whether he should tell Fleur of that boy's father's death. It did
not alter the situation except that he would be independent now,
and only have his mother's opposition to encounter. He would come
into a lot of money, no doubt, and perhaps the house—the house
built for Irene and himself—the house whose architect had wrought
his domestic ruin. His daughter—mistress of that house! That
would be poetic justice! Soames uttered a little mirthless laugh.
He had designed that house to re-establish his failing union,
meant it for the seat of his descendants, if he could have
induced Irene to give him one! Her son and Fleur! Their children
would be, in some sort, offspring of the union between himself
and her!

The theatricality in that thought was repulsive to his sober
sense. And yet—it would be the easiest and wealthiest way out of
the impasse, now that Jolyon was gone. The juncture of two
Forsyte fortunes had a kind of conservative charm. And
she—Irene-would be linked to him once more. Nonsense! Absurd! He
put the notion from his head.

On arriving home he heard the click of billiard-balls, and
through the window saw young Mont sprawling over the table.
Fleur, with her cue akimbo, was watching with a smile. How pretty
she looked! No wonder that young fellow was out of his mind about
her. A title—land! There was little enough in land, these days;
perhaps less in a title. The old Forsytes had always had a kind
of contempt for titles, rather remote and artificial things—not
worth the money they cost, and having to do with the Court. They
had all had that feeling in differing measure—Soames remembered.
Swithin, indeed, in his most expansive days had once attended a
Levee. He had come away saying he shouldn't go again—“all that
small fry.” It was suspected that he had looked too big in
knee-breeches. Soames remembered how his own mother had wished to
be presented because of the fashionable nature of the
performance, and how his father had put his foot down with
unwonted decision. What did she want with that peacocking—wasting
time and money; there was nothing in it!

The instinct which had made and kept the English Commons the
chief power in the State, a feeling that their own world was good
enough and a little better than any other because it was their
world, had kept the old Forsytes singularly free of “flummery,”
as Nicholas had been wont to call it when he had the gout.
Soames' generation, more self-conscious and ironical, had been
saved by a sense of Swithin in knee-breeches. While the third and
the fourth generation, as it seemed to him, laughed at
everything.

However, there was no harm in the young fellow's being heir to a
title and estate—a thing one couldn't help. He entered quietly,
as Mont missed his shot. He noted the young man's eyes, fixed on
Fleur bending over in her turn; and the adoration in them almost
touched him.

She paused with the cue poised on the bridge of her slim hand,
and shook her crop of short dark chestnut hair.

“I shall never do it.”

“'Nothing venture.'”

“All right.” The cue struck, the ball rolled. “There!”

“Bad luck! Never mind!”

Then they saw him, and Soames said:

“I'll mark for you.”

He sat down on the raised seat beneath the marker, trim and
tired, furtively studying those two young faces. When the game
was over Mont came up to him.

“I've started in, sir. Rum game, business, isn't it? I suppose
you saw a lot of human nature as a solicitor.”

“I did.”

“Shall I tell you what I've noticed: People are quite on the
wrong tack in offering less than they can afford to give; they
ought to offer more, and work backward.”

Soames raised his eyebrows.

“Suppose the more is accepted?”

“That doesn't matter a little bit,” said Mont; “it's much more
paying to abate a price than to increase it. For instance, say we
offer an author good terms—he naturally takes them. Then we go
into it, find we can't publish at a decent profit and tell him
so. He's got confidence in us because we've been generous to him,
and he comes down like a lamb, and bears us no malice. But if we
offer him poor terms at the start, he doesn't take them, so we
have to advance them to get him, and he thinks us damned screws
into the bargain.

“Try buying pictures on that system,” said Soames; “an offer
accepted is a contract—haven't you learned that?”

Young Mont turned his head to where Fleur was standing in the
window.

“No,” he said, “I wish I had. Then there's another thing. Always
let a man off a bargain if he wants to be let off.”

“As advertisement?” said Soames dryly.

“Of course it is; but I meant on principle.”

“Does your firm work on those lines?”

“Not yet,” said Mont, “but it'll come.”

“And they will go.”

“No, really, sir. I'm making any number of observations, and they
all confirm my theory. Human nature is consistently underrated in
business, people do themselves out of an awful lot of pleasure
and profit by that. Of course, you must be perfectly genuine and
open, but that's easy if you feel it. The more human and generous
you are the better chance you've got in business.”

Soames rose.

“Are you a partner?”

“Not for six months, yet.”

“The rest of the firm had better make haste and retire.”

Mont laughed.

“You'll see,” he said. “There's going to be a big change. The
possessive principle has got its shutters up.”

“What?” said Soames.

“The house is to let! Good-bye, sir; I'm off now.”

Soames watched his daughter give her hand, saw her wince at the
squeeze it received, and distinctly heard the young man's sigh as
he passed out. Then she came from the window, trailing her finger
along the mahogany edge of the billiard-table. Watching her,
Soames knew that she was going to ask him something. Her finger
felt round the last pocket, and she looked up.

“Have you done anything to stop Jon writing to me, Father?”

Soames shook his head.

“You haven't seen, then?” he said. “His father died just a week
ago to-day.”

“Oh!”

In her startled, frowning face he saw the instant struggle to
apprehend what this would mean.

“Poor Jon! Why didn't you tell me, Father?”