Chapter LXXIX: Part I: I.—encounter (1)

Soames Forsyte emerged from the Knightsbridge Hotel, where he was
staying, in the afternoon of the 12th of May, 1920, with the
intention of visiting a collection of pictures in a Gallery off
Cork Street, and looking into the Future. He walked. Since the
War he never took a cab if he could help it. Their drivers were,
in his view, an uncivil lot, though now that the War was over and
supply beginning to exceed demand again, getting more civil in
accordance with the custom of human nature. Still, he had not
forgiven them, deeply identifying them with gloomy memories, and
now, dimly, like all members, of their class, with revolution.
The considerable anxiety he had passed through during the War,
and the more considerable anxiety he had since undergone in the
Peace, had produced psychological consequences in a tenacious
nature. He had, mentally, so frequently experienced ruin, that he
had ceased to believe in its material probability. Paying away
four thousand a year in income and super tax, one could not very
well be worse off! A fortune of a quarter of a million,
encumbered only by a wife and one daughter, and very diversely
invested, afforded substantial guarantee even against that
“wildcat notion” a levy on capital. And as to confiscation of war
profits, he was entirely in favour of it, for he had none, and
“serve the beggars right!” The price of pictures, moreover, had,
if anything, gone up, and he had done better with his collection
since the War began than ever before. Air-raids, also, had acted
beneficially on a spirit congenitally cautious, and hardened a
character already dogged. To be in danger of being entirely
dispersed inclined one to be less apprehensive of the more
partial dispersions involved in levies and taxation, while the
habit of condemning the impudence of the Germans had led
naturally to condemning that of Labour, if not openly at least in
the sanctuary of his soul.

He walked. There was, moreover, time to spare, for Fleur was to
meet him at the Gallery at four o'clock, and it was as yet but
half-past two. It was good for him to walk—his liver was a little
constricted, and his nerves rather on edge. His wife was always
out when she was in Town, and his daughter would flibberty-gibbet
all over the place like most young women since the War. Still, he
must be thankful that she had been too young to do anything in
that War itself. Not, of course, that he had not supported the
War from its inception, with all his soul, but between that and
supporting it with the bodies of his wife and daughter, there had
been a gap fixed by something old-fashioned within him which
abhorred emotional extravagance. He had, for instance, strongly
objected to Annette, so attractive, and in 1914 only thirty-four,
going to her native France, her “chere patrie” as, under the
stimulus of war, she had begun to call it, to nurse her “braves
poilus,” forsooth! Ruining her health and her looks! As if she
were really a nurse! He had put a stopper on it. Let her do
needlework for them at home, or knit! She had not gone,
therefore, and had never been quite the same woman since. A bad
tendency of hers to mock at him, not openly, but in continual
little ways, had grown. As for Fleur, the War had resolved the
vexed problem whether or not she should go to school. She was
better away from her mother in her war mood, from the chance of
air-raids, and the impetus to do extravagant things; so he had
placed her in a seminary as far West as had seemed to him
compatible with excellence, and had missed her horribly. Fleur!
He had never regretted the somewhat outlandish name by which at
her birth he had decided so suddenly to call her—marked
concession though it had been to the French. Fleur! A pretty
name—a pretty child! But restless—too restless; and wilful!
Knowing her power too over her father! Soames often reflected on
the mistake it was to dote on his daughter. To get old and dote!
Sixty-five! He was getting on; but he didn't feel it, for,
fortunately perhaps, considering Annette's youth and good looks,
his second marriage had turned out a cool affair. He had known
but one real passion in his life—for that first wife of
his—Irene. Yes, and that fellow, his cousin Jolyon, who had gone
off with her, was looking very shaky, they said. No wonder, at
seventy-two, after twenty years of a third marriage!

Soames paused a moment in his march to lean over the railings of
the Row. A suitable spot for reminiscence, half-way between that
house in Park Lane which had seen his birth and his parents'
deaths, and the little house in Montpellier Square where
thirty-five years ago he had enjoyed his first edition of
matrimony. Now, after twenty years of his second edition, that
old tragedy seemed to him like a previous existence—which had
ended when Fleur was born in place of the son he had hoped for.
For many years he had ceased regretting, even vaguely, the son
who had not been born; Fleur filled the bill in his heart. After
all, she bore his name; and he was not looking forward at all to
the time when she would change it. Indeed, if he ever thought of
such a calamity, it was seasoned by the vague feeling that he
could make her rich enough to purchase perhaps and extinguish the
name of the fellow who married her—why not, since, as it seemed,
women were equal to men nowadays? And Soames, secretly convinced
that they were not, passed his curved hand over his face
vigorously, till it reached the comfort of his chin. Thanks to
abstemious habits, he had not grown fat and gabby; his nose was
pale and thin, his grey moustache close-clipped, his eyesight
unimpaired. A slight stoop closened and corrected the expansion
given to his face by the heightening of his forehead in the
recession of his grey hair. Little change had Time wrought in the
“warmest” of the young Forsytes, as the last of the old
Forsytes—Timothy-now in his hundred and first year, would have
phrased it.

The shade from the plane-trees fell on his neat Homburg hat; he
had given up top hats—it was no use attracting attention to
wealth in days like these. Plane-trees! His thoughts travelled
sharply to Madrid—the Easter before the War, when, having to make
up his mind about that Goya picture, he had taken a voyage of
discovery to study the painter on his spot. The fellow had
impressed him—great range, real genius! Highly as the chap
ranked, he would rank even higher before they had finished with
him. The second Goya craze would be greater even than the first;
oh, yes! And he had bought. On that visit he had—as never
before—commissioned a copy of a fresco painting called “La
Vendimia,” wherein was the figure of a girl with an arm akimbo,
who had reminded him of his daughter. He had it now in the
Gallery at Mapledurham, and rather poor it was—you couldn't copy
Goya. He would still look at it, however, if his daughter were
not there, for the sake of something irresistibly reminiscent in
the light, erect balance of the figure, the width between the
arching eyebrows, the eager dreaming of the dark eyes. Curious
that Fleur should have dark eyes, when his own were grey—no pure
Forsyte had brown eyes—and her mother's blue! But of course her
grandmother Lamotte's eyes were dark as treacle!

He began to walk on again toward Hyde Park Corner. No greater
change in all England than in the Row! Born almost within hail of
it, he could remember it from 1860 on. Brought there as a child
between the crinolines to stare at tight-trousered dandies in
whiskers, riding with a cavalry seat; to watch the doffing of
curly-brimmed and white top hats; the leisurely air of it all,
and the little bow-legged man in a long red waistcoat who used to
come among the fashion with dogs on several strings, and try to
sell one to his mother: King Charles spaniels, Italian
greyhounds, affectionate to her crinoline—you never saw them now.
You saw no quality of any sort, indeed, just working people
sitting in dull rows with nothing to stare at but a few young
bouncing females in pot hats, riding astride, or desultory
Colonials charging up and down on dismal-looking hacks; with,
here and there, little girls on ponies, or old gentlemen jogging
their livers, or an orderly trying a great galumphing cavalry
horse; no thoroughbreds, no grooms, no bowing, no scraping, no
gossip—nothing; only the trees the same—the trees indifferent to
the generations and declensions of mankind. A democratic
England—dishevelled, hurried, noisy, and seemingly without an
apex. And that something fastidious in the soul of Soames turned
over within him. Gone forever, the close borough of rank and
polish! Wealth there was—oh, yes! wealth—he himself was a richer
man than his father had ever been; but manners, flavour, quality,
all gone, engulfed in one vast, ugly, shoulder-rubbing,
petrol-smelling Cheerio. Little half-beaten pockets of gentility
and caste lurking here and there, dispersed and chetif, as
Annette would say; but nothing ever again firm and coherent to
look up to. And into this new hurly-burly of bad manners and
loose morals his daughter—flower of his life—was flung! And when
those Labour chaps got power—if they ever did—the worst was yet
to come.

He passed out under the archway, at last no longer—thank
goodness!—disfigured by the gungrey of its search-light. 'They'd
better put a search-light on to where they're all going,' he
thought, 'and light up their precious democracy!' And he directed
his steps along the Club fronts of Piccadilly. George Forsyte, of
course, would be sitting in the bay window of the Iseeum. The
chap was so big now that he was there nearly all his time, like
some immovable, sardonic, humorous eye noting the decline of men
and things. And Soames hurried, ever constitutionally uneasy
beneath his cousin's glance. George, who, as he had heard, had
written a letter signed “Patriot” in the middle of the War,
complaining of the Government's hysteria in docking the oats of
race-horses. Yes, there he was, tall, ponderous, neat,
clean-shaven, with his smooth hair, hardly thinned, smelling, no
doubt, of the best hair-wash, and a pink paper in his hand. Well,
he didn't change! And for perhaps the first time in his life
Soames felt a kind of sympathy tapping in his waistcoat for that
sardonic kinsman. With his weight, his perfectly parted hair, and
bull-like gaze, he was a guarantee that the old order would take
some shifting yet. He saw George move the pink paper as if
inviting him to ascend—the chap must want to ask something about
his property. It was still under Soames' control; for in the
adoption of a sleeping partnership at that painful period twenty
years back when he had divorced Irene, Soames had found himself
almost insensibly retaining control of all purely Forsyte
affairs.

Hesitating for just a moment, he nodded and went in. Since the
death of his brother-in-law Montague Dartie, in Paris, which no
one had quite known what to make of, except that it was certainly
not suicide—the Iseeum Club had seemed more respectable to
Soames. George, too, he knew, had sown the last of his wild oats,
and was committed definitely to the joys of the table, eating
only of the very best so as to keep his weight down, and owning,
as he said, “just one or two old screws to give me an interest in
life.” He joined his cousin, therefore, in the bay window without
the embarrassing sense of indiscretion he had been used to feel
up there. George put out a well-kept hand.

“Haven't seen you since the War,” he said. “How's your wife?”

“Thanks,” said Soames coldly, “well enough.”

Some hidden jest curved, for a moment, George's fleshy face, and
gloated from his eye.

“That Belgian chap, Profond,” he said, “is a member here now.
He's a rum customer.”

“Quite!” muttered Soames. “What did you want to see me about?”

“Old Timothy; he might go off the hooks at any moment. I suppose
he's made his Will.”

“Yes.”

“Well, you or somebody ought to give him a look up—last of the
old lot; he's a hundred, you know. They say he's like a mummy.
Where are you goin' to put him? He ought to have a pyramid by
rights.”

Soames shook his head. “Highgate, the family vault.”

“Well, I suppose the old girls would miss him, if he was anywhere
else. They say he still takes an interest in food. He might last
on, you know. Don't we get anything for the old Forsytes? Ten of
them—average age eighty-eight—I worked it out. That ought to be
equal to triplets.”

“Is that all?” said Soames, “I must be getting on.”

'You unsociable devil,' George's eyes seemed to answer. “Yes,
that's all: Look him up in his mausoleum—the old chap might want
to prophesy.” The grin died on the rich curves of his face, and
he added: “Haven't you attorneys invented a way yet of dodging
this damned income tax? It hits the fixed inherited income like
the very deuce. I used to have two thousand five hundred a year;
now I've got a beggarly fifteen hundred, and the price of living
doubled.”

“Ah!” murmured Soames, “the turf's in danger.”

Over George's face moved a gleam of sardonic self-defence.

“Well,” he said, “they brought me up to do nothing, and here I am
in the sear and yellow, getting poorer every day. These Labour
chaps mean to have the lot before they've done. What are you
going to do for a living when it comes? I shall work a six-hour
day teaching politicians how to see a joke. Take my tip, Soames;
go into Parliament, make sure of your four hundred—and employ
me.”

And, as Soames retired, he resumed his seat in the bay window.

Soames moved along Piccadilly deep in reflections excited by his
cousin's words. He himself had always been a worker and a saver,
George always a drone and a spender; and yet, if confiscation
once began, it was he—the worker and the saver—who would be
looted! That was the negation of all virtue, the overturning of
all Forsyte principles. Could civilization be built on any other?
He did not think so. Well, they wouldn't confiscate his pictures,
for they wouldn't know their worth. But what would they be worth,
if these maniacs once began to milk capital? A drug on the
market. 'I don't care about myself,' he thought; 'I could live on
five hundred a year, and never know the difference, at my age.'
But Fleur! This fortune, so widely invested, these treasures so
carefully chosen and amassed, were all for—her. And if it should
turn out that he couldn't give or leave them to her—well, life
had no meaning, and what was the use of going in to look at this
crazy, futuristic stuff with the view of seeing whether it had
any future?

Arriving at the Gallery off Cork Street, however, he paid his
shilling, picked up a catalogue, and entered. Some ten persons
were prowling round. Soames took steps and came on what looked to
him like a lamp-post bent by collision with a motor omnibus. It
was advanced some three paces from the wall, and was described in
his catalogue as “Jupiter.” He examined it with curiosity, having
recently turned some of his attention to sculpture. 'If that's
Jupiter,' he thought, 'I wonder what Juno's like.' And suddenly
he saw her, opposite. She appeared to him like nothing so much as
a pump with two handles, lightly clad in snow. He was still
gazing at her, when two of the prowlers halted on his left.
“Epatant!” he heard one say.

“Jargon!” growled Soames to himself.

The other's boyish voice replied

“Missed it, old bean; he's pulling your leg. When Jove and Juno
created he them, he was saying: 'I'll see how much these fools
will swallow.' And they've lapped up the lot.”

“You young duffer! Vospovitch is an innovator. Don't you see that
he's brought satire into sculpture? The future of plastic art, of
music, painting, and even architecture, has set in satiric. It
was bound to. People are tired—the bottom's tumbled out of
sentiment.”

“Well, I'm quite equal to taking a little interest in beauty. I
was through the War. You've dropped your handkerchief, sir.”

Soames saw a handkerchief held out in front of him. He took it
with some natural suspicion, and approached it to his nose. It
had the right scent—of distant Eau de Cologne—and his initials in
a corner. Slightly reassured, he raised his eyes to the young
man's face. It had rather fawn-like ears, a laughing mouth, with
half a toothbrush growing out of it on each side, and small
lively eyes, above a normally dressed appearance.

“Thank you,” he said; and moved by a sort of irritation, added:
“Glad to hear you like beauty; that's rare, nowadays.”

“I dote on it,” said the young man; “but you and I are the last
of the old guard, sir.”

Soames smiled.

“If you really care for pictures,” he said, “here's my card. I
can show you some quite good ones any Sunday, if you're down the
river and care to look in.”

“Awfully nice of you, sir. I'll drop in like a bird. My name's
Mont-Michael.” And he took off his hat.

Soames, already regretting his impulse, raised his own slightly
in response, with a downward look at the young man's companion,
who had a purple tie, dreadful little sluglike whiskers, and a
scornful look—as if he were a poet!

It was the first indiscretion he had committed for so long that
he went and sat down in an alcove. What had possessed him to give
his card to a rackety young fellow, who went about with a thing
like that? And Fleur, always at the back of his thoughts, started
out like a filigree figure from a clock when the hour strikes. On
the screen opposite the alcove was a large canvas with a great
many square tomato-coloured blobs on it, and nothing else, so far
as Soames could see from where he sat. He looked at his
catalogue: “No. 32 'The Future Town'—Paul Post.” 'I suppose
that's satiric too,' he thought. 'What a thing!' But his second
impulse was more cautious. It did not do to condemn hurriedly.
There had been those stripey, streaky creations of Monet's, which
had turned out such trumps; and then the stippled school; and
Gauguin. Why, even since the Post-Impressionists there had been
one or two painters not to be sneezed at. During the thirty-eight
years of his connoisseur's life, indeed, he had marked so many
“movements,” seen the tides of taste and technique so ebb and
flow, that there was really no telling anything except that there
was money to be made out of every change of fashion. This too
might quite well be a case where one must subdue primordial
instinct, or lose the market. He got up and stood before the
picture, trying hard to see it with the eyes of other people.
Above the tomato blobs was what he took to be a sunset, till some
one passing said: “He's got the airplanes wonderfully, don't you
think!” Below the tomato blobs was a band of white with vertical
black stripes, to which he could assign no meaning whatever, till
some one else came by, murmuring: “What expression he gets with
his foreground!” Expression? Of what? Soames went back to his
seat. The thing was “rich,” as his father would have said, and he
wouldn't give a damn for it. Expression! Ah! they were all
Expressionists now, he had heard, on the Continent. So it was
coming here too, was it? He remembered the first wave of
influenza in 1887—or '8—hatched in China, so they said. He
wondered where this—this Expressionism had been hatched. The
thing was a regular disease!

He had become conscious of a woman and a youth standing between
him and the “Future Town.” Their backs were turned; but very
suddenly Soames put his catalogue before his face, and drawing
his hat forward, gazed through the slit between. No mistaking
that back, elegant as ever though the hair above had gone grey.
Irene! His divorced wife—Irene! And this, no doubt, was—her
son—by that fellow Jolyon Forsyte—their boy, six months older
than his own girl! And mumbling over in his mind the bitter days
of his divorce, he rose to get out of sight, but quickly sat down
again. She had turned her head to speak to her boy; her profile
was still so youthful that it made her grey hair seem powdery, as
if fancy-dressed; and her lips were smiling as Soames, first
possessor of them, had never seen them smile. Grudgingly he
admitted her still beautiful and in figure almost as young as
ever. And how that boy smiled back at her! Emotion squeezed
Soames' heart. The sight infringed his sense of justice. He
grudged her that boy's smile—it went beyond what Fleur gave him,
and it was undeserved. Their son might have been his son; Fleur
might have been her daughter, if she had kept straight! He
lowered his catalogue. If she saw him, all the better! A reminder
of her conduct in the presence of her son, who probably knew
nothing of it, would be a salutary touch from the finger of that
Nemesis which surely must soon or late visit her! Then,
half-conscious that such a thought was extravagant for a Forsyte
of his age, Soames took out his watch. Past four! Fleur was late.
She had gone to his niece Imogen Cardigan's, and there they would
keep her smoking cigarettes and gossiping, and that. He heard the
boy laugh, and say eagerly: “I say, Mum, is this by one of Auntie
June's lame ducks?”

“Paul Post—I believe it is, darling.”

The word produced a little shock in Soames; he had never heard
her use it. And then she saw him. His eyes must have had in them
something of George Forsyte's sardonic look; for her gloved hand
crisped the folds of her frock, her eyebrows rose, her face went
stony. She moved on.

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

Soames stared after them. That boy was good-looking, with a
Forsyte chin, and eyes deep-grey, deep in; but with something
sunny, like a glass of old sherry spilled over him; his smile
perhaps, his hair. Better than they deserved—those two! They
passed from his view into the next room, and Soames continued to
regard the Future Town, but saw it not. A little smile snarled up
his lips. He was despising the vehemence of his own feelings
after all these years. Ghosts! And yet as one grew old—was there
anything but what was ghost-like left? Yes, there was Fleur! He
fixed his eyes on the entrance. She was due; but she would keep
him waiting, of course! And suddenly he became aware of a sort of
human breeze—a short, slight form clad in a sea-green djibbah
with a metal belt and a fillet binding unruly red-gold hair all
streaked with grey. She was talking to the Gallery attendants,
and something familiar riveted his gaze—in her eyes, her chin,
her hair, her spirit—something which suggested a thin Skye
terrier just before its dinner. Surely June Forsyte! His cousin
June—and coming straight to his recess! She sat down beside him,
deep in thought, took out a tablet, and made a pencil note.
Soames sat unmoving. A confounded thing, cousinship!
“Disgusting!” he heard her murmur; then, as if resenting the
presence of an overhearing stranger, she looked at him. The worst
had happened.

“Soames!”

Soames turned his head a very little.

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

“No. Whatever made you come here?”

“My sins,” said Soames. “What stuff!”

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

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

“Of course it is.”

“How d'you know?”

“It's my Gallery.”

Soames sniffed from sheer surprise.

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

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

Soames pointed to the Future Town. “Look at that! Who's going to
live in a town like that, or with it on his walls?”

June contemplated the picture for a moment.

“It's a vision,” she said.

“The deuce!”

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

“Well,” he said, “you'll find your young stepbrother here with a
woman I used to know. If you take my advice, you'll close this
exhibition.”

June looked back at him. “Oh! You Forsyte!” she said, and moved
on. About her light, fly-away figure, passing so suddenly away,
was a look of dangerous decisions. Forsyte! Of course, he was a
Forsyte! And so was she! But from the time when, as a mere girl,
she brought Bosinney into his life to wreck it, he had never hit
it off with June and never would! And here she was, unmarried to
this day, owning a Gallery!... And suddenly it came to Soames how
little he knew now of his own family. The old aunts at Timothy's
had been dead so many years; there was no clearing-house for
news. What had they all done in the War? Young Roger's boy had
been wounded, St. John Hayman's second son killed; young
Nicholas' eldest had got an O. B. E., or whatever they gave them.
They had all joined up somehow, he believed. That boy of Jolyon's
and Irene's, he supposed, had been too young; his own generation,
of course, too old, though Giles Hayman had driven a car for the
Red Cross—and Jesse Hayman been a special constable—those
“Dromios” had always been of a sporting type! As for himself, he
had given a motor ambulance, read the papers till he was sick of
them, passed through much anxiety, bought no clothes, lost seven
pounds in weight; he didn't know what more he could have done at
his age. Indeed, thinking it over, it struck him that he and his
family had taken this war very differently to that affair with
the Boers, which had been supposed to tax all the resources of
the Empire. In that old war, of course, his nephew Val Dartie had
been wounded, that fellow Jolyon's first son had died of enteric,
“the Dromios” had gone out on horses, and June had been a nurse;
but all that had seemed in the nature of a portent, while in this
war everybody had done “their bit,” so far as he could make out,
as a matter of course. It seemed to show the growth of something
or other—or perhaps the decline of something else. Had the
Forsytes become less individual, or more Imperial, or less
provincial? Or was it simply that one hated Germans?... Why
didn't Fleur come, so that he could get away? He saw those three
return together from the other room and pass back along the far
side of the screen. The boy was standing before the Juno now.
And, suddenly, on the other side of her, Soames saw—his daughter,
with eyebrows raised, as well they might be. He could see her
eyes glint sideways at the boy, and the boy look back at her.
Then Irene slipped her hand through his arm, and drew him on.
Soames saw him glancing round, and Fleur looking after them as
the three went out.

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

The young man who had handed him his handkerchief was again
passing. Soames nodded.

“I don't know what we're coming to.”

“Oh! That's all right, sir,” answered the young man cheerfully;
“they don't either.”

Fleur's voice said: “Hallo, Father! Here you are!” precisely as
if he had been keeping her waiting.

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

“Well,” said Soames, looking her up and down, “you're a punctual
sort of young woman!”

This treasured possession of his life was of medium height and
colour, with short, dark chestnut hair; her wide-apart brown eyes
were set in whites so clear that they glinted when they moved,
and yet in repose were almost dreamy under very white,
black-lashed lids, held over them in a sort of suspense. She had
a charming profile, and nothing of her father in her face save a
decided chin. Aware that his expression was softening as he
looked at her, Soames frowned to preserve the unemotionalism
proper to a Forsyte. He knew she was only too inclined to take
advantage of his weakness.

Slipping her hand under his arm, she said:

“Who was that?”

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

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

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

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

In the doorway they passed the young man called Mont and his
partner. But Soames had hung out a board marked “Trespassers will
be prosecuted,” and he barely acknowledged the young fellow's
salute.

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

“Aunt Winifred, and that Monsieur Profond.”

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

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

Soames grunted.

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

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

“Oh, no! They've sold their farm. Cousin Val is going to train
race-horses on the Sussex Downs. They've got a jolly old
manor-house; they asked me down there.”

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

“Very quiet, but nice, I think.”

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

“Oh! no, Father; they're awfully devoted. I promised to
go—Saturday to Wednesday next.”

“Training race-horses!” said Soames. It was extravagant, but not
the reason for his distaste. Why the deuce couldn't his nephew
have stayed out in South Africa? His own divorce had been bad
enough, without his nephew's marriage to the daughter of the
co-respondent; a half-sister too of June, and of that boy whom
Fleur had just been looking at from under the pump-handle. If he
didn't look out, she would come to know all about that old
disgrace! Unpleasant things! They were round him this afternoon
like a swarm of bees!

“I don't like it!” he said.

“I want to see the race-horses,” murmured Fleur; “and they've
promised I shall ride. Cousin Val can't walk much, you know; but
he can ride perfectly. He's going to show me their gallops.”

“Racing!” said Soames. “It's a pity the War didn't knock that on
the head. He's taking after his father, I'm afraid.”

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

“No,” said Soames, grimly. “He took an interest in horses and
broke his neck in Paris, walking down-stairs. Good riddance for
your aunt.” He frowned, recollecting the inquiry into those
stairs which he had attended in Paris six years ago, because
Montague Dartie could not attend it himself—perfectly normal
stairs in a house where they played baccarat. Either his winnings
or the way he had celebrated them had gone to his
brother-in-law's head. The French procedure had been very loose;
he had had a lot of trouble with it.

A sound from Fleur distracted his attention. “Look! The people
who were in the Gallery with us.”

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

“I think that woman's beautiful.”

“Come into this pastry-cook's,” said Soames abruptly, and
tightening his grip on her arm he turned into a confectioner's.
It was—for him—a surprising thing to do, and he said rather
anxiously: “What will you have?”

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

“We must have something now we're here,” muttered Soames, keeping
hold of her arm.

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

But no sooner was his body seated than his soul sprang up. Those
three—those three were coming in! He heard Irene say something to
her boy, and his answer:

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

At that moment, most awkward of his existence, crowded with
ghosts and shadows from his past, in presence of the only two
women he had ever loved—his divorced wife and his daughter by her
successor—Soames was not so much afraid of them as of his cousin
June. She might make a scene—she might introduce those two
children—she was capable of anything. He bit too hastily at the
nougat, and it stuck to his plate. Working at it with his finger,
he glanced at Fleur. She was masticating dreamily, but her eyes
were on the boy. The Forsyte in him said: “Think, feel, and
you're done for!” And he wiggled his finger desperately. Plate!
Did Jolyon wear a plate? Did that woman wear a plate? Time had
been when he had seen her wearing nothing! That was something,
anyway, which had never been stolen from him. And she knew it,
though she might sit there calm and self-possessed, as if she had
never been his wife. An acid humour stirred in his Forsyte blood;
a subtle pain divided by hair's breadth from pleasure. If only
June did not suddenly bring her hornets about his ears! The boy
was talking.

“Of course, Auntie June”—so he called his half-sister “Auntie,”
did he?—well, she must be fifty, if she was a day!—“it's jolly
good of you to encourage them. Only—hang it all!” Soames stole a
glance. Irene's startled eyes were bent watchfully on her boy.
She—she had these devotions—for Bosinney—for that boy's
father—for this boy! He touched Fleur's arm, and said:

“Well, have you had enough?”

“One more, Father, please.”

She would be sick! He went to the counter to pay. When he turned
round again he saw Fleur standing near the door, holding a
handkerchief which the boy had evidently just handed to her.

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

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

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

“Really! We must be. There aren't any others. I live at
Mapledurham; where do you?”

“Robin Hill.”

Question and answer had been so rapid that all was over before he
could lift a finger. He saw Irene's face alive with startled
feeling, gave the slightest shake of his head, and slipped his
arm through Fleur's.

“Come along!” he said.

She did not move.

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

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

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

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

He moved on.

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

“Au revoir!” he heard the boy reply.

II.—FINE FLEUR FORSYTE

Emerging from the “pastry-cook's,” Soames' first impulse was to
vent his nerves by saying to his daughter: 'Dropping your
hand-kerchief!' to which her reply might well be: 'I picked that
up from you!' His second impulse therefore was to let sleeping
dogs lie. But she would surely question him. He gave her a
sidelong look, and found she was giving him the same. She said
softly:

“Why don't you like those cousins, Father?” Soames lifted the
corner of his lip.

“What made you think that?”

“Cela se voit.”

'That sees itself!' What a way of putting it! After twenty years
of a French wife Soames had still little sympathy with her
language; a theatrical affair and connected in his mind with all
the refinements of domestic irony.

“How?” he asked.

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

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

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

Soames gave her another look. What had she picked up? Had her
Aunt Winifred, or Imogen, or Val Dartie and his wife, been
talking? Every breath of the old scandal had been carefully kept
from her at home, and Winifred warned many times that he wouldn't
have a whisper of it reach her for the world. So far as she ought
to know, he had never been married before. But her dark eyes,
whose southern glint and clearness often almost frightened him,
met his with perfect innocence.

“Well,” he said, “your grandfather and his brother had a quarrel.
The two families don't know each other.”

“How romantic!”

'Now, what does she mean by that?' he thought. The word was to
him extravagant and dangerous—it was as if she had said: “How
jolly!”

“And they'll continue not to know each, other,” he added, but
instantly regretted the challenge in those words. Fleur was
smiling. In this age, when young people prided themselves on
going their own ways and paying no attention to any sort of
decent prejudice, he had said the very thing to excite her
wilfulness. Then, recollecting the expression on Irene's face, he
breathed again.

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

“About a house. It's ancient history for you. Your grandfather
died the day you were born. He was ninety.”

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

“I don't know,” said Soames. “They're all dispersed now. The old
ones are dead, except Timothy.”

Fleur clasped her hands.

“Timothy? Isn't that delicious?”

“Not at all,” said Soames. It offended him that she should think
“Timothy” delicious—a kind of insult to his breed. This new
generation mocked at anything solid and tenacious. “You go and
see the old boy. He might want to prophesy.” Ah! If Timothy could
see the disquiet England of his great-nephews and great-nieces,
he would certainly give tongue. And involuntarily he glanced up
at the Iseeum; yes—George was still in the window, with the same
pink paper in his hand.

“Where is Robin Hill, Father?”

Robin Hill! Robin Hill, round which all that tragedy had centred!
What did she want to know for?

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

“Is the house there?”

“What house?”

“That they quarrelled about.”

“Yes. But what's all that to do with you? We're going home
to-morrow—you'd better be thinking about your frocks.”

“Bless you! They're all thought about. A family feud? It's like
the Bible, or Mark Twain—awfully exciting. What did you do in the
feud, Father?”

“Never you mind.”

“Oh! But if I'm to keep it up?”

“Who said you were to keep it up?”

“You, darling.”

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

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

She was too sharp for him; fine, as Annette sometimes called her.
Nothing for it but to distract her attention.

“There's a bit of rosaline point in here,” he said, stopping
before a shop, “that I thought you might like.”

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

“Don't you think that boy's mother is the most beautiful woman of
her age you've ever seen?”

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

“I don't know that I noticed her.”

“Dear, I saw the corner of your eye.”

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

“What's her husband like? He must be your first cousin, if your
fathers were brothers.”

“Dead, for all I know,” said Soames, with sudden vehemence. “I
haven't seen him for twenty years.”

“What was he?”

“A painter.”

“That's quite jolly.”

The words: “If you want to please me you'll put those people out
of your head,” sprang to Soames' lips, but he choked them back—he
must not let her see his feelings.

“He once insulted me,” he said.

Her quick eyes rested on his face.

“I see! You didn't avenge it, and it rankles. Poor Father! You
let me have a go!”

It was really like lying in the dark with a mosquito hovering
above his face. Such pertinacity in Fleur was new to him, and, as
they reached the hotel, he said grimly:

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

“I shall sit here.”

With a parting look at her extended in a chair—a look
half-resentful, half-adoring—Soames moved into the lift and was
transported to their suite on the fourth floor. He stood by the
window of the sitting-room which gave view over Hyde Park, and
drummed a finger on its pane. His feelings were confused, tetchy,
troubled. The throb of that old wound, scarred over by Time and
new interests, was mingled with displeasure and anxiety, and a
slight pain in his chest where that nougat stuff had disagreed.
Had Annette come in? Not that she was any good to him in such a
difficulty. Whenever she had questioned him about his first
marriage, he had always shut her up; she knew nothing of it, save
that it had been the great passion of his life, and his marriage
with herself but domestic makeshift. She had always kept the
grudge of that up her sleeve, as it were, and used it
commercially. He listened. A sound—the vague murmur of a woman's
movements—was coming through the door. She was in. He tapped.

“Who?”

“I,” said Soames.

She had been changing her frock, and was still imperfectly
clothed; a striking figure before her glass. There was a certain
magnificence about her arms, shoulders, hair, which had darkened
since he first knew her, about the turn of her neck, the
silkiness of her garments, her dark-lashed, greyblue eyes—she was
certainly as handsome at forty as she had ever been. A fine
possession, an excellent housekeeper, a sensible and affectionate
enough mother. If only she weren't always so frankly cynical
about the relations between them! Soames, who had no more real
affection for her than she had for him, suffered from a kind of
English grievance in that she had never dropped even the thinnest
veil of sentiment over their partnership. Like most of his
countrymen and women, he held the view that marriage should be
based on mutual love, but that when from a marriage love had
disappeared, or, been found never to have really existed—so that
it was manifestly not based on love—you must not admit it. There
it was, and the love was not—but there you were, and must
continue to be! Thus you had it both ways, and were not tarred
with cynicism, realism, and immorality like the French. Moreover,
it was necessary in the interests of property. He knew that she
knew that they both knew there was no love between them, but he
still expected her not to admit in words or conduct such a thing,
and he could never understand what she meant when she talked of
the hypocrisy of the English. He said:

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

Annette went on touching her lips delicately with salve—he always
wished she wouldn't do that.

“Your sister Winifred, and the Car-r-digans”—she took up a tiny
stick of black—“and Prosper Profond.”

“That Belgian chap? Why him?”

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

“He amuses Winifred.”

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

“R-restive?” repeated Annette. “Is it the first time you see
that, my friend? She was born r-restive, as you call it.”

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

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

“What have you been doing?”

Annette looked at him, reflected in her glass. Her
just-brightened lips smiled, rather full, rather ironical.

“Enjoying myself,” she said.

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

It was his word for all that incomprehensible running in and out
of shops that women went in for. “Has Fleur got her summer
dresses?”

“You don't ask if I have mine.”

“You don't care whether I do or not.”

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

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

Annette raised the eyebrows she had just finished.

“He yachts.”

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

“Sometimes,” answered Annette, and her face had a sort of quiet
enjoyment. “But sometimes very amusing.”

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

Annette stretched herself.

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

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

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

“Well, get some one for Fleur. I want to distract her. She's
going off on Saturday to Val Dartie and his wife; I don't like
it.”

“Why not?”

Since the reason could not be explained without going into family
history, Soames merely answered:

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

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

“I know nothing of her except—This thing's new.” And Soames took
up a creation from the bed.

Annette received it from him.

“Would you hook me?” she said.

Soames hooked. Glancing once over her shoulder into the glass, he
saw the expression on her face, faintly amused, faintly
contemptuous, as much as to say: “Thanks! You will never learn!”
No, thank God, he wasn't a Frenchman! He finished with a jerk,
and the words: “It's too low here.” And he went to the door, with
the wish to get away from her and go down to Fleur again.

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

“Que tu es grossier!”

He knew the expression—he had reason to. The first time she had
used it he had thought it meant “What a grocer you are!” and had
not known whether to be relieved or not when better informed. He
resented the word—he was not coarse! If he was coarse, what was
that chap in the room beyond his, who made those horrible noises
in the morning when he cleared his throat, or those people in the
Lounge who thought it well-bred to say nothing but what the whole
world could hear at the top of their voices—quacking inanity!
Coarse, because he had said her dress was low! Well, so it was!
He went out without reply.

Coming into the Lounge from the far end, he at once saw Fleur
where he had left her. She sat with crossed knees, slowly
balancing a foot in silk stocking and grey shoe, sure sign that
she was dreaming. Her eyes showed it too—they went off like that
sometimes. And then, in a moment, she would come to life, and be
as quick and restless as a monkey. And she knew so much, so
self-assured, and not yet nineteen. What was that odious word?
Flapper! Dreadful young creatures—squealing and squawking and
showing their legs! The worst of them bad dreams, the best of
them powdered angels! Fleur was not a flapper, not one of those
slangy, ill-bred young females. And yet she was frighteningly
self-willed, and full of life, and determined to enjoy it. Enjoy!
The word brought no puritan terror to Soames; but it brought the
terror suited to his temperament. He had always been afraid to
enjoy to-day for fear he might not enjoy tomorrow so much. And it
was terrifying to feel that his daughter was divested of that
safeguard. The very way she sat in that chair showed it—lost in
her dream. He had never been lost in a dream himself—there was
nothing to be had out of it; and where she got it from he did not
know! Certainly not from Annette! And yet Annette, as a young
girl, when he was hanging about her, had once had a flowery look.
Well, she had lost it now!

Fleur rose from her chair-swiftly, restlessly; and flung herself
down at a writing-table. Seizing ink and writing paper, she began
to write as if she had not time to breathe before she got her
letter written. And suddenly she saw him. The air of desperate
absorption vanished, she smiled, waved a kiss, made a pretty face
as if she were a little puzzled and a little bored.

Ah! She was “fine”—“fine!”

III.—AT ROBIN HILL

Jolyon Forsyte had spent his boy's nineteenth birthday at Robin
Hill, quietly going into his affairs. He did everything quietly
now, because his heart was in a poor way, and, like all his
family, he disliked the idea of dying. He had never realised how
much till one day, two years ago, he had gone to his doctor about
certain symptoms, and been told:

“At any moment, on any overstrain.”

He had taken it with a smile—the natural Forsyte reaction against
an unpleasant truth. But with an increase of symptoms in the
train on the way home, he had realised to the full the sentence
hanging over him. To leave Irene, his boy, his home, his
work—though he did little enough work now! To leave them for
unknown darkness, for the unimaginable state, for such
nothingness that he would not even be conscious of wind stirring
leaves above his grave, nor of the scent of earth and grass. Of
such nothingness that, however hard he might try to conceive it,
he never could, and must still hover on the hope that he might
see again those he loved! To realise this was to endure very
poignant spiritual anguish. Before he reached home that day he
had determined to keep it from Irene. He would have to be more
careful than man had ever been, for the least thing would give it
away and make her as wretched as himself, almost. His doctor had
passed him sound in other respects, and seventy was nothing of an
age—he would last a long time yet, if he could.

Such a conclusion, followed out for nearly two years, develops to
the full the subtler side of character. Naturally not abrupt,
except when nervously excited, Jolyon had become control
incarnate. The sad patience of old people who cannot exert
themselves was masked by a smile which his lips preserved even in
private. He devised continually all manner of cover to conceal
his enforced lack of exertion.

Mocking himself for so doing, he counterfeited conversion to the
Simple Life; gave up wine and cigars, drank a special kind of
coffee with no coffee in it. In short, he made himself as safe as
a Forsyte in his condition could, under the rose of his mild
irony. Secure from discovery, since his wife and son had gone up
to Town, he had spent the fine May day quietly arranging his
papers, that he might die to-morrow without inconveniencing any
one, giving in fact a final polish to his terrestrial state.
Having docketed and enclosed it in his father's old Chinese
cabinet, he put the key into an envelope, wrote the words
outside: “Key of the Chinese cabinet, wherein will be found the
exact state of me, J. F.,” and put it in his breast-pocket, where
it would be always about him, in case of accident. Then, ringing
for tea, he went out to have it under the old oak-tree.

All are under sentence of death; Jolyon, whose sentence was but a
little more precise and pressing, had become so used to it that
he thought habitually, like other people, of other things. He
thought of his son now.

Jon was nineteen that day, and Jon had come of late to a
decision. Educated neither at Eton like his father, nor at
Harrow, like his dead half-brother, but at one of those
establishments which, designed to avoid the evil and contain the
good of the Public School system, may or may not contain the evil
and avoid the good, Jon had left in April perfectly ignorant of
what he wanted to become. The War, which had promised to go on
for ever, had ended just as he was about to join the Army, six
months before his time. It had taken him ever since to get used
to the idea that he could now choose for himself. He had held
with his father several discussions, from which, under a cheery
show of being ready for anything—except, of course, the Church,
Army, Law, Stage, Stock Exchange, Medicine, Business, and
Engineering—Jolyon had gathered rather clearly that Jon wanted to
go in for nothing. He himself had felt exactly like that at the
same age. With him that pleasant vacuity had soon been ended by
an early marriage, and its unhappy consequences. Forced to become
an underwriter at Lloyd's, he had regained prosperity before his
artistic talent had outcropped. But having—as the simple
say—“learned” his boy to draw pigs and other animals, he knew
that Jon would never be a painter, and inclined to the conclusion
that his aversion from everything else meant that he was going to
be a writer. Holding, however, the view that experience was
necessary even for that profession, there seemed to Jolyon
nothing in the meantime, for Jon, but University, travel, and
perhaps the eating of dinners for the Bar. After that one would
see, or more probably one would not. In face of these proffered
allurements, however, Jon had remained undecided.