Chapter LXXXI: Part I: I.—encounter (3)

But the most poignant memory of that little visit had been
watching, unobserved, her stepmother reading to herself a letter
from Jon. It was—she decided—the prettiest sight she had ever
seen. Irene, lost as it were in the letter of her boy, stood at a
window where the light fell on her face and her fine grey hair;
her lips were moving, smiling, her dark eyes laughing, dancing,
and the hand which did not hold the letter was pressed against
her breast. Holly withdrew as from a vision of perfect love,
convinced that Jon must be nice.

When she saw him coming out of the station with a kit-bag in
either hand, she was confirmed in her predisposition. He was a
little like Jolly, that long-lost idol of her childhood, but
eager-looking and less formal, with deeper eyes and
brighter-coloured hair, for he wore no hat; altogether a very
interesting “little” brother!

His tentative politeness charmed one who was accustomed to
assurance in the youthful manner; he was disturbed because she
was to drive him home, instead of his driving her. Shouldn't he
have a shot? They hadn't a car at Robin Hill since the War, of
course, and he had only driven once, and landed up a bank, so she
oughtn't to mind his trying. His laugh, soft and infectious, was
very attractive, though that word, she had heard, was now quite
old-fashioned. When they reached the house he pulled out a
crumpled letter which she read while he was washing—a quite short
letter, which must have cost her father many a pang to write.

“MY DEAR,

“You and Val will not forget, I trust, that Jon knows nothing of
family history. His mother and I think he is too young at
present. The boy is very dear, and the apple of her eye. Verbum
sapientibus,

“Your loving father,

“J. F.”

That was all; but it renewed in Holly an uneasy regret that Fleur
was coming.

After tea she fulfilled that promise to herself and took Jon up
the hill. They had a long talk, sitting above an old chalk-pit
grown over with brambles and goosepenny. Milkwort and liverwort
starred the green slope, the larks sang, and thrushes in the
brake, and now and then a gull flighting inland would wheel very
white against the paling sky, where the vague moon was coming up.
Delicious fragrance came to them, as if little invisible
creatures were running and treading scent out of the blades of
grass.

Jon, who had fallen silent, said rather suddenly:

“I say, this is wonderful! There's no fat on it at all. Gull's
flight and sheep-bells.”

“'Gull's flight and sheep-bells'. You're a poet, my dear!”

Jon sighed.

“Oh, Golly! No go!”

“Try! I used to at your age.”

“Did you? Mother says 'try' too; but I'm so rotten. Have you any
of yours for me to see?”

“My dear,” Holly murmured, “I've been married nineteen years. I
only wrote verses when I wanted to be.”

“Oh!” said Jon, and turned over on his face: the one cheek she
could see was a charming colour. Was Jon “touched in the wind,”
then, as Val would have called it? Already? But, if so, all the
better, he would take no notice of young Fleur. Besides, on
Monday he would begin his farming. And she smiled. Was it Burns
who followed the plough, or only Piers Plowman? Nearly every
young man and most young women seemed to be poets now, judging
from the number of their books she had read out in South Africa,
importing them from Hatchus and Bumphards; and quite good—oh!
quite; much better than she had been herself! But then poetry had
only really come in since her day—with motor-cars. Another long
talk after dinner over a wood fire in the low hall, and there
seemed little left to know about Jon except anything of real
importance. Holly parted from him at his bedroom door, having
seen twice over that he had everything, with the conviction that
she would love him, and Val would like him. He was eager, but did
not gush; he was a splendid listener, sympathetic, reticent about
himself. He evidently loved their father, and adored his mother.
He liked riding, rowing, and fencing better than games. He saved
moths from candles, and couldn't bear spiders, but put them out
of doors in screws of paper sooner than kill them. In a word, he
was amiable. She went to sleep, thinking that he would suffer
horribly if anybody hurt him; but who would hurt him?

Jon, on the other hand, sat awake at his window with a bit of
paper and a pencil, writing his first “real poem” by the light of
a candle because there was not enough moon to see by, only enough
to make the night seem fluttery and as if engraved on silver.
Just the night for Fleur to walk, and turn her eyes, and lead
on-over the hills and far away. And Jon, deeply furrowed in his
ingenuous brow, made marks on the paper and rubbed them out and
wrote them in again, and did all that was necessary for the
completion of a work of art; and he had a feeling such as the
winds of Spring must have, trying their first songs among the
coming blossom. Jon was one of those boys (not many) in whom a
home-trained love of beauty had survived school life. He had had
to keep it to himself, of course, so that not even the
drawing-master knew of it; but it was there, fastidious and clear
within him. And his poem seemed to him as lame and stilted as the
night was winged. But he kept it, all the same. It was a “beast,”
but better than nothing as an expression of the inexpressible.
And he thought with a sort of discomfiture: 'I shan't be able to
show it to Mother.' He slept terribly well, when he did sleep,
overwhelmed by novelty.

VII.—FLEUR

To avoid the awkwardness of questions which could not be
answered, all that had been told Jon was:

“There's a girl coming down with Val for the week-end.”

For the same reason, all that had been told Fleur was: “We've got
a youngster staying with us.”

The two yearlings, as Val called them in his thoughts, met
therefore in a manner which for unpreparedness left nothing to be
desired. They were thus introduced by Holly:

“This is Jon, my little brother; Fleur's a cousin of ours, Jon.”

Jon, who was coming in through a French window out of strong
sunlight, was so confounded by the providential nature of this
miracle, that he had time to hear Fleur say calmly: “Oh, how do
you do?” as if he had never seen her, and to understand dimly
from the quickest imaginable little movement of her head that he
never had seen her. He bowed therefore over her hand in an
intoxicated manner, and became more silent than the grave. He
knew better than to speak. Once in his early life, surprised
reading by a nightlight, he had said fatuously “I was just
turning over the leaves, Mum,” and his mother had replied: “Jon,
never tell stories, because of your face nobody will ever believe
them.”

The saying had permanently undermined the confidence necessary to
the success of spoken untruth. He listened therefore to Fleur's
swift and rapt allusions to the jolliness of everything, plied
her with scones and jam, and got away as soon as might be. They
say that in delirium tremens you see a fixed object, preferably
dark, which suddenly changes shape and position. Jon saw the
fixed object; it had dark eyes and passably dark hair, and
changed its position, but never its shape. The knowledge that
between him and that object there was already a secret
understanding (however impossible to understand) thrilled him so
that he waited feverishly, and began to copy out his poem—which
of course he would never dare to—show her—till the sound of
horses' hoofs roused him, and, leaning from his window, he saw
her riding forth with Val. It was clear that she wasted no time,
but the sight filled him with grief. He wasted his. If he had not
bolted, in his fearful ecstasy, he might have been asked to go
too. And from his window he sat and watched them disappear,
appear again in the chine of the road, vanish, and emerge once
more for a minute clear on the outline of the Down. 'Silly
brute!' he thought; 'I always miss my chances.'

Why couldn't he be self-confident and ready? And, leaning his
chin on his hands, he imagined the ride he might have had with
her. A week-end was but a week-end, and he had missed three hours
of it. Did he know any one except himself who would have been
such a flat? He did not.

He dressed for dinner early, and was first down. He would miss no
more. But he missed Fleur, who came down last. He sat opposite
her at dinner, and it was terrible—impossible to say anything for
fear of saying the wrong thing, impossible to keep his eyes fixed
on her in the only natural way; in sum, impossible to treat
normally one with whom in fancy he had already been over the
hills and far away; conscious, too, all the time, that he must
seem to her, to all of them, a dumb gawk. Yes, it was terrible!
And she was talking so well—swooping with swift wing this way and
that. Wonderful how she had learned an art which he found so
disgustingly difficult. She must think him hopeless indeed!

His sister's eyes, fixed on him with a certain astonishment,
obliged him at last to look at Fleur; but instantly her eyes,
very wide and eager, seeming to say, “Oh! for goodness' sake!”
obliged him to look at Val, where a grin obliged him to look at
his cutlet—that, at least, had no eyes, and no grin, and he ate
it hastily.

“Jon is going to be a farmer,” he heard Holly say; “a farmer and
a poet.”

He glanced up reproachfully, caught the comic lift of her eyebrow
just like their father's, laughed, and felt better.

Val recounted the incident of Monsieur Prosper Profond; nothing
could have been more favourable, for, in relating it, he regarded
Holly, who in turn regarded him, while Fleur seemed to be
regarding with a slight frown some thought of her own, and Jon
was really free to look at her at last. She had on a white frock,
very simple and well made; her arms were bare, and her hair had a
white rose in it. In just that swift moment of free vision, after
such intense discomfort, Jon saw her sublimated, as one sees in
the dark a slender white fruit-tree; caught her like a verse of
poetry flashed before the eyes of the mind, or a tune which
floats out in the distance and dies. He wondered giddily how old
she was—she seemed so much more self-possessed and experienced
than himself. Why mustn't he say they had met? He remembered
suddenly his mother's face; puzzled, hurt-looking, when she
answered: “Yes, they're relations, but we don't know them.”
Impossible that his mother, who loved beauty, should not admire
Fleur if she did know her.

Alone with Val after dinner, he sipped port deferentially and
answered the advances of this new-found brother-in-law. As to
riding (always the first consideration with Val) he could have
the young chestnut, saddle and unsaddle it himself, and generally
look after it when he brought it in. Jon said he was accustomed
to all that at home, and saw that he had gone up one in his
host's estimation.

“Fleur,” said Val, “can't ride much yet, but she's keen. Of
course, her father doesn't know a horse from a cart-wheel. Does
your Dad ride?”

“He used to; but now he's—you know, he's—” He stopped, so hating
the word “old.” His father was old, and yet not old; no—never!

“Quite,” muttered Val. “I used to know your brother up at Oxford,
ages ago, the one who died in the Boer War. We had a fight in New
College Gardens. That was a queer business,” he added, musing; “a
good deal came out of it.”

Jon's eyes opened wide; all was pushing him toward historical
research, when his sister's voice said gently from the doorway:

“Come along, you two,” and he rose, his heart pushing him toward
something far more modern.

Fleur having declared that it was “simply too wonderful to stay
indoors,” they all went out. Moonlight was frosting the dew, and
an old sundial threw a long shadow. Two box hedges at right
angles, dark and square, barred off the orchard. Fleur turned
through that angled opening.

“Come on!” she called. Jon glanced at the others, and followed.
She was running among the trees like a ghost. All was lovely and
foamlike above her, and there was a scent of old trunks, and of
nettles. She vanished. He thought he had lost her, then almost
ran into her standing quite still.

“Isn't it jolly?” she cried, and Jon answered:

“Rather!”

She reached up, twisted off a blossom and, twirling it in her
fingers, said:

“I suppose I can call you Jon?”

“I should think so just.”

“All right! But you know there's a feud between our families?”

Jon stammered: “Feud? Why?”

“It's ever so romantic and silly. That's why I pretended we
hadn't met. Shall we get up early to-morrow morning and go for a
walk before breakfast and have it out? I hate being slow about
things, don't you?”

Jon murmured a rapturous assent.

“Six o'clock, then. I think your mother's beautiful”

Jon said fervently: “Yes, she is.”

“I love all kinds of beauty,” went on Fleur, “when it's exciting.
I don't like Greek things a bit.”

“What! Not Euripides?”

“Euripides? Oh! no, I can't bear Greek plays; they're so long. I
think beauty's always swift. I like to look at one picture, for
instance, and then run off. I can't bear a lot of things
together. Look!” She held up her blossom in the moonlight.
“That's better than all the orchard, I think.”

And, suddenly, with her other hand she caught Jon's.

“Of all things in the world, don't you think caution's the most
awful? Smell the moonlight!”

She thrust the blossom against his face; Jon agreed giddily that
of all things in the world caution was the worst, and bending
over, kissed the hand which held his.

“That's nice and old-fashioned,” said Fleur calmly. “You're
frightfully silent, Jon. Still I like silence when it's swift.”
She let go his hand. “Did you think I dropped my handkerchief on
purpose?”

“No!” cried Jon, intensely shocked.

“Well, I did, of course. Let's get back, or they'll think we're
doing this on purpose too.” And again she ran like a ghost among
the trees. Jon followed, with love in his heart, Spring in his
heart, and over all the moonlit white unearthly blossom. They
came out where they had gone in, Fleur walking demurely.

“It's quite wonderful in there,” she said dreamily to Holly.

Jon preserved silence, hoping against hope that she might be
thinking it swift.

She bade him a casual and demure good-night, which made him think
he had been dreaming....

In her bedroom Fleur had flung off her gown, and, wrapped in a
shapeless garment, with the white flower still in her hair, she
looked like a mousme, sitting cross-legged on her bed, writing by
candlelight.

“DEAREST CHERRY,

“I believe I'm in love. I've got it in the neck, only the feeling
is really lower down. He's a second cousin-such a child, about
six months older and ten years younger than I am. Boys always
fall in love with their seniors, and girls with their juniors or
with old men of forty. Don't laugh, but his eyes are the truest
things I ever saw; and he's quite divinely silent! We had a most
romantic first meeting in London under the Vospovitch Juno. And
now he's sleeping in the next room and the moonlight's on the
blossom; and to-morrow morning, before anybody's awake, we're
going to walk off into Down fairyland. There's a feud between our
families, which makes it really exciting. Yes! and I may have to
use subterfuge and come on you for invitations—if so, you'll know
why! My father doesn't want us to know each other, but I can't
help that. Life's too short. He's got the most beautiful mother,
with lovely silvery hair and a young face with dark eyes. I'm
staying with his sister—who married my cousin; it's all mixed up,
but I mean to pump her to-morrow. We've often talked about love
being a spoil-sport; well, that's all tosh, it's the beginning of
sport, and the sooner you feel it, my dear, the better for you.

“Jon (not simplified spelling, but short for Jolyon, which is a
name in my family, they say) is the sort that lights up and goes
out; about five feet ten, still growing, and I believe he's going
to be a poet. If you laugh at me I've done with you forever. I
perceive all sorts of difficulties, but you know when I really
want a thing I get it. One of the chief effects of love is that
you see the air sort of inhabited, like seeing a face in the
moon; and you feel—you feel dancey and soft at the same time,
with a funny sensation—like a continual first sniff of
orange—blossom—Just above your stays. This is my first, and I
feel as if it were going to be my last, which is absurd, of
course, by all the laws of Nature and morality. If you mock me I
will smite you, and if you tell anybody I will never forgive you.
So much so, that I almost don't think I'll send this letter.
Anyway, I'll sleep over it. So good-night, my Cherry—oh!

“Your,

“FLEUR.”

VIII.—IDYLL ON GRASS

When those two young Forsytes emerged from the chine lane, and
set their faces east toward the sun, there was not a cloud in
heaven, and the Downs were dewy. They had come at a good bat up
the slope and were a little out of breath; if they had anything
to say they did not say it, but marched in the early awkwardness
of unbreakfasted morning under the songs of the larks. The
stealing out had been fun, but with the freedom of the tops the
sense of conspiracy ceased, and gave place to dumbness.

“We've made one blooming error,” said Fleur, when they had gone
half a mile. “I'm hungry.”

Jon produced a stick of chocolate. They shared it and their
tongues were loosened. They discussed the nature of their homes
and previous existences, which had a kind of fascinating
unreality up on that lonely height. There remained but one thing
solid in Jon's past—his mother; but one thing solid in
Fleur's—her father; and of these figures, as though seen in the
distance with disapproving faces, they spoke little.

The Down dipped and rose again toward Chanctonbury Ring; a
sparkle of far sea came into view, a sparrow-hawk hovered in the
sun's eye so that the blood-nourished brown of his wings gleamed
nearly red. Jon had a passion for birds, and an aptitude for
sitting very still to watch them; keen-sighted, and with a memory
for what interested him, on birds he was almost worth listening
to. But in Chanctonbury Ring there were none—its great beech
temple was empty of life, and almost chilly at this early hour;
they came out willingly again into the sun on the far side. It
was Fleur's turn now. She spoke of dogs, and the way people
treated them. It was wicked to keep them on chains! She would
like to flog people who did that. Jon was astonished to find her
so humanitarian. She knew a dog, it seemed, which some farmer
near her home kept chained up at the end of his chicken run, in
all weathers, till it had almost lost its voice from barking!

“And the misery is,” she said vehemently, “that if the poor thing
didn't bark at every one who passes it wouldn't be kept there. I
do think men are cunning brutes. I've let it go twice, on the
sly; it's nearly bitten me both times, and then it goes simply
mad with joy; but it always runs back home at last, and they
chain it up again. If I had my way, I'd chain that man up.” Jon
saw her teeth and her eyes gleam. “I'd brand him on his forehead
with the word 'Brute'. that would teach him!”

Jon agreed that it would be a good remedy.

“It's their sense of property,” he said, “which makes people
chain things. The last generation thought of nothing but
property; and that's why there was the War.”

“Oh!” said Fleur, “I never thought of that. Your people and mine
quarrelled about property. And anyway we've all got it—at least,
I suppose your people have.”

“Oh! yes, luckily; I don't suppose I shall be any good at making
money.”

“If you were, I don't believe I should like you.”

Jon slipped his hand tremulously under her arm. Fleur looked
straight before her and chanted:

“Jon, Jon, the farmer's son, Stole a pig, and away he run!”

Jon's arm crept round her waist.

“This is rather sudden,” said Fleur calmly; “do you often do it?”

Jon dropped his arm. But when she laughed his arm stole back
again; and Fleur began to sing:

“O who will oer the downs so free, O who will with me ride? O who
will up and follow me—-”

“Sing, Jon!”

Jon sang. The larks joined in, sheep-bells, and an early morning
church far away over in Steyning. They went on from tune to tune,
till Fleur said:

“My God! I am hungry now!”

“Oh! I am sorry!”

She looked round into his face.

“Jon, you're rather a darling.”

And she pressed his hand against her waist. Jon almost reeled
from happiness. A yellow-and-white dog coursing a hare startled
them apart. They watched the two vanish down the slope, till
Fleur said with a sigh: “He'll never catch it, thank goodness!
What's the time? Mine's stopped. I never wound it.”

Jon looked at his watch. “By Jove!” he said, “mine's stopped;
too.”

They walked on again, but only hand in hand.

“If the grass is dry,” said Fleur, “let's sit down for half a
minute.”

Jon took off his coat, and they shared it.

“Smell! Actually wild thyme!”

With his arm round her waist again, they sat some minutes in
silence.

“We are goats!” cried Fleur, jumping up; “we shall be most
fearfully late, and look so silly, and put them on their guard.
Look here, Jon We only came out to get an appetite for breakfast,
and lost our way. See?”

“Yes,” said Jon.

“It's serious; there'll be a stopper put on us. Are you a good
liar?”

“I believe not very; but I can try.”

Fleur frowned.

“You know,” she said, “I realize that they don't mean us to be
friends.”

“Why not?”

“I told you why.”

“But that's silly.”

“Yes; but you don't know my father!”

“I suppose he's fearfully fond of you.”

“You see, I'm an only child. And so are you—of your mother. Isn't
it a bore? There's so much expected of one. By the time they've
done expecting, one's as good as dead.”

“Yes,” muttered Jon, “life's beastly short. One wants to live
forever, and know everything.”

“And love everybody?”

“No,” cried Jon; “I only want to love once—you.”

“Indeed! You're coming on! Oh! Look! There's the chalk-pit; we
can't be very far now. Let's run.”

Jon followed, wondering fearfully if he had offended her.

The chalk-pit was full of sunshine and the murmuration of bees.
Fleur flung back her hair.

“Well,” she said, “in case of accidents, you may give me one
kiss, Jon,” and she pushed her cheek forward. With ecstasy he
kissed that hot soft cheek.

“Now, remember! We lost our way; and leave it to me as much as
you can. I'm going to be rather beastly to you; it's safer; try
and be beastly to me!”

Jon shook his head. “That's impossible.”

“Just to please me; till five o'clock, at all events.”

“Anybody will be able to see through it,” said Jon gloomily.

“Well, do your best. Look! There they are! Wave your hat! Oh! you
haven't got one. Well, I'll cooee! Get a little away from me, and
look sulky.”

Five minutes later, entering the house and doing his utmost to
look sulky, Jon heard her clear voice in the dining-room:

“Oh! I'm simply ravenous! He's going to be a farmer—and he loses
his way! The boy's an idiot!”

IX. GOYA

Lunch was over and Soames mounted to the picture-gallery in his
house near Mapleduram. He had what Annette called “a grief.”
Fleur was not yet home. She had been expected on Wednesday; had
wired that it would be Friday; and again on Friday that it would
be Sunday afternoon; and here were her aunt, and her cousins the
Cardigans, and this fellow Profond, and everything flat as a
pancake for the want of her. He stood before his Gauguin—sorest
point of his collection. He had bought the ugly great thing with
two early Matisses before the War, because there was such a fuss
about those Post-Impressionist chaps. He was wondering whether
Profond would take them off his hands—the fellow seemed not to
know what to do with his money—when he heard his sister's voice
say: “I think that's a horrid thing, Soames,” and saw that
Winifred had followed him up.

“Oh! you do?” he said dryly; “I gave five hundred for it.”

“Fancy! Women aren't made like that even if they are black.”

Soames uttered a glum laugh. “You didn't come up to tell me
that.”

“No. Do you know that Jolyon's boy is staying with Val and his
wife?”

Soames spun round.

“What?”

“Yes,” drawled Winifred; “he's gone to live with them there while
he learns farming.”

Soames had turned away, but her voice pursued him as he walked up
and down. “I warned Val that neither of them was to be spoken to
about old matters.”

“Why didn't you tell me before?”

Winifred shrugged her substantial shoulders.

“Fleur does what she likes. You've always spoiled her. Besides,
my dear boy, what's the harm?”

“The harm!” muttered Soames. “Why, she—” he checked himself. The
Juno, the handkerchief, Fleur's eyes, her questions, and now this
delay in her return—the symptoms seemed to him so sinister that,
faithful to his nature, he could not part with them.

“I think you take too much care,” said Winifred. “If I were you,
I should tell her of that old matter. It's no good thinking that
girls in these days are as they used to be. Where they pick up
their knowledge I can't tell, but they seem to know everything.”

Over Soames' face, closely composed, passed a sort of spasm, and
Winifred added hastily:

“If you don't like to speak of it, I could for you.”

Soames shook his head. Unless there was absolute necessity the
thought that his adored daughter should learn of that old scandal
hurt his pride too much.

“No,” he said, “not yet. Never if I can help it.

“Nonsense, my dear. Think what people are!”

“Twenty years is a long time,” muttered Soames. “Outside our
family, who's likely to remember?”

Winifred was silenced. She inclined more and more to that peace
and quietness of which Montague Dartie had deprived her in her
youth. And, since pictures always depressed her, she soon went
down again.

Soames passed into the corner where, side by side, hung his real
Goya and the copy of the fresco “La Vendimia.” His acquisition of
the real Goya rather beautifully illustrated the cobweb of vested
interests and passions which mesh the bright-winged fly of human
life. The real Goya's noble owner's ancestor had come into
possession of it during some Spanish war—it was in a word loot.
The noble owner had remained in ignorance of its value until in
the nineties an enterprising critic discovered that a Spanish
painter named Goya was a genius. It was only a fair Goya, but
almost unique in England, and the noble owner became a marked
man. Having many possessions and that aristocratic culture which,
independent of mere sensuous enjoyment, is founded on the sounder
principle that one must know everything and be fearfully
interested in life, he had fully intended to keep an article
which contributed to his reputation while he was alive, and to
leave it to the nation after he was dead. Fortunately for Soames,
the House of Lords was violently attacked in 1909, and the noble
owner became alarmed and angry. 'If,' he said to himself, 'they
think they can have it both ways they are very much mistaken. So
long as they leave me in quiet enjoyment the nation can have some
of my pictures at my death. But if the nation is going to bait
me, and rob me like this, I'm damned if I won't sell the lot.
They can't have my private property and my public spirit-both.'
He brooded in this fashion for several months till one morning,
after reading the speech of a certain statesman, he telegraphed
to his agent to come down and bring Bodkin. On going over the
collection Bodkin, than whose opinion on market values none was
more sought, pronounced that with a free hand to sell to America,
Germany, and other places where there was an interest in art, a
lot more money could be made than by selling in England. The
noble owner's public spirit—he said—was well known but the
pictures were unique. The noble owner put this opinion in his
pipe and smoked it for a year. At the end of that time he read
another speech by the same statesman, and telegraphed to his
agents: “Give Bodkin a free hand.” It was at this juncture that
Bodkin conceived the idea which saved the Goya and two other
unique pictures for the native country of the noble owner. With
one hand Bodkin proffered the pictures to the foreign market,
with the other he formed a list of private British collectors.
Having obtained what he considered the highest possible bids from
across the seas, he submitted pictures and bids to the private
British collectors, and invited them, of their public spirit, to
outbid. In three instances (including the Goya) out of twenty-one
he was successful. And why? One of the private collectors made
buttons—he had made so many that he desired that his wife should
be called Lady “Buttons.” He therefore bought a unique picture at
great cost, and gave it to the nation. It was “part,” his friends
said, “of his general game.” The second of the private collectors
was an Americophobe, and bought an unique picture to “spite the
damned Yanks.” The third of the private collectors was Soames,
who—more sober than either of the, others—bought after a visit to
Madrid, because he was certain that Goya was still on the up
grade. Goya was not booming at the moment, but he would come
again; and, looking at that portrait, Hogarthian, Manetesque in
its directness, but with its own queer sharp beauty of paint, he
was perfectly satisfied still that he had made no error, heavy
though the price had been—heaviest he had ever paid. And next to
it was hanging the copy of “La Vendimia.” There she was—the
little wretch—looking back at him in her dreamy mood, the mood he
loved best because he felt so much safer when she looked like
that.

He was still gazing when the scent of a cigar impinged on his
nostrils, and a voice said:

“Well, Mr. Forsyde, what you goin' to do with this small lot?”

That Belgian chap, whose mother—as if Flemish blood were not
enough—had been Armenian! Subduing a natural irritation, he said:

“Are you a judge of pictures?”

“Well, I've got a few myself.”

“Any Post-Impressionists?”

“Ye-es, I rather like them.”

“What do you think of this?” said Soames, pointing to the
Gauguin.

Monsieur Profond protruded his lower lip and short pointed beard.

“Rather fine, I think,” he said; “do you want to sell it?”

Soames checked his instinctive “Not particularly”—he would not
chaffer with this alien.

“Yes,” he said.

“What do you want for it?”

“What I gave.”

“All right,” said Monsieur Profond. “I'll be glad to take that
small picture. Post-Impressionists—they're awful dead, but
they're amusin'. I don' care for pictures much, but I've got
some, just a small lot.”

“What do you care for?”

Monsieur Profond shrugged his shoulders.

“Life's awful like a lot of monkeys scramblin' for empty nuts.”

“You're young,” said Soames. If the fellow must make a
generalization, he needn't suggest that the forms of property
lacked solidity!

“I don' worry,” replied Monsieur Profond smiling; “we're born,
and we die. Half the world's starvin'. I feed a small lot of
babies out in my mother's country; but what's the use? Might as
well throw my money in the river.”

Soames looked at him, and turned back toward his Goya. He didn't
know what the fellow wanted.

“What shall I make my cheque for?” pursued Monsieur Profond.

“Five hundred,” said Soames shortly; “but I don't want you to
take it if you don't care for it more than that.”

“That's all right,” said Monsieur Profond; “I'll be 'appy to 'ave
that picture.”

He wrote a cheque with a fountain-pen heavily chased with gold.
Soames watched the process uneasily. How on earth had the fellow
known that he wanted to sell that picture? Monsieur Profond held
out the cheque.

“The English are awful funny about pictures,” he said. “So are
the French, so are my people. They're all awful funny.”

“I don't understand you,” said Soames stiffly.

“It's like hats,” said Monsieur Profond enigmatically, “small or
large, turnin' up or down—just the fashion. Awful funny.” And,
smiling, he drifted out of the gallery again, blue and solid like
the smoke of his excellent cigar.

Soames had taken the cheque, feeling as if the intrinsic value of
ownership had been called in question. 'He's a cosmopolitan,' he
thought, watching Profond emerge from under the verandah with
Annette, and saunter down the lawn toward the river. What his
wife saw in the fellow he didn't know, unless it was that he
could speak her language; and there passed in Soames what
Monsieur Profond would have called a “small doubt” whether
Annette was not too handsome to be walking with any one so
“cosmopolitan.” Even at that distance he could see the blue fumes
from Profond's cigar wreath out in the quiet sunlight; and his
grey buckskin shoes, and his grey hat—the fellow was a dandy! And
he could see the quick turn of his wife's head, so very straight
on her desirable neck and shoulders. That turn of her neck always
seemed to him a little too showy, and in the “Queen of all I
survey” manner—not quite distinguished. He watched them walk
along the path at the bottom of the garden. A young man in
flannels joined them down there—a Sunday caller no doubt, from up
the river. He went back to his Goya. He was still staring at that
replica of Fleur, and worrying over Winifred's news, when his
wife's voice said:

“Mr. Michael Mont, Soames. You invited him to see your pictures.”

There was the cheerful young man of the Gallery off Cork Street!

“Turned up, you see, sir; I live only four miles from Pangbourne.
Jolly day, isn't it?”

Confronted with the results of his expansiveness, Soames
scrutinized his visitor. The young man's mouth was excessively
large and curly—he seemed always grinning. Why didn't he grow the
rest of those idiotic little moustaches, which made him look like
a music-hall buffoon? What on earth were young men about,
deliberately lowering their class with these tooth-brushes, or
little slug whiskers? Ugh! Affected young idiots! In other
respects he was presentable, and his flannels very clean.

“Happy to see you!” he said.

The young man, who had been turning his head from side to side,
became transfixed. “I say!” he said, “'some' picture!”

Soames saw, with mixed sensations, that he had addressed the
remark to the Goya copy.

“Yes,” he said dryly, “that's not a Goya. It's a copy. I had it
painted because it reminded me of my daughter.”

“By Jove! I thought I knew the face, sir. Is she here?”

The frankness of his interest almost disarmed Soames.

“She'll be in after tea,” he said. “Shall we go round the
pictures?”

And Soames began that round which never tired him. He had not
anticipated much intelligence from one who had mistaken a copy
for an original, but as they passed from section to section,
period to period, he was startled by the young man's frank and
relevant remarks. Natively shrewd himself, and even sensuous
beneath his mask, Soames had not spent thirty-eight years over
his one hobby without knowing something more about pictures than
their market values. He was, as it were, the missing link between
the artist and the commercial public. Art for art's sake and all
that, of course, was cant. But aesthetics and good taste were
necessary. The appreciation of enough persons of good taste was
what gave a work of art its permanent market value, or in other
words made it “a work of art.” There was no real cleavage. And he
was sufficiently accustomed to sheep-like and unseeing visitors,
to be intrigued by one who did not hesitate to say of Mauve:
“Good old haystacks!” or of James Maris: “Didn't he just paint
and paper 'em! Mathew was the real swell, sir; you could dig into
his surfaces!” It was after the young man had whistled before a
Whistler, with the words, “D'you think he ever really saw a naked
woman, sir?” that Soames remarked:

“What are you, Mr. Mont, if I may ask?”

“I, sir? I was going to be a painter, but the War knocked that.
Then in the trenches, you know, I used to dream of the Stock
Exchange, snug and warm and just noisy enough. But the Peace
knocked that, shares seem off, don't they? I've only been
demobbed about a year. What do you recommend, sir?”

“Have you got money?”

“Well,” answered the young man, “I've got a father; I kept him
alive during the War, so he's bound to keep me alive now. Though,
of course, there's the question whether he ought to be allowed to
hang on to his property. What do you think about that, sir?”

Soames, pale and defensive, smiled.

“The old man has fits when I tell him he may have to work yet.
He's got land, you know; it's a fatal disease.”

“This is my real Goya,” said Soames dryly.

“By George! He was a swell. I saw a Goya in Munich once that
bowled me middle stump. A most evil-looking old woman in the most
gorgeous lace. He made no compromise with the public taste. That
old boy was 'some' explosive; he must have smashed up a lot of
convention in his day. Couldn't he just paint! He makes Velasquez
stiff, don't you think?”

“I have no Velasquez,” said Soames.

The young man stared. “No,” he said; “only nations or profiteers
can afford him, I suppose. I say, why shouldn't all the bankrupt
nations sell their Velasquez and Titians and other swells to the
profiteers by force, and then pass a law that any one who holds a
picture by an Old Master—see schedule—must hang it in a public
gallery? There seems something in that.”

“Shall we go down to tea?” said Soames.

The young man's ears seemed to droop on his skull. 'He's not
dense,' thought Soames, following him off the premises.

Goya, with his satiric and surpassing precision, his original
“line,” and the daring of his light and shade, could have
reproduced to admiration the group assembled round Annette's
tea-tray in the inglenook below. He alone, perhaps, of painters
would have done justice to the sunlight filtering through a
screen of creeper, to the lovely pallor of brass, the old cut
glasses, the thin slices of lemon in pale amber tea; justice to
Annette in her black lacey dress; there was something of the fair
Spaniard in her beauty, though it lacked the spirituality of that
rare type; to Winifred's grey-haired, corseted solidity; to
Soames, of a certain grey and flat-cheeked distinction; to the
vivacious Michael Mont, pointed in ear and eye; to Imogen, dark,
luscious of glance, growing a little stout; to Prosper Profond,
with his expression as who should say, “Well, Mr. Goya, what's
the use of paintin' this small party?” finally, to Jack Cardigan,
with his shining stare and tanned sanguinity betraying the moving
principle: “I'm English, and I live to be fit.”

Curious, by the way, that Imogen, who as a girl had declared
solemnly one day at Timothy's that she would never marry a good
man—they were so dull—should have married Jack Cardigan, in whom
health had so destroyed all traces of original sin, that she
might have retired to rest with ten thousand other Englishmen
without knowing the difference from the one she had chosen to
repose beside. “Oh!” she would say of him, in her “amusing” way,
“Jack keeps himself so fearfully fit; he's never had a day's
illness in his life. He went right through the War without a
finger-ache. You really can't imagine how fit he is!” Indeed, he
was so “fit” that he couldn't see when she was flirting, which
was such a comfort in a way. All the same she was quite fond of
him, so far as one could be of a sports-machine, and of the two
little Cardigans made after his pattern. Her eyes just then were
comparing him maliciously with Prosper Profond. There was no
“small” sport or game which Monsieur Profond had not played at
too, it seemed, from skittles to tarpon-fishing, and worn out
every one. Imogen would sometimes wish that they had worn out
Jack, who continued to play at them and talk of them with the
simple zeal of a school-girl learning hockey; at the age of
Great-uncle Timothy she well knew that Jack would be playing
carpet golf in her bedroom, and “wiping somebody's eye.”

He was telling them now how he had “pipped the pro—a charmin'
fellow, playin' a very good game,” at the last hole this morning;
and how he had pulled down to Caversham since lunch, and trying
to incite Prosper Profond to play him a set of tennis after
tea—do him good—“keep him fit.

“But what's the use of keepin' fit?” said Monsieur Profond.

“Yes, sir,” murmured Michael Mont, “what do you keep fit for?”

“Jack,” cried Imogen, enchanted, “what do you keep fit for?”

Jack Cardigan stared with all his health. The questions were like
the buzz of a mosquito, and he put up his hand to wipe them away.
During the War, of course, he had kept fit to kill Germans; now
that it was over he either did not know, or shrank in delicacy
from explanation of his moving principle.

“But he's right,” said Monsieur Profond unexpectedly, “there's
nothin' left but keepin' fit.”

The saying, too deep for Sunday afternoon, would have passed
unanswered, but for the mercurial nature of young Mont.

“Good!” he cried. “That's the great discovery of the War. We all
thought we were progressing—now we know we're only changing.”

“For the worse,” said Monsieur Profond genially.

“How you are cheerful, Prosper!” murmured Annette.

“You come and play tennis!” said Jack Cardigan; “you've got the
hump. We'll soon take that down. D'you play, Mr. Mont?”

“I hit the ball about, sir.”

At this juncture Soames rose, ruffled in that deep instinct of
preparation for the future which guided his existence.

“When Fleur comes—” he heard Jack Cardigan say.

Ah! and why didn't she come? He passed through drawing-room,
hall, and porch out on to the drive, and stood there listening
for the car. All was still and Sundayfied; the lilacs in full
flower scented the air. There were white clouds, like the
feathers of ducks gilded by the sunlight. Memory of the day when
Fleur was born, and he had waited in such agony with her life and
her mother's balanced in his hands, came to him sharply. He had
saved her then, to be the flower of his life. And now! was she
going to give him trouble—pain—give him trouble? He did not like
the look of things! A blackbird broke in on his reverie with an
evening song—a great big fellow up in that acacia-tree. Soames
had taken quite an interest in his birds of late years; he and
Fleur would walk round and watch them; her eyes were sharp as
needles, and she knew every nest. He saw her dog, a retriever,
lying on the drive in a patch of sunlight, and called to him.
“Hallo, old fellow-waiting for her too!” The dog came slowly with
a grudging tail, and Soames mechanically laid a pat on his head.
The dog, the bird, the lilac, all were part of Fleur for him; no
more, no less. 'Too fond of her!' he thought, 'too fond!' He was
like a man uninsured, with his ships at sea. Uninsured again—as
in that other time, so long ago, when he would wander dumb and
jealous in the wilderness of London, longing for that woman—his
first wife—the mother of this infernal boy. Ah! There was the car
at last! It drew up, it had luggage, but no Fleur.

“Miss Fleur is walking up, sir, by the towing-path.”

Walking all those miles? Soames stared. The man's face had the
beginning of a smile on it. What was he grinning at? And very
quickly he turned, saying, “All right, Sims!” and went into the
house. He mounted to the picture-gallery once more. He had from
there a view of the river bank, and stood with his eyes fixed on
it, oblivious of the fact that it would be an hour at least
before her figure showed there. Walking up! And that fellow's
grin! The boy—! He turned abruptly from the window. He couldn't
spy on her. If she wanted to keep things from him—she must; he
could not spy on her. His heart felt empty, and bitterness
mounted from it into his very mouth. The staccato shouts of Jack
Cardigan pursuing the ball, the laugh of young Mont rose in the
stillness and came in. He hoped they were making that chap
Profond run. And the girl in “La Vendimia” stood with her arm
akimbo and her dreamy eyes looking past him. 'I've done all I
could for you,' he thought, 'since you were no higher than my
knee. You aren't going to—to—hurt me, are you?'

But the Goya copy answered not, brilliant in colour just
beginning to tone down. 'There's no real life in it,' thought
Soames. 'Why doesn't she come?'

X.—TRIO

Among those four Forsytes of the third, and, as one might say,
fourth generation, at Wansdon under the Downs, a week-end
prolonged unto the ninth day had stretched the crossing threads
of tenacity almost to snapping-point. Never had Fleur been so
“fine,” Holly so watchful, Val so stable-secretive, Jon so silent
and disturbed. What he learned of farming in that week might have
been balanced on the point of a penknife and puffed off. He,
whose nature was essentially averse from intrigue, and whose
adoration of Fleur disposed him to think that any need for
concealing it was “skittles,” chafed and fretted, yet obeyed,
taking what relief he could in the few moments when they were
alone. On Thursday, while they were standing in the bay window of
the drawing-room, dressed for dinner, she said to him:

“Jon, I'm going home on Sunday by the 3.40 from Paddington; if
you were to go home on Saturday you could come up on Sunday and
take me down, and just get back here by the last train, after.
You were going home anyway, weren't you?”

Jon nodded.

“Anything to be with you,” he said; “only why need I pretend—”

Fleur slipped her little finger into his palm:

“You have no instinct, Jon; you must leave things to me. It's
serious about our people. We've simply got to be secret at
present, if we want to be together.” The door was opened, and she
added loudly: “You are a duffer, Jon.”

Something turned over within Jon; he could not bear this
subterfuge about a feeling so natural, so overwhelming, and so
sweet.

On Friday night about eleven he had packed his bag, and was
leaning out of his window, half miserable, and half lost in a
dream of Paddington station, when he heard a tiny sound, as of a
finger-nail tapping on his door. He rushed to it and listened.
Again the sound. It was a nail. He opened. Oh! What a lovely
thing came in!

“I wanted to show you my fancy dress,” it said, and struck an
attitude at the foot of his bed.

Jon drew a long breath and leaned against the door. The
apparition wore white muslin on its head, a fichu round its bare
neck over a wine-coloured dress, fulled out below its slender
waist.

It held one arm akimbo, and the other raised, right-angled,
holding a fan which touched its head.

“This ought to be a basket of grapes,” it whispered, “but I
haven't got it here. It's my Goya dress. And this is the attitude
in the picture. Do you like it?”

“It's a dream.”

The apparition pirouetted. “Touch it, and see.”

Jon knelt down and took the skirt reverently.

“Grape colour,” came the whisper, “all grapes—La Vendimia—the
vintage.”

Jon's fingers scarcely touched each side of the waist; he looked
up, with adoring eyes.

“Oh! Jon,” it whispered; bent, kissed his forehead, pirouetted
again, and, gliding out, was gone.

Jon stayed on his knees, and his head fell forward against the
bed. How long he stayed like that he did not know. The little
noises—of the tapping nail, the feet, the skirts rustling—as in a
dream—went on about him; and before his closed eyes the figure
stood and smiled and whispered, a faint perfume of narcissus
lingering in the air. And his forehead where it had been kissed
had a little cool place between the brows, like the imprint of a
flower. Love filled his soul, that love of boy for girl which
knows so little, hopes so much, would not brush the down off for
the world, and must become in time a fragrant memory—a searing
passion—a humdrum mateship—or, once in many times, vintage full
and sweet with sunset colour on the grapes.

Enough has been said about Jon Forsyte here and in another place
to show what long marches lay between him and his
great-great-grandfather, the first Jolyon, in Dorset down by the
sea. Jon was sensitive as a girl, more sensitive than nine out of
ten girls of the day; imaginative as one of his half-sister
June's “lame duck” painters; affectionate as a son of his father
and his mother naturally would be. And yet, in his inner tissue,
there was something of the old founder of his family, a secret
tenacity of soul, a dread of showing his feelings, a
determination not to know when he was beaten. Sensitive,
imaginative, affectionate boys get a bad time at school, but Jon
had instinctively kept his nature dark, and been but normally
unhappy there. Only with his mother had he, up till then, been
absolutely frank and natural; and when he went home to Robin Hill
that Saturday his heart was heavy because Fleur had said that he
must not be frank and natural with her from whom he had never yet
kept anything, must not even tell her that they had met again,
unless he found that she knew already. So intolerable did this
seem to him that he was very near to telegraphing an excuse and
staying up in London. And the first thing his mother said to him
was:

“So you've had our little friend of the confectioner's there,
Jon. What is she like on second thoughts?”

With relief, and a high colour, Jon answered:

“Oh! awfully jolly, Mum.”

Her arm pressed his.

Jon had never loved her so much as in that minute which seemed to
falsify Fleur's fears and to release his soul. He turned to look
at her, but something in her smiling face—something which only he
perhaps would have caught—stopped the words bubbling up in him.
Could fear go with a smile? If so, there was fear in her face.
And out of Jon tumbled quite other words, about farming, Holly,
and the Downs. Talking fast, he waited for her to come back to
Fleur. But she did not. Nor did his father mention her, though of
course he, too, must know. What deprivation, and killing of
reality was in his silence about Fleur—when he was so full of
her; when his mother was so full of Jon, and his father so full
of his mother! And so the trio spent the evening of that
Saturday.