Lunch was over and Soames mounted to the picture-gallery in his house near Mapledurham. 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's 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 salved 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 an 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 Americo-phobe, and bought a 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 generalisation, 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 towards 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 towards 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 wreathe 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. Soames 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 scrutinised 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 gallery?"
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 Velasquezes 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 ingle-nook 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 harpon-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 schoolgirl 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 onto the drive, and stood there listening for the car. All was still and Sunday-fied; 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—he 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?'
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 pen-knife and puffed off. He, whose nature was essentially averse to 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 this 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.
After dinner his mother played; she seemed to play all the things he liked best, and he sat with one knee clasped, and his hair standing up where his fingers had run through it. He gazed at his mother while she played, but he saw Fleur—Fleur in the moonlit orchard, Fleur in the sunlit gravel-pit, Fleur in that fancy dress, swaying, whispering, stooping, kissing his forehead. Once, while he listened, he forgot himself and glanced at his father in that other easy chair. What was Dad looking like that for? The expression on his face was so sad and puzzling. It filled him with a sort of remorse, so that he got up and went and sat on the arm of his father's chair. From there he could not see his face; and again he saw Fleur—in his mother's hands, slim and white on the keys, in the profile of her face and her powdery hair; and down the long room in the open window where the May night walked outside.
When he went up to bed his mother came into his room. She stood at the window, and said:
"Those cypresses your grandfather planted down there have done wonderfully. I always think they look beautiful under a dropping moon. I wish you had known your grandfather, Jon."
"Were you married to Father, when he was alive?" asked Jon suddenly.
"No, dear; he died in '92—very old—eighty-five, I think."
"Is Father like him?"
"A little, but more subtle, and not quite so solid."
"I know, from Grandfather's portrait; who painted that?"
"One of June's 'lame ducks.' But it's quite good."
Jon slipped his hand through his Mother's arm. "Tell me about the family quarrel, Mum."
He felt her arm quivering. "No, dear; that's for your father some day, if he thinks fit."
"Then it WAS serious," said Jon, with a catch in his breath.
"Yes." And there was a silence, during which neither knew whether the arm or the hand within it were quivering most.
"Some people," said Irene softly, "think the moon on her back is evil; to me she's always lovely. Look at those cypress shadows! Jon, Father says we may go to Italy, you and I, for two months. Would you like?"
Jon took his hand from under her arm; his sensation was so sharp and so confused. Italy with his Mother! A fortnight ago it would have been perfection; now it filled him with dismay; he felt that the sudden suggestion had to do with Fleur. He stammered out:
"Oh! yes; only—I don't know. Ought I—now I've just begun? I'd like to think it over."
Her voice answered, cool and gentle:
"Yes, dear; think it over. But better now than when you've begun farming seriously. Italy with you—! It would be nice!"
Jon put his arm round her waist, still slim and firm as a girl's.
"Do you think you ought to leave Father?" he said feebly, feeling very mean.
"Father suggested it; he thinks you ought to see Italy at least before you settle down to anything."
The sense of meanness died in Jon; he knew, yes—he knew—that his father and his mother were not speaking frankly, no more than he himself. They wanted to keep him from Fleur! His heart hardened. And, as if she felt that process going on, his mother said:
"Good-night, darling. Have a good sleep and think it over. But it would be lovely!"
She pressed him to her so quickly that he did not see her face. Jon stood feeling exactly as he used to when he was a naughty little boy; sore because he was not loving, and because he was justified in his own eyes.
But Irene, after she had stood a moment in her own room, passed through the dressing-room between it and her husband's.
"Well?"
"He will think it over, Jolyon."
Watching her lips that wore a little drawn smile, Jolyon said quietly:
"You had better let me tell him, and have done with it. After all, Jon has the instincts of a gentleman. He has only to understand—"
"Only! He can't understand; that's impossible."
"I believe I could have at his age."
Irene caught his hand. "You were always more of a realist than Jon; and never so innocent."
"That's true," said Jolyon. "It's queer, isn't it? You and I would tell our stories to the world without a particle of shame; but our own boy stumps us."
"We've never cared whether the world approves or not."
"Jon would not disapprove of US!"
"Oh! Jolyon, yes. He's in love, I feel he's in love. And he'd say: 'My mother once married WITHOUT LOVE! How could she have!' It'll seem to him a crime! And so it was!"
Jolyon took her hand, and said with a wry smile:
"Ah! why on earth are we born young? Now, if only we were born old and grew younger year by year we should understand how things happen, and drop all our cursed intolerance. But you know if the boy is really in love, he won't forget, even if he goes to Italy. We're a tenacious breed; and he'll know by instinct why he's being sent. Nothing will really cure him but the shock of being told."
"Let me try, anyway."
Jolyon stood a moment without speaking. Between this devil and this deep sea—the pain of a dreaded disclosure and the grief of losing his wife for two months—he secretly hoped for the devil; yet if she wished for the deep sea he must put up with it. After all, it would be training for that departure from which there would be no return. And, taking her in his arms, he kissed her eyes, and said:
"As you will, my love."
That "small" emotion, love, grows amazingly when threatened with extinction. Jon reached Paddington station half an hour before his time and a full week after, as it seemed to him. He stood at the appointed book-stall amid a crowd of Sunday travellers, in a Harris tweed suit exhaling, as it were, the emotion of his thumping heart. He read the names of the novels on the bookstall, and bought one at last, to avoid being regarded with suspicion by the book-stall clerk. It was called "The Heart of the Trail" which must mean something, though it did not seem to. He also bought "The Lady's Mirror" and "The Landsman." Every minute was an hour long, and full of horrid imaginings. After nineteen had passed, he saw her with a bag and a porter wheeling her luggage. She came swiftly; she came cool. She greeted him as if he were a brother.
"First class," she said to the porter, "corner seats; opposite."
Jon admired her frightful self-possession.
"Can't we get a carriage to ourselves?" he whispered.
"No good; it's a stopping train. After Maidenhead perhaps. Look natural, Jon."
Jon screwed his features into a scowl. They got in—with two other beasts!—oh! heaven! He tipped the porter unnaturally, in his confusion. The brute deserved nothing for putting them in there, and looking as if he knew all about it into the bargain.
Fleur hid herself behind "The Lady's Mirror." Jon imitated her behind "The Landsman." The train started. Fleur let "The Lady's Mirror" fall and leaned forward. "Well?" she said.
"It's seemed about fifteen days."
She nodded, and Jon's face lighted up at once.
"Look natural," murmured Fleur, and went off into a bubble of laughter. It hurt him. How could he look natural with Italy hanging over him? He had meant to break it to her gently, but now he blurted it out.
"They want me to go to Italy with Mother for two months."
Fleur drooped her eyelids; turned a little pale, and bit her lips.
"Oh!" she said. It was all, but it was much.
That "Oh!" was like the quick drawback of the wrist in fencing ready for riposte. It came.
"You must go!"
"Go?" said Jon in a strangled voice.
"Of course."
"But—two months—it's ghastly."
"No," said Fleur, "six weeks. You'll have forgotten me by then. We'll meet in the National Gallery the day after you get back."
Jon laughed.
"But suppose you've forgotten ME," he muttered into the noise of the train.
Fleur shook her head.
"Some other beast—" murmured Jon.
Her foot touched his.
"No other beast," she said, lifting the "Lady's Mirror."
The train stopped; two passengers got out, and one got in.
'I shall die,' thought Jon, 'if we're not alone at all.'
The train went on; and again Fleur leaned forward.
"I never let go," she said; "do you?"
Jon shook his head vehemently.
"Never!" he said. "Will you write to me?"
"No; but YOU can—to my club."
She had a Club; she was wonderful!
"Did you pump Holly?" he muttered.
"Yes, but got nothing. I didn't dare pump hard."
"What can it be?" cried Jon.
"I shall find out all right."
A long silence followed till Fleur said: "This is Maidenhead, stand by, Jon!"
The train stopped. The remaining passenger got out. Fleur drew down her blind.
"Quick!" she cried. "Hang out! Look as much of a beast as you can."
Jon blew his nose, and scowled; never in all his life had he scowled like that! An old lady recoiled, a young one tried the handle. It turned, but the lock would not open. The train moved, the young lady darted to another carriage.
"What luck!" cried Jon. "It jammed."
"Yes," said Fleur; "I was holding it."
The train moved out, and Jon fell on his knees.
"Look out for the corridor," she whispered; "and—quick!"
Her lips met his. And though their kiss only lasted perhaps ten seconds Jon's soul left his body and went so far beyond that, when he was again sitting opposite that demure figure, he was pale as death. He heard her sigh, and the sound seemed to him the most precious he had ever heard—an exquisite declaration that he meant something to her.
"Six weeks isn't really long," she said; "and you can easily make it six if you keep your head out there, and never seem to think of me."
Jon gasped.
"This is just what's really wanted, Jon, to convince them, don't you see? If we're just as bad when you come back they'll stop being ridiculous about it. Only, I'm sorry it's not Spain; there's a girl in a Goya picture at Madrid who's like me, Father says. Only she isn't—we've got a copy of her."
It was to Jon like a ray of sunshine piercing through a fog. "I'll make it Spain," he said, "Mother won't mind; she's never been there. And my father thinks a lot of Goya."
"Oh! yes, he's a painter—isn't he?"
"Only water-colour," said Jon, with honesty.
"When we come to Reading, Jon, get out first and go down to Caversham lock and wait for me. I'll send the car home and we'll walk by the towing-path."
Jon seized her hand in gratitude, and they sat silent, with the world well lost, and one eye on the corridor. But the train seemed to run twice as fast now, and its sound was almost lost in that of Jon's sighing.
"We're getting near," said Fleur; "the towing-path's awfully exposed. One more! Oh! Jon, don't forget me."
Jon answered with his kiss. And very soon, a flushed, distracted-looking youth could have been seen—as they say—leaping from the train and hurrying along the platform, searching his pockets for his ticket.
When at last she rejoined him on the towing-path a little beyond Caversham lock he had made an effort, and regained some measure of equanimity. If they had to part, he would not make a scene! A breeze by the bright river threw the white side of the willow leaves up into the sunlight, and followed those two with its faint rustle.
"I told our chauffeur that I was train-giddy," said Fleur. "Did you look pretty natural as you went out?" "I don't know. What is natural?"
"It's natural to you to look seriously happy. When I first saw you I thought you weren't a bit like other people."
"Exactly what I thought when I saw you. I knew at once I should never love anybody else."
Fleur laughed.
"We're absurdly young. And love's young dream is out of date, Jon. Besides, it's awfully wasteful. Think of all the fun you might have. You haven't begun, even; it's a shame, really. And there's me. I wonder!"
Confusion came on Jon's spirit. How could she say such things just as they were going to part?
"If you feel like that," he said, "I can't go. I shall tell Mother that I ought to try and work. There's always the condition of the world!"
"The condition of the world!"
Jon thrust his hands deep into his pockets.
"But there is," he said; "think of the people starving!"
Fleur shook her head. "No, no, I never, never will make myself miserable for nothing."
"Nothing! But there's an awful state of things, and of course one ought to help."
"Oh! yes, I know all that. But you can't help people, Jon; they're hopeless. When you pull them out of a hole they only get into another. Look at them, still fighting and plotting and struggling, though they're dying in heaps all the time. Idiots!"
"Aren't you sorry for them?"
"Oh! sorry—yes, but I'm not going to make myself unhappy about it; that's no good."
And they were silent, disturbed by this first glimpse of each other's natures.
"I think people are brutes and idiots," said Fleur stubbornly.
"I think they're poor wretches," said Jon. It was as if they had quarrelled—and at this supreme and awful moment, with parting visible out there in that last gap of the willows!
"Well, go and help your poor wretches, and don't think of me."
Jon stood still. Sweat broke out on his forehead, and his limbs trembled. Fleur too had stopped, and was frowning at the river.
"I MUST believe in things," said Jon with a sort of agony; "we're all meant to enjoy life."
Fleur laughed: "Yes; and that's what you won't do, if you don't take care. But perhaps your idea of enjoyment is to make yourself wretched. There are lots of people like that, of course."
She was pale, her eyes had darkened, her lips had thinned. Was it Fleur thus staring at the water? Jon had an unreal feeling as if he were passing through the scene in a book where the lover has to choose between love and duty. But just then she looked round at him. Never was anything so intoxicating as that vivacious look. It acted on him exactly as the tug of a chain acts on a dog—brought him up to her with his tail wagging and his tongue out.
"Don't let's be silly," she said, "time's too short. Look, Jon, you can just see where I've got to cross the river. There, round the bend, where the woods begin."
Jon saw a gable, a chimney or two, a patch of wall through the trees—and felt his heart sink.
"I mustn't dawdle any more. It's no good going beyond the next hedge, it gets all open. Let's get on to it and say good-bye."
They went side by side, hand in hand, silently towards the hedge, where the mayflower, both pink and white, was in full bloom.
"My Club's the 'Talisman,' Stratton Street, Piccadilly. Letters there will be quite safe, and I'm almost always up once a week."
Jon nodded. His face had become extremely set, his eyes stared straight before him.
"To-day's the twenty-third of May," said Fleur; "on the ninth of July I shall be in front of the 'Bacchus and Ariadne' at three o'clock; will you?"
"I will."
"If you feel as bad as I it's all right. Let those people pass!"
A man and woman airing their children went by strung out in Sunday fashion.
The last of them passed the wicket gate.
"Domesticity!" said Fleur, and blotted herself against the hawthorn hedge. The blossom sprayed out above her head, and one pink cluster brushed her cheek. Jon put up his hand jealously to keep it off.
"Good-bye, Jon!" For a second they stood with hands hard clasped. Then their lips met for the third time, and when they parted Fleur broke away and fled through the wicket gate. Jon stood where she had left him, with his forehead against that pink cluster. Gone! For an eternity—for seven weeks all but two days! And here he was, wasting the last sight of her! He rushed to the gate. She was walking swiftly on the heels of the straggling children. She turned her head, he saw her hand make a little flitting gesture; then she sped on, and the trailing family blotted her out from his view.
The words of a comic song—
"Paddington groan—worst ever known—He gave a sepulchral Paddington groan—"
came into his head, and he sped incontinently back to Reading station. All the way up to London and down to Wansdon he sat with "The Heart of the Trail" open on his knee, knitting in his head a poem so full of feeling that it would not rhyme.