‘Life over here’s a game!’ thought Val. ‘Muffin bell rings, horses run, money changes hands; ring again, run again, money changes back.’
But, alarmed at his own philosophy, he went to the paddock gate to watch the Mayfly filly canter down. She moved well; and he made his way over to the “small” car. The “small” lunch was the sort a man dreams of but seldom gets; and when it was concluded Monsieur Profond walked back with him to the paddock.
“Your wife’s a nice woman,” was his surprising remark.
“Nicest woman I know,” returned Val dryly.
“Yes,” said Monsieur Profond; “she has a nice face. I admire nice women.”
Val looked at him suspiciously, but something kindly and direct in the heavy diabolism of his companion disarmed him for the moment.
“Any time you like to come on my yacht, I’ll give her a small cruise.”
“Thanks,” said Val, in arms again, “she hates the sea.”
“So do I,” said Monsieur Profond.
“Then why do you yacht?”
The Belgian’s eyes smiled. “Oh! I don’ know. I’ve done everything; it’s the last thing I’m doin’.”
“It must be d–d expensive. I should want more reason than that.”
Monsieur Prosper Profond raised his eyebrows, and puffed out a heavy lower lip.
“I’m an easy-goin’ man,” he said.
“Were you in the war?” asked Val.
“Ye-es. I’ve done that too. I was gassed; it was a small bit unpleasant.” He smiled with a deep and sleepy air of prosperity, as if he had caught it from his name. Whether his saying “small” when he ought to have said “little” was genuine mistake or affectation, Val could not decide; the fellow was evidently capable of anything. Among the ring of buyers round the Mayfly filly who had won her race, Monsieur Profond said: “You goin’ to bid?”
Val nodded. With this sleepy Satan at his elbow, he felt in need of faith. Though placed above the ultimate blows of Providence by the forethought of a grandfather who had tied him up a thousand a year to which was added the thousand a year tied up for Holly by HER grand-father, Val was not flush of capital that he could touch, having spent most of what he had realised from his South African farm on his establishment in Sussex. And very soon he was thinking: ‘Dash it! she’s going beyond me!’ His limit—six hundred—exceeded, he dropped out of the bidding. The Mayfly filly passed under the hammer at seven hundred and fifty guineas. He was turning away vexed when the slow voice of Monsieur Profond said in his ear:
“Well, I’ve bought that small filly, but I don’t want her; you take her and give her to your wife.”
Val looked at the fellow with renewed suspicion, but the good humour in his eyes was such that he really could not take offence.
“I made a small lot of money in the war,” began Monsieur Profond in answer to that look. “I ‘ad armament shares. I like to give it away. I’m always makin’ money. I want very small lot myself. I like my friends to ‘ave it.”
“I’ll buy her of you at the price you gave,” said Val with sudden resolution.
“No,” said Monsieur Profond. “You take her. I don’ want her.”
“Hang it! One doesn’t—”
“Why not?” smiled Monsieur Profond. “I’m a friend of your family.”
“Seven hundred and fifty guineas is not a box of cigars,” said Val impatiently.
“All right; you keep her for me till I want her, and do what you like with her.”
“So long as she’s yours,” said Val, “I don’t mind that.” “That’s all right,” murmured Monsieur Profond, and moved away.
Val watched; he might be “a good devil,” but then again he might not. He saw him rejoin George Forsyte, and thereafter saw him no more.
He spent those nights after racing at his mother’s house in Green Street.
Winifred Dartie at sixty-two was marvellously preserved, considering the three-and-thirty years during which she had put up with Montague Dartie, till almost happily released by a French staircase. It was to her a vehement satisfaction to have her favourite son back from South Africa after all this time, to feel him so little changed, and to have taken a fancy to his wife. Winifred, who in the late seventies, before her marriage, had been in the vanguard of freedom, pleasure, and fashion, confessed her youth outclassed by the donzellas of the day. They seemed, for instance, to regard marriage as an incident, and Winifred sometimes regretted that she had not done the same; a second, third, fourth incident might have secured her a partner of less dazzling inebriety; though, after all, he had left her Val, Imogen, Maud, Benedict (almost a colonel and unharmed by the war)—none of whom had been divorced as yet. The steadiness of her children often amazed one who remembered their father; but, as she was fond of believing, they were really all Forsytes, favouring herself, with the exception perhaps of Imogen. Her brother’s “little girl” Fleur frankly puzzled Winifred. The child was as restless as any of these modern young women—“She’s a small flame in a draught,” Prosper Profond had said one day after dinner—but she did not flop, or talk at the top of her voice. The steady Forsyteism in Winifred’s own character instinctively resented the feeling in the air, the modern girl’s habits and her motto: “All’s much of a muchness! Spend! To-morrow we shall be poor!” She found it a saving grace in Fleur that having set her heart on a thing, she had no change of heart until she got it—though what happened after, Fleur was, of course, too young to have made evident. The child was a “very pretty little thing,” too. and quite a credit to take about, with her mother’s French taste and gift for wearing clothes; everybody turned to look at Fleur—great consideration to Winifred, a lover of the style and distinction which had so cruelly deceived her in the case of Montague Dartie.
In discussing her with Val, at breakfast on Saturday morning, Winifred dwelt on the family skeleton.
“That little affair of your father-inlaw and your Aunt Irene, Val—it’s old as the hills, of course, Fleur need know nothing about it—making a fuss. Your Uncle Soames is very particular about that. So you’ll be careful.”
“Yes! But it’s dashed awkward—Holly’s young half-brother is coming to live with us while he learns farming. He’s there already.”
“Oh!” said Winifred. “That is a gaff! What is he like?”
“Only saw him once—at Robin Hill, when we were home in 1909; he was naked and painted blue and yellow in stripes—a jolly little chap.”
Winifred thought that “rather nice,” and added comfortably: “Well, Holly’s sensible; she’ll know how to deal with it. I shan’t tell your uncle. It’ll only bother him. It’s a great comfort to have you back, my dear boy, now that I’m getting on.”
“Getting on! Why! you’re as young as ever. By the way, that chap Profond, Mother, is he all right?”
“Prosper Profond! Oh! the most amusing man I know.”
Val grunted, and recounted the story of the Mayfly filly.
“That’s SO like him,” murmured Winifred. “He does all sorts of things.”
“Well,” said Val shrewdly, “our family haven’t been too lucky with that kind of cattle; they’re too light-hearted for us.”
It was true, and Winifred’s blue study lasted a full minute before she answered:
“Oh! well! He’s a foreigner, Val; one must make allowances.”
“All right, I’ll use his filly and make it up to him, somehow.”
And soon after he gave her his blessing, received a kiss, and left her for his bookmaker’s, the Iseeum Club, and Victoria station.
Chapter VI.
JON
Mrs. Val Dartie, after twenty years of South Africa, had fallen deeply in love, fortunately with something of her own, for the object of her passion was the prospect in front of her windows, the cool clear light on the green Downs. It was England again, at last! England more beautiful than she had dreamed. Chance had, in fact, guided the Val Darties to a spot where the South Downs had real charm when th
e sun shone. Holly had enough of her father’s eye to apprehend the rare quality of their outlines and chalky radiance; to go up there by the ravine-like lane and wander along towards Chanctonbury or Amberley, was still a delight which she hardly attempted to share with Val, whose admiration of Nature was confused by a Forsyte’s instinct for getting something out of it, such as the condition of the turf for his horses’ exercise.
Driving the Ford home with a certain humouring smoothness, she promised herself that the first use she would make of Jon would be to take him up there, and show him “the view” under this May-day sky.
She was looking forward to her young half-brother with a motherliness not exhausted by Val. A three-day visit to Robin Hill, soon after their arrival home, had yielded no sight of him—he was still at school; so that her recollection, like Val’s, was of a little sunny-haired boy striped blue and yellow, down by the pond.
Those three days at Robin Hill had been exciting, sad, embarrassing. Memories of her dead brother, memories of Val’s courtship; the aging of her father, not seen for twenty years, something funereal in his ironic gentleness which did not escape one who had much subtle instinct; above all, the presence of her stepmother, whom she could still vaguely remember as the “lady in grey” of days when she was little and grandfather alive and Mademoiselle Beauce so cross because that intruder gave her music lessons—all these confused and tantalised a spirit which had longed to find Robin Hill untroubled. But Holly was adept at keeping things to herself, and all had seemed to go quite well.
Her father had kissed her when she left him, with lips which she was sure had trembled.
“Well, my dear,” he said, “the war hasn’t changed Robin Hill, has it? If only you could have brought Jolly back with you! I say, can you stand this spiritualistic racket? When the oak-tree dies, it dies, I’m afraid.”
From the warmth of her embrace he probably divined that he had let the cat out of his bag, for he rode off at once on irony.
“Spiritualism—queer word, when the more they manifest the more they prove that they’ve got hold of matter.”
“How?” said Holly.
“Why! Look at their photographs of auric presences. You must have something material for light and shade to fall on before you can take a photograph. No, it’ll end in our calling all matter spirit, or all spirit matter—I don’t know which.”
“But don’t you believe in survival, Dad?”
Jolyon had looked at her, and the sad whimsicality of his face impressed her deeply.
“Well, my dear, I should like to get something out of death. I’ve been looking into it a bit. But for the life of me I can’t find anything that telepathy, subconsciousness, and emanation from the storehouse of this world can’t account for just as well. Wish I could! Wishes father thoughts but they don’t breed evidence.”
Holly had pressed her lips again to his forehead with a feeling that it confirmed his theory that all matter was becoming spirit—his brow felt somehow so insubstantial.
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 to 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 nowadays, 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.
Chapter 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 night-light, 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. From his window he 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.’
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