Title:      The Silver Spoon
            (Second Book in the Trilogy "A Modern Comedy")
            (Second part of the Forsyte Chronicles)
Author:     John Galsworthy
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Title:      The Silver Spoon
            (Second Book in the Trilogy "A Modern Comedy")
            (Second part of the Forsyte Chronicles)
Author:     John Galsworthy




A MODERN COMEDY

BOOK II

THE SILVER SPOON




CONTENTS


INTERLUDE
A SILENT WOOING



BOOK II
THE SILVER SPOON

PART I


I.  A STRANGER

II.  CHANGE

III.  MICHAEL TAKES 'A LUNAR'

IV.  MERE CONVERSATION

V.  SIDE-SLIPS

VI.  SOAMES KEEPS HIS EYES OPEN

VII.  SOUNDS IN THE NIGHT

VIII.  ROUND AND ABOUT

IX.  POULTRY AND CATS

X.  FRANCIS WILMOT REVERSES

XI.  SOAMES VISITS THE PRESS

XII.  MICHAEL MUSES

XIII.  INCEPTION OF THE CASE

XIV.  FURTHER CONSIDERATION



PART II


I.  MICHAEL MAKES HIS SPEECH

II.  RESULTS

III.  MARJORIE FERRAR AT HOME

IV.  FONS ET ORIGO

V.  PROGRESS OF THE CASE

VI.  MICHAEL VISITS BETHNAL GREEN

VII.  CONTRASTS

VIII.  COLLECTING EVIDENCE

IX.  VOLTE FACE

X.  PHOTOGRAPHY

XI.  SHADOWS

XII.  DEEPENING



PART III


I.  'CIRCUSES'

II.  "NOT GOING TO HAVE IT"

III.  SOAMES DRIVES HOME

IV.  CATECHISM

V.  THE DAY

VI.  IN THE BOX

VII.  'FED UP'

VIII.  FANTOCHES

IX.  ROUT AT MRS. MAGUSSIE'S

X.  THE NEW LEAF

XI.  OVER THE WINDMILL

XII.  ENVOI




INTERLUDE

A SILENT WOOING


The first of February, 1924, Jon Forsyte, convalescing from the
'flu, was sitting in the lounge of an hotel at Camden, South
Carolina, with his bright hair slowly rising on his scalp.  He was
reading about a lynching.

A voice behind him said:

"Will you join our picnic over at those old-time mounds to-day?"

Looking up, he saw a young acquaintance called Francis Wilmot, who
came from further south.

"Very glad to.  Who's going?"

"Why, just Mr. and Mrs. Pulmore Hurrison, and that English
novelist, Gurdon Minho, and the Blair girls and their friends, and
my sister Anne and I.  You could ride over horseback, if you want
exercise."

"All right; they've got some new horses in this morning from
Columbia."

"Why, that's fine!  My sister and I'll ride horseback too, and some
of the Blair girls.  The Hurrisons can take the others."

"I say," said Jon, "this is a pretty bad case of lynching."

The young man to whom he spoke leaned in the window.  Jon admired
his face, as of ivory, with dark hair and eyes, and narrow nose and
lips, and his lissom attitude.

"All you Britishers go off the deep-end when you read of a
lynching.  You haven't got the negro problem up where you are at
Southern Pines.  They don't have it any to speak of in North
Carolina."

"No, and I don't profess to understand it.  But I can't see why
negroes shouldn't be tried the same as white men.  There may be
cases where you've got to shoot at sight; but how can you defend
mob law?  Once you catch a man, he ought to be tried properly."

"We're not taking any chances with that particular kind of
trouble."

"But without trial, how can you tell he's guilty?"

"Well, we'd sooner do without an innocent darkie now and again than
risk our women."

"But killing a man for a thing he hasn't done is the limit."

"Maybe, in Europe.  But, here, things are in the large, still."

"What do they think about lynching in the north?"

"They squeal a bit, but they've no call to.  If we've got negroes,
they've got the Reds, and they surely have a wholesale way with
them."

Jon Forsyte tilted back his rocking-chair, with a puzzled frown.

"I reckon there's too much space left in this country," said
Francis Wilmot; "a man has all the chances to get off.  So where we
feel strong about a thing, we take the law into our own hands."

"Well, every country to its own fashions.  What are these mounds
we're going to?"

"Old Indian remains that go way back thousands of years, they say.
You haven't met my sister?  She only came last night."

"No.  What time do we start?"

"Noon; it's about an hour's ride by the woods."

At noon then, in riding kit, Jon came out to the five horses, for
more than one of the Blair girls had elected to ride.  He started
between them, Francis Wilmot going ahead with his sister.

The Blair girls were young and pretty with a medium-coloured,
short-faced, well-complexioned, American prettiness, of a type to
which he had become accustomed during the two and a half years he
had spent in the United States.  They were at first extremely
silent, and then extremely vocal.  They rode astride, and very
well.  Jon learned that they, as well as the givers of the picnic,
Mr. and Mrs. Pulmore Hurrison, inhabited Long Island.  They asked
him many questions about England, to which Jon, who had left it at
the age of nineteen, invented many answers.  He began to look
longingly between his horse's ears at Francis Wilmot and his
sister, cantering ahead in a silence that, from a distance, seemed
extremely restful.  Their way led through pine woods--of trees
spindly and sparse, and over a rather sandy soil; the sunlight was
clear and warm, the air still crisp.  Jon rode a single-footing bay
horse, and felt as one feels on the first day of recovered health.

The Blair girls wished to know what he thought of the English
novelist--they were dying to see a real highbrow.  Jon had only
read one of his books, and of the characters therein could only
remember a cat.  The Blair girls had read none; but they had heard
that his cats were "just too cunning."

Francis Wilmot, reining up in front, pointed at a large mound which
certainly seemed to be unnaturally formed.  They all reined up,
looked at it for two minutes in silence, remarked that it was "very
interesting," and rode on.  In a hollow the occupants of two cars
were disembarking food.  Jon led the horses away to tether them
alongside the horses of Wilmot and his sister.

"My sister," said Francis Wilmot.

"Mr. Forsyte," said the sister.

She looked at Jon, and Jon looked at her.  She was slim but
distinctly firm, in a long dark-brown coat and breeches and boots;
her hair was bobbed and dark under a soft brown felt hat.  Her face
was pale, rather browned, and had a sort of restrained eagerness--
the brow broad and clear, the nose straight and slightly sudden,
the mouth unreddened, rather wide and pretty.  But what struck Jon
were her eyes, which were exactly his idea of a water nymph's.
They slanted a little, and were steady and brown and enticing;
whether there was ever such a slight squint in them he could not
tell, but if there were it was an improvement.  He felt shy.
Neither of them spoke.

Francis Wilmot reckoned that he was hungry, and they walked side by
side towards the eatables.

Jon said suddenly to the sister:

"You've just come then, Miss Wilmot?"

"Yes, Mr. Forsyte."

"Where from?"

"From Naseby.  It's way down between Charleston and Savannah."

"Oh, Charleston!  I liked Charleston."

"Anne likes Savannah best," said Francis Wilmot.

Anne nodded.  She was not talkative, it seemed, though her voice
had sounded pleasant in small quantities.

"It's kind of lonely where we live," said Francis.  "Mostly
darkies.  Anne's never seen an Englishman to speak to."

Anne smiled.  Jon also smiled.  Neither pursued the subject.  They
arrived at the eatables, spread in a manner calculated to give the
maximum of muscular and digestive exertion.  Mrs. Pulmore Hurrison,
a lady of forty or so, and of defined features, was seated with her
feet turned up; next to her, Gurdon Minho, the English novelist,
had his legs in a more reserved position; and then came quantities
of seated girls, all with pretty, unreserved legs; Mr. Pulmore
Hurrison, somewhat apart, was pursing a small mouth over the cork
of a large bottle.  Jon and the Wilmots also sat down.  The picnic
had begun.

Jon soon realised that everybody was expecting Gurdon Minho to say
something beyond "Yes" "Really!" "Ah!" "Quite!"  This did not
occur.  The celebrated novelist was at first almost painfully
attentive to what everybody else said, and then seemed to go into a
coma.  Jon felt a patriotic disappointment, for he himself was, if
anything, even more silent.  He could see that, among the three
Blair girls and their two girl friends, a sort of conspiracy was
brewing, to quiz the silent English in the privacy of the future.
Francis Wilmot's speechless sister was a comfort to him, therefore,
for he felt that she would neither be entitled nor inclined to join
that conspiracy.  He took refuge in handing victuals and was glad
when the period of eating on constricted stomachs was over.
Picnics were like Christmas Day, better in the future and the past
than in the present.  After the normal period of separation into
genders, the baskets were repacked, and all resorted to their
vehicles.  The two cars departed for another mound said to be two
miles off.  Francis Wilmot and the two Blair girls believed that
they would get back and watch the polo.  Jon asked Anne Wilmot
which she wished to do.  She elected to see the other mound.

They mounted and pursued a track through the woods in silence, till
Jon said:

"Do you like picnics?"

"I certainty do not."

"Nor do I.  But riding?"

"I just adore it more than anything in the world."

"More than dancing?"

"Surely.  Riding and swimming."

"Ah!  I THOUGHT--"  And he was silent.

"What did you think?"

"Well, I thought somehow you were a good swimmer."

"Why?"

Jon said with embarrassment:

"By your eyes--"

"What!  Are they fishy?"

Jon laughed.

"Not exactly.  They're like a water nymph's."

"I don't just know if that's a compliment."

"Of course it is."

"I thought nymphs weren't respectable."

"Oh!  WATER nymphs--very!  Shy, of course."

"Do you have many in England?"

"No.  As a matter of fact I've never seen one before."

"Then how do you know?"

"Just a general sense of what's fitting."

"I suppose you had a classical education.  Don't you all have that
in England?"

"Far from it."

"And how do you like America, Mr. Forsyte?"

"Very much.  I get homesick sometimes."

"I'd love to travel."

"You never have?"

She shook her head.  "I just stay at home and look after things.
But I reckon we'll have to sell the old home--cotton doesn't pay
any more."

"I grow peaches near Southern Pines, you know, up in North
Carolina; that's paying at present."

"D'you live there alone?"

"No; with my mother."

"Is she English?"

"Yes."

"Have you a father?"

"He died four years ago."

"Francis and I have been orphans ten years."

"I wish you'd both come and stay with us some day; my mother would
be awfully glad."

"Is she like you?"

Jon laughed.

"No.  She's beautiful."

The eyes regarded him gravely, the lips smiled faintly.

"I'd just love to come, but Francis and I can't ever be away
together."

"But," said Jon, "you're both here."

"We go back to-morrow; I wanted to see Camden."  The eyes resumed
their steady consideration of Jon's face.  "Won't you come back
with us and see our home--it's old?  Francis would like to have you
come."

"Do you always know what your brother would like?"

"Surely."

"That must be jolly.  But do you really mean you want me?"

"I certainly do."

"I'd enjoy it awfully; I hate hotels.  I mean--well, you know--"
But as HE didn't, he was not so sure that she did.

She touched her horse, and the single-footing animal broke into a
canter.

Along the alleys of the eternal pinewood the sun was in their eyes;
a warmed scent rose from pine needles, gum and herbs; the going was
sandy and soft; the horses in good mood.  Jon felt happy.  This
girl had strange eyes, enticing; and she rode better even than the
Blair girls.

"I suppose all the English ride well?" she said.

"Most do, when they ride at all; but we don't ride much nowadays."

"I'd love to see England; our folk came from England in 1700--
Worcestershire.  Where is that?"

"It's our middle west," said Jon.  "But as unlike as ever you can
imagine.  It's a fruit-growing county--very pretty; white timbered
houses, pastures, orchards, woods, green hills.  I went there
walking one holiday with a school friend."

"It sounds just lovely.  Our ancestors were Roman Catholics.  They
had a place called Naseby; that's why we call ours Naseby.  But my
grandmother was French Creole, from Louisiana.  Is it true that in
England they think Creoles have negro blood in them?"

"We're very ignorant," said Jon.  "_I_ know the Creoles are the old
French and Spanish families.  You both look as if you had French
blood."

"Francis does.  Do you think we've passed that mound?  We've come
all of four miles, and I thought it was only two."

"Does it matter?  The other mound was rather over-rated."

The lips smiled; she didn't ever quite laugh, it seemed.

"What Indians hereabouts?" asked Jon.

"I'm not too sure; Seminoles, if any, I think.  But Francis says
these mounds would be from way back before the present tribes.
What made you come to America, Mr. Forsyte?"

Jon bit his lip.  To give the reason--family feud--broken love
affair--was not exactly possible.

"I went first to British Columbia; but I didn't get on too well.
Then I heard of peaches in North Carolina."

"But why did you leave England?"

"I suppose I just wanted to see the world."

"Yes," she said.  It was a quiet but comprehending sound; Jon was
the more gratified, because she had not comprehended.  The image of
his first love did not often haunt him now--had not for a year or
more.  He had been so busy with his peaches.  Besides, Holly had
written that Fleur had a boy.  He said suddenly:  "I think we ought
to turn.  Look at the sun!"  The sun, indeed, was well down behind
the trees.

"My--yes!"

Jon turned his steed.  "Let's gallop, it'll be down in half an
hour; and there's no moon till late."

They galloped back along the track.  The sun went down even faster
than he had thought, the air grew cold, the light grey.  Jon reined
up suddenly.

"I'm awfully sorry; I don't believe we're on the track we came by
from the picnic.  I feel we've gone off to the right.  The tracks
are all alike and these horses only came in from Columbia
yesterday; they don't know the country any more than we do."

The girl laughed.

"We'll be lost."

"M'm!  That'll be no joke in these woods.  Don't they ever end?"

"I reckon not, in these parts.  It's an adventure."

"Yes; but you'll catch cold.  It's jolly cold at night."

"And you've had 'flu!"

"Oh!  That's all right.  Here's a track to the left.  Shall we go
on, or shall we take it?"

"Take it."

They cantered on.  It was too dark now for galloping, and soon too
dark for cantering.  And the track wound on and on.

"This is a pretty business," said Jon.  "I am sorry."  He peered
towards her riding beside him, and could just see her smile.

"Why!  It's lots of fun."

He was glad she thought so, but he could not see it.

"I HAVE been an ass.  Your brother'll be pretty sick with me."

"He'll know I'm with you."

"If we only had a compass.  We may be out all night at this rate.
Here's another fork!  Gosh, it is going to be dark."

And, almost as he spoke, the last of the light failed; he could
barely see her five yards away.

He came up close alongside, and she touched his sleeve.

"Don't worry," she said; "that spoils it."

Shifting his reins, he gave her hand a squeeze.

"You're splendid, Miss Wilmot."

"Oh! do call me Anne.  Surnames seem kind of chilly when you're
lost."

"Thank you very much.  My name's Jon.  Without an h, you know--
short for Jolyon."

"Jolyon--Jon; I like it."

"Well, Anne's always been my favourite name.  Shall we stop till
the moon rises, or ride on?"

"When will the moon rise?"

"Not for hours, judging from last night."

"Let's ride on and leave it to the horses."

"Right!  Only if they make for anywhere I'm pretty sure it'll be
towards Columbia, which must be miles and miles."

They pursued the narrow track at a foot's pace.  It was really dark
now.  Jon said:  "Are you cold?  You'd be warmer walking.  I'll go
ahead; stick close enough to see me."

He went ahead, and soon dismounted, feeling cold himself; there was
utter silence among unending trees.

"I'm cold now," said the voice of Anne.  "I'll get off too."

They had trailed on perhaps half an hour like this, leading their
horses, and almost feeling their way, when Jon said:  "Look!
There's some sort of a clearing here!  And what's that blackness on
the left?"

"It's a mound."

"Which mound, I wonder?  The one we saw, or the other, or neither?"

"I reckon we'd better stop here till the moon rises, then maybe
we'll see which it is, and know our way."

"You're right.  There'll be swamps, I expect.  I'll tether the
horses to leeward, and we'll try to find a nook.  It IS cold."

He tethered the horses out of the wind, and, turning back, found
her beside him.

"It's creepy here," she said.

"We'll find a snug place, and sit down."

He put his hand through her arm, and they moved round the foot of
the mound.

"Here," said Jon suddenly; "they've been digging.  This'll be
sheltered."  He felt the ground--dry enough.  "Let's squat here and
talk."

Side by side, with their backs to the wall of the excavated hollow,
they lighted cigarettes, and sat listening to the silence.  But for
a snuffle or soft stamp now and then from the horses, there was not
a sound.  Trees and wind, both, were too sparse for melody, and
nothing but their two selves and their horses seemed alive.  A
sprinkle of stars in a very dark sky and the deeper blackness of
the pine stems was all they could see.  Ah! and the glowing tips of
their cigarettes, and each other's faces thereby illumined, now and
then.

"I don't expect you'll ever forgive me for this," said Jon, with
gloom.

"Why!  I'm just loving it."

"Very sweet of you to say so; but you must be awfully cold.  Look
here--have my coat!"

He had begun to take it off when she said:  "If you do that I'll
run out into the woods and get really lost."

Jon resumed his coat.

"It might have been one of those Blair girls," he said.

"Would you rather?"

"For your sake, of course.  Not for my own--no, indeed!"

They were looking round at each other so that the tips of their
cigarettes were almost touching.  Just able to see her eyes, he had
a very distinct impulse to put his arm round her.  It seemed the
natural and proper thing to do, but of course it was not "done"!

"Have some chocolate," she said.

Jon ate a very little.  The chocolate should be reserved for her!

"This is a real adventure.  It IS black.  I'd have been scared
alone--seems kind of spooky here."

"Spirits of the old Indians," muttered Jon.  "Only I don't believe
in spirits."

"You would if you'd had a coloured nanny."

"Did you have one?"

"Surely, with a voice as soft as mush melon.  We have one old
darkie still, who was a slave as a boy.  He's the best of all the
negroes round--nearly eighty, with quite white hair."

"Your father couldn't have been in the Civil War, could he?"

"No; my two grandfathers and my great-grandfather."

"And how old are you, Anne?"

"Nineteen."

"I'm twenty-three."

"Tell me about your home in England."

"I haven't one now."  He began an expurgated edition of his youth,
and it seemed to him that she listened beautifully.  He asked for
her story in return; and, while she was telling it, wondered
whether he liked her voice or not.  It dwelled and slurred, but was
soft and had great flavour.  When she had finished her simple tale,
for she had hardly been away from home, there was silence, till Jon
said:

"I'll go and see that the horses are all right; then perhaps you
could get a snooze."

He moved round the foot of the mound till he came to the horses,
and stayed a little talking to them and stroking their noses.  A
feeling, warm and protective, stirred within him.  This was a nice
child, and a brave one.  A face to remember, with lots behind it.
Suddenly he heard her voice, low and as if pretending not to call:
"Jon, oh, Jon!"  He felt his way back through the darkness.  Her
hands were stretched out.

"It IS so spooky!  That funny rustling!  I've got creeps down my
back!"

"The wind's got up a bit.  Let's sit back to back--it'll keep you
warm.  Or, look here, I'll sit against the bank; if you lean up
against me you could go to sleep.  It's only an hour or two now
before we can ride on by moonlight."

They took up the suggested postures, her back against his side, and
her head in the hollow of his arm and shoulder.

"Comfy?"

"Surely.  It stops the creeps."

They smoked and talked a little more.  The stars were brighter now,
and their eyes more accustomed to the darkness.  And they were
grateful for each other's warmth.  Jon enjoyed the scent, as of
hay, that rose from her hair not far below his nose.  Then came a
long silence, while the warm protective feeling grew and grew
within him.  He would have liked to slip his arms round and hold
her closer.  But of course he did not.  It was, however, as much as
he could do to remain a piece of warmth impersonal enough for her
to recline against.  This was the very first time since he left
England that he had felt an inclination to put his arms round
anyone, so badly burnt had he been in that old affair.  The wind
rose, talked in the trees, died away again; the stillness was
greater than ever.  He was very wide awake, and it seemed curious
to him that she should sleep, for, surely, she was asleep--so
still.  The stars twinkled, and he gazed up at them.  His limbs
began to ache and twitch, and suddenly he realised that she was no
more asleep than he.  She slowly turned her head till he could see
her eyes, grave, enticing.

"I'm cramping you," she said, and raised herself; but his arm
restored her.

"Not a bit; so long as you're warm and comfy."

Her head settled in again; and the vigil was resumed.  They talked
a little now, of nothing important, and he thought:  'It's queer--
one could live months knowing people and not know them half so well
as we shall know each other now.'

Again a long silence fell; but this time his arm was round her, it
was more comfortable so, for both of them.  And Jon began to have
the feeling that it would be inadvisable for the moon to rise.  Had
she that feeling too?  He wondered.  But if she had, the moon in
its courses paid no attention.  For suddenly he became conscious
that it was there, behind the trees somewhere lurking, a curious
kind of stilly glimmer creeping about the air, along the ground, in
and out of the tree-stems.

"The moon!" he said.  She did not stir, and his heart beat rather
fast.  So!  She did not want the moon to rise any more than he!
And slowly the creeping glimmer became light, and, between the
tree-stems, stole, invading their bodies till they were visible.
And still they sat, unstirring, as if afraid to break a spell.  The
moon gained power and a cold glory, and rose above the trees; the
world was alive once more.  Jon thought, 'Could I kiss her?' and at
once recoiled.  As if she would want!  But, as though she divined
his thought, she turned her head, and her eyes looked into his.

"I'm in charge of you!" he did not exactly say.

Her answer was a little sigh, and she got up.  They stood, gazing
into the whitened mysterious wood.

"Look!" said Jon; "It IS the mound.  There's the path down to the
hollow where we had the picnic.  Now we can find the way all
right."

She made a sound that he could not interpret, and they went towards
the horses, untethered them, and mounted.  They set forth, riding
side by side.

"This'll be something to remember," said Jon.

"Yes, I shall always remember it."

They said no more, except to consult about the way, but this was
soon so clear, that they cantered till they came out on the polo
ground close to the hotel.

"Go in and relieve your brother's mind.  I'll take the horses
round, and then come on."

When he entered the hotel lounge Francis Wilmot, still in riding
clothes, was alone.  His expression was peculiar, not exactly
hostile, but certainly not friendly.

"Anne's gone up," he said, "I reckon you haven't much bump of
locality.  You surely had me scared."

"I'm awfully sorry," said Jon humbly, "I forgot the horses were new
to the country."

"Well!" said Francis Wilmot, and shrugged his shoulders.  Jon
looked at the young man steadily.

"You don't think that I got bushed on purpose?  Because you look as
if you did."

Again Francis Wilmot shrugged his shoulders.

"Forgive me," said Jon, "but aren't you forgetting that your
sister's a lady, and that one doesn't behave like a cad with a
lady?"

Francis Wilmot did not answer; he went to a window and stood
looking out.  Jon felt very angry.  He sat down on the arm of a
long chair, suddenly extremely tired.  He sat there looking at the
ground, and frowning heavily.  Damn the fellow!  Had he been
bullying Anne?  If he had--!  A voice behind him said:  "I reckon I
didn't mean it.  I certainly am sorry.  It was just the scare.
Shake hands!"

Jon stretched out his own impulsively, and they shook hands,
looking straight into each other's eyes.

"You must be about through," said Francis Wilmot.  "Come on to my
room; I've gotten a flask.  I've given Anne a dram already."

They went up.  Jon sat in the only chair, Francis Wilmot on the
bed.

"Anne tells me she's asked you to come home with us to-morrow.  I
surely hope you will."

"I should simply love to."

"That's fine!"

They drank, talked a little, smoked.

"Good night," said Jon, suddenly, "or I shall go to sleep here."

They shook hands again, and Jon staggered to his room.  He fell
asleep at once.

They travelled next day, all three, through Columbia and
Charleston, to the Wilmot's place.  It stood in the bend of a red
river, with cotton fields around, and swampy ground where live oaks
grew, melancholy, festooned with Florida moss.  The old slave
quarters, disused except as kennels, were still standing; the two-
storied house had flights of wooden steps running up on each side,
on to the wide wisteria-covered porch, and needed a coat of paint;
and, within, rooms ran one into the other, hung with old portraits
of dead Wilmots and de Frevilles; and darkies wandered around and
talked their soft drawled speech.

Jon was happier than he had been since he landed in the New World
three and a half years ago.  In the mornings he sauntered with the
dogs in the sunlight or tried to write poetry--for the two young
Wilmots were busy.  After the midday meal he rode with them or with
Anne alone.  In the evening he learned from her to play the ukulele
before a wood fire lighted at sundown, or heard about cotton
culture from Francis, with whom, since that moment of animosity, he
was on the best of terms.

Between Anne and himself there was little talk; they had, as it
were, resumed the silence which had fallen when they sat in the
dark under the old Indian mound.  But he watched her; indeed, he
was always trying to catch the grave enticing look in her dark
eyes.  More and more she seemed to him unlike any girl he had ever
known; quicker, more silent, and with more "sand."  The days went
on, in warm sun, and the nightly scent of wood smoke; and his
holiday drew to an end.  He could play the ukulele now, and they
sang to it--negro spirituals, songs from comic operas, and other
immortal works.  The last day came, and dismay descended on Jon.
To-morrow, early, he was going back to his peaches at Southern
Pines!  That afternoon, riding with her for the last time, the
silence was almost unnatural, and she did not even look at him.
Jon went up to change, with panic in his heart.  He knew now that
he wanted to take her back with him, and he thought he knew that
she did not want to come.  How he would miss watching for those
eyes to be fixed on him.  He was thirsty with the wish to kiss her.
He went down moodily, and sat in a long chair before the wood fire,
pulling a spaniel's ears and watching the room darken.  Perhaps she
wouldn't even come for a last sing-song.  Perhaps there would be
nothing more but dinner and an evening a trois; not even a chance
to say he loved her and be told that she didn't love him.  And he
thought, miserably:  'It's my fault--I'm a silent fool; I've missed
my chance.'  The room darkened till there was nothing but
firelight, and the spaniel went to sleep.  Jon, too, closed his
eyes.  It was as if he could wait better, thus--for the worst.
When he opened them she was standing in front of him with the
ukuleles in her hands.

"Do you want to play, Jon?"

"Yes," said Jon, "let's play.  It's the last time"; and he took his
ukulele.

She sat down on the rug before the fire, and began to tune hers.
Jon slipped down beside the spaniel and began to tune his.  The
spaniel got up and went away.

"What shall we sing?"

"I don't want to sing, Anne.  You sing; I'll just accompany."

She didn't look at him!  She would not look at him!  It was all up!
What a fool he'd been!

Anne sang.  She sang a crooning phrase--some Spanish air.  Jon
plucked his strings, and the tune plucked his heart.  She sang it
through.  She sang it again, and her eyes slid round.  God!  She
WAS looking at him.  She mustn't see that he knew she was!  It was
too good--that long dark look over the ukulele.  Between him and
her were her ukulele and his own.  He dropped the beastly thing.
And, suddenly shifting along the floor, he put his arm round her.
Without a word she drooped her head against his shoulder, as when
they sat under the Indian mound.  He bent his cheek down to her
hair.  It smelled, as it had then, of hay.  And, just as she had
screwed her face round in the moonlight, she turned it to him now.
But this time Jon kissed her lips.





THE SILVER SPOON



"But O, the thorns we stand upon!"

--Winter's Tale



TO JOHN FORTESCUE




PART I



CHAPTER I

A STRANGER


The young man, who, at the end of September, 1924, dismounted from
a taxicab in South Square, Westminster, was so unobtrusively
American that his driver had some hesitation in asking for double
his fare.  The young man had no hesitation in refusing it.

"Are you unable to read?" he said, softly.  "Here's four
shillings."

With that he turned his back and looked at the house before which
he had descended.  This, the first private English house he had
ever proposed to enter, inspired him with a certain uneasiness, as
of a man who expects to part with a family ghost.  Comparing a
letter with the number chased in pale brass on the door, he
murmured:  "It surely is," and rang the bell.

While waiting for the door to be opened, he was conscious of
extreme quietude, broken by a clock chiming four as if with the
voice of Time itself.  When the last boom died, the door yawned
inward, and a man, almost hairless, said:

"Yes, sir?"

The young man removed a soft hat from a dark head.

"This is Mrs. Michael Mont's house?"

"Correct, sir."

"Will you give her my card, and this letter?"

"'Mr. Francis Wilmot, Naseby, S. C.'  Will you wait in here, sir?"

Ushered through the doorway of a room on the right, Francis Wilmot
was conscious of a commotion close to the ground, and some teeth
grazing the calf of his leg.

"Dandie!" said the voice of the hairless man, "you little devil!
That dog is a proper little brute with strangers, sir.  Stand
still!  I've known him bite clean through a lady's stockings."

Francis Wilmot saw with interest a silver-grey dog nine inches high
and nearly as broad, looking up at him with lustrous eyes above
teeth of extreme beauty.

"It's the baby, sir," said the hairless man, pointing to a sort of
nest on the floor before the fireless hearth; "he WILL go for
people when he's with the baby.  But once he gets to smelling your
trousers, he's all right.  Better not touch the baby, though.  Mrs.
Mont was here a minute ago; I'll take your card up to her."

Francis Wilmot sat down on a settee in the middle of the room; and
the dog lay between him and the baby.

And while the young man sat he gazed around him.  The room was
painted in panels of a sub-golden hue, with a silver-coloured
ceiling.  A clavichord, little golden ghost of a piano, stood at
one end.  Glass lustres, pictures of flowers and of a silvery-
necked lady swinging a skirt and her golden slippers, adorned the
walls.  The curtains were of gold and silver.  The silver-coloured
carpet felt wonderfully soft beneath his feet, the furniture was of
a golden wood.

The young man felt suddenly quite homesick.  He was back in the
living-room of an old "Colonial" house, in the bend of a lonely
South Carolina river, reddish in hue.  He was staring at the effigy
of his high-collared, red-coated great-grandfather, Francis Wilmot,
Royalist major in the War of Independence.  They always said it was
like the effigy he saw when shaving every morning; the smooth dark
hair drooping across his right temple, the narrow nose and lips,
the narrow dark hand on the sword-hilt or the razor, the slits of
dark eyes gazing steadily out.  Young Francis was seeing the
darkies working in the cotton-fields under a sun that he did not
seem to have seen since he came over here; he was walking with his
setter along the swamp edge, where Florida moss festooned the tall
dolorous trees; he was thinking of the Wilmot inheritance, ruined
in the Civil War, still decayed yet precious, and whether to
struggle on with it, or to sell it to the Yank who wanted a week-
end run-to from his Charleston dock job, and would improve it out
of recognition.  It would be lonely there, now that Anne had
married that young Britisher, Jon Forsyte, and gone away north, to
Southern Pines.  And he thought of his sister, thus lost to him,
dark, pale, vivid, 'full of sand.'  Yes! this room made him
homesick, with its perfection, such as he had never beheld, where
the only object out of keeping was that dog, lying on its side now,
and so thick through that all its little legs were in the air.
Softly he said:

"It's the prettiest room I ever was in."

"What a perfectly charming thing to overhear!"

A young woman, with crinkly chestnut hair above a creamy face, with
smiling lips, a short straight nose, and very white dark-lashed
eyelids active over dark hazel eyes, stood near the door.  She came
towards him, and held out her hand.

Francis Wilmot bowed over it, and said, gravely:

"Mrs. Michael Mont?"

"So Jon's married your sister.  Is she pretty?"

"She is."

"Very?"

"Yes, indeed."

"I hope baby has been entertaining you."

"He's just great."

"He is, rather.  I hear Dandie bit you?"

"I reckon he didn't break the cuticle."

"Haven't you looked?  But he's quite healthy.  Sit down, and tell
me all about your sister and Jon.  Is it a marriage of true minds?"

Francis Wilmot sat down.

"It certainly is.  Young Jon is a pretty white man, and Anne--"

He heard a sigh.

"I'm very glad.  He says in his letter that he's awfully happy.
You must come and stay here.  You can be as free as you like.  Look
on us as an hotel."

The young man's dark eyes smiled.

"That's too good of you!  I've never been on this side before.
They got through the war too soon."

Fleur took the baby out of its nest.

"THIS creature doesn't bite.  Look--two teeth, but they don't
antagonise--isn't that how you put it?"

"What is its name?"

"Kit--for Christopher.  We agreed about its name, luckily.
Michael--my husband--will be in directly.  He's in Parliament, you
know.  They're not sitting till Monday--Ireland, of course.  We
only came back for it from Italy yesterday.  Italy's so wonderful--
you must see it."

"Pardon me, but is that the Parliament clock that chimes so loud?"

"Big Ben--yes.  He marks time for them.  Michael says Parliament is
the best drag on Progress ever invented.  With our first Labour
Government, it's been specially interesting this year.  Don't you
think it's rather touching the way this dog watches my baby?  He's
got the most terrific jaw!"

"What kind of dog is he?"

"A Dandie Dinmont.  We did have a Peke.  It was a terrible tragedy.
He WOULD go after cats; and one day he struck a fighting Tom, and
got clawed over both eyes--quite blinded--and so--"

The young man saw her eyes suddenly too bright.  He made a soft
noise, and said gently:  "That was too bad."

"I had to change this room completely.  It used to be Chinese.  It
reminded me too much."

"This little fellow would chaw any cat."

"Luckily he was brought up with kittens.  We got him for his legs--
they're so bowed in front that he can hardly run, so he just suits
the pram.  Dan, show your legs!"

The Dandie looked up with a negative sound.

"He's a terrible little 'character.'  Do tell me, what's Jon like
now?  Is he still English?"

The young man was conscious that she had uttered at last something
really in her mind.

"He is; but he's a dandy fellow."

"And his mother?  She used to be beautiful."

"And is to this day."

"She would be.  Grey, I suppose, by now?"

"Yes.  You don't like her?"

"Well, I hope she won't be jealous of your sister!"

"I think, perhaps, you're unjust."

"I think, perhaps, I am."

She sat very still, her face hard above the baby's.  And the young
man, aware of thoughts beyond his reach, got up.

"When you write to Jon," she said, suddenly, "tell him that I'm
awfully glad, and that I wish him luck.  I shan't write to him
myself.  May I call you Francis?"

Francis Wilmot bowed.  "I shall be proud, ma'am."

"Yes; but you must call me Fleur.  We're sort of related, you
know."

The young man smiled, and touched the name with his lips.

"Fleur!  It's a beautiful name!"

"Your room will be ready when you come back.  You'll have a
bathroom to yourself, of course."

He put his lips to the hand held out.

"It's wonderful," he said.  "I was feeling kind of homesick; I miss
the sun over here."

In going out, he looked back.  Fleur had put her baby back in its
nest, and was staring straight before her.



CHAPTER II

CHANGE


But more than the death of a dog had caused the regarnishing of
Fleur's Chinese room.  On the evening of her twenty-second birth-
day Michael had come home saying:

"Well, my child, I've chucked publishing.  With old Danby always in
the right--it isn't a career."

"Oh!  Michael, you'll be bored to death."

"I'll go into Parliament.  It's quite usual, and about the same
screw."

He had spoken in jest.  Six days later it became apparent that she
had listened in earnest.

"You were absolutely right, Michael.  It's the very thing for you.
You've got ideas."

"Other people's."

"And the gift of the gab.  We're frightfully handy for the House,
here."

"It costs money, Fleur."

"Yes; I've spoken to father.  It was rather funny--there's never
been a Forsyte, you know, anywhere near Parliament.  But he thinks
it'll be good for me; and that it's all baronets are fit for."

"One has to have a Seat, unfortunately."

"Well, I've sounded your father, too.  He'll speak to people.  They
want young men."

"Ah!  And what are my politics?"

"My dear boy, you must know--at thirty."

"I'm not a Liberal.  But am I Labour or Tory?"

"You can think it out before the next election!"

Next day, while he was shaving, and she was in her bath, he cut
himself slightly and said:

"The land and this unemployment is what I really care about.  I'm a
Foggartist."

"What?"

"Old Sir James Foggart's book, that he published after all.  You
read it."

"No."

"Well, you said so."

"So did others."

"Never mind--his eyes are fixed on 1944, and his policy's
according.  Safety in the Air, the Land, and Child Emigration;
adjustment of Supply and Demand within the Empire; cut our losses
in Europe; and endure a worse Present for the sake of a better
Future.  Everything, in fact, that's unpopular, and said to be
impossible."

"Well, you could keep all that to yourself till you get in.  You'll
have to stand as a Tory."

"How lovely you look!"

"If you get in, you can disagree with everybody.  That'll give you
a position from the start."

"Some scheme!" murmured Michael.

"You can initiate this--this Foggartism.  He isn't mad, is he?"

"No, only too sane, which is much the same thing, of course.  You
see we've got a higher wage-scale than any other country except
America and the Dominions; and it isn't coming down again; we
really group in with the new countries.  He's for growing as much
of our food as we can, and pumping British town children, before
they're spoiled, into the Colonies, till Colonial demand for goods
equals our supply.  It's no earthly, of course, without whole-
hearted co-operation between the Governments within the Empire."

"It sounds very sensible."

"We published him, you know, but at his own expense.  It's a 'faith
and the mountain' stunt.  He's got the faith all right, but the
mountain shows no signs of moving up to now."

Fleur stood up.  "Well," she said, "that's settled.  Your father
says he can get you a nomination as a Tory, and you can keep your
own views to yourself.  You'll get in on the human touch, Michael."

"Thank you, ducky.  Can I help dry you?" . . .

Before redecorating her Chinese room, however, Fleur had waited
till after Michael was comfortably seated for a division which
professed to be interested in agriculture.  She chose a blend
between Adam and Louis Quinze.  Michael called it the 'bimetallic
parlour'; and carried off "The White Monkey" to his study.  The
creature's pessimism was not, he felt, suited to political life.

Fleur had initiated her 'salon' with a gathering in February.  The
soul of society had passed away since the Liberal debacle and Lady
Alison's politico-legal coterie no longer counted.  Plainer people
were in the ascendant.  Her Wednesday evenings were youthful, with
age represented by her father-in-law, two minor ambassadors, and
Pevensey Blythe, editor of The Outpost.  So unlike his literary
style that he was usually mistaken for a Colonial Prime Minister,
Blythe was a tall man with a beard, and grey bloodshot eyes, who
expressed knowledge in paragraphs that few could really understand.
"What Blythe thinks to-day, the Conservative Party will not think
to-morrow," was said of him.  He spoke in a small voice, and
constantly used the impersonal pronoun.

"One is walking in one's sleep," he would say of the political
situation, "and will wake up without any clothes on."

A warm supporter of Sir James Foggart's book, characterising it as
"the masterpiece of a blind archangel," he had a passion for
listening to the clavichord, and was invaluable in Fleur's 'salon.'

Freed from poetry and modern music, from Sibley Swan, Walter Nazing
and Hugo Solstis, Fleur was finding time for her son--the eleventh
baronet.  He represented for her the reality of things.  Michael
might have posthumous theories, and Labour predatory hopes, but for
her the year 1944 would see the eleventh baronet come of age.  That
Kit should inherit an England worth living in was of more intrinsic
importance than anything they proposed in the Commons and were
unable to perform.  All those houses they were going to build, for
instance--very proper, but a little unnecessary if Kit still had
Lippinghall Manor and South Square, Westminster, to dwell in.  Not
that Fleur voiced such cynical convictions, or admitted them even
to herself.  She did orthodox lip-service to the great god
Progress.

The Peace of the World, Hygiene, Trade, and the End of Unemployment,
preoccupied all, irrespective of Party, and Fleur was in the
fashion; but instinct, rather than Michael and Sir James Foggart,
told her that the time-honoured motto:  'Eat your cake and have it,'
which underlay the platforms of all Parties, was not 'too
frightfully' sound.  So long as Kit had cake, it was no good
bothering too deeply about the rest; though, of course, one must
seem to.  Fluttering about her 'salon'--this to that person, and
that to the other, and to all so pretty, she charmed by her grace,
her common-sense, her pliancy.  Not infrequently she attended at the
House, and sat, not listening too much to the speeches, yet picking
up, as it were, by a sort of seventh sense (if women in Society all
had six, surely Fleur had seven) what was necessary to the conduct
of that 'salon'--the rise and fall of the Governmental barometer,
the catchwords and cliches of policy; and, more valuable,
impressions of personality, of the residuary man within the Member.
She watched Michael's career, with the fostering eye of a godmother
who has given her godchild a blue morocco prayer-book, in the hope
that some day he may remember its existence. Although a sedulous
attendant at the House all through the Spring and summer, Michael
had not yet opened his mouth, and so far she had approved of his
silence, while nurturing his desire to know his own mind by
listening to his wanderings in Foggartism.  If it were indeed the
only permanent cure for Unemployment, as he said, she too was a
Foggartist; common-sense assuring her that the only real danger to
Kit's future lay in that national malady.  Eliminate Unemployment,
and nobody would have time to make a fuss.  But her criticisms were
often pertinent:

"My dear boy, does a country ever sacrifice the present for the
sake of the future?" or:  "Do you really think country life is
better than town life?" or:  "Can you imagine sending Kit out of
England at fourteen to some Godforsaken end of the world?" or:  "Do
you suppose the towns will have it?" And they roused Michael to
such persistence and fluency that she felt he would really catch on
in time--like old Sir Giles Snoreham, whom they would soon be
making a peer, because he had always worn low-crowned hats and
advocated a return to hansom cabs.  Hats, buttonholes, an eyeglass--
she turned over in her mind all such little realities as help a
political career.

"Plain glass doesn't harm the sight; and it really has a focussing
value, Michael."

"My child, it's never done my Dad a bit of good; I doubt, if it's
sold three copies of any of his books.  No!  If I get on, it'll be
by talking."

But still she encouraged him to keep his mouth shut.

"It's no good starting wrong, Michael.  These Labour people aren't
going to last out the year."

"Why not?"

"Their heads are swelling, and their tempers going.  They're only
on sufferance; people on sufferance have got to be pleasant or they
won't be suffered.  When they go out, the Tories will get in again
and probably last.  You'll have several years to be eccentric in,
and by the time they're out again, you'll have your licence.  Just
go on working the human touch in your constituency; I'm sure it's a
mistake to forget you've got constituents."

Michael spent most week-ends that summer working the human touch in
mid-Bucks; and Fleur spent most week-ends with the eleventh baronet
at her father's house near Mapledurham.

Since wiping the dust of the city off his feet, after that affair
of Elderson and the P. P. R. S., Soames had become almost too
countrified for a Forsyte.  He had bought the meadows on the far
side of the river and several Jersey cows.  Not that he was going
in for farming or nonsense of that sort, but it gave him an
interest to punt himself over and see them milked.  He had put up a
good deal of glass, too, and was laying down melons.  The English
melon was superior to any other, and every year's connection with a
French wife made him more and more inclined to eat what he grew
himself.  After Michael was returned for Parliament, Fleur had sent
him Sir James Foggart's book, "The Parlous State of England."  When
it came, he said to Annette:

"I don't know what she thinks I want with this great thing!"

"To read it, Soames, I suppose."

Soames sniffed, turning the pages.

"I can't tell what it's all about."

"I will sell it at my bazaar, Soames.  It will do for some good man
who can read English."

From that moment Soames began almost unconsciously to read the
book.  He found it a peculiar affair, which gave most people some
good hard knocks.  He began to enjoy them, especially the chapter
deprecating the workman's dislike of parting with his children at a
reasonable age.  Having never been outside Europe, he had a
somewhat sketchy idea of places like South Africa, Australia,
Canada, and New Zealand; but this old fellow Foggart, it appeared,
had been there, and knew what he was talking about.  What he said
about their development seemed quite sensible.  Children who went
out there put on weight at once, and became owners of property at
an age when in England they were still delivering parcels, popping
in and out of jobs, hanging about street corners, and qualifying
for unemployment and Communism.  Get them out of England!  There
was a startling attraction in the idea for one who was English to a
degree.  He was in favour, too, of what was said about growing food
and making England safe in the air.  And then, slowly, he turned
against it.  The fellow was too much of a Jeremiah altogether.  He
complained to Fleur that the book dealt with nothing but birds in
the bush; it was unpractical.  What did 'Old Mont' say?

"He won't read it; he says he knows old Foggart."

"H'm!" said Soames, "I shouldn't be surprised if there were
something in it, then."  That little-headed baronet was old-
fashioned!  "Anyway it shows that Michael's given up those Labour
fellows."

"Michael says Foggartism will be Labour's policy when they
understand all it means."

"How's that?"

"He thinks it's going to do them much more good than anybody else.
He says one or two of their leaders are beginning to smell it out,
and that the rest of the leaders are bound to follow in time."

"In that case," said Soames, "it'll never go down with their rank
and file."  And for two minutes he sat in a sort of trance.  Had he
said something profound, or had he not?

Fleur's presence at week-ends with the eleventh baronet was
extremely agreeable to him.  Though at first he had felt a sort of
disappointment that his grandchild was not a girl--an eleventh
baronet belonged too definitely to the Monts--he began, as the
months wore on, to find him 'an engaging little chap,' and in any
case, to have him down at Mapledurham kept him away from
Lippinghall.  It tried him at times, of course, to see how the
women hung about the baby--there was something very excessive about
motherhood.  He had noticed it with Annette; he noticed it now with
Fleur.  French--perhaps!  He had not remembered his own mother
making such a fuss; indeed, he could not remember anything that
happened when he was one.  A week-end, when Madame Lamotte, Annette
and Fleur were all hanging over his grandson, three generations of
maternity concentrated on that pudgy morsel, reduced him to a punt,
fishing for what he felt sure nobody would eat.

By the time he had finished Sir James Foggart's book, the
disagreeable summer of 1924 was over, and a more disagreeable
September had set in.  The mellow golden days that glow up out of a
haze which stars with dewdrops every cobweb on a gate, simply did
not come.  It rained, and the river was so unnaturally full, that
the newspapers were at first unnaturally empty--there was literally
no news of drought; they filled up again slowly with reports of the
wettest summer 'for thirty years.'  Calm, greenish with weed and
tree shadow, the river flowed unendingly between Soames' damp lawn
and his damp meadows.  There were no mushrooms.  Blackberries
tasted of rain.  Soames made a point of eating one every year, and,
by the flavour, could tell what sort of year it had been.  There
was a good deal of 'old-man's-beard.'  In spite of all this,
however, he was more cheerful than he had been for ages.  Labour
had been 'in,' if not in real power, for months, and the heavens
had only lowered.  Forced by Labour-in-office to take some notice
of politics, he would utter prophecies at the breakfast-table.
They varied somewhat, according to the news; and, since he always
forgot those which did not come true, he was constantly able to
tell Annette that he had told her so.  She took no interest,
however, occupied, like a woman, with her bazaars and jam-making,
running about in the car, shopping in London, attending garden-
parties; and, in spite of her tendency to put on flesh, still
remarkably handsome.  Jack Cardigan, his niece Imogen's husband,
had made him a sixty-ninth-birthday present of a set of golf-clubs.
This was more puzzling to Soames than anything that had ever
happened to him.  What on earth was he to do with them?  Annette,
with that French quickness which so often annoyed him, suggested
that he should use them.  She was uncomfortable!  At his age--!
And then, one week-end in May the fellow himself had come down with
Imogen, and, teeing a ball up on half a molehill, had driven it
across the river.

"I'll bet you a box of cigars, Uncle Soames, that you don't do that
before we leave on Monday."

"I never bet," said Soames, "and I don't smoke."

"Time you began both.  Look here, we'll spend to-morrow learning to
knock the ball!'

"Absurd!" said Soames.

But in his room that night he had stood in his pyjamas swinging his
arms in imitation of Jack Cardigan.  The next day he sent the women
out in the car with their lunch; he was not going to have them
grinning at him.  He had seldom spent more annoying hours than
those which followed.  They culminated in a moment when at last he
hit the ball, and it fell into the river three yards from the near
bank.  He was so stiff next morning in arms and ribs, that Annette
had to rub him till he said:

"Look out! you're taking the skin off!"

He had, however, become infected.  After destroying some further
portions of his lawn, he joined the nearest Golf Club, and began to
go round by himself during the luncheon-hour, accompanied by a
little boy.  He kept at it with characteristic tenacity, till by
July he had attained a certain proficiency; and he began to say to
Annette that it would do her all the good in the world to take it
up, and keep her weight down.

"Merci, Soames," she would reply; "I have no wish to be the figure
of your English Misses, flat as a board before and behind."  She
was reactionary, 'like her nation'; and Soames, who at heart had a
certain sympathy with curves, did not seriously press the point.
He found that the exercise jogged both his liver and his temper.
He began to have colour in his cheeks.  The day after his first
nine-hole round with Jack Cardigan, who had given him three strokes
a hole and beaten him by nine holes, he received a package which,
to his dismay, contained a box of cigars.  What the fellow was
about, he could not imagine!  He only discovered when, one evening
a few days later, sitting at the window of his picture gallery, he
found that he had one in his mouth.  Curiously enough, it did not
make him sick.  It produced rather something of the feeling he used
to enjoy after 'doing Coue'--now comparatively out of fashion,
since an American, so his sister Winifred said, had found a shorter
cut.  A suspicion, however, that the family had set Jack Cardigan
on, prevented him from indulging his new sensation anywhere but in
his picture gallery; so that cigars gathered the halo of a secret
vice.  He renewed his store stealthily.  Only when he found that
Annette, Fleur, and others had known for weeks, did he relax his
rule, and say openly that the vice of the present day was
cigarettes.

"My dear boy," said Winifred, when she next saw him, "everybody's
saying you're a different man!"

Soames raised his eyebrows.  He was not conscious of any change.

"That chap Cardigan," he said, "is a funny fellow! . . .  I'm going
to dine and sleep at Fleur's; they're just back from Italy.  The
House sits on Monday."

"Yes," said Winifred; "very fussy of them--sitting in the Long
Vacation."

"Ireland!" said Soames, deeply.  "A pretty pair of shoes again!"
Always had been; always would be!



CHAPTER III

MICHAEL TAKES 'A LUNAR'


Michael had returned from Italy with the longing to 'get on with
it,' which results from Southern holidays.  Countryman by
upbringing, still deeply absorbed by the unemployment problem, and
committed to Foggartism, as its remedy, he had taken up no other
hobby in the House, and was eating the country's bread, if somewhat
unbuttered, and doing nothing for it.  He desired, therefore, to
know where he stood, and how long he was going to stand there.

Bent on 'taking this lunar'--as 'Old Forsyte' would call it--at his
own position, he walked away from the House that same day, after
dealing with an accumulated correspondence.  He walked towards
Pevensey Blythe, in the office of that self-sufficing weekly:  The
Outpost.  Sunburnt from his Italian holiday and thinned by Italian
cookery, he moved briskly, and thought of many things.  Passing
down on to the Embankment, where a number of unemployed birds on a
number of trees were also wondering, it seemed, where they stood
and how long they were going to stand there, he took a letter from
his pocket to read a second time.


"12 SAPPER'S ROW,
"CAMDEN TOWN.

HONOURABLE SIR,

"Being young in 'Who's Who,' you will not be hard, I think, to
those in suffering.  I am an Austrian woman who married a German
eleven years ago.  He was an actor on the English stage, for his
father and mother, who are no more living, brought him to England
quite young.  Interned he was, and his health broken up.  He has
the neurasthenie very bad so he cannot be trusted for any work.
Before the war he was always in a part, and we had some good money;
but this went partly when I was left with my child alone, and the
rest was taken by the P. T., and we got very little back, neither
of us being English.  What we did get has all been to the doctor,
and for our debts, and for burying our little child, which died
happily, for though I loved it much this life which we have is not
fit for a child to live.  We live on my needle, and that is not
earning much, a pound a week and sometimes nothing.  The managers
will not look at my husband all these years, because he shakes
suddenly, so they think he drinks, but, Sir, he has not the money
to buy it.  We do not know where to turn, or what to do.  So I
thought, dear Sir, whether you could do anything for us with the P.
T.; they have been quite sympatical; but they say they administrate
an order and cannot do more.  Or if you could get my husband some
work where he will be in open air--the doctor say that is what he
want.  We have nowhere to go in Germany or in Austria, our well-
loved families being no more alive.  I think we are like many, but
I cannot help asking you, Sir, because we want to keep living if we
can, and now we are hardly having any food.  Please to forgive me
my writing, and to believe your very anxious and humble

"ANNA BERGFELD."


'God help them!' thought Michael, under a plane-tree close to
Cleopatra's Needle, but without conviction.  For in his view God
was not so much interested in the fate of individual aliens as the
Governor of the Bank of England in the fate of a pound of sugar
bought with the fraction of a Bradbury; He would not arbitrarily
interfere with a ripple of the tides set loose by His arrangement
of the Spheres.  God, to Michael, was a monarch strictly limited by
His own Constitution.  He restored the letter to his pocket.  Poor
creatures!  But really, with 1,200,000 and more English unemployed,
mostly due to that confounded Kaiser and his Navy stunt--!  If that
fellow and his gang had not started their Naval rivalry in 1899,
England would have been out of the whole mess, or, perhaps, there
never would have been a mess!

He turned up from the Temple station towards the offices of The
Outpost.  He had 'taken' that Weekly for some years now.  It knew
everything, and managed to convey a slight impression that nobody
else knew anything; so that it seemed more weighty than any other
Weekly.  Having no particular Party to patronise, it could
patronise the lot.  Without Imperial bias, it professed a special
knowledge of the Empire.  Not literary, it made a point of reducing
the heads of literary men--Michael, in his publishing days, had
enjoyed every opportunity of noticing that.  Professing respect for
Church and the Law, it was an adept at giving them 'what-for.'  It
fancied itself on Drama, striking a somewhat Irish attitude towards
it.  But, perhaps above all, it excelled in neat detraction from
political reputations, keeping them in their place, and that place
a little lower than The Outpost's.  Moreover, from its editorials
emanated that 'holy ghost' of inspired knowledge in periods just a
little beyond average comprehension, without which no such
periodical had real importance.

Michael went up the stairs two at a time, and entered a large
square room, where Mr. Blythe, back to the door, was pointing with
a ruler to a circle drawn on a map.

"This is a bee map," said Mr. Blythe to himself.  "Quite the bee-
est map I ever saw."

Michael could not contain a gurgle, and the eyes of Mr. Blythe came
round, prominent, epileptic, richly encircled by pouches.

"Hallo!" he said defiantly:  "You?  The Colonial Office prepared
this map specially to show the best spots for Settlement schemes.
And they've left out Baggersfontein--the very hub."

Michael seated himself on the table.

"I've come in to ask what you think of the situation?  My wife says
Labour will be out in no time."

"Our charming little lady!" said Mr. Blythe; "Labour will survive
Ireland; they will survive Russia; they will linger on in their
precarious way.  One hesitates to predict their decease.  Fear of
their Budget may bring them down in February.  After the smell of
Russian fat has died away--say in November, Mont--one may make a
start."

"This first speech," said Michael, "is a nightmare to me.  How,
exactly, am I to start Foggartism?"

"One will have achieved the impression of a body of opinion before
then."

"But will there be one?"

"No," said Mr. Blythe.

"Oh!" said Michael.  "And, by the way, what about Free Trade?"

"One will profess Free Trade, and put on duties."

"God and Mammon."

"Necessary in England, before any new departure, Mont.  Witness
Liberal-Unionism, Tory-Socialism, and--"

"Other ramps," said Michael, gently.

"One will glide, deprecate Protection till there is more Protection
than Free Trade, then deprecate Free Trade.  Foggartism is an end,
not a means; Free Trade and Protection are means, not the ends
politicians have made them."

Roused by the word politician, Michael got off the table; he was
coming to have a certain sympathy with those poor devils.  They
were supposed to have no feeling for the country, and to be wise
only after the event.  But, really, who could tell what was good
for the country, among the mists of talk?  Not even old Foggart,
Michael sometimes thought.

"You know, Blythe," he said, "that we politicians don't think
ahead, simply because we know it's no earthly.  Every elector
thinks his own immediate good is the good of the country.  Only
their own shoes pinching will change electors' views.  If
Foggartism means adding to the price of living now, and taking
wage-earning children away from workmen's families for the sake of
benefit--ten or twenty years hence--who's going to stand for it?"

"My dear young man," said Mr. Blythe, "conversion is our job.  At
present our trade-unionists despise the outside world.  They've
never seen it.  Their philosophy is bounded by their smoky little
streets.  But five million pounds spent on the organised travel of
a hundred thousand working men would do the trick in five years.
It would infect the working class with a feverish desire for a
place in the sun.  The world is their children's for the taking.
But who can blame them, when they know nothing of it?"

"Some thought!" said Michael:  "Only--what Government will think
it?  Can I take those maps? . . .  By the way," he said at the
door, "there are Societies, you know, for sending out children."

Mr. Blythe grunted.  "Yes.  Excellent little affairs!  A few
hundred children doing well--concrete example of what might be.
Multiply it a hundredfold, and you've got a beginning.  You can't
fill pails with a teaspoon.  Good-bye!"

Out on the Embankment Michael wondered if one could love one's
country with a passion for getting people to leave it.  But this
over-bloated town condition, with its blight and smoky ugliness;
the children without a chance from birth; these swarms of poor
devils without work, who dragged about and hadn't an earthly, and
never would, on present lines; this unbalanced, hand-to-mouth,
dependent state of things--surely that wasn't to be for ever the
state of the country one loved!  He stared at the towers of
Westminster, with the setting sun behind them.  And there started
up before him the thousand familiars of his past--trees, fields and
streams, towers, churches, bridges; the English breeds of beasts,
the singing birds, the owls, the jays and rooks at Lippinghall, the
little differences from foreign sorts in shrub, flower, lichen, and
winged life; the English scents, the English haze, the English
grass; the eggs and bacon; the slow good humour, the moderation and
the pluck; the smell of rain; the apple-blossom, the heather, and
the sea.  His country, and his breed--unspoilable at heart!  He
passed the Clock Tower.  The House looked lacy and imposing, more
beautiful than fashion granted.  Did they spin the web of England's
future in that House?  Or were they painting camouflage--a screen,
over old England?

A familiar voice said:  "This is a monstrous great thing!"

And Michael saw his father-in-law staring up at the Lincoln statue.
"What did they want to put it here for?" said Soames.  "It's not
English."  He walked along at Michael's side.  "Fleur well?"

"Splendid.  Italy suited her like everything."

Soames sniffed.  "They're a theatrical lot," he said.  "Did you see
Milan cathedral!"

"Yes, sir.  It's about the only thing we didn't take to."

"H'm!  Their cooking gave me the collywobbles in '79.  I dare say
it's better now.  How's the boy?"

"A1, sir."

Soames made a sound of gratification, and they turned the corner
into South Square.

"What's this?" said Soames.

Outside the front door were two battered-looking trunks, a young
man, grasping a bag, and ringing the bell, and a taxicab turning
away.

"I can't tell you, sir," murmured Michael.  "Unless it's the angel
Gabriel."

"He's got the wrong house," said Soames, moving forward.

But just then the young man disappeared within.

Soames walked up to the trunks.  "Francis Wilmot," he read out.
"'S. S. Amphibian.'  There's some mistake!"



CHAPTER IV

MERE CONVERSATION


When they came in, Fleur was returning down-stairs from showing the
young man to his room.  Already fully dressed for the evening, she
had but little on, and her hair was shingled. . . .

"My dear girl," Michael had said, when shingling came in, "to
please me, don't!  Your nuque will be too bristly for kisses."

"My dear boy," she had answered, "as if one could help it!  You're
always the same with any new fashion!"

She had been one of the first twelve to shingle, and was just
feeling that without care she would miss being one of the first
twelve to grow some hair again.  Marjorie Ferrar, 'the Pet of the
Panjoys,' as Michael called her, already had more than an inch.
Somehow, one hated being distanced by Marjorie Ferrar. . . .

Advancing to her father, she said:

"I've asked a young American to stay, Dad; Jon Forsyte has married
his sister, out there.  You're quite brown, darling.  How's
mother?"

Soames only gazed at her.

And Fleur passed through one of those shamed moments, when the dumb
quality of his love for her seemed accusing the glib quality of her
love for him.  It was not fair--she felt--that he should look at
her like that; as if she had not suffered in that old business with
Jon more than he; if she could take it lightly now, surely he
could!  As for Michael--not a word!--not even a joke!  She bit her
lips, shook her shingled head, and passed into the 'bimetallic
parlour.'

Dinner began with soup and Soames deprecating his own cows for not
being Herefords.  He supposed that in America they had plenty of
Herefords?

Francis Wilmot believed that they were going in for Holsteins now.

"Holsteins!" repeated Soames.  "They're new since my young days.
What's their colour?"

"Parti-coloured," said Francis Wilmot.  "The English grass is just
wonderful."

"Too damp, with us," said Soames.  "We're on the river."

"The river Thames?  What size will that be, where it hasn't a
tide?"

"Just there--not more than a hundred yards."

"Will it have fish?"

"Plenty."

"And it'll run clear--not red; our Southern rivers have a red
colour.  And your trees will be willows, and poplars, and elms."

Soames was a good deal puzzled.  He had never been in America.  The
inhabitants were human, of course, but peculiar and all alike, with
more face than feature, heads fastened upright on their backs, and
shoulders too square to be real.  Their voices clanged in their
mouths; they pronounced the words 'very' and 'America' in a way
that he had tried to imitate without success; their dollar was too
high, and they all had motor-cars; they despised Europe, came over
in great quantities, and took back all they could; they talked all
the time, and were not allowed to drink.  This young man cut across
all these preconceptions.  He drank sherry and only spoke when he
was spoken to.  His shoulders looked natural; he had more feature
than face; and his voice was soft.  Perhaps, at least, he despised
Europe.

"I suppose," he said, "you find England very small."

"No, sir.  I find London very large; and you certainly have the
loveliest kind of a countryside."

Soames looked down one side of his nose.  "Pretty enough!" he said.

Then came turbot and a silence, broken, low down, behind his chair.

"That dog!" said Soames, impaling a morsel of fish he had set aside
as uneatable.

"No, no, Dad!  He just wants to know you've seen him!"

Soames stretched down a finger, and the Dandie fell on his side.

"He never eats," said Fleur; "but he has to be noticed."

A small covey of partridges came in, cooked.

"Is there any particular thing you want to see over here, Mr.
Wilmot?" said Michael.  "There's nothing very un-American left.
You're just too late for Regent Street."

"I want to see the Beefeaters; and Cruft's Dog Show; and your blood
horses; and the Derby."

"Darby!" Soames corrected.  "You can't stay for that--it's not till
next June."

"My cousin Val will show you race-horses," said Fleur.  "He married
Jon's sister, you know."

A 'bombe' appeared.  "You have more of this in America, I believe,"
said Soames.

"We don't have much ice-cream in the South, sir; but we have
special cooking--very tasty."

"I've heard of terrapin."

"Well, _I_ don't get frills like that.  I live away back, and have
to work pretty hard.  My place is kind of homey; but I've got some
mighty nice darkies that can cook fine--old folk that knew my
grannies.  The old-time darky is getting scarce, but he's the real
thing."

A Southerner!

Soames had been told that the Southerner was a gentleman.  He
remembered the 'Alabama,' too; and his father, James, saying:  "I
told you so" when the Government ate humble pie over that business.

In the savoury silence that accompanied soft roes on toast, the
patter of the Dandie's feet on the parquet floor could be plainly
heard.

"This is the only thing he likes," said Fleur, "Dan! go to your
master.  Give him a little bit, Michael."  And she stole a look at
Michael, but he did not answer it.

On their Italian holiday, with Fleur in the throes of novelty, sun
and wine warmed, disposed to junketing, amenable to his caresses,
he had been having his real honeymoon, enjoying, for the first time
since his marriage, a sense of being the chosen companion of his
adored.  And now had come this stranger, bringing reminder that one
played but second fiddle to that young second cousin and first
lover; and he couldn't help feeling the cup withdrawn again from
his lips.  She had invited this young man because he came from that
past of hers whose tune one could not play.  And, without looking
up, he fed the Dandie with tid-bits of his favourite edible.

Soames broke the silence.

"Take some nutmeg, Mr. Wilmot.  Melon without nutmeg--beats ginger
hollow."



When Fleur rose, Soames followed her to the drawing-room; while
Michael led the young American to his study.

"You knew Jon?" said Francis Wilmot.

"No; I never met him."

"He's a great little fellow; and some poet.  He's growing dandy
peaches."

"Is he going on with that, now he's married?"

"Surely."

"Not coming to England?"

"Not this year.  They have a nice home--horses and dogs.  They have
some hunting there, too.  Perhaps he'll bring my sister over for a
trip, next fall."

"Oh!" said Michael.  "And are you staying long, yourself?"

"Why! I'll go back for Christmas.  I'd like to see Rome and
Seville; and I want to visit the old home of my people, down in
Worcestershire."

"When did they go over?"

"William and Mary.  Catholics--they were.  Is it a nice part,
Worcestershire?"

"Very; especially in the Spring.  It grows a lot of fruit."

"Oh!  You still grow things in this country?"

"Not many."

"I thought that was so, coming on the cars, from Liverpool.  I saw
a lot of grass and one or two sheep, but I didn't see anybody
working.  The people all live in the towns, then?"

"Except a few unconsidered trifles.  You must come down to my
father's; they still grow a turnip or two thereabouts."

"It's sad," said Francis Wilmot.

"It is.  We began to grow wheat again in the war; but they've let
it all slip back--and worse."

"Why was that?"

Michael shrugged his shoulders:  "No accounting for statesmanship.
It lets the Land go to blazes when in office; and beats the drum of
it when in opposition.  At the end of the war we had the best air
force in the world, and agriculture was well on its way to
recovery.  And what did they do?  Dropped them both like hot
potatoes.  It was tragic.  What do you grow in Carolina?"

"Just cotton, on my place.  But it's mighty hard to make cotton pay
nowadays.  Labour's high."

"High with you, too?"

"Yes, sir.  Do they let strangers into your Parliament?"

"Rather.  Would you like to hear the Irish debate?  I can get you a
seat in the Distinguished Strangers' gallery."

"I thought the English were stiff; but it's wonderful the way you
make me feel at home.  Is that your father-in-law--the old
gentleman?"

"Yes."

"He seems kind of rarefied.  Is he a banker?"

"No.  But now you mention it--he ought to be."

Francis Wilmot's eyes roved round the room and came to rest on "The
White Monkey."

"Well, now," he said, softly, "that, surely, is a wonderful
picture.  Could I get a picture painted by that man, for Jon and my
sister?"

"I'm afraid not," said Michael.  "You see, he was a Chink--not
quite of the best period; but he must have gone West five hundred
years ago at least."

"Ah!  Well, he had a great sense of animals."

"We think he had a great sense of human beings."

Francis Wilmot stared.

There was something, Michael decided, in this young man
unresponsive to satire.

"So you want to see Cruft's Dog Show?" he said.  "You're keen on
dogs, then?"

"I'll be taking a bloodhound back for Jon, and two for myself.  I
want to raise bloodhounds."

Michael leaned back, and blew out smoke.  To Francis Wilmot, he
felt, the world was young, and life running on good tires to some
desirable destination.  In England--!

"What is it you Americans want out of life?" he said abruptly.

"Well, I suppose you might say we want success--in the North at all
events."

"WE wanted that in 1824," said Michael.

"Oh!  And nowadays?"

"We've had success, and now we're wondering whether it hasn't
cooked our goose."

"Well," said Francis Wilmot, "we're sort of thinly populated,
compared with you."

"That's it," said Michael.  "Every seat here is booked in advance;
and a good many sit on their own knees.  Will you have another
cigar, or shall we join the lady?"



CHAPTER V

SIDE-SLIPS


If Providence was completely satisfied with Sapper's Row, Camden
Town, Michael was not.  What could justify those twin dismal rows
of three-storied houses, so begrimed that they might have been
collars washed in Italy?  What possible attention to business could
make these little ground-floor shops do anything but lose money?
From the thronged and tram-lined thoroughfare so pregnantly scented
with fried fish, petrol and old clothes, who would turn into this
small back water for sweetness or for profit?  Even the children,
made with heroic constancy on its second and third floors, sought
the sweets of life outside its precincts; for in Sapper's Row they
could neither be run over nor stare at the outside of Cinemas.
Hand-carts, bicycles, light vans which had lost their nerve and
taxicabs which had lost their way, provided all the traffic; potted
geraniums and spotted cats supplied all the beauty.  Sapper's Row
drooped and dithered.

Michael entered from its west end, and against his principles.
Here was overcrowded England, at its most dismal, and here was he,
who advocated a reduction of its population, about to visit some
broken-down aliens with the view of keeping them alive.  He looked
into three of the little shops.  Not a soul!  Which was worst?
Such little shops frequented, or--deserted?  He came to No. 12,
and, looking up, saw a face looking down.  It was wax white,
movingly listless, above a pair of hands sewing at a garment.
'That,' he thought, 'is my "obedient humble" and her needle.'  He
entered the shop below, a hair-dresser's, containing a dirty basin
below a dusty mirror, suspicious towels, bottles, and two dingy
chairs.  In his shirt-sleeves, astride one of them, reading The
Daily Mail, sat a shadowy fellow with pale hollow cheeks, twisted
moustache, lank hair, and the eyes, at once knowing and tragic, of
a philosopher.

"Hair cut, sir?"

Michael shook his head.

"Do Mr. and Mrs. Bergfeld live here?"

"Up-stairs, top floor."

"How do I get up?"

"Through there."

Passing through a curtained aperture, Michael found a stairway, and
at its top, stood, hesitating.  His conscience was echoing Fleur's
comment on Anna Bergfeld's letter:  "Yes, I dare say; but what's
the good?" when the door was opened, and it seemed to him almost as
if a corpse were standing there, with a face as though some one had
come knocking on its grave, so eager and so white.

"Mrs. Bergfeld?  My name's Mont.  You wrote to me."

The woman trembled so, that Michael thought she was going to faint.

"Will you excuse me, sir, that I sit down?"  And she dropped on to
the end of the bed.  The room was spotless, but, besides the bed,
held only a small deal wash-stand, a pot of geranium, a tin trunk
with a pair of trousers folded on it, a woman's hat on a peg, and a
chair in the window covered with her sewing.

The woman stood up again.  She seemed not more than thirty, thin
but prettily formed; and her oval face, without colour except in
her dark eyes, suggested Rafael rather than Sapper's Row.

"It is like seeing an angel," she said.  "Excuse me, sir."

"Queer angel, Mrs. Bergfeld.  Your husband not in?"

"No, sir.  Fritz has gone to walk."

"Tell me, Mrs. Bergfeld.  If I pay your passages to Germany, will
you go?"

"We cannot hope from that now, Fritz has been here twenty years,
and never back; he has lost his German nationality, sir; they do
not want people like us, you know."

Michael stivered up his hair.

"Where are you from yourself?"

"From Salzburg."

"What about going back there?"

"I would like to, but what would we do?  In Austria every one is
poor now, and I have no relative left.  Here at least we have my
sewing."

"How much is that a week?"

"Sometimes a pound; sometimes fifteen shillings.  It is bread and
the rent."

"Don't you get the dole?"

"No, sir.  We are not registered."

Michael took out a five-pound note and laid it with his card on the
wash-stand.  "I've got to think this over, Mrs. Bergfeld.  Perhaps
your husband will come and see me."  He went out quickly, for the
ghostly woman had flushed pink.

Repassing through the curtained aperture, he caught the hair-
dresser wiping out the basin.

"Find em in, sir?"

"The lady."

"Ah!  Seen better days, I should say.  The 'usband's a queer
customer; 'alf off his nut.  Wanted to come in here with me, but
I've got to give this job up."

"Oh!  How's that?"

"I've got to have fresh air--only got one lung, and that's not very
gaudy.  I'll have to find something else."

"That's bad, in these days."

The hair-dresser shrugged his bony shoulders.  "Ah!" he said.
"I've been a hair-dresser from a boy, except for the war.  Funny
place this, to fetch up in after where I've been.  The war knocked
me out."  He twisted his little thin moustache.

"No pension?" said Michael.

"Not a bob.  What I want to keep me alive is something in the
open."

Michael took him in from head to foot.  Shadowy, narrow-headed,
with one lung.

"But do you know anything about country life?"

"Not a blessed thing.  Still, I've got to find something, or peg
out."

His tragic and knowing eyes searched Michael's face.

"I'm awfully sorry," said Michael.  "Good-bye!"

The hair-dresser made a queer jerky little movement.

Emerging from Sapper's Row into the crowded, roaring thoroughfare,
Michael thought of a speech in a play he had seen a year or two
before.  "The condition of the people leaves much to be desired.  I
shall make a point of taking up the cudgels in the House.  I shall
move--!"  The condition of the people!  What a remote thing!  The
sportive nightmare of a few dreaming nights, the skeleton in a
well-locked cupboard, the discomforting rare howl of a hungry dog!
And probably no folk in England less disturbed by it than the
gallant six hundred odd who sat with him in 'that House.'  For to
improve the condition of the people was their job, and that
relieved them of a sense of nightmare.  Since Oliver Cromwell some
sixteen thousand, perhaps, had sat there before them, to the same
end.  And was the trick done--not bee likely!  Still THEY were
really working for it, and other people were only looking on and
telling them how to do it!

Thus was he thinking when a voice said:

"Not got a job about you, sir?"

Michael quickened his steps, then stood still.  He saw that the man
who had spoken, having cast his eyes down again, had missed this
sign of weakness; and he went back to him.  They were black eyes in
a face round and pasty like a mince pie.  Decent and shabby, quiet
and forlorn, he wore an ex-Service-man's badge.

"You spoke to me?" said Michael.

"I'm sure I don't know why, sir; it just hopped out of me."

"No work?"

"No; and pretty low."

"Married?"

"Widower, sir; two children."

"Dole?"

"Yes; and fair sick of it."

"In the war, I see?"

"Yes, Mespot."

"What sort of job do you want?"

"Any mortal thing."

"Give me your name and address."

"Henry Boddick, 94 Waltham Buildings, Gunnersbury."

Michael took it down.

"Can't promise anything," he said.

"No, sir."

"Good luck, anyway.  Have a cigar?"

"Thank you, and good luck to you, sir."

Michael saluted, and resumed his progress; once out of sight of
Henry Boddick, he took a taxi.  A little more of this, and he would
lose the sweet reasonableness without which one could not sit in
'that House'!

'For Sale or to Let' recorded recurrently in Portland Place,
somewhat restored his sense of balance.

That same afternoon he took Francis Wilmot with him to the House,
and leaving him at the foot of the Distinguished Strangers'
stairway, made his way on to the floor.

He had never been in Ireland, so that the debate had for him little
relation to reality.  It seemed to illustrate, however, the
obstacles in the way of agreement on any mortal subject.  Almost
every speech emphasized the paramount need for a settlement, but
declared the impossibility of 'going back' on this, that, or the
other factor which precluded such settlement.  Still, for a debate
on Ireland it seemed good-tempered; and presently they would all go
out and record the votes they had determined on before it all
began.  He remembered the thrill with which he had listened to the
first debates after his election; the impression each speech had
given him that somebody must certainly be converted to something;
and the reluctance with which he had discovered that nobody ever
was.  Some force was at work far stronger than any eloquence,
however striking or sincere.  The clothes were washed elsewhere; in
here they were but aired before being put on.  Still, until people
put thoughts into words, they didn't know what they thought, and
sometimes they didn't know afterwards.  And for the hundredth time
Michael was seized by a weak feeling in his legs.  In a few weeks
he himself must rise on them.  Would the House accord him its
'customary indulgence'; or would it say:  'Young fellow--teaching
your grandmother to suck eggs--shut up!'

He looked around him.

His fellow members were sitting in all shapes.  Chosen of the
people, they confirmed the doctrine that human nature did not
change, or so slowly that one could not see the process--he had
seen their prototypes in Roman statues, in mediaeval pictures. . . .
'Plain but pleasant,' he thought, unconsciously reproducing
George Forsyte's description of himself in his palmy days.  But did
they take themselves seriously, as under Burke, as under Gladstone
even?

The words 'customary indulgence' roused him from reverie; for they
meant a maiden speech.  Ha! yes!  The member for Cornmarket.  He
composed himself to listen.  Delivering himself with restraint and
clarity, the speaker seemed suggesting that the doctrine 'Do unto
others as you would they should do unto you' need not be entirely
neglected, even in Ireland; but it was long--too long--Michael
watched the House grow restive.  'Alas! poor brother!' he thought,
as the speaker somewhat hastily sat down.  A very handsome man rose
in his place.  He congratulated his honourable friend on his able
and well-delivered effort, he only regretted that it had nothing to
do with the business in hand.  Exactly!  Michael slipped out.
Recovering his 'distinguished stranger,' he walked away with him to
South Square.

Francis Wilmot was in a state of some enthusiasm.

"That was fine," he said.  "Who was the gentleman under the
curtains?"

"The Speaker?"

"No; I mean the one who didn't speak."

"Exactly; he's the dignity of the House."

"They ought to feed him oxygen; it must be sleepy under there.  I
liked the delegate who spoke last but one.  He would 'go' in
America; he had big ideas."

"The idealism which keeps you out of the League of Nations, eh?"
said Michael with a grin.

Francis Wilmot turned his head rather sharply.

"Well," he said, "we're like any other people when it comes down to
bed-rock."

"Quite so," said Michael.  "Idealism is just a by-product of
geography--it's the haze that lies in the middle distance.  The
farther you are from bed-rock, the less quick you need be to see
it.  We're twenty sea-miles more idealistic about the European
situation than the French are.  And you're three thousand sea-miles
more idealistic than we are.  But when it's a matter of niggers,
we're three thousand sea-miles more idealistic than you; isn't that
so?"

Francis Wilmot narrowed his dark eyes.

"It is," he said.  "The farther North we go in the States, the more
idealistic we get about the negro.  Anne and I've lived all our
life with darkies, and never had trouble; we love them, and they
love us; but I wouldn't trust myself not to join in lynching one
that laid his hands on her.  I've talked that over many times with
Jon.  He doesn't see it that way; he says a darky should be tried
like a white man; but he doesn't know the real South.  His mind is
still three thousand sea-miles away."

Michael was silent.  Something within him always closed up at
mention of a name which he still spelt mentally with an h.

Francis Wilmot added ruminatively:  "There are a few saints in
every country proof against your theory; but the rest of us, I
reckon, aren't above human nature."

"Talking of human nature," said Michael, "here's my father-in-law!"



CHAPTER VI

SOAMES KEEPS HIS EYES OPEN


Soames, having prolonged his week-end visit, had been spending the
afternoon at the Zoological Gardens, removing his great-nephews,
the little Cardigans, from the too close proximity of monkeys and
cats.  After standing them once more in Imogen's hall, he had
roosted at his Club till, idly turning his evening paper, he had
come on this paragraph, in the "Chiff-chaff" column:

"A surprise for the coming Session is being confectioned at the
Wednesday gatherings of a young hostess not a hundred miles from
Westminster.  Her husband, a prospective baronet lately connected
with literature, is to be entrusted with the launching in
Parliament of a policy which enjoys the peculiar label of
Foggartism, derived from Sir James Foggart's book called "The
Parlous State of England."  This amusing alarum is attributed to
the somewhat fantastic brain which guides a well-known weekly.  We
shall see what comes of it.  In the meantime the enterprising
little lady in question is losing no chance of building up her
'salon' on the curiosity which ever surrounds any buccaneering in
politics."

Soames rubbed his eyes; then read it again with rising anger.
'Enterprising little lady is losing no chance of building up her
"salon."'  Who had written that?  He put the paper in his pocket--
almost the first theft he had ever committed--and all the way
across St. James's Park in the gathering twilight he brooded on
that anonymous paragraph.  The allusion seemed to him unmistakable,
and malicious into the bargain.  'Lion-hunter' would not have been
plainer.  Unfortunately, in a primary sense 'lion-hunter' was a
compliment, and Soames doubted whether its secondary sense had ever
been 'laid down' as libellous.  He was still brooding deeply, when
the young men ranged alongside.

"Well, sir?"

"Ah!" said Soames.  "I want to speak to you.  You've got a traitor
in the camp."  And, without meaning to at all, he looked angrily at
Francis Wilmot.

"Now, sir?" said Michael, when they were in his study.

Soames held out the folded paper.

Michael read the paragraph and made a face.

"Whoever wrote that comes to your evenings," said Soames; "that's
clear.  Who is he?"

"Very likely a she."

"D'you mean to say they print such things by women?"

Michael did not answer.  Old Forsyte was behind the times.

"Will they tell me who it is, if I go down to them?" asked Soames.

"No, fortunately."

"How d'you mean 'fortunately'?"

"Well, sir, the Press is a sensitive plant.  I'm afraid you might
make it curl up.  Besides, it's always saying nice things that
aren't deserved."

"But this--" began Soames; he stopped in time, and substituted:
"Do you mean that we've got to sit down under it?"

"To lie down, I'm afraid."

"Fleur has an evening to-morrow."

"Yes."

"I shall stay up for it, and keep my eyes open."

Michael had a vision of his father-in-law, like a plainclothes man
in the neighbourhood of wedding-presents.

But in spite of assumed levity, Michael had been hit.  The
knowledge that his adored one had the collector's habit, and
flitted, alluring, among the profitable, had, so far, caused him
only indulgent wonder.  But now it seemed more than an amusing
foible.  The swiftness with which she turned her smile off and on
as though controlled by a switch under her shingled hair; the quick
turns of her neck, so charming and exposed; the clever roving,
disguised so well but not quite well enough, of the pretty eyes;
the droop and flutter of their white lids; the expressive hands
grasping, if one could so call such slim and dainty apprehensions,
her career--all this suddenly caused Michael pain.  Still she was
doing it for him and Kit!  French women, they said, co-operated
with their husbands in the family career.  It was the French blood
in her.  Or perhaps just idealism, the desire to have and be the
best of whatever bunch there was about!  Thus Michael, loyally.
But his uneasy eyes roved from face to face of the Wednesday
gathering, trying to detect signs of quizzicality.

Soames followed another method.  His mind, indeed, was uncomplicated
by the currents awash in that of one who goes to bed with the object
of his criticism.  For him there was no reason why Fleur should not
know as many aristocrats, Labour members, painters, ambassadors,
young fools, and even writing fellows, as might flutter her fancy.
The higher up they were, the less likely, he thought with a certain
naivete would they be to borrow money or get her into a mess.  His
daughter was as good or better than any of them, and his deep pride
was stung to the quick by the notion that people should think she
had to claw and scrape to get them round her.  It was not she who
was after them, but they who were after her!  Standing under the
Fragonard which he had given her, grizzled, neatly moustached,
close-faced, chinny, with a gaze concentrated on nothing in
particular, as of one who has looked over much and found little in
it, he might have been one of her ambassadors.

A young woman, with red-gold hair, about an inch long on her de-
shingled neck, came and stood with her back to him, beside a soft
man, who kept washing his hands.  Soames could hear every word of
their talk.

"Isn't the little Mont amusing?  Look at her now, with 'Don
Fernando'--you'd think he was her only joy.  Ah!  There's young
Rashly!  Off she goes.  She's a born little snob.  But that doesn't
make this a 'salon,' as she thinks.  To found a 'salon' you want
personality, and wit, and the 'don't care a damn' spirit.  She
hasn't got a scrap.  Besides, who is she?"

"Money?" said the soft man.

"Not so very much.  Michael's such dead nuts on her that he's
getting dull; though it's partly Parliament, of course.  Have you
heard them talk this Foggartism?  All food, children, and the
future--the very dregs of dulness."

"Novelty," purred the soft man, "is the vice of our age."

"One resents a nobody like her climbing in on piffle like this
Foggartism.  Did you read the book?"

"Hardly.  Did you?"

"No jolly fear!  I'm sorry for Michael.  He's being exploited by
that little snob."

Penned without an outlet, Soames had begun breathing hard.  Feeling
a draught, perhaps, the young woman turned to encounter a pair of
eyes so grey, so cold, in a face so concentrated, that she moved
away.  "Who was that old buffer?" she asked of the soft man; "he
gave me 'the jim-jams.'"

The soft man thought it might be a poor relation--he didn't seem to
know anybody.

But Soames had already gone across to Michael.

"Who's that young woman with the red hair?"

"Marjorie Ferrar."

"She's the traitress--turn her out!"

Michael stared.

"But we know her quite well--she's a daughter of Lord Charles
Ferrar, and--"

"Turn her out!" said Soames again.

"How do you know that she's the traitress, sir?"

"I've just heard her use the very words of that paragraph, and
worse."

"But she's our guest."

"Pretty guest!" growled Soames through his teeth.

"One can't turn a guest out.  Besides, she's the grand-daughter of
a marquess and the pet of the Panjoys--it would make the deuce of a
scandal."

"Make it, then!"

"We won't ask her again; but really, that's all one can do."

"Is it?" said Soames; and walking past his son-in-law, he went
towards the object of his denunciation.  Michael followed, much
perturbed.  He had never yet seen his father-in-law with his teeth
bared.  He arrived in time to hear him say in a low but quite
audible voice:

"You were good enough, madam, to call my daughter a snob in her own
house."

Michael saw the de-shingled neck turn and rear, the hard blue eyes
stare with a sort of outraged impudence; he heard her laugh, then
Soames saying:

"You are a traitress; be so kind as to withdraw."

Of the half-dozen people round, not a soul was missing it!  Oh,
hell!  And he the master of the house!  Stepping forward, he put
his arm through that of Soames:

"That'll do, sir," he said, quietly; "this is not a Peace
Conference."

There was a horrid hush; and in all the group only the soft man's
white hands, washing each other, moved.

Marjorie Ferrar took a step towards the door.

"I don't know who this person is," she said; "but he's a liar."

"I reckon not."

At the edge of the little group was a dark young man.  His eyes
were fixed on Marjorie Ferrar's, whose eyes in turn were fixed on
his.

And, suddenly, Michael saw Fleur, very pale, standing just behind
him.  She must have heard it all!  She smiled, waved her hand, and
said:

"Madame Carelli's going to play."

Marjorie Ferrar walked on towards the door, and the soft man
followed her, still washing those hands, as if trying to rid them
of the incident.  Soames, like a slow dog making sure, walked after
them; Michael walked after him.  The words "How amusing!" floated
back, and a soft echoing snigger.  Slam!  Both outer door and
incident were closed.

Michael wiped his forehead.  One half of the brain behind admired
his father-in-law; the other thought:  'Well, the old man HAS gone
and done it!'  He went back into the drawing-room.  Fleur was
standing near the clavichord, as if nothing had happened.  But
Michael could see her fingers crisping at her dress; and his heart
felt sore.  He waited, quivering, for the last chord.

Soames had gone up-stairs.  Before "The White Monkey" in Michael's
study, he reviewed his own conduct.  He regretted nothing.  Red-
headed cat!  'Born snob!'  'Money?  Not very much.'  Ha!  'A nobody
like her!'  Grand-daughter of a marquess, was she?  Well, he had
shown the insolent baggage the door.  All that was sturdy in his
fibre, all that was acrid in his blood, all that resented patronage
and privilege, the inherited spirit of his forefathers, moved
within him.  Who were the aristocracy, to give themselves airs?
Jackanapes!  Half of 'em descendants of those who had got what they
had by robbery or jobbery!  That one of them should call his
daughter, HIS daughter, a snob!  He wouldn't lift a finger,
wouldn't cross a road, to meet the Duke of Seven Dials himself!  If
Fleur liked to amuse herself by having people round her, why
shouldn't she?  His blood ran suddenly a little cold.  Would she
say that he had spoiled her 'salon'?  Well!  He couldn't help it if
she did; better to have had the thing out, and got rid of that cat,
and know where they all were.  'I shan't wait up for her,' he
thought.  'Storm in a teacup!'

The thin strumming of the clavichord came up to him out on the
landing, waiting to climb to his room.  He wondered if these
evenings woke the baby.  A gruff sound at his feet made him jump.
That dog lying outside the baby's door!  He wished the little
beggar had been down-stairs just now--he would have known how to
put his teeth through that red-haired cat's nude stockings.  He
passed on up, looking at Francis Wilmot's door, which was opposite
his own.

That young American chap must have overheard something too; but he
shouldn't allude to the matter with him; not dignified.  And,
shutting his door on the strumming of the clavichord, Soames closed
his eyes again as best he could.



CHAPTER VII

SOUNDS IN THE NIGHT


Michael had never heard Fleur cry, and to see her, flung down
across the bed, smothering her sobs in the quilt, gave him a
feeling akin to panic.  She stopped at his touch on her hair, and
lay still.

"Buck up, darling!" he said, gently.  "If you aren't one, what does
it matter?"

She struggled up, and sat cross-legged, her flushed face smudged
with tears, her hair disordered.

"Who cares what one is?  It's what one's labelled."

"Well, we've labelled her 'Traitress.'"

"As if that made it better!  We all talk behind people's backs.
Who minds that?  But how can I go on when everybody is sniggering
and thinking me a lion-hunting snob?  She'll cry it all over London
in revenge.  How can I have any more evenings?"

Was it for her career, or his, that she was sorrowing?  Michael
went round to the other side of the bed and put his arms about her
from behind.

"Never mind what people think, my child.  Sooner or later one's got
to face that anyway."

"It's you who aren't facing it.  If I'm not thought nice, I can't
BE nice."

"Only the people who really know one matter."

"Nobody knows one," said Fleur, sullenly.  "The fonder they are,
the less they know, and the less it matters what they think."

Michael withdrew his arms.

She sat silent for so long that he went back to the other side of
the bed to see if he could tell anything from her face resting
moodily on her hands.  The grace of her body thus cramped was such
that his senses ached.  And since caresses would only worry her,
they ached the more.

"I hate her," she said, at last; "and if I can hurt her, I will."

He would have liked to hurt the 'pet of the Panjoys' himself, but
it did not console him to hear Fleur utter that sentiment; it meant
more from her than from himself, who, when it came to the point,
was a poor hand at hurting people.

"Well, darling," he said, "shall we sleep on it?"

"I said I wouldn't have any more evenings; but I shall."

"Good!" said Michael; "that's the spirit."

She laughed.  It was a funny hard little sound in the night.  And
with it Michael had to remain discontented.

All through the house it was a wakeful night.  Soames had the three
o'clock tremors, which cigars and the fresh air wherein he was
obliged to play his golf had subdued for some time past.  He was
disturbed, too, by that confounded great clock from hour to hour,
and by a stealthy noise between three and four, as of some one at
large in the house.

This was, in fact, Francis Wilmot.  Ever since his impulsive denial
that Soames was a liar, the young man had been in a peculiar state
of mind.  As Soames surmised, he too had overheard Marjorie Ferrar
slandering her hostess; but in the very moment of his refutation,
like Saul setting forth to attack the Christians, he had been
smitten by blindness.  Those blue eyes, pouring into his the light
of defiance, had finished with a gleam which seemed to say:  'Young
man, you please me!'  And it haunted him.  That lissome nymph--with
her white skin and red-gold hair, her blue eyes full of insolence,
her red lips full of joy, her white neck fragrant as a pine-wood in
sunshine--the vision was abiding.  He had been watching her all
through the evening; but it was uncanny the way she had left her
image on his senses in that one long moment, so that now he got no
sleep.  Though he had not been introduced, he knew her name to be
Marjorie Ferrar, and he thought it 'fine.'  Countryman that he was
and with little knowledge of women--she was unlike any woman he had
known.  And he had given her the lie direct!  This made him so
restless that he drank the contents of his water-bottle, put on his
clothes, and stole down-stairs.  Passing the Dandie, who stirred as
though muttering:  'Unusual!  But I know those legs!' he reached
the hall, where a milky glimmer came in through the fanlight.
Lighting a cigarette, he sat down on the marble coat-sarcophagus.
It cooled his anatomy, so that he got off it, turned up the light,
saw a telephone directory resting beside him, and mechanically
sought the letter 'F.'  There she was!  "Ferrar, Marjorie, 3, River
Studios, Wren Street."  Switching off the light, he slipped back
the door-chain, and stole out.  He knew his way to the river, and
went towards it.

It was the hour when sound, exhausted, has trailed away, and one
can hear a moth pass.  London, in clear air, with no smoke going
up, slept beneath the moon.  Bridges, towers, water, all silvered,
had a look as if withdrawn from man.  Even the houses and the trees
enjoyed their moony hour apart, and seemed to breathe out with
Francis Wilmot a stanza from "The Ancient Mariner":


     'O Sleep, it is a gentle thing,
      Beloved from pole to pole!
      To Mary Queen the praise be given,
      She sent the gentle sleep from heaven
      That slid into my soul!'


He turned at random to the right along the river.  Never in his
life had he walked through a great city at the dead hour.  Not a
passion alive, nor a thought of gain; haste asleep, and terrors
dreaming; here and there would be one turning on his bed; perchance
a soul passing.  Down on the water lighters and barges lay shadowy
and abandoned, with red lights burning; the lamps along the
Embankment shone without purpose, as if they had been freed.  Man
was away.  In the whole town only himself up and doing--what?
Natively shrewd and resourceful in all active situations, the young
Southerner had little power of diagnosis, and certainly did not
consider himself ridiculous wandering about like this at night, not
even when he suddenly felt that if he could 'locate' her windows,
he could go home and sleep.  He passed the Tate Gallery and saw a
human being with moonlit buttons.

"Pardon me, officer," he said, "but where is Wren Street?"

"Straight on and fifth to the right."

Francis Wilmot resumed his march.  The 'moving' moon was heeling
down, the stars were gaining light, the trees had begun to shiver.
He found the fifth turning, walked down 'the block,' and was no
wiser; it was too dark to read names or numbers.  He passed another
buttoned human effigy and said:

"Pardon me, officer, but where are River Studios?"

"Comin' away from them; last house on the right."

Francis Wilmot retraced his steps.  There it was, then--by itself,
back from the street.  He stood before it and gazed at dark
windows.  She might be behind any one of them!  Well!  He had
'located' her; and, in the rising wind, he turned and walked home.
He went up-stairs stealthily as he had come down, past the Dandie,
who again raised his head, muttered:  'Still more unusual, but the
same legs!' entered his room, lay down, and fell asleep like a
baby.



CHAPTER VIII

ROUND AND ABOUT


General reticence at breakfast concerning the incident of the night
before, made little impression on Soames, because the young
American was present, before whom, naturally, one would not discuss
it; but he noted that Fleur was pale.  In his early-morning vigil
legal misgivings had assailed him.  Could one call even a red-
haired baggage 'traitress' in the hearing of some half-dozen
persons with impunity?  He went off to his sister Winifred's after
breakfast, and told her the whole story.

"Quite right, my dear boy," was her comment.  "They tell me that
young woman is as fast as they're made.  Her father, you know,
owned the horse that didn't beat the French horse--I never can
remember its name--in that race, the Something Stakes, at--dear me!
what was the meeting?"

"I know nothing about racing," said Soames.

But that afternoon at 'The Connoisseurs Club' a card was brought to
him:


                      LORD CHARLES FERRAR

                High Marshes,
                Nr. Newmarket.  Burton's Club.


For a moment his knees felt a little weak; but the word 'snob'
coming to his assistance, he said drily:  "Show him into the
strangers' room."  He was not going to hurry himself for this
fellow, and finished his tea before repairing to that forlorn
corner.

A tallish man was standing in the middle of the little room, thin
and upright, with a moustache brushed arrogantly off his lips, and
a single eyeglass which seemed to have grown over the right eye, so
unaided was it.  There were corrugations in his thin weathered
cheeks, and in his thick hair flecked at the sides with grey.
Soames had no difficulty in disliking him at sight.

"Mr. Forsyte, I believe?"

Soames inclined his head.

"You made use of an insulting word to my daughter last night in the
presence of several people."

"Yes; it was richly deserved."

"You were not drunk, then?"

"Not at all," said Soames.

His dry precision seemed to disconcert the visitor, who twisted his
moustache, frowned his eyeglass closer to his eye, and said:

"I have the names of those who overheard it.  You will be good
enough to write to each of them separately withdrawing your
expression unreservedly."

"I shall do nothing of the kind."

A moment's silence ensued.

"You are an attorney, I believe?"

"A solicitor."

"Then you know the consequences of refusal."

"If your daughter likes to go into Court, I shall be happy to meet
her there."

"You refuse to withdraw?"

"Absolutely."

"Good evening, then!"

"Good evening!"

For two pins he would have walked round the fellow, the bristles
rising on his back, but, instead, he stood a little to one side to
let him out.  Insolent brute!  He could so easily hear again the
voice of old Uncle Jolyon, characterising some person of the
eighties as 'a pettifogging little attorney.'  And he felt that,
somehow or other, he must relieve his mind.  'Old Mont' would know
about this fellow--he would go across and ask him.

At 'The Aeroplane' he found not only Sir Lawrence Mont, looking
almost grave, but Michael, who had evidently been detailing to his
father last evening's incident.  This was a relief to Soames, who
felt the insults to his daughter too bitterly to talk of them.
Describing the visit he had just received, he ended with the words:

"This fellow--Ferrar--what's his standing?"

"Charlie Ferrar?  He owes money everywhere, has some useful horses,
and is a very good shot."

"He didn't strike me as a gentleman," said Soames.

Sir Lawrence cocked his eyebrow, as if debating whether he ought to
answer this remark about one who had ancestors, from one who had
none.

"And his daughter," said Soames, "isn't a lady."

Sir Lawrence wagged his head.

"Single-minded, Forsyte, single-minded; but you're right; there's a
queer streak in that blood.  Old Shropshire's a dear old man; it
skipped his generation, but it's there--it's there.  His aunt--"

"He called me an attorney," said Soames with a grim smile, "and she
called me a liar.  I don't know which is worse."

Sir Lawrence got up and looked into St. James's Street.  Soames had
the feeling that the narrow head perched up on that straight thin
back counted for more than his own, in this affair.  One was
dealing here with people who said and did what they liked and
damned the consequences; this baronet chap had been brought up in
that way himself, no doubt, he ought to know how their minds
worked.

Sir Lawrence turned.

"She may bring an action, Forsyte; it was very public.  What
evidence have you?"

"My own ears."

Sir Lawrence looked at the ears, as if to gauge their length.

"M'm!  Anything else?"

"That paragraph."

"She'll get at the paper.  Yes?"

"The man she was talking to."

Michael ejaculated:  "Philip Quinsey--put not your trust in Gath!"

"What more?"

"Well," said Soames, "there's what that young American overheard,
whatever it was."

"Ah!" said Sir Lawrence:  "Take care she doesn't get at HIM.  Is
that all?"

Soames nodded.  It didn't seem much, now he came to think of it!

"You say she called you a liar.  How would it be to take the
offensive?"

There was a silence; then Soames said:  "Women?  No!"

"Quite right, Forsyte!  They have their privileges still.  There's
nothing for it but to wait and see how the cat jumps.  Traitress!
I suppose you know how much the word costs?"

"The cost," said Soames, "is nothing; it's the publicity!"

His imagination was playing streets ahead of him.  He saw himself
already in 'the box,' retailing the spiteful purrings of that cat,
casting forth to the public and the papers the word 'snob,' of his
own daughter; for if he didn't, he would have no defence.  Too
painful!

"What does Fleur say?" he asked, suddenly, of Michael.

"War to the knife."

Soames jumped in his chair.

"Ah!" he said:  "That's a woman all over--no imagination!"

"That's what I thought at first, sir, but I'm not so sure.  She
says if Marjorie Ferrar is not taken by the short hairs, she'll put
it across everybody--and that the more public the thing is, the
less harm she can do."

"I think," said Sir Lawrence, coming back to his chair, "I'll go
and see old Shropshire.  My father and his shot woodcock together
in Albania in 'fifty-four."

Soames could not see the connection, but did not snub the proposal.
A marquess was a sort of gone-off duke; even in this democratic
age, he would have some influence, one supposed.

"He's eighty," went on Sir Lawrence, "and gets gout in the stomach,
but he's as brisk as a bee."

Soames could not be sure whether it was a comfort.

"The grass shall not grow, Forsyte.  I'll go there now."

They parted in the street, Sir Lawrence moving north--towards
Mayfair.

The Marquess of Shropshire was dictating to his secretary a letter
to his County Council, urging on them an item of his lifelong
programme for the electrification of everything.  One of the very
first to take up electricity, he had remained faithful to it all
his brisk and optimistic days.  A short, bird-like old man, in
shaggy Lovat tweeds, with a blue tie of knitted silk passed through
a ring, bright cheeks and well-trimmed white beard and moustache,
he was standing in his favourite attitude, with one foot on a
chair, his elbow on his knee, and his chin on his hand.

"Ah! young Mont!" he said:  "Sit down."

Sir Lawrence took a chair, crossed his knees, and threaded his
finger-tips.  He found it pleasing to be called 'young Mont,' at
sixty-six or so.

"Have you brought me another of your excellent books?"

"No, Marquess; I've come for your advice."

"Ah!  Go on, Mr. Mersey:  'In this way, gentlemen, you will save at
least three thousand a year to your rate-payers; confer a blessing
on the countryside by abolishing the smoke of four filthy chimneys;
and make me your obliged servant,

'SHROPSHIRE.'

Thank you, Mr. Mersey.  Now, my dear young Mont?"

Having watched the back of the secretary till it vanished, and the
old peer pivot his bright eyes, with their expression of one who
means to see more every day, on the face of his visitor, Sir
Lawrence took his eyeglass between thumb and finger, and said:

"Your granddaughter, sir, and my daughter-in-law want to fight like
billy-o."

"Marjorie?" said the old man, and his head fell to one side like a
bird's.  "I draw the line--a charming young woman to look at, but I
draw the line.  What has she done now?"

"Called my daughter-in-law a snob and a lion-hunter; and my
daughter-in-law's father has called your granddaughter a traitress
to her face."

"Bold man," said the marquess; "bold man!  Who is he?"

"His name is Forsyte."

"Forsyte?" repeated the old peer; "Forsyte?  The name's familiar--
now where would that be?  Ah!  Forsyte and Treffry--the big tea
men.  My father had his tea from them direct--real caravan; no such
tea now.  Is that the--?"

"Some relation, perhaps.  This man is a solicitor--retired; chiefly
renowned for his pictures.  A man of some substance, and probity."

"Indeed!  And IS his daughter a--a lion-hunter?"

Sir Lawrence smiled.

"She's a charmer.  Likes to have people about her.  Very pretty.
Excellent little mother; some French blood."

"Ah!" said the marquess: "the French!  Better built round the
middle than our people.  What do you want me to do?"

"Speak to your son Charles."

The old man took his foot off the chair, and stood nearly upright.
His head moved sideways with a slight continuous motion.

"I never speak to Charlie," he said, gravely.  "We haven't spoken
for six years."

"I beg your pardon, sir.  Didn't know.  Sorry to have bothered
you."

"No, no; pleasure to see you.  If I run across Marjorie, I'll see--
I'll see.  But, my dear Mont, what shall we do with these young
women--no sense of service; no continuity; no hair; no figures?  By
the way, do you know this Power Scheme on the Severn?"  He held up
a pamphlet:  "I've been at them to do it for years.  My Colliery
among others could be made to pay with electricity; but they won't
move.  We want some Americans over here."

Sir Lawrence had risen; the old man's sense of service had so
clearly taken the bit between its teeth again.  He held out his
hand.

"Good-bye, Marquess; delighted to see you looking so well."

"Good-bye, my dear young Mont; command me at any time, and let me
have another of your nice books."

They shook hands; and from the Lovat clothes was disengaged a
strong whiff of peat.  Sir Lawrence, looking back, saw the old man
back in his favourite attitude, foot on chair and chin on hand,
already reading the pamphlet.  'Some boy!' he thought; 'as Michael
would say.  But what has Charlie Ferrar done not to be spoken to
for six years?  Old Forsyte ought to be told about that.' . . .

In the meantime 'Old Forsyte' and Michael were walking homeward
across St. James's Park.

"That young American," said Soames; "what do you suppose made him
put his oar in?"

"I don't know, sir; and I don't like to ask."

"Exactly," said Soames, glumly.  There was, indeed, something
repulsive to him in treating with an American over a matter of
personal dignity.

"Do they use the word 'snob' over there?"

"I'm not sure; but, in the States to hunt lions is a form of
idealism.  They want to associate with what they think better than
themselves.  It's rather fine."

Soames did not agree; but found difficulty in explaining why.  Not
to recognise any one as better than himself or his daughter had
been a sort of guiding principle, and guiding principles were not
talked about.  In fact, it was so deep in him that he hadn't known
of it.

"I shan't mention it," he said, "unless he does.  What more can
this young woman do?  She's in a set, I suppose?"

"The Panjoys--"

"Panjoys!"

"Yes, sir; out for a good time at any cost--they don't really
count, of course.  But Marjorie Ferrar is frightfully in the
limelight.  She paints a bit; she's got some standing with the
Press; she dances; she hunts; she's something of an actress; she
goes everywhere week-ending.  It's the week-ends that matter, where
people have nothing to do but talk.  Were you ever at a weekend
party, sir?"

"I?" said Soames: "Good Lord--no!"

Michael smiled--incongruity, indeed, could go no farther.

"We must get one up for you at Lippinghall."

"No, thank you."

"You're right, sir; nothing more boring.  But they're the coulisses
of politics.  Fleur thinks they're good for me.  And Marjorie
Ferrar knows all the people we know, and lots more.  It IS
awkward."

"I should go on as if nothing had happened," said Soames:  "But
about that paper?  They ought to be warned that this woman is
venomous."

Michael regarded his father-in-law quizzically.

On entering, they found the man-servant in the hall.

"There's a man to see you, sir, by the name of Bugfill."

"Oh!  Ah!  Where have you put him, Coaker?"

"Well, I didn't know what to make of him, sir, he shakes all over.
I've stood him in the dining-room."

"Excuse me, sir," said Michael.

Soames passed into the 'parlour,' where he found his daughter and
Francis Wilmot.

"Mr. Wilmot is leaving us, Father.  You're just in time to say
good-bye."

If there were moments when Soames felt cordial, they were such as
these.  He had nothing against the young man; indeed, he rather
liked the look of him; but to see the last of almost anybody was in
a sense a relief; besides, there was this question of what he had
overheard, and to have him about the place without knowing would be
a continual temptation to compromise with one's dignity and ask him
what it was.

"Good-bye, Mr. Wilmot," he said; "if you're interested in pictures--"
he paused, and, holding out, his hand, added, "you should look
in at the British Museum."

Francis Wilmot shook the hand deferentially.

"I will.  It's been a privilege to know you, sir."  Soames was
wondering why, when the young man turned to Fleur.

"I'll be writing to Jon from Paris, and I'll surely send your love.
You've been perfectly wonderful to me.  I'll be glad to have you
and Michael visit me at any time you come across to the States; and
if you bring the little dog, why--I'll just be honoured to let him
bite me again."

He bowed over Fleur's hand and was gone, leaving Soames staring at
the back of his daughter's neck.

"That's rather sudden," he said, when the door was closed;
"anything upset him?"

She turned on him, and said coldly:

"Why did you make that fuss last night, Father?"

The injustice of her attack was so palpable, that Soames bit his
moustache in silence.  As if he could help himself, when she was
insulted in his hearing!

"What good do you think you've done?"

Soames, who had no notion, made no attempt to enlighten her.  He
only felt sore inside.

"You've made me feel as if I couldn't look anybody in the face.
But I'm going to, all the same.  If I'm a lion-hunter and a snob,
I'll do it thoroughly.  Only I do wish you wouldn't go on thinking
I'm a child and can't defend myself."

And still Soames was silent, sore to the soles of his boots.

Fleur flashed a look at him, and said:

"I'm sorry, but I can't help it; everything's queered;" and she too
went out of the room.

Soames moved blindly to the window and stood looking out.  He saw a
cab with luggage drive away; saw some pigeons alight, peck at the
pavement, and fly off again; he saw a man kissing a woman in the
dusk; a policeman light his pipe and go off duty.  He saw many
human and interesting things; he heard Big Ben chime.  Nothing in
it all!  He was staring at a silver spoon.  He himself had put it
in her mouth at birth.



CHAPTER IX

POULTRY AND CATS


He who had been stood in the dining-room, under the name of
Bugfill, was still upright.  Rather older than Michael, with an
inclination to side-whisker, darkish hair, and a pale face stamped
with that look of schooled quickness common to so many actors but
unfamiliar to Michael, he was grasping the edge of the dining-table
with one hand, and a wide-brimmed black hat with the other.  The
expression of his large, dark-circled eyes was such that Michael
smiled and said:

"It's all right, Mr. Bergfeld, I'm not a Manager.  Do sit down, and
smoke."

The visitor silently took the proffered chair and cigarette with an
attempt at a fixed smile.  Michael sat on the table.

"I gather from Mrs. Bergfeld that you're on the rocks."

"Fast," said the shaking lips.

"Your health, and your name, I suppose?"

"Yes."

"You want an open-air job, I believe?  I haven't been able to think
of anything very gaudy, but an idea did strike me last night in the
stilly watches.  How about raising poultry--everybody's doing it."

"If I had my savings."

"Yes, Mrs. Bergfeld told me about them.  I can inquire, but I'm
afraid--"

"It's robbery."  The chattered sound let Michael at once into the
confidence of the many Managers who had refused to employ him who
uttered it.

"I know," he said, soothingly, "robbing Peter to pay Paul.  That
clause in the Treaty was a bit of rank barbarism, of course,
camouflage it as they like.  Still, it's no good to let it prey on
your mind, is it?"

But his visitor had risen.  "To take from civilian to pay civilian!
Then why not take civilian life for civilian life?  What is the
difference?  And England does it--the leading nation to respect the
individual.  It is abominable."

Michael began to feel that he was overdoing it.

"You forget," he said, "that the war made us all into barbarians,
for the time being; we haven't quite got over it yet.  And your
country dropped the spark into the powder magazine, you know.  But
what about this poultry stunt?"

Bergfeld seemed to make a violent effort to control himself.

"For my wife's sake," he said, "I will do anything; but unless I
get my savings back, how can I start?"

"I can't promise; but perhaps I could start you.  That hair-dresser
below you wants an open-air job, too.  What's his name, by the
way?"

"Swain."

"How do you get on with him?"

"He is an opinionated man, but we are good friends enough."

Michael got off the table.  "Well, leave it to me to think it out.
We shall be able to do something, I hope;" and he held out his
hand.

Bergfeld took it silently, and his eyes resumed the expression with
which they had first looked at Michael.

'That man,' thought Michael, 'will be committing suicide some day,
if he doesn't look out.'  And he showed him to the door.  He stood
there some minutes gazing after the German actor's vanishing form,
with a feeling as if the dusk were formed out of the dark stories
of such as he and the hair-dresser and the man who had whispered to
him to stand and deliver a job.  Well, Bart must lend him that bit
of land beyond the coppice at Lippinghall.  He would buy a War hut
if there were any left and some poultry stock, and start a colony--
the Bergfelds, the hair-dresser, and Henry Boddick.  They could cut
the timber in the coppice, and put up the fowl-houses for
themselves.  It would be growing food--a practical experiment in
Foggartism!  Fleur would laugh at him.  But was there anything one
could do nowadays that somebody couldn't laugh at?  He turned back
into the house.  Fleur was in the hall.

"Francis Wilmot has gone," she said.

"Why?"

"He's off to Paris."

"What was it he overheard last night?"

"Do you suppose I asked?"

"Well, no," said Michael, humbly.  "Let's go up and look at Kit,
it's about his bath time."

The eleventh baronet, indeed, was already in his bath.

"All right, nurse," said Fleur, "I'll finish him."

"He's been in three minutes, ma'am."

"Lightly boiled," said Michael.

For one aged only fourteen months this naked infant had incredible
vigour--from lips to feet he was all sound and motion.  He seemed
to lend a meaning to life.  His vitality was absolute, not
relative.  His kicks and crows and splashings had the joy of a
gnat's dance, or a jackdaw's gambols in the air.  They gave thanks
not for what he was about to receive, but for what he was
receiving.  White as a turtle-dove, with pink toes, darker i