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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 Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
eBook No.: 0200741h.html
Language: English
Date first posted: October 2002
Date most recently updated: October 2002
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CONTENTS
INTERLUDE
BOOK II
THE SILVER SPOON
PART I
VI. SOAMES KEEPS HIS EYES OPEN
PART II
VI. MICHAEL VISITS BETHNAL GREEN
PART III
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 à 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.
"But O, the thorns we stand upon!"
--Winter's Tale
TO JOHN FORTESCUE
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.
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 débâcle 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 clichés 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 Coué'--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!
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!"
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?"
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!"
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 naïveté 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.
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.
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?"<