Title:      Swan Song
            (Third Book in the Trilogy "A Modern Comedy")
            (Second part of the Forsyte Chronicles)
Author:     John Galsworthy
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eBook No.:  0200751.txt
Language:   English
Date first posted: October 2002
Date most recently updated: October 2002

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A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook

Title:      Swan Song
            (Third Book in the Trilogy "A Modern Comedy")
            (Second part of the Forsyte Chronicles)
Author:     John Galsworthy



A MODERN COMEDY

BOOK III

SWAN SONG




CONTENTS


INTERLUDE

PASSERS BY


BOOK III

SWAN SONG


PART I


I.  INITIATION OF THE CANTEEN

II.  ON THE 'PHONE

III.  HOME-COMING

IV.  SOAMES GOES UP TO TOWN

V.  JEOPARDY

VI.  SNUFFBOX

VII.  MICHAEL HAS QUALMS

VIII.  SECRET

IX.  RENCOUNTER

X.  AFTER LUNCH

XI.  PERAMBULATION

XII.  PRIVATE FEELINGS

XIII.  SOAMES IN WAITING


PART II


I.  SON OF SLEEPING DOVE

II.  SOAMES GOES RACING

III.  THE TWO-YEAR-OLDS

IV.  IN THE MEADS

V.  MEASLES

VI.  FORMING A COMMITTEE

VII.  TWO VISITS

VIII.  THE JOLLY ACCIDENT

IX.  BUT--JON!

X.  THAT THING AND THIS THING

XI.  CONVERTING THE SLUMS

XII.  DELICIOUS NIGHT

XIII.  'ALWAYS!'


PART III


I.  SOAMES GIVES ADVICE

II.  OCCUPYING THE MIND

III.  POSSESSING THE SOUL

IV.  TALK IN A CAR

V.  MORE TALK IN A CAR

VI.  SOAMES HAS BRAIN WAVES

VII.  TO-MORROW

VIII.  FORBIDDEN FRUIT

IX.  AFTERMATH

X.  BITTER APPLE

XI.  'GREAT FORSYTE'

XII.  DRIVING ON

XIII.  FIRES

XIV.  HUSH

XV.  SOAMES TAKES THE FERRY

XVI.  FULL CLOSE




INTERLUDE

PASSERS BY


I


In Washington, District of Columbia, the "Fall" sun shone, and all
that was not evergreen or stone in Rock Creek Cemetery was glowing.
Before the Saint Gaudens statue Soames Forsyte sat on his overcoat,
with the marble screen to his back, enjoying the seclusion and a
streak of sunlight passaging between the cypresses.

With his daughter and her husband he had been up here already, the
afternoon before, and had taken a fancy to the place.  Apart from
the general attraction of a cemetery, this statue awakened the
connoisseur within him.  Though not a thing you could acquire, it
was undoubtedly a work of art, and produced a very marked effect.
He did not remember a statue that made him feel so thoroughly at
home.  That great greenish bronze figure of seated woman within the
hooding folds of her ample cloak seemed to carry him down to the
bottom of his own soul.  Yesterday, in the presence of Fleur,
Michael, and other people, all gaping like himself, he had not so
much noted the mood of the thing as its technical excellence, but
now, alone, he could enjoy the luxury of his own sensations.  Some
called it "Grief," some "The Adams Memorial."  He didn't know, but
in any case there it was, the best thing he had come across in
America, the one that gave him the most pleasure, in spite of all
the water he had seen at Niagara and those skyscrapers in New York.
Three times he had changed his position on that crescent marble
seat, varying his sensations every time.  From his present position
the woman had passed beyond grief.  She sat in a frozen acceptance
deeper than death itself, very remarkable!  There was something
about death!  He remembered his own father, James, a quarter of an
hour after death, as if--as if he had been told at last!

A red-oak leaf fell on to his lapel, another on to his knee; Soames
did not brush them off.  Easy to sit still in front of that thing!
They ought to make America sit there once a week!

He rose, crossed towards the statue, and gingerly touched a fold in
the green bronze, as if questioning the possibility of everlasting
nothingness.

"Got a sister living in Dallas--married a railroad man down there
as a young girl.  Why!  Texas is a wonderful State.  I know my
sister laughs at the idea that the climate of Texas isn't about
right."

Soames withdrew his hand from the bronze, and returned to his seat.
Two tall thin elderly figures were entering the sanctuary.  They
moved into the middle and stood silent.  Presently one said "Well!"
and they moved out again at the other end.  A little stir of wind
fluttered some fallen leaves at the base of the statue.  Soames
shifted along to the extreme left.  From there the statue was once
more woman--very noble!  And he sat motionless in his attitude of a
thinker, the lower part of his face buried in his hand.

Considerably browned and distinctly healthy-looking, he was
accustomed to regard himself as worn out by his long travel, which,
after encircling the world, would end, the day after tomorrow, by
embarkation on the Adelphic.  This three-day run to Washington was
the last straw, and he was supporting it very well.  The city was
pleasing; it had some fine buildings and a great many trees with
the tints on; there wasn't the rush of New York, and plenty of
houses that people could live in, he should think.  Of course the
place was full of Americans, but that was unavoidable.  He was
happy about Fleur too; she had quite got over that unpleasant
Ferrar business, seemed on excellent terms with young Michael, and
was looking forward to her home and her baby again.  There was,
indeed, in Soames a sense of culmination and of peace--a feeling of
virtue having been its own reward, and beyond all, the thought that
he would soon be smelling English grass and seeing again the river
flowing past his cows.  Annette, even, might be glad to see him--he
had bought her a really nice emerald bracelet in New York.  To such
general satisfaction this statue of "Grief" was putting the
finishing touch.

"Here we are, Anne."

An English voice, and two young people at the far end--going to
chatter, he supposed!  He was preparing to rise when he heard the
girl say, in a voice American, indeed, but soft and curiously
private:

"John, it's terribly great.  It makes me sink here."  From the
gesture of her hand, Soames saw that it was where the thing had
made HIM sink, too.

"Everlasting stillness.  It makes me sad, John."

As the young man's arm slid under hers his face came into view.
Quick as thought, half of Soames's face disappeared again into his
hand.  "John?"  "Jon" was what she had meant to say.  Young Jon
Forsyte--not a doubt of it!  And this girl, his wife, sister--as he
had heard--of that young American Francis Wilmot!  What a
mischance!  He remembered the boy's face perfectly, though he had
only seen it in that Gallery off Cork Street, and the pastrycook's
after, and once on that grim afternoon when he had gone down to
Robin Hill to beg his own divorced first wife to let HER son marry
HIS daughter!  Never had he been more pleased to be refused!  Never
had the fitness of things been better confirmed; and yet, the pain
of telling Fleur of that refusal remained in his memory like a
still-live ember, red and prickly under the ashes of time.  Behind
his shadowing hat and screening hand Soames made sure.  The young
man was standing bare-headed, as if in reverence to the statue.  A
Forsyte look about him, in spite of too much hair.  A poet--he had
heard!  The face wasn't a bad one; it had what they called charm;
the eyes were deep-set, like his grandfather's, old Jolyon's, and
the same colour, dark grey; the touch of brightness on his head
came from his mother, no doubt; but the chin was a Forsyte's chin.
Soames looked at the girl.  A fair height, brownish pale, brown
hair, dark eyes; pretty trick of the neck, nice way of standing
too; very straight, an attractive figure!  But how could the young
man have taken to her after Fleur?  Still, for an American, she
looked very natural; a little bit like a nymph, with a kind of
privacy about her.

Nothing in America had struck Soames so much as the lack of
privacy.  If you wanted to be private you had to disconnect your
telephone and get into a bath--otherwise they rang you up just as
you were going to sleep, to ask if you were Mr. and Mrs. Newberg.
The houses, too, were not divided from each other, nor even from
the roads.  In the hotels the rooms all ran into each other, and as
likely as not there'd be a drove of bankers in the hall.  Dinner
too--nothing private about that; even if you went out to dinner, it
was always the same: lobster-cocktails, shad, turkey, asparagus,
salad, and ice cream; very good dishes, no doubt, and you put on
weight, but nothing private about them.

Those two were talking; he remembered the young man's voice.

"It's the greatest man-made thing in America, Anne.  We haven't
anything so good at home.  It makes me hungry--we'll have to go to
Egypt."

"Your mother would just love that, Jon; and so would I."

"Come and see it from the other side."

Soames rose abruptly and left the alcove.  Though not recognised,
he was flustered.  A ridiculous, even a dangerous encounter.  He
had travelled for six months to restore Fleur's peace of mind, and
now that she was tranquil, he would not for the world have her
suddenly upset again by a sight of her first love.  He remembered
only too well how a sight of Irene used to upset himself.  Yes--and
as likely as not Irene was here too!  Well, Washington was a big
place.  Not much danger!  They were going to Mount Vernon in the
afternoon, and to-morrow morning early were off again!  At the top
of the cemetery his taxicab was waiting.  One of those other cars
must belong to those two young people; and he glanced at them
sidelong.  Did there rise in him some fear, some hope, that in one
of them he would see her whom, in another life, he had seen, day by
day, night by night, waiting for what--it seemed--he could not give
her.  No! only the drivers and their voices, their "Yeahs!" and
their "Yeps!"  Americans no longer said "Yes," it seemed.  And
getting into his taxi, he said:

"Hotel PO-tomac."

"Hotel Po-TO-mac?"

"If you prefer it."

The driver grinned and shut Soames in. . . .  The Veterans' Home!
They said the veterans had pretty well died off.  Still, they'd
have plenty coming on from this last war.  Besides, what was space
and money to America?  They had so much they didn't know what to do
with it.  Well, he didn't mind that, now that he was leaving.  He
didn't mind anything.  Indeed, he had invited quite a number of
Americans to come and see his pictures if they came to England.
They had been very kind, very hospitable; he had seen a great many
fine pictures too, including some Chinese; and a great many high
buildings, and the air was very stimulating.  It wouldn't suit him
to live here, but it was all very much alive, and a good tonic, for
a bit.  'I can't see HER living here!' he thought suddenly.  'There
never was anyone more private.'  The cars streamed past him, or
stood parked in rows.  America was all cars and newspapers!  And a
sudden thought disturbed him.  They put everything into the
newspapers over here; what if his name were among the arrivals?

Reaching his hotel, he went at once towards the kiosk in the hall
where you could buy newspapers, tooth-paste, "candy" to pull your
teeth out--teeth to replace them, he shouldn't be surprised.  List
of arrivals?  Here it was:  "Hotel Potomac:  Mr. and Mrs. Cyrus K.
McGunn; the Misses Errick; Mr. H. Yellam Roof; Mr. Semmes Forsyth;
Mr. and Mrs. Munt."  As large as life, but, fortunately, only half
as natural!  Forsyth!  Munt!  They never could get anything right
in the papers.  "Semmes!"  Unrecognisable, he should hope.  And
going over to the bureau, he turned the register towards him.  Yes!
he had written the names quite clearly.  Lucky, too, or they'd have
got 'em right, by mistake.  And then, turning the leaf, he read:
"Mr. and Mrs. Jolyon Forsyte."  Here!  At this hotel--those two!  A
day before them; yes, and at the very top, dated some days ago:
"Mrs. Irene Forsyte."  His mind travelled with incredible
swiftness.  He must deal with this at once.  Where were Fleur and
Michael?  They had seen the Freer Gallery with him yesterday, and a
beautiful little Gallery it was, he had never seen anything better,
and the Lincoln Memorial, and that great tower thing which he had
refused to go up.  This morning they had said they should go to the
Corcoran Gallery, where there was a Centenary Exhibition.  He had
known what that meant.  He had seen English centenaries in his
time.  All the fashionable painters of their day--and the result
too melancholy for words!  And to the clerk he said:

"Is there a restaurant here where I can get a good lunch?"

"Sure; they cook fine at Filler's."

"Good!  If my daughter and her husband come in, kindly tell them to
meet me at Filler's at one o'clock."

And, going back to the kiosk, he bought some tickets for the opera,
so that they should be out in the evening, and in ten minutes was
on his way to the Corcoran Gallery.  From Filler's they would go
straight off to Mount Vernon; they would dine at another hotel
before the opera, and to-morrow be off by the first train--he would
take no chances.  If only he could catch them at the Corcoran!

Arriving, he mechanically bought a catalogue and walked up-stairs.
The rooms opened off the gallery and he began at the end room.  Ah!
there they were, in front of a picture of the setting sun!  Sure of
them now, but not sure of himself--Fleur was so sharp--Soames
glanced at the pictures.  Modern stuff, trailing behind those
French extravagances Dumetrius had shown him six months ago in
London.  As he had thought, too, a wholesale lot; might all have
been painted by the same hand.  He saw Fleur touch Michael's arm
and laugh.  How pretty she looked!  A thousand pities to have her
applecart upset again!  He came up behind them.  What?  That
setting sun was a man's face, was it?  Well, you never knew
nowadays.

And he said:  "I thought I'd have a look in.  We're lunching at
Filler's; they tell me it's better than the hotel; and we can go
straight on from there to Mount Vernon.  I've got some seats for
the opera, to-night, too."

And, conscious of Fleur's scrutiny, he stared at the picture.  He
did not feel too comfortable.

"Are the older pictures better?" he asked.

"Well, sir, Fleur was just saying--how can anyone go on painting in
these days?"

"How do you mean?"

"If you walk through, you'll say the same.  Here's a hundred years
of it."

"The best pictures never get into these shows," said Soames; "they
just take anything they can get.  Ryder, Innes, Whistler, Sargent--
the Americans have had some great painters."

"Of course," said Fleur.  "But do you really want to go round, Dad?
I'm frightfully hungry."

"No," said Soames; "after that Saint Gaudens thing I don't feel
like it.  Let's go and lunch."



II


Mount Vernon!  The situation was remarkable!  With all that colour
on the trees, the grassy cliff, and below it the broad blue
Potomac, which, even Soames confessed, was more imposing than the
Thames.  And the low white house up here, dignified and private,
indeed, except for the trippers, almost English, giving him a
feeling he had not had since he left home.  He could imagine that
fellow George Washington being very fond of it.  One could have
taken to the place oneself.  Lord John Russell's old house on the
hill at Richmond was something like this, except, of course, for
the breadth of river, and the feeling you always had in America and
Canada, so far as he had seen, that they were trying to fill the
country and not succeeding--such a terrific lot of space, and
apparently no time.  Fleur was in raptures, and young Michael had
remarked that it was "absolutely topping."  The sun fell warmly on
his cheek while he took his last look from the wide porch, before
entering the house itself.  He should remember this--America had
not all been run up yesterday!  He passed into the hall and
proceeded, mousing, through the lower rooms.  Really!  They had
done it extraordinarily well.  Nothing but the good old original
stuff, from a century and a half ago, reminding Soames of half-
hours spent in the antique shops of Taunton and Tunbridge Wells.
Too much "George Washington" of course!  George Washington's mug,
George Washington's foot-bath, and his letter to so-and-so, and the
lace on his collar, and his sword and his gun and everything that
was his!  Still, that was unavoidable!  Detached from the throng,
detached even from his daughter, Soames moved--covered, as in a
cloak, by his collector's habit of silent appraisement; he so
disliked his judgments to be confused by uncritical imbecilities.
He had reached the bedroom up-stairs where George Washington had
died, and was gazing through the grille, when he heard sounds which
almost froze his blood; the very voices he had listened to that
morning before the Saint Gaudens statue, and with those voices
Michael's voice conjoined!  Was Fleur there too?  A backward glance
relieved him.  No! the three were standing at the head of the main
stairs exchanging the remarks of strangers casually interested in
the same thing.  He heard Michael say, "Jolly good taste in those
days."  And Jon Forsyte answering, "All hand-made, you see."

Soames dived for the back stairs, jostled a stout lady, recoiled,
stammering, and hurried on down.  If Fleur was not with Michael it
meant that she had got hold of the curator.  Take her away, while
those three were still up-stairs!  That was the thought in his
mind.  Two young Englishmen were not likely to exchange names or
anything else, and, if they did, he must get hold of Michael
quickly.  But how to get Fleur away?  Yes, there she was--talking
to the curator in front of George Washington's flute laid down on
George Washington's harpsichord in the music-room!  And Soames
suffered.  Revolting to seem unwell, still more revolting to
pretend to seem!  And yet--what else?  He could not go up to her
and say:  "I've had enough.  Let's go to the car!"  Swallowing
violently, he put his hand to his head and went towards the
harpsichord.

"Fleur!" he said, and without pausing to let her take him in, went
on:  "I'm not feeling the thing.  I must go to the car."

The words no doubt were startling, coming from one so undramatic.

"Dad!  What is it?"

"I don't know," said Soames; "giddy.  Give me your arm."

Really dreadful to him--the whole thing!  On the way to the car,
parked at the entrance, her concern was so embarrassing that he
very nearly abandoned his ruse.  But he managed to murmur:

"I've been doing too much, I expect; or else it's that cookery.
I'll just sit quiet in the car."

To his great relief she sat down with him, got out her smelling-
bottle, and sent the chauffeur to tell Michael.  Soames was
touched, though incommoded by having to sniff the salts, which were
very strong.

"Great fuss about nothing," he muttered.

"We'd better get home, dear, at once, so that you can lie down."

In a few minutes Michael came hurrying.  He too expressed what
seemed to Soames a genuine concern, and the car was started.
Soames sat back with his hand in Fleur's, and his mouth and eyes
tight closed, feeling perhaps better than he'd ever felt in his
life.  Before they reached Alexandria he opened his lips to say
that he had spoiled their trip for them; they must go home by way
of Arlington, and he would stay in the car while they had a look at
it.  Fleur was for going straight on, but he insisted.  Arrived,
however, at this other white house, also desirably situated on the
slope above the river, he almost had a fit while waiting for them
in the car.  What if the same idea had occurred to Jon Forsyte and
he were suddenly to drive up?  It was an intense relief when they
came out again, saying that it was nice but not a patch on Mount
Vernon: the porch columns were too thick.  When the car was again
traversing the bright woods Soames opened his eyes for good.

"I'm all right again, now.  It was liver, I expect."

"You ought to have some brandy, Dad.  We can get some on a doctor's
prescription."

"Doctor?  Nonsense.  We'll dine up-stairs and I'll get over the
waiter; they must have something in the house."

Dine up-stairs!  That was a happy thought!

In their sitting-room he lay down on the sofa, touched and
gratified, for Fleur was plopping up his cushions, shading the
light, looking over the top of her book to see how he was.  He did
not remember when he had felt so definitely that she really did
care about him.  He even thought:  'I ought to be ill a little,
every now and then!'  And yet, if he ever complained of feeling ill
at home, Annette at once complained of feeling worse!

Close by, in the little salon opposite the stairs, a piano was
being played.

"Does that music worry you, dear?"

Into Soames' mind flashed the thought 'Irene!'  If it were, and
Fleur were to go out to stop it, then, indeed, would fat be in the
fire!

"No; I rather like it," he said, hastily.

"It's a very good touch."

Irene's touch!  He remembered how June used to praise her touch;
remembered how he had caught that fellow Bosinney listening to her,
in the little drawing-room in Montpellier Square, with the wild-cat
look on his face, the fellow had; remembered how she used to stop
playing when he himself came in--from consideration, or the feeling
that it was wasted on him--which?  He had never known.  He had
never known anything!  Well--another life!  He closed his eyes, and
instantly saw Irene in her emerald-green dinner-gown, standing in
the Park Lane hall, first feast after their honeymoon, waiting to
be cloaked!  Why did such pictures come back before closed eyes--
pictures without rhyme or reason?  Irene brushing her hair--grey
now, of course!  As he was seventy, she must be nearly sixty-two!
How time went!  Hair feuille morte--old Aunt Juley used to call it
with a certain pride in having picked up the expression--and eyes
so velvet dark!  Ah! but handsome was as handsome did!  Still--who
could say!  Perhaps, if he had known how to express his feelings!
If he had understood music!  If she hadn't so excited his senses!
Perhaps--oh, perhaps your grandmother!  No riddling that out!  And
here--of all places.  A tricksy business!  Was one never to forget?

Fleur went to pack and dress.  Dinner came up.  Michael spoke of
having met a refreshing young couple at Mount Vernon, "an
Englishman; he said Mount Vernon made him awfully homesick."

"What was his name, Michael?"

"Name?  I didn't ask.  Why?"

"Oh!  I don't know.  I thought you might have."

Soames breathed again.  He had seen her prick her ears.  Give it a
chance, and her feeling for that boy of Irene's would flare up
again.  It was in the blood!

"Bright Markland," said Michael, "has been gassing over the future
of America--he's very happy about it because there are so many
farmers still, and people on the land; but he's also been gassing
over the future of England--he's very happy about it, and there's
hardly anybody on the land."

"Who's Bright Markland?" muttered Soames.

"Editor of our Scrutator, sir.  Never was a better example of
optimism, or the science of having things both ways."

"I'd hoped," said Soames heavily, "that seeing these new countries
would have made you feel there's something in an old one, after
all."

Michael laughed.  "No need to persuade me of that, sir.  But you
see I belong to what is called the fortunate class, and so, I
believe, do you."

Soames stared.  This young man was getting sarcastic!

"Well," he said, "I shall be glad to be home.  Are you packed?"

They were; and presently he telephoned for a cab to take them to
the opera.  So that they might not hang about in the hall, he went
down, himself, to see them into it.  The incident passed without
let or hindrance; and with a deep sigh of relief he resumed his
place in the lift, and was restored to his room.



III


He stood there at the window, looking out at the tall houses, the
lights, the cars moving below and the clear starry sky.  He was
really tired now; another day of this, and he would not need to
simulate indisposition.  A narrow squeak, indeed--a series of them!
He wished he were safe home.  To be under the same roof with that
woman--how very queer!  He had not passed a night under the same
roof with her since that dreadful day in November '87, when he
walked round and round Montpellier Square in such mortal agony, and
came to his front door to find young Jolyon there.  One lover dead,
and the other already on his threshold!  That night she had stolen
away from his house; never again till this night had the same roof
covered them.  That music again--soft and teasing!  WAS it she
playing?  To get away from it, he went into his bedroom and put his
things together.  He was not long about that, for he had only a
suitcase with him.  Should he go to bed?  To bed, and lie awake?
This thing had upset him.  If it were she, sitting at that piano, a
few yards away, what did she look like now?  Seven times--no,
eight--he had seen her since that long ago November night.  Twice
in her Chelsea flat; then by that fountain in the Bois de Boulogne;
at Robin Hill when he delivered his ultimatum to her and young
Jolyon; at Queen Victoria's funeral; at Lord's Cricket ground;
again at Robin Hill when he went to beg for Fleur; and in the
Goupenor Gallery just before she came out here.  Each meeting he
could remember in every detail, down to the lifting of her gloved
hand at the last--the faint smiling of her lips.

And Soames shivered.  Too hot--these American rooms!  He went back
into the sitting-room; they had cleared away and brought him the
evening paper; no good in that!  He could never find anything in
the papers over here.  At this distance from the past, all this
space and all this time--what did he feel about her?  Hate?  The
word was too strong.  One didn't hate those who weren't near one.
Besides, he had never hated her!  Not even when he first knew she
was unfaithful.  Contempt?  No.  She had made him ache too much for
that.  He didn't know what he felt.  And he began walking up and
down, and once or twice stood at the door and listened, as might a
prisoner in his cell.  Undignified!  And going to the sofa he
stretched himself out on it.  He would think about his travels.
Had he enjoyed them?  One long whirl of things, and--water.  And
yet, all had gone according to programme, except China, to which
they had given as wide a berth as possible, owing to its state.
The Sphinx and the Taj Mahal, Vancouver Harbour, and the Rocky
Mountains, they played a sort of hide-and-seek within him; and now--
that strumming; was it She?  Strange!  You had, it seemed, only
just one season of real heat.  Everything else that happened to you
was in a way tepid, and perhaps it was as well, or the boiler would
burst.  His emotions in the years when he first knew her--would he
go through them again?  Not for the world.  And yet!  Soames got
up.  That music was going on and on; but when it stopped, the
player--She or not She!--would be no longer visible.  Why not walk
past that little salon--just walk past, and--and take a glimpse?
If it were She, well, probably she'd lost her looks--the beauty
that had played such havoc with him?  He had noticed the position
of the piano; yes--the player would be in profile to him.  He
opened the door; the music swelled, and he stole forth.

The breadth of Fleur's room, only, separated him from that little
open salon opposite the stairs.  No one was in the corridor, not
even a bell boy.  Very likely some American woman after all,
possibly that girl--Jon's wife!  Yet no--there was something--
something in the sound!  And holding up the evening paper before
him, he moved along.  Three pillars, with spaces between them,
divided the salon from the corridor, avoiding what Soames so missed
in America--the fourth wall.  At the first of these pillars he came
to a stand.  A tall lamp with an orange shade stood by the
keyboard, and the light from it fell on the music, on the keys, on
the cheek and hair of the player.  SHE!  Though he had supposed her
grey by now, the sight of that hair without a thread in it of the
old gold affected him strangely.  Curved, soft, shining, it covered
her like a silver casque.  She was in evening dress, and he could
see that her shoulders, neck, and arms were still rounded and
beautiful.  All her body from the waist was moving lightly to the
rhythm of her playing.  Her frock was of a greyish heliotrope.
Soames stood behind his pillar gazing, his hand over his face, lest
she should turn her head.  He did not exactly feel--the film of
remembrance was unrolled too quickly.  From the first sight of her
in a Bournemouth drawing-room to the last sight of her in the
Goupenor Gallery--the long sequence passed him by in its heat and
its frost and its bitterness; the long struggle of sense, the long
failure of spirit; the long aching passion, and its long schooling
into numbness and indifference.  The last thing he wanted, standing
there, was to speak with her, and yet he could not take his eyes
away.  Suddenly she stopped playing; bending forward she closed the
music and reached to turn out the lamp.  Her face came round in the
light, and, cowering back, Soames saw it, still beautiful, perhaps
more beautiful, a little worn, so that the eyes looked even darker
than of old, larger, softer under the still-dark eyebrows.  And
once more he had that feeling:  "There sits a woman I have never
known."  With a sort of anger he craned back till he could see no
longer.  Ah! she had had many faults, but the worst of her faults
had always been, was still, her infernal mystery!  And, stepping
silently like a cat, he regained his room.

He felt tired to death now, and, going into his bedroom, undressed
hurriedly and got into bed.  He wished with all his heart that he
were on board, under the British flag.  'I'm old,' he thought
suddenly, 'old.'  This America was too young for him, so full of
energy, bustling about to ends he could not see.  Those Eastern
places had been different.  And yet, after all, he was a mere
seventy.  His father had lived to be ninety--old Jolyon eighty-
five, Timothy a hundred, and so with all the old Forsytes.  At
seventy THEY weren't playing golf; and yet they were younger,
younger anyway than he felt to-night.  The sight of that woman
had--had--!  Old!

'I'm not going back to be old,' he thought.  'If I feel like this
again I shall consult someone.'  They had some monkey thing
nowadays they could inject.  He shouldn't try that.  Monkeys
indeed!  Why not pigs or tigers?  Hold on somehow another ten or
fifteen years!  By that time they would have found out where they
were in England.  That precious capital levy would have been
exploded.  He would know what he had to leave to Fleur; would see
her baby grow into a boy and go to school--public school--even!
Eton?  No--young Jolyon had been there.  Winchester, the Monts'
school?  Not there either, if he could help it.  Harrow was handy;
or his own old school--Marlborough?  Perhaps he would see him play
at Lord's.  Another fifteen years before Kit could play at Lord's!
Well--something to look forward to, something to hold on for.  If
you hadn't that, you felt old, and if you FELT old, you WERE old,
and the end soon came.  How well that woman had worn!  She--!
There were his pictures too; take them up more seriously.  That
Freer Gallery!  Leave them to the nation, and your name lived--much
comfort in THAT!  She!  SHE would never die!

A crack of light on the wall close to the door.

"Asleep, Dad?"

So Fleur had remembered to come and have a look at him!

"How are you now, dear?"

"All right; tired.  How was the opera?"

"Middling."

"I've told them to call us at seven.  We'll breakfast on the
train."

Her lips touched his forehead.  If--if that woman--but never--never
once--never of her own accord--!

"Good night," he said.  "Sleep well!"

The light on the wall narrowed and was gone!  Well!  He was drowsy
now.  But, in this house--Shapes--Shapes!  Past--present--at the
piano--at his bedside--passing--passing by--and there, behind them,
the great bronze-hooded woman, with the closed eyes, deep sunk in
everlasting--profound--pro--!  And from Soames a gentle snore
escaped.





SWAN SONG



"We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."

--The Tempest,



TO F. N. DOUBLEDAY



PART I



CHAPTER I

INITIATION OF THE CANTEEN


In modern Society, one thing after another, this spice on that,
ensures a kind of memoristic vacuum, and Fleur Mont's passage of
arms with Marjorie Ferrar was, by the spring of 1926, well-nigh
forgotten.  Moreover, she gave Society's memory no encouragement,
for, after her tour round the world, she was interested in the
Empire--a bent so out of fashion as to have all the flavour and
excitement of novelty with a sort of impersonality guaranteed.

Colonials, Americans, and Indian students, people whom nobody could
suspect of being lions, now encountered each other in the
'bimetallic parlour,' and were found by Fleur 'very interesting,'
especially the Indian students, so supple and enigmatic, that she
could never tell whether she were 'using' them or they were 'using'
her.

Perceiving the extraordinarily uphill nature of Foggartism, she had
been looking for a second string to Michael's Parliamentary bow,
and, with her knowledge of India, where she had spent six weeks of
her tour, she believed that she had found it in the idea of free
entrance for the Indians into Kenya.  In her talks with these
Indian students, she learned that it was impossible to walk in a
direction unless you knew what it was.  These young men might be
complicated and unpractical, meditative and secret, but at least
they appeared to be convinced that the molecules in an organism
mattered less than the organism itself--that they, in fact,
mattered less than India.  Fleur, it seemed, had encountered faith--
a new and "intriguing" experience.  She mentioned the fact to
Michael.

"It's all very well," he answered, "but our Indian friends didn't
live for four years in the trenches, or the fear thereof, for the
sake of their faith.  If they had, they couldn't possibly have the
feeling that it matters as much as they think it does.  They might
want to, but their feelers would be blunted.  That's what the war
really did to all of us in Europe who were in the war."

"That doesn't make 'faith' any less interesting," said Fleur,
drily.

"Well, my dear, the prophets abuse us for being at loose ends, but
can you have faith in a life force so darned extravagant that it
makes mince-meat of you by the million?  Take it from me, Victorian
times fostered a lot of very cheap and easy faith, and our Indian
friends are in the same case--their India has lain doggo since the
Mutiny, and that was only a surface upheaval.  So you needn't take
'em too seriously."

"I don't; but I like the way they believe they're serving India."

And at his smile she frowned, seeing that he thought she was only
increasing her collection.

Her father-in-law, who had really made some study of orientalism,
lifted his eyebrow over these new acquaintances.

"My oldest friend," he said, on the first of May, "is a judge in
India.  He's been there forty years.  When he'd been there two, he
wrote to me that he was beginning to know something about the
Indians.  When he'd been there ten, he wrote that he knew all about
them.  I had a letter from him yesterday, and he says that after
forty years he knows nothing about them.  And they know as little
about us.  East and West--the circulation of the blood is
different."

"Hasn't forty years altered the circulation of your friend's
blood?"

"Not a jot," replied Sir Lawrence.  "It takes forty generations.
Give me another cup of your nice Turkish coffee, my dear.  What
does Michael say about the general strike?"

"That the Government won't budge unless the T. U. C. withdraw the
notice unreservedly."

"Exactly!  And but for the circulation of English blood there'd be
'a pretty mess,' as old Forsyte would say."

"Michael's sympathies are with the miners."

"So are mine, young lady.  Excellent fellow, the miner--but
unfortunately cursed with leaders.  The mine-owners are in the same
case.  Those precious leaders are going to grind the country's nose
before they've done.  Inconvenient product--coal; it's blackened
our faces, and now it's going to black our eyes.  Not a merry old
soul!  Well, good-bye!  My love to Kit, and tell Michael to keep
his head."

This was precisely what Michael was trying to do.  When 'the Great
War' broke out, though just old enough to fight, he had been too
young to appreciate the fatalism which creeps over human nature
with the approach of crisis.  He was appreciating it now before
'the Great Strike,' together with the peculiar value which the
human being attaches to saving face.  He noticed that both sides
had expressed the intention of meeting the other side in every way,
without, of course, making any concessions whatever; that the
slogans, 'Longer hours, less wages,' 'Not a minute more, not a bob
off,' curtsied, and got more and more distant as they neared each
other.  And now, with the ill-disguised impatience of his somewhat
mercurial nature, Michael was watching the sober and tentative
approaches of the typical Britons in whose hands any chance of
mediation lay.  When, on that memorable Monday, not merely the
faces of the gentlemen with slogans, but the very faces of the
typical Britons, were suddenly confronted with the need for being
saved, he knew that all was up; and, returning from the House of
Commons at midnight, he looked at his sleeping wife.  Should he
wake Fleur and tell her that the country was "for it," or should he
not?  Why spoil her beauty sleep?  She would know soon enough.
Besides, she wouldn't take it seriously.  Passing into his
dressing-room, he stood looking out of the window at the dark
square below.  A general strike at twelve hours' notice!  'Some'
test of the British character!  The British character?  Suspicion
had been dawning on Michael for years that its appearances were
deceptive; that members of Parliament, theatre-goers, trotty little
ladies with dresses tight blown about trotty little figures,
plethoric generals in armchairs, pettish and petted poets, parsons
in pulpits, posters in the street--above all, the Press, were not
representative of the national disposition.  If the papers were not
to come out, one would at least get a chance of feeling and seeing
British character; owing to the papers, one never had seen or felt
it clearly during the war, at least not in England.  In the
trenches, of course, one had--there, sentiment and hate,
advertisement and moonshine, had been 'taboo,' and with a grim
humour the Briton had just 'carried on,' unornamental and sublime,
in the mud and the blood, the stink and the racket, and the endless
nightmare of being pitchforked into fire without rhyme or reason!
The Briton's defiant humour that grew better as things grew worse,
would--he felt--get its chance again now.  And, turning from the
window, he undressed and went back into the bedroom.

Fleur was awake.

"Well, Michael?"

"The strike's on."

"What a bore!"

"Yes; we shall have to exert ourselves."

"What did they appoint that Commission for, and pay all that
subsidy, if not to avoid this?"

"My clear girl, that's mere common-sense--no good at all."

"Why can't they come to an agreement?"

"Because they've got to save face.  Saving face is the strongest
motive in the world."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, it caused the war; it's causing the strike now; without
'saving face' there'd probably be no life on the earth at all by
this time."

"Don't be absurd!"

Michael kissed her.

"I suppose you'll have to do something," she said, sleepily.
"There won't be much to talk about in the House while this is on."

"No; we shall sit and glower at each other, and use the word
'formula' at stated intervals."

"I wish we had a Mussolini."

"I don't.  You pay for him in the long run.  Look at Diaz and
Mexico; or Lenin and Russia; or Napoleon and France; or Cromwell
and England, for the matter of that."

"Charles the Second," murmured Fleur into her pillow, "was rather a
dear."

Michael stayed awake a little, disturbed by the kiss, slept a
little, woke again.  To save face!  No one would make a move
because of their faces.  For nearly an hour he lay trying to think
out a way of saving them all, then fell asleep.  He woke at seven
with the feeling that he had wasted his time.  Under the appearance
of concern for the country, and professions of anxiety to find a
'formula,' too many personal feelings, motives, and prejudices were
at work.  As before the war, there was a profound longing for the
humiliation and dejection of the adversary; each wished his face
saved at the expense of the other fellow's!

He went out directly after breakfast.

People and cars were streaming in over Westminster Bridge, no
'buses ran, no trams; but motor lorries, full or empty, rumbled
past.  Some 'specials' were out already, and emaciated men were
selling an emaciated print called The British Gazette.  Everybody
wore an air of defiant jollity.  Michael moved on towards Hyde
Park.  Over night had sprung up this amazing ordered mish-mash of
lorries and cans and tents!  In the midst of all the mental and
imaginative lethargy which had produced this national crisis--what
a wonderful display of practical and departmental energy!  'They
say we can't organise!' thought Michael; 'can't we just--AFTER THE
EVENT!'

He went on to a big railway station.  It was picketed, but they
were running trains already, with volunteer labour.  Poking round,
he talked here and there among the volunteers.  'By George!' he
thought, 'these fellows'll want feeding!  What about a canteen?'
And he returned post haste to South Square.

Fleur was in.

"Will you help me run a railway canteen for volunteers?"  He saw
the expression, 'Is that a good stunt?' rise on her face, and
hurried on:

"It'll mean frightfully hard work; and getting anybody we can to
help.  I daresay I could rope in Norah Curfew and her gang from
Bethnal Green for a start.  But it's your quick head that's wanted,
and your way with men."

Fleur smiled.  "All right," she said.

They took the car--a present from Soames on their return from round
the world--and went about, picking people up and dropping them
again.  They recruited Norah Curfew and 'her gang' in Bethnal
Green; and during this first meeting of Fleur with one whom she had
been inclined to suspect as something of a rival, Michael noted
how, within five minutes, she had accepted Norah Curfew as too
'good' to be dangerous.  He left them at South Square in conference
over culinary details, and set forth to sap the natural opposition
of officialdom.  It was like cutting barbed wire on a dark night
before an 'operation.'  He cut a good deal, and went down to the
'House.'  Humming with unformulated 'formulas,' it was, on the
whole, the least cheerful place he had been in that day.  Everyone
was talking of the 'menace to the Constitution.'  The Government's
long face was longer than ever, and nothing--they said--could be
done until it had been saved.  The expressions 'Freedom of the
Press' and 'At the pistol's mouth,' were being used to the point of
tautology!  He ran across Mr. Blythe brooding in the Lobby on the
temporary decease of his beloved Weekly, and took him over to South
Square 'for a bite' at nine o'clock.  Fleur had come in for the
same purpose.  According to Mr. Blythe, the solution was to 'form a
group' of right-thinking opinion.

"Exactly, Blythe!  But what is right-thinking, at 'the present time
of speaking'?"

"It all comes back to Foggartism," said Mr. Blythe.

"Oh!" said Fleur, "I do wish you'd both drop that.  Nobody will
have anything to say to it.  You might as well ask the people of
to-day to live like St. Francis d'Assisi."

"My dear young lady, suppose St. Francis d'Assisi had said that, we
shouldn't be hearing to-day of St. Francis."

"Well, what real effect has he had?  He's just a curiosity.  All
those great spiritual figures are curiosities.  Look at Tolstoi
now, or Christ, for that matter!"

"Fleur's rather right, Blythe."

"Blasphemy!" said Mr. Blythe.

"I don't know, Blythe; I've been looking at the gutters lately, and
I've come to the conclusion that they put a stopper on Foggartism.
Watch the children there, and you'll see how attractive gutters
are!  So long as a child can have a gutter, he'll never leave it.
And, mind you, gutters are a great civilising influence.  We have
more gutters here than any other country and more children brought
up in them; and we're the most civilised people in the world.  This
strike's going to prove that.  There'll be less bloodshed and more
good humour than there could be anywhere else; all due to the
gutter."

"Renegade!" said Mr. Blythe.

"Well," said Michael, "Foggartism, like all religions, is the over-
expression of a home truth.  We've been too wholesale, Blythe.
What converts have we made?"

"None," said Mr. Blythe.  "But if we can't take children from the
gutter, Foggartism is no more."

Michael wriggled; and Fleur said promptly:  "What never was can't
be no more.  Are you coming with me to see the kitchens, Michael--
they've been left in a filthy state.  How does one deal with
beetles on a large scale?"

"Get a beetle-man--sort of pied piper, who lures them to their
fate."

Arrived on the premises of the canteen-to-be, they were joined by
Ruth La Fontaine, of Norah Curfew's 'gang,' and descended to the
dark and odorous kitchen.  Michael struck a match, and found the
switch.  Gosh!  In the light, surprised, a brown-black scuttling
swarm covered the floor, the walls, the tables.  Michael had just
sufficient control of his nerves to take in the faces of those
three--Fleur's shuddering frown, Mr. Blythe's open mouth, the dark
and pretty Ruth La Fontaine's nervous smile.  He felt Fleur clutch
his arm.

"How DISGUSTING!"

The disturbed creatures were finding their holes or had ceased to
scuttle; here and there, a large one, isolated, seemed to watch
them.

"Imagine!" cried Fleur.  "And food's been cooked here all these
years!  Ugh!"

"After all," said Ruth La Fontaine, with a shivery giggle, "they're
not so b-bad as b-bugs."

Mr. Blythe puffed hard at his cigar.  Fleur muttered:

"What's to be done, Michael?"

Her face was pale; she was drawing little shuddering breaths; and
Michael was thinking:  'It's too bad; I must get her out of this!'
when suddenly she seized a broom and rushed at a large beetle on
the wall.  In a minute they were all at it--swabbing and sweeping,
and flinging open doors and windows.



CHAPTER II

ON THE 'PHONE


Winifred Dartie had not received her Morning Post.  Now in her
sixty-eighth year, she had not followed too closely the progress of
events which led up to the general strike--they were always saying
things in the papers, and you never knew what was true; those
Trades Union people, too, were so interfering, that really one had
no patience.  Besides, the Government always did something in the
end.  Acting, however, on the advice of her brother Soames, she had
filled her cellars with coal and her cupboards with groceries, and
by ten o'clock on the second morning of the strike, was seated
comfortably at the telephone.

"Is that you, Imogen?  Are you and Jack coming for me this
evening?"

"No, Mother.  Jack's sworn in, of course.  He has to be on duty at
five.  Besides, they say the theatres will close.  We'll go later.
'Dat Lubly Lady's' sure to run."

"Very well, dear.  But what a fuss it all is!  How are the boys?"

"Awfully fit.  They're both going to be little 'specials.'  I've
made them tiny badges.  D'you think the child's department at
Harridge's would have toy truncheons?"

"Sure to, if it goes on.  I shall be there today; I'll suggest it.
They'd look too sweet, wouldn't they?  Are you all right for coal?"

"Oh, yes.  Jack says we mustn't hoard.  He's fearfully patriotic."

"Well, good-bye, dear!  My love to the boys!"

She had just begun to consider whom she should call up next when
the telephone bell rang.

"Yes?"

"Mr. Val Dartie living there?"

"No.  Who is it speaking?"

"My name is Stainford.  I'm an old college friend of his.  Could
you give me his address, please?"

Stainford?  It conveyed nothing.

"I'm his mother.  My son is not in town; but I dare say he will be
before long.  Can I give him any message?"

"Well, thanks!  I want to see him.  I'll ring up again; or take my
chance later.  Thanks!"

Winifred replaced the receiver.

Stainford!  The voice was distinguished.  She hoped it had nothing
to do with money.  Odd, how often distinction was connected with
money!  Or, rather, with the lack of it.  In the old Park Lane days
they had known so many fashionables who had ended in the bankruptcy
or divorce courts.  Emily--her mother--had never been able to
resist distinction.  That had been the beginning of Monty--he had
worn such perfect waistcoats and gardenias, and had known so much
about all that was fast--impossible not to be impressed by him.
Ah, well!  She did not regret him now.  Without him she would never
have had Val, or Imogen's two boys, or Benedict (almost a colonel),
though she never saw him now, living, as he did, in Guernsey, to
grow cucumbers, away from the income tax.  They might say what they
liked about the age, but could it really be more up-to-date than it
was in the 'nineties and the early years of the century, when
income tax was at a shilling, and that considered high!  People now
just ran about and talked, to disguise the fact that they were not
so 'chic' and up-to-date as they used to be.

Again the telephone bell rang.  "Will you take a trunk call from
Wansdon? . . ."

"Hallo!  That you, Mother?"

"Oh, Val, how nice!  Isn't this strike absurd?"

"Silly asses!  I say: we're coming up."

"Really, dear.  But why?  You'll be so much more comfortable in the
country."

"Holly says we've got to do things.  Who d'you think turned up last
night?--her brother--young Jon Forsyte.  Left his wife and mother
in Paris--said he'd missed the war and couldn't afford to miss
this.  Been travelling all the winter--Egypt, Italy, and that--
chucked America, I gather.  Says he wants to do something dirty--
going to stoke an engine.  We're driving up to the Bristol this
afternoon."

"Oh, but why not come to me, dear, I've got plenty of everything?"

"Well, there's young Jon--I don't think--"

"But he's a nice boy, isn't he?"

"Uncle Soames isn't with you, is he?"

"No, dear.  He's at Mapledurham.  Oh, and by the way, Val, someone
has just rung up for you--a Mr. Stainford."

"Stainford?  What!  Aubrey Stainford--I haven't seen him since
Oxford."

"He said he would ring up again or take his chance of finding you
here."

"Oh, I'd love to see old Stainford again.  Well, if you don't mind
putting us up, Mother.  Can't leave young Jon out, you know--he and
Holly are very thick after six years; but I expect he'll be out all
the time."

"Oh, that'll be quite all right, dear; and how is Holly?"

"Topping."

"And the horses?"

"All right.  I've got a snorting two-year-old, rather backward.
Shan't run him till Goodwood, but he ought to win then."

"That'll be delightful.  Well, dear boy, I'll expect you.  But you
won't be doing anything rash, with your leg?"

"No; just drive a 'bus, perhaps.  Won't last, you know.  The
Government's all ready.  Pretty hot stuff.  We've GOT 'em this
time."

"I'm so glad.  It'll be such a good thing to have it over; it's
dreadfully bad for the season.  Your uncle will be very upset."

An indistinguishable sound; then Val's voice again:

"I say, Holly says SHE'LL want a job--you might ask young Mont.
He's in with people.  See you soon, then--good-bye!"

Replacing the receiver, Winifred had scarcely risen from the
satinwood chair on which she had been seated, when the bell rang
again.

"Mrs. Dartie? . . .  That you, Winifred?  Soames speaking.  What
did I tell you?"

"Yes; it's very annoying, dear.  But Val says it'll soon be over."

"What's he know about it?"

"He's very shrewd."

"Shrewd?  H'm!  I'm coming up to Fleur's."

"But, why, Soames?  I should have thought--"

"Must be on the spot, in case of--accidents.  Besides, the car'll
be eating its head off down here--may as well be useful.  Do that
fellow Riggs good to be sworn in.  This thing may lead to
anything."

"Oh!  Do you think--"

"Think?  It's no joke.  Comes of playing about with subsidies."

"But you told me last summer--"

"They don't look ahead.  They've got no more nous than a tom-cat.
Annette wants to go to her mother's in France.  I shan't stop her.
She can't gad about while this is on.  I shall take her to Dover
with the car to-day, and come up tomorrow."

"Ought one to sell anything, Soames?"

"Certainly not."

"People seem dreadfully busy about it all.  Val's going to drive a
'bus.  Oh! and, Soames--that young Jon Forsyte is back.  He's left
his wife and mother in Paris, and come over to be a stoker."

A deep sound, and then:

"What's he want to do that for?  Much better keep out of England."

"Ye-es.  I suppose Fleur--"

"Don't you go putting things into HER head!"

"Of course not, Soames.  So I shall see you?  Good-bye."

Dear Soames was always so fussy about Fleur!  Young Jon Forsyte and
she--of course--but that was ages ago!  Calf love!  And Winifred
smiled, sitting very still.  This strike was really most
'intriguing.'  So long as they didn't break any windows--because,
of course, the milk supply would be all right, the Government
always saw to that; and as to the newspapers--well, after all, they
were a luxury!  It would be very nice to have Val and Holly.  The
strike was really something to talk about; there had been nothing
so exciting since the war.  And, obeying an obscure instinct to do
something about it, Winifred again took up the receiver.  "Give me
Westminster 0000. . . .  Is that Mrs. Michael Mont's?  Fleur?  Aunt
Winifred speaking.  How are you, dear?"

The voice which answered had that quick little way of shaping words
that was so amusing to Winifred, who in her youth had perfected a
drawl, which effectually dominated both speed and emotion.  All the
young women in Society nowadays spoke like Fleur, as if they had
found the old way of speaking English slow and flat, and were
gingering it with little pinches.

"Perfectly all right, thanks.  Anything I can do for you, Auntie?"

"Yes, my dear--your cousin Val and Holly are coming up to me about
this strike.  And Holly--I think it's very unnecessary, but she
wants to DO something.  She thought perhaps Michael would know--"

"Oh, well, of course there are lots of things.  We've started a
canteen for railway workers; perhaps she'd like to help in that."

"My dear, that would be awfully nice."

"It won't, Aunt Winifred; it's pretty strenuous."

"It can't last, dear, of course.  Parliament are bound to do
something about it.  It must be a great comfort to you to have all
the news at first-hand.  Then, may I send Holly to you?"

"But of course.  She'll be very useful.  At her age she'd better do
supplies, I think, instead of standing about, serving.  I get on
with her all right.  The great thing is to have people that get on
together, and don't fuss.  Have you heard from Father?"

"Yes; he's coming up to you to-morrow."

"Oh!  But why?"

"He says he must be on the spot, in case of--"

"That's so silly.  Never mind.  It'll make two cars."

"Holly will have hers, too.  Val's going to drive a 'bus, he says--
and--er--young--well, dear, that's all!  My love to Kit.  There are
a tremendous lot of milk-cans in the Park already, Smither says.
She went out this morning into Park Lane to have a look.  It's all
rather thrilling, don't you think?"

"At the House they say it'll mean another shilling on the income
tax before it's over."

"Oh, dear!"

At this moment a voice said:  "Have they answered?"  And, replacing
the receiver, Winifred again sat, placid.  Park Lane!  From the old
house there--home of her youth--one would have had a splendid view
of everything--quite the headquarters!  But how dreadfully the poor
old Pater would have felt it!  James!  She seemed to see him again
with his plaid over his shoulders, and his nose glued to a window-
pane, trying to cure with the evidence of his old grey eyes the
fatal habit they all had of not telling him anything.  She still
had some of his wine.  And Warmson, their old butler, still kept
'The Pouter Pigeon,' on the river at Moulsbridge.  He always sent
her a Stilton cheese at Christmas, with a memorandum of the exact
amount of the old Park Lane port she was to pour into it.  His last
letter had ended thus:


"I often think of the master, and how fond he was of going down the
cellar right up to the end.  As regards wine, ma'am, I'm afraid the
days are not what they were.  My duty to Mr. Soames and all.  Dear
me, it seems a long time since I first came to Park Lane.

"Your obedient servant,

"GEORGE WARMSON.

"P. S.--I had a pound or two on that colt Mr. Val bred, please to
tell him--and came in useful."


The old sort of servant!  And now she had Smither, from Timothy's,
Cook having died--so mysteriously, or, as Smither put it:  "Of
hornwee, ma'am, I verily believe, missing Mr. Timothy as we did"--
Smither as a sort of supercargo--didn't they call it, on ships?--
and really very capable, considering she was sixty, if a day, and
the way her corsets creaked.  After all, to be with the family
again was a great comfort to the poor old soul--eight years younger
than Winifred, who, like a true Forsyte, looked down on the age of
others from the platform of perennial youth.  And a comfort, too,
to have about the house one who remembered Monty in his prime--
Montague Dartie, so long dead now, that he had a halo as yellow as
his gills had so often been.  Poor, dear Monty!  Was it really
forty-seven years since she married him, and came to live in Green
Street?  How well those satinwood chairs with the floral green
design on their top rails, had worn--furniture of times before this
seven-hour day and all the rest of it!  People thought about their
work then, and not about the cinema!  And Winifred, who had never
had any work to think about, sighed.  It had all been great fun--
and, if they could only get this little fuss over, the coming
season would be most enjoyable.  She had seats already for almost
everything.  Her hand slipped down to what she was sitting on.
Yes, she had only had those chairs re-covered twice in all her
forty-seven years in Green Street, and, really, they were quite
respectable still.  True! no one ever sat on them now, because they
were straight up without arms; and in these days, of course,
everybody sprawled, so restless, too, that no chair could stand it.
She rose to judge the degree of respectability beneath her, tilting
the satinwood chair forward.  The year Monty died they had been re-
covered last--1913, just before the war.  Really that had been a
marvellous piece of grey-green silk!



CHAPTER III

HOME-COMING


Jon Forsyte's sensations on landing at Newhaven, by the last
possible boat, after five and a half years' absence, had been most
peculiar.  All the way by car to Wansdon under the Sussex Downs he
was in a sort of excited dream.  England!  What wonderful chalk,
what wonderful green!  What an air of having been there for ever!
The sudden dips into villages, the old bridges, the sheep, the
beech clumps!  And the cuckoo--not heard for six years!  A poet,
somewhat dormant of late, stirred within this young man.  Delicious
old country!  Anne would be crazy about this countryside--it was so
beautifully finished.  When the general strike was over she could
come along, and he would show her everything.  In the meantime she
would be all right with his mother in Paris, and he would be free
for any job he could get.  He remembered this bit, and Chanctonbury
Ring up there, and his walk over from Worthing.  He remembered very
well.  Fleur!  His brother-in-law, Francis Wilmot, had come back
from England with much to say about Fleur; she was very modern now,
and attractive, and had a boy.  How deeply one could be in love;
and how completely get over it!  Considering what his old feelings
down here had been, it was strange but pleasant to be just simply
eager to see Holly and 'old Val.'

Beyond a telegram from Dieppe he had made no announcement of his
coming; but they would surely be here because of the horses.  He
would like to have a look at Val's racing stable, and get a ride,
perhaps, on the Downs before taking on a strike job.  If only Anne
were with him, and they could have that ride together!  And Jon
thought of his first ride with Anne in the South Carolinian woods--
that ride from which they had neither of them recovered.  There it
was!  The jolly old house!  And here at the door--Holly herself!
And at sight of his half-sister, slim and dark-haired in a lilac
dress, Jon was visited by a stabbing memory of their father as he
had looked that dreadful afternoon, lying dead in the old armchair
at Robin Hill.  Dad--always lovable--and so good to him!

"Jon!  How wonderful to see you!"

Her kiss, he remembered, had always lighted on his eyebrow--she
hadn't changed a bit.  A half-sister was nicer than a full-sister,
after all.  With full-sisters you were almost bound to fight a
little.

"What a pity you couldn't bring Anne and your mother!  But perhaps
it's just as well, till this is over.  You look quite English
still, Jon; and your mouth's as nice and wide as ever.  Why do
Americans and naval men have such small mouths?"

"Sense of duty, I think.  How's Val?"

"Oh, Val's all right.  You haven't lost your smile.  D'you remember
your old room?"

"Rather.  And how are you, Holly?"

"So-so.  I've become a writer, Jon."

"Splendid!"

"Not at all.  Hard labour and no reward."

"Oh!"

"The first book was born too still for anything.  A sort of
'African Farm,' without the spiritual frills--if you remember it."

"Rather!  But I always left the frills out."

"Yes, we get our objection to frills from the Dad, Jon.  He said to
me once, 'It'll end in our calling all matter spirit or all spirit
matter--I don't know which.'"

"It won't," said Jon; "people love to divide things up.  I say, I
remember every stick in this room.  How are the horses?  Can I have
a look at them and a ride to-morrow?"

"We'll go forth early and see them at exercise.  We've only got
three two-year-olds, but one of them's most promising."

"Fine!  After that I must go up and get a good, dirty job.  I
should like to stoke an engine.  I've always wanted to know how
stokers feel."

"We'll all go.  We can stay with Val's mother.  It is so lovely to
see you, Jon.  Dinner's in half an hour."

Jon lingered five minutes at his window.  That orchard in full
bloom--not mathematically planted, like his just-sold North
Carolinian peach-trees--was as lovely as on that long-ago night
when he chased Fleur therein.  That was the beauty of England--
nothing was planned!  How home-sick he had been over there; yes,
and his mother, too!  He would never go back!  How wonderful that
sea of apple blossom!  Cuckoo again! . . .  That alone was worth
coming home for.  He would find a place and grow fruit, down in the
West, Worcestershire or Somerset, or near here--they grew a lot of
figs and things at Worthing, he remembered.  Turning out his suit-
case, he began to dress.  Just where he was sitting now, pulling on
his American socks, had he sat when Fleur was showing him her Goya
dress.  Who would have believed then that, six years later, he
would want Anne, not Fleur, beside him on this bed!  The gong!
Dabbing at his hair, bright and stivery, he straightened his tie
and ran down.

Val's views on the strike, Val's views on everything, shrewd and
narrow as his horseman's face!  Those Labour johnnies were up
against it this time with a vengeance; they'd have to heel up
before it was over.  How had Jon liked the Yanks?  Had he seen 'Man
of War'?  No?  Good Lord!  The thing best worth seeing in America!
Was the grass in Kentucky really blue?  Only from the distance?
Oh!  What were they going to abolish over there next?  Wasn't there
a place down South where you were only allowed to cohabit under the
eyes of the town watch?  Parliament here were going to put a tax on
betting; why not introduce the 'Tote' and have done with it?
Personally he didn't care, he'd given up betting!  And he glanced
at Holly.  Jon, too, glanced at her lifted brows and slightly
parted lips--a charming face--ironical and tolerant!  She drove Val
with silken reins!

Val went on:  Good job Jon had given up America; if he must farm
out of England, why not South Africa, under the poor old British
flag; though the Dutch weren't done with yet!  A tough lot!  They
had gone out there, of course, so bright and early that they were
real settlers--none of your adventurers, failures-at-home,
remittancemen.  He didn't like the beggars, but they were stout
fellows, all the same.  Going to stay in England?  Good!  What
about coming in with them and breeding racing stock?

After an awkward little silence, Holly said slyly:

"Jon doesn't think that's quite a man's job, Val."

"Why not?"

"Luxury trade."

"Blood stock--where would horses be without it?"

"Very tempting," said Jon.  "I'd like an interest in it.  But I'd
want to grow fruit and things for a main line."

"All right, my son; you can grow the apples they eat on Sundays."

"You see, Jon," said Holly, "nobody believes in growing anything in
England.  We talk about it more and more, and do it less and less.
Do you see any change in Jon, Val?"

The cousins exchanged a stare.

"A bit more solid; nothing American, anyway."

Holly murmured thoughtfully:  "Why can one always tell an
American?"

"Why can one always tell an Englishman?" said Jon.

"Something guarded, my dear.  But a national look's the most
difficult thing in the world to define.  Still, you can't mistake
the American expression."

"I don't believe you'll take Anne for one."

"Describe her, Jon."

"No.  Wait till you see her."

When, after dinner, Val was going his last round of the stables,
Jon said:

"Do you ever see Fleur, Holly?"

"I haven't for eighteen months, I should think.  I like her
husband; he's an awfully good sort.  You were well out of that,
Jon.  She isn't your kind--not that she isn't charming; but she has
to be plumb centre of the stage.  I suppose you knew that, really."

Jon looked at her and did not answer.  "Of course," murmured Holly,
"when one's in love, one doesn't know much."

Up in his room again, the house began to be haunted.  Into it
seemed to troop all his memories, of Fleur, of Robin Hill--old
trees of his boyhood, his father's cigars, his mother's flowers and
music; the nursery of his games, Holly's nursery before him, with
its window looking out over the clock tower above the stables, the
room where latterly he had struggled with rhyme.  In through his
open bedroom window came the sweet-scented air--England's self--
from the loom of the Downs in the moon-scattered dusk, this first
night of home for more than two thousand nights.  With Robin Hill
sold, this was the nearest he had to home in England now.  But they
must make one of their own--he and Anne.  Home!  On the English
liner he had wanted to embrace the stewards and stewardesses just
because they spoke an English accent.  It was, still, as music to
his ears.  Anne would pick it up faster now--she was very
receptive!  He had liked the Americans, but he was glad Val had
said there was nothing American about him.  An owl hooted.  What a
shadow that barn cast--how soft and old its angle!  He got into
bed.  Sleep--if he wanted to be up to see the horses exercised!
Once before, here, he had got up early--for another purpose!  And
soon he slept; and a form--was it Anne's, was it Fleur's,--wandered
in the corridors of his dreams.



CHAPTER IV

SOAMES GOES UP TO TOWN


Having seen his wife off from Dover on the Wednesday, Soames
Forsyte motored towards town.  On the way he decided to make a
considerable detour and enter London over Hammersmith, the furthest
westerly bridge in reason.  There was for him a fixed connection
between unpleasantness and the East End, in times of industrial
disturbance.  And feeling that, if he encountered a threatening
proletariat, he would insist on going through with it, he acted in
accordance with the other side of a Forsyte's temperament, and
looked ahead.  Thus it was that he found his car held up in
Hammersmith Broadway by the only threatening conduct of the
afternoon.  A number of persons had collected to interfere with a
traffic of which they did not seem to approve.  After sitting
forward, to say to his chauffeur, "You'd better go round, Riggs,"
Soames did nothing but sit back.  The afternoon was fine, and the
car--a landaulette--open, so that he had a good view of the total
impossibility of "going round."  Just like that fellow Riggs to
have run bang into this!  A terrific pack of cars crammed with
people trying to run out of town; a few cars like his own, half
empty, trying to creep past them into town; a motor-omnibus, not
overturned precisely, but with every window broken, standing half
across the road; and a number of blank-looking people eddying and
shifting before a handful of constables!  Such were the phenomena
which Soames felt the authorities ought to be handling better.

The words, "Look at the blighted plutocrat!" assailed his ears; and
in attempting to see the plutocrat in question, he became aware
that it was himself.  The epithets were unjust!  He was modestly
attired in a brown overcoat and soft felt hat; that fellow Riggs
was plain enough in all conscience, and the car was an ordinary
blue.  True, he was alone in it, and all the other cars seemed full
of people; but he did not see how he was to get over that, short of
carrying into London persons desirous of going in the opposite
direction.  To shut the car, at all events, would look too pointed--
so there was nothing for it but to sit still and take no notice!
For this occupation no one could have been better framed by Nature
than Soames, with his air of slightly despising creation.  He sat,
taking in little but his own nose, with the sun shining on his neck
behind, and the crowd eddying round the police.  Such violence as
had been necessary to break the windows of the 'bus had ceased, and
the block was rather what might have been caused by the Prince of
Wales.  With every appearance of not encouraging it by seeming to
take notice, Soames was observing the crowd.  And a vacant-looking
lot they were, in his opinion; neither their eyes nor their hands
had any of that close attention to business which alone made
revolutionary conduct formidable.  Youths, for the most part, with
cigarettes drooping from their lips--they might have been looking
at a fallen horse.

People were born gaping nowadays.  And a good thing, too!  Cinemas,
fags, and football matches--there would be no real revolution while
they were on hand; and as there seemed to be more and more on hand
every year, he was just feeling that the prospect was not too
bleak, when a young woman put her head over the window of his car.

"Could you take me in to town?"

Soames automatically consulted his watch.  The hands pointing to
seven o'clock gave him extraordinarily little help.  Rather a
smartly-dressed young woman, with a slight cockney accent and
powder on her nose!  That fellow Riggs would never have done
grinning.  And yet he had read in the British Gazette that
everybody was doing it.  Rather gruffly he said:

"I suppose so.  Where do you want to go?"

"Oh, Leicester Square would do me all right."

Great Scott!

The young woman seemed to sense his emotion.  "You see," she said,
"I got to get something to eat before my show."

Moreover, she was getting in!  Soames nearly got out.  Restraining
himself, he gave her a sidelong look; actress or something--young--
round face, made up, naturally--nose a little snub--eyes grey,
rather goggly--'mouth--h'm, pretty mouth, slightly common!
Shingled--of course.

"It's awfly kind of you!"

"Not at all!" said Soames; and the car moved.

"Think it's going to last, the strike?"

Soames leaned forward.

"Go on, Riggs," he said; "and put this young lady down in--er--
Coventry Street."

"It's frightf'ly awk for us, all this," said the young lady.  "I
should never've got there in time.  You seen our show, 'Dat Lubly
Lady'?"

"No."

"It's rather good."

"Oh!"

"We shall have to close, though, if this lasts."

"Ah!"

The young lady was silent, seeming to recognise that she was not in
the presence of a conversationalist.

Soames re-crossed his legs.  It was so long since he had spoken to
a strange young woman, that he had almost forgotten how it was
done.  He did not want to encourage her, and yet was conscious that
it was his car.

"Comfortable?" he said, suddenly.

The young lady smiled.

"What d'you think?" she said.  "It's a lovely car."

"I don't like it," said Soames.

The young lady's mouth opened.

"Why?"

Soames shrugged his shoulders; he had only been carrying on the
conversation.

"I think it's rather fun, don't you?" said the young lady.
"Carrying on--you know, like we're all doing."

The car was now going at speed, and Soames began to calculate the
minutes necessary to put an end to this juxtaposition.

The Albert Memorial, already; he felt almost an affection for it--
so guiltless of the times!

"You MUST come and see our show," said the young lady.

Soames made an effort and looked into her face.

"What do you do in it?" he said.

"Sing and dance."

"I see."

"I've rather a good bit in the third act, where we're all in our
nighties."

Soames smiled faintly.

"You've got no one like Kate Vaughan now," he said.

"Kate Vaughan?  Who was she?"

"Who was Kate Vaughan?" repeated Soames; "greatest dancer that was
ever in burlesque.  Dancing was graceful in those days; now it's
all throwing your legs about.  The faster you can move your legs,
the more you think you're dancing."  And, disconcerted by an
outburst that was bound to lead to something, he averted his eyes.

"You don't like jazz?" queried the young lady.

"I do not," said Soames.

"Well, I don't either--not reely; it's getting old-fashioned, too."

Hyde Park Corner already!  And the car going a good twenty!

"My word!  Look at the lorries; it's marvellous, isn't it?"

Soames emitted a confirmatory grunt.  The young lady was powdering
her nose now, and touching up her lips, with an almost staggering
frankness.  'Suppose anyone sees me?' thought Soames.  And he would
never know whether anyone had or not.  Turning up the high collar
of his overcoat, he said:

"Draughty things, these cars!  Shall I put you down at Scott's?"

"Oh, no.  Lyons, please; I've only time f'r a snack; got to be on
the stage at eight.  It's been awf'ly kind of you.  I only hope
somebody'll take me home!"  Her eyes rolled suddenly, and she
added:  "If you know what I mean."

"Quite!" said Soames, with a certain delicacy of perception.  "Here
you are.  Stop--Riggs!"

The car stopped, and the young lady extended her hand to Soames.

"Good-bye, and thank you!"

"Good-bye!" said Soames.  Nodding and smiling, she got out.

"Go on, Riggs, sharp!  South Square."

The car moved on.  Soames did not look back; in his mind the
thought formed like a bubble on the surface of water:  'In the old
days anyone who looked and talked like that would have left me her
address.'  And she hadn't!  He could not decide whether or no this
marked an advance.

At South Square, on discovering that Michael and Fleur were out, he
did not dress for dinner, but went to the nursery.  His grandson,
now nearly three years old, was still awake, and said:  "Hallo!"

"Hallo!" replied Soames, producing a toy watchman's rattle.  There
followed five minutes of silent and complete absorption, broken
fitfully by guttural sounds from the rattle.  Then his grandson lay
back in his cot, fixed his blue eyes on Soames, and said, "Hallo!"

"Hallo!" replied Soames.

"Ta, ta!" said his grandson.

"Ta, ta!" said Soames, backing to the door, and nearly falling over
the silver dog.  The interview then terminated, and Soames went
downstairs.  Fleur had telephoned to say he was not to wait dinner.

Opposite the Goya he sat down.  No good saying he remembered the
Chartist riots of '48, because he had been born in '55; but he knew
his uncle Swithin had been a 'special' at the time.  This general
strike was probably the most serious internal disturbance that had
happened since; and, sitting over his soup, he bored further and
further into its possibilities.  Bolshevism round the corner--that
was the trouble!  That and the fixed nature of ideas in England.
Because a thing like coal had once been profitable, they thought it
must always be profitable.  Political leaders, Trades Unionists,
newspaper chaps--they never looked an inch before their noses!
They'd had since last August to do something about it, and what had
they done?  Drawn up a report that nobody would look at!

"White wine, sir, or claret?"

"Anything that's open."  To have said that in the 'eighties, or
even the 'nineties, would have given his father a fit!  The idea of
drinking claret already opened was then almost equivalent to
atheism.  Another sign of the slump in ideals.

"What do YOU think about this strike, Coaker?"

The almost hairless man lowered the Sauterne.

"Got no body in it, sir, if you ask me."

"What makes you say that?"

"If it had any body in it, sir, they'd have had the railings of
Hyde Park up by now."

Soames poised a bit of his sole.  "Shouldn't be surprised if you
were right," he said, with a certain approval.

"They make a lot of fuss, but no--there's nothing to it.  The dole--
that was a clever dodge, sir.  Pannus et circesses, as Mr. Mont
says, sir."

"Ha!  Have you seen this canteen they're running?"

"No, sir; I believe they've got the beetle man in this evening.
I'm told there's a proper lot of beetles."

"Ugh!"

"Yes, sir; it's a nahsty insect."

Having finished dinner, Soames lighted the second of his two daily
cigars, and took up the earpieces of the wireless.  He had resisted
this invention as long as he could--but in times like these!
"London calling!"  Yes, and the British Isles listening!  Trouble
in Glasgow?  There would be--lot of Irish there!  More 'specials'
wanted?  There'd soon be plenty of those.  He must tell that fellow
Riggs to enlist.  This butler chap, too, could well be spared.
Trains!  They seemed to be running a lot of trains already.  After
listening with some attention to the Home Secretary, Soames put the
earpieces down and took up The British Gazette.  It was his first
sustained look at this tenuous production, and he hoped it would be
his last.  The paper and printing were deplorable.  Still, he
supposed it was something to have got it out at all.  Tampering
with the freedom of the Press!  Those fellows were not finding it
so easy as they thought.  They had tampered, and the result was a
Press much more definitely against them than the Press they had
suppressed.  Burned their fingers there!  And quite unnecessary--
old-fashioned notion now--influence of the Press.  The war had
killed it.  Without confidence in truth there was no influence.
Politicians or the Press--if you couldn't believe them, they didn't
count!  Perhaps they would re-discover that some day.  In the
meantime the papers were like cocktails--tittilators mostly of the
appetite and the nerves.  How sleepy he was!  He hoped Fleur
wouldn't be very late coming in.  Mad thing, this strike, making
everybody do things they weren't accustomed to, just as Industry,
too, was beginning--or at least pretending--to recover.  But that
was it!  With every year, in these times, it was more difficult to
do what you said you would.  Always something or other turning up!
The world seemed to live from hand to mouth, and at such a pace,
too!  Sitting back in the Spanish chair, Soames covered his eyes
from the light, and the surge of sleep mounted to his brain; strike
or no strike, the soft, inexorable tide washed over him.

A tickling, and over his hand, thin and rather brown, the fringe of
a shawl came dangling.  Why!  With an effort he climbed out of an
abyss of dreams.  Fleur was standing beside him.  Pretty, bright,
her eyes shining, speaking quickly, excitedly, it seemed to him.

"Here you are, then, Dad!"  Her lips felt hot and soft on his
forehead, and her eyes--What was the matter with her?  She looked
so young--she looked so--how express it?

"So you're in!" he said.  "Kit's getting talkative.  Had anything
to eat?"

"Heaps!"

"This canteen--"

She flung off her shawl.

"I'm enjoying it frightfully."

Soames noted with surprise the rise and fall of her breast, as if
she had been running.  Her cheeks, too, were very pink.

"You haven't caught anything, have you--in that place?"

Fleur laughed.  A sound--delicious and unwarranted.

"How funny you are, Dad!  I hope the strike lasts!"

"Don't be foolish!" said Soames.  "Where's Michael?"

"Gone up.  He called for me, after the House.  Nothing doing there,
he says."

"What's the time?"

"Past twelve, dear.  You must have had a real good sleep."

"Just nodding."

"We saw a tank pass, on the Embankment--going East.  It looked
awfully queer.  Didn't you hear it?"

"No," said Soames.

"Well, don't be alarmed if you hear another.  They're on their way
to the docks, Michael says."

"Glad to hear it--shows the Government means business.  But you
must go up.  You're overtired."

She gazed at him over the Spanish shawl on her arm--whistling some
tune.

"Good-night!" he said.  "I shall be coming up in a minute."

She blew him a kiss, twirled round, and went.

"I don't like it," murmured Soames to himself; "I don't know why,
but I don't like it."

She had looked too young.  Had the strike gone to her head?  He
rose to squirt some soda-water into a glass--that nap had left a
taste in his mouth.

Um--dum--bom--um--dum--bom--um--dum--bom!  A grunching noise!
Another of those tanks?  He would like to see one of those great
things!  For the idea that they were going down to the docks gave
him a feeling almost of exhilaration.  With them on the spot the
country was safe enough.  Putting on his motoring coat and hat, he
went out, crossed the empty Square, and stood in the street, whence
he could see the Embankment.  There it came!  Like a great primeval
monster in the lamplit darkness, growling and gruntling along, a
huge, fantastic tortoise--like an embodiment of inexorable power.
'That'll astonish their weak nerves!' thought Soames, as the tank
crawled, grunching, out of sight.  He could hear another coming;
but with a sudden feeling that it would be too much of a good
thing, he turned on his heel.  A sort of extravagance about them,
when he remembered the blank-looking crowd around his car that
afternoon, not a weapon among the lot, nor even a revolutionary
look in their eyes!

"No BODY in the strike!"  These great crawling monsters!  Were the
Government trying to pretend that there was?  Playing the strong
man!  Something in Soames revolted slightly.  Hang it!  This was
England, not Russia, or Italy!  They might be right, but he didn't
like it!  Too--too military!  He put his latchkey into the keyhole.
Um--dum--bom--um--dum--bom!  Well, not many people would see or
hear them--this time of night!  He supposed they had got here from
the country somewhere--he wouldn't care to meet them wandering
about in the old lanes and places.  Father and mother and baby
tanks--like--like a family of mastodons, m--m?  No sense of
proportion in things like that!  And no sense of humour!  He stood
on the stairs listening.  It was to be hoped they wouldn't wake the
baby!



CHAPTER V

JEOPARDY


When, looking down the row of faces at her canteen table, Fleur saw
Jon Forsyte's, it was within her heart as if, in winter, she had
met with honeysuckle.  Recovering from that faint intoxication, she
noted his appearance from further off.  He was sitting seemingly
indifferent to food; and on his face, which was smudged with coal-
dust and sweat, was such a smile as men wear after going up a
mountain or at the end of a long run--tired, charming, and as if
they have been through something worth while.  His lashes--long
and dark as in her memory--concealed his eyes, and quarrelled with
his brighter hair, touzled to the limit of its shortness.

Continuing to issue her instructions to Ruth La Fontaine, Fleur
thought rapidly.  Jon!  Dropped from the skies into her canteen,
stronger-looking, better knit; with more jaw, and deeper set eyes,
but frightfully like Jon!  What was to be done about it?  If only
she could turn out the lights, steal up behind, lean over and kiss
him on that smudge above his left eye!  Yes!  And then--what?
Silly!  And now, suppose he came out of his far-away smile and saw
her!  As likely as not he would never come into her canteen again.
She remembered his conscience!  And she took a swift decision.  Not
to-night!  Holly would know where he was staying.  At her chosen
time, on her chosen ground, if--on second thoughts, she wanted to
play with fire.  And, giving a mandate to Ruth La Fontaine
concerning buns, she looked back over her shoulder at Jon's
absorbed and smiling face, and passed out into her little office.

And second thoughts began.  Michael, Kit, her father; the solid
security of virtue and possessions; the peace of mind into which
she had passed of late!  All jeopardised for the sake of a smile,
and a scent of honeysuckle!  No!  That account was closed.  To
reopen it was to tempt Providence.  And if to tempt Providence was
the practice of Modernity, she wasn't sure whether she was modern.
Besides, who knew whether she COULD reopen that account?  And she
was seized by a gust of curiosity to see that wife of his--that
substitute for herself.  Was she in England?  Was she dark, like
her brother Francis?  Fleur took up her list of purchases for the
morrow.  With so much to do, it was idiotic even to think about
such things!  The telephone!  All day its bell had been ringing;
since nine o'clock that morning she had been dancing to its pipe.

"Yes. . . ?  Mrs. Mont speaking.  What?  But I've ordered them. . . .
Oh!  But really I MUST give them bacon and eggs in the morning.
They can't start on cocoa only. . . .  How?  The Company can't
afford? . . .  Well!  Do you want an effective service or not? . . .
Come round to see you about it?  I really haven't time. . . .
Yes, yes . . . now please do be nice to me and tell the manager
that they simply must be properly fed.  They look so tired.  He'll
understand. . . .  Yes. . . .  Thank you ever so!"  She hung up the
receiver.  "Damn!"

Someone laughed.  "Oh!  It's you, Holly!  Cheese-paring and red
tape as usual!  This is the fourth time to-day.  Well, I don't
care--I'm going ahead.  Look!  Here's Harridge's list for to-
morrow.  It's terrific, but it's got to be.  Buy it all; I'll take
the risk, if I have to go round and slobber on him."  And beyond
the ironic sympathy on Holly's face she seemed to see Jon's smile.
He should be properly fed--all of them should!  And, without
looking at her cousin, she said:

"I saw Jon in there.  Where has he dropped from?"

"Paris.  He's putting up with us in Green Street."

Fleur stuck her chin forward, and gave a little laugh.

"Quaint to see him again, all smudgy like that!  His wife with
him?"

"Not yet," said Holly; "she's in Paris still, with his mother."

"Oh!  It'd be fun to see him some time!"

"He's stoking an engine on the local service--goes out at six, and
doesn't get in till about midnight."

"Of course; I meant after, if the strike ever ends."

Holly nodded.  "His wife wants to come over and help; would you
like her in the canteen?"

"If she's the right sort."

"Jon says:  Very much so."

"I don't see why an American should worry herself.  Are they going
to live in England?"

"Yes."

"Oh!  Well, we're both over the measles."

"If you get them again grown-up, Fleur, they're pretty bad."

Fleur laughed.  "No fear!"  And her eyes, hazel, clear, glancing,
met her cousin's eyes, deep, steady, grey.

"Michael's waiting for you with the car," said Holly.

"All right!  Can you carry on till they've finished?  Norah
Curfew's on duty at five tomorrow morning.  I shall be round at
nine, before you start for Harridge's.  If you think of anything
else, stick it on the list--I'll make them stump up somehow.  Good-
night, Holly."

"Good-night, my dear."

Was there a gleam of pity in those grey eyes?  Pity, indeed!

"Give Jon my love.  I do wonder how he likes stoking!  We must get
some more washbasins in."

Sitting beside Michael, who was driving their car, she saw again,
as it were, Jon's smile in the glass of the wind-screen, and in the
dark her lips pouted as if reaching for it.  Measles--they spotted
you, and raised your temperature!  How empty the streets were, now
that the taxis were on strike!  Michael looked round at her.

"Well, how's it going?"

"The beetle man was a caution, Michael.  He had a face like a
ravaged wedge, a wave of black hair, and the eyes of a lost soul;
but he was frightfully efficient."

"Look!  There's a tank; I was told of them.  They're going down to
the docks.  Rather provocative!  Just as well there are no papers
for them to get into."

Fleur laughed.

"Father'll be at home.  He's come up to protect me.  If there
really was shooting, I wonder what he'd do--take his umbrella?"

"Instinct.  How about you and Kit?  It's the same thing."

Fleur did not answer.  And when, after seeing her father, she went
up-stairs, she stood at the nursery door.  The tune that had
excited Soames' surprise made a whiffling sound in the empty
passage.  "L'amour est enfant de Boheme; il n'a jamais jamais connu
de loi; si tu ne m'aimes pas, je t'aime, et si je t'aime, prends
garde a toil!" Spain, and the heartache of her honeymoon!  "Voice
in the night crying!"  Close the shutters, muffle the ears--keep it
out!  She entered her bedroom and turned up the lights.  It had
never seemed to her so pretty, with its many mirrors, its lilac and
green, its shining silver.  She stood looking at her face, into
which had come two patches of red, one in each cheek.  Why wasn't
she Norah Curfew--dutiful, uncomplicated, selfless, who would give
Jon eggs and bacon at half-past five to-morrow morning--Jon with a
clean face!  Quickly she undressed.  Was that wife of his her equal
undressed?  To which would he award the golden apple if she stood
side by side with Anne?  And the red spots deepened in her cheeks.
Overtired--she knew that feeling!  She would not sleep!  But the
sheets were cool.  Yes, she preferred the old smooth Irish linen to
that new rough French grass-bleached stuff.  Ah!  Here was Michael
coming in, coming up to her!  Well!  No use to be unkind to him--
poor old Michael!  And in his arms, she saw--Jon's smile.

                    *     *     *     *     *

That first day spent in stoking an engine had been enough to make
anyone smile.  An engine-driver almost as youthful, but in private
life partner in his own engineering works, had put Jon 'wise' to
the mystery of getting level combustion.  "A tricky job, and very
tiring!"  Their passengers had behaved well.  One had even come up
and thanked them.  The engine-driver had winked at Jon.  There had
been some hectic moments.  Supping pea soup, Jon thought of them
with pleasure.  It had been great sport, but his hands and arms
felt wrenched.  "Oil them tonight," the engine-driver had said.

A young woman was handing him 'jacket' potatoes.  She had
marvellously clear, brown eyes, something like Anne's--only Anne's
were like a water nymph's.  He took a potato, thanked her, and
returned to a stoker's dreams.  Extraordinary pleasure in being up
against it--being in England again, doing something for England!
One had to leave one's country to become conscious of it.  Anne had
telegraphed that she wanted to come over and join him.  If he wired
back "No," she would come all the same.  He knew that much after
nearly two years of marriage.  Well, she would see England at its
best.  Americans didn't really know what England was.  Her brother
had seen nothing but London; he had spoken bitterly--a girl, Jon
supposed, though nothing had been said of her.  In Francis Wilmot's
history of England the gap accounted for the rest.  But everybody
ran down England, because she didn't slop over, or blow her own
trumpet.

"Butter?"

"Thanks, awfully.  These potatoes are frightfully good."

"So glad."

"Who runs this canteen?"

"Mr. and Mrs. Michael Mont mostly; he's a member of Parliament."

Jon dropped his potato.

"Mrs. Mont?  Gracious!  She's a cousin of mine.  Is she here?"

"Was.  Just gone, I think."

Jon's far-sighted eyes travelled round the large and dingy room.
Fleur!  How amazing!

"Treacle pudding?"

"No, thanks.  Nothing more."

"There'll be coffee, tea, or cocoa, and eggs and bacon, to-morrow
at 5.45."

"Splendid!  I think it's wonderful."

"It is, rather, in the time."

"Thank you awfully.  Good-night!"

Jon sought his coat.  Outside were Val and Holly in their car.

"Hallo, young Jon!  You're a nice object."

"What job have you caught, Val?"

"Motor lorry--begin to-morrow."

"Fine!"

"This'll knock out racing for a bit."

"But not England."

"England?  Lord--no!  What did you think?"

"Abroad they were saying so."

"Abroad!" growled Val.  "They would!"

And there was silence at thirty miles an hour.

From his bedroom door Jon said to his sister:

"They say Fleur runs that canteen.  Is she really so old now?"

"Fleur has a very clear head, my dear.  She saw you there.  No
second go of measles, Jon."

Jon laughed.

"Aunt Winifred," said Holly, "will be delighted to have Anne here
on Friday, she told me to tell you."

"Splendid!  That's awfully good of her."

"Well, good-night; bless you.  There's still hot water in the
bathroom."

In his bath Jon lay luxuriously still.  Sixty hours away from his
young wife, he was already looking forward with impatience to her
appearance on Friday.  And so Fleur ran that canteen!  A
fashionable young woman with a clear and, no doubt, shingled head--
he felt a great curiosity to see her again, but nothing more.
Second go of measles!  Not much!  He had suffered too severely from
the first.  Besides, he was too glad to be back--result of long,
half-acknowledged homesickness.  His mother had been home-sick for
Europe; but HE had felt no assuagement in Italy and France.  It was
England he had wanted.  Something in the way people walked and
talked; in the smell and the look of everything; some good-
humoured, slow, ironic essence in the air, after the tension of
America, the shrillness of Italy, the clarity of Paris.  For the
first time in five years his nerves felt coated.  Even those
features of his native land which offended the aesthetic soul, were
comforting.  The approaches to London, the countless awful little
houses of brick and slate which his own great-grandfather,
'Superior Dosset' Forsyte, had helped, so his father had once told
him, to build; the many little new houses, rather better, but still
bent on compromise; the total absence of symmetry or plan; the ugly
railway stations; the cockney voices, the lack of colour, taste, or
pride in people's dress--all seemed comfortable, a guarantee that
England would always be England.

And so Fleur was running that canteen!  He would be seeing her!  He
would like to see her!  Oh, yes!



CHAPTER VI

SNUFFBOX


In the next room Val was saying to Holly:

"Had a chap I knew at college to see me to-day.  Wanted me to lend
him money.  I once did, when I was jolly hard up myself, and never
got it back.  He used to impress me frightfully--such an awfully
good-looking, languid beggar.  I thought him top notch as a
'blood.'  You should see him now!"

"I did.  I was coming in as he was going out; I wondered who he
was.  I never saw a more bitterly contemptuous expression on a
face.  Did you lend him money?"

"Only a fiver."

"Well, don't lend him any more."

"Hardly.  D'you know what he's done?  Gone off with that Louis
Quinze snuffbox of Mother's that's worth about two hundred.
There's been nobody else in that room."

"Good heavens!"

"Yes, it's pretty thick.  He had the reputation of being the
fastest man up at the 'Varsity in my time--in with the gambling
set.  Since I went out to the Boer war I've never heard of him."

"Isn't your mother very annoyed, Val?"

"She wants to prosecute--it belonged to my granddad.  But how can
we--a college pal! . . .  Besides, we shouldn't get the box back."

Holly ceased to brush her hair.

"It's rather a comfort to me--this," she said.

"What is?"

"Why, everybody says the standard of honesty's gone down.  It's
nice to find someone belonging to our generation that had it even
less."

"Rum comfort!"

"Human nature doesn't alter, Val.  I believe in the young
generation.  We don't understand them--brought up in too settled
times."

"That may be.  My own dad wasn't too particular.  But what am I to
do about this?"

"Do you know his address?"

"He said the Brummell Club would find him--pretty queer haunt, if I
remember.  To come to sneaking things like that!  It's upset me
fright-fully."

Holly looked at him lying on his back in bed.  Catching her eyes on
him, he said:

"But for you, old girl, I might have gone a holy mucker myself."

"Oh, no, Val!  You're too open-air.  It's the indoor people who go
really wrong."

Val grinned.

"Something in that--the only exercise I ever saw that fellow take
was in a punt.  He used to bet like anything, but he didn't know a
horse from a hedge-hog.  Well, Mother must put up with it, I can't
do anything."

Holly came up to his bed.

"Turn over, and I'll tuck you up."

Getting into bed herself, she lay awake, thinking of the man who
had gone a holy mucker, and the contempt on his face--lined, dark,
well-featured, with prematurely greying hair, and prematurely faded
rings round the irises of the eyes; of his clothes, too, so
preternaturally preserved, and the worn, careful school tie.  She
felt she knew him.  No moral sense, and ingrained contempt for
those who had.  Poor Val!  HE hadn't so much moral sense that he
need be despised for it!  And yet--!  With a good many risky male
instincts, Val had been a loyal comrade all these years.  If in
philosophic reach or aesthetic taste he was not advanced, if he
knew more of horses than of poetry, was he any the worse?  She
sometimes thought he was the better.  The horse didn't change shape
or colour every five years and start reviling its predecessor.  The
horse was a constant, kept you from going too fast, and had a nose
to stroke--more than you could say of a poet.  They had, indeed,
only one thing in common--a liking for sugar.  Since the
publication of her novel Holly had become member of the 1930 Club.
Fleur had put her up, and whenever she came to town, she studied
modernity there.  Modernity was nothing but speed!  People who
blamed it might as well blame telephone, wireless, flying machine,
and quick lunch counter.  Beneath that top-dressing of speed,
modernity was old.  Women had worn fewer clothes when Jane Austen
began to write.  Drawers--the historians said--were only
nineteenth-century productions.  And take modern talk!  After South
Africa the speed of it certainly took one's wind away; but the
thoughts expressed were much her own thoughts as a girl, cut into
breathless lengths, by car and telephone bell.  Take modern
courtships!  They resulted in the same thing as under George the
Second, but took longer to reach it, owing to the motor-cycle and
the standing lunch.  Take modern philosophy!  People had no less
real philosophy than Martin Tupper or Izaak Walton; only, unlike
those celebrated ancients, they had no time to formulate it.  As to
a future life--modernity lived in hope, and not too much of that,
as everyone had, from immemorial time.  In fact, as a novelist
naturally would, Holly jumped to conclusions.  Scratch--she
thought--the best of modern youth, and you would find Charles James
Fox and Perdita in golf sweaters!  A steady sound retrieved her
thoughts.  Val was asleep.  How long and dark his eyelashes still
were, but his mouth was open!

"Val," she said, very softly; "Val!  Don't snore, dear!" . . .

                    *     *     *     *     *

A snuffbox may be precious, not so much for its enamel, its period,
and its little brilliants, as because it has belonged to one's
father.  Winifred, though her sense of property had been well
proved by her retention of Montague Dartie 'for poorer,' throughout
so many years, did not possess her brother Soames' collecting
instinct, nor, indeed, his taste in objects which George Forsyte
had been the first to call 'of bigotry and virtue.'  But the
further Time removed her father James--a quarter of a century by
now--the more she revered his memory.  As some ancient general or
philosopher, secured by age from competition, is acclaimed year by
year a greater genius, so with James!  His objection to change, his
perfect domesticity, his power of saving money for his children,
and his dread of not being told anything, were haloed for her more
and more with every year that he spent underground.  Her
fashionable aspirations waning with the increase of adipose, the
past waxed and became a very constellation of shining memories.
The removal of this snuffbox--so tangible a reminder of James and
Emily--tried her considerable equanimity more than anything that
had happened to her for years.  The thought that she had succumbed
to the distinction of a voice on the telephone, caused her positive
discomfort.  With all her experience of distinction, she ought to
have known better!  She was, however, one of those women who, when
a thing is done, admit the fact with a view to having it undone as
soon as possible; and, having failed with Val, who merely said,
"Awfully sorry, Mother, but there it is--jolly bad luck!" she
summoned her brother.

Soames was little less than appalled.  He remembered seeing James
buy the box at Jobson's for hardly more than one-tenth of what it
would fetch now.  Everything seemed futile if, in such a way, one
could lose what had been nursed for forty years into so really
magnificent a state of unearned increment.  And the fellow who had
taken it was of quite good family, or so his nephew said!  Whether
the honesty of the old Forsytes, in the atmosphere of which he had
been brought up and turned out into the world, had been inherited
or acquired--derived from their blood or their Banks--he had never
considered.  It had been in their systems just as the proverb
"Honesty is the best policy" was in that of the private banking
which then obtained.  A slight reverie on banking was no uncommon
affection of the mind in one who could recall the repercussion of
"Understart and Darnett's" failure, and the disappearance one by
one of all the little, old Banks with legendary names.  These great
modern affairs were good for credit and bad for novelists--run on a
Bank--there had been no better reading!  Such monster concerns
couldn't 'go broke,' no matter what their clients did; but whether
they made for honesty in the individual, Soames couldn't tell.  The
snuffbox was gone, however; and if Winifred didn't take care, she
wouldn't get it back.  How, precisely, she was to take care he
could not at present see; but he should advise her to put it into
the hands of somebody at once.

"But whose, Soames?"

"There's Scotland Yard," answered Soames, gloomily.  "I believe
they're very little good, except to make a fuss.  There's that
fellow I employed in the Ferrar case.  He charges very high."

"I shouldn't care so much," said Winifred, "if it hadn't belonged
to the dear Dad."

"Ruffians like that," muttered Soames, "oughtn't to be at large."

"And to think," said Winifred, "that it was especially to see him
that Val came to stay here."

"Was it?" said Soames, gloomily.  "I suppose you're sure that
fellow took it?"

"Quite.  I'd had it out to polish only a quarter of an hour before.
After he went, I came back into the room at once, to put it away,
and it was gone.  Val had been in the room the whole time."

Soames dwelled for a moment, then rejected a doubt about his
nephew, for, though connected by blood with that precious father of
his, Montague Dartie, and a racing man to boot, he was half a
Forsyte after all.

"Well," he said, "shall I send you this man--his name's Becroft--
always looks as if he'd over-shaved himself, but he's got a certain
amount of nous.  I should suggest his getting in touch with that
fellow's club."

"Suppose he's already sold the box?" said Winifred.

"Yesterday afternoon?  Should doubt that; but it wants immediate
handling.  I'll see Becroft as I go away.  Fleur's overdoing it,
with this canteen of hers."

"They say she's running it very well.  I do think all these young
women are so smart."

"Quick enough," grumbled Soames, "but steady does it in the long
run."

At that phrase--a maxim never far away from the lips of the old
Forsytes in her youthful days--Winifred blinked her rather too
light eyelashes.

"That was always rather a bore, you know, Soames.  And in these
days, if you're not quick, things move past you, so."

Soames gathered his hat.  "That snuffbox will, if we don't look
sharp."

"Well, thank you, dear boy.  I do hope we get it back.  The dear
Pater was so proud of it, and when he died it wasn't worth half
what it is now."

"Not a quarter," said Soames, and the thought bored into him as he
walked away.  What was the use of having judgment, if anybody could
come along and pocket the results!  People sneered at property
nowadays; but property was a proof of good judgment--it was one's
amour propre half the time.  And he thought of the amour propre
Bosinney had stolen from him in those far-off days of trouble.
Yes, even marriage--was an exercise of judgment--a pitting of
yourself against other people.  You 'spotted a winner,' as they
called it, or you didn't--Irene hadn't been 'a winner'--not
exactly!  Ah!  And he had forgotten to ask Winifred about that
young Jon Forsyte who had suddenly come back into the wind.  But
about this snuffbox!  The Brummell Club was some sort of betting
place, he had heard; full of gamblers, and people who did and sold
things on commission, he shouldn't wonder.  That was the vice of
the day; that and the dole.  Work?  No!  Sell things on commission--
motor-cars, for choice.  Brummell Club!  Yes!  This was the place!
It had a window--he remembered.  No harm, anyway, in asking if the
fellow really belonged there!  And entering, he enquired:

"Mr. Stainford a member here?"

"Yes.  Don't know if he's in.  Mr. Stainford been in, Bob?"

"Just come in."

"Oh!" said Soames, rather taken aback.

"Gentleman to see him, Bob."

A rather sinking sensation occurred within Soames.

"Come with me, sir."

Soames took a deep breath, and his legs moved.  In an alcove off
the entrance--somewhat shabby and constricted--he could see a man
lolling in an old armchair, smoking a cigarette through a holder.
He had a little red book in one hand and a small pencil in the
other, and held them as still as if he were about to jot down a
conviction that he had not got.  He wore a dark suit with little
lines; his legs were crossed, and Soames noted that one foot in a
worn brown shoe, treed and polished against age to the point of
pathos, was slowly moving in a circle.

"Gemman to see you, sir."

Soames now saw the face.  Its eyebrows were lifted in a V reversed,
its eyelids nearly covered its eyes.  Together with the figure, it
gave an impression of really remarkable languor.  Thin to a degree,
oval and pale, it seemed all shadow and slightly aquiline feature.
The foot had become still, the whole affair still.  Soames had the
curious feeling of being in the presence of something arrogantly
dead.  Without time for thought, he began:

"Mr. Stainford, I think?  Don't disturb yourself.  My name is
Forsyte.  You called at my sister's in Green Street yesterday
afternoon."

A slight contraction of the lines round that small mouth was
followed by the words:

"Will you sit down?"

The eyes had opened now, and must once have been beautiful.  They
narrowed again, so that Soames could not help feeling that their
owner had outlived everything except himself.  He swallowed a qualm
and resumed:

"I just wanted to ask you a question.  During your call, did you by
any chance happen to notice a Louis Quinze snuffbox on the table?
It's--er--disappeared, and we want to fix the time of its loss."

As a ghost might have smiled, so did the man in the chair; his eyes
disappeared still further.

"Afraid not."

With the thought, 'He's got it!'  Soames went on:

"I'm sorry--the thing had virtue as an heirloom.  It has obviously
been stolen.  I wanted to narrow down the issue.  If you'd noticed
it, we could have fixed the exact hour--on the little table just
where you were sitting--blue enamel."

The thin shoulders wriggled slightly, as though resenting this
attempt to place responsibility on them.

"Sorry I can't help you; I noticed nothing but some rather good
marqueterie."

'Coolest card I ever saw,' thought Soames.  'Wonder if it's in his
pocket.'

"The thing's unique," he said slowly.  "The police won't have much
difficulty.  Well, thanks very much.  I apologise for troubling
you.  You knew my nephew at college, I believe.  Good-morning."

"Good-morning."

From the door Soames took a stealthy glance.  The figure was
perfectly motionless, the legs still crossed, and above the little
red book the pale forehead was poised under the smooth grizzling
hair.  Nothing to be made of that!  But the fellow had it, he was
sure.

He went out and down to the Green Park with a most peculiar
feeling.  Sneak thief!  A gentleman to come to that!  The Elderson
affair had been bad, but somehow not pitiful like this.  The
whitened seams of the excellent suit, the traversing creases in the
once admirable shoes, the faded tie exactly tied, were evidences of
form preserved, day by day, from hand to mouth.  They afflicted
Soames.  That languid figure!  What DID a chap do when he had no
money and couldn't exert himself to save his life?  Incapable of
shame--that was clear!  He must talk to Winifred again.  And,
turning on his heel, Soames walked back towards Green Street.
Debouching from the Park, he saw on the opposite side of Piccadilly
the languid figure.  It, too, was moving in the direction of Green
Street.  Phew!  He crossed over and followed.  The chap had an air.
He was walking like someone who had come into the world from
another age--an age which set all its store on 'form.'  He felt
that 'this chap' would sooner part with life itself than exhibit
interest in anything.  Form!  Could you carry contempt for emotion
to such a pitch that you could no longer feel emotion?  Could the
lifted eyebrow become more important to you than all the movements
of the heart and brain?  Threadbare peacock's feathers walking,
with no peacock inside!  To show feeling was perhaps the only thing
of which that chap would be ashamed.  And, a little astonished at
his own powers of diagnosis, Soames followed round corner after
corner, till he was actually in Green Street.  By George!  The chap
WAS going to Winifred's!  'I'll astonish his weak nerves!' thought
Soames.  And, suddenly hastening, he said, rather breathlessly, on
his sister's very doorstep:

"Ah!  Mr. Stainford!  Come to return the snuffbox?"

With a sigh, and a slight stiffening of his cane on the pavement,
the figure turned.  Soames felt a sudden compunction--as of one who
has jumped out at a child in the dark.  The face, unmoved, with
eyebrows still raised and lids still lowered, was greenishly pale,
like that of a man whose heart is affected; a faint smile struggled
on the lips.  There was fully half a minute's silence, then the
pale lips spoke.

"Depends.  How much?"

What little breath was in Soames' body left him.  The impudence!
And again the lips moved.

"You can have it for ten pounds."

"I can have it for nothing," said Soames, "by asking a policeman to
step here."

The smile returned.  "You won't do that."

"Why not?"

"Not done."

"Not done!" repeated Soames.  "Why on earth not?  Most barefaced
thing I ever knew."

"Ten pounds," said the lips.  "I want them badly."

Soames stood and stared.  The thing was so sublime; the fellow as
easy as if asking for a match; not a flicker on a face which looked
as if it might pass into death at any moment.  Great art!  He
perceived that it was not the slightest use to indulge in moral
utterance.  The choice was between giving him the ten pounds or
calling a policeman.  He looked up and down the street.

"No--there isn't one in sight.  I have the box here--ten pounds."

Soames began to stammer.  The fellow was exercising on him a sort
of fascination.  And suddenly the whole thing tickled him.  It was
rich!

"Well!" he said, taking out two five-pound notes.  "For brass--!"

A thin hand removed a slight protuberance from a side pocket.

"Thanks very much.  Here it is!  Good-morning!"

The fellow was moving away.  He moved with the same incomparable
languor; he didn't look back.  Soames stood with the snuffbox in
his hand, staring after him.

"Well," he said, aloud, "that's a specimen they can't produce now,"
and he rang Winifred's bell.



CHAPTER VII

MICHAEL HAS QUALMS


During the eight days of the General Strike Michael's somewhat
hectic existence was relieved only by the hours spent in a House of
Commons so occupied in meditating on what it could do, that it
could do nothing.  He had formed his own opinion of how to settle
the matter, but as no one else had formed it, the result was
inconspicuous.  He watched, however, with a very deep satisfaction
the stock of British character daily quoted higher at home and
abroad; and with a certain uneasiness the stock of British
intelligence becoming almost unsaleable.  Mr. Blythe's continual
remark:  "What the bee aitch are they all about?" met with no small
response in his soul.  What WERE they about?  He had one
conversation with his father-in-law on the subject.

Over his egg Soames had said:

"Well, the Budget's dished."

Over his marmalade Michael answered:

"Used you to have this sort of thing in your young days, sir?"

"No," said Soames; "no Trade Unionism then, to speak of."

"People are saying this'll be the end of it.  What's your opinion
of the strike as a weapon, sir?"

"For the purposes of suicide, perfect.  It's a wonder they haven't
found that out long ago."

"I rather agree, but what's the alternative?"

"Well," said Soames, "they've got the vote."

"Yes, that's always said.  But somehow Parliament seems to matter
less and less; there's a directive sense in the country now, which
really settles things before we get down to them in Parliament.
Look at this strike, for instance; we can do nothing about it."

"There must be government," said Soames.

"Administration--of course.  But all we seem able to do in
Parliament is to discuss administration afterwards without much
effect.  The fact is, things swoop around too quick for us
nowadays."

"Well," said Soames, "you know your own business best.  Parliament
always was a talking shop."  And with that unconscious quotation
from Carlyle--an extravagant writer whom he curiously connected
with revolution--he looked up at the Goya, and added:  "I shouldn't
like to see Parliament done away with, though.  Ever heard any more
of that red-haired young woman?"

"Marjorie Ferrar?  Oddly enough, I saw her yesterday in Whitehall.
She told me she was driving for Downing Street."

"She spoke to you?"

"Oh, yes.  No ill-feeling."

"H'm!" said Soames.  "I don't understand this generation.  Is she
married?"

"No."

"That chap MacGown had a lucky escape--not that he deserved it.
Fleur doesn't miss her evenings?"

Michael did not answer.  He did not know.  Fleur and he were on
such perfect terms that they had no real knowledge of each other's
thoughts.  Then, feeling his father-in-law's grey eye gimletting
into him, he said hastily:

"Fleur's all right, sir."

Soames nodded.  "Don't let her overdo this canteen."

"She's thoroughly enjoying it--gives her head a chance."

"Yes," said Soames, "she's got a good little head, when she doesn't
lose it."  He seemed again to consult the Goya, and added:

"By the way, that young Jon Forsyte is over here--they tell me--
staying at Green Street, and stoking an engine or something.  A
boy-and-girl affair; but I thought you ought to know."

"Oh!" said Michael, "thanks.  I hadn't heard he was back."

"I don't suppose she's heard, either," said Soames guardedly; "I
told them not to tell her.  D'you remember, in America, up at Mount
Vernon, when I was taken ill?"

"Yes, sir; very well."

"Well, I wasn't.  Fact is, I saw that young man and his wife
talking to you on the stairs.  Thought it better that Fleur
shouldn't run up against them.  These things are very silly, but
you never can tell."

"No," said Michael, drily; "you never can tell.  I remember liking
the look of him a good deal."

"H'm!" muttered Soames:  "He's the son of his father, I expect."

And, from the expression on his face, Michael formed the notion
that this was a doubtful advantage.

No more was said, because of Soames' lifelong conviction that one
did not say any more than one need say; and of Michael's prejudice
against discussing Fleur seriously, even with her father.  She had
seemed to him quite happy lately.  After five-and-a-half years of
marriage, he was sure that mentally Fleur liked him, that
physically she had no objection to him, and that a man was not
sensible if he expected much more.  She consistently declined, of
course, to duplicate Kit, but only because she did not want to be
put out of action again for months at a time.  The more active, the
happier she was--over this canteen for instance, she was in her
glory.  If, indeed, he had realised that Jon Forsyte was being fed
there, Michael would have been troubled; as it was, the news of the
young man's reappearance in England made no great impression.  The
Country held the field of one's attention those strenuous days.
The multiple evidence of patriotism exhilarated him--undergraduates
at the docks, young women driving cars, shopfolk walking cheerfully
to their work, the swarm of 'specials,' the general 'carrying-on.'
Even the strikers were good-humoured.  A secret conviction of his
own concerning England was being reinforced day by day, in
refutation of the pessimists.  And there was no place so un-English
at the moment, he felt, as the House of Commons, where people had
nothing to do but pull long faces and talk over 'the situation.'

The news of the General Strike's collapse caught him as he was
going home after driving Fleur to the canteen.  A fizz and bustle
in the streets, and the words:  "Strike Over" scrawled extempore at
street corners, preceded the "End of the Strike--Official" of the
hurrying news-vendors.  Michael stopped his car against the curb
and bought a news-sheet.  There it was!  For a minute he sat
motionless with a choky feeling, such as he had felt when the news
of the Armistice came through.  A sword lifted from over the head
of England!  A source of pleasure to her enemies dried up!  People
passed and passed him, each with a news-sheet, or a look in the
eye.  They were taking it almost as soberly as they had taken the
strike itself.  'Good old England!  We're a great people when we're
up against it!' he thought, driving his car slowly on into
Trafalgar Square.  A group of men, who had obviously been strikers,
stood leaning against the parapet.  He tried to read their faces.
Glad, sorry, ashamed, resentful, relieved?  For the life of him he
could not tell.  Some defensive joke seemed going the round of
them.

'No wonder we're a puzzle to foreigners!' thought Michael:  'The
least understood people in the world!'

He moved on slowly round the square, into Whitehall.  Here were
some slight evidences of feeling.  The block was thick around the
Cenotaph and the entrance to Downing Street; and little cheers kept
breaking out.  A 'special' was escorting a lame man across the
street.  As he came back, Michael saw his face.  Why, it was Uncle
Hilary!  His mother's youngest brother, Hilary Charwell, Vicar of
St. Augustine's-in-the-Meads.

"Hallo, Michael!"

"You a 'special,' Uncle Hilary?  Where's your cloth?"

"My dear!  Are you one of those who think the Church debarred from
mundane pleasure?  You're not getting old-fashioned, Michael?"

Michael grinned.  He had a real affection for Uncle Hilary, based
on admiration for his thin, long face, so creased and humorous, on
boyish recollection of a jolly uncle, on a suspicion that in Hilary
Charwell had been lost a Polar explorer, or other sort of first-
rate adventurer.

"That reminds me, Michael; when are you coming round to see us?
I've got a topping scheme for airing 'The Meads'."

"Ah!" said Michael; "overcrowding's at the bottom of everything,
even this strike."

"Right you are, my son.  Come along, then, as soon as you can.  You
fellows in Parliament ought always to see things at first hand.
You suffer from auto-intoxication in that House.  And now pass on,
young man, you're impeding the traffic."

Michael passed on, grinning.  Good old Uncle Hilary!  Humanising
religion, and living dangerously--had climbed all the worst peaks
in Europe; no sense of his own importance and a real sense of
humour.  Quite the best type of Englishman!  They had tried to make
him a dignitary, but he had jibbed at the gaiters and hat-ropes.
He was what they called a 'live wire' and often committed the most
dreadful indiscretions; but everybody liked him, even his own wife.
Michael dwelt for a moment on his Aunt May.  Forty--he supposed--
with three children and fourteen hundred things to attend to every
day; shingled, and cheerful as a sandboy.  Nice-looking woman, Aunt
May!

Having garaged his car, he remembered that he had not lunched.  It
was three o'clock.  Munching a biscuit, he drank a glass of sherry,
and walked over to the House of Commons.  He found it humming in
anticipation of a statement.  Sitting back, with his legs stretched
out, he had qualms.  What things had been done in here!  The
abolitions of Slavery and of Child Labour, the Married Woman's
Property Act, Repeal of the Corn Laws; but could they be done
nowadays?  And if not--was it a life?  He had said to Fleur that
you couldn't change your vocation twice and survive.  But did he
want to survive?  Failing Foggartism--and Foggartism hadn't failed
only because it hadn't started--what did he really care about?

Leaving the world better than he found it?  Sitting there, he
couldn't help perceiving a certain vagueness about such an
aspiration, even when confined to England.  It was the aspiration
of the House of Commons; but in the ebb and flow of Party, it
didn't seem to make much progress.  Better to fix on some definite
bit of administrative work, stick to it, and get something done.
Fleur wanted him to concentrate on Kenya for the Indians.  Again
rather remote, and having little to do with England.  What definite
work was most needed in connection with England?  Education?
Bunkered again!  How tell what was the best direction into which to
turn education?  When they brought in State Education, for
instance, they had thought the question settled.  Now people were
saying that State education had ruined the State.  Emigration?
Attractive, but negative.  Revival of agriculture?  Well, the two
combined were Foggartism, and he knew by now that nothing but
bitter hardship would teach those lessons; you might talk till you
were blue in the face without convincing anyone but yourself.

What then?

"I've got a topping scheme for airing 'The Meads'."  The Meads was
one of the worst slum parishes in London.  'Clear the slums!'
thought Michael; 'that's practical anyway!'  You could smell the
slums, and feel them.  They stank and bit and bred corruption.  And
yet the dwellers therein loved them; or at least preferred them to
slums they knew not of!  And slum-dwellers were such good sorts!
Too bad to play at shuttlecock with them!  He must have a talk with
Uncle Hilary.  Lots of vitality in England still--numbers of red-
haired children!  But the vitality got sooted as it grew up--like
plants in a back garden.  Slum clearance, smoke abolition,
industrial peace, emigration, agriculture, and safety in the air!
'Them's my sentiments!' thought Michael.  'And if that isn't a
large enough policy for any man, I'm--!'

He turned his face towards the Statement, and thought of his
uncle's words about this 'House.'  Were they all really in a state
of auto-intoxication here--continual slow poisoning of the tissues?
All these chaps around him thought they were doing things.  And he
looked at the chaps.  He knew most of them, and had great respect
for many, but collectively he could not deny that they looked a bit
dazed.  His neighbour to the right was showing his front teeth in
an asphyxiated smile.  'Really,' he thought; 'it's heroic how we
all keep awake day after day!'



CHAPTER VIII

SECRET


It would not have been natural that Fleur should rejoice in the
collapse of the General Strike.  A national outlook over such a
matter was hardly in her character.  Her canteen was completing the
re-establishment in her of the social confidence which the Marjorie
Ferrar affair had so severely shaken; and to be thoroughly busy
with practical matters suited her.  Recruited by Norah Curfew, by
herself, Michael, and his Aunt Lady Alison Charwell, she had a
first-rate crew of helpers of all ages, most of them in Society.
They worked in the manner popularly attributed to negroes; they
craned at nothing--not even beetles.  They got up at, or stayed up
to, all hours.  They were never cross and always cheery.  In a
word, they seemed inspired.  The difference they had made in the
appearance of the railway's culinary premises was startling to the
Company.  Fleur herself was 'on the bridge' all the time.  On her
devolved the greasing of the official wheels, the