第82章

Slowly--inevitably--he would lose this flower of his life! And suddenly he was conscious that his hand was wet. His heart gave a little painful jump. He couldn't bear her to cry. He put his other hand quickly over hers, and a tear dropped on that, too. He couldn't go on like this! "Well, well," he said, "I'll think it over, and do what I can. Come, come!" If she must have it for her happiness--she must; he couldn't refuse to help her. And lest she should begin to thank him he got out of his chair and went up to the piano-player--making that noise! It ran down, as he reached it, with a faint buzz.

That musical box of his nursery days: "The Harmonious Blacksmith,""Glorious Port"--the thing had always made him miserable when his mother set it going on Sunday afternoons. Here it was again--the same thing, only larger, more expensive, and now it played "The Wild, Wild Women," and "The Policeman's Holiday," and he was no longer in black velvet with a sky blue collar. 'Profond's right,' he thought, 'there's nothing in it! We're all progressing to the grave!' And with that surprising mental comment he walked out.

He did not see Fleur again that night. But, at breakfast, her eyes followed him about with an appeal he could not escape--not that he intended to try. No! He had made up his mind to the nerve-racking business. He would go to Robin Hill--to that house of memories.

Pleasant memory--the last! Of going down to keep that boy's father and Irene apart by threatening divorce. He had often thought, since, that it had clinched their union. And, now, he was going to clinch the union of that boy with his girl. 'I don't know what I've done,'

he thought, 'to have such things thrust on me!' He went up by train and down by train, and from the station walked by the long rising lane, still very much as he remembered it over thirty years ago.

Funny--so near London! Some one evidently was holding on to the land there. This speculation soothed him, moving between the high hedges slowly, so as not to get overheated, though the day was chill enough.

After all was said and done there was something real about land, it didn't shift. Land, and good pictures! The values might fluctuate a bit, but on the whole they were always going up--worth holding on to, in a world where there was such a lot of unreality, cheap building, changing fashions, such a "Here to-day and gone to-morrow" spirit.

The French were right, perhaps, with their peasant proprietorship, though he had no opinion of the French. One's bit of land!

Something solid in it! He had heard peasant proprietors described as a pig-headed lot; had heard young Mont call his father a pigheaded Morning Poster--disrespectful young devil. Well, there were worse things than being pig-headed or reading the Morning Post. There was Profond and his tribe, and all these Labour chaps, and loud-mouthed politicians and 'wild, wild women'! A lot of worse things! And suddenly Soames became conscious of feeling weak, and hot, and shaky.

Sheer nerves at the meeting before him! As Aunt Juley might have said--quoting "Superior Dosset"--his nerves were "in a proper fautigue." He could see the house now among its trees, the house he had watched being built, intending it for himself and this woman, who, by such strange fate, had lived in it with another after all!

He began to think of Dumetrius, Local Loans, and other forms of investment. He could not afford to meet her with his nerves all shaking; he who represented the Day of Judgment for her on earth as it was in heaven; he, legal ownership, personified, meeting lawless beauty, incarnate. His dignity demanded impassivity during this embassy designed to link their offspring, who, if she had behaved herself, would have been brother and sister. That wretched tune, "The Wild, Wild Women," kept running in his head, perversely, for tunes did not run there as a rule. Passing the poplars in front of the house, he thought: 'How they've grown; I had them planted!'

A maid answered his ring.

"Will you say--Mr. Forsyte, on a very special matter."If she realised who he was, quite probably she would not see him.

'By George!' he thought, hardening as the tug came. 'It's a topsy-turvy affair!'

The maid came back. "Would the gentleman state his business, please?""Say it concerns Mr. Jon," said Soames.

And once more he was alone in that hall with the pool of grey-white marble designed by her first lover. Ah! she had been a bad lot--had loved two men, and not himself! He must remember that when he came face to face with her once more. And suddenly he saw her in the opening chink between the long heavy purple curtains, swaying, as if in hesitation; the old perfect poise and line, the old startled dark-eyed gravity, the old calm defensive voice: "Will you come in, please?"He passed through that opening. As in the picture-gallery and the confectioner's shop, she seemed to him still beautiful. And this was the first time--the very first--since he married her seven-and-thirty years ago, that he was speaking to her without the legal right to call her his. She was not wearing black--one of that fellow's radical notions, he supposed.

"I apologise for coming," he said glumly; "but this business must be settled one way or the other.""Won't you sit down?""No, thank you."

Anger at his false position, impatience of ceremony between them, mastered him, and words came tumbling out:

"It's an infernal mischance; I've done my best to discourage it. Iconsider my daughter crazy, but I've got into the habit of indulging her; that's why I'm here. I suppose you're fond of your son.""Devotedly.""Well?"

"It rests with him."

He had a sense of being met and baffled. Always--always she had baffled him, even in those old first married days.

"It's a mad notion," he said.

"It is."