The Forsyte saga - Complete
of the dandyism in which he had been bred, had left him the
essential neatness of the horseman, and given him a queer and
rather blighting eye over what he called “the silly haw-haw” of
some Englishmen, the “flapping cockatoory” of some
English-women—Holly had none of that and Holly was his model.
Observant, quick, resourceful, Val went straight to the heart of
a transaction, a horse, a drink; and he was on his way to the
heart of a Mayfly filly, when a slow voice said at his elbow:
“Mr. Val Dartie? How's Mrs. Val Dartie? She's well, I hope.” And
he saw beside him the Belgian he had met at his sister Imogen's.
“Prosper Profond—I met you at lunch,” said the voice.
“How are you?” murmured Val.
“I'm very well,” replied Monsieur Profond, smiling with a certain
inimitable slowness. “A good devil,” Holly had called him. Well!
He looked a little like a devil, with his dark, clipped, pointed
beard; a sleepy one though, and good-humoured, with fine eyes,
unexpectedly intelligent.
“Here's a gentleman wants to know you—cousin of yours—Mr. George
Forsyde.”
Val saw a large form, and a face clean-shaven, bull-like, a
little lowering, with sardonic humour bubbling behind a full grey
eye; he remembered it dimly from old days when he would dine with
his father at the Iseeum Club.
“I used to go racing with your father,” George was saying: “How's
the stud? Like to buy one of my screws?”
Val grinned, to hide the sudden feeling that the bottom had
fallen out of breeding. They believed in nothing over here, not
even in horses. George Forsyte, Prosper Profond! The devil
himself was not more disillusioned than those two.
“Didn't know you were a racing man,” he said to Monsieur Profond.
“I'm not. I don't care for it. I'm a yachtin' man. I don't care
for yachtin' either, but I like to see my friends. I've got some
lunch, Mr. Val Dartie, just a small lunch, if you'd like to 'ave
some; not much—just a small one—in my car.”
“Thanks,” said Val; “very good of you. I'll come along in about
quarter of an hour.”
“Over there. Mr. Forsyde's comin',” and Monsieur Profond
“poinded” with a yellow-gloved finger; “small car, with a small
lunch”; he moved on, groomed, sleepy, and remote, George Forsyte
following, neat, huge, and with his jesting air.
Val remained gazing at the Mayfly filly. George Forsyte, of
course, was an old chap, but this Profond might be about his own
age; Val felt extremely young, as if the Mayfly filly were a toy
at which those two had laughed. The animal had lost reality.
“That 'small' mare”—he seemed to hear the voice of Monsieur
Profond—“what do you see in her?—we must all die!”
And George Forsyte, crony of his father, racing still! The Mayfly
strain—was it any better than any other? He might just as well
have a flutter with his money instead.
“No, by gum!” he muttered suddenly, “if it's no good breeding
horses, it's no good doing anything. What did I come for? I'll
buy her.”
He stood back and watched the ebb of the paddock visitors toward
the stand. Natty old chips, shrewd portly fellows, Jews, trainers
looking as if they had never been guilty of seeing a horse in
their lives; tall, flapping, languid women, or brisk, loud-voiced
women; young men with an air as if trying to take it
seriously—two or three of them with only one arm.
'Life over here's a game!' thought Val. 'Muffin bell rings,
horses run, money changes hands; ring again, run again, money
changes back.'
But, alarmed at his own philosophy, he went to the paddock gate
to watch the Mayfly filly canter down. She moved well; and he
made his way over to the “small” car. The “small” lunch was the
sort a man dreams of but seldom gets; and when it was concluded
Monsieur Profond walked back with him to the paddock.
“Your wife's a nice woman,” was his surprising remark.
“Nicest woman I know,” returned Val dryly.
“Yes,” said Monsieur Profond; “she has a nice face. I admire nice
women.”
Val looked at him suspiciously, but something kindly and direct
in the heavy diabolism of his companion disarmed him for the
moment.
“Any time you like to come on my yacht, I'll give her a small
cruise.”
“Thanks,” said Val, in arms again, “she hates the sea.”
“So do I,” said Monsieur Profond.
“Then why do you yacht?”
The Belgian's eyes smiled. “Oh! I don't know. I've done
everything; it's the last thing I'm doin'.”
“It must be d-d expensive. I should want more reason than that.”
Monsieur Prosper Profond raised his eyebrows, and puffed out a
heavy lower lip.
“I'm an easy-goin' man,” he said.
“Were you in the War?” asked Val.
“Ye-es. I've done that too. I was gassed; it was a small bit
unpleasant.” He smiled with a deep and sleepy air of prosperity,
as if he had caught it from his name.
Whether his saying “small” when he ought to have said “little”
was genuine mistake or affectation Val could not decide; the
fellow was evidently capable of anything.
Among the ring of buyers round the Mayfly filly who had won her
race, Monsieur Profond said:
“You goin' to bid?”
Val nodded. With this sleepy Satan at his elbow, he felt in need
of faith. Though placed above the ultimate blows of Providence by
the forethought of a grand-father who had tied him up a thousand
a year to which was added the thousand a year tied up for Holly
by her grand-father, Val was not flush of capital that he could
touch, having spent most of what he had realised from his South
African farm on his establishment in Sussex. And very soon he was
thinking: 'Dash it! she's going beyond me!' His limit-six
hundred-was exceeded; he dropped out of the bidding. The Mayfly
filly passed under the hammer at seven hundred and fifty guineas.
He was turning away vexed when the slow voice of Monsieur Profond
said in his ear:
“Well, I've bought that small filly, but I don't want her; you
take her and give her to your wife.”
Val looked at the fellow with renewed suspicion, but the good
humour in his eyes was such that he really could not take
offence.
“I made a small lot of money in the War,” began Monsieur Profond
in answer to that look. “I 'ad armament shares. I like to give it
away. I'm always makin' money. I want very small lot myself. I
like my friends to 'ave it.”
“I'll buy her of you at the price you gave,” said Val with sudden
resolution.
“No,” said Monsieur Profond. “You take her. I don' want her.”
“Hang it! one doesn't—”
“Why not?” smiled Monsieur Profond. “I'm a friend of your
family.”
“Seven hundred and fifty guineas is not a box of cigars,” said
Val impatiently.
“All right; you keep her for me till I want her, and do what you
like with her.”
“So long as she's yours,” said Val. “I don't mind that.”
“That's all right,” murmured Monsieur Profond, and moved away.
Val watched; he might be “a good devil,” but then again he might
not. He saw him rejoin George Forsyte, and thereafter saw him no
more.
He spent those nights after racing at his mother's house in Green
Street.
Winifred Dartie at sixty-two was marvellously preserved,
considering the three-and-thirty years during which she had put
up with Montague Dartie, till almost happily released by a French
staircase. It was to her a vehement satisfaction to have her
favourite son back from South Africa after all this time, to feel
him so little changed, and to have taken a fancy to his wife.
Winifred, who in the late seventies, before her marriage, had
been in the vanguard of freedom, pleasure, and fashion, confessed
her youth outclassed by the donzellas of the day. They seemed,
for instance, to regard marriage as an incident, and Winifred
sometimes regretted that she had not done the same; a second,
third, fourth incident might have secured her a partner of less
dazzling inebriety; though, after all, he had left her Val,
Imogen, Maud, Benedict (almost a colonel and unharmed by the
War)—none of whom had been divorced as yet. The steadiness of her
children often amazed one who remembered their father; but, as
she was fond of believing, they were really all Forsytes,
favouring herself, with the exception, perhaps, of Imogen. Her
brother's “little girl” Fleur frankly puzzled Winifred. The child
was as restless as any of these modern young women—“She's a small
flame in a draught,” Prosper Profond had said one day after
dinner—but she did not flap, or talk at the top of her voice. The
steady Forsyteism in Winifred's own character instinctively
resented the feeling in the air, the modern girl's habits and her
motto: “All's much of a muchness! Spend, to-morrow we shall be
poor!” She found it a saving grace in Fleur that, having set her
heart on a thing, she had no change of heart until she got
it—though—what happened after, Fleur was, of course, too young to
have made evident. The child was a “very pretty little thing,”
too, and quite a credit to take about, with her mother's French
taste and gift for wearing clothes; everybody turned to look at
Fleur—great consideration to Winifred, a lover of the style and
distinction which had so cruelly deceived her in the case of
Montague Dartie.
In discussing her with Val, at breakfast on Saturday morning,
Winifred dwelt on the family skeleton.
“That little affair of your father-in-law and your Aunt Irene,
Val—it's old as the hills, of course, Fleur need know nothing
about it—making a fuss. Your Uncle Soames is very particular
about that. So you'll be careful.”
“Yes! But it's dashed awkward—Holly's young half-brother is
coming to live with us while he learns farming. He's there
already.”
“Oh!” said Winifred. “That is a gaff! What is he like?”
“Only saw him once—at Robin Hill, when we were home in 1909; he
was naked and painted blue and yellow in stripes—a jolly little
chap.”
Winifred thought that “rather nice,” and added comfortably:
“Well, Holly's sensible; she'll know how to deal with it. I
shan't tell your uncle. It'll only bother him. It's a great
comfort to have you back, my dear boy, now that I'm getting on.”
“Getting on! Why! you're as young as ever. That chap Profond,
Mother, is he all right?”
“Prosper Profond! Oh! the most amusing man I know.”
Val grunted, and recounted the story of the Mayfly filly.
“That's so like him,” murmured Winifred. “He does all sorts of
things.”
“Well,” said Val shrewdly, “our family haven't been too lucky
with that kind of cattle; they're too light-hearted for us.”
It was true, and Winifred's blue study lasted a full minute
before she answered:
“Oh! well! He's a foreigner, Val; one must make allowances.”
“All right, I'll use his filly and make it up to him, somehow.”