The Forsyte saga - Complete
Fleur's—her father; and of these figures, as though seen in the
distance with disapproving faces, they spoke little.
The Down dipped and rose again toward Chanctonbury Ring; a
sparkle of far sea came into view, a sparrow-hawk hovered in the
sun's eye so that the blood-nourished brown of his wings gleamed
nearly red. Jon had a passion for birds, and an aptitude for
sitting very still to watch them; keen-sighted, and with a memory
for what interested him, on birds he was almost worth listening
to. But in Chanctonbury Ring there were none—its great beech
temple was empty of life, and almost chilly at this early hour;
they came out willingly again into the sun on the far side. It
was Fleur's turn now. She spoke of dogs, and the way people
treated them. It was wicked to keep them on chains! She would
like to flog people who did that. Jon was astonished to find her
so humanitarian. She knew a dog, it seemed, which some farmer
near her home kept chained up at the end of his chicken run, in
all weathers, till it had almost lost its voice from barking!
“And the misery is,” she said vehemently, “that if the poor thing
didn't bark at every one who passes it wouldn't be kept there. I
do think men are cunning brutes. I've let it go twice, on the
sly; it's nearly bitten me both times, and then it goes simply
mad with joy; but it always runs back home at last, and they
chain it up again. If I had my way, I'd chain that man up.” Jon
saw her teeth and her eyes gleam. “I'd brand him on his forehead
with the word 'Brute'. that would teach him!”
Jon agreed that it would be a good remedy.
“It's their sense of property,” he said, “which makes people
chain things. The last generation thought of nothing but
property; and that's why there was the War.”
“Oh!” said Fleur, “I never thought of that. Your people and mine
quarrelled about property. And anyway we've all got it—at least,
I suppose your people have.”
“Oh! yes, luckily; I don't suppose I shall be any good at making
money.”
“If you were, I don't believe I should like you.”
Jon slipped his hand tremulously under her arm. Fleur looked
straight before her and chanted:
“Jon, Jon, the farmer's son, Stole a pig, and away he run!”
Jon's arm crept round her waist.
“This is rather sudden,” said Fleur calmly; “do you often do it?”
Jon dropped his arm. But when she laughed his arm stole back
again; and Fleur began to sing:
“O who will oer the downs so free, O who will with me ride? O who
will up and follow me—-”
“Sing, Jon!”
Jon sang. The larks joined in, sheep-bells, and an early morning
church far away over in Steyning. They went on from tune to tune,
till Fleur said:
“My God! I am hungry now!”
“Oh! I am sorry!”
She looked round into his face.
“Jon, you're rather a darling.”
And she pressed his hand against her waist. Jon almost reeled
from happiness. A yellow-and-white dog coursing a hare startled
them apart. They watched the two vanish down the slope, till
Fleur said with a sigh: “He'll never catch it, thank goodness!
What's the time? Mine's stopped. I never wound it.”
Jon looked at his watch. “By Jove!” he said, “mine's stopped;
too.”
They walked on again, but only hand in hand.
“If the grass is dry,” said Fleur, “let's sit down for half a
minute.”
Jon took off his coat, and they shared it.
“Smell! Actually wild thyme!”
With his arm round her waist again, they sat some minutes in
silence.
“We are goats!” cried Fleur, jumping up; “we shall be most
fearfully late, and look so silly, and put them on their guard.
Look here, Jon We only came out to get an appetite for breakfast,
and lost our way. See?”
“Yes,” said Jon.
“It's serious; there'll be a stopper put on us. Are you a good
liar?”
“I believe not very; but I can try.”
Fleur frowned.
“You know,” she said, “I realize that they don't mean us to be
friends.”
“Why not?”
“I told you why.”
“But that's silly.”
“Yes; but you don't know my father!”
“I suppose he's fearfully fond of you.”
“You see, I'm an only child. And so are you—of your mother. Isn't
it a bore? There's so much expected of one. By the time they've
done expecting, one's as good as dead.”
“Yes,” muttered Jon, “life's beastly short. One wants to live
forever, and know everything.”
“And love everybody?”
“No,” cried Jon; “I only want to love once—you.”
“Indeed! You're coming on! Oh! Look! There's the chalk-pit; we
can't be very far now. Let's run.”
Jon followed, wondering fearfully if he had offended her.
The chalk-pit was full of sunshine and the murmuration of bees.
Fleur flung back her hair.
“Well,” she said, “in case of accidents, you may give me one
kiss, Jon,” and she pushed her cheek forward. With ecstasy he
kissed that hot soft cheek.
“Now, remember! We lost our way; and leave it to me as much as
you can. I'm going to be rather beastly to you; it's safer; try
and be beastly to me!”
Jon shook his head. “That's impossible.”
“Just to please me; till five o'clock, at all events.”
“Anybody will be able to see through it,” said Jon gloomily.
“Well, do your best. Look! There they are! Wave your hat! Oh! you
haven't got one. Well, I'll cooee! Get a little away from me, and
look sulky.”
Five minutes later, entering the house and doing his utmost to
look sulky, Jon heard her clear voice in the dining-room:
“Oh! I'm simply ravenous! He's going to be a farmer—and he loses
his way! The boy's an idiot!”
IX. GOYA
Lunch was over and Soames mounted to the picture-gallery in his
house near Mapleduram. He had what Annette called “a grief.”
Fleur was not yet home. She had been expected on Wednesday; had
wired that it would be Friday; and again on Friday that it would
be Sunday afternoon; and here were her aunt, and her cousins the
Cardigans, and this fellow Profond, and everything flat as a
pancake for the want of her. He stood before his Gauguin—sorest
point of his collection. He had bought the ugly great thing with
two early Matisses before the War, because there was such a fuss
about those Post-Impressionist chaps. He was wondering whether
Profond would take them off his hands—the fellow seemed not to
know what to do with his money—when he heard his sister's voice
say: “I think that's a horrid thing, Soames,” and saw that
Winifred had followed him up.
“Oh! you do?” he said dryly; “I gave five hundred for it.”
“Fancy! Women aren't made like that even if they are black.”
Soames uttered a glum laugh. “You didn't come up to tell me
that.”
“No. Do you know that Jolyon's boy is staying with Val and his
wife?”
Soames spun round.
“What?”
“Yes,” drawled Winifred; “he's gone to live with them there while
he learns farming.”
Soames had turned away, but her voice pursued him as he walked up
and down. “I warned Val that neither of them was to be spoken to
about old matters.”
“Why didn't you tell me before?”
Winifred shrugged her substantial shoulders.
“Fleur does what she likes. You've always spoiled her. Besides,
my dear boy, what's the harm?”
“The harm!” muttered Soames. “Why, she—” he checked himself. The
Juno, the handkerchief, Fleur's eyes, her questions, and now this
delay in her return—the symptoms seemed to him so sinister that,
faithful to his nature, he could not part with them.
“I think you take too much care,” said Winifred. “If I were you,
I should tell her of that old matter. It's no good thinking that
girls in these days are as they used to be. Where they pick up
their knowledge I can't tell, but they seem to know everything.”
Over Soames' face, closely composed, passed a sort of spasm, and
Winifred added hastily:
“If you don't like to speak of it, I could for you.”
Soames shook his head. Unless there was absolute necessity the
thought that his adored daughter should learn of that old scandal
hurt his pride too much.
“No,” he said, “not yet. Never if I can help it.
“Nonsense, my dear. Think what people are!”
“Twenty years is a long time,” muttered Soames. “Outside our
family, who's likely to remember?”
Winifred was silenced. She inclined more and more to that peace
and quietness of which Montague Dartie had deprived her in her
youth. And, since pictures always depressed her, she soon went
down again.
Soames passed into the corner where, side by side, hung his real
Goya and the copy of the fresco “La Vendimia.” His acquisition of
the real Goya rather beautifully illustrated the cobweb of vested
interests and passions which mesh the bright-winged fly of human
life. The real Goya's noble owner's ancestor had come into
possession of it during some Spanish war—it was in a word loot.
The noble owner had remained in ignorance of its value until in
the nineties an enterprising critic discovered that a Spanish
painter named Goya was a genius. It was only a fair Goya, but
almost unique in England, and the noble owner became a marked
man. Having many possessions and that aristocratic culture which,
independent of mere sensuous enjoyment, is founded on the sounder
principle that one must know everything and be fearfully
interested in life, he had fully intended to keep an article
which contributed to his reputation while he was alive, and to
leave it to the nation after he was dead. Fortunately for Soames,
the House of Lords was violently attacked in 1909, and the noble
owner became alarmed and angry. 'If,' he said to himself, 'they
think they can have it both ways they are very much mistaken. So
long as they leave me in quiet enjoyment the nation can have some
of my pictures at my death. But if the nation is going to bait
me, and rob me like this, I'm damned if I won't sell the lot.
They can't have my private property and my public spirit-both.'
He brooded in this fashion for several months till one morning,
after reading the speech of a certain statesman, he telegraphed
to his agent to come down and bring Bodkin. On going over the
collection Bodkin, than whose opinion on market values none was
more sought, pronounced that with a free hand to sell to America,
Germany, and other places where there was an interest in art, a
lot more money could be made than by selling in England. The
noble owner's public spirit—he said—was well known but the
pictures were unique. The noble owner put this opinion in his
pipe and smoked it for a year. At the end of that time he read
another speech by the same statesman, and telegraphed to his
agents: “Give Bodkin a free hand.” It was at this juncture that
Bodkin conceived the idea which saved the Goya and two other
unique pictures for the native country of the noble owner. With