“What am I to do, if you won’t, Father?” she said very softly.

“I’ll do anything for your happiness,” said Soames; “but this isn’t for your happiness.”

“Oh! it is; it is!”

“It’ll only stir things up,” he said grimly.

“But they are stirred up. The thing is to quiet them. To make her feel that this is just OUR lives, and has nothing to do with yours or hers. You can do it, Father, I know you can.”

“You know a great deal, then,” was Soames’ glum answer.

“If you will, Jon and I will wait a year—two years if you like.”

“It seems to me,” murmured Soames, “that you care nothing about what I feel.”

Fleur pressed his hand against her cheek.

“I do, darling. But you wouldn’t like me to be awfully miserable.” How she wheedled to get her ends! And trying with all his might to think she really cared for him—he was not sure—not sure. All she cared for was this boy! Why should he help her to get this boy, who was killing her affection for himself? Why should he? By the laws of the Forsytes it was foolish! There was nothing to be had out of it—nothing! To give her to that boy! To pass her into the enemy’s camp, under the influence of the woman who had injured him so deeply! 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. A 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 clenched their union. And, now, he was going to clench 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 today and gone tomorrow” 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 pig-headed 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 fantigue.” 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 topsyturvy 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 five 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. I consider 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.”

“If you had only—! Well—they might have been—” he did not finish that sentence “brother and sister and all this saved,” but he saw her shudder as if he had, and stung by the sight, he crossed over to the window. Out THERE the trees had not grown—they couldn’t, they were old!

“So far as I’m concerned,” he said, “you may make your mind easy. I desire to see neither you nor your son if this marriage comes about. Young people in these days are—are unaccountable. But I can’t bear to see my daughter unhappy. What am I to say to her when I go back?”

“Please say to her, as I said to you, that it rests with Jon.”

“You don’t oppose it?”

“With all my heart; not with my lips.”

Soames stood, biting his finger.

“I remember an evening—” he said suddenly; and was silent. What was there—what was there in this woman that would not fit into the four comers of his hate or condemnation? “Where is he—your son?”