 Part 1, Chapter 10 of To Let. Among those four foresights of the third, and as one might say, fourth generation, that one's done under the Downs, a weekend, prolonged into the ninth day, had stretched the crossing threads of tenacity almost a snapping point. Never had Fleur been so fine, holly so watchful, foul so stable secretive, John so silent and disturbed. What he learnt of farming in that week might have been balanced on the point of a penknife and puffed off. He, whose nature was essentially a verse from intrigue, and whose adoration of Fleur disposed him to think that any need for concealing it was skittles, chafed and fretted, yet obeyed, taking what relief he could in the few moments when they were alone. On Thursday, while they were standing in the bay window of the drawing-room, dressed for dinner, she said to him, John, I'm going home on Sunday by the three forty from Paddington. If you were to go home on Saturday, you could come up on Sunday and take me down, and just get back here by the last train after. You were going home anyway, weren't you?" John nodded. Anything to be with you, he said, only, why didn't I pretend? Fleur slipped her little finger into his palm. You have no instinct, John. You must leave things to me. It's serious about our people. We've simply got to be secret at present if we want to be together. The door was opened, and she added loudly, You are a duffer, John. Something turned over within, John. He could not bear this subterfuge about a feeling so natural, so overwhelming, and so sweet. On Friday night, about eleven, he had packed his bag, and was leaning out of his window, half miserable, and half lost in a dream of Paddington station, when he heard a tiny sound, as of a fingernail, tapping on his door. He rushed to it and listened. Again the sound. It was a nail. He opened. Oh, what a lovely thing came in. I wanted to show you my fancy dress, its head, and struck an attitude at the foot of his bed. John drew a long breath, and leaned against the door. The apparition wore white muslin on its head. A fissue round its bare neck over a wine-coloured dress, fooled out below its slender waist. It held one arm akimbo, and the other raised, right-angled, holding a fan which touched its head. This ought to be a basket of grapes, it whispered, but I haven't got it here. It's my Goya dress, and this is the attitude in the picture. Do you like it? It's a dream. The apparition pirouetted. Touch it and see. John knelt down, and took the skirt reverently. Grape-colour, came the whisper, all grapes, la vendimilla. The vintage. John's fingers scarcely touched each side of the waist. He looked up with adoring eyes. Oh, John! it whispered, bent, kissed his forehead, pirouetted again, and gliding out was gone. John stayed on his knees, and his head fell forward against the bed. How long he stayed like that he did not know. The little noises of the tapping nail, the feet, the skirt rustling as in a dream, went on about him, and before his closed eyes the figure stood and smiled and whispered, a faint perfume of narcissus lingering in the air. And his forehead, where it had been kissed, had a little cool place between the brows, like the imprint of a flower. Love filled his soul, that love of boy for girl which knows so little, hopes so much, would not brush the down-off for the world, and must become in time a fragrant memory, a searing passion, a hunger, a mateship, or once, in many times vintage full and sweet, with sunset colour on the grapes. Enough has been said about John Forsythe, here and in another place, to show what long marches lay between him and his great-great-grandfather, the First Jolian, in Dorset, down by the sea. John was sensitive as a girl, more sensitive than nine out of ten girls of the day, imaginative as one of his half-sister-June's lame-duck painters, affectionate as a son of his father and mother naturally would be, and yet, in his inner tissue, there was something of the old founder of his family, a secret tenacity of soul, a dread of showing his feelings, a determination not to know when he was beaten, sensitive, imaginative, affectionate boys, get a bad time at school. But John had instinctively kept his nature dark, and been but normally unhappy there. Only with his mother had he, up till then, been absolutely frank and natural. And when he went home to Robin Hill that Saturday, his heart was heavy, because Fleur had said that he must not be frank and natural, with her from whom he had never yet kept anything, must not even tell her that they had met again, unless he found that she knew already. So intolerable did this seem to him, that he was very near to telegraphing an excuse and staying up in London. And the first thing his mother said to him was, So you've had our little friend of the confectioners there, John. What is she like on second thoughts? With relief and a high colour, John answered, Oh, awfully jolly, Mum! Her arm pressed his. John had never loved her so much as in that minute, which seemed to falsify Fleur's fears, and to release his soul. He turned to look at her. But something in her smiling face, something which only he perhaps would have caught, stopped the words bubbling up in him. Could fear go with a smile? If so, there was fear in her face. And out of John tumbled quite other words, about farming, holly, and the downs. Talking fast he waited for her to come back to Fleur, but she did not. Nor did his father mention her, though of course he too must have known. What deprivation and killing of reality was in his silence about Fleur, when he was so full of her, when his mother was so full of John and his father so full of his mother, and so the trio spent the evening of that Saturday. After dinner his mother played. She seemed to play all the things he liked best, and he sat with one knee clasped and his hair standing up where his fingers had run through it. He gazed at his mother while she played. But he saw Fleur. Fleur in the moonlit orchard. Fleur in the sunlit gravel pit. Fleur in that fancy dress, swaying, whispering, stooping, kissing his forehead. Once, while he listened, he forgot himself, and glanced at his father in that other easy chair. What was Dad looking like that for? The expression on his face was so sad and puzzling, it filled him with the sort of remorse, so that he got up and went and sat on the arm of his father's chair. From there he could not see his face, and again he saw Fleur in his mother's hands, slim and white on the keys, in the profile of her face and her powdery hair, and down the long room in the open window where the main night walked outside. When he went up to bed, his mother came into his room. She stood at the window and said, Those cypresses your grandfather planted down there have done wonderfully. I always think they look beautiful under a dropping moon. I wish you had known your grandfather, John. Were you married to father when he was alive? asked John suddenly. No, dear, he died in ninety-two, very old, eighty-five, I think. His father like him. A little, but more subtle, and not quite so solid. I know, from grandfather's portrait, who painted that? One of June's lame ducks, but it's quite good. John slipped his hand through his mother's arm. Tell me about the family quarrel, Mum. He felt her arm quivering. No, dear, that's for your father some day, if he thinks fit. Then it was serious, said John, with a catch in his breath. Yes. And there was a silence during which neither knew whether the arm or the hand within it were quivering most. Some people, said Irene softly, think the moon on her back is evil. To me she's always lovely. Look at those cypress shadows, John. Father says we may go to Italy, you and I, for two months. Would you like? John took his hand from under her arm. His sensation was so sharp and so confused. Italy, with his mother. A fortnight ago it would have been perfection. Now it filled him with dismay. He felt that the sudden suggestion had to do with Fleur. He stammered out, oh, yes, only, I don't know. Now I've just begun. I'd like to think it over. Her voice answered, cool and gentle. Yes, dear, think it over. But better now than when you've begun farming seriously. Italy, with you, it would be nice. John put his arm round her waist, still slim and firm as a girl's. Do you think you ought to leave father? he said, feebly, feeling very mean. Father suggested it. He thinks you ought to see Italy, at least before you settle down to anything. The sense of meanness died in John. He knew, yes, he knew, that his father and his mother were not speaking frankly, no more than he himself. They wanted to keep him from Fleur. His heart hardened. And as if she felt that process going on, his mother said, Good night, darling, have a good sleep and think it over. But it would be lovely. She pressed him to her so quickly that he did not see her face. John stood feeling exactly as he used to when he was a naughty little boy, sore because he was not loving, and because he was justified in his own eyes. But Irene, after she had stood a moment in her own room, passed through the dressing room between it and her husband's. Well, he will think it over, Jolyon. Watching her lips that wore a little drawn smile, Jolyon said quietly, You had better let me tell him and have done with it. After all, John has the instincts of a gentleman. He has only to understand. Only he can't understand. That's impossible. I believe I could, at his age. Irene caught his hand. You were always more of a realist than John and never so innocent. And that's true, said Jolyon. It's queer, isn't it? You and I would tell our stories to the world without a particle of shame. But our own boy stumps us. We've never cared whether the world approves or not. John would not disapprove of us. Oh, Jolyon, yes, he's in love. I feel he's in love. And he'd say my mother once married without love. How could she have? It'll seem to him a crime. And so it was. Jolyon took her hand and said with a wrigh smile, Ah, why on earth have we borne young? Now, if only we were born old and grew younger year by year. We should understand how things happen and drop all our cursed intolerance. But you know, if the boy is really in love, he won't forget, even if he goes to Italy. We are a tenacious breed, and he'll know by instinct why he's being sent. Nothing will really cure him but the shock of being told. Let me try, anyway. Jolyon stood a moment without speaking. Between this devil and this deep sea the pain of a dreaded disclosure and the grief of losing his wife for two months he secretly hoped for the devil. Yet, if she wished for the deep sea, he must put up with it. After all, it would be training for that departure from which there would be no return. And taking her in his arms he kissed her eyes and said, As you will, my love. End of Part 1, Chapter 10. Part 1, Chapter 11 of Tullette This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Leanne Howlett. The Foresight Saga 3, Tullette, by John Galsworthy. Part 1, Chapter 11, Duette That small emotion, love, grows amazingly when threatened with extinction. John reached Paddington Station half an hour before his time and a full week after, as it seemed to him. He stood at the appointed book stall amid a crowd of Sunday travelers and a Harris-Tweed suit exhaling, as it were, the emotion of his thumping heart. He read the names of the novels on the book stall and bought one at last to avoid being regarded with suspicion by the book stall clerk. It was called The Heart of the Trail, which must mean something, though it did not seem to. He also bought The Lady's Mirror and The Landsman. Every minute was an hour long and full of horrid imaginings. After nineteen had passed, he saw her with a bag and a porter wheeling her luggage. She came swiftly. She came cool. She greeted him as if he were a brother. First class, she said to the porter, corner seats opposite. John admired her frightful self-possession. Can't we get a carriage to ourselves, he whispered. No good. It's a stopping train. After maidenhead, perhaps. Look natural, John. John screwed his features into a scowl. They got in with two other beasts, O Heaven. He tipped the porter unnaturally in his confusion. The brute deserved nothing for putting him in there and looking as if he knew all about it into the bargain. Floor hid herself behind The Lady's Mirror. John imitated her behind The Landsman. The train started. Floor let The Lady's Mirror fall and leaned forward. Well, she said. It seemed about fifteen days. She nodded, and John's face lighted up at once. Look natural, murmured Floor, and went off into a bubble of laughter. It hurt him. How could he look natural with Italy hanging over him? He had meant to break it to her gently, but now he boarded it out. They want me to go to Italy with Mother for two months. Floor drooped her eyelids, turned a little pale, and bit her lips. Oh, she said. It was all, but it was much. That O was like the quick drawback of the wrist in fencing ready for repost. It came. You must go. Go, said John, a strangled voice. Of course. But two months it's ghastly. No, said Floor, six weeks. You'll have forgotten me by then. We'll meet in the National Gallery the day after you get back. John laughed. But suppose you've forgotten me, he muttered into the noise of the train. Floor shook her head. Some other beast, murmured John. Her foot touched his. No other beast, she said, lifting the lady's mirror. The train stopped. Two passengers got out, and one got in. I shall die, thought John, if we're not alone at all. The train went on, and again Floor leaned forward. I never let go, she said. Do you? John shook his head vehemently. Never, he said. Will you write to me? No, but you can, to my club. She had a club. She was wonderful. Did you pump Holly, he muttered? Yes, but I got nothing. I didn't dare pump hard. What can it be, cried John. I shall find out all right. A long silence followed till Floor said, This is maiden head. Stand by, John. The train stopped. The remaining passenger got out. Floor drew down her blind. Quick she cried, hang out. Look as much of a beast as you can. John blew his nose and scowled. Never in all his life had he scowled like that. An old lady recoiled. A young one tried the handle. It turned, but the door would not open. The train moved. The young lady darted to another carriage. What luck, cried John. It jammed. Yes, said Floor. I was holding it. The train moved out, and John fell on his knees. Look out for the corridor, she whispered, and quick. Her lips met his. I know their kiss only lasted perhaps ten seconds. John's soul left his body and went so far beyond that when he was again sitting opposite that demerit figure, he was pale as death. He heard her sigh, and the sound seemed to him the most precious he had ever heard. An exquisite declaration that he meant something to her. Six weeks isn't really long, she said, and you can easily make it six if you keep your head out there and never seem to think of me. John gasped. This is just what's really wanted, John, to convince them, don't you see? If we're just as bad when you come back, they'll stop being ridiculous about it. Only I'm sorry it's not Spain. There's a girl in a Goya picture at Madrid who's like me, Father, says. Only she isn't. We've got a copy of her. It was to John like a ray of sunshine piercing through a fog. I'll make it Spain, he said. Mother won't mind, she's never been there. And my father thinks a lot of Goya. Oh, yes, he's a painter, isn't he? Only watercolor, said John with honesty. When we come to Redding, John, get out first and go down to Caverchum Lock and wait for me. I'll send the car home and we'll walk by the towing path. John seized her hand in gratitude, and they sat silent with the world well lost and one eye on the corridor. But the trains seemed to run twice as fast now, and its sound was almost lost in that of John's sighing. We're getting nearer, said Fleur, the towing path's awfully exposed. One more. Oh, John, don't forget me. John answered with his kiss. And very soon a flushed, distracted looking youth could have been seen, as they say, leaping from the train and hurrying along the platform, searching his pockets for his ticket. When at last she rejoined him on the towing path a little beyond Caverchum Lock, he had made an effort and regained some measure of equanimity. If they had to part he would not make a scene. A breeze by the bright river through the white side of the willow leaves up into the sunlight and followed those two with its faint rustle. I told our chauffeur that I was trained, Giddy, said Fleur. Did you look pretty natural as you went out? I don't know. What is natural? It's natural to you to look seriously happy. When I first saw you I thought you weren't a bit like other people. Exactly what I thought when I saw you. I knew at once I should never love anybody else. Fleur laughed. We're absurdly young and love's young dream is out of date, John. Besides it's awfully wasteful. Think of all the fun you might have. You haven't begun even. It's a shame really. And there's me. I wonder. Confusion came on John's spirit. How could she say such things just as they were going to part? If you feel like that, he said, I can't go. I shall tell Mother that I ought to try and work. There's always the condition of the world. The condition of the world? John thrust his hands deep into his pockets. But there is, he said. Think of the people starving. Fleur shook her head. No, no, I never, never will make myself miserable for nothing. Nothing. But there's an awful state of things and, of course, one ought to help. Oh, yes, I know all that. But you can't help people, John. They're hopeless. When you pull them out they only get into another hole. Look at them, still fighting and plotting and struggling, though they're dying in heaps all the time. Idiots. Aren't you sorry for them? Oh, sorry, yes, but I'm not going to make myself unhappy about it. That's no good. And they were silent, disturbed by this first glimpse of each other's natures. I think people are brutes and idiots, said Fleur stubbornly. I think they're poor wretches, said John. It was as if they had quarreled and at this supreme and awful moment with parting visible out there in that last gap of the willows. Well, go and help your poor wretches and don't think of me. John stood still. Sweat broke out on his forehead and his limbs trembled. Fleur, too, had stopped and was frowning at the river. I must believe in things, said John with a sort of agony. We're all meant to enjoy life. Fleur laughed. Yes, and that's what you won't do if you don't take care. But perhaps your idea of enjoyment is to make yourself wretched. There are lots of people like that, of course. She was pale, her eyes had darkened, her lips had thinned. Was it Fleur or thus staring at the water? John had an unreal feeling as if he were passing through the scene in a book where the lover has to choose between love and duty. But just then she looked round at him. Never was anything so intoxicating as that vivacious look. It acted on him exactly as the tug of a chain acts on a dog. Brought him up to her with his tail wagging and his tongue out. Don't let's be silly, she said, times too short. Look, John, you can just see where I've got to cross the river. There round the bend where the woods begin. John saw a gable, a chimney or two, a patch of wall through the trees, and felt his heart sink. I mustn't dawdle any more. It's no good going beyond the next hedge. It gets all open. Let's get on to it and say good-bye. They went side by side, hand in hand, silently toward the hedge, where the mayflower both pink and white was in full bloom. My club's the talisman, Stratton Street, Piccadilly. Letters there will be quite safe and I'm almost always up once a week. John nodded. His face had become extremely set, his eyes stared straight before him. Today's the 23rd of May, said Fleur. On the 9th of July I shall be in front of the Bacchus and Ariadne at three o'clock. Will you? I will. If you feel as bad as I, it's all right. Let those people pass. A man and woman airing their children went by strung out in Sunday fashion. The last of them passed the wicket gate. Domesticity, said Fleur, and blotted herself against the Hawthorne hedge. The blossom sprayed out above her head, and one pink cluster brushed her cheek. John put up his hand, jealously, to keep it off. Good-bye, John. For a second they stood with hands hard clasped. Then their lips met for the third time, and when they parted, Fleur broke away and fled through the wicket gate. John stood where she had left him with his forehead against that pink cluster. Gone, for an eternity, for seven weeks all but two days. And here he was, wasting the last side of her. He rushed to the gate. She was walking swiftly on the heels of the straggling children. She turned her head, he saw her hand make a little flitting gesture. Then she sped on, and the trailing family blotted her out from his view. The words of a comic song. Pattington Grown, most ever known, he gave a sepulchral pattington groan. Came into his head, and he sped incontinently back to Reading Station. All the way up to London and down to Warnston, he sat with the heart of the trail open on his knee, knitting in his head a poem so full of feeling that it would not rhyme. End of Part 1, Chapter 11, Recording by Leanne Howlett. Part 1, Chapter 12 of To Let. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Leanne Howlett. The Foresight Saga 3, To Let, by John Gallsworthy. Part 1, Chapter 12, Caprice. Fleur sped on. She had need of rapid motion. She was late and wanted all her wits about her when she got in. She passed the islands, the station and hotel, and was about to take the ferry when she saw a skiff with a young man standing up in it and holding to the bushes. This foresight, he said, let me put you across. I've come on purpose. She looked at him in blank amazement. It's all right. I've been having tea with your people. I thought I'd save you the last bit. It's on my way. I'm just off back to Pangbourne. My name's Mont. I saw you at the picture gallery. You remember, when your father invited me to see his pictures. Oh, said Fleur. Yes, the handkerchief. To this young man, he owed John, and taking his hand, she stepped down into the skiff. Still emotional and a little out of breath, she sat silent. Not so the young man. She had never heard anyone say so much and so short a time. He told her his age, 24, his weight, 10 stone 11, his place of residence, not far away, described his sensations under fire and what it felt like to be gassed, criticized the Juno, mentioned his own conception of that goddess, commented on the Goya copy, said Fleur was not too awfully like it, sketched and rapidly the condition of England, spoke of Montchurpe-Fond, or whatever his name was, as an awful sport, thought her father had some ripping pictures and some rather dug up, hoped he might row down again and take her on the river because he was quite trustworthy, inquired her opinion of Chekhov, gave her his own, wished they could go to the Russian Ballet together sometime, considered the name Fleur Forsythe simply topping, cursed his people for giving him the name of Michael on the top of Mont, outlined his father and said that if she wanted a good book, she should read Job. His father was rather like Job, while Job still had land. But Job didn't have land, Fleur murmured. He only had flocks and herds and moved on. Ah, answered Michael Mont. I wish my governor would move on, not that I want his land, lands an awful bore in these days, don't you think? We never have it in my family, said Fleur, we have everything else. I believe one of my great uncles once had a sentimental farm in Dorset, because we came from there originally, but it cost him more than it made him happy. Did he sell it? No, he kept it. Why? Because nobody would buy it. Good for the old boy. No, it wasn't good for him. Father says it soured him. His name was Swithin. What a corking name. Do you know that we're getting farther off, not nearer? This river flows. Splendid, cried Mont, dipping his skulls vaguely. It's good to meet a girl who's got wit. But better to meet a young man who's got it in the plural. Young Mont raised a hand to tear his hair. Look out, cried Fleur, your skull. All right, it's thick enough to bear a scratch. Do you mind sculling, said Fleur severely, I want to get in. Ah, said Mont. But when you get in you see, I shan't see you anymore today. Phiney, as the French girl said when she jumped on her bed after saying her prayers. Don't you bless the day that gave you a French mother and a name like yours? I like my name, but father gave it to me. Mother wanted me called Marguerite, which is absurd. Do you mind calling me mm and letting me call you ff? It's in the spirit of the age. I don't mind anything so long as I get in. Mont caught a little crab and answered that was a nasty one. Please row. I am. And he did for several strokes looking at her with rueful eagerness. Of course, you know, he ejaculated pausing that I came to see you, not your father's pictures. Floor rows. If you don't row, I shall get out and swim. Really and truly, then I could come in after you. Mr. Mont, I'm late and tired. Please put me on shore at once. When she stepped out onto the garden landing stage, he rose and grasping his hair with both hands looked at her. Fleur smiled. Don't cry the irrepressible, Mont. I know you're going to say outdammed hair. Fleur whisked round, threw him a wave of her hand. Goodbye, Mr. mm, she called and was gone among the rose trees. She looked at her wristwatch and the windows of the house. It struck her as curiously uninhabited. Past six, the pigeons were just gathering to roost and sunlight slanted on the dove coat on their snowy feathers and beyond in a shower on the top bowels of the woods. The click of billiard balls came from the Englenook. Jack Cardigan, no doubt, a faint rustling two from a eucalyptus tree startling Southerner in this old English garden. She reached the veranda and was passing in, but stopped at the sound of voices from the drawing room to her left. Mother, one sure profound. From behind the veranda screen, which fenced the Englenook, she heard these words. I don't, Annette. Did Father know that he called her Mother Annette? Always on the side of her father, as children are ever on one side or the other, and houses or relations or little strained. She stood uncertain. Her mother was speaking in her low, pleasing, slightly metallic voice. One word she caught. Domain. And profan's answer. All right. Fleur frowned. A little sound came out into the stillness. Then profan's voice. I'm taking a small stroll. Fleur darted through the window into the morning room. There he came from the drawing room, crossing the veranda down the lawn and the click of billiard balls, which in listening for other sounds she had ceased to hear began again. She shook herself, passed into the hall and opened the drawing room door. Her mother was sitting on the sofa between the windows, her knees crossed, her head resting on a cushion, her lips half parted, her eyes half closed. She looked extraordinarily handsome. Ah, here you are, Fleur. Your father is beginning to fuss. Where is he? In the picture gallery. Go up. What are you going to do tomorrow, mother? Tomorrow. I go up to London with your aunt. I thought you might be. Will you get me a quite plain parasol? What color? Green. They're all going back, I suppose. Yes, all. You'll console your father. Kiss me then. Fleur crossed the room, stooped, received a kiss on her forehead, and went out past the impressive a form on the sofa cushions in the other corner. She ran upstairs. Fleur was by no means the old fashioned daughter who demands the regulation of her parents' lives in accordance with the standard imposed upon herself. She claimed to regulate her own life, not those of others. Besides, an unerring instinct for what was likely to advantage her own case was already at work. In a disturbed domestic atmosphere, the heart she had set on John would have a better chance. Nonetheless, was she offended as a flower by a crisping wind. If that man had really been kissing her mother, it was serious and her father ought to know. Domaine, all right. And her mother going up to town. She turned into her bedroom and hung out of the window to cool her face, which had suddenly grown very hot. John must be at the station by now. What did her father know about John? Probably everything, pretty nearly. She changed her dress so as to look as if she had been in some time and ran up to the gallery. Sones was standing stubbornly still before his Alfred Stevens, the picture he loved best. He did not churn at the sound of the door, but she knew he had heard and she knew he was hurt. She came up softly behind him, put her arms round his neck, and poked her face over his shoulder till her cheek lay against his. It was an advance which had never yet failed, but it failed her now, and she augured the worst. Well, he said stonely, so you've come. Is that all, murmured Fleur, from a bad parent? And she rubbed her cheek against his. Sones shook his head so far as that was possible. Why do you keep me on tenterhooks like this, putting me off and off? Darling, it was very harmless. Harmless? Much you know what's harmless and what isn't. Fleur dropped her arms. Well then, dear, suppose you tell me and be quite frank about it. And she went over to the window seat. Her father had turned from his picture and was staring at his feet. He looked very gray. He has nice small feet, she thought, catching his eye, at once averted from her. You're my only comfort, said Sones suddenly, and you go on like this. Fleur's heart began to beat. Like what, dear? Again, Sones gave her a look which, but for the affection in it, might have been called furtive. You know what I told you, he said. I don't choose to have anything to do with that branch of our family. Yes, ducky, but I don't know why I shouldn't. Sones turned on his heel. I'm not going into the reasons, he said. You ought to trust me, Fleur. The way he spoke those words affected Fleur, but she thought of John and was silent, tapping her foot against the wainscoat. Unconsciously, she had assumed a modern attitude, with one leg twisted in and out of the other, with her chin on one bent wrist, her other arm across her chest, and his hand hugging her elbow. There was not a line of her that was not involuted, and yet, in spite of all, she retained a certain grace. You knew my wishes, Sones went on, and yet you stayed on there four days, and I suppose that boy came with you today. Fleur kept her eyes on him. I don't ask you anything, said Sones. I make no inquisition where you're concerned. Fleur suddenly stood up, leaning out at the window with her chin on her hands. The sun had sunk behind trees, the pigeons were perched quite still on the edge of the dovecoat. The click of the billiard balls mounted, and a faint radiance shown out below where Jack Cardigan had turned the light up. Will it make you any happier, she said suddenly, if I promise you not to see him for, say, the next six weeks? She was not prepared for a sort of tremble in the blankness of his voice. Six weeks. Six years. Sixty years more like. Don't delude yourself, Fleur. Don't delude yourself. Fleur turned an alarm. Father, what is it? Sones came close enough to see her face. Don't tell me, he said, that you're foolish enough to have any feeling beyond caprice. That would be too much. And he laughed. Fleur, who had never heard him laugh like that, thought, then it is deep. Oh, what is it? And putting her hand through his arm, she said lightly. No, of course, caprice. Only I like my caprices and I don't like yours, dear. Mine, said Sones bitterly and turned away. The light outside had chilled and threw a chalky whiteness on the river. The trees had lost all gait of color. She felt a sudden hunger for John's face, for his hands and the feel of his lips again on hers. And pressing her arms tight across her breast, she forced out a little light laugh. Oh, la, la, what a small fuss, as Profan would say. Father, I don't like that man. She saw him stop and take something out of his breast pocket. You don't, he said. Why? Nothing, murmured Fleur. Just caprice. No, said Sones, not caprice. And he tore what was in his hands across. You're right. I don't like him either. Look, said Fleur softly. There he goes. I hate his shoes. They don't make any noise. Down in the failing light, Prosper Profan'd moved. His hands in his side pockets, whistling softly in his beard. He stopped and glanced up at the sky as if saying, I don't think much of that small moon. Fleur drew back. Isn't he a great cat, she whispered, in the sharp click of the billiard ball's rose, as if Jack Cartigan had capped the cat, the moon, caprice and tragedy, with in off the red, Monsure Profan'd had resumed his stroll to a teasing little tune in his beard. What was it? Oh, yes, from Rigoletto. Donna O'Mobile. Just what he would think. She squeezed her father's arm. Proudling, she muttered as he turned the corner of the house. It was past that disillusioned moment which divides the day and night, still and lingering and warm, with Hawthorne's scent and lilac's scent clinging on the riverside air. A blackbird suddenly burst out. John would be in London by now, in the park perhaps, crossing the serpentine, thinking of her. A little sound beside her made her turn her eyes. Her father was again tearing the paper in his hands. Fleur saw it was a check. I shan't sell him my go-gan, he said. I don't know what your aunt and image and see in him. Or mother. Your mother, said soames. Poor father, she thought. He never looks happy. Not really happy. I don't want to make him worse, but of course I shall have to when John comes back. Oh, well, sufficient unto the night. I'm going to dress, she said. In her room she had a fancy to put on her freak dress. It was of gold tissue with little trousers of the same, tightly drawn in at the ankles, a page's cape slung from the shoulders, little gold shoes, and a gold-winged mercury helmet. And all over her were tiny gold bells, especially on the helmet, so that if she shook her head she peeled. When she was dressed she felt quite sick because John could not see her. It even seemed to pity that the sprightly young man Michael Montt would not have a view. But the gong had sounded and she went down. She made a sensation in the drawing room. Winifred thought it most amusing. Imogen was enraptured. Jack Cardigan called it stunning, ripping, topping and corking. When Sherpa Fawn, smiling with his eyes, said, That's a nice small dress. Her mother, very handsome and black, sat looking at her and said nothing. It remained for her father to apply the test of common sense. What did you put on that thing for? You're not going to dance. Fleur spun round and the bells peeled. Caprice. Soames stared at her and turning away gave his arm to Winifred. Jack Cardigan took her mother. Prosper Pafon took Imogen. Fleur went in by herself with her bells jingling. The small moon had soon dropped down and may nights had fallen soft and warm and wrapping with its great bloom color and its sense, the billion Caprice's intrigues, passions, longings and regrets of men and women. Happy was Jack Cardigan who snored into Imogen's white shoulder fit as a flea or Timothy and his mausoleum too old for anything but baby's slumber. For so many lay awake or dreamed teased by the crisscross of the world. The dew fell and the flowers closed. Cattle grazed on in the river meadows, feeling with their tongues for the grass they could not see. And the sheep on the downs lay quiet as stones. Pheasants in the tall trees of the Pangbourne Woods, larks on their grassy nests above the gravel pit at Warnston, swallows in the eaves at Robin Hill and the sparrows of Mayfair, all made a dreamless night of it, soothed by the lack of wind. The Mayfly Philly, hardly accustomed to her new quarters, scraped at her straw little, and the few night-footing things, bats, mobs, owls, were vigorous in the warm darkness. But the peace of night lay in the brain of all daytime nature, colorless and still. Men and women alone, riding the hobby horses of anxiety or love, burned their wavering tapers of dream and thought into the lonely hours. Fleur, leading out of her window, heard the hall-clocks muffled chime of twel, the tiny splash of a fish, the sudden shaking of an aspen's leaves in the puffs of breeze that rose along the river, the distant rumble of a night train, and time and again the sounds which none can put a name to in the darkness, soft obscure expressions of uncatalogued emotions from man and beast, bird and machine, or maybe from departed foresights, darties, cardigans, taking night strolls back into a world which had once suited their embodied spirits. But Fleur heated not these sounds. Her spirit, far from disembodied, fled with swift wing from railway carriage to flowery hedge, straining after John, to nations of his forbidden image and the sound of his voice which was taboo. And she crinkled her nose, retrieving from the perfume of the riverside night that moment when his hand slipped between the mayflowers and her cheek. Long she leaned out in her freak dress, keen to burn her wings at life's candle, while the moths brushed her cheeks on their pilgrimage to the lamp on her dressing table, ignorant that in a foresight's house there is no open flame. But at last even she felt sleepy and forgetting her bells drew quickly in. Through the open window of his room, alongside a net, Somes, wakeful too, heard their thin, fake tinkle as it might be shaken from stars or the dew drops falling from a flower if one could hear such sounds. Caprice, he thought. I can't tell. She's willful. What shall I do? Fleur. And long into the small night, he brooded. The foresight saga, volume three, To Let, by John Gullsworthy, part two, chapter number one, Mother and Son. To say that John Forsight accompanied his mother to Spain unwillingly would scarcely have been adequate. He went as a well-natured dog goes for a walk, visits Mistress, leaving a choice mutton bone on the lawn. He went looking back at it. Forsight, deprived of their mutton bones, are warned to sulk. But John had little sulkiness in his composition. He adored his mother. And it was his first travel. Spain had become Italy. By his simply saying, I would rather go to Spain, man. You have been to Italy so many times. I would like it new to both of us. The fellow was subtle besides being naive. He never forgot that he was going to shorten the proposed two months into six weeks and must therefore show no sign of wishing to do so. For one, we saw enticing a mutton bone and so fixed an idea. He made a good enough traveling companion. Indifferent to where or when he arrived, superior to food, and subtlerly appreciative of a country strange to the most traveled Englishman. Fleur's wisdom in refusing to write to him was profound. For he reached each new place entirely without hope or fever and could concentrate immediate attention on the donkeys and tumbling bells, the priests, patios, beggars, children, growing cocks, sombrero, cactus hedges, old high white villages, goats, olive trees, greening plains, singing birds in tiny cages, water cellars, sunsets, melons, mules, great churches, pictures, and swimming gray brown mountains of a fascinating land. It was already hot and they enjoyed an absence of their compatriots. John, who so far as he knew had no blood in him, which was not English, was often innately unhappy in the presence of his own countryman. He felt they had no nonsense about them and took a more practical view of things than himself. He confided to his mother that he must be an unsociable beast. It was jolly to be away from everybody who could talk about the things people did talk about. To which Irene had replied simply, Yes, John, I know. In this isolation he had unparalleled opportunities of appreciating what few sons can apprehend, the whole heartedness of a mother's love. Knowledge of something kept from her made him no doubt unduly sensitive. And the southern people stimulated his admiration for her type of beauty, which he had been accustomed to hear called Spanish, but which he now perceived to be no such thing. Her beauty was neither English, French, Spanish, nor Italian. It was special. He appreciated too, as never before, his mother's subtlety of instinct. He could not tell, for instance, whether she had noticed his absorption in that Goya picture when Demia, or whether she knew that he had slipped back there after lunch and again next morning to stand before it full half an hour, a second and third time. It was not fleur, of course, but like enough to give him heartache, so dear to lovers, remembering her standing at the foot of his bed with her hand held above her head. To keep a postcard reproduction of this picture in his pocket and slip it out to look at became, for John, one of those bad habits which soon or late disclosed themselves to eyes sharpened by love, fear or jealousy. And his mothers were sharpened by all three. In Granada, he was fairly caught sitting on a sunworn stone bench in a little battle-mented garden on the Alhambra hill, whence he ought to have been looking at the view. His mother, he had sought, was examining the potted stalks between the pal'd Acacius, when her voice said, Is that your favorite Goya, John? He checked too late a movement such as he might have made at school to conceal some surreptitious document and answered yes. It certainly is most charming, but I think I prefer the Cuitasol. Your father would go crazy about Goya. I don't believe he saw them when he was in Spain in 92. In 92, nine years before he had been born, what had been the previous existences of his father and his mother? If they had a right to share in his future, surely he had a right to share in their pasts. He looked up at her, but something in her face, a look of life hard-lived, the mysterious impress of emotions, experience, and suffering seemed with its incalculable depths, its purchased sanctity to make curiosity impertinent. His mother must have had a wonderfully interesting life. She was so beautiful, and so, so, but he could not frame what he felt about her. He got up and stood gazing down at the town, at the plain all green with crops, and the ring of mountains glamorous in sinking sunlight. Her life was like the past of this old Moorish city, full, deep, remote. His own life as yet such a baby of a thing, hopelessly ignorant and innocent. They said that in those mountains to the west, which rose sheer from the blue-green plain, as if out of a sea, Phoenicians had dwelt a dark, strange secret race above the land. His mother's life was as unknown to him as secret, as that Phoenician past was to the town down there, whose cocks crowed, and whose children played and clamored so gaily, day in, day out. He felt aggrieved that she should know all about him, and he nothing about her, except that she loved him and his father, and was beautiful. His callow ignorance, he had not even had the advantage of the war, like nearly everybody else, made him small in his own eyes. That night from the balcony of his bedroom, he gazed down on the roof of the town, as if inlaid with honeycomb of jet ivory and gold. And long after, he lay awake, listening to the cry of the sentry as the hour struck, and forming in his head these lines. Voice in the night crying, down in the old sleeping, Spanish city darkened under her white stars. What says the voice? It's clear lingering anguish. Just the watchman telling his dateless tale of safety. Just the roadman flinging to the moon his song. No, this one deprived, whose lover's heart is weeping. Just his cry. How long? The word deprived seemed to him cold and unsatisfactory, but bereaved was too final, and no other word of two syllables short, long came to him, which would enable him to keep whose lover's heart is weeping. It was past two by the time he had finished it, and past three before he went to sleep, having said it over to himself at least 24 times. Next day he wrote it out and enclosed it in one of those letters to Fleur, which he always finished before he went down, so as to have his mind free and companionable. About noon that same day, on the tall terrace of their hotel, he felt a sudden dull pain in the back of his head, a queer sensation in the eyes and sickness. The sun had touched him too affectionately. The next three days were passed in semi-darkness, and the dulled, aching indifference to all accept the feel of ice on his forehead and his mother's smile. She never moved from his room, never relaxed, her noiseless vigilance which seemed to John Angelic. But there were moments when he was extremely sorry for himself, and wished terribly that Fleur could see him. Several times he took a poignant imaginary leave of her and of the earth's tears oozing out of his eyes. He even prepared the message he would send to her by his mother, who would regret to her dying day that she had ever sought to separate them, his poor mother. He was not slow, however, in perceiving that he had now his excuse for going home. That half past six each evening came the Gascastre of Belles, a cascade of tumbling chimes mounting from the city below and falling back chime on chime. After listening to them on the fourth day, he said subtly, I'd like to be back in England, ma'am, the sun is too hot. Very well, darling, as soon as you are fit to travel. And at once he felt better and meaner. They had been out five weeks. When they turned toward home, John's head was restored to its pristine clarity, but he was confined to a hat lined by his mother, his many layers of orange and green silk, and he still walked from choice in the shade. As the long struggle of discretion between them drew to its close, he wondered more and more whether she could see his eagerness to get back to that which she had brought him away from. Condemned by Spanish providence to spend the day in Madrid between their trains, it was but natural to go again to the Prado. John was elaborately casual this time before his Goya girl. Now that he was going back to her, he could afford a lesser scrutiny. It was his mother who lingered before the picture, saying, the face and the figure of the girl are exquisite. John hurt her uneasily. Did she understand? But he felt once more that he was no match for her in self-control and subtlety. She could, in some super-sensitive way, of which he had not the secret, feel the pulse of his thoughts. She knew by instinct what he hoped and feared and wished. It made him terribly uncomfortable and guilty, having beyond most boys a conscience. He wished she would be frank with him. He almost hoped for an open struggle. But none came, and steadily, silently, they travelled north. Thus did he first learn how much better than men women play a waiting game. In Paris, they had a game to pause for a day. John was grieved because it lasted two, owing to certain matters in connection with a dressmaker. As if his mother, who looked beautiful in anything, had any need of dresses. The happiest moment of his travel was that when he stepped on the folkstone boat. Standing by the boulevard rail, with her arm in his, she said, I'm afraid you haven't enjoyed it much, John, but you have been very sweet to me. John squeezed her arm. Oh, yes, I have enjoyed it awfully, except for my head lately. And now that the end had come, he really had, feeling a sort of glamour over the past weeks, a kind of painful pleasure, such as he had tried to screw into those lines about the voice in the night crying. A feeling such as he had known as a small boy listening avidly to Chopin, yet wanting to cry. And he wondered why it was that he could not say to her quite simply what she had said to him. You were very sweet to me. Odd. One never could be nice and natural like that. He substituted the words, I expect we shall be sick. They were, and reached London somewhat attenuated, having been away six weeks and two days without a single allusion to the subject which had hardly ever ceased to occupy their minds. End of part two, chapter one, recording by Ava Harnick Pontevedra, Florida. Part two, chapter two of To Let. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Ava Harnick Pontevedra, Florida. The foresight saga, volume three, To Let, by John Goldsworthy. Part two, chapter two, fathers and daughters. Deprived of his wife and son by the Spanish adventure, Jolion found the solitude at Robin Hill intolerable. A philosopher, when he has all that he wants, is different from a philosopher when he has not. Accustomed, however, to the idea if not to the reality of resignation, he would perhaps have faced it out but for his daughter, June. He was a lame duck now and on her conscience. Having achieved momentarily the rescue of an etchery low circumstances which she happened to have in hand, she appeared at Robin Hill a fortnight after Irene and John had gone. June was living now in a tiny house with a big studio at Chiswick. A foresight of the best period so far as the lack of responsibility was concerned, she had overcome the difficulty of a reduced income in a manner satisfactory to herself and her father. The rent of the gallery of Cork Street, which he had bought for her and her increased income tax happening to balance, it had been quite simple. She no longer paid him the rent. The gallery might be expected now at any time after eighteen years of barren use-fruit to pay its way so that she was sure her father would not feel it. Through this device she still had twelve hundred a year and by reducing what she ate and in place of two Belgians in a poor way employing one Austrian in a poorer practically the same sample as for the relief of genius. After three days at Robin Hill she carried her father back with her to town. In those three days she had stumbled on the secret he had kept for two years and had instantly decided to cure him. She knew in fact the very man he had done wonders with. All paused that painted a little in advance of futurism and she was impatient when her father because his eyebrows would go up and because he heard of neither. Of course if he hadn't face he would never get well. It was absurd not to have face in the man who had healed poor post so that he had only just relaxed from having overworked or overlived himself again. The great thing about this healer was that he relied on nature. He had made a special study of the symptoms of nature when his patient failed in any natural symptom he supplied the poison which caused it and there you were. She was extremely hopeful. Her father had clearly not been living a natural life at Robin Hill and she intended to provide the symptoms. He was she felt out of touch with the times which was not natural. His heart wanted stimulating. In the little chiswick house she and the Austrian a grateful soul so devoted to June for rescuing her that she was in danger of disease from overwork stimulated Julian in all sorts of ways preparing him for his cure but they could not keep his eyebrows down. As for example when the Austrian walk him at eight o'clock just as he was going to sleep or June took the times away from him because it was unnatural to read that stuff when he ought to be taking an interest in life. He never failed indeed to be astonished at her resource especially in the evenings for his benefit as she declared though he suspected that she also got something out of it she assembled the age so far as it was satellite to genius and with some solemnity it would move up and down the studio before him in the Foxtrot and that more mental form of dancing the one step which so pulled against the music that Julian's eyebrows would be almost lost in his hair from wonder at the strain it must impose on the dancers will power aware that hung on the line in the watercolour society he was a back number to those with any pretension to be called artist he would sit in the darkest corner he could find and wonder about the rhythm on which so long ago he had been raised and when June brought some girl or young man up to him he would rise humbly to their level so far as that was possible and think dear me this is very dull for them having his father's perennial sympathy with use he used to get very tired from entering into their points of view but it was all stimulating and he never failed in admiration of his daughter's indomitable spirit even genius itself attended these gatherings now and then with its nose on one side and June always introduced it to her father this she felt was exceptionally good for him for genius was a natural symptom he had never had fond as she was of him certain as a man can be that she was his own daughter he often wondered when she got herself her red gold hair now grayed into a special colour her direct spirited face so different from his own rather folded and subtylized countenance her little life figure when he and most of the four sides were tall and he would dwell on the origin of species and debate whether she might be Danish or Celtic Celtic he sought from her pugnacity and her taste in fillets and gibas it was not too much to say that he preferred her to the age with which she was surrounded useful though for the greater part it was she took her but too much interest in his teeth for he still had some of those natural symptoms her dentist at once found Staphylococcus aureus present in pure culture which might cause boys of course and wanted to take out all the teeth he had and supply him with two complete sets of unnatural symptoms Jolian's native tenacity was roused and in the studio that evening he developed his objections he had never had any balls and his own teeth would last his time of course june admitted they would last his time if he didn't have them out but if he had more teeth he would have a better heart and his time would be longer his recalcitrance she said was a symptom of his whole attitude he was taking it lying down he ought to be fighting when was he going to see the man who had cured poor post Jolian was very sorry but the fact was he was not going to see him june shaped pondridge she said the healer was such a fine man and he had such difficulty in making two ends meet and getting his theories recognized it was just such indifference and prejudice as her father manifested which was keeping him back it would be so splendid for both of them i perceive said jolian that you are trying to kill two birds with one stone to cure you mean cried june my dear it is the same thing june protested it was unfair to say that without a trial jolian thought he might not have the chance of saying it after that cry june you are hopeless but said jolian is a fact but i wish to remain hopeless as long as possible i shall let sleeping dogs lie my child they are quiet at present that's not giving science a chance cry june you have no idea how devoted pondridge is he puts his signs before everything just reply jolian puffing the mild cigarette to which he was reduced as mr. poll post puts his art and art for our sake science for the sake of science i know those enthusiastic egomaniac gentry they will exact you without blinking i am enough of a foresight to give them the go-by june dad said june if you only knew how old-fashioned that sounds nobody can afford to be half-hearted nowadays i'm afraid murmur jolian with his smile that is the only natural symptom with which mr. pondridge need not supply me we are born to be extreme or to be moderate my dear though if you will forgive my saying so half the people nowadays who believe they are extreme are really very moderate i am getting on as well as i can expect and i must leave it at that june was silent having experienced in her time the inexorable character of her father's amiable obstinacy so far as his own freedom of action was concerned how he came to let her know why irina had taken run to spain puzzle jolian for he had little confidence in her discretion after she had brooded on the news it brought a rather sharp discussion during which he perceived to the full the fundamental opposition between her active temperament and his wife's passivity he even gathered that the little soreness still remained from that generation old struggle between them over the body of filiposinae in which the passive had so signally triumphed over the active principle according to june it was foolish and even cowardly to hide the past from john sheer opportunism she called it which jolian put in mildly is the working principle of real life my dear oh cry june you don't really defend her for not telling john dad if it were left to you you would i might but simply because i know he must find out which will be worse than if we taught him then why don't you tell him it is just sleeping dogs again my dear said jolian i wouldn't for the world go against irini's instinct he is her boy yours too cry june what is a man's instinct compared with her mother's well i think it's very weak of you i dare say said jolian i dare say and that was all she got from him but the matter rankled in her brain she could not bear sleeping dogs and theirs stirred in her at torches impulse to push the matter towards decision john ought to be told so that either his feeling might be nipped in the bud or flowering in spite of the past come to fruition and she determined to see fleur and judge for herself when june determined on anything delicacy became a somewhat minor consideration after all she was somes' cousin and they were both interested in pictures she would go and tell him that he ought to buy a pole post or perhaps a piece of sculpture by boris trumolowski and of course she would say nothing to her father she went on the following sunday looking so determined that she had some difficulty in getting a cab at redding station the river country was lovely in those days of her own months and june ached at its loveliness she who had passed through this life without knowing what union was had a love of natural beauty which was almost madness and when she came to that choice spot where somes had pitched his tent she dismissed her cab because business over she wanted to revel in the bright water and the woods she appeared at his front door therefore as a mad pedestrian and sent in her card it was in june's character to know that when her nerves were fluttering she was doing something worthwhile if once nerves did not flutter she was taking the line of least resistance and knew that nobleness was not obliging her she was conducted to a drawing room which though not in her style showed every mark of fastidious elegance thinking too much days too many nicknacks she saw in an old lacquer framed mirror the figure of a girl coming in from the veranda closed in white and holding some white roses in her hand she had reflected in that silvery gray pool of glass a vision-like appearance as if a pretty ghost had come out of the green garden how do you do said june turning round i am a cousin of your father's oh yes i saw you in that confectioners with my young stepbrother is your father in he will be directly he has only gone for the little walk june slightly narrowed her blue eyes and lifted her decided chin your name is flare isn't it i have heard of you from holly what do you think of john the girl lifted the roses in her hand looked at them and answered calmly he's quite a nice boy not a bit like holly or me is he not a bit she is cool sought june and suddenly the girls said i wish you would tell me why our families don't get on confronted with the question she had advised her father to answer june was silent whether because this girl was trying to get something out of her or simply because what one would do theoretically is not always what one will do when it comes to the point you know said the girl the surest way to make people find out the worst is to keep them ignorant my father has told me it was a quarrel about property but i don't believe it we have both got heaps they wouldn't have been so bourgeois as all that june flushed the word applied to her grandfather and her father offended her my grandfather she said was very generous and my father is too neither of them was in the least bourgeois well what was it then repeated the girl conscious that this young foresight meant having what she wanted june at once determined to prevent her and to get something for herself instead why do you want to know the girl smelled at her roses i only want to know because they won't tell me well it was about property but there is more than one kind that makes it worse now i really must know june's small and resolute face quivered she was wearing a round cap and her hair had fluffed out under it she looked quite younger that moment rejuvenated by encounter you know she said i saw you drop your handkerchief is there anything between you and john because if so you had better drop that too the girl grew paler but she smiled if there were that isn't the way to make me at the gallantry of that reply june held out her hand i like you but i don't like your father i never have we may as well be frank did you come down to tell him that june laughed no i came down to see you how delightful of you this girl could fence i am two and a half times your age said june but i quite sympathize it is horrid not to have one's own sway the girl smiled again i really think you might tell me how the child stuck to her point it is not my secret but i will see what i can do because i think both you and john ought to be told and now i will say goodbye won't you wait and see father june shook her head how can i get over to the other side i will row you across looks at june impulsively next time you are in london come and see me this is where i live i generally have young people in the evening but i should not tell your father that you are coming the girl nodded watching her skull the skiff across june's sword she's awfully pretty and well made i never thought somes would have a daughter as pretty as this she and john would make a lovely couple the instinct to couple starved within herself was always at work in june she stood watching flea row back the girl took her hand off a skull to wave farewell and june walked languidly on between the meadows and the river with an ache in her heart used to use like the dragonflies chasing each other and love like the sun warming them through and through hires so long ago when phil and she and since nothing no one had been quite what she had wanted and so she had missed it all but what a coil was round those two young things if they really were in love as hollywood have it as her father and idina and somes himself seemed to dread what a call and what a barrier and the itch for the future the contempt as it were for what was overpass which forms the active principle moved in the heart of one who ever believed that what one wanted was more important than what other people did not want from the bank a while in the warm summer stillness she watched the water lily plants and willow leaves the fishes rising sniff the scent of grass and meadow sweet wondering how she could force everybody to be happy john and flea two little lame ducks charming callow yellow little ducks a great pity surely something could be done one must not take such situations lying down she walked on and reached the station hot and cross that evening faithful to the imposter direct action which made many people avoid her she said to her father that i have been down to see young flirt i think she's very attractive it is no good hiding our heads under our wings is it the startle jollion sat down his barley water and began crumbling his bread it is what you appear to be doing he said do you realize whose daughter she is can't the dead past bury its dead jollion rose certain things can never be buried i disagree set tune it is that which stands in the way of all happiness and progress you don't understand the age dead it's got no use for outgrown things why do you think it matters so terribly that john should know about his mother who pays any attention to that sort of thing now the marriage laws are just as they were when soams and idina couldn't get a divorce and you had to come in we have moved and they haven't so nobody cares marriage without a decent chance of relief is only a sort of slave owning people ought not to own each other everybody sees that now if irene broke such laws what does it matter it is not for me to disagree there said jollion but that is all quite beside the mark this is a matter of human feeling of course it is cry june the human feeling of those two young things my dear said jollion with gentle exasperation you are talking nonsense i am not if they prove to be really fond of each other why should they be made unhappy because of the past you have not lived that past i have through the feelings of my wife through my own nerves and my imagination as only one who is devoted can june two rose and began to wander restlessly if she said suddenly shivered the daughter of philippe bossini i could understand you better irene loved him she never loved soams jollion uttered a deep sound the sort of noise an italian peasant woman utters to her mule his heart had begun beating furiously but he paid no attention to it quite carried away by his feelings that shows how little you understand neither i know john if i know him would mind the love past it is the brutality of a union without love this girl is the daughter of the man who once owned john's mother as a negro slave was owned you can't lay that ghost don't try to june it is asking us to see john joined to the flesh and blood of the man who possessed john's mother against her will it is no good mincing words i want it clear once for all and now i mustn't talk anymore or i shall have to sit up with this all night and putting his hand over his heart jollion turned his back on his daughter and stood looking at the river thames june who by nature never saw a hornet's nest until she had put her head into it was seriously alarmed she came and slipped her arms through his not convinced that he was right and she herself wrong because that was not natural to her she was yet profoundly impressed by the obvious fact that the subject was very bad for him she rubbed her cheek against his shoulder and said nothing after taking her elderly cousin across fleur did not lend that once but pulled in among the reeds into the sunshine the peaceful beauty of the afternoon seduced for the little one not much given to the vague and poetic in the field beyond the bank where her skiff lay up a machine drawn by a gray horse was turning an early field of hay she watched the grass cascading over and behind the light wheels with fascination it looked so cool and fresh the click and swish blended with the rustle of the willows and the poplars and the cooing of a wood pigeon in a true river song alongside in the deep green water weeds like yellow snakes were breathing and nosing with the current piet cattle on the farther side stood in the shade lazily swishing their tails it was an afternoon to dream and she took out john's letters not flowery effusions but haunted in the recital of sing seen and done by a longing very agreeable to her and all ending your devoted jay fleur was not sentimental her desires were ever concrete and concentrated but what poetry there was in the daughter of soams and annette had certainly in those weeks of waiting gathered round her memories of john they all belong to grass and blossom flowers and running water she enjoyed him in the sense absorbed by her crinkling nose the stars could persuade her that she was standing beside him in the center of the map of spain and of an early morning the dewy cobwebs the hazy sparkle and promise of the day down in the garden were john personified to her two white swans came majestically by while she was reading his letters followed by the brood of six young swans in a line with just so much water between each tail and head a flotilla of gray destroyers fleur thrust her letters back got out her skulls and pulled up to the landing stage crossing the lawn she wondered whether she should tell her father of june's visit if he learned of it from the butler he might think it odd if she did not it gave her to another chance to startle out of him the reason of the feud she went therefore up the road to meet him soams had gone to look at the patch of ground on which the local authorities were proposing to erect a sanatorium for people with weak lungs faceful to his native individualism he took no part in local affairs content to pay the rates which are always going up he could not however remain indifferent to this new and dangerous scheme the site was not half a mile from his own house he was quite of opinion that the country should stamp out to work losses but this was not the place it should be done farther away he took indeed an attitude common to all true foresight the disability of any sort in other people was not his affair and the state should do its business without prejudicing in any way the natural advantages which he had acquired or inherited francy the most free spirited foresight of his generation except perhaps that fellow joan leon had once asked him in her malicious way did you ever see the name foresight in a subscription list soams that was as it might be but the sanatorium would appreciate the neighborhood and he should certainly sign the petition which was being got up against it returning with this decision fresh within him he saw a flare coming she was showing him more affection of late and the quiet time down here with her in this summer weather had been making him feel quite young annette was always running up to town for one thing or another so that he had flared to himself almost as much as he could wish to be sure young mont had formed the habit of appearing on his motorcycle almost every other day thank goodness the young fella had shaved off his half truce bushes and no longer looked like a mountbank with a girlfriend of flair's who was staying in the house and the neighboring youths also they made two couples after dinner in the hall to the music of the electric piano which performed foxtrot unassisted with a surprise shine on its expressive surface annette even now and then passed gracefully up and down in the arms of one or other of the young man and so coming to the drawing room door would lift his nose a little sideways and watch them waiting to catch a smile from flair then move back to his chair by the drawing room house to produce the times or some other collector's price list to his ever anxious eyes flair showed no sign of remembering that caprice of hers when she reached him on the dusty road he slipped his hand within her arm who do you think has been to see you dad she couldn't wait guess i never guessed that so much uneasily who your cousin june foresight quite unconsciously so scripted on what did she want i don't know but it was rather breaking through the feud wasn't it feud what feud the one that exists in your imagination dear sermes dropped her arm was she mocking or trying to draw him on i suppose she wanted me to buy a picture he said at last i don't think so perhaps it was just family affection she's only a first cousin once removed matted soames and the daughter of your enemy what do you mean by that i beg your pardon dear i thought he was enemy repeated soames it is ancient history i don't know where you get your notions from june foresight it had come to her as an inspiration that if he saw she knew or were on the edge of knowledge he would tell her sermes was startled but she had underrated his caution and tenacity if you know he said gaudley why do you plague me fleurson that she had overreached herself i don't want to plague you darling as you say why want to know more why want to know anything of that small mystery je m'en fiche as profond says that chap said soames profoundly that chap indeed played a considerable if invisible part of this summer for he had not turned up again ever since the sunday when fleur had drawn attention to him prowling on the lawn soames had thought of him a good deal and always in connection with annette for no reason except that she was looking handsomer than for some time past his possessive instinct subtle less formal more elastic since the war kept all misgivings underground as one looks on some american river quiet and pleasant knowing that an alligator perhaps is lying in the mud with his snout just raised and indistinguishable from a snag of wood soames looked on the river of his own existence subconscious of monsieur profond refusing to see more than the suspicion of his snout he had at this epoch in his life practically all he wanted and was as nearly happy as his nature would permit his senses were at rest his affections found all the when they needed in his daughter his collection was well known his money well invested his hands excellent save for a touch of liver now and again he had not yet begun to worry seriously about what would happen after death inclining to think that nothing would happen he resembled one of his own guilt edge securities and to knock the guilt off by seeing anything he could avoid seeing would be he felt instinctively perverse and retrogressive those two grumpled rose leaves flares caprice and monsieur profond snout would level away if he lay on them industriously that evening chance which visits the life of even the best invested foresight's put a clue into flares hands her father came down to dinner without a handkerchief and had occasion to blow his nose i will get you one there she had said and ran upstairs in the sachet where she sought for it an old sachet of very faded silk there were two compartments one held handkerchief the other was buttoned and contained something flat and hard by some childish impulse blur unbuttoned it there was a frame and in it a photograph of herself as a little girl she gazed at it fascinated as one is by one's own presentment it slipped under her fidgeting thumb and she saw that another photograph was behind she pressed her own down father and perceived a face which she seemed to know of a young woman very good looking in a very old style of evening dress slipping her own photograph up over it again she took out a handkerchief and went down only on the stairs did she identify that face surely surely john's mother the conviction came as a shock and she stood still in a flurry of salt why of course john's father had married the woman her father had wanted to marry had cheated him out of her perhaps then afraid of showing by her manner that she had lighted on his secret she refused to sing further and shaking out the silk handkerchief entered the dining room i chose the softest father hmm said so i only use those after a cold never mind that evening passed for flair in putting two and two together recalling the look on her father's face in the confectioner's job a look strange and coldly intimate a queer look he must have loved that woman very much to have kept her photograph all this time in spite of having lost her unsparing and matter of fact her mind darted to his relations with her own mother had he ever really loved her she sought not john was the son of the woman he had really loved surely then he ought not to mind his daughter loving him it only wanted getting used to and the sigh of sheer relief was caught in the folds of her nightgown sleeping over her head and of part two chapter two father's and daughters recording by Ava harnick pontevedra florida