 Part 3 Chapter 13 of the Man of Property. 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, the Man of Property by John Galswersy. Part 3 Chapter 13 James is Told. A simple quote, quote in the room, with double windows, where the air and the people who saw him were filtered as it were, the room he had not left since the middle of September and James was in deep waters. A little cold passing his little strengths and flying quickly to his lungs. He must not catch cold, the doctor had declared, and he had gone and caught it. When he first felt it in his throat he had said to his nurse, for he had one now, there I knew how it would be, airing the room like that. For a whole day he was highly nervous about himself and went in advance of all precautions and remedies, drawing every brass with extreme care, and having his temperature taken every hour, Emily was not alarmed. But next morning when she went in the nurse whispered, he won't have his temperature taken. Emily crossed to the side of the bed where he was lying and said softly, how do you feel James, holding the thermometer to his lips, James looked up at her. What's the good of that, he murmured huskily, I don't want to know. Then she was alarmed. He breezed with difficulty, he looked terribly frail, white, with faint red discolorations. She had had trouble with him, goodness knew, but he was James, had been James for nearly 50 years, she could not remember or imagine life without James, James behind all his fussiness, his pessimism, his crusty shell, deeply affectionate, really kind and generous to them all. All that day and the next, he hardly uttered a word. But there was in his eyes a noticing of everything done for him, a look on his face, which told her he was fighting and she did not lose hope. His very stillness, the way he conserved every little scrap of energy, showed the tenacity with which he was fighting. It touched her deeply and though her face was composed and comfortable in the sick room, tears ran down her cheeks when she was out of it. About tea time on the third day, she had just changed her dress, keeping her appearance so as not to alarm him because he noticed everything. She saw a difference. It is no use, I am tired, was written plainly across the white face, and when she went up to him, he muttered, send for Psalms. Yes, James, she said comfortably, all right, at once. And she kissed his forehead, a tear dropped there and as she wiped it off, she saw that his eyes looked grateful. Much upset and without hope now, she sent Psalms the telegram. When he entered out of the black windy night, the big house was still as a grave. Wormson's broad face looked almost narrow. He took the fur coat with a sort of added care saying, will you have a glass of wine, sir? Psalms shook his head and his eyebrows made inquiry. Wormson's lips twitched. He's asking for you, sir. And suddenly he blew his nose. It is a long time, sir, he said, that I have been with Mr. Forsythe a long time. Psalms left him folding the coat and began to mount the stairs. This house, where he had been born and sheltered, had never seemed to him so warm and rich and cozy as during this last pilgrimage to his father's room. It was not his taste, but in its own substantial, lean crust away, it was the acme of comfort and security. And the night was so dark and windy. The grave so cold and lonely. He paused outside the door. No sound came from within. He turned the handle softly and was in the room before he was perceived. The light was shaded. His mother and Winifred were sitting on the far side of the bed. The nurse was moving away from the near side, where it was an empty chair. For me, sought Psalms. As he moved from the door, his mother and sister rose. But he signed with his hand, and they sat down again. He went up to the chair and stood looking at his father. James's breezing was as if strangled. His eyes were closed. And in Psalms, looking on his father, so worn and white and wasted, listening to his strangled breezing, there rose a passionate vehemence of anger against nature. Cruel, inexorable nature, kneeling on the chest of that wisp of a body, slowly pressing out the breast, pressing out the life of the being who was dearest to him in the world. His father of all men had lived a careful life. Moderate, epistemious, and this was his reward to have life slowly, painfully squeezed out of him. And without knowing that he spoke, he said, it is cruel. He saw his mother cover her eyes, and Winifred bowed her face towards the bed. Women, they put up this thing so much better than men. He took a step nearer to his father. For three days, James had not been shaved. And his lips and chin were covered with hair, hardly more snowy than his forehead. It softened his face, gave it a queer look already not of this world. His eyes opened. Psalms went quite close and bent over. The lips moved. Here I am, father. Mm, what news? They never tell. The voice died, and the flood of emotion made Psalms' face work so that he could not speak. Tell him, yes, but what? He made a great effort, got his lips together, and said, Good news, dear, good, Annette, a son. Ah, it was the queerest sound, ugly, relieved, pitiful, triumphant. Like the noise a baby makes getting what it wants. The eyes closed, and that strangled sound of breathing began again. Psalms recalled to the chair and stonely sat down. The lie he had told, based as it were on some deep, temperamental instinct that after death James would not know the truth, had taken away all power of feeling for the moment. His arm brushed against something. It was his father's naked foot. In the struggle to breathe, he had pushed it out from under the clothes. Psalms took it in his hand, a cold foot, light and sin, white, very cold. What use to put it back, to wrap up that which must be colder soon? He warmed it mechanically with his hand, listening to his father's labored breathing, while the power of feeling rose again within him. A little sob quickly smothered came from Winifred, but his mother sat unmoving, with her eyes fixed on James. Psalms signed to the nurse. Where is the doctor, he whispered. He has been sent for. Can't you do anything to ease his breathing? Only an injection, and he can't stand it. The doctor said while he was fighting. He's not fighting, whispered Psalms. He is being slowly smothered. It is awful. James stirred uneasily, as if he knew what they were saying. Psalms rose and bent over him. James feebly moved his two hands, and Psalms took them. He wants to be pulled up, whispered the nurse. Psalms pulled. He thought he pulled gently, but a look almost of anger passed over James's face. The nurse plumped the pillows. Psalms laid the hands down, and bending over kissed his father's forehead. As he was raising himself again, James's eyes bent on him a look which seemed to come from the very depths of what was left within. I am done, my boy. It seemed to say, take care of them. Take care of yourself. Take care. I leave it all to you. Yes, yes, Psalms whispered. Yes, yes. Behind him the nurse did he knew not what, for his father made a tiny movement of repulsion, as if resenting that interference. And almost at once his breathing eased away, became quiet. He lay very still. The strained expression on his face passed. A curious white tranquility took its place. His eyelids quivered, rested. The whole face rested at ease. Only by the faint puffing of his lips could they tell that he was breathing. Psalms sank back on his chair and felt cherishing the foot again. He heard the nurse quietly crying over there by the far, curious that she, a stranger, should be the only one of them who cried. He heard the quiet licking flutter of the far flames. One more old foresight going to his long rest. Wonderful they were. Wonderful how he had held on. His mother and Winifred were leaning forward, hanging on the side of James' lips. But Psalms spent sideways over the feet, warming them both. They gave him comfort colder and colder, though they grew. Suddenly, he started up. A sound, a dreadful sound, such as he had never had, was coming from his father's lips, as if an outraged heart had broken with a long moan. What a strong heart to have uttered that farewell. It seized. Psalms looked into the face. No motion, no breath, dead. He kissed the brow, turned round, and went out of the room. He ran upstairs to the bedroom. His old bedroom still kept for him, flunked himself face down on the bed, and broke into Psalms, which he stilled with the pillow. A little later, he went downstairs and passed into the room. James lay alone, wonderfully calm, free from shadow and anxiety, with the gravity on his ravaged face, which underlies great age, the worn, fine gravity of old coins. Psalms looked steadily at that face, at the fire, at all the room, with windows thrown open to the London night. Goodbye, he whispered, and went out. End of chapter 13, Recording by Ava Harnick, Pontevedra, Florida. Part 3, Chapter 14, of Inchansary. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please go to LibriVox.org. Recording by Andy Minter. The Foresight Saga, too, Inchansary. By John Goresworthy. Part 3, Chapter 14, His. He had much to see to, that night and all next day. A telegram at breakfast reassured him about Annette, and he only caught the last train back to Reading, and Emma's kiss on his forehead, and in his ears her words, I don't know what I should have done without you, my dear boy. He reached his house at midnight. The weather had changed, was mild again, as though having finished its work, and sent a foresight to his last account, it could relax. A second telegram, received at dinnertime, had confirmed the good news of Annette, and instead of going in, Inchansary's homes passed down through the garden in the moonlight to his houseboat. He could sleep there quite well. Bitterly tired, he lay down on the sofa in his fur coat, and fell asleep. He woke soon after dawn, and went on deck. He stood against the rail, looking west, where the river swept round in a wide curve under the woods. Inchansary's appreciation of natural beauty was curiously like that of his farmer-ancestors, a sense of grievance if it wasn't there, sharpened, no doubt, and civilized by his researches among landscape painting. But dawn has power to fertilize the most matter-of-fact vision, and he was stirred. It was another world from the river he knew, under that remote cool light, a world into which man had not entered, an unreal world, like some strange shore sighted by discovery. Its color was not the color of convention, it was hardly color at all, its shapes were brooding, yet distinct, its silence stunning, it had no scent. Why it should move him he could not tell, unless it were that he felt so alone in it, bare of all relationship and all possessions. Into such a world his father might be voyaging, for all resemblance it had to the world he had left. And Soames took refuge from it in wondering what painter could have done it justice. The white-gray water was like the belly of a fish. Was it possible that this world on which he looked was all private property, except the water, and even that was tapped? No tree, no shrub, not a blade of grass, not a bird or beast, not even a fish that was not owned. And once on a time all this was jungle, and marsh, and water, and weird creatures roamed and sported without human cognizance to give them names. Rotting luxurians had rioted where those tall, carefully planted woods came down to the water, and marsh-misted reeds on that far side had covered all the pasture. Well they had got it under, kenneled it all up, labelled it, and stowed it in lawyers' offices, and a good thing too. But once in a way, as now, the ghost of the past came out to haunt and brood and whisper to any human who chanced to be awake. Out of my unowned loneliness you all came. Into it some day you will all return. And Soames, who felt the chill and the eeriness of that world knew to him, and so very old, the world unowned, visiting the scene of its past, went down, and made himself tea on a spirit lamp. When he had drunk it he took out writing materials, and wrote two paragraphs. On the twentieth instant, at his residence in Park Lane, James Foresight, in his ninety-first year, funeral at noon on the twenty-fourth at Highgate, no flowers by request. On the twentieth instant, at the shelter, Maple Durham, Annette, wife of Soames Foresight, of a daughter, and underneath, on the blotting paper, he traced the word, son. It was eight o'clock in an ordinary autumn world when he went across to the house, bushes across the river stood round and bright-coloured out of a milky haze. The wood-smoke went up blue and straight, and his doves cooled, preening their feathers in the sunlight. He stole up to his dressing-room, bathed, shaved, put on fresh linen and dark clothes. Madame Lamotte was beginning her breakfast when he went down. She looked at his clothes, said, Don't tell me, and pressed his hand. Annette is pretty well. But the doctor says she can never have no more children. You knew that? Soames nodded. It's a pity. Mais l'appétit est d'accordable. Du café? Soames got away from her as soon as he could. She offended him. Solid. Matter-of-fact. Quick. Clear. French. He could not bear her vowels, her aars. He resented the way she had looked at him, as if it were his fault that Annette could never bear him a son. His fault. He even resented her cheap adoration of the daughter he had not yet seen. Curious how he jibbed away from the sight of his wife and child? One would have thought he must have rushed up at the first moment. On the contrary, he had a sort of physical shrinking from it, fastidious possessor that he was. He was afraid of what Annette was thinking of him, author of her agonies, afraid of the look of the baby, afraid of showing his disappointment with the present and the future. He spent an hour walking up and down the drawing-room before he could screw his courage up to mount the stairs and knock on the door of their room. Madame Lamotte opened it. Ah, à plus tu commes, elle vous attend. She passed him, and Soames went in with his noiseless step. His jaw firmly set, his eyes furtive. Annette was very pale and very pretty lying there. The baby was hidden away somewhere. He could not see it. He went up to the bed, and with sudden emotion bent and kissed her forehead. Here you are, Soames. She said, I am not so bad now, but I suffered terribly, terribly. I am glad I cannot have any more. Oh, how I suffered! Soames stood silent, stroking her hand. Words of endearment, of sympathy, absolutely would not come. The thought passed through him. An English girl wouldn't have said that. At this moment he knew with certainty that he would never be near to her in spirit, and in truth, nor she to him. He had collected her, that was all. And Jolian's words came rushing into his mind. I should imagine you will be glad to have your neck out of Chancery. Well, he had got it out, and he got it in again. We must feed you up, he said. You will soon be strong. But don't you want to see baby Soames? She is asleep. Of course, said Soames, very much. He passed round the foot of the bed to the other side and stood staring. For the first moment what he saw was much what he had expected to see, a baby. But as he stared, and the baby breathed and made little sleeping movements with its tiny features, it seemed to assume an individual shape, grew to be like a picture, a thing he would know again, not repulsive, strangely bud-like and touching. It had dark hair. He touched it with his finger. He wanted to see its eyes. They opened. They were dark, whether blue or brown, he could not tell. The eyes winked, stared. They had a sort of sleepy depth in them. And suddenly his heart felt queer, warm, as if elated. Mapid did Fleur, Annette said, softly. Fleur, repeated Soames, Fleur, will call her that. The sense of triumph and renewed possessions swelled within him. By God this, this thing was His. By God this, this thing was His. End of Part 3, Chapter 14 and End of Enchancery, Part 2 of The Foresight Saga, by John Gallsworthy.