 Part 2, Chapter 10 of To Let. When Fleur left him, John stared at the Austrian. She was a thin woman, with a dark face, and the concerned expression of one who has watched every little good that life once had slipped from her one by one. No tea, she said, susceptible to the disappointment in her voice. John murmured, No, really, thanks, et le cap, et rendi, et le cap en cigarette. Fleur was gone. Hours of remorse and indecision lay before him, and with a heavy sense of disproportion he smiled and said, Well, thank you. She brought in a little pot of tea with two little cups, and a silver box of cigarettes on a little tray. Suga? Miss Forsythe has much sugar. She buy my sugar, my friend's sugar also. Miss Forsythe is a very kind lady, and happy to serve her. You her brother? Yes, said John, beginning to puff the second cigarette of his life. Very young brother, said the Austrian, with a little anxious smile, which reminded him of the wag of a dog's tail. May I give you some, he said, and won't you sit down, please? The Austrian shook her head. Your father? A very nice old man. The most nice old man I ever see. Miss Forsythe tell me all about him. Is he better? Her words fell on John like a reproach. Oh, yes, I think he's all right. I'd like to see him again, said the Austrian, putting a hand on her heart. He have very kind heart. Yes, said John, and again her words seemed to him a reproach. He never give no trouble to no one, and smile so gentle. Yes, doesn't he? He look at Miss Forsythe so funny sometimes. I tell him all my story. He's so sympathetic. Your mother? She nice and well? Yes, very. He have her photograph on his dressing table. A very beautiful. John gulp down his tea. This woman, with her concerned face, and her reminding words, was like the first and second murderers. Thank you, he said, I must go now. May I leave this with you? He put a tensioning note on the tray, with a doubting hand, and gained the door. He heard the Austrian gasp and hurried out. He had just time to catch his train, and all the way to Victoria looked at every face that passed, as lovers will, hoping against hope. On reaching Worthing, he put his luggage into the local train, and set out across the downs for Wonsdon, trying to walk off his aching irresolution. So long as he went full bat, he could enjoy the beauty of those green slopes, stopping now and again to sprawl on the grass, admire the perfection of a wild rose, all listen to a lark's song. But the war of motives within him was but postponed, the longing for Fleur, and the hatred of deception. He came to the old chalk-bit above Wonsdon, with his mind no more made up than when he started. To see both sides of a question vigorously was at once John's strength and weakness. He tramped in, just as the first dinner-bell rang. His things had already been brought up. He had a hurried bath, and came down to find Holly alone. Val had gone to town, and would not be back till the last train. Since Val's advice to him to ask his sister what was the matter between the two families, so much had happened. Fleur's disclosure in the Green Park, her visit to Robin Hill, today's meeting, that there seemed nothing to ask. He talked of Spain, his son's stroke, Val's horses, their father's health. Holly startled him by saying that she thought their father was not at all well. She had been twice to Robin Hill for the weekend. He had seemed fearfully languid, sometimes even in pain, but had always refused to talk about himself. He's so awfully dear and unselfish. Don't you think, John?" Feeling far from dear and unselfish himself, John answered, rather, I think he's been a simply perfect father so long as I can remember. Yes, answered John, very subdued. He never interfered, and he's always seemed to understand. I shall never forget his letting me go to South Africa and the Boer War when I was in love with Val. That was before he married Mother, wasn't it? said John suddenly. Yes. Why? Oh, nothing. Only, wasn't she engaged to Fleur's father first? Holly put down the spoon she was using and raised her eyes. Her stare was circumspect. What did the boy know? Enough to make it better to tell him? She could not decide. He looked strained and worried, altogether older, but that might be the sunstroke. There was something. She said, of course, we were out there and got no news of anything. She could not take the risk. It was not her secret. Besides, she was in the dark about his feelings now. Before Spain, she had made sure he was in love. But boys were boys, that was seven weeks ago, and all Spain between. She saw that he knew she was putting him off and added, Have you heard anything of Fleur? Yes. His face told her then more than the most elaborate explanations. So he had not forgotten. She said very quietly, Fleur is awfully attractive, John, but you know Val and I don't really like her very much. Why? We think she's got rather a having nature. Having, I don't know what you mean, she—she— He pushed his dessert plate away, got up and went to the window. Holly, too, got up and put her arm round his waist. Don't be angry, John, dear. We can't all see people in the same light, can we? You know, I believe each of us only has about one or two people who can see the best that's in us and bring it out. For you, I think it's your mother. I once saw her looking at a letter of yours. It was wonderful to see her face. I think she's the most beautiful woman I ever saw. Age doesn't seem to touch her. John's face softened. Then again became tense. Everybody, everybody was against him and Fleur. It all strengthened the appeal of her words. Make sure of me. Marry me, John. Here, where he had passed that wonderful week with her, the tug of her enchantment, the ache in his heart increased with every minute that she was not there to make the room, the garden, the very air, magical. Would he ever be able to live down here, not seeing her? And he closed her, butterly, going early to bed. It would not make him healthy, wealthy and wise, but it closeted him with memory of Fleur in her fancy frock. He heard vowels arrival, the Ford discharging cargo, then the stillness of the summer night stole back, with only the bleeding of very distant sheep, and a nightjar's harsh purring. He lent far out. Cold moon, warm air, the downs like silver, small wings, a stream bubbling, the rambler roses. God, how empty all of it without her. In the Bible it was written, Thou shalt leave father and mother and cleave to Fleur. Let him have pluck and go and tell them. They couldn't stop him marrying her. They wouldn't want to stop him when they knew how he felt. Yes, he would go. Bold and open. Fleur was wrong. The nightjar ceased. The sheep were silent. The only sound in the darkness was the bubbling of the stream, and John, in his bed, slept, freed from the worst of life's evils, in decision. End of Part 2, Chapter 10. Part 2, Chapter 11 of To Let. Part 2, Chapter 11. Timothy prophesies. On the day of the cancelled meeting at the National Gallery began the second anniversary of the resurrection of England's pride and glory, or more shortly, the top hat. Lords, that festival which the war had driven from the field, raised its light and dark blue flags for the second time, displaying almost every feature of a glorious past. Here, in the luncheon interval, were all species of female and one species of male hat, protecting the multiple types of face associated with the classes. The observing foresight might discern in the free or unconsidered seats a certain number of the squash hatted, but they hardly ventured onto the grass. The old school or schools could still rejoice that the proletariat was not yet paying the necessary half-crown. Here was still a close burrow, the only one left on a large scale, for the papers were about to estimate the attendance at ten thousand. And the ten thousand, all animated by one hope, were asking each other one question, where are you lunching? Something wonderfully uplifting and reassuring in that query, and the sight of so many people, like themselves, voicing it. What reserve power in the British realm? Enough pigeons, lobsters, lambs, salmon mayonnaise, strawberries, and bottles of champagne to feed the lot. No miracle in prospect, no case of seven loaves and a few fishes. Faith rested on sureer foundations. Six thousand top hats, four thousand parasols, would be doft and firled. Ten thousand mouths, all speaking the same English, would be filled. There was life in the old dog yet, tradition, and again tradition. How strong and how elastic, wars might rage, taxation prey, trades unions take toll, and Europe perish of starvation. But the ten thousand would be fed, and within their ring fence, stroll upon green turf, wear their top hats, and meet themselves. The harp was sound, the pulse regular. Eaton, eaton, harrow! Among the many foresights present on a hunting ground theirs, by personal prescriptive right, or proxy, was Soames, with his wife and daughter. He had not been at either school. He took no interest in cricket, but he wanted Fleur to show her frock, and he wanted to wear his top hat, parade it again in peace and plenty among his peers. He walked sedately with Fleur between him and Annette. No women equaled them, as far as he could see. They could walk and hold themselves up. There was substance in their good looks. The modern woman had no build, no chest, no anything. He remembered suddenly, with what intoxication of pride, he had walked round with Irini in the first years of his first marriage, and how they used to lunge on the drag, which his mother would make his father have, because it was so chic. All drags and carriages in those days, not these lumbering great stands. And how consistently Montague Darty had drunk too much. He supposed that people drank too much still, but there was not the scope for it, there used to be. He remembered George Forsight, whose brothers Roger and Euston had been at Harrow and Eaton, towering up on the top of the drag, waving a light blue flag with one hand, and a dark blue flag with the other, and shouting, E. Trot, Harten, just when everybody was silent, like the buffoon he had always been, and Euston's got up to the nines below, too dandified to wear any colour or take any notice. E, old days, an Irini in grey silk shot with Paylist Green. He looked sideways at Fleur's face, rather colourless, no light, no eagerness. That love affair was preying on her, a bad business. He looked beyond at his wife's face, rather more touched up than usual, a little disdainful. Not that she had any business to disdain, as far as he could see. She was taking Profan's defection with curious quietude. Or was his small voyage just a blind? If so, he should refuse to see it. Having promenaded round the pitch, and in front of the pavilion, they saw Winifred's table in the Bedwin Club tent. This club, a new cock and hen, had been founded in the interests of travel, and of a gentleman with an old Scottish name whose father had somewhat strangely been called Levi. Winifred had joined, not because she had travelled, but because instinct told her that a club with such a name and such a founder was bound to go far, if one didn't join at once, one might never have the chance. Its tent, with a text from the Quran on an orange ground, and a small green camel embroidered over the entrance, was the most striking on the ground. Outside it they found Jack Cardigan in a dark blue tie. He had once played for Harrow, batting with a malacca cane to show how that fellow ought to have hit that ball. He piloted them in. Assembled in Winifred's corner were Imogen, Benedict with his young wife, Val-Dartie without Holly, Maud and her husband, and after Soames and his two were seated, one empty place. I'm expecting Prosper, said Winifred, but he's so busy with his yacht. Soames stole a glance, no movement in his wife's face. Whether that fellow were coming or not, she evidently knew all about it. It did not escape him that Fleur, too, looked at her mother. If Annette didn't respect his feelings, she might think of Fleurs. The conversation, very desultory, was syncopated by Jack Cardigan talking about mid-off. He cited all the great mid-offs from the beginning of time as if they had been a definite racial entity in the composition of the British people. Soames had finished his lobster and was beginning on pigeon pie when he heard the words, I must small bit lit, Mrs. Dufty, and saw that there was no longer any empty place. That fellow was sitting between Annette and Imogen. Soames yet steadily on, with an occasional word to Maud and Winifred. Conversation buzzed around him. He heard the voice of Profan saying, I think you're mistaken, Mrs. Forsyde. I'll bet Mrs. Forsyde agrees with me. In what? came Fleurs' clear voice across the table. I was saying, young girls are much the same as they always were. There's a very small difference. Do you know so much about them? That sharp reply caught the ears of all, and Soames moved uneasily on his thin green chair. Well, look, I don't know. I think they want their own small way, and I think they always did. Indeed. Oh, but prosper! Winifred interjected comfortably. The girls in the streets, the girls who've been in munitions, the little flappers in the shops, their manners now really quite hit you in the eye. At the word hit, Jack Cardigan stopped his disquisition. And in the silence, M. Profan said, It was inside before. Now it's outside. That's all. But their morals, cried Imogen, just as Maud and the Saviour were, Mrs. Cardigan, but they've got more opportunity. The saying, so cryptically cynical, received a little laugh from Imogen, a slight opening of Jack Cardigan's mouth. And a creak from Soames' chair. Winifred said, That's too bad, Prosper. What do you say about his foresight? Don't you think human nature's always the same? Soames subdued a sudden longing to get up and kick the fellow. He heard his wife reply, Human nature is not the same in England as everywhere else. That was her confounded mockery. Well, I don't know much about this small country. No, thank God, thought Soames. But I should say the pot was boiling under the lid everywhere. We all want pleasure, and we always did. Damn the fellow! His cynicism was outrageous. When lunch was over, they broke up into couples for the digestive promenade. Too proud to notice Soames knew perfectly that Annette and that fellow had gone prowling round together. Fleur was with Val. She had chosen him, no doubt, because he knew that boy. He himself had Winifred for partner. They walked in the bright, circling stream, a little flushed and sated for some minutes, till Winifred sighed. I wish we were back forty years, old boy. Before the eyes of her spirit, an interminable procession of her own lord's frocks was passing, paid for with the money of her father, to save her a current crisis. It's been very amusing, after all. Sometimes I even wish Monti were back. What do you think of people nowadays, Soames? Precious little style. The thing began to go to pieces with bicycles and motor-cars. The war has finished it. I wonder what's coming, said Winifred, in a voice dreamy from Pigeon Pie. I'm not at all sure we shall go back to crinolines and pegtops. Look at that dress! Soames shook his head. There's money, but no faith in things. We don't lay by for the future. These youngsters, it's all a short life and a merry one with them. There's a hat, said Winifred. I don't know. When you come to think of the people killed and all that in the war, it's rather wonderful, I think. There's no other country. Prosper says the rest are all bankrupt except America, and of course her men always took their style in dress from us. Is that chap, said Soames, really going to the South Seas? Oh, one never knows where Prosper's going. He's a sign of the times, muttered Soames, if you like. Winifred's hand gripped his arm. Don't turn your head, she said, in a low voice, but look to your right in the front row of the stand. Soames looked as best he could under that limitation. A man in a grey top hat, grey bearded, with thin brown folded cheeks, and a certain elegance of posture sat there with a woman in a lawn-coloured frock whose dark eyes were fixed on himself. Soames looked quickly at his feet. How funnily feet moved, one after the other like that. Winifred's voice, said in his ear, Jolyon looks very ill, but he always had style. She doesn't change except her hair. Why did you tell Fleur about that business? I didn't. She picked it up. I always knew she would. Well, it's a mess. She set her heart upon that boy. A little rich, murmured Winifred. She tried to take me in about that. What shall you do, Soames? Beguided by events. They moved on, silent, in the almost solid crowd. Really, said Winifred suddenly, it almost seems like fate, only that so old-fashioned. Look, they're a Georgian Eustace. George Forsight's lofty bulk had halted before them. Hello, Soames, he said. Just met profond and your wife. You'll catch her up if you put on pace. Did you ever go to see old Timothy? Soames nodded, and the streams forced them apart. I almost liked old George, said Winifred. He's so droll. I never did, said Soames. Where's your seat? I shall go to mine. Fleur may be back there. Having seen Winifred to her seat, he regained his own, conscious of small, white, distant figures running, the click of the bat, the cheers and counter-chairs. No Fleur and no Annette. You could expect nothing of women nowadays. They had the vote. They were emancipated, and much good was it doing them. So Winifred would go back, would she, and put up with Darty all over again. To have the past once more, to be sitting here as he had sat in 83 and 84, before he was certain that his marriage with Irene had gone all wrong, before her antagonism had become so glaring that with the best will in the world he could not overlook it. The sight of her with that fellow had brought all memory back. Even now he could not understand why she had been so impracticable. She could love other men. She had it in her. To himself, the one person she ought to have loved, she had chosen to refuse her heart. It seemed to him, fantastically as he looked back, that all this modern relaxation of marriage, though its forms and laws were the same as when he married her, that all this modern looseness had come out of her revolt. It seemed to him, fantastically, that she had started it, till all decent ownership of anything had gone, or was on the point of going, all came from her. And now a pretty state of things. Homes? How could you have them without mutual ownership? Not that he had ever had a real home, but had that been his fault? He had done his best, and his rewards were those two sitting in that stand and this affair of flers. An overcome by loneliness, he thought, shan't wait any longer. They must find their own way back to the hotel, if they mean to come. Hailing a cab outside the ground, he said, Drive me to the Bayswater Road. His old aunts had never failed him. To them he had meant an ever-welcome visitor. Though they were gone, there still was Timothy. Smyther was standing in the open doorway. Mr. Soames, I was just taking the air. Cook will be so pleased. How is Mr. Timothy? Not himself at all these last few days, sir. He's been talking a great deal. Only this morning he was saying to me, My brother James, he's getting old. His mind wanders, Mr. Soames, and then he will talk of them. He troubles about their investments. The other day he said, There's my brother Jolian won't look at consoles. He seemed quite down about it. Come in, Mr. Soames. Come in. It's such a pleasant change. Well, said Soames, just for a few minutes. No, murmured Smyther in the hall, where the air had the singular freshness of the outside day. We haven't been very satisfied with him not all this week. He's always been one to leave a titbit to the end, but ever since Monday he's been eating it first. If you notice a dog, Mr. Soames, at its dinner it eats the meat first. We've always thought it's such a good sign of Mr. Timothy at his age to leave it till the last. But now he seems to have lost all his self-control, and of course it makes him leave the rest. The doctor doesn't make anything of it, but Smyther shook her head. He seems to think he's got to eat it first in case he shouldn't get to it. That and his talking makes us anxious. Has he said anything important? I shouldn't like to say that, Mr. Soames, but he's turned against his will. He gets quite pettish, and after having had it out every morning for years, he does seem funny. He said the other day, they want my money. He gave me such a turn, because as I said to him nobody wants his money, I'm sure. And he does seem a pity he should be thinking about money at his time of life. I took my courage in my hands. You know, Mr. Timothy, I said, my dear mistress, that's Miss Forsythe, Mr. Soames, Miss Anne that trained me. She never thought about money. I said it was all character with her. He looked at me. I can't tell you how funny. And he said, quite dry, nobody wants my character. Think of his saying a thing like that. But sometimes he'll say something as sharp and sensible as anything. Soames, who had been staring at an old print by the hat rack, thinking, that's got value. Mermond, I'll go up and see him, Smitha. Cooks with him, answered Smitha, above her corsets. She will be pleased to see you. He mounted slowly, with the thought, she won't care to live to be that age. On the second floor he paused and tapped. The door was opened, and he saw the round, homely face of a woman about sixty. Mr. Soames, she said, why, Mr. Soames? Soames nodded. All right, Cook? And entered. Timothy was propped up in bed, with his hands joined before his chest, and his eyes fixed on the ceiling, where a fly was standing, upside down. Soames stood at the foot of the bed, facing him. Uncle Timothy, he said, raising his voice, Uncle Timothy. Timothy's eyes left the fly, and levelled themselves on his visitor. Soames could see his pale tongue passing over his darkish lips. Uncle Timothy, he said again, is there anything I can do for you? Is there anything you'd like to say? Ha! said Timothy. I've come to look you up, and see that everything's all right. Timothy nodded. He seemed trying to get used to the apparition before him. Have you got everything you want? No, said Timothy. Can I get you anything? No, said Timothy. I'm Soames, you know, your nephew. Soames foresight, your brother James's son. Timothy nodded. I shall be delighted to do anything I can for you. Timothy beckoned. Soames went close to him. You, said Timothy, in a voice which seemed to have outlived tone, you tell them all from me. You tell them all, and his finger tapped on Soames' arm, to hold on. Hold on, consoles are going up. And he nodded thrice. All right, said Soames, I will. Yes, said Timothy, and fixing his eyes again on the ceiling, he added, That fly! Strangely moved, Soames looked at the cook's pleasant, fatish face, all little puckers from staring at fires. That'll do him the world a good, sir, she said. A mutter came from Timothy, but he was clearly speaking to himself, and Soames went out with the cook. I wish I could make you a pink cream, Mr. Soames, like in old days. You did so relish them. Good-bye, sir, it's been a pleasure. Take care of him, cook. He is old. And shaking her crumpled hand, he went downstairs. Smyther was still taking the air in the doorway. What do you think of him, Mr. Soames? Mmm, Soames murmured. He's lost touch. Yes, said Smyther. I was afraid you'd think that, coming fresh out of the world to see him like. Smyther, said Soames, we're all indebted to you. Oh, no, Mr. Soames, don't say that. It's a pleasure. He's such a wonderful man. Well, good-bye, said Soames, and got into his taxi. Going up, he thought, going up. Reaching the hotel at Knightsbridge, he went to their sitting-room and rang for tea. Neither of them were in, and again that sense of loneliness came over him. These hotels, what monstrous great places they were now. He could remember when there was nothing bigger than longs or browns, ballies or the tapestock, and the heads that were shaken over the Langham and the Grand. Hotels and clubs? Clubs and hotels? No end to them now. And Soames, who had just been watching at Lords a miracle of tradition and continuity, fell into reverie over the changes in that London where he had been born five and sixty years before. Whether consoles were going up or not, London had become a terrific property. No such property in the world, unless it were New York. There was a lot of hysteria in the paper nowadays, but anyone who, like himself, could remember London sixty years ago, and see it now, realised the fecundity and elasticity of wealth. They could only to keep their heads and go at it steadily. Why, he remembered cobblestones and stinking straw on the floor of your cab. And old Timothy, what could he not have told them if he had kept his memory? Things were unsettled, people in a funk or in a hurry, but here were London and the Thames, and out there the British Empire and the ends of the earth. Consoles are going up. He shouldn't be a bit surprised, it was the breed that counted. And all that was bulldogged in Soames, stared for a moment out of his grey eyes, till diverted by the print of a Victorian picture on the walls. The hotel had bought three dozen of that little lot. The old hunting, or rake's progress, prints in the old ins were worth looking at. But this sent him mental stuff? Well, Victorianism had gone. Tell them to hold on, old Timothy had said. But to what were they to hold on, in this modern welter of the democratic principle? Why, even privacy was threatened. And at the thought that privacy might perish, Soames pushed back his teacup and went to the window. Fancy owning no more of nature than the crowd out there owned of the flowers and trees and waters of Hyde Park. No, no, private possession underlay everything worth having. The world had slipped its sanity a bit, as dogs now and again at full moon slipped theirs, and went off on a night's rabbiting. But the world, like the dog, knew where its bread was buttered, and its bed warm, and would come back, sure enough, to the only home worth having, to private ownership. The world was in its second childhood for the moment, like old Timothy, eating its tit-bit first. He heard a sound behind him, and saw that his wife and daughter had come in. So you're back, he said. Fer did not answer. She stood for a moment, looking at him and her mother, and then passed into her bedroom. Annette poured herself out a cup of tea. I am going to Paris to my mother, Soames. Oh, to your mother? Yes. For how long? I do not know. And when are you going? On Monday. Was she really going to her mother? Odd how indifferent he felt. Odd how clearly she had perceived the indifference he would feel, so long as there was no scandal. And suddenly, between her and himself, he saw distinctly the face that he had seen that afternoon, a herrini's. Would you want money? Thank you. Eh, have enough. Very well. Let us know when you're coming back. Annette put down the cake she was fingering, and looking up through darkened lashes said, Shall I give my mother any message? My regards. Annette stretched herself, her hands on her waist, and said in French, What luck you have never loved me, Soames. Then, rising, she too left the room. Soames was glad she had spoken it in French. It seemed to require no dealing with. Again, that other face, pale, dark-eyed, beautiful still. And there stirred, far down within him the ghost of warmth, as from sparks lingering between a mound of flaky ash, and Fleur infatuated with her boy. Queer chance. Yet was there such a thing as chance? A man went down a street, a brick fell on his head. Ah, that was chance, no doubt. But this inherited his girl had said. She, she was holding on. End of part two, chapter eleven. Part three, chapter one of Toilet. 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 Andy Minter. The foresight saga. Three. Toilet. By John Gallsworthy. Part three, chapter one. Old Jolian walks. Two-fold impulse had made Jolian say to his wife at breakfast, Let's go up to Lord's. Wanted. Something to abate the anxiety in which those two had lived during the sixty hours since John had brought Fleur down. Wanted. Two. That which might assuage the pangs of memory, in one who knew he might lose them any day. Fifty-eight years ago Jolian had become an eaten boy. For Old Jolian's whim had been that he should be canonized at the greatest possible expense. Year after year he had gone to Lord's from Stanhope Gate, with the father whose youth in the 1820s had been passed without polish in the game of cricket. Old Jolian would speak quite openly of swipes, full tosses, half and three-quarter balls, and young Jolian, with the guile the snobbery of youth, had trembled lest his sire should be overheard. Only in this supreme matter of cricket he had been nervous, for his father, in Crimean whiskers then, had ever impressed him as the bow ideal. Though never canonized himself, Old Jolian's natural fastidiousness and balance had saved him from the errors of the vulgar. How delicious, after howling in a top hat and the sweltering heat, to go home with his father in a handsome cab, bathed, dressed, and forth to the disunion club, to dine off white-bait, cutlets, and the tart, and go to swells, old and young, in lavender-kid gloves, to the opera or play. And on Sunday, when the match was over, and his top hat duly broken, down with his father in a special handsome, to the crown and scepter, and the terrace above the river, the gold and sixties, when the world was simple, dandy's glamorous, democracy not born, and the books of white Melville coming thick and fast. A generation later, with his own boy Jolly, Harrow button-hulled with corn-flowers, by Old Jolian's whim his grandson had been canonized at a trifle less expense. Again Jolian had experienced the heat and counter-passions of the day, and come back to the cool and strawberry beds of Robin Hill, and billions after dinner, his boy making the most heartbreaking flukes, and trying to seem languid and grown-up. Those two days each year, he and his son had been alone together in the world, one on each side, and democracy just born. And so he had unearthed a grey top hat, borrowed a tiny bit of light blue ribbon from Irene, and gingerly, keeping cool by car and train and taxi, had reached Lord's ground. There, beside her in a lawn-coloured frock with narrow black edges, he had watched the game, and felt the old thrill stir within him. When Somes passed, the day was spoiled. Irene's face was distorted by compression of the lips. No good to go on sitting here with Somes, or perhaps his daughter, recurring in front of them, like decimals. And he said, Well, dear, if you've had enough, let's go. That evening Jolian felt exhausted. Not wanting her to see him thus, he waited till she had begun to play, and stole off to the little study. He opened the long window for air, and the door that he might still hear her music drifting in, and, settled in his father's old armchair, closed his eyes, with his head against the worn-brown leather. Like that passage of the César Franksenata, so had been his life with her, a divine third movement. And now this business of Johns, this bad business. Drifted to the edge of consciousness, he hardly knew if it were in sleep that he smelled the scent of a cigar, and seemed to see his father in the blackness before his closed eyes. That shape formed, went, and formed again, as if in the very chair where he himself was sitting. He saw his father, black-coated, with knees crossed, glasses balanced between thumb and finger, saw all the big white moustaches and the deep eyes looking up below a dome of forehead, and seeming to search his own, seeming to speak. Are you facing it, Joe? It's for you to decide. She's only a woman. Ah, how well he knew his father in that phrase! How all the Victorian age came up with it! And his answer. No, I've funked it. Funked hurting her and John and myself. I've got a heart. I've funked it. But the old eyes, so much older, so much younger than his own, kept at it. It's your wife, your son, your past. Tackle it, my boy. Was it a message from walking spirit, or but the instinct of his sire living on within him? And again came that scent of cigar smoke from the old saturated leather. Well, he would tackle it, right to John, and put the whole thing down in black and white. And suddenly he breathed with difficulty, with a sense of suffocation, as if his heart were swollen. He got up and went out into the air. The stars were very bright. He passed along the terrace, round the corner of the house, till, through the window of the music room, he could see Irene at the piano, with lamp-light falling on her powdery hair. With drawn into herself, she seemed, her dark eyes staring straight before her, her hands idle. Julian saw her raise those hands, and clasped them over her breast. It's John with her. He thought, all John. I'm dying out of her. It's natural. And careful not to be seen, he stole back. Next day, after a bad night, he sat down to his task. He wrote, with difficulty, and many erasures, My dearest boy, you are old enough to understand how very difficult it is for elders to give themselves away to their young. Especially when, like your mother and myself, though I shall never think of her as anything but young, their hearts are altogether set on him to whom they must confess. I cannot say we are conscious of having sinned, exactly. People in real life very seldom are, I believe. But most persons would say we had. And at all events, our conduct, righteous or not, has found us out. The truth is, my dear, we both have pasts, which it is now my task to make known to you, because they so grievously and deeply affect your future. Many, very many years ago, as far back indeed as 1883, when she was only 20, your mother had the great and lasting misfortune to make an unhappy marriage. No, not with me, John. Without money of her own, and with only a step-mother, closely related to Jezebel, she was very unhappy in her home life. It was Fleur's father that she married, my cousin, Somes Foresight. He had pursued her very tenaciously, and to do him justice was deeply in love with her. Within a week she knew the fearful mistake she had made. It was not his fault, it was her error of judgment, her misfortune. So far Jolian had kept some semblance of irony, but now his subject carried him away. John, I want to explain to you, if I can, and it's very hard, how it is that an unhappy marriage, such as this can so easily come about, you will of course say if she didn't really love him, how could she ever have married him? You would be right, if it were not for one or two rather terrible considerations. From this initial mistake of hers, all the subsequent trouble, sorrow and tragedy have come. And so I must make it clear to you, if I can. You see, John, in those days, and even to this day, indeed I don't see, for all the talk of enlightenment, how it can well be otherwise. Most girls are married ignorant of the sexual side of life. Even if they know what it means they have not experienced it, that's the crux. It's this actual lack of experience, whatever verbal knowledge they have, which makes all the difference and all the trouble. In a vast number of marriages, and your mother's was one, girls are not and cannot be certain whether they love the man they marry or not. They do not know until after that act of union, which makes the reality of marriage. Now in many cases, perhaps in most doubtful cases, this act cements and strengthens the attachment. But in other cases, and your mother's was one, it is a revelation of mistake, a destruction of such attraction as there was. There is nothing more tragic in a woman's life than such a revelation, growing daily, nightly clearer. Course-grained and unthinking people are act to laugh at such a mistake and say, what a fuss about nothing. Narrow and self-righteous people, only capable of judging the lives of others by their own, are apt to condemn those who make this tragic error, to condemn them for life to the dungeons they have made for themselves. You know the expression, she has made her bed, she must lie on it. It is a hard mouth saying, quite unworthy of a gentleman or lady in the best sense of these words, and I can use no stronger condemnation. I have not been what is called a moral man, but I wish to use no words to you, my dear, which will make you think lightly of ties or contracts into which you enter, heaven forbid, but with the experience of a life behind me, I do say that those who condemn the victims of these tragic mistakes, condemn them and hold out no hands to help them, are inhuman, or rather they would be if they had the understanding to know what they are doing, but they haven't. Let them go. They are as much anathema to me as I, no doubt, am to them. I have had to say all this because I am going to put you into a position to judge your mother, and you are very young, without experience of what life is, to go on with the story. After three years of efforts to subdue her shrinking, I was going to say her loathing, and it's not too strong a word, for shrinking soon becomes loathing under such circumstances. Three years of what to a sensitive, beauty-loving nature like your mother's, John, was torment. She met a young man who fell in love with her. He was the architect of this very house that we live in now. He was building it for her and Fleur's father to live in, a new prison to hold her, in place of the one she inhabited with him in London. Perhaps that fact played some part in what came of it, but in any case she too fell in love with him. I know it's not necessary to explain to you that one does not precisely choose with whom one will fall in love. It comes. Very well, it came. I can imagine, though she never said much to me about it, the struggle that then took place in her, because, John, she was brought up strictly, and was not light in her ideas, not at all. However, this was an overwhelming feeling, and it came to pass that they loved indeed as well as in thought. Then came a fearful tragedy. I must tell you of it, because if I don't, you will never understand the real situation that you now have to face. The man whom she married, Soames Forsight, the father of Fleur, one night, at the height of her passion for this young man, forcibly reasserted his rights over her. The next day she met her lover and told him of it, whether he committed suicide or whether he was accidentally run over in his distraction we never knew, but so it was. Think of your mother as she was that evening, when she heard of his death. I happened to see her. Your grandfather sent me to help her, if I could. I only just saw her, before the door was shut against me by her husband. But I have never forgotten her face. I can see it now. I was not in love with her then, not for twelve years after, but I have never forgotten. My dear boy, it is not easy to write like this, but you see I must. Your mother is wrapped up in you, utterly, devotedly. I don't wish to write harshly of Soames Forsight. I don't think harshly of him. I have long been sorry for him. Perhaps I was sorry even then. As the world judges, she was in error, he within his rights. He loved her, in his way. She was his property. That is the view he holds of life, of human feelings and hearts. Property. It was not his fault. So he was born. To me it is a view that has always been abhorrent. So was I born. Knowing you as I do, I feel it cannot be otherwise than abhorrent to you. Let me go on with the story. Your mother fled from his house that night. For twelve years she lived quietly, alone, without companionship of any sort, until in 1899, her husband, you see he was still her husband, for he did not attempt to divorce her, and she, of course, had no right to divorce him. Became conscious, it seems, of the want of children, and commenced a long attempt to induce her to go back to him and give him a child. I was her trustee then, under your grandfather's will, and I watched this going on. While watching I became attached to her, devotedly attached. His pressure increased till one day she came to me here and practically put herself under my protection. Her husband, who was kept informed of all her movements, attempted to force us apart by bringing a divorce suit. Or possibly he really meant it. I don't know. But anyway our names were publicly joined. That decided us, and we became united in fact. She was divorced, married me, and you were born. We have lived in perfect happiness, at least I have, and I believe your mother also. Soames, soon after the divorce, married Fleur's mother, and she was born. That is the story, John. I have told it to you, because, by the affection which we see you have formed for this man's daughter, you are blindly moving forward to what must utterly destroy your mother's happiness, if not your own. I don't wish to speak of myself, because at my age there's no use supposing I shall cumber the ground much longer. Besides, what I should suffer would be mainly on her account, and on yours. But what I want you to realise, is that feelings of horror and aversion, such as those, can never be buried or forgotten. They are alive in her today. Only yesterday, at Lord's, we happened to see Soames foresight. Her face, if you had seen it, would have convinced you. The idea that you should marry his daughter is a nightmare to her, John. I have nothing to say against Fleur, say that she is his daughter. But your children, if you married her, would be the grandchildren of Soames, as much as of your mother. Of a man who once owned your mother as a man might own a slave. Think what that would mean. By such a marriage, you enter the camp which held your mother prisoner, and wherein she ate her heart out. You are just on the threshold of life. You have only known this girl two months, and however deeply you think you love her, I appeal to you to break it off at once. Don't give your mother this rankling pain and humiliation during the rest of her life. Young though she will always seem to me, she is fifty-seven. Except for us, too, she has no one in the world. She will soon only have you. Pluck up your spirit, John, and break away. Don't put this cloud and barrier between you. Don't break her heart. Bless you, my dear boy, and again forgive me for all the pain that this letter must bring you. We tried to spare it to you, but Spain, it seems, was no good. Ever your devoted father, Jolian Forsight. Having finished his confession, Jolian sat with a thin cheek on his hand rereading. There were things in it which hurt him so much, when he thought of John reading them, that he nearly tore the letter up, to speak of such things at all to a boy, his own boy, to speak of them in relation to his own wife, and the boy's own mother, seemed dreadful to the reticence of his Forsight soul. And yet, without speaking of them, how make John understand the reality, the deep cleavage, the ineffacable scar? Without them, how justify this stifling of the boy's love? He might just as well not write at all. He folded the confession and put it in his pocket. It was, thank heaven, Saturday. He had till Sunday evening to think it over, for even if posted now it could not reach John till Monday. He felt a curious relief at this delay, and at the fact that, whether sent or not, it was written. In the rose garden, which had taken the place of the old fernary, he could see Irene snipping and pruning with a little basket on her arm. She was never idle, it seemed to him, and he envied her, now that he himself was idle nearly all his time. He went down to her. She held up a stained glove and smiled. A piece of lace tied under her chin concealed her hair, and her oval face, with its still dark brows, looked very young. The green flyer awful this year, and yet it's cold. You look tired, Jolyon. Jolyon took the confession from his pocket. I've been writing this. I think you ought to see it. To John, her whole face had changed, in that instant becoming almost haggard. Yes, the murder's out. He gave it to her, and walked away among the roses, presently, seeing that she had finished reading and was standing quite still, with the sheets of the letter against her skirt. He came back to her. Well, it's wonderfully put. I don't see how it could be put better. Thank you, dear. Is there anything you would like left out? She shook her head. No, he must know all if he's to understand. That's what I thought, but I hate it. He had the feeling that he hated it more than she. To him, sex was so much easier to mention between man and woman than between man and man, and she had always been more natural and frank, not deeply secretive, like his foresight self. I wonder if he will understand even now, Jolyon. He's so young, and he shrinks from the physical. He gets that shrinking from my father. He was as fastidious as a girl in all such matters. Would it be better to rewrite the whole thing, and just say you hated soams? Irene shook her head. Hates only a word. It conveys nothing. No, better as it is. Very well. It shall go to-morrow. She raised her face to his, and in sight of the big house's many creepered windows, he kissed her. End of Part 3, Chapter 1, Part 3, Chapter 2 of Toilet. 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 Andy Minter. The foresight saga. 3. Toilet. By John Gallsworthy. Part 3, Chapter 2, Confession. Late that same afternoon, Jolyon had a nap in the old armchair. Face down on his knee was La Rotisserie de la Reine Pédoc. And just before he fell asleep, he was thinking, As a people, shall we ever really like the French? Will they ever really like us? He himself had always liked the French, feeling at home with their wit, their taste, their cooking. Irene and he had paid many visits to France before the war, when John had been at his private school. His romance with her had begun in Paris, his last and most enduring romance. But the French. No Englishman could like them, who could not see them in some sort with the detached aesthetic eye. And with that melancholy conclusion he had nodded off. When he woke he saw John standing between him and the window. The boy had evidently come in from the garden and was waiting for him to wake. Jolyon smiled still half asleep. How nice the chap looked. Sensitive, affectionate, straight. Then his heart gave a nasty jump and a quaking sensation came over him. John, that confession. He controlled himself with an effort. Why, John, where did you spring from? John bent over and kissed his forehead. Only then he noticed the look on the boy's face. I came home to tell you something, Dad. With all his might, Jolyon tried to get the better of the jumping, gurgling sensations within his chest. Well, sit down, old man. Have you seen your mother? No. The boy's flushed look gave place to pallor. He sat down on the arm of the old chair, as in old days Jolyon himself used to sit beside his own father, installed in its recesses. Right up to the time of the rupture in their relations he had been want to perch there. Had he now reached such a moment with his own son? All his life he had hated scenes like poison, avoided rouse, gone on his own way quietly, and let others go on theirs. But now it seemed at the very end of things he had a scene before him more painful than any he had avoided. He drew a visor down over his emotion and waited for his son to speak. Father, said John slowly, Fleur and I are engaged. Exactly, thought Jolyon, breathing with difficulty. I know that you and Mother don't like the idea. Fleur says that Mother was engaged to her father before you married her. Of course I don't know what happened, but it must be ages ago. I'm devoted to her, Dad, and she says she is to me. Jolyon uttered the queer sound, half laugh, half grown. You're nineteen, John, and I am seventy-two. How are we to understand each other in a matter like this, eh? You love Mother, Dad. You must know what we feel. It isn't fair to us to let old things spoil our happiness, is it? Brought face to face with his confession. Jolyon resolved to do without it, if by any means he could. He laid his hand on the boy's arm. Look, John, I might put you off with talk about your both being too young and not knowing your own minds and all that, but you wouldn't listen. Besides, it doesn't meet the case. Youth unfortunately cures itself. You talk likely about old things like that, knowing nothing, as you say, truly of what happened. Now, have I ever given you reason to doubt my love for you, or my word? At a less anxious moment he might have been amused by the conflict his words aroused. The boy's eager clasp to reassure him on these points, the dread on his face of what that reassurance would bring forth. But he could only feel grateful for the squeeze. Very well. You can believe what I tell you. If you don't give up this love affair, you will make mother wretched to the end of her days. Believe me, my dear, the past whatever it was can't be buried. It can't indeed. John got off the arm of the chair. The girl thought Jolyon. There she goes, starting up before him, life itself, eager, pretty, loving. I can't, father. How can I? Just because you say that. Of course I can't. John, if you knew the story, you would give this up without hesitation. You would have to. Can't you believe me? How can you tell what I should think, father? I love her better than anything in the world. Jolyon's face twitched, and he said, with painful slowness, better than your mother, John? From the boy's face, and his clenched fists, Jolyon realized the stress and struggle he was going through. I don't know, he burst out. I don't know. But to give Fleur up for nothing, for something I don't understand, for something that I don't believe can really matter half so much, will make me—make me— make you feel us unjust. Put a barrier, yes. But that's better than going on with this. I can't. Fleur loves me, and I love her. You want me to trust you? Why don't you trust me, father? We wouldn't want to know anything. We wouldn't let it make any difference. It'll only make us both love you and mother all the more. Jolyon put his hand into his breast pocket, but brought it out again empty, and sat, clucking his tongue against his teeth. Think what your mother's been to you, John. She has nothing but you. I shan't last much longer. Why not? It isn't fair to—why not? Well, said Jolyon rather coldly, because the doctors tell me I shan't. That's all. Oh, dad! cried John, and burst into tears. This down-break of his son, whom he had not seen cry since he was ten, moved Jolyon terribly. He recognized to the full how fearfully soft the boy's heart was, how much he would suffer in this business, and in life generally. And he reached out his hand helplessly, not wishing, indeed not daring, to get up. Dear man, he said, don't—or you'll make me. Me. John smothered down his paroxysm, and stood with face averted, very still. What now? thought Jolyon. What can I say to him? By the way, don't speak of that to mother, he said. She has enough to frighten her with this affair of yours. I know how you feel, but John, you know her and me well enough to be sure we wouldn't wish to spoil your happiness lightly. Why, my dear boy, we don't care for anything but your happiness. At least, with me, it's just yours and mother's, and with her, just yours. It's all the future for you both that's at stake. John turned. His face was deadly pale. His eyes, deep in his head, seemed to burn. What is it? What is it? Don't keep me like this. Jolyon, who knew that he was beaten, thrust his hand again into his breast-pocket, and sat for a full minute, breathing with difficulty, his eyes closed. The thought passed through his mind. I've had a good long innings. Some pretty bitter moments. This is the worst. Then he brought his hand out with the letter, and said with a sort of fatigue, Well, John, if you hadn't come to-day, I was going to send you this. I wanted to spare you. I wanted to spare your mother and myself. But I see it's no good. Read it, and I think I'll go into the garden. He reached forward to get up. John, who had taken the letter, said quickly, No, I'll go. And was gone. Jolyon sank back in his chair. A blue-bottle chose that moment to come buzzing round him, with a sort of fury. The sound was homely, better than nothing. Where had the boy gone to read this letter, the wretched letter, the wretched story, a cruel business, cruel to her, to Soames, to those two children, to himself, his heart thumped and pained him. Life, its loves, its work, its beauty, its aching, and its end. A good time, a fine time, in spite of all, until you regretted that you had ever been born. Life, it wore you down. Yet it did not make you want to die. That was the cunning evil. Mistake to have a heart. Again the blue-bottle came buzzing, bringing in all the heat and hum and scent of the summer. Yes, even the scent as of ripe fruits, dried grasses, sappy shrubs, and the vanilla breath of cows. And out there, somewhere in the fragrance, John would be reading that letter, turning and twisting its pages in his trouble, his bewilderment and trouble, breaking his heart about it. The thought made Jolian acutely miserable. John was such a tender-hearted chap, affectionate to his bones and conscientious too. Just so unfair, so damned unfair. He remembered Ireney, saying to him once, Never was any one born more loving and lovable than John. Poor little John, his world gone up the spout all of a summer afternoon. Youth took things so hard. And stirred, tormented by that vision of youth, taking things hard, Jolian got out of his chair and went to the window. The boy was nowhere visible, and he passed out. If one could take any help to him now, one must. He traversed the shrubbery, glanced into the walled garden, no John. Nor were the peaches and the apricots were beginning to swell in colour. He passed the cupressus-trees, dark and spiral into the meadow. Where had the boy got to? Had he rushed down to the coppice, his old hunting-ground? Jolian crossed the rows of hay. They would cock it on Monday, and be carrying the day after, as rain held off. Often they had crossed this field together, hand in hand, when John was a little chap. Dash it! The golden age was over by the time one was ten. He came to the pond, where flies and gnats were dancing over a bright, greedy surface, and on into the coppice. It was cool there, fragrant of larches. Still no John, he called. No answer. On the log-seat he sat down, nervous, anxious, forgetting his own physical sensations. He had been wrong to let the boy get away with that letter. The ought to have kept him under his eye from the start. Greatly troubled he got up to retrace his steps. At the farm-buildings he called again, and looked into the dark cow-house. There, in the cool and the centre of vanilla and ammonia, away from the flies, the three oldenies were chewing the quiet cud, just milked, waiting for evening to be turned out again into the lower field. One turned a lazy head, a lustrous eye. Gillian could see the slobber on its grey, lower lip. He saw everything with passionate clearness, in the agitation of his nerves, all that in his time he had adored and tried to paint. Wonder of light and shade and colour. No wonder the legend put Christ into a manger. What more devotional than the eyes and moon-white horns of a chewing cow in the warm dusk. He called again. No answer. And he hurried away out of the coppice, past the pond, up the hill. Oddly ironical, now he came to think of it, if John had taken the gruel of his discovery, down in the coppice, where his mother and Bacini in those old days had made the plunge of acknowledging their love. Where he himself, on the log-seat the Sunday morning he came back from Paris, had realised to the full that Irene had become the world to him. That would have been the place for Irene to tear the veil from before the eyes of Irene's boy. When he was not here, where had he got to, one must find the poor chap. A gleam of sun had come, sharpening to his hurrying senses all the beauty of the afternoon, of the tall trees and lengthening shadows, of the blue and the white clouds, the scent of the hay, and the cooing of the pigeons, and the flower-shape standing tall. He came to the rosary, and the beauty of the roses in that sudden sunlight seemed to him unearthly. Rose, you Spaniard! Wonderful three words! There she had stood by that bush of dark red roses, had stood to read, and decide that John must know it all. He knew all now. Had she chosen wrong? He bent and sniffed a rose. Its petals brushed his nose and trembling lips. Nothing so soft as a rose leaf's velvet, except her neck, Irene. On across the lawn he went, up the slope to the oak tree. Its top alone was glistening, for the sudden sun was away over the house. The lower shade was thick, blessedly cool. He was greatly overheated. He paused a minute with his hand on the rope of the swing. Jolly, Holly, John. The old swing. And suddenly he felt horribly, deadly ill. I've overdone it! He thought. Pigeo, I've overdone it! After all. He staggered up towards the terrace, dragged himself up the steps, and fell against the wall of the house. He lent there, gasping, his face buried in the honeysuckle, that he and she had taken such trouble with, that it might sweeten the air which drifted in. Its fragrance mingled with awful pain. My love! he thought. The boy! and with great effort he tottered in through the long window, and sank into old Jolly and's chair. The book was there, a pencil in it. He caught it up. Scribble the word on the open page. His hand dropped. So it was like this, was it? There was a great wrench and darkness. End of Part 3, Chapter 2. Part 3, Chapter 3 of Tulet 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, Tulet. By John Galsworthy. Part 3, Chapter 3, Irene When John rushed away with the letter in his hand, he ran along the terrace and round the corner of the house, in fear and confusion. Leaning against the creepered wall, he tore open the letter. It was long, very long. This added to his fear and he began reading. When he came to the words, it was Fleur's father that she married. Everything seemed to spin before him. He was close to a window and entering by it, he passed through music room and hall, up to his bedroom. Dipping his face in cold water, he sat on his bed and went on reading, dropping each finished page on the bed beside him. His father's writing was easy to read. He knew it so well, though he had never had a letter from him one quarter so long. He read with a dull feeling, imagination only half at work. He best grasped on that first reading, the pain his father must have had in writing such a letter. He let the last sheet fall, and in a sort of mental moral helplessness, began to read the first again. It all seemed to him disgusting. Dead and disgusting. Then suddenly a hot wave of horrified emotion tingled through him. He buried his face in his hands. His mother, Fleur's father, he took up the letter again and read on mechanically. And again came the feeling that it was all dead and disgusting, his own love so different. This letter said his mother and her father, an awful letter. Property. Could there be men who looked on women as their property? Faces seen in street and countryside came thronging up before him. Red stockfish faces, hard dull faces, prim dry faces, violent faces, hundreds, thousands of them. How could he know what men who had such faces thought and did? He held his head in his hands and groaned, his mother. He caught up the letter and read on again. Horror and aversion alive in her today. Your children, grandchildren, of a man who once owned your mother as a man might own a slave. He got up from his bed. This cruel shadowy past lurking there to murder his love and flores was true, or his father could never have written it. Why didn't they tell me the first thing he thought? The day I first saw Fleur, they knew I'd seen her. They were afraid, and now I've got it. Overcome by misery to acute for thought or reason, he crept into a dusky corner of the room and sat down on the floor. He sat there like some unhappy little animal. There was comfort in dusk and the floor, as if he were back in those days when he played his battles sprawling all over it. He sat there huddled, his hair ruffled, his hands clasped round his knees for how long he did not know. He was wrenched from his blank wretchedness by the sound of the door opening from his mother's room. The blinds were down over the windows of his room, shut up in his absence, and from where he sat he could only hear a rustle, her footsteps crossing, till beyond the bed he saw her standing before his dressing table. She had something in her hand. He hardly breathed, hoping she would not see him and go away. He saw her touch things on the table as if they had some virtue in them, then faced the window, gray from head to foot like a ghost. The least turn of her head and she must see him. Her lips moved. Oh, John. She was speaking to herself, the tone of her voice troubled John's heart. He saw in her hand a little photograph. She held it toward the light, looking at it, very small. He knew it, one of himself as a tiny boy, which she always kept in her bag. His heart beat fast, and suddenly, as if she had heard it, she turned her eyes and saw him. At the gasp she gave and the movement of her hands pressing the photograph against her breast, he said, Yes, it's me. She moved over to the bed and sat down on it, quite close to him, her hands still clasping her breast, her feet among the sheets of the letter which had slipped to the floor. She saw them and her hands grasped the edge of the bed. She sat very upright, her dark eyes fixed on him. At last she spoke. Well, John, you know I see. Yes. You've seen father. Yes. There was a long silence till she said, Oh, my darling. It's all right. The emotions in him were so violent and so mixed that he dared not move. Resentment, despair, and yet a strange yearning for the comfort of her hand on his forehead. What are you going to do? I don't know. There was another long silence then she got up. She stood a moment, very still, made a little movement with her hand and said, My darling boy, my most darling boy, don't think of me, think of yourself. And passing around the foot of the bed went back into her room. John turned, hurled into a sort of ball as might a hedgehog into the corner made by the two walls. He must have been twenty minutes there before a cry roused him. It came from the terrace below. He got up, scared. Again came the cry. Again came the cry. John, his mother was calling. He ran out and down the stairs through the empty dining room into the study. She was kneeling before the old armchair and his father was lying back, quite white, his head on his breast, one of his hands resting on an open book with a pencil clutched in it, more strangely still than anything he had ever seen. She looked around wildly and said, Oh, John, he's dead. He's dead. John flung himself down and reaching over the arm of the chair where he had lately been sitting, put his lips to the forehead, icy cold. How could, how could dad be dead when only an hour ago? His mother's arms were round the knees, pressing her breast against them. Why, why wasn't I with him? He heard her whisper. Then he saw the tottering word, Irene, penciled on the open page and broke down himself. It was his first sight of human death and its unutterable stillness blotted from him all other emotion. All else then was but preliminary to this. All love and life and joy, anxiety and sorrow, all movement, light and beauty, but a beginning to this terrible white stillness. It made a dreadful mark on him. All seemed suddenly little, futile, short. He mastered himself at last, got up and raised her. Mother, don't cry, mother. Some hours later, when all was done that had to be and his mother was lying down, he saw his father alone on the bed covered with a white sheet. He stood for a long time gazing at that face which had never looked angry, always whimsical and kind. To be kind and keep your end up, there's nothing else in it. He had once heard his father say, How wonderfully dad had acted up to that philosophy. He understood now that his father had known for a long time past that this would come suddenly, known and not said a word. He gazed with an odd and passionate reverence, the loneliness of it, just to spare his mother and himself. His own trouble seemed small while he was looking at that face. The word scribbled on the page, the farewell word. Now his mother had no one but himself. He went up close to the dead face, not changed at all, and yet completely changed. He had heard his father say once that he did not believe in consciousness surviving death, or that if it did, it might be just survival till the natural age limit of the body had been reached, the natural term of its inherent vitality, so that if the body were broken by accident, excess, violent disease, consciousness might still persist till in the course of nature uninterfered with, it would naturally have faded out. It had struck him because he had never heard anyone else suggest it. When the heart failed like this, surely it was not quite natural. Perhaps his father's consciousness was in the room with him. Above the bed hung a picture of his father's father. Perhaps his consciousness too was still alive. And his brothers, his half-brother who had died in the Transvaal. Were they all gathered round this bed? John kissed the forehead and stole back to his own room. The door between it and his mother's was ajar. She had evidently been in. Everything was ready for him, even some biscuits and hot milk, and the letter no longer on the floor. He ate and drank, watching the last light fade. He did not try to see into the future. Just stared at the dark branches of the oak tree, level with his window, and felt as if life had stopped. Once in the night, turning in his heavy sleep, he was conscious of something white and still beside his bed and started up. His mother's voice said, It's only I, John, dear. Her hand pressed his forehead gently back. Her white figure disappeared. Alone, he fell heavily asleep again, and dreamed he saw his mother's name crawling on his bed. End of Part 3, Chapter 3. Recording by Leanne Howlett. Part 3, Chapter 4 of Too 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, Too Let, by John Galsworthy. Part 3, Chapter 4. Soames cogitates. The announcement in the times of his cousin Jolien's death affected Soames quite simply. So that chap was gone. There had never been a time in their two lives when love had not been lost between them. That quick-blooded sentiment hatred had run its course long since in Soames's heart, and he'd refused to allow any recudessence, but he considered this early decease a piece of poetic justice. For twenty years, the fellow had enjoyed the reversion of his wife and house, and he was dead. The obituary notice, which appeared a little later, paid Jolien, he thought, too much attention. It spoke of that diligent and agreeable painter whose work we have come to look on as typical of the best late Victorian watercolor art. Soames, who had almost mechanically preferred Mole, Morpin, and Caswell Bay, and had always sniffed quite audibly when he came to one of his cousins on the line, turned the times with a crackle. He had to go up to town that morning on foresight affairs, and was fully conscious of Gradman's glance side-long over his spectacles. The old clerk had about him an aura of regretful congratulation. He smelled, as it were, of old days. One could almost hear him thinking, Mr. Jolien, yes, just my age and gone. Dear, dear, I dare say she feels it. She was a mice-looking woman, flesh is flesh. They've given him a notice in the papers, fancy. His atmosphere, in fact, caused Soames to handle certain leases and conversions with exceptional swiftness. About that settlement on this floor, Mr. Soames. I thought better of that, answered Soames shortly. Ah, I'm glad of that. I thought you were a little hasty. The times do change. How this death would affect Floor had begun to trouble Soames. He was not certain that she knew of it. She seldom looked at the paper, never at the births, marriages, and deaths. He pressed matters on and made his way to Green Street for lunch. Winterford was almost doleful. Jack Cardigan had broken a splashboard so far as one could make out. It would not be fit for some time. She could not get used to the idea. Did Profan never get off? He said suddenly. He got off, replied Winterford. But where? I don't know. Yes, there it was. Impossible to tell anything. Not that he wanted to know. Letters from Annette were coming from Dip where she and her mother were staying. You saw that fellow's death, I suppose. Yes, said Winterford. I'm sorry for his children. He was very amiable. Soames uttered a rather queer sound. A suspicion of the old deep truth that men were judged in this world rather by what they were than by what they did, crept and knocked resentfully at the back doors of his mind. I know there was a superstition to that effect, he muttered. One must do him justice now he's dead. I should like to have done him justice before, said Soames, but I never had the chance. Have you got a Baronette a chair? Yes, in that bottom row. Soames took out a fat red book and ran over the leaves. Montt, Sir Lawrence, Ninth Baronette, created 1620. Eldest son of Geoffrey, Eighth Baronette, and Lavenia, daughter of Sir Charles Muscombe, Baronette, of Muscombe Hall, Shrops. Married 1890, Emily, daughter of Conway Charwell, Esquire, of Condaford Grange, County Oxon, one son, heir Michael Conway, born 1895, two daughters, residence, Lippinghall Manor, Fullwell, Bucks, Clubs, Snooks, Coffee House, Aeroplane, C. Bitticott. He said, did you ever know a publisher? Uncle Timothy, alive I mean. Montt knew one at his club, he brought him here to dinner once, Montt was always thinking of writing a book you know about how to make money on the turf, he tried to interest that man. Well, he put him on to a horse for the 2000, we didn't see him again, he was rather smart if I remember. Did it win? No, it ran last I think, you know Montt really was quite clever in his way. Was he, said Soames, can you see any connection between a sucking Baronette and publishing? People do all sorts of things nowadays, replied Winifred, the great stunt seems not to be idle, so different from our time, to do nothing was the thing then, but I suppose it'll come again. This young Montt that I'm speaking of is very sweet on floor, if it would put an end to that other affair I might encourage it. Has he got style? asked Winifred. He's no beauty, pleasant enough with some scattered brains, there's a good deal of land I believe. He seems genuinely attached, but I don't know. No, murmured Winifred, it's very difficult, I've always found it best to do nothing, it is such a bore about Jack, now we shan't get away till after bank holiday. Well the people are always amusing, I should go into the park and watch them. If I were you, said Soames, I should have a country cottage and be out of the way of holidays and strikes when you want. The country boars me, answered Winifred, and I found the railway strike quite exciting. Winifred had always been noted for sang Freud. Soames took his leave, all the way down to Reading, he debated whether he should tell Fleur of that boy's father's death. It did not alter the situation except that he would be independent now and only have his mother's opposition to encounter. He would come into a lot of money, no doubt, and perhaps the house, the house built for Irene and himself, the house whose architect had brought his domestic ruin, his daughter, mistress of that house, that would be poetic justice. Soames uttered a little mirthless laugh. He had designed that house to re-establish his failing union, meant it for the seat of his descendants if he could have induced Irene to give him one. Her son Fleur, their children would be, in some sort, offspring of the union between himself and her. The theatricality in that thought was repulsive to his sober sense, and yet it would be the easiest and wealthiest way out of the impasse now that Jolien was gone. The juncture of two foresight fortunes had a kind of conservative charm, and she, Irene, would be linked to him once more. Nonsense absurd. He put the notion from his head. On arriving home, he heard the click of billiard balls and through the window saw young Mott sprawling over the table. Fleur, with her cue akimbo, was watching with a smile. How pretty she looked. No wonder that young fellow was out of his mind about her. A title. Land. There was little enough in land these days, perhaps less than a title. The old foresight had always had a kind of contempt for titles, rather remote and artificial things, not worth the money they cost, and having to do with the court. They had all had their own feeling in differing measure, Somes remembered. Swithin, indeed, in his most expansive days, had once attended a levy. He had come away saying he shouldn't go again. All that small fry. It was suspected that he had looked too big in knee breeches. Somes remembered how his own mother had wished to be presented because of the fashionable nature of the performance, and how his father had put his foot down with unwanted decision. What did she want with that peacocking, wasting time and money? There was nothing in it. The instinct which had made and kept the English commons the chief power in the state, a feeling that their own world was good enough and a little better than any other because it was their world, had kept the old foresight singularly free of flummary as Nicholas had been want to call it when he had the gout. Somes' generation, more self-conscious and ironical, had been saved by a sense of swithin in knee breeches while the third and the fourth generation, as it seemed to him, laughed at everything. However, there was no harm in the young fellows being heir to a title and estate, a thing one couldn't help. He entered quietly as Mont missed his shot. He noted the young man's eyes, fixed on a flur, bending over in her turn, and the adoration in them almost touched him. She paused with the cue poised on the bridge of her slim hand and shook her crop of short, dark chestnut hair. I shall never do it. Nothing venture. All right. The cue struck. The ball rolled. There. Bad luck. Never mind. Then they saw him and Somes said, I'll mark for you. He sat down on the raised seat beneath the marker, trim and tired, vertically studying those two young faces. When the game was over, Mont came up to him. I've started in, sir, rum game business, isn't it? I suppose you saw a lot of human nature as a solicitor. I did. Shall I tell you what I've noticed? People are quite on the wrong tack in offering less than they can afford to give. They ought to offer more and work backward. Somes raised his eyebrows. Suppose the mora is accepted. That doesn't matter a little bit, said Mont. It's much more paying to obey to price than to increase it. For instance, say we offer an author good terms. He naturally takes them. Then we go into it. Fine, we can't do it. Then we go into it. Fine, we can't publish it a decent profit and tell him so. He's got confidence in us because we've been generous to him and he comes down like a lamb and bears us no malice. But if we offer him poor terms at the start, he doesn't take them. So we have to advance them to get him and he thinks this damned screws into the bargain. Try buying pictures on that system, said Somes. An offer accepted as a contract. Haven't you learned that? Young Mont turned his head to where Fleur was standing in the window. No, he said. I wish I had. Then there's another thing. Always let a man off a bargain if he wants to be let off. As advertisement, said Somes, dryly. Of course it is, but I meant on principle. Does your firm work on those lines? Not yet, said Mont. But it'll come. And they will go. No, really, sir. I'm making any number of observations and they all confirm my theory. Human nature is consistently underrated in business. People do themselves out of an awful lot of pleasure and profit by that. Of course you must be perfectly genuine and open, but that's easy if you feel it. The more human and generous you are, the better chance you've got in business. Somes rose. Are you a partner? Not for six months yet. The rest of the firm had better make haste and retire. Mont laughed. You'll see, he said. There's going to be a big change. The possessive principle has got its shutters up. What, said Somes? The house is to let. Goodbye, sir. I'm off now. Somes watched his daughter give her hand, saw her wince at the squeeze it received, and distinctly heard the young man's sigh as he passed out. Then she came from the window, trailing her finger along the mahogany edge of the billiard table. Watching her, Somes knew that she was going to ask him something. Her finger felt round the last pocket and she looked up. Have you done anything to stop John writing to me, father? Somes shook his head. You haven't seen, then, he said. His father died just a week ago today. Oh. In her startled, frowning face he saw the instant struggle to apprehend what this would mean. Poor John, why didn't you tell me, father? I never know, said Somes slowly. You don't confide in me. I would if you'd help me, dear. Perhaps I shall. Flora clasped her hands. Oh, darling, when one wants a thing fearfully, one doesn't think of other people. Don't be angry with me. Somes put out his hand as if pushing away an aspersion. I'm cogitating, he said. What on earth had made him use a word like that? Has young Montman bothering you again? Flora smiled. Oh, Michael, he's always bothering, but he's such a good sort. I don't mind him. Well, said Somes, I'm tired. I shall go and have a nap before dinner. He went up to his picture gallery, lay down on the couch there and closed his eyes. A terrible responsibility, this girl of his, whose mother was, uh, what was she? A terrible responsibility. Helper. How could he help her? He could not alter the fact that he was her father or that Irene. What was it young Mont had said, some nonsense about the possessive instinct shutters up to let? Silly. The sultry air charged with a scent of meadow sweet of river and roses closed on his senses, drowsing them. End of part three, chapter four, recording by Leanne Howlett. Part three, chapter five, 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 Eva Harnick. The foresight saga. Volume three, to let. By John Goldsworthy. Part three, chapter number five, the fixed idea. The fixed idea, which has outrun more constables than any other form of human disorder, has never more speed and stamina than when it takes the abit guys of love. To hedges and ditches and doors, to humans without ideas fixed or otherwise, to perambulators and the contents sucking their fixed ideas, even to the other sufferers from this fast melody, the fixed idea of love pays no attention. It runs with eyes turned inward to its own light, oblivious of all other stars. Those with the fixed ideas that human happiness depends on their art, on vivisecting dogs, on hating foreigners, on paying super tax, on remaining ministers, on making wheels go round, on preventing their neighbors from being divorced, on conscientious objection, Greek roots, church dogma, paradox, and superiority to everybody else with other forms of egomania, all are unstable, compared with him or her, whose fixed idea is the possession of some, her or him. And though Fleur, those chilly summer days, pursued the scattered life of a little foresight whose frogs are paid for and whose business is pleasure, she was, as Winifred would have said in the latest fashion of speech, honest to God, indifferent to it all. She wished and wished for the moon, which sailed in cold skies above the river or the green park when she went to town. She even kept John's letters covered with pink silk on her heart, than which in days when corsets were so low, sentiments so despised, and chests so out of fashion, that could perhaps have been no greater proof of the fixity of her idea. After hearing of his father's death, she wrote to John and received his answer three days later on her return from the river picnic. It was his first letter, since their meeting at June's. She opened it with misgiving and read it with dismay. Since I saw you, I have heard everything about the past. I won't tell it to you. I think you knew when we met at June's. She says, you did. If you did, Fleur, you ought to have told me. I expect you only heard your father's side of it. I have had my mother's. It is dreadful. Now that she is so sad, I can't do anything to hurt her more. Of course I long for you all day, but I don't believe now that we shall ever come together. That is something too strong pulling us apart. So, her deception had found her out, but John, she felt, had forgiven that. It was what he said of his mother, which caused the guttering in her heart and the weak sensation in her legs. Her first impulse was to reply, her second not to reply. These impulses were constantly renewed in the days which followed while desperation grew within her. She was not her father's child for nothing. The tenacity, which had at once made and undone soams, was her backbone too, frilled and embroidered by French grace and quickness. Instinctively, she conjugated the verb to have always with the pronoun I. She concealed, however, all signs of her growing desperation and pursued such river pleasures as the winds and rain of a disagreeable July permitted as if she had no care in the world. Nor did any sucking baronet ever neglect the business of her publisher more consistently than her attendant spirit Michael Mont. To soams, she was a puzzle. He was almost deceived by this careless gaiting, almost because he did not fail to mark her eyes often fixed on nothing and the film of light shining from her bedroom window late at night. What was she thinking and brooding over into small hours when she ought to have been asleep? But he dared not ask what was in her mind, and since that one little talk in the billiard room, she said nothing to him. In this taciturn condition of affairs, it chanced that Winifred invited them to lunch and to go afterward to a most amusing little play, the beggars opera, and would they bring a man to make four? So whose attitude to the theater was to go to nothing accepted because Fleur's attitude was to go to everything. They motored up taking Michael Mont, who being in his seventh heaven was found by Winifred very amusing. The beggars opera puzzled soams. The people were very unpleasant. The whole thing very cynical. Winifred was intrigued by the dresses. The music too did not displease her. At the opera the night before, she had arrived too early for the Russian ballet and found the stage occupied by singers for a whole hour, pale or apoplectic from terror. Lest by some dreadful inadvertence, they might drop into a tune. Michael Mont was enraptured with the whole thing. And all three wondered what Fleur was thinking of it. But Fleur was not thinking of it. Her fixed idea stood on the stage and sang with polypeacham, mimed with filch, danced with Jenny Diver, postured with Lucy Lockett, kissed, trolled and cuddled with McHeath. Her lips might smile, her hands applaud, but the comical masterpiece made no more impression on her than if it had been pathetic like a modern review. When they embarked in the cart to return, she ached because John was not sitting next to her instead of Michael Mont. When at some joy the young man's arm touched hers as if by accident she only sought, if that were John's arm. When his cheerful voice, tempered by her proximity, murmured above the sound of the car's progress, she smiled and answered, thinking if that were John's voice. And when once he said, Fleur, you look a perfect angel in that dress, she answered, oh, do you like it? Thinking if only John could see it. During this drive, she took a resolution. She would go to Robin Hill and see him alone. She would take the car without word beforehand to him or to her father. It was nine days since his letter, and she could wait no longer. On Monday she would go. The decision made her well-disposed toward young Mont with something to look forward to she could afford to tolerate and respond. He might stay to dinner, propose to her as usual, dance with her, press her hand, sigh, do what he liked. He was only a nuisance when he interfered with her fixed idea. She was even sorry for him so far as it was possible to be sorry for anybody but herself just now. At dinner he seemed to talk more wildly than usual about what he called the death of the close borough. She paid little attention, but her father seemed paying a good deal with the smile on his face, which meant opposition, if not anger. The younger generation doesn't think as you do, sir. Does it, Fleur? Fleur shrugged her shoulders. The younger generation was just John and she did not know what he was thinking. Young people will think as I do when they are my age, Mr. Mont. Human nature does not change. I admit that, sir, but the forms of thought change with their times. The pursuit of self-interest is a form of thought that is going out. Indeed, to mind one's own business is not a form of thought, Mr. Mont. It is an instinct. Yes, when John was the business. But what is one's business, sir? That is the point. Everybody's business is going to be one's business. Isn't it, Fleur? Fleur only smiled. If not, at a young Mont, there will be blood. People have talked like that from time immemorial. But you will admit, sir, that the sense of property is dying out. I should say increasing among those who have none. Well, look at me. I am heir to an entailed estate. I don't want the thing. I would cut the entail tomorrow. You are not married and you don't know what you are talking about. Fleur saw the young man's eyes turn rather piteously upon her. Do you really mean that marriage? He began. Society is built on marriage. Came from between her father's closed lips. Marriage and its consequences. Do you want to do away with it? Young Mont made a distracted gesture. Silence brooded over the dinner table, covered with spoons bearing the foresight crest. A pheasant proper under the electric light in an alabaster globe. And outside the river evening darkened, charged with heavy moisture and sweet scents. Monday sought Fleur. Monday sought Fleur. Monday. End of Part 3, Chapter 5. The Fixed Idea. Recording by Eva Harnick, Pontevedra, Florida.