 CHAPTER III at Robin Hill Jollyon Foresight had spent his boy's nineteenth birthday at Robin Hill, quietly going into his affairs. He did everything quietly now, because his heart was in a poor way, and, like all his family, he disliked the idea of dying. He had never realised how much, till one day two years ago, he had gone to his doctor about certain symptoms, and been told, at any moment, on any over-strain. He had taken it with a smile, the natural foresight reaction against an unpleasant truth, but, with an increase of symptoms in the train on the way home, he had realised to the fool that the sentence hanging over him. To leave Irene, his boy, his home, his work, though he did little enough work now, to leave them for unknown darkness, for the unimaginable state, for such nothing this that he would not even be conscious of wind-stirring leaves above his grave, nor of the scent of earth and grass, of such nothingness that, however hard he might try to conceive it, he never could, a must still hover on the hope that he might see again those he loved. To realise this was to endure very poignant spiritual anguish. Before he reached home that day he had determined to keep it from Irene. He would have to be more careful the man had ever been, for the least thing would give it away a maker as rich as himself, almost. His doctor had passed him sound in other respects, and seventy was nothing of an age. He would last a long time yet, if he could. Such a conclusion followed out for nearly two years develops to the fool of the subtler side of character. Naturally not abrupt, except when nervously excited, Jolian had become control incarnate. The sad patience of old people who cannot exert themselves was masked by a smile which his lips preserved even in private. He devised continually all manner of cover to conceal his enforced lack of exertion. Mocking himself for so doing, he counterfeited conversion to the simple life, gave up wine and cigars, drank a special kind of coffee with no coffee in it. In short he made himself as safe as a foresight in his condition could, under the rose of his mild irony. Before from discovery, since his wife and son had gone up to town, he had spent the fine May day quietly arranging his papers, that he might die tomorrow without inconveniencing any one, giving in fact a final polish to his terrestrial state. Having docketed and enclosed it in his father's old Chinese cabinet, he put the key into an envelope, wrote the words outside, Key of the Chinese cabinet, wherein will be found the exact state of me, J F, and put it in his breast pocket, where it would be always about him in case of accident. Then ringing for tea, he went out to have it under the old oak tree, all are under a sentence of death. Jolien, whose sentence was but a little more precise and pressing, had become so used to it that he thought habitually like other people of other things. He thought of his son now. John was nineteen that day, and John had come of late to a decision. Educated neither at Eaton, like his father, nor at Harrow, like his dead half-brother, but at one of those establishments which, designed to avoid the evil and contain the good of the public school system, may or may not have contained the evil and avoid the good. John had left in April perfectly ignorant of what he wanted to become. The war, which had promised to go on forever, had ended just as he was about to join the army six months before his time. It had taken him ever since to get used to the idea that he could now choose for himself. He had held with his father several discussions, from which, under a cheery show of being ready for anything, except of course the church, army, law, stage, stock exchange, medicine, business and engineering, Jolien had gathered rather clearly that John wanted to go in for nothing. He himself had felt exactly like that at the same age. With him that pleasant fecurity had soon been ended by an early marriage and its unhappy consequences. Forced to become an underwriter at Lloyd's, he had regrained prosperity before his artistic talent had outcropped. But having, as the simple say, learned his boy to draw pigs and other animals, he knew that John would never be a painter, and inclined to the conclusion that his aversion from everything else meant that he was going to be a writer. Holding however the view that experience was necessary even for that profession, there seemed to Jolien nothing in the meantime for John but university, travel, and perhaps the eating of dinners for the bar. After that one would see, or more probably one would not. In face of these proffered allurements however, John had remained undecided. Such discussions with his son had confirmed in Jolien a doubt whether the world had really changed. People said that it was a new age. With the profundity of one not too long for any age, Jolien perceived that under slightly different surfaces the area was precisely what it had been. Mankind was still divided into two species, the few who had speculation in their souls and the many who had none, with a belt of hybrids like himself in the middle. John appeared to have speculation. It seemed to his father a bad look-out. With something deeper therefore than his usual smile he had heard the boy say a fortnight ago, I should like to try farming, Dad, if it won't cost you too much. It seems to be about the only sort of life that doesn't hurt anybody, except art, and of course that's out of the question for me. Jolien subdued his smile and answered, All right, you shall skip back to where we were under the first Jolien in 1760. It'll prove the cycle theory, and incidentally no doubt you may grow a better turnip than he did. A little dashed, John had answered. But don't you think it's a good scheme, Dad? It will serve, my dear, and if you should really take to it you'll do more good than most men, which is little enough. To himself, however, he had said, But he won't take to it. I give him four years. Still, it's healthy and harmless. After turning the matter over and consulting with Irene, he wrote to his daughter, Mrs. Val Darty, asking if they knew of a farmer near them on the Downs, who would take John as an apprentice. Holly's answer had been enthusiastic. There was an excellent man quite close. She and Val would love John to live with them. The boy was due to go, to-morrow. Sipping weak tea with lemon in it, Jolien gazed through the leaves of the old oak-tree at that view which had appeared to him desirable for thirty-two years. The tree beneath which he sat seemed not a day older. So young, the little leaves of brinish gold. So old, the whitey grey-green of its thick, rough trunk. A tree of memories which would live on hundreds of years yet, unless some barbarian cut it down, would see Old England out of the pace things were going. He remembered a night three years before when, looking from his window, with his arm close round Irene, he watched a German aeroplane hovering it seemed right over the old tree. Next day they had found a bomb-hole in a field on Gage's farm. That was before he knew that he was under sentence of death. He could almost have wished the bomb had finished him. It would have saved a lot of hanging about, many hours of cold fear in the pit of his stomach. He counted on living to the normal foresight age of eighty-five or more when Irene would be seventy. As it was she would miss him. Still, there was John, more important in her life than himself, John who adored his mother. Under that tree were old Jolien, waiting for Irene to come to him across the lawn, had breathed his last. John wondered whimsically whether, having put everything in such perfect order, he had not better close his own eyes and drift away. There was something undignified in so parasitically clinging on to the effortless clothes of a life wherein he regretted two things only, the long division between his father and himself when he was young, and the lateness of his union with Irene. From where he sat, he could see a cluster of apple trees in blossom. Nothing in nature moved him so much as fruit trees in blossom, and his heart ached suddenly because he might never see them flower again. Spring. Decidedly, no man ought to have to die while his heart was still young enough to love beauty. Blackbirds sang recklessly in the shrubbery. Swallows were flying high, the leaves above him glistened, and over the fields was every imaginable tint of early foliage, burnished by the level sunlight, a way to where the distant smoke-bush blue was trailed across the horizon. Irene's flowers and their narrow beds had startling individuality that evening little deep assertions of gay life. Only Chinese and Japanese painters and perhaps Leonardo had known how to get that startling little ego into each painted flower and bird and beast. The ego, yet the sense of species, the universality of life as well. They were the fellows. I've made nothing that would live, thought Jolian. I've been an amateur, a mere lover, not a creator. Still, I shall leave John behind me when I go. What luck that the boy had not been caught by that ghastly war! He might so easily have been killed, like Paul Jolly twenty years ago out in the Transvaal. John would do something some day if the age didn't spoil him, and imagine it if chap. His whim to take up farming was but a bit of sentiment, and about as likely to last. And just then he saw them coming up the field, Irene and the boy walking from the station with their arms linked, and getting up he strolled down through the new rose-garden to meet them. Irene came into his room that night, and sat down by the window. She sat there without speaking till he said, What is it, my love? We had an encounter today. With whom? Soames. Soames. He kept that to-day out of his thoughts these last two years conscious that it was bad for him, and now his heart moved in a disconcerting manner, as if it had side-slipped with in his chest. Irene went on quietly. He and his daughter were in the gallery, and afterward the confectioners where we had tea. Jolly went over and put his hand on her shoulder. How did he look? Gray, but otherwise much the same, and the daughter? Pretty. At least John thought so. John's heart side-slipped again. His wife's face had a strained and puzzled look. You didn't—he began, No, but John knows their name. The girl dropped her handkerchief, and he picked it up. Johnian sat down on the bed, an evil chance. June was with you. Did she put her foot in it? No, but it was all very queer and strained, and John could see it was. Johnian drew a deep breath and said, I've often wondered whether it'd been right to keep it from him. You'll find out some day. The later the better, Jolly, and the young have such cheap, hard judgment. When you were nineteen, what would you have thought of your mother, if she had done what I have? Yes, there it was. John worshipped his mother and knew nothing of the tragedies, the inexorable necessities of life, nothing of the prisoned grief in a happy marriage, nothing of jealousy or passion, knew nothing at all as yet. What have you told him? He said at last. That they were relations, but that we didn't know them, that you would never care much for their family or they for you. I expect he will be asking you, Johnian smiled. This promise is to take the place of air-raids, he said. After all, one misses them. The greenie looked up at him. We've known it would come some day. He answered her with sudden energy. I could never stand seeing John blame you. He shan't do that, even in thought. He has imagination, and he'll understand if it's put to him properly. I think I'd better tell him before he gets to know otherwise. Not yet, Johnian. That was like her. She had no foresight and never went to meet trouble. Well, who knew she might be right? It was ill going against a mother's instinct. He might be well to let the boy go on, if possible, till experience had given him some touchstone by which he could judge the values of that old tragedy, till love, jealousy, longing had deepened his charity. All the same one must take precautions, every precaution possible. And long after Irene had left him, he lay awake, running over those precautions. He misrighted Holly, telling her that John knew nothing as yet of family history. Holly was discreet. She would make sure of her husband, and she would see to it. John could take the letter with him when he went to tomorrow. And so the day on which he had put the polish on his material estate, died out with the chiming of the stable clock. And another began for Johnian in the shadow of a spiritual disorder which could not be so rounded off and polished. But John, whose room had once been his day-nursery, lay awake too. The prey of a sensation disputed by those who have never known it. Love at first sight. He had felt it beginning in him, with the glint of those dark eyes gazing into his at the warp of the Juneau, a conviction that this was his dream, so that what followed had seemed to him at once natural and miraculous. Flur. Her name alone was almost enough for one who was terribly susceptible to the charm of words. In a homo-opathic age, when boys and girls were co-educated and mixed up in early life till sex was almost abolished, John was singularly old-fashioned. His modern school took boys only, and his holidays had been spent at Robin Hill with boyfriends, or his parents alone. He had never therefore been inoculated against the germs of love by small doses of the poison. And now in the dark his temperature was mounting fast. He lay awake, featuring Fleur, as they call it, recalling her words, especially that au revoir so soft and sprightly. He was still so wide awake at dawn that he got up, slipped on tennis shoes, trousers, and a sweater, and in silence crept downstairs and out through the study window. He was just light. There was a smell of grass. Fleur, he thought. Fleur! He must be mysteriously white out of doors, with nothing awake except the birds just beginning to chirp. I'll go down into the coppice, he thought. He ran down through the fields, reached the pond, just as the sun rose, and passed into the coppice. Bluebells carpeted the ground there. Among the large trees there was mystery. The air, as it were, composed of that romantic quality. John sniffed its freshness, and stared at the bluebells in the sharpening light. Fleur! She'd rime with her, and she lived at Maple Durham, a jolly name, too, on the river somewhere. He could find it in the atlas presently. He would write to her, but would she answer? Oh, she must! She'd said au revoir, not good-bye. What luck that she had dropped her handkerchief! He would never have known her but for that. And the more he thought of that handkerchief, the more amazing his luck seemed. Fleur! It certainly rhymed with her. Rhythm thronged his head, words jostled to be joined together. He was on the verge of a poem. John remained in this condition for more than half an hour, then returned to the house, and getting a ladder climbed in at his bedroom window out of sheer exhilaration. Then, remembering that the study window was open, he went down and shut it, first removing the ladder, so as to obliterate all traces of his feeling. The thing was too deep to be revealed to mortal soul, even to his mother. End of Chapter 3. Recording by Simon Evers. Chapter 4 of To Let. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Simon Evers. The Foresight Saga 3. To Let. by John Gorsworthy. Part 1. Chapter 4. The Mausoleum. There are houses whose souls have passed into the limbo of time, leaving their bodies in the limbo of London. Such was not quite the condition of Timothy's on the Bayswater Road, for Timothy's soul still had one foot in Timothy Foresight's body, and Smitha kept the atmosphere unchanging of camphor and port wine, and house whose windows are only open to air it twice a day. To Foresight imagination, that house was now a sort of Chinese pillbox, a series of layers in the last of which was Timothy. What did not reach him, also is reported by members of the family, who, out of old-time habit or absent-mindedness, would drive up once in a blue moon and ask after their surviving uncle. Such were Francie, now quite emancipated from God, she frankly avowed atheism, Euphemia, emancipated from old Nicholas, and Winifred Darty from her Man of the World. But after all everybody was emancipated now, or said they were, perhaps not quite the same thing. Tim Somes, therefore, took it on his way to Paddington Station on the morning after that encounter. It was hardly with the expectation of seeing Timothy in the flesh. His heart made a faint demonstration within him, while he stood in full south sunlight on the newly whitened doorstep of that little house where four Foresights had once lived, and now but one dwelt on, like a winter fly. The house into which Somes had come, and out of which he had gone, time without number, divested of, or burdened with, fardels of family gossip, the house of the old people of another century, another age. The sight of smither still corseted up to the armpits, because the new fashion which came in as they were going out about 1903 had never been considered nice by Aunt Julian Hester, brought a pale friendliness to Somes' lips. Smither still faithfully arranged to old pattern in every detail, an invaluable servant, none such left, smiling back at him with the words, Why, it's Mr. Somes after all this time, and how are you, sir? Mr. Timothy will be so pleased to know you've been. How is he? Oh, he keeps fairly bobbish for his age, sir, but of course he's a wonderful man. As I said to Mrs. Darty when she was here last, it would please Miss Foresight and Mrs. Julian, Miss Hester, to see how he relishes a baked apple still. But he's quite deaf, and a mercy I always think, for what we should have done with him in the air raids I don't know. Ah! said Somes, what did you do with him? We just left him in his bed, and had the bell run down into the cellar, so that Cook and I could hear him if he rang. He would never have done to let him know there was a war on. As I said to Cook, if Mr. Timothy rings they may do what they like, I'm going up. My dear Mrs. would have a fit if they could see him ringing and nobody going to him. But he slept through them all beautiful, and the one in the day time he was having his bath. He was a mercy, because he might have noticed the people in the street all looking up. He often looks out of the window. Quite, murmured Somes. Smith was getting garrulous. I just wanted to look round and see if there's anything to be done. Yes, sir, I don't think there's anything except a smell of mice in the dining room that we don't know how to get rid of. It's funny they should be there, and not a crumb, since Mr. Timothy took to not coming down just before the war. But they're nasty little things. You never know where they'll take you next. Does he leave his bed? Oh, yes, sir. He takes nice exercise between his bed and the window in the morning, not to risk a change of air, and he's quite comfortable in himself. Has his will out every day regular? It's a great consolation to him, that. Well, Smith, I want to see him, if I can, in case he has anything to say to me. Smith culled up above her corsets. It will be an occasion, she said. Shall I take you round the house, sir, when I send Cook to break it to him? No, you go to him, said Soames. I can go round the house by myself." One could not confess to sentiment before another, and Soames felt that he was going to be sentimental nosing round those rooms so saturated with the past. When Smith, creaking with excitement, had left him, Soames entered the dining room and sniffed. In his opinion it wasn't mice, but incipient wood-rot, and he examined the panelling. Whether it was worth a coat of paint at Timothy's age, he was not sure. The room had always been the most modern in the house, and only a faint smile curled Soames' lips and nostrils. Walls of a rich green surmounted the oak-de-do. A heavy metal chandelier hung by a chain from a ceiling divided by imitation beams. The pictures had been bought by Timothy, a bargain, one day at Jobson's, sixty years ago. Three Snyder still lifes, two faintly-coloured drawings of a boy and a girl, rather charming, which bore the initials J.R. Timothy had always believed they might turn out to be Joshua Reynolds, but Soames, who had marred them, had discovered that they were only John Robinson, and a doubtful moorland of a white pony being shod. Deep red plushed curtains, ten high-backed dark mahogany chairs with deep red plush seats, a turkey carpet, and a mahogany dining-table as large as the room was small. Such was an apartment which Soames could remember unchanged in soul or body since he was four years old. He looked especially at the two drawings and thought, I shall buy those of the sale. From the dining-room he passed into Timothy's study. He did not remember ever having been into that room. It was lined from floor to ceiling with volumes, and he looked at them with curiosity. One wall seemed devoted to educational books, which Timothy's firm had published to two generations back, sometimes as many as twenty copies of one book. Soames read their titles and shuddered. The middle wall had precisely the same books as used to be in the library at his own father's in Park Lane, from which he deduced the fancy that James and his youngest brother had gone out together one day and bought a brace of small libraries. The third wall he approached with more excitement. Here surely Timothy's own taste would be found. It was. The books were dummies. The fourth wall was all heavily curtained window, and, turn toward it, was a large chair with a mahogany reading-stand attached, on which the yellowish and folded copy of The Times, dated July 6, 1914, the day Timothy first failed to come down, as if in preparation for the war. It seemed waiting for him still. In a corner stood a large glow, but that world never visited by Timothy, deeply convinced of the unreality of anything but England, and permanently upset by the sea, on which he had been very sick one Sunday afternoon in 1836, out of a pleasure-boat off the pier at Brighton, with Julie and Hester Swithin and Hattie Chessman, all due to Swithin, who was always taking things into his head, and who, thank goodness, had been sick too. Sames knew all about it, having heard the tale fifty times at least from one or other of them. He went up to the globe and gave it a spin. He'd emitted a faint creak, and moved about an inch, bringing into his purview a daddy-long legs which had died on it in latitude forty-four. Mausoleum, he thought, George, was right, and he went out and up the stairs. On the half-landing he stopped before the case of stuffed hummingbirds which had delighted his childhood. They looked not a day older, suspended on wires above Pampers' grass. If the case were opened the words would not begin to hum, but the whole thing would crumble, he suspected. It wouldn't be worth putting that into the sale. And suddenly he was caught by a memory of Aunt Anne, dear old Aunt Anne, holding him by the hand in front of that case, and saying, Look, Semi, aren't they bright and pretty, dear little hummingbirds? Sames remembered his own answer. They don't hum, aren't they? He must have been six, in a black velveteen suit with a light blue collar. He remembered that suit well. Aunt Anne, with her ring-lits and her spidery kind hands, and her grave-old aquiline smile, a fine old lady, Aunt Anne. He moved on up to the drawing-room door. There, on each side of it, were the groups of miniatures—those he would certainly buy in. The miniatures of his four aunts, one of his uncle Swithin, adolescent, and one of his uncle Nicholas, as a boy. They'd all been painted by a young lady friend of the family at the time, 1830, about, when miniatures were considered very genteel, and lasting, too, painted as they were, on ivory. Many a time had he heard the tale of that young lady. Very talented, my dear, she had quite a weakness for Swithin, and very soon after she went into a consumption and died. So, like Keats, we often spoke of it. While there they were, Anne, Julie, Hester, Susan, quite a small child, Swithin, with sky-blue eyes, pink cheeks, yellow curls, white waistcoat, large as life, and Nicholas, like cupid with an eye on heaven. Now he came to think of it, Uncle Nick had always been rather like that, a wonderful man to the last. Yes, she must have had talent, and miniatures always had a certain back-watered cachet of their own, little subject to the currents of competition on aesthetic change. Soames opened the drawing-room door. The room was dusted, the furniture uncovered of the curtains drawn back, precisely as if his aunts still dwelt there patiently waiting, and a thought came to him. When Timothy died, why not? We did not be almost a duty to preserve this house, like Carl Isles, and put up a tablet and show it, specimen of mid-Victorian abode, entrance one shilling with catalogue. After all, it was the completest thing and perhaps the deadest in the London of today. Perfect in its special taste and culture, if that is, he took down and carried over to his own collection the four Barbizon pictures he had given them. The stills, sky-blue walls, tile-green curtains patterned with red flowers and ferns. The crew worked fast-screen before the cast on great. The mahogany cupboard with glass windows full of little knick-knacks, the beaded foot-stools, Keats, Shelley, Sothe, Cooper, Coleridge, Baron's Corsair, but nothing else, and the Victorian poets in a bookshelf row. The marketry cabinet lined with dim-red plush full of family relics, Hester's first fan, the buckles of their mother's father's shoes, three bottled scorpions, and one very yellow Elephant's Tusk sent home from India by great-uncle Edgar Forsyte, who had been in jute. A yellow bit of paper propped up with spidery writing on it, recording God knew what, and the pictures crowding on the walls, all watercolors saved those four Barbizans looking like the foreigners they were, and doubtful customers at that, pictures bright and illustrative, building the bees, hay for the ferry, and two in the style of frith, all thimble-rigged crinolines given them by Switham, many, many pictures at which soams had gazed a thousand times in supercilious fascination, a marvellous collection of bright, smooth, gilt frames, and the boudoir-ground piano beautifully dusted hermetically sealed as ever, an Aunt Julie's album of pressed seaweed on it, and the gilt-laked chairs stronger than they looked, and on one side of the far place the sofa of crimson silk where Aunt Anne and after Aunt Julie had been went to sit, facing the light and bolt upright, and on the other side of the far the one really easy chair back to the light for Aunt Hester. Switham's screwed up his eyes. He seemed to see them sitting there. Ha! And the atmosphere, even now, of too many stuffed and washed laced curtains, lavender in bags and dried beeswings. No, he thought, there's nothing like it left, it ought to be preserved. And by George they might laugh at it, but for a standard of gentle life never departed from, for fastidiousness of skin and eye and nose and feeling. It beat to-day hollow. To-day, with its tubes and cars, its perpetual smoking, its cross-legged, bare-necked girls visible up to the knees and down to the waist if you took the trouble, agreeable to the satire within each foresight but hardly his idea of a lady, with their feet, too, screwed round the legs of their chairs while they ate, and their solongs and their old beans and their laughter. Girls who gave him the shutters whenever he thought of fleur in contact with them, and the hard-eyed, capable older women who managed life and gave him the shutters, too. No. His old aunts, if they never opened their minds, their eyes, or very much their windows, at least had manners and a standard and reverence for past and future. With rather a choky feeling he closed the door and went tip-tearing upstairs. He looked in at a place on the way. Ha! In perfect order of the eighties with a sort of yellow oil-skin paper on the walls. At the top of the stairs he hesitated between four doors. Which of them was Timothy's? And he listened. A sound as of a child slowly dragging a hobby-horse about came to his ears. That must be Timothy. He tapped, and a door was opened by Smither very red in the face. Mr. Timothy was taking his walk, and she had not been able to get him to attend. If Mr. Soames would come into the back-room he could see him through the door. Soames went into the back-room and stood, watching. The last of the old foresights was on his feet, moving with the most impressive slowness and an air of perfect concentration on his own affairs backward and forward between the foot of his bed and the window, a distance of some twelve feet. The lower part of his square face, no longer clean-shaven, was covered with snowy beard, clipped as short as it could be, and his chin looked as broad as his brow, where the hair was also quite white, while nose and cheeks and brow were a good yellow. One hand held a stout stick, and the other grasped the skirt of his yeager dressing-gown, from one to which could be seen his bed-socked ankles and feet thrust into yeager slippers. The expression on his face was that of a crossed child intent on something that he has not got. Each time he turned he stumped the stick and then dragged it, as if to show that he could do without it. He still looked strong, said Soames, under his breath. Oh, yes, sir, you should see him take his bath. It's wonderful. He does enjoy it so. Those quite loud words gave Soames an insight. Timothy had resumed his babyhood. Does he take any interest in things generally? He said, also loud. Oh, yes, sir, his food and his will. It's quite a sight to see him turn it over and over, not to read it, of course. And every now and then he asked the price of consoles, and I'd write it on a slate for him, very large. Of course I always write the same, what they were when he last took notice in 1914. We got the doctor to forbid him to read the paper when the war broke out. Oh, he did take on about that at first. But he soon came round because he knew it tired him. And he's a wonder to conserve energy, as he used to call it when my dear mistresses were alive, bless their hearts. How he did go on at them about that. They were always so active, if you remember, Mr. Soames. What would happen if I were to go in? asked Soames. Would he remember me? I made his, will you know, after Mr. Hester died in 1907. Oh, that's replied Smith, doubtfully. I couldn't take on me to say, I think he might. He really is a wonderful man for his age. Soames moved into the doorway, and waiting for Timothy to turn, said in a loud voice, Uncle Timothy, Timothy trailed back halfway and halted. Huh? he said. Soames cried Soames at the top of his voice, holding out his hand. Soames foresight. No, said Timothy, and stomping his stick loudly on the floor, he continued his walk. It doesn't seem to work, said Soames. No, sir, replied Smith, I rather crestfallen. You see, he hasn't finished his walk. It always was one thing at a time with him. I expect you'll ask me this afternoon if you came about the gas. And a pretty job I shall have to make him understand. Do you think he ought to have a man about him? Smith held up her hands. A man? Oh, no! Cook and me can manage perfectly. A strange man about would send him crazy in no time, and my mistresses wouldn't like the idea of a man in the house, besides we're so proud of him. I suppose the doctor comes? Every morning. He makes special terms for such a quantity, and Mr. Timothy's so used to he doesn't take a bit of notice except to put out his tongue. Well, said Soames, turning away. It's rather sad and painful to me. No, sir, returned Smither anxiously. You mustn't think that. Now that he can't worry about things, he quite enjoys his life, really he does. As I say to Cook, Mr. Timothy is more of a man than he ever was. You see, when he's not walking or taking his bath, he's eating. When he's not eating, he's sleeping. And there it is. There isn't an ache or a care about him anywhere. Well, said Soames, there's something in that. I'll go down. By the way, let me see his will. Oh, I should have to take my time about that, sir. He keeps it under his pillow, and he'd see me while he's active. I only want to know if it's the one I made, said Soames. You take a look at its date some time, and let me know. Yes, sir. But I'm sure it is the same, because me and Cook witnessed you remember, and there's our names on it still, and we've only done it once. Quite, said Soames. He did remember. Smither and Jane had been proper witnesses, having been left nothing in the world that they might have no interest in Timothy's death. It had been, he'd fully admitted, an almost improper precaution. But Timothy had wished it, and after all, our tester had provided for them amply. Very well, he said. Goodbye, Smither. Look after him, and if he should say anything about it any time, put it down and let me know. Oh, yes, Mr. Soames, I'll be sure to do that. It's been such a pleasant change to see you. Cook would be quite excited when I tell her. Soames shook a hand and went downstairs. He stood for fully two minutes by the hat-stand, whereon he had hung his hat so many times. So it all passes, he be thinking. Passes and begins again. Poor old chap. And he listened, if perchance the sound of Timothy trailing his hobby-horse might come down the well of the stairs, or some ghost of an old-faced show over the bannisters, and an old voice say, Why, dear Soames, and were you only saying that we hadn't seen him for a week? Nothing, nothing, just the scent of camphor and dust-moats in a sun-beam through the fan-light over the door. The little old house, a mausoleum. And, turning on his heel, he went out and caught his train. End of Part 1, CHAPTER IV THE NATIVE HEATH His foot's upon his native heath, his name's Val-Dartie. With some such feeling did Val-Dartie, in the fortieth year of his age, set out that same Thursday morning very early, from the old manor-house he had taken on the north side of the Sussex Downs. His destination was Newmarket, and had not been there since the autumn of 1899, when he stole over from Oxford for the Cambridgeshire. He paused at the door to give his wife a kiss, and put a flask of port in his pocket. Don't ever tie your leg, Val, and don't bet too much. With the pressure of her chest against his own, and his eyes looking into his, Val felt both leg and pocket safe. He should be moderate. Holly was always right. She had a natural aptitude. It did not seem so remarkable to him, perhaps, as it might to others that half-Dartie as he was. He should have been perfectly faithful to his young first cousin, during the twenty years since he married her romantically out in the Boer War, and faithful without any feeling of sacrifice or boredom. She was so quick, so slyly always a little in front of his mood. Being first cousins they had decided, rather needlessly, to have no children. Although a little salower, she had kept her looks, her slimness, and the colour of her dark hair. Val particularly admired the life of her own she carried on, beside carrying on his, and riding better every year. She kept up her music. She read an awful lot, novels, poetry, all sorts of stuff. Out on their farm in Cape Colony she looked after all the nigger babies and women in a miraculous manner. She was, in fact, clever. He had made no fuss about it, and had no side. Though not remarkable for humility, Val had come to have the feeling that she was his superior, and he did not grudge it, a great tribute. It might be noted that he never looked at Holly without her knowing of it, but that she looked at him sometimes unawares. He had kissed her in the porch, because he should not be doing so on the platform, though she was going to the station with him to drive the car back. Tanned and wrinkled by colonial weather, and the wiles inseparable from horses, and handicapped by the lake which, weakened in the Boer War, had probably saved his life in the war just past. Val was still much as he had been in the days of his courtship. His smile was white and charming. His eyelashes, if anything, thicker and darker. His eyes screwed up under them, as bright as grey, his freckles rather deeper, his hair a little grizzled at the sides. He gave the impression of one who has lived actively with horses in a sunny climate. Twisting the car sharp round at the gate, he said, When is young John coming? Today. Is there anything you want for him? I could bring it down on Saturday. No, but you might come down by the same train as Fleur, one forty. Val gave the Ford full reign. He still drove like a man in a new country on bad roads, who refuses to compromise and expects heaven at every hole. That's a young woman who knows her way about, he said. I say, has it struck you? Yes, said Holly. Uncle Somes and your dad, a bit awkward, isn't it? She won't know, and he won't know, and nothing must be said, of course. It's only for five days, Val. Stable secret, righto. If Holly thought it safe, it was. Glancing slyly round at him, she said, Did you notice how beautifully she asked herself? No. Well, she did. What do you think of her, Val? Pretty and clever, but she might run out in any corner if she got her monkey up, I should say. I'm wondering, Holly murmured, whether she is the modern young woman. One feels at sea coming home into all this. You, you get the habit of things so quick! Holly slid her hand into his coat pocket. You keep one in the know, said Val, in courage. What do you think of that Belgian fellow performed? I think he's rather a good devil. Val grinned. He seems to me a queer fish for a friend of our family. In fact, our family is in pretty queer waters with Uncle Somes marrying a French woman, and your dad marrying Somes is first. Our grandfather's would have had fits. So would anybody's, my dear. This car, Val said suddenly, once rousing, she doesn't get her hind legs under our uphill. I shall have to give her her head on the slope if I'm to catch that train. There was that about horses which had prevented him from ever really sympathising with a car, and the running of the Ford under his guidance compared with its running under that of Holly was always noticeable. He caught the train. Take care, going home. She'll throw you down if she can. Goodbye, darling. Goodbye, called Holly, and kissed her hand. In the train, after a quarter of an hour's indecision between thoughts of Holly, his morning paper, the look of the bright day, and his dim memory of Newmarket, Val plunged into the recesses of a small square book, all names, pedigrees, tap-roots, and notes about the make and shape of horses. The foresight in him was bent on the acquisition of a certain strain of blood, and he was subduing resolutely as yet the darty hankering for a nutter. On getting back to England, after the profitable sale of his South African farm and stud, and observing that the son seldom shone, Val had said to himself, I've absolutely got to have an interest in life, or this country will give me the blues. Hunting's not enough. I'll breed, and I'll train. With just that extra pinch of shrewdness and decision imparted by long residents in a new country, Val had seen the weak point of modern breeding. They were all hypnotised by fashion and high price. He should buy for looks, and let names go hang. In here he was already hypnotised by the prestige of a certain strain of blood. Half-consciously he thought, There's something in this damned climate which makes one go round in a ring. All the same, I must have a strain of Mayfly blood. In this mood he reached the mecca of his hopes. It was one of those quiet meetings favourable to such as wish to look into horses rather than into the mouths of book-makers, and Val clung to the paddock. His twenty years of colonial life, divesting him of the dandyism in which he had been bred, had left him the essential neatness of the horseman, and given him a queer and rather blighting eye over what he called the silly whore-whore of some Englishman, the flapping cockatoo-ry of some Englishwomen. Holly had none of that, and Holly was his model. Observant, quick, resourceful, Val went straight to the heart of a transaction, a horse, a drink, and he was on his way to the heart of a Mayfly flea, when a slow voice said at his elbow, Mr. Valdati? How is Mrs. Valdati? She's well, I hope. And he saw beside him the Belgian he had met at his sister's imagines. Prospaprafont, I met you at lunch, said the voice. How are you, moment Val? I'm very well, replied Prospaprafont, smiling with a certain immeasurable slowness. A good devil, Holly had called him. Well, he looked a little like a devil with his dark, clipped, pointed beard, a sleepy one, though, and good human with fine eyes, unexpectedly intelligent. As a gentleman wants to know you, cousin of yours, Mr. George Forside. Val saw a large form and a face, clean-shaven, bull-like, a little larring, with sardonic humour bubbling behind a full grey eye. He remembered it dimly from old days when he would dine with his father at the Iseum Club. I used to go racing with your father, George was saying, how's the stud? I could buy one of my screws. Val grinned, to hide the sudden feeling that the bottom had fallen out of breeding. They believed in nothing ever here, not even in horses. George Forside, Prospaprafont. The devil himself was not more disillusioned than those two. Didn't know you were a racing man, he said, too mushy-performed. I'm not. I don't care for it. I'm a yachting man. I don't care for yachting either, but I'd like to see my friends. I've got some lunch, Mr. Val Dutty, just a small lunch, if you'd like to have some. Not much, just a small one, in my car. Thanks, I said, Val, very good of you. I'll come along in about a quarter of an hour. Over there, Mr. Forside's coming. A Mr. Profond pointed with the yellowed-loved finger. A small car with a small lunch. He moved on, groomed, sleepy, and remote. George Forside following, neat, huge, and with his jesting air. Val remained gazing at the Mayfly Ciffilly. George Forside, of course, was an old chap. But this Profond must be about his own age. Val felt extremely young, as if the Mayfly Ciffilly were a toy at which those two had laughed. The animal had lost reality. That small mare, he seemed to hear the voice of a Mr. Profond. What do you see in her? We must all die. And George Forside crony of his father racing still. The Mayfly strain was it any better than any other? He might just as well have a flutter with his money instead. No, my gum, he muttered suddenly. If it's no good breeding horses, it's no good doing anything. What did I come for? I'll buy her. He stood back and watched the ebb of the paddock visitors towards the stand. Natty old chips, shrewd, portly fellows, Jews, trainers looking as if they'd never been guilty of seeing a horse in their lives, tall, flapping, languid women, or brisk, loud-voiced women, young men with an air as if trying to take it seriously, two or three of them with only one arm. Life over here's a game, thought Val. Muffin bell-rings, horses run, money changes hands, ring again, run again, money changes back. But alarm'd at his own philosophy. He went to the paddock gate to watch the Mayfly filly canter down. She moved well, and he made his way over to the small car. The small lunch was the sort a man dreams of but seldom gets. And when it was concluded, Mr. Perfound walked back with him to the paddock. Your waves, a nice woman! was his surprising remark. Nicest woman I know! returned Val dryly. Yes, said M. Perfound, she has a nice face. I admire nice women! Val looked at him suspiciously, but something kindly and direct in the heavy diabolism of his companion disarmed him for the moment. Any time you like to come on my yacht, I'll give her a small cruise. Thanks, said Val, in arms again, she hates the sea. So do I! said M. Perfound. Then why do you yacht? The Belgians' eyes smiled. Oh, I don't know. I've done everything. It's the last thing I'm doing. It must be damned expensive. I should want more reason than that. M. Perfound raised his eyebrows and puffed out a heavy lower lip. I'm an easygoing man, he said. Were you in the war? asked Val. Yes, I've done that too. I was gassed. It was a small bit unpleasant. He smiled with a deep and sleepy air of prosperity as if he had caught it from his name. Whether he's saying small when he ought to have said little was genuine mistake or affectation, Val could not decide. The fellow was evidently capable of anything. Among the ring of buyers round the Mayfly Philly who had won her race M. Perfound said, You going to bid? Val nodded. With this sleepy Satan at his elbow he felt in need of faith. Though placed above the ultimate blows of providence the forethought of a grandfather who tied him up a thousand a year to which was added the thousand a year tied up for Holly by her grandfather Val was not flush of capital that he could touch having spent most of what he'd realised from his South African farm on his establishment in Sussex. And very soon he was thinking, Dash it, she's going beyond me. His limit, six hundred, was exceeded. He dropped out of the bidding. The Mayfly Philly passed under the hammer at seven hundred and fifty guineas. He was turning away vexed when the slow voice of M. Perfound said in his ear, Well, I've bought that small Philly, but I don't want her. You take her and give her to your wife. Val looked at the fellow with renewed suspicion but the good humour in his eyes was such that he really could not take offence. I made a small amount of money in the war, began M. Perfound in answer to that look. He had armament-shares. I like to give it away. I'm always making money. I want a very small lot myself. I like my friends to have it. I'll buy her a view at the price you gave," said Val with a sudden resolution. No, said M. Perfound. You take her, I don't wonder. Hang it, one doesn't. Why not?" smiled M. Perfound. I'm a friend of your family. Seven hundred and fifty guineas is not a box of cigars," said Val impatiently. All right. You keep her for me till I want her and do what you like with her. So long as she's yours," said Val, I don't mind that. That's all right. M. Perfound moved away. Val watched. He might be a good devil, but then again he might not. He saw him rejoin George Forsythe and thereafter saw him no more. He spent those nights after racing at his mother's house in Green Street. Winifred Darty at sixty-two was marvellously preserved, considering the three-and-thirty years during which she put up with Montagu Darty till almost happily released by a French staircase. It was to her a vehement satisfaction to have her favourite son back from South Africa after all this time to feed him so little changed and to have taken a fancy to his wife. Winifred, who in the late seventies before her marriage had been in the vanguard of freedom, pleasure, and fashion, confessed her youth outclassed by the Donzellas of the day. They seemed, for instance, to regard marriage as an incident, and Winifred sometimes regretted that she had not done the same. A second, third, fourth incident might have secured her a partner of less dazzling inebriity, though after all he had left her Val, Imogen, Maud, Benedict, almost a colonel and unharmed by the war, none of whom had been divorced as yet. The steadiness of her children after amazed one who remembered their father. But as she was fond of believing they were rarely all foresights, favouring herself, with the exception, perhaps of Imogen. Her brother's little girl, Fleur, frankly puzzled Winifred. The child was as restless as any of these modern young women. She's a small flame in a draught, Prosper performed and said one day after dinner. But she did not flop or talk at the top of her voice. The steady foresightism in Winifred's own character instinctively resented the feeling in the air the modern girl's habits and her motto, All's but to a muchness, spend, tomorrow we shall be poor. She found it a saving grace in Fleur that, having set her heart on a thing, she had no change of heart until she got it, though, what happened after, Fleur was, of course, too young to have made evident. The child was a very pretty little thing, too, and quite a credit to take about with her mother's French taste and gift for wearing clothes. Everybody turned to look at Fleur. Great consideration to Winifred, a lover of the style and distinction which had so cruelly deceived her in the case of Montague D'Arty. In discussing her with a vow at breakfast on Saturday morning, Winifred dealt on the family skeleton. That little affair of your father-in-law and your aunt Irene, Val, it's old as the hills, of course. Fleur need no nothing about it, making a fuss. Your uncle Serbs is very particular about that, so you'll be careful. Yes, but it's dashed awkward. Holly's young half-brother has come to live with us while he learns farming. He's there already. Ah, so Winifred, that is a gaffe. What is he like? Then he saw him once at Robin Hill when we were home in 1909. He was naked and painted blue and yellow in stripes of jolly little chap. Winifred thought that rather nice and added comfortably. Well, Holly's sensible, she'll know how to deal with it. I shan't tell your uncle. It'll only bother him. It's a great comfort have you back, my dear boy, now that I'm getting on. Getting on while you're as young as ever. That chap-performed mother, is he all right? Prosper-performed? Ah, the most amusing man I know. Val grunted and recounted the story of the Mayfly Philly. That's so like him, Mama Winifred. He does all sorts of things. Well, said Val shrewdly, our family haven't been too lucky with that kind of cattle there, too light-hearted for us. It was true. And Winifred's blue study lasted a full minute before she answered, Ah, well, he's a foreigner, Val, one must make alliances. All right, I use his Philly, make it up to him, somehow. And soon after he gave her his blessing, received a kiss, and left her for his bookmakers, the ICM Club, and Victoria Station. End of Part 1, Chapter 5. Recording by Simon Evers. Chapter 6 of Tollette. 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 Simon Evers. The Foresight Saga. 3. Tollette by John Goresworthy. Part 1, Chapter 6. John. Mrs. Val Darty, after twenty years of South Africa, had fallen deeply in love. Fortunately, with something of her own, for the object of her passion was the prospect in front of her windows, the cool, clear light on the green downs. It was England, again, at last. England more beautiful than she had dreamed. Chance had, in fact, guided the Val Dartys to a spot where the South Downs had real charm when the sun shone. Holly had enough of her father's eye to apprehend the rare quality of their outliant and chalky radiance. To go up there by the ravine-like lane and wander along towards Chanktonbury, or Amberley, was still a delight which she hardly attempted to share with Val, whose admiration of nature was confused by a Foresight's instinct for getting something out of it, such as the condition of the turf for his horse's exercise. Driving the Ford home with a certain humoring smoothness, she promised herself that the first use she would make of John would be to take him up there and show him the view under this May Day sky. She was looking forward to her young half-brother with a motherliness not exhausted by Val. A three-day visit to Robin Hill soon after their arrival home had yielded no sight of him. He was still at school. So that her recollection, like Val's, was of a little sunny-haired boy, striped blue and yellow, down by the pond. Those three days at Robin Hill had been exciting, sad, embarrassing. Memories of her dead brother, memories of Val's courtship, the aging of her father not seen for twenty years, something funereal in his ironic gentleness which did not escape one who had much subtle instinct. Above all, the presence of her stepmother, whom she could still vaguely remember as the lady in grey of days when she was little and grandfather alive, and Mademoiselle Bowie's so cross because that intruder gave her music lessons, all these confused and tantalised a spirit which had longed to find Robin Hill untroubled. But Holly was adept at keeping things to herself, and all had seemed to go quite well. Her father had kissed her when she left him with lips which she was sure had trembled. "'Well, my dear,' he said, "'the war hasn't changed, Robin Hill, has it? He only could have brought jolly back with you. I say, can you stand this spiritualistic racket? When the oak tree dies, it dies, I'm afraid.' From the warmth of her embrace he probably divined that he had let the cat out of the bag for he rode off at once on irony. Spiritualism, queer word, when the more they manifest, prove that they've got hold of matter.' "'How?' said Holly. "'Why, look at their photographs of auric presences. You must have something material for light and shade to fall on before you can take a photograph. Now it'll end in our calling all matter spirit or all spirit matter, I don't know which.' "'But don't you believe in survival, Dad?' John in had looked at her, and the sad whimsicality of his face pressed her deeply. "'Well, my dear, I'd like to get something out of death. I've been looking into it a bit. But for the life of me I can't find anything that telepathy, subconsciousness, and emanation from the storehouse of this world can't account for just as well. Wish I could. Wish his father thought, but they don't breed evidence.' Holly had pressed her lips again to his forehead, with the feeling that it confirmed his theory that all matter was becoming spirit. His brow felt somehow so insubstantial. But the most poignant memory of that little village had been watching, unobserved, her stepmother reading to herself a letter from John. It was, she decided, the prettiest sight she had ever seen. Arini, lost as it were in the letter of her boy, stood at a window where the light fell on her face and her fine grey hair. Her lips were moving, smiling, her dark eyes, laughing, dancing, and the hand which did not hold the letter was pressed against her breast. Holly withdrew, as from a vision of perfect love, convinced that John must be nice. When she saw him coming out of the station with a kit-bag in either hand, she was confirmed in her predisposition. He was a little like Jolly, that long-lost idol of her childhood, but eager-looking and less formal with deeper eyes and brighter coloured hair, for he wore no hat. All together a very interesting little brother. His tentative politeness charmed one who was accustomed to assurance in the youthful manner. He was disturbed because she was to drive him home instead of his driving her. Shouldn't he have a shot? There hadn't a car at Robin Hill nor, of course, and he'd only driven once and landed up a bank, so she oughtn't mind his trying. His laugh, soft and infectious, was very attractive, though that word she'd heard was now quite old-fashioned. When they reached the house he pulled out a crumpled letter which she read while he was washing, a quite short letter which must have cost her father many a pang to write. My dear, you and Val will not forget, I trust, that John knows nothing of family history. His mother and I think he is too young at present. The boy is very dear, and the apple of her eye. Verbum sapientibus, your loving father, J. F. That was all, but it renewed in holly an uneasy regret that Fleur was coming. After tea she fulfilled that promise to herself and took John up the hill. A long talk, sitting above an old chalk-pit grown over with brambles and goose-penny, milk-wort and liver-wort starred the green slope, the larks sang and thrushes in the break, and now then a gull, flighting in land, would wheel very white against the paling sky where the vague moon was coming up. Delicious fragrance came to them as if little invisible creatures were running and treading scent out of the blades of grass. John, who'd fallen silent, said rather suddenly, I say this is wonderful. There's no fat on it at all. Gull's flight and sheep's bells. Gull's flight and sheep's bells. You're a poet, my dear. John sighed. Oh, golly, no go! Try! I used to at your age. Did you? Mother says try, too, but I'm so rotten. Have you any of yours for me to see? My dear, holy moment, I've been married nineteen years. I only wrote verses when I wanted to be. Oh! said John, and turned over on his face the one cheek she could see was a charming colour. Was John touched in the wind then, as Val would have called it, already? But if so all the better he would take no notice of young Fleur. Besides, on one day he would begin his farming. And she smiled. Was it Burns who followed the plow, or only Pierce Plyman? Nearly every young man, and most young women, seemed to be poets now, judging from the number of their books she had read out in South Africa, importing them from hatchers and bumpfards, and quite good— oh, quite—much better than she'd been herself. But then Pertry had only really come in since her day with motor-cars. Another long talk after dinner over a wood fire in the low hall, and there seemed little left to know about John except anything of real importance. Holly parted from at his bedroom door, having seen twice over that he had everything, with the conviction that she would love him, and Val would like him. He was eager, but did not gush. He was a splendid listener, sympathetic, reticent about himself. He evidently loved their father, and adored his mother. He liked riding, rowing, and fencing better than games. He saved moths from candles and couldn't bear spiders, but put them out of doors in screws of paper sooner than killed them. In a word, he was amiable. She went to sleep, thinking that he would suffer horribly if anybody hurt him. But who would hurt him? John, on the other hand, sat awake at his window with a bit of paper and a pencil, writing his first real poem by the light of a candle because there was not enough moon to see by, only enough to make the night seem fluttery and as if engraved on silver. Just the night for Fleur to walk and turn her eyes and lead on over the hills and far away. And John, deeply furrowed in his ingenuous brow, made marks on the paper and rubbed them out and wrote them in again, and did all that was necessary for the completion of a work of art. And he had a feeling such as the winds of spring must have, trying their first songs among the coming blossom. John was one of those boys, not many, in whom a home-trained love of beauty had survived school life. He'd had to keep it to himself, of course, so that not even the drawing-master knew of it. But it was there, fastidious and clear within him, and his poem seemed to him as lame and stilted as the night was winged. But he kept it all the same. It was a beast, but better than nothing as an expression of the inexpressible. And he thought with a sort of discomforture, I shan't be able to show it to Mother. He slept terribly well when he did sleep, overwhelmed by novelty. End of Part 1, Chapter 6 Recording by Simon Evers Part 1, Chapter 7 of To Let. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Leanne Howlett The Foresight Saga 3, To Let. by John Galsworthy Part 1, Chapter 7, Flur. To avoid the awkwardness of questions which could not be answered, all that had been told John was, there's a girl coming down with Val for the weekend. For the same reason all that had been told Flur was, we've got a youngster staying with us. The two yearlings, as Val called them in his thoughts, met therefore in a manner which for unpreparedness left nothing to be desired. They were thus introduced by Holly. This is John, my little brother. Flur is a cousin of ours, John. John, who was coming in through a French window out of strong sunlight, was so confounded by the providential nature of this miracle that he had time to hear Flur say calmly, oh, how do you do, as if he had never seen her and to understand dimly from the quickest imaginable little movement of her head that he never had seen her. He bowed therefore over her hand in an intoxicated manner and became more silent than the grave. He knew better than to speak. Once in his early life, surprised reading by a nightlight, he had said fatuously, I was just turning over the leaves, mum, and his mother had replied, John, never tell stories because of your face nobody will ever believe them. The saying had permanently undermined the confidence necessary to the success of spoken untruth. He listened therefore to Flur's swift and rapt illusions to the jolliness of everything, plied her with scones and jam, and got away as soon as might be. They say that in delirium trimmins you see a fixed object, preferably dark, which suddenly changes shape and position. John saw the fixed object. It had dark eyes and passively dark hair and changed its position, but never its shape. The knowledge that between him and that object there was already a secret understanding, however impossible to understand, thrilled him so that he waited feverishly and began to copy out his poem, of course he would never dare to show her, till the sound of horses hooves roused him, and leaning from his window he saw her riding forth with a vow. It was clear that she wasted no time, but the sight filled him with grief. He wasted his. If he had not bolted in his fearful ecstasy he might have been asked to go too, and from his window he sat and watched them disappear, appear again in the chain of the road, vanish and emerge once more for a minute clear on the outline of the down. Silly brute he thought. I always missed my chances. Why couldn't he be self-confident and ready? And leaning his chin on his hands he imagined the ride he might have had with her. A weekend was but a weekend, and he had missed three hours of it. Did he know anyone except himself who would have been such a flat? He did not. He watched for dinner early and was first down. He would miss no more. But he missed Fleur, who came down last. He sat opposite her at dinner, and it was terrible. Impossible to say anything for fear of saying the wrong thing. Impossible to keep his eyes fixed on her in the only natural way. In some impossible to treat normally, one with whom in fancy he had already been over the hills and far away. Conscious to all the time and to her, to all of them, a dumb gawk. Yes, it was terrible. And she was talking so well. Swooping with swift wing this way and that. Wonderful how she had learned an art which she found so disgustingly difficult. She must think him hopeless indeed. His sister's eyes, fixed on him with a certain astonishment, obliged him at last to look at Fleur. But instantly her eyes, very wide and eager, seeming to say, oh for goodness sake, obliged him to look at Val, where a grin obliged him to look at his cutlet. That at least had no eyes and no grin, and he ate it hastily. John is going to be a farmer, he heard Holly say, a farmer and a poet. He glanced up reproachfully, caught the comic lift of her eyebrow just like their fathers, laughed and felt better. Val recounted the incident of Monsieur Prosper profound. Nothing could have been more favorable. For, in relating it, he regarded Holly, who in turn regarded him, while Fleur seemed to be regarding with a slight frown some thought of her own, and John was really free to look at her at last. She had on a white frock, very simple and well made. Her arms were bare, and her hair had a white rose in it. And just that swift moment of free vision for such intense discomfort, John saw her sublimated as one sees in the dark a slender white fruit tree, caught her like a verse of poetry flashed before the eyes of the mind, or a tune which floats out in the distance and dies. He wondered giddily how old she was. She seemed so much more self-possessed and experienced than himself. Why mustn't he say they had met? He remembered suddenly his mother's face, and she felt, hurt-looking, when she answered, Yes, they're relations, but we don't know them. Impossible that his mother, who loved beauty, should not admire Fleur if she did know her. Alone with Val after dinner, he sipped port deferentially and answered the advances of this new-found brother-in-law. As to writing, always the first consideration with Val, he could have the young chestnut saddle and unsaddle it himself and generally look after it when he brought it in. John said he was accustomed to all that at home and saw that he had gone up one in his host's estimation. Fleur, said Val, can't ride much yet, but she's keen. Of course her father doesn't know a horse from a cartwheel. Does your dad ride? He used to, but now he's, you know, he's stopped so hating the word, old. His father was old, and yet not old. No, never. Quite, muttered Val. I used to know your brother up at Oxford ages ago, the one who died in the Boer War. We had a fight in New College Gardens. That was a queer business, he added, using. A good deal came out of it. John's eyes opened wide, all was pushing him toward historical research when his sister's voice said gently from the doorway, come along you two, and he rose, his heart pushing him toward something far more modern. Fleur, having declared that it was simply too wonderful to stay indoors, they all went out. Moonlight was frosting the dew and an old sundial through a long shadow. Two box hedges at right angles, dark and square, barred off the orchard. Fleur turned through that angled opening. Come on, she called. John glanced at the others and followed. She was running among the trees like a ghost. All was lovely and foam-like above her, and there was a scent of old trunks and of nettles. She vanished. He thought he had lost her, then almost ran into her standing quite still. Isn't it jolly, she cried, and John answered, rather. She reached up, twisted off a blossom, and twirling in her fingers said, in a pose I can call you John. I should think so, just. All right, but you know there's a feud between our families. John stammered. Feud. Why? It's ever so romantic and silly. That's why I pretended we hadn't met. Shall we get up early tomorrow morning and go for a walk before breakfast and have it out? I hate being slow about things, don't you? John murmured a rapturous assent. Six o'clock, then. I think your mother's beautiful. John said fervently. Yes, she is. I love all kinds of beauty when on floor. When it's exciting, I don't like Greek things a bit. What? Not Euripides? Euripides? Oh, no. I can't bear Greek plays. They're so long. I think beauty's always swift. I like to look at one picture, for instance, and then run off. I can't bear a lot of things together. Look. She held up her blossom in the moonlight. That's better than all the orchard, I think. And suddenly, with her other hand, she caught John's. Of all things in the world, don't you think caution's the most awful? Smell the moonlight. She thrust the blossom against his face. John agreed giddily that of all things in the world, caution was the worst, and bending over kissed the hand which held his. That's nice and old-fashioned, said Fleur calmly. You're frightfully silent, John. Still, I like silence when it's swift. She let go his hand. Did you think I dropped my handkerchief on purpose? No, cried John, intensely shocked. Well, I did, of course. Let's get back, or they'll think we're doing this on purpose, too. And again she ran like a ghost among the trees. John followed, with love in his heart, spring in his heart, and over all the moonlight, white unearthly blossom. They came out where they had gone in, Fleur walking demurely. It's quite wonderful in there, she said dreamily to Holly. John preserved silence, hoping against hope that she might be thinking it's swift. She bade him a casual and demure a good night, which made him think he had been dreaming. In her bedroom, Fleur had flung off her gown and wrapped in a shapeless garment with the white flowers still in her hair. She looked like a moose may, sitting cross-legged on her bed, riding my candlelight. Dearest Cherry, I believe I'm in love. I've got it in the neck, only the feeling is really lower down. He's a second cousin, such a child, about six months older and ten years younger than I am. I'm in love with their seniors and girls with their juniors or with old men of forty. Don't laugh, but his eyes are the truest things I ever saw, and he's quite divinely silent. We had a most romantic first meeting in London under the Vospovich Juno, and now he's sleeping in the next room and the moonlight's on the blossom, and tomorrow morning before anybody's awake we're going to walk off into down fairy land. There's a feud between our families, which makes it really exciting. Yes, and I may have to use subterfuge and come on you for invitations. If so, you'll know why. My father doesn't want us to know each other, but I can't help that. Life's too short. He's got the most beautiful mother with lovely silvery hair and a young face with dark eyes. I'm staying with his sister, who married my cousin. It's all mixed up, but I mean to pumper tomorrow. We've often talked about love being a spoil sport. Gosh, it's the beginning of sport, and the sooner you feel it, my dear, the better for you. John, not simplified spelling, but short for Jolian, which is a name in my family, they say, is the sort that lights up and goes out. About five feet ten, still growing, and I believe he's going to be a poet. If you laugh at me, I've done with you forever. I perceive all sorts of difficulties, but you know when I really want a thing, I get it. One of the facts of love is that you see the air sort of inhabited, like seeing a face in the moon, and you feel dancey and soft at the same time, with a funny sensation, like a continual first sniff of orange blossom, just above your stays. This is my first, and I feel as if it were going to be my last, which is absurd, of course, by all the laws of nature and morality. If you mock me, I will smite you, and if you tell anybody, I will never forgive you. So much so that I almost don't think I'll send this letter. Anyway, I'll sleep over it. So good night, my cherry. Oh, your floor. End of Part 1, Chapter 7, Recording by Leanne Howlett. Part 1, Chapter 8 of To Let. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Andy Minter. The Foresight Saga 3. To Let by John Gallsworthy. Part 1, Chapter 8 Idyll on Grass. When those two young Foresights emerged from the Chine lane and set their faces eastward towards the sun, there was not a cloud in heaven and the downs were dewy. They had come at a good bat up the slope and were a little out of breath. If they had anything to say, they did not say it, but marched in the early awkwardness of unbreakfasted morning under the songs of the larks. The stealing out had been fun, but with the freedom of the tops their sense of conspiracy ceased and gave place to dumbness. We've made one blooming error, said Fleur, when they had gone half a mile. I'm hungry." John produced a stick of chocolate. They shared it, and their tongues were loosened. They discussed the nature of their homes and previous existences, which had a kind of fascinating unreality upon this lonely height. They remained but one thing solid in John's past, his mother, but one thing solid in Fleur's, her father, and of these figures as though seen in the distance with disapproving faces they spoke little. The down dipped and rose again towards Chanktonbury Ring, a sparkle of far sea came into view, a sparrow-hawk hovered in the sun's eye, so that the blood-nourished brown of his wings gleamed nearly red. John had a passion for birds and an aptitude for sitting very still to watch them, keen-sighted, and with a memory for what interested him. On birds he was almost worth listening to. But in Chanktonbury Ring there were none, its great beach temple was empty of life and almost chilly at this early hour. They came out willingly again into the sun on the far side. It was Fleur's turn now. She spoke of dogs and the way people treated them. It was wicked to keep them on chains. She would like to flog people who did that. John was astonished to find her so humanitarian. She knew a dog, it seemed, which some farmer near her home kept chained up at the end of his chicken-run in all weathers till it had almost lost its voice from barking. And the misery is, she said vehemently, that if the poor thing didn't bark at everyone who passes it wouldn't be kept there. I do think men are cunning brutes. I've let it go twice on the sly. It's nearly bitten me both times and then it simply goes mad with joy. But it always runs back home at last and they chain it up again. If I had my way I'd chain that man up. John saw her teeth and her eyes gleam. I'd brand him on his forehead with the word brute. That would teach him. John agreed that it would be a good remedy. It's a sense of property, he said, which makes people chain things. The last generation thought of nothing but property. And that's why there was the war. Oh, said Fleur, I'd never thought of that. Your people and mine quarreled about property. And anyway we've all got it. At least I suppose your people have. Oh, yes, luckily. I don't suppose I should be any good at making money. If you were, I don't believe I should like you. John slipped his hand tremulously under her arm. Fleur looked straight before her and chanted, John, John, the farmer's son. Stole a pig and away he run. John's arm crept round her waist. This is rather sudden, said Fleur calmly. Do you often do it? John dropped his arm. Oh, yes, luckily. John dropped his arm. But when she laughed, his arm stole back again, and Fleur began to sing. Oh, who will order down so free? Oh, who will with me ride? Oh, who will up and follow me? Sing, John! John sang. The larks joined in, sheet-bells, and an early morning church far away over in staining. They went on from tune to tune, till Fleur said, Oh, my God, I am hungry now. Oh, I am sorry. She looked round into his face. John, you're rather a darling. When she pressed his hand against her waist, John almost reeled from happiness. A yellow and white dog causing a hair startled them apart. They watched the two vanish down the slope till Fleur said with a sigh, He'll never catch it, thank goodness. What's the time? Mine stopped, I never wound it. John looked at his watch. By Jove, he said, Mine stopped too. They walked on again, but only hand in hand. If the grass is dry, said Fleur, Let's sit down for half a minute. John took off his coat, and they shared it. Smell, actually, wild time. With his arm round her waist again, they sat some minutes in silence. We are goats, cried Fleur, jumping up, wished we were most fearfully late, and looked so silly, and put them on their guard. Look here, John, we only came out to get an appetite for breakfast, and lost our way. See? Yes, said John. It's serious. There'll be a stopper put on us. Are you a good liar? I believe not very, but I can try." Fleur frowned. You know," she said, Why not? I told you why, but that's silly. Yes, but you don't know my father. I suppose he's fearfully fond of you. You see, I'm an only child, and so are you of your mother. Isn't it a bore? There's so much expected of one by the time they've done expecting one's as good as dead. Yes," muttered John, life's beastly short. You know everything. And love everybody? No," cried John. I only want to love once. You. Indeed, you're coming on. Oh, look, there's the chalk-bit. We can't be very far now. Let's run." John followed, wondering fearfully if he had offended her. The chalk-bit was full of sunshine and the murmuration of bees. Fleur flung back her hair. You may give me one kiss, John." And she pushed her cheek forward. With ecstasy he kissed that hot, soft cheek. Now remember, we lost our way and leave it to me as much as you can. I'm going to be rather beastly to you. It's safer. Try and be beastly to me." John shook his head. That's impossible. Just to please me till five o'clock at all events. Anybody will be able to see through it, said John gloomily. Well, do your best. Look, there they are. Wave your hat. Oh, you haven't got one. Well, I'll cooey. Get a little away from me and look sulky. Five minutes later entering the house and doing his utmost to look sulky, John heard her clear voice in the dining-room. Oh, I'm simply ravenous. He's going to be a farmer and he loses the way. The boy's an idiot. End of Part 1, Chapter 8 Part 1, Chapter 9 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 Simon Evers. The foresight saga 3. Toilet by John Gulsworthy Part 1, Chapter 9 Goya. She was over and Soames mounted to the picture gallery in his house near Maple Durham. He had what Annette called a grief. Fleur was not yet home. She had been expected on Wednesday at Wired that it would be Friday and again on Friday that it would be Sunday afternoon. And here were her aunt and her cousins, the cardigans and this fellow profaned and everything flat as a pancake for the want of her. He stood before his go-gar, sawest point of his collection. He bought the ugly great thing with too early Matisse before the war because there was such a fuss about these post-impressionist chaps. He was wondering whether profaned would take them off his hands. The fellow seemed not to know what to do with his money. When he heard his sister's voice say, I think that's a horrid thing, Soames, and saw that Winifred had followed him up. Oh, you do, he said dryly. I gave five hundred for it. Fancy! We may not made like that even if they are black. Soames uttered a glum laugh. You didn't come up to tell me that? No. Do you know that Jolien's boy is staying with Val and his wife? Soames spun round. What? Yes, Drawn. He said, Yes, Drawn Winifred. He's gone to live with them while he learns farming. Soames had turned away, but her voice pursued him as he walked up and down. I warned Val that neither of them was to be spoken to about old matters. Why didn't you tell me before? Winifred shrugged her substantial shoulders. Flurred us what she likes. You've always spoiled her. Besides my dear boy, what's the harm? The harm, muttered Soames. Why, she— He checked himself. The Juno, the haggard she flurs eyes, her questions, are now this delay in her return. The symptoms seem to him so sinister that, faithful to his nature, he could not part with them. I think you take too much care, said Winifred. If I were you, I should tell her of that old matter. It's no good thinking that girls in these days are as they used to be. Where they pick up their knowledge I can't tell, but they seem to know everything. Over Soames's face, closely composed, passed a sort of spasm. And Winifred added hastily, If you don't like to speak of it, I could for you. Soames shook his head, unless there was absolute necessity the thought that his adored daughter should learn of that old scandal hurt his pride too much. No, he said not yet. Never if I can help it. Not since, my dear, think what people are. Twenty years is a long time, muttered Soames, outside our family, who's likely to remember? Winifred was silenced. She inclined more and more to that peace and quietness of which Montague Dartier had deprived her in her youth. And since Pitcher's always depressed her, she soon went down again. Soames passed into the corner where, side by side, hung his real Goya and the copy of the fresco La Vendimia. His acquisition of the real Goya rather beautifully illustrated the cobweb of vested interests and passions which mesh the bright-winged fly of human life. The real Goya's noble owner's ancestor had come into possession of it during some Spanish war. It wasn't a word, lute. The noble owner had remained in ignorance of its value until in the nineties an enterprising critic discovered that a Spanish painter named Goya was a genius. It was only a fair Goya but almost unique in England and the noble owner became a marked man. Having many possessions and that aristocratic culture which, independent of mere sensuous enjoyment, is founded on the sounder principle that one must know everything and be fearfully interested in life, he had fully intended to keep an article which contributed to his reputation while he was alive and to leave it to the nation after he was dead. Fortunately for Somes the House of Lords was violently attacked in nineteen-o-nine and the noble owner became alarmed and angry. If, he said to himself they think they can have it both ways they are very much mistaken so long as they leave me in quiet enjoyment the nation can have some of my pictures of death. But if the nation is going to bait me and rob me like this I'm damned if I won't sell the lot. They can't have my private property and my public spirit both. He brooded in this fashion for several months till one morning after reading the speech of a certain statesman he telegraphed to his agent to come down and bring Bodkin. On going over the collection Bodkin and whose opinion on market values were sought, pronounced that with a free hand to sell to America, Germany and other places where there was an interest in art a lot more money could be made than by selling in England. The noble owner's public spirit he said was well known but the pictures were unique. The noble owner put this opinion in his pipe and smoked it for a year. At the end of that time he read another speech by the same statesman and telegraphed to his agents give Bodkin a free hand. It was at this juncture that Bodkin conceived the idea which sold the Dukgoia and two other unique pictures for the native country of the noble owner. With one hand Bodkin profited the pictures to the foreign market with the other he formed a list of private British collectors. Having obtained what he considered the highest possible bids from across the seas he made pictures and bids to the private British collectors and invited them, of their public spirit to outbid. In three instances including the Goya, out of twenty one he was successful and why? One of the private collectors made buttons he made so many that he desired that his wife should be called Lady Buttons he therefore bought a unique picture at great cost of the nation. It was part, his friend said of his general game. The second of the private collector was an America phobe and bought a unique picture to spite the damned Yanks. The third of the private collectors was Soames who, more sober than either of the others bought after a visit to Madrid because he was certain that Goya was still on the upgrade. Goya was not boomy at the moment but he would come again. And looking at that portrait Hogarthian, manateque in its directness but with its own queer, sharp beauty of paint he was perfectly satisfied still that he had made no error heavy though the price had been heaviest he had ever paid. And next to it was hanging the copy of La Vendimia. There she was the little wretch looking back at him in her dreamy mood the mood he loved best because he felt so much safer when she looked like that. He was still gazing when the scent of a cigar impinged on his nostrils and a voice said Well, Mr. Forsythe, what you got to do with this more lot? That Belgian chap whose mother as if Flemish blood were not enough had been Armenian. Subdueing a natural irritation he said Well, I've got a few myself. Any post-impressionists? Yes, I rather like them. What do you think of this? said Soames, pointing to the goga. Mr. Forsythe protruded his lower lip and short pointed beard. Rather fine, I think, he said. Do you want to sell it? Soames checked his instinctive. Not particularly. He would not chaffer with this alien. Yes, he said. What do you want for it? What I gave. All right, said Mr. Prefond. I'll be glad to take that small picture. Post-impressionists, they're awful dead, but they're amusing. I don't care for pictures much, but I've got some, just a small lot. What do you care for? Mr. Prefond shrugged his shoulders. Laves, awful like a lot of monkeys, crambling for empty nuts. You're young, said Soames. If the fellow must make a generalization, he needn't suggest that the forms of property lacked solidity. I don't worry, replied Mr. Prefond smiling. We're born, and we die. After-world starving. I feed a small lot of babies out in my mother's country. But what's the use? Might as well throw my money in the river. Soames looked at him and turned back towards his goya. He didn't know what the fellow wanted. What shall I make my check for? pursued Mr. Prefond. Five hundred, said Soames shortly. But I don't want you to take it if you don't care for it more than that. That's all right, said Mr. Prefond. I'll be happy to have that picture. He wrote a check with a fountain pen heavily chased with gold. Soames watched the process uneasily. And so on earth had the fellow known that he wanted to sell that picture. Mr. Prefond held out the check. The English are awfully funny about pictures, he said. So are the French. So are my people. They're all awful funny. I don't understand you, said Soames stiffly. It's like uts, said Mr. Prefond enigmatically. Small or large, turning up or down, just a fashion, awful funny. And smiling, he drifted out of the gallery again, blue and solid, like the smoke of his excellent cigar. Soames had taken the check, feeling as if the intrinsic value of ownership had been called in question. He's a cosmopolitan, he thought, watching Prefond emerge from under the veranda with a net, and saunter down the lawn towards the river. The wife saw in the fellow he didn't know, unless it was that he could speak her language. And there passed in Soames what Mr. Prefond would have called a small dot, where the net was not too handsome to be walking with anyone so cosmopolitan. Even at that distance he could see the blue fumes from Prefond's cigar wreath out in the quiet sunlight. At his grey buckskin shoes and his grey hat, the fellow was a dandy. And he could see the quick turn of his wife's head so very straight on her desirable neck and shoulders. That turn of her neck always seemed to him a little too showy and in the queen-of-all-ice-of-a manner, not quite distinguished. He watched them walk along the path at the bottom of the garden. A young man in fennels joined them down there, a Sunday caller no doubt from up the river. He went back to his goya. He was still staring at that replica of fleur and worrying over Winifred's news. When his wife's voice said, Mr. Michael Monde to Soames, you invited him to see your pictures. There was the cheerful young man of the gallery off Cork Street. Ah, turned up you see, sir. I live only four miles from Pangbourne. Jolly day, isn't it? Confronted with the results of his expansiveness, Soames scrutinized his visitor. The young man's mouth was excessively large and curly. He seemed always grinning. Why didn't he grow the rest of those idiotic little moustaches which made him look like a music hall buffoon? What on earth were young men about deliberately luring their class with these toothbrushes or little slug whiskers? Ah, affected young idiots. In other respects he was presentable at his flannels very clean. Happy to see you, he said. The young man who had been turning his head from side to side became transfixed. I say, he said, some picture. Soames saw with mixed sensations that he had addressed the remark to the Goya copy. Yes, he said, Riley, that's not a Goya. It's a copy. I had it painted by my daughter. I thought I knew the face, sir. Is he here? The frankness of his interest almost disarmed Soames. She'll be in after tea, he said. Shall we go round the pictures? And Soames began that round which never tired him. He had not anticipated much intelligence from one who had mistaken a copy for an original. But as they passed from section to section period to period he was startled by the young man's frank and relevant remarks. Natively shrewd himself and even sensuous beneath his mask, Soames had not spent thirty-eight years over his one hobby without knowing something more about pictures than their market values. He was, as it were, the missing link between the artist and the commercial public. Art for art's sake and all that, of course, was Kant. But aesthetics and good taste were necessary. The appreciation of enough persons of good taste was what gave a work of art its permanent market value, though in other words made it a work of art. There was no real cleavage. And he was sufficiently accustomed to sheep-like and unseeing visitors to be intrigued by one who did not hesitate to say of Moeva, good old haystacks, or of James Marris, didn't he just paint and paper him? Matthew was the real swell, sir. You could dig into his services. It was after the young man had whistled before a whistler with the words, Do you think he ever really saw a naked woman, sir? That seems remarked. What are you, Mr. Mont, if I may ask? Aye, sir. I was going to be a painter, but the war not that. Then in the trenches, you know, even with the stock exchange, snug and warm and just noisy enough. But the peace-knock that shares Seymourth, don't they? I've only been demombed about here. What do you recommend, sir? Have you got money? Well, answered the young man. I've got a father. I kept him alive during the war, so he's bound to keep me alive now. Of course, there's a question whether he ought to be allowed to hang on to his property. Seymourth pale and defensive. Smiled. The old man has fits when I tell him he may have to yet work. He's got land, you know. It's a fatal disease. This is my real gore, said Seymourth dryly. By George, he was a swell. I saw a gore in Munich once that bulb me middle-stub. Most evil-looking old woman in the most gorgeous lace. He made no compromise with the public taste. That old boy was some explosive. He must have smashed up a lot of convention in his day. Couldn't he just paint? He makes Velasquez stiff, don't you think? I have no Velasquez, said Seymourth. The young man stirred. No, he said. Any nations or profiteers can afford him, I suppose. I say, why shouldn't all the bankrupt nations sell their Velasquez's titions and other swells to the profiteers by force? And then pass a law that anyone who holds a picture by an old master, C. Schedule, must hang it in a public gallery. There seemed something in that. Shall we go down to T., said Seymourth? The young man's ears seemed to droop on his skull. He's not dense, thought Seymourth, following him off the premises. Goya, with his satiric and surpassing precision his original line and the daring of his light and shade, could have reproduced to aberration the group assembled round Annette's tea-tree in the ingledook below. He alone, perhaps, of painters would have done justice to the sunlight filtering through a screen of creeper, to the lovely pallor of brass, the old cut glasses, the thin slices of lemon in pale amber tea, justice to Annette in her black lacy dress. There was something of the fair Spaniard in her beauty. They lacked the spirit duality of that rare type. To Winifred's grey-haired, corseted subtlety. To soams of a certain grey and flat-cheeked distinction to the vivacious Michael Montt pointed in ear and eye, to images dark, luscious of glance, growing a little stout. To Prosper performed with this expressionist who would say, Well, Mr. Goya, what's the use of paint in this small party? Finally, to Jack Cardigan with his shining stare and tanned sanguinity betraying the moving principal. I'm English, and I live to be fit. Curious, by the way, that Imogen, who as a girl had declared solemnly one day at Timothy's that she would never marry a good man they were so dull, should have married Jack Cardigan in whom health had so destroyed all traces of original sin that she might have retired to rest with ten thousand other Englishmen without knowing the difference from the one she had chosen to repose beside. Oh, she would say of him in her abusing way. Jack keeps himself so fiefly fit he's never had a day's illness in his life. He went right through the war without a finger ache. You really can't imagine how fit he is. Indeed, he was so fit that he couldn't see when she was flirting which was such a comfort in a way. All the same she was quite fond of him so far as one could be of a sports machine and of the two little Cardigans made after his pattern. Her eyes just then were comparing him maliciously with Prosper performed. There was no small sport or game which Mr. Profond had not played at too skittles to tarp on fishing and worn out every one. Imogen would sometimes wish that they'd worn out Jack who continued to play at them and talk of them with the simple zeal of a schoolgirl learning hockey. At the age of great Uncle Timothy she well knew that Jack would be playing carpet-golf in her bedroom and wiping somebody's eye. He was telling them now how he had pipped the pro at Jarminfella playing a very good game this morning and how you pulled down to Caverchum since lunch and trying to incite Prosper performed to play him a set of tennis after tea. Do him good, keep him fit. But what is the use of keep him fit? said Mr. Profond. Ah, yes, sir. Merman Michael Mondeau, what do you keep fit for? Jack cried Imogen enchanted what do you keep fit for? Jack Cardigan stared with all his health the questions were like the buzz of a mosquito and he put up his hands to wipe them away during the war of course he kept fit to kill Germans now that it was over he either did not know or shrank in delicacy from explanation of his moving principal. But he's right said Mr. Profond unexpectedly there's nothing left but to keep him fit the saying too deep for Sunday afternoon we have passed unanswered but for the mercurial nature of young Mondeau good, he cried that's the great discovery of the war we all thought we were progressing now we know we're only changing for the worse said Mr. Profond genuinely are you a cheerful Prosper? murmured Annette you come and play tennis said Jack Cardigan you've got the hump I'll soon take that down I hit the ball about sir at this junction Somes rose ruffled in that deep instinct of preparation for the future which guided his existence when Fleur comes he heard Jack Cardigan say ah and why didn't she come he passed through drawing-room hall and porch out onto the drive and stood there listening for the car the ball was still and sundefied the lilacs in full flower scented the air there were white clouds like the feathers of ducks gilded by the sunlight memory of the day when Fleur was born and he had waited in such agony with her life and her mother's balanced in his hands came to him sharply he had saved her then to be the flower of his life and now trouble he did not like the look of things a blackbird broke in on his reverie with an evening song a great big fellow up in that acacia tree Somes had taken quite an interest in his birds of late years he and Fleur would walk round and watch them her eyes were sharp as needles and she knew every nest he saw her dog a retriever lying on the drive in a patch of sunlight and called to him hello old fellow, waiting for her too? the dog came slowly with a grudging tail and Somes mechanically laid a pat on its head the dog the bird the lilac all were part of Fleur for him no more, no less too fond of her he thought too fond he was like a man uninsured with his ships at sea uninsured again as if in that other time so long ago when he would wander dumb and jealous in the wilderness of London longing for that woman his first wife the mother of this infernal boy ah, there was the car at last it drew up it had luggage but no Fleur Miss Fleur is walking up, sir by the towing-path walking on those miles Somes stared the man's face had the beginning of a smile on it what was he grinning at? and very quickly he turned saying, all right, Somes and went into the house he mounted to the picture gallery once more he had from there a view of the riverbank and stood with his eyes fixed on it oblivious of the fact that it would be an hour at least before her figure showed there walking up and that fellow's grin the boy he turned abruptly from the window he couldn't spy on her if she wanted to keep things from him she must he could not spy on her his heart felt empty a bitterness mounted from it into his very mouth the staccato shouts of Jack Cardigan pursuing the ball the laugh of young Mont rose in the stillness and came in he hoped they were making that chap-performed run and the girl in La Vendimia stood with her armor kimbo and her dreamy eyes looking past him I've done all I could for you he thought since you were no higher than my knee you aren't going to to hurt me are you but the Goya copy answered not brilliant in colour just beginning to tone down there's no real life in it thought soams why doesn't she come end of part one chapter nine recording by Simon