"Thanks very much; I have to get back to dinner. I met Jon by accident, and we thought it would be rather jolly just to see his home."How self-possessed she was!
"Of course; but you must have tea. We'll send you down to the station. My husband will enjoy seeing you."The expression of his mother's eyes, resting on him for a moment, cast Jon down level with the ground--a true worm. Then she led on, and Fleur followed her. He felt like a child, trailing after those two, who were talking so easily about Spain and Wansdon, and the house up there beyond the trees and the grassy slope. He watched the fencing of their eyes, taking each other in--the two beings he loved most in the world.
He could see his father sitting under the oaktree; and suffered in advance all the loss of caste he must go through in the eyes of that tranquil figure, with his knees crossed, thin, old, and elegant;already he could feel the faint irony which would come into his voice and smile.
"This is Fleur Forsyte, Jolyon; Jon brought her down to see the house. Let's have tea at once--she has to catch a train. Jon, tell them, dear, and telephone to the Dragon for a car."To leave her alone with them was strange, and yet, as no doubt his mother had foreseen, the least of evils at the moment; so he ran up into the house. Now he would not see Fleur alone again--not for a minute, and they had arranged no further meeting! When he returned under cover of the maids and teapots, there was not a trace of awkwardness beneath the tree; it was all within himself, but not the less for that. They were talking of the Gallery off Cork Street.
"We back numbers," his father was saying, "are awfully anxious to find out why we can't appreciate the new stuff; you and Jon must tell us.""It's supposed to be satiric, isn't it?" said Fleur.
He saw his father's smile.
"Satiric? Oh! I think it's more than that. What do you say, Jon?""I don't know at all," stammered Jon. His father's face had a sudden grimness.
"The young are tired of us, our gods and our ideals. Off with their heads, they say--smash their idols! And let's get back to-nothing!
And, by Jove, they've done it! Jon's a poet. He'll be going in, too, and stamping on what's left of us. Property, beauty, sentiment--all smoke. We mustn't own anything nowadays, not even our feelings.
They stand in the way of--Nothing."
Jon listened, bewildered, almost outraged by his father's words, behind which he felt a meaning that he could not reach. He didn't want to stamp on anything!
"Nothing's the god of to-day," continued Jolyon; "we're back where the Russians were sixty years ago, when they started Nihilism.""No, Dad," cried Jon suddenly, "we only want to live, and we don't know how, because of the Past--that's all!""By George!" said Jolyon, "that's profound, Jon. Is it your own?
The Past! Old ownerships, old passions, and their aftermath. Let's have cigarettes."Conscious that his mother had lifted her hand to her lips, quickly, as if to hush something, Jon handed the cigarettes. He lighted his father's and Fleur's, then one for himself. Had he taken the knock that Val had spoken of? The smoke was blue when he had not puffed, grey when he had; he liked the sensation in his nose, and the sense of equality it gave him. He was glad no one said: "So you've begun!"He felt less young.
Fleur looked at her watch, and rose. His mother went with her into the house. Jon stayed with his father, puffing at the cigarette.
"See her into the car, old man," said Jolyon; "and when she's gone, ask your mother to come back to me."Jon went. He waited in the hall. He saw her into the car. There was no chance for any word; hardly for a pressure of the hand. He waited all that evening for something to be said to him. Nothing was said. Nothing might have happened. He went up to bed, and in the mirror on his dressing-table met himself. He did not speak, nor did the image; but both looked as if they thought the more.
IV
IN GREEN STREET
Uncertain whether the impression that Prosper Profond was dangerous should be traced to his attempt to give Val the Mayfly filly; to a remark of Fleur's: "He's like the hosts of Midian--he prowls and prowls around"; to his preposterous inquiry of Jack Cardigan: "What's the use of keepin' fit?" or, more simply, to the fact that he was a foreigner, or alien as it was now called. Certain, that Annette was looking particularly handsome, and that Soames--had sold him a Gauguin and then torn up the cheque, so that Monsieur Profond himself had said: "I didn't get that small picture I bought from Mr.
Forsyde."
However suspiciously regarded, he still frequented Winifred's evergreen little house in Green Street, with a good-natured obtuseness which no one mistook for naiv ete, a word hardly applicable to Monsieur Prosper Profond. Winifred still found him "amusing," and would write him little notes saying: "Come and have a 'jolly' with us"--it was breath of life to her to keep up with the phrases of the day.