Soames left dead silence in the little study. "Thank you for that good

lie," said Jolyon suddenly. "Come out--the air in here is not what it

was!"

In front of a long high southerly wall on which were trained peach-trees

the two walked up and down in silence. Old Jolyon had planted some

cupressus-trees, at intervals, between this grassy terrace and the

dipping meadow full of buttercups and ox-eyed daisies; for twelve years

they had flourished, till their dark spiral shapes had quite a look of

Italy. Birds fluttered softly in the wet shrubbery; the swallows swooped

past, with a steel-blue sheen on their swift little bodies; the grass

felt springy beneath the feet, its green refreshed; butterflies chased

each other. After that painful scene the quiet of Nature was wonderfully

poignant. Under the sun-soaked wall ran a narrow strip of garden-bed

full of mignonette and pansies, and from the bees came a low hum in

which all other sounds were set--the mooing of a cow deprived of her

calf, the calling of a cuckoo from an elm-tree at the bottom of the

meadow. Who would have thought that behind them, within ten miles,

London began--that London of the Forsytes, with its wealth, its misery;

its dirt and noise; its jumbled stone isles of beauty, its grey sea

of hideous brick and stucco? That London which had seen Irene's early

tragedy, and Jolyon's own hard days; that web; that princely workhouse

of the possessive instinct!

And while they walked Jolyon pondered those words: 'I hope you'll treat

him as you treated me.' That would depend on himself. Could he trust

himself? Did Nature permit a Forsyte not to make a slave of what he

adored? Could beauty be confided to him? Or should she not be just a

visitor, coming when she would, possessed for moments which passed, to

return only at her own choosing? 'We are a breed of spoilers!' thought

Jolyon, 'close and greedy; the bloom of life is not safe with us. Let

her come to me as she will, when she will, not at all if she will not.

Let me be just her stand-by, her perching-place; never-never her cage!'

She was the chink of beauty in his dream. Was he to pass through the

curtains now and reach her? Was the rich stuff of many possessions,

the close encircling fabric of the possessive instinct walling in that

little black figure of himself, and Soames--was it to be rent so that

he could pass through into his vision, find there something not of the

senses only? 'Let me,' he thought, 'ah! let me only know how not to

grasp and destroy!'




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