"Oh!"
"I came on a photo of her; it was in a frame behind a photo of me. Of
course, if he was very fond of her, that would have made him pretty mad,
wouldn't it?"
Jon thought for a minute. "Not if she loved my father best."
"But suppose they were engaged?"
"If we were engaged, and you found you loved somebody better, I might go
cracked, but I shouldn't grudge it you."
"I should. You mustn't ever do that with me, Jon.
"My God! Not much!"
"I don't believe that he's ever really cared for my mother."
Jon was silent. Val's words--the two past masters in the Club!
"You see, we don't know," went on Fleur; "it may have been a great
shock. She may have behaved badly to him. People do."
"My mother wouldn't."
Fleur shrugged her shoulders. "I don't think we know much about our
fathers and mothers. We just see them in the light of the way they
treat us; but they've treated other people, you know, before we were
born-plenty, I expect. You see, they're both old. Look at your father,
with three separate families!"
"Isn't there any place," cried Jon, "in all this beastly London where we
can be alone?"
"Only a taxi."
"Let's get one, then."
When they were installed, Fleur asked suddenly: "Are you going back to
Robin Hill? I should like to see where you live, Jon. I'm staying
with my aunt for the night, but I could get back in time for dinner. I
wouldn't come to the house, of course."
Jon gazed at her enraptured.
"Splendid! I can show it you from the copse, we shan't meet anybody.
There's a train at four."
The god of property and his Forsytes great and small, leisured,
official, commercial, or professional, like the working classes,
still worked their seven hours a day, so that those two of the fourth
generation travelled down to Robin Hill in an empty first-class
carriage, dusty and sun-warmed, of that too early train. They travelled
in blissful silence, holding each other's hands.
At the station they saw no one except porters, and a villager or two
unknown to Jon, and walked out up the lane, which smelled of dust and
honeysuckle.
For Jon--sure of her now, and without separation before him--it was a
miraculous dawdle, more wonderful than those on the Downs, or along the
river Thames. It was love-in-a-mist--one of those illumined pages of
Life, where every word and smile, and every light touch they gave each
other were as little gold and red and blue butterflies and flowers
and birds scrolled in among the text--a happy communing, without
afterthought, which lasted thirty-seven minutes. They reached the
coppice at the milking hour. Jon would not take her as far as the
farmyard; only to where she could see the field leading up to the
gardens, and the house beyond. They turned in among the larches, and
suddenly, at the winding of the path, came on Irene, sitting on an old
log seat.