"What am I to do if you won't, Father?" she said very softly.
"I'll do anything for your happiness," said Soanies; "but this isn't for
your happiness."
"Oh! it is; it is!"
"It'll only stir things up," he said grimly.
"But they are stirred up. The thing is to quiet them. To make her feel
that this is just our lives, and has nothing to do with yours or hers.
You can do it, Father, I know you can."
"You know a great deal, then," was Soames' glum answer.
"If you will, Jon and I will wait a year--two years if you like."
"It seems to me," murmured Soames, "that you care nothing about what I
feel."
Fleur pressed his hand against her cheek.
"I do, darling. But you wouldn't like me to be awfully miserable."
How she wheedled to get her ends! And trying with all his might to think
she really cared for him--he was not sure--not sure. All she cared for
was this boy! Why should he help her to get this boy, who was killing
her affection for himself? Why should he? By the laws of the Forsytes it
was foolish! There was nothing to be had out of it--nothing! To give her
to that boy! To pass her into the enemy's camp, under the influence of
the woman who had injured him so deeply! Slowly--inevitably--he would
lose this flower of his life! And suddenly he was conscious that his
hand was wet. His heart gave a little painful jump. He couldn't bear her
to cry. He put his other hand quickly over hers, and a tear dropped on
that, too. He couldn't go on like this! "Well, well," he said, "I'll
think it over, and do what I can. Come, come!" If she must have it for
her happiness--she must; he couldn't refuse to help her. And lest she
should begin to thank him he got out of his chair and went up to the
piano-player--making that noise! It ran down, as he reached it, with
a faint buzz. That musical box of his nursery days: "The Harmonious
Blacksmith," "Glorious Port"--the thing had always made him miserable
when his mother set it going on Sunday afternoons. Here it was
again--the same thing, only larger, more expensive, and now it played
"The Wild, Wild Women," and "The Policeman's Holiday," and he was no
longer in black velvet with a sky blue collar. 'Profond's right,' he
thought, 'there's nothing in it! We're all progressing to the grave!'
And with that surprising mental comment he walked out.
He did not see Fleur again that night. But, at breakfast, her eyes
followed him about with an appeal he could not escape--not that he
intended to try. No! He had made up his mind to the nerve-racking
business. He would go to Robin Hill--to that house of memories. Pleasant
memory--the last! Of going down to keep that boy's father and Irene
apart by threatening divorce. He had often thought, since, that it had
clinched their union. And, now, he was going to clinch the union of that
boy with his girl. 'I don't know what I've done,' he thought, 'to have
such things thrust on me!' He went up by train and down by train, and
from the station walked by the long rising lane, still very much as he
remembered it over thirty years ago. Funny--so near London! Some one
evidently was holding on to the land there. This speculation soothed
him, moving between the high hedges slowly, so as not to get overheated,
though the day was chill enough. After all was said and done there was
something real about land, it didn't shift. Land, and good pictures! The
values might fluctuate a bit, but on the whole they were always going
up--worth holding on to, in a world where there was such a lot of
unreality, cheap building, changing fashions, such a "Here to-day and
gone to-morrow" spirit. The French were right, perhaps, with their
peasant proprietorship, though he had no opinion of the French. One's
bit of land! Something solid in it! He had heard peasant proprietors
described as a pig-headed lot; had heard young Mont call his father a
pigheaded Morning Poster--disrespectful young devil. Well, there were
worse things than being pig-headed or reading the Morning Post. There
was Profond and his tribe, and all these Labour chaps, and loud-mouthed
politicians and 'wild, wild women'! A lot of worse things! And suddenly
Soames became conscious of feeling weak, and hot, and shaky. Sheer
nerves at the meeting before him! As Aunt Juley might have said--quoting
"Superior Dosset"--his nerves were "in a proper fautigue." He could see
the house now among its trees, the house he had watched being built,
intending it for himself and this woman, who, by such strange fate,
had lived in it with another after all! He began to think of Dumetrius,
Local Loans, and other forms of investment. He could not afford to meet
her with his nerves all shaking; he who represented the Day of Judgment
for her on earth as it was in heaven; he, legal ownership, personified,
meeting lawless beauty, incarnate. His dignity demanded impassivity
during this embassy designed to link their offspring, who, if she had
behaved herself, would have been brother and sister. That wretched tune,
"The Wild, Wild Women," kept running in his head, perversely, for tunes
did not run there as a rule. Passing the poplars in front of the house,
he thought: 'How they've grown; I had them planted!' A maid answered his
ring.