The Forsyte Saga - Volume 3

"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 Jon up the

hill. They had a long talk, sitting above an old chalk-pit grown over

with brambles and goosepenny. Milkwort and liverwort starred the green

slope, the larks sang, and thrushes in the brake, and now and then a

gull flighting inland 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.

Jon, who had fallen silent, said rather suddenly:

"I say, this is wonderful! There's no fat on it at all. Gull's flight

and sheep-bells."

"'Gull's flight and sheep-bells'! You're a poet, my dear!"

Jon 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," Holly murmured, "I've been married nineteen years. I only

wrote verses when I wanted to be."

"Oh!" said Jon, and turned over on his face: the one cheek she could see

was a charming colour. Was Jon "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 Monday he would begin his farming.

And she smiled. Was it Burns who followed the plough, or only Piers

Plowman? 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 Hatchus and Bumphards; and quite good--oh!

quite; much better than she had been herself! But then poetry 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 Jon except anything of real importance. Holly parted from him

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 kill 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?