If they steadied down, the age might yet become a golden, or a platinum, age at any rate. Even he might live to see the income tax at half-a-crown. ‘No,’ he thought, confused between his daughter and the age; ‘she mustn’t go throwing her cap over the windmill. It’s short-sighted!’ And, his blood warmed by perambulation, he became convinced that he would not speak to her, but lie low, and trust to that common-sense, of which she surely had her share–oh, yes! ‘Just keep my eyes open, and speak to no one,’ he thought; ‘least said, soonest mended.’
He had come again to the Artillery Memorial; and for the second time he moved around it. No! A bit of a blot–it seemed to him, now–so literal and heavy! Would that great white thing help Consols to rise? Some thing with wings might, after all, have been preferable. Some encouragement to people to take shares or go into domestic service; help, in fact, to make life liveable, instead of reminding them all the time that they had already once been blown to perdition and might again be. Those Artillery fellows–he had read somewhere–loved their guns, and wanted to be reminded of them. But did anybody else love their guns, or want reminder? Not those Artillery fellows would look at this every day outside St. George’s Hospital, but Tom, Dick, Harry, Peter, Gladys, Joan and Marjorie. ‘Mistake!’ thought Soames; ‘and a pretty heavy one. Something sedative, statue of Vulcan, or somebody on a horse; that’s what’s wanted!’ And remembering George III on a horse, he smiled grimly. Anyway, there the thing was, and would have to stay! But it was high time artists went back to nymphs and dolphins, and other evidences of a settled life.
When at lunch Fleur suggested that he would want a day’s law at Mapledurham before she and Kit came down, he again felt there was something behind; but, relieved enough at getting her, he let ‘the sleeping dog’ lie; nor did he mention his visit to Green Street.
“The weather looks settled,” he said. “You want some sun after that canteen. They talk about these ultra-violet rays. Plain sunshine used to be good enough. The doctors’ll be finding something extra-pink before long. If they’d only let things alone!”
“Darling, it amuses them.”
“Re-discovering what our grandmothers knew so well that we’ve forgotten ’em, and calling ’em by fresh names! A thing isn’t any more wholesome to eat, for instance, because they’ve invented the word ‘vitamin.’ Why, your grandfather ate an orange every day of his life, because his old doctor told him to, at the beginning of the last century. Vitamins! Don’t you let Kit get faddy about his food. It’s a long time before he’ll go to school–that’s one comfort. School feeding!”
“Did they feed you so badly, Dad?”
“Badly! How we grow up, I don’t know. We ate out principal meal in twenty minutes, and were playing football ten minutes after. But nobody thought about digestion, then.”
“Isn’t that an argument for thinking of it now?”
“A good digestion,” said Soames, “is the whole secret of life.” And he looked at his daughter. Thank God! SHE wasn’t peaky. So far as he knew, her digestion was excellent. She might fancy herself in love, or out of it; but so long as she was unconscious of her digestion, she would come through. “The thing is to walk as much as you can, in these days of cars,” he added.
“Yes,” said Fleur, “I had a nice walk this morning.”
Was she challenging him over her apple charlotte? If so, he wasn’t going to rise.
“So did I,” he said. “I went all about. We’ll have some golf down there.”
She looked at him for a second, then said a surprising thing:
“Yes, I believe I’m getting middle-aged enough for golf.”
Now what did she mean by that?
Chapter XII.
PRIVATE FEELINGS
On the day of the lunch party and the drive to Robin Hill, Michael really had a Committee, but he also had his private feelings and wanted to get on terms with them. There are natures in which discovery of what threatens happiness perverts to prejudice all judgment of the disturbing object. Michael’s was not such. He had taken a fancy to the young Englishman met at the home of that old American George Washington, partly, indeed, because he WAS English; and, seeing him now seated next to Fleur, – second cousin and first love–he was unable to revise the verdict. The boy had a nice face, and was better-looking than himself; he had attractive hair, a strong chin, straight eyes, and a modest bearing; there was no sense in blinking facts like those. The Free Trade in love, which obtained amongst pleasant people, forbade Michael to apply the cruder principles of Protection even in thoughts. Fortunately, the boy was married to this slim and attractive girl, who looked at one–as Mrs. Val had put it to him–like a guaranteed-pure water-nymph! Michael’s private feelings were therefore more concerned with Fleur than with the young man himself. But hers was a difficult face to read, a twisting brain to follow, a heart hard to get at; and–was Jon Forsyte the reason why? He remembered how in Cork Street this boy’s elderly half-sister–that fly-away little lady, June Forsyte–had blurted out to him that Fleur ought to have married her younger brother–first he had ever heard of it. How painfully it had affected him with its intimation that he played but second fiddle in the life of his beloved! He remembered, too, some cautious and cautionary allusions by “old Forsyte.” Coming from that model of secrecy and suppressed feelings, they, too, had made on Michael a deep and lasting impression, reinforced by his own failure to get at the bottom of Fleur’s heart. He went to his Committee with but half his mind on public matters. What had nipped that early love affair in the bud and given him his chance? Not sudden dislike, lack of health, or lack of money–not relationship, for Mrs. Val Dartie had married her second cousin apparently with everyone’s consent. Michael, it will be seen, had remained quite ignorant of the skeleton in Soames’ cupboard. Such Forsytes as he had met, reticent about family affairs, had never mentioned it; and Fleur had never even spoken of her first love, much less of the reason why it had come to naught. Yet, there must have been some reason; and it was idle to try and understand her present feelings without knowing what it was!
His Committee was on birth control in connection with the Ministry of Health; and, while listening to arguments why he should not support for other people what he practised himself, he was visited by an idea. Why not go and ask Jane Forsyte? He could find her in the telephone book–there could be but one with such a name.
“What do YOU say, Mont?”
“Well, sir, if we won’t export children to the Colonies or speed up emigration somehow, there’s nothing for it but birth control. In the upper and middle classes we’re doing it all the time, and blinking the moral side, if there is one; and I really don’t see how we can insist on a moral side for those who haven’t a quarter of our excuse for having lots of children.”
“My dear Mont,” said the chairman, with a grin, “aren’t you cutting there at the basis of all privilege?”
“Very probably,” said Michael, with an answering grin. “I think, of course, that child emigration is much better, but nobody else does, apparently.”
Everybody knew that ‘young Mont’ had a ‘bee in his bonnet’ about child emigration, and there was little disposition to encourage it to buzz. And, since no one was more aware than Michael of being that crank in politics, one who thought you could not eat your cake and have it, he said no more. Presently, feeling that they would go round and round the mulberry bush for some time yet, and sit on the fence after, he excused himself and went away.
He found the address he wanted: “Miss June Forsyte, Poplar House, Chiswick,” and mounted a Hammersmith ‘bus.
How fast things seemed coming back to the normal! Extraordinarily difficult to upset anything so vast, intricate, and elastic as a nation’s life. The ‘bus swung along among countless vehicles and pedestrian myriads, and Michael realised how firm were those two elements of stability in the modern state, the common need for eating, drinking, and getting about; and the fact that so many people could drive cars. ‘Revolution?’ he thought: ‘There never was a time when it had less chance. Machinery’s dead agin it.’ Machinery belonged to the settled state of things, and every day saw its reinforcement. The unskilled multitude and the Communistic visionaries, their leaders, only had a chance now where machinery and means of communication were still undeveloped, as in Russia. Brains, ability, and technical skill were by nature on the side of capital and individual enterprise, and were gaining ever more power.
“Poplar House” took some finding, and, when found, was a little house supporting a large studio with a north light. It stood, behind two poplar trees, tall, thin, white, like a ghost. A foreign woman opened to him. Yes. Miss Forsyte was in the studio with Mr. Blade! Michael sent up his card, and waited in a draught, extremely ill at ease; for now that he was here he could not imagine why he had come. How to get the information he wanted without seeming to have come for it, passed his comprehension; for it was the sort of knowledge that could only be arrived at by crude questioning.
Finding that he was to go up, he went, perfecting his first lie. On entering the studio, a large room with green-canvassed walls, pictures hung or stacked, the usual dais, a top light half curtained, and some cats, he was conscious of a fluttering movement. A little light lady in flowing green, with short silver hair, had risen from a footstool, and was coming towards him.
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