Jon said quickly: “What’s the matter between him and my father?”
“Stable secret, Jon. Take my advice, and bottle up. You’ll do no good by knowing. Have a liqueur?”
Jon shook his head.
“I hate the way people keep things from one,” he muttered, “and then sneer at one for being green.”
“Well, you can ask Holly. If SHE won’t tell you, you’ll believe it’s for your own good, I suppose.”
Jon got up. “I must go now; thanks awfully for the lunch.”
Val smiled up at him, half-sorry and yet amused. The boy looked so upset.
“All right! See you on Friday.”
“I don’t know,” murmured Jon.
And he did not. This conspiracy of silence made him desperate. It was humiliating to be treated like a child. He retraced his moody steps to Stratton Street. But he would go to her Club now, and find out the worst. To his inquiry the reply was that Miss Forsyte was not in the Club. She might be in perhaps later. She was often in on Monday — they could not say. Jon said he would call again, and, crossing into the Green Park, flung himself down under a tree. The sun was bright, and a breeze fluttered the leaves of the young lime-tree beneath which he lay; but his heart ached. Such darkness seemed gathered round his happiness. He heard Big Ben chime “Three” above the traffic. The sound moved something in him, and taking out a piece of paper, he began to scribble on it with a pencil. He had jotted a stanza, and was searching the grass for another verse, when something hard touched his shoulder — a green parasol. There above him stood Fleur!
“They told me you’d been, and were coming back. So I thought you might be out here; and you are — it’s rather wonderful!”
“Oh, Fleur! I thought you’d have forgotten me.”
“When I told you that I shouldn’t!”
Jon seized her arm.
“It’s too much luck! Let’s get away from this side.”
He almost dragged her on through that too thoughtfully regulated Park, to find some cover where they could sit and hold each other’s hands.
“Hasn’t anybody cut in?” he said, gazing round at her lashes, in suspense above her cheeks.
“There IS a young idiot, but he doesn’t count.”
Jon felt a twitch of compassion for the — young idiot.
“You know I’ve had sunstroke, I didn’t tell you.”
“Really! Was it interesting?”
“No. Mother was an angel. Has anything happened to YOU?”
“Nothing. Except that I think I’ve found out what’s wrong between our families, Jon.”
His heart began beating very fast.
“I believe my father wanted to marry your mother, and your father got her instead.”
“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, unlike 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-ina-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 twenty-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.
There are various kinds of shocks: to the vertebrae; to the nerves; to moral sensibility; and, more potent and permanent, to personal dignity. This last was the shock Jon received, coming thus on his mother. He became suddenly conscious that he was doing an indelicate thing. To have brought Fleur down openly — yes! But to sneak her in like this! Consumed with shame, he put on a front as brazen as his nature would permit.
Fleur was smiling a little defiantly; his mother’s startled face was changing quickly to the impersonal and gracious. It was she who uttered the first words:
“I’m very glad to see you. It was nice of Jon to think of bringing you down to us.”
“We weren’t coming to the house,” Jon blurted out. “I just wanted Fleur to see where I lived.”
His mother said quietly: “Won’t you come up and have tea?”
Feeling that he had but aggravated his breach of breeding, he heard Fleur answer: “Thanks very much; I have to get back to dinner. I met Jon by accident, and we thought it would be rather jolly just to see his home.”
How self-possessed she was!
“Of course; but you MUST have tea. We’ll send you down to the station. My husband will enjoy seeing you.”
The expression of his mother’s eyes, resting on him for a moment, cast Jon down level with the ground — a true worm. Then she led on, and Fleur followed her. He felt like a child, trailing after those two, who were talking so easily about Spain and Wansdon, and the house up there beyond the trees and the grassy slope. He watched the fencing of their eyes, taking each other in-the two beings he loved most in the world.
He could see his father sitting under the oak-tree; and suffered in advance all the loss of caste he must go through in the eyes of that tranquil figure, with his knees crossed, thin, old, and elegant; already he could feel the faint irony which would come into his voice and smile.
“This is Fleur Forsyte, Jolyon; Jon brought her down to see the house. Let’s have tea at once — she has to catch a train. Jon, tell them, dear, and telephone to the Dragon for a car.”
To leave her alone with them was strange, and yet, as no doubt his mother had foreseen, the least of evils at the moment; so he ran up into the house. Now he would not see Fleur alone again — not for a minute, and they had arranged no further meeting! When he returned under cover of the maids and teapots, there was not a trace of awkwardness beneath the tree; it was all within himself, but not the less for that. They were talking of the Gallery off Cork Street.