Awakening To Let | Page 4

July sunlight at five o'clock fell just where the broad stairway turned;
and in that radiant streak little Jon Forsyte stood, blue- linen-suited. His
hair was shining, and his eyes, from beneath a frown, for he was
considering how to go downstairs, this last of innumerable times,
before the car brought his father and mother home. Four at a time, and
five at the bottom? Stale! Down the banisters? But in which fashion?

On his face, feet foremost? Very stale. On his stomach, sideways?
Paltry! On his back, with his arms stretched down on both sides?
Forbidden! Or on his face, head foremost, in a manner unknown as yet
to any but himself? Such was the cause of the frown on the illuminated
face of little Jon....
In that Summer of 1909 the simple souls who even then desired to
simplify the English tongue, had, of course, no cognizance of little Jon,
or they would have claimed him for a disciple. But one can be too
simple in this life, for his real name was Jolyon, and his living father
and dead half-brother had usurped of old the other shortenings, Jo and
Jolly. As a fact little Jon had done his best to conform to convention
and spell himself first Jhon, then John; not till his father had explained
the sheer necessity, had he spelled his name Jon.
Up till now that father had possessed what was left of his heart by the
groom, Bob, who played the concertina, and his nurse "Da," who wore
the violet dress on Sundays, and enjoyed the name of Spraggins in that
private life lived at odd moments even by domestic servants. His
mother had only appeared to him, as it were in dreams, smelling
delicious, smoothing his forehead just before he fell asleep, and
sometimes docking his hair, of a golden brown colour. When he cut his
head open against the nursery fender she was there to be bled over; and
when he had nightmare she would sit on his bed and cuddle his head
against her neck. She was precious but remote, because "Da" was so
near, and there is hardly room for more than one woman at a time in a
man's heart. With his father, too, of course, he had special bonds of
union; for little Jon also meant to be a painter when he grew up--with
the one small difference, that his father painted pictures, and little Jon
intended to paint ceilings and walls, standing on a board between two
step-ladders, in a dirty-white apron, and a lovely smell of whitewash.
His father also took him riding in Richmond Park, on his pony, Mouse,
so-called because it was so-coloured.
Little Jon had been born with a silver spoon in a mouth which was
rather curly and large. He had never heard his father or his mother
speak in an angry voice, either to each other, himself, or anybody else;
the groom, Bob, Cook, Jane, Bella and the other servants, even "Da,"
who alone restrained him in his courses, had special voices when they
talked to him. He was therefore of opinion that the world was a place of

perfect and perpetual gentility and freedom.
A child of 1901, he had come to consciousness when his country, just
over that bad attack of scarlet fever, the Boer War, was preparing for
the Liberal revival of 1906. Coercion was unpopular, parents had
exalted notions of giving their offspring a good time. They spoiled their
rods, spared their children, and anticipated the results with enthusiasm.
In choosing, moreover, for his father an amiable man of fifty-two, who
had already lost an only son, and for his mother a woman of thirty-eight,
whose first and only child he was, little Jon had done well and wisely.
What had saved him from becoming a cross between a lap dog and a
little prig, had been his father's adoration of his mother, for even little
Jon could see that she was not merely just his mother, and that he
played second fiddle to her in his father's heart: What he played in his
mother's heart he knew not yet. As for "Auntie" June, his half-sister
(but so old that she had grown out of the relationship) she loved him, of
course, but was too sudden. His devoted "Da," too, had a Spartan touch.
His bath was cold and his knees were bare; he was not encouraged to
be sorry for himself. As to the vexed question of his education, little
Jon shared the theory of those who considered that children should not
be forced. He rather liked the Mademoiselle who came for two hours
every morning to teach him her language, together with history,
geography and sums; nor were the piano lessons which his mother gave
him