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tomato-colored
blobs on it, and nothing else, so far as Soames could see from where he
sat. He looked at his catalogue: "No. 32--'The Future Town'--Paul
Post." 'I suppose that's satiric too,' he thought. 'What a thing!' But his
second impulse was more cautious. It did not do to condemn hurriedly.
There had been those stripey, streaky creations of Monet's, which had
turned out such trumps; and then the stippled school; and Gauguin.
Why, even since the Post-Impressionists there had been one or two
painters not to be sneezed at. During the thirty-eight years of his
connoisseur's life, indeed, he had marked so many "movements," seen
the tides of taste and technique so ebb and flow, that there was really no
telling anything except that there was money to be made out of every
change of fashion. This too might quite well be a case where one must
subdue primordial instinct, or lose the market. He got up and stood
before the picture, trying hard to see it with the eyes of other people.
Above the tomato blobs was what he took to be a sunset, till some one
passing said: "He's got the airplanes wonderfully, don't you think!"
Below the tomato blobs was a band of white with vertical black stripes,
to which he could assign no meaning whatever, till some one else came
by, murmuring: "What expression he gets with his foreground!"
Expression? Of what? Soames went back to his seat. The thing was
"rich," as his father would have said, and he wouldn't give a damn for it.
Expression! Ah! they were all Expressionists now, he had heard, on the
Continent. So it was coming here too, was it? He remembered the first
wave of influenza in 1887--or 8--hatched in China, so they said. He
wondered where this--this Expressionism--had been hatched. The thing
was a regular disease!

He had become conscious of a woman and a youth standing between
him and the "Future Town." Their backs were turned; but very
suddenly Soames put his catalogue before his face, and drawing his hat
forward, gazed through the slit between. No mistaking that back,
elegant as ever though the hair above had gone grey. Irene! His
divorced wife--Irene! And this, no doubt, was her son--by that fellow
Jolyon Forsyte--their boy, six months older than his own girl! And
mumbling over in his mind the bitter days of his divorce, he rose to get
out of sight, but quickly sat down again. She had turned her head to
speak to her boy; her profile was still so youthful that it made her grey
hair seem powdery, as if fancy- dressed; and her lips were smiling as
Soames, first possessor of them, had never seen them smile.
Grudgingly he admitted her still beautiful, and in figure almost as
young as ever. And how that boy smiled back at her! Emotion squeezed
Soames' heart. The sight infringed his sense of justice. He grudged her
that boy's smile-- it went beyond what Fleur gave him, and it was
undeserved. Their son might have been his son; Fleur might have been
her daughter, if she had kept straight! He lowered his catalogue. If she
saw him, all the better! A reminder of her conduct in the presence of
her son, who probably knew nothing of it, would be a salutary touch
from the finger of that Nemesis which surely must soon or late visit her!
Then, half-conscious that such a thought was extravagant for a Forsyte
of his age, Soames took out his watch. Past four! Fleur was late. She
had gone to his niece Imogen Cardigan's, and there they would keep
her smoking cigarettes and gossiping, and that. He heard the boy laugh,
and say eagerly: "I say, Mum, is this one of Auntie June's lame ducks?"
"Paul Post--I believe it is, darling."
The word produced a little shock in Soames; he had never heard her use
it. And then she saw him. His eyes must have had in them something of
George Forsyte's sardonic look; for her gloved hand crisped the folds of
her frock, her eyebrows rose, her face went stony. She moved on.
"It IS a caution," said the boy, catching her arm again.
Soames stared after them. That boy was good-looking, with a Forsyte
chin, and eyes deep-grey, deep in; but with something sunny, like a

glass of old sherry spilled over him; his smile perhaps, his hair. Better
than they deserved--those two! They passed from his view into the next
room, and Soames continued to regard the Future Town, but saw it not.
A little smile snarled up his lips. He was despising the vehemence of
his own feelings after all these years. Ghosts! And yet as one grew
old--was there anything but what was ghost-like left? Yes, there was