To Let | Page 9

Fleur! He fixed his eyes on the entrance. She was due; but she would
keep him waiting, of course! And suddenly he became aware of a sort
of human breeze--a short, slight form clad in a sea-green djibbah with a
metal belt and a fillet binding unruly red-gold hair all streaked with
grey. She was talking to the Gallery attendants, and something familiar
riveted his gaze--in her eyes, her chin, her hair, her spirit--something
which suggested a thin Skye terrier just before its dinner. Surely June
Forsyte! His cousin June--and coming straight to his recess! She sat
down beside him, deep in thought, took out a tablet, and made a pencil
note. Soames sat unmoving. A confounded thing cousinship!
"Disgusting!" he heard her murmur; then, as if resenting the presence
of an overhearing stranger, she looked at him. The worst had happened.
"Soames!"
Soames turned his head a very little.
"How are YOU?" he said. "Haven't seen you for twenty years."
"No. Whatever made YOU come here?"
"My sins," said Soames. "What stuff!"
"Stuff? Oh, yes--of course; it hasn't ARRIVED yet."
"It never will," said Soames; "it must be making a dead loss."
"Of course it is."
"How d'you know?"
"It's my Gallery."

Soames sniffed from sheer surprise.
"Yours? What on earth makes you run a show like this?"
"I don't treat Art as if it were grocery."
Soames pointed to the Future Town. "Look at that! Who's going to live
in a town like that, or with it on his walls?"
June contemplated the picture for a moment. "It's a vision," she said.
"The deuce!"
There was silence, then June rose. 'Crazy-looking creature!' he thought.
"Well," he said, "you'll find your young stepbrother here with a woman
I used to know. If you take my advice, you'll close this exhibition."
June looked back at him. "Oh! You Forsyte!" she said, and moved on.
About her light, fly-away figure, passing so suddenly away, was a look
of dangerous decisions. Forsyte! Of course, he was a Forsyte! And so
was she! But from the time when, as a mere girl, she brought Bosinney
into his life to wreck it, he had never hit it off with June--and never
would! And here she was, unmarried to this day, owning a Gallery!...
And suddenly it came to Soames how little he knew now of his own
family. The old aunts at Timothy's had been dead so many years; there
was no clearing-house for news. What had they all done in the War?
Young Roger's boy had been wounded, St. John Hayman's second son
killed; young Nicholas' eldest had got an O. B. E., or whatever they
gave them. They had all joined up somehow, he believed. That boy of
Jolyon's and Irene's, he supposed, had been too young; his own
generation, of course, too old, though Giles Hayman had driven a car
for the Red Cross--and Jesse Hayman been a special constable--those
"Dromios" had always been of a sporting type! As for himself, he had
given a motor ambulance, read the papers till he was sick of them,
passed through much anxiety, invested in War Bonds, bought no
clothes, lost seven pounds in weight; he didn't know what more he
could have done at his age. Indeed, it struck him that he and his family

had taken this war very differently to that affair with the Boers, which
had been supposed to tax all the resources of the Empire. In that old
war, of course, his nephew Val Dartie had been wounded, that fellow
Jolyon's first son had died of enteric, "the Dromios" had gone out on
horses, and June had been a nurse; but all that had seemed in the nature
of a portent, while in THIS war everybody had done "their bit," so far
as he could make out, as a matter of course. It seemed to show the
growth of something or other--or perhaps the decline of something else.
Had the Forsytes become less individual, or more Imperial, or less
provincial? Or was it simply that one hated Germans?... Why didn't
Fleur come, so that he could get away? He saw those three return
together from the other room and pass back along the far side of the
screen. The boy was standing before the Juno now. And, suddenly, on
the other side of her, Soames saw--his daughter with eyebrows raised,
as well they might be. He could see her eyes glint sideways at the boy,
and the boy look back at her. Then Irene slipped her hand through his
arm, and drew him on. Soames saw him glancing round, and Fleur
looking after them as the three went out.
A voice said cheerfully: "Bit thick, isn't it, sir?"
The young man who had handed him his handkerchief was again
passing. Soames