To Let

Fleur slipped her little finger into his palm:

“You have no instinct, Jon; you MUST leave things to me. It’s serious about our people. We’ve simply got to be secret at present, if we want to be together.” The door was opened, and she added loudly: “You ARE a duffer, Jon.”

Something turned over within Jon; he could not bear this subterfuge about a feeling so natural, so overwhelming, and so sweet.

On Friday night about eleven he had packed his bag, and was leaning out of his window, half miserable and half lost in a dream of Paddington station, when he heard a tiny sound, as of a finger-nail tapping on his door. He rushed to it and listened. Again the sound. It WAS a nail. He opened. Oh! What a lovely thing came in!

“I wanted to show you my fancy dress,” it said, and struck an attitude at the foot of his bed. Jon drew a long breath and leaned against the door. The apparition wore white muslin on its head, a fichu round its bare neck over a wine-coloured dress, fulled out below its slender waist. It held one arm akimbo, and the other raised right-angled holding a fan which touched its head.

“This ought to be a basket of grapes,” it whispered, “but I haven’t got it here. It’s my Goya dress. And this is the attitude in the picture. Do you like it?”

“It’s a dream.”

The apparition pirouetted. “Touch it, and see.”

Jon knelt down and took the skirt reverently.

“Grape colour,” came the whisper, “all grapes—La Vendimia—the vintage.”

Jon’s fingers scarcely touched each side of the waist; he looked up, with adoring eyes.

“Oh! Jon,” it whispered; bent, kissed his forehead, pirouetted again, and,—gliding out, was gone.

Jon stayed on his knees, and his head fell forward against the bed. How long he stayed like that he did not know. The little noises of the tapping nail, the feet, the skirts rustling—as in a dream—went on about him; and before his closed eyes the figure stood and smiled and whispered, a faint perfume of narcissus lingering in the air. And his forehead where it had been kissed had a little cool place between the brows, like the imprint of a flower. Love filled his soul, that love of boy for girl which knows so little, hopes so much, would not brush the down off for the world, and must become in time a fragrant memory—a searing passion—a humdrum mateship—or, once in many times, vintage full and sweet with sunset colour on the grapes.

Enough has been said about Jon Forsyte here and in another place to show what long marches lay between him and his great-great-grandfather, the first Jolyon, in Dorset down by the sea. Jon was sensitive as a girl, more sensitive than nine out of ten girls of the day; imaginative as one of his half-sister June’s “lame duck” painters; affectionate as a son of his father and his mother naturally would be. And yet, in his i

“So you’ve had our little friend of the confectioner’s there, Jon. What is she like on second thoughts?”

With relief, and a high colour, Jon answered:

“Oh! awfully jolly, Mum.”

Her arm pressed his.

Jon had never loved her so much as in that minute which seemed to falsify Fleur’s fears and to release his soul. He turned to look at her, but something in her smiling face—something which only he perhaps would have caught—stopped the words bubbling up in him. Could fear go with a smile? If so, there was fear in her face. And out of Jon tumbled quite other words, about farming, Holly, and the Downs. Talking fast, he waited for her to come back to Fleur. But she did not. Nor did his father mention her, though of course he, too, must know. What deprivation, and killing of reality was in this silence about Fleur—when he was so full of her, when his mother was so full of Jon, and his father so full of his mother! And so the trio spent the evening of that Saturday.

After di

When he went up to bed his mother came into his room. She stood at the window, and said:

“Those cypresses your grandfather planted down there have done wonderfully. I always think they look beautiful under a dropping moon. I wish you had known your grandfather, Jon.”

“Were you married to Father, when he was alive?” asked Jon suddenly.

“No, dear; he died in ’92—very old—eighty-five, I think.”

“Is Father like him?”

“A little, but more subtle, and not quite so solid.”

“I know, from Grandfather’s portrait; who painted that?”

“One of June’s ‘lame ducks.’ But it’s quite good.”

Jon slipped his hand through his Mother’s arm. “Tell me about the family quarrel, Mum.”

He felt her arm quivering. “No, dear; that’s for your father some day, if he thinks fit.”

“Then it WAS serious,” said Jon, with a catch in his breath.

“Yes.” And there was a silence, during which neither knew whether the arm or the hand within it were quivering most.

“Some people,” said Irene softly, “think the moon on her back is evil; to me she’s always lovely. Look at those cypress shadows! Jon, Father says we may go to Italy, you and I, for two months. Would you like?”

Jon took his hand from under her arm; his sensation was so sharp and so confused. Italy with his Mother! A fortnight ago it would have been perfection; now it filled him with dismay; he felt that the sudden suggestion had to do with Fleur. He stammered out:

“Oh! yes; only—I don’t know. Ought I—now I’ve just begun? I’d like to think it over.”

Her voice answered, cool and gentle:

“Yes, dear; think it over. But better now than when you’ve begun farming seriously. Italy with you—! It would be nice!”

Jon put his arm round her waist, still slim and firm as a girl’s.

“Do you think you ought to leave Father?” he said feebly, feeling very mean.

“Father suggested it; he thinks you ought to see Italy at least before you settle down to anything.”

The sense of mea

“Good-night, darling. Have a good sleep and think it over. But it would be lovely!”

She pressed him to her so quickly that he did not see her face. Jon stood feeling exactly as he used to when he was a naughty little boy; sore because he was not loving, and because he was justified in his own eyes.