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A voice said cheerfully: "Bit thick, isn't it, sir?" The young man who had handed him his handkerchief was again passing. Soames nodded. "I don't know what we're coming to." "Oh! That's all right, sir," answered the young man cheerfully; "they don't either." Fleur's voice said, precisely as if he had been keeping her waiting: "Hallo, Father! There you are!"
Fleur's wisdom in refusing to write to him was profound, for he reached each new place entirely without hope or fever, and could concentrate immediate attention on the donkeys and tumbling bells, the priests, patios, beggars, children, crowing cocks, sombreros, cactus-hedges, old high white villages, goats, olive-trees, greening plains, singing birds in tiny cages, watersellers, sunsets, melons, mules, great churches, pictures, and swimming grey-brown mountains of a fascinating land.
For the same reason, all that had been told Fleur was: "We've got a youngster staying with us." The two yearlings, as Val called them in his thoughts, met therefore in a manner which for unpreparedness left nothing to be desired. They were thus introduced by Holly: "This is Jon, my little brother; Fleur's a cousin of ours, Jon."
Dartie," and saw that there was no longer any empty place. That fellow was sitting between Annette and Imogen. Soames ate steadily on, with an occasional word to Maud and Winifred. Conversation buzzed around him. He heard the voice of Profond say: "I think you're mistaken, Mrs. Forsyde; I'll I'll bet Miss Forsyde agrees with me." "In what?" came Fleur's clear voice across the table.
Fleur's father's first wife had been very foolish. There had been a young man who had got run over, and she had left Fleur's father. Then, years after, when it might all have come right again, she had taken up with their cousin Jolyon; and, of course, her father had been obliged to have a divorce. Nobody remembered anything of it now, except just the family.
He caught up the letter and read on again: "horror and aversion-alive in her to-day.... your children.... grandchildren.... of a man who once owned your mother as a man might own a slave...." He got up from his bed. This cruel shadowy past, lurking there to murder his love and Fleur's, was true, or his father could never have written it.
"He's never interfered, and he's always seemed to understand. I've not forgotten how he let me go out to South Africa in the Boer War when I was in love with Val." "That was before he married Mother, wasn't it?" said Jon suddenly. "Yes. Why?" "Oh! nothing. Only, wasn't she engaged to Fleur's father first?" Holly put down the spoon she was using, and raised her eyes. Her stare was circumspect.
"By George!" said Jolyon, "that's profound, Jon. Is it your own? The Past! Old ownerships, old passions, and their aftermath. Let's have cigarettes." Conscious that his mother had lifted her hand to her lips, quickly, as if to hush something, Jon handed the cigarettes. He lighted his father's and Fleur's, then one for himself. Had he taken the knock that Val had spoken of?
Le Diable! which is the first, and positive degree, is generally used upon ordinary emotions of the mind, where small things only fall out contrary to your expectations; such as the throwing once doublets La Fleur's being kick'd off his horse, and so forth. Cuckoldom, for the same reason, is always Le Diable!
He caught up the letter and read on again: "horror and aversion-alive in her to-day.... your children.... grandchildren.... of a man who once owned your mother as a man might own a slave...." He got up from his bed. This cruel shadowy past, lurking there to murder his love and Fleur's, was true, or his father could never have written it.
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