‘Oh!’ said Winifred. ‘That is a gaff! What is he like?’
‘Only saw him once – at Robin Hill, when we were home in 1909; he was naked and painted blue and yellow in stripes – a jolly little chap.’
Winifred thought that ‘rather nice’, and added comfortably: ‘Well, Holly’s sensible; she’ll know how to deal with it. I shan’t tell your uncle. It’ll only bother him. It’s a great comfort to have you back, my dear boy, now that I’m getting on.’
‘Getting on! Why! you’re as young as ever. That chap Profond, Mother, is he all right?’
‘Prosper Profond! Oh! the most amusing man I know.’
Val grunted, and recounted the story of the Mayfly filly.
‘That’s so like him,’ murmured Winifred. ‘He does all sorts of things.’
‘Well,’ said Val shrewdly, ‘our family haven’t been too lucky with that kind of cattle; they’re too light-hearted for us.’
It was true, and Winifred’s blue study lasted a full minute before she answered:
‘Oh! well! He’s a foreigner, Val: one must make allowances.’
‘All right, I’ll use his filly and make it up to him, somehow.’
And soon after he gave her his blessing, received a kiss, and left her for his bookmaker’s, the Iseeum Club, and Victoria station.
Chapter Six
JON
MRS VAL DAXTIE, after twenty years of South Africa, had fallen deeply in love, fortunately with something of her own, for the object of her passion was the prospect in front of her windows, the cool clear light on the green Downs. It was England again, at last! England more beautiful than she had dreamed. Chance had, in fact, guided the Val Darties to a spot where the South Downs had real charm when the sun shone. Holly had enough of her father’s eye to apprehend the rare quality of their outlines and chalky radiance; to go up there by the ravine-like lane and wander along toward Chanctonbury or Amberley, was still a delight which she hardly attempted to share with Val, whose admiration of Nature was confused by a Forsyte’s instinct for getting something out of it, such as the condition of the turf for his horses’ exercise.
Driving the Ford home with a certain humouring smoothness, she promised herself that the first use she would make of Jon would be to take him up there, and show him ‘the view’ under this May-day sky.
She was looking forward to her young half-brother with a motherliness not exhausted by Val. A three-day visit to Robin Hill, soon after their arrival home, had yielded no sight of him – he was still at school; so that her recollection, like Val’s, was of a little sunny-haired boy, striped blue and yellow, down by the pond.
Those three days at Robin Hill had been exciting, sad, embarrassing. Memories of her dead brother, memories of Val’s courtship; the ageing of her father, not seen for twenty years, something funereal in his ironic gentleness which did not escape one who had much subtle instinct; above all, the presence of her stepmother, whom she could still vaguely remember as the ‘lady in grey’ of days when she was little and grandfather alive and Mademoiselle Beauce so cross because that intruder gave her music lessons – all these confused and tantalized a spirit which had longed to find Robin Hill untroubled. But Holly was adept at keeping things to herself, and all had seemed to go quite well.
Her father had kissed her when she left him, with lips which she was sure had trembled.
‘Well, my dear,’ he said, ‘the War hasn’t changed Robin Hill, has it? If only you could have brought Jolly back with you! I say, can you stand this spiritualistic racket? When the oak tree dies, it dies, I’m afraid.’
From the warmth of her embrace he probably divined that he had let the cat out of the bag, for he rode off at once on irony.
‘Spiritualism – queer word, when the more they manifest the more they prove that they’ve got hold of matter.’
‘How?’ said Holly.
‘Why! Look at their photographs of auric presences. You must have something material for light and shade to fall on before you can take a photograph. No, it’ll end in our calling all matter spirit, or all spirit matter – I don’t know which.’
‘But don’t you believe in survival, Dad?’
Jolyon had looked at her, and the sad whimsicality of his face impressed her deeply.
‘Well, my dear, I should like to get something out of death. I’ve been looking into it a bit. But for the life of me I can’t find anything that telepathy, sub-consciousness, and emanation from the storehouse of this world can’t account for just as well. Wish I could! Wishes father thoughts but they don’t breed evidence.’