‘Come here, my son. This is Jon – your second cousin once removed.’
Kit advanced.
‘S’all I bwing my ‘orse in?’
‘Horse, Kit. No; shake hands.’
The small hand went up; Jon’s hand came down.
‘You got dirty nails.’
She saw Jon flush, heard Anne’s: ‘Isn’t he just too cunning?’ and said:
‘Kit, you’re very rude. So would you have, if you’d been stoking an engine.’
‘Yes, old man, I’ve been washing them ever since, but I can’t get them clean.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s got into the skin.’
‘Le’ me see.’
‘Go and shake hands with your great-aunt, Kit.’
‘No.’
‘Dear little chap,’ said Winifred. ‘Such a bore, isn’t it, Kit?’
‘Very well, then, go out again, and get your manners, and bring them in.’
‘All wight.’
His exit, closed in by the silver dog, was followed by a general laugh; Fleur said, softly:
‘Little wretch – poor Jon!’ And through her lashes she saw Jon give her a grateful look.
In this mid-May fine weather the view from Richmond Hill had all the width and leafy charm which had drawn so many Forsytes in phaetons and barouches, in hansom cabs and motorcars from immemorial time, or at least from the days of George the Fourth. The winding river shone discreetly, far down there, and the trees of the encompassing landscape, though the oaks were still goldened, had just began to have a brooding look; in July they would be heavy and blueish. Curiously, few houses showed among the trees and fields; very scanty evidence of man, within twelve miles of London! The spirit of an older England seemed to have fended jerry-builders from a prospect sacred to the ejaculations of four generations.
Of those five on the terrace Winifred best expressed that guarding spirit, with her:
‘Really, it’s a very pretty view!’
A view – a view! And yet a view was not what it had been when old Jolyon travelled the Alps with that knapsack of brown leather and square shape, still in his grandson Jon’s possession; or Swithin above his greys, rolling his neck with consequence towards the lady by his side, had pointed with his whip down at the river and pouted: ‘A pooty little view!’ Or James, crouched over his long knees in some gondola, had examined the Grand Canal at Venice with doubting eyes, and muttered: ‘They never told me the water was this colour!’ Or Nicholas, taking his constitutional at Matlock, had opined that the gorge was the finest in England. No, a view was not what it had been I George Forsyte and Montague Dartie, with their backs to it, quizzically contemplating the Liberty ladies brought down to be fed, had started that rot; and now the young folk didn’t use the expression, but just ejaculated: ‘Christ!’ or words to that effect.
But there was Anne, of course, like an American, with clasped hands, and:
‘Isn’t it too lovely, Jon? It’s sort of romantic!’
And so to the Park, where Winifred chanted automatically at sight of the chestnuts, and every path and patch of fern and fallen tree drew from Holly or Jon some riding recollection.
‘Look, Anne, that’s where I threw myself off my pony as a kid when I lost my stirrup and got so bored with being bumped.’
Or: ‘Look, Jon! Val and I had a race down that avenue. Oh! and there’s the log we used to jump. Still there!’
And Anne was in ecstasies over the deer and the grass, so different from the American varieties.
To Fleur the Park meant nothing.
‘Jon,’ she said, suddenly, ‘what are you going to do to get in at Robin Hill?’
‘Tell the butler that I want to show my wife where I lived as a boy; and give him a couple of good reasons. I don’t want to see the house, all new furniture and that.’
‘Couldn’t we go in at the bottom, through the coppice?’ and her eyes added: ‘As we did that day.’
‘We might come on someone, and get turned back.’
The couple of good reasons secured their top entrance to the grounds; the ‘family’ was not ‘in residence’.
Bosinney’s masterpiece wore its mellowest aspect. The sunblinds were down, for the sun was streaming on its front, past the old oak tree, where was now no swing. In Irene’s rosegarden which had replaced old Jolyon’s fernery, buds were forming, but only one rose was out.
‘ “Rose, you Spaniard!” ’ Something clutched Fleur’s heart. What was Jon thinking – what remembering, with those words and that frown? Just here she had sat between his father and his mother, believing that she and Jon would live here some day; together watch the roses bloom, the old oak drop its leaves; together say to their guests: ‘Look! There’s the grandstand at Epsom – see? Just above those poplars!’