“He’s not coming back?”

“No, ma’am, he was very sorry, but he couldn’t come back today.”

“Thank you.”

Fleur went back to the gate. She stood there, turning the note over and over. Suddenly she broke the seal and read:

Slowly, as if not knowing, she tore the sheet of paper and the envelope into tiny fragments and buried them in the hedge. Then she walked slowly, as if not seeing, to her car, and got in. She sat there stonily, alongside the orchard with the sunlight on her neck and scent from wind-fallen rotting apples in her nostrils. For four months, since in the canteen she saw Jon’s tired smile, he had been one long thought in her mind. And this was the end! Oh! Let her get away—away from here!

She started the car, and, once out of the lane, drove at a great pace. If she broke her neck, all the better! But Providence, which attends the drunk and desperate, was about her—spying out her ways; and she did not break her neck. For more than two hours she drove, hardly knowing where. At three in the afternoon she had her first sane impulse—a craving to smoke, a longing for tea. She got some at an inn, and turned her car towards Dorking. Driving more slowly now, she arrived between four and five. She had been at the wheel for nearly six hours. And the first thing she saw outside the “rest-house” was her father’s car. He! What had HE come for? Why did people pester her? On the point of starting the engine again, she saw him come out of the front door, and stand looking up and down the road. Something groping in that look of his touched her, and, leaving the car, she walked towards him.

Chapter XI.

“GREAT FORSYTE”

On the morning after the Slum Conversion Committee meeting Soames had started early. It was his intention to spend the night somewhere “down there,” look at his roots the following morning, and motor part of the way home. On the day after, he would return to town and see if he couldn’t carry Fleur back with him to Mapledurham for a long weekend. He reached a seaside hostel ten miles from his origin about six o’clock, ate a damp dinner, smoked his own cigar, and went to a bed in which, for insurance sake, he placed a camel’s hair shawl.

He had thought things out, and was provided with an ordinance map on an inordinate scale. He meant to begin his investigation by seeing the church. For he had little to go by except a memory that his father James had once been down, and had returned speaking of a church by the sea, and supposing that there might be “parish entries and that, but it was a long time back and he didn’t know.”

After an early breakfast he directed Riggs towards the church. As James had said, it was close to the sea, and it was open. Soames went in. A little old grey church with funny pews, and a damp smell. There wouldn’t be any tablets to his name, he supposed. There were not, and he went out again, to wander among the gravestones, overcome by a sense of unreality—everything underground, and each gravestone, older than the last century, undecipherable. He was about to turn away when he stumbled. Looking down in disapproval at a flat stone, he saw on the worn and lichened surface a capital F. He stood for a minute, scrutinizing, then went down on his knees with a sort of thrill. Two names—the first had an undoubted capital J, a y, and an n; the second name began with that capital F, and had what looked like an s in the middle, and the remains of a tall letter last but one! The date? By George—the date was legible! 1777. Scraping gingerly at the first name, he disinterred an o. Four letters out of the six in Jolyon; three letters out of Forsyte. There could hardly be a doubt that he had stumbled over his great-great-grandfather! Supposing the old chap had lived to the ordinary age of a Forsyte, his birth would be near the beginning of the eighteenth century! His eyes gimletted the stone with a hard grey glance as though to pierce to the bones beneath—clean as a whistle long since, no doubt! Then he rose from his knees and dusted them. He had a date now. And, singularly fortified, he emerged from the graveyard, and cast a suspicious look at Riggs. Had he been seen on his knees? But the fellow was seated, as usual, with his back to everything, smoking his eternal cigarette. Soames got into the car.

“I want the vicarage now, or whatever it is.”

“Yes, sir.”

He was always saying “Yes, sir,” without having an idea of where places were.

“You’d better ask,” he said, as the car moved up the rutted lane. Sooner than ask, the fellow would go back to London! Not that there was anyone to ask. Soames was impressed, indeed, by the extreme emptiness of this parish where his roots lay. It seemed terribly hilly, and full of space, with large fields, some woods in the coombe to the left, and a soil that you couldn’t swear by—not red and not white and not brown exactly; the sea was blue, however, and the cliffs, so far as he could judge, streaky. The lane bent to the right, past a blacksmith’s forge.

“Hi!” said Soames, “pull up!” He himself got out to ask. That fellow never made head or tail of what he was told.

The blacksmith was hammering at a wheel, and Soames waited till his presence was observed.

“Where’s the vicarage?”

“Up the lane, third ’ouse on the right.”

“Thank you,” said Soames, and, looking at the man suspiciously, added:

“Is the name Forsyte known hereabouts nowadays?”

“What’s that?”

“Have you ever heard the name Forsyte?”

“Farsyt? Noa.”

Soames heard him with a disappointed relief, and resumed his seat. What if he’d said: “Yes, it’s mine!”

A blacksmith’s was a respectable occupation, but he felt that he could do without it in the family. The car moved on.

The vicarage was smothered in creeper. Probably the Vicar would be, too! He rang a rusty bell and waited. The door was opened by a red-cheeked girl. It was all very rustic.

“I want the Vicar,” said Soames. “Is he in?”

“Yes, sir. What name?”

But at this moment a thin man in a thin suit and a thin beard came out from a doorway, saying:

“Am I wanted, Mary?”

“Yes,” said Soames; “here’s my card.”

There ought—he felt—to be a way of enquiring about one’s origin that would be distinguished; but, not finding it, he added simply:

“My family came from hereabouts some generations back; I just wanted to have a look at the place, and ask you a question or two.”

“Forsyte?” said the Vicar, gazing at the card: “I don’t know the name, but I daresay we shall find something.”

His clothes were extremely well worn, and Soames had the impression that his eyes would have been glad if they could. ‘Smells a fee,’ he thought; ‘poor devil!’

“Will you come in?” said the Vicar. “I’ve got some records and an old tythe map. We might have a look at them. The registers go back to 1580. I could make a search for you.”

“I don’t know if that’s worth while,” said Soames, following him into a room that impressed him as dismal beyond words.

“Do sit down,” said the Vicar. “I’ll get that map. Forsyte? I seem to remember the name now.”

The fellow was agreeable, and looked as if he could do with an honest penny!

“I’ve been up to the church,” said Soames: “it seems very close to the sea.”

“Yes; they used to use the pulpit, I’m afraid, to hide their smuggled brandy.”

“I got a date in the graveyard—1777; the stones are very much let down.”

“Yes,” said the Vicar, who was groping in a cupboard; “one’s difficulty is the sea air. Here’s the map I spoke of”; and, unrolling a large and dingy map, he laid it on the table, weighting down the corners with a tin of tobacco, an inkstand, a book of sermons, and a dog whip. The latter was not heavy enough, and the map curled slowly away from Soames.