he did
not attempt to divorce her, and she of course had no right to divorce
him--became conscious, it seems, of the want of children, and commenced a
long attempt to induce her to go back to him and give him a child. I was
her trustee then, under your Grandfather's Will, and I watched this going
on. While watching, I became attached to her, devotedly attached. His
pressure increased, till one day she came to me here and practically put
herself under my protection. Her husband, who was kept informed of all
her movements, attempted to force us apart by bringing a divorce suit, or
possibly he really meant it, I don't know; but anyway our names were
publicly joined. That decided us, and we became united in fact. She was
divorced, married me, and you were born. We have lived in perfect
happiness, at least I have, and I believe your mother also. Soames, soon
after the divorce, married Fleur's mother, and she was born. That is the
story, Jon. I have told it you, because by the affection which we see
you have formed for this man's daughter you are blindly moving toward
what must utterly destroy your mother's happiness, if not your own. I
don't wish to speak of myself, because at my age there's no use supposing
I shall cumber the ground much longer, besides, what I should suffer
would be mainly on her account, and on yours. But what I want you to
realise is that feelings of horror and aversion such as those can never
be buried or forgotten. They are alive in her to-day. Only yesterday at
Lord's we happened to see Soames Forsyte. Her face, if you had seen it,
would have convinced you. The idea that you should marry his daughter is
a nightmare to her, Jon. I have nothing to say against Fleur save that
she is his daughter. But your children, if you married her, would be the
grandchildren of Soames, as much as of your mother, of a man who once
owned your mother as a man might own a slave. Think what that would
mean. By such a marriage you enter the camp which held your mother
prisoner and wherein she ate her heart out. You are just on the
threshold of life, you have only known this girl two months, and however
deeply you think you love her, I appeal to you to break it off at once.
Don't give your mother this rankling pain and humiliation during the rest
of her life. Young though she will always seem to me, she is
fifty-seven. Except for us two she has no one in the world. She will
soon have only you. Pluck up y