The simple truth, which underlies the whole story, that where sex
attraction is utterly and definitely lacking in one partner to a union,
no amount of pity, or reason, or duty, or what not, can overcome a
repulsion implicit in Nature.
The tragedy of whose life is the very simple, uncontrollable tragedy of
being unlovable, without quite a thick enough skin to be thoroughly
unconscious of the fact. Not even Fleur loves Soames as he feels he
ought to be loved. But in pitying Soames, readers incline, perhaps, to
animus against Irene: After all, they think, he wasn't a bad fellow, it
wasn't his fault; she ought to have forgiven him, and so on!
"Let the dead Past bury its dead" would be a better saying if the Past
ever died. The persistence of the Past is one of those tragi-comic
blessings which each new age denies, coming cocksure on to the stage to
mouth its claim to a perfect novelty.
The figure of Irene, never, as the reader may possibly have observed,
present, except through the senses of other characters, is a concretion
of disturbing Beauty impinging on a possessive world.
She turned back into the drawing-room; but in a minute came out, and
stood as if listening. Then she came stealing up the stairs, with a
kitten in her arms. He could see her face bent over the little beast,
which was purring against her neck. Why couldn't she look at him like
that?
But though the impingement of Beauty and the claims of Freedom on a
possessive world are the main prepossessions of the Forsyte Saga, it
cannot be absolved from the charge of embalming the upper-middle class.
When a Forsyte was engaged, married, or born, the Forsytes were present;
when a Forsyte died--but no Forsyte had as yet died; they did not die;
death being contrary to their principles, they took precautions against
it, the instinctive precautions of highly vitalized persons who resent
encroachments on their property.
"It's my opinion," he said unexpectedly, "that it's just as well as it
is."
The eldest by some years of all the Forsytes, she held a peculiar
position amongst them. Opportunists and egotists one and all-- though
not, indeed, more so than their neighbours--they quailed before her
incorruptible figure, and, when opportunities were too strong, what could
they do but avoid her!
"I'm bad," he said, pouting--"been bad all the week; don't sleep at
night. The doctor can't tell why. He's a clever fellow, or I shouldn't
have him, but I get nothing out of him but bills."
There was little sentimentality about the Forsytes. In that great
London, which they had conquered and become merged in, what time had they
to be sentimental?
A moment passed, and young Jolyon, turning on his heel, marched out at
the door. He could hardly see; his smile quavered. Never in all the
fifteen years since he had first found out that life was no simple
business, had he found it so singularly complicated.
As in all self-respecting families, an emporium had been established
where family secrets were bartered, and family stock priced. It was
known on Forsyte 'Change that Irene regretted her marriage. Her regret
was disapproved of. She ought to have known her own mind; no dependable
woman made these mistakes.
Out of his other property, out of all the things he had collected, his
silver, his pictures, his houses, his investments, he got a secret and
intimate feeling; out of her he got none.
Of all those whom this strange rumour about Bosinney and Mrs. Soames
reached, James was the most affected. He had long forgotten how he had
hovered, lanky and pale, in side whiskers of chestnut hue, round Emily,
in the days of his own courtship. He had long forgotten the small house
in the purlieus of Mayfair, where he had spent the early days of his
married life, or rather, he had long forgotten the early days, not the
small house,--a Forsyte never forgot a house--he had afterwards sold it
at a clear profit of four hundred pounds.
And those countless Forsytes, who, in the course of innumerable
transactions concerned with property of all sorts (from wives to
water rights)....
"I now move, 'That the report and accounts for the year 1886 be received
and adopted.' You second that? Those in favour signify the same in the
usual way. Contrary--no. Carried. The next business, gentlemen...."
Soames smiled. Certainly Uncle Jolyon had a way with him!
Forces regardless of family or class or custom were beating down his
guard; impending events over which he had no control threw their shadows
on his head. The irritation of one accustomed to have his way was,
roused against he knew not what.
We are, of course, all of us the slaves of property, and I admit that
it's a question of degree, but what I call a 'Forsyte' is a man who is
decidedly more than less a slave of property. He knows a good thing, he
knows a safe thing, and his grip on property--it doesn't matter whether
it be wives, houses, money, or reputation--is his hall-mark."--"Ah!"
murmured Bosinney. "You should patent the word."--"I should like," said
young Jolyon, "to lecture on it: 'Properties and quality of a Forsyte':
This little animal, disturbed by the ridicule of his own sort, is
unaffected in his motions by the laughter of strange creatures (you or
I). Hereditarily disposed to myopia, he recognises only the persons of
his own species, amongst which he passes an existence of competitive
tranquillity."
"My people," replied young Jolyon, "are not very extreme, and they have
their own private peculiarities, like every other family, but they
possess in a remarkable degree those two qualities which are the real
tests of a Forsyte--the power of never being able to give yourself up to
anything soul and body, and the 'sense of property'."
An unhappy marriage! No ill-treatment--only that indefinable malaise,
that terrible blight which killed all sweetness under Heaven; and so from
day to day, from night to night, from week to week, from year to year,
till death should end it.
The more I see of people the more I am convinced that they are never good
or bad--merely comic, or pathetic. You probably don't agree with me!'
"Don't touch me!" she cried. He caught her wrist; she wrenched it away.
"And where may you have been?" he asked. "In heaven--out of this house!"
With those words she fled upstairs.
It seemed to young Jolyon that he could hear her saying: "But, darling,
it would ruin you!" For he himself had experienced to the full the
gnawing fear at the bottom of each woman's heart that she is a drag on
the man she loves.
She had come back like an animal wounded to death, not knowing
where to turn, not knowing what she was doing.