without love I did a dreadful thing. An unhappy marriage, Jon, can play
such havoc with other lives besides one's own. You are fearfully young,
my darling, and fearfully loving. Do you think you can possibly be happy
with this girl?”
Staring at her dark eyes, darker now from pain, Jon answered
“Yes; oh! yes—if you could be.”
Irene smiled.
“Admiration of beauty and longing for possession are not love. If yours
were another case like mine, Jon—where the deepest things are stifled;
the flesh joined, and the spirit at war!”
“Why should it, Mother? You think she must be like her father, but she's
not. I've seen him.”
Again the smile came on Irene's lips, and in Jon something wavered;
there was such irony and experience in that smile.
“You are a giver, Jon; she is a taker.”
That unworthy doubt, that haunting uncertainty again! He said with
vehemence:
“She isn't—she isn't. It's only because I can't bear to make you
unhappy, Mother, now that Father—” He thrust his fists against his
forehead.
Irene got up.
“I told you that night, dear, not to mind me. I meant it. Think of
yourself and your own happiness! I can stand what's left—I've brought it
on myself.”
Again the word “Mother!” burst from Jon's lips.
She came over to him and put her hands over his.
“Do you feel your head, darling?”
Jon shook it. What he felt was in his chest—a sort of tearing asunder of
the tissue there, by the two loves.
“I shall always love you the same, Jon, whatever you do. You won't lose
anything.” She smoothed his hair gently, and walked away.
He heard the door shut; and, rolling over on the bed, lay, stifling his
breath, with an awful held-up feeling within him.
VII.—EMBASSY
Enquiring for her at tea time Soames learned that Fleur had been out in
the car since two. Three hours! Where had she gone? Up to London without
a word to him? He had never become quite reconciled with cars. He had
embraced them in principle—like the born empiricist, or Forsyte, that he
was—adopting each symptom of progress as it came along with: “Well, we
couldn't do without them now.” But in fact he found them tearing, great,
smelly things. Obliged by Annette to have one—a Rollhard with pearl-grey
cushions, electric light, little mirrors, trays for the ashes of
cigarettes, flower vases—all smelling of petrol and stephanotis—he
regarded it much as he used to regard his brother-in-law, Montague
Dartie. The thing typified all that was fast, insecure, and
subcutaneously oily in modern life. As modern life became faster,
looser, younger, Soames was becoming older, slower, tighter, more and
more in thought and language like his father James before him. He was
almost aware of it himself. Pace and progress pleased him less and
less; there was an ostentation, too, about a car which he considered
provocative in the prevailing mood of Labour. On one occasion that
fellow Sims had driven over the only vested interest of a working man.
Soames had not forgotten the behaviour of its master, when not many
people would have stopped to put up with it. He had been sorry for
the dog, and quite prepared to take its part against the car, if that
ruffian hadn't been so outrageous. With four hours fast becoming five,
and still no Fleur, all the old car-wise feelings he had experienced in
person and by proxy balled within him, and sinking sensations troubled
the pit of his stomach. At seven he telephoned to Winifred by trunk
call. No! Fleur had not been to Green Street. Then where was she?
Visions of his beloved daughter rolled up in her pretty frills, all
blood and dust-stained, in some hideous catastrophe, began to haunt him.
He went to her room and spied among her things. She had taken nothing—no
dressing-case, no Jewellery. And this, a relief in one sense, increased
his fears of an accident. Terrible to be helpless when his loved one was
missing, especially when he couldn't bear fuss or publicity of any kind!
What should he do if she were not back by nightfall?
At a quarter to eight he heard the car. A great weight lifted from off
his heart; he hurried down. She was getting out—pale and tired-looking,
but nothing wrong. He met her in the hall.
“You've frightened me. Where have you been?”
“To Robin Hill. I'm sorry, dear. I had to go; I'll tell you afterward.”
And, with a flying kiss, she ran up-stairs.
Soames waited in the drawing-room. To Robin Hill! What did that portend?
It was not a subject they could discuss at dinner—consecrated to the
susceptibilities of the butler. The agony of nerves Soames had been
through, the relief he felt at her safety, softened his power to condemn
what she had done, or resist what she was going to do; he waited in a
relaxed stupor for her revelation. Life was a queer business. There he
was at sixty-five and no more in command of things than if he had not
spent forty years in building up security-always something one couldn't
get on terms with! In the pocket of his dinner-jacket was a letter from
Annette. She was coming back in a fortnight. He knew nothing of what she
had been doing out there. And he was glad that he did not. Her absence
had been a relief. Out of sight was out of mind! And now she was coming
back. Another worry! And the Bolderby Old Crome was gone—Dumetrius had
got it—all because that anonymous letter had put it out of his thoughts.
He furtively remarked the strained look on his daughter's face, as if
she too were gazing at a picture that she couldn't buy. He almost wished
the War back. Worries didn't seem, then, quite so worrying. From the
caress in her voice, the look on her face, he became certain that she
wanted something from him, uncertain whether it would be wise of him to
give it her. He pushed his savoury away uneaten, and even joined her in
a cigarette.
After dinner she set the electric piano-player going. And he augured the
worst when she sat down on a cushion footstool at his knee, and put her
hand on his.
“Darling, be nice to me. I had to see Jon—he wrote to me. He's going to
try what he can do with his mother. But I've been thinking. It's really
in your hands, Father. If you'd persuade her that it doesn't mean
renewing the past in any way! That I shall stay yours, and Jon will stay
hers; that you need never see him or her, and she need never see you or
me! Only you could persuade her, dear, because only you could promise.
One can't promise for other people. Surely it wouldn't be too awkward
for you to see her just this once now that Jon's father is dead?”
“Too awkward?” Soames repeated. “The whole thing's preposterous.”
“You know,” said Fleur, without looking up, “you wouldn't mind seeing
her, really.”
Soames was silent. Her words had expressed a truth too deep for him to
admit. She slipped her fingers between his own—hot, slim, eager, they
clung there. This child of his would corkscrew her way into a brick
wall!
“What am I to do if you won't, Father?” she said very softly.
“I'll do anything for your happiness,” said Soanies; “but this isn't for
your happiness.”
“Oh! it is; it is!”
“It'll only stir things up,” he said grimly.
“But they are stirred up. The thing is to quiet them. To make her feel
that this is just our lives, and has nothing to do with yours or hers.
You can do it, Father, I know you can.”
“You know a great deal, then,” was Soames' glum answer.
“If you will, Jon and I will wait a year—two years if you like.”
“It seems to me,” murmured Soames, “that you care nothing about what I
feel.”
Fleur pressed his hand against her cheek.
“I do, darling. But you wouldn't like me to be awfully miserable.”
How she wheedled to get her ends! And trying with all his might to think
she really cared for him—he was not sure—not sure. All she cared for was
this boy! Why should he help her to get this boy, who was killing her
affection for himself? Why should he? By the laws of the Forsytes it was
foolish! There was nothing to be had out of it—nothing! To give her to
that boy! To pass her into the enemy's camp, under the influence of the
woman who had injured him so deeply! Slowly—inevitably—he would lose
this flower of his life! And suddenly he was conscious that his hand was
wet. His heart gave a little painful jump. He couldn't bear her to cry.
He put his other hand quickly over hers, and a tear dropped on that,
too. He couldn't go on like this! “Well, well,” he said, “I'll think
it over, and do what I can. Come, come!” If she must have it for her
happiness—she must; he couldn't refuse to help her. And lest she
should begin to thank him he got out of his chair and went up to the
piano-player—making that noise! It ran down, as he reached it, with
a faint buzz. That musical box of his nursery days: “The Harmonious
Blacksmith,” “Glorious Port”—the thing had always made him miserable
when his mother set it going on Sunday afternoons. Here it was again—the
same thing, only larger, more expensive, and now it played “The Wild,
Wild Women,” and “The Policeman's Holiday,” and he was no longer in
black velvet with a sky blue collar. 'Profond's right,' he thought,
'there's nothing in it! We're all progressing to the grave!' And with
that surprising mental comment he walked out.
He did not see Fleur again that night. But, at breakfast, her eyes
followed him about with an appeal he could not escape—not that he
intended to try. No! He had made up his mind to the nerve-racking
business. He would go to Robin Hill—to that house of memories. Pleasant
memory—the last! Of going down to keep that boy's father and Irene
apart by threatening divorce. He had often thought, since, that it had
clinched their union. And, now, he was going to clinch the union of that
boy with his girl. 'I don't know what I've done,' he thought, 'to have
such things thrust on me!' He went up by train and down by train, and
from the station walked by the long rising lane, still very much as
he remembered it over thirty years ago. Funny—so near London! Some one
evidently was holding on to the land there. This speculation soothed
him, moving between the high hedges slowly, so as not to get overheated,
though the day was chill enough. After all was said and done there was
something real about land, it didn't shift. Land, and good pictures! The
values might fluctuate a bit, but on the whole they were always going
up—worth holding on to, in a world where there was such a lot of
unreality, cheap building, changing fashions, such a “Here to-day and
gone to-morrow” spirit. The French were right, perhaps, with their
peasant proprietorship, though he had no opinion of the French. One's
bit of land! Something solid in it! He had heard peasant proprietors
described as a pig-headed lot; had heard young Mont call his father a
pigheaded Morning Poster—disrespectful young devil. Well, there were
worse things than being pig-headed or reading the Morning Post. There
was Profond and his tribe, and all these Labour chaps, and loud-mouthed
politicians and 'wild, wild women'. A lot of worse things! And suddenly
Soames became conscious of feeling weak, and hot, and shaky. Sheer
nerves at the meeting before him! As Aunt Juley might have said—quoting
“Superior Dosset”—his nerves were “in a proper fautigue.” He could see
the house now among its trees, the house he had watched being built,
intending it for himself and this woman, who, by such strange fate,
had lived in it with another after all! He began to think of Dumetrius,
Local Loans, and other forms of investment. He could not afford to meet
her with his nerves all shaking; he who represented the Day of Judgment
for her on earth as it was in heaven; he, legal ownership, personified,
meeting lawless beauty, incarnate. His dignity demanded impassivity
during this embassy designed to link their offspring, who, if she had
behaved herself, would have been brother and sister. That wretched tune,
“The Wild, Wild Women,” kept running in his head, perversely, for tunes
did not run there as a rule. Passing the poplars in front of the house,
he thought: 'How they've grown; I had them planted!' A maid answered his
ring.
“Will you say—Mr. Forsyte, on a very special matter.”
If she realised who he was, quite probably she would not see him. 'By
George!' he thought, hardening as the tug came. 'It's a topsy-turvy
affair!'
The maid came back. “Would the gentleman state his business, please?”
“Say it concerns Mr. Jon,” said Soames.
And once more he was alone in that hall with the pool of grey-white
marble designed by her first lover. Ah! she had been a bad lot—had loved
two men, and not himself! He must remember that when he came face to
face with her once more. And suddenly he saw her in the opening chink
between the long heavy purple curtains, swaying, as if in hesitation;
the old perfect poise and line, the old startled dark-eyed gravity, the
old calm defensive voice: “Will you come in, please?”
He passed through that opening. As in the picture-gallery and the
confectioner's shop, she seemed to him still beautiful. And this was the
first time—the very first—since he married her seven-and-thirty years
ago, that he was speaking to her without the legal right to call her
his. She was not wearing black—one of that fellow's radical notions, he
supposed.
“I apologise for coming,” he said glumly; “but this business must be
settled one way or the other.”
“Won't you sit down?”
“No, thank you.”
Anger at his false position, impatience of ceremony between them,
mastered him, and words came tumbling out:
“It's an infernal mischance; I've done my best to discourage it. I
consider my daughter crazy, but I've got into the habit of indulging
her; that's why I'm here. I suppose you're fond of your son.”
“Devotedly.”
“Well?”
“It rests with him.”
He had a sense of being met and baffled. Always—always she had baffled
him, even in those old first married days.
“It's a mad notion,” he said.
“It is.”
“If you had only—! Well—they might have been—” he did not finish that
sentence “brother and sister and all this saved,” but he saw her shudder
as if he had, and stung by the sight he crossed over to the window. Out
there the trees had not grown—they couldn't, they were old!
“So far as I'm concerned,” he said, “you may make your mind easy. I
desire to see neither you nor your son if this marriage comes about.
Young people in these days are—are unaccountable. But I can't bear to
see my daughter unhappy. What am I to say to her when I go back?”
“Please say to her as I said to you, that it rests with Jon.”
“You don't oppose it?”
“With all my heart; not with my lips.”
Soames stood, biting his finger.
“I remember an evening—” he said suddenly; and was silent. What was
there—what was there in this woman that would not fit into the four
corners of his hate or condemnation? “Where is he—your son?”
“Up in his father's studio, I think.”
“Perhaps you'd have him down.”
He watched her ring the bell, he watched the maid come in.
“Please tell Mr. Jon that I want him.”
“If it rests with him,” said Soames hurriedly, when the maid was gone,
“I suppose I may take it for granted that this unnatural marriage
will take place; in that case there'll be formalities. Whom do I deal
with—Herring's?”
Irene nodded.
“You don't propose to live with them?”
Irene shook her head.
“What happens to this house?”
“It will be as Jon wishes.”
“This house,” said Soames suddenly: “I had hopes when I began it.
If they live in it—their children! They say there's such a thing as
Nemesis. Do you believe in it?”
“Yes.”
“Oh! You do!”
He had come back from the window, and was standing close to her, who, in
the curve of her grand piano, was, as it were, embayed.
“I'm not likely to see you again,” he said slowly. “Will you shake
hands”—his lip quivered, the words came out jerkily—“and let the past
die.” He held out his hand. Her pale face grew paler, her eyes so dark,
rested immovably on his, her hands remained clasped in front of her. He
heard a sound and turned. That boy was standing in the opening of the
curtains. Very queer he looked, hardly recognisable as the young fellow
he had seen in the Gallery off Cork Street—very queer; much older, no
youth in the face at all—haggard, rigid, his hair ruffled, his eyes deep
in his head. Soames made an effort, and said with a lift of his lip, not
quite a smile nor quite a sneer:
“Well, young man! I'm here for my daughter; it rests with you, it
seems—this matter. Your mother leaves it in your hands.”
The boy continued staring at his mother's face, and made no answer.
“For my daughter's sake I've brought myself to come,” said Soames. “What
am I to say to her when I go back?”
Still looking at his mother, the boy said, quietly:
“Tell Fleur that it's no good, please; I must do as my father wished
before he died.”
“Jon!”
“It's all right, Mother.”
In a kind of stupefaction Soames looked from one to the other; then,
taking up hat and umbrella which he had put down on a chair, he walked
toward the curtains. The boy stood aside for him to go by. He passed
through and heard the grate of the rings as the curtains were drawn
behind him. The sound liberated something in his chest.
'So that's that!' he thought, and passed out of the front door.
VIII.—THE DARK TUNE
As Soames walked away from the house at Robin Hill the sun broke through
the grey of that chill afternoon, in smoky radiance. So absorbed in
landscape painting that he seldom looked seriously for effects of Nature
out of doors—he was struck by that moody effulgence—it mourned with a
triumph suited to his own feeling. Victory in defeat. His embassy
had come to naught. But he was rid of those people, had regained his
daughter at the expense of—her happiness. What would Fleur say to him?
Would she believe he had done his best? And under that sunlight faring
on the elms, hazels, hollies of the lane and those unexploited fields,
Soames felt dread. She would be terribly upset! He must appeal to her
pride. That boy had given her up, declared part and lot with the woman
who so long ago had given her father up! Soames clenched his hands.
Given him up, and why? What had been wrong with him? And once more he
felt the malaise of one who contemplates himself as seen by another—like
a dog who chances on his refection in a mirror and is intrigued and
anxious at the unseizable thing.
Not in a hurry to get home, he dined in town at the Connoisseurs. While
eating a pear it suddenly occurred to him that, if he had not gone down
to Robin Hill, the boy might not have so decided. He remembered the
expression on his face while his mother was refusing the hand he had
held out. A strange, an awkward thought! Had Fleur cooked her own goose
by trying to make too sure?
He reached home at half-past nine. While the car was passing in at one
drive gate he heard the grinding sputter of a motor-cycle passing out
by the other. Young Mont, no doubt, so Fleur had not been lonely. But he
went in with a sinking heart. In the cream-panelled drawing-room she was
sitting with her elbows on her knees, and her chin on her clasped hands,
in front of a white camellia plant which filled the fireplace. That
glance at her before she saw him renewed his dread. What was she seeing
among those white camellias?
“Well, Father!”
Soames shook his head. His tongue failed him. This was murderous work!
He saw her eyes dilate, her lips quivering.
“What? What? Quick, Father!”
“My dear,” said Soames, “I—I did my best, but—” And again he shook his
head.
Fleur ran to him, and put a hand on each of his shoulders.
“She?”
“No,” muttered Soames; “he. I was to tell you that it was no use; he
must do what his father wished before he died.” He caught her by the
waist. “Come, child, don't let them hurt you. They're not worth your
little finger.”
Fleur tore herself from his grasp.
“You didn't you—couldn't have tried. You—you betrayed me, Father!”
Bitterly wounded, Soames gazed at her passionate figure writhing there
in front of him.
“You didn't try—you didn't—I was a fool! I won't believe he could—he
ever could! Only yesterday he—! Oh! why did I ask you?”
“Yes,” said Soames, quietly, “why did you? I swallowed my feelings;
I did my best for you, against my judgment—and this is my reward.
Good-night!”
With every nerve in his body twitching he went toward the door.
Fleur darted after him.
“He gives me up? You mean that? Father!”
Soames turned and forced himself to answer:
“Yes.”
“Oh!” cried Fleur. “What did you—what could you have done in those old
days?”
The breathless sense of really monstrous injustice cut the power of
speech in Soames' throat. What had he done! What had they done to him!
And with quite unconscious dignity he put his hand on his breast, and
looked at her.
“It's a shame!” cried Fleur passionately.
Soames went out. He mounted, slow and icy, to his picture gallery, and
paced among his treasures. Outrageous! Oh! Outrageous! She was spoiled!
Ah! and who had spoiled her? He stood still before the Goya copy.
Accustomed to her own way in everything. Flower of his life! And
now that she couldn't have it! He turned to the window for some air.
Daylight was dying, the moon rising, gold behind the poplars! What sound
was that? Why! That piano thing! A dark tune, with a thrum and a throb!
She had set it going—what comfort could she get from that? His eyes
caught movement down there beyond the lawn, under the trellis of rambler
roses and young acacia-trees, where the moonlight fell. There she was,
roaming up and down. His heart gave a little sickening jump. What would
she do under this blow? How could he tell? What did he know of her—he
had only loved her all his life—looked on her as the apple of his eye!
He knew nothing—had no notion. There she was—and that dark tune—and the
river gleaming in the moonlight!
'I must go out,' he thought.
He hastened down to the drawing-room, lighted just as he had left it,
with the piano thrumming out that waltz, or fox-trot, or whatever they
called it in these days, and passed through on to the verandah.
Where could he watch, without her seeing him? And he stole down through
the fruit garden to the boat-house. He was between her and the river
now, and his heart felt lighter. She was his daughter, and Annette's—she
wouldn't do anything foolish; but there it was—he didn't know! From the
boat house window he could see the last acacia and the spin of her
skirt when she turned in her restless march. That tune had run down at
last—thank goodness! He crossed the floor and looked through the farther
window at the water slow-flowing past the lilies. It made little bubbles
against them, bright where a moon-streak fell. He remembered suddenly
that early morning when he had slept on the house-boat after his father
died, and she had just been born—nearly nineteen years ago! Even now he
recalled the unaccustomed world when he woke up, the strange feeling it
had given him. That day the second passion of his life began—for this
girl of his, roaming under the acacias. What a comfort she had been to
him! And all the soreness and sense of outrage left him. If he could
make her happy again, he didn't care! An owl flew, queeking, queeking; a
bat flitted by; the moonlight brightened and broadened on the water. How
long was she going to roam about like this! He went back to the window,
and suddenly saw her coming down to the bank. She stood quite close, on
the landing-stage. And Soames watched, clenching his hands. Should he
speak to her? His excitement was intense. The stillness of her figure,
its youth, its absorption in despair, in longing, in—itself. He would
always remember it, moonlit like that; and the faint sweet reek of the
river and the shivering of the willow leaves. She had everything in the
world that he could give her, except the one thing that she could not
have because of him! The perversity of things hurt him at that moment,
as might a fish-bone in his throat.
Then, with an infinite relief, he saw her turn back toward the house.
What could he give her to make amends? Pearls, travel, horses, other
young men—anything she wanted—that he might lose the memory of her young
figure lonely by the water! There! She had set that tune going again!
Why—it was a mania! Dark, thrumming, faint, travelling from the house.
It was as though she had said: “If I can't have something to keep me
going, I shall die of this!” Soames dimly understood. Well, if it helped
her, let her keep it thrumming on all night! And, mousing back through
the fruit garden, he regained the verandah. Though he meant to go in and
speak to her now, he still hesitated, not knowing what to say, trying
hard to recall how it felt to be thwarted in love. He ought to know,
ought to remember—and he could not! Gone—all real recollection; except
that it had hurt him horribly. In this blankness he stood passing his
handkerchief over hands and lips, which were very dry. By craning his
head he could just see Fleur, standing with her back to that piano still
grinding out its tune, her arms tight crossed on her breast, a lighted
cigarette between her lips, whose smoke half veiled her face. The
expression on it was strange to Soames, the eyes shone and stared, and
every feature was alive with a sort of wretched scorn and anger. Once
or twice he had seen Annette look like that—the face was too vivid,
too naked, not his daughter's at that moment. And he dared not go in,
realising the futility of any attempt at consolation. He sat down in the
shadow of the ingle-nook.
Monstrous trick, that Fate had played him! Nemesis! That old unhappy
marriage! And in God's name-why? How was he to know, when he wanted
Irene so violently, and she consented to be his, that she would never
love him? The tune died and was renewed, and died again, and still
Soames sat in the shadow, waiting for he knew not what. The fag of
Fleur's cigarette, flung through the window, fell on the grass; he
watched it glowing, burning itself out. The moon had freed herself above
the poplars, and poured her unreality on the garden. Comfortless light,
mysterious, withdrawn—like the beauty of that woman who had never loved
him—dappling the nemesias and the stocks with a vesture not of earth.
Flowers! And his flower so unhappy! Ah! Why could one not put happiness
into Local Loans, gild its edges, insure it against going down?
Light had ceased to flow out now from the drawing-room window. All was
silent and dark in there. Had she gone up? He rose, and, tiptoeing,
peered in. It seemed so! He entered. The verandah kept the moonlight
out; and at first he could see nothing but the outlines of furniture
blacker than the darkness. He groped toward the farther window to shut
it. His foot struck a chair, and he heard a gasp. There she was, curled
and crushed into the corner of the sofa! His hand hovered. Did she want
his consolation? He stood, gazing at that ball of crushed frills and
hair and graceful youth, trying to burrow its way out of sorrow. How
leave her there? At last he touched her hair, and said:
“Come, darling, better go to bed. I'll make it up to you, somehow.” How
fatuous! But what could he have said?
IX.—UNDER THE OAK-TREE
When their visitor had disappeared Jon and his mother stood without
speaking, till he said suddenly:
“I ought to have seen him out.”
But Soames was already walking down the drive, and Jon went upstairs to
his father's studio, not trusting himself to go back.
The expression on his mother's face confronting the man she had once
been married to, had sealed a resolution growing within him ever
since she left him the night before. It had put the finishing touch
of reality. To marry Fleur would be to hit his mother in the face; to
betray his dead father! It was no good! Jon had the least resentful of
natures. He bore his parents no grudge in this hour of his distress. For
one so young there was a rather strange power in him of seeing things
in some sort of proportion. It was worse for Fleur, worse for his mother
even, than it was for him. Harder than to give up was to be given up,
or to be the cause of some one you loved giving up for you. He must not,
would not behave grudgingly! While he stood watching the tardy sunlight,
he had again that sudden vision of the world which had come to him the
night before. Sea on sea, country on country, millions on millions
of people, all with their own lives, energies, joys, griefs, and
suffering—all with things they had to give up, and separate struggles
for existence. Even though he might be willing to give up all else for
the one thing he couldn't have, he would be a fool to think his feelings
mattered much in so vast a world, and to behave like a cry-baby or a
cad. He pictured the people who had nothing—the millions who had given
up life in the War, the millions whom the War had left with life and
little else; the hungry children he had read of, the shattered men;
people in prison, every kind of unfortunate. And—they did not help him
much. If one had to miss a meal, what comfort in the knowledge that many
others had to miss it too? There was more distraction in the thought of
getting away out into this vast world of which he knew nothing yet. He
could not go on staying here, walled in and sheltered, with everything
so slick and comfortable, and nothing to do but brood and think what
might have been. He could not go back to Wansdon, and the memories of
Fleur. If he saw her again he could not trust himself; and if he stayed
here or went back there, he would surely see her. While they were within
reach of each other that must happen. To go far away and quickly was the
only thing to do. But, however much he loved his mother, he did not want
to go away with her. Then feeling that was brutal, he made up his mind
desperately to propose that they should go to Italy. For two hours in
that melancholy room he tried to master himself, then dressed solemnly
for dinner.
His mother had done the same. They ate little, at some length, and
talked of his father's catalogue. The show was arranged for October, and
beyond clerical detail there was nothing more to do.
After dinner she put on a cloak and they went out; walked a little,
talked a little, till they were standing silent at last beneath the
oak-tree. Ruled by the thought: 'If I show anything, I show all,' Jon
put his arm through hers and said quite casually:
“Mother, let's go to Italy.”
Irene pressed his arm, and said as casually:
“It would be very nice; but I've been thinking you ought to see and do
more than you would if I were with you.”
“But then you'd be alone.”
“I was once alone for more than twelve years. Besides, I should like to
be here for the opening of Father's show.”
Jon's grip tightened round her arm; he was not deceived.
“You couldn't stay here all by yourself; it's too big.”
“Not here, perhaps. In London, and I might go to Paris, after the show
opens. You ought to have a year at least, Jon, and see the world.”
“Yes, I'd like to see the world and rough it. But I don't want to leave
you all alone.”
“My dear, I owe you that at least. If it's for your good, it'll be for
mine. Why not start tomorrow? You've got your passport.”
“Yes; if I'm going it had better be at once. Only—Mother—if—if I
wanted to stay out somewhere—America or anywhere, would you mind coming
presently?”
“Wherever and whenever you send for me. But don't send until you really
want me.”
Jon drew a deep breath.
“I feel England's choky.”
They stood a few minutes longer under the oak-tree—looking out to where
the grand stand at Epsom was veiled in evening. The branches kept the
moonlight from them, so that it only fell everywhere else—over the
fields and far away, and on the windows of the creepered house behind,
which soon would be to let.
X.—FLEUR'S WEDDING
The October paragraphs describing the wedding of Fleur Forsyte to
Michael Mont hardly conveyed the symbolic significance of this event. In
the union of the great-granddaughter of “Superior Dosset” with the heir
of a ninth baronet was the outward and visible sign of that merger of
class in class which buttresses the political stability of a realm. The
time had come when the Forsytes might resign their natural resentment
against a “flummery” not theirs by birth, and accept it as the still
more natural due of their possessive instincts. Besides, they had to
mount to make room for all those so much more newly rich. In that
quiet but tasteful ceremony in Hanover Square, and afterward among the
furniture in Green Street, it had been impossible for those not in the
know to distinguish the Forsyte troop from the Mont contingent—so
far away was “Superior Dosset” now. Was there, in the crease of his
trousers, the expression of his moustache, his accent, or the shine
on his top-hat, a pin to choose between Soames and the ninth baronet
himself? Was not Fleur as self-possessed, quick, glancing, pretty,
and hard as the likeliest Muskham, Mont, or Charwell filly present? If
anything, the Forsytes had it in dress and looks and manners. They had
become “upper class” and now their name would be formally recorded in
the Stud Book, their money joined to land. Whether this was a little
late in the day, and those rewards of the possessive instinct, lands and
money, destined for the melting-pot—was still a question so moot that
it was not mooted. After all, Timothy had said Consols were goin'
up. Timothy, the last, the missing link; Timothy, in extremis on the
Bayswater Road—so Francie had reported. It was whispered, too, that this
young Mont was a sort of socialist—strangely wise of him, and in the
nature of insurance, considering the days they lived in. There was
no uneasiness on that score. The landed classes produced that sort
of amiable foolishness at times, turned to safe uses and confined to
theory. As George remarked to his sister Francie: “They'll soon be
having puppies—that'll give him pause.”
The church with white flowers and something blue in the middle of
the East window looked extremely chaste, as though endeavouring to
counteract the somewhat lurid phraseology of a Service calculated to
keep the thoughts of all on puppies. Forsytes, Haymans, Tweetymans,
sat in the left aisle; Monts, Charwells; Muskhams in the right; while
a sprinkling of Fleur's fellow-sufferers at school, and of Mont's
fellow-sufferers in, the War, gaped indiscriminately from either side,
and three maiden ladies, who had dropped in on their way from Skyward's
brought up the rear, together with two Mont retainers and Fleur's old
nurse. In the unsettled state of the country as full a house as could be
expected.
Mrs. Val Dartie, who sat with her husband in the third row, squeezed his
hand more than once during the performance. To her, who knew the plot
of this tragi-comedy, its most dramatic moment was well-nigh painful.
'I wonder if Jon knows by instinct,' she thought—Jon, out in British
Columbia. She had received a letter from him only that morning which had
made her smile and say:
“Jon's in British Columbia, Val, because he wants to be in California.
He thinks it's too nice there.”
“Oh!” said Val, “so he's beginning to see a joke again.”
“He's bought some land and sent for his mother.”
“What on earth will she do out there?”
“All she cares about is Jon. Do you still think it a happy release?”
Val's shrewd eyes narrowed to grey pin-points between their dark lashes.
“Fleur wouldn't have suited him a bit. She's not bred right.”
“Poor little Fleur!” sighed Holly. Ah! it was strange—this marriage.
The young man, Mont, had caught her on the rebound, of course, in the
reckless mood of one whose ship has just gone down. Such a plunge could
not but be—as Val put it—an outside chance. There was little to be told
from the back view of her young cousin's veil, and Holly's eyes reviewed
the general aspect of this Christian wedding. She, who had made a
love-match which had been successful, had a horror of unhappy marriages.
This might not be one in the end—but it was clearly a toss-up; and to
consecrate a toss-up in this fashion with manufactured unction before
a crowd of fashionable free-thinkers—for who thought otherwise than
freely, or not at all, when they were “dolled” up—seemed to her as near
a sin as one could find in an age which had abolished them. Her eyes
wandered from the prelate in his robes (a Charwell-the Forsytes had
not as yet produced a prelate) to Val, beside her, thinking—she was
certain—of the Mayfly filly at fifteen to one for the Cambridgeshire.
They passed on and caught the profile of the ninth baronet, in
counterfeitment of the kneeling process. She could just see the neat
ruck above his knees where he had pulled his trousers up, and thought:
'Val's forgotten to pull up his!' Her eyes passed to the pew in front of
her, where Winifred's substantial form was gowned with passion, and on
again to Soames and Annette kneeling side by side. A little smile came
on her lips—Prosper Profond, back from the South Seas of the Channel,
would be kneeling too, about six rows behind. Yes! This was a funny
“small” business, however it turned out; still it was in a proper church
and would be in the proper papers to-morrow morning.
They had begun a hymn; she could hear the ninth baronet across the
aisle, singing of the hosts of Midian. Her little finger touched Val's
thumb—they were holding the same hymn-book—and a tiny thrill passed
through her, preserved—from twenty years ago. He stooped and whispered:
“I say, d'you remember the rat?” The rat at their wedding in Cape
Colony, which had cleaned its whiskers behind the table at the
Registrar's! And between her little and third forgers she squeezed his
thumb hard.
The hymn was over, the prelate had begun to deliver his discourse. He
told them of the dangerous times they lived in, and the awful conduct of
the House of Lords in connection with divorce. They were all soldiers—he
said—in the trenches under the poisonous gas of the Prince of Darkness,
and must be manful. The purpose of marriage was children, not mere
sinful happiness.
An imp danced in Holly's eyes—Val's eyelashes were meeting. Whatever
happened; he must not snore. Her finger and thumb closed on his thigh
till he stirred uneasily.
The discourse was over, the danger past. They were signing in the
vestry; and general relaxation had set in.
A voice behind her said:
“Will she stay the course?”
“Who's that?” she whispered.
“Old George Forsyte!”
Holly demurely scrutinized one of whom she had often heard. Fresh
from South Africa, and ignorant of her kith and kin, she never saw one
without an almost childish curiosity. He was very big, and very dapper;
his eyes gave her a funny feeling of having no particular clothes.
“They're off!” she heard him say.
They came, stepping from the chancel. Holly looked first in young Mont's
face. His lips and ears were twitching, his eyes, shifting from his feet
to the hand within his arm, stared suddenly before them as if to face
a firing party. He gave Holly the feeling that he was spiritually
intoxicated. But Fleur! Ah! That was different. The girl was perfectly
composed, prettier than ever, in her white robes and veil over her
banged dark chestnut hair; her eyelids hovered demure over her dark
hazel eyes. Outwardly, she seemed all there. But inwardly, where was
she? As those two passed, Fleur raised her eyelids—the restless glint
of those clear whites remained on Holly's vision as might the flutter of
caged bird's wings.
In Green Street Winifred stood to receive, just a little less composed
than usual. Soames' request for the use of her house had come on her
at a deeply psychological moment. Under the influence of a remark
of Prosper Profond, she had begun to exchange her Empire for
Expressionistic furniture. There were the most amusing arrangements,
with violet, green, and orange blobs and scriggles, to be had at
Mealard's. Another month and the change would have been complete. Just
now, the very “intriguing” recruits she had enlisted, did not march too
well with the old guard. It was as if her regiment were half in khaki,
half in scarlet and bearskins. But her strong and comfortable character
made the best of it in a drawing-room which typified, perhaps, more
perfectly than she imagined, the semi-bolshevized imperialism of her
country. After all, this was a day of merger, and you couldn't have too
much of it! Her eyes travelled indulgently among her guests. Soames had
gripped the back of a buhl chair; young Mont was behind that “awfully
amusing” screen, which no one as yet had been able to explain to her.
The ninth baronet had shied violently at a round scarlet table, inlaid
under glass with blue Australian butteries' wings, and was clinging
to her Louis-Quinze cabinet; Francie Forsyte had seized the new
mantel-board, finely carved with little purple grotesques on an ebony
ground; George, over by the old spinet, was holding a little sky-blue
book as if about to enter bets; Prosper Profond was twiddling the knob
of the open door, black with peacock-blue panels; and Annette's hands,
close by, were grasping her own waist; two Muskhams clung to the balcony
among the plants, as if feeling ill; Lady Mont, thin and brave-looking,
had taken up her long-handled glasses and was gazing at the central
light shade, of ivory and orange dashed with deep magenta, as if the
heavens had opened. Everybody, in fact, seemed holding on to something.
Only Fleur, still in her bridal dress, was detached from all support,
flinging her words and glances to left and right.
The room was full of the bubble and the squeak of conversation.
Nobody could hear anything that anybody said; which seemed of little
consequence, since no one waited for anything so slow as an answer.
Modern conversation seemed to Winifred so different from the days of her
prime, when a drawl was all the vogue. Still it was “amusing,” which,
of course, was all that mattered. Even the Forsytes were talking with
extreme rapidity—Fleur and Christopher, and Imogen, and young Nicholas's
youngest, Patrick. Soames, of course, was silent; but George, by the
spinet, kept up a running commentary, and Francie, by her mantel-shelf.
Winifred drew nearer to the ninth baronet. He seemed to promise a
certain repose; his nose was fine and drooped a little, his grey
moustaches too; and she said, drawling through her smile:
“It's rather nice, isn't it?”
His reply shot out of his smile like a snipped bread pellet
“D'you remember, in Frazer, the tribe that buries the bride up to the
waist?”
He spoke as fast as anybody! He had dark lively little eyes, too, all
crinkled round like a Catholic priest's. Winifred felt suddenly he might
say things she would regret.
“They're always so amusing—weddings,” she murmured, and moved on to
Soames. He was curiously still, and Winifred saw at once what was
dictating his immobility. To his right was George Forsyte, to his left
Annette and Prosper Profond. He could not move without either seeing
those two together, or the reflection of them in George Forsyte's japing
eyes. He was quite right not to be taking notice.
“They say Timothy's sinking;” he said glumly.
“Where will you put him, Soames?”
“Highgate.” He counted on his fingers. “It'll make twelve of them there,
including wives. How do you think Fleur looks?”
“Remarkably well.”
Soames nodded. He had never seen her look prettier, yet he could not rid
himself of the impression that this business was unnatural—remembering
still that crushed figure burrowing into the corner of the sofa. From
that night to this day he had received from her no confidences. He knew
from his chauffeur that she had made one more attempt on Robin Hill
and drawn blank—an empty house, no one at home. He knew that she had
received a letter, but not what was in it, except that it had made her
hide herself and cry. He had remarked that she looked at him sometimes
when she thought he wasn't noticing, as if she were wondering still what
he had done—forsooth—to make those people hate him so. Well, there
it was! Annette had come back, and things had worn on through the
summer—very miserable, till suddenly Fleur had said she was going to
marry young Mont. She had shown him a little more affection when she
told him that. And he had yielded—what was the good of opposing it? God
knew that he had never wished to thwart her in anything! And the young
man seemed quite delirious about her. No doubt she was in a reckless
mood, and she was young, absurdly young. But if he opposed her, he
didn't know what she would do; for all he could tell she might want to
take up a profession, become a doctor or solicitor, some nonsense. She
had no aptitude for painting, writing, music, in his view the legitimate
occupations of unmarried women, if they must do something in these
days. On the whole, she was safer married, for he could see too well how
feverish and restless she was at home. Annette, too, had been in favour
of it—Annette, from behind the veil of his refusal to know what she was
about, if she was about anything. Annette had said: “Let her marry this
young man. He is a nice boy—not so highty-flighty as he seems.” Where
she got her expressions, he didn't know—but her opinion soothed his
doubts. His wife, whatever her conduct, had clear eyes and an almost
depressing amount of common sense. He had settled fifty thousand on
Fleur, taking care that there was no cross settlement in case it didn't
turn out well. Could it turn out well? She had not got over that other
boy—he knew. They were to go to Spain for the honeymoon. He would be
even lonelier when she was gone. But later, perhaps, she would forget,
and turn to him again! Winifred's voice broke on his reverie.
“Why! Of all wonders-June!”
There, in a djibbah—what things she wore!—with her hair straying from
under a fillet, Soames saw his cousin, and Fleur going forward to greet
her. The two passed from their view out on to the stairway.
“Really,” said Winifred, “she does the most impossible things! Fancy her
coming!”
“What made you ask her?” muttered Soames.
“Because I thought she wouldn't accept, of course.”
Winifred had forgotten that behind conduct lies the main trend of
character; or, in other words, omitted to remember that Fleur was now a
“lame duck.”
On receiving her invitation, June had first thought, 'I wouldn't go near
them for the world!' and then, one morning, had awakened from a dream of
Fleur waving to her from a boat with a wild unhappy gesture. And she had
changed her mind.
When Fleur came forward and said to her, “Do come up while I'm changing
my dress,” she had followed up the stairs. The girl led the way into
Imogen's old bedroom, set ready for her toilet.
June sat down on the bed, thin and upright, like a little spirit in the
sear and yellow. Fleur locked the door.
The girl stood before her divested of her wedding dress. What a pretty
thing she was!
“I suppose you think me a fool,” she said, with quivering lips, “when it
was to have been Jon. But what does it matter? Michael wants me, and
I don't care. It'll get me away from home.” Diving her hand into the
frills on her breast, she brought out a letter. “Jon wrote me this.”
June read: “Lake Okanagen, British Columbia. I'm not coming back to
England. Bless you always. Jon.”
“She's made safe, you see,” said Fleur.
June handed back the letter.
“That's not fair to Irene,” she said, “she always told Jon he could do
as he wished.”
Fleur smiled bitterly. “Tell me, didn't she spoil your life too?” June
looked up. “Nobody can spoil a life, my dear. That's nonsense. Things
happen, but we bob up.”
With a sort of terror she saw the girl sink on her knees and bury her
face in the djibbah. A strangled sob mounted to June's ears.
“It's all right—all right,” she murmured, “Don't! There, there!”
But the point of the girl's chin was pressed ever closer into her thigh,
and the sound was dreadful of her sobbing.
Well, well! It had to come. She would feel better afterward! June
stroked the short hair of that shapely head; and all the scattered
mother-sense in her focussed itself and passed through the tips of her
fingers into the girl's brain.
“Don't sit down under it, my dear,” she said at last. “We can't control
life, but we can fight it. Make the best of things. I've had to. I held
on, like you; and I cried, as you're crying now. And look at me!”
Fleur raised her head; a sob merged suddenly into a little choked laugh.
In truth it was a thin and rather wild and wasted spirit she was looking
at, but it had brave eyes.
“All right!” she said. “I'm sorry. I shall forget him, I suppose, if I
fly fast and far enough.”
And, scrambling to her feet, she went over to the wash-stand.
June watched her removing with cold water the traces of emotion. Save
for a little becoming pinkness there was nothing left when she stood
before the mirror. June got off the bed and took a pin-cushion in her
hand. To put two pins into the wrong places was all the vent she found
for sympathy.
“Give me a kiss,” she said when Fleur was ready, and dug her chin into
the girl's warm cheek.
“I want a whiff,” said Fleur; “don't wait.”
June left her, sitting on the bed with a cigarette between her lips
and her eyes half closed, and went down-stairs. In the doorway of the
drawing-room stood Soames as if unquiet at his daughter's tardiness.
June tossed her head and passed down on to the half-landing. Her cousin
Francie was standing there.
“Look!” said June, pointing with her chin at Soames. “That man's fatal!”
“How do you mean,” said Francie, “fatal?”
June did not answer her. “I shan't wait to see them off,” she said.
“Good-bye!”
“Good-bye!” said Francie, and her eyes, of a Celtic grey, goggled. That
old feud! Really, it was quite romantic!
Soames, moving to the well of the staircase, saw June go, and drew a
breath of satisfaction. Why didn't Fleur come? They would miss their
train. That train would bear her away from him, yet he could not help
fidgeting at the thought that they would lose it. And then she did come,
running down in her tan-coloured frock and black velvet cap, and passed
him into the drawing-room. He saw her kiss her mother, her aunt, Val's
wife, Imogen, and then come forth, quick and pretty as ever. How would
she treat him at this last moment of her girlhood? He couldn't hope for
much!
Her lips pressed the middle of his cheek.
“Daddy!” she said, and was past and gone! Daddy! She hadn't called him
that for years. He drew a long breath and followed slowly down. There
was all the folly with that confetti stuff and the rest of it to go
through with yet. But he would like just to catch her smile, if she
leaned out, though they would hit her in the eye with the shoe, if they
didn't take care. Young Mont's voice said fervently in his ear:
“Good-bye, sir; and thank you! I'm so fearfully bucked.”
“Good-bye,” he said; “don't miss your train.”
He stood on the bottom step but three, whence he could see above the
heads—the silly hats and heads. They were in the car now; and there was
that stuff, showering, and there went the shoe. A flood of something
welled up in Soames, and—he didn't know—he couldn't see!
XI.—THE LAST OF THE OLD FORSYTES
When they came to prepare that terrific symbol Timothy Forsyte—the one
pure individualist left, the only man who hadn't heard of the Great
War—they found him wonderful—not even death had undermined his
soundness.
To Smither and Cook that preparation came like final evidence of what
they had never believed possible—the end of the old Forsyte family on
earth. Poor Mr. Timothy must now take a harp and sing in the company of
Miss Forsyte, Mrs. Julia, Miss Hester; with Mr. Jolyon, Mr. Swithin,
Mr. James, Mr. Roger, and Mr. Nicholas of the party. Whether Mrs. Hayman
would be there was more doubtful, seeing that she had been cremated.
Secretly Cook thought that Mr. Timothy would be upset—he had always been
so set against barrel organs. How many times had she not said: “Drat the
thing! There it is again! Smither, you'd better run up and see what you
can do.” And in her heart she would so have enjoyed the tunes, if she
hadn't known that Mr. Timothy would ring the bell in a minute and say:
“Here, take him a halfpenny and tell him to move on.” Often they
had been obliged to add threepence of their own before the man would
go—Timothy had ever underrated the value of emotion. Luckily he had
taken the organs for blue-bottles in his last years, which had been a
comfort, and they had been able to enjoy the tunes. But a harp! Cook
wondered. It was a change! And Mr. Timothy had never liked change. But
she did not speak of this to Smither, who did so take a line of her own
in regard to heaven that it quite put one about sometimes.
She cried while Timothy was being prepared, and they all had sherry
afterward out of the yearly Christmas bottle, which would not be needed
now. Ah! dear! She had been there five-and-forty years and Smither
three-and-forty! And now they would be going to a tiny house in Tooting,
to live on their savings and what Miss Hester had so kindly left
them—for to take fresh service after the glorious past—No! But they
would like just to see Mr. Soames again, and Mrs. Dartie, and Miss
Francie, and Miss Euphemia. And even if they had to take their own cab,
they felt they must go to the funeral. For six years Mr. Timothy had
been their baby, getting younger and younger every day, till at last he
had been too young to live.
They spent the regulation hours of waiting in polishing and dusting, in
catching the one mouse left, and asphyxiating the last beetle so as to
leave it nice, discussing with each other what they would buy at the
sale. Miss Ann's workbox; Miss Juley's (that is Mrs. Julia's) seaweed
album; the fire-screen Miss Hester had crewelled; and Mr. Timothy's
hair—little golden curls, glued into a black frame. Oh! they must have
those—only the price of things had gone up so!
It fell to Soames to issue invitations for the funeral. He had them
drawn up by Gradman in his office—only blood relations, and no flowers.
Six carriages were ordered. The Will would be read afterward at the
house.
He arrived at eleven o'clock to see that all was ready. At a quarter
past old Gradman came in black gloves and crape on his hat. He and
Soames stood in the drawing-room waiting. At half-past eleven the
carriages drew up in a long row. But no one else appeared. Gradman said:
“It surprises me, Mr. Soames. I posted them myself.”
“I don't know,” said Soames; “he'd lost touch with the family.” Soames
had often noticed in old days how much more neighbourly his family were
to the dead than to the living. But, now, the way they had flocked to
Fleur's wedding and abstained from Timothy's funeral, seemed to show
some vital change. There might, of course, be another reason; for Soames
felt that if he had not known the contents of Timothy's Will, he might
have stayed away himself through delicacy. Timothy had left a lot of
money, with nobody in particular to leave it to. They mightn't like to
seem to expect something.
At twelve o'clock the procession left the door; Timothy alone in the
first carriage under glass. Then Soames alone; then Gradman alone;
then Cook and Smither together. They started at a walk, but were soon
trotting under a bright sky. At the entrance to Highgate Cemetery they
were delayed by service in the Chapel. Soames would have liked to stay
outside in the sunshine. He didn't believe a word of it; on the other
hand, it was a form of insurance which could not safely be neglected, in
case there might be something in it after all.
They walked up two and two—he and Gradman, Cook and Smither—to the
family vault. It was not very distinguished for the funeral of the last
old Forsyte.
He took Gradman into his carriage on the way back to the Bayswater Road
with a certain glow in his heart. He had a surprise in pickle for the
old chap who had served the Forsytes four-and-fifty years-a treat that
was entirely his doing. How well he remembered saying to Timothy the
day—after Aunt Hester's funeral: “Well; Uncle Timothy, there's Gradman.
He's taken a lot of trouble for the family. What do you say to leaving
him five thousand?” and his surprise, seeing the difficulty there had
been in getting Timothy to leave anything, when Timothy had nodded.
And now the old chap would be as pleased as Punch, for Mrs. Gradman, he
knew, had a weak heart, and their son had lost a leg in the War. It
was extraordinarily gratifying to Soames to have left him five thousand
pounds of Timothy's money. They sat down together in the little
drawing-room, whose walls—like a vision of heaven—were sky-blue and gold
with every picture-frame unnaturally bright, and every speck of
dust removed from every piece of furniture, to read that little
masterpiece—the Will of Timothy. With his back to the light in Aunt
Hester's chair, Soames faced Gradman with his face to the light, on Aunt
Ann's sofa; and, crossing his legs, began:
“This is the last Will and Testament of me Timothy Forsyte of The Bower
Bayswater Road, London I appoint my nephew Soames Forsyte of The Shelter
Mapleduram and Thomas Gradman of 159 Folly Road Highgate (hereinafter
called my Trustees) to be the trustees and executors of this my Will To
the said Soames Forsyte I leave the sum of one thousand pounds free
of legacy duty and to the said Thomas Gradman I leave the sum of five
thousand pounds free of legacy duty.”
Soames paused. Old Gradman was leaning forward, convulsively gripping a
stout black knee with each of his thick hands; his mouth had fallen
open so that the gold fillings of three teeth gleamed; his eyes were
blinking, two tears rolled slowly out of them. Soames read hastily on.
“All the rest of my property of whatsoever description I bequeath to
my Trustees upon Trust to convert and hold the same upon the following
trusts namely To pay thereout all my debts funeral expenses and
outgoings of any kind in connection with my Will and to hold the residue
thereof in trust for that male lineal descendant of my father Jolyon
Forsyte by his marriage with Ann Pierce who after the decease of all
lineal descendants whether male or female of my said father by his said
marriage in being at the time of my death shall last attain the age of
twenty-one years absolutely it being my desire that my property shall
be nursed to the extreme limit permitted by the laws of England for the
benefit of such male lineal descendant as aforesaid.”
Soames read the investment and attestation clauses, and, ceasing,
looked at Gradman. The old fellow was wiping his brow with a large
handkerchief, whose brilliant colour supplied a sudden festive tinge to
the proceedings.
“My word, Mr. Soames!” he said, and it was clear that the lawyer in him
had utterly wiped out the man: “My word! Why, there are two babies now,
and some quite young children—if one of them lives to be eighty—it's not
a great age—and add twenty-one—that's a hundred years; and Mr. Timothy
worth a hundred and fifty thousand pound net if he's worth a penny.
Compound interest at five per cent. doubles you in fourteen years.
In fourteen years three hundred thousand-six hundred thousand in
twenty-eight—twelve hundred thousand in forty-two—twenty-four
hundred thousand in fifty-six—four million eight hundred thousand in
seventy—nine million six hundred thousand in eighty-four—Why, in a
hundred years it'll be twenty million! And we shan't live to use it! It
is a Will!”
Soames said dryly: “Anything may happen. The State might take the lot;
they're capable of anything in these days.”
“And carry five,” said Gradman to himself. “I forgot—Mr. Timothy's in
Consols; we shan't get more than two per cent. with this income tax. To
be on the safe side, say eight millions. Still, that's a pretty penny.”
Soames rose and handed him the Will. “You're going into the City. Take
care of that, and do what's necessary. Advertise; but there are no
debts. When's the sale?”
“Tuesday week,” said Gradman. “Life or lives in bein' and twenty-one
years afterward—it's a long way off. But I'm glad he's left it in the
family....”
The sale—not at Jobson's, in view of the Victorian nature of the
effects—was far more freely attended than the funeral, though not by
Cook and Smither, for Soames had taken it on himself to give them
their heart's desires. Winifred was present, Euphemia, and Francie,
and Eustace had come in his car. The miniatures, Barbizons, and J. R.
drawings had been bought in by Soames; and relics of no marketable value
were set aside in an off-room for members of the family who cared
to have mementoes. These were the only restrictions upon bidding
characterised by an almost tragic languor. Not one piece of furniture,
no picture or porcelain figure appealed to modern taste. The humming
birds had fallen like autumn leaves when taken from where they had not
hummed for sixty years. It was painful to Soames to see the chairs his
aunts had sat on, the little grand piano they had practically never
played, the books whose outsides they had gazed at, the china they had
dusted, the curtains they had drawn, the hearth-rug which had warmed
their feet; above all, the beds they had lain and died in—sold to little
dealers, and the housewives of Fulham. And yet—what could one do? Buy
them and stick them in a lumber-room? No; they had to go the way of all
flesh and furniture, and be worn out. But when they put up Aunt Ann's
sofa and were going to knock it down for thirty shillings, he cried out,
suddenly: “Five pounds!” The sensation was considerable, and the sofa
his.
When that little sale was over in the fusty saleroom, and those
Victorian ashes scattered, he went out into the misty October sunshine
feeling as if cosiness had died out of the world, and the board “To Let”
was up, indeed. Revolutions on the horizon; Fleur in Spain; no comfort
in Annette; no Timothy's on the Bayswater Road. In the irritable
desolation of his soul he went into the Goupenor Gallery. That chap
Jolyon's watercolours were on view there. He went in to look down his
nose at them—it might give him some faint satisfaction. The news had
trickled through from June to Val's wife, from her to Val, from Val to
his mother, from her to Soames, that the house—the fatal house at
Robin Hill—was for sale, and Irene going to join her boy out in British
Columbia, or some such place. For one wild moment the thought had come
to Soames: 'Why shouldn't I buy it back? I meant it for my!' No sooner
come than gone. Too lugubrious a triumph; with too many humiliating
memories for himself and Fleur. She would never live there after what
had happened. No, the place must go its way to some peer or profiteer.
It had been a bone of contention from the first, the shell of the feud;
and with the woman gone, it was an empty shell. “For Sale or To Let.”
With his mind's eye he could see that board raised high above the ivied
wall which he had built.
He passed through the first of the two rooms in the Gallery. There was
certainly a body of work! And now that the fellow was dead it did not
seem so trivial. The drawings were pleasing enough, with quite a sense
of atmosphere, and something individual in the brush work. 'His father
and my father; he and I; his child and mine!' thought Soames. So it had
gone on! And all about that woman! Softened by the events of the past
week, affected by the melancholy beauty of the autumn day, Soames came
nearer than he had ever been to realisation of that truth—passing the
understanding of a Forsyte pure—that the body of Beauty has a spiritual
essence, uncapturable save by a devotion which thinks not of self. After
all, he was near that truth in his devotion to his daughter; perhaps
that made him understand a little how he had missed the prize. And
there, among the drawings of his kinsman, who had attained to that
which he had found beyond his reach, he thought of him and her with a
tolerance which surprised him. But he did not buy a drawing.
Just as he passed the seat of custom on his return to the outer air he
met with a contingency which had not been entirely absent from his mind
when he went into the Gallery—Irene, herself, coming in. So she had not
gone yet, and was still paying farewell visits to that fellow's remains!
He subdued the little involuntary leap of his subconsciousness, the
mechanical reaction of his senses to the charm of this once-owned woman,
and passed her with averted eyes. But when he had gone by he could not
for the life of him help looking back. This, then, was finality—the heat
and stress of his life, the madness and the longing thereof, the only
defeat he had known, would be over when she faded from his view this
time; even such memories had their own queer aching value.
She, too, was looking back. Suddenly she lifted her gloved hand, her
lips smiled faintly, her dark eyes seemed to speak. It was the turn of
Soames to make no answer to that smile and that little farewell wave;
he went out into the fashionable street quivering from head to foot. He
knew what she had meant to say: “Now that I am going for ever out of
the reach of you and yours—forgive me; I wish you well.” That was the
meaning; last sign of that terrible reality—passing morality, duty,
common sense—her aversion from him who had owned her body, but had never
touched her spirit or her heart. It hurt; yes—more than if she had kept
her mask unmoved, her hand unlifted.
Three days later, in that fast-yellowing October, Soames took a taxi-cab
to Highgate Cemetery and mounted through its white forest to the Forsyte
vault. Close to the cedar, above catacombs and columbaria, tall, ugly,
and individual, it looked like an apex of the competitive system. He
could remember a discussion wherein Swithin had advocated the addition
to its face of the pheasant proper. The proposal had been rejected in
favour of a wreath in stone, above the stark words: “The family vault
of Jolyon Forsyte: 1850.” It was in good order. All trace of the recent
interment had been removed, and its sober grey gloomed reposefully in
the sunshine. The whole family lay there now, except old Jolyon's wife,
who had gone back under a contract to her own family vault in Suffolk;
old Jolyon himself lying at Robin Hill; and Susan Hayman, cremated
so that none knew where she might be. Soames gazed at it with
satisfaction—massive, needing little attention; and this was important,
for he was well aware that no one would attend to it when he himself was
gone, and he would have to be looking out for lodgings soon. He might
have twenty years before him, but one never knew. Twenty years without
an aunt or uncle, with a wife of whom one had better not know anything,
with a daughter gone from home. His mood inclined to melancholy and
retrospection.
This cemetery was full, they said—of people with extraordinary names,
buried in extraordinary taste. Still, they had a fine view up here,
right over London. Annette had once given him a story to read by that
Frenchman, Maupassant, most lugubrious concern, where all the skeletons
emerged from their graves one night, and all the pious inscriptions on
the stones were altered to descriptions of their sins. Not a true story
at all. He didn't know about the French, but there was not much real
harm in English people except their teeth and their taste, which was
certainly deplorable. “The family vault of Jolyon Forsyte: 1850.” A lot
of people had been buried here since then—a lot of English life crumbled
to mould and dust! The boom of an airplane passing under the gold-tinted
clouds caused him to lift his eyes. The deuce of a lot of expansion had
gone on. But it all came back to a cemetery—to a name and a date on a
tomb. And he thought with a curious pride that he and his family had
done little or nothing to help this feverish expansion. Good solid
middlemen, they had gone to work with dignity to manage and possess.
“Superior Dosset,” indeed, had built in a dreadful, and Jolyon painted
in a doubtful, period, but so far as he remembered not another of them
all had soiled his hands by creating anything—unless you counted Val
Dartie and his horse-breeding. Collectors, solicitors, barristers,
merchants, publishers, accountants, directors, land agents, even
soldiers—there they had been! The country had expanded, as it were,
in spite of them. They had checked, controlled, defended, and taken
advantage of the process and when you considered how “Superior Dosset”
had begun life with next to nothing, and his lineal descendants already
owned what old Gradman estimated at between a million and a million and
a half, it was not so bad! And yet he sometimes felt as if the family
bolt was shot, their possessive instinct dying out. They seemed
unable to make money—this fourth generation; they were going into
art, literature, farming, or the army; or just living on what was left
them—they had no push and no tenacity. They would die out if they didn't
take care.
Soames turned from the vault and faced toward the breeze. The air up
here would be delicious if only he could rid his nerves of the feeling
that mortality was in it. He gazed restlessly at the crosses and the
urns, the angels, the “immortelles,” the flowers, gaudy or withering;
and suddenly he noticed a spot which seemed so different from anything
else up there that he was obliged to walk the few necessary yards and
look at it. A sober corner, with a massive queer-shaped cross of grey
rough-hewn granite, guarded by four dark yew-trees. The spot was free
from the pressure of the other graves, having a little box-hedged garden
on the far side, and in front a goldening birch-tree. This oasis in the
desert of conventional graves appealed to the aesthetic sense of Soames,
and he sat down there in the sunshine. Through those trembling gold
birch leaves he gazed out at London, and yielded to the waves of
memory. He thought of Irene in Montpellier Square, when her hair
was rusty-golden and her white shoulders his—Irene, the prize of his
love-passion, resistant to his ownership. He saw Bosinney's body lying
in that white mortuary, and Irene sitting on the sofa looking at space
with the eyes of a dying bird. Again he thought of her by the little
green Niobe in the Bois de Boulogne, once more rejecting him. His fancy
took him on beside his drifting river on the November day when Fleur
was to be born, took him to the dead leaves floating on the green-tinged
water and the snake-headed weed for ever swaying and nosing, sinuous,
blind, tethered. And on again to the window opened to the cold starry
night above Hyde Park, with his father lying dead. His fancy darted
to that picture of “the future town,” to that boy's and Fleur's first
meeting; to the bluish trail of Prosper Profond's cigar, and Fleur in
the window pointing down to where the fellow prowled. To the sight of
Irene and that dead fellow sitting side by side in the stand at Lord's.
To her and that boy at Robin Hill. To the sofa, where Fleur lay crushed
up in the corner; to her lips pressed into his cheek, and her farewell
“Daddy.” And suddenly he saw again Irene's grey-gloved hand waving its
last gesture of release.
He sat there a long time dreaming his career, faithful to the scut of
his possessive instinct, warming himself even with its failures.
“To Let”—the Forsyte age and way of life, when a man owned his soul, his
investments, and his woman, without check or question. And now the State
had, or would have, his investments, his woman had herself, and God knew
who had his soul. “To Let”—that sane and simple creed!
The waters of change were foaming in, carrying the promise of new forms
only when their destructive flood should have passed its full. He sat
there, subconscious of them, but with his thoughts resolutely set on the
past—as a man might ride into a wild night with his face to the tail of
his galloping horse. Athwart the Victorian dykes the waters were
rolling on property, manners, and morals, on melody and the old forms
of art—waters bringing to his mouth a salt taste as of blood, lapping
to the foot of this Highgate Hill where Victorianism lay buried. And
sitting there, high up on its most individual spot, Soames—like a figure
of Investment—refused their restless sounds. Instinctively he would
not fight them—there was in him too much primeval wisdom, of Man the
possessive animal. They would quiet down when they had fulfilled their
tidal fever of dispossessing and destroying; when the creations and the
properties of others were sufficiently broken and defected—they would
lapse and ebb, and fresh forms would rise based on an instinct older
than the fever of change—the instinct of Home.
“Je m'en fiche,” said Prosper Profond. Soames did not say “Je m'en
fiche”—it was French, and the fellow was a thorn in his side—but deep
down he knew that change was only the interval of death between two
forms of life, destruction necessary to make room for fresher property.
What though the board was up, and cosiness to let?—some one would come
along and take it again some day.
And only one thing really troubled him, sitting there—the melancholy
craving in his heart—because the sun was like enchantment on his face
and on the clouds and on the golden birch leaves, and the wind's rustle
was so gentle, and the yewtree green so dark, and the sickle of a moon
pale in the sky.
He might wish and wish and never get it—the beauty and the loving in the
world!
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End of Project Gutenberg's The Forsyte Saga, Awakening and To Let, by
John Galsworthy