The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Galsworthy

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June had never really got on well with her who had reprehensibly taken
her own mother's place; and ever since old Jolyon died she had been
established in a sort of studio in London. But she had come back to
Robin Hill on her stepmother's death, and gathered the reins there into
her small decided hands. Jolly was then at Harrow; Holly still learning
from Mademoiselle Beauce. There had been nothing to keep Jolyon at home,
and he had removed his grief and his paint-box abroad. There he had
wandered, for the most part in Brittany, and at last had fetched up in
Paris. He had stayed there several months, and come back with the
younger face and the short fair beard. Essentially a man who merely
lodged in any house, it had suited him perfectly that June should reign
at Robin Hill, so that he was free to go off with his easel where and
when he liked. She was inclined, it is true, to regard the house rather
as an asylum for her proteges! but his own outcast days had filled Jolyon
for ever with sympathy towards an outcast, and June's 'lame ducks' about
the place did not annoy him. By all means let her have them down--and
feed them up; and though his slightly cynical humour perceived that they
ministered to his daughter's love of domination as well as moved her warm
heart, he never ceased to admire her for having so many ducks. He fell,
indeed, year by year into a more and more detached and brotherly attitude
towards his own son and daughters, treating them with a sort of whimsical
equality. When he went down to Harrow to see Jolly, he never quite knew
which of them was the elder, and would sit eating cherries with him out
of one paper bag, with an affectionate and ironical smile twisting up an
eyebrow and curling his lips a little. And he was always careful to have
money in his pocket, and to be modish in his dress, so that his son need
not blush for him. They were perfect friends, but never seemed to have
occasion for verbal confidences, both having the competitive
self-consciousness of Forsytes. They knew they would stand by each other
in scrapes, but there was no need to talk about it. Jolyon had a
striking horror--partly original sin, but partly the result of his early
immorality--of the moral attitude. The most he could ever have said to
his son would have been:

"Look here, old man; don't forget you're a gentleman," and then have
wondered whimsically whether that was not a snobbish sentiment. The
great cricket match was perhaps the most searching and awkward time they
annually went through together, for Jolyon had been at Eton. They would
be particularly careful during that match, continually saying: "Hooray!
Oh! hard luck, old man!" or "Hooray! Oh! bad luck, Dad!" to each other,
when some disaster at which their hearts bounded happened to the opposing
school. And Jolyon would wear a grey top hat, instead of his usual soft
one, to save his son's feelings, for a black top hat he could not
stomach. When Jolly went up to Oxford, Jolyon went up with him, amused,
humble, and a little anxious not to discredit his boy amongst all these
youths who seemed so much more assured and old than himself. He often
thought, 'Glad I'm a painter' for he had long dropped under-writing at
Lloyds--'it's so innocuous. You can't look down on a painter--you can't
take him seriously enough.' For Jolly, who had a sort of natural
lordliness, had passed at once into a very small set, who secretly amused
his father. The boy had fair hair which curled a little, and his
grandfather's deepset iron-grey eyes. He was well-built and very
upright, and always pleased Jolyon's aesthetic sense, so that he was a
tiny bit afraid of him, as artists ever are of those of their own sex
whom they admire physically. On that occasion, however, he actually did
screw up his courage to give his son advice, and this was it:

"Look here, old man, you're bound to get into debt; mind you come to me
at once. Of course, I'll always pay them. But you might remember that
one respects oneself more afterwards if one pays one's own way. And
don't ever borrow, except from me, will you?"

And Jolly had said:

"All right, Dad, I won't," and he never had.

"And there's just one other thing. I don't know much about morality and
that, but there is this: It's always worth while before you do anything
to consider whether it's going to hurt another person more than is
absolutely necessary."

Jolly had looked thoughtful, and nodded, and presently had squeezed his
father's hand. And Jolyon had thought: 'I wonder if I had the right to
say that?' He always had a sort of dread of losing the dumb confidence
they had in each other; remembering how for long years he had lost his
own father's, so that there had been nothing between them but love at a
great distance. He under-estimated, no doubt, the change in the spirit
of the age since he himself went up to Cambridge in '65; and perhaps he
underestimated, too, his boy's power of understanding that he was
tolerant to the very bone. It was that tolerance of his, and possibly
his scepticism, which ever made his relations towards June so queerly
defensive. She was such a decided mortal; knew her own mind so terribly
well; wanted things so inexorably until she got them--and then, indeed,
often dropped them like a hot potato. Her mother had been like that,
whence had come all those tears. Not that his incompatibility with his
daughter was anything like what it had been with the first Mrs. Young
Jolyon. One could be amused where a daughter was concerned; in a wife's
case one could not be amused. To see June set her heart and jaw on a
thing until she got it was all right, because it was never anything which
interfered fundamentally with Jolyon's liberty--the one thing on which
his jaw was also absolutely rigid, a considerable jaw, under that short
grizzling beard. Nor was there ever any necessity for real
heart-to-heart encounters. One could break away into irony--as indeed he
often had to. But the real trouble with June was that she had never
appealed to his aesthetic sense, though she might well have, with her
red-gold hair and her viking-coloured eyes, and that touch of the
Berserker in her spirit. It was very different with Holly, soft and
quiet, shy and affectionate, with a playful imp in her somewhere. He
watched this younger daughter of his through the duckling stage with
extraordinary interest. Would she come out a swan? With her sallow oval
face and her grey wistful eyes and those long dark lashes, she might, or
she might not. Only this last year had he been able to guess. Yes, she
would be a swan--rather a dark one, always a shy one, but an authentic
swan. She was eighteen now, and Mademoiselle Beauce was gone--the
excellent lady had removed, after eleven years haunted by her continuous
reminiscences of the 'well-brrred little Tayleurs,' to another family
whose bosom would now be agitated by her reminiscences of the
'well-brrred little Forsytes.' She had taught Holly to speak French like
herself.

Portraiture was not Jolyon's forte, but he had already drawn his younger
daughter three times, and was drawing her a fourth, on the afternoon of
October 4th, 1899, when a card was brought to him which caused his
eyebrows to go up:

Mr. SOAMES FORSYTE

THE SHELTER, CONNOISSEURS CLUB, MAPLEDURHAM. ST.
JAMES'S.

But here the Forsyte Saga must digress again....

To return from a long travel in Spain to a darkened house, to a little
daughter bewildered with tears, to the sight of a loved father lying
peaceful in his last sleep, had never been, was never likely to be,
forgotten by so impressionable and warm-hearted a man as Jolyon. A sense
as of mystery, too, clung to that sad day, and about the end of one whose
life had been so well-ordered, balanced, and above-board. It seemed
incredible that his father could thus have vanished without, as it were,
announcing his intention, without last words to his son, and due
farewells. And those incoherent allusions of little Holly to 'the lady
in grey,' of Mademoiselle Beauce to a Madame Errant (as it sounded)
involved all things in a mist, lifted a little when he read his father's
will and the codicil thereto. It had been his duty as executor of that
will and codicil to inform Irene, wife of his cousin Soames, of her life
interest in fifteen thousand pounds. He had called on her to explain
that the existing investment in India Stock, ear-marked to meet the
charge, would produce for her the interesting net sum of L430 odd a year,
clear of income tax. This was but the third time he had seen his cousin
Soames' wife--if indeed she was still his wife, of which he was not quite
sure. He remembered having seen her sitting in the Botanical Gardens
waiting for Bosinney--a passive, fascinating figure, reminding him of
Titian's 'Heavenly Love,' and again, when, charged by his father, he had
gone to Montpellier Square on the afternoon when Bosinney's death was
known. He still recalled vividly her sudden appearance in the
drawing-room doorway on that occasion--her beautiful face, passing from
wild eagerness of hope to stony despair; remembered the compassion he had
felt, Soames' snarling smile, his words, "We are not at home!" and the
slam of the front door.

This third time he saw a face and form more beautiful--freed from that
warp of wild hope and despair. Looking at her, he thought: 'Yes, you are
just what the Dad would have admired!' And the strange story of his
father's Indian summer became slowly clear to him. She spoke of old
Jolyon with reverence and tears in her eyes. "He was so wonderfully kind
to me; I don't know why. He looked so beautiful and peaceful sitting in
that chair under the tree; it was I who first came on him sitting there,
you know. Such a lovely day. I don't think an end could have been
happier. We should all like to go out like that."

'Quite right!' he had thought. 'We should all a like to go out in full
summer with beauty stepping towards us across a lawn.' And looking round
the little, almost empty drawing-room, he had asked her what she was
going to do now. "I am going to live again a little, Cousin Jolyon. It's
wonderful to have money of one's own. I've never had any. I shall keep
this flat, I think; I'm used to it; but I shall be able to go to Italy."

"Exactly!" Jolyon had murmured, looking at her faintly smiling lips; and
he had gone away thinking: 'A fascinating woman! What a waste! I'm glad
the Dad left her that money.' He had not seen her again, but every
quarter he had signed her cheque, forwarding it to her bank, with a note
to the Chelsea flat to say that he had done so; and always he had
received a note in acknowledgment, generally from the flat, but sometimes
from Italy; so that her personality had become embodied in slightly
scented grey paper, an upright fine handwriting, and the words, 'Dear
Cousin Jolyon.' Man of property that he now was, the slender cheque he
signed often gave rise to the thought: 'Well, I suppose she just
manages'; sliding into a vague wonder how she was faring otherwise in a
world of men not wont to let beauty go unpossessed. At first Holly had
spoken of her sometimes, but 'ladies in grey' soon fade from children's
memories; and the tightening of June's lips in those first weeks after
her grandfather's death whenever her former friend's name was mentioned,
had discouraged allusion. Only once, indeed, had June spoken definitely:
"I've forgiven her. I'm frightfully glad she's independent now...."

On receiving Soames' card, Jolyon said to the maid--for he could not
abide butlers--"Show him into the study, please, and say I'll be there in
a minute"; and then he looked at Holly and asked:

"Do you remember 'the lady in grey,' who used to give you music-lessons?"

"Oh yes, why? Has she come?"

Jolyon shook his head, and, changing his holland blouse for a coat, was
silent, perceiving suddenly that such history was not for those young
ears. His face, in fact, became whimsical perplexity incarnate while he
journeyed towards the study.

Standing by the french-window, looking out across the terrace at the oak
tree, were two figures, middle-aged and young, and he thought: 'Who's
that boy? Surely they never had a child.'

The elder figure turned. The meeting of those two Forsytes of the second
generation, so much more sophisticated than the first, in the house built
for the one and owned and occupied by the other, was marked by subtle
defensiveness beneath distinct attempt at cordiality. 'Has he come about
his wife?' Jolyon was thinking; and Soames, 'How shall I begin?' while
Val, brought to break the ice, stood negligently scrutinising this
'bearded pard' from under his dark, thick eyelashes.

"This is Val Dartie," said Soames, "my sister's son. He's just going up
to Oxford. I thought I'd like him to know your boy."

"Ah! I'm sorry Jolly's away. What college?"

"B.N.C.," replied Val.

"Jolly's at the 'House,' but he'll be delighted to look you up."

"Thanks awfully."

"Holly's in--if you could put up with a female relation, she'd show you
round. You'll find her in the hall if you go through the curtains. I
was just painting her."

With another "Thanks, awfully!" Val vanished, leaving the two cousins
with the ice unbroken.

"I see you've some drawings at the 'Water Colours,'" said Soames.

Jolyon winced. He had been out of touch with the Forsyte family at large
for twenty-six years, but they were connected in his mind with Frith's
'Derby Day' and Landseer prints. He had heard from June that Soames was
a connoisseur, which made it worse. He had become aware, too, of a
curious sensation of repugnance.

"I haven't seen you for a long time," he said.

"No," answered Soames between close lips, "not since--as a matter of
fact, it's about that I've come. You're her trustee, I'm told."

Jolyon nodded.

"Twelve years is a long time," said Soames rapidly: "I--I'm tired of it."

Jolyon found no more appropriate answer than:

"Won't you smoke?"

"No, thanks."

Jolyon himself lit a cigarette.

"I wish to be free," said Soames abruptly.

"I don't see her," murmured Jolyon through the fume of his cigarette.

"But you know where she lives, I suppose?"

Jolyon nodded. He did not mean to give her address without permission.
Soames seemed to divine his thought.

"I don't want her address," he said; "I know it."

"What exactly do you want?"

"She deserted me. I want a divorce."

"Rather late in the day, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Soames. And there was a silence.

"I don't know much about these things--at least, I've forgotten," said
Jolyon with a wry smile. He himself had had to wait for death to grant
him a divorce from the first Mrs. Jolyon. "Do you wish me to see her
about it?"

Soames raised his eyes to his cousin's face. "I suppose there's
someone," he said.

A shrug moved Jolyon's shoulders.

"I don't know at all. I imagine you may have both lived as if the other
were dead. It's usual in these cases."

Soames turned to the window. A few early fallen oak-leaves strewed the
terrace already, and were rolling round in the wind. Jolyon saw the
figures of Holly and Val Dartie moving across the lawn towards the
stables. 'I'm not going to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds,'
he thought. 'I must act for her. The Dad would have wished that.' And
for a swift moment he seemed to see his father's figure in the old
armchair, just beyond Soames, sitting with knees crossed, The Times in
his hand. It vanished.

"My father was fond of her," he said quietly.

"Why he should have been I don't know," Soames answered without looking
round. "She brought trouble to your daughter June; she brought trouble
to everyone. I gave her all she wanted. I would have given her
even--forgiveness--but she chose to leave me."

In Jolyon compassion was checked by the tone of that close voice. What
was there in the fellow that made it so difficult to be sorry for him?

"I can go and see her, if you like," he said. "I suppose she might be
glad of a divorce, but I know nothing."

Soames nodded.

"Yes, please go. As I say, I know her address; but I've no wish to see
her." His tongue was busy with his lips, as if they were very dry.

"You'll have some tea?" said Jolyon, stifling the words: 'And see the
house.' And he led the way into the hall. When he had rung the bell and
ordered tea, he went to his easel to turn his drawing to the wall. He
could not bear, somehow, that his work should be seen by Soames, who was
standing there in the middle of the great room which had been designed
expressly to afford wall space for his own pictures. In his cousin's
face, with its unseizable family likeness to himself, and its chinny,
narrow, concentrated look, Jolyon saw that which moved him to the
thought: 'That chap could never forget anything--nor ever give himself
away. He's pathetic!'




CHAPTER VII

THE COLT AND THE FILLY

When young Val left the presence of the last generation he was thinking:
'This is jolly dull! Uncle Soames does take the bun. I wonder what this
filly's like?' He anticipated no pleasure from her society; and suddenly
he saw her standing there looking at him. Why, she was pretty! What
luck!

"I'm afraid you don't know me," he said. "My name's Val Dartie--I'm
once removed, second cousin, something like that, you know. My mother's
name was Forsyte."

Holly, whose slim brown hand remained in his because she was too shy to
withdraw it, said:

"I don't know any of my relations. Are there many?"

"Tons. They're awful--most of them. At least, I don't know--some of
them. One's relations always are, aren't they?"

"I expect they think one awful too," said Holly.

"I don't know why they should. No one could think you awful, of course."

Holly looked at him--the wistful candour in those grey eyes gave young
Val a sudden feeling that he must protect her.

"I mean there are people and people," he added astutely. "Your dad looks
awfully decent, for instance."

"Oh yes!" said Holly fervently; "he is."

A flush mounted in Val's cheeks--that scene in the Pandemonium
promenade--the dark man with the pink carnation developing into his own
father! "But you know what the Forsytes are," he said almost viciously.
"Oh! I forgot; you don't."

"What are they?"

"Oh! fearfully careful; not sportsmen a bit. Look at Uncle Soames!"

"I'd like to," said Holly.

Val resisted a desire to run his arm through hers. "Oh! no," he said,
"let's go out. You'll see him quite soon enough. What's your brother
like?"

Holly led the way on to the terrace and down to the lawn without
answering. How describe Jolly, who, ever since she remembered anything,
had been her lord, master, and ideal?

"Does he sit on you?" said Val shrewdly. "I shall be knowing him at
Oxford. Have you got any horses?"

Holly nodded. "Would you like to see the stables?"

"Rather!"

They passed under the oak tree, through a thin shrubbery, into the
stable-yard. There under a clock-tower lay a fluffy brown-and-white dog,
so old that he did not get up, but faintly waved the tail curled over his
back.

"That's Balthasar," said Holly; "he's so old--awfully old, nearly as old
as I am. Poor old boy! He's devoted to Dad."

"Balthasar! That's a rum name. He isn't purebred you know."

"No! but he's a darling," and she bent down to stroke the dog. Gentle and
supple, with dark covered head and slim browned neck and hands, she
seemed to Val strange and sweet, like a thing slipped between him and all
previous knowledge.

"When grandfather died," she said, "he wouldn't eat for two days. He saw
him die, you know."

"Was that old Uncle Jolyon? Mother always says he was a topper."

"He was," said Holly simply, and opened the stable door.

In a loose-box stood a silver roan of about fifteen hands, with a long
black tail and mane. "This is mine--Fairy."

"Ah!" said Val, "she's a jolly palfrey. But you ought to bang her tail.
She'd look much smarter." Then catching her wondering look, he thought
suddenly: 'I don't know--anything she likes!' And he took a long sniff
of the stable air. "Horses are ripping, aren't they? My Dad..." he
stopped.

"Yes?" said Holly.

An impulse to unbosom himself almost overcame him--but not quite. "Oh! I
don't know he's often gone a mucker over them. I'm jolly keen on them
too--riding and hunting. I like racing awfully, as well; I should like
to be a gentleman rider." And oblivious of the fact that he had but one
more day in town, with two engagements, he plumped out:

"I say, if I hire a gee to-morrow, will you come a ride in Richmond
Park?"

Holly clasped her hands.

"Oh yes! I simply love riding. But there's Jolly's horse; why don't you
ride him? Here he is. We could go after tea."

Val looked doubtfully at his trousered legs.

He had imagined them immaculate before her eyes in high brown boots and
Bedford cords.

"I don't much like riding his horse," he said. "He mightn't like it.
Besides, Uncle Soames wants to get back, I expect. Not that I believe in
buckling under to him, you know. You haven't got an uncle, have you?
This is rather a good beast," he added, scrutinising Jolly's horse, a
dark brown, which was showing the whites of its eyes. "You haven't got
any hunting here, I suppose?"

"No; I don't know that I want to hunt. It must be awfully exciting, of
course; but it's cruel, isn't it? June says so."

"Cruel?" ejaculated Val. "Oh! that's all rot. Who's June?"

"My sister--my half-sister, you know--much older than me." She had put
her hands up to both cheeks of Jolly's horse, and was rubbing her nose
against its nose with a gentle snuffling noise which seemed to have an
hypnotic effect on the animal. Val contemplated her cheek resting
against the horse's nose, and her eyes gleaming round at him. 'She's
really a duck,' he thought.

They returned to the house less talkative, followed this time by the dog
Balthasar, walking more slowly than anything on earth, and clearly
expecting them not to exceed his speed limit.

"This is a ripping place," said Val from under the oak tree, where they
had paused to allow the dog Balthasar to come up.

"Yes," said Holly, and sighed. "Of course I want to go everywhere. I
wish I were a gipsy."

"Yes, gipsies are jolly," replied Val, with a conviction which had just
come to him; "you're rather like one, you know."

Holly's face shone suddenly and deeply, like dark leaves gilded by the
sun.

"To go mad-rabbiting everywhere and see everything, and live in the
open--oh! wouldn't it be fun?"

"Let's do it!" said Val.

"Oh yes, let's!"

"It'd be grand sport, just you and I."

Then Holly perceived the quaintness and gushed.

"Well, we've got to do it," said Val obstinately, but reddening too.

"I believe in doing things you want to do. What's down there?"

"The kitchen-garden, and the pond and the coppice, and the farm."

"Let's go down!"

Holly glanced back at the house.

"It's tea-time, I expect; there's Dad beckoning."

Val, uttering a growly sound, followed her towards the house.

When they re-entered the hall gallery the sight of two middle-aged
Forsytes drinking tea together had its magical effect, and they became
quite silent. It was, indeed, an impressive spectacle. The two were
seated side by side on an arrangement in marqueterie which looked like
three silvery pink chairs made one, with a low tea-table in front of
them. They seemed to have taken up that position, as far apart as the
seat would permit, so that they need not look at each other too much; and
they were eating and drinking rather than talking--Soames with his air of
despising the tea-cake as it disappeared, Jolyon of finding himself
slightly amusing. To the casual eye neither would have seemed greedy,
but both were getting through a good deal of sustenance. The two young
ones having been supplied with food, the process went on silent and
absorbative, till, with the advent of cigarettes, Jolyon said to Soames:

"And how's Uncle James?"

"Thanks, very shaky."

"We're a wonderful family, aren't we? The other day I was calculating
the average age of the ten old Forsytes from my father's family Bible. I
make it eighty-four already, and five still living. They ought to beat
the record;" and looking whimsically at Soames, he added:

"We aren't the men they were, you know."

Soames smiled. 'Do you really think I shall admit that I'm not their
equal'; he seemed to be saying, 'or that I've got to give up anything,
especially life?'

"We may live to their age, perhaps," pursued Jolyon, "but
self-consciousness is a handicap, you know, and that's the difference
between us. We've lost conviction. How and when self-consciousness was
born I never can make out. My father had a little, but I don't believe
any other of the old Forsytes ever had a scrap. Never to see yourself as
others see you, it's a wonderful preservative. The whole history of the
last century is in the difference between us. And between us and you," he
added, gazing through a ring of smoke at Val and Holly, uncomfortable
under his quizzical regard, "there'll be--another difference. I wonder
what."