The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Galsworthy

J >> John Galsworthy >> The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Galsworthy


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! Iwon'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.