The Forsyte Saga, Volume III.

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THE FORSYTE SAGA--VOLUME III.




AWAKENING and TO LET

By John Galsworthy




AWAKENING



TO CHARLES SCRIBNER




AWAKENING

Through the massive skylight illuminating the hall at Robin Hill, the
July sunlight at five o'clock fell just where the broad stairway turned;
and in that radiant streak little Jon Forsyte stood, blue-linen-suited.
His hair was shining, and his eyes, from beneath a frown, for he was
considering how to go downstairs, this last of innumerable times, before
the car brought his father and mother home. Four at a time, and five
at the bottom? Stale! Down the banisters? But in which fashion? On his
face, feet foremost? Very stale. On his stomach, sideways? Paltry! On
his back, with his arms stretched down on both sides? Forbidden! Or on
his face, head foremost, in a manner unknown as yet to any but himself?
Such was the cause of the frown on the illuminated face of little
Jon....

In that Summer of 1909 the simple souls who even then desired to
simplify the English tongue, had, of course, no cognizance of little
Jon, or they would have claimed him for a disciple. But one can be too
simple in this life, for his real name was Jolyon, and his living father
and dead half-brother had usurped of old the other shortenings, Jo and
Jolly. As a fact little Jon had done his best to conform to convention
and spell himself first Jhon, then John; not till his father had
explained the sheer necessity, had he spelled his name Jon.

Up till now that father had possessed what was left of his heart by the
groom, Bob, who played the concertina, and his nurse "Da," who wore
the violet dress on Sundays, and enjoyed the name of Spraggins in that
private life lived at odd moments even by domestic servants. His mother
had only appeared to him, as it were in dreams, smelling delicious,
smoothing his forehead just before he fell asleep, and sometimes docking
his hair, of a golden brown colour. When he cut his head open against
the nursery fender she was there to be bled over; and when he had
nightmare she would sit on his bed and cuddle his head against her neck.
She was precious but remote, because "Da" was so near, and there is
hardly room for more than one woman at a time in a man's heart. With his
father, too, of course, he had special bonds of union; for little
Jon also meant to be a painter when he grew up--with the one small
difference, that his father painted pictures, and little Jon intended to
paint ceilings and walls, standing on a board between two step-ladders,
in a dirty-white apron, and a lovely smell of whitewash. His father also
took him riding in Richmond Park, on his pony, Mouse, so-called because
it was so-coloured.

Little Jon had been born with a silver spoon in a mouth which was rather
curly and large. He had never heard his father or his mother speak in an
angry voice, either to each other, himself, or anybody else; the groom,
Bob, Cook, Jane, Bella and the other servants, even "Da," who alone
restrained him in his courses, had special voices when they talked to
him. He was therefore of opinion that the world was a place of perfect
and perpetual gentility and freedom.

A child of 1901, he had come to consciousness when his country, just
over that bad attack of scarlet fever, the Boer War, was preparing for
the Liberal revival of 1906. Coercion was unpopular, parents had exalted
notions of giving their offspring a good time. They spoiled their rods,
spared their children, and anticipated the results with enthusiasm. In
choosing, moreover, for his father an amiable man of fifty-two, who had
already lost an only son, and for his mother a woman of thirty-eight,
whose first and only child he was, little Jon had done well and wisely.
What had saved him from becoming a cross between a lap dog and a little
prig, had been his father's adoration of his mother, for even little Jon
could see that she was not merely just his mother, and that he played
second fiddle to her in his father's heart: What he played in his
mother's heart he knew not yet. As for "Auntie" June, his half-sister
(but so old that she had grown out of the relationship) she loved him,
of course, but was too sudden. His devoted "Da," too, had a Spartan
touch. His bath was cold and his knees were bare; he was not encouraged
to be sorry for himself. As to the vexed question of his education,
little Jon shared the theory of those who considered that children
should not be forced. He rather liked the Mademoiselle who came for two
hours every morning to teach him her language, together with history,
geography and sums; nor were the piano lessons which his mother gave him
disagreeable, for she had a way of luring him from tune to tune, never
making him practise one which did not give him pleasure, so that he
remained eager to convert ten thumbs into eight fingers. Under his
father he learned to draw pleasure-pigs and other animals. He was not a
highly educated little boy. Yet, on the whole, the silver spoon stayed
in his mouth without spoiling it, though "Da" sometimes said that other
children would do him a "world of good."

It was a disillusionment, then, when at the age of nearly seven she held
him down on his back, because he wanted to do something of which she did
not approve. This first interference with the free individualism of a
Forsyte drove him almost frantic. There was something appalling in the
utter helplessness of that position, and the uncertainty as to whether
it would ever come to an end. Suppose she never let him get up any more!
He suffered torture at the top of his voice for fifty seconds. Worse
than anything was his perception that "Da" had taken all that time
to realise the agony of fear he was enduring. Thus, dreadfully, was
revealed to him the lack of imagination in the human being.

When he was let up he remained convinced that "Da" had done a dreadful
thing. Though he did not wish to bear witness against her, he had been
compelled, by fear of repetition, to seek his mother and say: "Mum,
don't let 'Da' hold me down on my back again."

His mother, her hands held up over her head, and in them two plaits of
hair--"couleur de feuille morte," as little Jon had not yet learned
to call it--had looked at him with eyes like little bits of his brown
velvet tunic, and answered:

"No, darling, I won't."

She, being in the nature of a goddess, little Jon was satisfied;
especially when, from under the dining-table at breakfast, where he
happened to be waiting for a mushroom, he had overheard her say to his
father:

"Then, will you tell 'Da,' dear, or shall I? She's so devoted to him";
and his father's answer:

"Well, she mustn't show it that way. I know exactly what it feels like
to be held down on one's back. No Forsyte can stand it for a minute."

Conscious that they did not know him to be under the table, little Jon
was visited by the quite new feeling of embarrassment, and stayed where
he was, ravaged by desire for the mushroom.

Such had been his first dip into the dark abysses of existence. Nothing
much had been revealed to him after that, till one day, having gone down
to the cow-house for his drink of milk fresh from the cow, after Garratt
had finished milking, he had seen Clover's calf, dead. Inconsolable,
and followed by an upset Garratt, he had sought "Da"; but suddenly
aware that she was not the person he wanted, had rushed away to find his
father, and had run into the arms of his mother.

"Clover's calf's dead! Oh! Oh! It looked so soft!"

His mother's clasp, and her:

"Yes, darling, there, there!" had stayed his sobbing. But if Clover's
calf could die, anything could--not only bees, flies, beetles and
chickens--and look soft like that! This was appalling--and soon
forgotten!

The next thing had been to sit on a bumble bee, a poignant experience,
which his mother had understood much better than "Da"; and nothing of
vital importance had happened after that till the year turned; when,
following a day of utter wretchedness, he had enjoyed a disease composed
of little spots, bed, honey in a spoon, and many Tangerine oranges.
It was then that the world had flowered. To "Auntie" June he owed that
flowering, for no sooner was he a little lame duck than she came rushing
down from London, bringing with her the books which had nurtured her
own Berserker spirit, born in the noted year of 1869. Aged, and of many
colours, they were stored with the most formidable happenings. Of
these she read to little Jon, till he was allowed to read to himself;
whereupon she whisked back to London and left them with him in a heap.
Those books cooked his fancy, till he thought and dreamed of nothing but
midshipmen and dhows, pirates, rafts, sandal-wood traders, iron horses,
sharks, battles, Tartars, Red Indians, balloons, North Poles and other
extravagant delights. The moment he was suffered to get up, he rigged
his bed fore and aft, and set out from it in a narrow bath across green
seas of carpet, to a rock, which he climbed by means of its mahogany
drawer knobs, to sweep the horizon with his drinking tumbler screwed to
his eye, in search of rescuing sails. He made a daily raft out of the
towel stand, the tea tray, and his pillows. He saved the juice from his
French plums, bottled it in an empty medicine bottle, and provisioned
the raft with the rum that it became; also with pemmican made out of
little saved-up bits of chicken sat on and dried at the fire; and with
lime juice against scurvy, extracted from the peel of his oranges and a
little economised juice. He made a North Pole one morning from the whole
of his bedclothes except the bolster, and reached it in a birch-bark
canoe (in private life the fender), after a terrible encounter with a
polar bear fashioned from the bolster and four skittles dressed up
in "Da's" nightgown. After that, his father, seeking to steady his
imagination, brought him Ivanboe, Bevis, a book about King Arthur, and
Tom Brown's Schooldays. He read the first, and for three days built,
defended and stormed Front de Boeuf's castle, taking every part in the
piece except those of Rebecca and Rowena; with piercing cries of: "En
avant, de Bracy!" and similar utterances. After reading the book about
King Arthur he became almost exclusively Sir Lamorac de Galis, because,
though there was very little about him, he preferred his name to that of
any other knight; and he rode his old rocking-horse to death, armed
with a long bamboo. Bevis he found tame; besides, it required woods and
animals, of which he had none in his nursery, except his two cats, Fitz
and Puck Forsyte, who permitted no liberties. For Tom Brown he was as
yet too young. There was relief in the house when, after the fourth
week, he was permitted to go down and out.

The month being March the trees were exceptionally like the masts of
ships, and for little Jon that was a wonderful Spring, extremely hard
on his knees, suits, and the patience of "Da," who had the washing and
reparation of his clothes. Every morning the moment his breakfast was
over, he could be viewed by his mother and father, whose windows looked
out that way, coming from the study, crossing the terrace, climbing the
old oak tree, his face resolute and his hair bright. He began the day
thus because there was not time to go far afield before his lessons. The
old tree's variety never staled; it had mainmast, foremast, top-gallant
mast, and he could always come down by the halyards--or ropes of the
swing. After his lessons, completed by eleven, he would go to
the kitchen for a thin piece of cheese, a biscuit and two French
plums--provision enough for a jolly-boat at least--and eat it in some
imaginative way; then, armed to the teeth with gun, pistols, and sword,
he would begin the serious climbing of the morning, encountering by the
way innumerable slavers, Indians, pirates, leopards, and bears. He was
seldom seen at that hour of the day without a cutlass in his teeth (like
Dick Needham) amid the rapid explosion of copper caps. And many were the
gardeners he brought down with yellow peas shot out of his little gun.
He lived a life of the most violent action.

"Jon," said his father to his mother, under the oak tree, "is terrible.
I'm afraid he's going to turn out a sailor, or something hopeless. Do
you see any sign of his appreciating beauty?"

"Not the faintest."

"Well, thank heaven he's no turn for wheels or engines! I can bear
anything but that. But I wish he'd take more interest in Nature."

"He's imaginative, Jolyon."

"Yes, in a sanguinary way. Does he love anyone just now?"

"No; only everyone. There never was anyone born more loving or more
lovable than Jon."

"Being your boy, Irene."

At this moment little Jon, lying along a branch high above them, brought
them down with two peas; but that fragment of talk lodged, thick, in his
small gizzard. Loving, lovable, imaginative, sanguinary!

The leaves also were thick by now, and it was time for his birthday,
which, occurring every year on the twelfth of May, was always memorable
for his chosen dinner of sweetbread, mushrooms, macaroons, and ginger
beer.

Between that eighth birthday, however, and the afternoon when he stood
in the July radiance at the turning of the stairway, several important
things had happened.

"Da," worn out by washing his knees, or moved by that mysterious
instinct which forces even nurses to desert their nurslings, left the
very day after his birthday in floods of tears "to be married"--of
all things--"to a man." Little Jon, from whom it had been kept, was
inconsolable for an afternoon. It ought not to have been kept from him!
Two large boxes of soldiers and some artillery, together with The Young
Buglers, which had been among his birthday presents, cooperated with
his grief in a sort of conversion, and instead of seeking adventures in
person and risking his own life, he began to play imaginative games, in
which he risked the lives of countless tin soldiers, marbles, stones and
beans. Of these forms of "chair a canon" he made collections, and, using
them alternately, fought the Peninsular, the Seven Years, the Thirty
Years, and other wars, about which he had been reading of late in a big
History of Europe which had been his grandfather's. He altered them to
suit his genius, and fought them all over the floor in his day nursery,
so that nobody could come in, for fearing of disturbing Gustavus
Adolphus, King of Sweden, or treading on an army of Austrians. Because
of the sound of the word he was passionately addicted to the Austrians,
and finding there were so few battles in which they were successful
he had to invent them in his games. His favourite generals were
Prince Eugene, the Archduke Charles and Wallenstein. Tilly and Mack
("music-hall turns" he heard his father call them one day, whatever that
might mean) one really could not love very much, Austrian though they
were. For euphonic reasons, too, he doted on Turenne.

This phase, which caused his parents anxiety, because it kept him
indoors when he ought to have been out, lasted through May and half of
June, till his father killed it by bringing home to him Tom Sawyer and
Huckleberry Finn. When he read those books something happened in him,
and he went out of doors again in passionate quest of a river. There
being none on the premises at Robin Hill, he had to make one out of
the pond, which fortunately had water lilies, dragonflies, gnats,
bullrushes, and three small willow trees. On this pond, after his father
and Garratt had ascertained by sounding that it had a reliable bottom
and was nowhere more than two feet deep, he was allowed a little
collapsible canoe, in which he spent hours and hours paddling, and lying
down out of sight of Indian Joe and other enemies. On the shore of the
pond, too, he built himself a wigwam about four feet square, of old
biscuit tins, roofed in by boughs. In this he would make little fires,
and cook the birds he had not shot with his gun, hunting in the coppice
and fields, or the fish he did not catch in the pond because there were
none. This occupied the rest of June and that July, when his father
and mother were away in Ireland. He led a lonely life of "make believe"
during those five weeks of summer weather, with gun, wigwam, water and
canoe; and, however hard his active little brain tried to keep the
sense of beauty away, she did creep in on him for a second now and then,
perching on the wing of a dragon-fly, glistening on the water lilies, or
brushing his eyes with her blue as he Jay on his back in ambush.

"Auntie" June, who had been left in charge, had a "grown-up" in the
house, with a cough and a large piece of putty which he was making
into a face; so she hardly ever came down to see him in the pond. Once,
however, she brought with her two other "grown-ups." Little Jon, who
happened to have painted his naked self bright blue and yellow in
stripes out of his father's water-colour box, and put some duck's
feathers in his hair, saw them coming, and--ambushed himself among the
willows. As he had foreseen, they came at once to his wigwam and knelt
down to look inside, so that with a blood-curdling yell he was able to
take the scalps of "Auntie" June and the woman "grown-up" in an almost
complete manner before they kissed him. The names of the two grown-ups
were "Auntie" Holly and "Uncle" Val, who had a brown face and a little
limp, and laughed at him terribly. He took a fancy to "Auntie" Holly,
who seemed to be a sister too; but they both went away the same
afternoon and he did not see them again. Three days before his father
and mother were to come home "Auntie" June also went off in a great
hurry, taking the "grown-up" who coughed and his piece of putty; and
Mademoiselle said: "Poor man, he was veree ill. I forbid you to go into
his room, Jon." Little Jon, who rarely did things merely because he was
told not to, refrained from going, though he was bored and lonely. In
truth the day of the pond was past, and he was filled to the brim of
his soul with restlessness and the want of something--not a tree, not a
gun--something soft. Those last two days had seemed months in spite
of Cast Up by the Sea, wherein he was reading about Mother Lee and her
terrible wrecking bonfire. He had gone up and down the stairs perhaps a
hundred times in those two days, and often from the day nursery, where
he slept now, had stolen into his mother's room, looked at everything,
without touching, and on into the dressing-room; and standing on one leg
beside the bath, like Slingsby, had whispered:

"Ho, ho, ho! Dog my cats!" mysteriously, to bring luck. Then, stealing
back, he had opened his mother's wardrobe, and taken a long sniff which
seemed to bring him nearer to--he didn't know what.

He had done this just before he stood in the streak of sunlight,
debating in which of the several ways he should slide down the
banisters. They all seemed silly, and in a sudden languor he began
descending the steps one by one. During that descent he could remember
his father quite distinctly--the short grey beard, the deep eyes
twinkling, the furrow between them, the funny smile, the thin figure
which always seemed so tall to little Jon; but his mother he couldn't
see. All that represented her was something swaying with two dark eyes
looking back at him; and the scent of her wardrobe.

Bella was in the hall, drawing aside the big curtains, and opening the
front door. Little Jon said, wheedling,

"Bella!"

"Yes, Master Jon."

"Do let's have tea under the oak tree when they come; I know they'd like
it best."

"You mean you'd like it best."

Little Jon considered.

"No, they would, to please me."

Bella smiled. "Very well, I'll take it out if you'll stay quiet here and
not get into mischief before they come."

Little Jon sat down on the bottom step, and nodded. Bella came close,
and looked him over.

"Get up!" she said.

Little Jon got up. She scrutinized him behind; he was not green, and his
knees seemed clean.

"All right!" she said. "My! Aren't you brown? Give me a kiss!"

And little Jon received a peck on his hair.

"What jam?" he asked. "I'm so tired of waiting."

"Gooseberry and strawberry."

Num! They were his favourites!

When she was gone he sat still for quite a minute. It was quiet in the
big hall open to its East end so that he could see one of his trees,
a brig sailing very slowly across the upper lawn. In the outer hall
shadows were slanting from the pillars. Little Jon got up, jumped one of
them, and walked round the clump of iris plants which filled the pool
of grey-white marble in the centre. The flowers were pretty, but only
smelled a very little. He stood in the open doorway and looked out.
Suppose!--suppose they didn't come! He had waited so long that he
felt he could not bear that, and his attention slid at once from such
finality to the dust motes in the bluish sunlight coming in: Thrusting
his hand up, he tried to catch some. Bella ought to have dusted that
piece of air! But perhaps they weren't dust--only what sunlight was made
of, and he looked to see whether the sunlight out of doors was the same.
It was not. He had said he would stay quiet in the hall, but he simply
couldn't any more; and crossing the gravel of the drive he lay down
on the grass beyond. Pulling six daisies he named them carefully,
Sir Lamorac, Sir Tristram, Sir Lancelot, Sir Palimedes, Sir Bors, Sir
Gawain, and fought them in couples till only Sir Lamorac, whom he had
selected for a specially stout stalk, had his head on, and even he,
after three encounters, looked worn and waggly. A beetle was moving
slowly in the grass, which almost wanted cutting. Every blade was
a small tree, round whose trunk the beetle had to glide. Little Jon
stretched out Sir Lamorac, feet foremost, and stirred the creature up.
It scuttled painfully. Little Jon laughed, lost interest, and sighed.
His heart felt empty. He turned over and lay on his back. There was a
scent of honey from the lime trees in flower, and in the sky the blue
was beautiful, with a few white clouds which looked and perhaps tasted
like lemon ice. He could hear Bob playing: "Way down upon de Suwannee
ribber" on his concertina, and it made him nice and sad. He turned over
again and put his ear to the ground--Indians could hear things coming
ever so far--but he could hear nothing--only the concertina! And almost
instantly he did hear a grinding sound, a faint toot. Yes! it was a
car--coming--coming! Up he jumped. Should he wait in the porch, or rush
upstairs, and as they came in, shout: "Look!" and slide slowly down the
banisters, head foremost? Should he? The car turned in at the drive. It
was too late! And he only waited, jumping up and down in his excitement.
The car came quickly, whirred, and stopped. His father got out, exactly
like life. He bent down and little Jon bobbed up--they bumped. His
father said,

"Bless us! Well, old man, you are brown!" Just as he would; and the
sense of expectation--of something wanted--bubbled unextinguished in
little Jon. Then, with a long, shy look he saw his mother, in a blue
dress, with a blue motor scarf over her cap and hair, smiling. He jumped
as high as ever he could, twined his legs behind her back, and hugged.
He heard her gasp, and felt her hugging back. His eyes, very dark blue
just then, looked into hers, very dark brown, till her lips closed on
his eyebrow, and, squeezing with all his might, he heard her creak and
laugh, and say:

"You are strong, Jon!"

He slid down at that, and rushed into the hall, dragging her by the
hand.

While he was eating his jam beneath the oak tree, he noticed things
about his mother that he had never seemed to see before, her cheeks for
instance were creamy, there were silver threads in her dark goldy hair,
her throat had no knob in it like Bella's, and she went in and out
softly. He noticed, too, some little lines running away from the corners
of her eyes, and a nice darkness under them. She was ever so beautiful,
more beautiful than "Da" or Mademoiselle, or "Auntie" June or even
"Auntie" Holly, to whom he had taken a fancy; even more beautiful than
Bella, who had pink cheeks and came out too suddenly in places. This new
beautifulness of his mother had a kind of particular importance, and he
ate less than he had expected to.

When tea was over his father wanted him to walk round the gardens.
He had a long conversation with his father about things in general,
avoiding his private life--Sir Lamorac, the Austrians, and the emptiness
he had felt these last three days, now so suddenly filled up. His father
told him of a place called Glensofantrim, where he and his mother had
been; and of the little people who came out of the ground there when it
was very quiet. Little Jon came to a halt, with his heels apart.

"Do you really believe they do, Daddy?" "No, Jon, but I thought you
might."

"Why?"

"You're younger than I; and they're fairies." Little Jon squared the
dimple in his chin.

"I don't believe in fairies. I never see any." "Ha!" said his father.

"Does Mum?"

His father smiled his funny smile.