The Forsyte saga - Complete
might have retired to rest with ten thousand other Englishmen
without knowing the difference from the one she had chosen to
repose beside. “Oh!” she would say of him, in her “amusing” way,
“Jack keeps himself so fearfully fit; he's never had a day's
illness in his life. He went right through the War without a
finger-ache. You really can't imagine how fit he is!” Indeed, he
was so “fit” that he couldn't see when she was flirting, which
was such a comfort in a way. All the same she was quite fond of
him, so far as one could be of a sports-machine, and of the two
little Cardigans made after his pattern. Her eyes just then were
comparing him maliciously with Prosper Profond. There was no
“small” sport or game which Monsieur Profond had not played at
too, it seemed, from skittles to tarpon-fishing, and worn out
every one. Imogen would sometimes wish that they had worn out
Jack, who continued to play at them and talk of them with the
simple zeal of a school-girl learning hockey; at the age of
Great-uncle Timothy she well knew that Jack would be playing
carpet golf in her bedroom, and “wiping somebody's eye.”
He was telling them now how he had “pipped the pro—a charmin'
fellow, playin' a very good game,” at the last hole this morning;
and how he had pulled down to Caversham since lunch, and trying
to incite Prosper Profond to play him a set of tennis after
tea—do him good—“keep him fit.
“But what's the use of keepin' fit?” said Monsieur Profond.
“Yes, sir,” murmured Michael Mont, “what do you keep fit for?”
“Jack,” cried Imogen, enchanted, “what do you keep fit for?”
Jack Cardigan stared with all his health. The questions were like
the buzz of a mosquito, and he put up his hand to wipe them away.
During the War, of course, he had kept fit to kill Germans; now
that it was over he either did not know, or shrank in delicacy
from explanation of his moving principle.
“But he's right,” said Monsieur Profond unexpectedly, “there's
nothin' left but keepin' fit.”
The saying, too deep for Sunday afternoon, would have passed
unanswered, but for the mercurial nature of young Mont.
“Good!” he cried. “That's the great discovery of the War. We all
thought we were progressing—now we know we're only changing.”
“For the worse,” said Monsieur Profond genially.
“How you are cheerful, Prosper!” murmured Annette.
“You come and play tennis!” said Jack Cardigan; “you've got the
hump. We'll soon take that down. D'you play, Mr. Mont?”
“I hit the ball about, sir.”
At this juncture Soames rose, ruffled in that deep instinct of
preparation for the future which guided his existence.
“When Fleur comes—” he heard Jack Cardigan say.
Ah! and why didn't she come? He passed through drawing-room,
hall, and porch out on to the drive, and stood there listening
for the car. All was still and Sundayfied; the lilacs in full
flower scented the air. There were white clouds, like the
feathers of ducks gilded by the sunlight. Memory of the day when
Fleur was born, and he had waited in such agony with her life and
her mother's balanced in his hands, came to him sharply. He had
saved her then, to be the flower of his life. And now! was she
going to give him trouble—pain—give him trouble? He did not like
the look of things! A blackbird broke in on his reverie with an
evening song—a great big fellow up in that acacia-tree. Soames
had taken quite an interest in his birds of late years; he and
Fleur would walk round and watch them; her eyes were sharp as
needles, and she knew every nest. He saw her dog, a retriever,
lying on the drive in a patch of sunlight, and called to him.
“Hallo, old fellow-waiting for her too!” The dog came slowly with
a grudging tail, and Soames mechanically laid a pat on his head.
The dog, the bird, the lilac, all were part of Fleur for him; no
more, no less. 'Too fond of her!' he thought, 'too fond!' He was
like a man uninsured, with his ships at sea. Uninsured again—as
in that other time, so long ago, when he would wander dumb and
jealous in the wilderness of London, longing for that woman—his
first wife—the mother of this infernal boy. Ah! There was the car
at last! It drew up, it had luggage, but no Fleur.
“Miss Fleur is walking up, sir, by the towing-path.”
Walking all those miles? Soames stared. The man's face had the
beginning of a smile on it. What was he grinning at? And very
quickly he turned, saying, “All right, Sims!” and went into the
house. He mounted to the picture-gallery once more. He had from
there a view of the river bank, and stood with his eyes fixed on
it, oblivious of the fact that it would be an hour at least
before her figure showed there. Walking up! And that fellow's
grin! The boy—! He turned abruptly from the window. He couldn't
spy on her. If she wanted to keep things from him—she must; he
could not spy on her. His heart felt empty, and bitterness
mounted from it into his very mouth. The staccato shouts of Jack
Cardigan pursuing the ball, the laugh of young Mont rose in the
stillness and came in. He hoped they were making that chap
Profond run. And the girl in “La Vendimia” stood with her arm
akimbo and her dreamy eyes looking past him. 'I've done all I
could for you,' he thought, 'since you were no higher than my
knee. You aren't going to—to—hurt me, are you?'
But the Goya copy answered not, brilliant in colour just
beginning to tone down. 'There's no real life in it,' thought
Soames. 'Why doesn't she come?'
X.—TRIO
Among those four Forsytes of the third, and, as one might say,
fourth generation, at Wansdon under the Downs, a week-end
prolonged unto the ninth day had stretched the crossing threads
of tenacity almost to snapping-point. Never had Fleur been so
“fine,” Holly so watchful, Val so stable-secretive, Jon so silent
and disturbed. What he learned of farming in that week might have
been balanced on the point of a penknife and puffed off. He,
whose nature was essentially averse from intrigue, and whose
adoration of Fleur disposed him to think that any need for
concealing it was “skittles,” chafed and fretted, yet obeyed,
taking what relief he could in the few moments when they were
alone. On Thursday, while they were standing in the bay window of
the drawing-room, dressed for dinner, she said to him:
“Jon, I'm going home on Sunday by the 3.40 from Paddington; if
you were to go home on Saturday you could come up on Sunday and
take me down, and just get back here by the last train, after.
You were going home anyway, weren't you?”
Jon nodded.
“Anything to be with you,” he said; “only why need I pretend—”
Fleur slipped her little finger into his palm:
“You have no instinct, Jon; you must leave things to me. It's
serious about our people. We've simply got to be secret at
present, if we want to be together.” The door was opened, and she
added loudly: “You are a duffer, Jon.”
Something turned over within Jon; he could not bear this
subterfuge about a feeling so natural, so overwhelming, and so
sweet.
On Friday night about eleven he had packed his bag, and was
leaning out of his window, half miserable, and half lost in a
dream of Paddington station, when he heard a tiny sound, as of a
finger-nail tapping on his door. He rushed to it and listened.
Again the sound. It was a nail. He opened. Oh! What a lovely
thing came in!
“I wanted to show you my fancy dress,” it said, and struck an
attitude at the foot of his bed.
Jon drew a long breath and leaned against the door. The
apparition wore white muslin on its head, a fichu round its bare
neck over a wine-coloured dress, fulled out below its slender
waist.
It held one arm akimbo, and the other raised, right-angled,
holding a fan which touched its head.
“This ought to be a basket of grapes,” it whispered, “but I
haven't got it here. It's my Goya dress. And this is the attitude
in the picture. Do you like it?”
“It's a dream.”
The apparition pirouetted. “Touch it, and see.”
Jon knelt down and took the skirt reverently.
“Grape colour,” came the whisper, “all grapes—La Vendimia—the
vintage.”
Jon's fingers scarcely touched each side of the waist; he looked
up, with adoring eyes.
“Oh! Jon,” it whispered; bent, kissed his forehead, pirouetted
again, and, gliding out, was gone.
Jon stayed on his knees, and his head fell forward against the
bed. How long he stayed like that he did not know. The little
noises—of the tapping nail, the feet, the skirts rustling—as in a
dream—went on about him; and before his closed eyes the figure
stood and smiled and whispered, a faint perfume of narcissus
lingering in the air. And his forehead where it had been kissed
had a little cool place between the brows, like the imprint of a
flower. Love filled his soul, that love of boy for girl which
knows so little, hopes so much, would not brush the down off for
the world, and must become in time a fragrant memory—a searing
passion—a humdrum mateship—or, once in many times, vintage full
and sweet with sunset colour on the grapes.
Enough has been said about Jon Forsyte here and in another place
to show what long marches lay between him and his
great-great-grandfather, the first Jolyon, in Dorset down by the
sea. Jon was sensitive as a girl, more sensitive than nine out of
ten girls of the day; imaginative as one of his half-sister
June's “lame duck” painters; affectionate as a son of his father
and his mother naturally would be. And yet, in his inner tissue,
there was something of the old founder of his family, a secret
tenacity of soul, a dread of showing his feelings, a
determination not to know when he was beaten. Sensitive,
imaginative, affectionate boys get a bad time at school, but Jon
had instinctively kept his nature dark, and been but normally
unhappy there. Only with his mother had he, up till then, been
absolutely frank and natural; and when he went home to Robin Hill
that Saturday his heart was heavy because Fleur had said that he
must not be frank and natural with her from whom he had never yet
kept anything, must not even tell her that they had met again,
unless he found that she knew already. So intolerable did this
seem to him that he was very near to telegraphing an excuse and
staying up in London. And the first thing his mother said to him
was:
“So you've had our little friend of the confectioner's there,
Jon. What is she like on second thoughts?”
With relief, and a high colour, Jon answered:
“Oh! awfully jolly, Mum.”
Her arm pressed his.
Jon had never loved her so much as in that minute which seemed to
falsify Fleur's fears and to release his soul. He turned to look
at her, but something in her smiling face—something which only he