The Forsyte saga - Complete
“Oh! yes, he's a painter—isn't he?”
“Only water-colour,” said Jon, with honesty.
“When we come to Reading, Jon, get out first and go down to
Caversham lock and wait for me. I'll send the car home and we'll
walk by the towing-path.”
Jon seized her hand in gratitude, and they sat silent, with the
world well lost, and one eye on the corridor. But the train
seemed to run twice as fast now, and its sound was almost lost in
that of Jon's sighing.
“We're getting near,” said Fleur; “the towing-path's awfully
exposed. One more! Oh! Jon, don't forget me.”
Jon answered with his kiss. And very soon, a flushed,
distracted-looking youth could have been seen—as they say—leaping
from the train and hurrying along the platform, searching his
pockets for his ticket.
When at last she rejoined him on the towing-path a little beyond
Caversham lock he had made an effort, and regained some measure
of equanimity. If they had to part, he would not make a scene! A
breeze by the bright river threw the white side of the willow
leaves up into the sunlight, and followed those two with its
faint rustle.
“I told our chauffeur that I was train-giddy,” said Fleur. “Did
you look pretty natural as you went out?”
“I don't know. What is natural?”
“It's natural to you to look seriously happy. When I first saw
you I thought you weren't a bit like other people.”
“Exactly what I thought when I saw you. I knew at once I should
never love anybody else.”
Fleur laughed.
“We're absurdly young. And love's young dream is out of date,
Jon. Besides, it's awfully wasteful. Think of all the fun you
might have. You haven't begun, even; it's a shame, really. And
there's me. I wonder!”
Confusion came on Jon's spirit. How could she say such things
just as they were going to part?
“If you feel like that,” he said, “I can't go. I shall tell
Mother that I ought to try and work. There's always the condition
of the world!”
“The condition of the world!”
Jon thrust his hands deep into his pockets.
“But there is,” he said; “think of the people starving!”
Fleur shook her head. “No, no, I never, never will make myself
miserable for nothing.”
“Nothing! But there's an awful state of things, and of course one
ought to help.”
“Oh! yes, I know all that. But you can't help people, Jon;
they're hopeless. When you pull them out they only get into
another hole. Look at them, still fighting and plotting and
struggling, though they're dying in heaps all the time. Idiots!”
“Aren't you sorry for them?”
“Oh! sorry—yes, but I'm not going to make myself unhappy about
it; that's no good.”
And they were silent, disturbed by this first glimpse of each
other's natures.
“I think people are brutes and idiots,” said Fleur stubbornly.
“I think they're poor wretches,” said Jon. It was as if they had
quarrelled—and at this supreme and awful moment, with parting
visible out there in that last gap of the willows!
“Well, go and help your poor wretches, and don't think of me.”
Jon stood still. Sweat broke out on his forehead, and his limbs
trembled. Fleur too had stopped, and was frowning at the river.
“I must believe in things,” said Jon with a sort of agony; “we're
all meant to enjoy life.”
Fleur laughed. “Yes; and that's what you won't do, if you don't
take care. But perhaps your idea of enjoyment is to make yourself
wretched. There are lots of people like that, of course.”
She was pale, her eyes had darkened, her lips had thinned. Was it
Fleur thus staring at the water? Jon had an unreal feeling as if
he were passing through the scene in a book where the lover has
to choose between love and duty. But just then she looked round
at him. Never was anything so intoxicating as that vivacious
look. It acted on him exactly as the tug of a chain acts on a
dog—brought him up to her with his tail wagging and his tongue
out.
“Don't let's be silly,” she said, “time's too short. Look, Jon,
you can just see where I've got to cross the river. There, round
the bend, where the woods begin.”
Jon saw a gable, a chimney or two, a patch of wall through the
trees—and felt his heart sink.
“I mustn't dawdle any more. It's no good going beyond the next
hedge, it gets all open. Let's get on to it and say good-bye.”
They went side by side, hand in hand, silently toward the hedge,
where the may-flower, both pink and white, was in full bloom.
“My Club's the 'Talisman,' Stratton Street, Piccadilly. Letters
there will be quite safe, and I'm almost always up once a week.”
Jon nodded. His face had become extremely set, his eyes stared
straight before him.
“To-day's the twenty-third of May,” said Fleur; “on the ninth of
July I shall be in front of the 'Bacchus and Ariadne' at three
o'clock; will you?”
“I will.”
“If you feel as bad as I it's all right. Let those people pass!”
A man and woman airing their children went by strung out in
Sunday fashion.
The last of them passed the wicket gate.
“Domesticity!” said Fleur, and blotted herself against the
hawthorn hedge. The blossom sprayed out above her head, and one
pink cluster brushed her cheek. Jon put up his hand jealously to
keep it off.
“Good-bye, Jon.” For a second they stood with hands hard clasped.
Then their lips met for the third time, and when they parted
Fleur broke away and fled through the wicket gate. Jon stood
where she had left him, with his forehead against that pink
cluster. Gone! For an eternity—for seven weeks all but two days!
And here he was, wasting the last sight of her! He rushed to the
gate. She was walking swiftly on the heels of the straggling
children. She turned her head, he saw her hand make a little
flitting gesture; then she sped on, and the trailing family
blotted her out from his view.
The words of a comic song—
“Paddington groan-worst ever known He gave a sepulchral
Paddington groan—”
came into his head, and he sped incontinently back to Reading
station. All the way up to London and down to Wansdon he sat with
“The Heart of the Trail” open on his knee, knitting in his head a
poem so full of feeling that it would not rhyme.
XII.—CAPRICE
Fleur sped on. She had need of rapid motion; she was late, and
wanted all her wits about her when she got in. She passed the
islands, the station, and hotel, and was about to take the ferry,
when she saw a skiff with a young man standing up in it, and
holding to the bushes.
“Miss Forsyte,” he said; “let me put you across. I've come on
purpose.”
She looked at him in blank amazement.
“It's all right, I've been having tea with your people. I thought
I'd save you the last bit. It's on my way, I'm just off back to
Pangbourne. My name's Mont. I saw you at the picture-gallery—you
remember—when your father invited me to see his pictures.”
“Oh!” said Fleur; “yes—the handkerchief.”
To this young man she owed Jon; and, taking his hand, she stepped
down into the skiff. Still emotional, and a little out of breath,
she sat silent; not so the young man. She had never heard any one
say so much in so short a time. He told her his age, twenty-four;
his weight, ten stone eleven; his place of residence, not far
away; described his sensations under fire, and what it felt like
to be gassed; criticized the Juno, mentioned his own conception
of that goddess; commented on the Goya copy, said Fleur was not
too awfully like it; sketched in rapidly the condition of
England; spoke of Monsieur Profond—or whatever his name was—as
“an awful sport”; thought her father had some “ripping” pictures
and some rather “dug-up”; hoped he might row down again and take
her on the river because he was quite trustworthy; inquired her
opinion of Tchekov, gave her his own; wished they could go to the
Russian ballet together some time—considered the name Fleur
Forsyte simply topping; cursed his people for giving him the name
of Michael on the top of Mont; outlined his father, and said that
if she wanted a good book she should read “Job”; his father was
rather like Job while Job still had land.
“But Job didn't have land,” Fleur murmured; “he only had flocks
and herds and moved on.”
“Ah!” answered Michael Mont, “I wish my gov'nor would move on.
Not that I want his land. Land's an awful bore in these days,
don't you think?”
“We never have it in my family,” said Fleur. “We have everything
else. I believe one of my great-uncles once had a sentimental
farm in Dorset, because we came from there originally, but it
cost him more than it made him happy.”
“Did he sell it?”
“No; he kept it.”
“Why?”
“Because nobody would buy it.”
“Good for the old boy!”
“No, it wasn't good for him. Father says it soured him. His name
was Swithin.”
“What a corking name!”
“Do you know that we're getting farther off, not nearer? This
river flows.”
“Splendid!” cried Mont, dipping his sculls vaguely; “it's good to
meet a girl who's got wit.”
“But better to meet a young man who's got it in the plural.”
Young Mont raised a hand to tear his hair.
“Look out!” cried Fleur. “Your scull!”
“All right! It's thick enough to bear a scratch.”
“Do you mind sculling?” said Fleur severely. “I want to get in.”
“Ah!” said Mont; “but when you get in, you see, I shan't see you
any more to-day. Fini, as the French girl said when she jumped on
her bed after saying her prayers. Don't you bless the day that
gave you a French mother, and a name like yours?”
“I like my name, but Father gave it me. Mother wanted me called
Marguerite.”
“Which is absurd. Do you mind calling me M. M. and letting me
call you F. F.? It's in the spirit of the age.”
“I don't mind anything, so long as I get in.”
Mont caught a little crab, and answered: “That was a nasty one!”
“Please row.”
“I am.” And he did for several strokes, looking at her with
rueful eagerness. “Of course, you know,” he ejaculated, pausing,
“that I came to see you, not your father's pictures.”
Fleur rose.
“If you don't row, I shall get out and swim.”
“Really and truly? Then I could come in after you.”
“Mr. Mont, I'm late and tired; please put me on shore at once.”
When she stepped out on to the garden landing-stage he rose, and
grasping his hair with both hands, looked at her.
Fleur smiled.
“Don't!” cried the irrepressible Mont. “I know you're going to
say: 'Out, damned hair!'”
Fleur whisked round, threw him a wave of her hand. “Good-bye, Mr.
M.M.!” she called, and was gone among the rose-trees. She looked
at her wrist-watch and the windows of the house. It struck her as
curiously uninhabited. Past six! The pigeons were just gathering