The Forsyte saga - Complete
other young men to himself. They wore their clothes with such an
air; they had assurance; they were old. He was suddenly
overwhelmed by the conviction that Fleur must have forgotten him.
Absorbed in his own feeling for her all these weeks, he had
mislaid that possibility. The corners of his mouth drooped, his
hands felt clammy. Fleur with the pick of youth at the beck of
her smile-Fleur incomparable! It was an evil moment. Jon,
however, had a great idea that one must be able to face anything.
And he braced himself with that dour reflection in front of a
bric-a-brac shop. At this high-water mark of what was once the
London season, there was nothing to mark it out from any other
except a grey top hat or two, and the sun. Jon moved on, and
turning the corner into Piccadilly, ran into Val Dartie moving
toward the Iseeum Club, to which he had just been elected.
“Hallo! young man! Where are you off to?”
Jon gushed. “I've just been to my tailor's.”
Val looked him up and down. “That's good! I'm going in here to
order some cigarettes; then come and have some lunch.”
Jon thanked him. He might get news of her from Val!
The condition of England, that nightmare of its Press and Public
men, was seen in different perspective within the tobacconist's
which they now entered.
“Yes, sir; precisely the cigarette I used to supply your father
with. Bless me! Mr. Montague Dartie was a customer here from—let
me see—the year Melton won the Derby. One of my very best
customers he was.” A faint smile illumined the tobacconist's
face. “Many's the tip he's given me, to be sure! I suppose he
took a couple of hundred of these every week, year in, year out,
and never changed his cigarette. Very affable gentleman, brought
me a lot of custom. I was sorry he met with that accident. One
misses an old customer like him.”
Val smiled. His father's decease had closed an account which had
been running longer, probably, than any other; and in a ring of
smoke puffed out from that time-honoured cigarette he seemed to
see again his father's face, dark, good-looking, moustachioed, a
little puffy, in the only halo it had earned. His father had his
fame here, anyway—a man who smoked two hundred cigarettes a week,
who could give tips, and run accounts for ever! To his
tobacconist a hero! Even that was some distinction to inherit!
“I pay cash,” he said; “how much?”
“To his son, sir, and cash—ten and six. I shall never forget Mr.
Montague Dartie. I've known him stand talkin' to me half an hour.
We don't get many like him now, with everybody in such a hurry.
The War was bad for manners, sir—it was bad for manners. You were
in it, I see.”
“No,” said Val, tapping his knee, “I got this in the war before.
Saved my life, I expect. Do you want any cigarettes, Jon?”
Rather ashamed, Jon murmured, “I don't smoke, you know,” and saw
the tobacconist's lips twisted, as if uncertain whether to say
“Good God!” or “Now's your chance, sir!”
“That's right,” said Val; “keep off it while you can. You'll want
it when you take a knock. This is really the same tobacco, then?”
“Identical, sir; a little dearer, that's all. Wonderful staying
power—the British Empire, I always say.”
“Send me down a hundred a week to this address, and invoice it
monthly. Come on, Jon.”
Jon entered the Iseeum with curiosity. Except to lunch now and
then at the Hotch-Potch with his father, he had never been in a
London Club. The Iseeum, comfortable and unpretentious, did not
move, could not, so long as George Forsyte sat on its Committee,
where his culinary acumen was almost the controlling force. The
Club had made a stand against the newly rich, and it had taken
all George Forsyte's prestige, and praise of him as a “good
sportsman,” to bring in Prosper Profond.
The two were lunching together when the half-brothers-in-law
entered the dining-room, and attracted by George's forefinger,
sat down at their table, Val with his shrewd eyes and charming
smile, Jon with solemn lips and an attractive shyness in his
glance. There was an air of privilege around that corner table,
as though past masters were eating there. Jon was fascinated by
the hypnotic atmosphere. The waiter, lean in the chaps, pervaded
with such free-masonical deference. He seemed to hang on George
Forsyte's lips, to watch the gloat in his eye with a kind of
sympathy, to follow the movements of the heavy club-marked silver
fondly. His liveried arm and confidential voice alarmed Jon, they
came so secretly over his shoulder.
Except for George's “Your grandfather tipped me once; he was a
deuced good judge of a cigar!” neither he nor the other past
master took any notice of him, and he was grateful for this. The
talk was all about the breeding, points, and prices of horses,
and he listened to it vaguely at first, wondering how it was
possible to retain so much knowledge in a head. He could not take
his eyes off the dark past master—what he said was so deliberate
and discouraging—such heavy, queer, smiled-out words. Jon was
thinking of butterflies, when he heard him say:
“I want to see Mr. Soames Forsyde take an interest in 'orses.”
“Old Soames! He's too dry a file!”
With all his might Jon tried not to grow red, while the dark past
master went on.
“His daughter's an attractive small girl. Mr. Soames Forsyde is a
bit old-fashioned. I want to see him have a pleasure some day.”
George Forsyte grinned.
“Don't you worry; he's not so miserable as he looks. He'll never
show he's enjoying anything—they might try and take it from him.
Old Soames! Once bit, twice shy!”
“Well, Jon,” said Val, hastily, “if you've finished, we'll go and
have coffee.”
“Who were those?” Jon asked, on the stairs. “I didn't quite—-”
“Old George Forsyte is a first cousin of your father's and of my
Uncle Soames. He's always been here. The other chap, Profond, is
a queer fish. I think he's hanging round Soames' wife, if you ask
me!”
Jon looked at him, startled. “But that's awful,” he said: “I
mean—for Fleur.”
“Don't suppose Fleur cares very much; she's very up-to-date.”
“Her mother!”
“You're very green, Jon.”
Jon grew red. “Mothers,” he stammered angrily, “are different.”
“You're right,” said Val suddenly; “but things aren't what they
were when I was your age. There's a 'To-morrow we die' feeling.
That's what old George meant about my Uncle Soames. He doesn't
mean to die to-morrow.”
Jon said, quickly: “What's the matter between him and my father?”
“Stable secret, Jon. Take my advice, and bottle up. You'll do no
good by knowing. Have a liqueur?”
Jon shook his head.
“I hate the way people keep things from one,” he muttered, “and
then sneer at one for being green.”
“Well, you can ask Holly. If she won't tell you, you'll believe
it's for your own good, I suppose.”
Jon got up. “I must go now; thanks awfully for the lunch.”
Val smiled up at him half-sorry, and yet amused. The boy looked
so upset.
“All right! See you on Friday.”
“I don't know,” murmured Jon.
And he did not. This conspiracy of silence made him desperate. It
was humiliating to be treated like a child! He retraced his moody
steps to Stratton Street. But he would go to her Club now, and
find out the worst! To his enquiry the reply was that Miss
Forsyte was not in the Club. She might be in perhaps later. She
was often in on Monday—they could not say. Jon said he would call
again, and, crossing into the Green Park, flung himself down
under a tree. The sun was bright, and a breeze fluttered the
leaves of the young lime-tree beneath which he lay; but his heart
ached. Such darkness seemed gathered round his happiness. He
heard Big Ben chime “Three” above the traffic. The sound moved
something in him, and, taking out a piece of paper, he began to
scribble on it with a pencil. He had jotted a stanza, and was
searching the grass for another verse, when something hard
touched his shoulder-a green parasol. There above him stood
Fleur!
“They told me you'd been, and were coming back. So I thought you
might be out here; and you are—it's rather wonderful!”
“Oh, Fleur! I thought you'd have forgotten me.”
“When I told you that I shouldn't!”
Jon seized her arm.
“It's too much luck! Let's get away from this side.” He almost
dragged her on through that too thoughtfully regulated Park, to
find some cover where they could sit and hold each other's hands.
“Hasn't anybody cut in?” he said, gazing round at her lashes, in
suspense above her cheeks.
“There is a young idiot, but he doesn't count.”
Jon felt a twitch of compassion for the-young idiot.
“You know I've had sunstroke; I didn't tell you.”
“Really! Was it interesting?”
“No. Mother was an angel. Has anything happened to you?”
“Nothing. Except that I think I've found out what's wrong between
our families, Jon.”
His heart began beating very fast.
“I believe my father wanted to marry your mother, and your father
got her instead.”
“Oh!”
“I came on a photo of her; it was in a frame behind a photo of
me. Of course, if he was very fond of her, that would have made
him pretty mad, wouldn't it?”
Jon thought for a minute. “Not if she loved my father best.”
“But suppose they were engaged?”
“If we were engaged, and you found you loved somebody better, I
might go cracked, but I shouldn't grudge it you.”
“I should. You mustn't ever do that with me, Jon.
“My God! Not much!”
“I don't believe that he's ever really cared for my mother.”
Jon was silent. Val's words—the two past masters in the Club!
“You see, we don't know,” went on Fleur; “it may have been a
great shock. She may have behaved badly to him. People do.”
“My mother wouldn't.”
Fleur shrugged her shoulders. “I don't think we know much about
our fathers and mothers. We just see them in the light of the way
they treat us; but they've treated other people, you know, before
we were born-plenty, I expect. You see, they're both old. Look at
your father, with three separate families!”
“Isn't there any place,” cried Jon, “in all this beastly London
where we can be alone?”
“Only a taxi.”
“Let's get one, then.”
When they were installed, Fleur asked suddenly: “Are you going
back to Robin Hill? I should like to see where you live, Jon. I'm
staying with my aunt for the night, but I could get back in time
for dinner. I wouldn't come to the house, of course.”
Jon gazed at her enraptured.
“Splendid! I can show it you from the copse, we shan't meet
anybody. There's a train at four.”
The god of property and his Forsytes great and small, leisured,
official, commercial, or professional, like the working classes,