The Forsyte saga - Complete
old Armenian work—from before the Flood. I want your opinion on
it, Prosper.”
“Auntie,” whispered Fleur suddenly.
At the tone in the girl's voice Winifred closed in on her.'
“What's the matter? Aren't you well?”
Monsieur Profond had withdrawn into the window, where he was
practically out of hearing.
“Auntie, he-he told me that father has been married before. Is it
true that he divorced her, and she married Jon Forsyte's father?”
Never in all the life of the mother of four little Darties had
Winifred felt more seriously embarrassed. Her niece's face was so
pale, her eyes so dark, her voice so whispery and strained.
“Your father didn't wish you to hear,” she said, with all the
aplomb she could muster. “These things will happen. I've often
told him he ought to let you know.”
“Oh!” said Fleur, and that was all, but it made Winifred pat her
shoulder—a firm little shoulder, nice and white! She never could
help an appraising eye and touch in the matter of her niece, who
would have to be married, of course—though not to that boy Jon.
“We've forgotten all about it years and years ago,” she said
comfortably. “Come and have dinner!”
“No, Auntie. I don't feel very well. May I go upstairs?”
“My dear!” murmured Winifred, concerned, “you're not taking this
to heart? Why, you haven't properly come out yet! That boy's a
child!”
“What boy? I've only got a headache. But I can't stand that man
to-night.”
“Well, well,” said Winifred, “go and lie down. I'll send you some
bromide, and I shall talk to Prosper Profond. What business had
he to gossip? Though I must say I think it's much better you
should know.”
Fleur smiled. “Yes,” she said, and slipped from the room.
She went up with her head whirling, a dry sensation in her
throat, a guttered frightened feeling in her breast. Never in her
life as yet had she suffered from even momentary fear that she
would not get what she had set her heart on. The sensations of
the afternoon had been full and poignant, and this gruesome
discovery coming on the top of them had really made her head
ache. No wonder her father had hidden that photograph, so
secretly behind her own-ashamed of having kept it! But could he
hate Jon's mother and yet keep her photograph? She pressed her
hands over her forehead, trying to see things clearly. Had they
told Jon—had her visit to Robin Hill forced them to tell him?
Everything now turned on that! She knew, they all knew,
except—perhaps—Jon!
She walked up and down, biting her lip and thinking desperately
hard. Jon loved his mother. If they had told him, what would he
do? She could not tell. But if they had not told him, should she
not—could she not get him for herself—get married to him, before
he knew? She searched her memories of Robin Hill. His mother's
face so passive—with its dark eyes and as if powdered hair, its
reserve, its smile—baffled her; and his father's—kindly, sunken,
ironic. Instinctively she felt they would shrink from telling
Jon, even now, shrink from hurting him—for of course it would
hurt him awfully to know!
Her aunt must be made not to tell her father that she knew. So
long as neither she herself nor Jon were supposed to know, there
was still a chance—freedom to cover one's tracks, and get what
her heart was set on. But she was almost overwhelmed by her
isolation. Every one's hand was against her—every one's! It was
as Jon had said—he and she just wanted to live and the past was
in their way, a past they hadn't shared in, and didn't
understand! Oh! What a shame! And suddenly she thought of June.
Would she help them? For somehow June had left on her the
impression that she would be sympathetic with their love,
impatient of obstacle. Then, instinctively, she thought: 'I won't
give anything away, though, even to her. I daren't. I mean to
have Jon; against them all.'
Soup was brought up to her, and one of Winifred's pet headache
cachets. She swallowed both. Then Winifred herself appeared.
Fleur opened her campaign with the words:
“You know, Auntie, I do wish people wouldn't think I'm in love
with that boy. Why, I've hardly seen him!”
Winifred, though experienced, was not “fine.” She accepted the
remark with considerable relief. Of course, it was not pleasant
for the girl to hear of the family scandal, and she set herself
to minimise the matter, a task for which she was eminently
qualified, “raised” fashionably under a comfortable mother and a
father whose nerves might not be shaken, and for many years the
wife of Montague Dartie. Her description was a masterpiece of
understatement. Fleur's father's first wife had been very
foolish. There had been a young man who had got run over, and she
had left Fleur's father. Then, years after, when it might all
have come—right again, she had taken up with their cousin Jolyon;
and, of course, her father had been obliged to have a divorce.
Nobody remembered anything of it now, except just the family.
And, perhaps, it had all turned out for the best; her father had
Fleur; and Jolyon and Irene had been quite happy, they said, and
their boy was a nice boy. “Val having Holly, too, is a sort of
plaster, don't you know?” With these soothing words, Winifred
patted her niece's shoulder; thought: 'She's a nice, plump little
thing!' and went back to Prosper Profond, who, in spite of his
indiscretion, was very “amusing” this evening.
For some minutes after her aunt had gone Fleur remained under
influence of bromide material and spiritual. But then reality
came back. Her aunt had left out all that mattered—all the
feeling, the hate, the love, the unforgivingness of passionate
hearts. She, who knew so little of life, and had touched only the
fringe of love, was yet aware by instinct that words have as
little relation to fact and feeling as coin to the bread it buys.
'Poor Father!' she thought. 'Poor me! Poor Jon! But I don't care,
I mean to have him!' From the window of her darkened room she saw
“that man” issue from the door below and “prowl” away. If he and
her mother—how would that affect her chance? Surely it must make
her father cling to her more closely, so that he would consent in
the end to anything she wanted, or become reconciled the sooner
to what she did without his knowledge.
She took some earth from the flower-box in the window, and with
all her might flung it after that disappearing figure. It fell
short, but the action did her good.
And a little puff of air came up from Green Street, smelling of
petrol, not sweet.
V.—PURELY FORSYTE AFFAIRS
Soames, coming up to the City, with the intention of calling in
at Green Street at the end of his day and taking Fleur back home
with him, suffered from rumination. Sleeping partner that he was,
he seldom visited the City now, but he still had a room of his
own at Cuthcott, Kingson and Forsyte's, and one special clerk and
a half assigned to the management of purely Forsyte affairs. They
were somewhat in flux just now—an auspicious moment for the
disposal of house property. And Soames was unloading the estates
of his father and Uncle Roger, and to some extent of his Uncle
Nicholas. His shrewd and matter-of-course probity in all money
concerns had made him something of an autocrat in connection with
these trusts. If Soames thought this or thought that, one had
better save oneself the bother of thinking too. He guaranteed, as
it were, irresponsibility to numerous Forsytes of the third and
fourth generations. His fellow trustees, such as his cousins
Roger or Nicholas, his cousins-in-law Tweetyman and Spender, or
his sister Cicely's husband, all trusted him; he signed first,
and where he signed first they signed after, and nobody was a
penny the worse. Just now they were all a good many pennies the
better, and Soames was beginning to see the close of certain
trusts, except for distribution of the income from securities as
gilt-edged as was compatible with the period.
Passing the more feverish parts of the City toward the most
perfect backwater in London, he ruminated. Money was
extraordinarily tight; and morality extraordinarily loose! The
War had done it. Banks were not lending; people breaking
contracts all over the place. There was a feeling in the air and
a look on faces that he did not like. The country seemed in for a
spell of gambling and bankruptcies. There was satisfaction in the
thought that neither he nor his trusts had an investment which
could be affected by anything less maniacal than national
repudiation or a levy on capital. If Soames had faith, it was in
what he called “English common sense”—or the power to have
things, if not one way then another. He might—like his father
James before him—say he didn't know what things were coming to,
but he never in his heart believed they were. If it rested with
him, they wouldn't—and, after all, he was only an Englishman like
any other, so quietly tenacious of what he had that he knew he
would never really part with it without something more or less
equivalent in exchange. His mind was essentially equilibristic in
material matters, and his way of putting the national situation
difficult to refute in a world composed of human beings. Take his
own case, for example! He was well off. Did that do anybody harm?
He did not eat ten meals a day; he ate no more than, perhaps not
so much as, a poor man. He spent no money on vice; breathed no
more air, used no more water to speak of than the mechanic or the
porter. He certainly had pretty things about him, but they had
given employment in the making, and somebody must use them. He
bought pictures, but Art must be encouraged. He was, in fact, an
accidental channel through which money flowed, employing labour.
What was there objectionable in that? In his charge money was in
quicker and more useful flux than it would be in charge of the
State and a lot of slow-fly money-sucking officials. And as to
what he saved each year—it was just as much in flux as what he
didn't save, going into Water Board or Council Stocks, or
something sound and useful. The State paid him no salary for
being trustee of his own or other people's money he did all that
for nothing. Therein lay the whole case against
nationalisation—owners of private property were unpaid, and yet
had every incentive to quicken up the flux. Under
nationalisation—just the opposite! In a country smarting from
officialism he felt that he had a strong case.
It particularly annoyed him, entering that backwater of perfect
peace, to think that a lot of unscrupulous Trusts and
Combinations had been cornering the market in goods of all kinds,
and keeping prices at an artificial height. Such abusers of the
individualistic system were the ruffians who caused all the