The Forsyte saga - Complete
would be the grandchildren of Soames, as much as of your mother,
of a man who once owned your mother as a man might own a slave.
Think what that would mean. By such a marriage you enter the camp
which held your mother prisoner and wherein she ate her heart
out. You are just on the threshold of life, you have only known
this girl two months, and however deeply you think you love her,
I appeal to you to break it off at once. Don't give your mother
this rankling pain and humiliation during the rest of her life.
Young though she will always seem to me, she is fifty-seven.
Except for us two she has no one in the world. She will soon have
only you. Pluck up your spirit, Jon, and break away. Don't put
this cloud and barrier between you. Don't break her heart! Bless
you, my dear boy, and again forgive me for all the pain this
letter must bring you—we tried to spare it you, but Spain—it
seems—-was no good.
“Ever your devoted father,
“JOLYON FORSYTE.”
Having finished his confession, Jolyon sat with a thin cheek on
his hand, re-reading. There were things in it which hurt him so
much, when he thought of Jon reading them, that he nearly tore
the letter up. To speak of such things at all to a boy—his own
boy—to speak of them in relation to his own wife and the boy's
own mother, seemed dreadful to the reticence of his Forsyte soul.
And yet without speaking of them how make Jon understand the
reality, the deep cleavage, the ineffaceable scar? Without them,
how justify this stiffing of the boy's love? He might just as
well not write at all!
He folded the confession, and put it in his pocket. It was—thank
Heaven!—Saturday; he had till Sunday evening to think it over;
for even if posted now it could not reach Jon till Monday. He
felt a curious relief at this delay, and at the fact that,
whether sent or not, it was written.
In the rose garden, which had taken the place of the old fernery,
he could see Irene snipping and pruning, with a little basket on
her arm. She was never idle, it seemed to him, and he envied her
now that he himself was idle nearly all his time. He went down to
her. She held up a stained glove and smiled. A piece of lace tied
under her chin concealed her hair, and her oval face with its
still dark brows looked very young.
“The green-fly are awful this year, and yet it's cold. You look
tired, Jolyon.”
Jolyon took the confession from his pocket. “I've been writing
this. I think you ought to see it?”
“To Jon?” Her whole face had changed, in that instant, becoming
almost haggard.
“Yes; the murder's out.”
He gave it to her, and walked away among the roses. Presently,
seeing that she had finished reading and was standing quite still
with the sheets of the letter against her skirt, he came back to
her.
“Well?”
“It's wonderfully put. I don't see how it could be put better.
Thank you, dear.”
“Is there anything you would like left out?”
She shook her head.
“No; he must know all, if he's to understand.”
“That's what I thought, but—I hate it!”
He had the feeling that he hated it more than she—to him sex was
so much easier to mention between man and woman than between man
and man; and she had always been more natural and frank, not
deeply secretive like his Forsyte self.
“I wonder if he will understand, even now, Jolyon? He's so young;
and he shrinks from the physical.”
“He gets that shrinking from my father, he was as fastidious as a
girl in all such matters. Would it be better to rewrite the whole
thing, and just say you hated Soames?”
Irene shook her head.
“Hate's only a word. It conveys nothing. No, better as it is.”
“Very well. It shall go to-morrow.”
She raised her face to his, and in sight of the big house's many
creepered windows, he kissed her.
II.—CONFESSION
Late that same afternoon, Jolyon had a nap in the old armchair.
Face down on his knee was La Rotisserie de la Refine Pedauque,
and just before he fell asleep he had been thinking: 'As a people
shall we ever really like the French? Will they ever really like
us!' He himself had always liked the French, feeling at home with
their wit, their taste, their cooking. Irene and he had paid many
visits to France before the War, when Jon had been at his private
school. His romance with her had begun in Paris—his last and most
enduring romance. But the French—no Englishman could like them
who could not see them in some sort with the detached aesthetic
eye! And with that melancholy conclusion he had nodded off.
When he woke he saw Jon standing between him and the window. The
boy had evidently come in from the garden and was waiting for him
to wake. Jolyon smiled, still half asleep. How nice the chap
looked—sensitive, affectionate, straight! Then his heart gave a
nasty jump; and a quaking sensation overcame him. Jon! That
confession! He controlled himself with an effort. “Why, Jon,
where did you spring from?”
Jon bent over and kissed his forehead.
Only then he noticed the look on the boy's face.
“I came home to tell you something, Dad.”
With all his might Jolyon tried to get the better of the jumping,
gurgling sensations within his chest.
“Well, sit down, old man. Have you seen your mother?”
“No.” The boy's flushed look gave place to pallor; he sat down on
the arm of the old chair, as, in old days, Jolyon himself used to
sit beside his own father, installed in its recesses. Right up to
the time of the rupture in their relations he had been wont to
perch there—had he now reached such a moment with his own son?
All his life he had hated scenes like poison, avoided rows, gone
on his own way quietly and let others go on theirs. But now—it
seemed—at the very end of things, he had a scene before him more
painful than any he had avoided. He drew a visor down over his
emotion, and waited for his son to speak.
“Father,” said Jon slowly, “Fleur and I are engaged.”
'Exactly!' thought Jolyon, breathing with difficulty.
“I know that you and Mother don't like the idea. Fleur says that
Mother was engaged to her father before you married her. Of
course I don't know what happened, but it must be ages ago. I'm
devoted to her, Dad, and she says she is to me.”
Jolyon uttered a queer sound, half laugh, half groan.
“You are nineteen, Jon, and I am seventy-two. How are we to
understand each other in a matter like this, eh?”
“You love Mother, Dad; you must know what we feel. It isn't fair
to us to let old things spoil our happiness, is it?”
Brought face to face with his confession, Jolyon resolved to do
without it if by any means he could. He laid his hand on the
boy's arm.
“Look, Jon! I might put you off with talk about your both being
too young and not knowing your own minds, and all that, but you
wouldn't listen, besides, it doesn't meet the case—Youth,
unfortunately, cures itself. You talk lightly about 'old things
like that,' knowing nothing—as you say truly—of what happened.
Now, have I ever given you reason to doubt my love for you, or my
word?”
At a less anxious moment he might have been amused by the
conflict his words aroused—the boy's eager clasp, to reassure him
on these points, the dread on his face of what that reassurance
would bring forth; but he could only feel grateful for the
squeeze.
“Very well, you can believe what I tell you. If you don't give up
this love affair, you will make Mother wretched to the end of her
days. Believe me, my dear, the past, whatever it was, can't be
buried—it can't indeed.”
Jon got off the arm of the chair.
'The girl'—thought Jolyon—'there she goes—starting up before
him—life itself—eager, pretty, loving!'
“I can't, Father; how can I—just because you say that? Of course,
I can't!”
“Jon, if you knew the story you would give this up without
hesitation; you would have to! Can't you believe me?”
“How can you tell what I should think? Father, I love her better
than anything in the world.”
Jolyon's face twitched, and he said with painful slowness:
“Better than your mother, Jon?”
From the boy's face, and his clenched fists Jolyon realised the
stress and struggle he was going through.
“I don't know,” he burst out, “I don't know! But to give Fleur up
for nothing—for something I don't understand, for something that
I don't believe can really matter half so much, will make me—make
me....”
“Make you feel us unjust, put a barrier—yes. But that's better
than going on with this.”
“I can't. Fleur loves me, and I love her. You want me to trust
you; why don't you trust me, Father? We wouldn't want to know
anything—we wouldn't let it make any difference. It'll only make
us both love you and Mother all the more.”
Jolyon put his hand into his breast pocket, but brought it out
again empty, and sat, clucking his tongue against his teeth.
“Think what your mother's been to you, Jon! She has nothing but
you; I shan't last much longer.”
“Why not? It isn't fair to—Why not?”
“Well,” said Jolyon, rather coldly, “because the doctors tell me
I shan't; that's all.”
“Oh, Dad!” cried Jon, and burst into tears.
This downbreak of his son, whom he had not seen cry since he was
ten, moved Jolyon terribly. He recognised to the full how
fearfully soft the boy's heart was, how much he would suffer in
this business, and in life generally. And he reached out his hand
helplessly—not wishing, indeed not daring to get up.
“Dear man,” he said, “don't—or you'll make me!”
Jon smothered down his paroxysm, and stood with face averted,
very still.
'What now?' thought Jolyon. 'What can I say to move him?'
“By the way, don't speak of that to Mother,” he said; “she has
enough to frighten her with this affair of yours. I know how you
feel. But, Jon, you know her and me well enough to be sure we
wouldn't wish to spoil your happiness lightly. Why, my dear boy,
we don't care for anything but your happiness—at least, with me
it's just yours and Mother's and with her just yours. It's all
the future for you both that's at stake.”
Jon turned. His face was deadly pale; his eyes, deep in his head,
seemed to burn.
“What is it? What is it? Don't keep me like this!”
Jolyon, who knew that he was beaten, thrust his hand again into
his breast pocket, and sat for a full minute, breathing with
difficulty, his eyes closed. The thought passed through his mind:
'I've had a good long innings—some pretty bitter moments—this is
the worst!' Then he brought his hand out with the letter, and
said with a sort of fatigue: “Well, Jon, if you hadn't come
to-day, I was going to send you this. I wanted to spare you—I
wanted to spare your mother and myself, but I see it's no good.