The Forsyte saga - Complete
she smiled and answered, thinking: 'If that were Jon's voice!'
and when once he said, “Fleur, you look a perfect angel in that
dress!” she answered, “Oh, do you like it?” thinking, 'If only
Jon could see it!'
During this drive she took a resolution. She would go to Robin
Hill and see him—alone; she would take the car, without word
beforehand to him or to her father. It was nine days since his
letter, and she could wait no longer. On Monday she would go! The
decision made her well disposed toward young Mont. With something
to look forward to she could afford to tolerate and respond. He
might stay to dinner; propose to her as usual; dance with her,
press her hand, sigh—do what he liked. He was only a nuisance
when he interfered with her fixed idea. She was even sorry for
him so far as it was possible to be sorry for anybody but herself
just now. At dinner he seemed to talk more wildly than usual
about what he called “the death of the close borough”—she paid
little attention, but her father seemed paying a good deal, with
the smile on his face which meant opposition, if not anger.
“The younger generation doesn't think as you do, sir; does it,
Fleur?”
Fleur shrugged her shoulders—the younger generation was just Jon,
and she did not know what he was thinking.
“Young people will think as I do when they're my age, Mr. Mont.
Human nature doesn't change.”
“I admit that, sir; but the forms of thought change with the
times. The pursuit of self-interest is a form of thought that's
going out.”
“Indeed! To mind one's own business is not a form of thought, Mr.
Mont, it's an instinct.”
Yes, when Jon was the business!
“But what is one's business, sir? That's the point. Everybody's
business is going to be one's business. Isn't it, Fleur?”
Fleur only smiled.
“If not,” added young Mont, “there'll be blood.”
“People have talked like that from time immemorial”
“But you'll admit, sir, that the sense of property is dying out?”
“I should say increasing among those who have none.”
“Well, look at me! I'm heir to an entailed estate. I don't want
the thing; I'd cut the entail to-morrow.”
“You're not married, and you don't know what you're talking
about.”
Fleur saw the young man's eyes turn rather piteously upon her.
“Do you really mean that marriage—?” he began.
“Society is built on marriage,” came from between her father's
close lips; “marriage and its consequences. Do you want to do
away with it?”
Young Mont made a distracted gesture. Silence brooded over the
dinner table, covered with spoons bearing the Forsyte crest—a
pheasant proper—under the electric light in an alabaster globe.
And outside, the river evening darkened, charged with heavy
moisture and sweet scents.
'Monday,' thought Fleur; 'Monday!'
VI.—DESPERATE
The weeks which followed the death of his father were sad and
empty to the only Jolyon Forsyte left. The necessary forms and
ceremonies—the reading of the Will, valuation of the estate,
distribution of the legacies—were enacted over the head, as it
were, of one not yet of age. Jolyon was cremated. By his special
wish no one attended that ceremony, or wore black for him. The
succession of his property, controlled to some extent by old
Jolyon's Will, left his widow in possession of Robin Hill, with
two thousand five hundred pounds a year for life. Apart from this
the two Wills worked together in some complicated way to insure
that each of Jolyon's three children should have an equal share
in their grandfather's and father's property in the future as in
the present, save only that Jon, by virtue of his sex, would have
control of his capital when he was twenty-one, while June and
Holly would only have the spirit of theirs, in order that their
children might have the body after them. If they had no children,
it would all come to Jon if he outlived them; and since June was
fifty, and Holly nearly forty, it was considered in Lincoln's Inn
Fields that but for the cruelty of income tax, young Jon would be
as warm a man as his grandfather when he died. All this was
nothing to Jon, and little enough to his mother. It was June who
did everything needful for one who had left his affairs in
perfect order. When she had gone, and those two were alone again
in the great house, alone with death drawing them together, and
love driving them apart, Jon passed very painful days secretly
disgusted and disappointed with himself. His mother would look at
him with such a patient sadness which yet had in it an
instinctive pride, as if she were reserving her defence. If she
smiled he was angry that his answering smile should be so
grudging and unnatural. He did not judge or condemn her; that was
all too remote—indeed, the idea of doing so had never come to
him. No! he was grudging and unnatural because he couldn't have
what he wanted because of her. There was one alleviation—much to
do in connection with his father's career, which could not be
safely entrusted to June, though she had offered to undertake it.
Both Jon and his mother had felt that if she took his portfolios,
unexhibited drawings and unfinished matter, away with her, the
work would encounter such icy blasts from Paul Post and other
frequenters of her studio, that it would soon be frozen out even
of her warm heart. On its old-fashioned plane and of its kind the
work was good, and they could not bear the thought of its
subjection to ridicule. A one-man exhibition of his work was the
least testimony they could pay to one they had loved; and on
preparation for this they spent many hours together. Jon came to
have a curiously increased respect for his father. The quiet
tenacity with which he had converted a mediocre talent into
something really individual was disclosed by these researches.
There was a great mass of work with a rare continuity of growth
in depth and reach of vision. Nothing certainly went very deep,
or reached very high—but such as the work was, it was thorough,
conscientious, and complete. And, remembering his father's utter
absence of “side” or self-assertion, the chaffing humility with
which he had always spoken of his own efforts, ever calling
himself “an amateur,” Jon could not help feeling that he had
never really known his father. To take himself seriously, yet
never that he did so, seemed to have been his ruling principle.
There was something in this which appealed to the boy, and made
him heartily endorse his mother's comment: “He had true
refinement; he couldn't help thinking of others, whatever he did.
And when he took a resolution which went counter, he did it with
the minimum of defiance—not like the Age, is it? Twice in his
life he had to go against everything; and yet it never made him
bitter.” Jon saw tears running down her face, which she at once
turned away from him. She was so quiet about her loss that
sometimes he had thought she didn't feel it much. Now, as he
looked at her, he felt how far he fell short of the reserve power
and dignity in both his father and his mother. And, stealing up
to her, he put his arm round her waist. She kissed him swiftly,
but with a sort of passion, and went out of the room.
The studio, where they had been sorting and labelling, had once
been Holly's schoolroom, devoted to her silkworms, dried
lavender, music, and other forms of instruction. Now, at the end
of July, despite its northern and eastern aspects, a warm and
slumberous air came in between the long-faded lilac linen
curtains. To redeem a little the departed glory, as of a field
that is golden and gone, clinging to a room which its master has
left, Irene had placed on the paint-stained table a bowl of red
roses. This, and Jolyon's favourite cat, who still clung to the
deserted habitat, were the pleasant spots in that dishevelled,
sad workroom. Jon, at the north window, sniffing air mysteriously
scented with warm strawberries, heard a car drive up. The lawyers
again about some nonsense! Why did that scent so make one ache?
And where did it come from—there were no strawberry beds on this
side of the house. Instinctively he took a crumpled sheet of
paper from his pocket, and wrote down some broken words. A warmth
began spreading in his chest; he rubbed the palms of his hands
together. Presently he had jotted this:
“If I could make a little song A little song to soothe my heart!
I'd make it all of little things The plash of water, rub of
wings, The puffing-off of dandies crown, The hiss of raindrop
spilling down, The purr of cat, the trill of bird, And ev'ry
whispering I've heard From willy wind in leaves and grass, And
all the distant drones that pass. A song as tender and as light
As flower, or butterfly in flight; And when I saw it opening, I'd
let it fly and sing!”
He was still muttering it over to himself at the window, when he
heard his name called, and, turning round, saw Fleur. At that
amazing apparition, he made at first no movement and no sound,
while her clear vivid glance ravished his heart. Then he went
forward to the table, saying, “How nice of you to come!” and saw
her flinch as if he had thrown something at her.
“I asked for you,” she said, “and they showed me up here. But I
can go away again.”
Jon clutched the paint-stained table. Her face and figure in its
frilly frock photographed itself with such startling vividness
upon his eyes, that if she had sunk through the floor he must
still have seen her.
“I know I told you a lie, Jon. But I told it out of love.”
“Yes, oh! yes! That's nothing!”
“I didn't answer your letter. What was the use—there wasn't
anything to answer. I wanted to see you instead.” She held out
both her hands, and Jon grasped them across the table. He tried
to say something, but all his attention was given to trying not
to hurt her hands. His own felt so hard and hers so soft. She
said almost defiantly:
“That old story—was it so very dreadful?”
“Yes.” In his voice, too, there was a note of defiance.
She dragged her hands away. “I didn't think in these days boys
were tied to their mothers' apron-strings.”
Jon's chin went up as if he had been struck.
“Oh! I didn't mean it, Jon. What a horrible thing to say!”
Swiftly she came close to him. “Jon, dear; I didn't mean it.”
“All right.”
She had put her two hands on his shoulder, and her forehead down
on them; the brim of her hat touched his neck, and he felt it
quivering. But, in a sort of paralysis, he made no response. She
let go of his shoulder and drew away.
“Well, I'll go, if you don't want me. But I never thought you'd
have given me up.”
“I haven't,” cried Jon, coming suddenly to life. “I can't. I'll
try again.”
Her eyes gleamed, she swayed toward him. “Jon—I love you! Don't