The Forsyte saga - Complete
not. Her absence had been a relief. Out of sight was out of mind!
And now she was coming back. Another worry! And the Bolderby Old
Crome was gone—Dumetrius had got it—all because that anonymous
letter had put it out of his thoughts. He furtively remarked the
strained look on his daughter's face, as if she too were gazing
at a picture that she couldn't buy. He almost wished the War
back. Worries didn't seem, then, quite so worrying. From the
caress in her voice, the look on her face, he became certain that
she wanted something from him, uncertain whether it would be wise
of him to give it her. He pushed his savoury away uneaten, and
even joined her in a cigarette.
After dinner she set the electric piano-player going. And he
augured the worst when she sat down on a cushion footstool at his
knee, and put her hand on his.
“Darling, be nice to me. I had to see Jon—he wrote to me. He's
going to try what he can do with his mother. But I've been
thinking. It's really in your hands, Father. If you'd persuade
her that it doesn't mean renewing the past in any way! That I
shall stay yours, and Jon will stay hers; that you need never see
him or her, and she need never see you or me! Only you could
persuade her, dear, because only you could promise. One can't
promise for other people. Surely it wouldn't be too awkward for
you to see her just this once now that Jon's father is dead?”
“Too awkward?” Soames repeated. “The whole thing's preposterous.”
“You know,” said Fleur, without looking up, “you wouldn't mind
seeing her, really.”
Soames was silent. Her words had expressed a truth too deep for
him to admit. She slipped her fingers between his own—hot, slim,
eager, they clung there. This child of his would corkscrew her
way into a brick wall!
“What am I to do if you won't, Father?” she said very softly.
“I'll do anything for your happiness,” said Soanies; “but this
isn't for your happiness.”
“Oh! it is; it is!”
“It'll only stir things up,” he said grimly.
“But they are stirred up. The thing is to quiet them. To make her
feel that this is just our lives, and has nothing to do with
yours or hers. You can do it, Father, I know you can.”
“You know a great deal, then,” was Soames' glum answer.
“If you will, Jon and I will wait a year—two years if you like.”
“It seems to me,” murmured Soames, “that you care nothing about
what I feel.”
Fleur pressed his hand against her cheek.
“I do, darling. But you wouldn't like me to be awfully
miserable.”
How she wheedled to get her ends! And trying with all his might
to think she really cared for him—he was not sure—not sure. All
she cared for was this boy! Why should he help her to get this
boy, who was killing her affection for himself? Why should he? By
the laws of the Forsytes it was foolish! There was nothing to be
had out of it—nothing! To give her to that boy! To pass her into
the enemy's camp, under the influence of the woman who had
injured him so deeply! Slowly—inevitably—he would lose this
flower of his life! And suddenly he was conscious that his hand
was wet. His heart gave a little painful jump. He couldn't bear
her to cry. He put his other hand quickly over hers, and a tear
dropped on that, too. He couldn't go on like this! “Well, well,”
he said, “I'll think it over, and do what I can. Come, come!” If
she must have it for her happiness—she must; he couldn't refuse
to help her. And lest she should begin to thank him he got out of
his chair and went up to the piano-player—making that noise! It
ran down, as he reached it, with a faint buzz. That musical box
of his nursery days: “The Harmonious Blacksmith,” “Glorious
Port”—the thing had always made him miserable when his mother set
it going on Sunday afternoons. Here it was again—the same thing,
only larger, more expensive, and now it played “The Wild, Wild
Women,” and “The Policeman's Holiday,” and he was no longer in
black velvet with a sky blue collar. 'Profond's right,' he
thought, 'there's nothing in it! We're all progressing to the
grave!' And with that surprising mental comment he walked out.
He did not see Fleur again that night. But, at breakfast, her
eyes followed him about with an appeal he could not escape—not
that he intended to try. No! He had made up his mind to the
nerve-racking business. He would go to Robin Hill—to that house
of memories. Pleasant memory—the last! Of going down to keep that
boy's father and Irene apart by threatening divorce. He had often
thought, since, that it had clinched their union. And, now, he
was going to clinch the union of that boy with his girl. 'I don't
know what I've done,' he thought, 'to have such things thrust on
me!' He went up by train and down by train, and from the station
walked by the long rising lane, still very much as he remembered
it over thirty years ago. Funny—so near London! Some one
evidently was holding on to the land there. This speculation
soothed him, moving between the high hedges slowly, so as not to
get overheated, though the day was chill enough. After all was
said and done there was something real about land, it didn't
shift. Land, and good pictures! The values might fluctuate a bit,
but on the whole they were always going up—worth holding on to,
in a world where there was such a lot of unreality, cheap
building, changing fashions, such a “Here to-day and gone
to-morrow” spirit. The French were right, perhaps, with their
peasant proprietorship, though he had no opinion of the French.
One's bit of land! Something solid in it! He had heard peasant
proprietors described as a pig-headed lot; had heard young Mont
call his father a pigheaded Morning Poster—disrespectful young
devil. Well, there were worse things than being pig-headed or
reading the Morning Post. There was Profond and his tribe, and
all these Labour chaps, and loud-mouthed politicians and 'wild,
wild women'. A lot of worse things! And suddenly Soames became
conscious of feeling weak, and hot, and shaky. Sheer nerves at
the meeting before him! As Aunt Juley might have said—quoting
“Superior Dosset”—his nerves were “in a proper fautigue.” He
could see the house now among its trees, the house he had watched
being built, intending it for himself and this woman, who, by
such strange fate, had lived in it with another after all! He
began to think of Dumetrius, Local Loans, and other forms of
investment. He could not afford to meet her with his nerves all
shaking; he who represented the Day of Judgment for her on earth
as it was in heaven; he, legal ownership, personified, meeting
lawless beauty, incarnate. His dignity demanded impassivity
during this embassy designed to link their offspring, who, if she
had behaved herself, would have been brother and sister. That
wretched tune, “The Wild, Wild Women,” kept running in his head,
perversely, for tunes did not run there as a rule. Passing the
poplars in front of the house, he thought: 'How they've grown; I
had them planted!' A maid answered his ring.
“Will you say—Mr. Forsyte, on a very special matter.”
If she realised who he was, quite probably she would not see him.
'By George!' he thought, hardening as the tug came. 'It's a
topsy-turvy affair!'
The maid came back. “Would the gentleman state his business,
please?”
“Say it concerns Mr. Jon,” said Soames.
And once more he was alone in that hall with the pool of
grey-white marble designed by her first lover. Ah! she had been a
bad lot—had loved two men, and not himself! He must remember that
when he came face to face with her once more. And suddenly he saw
her in the opening chink between the long heavy purple curtains,
swaying, as if in hesitation; the old perfect poise and line, the
old startled dark-eyed gravity, the old calm defensive voice:
“Will you come in, please?”
He passed through that opening. As in the picture-gallery and the
confectioner's shop, she seemed to him still beautiful. And this
was the first time—the very first—since he married her
seven-and-thirty years ago, that he was speaking to her without
the legal right to call her his. She was not wearing black—one of
that fellow's radical notions, he supposed.
“I apologise for coming,” he said glumly; “but this business must
be settled one way or the other.”
“Won't you sit down?”
“No, thank you.”
Anger at his false position, impatience of ceremony between them,
mastered him, and words came tumbling out:
“It's an infernal mischance; I've done my best to discourage it.
I consider my daughter crazy, but I've got into the habit of
indulging her; that's why I'm here. I suppose you're fond of your
son.”
“Devotedly.”
“Well?”
“It rests with him.”
He had a sense of being met and baffled. Always—always she had
baffled him, even in those old first married days.
“It's a mad notion,” he said.
“It is.”
“If you had only—! Well—they might have been—” he did not finish
that sentence “brother and sister and all this saved,” but he saw
her shudder as if he had, and stung by the sight he crossed over
to the window. Out there the trees had not grown—they couldn't,
they were old!
“So far as I'm concerned,” he said, “you may make your mind easy.
I desire to see neither you nor your son if this marriage comes
about. Young people in these days are—are unaccountable. But I
can't bear to see my daughter unhappy. What am I to say to her
when I go back?”
“Please say to her as I said to you, that it rests with Jon.”
“You don't oppose it?”
“With all my heart; not with my lips.”
Soames stood, biting his finger.
“I remember an evening—” he said suddenly; and was silent. What
was there—what was there in this woman that would not fit into
the four corners of his hate or condemnation? “Where is he—your
son?”
“Up in his father's studio, I think.”
“Perhaps you'd have him down.”
He watched her ring the bell, he watched the maid come in.
“Please tell Mr. Jon that I want him.”
“If it rests with him,” said Soames hurriedly, when the maid was
gone, “I suppose I may take it for granted that this unnatural
marriage will take place; in that case there'll be formalities.
Whom do I deal with—Herring's?”
Irene nodded.
“You don't propose to live with them?”
Irene shook her head.
“What happens to this house?”
“It will be as Jon wishes.”
“This house,” said Soames suddenly: “I had hopes when I began it.
If they live in it—their children! They say there's such a thing
as Nemesis. Do you believe in it?”
“Yes.”
“Oh! You do!”
He had come back from the window, and was standing close to her,
who, in the curve of her grand piano, was, as it were, embayed.
“I'm not likely to see you again,” he said slowly. “Will you