The Forsyte saga - Complete
shake hands”—his lip quivered, the words came out jerkily—“and
let the past die.” He held out his hand. Her pale face grew
paler, her eyes so dark, rested immovably on his, her hands
remained clasped in front of her. He heard a sound and turned.
That boy was standing in the opening of the curtains. Very queer
he looked, hardly recognisable as the young fellow he had seen in
the Gallery off Cork Street—very queer; much older, no youth in
the face at all—haggard, rigid, his hair ruffled, his eyes deep
in his head. Soames made an effort, and said with a lift of his
lip, not quite a smile nor quite a sneer:
“Well, young man! I'm here for my daughter; it rests with you, it
seems—this matter. Your mother leaves it in your hands.”
The boy continued staring at his mother's face, and made no
answer.
“For my daughter's sake I've brought myself to come,” said
Soames. “What am I to say to her when I go back?”
Still looking at his mother, the boy said, quietly:
“Tell Fleur that it's no good, please; I must do as my father
wished before he died.”
“Jon!”
“It's all right, Mother.”
In a kind of stupefaction Soames looked from one to the other;
then, taking up hat and umbrella which he had put down on a
chair, he walked toward the curtains. The boy stood aside for him
to go by. He passed through and heard the grate of the rings as
the curtains were drawn behind him. The sound liberated something
in his chest.
'So that's that!' he thought, and passed out of the front door.
VIII.—THE DARK TUNE
As Soames walked away from the house at Robin Hill the sun broke
through the grey of that chill afternoon, in smoky radiance. So
absorbed in landscape painting that he seldom looked seriously
for effects of Nature out of doors—he was struck by that moody
effulgence—it mourned with a triumph suited to his own feeling.
Victory in defeat. His embassy had come to naught. But he was rid
of those people, had regained his daughter at the expense of—her
happiness. What would Fleur say to him? Would she believe he had
done his best? And under that sunlight faring on the elms,
hazels, hollies of the lane and those unexploited fields, Soames
felt dread. She would be terribly upset! He must appeal to her
pride. That boy had given her up, declared part and lot with the
woman who so long ago had given her father up! Soames clenched
his hands. Given him up, and why? What had been wrong with him?
And once more he felt the malaise of one who contemplates himself
as seen by another—like a dog who chances on his refection in a
mirror and is intrigued and anxious at the unseizable thing.
Not in a hurry to get home, he dined in town at the Connoisseurs.
While eating a pear it suddenly occurred to him that, if he had
not gone down to Robin Hill, the boy might not have so decided.
He remembered the expression on his face while his mother was
refusing the hand he had held out. A strange, an awkward thought!
Had Fleur cooked her own goose by trying to make too sure?
He reached home at half-past nine. While the car was passing in
at one drive gate he heard the grinding sputter of a motor-cycle
passing out by the other. Young Mont, no doubt, so Fleur had not
been lonely. But he went in with a sinking heart. In the
cream-panelled drawing-room she was sitting with her elbows on
her knees, and her chin on her clasped hands, in front of a white
camellia plant which filled the fireplace. That glance at her
before she saw him renewed his dread. What was she seeing among
those white camellias?
“Well, Father!”
Soames shook his head. His tongue failed him. This was murderous
work! He saw her eyes dilate, her lips quivering.
“What? What? Quick, Father!”
“My dear,” said Soames, “I—I did my best, but—” And again he
shook his head.
Fleur ran to him, and put a hand on each of his shoulders.
“She?”
“No,” muttered Soames; “he. I was to tell you that it was no use;
he must do what his father wished before he died.” He caught her
by the waist. “Come, child, don't let them hurt you. They're not
worth your little finger.”
Fleur tore herself from his grasp.
“You didn't you—couldn't have tried. You—you betrayed me,
Father!”
Bitterly wounded, Soames gazed at her passionate figure writhing
there in front of him.
“You didn't try—you didn't—I was a fool! I won't believe he
could—he ever could! Only yesterday he—! Oh! why did I ask you?”
“Yes,” said Soames, quietly, “why did you? I swallowed my
feelings; I did my best for you, against my judgment—and this is
my reward. Good-night!”
With every nerve in his body twitching he went toward the door.
Fleur darted after him.
“He gives me up? You mean that? Father!”
Soames turned and forced himself to answer:
“Yes.”
“Oh!” cried Fleur. “What did you—what could you have done in
those old days?”
The breathless sense of really monstrous injustice cut the power
of speech in Soames' throat. What had he done! What had they done
to him!
And with quite unconscious dignity he put his hand on his breast,
and looked at her.
“It's a shame!” cried Fleur passionately.
Soames went out. He mounted, slow and icy, to his picture
gallery, and paced among his treasures. Outrageous! Oh!
Outrageous! She was spoiled! Ah! and who had spoiled her? He
stood still before the Goya copy. Accustomed to her own way in
everything. Flower of his life! And now that she couldn't have
it! He turned to the window for some air. Daylight was dying, the
moon rising, gold behind the poplars! What sound was that? Why!
That piano thing! A dark tune, with a thrum and a throb! She had
set it going—what comfort could she get from that? His eyes
caught movement down there beyond the lawn, under the trellis of
rambler roses and young acacia-trees, where the moonlight fell.
There she was, roaming up and down. His heart gave a little
sickening jump. What would she do under this blow? How could he
tell? What did he know of her—he had only loved her all his
life—looked on her as the apple of his eye! He knew nothing—had
no notion. There she was—and that dark tune—and the river
gleaming in the moonlight!
'I must go out,' he thought.
He hastened down to the drawing-room, lighted just as he had left
it, with the piano thrumming out that waltz, or fox-trot, or
whatever they called it in these days, and passed through on to
the verandah.
Where could he watch, without her seeing him? And he stole down
through the fruit garden to the boat-house. He was between her
and the river now, and his heart felt lighter. She was his
daughter, and Annette's—she wouldn't do anything foolish; but
there it was—he didn't know! From the boat house window he could
see the last acacia and the spin of her skirt when she turned in
her restless march. That tune had run down at last—thank
goodness! He crossed the floor and looked through the farther
window at the water slow-flowing past the lilies. It made little
bubbles against them, bright where a moon-streak fell. He
remembered suddenly that early morning when he had slept on the
house-boat after his father died, and she had just been
born—nearly nineteen years ago! Even now he recalled the
unaccustomed world when he woke up, the strange feeling it had
given him. That day the second passion of his life began—for this
girl of his, roaming under the acacias. What a comfort she had
been to him! And all the soreness and sense of outrage left him.
If he could make her happy again, he didn't care! An owl flew,
queeking, queeking; a bat flitted by; the moonlight brightened
and broadened on the water. How long was she going to roam about
like this! He went back to the window, and suddenly saw her
coming down to the bank. She stood quite close, on the
landing-stage. And Soames watched, clenching his hands. Should he
speak to her? His excitement was intense. The stillness of her
figure, its youth, its absorption in despair, in longing,
in—itself. He would always remember it, moonlit like that; and
the faint sweet reek of the river and the shivering of the willow
leaves. She had everything in the world that he could give her,
except the one thing that she could not have because of him! The
perversity of things hurt him at that moment, as might a
fish-bone in his throat.
Then, with an infinite relief, he saw her turn back toward the
house. What could he give her to make amends? Pearls, travel,
horses, other young men—anything she wanted—that he might lose
the memory of her young figure lonely by the water! There! She
had set that tune going again! Why—it was a mania! Dark,
thrumming, faint, travelling from the house. It was as though she
had said: “If I can't have something to keep me going, I shall
die of this!” Soames dimly understood. Well, if it helped her,
let her keep it thrumming on all night! And, mousing back through
the fruit garden, he regained the verandah. Though he meant to go
in and speak to her now, he still hesitated, not knowing what to
say, trying hard to recall how it felt to be thwarted in love. He
ought to know, ought to remember—and he could not! Gone—all real
recollection; except that it had hurt him horribly. In this
blankness he stood passing his handkerchief over hands and lips,
which were very dry. By craning his head he could just see Fleur,
standing with her back to that piano still grinding out its tune,
her arms tight crossed on her breast, a lighted cigarette between
her lips, whose smoke half veiled her face. The expression on it
was strange to Soames, the eyes shone and stared, and every
feature was alive with a sort of wretched scorn and anger. Once
or twice he had seen Annette look like that—the face was too
vivid, too naked, not his daughter's at that moment. And he dared
not go in, realising the futility of any attempt at consolation.
He sat down in the shadow of the ingle-nook.
Monstrous trick, that Fate had played him! Nemesis! That old
unhappy marriage! And in God's name-why? How was he to know, when
he wanted Irene so violently, and she consented to be his, that
she would never love him? The tune died and was renewed, and died
again, and still Soames sat in the shadow, waiting for he knew
not what. The fag of Fleur's cigarette, flung through the window,
fell on the grass; he watched it glowing, burning itself out. The
moon had freed herself above the poplars, and poured her
unreality on the garden. Comfortless light, mysterious,
withdrawn—like the beauty of that woman who had never loved
him—dappling the nemesias and the stocks with a vesture not of
earth. Flowers! And his flower so unhappy! Ah! Why could one not
put happiness into Local Loans, gild its edges, insure it against
going down?