The Forsyte saga - Complete
Light had ceased to flow out now from the drawing-room window.
All was silent and dark in there. Had she gone up? He rose, and,
tiptoeing, peered in. It seemed so! He entered. The verandah kept
the moonlight out; and at first he could see nothing but the
outlines of furniture blacker than the darkness. He groped toward
the farther window to shut it. His foot struck a chair, and he
heard a gasp. There she was, curled and crushed into the corner
of the sofa! His hand hovered. Did she want his consolation? He
stood, gazing at that ball of crushed frills and hair and
graceful youth, trying to burrow its way out of sorrow. How leave
her there? At last he touched her hair, and said:
“Come, darling, better go to bed. I'll make it up to you,
somehow.” How fatuous! But what could he have said?
IX.—UNDER THE OAK-TREE
When their visitor had disappeared Jon and his mother stood
without speaking, till he said suddenly:
“I ought to have seen him out.”
But Soames was already walking down the drive, and Jon went
upstairs to his father's studio, not trusting himself to go back.
The expression on his mother's face confronting the man she had
once been married to, had sealed a resolution growing within him
ever since she left him the night before. It had put the
finishing touch of reality. To marry Fleur would be to hit his
mother in the face; to betray his dead father! It was no good!
Jon had the least resentful of natures. He bore his parents no
grudge in this hour of his distress. For one so young there was a
rather strange power in him of seeing things in some sort of
proportion. It was worse for Fleur, worse for his mother even,
than it was for him. Harder than to give up was to be given up,
or to be the cause of some one you loved giving up for you. He
must not, would not behave grudgingly! While he stood watching
the tardy sunlight, he had again that sudden vision of the world
which had come to him the night before. Sea on sea, country on
country, millions on millions of people, all with their own
lives, energies, joys, griefs, and suffering—all with things they
had to give up, and separate struggles for existence. Even though
he might be willing to give up all else for the one thing he
couldn't have, he would be a fool to think his feelings mattered
much in so vast a world, and to behave like a cry-baby or a cad.
He pictured the people who had nothing—the millions who had given
up life in the War, the millions whom the War had left with life
and little else; the hungry children he had read of, the
shattered men; people in prison, every kind of unfortunate.
And—they did not help him much. If one had to miss a meal, what
comfort in the knowledge that many others had to miss it too?
There was more distraction in the thought of getting away out
into this vast world of which he knew nothing yet. He could not
go on staying here, walled in and sheltered, with everything so
slick and comfortable, and nothing to do but brood and think what
might have been. He could not go back to Wansdon, and the
memories of Fleur. If he saw her again he could not trust
himself; and if he stayed here or went back there, he would
surely see her. While they were within reach of each other that
must happen. To go far away and quickly was the only thing to do.
But, however much he loved his mother, he did not want to go away
with her. Then feeling that was brutal, he made up his mind
desperately to propose that they should go to Italy. For two
hours in that melancholy room he tried to master himself, then
dressed solemnly for dinner.
His mother had done the same. They ate little, at some length,
and talked of his father's catalogue. The show was arranged for
October, and beyond clerical detail there was nothing more to do.
After dinner she put on a cloak and they went out; walked a
little, talked a little, till they were standing silent at last
beneath the oak-tree. Ruled by the thought: 'If I show anything,
I show all,' Jon put his arm through hers and said quite
casually:
“Mother, let's go to Italy.”
Irene pressed his arm, and said as casually:
“It would be very nice; but I've been thinking you ought to see
and do more than you would if I were with you.”
“But then you'd be alone.”
“I was once alone for more than twelve years. Besides, I should
like to be here for the opening of Father's show.”
Jon's grip tightened round her arm; he was not deceived.
“You couldn't stay here all by yourself; it's too big.”
“Not here, perhaps. In London, and I might go to Paris, after the
show opens. You ought to have a year at least, Jon, and see the
world.”
“Yes, I'd like to see the world and rough it. But I don't want to
leave you all alone.”
“My dear, I owe you that at least. If it's for your good, it'll
be for mine. Why not start tomorrow? You've got your passport.”
“Yes; if I'm going it had better be at once. Only—Mother—if—if I
wanted to stay out somewhere—America or anywhere, would you mind
coming presently?”
“Wherever and whenever you send for me. But don't send until you
really want me.”
Jon drew a deep breath.
“I feel England's choky.”
They stood a few minutes longer under the oak-tree—looking out to
where the grand stand at Epsom was veiled in evening. The
branches kept the moonlight from them, so that it only fell
everywhere else—over the fields and far away, and on the windows
of the creepered house behind, which soon would be to let.
X.—FLEUR'S WEDDING
The October paragraphs describing the wedding of Fleur Forsyte to
Michael Mont hardly conveyed the symbolic significance of this
event. In the union of the great-granddaughter of “Superior
Dosset” with the heir of a ninth baronet was the outward and
visible sign of that merger of class in class which buttresses
the political stability of a realm. The time had come when the
Forsytes might resign their natural resentment against a
“flummery” not theirs by birth, and accept it as the still more
natural due of their possessive instincts. Besides, they had to
mount to make room for all those so much more newly rich. In that
quiet but tasteful ceremony in Hanover Square, and afterward
among the furniture in Green Street, it had been impossible for
those not in the know to distinguish the Forsyte troop from the
Mont contingent—so far away was “Superior Dosset” now. Was there,
in the crease of his trousers, the expression of his moustache,
his accent, or the shine on his top-hat, a pin to choose between
Soames and the ninth baronet himself? Was not Fleur as
self-possessed, quick, glancing, pretty, and hard as the
likeliest Muskham, Mont, or Charwell filly present? If anything,
the Forsytes had it in dress and looks and manners. They had
become “upper class” and now their name would be formally
recorded in the Stud Book, their money joined to land. Whether
this was a little late in the day, and those rewards of the
possessive instinct, lands and money, destined for the
melting-pot—was still a question so moot that it was not mooted.
After all, Timothy had said Consols were goin' up. Timothy, the
last, the missing link; Timothy, in extremis on the Bayswater
Road—so Francie had reported. It was whispered, too, that this
young Mont was a sort of socialist—strangely wise of him, and in
the nature of insurance, considering the days they lived in.
There was no uneasiness on that score. The landed classes
produced that sort of amiable foolishness at times, turned to
safe uses and confined to theory. As George remarked to his
sister Francie: “They'll soon be having puppies—that'll give him
pause.”
The church with white flowers and something blue in the middle of
the East window looked extremely chaste, as though endeavouring
to counteract the somewhat lurid phraseology of a Service
calculated to keep the thoughts of all on puppies. Forsytes,
Haymans, Tweetymans, sat in the left aisle; Monts, Charwells;
Muskhams in the right; while a sprinkling of Fleur's
fellow-sufferers at school, and of Mont's fellow-sufferers in,
the War, gaped indiscriminately from either side, and three
maiden ladies, who had dropped in on their way from Skyward's
brought up the rear, together with two Mont retainers and Fleur's
old nurse. In the unsettled state of the country as full a house
as could be expected.
Mrs. Val Dartie, who sat with her husband in the third row,
squeezed his hand more than once during the performance. To her,
who knew the plot of this tragi-comedy, its most dramatic moment
was well-nigh painful. 'I wonder if Jon knows by instinct,' she
thought—Jon, out in British Columbia. She had received a letter
from him only that morning which had made her smile and say:
“Jon's in British Columbia, Val, because he wants to be in
California. He thinks it's too nice there.”
“Oh!” said Val, “so he's beginning to see a joke again.”
“He's bought some land and sent for his mother.”
“What on earth will she do out there?”
“All she cares about is Jon. Do you still think it a happy
release?”
Val's shrewd eyes narrowed to grey pin-points between their dark
lashes.
“Fleur wouldn't have suited him a bit. She's not bred right.”
“Poor little Fleur!” sighed Holly. Ah! it was strange—this
marriage. The young man, Mont, had caught her on the rebound, of
course, in the reckless mood of one whose ship has just gone
down. Such a plunge could not but be—as Val put it—an outside
chance. There was little to be told from the back view of her
young cousin's veil, and Holly's eyes reviewed the general aspect
of this Christian wedding. She, who had made a love-match which
had been successful, had a horror of unhappy marriages. This
might not be one in the end—but it was clearly a toss-up; and to
consecrate a toss-up in this fashion with manufactured unction
before a crowd of fashionable free-thinkers—for who thought
otherwise than freely, or not at all, when they were “dolled”
up—seemed to her as near a sin as one could find in an age which
had abolished them. Her eyes wandered from the prelate in his
robes (a Charwell-the Forsytes had not as yet produced a prelate)
to Val, beside her, thinking—she was certain—of the Mayfly filly
at fifteen to one for the Cambridgeshire. They passed on and
caught the profile of the ninth baronet, in counterfeitment of
the kneeling process. She could just see the neat ruck above his
knees where he had pulled his trousers up, and thought: 'Val's
forgotten to pull up his!' Her eyes passed to the pew in front of
her, where Winifred's substantial form was gowned with passion,
and on again to Soames and Annette kneeling side by side. A
little smile came on her lips—Prosper Profond, back from the