The Forsyte saga - Complete
took a long sniff of the stable air. “Horses are ripping, aren’t
they? My Dad...” he stopped.
“Yes?” said Holly.
An impulse to unbosom himself almost overcame him—but not quite.
“Oh! I don’t know he’s often gone a mucker over them. I’m jolly
keen on them too—riding and hunting. I like racing awfully, as
well; I should like to be a gentleman rider.” And oblivious of
the fact that he had but one more day in town, with two
engagements, he plumped out:
“I say, if I hire a gee to-morrow, will you come a ride in
Richmond Park?”
Holly clasped her hands.
“Oh yes! I simply love riding. But there’s Jolly’s horse; why
don’t you ride him? Here he is. We could go after tea.”
Val looked doubtfully at his trousered legs.
He had imagined them immaculate before her eyes in high brown
boots and Bedford cords.
“I don’t much like riding his horse,” he said. “He mightn’t like
it. Besides, Uncle Soames wants to get back, I expect. Not that I
believe in buckling under to him, you know. You haven’t got an
uncle, have you? This is rather a good beast,” he added,
scrutinising Jolly’s horse, a dark brown, which was showing the
whites of its eyes. “You haven’t got any hunting here, I
suppose?”
“No; I don’t know that I want to hunt. It must be awfully
exciting, of course; but it’s cruel, isn’t it? June says so.”
“Cruel?” ejaculated Val. “Oh! that’s all rot. Who’s June?”
“My sister—my half-sister, you know—much older than me.” She had
put her hands up to both cheeks of Jolly’s horse, and was rubbing
her nose against its nose with a gentle snuffling noise which
seemed to have an hypnotic effect on the animal. Val contemplated
her cheek resting against the horse’s nose, and her eyes gleaming
round at him. “She’s really a duck,” he thought.
They returned to the house less talkative, followed this time by
the dog Balthasar, walking more slowly than anything on earth,
and clearly expecting them not to exceed his speed limit.
“This is a ripping place,” said Val from under the oak tree,
where they had paused to allow the dog Balthasar to come up.
“Yes,” said Holly, and sighed. “Of course I want to go
everywhere. I wish I were a gipsy.”
“Yes, gipsies are jolly,” replied Val, with a conviction which
had just come to him; “you’re rather like one, you know.”
Holly’s face shone suddenly and deeply, like dark leaves gilded
by the sun.
“To go mad-rabbiting everywhere and see everything, and live in
the open—oh! wouldn’t it be fun?”
“Let’s do it!” said Val.
“Oh yes, let’s!”
“It’d be grand sport, just you and I.”
Then Holly perceived the quaintness and gushed.
“Well, we’ve got to do it,” said Val obstinately, but reddening
too.
“I believe in doing things you want to do. What’s down there?”
“The kitchen-garden, and the pond and the coppice, and the farm.”
“Let’s go down!”
Holly glanced back at the house.
“It’s tea-time, I expect; there’s Dad beckoning.”
Val, uttering a growly sound, followed her towards the house.
When they re-entered the hall gallery the sight of two
middle-aged Forsytes drinking tea together had its magical
effect, and they became quite silent. It was, indeed, an
impressive spectacle. The two were seated side by side on an
arrangement in marqueterie which looked like three silvery pink
chairs made one, with a low tea-table in front of them. They
seemed to have taken up that position, as far apart as the seat
would permit, so that they need not look at each other too much;
and they were eating and drinking rather than talking—Soames with
his air of despising the tea-cake as it disappeared, Jolyon of
finding himself slightly amusing. To the casual eye neither would
have seemed greedy, but both were getting through a good deal of
sustenance. The two young ones having been supplied with food,
the process went on silent and absorbative, till, with the advent
of cigarettes, Jolyon said to Soames:
“And how’s Uncle James?”
“Thanks, very shaky.”
“We’re a wonderful family, aren’t we? The other day I was
calculating the average age of the ten old Forsytes from my
father’s family Bible. I make it eighty-four already, and five
still living. They ought to beat the record;” and looking
whimsically at Soames, he added:
“We aren’t the men they were, you know.”
Soames smiled. “Do you really think I shall admit that I’m not
their equal”. he seemed to be saying, “or that I’ve got to give
up anything, especially life?”
“We may live to their age, perhaps,” pursued Jolyon, “but
self-consciousness is a handicap, you know, and that’s the
difference between us. We’ve lost conviction. How and when
self-consciousness was born I never can make out. My father had a
little, but I don’t believe any other of the old Forsytes ever
had a scrap. Never to see yourself as others see you, it’s a
wonderful preservative. The whole history of the last century is
in the difference between us. And between us and you,” he added,
gazing through a ring of smoke at Val and Holly, uncomfortable
under his quizzical regard, “there’ll be—another difference. I
wonder what.”
Soames took out his watch.
“We must go,” he said, “if we’re to catch our train.”
“Uncle Soames never misses a train,” muttered Val, with his mouth
full.
“Why should I?” Soames answered simply.
“Oh! I don’t know,” grumbled Val, “other people do.”
At the front door he gave Holly’s slim brown hand a long and
surreptitious squeeze.
“Look out for me to-morrow,” he whispered; “three o’clock. I’ll
wait for you in the road; it’ll save time. We’ll have a ripping
ride.” He gazed back at her from the lodge gate, and, but for the
principles of a man about town, would have waved his hand. He
felt in no mood to tolerate his uncle’s conversation. But he was
not in danger. Soames preserved a perfect muteness, busy with
far-away thoughts.
The yellow leaves came down about those two walking the mile and
a half which Soames had traversed so often in those long-ago days
when he came down to watch with secret pride the building of the
house—that house which was to have been the home of him and her
from whom he was now going to seek release. He looked back once,
up that endless vista of autumn lane between the yellowing
hedges. What an age ago! “I don’t want to see her,” he had said
to Jolyon. Was that true? “I may have to,” he thought; and he
shivered, seized by one of those queer shudderings that they say
mean footsteps on one’s grave. A chilly world! A queer world! And
glancing sidelong at his nephew, he thought: “Wish I were his
age! I wonder what she’s like now!”
CHAPTER VIII JOLYON PROSECUTES TRUSTEESHIP
When those two were gone Jolyon did not return to his painting,
for daylight was failing, but went to the study, craving
unconsciously a revival of that momentary vision of his father
sitting in the old leather chair with his knees crossed and his
straight eyes gazing up from under the dome of his massive brow.
Often in this little room, cosiest in the house, Jolyon would
catch a moment of communion with his father. Not, indeed, that he
had definitely any faith in the persistence of the human
spirit—the feeling was not so logical—it was, rather, an
atmospheric impact, like a scent, or one of those strong
animistic impressions from forms, or effects of light, to which
those with the artist’s eye are especially prone. Here only—in
this little unchanged room where his father had spent the most of
his waking hours—could be retrieved the feeling that he was not
quite gone, that the steady counsel of that old spirit and the
warmth of his masterful lovability endured.
What would his father be advising now, in this sudden
recrudescence of an old tragedy—what would he say to this menace
against her to whom he had taken such a fancy in the last weeks
of his life? “I must do my best for her,” thought Jolyon; “he
left her to me in his will. But what _is_ the best?”
And as if seeking to regain the sapience, the balance and shrewd
common sense of that old Forsyte, he sat down in the ancient
chair and crossed his knees. But he felt a mere shadow sitting
there; nor did any inspiration come, while the fingers of the
wind tapped on the darkening panes of the french-window.
“Go and see her?” he thought, “or ask her to come down here?
What’s her life been? What is it now, I wonder? Beastly to rake
up things at this time of day.” Again the figure of his cousin
standing with a hand on a front door of a fine olive-green leaped
out, vivid, like one of those figures from old-fashioned clocks
when the hour strikes; and his words sounded in Jolyon’s ears
clearer than any chime: “I manage my own affairs. I’ve told you
once, I tell you again: We are not at home.” The repugnance he
had then felt for Soames—for his flat-cheeked, shaven face full
of spiritual bull-doggedness; for his spare, square, sleek figure
slightly crouched as it were over the bone he could not
digest—came now again, fresh as ever, nay, with an odd increase.
“I dislike him,” he thought, “I dislike him to the very roots of
me. And that’s lucky; it’ll make it easier for me to back his
wife.” Half-artist, and half-Forsyte, Jolyon was constitutionally
averse from what he termed “ructions”; unless angered, he
conformed deeply to that classic description of the she-dog,
“Er’d ruther run than fight.” A little smile became settled in
his beard. Ironical that Soames should come down here—to this
house, built for himself! How he had gazed and gaped at this ruin
of his past intention; furtively nosing at the walls and
stairway, appraising everything! And intuitively Jolyon thought:
“I believe the fellow even now would like to be living here. He
could never leave off longing for what he once owned! Well, I
must act, somehow or other; but it’s a bore—a great bore.”
Late that evening he wrote to the Chelsea flat, asking if Irene
would see him.
The old century which had seen the plant of individualism flower
so wonderfully was setting in a sky orange with coming storms.
Rumours of war added to the briskness of a London turbulent at
the close of the summer holidays. And the streets to Jolyon, who
was not often up in town, had a feverish look, due to these new
motorcars and cabs, of which he disapproved aesthetically. He
counted these vehicles from his hansom, and made the proportion
of them one in twenty. “They were one in thirty about a year
ago,” he thought; “they’ve come to stay. Just so much more
rattling round of wheels and general stink”—for he was one of
those rather rare Liberals who object to anything new when it
takes a material form; and he instructed his driver to get down
to the river quickly, out of the traffic, desiring to look at the