The Forsyte Saga

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by John Galsworthy

“Well, when I do, I’ll come in and give you a kiss, then if you’re awake you’ll know, and if you’re not you’ll still know you’ve had one.”

  Little Jon sighed, “All right!” he said: “I suppose I must put up with that. Mum?”

  “Yes?”

  “What was her name that Daddy believes in? Venus Anna Diomedes?”

  “Oh! my angel! Anadyomene.”

  “Yes! but I like my name for you much better.”

  “What is yours, Jon?”

  Little Jon answered shyly:

  “Guinevere! it’s out of the Round Table—I’ve only just thought of it, only of course her hair was down.”

  His mother’s eyes, looking past him, seemed to float.

  “You won’t forget to come, Mum?”

  “Not if you’ll go to sleep.”

  “That’s a bargain, then.” And little Jon screwed up his eyes.

  He felt her lips on his forehead, heard her footsteps; opened his eyes to see her gliding through the doorway, and, sighing, screwed them up again.

  Then time began.

  For some ten minutes of it he tried loyally to sleep, counting a great number of thistles in a row, “Da’s” old recipe for bringing slumber. He seemed to have been hours counting. It must, he thought, be nearly time for her to come up now. He threw the bedclothes back. “I’m hot!” he said, and his voice sounded funny in the darkness, like someone else’s. Why didn’t she come? He sat up. He must look! He got out of bed, went to the window and pulled the curtain a slice aside. It wasn’t dark, but he couldn’t tell whether because of daylight or the moon, which was very big. It had a funny, wicked face, as if laughing at him, and he did not want to look at it. Then, remembering that his mother had said moonlit nights were beautiful, he continued to stare out in a general way. The trees threw thick shadows, the lawn looked like spilt milk, and a long, long way he could see; oh! very far; right over the world, and it all looked different and swimmy. There was a lovely smell, too, in his open window.

  “I wish I had a dove like Noah!” he thought.

  The moony moon was round and bright,

  It shone and shone and made it light.

  After that rhyme, which came into his head all at once, he became conscious of music, very soft-lovely! Mum playing! He bethought himself of a macaroon he had, laid up in his chest of drawers, and, getting it, came back to the window. He leaned out, now munching, now holding his jaws to hear the music better. “Da” used to say that angels played on harps in heaven; but it wasn’t half so lovely as Mum playing in the moony night, with him eating a macaroon. A cockchafer buzzed by, a moth flew in his face, the music stopped, and little Jon drew his head in. She must be coming! He didn’t want to be found awake. He got back into bed and pulled the clothes nearly over his head; but he had left a streak of moonlight coming in. It fell across the floor, near the foot of the bed, and he watched it moving ever so slowly towards him, as if it were alive. The music began again, but he could only just hear it now; sleepy music, pretty—sleepy—music—sleepy—slee. . . . .

  And time slipped by, the music rose, fell, ceased; the moonbeam crept towards his face. Little Jon turned in his sleep till he lay on his back, with one brown fist still grasping the bedclothes. The corners of his eyes twitched—he had begun to dream. He dreamed he was drinking milk out of a pan that was the moon, opposite a great black cat which watched him with a funny smile like his father’s. He heard it whisper: “Don’t drink too much!” It was the cat’s milk, of course, and he put out his hand amicably to stroke the creature; but it was no longer there; the pan had become a bed, in which he was lying, and when he tried to get out he couldn’t find the edge; he couldn’t find it—he—he—couldn’t get out! It was dreadful!

  He whimpered in his sleep. The bed had begun to go round too; it was outside him and inside him; going round and round, and getting fiery, and Mother Lee out of Cast up by the Sea was stirring it! Oh! so horrible she looked! Faster and faster!—till he and the bed and Mother Lee and the moon and the cat were all one wheel going round and round and up and up—awful—awful—awful!

  He shrieked.

  A voice saying: “Darling, darling!” got through the wheel, and he awoke, standing on his bed, with his eyes wide open.

  There was his mother, with her hair like Guinevere’s, and, clutching her, he buried his face in it.

  “Oh! oh!”

  “It’s all right, treasure. You’re awake now. There! There! It’s nothing!”

  But little Jon continued to say: “Oh! oh!”

  Her voice went on, velvety in his ear:

  “It was the moonlight, sweetheart, coming on your face.”

  Little Jon burbled into her nightgown

  “You said it was beautiful. Oh!”

  “Not to sleep in, Jon. Who let it in? Did you draw the curtains?”

  “I wanted to see the time; I—I looked out, I—I heard you playing, Mum; I—I ate my macaroon.” But he was growing slowly comforted; and the instinct to excuse his fear revived within him.

  “Mother Lee went round in me and got all fiery,” he mumbled.

  “Well, Jon, what can you expect if you eat macaroons after you’ve gone to bed?”

  “Only one, Mum; it made the music ever so more beautiful. I was waiting for you—I nearly thought it was tomorrow.”

  “My ducky, it’s only just eleven now.”

  Little Jon was silent, rubbing his nose on her neck.

  “Mum, is Daddy in your room?”

  “Not tonight.”

  “Can I come?”

  “If you wish, my precious.”

  Half himself again, little Jon drew back.

  “You look different, Mum; ever so younger.”

  “It’s my hair, darling.”

  Little Jon laid hold of it, thick, dark gold, with a few silver threads.

  “I like it,” he said: “I like you best of all like this.”

  Taking her hand, he had begun dragging her towards the door. He shut it as they passed, with a sigh of relief.

  “Which side of the bed do you like, Mum?”

  “The left side.”

  “All right.”

  Wasting no time, giving her no chance to change her mind, little Jon got into the bed, which seemed much softer than his own. He heaved another sigh, screwed his head into the pillow and lay examining the battle of chariots and swords and spears which always went on outside blankets, where the little hairs stood up against the light.

  “It wasn’t anything, really, was it?” he said.

  From before her glass his mother answered:

  “Nothing but the moon and your imagination heated up. You mustn’t get so excited, Jon.”

  But, still not quite in possession of his nerves, little Jon answered boastfully:

  “I wasn’t afraid, really, of course!” And again he lay watching the spears and chariots. It all seemed very long.

  “Oh! Mum, do hurry up!”

  “Darling, I have to plait my hair.”

  “Oh! not tonight. You’ll only have to unplait it again tomorrow. I’m sleepy now; if you don’t come, I shan’t be sleepy soon.”

  His mother stood up white and flowey before the winged mirror: he could see three of her, with her neck turned and her hair bright under the light, and her dark eyes smiling. It was unnecessary, and he said:

  “Do come, Mum; I’m waiting.”

  “Very well, my love, I’ll come.”

  Little Jon closed his eyes. Everything was turning out most satisfactory, only she must hurry up! He felt the bed shake, she was getting in. And, still with his eyes closed, he said sleepily: “It’s nice, isn’t it?”

  He heard her voice say something, felt her lips touching his nose, and, snuggling up beside her who lay awake and loved him with her thoughts, he fell into the dr
eamless sleep, which rounded off his past.

  Book III

  To Let

  “From out the fatal loins of those two foes

  A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life.”

  —Romeo and Juliet

  Dedication

  To Charles Scribner

  Part I

  Chapter I

  Encounter

  Soames Forsyte emerged from the Knightsbridge Hotel, where he was staying, in the afternoon of the twelfth of May, 1920, with the intention of visiting a collection of pictures in a gallery off Cork Street, and looking into the Future. He walked. Since the war he never took a cab if he could help it. Their drivers were, in his view, an uncivil lot, though now that the war was over and supply beginning to exceed demand again, getting more civil in accordance with the custom of human nature. Still, he had not forgiven them, deeply identifying them with gloomy memories, and now, dimly, like all members, of their class, with revolution. The considerable anxiety he had passed through during the war, and the more considerable anxiety he had since undergone in the peace, had produced psychological consequences in a tenacious nature. He had, mentally, so frequently experienced ruin, that he had ceased to believe in its material probability. Paying away four thousand a year in income and super tax, one could not very well be worse off! A fortune of a quarter of a million, encumbered only by a wife and one daughter, and very diversely invested, afforded substantial guarantee even against that “wildcat notion” a levy on capital. And as to confiscation of war profits, he was entirely in favour of it, for he had none, and “serve the beggars right!” The price of pictures, moreover, had, if anything, gone up, and he had done better with his collection since the war began than ever before. Air raids, also, had acted beneficially on a spirit congenitally cautious, and hardened a character already dogged. To be in danger of being entirely dispersed inclined one to be less apprehensive of the more partial dispersions involved in levies and taxation, while the habit of condemning the impudence of the Germans had led naturally to condemning that of Labour, if not openly at least in the sanctuary of his soul.

  He walked. There was, moreover, time to spare, for Fleur was to meet him at the gallery at four o’clock, and it was as yet but half past two. It was good for him to walk—his liver was a little constricted, and his nerves rather on edge. His wife was always out when she was in town, and his daughter would flibberty-gibbet all over the place like most young women since the war. Still, he must be thankful that she had been too young to do anything in that war itself. Not, of course, that he had not supported the war from its inception, with all his soul, but between that and supporting it with the bodies of his wife and daughter, there had been a gap fixed by something old-fashioned within him which abhorred emotional extravagance. He had, for instance, strongly objected to Annette, so attractive, and in 1914 only thirty-four, going to her native France, her chère patrie as, under the stimulus of war, she had begun to call it, to nurse her braves poilus, forsooth! Ruining her health and her looks! As if she were really a nurse! He had put a stopper on it. Let her do needlework for them at home, or knit! She had not gone, therefore, and had never been quite the same woman since. A bad tendency of hers to mock at him, not openly, but in continual little ways, had grown. As for Fleur, the war had resolved the vexed problem whether or not she should go to school. She was better away from her mother in her war mood, from the chance of air raids, and the impetus to do extravagant things; so he had placed her in a seminary as far west as had seemed to him compatible with excellence, and had missed her horribly. Fleur! He had never regretted the somewhat outlandish name by which at her birth he had decided so suddenly to call her—marked concession though it had been to the French. Fleur! A pretty name—a pretty child! But restless—too restless; and wilful! Knowing her power too over her father! Soames often reflected on the mistake it was to dote on his daughter. To get old and dote! Sixty-five! He was getting on; but he didn’t feel it, for, fortunately perhaps, considering Annette’s youth and good looks, his second marriage had turned out a cool affair. He had known but one real passion in his life—for that first wife of his—Irene. Yes, and that fellow, his cousin Jolyon, who had gone off with her, was looking very shaky, they said. No wonder, at seventy-two, after twenty years of a third marriage!

  Soames paused a moment in his march to lean over the railings of the Row. A suitable spot for reminiscence, halfway between that house in Park Lane which had seen his birth and his parents’ deaths, and the little house in Montpellier Square where thirty-five years ago he had enjoyed his first edition of matrimony. Now, after twenty years of his second edition, that old tragedy seemed to him like a previous existence—which had ended when Fleur was born in place of the son he had hoped for. For many years he had ceased regretting, even vaguely, the son who had not been born; Fleur filled the bill in his heart. After all, she bore his name; and he was not looking forward at all to the time when she would change it. Indeed, if he ever thought of such a calamity, it was seasoned by the vague feeling that he could make her rich enough to purchase perhaps and extinguish the name of the fellow who married her—why not, since, as it seemed, women were equal to men nowadays? And Soames, secretly convinced that they were not, passed his curved hand over his face vigorously, till it reached the comfort of his chin. Thanks to abstemious habits, he had not grown fat and gabby; his nose was pale and thin, his grey moustache close-clipped, his eyesight unimpaired. A slight stoop closened and corrected the expansion given to his face by the heightening of his forehead in the recession of his grey hair. Little change had time wrought in the “warmest” of the young Forsytes, as the last of the old Forsytes—Timothy—now in his hundred and first year, would have phrased it.

  The shade from the plane trees fell on his neat Homburg hat; he had given up top hats—it was no use attracting attention to wealth in days like these. Plane trees! His thoughts travelled sharply to Madrid—the Easter before the war, when, having to make up his mind about that Goya picture, he had taken a voyage of discovery to study the painter on his spot. The fellow had impressed him—great range, real genius! Highly as the chap ranked, he would rank even higher before they had finished with him. The second Goya craze would be greater even than the first; oh, yes! And he had bought. On that visit he had—as never before—commissioned a copy of a fresco painting called La Vendimia, wherein was the figure of a girl with an arm akimbo, who had reminded him of his daughter. He had it now in the gallery at Mapledurham, and rather poor it was—you couldn’t copy Goya. He would still look at it, however, if his daughter were not there, for the sake of something irresistibly reminiscent in the light, erect balance of the figure, the width between the arching eyebrows, the eager dreaming of the dark eyes. Curious that Fleur should have dark eyes, when his own were grey—no pure Forsyte had brown eyes—and her mother’s blue! But of course her grandmother Lamotte’s eyes were dark as treacle!

  He began to walk on again toward Hyde Park Corner. No greater change in all England than in the Row! Born almost within hail of it, he could remember it from 1860 on. Brought there as a child between the crinolines to stare at tight-trousered dandies in whiskers, riding with a cavalry seat; to watch the doffing of curly-brimmed and white top hats; the leisurely air of it all, and the little bowlegged man in a long red waistcoat who used to come among the fashion with dogs on several strings, and try to sell one to his mother: King Charles spaniels, Italian greyhounds, affectionate to her crinoline—you never saw them now. You saw no quality of any sort, indeed, just working people sitting in dull rows with nothing to stare at but a few young bouncing females in pot hats, riding astride, or desultory Colonials charging up and down on dismal-looking hacks; with, here and there, little girls on ponies, or old gentlemen jogging their livers, or an orderly trying a great galumphing cavalry horse; no thoroughbreds, no grooms, no bowing, no scraping, no gossip—nothing; only the trees the same—the trees indifferent to the generations and declensions of mankind.
A democratic England—disheveled, hurried, noisy, and seemingly without an apex. And that something fastidious in the soul of Soames turned over within him. Gone forever, the close borough of rank and polish! Wealth there was—oh, yes! wealth—he himself was a richer man than his father had ever been; but manners, flavour, quality, all gone, engulfed in one vast, ugly, shoulder-rubbing, petrol-smelling Cheerio. Little half-beaten pockets of gentility and caste lurking here and there, dispersed and chetif, as Annette would say; but nothing ever again firm and coherent to look up to. And into this new hurly-burly of bad manners and loose morals his daughter—flower of his life—was flung! And when those Labour chaps got power—if they ever did—the worst was yet to come.

  He passed out under the archway, at last no longer—thank goodness!—disfigured by the gungrey of its searchlight. “They’d better put a searchlight on to where they’re all going,” he thought, “and light up their precious democracy!” And he directed his steps along the club fronts of Piccadilly. George Forsyte, of course, would be sitting in the bay window of the Iseeum. The chap was so big now that he was there nearly all his time, like some immovable, sardonic, humorous eye noting the decline of men and things. And Soames hurried, ever constitutionally uneasy beneath his cousin’s glance. George, who, as he had heard, had written a letter signed “Patriot” in the middle of the war, complaining of the government’s hysteria in docking the oats of racehorses. Yes, there he was, tall, ponderous, neat, clean-shaven, with his smooth hair, hardly thinned, smelling, no doubt, of the best hair-wash, and a pink paper in his hand. Well, he didn’t change! And for perhaps the first time in his life Soames felt a kind of sympathy tapping in his waistcoat for that sardonic kinsman. With his weight, his perfectly parted hair, and bull-like gaze, he was a guarantee that the old order would take some shifting yet. He saw George move the pink paper as if inviting him to ascend—the chap must want to ask something about his property. It was still under Soames’s control; for in the adoption of a sleeping partnership at that painful period twenty years back when he had divorced Irene, Soames had found himself almost insensibly retaining control of all purely Forsyte affairs.

 

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