They had begun a hymn; she could hear the ninth baronet across the aisle, singing of the hosts of Midian. Her little finger touched Val’s thumb – they were holding the same hymn-book – and a tiny thrill passed through her, preserved from twenty years ago. He stooped and whispered:
‘I say, d’you remember the rat?’ The rat at their wedding in Cape Colony, which had cleanèd its whiskers behind the table at the Registrar’s! And between her little and third finger she squeezed his thumb hard.
The hymn was over, the prelate had begun to deliver his discourse. He told them of the dangerous times they lived in, and the awful conduct of the House of Lords in connexion with divorce. They were all soldiers – he said – in the trenches under the poisonous gas of the Prince of Darkness, and must be manful. The purpose of marriage was children, not mere sinful happiness.
An imp danced in Holly’s eyes – Val’s eyelashes were meeting. Whatever happened, he must not snore. Her finger and thumb closed on his thigh till he stirred uneasily.
The discourse was over, the danger past. They were signing in the vestry; and general relaxation had set in.
A voice behind her said:
‘Will she stay the course?’
‘Who’s that?’ she whispered.
‘Old George Forsyte!’
Holly demurely scrutinized one of whom she had often heard. Fresh from South Africa, and ignorant of her kith and kin, she never saw one without an almost childish curiosity. He was very big, and very dapper; his eyes gave her a funny feeling of having no particular clothes.
‘They’re off!’ she heard him say.
They came, stepping from the chancel. Holly looked first in young Mont’s face. His lips and ears twitching, his eyes, shifting from his feet to the hand within his arm, stared suddenly before them as if to face a firing party. He gave Holly the feeling that he was spiritually intoxicated. But Fleur! Ah! That was different. The girl was perfectly composed, prettier than ever; in her white robes and veil over her banged dark chestnut hair; her eyelids hovered demure over her dark hazel eyes. Outwardly, she seemed all there. But inwardly, where was she? As those two passed, Fleur raised her eyelids – the restless glint of those clear whites remained on Holly’s vision as might the flutter of a caged bird’s wings.
In Green Street Winifred stood to receive, just a little less composed than usual. Soame’s request for the use of her house had come on her at a deeply psychological moment. Under the influence of a remark of Prosper Profond, she had begun to exchange her Empire for Expressionistic furniture. There were the most amusing arrangements, with violet, green, and orange blobs and scriggles, to be had at Mealard’s. Another month and the change would have been complete. Just now, the very ‘intriguing’ recruits she had enlisted, did not march too well with the old guard. It was as if her regiment were half in khaki, half in scarlet and bearskins. But her strong and comfortable character made the best of it in a drawing-room which typified, perhaps, more perfectly that she imagined, the semi-bolshevized imperialism of her country. After all, this was a day of merger, and you couldn’t have too much of it! Her eyes travelled indulgently among her guests. Soames had gripped the back of a buhl chair; young Mont was behind that ‘awfully amusing’ screen, which no one as yet had been able to explain to her. The ninth baronet had shied violently at a round scarlet table, inlaid under glass with blue Australian butterflies’ wings, and was clinging to her Louis-Quinze cabinet; Francie Forsyte had seized the new mantel-board, finely carved with little purple grotesques on an ebony ground; George, over by the old spinet, was holding a little sky-blue book as if about to enter bets; Prosper Profond was twiddling the knob of the open door, black with peacock-blue panels; and Annette’s hands, close by, were grasping her own waist; two Muskhams clung to the balcony among the plants, as if feeling ill; Lady Mont, thin and brave-looking, had taken up her long-handled glasses and was gazing at the central light shade, of ivory and orange dashed with deep magenta, as if the heavens had opened. Everybody, in fact, seemed holding on to something. Only Fleur, still in her bridal dress, was detached from all support, flinging her words and glances to left and right.
The room was full of the bubble and the squeak of conversation. Nobody could hear anything that anybody said; which seemed of little consequence, since no one waited for anything so slow as an answer. Modern conversation seemed to Winifred so different from the days of her prime, when a drawl was all the vogue. Still it was ‘amusing’, which, of course, was all that mattered. Even the Forsytes were talking with extreme rapidity – Fleur and Christopher, and Imogen, and young Nicholas’s youngest, Patrick. Soames, of course, was silent; but George, by the spinet, kept up a running commentary, and Francie, by her mantel-shelf. Winifred drew nearer to the ninth baronet. He seemed to promise a certain repose; his nose was fine and drooped a little, his grey moustaches too; and she said, drawling through her smile:
‘It’s rather nice, isn’t it?’
His reply shot out of his smile like a snipped bread pellet:
‘D’you remember, in Frazer, the tribe that buries the bride up to the waist?’
He spoke as fast as anybody! He had dark lively little eyes, too, all crinkled round like a Catholic priest’s. Winifred felt suddenly he might say things she would regret.
‘They’re always so amusing – weddings,’ she murmured, and moved on to Soames. He was curiously still, and Winifred saw at once what was dictating his immobility. To his right was George Forsyte, to his left Annette and Prosper Profond. He could not move without either seeing those two together, or the reflection of them in George Forsyte’s japing eyes. He was quite right not to be taking notice.
‘They say Timothy’s sinking,’ he said glumly.
‘Where will you put him, Soames?’
‘Highgate.’ He counted on his fingers. ‘It’ll make twelve of them there, including wives. How do you think Fleur looks?’
‘Remarkably well.’
Soames nodded. He had never seen her look prettier, yet he could not rid himself of the impression that this business was unnatural – remembering still that crushed figure burrowing into the corner of the sofa. From that night to this day he had received from her no confidences. He knew from his chauffeur that she had made one more attempt on Robin Hill and drawn blank – an empty house, no one at home. He knew that she had received a letter, but not what was in it, except that it had made her hide herself and cry. He had remarked that she looked at him sometimes when she thought he wasn’t noticing, as if she were wondering still what he had done – forsooth – to make those people hate him so. Well, there it was! Annette had come back, and things had worn on through the summer – very miserable, till suddenly Fleur had said she was going to marry young Mont. She had shown him a little more affection when she told him that. And he had yielded – what was the good of opposing it? God knew that he had never wished to thwart her in anything! And the young man seemed quite delirious about her. No doubt she was in a reckless mood, and she was young, absurdly young. But if he opposed her, he didn’t know what she would do; for all he could tell she might want to take up a profession, become a doctor or solicitor, some nonsense. She had no aptitude for painting, writing, music, in his view the legitimate occupations of unmarried women, if they must do something in these days. On the whole, she was safer married, for he could see too well how feverish and restless she was at home. Annette, too, had been in favour of it – Annette, from behind the veil of his refusal to know what she was about, if she was about anything. Annette had said: ‘Let her marry this young man. He is a nice boy – not so highty-flighty as he seems.’ Where she got her expression, he didn’t know – but her opinion soothed his doubts. His wife, whatever her conduct, had clear eyes and an almost depressing amount of common sense. He had settled fifty thousand on Fleur, taking care that there was no cross settlement in case it didn’t turn out well. Could it turn out well? She had not got over that other boy – he knew. They were to go to Spain for the honeymoon. He
would be even lonelier when she was gone. But later, perhaps, she would forget, and turn to him again!
Winifred’s voice broke on his reverie.
‘Why? Of all wonders – June!’
There, in a djibbah – what things she wore! – with her hair straying from under a fillet, Soames saw his cousin, and Fleur going forward to greet her. The two passed from their view out on to the stairway.
‘Really,’ said Winifred, ‘she does the most impossible things! Fancy her coming!’
‘What made you ask her?’ muttered Soames.
‘Because I thought she wouldn’t accept, of course.’
Winifred had forgotten that behind conduct lies the main trend of character; or, in other words, omitted to remember that Fleur was now a ‘lame duck’.
On receiving her invitation, June had first thought, ‘I wouldn’t go near them for the world!’ and then, one morning, had awakened from a dream of Fleur waving to her from a boat with a wild unhappy gesture. And she had changed her mind.
When Fleur came forward and said to her, ‘Do come up while I’m changing my dress,’ she had followed up the stairs. The girl led the way into Imogen’s old bedroom, set ready for her toilet.
June sat down on the bed, thin and upright, like a little spirit in the sear and yellow. Fleur locked the door.
The girl stood before her divested of her wedding-dress. What a pretty thing she was!
‘I suppose you think me a fool,’ she said, with quivering lips, ‘when it was to have been Jon. But what it does matter? Michael wants me and I don’t care. It’ll get me away from home.’ Diving her hand into the frills on her breast, she brought out a letter. ‘Jon wrote me this.’
June read: ‘Lake Okanagan, British Columbia. I’m not coming back to England. Bless you always. – Jon.’
‘She’s made safe, you see,’ said Fleur.
June handed back the letter.
‘That’s not fair to Irene,’ she said; ‘she always told Jon he could do as he wished.’
Fleur smiled bitterly. ‘Tell me, didn’t she spoil your life too?’
June looked up. ‘Nobody can spoil a life, my dear. That’s nonsense. Things happen, but we bob up.’
With a sort of terror she saw the girl sink on her knees and bury her face in the djibbah. A strangled sob mounted to June’s ears.
‘It’s all right – all right,’ she murmured. ‘Don’t! There, there!’
But the point of the girl’s chin was pressed ever closer into her thigh, and the sound was dreadful of her sobbing.
Well, well! It had to come. She would feel better afterward! June stroked the short hair of that shapely head; and all the scattered mother-sense in her focused itself and passed through the tips of her fingers into the girl’s brain.
‘Don’t sit down under it, my dear,’ she said at last. ‘We can’t control life, but we can fight it. Make the best of things. I’ve had to. I held on, like you; and I cried, as you’re crying now. And look at me!’
Fleur raised her head; a sob merged suddenly into a little choked laugh. In truth it was a thin and rather wild and wasted spirit she was looking at, but it had brave eyes.
‘All right!’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I shall forget him, I suppose, if I fly fast and far enough.’
And, scrambling to her feet, she went over to the wash-stand.
June watched her removing with cold water the traces of emotion. Save for a little becoming pinkness there was nothing left when she stood before the mirror. June got off the bed and took a pin-cushion in her hand. To put two pins into the wrong places was all the vent she found for sympathy.
‘Give me a kiss,’ she said when Fleur was ready, and dug her chin into the girl’s warm cheek.
‘I want a whiff,’ said Fleur; ‘don’t wait.’
June left her, sitting on the bed with a cigarette between her lips and her eyes half closed, and went downstairs. In the doorway of the drawing-room stood Soames as if unquiet at his daughter’s tardiness. June tossed her head and passed down on to the half-landing. Her cousin Francie was standing there.
‘Look!’ said June, pointing with her chin at Soames. ‘That man’s fatal!’
‘How do you mean,’ said Francie, ‘Fatal?’
June did not answer her. ‘I shan’t wait to see them off,’ she said. ‘Good-bye!’
‘Good-bye!’ said Francie, and her eyes, of a Celtic grey, goggled. That old feud! Really, it was quite romantic!
Soames, moving to the well of the staircase, saw June go, and drew a breath of satisfaction. Why didn’t Fleur come? They would miss their train. That train would bear her away from him, yet he could not help fidgeting at the thought that they would lose it. And then she did come, running down in her tancoloured frock and black velvet cap, and passed him into the drawing-room. He saw her kiss her mother, her aunt, Val’s wife, Imogen, and then come forth, quick and pretty as ever. How would she treat him at this last moment of her girlhood? He couldn’t hope for much!
Her lips pressed the middle of his cheek.
‘Daddy!’ she said, and was past and gone. Daddy! She hadn’t called him that for years. He drew a long breath and followed slowly down. There was all the folly with that confetti stuff and the rest of it to go through with, yet. But he would like just to catch her smile, if she leaned out, though they would hit her in the eye with the shoe, if they didn’t take care. Young Mont’s voice said fervently in his ear:
‘Good-bye, sir; and thank you! I’m so fearfully bucked.’
‘Good-bye,’ he said; ‘don’t miss your train.’
He stood on the bottom step but three, whence he could see above the heads – the silly hats and heads. They were in the car now; and there was that stuff, showering, and there went the shoe. A flood of something welled up in Soames, and – he didn’t know – he couldn’t see!
Chapter Eleven
THE LAST OF THE OLD FORSYTES
WHEN they came to prepare that terrific symbol Timothy Forsyte – the one pure individualist left, the only man who hadn’t heard of the Great War – they found him wonderful – not even death had undermined his soundness.
To Smither and Cook that preparation came like final evidence of what they had never believed possible – the end of the old Forsyte family on earth. Poor Mr Timothy must now take a harp and sing in the company of Miss Forsyte, Mrs Julia, Miss Hester; with Mr Jolyon, Mr Swithin, Mr James, Mr Roger and Mr Nicholas of the party. Whether Mrs Hayman would be there was more doubtful, seeing that she had been cremated. Secretly Cook thought that Mr Timothy would be upset – he had always been so set against barrel organs. How many times had she not said: ‘Drat the thing! There it is again! Smither, you’d better run up and see what you can do.’ And in her heart she would so have enjoyed the tunes, if she hadn’t known that Mr Timothy would ring the bell in a minute and say: ‘Here, take him a halfpenny and tell him to move on.’ Often they had been obliged to add threepence of their own before the man would go – Timothy had ever underrated the value of emotion. Luckily he had taken the organs for blue-bottles in his last years, which had been a comfort, and they had been able to enjoy the tunes. But a harp! Cook wondered. It was a change! And Mr Timothy had never liked change. But she did not speak of this to Smither, who did so take a line of her own in regard to heaven that it quite put one about sometimes.
She cried while Timothy was being prepared, and they all had sherry afterward out of the yearly Christmas bottle, which would not be needed now. Ah! dear! She had been there five-and-forty years and Smither three-and-forty! And now they would be going to a tiny house in Tooting, to live on their savings and what Miss Hester had so kindly left them – for to take fresh service after the glorious past – No! But they would like just to see Mr Soames again, and Mrs Dartie, and Miss Francie, and Miss Euphemia. And even if they had to take their own cab, they felt they must go to the funeral. For six years Mr Timothy had been their baby, getting younger and younger every day, till at last he had been too young to live.
They spent the regulation hours of waiting in polishing and dusting, in catching the one mouse left, and asphyxiating the last beetle so as to leave it nice, discussing with each other what they would buy at the sale. Miss Ann’s work-box; Miss Juley’s (that is Mrs Julia’s) seaweed album; the fire-screen Miss Hester had crewelled; and Mr Timothy’s hair – little golden curls, glued into a black frame. Oh! they must have those – only the price of things had gone up so!
It fell to Soames to issue invitations for the funeral. He had them drawn up by Gradman in his office – only blood relations, and no flowers. Six carriages were ordered. The Will would be read afterwards at the house.
He arrived at eleven o’clock to see that all was ready. At a quarter past old Gradman came in black gloves and crape on his hat. He and Soames stood in the drawing-room waiting. At half-past eleven the carriages drew up in a long row. But no one else appeared. Gradman said:
The Forsyte Saga, Volume 1 Page 97