The Forsyte Saga, Volume 2

by John Galsworthy

  ‘Spoiled,’ thought Michael, ‘by our past prosperity. We shall never admit it,’ he thought, ‘never! And yet in our bones we feel it!’

  England with the silver spoon in her mouth and no longer the teeth to hold it there, or the will to part with it! And her very qualities – the latent ‘grit’, the power to take things smiling, the lack of nerves and imagination! Almost vices, now, perpetuating the rash belief that England could still ‘muddle through’ without special effort, although with every year there was less chance of recovering from shock, less time in which to exercise the British ‘virtues’. ‘Slow in the uptak’,’ thought Michael, ‘it’s a ghastly fault in 1924.’

  Thus musing, he turned East. Mid-theatre-hour, and the ‘Great Parasite’ – as Sir James Foggart called it – was lying inert and bright. He walked the length of wakeful Fleet Street into the City so delirious by day, so dead by night. Here England’s wealth was snoozing off the day’s debauch. Here were all the frame and filaments of English credit And based on – what? On food and raw material from which England, undefended in the air, might be cut off by a fresh war; on Labour, too big for European boots. And yet that credit stood high still, soothing all with its ‘panache’ – save, perhaps, receivers of the dole. With her promise to pay, England could still purchase any-thing, except a quiet heart.

  And Michael walked on – through Whitechapel, busy still and coloured – into Mile End. The houses had become low, as if to give the dwellers a better view of stars they couldn’t reach. He had crossed a frontier. Here was a different race almost; another England, but as happy-go-lucky and as hand-to-mouth as the England of Fleet Street and the City. Aye, and more! For the England in Mile End knew that whatever she felt could have no effect on policy. Mile on mile, without an end, the low grey streets stretched towards the ultimate deserted grass. Michael did not follow them, but coming to a cinema, turned in.

  The show was far advanced. Bound and seated in front of the bad cowboy on a bronco, the heroine was crossing what Michael shrewdly suspected to be the film company’s pet paddock. Every ten seconds she gave way to John T. Bronson, manager of the Tucsonville Copper Mine, devouring the road in his 60-h.p. Packard, to cut her off before she reached the Pima river. Michael contemplated his fellow gazers. Lapping it up! Strong stable government – not much! This was their anodyne and they could not have enough of it. He saw the bronco fall, dropped by a shot from John T. Bronson, and the screen disclose the words: ‘Hairy Pete grows desperate.… ’ ‘You shall not have her, Bronson.’ Quite! He was throwing her into the river instead, to the words: ‘John T. Bronson dives.’ There he goes! He has her by her flowing hair! But Hairy Pete is kneeling on the bank. The bullets chip the water. Through the heroine’s fair perforated shoulder the landscape is almost visible. What is that sound? Yes! John T. Bronson is setting his teeth! He lands, he drags her out. From his cap he takes his automatic. Still dry – thank God!

  ‘Look to yourself, Hairy Pete!’ A puff of smoke. Pete squirms and bites the sand – he seems almost to absorb the desert. ‘Hairy Pete gets it for keeps!’ Slow music, slower! John T. Bronson raises the reviving form. Upon the bank of the Pima river they stand embraced, and the sun sets. ‘At last, my dinky love!’

  ‘Pom, pom! that’s the stuff!’ thought Michael, returning to the light of night: ‘Back to the Land! “Plough the fields and scatter” – when they can get this? Not much!’ And he turned West again, taking a seat on the top of a bus beside a man with grease-stains on his clothes. They travelled in silence till Michael said:

  ‘What do you make of the political situation, sir?’

  The possible plumber replied, without turning his head:

  ‘I should say they’ve over-reached theirselves.’

  ‘Ought to have fought on Russia – oughtn’t they?’

  ‘Russia – that cock won’t fight either. No – ought to ‘ave ‘eld on to the Spring, an’ fought on a good stiff Budget.’

  ‘Real class issue?’

  ‘Yus!’

  ‘But do you think class politics can wipe out unemployment?’

  The man’s mouth moved under his moustache as if mumbling a new idea.

  ‘Ah! I’m fed up with politics; in work to-day and out tomorrow – what’s the good of politics that can’t give you a permanent job?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Reparations,’ said his neighbour; ‘we’re not goin’ to benefit by reparations. The workin’ classes ought to stand together in every country.’ And he looked at Michael to see how he liked that.

  ‘A good many people thought so before the war; and see what happened.’

  ‘Ah!’ said the man, ‘and what good’s it done us?’

  ‘Have you thought of emigrating to the Dominions?’

  The man shook his head.

  ‘Don’t like what I see of the Austrylians and Canydians.’

  ‘Confirmed Englishman – like myself.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the man. ‘So long, Mister,’ and he got off.

  Michael travelled till the bus put him down under Big Ben, and it was nearly twelve. Another election! Could he stand a second time without showing his true colours? Not the faintest hope of making Foggartism clear to a rural constituency in three weeks! If he spoke from now till the day of the election, they would merely think he held rather extreme views on Imperial Preference, which, by the way, he did. He could never tell the electorate that he thought England was on the wrong tack – one might just as well not stand. He could never buttonhole the ordinary voter, and say to him: ‘Look here, you know, there’s no earthly hope of any real improvement for another ten years; in the meantime we must face the music, and pay more for everything, so that twenty years hence we may be safe from possible starvation, and self-supporting within the Empire.’ It wasn’t done. Nor could he say to his Committee: ‘My friends, I represent a policy that no one else does, so far.’

  No! If he meant to stand again, he must just get the old wheezes off his chest. But did he mean to stand again? Few people had less conceit than Michael – he knew himself for a lightweight. But he had got this bee into his bonnet; the longer he lived the more it buzzed, the more its buzz seemed the voice of one crying in the wilderness, and that wilderness his country. To stop up that buzzing in his ears; to turn his back on old Blythe; to stifle his convictions, and yet remain in Parliament – he could not! It was like the war over again. Once in, you couldn’t get out. And he was ‘in’ – committed to something deeper far than the top dressings of Party politics. Foggartism had a definite solution of England’s troubles to work towards – an independent, balanced Empire; an England safe in the air, and free from unemployment – with Town and Country once more in some sort of due proportion! Was it such a hopeless dream? Apparently!

  ‘Well,’ thought Michael, putting his latch-key in his door, ‘they may call me what kind of a bee fool they like – I shan’t budge.’ He went up to his dressing-room and, opening the window, leaned out.

  The rumourous town still hummed; the sky was faintly coloured by reflection from its million lights. A spire was visible, some stars; the tree foliage in the Square hung flat, unstirred by wind. Peaceful and almost warm – the night. Michael remembered a certain evening – the last London air-raid of the war. From his convalescent hospital he had watched it for three hours.

  ‘What fools we all are not to drop fighting in the air,’ he thought. ‘Well, if we don’t, I shall go all out for a great air force – all hangs, for us, on safety from air attack. Even the wise can understand that.’

  Two men had stopped beneath his window, talking. One was his next-door neighbour.

  ‘Mark my words,’ said his neighbour, ‘the election’ll see a big turnover.’

  ‘Yes; and what are you going to do with it?’ said the other.

  ‘Let things alone; they’ll right themselves. I’m sick of all this depressing twaddle. A shilling off the Income Tax, and you’ll see.’

  ‘How are you go
ing to deal with the Land?’

  ‘Oh! damn the Land! Leave it to itself, that’s all the farmers really want. The more you touch it, the worse it gets.’

  ‘Let the grass grow under your feet?’

  The neighbour laughed. ‘That’s about it. Well, what else can you do – the Country won’t have it. Good night!’

  Sounds of a door, of footsteps. A car drove by; a moth flew in Michael’s face. ‘The Country won’t have it!’ Policies! What but mental yawns, long shrugs of the shoulders, trusting to Luck! What else could they be? The Country wouldn’t have it! And Big Ben struck twelve.

  Chapter Thirteen

  INCEPTION OF THE CASE

  THERE are people in every human hive born to focus talk; perhaps their magnetism draws the human tongue, or their lives are lived at an acute angle. Of such was Marjorie Ferrar – one of the most talked-of young women in London. Whatever happened to her was rumoured at once in that collection of the busy and the idle called Society. That she had been ejected from a drawing-room was swiftly known. Fleur’s letters about her became current gossip. The reasons for ejectment varied from truth to a legend that she had lifted Michael from the arms of his wife.

  The origins of lawsuits are seldom simple. And when Soames called it all ‘a storm in a tea-cup’, he might have been right if Lord Charles Ferrar had not been so heavily in debt that he had withdrawn his daughter’s allowance; if, too, a Member for a Scottish borough, Sir Alexander MacGown, had not for some time past been pursuing her with the idea of marriage. Wealth made out of jute, a rising Parliamentary repute, powerful physique, and a determined character, had not advanced Sir Alexander’s claims in twelve months so much as the withdrawal of her allowance advanced them in a single night Marjorie Ferrar was, indeed, of those who can always get money at a pinch, but even to such come moments when they have seriously to consider what kind of pinch. In proportion to her age and sex, she was ‘dipped’ as badly as her father, and the withdrawal of her allowance was in the nature of a last straw. In a moment of discouragement she consented to an engagement, not yet to be made public. When the incident at Fleur’s came to Sir Alexander’s ears, he went to his betrothed flaming. What could he do?

  ‘Nothing, of course; don’t be silly, Alec! Who cares?’

  ‘The thing’s monstrous. Let me go and exact an apology from this old blackguard.’

  ‘Father’s been, and he wouldn’t give it. He’s got a chin you could hang a kettle on.’

  ‘Now, look here, Marjorie, you’ve got to make our engagement public, and let me get to work on him. I won’t have this story going about.’

  Marjorie Ferrar shook her head.

  ‘Oh! no, my dear. You’re still on probation. I don’t care a tuppeny ice about the story.’

  ‘Well, I do, and I’m going to that fellow to-morrow.’

  Marjorie Ferrar studied his face – its brown, burning eyes, its black, stiff hair, its jaw – shivered slightly, and had a brainwave.

  ‘You will do nothing of the kind, Alec, or you’ll spill your ink. My father wants me to bring an action. He says I shall get swinging damages.’

  The Scotsman in MacGown applauded, the lover quailed.

  ‘That may be very unpleasant for you,’ he muttered, ‘unless the brute settles out of Court.’

  ‘Of course he’ll settle. I’ve got all his evidence in my vanity-bag.’

  MacGown gripped her by the shoulders and gave her a fierce kiss.

  ‘If he doesn’t, I’ll break every bone in his body.’

  ‘My dear! He’s nearly seventy, I should think.’

  ‘H’m! Isn’t there a young man in the same boat with him?’

  ‘Michael? Oh! Michael’s a dear. I couldn’t have his bones broken.’

  ‘Indeed!’ said MacGown. ‘Wait till he launches this precious Foggartism they talk of – dreary rot! I’ll eat him!’

  ‘Poor little Michael!’

  ‘I heard something about an American boy, too.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Marjorie Ferrar, releasing herself from his grip. ‘A bird of passage – don’t bother about him.’

  ‘Have you got a lawyer?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I’ll send you mine. He’ll make them sit up!’

  She remained pensive after he had left her, distrusting her own brain-wave. If only she weren’t so hard up! She had learned during this month of secret engagement that ‘Nothing for nothing and only fair value for sixpence’ ruled North of the Tweed as well as South. He had taken a good many kisses and given her one trinket which she dared not take to ‘her Uncle’s’. It began to look as if she would have to marry him. The prospect was in some ways not repulsive – he was emphatically a man; her father would take care that she only married him on terms as liberal as his politics; and perhaps her motto ‘Live dangerously’ could be even better carried out with him than without. Resting inert in a long chair, she thought of Francis Wilmot. Hopeless as husband, he might be charming as lover, naïve, fresh, unknown in London, absurdly devoted, oddly attractive, with his lithe form, dark eyes, engaging smile. Too old-fashioned for words, he had made it clear already that he wanted to’marry her. He was a baby. But until she was beyond his reach, she had begun to feel that he was beyond hers. After? Well, who knew? She lived in advance, dangerously, with Francis Wilmot. In the meantime this action for slander was a bore I and shaking the idea out of her head, she ordered her horse, changed her clothes, and repaired to the Row. After that she again changed her clothes, went to the Cosmopolis Hotel, and danced with her mask-faced partner and Francis Wilmot. After that she changed her clothes once more, went to a first night, partook of supper afterwards with the principal actor and his party, and was in bed by two o’clock.

  Like most reputations, that of Marjorie Ferrar received more than its deserts. If you avow a creed of indulgence, you will be indulged by the credulous. In truth she had only had two love-affairs passing the limits of decorum; had smoked opium once, and been sick over it; and had sniffed cocaine just to see what it was like. She gambled only with discretion, and chiefly on racehorses; drank with strict moderation and a good head; smoked of course, but the purest cigarettes she could get, and through a holder. If she had learned suggestive forms of dancing, she danced them but once in a blue moon. She rarely rode at a five-bar gate, and that only on horses whose powers she knew.

  To be in the know she read, of course, anything ‘extreme’, but would not go out of her way to do so. She had flown, but just to Paris. She drove a car well, and of course fast, but never to the danger of herself, and seldom to the real danger of the public. She had splendid health, and took care of it in private. She could always sleep at ten minutes’ notice, and when she sat up half the night, slept half the day. She was ‘in’ with the advanced theatre, but took it as it came. Her book of poems, which had received praise because they emanated from one of a class supposed to be unpoetic, was remarkable not so much for irregularity of thought as for irregularity of metre. She was, in sum, credited with a too strict observance of her expressed creed: ‘Take life in both hands, and eat it.’

  This was why Sir Alexander MacGown’s lawyer sat on the edge of his chair in her studio the following morning, and gazed at her intently. He knew her renown better than Sir Alexander. Messrs Settlewhite and Stark liked to be on the right side of a matter before they took it up. How far would this young lady, with her very attractive appearance and her fast reputation, stand fire? For costs – they had Sir Alexander’s guarantee and the word ‘traitress’ was a good enough beginning; but in cases of word against word, it was ill predicting.

  Her physiognomy impressed Mr Settlewhite favourably. She would not ‘get rattled’ in Court, if he was any judge; nor had she the Aubrey Beardsley cast of feature he had been afraid of, that might alienate a jury. No! an upstanding young woman with a good blue eye and popular hair. She would do, if her story were all right.

  Marjorie Ferrar, in turn, scrutinized one who looked as if he might take things
out of her hands. Long-faced, with grey deep eyes under long dark lashes, all his hair, and good clothes, he was as well preserved a man of sixty as she had ever seen.

  ‘What do you want me to tell you, Mr Settlewhite?’

  ‘The truth.’

  ‘Oh! but naturally. Well, I was just saying to Mr Quinsey that Mrs Mont was very eager to form a “salon”, and had none of the right qualities, and the old person who overheard me thought I was insulting her –’

  ‘That all?’

  ‘Well, I may have said she was fond of lions; and so she is.’

  ‘Yes; but why did he call you a traitress?’

  ‘Because she was his daughter and my hostess, I suppose.’

  ‘Will this Mr Quinsey confirm you?’

  ‘Philip Quinsey? – oh! rather! He’s in my pocket.’

  ‘Did anybody else overhear you running her down?’

  She hesitated a second. ‘No.’

  ‘First lie!’ thought Mr Settlewhite, with his peculiar sweet-sarcastic smile. ‘What about an American?’

  Marjorie Ferrar laughed. ‘He won’t say so, anyway.’

  ‘An admirer?’

  ‘No. He’s going back to America.’

  ‘Second lie!’ thought Mr Settlewhite. ‘But she tells them well.’

  ‘You want an apology you can show to those who overheard the insult; and what we can get, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes. The more the better.’

  ‘Speaking the truth there,’ thought Mr Settlewhite. ‘Are you hard up?’

  ‘Couldn’t well be harder.’

  Mr Settlewhite put one hand on each knee, and reared his slim body.

  ‘You don’t want it to come into Court?’

  ‘No; though I suppose it might be rather fun.’

  Mr Settlewhite smiled again.

  ‘That entirely depends on how many skeletons you have in your cupboard.’

  Marjorie Ferrar also smiled.

  ‘I shall put everything in your hands,’ she said.