The Forsyte Saga, Volume 2

by John Galsworthy

  ‘Good-bye, darling! Take care of yourself. You shall have all the news I can send you, and don’t worry about Kit’.

  His teeth were clenched, and her eyes – he saw – were wet! And, then, once more:

  ‘Good-bye!’

  ‘Good-bye!’

  Back on the tender, with the strip of grey water opening, spreading between him and the ship’s side, and that high line of faces above the bulwark – Fleur’s face under the small fawn hat, her waving hand; and, away to the left, seen out of the tail of his eyes, old Forsyte’s face alone – withdrawn so that they might have their parting to themselves – long, chinny, grey-moustached, very motionless; absorbed and lonely, as might be that of some long-distance bird arrived on an unknown shore, and looking back towards the land of its departure. Smaller and smaller they grew, merged in blur, vanished.

  For the whole journey back to Westminster, Michael smoked cigarette on cigarette, and read the same sentence over and over in the same journal, and the sentence was:

  ‘Robbery at Highgate, Cat Burglar gets clear away.’

  He went straight into the House of Commons. And all the afternoon sat listening and taking in a few words now and then, of a debate on education. What chance – what earthly chance – had his skyscraping in this place, where they still talked with calm disagreement, as if England were the England of 1906, and the verdict on him was: ‘Amiable but very foolish young man!’ National unity – national movement! No jolly fear! The country wouldn’t have it! One was battering at a door which everybody said must be opened, but through which nobody could pass. And a long strip of grey water kept spreading between him and the talkers; the face under the fawn hat confused itself with that of the Member for Wasbaston; the face of Old Forsyte above the bulwark rail appeared suddenly between two Labour Leaders; and the lines of faces faded to a blur on a grey river where gulls were flighting.

  Going out, he passed a face that had more reality – MacGown’s! Grim! It wasn’t the word. No one had got any change out of that affair. Multum ex parvo ! Parvum ex multo ! That was the modern comedy!

  Going home to have a look at Kit and send Fleur a wireless, he passed four musicians playing four instruments with a sort of fury. They had able bodies in shabby clothes. ‘By Jove!’ thought Michael, ‘I know that chap’s face! – surely he was in my company in France!’ He watched till the cheeks collapsed. Yes! A good man, too! But they had all been good men. By George, they had been wonders! And here they were! And he within an ace of abandoning them! Though everybody had his nostrum, and one perhaps was as good as another, still one could only follow what light one had! And if the Future was unreadable, and Fate grinned, well – let it grin!

  How empty the house felt! Tomorrow Kit and the dog were to go down to ‘The Shelter’ in the car, and it would be still emptier. From room after room he tried to retrieve some sight or scent of Fleur. Too painful: His dressing-room, his study were the only places possible – in them he would abide.

  He went to the nursery and opened the door softly. Whiteness and dimity; the dog on his fat silver side, the Magicoal fire burning; the prints on the white walls so carefully selected for the moment when the eleventh baronet should begin to take notice – prints slightly comic, to avoid a moral; the high and shining fender-guard that even Magicoal might not be taken too seriously; the light coming in between bright chintz. A charming room! The nurse, in blue, was standing with her back to the door, and did not see him. And, in his little high chair, the eleventh baronet was at table; on his face, beneath its dark chestnut curls, was a slight frown; and in his tiny hand he held a silver spoon, with which over the bowl before him he was making spasmodic passes.

  Michael heard the nurse saying:

  ‘Now that mother’s gone, you must be a little man, Kit, and learn to use your spoon.’

  Michael saw his offspring dip at the bowl and throw some of its contents into the air.

  ‘That’s not the way at all.’

  The eleventh baronet repeated the performance, and looked for applause, with a determined smile.

  ‘Naughty!’

  ‘A – a!’ said the eleventh baronet, plopping the spoon. The contents spurted wastefully.

  ‘Oh! you spoiled boy!’

  ‘ “England, my England!”’ thought Michael, ‘as the poet said.’

  SWAN SONG

  Contents

  PART ONE

  1 Initiation of the Canteen

  2 On the’Phone

  3 Home-coming

  4 Soames Goes Up to Town

  5 Jeopardy

  6 Snuff-box

  7 Michael Has Qualms

  8 Secret

  9 Rencounter

  10 After Lunch

  11 Perambulation

  12 Private Feelings

  13 Soames in Waiting

  PART TWO

  1 Son of Sleeping Dove

  2 Soames Goes Racing

  3 The Two-year-olds

  4 In the Meads

  5 Measles

  6 Forming a Committee

  7 Two visits

  8 The Jolly Accident

  9 But – Jon!

  10 That Thing and This Thing

  11 Converting the Slums

  12 Delicious Night

  13 ‘Always!’

  PART THREE

  1 Soames Gives Advice

  2 Occupying the Mind

  3 Possessing the Soul

  4 Talk in a Car

  5 More Talk in a Car

  6 Soames has Brain-waves

  7 Tomorrow

  8 Forbidden Fruit

  9 Aftermath

  10 Bitter Apple

  11 ‘Great Forsyte’

  12 Driving On

  13 Fires

  14 Hush

  15 Soames Takes the Ferry

  16 Full Close

  TO

  F. N. Doubleday

  We are such stuff

  As dreams are made on; and our little life

  Is rounded with a sleep.

  The Tempest.

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  INITIATION OF THE CANTEEN

  IN modern Society, one thing after another, this spice on that, ensures a kind of memoristic vacuum, and Fleur Mont’s passage of arms with Marjorie Ferrar was, by the spring of 1926, well-nigh forgotten. Moreover, she gave Society’s memory no encouragement, for after her tour round the world, she was interested in the Empire – a bent so out of fashion as to have all the flavour and excitement of novelty with a sort of impersonality guaranteed.

  Colonials, Americans, and Indian students, people whom nobody could suspect of being lions, now encountered each other in the ‘bimetallic parlour’, and were found by Fleur ‘very interesting’, especially the Indian students, so supple and enigmatic, that she could never tell whether she were ‘using’ them or they were ‘using’ her.

  Perceiving the extraordinary uphill nature of Foggartism, she had been looking for a second string to Michael’s Parliamentary bow, and, with her knowledge of India, where she had spent six weeks of her tour, she believed that she had found it in the idea of free entrance for the Indians into Kenya. In her talks with these Indian students, she learned that it was impossible to walk in a direction unless you knew what it was. These young men might be complicated and unpractical, meditative and secret, but at least they appeared to be convinced that the molecules in an organism mattered less than the organism itself – that they, in fact, mattered less than India. Fleur, it seemed, had encountered faith – a new and ‘intriguing’ experience. She mentioned the fact to Michael.

  ‘It’s all very well,’ he answered, ‘but our Indian friends didn’t live four years in the trenches, or the fear thereof, for the sake of their faith. If they had, they couldn’t possibly have the feeling that it matters as much as they think it does. They might want to, but their feelers would be blunted. That’s what the war really did to all of us in Europe who were in the war.’

  ‘That doesn’t
make “faith” any less interesting,’ said Fleur, dryly.

  ‘Well, my dear, the prophets abuse us for being at loose ends, but can you have faith in a life force so darned extravagant that it makes mincemeat of you by the million? Take it from me, Victorian times fostered a lot of very cheap and easy faith, and our Indian friends are in the same case – their India has lain doggo since the Mutiny, and that was only a surface upheaval. So you needn’t take ’em too seriously.’

  ‘I don’t; but I like the way they believe they’re serving India.’

  And at his smile she frowned, seeing that he thought she was only increasing her collection.

  Her father-in-law, who had really made some study of Orientalism, lifted his eyebrow over these new acquaintances.

  ‘My oldest friend,’ he said, on the first of May, ‘is a judge in India. He’s been there forty years. When he’d been there two, he wrote to me that he was beginning to know something about the Indians. When he’d been there ten, he wrote that he knew all about them. I had a letter from him yesterday, and he says that after forty years he knows nothing about them. And they know as little about us. East and West – the circulation of the blood is different.’

  ‘Hasn’t forty years altered the circulation of your friend’s blood?’

  ‘Not a jot,’ replied Sir Lawrence. ‘It takes forty generations. Give me another cup of your nice Turkish coffee, my dear. What does Michael say about the general strike?’

  ‘That the Government won’t budge unless the T.U.C. with-draw the notice unreservedly.’

  ‘Exactly! And but for the circulation of English blood there’d be “a pretty mess”, as old Forsyte would say.’

  ‘Michael’s sympathies are with the miners.’

  ‘So are mine, young lady. Excellent fellow, the miner – but unfortunately cursed with leaders. The mine-owners are in the same case. Those precious leaders are going to grind the country’s nose before they’ve done. Inconvenient product – coal; it’s blackened our faces, and now it’s going to black our eyes. Not a merry old soul! Well, good-bye! My love to Kit, and tell Michael to keep his head.”

  This was precisely what Michael was trying to do. When ‘the Great War’ broke out, though just old enough to fight, he had been too young to appreciate the fatalism which creeps over human nature with the approach of crisis. He was appreciating it now before ‘the Great Strike’, together with the peculiar value which the human being attaches to saving face. He noticed that both sides had expressed the intention of meeting the other side in every way, without, of course, making any concessions whatever; the slogans, ‘Longer hours, less wages’, ‘Not a minute more, not a bob off’, curtsied, and got more and more distant as they neared each other. And now, with the ill-disguised impatience of his somewhat mercurial nature, Michael was watching the sober and tentative approaches of the typical Britons in whose hands any chance of mediation lay. When, on that memorable Monday, not merely the faces of the gentlemen with slogans, but the very faces of the typical Britons were suddenly confronted with the need for being saved, he knew that all was up; and returning from the House of Commons at midnight, he looked at his sleeping wife. Should he wake Fleur and tell her that the country was ‘for it’, or should he not? Why spoil her beauty sleep? She would know soon enough. Besides, she wouldn’t take it seriously. Passing into his dressing-room, he stood looking out of the window at the dark Square below. A general strike at a few hours’ notice! ‘Some’ test of the British character! The British character? Suspicion had been dawning on Michael for years that its appearances were deceptive; that Members of Parliament, theatregoers, trotty little ladies with dresses tight blown about trotty little figures, plethoric generals in armchairs, pettish and petted poets, parsons in pulpits, posters in the street – above all, the Press, were not representative of the national disposition. If the papers were not to come out, one would at least get a chance of feeling and seeing the British character; owing to the papers, one never had seen or felt it clearly during the war, at least not in England. In the trenches, of course, one had – there, sentiment and hate, advertisement and moonshine, had been ‘taboo’, and with a grim humour the Briton had just ‘carried on’, unornamental and sublime, in the mud and the blood, the stink and the racket, and the endless nightmare of being pitchforked into fire without rhyme or reason! The Briton’s defiant humour that grew better as things grew worse, would – he felt – get its chance again now. And, turning from the window, he undressed and went back into the bedroom.

  Fleur was awake.

  ‘Well, Michael?’

  ‘The strike’s on.’

  ‘What a bore!’

  ‘Yes; we shall have to exert ourselves.’

  ‘What did they appoint that Commission for, and pay all that subsidy, if not to avoid things?’

  ‘My dear girl, that’s there common sense – no good at all.’

  ‘Why can’t they come to an agreement?’

  ‘Because they’ve got to save face. Saving face is the strongest motive in the world.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, it caused the war; it’s causing the strike now; without “saving face” there’d probably be no life on the earth at all by this time.’

  Michael kissed her.

  ‘I suppose you’ll have to do something,’ she said, sleepily. ‘There won’t be much to talk about in the House while this is on,’

  ‘No; we shall sit and glower at each other, and use the word “formula” at stated intervals.’

  ‘I wish we had a Mussolini.’

  ‘I don’t. You pay for him in the long run. Look at Diaz and Mexico; or Lenin and Russia; or Napoleon and France; or Cromwell and England, for the matter of that.’

  ‘Charles the Second,’ murmured Fleur into her pillow ‘was rather a dear.’

  Michael stayed awake a little, disturbed by the kiss, slept a little, woke again. To save face! No one would make a move because of their faces. For nearly an hour he lay trying to think out a way of saving them all, then fell asleep. He woke at seven with the feeling that he had wasted his time. Under the appearance of concern for the country, and professions of anxiety to find a ‘formula’, too many personal feelings, motives, and prejudices were at work. As before the war, there was a profound longing for the humiliation and dejection of the adversary; each wished his face saved at the expense of the other fellow’s!

  He went out directly after breakfast.

  People and cars were streaming over Westminster Bridge, no buses ran, no trams; but motor-lorries, full or empty, rumbled past. Some ‘specials’ were out already, and everybody had a look as if they were going to a tea party, cloaked in a kind of defiant jollity. Michael moved on towards Hyde Park. Over night had sprung up this amazing mish-mash of lorries and cans and tents! In the midst of all the mental and imaginative lethargy which had produced this national crisis – what a wonderful display of practical and departmental energy! ‘They say we can’t organize!’ thought Michael; ‘can’t we just – after the event!’

  He went on to a big railway station. It was picketed, but they were running trains already, with volunteer labour. Poking round, he talked here and there among the volunteers. ‘By George!’ he thought, ‘these fellows’ll want feeding! What about a canteen!’ And he returned post haste to South Square.

  Fleur was in.

  ‘Will you help me run a railway canteen for volunteers?’ He saw the expression: ‘Is that a good stunt?’ rise on her face, and hurried on:

  ‘It’ll mean frightfully hard work; and getting anybody we can to help. I daresay I could rope in Norah Curfew and her gang from Bethnal Green for a start. But it’s your quick head that’s wanted, and your way with men.’

  Fleur smiled. ‘All right,’ she said.

  They took the car – a present from Soames on their return from round the world – and went about, picking people up and dropping them again. They recruited Norah Curfew and ‘her gang’ in Bethnal Green; and during this f
irst meeting of Fleur with one whom she had been inclined to suspect as something of a rival, Michael noted how, within five minutes, she had accepted Norah Curfew as too ‘good’ to be dangerous. He left them at South Square in conference over culinary details, and set forth to sap the natural oppositions of officialdom. It was like cutting barbed wide on a dark night before an ‘operation’. He cut a good deal, and went down to the ‘House’. Humming with unformulated ‘formulas’, it was, on the whole, the least cheerful place he had been in that day. Everyone was talking of the ‘menace to the Constitution’. The Government’s long face was longer than ever, and nothing – they said – could be done until it had been saved. The expressions ‘Freedom of the Press’ and ‘At the pistol’s mouth’, were being used to the point of tautology! He ran across Mr Blythe brooding in the Lobby on the temporary decease of his beloved weekly, and took him over to South Square ‘for a bite’ at nine o’clock. Fleur had come in for the same purpose. According to Mr Blythe, the solution was to ‘form a group’ of right-thinking opinion.

  ‘Exactly, Blythe! But what is right-thinking, at “the present time of speaking”?’

  It all comes back to Foggartism,’ said Mr Blythe.

  ‘Oh!’ said Fleur, ‘I do wish you’d both drop that. Nobody will have anything to say to it. You might as well ask the people of today to live like St Francis d’Assisi.’

  ‘My dear young lady, suppose St Francis d’Assisi had said that, we shouldn’t be hearing today of St Francis.’

  ‘Well, what real effect has he had? He’s just a curiosity. All those great spiritual figures are curiosities. Look at Tolstoi now, or Christ, for that matter!’

  ‘Fleur’s rather right, Blythe.’

  ‘Blasphemy!’ said Mr Blythe.’

  ‘I don’t know, Blythe; I’ve been looking at the gutters lately, and I’ve come to the conclusion that they put a stopper on Fog-gartism. Watch the children there, and you’ll see how attractive gutters are! So long as a child can have a gutter, he’ll never leave it. And, mind you, gutters are a great civilizing influence. We have more gutters here than any other country and more children brought up in them; and we’re the most civilized people in the world. This strike’s going to prove that. There’ll be less bloodshed and more good humour than there could be anywhere else; all due to the gutter.’