The Forsyte Saga, Volume 2

by John Galsworthy

  ‘No.’

  ‘That chap MacGown had a lucky escape – not that he deserved it. Fleur doesn’t miss her evenings?’

  Michael did not answer. He did not know. Fleur and he were on such perfect terms that they had no real knowledge of each other’s thoughts. Then, feeling his father-in-law’s grey eye gim-letting into him, he said hastily:

  ‘Fleur’s all right, sir.’

  Soames nodded. ‘Don’t let her overdo this canteen.’

  ‘She’s thoroughly enjoying it – gives her head a chance.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Soames, ‘she’s got a good little head, when she doesn’t lose it.’ He seemed again to consult the Goya, and added:

  ‘By the way, that young Jon Forsyte is over here – they tell me – staying at Green Street, and stoking an engine or something. A boy-and-girl affair; but I thought you ought to know.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Michael, ‘thanks. I hadn’t heard.’

  ‘I don’t suppose she’s heard, either,’ said Soames guardedly; ‘I told them not to tell her. D’you remember, in America, up at Mount Vernon, when I was taken ill?’

  ‘Yes, sir; very well.’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t. Fact is, I saw that young man and his wife talking to you on the stairs. Thought it better that Fleur shouldn’t run up against them. These things are very silly, but you never can tell.’

  ‘No,’ said Michael dryly; ‘you never can tell. I remember liking the look of him a good deal.’

  ‘Hm!’ muttered Soames. ‘He’s the son of his father, I expect.’

  And, from the expression on his face, Michael formed the notion that this was a doubtful advantage.

  No more was said, because of Soames’s lifelong conviction that one did not say any more than one need say; and of Michael’s prejudice against discussing Fleur seriously, even with her father. She had seemed to him quite happy lately. After five and a half years of marriage, he was sure that mentally Fleur liked him, that physically she had no objection to him, and that a man was not sensible if he expected much more. She consistently declined, of course, to duplicate Kit, but only because she did not want to be put out of action again for months at a time. The more active, the happier she was – over this canteen, for instance she was in her glory. If, indeed, he had realized that Jon Forsyte was being fed there, Michael would have been troubled; as it was, the news of the young man’s reappearance in England made no great impression. The country held the field of one’s attention those strenuous days. The multiple evidence of patriotism exhilarated him – undergraduates at the docks, young women driving cars, shopfolk walking cheerfully to their work, the swarms of ‘specials’, the general ‘carrying-on’. Even the strikers were good-humoured. A secret conviction of his own concerning England was being reinforced day by day, in refutation of the pessimists. And there was no place so un-English at the moment, he felt, as the House of Commons, where people had nothing to do but pull long faces and talk over ‘the situation’.

  The news of the General Strike’s collapse caught him as he was going home after driving Fleur to the canteen. A fizz and bustle in the streets, and the words: ‘Strike Over’ scrawled extempore at street corners, preceded the ‘End of the Strike – Official’ of the hurrying newsvendors. Michael stopped his car against the kerb and bought a news-sheet. There it was I For a minute he sat motionless with a choky feeling, such as he had felt when the news of the Armistice came through. A sword lifted from over the head of England! A source of pleasure to her enemies dried up! People passed and passed him, each with a news-sheet, or a look in the eye. They were taking it almost as soberly as they had taken the strike itself. ‘Good old England! We’re a great people when we’re up against it!’ he thought, driving his car slowly on into Trafalgar Square. A group of men, who had obviously been strikers, stood leaning against the parapet. He tried to read their faces. Glad, sorry, ashamed, resentful, relieved? For the life of him he could not tell. Some defensive joke seemed going the round of them.

  ‘No wonder we’re a puzzle to foreigners!’ thought Michael. ‘The least understood people in the world!’

  He moved on slowly round the square, into Whitehall. Here were some slight evidences of feeling. The block was thick around the Cenotaph and the entrance to Downing Street; and little cheers kept breaking out. A ‘special’ was escorting a lame man across the street. As he came back, Michael saw his face. Why, it was Uncle Hilary! His mother’s youngest brother, Hilary Charwell, Vicar of St Augustine’s-in-die-Meads.

  ‘Hallo, Michael!’

  ‘You a “special”, Uncle Hilary? Where’s your cloth?’

  ‘My dear! Are you one of those who think the Church debarred from mundane pleasure? You’re not getting old-fashioned, Michael?’

  Michael grinned. He had a real affection for Uncle Hilary, based on admiration for his thin, long face, so creased and humorous, on boyish recollection of a jolly uncle, on a suspicion that in Hilary Charwell had been lost a Polar explorer, or other sort of first-rate adventurer.

  ‘That reminds me, Michael; when are you coming round to see us? I’ve got a topping scheme for airing “The Meads”.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Michael; ‘overcrowding’s at the bottom of everything, even this strike.’

  ‘Right you are, my son. Come along, then, as soon as you can. You fellows in Parliament ought always to see things at first hand. You suffer from auto-intoxication in that House. And now pass on, young man, you’re impeding the traffic.’

  Michael passed on, grinning. Good old Uncle Hilary! Humanizing religion, and living dangerously – had climbed all the worst peaks in Europe; no sense of his own importnace and a real sense of humour. Quite the best type of Englishman! They had tried to make him a dignitary, but he had jibbed at the gaiters and hat-ropes. He was what they called a ‘live wire’, and often committed the most dreadful indiscretions; but everybody liked him, even his own wife. Michael dwelt for a moment on his Aunt May. Forty – he supposed – with three children and fourteen hundred things to attend to every day; shingled, and cheerful as a sandboy. Nice-looking woman, Aunt May!

  Having garaged his car, he remembered that he had not lunched. It was three o’clock. Munching a biscuit, he drank a glass of sherry, and walked over to the House of Commons. He found it humming in anticipation of a statement. Sitting back, with his legs stretched out, he had qualms. What things had been done in here! The abolitions of Slavery and of Child Labour, the Married Woman’s Property Act, Repeal of the Corn Laws; but could they be done nowadays? And if not – was it a life? He had said to Fleur that you couldn’t change your vocation twice and survive. But did he want to survive? Failing Foggartism – and Foggartism hadn’t failed only because it hadn’t started – what did he really care about?

  Leaving the world better than he found it? Siting there, he couldn’t help perceiving a certain vagueness about such an aspiration, even when confined to England. It was the aspiration of the House of Commons; but in the ebb and flow of Party, it didn’t seem to make much progress. Better to fix on some definite bit of administrative work, stick to it, and get something done. Fleur wanted him to concentrate on Kenya for the Indians. Again rather remote, and having little to do with England. What definite work was most needed in connexion with England? Education? Bunkered again! How tell what was the best direction into which to turn education? When they brought in State Education, for instance, they had thought the question setded. Now people were saying that State education had ruined the State. Emigration? Attractive, but negative. Revival of agriculture? Well, the two combined were Foggartism, and he knew by now that nothing but bitter hardship would teach those lessons; you might talk till you were blue in the face without convincing anyone but yourself.

  What then?

  ‘I’ve got a topping scheme for airing “The Meads”.’ ‘The Meads’ was one of the worst slum parishes in London. ‘Clear the slums!’ thought Michael; ‘that’s practical, anyway!’ You could smell the slums, and feel them. They stank and bit and
bred corruption. And yet the dwellers therein loved them; or at least preferred them to slums they knew not of! And slum-dwellers were such good sorts! Too bad to play at shuttlecock with them! He must have a talk with Uncle Hilary. Lots of vitality in England still – numbers of red-haired children! But the vitality got sooted as it grew up – like plants in a back garden. Slum clearance, smoke abolition, industrial peace, emigration, agriculture, and safety in the air! ‘Them’s my sentiments!’ thought Michael. ‘And if that isn’t a large enough policy for any man, I’m –!’

  He turned his face towards the statement, and thought of his uncle’s words about this ‘House’. Were they all really in a state of auto-intoxication here – continual slow poisoning of the tissues? All these chaps around him thought they were doing things. And he looked at the chaps. He knew most of them, and had great respect for many, but collectively he could not deny that they looked a bit dazed. His neighbour to the right was showing his front teeth in an asphyxiated smile. ‘Really,’ he thought; ‘it’s heroic how we all keep awake day after day!’

  Chapter Eight

  SECRET

  IT would not have been natural that Fleur should rejoice in the collapse of the General Strike. A national outlook over such a matter was hardly in her character. Her canteen was completing the re-establishment in her of the social confidence which the Marjorie Ferrar affair had so severely shaken; and to be thoroughly busy with practical matters suited her. recruited by norah curfew, by herself, michael, and his Aunt lady alison charwell, she had a first-rate crew of helpers of all ages, most of them in Society. They worked in the manner popularly attributed to Negroes; they craned at nothing – not even cockroaches. They got up at, or stayed up to, all hours. They were never cross and always cheery. In a word, they seemed inspired. The difference they had made in the appearance of the railway’s culinary premises was starding to the Company. Fleur herself was ‘on the bridge’ all the time. On her devolved the greasing of the official wheels, the snipping off of red tape in numberless telephonic duels,- and the bearding of the managerial face. She had even opened her father’s pocket to supplement the shortcomings she encountered. The volunteers were fed to repletion, and – on Michael’s inspiration – she had undermined the pickets with surreptitious coffee dashed with rum, at odd hours of their wearisome vigils. Her provisioning car, entrusted to Holly, ran the blockade, by leaving and arriving, as though Harridge’s, whence she drew her supplies, were the last placo in its thoughts.

  ‘Let us give the strikers,’ said Michael, ‘every possible excuse to wink the other eye.’

  The canteen, in fact, was an unqualified success. She had not seen Jon again, but she lived in that peculiar mixture of fear and hope which signifies a real interest in life. On the Friday Holly announced to her that Jon’s wife had arrived – might she bring her down next morning?

  ‘Oh! yes,’ said Fleur. ‘What is she like?’

  ‘Attractive – with eyes like a water-nymph’s, or so Jon thinks; but it’s quite the best type of water-nymph.’

  ‘M-m!’ said Fleur.

  She was checking a list on the telephone next day when Holly brought Anne. About Fleur’s own height, straight and slim, darker in the hair, browner in complexion, browner in the eye (Fleur could see what Holly had meant by ‘water-nymph’), her nose a little too sudden, her chin pointed and her teeth very white, her successor stood. Did she know that Jon and she – ?

  And stretching out her free hand, Fleur said:

  ‘I think it’s awfully sporting of you as an American. How’s your brother Francis?’

  The hand she squeezed was brown, dry, warm; the voice she heard only faintly American, as if Jon had been at it.

  ‘You were just too good to Francis. He always talks of you. If it hadn’t been for you –’

  ‘That’s nothing. Excuse me…. Ye-cs?… No! If the Princess comes, ask her to be good enough to come when they’re feeding. Yes – yes – thank you! To-morrow? Certainly…. Did you have a good crossing?’

  ‘Frightful!’ I was glad Jon wasn’t with me. I do so hate being green, don’t you?’

  ‘I never am,’ said Fleur.

  That girl had Jon to bend above her when she was green I Pretty? Yes. The browned face was very alive – rather like Francis Wilmot’s, but with those enticing eyes, much more eager. What was it about those eyes that made them so unusual and attractive? – surely the suspicion of a squint! She had a way of standing, too – a trick of the neck, the head was beautifully poised. Lovely clothes, of course! Fleur’s glance swept swiftly down to calves and ankles. Not thick, not crooked I No luck!

  ‘I think it’s just wonderful of you to let me come and help.’

  ‘Not a bit. Holly will put you wise.’

  ‘That sounds nice and homey.’

  ‘Oh ! We all use your expressions now. Will you take her provisioning, Holly?’

  When the girl had gone, under Holly’s thing, Fleur bit her lip. By the uncomplicated glance of Jon’s wife she guessed that Jon had not told her. How awfully young! Fleur felt suddenly as if she herself had never had a youth. Ah! If Jon had not been caught away from her! Her bitten lip quivered, and she buried it in the mouthpiece of the telephone.

  Whenever again – three or four times – before the canteen was closed, she saw the girl, she forced herself to be cordial. Instinctively she felt that she must shut no doors on life just now. What Jon’s reappearance meant to her she could not yet tell; but no one should put a finger this time in whatever pie she chose to make. She was mistress of her face and movements now, as she had never been when she and Jon were babes in the wood. With a warped pleasure she heard Holly’s: ‘Anne thinks you wonderful, Fleur!’ No! Jon had not told his wife about her. It was like him, for the secret had not been his alone! But how long would that girl be left in ignorance? On the day the canteen closed she said to Holly:

  ‘No one has told Jon’s wife that he and I were once in love, I suppose?’

  Holly shook her head.

  ‘I’d rather they didn’t, then.’

  ‘Of course not, my dear. I’ll see to it. The child’s nice, I think.’

  ‘Nice,’ said Fleur, ‘but not important.’

  ‘You’ve got to allow for the utter strangeness of everything. Americans are generally important, sooner or later.’

  ‘To themselves,’ said Fleur, and saw Holly smile. Feeling that she had revealed a corner of her feelings, she smiled too.

  ‘Well, so long as they get on. They do, I suppose?’

  ‘My dear, I’ve hardly seen Jon, but I should say it’s perfectly successful. Now the strike’s over they’re coming down to us at Wansdon.’

  ‘Good! Well, this is the end of the old canteen. Let’s powder our noses and get out; Father’s waiting for me with the car. Can we drop you?’

  ‘No, thanks; I’ll walk.’

  ‘What? The old gêne? Funny how hard things die!’

  ‘Yes; when you’re a Forsyte,’ murmured Holly. ‘You see, we don’t show our feelings. It’s airing them that kills feelings.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Fleur. ‘Well, God bless you, as they say, and give Jon my love. I’d ask them to lunch, but you’re off to Wansdon?’

  ‘The day after to-morrow.’

  In the little round mirror Fleur saw her face mask itself more thoroughly, and turned to the door.

  ‘I may look in at Aunt Winifred’s, if I’ve time. So long!’

  Going down the stairs she thought: ‘So it’s air that kills feelings!’

  Soames, in the car, was gazing at Riggs’s back. The fellow was as lean as a rail.

  ‘Finished with that?’ he said to her.

  ‘Yes, dear.’

  ‘Good job, too. Wearing yourself to a shadow.’

  ‘Why? Do I look thin, Dad?’

  ‘No,’ said Soames, ‘no. That’s your mother. But you can’t keep on at that rate. Would you like some air? Into the Park, Riggs.’

  Passing into that haven, he murmured:
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br />   ‘I remember when your grandmother drove here every day, regular as clockwork. People had habits then. Shall we stop and have a look at that Memorial affair they made such a fuss about?’

  ‘I’ve seen it, Dad.’

  ‘So have I,’ said Soames. ‘Stunt sculpture! Now, that St Gaudens statue at Washington was something.’ And he looked at her sidelong. Thank goodness she didn’t know of the way he had fended her off from young Jon Forsyte over there. She must have heard by now that the fellow was in London, and staying at her aunt’s, too! And now the strike was off, and normal railway services beginning again, he would be at a loose end! But perhaps he would go back to Paris; his mother was there still, he understood. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask. Instinct however, potent only in his dealings with Fleur, stopped him. If she had seen the young man, she wouldn’t tell him of it. She was looking somehow secret – or was that just imagination?

  No! He couldn’t see her thoughts. Good thing, perhaps! Who could afford to have his thoughts seen? The recesses, ramifications, excesses of thought! Only when sieved and filtered was thought fit for exposure. And again Soames looked sidelong at his daughter.

  She was thinking, indeed, to purposes that would have upset him. How was she going to see Jon alone before he left for Wansdon? She could call to-morrow, of course, openly at Green Street, and probably not see him. She could ask him to lunch in South Square, but hardly without his wife or her own husband. There was in fact, no way of seeing him alone except by accident. And she began trying to plan one. On the point of perceiving that the essence of an accident was that it could not be planned, she planned it She would go to Green Street at nine in the morning to consult Holly on the canteen accounts. After such strenuous days Holly and Anne might surely be breakfasting in bed. Val had gone back to Wansdon, Aunt Winifred never got up! Jon might be alone! And she turned to Soames:

  ‘Awfully sweet of you, Dad, to be airing me; I am enjoying it.’

  ‘Like to get out and have a look at the ducks? The swans have got a brood at Mapledurham again this year.’