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The Forsyte Saga, Volume III. Awakening. To Let
“Do you really believe they do, Daddy?” “No, Jon, but I thought you might.”
“Why?”
“You’re younger than I; and they’re fairies.” Little Jon squared the dimple in his chin.
“I don’t believe in fairies. I never see any.” “Ha!” said his father.
“Does Mum?”
His father smiled his funny smile.
“No; she only sees Pan.”
“What’s Pan?”
“The Goaty God who skips about in wild and beautiful places.”
“Was he in Glensofantrim?”
“Mum said so.”
Little Jon took his heels up, and led on.
“Did you see him?”
“No; I only saw Venus Anadyomene.”
Little Jon reflected; Venus was in his book about the Greeks and Trojans. Then Anna was her Christian and Dyomene her surname?
But it appeared, on inquiry, that it was one word, which meant rising from the foam.
“Did she rise from the foam in Glensofantrim?”
“Yes; every day.”
“What is she like, Daddy?”
“Like Mum.”
“Oh! Then she must be…” but he stopped at that, rushed at a wall, scrambled up, and promptly scrambled down again. The discovery that his mother was beautiful was one which he felt must absolutely be kept to himself. His father’s cigar, however, took so long to smoke, that at last he was compelled to say:
“I want to see what Mum’s brought home. Do you mind, Daddy?”
He pitched the motive low, to absolve him from unmanliness, and was a little disconcerted when his father looked at him right through, heaved an important sigh, and answered:
“All right, old man, you go and love her.”
He went, with a pretence of slowness, and then rushed, to make up. He entered her bedroom from his own, the door being open. She was still kneeling before a trunk, and he stood close to her, quite still.
She knelt up straight, and said:
“Well, Jon?”
“I thought I’d just come and see.”
Having given and received another hug, he mounted the window-seat, and tucking his legs up under him watched her unpack. He derived a pleasure from the operation such as he had not yet known, partly because she was taking out things which looked suspicious, and partly because he liked to look at her. She moved differently from anybody else, especially from Bella; she was certainly the refinedest-looking person he had ever seen. She finished the trunk at last, and knelt down in front of him.
“Have you missed us, Jon?”
Little Jon nodded, and having thus admitted his feelings, continued to nod.
“But you had ‘Auntie’ June?”
“Oh! she had a man with a cough.”
His mother’s face changed, and looked almost angry. He added hastily:
“He was a poor man, Mum; he coughed awfully; I – I liked him.”
His mother put her hands behind his waist.
“You like everybody, Jon?”
Little Jon considered.
“Up to a point,” he said: “Auntie June took me to church one Sunday.”
“To church? Oh!”
“She wanted to see how it would affect me.” “And did it?”
“Yes. I came over all funny, so she took me home again very quick. I wasn’t sick after all. I went to bed and had hot brandy and water, and read The Boys of Beechwood. It was scrumptious.”
His mother bit her lip.
“When was that?”
“Oh! about – a long time ago – I wanted her to take me again, but she wouldn’t. You and Daddy never go to church, do you?”
“No, we don’t.”
“Why don’t you?”
His mother smiled.
“Well, dear, we both of us went when we were little. Perhaps we went when we were too little.”
“I see,” said little Jon, “it’s dangerous.”
“You shall judge for yourself about all those things as you grow up.”
Little Jon replied in a calculating manner:
“I don’t want to grow up, much. I don’t want to go to school.” A sudden overwhelming desire to say something more, to say what he really felt, turned him red. “I – I want to stay with you, and be your lover, Mum.”
Then with an instinct to improve the situation, he added quickly “I don’t want to go to bed to-night, either. I’m simply tired of going to bed, every night.”
“Have you had any more nightmares?”
“Only about one. May I leave the door open into your room to-night, Mum?”
“Yes, just a little.” Little Jon heaved a sigh of satisfaction.
“What did you see in Glensofantrim?”
“Nothing but beauty, darling.”
“What exactly is beauty?”
“What exactly is – Oh! Jon, that’s a poser.”
“Can I see it, for instance?” His mother got up, and sat beside him. “You do, every day. The sky is beautiful, the stars, and moonlit nights, and then the birds, the flowers, the trees – they’re all beautiful. Look out of the window – there’s beauty for you, Jon.”
“Oh! yes, that’s the view. Is that all?”
“All? no. The sea is wonderfully beautiful, and the waves, with their foam flying back.”
“Did you rise from it every day, Mum?”
His mother smiled. “Well, we bathed.”
Little Jon suddenly reached out and caught her neck in his hands.
“I know,” he said mysteriously, “you’re it, really, and all the rest is make-believe.”
She sighed, laughed, said: “Oh! Jon!”
Little Jon said critically:
“Do you think Bella beautiful, for instance? I hardly do.”
“Bella is young; that’s something.”
“But you look younger, Mum. If you bump against Bella she hurts.”
“I don’t believe ‘Da’ was beautiful, when I come to think of it; and Mademoiselle’s almost ugly.”
“Mademoiselle has a very nice face.” “Oh! yes; nice. I love your little rays, Mum.”
“Rays?”
Little Jon put his finger to the outer corner of her eye.
“Oh! Those? But they’re a sign of age.”
“They come when you smile.”
“But they usen’t to.”
“Oh! well, I like them. Do you love me, Mum?”
“I do – I do love you, darling.”
“Ever so?”
“Ever so!”
“More than I thought you did?”
“Much – much more.”
“Well, so do I; so that makes it even.”
Conscious that he had never in his life so given himself away, he felt a sudden reaction to the manliness of Sir Lamorac, Dick Needham, Huck Finn, and other heroes.
“Shall I show you a thing or two?” he said; and slipping out of her arms, he stood on his head. Then, fired by her obvious admiration, he mounted the bed, and threw himself head foremost from his feet on to his back, without touching anything with his hands. He did this several times.
That evening, having inspected what they had brought, he stayed up to dinner, sitting between them at the little round table they used when they were alone. He was extremely excited. His mother wore a French-grey dress, with creamy lace made out of little scriggly roses, round her neck, which was browner than the lace. He kept looking at her, till at last his father’s funny smile made him suddenly attentive to his slice of pineapple. It was later than he had ever stayed up, when he went to bed. His mother went up with him, and he undressed very slowly so as to keep her there. When at last he had nothing on but his pyjamas, he said:
“Promise you won’t go while I say my prayers!”
“I promise.”
Kneeling down and plunging his face into the bed, little Jon hurried up, under his breath, opening one eye now and then, to see her standing perfectly still with a smile on her face. “Our Father” – so went his last prayer, “which art in heaven, hallowed be thy Mum, thy Kingdom Mum – on Earth as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily Mum and forgive us our trespasses on earth as it is in heaven and trespass against us, for thine is the evil the power and the glory for ever and ever. Amum! Look out!” He sprang, and for a long minute remained in her arms. Once in bed, he continued to hold her hand.
“You won’t shut the door any more than that, will you? Are you going to be long, Mum?”
“I must go down and play to Daddy.”
“Oh! well, I shall hear you.”
“I hope not; you must go to sleep.”
“I can sleep any night.”
“Well, this is just a night like any other.”
“Oh! no – it’s extra special.”
“On extra special nights one always sleeps soundest.”
“But if I go to sleep, Mum, I shan’t hear you come up.”
“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 to-morrow.”
“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 to-night.”
“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 to-night. You’ll only have to unplait it again to-morrow. 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 dreamless sleep, which rounded off his past.
TO LET
PART I
I. – ENCOUNTER
Soames Forsyte emerged from the Knightsbridge Hotel, where he was staying, in the afternoon of the 12th 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 “chere 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, half-way 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 bow-legged 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 – dishevelled, 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.
