To Let
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John Galsworthy >> To Let
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20 This etext was produced by Charles Franks, Robert Rowe and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
With this volume, The Forsyte Saga--that series comprising "The
Man of Property," "Indian Summer of a Forsyte" (from the volume
"Five Tales"), "In Chancery," and "Awakening"--comes to an end.
J. G.
CONTENTS
PART I
I. ENCOUNTER
II. FINE FLEUR FORSYTE
III. AT ROBIN HILL
IV. THE MAUSOLEUM
V. THE NATIVE HEATH
VI. JON
VII. FLEUR
VIII. IDYLL ON GRASS
IX. GOYA
X. TRIO
XI. DUET
XII. CAPRICE
PART II
I. MOTHER AND SON
II. FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS
III. MEETINGS
IV. IN GREEN STREET
V. PURELY FORSYTE AFFAIRS
VI. SOAMES' PRIVATE LIFE
VII. JUNE TAKES A HAND
VIII. THE BIT BETWEEN THE TEETH
IX. FAT IN THE FIRE
X. DECISION
XI. TIMOTHY PROPHESIES
PART III
I. OLD JOLYON WALKS
II. CONFESSION
III. IRENE!
IV. SOAMES COGITATES
V. THE FIXED IDEA
VI. DESPERATE
VII. EMBASSY
VIII. THE DARK TUNE
IX. UNDER THE OAK-TREE
X. FLEUR'S WEDDING
XI. THE LAST OF THE FORSYTES
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 favor 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 Labor, 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-five, 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 flabby; 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 towards 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 for
ever, 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!
He passed out under the archway, at last no longer--thank
goodness!--disfigured by the gun-grey of its search-light. 'They'd
better put a search-light on to where they're all going,' he
thought, 'and light up their precious democracy!' And he directed
his steps along the Club fronts of Piccadilly. George Forsyte, of
course, would be sitting in the bay window of the Iseeum. The chap
was so big now that he was there nearly all his time, like some
immovable, sardonic, humorous eye noting the decline of men and
things. And Soames hurried, ever constitutionally uneasy beneath
his cousin's glance. George, who, as he had heard, had written a
letter signed "Patriot" in the middle of the War, complaining of
the Government's hysteria in docking the oats of race-horses. Yes,
there he was, tall, ponderous, neat, clean-shaven, with his smooth
hair, hardly thinned, smelling, no doubt, of the best hair-wash,
and a pink paper in his hand. Well, he didn't change! And for
perhaps the first time in his life Soames felt a kind of sympathy
tapping in his waistcoat for that sardonic kinsman. With his
weight, his perfectly parted hair, and bull-like gaze, he was a
guarantee that the old order would take some shifting yet. He saw
George move the pink paper as if inviting him to ascend--the chap
must want to ask something about his property. It was still under
Soames's control; for in the adoption of a sleeping partnership at
that painful period twenty years back when he had divorced Irene,
Soames had found himself almost insensibly retaining control of
all purely Forsyte affairs.
Hesitating for just a moment, he nodded and went in. Since the
death of his brother-in-law Montague Dartie, in Paris, which no
one had quite known what to make of, except that it was certainly
not suicide--the Iseeum Club had seemed more respectable to
Soames. George, too, he knew, had sown the last of his wild oats,
and was committed definitely to the joys of the table, eating only
of the very best so as to keep his weight down, and owning, as he
said, "just one or two old screws to give me an interest in life."
He joined his cousin, therefore, in the bay window without the
embarrassing sense of indiscretion he had been used to feel up
there. George put out a well-kept hand.
"Haven't seen you since the War," he said. "How's your wife?"
"Thanks," said Soames coldly, "well enough."
Some hidden jest curved, for a moment, George's fleshy face, and
gloated from his eye.
"That Belgian chap, Profond," he said, "is a member here now. He's
a rum customer."
"Quite!" muttered Soames. "What did you want to see me about?"
"Old Timothy; he might go off the hooks at any moment. I suppose
he's made his Will."
"Yes."
"Well, you or somebody ought to give him a look up--last of the
old lot; he's a hundred, you know. They say he's like a mummy.
Where are you goin' to put him? He ought to have a pyramid by
rights."
Soames shook his head. "Highgate, the family vault."
"Well, I suppose the old girls would miss him, if he was anywhere
else. They say he still takes an interest in food. He might last
on, you know. Don't we GET anything for the old Forsytes? Ten of
them--average age eighty-eight--I worked it out. That ought to be
equal to triplets."
"Is that all?" said Soames. "I must be getting on."
'You unsociable devil,' George's eyes seemed to answer.
"Yes, that's all: Look him up in his mausoleum--the old chap might
want to prophesy." The grin died on the rich curves of his face,
and he added: "Haven't you attorneys invented a way yet of dodging
this damned income tax? It hits the fixed inherited income like
the very deuce. I used to have two thousand five hundred a year;
now I've got a beggarly fifteen hundred, and the price of living
doubled."
"Ah!" murmured Soames, "the turf's in danger."
Over George's face moved a gleam of sardonic self-defence.
"Well," he said, "they brought me up to do nothing, and here I am
in the sere and yellow, getting poorer every day. These Labour
chaps mean to have the lot before they've done. What are you going
to do for a living when it comes? I shall work a six-hour day
teaching politicians how to see a joke. Take my tip, Soames; go
into Parliament, make sure of your four hundred--and employ me."
And, as Soames retired, he resumed his seat in the bay window.
Soames moved along Piccadilly deep in reflections excited by his
cousin's words. He himself had always been a worker and a saver,
George always a drone and a spender; and yet, if confiscation once
began, it was he--the worker and the saver--who would be looted!
That was the negation of all virtue, the overturning of all
Forsyte principles. Could civilisation be built on any other? He
did not think so. Well, they wouldn't confiscate his pictures, for
they wouldn't know their worth. But what would they be worth, if
these maniacs once began to milk capital? A drug on the market. 'I
don't care about myself,' he thought; 'I could live on five
hundred a year, and never know the difference, at my age.' But
Fleur! This fortune, so wisely invested, these treasures so
carefully chosen and amassed, were all for her. And if it should
turn out that he couldn't give or leave them to her--well, life
had no meaning, and what was the use of going in to look at this
crazy, futuristic stuff with the view of seeing whether it had any
future?
Arriving at the Gallery off Cork Street, however, he paid his
shilling, picked up a catalogue, and entered. Some ten persons
were prowling round. Soames took steps and came on what looked to
him like a lamp-post bent by collision with a motor omnibus. It
was advanced some three paces from the wall, and was described in
his catalogue as "Jupiter." He examined it with curiosity, having
recently turned some of his attention to sculpture. 'If that's
Jupiter,' he thought, 'I wonder what Juno's like.' And suddenly he
saw her, opposite. She appeared to him like nothing so much as a
pump with two handles, lightly clad in snow. He was still gazing
at her, when two of the prowlers halted on his left. "Epatant!" he
heard one say.
"Jargon!" growled Soames to himself.
The other's boyish voice replied:
"Missed it, old bean; he's pulling your leg. When Jove and Juno
created he them, he was saying: 'I'll see how much these fools
will swallow.' And they've lapped up the lot."
"You young duffer! Vospovitch is an innovator. Don't you see that
he's brought satire into sculpture? The future of plastic art, of
music, painting, and even architecture, has set in satiric. It was
bound to. People are tired--the bottom's tumbled out of
sentiment."
"Well, I'm quite equal to taking a little interest in beauty. I
was through the War. You've dropped your handkerchief, sir."
Soames saw a handkerchief held out in front of him. He took it
with some natural suspicion, and approached it to his nose. It had
the right scent--of distant Eau de Cologne--and his initials in a
corner. Slightly reassured, he raised his eyes to the young man's
face. It had rather fawn-like ears, a laughing mouth, with half a
toothbrush growing out of it on each side, and small lively eyes,
above a normally dressed appearance.
"Thank you," he said; and moved by a sort of irritation, added:
"Glad to hear you like beauty; that's rare, nowadays."
"I dote on it," said the young man; "but you and I are the last of
the old guard, sir."
Soames smiled.
"If you really care for pictures," he said, "here's my card. I can
show you some quite good ones any Sunday, if you're down the river
and care to look in."
"Awfully nice of you, sir. I'll drop in like a bird. My name's
Mont-Michael." And he took off his hat.
Soames, already regretting his impulse, raised his own slightly in
response, with a downward look at the young man's companion, who
had a purple tie, dreadful little slug-like whiskers, and a
scornful look--as if he were a poet!
It was the first indiscretion he had committed for so long that he
went and sat down in an alcove. What had possessed him to give his
card to a rackety young fellow, who went about with a thing like
that? And Fleur, always at the back of his thoughts, started out
like a filagree figure from a clock when the hour strikes. On the
screen opposite the alcove was a large canvas with a great many
square tomato-colored blobs on it, and nothing else, so far as
Soames could see from where he sat. He looked at his catalogue:
"No. 32--'The Future Town'--Paul Post." 'I suppose that's satiric
too,' he thought. 'What a thing!' But his second impulse was more
cautious. It did not do to condemn hurriedly. There had been those
stripey, streaky creations of Monet's, which had turned out such
trumps; and then the stippled school; and Gauguin. Why, even since
the Post-Impressionists there had been one or two painters not to
be sneezed at. During the thirty-eight years of his connoisseur's
life, indeed, he had marked so many "movements," seen the tides of
taste and technique so ebb and flow, that there was really no
telling anything except that there was money to be made out of
every change of fashion. This too might quite well be a case where
one must subdue primordial instinct, or lose the market. He got up
and stood before the picture, trying hard to see it with the eyes
of other people. Above the tomato blobs was what he took to be a
sunset, till some one passing said: "He's got the airplanes
wonderfully, don't you think!" Below the tomato blobs was a band
of white with vertical black stripes, to which he could assign no
meaning whatever, till some one else came by, murmuring: "What
expression he gets with his foreground!" Expression? Of what?
Soames went back to his seat. The thing was "rich," as his father
would have said, and he wouldn't give a damn for it. Expression!
Ah! they were all Expressionists now, he had heard, on the
Continent. So it was coming here too, was it? He remembered the
first wave of influenza in 1887--or 8--hatched in China, so they
said. He wondered where this--this Expressionism--had been
hatched. The thing was a regular disease!
He had become conscious of a woman and a youth standing between
him and the "Future Town." Their backs were turned; but very
suddenly Soames put his catalogue before his face, and drawing his
hat forward, gazed through the slit between. No mistaking that
back, elegant as ever though the hair above had gone grey. Irene!
His divorced wife--Irene! And this, no doubt, was her son--by that
fellow Jolyon Forsyte--their boy, six months older than his own
girl! And mumbling over in his mind the bitter days of his
divorce, he rose to get out of sight, but quickly sat down again.
She had turned her head to speak to her boy; her profile was still
so youthful that it made her grey hair seem powdery, as if fancy-
dressed; and her lips were smiling as Soames, first possessor of
them, had never seen them smile. Grudgingly he admitted her still
beautiful, and in figure almost as young as ever. And how that boy
smiled back at her! Emotion squeezed Soames' heart. The sight
infringed his sense of justice. He grudged her that boy's smile--
it went beyond what Fleur gave him, and it was undeserved. Their
son might have been his son; Fleur might have been her daughter,
if she had kept straight! He lowered his catalogue. If she saw
him, all the better! A reminder of her conduct in the presence of
her son, who probably knew nothing of it, would be a salutary
touch from the finger of that Nemesis which surely must soon or
late visit her! Then, half-conscious that such a thought was
extravagant for a Forsyte of his age, Soames took out his watch.
Past four! Fleur was late. She had gone to his niece Imogen
Cardigan's, and there they would keep her smoking cigarettes and
gossiping, and that. He heard the boy laugh, and say eagerly: "I
say, Mum, is this one of Auntie June's lame ducks?"
"Paul Post--I believe it is, darling."
The word produced a little shock in Soames; he had never heard her
use it. And then she saw him. His eyes must have had in them
something of George Forsyte's sardonic look; for her gloved hand
crisped the folds of her frock, her eyebrows rose, her face went
stony. She moved on.
"It IS a caution," said the boy, catching her arm again.
Soames stared after them. That boy was good-looking, with a
Forsyte chin, and eyes deep-grey, deep in; but with something
sunny, like a glass of old sherry spilled over him; his smile
perhaps, his hair. Better than they deserved--those two! They
passed from his view into the next room, and Soames continued to
regard the Future Town, but saw it not. A little smile snarled up
his lips. He was despising the vehemence of his own feelings after
all these years. Ghosts! And yet as one grew old--was there
anything but what was ghost-like left? Yes, there was Fleur! He
fixed his eyes on the entrance. She was due; but she would keep
him waiting, of course! And suddenly he became aware of a sort of
human breeze--a short, slight form clad in a sea-green djibbah
with a metal belt and a fillet binding unruly red-gold hair all
streaked with grey. She was talking to the Gallery attendants, and
something familiar riveted his gaze--in her eyes, her chin, her
hair, her spirit--something which suggested a thin Skye terrier
just before its dinner. Surely June Forsyte! His cousin June--and
coming straight to his recess! She sat down beside him, deep in
thought, took out a tablet, and made a pencil note. Soames sat
unmoving. A confounded thing cousinship! "Disgusting!" he heard
her murmur; then, as if resenting the presence of an overhearing
stranger, she looked at him. The worst had happened.
"Soames!"
Soames turned his head a very little.
"How are YOU?" he said. "Haven't seen you for twenty years."
"No. Whatever made YOU come here?"
"My sins," said Soames. "What stuff!"
"Stuff? Oh, yes--of course; it hasn't ARRIVED yet."
"It never will," said Soames; "it must be making a dead loss."
"Of course it is."
"How d'you know?"
"It's my Gallery."
Soames sniffed from sheer surprise.
"Yours? What on earth makes you run a show like this?"
"_I_ don't treat Art as if it were grocery."
Soames pointed to the Future Town. "Look at that! Who's going to
live in a town like that, or with it on his walls?"
June contemplated the picture for a moment. "It's a vision," she
said.
"The deuce!"
There was silence, then June rose. 'Crazy-looking creature!' he
thought.
"Well," he said, "you'll find your young stepbrother here with a
woman I used to know. If you take my advice, you'll close this
exhibition."
June looked back at him. "Oh! You Forsyte!" she said, and moved
on. About her light, fly-away figure, passing so suddenly away,
was a look of dangerous decisions. Forsyte! Of course, he was a
Forsyte! And so was she! But from the time when, as a mere girl,
she brought Bosinney into his life to wreck it, he had never hit
it off with June--and never would! And here she was, unmarried to
this day, owning a Gallery!... And suddenly it came to Soames how
little he knew now of his own family. The old aunts at Timothy's
had been dead so many years; there was no clearing-house for news.
What had they all done in the War? Young Roger's boy had been
wounded, St. John Hayman's second son killed; young Nicholas'
eldest had got an O. B. E., or whatever they gave them. They had
all joined up somehow, he believed. That boy of Jolyon's and
Irene's, he supposed, had been too young; his own generation, of
course, too old, though Giles Hayman had driven a car for the Red
Cross--and Jesse Hayman been a special constable--those "Dromios"
had always been of a sporting type! As for himself, he had given a
motor ambulance, read the papers till he was sick of them, passed
through much anxiety, invested in War Bonds, bought no clothes,
lost seven pounds in weight; he didn't know what more he could
have done at his age. Indeed, it struck him that he and his family
had taken this war very differently to that affair with the Boers,
which had been supposed to tax all the resources of the Empire. In
that old war, of course, his nephew Val Dartie had been wounded,
that fellow Jolyon's first son had died of enteric, "the Dromios"
had gone out on horses, and June had been a nurse; but all that
had seemed in the nature of a portent, while in THIS war everybody
had done "their bit," so far as he could make out, as a matter of
course. It seemed to show the growth of something or other--or
perhaps the decline of something else. Had the Forsytes become
less individual, or more Imperial, or less provincial? Or was it
simply that one hated Germans?... Why didn't Fleur come, so that
he could get away? He saw those three return together from the
other room and pass back along the far side of the screen. The boy
was standing before the Juno now. And, suddenly, on the other side
of her, Soames saw--his daughter with eyebrows raised, as well
they might be. He could see her eyes glint sideways at the boy,
and the boy look back at her. Then Irene slipped her hand through
his arm, and drew him on. Soames saw him glancing round, and Fleur
looking after them as the three went out.
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