The Forsyte Saga, Volume 2 (118 page)

‘Which way are you going?'

‘Through Esher, sir, and off to the left.'

‘Well,' said Soames, ‘it's all the same to me.'

It was past lunch-time, but he wasn't hungry. He wouldn't be hungry till he knew the worst. But that chap would be, he supposed.

‘Better stop somewhere,' he said, ‘and have a snack and a cigarette.'

‘Yes, sir.'

He wasn't long in stopping. Soames sat on in the car, gazing idly at the sign – ‘Red Lion'. Red Lions, Angels and White Horses – nothing killed them off. One of these days they'd try and bring in Prohibition, he shouldn't wonder; but that cock
wouldn't fight in England – too extravagant! Treating people like children wasn't the way to make them grow up; as if they weren't childish enough as it was. Look at this coal strike, that went on and on – perfectly childish, hurting everybody and doing good to none! Weak-minded! To reflect on the weak-mindedness of his fellow-citizens was restful to Soames, faced with a future that might prove disastrous. For, in view of her infatuation, what could taking that young man about in her car mean – except disaster? What a time Riggs was! He got out and walked up and down. Not that there was anything he could do – he supposed – when he did get there. No matter how much you loved a person, how anxious you were about her, you had no power – perhaps less power in proportion to your love. But he must speak his mind at last, if he had the chance. Couldn't let her go over the edge without putting out a hand! The sun struck on his face, and he lifted it a little blindly, as if grateful for the warmth. All humbug about the world coming to an end, of course, but he'd be glad enough for it to come before he was brought down in sorrow to the grave. He saw with hideous clearness how complete disaster must be. If Fleur ran off, there'd be nothing left to him that he really cared about, for the Monts would take Kit. He'd be stranded among his pictures and his cows, without heart for either, till he died. ‘I won't have it,' he thought. ‘If it hasn't happened!' I won't have it.' Yes! But how prevent it? And with the futility of his own resolution staring him in the face, he went back to the car. There was the fellow, at last, smoking his cigarette.

‘Let's start!' he said. ‘Push along!'

He arrived at three o'clock to hear that Fleur had gone out with the car at ten. It was an immense relief to learn that at least she had been there overnight. And at once he began to make trunk calls. They renewed his anxiety. She was not at home; nor at June's. Where, then, if not with that young man? But at least she had taken no things with her – this he ascertained, and it gave him strength to drink some tea and wait He had gone out into the road for the fourth time to peer up and down when at last he saw her coming towards him.

The expression on her face – hungry and hard and feverish – had the most peculiar effect on Soames; his heart ached, and leaped with relief at the same time. That was not the face of victorious passion! It was tragically unhappy, arid, wrenched. Every feature seemed to have sharpened since he saw her last. And, instinctively, he remained silent, poking his face forward for a kiss. She gave it – hard and parched.

‘So you're back,' she said.

‘Yes; and when you've had your tea, I want you to come straight on with me to “The Shelter” – Riggs'll put your car away.'

She shrugged her shoulders and passed him into the house. It seemed to him that she did not care what he saw in her, or what he thought of her. And this was so strange in Fleur that he was confounded. Had she tried and failed? Could it mean anything so good? He searched his memory to recall how she had looked when he brought her back the news of failure six years ago. Yes! Only then she was so young, her face so round – not like this hardened, sharpened, burnt-up face, that frightened him. Get her away to Kit! Get her away, and quickly! And with that saving instinct of his where Fleur only was concerned, he summoned Riggs, told him to close the car and bring it round.

She had gone up to her room. He sent up a message presently that the car was ready. Soon she came down. She had coated her face with powder and put salve on her lips; and again Soames was shocked by that white mask with compressed red line of mouth, and the live and tortured eyes. And again he said nothing, and got out a map.

‘That fellow will go wrong unless I sit beside him. It's cross-country'; and he mounted the front of the car. He knew she couldn't talk, and that he couldn't bear to see her face. So they started. An immense time they travelled thus, it seemed to him. Once or twice only he looked round to see her sitting like something dead, so white and motionless. And, within him, the two feelings – relief and pity, continued to struggle. Surely it was the end – she had played her hand and lost! How, where, when
– he felt would always be unknown to him; but she had lost! Poor little thing! Not her fault that she had loved this boy, that she couldn't get him out of her head – no more her fault than it had been his own for loving that boy's mother! Only everyone's misfortune! It was as if that passion, born of an ill-starred meeting in a Bournemouth drawing-room forty-six years before, and transmitted with his blood into her being, were singing its swan-song of death, through the silent crimsoned lips of that white-faced girl behind him in the cushioned car. ‘Praise thou the Lord, O my soul! Praise the Lord!' Um! How could one! They were crossing the river at Staines – from now on that fellow knew his road. When they got home, how should he bring some life into her face again? Thank goodness her mother was away! Surely Kit would be some use! And her old dog, perhaps. And yet, tired though he was after his three long days, Soames dreaded the moment when the car should stop. To drive on and on, perhaps, was the thing for her. Perhaps, for all the world, now. To get away from something that couldn't be got away from – ever since the war – driving on! When you couldn't have what you wanted, and yet couldn't let go; and drove, on and on, to dull the aching. Resignation – like painting – was a lost art; or so it seemed to Soames, as they passed the graveyard where he expected to be buried some day.

Close home now, and what was he going to say to her when they got out? Words were so futile. He put his head out of the window and took some deep breaths. It smelled better down here by the river than elsewhere, he always thought – more sap in the trees, more savour in the grass. Not the equal of the air on ‘Great Forsyte', but more of the earth, more cosy. The gables and the poplars, the scent of a wood fire, the last flight of the doves – here they were! And with a long sigh, he got out.

‘You've been doing too much,' he said, opening the door. ‘Would you like to go straight up to bed when you've seen Kit? I'll send up your dinner.'

‘Thanks, Dad. Some soup is all I shall want. I've got a chill, I think.'

Soames looked at her deeply for a moment and shook his head; then, touching her whitened cheek with a finger, he turned away.

He went round to the stables and released her old dog. It might want a run before being let into the house; and he took it down towards the river. A thin daylight lingered, though the sun had set some time, and while the dog freshened himself among the bushes, Soames stood looking at the water. The swans passed over to their islet while he gazed. The young ones were growing up – were almost white. Rather ghostly in the dusk, the flotilla passed – graceful things and silent. He had often thought of going in for a peacock or two, they put a finish on a garden, but they were noisy; he had never forgotten an early morning in Montpelier Square, hearing their cry, as of lost passion, from Hyde Park. No! The swan was better; just as graceful and didn't sing. That dog was ruining his dwarf arbutus.

‘Come along to your mistress!' he said, and turned back toward the lighted house. He went up into the picture gallery. On the bureau were laid a number of letters and things to be attended to. For half an hour he laboured at them. He had never torn up things with greater satisfaction. Then the gong sounded, and he went down to be lonely, as he supposed.

FIRES

B
UT
Fleur came down again. And there began for Soames the most confused evening he had ever spent. For in his heart were great gladness and great pity, and he must not show a sign of either. He wished now that he had stopped to look at Fleur's portrait; it would have given him something to talk of. He fell back feebly on her Dorking house.

‘It seems a useful place,' he said; ‘the girls –'

‘I always feel they hate me. And why not? They have nothing, and I have everything.'

Her laugh cut Soames to the quick.

She was only pretending to eat, too. But he was afraid to ask if she had taken her temperature. She would only laugh again. He began, instead, an account of how he had found a field by the sea where the Forsytes came from, and how he had visited Winchester Cathedral; and, while he went on and on, he thought: ‘She hasn't heard a word.'

The idea that she would go up to bed consumed by this smouldering fire at which he could not get, distressed and alarmed him greatly. She looked as if – as if she might do something to herself! She had no veronal, or anything of that sort, he hoped. And all the time he was wondering what had happened. If the issue were still doubtful – if she were still waiting, she might be restless, feverish, but surely she would not look like this! No! It was defeat. But how? And was it final, and he freed for ever from the carking anxiety of these last months? His eyes kept questioning her face, where her fevered mood had crept throught the coating of powder, so that she looked theatrical and unlike herself. Its expression, hard and hopeless, went to his heart. If only she would cry, and blurt everything out! But he recognized that in coming down at all, and facing
him, she was practically saying:
‘Nothing
has happened!' And he compressed his lips. A dumb thing, affection – one couldn't put it into words! The more deeply he felt the more dumb he had always been. Those glib people who poured themselves out and got rid of the feelings they had in their chests, he didn't know how they could do it!

Dinner dragged to its end, with little bursts of talk from Fleur, and more of that laughter which hurt him, and afterwards they went to the drawing-room.

‘It's hot to-night,' she said, and opened the french window. The moon was just rising, low and far behind the river bushes; and a waft of light was already floating down the water.

‘Yes, it's warm,' said Soames, ‘but you oughtn't to be in the air if you've got a chill.'

And, taking her arm, he led her within. He had a dread of her wandering outside to-night, so near the water.

She went over to the piano.

‘Do you mind if I strum, Dad?'

‘Not at all. Your mother's got some French songs there.' He didn't mind what she did, if only she could get that look off her face. But music was emotional stuff, and French songs always about love! It was to be hoped she wouldn't light on the one Annette was for ever singing:

‘Auprès de ma blonde, il fait bon – fait bon – fait bon,
Auprès de ma blonde, il fait bon dormir.'

The young man's hair! In the old days, beside his mother! What hair
she'd
had! What bright hair and what dark eyes! And for a moment it was as if, not Fleur, but Irene, sat there at the piano. Music! Mysterious how it could mean to anyone what it had meant to her. Yes! More than men and more than money – music! A thing that had never moved him, that he didn't understand! What a mischance! There she was, above the piano, as he used to see her in the little drawing-room in Montpelier Square; there, as he had seen her last in that Washington hotel. There she would sit until she died, he supposed, beautiful, he shouldn't wonder, even then. Music!

He came to himself.

Fleur's thin, staccato voice tickled his ears, where he sat in the fume of his cigar. Painful! She was making a brave fight. He wanted her to break down, and he didn't want her to. For if she broke down he didn't know what he would do!

She stopped in the middle of a song and closed the piano. She looked almost old – so she would look, perhaps, when she was forty. Then she came and sat down on the other side of the hearth. She was in red, and he wished she wasn't – the colour increased his feeling that she was on fire beneath that mask of powder on her face and neck. She sat there very still, pretending to read. And he who had
The Times
in his hand, tried not to notice her. Was there nothing he could do to divert her attention? What about his pictures? Which – he asked – was her favourite? The Constable, the Stevens, the Corot, or the Daumier?

‘I'm leaving the lot to the nation,' he said. ‘But I shall want you to take your pick of four or so; and, of course, that copy of Goya's “Vendimia” belongs to you.' Then, remembering she had worn the ‘Vendimia' dress at the dance in the Nettlefold hotel, he hurried on: