The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy (acx book reading txt) 📕

“No. Do you know that Jolyon’s boy is staying with Val and his wife?”

Soames spun round.

“What?”

“Yes,” drawled Winifred; “he’s gone to live with them there while he learns farming.”

Soames had turned away, but her voice pursued him as he walked up and down. “I warned Val that neither of them was to be spoken to about old matters.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

Winifred shrugged her substantial shoulders.

“Fleur does what she likes. You’ve always spoiled her. Besides, my dear boy, what’s the harm?”

“The harm!” muttered Soames. “Why, she⁠—” he checked himself. The Juno, the handkerchief, Fleur’s eyes, her questions, and now this delay in her return⁠—the symptoms seemed to him so sinister that, faithful to his nature, he could not part with them.

“I think you take too much care,” said Winifred. “If I were you, I should tell her of that old matter. It’s no good thinking that girls in these days are as they used to be. Where they pick up their knowledge I can’t tell, but they seem to know everything.”

Over Soames’ face, closely composed, passed a sort of spasm, and Winifred added hastily:

“If you don’t like to speak of it, I could for you.”

Soames shook his head. Unless there was absolute necessity the thought that his adored daughter should learn of that old scandal hurt his pride too much.

“No,” he said, “not yet. Never if I can help it.”

“Nonsense, my dear. Think what people are!”

“Twenty years is a long time,” muttered Soames. “Outside our family, who’s likely to remember?”

Winifred was silenced. She inclined more and more to that peace and quietness of which Montague Dartie had deprived her in her youth. And, since pictures always depressed her, she soon went down again.

Soames passed into the corner where, side by side, hung his real Goya and the copy of the fresco La Vendimia. His acquisition of the real Goya rather beautifully illustrated the cobweb of vested interests and passions which mesh the bright-winged fly of human life. The real Goya’s noble owner’s ancestor had come into possession of it during some Spanish war⁠—it was in a word loot. The noble owner had remained in ignorance of its value until in the nineties an enterprising critic discovered that a Spanish painter named Goya was a genius. It was only a fair Goya, but almost unique in England, and the noble owner became a marked man. Having many possessions and that aristocratic culture which, independent of mere sensuous enjoyment, is founded on the sounder principle that one must know everything and be fearfully interested in life, he had fully intended to keep an article which contributed to his reputation while he was alive, and to leave it to the nation after he was dead. Fortunately for Soames, the House of Lords was violently attacked in 1909, and the noble owner became alarmed and angry. “If,” he said to himself, “they think they can have it both ways they are very much mistaken. So long as they leave me in quiet enjoyment the nation can have some of my pictures at my death. But if the nation is going to bait me, and rob me like this, I’m damned if I won’t sell the ⸻ lot. They can’t have my private property and my public spirit⁠—both.” He brooded in this fashion for several months till one morning, after reading the speech of a certain statesman, he telegraphed to his agent to come down and bring Bodkin. On going over the collection Bodkin, than whose opinion on market values none was more sought, pronounced that with a free hand to sell to America, Germany, and other places where there was an interest in art, a lot more money could be made than by selling in England. The noble owner’s public spirit⁠—he said⁠—was well known but the pictures were unique. The noble owner put this opinion in his pipe and smoked it for a year. At the end of that time he read another speech by the same statesman, and telegraphed to his agents: “Give Bodkin a free hand.” It was at this juncture that Bodkin conceived the idea which saved the Goya and two other unique pictures for the native country of the noble owner. With one hand Bodkin proffered the pictures to the foreign market, with the other he formed a list of private British collectors. Having obtained what he considered the highest possible bids from across the seas, he submitted pictures and bids to the private British collectors, and invited them, of their public spirit, to outbid. In three instances (including the Goya) out of twenty-one he was successful. And why? One of the private collectors made buttons⁠—he had made so many that he desired that his wife should be called Lady “Buttons.” He therefore bought a unique picture at great cost, and gave it to the nation. It was “part,” his friends said, “of his general game.” The second of the private collectors was an Americophobe, and bought an unique picture to “spite the damned Yanks.” The third of the private collectors was Soames, who⁠—more sober than either of the, others⁠—bought after a visit to Madrid, because he was certain that Goya was still on the up grade. Goya was not booming at the moment, but he would come again; and, looking at that portrait, Hogarthian, Manetesque in its directness, but with its own queer sharp beauty of paint, he was perfectly satisfied still that he had made no error, heavy though the price had been⁠—heaviest he had ever paid. And next to it was hanging the copy of La Vendimia. There she was⁠—the little wretch⁠—looking back at him in her dreamy mood, the mood he loved best because he felt so much safer when she looked like that.

He was still gazing when the scent of a cigar impinged on his nostrils, and a voice said:

“Well, Mr. Forsyde, what you goin’ to do with this small lot?”

That Belgian chap, whose mother⁠—as if Flemish blood