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

business, people do themselves out of an awful lot of pleasure and profit by that. Of course, you must be perfectly genuine and open, but that’s easy if you feel it. The more human and generous you are the better chance you’ve got in business.”

Soames rose.

“Are you a partner?”

“Not for six months, yet.”

“The rest of the firm had better make haste and retire.”

Mont laughed.

“You’ll see,” he said. “There’s going to be a big change. The possessive principle has got its shutters up.”

“What?” said Soames.

“The house is to let! Goodbye, sir; I’m off now.”

Soames watched his daughter give her hand, saw her wince at the squeeze it received, and distinctly heard the young man’s sigh as he passed out. Then she came from the window, trailing her finger along the mahogany edge of the billiard-table. Watching her, Soames knew that she was going to ask him something. Her finger felt round the last pocket, and she looked up.

“Have you done anything to stop Jon writing to me, Father?”

Soames shook his head.

“You haven’t seen, then?” he said. “His father died just a week ago today.”

“Oh!”

In her startled, frowning face he saw the instant struggle to apprehend what this would mean.

“Poor Jon! Why didn’t you tell me, Father?”

“I never know!” said Soames slowly; “you don’t confide in me.”

“I would, if you’d help me, dear.”

“Perhaps I shall.”

Fleur clasped her hands. “Oh! darling⁠—when one wants a thing fearfully, one doesn’t think of other people. Don’t be angry with me.”

Soames put out his hand, as if pushing away an aspersion.

“I’m cogitating,” he said. What on earth had made him use a word like that! “Has young Mont been bothering you again?”

Fleur smiled. “Oh! Michael! He’s always bothering; but he’s such a good sort⁠—I don’t mind him.”

“Well,” said Soames, “I’m tired; I shall go and have a nap before dinner.”

He went up to his picture-gallery, lay down on the couch there, and closed his eyes. A terrible responsibility this girl of his⁠—whose mother was⁠—ah! what was she? A terrible responsibility! Help her⁠—how could he help her? He could not alter the fact that he was her father. Or that Irene⁠—! What was it young Mont had said⁠—some nonsense about the possessive instinct⁠—shutters up⁠—To let? Silly!

The sultry air, charged with a scent of meadow-sweet, of river and roses, closed on his senses, drowsing them.

V The Fixed Idea

“The fixed idea,” which has outrun more constables than any other form of human disorder, has never more speed and stamina than when it takes the avid guise of love. To hedges and ditches, and doors, to humans without ideas fixed or otherwise, to perambulators and the contents sucking their fixed ideas, even to the other sufferers from this fast malady⁠—the fixed idea of love pays no attention. It runs with eyes turned inward to its own light, oblivious of all other stars. Those with the fixed ideas that human happiness depends on their art, on vivisecting dogs, on hating foreigners, on paying supertax, on remaining Ministers, on making wheels go round, on preventing their neighbours from being divorced, on conscientious objection, Greek roots, Church dogma, paradox and superiority to everybody else, with other forms of egomania⁠—all are unstable compared with him or her whose fixed idea is the possession of some her or him. And though Fleur, those chilly summer days, pursued the scattered life of a little Forsyte whose frocks are paid for, and whose business is pleasure, she was⁠—as Winifred would have said in the latest fashion of speech⁠—“honest to God” indifferent to it all. She wished and wished for the moon, which sailed in cold skies above the river or the Green Park when she went to Town. She even kept Jon’s letters, covered with pink silk, on her heart, than which in days when corsets were so low, sentiment so despised, and chests so out of fashion, there could, perhaps, have been no greater proof of the fixity of her idea.

After hearing of his father’s death, she wrote to Jon, and received his answer three days later on her return from a river picnic. It was his first letter since their meeting at June’s. She opened it with misgiving, and read it with dismay.

“Since I saw you I’ve heard everything about the past. I won’t tell it you⁠—I think you knew when we met at June’s. She says you did. If you did, Fleur, you ought to have told me. I expect you only heard your father’s side of it. I have heard my mother’s. It’s dreadful. Now that she’s so sad I can’t do anything to hurt her more. Of course, I long for you all day, but I don’t believe now that we shall ever come together⁠—there’s something too strong pulling us apart.”

So! Her deception had found her out. But Jon⁠—she felt⁠—had forgiven that. It was what he said of his mother which caused the guttering in her heart and the weak sensation in her legs.

Her first impulse was to reply⁠—her second, not to reply. These impulses were constantly renewed in the days which followed, while desperation grew within her. She was not her father’s child for nothing. The tenacity which had at once made and undone Soames was her backbone, too, frilled and embroidered by French grace and quickness. Instinctively she conjugated the verb “to have” always with the pronoun “I.” She concealed, however, all signs of her growing desperation, and pursued such river pleasures as the winds and rain of a disagreeable July permitted, as if she had no care in the world; nor did any “sucking baronet” ever neglect the business of a publisher more consistently than her attendant spirit, Michael Mont.

To Soames she was a puzzle. He was almost deceived by this careless gaiety. Almost⁠—because he did not fail to mark her eyes often fixed on nothing, and the film of light shining from her bedroom window late at night. What was she thinking and brooding over into small hours when she ought to have been asleep?