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

nothing to Jon, and little enough to his mother. It was June who did everything needful for one who had left his affairs in perfect order. When she had gone, and those two were alone again in the great house, alone with death drawing them together, and love driving them apart, Jon passed very painful days secretly disgusted and disappointed with himself. His mother would look at him with such a patient sadness which yet had in it an instinctive pride, as if she were reserving her defence. If she smiled he was angry that his answering smile should be so grudging and unnatural. He did not judge or condemn her; that was all too remote⁠—indeed, the idea of doing so had never come to him. No! he was grudging and unnatural because he couldn’t have what he wanted because of her. There was one alleviation⁠—much to do in connection with his father’s career, which could not be safely entrusted to June, though she had offered to undertake it. Both Jon and his mother had felt that if she took his portfolios, unexhibited drawings and unfinished matter, away with her, the work would encounter such icy blasts from Paul Post and other frequenters of her studio, that it would soon be frozen out even of her warm heart. On its old-fashioned plane and of its kind the work was good, and they could not bear the thought of its subjection to ridicule. A one-man exhibition of his work was the least testimony they could pay to one they had loved; and on preparation for this they spent many hours together. Jon came to have a curiously increased respect for his father. The quiet tenacity with which he had converted a mediocre talent into something really individual was disclosed by these researches. There was a great mass of work with a rare continuity of growth in depth and reach of vision. Nothing certainly went very deep, or reached very high⁠—but such as the work was, it was thorough, conscientious, and complete. And, remembering his father’s utter absence of “side” or self-assertion, the chaffing humility with which he had always spoken of his own efforts, ever calling himself “an amateur,” Jon could not help feeling that he had never really known his father. To take himself seriously, yet never that he did so, seemed to have been his ruling principle. There was something in this which appealed to the boy, and made him heartily endorse his mother’s comment: “He had true refinement; he couldn’t help thinking of others, whatever he did. And when he took a resolution which went counter, he did it with the minimum of defiance⁠—not like the Age, is it? Twice in his life he had to go against everything; and yet it never made him bitter.” Jon saw tears running down her face, which she at once turned away from him. She was so quiet about her loss that sometimes he had thought she didn’t feel it much. Now, as he looked at her, he felt how far he fell short of the reserve power and dignity in both his father and his mother. And, stealing up to her, he put his arm round her waist. She kissed him swiftly, but with a sort of passion, and went out of the room.

The studio, where they had been sorting and labelling, had once been Holly’s schoolroom, devoted to her silkworms, dried lavender, music, and other forms of instruction. Now, at the end of July, despite its northern and eastern aspects, a warm and slumberous air came in between the long-faded lilac linen curtains. To redeem a little the departed glory, as of a field that is golden and gone, clinging to a room which its master has left, Irene had placed on the paint-stained table a bowl of red roses. This, and Jolyon’s favourite cat, who still clung to the deserted habitat, were the pleasant spots in that dishevelled, sad workroom. Jon, at the north window, sniffing air mysteriously scented with warm strawberries, heard a car drive up. The lawyers again about some nonsense! Why did that scent so make one ache? And where did it come from⁠—there were no strawberry beds on this side of the house. Instinctively he took a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket, and wrote down some broken words. A warmth began spreading in his chest; he rubbed the palms of his hands together. Presently he had jotted this:

“If I could make a little song
A little song to soothe my heart!
I’d make it all of little things
The plash of water, rub of wings,
The puffing-off of dandies crown,
The hiss of raindrop spilling down,
The purr of cat, the trill of bird,
And ev’ry whispering I’ve heard
From willy wind in leaves and grass,
And all the distant drones that pass.
A song as tender and as light
As flower, or butterfly in flight;
And when I saw it opening,
I’d let it fly and sing!”

He was still muttering it over to himself at the window, when he heard his name called, and, turning round, saw Fleur. At that amazing apparition, he made at first no movement and no sound, while her clear vivid glance ravished his heart. Then he went forward to the table, saying, “How nice of you to come!” and saw her flinch as if he had thrown something at her.

“I asked for you,” she said, “and they showed me up here. But I can go away again.”

Jon clutched the paint-stained table. Her face and figure in its frilly frock photographed itself with such startling vividness upon his eyes, that if she had sunk through the floor he must still have seen her.

“I know I told you a lie, Jon. But I told it out of love.”

“Yes, oh! yes! That’s nothing!”

“I didn’t answer your letter. What was the use⁠—there wasn’t anything to answer. I wanted to see you instead.” She held out both her hands, and Jon grasped them across the table. He tried to say something, but