The Forsyte Saga, Volume 2 Page 11

  The meeting was in full swing when he arrived, the candidate pitilessly exposing the fallacies of a capitalism which, in his view, had brought on the war. For fear that it should bring on another, it must be changed for a system which would ensure that nations should not want anything too much. The individual – said the candidate – was in every respect superior to the nation of which he formed a part; and the problem before them was to secure an economic condition which would enable the individual to function freely in his native superiority. In that way alone, he said, would they lose those mass movements and emotions which imperilled the sanity of the world. He spoke well. Michael listened, purring almost audibly, till he found that he was thinking of himself, Wilfrid and Fleur. Would he ever function so freely in a native superiority that he did not want Fleur too much? And did he wish to? He did not. That seemed to introduce human nature into the speaker’s argument. Didn’t everybody want something too much? Wasn’t it natural? And if so, wouldn’t there always be a collective wanting too much – pooling of primary desire, such as the desire of keeping your own head above water? The candidate’s argument seemed to him suddenly to leave out heat, to omit friction, to be that of a man in an armchair after a poor lunch. He looked attentively at the speaker’s shrewd, dry, doubting face. ‘No juice!’ he thought. And when ‘the chap’ sat down, he got up and left the hall.

  This Wilfrid business had upset him horribly. Try as he had to put it out of his mind, try as he would to laugh it off, it continued to eat into his sense of security and happiness. Wife and best friend! A hundred times a day he assured himself that he trusted Fleur. Only, Wilfrid was so much more attractive than himself, and Fleur deserved the best of everything. Besides, Wilfrid was going through torture, and it was not a pleasant thought! How end the thing, restore peace of mind to himself, to him, to her? She had told him nothing; and it simply was impossible to ask. No way even of showing his anxiety! The whole thing was just ‘dark’, and, so far as he could see, would have to stay so; nothing to be done but screw the lid on tighter, be as nice as he could to her, try not to feel bitter about him. Hades!

  He turned down Chelsea Embankment. Here the sky was dark and wide and streaming with stars. The river wide, dark and gleaming with oily rays from the Embankment lamps. The width of it all gave him relief. Dash the dumps! A jolly, queer, muddled, sweet and bitter world; an immensely intriguing game of chance, no matter how the cards were falling at the moment! In the trenches he had thought: ‘Get out of this, and I’ll never mind anything again!’ How seldom now he remembered thinking that! The human body renewed itself – they said – in seven years. In three years’ time his body would not be the body of the trenches, but a whole-time peace body with a fading complex. If only Fleur would tell him quite openly what she felt, what she was doing about Wilfrid, for she must be doing something! And Wilfrid’s verse? Would his confounded passion – as Bart suggested – flow in poetry? And if so, who would publish it? A miserable business! Well the night was beautiful, and the great thing not to be a pig. Beauty and not being a pig! Nothing much else to it – except laughter – the comic side! Keep one’s sense of humour, anyway! And Michael searched, while he strode beneath plane trees half-stripped of leaves and plume-like in the dark, for the fun in his position. He failed to find it. There seemed absolutely nothing funny about love. Possibly he might fall out of love again some day, but not so long as she kept him on her tenterhooks. Did she do it on purpose? Never! Fleur simply could not be like those women who kept their husbands hungry and fed them when they wanted dresses, furs, jewels. Revolting!

  He came in sight of Westminster. Only half-past ten! Suppose he took a cab to Wilfrid’s rooms, and tried to have it out with him. It would be like trying to make the hands of a clock move backwards to its ticking. What use in saying: ‘You love Fleur – well, don’t!’ or in Wilfrid saying it to him. ‘After all, I was first with Fleur,’ he thought. Pure chance, perhaps, but fact! Ah! And wasn’t that just the danger? He was no longer a novelty to her – nothing unexpected about him now! And he and she had agreed times without number that novelty was the salt of life, the essence of interest and drama. Novelty now lay with Wilfrid! Lord! Lord! Possession appeared far from being nine points of the law! He rounded-in from the Embankment towards home – jolly part of London, jolly Square; everything jolly except just this infernal complication. Something, soft as a large leaf, tapped twice against his ear. He turned, astonished; he was in empty space, no tree near. Floating in the darkness, a round thing – he grabbed, it bobbed. What? A child’s balloon! He secured it between his hands, took it beneath a lamp-post – green, he judged. Queer! He looked up. Two windows lighted, one of them Fleur’s! Was this the bubble of his own happiness expelled? Morbid! Silly ass! Some gust of wind – a child’s plaything lodged and loosened! He held the balloon gingerly. He would take it in and show it to her. He put his latchkey in the door. Dark in the hall – gone up! He mounted, swinging the balloon on his finger. Fleur was standing before a mirror.

  ‘What on earth’s that?’ she said.

  The blood returned to Michael’s heart. Curious how he had dreaded its having anything to do with her!

  ‘Don’t know, darling; fell on my hat – must belong to heaven.’ And he batted it.

  The balloon floated, dropped, bounded twice, wobbled and came to rest.

  ‘You are a baby, Michael. I believe you bought it.’

  Michael came closer, and stood quite still.

  ‘My hat! What a misfortune to be in love!’

  ‘You think so!’

  ‘Il y a toujours un qui baise, et l’autre qui ne tend pas la joue.’

  ‘But I do.’

  ‘Fleur!’

  Fleur smiled.

  ‘Baise away.’

  Embracing her, Michael thought: ‘She holds me – does with me what she likes; I know nothing of her!’

  And there arose a small sound – from Ting-a-ling smelling the balloon.

  PART TWO

  Chapter One

  THE MARK FALLS

  THE state of the world had been getting more and more on Soames’s nerves ever since the general meeting of the P.P.R.S. It had gone off with that fatuity long associated by him with such gatherings – a watertight rigmarole from the chairman; butter from two reliable shareholders; vinegar from shareholders not so reliable; and the usual ‘gup’ over the dividend. He had gone there glum, come away glummer. From a notion once taken into his head Soames parted more slowly than a cheese parts from its mites. Two-sevenths of foreign business, nearly all German! And the mark falling! It had begun to fall from the moment that he decided to support the dividend. And why? What was in the wind? Contrary to his custom, he had taken to sniffing closely the political columns of his paper. The French – he had always mistrusted them, especially since his second marriage – the French were going to play old Harry, if he was not greatly mistaken! Their papers, he noticed, never lost a chance of having a dab at English policy; seemed to think they could always call the tune for England to pipe to! And the mark and the franc, and every other sort of money, falling. And, though in Soames was that which rejoiced in the thought that one of his country’s bits of paper could buy a great quantity of other countries’ bits of paper, there was also that which felt the whole thing silly and unreal, with an ever-growing consciousness that the P.P.R.S. would pay no dividend next year. The P.P.R.S. was a big concern; no dividend would be a sign, no small one, of bad management. Assurance was one of the few things on God’s earth which could and should be conducted without real risk. But for that he would never have gone on the Board. And to find assurance had not been so conducted and that by himself, was – well! He had caused Winifred to sell, anyway, though the shares had already fallen slightly. ‘I thought it was such a good thing, Soames,’ she had said plaintively: ‘it’s rather a bore, losin’ money on these shares.’ He had answered without mercy: ‘If you don’t sell, you’ll lose more.’ And she had done it. If the Rogers and Nicholases
who had followed him into it hadn’t sold too – well, it was their look out! He had made Winifred warn them. As for himself, he had nothing but his qualifying shares, and the missing of a dividend or two would not hurt one whose director’s fees more than compensated. It was not, therefore, private uneasiness so much as resentment at a state of things connected with foreigners and the slur on his infallibility.

  Christmas had gone off quietly at Mapledurham. He abominated Christmas, and only observed it because his wife was French, and her national festival New Year’s Day. One could not go so far as to observe that, encouraging a foreign notion. But Christmas with no child about – he still remembered the holly and snapdragons of Park Lane in his own childhood – the family parties; and how disgusted he had been if he got anything symbolic – the thimble, or the ring – instead of the shilling. They had never gone in for Santa Claus at Park Lane, partly because they could see through the old gentleman, and partly because he was not at all a late thing. Emily, his mother, had seen to that. Yes; and, by the way, that William Gouldyng, Ingerer, had so stumped those fellows at the Heralds’ College, that Soames had dropped the inquiry – it was just encouraging them to spend his money for a sentimental satisfaction which did not materialize. That narrow-headed chap, ‘Old Mont’, peacocked about his ancestry; all the more reason for having no ancestry to peacock about. The Forsytes and the Goldings were good English country stock – that was what mattered. And if Fleur and her child, if one came, had French blood in them – well, he couldn’t help it now.

  In regard to the coming of a grandchild, Soames knew no more than in October. Fleur had spent Christmas with the Monts; she was promised to him, however, before long, and her mother must ask her a question or two!

  The weather was extremely mild; Soames had even been out in a punt fishing. In a heavy coat he trailed a line for perch and dace, and caught now and then a roach – precious little good, the servants wouldn’t eat them, nowadays! His grey eyes would brood over the grey water under the grey sky; and in his mind the mark would fall. It fell with a bump on that eleventh of January when the French went and occupied the Ruhr. He said to Annette at breakfast: ‘Your country’s cracked! Look at the mark now!’

  ‘What do I care about the mark?’ she had answered over her coffee. ‘I care that they shall not come again into my country. I hope they will suffer a little what we have suffered.’

  ‘You,’ said Soames; ‘you never suffered anything.’

  Annette put her hand where Soames sometimes doubted the existence of a heart.

  ‘I have suffered here,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t notice it. You never went without butter. What do you suppose Europe’s going to be like now for the next thirty years! How about British trade?’

  ‘We French see before our noses,’ said Annette with warmth. ‘We see that the beaten must be kept the beaten, or he will take revenge. You English are so sloppy.’

  ‘Sloppy, are we?’ said Soames. ‘You’re talking like a child. Could a sloppy people ever have reached our position in the world?’

  ‘That is your selfishness. You are cold and selfish.’

  ‘Cold, selfish and sloppy – they don’t go together. Try again.’

  ‘Your slop is in your thought and your talk; it is your instinct that gives you your success, and your English instinct is cold and selfish, Soames. You are a mixture, all of you, of hypocrisy, stupidity and egoism.’

  Soames took some marmalade.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘and what are the French? – cynical, avaricious and revengeful. And the Germans are sentimental, heady and brutal. We can all abuse each other. There’s nothing for it but to keep clear. And that’s what you French won’t do,’

  Annette’s handsome person stiffened.

  ‘When you are tied to a person, as I am tied to you, Soames, or as we French are tied to the Germans, it is necessary to be top dog, or to be bottom dog.’

  Soames stayed his toast.

  ‘Do you suppose yourself top dog in this house?’

  ‘Yes, Soames.’

  ‘Oh! Then you can go back to France tomorrow.’

  Annette’s eyebrows rose quizzically.

  ‘I would wait a little longer, my friend; you are still too young.’

  But Soames had already regretted his remark; he did not wish any disturbance at his time of life, and he said more calmly:

  ‘Compromise is the essence of any reasonable existence between individuals or nations. We can’t have the fat thrown into the fire every few years.’

  ‘That is so English,’ murmured Annette. ‘We others never know what you English will do. You always wait to see which way the cat jumps.’

  However deeply sympathetic with such a reasonable characteristic, Soames would have denied it at any ordinary moment – to confess to temporizing was not, as it were, done. But, with the mark falling like a cartload of bricks, he was heated to the point of standing by his nature.

  ‘And why shouldn’t we? Rushing into things that you’ll have to rush out of! I don’t want to argue. French and English never did get on, and never will.’

  Annette rose. ‘You speak the truth, my friend. Entente, mais pas cordiale. What are you doing today?’

  ‘Going up to town,’ said Soames glumly. ‘Your precious Government has put business into Queer Street with a vengeance.’

  ‘Do you stay the night?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Adieu, then, jusqu’au revoir!’ And she got up.

  Soames remained brooding above his marmalade – with the mark falling in his mind – glad to see the last of her handsome figure, having no patience at the moment for French tantrums. An irritable longing to say to somebody ‘I told you so’ possessed him. He would have to wait, however, till he found somebody to say it to.

  A beautiful day, quite warm; and, taking his umbrella as an assurance against change, he set out for the station.

  In the carriage going up they were talking about the Ruhr. Averse from discussion in public, Soames listened from behind his paper. The general sentiment was surprisingly like his own. In so far as it was unpleasant for the Huns – all right; in so far as it was unpleasant for British trade – all wrong; in so far as love of British trade was active and hate of Huns now passive – more wrong than right. A Francophil remark that the French were justified in making themselves safe at all cost, was coldly received. At Maidenhead a man got in whom Soames connected automatically with disturbance. He had much grey hair, a sanguine face, lively eyes, twisting eyebrows, and within five minutes had asked in a breezy voice whether anyone had heard of the League of Nations. Confirmed in his estimate, Soames looked round the corner of his paper. Yes, that chap would get off on some hobby-horse or other! And there he went! The question – said the newcomer – was not whether the Germans should get one in the eye, the British one in the pocket, or the French one in the heart, but whether the world should get peace and goodwill. Soames lowered his paper. If – this fellow said – they wanted peace, they must sink their individual interests, and think in terms of collective interest. The good of all was the good of one! Soames saw the flaw at once; that might be, but the good of one was not the good of all. He felt that if he did not take care he would be pointing this out. The man was a perfect stranger to him, and no good ever came of argument. Unfortunately his silence amid the general opinion that the League of Nations was ‘no earthly’, seemed to cause the newcomer to regard him as a sympathizer; the fellow kept on throwing his eyebrows at him! To put up his paper again seemed too pointed, and his position was getting more and more false when the train ran in at Paddington. He hastened to a cab. A voice behind him said:

  ‘Hopeless lot, sir, eh! Glad to see you saw my point.’

  ‘Quite!’ said Soames. ‘Taxi!’

  ‘Unless the League of Nations functions, we’re all for Gehenna.’

  Soames turned the handle of the cab door.

  ‘Quite!’ he said again. ‘Poultry!’ and got in. H
e was not going to be drawn. The fellow was clearly a firebrand!

  In the cab the measure of his disturbance was revealed. He had said ‘Poultry’, an address that ‘Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte’ had abandoned two-and-twenty years ago when, merged with ‘Cuthcott, Holliday and Kingson,’ they became ‘Cuthcott, Kingson and Forsyte’. Rectifying the error, he sat forward, brooding. Fall of the mark! The country was sound about it, yes – but when they failed to pay the next dividend, could they rely on resentment against the French instead of against the directors? Doubtful! The directors ought to have seen it coming! That might be said of the other directors, but not of himself – here was a policy that he personally never would have touched. If only he could discuss the whole thing with someone – but old Gradman would be out of his depth in a matter of this sort. And, on arrival at his office, he gazed with a certain impatience at that changeless old fellow, sitting in his swivel chair.

  ‘Ah! Mr Soames, I was hopin’ you might come in this morning. There’s a young man been round to see you from the P.P.R.S. Wouldn’t give his business, said he wanted to see you privately. Left his number on the phone.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Soames.

  ‘Quite a young feller – in the office.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Nice, clean young man. I was quite favourably impressed – name of Butterfield.’

  ‘Well, ring him up, and let him know I’m here.’ And going over to the window, he stood looking out on to a perfectly blank wall.

  Suited to a sleeping partner, his room was at the back, free from disturbance. Young man! The call was somewhat singular! And he said over his shoulder: ‘Don’t go when he comes, Gradman, I know nothing of him.’

  The world changed, people died off, the mark fell, but Gradman was there – embodiment, faithful and grey, of service and integrity – an anchor.