Oh! how my heart is beating! I must put you away now, my diary. What–ah! what will have come to me when I write in you again!…
“Friday afternoon. I am distraught. I cannot tell what to do, I cannot tell. All today my mind has been going this way and that, ever since I had his dear letter. I have made it all out with the help of the dictionary. His regiment is marching tomorrow to Frankfort, and he begs me to come to him there. He says we will be married, and he will make me ‘ever happy.’ But until he goes he is so busy that he cannot come again. I know it is my besetting weakness not to be able to act for myself; Ann is always at me about it. I wonder what she would say if she knew that if I could act now I should go to him and disregard the consequences. It is not that I am afraid of the consequences, but it is so difficult to act all by myself; there are so many things I must do if I am to go. Ah! if only someone could do them for me. It is not my soul, but my body that lags and lags. I wish I were like Ann, who always does at once what she feels to be right. Is it that I am ashamed of what has happened? No, not to myself. How can I be ashamed of obeying the dictates of my heart and his? But I cannot face having to explain to John and Eleanor. They would be so horrified, and how could I make them understand? And then there is the arranging for my journey and selling my necklace, for I have not enough money. He would send me money if he knew, but I could not ask him. Oh dear! it is all so difficult. Yesterday I was intoxicated on the memory of our night, it still makes me burn; but today my courage and my energy is all run out of me. Our night! Never, never could I write of it, even in you, my diary. It was too wonderful, and terrifying, and sweet. Did I care then what I was doing, do I care now what I did? A thousand times no! If he were here at this moment it should be again as it was. I think I must be wanton by nature, for I am proud of it to myself. But to the world–and then John and Eleanor! After all their kindness in taking me this tour, how can I leave them without a word? And if I do not, how can I ever tell them what I have done–what we have done! I should die of shame! But if I cannot make up my mind to leave them without a word, and do all those other things that are necessary, I must go on with them to Cologne, and back to London, and never see him again. Soon he will not remember me. I shall be just a night of love. Perhaps one of many nights, for what do I know of him but that I love him, and that he seems to me brave and beautiful? If I look up I can see him there leaning above me in the moonlight. O God! I was wicked, but I was happy. There is the bell for supper. Yes! I am distracted. Perhaps in the night I shall gain courage to act, because I shall want him so!…
“Sunday, Cologne. All has moved on as it seemed without me, and my body has come here with John and Eleanor. I have just written to him. I have told him that if he really loves me, he will come to England to claim me; but I know he will not come. I feel it is the end. I am not a fool. John and Eleanor think I have a touch of the sun; it was very hot in the chaise. It is a touch of the moon I have. The moon! I, Hester, who always laughed–! Ah me! I have a lump of lead in my chest. Eleanor came to my room early yesterday morning and insisted on helping me to pack; she is so kind; we started at eight o’clock and drove all day. Now we shall go to the Cathedral and tomorrow travel by train, and in four days we shall be home. John said to-night: ‘Well, I think it has been a very enjoyable little tour.’ He is a dear nice fellow, but quite blind! When I go home I shall kiss them all and say: ‘Oh! such a lovely tour!’ As I sit here in my bedroom writing, I seem to see myself with malice: Dear prim proper little Hester! Ugh! I have not cried at all, but an’ I would–! To-morrow morning we shall travel on and on and on away from him. All my mind and will feel paralysed, my heart only is alive and sore; I know that if it came over again I should act just the same. And my nature will always be like this; always want love and freedom, always be free in thought but not in deed…
“Saturday. I have not written in you for days, my diary. What was the use? Yesterday we crossed in the packet and came up to London. I laughed when I saw our house, but I was not amused. It looked so pokey, and like other houses. Oh! Rolandseck! and the moonlight on the river! There was no letter from him. I have been a fool; I know it now. My pride is hurt, and I am sore–sore. Ann looked at me so hard, I could not help smiling bitterly. Poor Ann! And Juley gushed about my looking pale. She is a fool. I feel much older than them both. And now I shall go on day after day doing exactly what we have always done; but I shall never feel the same again, for I have been where they have not. I have had my little tour…”
In her capacity of editress Francie had added: “This is surely a curious little sidelight on the nature of our Victorian foremothers.”
“F. F.”
TIMOTHY’S NARROW SQUEAK, 1851
In 1920 Soames Forsyte on the death of his uncle Timothy, proved that will which but for the law against accumulations would in course of time have produced such astounding results. He had been at pains to explain to Timothy how, owing to that law, what Timothy intended would not come about; but Timothy had merely stared at him very hard and said: “Rubbage! Make it so!” And Soames had made it. In any case the legal limit of accumulation would be reached, and that was as near to what the old chap wanted as could be. When, as executor, he came to the examination of the papers left behind by Timothy, he had fresh confirmation of his uncle’s lifelong passion for safety. Practically nothing had been destroyed. Seventy years and more of receipted bills, and cheque books with the paid-out cheque forms carefully returned to them in order of date, were found, and–since Timothy had been spoon-fed and incapable of paying a bill since before the War–burned out of hand. There was a mass of papers referring to the publishing business, which he had abandoned for Consols in 1879, and which had died, very fortunately for Soames, a natural death not long after. All these were committed to the fire. But then–a far more serious matter–there were whole drawers full of private letters and odds and ends not only Timothy’s, but of the three sisters who had made house with him since their father’s death in 1850. And with that conscientiousness, which ever distinguished him in an unconscientious world, Soames had decided to go through them first and destroy them afterwards. It was no mean task. He sneezed his way through it doggedly, reading the spidery calligraphy of the Victorian era, in bundle after dirty bundle of yellowed letters; cheered slightly now and then, among the mass of sententious gossip, by little streaks of side light on this member of his family or on that. The fifteenth evening of his perusal, for he had had the lot conveyed by motor lorry down to Mapledurham, he came on the letter which forms the starting point of this narration. It was enclosed in a yellowed envelope bearing the address, “Miss Hatty Beecher;” was in Timothy’s handwriting; bore the date, “May the twenty-seventh 1851,” and had obviously never been posted. Hatty Beecher! Why that had been the maiden name of Hatty Chessman, the lively, elderly, somewhat raddled widow and friend of the family in his youth. He remembered her death in the Spring of 1899. She had left his Aunts Juley and Hester five hundred pounds apiece. Soames began to read the letter with an ashamed curiosity, though it was nearly seventy years old and everybody dead; he continued to read it with a sort of emotion, as of one coming on blood in the tissue of a mummy.
“MY DEAR HATTY,” (it began),
“I hope it will not surprise you to receive from me,” (‘obviously she never did,’ thought Soames), “this missive which has caused me much anxiety, for I am not one of those lighthearted gentry who take the gravest steps in life without due consideration. Only the conviction that my best interests, indeed my happiness, and, I trust, your happiness, are involved, have caused me to write this letter. I have not, I hope, obtruded my attentions upon you, but you will not I equally hope have failed to notice that the charms of your person and your character have made a great impression upon me and that I seek your company with an ever growing ardour. I cannot, then, think that it will be in the nature of a shock to you when, with all the gravity born of long consideration and many heart searchings, I ask for the honour of your hand. If I am so fortunate as to meet with your approval as a suitor, it will be my earnest endeavour to provide for you a happy and prosperous home, to surround you with every attention, and to make you a good husband. As you know, I think, I am thirty-one years old, and my business is increasing, I am indeed slowly, I am happy to say, becoming a warm man; so that in material matters you will have all the comfort and indeed luxury with which I feel you should be surrounded. In the words of, I think, the Marquis of Montrose:
‘He either fears his fate too much
Or his deserts are small
Who dares not put it to the touch
To win or lose it all.’
“As I say, I have not taken this step lightly, and if, my dear Hatty, it pleases you to crown my aspirations with success, I think you may rely on me to make you happy. I shall be on tenterhooks until I have your reply which I hope will not be delayed beyond the morrow. I express to you my devoted admiration and am, my dear Hatty,
“Your faithful and attached Suitor,
“TIMOTHY FORSYTE.”
With a faint grin Soames dropped the yellowed letter–six years older than himself–on his knee, and sat brooding. Poor old Timothy! And he had never sent it. Why not? Never ‘put it to the touch’ after all. If he remembered Hatty Chessman the old boy had been well out of it. Bit of a dasher Hatty Chessman in her time, from all that he had heard!
Still! There was the letter! Irrefutable evidence that Timothy had been human once upon a time. 1851? – the year of the Great Exhibition! Yes, they had been in the Bayswater Road by then, Timothy and the girls, Ann, Juley, Hester! Fancy a thing like that letter coming out of the blue at this time of day! What had Hatty done that he didn’t send the letter? Or what had Timothy done? Eaten something that disagreed with him–he shouldn’t wonder, had a scare of some sort. The envelope had just Hatty’s name but no address; was she then staying with them at the time or what–she had been a great friend, he knew, of Juley and of Hester! He put the letter back into its yellowed envelope with Timothy’s cypher in an oval medallion on the flap, dropped it into a tray, and went on with his task of conning over his Uncle’s remains.
Hallo! What were these?
Three thin red notebooks held together by a bit of dingy rainbow-coloured ribbon tied in a bow. Whose writing? Aunt Ann’s undoubtedly, more upright, more distinct than any other in the family. A diary, by George, and pretty old! Yes, begun when they went to ‘the Nook,’ “November 1850,” and going on to “1855,” the year that old Aunt Juley married Septimus Small. It would be old-fashioned twaddle! But suddenly Soames’ eye lighted again on the yellowed letter in the tray and taking up the second volume of the diary he turned its pages till he came to April 1851.
“April 3. We are all agog about the Great Exhibition that is to be opened in Hyde Park. James says he doesn’t know, but he thinks it will be a failure. They are making a great to-do and the Park does not look itself at all. It has quite upset dear Timothy. He is afraid that it will attract many rogues and foreigners and that our house will be burgled.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34