Only too well she knew that on that night she had been capable of slipping down into the river, of standing before a rushing car, of anything not too deliberate and active, that would have put her out of her aching misery. She knew well enough that she had recklessly stood rooted when the picture toppled above her. And now, sobered to the very marrow by the shock, she could not forgive herself.
With her mother, her aunt and the two trained nurses she divided the watches, so that there were never less than two, of whom she was nearly always one, in Annette’s bedroom where Soames lay. She would sit hour after hour, almost as still as her father, with her eyes wistful and dark-circled, fixed on his face. Passion and fever had quite died out of her. It was as if, with his infallible instinct where she was concerned, Soames had taken the one step that could rid her of the fire which had been consuming her. Jon was remote from her in that room darkened by sun blinds and her remorse.
Yes! She had meant to be killed by that picture, ironically that of the Goya girl whose dress she had worn when she visited Jon’s room at Wansdon, and when she danced with him at Nettlefold! Distraught that desperate night, she did not even now realise that she had caused the fire, by a cigarette flung down still lighted, not even perhaps that she had smoked up there. But only too well she realised that because she had wanted to die, had stood welcoming sudden extinction, her father was now lying there so nearly dead. How good he had always been to her! Incredible that he should die and take that goodness away, that she should never hear his flat-toned voice again, or feel the touch of his moustache on her cheeks or forehead. Incredible that he should never give her a chance to show that she had really loved him–yes really, beneath all the fret and self-importance of her life. While watching him now, the little rather than the great things came back to her. How he would pitch a new doll down in the nursery and say: “Well, I don’t know if you’ll care for this one; I just picked her up.” How once, after her mother had whipped her, he had come in, taken her hand and said: “There, there. Let’s go and see if there are some raspberries!” How he had stood on the stairs at Green Street after her wedding, watching, pale and unobtrusive, above the guests clustered in the hall, for a turn of her head and her last look back. Unobtrusive! That was the word–unobtrusive, always! Why, if he went, there would be no portrait–hardly even a photograph, to remember him by! Just one of him as a baby, in his mother’s arms; one as a little boy, looking sceptically at his velvet knickers; one in ‘76 as a young man in a full-tailed coat and short whiskers; and a snapshot or two taken unawares. Had any man ever been less photographed? He had never seemed to wish to be appreciated, or even remembered, by any one. To Fleur, so avid of appreciation, it seemed marvellously strange. What secret force within that spare form, lying there inert, had made him thus self-sufficing? He had been brought up as luxuriously as herself, had never known want or the real need for effort, but somehow had preserved a sort of stoic independence of others, and what they thought of him. And yet, as none knew better than herself, he had longed to be loved. This hurt her most, watching him. He had longed for her affection, and she had not shown him enough. But she had felt it–really felt it all the time. Something in him had repelled feeling, dried up his manifestation. There had been no magnet in his “makeup.” And stealing to the bed–her mother’s bed where she herself had been conceived and born–she would stand beside that almost deserted body and drawn dun face, feeling so hollow and miserable that she could hardly restrain herself.
So the days and nights passed. On the third day about three o’clock, while she stood there beside him, she saw the eyes open–a falling apart of the lids, indeed, rather than an opening, and no speculation in the gaps; but her heart beat fast. The nurse, summoned by her finger, came, looked, and went quickly out to the telephone. And Fleur stood there with her soul in her eyes, trying to summon his. It did not come, the lids drooped again. She drew up a chair and sat down, not taking her eyes off his face. The nurse came back to say that the doctor was on his rounds; as soon as he came in he would be sent to them post-haste. As her father would have said: “Of course, ‘the fellow’ wasn’t in when he was wanted!” But it would make no difference. They knew what to do. It was nearly four when again the lids were raised, and this time something looked forth. Fleur could not be sure he saw anything particular, recognised her or any other object, but there was something there, some flickering light, trying for focus. Slowly it strengthened, then went out again between the lids. They gave him stimulant. And again she sat down to watch. In half an hour his eyes reopened. This time he SAW! And for torturing minutes Fleur watched a being trying to BE, a mind striving to obey the mandate of instinctive will power. Bending so that those eyes, which she now knew recognised her, should have the least possible effort, she waited with her lips trembling, as if in a kiss. The extraordinary tenacity of that struggle to come back terrified her. He MEANT to be a mind, he MEANT to know and hear and speak. It was as if he must die from the sheer effort of it. She murmured to him. She put her hand under his cold hand, so that if he made the faintest pressure she would feel it. She watched his lips desperately. At last that struggle for coherence ceased, the half-blank, half-angry look yielded to something deeper, the lips moved. They said nothing, but they moved, and the faintest tremor passed from his finger into hers.
“You know me, darling?”
His eyes said: “Yes.”
“You remember?”
Again his eyes said: “Yes.”
His lips were twitching all the time, as if rehearsing for speech, and the look in his eyes deepening. She saw his brows frown faintly, as if her face were too close; drew back a little and the frown relaxed.
“Darling, you are going to be all right.”
His eyes said: “No”; and his lips moved, but she could not distinguish the sound. For a moment she lost control, and said with a sob:
“Dad, forgive me!”
His eyes softened; and this time she caught what sounded like:
“Forgive? Nonsense!”
“I love you so.”
He seemed to abandon the effort to speak then, and centred all the life of him in his eyes. Deeper and deeper grew the colour and the form and the meaning in them, as if to compel something from her. And suddenly, like a little girl, she said:
“Yes, Dad; I will be good!”
A tremor from his finger passed into her palm; his lips seemed trying to smile, his head moved as if he had meant to nod, and always that look deepened in his eyes.
“Gradman is here, darling, and Mother, and Aunt Winifred, and Kit and Michael. Is there anyone you would like to see?”
His lips shaped: “No–you!”
“I am here all the time.” Again she felt the tremor from his fingers, saw his lips whispering:
“That’s all.”
And suddenly, his eyes went out. There was nothing there! For some time longer he breathed, but before “that fellow” came, he had lost hold–was gone.
Chapter XVI.
FULL CLOSE
In accordance with all that was implicit in Soames there was no fuss over his funeral. For a long time now, indeed, he had been the only one of the family at all interested in obsequies.
It was then, a very quiet affair, only men attending.
Sir Lawrence had come down, graver than Michael had ever known him.
“I respected old Forsyte,” he said to his son, while they returned on foot from the churchyard, where, in the corner selected by himself, Soames now lay, under a crab-apple tree: “He dated, and he couldn’t express himself; but there was no humbug about him–an honest man. How is Fleur bearing up?”
Michael shook his head. “It’s terrible for her to think that he–”
“My dear boy, there’s no better death than dying to save the one you’re fondest of. As soon as you can, let us have Fleur at Lippinghall–where her father and her family never were. I’ll get Hilary and his wife down for a holiday–she likes THEM.”
“I’m very worried about her, Dad–something’s broken.”
“That happens to most of us, before we’re thirty. Some spring or other goes; but presently we get our second winds. It’s what happened to the Age–something broke and it hasn’t yet got its second wind. But it’s getting it, and so will she. What sort of a stone are you going to put up?”
“A cross, I suppose.”
“I think he’d prefer a flat stone with that crab-apple at the head and yew trees round, so that he’s not overlooked. No ‘Beloved’ or ‘Regretted.’ Has he got the freehold of that corner? He’d like to belong to his descendants in perpetuity. We’re all more Chinese than you’d think, only with them it’s the ancestors who do the owning. Who was the old chap who cried into his hat?”
“Old Mr. Gradman–sort of business nurse to the family.”
“Faithful old dog! Well! I certainly never thought Forsyte would take the ferry before me. He looked permanent, but it’s an ironical world. Can I do anything for you and Fleur? Talk to the Nation about the pictures? The Marquess and I could fix that for you. He had quite a weakness for old Forsyte, and his Morland’s saved. By the way, that must have been a considerable contest between him and the fire up there all alone. It’s the sort of thing one would never have suspected him of.”
“Yes,” said Michael: “I’ve been talking to Riggs. He’s full of it.”
“He saw it, then?”
Michael nodded. “Here he comes!”
They slackened their pace, and the chauffeur, touching his hat, came alongside.
“Ah! Riggs,” said Sir Lawrence, “you were up there at the fire, I’m told.”
“Yes, Sir Lawrence. Mr. Forsyte was a proper wonder–went at it like a two-year old, we fair had to carry him away. So particular as a rule about not getting his coat wet or sitting in a draught, but the way he stuck it–at his age… ‘Come on!’ he kept saying to me all through that smoke–a proper champion! Never so surprised in all my life, Sir Lawrence–nervous gentleman like him. And what a bit o’ luck! If he hadn’t insisted on saving that last picture, it’d never have fallen and got ’im.”
“How did the fire begin?”
“Nobody knows, Sir Lawrence, unless Mr. Forsyte did, and he never said nothing. Wish I’d got there sooner, but I was puttin’ the petrol out of action. What that old gentleman did by ‘imself up there; and after the day we’d had! Why! We came from Winchester that morning to London, on to Dorking, picked up Mrs. Mont, and on here. And now he’ll never tell me I’ve gone wrong again.”
A grimace passed over his thin face, seamed and shadowed by traffic and the insides of his car; and, touching his hat, he left them at the gate.
“‘A proper champion,’” Sir Lawrence repeated, softly: “You might almost put that on the stone. Yes, it’s an ironical world!”
In the hall they parted, for Sir Lawrence was going back to Town by car. He took Gradman with him, the provisions of the will having been quietly disclosed. Michael found Smither crying and drawing up the blinds, and in the library Winifred and Val, who had come, with Holly, for the funeral, dealing with condolences, such as they were. Annette was with Kit in the nursery. Michael went up to Fleur in the room she used to have as a little girl–a single room, so that he had been sleeping elsewhere.
She was lying on her bed, graceful, and as if without life.
The eyes she turned on Michael seemed to make of him no less, but no more, than they were making of the ceiling.
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With her mother, her aunt and the two trained nurses she divided the watches, so that there were never less than two, of whom she was nearly always one, in Annette’s bedroom where Soames lay. She would sit hour after hour, almost as still as her father, with her eyes wistful and dark-circled, fixed on his face. Passion and fever had quite died out of her. It was as if, with his infallible instinct where she was concerned, Soames had taken the one step that could rid her of the fire which had been consuming her. Jon was remote from her in that room darkened by sun blinds and her remorse.
Yes! She had meant to be killed by that picture, ironically that of the Goya girl whose dress she had worn when she visited Jon’s room at Wansdon, and when she danced with him at Nettlefold! Distraught that desperate night, she did not even now realise that she had caused the fire, by a cigarette flung down still lighted, not even perhaps that she had smoked up there. But only too well she realised that because she had wanted to die, had stood welcoming sudden extinction, her father was now lying there so nearly dead. How good he had always been to her! Incredible that he should die and take that goodness away, that she should never hear his flat-toned voice again, or feel the touch of his moustache on her cheeks or forehead. Incredible that he should never give her a chance to show that she had really loved him–yes really, beneath all the fret and self-importance of her life. While watching him now, the little rather than the great things came back to her. How he would pitch a new doll down in the nursery and say: “Well, I don’t know if you’ll care for this one; I just picked her up.” How once, after her mother had whipped her, he had come in, taken her hand and said: “There, there. Let’s go and see if there are some raspberries!” How he had stood on the stairs at Green Street after her wedding, watching, pale and unobtrusive, above the guests clustered in the hall, for a turn of her head and her last look back. Unobtrusive! That was the word–unobtrusive, always! Why, if he went, there would be no portrait–hardly even a photograph, to remember him by! Just one of him as a baby, in his mother’s arms; one as a little boy, looking sceptically at his velvet knickers; one in ‘76 as a young man in a full-tailed coat and short whiskers; and a snapshot or two taken unawares. Had any man ever been less photographed? He had never seemed to wish to be appreciated, or even remembered, by any one. To Fleur, so avid of appreciation, it seemed marvellously strange. What secret force within that spare form, lying there inert, had made him thus self-sufficing? He had been brought up as luxuriously as herself, had never known want or the real need for effort, but somehow had preserved a sort of stoic independence of others, and what they thought of him. And yet, as none knew better than herself, he had longed to be loved. This hurt her most, watching him. He had longed for her affection, and she had not shown him enough. But she had felt it–really felt it all the time. Something in him had repelled feeling, dried up his manifestation. There had been no magnet in his “makeup.” And stealing to the bed–her mother’s bed where she herself had been conceived and born–she would stand beside that almost deserted body and drawn dun face, feeling so hollow and miserable that she could hardly restrain herself.
So the days and nights passed. On the third day about three o’clock, while she stood there beside him, she saw the eyes open–a falling apart of the lids, indeed, rather than an opening, and no speculation in the gaps; but her heart beat fast. The nurse, summoned by her finger, came, looked, and went quickly out to the telephone. And Fleur stood there with her soul in her eyes, trying to summon his. It did not come, the lids drooped again. She drew up a chair and sat down, not taking her eyes off his face. The nurse came back to say that the doctor was on his rounds; as soon as he came in he would be sent to them post-haste. As her father would have said: “Of course, ‘the fellow’ wasn’t in when he was wanted!” But it would make no difference. They knew what to do. It was nearly four when again the lids were raised, and this time something looked forth. Fleur could not be sure he saw anything particular, recognised her or any other object, but there was something there, some flickering light, trying for focus. Slowly it strengthened, then went out again between the lids. They gave him stimulant. And again she sat down to watch. In half an hour his eyes reopened. This time he SAW! And for torturing minutes Fleur watched a being trying to BE, a mind striving to obey the mandate of instinctive will power. Bending so that those eyes, which she now knew recognised her, should have the least possible effort, she waited with her lips trembling, as if in a kiss. The extraordinary tenacity of that struggle to come back terrified her. He MEANT to be a mind, he MEANT to know and hear and speak. It was as if he must die from the sheer effort of it. She murmured to him. She put her hand under his cold hand, so that if he made the faintest pressure she would feel it. She watched his lips desperately. At last that struggle for coherence ceased, the half-blank, half-angry look yielded to something deeper, the lips moved. They said nothing, but they moved, and the faintest tremor passed from his finger into hers.
“You know me, darling?”
His eyes said: “Yes.”
“You remember?”
Again his eyes said: “Yes.”
His lips were twitching all the time, as if rehearsing for speech, and the look in his eyes deepening. She saw his brows frown faintly, as if her face were too close; drew back a little and the frown relaxed.
“Darling, you are going to be all right.”
His eyes said: “No”; and his lips moved, but she could not distinguish the sound. For a moment she lost control, and said with a sob:
“Dad, forgive me!”
His eyes softened; and this time she caught what sounded like:
“Forgive? Nonsense!”
“I love you so.”
He seemed to abandon the effort to speak then, and centred all the life of him in his eyes. Deeper and deeper grew the colour and the form and the meaning in them, as if to compel something from her. And suddenly, like a little girl, she said:
“Yes, Dad; I will be good!”
A tremor from his finger passed into her palm; his lips seemed trying to smile, his head moved as if he had meant to nod, and always that look deepened in his eyes.
“Gradman is here, darling, and Mother, and Aunt Winifred, and Kit and Michael. Is there anyone you would like to see?”
His lips shaped: “No–you!”
“I am here all the time.” Again she felt the tremor from his fingers, saw his lips whispering:
“That’s all.”
And suddenly, his eyes went out. There was nothing there! For some time longer he breathed, but before “that fellow” came, he had lost hold–was gone.
Chapter XVI.
FULL CLOSE
In accordance with all that was implicit in Soames there was no fuss over his funeral. For a long time now, indeed, he had been the only one of the family at all interested in obsequies.
It was then, a very quiet affair, only men attending.
Sir Lawrence had come down, graver than Michael had ever known him.
“I respected old Forsyte,” he said to his son, while they returned on foot from the churchyard, where, in the corner selected by himself, Soames now lay, under a crab-apple tree: “He dated, and he couldn’t express himself; but there was no humbug about him–an honest man. How is Fleur bearing up?”
Michael shook his head. “It’s terrible for her to think that he–”
“My dear boy, there’s no better death than dying to save the one you’re fondest of. As soon as you can, let us have Fleur at Lippinghall–where her father and her family never were. I’ll get Hilary and his wife down for a holiday–she likes THEM.”
“I’m very worried about her, Dad–something’s broken.”
“That happens to most of us, before we’re thirty. Some spring or other goes; but presently we get our second winds. It’s what happened to the Age–something broke and it hasn’t yet got its second wind. But it’s getting it, and so will she. What sort of a stone are you going to put up?”
“A cross, I suppose.”
“I think he’d prefer a flat stone with that crab-apple at the head and yew trees round, so that he’s not overlooked. No ‘Beloved’ or ‘Regretted.’ Has he got the freehold of that corner? He’d like to belong to his descendants in perpetuity. We’re all more Chinese than you’d think, only with them it’s the ancestors who do the owning. Who was the old chap who cried into his hat?”
“Old Mr. Gradman–sort of business nurse to the family.”
“Faithful old dog! Well! I certainly never thought Forsyte would take the ferry before me. He looked permanent, but it’s an ironical world. Can I do anything for you and Fleur? Talk to the Nation about the pictures? The Marquess and I could fix that for you. He had quite a weakness for old Forsyte, and his Morland’s saved. By the way, that must have been a considerable contest between him and the fire up there all alone. It’s the sort of thing one would never have suspected him of.”
“Yes,” said Michael: “I’ve been talking to Riggs. He’s full of it.”
“He saw it, then?”
Michael nodded. “Here he comes!”
They slackened their pace, and the chauffeur, touching his hat, came alongside.
“Ah! Riggs,” said Sir Lawrence, “you were up there at the fire, I’m told.”
“Yes, Sir Lawrence. Mr. Forsyte was a proper wonder–went at it like a two-year old, we fair had to carry him away. So particular as a rule about not getting his coat wet or sitting in a draught, but the way he stuck it–at his age… ‘Come on!’ he kept saying to me all through that smoke–a proper champion! Never so surprised in all my life, Sir Lawrence–nervous gentleman like him. And what a bit o’ luck! If he hadn’t insisted on saving that last picture, it’d never have fallen and got ’im.”
“How did the fire begin?”
“Nobody knows, Sir Lawrence, unless Mr. Forsyte did, and he never said nothing. Wish I’d got there sooner, but I was puttin’ the petrol out of action. What that old gentleman did by ‘imself up there; and after the day we’d had! Why! We came from Winchester that morning to London, on to Dorking, picked up Mrs. Mont, and on here. And now he’ll never tell me I’ve gone wrong again.”
A grimace passed over his thin face, seamed and shadowed by traffic and the insides of his car; and, touching his hat, he left them at the gate.
“‘A proper champion,’” Sir Lawrence repeated, softly: “You might almost put that on the stone. Yes, it’s an ironical world!”
In the hall they parted, for Sir Lawrence was going back to Town by car. He took Gradman with him, the provisions of the will having been quietly disclosed. Michael found Smither crying and drawing up the blinds, and in the library Winifred and Val, who had come, with Holly, for the funeral, dealing with condolences, such as they were. Annette was with Kit in the nursery. Michael went up to Fleur in the room she used to have as a little girl–a single room, so that he had been sleeping elsewhere.
She was lying on her bed, graceful, and as if without life.
The eyes she turned on Michael seemed to make of him no less, but no more, than they were making of the ceiling.
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 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50