Jon Forsyte

“ Fleur left him standing there with his hat raised. Stealing a look round, she saw him stroll—immaculate and heavy—back toward his Club.
'He can't even love with conviction,' she thought. 'What will Mother do?'
Her dreams that night were endless and uneasy; she rose heavy and unrested, and went at once to the study of Whitaker's Almanac. A Forsyte is instinctively aware that facts are the real crux of any situation. She might conquer Jon's prejudice, but without exact machinery to complete their desperate resolve, nothing would happen. ”

“ She could stay with Mary Lambe, who with her brother would serve for witnesses. She well knew that some girls would think all this unnecessary, and that all she and Jon need do was to go away together for a weekend and then say to their people: “We are married by Nature, we must now be married by Law.” But Fleur was Forsyte enough to feel such a proceeding dubious, and to dread her father's face when he heard of it. Besides, she did not believe that Jon would do it ”

“ No father and mother could have let the boy marry Fleur without knowledge of the facts; and the facts determine Jon, not the persuasion of his parents. Moreover, Jolyon’s persuasion is not on his own account, but on Irene’s, and Irene’s persuasion becomes a reiterated: “Don’t think of me, think of yourself!” That Jon, knowing the facts, can realise his mother’s feelings, will hardly with justice be held proof that she is, after all, a Forsyte. ”

“ He'll never show he's enjoying anything—they might try and take it from him. Old Soames! Once bit, twice shy!”
“Well, Jon,” said Val, hastily, “if you've finished, we'll go and have coffee.”
“Who were those?” Jon asked, on the stairs. “I didn't quite—-”
“Old George Forsyte is a first cousin of your father's and of my Uncle Soames. He's always been here. The other chap, Profond, is a queer fish. I think he's hanging round Soames' wife, if you ask me!”
Jon looked at him, startled. “But that's awful,” he said: “I mean—for Fleur.” ”

“ They are alive in her to-day. Only yesterday at Lord's we happened to see Soames Forsyte. Her face, if you had seen it, would have convinced you. The idea that you should marry his daughter is a nightmare to her, Jon. I have nothing to say against Fleur save that she is his daughter. But your children, if you married her, would be the grandchildren of Soames, as much as of your mother, of a man who once owned your mother as a man might own a slave. Think what that would mean. By such a marriage you enter the camp which held your mother prisoner and wherein she ate her heart out. ”

“ Jon entered the Iseeum with curiosity. Except to lunch now and then at the Hotch-Potch with his father, he had never been in a London Club. The Iseeum, comfortable and unpretentious, did not move, could not, so long as George Forsyte sat on its Committee, where his culinary acumen was almost the controlling force. The Club had made a stand against the newly rich, and it had taken all George Forsyte's prestige, and praise of him as a “good sportsman,” to bring in Prosper Profond. ”

“ Miss Forsyte tell me all about him. Is he better?"
Her words fell on Jon like a reproach. "Oh! I think he's all right."
"I like to see him again," said the Austrian, putting a hand on her heart; "he have veree kind heart."
"Yes," said Jon. And again her words seemed to him a reproach.
"He never give no trouble to no one, and smile so gentle."
"Yes! doesn't he?"
"He look at Miss Forsyte so funny sometimes. I tell him all my story; he so sympatisch. Your mother—she nice and well?"
"Very."
"He have her photograph on his dressing-table. Veree beautiful."
Jon gulped down his tea. ”

“ He could not take his eyes off the dark past master—what he said was so deliberate and discouraging—such heavy, queer, smiled-out words. Jon was thinking of butterflies, when he heard him say:
“I want to see Mr. Soames Forsyde take an interest in 'orses.”
“Old Soames! He's too dry a file!”
With all his might Jon tried not to grow red, while the dark past master went on.
“His daughter's an attractive small girl. Mr. Soames Forsyde is a bit old-fashioned. I want to see him have a pleasure some day.” George Forsyte grinned.
“Don't you worry; he's not so miserable as he looks. ”

“ We must be. There aren't any others. I live at Mapledurham; where do you?”
“Robin Hill.”
Question and answer had been so rapid that all was over before he could lift a finger. He saw Irene's face alive with startled feeling, gave the slightest shake of his head, and slipped his arm through Fleur's.
“Come along!” he said.
She did not move.
“Didn't you hear, Father? Isn't it queer—our name's the same. Are we cousins?”
“What's that?” he said. “Forsyte? Distant, perhaps.”
“My name's Jolyon, sir. Jon, for short.”
“Oh! Ah!” said Soames. “Yes. Distant. How are you? Very good of you. ”

“ A little dashed, Jon had answered:
“But don't you think it's a good scheme, Dad?”
“'Twill serve, my dear; and if you should really take to it, you'll do more good than most men, which is little enough.”
To himself, however, he had said: 'But he won't take to it. I give him four years. Still, it's healthy, and harmless.'
After turning the matter over and consulting with Irene, he wrote to his daughter, Mrs. Val Dartie, asking if they knew of a farmer near them on the Downs who would take Jon as an apprentice. Holly's answer had been enthusiastic. There was an excellent man quite close ”

“ She said very quietly: “Fleur is awfully attractive, Jon, but you know—Val and I don't really like her very much.”
“Why?”
“We think she's got rather a 'having' nature.”
“'Having'. I don't know what you mean. She—she—” he pushed his dessert plate away, got up, and went to the window.
Holly, too, got up, and put her arm round his waist.
“Don't be angry, Jon dear. We can't all see people in the same light, can we? You know, I believe each of us only has about one or two people who can see the best that's in us, and bring it out. For you I think it's your mother. ”

“ But the Goya copy answered not, brilliant in colour just beginning to tone down. 'There's no real life in it,' thought Soames. 'Why doesn't she come?'
X.—TRIO
Among those four Forsytes of the third, and, as one might say, fourth generation, at Wansdon under the Downs, a week-end prolonged unto the ninth day had stretched the crossing threads of tenacity almost to snapping-point. Never had Fleur been so “fine,” Holly so watchful, Val so stable-secretive, Jon so silent and disturbed. What he learned of farming in that week might have been balanced on the point of a penknife and puffed off. ”

“ Forsytes deprived of their mutton-bones are wont to sulk. But Jon had little sulkiness in his composition. He adored his mother, and it was his first travel. Spain had become Italy by his simply saying: “I'd rather go to Spain, Mum; you've been to Italy so many times ”

“ A little private hotel over a well-known restaurant near the Gare St. Lazare was Jolyon’s haunt in Paris. He hated his fellow Forsytes abroad—vapid as fish out of water in their well-trodden runs, the Opera, Rue de Rivoli, and Moulin Rouge. Their air of having come because they wanted to be somewhere else as soon as possible annoyed him. But no other Forsyte came near this haunt, where he had a wood fire in his bedroom and the coffee was excellent. Paris was always to him more attractive in winter. ”

“ And as though in the habit of taking each other home every night they went out and stepped into the cab.
To old Jolyon it seemed that his son had grown. “More of a man altogether,” was his comment. Over the natural amiability of that son’s face had come a rather sardonic mask, as though he had found in the circumstances of his life the necessity for armour. The features were certainly those of a Forsyte, but the expression was more the introspective look of a student or philosopher. He had no doubt been obliged to look into himself a good deal in the course of those fifteen years. ”

“ But here they looked at each other guiltily. They had no desire to spread scandal, no desire to be ill-natured. Who would have? And to outsiders no word was breathed, unwritten law keeping them silent.
Then came the news that June had gone to the seaside with old Jolyon.
He had carried her off to Broadstairs, for which place there was just then a feeling, Yarmouth having lost caste, in spite of Nicholas, and no Forsyte going to the sea without intending to have an air for his money such as would render him bilious in a week. ”

“ Old Jolyon was conscious of all this, and yet there was in him that which transcended Forsyteism. For it is written that a Forsyte shall not love beauty more than reason; nor his own way more than his own health. And something beat within him in these days that with each throb fretted at the thinning shell. His sagacity knew this, but it knew too that he could not stop that beating, nor would if he could. And yet, if you had told him he was living on his capital, he would have stared you down. No, no; a man did not live on his capital ”

“ Old Jolyon had little Holly on his knee; she had taken possession of his watch; Jolly, very red in the face, was trying to show that he could stand on his head. The dog Balthasar, as close as he might be to the tea-table, had fixed his eyes on the cake.
Young Jolyon felt a malicious desire to cut their enjoyment short.
What business had his father to come and upset his wife like this? It was a shock, after all these years! He ought to have known; he ought to have given them warning; but when did a Forsyte ever imagine that his conduct could upset anybody! ”

“ England more beautiful than she had dreamed. Chance had, in fact, guided the Val Darties to a spot where the South Downs had real charm when the sun shone. Holly had enough of her father's eye to apprehend the rare quality of their outlines and chalky radiance; to go up there by the ravine-like lane and wander along toward Chanctonbury or Amberley, was still a delight which she hardly attempted to share with Val, whose admiration of Nature was confused by a Forsyte's instinct for getting something out of it, such as the condition of the turf for his horses' exercise. ”

“ Under his father he learned to draw pleasure-pigs and other animals. He was not a highly educated little boy. Yet, on the whole, the silver spoon stayed in his mouth without spoiling it, though “Da” sometimes said that other children would do him a “world of good.”
It was a disillusionment, then, when at the age of nearly seven she held him down on his back, because he wanted to do something of which she did not approve. This first interference with the free individualism of a Forsyte drove him almost frantic. ”

“ At all events they’ve turned thirty thousand pounds into a cool million between them in the course of their long lives. They never did a wild thing—unless it was your great-uncle Swithin, who I believe was once swindled at thimble-rig, and was called ‘Four-in-hand Forsyte’ because he drove a pair. Their day is passing, and their type, not altogether for the advantage of the country. They were pedestrian, but they too were sound. I am the fourth Jolyon Forsyte—a poor holder of the name—”
“No, Dad,” said Jolly, and Holly squeezed his hand. ”

“ There—how can you do it? Work’s no use unless you believe in it!”
“Good,” said young Jolyon; “it’s exactly what I’ve always said. By-the-bye, have you noticed that whenever one says ‘Good,’ one always adds ‘it’s exactly what I’ve always said’. But if you ask me how I do it, I answer, because I’m a Forsyte.”
“A Forsyte! I never thought of you as one!”
“A Forsyte,” replied young Jolyon, “is not an uncommon animal. There are hundreds among the members of this Club. Hundreds out there in the streets; you meet them wherever you go!”
“And how do you tell them, may I ask?” said Bosinney. ”

“ Did Nature permit a Forsyte not to make a slave of what he adored? Could beauty be confided to him? Or should she not be just a visitor, coming when she would, possessed for moments which passed, to return only at her own choosing? “We are a breed of spoilers!” thought Jolyon, “close and greedy; the bloom of life is not safe with us. Let her come to me as she will, when she will, not at all if she will not. Let me be just her stand-by, her perching-place; never—never her cage!”
She was the chink of beauty in his dream. Was he to pass through the curtains now and reach her? ”

“ I wonder what this filly’s like?” He anticipated no pleasure from her society; and suddenly he saw her standing there looking at him. Why, she was pretty! What luck!
“I’m afraid you don’t know me,” he said. “My name’s Val Dartie—I’m once removed, second cousin, something like that, you know. My mother’s name was Forsyte.”
Holly, whose slim brown hand remained in his because she was too shy to withdraw it, said:
“I don’t know any of my relations. Are there many?”
“Tons. They’re awful—most of them. At least, I don’t know—some of them. One’s relations always are, aren’t they?” ”

“ In the more cultivated American tongue, she was “through” at last—through that tortuous labyrinth of make-shifts, which must be traversed before fashionable display can be combined with the sound economy of a Forsyte. Thin but brilliant, in her maize-coloured frock with much tulle about the shoulders, she went from place to place, fitting on her gloves, and casting her eye over it all.
To the hired butler (for Roger only kept maids) she spoke about the wine. Did he quite understand that Mr. Forsyte wished a dozen bottles of the champagne from Whiteley’s to be put out? ”