The Forsyte Saga John Galsworthy (hot novels to read TXT) đ
- Author: John Galsworthy
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Soames turned from the vault and faced toward the breeze. The air up here would be delicious if only he could rid his nerves of the feeling that mortality was in it. He gazed restlessly at the crosses and the urns, the angels, the âimmortelles,â the flowers, gaudy or withering; and suddenly he noticed a spot which seemed so different from anything else up there that he was obliged to walk the few necessary yards and look at it. A sober corner, with a massive queer-shaped cross of grey rough-hewn granite, guarded by four dark yew-trees. The spot was free from the pressure of the other graves, having a little box-hedged garden on the far side, and in front a goldening birch-tree. This oasis in the desert of conventional graves appealed to the aesthetic sense of Soames, and he sat down there in the sunshine. Through those trembling gold birch leaves he gazed out at London, and yielded to the waves of memory. He thought of Irene in Montpellier Square, when her hair was rusty-golden and her white shoulders hisâ âIrene, the prize of his love-passion, resistant to his ownership. He saw Bosinneyâs body lying in that white mortuary, and Irene sitting on the sofa looking at space with the eyes of a dying bird. Again he thought of her by the little green Niobe in the Bois de Boulogne, once more rejecting him. His fancy took him on beside his drifting river on the November day when Fleur was to be born, took him to the dead leaves floating on the green-tinged water and the snake-headed weed forever swaying and nosing, sinuous, blind, tethered. And on again to the window opened to the cold starry night above Hyde Park, with his father lying dead. His fancy darted to that picture of âthe future town,â to that boyâs and Fleurâs first meeting; to the bluish trail of Prosper Profondâs cigar, and Fleur in the window pointing down to where the fellow prowled. To the sight of Irene and that dead fellow sitting side by side in the stand at Lordâs. To her and that boy at Robin Hill. To the sofa, where Fleur lay crushed up in the corner; to her lips pressed into his cheek, and her farewell âDaddy.â And suddenly he saw again Ireneâs grey-gloved hand waving its last gesture of release.
He sat there a long time dreaming his career, faithful to the scut of his possessive instinct, warming himself even with its failures.
âTo Letââ âthe Forsyte age and way of life, when a man owned his soul, his investments, and his woman, without check or question. And now the State had, or would have, his investments, his woman had herself, and God knew who had his soul. âTo Letââ âthat sane and simple creed!
The waters of change were foaming in, carrying the promise of new forms only when their destructive flood should have passed its full. He sat there, subconscious of them, but with his thoughts resolutely set on the pastâ âas a man might ride into a wild night with his face to the tail of his galloping horse. Athwart the Victorian dykes the waters were rolling on property, manners, and morals, on melody and the old forms of artâ âwaters bringing to his mouth a salt taste as of blood, lapping to the foot of this Highgate Hill where Victorianism lay buried. And sitting there, high up on its most individual spot, Soamesâ âlike a figure of Investmentâ ârefused their restless sounds. Instinctively he would not fight themâ âthere was in him too much primeval wisdom, of Man the possessive animal. They would quiet down when they had fulfilled their tidal fever of dispossessing and destroying; when the creations and the properties of others were sufficiently broken and defectedâ âthey would lapse and ebb, and fresh forms would rise based on an instinct older than the fever of changeâ âthe instinct of Home.
âJe mâen fiche,â said Prosper Profond. Soames did not say âJe mâen ficheââ âit was French, and the fellow was a thorn in his sideâ âbut deep down he knew that change was only the interval of death between two forms of life, destruction necessary to make room for fresher property. What though the board was up, and cosiness to let?â âsomeone would come along and take it again some day.
And only one thing really troubled him, sitting thereâ âthe melancholy craving in his heartâ âbecause the sun was like enchantment on his face and on the clouds and on the golden birch leaves, and the windâs rustle was so gentle, and the yew-tree green so dark, and the sickle of a moon pale in the sky.
He might wish and wish and never get itâ âthe beauty and the loving in the world!
Colophon
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