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Georg Ebers - "The Emperor, Part 1, Volume 2."

Samuel Pepys - "Diary of Samuel Pepys, March 1663/64"

George Meredith - "The Tragic Comedians, Complete"

John Galsworthy - "The Project Gutenberg Plays of John Galsworthy, Complete"

The Forsyte Saga, Complete

J >> John Galsworthy >> The Forsyte Saga, Complete




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 "immortelles," 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 his--Irene, the prize of his
love-passion, resistant to his ownership. He saw Bosinney's 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 for ever 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 "the future town," to that boy's and Fleur's first
meeting; to the bluish trail of Prosper Profond's 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 Lord's.
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
"Daddy." And suddenly he saw again Irene's 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.

"To Let"--the 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. "To Let"--that 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
past--as 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
art--waters 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, Soames--like a
figure of Investment--refused their restless sounds. Instinctively he
would not fight them--there 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 defected--they
would lapse and ebb, and fresh forms would rise based on an instinct
older than the fever of change--the instinct of Home.

"Je m'en fiche," said Prosper Profond. Soames did not say "Je m'en
fiche"--it was French, and the fellow was a thorn in his side--but 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?--some one would come
along and take it again some day.

And only one thing really troubled him, sitting there--the melancholy
craving in his heart--because the sun was like enchantment on his face
and on the clouds and on the golden birch leaves, and the wind's rustle
was so gentle, and the yewtree green so dark, and the sickle of a moon
pale in the sky.

He might wish and wish and never get it--the beauty and the loving in
the world!