To Let, John Galsworthy [good non fiction books to read txt] 📗
- Author: John Galsworthy
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In--Sold To Little Dealers, And The Housewives Of Fulham. And Yet--What
Could One Do? Buy Them And Stick Them In A Lumber-Room? No; They Had To
Go The Way Of All Flesh And Furniture, And Be Worn Out. But When They
Put Up Aunt Ann's Sofa And Were Going To Knock It Down For Thirty
Shillings, He Cried Out, Suddenly: "Five Pounds!" The Sensation Was
Considerable, And The Sofa His.
When That Little Sale Was Over In The Fusty Saleroom, And Those
Victorian Ashes Scattered, He Went Out Into The Misty October Sunshine
Feeling As If Cosiness Had Died Out Of The World, And The Board "To
Let" Was Up, Indeed. Revolutions On The Horizon; Fleur In Spain; No
Comfort In Annette; No Timothy's On The Bayswater Road. In The
Irritable Desolation Of His Soul He Went Into The Goupenor Gallery.
That Chap Jolyon's Water-Colours Were On View There. He Went In To Look
Down His Nose At Them--It Might Give Him Some Faint Satisfaction. The
News Had Trickled Through From June To Val's Wife, From Her To Val,
From Val To His Mother, From Her To Soames, That The House--The Fatal
House At Robin Hill--Was For Sale, And Irene Going To Join Her Boy Out
In British Columbia, Or Some Such Place. For One Wild Moment The
Thought Had Come To Soames: 'Why Shouldn't I Buy It Back? I Meant It
For My--!' No Sooner Come Than Gone. Too Lugubrious A Triumph; With Two
Many Humiliating Memories For Himself And Fleur. She Would Never Live
There After What Had Happened. No, The Place Must Go Its Way To Some
Peer Or Profiteer. It Had Been A Bone Of Contention From The First, The
Shell Of The Feud And With The Woman Gone, It Was An Empty Shell. "For
Sale Or To Let." With His Mind's Eye He Could See That Board Raised
High Above The Ivied Wall Which He Had Built.
Part III XI (The Last Of The Forsytes) Pg 140He Passed Through The First Of The Two Rooms In The Gallery. There Was
Certainly A Body Of Work! And Now That The Fellow Was Dead It Did Not
Seem So Trivial. The Drawings Were Pleasing Enough, With Quite A Sense
Of Atmosphere, And Something Individual In The Brush Work. 'His Father
And My Father; He And I; His Child And Mine!' Thought Soames. So It Had
Gone On! And All About That Woman! Softened By The Events Of The Past
Week, Affected By The Melancholy Beauty Of The Autumn Day, Soames Came
Nearer Than He Had Ever Been To Realisation Of That Truth--Passing The
Understanding Of A Forsyte Pure--That The Body Of Beauty Has A
Spiritual Essence, Uncapturable Save By A Devotion Which Thinks Not Of
Self. After All, He Was Near That Truth In His Devotion To His
Daughter; Perhaps That Made Him Understand A Little How He Had Missed
The Prize. And There, Among The Drawings Of His Kinsman, Who Had
Attained To That Which He Had Found Beyond His Reach, He Thought Of Him
And Her With A Tolerance Which Surprised Him. But He Did Not Buy A
Drawing.
Just As He Passed The Seat Of Custom On His Return To The Outer Air He
Met With A Contingency Which Had Not Been Entirely Absent From His Mind
When He Went Into The Gallery--Irene, Herself, Coming In. So She Had
Not Gone Yet, And Was Still Paying Farewell Visits To That Fellow's
Remains! He Subdued The Little Involuntary Leap Of His
Subconsciousness, The Mechanical Reaction Of His Senses To The Charm Of
This Once-Owned Woman, And Passed Her With Averted Eyes. But When He
Had Gone By He Could Not For The Life Of Him Help Looking Back. This,
Then, Was Finality--The Heat And Stress Of His Life, The Madness And
The Longing Thereof, The Long, The Only Defeat He Had Known, Would Be
Over When She Faded From His View This Time; Even Such Memories Had
Their Own Queer Aching Value. She, Too, Was Looking Back. Suddenly She
Lifted Her Gloved Hand, Her Lips Smiled Faintly, Her Dark Eyes Seemed
To Speak. It Was The Turn Of Soames To Make No Answer To That Smile And
That Little Farewell Wave; He Went Out Into The Fashionable Street
Quivering From Head To Foot. He Knew What She Had Meant To Say: "Now
That I Am Going For Ever Out Of The Reach Of You And Yours--Forgive Me;
I Wish You Well." That Was The Meaning; Last Sign Of That Terrible
Reality--Passing Morality, Duty, Common Sense--Her Aversion From Him
Who Had Owned Her Body But Had Never Touched Her Spirit Or Her Heart.
It Hurt; Yes--More Than If She Had Kept Her Mask Unmoved, Her Hand
Unlifted.
Part III XI (The Last Of The Forsytes) Pg 141Three Days Later, In That Fast-Yellowing October, Soames Took A
Taxi-Cab To Highgate Cemetery And Mounted Through Its White Forest To
The Forsyte Vault. Close To The Cedar, Above Catacombs And Columbaria,
Tall, Ugly, And Individual, It Looked Like An Apex Of The Competitive
System. He Could Remember A Discussion Wherein Swithin Had Advocated
The Addition To Its Face Of The Pheasant Proper. The Proposal Had Been
Rejected In Favour Of A Wreath In Stone, Above The Stark Words: "The
Family Vault Of Jolyon Forsyte: 1850." It Was In Good Order. All Trace
Of The Recent Interment Had Been Removed, And Its Sober Grey Gloomed
Reposefully In The Sunshine. The Whole Family Lay There Now, Except Old
Jolyon's Wife, Who Had Gone Back Under A Contract To Her Own Family
Vault In Suffolk; Old Jolyon Himself Lying At Robin Hill; And Susan
Hayman, Cremated So That None Knew Where She Might Be. Soames Gazed At
It With Satisfaction--Massive, Needing Little Attention; And This Was
Important, For He Was Well Aware That No One Would Attend To It When He
Himself Was Gone, And He Would Have To Be Looking Out For Lodgings
Soon. He Might Have Twenty Years Before Him, But One Never Knew. Twenty
Years Without An Aunt Or Uncle, With A Wife Of Whom One Had Better Not
Know Anything, With A Daughter Gone From Home. His Mood Inclined To
Melancholy And Retrospection. This Cemetery Was Quite Full Now--Of
People With Extraordinary Names, Buried In Extraordinary Taste. Still,
They Had A Fine View Up Here, Right Over London. Annette Had Once Given
Him A Story To Read By That Frenchman, Maupassant--A Most Lugubrious
Concern, Where All The Skeletons Emerged From Their Graves One Night,
And All The Pious Inscriptions On The Stones Were Altered To
Descriptions Of Their Sins. Not A True Story At All. He Didn't Know
About The French, But There Was Not Much Real Harm In English People
Except Their Teeth And Their Taste, Which Were Certainly Deplorable.
"The Family Vault Of Jolyon Forsyte, 1850." A Lot Of People Had Been
Buried Here Since Then--A Lot Of English Life Crumbled To Mould And
Dust! The Boom Of An Airplane Passing Under The Gold-Tinted Clouds
Caused Him To Lift His Eyes. The Deuce Of A Lot Of Expansion Had Gone
On. But It All Came Back To A Cemetery--To A Name And A Date On A Tomb.
And He Thought With A Curious Pride That He And His Family Had Done
Little Or Nothing To Help This Feverish Expansion. Good Solid
Middlemen, They Had Gone To Work With Dignity To Manage And Possess.
"Superior Dosset," Indeed, Had Built, In A Dreadful, And Jolyon
Painted, In A Doubtful Period, But So Far As He Remembered Not Another
Of Them All Had Soiled His Hands By Creating Anything--Unless You
Counted Val Dartie And His Horse-Breeding.
Part III XI (The Last Of The Forsytes) Pg 142Collectors, Solicitors,
Barristers, Merchants, Publishers, Accountants, Directors, Land Agents,
Even Soldiers--There They Had Been! The Country Had Expanded, As It
Were, In Spite Of Them. They Had Checked, Controlled, Defended, And
Taken Advantage Of The Process--And When You Considered How "Superior
Dosset" Had Begun Life With Next To Nothing, And His Lineal Descendants
Already Owned What Old Gradman Estimated At Between A Million And A
Million And A Half, It Was Not So Bad! And Yet He Sometimes Felt As If
The Family Bolt Was Shot, Their Possessive Instinct Dying Out. They
Seemed Unable To Make Money--This Fourth Generation; They Were Going
Into Art, Literature, Farming, Or The Army; Or Just Living On What Was
Left Them--They Had No Push And No Tenacity. They Would Die Out If They
Didn't Take Care.
Soames Turned From The Vault And Faced Towards 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, Arid 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
Her Picture 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.
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