The Forsyte Saga Volume 2(308)

‘Yes, ma’am?’

‘I was to meet Mr Forsyte here at noon about the farm.’

‘Oh, yes, ma’am; Mr Forsyte came early. He was very sorry he had to go away. He left this note for you.’

‘He’s not coming back?’

‘No, ma’am, he was very sorry, but he couldn’t come back today.’

‘Thank you.’

Fleur went back to the gate. She stood there, turning the note over and over. Suddenly she broke the seal and read:

Last night Anne told me of her own accord that she knew what had happened. She told me, too, that she is to have a child. I have promised her not to see you again. Forgive me and forget me, as I must forget you.

JON

Slowly, as if not knowing, she tore the sheet of paper and the envelope into tiny fragments and buried them in the hedge. Then she walked slowly, as if not seeing, to her car, and got in. She sat there stonily, alongside the orchard with the sunlight on her neck and scent from wind-fallen rotting apples in her nostrils. For four months, since in the canteen she saw Jon’s tired smile, he had been one long thought in her mind. And this was the end! Oh! Let her get away – away from here!

She started the car, and, once out of the lane, drove at a great pace. If she broke her neck, all the better! But Providence, which attends the drunk and desperate, was about her – spying out her ways; and she did not break her neck. For more than two hours she drove, hardly knowing where. At three in the afternoon she had her first impulse – a craving to smoke, a longing for tea. She got some at an inn, and turned her car towards Dorking. Driving more slowly now, she arrived between four and five. She had been at the wheel for nearly six hours. And the first thing she saw outside the ‘Rest House’ was her father’s car. He! What had he come for? Why did people pester her? On the point of starting the engine again, she saw him come out of the front door, and stand looking up and down the road. Something groping in that look of his touched her, and, leaving the car, she walked towards him.





Chapter Eleven



‘GREAT FORSYTE’



ON the morning after the Slum Conversion Committee meeting Soames had started early. It was his intention to spend the night somewhere ‘down there’, look at his roots the following morning, and motor part of the way home. On the day after, he would return to town and see if he couldn’t carry Fleur back with him to Mapledurham for a long week-end. He reached a seaside hostel ten miles from his origin about six o’clock, ate a damp dinner, smoked his own cigar, and went to a bed in which, for insurance sake, he placed a camel’s hair shawl.

He had thought things out, and was provided with an ordnance map on an inordinate scale. He meant to begin his investigation by seeing the church. For he had little to go by except a memory that his father James had once been down, and had returned speaking of a church by the sea, and supposing that there might be ‘parish entries and that, but it was a long time back and he didn’t know’.

After an early breakfast he directed Riggs towards the church. As James had said, it was close to the sea, and it was open. Soames went in. A little old grey church with funny pews and a damp smell. There wouldn’t be any tablets to his name, he supposed. There were not, and he went out again, to wander among the gravestones, overcome by a sense of unreality – everything underground, and each gravestone, older than the last century, undecipherable. He was about to turn away when he stumbled. Looking down in disapproval at a flat stone, he saw on the worn and lichened surface a capital F. He stood for a minute, scrutinizing, then went down on his knees with a sort of thrill. Two names – the first had an undoubted capital J, a y, and an n; the second name began with that capital F, and had what looked like an s in the middle, and the remains of a tall letter last but one! The date? By George – the date was legible! 1777. Scraping gingerly at the first name, he disinterred an o. Four letters out of the six in Jolyon; three letters out of Forsyte. There could hardly be a doubt that he had stumbled over his great-great-grandfather! Supposing the old chap had lived to the ordinary age of a Forsyte, his birth would be near the beginning of the eighteenth century! His eyes gimletted the stone with a hard grey glance as though to pierce to the bones beneath – clean as a whistle long since, no doubt! Then he rose from his knees and dusted them. He had a date now. And, singularly fortified, he emerged from the graveyard, and cast a suspicious look at Riggs. Had he been seen on his knees? But the fellow was seated, as usual, with his back to everything, smoking his eternal cigarette. Soames got into the car.

‘I want the vicarage now, or whatever it is.’