The Forsyte Saga, Volume 3

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The Forsyte Saga

Volume 3

John Galsworthy, the son of a solicitor, was born in 1867 and educated at Harrow and New College, Oxford. He was called to the Bar in 1890, but a chance meeting with Joseph Conrad, and the strong influence of his future wife, turned him to writing. A collection of short stories, From the Four Winds (1897), was followed by a novel entitled Jocelyn (1898). The Man of Property appeared in 1906 and, together with In Chancery and To Let, completed the first volume of the Forsyte trilogy, The Forsyte Saga, published in 1922. His playwrighting career began in 1906 with The Silver Box, the first of a long line of plays with social and moral themes. The second Forsyte trilogy, which contained The White Monkey, The Silver Spoon and Swan Song, was published as A Modern Comedy in 1929. In 1931 Galsworthy followed the immense success of the Forsyte books with a further collection of stories, On Forsyte Change. The final Forsyte trilogy, containing Maid in Waiting, Flowering Wilderness and Over the River, was published posthumously as The End of the Chapter in 1934. The nine novels in his three Forsyte trilogies are all published by Penguin. A television serial of the Forsyte chronicles, presented by the BBC in 1967, received great critical acclaim in Great Britain and over the world.

The first President of the PEN Club, John Galsworthy was the recipient of several honorary degrees and other literary honours. He was made an OM in 1929 and received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932. He lived on Dartmoor for many years and afterwards at Bury on the Sussex Downs. He died in 1933.

John Galsworthy

THE FORSYTE SAGA

Volume 3

MAID IN WAITING

FLOWERING WILDERNESS

OVER THE RIVER

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Published by the Penguin Group

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Maid in Waiting first published by William Heinemann Ltd 1931

Published in Penguin Books 1968

Flowering Wilderness first published by William Heinemann Ltd 1932

Published in Penguin Books 1968

Over the River first published by William Heinemann Ltd 1933

Published in Penguin Books 1968

This one-volume edition of The End of the Chapter, the last trilogy of
The Forsyte Chronicles, first published in Penguin Books 1990

Reprinted under the present title in Penguin Classics 2001

11

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-195873-6

Contents

MAID IN WAITING

FLOWERING WILDERNESS

OVER THE RIVER

MAID IN WAITING

TO
Frank Galsworthy

Chapter One

THE Bishop of Porthminster was sinking fast; they had sent for his four nephews, his two nieces and their one husband. It was not thought that he would last the night.

He who had been ‘Cuffs’ Cherrell (for so the name Charwell is pronounced) to his cronies at Harrow and Cambridge in the sixties, the Reverend Cuthbert Cherrell in his two London parishes, Canon Cherrell in the days of his efflorescence as a preacher, and Cuthbert Porthminster for the last eighteen years, had never married. For eighty-two years he had lived and for fifty-five, having been ordained rather late, had represented God upon certain portions of the earth. This and the control of his normal instincts since the age of twenty-six had given to his face a repressed dignity which the approach of death did not disturb. He awaited it almost quizzically, judging from the twist of his eyebrow and the tone in which he said so faintly to his nurse:

‘You will get a good sleep tomorrow, nurse. I shall be punctual, no robes to put on.’

The best wearer of robes in the whole episcopacy, the most distinguished in face and figure, maintaining to the end the dandyism which had procured him the nickname ‘Cuffs’, lay quite still, his grey hair brushed and his face like ivory. He had been a bishop so long that no one knew now what he thought about death, or indeed about anything, except the prayer book, any change in which he had deprecated with determination. In one never remarkable for expressing his feelings the ceremony of life had overlaid the natural reticence, as embroidery and jewels will disguise the foundation stuff of vestment.

He lay in a room with mullion windows, an ascetic room in a sixteenth-century house, close to the Cathedral, whose scent of age was tempered but imperfectly by the September air coming in. Some zinnias in an old vase on the window-sill made the only splash of colour, and it was noticed by the nurse that his eyes scarcely left it, except to close from time to time. About six o’clock they informed him that all the family of his long-dead elder brother had arrived.

‘Ah! See that they are comfortable. I should like to see Adrian.’

When an hour later he opened his eyes again, they fell on his nephew Adrian seated at the foot of the bed. For some minutes he contemplated the lean and wrinkled brownness of a thin bearded face, topped with grizzling hair, with a sort of faint astonishment, as though finding his nephew older than he had expected. Then, with lifted eyebrows and the same just quizzical tone in his faint voice, he said:

‘My dear Adrian! Good of you! Would you mind coming closer? Ah! I haven’t much strength, but what I have I wanted you to have the benefit of; or perhaps, as you may think, the reverse. I must speak to the point or not at all. You are not a Churchman, so what I have to say I will put in the words of a man of the world, which once I was myself, perhaps have always been. I have heard that you have an affection, or may I say infatuation, for a lady who is not in a position to marry you – is that so?’

The face of his nephew, kindly and wrinkled, was gentle with an expression of concern.

‘It is, Uncle Cuthbert. I am sorry if it troubles you.’

‘A mutual affection?’

His nephew shrugged.

‘My dear Adrian, the world has changed in its judgements since my young days, but there is still a halo around marriage. That, however, is a matter for your conscience and is not my point.