John Galsworthy

A Silent Wooing

The first of February, 1924, Jon Forsyte, convalescing from the ‘flu, was sitting in the lounge of an hotel at Camden, South Carolina, with his bright hair slowly rising on his scalp. He was reading about a lynching.

A voice behind him said:

“Will you join our picnic over at those old-time mounds today?”

Looking up, he saw a young acquaintance called Francis Wilmot, who came from further south.

“Very glad to. Who’s going?”

“Why, just Mr. and Mrs. Pulmore Hurrison, and that English novelist, Gurdon Minho, and the Blair girls and their friends, and my sister Anne and I. You could ride over horseback, if you want exercise.”

“All right; they’ve got some new horses in this morning from Columbia.”

“Why, that’s fine! My sister and I’ll ride horseback too, and some of the Blair girls. The Hurrisons can take the others.”

“I say,” said Jon, “this is a pretty bad case of lynching.”

The young man to whom he spoke leaned in the window. Jon admired his face, as of ivory, with dark hair and eyes, and narrow nose and lips, and his lissom attitude.

“All you Britishers go off the deep-end when you read of a lynching. You haven’t got the negro problem up where you are at Southern Pines. They don’t have it any to speak of in North Carolina.”

“No, and I don’t profess to understand it. But I can’t see why negroes shouldn’t be tried the same as white men. There may be cases where you’ve got to shoot at sight; but how can you defend mob law? Once you catch a man, he ought to be tried properly.”

“We’re not taking any chances with that particular kind of trouble.”

“But without trial, how can you tell he’s guilty?”

“Well, we’d sooner do without an innocent darkie now and again than risk our women.”

“But killing a man for a thing he hasn’t done is the limit.”

“Maybe, in Europe. But, here, things are in the large, still.”

“What do they think about lynching in the north?”

“They squeal a bit, but they’ve no call to. If we’ve got negroes, they’ve got the Reds, and they surely have a wholesale way with them.”

Jon Forsyte tilted back his rocking-chair, with a puzzled frown.

“I reckon there’s too much space left in this country,” said Francis Wilmot; “a man has all the chances to get off. So where we feel strong about a thing, we take the law into our own hands.”

“Well, every country to its own fashions. What are these mounds we’re going to?”

“Old Indian remains that go way back thousands of years, they say. You haven’t met my sister? She only came last night.”

“No. What time do we start?”

“Noon; it’s about an hour’s ride by the woods.”

At noon then, in riding kit, Jon came out to the five horses, for more than one of the Blair girls had elected to ride. He started between them, Francis Wilmot going ahead with his sister.

The Blair girls were young and pretty with a medium-coloured, short-faced, well-complexioned, American prettiness, of a type to which he had become accustomed during the two and a half years he had spent in the United States. They were at first extremely silent, and then extremely vocal. They rode astride, and very well. Jon learned that they, as well as the givers of the picnic, Mr. and Mrs. Pulmore Hurrison, inhabited Long Island. They asked him many questions about England, to which Jon, who had left it at the age of nineteen, invented many answers. He began to look longingly between his horse’s ears at Francis Wilmot and his sister, cantering ahead in a silence that, from a distance, seemed extremely restful. Their way led through pine woods—of trees spindly and sparse, and over a rather sandy soil; the sunlight was clear and warm, the air still crisp. Jon rode a single-footing bay horse, and felt as one feels on the first day of recovered health.

The Blair girls wished to know what he thought of the English novelist—they were dying to see a real highbrow. Jon had only read one of his books, and of the characters therein could only remember a cat. The Blair girls had read none; but they had heard that his cats were “just too cunning.”

Francis Wilmot, reining up in front, pointed at a large mound which certainly seemed to be unnaturally formed. They all reined up, looked at it for two minutes in silence, remarked that it was “very interesting,” and rode on. In a hollow the occupants of two cars were disembarking food. Jon led the horses away to tether them alongside the horses of Wilmot and his sister.

“My sister,” said Francis Wilmot.

“Mr. Forsyte,” said the sister.

She looked at Jon, and Jon looked at her. She was slim but distinctly firm, in a long dark-brown coat and breeches and boots; her hair was bobbed and dark under a soft brown felt hat. Her face was pale, rather browned, and had a sort of restrained eagerness—the brow broad and clear, the nose straight and slightly sudden, the mouth unreddened, rather wide and pretty. But what struck Jon were her eyes, which were exactly his idea of a water nymph’s. They slanted a little, and were steady and brown and enticing; whether there was ever such a slight squint in them he could not tell, but if there were it was an improvement. He felt shy. Neither of them spoke.

Francis Wilmot reckoned that he was hungry, and they walked side by side towards the eatables.

Jon said suddenly to the sister:

“You’ve just come then, Miss Wilmot?”

“Yes, Mr. Forsyte.”

“Where from?”

“From Naseby. It’s way down between Charleston and Savannah.”

“Oh, Charleston! I liked Charleston.”

“Anne likes Savannah best,” said Francis Wilmot.

Anne nodded. She was not talkative, it seemed, though her voice had sounded pleasant in small quantities.

“It’s kind of lonely where we live,” said Francis. “Mostly darkies. Anne’s never seen an Englishman to speak to.”

Anne smiled. Jon also smiled. Neither pursued the subject. They arrived at the eatables, spread in a manner calculated to give the maximum of muscular and digestive exertion. Mrs. Pulmore Hurrison, a lady of forty or so, and of defined features, was seated with her feet turned up; next to her, Gurdon Minho, the English novelist, had his legs in a more reserved position; and then came quantities of seated girls, all with pretty, unreserved legs; Mr. Pulmore Hurrison, somewhat apart, was pursing a small mouth over the cork of a large bottle. Jon and the Wilmots also sat down. The picnic had begun.

Jon soon realised that everybody was expecting Gurdon Minho to say something beyond “Yes” “Really!” “Ah!” “Quite!” This did not occur. The celebrated novelist was at first almost painfully attentive to what everybody else said, and then seemed to go into a coma. Jon felt a patriotic disappointment, for he himself was, if anything, even more silent. He could see that, among the three Blair girls and their two girl friends, a sort of conspiracy was brewing, to quiz the silent English in the privacy of the future. Francis Wilmot’s speechless sister was a comfort to him, therefore, for he felt that she would neither be entitled nor inclined to join that conspiracy. He took refuge in handing victuals and was glad when the period of eating on constricted stomachs was over. Picnics were like Christmas Day, better in the future and the past than in the present. After the normal period of separation into genders, the baskets were repacked, and all resorted to their vehicles. The two cars departed for another mound said to be two miles off. Francis Wilmot and the two Blair girls believed that they would get back and watch the polo. Jon asked Anne Wilmot which she wished to do. She elected to see the other mound.

They mounted and pursued a track through the woods in silence, till Jon said:

“Do you like picnics?”

“I certainty do not.”

“Nor do I. But riding?”

“I just adore it more than anything in the world.”

“More than dancing?”

“Surely. Riding and swimming.”

“Ah! I THOUGHT—” And he was silent.

“What did you think?”

“Well, I thought somehow you were a good swimmer.”

“Why?”

Jon said with embarrassment:

“By your eyes—”

“What! Are they fishy?”

Jon laughed.

“Not exactly. They’re like a water nymph’s.”

“I don’t just know if that’s a compliment.”

“Of course it is.”

“I thought nymphs weren’t respectable.”

“Oh! WATER nymphs—very! Shy, of course.”

“Do you have many in England?”

“No. As a matter of fact I’ve never seen one before.”

“Then how do you know?”

“Just a general sense of what’s fitting.”

“I suppose you had a classical education. Don’t you all have that in England?”

“Far from it.”

“And how do you like America, Mr. Forsyte?”

“Very much. I get homesick sometimes.”

“I’d love to travel.”

“You never have?”

She shook her head. “I just stay at home and look after things. But I reckon we’ll have to sell the old home—cotton doesn’t pay any more.”

“I grow peaches near Southern Pines, you know, up in North Carolina; that’s paying at present.”

“D’you live there alone?”

“No; with my mother.”

“Is she English?”

“Yes.”

“Have you a father?”

“He died four years ago.”

“Francis and I have been orphans ten years.”

“I wish you’d both come and stay with us some day; my mother would be awfully glad.”

“Is she like you?”

Jon laughed.

“No. She’s beautiful.”

The eyes regarded him gravely, the lips smiled faintly.

“I’d just love to come, but Francis and I can’t ever be away together.”

“But,” said Jon, “you’re both here.”

“We go back tomorrow; I wanted to see Camden.” The eyes resumed their steady consideration of Jon’s face. “Won’t you come back with us and see our home—it’s old? Francis would like to have you come.”