Soames doggedly let the spring come—no easy task for one
conscious that time was flying, his birds in the bush no nearer
the hand, no issue from the web anywhere visible. Mr. Polteed
reported nothing, except that his watch went on—costing a lot of
money. Val and his cousin were gone to the war, whence came news
more favourable; Dartie was behaving himself so far; James had
retained his health; business prospered almost terribly—there was
nothing to worry Soames except that he was “held up,” could make
no step in any direction.
He did not exactly avoid Soho, for he could not afford to let
them think that he had “piped off,” as James would have put it—he
might want to “pipe on” again at any minute. But he had to be so
restrained and cautious that he would often pass the door of the
Restaurant Bretagne without going in, and wander out of the
purlieus of that region which always gave him the feeling of
having been possessively irregular.
He wandered thus one May night into Regent Street and the most
amazing crowd he had ever seen; a shrieking, whistling, dancing,
jostling, grotesque and formidably jovial crowd, with false noses
and mouth-organs, penny whistles and long feathers, every
appanage of idiocy, as it seemed to him. Mafeking! Of course, it
had been relieved! Good! But was that an excuse? Who were these
people, what were they, where had they come from into the West
End? His face was tickled, his ears whistled into. Girls cried:
“Keep your hair on, stucco!” A youth so knocked off his top-hat
that he recovered it with difficulty. Crackers were exploding
beneath his nose, between his feet. He was bewildered,
exasperated, offended. This stream of people came from every
quarter, as if impulse had unlocked flood-gates, let flow waters
of whose existence he had heard, perhaps, but believed in never.
This, then, was the populace, the innumerable living negation of
gentility and Forsyteism. This was—egad!—Democracy! It stank,
yelled, was hideous! In the East End, or even Soho, perhaps—but
here in Regent Street, in Piccadilly! What were the police about!
In 1900, Soames, with his Forsyte thousands, had never seen the
cauldron with the lid off; and now looking into it, could hardly
believe his scorching eyes. The whole thing was unspeakable!
These people had no restraint, they seemed to think him funny;
such swarms of them, rude, coarse, laughing—and what laughter!
Nothing sacred to them! He shouldn’t be surprised if they began
to break windows. In Pall Mall, past those august dwellings, to
enter which people paid sixty pounds, this shrieking, whistling,
dancing dervish of a crowd was swarming. From the Club windows
his own kind were looking out on them with regulated amusement.
They didn’t realise! Why, this was serious—might come to
anything! The crowd was cheerful, but some day they would come in
different mood! He remembered there had been a mob in the late
eighties, when he was at Brighton; they had smashed things and
made speeches. But more than dread, he felt a deep surprise. They
were hysterical—it wasn’t English! And all about the relief of a
little town as big as—Watford, six thousand miles away.
Restraint, reserve! Those qualities to him more dear almost than
life, those indispensable attributes of property and culture,
where were they? It wasn’t English! No, it wasn’t English! So
Soames brooded, threading his way on. It was as if he had
suddenly caught sight of someone cutting the covenant “for quiet
possession” out of his legal documents; or of a monster lurking
and stalking out in the future, casting its shadow before. Their
want of stolidity, their want of reverence! It was like
discovering that nine-tenths of the people of England were
foreigners. And if that were so—then, anything might happen!
At Hyde Park Corner he ran into George Forsyte, very sunburnt
from racing, holding a false nose in his hand.
“Hallo, Soames!” he said, “have a nose!”
Soames responded with a pale smile.
“Got this from one of these sportsmen,” went on George, who had
evidently been dining; “had to lay him out—for trying to bash my
hat. I say, one of these days we shall have to fight these chaps,
they’re getting so damned cheeky—all radicals and socialists.
They want our goods. You tell Uncle James that, it’ll make him
sleep.”
“_In vino veritas_,” thought Soames, but he only nodded, and
passed on up Hamilton Place. There was but a trickle of
roysterers in Park Lane, not very noisy. And looking up at the
houses he thought: “After all, we’re the backbone of the country.
They won’t upset us easily. Possession’s nine points of the law.”
But, as he closed the door of his father’s house behind him, all
that queer outlandish nightmare in the streets passed out of his
mind almost as completely as if, having dreamed it, he had
awakened in the warm clean morning comfort of his
spring-mattressed bed.
Walking into the centre of the great empty drawing-room, he stood
still.
A wife! Somebody to talk things over with. One had a right! Damn
it! One had a right!
PART III
CHAPTER I SOAMES IN PARIS
Soames had travelled little. Aged nineteen he had made the “petty
tour” with his father, mother, and Winifred—Brussels, the Rhine,
Switzerland, and home by way of Paris. Aged twenty-seven, just
when he began to take interest in pictures, he had spent five hot
weeks in Italy, looking into the Renaissance—not so much in it as
he had been led to expect—and a fortnight in Paris on his way
back, looking into himself, as became a Forsyte surrounded by
people so strongly self-centred and “foreign” as the French. His
knowledge of their language being derived from his public school,
he did not understand them when they spoke. Silence he had found
better for all parties; one did not make a fool of oneself. He
had disliked the look of the men’s clothes, the closed-in cabs,
the theatres which looked like bee-hives, the Galleries which
smelled of beeswax. He was too cautious and too shy to explore
that side of Paris supposed by Forsytes to constitute its
attraction under the rose; and as for a collector’s bargain—not
one to be had! As Nicholas might have put it—they were a grasping
lot. He had come back uneasy, saying Paris was overrated.
When, therefore, in June of 1900 he went to Paris, it was but his
third attempt on the centre of civilisation. This time, however,
the mountain was going to Mahomet; for he felt by now more deeply
civilised than Paris, and perhaps he really was. Moreover, he had
a definite objective. This was no mere genuflexion to a shrine of
taste and immorality, but the prosecution of his own legitimate
affairs. He went, indeed, because things were getting past a
joke. The watch went on and on, and—nothing—nothing! Jolyon had
never returned to Paris, and no one else was “suspect!” Busy with
new and very confidential matters, Soames was realising more than
ever how essential reputation is to a solicitor. But at night and
in his leisure moments he was ravaged by the thought that time
was always flying and money flowing in, and his own future as
much “in irons” as ever. Since Mafeking night he had become aware
that a “young fool of a doctor” was hanging round Annette. Twice
he had come across him—a cheerful young fool, not more than
thirty.
Nothing annoyed Soames so much as cheerfulness—an indecent,
extravagant sort of quality, which had no relation to facts. The
mixture of his desires and hopes was, in a word, becoming
torture; and lately the thought had come to him that perhaps
Irene knew she was being shadowed: It was this which finally
decided him to go and see for himself; to go and once more try to
break down her repugnance, her refusal to make her own and his
path comparatively smooth once more. If he failed again—well, he
would see what she did with herself, anyway!
He went to an hotel in the Rue Caumartin, highly recommended to
Forsytes, where practically nobody spoke French. He had formed no
plan. He did not want to startle her; yet must contrive that she
had no chance to evade him by flight. And next morning he set out
in bright weather.
Paris had an air of gaiety, a sparkle over its star-shape which
almost annoyed Soames. He stepped gravely, his nose lifted a
little sideways in real curiosity. He desired now to understand
things French. Was not Annette French? There was much to be got
out of his visit, if he could only get it. In this laudable mood
and the Place de la Concorde he was nearly run down three times.
He came on the “Cours la Reine,” where Irene’s hotel was
situated, almost too suddenly, for he had not yet fixed on his
procedure. Crossing over to the river side, he noted the
building, white and cheerful-looking, with green sunblinds, seen
through a screen of plane-tree leaves. And, conscious that it
would be far better to meet her casually in some open place than
to risk a call, he sat down on a bench whence he could watch the
entrance. It was not quite eleven o’clock, and improbable that
she had yet gone out. Some pigeons were strutting and preening
their feathers in the pools of sunlight between the shadows of
the plane-trees. A workman in a blue blouse passed, and threw
them crumbs from the paper which contained his dinner. A
“_bonne_” coiffed with ribbon shepherded two little girls with
pig-tails and frilled drawers. A cab meandered by, whose _cocher_
wore a blue coat and a black-glazed hat. To Soames a kind of
affectation seemed to cling about it all, a sort of
picturesqueness which was out of date. A theatrical people, the
French! He lit one of his rare cigarettes, with a sense of injury
that Fate should be casting his life into outlandish waters. He
shouldn’t wonder if Irene quite enjoyed this foreign life; she
had never been properly English—even to look at! And he began
considering which of those windows could be hers under the green
sunblinds. How could he word what he had come to say so that it
might pierce the defence of her proud obstinacy? He threw the
fag-end of his cigarette at a pigeon, with the thought: “I can’t
stay here for ever twiddling my thumbs. Better give it up and
call on her in the late afternoon.” But he still sat on, heard
twelve strike, and then half-past. “I’ll wait till one,” he
thought, “while I’m about it.” But just then he started up, and
shrinkingly sat down again. A woman had come out in a
cream-coloured frock, and was moving away under a fawn-coloured
parasol. Irene herself! He waited till she was too far away to
recognise him, then set out after her. She was strolling as
though she had no particular objective; moving, if he remembered
rightly, toward the Bois de Boulogne. For half an hour at least
he kept his distance on the far side of the way till she had
passed into the Bois itself. Was she going to meet someone after
all? Some confounded Frenchman—one of those “Bel Ami” chaps,
perhaps, who had nothing to do but hang about women—for he had
read that book with difficulty and a sort of disgusted
fascination. He followed doggedly along a shady alley, losing
sight of her now and then when the path curved. And it came back
to him how, long ago, one night in Hyde Park he had slid and
sneaked from tree to tree, from seat to seat, hunting blindly,
ridiculously, in burning jealousy for her and young Bosinney. The
path bent sharply, and, hurrying, he came on her sitting in front
of a small fountain—a little green-bronze Niobe veiled in hair to
her slender hips, gazing at the pool she had wept: He came on her
so suddenly that he was past before he could turn and take off
his hat. She did not start up. She had always had great
self-command—it was one of the things he most admired in her, one
of his greatest grievances against her, because he had never been
able to tell what she was thinking. Had she realised that he was
following? Her self-possession made him angry; and, disdaining to
explain his presence, he pointed to the mournful little Niobe,
and said:
“That’s rather a good thing.”
He could see, then, that she was struggling to preserve her
composure.
“I didn’t want to startle you; is this one of your haunts?”
“Yes.”
“A little lonely.” As he spoke, a lady, strolling by, paused to
look at the fountain and passed on.
Irene’s eyes followed her.
“No,” she said, prodding the ground with her parasol, “never
lonely. One has always one’s shadow.”
Soames understood; and, looking at her hard, he exclaimed:
“Well, it’s your own fault. You can be free of it at any moment.
Irene, come back to me, and be free.”
Irene laughed.
“Don’t!” cried Soames, stamping his foot; “it’s inhuman. Listen!
Is there any condition I can make which will bring you back to
me? If I promise you a separate house—and just a visit now and
then?”
Irene rose, something wild suddenly in her face and figure.
“None! None! None! You may hunt me to the grave. I will not
come.”
Outraged and on edge, Soames recoiled.
“Don’t make a scene!” he said sharply. And they both stood
motionless, staring at the little Niobe, whose greenish flesh the
sunlight was burnishing.
“That’s your last word, then,” muttered Soames, clenching his
hands; “you condemn us both.”
Irene bent her head. “I can’t come back. Good-bye!”
A feeling of monstrous injustice flared up in Soames.
“Stop!” he said, “and listen to me a moment. You gave me a sacred
vow—you came to me without a penny. You had all I could give you.
You broke that vow without cause, you made me a by-word; you
refused me a child; you’ve left me in prison; you—you still move
me so that I want you—I want you. Well, what do you think of
yourself?”
Irene turned, her face was deadly pale, her eyes burning dark.
“God made me as I am,” she said; “wicked if you like—but not so
wicked that I’ll give myself again to a man I hate.”
The sunlight gleamed on her hair as she moved away, and seemed to
lay a caress all down her clinging cream-coloured frock.
Soames could neither speak nor move. That word “hate”—so extreme,
so primitive—made all the Forsyte in him tremble. With a deep
imprecation he strode away from where she had vanished, and ran
almost into the arms of the lady sauntering back—the fool, the
shadowing fool!
He was soon dripping with perspiration, in the depths of the
Bois.
“Well,” he thought, “I need have no consideration for her now;
she has not a grain of it for me. I’ll show her this very day
that she’s my wife still.”
But on the way home to his hotel, he was forced to the conclusion
that he did not know what he meant. One could not make scenes in
public, and short of scenes in public what was there he could do?
He almost cursed his own thin-skinnedness. She might deserve no
consideration; but he—alas! deserved some at his own hands. And
sitting lunchless in the hall of his hotel, with tourists passing
every moment, Baedeker in hand, he was visited by black
dejection. In irons! His whole life, with every natural instinct
and every decent yearning gagged and fettered, and all because
Fate had driven him seventeen years ago to set his heart upon
this woman—so utterly, that even now he had no real heart to set
on any other! Cursed was the day he had met her, and his eyes for
seeing in her anything but the cruel Venus she was! And yet,
still seeing her with the sunlight on the clinging China crepe of
her gown, he uttered a little groan, so that a tourist who was
passing, thought: “Man in pain! Let’s see! what did I have for
lunch?”
Later, in front of a café near the Opera, over a glass of cold
tea with lemon and a straw in it, he took the malicious
resolution to go and dine at her hotel. If she were there, he
would speak to her; if she were not, he would leave a note. He
dressed carefully, and wrote as follows:
“Your idyll with that fellow Jolyon Forsyte is known to me at all
events. If you pursue it, understand that I will leave no stone
unturned to make things unbearable for him.
‘S. F.’”
He sealed this note but did not address it, refusing to write the
maiden name which she had impudently resumed, or to put the word
Forsyte on the envelope lest she should tear it up unread. Then
he went out, and made his way through the glowing streets,
abandoned to evening pleasure-seekers. Entering her hotel, he
took his seat in a far corner of the dining-room whence he could
see all entrances and exits. She was not there. He ate little,
quickly, watchfully. She did not come. He lingered in the lounge
over his coffee, drank two liqueurs of brandy. But still she did
not come. He went over to the keyboard and examined the names.
Number twelve, on the first floor! And he determined to take the
note up himself. He mounted red-carpeted stairs, past a little
salon; eight-ten-twelve! Should he knock, push the note under,
or...? He looked furtively round and turned the handle. The door
opened, but into a little space leading to another door; he
knocked on that—no answer. The door was locked. It fitted very
closely to the floor; the note would not go under. He thrust it
back into his pocket, and stood a moment listening. He felt
somehow certain that she was not there. And suddenly he came
away, passing the little salon down the stairs. He stopped at the
bureau and said:
“Will you kindly see that Mrs. Heron has this note?”
“Madame Heron left to-day, Monsieur—suddenly, about three
o’clock. There was illness in her family.”
Soames compressed his lips. “Oh!” he said; “do you know her
address?”
“_Non, Monsieur_. England, I think.”
Soames put the note back into his pocket and went out. He hailed
an open horse-cab which was passing.
“Drive me anywhere!”
The man, who, obviously, did not understand, smiled, and waved
his whip. And Soames was borne along in that little
yellow-wheeled Victoria all over star-shaped Paris, with here and
there a pause, and the question, “_C’est par ici, Monsieur?_”
“No, go on,” till the man gave it up in despair, and the
yellow-wheeled chariot continued to roll between the tall,
flat-fronted shuttered houses and plane-tree avenues—a little
Flying Dutchman of a cab.
“Like my life,” thought Soames, “without object, on and on!”
CHAPTER II IN THE WEB
Soames returned to England the following day, and on the third
morning received a visit from Mr. Polteed, who wore a flower and
carried a brown billycock hat. Soames motioned him to a seat.
“The news from the war is not so bad, is it?” said Mr. Polteed.
“I hope I see you well, sir.”
“Thanks! quite.”
Mr. Polteed leaned forward, smiled, opened his hand, looked into
it, and said softly:
“I think we’ve done your business for you at last.”
“What?” ejaculated Soames.
“Nineteen reports quite suddenly what I think we shall be
justified in calling conclusive evidence,” and Mr. Polteed
paused.
“Well?”
“On the 10th instant, after witnessing an interview between 17
and a party, earlier in the day, 19 can swear to having seen him
coming out of her bedroom in the hotel about ten o’clock in the
evening. With a little care in the giving of the evidence that
will be enough, especially as 17 has left Paris—no doubt with the
party in question. In fact, they both slipped off, and we haven’t
got on to them again, yet; but we shall—we shall. She’s worked
hard under very difficult circumstances, and I’m glad she’s
brought it off at last.” Mr. Polteed took out a cigarette, tapped
its end against the table, looked at Soames, and put it back. The
expression on his client’s face was not encouraging.
“Who is this new person?” said Soames abruptly.
“That we don’t know. She’ll swear to the fact, and she’s got his
appearance pat.”
Mr. Polteed took out a letter, and began reading:
“‘Middle-aged, medium height, blue dittoes in afternoon, evening
dress at night, pale, dark hair, small dark moustache, flat
cheeks, good chin, grey eyes, small feet, guilty look....’”
Soames rose and went to the window. He stood there in sardonic
fury. Congenital idiot—spidery congenital idiot! Seven months at
fifteen pounds a week—to be tracked down as his own wife’s lover!
Guilty look! He threw the window open.
“It’s hot,” he said, and came back to his seat.
Crossing his knees, he bent a supercilious glance on Mr. Polteed.
“I doubt if that’s quite good enough,” he said, drawling the
words, “with no name or address. I think you may let that lady
have a rest, and take up our friend 47 at this end.” Whether
Polteed had spotted him he could not tell; but he had a mental
vision of him in the midst of his cronies dissolved in
inextinguishable laughter. “Guilty look!” Damnation!
Mr. Polteed said in a tone of urgency, almost of pathos: “I
assure you we have put it through sometimes on less than that.
It’s Paris, you know. Attractive woman living alone. Why not risk
it, sir? We might screw it up a peg.”
Soames had sudden insight. The fellow’s professional zeal was
stirred: “Greatest triumph of my career; got a man his divorce
through a visit to his own wife’s bedroom! Something to talk of
there, when I retire!” And for one wild moment he thought: “Why
not?” After all, hundreds of men of medium height had small feet
and a guilty look!
“I’m not authorised to take any risk!” he said shortly.
Mr. Polteed looked up.
“Pity,” he said, “quite a pity! That other affair seemed very
costive.”
Soames rose.
“Never mind that. Please watch 47, and take care not to find a
mare’s nest. Good-morning!”
Mr. Polteed’s eye glinted at the words “mare’s nest!”
“Very good. You shall be kept informed.”
And Soames was alone again. The spidery, dirty, ridiculous
business! Laying his arms on the table, he leaned his forehead on
them. Full ten minutes he rested thus, till a managing clerk
roused him with the draft prospectus of a new issue of shares,
very desirable, in Manifold and Topping’s. That afternoon he left
work early and made his way to the Restaurant Bretagne. Only
Madame Lamotte was in. Would _Monsieur_ have tea with her?
Soames bowed.
When they were seated at right angles to each other in the little
room, he said abruptly:
“I want a talk with you, _Madame_.”
The quick lift of her clear brown eyes told him that she had long
expected such words.
“I have to ask you something first: That young doctor—what’s his
name? Is there anything between him and Annette?”
Her whole personality had become, as it were, like jet—clear-cut,
black, hard, shining.
“Annette is young,” she said; “so is _monsieur le docteur_.
Between young people things move quickly; but Annette is a good
daughter. Ah! what a jewel of a nature!”
The least little smile twisted Soames’ lips.
“Nothing definite, then?”
“But definite—no, indeed! The young man is veree nice, but—what
would you? There is no money at present.”
She raised her willow-patterned tea-cup; Soames did the same.
Their eyes met.
“I am a married man,” he said, “living apart from my wife for
many years. I am seeking to divorce her.”
Madame Lamotte put down her cup. Indeed! What tragic things there
were! The entire absence of sentiment in her inspired a queer
species of contempt in Soames.
“I am a rich man,” he added, fully conscious that the remark was
not in good taste. “It is useless to say more at present, but I
think you understand.”
Madame’s eyes, so open that the whites showed above them, looked
at him very straight.
“_Ah! ça—mais nous avons le temps!_” was all she said. “Another
little cup?” Soames refused, and, taking his leave, walked
westward.
He had got that off his mind; she would not let Annette commit
herself with that cheerful young ass until...! But what chance of
his ever being able to say: “I’m free?” What chance? The future
had lost all semblance of reality. He felt like a fly, entangled
in cobweb filaments, watching the desirable freedom of the air
with pitiful eyes.
He was short of exercise, and wandered on to Kensington Gardens,
and down Queen’s Gate towards Chelsea. Perhaps she had gone back
to her flat. That at all events he could find out. For since that
last and most ignominious repulse his wounded self-respect had
taken refuge again in the feeling that she must have a lover. He
arrived before the little Mansions at the dinner-hour. No need to
enquire! A grey-haired lady was watering the flower-boxes in her
window. It was evidently let. And he walked slowly past again,
along the river—an evening of clear, quiet beauty, all harmony
and comfort, except within his heart.
CHAPTER III RICHMOND PARK
On the afternoon that Soames crossed to France a cablegram was
received by Jolyon at Robin Hill:
“Your son down with enteric no immediate danger will cable
again.”
It reached a household already agitated by the imminent departure
of June, whose berth was booked for the following day. She was,
indeed, in the act of confiding Eric Cobbley and his family to
her father’s care when the message arrived.
The resolution to become a Red Cross nurse, taken under stimulus
of Jolly’s enlistment, had been loyally fulfilled with the
irritation and regret which all Forsytes feel at what curtails
their individual liberties. Enthusiastic at first about the
“wonderfulness” of the work, she had begun after a month to feel
that she could train herself so much better than others could
train her. And if Holly had not insisted on following her
example, and being trained too, she must inevitably have “cried
off.” The departure of Jolly and Val with their troop in April
had further stiffened her failing resolve. But now, on the point
of departure, the thought of leaving Eric Cobbley, with a wife
and two children, adrift in the cold waters of an unappreciative
world weighed on her so that she was still in danger of backing
out. The reading of that cablegram, with its disquieting reality,
clinched the matter. She saw herself already nursing Jolly—for of
course they would let her nurse her own brother! Jolyon—ever wide
and doubtful—had no such hope. Poor June!
Could any Forsyte of her generation grasp how rude and brutal
life was? Ever since he knew of his boy’s arrival at Cape Town
the thought of him had been a kind of recurrent sickness in
Jolyon. He could not get reconciled to the feeling that Jolly was
in danger all the time. The cablegram, grave though it was, was
almost a relief. He was now safe from bullets, anyway. And
yet—this enteric was a virulent disease! _The Times_ was full of
deaths therefrom. Why could _he_ not be lying out there in that
up-country hospital, and his boy safe at home? The un-Forsytean
self-sacrifice of his three children, indeed, had quite
bewildered Jolyon. He would eagerly change places with Jolly,
because he loved his boy; but no such personal motive was
influencing _them_. He could only think that it marked the
decline of the Forsyte type.
Late that afternoon Holly came out to him under the old oak-tree.
She had grown up very much during these last months of hospital
training away from home. And, seeing her approach, he thought:
“She has more sense than June, child though she is; more wisdom.
Thank God _she_ isn’t going out.” She had seated herself in the
swing, very silent and still. “She feels this,” thought Jolyon,
“as much as I” and, seeing her eyes fixed on him, he said: “Don’t
take it to heart too much, my child. If he weren’t ill, he might
be in much greater danger.”
Holly got out of the swing.
“I want to tell you something, Dad. It was through me that Jolly
enlisted and went out.”
“How’s that?”
“When you were away in Paris, Val Dartie and I fell in love. We
used to ride in Richmond Park; we got engaged. Jolly found it
out, and thought he ought to stop it; so he dared Val to enlist.
It was all my fault, Dad; and I want to go out too. Because if
anything happens to either of them I should feel awful. Besides,
I’m just as much trained as June.”
Jolyon gazed at her in a stupefaction that was tinged with irony.
So this was the answer to the riddle he had been asking himself;
and his three children were Forsytes after all. Surely Holly
might have told him all this before! But he smothered the
sarcastic sayings on his lips. Tenderness to the young was
perhaps the most sacred article of his belief. He had got, no
doubt, what he deserved. Engaged! So this was why he had so lost
touch with her! And to young Val Dartie—nephew of Soames—in the
other camp! It was all terribly distasteful. He closed his easel,
and set his drawing against the tree.
“Have you told June?”
“Yes; she says she’ll get me into her cabin somehow. It’s a
single cabin; but one of us could sleep on the floor. If you
consent, she’ll go up now and get permission.”
“Consent?” thought Jolyon. “Rather late in the day to ask for
that!” But again he checked himself.
“You’re too young, my dear; they won’t let you.”
“June knows some people that she helped to go to Cape Town. If
they won’t let me nurse yet, I could stay with them and go on
training there. Let me go, Dad!”
Jolyon smiled because he could have cried.
“I never stop anyone from doing anything,” he said.
Holly flung her arms round his neck.
“Oh! Dad, you are the best in the world.”
“That means the worst,” thought Jolyon. If he had ever doubted
his creed of tolerance he did so then.
“I’m not friendly with Val’s family,” he said, “and I don’t know
Val, but Jolly didn’t like him.”
Holly looked at the distance and said:
“I love him.”
“That settles it,” said Jolyon dryly, then catching the
expression on her face, he kissed her, with the thought: “Is
anything more pathetic than the faith of the young?” Unless he
actually forbade her going it was obvious that he must make the
best of it, so he went up to town with June. Whether due to her
persistence, or the fact that the official they saw was an old
school friend of Jolyon’s, they obtained permission for Holly to
share the single cabin. He took them to Surbiton station the
following evening, and they duly slid away from him, provided
with money, invalid foods, and those letters of credit without
which Forsytes do not travel.
He drove back to Robin Hill under a brilliant sky to his late
dinner, served with an added care by servants trying to show him
that they sympathised, eaten with an added scrupulousness to show
them that he appreciated their sympathy. But it was a real relief
to get to his cigar on the terrace of flag-stones—cunningly
chosen by young Bosinney for shape and colour—with night closing
in around him, so beautiful a night, hardly whispering in the
trees, and smelling so sweet that it made him ache. The grass was
drenched with dew, and he kept to those flagstones, up and down,
till presently it began to seem to him that he was one of three,
not wheeling, but turning right about at each end, so that his
father was always nearest to the house, and his son always
nearest to the terrace edge. Each had an arm lightly within his
arm; he dared not lift his hand to his cigar lest he should
disturb them, and it burned away, dripping ash on him, till it
dropped from his lips, at last, which were getting hot. They left
him then, and his arms felt chilly. Three Jolyons in one Jolyon
they had walked.
He stood still, counting the sounds—a carriage passing on the
highroad, a distant train, the dog at Gage’s farm, the whispering
trees, the groom playing on his penny whistle. A multitude of
stars up there—bright and silent, so far off! No moon as yet!
Just enough light to show him the dark flags and swords of the
iris flowers along the terrace edge—his favourite flower that had
the night’s own colour on its curving crumpled petals. He turned
round to the house. Big, unlighted, not a soul beside himself to
live in all that part of it. Stark loneliness! He could not go on
living here alone. And yet, so long as there was beauty, why
should a man feel lonely? The answer—as to some idiot’s
riddle—was: Because he did. The greater the beauty, the greater
the loneliness, for at the back of beauty was harmony, and at the
back of harmony was—union. Beauty could not comfort if the soul
were out of it. The night, maddeningly lovely, with bloom of
grapes on it in starshine, and the breath of grass and honey
coming from it, he could not enjoy, while she who was to him the
life of beauty, its embodiment and essence, was cut off from him,
utterly cut off now, he felt, by honourable decency.
He made a poor fist of sleeping, striving too hard after that
resignation which Forsytes find difficult to reach, bred to their
own way and left so comfortably off by their fathers. But after
dawn he dozed off, and soon was dreaming a strange dream.
He was on a stage with immensely high rich curtains—high as the
very stars—stretching in a semi-circle from footlights to
footlights. He himself was very small, a little black restless
figure roaming up and down; and the odd thing was that he was not
altogether himself, but Soames as well, so that he was not only
experiencing but watching. This figure of himself and Soames was
trying to find a way out through the curtains, which, heavy and
dark, kept him in. Several times he had crossed in front of them
before he saw with delight a sudden narrow rift—a tall chink of
beauty the colour of iris flowers, like a glimpse of Paradise,
remote, ineffable. Stepping quickly forward to pass into it, he
found the curtains closing before him. Bitterly disappointed
he—or was it Soames?—moved on, and there was the chink again
through the parted curtains, which again closed too soon. This
went on and on and he never got through till he woke with the
word “Irene” on his lips. The dream disturbed him badly,
especially that identification of himself with Soames.
Next morning, finding it impossible to work, he spent hours
riding Jolly’s horse in search of fatigue. And on the second day
he made up his mind to move to London and see if he could not get
permission to follow his daughters to South Africa. He had just
begun to pack the following morning when he received this letter:
“GREEN HOTEL,
“RICHMOND.
“_June_ 13.
“MY DEAR JOLYON,
“You will be surprised to see how near I am to you. Paris
became impossible—and I have come here to be within reach of
your advice. I would so love to see you again. Since you left
Paris I don’t think I have met anyone I could really talk to.
Is all well with you and with your boy? No one knows, I
think, that I am here at present.
“Always your friend,
“IRENE.”
Irene within three miles of him!—and again in flight! He stood
with a very queer smile on his lips. This was more than he had
bargained for!
About noon he set out on foot across Richmond Park, and as he
went along, he thought: “Richmond Park! By Jove, it suits us
Forsytes!” Not that Forsytes lived there—nobody lived there save
royalty, rangers, and the deer—but in Richmond Park Nature was
allowed to go so far and no further, putting up a brave show of
being natural, seeming to say: “Look at my instincts—they are
almost passions, very nearly out of hand, but not quite, of
course; the very hub of possession is to possess oneself.” Yes!
Richmond Park possessed itself, even on that bright day of June,
with arrowy cuckoos shifting the tree-points of their calls, and
the wood doves announcing high summer.
The Green Hotel, which Jolyon entered at one o’clock, stood
nearly opposite that more famous hostelry, the Crown and Sceptre;
it was modest, highly respectable, never out of cold beef,
gooseberry tart, and a dowager or two, so that a carriage and
pair was almost always standing before the door.
In a room draped in chintz so slippery as to forbid all emotion,
Irene was sitting on a piano stool covered with crewel work,
playing “Hansel and Gretel” out of an old score. Above her on a
wall, not yet Morris-papered, was a print of the Queen on a pony,
amongst deer-hounds, Scotch caps, and slain stags; beside her in
a pot on the window-sill was a white and rosy fuchsia. The
Victorianism of the room almost talked; and in her clinging frock
Irene seemed to Jolyon like Venus emerging from the shell of the
past century.
“If the proprietor had eyes,” he said, “he would show you the
door; you have broken through his decorations.” Thus lightly he
smothered up an emotional moment. Having eaten cold beef, pickled
walnut, gooseberry tart, and drunk stone-bottle ginger-beer, they
walked into the Park, and light talk was succeeded by the silence
Jolyon had dreaded.
“You haven’t told me about Paris,” he said at last.
“No. I’ve been shadowed for a long time; one gets used to that.
But then Soames came. By the little Niobe—the same story; would I
go back to him?”
“Incredible!”
She had spoken without raising her eyes, but she looked up now.
Those dark eyes clinging to his said as no words could have: “I
have come to an end; if you want me, here I am.”
For sheer emotional intensity had he ever—old as he was—passed
through such a moment?
The words: “Irene, I adore you!” almost escaped him. Then, with a
clearness of which he would not have believed mental vision
capable, he saw Jolly lying with a white face turned to a white
wall.
“My boy is very ill out there,” he said quietly.
Irene slipped her arm through his.
“Let’s walk on; I understand.”
No miserable explanation to attempt! She had understood! And they
walked on among the bracken, knee-high already, between the
rabbit-holes and the oak-trees, talking of Jolly. He left her two
hours later at the Richmond Hill Gate, and turned towards home.
“She knows of my feeling for her, then,” he thought. Of course!
One could not keep knowledge of that from such a woman!
CHAPTER IV OVER THE RIVER
Jolly was tired to death of dreams. They had left him now too wan
and weak to dream again; left him to lie torpid, faintly
remembering far-off things; just able to turn his eyes and gaze
through the window near his cot at the trickle of river running
by in the sands, at the straggling milk-bush of the Karoo beyond.
He knew what the Karoo was now, even if he had not seen a Boer
roll over like a rabbit, or heard the whine of flying bullets.
This pestilence had sneaked on him before he had smelled powder.
A thirsty day and a rash drink, or perhaps a tainted fruit—who
knew? Not he, who had not even strength left to grudge the evil
thing its victory—just enough to know that there were many lying
here with him, that he was sore with frenzied dreaming; just
enough to watch that thread of river and be able to remember
faintly those far-away things....
The sun was nearly down. It would be cooler soon. He would have
liked to know the time—to feel his old watch, so butter-smooth,
to hear the repeater strike. It would have been friendly,
home-like. He had not even strength to remember that the old
watch was last wound the day he began to lie here. The pulse of
his brain beat so feebly that faces which came and went, nurse’s,
doctor’s, orderly’s, were indistinguishable, just one indifferent
face; and the words spoken about him meant all the same thing,
and that almost nothing. Those things he used to do, though far
and faint, were more distinct—walking past the foot of the old
steps at Harrow “bill”—“Here, sir! Here, sir!”—wrapping boots in
the Westminster Gazette, greenish paper, shining
boots—grandfather coming from somewhere dark—a smell of earth—the
mushroom house! Robin Hill! Burying poor old Balthasar in the
leaves! Dad! Home....
Consciousness came again with noticing that the river had no
water in it—someone was speaking too. Want anything? No. What
could one want? Too weak to want—only to hear his watch
strike....
Holly! She wouldn’t bowl properly. Oh! Pitch them up! Not
sneaks!... “Back her, Two and Bow!” He was Two!... Consciousness
came once more with a sense of the violet dusk outside, and a
rising blood-red crescent moon. His eyes rested on it fascinated;
in the long minutes of brain-nothingness it went moving up and
up....
“He’s going, doctor!” Not pack boots again? Never? “Mind your
form, Two!” Don’t cry! Go quietly—over the river—sleep!... Dark?
If somebody would—strike—his—watch!...
CHAPTER V SOAMES ACTS
A sealed letter in the handwriting of Mr. Polteed remained
unopened in Soames’ pocket throughout two hours of sustained
attention to the affairs of the “New Colliery Company,” which,
declining almost from the moment of old Jolyon’s retirement from
the Chairmanship, had lately run down so fast that there was now
nothing for it but a “winding-up.” He took the letter out to
lunch at his City Club, sacred to him for the meals he had eaten
there with his father in the early seventies, when James used to
like him to come and see for himself the nature of his future
life.
Here in a remote corner before a plate of roast mutton and mashed
potato, he read:
“DEAR SIR,
“In accordance with your suggestion we have duly taken the
matter up at the other end with gratifying results.
Observation of 47 has enabled us to locate 17 at the Green
Hotel, Richmond. The two have been observed to meet daily
during the past week in Richmond Park. Nothing absolutely
crucial has so far been notified. But in conjunction with
what we had from Paris at the beginning of the year, I am
confident we could now satisfy the Court. We shall, of
course, continue to watch the matter until we hear from you.
“Very faithfully yours,
“CLAUD POLTEED.”
Soames read it through twice and beckoned to the waiter:
“Take this away; it’s cold.”
“Shall I bring you some more, sir?”
“No. Get me some coffee in the other room.”
And, paying for what he had not eaten, he went out, passing two
acquaintances without sign of recognition.
“Satisfy the Court!” he thought, sitting at a little round marble
table with the coffee before him. That fellow Jolyon! He poured
out his coffee, sweetened and drank it. He would disgrace him in
the eyes of his own children! And rising, with that resolution
hot within him, he found for the first time the inconvenience of
being his own solicitor. He could not treat this scandalous
matter in his own office. He must commit the soul of his private
dignity to a stranger, some other professional dealer in family
dishonour. Who was there he could go to? Linkman and Laver in
Budge Row, perhaps—reliable, not too conspicuous, only nodding
acquaintances. But before he saw them he must see Polteed again.
But at this thought Soames had a moment of sheer weakness. To
part with his secret? How find the words? How subject himself to
contempt and secret laughter? Yet, after all, the fellow knew
already—oh yes, he knew! And, feeling that he must finish with it
now, he took a cab into the West End.
In this hot weather the window of Mr. Polteed’s room was
positively open, and the only precaution was a wire gauze,
preventing the intrusion of flies. Two or three had tried to come
in, and been caught, so that they seemed to be clinging there
with the intention of being devoured presently. Mr. Polteed,
following the direction of his client’s eye, rose apologetically
and closed the window.
“Posing ass!” thought Soames. Like all who fundamentally believe
in themselves he was rising to the occasion, and, with his little
sideway smile, he said: “I’ve had your letter. I’m going to act.
I suppose you know who the lady you’ve been watching really is?”
Mr. Polteed’s expression at that moment was a masterpiece. It so
clearly said: “Well, what do you think? But mere professional
knowledge, I assure you—pray forgive it!” He made a little half
airy movement with his hand, as who should say: “Such things—such
things will happen to us all!”
“Very well, then,” said Soames, moistening his lips: “there’s no
need to say more. I’m instructing Linkman and Laver of Budge Row
to act for me. I don’t want to hear your evidence, but kindly
make your report to them at five o’clock, and continue to observe
the utmost secrecy.”
Mr. Polteed half closed his eyes, as if to comply at once. “My
dear sir,” he said.
“Are you convinced,” asked Soames with sudden energy, “that there
is enough?”
The faintest movement occurred to Mr. Polteed’s shoulders.
“You can risk it,” he murmured; “with what we have, and human
nature, you can risk it.”
Soames rose. “You will ask for Mr. Linkman. Thanks; don’t get
up.” He could not bear Mr. Polteed to slide as usual between him
and the door. In the sunlight of Piccadilly he wiped his
forehead. This had been the worst of it—he could stand the
strangers better. And he went back into the City to do what still
lay before him.
That evening in Park Lane, watching his father dine, he was
overwhelmed by his old longing for a son—a son, to watch _him_
eat as he went down the years, to be taken on _his_ knee as James
on a time had been wont to take him; a son of his own begetting,
who could understand him because he was the same flesh and
blood—understand, and comfort him, and become more rich and
cultured than himself because he would start even better off. To
get old—like that thin, grey wiry-frail figure sitting there—and
be quite alone with possessions heaping up around him; to take no
interest in anything because it had no future and must pass away
from him to hands and mouths and eyes for whom he cared no jot!
No! He would force it through now, and be free to marry, and have
a son to care for him before he grew to be like the old old man
his father, wistfully watching now his sweetbread, now his son.
In that mood he went up to bed. But, lying warm between those
fine linen sheets of Emily’s providing, he was visited by
memories and torture. Visions of Irene, almost the solid feeling
of her body, beset him. Why had he ever been fool enough to see
her again, and let this flood back on him so that it was pain to
think of her with that fellow—that stealing fellow.
CHAPTER VI A SUMMER DAY
His boy was seldom absent from Jolyon’s mind in the days which
followed the first walk with Irene in Richmond Park. No further
news had come; enquiries at the War Office elicited nothing; nor
could he expect to hear from June and Holly for three weeks at
least. In these days he felt how insufficient were his memories
of Jolly, and what an amateur of a father he had been. There was
not a single memory in which anger played a part; not one
reconciliation, because there had never been a rupture; nor one
heart-to-heart confidence, not even when Jolly’s mother died.
Nothing but half-ironical affection. He had been too afraid of
committing himself in any direction, for fear of losing his
liberty, or interfering with that of his boy.
Only in Irene’s presence had he relief, highly complicated by the
ever-growing perception of how divided he was between her and his
son. With Jolly was bound up all that sense of continuity and
social creed of which he had drunk deeply in his youth and again
during his boy’s public school and varsity life—all that sense of
not going back on what father and son expected of each other.
With Irene was bound up all his delight in beauty and in Nature.
And he seemed to know less and less which was the stronger within
him. From such sentimental paralysis he was rudely awakened,
however, one afternoon, just as he was starting off to Richmond,
by a young man with a bicycle and a face oddly familiar, who came
forward faintly smiling.
“Mr. Jolyon Forsyte? Thank you!” Placing an envelope in Jolyon’s
hand he wheeled off the path and rode away. Bewildered, Jolyon
opened it.
“Admiralty Probate and Divorce, Forsyte _v._ Forsyte and
Forsyte!”
A sensation of shame and disgust was followed by the instant
reaction “Why, here’s the very thing you want, and you don’t like
it!” But she must have had one too; and he must go to her at
once. He turned things over as he went along. It was an ironical
business. For, whatever the Scriptures said about the heart, it
took more than mere longings to satisfy the law. They could
perfectly well defend this suit, or at least in good faith try
to. But the idea of doing so revolted Jolyon. If not her lover in
deed he was in desire, and he knew that she was ready to come to
him. Her face had told him so. Not that he exaggerated her
feeling for him. She had had her grand passion, and he could not
expect another from her at his age. But she had trust in him,
affection for him, and must feel that he would be a refuge.
Surely she would not ask him to defend the suit, knowing that he
adored her! Thank Heaven she had not that maddening British
conscientiousness which refused happiness for the sake of
refusing! She must rejoice at this chance of being free after
seventeen years of death in life! As to publicity, the fat was in
the fire! To defend the suit would not take away the slur. Jolyon
had all the proper feeling of a Forsyte whose privacy is
threatened: If he was to be hung by the Law, by all means let it
be for a sheep! Moreover the notion of standing in a witness box
and swearing to the truth that no gesture, not even a word of
love had passed between them seemed to him more degrading than to
take the tacit stigma of being an adulterer—more truly degrading,
considering the feeling in his heart, and just as bad and painful
for his children. The thought of explaining away, if he could,
before a judge and twelve average Englishmen, their meetings in
Paris, and the walks in Richmond Park, horrified him. The
brutality and hypocritical censoriousness of the whole process;
the probability that they would not be believed—the mere vision
of her, whom he looked on as the embodiment of Nature and of
Beauty, standing there before all those suspicious, gloating eyes
was hideous to him. No, no! To defend a suit only made a London
holiday, and sold the newspapers. A thousand times better accept
what Soames and the gods had sent!
“Besides,” he thought honestly, “who knows whether, even for my
boy’s sake, I could have stood this state of things much longer?
Anyway, her neck will be out of chancery at last!” Thus absorbed,
he was hardly conscious of the heavy heat. The sky had become
overcast, purplish with little streaks of white. A heavy
heat-drop plashed a little star pattern in the dust of the road
as he entered the Park. “Phew!” he thought, “thunder! I hope
she’s not come to meet me; there’s a ducking up there!” But at
that very minute he saw Irene coming towards the Gate. “We must
scuttle back to Robin Hill,” he thought.
The storm had passed over the Poultry at four o’clock, bringing
welcome distraction to the clerks in every office. Soames was
drinking a cup of tea when a note was brought in to him:
“DEAR SIR,
_Forsyte v. Forsyte and Forsyte_
“In accordance with your instructions, we beg to inform you
that we personally served the respondent and co-respondent in
this suit to-day, at Richmond, and Robin Hill, respectively.
“Faithfully yours,
“LINKMAN AND LAVER.”
For some minutes Soames stared at that note. Ever since he had
given those instructions he had been tempted to annul them. It
was so scandalous, such a general disgrace! The evidence, too,
what he had heard of it, had never seemed to him conclusive;
somehow, he believed less and less that those two had gone all
lengths. But this, of course, would drive them to it; and he
suffered from the thought. That fellow to have her love, where he
had failed! Was it too late? Now that they had been brought up
sharp by service of this petition, had he not a lever with which
he could force them apart? “But if I don’t act at once,” he
thought, “it will be too late, now they’ve had this thing. I’ll
go and see him; I’ll go down!”
And, sick with nervous anxiety, he sent out for one of the
“new-fangled” motor-cabs. It might take a long time to run that
fellow to ground, and Goodness knew what decision they might come
to after such a shock! “If I were a theatrical ass,” he thought,
“I suppose I should be taking a horse-whip or a pistol or
something!” He took instead a bundle of papers in the case of
“Magentie versus Wake,” intending to read them on the way down.
He did not even open them, but sat quite still, jolted and
jarred, unconscious of the draught down the back of his neck, or
the smell of petrol. He must be guided by the fellow’s attitude;
the great thing was to keep his head!
London had already begun to disgorge its workers as he neared
Putney Bridge; the ant-heap was on the move outwards. What a lot
of ants, all with a living to get, holding on by their eyelids in
the great scramble! Perhaps for the first time in his life Soames
thought: “_I_ could let go if I liked! Nothing could touch me; I
could snap my fingers, live as I wished—enjoy myself!” No! One
could not live as he had and just drop it all—settle down in
Capua, to spend the money and reputation he had made. A man’s
life was what he possessed and sought to possess. Only fools
thought otherwise—fools, and socialists, and libertines!
The cab was passing villas now, going a great pace. “Fifteen
miles an hour, I should think!” he mused; “this’ll take people
out of town to live!” and he thought of its bearing on the
portions of London owned by his father—he himself had never taken
to that form of investment, the gambler in him having all the
outlet needed in his pictures. And the cab sped on, down the hill
past Wimbledon Common. This interview! Surely a man of fifty-two
with grown-up children, and hung on the line, would not be
reckless. “He won’t want to disgrace the family,” he thought; “he
was as fond of his father as I am of mine, and they were
brothers. That woman brings destruction—what is it in her? I’ve
never known.” The cab branched off, along the side of a wood, and
he heard a late cuckoo calling, almost the first he had heard
that year. He was now almost opposite the site he had originally
chosen for his house, and which had been so unceremoniously
rejected by Bosinney in favour of his own choice. He began
passing his handkerchief over his face and hands, taking deep
breaths to give him steadiness. “Keep one’s head,” he thought,
“keep one’s head!”
The cab turned in at the drive which might have been his own, and
the sound of music met him. He had forgotten the fellow’s
daughters.
“I may be out again directly,” he said to the driver, “or I may
be kept some time”; and he rang the bell.
Following the maid through the curtains into the inner hall, he
felt relieved that the impact of this meeting would be broken by
June or Holly, whichever was playing in there, so that with
complete surprise he saw Irene at the piano, and Jolyon sitting
in an armchair listening. They both stood up. Blood surged into
Soames’ brain, and all his resolution to be guided by this or
that left him utterly. The look of his farmer forbears—dogged
Forsytes down by the sea, from “Superior Dosset” back—grinned out
of his face.
“Very pretty!” he said.
He heard the fellow murmur:
“This is hardly the place—we’ll go to the study, if you don’t
mind.” And they both passed him through the curtain opening. In
the little room to which he followed them, Irene stood by the
open window, and the “fellow” close to her by a big chair. Soames
pulled the door to behind him with a slam; the sound carried him
back all those years to the day when he had shut out Jolyon—shut
him out for meddling with his affairs.
“Well,” he said, “what have you to say for yourselves?”
The fellow had the effrontery to smile.
“What we have received to-day has taken away your right to ask. I
should imagine you will be glad to have your neck out of
chancery.”
“Oh!” said Soames; “you think so! I came to tell you that I’ll
divorce her with every circumstance of disgrace to you both,
unless you swear to keep clear of each other from now on.”
He was astonished at his fluency, because his mind was stammering
and his hands twitching. Neither of them answered; but their
faces seemed to him as if contemptuous.
“Well,” he said; “you—Irene?”
Her lips moved, but Jolyon laid his hand on her arm.
“Let her alone!” said Soames furiously. “Irene, will you swear
it?”
“No.”
“Oh! and you?”
“Still less.”
“So then you’re guilty, are you?”
“Yes, guilty.” It was Irene speaking in that serene voice, with
that unreached air which had maddened him so often; and, carried
beyond himself, he cried:
“_You_ are a devil.”
“Go out! Leave this house, or I’ll do you an injury.”
That fellow to talk of injuries! Did he know how near his throat
was to being scragged?
“A trustee,” he said, “embezzling trust property! A thief,
stealing his cousin’s wife.”
“Call me what you like. You have chosen your part, we have chosen
ours. Go out!”
If he had brought a weapon Soames might have used it at that
moment.
“I’ll make you pay!” he said.
“I shall be very happy.”
At that deadly turning of the meaning of his speech by the son of
him who had nicknamed him “the man of property,” Soames stood
glaring. It was ridiculous!
There they were, kept from violence by some secret force. No blow
possible, no words to meet the case. But he could not, did not
know how to turn and go away. His eyes fastened on Irene’s
face—the last time he would ever see that fatal face—the last
time, no doubt!
“You,” he said suddenly, “I hope you’ll treat him as you treated
me—that’s all.”
He saw her wince, and with a sensation not quite triumph, not
quite relief, he wrenched open the door, passed out through the
hall, and got into his cab. He lolled against the cushion with
his eyes shut. Never in his life had he been so near to murderous
violence, never so thrown away the restraint which was his second
nature. He had a stripped and naked feeling, as if all virtue had
gone out of him—life meaningless, mind-striking work. Sunlight
streamed in on him, but he felt cold. The scene he had passed
through had gone from him already, what was before him would not
materialise, he could catch on to nothing; and he felt
frightened, as if he had been hanging over the edge of a
precipice, as if with another turn of the screw sanity would have
failed him. “I’m not fit for it,” he thought; “I mustn’t—I’m not
fit for it.” The cab sped on, and in mechanical procession trees,
houses, people passed, but had no significance. “I feel very
queer,” he thought; “I’ll take a Turkish bath.—I’ve been very
near to something. It won’t do.” The cab whirred its way back
over the bridge, up the Fulham Road, along the Park.
“To the Hammam,” said Soames.
Curious that on so warm a summer day, heat should be so
comforting! Crossing into the hot room he met George Forsyte
coming out, red and glistening.
“Hallo!” said George; “what are you training for? You’ve not got
much superfluous.”
Buffoon! Soames passed him with his sideway smile. Lying back,
rubbing his skin uneasily for the first signs of perspiration, he
thought: “Let them laugh! I _won’t_ feel anything! I can’t stand
violence! It’s not good for me!”
CHAPTER VII A SUMMER NIGHT
Soames left dead silence in the little study. “Thank you for that
good lie,” said Jolyon suddenly. “Come out—the air in here is not
what it was!”
In front of a long high southerly wall on which were trained
peach-trees the two walked up and down in silence. Old Jolyon had
planted some cupressus-trees, at intervals, between this grassy
terrace and the dipping meadow full of buttercups and ox-eyed
daisies; for twelve years they had flourished, till their dark
spiral shapes had quite a look of Italy. Birds fluttered softly
in the wet shrubbery; the swallows swooped past, with a
steel-blue sheen on their swift little bodies; the grass felt
springy beneath the feet, its green refreshed; butterflies chased
each other. After that painful scene the quiet of Nature was
wonderfully poignant. Under the sun-soaked wall ran a narrow
strip of garden-bed full of mignonette and pansies, and from the
bees came a low hum in which all other sounds were set—the mooing
of a cow deprived of her calf, the calling of a cuckoo from an
elm-tree at the bottom of the meadow. Who would have thought that
behind them, within ten miles, London began—that London of the
Forsytes, with its wealth, its misery; its dirt and noise; its
jumbled stone isles of beauty, its grey sea of hideous brick and
stucco? That London which had seen Irene’s early tragedy, and
Jolyon’s own hard days; that web; that princely workhouse of the
possessive instinct!
And while they walked Jolyon pondered those words: “I hope you’ll
treat him as you treated me.” That would depend on himself. Could
he trust himself? Did Nature permit a Forsyte not to make a slave
of what he adored? Could beauty be confided to him? Or should she
not be just a visitor, coming when she would, possessed for
moments which passed, to return only at her own choosing? “We are
a breed of spoilers!” thought Jolyon, “close and greedy; the
bloom of life is not safe with us. Let her come to me as she
will, when she will, not at all if she will not. Let me be just
her stand-by, her perching-place; never—never her cage!”
She was the chink of beauty in his dream. Was he to pass through
the curtains now and reach her? Was the rich stuff of many
possessions, the close encircling fabric of the possessive
instinct walling in that little black figure of himself, and
Soames—was it to be rent so that he could pass through into his
vision, find there something not of the senses only? “Let me,” he
thought, “ah! let me only know how not to grasp and destroy!”
But at dinner there were plans to be made. To-night she would go
back to the hotel, but tomorrow he would take her up to London.
He must instruct his solicitor—Jack Herring. Not a finger must be
raised to hinder the process of the Law. Damages exemplary,
judicial strictures, costs, what they liked—let it go through at
the first moment, so that her neck might be out of chancery at
last! To-morrow he would see Herring—they would go and see him
together. And then—abroad, leaving no doubt, no difficulty about
evidence, making the lie she had told into the truth. He looked
round at her; and it seemed to his adoring eyes that more than a
woman was sitting there. The spirit of universal beauty, deep,
mysterious, which the old painters, Titian, Giorgione,
Botticelli, had known how to capture and transfer to the faces of
their women—this flying beauty seemed to him imprinted on her
brow, her hair, her lips, and in her eyes.
“And this is to be mine!” he thought. “It frightens me!”
After dinner they went out on to the terrace to have coffee. They
sat there long, the evening was so lovely, watching the summer
night come very slowly on. It was still warm and the air smelled
of lime blossom—early this summer. Two bats were flighting with
the faint mysterious little noise they make. He had placed the
chairs in front of the study window, and moths flew past to visit
the discreet light in there. There was no wind, and not a whisper
in the old oak-tree twenty yards away! The moon rose from behind
the copse, nearly full; and the two lights struggled, till
moonlight conquered, changing the colour and quality of all the
garden, stealing along the flagstones, reaching their feet,
climbing up, changing their faces.
“Well,” said Jolyon at last, “you’ll be tired, dear; we’d better
start. The maid will show you Holly’s room,” and he rang the
study bell. The maid who came handed him a telegram. Watching her
take Irene away, he thought: “This must have come an hour or more
ago, and she didn’t bring it out to us! That shows! Well, we’ll
be hung for a sheep soon!” And, opening the telegram, he read:
“JOLYON FORSYTE, Robin Hill.—Your son passed painlessly away on
June 20th. Deep sympathy”—some name unknown to him.
He dropped it, spun round, stood motionless. The moon shone in on
him; a moth flew in his face. The first day of all that he had
not thought almost ceaselessly of Jolly. He went blindly towards
the window, struck against the old armchair—his father’s—and sank
down on to the arm of it. He sat there huddled forward, staring
into the night. Gone out like a candle flame; far from home, from
love, all by himself, in the dark! His boy! From a little chap
always so good to him—so friendly! Twenty years old, and cut down
like grass—to have no life at all! “I didn’t really know him,” he
thought, “and he didn’t know me; but we loved each other. It’s
only love that matters.”
To die out there—lonely—wanting them—wanting home! This seemed to
his Forsyte heart more painful, more pitiful than death itself.
No shelter, no protection, no love at the last! And all the
deeply rooted clanship in him, the family feeling and essential
clinging to his own flesh and blood which had been so strong in
old Jolyon was so strong in all the Forsytes—felt outraged, cut,
and torn by his boy’s lonely passing. Better far if he had died
in battle, without time to long for them to come to him, to call
out for them, perhaps, in his delirium!
The moon had passed behind the oak-tree now, endowing it with
uncanny life, so that it seemed watching him—the oak-tree his boy
had been so fond of climbing, out of which he had once fallen and
hurt himself, and hadn’t cried!
The door creaked. He saw Irene come in, pick up the telegram and
read it. He heard the faint rustle of her dress. She sank on her
knees close to him, and he forced himself to smile at her. She
stretched up her arms and drew his head down on her shoulder. The
perfume and warmth of her encircled him; her presence gained
slowly his whole being.
CHAPTER VIII JAMES IN WAITING
Sweated to serenity, Soames dined at the Remove and turned his
face toward Park Lane. His father had been unwell lately. This
would have to be kept from him! Never till that moment had he
realised how much the dread of bringing James’ grey hairs down
with sorrow to the grave had counted with him; how intimately it
was bound up with his own shrinking from scandal. His affection
for his father, always deep, had increased of late years with the
knowledge that James looked on him as the real prop of his
decline. It seemed pitiful that one who had been so careful all
his life and done so much for the family name—so that it was
almost a byword for solid, wealthy respectability—should at his
last gasp have to see it in all the newspapers. This was like
lending a hand to Death, that final enemy of Forsytes. “I must
tell mother,” he thought, “and when it comes on, we must keep the
papers from him somehow. He sees hardly anyone.” Letting himself
in with his latchkey, he was beginning to ascend he stairs when
he became conscious of commotion on the second-floor landing. His
mother’s voice was saying:
“Now, James, you’ll catch cold. Why can’t you wait quietly?”
His father’s answering
“Wait? I’m always waiting. Why doesn’t he come in?”
“You can speak to him to-morrow morning, instead of making a guy
of yourself on the landing.”
“He’ll go up to bed, I shouldn’t wonder. I shan’t sleep.”
“Now come back to bed, James.”
“Um! I might die before to-morrow morning for all you can tell.”
“You shan’t have to wait till to-morrow morning; I’ll go down and
bring him up. Don’t fuss!”
“There you go—always so cock-a-hoop. He mayn’t come in at all.”
“Well, if he doesn’t come in you won’t catch him by standing out
here in your dressing-gown.”
Soames rounded the last bend and came in sight of his father’s
tall figure wrapped in a brown silk quilted gown, stooping over
the balustrade above. Light fell on his silvery hair and
whiskers, investing his head with a sort of halo.
“Here he is!” he heard him say in a voice which sounded injured,
and his mother’s comfortable answer from the bedroom door:
“That’s all right. Come in, and I’ll brush your hair.” James
extended a thin, crooked finger, oddly like the beckoning of a
skeleton, and passed through the doorway of his bedroom.
“What is it?” thought Soames. “What has he got hold of now?”
His father was sitting before the dressing-table sideways to the
mirror, while Emily slowly passed two silver-backed brushes
through and through his hair. She would do this several times a
day, for it had on him something of the effect produced on a cat
by scratching between its ears.
“There you are!” he said. “I’ve been waiting.”
Soames stroked his shoulder, and, taking up a silver button-hook,
examined the mark on it.
“Well,” he said, “you’re looking better.”
James shook his head.
“I want to say something. Your mother hasn’t heard.” He announced
Emily’s ignorance of what he hadn’t told her, as if it were a
grievance.
“Your father’s been in a great state all the evening. I’m sure I
don’t know what about.”
The faint “whisk-whisk” of the brushes continued the soothing of
her voice.
“No! you know nothing,” said James. “Soames can tell me.” And,
fixing his grey eyes, in which there was a look of strain,
uncomfortable to watch, on his son, he muttered:
“I’m getting on, Soames. At my age I can’t tell. I might die any
time. There’ll be a lot of money. There’s Rachel and Cicely got
no children; and Val’s out there—that chap his father will get
hold of all he can. And somebody’ll pick up Imogen, I shouldn’t
wonder.”
Soames listened vaguely—he had heard all this before.
Whish-whish! went the brushes.
“If that’s all!” said Emily.
“All!” cried James; “it’s nothing. I’m coming to that.” And again
his eyes strained pitifully at Soames.
“It’s you, my boy,” he said suddenly; “you ought to get a
divorce.”
That word, from those of all lips, was almost too much for
Soames’ composure. His eyes reconcentrated themselves quickly on
the buttonhook, and as if in apology James hurried on:
“I don’t know what’s become of her—they say she’s abroad. Your
Uncle Swithin used to admire her—he was a funny fellow.” (So he
always alluded to his dead twin—“The Stout and the Lean of it,”
they had been called.) “She wouldn’t be alone, I should say.” And
with that summing-up of the effect of beauty on human nature, he
was silent, watching his son with eyes doubting as a bird’s.
Soames, too, was silent. Whish-whish went the brushes.
“Come, James! Soames knows best. It’s his business.”
“Ah!” said James, and the word came from deep down; “but there’s
all my money, and there’s his—who’s it to go to? And when he dies
the name goes out.”
Soames replaced the button-hook on the lace and pink silk of the
dressing-table coverlet.
“The name?” said Emily, “there are all the other Forsytes.”
“As if that helped me,” muttered James. “I shall be in my grave,
and there’ll be nobody, unless he marries again.”
“You’re quite right,” said Soames quietly; “I’m getting a
divorce.”
James’ eyes almost started from his head.
“What?” he cried. “There! nobody tells me anything.”
“Well,” said Emily, “who would have imagined you wanted it? My
dear boy, that _is_ a surprise, after all these years.”
“It’ll be a scandal,” muttered James, as if to himself; “but I
can’t help that. Don’t brush so hard. When’ll it come on?”
“Before the Long Vacation; it’s not defended.”
James’ lips moved in secret calculation. “I shan’t live to see my
grandson,” he muttered.
Emily ceased brushing. “Of course you will, James. Soames will be
as quick as he can.”
There was a long silence, till James reached out his arm.
“Here! let’s have the eau-de-Cologne,” and, putting it to his
nose, he moved his forehead in the direction of his son. Soames
bent over and kissed that brow just where the hair began. A
relaxing quiver passed over James’ face, as though the wheels of
anxiety within were running down.
“I’ll get to bed,” he said; “I shan’t want to see the papers when
that comes. They’re a morbid lot; I can’t pay attention to them,
I’m too old.”
Queerly affected, Soames went to the door; he heard his father
say:
“Here, I’m tired. I’ll say a prayer in bed.”
And his mother answering
“That’s right, James; it’ll be ever so much more comfy.”
CHAPTER IX OUT OF THE WEB
On Forsyte ’Change the announcement of Jolly’s death, among a
batch of troopers, caused mixed sensation. Strange to read that
Jolyon Forsyte (fifth of the name in direct descent) had died of
disease in the service of his country, and not be able to feel it
personally. It revived the old grudge against his father for
having estranged himself. For such was still the prestige of old
Jolyon that the other Forsytes could never quite feel, as might
have been expected, that it was they who had cut off his
descendants for irregularity. The news increased, of course, the
interest and anxiety about Val; but then Val’s name was Dartie,
and even if he were killed in battle or got the Victoria Cross,
it would not be at all the same as if his name were Forsyte. Not
even casualty or glory to the Haymans would be really
satisfactory. Family pride felt defrauded.
How the rumour arose, then, that “something very dreadful, my
dear,” was pending, no one, least of all Soames, could tell,
secret as he kept everything. Possibly some eye had seen “Forsyte
_v._ Forsyte and Forsyte,” in the cause list; and had added it to
“Irene in Paris with a fair beard.” Possibly some wall at Park
Lane had ears. The fact remained that it _was_ known—whispered
among the old, discussed among the young—that family pride must
soon receive a blow.
Soames, paying one of his Sunday visits to Timothy’s—paying it
with the feeling that after the suit came on he would be paying
no more—felt knowledge in the air as he came in. Nobody, of
course, dared speak of it before him, but each of the four other
Forsytes present held their breath, aware that nothing could
prevent Aunt Juley from making them all uncomfortable. She looked
so piteously at Soames, she checked herself on the point of
speech so often, that Aunt Hester excused herself and said she
must go and bathe Timothy’s eye—he had a sty coming. Soames,
impassive, slightly supercilious, did not stay long. He went out
with a curse stifled behind his pale, just smiling lips.
Fortunately for the peace of his mind, cruelly tortured by the
coming scandal, he was kept busy day and night with plans for his
retirement—for he had come to that grim conclusion. To go on
seeing all those people who had known him as a “long-headed
chap,” an astute adviser—after _that_—no! The fastidiousness and
pride which was so strangely, so inextricably blended in him with
possessive obtuseness, revolted against the thought. He would
retire, live privately, go on buying pictures, make a great name
as a collector—after all, his heart was more in that than it had
ever been in Law. In pursuance of this now fixed resolve, he had
to get ready to amalgamate his business with another firm without
letting people know, for that would excite curiosity and make
humiliation cast its shadow before. He had pitched on the firm of
Cuthcott, Holliday and Kingson, two of whom were dead. The full
name after the amalgamation would therefore be Cuthcott,
Holliday, Kingson, Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte. But after debate
as to which of the dead still had any influence with the living,
it was decided to reduce the title to Cuthcott, Kingson and
Forsyte, of whom Kingson would be the active and Soames the
sleeping partner. For leaving his name, prestige, and clients
behind him, Soames would receive considerable value.