It is so much easier to say, “Then we know where we are,” than to mean anything particular by the words. And in saying them Soames did but vent the jealous rankling of his instincts. He got out of the cab in a state of wary anger — with himself for not having seen Irene, with Jolyon for having seen her; and now with his inability to tell exactly what he wanted.
He had abandoned the cab because he could not bear to remain seated beside his cousin, and walking briskly eastwards he thought: ‘I wouldn’t trust that fellow Jolyon a yard. Once outcast, always outcast!’ The chap had a natural sympathy with — with — laxity (he had shied at the word sin, because it was too melodramatic for use by a Forsyte).
Indecision in desire was to him a new feeling. He was like a child between a promised toy and an old one which had been taken away from him; and he was astonished at himself. Only last Sunday desire had seemed simple — just his freedom and Annette. ‘I’ll go and dine there,’ he thought. To see her might bring back his singleness of intention, calm his exasperation, clear his mind.
The restaurant was fairly full — a good many foreigners and folk whom, from their appearance, he took to be literary or artistic. Scraps of conversation came his way through the clatter of plates and glasses. He distinctly heard the Boers sympathised with, the British Government blamed. ‘Don’t think much of their clientele,’ he thought. He went stolidly through his dinner and special coffee without making his presence known, and when at last he had finished, was careful not to be seen going towards the sanctum of Madame Lamotte. They were, as he entered, having supper — such a much nicer-looking supper than the dinner he had eaten that he felt a kind of grief — and they greeted him with a surprise so seemingly genuine that he thought with sudden suspicion: ‘I believe they knew I was here all the time.’ He gave Annette a look furtive and searching. So pretty, seemingly so candid; could she be angling for him? He turned to Madame Lamotte and said:
“I’ve been dining here.”
Really! If she had only known! There were dishes she could have recommended; what a pity! Soames was confirmed in his suspicion. ‘I must look out what I’m doing!’ he thought sharply.
“Another little cup of very special coffee, monsieur; a liqueur, Grand Marnier?” and Madame Lamotte rose to order these delicacies.
Alone with Annette Soames said, “Well, Annette?” with a defensive little smile about his lips.
The girl blushed. This, which last Sunday would have set his nerves tingling, now gave him much the same feeling a man has when a dog that he owns wriggles and looks at him. He had a curious sense of power, as if he could have said to her, ‘Come and kiss me,’ and she would have come. And yet — it was strange — but there seemed another face and form in the room too; and the itch in his nerves, was it for that — or for this? He jerked his head towards the restaurant and said: “You have some queer customers. Do you like this life?”
Annette looked up at him for a moment, looked down, and played with her fork.
“No,” she said, “I do not like it.”
‘I’ve got her,’ thought Soames, ‘if I want her. But do I want her?’ She was graceful, she was pretty — very pretty; she was fresh, she had taste of a kind. His eyes travelled round the little room; but the eyes of his mind went another journey — a half-light, and silvery walls, a satinwood piano, a woman standing against it, reined back as it were from him — a woman with white shoulders that he knew, and dark eyes that he had sought to know, and hair like dull dark amber. And as in an artist who strives for the unrealisable and is ever thirsty, so there rose in him at that moment the thirst of the old passion he had never satisfied.
“Well,” he said calmly, “you’re young. There’s everything before you.”
Annette shook her head.
“I think sometimes there is nothing before me but hard work. I am not so in love with work as mother.”
“Your mother is a wonder,” said Soames, faintly mocking; “she will never let failure lodge in her house.”
Annette sighed. “It must be wonderful to be rich.”
“Oh! You’ll be rich some day,” answered Soames, still with that faint mockery; “don’t be afraid.”
Annette shrugged her shoulders. “Monsieur is very kind.” And between her pouting lips she put a chocolate.
‘Yes, my dear,’ thought Soames, ‘they’re very pretty.’
Madame Lamotte, with coffee and liqueur, put an end to that colloquy. Soames did not stay long.
Outside in the streets of Soho, which always gave him such a feeling of property improperly owned, he mused. If only Irene had given him a son, he wouldn’t now be squirming after women! The thought had jumped out of its little dark sentry-box in his inner consciousness. A son — something to look forward to, something to make the rest of life worth while, something to leave himself to, some perpetuity of self. ‘If I had a son,’ he thought bitterly, ‘a proper legal son, I could make shift to go on as I used. One woman’s much the same as another, after all.’ But as he walked he shook his head. No! One woman was not the same as another. Many a time had he tried to think that in the old days of his thwarted married life; and he had always failed. He was failing now. He was trying to think Annette the same as that other. But she was not, she had not the lure of that old passion. ‘And Irene’s my wife,’ he thought, ‘my legal wife. I have done nothing to put her away from me. Why shouldn’t she come back to me? It’s the right thing, the lawful thing. It makes no scandal, no disturbance. If it’s disagreeable to her — but why should it be? I’m not a leper, and she — she’s no longer in love!’ Why should he be put to the shifts and the sordid disgraces and the lurking defeats of the Divorce Court, when there she was like an empty house only waiting to be retaken into use and possession by him who legally owned her? To one so secretive as Soames the thought of reentry into quiet possession of his own property with nothing given away to the world was intensely alluring. ‘No,’ he mused, ‘I’m glad I went to see that girl. I know now what I want most. If only Irene will come back I’ll be as considerate as she wishes; she could live her own life; but perhaps — perhaps she would come round to me.’ There was a lump in his throat. And doggedly along by the railings of the Green Park, towards his father’s house, he went, trying to tread on his shadow walking before him in the brilliant moonlight.
Jolly Forsyte was strolling down High Street, Oxford, on a November afternoon; Val Dartie was strolling up. Jolly had just changed out of boating flannels and was on his way to the ‘Frying-pan,’ to which he had recently been elected. Val had just changed out of riding clothes and was on his way to the fire — a bookmaker’s in Cornmarket.
“Hallo!” said Jolly.
“Hallo!” replied Val.
The cousins had met but twice, Jolly, the second-year man, having invited the freshman to breakfast; and last evening they had seen each other again under somewhat exotic circumstances.
Over a tailor’s in the Cornmarket resided one of those privileged young beings called minors, whose inheritances are large, whose parents are dead, whose guardians are remote, and whose instincts are vicious. At nineteen he had commenced one of those careers attractive and inexplicable to ordinary mortals for whom a single bankruptcy is good as a feast. Already famous for having the only roulette table then to be found in Oxford, he was anticipating his expectations at a dazzling rate. He out-crummed Crum, though of a sanguine and rather beefy type which lacked the latter’s fascinating languor. For Val it had been in the nature of baptism to be taken there to play roulette; in the nature of confirmation to get back into college, after hours, through a window whose bars were deceptive. Once, during that evening of delight, glancing up from the seductive green before him, he had caught sight, through a cloud of smoke, of his cousin standing opposite. ‘Rouge gagne, impair, et manque!’ He had not seen him again.
“Come in to the Frying-pan and have tea,” said Jolly, and they went in.
A stranger, seeing them together, would have noticed an unseizable resemblance between these second cousins of the third generations of Forsytes; the same bone formation in face, though Jolly’s eyes were darker grey, his hair lighter and more wavy.
“Tea and buttered buns, waiter, please,” said Jolly.
“Have one of my cigarettes?” said Val. “I saw you last night. How did you do?”
“I didn’t play.”
“I won fifteen quid.”
Though desirous of repeating a whimsical comment on gambling he had once heard his father make —‘When you’re fleeced you’re sick, and when you fleece you’re sorry — Jolly contented himself with:
“Rotten game, I think; I was at school with that chap. He’s an awful fool.”
“Oh! I don’t know,” said Val, as one might speak in defence of a disparaged god; “he’s a pretty good sport.”
They exchanged whiffs in silence.
“You met my people, didn’t you?” said Jolly. “They’re coming up to-morrow.”
Val grew a little red.
“Really! I can give you a rare good tip for the Manchester November handicap.”
“Thanks, I only take interest in the classic races.”
“You can’t make any money over them,” said Val.
“I hate the ring,” said Jolly; “there’s such a row and stink. I like the paddock.”
“I like to back my judgment,”’ answered Val.
Jolly smiled; his smile was like his father’s.
“I haven’t got any. I always lose money if I bet.”
“You have to buy experience, of course.”
“Yes, but it’s all messed-up with doing people in the eye.”
“Of course, or they’ll do you — that’s the excitement.”
Jolly looked a little scornful.
“What do you do with yourself? Row?”
“No — ride, and drive about. I’m going to play polo next term, if I can get my granddad to stump up.”
“That’s old Uncle James, isn’t it? What’s he like?”
“Older than forty hills,” said Val, “and always thinking he’s going to be ruined.”
“I suppose my granddad and he were brothers.”
“I don’t believe any of that old lot were sportsmen,” said Val; “they must have worshipped money.”
“Mine didn’t!” said Jolly warmly.
Val flipped the ash off his cigarette.
“Money’s only fit to spend,” he said; “I wish the deuce I had more.”
Jolly gave him that direct upward look of judgment which he had inherited from old Jolyon: One didn’t talk about money! And again there was silence, while they drank tea and ate the buttered buns.
“Where are your people going to stay?” asked Val, elaborately casual.
“‘Rainbow.’ What do you think of the war?”
“Rotten, so far. The Boers aren’t sports a bit. Why don’t they come out into the open?”
“Why should they? They’ve got everything against them except their way of fighting. I rather admire them.”
“They can ride and shoot,” admitted Val, “but they’re a lousy lot. Do you know Crum?”
“Of Merton? Only by sight. He’s in that fast set too, isn’t he? Rather La-di-da and Brummagem.”
Val said fixedly: “He’s a friend of mine.”
“Oh! Sorry!” And they sat awkwardly staring past each other, having pitched on their pet points of snobbery. For Jolly was forming himself unconsciously on a set whose motto was:
‘We defy you to bore us. Life isn’t half long enough, and we’re going to talk faster and more crisply, do more and know more, and dwell less on any subject than you can possibly imagine. We are “the best”— made of wire and whipcord.’ And Val was unconsciously forming himself on a set whose motto was: ‘We defy you to interest or excite us. We have had every sensation, or if we haven’t, we pretend we have. We are so exhausted with living that no hours are too small for us. We will lose our shirts with equanimity. We have flown fast and are past everything. All is cigarette smoke. Bismillah!’ Competitive spirit, bone-deep in the English, was obliging those two young Forsytes to have ideals; and at the close of a century ideals are mixed. The aristocracy had already in the main adopted the ‘jumping-Jesus’ principle; though here and there one like Crum — who was an ‘honourable’— stood starkly languid for that gambler’s Nirvana which had been the summum bonum of the old ‘dandies’ and of ‘the mashers’ in the eighties. And round Crum were still gathered a forlorn hope of blue-bloods with a plutocratic following.
But there was between the cousins another far less obvious antipathy — coming from the unseizable family resemblance, which each perhaps resented; or from some half-consciousness of that old feud persisting still between their branches of the clan, formed within them by odd words or half-hints dropped by their elders. And Jolly, tinkling his teaspoon, was musing: ‘His tie-pin and his waistcoat and his drawl and his betting — good Lord!’
And Val, finishing his bun, was thinking: ‘He’s rather a young beast!’
“I suppose you’ll be meeting your people?” he said, getting up. “I wish you’d tell them I should like to show them over B.N.C.— not that there’s anything much there — if they’d care to come.”
“Thanks, I’ll ask them.”
“Would they lunch? I’ve got rather a decent scout.”
Jolly doubted if they would have time.
“You’ll ask them, though?”
“Very good of you,” said Jolly, fully meaning that they should not go; but, instinctively polite, he added: “You’d better come and have dinner with us to-morrow.”
“Rather. What time?”
“Seven-thirty.”
“Dress?”
“No.” And they parted, a subtle antagonism alive within them.
Holly and her father arrived by a midday train. It was her first visit to the city of spires and dreams, and she was very silent, looking almost shyly at the brother who was part of this wonderful place. After lunch she wandered, examining his household gods with intense curiosity. Jolly’s sitting-room was panelled, and Art represented by a set of Bartolozzi prints which had belonged to old Jolyon, and by college photographs — of young men, live young men, a little heroic, and to be compared with her memories of Val. Jolyon also scrutinised with care that evidence of his boy’s character and tastes.
Jolly was anxious that they should see him rowing, so they set forth to the river. Holly, between her brother and her father, felt elated when heads were turned and eyes rested on her. That they might see him to the best advantage they left him at the Barge and crossed the river to the towing-path. Slight in build — for of all the Forsytes only old Swithin and George were beefy — Jolly was rowing ‘Two’ in a trial eight. He looked very earnest and strenuous. With pride Jolyon thought him the best-looking boy of the lot; Holly, as became a sister, was more struck by one or two of the others, but would not have said so for the world. The river was bright that afternoon, the meadows lush, the trees still beautiful with colour. Distinguished peace clung around the old city; Jolyon promised himself a day’s sketching if the weather held. The Eight passed a second time, spurting home along the Barges — Jolly’s face was very set, so as not to show that he was blown. They returned across the river and waited for him.
“Oh!” said Jolly in the Christ Church meadows, “I had to ask that chap Val Dartie to dine with us to-night. He wanted to give you lunch and show you B.N.C., so I thought I’d better; then you needn’t go. I don’t like him much.”
Holly’s rather sallow face had become suffused with pink.
“Why not?”
“Oh! I don’t know. He seems to me rather showy and bad form. What are his people like, Dad? He’s only a second cousin, isn’t he?”
Jolyon took refuge in a smile.
“Ask Holly,” he said; “she saw his uncle.”
“I liked Val,” Holly answered, staring at the ground before her; “his uncle looked — awfully different.” She stole a glance at Jolly from under her lashes.
“Did you ever,” said Jolyon with whimsical intention, “hear our family history, my dears? It’s quite a fairy tale. The first Jolyon Forsyte — at all events the first we know anything of, and that would be your great-great-grandfather — dwelt in the land of Dorset on the edge of the sea, being by profession an ‘agriculturalist,’ as your great-aunt put it, and the son of an agriculturist — farmers, in fact; your grandfather used to call them, ‘Very small beer.’” He looked at Jolly to see how his lordliness was standing it, and with the other eye noted Holly’s malicious pleasure in the slight drop of her brother’s face.
“We may suppose him thick and sturdy, standing for England as it was before the Industrial Era began. The second Jolyon Forsyte — your great-grandfather, Jolly; better known as Superior Dosset Forsyte — built houses, so the chronicle runs, begat ten children, and migrated to London town. It is known that he drank sherry. We may suppose him representing the England of Napoleon’s wars, and general unrest. The eldest of his six sons was the third Jolyon, your grandfather, my dears — tea merchant and chairman of companies, one of the soundest Englishmen who ever lived — and to me the dearest.” Jolyon’s voice had lost its irony, and his son and daughter gazed at him solemnly, “He was just and tenacious, tender and young at heart. You remember him, and I remember him. Pass to the others! Your great-uncle James, that’s young Val’s grandfather, had a son called Soames — whereby hangs a tale of no love lost, and I don’t think I’ll tell it you. James and the other eight children of ‘Superior Dosset,’ of whom there are still five alive, may be said to have represented Victorian England, with its principles of trade and individualism at five per cent. and your money back — if you know what that means. At all events they’ve turned thirty thousand pounds into a cool million between them in the course of their long lives. They never did a wild thing — unless it was your great-uncle Swithin, who I believe was once swindled at thimble-rig, and was called ‘Four-in-hand Forsyte’ because he drove a pair. Their day is passing, and their type, not altogether for the advantage of the country. They were pedestrian, but they too were sound. I am the fourth Jolyon Forsyte — a poor holder of the name —”
“No, Dad,” said Jolly, and Holly squeezed his hand.
“Yes,” repeated Jolyon, “a poor specimen, representing, I’m afraid, nothing but the end of the century, unearned income, amateurism, and individual liberty — a different thing from individualism, Jolly. You are the fifth Jolyon Forsyte, old man, and you open the ball of the new century.”
As he spoke they turned in through the college gates, and Holly said: “It’s fascinating, Dad.”
None of them quite knew what she meant. Jolly was grave.
The Rainbow, distinguished, as only an Oxford hostel can be, for lack of modernity, provided one small oak-panelled private sitting-room, in which Holly sat to receive, white-frocked, shy, and alone, when the only guest arrived. Rather as one would touch a moth, Val took her hand. And wouldn’t she wear this ‘measly flower’? It would look ripping in her hair. He removed a gardenia from his coat.
“Oh! No, thank you — I couldn’t!” But she took it and pinned it at her neck, having suddenly remembered that word ‘showy’! Val’s buttonhole would give offence; and she so much wanted Jolly to like him. Did she realise that Val was at his best and quietest in her presence, and was that, perhaps, half the secret of his attraction for her?
“I never said anything about our ride, Val.”
“Rather not! It’s just between us.”
By the uneasiness of his hands and the fidgeting of his feet he was giving her a sense of power very delicious; a soft feeling too — the wish to make him happy.
“Do tell me about Oxford. It must be ever so lovely.”
Val admitted that it was frightfully decent to do what you liked; the lectures were nothing; and there were some very good chaps. “Only,” he added, “of course I wish I was in town, and could come down and see you.”
Holly moved one hand shyly on her knee, and her glance dropped.
“You haven’t forgotten,” he said, suddenly gathering courage, “that we’re going mad-rabbiting together?”
Holly smiled.
“Oh! That was only make-believe. One can’t do that sort of thing after one’s grown up, you know.”
“Dash it! cousins can,” said Val. “Next Long Vac.— it begins in June, you know, and goes on for ever — we’ll watch our chance.”
But, though the thrill of conspiracy ran through her veins, Holly shook her head. “It won’t come off,” she murmured.
“Won’t it!” said Val fervently; “who’s going to stop it? Not your father or your brother.”
At this moment Jolyon and Jolly came in; and romance fled into Val’s patent leather and Holly’s white satin toes, where it itched and tingled during an evening not conspicuous for open-heartedness.
Sensitive to atmosphere, Jolyon soon felt the latent antagonism between the boys, and was puzzled by Holly; so he became unconsciously ironical, which is fatal to the expansiveness of youth. A letter, handed to him after dinner, reduced him to a silence hardly broken till Jolly and Val rose to go. He went out with them, smoking his cigar, and walked with his son to the gates of Christ Church. Turning back, he took out the letter and read it again beneath a lamp.
“DEAR JOLYON,
“Soames came again to-night — my thirty-seventh birthday. You were right, I mustn’t stay here. I’m going to-morrow to the Piedmont Hotel, but I won’t go abroad without seeing you. I feel lonely and down-hearted.
“Yours affectionately, “IRENE.”
He folded the letter back into his pocket and walked on, astonished at the violence of his feelings. What had the fellow said or done?
He turned into High Street, down the Turf, and on among a maze of spires and domes and long college fronts and walls, bright or dark-shadowed in the strong moonlight. In this very heart of England’s gentility it was difficult to realise that a lonely woman could be importuned or hunted, but what else could her letter mean? Soames must have been pressing her to go back to him again, with public opinion and the Law on his side, too! ‘Eighteen-ninety-nine!,’ he thought, gazing at the broken glass shining on the top of a villa garden wall; ‘but when it comes to property we’re still a heathen people! I’ll go up to-morrow morning. I dare say it’ll be best for her to go abroad.’ Yet the thought displeased him. Why should Soames hunt her out of England! Besides, he might follow, and out there she would be still more helpless against the attentions of her own husband! ‘I must tread warily,’ he thought; ‘that fellow could make himself very nasty. I didn’t like his manner in the cab the other night.’ His thoughts turned to his daughter June. Could she help? Once on a time Irene had been her greatest friend, and now she was a ‘lame duck,’ such as must appeal to June’s nature! He determined to wire to his daughter to meet him at Paddington Station. Retracing his steps towards the Rainbow he questioned his own sensations. Would he be upsetting himself over every woman in like case? No! he would not. The candour of this conclusion discomfited him; and, finding that Holly had gone up to bed, he sought his own room. But he could not sleep, and sat for a long time at his window, huddled in an overcoat, watching the moonlight on the roofs.
Next door Holly too was awake, thinking of the lashes above and below Val’s eyes, especially below; and of what she could do to make Jolly like him better. The scent of the gardenia was strong in her little bedroom, and pleasant to her.
And Val, leaning out of his first-floor window in B.N.C., was gazing at a moonlit quadrangle without seeing it at all, seeing instead Holly, slim and white-frocked, as she sat beside the fire when he first went in.
But Jolly, in his bedroom narrow as a ghost, lay with a hand beneath his cheek and dreamed he was with Val in one boat, rowing a race against him, while his father was calling from the towpath: ‘Two! Get your hands away there, bless you!’
Of all those radiant firms which emblazon with their windows the West End of London, Gaves and Cortegal were considered by Soames the most ‘attractive’ word just coming into fashion. He had never had his Uncle Swithin’s taste in precious stones, and the abandonment by Irene when she left his house in 1887 of all the glittering things he had given her had disgusted him with this form of investment. But he still knew a diamond when he saw one, and during the week before her birthday he had taken occasion, on his way into the Poultry or his way out therefrom, to dally a little before the greater jewellers where one got, if not one’s money’s worth, at least a certain cachet with the goods.
Constant cogitation since his drive with Jolyon had convinced him more and more of the supreme importance of this moment in his life, the supreme need for taking steps and those not wrong. And, alongside the dry and reasoned sense that it was now or never with his self-preservation, now or never if he were to range himself and found a family, went the secret urge of his senses roused by the sight of her who had once been a passionately desired wife, and the conviction that it was a sin against common sense and the decent secrecy of Forsytes to waste the wife he had.
In an opinion on Winifred’s case, Dreamer, Q.C.— he would much have preferred Waterbuck, but they had made him a judge (so late in the day as to rouse the usual suspicion of a political job)— had advised that they should go forward and obtain restitution of conjugal rights, a point which to Soames had never been in doubt. When they had obtained a decree to that effect they must wait to see if it was obeyed. If not, it would constitute legal desertion, and they should obtain evidence of misconduct and file their petition for divorce. All of which Soames knew perfectly well. They had marked him ten and one. This simplicity in his sister’s case only made him the more desperate about the difficulty in his own. Everything, in fact, was driving him towards the simple solution of Irene’s return. If it were still against the grain with her, had he not feelings to subdue, injury to forgive, pain to forget? He at least had never injured her, and this was a world of compromise! He could offer her so much more than she had now. He would be prepared to make a liberal settlement on her which could not be upset. He often scrutinised his image in these days. He had never been a peacock like that fellow Dartie, or fancied himself a woman’s man, but he had a certain belief in his own appearance — not unjustly, for it was well-coupled and preserved, neat, healthy, pale, unblemished by drink or excess of any kind. The Forsyte jaw and the concentration of his face were, in his eyes, virtues. So far as he could tell there was no feature of him which need inspire dislike.
Thoughts and yearnings, with which one lives daily, become natural, even if far-fetched in their inception. If he could only give tangible proof enough of his determination to let bygones be bygones, and to do all in his power to please her, why should she not come back to him?
He entered Gaves and Cortegal’s therefore, on the morning of November the 9th, to buy a certain diamond brooch. “Four twenty-five and dirt cheap, sir, at the money. It’s a lady’s brooch.” There was that in his mood which made him accept without demur. And he went on into the Poultry with the flat green morocco case in his breast pocket. Several times that day he opened it to look at the seven soft shining stones in their velvet oval nest.
“If the lady doesn’t like it, sir, happy to exchange it any time. But there’s no fear of that.” If only there were not! He got through a vast amount of work, only soother of the nerves he knew. A cablegram came while he was in the office with details from the agent in Buenos Aires, and the name and address of a stewardess who would be prepared to swear to what was necessary. It was a timely spur to Soames, with his rooted distaste for the washing of dirty linen in public. And when he set forth by Underground to Victoria Station he received a fresh impetus towards the renewal of his married life from the account in his evening paper of a fashionable divorce suit. The homing instinct of all true Forsytes in anxiety and trouble, the corporate tendency which kept them strong and solid, made him choose to dine at Park Lane. He neither could nor would breath a word to his people of his intention — too reticent and proud — but the thought that at least they would be glad if they knew, and wish him luck, was heartening.
James was in lugubrious mood, for the fire which the impudence of Kruger’s ultimatum had lit in him had been cold-watered by the poor success of the last month, and the exhortations to effort in The Times. He didn’t know where it would end. Soames sought to cheer him by the continual use of the word Buller. But James couldn’t tell! There was Colley — and he got stuck on that hill, and this Ladysmith was down in a hollow, and altogether it looked to him a ‘pretty kettle of fish’; he thought they ought to be sending the sailors — they were the chaps, they did a lot of good in the Crimea. Soames shifted the ground of consolation. Winifred had heard from Val that there had been a ‘rag’ and a bonfire on Guy Fawkes Day at Oxford, and that he had escaped detection by blacking his face.
“Ah!” James muttered, “he’s a clever little chap.” But he shook his head shortly afterwards and remarked that he didn’t know what would become of him, and looking wistfully at his son, murmured on that Soames had never had a boy. He would have liked a grandson of his own name. And now — well, there it was!
Soames flinched. He had not expected such a challenge to disclose the secret in his heart. And Emily, who saw him wince, said:
“Nonsense, James; don’t talk like that!”
But James, not looking anyone in the face, muttered on. There were Roger and Nicholas and Jolyon; they all had grandsons. And Swithin and Timothy had never married. He had done his best; but he would soon be gone now. And, as though he had uttered words of profound consolation, he was silent, eating brains with a fork and a piece of bread, and swallowing the bread.
Soames excused himself directly after dinner. It was not really cold, but he put on his fur coat, which served to fortify him against the fits of nervous shivering to which he had been subject all day. Subconsciously, he knew that he looked better thus than in an ordinary black overcoat. Then, feeling the morocco case flat against his heart, he sallied forth. He was no smoker, but he lit a cigarette, and smoked it gingerly as he walked along. He moved slowly down the Row towards Knightsbridge, timing himself to get to Chelsea at nine-fifteen. What did she do with herself evening after evening in that little hole? How mysterious women were! One lived alongside and knew nothing of them. What could she have seen in that fellow Bosinney to send her mad? For there was madness after all in what she had done — crazy moonstruck madness, in which all sense of values had been lost, and her life and his life ruined! And for a moment he was filled with a sort of exaltation, as though he were a man read of in a story who, possessed by the Christian spirit, would restore to her all the prizes of existence, forgiving and forgetting, and becoming the godfather of her future. Under a tree opposite Knightsbridge Barracks, where the moon-light struck down clear and white, he took out once more the morocco case, and let the beams draw colour from those stones. Yes, they were of the first water! But, at the hard closing snap of the case, another cold shiver ran through his nerves; and he walked on faster, clenching his gloved hands in the pockets of his coat, almost hoping she would not be in. The thought of how mysterious she was again beset him. Dining alone there night after night — in an evening dress, too, as if she were making believe to be in society! Playing the piano — to herself! Not even a dog or cat, so far as he had seen. And that reminded him suddenly of the mare he kept for station work at Mapledurham. If ever he went to the stable, there she was quite alone, half asleep, and yet, on her home journeys going more freely than on her way out, as if longing to be back and lonely in her stable! ‘I would treat her well,’ he thought incoherently. ‘I would be very careful.’ And all that capacity for home life of which a mocking Fate seemed for ever to have deprived him swelled suddenly in Soames, so that he dreamed dreams opposite South Kensington Station. In the King’s Road a man came slithering out of a public house playing a concertina. Soames watched him for a moment dance crazily on the pavement to his own drawling jagged sounds, then crossed over to avoid contact with this piece of drunken foolery. A night in the lock-up! What asses people were! But the man had noticed his movement of avoidance, and streams of genial blasphemy followed him across the street. ‘I hope they’ll run him in,’ thought Soames viciously. ‘To have ruffians like that about, with women out alone!’ A woman’s figure in front had induced this thought. Her walk seemed oddly familiar, and when she turned the corner for which he was bound, his heart began to beat. He hastened on to the corner to make certain. Yes! It was Irene; he could not mistake her walk in that little drab street. She threaded two more turnings, and from the last corner he saw her enter her block of flats. To make sure of her now, he ran those few paces, hurried up the stairs, and caught her standing at her door. He heard the latchkey in the lock, and reached her side just as she turned round, startled, in the open doorway.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he said, breathless. “I happened to see you. Let me come in a minute.”
She had put her hand up to her breast, her face was colourless, her eyes widened by alarm. Then seeming to master herself, she inclined her head, and said: “Very well.”
Soames closed the door. He, too, had need to recover, and when she had passed into the sitting-room, waited a full minute, taking deep breaths to still the beating of his heart. At this moment, so fraught with the future, to take out that morocco case seemed crude. Yet, not to take it out left him there before her with no preliminary excuse for coming. And in this dilemma he was seized with impatience at all this paraphernalia of excuse and justification. This was a scene — it could be nothing else, and he must face it. He heard her voice, uncomfortably, pathetically soft:
“Why have you come again? Didn’t you understand that I would rather you did not?”
He noticed her clothes — a dark brown velvet corduroy, a sable boa, a small round toque of the same. They suited her admirably. She had money to spare for dress, evidently! He said abruptly:
“It’s your birthday. I brought you this,” and he held out to her the green morocco case.
“Oh! No-no!”
Soames pressed the clasp; the seven stones gleamed out on the pale grey velvet.
“Why not?” he said. “Just as a sign that you don’t bear me ill-feeling any longer.”
“I couldn’t.”
Soames took it out of the case.
“Let me just see how it looks.”
She shrank back.
He followed, thrusting his hand with the brooch in it against the front of her dress. She shrank again.
Soames dropped his hand.
“Irene,” he said, “let bygones be bygones. If I can, surely you might. Let’s begin again, as if nothing had been. Won’t you?” His voice was wistful, and his eyes, resting on her face, had in them a sort of supplication.
She, who was standing literally with her back against the wall, gave a little gulp, and that was all her answer. Soames went on:
“Can you really want to live all your days half-dead in this little hole? Come back to me, and I’ll give you all you want. You shall live your own life; I swear it.”
He saw her face quiver ironically.
“Yes,” he repeated, “but I mean it this time. I’ll only ask one thing. I just want — I just want a son. Don’t look like that! I want one. It’s hard.” His voice had grown hurried, so that he hardly knew it for his own, and twice he jerked his head back as if struggling for breath. It was the sight of her eyes fixed on him, dark with a sort of fascinated fright, which pulled him together and changed that painful incoherence to anger.
“Is it so very unnatural?” he said between his teeth, “Is it unnatural to want a child from one’s own wife? You wrecked our life and put this blight on everything. We go on only half alive, and without any future. Is it so very unflattering to you that in spite of everything I— I still want you for my wife? Speak, for Goodness’ sake! do speak.”
Irene seemed to try, but did not succeed.
“I don’t want to frighten you,” said Soames more gently. “Heaven knows. I only want you to see that I can’t go on like this. I want you back. I want you.”
Irene raised one hand and covered the lower part of her face, but her eyes never moved from his, as though she trusted in them to keep him at bay. And all those years, barren and bitter, since — ah! when?— almost since he had first known her, surged up in one great wave of recollection in Soames; and a spasm that for his life he could not control constricted his face.
“It’s not too late,” he said; “it’s not — if you’ll only believe it.”
Irene uncovered her lips, and both her hands made a writhing gesture in front of her breast. Soames seized them.
“Don’t!” she said under her breath. But he stood holding on to them, trying to stare into her eyes which did not waver. Then she said quietly:
“I am alone here. You won’t behave again as you once behaved.”
Dropping her hands as though they had been hot irons, he turned away. Was it possible that there could be such relentless unforgiveness! Could that one act of violent possession be still alive within her? Did it bar him thus utterly? And doggedly he said, without looking up:
“I am not going till you’ve answered me. I am offering what few men would bring themselves to offer, I want a — a reasonable answer.”
And almost with surprise he heard her say:
“You can’t have a reasonable answer. Reason has nothing to do with it. You can only have the brutal truth: I would rather die.”
Soames stared at her.
“Oh!” he said. And there intervened in him a sort of paralysis of speech and movement, the kind of quivering which comes when a man has received a deadly insult, and does not yet know how he is going to take it, or rather what it is going to do with him.
“Oh!” he said again, “as bad as that? Indeed! You would rather die. That’s pretty!”
“I am sorry. You wanted me to answer. I can’t help the truth, can I?”
At that queer spiritual appeal Soames turned for relief to actuality. He snapped the brooch back into its case and put it in his pocket.
“The truth!” he said; “there’s no such thing with women. It’s nerves-nerves.”
He heard the whisper:
“Yes; nerves don’t lie. Haven’t you discovered that?” He was silent, obsessed by the thought: ‘I will hate this woman. I will hate her.’ That was the trouble! If only he could! He shot a glance at her who stood unmoving against the wall with her head up and her hands clasped, for all the world as if she were going to be shot. And he said quickly:
“I don’t believe a word of it. You have a lover. If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t be such a — such a little idiot.” He was conscious, before the expression in her eyes, that he had uttered something of a non-sequitur, and dropped back too abruptly into the verbal freedom of his connubial days. He turned away to the door. But he could not go out. Something within him — that most deep and secret Forsyte quality, the impossibility of letting go, the impossibility of seeing the fantastic and forlorn nature of his own tenacity — prevented him. He turned about again, and there stood, with his back against the door, as hers was against the wall opposite, quite unconscious of anything ridiculous in this separation by the whole width of the room.
“Do you ever think of anybody but yourself?” he said.
Irene’s lips quivered; then she answered slowly:
“Do you ever think that I found out my mistake — my hopeless, terrible mistake — the very first week of our marriage; that I went on trying three years — you know I went on trying? Was it for myself?”
Soames gritted his teeth. “God knows what it was. I’ve never understood you; I shall never understand you. You had everything you wanted; and you can have it again, and more. What’s the matter with me? I ask you a plain question: What is it?” Unconscious of the pathos in that enquiry, he went on passionately: “I’m not lame, I’m not loathsome, I’m not a boor, I’m not a fool. What is it? What’s the mystery about me?”
Her answer was a long sigh.
He clasped his hands with a gesture that for him was strangely full of expression. “When I came here to-night I was — I hoped — I meant everything that I could to do away with the past, and start fair again. And you meet me with ‘nerves,’ and silence, and sighs. There’s nothing tangible. It’s like — it’s like a spider’s web.”
“Yes.”
That whisper from across the room maddened Soames afresh.
“Well, I don’t choose to be in a spider’s web. I’ll cut it.” He walked straight up to her. “Now!” What he had gone up to her to do he really did not know. But when he was close, the old familiar scent of her clothes suddenly affected him. He put his hands on her shoulders and bent forward to kiss her. He kissed not her lips, but a little hard line where the lips had been drawn in; then his face was pressed away by her hands; he heard her say: “Oh! No!” Shame, compunction, sense of futility flooded his whole being, he turned on his heel and went straight out.
Jolyon found June waiting on the platform at Paddington. She had received his telegram while at breakfast. Her abode — a studio and two bedrooms in a St. John’s Wood garden — had been selected by her for the complete independence which it guaranteed. Unwatched by Mrs. Grundy, unhindered by permanent domestics, she could receive lame ducks at any hour of day or night, and not seldom had a duck without studio of its own made use of June’s. She enjoyed her freedom, and possessed herself with a sort of virginal passion; the warmth which she would have lavished on Bosinney, and of which — given her Forsyte tenacity — he must surely have tired, she now expended in championship of the underdogs and budding ‘geniuses’ of the artistic world. She lived, in fact, to turn ducks into the swans she believed they were. The very fervour of her protection warped her judgments. But she was loyal and liberal; her small eager hand was ever against the oppressions of academic and commercial opinion, and though her income was considerable, her bank balance was often a minus quantity.
She had come to Paddington Station heated in her soul by a visit to Eric Cobbley. A miserable Gallery had refused to let that straight-haired genius have his one-man show after all. Its impudent manager, after visiting his studio, had expressed the opinion that it would only be a ‘one-horse show from the selling point of view.’ This crowning example of commercial cowardice towards her favourite lame duck — and he so hard up, with a wife and two children, that he had caused her account to be overdrawn — was still making the blood glow in her small, resolute face, and her red-gold hair to shine more than ever. She gave her father a hug, and got into a cab with him, having as many fish to fry with him as he with her. It became at once a question which would fry them first.
Jolyon had reached the words: “My dear, I want you to come with me,” when, glancing at her face, he perceived by her blue eyes moving from side to side — like the tail of a preoccupied cat — that she was not attending. “Dad, is it true that I absolutely can’t get at any of my money?”
“Only the income, fortunately, my love.”
“How perfectly beastly! Can’t it be done somehow? There must be a way. I know I could buy a small Gallery for ten thousand pounds.”
“A small Gallery,” murmured Jolyon, “seems a modest desire. But your grandfather foresaw it.”
“I think,” cried June vigorously, “that all this care about money is awful, when there’s so much genius in the world simply crushed out for want of a little. I shall never marry and have children; why shouldn’t I be able to do some good instead of having it all tied up in case of things which will never come off?”
“Our name is Forsyte, my dear,” replied Jolyon in the ironical voice to which his impetuous daughter had never quite grown accustomed; “and Forsytes, you know, are people who so settle their property that their grandchildren, in case they should die before their parents, have to make wills leaving the property that will only come to themselves when their parents die. Do you follow that? Nor do I, but it’s a fact, anyway; we live by the principle that so long as there is a possibility of keeping wealth in the family it must not go out; if you die unmarried, your money goes to Jolly and Holly and their children if they marry. Isn’t it pleasant to know that whatever you do you can none of you be destitute?”
“But can’t I borrow the money?”
Jolyon shook his head. “You could rent a Gallery, no doubt, if you could manage it out of your income.”
June uttered a contemptuous sound.
“Yes; and have no income left to help anybody with.”
“My dear child,” murmured Jolyon, “wouldn’t it come to the same thing?”
“No,” said June shrewdly, “I could buy for ten thousand; that would only be four hundred a year. But I should have to pay a thousand a year rent, and that would only leave me five hundred. If I had the Gallery, Dad, think what I could do. I could make Eric Cobbley’s name in no time, and ever so many others.”
“Names worth making make themselves in time.”
“When they’re dead.”
“Did you ever know anybody living, my dear, improved by having his name made?”
“Yes, you,” said June, pressing his arm.
Jolyon started. ‘I?’ he thought. ‘Oh! Ah! Now she’s going to ask me to do something. We take it out, we Forsytes, each in our different ways.’
June came closer to him in the cab.
“Darling,” she said, “you buy the Gallery, and I’ll pay you four hundred a year for it. Then neither of us will be any the worse off. Besides, it’s a splendid investment.”
Jolyon wriggled. “Don’t you think,” he said, “that for an artist to buy a Gallery is a bit dubious? Besides, ten thousand pounds is a lump, and I’m not a commercial character.”
June looked at him with admiring appraisement.
“Of course you’re not, but you’re awfully businesslike. And I’m sure we could make it pay. It’ll be a perfect way of scoring off those wretched dealers and people.” And again she squeezed her father’s arm.
Jolyon’s face expressed quizzical despair.
“Where is this desirable Gallery? Splendidly situated, I suppose?”
“Just off Cork Street.”
‘Ah!’ thought Jolyon, ‘I knew it was just off somewhere. Now for what I want out of her!’
“Well, I’ll think of it, but not just now. You remember Irene? I want you to come with me and see her. Soames is after her again. She might be safer if we could give her asylum somewhere.”
The word asylum, which he had used by chance, was of all most calculated to rouse June’s interest.
“Irene! I haven’t seen her since! Of course! I’d love to help her.”
It was Jolyon’s turn to squeeze her arm, in warm admiration for this spirited, generous-hearted little creature of his begetting.
“Irene is proud,” he said, with a sidelong glance, in sudden doubt of June’s discretion; “she’s difficult to help. We must tread gently. This is the place. I wired her to expect us. Let’s send up our cards.”
“I can’t bear Soames,” said June as she got out; “he sneers at everything that isn’t successful”
Irene was in what was called the ‘Ladies’ drawing-room’ of the Piedmont Hotel.
Nothing if not morally courageous, June walked straight up to her former friend, kissed her cheek, and the two settled down on a sofa never sat on since the hotel’s foundation. Jolyon could see that Irene was deeply affected by this simple forgiveness.
“So Soames has been worrying you?” he said.
“I had a visit from him last night; he wants me to go back to him.”
“You’re not going, of course?” cried June.
Irene smiled faintly and shook her head. “But his position is horrible,” she murmured.
“It’s his own fault; he ought to have divorced you when he could.”
Jolyon remembered how fervently in the old days June had hoped that no divorce would smirch her dead and faithless lover’s name.
“Let us hear what Irene is going to do,” he said.
Irene’s lips quivered, but she spoke calmly.
“I’d better give him fresh excuse to get rid of me.”
“How horrible!” cried June.
“What else can I do?”
“Out of the question,” said Jolyon very quietly, “sans amour.”
He thought she was going to cry; but, getting up quickly, she half turned her back on them, and stood regaining control of herself.
June said suddenly:
“Well, I shall go to Soames and tell him he must leave you alone. What does he want at his age?”
“A child. It’s not unnatural”
“A child!” cried June scornfully. “Of course! To leave his money to. If he wants one badly enough let him take somebody and have one; then you can divorce him, and he can marry her.”
Jolyon perceived suddenly that he had made a mistake to bring June — her violent partizanship was fighting Soames’ battle.
“It would be best for Irene to come quietly to us at Robin Hill, and see how things shape.”
“Of course,” said June; “only. . . . ”
Irene looked full at Jolyon — in all his many attempts afterwards to analyze that glance he never could succeed.
“No! I should only bring trouble on you all. I will go abroad.”
He knew from her voice that this was final. The irrelevant thought flashed through him: ‘Well, I could see her there.’ But he said:
“Don’t you think you would be more helpless abroad, in case he followed?”
“I don’t know. I can but try.”
June sprang up and paced the room. “It’s all horrible,” she said. “Why should people be tortured and kept miserable and helpless year after year by this disgusting sanctimonious law?” But someone had come into the room, and June came to a standstill. Jolyon went up to Irene:
“Do you want money?”
“No.”
“And would you like me to let your flat?”
“Yes, Jolyon, please.”
“When shall you be going?”
“To-morrow.”
“You won’t go back there in the meantime, will you?” This he said with an anxiety strange to himself.
“No; I’ve got all I want here.”
“You’ll send me your address?”
She put out her hand to him. “I feel you’re a rock.”
“Built on sand,” answered Jolyon, pressing her hand hard; “but it’s a pleasure to do anything, at any time, remember that. And if you change your mind. . . .! Come along, June; say good-bye.”
June came from the window and flung her arms round Irene.
“Don’t think of him,” she said under her breath; “enjoy yourself, and bless you!”
With a memory of tears in Irene’s eyes, and of a smile on her lips, they went away extremely silent, passing the lady who had interrupted the interview and was turning over the papers on the table.
Opposite the National Gallery June exclaimed:
“Of all undignified beasts and horrible laws!”
But Jolyon did not respond. He had something of his father’s balance, and could see things impartially even when his emotions were roused. Irene was right; Soames’ position was as bad or worse than her own. As for the law — it catered for a human nature of which it took a naturally low view. And, feeling that if he stayed in his daughter’s company he would in one way or another commit an indiscretion, he told her he must catch his train back to Oxford; and hailing a cab, left her to Turner’s water-colours, with the promise that he would think over that Gallery.
But he thought over Irene instead. Pity, they said, was akin to love! If so he was certainly in danger of loving her, for he pitied her profoundly. To think of her drifting about Europe so handicapped and lonely! ‘I hope to goodness she’ll keep her head!’ he thought; ‘she might easily grow desperate.’ In fact, now that she had cut loose from her poor threads of occupation, he couldn’t imagine how she would go on — so beautiful a creature, hopeless, and fair game for anyone! In his exasperation was more than a little fear and jealousy. Women did strange things when they were driven into corners. ‘I wonder what Soames will do now!’ he thought. ‘A rotten, idiotic state of things! And I suppose they would say it was her own fault.’ Very preoccupied and sore at heart, he got into his train, mislaid his ticket, and on the platform at Oxford took his hat off to a lady whose face he seemed to remember without being able to put a name to her, not even when he saw her having tea at the Rainbow.
Quivering from the defeat of his hopes, with the green morocco case still flat against his heart, Soames revolved thoughts bitter as death. A spider’s web! Walking fast, and noting nothing in the moonlight, he brooded over the scene he had been through, over the memory of her figure rigid in his grasp. And the more he brooded, the more certain he became that she had a lover — her words, ‘I would sooner die!’ were ridiculous if she had not. Even if she had never loved him, she had made no fuss until Bosinney came on the scene. No; she was in love again, or she would not have made that melodramatic answer to his proposal, which in all the circumstances was reasonable! Very well! That simplified matters.
‘I’ll take steps to know where I am,’ he thought; ‘I’ll go to Polteed’s the first thing tomorrow morning.’
But even in forming that resolution he knew he would have trouble with himself. He had employed Polteed’s agency several times in the routine of his profession, even quite lately over Dartie’s case, but he had never thought it possible to employ them to watch his own wife.
It was too insulting to himself!
He slept over that project and his wounded pride — or rather, kept vigil. Only while shaving did he suddenly remember that she called herself by her maiden name of Heron. Polteed would not know, at first at all events, whose wife she was, would not look at him obsequiously and leer behind his back. She would just be the wife of one of his clients. And that would be true — for was he not his own solicitor?
He was literally afraid not to put his design into execution at the first possible moment, lest, after all, he might fail himself. And making Warmson bring him an early cup of coffee; he stole out of the house before the hour of breakfast. He walked rapidly to one of those small West End streets where Polteed’s and other firms ministered to the virtues of the wealthier classes. Hitherto he had always had Polteed to see him in the Poultry; but he well knew their address, and reached it at the opening hour. In the outer office, a room furnished so cosily that it might have been a money-lender’s, he was attended by a lady who might have been a schoolmistress.
“I wish to see Mr. Claud Polteed. He knows me — never mind my name.”
To keep everybody from knowing that he, Soames Forsyte, was reduced to having his wife spied on, was the overpowering consideration.
Mr. Claud Polteed — so different from Mr. Lewis Polteed — was one of those men with dark hair, slightly curved noses, and quick brown eyes, who might be taken for Jews but are really Phoenicians; he received Soames in a room hushed by thickness of carpet and curtains. It was, in fact, confidentially furnished, without trace of document anywhere to be seen.
Greeting Soames deferentially, he turned the key in the only door with a certain ostentation.
“If a client sends for me,” he was in the habit of saying, “he takes what precaution he likes. If he comes here, we convince him that we have no leakages. I may safely say we lead in security, if in nothing else. . . . Now, sir, what can I do for you?”
Soames’ gorge had risen so that he could hardly speak. It was absolutely necessary to hide from this man that he had any but professional interest in the matter; and, mechanically, his face assumed its sideway smile.
“I’ve come to you early like this because there’s not an hour to lose”— if he lost an hour he might fail himself yet! “Have you a really trustworthy woman free?”
Mr. Polteed unlocked a drawer, produced a memorandum, ran his eyes over it, and locked the drawer up again.
“Yes,” he said; “the very woman.”
Soames had seated himself and crossed his legs — nothing but a faint flush, which might have been his normal complexion, betrayed him.
“Send her off at once, then, to watch a Mrs. Irene Heron of Flat C, Truro Mansions, Chelsea, till further notice.”
“Precisely,” said Mr. Polteed; “divorce, I presume?” and he blew into a speaking-tube. “Mrs. Blanch in? I shall want to speak to her in ten minutes.”
“Deal with any reports yourself,” resumed Soames, “and send them to me personally, marked confidential, sealed and registered. My client exacts the utmost secrecy.”
Mr. Polteed smiled, as though saying, ‘You are teaching your grandmother, my dear sir;’ and his eyes slid over Soames’ face for one unprofessional instant.
“Make his mind perfectly easy,” he said. “Do you smoke?”
“No,” said Soames. “Understand me: Nothing may come of this. If a name gets out, or the watching is suspected, it may have very serious consequences.”
Mr. Polteed nodded. “I can put it into the cipher category. Under that system a name is never mentioned; we work by numbers.”
He unlocked another drawer and took out two slips of paper, wrote on them, and handed one to Soames.
“Keep that, sir; it’s your key. I retain this duplicate. The case we’ll call 7x. The party watched will be 17; the watcher 19; the Mansions 25; yourself — I should say, your firm — 31; my firm 32, myself 2. In case you should have to mention your client in writing I have called him 43; any person we suspect will be 47; a second person 51. Any special hint or instruction while we’re about it?”
“No,” said Soames; “that is — every consideration compatible.”
Again Mr. Polteed nodded. “Expense?”
Soames shrugged. “In reason,” he answered curtly, and got up. “Keep it entirely in your own hands.”
“Entirely,” said Mr. Polteed, appearing suddenly between him and the door. “I shall be seeing you in that other case before long. Good morning, sir.” His eyes slid unprofessionally over Soames once more, and he unlocked the door.
“Good morning,” said Soames, looking neither to right nor left.
Out in the street he swore deeply, quietly, to himself. A spider’s web, and to cut it he must use this spidery, secret, unclean method, so utterly repugnant to one who regarded his private life as his most sacred piece of property. But the die was cast, he could not go back. And he went on into the Poultry, and locked away the green morocco case and the key to that cipher destined to make crystal-clear his domestic bankruptcy.
Odd that one whose life was spent in bringing to the public eye all the private coils of property, the domestic disagreements of others, should dread so utterly the public eye turned on his own; and yet not odd, for who should know so well as he the whole unfeeling process of legal regulation.
He worked hard all day. Winifred was due at four o’clock; he was to take her down to a conference in the Temple with Dreamer Q.C., and waiting for her he re-read the letter he had caused her to write the day of Dartie’s departure, requiring him to return.
“DEAR MONTAGUE,
“I have received your letter with the news that you have left me for ever and are on your way to Buenos Aires. It has naturally been a great shock. I am taking this earliest opportunity of writing to tell you that I am prepared to let bygones be bygones if you will return to me at once. I beg you to do so. I am very much upset, and will not say any more now. I am sending this letter registered to the address you left at your Club. Please cable to me.
“Your still affectionate wife, “WINIFRED DARTIE.”
Ugh! What bitter humbug! He remembered leaning over Winifred while she copied what he had pencilled, and how she had said, laying down her pen, “Suppose he comes, Soames!” in such a strange tone of voice, as if she did not know her own mind. “He won’t come,” he had answered, “till he’s spent his money. That’s why we must act at once.” Annexed to the copy of that letter was the original of Dartie’s drunken scrawl from the Iseeum Club. Soames could have wished it had not been so manifestly penned in liquor. Just the sort of thing the Court would pitch on. He seemed to hear the Judge’s voice say: “You took this seriously! Seriously enough to write him as you did? Do you think he meant it?” Never mind! The fact was clear that Dartie had sailed and had not returned. Annexed also was his cabled answer: “Impossible return. Dartie.” Soames shook his head. If the whole thing were not disposed of within the next few months the fellow would turn up again like a bad penny. It saved a thousand a year at least to get rid of him, besides all the worry to Winifred and his father. ‘I must stiffen Dreamer’s back,’ he thought; ‘we must push it on.’
Winifred, who had adopted a kind of half-mourning which became her fair hair and tall figure very well, arrived in James’ barouche drawn by James’ pair. Soames had not seen it in the City since his father retired from business five years ago, and its incongruity gave him a shock. ‘Times are changing,’ he thought; ‘one doesn’t know what’ll go next!’ Top hats even were scarcer. He enquired after Val. Val, said Winifred, wrote that he was going to play polo next term. She thought he was in a very good set. She added with fashionably disguised anxiety: “Will there be much publicity about my affair, Soames? Must it be in the papers? It’s so bad for him, and the girls.”
With his own calamity all raw within him, Soames answered:
“The papers are a pushing lot; it’s very difficult to keep things out. They pretend to be guarding the public’s morals, and they corrupt them with their beastly reports. But we haven’t got to that yet. We’re only seeing Dreamer to-day on the restitution question. Of course he understands that it’s to lead to a divorce; but you must seem genuinely anxious to get Dartie back — you might practice that attitude to-day.”
Winifred sighed.
“Oh! What a clown Monty’s been!” she said.
Soames gave her a sharp look. It was clear to him that she could not take her Dartie seriously, and would go back on the whole thing if given half a chance. His own instinct had been firm in this matter from the first. To save a little scandal now would only bring on his sister and her children real disgrace and perhaps ruin later on if Dartie were allowed to hang on to them, going down-hill and spending the money James would leave his daughter. Though it was all tied up, that fellow would milk the settlements somehow, and make his family pay through the nose to keep him out of bankruptcy or even perhaps gaol! They left the shining carriage, with the shining horses and the shining-hatted servants on the Embankment, and walked up to Dreamer Q.C.‘s Chambers in Crown Office Row.
“Mr. Bellby is here, sir,” said the clerk; “Mr. Dreamer will be ten minutes.”
Mr. Bellby, the junior — not as junior as he might have been, for Soames only employed barristers of established reputation; it was, indeed, something of a mystery to him how barristers ever managed to establish that which made him employ them — Mr. Bellby was seated, taking a final glance through his papers. He had come from Court, and was in wig and gown, which suited a nose jutting out like the handle of a tiny pump, his small shrewd blue eyes, and rather protruding lower lip — no better man to supplement and stiffen Dreamer.
The introduction to Winifred accomplished, they leaped the weather and spoke of the war. Soames interrupted suddenly:
“If he doesn’t comply we can’t bring proceedings for six months. I want to get on with the matter, Bellby.”
Mr. Bellby, who had the ghost of an Irish brogue, smiled at Winifred and murmured: “The Law’s delays, Mrs. Dartie.”
“Six months!” repeated Soames; “it’ll drive it up to June! We shan’t get the suit on till after the long vacation. We must put the screw on, Bellby”— he would have all his work cut out to keep Winifred up to the scratch.
“Mr. Dreamer will see you now, sir.”
They filed in, Mr. Bellby going first, and Soames escorting Winifred after an interval of one minute by his watch.
Dreamer Q.C., in a gown but divested of wig, was standing before the fire, as if this conference were in the nature of a treat; he had the leathery, rather oily complexion which goes with great learning, a considerable nose with glasses perched on it, and little greyish whiskers; he luxuriated in the perpetual cocking of one eye, and the concealment of his lower with his upper lip, which gave a smothered turn to his speech. He had a way, too, of coming suddenly round the corner on the person he was talking to; this, with a disconcerting tone of voice, and a habit of growling before he began to speak — had secured a reputation second in Probate and Divorce to very few. Having listened, eye cocked, to Mr. Bellby’s breezy recapitulation of the facts, he growled, and said:
“I know all that;” and coming round the corner at Winifred, smothered the words:
“We want to get him back, don’t we, Mrs. Dartie?”
Soames interposed sharply:
“My sister’s position, of course, is intolerable.”
Dreamer growled. “Exactly. Now, can we rely on the cabled refusal, or must we wait till after Christmas to give him a chance to have written — that’s the point, isn’t it?”
“The sooner. . . . ” Soames began.
“What do you say, Bellby?” said Dreamer, coming round his corner.
Mr. Bellby seemed to sniff the air like a hound.
“We won’t be on till the middle of December. We’ve no need to give um more rope than that.”
“No,” said Soames, “why should my sister be incommoded by his choosing to go . . . ”
“To Jericho!” said Dreamer, again coming round his corner; “quite so. People oughtn’t to go to Jericho, ought they, Mrs. Dartie?” And he raised his gown into a sort of fantail. “I agree. We can go forward. Is there anything more?”
“Nothing at present,” said Soames meaningly; “I wanted you to see my sister.”
Dreamer growled softly: “Delighted. Good evening!” And let fall the protection of his gown.
They filed out. Winifred went down the stairs. Soames lingered. In spite of himself he was impressed by Dreamer.
“The evidence is all right, I think,” he said to Bellby. “Between ourselves, if we don’t get the thing through quick, we never may. D’you think he understands that?”
“I’ll make um,” said Bellby. “Good man though — good man.”
Soames nodded and hastened after his sister. He found her in a draught, biting her lips behind her veil, and at once said:
“The evidence of the stewardess will be very complete.”
Winifred’s face hardened; she drew herself up, and they walked to the carriage. And, all through that silent drive back to Green Street, the souls of both of them revolved a single thought: ‘Why, oh! why should I have to expose my misfortune to the public like this? Why have to employ spies to peer into my private troubles? They were not of my making.’
The possessive instinct, which, so determinedly balked, was animating two members of the Forsyte family towards riddance of what they could no longer possess, was hardening daily in the British body politic. Nicholas, originally so doubtful concerning a war which must affect property, had been heard to say that these Boers were a pig-headed lot; they were causing a lot of expense, and the sooner they had their lesson the better. He would send out Wolseley! Seeing always a little further than other people — whence the most considerable fortune of all the Forsytes — he had perceived already that Buller was not the man —‘a bull of a chap, who just went butting, and if they didn’t look out Ladysmith would fall.’ This was early in December, so that when Black Week came, he was enabled to say to everybody: ‘I told you so.’ During that week of gloom such as no Forsyte could remember, very young Nicholas attended so many drills in his corps, ‘The Devil’s Own,’ that young Nicholas consulted the family physician about his son’s health and was alarmed to find that he was perfectly sound. The boy had only just eaten his dinners and been called to the bar, at some expense, and it was in a way a nightmare to his father and mother that he should be playing with military efficiency at a time when military efficiency in the civilian population might conceivably be wanted. His grandfather, of course, pooh-poohed the notion, too thoroughly educated in the feeling that no British war could be other than little and professional, and profoundly distrustful of Imperial commitments, by which, moreover, he stood to lose, for he owned De Beers, now going down fast, more than a sufficient sacrifice on the part of his grandson.
At Oxford, however, rather different sentiments prevailed. The inherent effervescence of conglomerate youth had, during the two months of the term before Black Week, been gradually crystallising out into vivid oppositions. Normal adolescence, ever in England of a conservative tendency though not taking things too seriously, was vehement for a fight to a finish and a good licking for the Boers. Of this larger faction Val Dartie was naturally a member. Radical youth, on the other hand, a small but perhaps more vocal body, was for stopping the war and giving the Boers autonomy. Until Black Week, however, the groups were amorphous, without sharp edges, and argument remained but academic. Jolly was one of those who knew not where he stood. A streak of his grandfather old Jolyon’s love of justice prevented, him from seeing one side only. Moreover, in his set of ‘the best’ there was a ‘jumping-Jesus’ of extremely advanced opinions and some personal magnetism. Jolly wavered. His father, too, seemed doubtful in his views. And though, as was proper at the age of twenty, he kept a sharp eye on his father, watchful for defects which might still be remedied, still that father had an ‘air’ which gave a sort of glamour to his creed of ironic tolerance. Artists of course; were notoriously Hamlet-like, and to this extent one must discount for one’s father, even if one loved him. But Jolyon’s original view, that to ‘put your nose in where you aren’t wanted’ (as the Uitlanders had done) ‘and then work the oracle till you get on top is not being quite the clean potato,’ had, whether founded in fact or no, a certain attraction for his son, who thought a deal about gentility. On the other hand Jolly could not abide such as his set called ‘cranks,’ and Val’s set called ‘smugs,’ so that he was still balancing when the clock of Black Week struck. One — two — three, came those ominous repulses at Stormberg, Magersfontein, Colenso. The sturdy English soul reacting after the first cried, ‘Ah! but Methuen!’ after the second: ‘Ah! but Buller!’ then, in inspissated gloom, hardened. And Jolly said to himself: ‘No, damn it! We’ve got to lick the beggars now; I don’t care whether we’re right or wrong.’ And, if he had known it, his father was thinking the same thought.
That next Sunday, last of the term, Jolly was bidden to wine with ‘one of the best.’ After the second toast, ‘Buller and damnation to the Boers,’ drunk — no heel taps — in the college Burgundy, he noticed that Val Dartie, also a guest, was looking at him with a grin and saying something to his neighbour. He was sure it was disparaging. The last boy in the world to make himself conspicuous or cause public disturbance, Jolly grew rather red and shut his lips. The queer hostility he had always felt towards his second-cousin was strongly and suddenly reinforced. ‘All right!’ he thought, ‘you wait, my friend!’ More wine than was good for him, as the custom was, helped him to remember, when they all trooped forth to a secluded spot, to touch Val on the arm.
“What did you say about me in there?”
“Mayn’t I say what I like?”
“No.”
“Well, I said you were a pro-Boer — and so you are!”
“You’re a liar!”
“D’you want a row?”
“Of course, but not here; in the garden.”
“All right. Come on.”
They went, eyeing each other askance, unsteady, and unflinching; they climbed the garden railings. The spikes on the top slightly ripped Val’s sleeve, and occupied his mind. Jolly’s mind was occupied by the thought that they were going to fight in the precincts of a college foreign to them both. It was not the thing, but never mind — the young beast!
They passed over the grass into very nearly darkness, and took off their coats.
“You’re not screwed, are you?” said Jolly suddenly. “I can’t fight you if you’re screwed.”
“No more than you.”
“All right then.”
Without shaking hands, they put themselves at once into postures of defence. They had drunk too much for science, and so were especially careful to assume correct attitudes, until Jolly smote Val almost accidentally on the nose. After that it was all a dark and ugly scrimmage in the deep shadow of the old trees, with no one to call ‘time,’ till, battered and blown, they unclinched and staggered back from each other, as a voice said:
“Your names, young gentlemen?”
At this bland query spoken from under the lamp at the garden gate, like some demand of a god, their nerves gave way, and snatching up their coats, they ran at the railings, shinned up them, and made for the secluded spot whence they had issued to the fight. Here, in dim light, they mopped their faces, and without a word walked, ten paces apart, to the college gate. They went out silently, Val going towards the Broad along the Brewery, Jolly down the lane towards the High. His head, still fumed, was busy with regret that he had not displayed more science, passing in review the counters and knockout blows which he had not delivered. His mind strayed on to an imagined combat, infinitely unlike that which he had just been through, infinitely gallant, with sash and sword, with thrust and parry, as if he were in the pages of his beloved Dumas. He fancied himself La Mole, and Aramis, Bussy, Chicot, and D’Artagnan rolled into one, but he quite failed to envisage Val as Coconnas, Brissac, or Rochefort. The fellow was just a confounded cousin who didn’t come up to Cocker. Never mind! He had given him one or two. ‘Pro-Boer!’ The word still rankled, and thoughts of enlisting jostled his aching head; of riding over the veldt, firing gallantly, while the Boers rolled over like rabbits. And, turning up his smarting eyes, he saw the stars shining between the housetops of the High, and himself lying out on the Karoo (whatever that was) rolled in a blanket, with his rifle ready and his gaze fixed on a glittering heaven.
He had a fearful ‘head’ next morning, which he doctored, as became one of ‘the best,’ by soaking it in cold water, brewing strong coffee which he could not drink, and only sipping a little Hock at lunch. The legend that ‘some fool’ had run into him round a corner accounted for a bruise on his cheek. He would on no account have mentioned the fight, for, on second thoughts, it fell far short of his standards.
The next day he went ‘down,’ and travelled through to Robin Hill. Nobody was there but June and Holly, for his father had gone to Paris. He spent a restless and unsettled Vacation, quite out of touch with either of his sisters. June, indeed, was occupied with lame ducks, whom, as a rule, Jolly could not stand, especially that Eric Cobbley and his family, ‘hopeless outsiders,’ who were always littering up the house in the Vacation. And between Holly and himself there was a strange division, as if she were beginning to have opinions of her own, which was so — unnecessary. He punched viciously at a ball, rode furiously but alone in Richmond Park, making a point of jumping the stiff, high hurdles put up to close certain worn avenues of grass — keeping his nerve in, he called it. Jolly was more afraid of being afraid than most boys are. He bought a rifle, too, and put a range up in the home field, shooting across the pond into the kitchen-garden wall, to the peril of gardeners, with the thought that some day, perhaps, he would enlist and save South Africa for his country. In fact, now that they were appealing for Yeomanry recruits the boy was thoroughly upset. Ought he to go? None of ‘the best,’ so far as he knew — and he was in correspondence with several — were thinking of joining. If they had been making a move he would have gone at once — very competitive, and with a strong sense of form, he could not bear to be left behind in anything — but to do it off his own bat might look like ‘swagger’; because of course it wasn’t really necessary. Besides, he did not want to go, for the other side of this young Forsyte recoiled from leaping before he looked. It was altogether mixed pickles within him, hot and sickly pickles, and he became quite unlike his serene and rather lordly self.
And then one day he saw that which moved him to uneasy wrath — two riders, in a glade of the Park close to the Ham Gate, of whom she on the left-hand was most assuredly Holly on her silver roan, and he on the right-hand as assuredly that ‘squirt’ Val Dartie. His first impulse was to urge on his own horse and demand the meaning of this portent, tell the fellow to ‘bunk,’ and take Holly home. His second — to feel that he would look a fool if they refused. He reined his horse in behind a tree, then perceived that it was equally impossible to spy on them. Nothing for it but to go home and await her coming! Sneaking out with that young bounder! He could not consult with June, because she had gone up that morning in the train of Eric Cobbley and his lot. And his father was still in ‘that rotten Paris.’ He felt that this was emphatically one of those moments for which he had trained himself, assiduously, at school, where he and a boy called Brent had frequently set fire to newspapers and placed them in the centre of their studies to accustom them to coolness in moments of danger. He did not feel at all cool waiting in the stable-yard, idly stroking the dog Balthasar, who queasy as an old fat monk, and sad in the absence of his master, turned up his face, panting with gratitude for this attention. It was half an hour before Holly came, flushed and ever so much prettier than she had any right to look. He saw her look at him quickly — guiltily of course — then followed her in, and, taking her arm, conducted her into what had been their grandfather’s study. The room, not much used now, was still vaguely haunted for them both by a presence with which they associated tenderness, large drooping white moustaches, the scent of cigar smoke, and laughter. Here Jolly, in the prime of his youth, before he went to school at all, had been wont to wrestle with his grandfather, who even at eighty had an irresistible habit of crooking his leg. Here Holly, perched on the arm of the great leather chair, had stroked hair curving silvery over an ear into which she would whisper secrets. Through that window they had all three sallied times without number to cricket on the lawn, and a mysterious game called ‘Wopsy-doozle,’ not to be understood by outsiders, which made old Jolyon very hot. Here once on a warm night Holly had appeared in her ‘nighty,’ having had a bad dream, to have the clutch of it released. And here Jolly, having begun the day badly by introducing fizzy magnesia into Mademoiselle Beauce’s new-laid egg, and gone on to worse, had been sent down (in the absence of his father) to the ensuing dialogue:
“Now, my boy, you mustn’t go on like this.”
“Well, she boxed my ears, Gran, so I only boxed hers, and then she boxed mine again.”
“Strike a lady? That’ll never do! Have you begged her pardon?”
“Not yet.”
“Then you must go and do it at once. Come along.”
“But she began it, Gran; and she had two to my one.”
“My dear, it was an outrageous thing to do.”
“Well, she lost her temper; and I didn’t lose mine.”
“Come along.”
“You come too, then, Gran.”
“Well — this time only.”
And they had gone hand in hand.
Here — where the Waverley novels and Byron’s works and Gibbon’s Roman Empire and Humboldt’s Cosmos, and the bronzes on the mantelpiece, and that masterpiece of the oily school, ‘Dutch Fishing-Boats at Sunset,’ were fixed as fate, and for all sign of change old Jolyon might have been sitting there still, with legs crossed, in the arm chair, and domed forehead and deep eyes grave above The Times — here they came, those two grandchildren. And Jolly said:
“I saw you and that fellow in the Park.”
The sight of blood rushing into her cheeks gave him some satisfaction; she ought to be ashamed!
“Well?” she said.
Jolly was surprised; he had expected more, or less.
“Do you know,” he said weightily, “that he called me a pro-Boer last term? And I had to fight him.”
“Who won?”
Jolly wished to answer: ‘I should have,’ but it seemed beneath him.
“Look here!” he said, “what’s the meaning of it? Without telling anybody!”
“Why should I? Dad isn’t here; why shouldn’t I ride with him?”
“You’ve got me to ride with. I think he’s an awful young rotter.”
Holly went pale with anger.
“He isn’t. It’s your own fault for not liking him.”
And slipping past her brother she went out, leaving him staring at the bronze Venus sitting on a tortoise, which had been shielded from him so far by his sister’s dark head under her soft felt riding hat. He felt queerly disturbed, shaken to his young foundations. A lifelong domination lay shattered round his feet. He went up to the Venus and mechanically inspected the tortoise.
Why didn’t he like Val Dartie? He could not tell. Ignorant of family history, barely aware of that vague feud which had started thirteen years before with Bosinney’s defection from June in favour of Soames’ wife, knowing really almost nothing about Val he was at sea. He just did dislike him. The question, however, was: What should he do? Val Dartie, it was true, was a second-cousin, but it was not the thing for Holly to go about with him. And yet to ‘tell’ of what he had chanced on was against his creed. In this dilemma he went and sat in the old leather chair and crossed his legs. It grew dark while he sat there staring out through the long window at the old oak-tree, ample yet bare of leaves, becoming slowly just a shape of deeper dark printed on the dusk.
‘Grandfather!’ he thought without sequence, and took out his watch. He could not see the hands, but he set the repeater going. ‘Five o’clock!’ His grandfather’s first gold hunter watch, butter-smooth with age — all the milling worn from it, and dented with the mark of many a fall. The chime was like a little voice from out of that golden age, when they first came from St. John’s Wood, London, to this house — came driving with grandfather in his carriage, and almost instantly took to the trees. Trees to climb, and grandfather watering the geranium-beds below! What was to be done? Tell Dad he must come home? Confide in June?— only she was so — so sudden! Do nothing and trust to luck? After all, the Vac. would soon be over. Go up and see Val and warn him off? But how get his address? Holly wouldn’t give it him! A maze of paths, a cloud of possibilities! He lit a cigarette. When he had smoked it halfway through his brow relaxed, almost as if some thin old hand had been passed gently over it; and in his ear something seemed to whisper: ‘Do nothing; be nice to Holly, be nice to her, my dear!’ And Jolly heaved a sigh of contentment, blowing smoke through his nostrils. . . .
But up in her room, divested of her habit, Holly was still frowning. ‘He is not — he is not!’ were the words which kept forming on her lips.
A little private hotel over a well-known restaurant near the Gare St. Lazare was Jolyon’s haunt in Paris. He hated his fellow Forsytes abroad — vapid as fish out of water in their well-trodden runs, the Opera, Rue de Rivoli, and Moulin Rouge. Their air of having come because they wanted to be somewhere else as soon as possible annoyed him. But no other Forsyte came near this haunt, where he had a wood fire in his bedroom and the coffee was excellent. Paris was always to him more attractive in winter. The acrid savour from woodsmoke and chestnut-roasting braziers, the sharpness of the wintry sunshine on bright rays, the open cafes defying keen-aired winter, the self-contained brisk boulevard crowds, all informed him that in winter Paris possessed a soul which, like a migrant bird, in high summer flew away.
He spoke French well, had some friends, knew little places where pleasant dishes could be met with, queer types observed. He felt philosophic in Paris, the edge of irony sharpened; life took on a subtle, purposeless meaning, became a bunch of flavours tasted, a darkness shot with shifting gleams of light.
When in the first week of December he decided to go to Paris, he was far from admitting that Irene’s presence was influencing him. He had not been there two days before he owned that the wish to see her had been more than half the reason. In England one did not admit what was natural. He had thought it might be well to speak to her about the letting of her flat and other matters, but in Paris he at once knew better. There was a glamour over the city. On the third day he wrote to her, and received an answer which procured him a pleasurable shiver of the nerves: “MY DEAR JOLYON,
“It will be a happiness for me to see you. “IRENE.”
He took his way to her hotel on a bright day with a feeling such as he had often had going to visit an adored picture. No woman, so far as he remembered, had ever inspired in him this special sensuous and yet impersonal sensation. He was going to sit and feast his eyes, and come away knowing her no better, but ready to go and feast his eyes again to-morrow. Such was his feeling, when in the tarnished and ornate little lounge of a quiet hotel near the river she came to him preceded by a small page-boy who uttered the word, “Madame,” and vanished. Her face, her smile, the poise of her figure, were just as he had pictured, and the expression of her face said plainly: ‘A friend!’
“Well,” he said, “what news, poor exile?”
“None.”
“Nothing from Soames?”
“Nothing.”
“I have let the flat for you, and like a good steward I bring you some money. How do you like Paris?”
While he put her through this catechism, it seemed to him that he had never seen lips so fine and sensitive, the lower lip curving just a little upwards, the upper touched at one corner by the least conceivable dimple. It was like discovering a woman in what had hitherto been a sort of soft and breathed-on statue, almost impersonally admired. She owned that to be alone in Paris was a little difficult; and yet, Paris was so full of its own life that it was often, she confessed, as innocuous as a desert. Besides, the English were not liked just now!
“That will hardly be your case,” said Jolyon; “you should appeal to the French.”
“It has its disadvantages.”
Jolyon nodded.
“Well, you must let me take you about while I’m here. We’ll start to-morrow. Come and dine at my pet restaurant; and we’ll go to the Opera-Comique.”
It was the beginning of daily meetings.
Jolyon soon found that for those who desired a static condition of the affections, Paris was at once the first and last place in which to be friendly with a pretty woman. Revelation was alighting like a bird in his heart, singing: ‘Elle est ton reve! Elle est ton reve! Sometimes this seemed natural, sometimes ludicrous — a bad case of elderly rapture. Having once been ostracised by Society, he had never since had any real regard for conventional morality; but the idea of a love which she could never return — and how could she at his age?— hardly mounted beyond his subconscious mind. He was full, too, of resentment, at the waste and loneliness of her life. Aware of being some comfort to her, and of the pleasure she clearly took in their many little outings, he was amiably desirous of doing and saying nothing to destroy that pleasure. It was like watching a starved plant draw up water, to see her drink in his companionship. So far as they could tell, no one knew her address except himself; she was unknown in Paris, and he but little known, so that discretion seemed unnecessary in those walks, talks, visits to concerts, picture-galleries, theatres, little dinners, expeditions to Versailles, St. Cloud, even Fontainebleau. And time fled — one of those full months without past to it or future. What in his youth would certainly have been headlong passion, was now perhaps as deep a feeling, but far gentler, tempered to protective companionship by admiration, hopelessness, and a sense of chivalry — arrested in his veins at least so long as she was there, smiling and happy in their friendship, and always to him more beautiful and spiritually responsive: for her philosophy of life seemed to march in admirable step with his own, conditioned by emotion more than by reason, ironically mistrustful, susceptible to beauty, almost passionately humane and tolerant, yet subject to instinctive rigidities of which as a mere man he was less capable. And during all this companionable month he never quite lost that feeling with which he had set out on the first day as if to visit an adored work of art, a well-nigh impersonal desire. The future — inexorable pendant to the present he took care not to face, for fear of breaking up his untroubled manner; but he made plans to renew this time in places still more delightful, where the sun was hot and there were strange things to see and paint. The end came swiftly on the 20th of January with a telegram:
“Have enlisted in Imperial Yeomanry. JOLLY.”
Jolyon received it just as he was setting out to meet her at the Louvre. It brought him up with a round turn. While he was lotus-eating here, his boy, whose philosopher and guide he ought to be, had taken this great step towards danger, hardship, perhaps even death. He felt disturbed to the soul, realising suddenly how Irene had twined herself round the roots of his being. Thus threatened with severance, the tie between them — for it had become a kind of tie — no longer had impersonal quality. The tranquil enjoyment of things in common, Jolyon perceived, was gone for ever. He saw his feeling as it was, in the nature of an infatuation. Ridiculous, perhaps, but so real that sooner or later it must disclose itself. And now, as it seemed to him, he could not, must not, make any such disclosure. The news of Jolly stood inexorably in the way. He was proud of this enlistment; proud of his boy for going off to fight for the country; for on Jolyon’s pro-Boerism, too, Black Week had left its mark. And so the end was reached before the beginning! Well, luckily he had never made a sign!
When he came into the Gallery she was standing before the ‘Virgin of the Rocks,’ graceful, absorbed, smiling and unconscious. ‘Have I to give up seeing that?’ he thought. ‘It’s unnatural, so long as she’s willing that I should see her.’ He stood, unnoticed, watching her, storing up the image of her figure, envying the picture on which she was bending that long scrutiny. Twice she turned her head towards the entrance, and he thought: ‘That’s for me!’ At last he went forward.
“Look!” he said.
She read the telegram, and he heard her sigh.
That sigh, too, was for him! His position was really cruel! To be loyal to his son he must just shake her hand and go. To be loyal to the feeling in his heart he must at least tell her what that feeling was. Could she, would she understand the silence in which he was gazing at that picture?
“I’m afraid I must go home at once,” he said at last. “I shall miss all this awfully.”
“So shall I; but, of course, you must go.”
“Well!” said Jolyon holding out his hand.
Meeting her eyes, a flood of feeling nearly mastered him.
“Such is life!” he said. “Take care of yourself, my dear!”
He had a stumbling sensation in his legs and feet, as if his brain refused to steer him away from her. From the doorway, he saw her lift her hand and touch its fingers with her lips. He raised his hat solemnly, and did not look back again.