The Forsyte Saga (42 page)

“Call him Cato,” said George, “it'll be damned piquant!” He had just won a tenner on a horse of that name.

“Cato!” Dartie had replied—they were a little “on” as the phrase was even in those days—“it's not a Christian name.”

“Hallo you!” George called to a waiter in knee breeches. “Bring me the
Encyc'pedia Brit
. from the Library, letter C.”

The waiter brought it.

“Here you are!” said George, pointing with his cigar: “Cato Publius Valerius by Virgil out of Lydia. That's what you want. Publius Valerius is Christian enough.”

Dartie, on arriving home, had informed Winifred. She had been charmed. It was so chic. And Publius Valerius became the baby's name, though it afterwards transpired that they had got hold of the inferior Cato. In 1890, however, when little Publius was nearly ten, the word chic went out of fashion, and sobriety came in; Winifred began to have doubts. They were confirmed by little Publius himself who returned from his first term at school complaining that life was a burden to him—they called him Pubby. Winifred—a woman of real decision—promptly changed his school and his name to Val, the Publius being dropped even as an initial.

At nineteen he was a limber, freckled youth with a wide mouth, light eyes, long dark lashes; a rather charming smile, considerable knowledge of what he should not know, and no experience of what he ought to do. Few boys had more narrowly escaped being expelled—the engaging rascal. After kissing his mother and pinching Imogen, he ran upstairs three at a time, and came down four, dressed for dinner. He was awfully sorry, but his trainer, who had come up too, had asked him to dine at the Oxford and Cambridge; it wouldn't do to miss—the old chap would be hurt. Winifred let him go with an unhappy pride. She had wanted him at home, but it was very nice to know that his tutor was so fond of him. He went out with a wink at Imogen, saying: “I say, Mother, could I have two plover's eggs when I come in?—cook's got some. They top up so jolly well. Oh! and look here—have you any money?—I had to borrow a fiver from old Snobby.”

Winifred, looking at him with fond shrewdness, answered:

“My dear, you
are
naughty about money. But you shouldn't pay him tonight, anyway; you're his guest.” How nice and slim he looked in his white waistcoat, and his dark thick lashes!

“Oh, but we may go to the theatre, you see, Mother; and I think I ought to stand the tickets; he's always hard up, you know.”

Winifred produced a five-pound note, saying:

“Well, perhaps you'd better pay him, but you mustn't stand the tickets too.”

Val pocketed the fiver.

“If I do, I can't,” he said. “Good night, Mum!”

He went out with his head up and his hat cocked joyously, sniffing the air of Piccadilly like a young hound loosed into covert. Jolly good biz! After that mouldy old slow hole down there!

He found his tutor, not indeed at the Oxford and Cambridge, but at the Goat's Club. This tutor was a year older than himself, a good-looking youth, with fine brown eyes, and smooth dark hair, a small mouth, an oval face, languid, immaculate, cool to a degree, one of those young men who without effort establish moral ascendancy over their companions. He had missed being expelled from school a year before Val, had spent that year at Oxford, and Val could almost see a halo round his head. His name was Crum, and no one could get through money quicker. It seemed to be his only aim in life—dazzling to young Val, in whom, however, the Forsyte would stand apart, now and then, wondering where the value for that money was.

They dined quietly, in style and taste; left the club smoking cigars, with just two bottles inside them, and dropped into stalls at the Liberty. For Val the sound of comic songs, the sight of lovely legs were fogged and interrupted by haunting fears that he would never equal Crum's quiet dandyism. His idealism was roused; and when that is so, one is never quite at ease. Surely he had too wide a mouth, not the best cut of waistcoat, no braid on his trousers, and his lavender gloves had no thin black stitchings down the back. Besides, he laughed too much—Crum never laughed, he only smiled, with his regular dark brows raised a little so that they formed a gable over his just drooped lids. No! he would never be Crum's equal. All the same it was a jolly good show, and Cynthia Dark simply ripping. Between the acts Crum regaled him with particulars of Cynthia's private life, and the awful knowledge became Val's that, if he liked, Crum could go behind. He simply longed to say: “I say, take me!” but dared not, because of his deficiencies; and this made the last act or two almost miserable. On coming out Crum said: “It's half an hour before they close; let's go on to the Pandemonium.” They took a hansom to travel the hundred yards, and seats costing seven-and-six apiece because they were going to stand, and walked into the Promenade. It was in these little things, this utter negligence of money that Crum had such engaging polish. The ballet was on its last legs and night, and the traffic of the Promenade was suffering for the moment. Men and women were crowded in three rows against the barrier. The whirl and dazzle on the stage, the half dark, the mingled tobacco fumes and women's scent, all that curious lure to promiscuity which belongs to Promenades, began to free young Val from his idealism. He looked admiringly in a young woman's face, saw she was not young, and quickly looked away. Shades of Cynthia Dark! The young woman's arm touched his unconsciously; there was a scent of musk and mignonette. Val looked round the corner of his lashes. Perhaps she was young, after all. Her foot trod on his; she begged his pardon. He said:

“Not at all; jolly good ballet, isn't it?”

“Oh, I'm tired of it; aren't you?”

Young Val smiled—his wide, rather charming smile. Beyond that he did not go—not yet convinced. The Forsyte in him stood out for greater certainty. And on the stage the ballet whirled its kaleidoscope of snow white, salmon pink, and emerald green and violet and seemed suddenly to freeze into a stilly spangled pyramid. Applause broke out, and it was over! Maroon curtains had cut it off. The semicircle of men and women round the barrier broke up, the young woman's arm pressed his. A little way off disturbance seemed centring round a man with a pink carnation; Val stole another glance at the young woman, who was looking towards it. Three men, unsteady, emerged, walking arm in arm. The one in the centre wore the pink carnation, a white waistcoat, a dark moustache; he reeled a little as he walked. Crum's voice said slow and level: “Look at that bounder, he's screwed!” Val turned to look. The bounder had disengaged his arm, and was pointing straight at them. Crum's voice, level as ever, said:

“He seems to know you!” The bounder spoke:

“H'llo!” he said. “You f'llows, look! There's my young rascal of a son!”

Val saw. It was his father! He could have sunk into the crimson carpet. It was not the meeting in this place, not even that his father was screwed; it was Crum's word bounder, which, as by heavenly revelation, he perceived at that moment to be true. Yes, his father looked a bounder with his dark good looks, and his pink carnation, and his square, self-assertive walk. And without a word he ducked behind the young woman and slipped out of the Promenade. He heard the word, “Val!” behind him, and ran down deep-carpeted steps past the “chuckersout,” into the square.

To be ashamed of his own father is perhaps the bitterest experience a young man can go through. It seemed to Val, hurrying away, that his career had ended before it had begun. How could he go up to Oxford now amongst all those chaps, those splendid friends of Crum's, who would know that his father was a bounder! And suddenly he hated Crum. Who the devil was Crum, to say that? If Crum had been beside him at that moment, he would certainly have been jostled off the pavement. His own father—his own! A choke came up in his throat, and he dashed his hands down deep into his overcoat pockets. Damn Crum! He conceived the wild idea of running back and fending his father, taking him by the arm and walking about with him in front of Crum; but gave it up at once and pursued his way down Piccadilly. A young woman planted herself before him. “Not so angry, darling!” He shied, dodged her, and suddenly became quite cool. If Crum ever said a word, he would jolly well punch his head, and there would be an end of it. He walked a hundred yards or more, contented with that thought, then lost its comfort utterly. It wasn't simple like that! He remembered how, at school, when some parent came down who did not pass the standard, it just clung to the fellow afterwards. It was one of those things nothing could remove. Why had his mother married his father, if he was a bounder? It was bitterly unfair—jolly low-down on a fellow to give him a bounder for father. The worst of it was that now Crum had spoken the word, he realised that he had long known subconsciously that his father was not “the clean potato.” It was the beastliest thing that had ever happened to him—beastliest thing that had ever happened to any fellow! And, downhearted as he had never yet been, he came to Green Street, and let himself in with a smuggled latchkey. In the dining room his plover's eggs were set invitingly, with some cut bread and butter, and a little whisky at the bottom of a decanter—just enough, as Winifred had thought, for him to feel himself a man. It made him sick to look at them, and he went upstairs.

Winifred heard him pass, and thought: “The dear boy's in. Thank goodness! If he takes after his father I don't know what I shall do! But he won't he's like me. Dear Val!”

When Soames entered his sister's little Louis Quinze drawing room, with its small balcony, always flowered with hanging geraniums in the summer, and now with pots of
Lilium auratum
, he was struck by the immutability of human affairs. It looked just the same as on his first visit to the newly married Darties twenty-one years ago. He had chosen the furniture himself, and so completely that no subsequent purchase had ever been able to change the room's atmosphere. Yes, he had founded his sister well, and she had wanted it. Indeed, it said a great deal for Winifred that after all this time with Dartie she remained well-founded. From the first Soames had nosed out Dartie's nature from underneath the plausibility,
savoir faire
, and good looks which had dazzled Winifred, her mother, and even James, to the extent of permitting the fellow to marry his daughter without bringing anything but shares of no value into settlement.

Winifred, whom he noticed next to the furniture, was sitting at her Buhl bureau with a letter in her hand. She rose and came towards him. Tall as himself, strong in the cheekbones, well-tailored, something in her face disturbed Soames. She crumpled the letter in her hand, but seemed to change her mind and held it out to him. He was her lawyer as well as her brother.

Soames read, on Iseeum Club paper, these words:

You will not get chance to insult in my own again. I am leaving country tomorrow. It's played out. I'm tired of being insulted by you. You've brought on yourself. No self-respecting man can stand it. I shall not ask you for anything again. Goodbye. I took the photograph of the two girls. Give them my love. I don't care what your family say. It's all their doing. I'm going to live new life.

M.D.

This after-dinner note had a splotch on it not yet quite dry. He looked at Winifred—the splotch had clearly come from her; and he checked the words: “Good riddance!” Then it occurred to him that with this letter she was entering that very state which he himself so earnestly desired to quit—the state of a Forsyte who was not divorced.

Winifred had turned away, and was taking a long sniff from a little gold-topped bottle. A dull commiseration, together with a vague sense of injury, crept about Soames's heart. He had come to her to talk of his own position, and get sympathy, and here was she in the same position, wanting of course to talk of it, and get sympathy from him. It was always like that! Nobody ever seemed to think that he had troubles and interests of his own. He folded up the letter with the splotch inside, and said:

“What's it all about, now?”

Winifred recited the story of the pearls calmly.

“Do you think he's really gone, Soames? You see the state he was in when he wrote that.”

Soames who, when he desired a thing, placated Providence by pretending that he did not think it likely to happen, answered:

“I shouldn't think so. I might find out at his club.”

“If George is there,” said Winifred, “he would know.”

“George?” said Soames; “I saw him at his father's funeral.”

“Then he's sure to be there.”

Soames, whose good sense applauded his sister's acumen, said grudgingly: “Well, I'll go round. Have you said anything in Park Lane?”

“I've told Emily,” returned Winifred, who retained that chic way of describing her mother. “Father would have a fit.”

Indeed, anything untoward was now sedulously kept from James. With another look round at the furniture, as if to gauge his sister's exact position, Soames went out towards Piccadilly. The evening was drawing in—a touch of chill in the October haze. He walked quickly, with his close and concentrated air. He must get through, for he wished to dine in Soho. On hearing from the hall porter at the Iseeum that Mr. Dartie had not been in today, he looked at the trusty fellow and decided only to ask if Mr. George Forsyte was in the club. He was. Soames, who always looked askance at his cousin George, as one inclined to jest at his expense, followed the pageboy, slightly reassured by the thought that George had just lost his father. He must have come in for about thirty thousand, besides what he had under that settlement of Roger's, which had avoided death duty. He found George in a bow-window, staring out across a half-eaten plate of muffins. His tall, bulky, black-clothed figure loomed almost threatening, though preserving still the supernatural neatness of the racing man. With a faint grin on his fleshy face, he said:

“Hallo, Soames! Have a muffin?”

“No, thanks,” murmured Soames; and, nursing his hat, with the desire to say something suitable and sympathetic, added:

“How's your mother?”

“Thanks,” said George; “so-so. Haven't seen you for ages. You never go racing. How's the city?”

Soames, scenting the approach of a jest, closed up, and answered:

“I wanted to ask you about Dartie. I hear he's. . . .”

“Flitted, made a bolt to Buenos Aires with the fair Lola. Good for Winifred and the little Darties. He's a treat.”

Soames nodded. Naturally inimical as these cousins were, Dartie made them kin.

“Uncle James'll sleep in his bed now,” resumed George; “I suppose he's had a lot off you, too.”

Soames smiled.

“Ah! You saw him further,” said George amicably. “He's a real rouser. Young Val will want a bit of looking after. I was always sorry for Winifred. She's a plucky woman.”

Again Soames nodded. “I must be getting back to her,” he said; “she just wanted to know for certain. We may have to take steps. I suppose there's no mistake?”

“It's quite O.K.,” said George—it was he who invented so many of those quaint sayings which have been assigned to other sources. “He was drunk as a lord last night; but he went off all right this morning. His ship's the
Tuscarora
;” and, fishing out a card, he read mockingly:

“‘Mr. Montague Dartie, Poste Restante, Buenos Aires.' I should hurry up with the steps, if I were you. He fairly fed me up last night.”

“Yes,” said Soames; “but it's not always easy.” Then, conscious from George's eyes that he had roused reminiscence of his own affair, he got up, and held out his hand. George rose too.

“Remember me to Winifred. . . . You'll enter her for the divorce stakes straight off if you ask me.”

Soames took a sidelong look back at him from the doorway. George had seated himself again and was staring before him; he looked big and lonely in those black clothes. Soames had never known him so subdued. “I suppose he feels it in a way,” he thought. “They must have about fifty thousand each, all told. They ought to keep the estate together. If there's a war, house property will go down. Uncle Roger was a good judge, though.” And the face of Annette rose before him in the darkening street; her brown hair and her blue eyes with their dark lashes, her fresh lips and cheeks, dewy and blooming in spite of London, her perfect French figure. “Take steps!” he thought. Reentering Winifred's house he encountered Val, and they went in together. An idea had occurred to Soames. His cousin Jolyon was Irene's trustee, the first step would be to go down and see him at Robin Hill. Robin Hill! The odd—the very odd feeling those words brought back! Robin Hill—the house Bosinney had built for him and Irene—the house they had never lived in—the fatal house! And Jolyon lived there now! H'm! And suddenly he thought: “They say he's got a boy at Oxford! Why not take young Val down and introduce them! It's an excuse! Less bald—very much less bald!” So, as they went upstairs, he said to Val:

“You've got a cousin at Oxford; you've never met him. I should like to take you down with me tomorrow to where he lives and introduce you. You'll find it useful.”

Val, receiving the idea with but moderate transports, Soames clinched it.

“I'll call for you after lunch. It's in the country—not far; you'll enjoy it.”

On the threshold of the drawing room he recalled with an effort that the steps he contemplated concerned Winifred at the moment, not himself.

Winifred was still sitting at her Buhl bureau.

“It's quite true,” he said; “he's gone to Buenos Aires, started this morning—we'd better have him shadowed when he lands. I'll cable at once. Otherwise we may have a lot of expense. The sooner these things are done the better. I'm always regretting that I didn't . . .” he stopped, and looked sidelong at the silent Winifred. “By the way,” he went on, “can you prove cruelty?”

Winifred said in a dull voice:

“I don't know. What is cruelty?”

“Well, has he struck you, or anything?”

Winifred shook herself, and her jaw grew square.

“He twisted my arm. Or would pointing a pistol count? Or being too drunk to undress himself, or—No—I can't bring in the children.”

“No,” said Soames; “no! I wonder! Of course, there's legal separation—we can get that. But separation! Um!”

“What does it mean?” asked Winifred desolately.

“That he can't touch you, or you him; you're both of you married and unmarried.” And again he grunted. What was it, in fact, but his own accursed position, legalised! No, he would not put her into that!

“It must be divorce,” he said decisively; “failing cruelty, there's desertion. There's a way of shortening the two years, now. We get the court to give us restitution of conjugal rights. Then if he doesn't obey, we can bring a suit for divorce in six months' time. Of course you don't want him back. But they won't know that. Still, there's the risk that he might come. I'd rather try cruelty.”

Winifred shook her head. “It's so beastly.”

“Well,” Soames murmured, “perhaps there isn't much risk so long as he's infatuated and got money. Don't say anything to anybody, and don't pay any of his debts.”

Winifred sighed. In spite of all she had been through, the sense of loss was heavy on her. And this idea of not paying his debts any more brought it home to her as nothing else yet had. Some richness seemed to have gone out of life. Without her husband, without her pearls, without that intimate sense that she made a brave show above the domestic whirlpool, she would now have to face the world. She felt bereaved indeed.

And into the chilly kiss he placed on her forehead, Soames put more than his usual warmth.

“I have to go down to Robin Hill tomorrow,” he said, “to see young Jolyon on business. He's got a boy at Oxford. I'd like to take Val with me and introduce him. Come down to The Shelter for the weekend and bring the children. Oh! by the way, no, that won't do; I've got some other people coming.” So saying, he left her and turned towards Soho.