The Forsyte Saga (62 page)

Soames returned to England the following day, and on the third morning received a visit from Mr. Polteed, who wore a flower and carried a brown billycock hat. Soames motioned him to a seat.

“The news from the war is not so bad, is it?” said Mr. Polteed. “I hope I see you well, sir.”

“Thanks! quite.”

Mr. Polteed leaned forward, smiled, opened his hand, looked into it, and said softly:

“I think we've done your business for you at last.”

“What?” ejaculated Soames.

“Nineteen reports quite suddenly what I think we shall be justified in calling conclusive evidence,” and Mr. Polteed paused.

“Well?”

“On the tenth instant, after witnessing an interview between 17 and a party, earlier in the day, 19 can swear to having seen him coming out of her bedroom in the hotel about ten o'clock in the evening. With a little care in the giving of the evidence that will be enough, especially as 17 has left Paris—no doubt with the party in question. In fact, they both slipped off, and we haven't got on to them again, yet; but we shall—we shall. She's worked hard under very difficult circumstances, and I'm glad she's brought it off at last.” Mr. Polteed took out a cigarette, tapped its end against the table, looked at Soames, and put it back. The expression on his client's face was not encouraging.

“Who is this new person?” said Soames abruptly.

“That we don't know. She'll swear to the fact, and she's got his appearance pat.”

Mr. Polteed took out a letter, and began reading:

“‘Middle-aged, medium height, blue dittoes in afternoon, evening dress at night, pale, dark hair, small dark moustache, flat cheeks, good chin, grey eyes, small feet, guilty look. . . .'”

Soames rose and went to the window. He stood there in sardonic fury. Congenital idiot—spidery congenital idiot! Seven months at fifteen pounds a week—to be tracked down as his own wife's lover! Guilty look! He threw the window open.

“It's hot,” he said, and came back to his seat.

Crossing his knees, he bent a supercilious glance on Mr. Polteed.

“I doubt if that's quite good enough,” he said, drawling the words, “with no name or address. I think you may let that lady have a rest, and take up our friend 47 at this end.” Whether Polteed had spotted him he could not tell; but he had a mental vision of him in the midst of his cronies dissolved in inextinguishable laughter. Guilty look! Damnation!

Mr. Polteed said in a tone of urgency, almost of pathos: “I assure you we have put it through sometimes on less than that. It's Paris, you know. Attractive woman living alone. Why not risk it, sir? We might screw it up a peg.”

Soames had sudden insight. The fellow's professional zeal was stirred: “Greatest triumph of my career; got a man his divorce through a visit to his own wife's bedroom! Something to talk of there, when I retire!” And for one wild moment he thought: “Why not?” After all, hundreds of men of medium height had small feet and a guilty look!

“I'm not authorised to take any risk!” he said shortly.

Mr. Polteed looked up.

“Pity,” he said, “quite a pity! That other affair seemed very costive.”

Soames rose.

“Never mind that. Please watch 47, and take care not to find a mare's nest. Good morning!”

Mr. Polteed's eye glinted at the words “mare's nest!”

“Very good. You shall be kept informed.”

And Soames was alone again. The spidery, dirty, ridiculous business! Laying his arms on the table, he leaned his forehead on them. Full ten minutes he rested thus, till a managing clerk roused him with the draft prospectus of a new issue of shares, very desirable, in Manifold and Topping's. That afternoon he left work early and made his way to the Restaurant Bretagne. Only Madame Lamotte was in. Would
monsieur
have tea with her?

Soames bowed.

When they were seated at right angles to each other in the little room, he said abruptly:

“I want a talk with you,
madame
.”

The quick lift of her clear brown eyes told him that she had long expected such words.

“I have to ask you something first: That young doctor—what's his name? Is there anything between him and Annette?”

Her whole personality had become, as it were, like jet—clear-cut, black, hard, shining.

“Annette is young,” she said; “so is
monsieur le docteur
. Between young people things move quickly; but Annette is a good daughter. Ah! what a jewel of a nature!”

The least little smile twisted Soames's lips.

“Nothing definite, then?”

“But definite—no, indeed! The young man is veree nice, but—what would you? There is no money at present.”

She raised her willow-patterned teacup; Soames did the same. Their eyes met.

“I am a married man,” he said, “living apart from my wife for many years. I am seeking to divorce her.”

Madame Lamotte put down her cup. Indeed! What tragic things there were! The entire absence of sentiment in her inspired a queer species of contempt in Soames.

“I am a rich man,” he added, fully conscious that the remark was not in good taste. “It is useless to say more at present, but I think you understand.”

Madame's eyes, so open that the whites showed above them, looked at him very straight.

“
Ah!
ç
a—mais nous avons le temps!
” was all she said. “Another little cup?” Soames refused, and, taking his leave, walked westward.

He had got that off his mind; she would not let Annette commit herself with that cheerful young ass until . . . ! But what chance of his ever being able to say: “I'm free.” What chance? The future had lost all semblance of reality. He felt like a fly, entangled in cobweb filaments, watching the desirable freedom of the air with pitiful eyes.

He was short of exercise, and wandered on to Kensington Gardens, and down Queen's Gate towards Chelsea. Perhaps she had gone back to her flat. That at all events he could find out. For since that last and most ignominious repulse his wounded self-respect had taken refuge again in the feeling that she must have a lover. He arrived before the little Mansions at the dinner-hour. No need to enquire! A grey-haired lady was watering the flower boxes in her window. It was evidently let. And he walked slowly past again, along the river—an evening of clear, quiet beauty, all harmony and comfort, except within his heart.

On the afternoon that Soames crossed to France a cablegram was received by Jolyon at Robin Hill:

Your son down with enteric no immediate danger will cable again.

It reached a household already agitated by the imminent departure of June, whose berth was booked for the following day. She was, indeed, in the act of confiding Eric Cobbley and his family to her father's care when the message arrived.

The resolution to become a Red Cross nurse, taken under stimulus of Jolly's enlistment, had been loyally fulfilled with the irritation and regret which all Forsytes feel at what curtails their individual liberties. Enthusiastic at first about the wonderfulness of the work, she had begun after a month to feel that she could train herself so much better than others could train her. And if Holly had not insisted on following her example, and being trained too, she must inevitably have cried off. The departure of Jolly and Val with their troop in April had further stiffened her failing resolve. But now, on the point of departure, the thought of leaving Eric Cobbley, with a wife and two children, adrift in the cold waters of an unappreciative world weighed on her so that she was still in danger of backing out. The reading of that cablegram, with its disquieting reality, clinched the matter. She saw herself already nursing Jolly—for of course they would let her nurse her own brother! Jolyon—ever wide and doubtful—had no such hope. Poor June!

Could any Forsyte of her generation grasp how rude and brutal life was? Ever since he knew of his boy's arrival at Cape Town the thought of him had been a kind of recurrent sickness in Jolyon. He could not get reconciled to the feeling that Jolly was in danger all the time. The cablegram, grave though it was, was almost a relief. He was now safe from bullets, anyway. And yet—this enteric was a virulent disease!
The Times
was full of deaths therefrom. Why could
he
not be lying out there in that up-country hospital, and his boy safe at home? The un-Forsytean self-sacrifice of his three children, indeed, had quite bewildered Jolyon. He would eagerly change places with Jolly, because he loved his boy; but no such personal motive was influencing
them
. He could only think that it marked the decline of the Forsyte type.

Late that afternoon Holly came out to him under the old oak tree. She had grown up very much during these last months of hospital training away from home. And, seeing her approach, he thought: “She has more sense than June, child though she is; more wisdom. Thank God
she
isn't going out.” She had seated herself in the swing, very silent and still. “She feels this,” thought Jolyon, “as much as I,” and, seeing her eyes fixed on him, he said: “Don't take it to heart too much, my child. If he weren't ill, he might be in much greater danger.”

Holly got out of the swing.

“I want to tell you something, Dad. It was through me that Jolly enlisted and went out.”

“How's that?”

“When you were away in Paris, Val Dartie and I fell in love. We used to ride in Richmond Park; we got engaged. Jolly found it out, and thought he ought to stop it; so he dared Val to enlist. It was all my fault, Dad; and I want to go out too. Because if anything happens to either of them I should feel awful. Besides, I'm just as much trained as June.”

Jolyon gazed at her in a stupefaction that was tinged with irony. So this was the answer to the riddle he had been asking himself; and his three children were Forsytes after all. Surely Holly might have told him all this before! But he smothered the sarcastic sayings on his lips. Tenderness to the young was perhaps the most sacred article of his belief. He had got, no doubt, what he deserved. Engaged! So this was why he had so lost touch with her! And to young Val Dartie—nephew of Soames—in the other camp! It was all terribly distasteful. He closed his easel, and set his drawing against the tree.

“Have you told June?”

“Yes; she says she'll get me into her cabin somehow. It's a single cabin; but one of us could sleep on the floor. If you consent, she'll go up now and get permission.”

“Consent?” thought Jolyon. “Rather late in the day to ask for that!” But again he checked himself.

“You're too young, my dear; they won't let you.”

“June knows some people that she helped to go to Cape Town. If they won't let me nurse yet, I could stay with them and go on training there. Let me go, Dad!”

Jolyon smiled because he could have cried.

“I never stop anyone from doing anything,” he said.

Holly flung her arms round his neck.

“Oh! Dad, you are the best in the world.”

“That means the worst,” thought Jolyon. If he had ever doubted his creed of tolerance he did so then.

“I'm not friendly with Val's family,” he said, “and I don't know Val, but Jolly didn't like him.”

Holly looked at the distance and said:

“I love him.”

“That settles it,” said Jolyon dryly, then catching the expression on her face, he kissed her, with the thought: “Is anything more pathetic than the faith of the young?” Unless he actually forbade her going it was obvious that he must make the best of it, so he went up to town with June. Whether due to her persistence, or the fact that the official they saw was an old school friend of Jolyon's, they obtained permission for Holly to share the single cabin. He took them to Surbiton station the following evening, and they duly slid away from him, provided with money, invalid foods, and those letters of credit without which Forsytes do not travel.

He drove back to Robin Hill under a brilliant sky to his late dinner, served with an added care by servants trying to show him that they sympathised, eaten with an added scrupulousness to show them that he appreciated their sympathy. But it was a real relief to get to his cigar on the terrace of flagstones—cunningly chosen by young Bosinney for shape and colour—with night closing in around him, so beautiful a night, hardly whispering in the trees, and smelling so sweet that it made him ache. The grass was drenched with dew, and he kept to those flagstones, up and down, till presently it began to seem to him that he was one of three, not wheeling, but turning right about at each end, so that his father was always nearest to the house, and his son always nearest to the terrace edge. Each had an arm lightly within his arm; he dared not lift his hand to his cigar lest he should disturb them, and it burned away, dripping ash on him, till it dropped from his lips, at last, which were getting hot. They left him then, and his arms felt chilly. Three Jolyons in one Jolyon they had walked.

He stood still, counting the sounds—a carriage passing on the highroad, a distant train, the dog at Gage's farm, the whispering trees, the groom playing on his penny whistle. A multitude of stars up there—bright and silent, so far off! No moon as yet! Just enough light to show him the dark flags and swords of the iris flowers along the terrace edge—his favourite flower that had the night's own colour on its curving crumpled petals. He turned round to the house. Big, unlighted, not a soul beside himself to live in all that part of it. Stark loneliness! He could not go on living here alone. And yet, so long as there was beauty, why should a man feel lonely? The answer—as to some idiot's riddle—was: Because he did. The greater the beauty, the greater the loneliness, for at the back of beauty was harmony, and at the back of harmony was—union. Beauty could not comfort if the soul were out of it. The night, maddeningly lovely, with bloom of grapes on it in starshine, and the breath of grass and honey coming from it, he could not enjoy, while she who was to him the life of beauty, its embodiment and essence, was cut off from him, utterly cut off now, he felt, by honourable decency.

He made a poor fist of sleeping, striving too hard after that resignation which Forsytes find difficult to reach, bred to their own way and left so comfortably off by their fathers. But after dawn he dozed off, and soon was dreaming a strange dream.

He was on a stage with immensely high rich curtains—high as the very stars—stretching in a semicircle from footlights to footlights. He himself was very small, a little black restless figure roaming up and down; and the odd thing was that he was not altogether himself, but Soames as well, so that he was not only experiencing but watching. This figure of himself and Soames was trying to find a way out through the curtains, which, heavy and dark, kept him in. Several times he had crossed in front of them before he saw with delight a sudden narrow rift—a tall chink of beauty the colour of iris flowers, like a glimpse of Paradise, remote, ineffable. Stepping quickly forward to pass into it, he found the curtains closing before him. Bitterly disappointed he—or was it Soames?—moved on, and there was the chink again through the parted curtains, which again closed too soon. This went on and on and he never got through till he woke with the word “Irene” on his lips. The dream disturbed him badly, especially that identification of himself with Soames.

Next morning, finding it impossible to work, he spent hours riding Jolly's horse in search of fatigue. And on the second day he made up his mind to move to London and see if he could not get permission to follow his daughters to South Africa. He had just begun to pack the following morning when he received this letter:

GREEN HOTEL,

RICHMOND

June
13

MY DEAR JOLYON,

You will be surprised to see how near I am to you. Paris became impossible—and I have come here to be within reach of your advice. I would so love to see you again. Since you left Paris I don't think I have met anyone I could really talk to. Is all well with you and with your boy? No one knows, I think, that I am here at present.

Always your friend,

IRENE

Irene within three miles of him!—and again in flight! He stood with a very queer smile on his lips. This was more than he had bargained for!

About noon he set out on foot across Richmond Park, and as he went along, he thought: “Richmond Park! By Jove, it suits us Forsytes!” Not that Forsytes lived there—nobody lived there save royalty, rangers, and the deer—but in Richmond Park nature was allowed to go so far and no further, putting up a brave show of being natural, seeming to say: “Look at my instincts—they are almost passions, very nearly out of hand, but not quite, of course; the very hub of possession is to possess oneself.” Yes! Richmond Park possessed itself, even on that bright day of June, with arrowy cuckoos shifting the tree-points of their calls, and the wood doves announcing high summer.

The Green Hotel, which Jolyon entered at one o'clock, stood nearly opposite that more famous hostelry, the Crown and Sceptre; it was modest, highly respectable, never out of cold beef, gooseberry tart, and a dowager or two, so that a carriage and pair was almost always standing before the door.

In a room draped in chintz so slippery as to forbid all emotion, Irene was sitting on a piano stool covered with crewel work, playing “Hansel and Gretel” out of an old score. Above her on a wall, not yet Morris-papered, was a print of the queen on a pony, amongst deerhounds, Scotch caps, and slain stags; beside her in a pot on the windowsill was a white and rosy fuchsia. The Victorianism of the room almost talked; and in her clinging frock Irene seemed to Jolyon like Venus emerging from the shell of the past century.

“If the proprietor had eyes,” he said, “he would show you the door; you have broken through his decorations.” Thus lightly he smothered up an emotional moment. Having eaten cold beef, pickled walnut, gooseberry tart, and drunk stone-bottle ginger beer, they walked into the park, and light talk was succeeded by the silence Jolyon had dreaded.

“You haven't told me about Paris,” he said at last.

“No. I've been shadowed for a long time; one gets used to that. But then Soames came. By the little Niobe—the same story; would I go back to him?”

“Incredible!”

She had spoken without raising her eyes, but she looked up now. Those dark eyes clinging to his said as no words could have: “I have come to an end; if you want me, here I am.”

For sheer emotional intensity had he ever—old as he was—passed through such a moment?

The words: “Irene, I adore you!” almost escaped him. Then, with a clearness of which he would not have believed mental vision capable, he saw Jolly lying with a white face turned to a white wall.

“My boy is very ill out there,” he said quietly.

Irene slipped her arm through his.

“Let's walk on; I understand.”

No miserable explanation to attempt! She had understood! And they walked on among the bracken, knee-high already, between the rabbit-holes and the oak trees, talking of Jolly. He left her two hours later at the Richmond Hill Gate, and turned towards home.

“She knows of my feeling for her, then,” he thought. Of course! One could not keep knowledge of that from such a woman!