The Forsyte Saga, Volume II.

J >> John Galsworthy >> The Forsyte Saga, Volume II.


"Cruel?" ejaculated Val. "Oh! that's all rot. Who's June?"

"My sister--my half-sister, you know--much older than me." She had put
her hands up to both cheeks of Jolly's horse, and was rubbing her nose
against its nose with a gentle snuffling noise which seemed to have
an hypnotic effect on the animal. Val contemplated her cheek resting
against the horse's nose, and her eyes gleaming round at him. 'She's
really a duck,' he thought.

They returned to the house less talkative, followed this time by the
dog Balthasar, walking more slowly than anything on earth, and clearly
expecting them not to exceed his speed limit.

"This is a ripping place," said Val from under the oak tree, where they
had paused to allow the dog Balthasar to come up.

"Yes," said Holly, and sighed. "Of course I want to go everywhere. I
wish I were a gipsy."

"Yes, gipsies are jolly," replied Val, with a conviction which had just
come to him; "you're rather like one, you know."

Holly's face shone suddenly and deeply, like dark leaves gilded by the
sun.

"To go mad-rabbiting everywhere and see everything, and live in the
open--oh! wouldn't it be fun?"

"Let's do it!" said Val.

"Oh yes, let's!"

"It'd be grand sport, just you and I."

Then Holly perceived the quaintness and gushed.

"Well, we've got to do it," said Val obstinately, but reddening too.

"I believe in doing things you want to do. What's down there?"

"The kitchen-garden, and the pond and the coppice, and the farm."

"Let's go down!"

Holly glanced back at the house.

"It's tea-time, I expect; there's Dad beckoning."

Val, uttering a growly sound, followed her towards the house.

When they re-entered the hall gallery the sight of two middle-aged
Forsytes drinking tea together had its magical effect, and they became
quite silent. It was, indeed, an impressive spectacle. The two were
seated side by side on an arrangement in marqueterie which looked like
three silvery pink chairs made one, with a low tea-table in front of
them. They seemed to have taken up that position, as far apart as the
seat would permit, so that they need not look at each other too much;
and they were eating and drinking rather than talking--Soames with
his air of despising the tea-cake as it disappeared, Jolyon of finding
himself slightly amusing. To the casual eye neither would have seemed
greedy, but both were getting through a good deal of sustenance. The two
young ones having been supplied with food, the process went on silent
and absorbative, till, with the advent of cigarettes, Jolyon said to
Soames:

"And how's Uncle James?"

"Thanks, very shaky."

"We're a wonderful family, aren't we? The other day I was calculating
the average age of the ten old Forsytes from my father's family Bible.
I make it eighty-four already, and five still living. They ought to beat
the record;" and looking whimsically at Soames, he added:

"We aren't the men they were, you know."

Soames smiled. 'Do you really think I shall admit that I'm not their
equal'; he seemed to be saying, 'or that I've got to give up anything,
especially life?'

"We may live to their age, perhaps," pursued Jolyon, "but
self-consciousness is a handicap, you know, and that's the difference
between us. We've lost conviction. How and when self-consciousness was
born I never can make out. My father had a little, but I don't believe
any other of the old Forsytes ever had a scrap. Never to see yourself as
others see you, it's a wonderful preservative. The whole history of the
last century is in the difference between us. And between us and you,"
he added, gazing through a ring of smoke at Val and Holly, uncomfortable
under his quizzical regard, "there'll be--another difference. I wonder
what."

Soames took out his watch.

"We must go," he said, "if we're to catch our train."

"Uncle Soames never misses a train," muttered Val, with his mouth full.

"Why should I?" Soames answered simply.

"Oh! I don't know," grumbled Val, "other people do."

At the front door he gave Holly's slim brown hand a long and
surreptitious squeeze.

"Look out for me to-morrow," he whispered; "three o'clock. I'll wait for
you in the road; it'll save time. We'll have a ripping ride." He gazed
back at her from the lodge gate, and, but for the principles of a man
about town, would have waved his hand. He felt in no mood to tolerate
his uncle's conversation. But he was not in danger. Soames preserved a
perfect muteness, busy with far-away thoughts.

The yellow leaves came down about those two walking the mile and a half
which Soames had traversed so often in those long-ago days when he came
down to watch with secret pride the building of the house--that house
which was to have been the home of him and her from whom he was now
going to seek release. He looked back once, up that endless vista of
autumn lane between the yellowing hedges. What an age ago! "I don't want
to see her," he had said to Jolyon. Was that true? 'I may have to,' he
thought; and he shivered, seized by one of those queer shudderings that
they say mean footsteps on one's grave. A chilly world! A queer world!
And glancing sidelong at his nephew, he thought: 'Wish I were his age! I
wonder what she's like now!'




CHAPTER VIII--JOLYON PROSECUTES TRUSTEESHIP

When those two were gone Jolyon did not return to his painting, for
daylight was failing, but went to the study, craving unconsciously
a revival of that momentary vision of his father sitting in the old
leather chair with his knees crossed and his straight eyes gazing up
from under the dome of his massive brow. Often in this little room,
cosiest in the house, Jolyon would catch a moment of communion with his
father. Not, indeed, that he had definitely any faith in the persistence
of the human spirit--the feeling was not so logical--it was, rather,
an atmospheric impact, like a scent, or one of those strong animistic
impressions from forms, or effects of light, to which those with the
artist's eye are especially prone. Here only--in this little unchanged
room where his father had spent the most of his waking hours--could
be retrieved the feeling that he was not quite gone, that the steady
counsel of that old spirit and the warmth of his masterful lovability
endured.

What would his father be advising now, in this sudden recrudescence of
an old tragedy--what would he say to this menace against her to whom he
had taken such a fancy in the last weeks of his life? 'I must do my best
for her,' thought Jolyon; 'he left her to me in his will. But what is
the best?'

And as if seeking to regain the sapience, the balance and shrewd common
sense of that old Forsyte, he sat down in the ancient chair and
crossed his knees. But he felt a mere shadow sitting there; nor did any
inspiration come, while the fingers of the wind tapped on the darkening
panes of the french-window.

'Go and see her?' he thought, 'or ask her to come down here? What's her
life been? What is it now, I wonder? Beastly to rake up things at this
time of day.' Again the figure of his cousin standing with a hand on a
front door of a fine olive-green leaped out, vivid, like one of those
figures from old-fashioned clocks when the hour strikes; and his words
sounded in Jolyon's ears clearer than any chime: "I manage my own
affairs. I've told you once, I tell you again: We are not at home." The
repugnance he had then felt for Soames--for his flat-cheeked, shaven
face full of spiritual bull-doggedness; for his spare, square,
sleek figure slightly crouched as it were over the bone he could not
digest--came now again, fresh as ever, nay, with an odd increase. 'I
dislike him,' he thought, 'I dislike him to the very roots of me.
And that's lucky; it'll make it easier for me to back his wife.'
Half-artist, and half-Forsyte, Jolyon was constitutionally averse from
what he termed 'ructions'; unless angered, he conformed deeply to that
classic description of the she-dog, 'Er'd ruther run than fight.' A
little smile became settled in his beard. Ironical that Soames should
come down here--to this house, built for himself! How he had gazed and
gaped at this ruin of his past intention; furtively nosing at the walls
and stairway, appraising everything! And intuitively Jolyon thought: 'I
believe the fellow even now would like to be living here. He could never
leave off longing for what he once owned! Well, I must act, somehow or
other; but it's a bore--a great bore.'

Late that evening he wrote to the Chelsea flat, asking if Irene would
see him.

The old century which had seen the plant of individualism flower so
wonderfully was setting in a sky orange with coming storms. Rumours of
war added to the briskness of a London turbulent at the close of the
summer holidays. And the streets to Jolyon, who was not often up in
town, had a feverish look, due to these new motorcars and cabs, of which
he disapproved aesthetically. He counted these vehicles from his hansom,
and made the proportion of them one in twenty. 'They were one in thirty
about a year ago,' he thought; 'they've come to stay. Just so much more
rattling round of wheels and general stink'--for he was one of those
rather rare Liberals who object to anything new when it takes a material
form; and he instructed his driver to get down to the river quickly,
out of the traffic, desiring to look at the water through the mellowing
screen of plane-trees. At the little block of flats which stood back
some fifty yards from the Embankment, he told the cabman to wait, and
went up to the first floor.

Yes, Mrs. Heron was at home!

The effect of a settled if very modest income was at once apparent to
him remembering the threadbare refinement in that tiny flat eight
years ago when he announced her good fortune. Everything was now fresh,
dainty, and smelled of flowers. The general effect was silvery with
touches of black, hydrangea colour, and gold. 'A woman of great taste,'
he thought. Time had dealt gently with Jolyon, for he was a Forsyte.
But with Irene Time hardly seemed to deal at all, or such was his
impression. She appeared to him not a day older, standing there in
mole-coloured velvet corduroy, with soft dark eyes and dark gold hair,
with outstretched hand and a little smile.

"Won't you sit down?"

He had probably never occupied a chair with a fuller sense of
embarrassment.

"You look absolutely unchanged," he said.

"And you look younger, Cousin Jolyon."

Jolyon ran his hands through his hair, whose thickness was still a
comfort to him.

"I'm ancient, but I don't feel it. That's one thing about painting, it
keeps you young. Titian lived to ninety-nine, and had to have plague to
kill him off. Do you know, the first time I ever saw you I thought of a
picture by him?"

"When did you see me for the first time?"

"In the Botanical Gardens."

"How did you know me, if you'd never seen me before?"

"By someone who came up to you." He was looking at her hardily, but her
face did not change; and she said quietly:

"Yes; many lives ago."

"What is your recipe for youth, Irene?"

"People who don't live are wonderfully preserved."

H'm! a bitter little saying! People who don't live! But an opening, and
he took it. "You remember my Cousin Soames?"

He saw her smile faintly at that whimsicality, and at once went on:

"He came to see me the day before yesterday! He wants a divorce. Do
you?"

"I?" The word seemed startled out of her. "After twelve years? It's
rather late. Won't it be difficult?"

Jolyon looked hard into her face. "Unless...." he said.

"Unless I have a lover now. But I have never had one since."

What did he feel at the simplicity and candour of those words? Relief,
surprise, pity! Venus for twelve years without a lover!

"And yet," he said, "I suppose you would give a good deal to be free,
too?"

"I don't know. What does it matter, now?"

"But if you were to love again?"

"I should love." In that simple answer she seemed to sum up the whole
philosophy of one on whom the world had turned its back.

"Well! Is there anything you would like me to say to him?"

"Only that I'm sorry he's not free. He had his chance once. I don't know
why he didn't take it."

"Because he was a Forsyte; we never part with things, you know, unless
we want something in their place; and not always then."

Irene smiled. "Don't you, Cousin Jolyon?--I think you do."

"Of course, I'm a bit of a mongrel--not quite a pure Forsyte. I never
take the halfpennies off my cheques, I put them on," said Jolyon
uneasily.

"Well, what does Soames want in place of me now?"

"I don't know; perhaps children."

She was silent for a little, looking down.

"Yes," she murmured; "it's hard. I would help him to be free if I
could."

Jolyon gazed into his hat, his embarrassment was increasing fast; so
was his admiration, his wonder, and his pity. She was so lovely, and so
lonely; and altogether it was such a coil!

"Well," he said, "I shall have to see Soames. If there's anything I
can do for you I'm always at your service. You must think of me as a
wretched substitute for my father. At all events I'll let you know what
happens when I speak to Soames. He may supply the material himself."

She shook her head.

"You see, he has a lot to lose; and I have nothing. I should like him to
be free; but I don't see what I can do."

"Nor I at the moment," said Jolyon, and soon after took his leave. He
went down to his hansom. Half-past three! Soames would be at his office
still.

"To the Poultry," he called through the trap. In front of the Houses of
Parliament and in Whitehall, newsvendors were calling, "Grave situation
in the Transvaal!" but the cries hardly roused him, absorbed in
recollection of that very beautiful figure, of her soft dark glance, and
the words: "I have never had one since." What on earth did such a woman
do with her life, back-watered like this? Solitary, unprotected, with
every man's hand against her or rather--reaching out to grasp her at the
least sign. And year after year she went on like that!

The word 'Poultry' above the passing citizens brought him back to
reality.

'Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte,' in black letters on a ground the colour
of peasoup, spurred him to a sort of vigour, and he went up the stone
stairs muttering: "Fusty musty ownerships! Well, we couldn't do without
them!"

"I want Mr. Soames Forsyte," he said to the boy who opened the door.

"What name?"

"Mr. Jolyon Forsyte."

The youth looked at him curiously, never having seen a Forsyte with a
beard, and vanished.

The offices of 'Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte' had slowly absorbed the
offices of 'Tooting and Bowles,' and occupied the whole of the first
floor.

The firm consisted now of nothing but Soames and a number of managing
and articled clerks. The complete retirement of James some six years
ago had accelerated business, to which the final touch of speed had been
imparted when Bustard dropped off, worn out, as many believed, by the
suit of 'Fryer versus Forsyte,' more in Chancery than ever and less
likely to benefit its beneficiaries. Soames, with his saner grasp of
actualities, had never permitted it to worry him; on the contrary, he
had long perceived that Providence had presented him therein with L200 a
year net in perpetuity, and--why not?

When Jolyon entered, his cousin was drawing out a list of holdings in
Consols, which in view of the rumours of war he was going to advise his
companies to put on the market at once, before other companies did the
same. He looked round, sidelong, and said:

"How are you? Just one minute. Sit down, won't you?" And having entered
three amounts, and set a ruler to keep his place, he turned towards
Jolyon, biting the side of his flat forefinger....

"Yes?" he said.

"I have seen her."

Soames frowned.

"Well?"

"She has remained faithful to memory."

Having said that, Jolyon was ashamed. His cousin had flushed a dusky
yellowish red. What had made him tease the poor brute!

"I was to tell you she is sorry you are not free. Twelve years is a long
time. You know your law, and what chance it gives you." Soames uttered
a curious little grunt, and the two remained a full minute without
speaking. 'Like wax!' thought Jolyon, watching that close face, where
the flush was fast subsiding. 'He'll never give me a sign of what he's
thinking, or going to do. Like wax!' And he transferred his gaze to a
plan of that flourishing town, 'By-Street on Sea,' the future existence
of which lay exposed on the wall to the possessive instincts of the
firm's clients. The whimsical thought flashed through him: 'I wonder if
I shall get a bill of costs for this--"To attending Mr. Jolyon Forsyte
in the matter of my divorce, to receiving his account of his visit to
my wife, and to advising him to go and see her again, sixteen and
eightpence."'

Suddenly Soames said: "I can't go on like this. I tell you, I can't
go on like this." His eyes were shifting from side to side, like an
animal's when it looks for way of escape. 'He really suffers,' thought
Jolyon; 'I've no business to forget that, just because I don't like
him.'

"Surely," he said gently, "it lies with yourself. A man can always put
these things through if he'll take it on himself."

Soames turned square to him, with a sound which seemed to come from
somewhere very deep.

"Why should I suffer more than I've suffered already? Why should I?"

Jolyon could only shrug his shoulders. His reason agreed, his instinct
rebelled; he could not have said why.

"Your father," went on Soames, "took an interest in her--why, goodness
knows! And I suppose you do too?" he gave Jolyon a sharp look. "It seems
to me that one only has to do another person a wrong to get all the
sympathy. I don't know in what way I was to blame--I've never known.
I always treated her well. I gave her everything she could wish for. I
wanted her."

Again Jolyon's reason nodded; again his instinct shook its head. 'What
is it?' he thought; 'there must be something wrong in me. Yet if there
is, I'd rather be wrong than right.'

"After all," said Soames with a sort of glum fierceness, "she was my
wife."

In a flash the thought went through his listener: 'There it is!
Ownerships! Well, we all own things. But--human beings! Pah!'

"You have to look at facts," he said drily, "or rather the want of
them."

Soames gave him another quick suspicious look.

"The want of them?" he said. "Yes, but I am not so sure."

"I beg your pardon," replied Jolyon; "I've told you what she said. It
was explicit."

"My experience has not been one to promote blind confidence in her word.
We shall see."

Jolyon got up.

"Good-bye," he said curtly.

"Good-bye," returned Soames; and Jolyon went out trying to understand
the look, half-startled, half-menacing, on his cousin's face. He sought
Waterloo Station in a disturbed frame of mind, as though the skin of
his moral being had been scraped; and all the way down in the train he
thought of Irene in her lonely flat, and of Soames in his lonely
office, and of the strange paralysis of life that lay on them both.
'In chancery!' he thought. 'Both their necks in chancery--and her's so
pretty!'




CHAPTER IX--VAL HEARS THE NEWS

The keeping of engagements had not as yet been a conspicuous feature in
the life of young Val Dartie, so that when he broke two and kept one,
it was the latter event which caused him, if anything, the greater
surprise, while jogging back to town from Robin Hill after his ride with
Holly. She had been even prettier than he had thought her yesterday,
on her silver-roan, long-tailed 'palfrey'; and it seemed to him,
self-critical in the brumous October gloaming and the outskirts
of London, that only his boots had shone throughout their two-hour
companionship. He took out his new gold 'hunter'--present from
James--and looked not at the time, but at sections of his face in the
glittering back of its opened case. He had a temporary spot over one
eyebrow, and it displeased him, for it must have displeased her. Crum
never had any spots. Together with Crum rose the scene in the promenade
of the Pandemonium. To-day he had not had the faintest desire to
unbosom himself to Holly about his father. His father lacked poetry,
the stirrings of which he was feeling for the first time in his nineteen
years. The Liberty, with Cynthia Dark, that almost mythical embodiment
of rapture; the Pandemonium, with the woman of uncertain age--both
seemed to Val completely 'off,' fresh from communion with this new, shy,
dark-haired young cousin of his. She rode 'Jolly well,' too, so that it
had been all the more flattering that she had let him lead her where he
would in the long gallops of Richmond Park, though she knew them so
much better than he did. Looking back on it all, he was mystified by
the barrenness of his speech; he felt that he could say 'an awful lot of
fetching things' if he had but the chance again, and the thought that
he must go back to Littlehampton on the morrow, and to Oxford on the
twelfth--'to that beastly exam,' too--without the faintest chance of
first seeing her again, caused darkness to settle on his spirit even
more quickly than on the evening. He should write to her, however, and
she had promised to answer. Perhaps, too, she would come up to Oxford to
see her brother. That thought was like the first star, which came out as
he rode into Padwick's livery stables in the purlieus of Sloane Square.
He got off and stretched himself luxuriously, for he had ridden some
twenty-five good miles. The Dartie within him made him chaffer for
five minutes with young Padwick concerning the favourite for the
Cambridgeshire; then with the words, "Put the gee down to my account,"
he walked away, a little wide at the knees, and flipping his boots with
his knotty little cane. 'I don't feel a bit inclined to go out,' he
thought. 'I wonder if mother will stand fizz for my last night!' With
'fizz' and recollection, he could well pass a domestic evening.

When he came down, speckless after his bath, he found his mother
scrupulous in a low evening dress, and, to his annoyance, his Uncle
Soames. They stopped talking when he came in; then his uncle said:

"He'd better be told."

At those words, which meant something about his father, of course, Val's
first thought was of Holly. Was it anything beastly? His mother began
speaking.

"Your father," she said in her fashionably appointed voice, while her
fingers plucked rather pitifully at sea-green brocade, "your father, my
dear boy, has--is not at Newmarket; he's on his way to South America.
He--he's left us."

Val looked from her to Soames. Left them! Was he sorry? Was he fond of
his father? It seemed to him that he did not know. Then, suddenly--as at
a whiff of gardenias and cigars--his heart twitched within him, and
he was sorry. One's father belonged to one, could not go off in this
fashion--it was not done! Nor had he always been the 'bounder' of the
Pandemonium promenade. There were precious memories of tailors' shops
and horses, tips at school, and general lavish kindness, when in luck.

"But why?" he said. Then, as a sportsman himself, was sorry he had
asked. The mask of his mother's face was all disturbed; and he burst
out:

"All right, Mother, don't tell me! Only, what does it mean?"

"A divorce, Val, I'm afraid."

Val uttered a queer little grunt, and looked quickly at his uncle--that
uncle whom he had been taught to look on as a guarantee against the
consequences of having a father, even against the Dartie blood in his
own veins. The flat-checked visage seemed to wince, and this upset him.

"It won't be public, will it?"

So vividly before him had come recollection of his own eyes glued to the
unsavoury details of many a divorce suit in the Public Press.

"Can't it be done quietly somehow? It's so disgusting for--for mother,
and--and everybody."

"Everything will be done as quietly as it can, you may be sure."

"Yes--but, why is it necessary at all? Mother doesn't want to marry
again."

Himself, the girls, their name tarnished in the sight of his
schoolfellows and of Crum, of the men at Oxford, of--Holly! Unbearable!
What was to be gained by it?

"Do you, Mother?" he said sharply.

Thus brought face to face with so much of her own feeling by the one she
loved best in the world, Winifred rose from the Empire chair in which
she had been sitting. She saw that her son would be against her unless
he was told everything; and, yet, how could she tell him? Thus, still
plucking at the green brocade, she stared at Soames. Val, too, stared
at Soames. Surely this embodiment of respectability and the sense of
property could not wish to bring such a slur on his own sister!

Soames slowly passed a little inlaid paperknife over the smooth surface
of a marqueterie table; then, without looking at his nephew, he began:

"You don't understand what your mother has had to put up with these
twenty years. This is only the last straw, Val." And glancing up
sideways at Winifred, he added:

"Shall I tell him?"

Winifred was silent. If he were not told, he would be against her! Yet,
how dreadful to be told such things of his own father! Clenching her
lips, she nodded.