Then suddenly James raised his eyes. There was a queer appeal in that suspicious troubled look: “I know I’m no match for you,” it seemed to say. And, hunting for handkerchief he wiped his brow; then, bending sorrowful and lank over the dead man, he too turned and hurried out.
Old Jolyon stood, still as death, his eyes fixed on the body. Who shall tell of what he was thinking? Of himself, when his hair was brown like the hair of that young fellow dead before him? Of himself, with his battle just beginning, the long, long battle he had loved; the battle that was over for this young man almost before it had begun? Of his grand-daughter, with her broken hopes? Of that other woman? Of the strangeness, and the pity of it? And the irony, inscrutable, and bitter of that end? Justice! There was no justice for men, for they were ever in the dark!
Or perhaps in his philosophy he thought: Better to be out of, it all! Better to have done with it, like this poor youth...
Some one touched him on the arm.
A tear started up and wetted his eyelash. “Well,” he said, “I’m no good here. I’d better be going. You’ll come to me as soon as you can, Jo,” and with his head bowed he went away.
It was young Jolyon’s turn to take his stand beside the dead man, round whose fallen body he seemed to see all the Forsytes breathless, and prostrated. The stroke had fallen too swiftly.
The forces underlying every tragedy — forces that take no denial, working through cross currents to their ironical end, had met and fused with a thunder-clap, flung out the victim, and flattened to the ground all those that stood around.
Or so at all events young Jolyon seemed to see them, lying around Bosinney’s body.
He asked the Inspector to tell him what had happened, and the latter, like a man who does not every day get such a chance, again detailed such facts as were known.
“There’s more here, sir, however,” he said, “than meets the eye. I don’t believe in suicide, nor in pure accident, myself. It’s more likely I think that he was suffering under great stress of mind, and took no notice of things about him. Perhaps you can throw some light on these.”
He took from his pocket a little packet and laid it on the table. Carefully undoing it, he revealed a lady’s handkerchief, pinned through the folds with a pin of discoloured Venetian gold, the stone of which had fallen from the socket. A scent of dried violets rose to young Jolyon’s nostrils.
“Found in his breast pocket,” said the Inspector; “the name has been cut away!”
Young Jolyon with difficulty answered: “I’m afraid I cannot help you!” But vividly there rose before him the face he had seen light up, so tremulous and glad, at Bosinney’s coming! Of her he thought more than of his own daughter, more than of them all — of her with the dark, soft glance, the delicate passive face, waiting for the dead man, waiting even at that moment, perhaps, still and patient in the sunlight.
He walked sorrowfully away from the hospital towards his father’s house, reflecting that this death would break up the Forsyte family. The stroke had indeed slipped past their defences into the very wood of their tree. They might flourish to all appearance as before, preserving a brave show before the eyes of London, but the trunk was dead, withered by the same flash that had stricken down Bosinney. And now the saplings would take its place, each one a new custodian of the sense of property.
Good forest of Forsytes! thought young Jolyon — soundest timber of our land!
Concerning the cause of this death — his family would doubtless reject with vigour the suspicion of suicide, which was so compromising! They would take it as an accident, a stroke of fate. In their hearts they would even feel it an intervention of Providence, a retribution — had not Bosinney endangered their two most priceless possessions, the pocket and the hearth? And they would talk of ‘that unfortunate accident of young Bosinney’s,’ but perhaps they would not talk — silence might be better!
As for himself, he regarded the bus-driver’s account of the accident as of very little value. For no one so madly in love committed suicide for want of money; nor was Bosinney the sort of fellow to set much store by a financial crisis. And so he too, rejected this theory of suicide, the dead man’s face rose too clearly before him. Gone in the heyday of his summer — and to believe thus that an accident had cut Bosinney off in the full sweep of his passion was more than ever pitiful to young Jolyon.
Then came a vision of Soames’ home as it now was, and must be hereafter. The streak of lightning had flashed its clear uncanny gleam on bare bones with grinning spaces between, the disguising flesh was gone...
In the dining-room at Stanhope Gate old Jolyon was sitting alone when his son came in. He looked very wan in his great armchair. And his eyes travelling round the walls with their pictures of still life, and the masterpiece ‘Dutch fishing-boats at Sunset’ seemed as though passing their gaze over his life with its hopes, its gains, its achievements.
“Ah! Jo!” he said, “is that you? I’ve told poor little June. But that’s not all of it. Are you going to Soames’. She’s brought it on herself, I suppose; but somehow I can’t bear to think of her, shut up there — and all alone.” And holding up his thin, veined hand, he clenched it.
CHAPTER IX — IRENE’S RETURN
After leaving James and old Jolyon in the mortuary of the hospital, Soames hurried aimlessly along the streets.
The tragic event of Bosinney’s death altered the complexion of everything. There was no longer the same feeling that to lose a minute would be fatal, nor would he now risk communicating the fact of his wife’s flight to anyone till the inquest was over.
That morning he had risen early, before the postman came, had taken the first-post letters from the box himself, and, though there had been none from Irene, he had made an opportunity of telling Bilson that her mistress was at the sea; he would probably, he said, be going down himself from Saturday to Monday. This had given him time to breathe, time to leave no stone unturned to find her.
But now, cut off from taking steps by Bosinney’s death — that strange death, to think of which was like putting a hot iron to his heart, like lifting a great weight from it — he did not know how to pass his day; and he wandered here and there through the streets, looking at every face he met, devoured by a hundred anxieties.
And as he wandered, he thought of him who had finished his wandering, his prowling, and would never haunt his house again.
Already in the afternoon he passed posters announcing the identity of the dead man, and bought the papers to see what they said. He would stop their mouths if he could, and he went into the City, and was closeted with Boulter for a long time.
On his way home, passing the steps of Jobson’s about half past four, he met George Forsyte, who held out an evening paper to Soames, saying:
“Here! Have you seen this about the poor Buccaneer?”
Soames answered stonily: “Yes.”
George stared at him. He had never liked Soames; he now held him responsible for Bosinney’s death. Soames had done for him — done for him by that act of property that had sent the Buccaneer to run amok that fatal afternoon.
‘The poor fellow,’ he was thinking, ‘was so cracked with jealousy, so cracked for his vengeance, that he heard nothing of the omnibus in that infernal fog.’
Soames had done for him! And this judgment was in George’s eyes.
“They talk of suicide here,” he said at last. “That cat won’t jump.”
Soames shook his head. “An accident,” he muttered.
Clenching his fist on the paper, George crammed it into his pocket. He could not resist a parting shot.
“H’mm! All flourishing at home? Any little Soameses yet?”
With a face as white as the steps of Jobson’s, and a lip raised as if snarling, Soames brushed past him and was gone...
On reaching home, and entering the little lighted hall with his latchkey, the first thing that caught his eye was his wife’s gold-mounted umbrella lying on the rug chest. Flinging off his fur coat, he hurried to the drawing-room.
The curtains were drawn for the night, a bright fire of cedar-logs burned in the grate, and by its light he saw Irene sitting in her usual corner on the sofa. He shut the door softly, and went towards her. She did not move, and did not seem to see him.
“So you’ve come back?” he said. “Why are you sitting here in the dark?”
Then he caught sight of her face, so white and motionless that it seemed as though the blood must have stopped flowing in her veins; and her eyes, that looked enormous, like the great, wide, startled brown eyes of an owl.
Huddled in her grey fur against the sofa cushions, she had a strange resemblance to a captive owl, bunched in its soft feathers against the wires of a cage. The supple erectness of her figure was gone, as though she had been broken by cruel exercise; as though there were no longer any reason for being beautiful, and supple, and erect.
“So you’ve come back,” he repeated.
She never looked up, and never spoke, the firelight playing over her motionless figure.
Suddenly she tried to rise, but he prevented her; it was then that he understood.
She had come back like an animal wounded to death, not knowing where to turn, not knowing what she was doing. The sight of her figure, huddled in the fur, was enough.
He knew then for certain that Bosinney had been her lover; knew that she had seen the report of his death — perhaps, like himself, had bought a paper at the draughty corner of a street, and read it.
She had come back then of her own accord, to the cage she had pined to be free of — and taking in all the tremendous significance of this, he longed to cry: “Take your hated body, that I love, out of my house! Take away that pitiful white face, so cruel and soft — before I crush it. Get out of my sight; never let me see you again!”
And, at those unspoken words, he seemed to see her rise and move away, like a woman in a terrible dream, from which she was fighting to awake — rise and go out into the dark and cold, without a thought of him, without so much as the knowledge of his presence.
Then he cried, contradicting what he had not yet spoken, “No; stay there!” And turning away from her, he sat down in his accustomed chair on the other side of the hearth.
They sat in silence.
And Soames thought: ‘Why is all this? Why should I suffer so? What have I done? It is not my fault!’
Again he looked at her, huddled like a bird that is shot and dying, whose poor breast you see panting as the air is taken from it, whose poor eyes look at you who have shot it, with a slow, soft, unseeing look, taking farewell of all that is good — of the sun, and the air, and its mate.
So they sat, by the firelight, in the silence, one on each side of the hearth.
And the fume of the burning cedar logs, that he loved so well, seemed to grip Soames by the throat till he could bear it no longer. And going out into the hall he flung the door wide, to gulp down the cold air that came in; then without hat or overcoat went out into the Square.
Along the garden rails a half-starved cat came rubbing her way towards him, and Soames thought: ‘Suffering! when will it cease, my suffering?’
At a front door across the way was a man of his acquaintance named Rutter, scraping his boots, with an air of ‘I am master here.’ And Soames walked on.
From far in the clear air the bells of the church where he and Irene had been married were pealing in ‘practice’ for the advent of Christ, the chimes ringing out above the sound of traffic. He felt a craving for strong drink, to lull him to indifference, or rouse him to fury. If only he could burst out of himself, out of this web that for the first time in his life he felt around him. If only he could surrender to the thought: ‘Divorce her — turn her out! She has forgotten you. Forget her!’
If only he could surrender to the thought: ‘Let her go — she has suffered enough!’
If only he could surrender to the desire: ‘Make a slave of her — she is in your power!’
If only even he could surrender to the sudden vision: ‘What does it all matter?’ Forget himself for a minute, forget that it mattered what he did, forget that whatever he did he must sacrifice something.
If only he could act on an impulse!
He could forget nothing; surrender to no thought, vision, or desire; it was all too serious; too close around him, an unbreakable cage.
On the far side of the Square newspaper boys were calling their evening wares, and the ghoulish cries mingled and jangled with the sound of those church bells.
Soames covered his ears. The thought flashed across him that but for a chance, he himself, and not Bosinney, might be lying dead, and she, instead of crouching there like a shot bird with those dying eyes...
Something soft touched his legs, the cat was rubbing herself against them. And a sob that shook him from head to foot burst from Soames’ chest. Then all was still again in the dark, where the houses seemed to stare at him, each with a master and mistress of its own, and a secret story of happiness or sorrow.
And suddenly he saw that his own door was open, and black against the light from the hall a man standing with his back turned. Something slid too in his breast, and he stole up close behind.
He could see his own fur coat flung across the carved oak chair; the Persian rugs; the silver bowls, the rows of porcelain plates arranged along the walls, and this unknown man who was standing there.
And sharply he asked: “What is it you want, sir?”
The visitor turned. It was young Jolyon.
“The door was open,” he said. “Might I see your wife for a minute, I have a message for her?”
Soames gave him a strange, sidelong stare.
“My wife can see no one,” he muttered doggedly.
Young Jolyon answered gently: “I shouldn’t keep her a minute.”
Soames brushed by him and barred the way.
“She can see no one,” he said again.
Young Jolyon’s glance shot past him into the hall, and Soames turned. There in the drawing-room doorway stood Irene, her eyes were wild and eager, her lips were parted, her hands outstretched. In the sight of both men that light vanished from her face; her hands dropped to her sides; she stood like stone.
Soames spun round, and met his visitor’s eyes, and at the look he saw in them, a sound like a snarl escaped him. He drew his lips back in the ghost of a smile.
“This is my house,” he said; “I manage my own affairs. I’ve told you once — I tell you again; we are not at home.”
And in young Jolyon’s face he slammed the door.
=================
INDIAN SUMMER OF A FORSYTE
“And Summer’s lease hath all
too short a date.”
— Shakespeare
I
In the last day of May in the early ‘nineties, about six o’clock of the evening, old Jolyon Forsyte sat under the oak tree below the terrace of his house at Robin Hill. He was waiting for the midges to bite him, before abandoning the glory of the afternoon. His thin brown hand, where blue veins stood out, held the end of a cigar in its tapering, long-nailed fingers — a pointed polished nail had survived with him from those earlier Victorian days when to touch nothing, even with the tips of the fingers, had been so distinguished. His domed forehead, great white moustache, lean cheeks, and long lean jaw were covered from the westering sunshine by an old brown Panama hat. His legs were crossed; in all his attitude was serenity and a kind of elegance, as of an old man who every morning put eau de Cologne upon his silk handkerchief. At his feet lay a woolly brown-and-white dog trying to be a Pomeranian — the dog Balthasar between whom and old Jolyon primal aversion had changed into attachment with the years. Close to his chair was a swing, and on the swing was seated one of Holly’s dolls — called ‘Duffer Alice’ — with her body fallen over her legs and her doleful nose buried in a black petticoat. She was never out of disgrace, so it did not matter to her how she sat. Below the oak tree the lawn dipped down a bank, stretched to the fernery, and, beyond that refinement, became fields, dropping to the pond, the coppice, and the prospect — ’Fine, remarkable’ — at which Swithin Forsyte, from under this very tree, had stared five years ago when he drove down with Irene to look at the house. Old Jolyon had heard of his brother’s exploit — that drive which had become quite celebrated on Forsyte ‘Change. Swithin! And the fellow had gone and died, last November, at the age of only seventy-nine, renewing the doubt whether Forsytes could live for ever, which had first arisen when Aunt Ann passed away. Died! and left only Jolyon and James, Roger and Nicholas and Timothy, Julia, Hester, Susan! And old Jolyon thought: ‘Eighty-five! I don’t feel it — except when I get that pain.’
His memory went searching. He had not felt his age since he had bought his nephew Soames’ ill-starred house and settled into it here at Robin Hill over three years ago. It was as if he had been getting younger every spring, living in the country with his son and his grandchildren — June, and the little ones of the second marriage, Jolly and Holly; living down here out of the racket of London and the cackle of Forsyte ‘Change,’ free of his boards, in a delicious atmosphere of no work and all play, with plenty of occupation in the perfecting and mellowing of the house and its twenty acres, and in ministering to the whims of Holly and Jolly. All the knots and crankiness, which had gathered in his heart during that long and tragic business of June, Soames, Irene his wife, and poor young Bosinney, had been smoothed out. Even June had thrown off her melancholy at last — witness this travel in Spain she was taking now with her father and her stepmother. Curiously perfect peace was left by their departure; blissful, yet blank, because his son was not there. Jo was never anything but a comfort and a pleasure to him nowadays — an amiable chap; but women, somehow — even the best — got a little on one’s nerves, unless of course one admired them.
Far-off a cuckoo called; a wood-pigeon was cooing from the first elm-tree in the field, and how the daisies and buttercups had sprung up after the last mowing! The wind had got into the sou’ west, too — a delicious air, sappy! He pushed his hat back and let the sun fall on his chin and cheek. Somehow, to-day, he wanted company — wanted a pretty face to look at. People treated the old as if they wanted nothing. And with the un-Forsytean philosophy which ever intruded on his soul, he thought: ‘One’s never had enough. With a foot in the grave one’ll want something, I shouldn’t be surprised!’ Down here — away from the exigencies of affairs — his grandchildren, and the flowers, trees, birds of his little domain, to say nothing of sun and moon and stars above them, said, ‘Open, sesame,’ to him day and night. And sesame had opened — how much, perhaps, he did not know. He had always been responsive to what they had begun to call ‘Nature,’ genuinely, almost religiously responsive, though he had never lost his habit of calling a sunset a sunset and a view a view, however deeply they might move him. But nowadays Nature actually made him ache, he appreciated it so. Every one of these calm, bright, lengthening days, with Holly’s hand in his, and the dog Balthasar in front looking studiously for what he never found, he would stroll, watching the roses open, fruit budding on the walls, sunlight brightening the oak leaves and saplings in the coppice, watching the water-lily leaves unfold and glisten, and the silvery young corn of the one wheat field; listening to the starlings and skylarks, and the Alderney cows chewing the cud, flicking slow their tufted tails; and every one of these fine days he ached a little from sheer love of it all, feeling perhaps, deep down, that he had not very much longer to enjoy it. The thought that some day — perhaps not ten years hence, perhaps not five — all this world would be taken away from him, before he had exhausted his powers of loving it, seemed to him in the nature of an injustice brooding over his horizon. If anything came after this life, it wouldn’t be what he wanted; not Robin Hill, and flowers and birds and pretty faces — too few, even now, of those about him! With the years his dislike of humbug had increased; the orthodoxy he had worn in the ‘sixties, as he had worn side-whiskers out of sheer exuberance, had long dropped off, leaving him reverent before three things alone — beauty, upright conduct, and the sense of property; and the greatest of these now was beauty. He had always had wide interests, and, indeed could still read The Times, but he was liable at any moment to put it down if he heard a blackbird sing. Upright conduct, property — somehow, they were tiring; the blackbirds and the sunsets never tired him, only gave him an uneasy feeling that he could not get enough of them. Staring into the stilly radiance of the early evening and at the little gold and white flowers on the lawn, a thought came to him: This weather was like the music of ‘Orfeo,’ which he had recently heard at Covent Garden. A beautiful opera, not like Meyerbeer, nor even quite Mozart, but, in its way, perhaps even more lovely; something classical and of the Golden Age about it, chaste and mellow, and the Ravogli ‘almost worthy of the old days’ — highest praise he could bestow. The yearning of Orpheus for the beauty he was losing, for his love going down to Hades, as in life love and beauty did go — the yearning which sang and throbbed through the golden music, stirred also in the lingering beauty of the world that evening. And with the tip of his cork-soled, elastic-sided boot he involuntarily stirred the ribs of the dog Balthasar, causing the animal to wake and attack his fleas; for though he was supposed to have none, nothing could persuade him of the fact. When he had finished he rubbed the place he had been scratching against his master’s calf, and settled down again with his chin over the instep of the disturbing boot. And into old Jolyon’s mind came a sudden recollection — a face he had seen at that opera three weeks ago — Irene, the wife of his precious nephew Soames, that man of property! Though he had not met her since the day of the ‘At Home’ in his old house at Stanhope Gate, which celebrated his granddaughter June’s ill-starred engagement to young Bosinney, he had remembered her at once, for he had always admired her — a very pretty creature. After the death of young Bosinney, whose mistress she had so reprehensibly become, he had heard that she had left Soames at once. Goodness only knew what she had been doing since. That sight of her face — a side view — in the row in front, had been literally the only reminder these three years that she was still alive. No one ever spoke of her. And yet Jo had told him something once — something which had upset him completely. The boy had got it from George Forsyte, he believed, who had seen Bosinney in the fog the day he was run over — something which explained the young fellow’s distress — an act of Soames towards his wife — a shocking act. Jo had seen her, too, that afternoon, after the news was out, seen her for a moment, and his description had always lingered in old Jolyon’s mind — ’wild and lost’ he had called her. And next day June had gone there — bottled up her feelings and gone there, and the maid had cried and told her how her mistress had slipped out in the night and vanished. A tragic business altogether! One thing was certain — Soames had never been able to lay hands on her again. And he was living at Brighton, and journeying up and down — a fitting fate, the man of property! For when he once took a dislike to anyone — as he had to his nephew — old Jolyon never got over it. He remembered still the sense of relief with which he had heard the news of Irene’s disappearance. It had been shocking to think of her a prisoner in that house to which she must have wandered back, when Jo saw her, wandered back for a moment — like a wounded animal to its hole after seeing that news, ‘Tragic death of an Architect,’ in the street. Her face had struck him very much the other night — more beautiful than he had remembered, but like a mask, with something going on beneath it. A young woman still — twenty-eight perhaps. Ah, well! Very likely she had another lover by now. But at this subversive thought — for married women should never love: once, even, had been too much — his instep rose, and with it the dog Balthasar’s head. The sagacious animal stood up and looked into old Jolyon’s face. ‘Walk?’ he seemed to say; and old Jolyon answered: “Come on, old chap!”
Slowly, as was their wont, they crossed among the constellations of buttercups and daisies, and entered the fernery. This feature, where very little grew as yet, had been judiciously dropped below the level of the lawn so that it might come up again on the level of the other lawn and give the impression of irregularity, so important in horticulture. Its rocks and earth were beloved of the dog Balthasar, who sometimes found a mole there. Old Jolyon made a point of passing through it because, though it was not beautiful, he intended that it should be, some day, and he would think: ‘I must get Varr to come down and look at it; he’s better than Beech.’ For plants, like houses and human complaints, required the best expert consideration. It was inhabited by snails, and if accompanied by his grandchildren, he would point to one and tell them the story of the little boy who said: ‘Have plummers got leggers, Mother? ‘No, sonny.’ ‘Then darned if I haven’t been and swallowed a snileybob.’ And when they skipped and clutched his hand, thinking of the snileybob going down the little boy’s ‘red lane,’ his eyes would twinkle. Emerging from the fernery, he opened the wicket gate, which just there led into the first field, a large and park-like area, out of which, within brick walls, the vegetable garden had been carved. Old Jolyon avoided this, which did not suit his mood, and made down the hill towards the pond. Balthasar, who knew a water-rat or two, gambolled in front, at the gait which marks an oldish dog who takes the same walk every day. Arrived at the edge, old Jolyon stood, noting another water-lily opened since yesterday; he would show it to Holly to-morrow, when ‘his little sweet’ had got over the upset which had followed on her eating a tomato at lunch — her little arrangements were very delicate. Now that Jolly had gone to school — his first term — Holly was with him nearly all day long, and he missed her badly. He felt that pain too, which often bothered him now, a little dragging at his left side. He looked back up the hill. Really, poor young Bosinney had made an uncommonly good job of the house; he would have done very well for himself if he had lived! And where was he now? Perhaps, still haunting this, the site of his last work, of his tragic love affair. Or was Philip Bosinney’s spirit diffused in the general? Who could say? That dog was getting his legs muddy! And he moved towards the coppice. There had been the most delightful lot of bluebells, and he knew where some still lingered like little patches of sky fallen in between the trees, away out of the sun. He passed the cow-houses and the hen-houses there installed, and pursued a path into the thick of the saplings, making for one of the bluebell plots. Balthasar, preceding him once more, uttered a low growl. Old Jolyon stirred him with his foot, but the dog remained motionless, just where there was no room to pass, and the hair rose slowly along the centre of his woolly back. Whether from the growl and the look of the dog’s stivered hair, or from the sensation which a man feels in a wood, old Jolyon also felt something move along his spine. And then the path turned, and there was an old mossy log, and on it a woman sitting. Her face was turned away, and he had just time to think: ‘She’s trespassing — I must have a board put up!’ before she turned. Powers above! The face he had seen at the opera — the very woman he had just been thinking of! In that confused moment he saw things blurred, as if a spirit — queer effect — the slant of sunlight perhaps on her violet-grey frock! And then she rose and stood smiling, her head a little to one side. Old Jolyon thought: ‘How pretty she is!’ She did not speak, neither did he; and he realized why with a certain admiration. She was here no doubt because of some memory, and did not mean to try and get out of it by vulgar explanation.
“Don’t let that dog touch your frock,” he said; “he’s got wet feet. Come here, you!”
But the dog Balthasar went on towards the visitor, who put her hand down and stroked his head. Old Jolyon said quickly:
“I saw you at the opera the other night; you didn’t notice me.”
“Oh, yes! I did.”
He felt a subtle flattery in that, as though she had added: ‘Do you think one could miss seeing you?’