“I don’t want her address,” he said; “I know it.”
“What exactly do you want?”
“She deserted me. I want a divorce.”
“Rather late in the day, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Soames. And there was a silence.
“I don’t know much about these things — at least, I’ve forgotten,” said Jolyon with a wry smile. He himself had had to wait for death to grant him a divorce from the first Mrs. Jolyon. “Do you wish me to see her about it?”
Soames raised his eyes to his cousin’s face. “I suppose there’s someone,” he said.
A shrug moved Jolyon’s shoulders.
“I don’t know at all. I imagine you may have both lived as if the other were dead. It’s usual in these cases.”
Soames turned to the window. A few early fallen oak-leaves strewed the terrace already, and were rolling round in the wind. Jolyon saw the figures of Holly and Val Dartie moving across the lawn towards the stables. ‘I’m not going to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds,’ he thought. ‘I must act for her. The Dad would have wished that.’ And for a swift moment he seemed to see his father’s figure in the old armchair, just beyond Soames, sitting with knees crossed, The Times in his hand. It vanished.
“My father was fond of her,” he said quietly.
“Why he should have been I don’t know,” Soames answered without looking round. “She brought trouble to your daughter June; she brought trouble to everyone. I gave her all she wanted. I would have given her even — forgiveness — but she chose to leave me.”
In Jolyon compassion was checked by the tone of that close voice. What was there in the fellow that made it so difficult to be sorry for him?
“I can go and see her, if you like,” he said. “I suppose she might be glad of a divorce, but I know nothing.”
Soames nodded.
“Yes, please go. As I say, I know her address; but I’ve no wish to see her.” His tongue was busy with his lips, as if they were very dry.
“You’ll have some tea?” said Jolyon, stifling the words: ‘And see the house.’ And he led the way into the hall. When he had rung the bell and ordered tea, he went to his easel to turn his drawing to the wall. He could not bear, somehow, that his work should be seen by Soames, who was standing there in the middle of the great room which had been designed expressly to afford wall space for his own pictures. In his cousin’s face, with its unseizable family likeness to himself, and its chinny, narrow, concentrated look, Jolyon saw that which moved him to the thought: ‘That chap could never forget anything — nor ever give himself away. He’s pathetic!’
CHAPTER VII — THE COLT AND THE FILLY
When young Val left the presence of the last generation he was thinking: ‘This is jolly dull! Uncle Soames does take the bun. I wonder what this filly’s like?’ He anticipated no pleasure from her society; and suddenly he saw her standing there looking at him. Why, she was pretty! What luck!
“I’m afraid you don’t know me,” he said. “My name’s Val Dartie — I’m once removed, second cousin, something like that, you know. My mother’s name was Forsyte.”
Holly, whose slim brown hand remained in his because she was too shy to withdraw it, said:
“I don’t know any of my relations. Are there many?”
“Tons. They’re awful — most of them. At least, I don’t know — some of them. One’s relations always are, aren’t they?”
“I expect they think one awful too,” said Holly.
“I don’t know why they should. No one could think you awful, of course.”
Holly looked at him — the wistful candour in those grey eyes gave young Val a sudden feeling that he must protect her.
“I mean there are people and people,” he added astutely. “Your dad looks awfully decent, for instance.”
“Oh yes!” said Holly fervently; “he is.”
A flush mounted in Val’s cheeks — that scene in the Pandemonium promenade — the dark man with the pink carnation developing into his own father! “But you know what the Forsytes are,” he said almost viciously. “Oh! I forgot; you don’t.”
“What are they?”
“Oh! fearfully careful; not sportsmen a bit. Look at Uncle Soames!”
“I’d like to,” said Holly.
Val resisted a desire to run his arm through hers. “Oh! no,” he said, “let’s go out. You’ll see him quite soon enough. What’s your brother like?”
Holly led the way on to the terrace and down to the lawn without answering. How describe Jolly, who, ever since she remembered anything, had been her lord, master, and ideal?
“Does he sit on you?” said Val shrewdly. “I shall be knowing him at Oxford. Have you got any horses?”
Holly nodded. “Would you like to see the stables?”
“Rather!”
They passed under the oak tree, through a thin shrubbery, into the stable-yard. There under a clock-tower lay a fluffy brown-and-white dog, so old that he did not get up, but faintly waved the tail curled over his back.
“That’s Balthasar,” said Holly; “he’s so old — awfully old, nearly as old as I am. Poor old boy! He’s devoted to Dad.”
“Balthasar! That’s a rum name. He isn’t purebred you know.”
“No! but he’s a darling,” and she bent down to stroke the dog. Gentle and supple, with dark covered head and slim browned neck and hands, she seemed to Val strange and sweet, like a thing slipped between him and all previous knowledge.
“When grandfather died,” she said, “he wouldn’t eat for two days. He saw him die, you know.”
“Was that old Uncle Jolyon? Mother always says he was a topper.”
“He was,” said Holly simply, and opened the stable door.
In a loose-box stood a silver roan of about fifteen hands, with a long black tail and mane. “This is mine — Fairy.”
“Ah!” said Val, “she’s a jolly palfrey. But you ought to bang her tail. She’d look much smarter.” Then catching her wondering look, he thought suddenly: ‘I don’t know — anything she likes!’ And he took a long sniff of the stable air. “Horses are ripping, aren’t they? My Dad...” he stopped.
“Yes?” said Holly.
An impulse to unbosom himself almost overcame him — but not quite. “Oh! I don’t know he’s often gone a mucker over them. I’m jolly keen on them too — riding and hunting. I like racing awfully, as well; I should like to be a gentleman rider.” And oblivious of the fact that he had but one more day in town, with two engagements, he plumped out:
“I say, if I hire a gee to-morrow, will you come a ride in Richmond Park?”
Holly clasped her hands.
“Oh yes! I simply love riding. But there’s Jolly’s horse; why don’t you ride him? Here he is. We could go after tea.”
Val looked doubtfully at his trousered legs.
He had imagined them immaculate before her eyes in high brown boots and Bedford cords.
“I don’t much like riding his horse,” he said. “He mightn’t like it. Besides, Uncle Soames wants to get back, I expect. Not that I believe in buckling under to him, you know. You haven’t got an uncle, have you? This is rather a good beast,” he added, scrutinising Jolly’s horse, a dark brown, which was showing the whites of its eyes. “You haven’t got any hunting here, I suppose?”
“No; I don’t know that I want to hunt. It must be awfully exciting, of course; but it’s cruel, isn’t it? June says so.”
“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!’