The Forsyte saga - Complete
“Ah!” he said, “of course! On his beam ends. So—it begins again!
This’ll about finish father.”
“Can’t we keep it from him?”
“Impossible. He has an uncanny flair for anything that’s
worrying.”
And he brooded, with fingers hooked into his blue silk braces.
“There ought to be some way in law,” he muttered, “to make him
safe.”
“No,” cried Winifred, “I won’t be made a fool of again; I’d
sooner put up with him.”
The two stared at each other. Their hearts were full of feeling,
but they could give it no expression—Forsytes that they were.
“Where did you leave him?”
“In the bath,” and Winifred gave a little bitter laugh. “The only
thing he’s brought back is lavender-water.”
“Steady!” said Soames, “you’re thoroughly upset. I’ll go back
with you.”
“What’s the use?”
“We ought to make terms with him.”
“Terms! It’ll always be the same. When he recovers—cards and
betting, drink and...!” She was silent, remembering the look on
her husband’s face. The burnt child—the burnt child. Perhaps...!
“Recovers?” replied Soames: “Is he ill?”
“No; burnt out; that’s all.”
Soames took his waistcoat from a chair and put it on, he took his
coat and got into it, he scented his handkerchief with
eau-de-Cologne, threaded his watch-chain, and said: “We haven’t
any luck.”
And in the midst of her own trouble Winifred was sorry for him,
as if in that little saying he had revealed deep trouble of his
own.
“I’d like to see mother,” she said.
“She’ll be with father in their room. Come down quietly to the
study. I’ll get her.”
Winifred stole down to the little dark study, chiefly remarkable
for a Canaletto too doubtful to be placed elsewhere, and a fine
collection of Law Reports unopened for many years. Here she
stood, with her back to maroon-coloured curtains close-drawn,
staring at the empty grate, till her mother came in followed by
Soames.
“Oh! my poor dear!” said Emily: “How miserable you look in here!
This is too bad of him, really!”
As a family they had so guarded themselves from the expression of
all unfashionable emotion that it was impossible to go up and
give her daughter a good hug. But there was comfort in her
cushioned voice, and her still dimpled shoulders under some rare
black lace. Summoning pride and the desire not to distress her
mother, Winifred said in her most off-hand voice:
“It’s all right, Mother; no good fussing.”
“I don’t see,” said Emily, looking at Soames, “why Winifred
shouldn’t tell him that she’ll prosecute him if he doesn’t keep
off the premises. He took her pearls; and if he’s not brought
them back, that’s quite enough.”
Winifred smiled. They would all plunge about with suggestions of
this and that, but she knew already what she would be doing, and
that was—nothing. The feeling that, after all, she had won a sort
of victory, retained her property, was every moment gaining
ground in her. No! if she wanted to punish him, she could do it
at home without the world knowing.
“Well,” said Emily, “come into the dining-room comfortably—you
must stay and have dinner with us. Leave it to me to tell your
father.” And, as Winifred moved towards the door, she turned out
the light. Not till then did they see the disaster in the
corridor.
There, attracted by light from a room never lighted, James was
standing with his duncoloured camel-hair shawl folded about him,
so that his arms were not free and his silvered head looked cut
off from his fashionably trousered legs as if by an expanse of
desert. He stood, inimitably stork-like, with an expression as if
he saw before him a frog too large to swallow.
“What’s all this?” he said. “Tell your father? You never tell me
anything.”
The moment found Emily without reply. It was Winifred who went up
to him, and, laying one hand on each of his swathed, helpless
arms, said:
“Monty’s not gone bankrupt, Father. He’s only come back.”
They all three expected something serious to happen, and were
glad she had kept that grip of his arms, but they did not know
the depth of root in that shadowy old Forsyte. Something wry
occurred about his shaven mouth and chin, something scratchy
between those long silvery whiskers. Then he said with a sort of
dignity: “He’ll be the death of me. I knew how it would be.”
“You mustn’t worry, Father,” said Winifred calmly. “I mean to
make him behave.”
“Ah!” said James. “Here, take this thing off, I’m hot.” They
unwound the shawl. He turned, and walked firmly to the
dining-room.
“I don’t want any soup,” he said to Warmson, and sat down in his
chair. They all sat down too, Winifred still in her hat, while
Warmson laid the fourth place. When he left the room, James said:
“What’s he brought back?”
“Nothing, Father.”
James concentrated his eyes on his own image in a tablespoon.
“Divorce!” he muttered; “rubbish! What was I about? I ought to
have paid him an allowance to stay out of England. Soames you go
and propose it to him.”
It seemed so right and simple a suggestion that even Winifred was
surprised when she said: “No, I’ll keep him now he’s back; he
must just behave—that’s all.”
They all looked at her. It had always been known that Winifred
had pluck.
“Out there!” said James elliptically, “who knows what
cut-throats! You look for his revolver! Don’t go to bed without.
You ought to have Warmson to sleep in the house. I’ll see him
myself tomorrow.”
They were touched by this declaration, and Emily said
comfortably: “That’s right, James, we won’t have any nonsense.”
“Ah!” muttered James darkly, “I can’t tell.”
The advent of Warmson with fish diverted conversation.
When, directly after dinner, Winifred went over to kiss her
father good-night, he looked up with eyes so full of question and
distress that she put all the comfort she could into her voice.
“It’s all right, Daddy, dear; don’t worry. I shan’t need
anyone—he’s quite bland. I shall only be upset if you worry.
Good-night, bless you!”
James repeated the words, “Bless you!” as if he did not quite
know what they meant, and his eyes followed her to the door.
She reached home before nine, and went straight upstairs.
Dartie was lying on the bed in his dressing-room, fully redressed
in a blue serge suit and pumps; his arms were crossed behind his
head, and an extinct cigarette drooped from his mouth.
Winifred remembered ridiculously the flowers in her window-boxes
after a blazing summer day; the way they lay, or rather
stood—parched, yet rested by the sun’s retreat. It was as if a
little dew had come already on her burnt-up husband.
He said apathetically: “I suppose you’ve been to Park Lane. How’s
the old man?”
Winifred could not help the bitter answer: “Not dead.”
He winced, actually he winced.
“Understand, Monty,” she said, “I will _not_ have him worried. If
you aren’t going to behave yourself, you may go back, you may go
anywhere. Have you had dinner?”
No.
“Would you like some?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Imogen offered me some. I didn’t want any.”
Imogen! In the plenitude of emotion Winifred had forgotten her.
“So you’ve seen her? What did she say?”
“She gave me a kiss.”
With mortification Winifred saw his dark sardonic face relaxed.
“Yes!” she thought, “he cares for her, not for me a bit.”
Dartie’s eyes were moving from side to side.
“Does she know about me?” he said.
It flashed through Winifred that here was the weapon she needed.
_He minded their knowing!_
“No. Val knows. The others don’t; they only know you went away.”
She heard him sigh with relief.
“But they _shall_ know,” she said firmly, “if you give me cause.”
“All right!” he muttered, “hit me! I’m down!”
Winifred went up to the bed. “Look here, Monty! I don’t want to
hit you. I don’t want to hurt you. I shan’t allude to anything.
I’m not going to worry. What’s the use?” She was silent a moment.
“I can’t stand any more, though, and I won’t! You’d better know.
You’ve made me suffer. But I used to be fond of you. For the sake
of that....” She met the heavy-lidded gaze of his brown eyes with
the downward stare of her green-grey eyes; touched his hand
suddenly, turned her back, and went into her room.
She sat there a long time before her glass, fingering her rings,
thinking of this subdued dark man, almost a stranger to her, on
the bed in the other room; resolutely not “worrying,” but gnawed
by jealousy of what he had been through, and now and again just
visited by pity.
CHAPTER XIV OUTLANDISH NIGHT
Soames doggedly let the spring come—no easy task for one
conscious that time was flying, his birds in the bush no nearer
the hand, no issue from the web anywhere visible. Mr. Polteed
reported nothing, except that his watch went on—costing a lot of
money. Val and his cousin were gone to the war, whence came news
more favourable; Dartie was behaving himself so far; James had
retained his health; business prospered almost terribly—there was
nothing to worry Soames except that he was “held up,” could make
no step in any direction.
He did not exactly avoid Soho, for he could not afford to let
them think that he had “piped off,” as James would have put it—he
might want to “pipe on” again at any minute. But he had to be so
restrained and cautious that he would often pass the door of the
Restaurant Bretagne without going in, and wander out of the
purlieus of that region which always gave him the feeling of
having been possessively irregular.
He wandered thus one May night into Regent Street and the most
amazing crowd he had ever seen; a shrieking, whistling, dancing,
jostling, grotesque and formidably jovial crowd, with false noses
and mouth-organs, penny whistles and long feathers, every
appanage of idiocy, as it seemed to him. Mafeking! Of course, it
had been relieved! Good! But was that an excuse? Who were these
people, what were they, where had they come from into the West
End? His face was tickled, his ears whistled into. Girls cried:
“Keep your hair on, stucco!” A youth so knocked off his top-hat
that he recovered it with difficulty. Crackers were exploding
beneath his nose, between his feet. He was bewildered,
exasperated, offended. This stream of people came from every
quarter, as if impulse had unlocked flood-gates, let flow waters
of whose existence he had heard, perhaps, but believed in never.
This, then, was the populace, the innumerable living negation of
gentility and Forsyteism. This was—egad!—Democracy! It stank,
yelled, was hideous! In the East End, or even Soho, perhaps—but
here in Regent Street, in Piccadilly! What were the police about!
In 1900, Soames, with his Forsyte thousands, had never seen the