The Forsyte saga - Complete
cauldron with the lid off; and now looking into it, could hardly
believe his scorching eyes. The whole thing was unspeakable!
These people had no restraint, they seemed to think him funny;
such swarms of them, rude, coarse, laughing—and what laughter!
Nothing sacred to them! He shouldn’t be surprised if they began
to break windows. In Pall Mall, past those august dwellings, to
enter which people paid sixty pounds, this shrieking, whistling,
dancing dervish of a crowd was swarming. From the Club windows
his own kind were looking out on them with regulated amusement.
They didn’t realise! Why, this was serious—might come to
anything! The crowd was cheerful, but some day they would come in
different mood! He remembered there had been a mob in the late
eighties, when he was at Brighton; they had smashed things and
made speeches. But more than dread, he felt a deep surprise. They
were hysterical—it wasn’t English! And all about the relief of a
little town as big as—Watford, six thousand miles away.
Restraint, reserve! Those qualities to him more dear almost than
life, those indispensable attributes of property and culture,
where were they? It wasn’t English! No, it wasn’t English! So
Soames brooded, threading his way on. It was as if he had
suddenly caught sight of someone cutting the covenant “for quiet
possession” out of his legal documents; or of a monster lurking
and stalking out in the future, casting its shadow before. Their
want of stolidity, their want of reverence! It was like
discovering that nine-tenths of the people of England were
foreigners. And if that were so—then, anything might happen!
At Hyde Park Corner he ran into George Forsyte, very sunburnt
from racing, holding a false nose in his hand.
“Hallo, Soames!” he said, “have a nose!”
Soames responded with a pale smile.
“Got this from one of these sportsmen,” went on George, who had
evidently been dining; “had to lay him out—for trying to bash my
hat. I say, one of these days we shall have to fight these chaps,
they’re getting so damned cheeky—all radicals and socialists.
They want our goods. You tell Uncle James that, it’ll make him
sleep.”
“_In vino veritas_,” thought Soames, but he only nodded, and
passed on up Hamilton Place. There was but a trickle of
roysterers in Park Lane, not very noisy. And looking up at the
houses he thought: “After all, we’re the backbone of the country.
They won’t upset us easily. Possession’s nine points of the law.”
But, as he closed the door of his father’s house behind him, all
that queer outlandish nightmare in the streets passed out of his
mind almost as completely as if, having dreamed it, he had
awakened in the warm clean morning comfort of his
spring-mattressed bed.
Walking into the centre of the great empty drawing-room, he stood
still.
A wife! Somebody to talk things over with. One had a right! Damn
it! One had a right!
PART III
CHAPTER I SOAMES IN PARIS
Soames had travelled little. Aged nineteen he had made the “petty
tour” with his father, mother, and Winifred—Brussels, the Rhine,
Switzerland, and home by way of Paris. Aged twenty-seven, just
when he began to take interest in pictures, he had spent five hot
weeks in Italy, looking into the Renaissance—not so much in it as
he had been led to expect—and a fortnight in Paris on his way
back, looking into himself, as became a Forsyte surrounded by
people so strongly self-centred and “foreign” as the French. His
knowledge of their language being derived from his public school,
he did not understand them when they spoke. Silence he had found
better for all parties; one did not make a fool of oneself. He
had disliked the look of the men’s clothes, the closed-in cabs,
the theatres which looked like bee-hives, the Galleries which
smelled of beeswax. He was too cautious and too shy to explore
that side of Paris supposed by Forsytes to constitute its
attraction under the rose; and as for a collector’s bargain—not
one to be had! As Nicholas might have put it—they were a grasping
lot. He had come back uneasy, saying Paris was overrated.
When, therefore, in June of 1900 he went to Paris, it was but his
third attempt on the centre of civilisation. This time, however,
the mountain was going to Mahomet; for he felt by now more deeply
civilised than Paris, and perhaps he really was. Moreover, he had
a definite objective. This was no mere genuflexion to a shrine of
taste and immorality, but the prosecution of his own legitimate
affairs. He went, indeed, because things were getting past a
joke. The watch went on and on, and—nothing—nothing! Jolyon had
never returned to Paris, and no one else was “suspect!” Busy with
new and very confidential matters, Soames was realising more than
ever how essential reputation is to a solicitor. But at night and
in his leisure moments he was ravaged by the thought that time
was always flying and money flowing in, and his own future as
much “in irons” as ever. Since Mafeking night he had become aware
that a “young fool of a doctor” was hanging round Annette. Twice
he had come across him—a cheerful young fool, not more than
thirty.
Nothing annoyed Soames so much as cheerfulness—an indecent,
extravagant sort of quality, which had no relation to facts. The
mixture of his desires and hopes was, in a word, becoming
torture; and lately the thought had come to him that perhaps
Irene knew she was being shadowed: It was this which finally
decided him to go and see for himself; to go and once more try to
break down her repugnance, her refusal to make her own and his
path comparatively smooth once more. If he failed again—well, he
would see what she did with herself, anyway!
He went to an hotel in the Rue Caumartin, highly recommended to
Forsytes, where practically nobody spoke French. He had formed no
plan. He did not want to startle her; yet must contrive that she
had no chance to evade him by flight. And next morning he set out
in bright weather.
Paris had an air of gaiety, a sparkle over its star-shape which
almost annoyed Soames. He stepped gravely, his nose lifted a
little sideways in real curiosity. He desired now to understand
things French. Was not Annette French? There was much to be got
out of his visit, if he could only get it. In this laudable mood
and the Place de la Concorde he was nearly run down three times.
He came on the “Cours la Reine,” where Irene’s hotel was
situated, almost too suddenly, for he had not yet fixed on his
procedure. Crossing over to the river side, he noted the
building, white and cheerful-looking, with green sunblinds, seen
through a screen of plane-tree leaves. And, conscious that it
would be far better to meet her casually in some open place than
to risk a call, he sat down on a bench whence he could watch the
entrance. It was not quite eleven o’clock, and improbable that
she had yet gone out. Some pigeons were strutting and preening
their feathers in the pools of sunlight between the shadows of
the plane-trees. A workman in a blue blouse passed, and threw
them crumbs from the paper which contained his dinner. A
“_bonne_” coiffed with ribbon shepherded two little girls with
pig-tails and frilled drawers. A cab meandered by, whose _cocher_
wore a blue coat and a black-glazed hat. To Soames a kind of
affectation seemed to cling about it all, a sort of
picturesqueness which was out of date. A theatrical people, the
French! He lit one of his rare cigarettes, with a sense of injury
that Fate should be casting his life into outlandish waters. He
shouldn’t wonder if Irene quite enjoyed this foreign life; she
had never been properly English—even to look at! And he began
considering which of those windows could be hers under the green
sunblinds. How could he word what he had come to say so that it
might pierce the defence of her proud obstinacy? He threw the
fag-end of his cigarette at a pigeon, with the thought: “I can’t
stay here for ever twiddling my thumbs. Better give it up and
call on her in the late afternoon.” But he still sat on, heard
twelve strike, and then half-past. “I’ll wait till one,” he
thought, “while I’m about it.” But just then he started up, and
shrinkingly sat down again. A woman had come out in a
cream-coloured frock, and was moving away under a fawn-coloured
parasol. Irene herself! He waited till she was too far away to
recognise him, then set out after her. She was strolling as
though she had no particular objective; moving, if he remembered
rightly, toward the Bois de Boulogne. For half an hour at least
he kept his distance on the far side of the way till she had
passed into the Bois itself. Was she going to meet someone after
all? Some confounded Frenchman—one of those “Bel Ami” chaps,
perhaps, who had nothing to do but hang about women—for he had
read that book with difficulty and a sort of disgusted
fascination. He followed doggedly along a shady alley, losing
sight of her now and then when the path curved. And it came back
to him how, long ago, one night in Hyde Park he had slid and
sneaked from tree to tree, from seat to seat, hunting blindly,
ridiculously, in burning jealousy for her and young Bosinney. The
path bent sharply, and, hurrying, he came on her sitting in front
of a small fountain—a little green-bronze Niobe veiled in hair to
her slender hips, gazing at the pool she had wept: He came on her
so suddenly that he was past before he could turn and take off
his hat. She did not start up. She had always had great
self-command—it was one of the things he most admired in her, one
of his greatest grievances against her, because he had never been
able to tell what she was thinking. Had she realised that he was
following? Her self-possession made him angry; and, disdaining to
explain his presence, he pointed to the mournful little Niobe,
and said:
“That’s rather a good thing.”
He could see, then, that she was struggling to preserve her
composure.
“I didn’t want to startle you; is this one of your haunts?”
“Yes.”
“A little lonely.” As he spoke, a lady, strolling by, paused to
look at the fountain and passed on.
Irene’s eyes followed her.
“No,” she said, prodding the ground with her parasol, “never
lonely. One has always one’s shadow.”
Soames understood; and, looking at her hard, he exclaimed:
“Well, it’s your own fault. You can be free of it at any moment.
Irene, come back to me, and be free.”
Irene laughed.
“Don’t!” cried Soames, stamping his foot; “it’s inhuman. Listen!
Is there any condition I can make which will bring you back to
me? If I promise you a separate house—and just a visit now and
then?”
Irene rose, something wild suddenly in her face and figure.
“None! None! None! You may hunt me to the grave. I will not
come.”