The Forsyte saga - Complete
“He’ll get you up in an hour and a quarter. Take this for your
_protégées_,” and he slipped a cheque for fifty pounds into her
hand. He saw her brightened eyes, and heard her murmur: “Oh!
Uncle Jolyon!” and a real throb of pleasure went through him.
That meant one or two poor creatures helped a little, and it
meant that she would come again. He put his hand in at the window
and grasped hers once more. The carriage rolled away. He stood
looking at the moon and the shadows of the trees, and thought: “A
sweet night! She...!”
II
Two days of rain, and summer set in bland and sunny. Old Jolyon
walked and talked with Holly. At first he felt taller and full of
a new vigour; then he felt restless. Almost every afternoon they
would enter the coppice, and walk as far as the log. “Well, she’s
not there!” he would think, “of course not!” And he would feel a
little shorter, and drag his feet walking up the hill home, with
his hand clapped to his left side. Now and then the thought would
move in him: “Did she come—or did I dream it?” and he would stare
at space, while the dog Balthasar stared at him. Of course she
would not come again! He opened the letters from Spain with less
excitement. They were not returning till July; he felt, oddly,
that he could bear it. Every day at dinner he screwed up his eyes
and looked at where she had sat. She was not there, so he
unscrewed his eyes again.
On the seventh afternoon he thought: “I must go up and get some
boots.” He ordered Beacon, and set out. Passing from Putney
towards Hyde Park he reflected: “I might as well go to Chelsea
and see her.” And he called out: “Just drive me to where you took
that lady the other night.” The coachman turned his broad red
face, and his juicy lips answered: “The lady in grey, sir?”
“Yes, the lady in grey.” What other ladies were there! Stodgy
chap!
The carriage stopped before a small three-storied block of flats,
standing a little back from the river. With a practised eye old
Jolyon saw that they were cheap. “I should think about sixty
pound a year,” he mused; and entering, he looked at the
name-board. The name “Forsyte” was not on it, but against “First
Floor, Flat C” were the words: “Mrs. Irene Heron.” Ah! She had
taken her maiden name again! And somehow this pleased him. He
went upstairs slowly, feeling his side a little. He stood a
moment, before ringing, to lose the feeling of drag and
fluttering there. She would not be in! And then—Boots! The
thought was black. What did he want with boots at his age? He
could not wear out all those he had.
“Your mistress at home?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Say Mr. Jolyon Forsyte.”
“Yes, sir, will you come this way?”
Old Jolyon followed a very little maid—not more than sixteen one
would say—into a very small drawing-room where the sun-blinds
were drawn. It held a cottage piano and little else save a vague
fragrance and good taste. He stood in the middle, with his top
hat in his hand, and thought: “I expect she’s very badly off!”
There was a mirror above the fireplace, and he saw himself
reflected. An old-looking chap! He heard a rustle, and turned
round. She was so close that his moustache almost brushed her
forehead, just under her hair.
“I was driving up,” he said. “Thought I’d look in on you, and ask
you how you got up the other night.”
And, seeing her smile, he felt suddenly relieved. She was really
glad to see him, perhaps.
“Would you like to put on your hat and come for a drive in the
Park?”
But while she was gone to put her hat on, he frowned. The Park!
James and Emily! Mrs. Nicholas, or some other member of his
precious family would be there very likely, prancing up and down.
And they would go and wag their tongues about having seen him
with her, afterwards. Better not! He did not wish to revive the
echoes of the past on Forsyte ’Change. He removed a white hair
from the lapel of his closely-buttoned-up frock coat, and passed
his hand over his cheeks, moustache, and square chin. It felt
very hollow there under the cheekbones. He had not been eating
much lately—he had better get that little whippersnapper who
attended Holly to give him a tonic. But she had come back and
when they were in the carriage, he said:
“Suppose we go and sit in Kensington Gardens instead?” and added
with a twinkle: “No prancing up and down there,” as if she had
been in the secret of his thoughts.
Leaving the carriage, they entered those select precincts, and
strolled towards the water.
“You’ve gone back to your maiden name, I see,” he said: “I’m not
sorry.”
She slipped her hand under his arm: “Has June forgiven me, Uncle
Jolyon?”
He answered gently: “Yes—yes; of course, why not?”
“And have you?”
“I? I forgave you as soon as I saw how the land really lay.” And
perhaps he had; his instinct had always been to forgive the
beautiful.
She drew a deep breath. “I never regretted—I couldn’t. Did you
ever love very deeply, Uncle Jolyon?”
At that strange question old Jolyon stared before him. Had he? He
did not seem to remember that he ever had. But he did not like to
say this to the young woman whose hand was touching his arm,
whose life was suspended, as it were, by memory of a tragic love.
And he thought: “If I had met you when I was young I—I might have
made a fool of myself, perhaps.” And a longing to escape in
generalities beset him.
“Love’s a queer thing,” he said, “fatal thing often. It was the
Greeks—wasn’t it?—made love into a goddess; they were right, I
dare say, but then they lived in the Golden Age.”
“Phil adored them.”
Phil! The word jarred him, for suddenly—with his power to see all
round a thing, he perceived why she was putting up with him like
this. She wanted to talk about her lover! Well! If it was any
pleasure to her! And he said: “Ah! There was a bit of the
sculptor in him, I fancy.”
“Yes. He loved balance and symmetry; he loved the whole-hearted
way the Greeks gave themselves to art.”
Balance! The chap had no balance at all, if he remembered; as for
symmetry—clean-built enough he was, no doubt; but those queer
eyes of his, and high cheek-bones—Symmetry?
“You’re of the Golden Age, too, Uncle Jolyon.”
Old Jolyon looked round at her. Was she chaffing him? No, her
eyes were soft as velvet. Was she flattering him? But if so, why?
There was nothing to be had out of an old chap like him.
“Phil thought so. He used to say: ‘But I can never tell him that
I admire him.’”
Ah! There it was again. Her dead lover; her desire to talk of
him! And he pressed her arm, half resentful of those memories,
half grateful, as if he recognised what a link they were between
herself and him.
“He was a very talented young fellow,” he murmured. “It’s hot; I
feel the heat nowadays. Let’s sit down.”
They took two chairs beneath a chestnut tree whose broad leaves
covered them from the peaceful glory of the afternoon. A pleasure
to sit there and watch her, and feel that she liked to be with
him. And the wish to increase that liking, if he could, made him
go on:
“I expect he showed you a side of him I never saw. He’d be at his
best with you. His ideas of art were a little new—to me”—he had
stiffed the word ‘fangled.’
“Yes: but he used to say you had a real sense of beauty.” Old
Jolyon thought: “The devil he did!” but answered with a twinkle:
“Well, I have, or I shouldn’t be sitting here with you.” She was
fascinating when she smiled with her eyes, like that!
“He thought you had one of those hearts that never grow old. Phil
had real insight.”
He was not taken in by this flattery spoken out of the past, out
of a longing to talk of her dead lover—not a bit; and yet it was
precious to hear, because she pleased his eyes and heart
which—quite true!—had never grown old. Was that because—unlike
her and her dead lover, he had never loved to desperation, had
always kept his balance, his sense of symmetry. Well! It had left
him power, at eighty-four, to admire beauty. And he thought, “If
I were a painter or a sculptor! But I’m an old chap. Make hay
while the sun shines.”
A couple with arms entwined crossed on the grass before them, at
the edge of the shadow from their tree. The sunlight fell cruelly
on their pale, squashed, unkempt young faces. “We’re an ugly
lot!” said old Jolyon suddenly. “It amazes me to see how—love
triumphs over that.”
“Love triumphs over everything!”
“The young think so,” he muttered.
“Love has no age, no limit, and no death.”
With that glow in her pale face, her breast heaving, her eyes so
large and dark and soft, she looked like Venus come to life! But
this extravagance brought instant reaction, and, twinkling, he
said: “Well, if it had limits, we shouldn’t be born; for by
George! it’s got a lot to put up with.”
Then, removing his top hat, he brushed it round with a cuff. The
great clumsy thing heated his forehead; in these days he often
got a rush of blood to the head—his circulation was not what it
had been.
She still sat gazing straight before her, and suddenly she
murmured:
“It’s strange enough that _I’m_ alive.”
Those words of Jo’s “Wild and lost” came back to him.
“Ah!” he said: “my son saw you for a moment—that day.”
“Was it your son? I heard a voice in the hall; I thought for a
second it was—Phil.”
Old Jolyon saw her lips tremble. She put her hand over them, took
it away again, and went on calmly: “That night I went to the
Embankment; a woman caught me by the dress. She told me about
herself. When one knows that others suffer, one’s ashamed.”
“One of _those?_”
She nodded, and horror stirred within old Jolyon, the horror of
one who has never known a struggle with desperation. Almost
against his will he muttered: “Tell me, won’t you?”
“I didn’t care whether I lived or died. When you’re like that,
Fate ceases to want to kill you. She took care of me three
days—she never left me. I had no money. That’s why I do what I
can for them, now.”
But old Jolyon was thinking: “No money!” What fate could compare
with that? Every other was involved in it.
“I wish you had come to me,” he said. “Why didn’t you?” But Irene
did not answer.
“Because my name was Forsyte, I suppose? Or was it June who kept
you away? How are you getting on now?” His eyes involuntarily
swept her body. Perhaps even now she was—! And yet she wasn’t
thin—not really!
“Oh! with my fifty pounds a year, I make just enough.” The answer
did not reassure him; he had lost confidence. And that fellow
Soames! But his sense of justice stifled condemnation. No, she
would certainly have died rather than take another penny from
_him_. Soft as she looked, there must be strength in her