The Forsyte saga - Complete
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 £200 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!”
CHAPTER IX VAL HEARS THE NEWS
The keeping of engagements had not as yet been a conspicuous
feature in the life of young Val Dartie, so that when he broke
two and kept one, it was the latter event which caused him, if
anything, the greater surprise, while jogging back to town from
Robin Hill after his ride with Holly. She had been even prettier
than he had thought her yesterday, on her silver-roan,
long-tailed “palfrey”. and it seemed to him, self-critical in the
brumous October gloaming and the outskirts of London, that only
his boots had shone throughout their two-hour companionship. He
took out his new gold “hunter”—present from James—and looked not
at the time, but at sections of his face in the glittering back