The Forsyte saga - Complete
Odd that one whose life was spent in bringing to the public eye
all the private coils of property, the domestic disagreements of
others, should dread so utterly the public eye turned on his own;
and yet not odd, for who should know so well as he the whole
unfeeling process of legal regulation.
He worked hard all day. Winifred was due at four o’clock; he was
to take her down to a conference in the Temple with Dreamer Q.C.,
and waiting for her he re-read the letter he had caused her to
write the day of Dartie’s departure, requiring him to return.
“DEAR MONTAGUE,
“I have received your letter with the news that you have left
me for ever and are on your way to Buenos Aires. It has
naturally been a great shock. I am taking this earliest
opportunity of writing to tell you that I am prepared to let
bygones be bygones if you will return to me at once. I beg
you to do so. I am very much upset, and will not say any more
now. I am sending this letter registered to the address you
left at your Club. Please cable to me.
“Your still affectionate wife,
“WINIFRED DARTIE.”
Ugh! What bitter humbug! He remembered leaning over Winifred
while she copied what he had pencilled, and how she had said,
laying down her pen, “Suppose he comes, Soames!” in such a
strange tone of voice, as if she did not know her own mind. “He
won’t come,” he had answered, “till he’s spent his money. That’s
why we must act at once.” Annexed to the copy of that letter was
the original of Dartie’s drunken scrawl from the Iseeum Club.
Soames could have wished it had not been so manifestly penned in
liquor. Just the sort of thing the Court would pitch on. He
seemed to hear the Judge’s voice say: “You took this seriously!
Seriously enough to write him as you did? Do you think he meant
it?” Never mind! The fact was clear that Dartie had sailed and
had not returned. Annexed also was his cabled answer: “Impossible
return. Dartie.” Soames shook his head. If the whole thing were
not disposed of within the next few months the fellow would turn
up again like a bad penny. It saved a thousand a year at least to
get rid of him, besides all the worry to Winifred and his father.
“I must stiffen Dreamer’s back,” he thought; “we must push it
on.”
Winifred, who had adopted a kind of half-mourning which became
her fair hair and tall figure very well, arrived in James’
barouche drawn by James’ pair. Soames had not seen it in the City
since his father retired from business five years ago, and its
incongruity gave him a shock. “Times are changing,” he thought;
“one doesn’t know what’ll go next!” Top hats even were scarcer.
He enquired after Val. Val, said Winifred, wrote that he was
going to play polo next term. She thought he was in a very good
set. She added with fashionably disguised anxiety: “Will there be
much publicity about my affair, Soames? _Must_ it be in the
papers? It’s so bad for him, and the girls.”
With his own calamity all raw within him, Soames answered:
“The papers are a pushing lot; it’s very difficult to keep things
out. They pretend to be guarding the public’s morals, and they
corrupt them with their beastly reports. But we haven’t got to
that yet. We’re only seeing Dreamer to-day on the restitution
question. Of course he understands that it’s to lead to a
divorce; but you must seem genuinely anxious to get Dartie
back—you might practise that attitude to-day.”
Winifred sighed.
“Oh! What a clown Monty’s been!” she said.
Soames gave her a sharp look. It was clear to him that she could
not take her Dartie seriously, and would go back on the whole
thing if given half a chance. His own instinct had been firm in
this matter from the first. To save a little scandal now would
only bring on his sister and her children real disgrace and
perhaps ruin later on if Dartie were allowed to hang on to them,
going down-hill and spending the money James would leave his
daughter. Though it _was_ all tied up, that fellow would milk the
settlements somehow, and make his family pay through the nose to
keep him out of bankruptcy or even perhaps gaol! They left the
shining carriage, with the shining horses and the shining-hatted
servants on the Embankment, and walked up to Dreamer Q.C.’s
Chambers in Crown Office Row.
“Mr. Bellby is here, sir,” said the clerk; “Mr. Dreamer will be
ten minutes.”
Mr. Bellby, the junior—not as junior as he might have been, for
Soames only employed barristers of established reputation; it
was, indeed, something of a mystery to him how barristers ever
managed to establish that which made him employ them—Mr. Bellby
was seated, taking a final glance through his papers. He had come
from Court, and was in wig and gown, which suited a nose jutting
out like the handle of a tiny pump, his small shrewd blue eyes,
and rather protruding lower lip—no better man to supplement and
stiffen Dreamer.
The introduction to Winifred accomplished, they leaped the
weather and spoke of the war. Soames interrupted suddenly:
“If he doesn’t comply we can’t bring proceedings for six months.
I want to get on with the matter, Bellby.”
Mr. Bellby, who had the ghost of an Irish brogue, smiled at
Winifred and murmured: “The Law’s delays, Mrs. Dartie.”
“Six months!” repeated Soames; “it’ll drive it up to June! We
shan’t get the suit on till after the long vacation. We must put
the screw on, Bellby”—he would have all his work cut out to keep
Winifred up to the scratch.
“Mr. Dreamer will see you now, sir.”
They filed in, Mr. Bellby going first, and Soames escorting
Winifred after an interval of one minute by his watch.
Dreamer Q.C., in a gown but divested of wig, was standing before
the fire, as if this conference were in the nature of a treat; he
had the leathery, rather oily complexion which goes with great
learning, a considerable nose with glasses perched on it, and
little greyish whiskers; he luxuriated in the perpetual cocking
of one eye, and the concealment of his lower with his upper lip,
which gave a smothered turn to his speech. He had a way, too, of
coming suddenly round the corner on the person he was talking to;
this, with a disconcerting tone of voice, and a habit of growling
before he began to speak—had secured a reputation second in
Probate and Divorce to very few. Having listened, eye cocked, to
Mr. Bellby’s breezy recapitulation of the facts, he growled, and
said:
“I know all that;” and coming round the corner at Winifred,
smothered the words:
“We want to get him back, don’t we, Mrs. Dartie?”
Soames interposed sharply:
“My sister’s position, of course, is intolerable.”
Dreamer growled. “Exactly. Now, can we rely on the cabled
refusal, or must we wait till after Christmas to give him a
chance to have written—that’s the point, isn’t it?”
“The sooner....” Soames began.
“What do you say, Bellby?” said Dreamer, coming round his corner.
Mr. Bellby seemed to sniff the air like a hound.
“We won’t be on till the middle of December. We’ve no need to
give um more rope than that.”
“No,” said Soames, “why should my sister be incommoded by his
choosing to go...”
“To Jericho!” said Dreamer, again coming round his corner; “quite
so. People oughtn’t to go to Jericho, ought they, Mrs. Dartie?”
And he raised his gown into a sort of fantail. “I agree. We can
go forward. Is there anything more?”
“Nothing at present,” said Soames meaningly; “I wanted you to see
my sister.”
Dreamer growled softly: “Delighted. Good evening!” And let fall
the protection of his gown.
They filed out. Winifred went down the stairs. Soames lingered.
In spite of himself he was impressed by Dreamer.
“The evidence is all right, I think,” he said to Bellby. “Between
ourselves, if we don’t get the thing through quick, we never may.
D’you think _he_ understands that?”
“I’ll make um,” said Bellby. “Good man though—good man.”
Soames nodded and hastened after his sister. He found her in a
draught, biting her lips behind her veil, and at once said:
“The evidence of the stewardess will be very complete.”
Winifred’s face hardened; she drew herself up, and they walked to
the carriage. And, all through that silent drive back to Green
Street, the souls of both of them revolved a single thought:
“Why, oh! why should I have to expose my misfortune to the public
like this? Why have to employ spies to peer into my private
troubles? They were not of my making.”
CHAPTER V JOLLY SITS IN JUDGMENT
The possessive instinct, which, so determinedly balked, was
animating two members of the Forsyte family towards riddance of
what they could no longer possess, was hardening daily in the
British body politic. Nicholas, originally so doubtful concerning
a war which must affect property, had been heard to say that
these Boers were a pig-headed lot; they were causing a lot of
expense, and the sooner they had their lesson the better. _He_
would send out Wolseley! Seeing always a little further than
other people—whence the most considerable fortune of all the
Forsytes—he had perceived already that Buller was not the man—“a
bull of a chap, who just went butting, and if they didn’t look
out Ladysmith would fall.” This was early in December, so that
when Black Week came, he was enabled to say to everybody: “I told
you so.” During that week of gloom such as no Forsyte could
remember, very young Nicholas attended so many drills in his
corps, “The Devil’s Own,” that young Nicholas consulted the
family physician about his son’s health and was alarmed to find
that he was perfectly sound. The boy had only just eaten his
dinners and been called to the bar, at some expense, and it was
in a way a nightmare to his father and mother that he should be
playing with military efficiency at a time when military
efficiency in the civilian population might conceivably be
wanted. His grandfather, of course, pooh-poohed the notion, too
thoroughly educated in the feeling that no British war could be
other than little and professional, and profoundly distrustful of
Imperial commitments, by which, moreover, he stood to lose, for
he owned De Beers, now going down fast, more than a sufficient
sacrifice on the part of his grandson.
At Oxford, however, rather different sentiments prevailed. The
inherent effervescence of conglomerate youth had, during the two
months of the term before Black Week, been gradually
crystallising out into vivid oppositions. Normal adolescence,
ever in England of a conservative tendency though not taking
things too seriously, was vehement for a fight to a finish and a
good licking for the Boers. Of this larger faction Val Dartie was
naturally a member. Radical youth, on the other hand, a small but