Chapter VI: A Summer Day

His boy was seldom absent from Jolyon’s mind in the days which
followed the first walk with Irene in Richmond Park. No further
news had come; enquiries at the War Office elicited nothing; nor
could he expect to hear from June and Holly for three weeks at
least. In these days he felt how insufficient were his memories
of Jolly, and what an amateur of a father he had been. There was
not a single memory in which anger played a part; not one
reconciliation, because there had never been a rupture; nor one
heart-to-heart confidence, not even when Jolly’s mother died.
Nothing but half-ironical affection. He had been too afraid of
committing himself in any direction, for fear of losing his
liberty, or interfering with that of his boy.

Only in Irene’s presence had he relief, highly complicated by the
ever-growing perception of how divided he was between her and his
son. With Jolly was bound up all that sense of continuity and
social creed of which he had drunk deeply in his youth and again
during his boy’s public school and varsity life—all that sense of
not going back on what father and son expected of each other.
With Irene was bound up all his delight in beauty and in Nature.
And he seemed to know less and less which was the stronger within
him. From such sentimental paralysis he was rudely awakened,
however, one afternoon, just as he was starting off to Richmond,
by a young man with a bicycle and a face oddly familiar, who came
forward faintly smiling.

“Mr. Jolyon Forsyte? Thank you!” Placing an envelope in Jolyon’s
hand he wheeled off the path and rode away. Bewildered, Jolyon
opened it.

“Admiralty Probate and Divorce, Forsyte _v._ Forsyte and
Forsyte!”

A sensation of shame and disgust was followed by the instant
reaction “Why, here’s the very thing you want, and you don’t like
it!” But she must have had one too; and he must go to her at
once. He turned things over as he went along. It was an ironical
business. For, whatever the Scriptures said about the heart, it
took more than mere longings to satisfy the law. They could
perfectly well defend this suit, or at least in good faith try
to. But the idea of doing so revolted Jolyon. If not her lover in
deed he was in desire, and he knew that she was ready to come to
him. Her face had told him so. Not that he exaggerated her
feeling for him. She had had her grand passion, and he could not
expect another from her at his age. But she had trust in him,
affection for him, and must feel that he would be a refuge.
Surely she would not ask him to defend the suit, knowing that he
adored her! Thank Heaven she had not that maddening British
conscientiousness which refused happiness for the sake of
refusing! She must rejoice at this chance of being free after
seventeen years of death in life! As to publicity, the fat was in
the fire! To defend the suit would not take away the slur. Jolyon
had all the proper feeling of a Forsyte whose privacy is
threatened: If he was to be hung by the Law, by all means let it
be for a sheep! Moreover the notion of standing in a witness box
and swearing to the truth that no gesture, not even a word of
love had passed between them seemed to him more degrading than to
take the tacit stigma of being an adulterer—more truly degrading,
considering the feeling in his heart, and just as bad and painful
for his children. The thought of explaining away, if he could,
before a judge and twelve average Englishmen, their meetings in
Paris, and the walks in Richmond Park, horrified him. The
brutality and hypocritical censoriousness of the whole process;
the probability that they would not be believed—the mere vision
of her, whom he looked on as the embodiment of Nature and of
Beauty, standing there before all those suspicious, gloating eyes
was hideous to him. No, no! To defend a suit only made a London
holiday, and sold the newspapers. A thousand times better accept
what Soames and the gods had sent!

“Besides,” he thought honestly, “who knows whether, even for my
boy’s sake, I could have stood this state of things much longer?
Anyway, her neck will be out of chancery at last!” Thus absorbed,
he was hardly conscious of the heavy heat. The sky had become
overcast, purplish with little streaks of white. A heavy
heat-drop plashed a little star pattern in the dust of the road
as he entered the Park. “Phew!” he thought, “thunder! I hope
she’s not come to meet me; there’s a ducking up there!” But at
that very minute he saw Irene coming towards the Gate. “We must
scuttle back to Robin Hill,” he thought.

The storm had passed over the Poultry at four o’clock, bringing
welcome distraction to the clerks in every office. Soames was
drinking a cup of tea when a note was brought in to him:

“DEAR SIR,

_Forsyte v. Forsyte and Forsyte_

“In accordance with your instructions, we beg to inform you
that we personally served the respondent and co-respondent in
this suit to-day, at Richmond, and Robin Hill, respectively.

“Faithfully yours,
“LINKMAN AND LAVER.”

For some minutes Soames stared at that note. Ever since he had
given those instructions he had been tempted to annul them. It
was so scandalous, such a general disgrace! The evidence, too,
what he had heard of it, had never seemed to him conclusive;
somehow, he believed less and less that those two had gone all
lengths. But this, of course, would drive them to it; and he
suffered from the thought. That fellow to have her love, where he
had failed! Was it too late? Now that they had been brought up
sharp by service of this petition, had he not a lever with which
he could force them apart? “But if I don’t act at once,” he
thought, “it will be too late, now they’ve had this thing. I’ll
go and see him; I’ll go down!”

And, sick with nervous anxiety, he sent out for one of the
“new-fangled” motor-cabs. It might take a long time to run that
fellow to ground, and Goodness knew what decision they might come
to after such a shock! “If I were a theatrical ass,” he thought,
“I suppose I should be taking a horse-whip or a pistol or
something!” He took instead a bundle of papers in the case of
“Magentie versus Wake,” intending to read them on the way down.
He did not even open them, but sat quite still, jolted and
jarred, unconscious of the draught down the back of his neck, or
the smell of petrol. He must be guided by the fellow’s attitude;
the great thing was to keep his head!

London had already begun to disgorge its workers as he neared
Putney Bridge; the ant-heap was on the move outwards. What a lot
of ants, all with a living to get, holding on by their eyelids in
the great scramble! Perhaps for the first time in his life Soames
thought: “_I_ could let go if I liked! Nothing could touch me; I
could snap my fingers, live as I wished—enjoy myself!” No! One
could not live as he had and just drop it all—settle down in
Capua, to spend the money and reputation he had made. A man’s
life was what he possessed and sought to possess. Only fools
thought otherwise—fools, and socialists, and libertines!

The cab was passing villas now, going a great pace. “Fifteen
miles an hour, I should think!” he mused; “this’ll take people
out of town to live!” and he thought of its bearing on the
portions of London owned by his father—he himself had never taken
to that form of investment, the gambler in him having all the
outlet needed in his pictures. And the cab sped on, down the hill
past Wimbledon Common. This interview! Surely a man of fifty-two
with grown-up children, and hung on the line, would not be
reckless. “He won’t want to disgrace the family,” he thought; “he
was as fond of his father as I am of mine, and they were
brothers. That woman brings destruction—what is it in her? I’ve
never known.” The cab branched off, along the side of a wood, and
he heard a late cuckoo calling, almost the first he had heard
that year. He was now almost opposite the site he had originally
chosen for his house, and which had been so unceremoniously
rejected by Bosinney in favour of his own choice. He began
passing his handkerchief over his face and hands, taking deep
breaths to give him steadiness. “Keep one’s head,” he thought,
“keep one’s head!”

The cab turned in at the drive which might have been his own, and
the sound of music met him. He had forgotten the fellow’s
daughters.

“I may be out again directly,” he said to the driver, “or I may
be kept some time”; and he rang the bell.

Following the maid through the curtains into the inner hall, he
felt relieved that the impact of this meeting would be broken by
June or Holly, whichever was playing in there, so that with
complete surprise he saw Irene at the piano, and Jolyon sitting
in an armchair listening. They both stood up. Blood surged into
Soames’ brain, and all his resolution to be guided by this or
that left him utterly. The look of his farmer forbears—dogged
Forsytes down by the sea, from “Superior Dosset” back—grinned out
of his face.

“Very pretty!” he said.

He heard the fellow murmur:

“This is hardly the place—we’ll go to the study, if you don’t
mind.” And they both passed him through the curtain opening. In
the little room to which he followed them, Irene stood by the
open window, and the “fellow” close to her by a big chair. Soames
pulled the door to behind him with a slam; the sound carried him
back all those years to the day when he had shut out Jolyon—shut
him out for meddling with his affairs.

“Well,” he said, “what have you to say for yourselves?”

The fellow had the effrontery to smile.

“What we have received to-day has taken away your right to ask. I
should imagine you will be glad to have your neck out of
chancery.”

“Oh!” said Soames; “you think so! I came to tell you that I’ll
divorce her with every circumstance of disgrace to you both,
unless you swear to keep clear of each other from now on.”

He was astonished at his fluency, because his mind was stammering
and his hands twitching. Neither of them answered; but their
faces seemed to him as if contemptuous.

“Well,” he said; “you—Irene?”

Her lips moved, but Jolyon laid his hand on her arm.

“Let her alone!” said Soames furiously. “Irene, will you swear
it?”

“No.”

“Oh! and you?”

“Still less.”

“So then you’re guilty, are you?”

“Yes, guilty.” It was Irene speaking in that serene voice, with
that unreached air which had maddened him so often; and, carried
beyond himself, he cried:

“_You_ are a devil.”

“Go out! Leave this house, or I’ll do you an injury.”

That fellow to talk of injuries! Did he know how near his throat
was to being scragged?

“A trustee,” he said, “embezzling trust property! A thief,
stealing his cousin’s wife.”

“Call me what you like. You have chosen your part, we have chosen
ours. Go out!”

If he had brought a weapon Soames might have used it at that
moment.

“I’ll make you pay!” he said.

“I shall be very happy.”

At that deadly turning of the meaning of his speech by the son of
him who had nicknamed him “the man of property,” Soames stood
glaring. It was ridiculous!

There they were, kept from violence by some secret force. No blow
possible, no words to meet the case. But he could not, did not
know how to turn and go away. His eyes fastened on Irene’s
face—the last time he would ever see that fatal face—the last
time, no doubt!

“You,” he said suddenly, “I hope you’ll treat him as you treated
me—that’s all.”

He saw her wince, and with a sensation not quite triumph, not
quite relief, he wrenched open the door, passed out through the
hall, and got into his cab. He lolled against the cushion with
his eyes shut. Never in his life had he been so near to murderous
violence, never so thrown away the restraint which was his second
nature. He had a stripped and naked feeling, as if all virtue had
gone out of him—life meaningless, mind-striking work. Sunlight
streamed in on him, but he felt cold. The scene he had passed
through had gone from him already, what was before him would not
materialise, he could catch on to nothing; and he felt
frightened, as if he had been hanging over the edge of a
precipice, as if with another turn of the screw sanity would have
failed him. “I’m not fit for it,” he thought; “I mustn’t—I’m not
fit for it.” The cab sped on, and in mechanical procession trees,
houses, people passed, but had no significance. “I feel very
queer,” he thought; “I’ll take a Turkish bath.—I’ve been very
near to something. It won’t do.” The cab whirred its way back
over the bridge, up the Fulham Road, along the Park.

“To the Hammam,” said Soames.

Curious that on so warm a summer day, heat should be so
comforting! Crossing into the hot room he met George Forsyte
coming out, red and glistening.

“Hallo!” said George; “what are you training for? You’ve not got
much superfluous.”

Buffoon! Soames passed him with his sideway smile. Lying back,
rubbing his skin uneasily for the first signs of perspiration, he
thought: “Let them laugh! I _won’t_ feel anything! I can’t stand
violence! It’s not good for me!”