Imogen's frocks for her first season exercised the judgment of her mother and the purse of her grandfather all through the month of March. With Forsyte tenacity Winifred quested for perfection. It took her mind off the slowly approaching rite which would give her a freedom but doubtfully desired; took her mind, too, off her boy and his fast approaching departure for a war from which the news remained disquieting. Like bees busy on summer flowers, or bright gadflies hovering and darting over spiky autumn blossoms, she and her 'little daughter,' tall nearly as herself and with a bust measurement not far inferior, hovered in the shops of Regent Street, the establishments of Hanover Square and of Bond Street, lost in consideration and the feel of fabrics. Dozens of young women of striking deportment and peculiar gait paraded before Winifred and Imogen, draped in 'creations.' The models—'Very new, modom; quite the latest thing—' which those two reluctantly turned down, would have filled a museum; the models which they were obliged to have nearly emptied James' bank. It was no good doing things by halves, Winifred felt, in view of the need for making this first and sole untarnished season a conspicuous success. Their patience in trying the patience of those impersonal creatures who swam about before them could alone have been displayed by such as were moved by faith. It was for Winifred a long prostration before her dear goddess Fashion, fervent as a Catholic might make before the Virgin; for Imogen an experience by no means too unpleasant—she often looked so nice, and flattery was implicit everywhere: in a word it was 'amusing.'
On the afternoon of the 20th of March, having, as it were, gutted Skywards, they had sought refreshment over the way at Caramel and Baker's, and, stored with chocolate frothed at the top with cream, turned homewards through Berkeley Square of an evening touched with spring. Opening the door—freshly painted a light olive-green; nothing neglected that year to give Imogen a good send-off—Winifred passed towards the silver basket to see if anyone had called, and suddenly her nostrils twitched. What was that scent?
Imogen had taken up a novel sent from the library, and stood absorbed. Rather sharply, because of the queer feeling in her breast, Winifred said:
“Take that up, dear, and have a rest before dinner.”
Imogen, still reading, passed up the stairs. Winifred heard the door of her room slammed to, and drew a long savouring breath. Was it spring tickling her senses—whipping up nostalgia for her 'clown,' against all wisdom and outraged virtue? A male scent! A faint reek of cigars and lavender-water not smelt since that early autumn night six months ago, when she had called him 'the limit.' Whence came it, or was it ghost of scent—sheer emanation from memory? She looked round her. Nothing—not a thing, no tiniest disturbance of her hall, nor of the diningroom. A little day-dream of a scent—illusory, saddening, silly! In the silver basket were new cards, two with 'Mr. and Mrs. Polegate Thom,' and one with 'Mr. Polegate Thom' thereon; she sniffed them, but they smelled severe. 'I must be tired,' she thought, 'I'll go and lie down.' Upstairs the drawing-room was darkened, waiting for some hand to give it evening light; and she passed on up to her bedroom. This, too, was half-curtained and dim, for it was six o'clock. Winifred threw off her coat—that scent again!—then stood, as if shot, transfixed against the bed-rail. Something dark had risen from the sofa in the far corner. A word of horror—in her family—escaped her: “God!”
“It's I—Monty,” said a voice.
Clutching the bed-rail, Winifred reached up and turned the switch of the light hanging above her dressing-table. He appeared just on the rim of the light's circumference, emblazoned from the absence of his watch-chain down to boots neat and sooty brown, but—yes!—split at the toecap. His chest and face were shadowy. Surely he was thin—or was it a trick of the light? He advanced, lighted now from toe-cap to the top of his dark head—surely a little grizzled! His complexion had darkened, sallowed; his black moustache had lost boldness, become sardonic; there were lines which she did not know about his face. There was no pin in his tie. His suit—ah!—she knew that—but how unpressed, unglossy! She stared again at the toe-cap of his boot. Something big and relentless had been 'at him,' had turned and twisted, raked and scraped him. And she stayed, not speaking, motionless, staring at that crack across the toe.
“Well!” he said, “I got the order. I'm back.”
Winifred's bosom began to heave. The nostalgia for her husband which had rushed up with that scent was struggling with a deeper jealousy than any she had felt yet. There he was—a dark, and as if harried, shadow of his sleek and brazen self! What force had done this to him—squeezed him like an orange to its dry rind! That woman!
“I'm back,” he said again. “I've had a beastly time. By God! I came steerage. I've got nothing but what I stand up in, and that bag.”
“And who has the rest?” cried Winifred, suddenly alive. “How dared you come? You knew it was just for divorce that you got that order to come back. Don't touch me!”
They held each to the rail of the big bed where they had spent so many years of nights together. Many times, yes—many times she had wanted him back. But now that he had come she was filled with this cold and deadly resentment. He put his hand up to his moustache; but did not frizz and twist it in the old familiar way, he just pulled it downwards.
“Gad!” he said: “If you knew the time I've had!”
“I'm glad I don't!”
“Are the kids all right?”
Winifred nodded. “How did you get in?”
“With my key.”
“Then the maids don't know. You can't stay here, Monty.”
He uttered a little sardonic laugh.
“Where then?”
“Anywhere.”
“Well, look at me! That—that damned....”
“If you mention her,” cried Winifred, “I go straight out to Park Lane and I don't come back.”
Suddenly he did a simple thing, but so uncharacteristic that it moved her. He shut his eyes. It was as if he had said: 'All right! I'm dead to the world!'
“You can have a room for the night,” she said; “your things are still here. Only Imogen is at home.”
He leaned back against the bed-rail. “Well, it's in your hands,” and his own made a writhing movement. “I've been through it. You needn't hit too hard—it isn't worth while. I've been frightened; I've been frightened, Freddie.”
That old pet name, disused for years and years, sent a shiver through Winifred.
'What am I to do with him?' she thought. 'What in God's name am I to do with him?'
“Got a cigarette?”
She gave him one from a little box she kept up there for when she couldn't sleep at night, and lighted it. With that action the matter-of-fact side of her nature came to life again.
“Go and have a hot bath. I'll put some clothes out for you in the dressing-room. We can talk later.”
He nodded, and fixed his eyes on her—they looked half-dead, or was it that the folds in the lids had become heavier?
'He's not the same,' she thought. He would never be quite the same again! But what would he be?
“All right!” he said, and went towards the door. He even moved differently, like a man who has lost illusion and doubts whether it is worth while to move at all.
When he was gone, and she heard the water in the bath running, she put out a complete set of garments on the bed in his dressing-room, then went downstairs and fetched up the biscuit box and whisky. Putting on her coat again, and listening a moment at the bathroom door, she went down and out. In the street she hesitated. Past seven o'clock! Would Soames be at his Club or at Park Lane? She turned towards the latter. Back!
Soames had always feared it—she had sometimes hoped it.... Back! So like him—clown that he was—with this: 'Here we are again!' to make fools of them all—of the Law, of Soames, of herself!
Yet to have done with the Law, not to have that murky cloud hanging over her and the children! What a relief! Ah! but how to accept his return? That 'woman' had ravaged him, taken from him passion such as he had never bestowed on herself, such as she had not thought him capable of. There was the sting! That selfish, blatant 'clown' of hers, whom she herself had never really stirred, had been swept and ungarnished by another woman! Insulting! Too insulting! Not right, not decent to take him back! And yet she had asked for him; the Law perhaps would make her now! He was as much her husband as ever—she had put herself out of court! And all he wanted, no doubt, was money—to keep him in cigars and lavender-water! That scent! 'After all, I'm not old,' she thought, 'not old yet!' But that woman who had reduced him to those words: 'I've been through it. I've been frightened—frightened, Freddie!' She neared her father's house, driven this way and that, while all the time the Forsyte undertow was drawing her to deep conclusion that after all he was her property, to be held against a robbing world. And so she came to James'.
“Mr. Soames? In his room? I'll go up; don't say I'm here.”
Her brother was dressing. She found him before a mirror, tying a black bow with an air of despising its ends.
“Hullo!” he said, contemplating her in the glass; “what's wrong?”
“Monty!” said Winifred stonily.
Soames spun round. “What!”
“Back!”
“Hoist,” muttered Soames, “with our own petard. Why the deuce didn't you let me try cruelty? I always knew it was too much risk this way.”
“Oh! Don't talk about that! What shall I do?”
Soames answered, with a deep, deep sound.
“Well?” said Winifred impatiently.
“What has he to say for himself?”
“Nothing. One of his boots is split across the toe.”
Soames stared at her.
“Ah!” he said, “of course! On his beam ends. So—it begins again! This'll about finish father.”
“Can't we keep it from him?”
“Impossible. He has an uncanny flair for anything that's worrying.”
And he brooded, with fingers hooked into his blue silk braces. “There ought to be some way in law,” he muttered, “to make him safe.”
“No,” cried Winifred, “I won't be made a fool of again; I'd sooner put up with him.”
The two stared at each other. Their hearts were full of feeling, but they could give it no expression—Forsytes that they were.
“Where did you leave him?”
“In the bath,” and Winifred gave a little bitter laugh. “The only thing he's brought back is lavender-water.”
“Steady!” said Soames, “you're thoroughly upset. I'll go back with you.”
“What's the use?”
“We ought to make terms with him.”
“Terms! It'll always be the same. When he recovers—cards and betting, drink and...!” She was silent, remembering the look on her husband's face. The burnt child—the burnt child. Perhaps...!
“Recovers?” replied Soames: “Is he ill?”
“No; burnt out; that's all.”
Soames took his waistcoat from a chair and put it on, he took his coat and got into it, he scented his handkerchief with eau-de-Cologne, threaded his watch-chain, and said: “We haven't any luck.”
And in the midst of her own trouble Winifred was sorry for him, as if in that little saying he had revealed deep trouble of his own.
“I'd like to see mother,” she said.
“She'll be with father in their room. Come down quietly to the study. I'll get her.”
Winifred stole down to the little dark study, chiefly remarkable for a Canaletto too doubtful to be placed elsewhere, and a fine collection of Law Reports unopened for many years. Here she stood, with her back to maroon-coloured curtains close-drawn, staring at the empty grate, till her mother came in followed by Soames.
“Oh! my poor dear!” said Emily: “How miserable you look in here! This is too bad of him, really!”
As a family they had so guarded themselves from the expression of all unfashionable emotion that it was impossible to go up and give her daughter a good hug. But there was comfort in her cushioned voice, and her still dimpled shoulders under some rare black lace. Summoning pride and the desire not to distress her mother, Winifred said in her most off-hand voice:
“It's all right, Mother; no good fussing.”
“I don't see,” said Emily, looking at Soames, “why Winifred shouldn't tell him that she'll prosecute him if he doesn't keep off the premises. He took her pearls; and if he's not brought them back, that's quite enough.”
Winifred smiled. They would all plunge about with suggestions of this and that, but she knew already what she would be doing, and that was—nothing. The feeling that, after all, she had won a sort of victory, retained her property, was every moment gaining ground in her. No! if she wanted to punish him, she could do it at home without the world knowing.
“Well,” said Emily, “come into the dining-room comfortably—you must stay and have dinner with us. Leave it to me to tell your father.” And, as Winifred moved towards the door, she turned out the light. Not till then did they see the disaster in the corridor.
There, attracted by light from a room never lighted, James was standing with his duncoloured camel-hair shawl folded about him, so that his arms were not free and his silvered head looked cut off from his fashionably trousered legs as if by an expanse of desert. He stood, inimitably stork-like, with an expression as if he saw before him a frog too large to swallow.
“What's all this?” he said. “Tell your father? You never tell me anything.”
The moment found Emily without reply. It was Winifred who went up to him, and, laying one hand on each of his swathed, helpless arms, said:
“Monty's not gone bankrupt, Father. He's only come back.”
They all three expected something serious to happen, and were glad she had kept that grip of his arms, but they did not know the depth of root in that shadowy old Forsyte. Something wry occurred about his shaven mouth and chin, something scratchy between those long silvery whiskers. Then he said with a sort of dignity: “He'll be the death of me. I knew how it would be.”
“You mustn't worry, Father,” said Winifred calmly. “I mean to make him behave.”
“Ah!” said James. “Here, take this thing off, I'm hot.” They unwound the shawl. He turned, and walked firmly to the dining-room.
“I don't want any soup,” he said to Warmson, and sat down in his chair. They all sat down too, Winifred still in her hat, while Warmson laid the fourth place. When he left the room, James said: “What's he brought back?”
“Nothing, Father.”
James concentrated his eyes on his own image in a tablespoon. “Divorce!” he muttered; “rubbish! What was I about? I ought to have paid him an allowance to stay out of England. Soames you go and propose it to him.”
It seemed so right and simple a suggestion that even Winifred was surprised when she said: “No, I'll keep him now he's back; he must just behave—that's all.”
They all looked at her. It had always been known that Winifred had pluck.
“Out there!” said James elliptically, “who knows what cut-throats! You look for his revolver! Don't go to bed without. You ought to have Warmson to sleep in the house. I'll see him myself tomorrow.”
They were touched by this declaration, and Emily said comfortably: “That's right, James, we won't have any nonsense.”
“Ah!” muttered James darkly, “I can't tell.”
The advent of Warmson with fish diverted conversation.
When, directly after dinner, Winifred went over to kiss her father good-night, he looked up with eyes so full of question and distress that she put all the comfort she could into her voice.
“It's all right, Daddy, dear; don't worry. I shan't need anyone—he's quite bland. I shall only be upset if you worry. Good-night, bless you!”
James repeated the words, “Bless you!” as if he did not quite know what they meant, and his eyes followed her to the door.
She reached home before nine, and went straight upstairs.
Dartie was lying on the bed in his dressing-room, fully redressed in a blue serge suit and pumps; his arms were crossed behind his head, and an extinct cigarette drooped from his mouth.
Winifred remembered ridiculously the flowers in her window-boxes after a blazing summer day; the way they lay, or rather stood—parched, yet rested by the sun's retreat. It was as if a little dew had come already on her burnt-up husband.
He said apathetically: “I suppose you've been to Park Lane. How's the old man?”
Winifred could not help the bitter answer: “Not dead.”
He winced, actually he winced.
“Understand, Monty,” she said, “I will not have him worried. If you aren't going to behave yourself, you may go back, you may go anywhere. Have you had dinner?”
No.
“Would you like some?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Imogen offered me some. I didn't want any.”
Imogen! In the plenitude of emotion Winifred had forgotten her.
“So you've seen her? What did she say?”
“She gave me a kiss.”
With mortification Winifred saw his dark sardonic face relaxed. 'Yes!' she thought, 'he cares for her, not for me a bit.'
Dartie's eyes were moving from side to side.
“Does she know about me?” he said.
It flashed through Winifred that here was the weapon she needed. He minded their knowing!
“No. Val knows. The others don't; they only know you went away.”
She heard him sigh with relief.
“But they shall know,” she said firmly, “if you give me cause.”
“All right!” he muttered, “hit me! I'm down!”
Winifred went up to the bed. “Look here, Monty! I don't want to hit you. I don't want to hurt you. I shan't allude to anything. I'm not going to worry. What's the use?” She was silent a moment. “I can't stand any more, though, and I won't! You'd better know. You've made me suffer. But I used to be fond of you. For the sake of that....” She met the heavy-lidded gaze of his brown eyes with the downward stare of her green-grey eyes; touched his hand suddenly, turned her back, and went into her room.
She sat there a long time before her glass, fingering her rings, thinking of this subdued dark man, almost a stranger to her, on the bed in the other room; resolutely not 'worrying,' but gnawed by jealousy of what he had been through, and now and again just visited by pity.
Soames doggedly let the spring come—no easy task for one conscious that time was flying, his birds in the bush no nearer the hand, no issue from the web anywhere visible. Mr. Polteed reported nothing, except that his watch went on—costing a lot of money. Val and his cousin were gone to the war, whence came news more favourable; Dartie was behaving himself so far; James had retained his health; business prospered almost terribly—there was nothing to worry Soames except that he was 'held up,' could make no step in any direction.
He did not exactly avoid Soho, for he could not afford to let them think that he had 'piped off,' as James would have put it—he might want to 'pipe on' again at any minute. But he had to be so restrained and cautious that he would often pass the door of the Restaurant Bretagne without going in, and wander out of the purlieus of that region which always gave him the feeling of having been possessively irregular.
He wandered thus one May night into Regent Street and the most amazing crowd he had ever seen; a shrieking, whistling, dancing, jostling, grotesque and formidably jovial crowd, with false noses and mouth-organs, penny whistles and long feathers, every appanage of idiocy, as it seemed to him. Mafeking! Of course, it had been relieved! Good! But was that an excuse? Who were these people, what were they, where had they come from into the West End? His face was tickled, his ears whistled into. Girls cried: 'Keep your hair on, stucco!' A youth so knocked off his top-hat that he recovered it with difficulty. Crackers were exploding beneath his nose, between his feet. He was bewildered, exasperated, offended. This stream of people came from every quarter, as if impulse had unlocked flood-gates, let flow waters of whose existence he had heard, perhaps, but believed in never. This, then, was the populace, the innumerable living negation of gentility and Forsyteism. This was—egad!—Democracy! It stank, yelled, was hideous! In the East End, or even Soho, perhaps—but here in Regent Street, in Piccadilly! What were the police about! In 1900, Soames, with his Forsyte thousands, had never seen the 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!
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.”
Outraged and on edge, Soames recoiled.
“Don't make a scene!” he said sharply. And they both stood motionless, staring at the little Niobe, whose greenish flesh the sunlight was burnishing.
“That's your last word, then,” muttered Soames, clenching his hands; “you condemn us both.”
Irene bent her head. “I can't come back. Good-bye!”
A feeling of monstrous injustice flared up in Soames.
“Stop!” he said, “and listen to me a moment. You gave me a sacred vow—you came to me without a penny. You had all I could give you. You broke that vow without cause, you made me a by-word; you refused me a child; you've left me in prison; you—you still move me so that I want you—I want you. Well, what do you think of yourself?”
Irene turned, her face was deadly pale, her eyes burning dark.
“God made me as I am,” she said; “wicked if you like—but not so wicked that I'll give myself again to a man I hate.”
The sunlight gleamed on her hair as she moved away, and seemed to lay a caress all down her clinging cream-coloured frock.
Soames could neither speak nor move. That word 'hate'—so extreme, so primitive—made all the Forsyte in him tremble. With a deep imprecation he strode away from where she had vanished, and ran almost into the arms of the lady sauntering back—the fool, the shadowing fool!
He was soon dripping with perspiration, in the depths of the Bois.
'Well,' he thought, 'I need have no consideration for her now; she has not a grain of it for me. I'll show her this very day that she's my wife still.'
But on the way home to his hotel, he was forced to the conclusion that he did not know what he meant. One could not make scenes in public, and short of scenes in public what was there he could do? He almost cursed his own thin-skinnedness. She might deserve no consideration; but he—alas! deserved some at his own hands. And sitting lunchless in the hall of his hotel, with tourists passing every moment, Baedeker in hand, he was visited by black dejection. In irons! His whole life, with every natural instinct and every decent yearning gagged and fettered, and all because Fate had driven him seventeen years ago to set his heart upon this woman—so utterly, that even now he had no real heart to set on any other! Cursed was the day he had met her, and his eyes for seeing in her anything but the cruel Venus she was! And yet, still seeing her with the sunlight on the clinging China crepe of her gown, he uttered a little groan, so that a tourist who was passing, thought: 'Man in pain! Let's see! what did I have for lunch?'
Later, in front of a cafe near the Opera, over a glass of cold tea with lemon and a straw in it, he took the malicious resolution to go and dine at her hotel. If she were there, he would speak to her; if she were not, he would leave a note. He dressed carefully, and wrote as follows:
“Your idyll with that fellow Jolyon Forsyte is known to me at all events. If you pursue it, understand that I will leave no stone unturned to make things unbearable for him. 'S. F.'”
He sealed this note but did not address it, refusing to write the maiden name which she had impudently resumed, or to put the word Forsyte on the envelope lest she should tear it up unread. Then he went out, and made his way through the glowing streets, abandoned to evening pleasure-seekers. Entering her hotel, he took his seat in a far corner of the dining-room whence he could see all entrances and exits. She was not there. He ate little, quickly, watchfully. She did not come. He lingered in the lounge over his coffee, drank two liqueurs of brandy. But still she did not come. He went over to the keyboard and examined the names. Number twelve, on the first floor! And he determined to take the note up himself. He mounted red-carpeted stairs, past a little salon; eight-ten-twelve! Should he knock, push the note under, or...? He looked furtively round and turned the handle. The door opened, but into a little space leading to another door; he knocked on that—no answer. The door was locked. It fitted very closely to the floor; the note would not go under. He thrust it back into his pocket, and stood a moment listening. He felt somehow certain that she was not there. And suddenly he came away, passing the little salon down the stairs. He stopped at the bureau and said:
“Will you kindly see that Mrs. Heron has this note?”
“Madame Heron left to-day, Monsieur—suddenly, about three o'clock. There was illness in her family.”
Soames compressed his lips. “Oh!” he said; “do you know her address?”
“Non, Monsieur. England, I think.”
Soames put the note back into his pocket and went out. He hailed an open horse-cab which was passing.
“Drive me anywhere!”
The man, who, obviously, did not understand, smiled, and waved his whip. And Soames was borne along in that little yellow-wheeled Victoria all over star-shaped Paris, with here and there a pause, and the question, “C'est par ici, Monsieur?” “No, go on,” till the man gave it up in despair, and the yellow-wheeled chariot continued to roll between the tall, flat-fronted shuttered houses and plane-tree avenues—a little Flying Dutchman of a cab.
'Like my life,' thought Soames, 'without object, on and on!'
Soames returned to England the following day, and on the third morning received a visit from Mr. Polteed, who wore a flower and carried a brown billycock hat. Soames motioned him to a seat.
“The news from the war is not so bad, is it?” said Mr. Polteed. “I hope I see you well, sir.”
“Thanks! quite.”
Mr. Polteed leaned forward, smiled, opened his hand, looked into it, and said softly:
“I think we've done your business for you at last.”
“What?” ejaculated Soames.
“Nineteen reports quite suddenly what I think we shall be justified in calling conclusive evidence,” and Mr. Polteed paused.
“Well?”
“On the 10th instant, after witnessing an interview between 17 and a party, earlier in the day, 19 can swear to having seen him coming out of her bedroom in the hotel about ten o'clock in the evening. With a little care in the giving of the evidence that will be enough, especially as 17 has left Paris—no doubt with the party in question. In fact, they both slipped off, and we haven't got on to them again, yet; but we shall—we shall. She's worked hard under very difficult circumstances, and I'm glad she's brought it off at last.” Mr. Polteed took out a cigarette, tapped its end against the table, looked at Soames, and put it back. The expression on his client's face was not encouraging.
“Who is this new person?” said Soames abruptly.
“That we don't know. She'll swear to the fact, and she's got his appearance pat.”
Mr. Polteed took out a letter, and began reading:
“'Middle-aged, medium height, blue dittoes in afternoon, evening dress at night, pale, dark hair, small dark moustache, flat cheeks, good chin, grey eyes, small feet, guilty look....'”
Soames rose and went to the window. He stood there in sardonic fury. Congenital idiot—spidery congenital idiot! Seven months at fifteen pounds a week—to be tracked down as his own wife's lover! Guilty look! He threw the window open.
“It's hot,” he said, and came back to his seat.
Crossing his knees, he bent a supercilious glance on Mr. Polteed.
“I doubt if that's quite good enough,” he said, drawling the words, “with no name or address. I think you may let that lady have a rest, and take up our friend 47 at this end.” Whether Polteed had spotted him he could not tell; but he had a mental vision of him in the midst of his cronies dissolved in inextinguishable laughter. 'Guilty look!' Damnation!
Mr. Polteed said in a tone of urgency, almost of pathos: “I assure you we have put it through sometimes on less than that. It's Paris, you know. Attractive woman living alone. Why not risk it, sir? We might screw it up a peg.”
Soames had sudden insight. The fellow's professional zeal was stirred: 'Greatest triumph of my career; got a man his divorce through a visit to his own wife's bedroom! Something to talk of there, when I retire!' And for one wild moment he thought: 'Why not?' After all, hundreds of men of medium height had small feet and a guilty look!
“I'm not authorised to take any risk!” he said shortly.
Mr. Polteed looked up.
“Pity,” he said, “quite a pity! That other affair seemed very costive.”
Soames rose.
“Never mind that. Please watch 47, and take care not to find a mare's nest. Good-morning!”
Mr. Polteed's eye glinted at the words 'mare's nest!'
“Very good. You shall be kept informed.”
And Soames was alone again. The spidery, dirty, ridiculous business! Laying his arms on the table, he leaned his forehead on them. Full ten minutes he rested thus, till a managing clerk roused him with the draft prospectus of a new issue of shares, very desirable, in Manifold and Topping's. That afternoon he left work early and made his way to the Restaurant Bretagne. Only Madame Lamotte was in. Would Monsieur have tea with her?
Soames bowed.
When they were seated at right angles to each other in the little room, he said abruptly:
“I want a talk with you, Madame.”
The quick lift of her clear brown eyes told him that she had long expected such words.
“I have to ask you something first: That young doctor—what's his name? Is there anything between him and Annette?”
Her whole personality had become, as it were, like jet—clear-cut, black, hard, shining.
“Annette is young,” she said; “so is monsieur le docteur. Between young people things move quickly; but Annette is a good daughter. Ah! what a jewel of a nature!”
The least little smile twisted Soames' lips.
“Nothing definite, then?”
“But definite—no, indeed! The young man is veree nice, but—what would you? There is no money at present.”
She raised her willow-patterned tea-cup; Soames did the same. Their eyes met.
“I am a married man,” he said, “living apart from my wife for many years. I am seeking to divorce her.”
Madame Lamotte put down her cup. Indeed! What tragic things there were! The entire absence of sentiment in her inspired a queer species of contempt in Soames.
“I am a rich man,” he added, fully conscious that the remark was not in good taste. “It is useless to say more at present, but I think you understand.”
Madame's eyes, so open that the whites showed above them, looked at him very straight.
“Ah! ca—mais nous avons le temps!” was all she said. “Another little cup?” Soames refused, and, taking his leave, walked westward.
He had got that off his mind; she would not let Annette commit herself with that cheerful young ass until...! But what chance of his ever being able to say: 'I'm free.' What chance? The future had lost all semblance of reality. He felt like a fly, entangled in cobweb filaments, watching the desirable freedom of the air with pitiful eyes.
He was short of exercise, and wandered on to Kensington Gardens, and down Queen's Gate towards Chelsea. Perhaps she had gone back to her flat. That at all events he could find out. For since that last and most ignominious repulse his wounded self-respect had taken refuge again in the feeling that she must have a lover. He arrived before the little Mansions at the dinner-hour. No need to enquire! A grey-haired lady was watering the flower-boxes in her window. It was evidently let. And he walked slowly past again, along the river—an evening of clear, quiet beauty, all harmony and comfort, except within his heart.