The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy (acx book reading txt) 📕

past the bowl of carnations he had plucked, which mocked him with its scent. Of all things hard to bear, the prostration of willpower is hardest, for one who has always had his way. Nature had got him in its net, and like an unhappy fish he turned and swam at the meshes, here and there, found no hole, no breaking point. They brought him tea at five o’clock, and a letter. For a moment hope beat up in him. He cut the envelope with the butter knife, and read:

“Dearest Uncle Jolyon⁠—I can’t bear to write anything that may disappoint you, but I was too cowardly to tell you last night. I feel I can’t come down and give Holly any more lessons, now that June is coming back. Some things go too deep to be forgotten. It has been such a joy to see you and Holly. Perhaps I shall still see you sometimes when you come up, though I’m sure it’s not good for you; I can see you are tiring yourself too much. I believe you ought to rest quite quietly all this hot weather, and now you have your son and June coming back you will be so happy. Thank you a million times for all your sweetness to me.

“Lovingly your

“Irene.”

So, there it was! Not good for him to have pleasure and what he chiefly cared about; to try and put off feeling the inevitable end of all things, the approach of death with its stealthy, rustling footsteps. Not good for him! Not even she could see how she was his new lease of interest in life, the incarnation of all the beauty he felt slipping from him.

His tea grew cold, his cigar remained unlit; and up and down he paced, torn between his dignity and his hold on life. Intolerable to be squeezed out slowly, without a say of your own, to live on when your will was in the hands of others bent on weighing you to the ground with care and love. Intolerable! He would see what telling her the truth would do⁠—the truth that he wanted the sight of her more than just a lingering on. He sat down at his old bureau and took a pen. But he could not write. There was something revolting in having to plead like this; plead that she should warm his eyes with her beauty. It was tantamount to confessing dotage. He simply could not. And instead, he wrote:

“I had hoped that the memory of old sores would not be allowed to stand in the way of what is a pleasure and a profit to me and my little granddaughter. But old men learn to forego their whims; they are obliged to, even the whim to live must be foregone sooner or later; and perhaps the sooner the better.

“My love to you,

“Jolyon Forsyte.”

“Bitter,” he thought, “but I can’t help it. I’m tired.” He sealed and dropped it into the box for the evening post, and hearing it fall to the bottom, thought: “There goes all I’ve looked forward to!”

That evening after dinner which he scarcely touched, after his cigar which he left half-smoked for it made him feel faint, he went very slowly upstairs and stole into the night-nursery. He sat down on the window-seat. A night-light was burning, and he could just see Holly’s face, with one hand underneath the cheek. An early cockchafer buzzed in the Japanese paper with which they had filled the grate, and one of the horses in the stable stamped restlessly. To sleep like that child! He pressed apart two rungs of the venetian blind and looked out. The moon was rising, blood-red. He had never seen so red a moon. The woods and fields out there were dropping to sleep too, in the last glimmer of the summer light. And beauty, like a spirit, walked. “I’ve had a long life,” he thought, “the best of nearly everything. I’m an ungrateful chap; I’ve seen a lot of beauty in my time. Poor young Bosinney said I had a sense of beauty. There’s a man in the moon tonight!” A moth went by, another, another. “Ladies in grey!” He closed his eyes. A feeling that he would never open them again beset him; he let it grow, let himself sink; then, with a shiver, dragged the lids up. There was something wrong with him, no doubt, deeply wrong; he would have to have the doctor after all. It didn’t much matter now! Into that coppice the moonlight would have crept; there would be shadows, and those shadows would be the only things awake. No birds, beasts, flowers, insects; Just the shadows⁠—moving; “Ladies in grey!” Over that log they would climb; would whisper together. She and Bosinney! Funny thought! And the frogs and little things would whisper too! How the clock ticked, in here! It was all eerie⁠—out there in the light of that red moon; in here with the little steady night-light and, the ticking clock and the nurse’s dressing-gown hanging from the edge of the screen, tall, like a woman’s figure. “Lady in grey!” And a very odd thought beset him: Did she exist? Had she ever come at all? Or was she but the emanation of all the beauty he had loved and must leave so soon? The violet-grey spirit with the dark eyes and the crown of amber hair, who walks the dawn and the moonlight, and at bluebell time? What was she, who was she, did she exist? He rose and stood a moment clutching the windowsill, to give him a sense of reality again; then began tiptoeing towards the door. He stopped at the foot of the bed; and Holly, as if conscious of his eyes fixed on her, stirred, sighed, and curled up closer in defence. He tiptoed on and passed out into the dark passage; reached his room, undressed at once, and stood before a mirror