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

“Very few.”

At Waterloo they took a hansom, and he drove with her to the door of her mansions. Squeezing her hand at parting, he said:

“You know, you could always come to us at Robin Hill; you must let me know everything that happens. Goodbye, Irene.”

“Goodbye,” she answered softly.

Jolyon climbed back into his cab, wondering why he had not asked her to dine and go to the theatre with him. Solitary, starved, hung-up life that she had! “Hotch Potch Club,” he said through the trap-door. As his hansom debouched on to the Embankment, a man in top-hat and overcoat passed, walking quickly, so close to the wall that he seemed to be scraping it.

“By Jove!” thought Jolyon; “Soames himself! What’s he up to now?” And, stopping the cab round the corner, he got out and retraced his steps to where he could see the entrance to the mansions. Soames had halted in front of them, and was looking up at the light in her windows. “If he goes in,” thought Jolyon, “what shall I do? What have I the right to do?” What the fellow had said was true. She was still his wife, absolutely without protection from annoyance! “Well, if he goes in,” he thought, “I follow.” And he began moving towards the mansions. Again Soames advanced; he was in the very entrance now. But suddenly he stopped, spun round on his heel, and came back towards the river. “What now?” thought Jolyon. “In a dozen steps he’ll recognise me.” And he turned tail. His cousin’s footsteps kept pace with his own. But he reached his cab, and got in before Soames had turned the corner. “Go on!” he said through the trap. Soames’ figure ranged up alongside.

“Hansom!” he said. “Engaged? Hallo!”

“Hallo!” answered Jolyon. “You?”

The quick suspicion on his cousin’s face, white in the lamplight, decided him.

“I can give you a lift,” he said, “if you’re going West.”

“Thanks,” answered Soames, and got in.

“I’ve been seeing Irene,” said Jolyon when the cab had started.

“Indeed!”

“You went to see her yesterday yourself, I understand.”

“I did,” said Soames; “she’s my wife, you know.”

The tone, the half-lifted sneering lip, roused sudden anger in Jolyon; but he subdued it.

“You ought to know best,” he said, “but if you want a divorce it’s not very wise to go seeing her, is it? One can’t run with the hare and hunt with the hounds?”

“You’re very good to warn me,” said Soames, “but I have not made up my mind.”

“She has,” said Jolyon, looking straight before him; “you can’t take things up, you know, as they were twelve years ago.”

“That remains to be seen.”

“Look here!” said Jolyon, “she’s in a damnable position, and I am the only person with any legal say in her affairs.”

“Except myself,” retorted Soames, “who am also in a damnable position. Hers is what she made for herself; mine what she made for me. I am not at all sure that in her own interests I shan’t require her to return to me.”

“What!” exclaimed Jolyon; and a shiver went through his whole body.

“I don’t know what you may mean by ‘what,’ ” answered Soames coldly; “your say in her affairs is confined to paying out her income; please bear that in mind. In choosing not to disgrace her by a divorce, I retained my rights, and, as I say, I am not at all sure that I shan’t require to exercise them.”

“My God!” ejaculated Jolyon, and he uttered a short laugh.

“Yes,” said Soames, and there was a deadly quality in his voice. “I’ve not forgotten the nickname your father gave me, ‘The man of property.’ I’m not called names for nothing.”

“This is fantastic,” murmured Jolyon. Well, the fellow couldn’t force his wife to live with him. Those days were past, anyway! And he looked around at Soames with the thought: “Is he real, this man?” But Soames looked very real, sitting square yet almost elegant with the clipped moustache on his pale face, and a tooth showing where a lip was lifted in a fixed smile. There was a long silence, while Jolyon thought: “Instead of helping her, I’ve made things worse.” Suddenly Soames said:

“It would be the best thing that could happen to her in many ways.”

At those words such a turmoil began taking place in Jolyon that he could barely sit still in the cab. It was as if he were boxed up with hundreds of thousands of his countrymen, boxed up with that something in the national character which had always been to him revolting, something which he knew to be extremely natural and yet which seemed to him inexplicable⁠—their intense belief in contracts and vested rights, their complacent sense of virtue in the exaction of those rights. Here beside him in the cab was the very embodiment, the corporeal sum as it were, of the possessive instinct⁠—his own kinsman, too! It was uncanny and intolerable! “But there’s something more in it than that!” he thought with a sick feeling. “The dog, they say, returns to his vomit! The sight of her has reawakened something. Beauty! The devil’s in it!”

“As I say,” said Soames, “I have not made up my mind. I shall be obliged if you will kindly leave her quite alone.”

Jolyon bit his lips; he who had always hated rows almost welcomed the thought of one now.

“I can give you no such promise,” he said shortly.

“Very well,” said Soames, “then we know where we are. I’ll get down here.” And stopping the cab he got out without word or sign of farewell. Jolyon travelled on to his Club.

The first news of the war was being called in the streets, but he paid no attention. What could he do to help her? If only his father were alive! He could have done so much! But why could he not do all that his father could have done? Was he not old enough?⁠—turned fifty and twice married, with grown-up daughters and a son. “Queer,” he thought. “If she were plain I