The Forsyte Saga, Volume 1

by John Galsworthy

  Soames shrugged. ‘In reason,’ he answered curtly, and got up. ‘Keep it entirely in your own hands.’

  ‘Entirely,’ said Mr Polteed, appearing suddenly between him and the door. ‘I shall be seeing you in that other case before long. Good morning, sir.’ His eyes slid unprofessionally over Soames once more, and he unlocked the door.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Soames, looking neither to right nor left.

  Out in the street he swore deeply, quietly, to himself. A spider’s web, and to cut it he must use this spidery, secret, unclean method, so utterly repugnant to one who regarded his private life as his most sacred piece of property. But the die was cast, he could not go back. And he went on into the Poultry and locked away the green morocco case and the key to that cipher destined to make crystal-clear his domestic bankruptcy.

  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’s barouche drawn by James’s 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 inquired 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 today on the restitution question. Of course he understands that it’s to lead to divorce; but you must seem genuinely anxious to get Dartie back – you might practise that attitude today.’

  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 downhill 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 interjected 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 of the person he was talking to; this, with a disconcerting tone of voice and 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 him 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. Do you think he understands that?’

  ‘I’ll make urn,’ 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 Five

  JOLYON SITS IN JUDGEMENT

  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 farther 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 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 crystallizing 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 perhaps more vocal body, was for stopping the war and giving the Boers autonomy. Until Black Week, however, the groups were amorphous, without sharp edges, and argument remained but academic. Jolly was one of those who knew not where he stood. A streak of his grandfather old Jolyon’s love of justice prevented him from seeing one side only. Moreover, in his set of ‘the best’ there was a ‘jumping-jesus’ of extremely advanced opinions and some personal magnetism. Jolly wavered. His father, too, seemed doubtful in his view. And though, as was proper at the age of twenty, he kept a sharp eye on his father, watchful for defects which might still be remedied, still that father had an ‘air’ which gave a sort of glamour to his creed of ironic tolerance. Artists, of course, were notoriously Hamlet-like, and to this extent one must discount for one’s father, even if one loved him. But Jolyon’s original view, that to ‘put your nose in where you aren’t wanted’ (as the Uitlanders had done), ‘and then work the oracle till you get on top is not being quite the clean potato:’ had, whether founded in fact or no, a certain attraction for his son, who thought a deal about gentility. On the other hand, Jolly could not abide such as his set called ‘cranks’, and Val’s set called ‘smugs’, so that he was still balancing when the clock of Black Week struck. One – two – three, came those ominous repulses at Stormberg, Magersfontein, Colenso. The sturdy English soul reacting after the first cried, ‘Ah! but Methuen!’ after the second: ‘Ah! but Buller!’ then, in inspissated gloom, hardened. And Jolly said to himself: ‘No, damn it! We’ve got to lick the beggars now; I don’t care whether we’re right or wrong.’ And, if he had known it, his father was thinking the same thought.

  That next Sunday, last of the term, Jolly was bidden to wine with ‘one of the best’. After the second toast, ‘Buller and damnation to the Boers’, drunk – no heel taps – in the college Burgundy, he noticed that Val Dartie, also a guest, was looking at him with a grin and saying something to his neighbour. He was sure it was disparaging. The last boy in the world to make himself conspicuous or cause public disturbance, Jolly grew rather red and shut his lips. The queer hostility he had always felt towards his second cousin was strongly and suddenly reinforced. ‘All right!’ he said to himself; ‘you wait, my friend!’ More wine than was good for him, as the custom was, helped him to remember, when they all trooped forth to a secluded spot, to touch Val on the arm.

  ‘What did you say about me in there?’

  ‘Mayn’t I say what I like?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I said you were a pro-Boer – and so you are!’

  ‘You’re a liar!’

  ’D’you want a row?’

  ‘Of course, but not here; in the garden.’

  ‘All right. Come on.’

  They went, eyeing each other askance, unsteady, and unflinching: they climbed the garden railings. The spikes on the top slightly ripped Val’s sleeve, and occupied his mind. Jolly’s mind was occupied by the thought that they were going to fight ir the precincts of a college foreign to them both. It was not the thing, but never mind – the young beast!

  They passed over the grass into very nearly darkness and took off their coats.

  ‘You’re not screwed, are you?’ said Jolly suddenly. ‘I can’t fight you if you’re screwed.’

  ‘No more than you.’

  ‘All right then.’

  Without shaking hands, they put themselves at once into postures of defence. They had drunk too much for science, and so were especially careful to assume correct attitude, until Jolly smote Val almost accidentally on the nose. After that it was all a dark and ugly scrimmage in the deep shadow of the old trees, with no one to call ‘time’, till battered and blown, they unclinched and staggered back from each other, as a voice said:

  ‘Your names, young gentlemen?’

  At this bland query spoken from under the lamp at the garden gate, like some demand of a god, their nerves gave way, and snatching up their coats, they ran at the railings, shinned up them, and made for the secluded spot whence they had issued to the fight. Here, in dim light, they mopped their faces, and without a word walked, ten paces apart, to the college gates. They went out silently, Val going towards the Broad along the Brewery, Jolly down the lane towards the High. His head, still fumed, was busy with regret that he had not displayed more science, passing in review the counters and knock-out blows which he had not delivered. His mind strayed on to an imagined combat, infinitely unlike that which he had just been through, infinitely gallant, with sash and sword, with thrust and parry, as if he were in the pages of his beloved Dumas. He fancied himself La Mole, and Aramis, Bussy, Chicot, and D’Artagnan rolled into one, but he quite failed to envisage Val as Coconnas, Brissac, or Rochefort. The fellow was just a confounded cousin who didn’t come up to Cocker. Never mind. He had given him one or two.
‘Pro-Boer!’ The word still rankled, and thoughts of enlisting jostled his aching head; of riding over the veldt, firing gallantly, while the Boers rolled over like rabbits. And, turning up his smarting eyes, he saw the stars shining between the house-tops of the High, and himself lying out on the Karoo (whatever that was) rolled in a blanket, with his rifle ready and his gaze fixed on a glittering heaven.

  He had a fearful ‘head’ next morning, which he doctored, as became one of ‘the best’, by soaking it in cold water, brewing strong coffee which he could not drink, and only sipping a little hock at lunch. The legend that ‘some fool’ had run into him round a corner accounted for a bruise on his cheek. He would on no account have mentioned the fight, for, on second thoughts, it fell far short of his standards.

  The next day he went ‘down’, and travelled through to Robin Hill. Nobody was there but June and Holly, for his father had gone to Paris. He spent a restless and unsettled vacation, quite out of touch with either of his sisters. June, indeed, was occupied with lame ducks, whom, as a rule, Jolly could not stand, especially that Eric Cobbley and his family, ‘hopeless outsiders’, who were always littering up the house in the vacation. And between Holly and himself there was a strange division, as if she were unnecessary. He punched viciously at a ball, rode furiously but alone in Richmond Park, making a point of jumping the stiff, high hurdles put up to close certain worn avenues of grass – keeping his nerve in, he called it. Jolly was more afraid of being afraid than most boys are. He bought a rifle, too, and put a range up in the home field, shooting across the pond into the kitchen-garden wall, to the peril of gardeners, with the thought that some day, perhaps, he would enlist and save South Africa for his country. In fact, now that they were appealing for Yeomanry recruits the boy was thoroughly upset. Ought he to go? None of ‘the best’, so far as he knew – and he was in correspondence with several – were thinking of joining. If they had been making a move he would have gone at once – very competitive, and with a strong sense of form, he could not bear to be left behind in anything – but to do it off his own bat might look like ‘swagger’; because of course it wasn’t really necessary. Besides, he did not want to go, for the other side of this young Forsyte recoiled from leaping before he looked. It was altogether mixed pickles within him, hot and sickly pickles, and he became quite unlike his serene and rather lordly self.