Chapter III: Richmond Park

On the afternoon that Soames crossed to France a cablegram was
received by Jolyon at Robin Hill:

“Your son down with enteric no immediate danger will cable
again.”

It reached a household already agitated by the imminent departure
of June, whose berth was booked for the following day. She was,
indeed, in the act of confiding Eric Cobbley and his family to
her father’s care when the message arrived.

The resolution to become a Red Cross nurse, taken under stimulus
of Jolly’s enlistment, had been loyally fulfilled with the
irritation and regret which all Forsytes feel at what curtails
their individual liberties. Enthusiastic at first about the
“wonderfulness” of the work, she had begun after a month to feel
that she could train herself so much better than others could
train her. And if Holly had not insisted on following her
example, and being trained too, she must inevitably have “cried
off.” The departure of Jolly and Val with their troop in April
had further stiffened her failing resolve. But now, on the point
of departure, the thought of leaving Eric Cobbley, with a wife
and two children, adrift in the cold waters of an unappreciative
world weighed on her so that she was still in danger of backing
out. The reading of that cablegram, with its disquieting reality,
clinched the matter. She saw herself already nursing Jolly—for of
course they would let her nurse her own brother! Jolyon—ever wide
and doubtful—had no such hope. Poor June!

Could any Forsyte of her generation grasp how rude and brutal
life was? Ever since he knew of his boy’s arrival at Cape Town
the thought of him had been a kind of recurrent sickness in
Jolyon. He could not get reconciled to the feeling that Jolly was
in danger all the time. The cablegram, grave though it was, was
almost a relief. He was now safe from bullets, anyway. And
yet—this enteric was a virulent disease! _The Times_ was full of
deaths therefrom. Why could _he_ not be lying out there in that
up-country hospital, and his boy safe at home? The un-Forsytean
self-sacrifice of his three children, indeed, had quite
bewildered Jolyon. He would eagerly change places with Jolly,
because he loved his boy; but no such personal motive was
influencing _them_. He could only think that it marked the
decline of the Forsyte type.

Late that afternoon Holly came out to him under the old oak-tree.
She had grown up very much during these last months of hospital
training away from home. And, seeing her approach, he thought:
“She has more sense than June, child though she is; more wisdom.
Thank God _she_ isn’t going out.” She had seated herself in the
swing, very silent and still. “She feels this,” thought Jolyon,
“as much as I” and, seeing her eyes fixed on him, he said: “Don’t
take it to heart too much, my child. If he weren’t ill, he might
be in much greater danger.”

Holly got out of the swing.

“I want to tell you something, Dad. It was through me that Jolly
enlisted and went out.”

“How’s that?”

“When you were away in Paris, Val Dartie and I fell in love. We
used to ride in Richmond Park; we got engaged. Jolly found it
out, and thought he ought to stop it; so he dared Val to enlist.
It was all my fault, Dad; and I want to go out too. Because if
anything happens to either of them I should feel awful. Besides,
I’m just as much trained as June.”

Jolyon gazed at her in a stupefaction that was tinged with irony.
So this was the answer to the riddle he had been asking himself;
and his three children were Forsytes after all. Surely Holly
might have told him all this before! But he smothered the
sarcastic sayings on his lips. Tenderness to the young was
perhaps the most sacred article of his belief. He had got, no
doubt, what he deserved. Engaged! So this was why he had so lost
touch with her! And to young Val Dartie—nephew of Soames—in the
other camp! It was all terribly distasteful. He closed his easel,
and set his drawing against the tree.

“Have you told June?”

“Yes; she says she’ll get me into her cabin somehow. It’s a
single cabin; but one of us could sleep on the floor. If you
consent, she’ll go up now and get permission.”

“Consent?” thought Jolyon. “Rather late in the day to ask for
that!” But again he checked himself.

“You’re too young, my dear; they won’t let you.”

“June knows some people that she helped to go to Cape Town. If
they won’t let me nurse yet, I could stay with them and go on
training there. Let me go, Dad!”

Jolyon smiled because he could have cried.

“I never stop anyone from doing anything,” he said.

Holly flung her arms round his neck.

“Oh! Dad, you are the best in the world.”

“That means the worst,” thought Jolyon. If he had ever doubted
his creed of tolerance he did so then.

“I’m not friendly with Val’s family,” he said, “and I don’t know
Val, but Jolly didn’t like him.”

Holly looked at the distance and said:

“I love him.”

“That settles it,” said Jolyon dryly, then catching the
expression on her face, he kissed her, with the thought: “Is
anything more pathetic than the faith of the young?” Unless he
actually forbade her going it was obvious that he must make the
best of it, so he went up to town with June. Whether due to her
persistence, or the fact that the official they saw was an old
school friend of Jolyon’s, they obtained permission for Holly to
share the single cabin. He took them to Surbiton station the
following evening, and they duly slid away from him, provided
with money, invalid foods, and those letters of credit without
which Forsytes do not travel.

He drove back to Robin Hill under a brilliant sky to his late
dinner, served with an added care by servants trying to show him
that they sympathised, eaten with an added scrupulousness to show
them that he appreciated their sympathy. But it was a real relief
to get to his cigar on the terrace of flag-stones—cunningly
chosen by young Bosinney for shape and colour—with night closing
in around him, so beautiful a night, hardly whispering in the
trees, and smelling so sweet that it made him ache. The grass was
drenched with dew, and he kept to those flagstones, up and down,
till presently it began to seem to him that he was one of three,
not wheeling, but turning right about at each end, so that his
father was always nearest to the house, and his son always
nearest to the terrace edge. Each had an arm lightly within his
arm; he dared not lift his hand to his cigar lest he should
disturb them, and it burned away, dripping ash on him, till it
dropped from his lips, at last, which were getting hot. They left
him then, and his arms felt chilly. Three Jolyons in one Jolyon
they had walked.

He stood still, counting the sounds—a carriage passing on the
highroad, a distant train, the dog at Gage’s farm, the whispering
trees, the groom playing on his penny whistle. A multitude of
stars up there—bright and silent, so far off! No moon as yet!
Just enough light to show him the dark flags and swords of the
iris flowers along the terrace edge—his favourite flower that had
the night’s own colour on its curving crumpled petals. He turned
round to the house. Big, unlighted, not a soul beside himself to
live in all that part of it. Stark loneliness! He could not go on
living here alone. And yet, so long as there was beauty, why
should a man feel lonely? The answer—as to some idiot’s
riddle—was: Because he did. The greater the beauty, the greater
the loneliness, for at the back of beauty was harmony, and at the
back of harmony was—union. Beauty could not comfort if the soul
were out of it. The night, maddeningly lovely, with bloom of
grapes on it in starshine, and the breath of grass and honey
coming from it, he could not enjoy, while she who was to him the
life of beauty, its embodiment and essence, was cut off from him,
utterly cut off now, he felt, by honourable decency.

He made a poor fist of sleeping, striving too hard after that
resignation which Forsytes find difficult to reach, bred to their
own way and left so comfortably off by their fathers. But after
dawn he dozed off, and soon was dreaming a strange dream.

He was on a stage with immensely high rich curtains—high as the
very stars—stretching in a semi-circle from footlights to
footlights. He himself was very small, a little black restless
figure roaming up and down; and the odd thing was that he was not
altogether himself, but Soames as well, so that he was not only
experiencing but watching. This figure of himself and Soames was
trying to find a way out through the curtains, which, heavy and
dark, kept him in. Several times he had crossed in front of them
before he saw with delight a sudden narrow rift—a tall chink of
beauty the colour of iris flowers, like a glimpse of Paradise,
remote, ineffable. Stepping quickly forward to pass into it, he
found the curtains closing before him. Bitterly disappointed
he—or was it Soames?—moved on, and there was the chink again
through the parted curtains, which again closed too soon. This
went on and on and he never got through till he woke with the
word “Irene” on his lips. The dream disturbed him badly,
especially that identification of himself with Soames.

Next morning, finding it impossible to work, he spent hours
riding Jolly’s horse in search of fatigue. And on the second day
he made up his mind to move to London and see if he could not get
permission to follow his daughters to South Africa. He had just
begun to pack the following morning when he received this letter:

“GREEN HOTEL,
“RICHMOND.
“_June_ 13.

“MY DEAR JOLYON,
“You will be surprised to see how near I am to you. Paris
became impossible—and I have come here to be within reach of
your advice. I would so love to see you again. Since you left
Paris I don’t think I have met anyone I could really talk to.
Is all well with you and with your boy? No one knows, I
think, that I am here at present.

“Always your friend,
“IRENE.”

Irene within three miles of him!—and again in flight! He stood
with a very queer smile on his lips. This was more than he had
bargained for!

About noon he set out on foot across Richmond Park, and as he
went along, he thought: “Richmond Park! By Jove, it suits us
Forsytes!” Not that Forsytes lived there—nobody lived there save
royalty, rangers, and the deer—but in Richmond Park Nature was
allowed to go so far and no further, putting up a brave show of
being natural, seeming to say: “Look at my instincts—they are
almost passions, very nearly out of hand, but not quite, of
course; the very hub of possession is to possess oneself.” Yes!
Richmond Park possessed itself, even on that bright day of June,
with arrowy cuckoos shifting the tree-points of their calls, and
the wood doves announcing high summer.

The Green Hotel, which Jolyon entered at one o’clock, stood
nearly opposite that more famous hostelry, the Crown and Sceptre;
it was modest, highly respectable, never out of cold beef,
gooseberry tart, and a dowager or two, so that a carriage and
pair was almost always standing before the door.

In a room draped in chintz so slippery as to forbid all emotion,
Irene was sitting on a piano stool covered with crewel work,
playing “Hansel and Gretel” out of an old score. Above her on a
wall, not yet Morris-papered, was a print of the Queen on a pony,
amongst deer-hounds, Scotch caps, and slain stags; beside her in
a pot on the window-sill was a white and rosy fuchsia. The
Victorianism of the room almost talked; and in her clinging frock
Irene seemed to Jolyon like Venus emerging from the shell of the
past century.

“If the proprietor had eyes,” he said, “he would show you the
door; you have broken through his decorations.” Thus lightly he
smothered up an emotional moment. Having eaten cold beef, pickled
walnut, gooseberry tart, and drunk stone-bottle ginger-beer, they
walked into the Park, and light talk was succeeded by the silence
Jolyon had dreaded.

“You haven’t told me about Paris,” he said at last.

“No. I’ve been shadowed for a long time; one gets used to that.
But then Soames came. By the little Niobe—the same story; would I
go back to him?”

“Incredible!”

She had spoken without raising her eyes, but she looked up now.
Those dark eyes clinging to his said as no words could have: “I
have come to an end; if you want me, here I am.”

For sheer emotional intensity had he ever—old as he was—passed
through such a moment?

The words: “Irene, I adore you!” almost escaped him. Then, with a
clearness of which he would not have believed mental vision
capable, he saw Jolly lying with a white face turned to a white
wall.

“My boy is very ill out there,” he said quietly.

Irene slipped her arm through his.

“Let’s walk on; I understand.”

No miserable explanation to attempt! She had understood! And they
walked on among the bracken, knee-high already, between the
rabbit-holes and the oak-trees, talking of Jolly. He left her two
hours later at the Richmond Hill Gate, and turned towards home.

“She knows of my feeling for her, then,” he thought. Of course!
One could not keep knowledge of that from such a woman!