Chapter XIII: Jolyon Finds Out Where He Is

Jolyon stood at the window in Holly’s old night nursery,
converted into a studio, not because it had a north light, but
for its view over the prospect away to the Grand Stand at Epsom.
He shifted to the side window which overlooked the stableyard,
and whistled down to the dog Balthasar who lay for ever under the
clock tower. The old dog looked up and wagged his tail. “Poor old
boy!” thought Jolyon, shifting back to the other window.

He had been restless all this week, since his attempt to
prosecute trusteeship, uneasy in his conscience which was ever
acute, disturbed in his sense of compassion which was easily
excited, and with a queer sensation as if his feeling for beauty
had received some definite embodiment. Autumn was getting hold of
the old oak-tree, its leaves were browning. Sunshine had been
plentiful and hot this summer. As with trees, so with men’s
lives! “_I_ ought to live long,” thought Jolyon; “I’m getting
mildewed for want of heat. If I can’t work, I shall be off to
Paris.” But memory of Paris gave him no pleasure. Besides, how
could he go? He must stay and see what Soames was going to do.
“I’m her trustee. I can’t leave her unprotected,” he thought. It
had been striking him as curious how very clearly he could still
see Irene in her little drawing-room which he had only twice
entered. Her beauty must have a sort of poignant harmony! No
literal portrait would ever do her justice; the essence of her
was—ah I what?... The noise of hoofs called him back to the other
window. Holly was riding into the yard on her long-tailed
“palfrey.” She looked up and he waved to her. She had been rather
silent lately; getting old, he supposed, beginning to want her
future, as they all did—youngsters!

Time was certainly the devil! And with the feeling that to waste
this swift-travelling commodity was unforgivable folly, he took
up his brush. But it was no use; he could not concentrate his
eye—besides, the light was going. “I’ll go up to town,” he
thought. In the hall a servant met him.

“A lady to see you, sir; Mrs. Heron.”

Extraordinary coincidence! Passing into the picture-gallery, as
it was still called, he saw Irene standing over by the window.

She came towards him saying:

“I’ve been trespassing; I came up through the coppice and garden.
I always used to come that way to see Uncle Jolyon.”

“You couldn’t trespass here,” replied Jolyon; “history makes that
impossible. I was just thinking of you.”

Irene smiled. And it was as if something shone through; not mere
spirituality—serener, completer, more alluring.

“History!” she answered; “I once told Uncle Jolyon that love was
for ever. Well, it isn’t. Only aversion lasts.”

Jolyon stared at her. Had she got over Bosinney at last?

“Yes!” he said, “aversion’s deeper than love or hate because it’s
a natural product of the nerves, and we don’t change them.”

“I came to tell you that Soames has been to see me. He said a
thing that frightened me. He said: ‘You are still my wife!’”

“What!” ejaculated Jolyon. “You ought not to live alone.” And he
continued to stare at her, afflicted by the thought that where
Beauty was, nothing ever ran quite straight, which, no doubt, was
why so many people looked on it as immoral.

“What more?”

“He asked me to shake hands.”

“Did you?”

“Yes. When he came in I’m sure he didn’t want to; he changed
while he was there.”

“Ah! you certainly ought not to go on living there alone.”

“I know no woman I could ask; and I can’t take a lover to order,
Cousin Jolyon.”

“Heaven forbid!” said Jolyon. “What a damnable position! Will you
stay to dinner? No? Well, let me see you back to town; I wanted
to go up this evening.”

“Truly?”

“Truly. I’ll be ready in five minutes.”

On that walk to the station they talked of pictures and music,
contrasting the English and French characters and the difference
in their attitude to Art. But to Jolyon the colours in the hedges
of the long straight lane, the twittering of chaffinches who kept
pace with them, the perfume of weeds being already burned, the
turn of her neck, the fascination of those dark eyes bent on him
now and then, the lure of her whole figure, made a deeper
impression than the remarks they exchanged. Unconsciously he held
himself straighter, walked with a more elastic step.

In the train he put her through a sort of catechism as to what
she did with her days.

Made her dresses, shopped, visited a hospital, played her piano,
translated from the French.

She had regular work from a publisher, it seemed, which
supplemented her income a little. She seldom went out in the
evening. “I’ve been living alone so long, you see, that I don’t
mind it a bit. I believe I’m naturally solitary.”

“I don’t believe that,” said Jolyon. “Do you know many people?”

“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. Good-bye, Irene.”

“Good-bye,” 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 shouldn’t be
thinking twice about it. Beauty is the devil, when you’re
sensitive to it!” And into the Club reading-room he went with a
disturbed heart. In that very room he and Bosinney had talked one
summer afternoon; he well remembered even now the disguised and
secret lecture he had given that young man in the interests of
June, the diagnosis of the Forsytes he had hazarded; and how he
had wondered what sort of woman it was he was warning him
against. And now! He was almost in want of a warning himself.
“It’s deuced funny!” he thought, “really deuced funny!”