Chapter VI: Jolyon in Two Minds

A little private hotel over a well-known restaurant near the Gare
St. Lazare was Jolyon’s haunt in Paris. He hated his fellow
Forsytes abroad—vapid as fish out of water in their well-trodden
runs, the Opera, Rue de Rivoli, and Moulin Rouge. Their air of
having come because they wanted to be somewhere else as soon as
possible annoyed him. But no other Forsyte came near this haunt,
where he had a wood fire in his bedroom and the coffee was
excellent. Paris was always to him more attractive in winter. The
acrid savour from woodsmoke and chestnut-roasting braziers, the
sharpness of the wintry sunshine on bright rays, the open cafés
defying keen-aired winter, the self-contained brisk boulevard
crowds, all informed him that in winter Paris possessed a soul
which, like a migrant bird, in high summer flew away.

He spoke French well, had some friends, knew little places where
pleasant dishes could be met with, queer types observed. He felt
philosophic in Paris, the edge of irony sharpened; life took on a
subtle, purposeless meaning, became a bunch of flavours tasted, a
darkness shot with shifting gleams of light.

When in the first week of December he decided to go to Paris, he
was far from admitting that Irene’s presence was influencing him.
He had not been there two days before he owned that the wish to
see her had been more than half the reason. In England one did
not admit what was natural. He had thought it might be well to
speak to her about the letting of her flat and other matters, but
in Paris he at once knew better. There was a glamour over the
city. On the third day he wrote to her, and received an answer
which procured him a pleasurable shiver of the nerves:

“MY DEAR JOLYON,
“It will be a happiness for me to see you.

“IRENE.”

He took his way to her hotel on a bright day with a feeling such
as he had often had going to visit an adored picture. No woman,
so far as he remembered, had ever inspired in him this special
sensuous and yet impersonal sensation. He was going to sit and
feast his eyes, and come away knowing her no better, but ready to
go and feast his eyes again to-morrow. Such was his feeling, when
in the tarnished and ornate little lounge of a quiet hotel near
the river she came to him preceded by a small page-boy who
uttered the word, “_Madame_,” and vanished. Her face, her smile,
the poise of her figure, were just as he had pictured, and the
expression of her face said plainly: “A friend!”

“Well,” he said, “what news, poor exile?”

“None.”

“Nothing from Soames?”

“Nothing.”

“I have let the flat for you, and like a good steward I bring you
some money. How do you like Paris?”

While he put her through this catechism, it seemed to him that he
had never seen lips so fine and sensitive, the lower lip curving
just a little upwards, the upper touched at one corner by the
least conceivable dimple. It was like discovering a woman in what
had hitherto been a sort of soft and breathed-on statue, almost
impersonally admired. She owned that to be alone in Paris was a
little difficult; and yet, Paris was so full of its own life that
it was often, she confessed, as innocuous as a desert. Besides,
the English were not liked just now!

“That will hardly be your case,” said Jolyon; “you should appeal
to the French.”

“It has its disadvantages.”

Jolyon nodded.

“Well, you must let _me_ take you about while I’m here. We’ll
start to-morrow. Come and dine at my pet restaurant; and we’ll go
to the Opéra-Comique.”

It was the beginning of daily meetings.

Jolyon soon found that for those who desired a static condition
of the affections, Paris was at once the first and last place in
which to be friendly with a pretty woman. Revelation was
alighting like a bird in his heart, singing: “_Elle est ton rêve!
Elle est ton rêve!_” Sometimes this seemed natural, sometimes
ludicrous—a bad case of elderly rapture. Having once been
ostracised by Society, he had never since had any real regard for
conventional morality; but the idea of a love which she could
never return—and how could she at his age?—hardly mounted beyond
his subconscious mind. He was full, too, of resentment, at the
waste and loneliness of her life. Aware of being some comfort to
her, and of the pleasure she clearly took in their many little
outings, he was amiably desirous of doing and saying nothing to
destroy that pleasure. It was like watching a starved plant draw
up water, to see her drink in his companionship. So far as they
could tell, no one knew her address except himself; she was
unknown in Paris, and he but little known, so that discretion
seemed unnecessary in those walks, talks, visits to concerts,
picture-galleries, theatres, little dinners, expeditions to
Versailles, St. Cloud, even Fontainebleau. And time fled—one of
those full months without past to it or future. What in his youth
would certainly have been headlong passion, was now perhaps as
deep a feeling, but far gentler, tempered to protective
companionship by admiration, hopelessness, and a sense of
chivalry—arrested in his veins at least so long as she was there,
smiling and happy in their friendship, and always to him more
beautiful and spiritually responsive: for her philosophy of life
seemed to march in admirable step with his own, conditioned by
emotion more than by reason, ironically mistrustful, susceptible
to beauty, almost passionately humane and tolerant, yet subject
to instinctive rigidities of which as a mere man he was less
capable. And during all this companionable month he never quite
lost that feeling with which he had set out on the first day as
if to visit an adored work of art, a well-nigh impersonal desire.
The future—inexorable pendant to the present he took care not to
face, for fear of breaking up his untroubled manner; but he made
plans to renew this time in places still more delightful, where
the sun was hot and there were strange things to see and paint.
The end came swiftly on the 20th of January with a telegram:

“Have enlisted in Imperial Yeomanry.—JOLLY.”

Jolyon received it just as he was setting out to meet her at the
Louvre. It brought him up with a round turn. While he was
lotus-eating here, his boy, whose philosopher and guide he ought
to be, had taken this great step towards danger, hardship,
perhaps even death. He felt disturbed to the soul, realising
suddenly how Irene had twined herself round the roots of his
being. Thus threatened with severance, the tie between them—for
it had become a kind of tie—no longer had impersonal quality. The
tranquil enjoyment of things in common, Jolyon perceived, was
gone for ever. He saw his feeling as it was, in the nature of an
infatuation. Ridiculous, perhaps, but so real that sooner or
later it must disclose itself. And now, as it seemed to him, he
could not, must not, make any such disclosure. The news of Jolly
stood inexorably in the way. He was proud of this enlistment;
proud of his boy for going off to fight for the country; for on
Jolyon’s pro-Boerism, too, Black Week had left its mark. And so
the end was reached before the beginning! Well, luckily he had
never made a sign!

When he came into the Gallery she was standing before the “Virgin
of the Rocks,” graceful, absorbed, smiling and unconscious. “Have
I to give up seeing _that?_” he thought. “It’s unnatural, so long
as she’s willing that I should see her.” He stood, unnoticed,
watching her, storing up the image of her figure, envying the
picture on which she was bending that long scrutiny. Twice she
turned her head towards the entrance, and he thought: “That’s for
me!” At last he went forward.

“Look!” he said.

She read the telegram, and he heard her sigh.

That sigh, too, was for him! His position was really cruel! To be
loyal to his son he must just shake her hand and go. To be loyal
to the feeling in his heart he must at least tell her what that
feeling was. Could she, would she understand the silence in which
he was gazing at that picture?

“I’m afraid I must go home at once,” he said at last. “I shall
miss all this awfully.”

“So shall I; but, of course, you must go.”

“Well!” said Jolyon holding out his hand.

Meeting her eyes, a flood of feeling nearly mastered him.

“Such is life!” he said. “Take care of yourself, my dear!”

He had a stumbling sensation in his legs and feet, as if his
brain refused to steer him away from her. From the doorway, he
saw her lift her hand and touch its fingers with her lips. He
raised his hat solemnly, and did not look back again.