Chapter VII: A Summer Night

Soames left dead silence in the little study. “Thank you for that
good lie,” said Jolyon suddenly. “Come out—the air in here is not
what it was!”

In front of a long high southerly wall on which were trained
peach-trees the two walked up and down in silence. Old Jolyon had
planted some cupressus-trees, at intervals, between this grassy
terrace and the dipping meadow full of buttercups and ox-eyed
daisies; for twelve years they had flourished, till their dark
spiral shapes had quite a look of Italy. Birds fluttered softly
in the wet shrubbery; the swallows swooped past, with a
steel-blue sheen on their swift little bodies; the grass felt
springy beneath the feet, its green refreshed; butterflies chased
each other. After that painful scene the quiet of Nature was
wonderfully poignant. Under the sun-soaked wall ran a narrow
strip of garden-bed full of mignonette and pansies, and from the
bees came a low hum in which all other sounds were set—the mooing
of a cow deprived of her calf, the calling of a cuckoo from an
elm-tree at the bottom of the meadow. Who would have thought that
behind them, within ten miles, London began—that London of the
Forsytes, with its wealth, its misery; its dirt and noise; its
jumbled stone isles of beauty, its grey sea of hideous brick and
stucco? That London which had seen Irene’s early tragedy, and
Jolyon’s own hard days; that web; that princely workhouse of the
possessive instinct!

And while they walked Jolyon pondered those words: “I hope you’ll
treat him as you treated me.” That would depend on himself. Could
he trust himself? Did Nature permit a Forsyte not to make a slave
of what he adored? Could beauty be confided to him? Or should she
not be just a visitor, coming when she would, possessed for
moments which passed, to return only at her own choosing? “We are
a breed of spoilers!” thought Jolyon, “close and greedy; the
bloom of life is not safe with us. Let her come to me as she
will, when she will, not at all if she will not. Let me be just
her stand-by, her perching-place; never—never her cage!”

She was the chink of beauty in his dream. Was he to pass through
the curtains now and reach her? Was the rich stuff of many
possessions, the close encircling fabric of the possessive
instinct walling in that little black figure of himself, and
Soames—was it to be rent so that he could pass through into his
vision, find there something not of the senses only? “Let me,” he
thought, “ah! let me only know how not to grasp and destroy!”

But at dinner there were plans to be made. To-night she would go
back to the hotel, but tomorrow he would take her up to London.
He must instruct his solicitor—Jack Herring. Not a finger must be
raised to hinder the process of the Law. Damages exemplary,
judicial strictures, costs, what they liked—let it go through at
the first moment, so that her neck might be out of chancery at
last! To-morrow he would see Herring—they would go and see him
together. And then—abroad, leaving no doubt, no difficulty about
evidence, making the lie she had told into the truth. He looked
round at her; and it seemed to his adoring eyes that more than a
woman was sitting there. The spirit of universal beauty, deep,
mysterious, which the old painters, Titian, Giorgione,
Botticelli, had known how to capture and transfer to the faces of
their women—this flying beauty seemed to him imprinted on her
brow, her hair, her lips, and in her eyes.

“And this is to be mine!” he thought. “It frightens me!”

After dinner they went out on to the terrace to have coffee. They
sat there long, the evening was so lovely, watching the summer
night come very slowly on. It was still warm and the air smelled
of lime blossom—early this summer. Two bats were flighting with
the faint mysterious little noise they make. He had placed the
chairs in front of the study window, and moths flew past to visit
the discreet light in there. There was no wind, and not a whisper
in the old oak-tree twenty yards away! The moon rose from behind
the copse, nearly full; and the two lights struggled, till
moonlight conquered, changing the colour and quality of all the
garden, stealing along the flagstones, reaching their feet,
climbing up, changing their faces.

“Well,” said Jolyon at last, “you’ll be tired, dear; we’d better
start. The maid will show you Holly’s room,” and he rang the
study bell. The maid who came handed him a telegram. Watching her
take Irene away, he thought: “This must have come an hour or more
ago, and she didn’t bring it out to us! That shows! Well, we’ll
be hung for a sheep soon!” And, opening the telegram, he read:

“JOLYON FORSYTE, Robin Hill.—Your son passed painlessly away on
June 20th. Deep sympathy”—some name unknown to him.

He dropped it, spun round, stood motionless. The moon shone in on
him; a moth flew in his face. The first day of all that he had
not thought almost ceaselessly of Jolly. He went blindly towards
the window, struck against the old armchair—his father’s—and sank
down on to the arm of it. He sat there huddled forward, staring
into the night. Gone out like a candle flame; far from home, from
love, all by himself, in the dark! His boy! From a little chap
always so good to him—so friendly! Twenty years old, and cut down
like grass—to have no life at all! “I didn’t really know him,” he
thought, “and he didn’t know me; but we loved each other. It’s
only love that matters.”

To die out there—lonely—wanting them—wanting home! This seemed to
his Forsyte heart more painful, more pitiful than death itself.
No shelter, no protection, no love at the last! And all the
deeply rooted clanship in him, the family feeling and essential
clinging to his own flesh and blood which had been so strong in
old Jolyon was so strong in all the Forsytes—felt outraged, cut,
and torn by his boy’s lonely passing. Better far if he had died
in battle, without time to long for them to come to him, to call
out for them, perhaps, in his delirium!

The moon had passed behind the oak-tree now, endowing it with
uncanny life, so that it seemed watching him—the oak-tree his boy
had been so fond of climbing, out of which he had once fallen and
hurt himself, and hadn’t cried!

The door creaked. He saw Irene come in, pick up the telegram and
read it. He heard the faint rustle of her dress. She sank on her
knees close to him, and he forced himself to smile at her. She
stretched up her arms and drew his head down on her shoulder. The
perfume and warmth of her encircled him; her presence gained
slowly his whole being.