The Forsyte Saga(347)

Staring at her dark eyes, darker now from pain, Jon answered:

‘Yes; oh! yes – if you could be.’

Irene smiled.

‘Admiration of beauty and longing for possession are not love. If yours were another case like mine, Jon – where the deepest things are stifled; the flesh joined, and the spirit at war!’

‘Why should it, Mother? You think she must be like her father, but she’s not. I’ve seen him.’

Again the smile came on Irene’s lips and in Jon something wavered; there was such irony and experience in that smile.

‘You are a giver, Jon; she is a taker.’

That unworthy doubt, that haunting uncertainty again. He said with vehemence:

‘She isn’t – she isn’t. It’s only because I can’t bear to make you unhappy, Mother, now that Father –’ He thrust his fists against his forehead.

Irene got up.

‘I told you that night, dear, not to mind me. I meant it. Think of yourself and your own happiness! I can stand what’s left – I’ve brought it on myself!’

Again the word ‘Mother!’ burst from Jon’s lips.

She came over to him and put her hands over his.

‘Do you feel your head, darling?’

Jon shook it. What he felt was in his chest – a sort of tearing asunder of the tissue there, by the two loves.

‘I shall always love you just the same, Jon, whatever you do. You won’t lose anything.’ She smoothed his hair gently, and walked away.

He heard the door shut; and, rolling over on the bed, lay, stifling his breath, with an awful held-up feeling within him.





Chapter Seven



EMBASSY





INQUIRING for her at tea time Soames learned that Fleur had been out in the car since two. Three hours! Where had she gone? Up to London without a word to him? He had never become quite reconciled with cars. He had embraced them in principle – like the born empiricist, or Forsyte, that he was – adopting each symptom of progress as it came along with: ‘Well, we couldn’t do without them now.’ But in fact he found them tearing, great, smelly things. Obliged by Annette to have one – a Rollhard with pearl-grey cushions, electric light, little mirrors, trays for the ashes of cigarettes, flower-vases – all smelling of petrol and stephanotis – he regarded it much as he used to regard his brother-in-law, Montague Dartie. The thing typified all that was fast, insecure, and subcutaneously oily in modern life. As modern life become faster, looser, younger, Soames was becoming older, slower, tighter, more and more in thought and language like his father James before him. He was almost aware of it himself. Pace and progress pleased him less and less; there was an ostentation, too, about a car which he considered provocative in the prevailing mood of Labour. On one occasion that fellow Sims had driven over the only vested interest of a working man. Soames had not forgotten the behaviour of its master, when not many people would have stopped to put up with it. He had been sorry for the dog, and quite prepared to take its part against the car, if that ruffian hadn’t been so outrageous. With four hours fast becoming five, and still no Fleur, all the old car-wise feelings he had experienced in person and by proxy balled within him, and shaking sensations troubled the pit of his stomach. At seven he telephoned to Winifred by trunk call. No! Fleur had not been to Green Street. Then where was she? Visions of his beloved daughter rolled up in her pretty frills, all blood and dust-stained, in some hideous catastrophe, began to haunt him. He went to her room and spied among her things. She had taken nothing – no dressing-case, no jewellery. And this, a relief in one sense, increased his fears of an accident. Terrible to be helpless when his loved one was missing, especially when he couldn’t bear fuss or publicity of any kind! What should he do if she were not back by night-fall?

At a quarter to eight he heard the car. A great weight lifted from off his heart; he hurried down. She was getting out – pale and tired-looking, but nothing wrong. He met her in the hall.

‘You’ve frightened me. Where have you been?’

‘To Robin Hill. I’m sorry, dear. I had to go; I’ll tell you after-wards.’ And, with a flying kiss, she ran upstairs.

Soames waited in the drawing-room. To Robin Hill! What did that portend?

It was not a subject they could discuss at dinner – consecrated to the susceptibilities of the butler. The agony of nerves Soames had been through, the relief he felt at her safety, softened his power to condemn what she had done, or resist what she was going to do; he waited in a relaxed stupor for her revelation. Life was a queer business. There he was at sixty-five and no more in command of things than if he had not spent forty years in building up security – always something one couldn’t get on terms with! In the pocket of his dinner-jacket was a letter from Annette. She was coming back in a fortnight. He knew nothing of what she had been doing out there. And he was glad that he did not. Her absence had been a relief. Out of sight was out of mind! And now she was coming back. Another worry! And the Bolderby Old Crome was gone – Dumetrius had got it – all because that anonymous letter had put it out of his thoughts. He furtively remarked the strained look on his daughter’s face, as if she too were gazing at a picture that she couldn’t buy. He almost wished the War back. Worries didn’t seem, then, quite so worrying. From the caress in her voice, the look on her face, he became certain that she wanted something from him, uncertain whether it would be wise of him to give it her. He pushed his savoury away uneaten, and even joined her in a cigarette.