The Forsyte Saga Volume 2(321)

‘She was standing below the window when the picture fell, and didn’t seem to realize. He pushed her out of the way, and it hit him instead.’

‘Why! What a thing!’

‘Yes. She can’t get over it.’

Gradman looked up at the young man’s face in the twilight.

‘You mustn’t be down-’earted,’ he said. ‘She’ll come round. Misfortunes will happen. The family’s been told, I suppose. There’s just one thing, Mr Michael – his first wife, Mrs Irene, that married Mr Jolyon after; she’s still living, they say; she might like to send a message that byegones were byegones, in case he came round.’

‘I don’t know, Mr Gradman, I don’t know.’

‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass – ’e was greatly attached to ‘er at one time.’

‘So I believe, but there are things that – Still, Mrs Dartie knows her address, if you like to ask her. She’s here, you know.’

‘I’ll turn it over. I remember Mrs Irene’s wedding – very pale she was; a beautiful young woman, too.’

‘I believe so.’

‘The present one – being French, I suppose, she shows her feelings. However – if he’s unconscious –’ It seemed to him that the young man’s face looked funny, and he added; ‘I’ve never heard much of her. Not very happy with his wives, I’m afraid, he hasn’t been.’

‘Some men aren’t, you know, Mr Gradman. It’s being too near, I suppose.’

‘Ah!’ said Gradman: ‘It’s one thing or the other, and that’s a fact. Mrs G. and I have never had a difference – not to speak of, in fifty-two years, and that’s going back, as the saying is. Well, I mustn’t keep you from Miss Fleur. She’ll need cossetting. Just cold beef and a pickle. You’ll let me know if I’m wanted – any time, day or night. And if Mrs Dartie’d like to see me I’m at her service.’

The talk had done him good. That young man was a nicer young fellow than he’d thought. He felt that he could almost relish a pickle. After he had done so a message came: Would he go to Mrs Dartie in the drawing-room?

‘Wait for me, my dear,’ he said to the maid: ‘I’m strange here.’

Having washed his hands and passed a towel over his face, he followed her down the stairs of the hushed house. What a room to be sure! Rather empty, but in apple-pie order, with its cream-coloured panels, and its china, and its grand piano. Winifred Dartie was sitting on a sofa before a wood fire. She rose and took his hand.

‘Such a comfort to see you, Gradman,’ she said: ‘You’re the oldest friend we have.’

Her face looked strange, as if she wanted to cry and had forgotten how. He had known her as a child, as a fashionable young woman, had helped to draw her marriage settlement, and shaken his head over her husband many a time – the trouble he’d had in finding out exactly what that Gentleman owed, after he fell down the staircase in Paris and broke his neck! And every year still he prepared her income tax return.

‘A good cry,’ he said, ‘would do you good, and I shouldn’t blame you. But we mustn’t say “die”; Mr Soames has a good constitution, and it’s not as if he drank; perhaps he’ll pull round after all.’

She shook her head. Her face had a square grim look that reminded him of her old aunt Ann. Underneath all her fashionableness she’d borne a lot – she had, when you came to think of it.

‘It struck him here,’ she said; ‘a glancing blow on the right side of the head. I shall miss him terribly; he’s the only –’ Gradman patted her hand.

‘Ye-es, ye-es! But we must look on the bright side. If he comes round, I shall be there.’ What exact comfort he thought this was, he could not have made clear. ‘I did wonder whether he would like Mrs Irene told. I don’t like the idea of his going with a grudge on his mind. It’s an old story, of course, but at the Judgement Day –’

A faint smile was lost in the square lines round Winifred’s mouth.

‘We needn’t bother him with that, Gradman; it’s out of fashion.’

Gradman emitted a sound, as though, within him, faith and respect for the family he had served for sixty years had bumped against each other.

‘Well, you know best,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t like him to go with anything on his conscience.’

‘On her conscience, Gradman.’

Gradman stared at a Dresden shepherdess.

‘In a case of forgivin’, you never know. I wanted to speak to him, too, about his steel shares; they’re not all they might be. But we must just take our chance, I suppose. I’m glad your father was spared this, Mr James would have taken on. It won’t be like the same world again, if Mr Soames –’