The Forsyte Saga, Volume 3(312)

‘Oh!’

Adrian stole a look. What should Dornford’s face express – concern, relief, hope, sympathy? It only wore a little frown.

‘There was a question I wanted to ask you, Dornford. Someone had settled the costs granted against young Croom in that case.’ The eyebrows were raised now, but the face said nothing. ‘I thought you might have known who. The lawyers will only say that it wasn’t the other side.’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘So!’ thought Adrian. ‘No nearer, except that, if a liar, he’s a good one!’

‘I like young Croom,’ said Dornford; ‘he’s behaved decently, and had hard luck. That’ll save him from bankruptcy.’

‘Bit mysterious, though,’ murmured Adrian.

‘It is.’

‘On the whole,’ Adrian thought, ‘I believe he did. But what a poker face!’ He said, however:

‘How do you find Clare since the case?’

‘A little more cynical. She expressed her views on my profession rather freely when we were riding this morning.’

‘Do you think she’ll marry young Croom?’

Dornford shook his head.

‘I doubt it, especially if what you say about those costs is true. She might have out of a sense of obligation, but otherwise I think the case has worked against his chance. She’s no real feeling for him – at least that’s my view.’

‘Corven disillusioned her thoroughly.’

‘I’ve certainly seldom seen a more disillusioning face than his,’ murmured Dornford. ‘But she seems to me headed for quite an amusing life on her own. She’s got pluck and, like all these young women now, she’s essentially independent.’

‘Yes, I can’t see Clare being domestic.’

Dornford was silent. ‘Would you say that of Dinny, too?’ he asked suddenly.

‘Well, I can’t see Clare as a mother; Dinny I can. I can’t see Dinny here, there and everywhere; Clare I can. All the same – “domestic” of Dinny! It’s not the word.’

‘No!’ said Dornford fervently. ‘I don’t know what it is. You believe very much in her, don’t you?’

Adrian nodded.

‘Enormously.’

‘It’s been tremendous for me,’ said Dornford, very low, ‘to have come across her; but I’m afraid so far it’s been nothing to her.’

‘Much to allow for,’ suggested Adrian. ‘ “Patience is a virtue,” or so it used to be before the world went up in that blue flame and never came down again.’

‘But I’m rising forty.’

‘Well, Dinny’s rising twenty-nine.’

‘What you told me just now makes a difference, or – doesn’t it?’

‘About Siam? I think it does – a great difference.’

‘Well thank you.’

They parted with a firm clasp, and Adrian branched off northwards. He walked slowly, thinking of the balance-sheet that confronts each lover’s unlimited liability. No waterings of capital nor any insurance could square or guarantee that shifting lifelong document. By love was man flung into the world; with love was he in business nearly all his days, making debts or profit; and when he died was by the results of love, if not by the parish, buried and forgotten. In this swarming London not a creature but was deeply in account with a Force so whimsical, inexorable, and strong, that none, man or woman, in their proper senses would choose to do business with it. ‘Good match’, ‘happy marriage’, ‘ideal partnership’, ‘life-long union  ’, ledgered against ‘don’t get on’, ‘just a flare up’, ‘tragic state of things’, ‘misfit’! All his other activities man could insure, modify, foresee, provide against (save the inconvenient activity of death); love he could not. It stepped to him out of the night, into the night returned. It stayed, it fled. On one side or the other of the balance sheet it scored an entry, leaving him to cast up and wait for the next entry. It mocked dictators, parliaments, judges, bishops, police, and even good intentions; it maddened with joy and grief; wantoned, procreated, thieved, and murdered; was devoted, faithful, fickle. It had no shame, and owned no master; built homes and gutted them; passed by on the other side; and now and again made of two hearts one heart till death. To think of London, Manchester, Glasgow without love appeared to Adrian, walking up the Charing Cross Road, to be easy; and yet without love not one of these passing citizens would be sniffing the petrol of this night air, not one grimy brick would have been laid upon brick, not one bus be droning past, no street musician would wail, nor lamp light up the firmament. A somewhat primary concern! And he, whose primary concern was with the bones of ancient men, who but for love would have had no bones to be dug up, classified and kept under glass, thought of Dornford and Dinny, and whether they would ‘click’…