The Forsyte Saga

by John Galsworthy

  “Well!” he said, “I got the order. I’m back.”

  Winifred’s bosom began to heave. The nostalgia for her husband which had rushed up with that scent was struggling with a deeper jealousy than any she had felt yet. There he was—a dark, and as if harried, shadow of his sleek and brazen self! What force had done this to him—squeezed him like an orange to its dry rind! That woman!

  “I’m back,” he said again. “I’ve had a beastly time. By God! I came steerage. I’ve got nothing but what I stand up in, and that bag.”

  “And who has the rest?” cried Winifred, suddenly alive. “How dared you come? You knew it was just for divorce that you got that order to come back. Don’t touch me!”

  They held each to the rail of the big bed where they had spent so many years of nights together. Many times, yes—many times she had wanted him back. But now that he had come she was filled with this cold and deadly resentment. He put his hand up to his moustache; but did not frizz and twist it in the old familiar way, he just pulled it downwards.

  “Gad!” he said: “If you knew the time I’ve had!”

  “I’m glad I don’t!”

  “Are the kids all right?”

  Winifred nodded. “How did you get in?”

  “With my key.”

  “Then the maids don’t know. You can’t stay here, Monty.”

  He uttered a little sardonic laugh.

  “Where then?”

  “Anywhere.”

  “Well, look at me! That—that damned. . . .”

  “If you mention her,” cried Winifred, “I go straight out to Park Lane and I don’t come back.”

  Suddenly he did a simple thing, but so uncharacteristic that it moved her. He shut his eyes. It was as if he had said: “All right! I’m dead to the world!”

  “You can have a room for the night,” she said; “your things are still here. Only Imogen is at home.”

  He leaned back against the bedrail. “Well, it’s in your hands,” and his own made a writhing movement. “I’ve been through it. You needn’t hit too hard—it isn’t worthwhile. I’ve been frightened; I’ve been frightened, Freddie.”

  That old pet name, disused for years and years, sent a shiver through Winifred.

  “What am I to do with him?” she thought. “What in God’s name am I to do with him?”

  “Got a cigarette?”

  She gave him one from a little box she kept up there for when she couldn’t sleep at night, and lighted it. With that action the matter-of-fact side of her nature came to life again.

  “Go and have a hot bath. I’ll put some clothes out for you in the dressing room. We can talk later.”

  He nodded, and fixed his eyes on her—they looked half-dead, or was it that the folds in the lids had become heavier?

  “He’s not the same,” she thought. He would never be quite the same again! But what would he be?

  “All right!” he said, and went towards the door. He even moved differently, like a man who has lost illusion and doubts whether it is worthwhile to move at all.

  When he was gone, and she heard the water in the bath running, she put out a complete set of garments on the bed in his dressing room, then went downstairs and fetched up the biscuit box and whisky. Putting on her coat again, and listening a moment at the bathroom door, she went down and out. In the street she hesitated. Past seven o’clock! Would Soames be at his club or at Park Lane? She turned towards the latter. Back!

  Soames had always feared it—she had sometimes hoped it. . . . Back! So like him—clown that he was—with this: “Here we are again!” to make fools of them all—of the law, of Soames, of herself!

  Yet to have done with the law, not to have that murky cloud hanging over her and the children! What a relief! Ah! but how to accept his return? That woman had ravaged him, taken from him passion such as he had never bestowed on herself, such as she had not thought him capable of. There was the sting! That selfish, blatant clown of hers, whom she herself had never really stirred, had been swept and ungarnished by another woman! Insulting! Too insulting! Not right, not decent to take him back! And yet she had asked for him; the Law perhaps would make her now! He was as much her husband as ever—she had put herself out of court! And all he wanted, no doubt, was money—to keep him in cigars and lavender water! That scent! “After all, I’m not old,” she thought, “not old yet!” But that woman who had reduced him to those words: “I’ve been through it. I’ve been frightened—frightened, Freddie!” She neared her father’s house, driven this way and that, while all the time the Forsyte undertow was drawing her to deep conclusion that after all he was her property, to be held against a robbing world. And so she came to James’s.

  “Mr. Soames? In his room? I’ll go up; don’t say I’m here.”

  Her brother was dressing. She found him before a mirror, tying a black bow with an air of despising its ends.

  “Hullo!” he said, contemplating her in the glass; “what’s wrong?”

  “Monty!” said Winifred stonily.

  Soames spun round. “What!”

  “Back!”

  “Hoist,” muttered Soames, “with our own petard. Why the deuce didn’t you let me try cruelty? I always knew it was too much risk this way.”

  “Oh! Don’t talk about that! What shall I do?”

  Soames answered, with a deep, deep sound.

  “Well?” said Winifred impatiently.

  “What has he to say for himself?”

  “Nothing. One of his boots is split across the toe.”

  Soames stared at her.

  “Ah!” he said, “of course! On his beam ends. So—it begins again! This’ll about finish father.”

  “Can’t we keep it from him?”

  “Impossible. He has an uncanny flair for anything that’s worrying.”

  And he brooded, with fingers hooked into his blue silk braces. “There ought to be some way in law,” he muttered, “to make him safe.”

  “No,” cried Winifred, “I won’t be made a fool of again; I’d sooner put up with him.”

  The two stared at each other. Their hearts were full of feeling, but they could give it no expression—Forsytes that they were.

  “Where did you leave him?”

  “In the bath,” and Winifred gave a little bitter laugh. “The only thing he’s brought back is lavender water.”

  “Steady!” said Soames, “you’re thoroughly upset. I’ll go back with you.”

  “What’s the use?”

  “We ought to make terms with him.”

  “Terms! It’ll always be the same. When he recovers—cards and betting, drink and . . . !” She was silent, remembering the look on her husband’s face. The burnt child—the burnt child. Perhaps . . . !

  “Recovers?” replied Soames: “Is he ill?”

  “No; burnt out; that’s all.”

  Soames took his waistcoat from a chair and put it on, he took his coat and got into it, he scented his handkerchief with eau de cologne, threaded his watch chain, and said: “We haven’t any luck.”

  And in the midst of her own trouble Winifred was sorry for him, as if in that little saying he had revealed deep trouble of his own.

  “I’d like to see mother,” she said.

  “She’ll be with father in their room. Come down quietly to the study. I’ll get her.”

  Winifred stole down to the little dark study, chiefly remarkable for a Canaletto too doubtful to be placed elsewhere, and a fine collection of law reports unopened for many years. Here she stood, with her back to maroon-coloured curtains close-drawn, staring at the empty grate, till her mother came in followed by Soames.

  “Oh! my poor dear!” said Emily: “How miserable you look in here! This is too bad of him, really!”

  As a family they had so guarded themselves from the expression of all un
fashionable emotion that it was impossible to go up and give her daughter a good hug. But there was comfort in her cushioned voice, and her still dimpled shoulders under some rare black lace. Summoning pride and the desire not to distress her mother, Winifred said in her most offhand voice:

  “It’s all right, Mother; no good fussing.”

  “I don’t see,” said Emily, looking at Soames, “why Winifred shouldn’t tell him that she’ll prosecute him if he doesn’t keep off the premises. He took her pearls; and if he’s not brought them back, that’s quite enough.”

  Winifred smiled. They would all plunge about with suggestions of this and that, but she knew already what she would be doing, and that was—nothing. The feeling that, after all, she had won a sort of victory, retained her property, was every moment gaining ground in her. No! if she wanted to punish him, she could do it at home without the world knowing.

  “Well,” said Emily, “come into the dining room comfortably—you must stay and have dinner with us. Leave it to me to tell your father.” And, as Winifred moved towards the door, she turned out the light. Not till then did they see the disaster in the corridor.

  There, attracted by light from a room never lighted, James was standing with his dun-coloured camel-hair shawl folded about him, so that his arms were not free and his silvered head looked cut off from his fashionably trousered legs as if by an expanse of desert. He stood, inimitably stork-like, with an expression as if he saw before him a frog too large to swallow.

  “What’s all this?” he said. “Tell your father? You never tell me anything.”

  The moment found Emily without reply. It was Winifred who went up to him, and, laying one hand on each of his swathed, helpless arms, said:

  “Monty’s not gone bankrupt, Father. He’s only come back.”

  They all three expected something serious to happen, and were glad she had kept that grip of his arms, but they did not know the depth of root in that shadowy old Forsyte. Something wry occurred about his shaven mouth and chin, something scratchy between those long silvery whiskers. Then he said with a sort of dignity: “He’ll be the death of me. I knew how it would be.”

  “You mustn’t worry, Father,” said Winifred calmly. “I mean to make him behave.”

  “Ah!” said James. “Here, take this thing off, I’m hot.” They unwound the shawl. He turned, and walked firmly to the dining room.

  “I don’t want any soup,” he said to Warmson, and sat down in his chair. They all sat down too, Winifred still in her hat, while Warmson laid the fourth place. When he left the room, James said: “What’s he brought back?”

  “Nothing, Father.”

  James concentrated his eyes on his own image in a tablespoon. “Divorce!” he muttered; “rubbish! What was I about? I ought to have paid him an allowance to stay out of England. Soames you go and propose it to him.”

  It seemed so right and simple a suggestion that even Winifred was surprised when she said: “No, I’ll keep him now he’s back; he must just behave—that’s all.”

  They all looked at her. It had always been known that Winifred had pluck.

  “Out there!” said James elliptically, “who knows what cutthroats! You look for his revolver! Don’t go to bed without. You ought to have Warmson to sleep in the house. I’ll see him myself tomorrow.”

  They were touched by this declaration, and Emily said comfortably: “That’s right, James, we won’t have any nonsense.”

  “Ah!” muttered James darkly, “I can’t tell.”

  The advent of Warmson with fish diverted conversation.

  When, directly after dinner, Winifred went over to kiss her father goodnight, he looked up with eyes so full of question and distress that she put all the comfort she could into her voice.

  “It’s all right, Daddy, dear; don’t worry. I shan’t need anyone—he’s quite bland. I shall only be upset if you worry. Good night, bless you!”

  James repeated the words, “Bless you!” as if he did not quite know what they meant, and his eyes followed her to the door.

  She reached home before nine, and went straight upstairs.

  Dartie was lying on the bed in his dressing room, fully redressed in a blue serge suit and pumps; his arms were crossed behind his head, and an extinct cigarette drooped from his mouth.

  Winifred remembered ridiculously the flowers in her window boxes after a blazing summer day; the way they lay, or rather stood—parched, yet rested by the sun’s retreat. It was as if a little dew had come already on her burnt-up husband.

  He said apathetically: “I suppose you’ve been to Park Lane. How’s the old man?”

  Winifred could not help the bitter answer: “Not dead.”

  He winced, actually he winced.

  “Understand, Monty,” she said, “I will not have him worried. If you aren’t going to behave yourself, you may go back, you may go anywhere. Have you had dinner?”

  No.

  “Would you like some?”

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “Imogen offered me some. I didn’t want any.”

  Imogen! In the plenitude of emotion Winifred had forgotten her.

  “So you’ve seen her? What did she say?”

  “She gave me a kiss.”

  With mortification Winifred saw his dark sardonic face relaxed. “Yes!” she thought, “he cares for her, not for me a bit.”

  Dartie’s eyes were moving from side to side.

  “Does she know about me?” he said.

  It flashed through Winifred that here was the weapon she needed. He minded their knowing!

  “No. Val knows. The others don’t; they only know you went away.”

  She heard him sigh with relief.

  “But they shall know,” she said firmly, “if you give me cause.”

  “All right!” he muttered, “hit me! I’m down!”

  Winifred went up to the bed. “Look here, Monty! I don’t want to hit you. I don’t want to hurt you. I shan’t allude to anything. I’m not going to worry. What’s the use?” She was silent a moment. “I can’t stand any more, though, and I won’t! You’d better know. You’ve made me suffer. But I used to be fond of you. For the sake of that. . . .” She met the heavy-lidded gaze of his brown eyes with the downward stare of her green-grey eyes; touched his hand suddenly, turned her back, and went into her room.

  She sat there a long time before her glass, fingering her rings, thinking of this subdued dark man, almost a stranger to her, on the bed in the other room; resolutely not worrying, but gnawed by jealousy of what he had been through, and now and again just visited by pity.

  Chapter XIV

  Outlandish Night

  Soames doggedly let the spring come—no easy task for one conscious that time was flying, his birds in the bush no nearer the hand, no issue from the web anywhere visible. Mr. Polteed reported nothing, except that his watch went on—costing a lot of money. Val and his cousin were gone to the war, whence came news more favourable; Dartie was behaving himself so far; James had retained his health; business prospered almost terribly—there was nothing to worry Soames except that he was held up, could make no step in any direction.

  He did not exactly avoid Soho, for he could not afford to let them think that he had “piped off,” as James would have put it—he might want to “pipe on” again at any minute. But he had to be so restrained and cautious that he would often pass the door of the Restaurant Bretagne without going in, and wander out of the purlieus of that region which always gave him the feeling of having been possessively irregular.

  He wandered thus one May night into Regent Street and the most amazing crowd he had ever seen; a shrieking, whistling, dancing, jostling, grotesque and formidably jovial crowd, with false noses and mouth organs, penny whistles and long feathers, every appanage of idiocy, as it seemed to him. Mafeking! Of course, it had been relieved! G
ood! But was that an excuse? Who were these people, what were they, where had they come from into the West End? His face was tickled, his ears whistled into. Girls cried: “Keep your hair on, stucco!” A youth so knocked off his top hat that he recovered it with difficulty. Crackers were exploding beneath his nose, between his feet. He was bewildered, exasperated, offended. This stream of people came from every quarter, as if impulse had unlocked floodgates, let flow waters of whose existence he had heard, perhaps, but believed in never. This, then, was the populace, the innumerable living negation of gentility and Forsyteism. This was—egad!—Democracy! It stank, yelled, was hideous! In the East End, or even Soho, perhaps—but here in Regent Street, in Piccadilly! What were the police about! In 1900, Soames, with his Forsyte thousands, had never seen the cauldron with the lid off; and now looking into it, could hardly believe his scorching eyes. The whole thing was unspeakable! These people had no restraint, they seemed to think him funny; such swarms of them, rude, coarse, laughing—and what laughter!

  Nothing sacred to them! He shouldn’t be surprised if they began to break windows. In Pall Mall, past those august dwellings, to enter which people paid sixty pounds, this shrieking, whistling, dancing dervish of a crowd was swarming. From the club windows his own kind were looking out on them with regulated amusement. They didn’t realise! Why, this was serious—might come to anything! The crowd was cheerful, but some day they would come in different mood! He remembered there had been a mob in the late eighties, when he was at Brighton; they had smashed things and made speeches. But more than dread, he felt a deep surprise. They were hysterical—it wasn’t English! And all about the relief of a little town as big as—Watford, six thousand miles away. Restraint, reserve! Those qualities to him more dear almost than life, those indispensable attributes of property and culture, where were they? It wasn’t English! No, it wasn’t English! So Soames brooded, threading his way on. It was as if he had suddenly caught sight of someone cutting the covenant “for quiet possession” out of his legal documents; or of a monster lurking and stalking out in the future, casting its shadow before. Their want of stolidity, their want of reverence! It was like discovering that nine-tenths of the people of England were foreigners. And if that were so—then, anything might happen!