Interlude: Passers By amc-4

by Джон Голсуорси

  “I’m all right again, now. It was liver, I expect.”

  “You ought to have some brandy, Dad. We can get some on a doctor’s prescription.”

  “Doctor? Nonsense. We’ll dine up-stairs and I’ll get over the waiter; they must have something in the house.”

  Dine up-stairs! That was a happy thought!

  In their sitting-room he lay down on the sofa, touched and gratified, for Fleur was plopping up his cushions, shading the light, looking over the top of her book to see how he was. He did not remember when he had felt so definitely that she really did care about him. He even thought: ‘I ought to be ill a little, every now and then!’ And yet, if he ever complained of feeling ill at home, Annette at once complained of feeling worse!

  Close by, in the little salon opposite the stairs, a piano was being played.

  “Does that music worry you, dear?”

  Into Soames’ mind flashed the thought ‘Irene!’ If it were, and Fleur were to go out to stop it, then, indeed, would fat be in the fire!

  “No; I rather like it,” he said, hastily.

  “It’s a very good touch.”

  Irene’s touch! He remembered how June used to praise her touch; remembered how he had caught that fellow Bosinney listening to her, in the little drawing-room in Montpellier Square, with the wild-cat look on his face, the fellow had; remembered how she used to stop playing when he himself came in-from consideration, or the feeling that it was wasted on him—which? He had never known. He had never known anything! Well—another life! He closed his eyes, and instantly saw Irene in her emerald-green dinner-gown, standing in the Park Lane hall, first feast after their honeymoon, waiting to be cloaked! Why did such pictures come back before closed eyes—pictures without rhyme or reason? Irene brushing her hair—grey now, of course! As he was seventy, she must be nearly sixty-two! How time went! Hair feuille morte—old Aunt Juley used to call it with a certain pride in having picked up the expression—and eyes so velvet dark! Ah! but handsome was as handsome did! Still—who could say! Perhaps, if he had known how to express his feelings! If he had understood music! If she hadn’t so excited his senses! Perhaps—oh, perhaps your grandmother! No riddling that out! And here—of all places. A tricksy business! Was one never to forget?

  Fleur went to pack and dress. Dinner came up. Michael spoke of having met a refreshing young couple at Mount Vernon, “an Englishman; he said Mount Vernon made him awfully homesick.”

  “What was his name, Michael?”

  “Name? I didn’t ask. Why?”

  “Oh! I don’t know. I thought you might have.”

  Soames breathed again. He had seen her prick her ears. Give it a chance, and her feeling for that boy of Irene’s would flare up again. It was in the blood!

  “Bright Markland,” said Michael, “has been gassing over the future of America—he’s very happy about it because there are so many farmers still, and people on the land; but he’s also been gassing over the future of England—he’s very happy about it, and there’s hardly anybody on the land.”

  “Who’s Bright Markland?” muttered Soames.

  “Editor of our Scrutator, sir. Never was a better example of optimism, or the science of having things both ways.”

  “I’d hoped,” said Soames heavily, “that seeing these new countries would have made you feel there’s something in an old one, after all.”

  Michael laughed. “No need to persuade me of that, sir. But you see I belong to what is called the fortunate class, and so, I believe, do you.”

  Soames stared. This young man was getting sarcastic!

  “Well,” he said, “I shall be glad to be home. Are you packed?”

  They were; and presently he telephoned for a cab to take them to the opera. So that they might not hang about in the hall, he went down, himself, to see them into it. The incident passed without let or hindrance; and with a deep sigh of relief he resumed his place in the lift, and was restored to his room.

  III

  He stood there at the window, looking out at the tall houses, the lights, the cars moving below and the clear starry sky. He was really tired now; another day of this, and he would not need to simulate indisposition. A narrow squeak, indeed—a series of them! He wished he were safe home. To be under the same roof with that woman—how very queer! He had not passed a night under the same roof with her since that dreadful day in November ‘87, when he walked round and round Montpellier Square in such mortal agony, and came to his front door to find young Jolyon there. One lover dead, and the other already on his threshold! That night she had stolen away from his house; never again till this night had the same roof covered them. That music again—soft and teasing! WAS it she playing? To get away from it, he went into his bedroom and put his things together. He was not long about that, for he had only a suitcase with him. Should he go to bed? To bed, and lie awake? This thing had upset him. If it were she, sitting at that piano, a few yards away, what did she look like now? Seven times—no, eight—he had seen her since that long ago November night. Twice in her Chelsea flat; then by that fountain in the Bois de Boulogne; at Robin Hill when he delivered his ultimatum to her and young Jolyon; at Queen Victoria’s funeral; at Lord’s Cricket ground; again at Robin Hill when he went to beg for Fleur; and in the Goupenor Gallery just before she came out here. Each meeting he could remember in every detail, down to the lifting of her gloved hand at the last—the faint smiling of her lips.

  And Soames shivered. Too hot—these American rooms! He went back into the sitting-room; they had cleared away and brought him the evening paper; no good in that! He could never find anything in the papers over here. At this distance from the past, all this space and all this time—what did he feel about her? Hate? The word was too strong. One didn’t hate those who weren’t near one. Besides, he had never hated her! Not even when he first knew she was unfaithful. Contempt? No. She had made him ache too much for that. He didn’t know what he felt. And he began walking up and down, and once or twice stood at the door and listened, as might a prisoner in his cell. Undignified! And going to the sofa he stretched himself out on it. He would think about his travels. Had he enjoyed them? One long whirl of things, and—water. And yet, all had gone according to programme, except China, to which they had given as wide a berth as possible, owing to its state. The Sphinx and the Taj Mahal, Vancouver Harbour, and the Rocky Mountains, they played a sort of hide-and-seek within him; and now—that strumming; was it She? Strange! You had, it seemed, only just one season of real heat. Everything else that happened to you was in a way tepid, and perhaps it was as well, or the boiler would burst. His emotions in the years when he first knew her—would he go through them again? Not for the world. And yet! Soames got up. That music was going on and on; but when it stopped, the player—She or not She! – would be no longer visible. Why not walk past that little salon—just walk past, and—and take a glimpse? If it were She, well, probably she’d lost her looks—the beauty that had played such havoc with him? He had noticed the position of the piano; yes—the player would be in profile to him. He opened the door; the music swelled, and he stole forth.

  The breadth of Fleur’s room, only, separated him from that little open salon opposite the stairs. No one was in the corridor, not even a bell boy. Very likely some American woman after all, possibly that girl—Jon’s wife! Yet no—there was something—something in the sound! And holding up the evening paper before him, he moved along. Three pillars, with spaces between them, divided the salon from the corridor, avoiding what Soames so missed in America—the fourth wall. At the first of these pillars he came to a stand. A tall lamp with an orange shade stood by the keyboard, and the light from it fell on the music, on the keys, on the cheek and hair of the player. SHE! Though he had supposed her grey by now, the sight of that hair without a thread in it of the old gold affected him strangely. Curved, soft, shining, it covered her like a silver casque. She was in evening dress, and he could see that her shoulders, neck, and arms were still rounded and
beautiful. All her body from the waist was moving lightly to the rhythm of her playing. Her frock was of a greyish heliotrope. Soames stood behind his pillar gazing, his hand over his face, lest she should turn her head. He did not exactly feel—the film of remembrance was unrolled too quickly. From the first sight of her in a Bournemouth drawing-room to the last sight of her in the Goupenor Gallery—the long sequence passed him by in its heat and its frost and its bitterness; the long struggle of sense, the long failure of spirit; the long aching passion, and its long schooling into numbness and indifference. The last thing he wanted, standing there, was to speak with her, and yet he could not take his eyes away. Suddenly she stopped playing; bending forward she closed the music and reached to turn out the lamp. Her face came round in the light, and, cowering back, Soames saw it, still beautiful, perhaps more beautiful, a little worn, so that the eyes looked even darker than of old, larger, softer under the still-dark eyebrows. And once more he had that feeling: “There sits a woman I have never known.” With a sort of anger he craned back till he could see no longer. Ah! she had had many faults, but the worst of her faults had always been, was still, her infernal mystery! And, stepping silently like a cat, he regained his room.

  He felt tired to death now, and, going into his bedroom, undressed hurriedly and got into bed. He wished with all his heart that he were on board, under the British flag. ‘I’m old,’ he thought suddenly, ‘old.’ This America was too young for him, so full of energy, bustling about to ends he could not see. Those Eastern places had been different. And yet, after all, he was a mere seventy. His father had lived to be ninety—old Jolyon eighty-five, Timothy a hundred, and so with all the old Forsytes. At seventy THEY weren’t playing golf; and yet they were younger, younger anyway than he felt to-night. The sight of that woman had—had—! Old!

  ‘I’m not going back to be old,’ he thought. ‘If I feel like this again I shall consult someone.’ They had some monkey thing nowadays they could inject. He shouldn’t try that. Monkeys indeed! Why not pigs or tigers? Hold on somehow another ten or fifteen years! By that time they would have found out where they were in England. That precious capital levy would have been exploded. He would know what he had to leave to Fleur; would see her baby grow into a boy and go to school—public school—even! Eton? No—young Jolyon had been there. Winchester, the Monts’ school? Not there either, if he could help it. Harrow was handy; or his own old school—Marlborough? Perhaps he would see him play at Lord’s. Another fifteen years before Kit could play at Lord’s! Well—something to look forward to, something to hold on for. If you hadn’t that, you felt old, and if you FELT old, you WERE old, and the end soon came. How well that woman had worn! She—! There were his pictures too; take them up more seriously. That Freer Gallery! Leave them to the nation, and your name lived—much comfort in THAT! She! SHE would never die!

  A crack of light on the wall close to the door.

  “Asleep, Dad?”

  So Fleur had remembered to come and have a look at him!

  “How are you now, dear?”

  “All right; tired. How was the opera?”

  “Middling.”

  “I’ve told them to call us at seven. We’ll breakfast on the train.”

  Her lips touched his forehead. If—if that woman—but never—never once—never of her own accord—!

  “Good night,” he said. “Sleep well!”

  The light on the wall narrowed and was gone! Well! He was drowsy now. But, in this house—Shapes—Shapes! Past—present—at the piano—at his bedside—passing—passing by—and there, behind them, the great bronze-hooded woman, with the closed eyes, deep sunk in everlasting—profound—pro—! And from Soames a gentle snore escaped.

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