The Forsyte Saga, Volume 3 Read online

  ‘We are just as we were,’ said Adrian, ‘friends.’

  ‘You’d say that anyway.’

  ‘Perhaps. But there is no more to say, except that I’m bound to think of her first, as I always have.’

  ‘That’s why you’re here, then?’

  ‘Gracious, man! Haven’t you realized the shock it will be to her? Perhaps you can’t remember the life you led her before you went in there? But do you think she’s forgotten? Wouldn’t it be fairer to her and to yourself if you came to my room, say, at the Museum, and saw her there for the first time?’

  ‘No; I’ll see her here in my own house.’

  ‘This is where she went through hell, Ferse. You may have been right to keep dark, as you call it, so far as the doctors are concerned, but you’re certainly not right to spring your recovery on her like this.’

  Ferse made a violent gesture.

  ‘You want her kept from me.’

  Adrian bowed his head.

  ‘That may be,’ he said, gently. ‘But look here, Ferse, you’re just as well able to gauge this situation as myself. Put yourself in her place. Imagine her coming in, as she may at any minute, seeing you without warning, knowing nothing of your recovery, needing time to believe in it – with all her memories of you as you were. What chance are you giving yourself?’

  Ferse groaned. ‘What chance shall I be given, if I don’t take any chance I can? Do you think I trust anyone now? Try it – try four years of it, and see!’ and his eyes went swiftly round: ‘Try being watched, try being treated like a dangerous child. I’ve looked on at my own treatment, as a perfectly sane man, for the last three months. If my own wife can’t take me for what I am – clothed and in my right mind, who will or can?’

  Adrian went up to him.

  ‘Gently!’ he said: ‘That’s where you’re wrong. Only she knew you at the worst. It should be more difficult for her than for anyone.’

  Ferse covered his face.

  Adrian waited, grey with anxiety; but when Ferse uncovered his face again he could not bear the look on it, and turned his eyes away.

  ‘Talk of loneliness!’ said Ferse. ‘Go off your chump, Cherrell, then you’ll know what it means to be lonely for the rest of your days.’

  Adrian put a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Look here, my dear fellow, I’ve got a spare room at my digs, come and put up with me till we get things straightened out.’ Sudden suspicion grinned from Ferse’s face, an intense searching look came into his eyes; it softened as if with gratitude, grew bitter, softened again.

  ‘You were always a white man, Cherrell; but no, thanks – I couldn’t. I must be here. Foxes have holes, and I’ve still got this.’

  Adrian sighed.

  ‘Very well; then we must wait for her. Have you seen the children?’

  ‘No. Do they remember me?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Do they know I’m alive?’

  ‘Yes. They know that you’re away, ill.’

  ‘Not –?’ Ferse touched his forehead.

  ‘No. Shall we go up to them?’

  Ferse shook his head, and at that moment through the window Adrian saw Diana coming. He moved quietly towards the door. What was he to do or say? His hand was on the knob when Ferse pushed by him into the hall. Diana had come in with her latchkey. Adrian could see her face grow deadly pale below the casque of her close hat. She recoiled against the wall.

  ‘It’s all right, Diana,’ he said quickly, and held open the dining-room door. She came from the wall, passed them both into the room, and Ferse followed.

  ‘If you want to consult me I shall be here,’ said Adrian, and closed the door.…

  Husband and wife stood breathing as if they had run a hundred yards instead of walking three.

  ‘Diana!’ said Ferse: ‘Diana!’

  It seemed as if she couldn’t speak, and his voice rose:

  ‘I’m all right. Don’t you believe me?’

  She bent her head, and still didn’t speak.

  ‘Not a word to throw to a dog?’

  ‘It’s – it’s the shock.’

  ‘I have come back sane, I have been sane for three months now.’

  ‘I am so glad, so glad.’

  ‘My God! You’re as beautiful as ever.’

  And suddenly he gripped her, pressed her hard against him, and began kissing her hungrily. When he let her go, she sank breathless into a chair, gazing at him with an expression of such terror that he put his hands over his face.

  ‘Ronald – I couldn’t – I couldn’t let it be as it was before. I couldn’t – I couldn’t!’

  He dropped on his knees at her feet. ‘I didn’t mean to be violent. Forgive me!’

  And then, from sheer exhaustion of the power of feeling, both rose and moved apart.

  ‘We had better talk it over quietly,’ said Ferse.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Am I not to live here?’

  ‘It’s your house. You must do whatever’s best for you.’

  He uttered the sound that was so like a laugh.

  ‘It would be best for me if you and everyone would treat me exactly as if nothing had happened to me.’

  Diana was silent. She was silent so long that again he made that sound.

  ‘Don’t!’ she said. ‘I will try. But I must – I must have a separate room.’

  Ferse bowed. Suddenly his eyes darted at her. ‘Are you in love with Cherrell?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘With anyone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Scared then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I see. Naturally. Well, it’s not for God’s playthings to make terms. We take what we can get. Will you wire for them to send my things from that place? That will save any fuss they might want to make. I came away without saying good-bye. There is probably something owing too.’

  ‘Of course. I will see to all that.’

  ‘Can we let Cherrell go now?’

  ‘I will tell him.’

  ‘Let me!’

  ‘No, Ronald, I will,’ and she moved resolutely past him.

  Adrian was leaning against the wall opposite the door. He looked up at her and tried to smile, he had divined the upshot.

  ‘He is to stay here, but apart. My dear, thank you so much for all. Will you see to that Home for me? I will let you know everything. I’ll take him up to the children now. Good-bye!’ He kissed her hand and went out.

  Chapter Sixteen

  HUBERT CHERRELL stood outside his father’s club in Pall Mall, a senior affair of which he was not yet a member. He was feeling concerned, for he had a respect for his father somewhat odd in days when fathers were commonly treated as younger brethren, or alluded to as ‘that old man’. Nervously therefore he entered an edifice wherein more people had held more firmly to the prides and prejudices of a lifetime than possibly anywhere else on earth. There was little however, either of pride or prejudice, about the denizens of the room into which he was now shown. A short alert man with a pale face and a tooth-brush moustache was biting the end of a pen, and trying to compose a letter to The Times on the condition of Iraq; a modest-looking little Brigadier General with a bald forehead and grey moustache was discussing with a tall modest-looking Lieutenant Colonel the flora of the island of Cyprus; a man of square build, square cheek-bones and lion-like eyes, was sitting in the window as still as if he had just buried an aunt and were thinking whether or not he would try and swim the Channel next year; and Sir Conway himself was reading Whitaker’s Almanack.

  ‘Hallo, Hubert! This room’s too small. Come into the hall.’ Hubert had the instant feeling not only that he wanted to say something to his father, but that his father wanted to say something to him. They sat down in a recess.

  ‘What’s brought you up?’

  ‘I want to get married, Sir.’

  ‘Married?’

  ‘To Jean Tasburgh.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘We thought of getting a spe
cial licence and having no fuss.’

  The General shook his head. ‘She’s a fine girl, and I’m glad you feel like that, but the fact is your position’s queer, Hubert. I’ve just been hearing.’

  Hubert noticed suddenly how worn-looking was his father’s face. ‘That fellow you shot. They’re pressing for your extradition on a charge of murder.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s a monstrous business, and I can’t believe they’ll go on with it in the face of what you say about his going for you – luckily you’ve still got his scar on your arm; but it seems there’s the deuce of a fuss in the Bolivian papers; and those half-castes are sticking together about it.’

  ‘I must see Hallorsen at once.’

  ‘The authorities won’t be in a hurry, I expect.’

  After this, the two sat silent in the big hall, staring in front of them with very much the same expression on their faces. At the back of both their minds the fear of this development had lurked, but neither had ever permitted it to take definite shape; and its wretchedness was therefore the more potent. To the General it was even more searing than to Hubert. The idea that his only son could be haled half across the world on a charge of murder was as horrible as a nightmare.

  ‘No good to let it prey on our minds, Hubert,’ he said at last; ‘if there’s any sense in the country at all we’ll get this stopped. I was trying to think of someone who knows how to get at people. I’m helpless in these matters – some fellows seem to know everybody and exactly how to work them. I think we’d better go to Lawrence Mont; he knows Saxenden anyway, and probably the people at the Foreign Office. It was Topsham who told me, but he can do nothing. Let’s walk, shall we? Do us good.’

  Much touched by the way his father was identifying himself with his trouble, Hubert squeezed his arm, and they left the Club. In Piccadilly the General said, with a transparent effort: ‘I don’t much like all these changes.’

  ‘Well, Sir, except for Devonshire House, I don’t believe I notice them.’

  ‘No, it’s queer; the spirit of Piccadilly is stronger than the street itself, you can’t destroy its atmosphere. You never see a top hat now, and yet it doesn’t seem to make any difference. I felt the same walking down Piccadilly after the war as I did as a youngster back from India. One just had the feeling of having got there at last.’

  ‘Yes; you get a queer sort of homesickness for it. I did in Mespot and Bolivia. If one closed one’s eyes the whole thing would start up.’

  ‘Core of English life,’ began the General, and stopped, as if surprised at having delivered a summary.

  ‘Even the Americans feel it,’ remarked Hubert, as they turned into Half-Moon Street. ‘Hallorsen was saying to me they had nothing like it over there; “no focus for their national influence” was the way he put it.’

  ‘And yet they have influence,’ said the General.

  ‘No doubt about that, Sir, but can you define it? Is it their speed that gives it them?’

  ‘Where does their speed get them? Everywhere in general; nowhere in particular. No, it’s their money, I think.’

  ‘Well, I’ve noticed about Americans, and it’s where most people go wrong, that they care very little for money as money. They like to get it fast; but they’d rather lose it fast than get it slow.’

  ‘Queer thing having no core,’ said the General.

  ‘The country’s too big, Sir. But they have a sort of core, all the same – pride of country.’

  The General nodded.

  ‘Queer little old streets these. I remember walking with my Dad from Curzon Street to the St. James’ Club in ’82 – day I first went to Harrow – hardly a stick changed.’ And so, concerned in talk that touched not on the feelings within them, they reached Mount Street.

  ‘There’s your Aunt Em, don’t tell her.’

  A few paces in front of them Lady Mont was, as it were, swimming home. They overtook her some hundred yards from the door.

  ‘Con,’ she said, ‘you’re lookin’ thin.’

  ‘My dear girl, I never was anything else.’

  ‘No. Hubert, there was somethin’ I wanted to ask you. Oh! I know! But Dinny said you hadn’t had any breeches since the war. How do you like Jean? Rather attractive?’

  ‘Yes, Aunt Em.’

  ‘She wasn’t expelled.’

  ‘Why should she have been?’

  ‘Oh! well, you never know. She’s never terrorized me. D’you want Lawrence? It’s Voltaire now and Dean Swift. So unnecessary – they’ve been awfully done; but he likes doin’ them because they bite. About those mules, Hubert?’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘I never can remember if the donkey is the sire or the dam.’

  ‘The donkey is the sire and the dam a mare, Aunt Em.’

  ‘Yes, and they don’t have children – such a blessin’. Where’s Dinny?’

  ‘She’s in town, somewhere.’

  ‘She ought to marry.’

  ‘Why?’ said the General.

  ‘Well, there she is! Hen was saying she’d make a good lady-in-waitin’ – unselfish. That’s the danger.’ And, taking a latch-key out of her bag, Lady Mont applied it to the door.

  ‘I can’t get Lawrence to drink tea – would you like some?’

  ‘No thank you, Em.’

  ‘You’ll find him stewin’ in the library.’ She kissed her brother and her nephew, and swam towards the stairs. ‘Puzzlin’,’ they heard her say as they entered the library. They found Sir Lawrence surrounded by the works of Voltaire and Swift, for he was engaged on an imaginary dialogue between those two serious men. He listened gravely to the General’s tale.

  ‘I saw,’ he said, when his brother-in-law had finished, ‘that Hallorsen had repented him of the evil – that will be Dinny. I think we’d better see him – not here, there’s no cook, Em’s still slimming – but we can all dine at the Coffee House.’ And he took up the telephone.

  Professor Hallorsen was expected in at five and should at once be given the message.

  ‘This seems to be more of an F.O. business than a Police matter,’ went on Sir Lawrence. ‘Let’s go over and see old Shropshire. He must have known your father well, Con; and his nephew, Bobbie Ferrar, is about as fixed a star as there is at the F.O. Old Shropshire’s always in!’

  Arrived at Shropshire House Sir Lawrence said:

  ‘Can we see the Marquess, Pommett?’

  ‘I rather think he’s having his lesson, Sir Lawrence.’

  ‘Lesson – in what?’

  ‘Heinstein, is it, Sir Lawrence?’

  ‘Then the blind is leading the blind, and it will be well to save him. The moment there’s a chance, Pommett, let us in.’

  ‘Yes, Sir Lawrence.’

  ‘Eighty-four and learning Einstein. Who said the aristocracy was decadent? I should like to see the bloke who’s teaching it, though; he must have singular powers of persuasion – there are no flies on old Shropshire.’

  At this moment a man of ascetic aspect, with a cold deep eye and not much hair, entered, took hat and umbrella from a chair, and went out.

  ‘Behold the man!’ said Sir Lawrence. ‘I wonder what he charges? Einstein is like the electron or the vitamin – inapprehensible; it’s as clear a case of money under false pretences as I’ve ever come across. Come along.’

  The Marquess of Shropshire was walking up and down his study, nodding his quick and sanguine grey-bearded head as if to himself.

  ‘Ah! young Mont,’ he said, ‘did you meet that man – if he offers to teach you Einstein, don’t let him. He can no more explain space bounded yet infinite, than I can.’

  ‘But even Einstein can’t, Marquess.’

  ‘I am not old enough,’ said the Marquess, ‘for anything but the exact sciences. I told him not to come again. Whom have I the pleasure of seeing?’

  ‘My brother-in-law General Sir Conway Cherrell, and his son Captain Hubert Cherrell, D.S.O. You’ll remember Conway’s father, Marquess – he was Ambassador at
Madrid.’

  ‘Yes, yes, dear me, yes! I know your brother Hilary, too; a live wire. Sit down! Sit down, young man! Is it anything to do with electricity?’

  ‘Not wholly, Marquess; more a matter of extradition.’

  ‘Indeed!’ The Marquess, raising his foot to the seat of a chair, leaned his elbow on his knee and his bearded chin on his hand. And, while the General was explaining he continued to stand in this attitude, gazing at Hubert, who was sitting with compressed lips, and lowered eyes. When the General had finished the Marquess said:

  ‘D.S.O., I think your uncle said. In the war?’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘I shall do what I can. Could I see that scar?’

  Hubert drew up his left sleeve, unlinked his shirt cuff and exposed an arm up which a long glancing scar stretched almost from wrist to elbow.

  The Marquess whistled softly through teeth still his own. ‘Narrow escape that, young man.’

  ‘Yes, Sir. I put up my arm just as he struck.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Jumped back and shot him as he came on again. Then I fainted.’

  ‘This man was flogged for ill-treating his mules, you say?’

  ‘Continually ill-treating them.’

  ‘Continually?’ repeated the Marquess. ‘Some think the meat-trade and Zoological Society continually ill-treat animals, but I never heard of their being flogged. Tastes differ. Now, let me see, what can I do? Is Bobbie in town, young Mont?’

  ‘Yes, Marquess. I saw him at the Coffee House yesterday.’

  ‘I will get him to breakfast. If I remember he does not allow his children to keep rabbits, and has a dog that bites everybody. That should be to the good. A man who is fond of animals would always like to flog a man who isn’t. Before you go, young Mont, will you tell me what you think of this?’ And replacing his foot on the ground, the Marquess went to the corner, took up a canvas that was leaning against the wall, and brought it to the light. It represented with a moderate degree of certainty a young woman without clothes.

  ‘By Steinvitch,’ said the Marquess; ‘she could corrupt no morals, could she – if hung?’

  Sir Lawrence screwed in his monocle: ‘The oblong school. This comes of living with women of a certain shape, Marquess. No, she couldn’t corrupt morals, but she might spoil digestions – flesh sea-green, hair tomato, style blobby. Did you buy her?’