The Forsyte Saga, Volume 3 Page 15

  ‘Pleasure!’ he said: ‘A pleasure.’

  Jean raised her eyes, and the thought went through her: ‘Purring stockfish.’ She extended her hand.

  ‘It’s terribly nice of you to see me.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘I wanted to tell you of my engagement to Hubert Cherrell – you remember his sister at the Monts’. Have you heard of this absurd request for his extradition? It’s too silly for words – the shooting was in pure self-defence – he’s got a most terrible scar he could show you at any time.’

  Lord Saxenden murmured something inaudible. His eyes had become somewhat frosted.

  ‘So you see, I wanted to ask you to put a stop to it. I know you have the power.’

  ‘Power? Not a bit – none at all.’

  Jean smiled.

  ‘Of course you have the power. Everybody knows that. This means such a lot to me.’

  ‘But you weren’t engaged, were you, the other night?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Very sudden!’

  ‘Aren’t all engagements sudden?’ She could not perhaps realize the impact of her news on a man over fifty who had entered the room with at all events vague hopes of having made an impression on Youth; but she did realize that she was not all that he had thought her, and that he was not all that she had thought him. A wary and polite look had come over his face.

  ‘More hard-boiled than I imagined,’ was her reflection. And changing her tone, she said coldly: ‘After all, Captain Cherrell is a D.S.O. and one of you. Englishmen don’t let each other down, do they? Especially when they’ve been to the same school.’

  This remarkably astute utterance, at that disillusioned moment, impressed him who had been ‘Snubby Bantham’.

  ‘Oh!’ he said: ‘Was he there, too?’

  ‘Yes. And you know what a time he had on that expedition. Dinny read you some of his diary.’

  The colour deepened in his face, and he said with sudden exasperation: ‘You young ladies seem to think I’ve nothing to do but meddle in things that don’t concern me. Extradition is a legal job.’

  Jean looked up through her lashes, and the unhappy peer moved as if to duck his head.

  ‘What can I do?’ he said, gruffly. ‘They wouldn’t listen to me.’

  ‘Try,’ said Jean. ‘Some men are always listened to.’

  Lord Saxenden’s eyes bulged slightly.

  ‘You say he’s got a scar. Where?’

  Jean pushed up the sleeve on her left arm.

  ‘From here to here. He shot as the man came on again.’

  ‘H’m!’

  Looking intently at the arm, he repeated that profound remark, and there was silence, till Jean said suddenly: ‘Would you like to be extradited, Lord Saxenden?’

  He made an impatient movement.

  ‘But this is an official matter, young lady.’

  Jean looked at him again.

  ‘Is it really true that no influence is ever brought to bear on anybody about anything?’

  He laughed.

  ‘Come and lunch with me at the Piedmont Grill the day after tomorrow – no, the day after that, and I’ll let you know if I’ve been able to do anything.’

  Jean knew well when to stop; never in parish meetings did she talk on. She held out her hand: ‘Thank you ever so. One-thirty?’

  Lord Saxenden gave her an astonished nod. This young woman had a directness which appealed to one whose life was passed among public matters conspicuous for the lack of it.

  ‘Good-bye!’ she said.

  ‘Good-bye, Miss Tasburgh; congratulations.’

  ‘Thank you. That will depend on you, won’t it?’ And before he could answer she was through the door. She walked back, her mind not in a whirl. She thought clearly and quickly, with a natural distrust of leaving things to others. She must see Hubert that very night; and, on getting in, she went at once to the telephone again and rang up ‘The Coffee House’.

  ‘Is that you, Hubert? Jean speaking.’

  ‘Yes, darling.’

  ‘Come here after dinner. I must see you.’

  ‘About nine?’

  ‘Yes. My love to you. That’s all.’ And she cut off.

  She stood for a moment before going up to dress, as if to endorse that simile of ‘leopardess’. She looked, indeed, like Youth stalking its own future – lithe, intent, not to be deviated, in Fleur’s finished and stylistic drawing-room as much at home and yet as foreign to its atmosphere as a cat might be.

  Dinner, when any of the diners have cause for really serious anxiety and the others know of it, is conspicuous for avoidance of all but quick-fire conversation. Nobody touched on the Ferse topic, and Adrian left as soon as he had drunk his coffee. Dinny saw him out.

  ‘Good night, Uncle dear. I shall sleep with my emergency suit-case; one can always get a taxi here at a moment’s notice. Promise me not to worry.’

  Adrian smiled, but he looked haggard. Jean met her coming from the door and told her the fresh news of Hubert. Her first feeling, of complete dismay, was succeeded by burning indignation.

  ‘What utter ruffianism!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jean. ‘Hubert’s coming in a minute or two and I want him to myself.’

  ‘Take him up to Michael’s study, then. I’ll go and tell Michael. Parliament ought to know; only,’ she added, ‘it’s not sitting. It only seems to sit when it oughtn’t to.’

  Jean waited in the hall to let Hubert in. When he had gone up with her to that room whose walls were covered with the graven witticisms of the last three generations, she put him into Michael’s most comfortable chair, and sat down on his knee. Thus, with her arm round his neck, and her lips more or less to his, she stayed for some minutes.

  ‘That’ll do,’ she said, rising, and lighting cigarettes. ‘This extradition business isn’t going to come to anything, Hubert.’

  ‘But suppose it does.’

  ‘It won’t. But if it does – all the more reason for our being married at once.’

  ‘My darling girl, I can’t possibly.’

  ‘You must. You don’t suppose that if you were extradited – which is absurd – I shouldn’t go too. Of course I should, and by the same boat – married or not.’

  Hubert looked at her.

  ‘You’re a marvel,’ he said, ‘but –’

  ‘Oh! yes, I know. Your father, and your chivalry, and your desire to make me unhappy for my own good, and all that. I’ve seen your uncle Hilary. He’s ready to do it; he’s a padre and a man of real experience. Now, look here – we’ll tell him of this development, and if he’ll still do it, we’ll be done. We’ll go to him together tomorrow morning.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘But! Surely you can trust him; he strikes me as a real person.’

  ‘He is,’ said Hubert; ‘no one more so.’

  ‘Very well then; that’s settled. Now you can kiss me again.’ And she resumed her position on his knee. So, but for her acute sense of hearing, they would have been surprised. She was, however, examining the White Monkey on the wall, and Hubert was taking out his cigarette case, when Dinny opened the door.

  ‘This monkey is frightfully good,’ said Jean. ‘We’re going to be married, Dinny, in spite of this new nonsense – that is, if your Uncle Hilary still will. You can come with us to him again tomorrow morning, if you like.’

  Dinny looked at Hubert, who had risen.

  ‘She’s hopeless,’ he said: ‘I can’t do anything with her.’

  ‘And you can’t do anything without her. Imagine! He thought, if the worst came to the worst and he was sent out to be tried, that I shouldn’t be going too. Men really are terribly like babies. Well, Dinny?’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘It depends on Uncle Hilary,’ said Hubert; ‘you understand that, Jean.’

  ‘Yes. He’s in touch with real life, and what he says shall go. Come for us at ten tomorrow. Turn your back, Dinny. I’ll give him one kiss, and then he must be off.’

&nb
sp; Dinny turned her back.

  ‘Now,’ said Jean. They went down; and soon after, the girls went up to bed. Their rooms were next each other, and furnished with all Fleur’s taste. They talked a little, embraced and parted. Dinny dawdled over her undressing.

  The quiet Square, inhabited for the most part by Members of Parliament away on holiday, had few lights in the windows of its houses; no wind stirred the dark branches of the trees; through her open window came air that had no night sweetness; and rumbling noises of the Town kept alive in her the tingling sensations of that long day.

  ‘I couldn’t live with Jean,’ she thought, ‘but,’ she added with the greater justice, ‘Hubert could. He needs that sort of thing.’ And she smiled wryly, mocking her sense of having been supplanted. Once in bed she lay, thinking of Adrian’s fear and dismay, of Diana, and that poor wretch, her husband – longing for her – shut off from her – shut off from everyone. In the darkness she seemed to see his eyes flickering, burning and intense; the eyes of a being that yearned to be at home, at rest, and could not be. She drew the bedclothes up to her own eyes, and over and over, for comfort, repeated to herself the nursery rhyme:

  Mary, Mary, quite contrary,

  How does your garden grow?

  Silver bells and cockle shells

  And pretty girls all of a row!

  Chapter Nineteen

  IF you had examined Hilary Cherrell, Vicar of St Augustine’s-in-the-Meads, in the privacy that lies behind all appearance, all spoken words, even all human gesture, you would have found that he did not really believe his faithful activity was leading anywhere. But to ‘serve’ was bred into his blood and bone, as they serve, that is, who lead and direct. As a setter dog, untrained, taken for a walk, will instantly begin to range, as a Dalmatian dog, taken out riding, will follow from the first under the heels of the horse, so was it bred into Hilary, coming of families who for generations had manned the Services, to wear himself out, leading, directing and doing things for the people round him, without conviction that in his leadership or ministrations he was more than marking the time of his own duty. In an age when doubt obscured everything and the temptation to sneer at caste and tradition was irresistible, he illustrated an ‘order’ bred to go on doing its job, not because it saw benefit to others, not because it sighted advantage to self, but because to turn tail on the job was equivalent to desertion. Hilary never dreamed of justifying his ‘order’ or explaining the servitude to which his father the diplomat, his uncle the Bishop, his brothers the soldier, the ‘curator’, and the judge (for Lionel had just been appointed) were, in their different ways, committed. He thought of them and himself as just ‘plugging along’. Besides, each of his activities had some specious advantage which he could point to, but which, in his heart, he suspected of being graven on paper rather than on stone.

  He had dealt with a manifold correspondence when, at nine-thirty on the morning after the reappearance of Ferse, Adrian entered his somewhat threadbare study. Among Adrian’s numerous male friends Hilary alone understood and appreciated his brother’s feelings and position. There were but two years between them in age, they had been fast chums as boys; were both mountaineers, accustomed in pre-war days to each other’s company in awkward ascents and descents still more awkward; had both been to the war, Hilary as Padre in France, Adrian, who spoke Arabic, on liaison work in the East; and they had very different temperaments, always an advantage to abiding comradeship. There was no need of spiritual discovery between them, and they went at once into Committee of Ways and Means.

  ‘Any news this morning?’ asked Hilary.

  ‘Dinny reports all quiet; but sooner or later the strain of being in the same house is bound to break down his control. For the moment the feeling of being home and free may be enough; but I don’t give that more than a week. I’m going down to the Home, but they’ll know no more than we.’

  ‘Forgive me, old man, but normal life with her would be best.’

  Adrian’s face quivered.

  ‘It’s beyond human power, Hilary. There’s something about such a relationship too cruel for words. It shouldn’t be asked of a woman.’

  ‘Unless the poor fellow’s going to stay sane.’

  ‘The decision’s not for you, or me, or him – it’s for her; it’s more than anyone ought to have to bear. Don’t forget what she went through before he went into the Home. He ought to be got out of the house, Hilary.’

  ‘It would be simpler if she took asylum.’

  ‘Who would give it her, except myself, and that would send him over the edge again for a certainty.’

  ‘If she could put up with the conditions here, we could take her,’ said Hilary.

  ‘But the children?’

  ‘We could squeeze them in. But to leave him alone and idle wouldn’t help him to stay sane. Could he do any work?’

  ‘I don’t suppose he could. Four years of that would rot any man. And who’d give him a job? If I could get him to come to me!’

  ‘Dinny and that other young woman said that he looks and talks all right.’

  ‘In a way he does. Those people down there may have some suggestion.’

  Hilary took his brother’s arm.

  ‘Old boy, it’s ghastly for you. But ten to one it won’t be so bad as we think. I’ll talk to May, and if, after you’ve seen those people, you think asylum here is the best thing for Diana – offer it.’

  Adrian pressed the hand within his arm.

  ‘I’ll get off now and catch my train.’

  Left to himself Hilary stood frowning. He had seen in his time so much of the inscrutability of Providence that he had given up classing it as benevolent even in his sermons. On the other hand he had seen many people by sheer tenacity defeat many misfortunes, and many other people, defeated by their misfortunes, live well enough on them afterwards; he was convinced, therefore, that misery was over rated, and that what was lost was usually won. The thing was to keep going and not worry. At this moment he received his second visitor, the girl Millicent Pole, who, though acquitted, had lost her job at Petter and Poplin’s; notoriety not being dispelled by legal innocence.

  She came, by appointment, in a neat blue dress, and all her money, as it were, in her stockings, and stood waiting to be catechized.

  ‘Well, Millie, how’s your sister?’

  ‘She went back yesterday, Mr Cherrell.’

  ‘Was she fit to go?’

  ‘I don’t think so, but she said if she didn’t, she’d likely lose her job, too.’

  ‘I don’t see that.’

  ‘She said if she stayed away any longer they’d think we was in that together.’

  ‘Well, and what about you? Would you like to go into the country?’

  ‘Oh, no.’

  Hilary contemplated her. A pretty girl, with a pretty figure and ankles, and an easy-going mouth; it looked to him, frankly, as if she ought to be married.

  ‘Got a young man, Millie?’

  The girl smiled.

  ‘Not very special, Sir.’

  ‘Not special enough to get married?’

  ‘He don’t want to, so far as I can see.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I’m not in a hurry.’

  ‘Well, have you any views?’

  ‘I’d like – well, I’d like to be a mannykin.’

  ‘I daresay. Have Petters given you a reference?’

  ‘Yes, and they said they were sorry I had to go; but being so much in the papers the other girls –’

  ‘Yes. Millie, you got yourself into that scrape, you know. I stood up for you because you were hard pressed, but I’m not blind. You’ve got to promise me that you won’t do that again; it’s the first step to blue ruin.’

  The girl made just the answer he expected – none.

  ‘I’m going to turn you over to my wife now. Consult with her, and if you can’t get a job like your old one, we might give you some quick training, and get you a post as a waitress. How would that suit yo
u?’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind that.’

  She gave him a look half-shy, half-smiling; and Hilary thought: ‘Faces like that ought to be endowed by the State; there’s no other way to keep them safe.’

  ‘Shake hands, Millie, and remember what I said. Your mother and father were friends of mine, and you’re going to remain a credit to them.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Cherrell.’

  ‘You bet!’ thought Hilary, and led her into the dining-room opposite, where his wife was working a typing machine. Back in his study he pulled out a drawer of his bureau and prepared to wrestle with accounts, for if there were a place where money was of more importance than in this slum centre of a Christendom whose religion scorns money, Hilary had yet to meet with it.

  ‘The lilies of the field,’ he thought, ‘toil not, neither do they spin, but they beg all right. How the deuce am I going to get enough to keep the Institute going over the year?’ The problem had not been solved when the maid said:

  ‘Captain and Miss Cherrell, and Miss Tasburgh.’

  ‘Phew!’ he thought: ‘They don’t let grass grow.’

  He had not seen his nephew since his return from the Hallorsen Expedition, and was struck by the darkened and aged look of his face.

  ‘Congratulations, old man,’ he said. ‘I heard something of your aspiration, yesterday.’

  ‘Uncle,’ said Dinny, ‘prepare for the role of Solomon.’

  ‘Solomon’s reputation for wisdom, my irreverent niece, is perhaps the thinnest in history. Consider the number of his wives. Well?’

  ‘Uncle Hilary,’ said Hubert: ‘I’ve had news that a warrant may be issued for my extradition, over that muleteer I shot. Jean wants the marriage at once in spite of that –’

  ‘Because of that,’ put in Jean.

  ‘I say it’s too chancey altogether; and not fair to her. But we agreed to put it to you, and abide by your judgement.’

  ‘Thank you,’ murmured Hilary; ‘and why to me?’

  ‘Because,’ said Dinny, ‘you have to make more decisions-while-they-wait than anybody, except police magistrates.’

  Hilary grimaced. ‘With your knowledge of Scripture, Dinny, you might have remembered the camel and the last straw. However –!’ And he looked from Jean to Hubert and back again.