”
“Why! What a thing!”
“Yes. She can’t get over it.”
Gradman looked up at the young man’s face in the twilight.
“You mustn’t be down-‘earted,” he said. “She’ll come round. Misfortunes will happen. The family’s been told, I suppose. There’s just one thing, Mr. Michael–his first wife, Mrs. Irene, that married Mr. Jolyon after; she’s still living, they say; she might like to send a message that byegones were byegones, in case he came round.”
“I don’t know, Mr. Gradman, I don’t know.”
“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass–‘e was greatly attached to ‘er at one time.”
“So I believe, but there are things that–. Still, Mrs. Dartie knows her address, if you like to ask her. She’s here, you know.”
“I’ll turn it over. I remember Mrs. Irene’s wedding–very pale she was; a beautiful young woman, too.”
“I believe so.”
“The present one–being French, I suppose, she shows her feelings. However–if he’s unconscious–” It seemed to him that the young man’s face looked funny, and he added: “I’ve never heard much of her. Not very happy with his wives, I’m afraid, he hasn’t been.”
“Some men aren’t, you know, Mr. Gradman. It’s being too near, I suppose.”
“Ah!” said Gradman: “It’s one thing or the other, and that’s a fact. Mrs. G. and I have never had a difference–not to speak of, in fifty-two years, and that’s going back, as the saying is. Well, I mustn’t keep you from Miss Fleur. She’ll need cossetting. Just cold beef and a pickle. You’ll let me know if I’m wanted–any time, day or night. And if Mrs. Dartie’d like to see me I’m at her service.”
The talk had done him good. That young man was a nicer young fellow than he’d thought. He felt that he could almost relish a pickle. After he had done so a message came: Would he go to Mrs. Dartie in the drawing room?
“Wait for me, my dear,” he said to the maid; “I’m strange here.”
Having washed his hands and passed a towel over his face, he followed her down the stairs of the hushed house. What a room to be sure! Rather empty, but in apple-pie order, with its cream-coloured panels, and its china, and its grand piano. Winifred Dartie was sitting on a sofa before a wood fire. She rose and took his hand.
“Such a comfort to see you, Gradman,” she said. “You’re the oldest friend we have.”
Her face looked strange, as if she wanted to cry and had forgotten how. He had known her as a child, as a fashionable young woman, had helped to draw her marriage settlement, and shaken his head over her husband many a time–the trouble he’d had in finding out exactly what that gentleman owed, after he fell down the staircase in Paris and broke his neck! And every year still he prepared her income tax return.
“A good cry,” he said, “would do you good, and I shouldn’t blame you. But we mustn’t say ‘die’; Mr. Soames has a good constitution, and it’s not as if he drank; perhaps he’ll pull round after all.”
She shook her head. Her face had a square grim look that reminded him of her old Aunt Ann. Underneath all her fashionableness she’d borne a lot–she had, when you came to think of it.
“It struck him here,” she said; “a slanting blow on the right of the head. I shall miss him terribly; he’s the only–” Gradman patted her hand.
“Ye-es, ye-es! But we must look on the bright side. If he comes round, I shall be there.” What exact comfort he thought this was, he could not have made clear. “I did wonder whether he would like Mrs. Irene told. I don’t like the idea of his going with a grudge on his mind. It’s an old story, of course, but at the Judgment Day–”
A faint smile was lost in the square lines round Winifred’s mouth.
“We needn’t bother him with that, Gradman; it’s out of fashion.”
Gradman emitted a sound, as though, within him, faith and respect for the family he had served for sixty years had bumped against each other.
“Well, you know best,” he said, “I shouldn’t like him to go with anything on his conscience.”
“On HER conscience, Gradman.”
Gradman stared at a Dresden shepherdess.
“In a case of forgivin’, you never know. I wanted to speak to him too, about his steel shares; they’re not all they might be. But we must just take our chance, I suppose. I’m glad your father was spared, Mr. James WOULD have taken on. It won’t be like the same world again, if Mr. Soames–”
She had put her hand up to her mouth and turned away. Fashion had dropped from her thickened figure. Much affected, Gradman turned to the door.
“Shan’t leave my clothes off, in case I’m wanted. I’ve got everything here. Good-night!”
He went upstairs again, tiptoeing past the door, and, entering his room, switched on the light. They had taken away the pickles; turned his bed down, laid his flannel nightgown out. They took a lot of trouble! And, sinking on his knees, he prayed in a muffled murmur, varying the usual words, and ending: “And for Mr. Soames, O Lord, I specially commend him body and soul. Forgive him his trespasses, and deliver him from all ‘ardness of ’eart and impurities, before he goes ‘ence, and make him as a little lamb again, that he may find favour in Thy sight. They faithful servant. Amen.” And, for some time after he had finished, he remained kneeling on the very soft carpet, breathing-in the familiar reek of flannel and old times. He rose easier in his mind. Removing his boots, laced and square-toed, and his old frock coat, he put on his Jaeger gown, and shut the window, to keep out the night air. Then taking the eiderdown, he placed a large handkerchief over his bald head, and, switching off the light, sat down in the armchair, with the eiderdown over his knees.
What an ‘ush after London, to be sure, so quiet you could hear yourself think! For some reason he thought of Queen Victoria’s first Jubilee, when he was a youngster of forty, and Mr. James had given him and Mrs. G. two seats. They had seen the whole thing–first chop! – the Guards and the procession, the carriages, the horses, the Queen and the Royal family. A beautiful summer day–a real summer that; not like the summers lately. And everything going on, as if it’d go on for ever, with three per cents at nearly par if he remembered, and all going to church regular. And only that same year, a bit later, Mr. Soames had had his first upset. And another memory came. Queer he should remember that to-night, with Mr. Soames lying there–must have been quite soon after the Jubilee, too! Going with a lease that wouldn’t bear to wait to Mr. Soames’s private house, Montpellier Square, and being shown into the dining-room, and hearing some one singing and playing on the “pianner.” He had opened the door to listen. Why–he could remember the words now! About “laying on the grass,” “I die, I faint, I fail,” “the champaign odours,” something “on your cheek” and something “pale.” Fancy that! And, suddenly, the door had opened and out she’d come–Mrs. Irene–in a frock–ah!
“Are you waiting for Mr. Forsyte? Won’t you come in and have some tea?” And he’d gone in and had tea, sitting on the edge of a chair that didn’t look too firm, all gilt and spindley. And she on the sofa in that frock, pouring it out, and saying:
“Are you fond of music, then, Mr. Gradman?” Soft, a soft look, with her dark eyes and her hair–not red and not what you’d call gold–but like a turned leaf–um? – a beautiful young woman, sad and sort of sympathetic in the face. He’d often thought of her–he could see her now! And then Mr. Soames coming in, and her face all closing up like–like a book. Queer to remember that to-night!… Dear me!… How dark and quiet it was! That poor young daughter, that it was all about! It was to be ‘oped she’d sleep! Ye-es! And what would Mrs. G. say if she could see HIM sitting in a chair like this, with his teeth in, too. Ah! Well–she’d never seen Mr. Soames, never seen the family–Maria hadn’t! But what an ‘ush! And slowly but surely old Gradman’s mouth fell open, and he broke the hush.
Beyond the closed window the moon rode up, a full and brilliant moon, so that the stilly darkened country dissolved into shape and shadow, and the owls hooted, and, far off, a dog bayed; and flowers in the garden became each a little presence in a night-time carnival graven into stillness; and on the gleaming river every fallen leaf that drifted down carried a moonbeam; while, above, the trees stayed, quiet, measured and illumined, quiet as the very sky, for the wind stirred not.
Chapter XV.
SOAMES TAKES THE FERRY
There was only just life in Soames. Two nights and two days they had waited, watching the unmoving bandaged head. Specialists had come, given their verdict: “Nothing to be done by way of operation”; and gone again. The doctor who had presided over Fleur’s birth was in charge. Though never quite forgiven by Soames for the anxiety he had caused on that occasion, “the fellow” had hung on, attending the family. By his instructions they watched the patient’s eyes; at any sign, they were to send for him at once.
Michael, from whom Fleur seemed inconsolably caught away, gave himself up to Kit, walking and talking and trying to keep the child unaware. He did not visit the still figure, not from indifference, but because he felt an intruder there. He had removed all the pictures left in the gallery, and, storing them with those which Soames had thrown from the window, had listed them carefully. The fire had destroyed eleven out of the eighty-four.
Annette had cried, and was feeling better. The thought of life without Soames was for her strange and–possible; precisely, in fact, like the thought of life with him. She wished him to recover, but if he didn’t she would live in France.
Winifred, who shared the watches, lived much and sadly in the past. Soames had been her mainstay throughout thirty-four years chequered by Montague Dartie, had continued her mainstay in the thirteen unchequered years since. She did not see how things could ever be cosy again. She had a heart, and could not look at that still figure without trying to remember how to cry. Letters came to her from the family worded with a sort of anxious astonishment that Soames should have had such a thing happen to him.
Gradman, who had taken a bath, and changed his trousers to black, was deep in calculations and correspondence with the Insurance firm. He walked, too, in the kitchen garden, out of sight of the house; for he could not get over the fact that Mr. James had lived to be ninety, and Mr. Timothy a hundred, to say nothing of the others. And, stopping mournfully before the seakail or the Brussels sprouts he would shake his head.
Smither had come down to be with Winifred, but was of little use, except to say: “Poor Mr. Soames! Poor dear Mr. Soames! To think of it! And he so careful of himself, and everybody!”
For that was it! Ignorant of the long and stealthy march of passion, and of the state to which it had reduced Fleur; ignorant of how Soames had watched her, seen that beloved young part of his very self fail, reach the edge of things and stand there balancing; ignorant of Fleur’s reckless desperation beneath that falling picture, and her father’s knowledge thereof–ignorant of all this everybody felt aggrieved. It seemed to them that a mere bolt from the blue, rather than the inexorable secret culmination of an old, old story, had striken one who of all men seemed the least liable to accident. How should they tell that it was not so accidental as all that!
But Fleur knew well enough that her desperate mood had destroyed her father, just as surely as if she had flung herself into the river and he had been drowned in saving her.
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“Why! What a thing!”
“Yes. She can’t get over it.”
Gradman looked up at the young man’s face in the twilight.
“You mustn’t be down-‘earted,” he said. “She’ll come round. Misfortunes will happen. The family’s been told, I suppose. There’s just one thing, Mr. Michael–his first wife, Mrs. Irene, that married Mr. Jolyon after; she’s still living, they say; she might like to send a message that byegones were byegones, in case he came round.”
“I don’t know, Mr. Gradman, I don’t know.”
“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass–‘e was greatly attached to ‘er at one time.”
“So I believe, but there are things that–. Still, Mrs. Dartie knows her address, if you like to ask her. She’s here, you know.”
“I’ll turn it over. I remember Mrs. Irene’s wedding–very pale she was; a beautiful young woman, too.”
“I believe so.”
“The present one–being French, I suppose, she shows her feelings. However–if he’s unconscious–” It seemed to him that the young man’s face looked funny, and he added: “I’ve never heard much of her. Not very happy with his wives, I’m afraid, he hasn’t been.”
“Some men aren’t, you know, Mr. Gradman. It’s being too near, I suppose.”
“Ah!” said Gradman: “It’s one thing or the other, and that’s a fact. Mrs. G. and I have never had a difference–not to speak of, in fifty-two years, and that’s going back, as the saying is. Well, I mustn’t keep you from Miss Fleur. She’ll need cossetting. Just cold beef and a pickle. You’ll let me know if I’m wanted–any time, day or night. And if Mrs. Dartie’d like to see me I’m at her service.”
The talk had done him good. That young man was a nicer young fellow than he’d thought. He felt that he could almost relish a pickle. After he had done so a message came: Would he go to Mrs. Dartie in the drawing room?
“Wait for me, my dear,” he said to the maid; “I’m strange here.”
Having washed his hands and passed a towel over his face, he followed her down the stairs of the hushed house. What a room to be sure! Rather empty, but in apple-pie order, with its cream-coloured panels, and its china, and its grand piano. Winifred Dartie was sitting on a sofa before a wood fire. She rose and took his hand.
“Such a comfort to see you, Gradman,” she said. “You’re the oldest friend we have.”
Her face looked strange, as if she wanted to cry and had forgotten how. He had known her as a child, as a fashionable young woman, had helped to draw her marriage settlement, and shaken his head over her husband many a time–the trouble he’d had in finding out exactly what that gentleman owed, after he fell down the staircase in Paris and broke his neck! And every year still he prepared her income tax return.
“A good cry,” he said, “would do you good, and I shouldn’t blame you. But we mustn’t say ‘die’; Mr. Soames has a good constitution, and it’s not as if he drank; perhaps he’ll pull round after all.”
She shook her head. Her face had a square grim look that reminded him of her old Aunt Ann. Underneath all her fashionableness she’d borne a lot–she had, when you came to think of it.
“It struck him here,” she said; “a slanting blow on the right of the head. I shall miss him terribly; he’s the only–” Gradman patted her hand.
“Ye-es, ye-es! But we must look on the bright side. If he comes round, I shall be there.” What exact comfort he thought this was, he could not have made clear. “I did wonder whether he would like Mrs. Irene told. I don’t like the idea of his going with a grudge on his mind. It’s an old story, of course, but at the Judgment Day–”
A faint smile was lost in the square lines round Winifred’s mouth.
“We needn’t bother him with that, Gradman; it’s out of fashion.”
Gradman emitted a sound, as though, within him, faith and respect for the family he had served for sixty years had bumped against each other.
“Well, you know best,” he said, “I shouldn’t like him to go with anything on his conscience.”
“On HER conscience, Gradman.”
Gradman stared at a Dresden shepherdess.
“In a case of forgivin’, you never know. I wanted to speak to him too, about his steel shares; they’re not all they might be. But we must just take our chance, I suppose. I’m glad your father was spared, Mr. James WOULD have taken on. It won’t be like the same world again, if Mr. Soames–”
She had put her hand up to her mouth and turned away. Fashion had dropped from her thickened figure. Much affected, Gradman turned to the door.
“Shan’t leave my clothes off, in case I’m wanted. I’ve got everything here. Good-night!”
He went upstairs again, tiptoeing past the door, and, entering his room, switched on the light. They had taken away the pickles; turned his bed down, laid his flannel nightgown out. They took a lot of trouble! And, sinking on his knees, he prayed in a muffled murmur, varying the usual words, and ending: “And for Mr. Soames, O Lord, I specially commend him body and soul. Forgive him his trespasses, and deliver him from all ‘ardness of ’eart and impurities, before he goes ‘ence, and make him as a little lamb again, that he may find favour in Thy sight. They faithful servant. Amen.” And, for some time after he had finished, he remained kneeling on the very soft carpet, breathing-in the familiar reek of flannel and old times. He rose easier in his mind. Removing his boots, laced and square-toed, and his old frock coat, he put on his Jaeger gown, and shut the window, to keep out the night air. Then taking the eiderdown, he placed a large handkerchief over his bald head, and, switching off the light, sat down in the armchair, with the eiderdown over his knees.
What an ‘ush after London, to be sure, so quiet you could hear yourself think! For some reason he thought of Queen Victoria’s first Jubilee, when he was a youngster of forty, and Mr. James had given him and Mrs. G. two seats. They had seen the whole thing–first chop! – the Guards and the procession, the carriages, the horses, the Queen and the Royal family. A beautiful summer day–a real summer that; not like the summers lately. And everything going on, as if it’d go on for ever, with three per cents at nearly par if he remembered, and all going to church regular. And only that same year, a bit later, Mr. Soames had had his first upset. And another memory came. Queer he should remember that to-night, with Mr. Soames lying there–must have been quite soon after the Jubilee, too! Going with a lease that wouldn’t bear to wait to Mr. Soames’s private house, Montpellier Square, and being shown into the dining-room, and hearing some one singing and playing on the “pianner.” He had opened the door to listen. Why–he could remember the words now! About “laying on the grass,” “I die, I faint, I fail,” “the champaign odours,” something “on your cheek” and something “pale.” Fancy that! And, suddenly, the door had opened and out she’d come–Mrs. Irene–in a frock–ah!
“Are you waiting for Mr. Forsyte? Won’t you come in and have some tea?” And he’d gone in and had tea, sitting on the edge of a chair that didn’t look too firm, all gilt and spindley. And she on the sofa in that frock, pouring it out, and saying:
“Are you fond of music, then, Mr. Gradman?” Soft, a soft look, with her dark eyes and her hair–not red and not what you’d call gold–but like a turned leaf–um? – a beautiful young woman, sad and sort of sympathetic in the face. He’d often thought of her–he could see her now! And then Mr. Soames coming in, and her face all closing up like–like a book. Queer to remember that to-night!… Dear me!… How dark and quiet it was! That poor young daughter, that it was all about! It was to be ‘oped she’d sleep! Ye-es! And what would Mrs. G. say if she could see HIM sitting in a chair like this, with his teeth in, too. Ah! Well–she’d never seen Mr. Soames, never seen the family–Maria hadn’t! But what an ‘ush! And slowly but surely old Gradman’s mouth fell open, and he broke the hush.
Beyond the closed window the moon rode up, a full and brilliant moon, so that the stilly darkened country dissolved into shape and shadow, and the owls hooted, and, far off, a dog bayed; and flowers in the garden became each a little presence in a night-time carnival graven into stillness; and on the gleaming river every fallen leaf that drifted down carried a moonbeam; while, above, the trees stayed, quiet, measured and illumined, quiet as the very sky, for the wind stirred not.
Chapter XV.
SOAMES TAKES THE FERRY
There was only just life in Soames. Two nights and two days they had waited, watching the unmoving bandaged head. Specialists had come, given their verdict: “Nothing to be done by way of operation”; and gone again. The doctor who had presided over Fleur’s birth was in charge. Though never quite forgiven by Soames for the anxiety he had caused on that occasion, “the fellow” had hung on, attending the family. By his instructions they watched the patient’s eyes; at any sign, they were to send for him at once.
Michael, from whom Fleur seemed inconsolably caught away, gave himself up to Kit, walking and talking and trying to keep the child unaware. He did not visit the still figure, not from indifference, but because he felt an intruder there. He had removed all the pictures left in the gallery, and, storing them with those which Soames had thrown from the window, had listed them carefully. The fire had destroyed eleven out of the eighty-four.
Annette had cried, and was feeling better. The thought of life without Soames was for her strange and–possible; precisely, in fact, like the thought of life with him. She wished him to recover, but if he didn’t she would live in France.
Winifred, who shared the watches, lived much and sadly in the past. Soames had been her mainstay throughout thirty-four years chequered by Montague Dartie, had continued her mainstay in the thirteen unchequered years since. She did not see how things could ever be cosy again. She had a heart, and could not look at that still figure without trying to remember how to cry. Letters came to her from the family worded with a sort of anxious astonishment that Soames should have had such a thing happen to him.
Gradman, who had taken a bath, and changed his trousers to black, was deep in calculations and correspondence with the Insurance firm. He walked, too, in the kitchen garden, out of sight of the house; for he could not get over the fact that Mr. James had lived to be ninety, and Mr. Timothy a hundred, to say nothing of the others. And, stopping mournfully before the seakail or the Brussels sprouts he would shake his head.
Smither had come down to be with Winifred, but was of little use, except to say: “Poor Mr. Soames! Poor dear Mr. Soames! To think of it! And he so careful of himself, and everybody!”
For that was it! Ignorant of the long and stealthy march of passion, and of the state to which it had reduced Fleur; ignorant of how Soames had watched her, seen that beloved young part of his very self fail, reach the edge of things and stand there balancing; ignorant of Fleur’s reckless desperation beneath that falling picture, and her father’s knowledge thereof–ignorant of all this everybody felt aggrieved. It seemed to them that a mere bolt from the blue, rather than the inexorable secret culmination of an old, old story, had striken one who of all men seemed the least liable to accident. How should they tell that it was not so accidental as all that!
But Fleur knew well enough that her desperate mood had destroyed her father, just as surely as if she had flung herself into the river and he had been drowned in saving her.
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