His boy was seldom absent from Jolyon's mind in the days which followed

the first walk with Irene in Richmond Park. No further news had come;

enquiries at the War Office elicited nothing; nor could he expect to

hear from June and Holly for three weeks at least. In these days he felt

how insufficient were his memories of Jolly, and what an amateur of a

father he had been. There was not a single memory in which anger played

a part; not one reconciliation, because there had never been a rupture;

nor one heart-to-heart confidence, not even when Jolly's mother

died. Nothing but half-ironical affection. He had been too afraid of

committing himself in any direction, for fear of losing his liberty, or

interfering with that of his boy.

Only in Irene's presence had he relief, highly complicated by the

ever-growing perception of how divided he was between her and his son.

With Jolly was bound up all that sense of continuity and social creed of

which he had drunk deeply in his youth and again during his boy's public

school and varsity life--all that sense of not going back on what father

and son expected of each other. With Irene was bound up all his delight

in beauty and in Nature. And he seemed to know less and less which was

the stronger within him. From such sentimental paralysis he was rudely

awakened, however, one afternoon, just as he was starting off to

Richmond, by a young man with a bicycle and a face oddly familiar, who

came forward faintly smiling.

"Mr. Jolyon Forsyte? Thank you!" Placing an envelope in Jolyon's hand he

wheeled off the path and rode away. Bewildered, Jolyon opened it.

"Admiralty Probate and Divorce, Forsyte v. Forsyte and Forsyte!"

A sensation of shame and disgust was followed by the instant reaction

'Why, here's the very thing you want, and you don't like it!' But she

must have had one too; and he must go to her at once. He turned things

over as he went along. It was an ironical business. For, whatever the

Scriptures said about the heart, it took more than mere longings to

satisfy the law. They could perfectly well defend this suit, or at least

in good faith try to. But the idea of doing so revolted Jolyon. If not

her lover in deed he was in desire, and he knew that she was ready

to come to him. Her face had told him so. Not that he exaggerated her

feeling for him. She had had her grand passion, and he could not expect

another from her at his age. But she had trust in him, affection for

him, and must feel that he would be a refuge. Surely she would not ask

him to defend the suit, knowing that he adored her! Thank Heaven she had

not that maddening British conscientiousness which refused happiness

for the sake of refusing! She must rejoice at this chance of being free

after seventeen years of death in life! As to publicity, the fat was in

the fire! To defend the suit would not take away the slur. Jolyon had

all the proper feeling of a Forsyte whose privacy is threatened: If he

was to be hung by the Law, by all means let it be for a sheep! Moreover

the notion of standing in a witness box and swearing to the truth that

no gesture, not even a word of love had passed between them seemed

to him more degrading than to take the tacit stigma of being an

adulterer--more truly degrading, considering the feeling in his heart,

and just as bad and painful for his children. The thought of explaining

away, if he could, before a judge and twelve average Englishmen, their

meetings in Paris, and the walks in Richmond Park, horrified him. The

brutality and hypocritical censoriousness of the whole process; the

probability that they would not be believed--the mere vision of her,

whom he looked on as the embodiment of Nature and of Beauty, standing

there before all those suspicious, gloating eyes was hideous to him.

No, no! To defend a suit only made a London holiday, and sold the

newspapers. A thousand times better accept what Soames and the gods had

sent!




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