On the afternoon that Soames crossed to France a cablegram was received
by Jolyon at Robin Hill:
"Your son down with enteric no immediate danger will cable again."
It reached a household already agitated by the imminent departure of
June, whose berth was booked for the following day. She was, indeed, in
the act of confiding Eric Cobbley and his family to her father's care
when the message arrived.
The resolution to become a Red Cross nurse, taken under stimulus of
Jolly's enlistment, had been loyally fulfilled with the irritation
and regret which all Forsytes feel at what curtails their individual
liberties. Enthusiastic at first about the 'wonderfulness' of the work,
she had begun after a month to feel that she could train herself so much
better than others could train her. And if Holly had not insisted on
following her example, and being trained too, she must inevitably have
'cried off.' The departure of Jolly and Val with their troop in April
had further stiffened her failing resolve. But now, on the point of
departure, the thought of leaving Eric Cobbley, with a wife and two
children, adrift in the cold waters of an unappreciative world weighed
on her so that she was still in danger of backing out. The reading of
that cablegram, with its disquieting reality, clinched the matter. She
saw herself already nursing Jolly--for of course they would let her
nurse her own brother! Jolyon--ever wide and doubtful--had no such hope.
Poor June!
Could any Forsyte of her generation grasp how rude and brutal life was?
Ever since he knew of his boy's arrival at Cape Town the thought of
him had been a kind of recurrent sickness in Jolyon. He could not get
reconciled to the feeling that Jolly was in danger all the time. The
cablegram, grave though it was, was almost a relief. He was now safe
from bullets, anyway. And yet--this enteric was a virulent disease! The
Times was full of deaths therefrom. Why could he not be lying out there
in that up-country hospital, and his boy safe at home? The un-Forsytean
self-sacrifice of his three children, indeed, had quite bewildered
Jolyon. He would eagerly change places with Jolly, because he loved his
boy; but no such personal motive was influencing them. He could only
think that it marked the decline of the Forsyte type.
Late that afternoon Holly came out to him under the old oak-tree. She
had grown up very much during these last months of hospital training
away from home. And, seeing her approach, he thought: 'She has more
sense than June, child though she is; more wisdom. Thank God she isn't
going out.' She had seated herself in the swing, very silent and still.
'She feels this,' thought Jolyon, 'as much as I' and, seeing her eyes
fixed on him, he said: "Don't take it to heart too much, my child. If he
weren't ill, he might be in much greater danger."