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!