Irene Forsyte

“ The announcement in the marriage column of The Times, “Jolyon Forsyte to Irene, only daughter of the late Professor Heron,” had occasioned doubt whether Irene had been justly described. And yet, on the whole, relief was felt that she had not been entered as “Irene, late the wife,” or “the divorced wife,” “of Soames Forsyte.” Altogether, there had been a kind of sublimity from the first about the way the family had taken that “affair.” As James had phrased it, “There it was!” No use to fuss! ”

“ He had become conscious of a woman and a youth standing between him and the “Future Town.” Their backs were turned; but very suddenly Soames put his catalogue before his face, and drawing his hat forward, gazed through the slit between. No mistaking that back, elegant as ever though the hair above had gone grey. Irene! His divorced wife—Irene! And this, no doubt, was—her son—by that fellow Jolyon Forsyte—their boy, six months older than his own girl! And mumbling over in his mind the bitter days of his divorce, he rose to get out of sight, but quickly sat down again. ”

“ Irene’s eyes followed her.
“No,” she said, prodding the ground with her parasol, “never lonely. One has always one’s shadow.”
Soames understood; and, looking at her hard, he exclaimed:
“Well, it’s your own fault. You can be free of it at any moment. Irene, come back to me, and be free.”
Irene laughed.
“Don’t!” cried Soames, stamping his foot; “it’s inhuman. Listen! Is there any condition I can make which will bring you back to me? If I promise you a separate house—and just a visit now and then?”
Irene rose, something wild suddenly in her face and figure. ”

“ And gazing down into the street, where figures were passing from pool to pool of the light from the high lamps, he thought: “Nothing seems any good—nothing seems worth while. I’m lonely—that’s the trouble.”
He closed his eyes; and at once he seemed to see Irene, in a dark street below a church—passing, turning her neck so that he caught the gleam of her eyes and her white forehead under a little dark hat, which had gold spangles on it and a veil hanging down behind. ”

“ He remembered George Forsyte—whose brothers Roger and Eustace had been at Harrow and Eton—towering up on the top of the drag waving a light-blue flag with one hand and a dark-blue flag with the other, and shouting “Etroow-Harrton!” Just when everybody was silent, like the buffoon he had always been; and Eustace got up to the nines below, too dandified to wear any colour or take any notice. H'm! Old days, and Irene in grey silk shot with palest green. He looked, sideways, at Fleur's face. Rather colourless-no light, no eagerness! That love affair was preying on her—a bad business! ”

“ One woman was not the same as another. Many a time had he tried to think that in the old days of his thwarted married life; and he had always failed. He was failing now. He was trying to think Annette the same as that other. But she was not, she had not the lure of that old passion. “And Irene’s my wife,” he thought, “my legal wife. I have done nothing to put her away from me. Why shouldn’t she come back to me? It’s the right thing, the lawful thing. It makes no scandal, no disturbance. If it’s disagreeable to her—but why should it be? I’m not a leper, and she—she’s no longer in love!” ”

“ On just such a day as this Soames had got from Irene the promise he had asked her for so often. Seated on the fallen trunk of a tree, he had promised for the twentieth time that if their marriage were not a success, she should be as free as if she had never married him!
“Do you swear it?” she had said. A few days back she had reminded him of that oath. He had answered: “Nonsense! I couldn’t have sworn any such thing!” By some awkward fatality he remembered it now. What queer things men would swear for the sake of women! He would have sworn it at any time to gain her! ”

“ And last, not least—for he was no more outside the radiation of family gossip than any other Forsyte—he had now heard the sinister, indefinite, but none the less disturbing rumour about Bosinney, and his pride was wounded to the quick.
Characteristically, his irritation turned not against Irene but against Soames. The idea that his nephew’s wife (why couldn’t the fellow take better care of her—Oh! quaint injustice! as though Soames could possibly take more care!) —should be drawing to herself Jun’s lover, was intolerably humiliating. ”

“ And he had long to wait, watching Irene bloom, the lines of her young figure softening, the stronger blood deepening the gleam of her eyes, and warming her face to a creamy glow; and at each visit he proposed to her, and when that visit was at an end, took her refusal away with him, back to London, sore at heart, but steadfast and silent as the grave. He tried to come at the secret springs of her resistance; only once had he a gleam of light. It was at one of those assembly dances, which afford the only outlet to the passions of the population of seaside watering-places. ”

“ Nothing annoyed Soames so much as cheerfulness—an indecent, extravagant sort of quality, which had no relation to facts. The mixture of his desires and hopes was, in a word, becoming torture; and lately the thought had come to him that perhaps Irene knew she was being shadowed: It was this which finally decided him to go and see for himself; to go and once more try to break down her repugnance, her refusal to make her own and his path comparatively smooth once more. ”

“ It was an axiom with the Forsytes that people did not go anywhere unless they wanted something. "Came to talk about her lover, I suppose?"
Irene made no reply.
"It looks to me," continued Soames, "as if she were sweeter on him than he is on her. She's always following him about." ”

“ Irene hung back, but again changed her mind, and went out to the carriage, James brooding over her closely, to make quite sure.
It was not before he had got her more than half way that he began: “Soames is very fond of you—he won’t have anything said against you; why don’t you show him more affection?” ”

“ He heard Irene say softly: “Just one minute.” In the little drawing-room when the door was shut, he asked gravely: “One of your protégées?”
“Yes. Now thanks to you, I can do something for her.”
He stood, staring, and stroking that chin whose strength had frightened so many in its time. The idea of her thus actually in contact with this outcast grieved and frightened him. What could she do for them? Nothing. Only soil and make trouble for herself, perhaps. And he said: “Take care, my dear! The world puts the worst construction on everything.” ”

“ Fleur was smiling. In this age, when young people prided themselves on going their own ways and paying no attention to any sort of decent prejudice, he had said the very thing to excite her wilfulness. Then, recollecting the expression on Irene's face, he breathed again.
“What sort of a quarrel?” he heard Fleur say.
“About a house. It's ancient history for you. Your grandfather died the day you were born. He was ninety.”
“Ninety? Are there many Forsytes besides those in the Red Book?”
“I don't know,” said Soames. “They're all dispersed now. The old ones are dead, except Timothy.” ”

“ Since the ball at Roger’s he had seen too clearly how the land lay—he could put two and two together quicker than most men—and, with the example of his own son before his eyes, knew better than any Forsyte of them all that the pale flame singes men’s wings whether they will or no.
In the days before Jun’s engagement, when she and Mrs. Soames were always together, he had seen enough of Irene to feel the spell she cast over men. ”

“ But old Jolyon was thinking: “No money!” What fate could compare with that? Every other was involved in it.
“I wish you had come to me,” he said. “Why didn’t you?” But Irene did not answer.
“Because my name was Forsyte, I suppose? Or was it June who kept you away? How are you getting on now?” His eyes involuntarily swept her body. Perhaps even now she was—! And yet she wasn’t thin—not really!
“Oh! with my fifty pounds a year, I make just enough.” The answer did not reassure him; he had lost confidence. And that fellow Soames! ”

“ A brooding look came instantly on Irene’s face, and even James became conscious of the rigidity that took possession of her whole figure beneath the softness of its silk and lace clothing.
He was frightened by the effect he had produced, and like most men with but little courage, he sought at once to justify himself by bullying.
“You don’t seem to care about going about. Why don’t you drive down to Hurlingham with us? And go to the theatre now and then. At your time of life you ought to take an interest in things. You’re a young woman!” ”

“ And he hurried away out of the coppice, past the pond, up the hill. Oddly ironical—now he came to think of it—if Jon had taken the gruel of his discovery down in the coppice where his mother and Bosinney in those old days had made the plunge of acknowledging their love. Where he himself, on the log seat the Sunday morning he came back from Paris, had realised to the full that Irene had become the world to him. That would have been the place for Irony to tear the veil from before the eyes of Irene's boy! But he was not here! Where had he got to? One must find the poor chap! ”

“ Leaves fell, lives drifted down—Death! To decide about death! And no one to give him a hand. Life lost was lost for good. Let nothing go that you could keep; for, if it went, you couldn’t get it back. It left you bare, like those trees when they lost their leaves; barer and barer until you, too, withered and came down. And, by a queer somersault of thought, he seemed to see not Annette lying up there behind that window-pane on which the sun was shining, but Irene lying in their bedroom in Montpellier Square, as it might conceivably have been her fate to lie, sixteen years ago. ”

“ She would be sitting out there in the dark, under the Japanese sunshade, knitting. A beautiful, warm night....
In truth, June had come in that afternoon with shining eyes, and the words: “Soames is a brick! It’s splendid for Phil—the very thing for him!”
Irene’s face remaining dark and puzzled, she went on:
“Your new house at Robin Hill, of course. What? Don’t you know?”
Irene did not know.
“Oh! then, I suppose I oughtn’t to have told you!” Looking impatiently at her friend, she cried: “You look as if you didn’t care. ”

“ But this long tale is no scientific study of a period; it is rather an intimate incarnation of the disturbance that Beauty effects in the lives of men.
The figure of Irene, never, as the reader may possibly have observed, present, except through the senses of other characters, is a concretion of disturbing Beauty impinging on a possessive world.
One has noticed that readers, as they wade on through the salt waters of the Saga, are inclined more and more to pity Soames, and to think that in doing so they are in revolt against the mood of his creator. ”

“ He had the feeling that he hated it more than she—to him sex was so much easier to mention between man and woman than between man and man; and she had always been more natural and frank, not deeply secretive like his Forsyte self.
"I wonder if he will understand, even now, Jolyon? He's so young; and he shrinks from the physical."
"He gets that shrinking from my father, he was as fastidious as a girl in all such matters. Would it be better to rewrite the whole thing, and just say you hated Soames?"
Irene shook her head.
"Hate's only a word. It conveys nothing. No, better as it is." ”

“ Irene came out at once, and stepped in—he afterward described it at Timothy’s—“as light as—er—Taglioni, no fuss about it, no wanting this or wanting that;” and above all, Swithin dwelt on this, staring at Mrs. Septimus in a way that disconcerted her a good deal, “no silly nervousness!” To Aunt Hester he portrayed Irene’s hat. “Not one of your great flopping things, sprawling about, and catching the dust, that women are so fond of nowadays, but a neat little—” he made a circular motion of his hand, “white veil—capital taste.” ”

“ Bosinney did not take it, but, turning with a laugh, said:
“Good-bye, Mr. Forsyte. Don’t get caught in the storm!” and walked away.
“Well,” began James, “I don’t know....”
But the sight of Irene’s face stopped him. Taking hold of his daughter-in-law by the elbow, he escorted her towards the carriage. He felt certain, quite certain, they had been making some appointment or other....
Nothing in this world is more sure to upset a Forsyte than the discovery that something on which he has stipulated to spend a certain sum has cost more. ”

“ You won’t look ahead. Soames he doesn’t say much, but I can see he won’t stand a great deal more of this sort of thing. You’ll have nobody but yourself to blame, and, what’s more, you’ll get no sympathy from anybody.”
Irene bent her head with a little smiling bow. “I am very much obliged to you.”
James did not know what on earth to answer.
The bright hot morning had changed slowly to a grey, oppressive afternoon; a heavy bank of clouds, with the yellow tinge of coming thunder, had risen in the south, and was creeping up. ”

“ Soames’s sister, Winifred Dartie, who had imbibed with the breezes of Mayfair—she lived in Green Street—more fashionable principles in regard to matrimonial behaviour than were current, for instance, in Ladbroke Grove, laughed at the idea of there being anything in it. The “little thing”—Irene was taller than herself, and it was real testimony to the solid worth of a Forsyte that she should always thus be a “little thing”—the little thing was bored. Why shouldn’t she amuse herself? ”