Chapter 27 Voyage into the Inferno

The morning after a certain night on which Soames at last asserted his rights and acted like a man, he breakfasted alone.
He breakfasted by gaslight, the fog of late November wrapping the town as in some monstrous blanket till the trees of the Square even were barely visible from the dining-room window.
He ate steadily, but at times a sensation as though he could not swallow attacked him. Had he been right to yield to his overmastering hunger of the night before, and break down the resistance which he had suffered now too long from this woman who was his lawful and solemnly constituted helpmate?
He was strangely haunted by the recollection of her face, from before which, to soothe her, he had tried to pull her hands — of her terrible smothered sobbing, the like of which he had never heard, and still seemed to hear; and he was still haunted by the odd, intolerable feeling of remorse and shame he had felt, as he stood looking at her by the flame of the single candle, before silently slinking away.
And somehow, now that he had acted like this, he was surprised at himself.
Two nights before, at Winifred Dartie’s, he had taken Mrs. MacAnder into dinner. She had said to him, looking in his face with her sharp, greenish eyes: “And so your wife is a great friend of that Mr. Bosinney’s?”
Not deigning to ask what she meant, he had brooded over her words.
They had roused in him a fierce jealousy, which, with the peculiar perversion of this instinct, had turned to fiercer desire.
Without the incentive of Mrs. MacAnder’s words he might never have done what he had done. Without their incentive and the accident of finding his wife’s door for once unlocked, which had enabled him to steal upon her asleep.
Slumber had removed his doubts, but the morning brought them again. One thought comforted him: No one would know — it was not the sort of thing that she would speak about.
And, indeed, when the vehicle of his daily business life, which needed so imperatively the grease of clear and practical thought, started rolling once more with the reading of his letters, those nightmare-like doubts began to assume less extravagant importance at the back of his mind. The incident was really not of great moment; women made a fuss about it in books; but in the cool judgment of right-thinking men, of men of the world, of such as he recollected often received praise in the Divorce Court, he had but done his best to sustain the sanctity of marriage, to prevent her from abandoning her duty, possibly, if she were still seeing Bosinney, from. . . .
No, he did not regret it.
Now that the first step towards reconciliation had been taken, the rest would be comparatively — comparatively. . . .
He, rose and walked to the window. His nerve had been shaken. The sound of smothered sobbing was in his ears again. He could not get rid of it.
He put on his fur coat, and went out into the fog; having to go into the City, he took the underground railway from Sloane Square station.
In his corner of the first-class compartment filled with City men the smothered sobbing still haunted him, so he opened the Times with the rich crackle that drowns all lesser sounds, and, barricaded behind it, set himself steadily to con the news.
He read that a Recorder had charged a grand jury on the previous day with a more than usually long list of offences. He read of three murders, five manslaughters, seven arsons, and as many as eleven rapes — a surprisingly high number — in addition to many less conspicuous crimes, to be tried during a coming Sessions; and from one piece of news he went on to another, keeping the paper well before his face.
And still, inseparable from his reading, was the memory of Irene’s tear-stained face, and the sounds from her broken heart.
The day was a busy one, including, in addition to the ordinary affairs of his practice, a visit to his brokers, Messrs. Grin and Grinning, to give them instructions to sell his shares in the New Colliery Co., Ltd., whose business he suspected, rather than knew, was stagnating (this enterprise afterwards slowly declined, and was ultimately sold for a song to an American syndicate); and a long conference at Waterbuck, Q.C.‘s chambers, attended by Boulter, by Fiske, the junior counsel, and Waterbuck, Q.C., himself.
The case of Forsyte v. Bosinney was expected to be reached on the morrow, before Mr. Justice Bentham.
Mr. Justice Bentham, a man of common-sense rather than too great legal knowledge, was considered to be about the best man they could have to try the action. He was a ‘strong’ Judge.
Waterbuck, Q.C., in pleasing conjunction with an almost rude neglect of Boulter and Fiske paid to Soames a good deal of attention, by instinct or the sounder evidence of rumour, feeling him to be a man of property.
He held with remarkable consistency to the opinion he had already expressed in writing, that the issue would depend to a great extent on the evidence given at the trial, and in a few well directed remarks he advised Soames not to be too careful in giving that evidence. “A little bluffness, Mr. Forsyte,” he said, “a little bluffness,” and after he had spoken he laughed firmly, closed his lips tight, and scratched his head just below where he had pushed his wig back, for all the world like the gentleman-farmer for whom he loved to be taken. He was considered perhaps the leading man in breach of promise cases.
Soames used the underground again in going home.
The fog was worse than ever at Sloane Square station. Through the still, thick blur, men groped in and out; women, very few, grasped their reticules to their bosoms and handkerchiefs to their mouths; crowned with the weird excrescence of the driver, haloed by a vague glow of lamp-light that seemed to drown in vapour before it reached the pavement, cabs loomed dim-shaped ever and again, and discharged citizens, bolting like rabbits to their burrows.
And these shadowy figures, wrapped each in his own little shroud of fog, took no notice of each other. In the great warren, each rabbit for himself, especially those clothed in the more expensive fur, who, afraid of carriages on foggy days, are driven underground.
One figure, however, not far from Soames, waited at the station door.
Some buccaneer or lover, of whom each Forsyte thought: ‘Poor devil! looks as if he were having a bad time!’ Their kind hearts beat a stroke faster for that poor, waiting, anxious lover in the fog; but they hurried by, well knowing that they had neither time nor money to spare for any suffering but their own.
Only a policeman, patrolling slowly and at intervals, took an interest in that waiting figure, the brim of whose slouch hat half hid a face reddened by the cold, all thin, and haggard, over which a hand stole now and again to smooth away anxiety, or renew the resolution that kept him waiting there. But the waiting lover (if lover he were) was used to policemen’s scrutiny, or too absorbed in his anxiety, for he never flinched. A hardened case, accustomed to long trysts, to anxiety, and fog, and cold, if only his mistress came at last. Foolish lover! Fogs last until the spring; there is also snow and rain, no comfort anywhere; gnawing fear if you bring her out, gnawing fear if you bid her stay at home!
“Serve him right; he should arrange his affairs better!”
So any respectable Forsyte. Yet, if that sounder citizen could have listened at the waiting lover’s heart, out there in the fog and the cold, he would have said again: “Yes, poor devil he’s having a bad time!”
Soames got into his cab, and, with the glass down, crept along Sloane Street, and so along the Brompton Road, and home. He reached his house at five.
His wife was not in. She had gone out a quarter of an hour before. Out at such a time of night, into this terrible fog! What was the meaning of that?
He sat by the dining-room fire, with the door open, disturbed to the soul, trying to read the evening paper. A book was no good — in daily papers alone was any narcotic to such worry as his. From the customary events recorded in the journal he drew some comfort. ‘Suicide of an actress’—‘Grave indisposition of a Statesman’ (that chronic sufferer)—‘Divorce of an army officer’—‘Fire in a colliery’— he read them all. They helped him a little — prescribed by the greatest of all doctors, our natural taste.
It was nearly seven when he heard her come in.
The incident of the night before had long lost its importance under stress of anxiety at her strange sortie into the fog. But now that Irene was home, the memory of her broken-hearted sobbing came back to him, and he felt nervous at the thought of facing her.
She was already on the stairs; her grey fur coat hung to her knees, its high collar almost hid her face, she wore a thick veil.
She neither turned to look at him nor spoke. No ghost or stranger could have passed more silently.
Bilson came to lay dinner, and told him that Mrs. Forsyte was not coming down; she was having the soup in her room.
For once Soames did not ‘change’; it was, perhaps, the first time in his life that he had sat down to dinner with soiled cuffs, and, not even noticing them, he brooded long over his wine. He sent Bilson to light a fire in his picture-room, and presently went up there himself.
Turning on the gas, he heaved a deep sigh, as though amongst these treasures, the backs of which confronted him in stacks, around the little room, he had found at length his peace of mind. He went straight up to the greatest treasure of them all, an undoubted Turner, and, carrying it to the easel, turned its face to the light. There had been a movement in Turners, but he had not been able to make up his mind to part with it. He stood for a long time, his pale, clean-shaven face poked forward above his stand-up collar, looking at the picture as though he were adding it up; a wistful expression came into his eyes; he found, perhaps, that it came to too little. He took it down from the easel to put it back against the wall; but, in crossing the room, stopped, for he seemed to hear sobbing.
It was nothing — only the sort of thing that had been bothering him in the morning. And soon after, putting the high guard before the blazing fire, he stole downstairs.
Fresh for the morrow! was his thought. It was long before he went to sleep. . . .
It is now to George Forsyte that the mind must turn for light on the events of that fog-engulfed afternoon.
The wittiest and most sportsmanlike of the Forsytes had passed the day reading a novel in the paternal mansion at Princes’ Gardens. Since a recent crisis in his financial affairs he had been kept on parole by Roger, and compelled to reside ‘at home.’
Towards five o’clock he went out, and took train at South Kensington Station (for everyone to-day went Underground). His intention was to dine, and pass the evening playing billiards at the Red Pottle — that unique hostel, neither club, hotel, nor good gilt restaurant.
He got out at Charing Cross, choosing it in preference to his more usual St. James’s Park, that he might reach Jermyn Street by better lighted ways.
On the platform his eyes — for in combination with a composed and fashionable appearance, George had sharp eyes, and was always on the look-out for fillips to his sardonic humour — his eyes were attracted by a man, who, leaping from a first-class compartment, staggered rather than walked towards the exit.
‘So ho, my bird!’ said George to himself; ‘why, it’s “the Buccaneer!”’ and he put his big figure on the trail. Nothing afforded him greater amusement than a drunken man.
Bosinney, who wore a slouch hat, stopped in front of him, spun around, and rushed back towards the carriage he had just left. He was too late. A porter caught him by the coat; the train was already moving on.
George’s practised glance caught sight of the face of a lady clad in a grey fur coat at the carriage window. It was Mrs. Soames — and George felt that this was interesting!
And now he followed Bosinney more closely than ever — up the stairs, past the ticket collector into the street. In that progress, however, his feelings underwent a change; no longer merely curious and amused, he felt sorry for the poor fellow he was shadowing. ‘The Buccaneer’ was not drunk, but seemed to be acting under the stress of violent emotion; he was talking to himself, and all that George could catch were the words “Oh, God!” Nor did he appear to know what he was doing, or where going; but stared, hesitated, moved like a man out of his mind; and from being merely a joker in search of amusement, George felt that he must see the poor chap through.
He had ‘taken the knock’—‘taken the knock!’ And he wondered what on earth Mrs. Soames had been saying, what on earth she had been telling him in the railway carriage. She had looked bad enough herself! It made George sorry to think of her travelling on with her trouble all alone.
He followed close behind Bosinney’s elbow — tall, burly figure, saying nothing, dodging warily — and shadowed him out into the fog.
There was something here beyond a jest! He kept his head admirably, in spite of some excitement, for in addition to compassion, the instincts of the chase were roused within him.
Bosinney walked right out into the thoroughfare — a vast muffled blackness, where a man could not see six paces before him; where, all around, voices or whistles mocked the sense of direction; and sudden shapes came rolling slow upon them; and now and then a light showed like a dim island in an infinite dark sea.
And fast into this perilous gulf of night walked Bosinney, and fast after him walked George. If the fellow meant to put his ‘twopenny’ under a ‘bus, he would stop it if he could! Across the street and back the hunted creature strode, not groping as other men were groping in that gloom, but driven forward as though the faithful George behind wielded a knout; and this chase after a haunted man began to have for George the strangest fascination.
But it was now that the affair developed in a way which ever afterwards caused it to remain green in his mind. Brought to a stand-still in the fog, he heard words which threw a sudden light on these proceedings. What Mrs. Soames had said to Bosinney in the train was now no longer dark. George understood from those mutterings that Soames had exercised his rights over an estranged and unwilling wife in the greatest — the supreme act of property.
His fancy wandered in the fields of this situation; it impressed him; he guessed something of the anguish, the sexual confusion and horror in Bosinney’s heart. And he thought: ‘Yes, it’s a bit thick! I don’t wonder the poor fellow is half-cracked!’
He had run his quarry to earth on a bench under one of the lions in Trafalgar Square, a monster sphynx astray like themselves in that gulf of darkness. Here, rigid and silent, sat Bosinney, and George, in whose patience was a touch of strange brotherliness, took his stand behind. He was not lacking in a certain delicacy — a sense of form — that did not permit him to intrude upon this tragedy, and he waited, quiet as the lion above, his fur collar hitched above his ears concealing the fleshy redness of his cheeks, concealing all but his eyes with their sardonic, compassionate stare. And men kept passing back from business on the way to their clubs — men whose figures shrouded in cocoons of fog came into view like spectres, and like spectres vanished. Then even in his compassion George’s Quilpish humour broke forth in a sudden longing to pluck these spectres by the sleeve, and say:
“Hi, you Johnnies! You don’t often see a show like this! Here’s a poor devil whose mistress has just been telling him a pretty little story of her husband; walk up, walk up! He’s taken the knock, you see.”
In fancy he saw them gaping round the tortured lover; and grinned as he thought of some respectable, newly-married spectre enabled by the state of his own affections to catch an inkling of what was going on within Bosinney; he fancied he could see his mouth getting wider and wider, and the fog going down and down. For in George was all that contempt of the of the married middle-class — peculiar to the wild and sportsmanlike spirits in its ranks.
But he began to be bored. Waiting was not what he had bargained for.
‘After all,’ he thought, ‘the poor chap will get over it; not the first time such a thing has happened in this little city!’ But now his quarry again began muttering words of violent hate and anger. And following a sudden impulse George touched him on the shoulder.
Bosinney spun round.
“Who are you? What do you want?”
George could have stood it well enough in the light of the gas lamps, in the light of that everyday world of which he was so hardy a connoisseur; but in this fog, where all was gloomy and unreal, where nothing had that matter-of-fact value associated by Forsytes with earth, he was a victim to strange qualms, and as he tried to stare back into the eyes of this maniac, he thought:
‘If I see a bobby, I’ll hand him over; he’s not fit to be at large.’
But waiting for no answer, Bosinney strode off into the fog, and George followed, keeping perhaps a little further off, yet more than ever set on tracking him down.
‘He can’t go on long like this,’ he thought. ‘It’s God’s own miracle he’s not been run over already.’ He brooded no more on policemen, a sportsman’s sacred fire alive again within him.
Into a denser gloom than ever Bosinney held on at a furious pace; but his pursuer perceived more method in his madness — he was clearly making his way westwards.
‘He’s really going for Soames!’ thought George. The idea was attractive. It would be a sporting end to such a chase. He had always disliked his cousin.
The shaft of a passing cab brushed against his shoulder and made him leap aside. He did not intend to be killed for the Buccaneer, or anyone. Yet, with hereditary tenacity, he stuck to the trail through vapour that blotted out everything but the shadow of the hunted man and the dim moon of the nearest lamp.
Then suddenly, with the instinct of a town-stroller, George knew himself to be in Piccadilly. Here he could find his way blindfold; and freed from the strain of geographical uncertainty, his mind returned to Bosinney’s trouble.
Down the long avenue of his man-about-town experience, bursting, as it were, through a smirch of doubtful amours, there stalked to him a memory of his youth. A memory, poignant still, that brought the scent of hay, the gleam of moonlight, a summer magic, into the reek and blackness of this London fog — the memory of a night when in the darkest shadow of a lawn he had overheard from a woman’s lips that he was not her sole possessor. And for a moment George walked no longer in black Piccadilly, but lay again, with hell in his heart, and his face to the sweet-smelling, dewy grass, in the long shadow of poplars that hid the moon.
A longing seized him to throw his arm round the Buccaneer, and say, “Come, old boy. Time cures all. Let’s go and drink it off!”
But a voice yelled at him, and he started back. A cab rolled out of blackness, and into blackness disappeared. And suddenly George perceived that he had lost Bosinney. He ran forward and back, felt his heart clutched by a sickening fear, the dark fear which lives in the wings of the fog. Perspiration started out on his brow. He stood quite still, listening with all his might.
“And then,” as he confided to Dartie the same evening in the course of a game of billiards at the Red Pottle, “I lost him.”
Dartie twirled complacently at his dark moustache. He had just put together a neat break of twenty-three — failing at a ‘Jenny.’ “And who was she?” he asked.
George looked slowly at the ‘man of the world’s’ fattish, sallow face, and a little grim smile lurked about the curves of his cheeks and his heavy-lidded eyes.
‘No, no, my fine fellow,’ he thought, ‘I’m not going to tell you.’ For though he mixed with Dartie a good deal, he thought him a bit of a cad.
“Oh, some little love-lady or other,” he said, and chalked his cue.
“A love-lady!” exclaimed Dartie — he used a more figurative expression. “I made sure it was our friend Soa. . . . ”
“Did you?” said George curtly. “Then damme you’ve made an error.”
He missed his shot. He was careful not to allude to the subject again till, towards eleven o’clock, having, in his poetic phraseology, ‘looked upon the drink when it was yellow,’ he drew aside the blind, and gazed out into the street. The murky blackness of the fog was but faintly broken by the lamps of the ‘Red Pottle,’ and no shape of mortal man or thing was in sight.
“I can’t help thinking of that poor Buccaneer,” he said. “He may be wandering out there now in that fog. If he’s not a corpse,” he added with strange dejection.
“Corpse!” said Dartie, in whom the recollection of his defeat at Richmond flared up. “He’s all right. Ten to one if he wasn’t tight!”
George turned on him, looking really formidable, with a sort of savage gloom on his big face.
“Dry up!” he said. “Don’t I tell you he’s ‘taken the knock!”’