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 policemens 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 lovers heart, out there in the fog and the cold, he would have said again: Yes, poor devil hes 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 oclock 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. Jamess 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, its 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.
Georges 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 Bosinneys 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 Bosinneys heart. And he thought: Yes, its a bit thick! I dont 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 Georges Quilpish humour broke forth in a sudden longing to pluck these spectres by the sleeve, and say:
Hi, you Johnnies! You dont often see a show like this! Heres a poor devil whose mistress has just been telling him a pretty little story of her husband; walk up, walk up! Hes taken the knock, you see.