"DEAREST UNCLE JOLYON,--I can't bear to write anything that may
disappoint you, but I was too cowardly to tell you last night. I feel I
can't come down and give Holly any more lessons, now that June is coming
back. Some things go too deep to be forgotten. It has been such a joy to
see you and Holly. Perhaps I shall still see you sometimes when you
come up, though I'm sure it's not good for you; I can see you are tiring
yourself too much. I believe you ought to rest quite quietly all this
hot weather, and now you have your son and June coming back you will be
so happy. Thank you a million times for all your sweetness to me.
"Lovingly your IRENE."
So, there it was! Not good for him to have pleasure and what he chiefly
cared about; to try and put off feeling the inevitable end of all
things, the approach of death with its stealthy, rustling footsteps.
Not good for him! Not even she could see how she was his new lease of
interest in life, the incarnation of all the beauty he felt slipping
from him.
His tea grew cold, his cigar remained unlit; and up and down he paced,
torn between his dignity and his hold on life. Intolerable to be
squeezed out slowly, without a say of your own, to live on when your
will was in the hands of others bent on weighing you to the ground with
care and love. Intolerable! He would see what telling her the truth
would do--the truth that he wanted the sight of her more than just a
lingering on. He sat down at his old bureau and took a pen. But he could
not write. There was something revolting in having to plead like this;
plead that she should warm his eyes with her beauty. It was tantamount
to confessing dotage. He simply could not. And instead, he wrote:
"I had hoped that the memory of old sores would not be allowed to
stand in the way of what is a pleasure and a profit to me and my little
grand-daughter. But old men learn to forego their whims; they are
obliged to, even the whim to live must be foregone sooner or later; and
perhaps the sooner the better.
"My love to you,
"JOLYON FORSYTE."
'Bitter,' he thought, 'but I can't help it. I'm tired.' He sealed and
dropped it into the box for the evening post, and hearing it fall to the
bottom, thought: 'There goes all I've looked forward to!'
That evening after dinner which he scarcely touched, after his cigar
which he left half-smoked for it made him feel faint, he went very
slowly upstairs and stole into the night-nursery. He sat down on the
window-seat. A night-light was burning, and he could just see Holly's
face, with one hand underneath the cheek. An early cockchafer buzzed in
the Japanese paper with which they had filled the grate, and one of the
horses in the stable stamped restlessly. To sleep like that child! He
pressed apart two rungs of the venetian blind and looked out. The moon
was rising, blood-red. He had never seen so red a moon. The woods and
fields out there were dropping to sleep too, in the last glimmer of the
summer light. And beauty, like a spirit, walked. 'I've had a long life,'
he thought, 'the best of nearly everything. I'm an ungrateful chap; I've
seen a lot of beauty in my time. Poor young Bosinney said I had a sense
of beauty. There's a man in the moon to-night!' A moth went by, another,
another. 'Ladies in grey!' He closed his eyes. A feeling that he would
never open them again beset him; he let it grow, let himself sink; then,
with a shiver, dragged the lids up. There was something wrong with him,
no doubt, deeply wrong; he would have to have the doctor after all.
It didn't much matter now! Into that coppice the moon-light would have
crept; there would be shadows, and those shadows would be the only
things awake. No birds, beasts, flowers, insects; Just the shadows
--moving; 'Ladies in grey!' Over that log they would climb; would
whisper together. She and Bosinney! Funny thought! And the frogs and
little things would whisper too! How the clock ticked, in here! It was
all eerie--out there in the light of that red moon; in here with
the little steady night-light and, the ticking clock and the nurse's
dressing-gown hanging from the edge of the screen, tall, like a woman's
figure. 'Lady in grey!' And a very odd thought beset him: Did she exist?
Had she ever come at all? Or was she but the emanation of all the beauty
he had loved and must leave so soon? The violet-grey spirit with the
dark eyes and the crown of amber hair, who walks the dawn and the
moonlight, and at blue-bell time? What was she, who was she, did she
exist? He rose and stood a moment clutching the window-sill, to give
him a sense of reality again; then began tiptoeing towards the door. He
stopped at the foot of the bed; and Holly, as if conscious of his eyes
fixed on her, stirred, sighed, and curled up closer in defence. He
tiptoed on and passed out into the dark passage; reached his room,
undressed at once, and stood before a mirror in his night-shirt. What a
scarecrow--with temples fallen in, and thin legs! His eyes resisted his
own image, and a look of pride came on his face. All was in league
to pull him down, even his reflection in the glass, but he was not
down--yet! He got into bed, and lay a long time without sleeping,
trying to reach resignation, only too well aware that fretting and
disappointment were very bad for him.