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Title: The Forsyte Saga, In Chancery

Author: John Galsworthy

Release Date: April, 2001 [EBook #2594]
[Most recently updated: May 26, 2020]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

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     FORSYTE SAGA

     IN CHANCERY

     By John Galsworthy




     Contents


        INDIAN SUMMER OF A FORSYTE

        I

        II

        III

        IV

        V

        IN CHANCERY

        PART 1

        CHAPTER I—AT TIMOTHY’S

        CHAPTER II—EXIT A MAN OF THE WORLD

        CHAPTER III—SOAMES PREPARES TO TAKE STEPS

        CHAPTER IV—SOHO

        CHAPTER V—JAMES SEES VISIONS

        CHAPTER VI—NO-LONGER-YOUNG JOLYON AT HOME

        CHAPTER VII—THE COLT AND THE FILLY

        CHAPTER VIII—JOLYON PROSECUTES TRUSTEESHIP

        CHAPTER IX—VAL HEARS THE NEWS

        CHAPTER X—SOAMES ENTERTAINS THE FUTURE

        CHAPTER XI—AND VISITS THE PAST

        CHAPTER XII—ON FORSYTE ’CHANGE

        CHAPTER XIII—JOLYON FINDS OUT WHERE HE IS

        CHAPTER XIV—SOAMES DISCOVERS WHAT HE WANTS

        PART II

        CHAPTER I—THE THIRD GENERATION

        CHAPTER II—SOAMES PUTS IT TO THE TOUCH

        CHAPTER III—VISIT TO IRENE

        CHAPTER IV—WHERE FORSYTES FEAR TO TREAD

        CHAPTER V—JOLLY SITS IN JUDGMENT

        CHAPTER VI—JOLYON IN TWO MINDS

        CHAPTER VII—DARTIE VERSUS DARTIE

        CHAPTER VIII—THE CHALLENGE

        CHAPTER IX—DINNER AT JAMES’

        CHAPTER X—DEATH OF THE DOG BALTHASAR

        CHAPTER XI—TIMOTHY STAYS THE ROT

        CHAPTER XII—PROGRESS OF THE CHASE

        CHAPTER XIII—“HERE WE ARE AGAIN!”

        CHAPTER XIV—OUTLANDISH NIGHT

        PART III

        CHAPTER I—SOAMES IN PARIS

        CHAPTER II—IN THE WEB

        CHAPTER III—RICHMOND PARK

        CHAPTER IV—OVER THE RIVER

        CHAPTER V—SOAMES ACTS

        CHAPTER VI—A SUMMER DAY

        CHAPTER VII—A SUMMER NIGHT

        CHAPTER VIII—JAMES IN WAITING

        CHAPTER IX—OUT OF THE WEB

        CHAPTER X—PASSING OF AN AGE

        CHAPTER XI—SUSPENDED ANIMATION

        CHAPTER XII—BIRTH OF A FORSYTE

        CHAPTER XIII—JAMES IS TOLD

        CHAPTER XIV—HIS


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     THE FORSYTE SAGA—VOLUME II

     By John Galsworthy

     TO ANDRÉ CHEVRILLON


     INDIAN SUMMER OF A FORSYTE

“And Summer’s lease hath all too short a date.”
                   —Shakespeare




     I


     In the last day of May in the early ’nineties, about six o’clock
     of the evening, old Jolyon Forsyte sat under the oak tree below
     the terrace of his house at Robin Hill. He was waiting for the
     midges to bite him, before abandoning the glory of the afternoon.
     His thin brown hand, where blue veins stood out, held the end of
     a cigar in its tapering, long-nailed fingers—a pointed polished
     nail had survived with him from those earlier Victorian days when
     to touch nothing, even with the tips of the fingers, had been so
     distinguished. His domed forehead, great white moustache, lean
     cheeks, and long lean jaw were covered from the westering
     sunshine by an old brown Panama hat. His legs were crossed; in
     all his attitude was serenity and a kind of elegance, as of an
     old man who every morning put eau de Cologne upon his silk
     handkerchief. At his feet lay a woolly brown-and-white dog trying
     to be a Pomeranian—the dog Balthasar between whom and old Jolyon
     primal aversion had changed into attachment with the years. Close
     to his chair was a swing, and on the swing was seated one of
     Holly’s dolls—called “Duffer Alice”—with her body fallen over her
     legs and her doleful nose buried in a black petticoat. She was
     never out of disgrace, so it did not matter to her how she sat.
     Below the oak tree the lawn dipped down a bank, stretched to the
     fernery, and, beyond that refinement, became fields, dropping to
     the pond, the coppice, and the prospect—“Fine, remarkable”—at
     which Swithin Forsyte, from under this very tree, had stared five
     years ago when he drove down with Irene to look at the house. Old
     Jolyon had heard of his brother’s exploit—that drive which had
     become quite celebrated on Forsyte ’Change. Swithin! And the
     fellow had gone and died, last November, at the age of only
     seventy-nine, renewing the doubt whether Forsytes could live for
     ever, which had first arisen when Aunt Ann passed away. Died! and
     left only Jolyon and James, Roger and Nicholas and Timothy,
     Julia, Hester, Susan! And old Jolyon thought: “Eighty-five! I
     don’t feel it—except when I get that pain.”

     His memory went searching. He had not felt his age since he had
     bought his nephew Soames’ ill-starred house and settled into it
     here at Robin Hill over three years ago. It was as if he had been
     getting younger every spring, living in the country with his son
     and his grandchildren—June, and the little ones of the second
     marriage, Jolly and Holly; living down here out of the racket of
     London and the cackle of Forsyte ’Change, free of his boards, in
     a delicious atmosphere of no work and all play, with plenty of
     occupation in the perfecting and mellowing of the house and its
     twenty acres, and in ministering to the whims of Holly and Jolly.
     All the knots and crankiness, which had gathered in his heart
     during that long and tragic business of June, Soames, Irene his
     wife, and poor young Bosinney, had been smoothed out. Even June
     had thrown off her melancholy at last—witness this travel in
     Spain she was taking now with her father and her stepmother.
     Curiously perfect peace was left by their departure; blissful,
     yet blank, because his son was not there. Jo was never anything
     but a comfort and a pleasure to him nowadays—an amiable chap; but
     women, somehow—even the best—got a little on one’s nerves, unless
     of course one admired them.

     Far-off a cuckoo called; a wood-pigeon was cooing from the first
     elm-tree in the field, and how the daisies and buttercups had
     sprung up after the last mowing! The wind had got into the sou’
     west, too—a delicious air, sappy! He pushed his hat back and let
     the sun fall on his chin and cheek. Somehow, to-day, he wanted
     company—wanted a pretty face to look at. People treated the old
     as if they wanted nothing. And with the un-Forsytean philosophy
     which ever intruded on his soul, he thought: “One’s never had
     enough. With a foot in the grave one’ll want something, I
     shouldn’t be surprised!” Down here—away from the exigencies of
     affairs—his grandchildren, and the flowers, trees, birds of his
     little domain, to say nothing of sun and moon and stars above
     them, said, “Open, sesame,” to him day and night. And sesame had
     opened—how much, perhaps, he did not know. He had always been
     responsive to what they had begun to call “Nature,” genuinely,
     almost religiously responsive, though he had never lost his habit
     of calling a sunset a sunset and a view a view, however deeply
     they might move him. But nowadays Nature actually made him ache,
     he appreciated it so. Every one of these calm, bright,
     lengthening days, with Holly’s hand in his, and the dog Balthasar
     in front looking studiously for what he never found, he would
     stroll, watching the roses open, fruit budding on the walls,
     sunlight brightening the oak leaves and saplings in the coppice,
     watching the water-lily leaves unfold and glisten, and the
     silvery young corn of the one wheat field; listening to the
     starlings and skylarks, and the Alderney cows chewing the cud,
     flicking slow their tufted tails; and every one of these fine
     days he ached a little from sheer love of it all, feeling
     perhaps, deep down, that he had not very much longer to enjoy it.
     The thought that some day—perhaps not ten years hence, perhaps
     not five—all this world would be taken away from him, before he
     had exhausted his powers of loving it, seemed to him in the
     nature of an injustice brooding over his horizon. If anything
     came after this life, it wouldn’t be what he wanted; not Robin
     Hill, and flowers and birds and pretty faces—too few, even now,
     of those about him! With the years his dislike of humbug had
     increased; the orthodoxy he had worn in the ’sixties, as he had
     worn side-whiskers out of sheer exuberance, had long dropped off,
     leaving him reverent before three things alone—beauty, upright
     conduct, and the sense of property; and the greatest of these now
     was beauty. He had always had wide interests, and, indeed could
     still read _The Times_, but he was liable at any moment to put it
     down if he heard a blackbird sing. Upright conduct,
     property—somehow, they were tiring; the blackbirds and the
     sunsets never tired him, only gave him an uneasy feeling that he
     could not get enough of them. Staring into the stilly radiance of
     the early evening and at the little gold and white flowers on the
     lawn, a thought came to him: This weather was like the music of
     “Orfeo,” which he had recently heard at Covent Garden. A
     beautiful opera, not like Meyerbeer, nor even quite Mozart, but,
     in its way, perhaps even more lovely; something classical and of
     the Golden Age about it, chaste and mellow, and the Ravogli
     “almost worthy of the old days”—highest praise he could bestow.
     The yearning of Orpheus for the beauty he was losing, for his
     love going down to Hades, as in life love and beauty did go—the
     yearning which sang and throbbed through the golden music,
     stirred also in the lingering beauty of the world that evening.
     And with the tip of his cork-soled, elastic-sided boot he
     involuntarily stirred the ribs of the dog Balthasar, causing the
     animal to wake and attack his fleas; for though he was supposed
     to have none, nothing could persuade him of the fact. When he had
     finished he rubbed the place he had been scratching against his
     master’s calf, and settled down again with his chin over the
     instep of the disturbing boot. And into old Jolyon’s mind came a
     sudden recollection—a face he had seen at that opera three weeks
     ago—Irene, the wife of his precious nephew Soames, that man of
     property! Though he had not met her since the day of the “At
     Home” in his old house at Stanhope Gate, which celebrated his
     granddaughter June’s ill-starred engagement to young Bosinney, he
     had remembered her at once, for he had always admired her—a very
     pretty creature. After the death of young Bosinney, whose
     mistress she had so reprehensibly become, he had heard that she
     had left Soames at once. Goodness only knew what she had been
     doing since. That sight of her face—a side view—in the row in
     front, had been literally the only reminder these three years
     that she was still alive. No one ever spoke of her. And yet Jo
     had told him something once—something which had upset him
     completely. The boy had got it from George Forsyte, he believed,
     who had seen Bosinney in the fog the day he was run
     over—something which explained the young fellow’s distress—an act
     of Soames towards his wife—a shocking act. Jo had seen her, too,
     that afternoon, after the news was out, seen her for a moment,
     and his description had always lingered in old Jolyon’s
     mind—“wild and lost” he had called her. And next day June had
     gone there—bottled up her feelings and gone there, and the maid
     had cried and told her how her mistress had slipped out in the
     night and vanished. A tragic business altogether! One thing was
     certain—Soames had never been able to lay hands on her again. And
     he was living at Brighton, and journeying up and down—a fitting
     fate, the man of property! For when he once took a dislike to
     anyone—as he had to his nephew—old Jolyon never got over it. He
     remembered still the sense of relief with which he had heard the
     news of Irene’s disappearance. It had been shocking to think of
     her a prisoner in that house to which she must have wandered
     back, when Jo saw her, wandered back for a moment—like a wounded
     animal to its hole after seeing that news, “Tragic death of an
     Architect,” in the street. Her face had struck him very much the
     other night—more beautiful than he had remembered, but like a
     mask, with something going on beneath it. A young woman
     still—twenty-eight perhaps. Ah, well! Very likely she had another
     lover by now. But at this subversive thought—for married women
     should never love: once, even, had been too much—his instep rose,
     and with it the dog Balthasar’s head. The sagacious animal stood
     up and looked into old Jolyon’s face. “Walk?” he seemed to say;
     and old Jolyon answered: “Come on, old chap!”

     Slowly, as was their wont, they crossed among the constellations
     of buttercups and daisies, and entered the fernery. This feature,
     where very little grew as yet, had been judiciously dropped below
     the level of the lawn so that it might come up again on the level
     of the other lawn and give the impression of irregularity, so
     important in horticulture. Its rocks and earth were beloved of
     the dog Balthasar, who sometimes found a mole there. Old Jolyon
     made a point of passing through it because, though it was not
     beautiful, he intended that it should be, some day, and he would
     think: “I must get Varr to come down and look at it; he’s better
     than Beech.” For plants, like houses and human complaints,
     required the best expert consideration. It was inhabited by
     snails, and if accompanied by his grandchildren, he would point
     to one and tell them the story of the little boy who said: “Have
     plummers got leggers, Mother?” “No, sonny.” “Then darned if I
     haven’t been and swallowed a snileybob.” And when they skipped
     and clutched his hand, thinking of the snileybob going down the
     little boy’s “red lane,” his eyes would twinkle. Emerging from
     the fernery, he opened the wicket gate, which just there led into
     the first field, a large and park-like area, out of which, within
     brick walls, the vegetable garden had been carved. Old Jolyon
     avoided this, which did not suit his mood, and made down the hill
     towards the pond. Balthasar, who knew a water-rat or two,
     gambolled in front, at the gait which marks an oldish dog who
     takes the same walk every day. Arrived at the edge, old Jolyon
     stood, noting another water-lily opened since yesterday; he would
     show it to Holly to-morrow, when “his little sweet” had got over
     the upset which had followed on her eating a tomato at lunch—her
     little arrangements were very delicate. Now that Jolly had gone
     to school—his first term—Holly was with him nearly all day long,
     and he missed her badly. He felt that pain too, which often
     bothered him now, a little dragging at his left side. He looked
     back up the hill. Really, poor young Bosinney had made an
     uncommonly good job of the house; he would have done very well
     for himself if he had lived! And where was he now? Perhaps, still
     haunting this, the site of his last work, of his tragic love
     affair. Or was Philip Bosinney’s spirit diffused in the general?
     Who could say? That dog was getting his legs muddy! And he moved
     towards the coppice. There had been the most delightful lot of
     bluebells, and he knew where some still lingered like little
     patches of sky fallen in between the trees, away out of the sun.
     He passed the cow-houses and the hen-houses there installed, and
     pursued a path into the thick of the saplings, making for one of
     the bluebell plots. Balthasar, preceding him once more, uttered a
     low growl. Old Jolyon stirred him with his foot, but the dog
     remained motionless, just where there was no room to pass, and
     the hair rose slowly along the centre of his woolly back. Whether
     from the growl and the look of the dog’s stivered hair, or from
     the sensation which a man feels in a wood, old Jolyon also felt
     something move along his spine. And then the path turned, and
     there was an old mossy log, and on it a woman sitting. Her face
     was turned away, and he had just time to think: “She’s
     trespassing—I must have a board put up!” before she turned.
     Powers above! The face he had seen at the opera—the very woman he
     had just been thinking of! In that confused moment he saw things
     blurred, as if a spirit—queer effect—the slant of sunlight
     perhaps on her violet-grey frock! And then she rose and stood
     smiling, her head a little to one side. Old Jolyon thought: “How
     pretty she is!” She did not speak, neither did he; and he
     realized why with a certain admiration. She was here no doubt
     because of some memory, and did not mean to try and get out of it
     by vulgar explanation.

     “Don’t let that dog touch your frock,” he said; “he’s got wet
     feet. Come here, you!”

     But the dog Balthasar went on towards the visitor, who put her
     hand down and stroked his head. Old Jolyon said quickly:

     “I saw you at the opera the other night; you didn’t notice me.”

     “Oh, yes! I did.”

     He felt a subtle flattery in that, as though she had added: “Do
     you think one could miss seeing you?”

     “They’re all in Spain,” he remarked abruptly. “I’m alone; I drove
     up for the opera. The Ravogli’s good. Have you seen the
     cow-houses?”

     In a situation so charged with mystery and something very like
     emotion he moved instinctively towards that bit of property, and
     she moved beside him. Her figure swayed faintly, like the best
     kind of French figures; her dress, too, was a sort of French
     grey. He noticed two or three silver threads in her
     amber-coloured hair, strange hair with those dark eyes of hers,
     and that creamy-pale face. A sudden sidelong look from the
     velvety brown eyes disturbed him. It seemed to come from deep and
     far, from another world almost, or at all events from some one
     not living very much in this. And he said mechanically:

     “Where are you living now?”

     “I have a little flat in Chelsea.”

     He did not want to hear what she was doing, did not want to hear
     anything; but the perverse word came out:

     “Alone?”

     She nodded. It was a relief to know that. And it came into his
     mind that, but for a twist of fate, she would have been mistress
     of this coppice, showing these cow-houses to him, a visitor.

     “All Alderneys,” he muttered; “they give the best milk. This
     one’s a pretty creature. Woa, Myrtle!”

     The fawn-coloured cow, with eyes as soft and brown as Irene’s
     own, was standing absolutely still, not having long been milked.
     She looked round at them out of the corner of those lustrous,
     mild, cynical eyes, and from her grey lips a little dribble of
     saliva threaded its way towards the straw. The scent of hay and
     vanilla and ammonia rose in the dim light of the cool cow-house;
     and old Jolyon said:

     “You must come up and have some dinner with me. I’ll send you
     home in the carriage.”

     He perceived a struggle going on within her; natural, no doubt,
     with her memories. But he wanted her company; a pretty face, a
     charming figure, beauty! He had been alone all the afternoon.
     Perhaps his eyes were wistful, for she answered: “Thank you,
     Uncle Jolyon. I should like to.”

     He rubbed his hands, and said:

     “Capital! Let’s go up, then!” And, preceded by the dog Balthasar,
     they ascended through the field. The sun was almost level in
     their faces now, and he could see, not only those silver threads,
     but little lines, just deep enough to stamp her beauty with a
     coin-like fineness—the special look of life unshared with others.
     “I’ll take her in by the terrace,” he thought: “I won’t make a
     common visitor of her.”

     “What do you do all day?” he said.

     “Teach music; I have another interest, too.”

     “Work!” said old Jolyon, picking up the doll from off the swing,
     and smoothing its black petticoat. “Nothing like it, is there? I
     don’t do any now. I’m getting on. What interest is that?”

     “Trying to help women who’ve come to grief.” Old Jolyon did not
     quite understand. “To grief?” he repeated; then realised with a
     shock that she meant exactly what he would have meant himself if
     he had used that expression. Assisting the Magdalenes of London!
     What a weird and terrifying interest! And, curiosity overcoming
     his natural shrinking, he asked:

     “Why? What do you do for them?”

     “Not much. I’ve no money to spare. I can only give sympathy and
     food sometimes.”

     Involuntarily old Jolyon’s hand sought his purse. He said
     hastily: “How d’you get hold of them?”

     “I go to a hospital.”

     “A hospital! Phew!”

     “What hurts me most is that once they nearly all had some sort of
     beauty.”

     Old Jolyon straightened the doll. “Beauty!” he ejaculated: “Ha!
     Yes! A sad business!” and he moved towards the house. Through a
     French window, under sun-blinds not yet drawn up, he preceded her
     into the room where he was wont to study _The Times_ and the
     sheets of an agricultural magazine, with huge illustrations of
     mangold wurzels, and the like, which provided Holly with material
     for her paint brush.

     “Dinner’s in half an hour. You’d like to wash your hands! I’ll
     take you to June’s room.”

     He saw her looking round eagerly; what changes since she had last
     visited this house with her husband, or her lover, or both
     perhaps—he did not know, could not say! All that was dark, and he
     wished to leave it so. But what changes! And in the hall he said:

     “My boy Jo’s a painter, you know. He’s got a lot of taste. It
     isn’t mine, of course, but I’ve let him have his way.”

     She was standing very still, her eyes roaming through the hall
     and music room, as it now was—all thrown into one, under the
     great skylight. Old Jolyon had an odd impression of her. Was she
     trying to conjure somebody from the shades of that space where
     the colouring was all pearl-grey and silver? He would have had
     gold himself; more lively and solid. But Jo had French tastes,
     and it had come out shadowy like that, with an effect as of the
     fume of cigarettes the chap was always smoking, broken here and
     there by a little blaze of blue or crimson colour. It was not
     _his_ dream! Mentally he had hung this space with those
     gold-framed masterpieces of still and stiller life which he had
     bought in days when quantity was precious. And now where were
     they? Sold for a song! That something which made him, alone among
     Forsytes, move with the times had warned him against the struggle
     to retain them. But in his study he still had “Dutch Fishing
     Boats at Sunset.”

     He began to mount the stairs with her, slowly, for he felt his
     side.

     “These are the bathrooms,” he said, “and other arrangements. I’ve
     had them tiled. The nurseries are along there. And this is Jo’s
     and his wife’s. They all communicate. But you remember, I
     expect.”

     Irene nodded. They passed on, up the gallery and entered a large
     room with a small bed, and several windows.

     “This is mine,” he said. The walls were covered with the
     photographs of children and watercolour sketches, and he added
     doubtfully:

     “These are Jo’s. The view’s first-rate. You can see the Grand
     Stand at Epsom in clear weather.”

     The sun was down now, behind the house, and over the “prospect” a
     luminous haze had settled, emanation of the long and prosperous
     day. Few houses showed, but fields and trees faintly glistened,
     away to a loom of downs.

     “The country’s changing,” he said abruptly, “but there it’ll be
     when we’re all gone. Look at those thrushes—the birds are sweet
     here in the mornings. I’m glad to have washed my hands of
     London.”

     Her face was close to the window pane, and he was struck by its
     mournful look. “Wish I could make her look happy!” he thought. “A
     pretty face, but sad!” And taking up his can of hot water he went
     out into the gallery.

     “This is June’s room,” he said, opening the next door and putting
     the can down; “I think you’ll find everything.” And closing the
     door behind her he went back to his own room. Brushing his hair
     with his great ebony brushes, and dabbing his forehead with eau
     de Cologne, he mused. She had come so strangely—a sort of
     visitation; mysterious, even romantic, as if his desire for
     company, for beauty, had been fulfilled by whatever it was which
     fulfilled that sort of thing. And before the mirror he
     straightened his still upright figure, passed the brushes over
     his great white moustache, touched up his eyebrows with eau de
     Cologne, and rang the bell.

     “I forgot to let them know that I have a lady to dinner with me.
     Let cook do something extra, and tell Beacon to have the landau
     and pair at half-past ten to drive her back to Town to-night. Is
     Miss Holly asleep?”

     The maid thought not. And old Jolyon, passing down the gallery,
     stole on tiptoe towards the nursery, and opened the door whose
     hinges he kept specially oiled that he might slip in and out in
     the evenings without being heard.

     But Holly _was_ asleep, and lay like a miniature Madonna, of that
     type which the old painters could not tell from Venus, when they
     had completed her. Her long dark lashes clung to her cheeks; on
     her face was perfect peace—her little arrangements were evidently
     all right again. And old Jolyon, in the twilight of the room,
     stood adoring her! It was so charming, solemn, and loving—that
     little face. He had more than his share of the blessed capacity
     of living again in the young. They were to him his future
     life—all of a future life that his fundamental pagan sanity
     perhaps admitted. There she was with everything before her, and
     his blood—some of it—in her tiny veins. There she was, his little
     companion, to be made as happy as ever he could make her, so that
     she knew nothing but love. His heart swelled, and he went out,
     stilling the sound of his patent-leather boots. In the corridor
     an eccentric notion attacked him: To think that children should
     come to that which Irene had told him she was helping! Women who
     were all, once, little things like this one sleeping there! “I
     must give her a cheque!” he mused; “Can’t bear to think of them!”
     They had never borne reflecting on, those poor outcasts; wounding
     too deeply the core of true refinement hidden under layers of
     conformity to the sense of property—wounding too grievously the
     deepest thing in him—a love of beauty which could give him, even
     now, a flutter of the heart, thinking of his evening in the
     society of a pretty woman. And he went downstairs, through the
     swinging doors, to the back regions. There, in the wine-cellar,
     was a hock worth at least two pounds a bottle, a Steinberg
     Cabinet, better than any Johannisberg that ever went down throat;
     a wine of perfect bouquet, sweet as a nectarine—nectar indeed! He
     got a bottle out, handling it like a baby, and holding it level
     to the light, to look. Enshrined in its coat of dust, that mellow
     coloured, slender-necked bottle gave him deep pleasure. Three
     years to settle down again since the move from Town—ought to be
     in prime condition! Thirty-five years ago he had bought it—thank
     God he had kept his palate, and earned the right to drink it. She
     would appreciate this; not a spice of acidity in a dozen. He
     wiped the bottle, drew the cork with his own hands, put his nose
     down, inhaled its perfume, and went back to the music room.

     Irene was standing by the piano; she had taken off her hat and a
     lace scarf she had been wearing, so that her gold-coloured hair
     was visible, and the pallor of her neck. In her grey frock she
     made a pretty picture for old Jolyon, against the rosewood of the
     piano.

     He gave her his arm, and solemnly they went. The room, which had
     been designed to enable twenty-four people to dine in comfort,
     held now but a little round table. In his present solitude the
     big dining-table oppressed old Jolyon; he had caused it to be
     removed till his son came back. Here in the company of two really
     good copies of Raphael Madonnas he was wont to dine alone. It was
     the only disconsolate hour of his day, this summer weather. He
     had never been a large eater, like that great chap Swithin, or
     Sylvanus Heythorp, or Anthony Thornworthy, those cronies of past
     times; and to dine alone, overlooked by the Madonnas, was to him
     but a sorrowful occupation, which he got through quickly, that he
     might come to the more spiritual enjoyment of his coffee and
     cigar. But this evening was a different matter! His eyes twinkled
     at her across the little table and he spoke of Italy and
     Switzerland, telling her stories of his travels there, and other
     experiences which he could no longer recount to his son and
     grand-daughter because they knew them. This fresh audience was
     precious to him; he had never become one of those old men who
     ramble round and round the fields of reminiscence. Himself
     quickly fatigued by the insensitive, he instinctively avoided
     fatiguing others, and his natural flirtatiousness towards beauty
     guarded him specially in his relations with a woman. He would
     have liked to draw her out, but though she murmured and smiled
     and seemed to be enjoying what he told her, he remained conscious
     of that mysterious remoteness which constituted half her
     fascination. He could not bear women who threw their shoulders
     and eyes at you, and chattered away; or hard-mouthed women who
     laid down the law and knew more than you did. There was only one
     quality in a woman that appealed to him—charm; and the quieter it
     was, the more he liked it. And this one had charm, shadowy as
     afternoon sunlight on those Italian hills and valleys he had
     loved. The feeling, too, that she was, as it were, apart,
     cloistered, made her seem nearer to himself, a strangely
     desirable companion. When a man is very old and quite out of the
     running, he loves to feel secure from the rivalries of youth, for
     he would still be first in the heart of beauty. And he drank his
     hock, and watched her lips, and felt nearly young. But the dog
     Balthasar lay watching her lips too, and despising in his heart
     the interruptions of their talk, and the tilting of those
     greenish glasses full of a golden fluid which was distasteful to
     him.

     The light was just failing when they went back into the
     music-room. And, cigar in mouth, old Jolyon said:

     “Play me some Chopin.”

     By the cigars they smoke, and the composers they love, ye shall
     know the texture of men’s souls. Old Jolyon could not bear a
     strong cigar or Wagner’s music. He loved Beethoven and Mozart,
     Handel and Gluck, and Schumann, and, for some occult reason, the
     operas of Meyerbeer; but of late years he had been seduced by
     Chopin, just as in painting he had succumbed to Botticelli. In
     yielding to these tastes he had been conscious of divergence from
     the standard of the Golden Age. Their poetry was not that of
     Milton and Byron and Tennyson; of Raphael and Titian; Mozart and
     Beethoven. It was, as it were, behind a veil; their poetry hit no
     one in the face, but slipped its fingers under the ribs and
     turned and twisted, and melted up the heart. And, never certain
     that this was healthy, he did not care a rap so long as he could
     see the pictures of the one or hear the music of the other.

     Irene sat down at the piano under the electric lamp festooned
     with pearl-grey, and old Jolyon, in an armchair, whence he could
     see her, crossed his legs and drew slowly at his cigar. She sat a
     few moments with her hands on the keys, evidently searching her
     mind for what to give him. Then she began and within old Jolyon
     there arose a sorrowful pleasure, not quite like anything else in
     the world. He fell slowly into a trance, interrupted only by the
     movements of taking the cigar out of his mouth at long intervals,
     and replacing it. She was there, and the hock within him, and the
     scent of tobacco; but there, too, was a world of sunshine
     lingering into moonlight, and pools with storks upon them, and
     bluish trees above, glowing with blurs of wine-red roses, and
     fields of lavender where milk-white cows were grazing, and a
     woman all shadowy, with dark eyes and a white neck, smiled,
     holding out her arms; and through air which was like music a star
     dropped and was caught on a cow’s horn. He opened his eyes.
     Beautiful piece; she played well—the touch of an angel! And he
     closed them again. He felt miraculously sad and happy, as one
     does, standing under a lime-tree in full honey flower. Not live
     one’s own life again, but just stand there and bask in the smile
     of a woman’s eyes, and enjoy the bouquet! And he jerked his hand;
     the dog Balthasar had reached up and licked it.

     “Beautiful!” He said: “Go on—more Chopin!”

     She began to play again. This time the resemblance between her
     and “Chopin” struck him. The swaying he had noticed in her walk
     was in her playing too, and the Nocturne she had chosen and the
     soft darkness of her eyes, the light on her hair, as of moonlight
     from a golden moon. Seductive, yes; but nothing of Delilah in her
     or in that music. A long blue spiral from his cigar ascended and
     dispersed. “So we go out!” he thought. “No more beauty! Nothing?”

     Again Irene stopped.

     “Would you like some Gluck? He used to write his music in a
     sunlit garden, with a bottle of Rhine wine beside him.”

     “Ah! yes. Let’s have ‘Orfeo.’” Round about him now were fields of
     gold and silver flowers, white forms swaying in the sunlight,
     bright birds flying to and fro. All was summer. Lingering waves
     of sweetness and regret flooded his soul. Some cigar ash dropped,
     and taking out a silk handkerchief to brush it off, he inhaled a
     mingled scent as of snuff and eau de Cologne. “Ah!” he thought,
     “Indian summer—that’s all!” and he said: “You haven’t played me
     ‘Che faro.’”

     She did not answer; did not move. He was conscious of
     something—some strange upset. Suddenly he saw her rise and turn
     away, and a pang of remorse shot through him. What a clumsy chap!
     Like Orpheus, she of course—she too was looking for her lost one
     in the hall of memory! And disturbed to the heart, he got up from
     his chair. She had gone to the great window at the far end.
     Gingerly he followed. Her hands were folded over her breast; he
     could just see her cheek, very white. And, quite emotionalized,
     he said:

     “There, there, my love!” The words had escaped him mechanically,
     for they were those he used to Holly when she had a pain, but
     their effect was instantaneously distressing. She raised her
     arms, covered her face with them, and wept.

     Old Jolyon stood gazing at her with eyes very deep from age. The
     passionate shame she seemed feeling at her abandonment, so unlike
     the control and quietude of her whole presence was as if she had
     never before broken down in the presence of another being.

     “There, there—there, there!” he murmured, and putting his hand
     out reverently, touched her. She turned, and leaned the arms
     which covered her face against him. Old Jolyon stood very still,
     keeping one thin hand on her shoulder. Let her cry her heart
     out—it would do her good.

     And the dog Balthasar, puzzled, sat down on his stern to examine
     them.

     The window was still open, the curtains had not been drawn, the
     last of daylight from without mingled with faint intrusion from
     the lamp within; there was a scent of new-mown grass. With the
     wisdom of a long life old Jolyon did not speak. Even grief sobbed
     itself out in time; only Time was good for sorrow—Time who saw
     the passing of each mood, each emotion in turn; Time the
     layer-to-rest. There came into his mind the words: “As panteth
     the hart after cooling streams”—but they were of no use to him.
     Then, conscious of a scent of violets, he knew she was drying her
     eyes. He put his chin forward, pressed his moustache against her
     forehead, and felt her shake with a quivering of her whole body,
     as of a tree which shakes itself free of raindrops. She put his
     hand to her lips, as if saying: “All over now! Forgive me!”

     The kiss filled him with a strange comfort; he led her back to
     where she had been so upset. And the dog Balthasar, following,
     laid the bone of one of the cutlets they had eaten at their feet.

     Anxious to obliterate the memory of that emotion, he could think
     of nothing better than china; and moving with her slowly from
     cabinet to cabinet, he kept taking up bits of Dresden and
     Lowestoft and Chelsea, turning them round and round with his
     thin, veined hands, whose skin, faintly freckled, had such an
     aged look.

     “I bought this at Jobson’s,” he would say; “cost me thirty
     pounds. It’s very old. That dog leaves his bones all over the
     place. This old ‘ship-bowl’ I picked up at the sale when that
     precious rip, the Marquis, came to grief. But you don’t remember.
     Here’s a nice piece of Chelsea. Now, what would you say _this_
     was?” And he was comforted, feeling that, with her taste, she was
     taking a real interest in these things; for, after all, nothing
     better composes the nerves than a doubtful piece of china.

     When the crunch of the carriage wheels was heard at last, he
     said:

     “You must come again; you must come to lunch, then I can show you
     these by daylight, and my little sweet—she’s a dear little thing.
     This dog seems to have taken a fancy to you.”

     For Balthasar, feeling that she was about to leave, was rubbing
     his side against her leg. Going out under the porch with her, he
     said:

     “He’ll get you up in an hour and a quarter. Take this for your
     _protégées_,” and he slipped a cheque for fifty pounds into her
     hand. He saw her brightened eyes, and heard her murmur: “Oh!
     Uncle Jolyon!” and a real throb of pleasure went through him.
     That meant one or two poor creatures helped a little, and it
     meant that she would come again. He put his hand in at the window
     and grasped hers once more. The carriage rolled away. He stood
     looking at the moon and the shadows of the trees, and thought: “A
     sweet night! She...!”




     II


     Two days of rain, and summer set in bland and sunny. Old Jolyon
     walked and talked with Holly. At first he felt taller and full of
     a new vigour; then he felt restless. Almost every afternoon they
     would enter the coppice, and walk as far as the log. “Well, she’s
     not there!” he would think, “of course not!” And he would feel a
     little shorter, and drag his feet walking up the hill home, with
     his hand clapped to his left side. Now and then the thought would
     move in him: “Did she come—or did I dream it?” and he would stare
     at space, while the dog Balthasar stared at him. Of course she
     would not come again! He opened the letters from Spain with less
     excitement. They were not returning till July; he felt, oddly,
     that he could bear it. Every day at dinner he screwed up his eyes
     and looked at where she had sat. She was not there, so he
     unscrewed his eyes again.

     On the seventh afternoon he thought: “I must go up and get some
     boots.” He ordered Beacon, and set out. Passing from Putney
     towards Hyde Park he reflected: “I might as well go to Chelsea
     and see her.” And he called out: “Just drive me to where you took
     that lady the other night.” The coachman turned his broad red
     face, and his juicy lips answered: “The lady in grey, sir?”

     “Yes, the lady in grey.” What other ladies were there! Stodgy
     chap!

     The carriage stopped before a small three-storied block of flats,
     standing a little back from the river. With a practised eye old
     Jolyon saw that they were cheap. “I should think about sixty
     pound a year,” he mused; and entering, he looked at the
     name-board. The name “Forsyte” was not on it, but against “First
     Floor, Flat C” were the words: “Mrs. Irene Heron.” Ah! She had
     taken her maiden name again! And somehow this pleased him. He
     went upstairs slowly, feeling his side a little. He stood a
     moment, before ringing, to lose the feeling of drag and
     fluttering there. She would not be in! And then—Boots! The
     thought was black. What did he want with boots at his age? He
     could not wear out all those he had.

     “Your mistress at home?”

     “Yes, sir.”

     “Say Mr. Jolyon Forsyte.”

     “Yes, sir, will you come this way?”

     Old Jolyon followed a very little maid—not more than sixteen one
     would say—into a very small drawing-room where the sun-blinds
     were drawn. It held a cottage piano and little else save a vague
     fragrance and good taste. He stood in the middle, with his top
     hat in his hand, and thought: “I expect she’s very badly off!”
     There was a mirror above the fireplace, and he saw himself
     reflected. An old-looking chap! He heard a rustle, and turned
     round. She was so close that his moustache almost brushed her
     forehead, just under her hair.

     “I was driving up,” he said. “Thought I’d look in on you, and ask
     you how you got up the other night.”

     And, seeing her smile, he felt suddenly relieved. She was really
     glad to see him, perhaps.

     “Would you like to put on your hat and come for a drive in the
     Park?”

     But while she was gone to put her hat on, he frowned. The Park!
     James and Emily! Mrs. Nicholas, or some other member of his
     precious family would be there very likely, prancing up and down.
     And they would go and wag their tongues about having seen him
     with her, afterwards. Better not! He did not wish to revive the
     echoes of the past on Forsyte ’Change. He removed a white hair
     from the lapel of his closely-buttoned-up frock coat, and passed
     his hand over his cheeks, moustache, and square chin. It felt
     very hollow there under the cheekbones. He had not been eating
     much lately—he had better get that little whippersnapper who
     attended Holly to give him a tonic. But she had come back and
     when they were in the carriage, he said:

     “Suppose we go and sit in Kensington Gardens instead?” and added
     with a twinkle: “No prancing up and down there,” as if she had
     been in the secret of his thoughts.

     Leaving the carriage, they entered those select precincts, and
     strolled towards the water.

     “You’ve gone back to your maiden name, I see,” he said: “I’m not
     sorry.”

     She slipped her hand under his arm: “Has June forgiven me, Uncle
     Jolyon?”

     He answered gently: “Yes—yes; of course, why not?”

     “And have you?”

     “I? I forgave you as soon as I saw how the land really lay.” And
     perhaps he had; his instinct had always been to forgive the
     beautiful.

     She drew a deep breath. “I never regretted—I couldn’t. Did you
     ever love very deeply, Uncle Jolyon?”

     At that strange question old Jolyon stared before him. Had he? He
     did not seem to remember that he ever had. But he did not like to
     say this to the young woman whose hand was touching his arm,
     whose life was suspended, as it were, by memory of a tragic love.
     And he thought: “If I had met you when I was young I—I might have
     made a fool of myself, perhaps.” And a longing to escape in
     generalities beset him.

     “Love’s a queer thing,” he said, “fatal thing often. It was the
     Greeks—wasn’t it?—made love into a goddess; they were right, I
     dare say, but then they lived in the Golden Age.”

     “Phil adored them.”

     Phil! The word jarred him, for suddenly—with his power to see all
     round a thing, he perceived why she was putting up with him like
     this. She wanted to talk about her lover! Well! If it was any
     pleasure to her! And he said: “Ah! There was a bit of the
     sculptor in him, I fancy.”

     “Yes. He loved balance and symmetry; he loved the whole-hearted
     way the Greeks gave themselves to art.”

     Balance! The chap had no balance at all, if he remembered; as for
     symmetry—clean-built enough he was, no doubt; but those queer
     eyes of his, and high cheek-bones—Symmetry?

     “You’re of the Golden Age, too, Uncle Jolyon.”

     Old Jolyon looked round at her. Was she chaffing him? No, her
     eyes were soft as velvet. Was she flattering him? But if so, why?
     There was nothing to be had out of an old chap like him.

     “Phil thought so. He used to say: ‘But I can never tell him that
     I admire him.’”

     Ah! There it was again. Her dead lover; her desire to talk of
     him! And he pressed her arm, half resentful of those memories,
     half grateful, as if he recognised what a link they were between
     herself and him.

     “He was a very talented young fellow,” he murmured. “It’s hot; I
     feel the heat nowadays. Let’s sit down.”

     They took two chairs beneath a chestnut tree whose broad leaves
     covered them from the peaceful glory of the afternoon. A pleasure
     to sit there and watch her, and feel that she liked to be with
     him. And the wish to increase that liking, if he could, made him
     go on:

     “I expect he showed you a side of him I never saw. He’d be at his
     best with you. His ideas of art were a little new—to me”—he had
     stiffed the word ‘fangled.’

     “Yes: but he used to say you had a real sense of beauty.” Old
     Jolyon thought: “The devil he did!” but answered with a twinkle:
     “Well, I have, or I shouldn’t be sitting here with you.” She was
     fascinating when she smiled with her eyes, like that!

     “He thought you had one of those hearts that never grow old. Phil
     had real insight.”

     He was not taken in by this flattery spoken out of the past, out
     of a longing to talk of her dead lover—not a bit; and yet it was
     precious to hear, because she pleased his eyes and heart
     which—quite true!—had never grown old. Was that because—unlike
     her and her dead lover, he had never loved to desperation, had
     always kept his balance, his sense of symmetry. Well! It had left
     him power, at eighty-four, to admire beauty. And he thought, “If
     I were a painter or a sculptor! But I’m an old chap. Make hay
     while the sun shines.”

     A couple with arms entwined crossed on the grass before them, at
     the edge of the shadow from their tree. The sunlight fell cruelly
     on their pale, squashed, unkempt young faces. “We’re an ugly
     lot!” said old Jolyon suddenly. “It amazes me to see how—love
     triumphs over that.”

     “Love triumphs over everything!”

     “The young think so,” he muttered.

     “Love has no age, no limit, and no death.”

     With that glow in her pale face, her breast heaving, her eyes so
     large and dark and soft, she looked like Venus come to life! But
     this extravagance brought instant reaction, and, twinkling, he
     said: “Well, if it had limits, we shouldn’t be born; for by
     George! it’s got a lot to put up with.”

     Then, removing his top hat, he brushed it round with a cuff. The
     great clumsy thing heated his forehead; in these days he often
     got a rush of blood to the head—his circulation was not what it
     had been.

     She still sat gazing straight before her, and suddenly she
     murmured:

     “It’s strange enough that _I’m_ alive.”

     Those words of Jo’s “Wild and lost” came back to him.

     “Ah!” he said: “my son saw you for a moment—that day.”

     “Was it your son? I heard a voice in the hall; I thought for a
     second it was—Phil.”

     Old Jolyon saw her lips tremble. She put her hand over them, took
     it away again, and went on calmly: “That night I went to the
     Embankment; a woman caught me by the dress. She told me about
     herself. When one knows that others suffer, one’s ashamed.”

     “One of _those?_”

     She nodded, and horror stirred within old Jolyon, the horror of
     one who has never known a struggle with desperation. Almost
     against his will he muttered: “Tell me, won’t you?”

     “I didn’t care whether I lived or died. When you’re like that,
     Fate ceases to want to kill you. She took care of me three
     days—she never left me. I had no money. That’s why I do what I
     can for them, now.”

     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! But his sense of justice stifled condemnation. No, she
     would certainly have died rather than take another penny from
     _him_. Soft as she looked, there must be strength in her
     somewhere—strength and fidelity. But what business had young
     Bosinney to have got run over and left her stranded like this!

     “Well, you must come to me now,” he said, “for anything you want,
     or I shall be quite cut up.” And putting on his hat, he rose.
     “Let’s go and get some tea. I told that lazy chap to put the
     horses up for an hour, and come for me at your place. We’ll take
     a cab presently; I can’t walk as I used to.”

     He enjoyed that stroll to the Kensington end of the gardens—the
     sound of her voice, the glancing of her eyes, the subtle beauty
     of a charming form moving beside him. He enjoyed their tea at
     Ruffel’s in the High Street, and came out thence with a great box
     of chocolates swung on his little finger. He enjoyed the drive
     back to Chelsea in a hansom, smoking his cigar. She had promised
     to come down next Sunday and play to him again, and already in
     thought he was plucking carnations and early roses for her to
     carry back to town. It was a pleasure to give her a little
     pleasure, if it _were_ pleasure from an old chap like him! The
     carriage was already there when they arrived. Just like that
     fellow, who was always late when he was wanted! Old Jolyon went
     in for a minute to say good-bye. The little dark hall of the flat
     was impregnated with a disagreeable odour of patchouli, and on a
     bench against the wall—its only furniture—he saw a figure
     sitting. 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.”

     “I know that.”

     He was abashed by her quiet smile. “Well then—Sunday,” he
     murmured: “Good-bye.”

     She put her cheek forward for him to kiss.

     “Good-bye,” he said again; “take care of yourself.” And he went
     out, not looking towards the figure on the bench. He drove home
     by way of Hammersmith; that he might stop at a place he knew of
     and tell them to send her in two dozen of their best Burgundy.
     She must want picking-up sometimes! Only in Richmond Park did he
     remember that he had gone up to order himself some boots, and was
     surprised that he could have had so paltry an idea.




     III


     The little spirits of the past which throng an old man’s days had
     never pushed their faces up to his so seldom as in the seventy
     hours elapsing before Sunday came. The spirit of the future, with
     the charm of the unknown, put up her lips instead. Old Jolyon was
     not restless now, and paid no visits to the log, because she was
     _coming to lunch_. There is wonderful finality about a meal; it
     removes a world of doubts, for no one misses meals except for
     reasons beyond control. He played many games with Holly on the
     lawn, pitching them up to her who was batting so as to be ready
     to bowl to Jolly in the holidays. For she was not a Forsyte, but
     Jolly was—and Forsytes always bat, until they have resigned and
     reached the age of eighty-five. The dog Balthasar, in attendance,
     lay on the ball as often as he could, and the page-boy fielded,
     till his face was like the harvest moon. And because the time was
     getting shorter, each day was longer and more golden than the
     last. On Friday night he took a liver pill, his side hurt him
     rather, and though it was not the liver side, there is no remedy
     like that. Anyone telling him that he had found a new excitement
     in life and that excitement was not good for him, would have been
     met by one of those steady and rather defiant looks of his
     deep-set iron-grey eyes, which seemed to say: “I know my own
     business best.” He always had and always would.

     On Sunday morning, when Holly had gone with her governess to
     church, he visited the strawberry beds. There, accompanied by the
     dog Balthasar, he examined the plants narrowly and succeeded in
     finding at least two dozen berries which were really ripe.
     Stooping was not good for him, and he became very dizzy and red
     in the forehead. Having placed the strawberries in a dish on the
     dining-table, he washed his hands and bathed his forehead with
     eau de Cologne. There, before the mirror, it occurred to him that
     he was thinner. What a “threadpaper” he had been when he was
     young! It was nice to be slim—he could not bear a fat chap; and
     yet perhaps his cheeks were _too_ thin! She was to arrive by
     train at half-past twelve and walk up, entering from the road
     past Drage’s farm at the far end of the coppice. And, having
     looked into June’s room to see that there was hot water ready, he
     set forth to meet her, leisurely, for his heart was beating. The
     air smelled sweet, larks sang, and the Grand Stand at Epsom was
     visible. A perfect day! On just such a one, no doubt, six years
     ago, Soames had brought young Bosinney down with him to look at
     the site before they began to build. It was Bosinney who had
     pitched on the exact spot for the house—as June had often told
     him. In these days he was thinking much about that young fellow,
     as if his spirit were really haunting the field of his last work,
     on the chance of seeing—her. Bosinney—the one man who had
     possessed her heart, to whom she had given her whole self with
     rapture! At his age one could not, of course, imagine such
     things, but there stirred in him a queer vague aching—as it were
     the ghost of an impersonal jealousy; and a feeling, too, more
     generous, of pity for that love so early lost. All over in a few
     poor months! Well, well! He looked at his watch before entering
     the coppice—only a quarter past, twenty-five minutes to wait! And
     then, turning the corner of the path, he saw her exactly where he
     had seen her the first time, on the log; and realised that she
     must have come by the earlier train to sit there alone for a
     couple of hours at least. Two hours of her society missed! What
     memory could make that log so dear to her? His face showed what
     he was thinking, for she said at once:

     “Forgive me, Uncle Jolyon; it was here that I first knew.”

     “Yes, yes; there it is for you whenever you like. You’re looking
     a little Londony; you’re giving too many lessons.”

     That she should have to give lessons worried him. Lessons to a
     parcel of young girls thumping out scales with their thick
     fingers.

     “Where do you go to give them?” he asked.

     “They’re mostly Jewish families, luckily.”

     Old Jolyon stared; to all Forsytes Jews seem strange and
     doubtful.

     “They love music, and they’re very kind.”

     “They had better be, by George!” He took her arm—his side always
     hurt him a little going uphill—and said:

     “Did you ever see anything like those buttercups? They came like
     that in a night.”

     Her eyes seemed really to fly over the field, like bees after the
     flowers and the honey. “I wanted you to see them—wouldn’t let
     them turn the cows in yet.” Then, remembering that she had come
     to talk about Bosinney, he pointed to the clock-tower over the
     stables:

     “I expect _he_ wouldn’t have let me put that there—had no notion
     of time, if I remember.”

     But, pressing his arm to her, she talked of flowers instead, and
     he knew it was done that he might not feel she came because of
     her dead lover.

     “The best flower I can show you,” he said, with a sort of
     triumph, “is my little sweet. She’ll be back from Church
     directly. There’s something about her which reminds me a little
     of you,” and it did not seem to him peculiar that he had put it
     thus, instead of saying: “There’s something about you which
     reminds me a little of her.” Ah! And here she was!

     Holly, followed closely by her elderly French governess, whose
     digestion had been ruined twenty-two years ago in the siege of
     Strasbourg, came rushing towards them from under the oak tree.
     She stopped about a dozen yards away, to pat Balthasar and
     pretend that this was all she had in her mind. Old Jolyon, who
     knew better, said:

     “Well, my darling, here’s the lady in grey I promised you.”

     Holly raised herself and looked up. He watched the two of them
     with a twinkle, Irene smiling, Holly beginning with grave
     inquiry, passing into a shy smile too, and then to something
     deeper. She had a sense of beauty, that child—knew what was what!
     He enjoyed the sight of the kiss between them.

     “Mrs. Heron, Mam’zelle Beauce. Well, Mam’zelle—good sermon?”

     For, now that he had not much more time before him, the only part
     of the service connected with this world absorbed what interest
     in church remained to him. Mam’zelle Beauce stretched out a
     spidery hand clad in a black kid glove—she had been in the best
     families—and the rather sad eyes of her lean yellowish face
     seemed to ask: “Are you well-brrred?” Whenever Holly or Jolly did
     anything unpleasing to her—a not uncommon occurrence—she would
     say to them: “The little Tayleurs never did that—they were such
     well-brrred little children.” Jolly hated the little Tayleurs;
     Holly wondered dreadfully how it was she fell so short of them.
     “A thin rum little soul,” old Jolyon thought her—Mam’zelle
     Beauce.

     Luncheon was a successful meal, the mushrooms which he himself
     had picked in the mushroom house, his chosen strawberries, and
     another bottle of the Steinberg cabinet filled him with a certain
     aromatic spirituality, and a conviction that he would have a
     touch of eczema to-morrow.

     After lunch they sat under the oak tree drinking Turkish coffee.
     It was no matter of grief to him when Mademoiselle Beauce
     withdrew to write her Sunday letter to her sister, whose future
     had been endangered in the past by swallowing a pin—an event held
     up daily in warning to the children to eat slowly and digest what
     they had eaten. At the foot of the bank, on a carriage rug, Holly
     and the dog Balthasar teased and loved each other, and in the
     shade old Jolyon with his legs crossed and his cigar luxuriously
     savoured, gazed at Irene sitting in the swing. A light, vaguely
     swaying, grey figure with a fleck of sunlight here and there upon
     it, lips just opened, eyes dark and soft under lids a little
     drooped. She looked content; surely it did her good to come and
     see him! The selfishness of age had not set its proper grip on
     him, for he could still feel pleasure in the pleasure of others,
     realising that what he wanted, though much, was not quite all
     that mattered.

     “It’s quiet here,” he said; “you mustn’t come down if you find it
     dull. But it’s a pleasure to see you. My little sweet is the only
     face which gives me any pleasure, except yours.”

     From her smile he knew that she was not beyond liking to be
     appreciated, and this reassured him. “That’s not humbug,” he
     said. “I never told a woman I admired her when I didn’t. In fact
     I don’t know when I’ve told a woman I admired her, except my wife
     in the old days; and wives are funny.” He was silent, but resumed
     abruptly:

     “She used to expect me to say it more often than I felt it, and
     there we were.” Her face looked mysteriously troubled, and,
     afraid that he had said something painful, he hurried on: “When
     my little sweet marries, I hope she’ll find someone who knows
     what women feel. I shan’t be here to see it, but there’s too much
     topsy-turvydom in marriage; I don’t want her to pitch up against
     that.” And, aware that he had made bad worse, he added: “That dog
     _will_ scratch.”

     A silence followed. Of what was she thinking, this pretty
     creature whose life was spoiled; who had done with love, and yet
     was made for love? Some day when he was gone, perhaps, she would
     find another mate—not so disorderly as that young fellow who had
     got himself run over. Ah! but her husband?

     “Does Soames never trouble you?” he asked.

     She shook her head. Her face had closed up suddenly. For all her
     softness there was something irreconcilable about her. And a
     glimpse of light on the inexorable nature of sex antipathies
     strayed into a brain which, belonging to early Victorian
     civilisation—so much older than this of his old age—had never
     thought about such primitive things.

     “That’s a comfort,” he said. “You can see the Grand Stand to-day.
     Shall we take a turn round?”

     Through the flower and fruit garden, against whose high outer
     walls peach trees and nectarines were trained to the sun, through
     the stables, the vinery, the mushroom house, the asparagus beds,
     the rosery, the summer-house, he conducted her—even into the
     kitchen garden to see the tiny green peas which Holly loved to
     scoop out of their pods with her finger, and lick up from the
     palm of her little brown hand. Many delightful things he showed
     her, while Holly and the dog Balthasar danced ahead, or came to
     them at intervals for attention. It was one of the happiest
     afternoons he had ever spent, but it tired him and he was glad to
     sit down in the music room and let her give him tea. A special
     little friend of Holly’s had come in—a fair child with short hair
     like a boy’s. And the two sported in the distance, under the
     stairs, on the stairs, and up in the gallery. Old Jolyon begged
     for Chopin. She played studies, mazurkas, waltzes, till the two
     children, creeping near, stood at the foot of the piano their
     dark and golden heads bent forward, listening. Old Jolyon
     watched.

     “Let’s see you dance, you two!”

     Shyly, with a false start, they began. Bobbing and circling,
     earnest, not very adroit, they went past and past his chair to
     the strains of that waltz. He watched them and the face of her
     who was playing turned smiling towards those little dancers
     thinking:

     “Sweetest picture I’ve seen for ages.”

     A voice said:

     “Hollee! _Mais enfin—qu’est-ce que tu fais la—danser, le
     dimanche! Viens, donc!_”

     But the children came close to old Jolyon, knowing that he would
     save them, and gazed into a face which was decidedly “caught
     out.”

     “Better the day, better the deed, Mam’zelle. It’s all my doing.
     Trot along, chicks, and have your tea.”

     And, when they were gone, followed by the dog Balthasar, who took
     every meal, he looked at Irene with a twinkle and said:

     “Well, there we are! Aren’t they sweet? Have you any little ones
     among your pupils?”

     “Yes, three—two of them darlings.”

     “Pretty?”

     “Lovely!”

     Old Jolyon sighed; he had an insatiable appetite for the very
     young. “My little sweet,” he said, “is devoted to music; she’ll
     be a musician some day. You wouldn’t give me your opinion of her
     playing, I suppose?”

     “Of course I will.”

     “You wouldn’t like—” but he stifled the words “to give her
     lessons.” The idea that she gave lessons was unpleasant to him;
     yet it would mean that he would see her regularly. She left the
     piano and came over to his chair.

     “I would like, very much; but there is—June. When are they coming
     back?”

     Old Jolyon frowned. “Not till the middle of next month. What does
     that matter?”

     “You said June had forgiven me; but she could never forget, Uncle
     Jolyon.”

     Forget! She _must_ forget, if he wanted her to.

     But as if answering, Irene shook her head. “You know she
     couldn’t; one doesn’t forget.”

     Always that wretched past! And he said with a sort of vexed
     finality:

     “Well, we shall see.”

     He talked to her an hour or more, of the children, and a hundred
     little things, till the carriage came round to take her home. And
     when she had gone he went back to his chair, and sat there
     smoothing his face and chin, dreaming over the day.

     That evening after dinner he went to his study and took a sheet
     of paper. He stayed for some minutes without writing, then rose
     and stood under the masterpiece “Dutch Fishing Boats at Sunset.”
     He was not thinking of that picture, but of his life. He was
     going to leave her something in his Will; nothing could so have
     stirred the stilly deeps of thought and memory. He was going to
     leave her a portion of his wealth, of his aspirations, deeds,
     qualities, work—all that had made that wealth; going to leave
     her, too, a part of all he had missed in life, by his sane and
     steady pursuit of wealth. All! What had he missed? “Dutch Fishing
     Boats” responded blankly; he crossed to the French window, and
     drawing the curtain aside, opened it. A wind had got up, and one
     of last year’s oak leaves which had somehow survived the
     gardener’s brooms, was dragging itself with a tiny clicking
     rustle along the stone terrace in the twilight. Except for that
     it was very quiet out there, and he could smell the heliotrope
     watered not long since. A bat went by. A bird uttered its last
     “cheep.” And right above the oak tree the first star shone. Faust
     in the opera had bartered his soul for some fresh years of youth.
     Morbid notion! No such bargain was possible, that was _real_
     tragedy! No making oneself new again for love or life or
     anything. Nothing left to do but enjoy beauty from afar off while
     you could, and leave it something in your Will. But how much?
     And, as if he could not make that calculation looking out into
     the mild freedom of the country night, he turned back and went up
     to the chimney-piece. There were his pet bronzes—a Cleopatra with
     the asp at her breast; a Socrates; a greyhound playing with her
     puppy; a strong man reining in some horses. “They last!” he
     thought, and a pang went through his heart. They had a thousand
     years of life before them!

     “How much?” Well! enough at all events to save her getting old
     before her time, to keep the lines out of her face as long as
     possible, and grey from soiling that bright hair. He might live
     another five years. She would be well over thirty by then. “How
     much?” She had none of his blood in her! In loyalty to the tenor
     of his life for forty years and more, ever since he married and
     founded that mysterious thing, a family, came this warning
     thought—None of his blood, no right to anything! It was a luxury
     then, this notion. An extravagance, a petting of an old man’s
     whim, one of those things done in dotage. His real future was
     vested in those who had his blood, in whom he would live on when
     he was gone. He turned away from the bronzes and stood looking at
     the old leather chair in which he had sat and smoked so many
     hundreds of cigars. And suddenly he seemed to see her sitting
     there in her grey dress, fragrant, soft, dark-eyed, graceful,
     looking up at him. Why! She cared nothing for him, really; all
     she cared for was that lost lover of hers. But she was there,
     whether she would or no, giving him pleasure with her beauty and
     grace. One had no right to inflict an old man’s company, no right
     to ask her down to play to him and let him look at her—for no
     reward! Pleasure must be paid for in this world. “How much?”
     After all, there was plenty; his son and his three grandchildren
     would never miss that little lump. He had made it himself, nearly
     every penny; he could leave it where he liked, allow himself this
     little pleasure. He went back to the bureau. “Well, I’m going
     to,” he thought, “let them think what they like. I’m going to!”
     And he sat down.

     “How much?” Ten thousand, twenty thousand—how much? If only with
     his money he could buy one year, one month of youth. And startled
     by that thought, he wrote quickly:

     “DEAR HERRING,—Draw me a codicil to this effect: “I leave to my
     niece Irene Forsyte, born Irene Heron, by which name she now
     goes, fifteen thousand pounds free of legacy duty.”

     “Yours faithfully,
     “JOLYON FORSYTE.”

     When he had sealed and stamped the envelope, he went back to the
     window and drew in a long breath. It was dark, but many stars
     shone now.




     IV


     He woke at half-past two, an hour which long experience had
     taught him brings panic intensity to all awkward thoughts.
     Experience had also taught him that a further waking at the
     proper hour of eight showed the folly of such panic. On this
     particular morning the thought which gathered rapid momentum was
     that if he became ill, at his age not improbable, he would not
     see her. From this it was but a step to realisation that he would
     be cut off, too, when his son and June returned from Spain. How
     could he justify desire for the company of one who had
     stolen—early morning does not mince words—June’s lover? That
     lover was dead; but June was a stubborn little thing;
     warm-hearted, but stubborn as wood, and—quite true—not one who
     forgot! By the middle of next month they would be back. He had
     barely five weeks left to enjoy the new interest which had come
     into what remained of his life. Darkness showed up to him
     absurdly clear the nature of his feeling. Admiration for beauty—a
     craving to see that which delighted his eyes.

     Preposterous, at his age! And yet—what other reason was there for
     asking June to undergo such painful reminder, and how prevent his
     son and his son’s wife from thinking him very queer? He would be
     reduced to sneaking up to London, which tired him; and the least
     indisposition would cut him off even from that. He lay with eyes
     open, setting his jaw against the prospect, and calling himself
     an old fool, while his heart beat loudly, and then seemed to stop
     beating altogether. He had seen the dawn lighting the window
     chinks, heard the birds chirp and twitter, and the cocks crow,
     before he fell asleep again, and awoke tired but sane. Five weeks
     before he need bother, at his age an eternity! But that early
     morning panic had left its mark, had slightly fevered the will of
     one who had always had his own way. He would see her as often as
     he wished! Why not go up to town and make that codicil at his
     solicitor’s instead of writing about it; she might like to go to
     the opera! But, by train, for he would not have that fat chap
     Beacon grinning behind his back. Servants were such fools; and,
     as likely as not, they had known all the past history of Irene
     and young Bosinney—servants knew everything, and suspected the
     rest. He wrote to her that morning:

     “MY DEAR IRENE,—I have to be up in town to-morrow. If you would
     like to have a look in at the opera, come and dine with me
     quietly ....”
         But where? It was decades since he had dined anywhere in
         London save at his Club or at a private house. Ah! that
         new-fangled place close to Covent Garden....
         “Let me have a line to-morrow morning to the Piedmont Hotel
         whether to expect you there at 7 o’clock.

     “Yours affectionately,
     “JOLYON FORSYTE.”

     She would understand that he just wanted to give her a little
     pleasure; for the idea that she should guess he had this itch to
     see her was instinctively unpleasant to him; it was not seemly
     that one so old should go out of his way to see beauty,
     especially in a woman.

     The journey next day, short though it was, and the visit to his
     lawyer’s, tired him. It was hot too, and after dressing for
     dinner he lay down on the sofa in his bedroom to rest a little.
     He must have had a sort of fainting fit, for he came to himself
     feeling very queer; and with some difficulty rose and rang the
     bell. Why! it was past seven! And there he was and she would be
     waiting. But suddenly the dizziness came on again, and he was
     obliged to relapse on the sofa. He heard the maid’s voice say:

     “Did you ring, sir?”

     “Yes, come here”; he could not see her clearly, for the cloud in
     front of his eyes. “I’m not well, I want some sal volatile.”

     “Yes, sir.” Her voice sounded frightened.

     Old Jolyon made an effort.

     “Don’t go. Take this message to my niece—a lady waiting in the
     hall—a lady in grey. Say Mr. Forsyte is not well—the heat. He is
     very sorry; if he is not down directly, she is not to wait
     dinner.”

     When she was gone, he thought feebly: “Why did I say a lady in
     grey—she may be in anything. Sal volatile!” He did not go off
     again, yet was not conscious of how Irene came to be standing
     beside him, holding smelling salts to his nose, and pushing a
     pillow up behind his head. He heard her say anxiously: “Dear
     Uncle Jolyon, what is it?” was dimly conscious of the soft
     pressure of her lips on his hand; then drew a long breath of
     smelling salts, suddenly discovered strength in them, and
     sneezed.

     “Ha!” he said, “it’s nothing. How did you get here? Go down and
     dine—the tickets are on the dressing-table. I shall be all right
     in a minute.”

     He felt her cool hand on his forehead, smelled violets, and sat
     divided between a sort of pleasure and a determination to be all
     right.

     “Why! You _are_ in grey!” he said. “Help me up.” Once on his feet
     he gave himself a shake.

     “What business had I to go off like that!” And he moved very
     slowly to the glass. What a cadaverous chap! Her voice, behind
     him, murmured:

     “You mustn’t come down, Uncle; you must rest.”

     “Fiddlesticks! A glass of champagne’ll soon set me to rights. I
     can’t have you missing the opera.”

     But the journey down the corridor was troublesome. What carpets
     they had in these newfangled places, so thick that you tripped up
     in them at every step! In the lift he noticed how concerned she
     looked, and said with the ghost of a twinkle:

     “I’m a pretty host.”

     When the lift stopped he had to hold firmly to the seat to
     prevent its slipping under him; but after soup and a glass of
     champagne he felt much better, and began to enjoy an infirmity
     which had brought such solicitude into her manner towards him.

     “I should have liked you for a daughter,” he said suddenly; and
     watching the smile in her eyes, went on:

     “You mustn’t get wrapped up in the past at your time of life;
     plenty of that when you get to my age. That’s a nice dress—I like
     the style.”

     “I made it myself.”

     Ah! A woman who could make herself a pretty frock had not lost
     her interest in life.

     “Make hay while the sun shines,” he said; “and drink that up. I
     want to see some colour in your cheeks. We mustn’t waste life; it
     doesn’t do. There’s a new Marguerite to-night; let’s hope she
     won’t be fat. And Mephisto—anything more dreadful than a fat chap
     playing the Devil I can’t imagine.”

     But they did not go to the opera after all, for in getting up
     from dinner the dizziness came over him again, and she insisted
     on his staying quiet and going to bed early. When he parted from
     her at the door of the hotel, having paid the cabman to drive her
     to Chelsea, he sat down again for a moment to enjoy the memory of
     her words: “You _are_ such a darling to me, Uncle Jolyon!” Why!
     Who wouldn’t be! He would have liked to stay up another day and
     take her to the Zoo, but two days running of him would bore her
     to death. No, he must wait till next Sunday; she had promised to
     come then. They would settle those lessons for Holly, if only for
     a month. It would be something. That little Mam’zelle Beauce
     wouldn’t like it, but she would have to lump it. And crushing his
     old opera hat against his chest he sought the lift.

     He drove to Waterloo next morning, struggling with a desire to
     say: “Drive me to Chelsea.” But his sense of proportion was too
     strong. Besides, he still felt shaky, and did not want to risk
     another aberration like that of last night, away from home.
     Holly, too, was expecting him, and what he had in his bag for
     her. Not that there was any cupboard love in his little sweet—she
     was a bundle of affection. Then, with the rather bitter cynicism
     of the old, he wondered for a second whether it was not cupboard
     love which made Irene put up with him. No, she was not that sort
     either. She had, if anything, too little notion of how to butter
     her bread, no sense of property, poor thing! Besides, he had not
     breathed a word about that codicil, nor should he—sufficient unto
     the day was the good thereof.

     In the victoria which met him at the station Holly was
     restraining the dog Balthasar, and their caresses made “jubey”
     his drive home. All the rest of that fine hot day and most of the
     next he was content and peaceful, reposing in the shade, while
     the long lingering sunshine showered gold on the lawns and the
     flowers. But on Thursday evening at his lonely dinner he began to
     count the hours; sixty-five till he would go down to meet her
     again in the little coppice, and walk up through the fields at
     her side. He had intended to consult the doctor about his
     fainting fit, but the fellow would be sure to insist on quiet, no
     excitement and all that; and he did not mean to be tied by the
     leg, did not want to be told of an infirmity—if there were one,
     could not afford to hear of it at his time of life, now that this
     new interest had come. And he carefully avoided making any
     mention of it in a letter to his son. It would only bring them
     back with a run! How far this silence was due to consideration
     for their pleasure, how far to regard for his own, he did not
     pause to consider.

     That night in his study he had just finished his cigar and was
     dozing off, when he heard the rustle of a gown, and was conscious
     of a scent of violets. Opening his eyes he saw her, dressed in
     grey, standing by the fireplace, holding out her arms. The odd
     thing was that, though those arms seemed to hold nothing, they
     were curved as if round someone’s neck, and her own neck was bent
     back, her lips open, her eyes closed. She vanished at once, and
     there were the mantelpiece and his bronzes. But those bronzes and
     the mantelpiece had not been there when she was, only the
     fireplace and the wall! Shaken and troubled, he got up. “I must
     take medicine,” he thought; “I can’t be well.” His heart beat too
     fast, he had an asthmatic feeling in the chest; and going to the
     window, he opened it to get some air. A dog was barking far away,
     one of the dogs at Gage’s farm no doubt, beyond the coppice. A
     beautiful still night, but dark. “I dropped off,” he mused,
     “that’s it! And yet I’ll swear my eyes were open!” A sound like a
     sigh seemed to answer.

     “What’s that?” he said sharply, “who’s there?”

     Putting his hand to his side to still the beating of his heart,
     he stepped out on the terrace. Something soft scurried by in the
     dark. “Shoo!” It was that great grey cat. “Young Bosinney was
     like a great cat!” he thought. “It was him in there, that
     she—that she was—He’s got her still!” He walked to the edge of
     the terrace, and looked down into the darkness; he could just see
     the powdering of the daisies on the unmown lawn. Here to-day and
     gone to-morrow! And there came the moon, who saw all, young and
     old, alive and dead, and didn’t care a dump! His own turn soon.
     For a single day of youth he would give what was left! And he
     turned again towards the house. He could see the windows of the
     night nursery up there. His little sweet would be asleep. “Hope
     that dog won’t wake her!” he thought. “What is it makes us love,
     and makes us die! I must go to bed.”

     And across the terrace stones, growing grey in the moonlight, he
     passed back within.




     V


     How should an old man live his days if not in dreaming of his
     well-spent past? In that, at all events, there is no agitating
     warmth, only pale winter sunshine. The shell can withstand the
     gentle beating of the dynamos of memory. The present he should
     distrust; the future shun. From beneath thick shade he should
     watch the sunlight creeping at his toes. If there be sun of
     summer, let him not go out into it, mistaking it for the
     Indian-summer sun! Thus peradventure he shall decline softly,
     slowly, imperceptibly, until impatient Nature clutches his
     wind-pipe and he gasps away to death some early morning before
     the world is aired, and they put on his tombstone: “In the
     fulness of years!” Yea! If he preserve his principles in perfect
     order, a Forsyte may live on long after he is dead.

     Old Jolyon was conscious of all this, and yet there was in him
     that which transcended Forsyteism. For it is written that a
     Forsyte shall not love beauty more than reason; nor his own way
     more than his own health. And something beat within him in these
     days that with each throb fretted at the thinning shell. His
     sagacity knew this, but it knew too that he could not stop that
     beating, nor would if he could. And yet, if you had told him he
     was living on his capital, he would have stared you down. No, no;
     a man did not live on his capital; it was not done! The
     shibboleths of the past are ever more real than the actualities
     of the present. And he, to whom living on one’s capital had
     always been anathema, could not have borne to have applied so
     gross a phrase to his own case. Pleasure is healthful; beauty
     good to see; to live again in the youth of the young—and what
     else on earth was he doing!

     Methodically, as had been the way of his whole life, he now
     arranged his time. On Tuesdays he journeyed up to town by train;
     Irene came and dined with him. And they went to the opera. On
     Thursdays he drove to town, and, putting that fat chap and his
     horses up, met her in Kensington Gardens, picking up the carriage
     after he had left her, and driving home again in time for dinner.
     He threw out the casual formula that he had business in London on
     those two days. On Wednesdays and Saturdays she came down to give
     Holly music lessons. The greater the pleasure he took in her
     society, the more scrupulously fastidious he became, just a
     matter-of-fact and friendly uncle. Not even in feeling, really,
     was he more—for, after all, there was his age. And yet, if she
     were late he fidgeted himself to death. If she missed coming,
     which happened twice, his eyes grew sad as an old dog’s, and he
     failed to sleep.

     And so a month went by—a month of summer in the fields, and in
     his heart, with summer’s heat and the fatigue thereof. Who could
     have believed a few weeks back that he would have looked forward
     to his son’s and his grand-daughter’s return with something like
     dread! There was such a delicious freedom, such recovery of that
     independence a man enjoys before he founds a family, about these
     weeks of lovely weather, and this new companionship with one who
     demanded nothing, and remained always a little unknown, retaining
     the fascination of mystery. It was like a draught of wine to him
     who has been drinking water for so long that he has almost
     forgotten the stir wine brings to his blood, the narcotic to his
     brain. The flowers were coloured brighter, scents and music and
     the sunlight had a living value—were no longer mere reminders of
     past enjoyment. There was something now to live for which stirred
     him continually to anticipation. He lived in that, not in
     retrospection; the difference is considerable to any so old as
     he. The pleasures of the table, never of much consequence to one
     naturally abstemious, had lost all value. He ate little, without
     knowing what he ate; and every day grew thinner and more worn to
     look at. He was again a “threadpaper”. and to this thinned form
     his massive forehead, with hollows at the temples, gave more
     dignity than ever. He was very well aware that he ought to see
     the doctor, but liberty was too sweet. He could not afford to pet
     his frequent shortness of breath and the pain in his side at the
     expense of liberty. Return to the vegetable existence he had led
     among the agricultural journals with the life-size mangold
     wurzels, before this new attraction came into his life—no! He
     exceeded his allowance of cigars. Two a day had always been his
     rule. Now he smoked three and sometimes four—a man will when he
     is filled with the creative spirit. But very often he thought: “I
     must give up smoking, and coffee; I must give up rattling up to
     town.” But he did not; there was no one in any sort of authority
     to notice him, and this was a priceless boon. The servants
     perhaps wondered, but they were, naturally, dumb. Mam’zelle
     Beauce was too concerned with her own digestion, and too
     “well-brrred” to make personal allusions. Holly had not as yet an
     eye for the relative appearance of him who was her plaything and
     her god. It was left for Irene herself to beg him to eat more, to
     rest in the hot part of the day, to take a tonic, and so forth.
     But she did not tell him that she was the cause of his
     thinness—for one cannot see the havoc oneself is working. A man
     of eighty-five has no passions, but the Beauty which produces
     passion works on in the old way, till death closes the eyes which
     crave the sight of Her.

     On the first day of the second week in July he received a letter
     from his son in Paris to say that they would all be back on
     Friday. This had always been more sure than Fate; but, with the
     pathetic improvidence given to the old, that they may endure to
     the end, he had never quite admitted it. Now he did, and
     something would have to be done. He had ceased to be able to
     imagine life without this new interest, but that which is not
     imagined sometimes exists, as Forsytes are perpetually finding to
     their cost. He sat in his old leather chair, doubling up the
     letter, and mumbling with his lips the end of an unlighted cigar.
     After to-morrow his Tuesday expeditions to town would have to be
     abandoned. He could still drive up, perhaps, once a week, on the
     pretext of seeing his man of business. But even that would be
     dependent on his health, for now they would begin to fuss about
     him. The lessons! The lessons must go on! She must swallow down
     her scruples, and June must put her feelings in her pocket. She
     had done so once, on the day after the news of Bosinney’s death;
     what she had done then, she could surely do again now. Four years
     since that injury was inflicted on her—not Christian to keep the
     memory of old sores alive. June’s will was strong, but his was
     stronger, for his sands were running out. Irene was soft, surely
     she would do this for him, subdue her natural shrinking, sooner
     than give him pain! The lessons must continue; for if they did,
     he was secure. And lighting his cigar at last, he began trying to
     shape out how to put it to them all, and explain this strange
     intimacy; how to veil and wrap it away from the naked truth—that
     he could not bear to be deprived of the sight of beauty. Ah!
     Holly! Holly was fond of her, Holly liked her lessons. She would
     save him—his little sweet! And with that happy thought he became
     serene, and wondered what he had been worrying about so
     fearfully. He must not worry, it left him always curiously weak,
     and as if but half present in his own body.

     That evening after dinner he had a return of the dizziness,
     though he did not faint. He would not ring the bell, because he
     knew it would mean a fuss, and make his going up on the morrow
     more conspicuous. When one grew old, the whole world was in
     conspiracy to limit freedom, and for what reason?—just to keep
     the breath in him a little longer. He did not want it at such
     cost. Only the dog Balthasar saw his lonely recovery from that
     weakness; anxiously watched his master go to the sideboard and
     drink some brandy, instead of giving him a biscuit. When at last
     old Jolyon felt able to tackle the stairs he went up to bed. And,
     though still shaky next morning, the thought of the evening
     sustained and strengthened him. It was always such a pleasure to
     give her a good dinner—he suspected her of undereating when she
     was alone; and, at the opera to watch her eyes glow and brighten,
     the unconscious smiling of her lips. She hadn’t much pleasure,
     and this was the last time he would be able to give her that
     treat. But when he was packing his bag he caught himself wishing
     that he had not the fatigue of dressing for dinner before him,
     and the exertion, too, of telling her about June’s return.

     The opera that evening was “Carmen,” and he chose the last
     _entr’acte_ to break the news, instinctively putting it off till
     the latest moment.

     She took it quietly, queerly; in fact, he did not know how she
     had taken it before the wayward music lifted up again and silence
     became necessary. The mask was down over her face, that mask
     behind which so much went on that he could not see. She wanted
     time to think it over, no doubt! He would not press her, for she
     would be coming to give her lesson to-morrow afternoon, and he
     should see her then when she had got used to the idea. In the cab
     he talked only of the Carmen; he had seen better in the old days,
     but this one was not bad at all. When he took her hand to say
     good-night, she bent quickly forward and kissed his forehead.

     “Good-bye, dear Uncle Jolyon, you have been so sweet to me.”

     “To-morrow then,” he said. “Good-night. Sleep well.” She echoed
     softly: “Sleep well” and from the cab window, already moving
     away, he saw her face screwed round towards him, and her hand put
     out in a gesture which seemed to linger.

     He sought his room slowly. They never gave him the same, and he
     could not get used to these “spick-and-spandy” bedrooms with new
     furniture and grey-green carpets sprinkled all over with pink
     roses. He was wakeful and that wretched Habanera kept throbbing
     in his head.

     His French had never been equal to its words, but its sense he
     knew, if it had any sense, a gipsy thing—wild and unaccountable.
     Well, there _was_ in life something which upset all your care and
     plans—something which made men and women dance to its pipes. And
     he lay staring from deep-sunk eyes into the darkness where the
     unaccountable held sway. You thought you had hold of life, but it
     slipped away behind you, took you by the scruff of the neck,
     forced you here and forced you there, and then, likely as not,
     squeezed life out of you! It took the very stars like that, he
     shouldn’t wonder, rubbed their noses together and flung them
     apart; it had never done playing its pranks. Five million people
     in this great blunderbuss of a town, and all of them at the mercy
     of that Life-Force, like a lot of little dried peas hopping about
     on a board when you struck your fist on it. Ah, well! Himself
     would not hop much longer—a good long sleep would do him good!

     How hot it was up here!—how noisy! His forehead burned; she had
     kissed it just where he always worried; just there—as if she had
     known the very place and wanted to kiss it all away for him. But,
     instead, her lips left a patch of grievous uneasiness. She had
     never spoken in quite that voice, had never before made that
     lingering gesture or looked back at him as she drove away.

     He got out of bed and pulled the curtains aside; his room faced
     down over the river. There was little air, but the sight of that
     breadth of water flowing by, calm, eternal, soothed him. “The
     great thing,” he thought “is not to make myself a nuisance. I’ll
     think of my little sweet, and go to sleep.” But it was long
     before the heat and throbbing of the London night died out into
     the short slumber of the summer morning. And old Jolyon had but
     forty winks.

     When he reached home next day he went out to the flower garden,
     and with the help of Holly, who was very delicate with flowers,
     gathered a great bunch of carnations. They were, he told her, for
     “the lady in grey”—a name still bandied between them; and he put
     them in a bowl in his study where he meant to tackle Irene the
     moment she came, on the subject of June and future lessons. Their
     fragrance and colour would help. After lunch he lay down, for he
     felt very tired, and the carriage would not bring her from the
     station till four o’clock. But as the hour approached he grew
     restless, and sought the schoolroom, which overlooked the drive.
     The sun-blinds were down, and Holly was there with Mademoiselle
     Beauce, sheltered from the heat of a stifling July day, attending
     to their silkworms. Old Jolyon had a natural antipathy to these
     methodical creatures, whose heads and colour reminded him of
     elephants; who nibbled such quantities of holes in nice green
     leaves; and smelled, as he thought, horrid. He sat down on a
     chintz-covered windowseat whence he could see the drive, and get
     what air there was; and the dog Balthasar who appreciated chintz
     on hot days, jumped up beside him. Over the cottage piano a
     violet dust-sheet, faded almost to grey, was spread, and on it
     the first lavender, whose scent filled the room. In spite of the
     coolness here, perhaps because of that coolness the beat of life
     vehemently impressed his ebbed-down senses. Each sunbeam which
     came through the chinks had annoying brilliance; that dog smelled
     very strong; the lavender perfume was overpowering; those
     silkworms heaving up their grey-green backs seemed horribly
     alive; and Holly’s dark head bent over them had a wonderfully
     silky sheen. A marvellous cruelly strong thing was life when you
     were old and weak; it seemed to mock you with its multitude of
     forms and its beating vitality. He had never, till those last few
     weeks, had this curious feeling of being with one half of him
     eagerly borne along in the stream of life, and with the other
     half left on the bank, watching that helpless progress. Only when
     Irene was with him did he lose this double consciousness.

     Holly turned her head, pointed with her little brown fist to the
     piano—for to point with a finger was not “well-brrred”—and said
     slyly:

     “Look at the ‘lady in grey,’ Gran; isn’t she pretty to-day?”

     Old Jolyon’s heart gave a flutter, and for a second the room was
     clouded; then it cleared, and he said with a twinkle:

     “Who’s been dressing her up?”

     “Mam’zelle.”

     “Hollee! Don’t be foolish!”

     That prim little Frenchwoman! She hadn’t yet got over the music
     lessons being taken away from her. That wouldn’t help. His little
     sweet was the only friend they had. Well, they were her lessons.
     And he shouldn’t budge shouldn’t budge for anything. He stroked
     the warm wool on Balthasar’s head, and heard Holly say: “When
     mother’s home, there won’t be any changes, will there? She
     doesn’t like strangers, you know.”

     The child’s words seemed to bring the chilly atmosphere of
     opposition about old Jolyon, and disclose all the menace to his
     new-found freedom. Ah! He would have to resign himself to being
     an old man at the mercy of care and love, or fight to keep this
     new and prized companionship; and to fight tired him to death.
     But his thin, worn face hardened into resolution till it appeared
     all Jaw. This was his house, and his affair; he should not budge!
     He looked at his watch, old and thin like himself; he had owned
     it fifty years. Past four already! And kissing the top of Holly’s
     head in passing, he went down to the hall. He wanted to get hold
     of her before she went up to give her lesson. At the first sound
     of wheels he stepped out into the porch, and saw at once that the
     victoria was empty.

     “The train’s in, sir; but the lady ’asn’t come.”

     Old Jolyon gave him a sharp upward look, his eyes seemed to push
     away that fat chap’s curiosity, and defy him to see the bitter
     disappointment he was feeling.

     “Very well,” he said, and turned back into the house. He went to
     his study and sat down, quivering like a leaf. What did this
     mean? She might have lost her train, but he knew well enough she
     hadn’t. “Good-bye, dear Uncle Jolyon.” Why “Good-bye” and not
     “Good-night”. And that hand of hers lingering in the air. And her
     kiss. What did it mean? Vehement alarm and irritation took
     possession of him. He got up and began to pace the Turkey carpet,
     between window and wall. She was going to give him up! He felt it
     for certain—and he defenceless. An old man wanting to look on
     beauty! It was ridiculous! Age closed his mouth, paralysed his
     power to fight. He had no right to what was warm and living, no
     right to anything but memories and sorrow. He could not plead
     with her; even an old man has his dignity. Defenceless! For an
     hour, lost to bodily fatigue, he paced up and down, past the bowl
     of carnations he had plucked, which mocked him with its scent. Of
     all things hard to bear, the prostration of will-power is
     hardest, for one who has always had his way. Nature had got him
     in its net, and like an unhappy fish he turned and swam at the
     meshes, here and there, found no hole, no breaking point. They
     brought him tea at five o’clock, and a letter. For a moment hope
     beat up in him. He cut the envelope with the butter knife, and
     read:

     “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 moonlight 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.

     He woke in the morning so unrefreshed and strengthless that he
     sent for the doctor. After sounding him, the fellow pulled a face
     as long as your arm, and ordered him to stay in bed and give up
     smoking. That was no hardship; there was nothing to get up for,
     and when he felt ill, tobacco always lost its savour. He spent
     the morning languidly with the sun-blinds down, turning and
     re-turning _The Times_, not reading much, the dog Balthasar lying
     beside his bed. With his lunch they brought him a telegram,
     running thus:

     “Your letter received coming down this afternoon will be with you
     at four-thirty. Irene.”

     Coming down! After all! Then she did exist—and he was not
     deserted. Coming down! A glow ran through his limbs; his cheeks
     and forehead felt hot. He drank his soup, and pushed the
     tray-table away, lying very quiet until they had removed lunch
     and left him alone; but every now and then his eyes twinkled.
     Coming down! His heart beat fast, and then did not seem to beat
     at all. At three o’clock he got up and dressed deliberately,
     noiselessly. Holly and Mam’zelle would be in the schoolroom, and
     the servants asleep after their dinner, he shouldn’t wonder. He
     opened his door cautiously, and went downstairs. In the hall the
     dog Balthasar lay solitary, and, followed by him, old Jolyon
     passed into his study and out into the burning afternoon. He
     meant to go down and meet her in the coppice, but felt at once he
     could not manage that in this heat. He sat down instead under the
     oak tree by the swing, and the dog Balthasar, who also felt the
     heat, lay down beside him. He sat there smiling. What a revel of
     bright minutes! What a hum of insects, and cooing of pigeons! It
     was the quintessence of a summer day. Lovely! And he was
     happy—happy as a sand-boy, whatever that might be. She was
     coming; she had not given him up! He had everything in life he
     wanted—except a little more breath, and less weight—just here! He
     would see her when she emerged from the fernery, come swaying
     just a little, a violet-grey figure passing over the daisies and
     dandelions and “soldiers” on the lawn—the soldiers with their
     flowery crowns. He would not move, but she would come up to him
     and say: “Dear Uncle Jolyon, I am sorry!” and sit in the swing
     and let him look at her and tell her that he had not been very
     well but was all right now; and that dog would lick her hand.
     That dog knew his master was fond of her; that dog was a good
     dog.

     It was quite shady under the tree; the sun could not get at him,
     only make the rest of the world bright so that he could see the
     Grand Stand at Epsom away out there, very far, and the cows
     cropping the clover in the field and swishing at the flies with
     their tails. He smelled the scent of limes, and lavender. Ah!
     that was why there was such a racket of bees. They were
     excited—busy, as his heart was busy and excited. Drowsy, too,
     drowsy and drugged on honey and happiness; as his heart was
     drugged and drowsy. Summer—summer—they seemed saying; great bees
     and little bees, and the flies too!

     The stable clock struck four; in half an hour she would be here.
     He would have just one tiny nap, because he had had so little
     sleep of late; and then he would be fresh for her, fresh for
     youth and beauty, coming towards him across the sunlit lawn—lady
     in grey! And settling back in his chair he closed his eyes. Some
     thistle-down came on what little air there was, and pitched on
     his moustache more white than itself. He did not know; but his
     breathing stirred it, caught there. A ray of sunlight struck
     through and lodged on his boot. A bumble-bee alighted and
     strolled on the crown of his Panama hat. And the delicious surge
     of slumber reached the brain beneath that hat, and the head
     swayed forward and rested on his breast. Summer—summer! So went
     the hum.

     The stable clock struck the quarter past. The dog Balthasar
     stretched and looked up at his master. The thistledown no longer
     moved. The dog placed his chin over the sunlit foot. It did not
     stir. The dog withdrew his chin quickly, rose, and leaped on old
     Jolyon’s lap, looked in his face, whined; then, leaping down, sat
     on his haunches, gazing up. And suddenly he uttered a long, long
     howl.

     But the thistledown was still as death, and the face of his old
     master.

     Summer—summer—summer! The soundless footsteps on the grass! 1917




     IN CHANCERY

    Two households both alike in dignity,
    From ancient grudge, break into new mutiny.
                   —_Romeo and Juliet_

     TO JESSIE AND JOSEPH CONRAD




     PART 1

     CHAPTER I AT TIMOTHY’S


     The possessive instinct never stands still. Through florescence
     and feud, frosts and fires, it followed the laws of progression
     even in the Forsyte family which had believed it fixed for ever.
     Nor can it be dissociated from environment any more than the
     quality of potato from the soil.

     The historian of the English eighties and nineties will, in his
     good time, depict the somewhat rapid progression from
     self-contented and contained provincialism to still more
     self-contented if less contained imperialism—in other words, the
     “possessive” instinct of the nation on the move. And so, as if in
     conformity, was it with the Forsyte family. They were spreading
     not merely on the surface, but within.

     When, in 1895, Susan Hayman, the married Forsyte sister, followed
     her husband at the ludicrously low age of seventy-four, and was
     cremated, it made strangely little stir among the six old
     Forsytes left. For this apathy there were three causes. First:
     the almost surreptitious burial of old Jolyon in 1892 down at
     Robin Hill—first of the Forsytes to desert the family grave at
     Highgate. That burial, coming a year after Swithin’s entirely
     proper funeral, had occasioned a great deal of talk on Forsyte
     ’Change, the abode of Timothy Forsyte on the Bayswater Road,
     London, which still collected and radiated family gossip.
     Opinions ranged from the lamentation of Aunt Juley to the
     outspoken assertion of Francie that it was “a jolly good thing to
     stop all that stuffy Highgate business.” Uncle Jolyon in his
     later years—indeed, ever since the strange and lamentable affair
     between his granddaughter June’s lover, young Bosinney, and
     Irene, his nephew Soames Forsyte’s wife—had noticeably rapped the
     family’s knuckles; and that way of his own which he had always
     taken had begun to seem to them a little wayward. The philosophic
     vein in him, of course, had always been too liable to crop out of
     the strata of pure Forsyteism, so they were in a way prepared for
     his interment in a strange spot. But the whole thing was an odd
     business, and when the contents of his Will became current coin
     on Forsyte ’Change, a shiver had gone round the clan. Out of his
     estate (£145,304 gross, with liabilities £35 7s. 4d.) he had
     actually left £15,000 to “whomever do you think, my dear? To
     _Irene!_” that runaway wife of his nephew Soames; Irene, a woman
     who had almost disgraced the family, and—still more amazing was
     to him no blood relation. Not out and out, of course; only a life
     interest—only the income from it! Still, there it was; and old
     Jolyon’s claim to be the perfect Forsyte was ended once for all.
     That, then, was the first reason why the burial of Susan
     Hayman—at Woking—made little stir.

     The second reason was altogether more expansive and imperial.
     Besides the house on Campden Hill, Susan had a place (left her by
     Hayman when he died) just over the border in Hants, where the
     Hayman boys had learned to be such good shots and riders, as it
     was believed, which was of course nice for them, and creditable
     to everybody; and the fact of owning something really countrified
     seemed somehow to excuse the dispersion of her remains—though
     what could have put cremation into her head they could not think!
     The usual invitations, however, had been issued, and Soames had
     gone down and young Nicholas, and the Will had been quite
     satisfactory so far as it went, for she had only had a life
     interest; and everything had gone quite smoothly to the children
     in equal shares.

     The third reason why Susan’s burial made little stir was the most
     expansive of all. It was summed up daringly by Euphemia, the
     pale, the thin: “Well, _I_ think people have a right to their own
     bodies, even when they’re dead.” Coming from a daughter of
     Nicholas, a Liberal of the old school and most tyrannical, it was
     a startling remark—showing in a flash what a lot of water had run
     under bridges since the death of Aunt Ann in ’86, just when the
     proprietorship of Soames over his wife’s body was acquiring the
     uncertainty which had led to such disaster. Euphemia, of course,
     spoke like a child, and had no experience; for though well over
     thirty by now, her name was still Forsyte. But, making all
     allowances, her remark did undoubtedly show expansion of the
     principle of liberty, decentralisation and shift in the central
     point of possession from others to oneself. When Nicholas heard
     his daughter’s remark from Aunt Hester he had rapped out: “Wives
     and daughters! There’s no end to their liberty in these days. I
     knew that ‘Jackson’ case would lead to things—lugging in Habeas
     Corpus like that!” He had, of course, never really forgiven the
     Married Woman’s Property Act, which would so have interfered with
     him if he had not mercifully married before it was passed. But,
     in truth, there was no denying the revolt among the younger
     Forsytes against being owned by others; that, as it were,
     Colonial disposition to own oneself, which is the paradoxical
     forerunner of Imperialism, was making progress all the time. They
     were all now married, except George, confirmed to the Turf and
     the Iseeum Club; Francie, pursuing her musical career in a studio
     off the King’s Road, Chelsea, and still taking “lovers” to
     dances; Euphemia, living at home and complaining of Nicholas; and
     those two Dromios, Giles and Jesse Hayman. Of the third
     generation there were not very many—young Jolyon had three,
     Winifred Dartie four, young Nicholas six already, young Roger had
     one, Marian Tweetyman one; St. John Hayman two. But the rest of
     the sixteen married—Soames, Rachel and Cicely of James’ family;
     Eustace and Thomas of Roger’s; Ernest, Archibald and Florence of
     Nicholas’. Augustus and Annabel Spender of the Hayman’s—were
     going down the years unreproduced.

     Thus, of the ten old Forsytes twenty-one young Forsytes had been
     born; but of the twenty-one young Forsytes there were as yet only
     seventeen descendants; and it already seemed unlikely that there
     would be more than a further unconsidered trifle or so. A student
     of statistics must have noticed that the birth rate had varied in
     accordance with the rate of interest for your money. Grandfather
     “Superior Dosset” Forsyte in the early nineteenth century had
     been getting ten per cent. for his, hence ten children. Those
     ten, leaving out the four who had not married, and Juley, whose
     husband Septimus Small had, of course, died almost at once, had
     averaged from four to five per cent. for theirs, and produced
     accordingly. The twenty-one whom they produced were now getting
     barely three per cent. in the Consols to which their father had
     mostly tied the Settlements they made to avoid death duties, and
     the six of them who had been reproduced had seventeen children,
     or just the proper two and five-sixths per stem.

     There were other reasons, too, for this mild reproduction. A
     distrust of their earning powers, natural where a sufficiency is
     guaranteed, together with the knowledge that their fathers did
     not die, kept them cautious. If one had children and not much
     income, the standard of taste and comfort must of necessity go
     down; what was enough for two was not enough for four, and so
     on—it would be better to wait and see what Father did. Besides,
     it was nice to be able to take holidays unhampered. Sooner in
     fact than own children, they preferred to concentrate on the
     ownership of themselves, conforming to the growing tendency _fin
     de siècle_, as it was called. In this way, little risk was run,
     and one would be able to have a motor-car. Indeed, Eustace
     already had one, but it had shaken him horribly, and broken one
     of his eye teeth; so that it would be better to wait till they
     were a little safer. In the meantime, no more children! Even
     young Nicholas was drawing in his horns, and had made no addition
     to his six for quite three years.

     The corporate decay, however, of the Forsytes, their dispersion
     rather, of which all this was symptomatic, had not advanced so
     far as to prevent a rally when Roger Forsyte died in 1899. It had
     been a glorious summer, and after holidays abroad and at the sea
     they were practically all back in London, when Roger with a touch
     of his old originality had suddenly breathed his last at his own
     house in Princes Gardens. At Timothy’s it was whispered sadly
     that poor Roger had always been eccentric about his digestion—had
     he not, for instance, preferred German mutton to all the other
     brands?

     Be that as it may, his funeral at Highgate had been perfect, and
     coming away from it Soames Forsyte made almost mechanically for
     his Uncle Timothy’s in the Bayswater Road. The “Old Things”—Aunt
     Juley and Aunt Hester—would like to hear about it. His
     father—James—at eighty-eight had not felt up to the fatigue of
     the funeral; and Timothy himself, of course, had not gone; so
     that Nicholas had been the only brother present. Still, there had
     been a fair gathering; and it would cheer Aunts Juley and Hester
     up to know. The kindly thought was not unmixed with the
     inevitable longing to get something out of everything you do,
     which is the chief characteristic of Forsytes, and indeed of the
     saner elements in every nation. In this practice of taking family
     matters to Timothy’s in the Bayswater Road, Soames was but
     following in the footsteps of his father, who had been in the
     habit of going at least once a week to see his sisters at
     Timothy’s, and had only given it up when he lost his nerve at
     eighty-six, and could not go out without Emily. To go with Emily
     was of no use, for who could really talk to anyone in the
     presence of his own wife? Like James in the old days, Soames
     found time to go there nearly every Sunday, and sit in the little
     drawing-room into which, with his undoubted taste, he had
     introduced a good deal of change and china not quite up to his
     own fastidious mark, and at least two rather doubtful Barbizon
     pictures, at Christmastides. He himself, who had done extremely
     well with the Barbizons, had for some years past moved towards
     the Marises, Israels, and Mauve, and was hoping to do better. In
     the riverside house which he now inhabited near Mapledurham he
     had a gallery, beautifully hung and lighted, to which few London
     dealers were strangers. It served, too, as a Sunday afternoon
     attraction in those week-end parties which his sisters, Winifred
     or Rachel, occasionally organised for him. For though he was but
     a taciturn showman, his quiet collected determinism seldom failed
     to influence his guests, who knew that his reputation was
     grounded not on mere aesthetic fancy, but on his power of gauging
     the future of market values. When he went to Timothy’s he almost
     always had some little tale of triumph over a dealer to unfold,
     and dearly he loved that coo of pride with which his aunts would
     greet it. This afternoon, however, he was differently animated,
     coming from Roger’s funeral in his neat dark clothes—not quite
     black, for after all an uncle was but an uncle, and his soul
     abhorred excessive display of feeling. Leaning back in a
     marqueterie chair and gazing down his uplifted nose at the
     sky-blue walls plastered with gold frames, he was noticeably
     silent. Whether because he had been to a funeral or not, the
     peculiar Forsyte build of his face was seen to the best advantage
     this afternoon—a face concave and long, with a jaw which divested
     of flesh would have seemed extravagant: altogether a chinny face
     though not at all ill-looking. He was feeling more strongly than
     ever that Timothy’s was hopelessly “rum-ti-too” and the souls of
     his aunts dismally mid-Victorian. The subject on which alone he
     wanted to talk—his own undivorced position—was unspeakable. And
     yet it occupied his mind to the exclusion of all else. It was
     only since the Spring that this had been so and a new feeling
     grown up which was egging him on towards what he knew might well
     be folly in a Forsyte of forty-five. More and more of late he had
     been conscious that he was “getting on.” The fortune already
     considerable when he conceived the house at Robin Hill which had
     finally wrecked his marriage with Irene, had mounted with
     surprising vigour in the twelve lonely years during which he had
     devoted himself to little else. He was worth to-day well over a
     hundred thousand pounds, and had no one to leave it to—no real
     object for going on with what was his religion. Even if he were
     to relax his efforts, money made money, and he felt that he would
     have a hundred and fifty thousand before he knew where he was.
     There had always been a strongly domestic, philoprogenitive side
     to Soames; baulked and frustrated, it had hidden itself away, but
     now had crept out again in this his “prime of life.” Concreted
     and focussed of late by the attraction of a girl’s undoubted
     beauty, it had become a veritable prepossession.

     And this girl was French, not likely to lose her head, or accept
     any unlegalised position. Moreover, Soames himself disliked the
     thought of that. He had tasted of the sordid side of sex during
     those long years of forced celibacy, secretively, and always with
     disgust, for he was fastidious, and his sense of law and order
     innate. He wanted no hole and corner liaison. A marriage at the
     Embassy in Paris, a few months’ travel, and he could bring
     Annette back quite separated from a past which in truth was not
     too distinguished, for she only kept the accounts in her mother’s
     Soho Restaurant; he could bring her back as something very new
     and chic with her French taste and self-possession, to reign at
     “The Shelter” near Mapledurham. On Forsyte ’Change and among his
     riverside friends it would be current that he had met a charming
     French girl on his travels and married her. There would be the
     flavour of romance, and a certain _cachet_ about a French wife.
     No! He was not at all afraid of that. It was only this cursed
     undivorced condition of his, and—and the question whether Annette
     would take him, which he dared not put to the touch until he had
     a clear and even dazzling future to offer her.

     In his aunts’ drawing-room he heard with but muffled ears those
     usual questions: How was his dear father? Not going out, of
     course, now that the weather was turning chilly? Would Soames be
     sure to tell him that Hester had found boiled holly leaves most
     comforting for that pain in her side; a poultice every three
     hours, with red flannel afterwards. And could he relish just a
     little pot of their very best prune preserve—it was so delicious
     this year, and had such a wonderful effect. Oh! and about the
     Darties—_had_ Soames heard that dear Winifred was having a most
     distressing time with Montague? Timothy thought she really ought
     to have protection It was said—but Soames mustn’t take this for
     certain—that he had given some of Winifred’s jewellery to a
     dreadful dancer. It was such a bad example for dear Val just as
     he was going to college. Soames had not heard? Oh, but he must go
     and see his sister and look into it at once! And did he think
     these Boers were really going to resist? Timothy was in quite a
     stew about it. The price of Consols was so high, and he had such
     a lot of money in them. Did Soames think they must go down if
     there was a war? Soames nodded. But it would be over very
     quickly. It would be so bad for Timothy if it wasn’t. And of
     course Soames’ dear father would feel it very much at his age.
     Luckily poor dear Roger had been spared this dreadful anxiety.
     And Aunt Juley with a little handkerchief wiped away the large
     tear trying to climb the permanent pout on her now quite withered
     left cheek; she was remembering dear Roger, and all his
     originality, and how he used to stick pins into her when they
     were little together. Aunt Hester, with her instinct for avoiding
     the unpleasant, here chimed in: Did Soames think they would make
     Mr. Chamberlain Prime Minister at once? He would settle it all so
     quickly. She would like to see that old Kruger sent to St.
     Helena. She could remember so well the news of Napoleon’s death,
     and what a relief it had been to his grandfather. Of course she
     and Juley—“We were in pantalettes then, my dear”—had not felt it
     much at the time.

     Soames took a cup of tea from her, drank it quickly, and ate
     three of those macaroons for which Timothy’s was famous. His
     faint, pale, supercilious smile had deepened just a little.
     Really, his family remained hopelessly provincial, however much
     of London they might possess between them. In these go-ahead days
     their provincialism stared out even more than it used to. Why,
     old Nicholas was still a Free Trader, and a member of that
     antediluvian home of Liberalism, the Remove Club—though, to be
     sure, the members were pretty well all Conservatives now, or he
     himself could not have joined; and Timothy, they said, still wore
     a nightcap. Aunt Juley spoke again. Dear Soames was looking so
     well, hardly a day older than he did when dear Ann died, and they
     were all there together, dear Jolyon, and dear Swithin, and dear
     Roger. She paused and caught the tear which had climbed the pout
     on her right cheek. Did he—did he ever hear anything of Irene
     nowadays? Aunt Hester visibly interposed her shoulder. Really,
     Juley was always saying something! The smile left Soames’ face,
     and he put his cup down. Here was his subject broached for him,
     and for all his desire to expand, he could not take advantage.

     Aunt Juley went on rather hastily:

     “They say dear Jolyon first left her that fifteen thousand out
     and out; then of course he saw it would not be right, and made it
     for her life only.”

     Had Soames heard that?

     Soames nodded.

     “Your cousin Jolyon is a widower now. He is her trustee; you knew
     that, of course?”

     Soames shook his head. He did know, but wished to show no
     interest. Young Jolyon and he had not met since the day of
     Bosinney’s death.

     “He must be quite middle-aged by now,” went on Aunt Juley
     dreamily. “Let me see, he was born when your dear uncle lived in
     Mount Street; long before they went to Stanhope Gate in December.
     Just before that dreadful Commune. Over fifty! Fancy that! Such a
     pretty baby, and we were all so proud of him; the very first of
     you all.” Aunt Juley sighed, and a lock of not quite her own hair
     came loose and straggled, so that Aunt Hester gave a little
     shiver. Soames rose, he was experiencing a curious piece of
     self-discovery. That old wound to his pride and self-esteem was
     not yet closed. He had come thinking he could talk of it, even
     wanting to talk of his fettered condition, and—behold! he was
     shrinking away from this reminder by Aunt Juley, renowned for her
     Malapropisms.

     Oh, Soames was not going already!

     Soames smiled a little vindictively, and said:

     “Yes. Good-bye. Remember me to Uncle Timothy!” And, leaving a
     cold kiss on each forehead, whose wrinkles seemed to try and
     cling to his lips as if longing to be kissed away, he left them
     looking brightly after him—dear Soames, it had been so good of
     him to come to-day, when they were not feeling very...!

     With compunction tweaking at his chest Soames descended the
     stairs, where was always that rather pleasant smell of camphor
     and port wine, and house where draughts are not permitted. The
     poor old things—he had not meant to be unkind! And in the street
     he instantly forgot them, repossessed by the image of Annette and
     the thought of the cursed coil around him. Why had he not pushed
     the thing through and obtained divorce when that wretched
     Bosinney was run over, and there was evidence galore for the
     asking! And he turned towards his sister Winifred Dartie’s
     residence in Green Street, Mayfair.




     CHAPTER II EXIT A MAN OF THE WORLD


     That a man of the world so subject to the vicissitudes of
     fortunes as Montague Dartie should still be living in a house he
     had inhabited twenty years at least would have been more
     noticeable if the rent, rates, taxes, and repairs of that house
     had not been defrayed by his father-in-law. By that simple if
     wholesale device James Forsyte had secured a certain stability in
     the lives of his daughter and his grandchildren. After all, there
     is something invaluable about a safe roof over the head of a
     sportsman so dashing as Dartie. Until the events of the last few
     days he had been almost-supernaturally steady all this year. The
     fact was he had acquired a half share in a filly of George
     Forsyte’s, who had gone irreparably on the turf, to the horror of
     Roger, now stilled by the grave. Sleeve-links, by Martyr, out of
     Shirt-on-fire, by Suspender, was a bay filly, three years old,
     who for a variety of reasons had never shown her true form. With
     half ownership of this hopeful animal, all the idealism latent
     somewhere in Dartie, as in every other man, had put up its head,
     and kept him quietly ardent for months past. When a man has some
     thing good to live for it is astonishing how sober he becomes;
     and what Dartie had was really good—a three to one chance for an
     autumn handicap, publicly assessed at twenty-five to one. The
     old-fashioned heaven was a poor thing beside it, and his shirt
     was on the daughter of Shirt-on-fire. But how much more than his
     shirt depended on this granddaughter of Suspender! At that roving
     age of forty-five, trying to Forsytes—and, though perhaps less
     distinguishable from any other age, trying even to
     Darties—Montague had fixed his current fancy on a dancer. It was
     no mean passion, but without money, and a good deal of it, likely
     to remain a love as airy as her skirts; and Dartie never had any
     money, subsisting miserably on what he could beg or borrow from
     Winifred—a woman of character, who kept him because he was the
     father of her children, and from a lingering admiration for those
     now-dying Wardour Street good looks which in their youth had
     fascinated her. She, together with anyone else who would lend him
     anything, and his losses at cards and on the turf (extraordinary
     how some men make a good thing out of losses!) were his whole
     means of subsistence; for James was now too old and nervous to
     approach, and Soames too formidably adamant. It is not too much
     to say that Dartie had been living on hope for months. He had
     never been fond of money for itself, had always despised the
     Forsytes with their investing habits, though careful to make such
     use of them as he could. What he liked about money was what it
     bought—personal sensation.

     “No real sportsman cares for money,” he would say, borrowing a
     “pony” if it was no use trying for a “monkey.” There was
     something delicious about Montague Dartie. He was, as George
     Forsyte said, a “daisy.”

     The morning of the Handicap dawned clear and bright, the last day
     of September, and Dartie who had travelled to Newmarket the night
     before, arrayed himself in spotless checks and walked to an
     eminence to see his half of the filly take her final canter: If
     she won he would be a cool three thou. in pocket—a poor enough
     recompense for the sobriety and patience of these weeks of hope,
     while they had been nursing her for this race. But he had not
     been able to afford more. Should he “lay it off” at the eight to
     one to which she had advanced? This was his single thought while
     the larks sang above him, and the grassy downs smelled sweet, and
     the pretty filly passed, tossing her head and glowing like satin.

     After all, if he lost it would not be he who paid, and to “lay it
     off” would reduce his winnings to some fifteen hundred—hardly
     enough to purchase a dancer out and out. Even more potent was the
     itch in the blood of all the Darties for a real flutter. And
     turning to George he said: “She’s a clipper. She’ll win hands
     down; I shall go the whole hog.” George, who had laid off every
     penny, and a few besides, and stood to win, however it came out,
     grinned down on him from his bulky height, with the words: “So
     ho, my wild one!” for after a chequered apprenticeship weathered
     with the money of a deeply complaining Roger, his Forsyte blood
     was beginning to stand him in good stead in the profession of
     owner.

     There are moments of disillusionment in the lives of men from
     which the sensitive recorder shrinks. Suffice it to say that the
     good thing fell down. Sleeve-links finished in the ruck. Dartie’s
     shirt was lost.

     Between the passing of these things and the day when Soames
     turned his face towards Green Street, what had not happened!

     When a man with the constitution of Montague Dartie has exercised
     self-control for months from religious motives, and remains
     unrewarded, he does not curse God and die, he curses God and
     lives, to the distress of his family.

     Winifred—a plucky woman, if a little too fashionable—who had
     borne the brunt of him for exactly twenty-one years, had never
     really believed that he would do what he now did. Like so many
     wives, she thought she knew the worst, but she had not yet known
     him in his forty-fifth year, when he, like other men, felt that
     it was now or never. Paying on the 2nd of October a visit of
     inspection to her jewel case, she was horrified to observe that
     her woman’s crown and glory was gone—the pearls which Montague
     had given her in ’86, when Benedict was born, and which James had
     been compelled to pay for in the spring of ’87, to save scandal.
     She consulted her husband at once. He “pooh-poohed” the matter.
     They would turn up! Nor till she said sharply: “Very well, then,
     Monty, I shall go down to Scotland Yard _myself_,” did he consent
     to take the matter in hand. Alas! that the steady and resolved
     continuity of design necessary to the accomplishment of sweeping
     operations should be liable to interruption by drink. That night
     Dartie returned home without a care in the world or a particle of
     reticence. Under normal conditions Winifred would merely have
     locked her door and let him sleep it off, but torturing suspense
     about her pearls had caused her to wait up for him. Taking a
     small revolver from his pocket and holding on to the dining
     table, he told her at once that he did not care a cursh whether
     she lived s’long as she was quiet; but he himself wash tired
     orsdquo; life. Winifred, holding onto the other side of the
     dining table, answered:

     “Don’t be a clown, Monty. Have you been to Scotland Yard?”

     Placing the revolver against his chest, Dartie had pulled the
     trigger several times. It was not loaded. Dropping it with an
     imprecation, he had muttered: “For shake o’ the children,” and
     sank into a chair. Winifred, having picked up the revolver, gave
     him some soda water. The liquor had a magical effect. Life had
     illused him; Winifred had never “unshtood’m.” If he hadn’t the
     right to take the pearls he had given her himself, who had? That
     Spanish filly had got’m. If Winifred had any ’jection he w’d
     cut—her—throat. What was the matter with that? (Probably the
     first use of that celebrated phrase—so obscure are the origins of
     even the most classical language!)

     Winifred, who had learned self-containment in a hard school,
     looked up at him, and said: “Spanish filly! Do you mean that girl
     we saw dancing in the Pandemonium Ballet? Well, you are a thief
     and a blackguard.” It had been the last straw on a sorely loaded
     consciousness; reaching up from his chair Dartie seized his
     wife’s arm, and recalling the achievements of his boyhood,
     twisted it. Winifred endured the agony with tears in her eyes,
     but no murmur. Watching for a moment of weakness, she wrenched it
     free; then placing the dining table between them, said between
     her teeth: “You are the limit, Monty.” (Undoubtedly the inception
     of that phrase—so is English formed under the stress of
     circumstances.) Leaving Dartie with foam on his dark moustache
     she went upstairs, and, after locking her door and bathing her
     arm in hot water, lay awake all night, thinking of her pearls
     adorning the neck of another, and of the consideration her
     husband had presumably received therefor.

     The man of the world awoke with a sense of being lost to that
     world, and a dim recollection of having been called a “limit.” He
     sat for half an hour in the dawn and the armchair where he had
     slept—perhaps the unhappiest half-hour he had ever spent, for
     even to a Dartie there is something tragic about an end. And he
     knew that he had reached it. Never again would he sleep in his
     dining-room and wake with the light filtering through those
     curtains bought by Winifred at Nickens and Jarveys with the money
     of James. Never again eat a devilled kidney at that rose-wood
     table, after a roll in the sheets and a hot bath. He took his
     note case from his dress coat pocket. Four hundred pounds, in
     fives and tens—the remainder of the proceeds of his half of
     Sleeve-links, sold last night, cash down, to George Forsyte, who,
     having won over the race, had not conceived the sudden dislike to
     the animal which he himself now felt. The ballet was going to
     Buenos Aires the day after to-morrow, and he was going too. Full
     value for the pearls had not yet been received; he was only at
     the soup.

     He stole upstairs. Not daring to have a bath, or shave (besides,
     the water would be cold), he changed his clothes and packed
     stealthily all he could. It was hard to leave so many shining
     boots, but one must sacrifice something. Then, carrying a valise
     in either hand, he stepped out onto the landing. The house was
     very quiet—that house where he had begotten his four children. It
     was a curious moment, this, outside the room of his wife, once
     admired, if not perhaps loved, who had called him “the limit.” He
     steeled himself with that phrase, and tiptoed on; but the next
     door was harder to pass. It was the room his daughters slept in.
     Maud was at school, but Imogen would be lying there; and moisture
     came into Dartie’s early morning eyes. She was the most like him
     of the four, with her dark hair, and her luscious brown glance.
     Just coming out, a pretty thing! He set down the two valises.
     This almost formal abdication of fatherhood hurt him. The morning
     light fell on a face which worked with real emotion. Nothing so
     false as penitence moved him; but genuine paternal feeling, and
     that melancholy of “never again.” He moistened his lips; and
     complete irresolution for a moment paralysed his legs in their
     check trousers. It was hard—hard to be thus compelled to leave
     his home! “D—-nit!” he muttered, “I never thought it would come
     to this.” Noises above warned him that the maids were beginning
     to get up. And grasping the two valises, he tiptoed on
     downstairs. His cheeks were wet, and the knowledge of that was
     comforting, as though it guaranteed the genuineness of his
     sacrifice. He lingered a little in the rooms below, to pack all
     the cigars he had, some papers, a crush hat, a silver cigarette
     box, a Ruff’s Guide. Then, mixing himself a stiff whisky and
     soda, and lighting a cigarette, he stood hesitating before a
     photograph of his two girls, in a silver frame. It belonged to
     Winifred. “Never mind,” he thought; “she can get another taken,
     and I can’t!” He slipped it into the valise. Then, putting on his
     hat and overcoat, he took two others, his best malacca cane, an
     umbrella, and opened the front door. Closing it softly behind
     him, he walked out, burdened as he had never been in all his
     life, and made his way round the corner to wait there for an
     early cab to come by.

     Thus had passed Montague Dartie in the forty-fifth year of his
     age from the house which he had called his own.

     When Winifred came down, and realised that he was not in the
     house, her first feeling was one of dull anger that he should
     thus elude the reproaches she had carefully prepared in those
     long wakeful hours. He had gone off to Newmarket or Brighton,
     with that woman as likely as not. Disgusting! Forced to a
     complete reticence before Imogen and the servants, and aware that
     her father’s nerves would never stand the disclosure, she had
     been unable to refrain from going to Timothy’s that afternoon,
     and pouring out the story of the pearls to Aunts Juley and Hester
     in utter confidence. It was only on the following morning that
     she noticed the disappearance of that photograph. What did it
     mean? Careful examination of her husband’s relics prompted the
     thought that he had gone for good. As that conclusion hardened
     she stood quite still in the middle of his dressing-room, with
     all the drawers pulled out, to try and realise what she was
     feeling. By no means easy! Though he was “the limit” he was yet
     her property, and for the life of her she could not but feel the
     poorer. To be widowed yet not widowed at forty-two; with four
     children; made conspicuous, an object of commiseration! Gone to
     the arms of a Spanish Jade! Memories, feelings, which she had
     thought quite dead, revived within her, painful, sullen,
     tenacious. Mechanically she closed drawer after drawer, went to
     her bed, lay on it, and buried her face in the pillows. She did
     not cry. What was the use of that? When she got off her bed to go
     down to lunch she felt as if only one thing could do her good,
     and that was to have Val home. He—her eldest boy—who was to go to
     Oxford next month at James’ expense, was at Littlehampton taking
     his final gallops with his trainer for Smalls, as he would have
     phrased it following his father’s diction. She caused a telegram
     to be sent to him.

     “I must see about his clothes,” she said to Imogen; “I can’t have
     him going up to Oxford all anyhow. Those boys are so particular.”

     “Val’s got heaps of things,” Imogen answered.

     “I know; but they want overhauling. I hope he’ll come.”

     “He’ll come like a shot, Mother. But he’ll probably skew his
     Exam.”

     “I can’t help that,” said Winifred. “I want him.”

     With an innocent shrewd look at her mother’s face, Imogen kept
     silence. It was father, of course! Val did come “like a shot” at
     six o’clock.

     Imagine a cross between a pickle and a Forsyte and you have young
     Publius Valerius Dartie. A youth so named could hardly turn out
     otherwise. When he was born, Winifred, in the heyday of spirits,
     and the craving for distinction, had determined that her children
     should have names such as no others had ever had. (It was a
     mercy—she felt now—that she had just not named Imogen Thisbe.)
     But it was to George Forsyte, always a wag, that Val’s
     christening was due. It so happened that Dartie, dining with him
     a week after the birth of his son and heir, had mentioned this
     aspiration of Winifred’s.

     “Call him Cato,” said George, “it’ll be damned piquant!” He had
     just won a tenner on a horse of that name.

     “Cato!” Dartie had replied—they were a little ‘on’ as the phrase
     was even in those days—“it’s not a Christian name.”

     “Halo you!” George called to a waiter in knee breeches. “Bring me
     the _Encyc’pedia Brit_. from the Library, letter C.”

     The waiter brought it.

     “Here you are!” said George, pointing with his cigar: “Cato
     Publius Valerius by Virgil out of Lydia. That’s what you want.
     Publius Valerius is Christian enough.”

     Dartie, on arriving home, had informed Winifred. She had been
     charmed. It was so “chic.” And Publius Valerius became the baby’s
     name, though it afterwards transpired that they had got hold of
     the inferior Cato. In 1890, however, when little Publius was
     nearly ten, the word “chic” went out of fashion, and sobriety
     came in; Winifred began to have doubts. They were confirmed by
     little Publius himself who returned from his first term at school
     complaining that life was a burden to him—they called him Pubby.
     Winifred—a woman of real decision—promptly changed his school and
     his name to Val, the Publius being dropped even as an initial.

     At nineteen he was a limber, freckled youth with a wide mouth,
     light eyes, long dark lashes; a rather charming smile,
     considerable knowledge of what he should not know, and no
     experience of what he ought to do. Few boys had more narrowly
     escaped being expelled—the engaging rascal. After kissing his
     mother and pinching Imogen, he ran upstairs three at a time, and
     came down four, dressed for dinner. He was awfully sorry, but his
     “trainer,” who had come up too, had asked him to dine at the
     Oxford and Cambridge; it wouldn’t do to miss—the old chap would
     be hurt. Winifred let him go with an unhappy pride. She had
     wanted him at home, but it was very nice to know that his tutor
     was so fond of him. He went out with a wink at Imogen, saying: “I
     say, Mother, could I have two plover’s eggs when I come
     in?—cook’s got some. They top up so jolly well. Oh! and look
     here—have you any money?—I had to borrow a fiver from old
     Snobby.”

     Winifred, looking at him with fond shrewdness, answered:

     “My dear, you _are_ naughty about money. But you shouldn’t pay
     him to-night, anyway; you’re his guest. How nice and slim he
     looked in his white waistcoat, and his dark thick lashes!”

     “Oh, but we may go to the theatre, you see, Mother; and I think I
     ought to stand the tickets; he’s always hard up, you know.”

     Winifred produced a five-pound note, saying:

     “Well, perhaps you’d better pay him, but you mustn’t stand the
     tickets too.”

     Val pocketed the fiver.

     “If I do, I can’t,” he said. “Good-night, Mum!”

     He went out with his head up and his hat cocked joyously,
     sniffing the air of Piccadilly like a young hound loosed into
     covert. Jolly good biz! After that mouldy old slow hole down
     there!

     He found his “tutor,” not indeed at the Oxford and Cambridge, but
     at the Goat’s Club. This “tutor” was a year older than himself, a
     good-looking youth, with fine brown eyes, and smooth dark hair, a
     small mouth, an oval face, languid, immaculate, cool to a degree,
     one of those young men who without effort establish moral
     ascendancy over their companions. He had missed being expelled
     from school a year before Val, had spent that year at Oxford, and
     Val could almost see a halo round his head. His name was Crum,
     and no one could get through money quicker. It seemed to be his
     only aim in life—dazzling to young Val, in whom, however, the
     Forsyte would stand apart, now and then, wondering where the
     value for that money was.

     They dined quietly, in style and taste; left the Club smoking
     cigars, with just two bottles inside them, and dropped into
     stalls at the Liberty. For Val the sound of comic songs, the
     sight of lovely legs were fogged and interrupted by haunting
     fears that he would never equal Crum’s quiet dandyism. His
     idealism was roused; and when that is so, one is never quite at
     ease. Surely he had too wide a mouth, not the best cut of
     waistcoat, no braid on his trousers, and his lavender gloves had
     no thin black stitchings down the back. Besides, he laughed too
     much—Crum never laughed, he only smiled, with his regular dark
     brows raised a little so that they formed a gable over his just
     drooped lids. No! he would never be Crum’s equal. All the same it
     was a jolly good show, and Cynthia Dark simply ripping. Between
     the acts Crum regaled him with particulars of Cynthia’s private
     life, and the awful knowledge became Val’s that, if he liked,
     Crum could go behind. He simply longed to say: “I say, take me!”
     but dared not, because of his deficiencies; and this made the
     last act or two almost miserable. On coming out Crum said: “It’s
     half an hour before they close; let’s go on to the Pandemonium.”
     They took a hansom to travel the hundred yards, and seats costing
     seven-and-six apiece because they were going to stand, and walked
     into the Promenade. It was in these little things, this utter
     negligence of money that Crum had such engaging polish. The
     ballet was on its last legs and night, and the traffic of the
     Promenade was suffering for the moment. Men and women were
     crowded in three rows against the barrier. The whirl and dazzle
     on the stage, the half dark, the mingled tobacco fumes and
     women’s scent, all that curious lure to promiscuity which belongs
     to Promenades, began to free young Val from his idealism. He
     looked admiringly in a young woman’s face, saw she was not young,
     and quickly looked away. Shades of Cynthia Dark! The young
     woman’s arm touched his unconsciously; there was a scent of musk
     and mignonette. Val looked round the corner of his lashes.
     Perhaps she _was_ young, after all. Her foot trod on his; she
     begged his pardon. He said:

     “Not at all; jolly good ballet, isn’t it?”

     “Oh, I’m tired of it; aren’t you?”

     Young Val smiled—his wide, rather charming smile. Beyond that he
     did not go—not yet convinced. The Forsyte in him stood out for
     greater certainty. And on the stage the ballet whirled its
     kaleidoscope of snow-white, salmon-pink, and emerald-green and
     violet and seemed suddenly to freeze into a stilly spangled
     pyramid. Applause broke out, and it was over! Maroon curtains had
     cut it off. The semi-circle of men and women round the barrier
     broke up, the young woman’s arm pressed his. A little way off
     disturbance seemed centring round a man with a pink carnation;
     Val stole another glance at the young woman, who was looking
     towards it. Three men, unsteady, emerged, walking arm in arm. The
     one in the centre wore the pink carnation, a white waistcoat, a
     dark moustache; he reeled a little as he walked. Crum’s voice
     said slow and level: “Look at that bounder, he’s screwed!” Val
     turned to look. The “bounder” had disengaged his arm, and was
     pointing straight at them. Crum’s voice, level as ever, said:

     “He seems to know you!” The “bounder” spoke:

     “H’llo!” he said. “You f’llows, look! There’s my young rascal of
     a son!”

     Val saw. It was his father! He could have sunk into the crimson
     carpet. It was not the meeting in this place, not even that his
     father was “screwed”. it was Crum’s word “bounder,” which, as by
     heavenly revelation, he perceived at that moment to be true. Yes,
     his father looked a bounder with his dark good looks, and his
     pink carnation, and his square, self-assertive walk. And without
     a word he ducked behind the young woman and slipped out of the
     Promenade. He heard the word, “Val!” behind him, and ran down
     deep-carpeted steps past the “chuckersout,” into the Square.

     To be ashamed of his own father is perhaps the bitterest
     experience a young man can go through. It seemed to Val, hurrying
     away, that his career had ended before it had begun. How could he
     go up to Oxford now amongst all those chaps, those splendid
     friends of Crum’s, who would know that his father was a
     “bounder”. And suddenly he hated Crum. Who the devil was Crum, to
     say that? If Crum had been beside him at that moment, he would
     certainly have been jostled off the pavement. His own father—his
     own! A choke came up in his throat, and he dashed his hands down
     deep into his overcoat pockets. Damn Crum! He conceived the wild
     idea of running back and fending his father, taking him by the
     arm and walking about with him in front of Crum; but gave it up
     at once and pursued his way down Piccadilly. A young woman
     planted herself before him. “Not so angry, darling!” He shied,
     dodged her, and suddenly became quite cool. If Crum ever said a
     word, he would jolly well punch his head, and there would be an
     end of it. He walked a hundred yards or more, contented with that
     thought, then lost its comfort utterly. It wasn’t simple like
     that! He remembered how, at school, when some parent came down
     who did not pass the standard, it just clung to the fellow
     afterwards. It was one of those things nothing could remove. Why
     had his mother married his father, if he was a “bounder”. It was
     bitterly unfair—jolly low-down on a fellow to give him a
     “bounder” for father. The worst of it was that now Crum had
     spoken the word, he realised that he had long known
     subconsciously that his father was not “the clean potato.” It was
     the beastliest thing that had ever happened to him—beastliest
     thing that had ever happened to any fellow! And, down-hearted as
     he had never yet been, he came to Green Street, and let himself
     in with a smuggled latch-key. In the dining-room his plover’s
     eggs were set invitingly, with some cut bread and butter, and a
     little whisky at the bottom of a decanter—just enough, as
     Winifred had thought, for him to feel himself a man. It made him
     sick to look at them, and he went upstairs.

     Winifred heard him pass, and thought: “The dear boy’s in. Thank
     goodness! If he takes after his father I don’t know what I shall
     do! But he won’t he’s like me. Dear Val!”




     CHAPTER III SOAMES PREPARES TO TAKE STEPS


     When Soames entered his sister’s little Louis Quinze
     drawing-room, with its small balcony, always flowered with
     hanging geraniums in the summer, and now with pots of Lilium
     Auratum, he was struck by the immutability of human affairs. It
     looked just the same as on his first visit to the newly married
     Darties twenty-one years ago. He had chosen the furniture
     himself, and so completely that no subsequent purchase had ever
     been able to change the room’s atmosphere. Yes, he had founded
     his sister well, and she had wanted it. Indeed, it said a great
     deal for Winifred that after all this time with Dartie she
     remained well-founded. From the first Soames had nosed out
     Dartie’s nature from underneath the plausibility, _savoir faire_,
     and good looks which had dazzled Winifred, her mother, and even
     James, to the extent of permitting the fellow to marry his
     daughter without bringing anything but shares of no value into
     settlement.

     Winifred, whom he noticed next to the furniture, was sitting at
     her Buhl bureau with a letter in her hand. She rose and came
     towards him. Tall as himself, strong in the cheekbones, well
     tailored, something in her face disturbed Soames. She crumpled
     the letter in her hand, but seemed to change her mind and held it
     out to him. He was her lawyer as well as her brother.

     Soames read, on Iseeum Club paper, these words:

     ‘You will not get chance to insult in my own again. I am leaving
     country to-morrow. It’s played out. I’m tired of being insulted
     by you. You’ve brought on yourself. No self-respecting man can
     stand it. I shall not ask you for anything again. Good-bye. I
     took the photograph of the two girls. Give them my love. I don’t
     care what your family say. It’s all their doing. I’m going to
     live new life.

     ‘M.D.’

     This after-dinner note had a splotch on it not yet quite dry. He
     looked at Winifred—the splotch had clearly come from her; and he
     checked the words: “Good riddance!” Then it occurred to him that
     with this letter she was entering that very state which he
     himself so earnestly desired to quit—the state of a Forsyte who
     was not divorced.

     Winifred had turned away, and was taking a long sniff from a
     little gold-topped bottle. A dull commiseration, together with a
     vague sense of injury, crept about Soames’ heart. He had come to
     her to talk of his own position, and get sympathy, and here was
     she in the same position, wanting of course to talk of it, and
     get sympathy from him. It was always like that! Nobody ever
     seemed to think that he had troubles and interests of his own. He
     folded up the letter with the splotch inside, and said:

     “What’s it all about, now?”

     Winifred recited the story of the pearls calmly.

     “Do you think he’s really gone, Soames? You see the state he was
     in when he wrote that.”

     Soames who, when he desired a thing, placated Providence by
     pretending that he did not think it likely to happen, answered:

     “I shouldn’t think so. I might find out at his Club.”

     “If George is there,” said Winifred, “he would know.”

     “George?” said Soames; “I saw him at his father’s funeral.”

     “Then he’s sure to be there.”

     Soames, whose good sense applauded his sister’s acumen, said
     grudgingly: “Well, I’ll go round. Have you said anything in Park
     Lane?”

     “I’ve told Emily,” returned Winifred, who retained that “chic”
     way of describing her mother. “Father would have a fit.”

     Indeed, anything untoward was now sedulously kept from James.
     With another look round at the furniture, as if to gauge his
     sister’s exact position, Soames went out towards Piccadilly. The
     evening was drawing in—a touch of chill in the October haze. He
     walked quickly, with his close and concentrated air. He must get
     through, for he wished to dine in Soho. On hearing from the hall
     porter at the Iseeum that Mr. Dartie had not been in to-day, he
     looked at the trusty fellow and decided only to ask if Mr. George
     Forsyte was in the Club. He was. Soames, who always looked
     askance at his cousin George, as one inclined to jest at his
     expense, followed the pageboy, slightly reassured by the thought
     that George had just lost his father. He must have come in for
     about thirty thousand, besides what he had under that settlement
     of Roger’s, which had avoided death duty. He found George in a
     bow-window, staring out across a half-eaten plate of muffins. His
     tall, bulky, black-clothed figure loomed almost threatening,
     though preserving still the supernatural neatness of the racing
     man. With a faint grin on his fleshy face, he said:

     “Hallo, Soames! Have a muffin?”

     “No, thanks,” murmured Soames; and, nursing his hat, with the
     desire to say something suitable and sympathetic, added:

     “How’s your mother?”

     “Thanks,” said George; “so-so. Haven’t seen you for ages. You
     never go racing. How’s the City?”

     Soames, scenting the approach of a jest, closed up, and answered:

     “I wanted to ask you about Dartie. I hear he’s....”

     “Flitted, made a bolt to Buenos Aires with the fair Lola. Good
     for Winifred and the little Darties. He’s a treat.”

     Soames nodded. Naturally inimical as these cousins were, Dartie
     made them kin.

     “Uncle James’ll sleep in his bed now,” resumed George; “I suppose
     he’s had a lot off you, too.”

     Soames smiled.

     “Ah! You saw him further,” said George amicably. “He’s a real
     rouser. Young Val will want a bit of looking after. I was always
     sorry for Winifred. She’s a plucky woman.”

     Again Soames nodded. “I must be getting back to her,” he said;
     “she just wanted to know for certain. We may have to take steps.
     I suppose there’s no mistake?”

     “It’s quite O.K.,” said George—it was he who invented so many of
     those quaint sayings which have been assigned to other sources.
     “He was drunk as a lord last night; but he went off all right
     this morning. His ship’s the _Tuscarora;_” and, fishing out a
     card, he read mockingly:

     “‘Mr. Montague Dartie, Poste Restante, Buenos Aires.’ I should
     hurry up with the steps, if I were you. He fairly fed me up last
     night.”

     “Yes,” said Soames; “but it’s not always easy.” Then, conscious
     from George’s eyes that he had roused reminiscence of his own
     affair, he got up, and held out his hand. George rose too.

     “Remember me to Winifred.... You’ll enter her for the Divorce
     Stakes straight off if you ask me.”

     Soames took a sidelong look back at him from the doorway. George
     had seated himself again and was staring before him; he looked
     big and lonely in those black clothes. Soames had never known him
     so subdued. “I suppose he feels it in a way,” he thought. “They
     must have about fifty thousand each, all told. They ought to keep
     the estate together. If there’s a war, house property will go
     down. Uncle Roger was a good judge, though.” And the face of
     Annette rose before him in the darkening street; her brown hair
     and her blue eyes with their dark lashes, her fresh lips and
     cheeks, dewy and blooming in spite of London, her perfect French
     figure. “Take steps!” he thought. Re-entering Winifred’s house he
     encountered Val, and they went in together. An idea had occurred
     to Soames. His cousin Jolyon was Irene’s trustee, the first step
     would be to go down and see him at Robin Hill. Robin Hill! The
     odd—the very odd feeling those words brought back! Robin Hill—the
     house Bosinney had built for him and Irene—the house they had
     never lived in—the fatal house! And Jolyon lived there now! H’m!
     And suddenly he thought: “They say he’s got a boy at Oxford! Why
     not take young Val down and introduce them! It’s an excuse! Less
     bald—very much less bald!” So, as they went upstairs, he said to
     Val:

     “You’ve got a cousin at Oxford; you’ve never met him. I should
     like to take you down with me to-morrow to where he lives and
     introduce you. You’ll find it useful.”

     Val, receiving the idea with but moderate transports, Soames
     clinched it.

     “I’ll call for you after lunch. It’s in the country—not far;
     you’ll enjoy it.”

     On the threshold of the drawing-room he recalled with an effort
     that the steps he contemplated concerned Winifred at the moment,
     not himself.

     Winifred was still sitting at her Buhl bureau.

     “It’s quite true,” he said; “he’s gone to Buenos Aires, started
     this morning—we’d better have him shadowed when he lands. I’ll
     cable at once. Otherwise we may have a lot of expense. The sooner
     these things are done the better. I’m always regretting that I
     didn’t...” he stopped, and looked sidelong at the silent
     Winifred. “By the way,” he went on, “can you prove cruelty?”

     Winifred said in a dull voice:

     “I don’t know. What is cruelty?”

     “Well, has he struck you, or anything?”

     Winifred shook herself, and her jaw grew square.

     “He twisted my arm. Or would pointing a pistol count? Or being
     too drunk to undress himself, or—No—I can’t bring in the
     children.”

     “No,” said Soames; “no! I wonder! Of course, there’s legal
     separation—we can get that. But separation! Um!”

     “What does it mean?” asked Winifred desolately.

     “That he can’t touch you, or you him; you’re both of you married
     and unmarried.” And again he grunted. What was it, in fact, but
     his own accursed position, legalised! No, he would not put her
     into that!

     “It must be divorce,” he said decisively; “failing cruelty,
     there’s desertion. There’s a way of shortening the two years,
     now. We get the Court to give us restitution of conjugal rights.
     Then if he doesn’t obey, we can bring a suit for divorce in six
     months’ time. Of course you don’t want him back. But they won’t
     know that. Still, there’s the risk that he might come. I’d rather
     try cruelty.”

     Winifred shook her head. “It’s so beastly.”

     “Well,” Soames murmured, “perhaps there isn’t much risk so long
     as he’s infatuated and got money. Don’t say anything to anybody,
     and don’t pay any of his debts.”

     Winifred sighed. In spite of all she had been through, the sense
     of loss was heavy on her. And this idea of not paying his debts
     any more brought it home to her as nothing else yet had. Some
     richness seemed to have gone out of life. Without her husband,
     without her pearls, without that intimate sense that she made a
     brave show above the domestic whirlpool, she would now have to
     face the world. She felt bereaved indeed.

     And into the chilly kiss he placed on her forehead, Soames put
     more than his usual warmth.

     “I have to go down to Robin Hill to-morrow,” he said, “to see
     young Jolyon on business. He’s got a boy at Oxford. I’d like to
     take Val with me and introduce him. Come down to ‘The Shelter’
     for the week-end and bring the children. Oh! by the way, no, that
     won’t do; I’ve got some other people coming.” So saying, he left
     her and turned towards Soho.




     CHAPTER IV SOHO


     Of all quarters in the queer adventurous amalgam called London,
     Soho is perhaps least suited to the Forsyte spirit. “So-ho, my
     wild one!” George would have said if he had seen his cousin going
     there. Untidy, full of Greeks, Ishmaelites, cats, Italians,
     tomatoes, restaurants, organs, coloured stuffs, queer names,
     people looking out of upper windows, it dwells remote from the
     British Body Politic. Yet has it haphazard proprietary instincts
     of its own, and a certain possessive prosperity which keeps its
     rents up when those of other quarters go down. For long years
     Soames’ acquaintanceship with Soho had been confined to its
     Western bastion, Wardour Street. Many bargains had he picked up
     there. Even during those seven years at Brighton after Bosinney’s
     death and Irene’s flight, he had bought treasures there
     sometimes, though he had no place to put them; for when the
     conviction that his wife had gone for good at last became firm
     within him, he had caused a board to be put up in Montpellier
     Square:

     FOR SALE
     THE LEASE OF THIS DESIRABLE RESIDENCE
     Enquire of Messrs. Lesson and Tukes, Court Street, Belgravia.

     It had sold within a week—that desirable residence, in the shadow
     of whose perfection a man and a woman had eaten their hearts out.

     Of a misty January evening, just before the board was taken down,
     Soames had gone there once more, and stood against the Square
     railings, looking at its unlighted windows, chewing the cud of
     possessive memories which had turned so bitter in the mouth. Why
     had she never loved him? Why? She had been given all she had
     wanted, and in return had given him, for three long years, all he
     had wanted—except, indeed, her heart. He had uttered a little
     involuntary groan, and a passing policeman had glanced
     suspiciously at him who no longer possessed the right to enter
     that green door with the carved brass knocker beneath the board
     “For Sale!” A choking sensation had attacked his throat, and he
     had hurried away into the mist. That evening he had gone to
     Brighton to live....

     Approaching Malta Street, Soho, and the Restaurant Bretagne,
     where Annette would be drooping her pretty shoulders over her
     accounts, Soames thought with wonder of those seven years at
     Brighton. How had he managed to go on so long in that town devoid
     of the scent of sweetpeas, where he had not even space to put his
     treasures? True, those had been years with no time at all for
     looking at them—years of almost passionate money-making, during
     which Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte had become solicitors to more
     limited Companies than they could properly attend to. Up to the
     City of a morning in a Pullman car, down from the City of an
     evening in a Pullman car. Law papers again after dinner, then the
     sleep of the tired, and up again next morning. Saturday to Monday
     was spent at his Club in town—curious reversal of customary
     procedure, based on the deep and careful instinct that while
     working so hard he needed sea air to and from the station twice a
     day, and while resting must indulge his domestic affections. The
     Sunday visit to his family in Park Lane, to Timothy’s, and to
     Green Street; the occasional visits elsewhere had seemed to him
     as necessary to health as sea air on weekdays. Even since his
     migration to Mapledurham he had maintained those habits until—he
     had known Annette.

     Whether Annette had produced the revolution in his outlook, or
     that outlook had produced Annette, he knew no more than we know
     where a circle begins. It was intricate and deeply involved with
     the growing consciousness that property without anyone to leave
     it to is the negation of true Forsyteism. To have an heir, some
     continuance of self, who would begin where he left off—ensure, in
     fact, that he would not leave off—had quite obsessed him for the
     last year and more. After buying a bit of Wedgwood one evening in
     April, he had dropped into Malta Street to look at a house of his
     father’s which had been turned into a restaurant—a risky
     proceeding, and one not quite in accordance with the terms of the
     lease. He had stared for a little at the outside painted a good
     cream colour, with two peacock-blue tubs containing little
     bay-trees in a recessed doorway—and at the words “Restaurant
     Bretagne” above them in gold letters, rather favourably
     impressed. Entering, he had noticed that several people were
     already seated at little round green tables with little pots of
     fresh flowers on them and Brittany-ware plates, and had asked of
     a trim waitress to see the proprietor. They had shown him into a
     back room, where a girl was sitting at a simple bureau covered
     with papers, and a small round, table was laid for two. The
     impression of cleanliness, order, and good taste was confirmed
     when the girl got up, saying, “You wish to see _Maman,
     Monsieur?_” in a broken accent.

     “Yes,” Soames had answered, “I represent your landlord; in fact,
     I’m his son.”

     “Won’t you sit down, sir, please? Tell _Maman_ to come to this
     gentleman.”

     He was pleased that the girl seemed impressed, because it showed
     business instinct; and suddenly he noticed that she was
     remarkably pretty—so remarkably pretty that his eyes found a
     difficulty in leaving her face. When she moved to put a chair for
     him, she swayed in a curious subtle way, as if she had been put
     together by someone with a special secret skill; and her face and
     neck, which was a little bared, looked as fresh as if they had
     been sprayed with dew. Probably at this moment Soames decided
     that the lease had not been violated; though to himself and his
     father he based the decision on the efficiency of those illicit
     adaptations in the building, on the signs of prosperity, and the
     obvious business capacity of Madame Lamotte. He did not, however,
     neglect to leave certain matters to future consideration, which
     had necessitated further visits, so that the little back room had
     become quite accustomed to his spare, not unsolid, but
     unobtrusive figure, and his pale, chinny face with clipped
     moustache and dark hair not yet grizzling at the sides.

     “_Un Monsieur très distingué_,” Madame Lamotte found him; and
     presently, “_Très amical, très gentil_,” watching his eyes upon
     her daughter.

     She was one of those generously built, fine-faced, dark-haired
     Frenchwomen, whose every action and tone of voice inspire perfect
     confidence in the thoroughness of their domestic tastes, their
     knowledge of cooking, and the careful increase of their bank
     balances.

     After those visits to the Restaurant Bretagne began, other visits
     ceased—without, indeed, any definite decision, for Soames, like
     all Forsytes, and the great majority of their countrymen, was a
     born empiricist. But it was this change in his mode of life which
     had gradually made him so definitely conscious that he desired to
     alter his condition from that of the unmarried married man to
     that of the married man remarried.

     Turning into Malta Street on this evening of early October, 1899,
     he bought a paper to see if there were any after-development of
     the Dreyfus case—a question which he had always found useful in
     making closer acquaintanceship with Madame Lamotte and her
     daughter, who were Catholic and anti-Dreyfusard.

     Scanning those columns, Soames found nothing French, but noticed
     a general fall on the Stock Exchange and an ominous leader about
     the Transvaal. He entered, thinking: “War’s a certainty. I shall
     sell my consols.” Not that he had many, personally, the rate of
     interest was too wretched; but he should advise his
     Companies—consols would assuredly go down. A look, as he passed
     the doorways of the restaurant, assured him that business was
     good as ever, and this, which in April would have pleased him,
     now gave him a certain uneasiness. If the steps which he had to
     take ended in his marrying Annette, he would rather see her
     mother safely back in France, a move to which the prosperity of
     the Restaurant Bretagne might become an obstacle. He would have
     to buy them out, of course, for French people only came to
     England to make money; and it would mean a higher price. And then
     that peculiar sweet sensation at the back of his throat, and a
     slight thumping about the heart, which he always experienced at
     the door of the little room, prevented his thinking how much it
     would cost.

     Going in, he was conscious of an abundant black skirt vanishing
     through the door into the restaurant, and of Annette with her
     hands up to her hair. It was the attitude in which of all others
     he admired her—so beautifully straight and rounded and supple.
     And he said:

     “I just came in to talk to your mother about pulling down that
     partition. No, don’t call her.”

     “_Monsieur_ will have supper with us? It will be ready in ten
     minutes.” Soames, who still held her hand, was overcome by an
     impulse which surprised him.

     “You look so pretty to-night,” he said, “so very pretty. Do you
     know how pretty you look, Annette?”

     Annette withdrew her hand, and blushed. “Monsieur is very good.”

     “Not a bit good,” said Soames, and sat down gloomily.

     Annette made a little expressive gesture with her hands; a smile
     was crinkling her red lips untouched by salve.

     And, looking at those lips, Soames said:

     “Are you happy over here, or do you want to go back to France?”

     “Oh, I like London. Paris, of course. But London is better than
     Orleans, and the English country is so beautiful. I have been to
     Richmond last Sunday.”

     Soames went through a moment of calculating struggle.
     Mapledurham! Dared he? After all, dared he go so far as that, and
     show her what there was to look forward to! Still! Down there one
     could say things. In this room it was impossible.

     “I want you and your mother,” he said suddenly, “to come for the
     afternoon next Sunday. My house is on the river, it’s not too
     late in this weather; and I can show you some good pictures. What
     do you say?”

     Annette clasped her hands.

     “It will be lovelee. The river is so beautiful”

     “That’s understood, then. I’ll ask Madame.”

     He need say no more to her this evening, and risk giving himself
     away. But had he not already said too much? Did one ask
     restaurant proprietors with pretty daughters down to one’s
     country house without design? Madame Lamotte would see, if
     Annette didn’t. Well! there was not much that Madame did not see.
     Besides, this was the second time he had stayed to supper with
     them; he owed them hospitality.

     Walking home towards Park Lane—for he was staying at his
     father’s—with the impression of Annette’s soft clever hand within
     his own, his thoughts were pleasant, slightly sensual, rather
     puzzled. Take steps! What steps? How? Dirty linen washed in
     public? Pah! With his reputation for sagacity, for
     far-sightedness and the clever extrication of others, he, who
     stood for proprietary interests, to become the plaything of that
     Law of which he was a pillar! There was something revolting in
     the thought! Winifred’s affair was bad enough! To have a double
     dose of publicity in the family! Would not a liaison be better
     than that—a liaison, and a son he could adopt? But dark, solid,
     watchful, Madame Lamotte blocked the avenue of that vision. No!
     that would not work. It was not as if Annette could have a real
     passion for him; one could not expect that at his age. If her
     mother wished, if the worldly advantage were manifestly
     great—perhaps! If not, refusal would be certain. Besides, he
     thought: “I’m not a villain. I don’t want to hurt her; and I
     don’t want anything underhand. But I do want her, and I want a
     son! There’s nothing for it but divorce—somehow—anyhow—divorce!”
     Under the shadow of the plane-trees, in the lamplight, he passed
     slowly along the railings of the Green Park. Mist clung there
     among the bluish tree shapes, beyond range of the lamps. How many
     hundred times he had walked past those trees from his father’s
     house in Park Lane, when he was quite a young man; or from his
     own house in Montpellier Square in those four years of married
     life! And, to-night, making up his mind to free himself if he
     could of that long useless marriage tie, he took a fancy to walk
     on, in at Hyde Park Corner, out at Knightsbridge Gate, just as he
     used to when going home to Irene in the old days. What could she
     be like now?—how had she passed the years since he last saw her,
     twelve years in all, seven already since Uncle Jolyon left her
     that money? Was she still beautiful? Would he know her if he saw
     her? “I’ve not changed much,” he thought; “I expect she has. She
     made me suffer.” He remembered suddenly one night, the first on
     which he went out to dinner alone—an old Malburian dinner—the
     first year of their marriage. With what eagerness he had hurried
     back; and, entering softly as a cat, had heard her playing.
     Opening the drawing-room door noiselessly, he had stood watching
     the expression on her face, different from any he knew, so much
     more open, so confiding, as though to her music she was giving a
     heart he had never seen. And he remembered how she stopped and
     looked round, how her face changed back to that which he did
     know, and what an icy shiver had gone through him, for all that
     the next moment he was fondling her shoulders. Yes, she had made
     him suffer! Divorce! It seemed ridiculous, after all these years
     of utter separation! But it would have to be. No other way! “The
     question,” he thought with sudden realism, “is—which of us? She
     or me? She deserted me. She ought to pay for it. There’ll be
     someone, I suppose.” Involuntarily he uttered a little snarling
     sound, and, turning, made his way back to Park Lane.




     CHAPTER V JAMES SEES VISIONS


     The butler himself opened the door, and closing it softly,
     detained Soames on the inner mat.

     “The master’s poorly, sir,” he murmured. “He wouldn’t go to bed
     till you came in. He’s still in the diningroom.”

     Soames responded in the hushed tone to which the house was now
     accustomed.

     “What’s the matter with him, Warmson?”

     “Nervous, sir, I think. Might be the funeral; might be Mrs.
     Dartie’s comin’ round this afternoon. I think he overheard
     something. I’ve took him in a negus. The mistress has just gone
     up.”

     Soames hung his hat on a mahogany stag’s-horn.

     “All right, Warmson, you can go to bed; I’ll take him up myself.”
     And he passed into the dining-room.

     James was sitting before the fire, in a big armchair, with a
     camel-hair shawl, very light and warm, over his frock-coated
     shoulders, on to which his long white whiskers drooped. His white
     hair, still fairly thick, glistened in the lamplight; a little
     moisture from his fixed, light-grey eyes stained the cheeks,
     still quite well coloured, and the long deep furrows running to
     the corners of the clean-shaven lips, which moved as if mumbling
     thoughts. His long legs, thin as a crow’s, in shepherd’s plaid
     trousers, were bent at less than a right angle, and on one knee a
     spindly hand moved continually, with fingers wide apart and
     glistening tapered nails. Beside him, on a low stool, stood a
     half-finished glass of negus, bedewed with beads of heat. There
     he had been sitting, with intervals for meals, all day. At
     eighty-eight he was still organically sound, but suffering
     terribly from the thought that no one ever told him anything. It
     is, indeed, doubtful how he had become aware that Roger was being
     buried that day, for Emily had kept it from him. She was always
     keeping things from him. Emily was only seventy! James had a
     grudge against his wife’s youth. He felt sometimes that he would
     never have married her if he had known that she would have so
     many years before her, when he had so few. It was not natural.
     She would live fifteen or twenty years after he was gone, and
     might spend a lot of money; she had always had extravagant
     tastes. For all he knew she might want to buy one of these
     motor-cars. Cicely and Rachel and Imogen and all the young
     people—they all rode those bicycles now and went off Goodness
     knew where. And now Roger was gone. He didn’t know—couldn’t tell!
     The family was breaking up. Soames would know how much his uncle
     had left. Curiously he thought of Roger as Soames’ uncle not as
     his own brother. Soames! It was more and more the one solid spot
     in a vanishing world. Soames was careful; he was a warm man; but
     he had no one to leave his money to. There it was! He didn’t
     know! And there was that fellow Chamberlain! For James’ political
     principles had been fixed between ’70 and ’85 when “that rascally
     Radical” had been the chief thorn in the side of property and he
     distrusted him to this day in spite of his conversion; he would
     get the country into a mess and make money go down before he had
     done with it. A stormy petrel of a chap! Where was Soames? He had
     gone to the funeral of course which they had tried to keep from
     him. He knew that perfectly well; he had seen his son’s trousers.
     Roger! Roger in his coffin! He remembered how, when they came up
     from school together from the West, on the box seat of the old
     Slowflyer in 1824, Roger had got into the “boot” and gone to
     sleep. James uttered a thin cackle. A funny fellow—Roger—an
     original! He didn’t know! Younger than himself, and in his
     coffin! The family was breaking up. There was Val going to the
     university; he never came to see him now. He would cost a pretty
     penny up there. It was an extravagant age. And all the pretty
     pennies that his four grandchildren would cost him danced before
     James’ eyes. He did not grudge them the money, but he grudged
     terribly the risk which the spending of that money might bring on
     them; _he grudged the diminution of security_. And now that
     Cicely had married, she might be having children too. He didn’t
     know—couldn’t tell! Nobody thought of anything but spending money
     in these days, and racing about, and having what they called “a
     good time.” A motor-car went past the window. Ugly great
     lumbering thing, making all that racket! But there it was, the
     country rattling to the dogs! People in such a hurry that they
     couldn’t even care for style—a neat turnout like his barouche and
     bays was worth all those new-fangled things. And consols at 116!
     There must be a lot of money in the country. And now there was
     this old Kruger! They had tried to keep old Kruger from him. But
     he knew better; there would be a pretty kettle of fish out there!
     He had known how it would be when that fellow Gladstone—dead now,
     thank God! made such a mess of it after that dreadful business at
     Majuba. He shouldn’t wonder if the Empire split up and went to
     pot. And this vision of the Empire going to pot filled a full
     quarter of an hour with qualms of the most serious character. He
     had eaten a poor lunch because of them. But it was after lunch
     that the real disaster to his nerves occurred. He had been dozing
     when he became aware of voices—low voices. Ah! they never told
     him anything! Winifred’s and her mother’s. “Monty!” That fellow
     Dartie—always that fellow Dartie! The voices had receded; and
     James had been left alone, with his ears standing up like a
     hare’s, and fear creeping about his inwards. Why did they leave
     him alone? Why didn’t they come and tell him? And an awful
     thought, which through long years had haunted him, concreted
     again swiftly in his brain. Dartie had gone bankrupt—fraudulently
     bankrupt, and to save Winifred and the children, he—James—would
     have to pay! Could he—could Soames turn him into a limited
     company? No, he couldn’t! There it was! With every minute before
     Emily came back the spectre fiercened. Why, it might be forgery!
     With eyes fixed on the doubted Turner in the centre of the wall,
     James suffered tortures. He saw Dartie in the dock, his
     grandchildren in the gutter, and himself in bed. He saw the
     doubted Turner being sold at Jobson’s, and all the majestic
     edifice of property in rags. He saw in fancy Winifred
     unfashionably dressed, and heard in fancy Emily’s voice saying:
     “Now, don’t fuss, James!” She was always saying: “Don’t fuss!”
     She had no nerves; he ought never to have married a woman
     eighteen years younger than himself. Then Emily’s real voice
     said:

     “Have you had a nice nap, James?”

     Nap! He was in torment, and she asked him that!

     “What’s this about Dartie?” he said, and his eyes glared at her.

     Emily’s self-possession never deserted her.

     “What have you been hearing?” she asked blandly.

     “What’s this about Dartie?” repeated James. “He’s gone bankrupt.”

     “Fiddle!”

     James made a great effort, and rose to the full height of his
     stork-like figure.

     “You never tell me anything,” he said; “he’s gone bankrupt.”

     The destruction of that fixed idea seemed to Emily all that
     mattered at the moment.

     “He has not,” she answered firmly. “He’s gone to Buenos Aires.”

     If she had said “He’s gone to Mars” she could not have dealt
     James a more stunning blow; his imagination, invested entirely in
     British securities, could as little grasp one place as the other.

     “What’s he gone there for?” he said. “He’s got no money. What did
     he take?”

     Agitated within by Winifred’s news, and goaded by the constant
     reiteration of this jeremiad, Emily said calmly:

     “He took Winifred’s pearls and a dancer.”

     “What!” said James, and sat down.

     His sudden collapse alarmed her, and smoothing his forehead, she
     said:

     “Now, don’t fuss, James!”

     A dusky red had spread over James’ cheeks and forehead.

     “I paid for them,” he said tremblingly; “he’s a thief! I—I knew
     how it would be. He’ll be the death of me; he ....” Words failed
     him and he sat quite still. Emily, who thought she knew him so
     well, was alarmed, and went towards the sideboard where she kept
     some sal volatile. She could not see the tenacious Forsyte spirit
     working in that thin, tremulous shape against the extravagance of
     the emotion called up by this outrage on Forsyte principles—the
     Forsyte spirit deep in there, saying: “You mustn’t get into a
     fantod, it’ll never do. You won’t digest your lunch. You’ll have
     a fit!” All unseen by her, it was doing better work in James than
     sal volatile.

     “Drink this,” she said.

     James waved it aside.

     “What was Winifred about,” he said, “to let him take her pearls?”
     Emily perceived the crisis past.

     “She can have mine,” she said comfortably. “I never wear them.
     She’d better get a divorce.”

     “There you go!” said James. “Divorce! We’ve never had a divorce
     in the family. Where’s Soames?”

     “He’ll be in directly.”

     “No, he won’t,” said James, almost fiercely; “he’s at the
     funeral. You think I know nothing.”

     “Well,” said Emily with calm, “you shouldn’t get into such fusses
     when we tell you things.” And plumping up his cushions, and
     putting the sal volatile beside him, she left the room.

     But James sat there seeing visions—of Winifred in the Divorce
     Court, and the family name in the papers; of the earth falling on
     Roger’s coffin; of Val taking after his father; of the pearls he
     had paid for and would never see again; of money back at four per
     cent., and the country going to the dogs; and, as the afternoon
     wore into evening, and tea-time passed, and dinnertime, those
     visions became more and more mixed and menacing—of being told
     nothing, till he had nothing left of all his wealth, and they
     told him nothing of it. Where was Soames? Why didn’t he come
     in?... His hand grasped the glass of negus, he raised it to
     drink, and saw his son standing there looking at him. A little
     sigh of relief escaped his lips, and putting the glass down, he
     said:

     “There you are! Dartie’s gone to Buenos Aires.”

     Soames nodded. “That’s all right,” he said; “good riddance.”

     A wave of assuagement passed over James’ brain. Soames knew.
     Soames was the only one of them all who had sense. Why couldn’t
     he come and live at home? He had no son of his own. And he said
     plaintively:

     “At my age I get nervous. I wish you were more at home, my boy.”

     Again Soames nodded; the mask of his countenance betrayed no
     understanding, but he went closer, and as if by accident touched
     his father’s shoulder.

     “They sent their love to you at Timothy’s,” he said. “It went off
     all right. I’ve been to see Winifred. I’m going to take steps.”
     And he thought: “Yes, and you mustn’t hear of them.”

     James looked up; his long white whiskers quivered, his thin
     throat between the points of his collar looked very gristly and
     naked.

     “I’ve been very poorly all day,” he said; “they never tell me
     anything.”

     Soames’ heart twitched.

     “Well, it’s all right. There’s nothing to worry about. Will you
     come up now?” and he put his hand under his father’s arm.

     James obediently and tremulously raised himself, and together
     they went slowly across the room, which had a rich look in the
     firelight, and out to the stairs. Very slowly they ascended.

     “Good-night, my boy,” said James at his bedroom door.

     “Good-night, father,” answered Soames. His hand stroked down the
     sleeve beneath the shawl; it seemed to have almost nothing in it,
     so thin was the arm. And, turning away from the light in the
     opening doorway, he went up the extra flight to his own bedroom.

     “I want a son,” he thought, sitting on the edge of his bed; “_I
     want a son_.”




     CHAPTER VI NO-LONGER-YOUNG JOLYON AT HOME


     Trees take little account of time, and the old oak on the upper
     lawn at Robin Hill looked no day older than when Bosinney
     sprawled under it and said to Soames: “Forsyte, I’ve found the
     very place for your house.” Since then Swithin had dreamed, and
     old Jolyon died, beneath its branches. And now, close to the
     swing, no-longer-young Jolyon often painted there. Of all spots
     in the world it was perhaps the most sacred to him, for he had
     loved his father.

     Contemplating its great girth—crinkled and a little mossed, but
     not yet hollow—he would speculate on the passage of time. That
     tree had seen, perhaps, all real English history; it dated, he
     shouldn’t wonder, from the days of Elizabeth at least. His own
     fifty years were as nothing to its wood. When the house behind
     it, which he now owned, was three hundred years of age instead of
     twelve, that tree might still be standing there, vast and
     hollow—for who would commit such sacrilege as to cut it down? A
     Forsyte might perhaps still be living in that house, to guard it
     jealously. And Jolyon would wonder what the house would look like
     coated with such age. Wistaria was already about its walls—the
     new look had gone. Would it hold its own and keep the dignity
     Bosinney had bestowed on it, or would the giant London have
     lapped it round and made it into an asylum in the midst of a
     jerry-built wilderness? Often, within and without of it, he was
     persuaded that Bosinney had been moved by the spirit when he
     built. He had put his heart into that house, indeed! It might
     even become one of the “homes of England”—a rare achievement for
     a house in these degenerate days of building. And the aesthetic
     spirit, moving hand in hand with his Forsyte sense of possessive
     continuity, dwelt with pride and pleasure on his ownership
     thereof. There was the smack of reverence and ancestor-worship
     (if only for one ancestor) in his desire to hand this house down
     to his son and his son’s son. His father had loved the house, had
     loved the view, the grounds, that tree; his last years had been
     happy there, and no one had lived there before him. These last
     eleven years at Robin Hill had formed in Jolyon’s life as a
     painter, the important period of success. He was now in the very
     van of water-colour art, hanging on the line everywhere. His
     drawings fetched high prices. Specialising in that one medium
     with the tenacity of his breed, he had “arrived”—rather late, but
     not too late for a member of the family which made a point of
     living for ever. His art had really deepened and improved. In
     conformity with his position he had grown a short fair beard,
     which was just beginning to grizzle, and hid his Forsyte chin;
     his brown face had lost the warped expression of his ostracised
     period—he looked, if anything, younger. The loss of his wife in
     1894 had been one of those domestic tragedies which turn out in
     the end for the good of all. He had, indeed, loved her to the
     last, for his was an affectionate spirit, but she had become
     increasingly difficult: jealous of her step-daughter June,
     jealous even of her own little daughter Holly, and making
     ceaseless plaint that he could not love her, ill as she was, and
     “useless to everyone, and better dead.” He had mourned her
     sincerely, but his face had looked younger since she died. If she
     could only have believed that she made him happy, how much
     happier would the twenty years of their companionship have been!

     June had never really got on well with her who had reprehensibly
     taken her own mother’s place; and ever since old Jolyon died she
     had been established in a sort of studio in London. But she had
     come back to Robin Hill on her stepmother’s death, and gathered
     the reins there into her small decided hands. Jolly was then at
     Harrow; Holly still learning from Mademoiselle Beauce. There had
     been nothing to keep Jolyon at home, and he had removed his grief
     and his paint-box abroad. There he had wandered, for the most
     part in Brittany, and at last had fetched up in Paris. He had
     stayed there several months, and come back with the younger face
     and the short fair beard. Essentially a man who merely lodged in
     any house, it had suited him perfectly that June should reign at
     Robin Hill, so that he was free to go off with his easel where
     and when he liked. She was inclined, it is true, to regard the
     house rather as an asylum for her _protégés;_ but his own outcast
     days had filled Jolyon for ever with sympathy towards an outcast,
     and June’s “lame ducks” about the place did not annoy him. By all
     means let her have them down—and feed them up; and though his
     slightly cynical humour perceived that they ministered to his
     daughter’s love of domination as well as moved her warm heart, he
     never ceased to admire her for having so many ducks. He fell,
     indeed, year by year into a more and more detached and brotherly
     attitude towards his own son and daughters, treating them with a
     sort of whimsical equality. When he went down to Harrow to see
     Jolly, he never quite knew which of them was the elder, and would
     sit eating cherries with him out of one paper bag, with an
     affectionate and ironical smile twisting up an eyebrow and
     curling his lips a little. And he was always careful to have
     money in his pocket, and to be modish in his dress, so that his
     son need not blush for him. They were perfect friends, but never
     seemed to have occasion for verbal confidences, both having the
     competitive self-consciousness of Forsytes. They knew they would
     stand by each other in scrapes, but there was no need to talk
     about it. Jolyon had a striking horror—partly original sin, but
     partly the result of his early immorality—of the moral attitude.
     The most he could ever have said to his son would have been:

     “Look here, old man; don’t forget you’re a gentleman,” and then
     have wondered whimsically whether that was not a snobbish
     sentiment. The great cricket match was perhaps the most searching
     and awkward time they annually went through together, for Jolyon
     had been at Eton. They would be particularly careful during that
     match, continually saying: “Hooray! Oh! hard luck, old man!” or
     “Hooray! Oh! bad luck, Dad!” to each other, when some disaster at
     which their hearts bounded happened to the opposing school. And
     Jolyon would wear a grey top hat, instead of his usual soft one,
     to save his son’s feelings, for a black top hat he could not
     stomach. When Jolly went up to Oxford, Jolyon went up with him,
     amused, humble, and a little anxious not to discredit his boy
     amongst all these youths who seemed so much more assured and old
     than himself. He often thought, “Glad I’m a painter” for he had
     long dropped under-writing at Lloyds—“it’s so innocuous. You
     can’t look down on a painter—you can’t take him seriously
     enough.” For Jolly, who had a sort of natural lordliness, had
     passed at once into a very small set, who secretly amused his
     father. The boy had fair hair which curled a little, and his
     grandfather’s deepset iron-grey eyes. He was well-built and very
     upright, and always pleased Jolyon’s aesthetic sense, so that he
     was a tiny bit afraid of him, as artists ever are of those of
     their own sex whom they admire physically. On that occasion,
     however, he actually did screw up his courage to give his son
     advice, and this was it:

     “Look here, old man, you’re bound to get into debt; mind you come
     to me at once. Of course, I’ll always pay them. But you might
     remember that one respects oneself more afterwards if one pays
     one’s own way. And don’t ever borrow, except from me, will you?”

     And Jolly had said:

     “All right, Dad, I won’t,” and he never had.

     “And there’s just one other thing. I don’t know much about
     morality and that, but there is this: It’s always worth while
     before you do anything to consider whether it’s going to hurt
     another person more than is absolutely necessary.”

     Jolly had looked thoughtful, and nodded, and presently had
     squeezed his father’s hand. And Jolyon had thought: “I wonder if
     I had the right to say that?” He always had a sort of dread of
     losing the dumb confidence they had in each other; remembering
     how for long years he had lost his own father’s, so that there
     had been nothing between them but love at a great distance. He
     under-estimated, no doubt, the change in the spirit of the age
     since he himself went up to Cambridge in ’65; and perhaps he
     underestimated, too, his boy’s power of understanding that he was
     tolerant to the very bone. It was that tolerance of his, and
     possibly his scepticism, which ever made his relations towards
     June so queerly defensive. She was such a decided mortal; knew
     her own mind so terribly well; wanted things so inexorably until
     she got them—and then, indeed, often dropped them like a hot
     potato. Her mother had been like that, whence had come all those
     tears. Not that his incompatibility with his daughter was
     anything like what it had been with the first Mrs. Young Jolyon.
     One could be amused where a daughter was concerned; in a wife’s
     case one could not be amused. To see June set her heart and jaw
     on a thing until she got it was all right, because it was never
     anything which interfered fundamentally with Jolyon’s liberty—the
     one thing on which his jaw was also absolutely rigid, a
     considerable jaw, under that short grizzling beard. Nor was there
     ever any necessity for real heart-to-heart encounters. One could
     break away into irony—as indeed he often had to. But the real
     trouble with June was that she had never appealed to his
     aesthetic sense, though she might well have, with her red-gold
     hair and her viking-coloured eyes, and that touch of the
     Berserker in her spirit. It was very different with Holly, soft
     and quiet, shy and affectionate, with a playful imp in her
     somewhere. He watched this younger daughter of his through the
     duckling stage with extraordinary interest. Would she come out a
     swan? With her sallow oval face and her grey wistful eyes and
     those long dark lashes, she might, or she might not. Only this
     last year had he been able to guess. Yes, she would be a
     swan—rather a dark one, always a shy one, but an authentic swan.
     She was eighteen now, and Mademoiselle Beauce was gone—the
     excellent lady had removed, after eleven years haunted by her
     continuous reminiscences of the “well-brrred little Tayleurs,” to
     another family whose bosom would now be agitated by her
     reminiscences of the “well-brrred little Forsytes.” She had
     taught Holly to speak French like herself.

     Portraiture was not Jolyon’s forte, but he had already drawn his
     younger daughter three times, and was drawing her a fourth, on
     the afternoon of October 4th, 1899, when a card was brought to
     him which caused his eyebrows to go up:
                    MR. SOAMES FORSYTE
          THE SHELTER,         CONNOISSEURS CLUB, MAPLEDURHAM.
          ST. JAMES’S.
     But here the Forsyte Saga must digress again....

     To return from a long travel in Spain to a darkened house, to a
     little daughter bewildered with tears, to the sight of a loved
     father lying peaceful in his last sleep, had never been, was
     never likely to be, forgotten by so impressionable and
     warm-hearted a man as Jolyon. A sense as of mystery, too, clung
     to that sad day, and about the end of one whose life had been so
     well-ordered, balanced, and above-board. It seemed incredible
     that his father could thus have vanished without, as it were,
     announcing his intention, without last words to his son, and due
     farewells. And those incoherent allusions of little Holly to “the
     lady in grey,” of Mademoiselle Beauce to a Madame Errant (as it
     sounded) involved all things in a mist, lifted a little when he
     read his father’s will and the codicil thereto. It had been his
     duty as executor of that will and codicil to inform Irene, wife
     of his cousin Soames, of her life interest in fifteen thousand
     pounds. He had called on her to explain that the existing
     investment in India Stock, ear-marked to meet the charge, would
     produce for her the interesting net sum of £430 odd a year, clear
     of income tax. This was but the third time he had seen his cousin
     Soames’ wife—if indeed she was still his wife, of which he was
     not quite sure. He remembered having seen her sitting in the
     Botanical Gardens waiting for Bosinney—a passive, fascinating
     figure, reminding him of Titian’s “Heavenly Love,” and again,
     when, charged by his father, he had gone to Montpellier Square on
     the afternoon when Bosinney’s death was known. He still recalled
     vividly her sudden appearance in the drawing-room doorway on that
     occasion—her beautiful face, passing from wild eagerness of hope
     to stony despair; remembered the compassion he had felt, Soames’
     snarling smile, his words, “We are not at home!” and the slam of
     the front door.

     This third time he saw a face and form more beautiful—freed from
     that warp of wild hope and despair. Looking at her, he thought:
     “Yes, you are just what the Dad would have admired!” And the
     strange story of his father’s Indian summer became slowly clear
     to him. She spoke of old Jolyon with reverence and tears in her
     eyes. “He was so wonderfully kind to me; I don’t know why. He
     looked so beautiful and peaceful sitting in that chair under the
     tree; it was I who first came on him sitting there, you know.
     Such a lovely day. I don’t think an end could have been happier.
     We should all like to go out like that.”

     “Quite right!” he had thought. “We should all like to go out in
     full summer with beauty stepping towards us across a lawn.”

     And looking round the little, almost empty drawing-room, he had
     asked her what she was going to do now. “I am going to live again
     a little, Cousin Jolyon. It’s wonderful to have money of one’s
     own. I’ve never had any. I shall keep this flat, I think; I’m
     used to it; but I shall be able to go to Italy.”

     “Exactly!” Jolyon had murmured, looking at her faintly smiling
     lips; and he had gone away thinking: “A fascinating woman! What a
     waste! I’m glad the Dad left her that money.” He had not seen her
     again, but every quarter he had signed her cheque, forwarding it
     to her bank, with a note to the Chelsea flat to say that he had
     done so; and always he had received a note in acknowledgment,
     generally from the flat, but sometimes from Italy; so that her
     personality had become embodied in slightly scented grey paper,
     an upright fine handwriting, and the words, “Dear Cousin Jolyon.”
     Man of property that he now was, the slender cheque he signed
     often gave rise to the thought: “Well, I suppose she just
     manages”; sliding into a vague wonder how she was faring
     otherwise in a world of men not wont to let beauty go
     unpossessed. At first Holly had spoken of her sometimes, but
     “ladies in grey” soon fade from children’s memories; and the
     tightening of June’s lips in those first weeks after her
     grandfather’s death whenever her former friend’s name was
     mentioned, had discouraged allusion. Only once, indeed, had June
     spoken definitely: “I’ve forgiven her. I’m frightfully glad she’s
     independent now....”

     On receiving Soames’ card, Jolyon said to the maid—for he could
     not abide butlers—“Show him into the study, please, and say I’ll
     be there in a minute”; and then he looked at Holly and asked:

     “Do you remember ‘the lady in grey,’ who used to give you
     music-lessons?”

     “Oh yes, why? Has she come?”

     Jolyon shook his head, and, changing his holland blouse for a
     coat, was silent, perceiving suddenly that such history was not
     for those young ears. His face, in fact, became whimsical
     perplexity incarnate while he journeyed towards the study.

     Standing by the french-window, looking out across the terrace at
     the oak tree, were two figures, middle-aged and young, and he
     thought: “Who’s that boy? Surely they never had a child.”

     The elder figure turned. The meeting of those two Forsytes of the
     second generation, so much more sophisticated than the first, in
     the house built for the one and owned and occupied by the other,
     was marked by subtle defensiveness beneath distinct attempt at
     cordiality. “Has he come about his wife?” Jolyon was thinking;
     and Soames, “How shall I begin?” while Val, brought to break the
     ice, stood negligently scrutinising this “bearded pard” from
     under his dark, thick eyelashes.

     “This is Val Dartie,” said Soames, “my sister’s son. He’s just
     going up to Oxford. I thought I’d like him to know your boy.”

     “Ah! I’m sorry Jolly’s away. What college?”

     “B.N.C.,” replied Val.

     “Jolly’s at the ‘House,’ but he’ll be delighted to look you up.”

     “Thanks awfully.”

     “Holly’s in—if you could put up with a female relation, she’d
     show you round. You’ll find her in the hall if you go through the
     curtains. I was just painting her.”

     With another “Thanks, awfully!” Val vanished, leaving the two
     cousins with the ice unbroken.

     “I see you’ve some drawings at the ‘Water Colours,’” said Soames.

     Jolyon winced. He had been out of touch with the Forsyte family
     at large for twenty-six years, but they were connected in his
     mind with Frith’s “Derby Day” and Landseer prints. He had heard
     from June that Soames was a connoisseur, which made it worse. He
     had become aware, too, of a curious sensation of repugnance.

     “I haven’t seen you for a long time,” he said.

     “No,” answered Soames between close lips, “not since—as a matter
     of fact, it’s about that I’ve come. You’re her trustee, I’m
     told.”

     Jolyon nodded.

     “Twelve years is a long time,” said Soames rapidly: “I—I’m tired
     of it.”

     Jolyon found no more appropriate answer than:

     “Won’t you smoke?”

     “No, thanks.”

     Jolyon himself lit a cigarette.

     “I wish to be free,” said Soames abruptly.

     “I don’t see her,” murmured Jolyon through the fume of his
     cigarette.

     “But you know where she lives, I suppose?”

     Jolyon nodded. He did not mean to give her address without
     permission. Soames seemed to divine his thought.

     “I don’t want her address,” he said; “I know it.”

     “What exactly do you want?”

     “She deserted me. I want a divorce.”

     “Rather late in the day, isn’t it?”

     “Yes,” said Soames. And there was a silence.

     “I don’t know much about these things—at least, I’ve forgotten,”
     said Jolyon with a wry smile. He himself had had to wait for
     death to grant him a divorce from the first Mrs. Jolyon. “Do you
     wish me to see her about it?”

     Soames raised his eyes to his cousin’s face. “I suppose there’s
     someone,” he said.

     A shrug moved Jolyon’s shoulders.

     “I don’t know at all. I imagine you may have both lived as if the
     other were dead. It’s usual in these cases.”

     Soames turned to the window. A few early fallen oak-leaves
     strewed the terrace already, and were rolling round in the wind.
     Jolyon saw the figures of Holly and Val Dartie moving across the
     lawn towards the stables. “I’m not going to run with the hare and
     hunt with the hounds,” he thought. “I must act for her. The Dad
     would have wished that.” And for a swift moment he seemed to see
     his father’s figure in the old armchair, just beyond Soames,
     sitting with knees crossed, _The Times_ in his hand. It vanished.

     “My father was fond of her,” he said quietly.

     “Why he should have been I don’t know,” Soames answered without
     looking round. “She brought trouble to your daughter June; she
     brought trouble to everyone. I gave her all she wanted. I would
     have given her even—forgiveness—but she chose to leave me.”

     In Jolyon compassion was checked by the tone of that close voice.
     What was there in the fellow that made it so difficult to be
     sorry for him?

     “I can go and see her, if you like,” he said. “I suppose she
     might be glad of a divorce, but I know nothing.”

     Soames nodded.

     “Yes, please go. As I say, I know her address; but I’ve no wish
     to see her.” His tongue was busy with his lips, as if they were
     very dry.

     “You’ll have some tea?” said Jolyon, stifling the words: “And see
     the house.” And he led the way into the hall. When he had rung
     the bell and ordered tea, he went to his easel to turn his
     drawing to the wall. He could not bear, somehow, that his work
     should be seen by Soames, who was standing there in the middle of
     the great room which had been designed expressly to afford wall
     space for his own pictures. In his cousin’s face, with its
     unseizable family likeness to himself, and its chinny, narrow,
     concentrated look, Jolyon saw that which moved him to the
     thought: “That chap could never forget anything—nor ever give
     himself away. He’s pathetic!”




     CHAPTER VII THE COLT AND THE FILLY


     When young Val left the presence of the last generation he was
     thinking: “This is jolly dull! Uncle Soames does take the bun. I
     wonder what this filly’s like?” He anticipated no pleasure from
     her society; and suddenly he saw her standing there looking at
     him. Why, she was pretty! What luck!

     “I’m afraid you don’t know me,” he said. “My name’s Val
     Dartie—I’m once removed, second cousin, something like that, you
     know. My mother’s name was Forsyte.”

     Holly, whose slim brown hand remained in his because she was too
     shy to withdraw it, said:

     “I don’t know any of my relations. Are there many?”

     “Tons. They’re awful—most of them. At least, I don’t know—some of
     them. One’s relations always are, aren’t they?”

     “I expect they think one awful too,” said Holly.

     “I don’t know why they should. No one could think you awful, of
     course.”

     Holly looked at him—the wistful candour in those grey eyes gave
     young Val a sudden feeling that he must protect her.

     “I mean there are people and people,” he added astutely. “Your
     dad looks awfully decent, for instance.”

     “Oh yes!” said Holly fervently; “he is.”

     A flush mounted in Val’s cheeks—that scene in the Pandemonium
     promenade—the dark man with the pink carnation developing into
     his own father! “But you know what the Forsytes are,” he said
     almost viciously. “Oh! I forgot; you don’t.”

     “What are they?”

     “Oh! fearfully careful; not sportsmen a bit. Look at Uncle
     Soames!”

     “I’d like to,” said Holly.

     Val resisted a desire to run his arm through hers. “Oh! no,” he
     said, “let’s go out. You’ll see him quite soon enough. What’s
     your brother like?”

     Holly led the way on to the terrace and down to the lawn without
     answering. How describe Jolly, who, ever since she remembered
     anything, had been her lord, master, and ideal?

     “Does he sit on you?” said Val shrewdly. “I shall be knowing him
     at Oxford. Have you got any horses?”

     Holly nodded. “Would you like to see the stables?”

     “Rather!”

     They passed under the oak tree, through a thin shrubbery, into
     the stable-yard. There under a clock-tower lay a fluffy
     brown-and-white dog, so old that he did not get up, but faintly
     waved the tail curled over his back.

     “That’s Balthasar,” said Holly; “he’s so old—awfully old, nearly
     as old as I am. Poor old boy! He’s devoted to Dad.”

     “Balthasar! That’s a rum name. He isn’t purebred you know.”

     “No! but he’s a darling,” and she bent down to stroke the dog.
     Gentle and supple, with dark covered head and slim browned neck
     and hands, she seemed to Val strange and sweet, like a thing
     slipped between him and all previous knowledge.

     “When grandfather died,” she said, “he wouldn’t eat for two days.
     He saw him die, you know.”

     “Was that old Uncle Jolyon? Mother always says he was a topper.”

     “He was,” said Holly simply, and opened the stable door.

     In a loose-box stood a silver roan of about fifteen hands, with a
     long black tail and mane. “This is mine—Fairy.”

     “Ah!” said Val, “she’s a jolly palfrey. But you ought to bang her
     tail. She’d look much smarter.” Then catching her wondering look,
     he thought suddenly: “I don’t know—anything she likes!” And he
     took a long sniff of the stable air. “Horses are ripping, aren’t
     they? My Dad...” he stopped.

     “Yes?” said Holly.

     An impulse to unbosom himself almost overcame him—but not quite.
     “Oh! I don’t know he’s often gone a mucker over them. I’m jolly
     keen on them too—riding and hunting. I like racing awfully, as
     well; I should like to be a gentleman rider.” And oblivious of
     the fact that he had but one more day in town, with two
     engagements, he plumped out:

     “I say, if I hire a gee to-morrow, will you come a ride in
     Richmond Park?”

     Holly clasped her hands.

     “Oh yes! I simply love riding. But there’s Jolly’s horse; why
     don’t you ride him? Here he is. We could go after tea.”

     Val looked doubtfully at his trousered legs.

     He had imagined them immaculate before her eyes in high brown
     boots and Bedford cords.

     “I don’t much like riding his horse,” he said. “He mightn’t like
     it. Besides, Uncle Soames wants to get back, I expect. Not that I
     believe in buckling under to him, you know. You haven’t got an
     uncle, have you? This is rather a good beast,” he added,
     scrutinising Jolly’s horse, a dark brown, which was showing the
     whites of its eyes. “You haven’t got any hunting here, I
     suppose?”

     “No; I don’t know that I want to hunt. It must be awfully
     exciting, of course; but it’s cruel, isn’t it? June says so.”

     “Cruel?” ejaculated Val. “Oh! that’s all rot. Who’s June?”

     “My sister—my half-sister, you know—much older than me.” She had
     put her hands up to both cheeks of Jolly’s horse, and was rubbing
     her nose against its nose with a gentle snuffling noise which
     seemed to have an hypnotic effect on the animal. Val contemplated
     her cheek resting against the horse’s nose, and her eyes gleaming
     round at him. “She’s really a duck,” he thought.

     They returned to the house less talkative, followed this time by
     the dog Balthasar, walking more slowly than anything on earth,
     and clearly expecting them not to exceed his speed limit.

     “This is a ripping place,” said Val from under the oak tree,
     where they had paused to allow the dog Balthasar to come up.

     “Yes,” said Holly, and sighed. “Of course I want to go
     everywhere. I wish I were a gipsy.”

     “Yes, gipsies are jolly,” replied Val, with a conviction which
     had just come to him; “you’re rather like one, you know.”

     Holly’s face shone suddenly and deeply, like dark leaves gilded
     by the sun.

     “To go mad-rabbiting everywhere and see everything, and live in
     the open—oh! wouldn’t it be fun?”

     “Let’s do it!” said Val.

     “Oh yes, let’s!”

     “It’d be grand sport, just you and I.”

     Then Holly perceived the quaintness and gushed.

     “Well, we’ve got to do it,” said Val obstinately, but reddening
     too.

     “I believe in doing things you want to do. What’s down there?”

     “The kitchen-garden, and the pond and the coppice, and the farm.”

     “Let’s go down!”

     Holly glanced back at the house.

     “It’s tea-time, I expect; there’s Dad beckoning.”

     Val, uttering a growly sound, followed her towards the house.

     When they re-entered the hall gallery the sight of two
     middle-aged Forsytes drinking tea together had its magical
     effect, and they became quite silent. It was, indeed, an
     impressive spectacle. The two were seated side by side on an
     arrangement in marqueterie which looked like three silvery pink
     chairs made one, with a low tea-table in front of them. They
     seemed to have taken up that position, as far apart as the seat
     would permit, so that they need not look at each other too much;
     and they were eating and drinking rather than talking—Soames with
     his air of despising the tea-cake as it disappeared, Jolyon of
     finding himself slightly amusing. To the casual eye neither would
     have seemed greedy, but both were getting through a good deal of
     sustenance. The two young ones having been supplied with food,
     the process went on silent and absorbative, till, with the advent
     of cigarettes, Jolyon said to Soames:

     “And how’s Uncle James?”

     “Thanks, very shaky.”

     “We’re a wonderful family, aren’t we? The other day I was
     calculating the average age of the ten old Forsytes from my
     father’s family Bible. I make it eighty-four already, and five
     still living. They ought to beat the record;” and looking
     whimsically at Soames, he added:

     “We aren’t the men they were, you know.”

     Soames smiled. “Do you really think I shall admit that I’m not
     their equal”. he seemed to be saying, “or that I’ve got to give
     up anything, especially life?”

     “We may live to their age, perhaps,” pursued Jolyon, “but
     self-consciousness is a handicap, you know, and that’s the
     difference between us. We’ve lost conviction. How and when
     self-consciousness was born I never can make out. My father had a
     little, but I don’t believe any other of the old Forsytes ever
     had a scrap. Never to see yourself as others see you, it’s a
     wonderful preservative. The whole history of the last century is
     in the difference between us. And between us and you,” he added,
     gazing through a ring of smoke at Val and Holly, uncomfortable
     under his quizzical regard, “there’ll be—another difference. I
     wonder what.”

     Soames took out his watch.

     “We must go,” he said, “if we’re to catch our train.”

     “Uncle Soames never misses a train,” muttered Val, with his mouth
     full.

     “Why should I?” Soames answered simply.

     “Oh! I don’t know,” grumbled Val, “other people do.”

     At the front door he gave Holly’s slim brown hand a long and
     surreptitious squeeze.

     “Look out for me to-morrow,” he whispered; “three o’clock. I’ll
     wait for you in the road; it’ll save time. We’ll have a ripping
     ride.” He gazed back at her from the lodge gate, and, but for the
     principles of a man about town, would have waved his hand. He
     felt in no mood to tolerate his uncle’s conversation. But he was
     not in danger. Soames preserved a perfect muteness, busy with
     far-away thoughts.

     The yellow leaves came down about those two walking the mile and
     a half which Soames had traversed so often in those long-ago days
     when he came down to watch with secret pride the building of the
     house—that house which was to have been the home of him and her
     from whom he was now going to seek release. He looked back once,
     up that endless vista of autumn lane between the yellowing
     hedges. What an age ago! “I don’t want to see her,” he had said
     to Jolyon. Was that true? “I may have to,” he thought; and he
     shivered, seized by one of those queer shudderings that they say
     mean footsteps on one’s grave. A chilly world! A queer world! And
     glancing sidelong at his nephew, he thought: “Wish I were his
     age! I wonder what she’s like now!”




     CHAPTER VIII JOLYON PROSECUTES TRUSTEESHIP


     When those two were gone Jolyon did not return to his painting,
     for daylight was failing, but went to the study, craving
     unconsciously a revival of that momentary vision of his father
     sitting in the old leather chair with his knees crossed and his
     straight eyes gazing up from under the dome of his massive brow.
     Often in this little room, cosiest in the house, Jolyon would
     catch a moment of communion with his father. Not, indeed, that he
     had definitely any faith in the persistence of the human
     spirit—the feeling was not so logical—it was, rather, an
     atmospheric impact, like a scent, or one of those strong
     animistic impressions from forms, or effects of light, to which
     those with the artist’s eye are especially prone. Here only—in
     this little unchanged room where his father had spent the most of
     his waking hours—could be retrieved the feeling that he was not
     quite gone, that the steady counsel of that old spirit and the
     warmth of his masterful lovability endured.

     What would his father be advising now, in this sudden
     recrudescence of an old tragedy—what would he say to this menace
     against her to whom he had taken such a fancy in the last weeks
     of his life? “I must do my best for her,” thought Jolyon; “he
     left her to me in his will. But what _is_ the best?”

     And as if seeking to regain the sapience, the balance and shrewd
     common sense of that old Forsyte, he sat down in the ancient
     chair and crossed his knees. But he felt a mere shadow sitting
     there; nor did any inspiration come, while the fingers of the
     wind tapped on the darkening panes of the french-window.

     “Go and see her?” he thought, “or ask her to come down here?
     What’s her life been? What is it now, I wonder? Beastly to rake
     up things at this time of day.” Again the figure of his cousin
     standing with a hand on a front door of a fine olive-green leaped
     out, vivid, like one of those figures from old-fashioned clocks
     when the hour strikes; and his words sounded in Jolyon’s ears
     clearer than any chime: “I manage my own affairs. I’ve told you
     once, I tell you again: We are not at home.” The repugnance he
     had then felt for Soames—for his flat-cheeked, shaven face full
     of spiritual bull-doggedness; for his spare, square, sleek figure
     slightly crouched as it were over the bone he could not
     digest—came now again, fresh as ever, nay, with an odd increase.
     “I dislike him,” he thought, “I dislike him to the very roots of
     me. And that’s lucky; it’ll make it easier for me to back his
     wife.” Half-artist, and half-Forsyte, Jolyon was constitutionally
     averse from what he termed “ructions”; unless angered, he
     conformed deeply to that classic description of the she-dog,
     “Er’d ruther run than fight.” A little smile became settled in
     his beard. Ironical that Soames should come down here—to this
     house, built for himself! How he had gazed and gaped at this ruin
     of his past intention; furtively nosing at the walls and
     stairway, appraising everything! And intuitively Jolyon thought:
     “I believe the fellow even now would like to be living here. He
     could never leave off longing for what he once owned! Well, I
     must act, somehow or other; but it’s a bore—a great bore.”

     Late that evening he wrote to the Chelsea flat, asking if Irene
     would see him.

     The old century which had seen the plant of individualism flower
     so wonderfully was setting in a sky orange with coming storms.
     Rumours of war added to the briskness of a London turbulent at
     the close of the summer holidays. And the streets to Jolyon, who
     was not often up in town, had a feverish look, due to these new
     motorcars and cabs, of which he disapproved aesthetically. He
     counted these vehicles from his hansom, and made the proportion
     of them one in twenty. “They were one in thirty about a year
     ago,” he thought; “they’ve come to stay. Just so much more
     rattling round of wheels and general stink”—for he was one of
     those rather rare Liberals who object to anything new when it
     takes a material form; and he instructed his driver to get down
     to the river quickly, out of the traffic, desiring to look at the
     water through the mellowing screen of plane-trees. At the little
     block of flats which stood back some fifty yards from the
     Embankment, he told the cabman to wait, and went up to the first
     floor.

     Yes, Mrs. Heron was at home!

     The effect of a settled if very modest income was at once
     apparent to him remembering the threadbare refinement in that
     tiny flat eight years ago when he announced her good fortune.
     Everything was now fresh, dainty, and smelled of flowers. The
     general effect was silvery with touches of black, hydrangea
     colour, and gold. “A woman of great taste,” he thought. Time had
     dealt gently with Jolyon, for he was a Forsyte. But with Irene
     Time hardly seemed to deal at all, or such was his impression.
     She appeared to him not a day older, standing there in
     mole-coloured velvet corduroy, with soft dark eyes and dark gold
     hair, with outstretched hand and a little smile.

     “Won’t you sit down?”

     He had probably never occupied a chair with a fuller sense of
     embarrassment.

     “You look absolutely unchanged,” he said.

     “And you look younger, Cousin Jolyon.”

     Jolyon ran his hands through his hair, whose thickness was still
     a comfort to him.

     “I’m ancient, but I don’t feel it. That’s one thing about
     painting, it keeps you young. Titian lived to ninety-nine, and
     had to have plague to kill him off. Do you know, the first time I
     ever saw you I thought of a picture by him?”

     “When did you see me for the first time?”

     “In the Botanical Gardens.”

     “How did you know me, if you’d never seen me before?”

     “By someone who came up to you.” He was looking at her hardily,
     but her face did not change; and she said quietly:

     “Yes; many lives ago.”

     “What is _your_ recipe for youth, Irene?”

     “People who don’t _live_ are wonderfully preserved.”

     H’m! a bitter little saying! People who don’t live! But an
     opening, and he took it. “You remember my Cousin Soames?”

     He saw her smile faintly at that whimsicality, and at once went
     on:

     “He came to see me the day before yesterday! He wants a divorce.
     Do you?”

     “I?” The word seemed startled out of her. “After twelve years?
     It’s rather late. Won’t it be difficult?”

     Jolyon looked hard into her face. “Unless....” he said.

     “Unless I have a lover now. But I have never had one since.”

     What did he feel at the simplicity and candour of those words?
     Relief, surprise, pity! Venus for twelve years without a lover!

     “And yet,” he said, “I suppose you would give a good deal to be
     free, too?”

     “I don’t know. What does it matter, now?”

     “But if you were to love again?”

     “I should love.” In that simple answer she seemed to sum up the
     whole philosophy of one on whom the world had turned its back.

     “Well! Is there anything you would like me to say to him?”

     “Only that I’m sorry he’s not free. He had his chance once. I
     don’t know why he didn’t take it.”

     “Because he was a Forsyte; we never part with things, you know,
     unless we want something in their place; and not always then.”

     Irene smiled. “Don’t you, Cousin Jolyon?—I think you do.”

     “Of course, I’m a bit of a mongrel—not quite a pure Forsyte. I
     never take the halfpennies off my cheques, I put them on,” said
     Jolyon uneasily.

     “Well, what does Soames want in place of me now?”

     “I don’t know; perhaps children.”

     She was silent for a little, looking down.

     “Yes,” she murmured; “it’s hard. I would help him to be free if I
     could.”

     Jolyon gazed into his hat, his embarrassment was increasing fast;
     so was his admiration, his wonder, and his pity. She was so
     lovely, and so lonely; and altogether it was such a coil!

     “Well,” he said, “I shall have to see Soames. If there’s anything
     I can do for you I’m always at your service. You must think of me
     as a wretched substitute for my father. At all events I’ll let
     you know what happens when I speak to Soames. He may supply the
     material himself.”

     She shook her head.

     “You see, he has a lot to lose; and I have nothing. I should like
     him to be free; but I don’t see what I can do.”

     “Nor I at the moment,” said Jolyon, and soon after took his
     leave. He went down to his hansom. Half-past three! Soames would
     be at his office still.

     “To the Poultry,” he called through the trap. In front of the
     Houses of Parliament and in Whitehall, newsvendors were calling,
     “Grave situation in the Transvaal!” but the cries hardly roused
     him, absorbed in recollection of that very beautiful figure, of
     her soft dark glance, and the words: “I have never had one
     since.” What on earth did such a woman do with her life,
     back-watered like this? Solitary, unprotected, with every man’s
     hand against her or rather—reaching out to grasp her at the least
     sign. And year after year she went on like that!

     The word “Poultry” above the passing citizens brought him back to
     reality.

     “Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte,” in black letters on a ground the
     colour of peasoup, spurred him to a sort of vigour, and he went
     up the stone stairs muttering: “Fusty musty ownerships! Well, we
     couldn’t do without them!”

     “I want Mr. Soames Forsyte,” he said to the boy who opened the
     door.

     “What name?”

     “Mr. Jolyon Forsyte.”

     The youth looked at him curiously, never having seen a Forsyte
     with a beard, and vanished.

     The offices of “Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte” had slowly absorbed
     the offices of “Tooting and Bowles,” and occupied the whole of
     the first floor.

     The firm consisted now of nothing but Soames and a number of
     managing and articled clerks. The complete retirement of James
     some six years ago had accelerated business, to which the final
     touch of speed had been imparted when Bustard dropped off, worn
     out, as many believed, by the suit of “Fryer _versus_ Forsyte,”
     more in Chancery than ever and less likely to benefit its
     beneficiaries. Soames, with his saner grasp of actualities, had
     never permitted it to worry him; on the contrary, he had long
     perceived that Providence had presented him therein with £200 a
     year net in perpetuity, and—why not?

     When Jolyon entered, his cousin was drawing out a list of
     holdings in Consols, which in view of the rumours of war he was
     going to advise his companies to put on the market at once,
     before other companies did the same. He looked round, sidelong,
     and said:

     “How are you? Just one minute. Sit down, won’t you?” And having
     entered three amounts, and set a ruler to keep his place, he
     turned towards Jolyon, biting the side of his flat forefinger....

     “Yes?” he said.

     “I have seen her.”

     Soames frowned.

     “Well?”

     “She has remained faithful to memory.”

     Having said that, Jolyon was ashamed. His cousin had flushed a
     dusky yellowish red. What had made him tease the poor brute!

     “I was to tell you she is sorry you are not free. Twelve years is
     a long time. You know your law, and what chance it gives you.”
     Soames uttered a curious little grunt, and the two remained a
     full minute without speaking. “Like wax!” thought Jolyon,
     watching that close face, where the flush was fast subsiding.
     “He’ll never give me a sign of what he’s thinking, or going to
     do. Like wax!” And he transferred his gaze to a plan of that
     flourishing town, “By-Street on Sea,” the future existence of
     which lay exposed on the wall to the possessive instincts of the
     firm’s clients. The whimsical thought flashed through him: “I
     wonder if I shall get a bill of costs for this—‘To attending Mr.
     Jolyon Forsyte in the matter of my divorce, to receiving his
     account of his visit to my wife, and to advising him to go and
     see her again, sixteen and eightpence.’”

     Suddenly Soames said: “I can’t go on like this. I tell you, I
     can’t go on like this.” His eyes were shifting from side to side,
     like an animal’s when it looks for way of escape. “He really
     suffers,” thought Jolyon; “I’ve no business to forget that, just
     because I don’t like him.”

     “Surely,” he said gently, “it lies with yourself. A man can
     always put these things through if he’ll take it on himself.”

     Soames turned square to him, with a sound which seemed to come
     from somewhere very deep.

     “Why should I suffer more than I’ve suffered already? Why should
     I?”

     Jolyon could only shrug his shoulders. His reason agreed, his
     instinct rebelled; he could not have said why.

     “Your father,” went on Soames, “took an interest in her—why,
     goodness knows! And I suppose you do too?” he gave Jolyon a sharp
     look. “It seems to me that one only has to do another person a
     wrong to get all the sympathy. I don’t know in what way I was to
     blame—I’ve never known. I always treated her well. I gave her
     everything she could wish for. I wanted her.”

     Again Jolyon’s reason nodded; again his instinct shook its head.
     “What is it?” he thought; “there must be something wrong in me.
     Yet if there is, I’d rather be wrong than right.”

     “After all,” said Soames with a sort of glum fierceness, “she was
     my wife.”

     In a flash the thought went through his listener: “There it is!
     Ownerships! Well, we all own things. But—human beings! Pah!”

     “You have to look at facts,” he said drily, “or rather the want
     of them.”

     Soames gave him another quick suspicious look.

     “The want of them?” he said. “Yes, but I am not so sure.”

     “I beg your pardon,” replied Jolyon; “I’ve told you what she
     said. It was explicit.”

     “My experience has not been one to promote blind confidence in
     her word. We shall see.”

     Jolyon got up.

     “Good-bye,” he said curtly.

     “Good-bye,” returned Soames; and Jolyon went out trying to
     understand the look, half-startled, half-menacing, on his
     cousin’s face. He sought Waterloo Station in a disturbed frame of
     mind, as though the skin of his moral being had been scraped; and
     all the way down in the train he thought of Irene in her lonely
     flat, and of Soames in his lonely office, and of the strange
     paralysis of life that lay on them both. “In chancery!” he
     thought. “Both their necks in chancery—and her’s so pretty!”




     CHAPTER IX VAL HEARS THE NEWS


     The keeping of engagements had not as yet been a conspicuous
     feature in the life of young Val Dartie, so that when he broke
     two and kept one, it was the latter event which caused him, if
     anything, the greater surprise, while jogging back to town from
     Robin Hill after his ride with Holly. She had been even prettier
     than he had thought her yesterday, on her silver-roan,
     long-tailed “palfrey”. and it seemed to him, self-critical in the
     brumous October gloaming and the outskirts of London, that only
     his boots had shone throughout their two-hour companionship. He
     took out his new gold “hunter”—present from James—and looked not
     at the time, but at sections of his face in the glittering back
     of its opened case. He had a temporary spot over one eyebrow, and
     it displeased him, for it must have displeased her. Crum never
     had any spots. Together with Crum rose the scene in the promenade
     of the Pandemonium. To-day he had not had the faintest desire to
     unbosom himself to Holly about his father. His father lacked
     poetry, the stirrings of which he was feeling for the first time
     in his nineteen years. The Liberty, with Cynthia Dark, that
     almost mythical embodiment of rapture; the Pandemonium, with the
     woman of uncertain age—both seemed to Val completely “off,” fresh
     from communion with this new, shy, dark-haired young cousin of
     his. She rode “Jolly well,” too, so that it had been all the more
     flattering that she had let him lead her where he would in the
     long gallops of Richmond Park, though she knew them so much
     better than he did. Looking back on it all, he was mystified by
     the barrenness of his speech; he felt that he could say “an awful
     lot of fetching things” if he had but the chance again, and the
     thought that he must go back to Littlehampton on the morrow, and
     to Oxford on the twelfth—“to that beastly exam,” too—without the
     faintest chance of first seeing her again, caused darkness to
     settle on his spirit even more quickly than on the evening. He
     should write to her, however, and she had promised to answer.
     Perhaps, too, she would come up to Oxford to see her brother.
     That thought was like the first star, which came out as he rode
     into Padwick’s livery stables in the purlieus of Sloane Square.
     He got off and stretched himself luxuriously, for he had ridden
     some twenty-five good miles. The Dartie within him made him
     chaffer for five minutes with young Padwick concerning the
     favourite for the Cambridgeshire; then with the words, “Put the
     gee down to my account,” he walked away, a little wide at the
     knees, and flipping his boots with his knotty little cane. “I
     don’t feel a bit inclined to go out,” he thought. “I wonder if
     mother will stand fizz for my last night!” With “fizz” and
     recollection, he could well pass a domestic evening.

     When he came down, speckless after his bath, he found his mother
     scrupulous in a low evening dress, and, to his annoyance, his
     Uncle Soames. They stopped talking when he came in; then his
     uncle said:

     “He’d better be told.”

     At those words, which meant something about his father, of
     course, Val’s first thought was of Holly. Was it anything
     beastly? His mother began speaking.

     “Your father,” she said in her fashionably appointed voice, while
     her fingers plucked rather pitifully at sea-green brocade, “your
     father, my dear boy, has—is not at Newmarket; he’s on his way to
     South America. He—he’s left us.”

     Val looked from her to Soames. Left them! Was he sorry? Was he
     fond of his father? It seemed to him that he did not know. Then,
     suddenly—as at a whiff of gardenias and cigars—his heart twitched
     within him, and he _was_ sorry. One’s father belonged to one,
     could not go off in this fashion—it was not done! Nor had he
     always been the “bounder” of the Pandemonium promenade. There
     were precious memories of tailors’ shops and horses, tips at
     school, and general lavish kindness, when in luck.

     “But why?” he said. Then, as a sportsman himself, was sorry he
     had asked. The mask of his mother’s face was all disturbed; and
     he burst out:

     “All right, Mother, don’t tell me! Only, what does it mean?”

     “A divorce, Val, I’m afraid.”

     Val uttered a queer little grunt, and looked quickly at his
     uncle—that uncle whom he had been taught to look on as a
     guarantee against the consequences of having a father, even
     against the Dartie blood in his own veins. The flat-checked
     visage seemed to wince, and this upset him.

     “It won’t be public, will it?”

     So vividly before him had come recollection of his own eyes glued
     to the unsavoury details of many a divorce suit in the Public
     Press.

     “Can’t it be done quietly somehow? It’s so disgusting for—for
     mother, and—and everybody.”

     “Everything will be done as quietly as it can, you may be sure.”

     “Yes—but, why is it necessary at all? Mother doesn’t want to
     marry again.”

     Himself, the girls, their name tarnished in the sight of his
     schoolfellows and of Crum, of the men at Oxford, of—Holly!
     Unbearable! What was to be gained by it?

     “Do you, Mother?” he said sharply.

     Thus brought face to face with so much of her own feeling by the
     one she loved best in the world, Winifred rose from the Empire
     chair in which she had been sitting. She saw that her son would
     be against her unless he was told everything; and, yet, how could
     she tell him? Thus, still plucking at the green brocade, she
     stared at Soames. Val, too, stared at Soames. Surely this
     embodiment of respectability and the sense of property could not
     wish to bring such a slur on his own sister!

     Soames slowly passed a little inlaid paperknife over the smooth
     surface of a marqueterie table; then, without looking at his
     nephew, he began:

     “You don’t understand what your mother has had to put up with
     these twenty years. This is only the last straw, Val.” And
     glancing up sideways at Winifred, he added:

     “Shall I tell him?”

     Winifred was silent. If he were not told, he would be against
     her! Yet, how dreadful to be told such things of his own father!
     Clenching her lips, she nodded.

     Soames spoke in a rapid, even voice:

     “He has always been a burden round your mother’s neck. She has
     paid his debts over and over again; he has often been drunk,
     abused and threatened her; and now he is gone to Buenos Aires
     with a dancer.” And, as if distrusting the efficacy of those
     words on the boy, he went on quickly:

     “He took your mother’s pearls to give to her.”

     Val jerked up his hand, then. At that signal of distress Winifred
     cried out:

     “That’ll do, Soames—stop!”

     In the boy, the Dartie and the Forsyte were struggling. For
     debts, drink, dancers, he had a certain sympathy; but the
     pearls—no! That was too much! And suddenly he found his mother’s
     hand squeezing his.

     “You see,” he heard Soames say, “we can’t have it all begin over
     again. There’s a limit; we must strike while the iron’s hot.”

     Val freed his hand.

     “But—you’re—never going to bring out that about the pearls! I
     couldn’t stand that—I simply couldn’t!”

     Winifred cried out:

     “No, no, Val—oh no! That’s only to show you how impossible your
     father is!” And his uncle nodded. Somewhat assuaged, Val took out
     a cigarette. His father had bought him that thin curved case. Oh!
     it was unbearable—just as he was going up to Oxford!

     “Can’t mother be protected without?” he said. “I could look after
     her. It could always be done later if it was really necessary.”

     A smile played for a moment round Soames’ lips, and became
     bitter.

     “You don’t know what you’re talking of; nothing’s so fatal as
     delay in such matters.”

     “Why?”

     “I tell you, boy, nothing’s so fatal. I know from experience.”

     His voice had the ring of exasperation. Val regarded him
     round-eyed, never having known his uncle express any sort of
     feeling. Oh! Yes—he remembered now—there had been an Aunt Irene,
     and something had happened—something which people kept dark; he
     had heard his father once use an unmentionable word of her.

     “I don’t want to speak ill of your father,” Soames went on
     doggedly, “but I know him well enough to be sure that he’ll be
     back on your mother’s hands before a year’s over. You can imagine
     what that will mean to her and to all of you after this. The only
     thing is to cut the knot for good.”

     In spite of himself, Val was impressed; and, happening to look at
     his mother’s face, he got what was perhaps his first real insight
     into the fact that his own feelings were not always what mattered
     most.

     “All right, mother,” he said; “we’ll back you up. Only I’d like
     to know when it’ll be. It’s my first term, you know. I don’t want
     to be up there when it comes off.”

     “Oh! my dear boy,” murmured Winifred, “it _is_ a bore for you.”
     So, by habit, she phrased what, from the expression of her face,
     was the most poignant regret. “When will it be, Soames?”

     “Can’t tell—not for months. We must get restitution first.”

     “What the deuce is that?” thought Val. “What silly brutes lawyers
     are! Not for months! I know one thing: I’m not going to dine in!”
     And he said:

     “Awfully sorry, mother, I’ve got to go out to dinner now.”

     Though it was his last night, Winifred nodded almost gratefully;
     they both felt that they had gone quite far enough in the
     expression of feeling.

     Val sought the misty freedom of Green Street, reckless and
     depressed. And not till he reached Piccadilly did he discover
     that he had only eighteen-pence. One couldn’t dine off
     eighteen-pence, and he was very hungry. He looked longingly at
     the windows of the Iseeum Club, where he had often eaten of the
     best with his father! Those pearls! There was no getting over
     them! But the more he brooded and the further he walked the
     hungrier he naturally became. Short of trailing home, there were
     only two places where he could go—his grandfather’s in Park Lane,
     and Timothy’s in the Bayswater Road. Which was the less
     deplorable? At his grandfather’s he would probably get a better
     dinner on the spur of the moment. At Timothy’s they gave you a
     jolly good feed when they expected you, not otherwise. He decided
     on Park Lane, not unmoved by the thought that to go up to Oxford
     without affording his grandfather a chance to tip him was hardly
     fair to either of them. His mother would hear he had been there,
     of course, and might think it funny; but he couldn’t help that.
     He rang the bell.

     “Hullo, Warmson, any dinner for me, d’you think?”

     “They’re just going in, Master Val. Mr. Forsyte will be very glad
     to see you. He was saying at lunch that he never saw you
     nowadays.”

     Val grinned.

     “Well, here I am. Kill the fatted calf, Warmson, let’s have
     fizz.”

     Warmson smiled faintly—in his opinion Val was a young limb.

     “I will ask Mrs. Forsyte, Master Val.”

     “I say,” Val grumbled, taking off his overcoat, “I’m not at
     school any more, you know.”

     Warmson, not without a sense of humour, opened the door beyond
     the stag’s-horn coat stand, with the words:

     “Mr. Valerus, ma’am.”

     “Confound him!” thought Val, entering.

     A warm embrace, a “Well, Val!” from Emily, and a rather quavery
     “So there you are at last!” from James, restored his sense of
     dignity.

     “Why didn’t you let us know? There’s only saddle of mutton.
     Champagne, Warmson,” said Emily. And they went in.

     At the great dining-table, shortened to its utmost, under which
     so many fashionable legs had rested, James sat at one end, Emily
     at the other, Val half-way between them; and something of the
     loneliness of his grandparents, now that all their four children
     were flown, reached the boy’s spirit. “I hope I shall kick the
     bucket long before I’m as old as grandfather,” he thought. “Poor
     old chap, he’s as thin as a rail!” And lowering his voice while
     his grandfather and Warmson were in discussion about sugar in the
     soup, he said to Emily:

     “It’s pretty brutal at home, Granny. I suppose you know.”

     “Yes, dear boy.”

     “Uncle Soames was there when I left. I say, isn’t there anything
     to be done to prevent a divorce? Why is he so beastly keen on
     it?”

     “Hush, my dear!” murmured Emily; “we’re keeping it from your
     grandfather.”

     James’ voice sounded from the other end.

     “What’s that? What are you talking about?”

     “About Val’s college,” returned Emily. “Young Pariser was there,
     James; you remember—he nearly broke the Bank at Monte Carlo
     afterwards.”

     James muttered that he did not know—Val must look after himself
     up there, or he’d get into bad ways. And he looked at his
     grandson with gloom, out of which affection distrustfully
     glimmered.

     “What I’m afraid of,” said Val to his plate, “is of being hard
     up, you know.”

     By instinct he knew that the weak spot in that old man was fear
     of insecurity for his grandchildren.

     “Well,” said James, and the soup in his spoon dribbled over,
     “you’ll have a good allowance; but you must keep within it.”

     “Of course,” murmured Val; “if it is good. How much will it be,
     Grandfather?”

     “Three hundred and fifty; it’s too much. I had next to nothing at
     your age.”

     Val sighed. He had hoped for four, and been afraid of three. “I
     don’t know what your young cousin has,” said James; “he’s up
     there. His father’s a rich man.”

     “Aren’t you?” asked Val hardily.

     “I?” replied James, flustered. “I’ve got so many expenses. Your
     father....” and he was silent.

     “Cousin Jolyon’s got an awfully jolly place. I went down there
     with Uncle Soames—ripping stables.”

     “Ah!” murmured James profoundly. “That house—I knew how it would
     be!” And he lapsed into gloomy meditation over his fish-bones.
     His son’s tragedy, and the deep cleavage it had caused in the
     Forsyte family, had still the power to draw him down into a
     whirlpool of doubts and misgivings. Val, who hankered to talk of
     Robin Hill, because Robin Hill meant Holly, turned to Emily and
     said:

     “Was that the house built for Uncle Soames?” And, receiving her
     nod, went on: “I wish you’d tell me about him, Granny. What
     became of Aunt Irene? Is she still going? He seems awfully
     worked-up about something to-night.”

     Emily laid her finger on her lips, but the word Irene had caught
     James’ ear.

     “What’s that?” he said, staying a piece of mutton close to his
     lips. “Who’s been seeing her? I knew we hadn’t heard the last of
     that.”

     “Now, James,” said Emily, “eat your dinner. Nobody’s been seeing
     anybody.”

     James put down his fork.

     “There you go,” he said. “I might die before you’d tell me of it.
     Is Soames getting a divorce?”

     “Nonsense,” said Emily with incomparable aplomb; “Soames is much
     too sensible.”

     James had sought his own throat, gathering the long white
     whiskers together on the skin and bone of it.

     “She—she was always....” he said, and with that enigmatic remark
     the conversation lapsed, for Warmson had returned. But later,
     when the saddle of mutton had been succeeded by sweet, savoury,
     and dessert, and Val had received a cheque for twenty pounds and
     his grandfather’s kiss—like no other kiss in the world, from lips
     pushed out with a sort of fearful suddenness, as if yielding to
     weakness—he returned to the charge in the hall.

     “Tell us about Uncle Soames, Granny. Why is he so keen on
     mother’s getting a divorce?”

     “Your Uncle Soames,” said Emily, and her voice had in it an
     exaggerated assurance, “is a lawyer, my dear boy. He’s sure to
     know best.”

     “Is he?” muttered Val. “But what did become of Aunt Irene? I
     remember she was jolly good-looking.”

     “She—er....” said Emily, “behaved very badly. We don’t talk about
     it.”

     “Well, I don’t want everybody at Oxford to know about our
     affairs,” ejaculated Val; “it’s a brutal idea. Why couldn’t
     father be prevented without its being made public?”

     Emily sighed. She had always lived rather in an atmosphere of
     divorce, owing to her fashionable proclivities—so many of those
     whose legs had been under her table having gained a certain
     notoriety. When, however, it touched her own family, she liked it
     no better than other people. But she was eminently practical, and
     a woman of courage, who never pursued a shadow in preference to
     its substance.

     “Your mother,” she said, “will be happier if she’s quite free,
     Val. Good-night, my dear boy; and don’t wear loud waistcoats up
     at Oxford, they’re not the thing just now. Here’s a little
     present.”

     With another five pounds in his hand, and a little warmth in his
     heart, for he was fond of his grandmother, he went out into Park
     Lane. A wind had cleared the mist, the autumn leaves were
     rustling, and the stars were shining. With all that money in his
     pocket an impulse to “see life” beset him; but he had not gone
     forty yards in the direction of Piccadilly when Holly’s shy face,
     and her eyes with an imp dancing in their gravity, came up before
     him, and his hand seemed to be tingling again from the pressure
     of her warm gloved hand. “No, dash it!” he thought, “I’m going
     home!”




     CHAPTER X SOAMES ENTERTAINS THE FUTURE


     It was full late for the river, but the weather was lovely, and
     summer lingered below the yellowing leaves. Soames took many
     looks at the day from his riverside garden near Mapledurham that
     Sunday morning.

     With his own hands he put flowers about his little house-boat,
     and equipped the punt, in which, after lunch, he proposed to take
     them on the river. Placing those Chinese-looking cushions, he
     could not tell whether or no he wished to take Annette alone. She
     was so very pretty—could he trust himself not to say irrevocable
     words, passing beyond the limits of discretion? Roses on the
     veranda were still in bloom, and the hedges ever-green, so that
     there was almost nothing of middle-aged autumn to chill the mood;
     yet was he nervous, fidgety, strangely distrustful of his powers
     to steer just the right course. This visit had been planned to
     produce in Annette and her mother a due sense of his possessions,
     so that they should be ready to receive with respect any overture
     he might later be disposed to make. He dressed with great care,
     making himself neither too young nor too old, very thankful that
     his hair was still thick and smooth and had no grey in it. Three
     times he went up to his picture-gallery. If they had any
     knowledge at all, they must see at once that his collection alone
     was worth at least thirty thousand pounds. He minutely inspected,
     too, the pretty bedroom overlooking the river where they would
     take off their hats. It would be her bedroom if—if the matter
     went through, and she became his wife. Going up to the
     dressing-table he passed his hand over the lilac-coloured
     pincushion, into which were stuck all kinds of pins; a bowl of
     pot-pourri exhaled a scent that made his head turn just a little.
     His wife! If only the whole thing could be settled out of hand,
     and there was not the nightmare of this divorce to be gone
     through first; and with gloom puckered on his forehead, he looked
     out at the river shining beyond the roses and the lawn. Madame
     Lamotte would never resist this prospect for her child; Annette
     would never resist her mother. If only he were free! He drove to
     the station to meet them. What taste Frenchwomen had! Madame
     Lamotte was in black with touches of lilac colour, Annette in
     greyish lilac linen, with cream coloured gloves and hat. Rather
     pale she looked and Londony; and her blue eyes were demure.
     Waiting for them to come down to lunch, Soames stood in the open
     french-window of the diningroom moved by that sensuous delight in
     sunshine and flowers and trees which only came to the full when
     youth and beauty were there to share it with one. He had ordered
     the lunch with intense consideration; the wine was a very special
     Sauterne, the whole appointments of the meal perfect, the coffee
     served on the veranda super-excellent. Madame Lamotte accepted
     creme de menthe; Annette refused. Her manners were charming, with
     just a suspicion of “the conscious beauty” creeping into them.
     “Yes,” thought Soames, “another year of London and that sort of
     life, and she’ll be spoiled.”

     Madame was in sedate French raptures. “_Adorable! Le soleil est
     si bon!_ How everything is _chic_, is it not, Annette? Monsieur
     is a real Monte Cristo.” Annette murmured assent, with a look up
     at Soames which he could not read. He proposed a turn on the
     river. But to punt two persons when one of them looked so
     ravishing on those Chinese cushions was merely to suffer from a
     sense of lost opportunity; so they went but a short way towards
     Pangbourne, drifting slowly back, with every now and then an
     autumn leaf dropping on Annette or on her mother’s black
     amplitude. And Soames was not happy, worried by the thought:
     “How—when—where—can I say—what?” They did not yet even know that
     he was married. To tell them he was married might jeopardise his
     every chance; yet, if he did not definitely make them understand
     that he wished for Annette’s hand, it would be dropping into some
     other clutch before he was free to claim it.

     At tea, which they both took with lemon, Soames spoke of the
     Transvaal.

     “There’ll be war,” he said.

     Madame Lamotte lamented.

     “_Ces pauvres gens bergers!_” Could they not be left to
     themselves?

     Soames smiled—the question seemed to him absurd.

     Surely as a woman of business she understood that the British
     could not abandon their legitimate commercial interests.

     “Ah! that!” But Madame Lamotte found that the English were a
     little hypocrite. They were talking of justice and the
     Uitlanders, not of business. Monsieur was the first who had
     spoken to her of that.

     “The Boers are only half-civilised,” remarked Soames; “they stand
     in the way of progress. It will never do to let our suzerainty
     go.”

     “What does that mean to say? Suzerainty!”

     “What a strange word!” Soames became eloquent, roused by these
     threats to the principle of possession, and stimulated by
     Annette’s eyes fixed on him. He was delighted when presently she
     said:

     “I think Monsieur is right. They should be taught a lesson.” She
     was sensible!

     “Of course,” he said, “we must act with moderation. I’m no jingo.
     We must be firm without bullying. Will you come up and see my
     pictures?” Moving from one to another of these treasures, he soon
     perceived that they knew nothing. They passed his last Mauve,
     that remarkable study of a “Hay-cart going Home,” as if it were a
     lithograph. He waited almost with awe to see how they would view
     the jewel of his collection—an Israels whose price he had watched
     ascending till he was now almost certain it had reached top
     value, and would be better on the market again. They did not view
     it at all. This was a shock; and yet to have in Annette a virgin
     taste to form would be better than to have the silly, half-baked
     predilections of the English middle-class to deal with. At the
     end of the gallery was a Meissonier of which he was rather
     ashamed—Meissonier was so steadily going down. Madame Lamotte
     stopped before it.

     “Meissonier! Ah! What a jewel!” Soames took advantage of that
     moment. Very gently touching Annette’s arm, he said:

     “How do you like my place, Annette?”

     She did not shrink, did not respond; she looked at him full,
     looked down, and murmured:

     “Who would not like it? It is so beautiful!”

     “Perhaps some day—” Soames said, and stopped.

     So pretty she was, so self-possessed—she frightened him. Those
     cornflower-blue eyes, the turn of that creamy neck, her delicate
     curves—she was a standing temptation to indiscretion! No! No! One
     must be sure of one’s ground—much surer! “If I hold off,” he
     thought, “it will tantalise her.” And he crossed over to Madame
     Lamotte, who was still in front of the Meissonier.

     “Yes, that’s quite a good example of his later work. You must
     come again, Madame, and see them lighted up. You must both come
     and spend a night.”

     Enchanted, would it not be beautiful to see them lighted? By
     moonlight too, the river must be ravishing!

     Annette murmured:

     “Thou art sentimental, _Maman!_”

     Sentimental! That black-robed, comely, substantial Frenchwoman of
     the world! And suddenly he was certain as he could be that there
     was no sentiment in either of them. All the better. Of what use
     sentiment? And yet...!

     He drove to the station with them, and saw them into the train.
     To the tightened pressure of his hand it seemed that Annette’s
     fingers responded just a little; her face smiled at him through
     the dark.

     He went back to the carriage, brooding. “Go on home, Jordan,” he
     said to the coachman; “I’ll walk.” And he strode out into the
     darkening lanes, caution and the desire of possession playing
     see-saw within him. “_Bon soir, monsieur!_” How softly she had
     said it. To know what was in her mind! The French—they were like
     cats—one could tell nothing! But—how pretty! What a perfect young
     thing to hold in one’s arms! What a mother for his heir! And he
     thought, with a smile, of his family and their surprise at a
     French wife, and their curiosity, and of the way he would play
     with it and buffet it confound them!

     The poplars sighed in the darkness; an owl hooted. Shadows
     deepened in the water. “I will and must be free,” he thought. “I
     won’t hang about any longer. I’ll go and see Irene. If you want
     things done, do them yourself. I must live again—live and move
     and have my being.” And in echo to that queer biblicality
     church-bells chimed the call to evening prayer.




     CHAPTER XI AND VISITS THE PAST


     On a Tuesday evening after dining at his club Soames set out to
     do what required more courage and perhaps less delicacy than
     anything he had yet undertaken in his life—save perhaps his
     birth, and one other action. He chose the evening, indeed, partly
     because Irene was more likely to be in, but mainly because he had
     failed to find sufficient resolution by daylight, had needed wine
     to give him extra daring.

     He left his hansom on the Embankment, and walked up to the Old
     Church, uncertain of the block of flats where he knew she lived.
     He found it hiding behind a much larger mansion; and having read
     the name, “Mrs. Irene Heron”—Heron, forsooth! Her maiden name: so
     she used that again, did she?—he stepped back into the road to
     look up at the windows of the first floor. Light was coming
     through in the corner flat, and he could hear a piano being
     played. He had never had a love of music, had secretly borne it a
     grudge in the old days when so often she had turned to her piano,
     making of it a refuge place into which she knew he could not
     enter. Repulse! The long repulse, at first restrained and secret,
     at last open! Bitter memory came with that sound. It must be she
     playing, and thus almost assured of seeing her, he stood more
     undecided than ever. Shivers of anticipation ran through him; his
     tongue felt dry, his heart beat fast. “_I_ have no cause to be
     afraid,” he thought. And then the lawyer stirred within him. Was
     he doing a foolish thing? Ought he not to have arranged a formal
     meeting in the presence of her trustee? No! Not before that
     fellow Jolyon, who sympathised with her! Never! He crossed back
     into the doorway, and, slowly, to keep down the beating of his
     heart, mounted the single flight of stairs and rang the bell.
     When the door was opened to him his sensations were regulated by
     the scent which came—that perfume—from away back in the past,
     bringing muffled remembrance: fragrance of a drawing-room he used
     to enter, of a house he used to own—perfume of dried rose-leaves
     and honey!

     “Say, Mr. Forsyte,” he said, “your mistress will see me, I know.”
     He had thought this out; she would think it was Jolyon!

     When the maid was gone and he was alone in the tiny hall, where
     the light was dim from one pearly-shaded sconce, and walls,
     carpet, everything was silvery, making the walled-in space all
     ghostly, he could only think ridiculously: “Shall I go in with my
     overcoat on, or take it off?” The music ceased; the maid said
     from the doorway:

     “Will you walk in, sir?”

     Soames walked in. He noted mechanically that all was still
     silvery, and that the upright piano was of satinwood. She had
     risen and stood recoiled against it; her hand, placed on the keys
     as if groping for support, had struck a sudden discord, held for
     a moment, and released. The light from the shaded piano-candle
     fell on her neck, leaving her face rather in shadow. She was in a
     black evening dress, with a sort of mantilla over her
     shoulders—he did not remember ever having seen her in black, and
     the thought passed through him: “She dresses even when she’s
     alone.”

     “You!” he heard her whisper.

     Many times Soames had rehearsed this scene in fancy. Rehearsal
     served him not at all. He simply could not speak. He had never
     thought that the sight of this woman whom he had once so
     passionately desired, so completely owned, and whom he had not
     seen for twelve years, could affect him in this way. He had
     imagined himself speaking and acting, half as man of business,
     half as judge. And now it was as if he were in the presence not
     of a mere woman and erring wife, but of some force, subtle and
     elusive as atmosphere itself within him and outside. A kind of
     defensive irony welled up in him.

     “Yes, it’s a queer visit! I hope you’re well.”

     “Thank you. Will you sit down?”

     She had moved away from the piano, and gone over to a
     window-seat, sinking on to it, with her hands clasped in her lap.
     Light fell on her there, so that Soames could see her face, eyes,
     hair, strangely as he remembered them, strangely beautiful.

     He sat down on the edge of a satinwood chair, upholstered with
     silver-coloured stuff, close to where he was standing.

     “You have not changed,” he said.

     “No? What have you come for?”

     “To discuss things.”

     “I have heard what you want from your cousin.”

     “Well?”

     “I am willing. I have always been.”

     The sound of her voice, reserved and close, the sight of her
     figure watchfully poised, defensive, was helping him now. A
     thousand memories of her, ever on the watch against him, stirred,
     and....

     “Perhaps you will be good enough, then, to give me information on
     which I can act. The law must be complied with.”

     “I have none to give you that you don’t know of.”

     “Twelve years! Do you suppose I can believe that?”

     “I don’t suppose you will believe anything I say; but it’s the
     truth.”

     Soames looked at her hard. He had said that she had not changed;
     now he perceived that she had. Not in face, except that it was
     more beautiful; not in form, except that it was a little
     fuller—no! She had changed spiritually. There was more of her, as
     it were, something of activity and daring, where there had been
     sheer passive resistance. “Ah!” he thought, “that’s her
     independent income! Confound Uncle Jolyon!”

     “I suppose you’re comfortably off now?” he said.

     “Thank you, yes.”

     “Why didn’t you let me provide for you? I would have, in spite of
     everything.”

     A faint smile came on her lips; but she did not answer.

     “You are still my wife,” said Soames. Why he said that, what he
     meant by it, he knew neither when he spoke nor after. It was a
     truism almost preposterous, but its effect was startling. She
     rose from the window-seat, and stood for a moment perfectly
     still, looking at him. He could see her bosom heaving. Then she
     turned to the window and threw it open.

     “Why do that?” he said sharply. “You’ll catch cold in that dress.
     I’m not dangerous.” And he uttered a little sad laugh.

     She echoed it—faintly, bitterly.

     “It was—habit.”

     “Rather odd habit,” said Soames as bitterly. “Shut the window!”

     She shut it and sat down again. She had developed power, this
     woman—this—wife of his! He felt it issuing from her as she sat
     there, in a sort of armour. And almost unconsciously he rose and
     moved nearer; he wanted to see the expression on her face. Her
     eyes met his unflinching. Heavens! how clear they were, and what
     a dark brown against that white skin, and that burnt-amber hair!
     And how white her shoulders.

     Funny sensation this! He ought to hate her.

     “You had better tell me,” he said; “it’s to your advantage to be
     free as well as to mine. That old matter is too old.”

     “I _have_ told you.”

     “Do you mean to tell me there has been nothing—nobody?”

     “Nobody. You must go to your own life.”

     Stung by that retort, Soames moved towards the piano and back to
     the hearth, to and fro, as he had been wont in the old days in
     their drawing-room when his feelings were too much for him.

     “That won’t do,” he said. “You deserted me. In common justice
     it’s for you....”

     He saw her shrug those white shoulders, heard her murmur:

     “Yes. Why didn’t you divorce me then? Should I have cared?”

     He stopped, and looked at her intently with a sort of curiosity.
     What on earth did she do with herself, if she really lived quite
     alone? And why had he not divorced her? The old feeling that she
     had never understood him, never done him justice, bit him while
     he stared at her.

     “Why couldn’t you have made me a good wife?” he said.

     “Yes; it was a crime to marry you. I have paid for it. You will
     find some way perhaps. You needn’t mind my name, I have none to
     lose. Now I think you had better go.”

     A sense of defeat—of being defrauded of his self-justification,
     and of something else beyond power of explanation to himself,
     beset Soames like the breath of a cold fog. Mechanically he
     reached up, took from the mantel-shelf a little china bowl,
     reversed it, and said:

     “Lowestoft. Where did you get this? I bought its fellow at
     Jobson’s.” And, visited by the sudden memory of how, those many
     years ago, he and she had bought china together, he remained
     staring at the little bowl, as if it contained all the past. Her
     voice roused him.

     “Take it. I don’t want it.”

     Soames put it back on the shelf.

     “Will you shake hands?” he said.

     A faint smile curved her lips. She held out her hand. It was cold
     to his rather feverish touch. “She’s made of ice,” he
     thought—“she was always made of ice!” But even as that thought
     darted through him, his senses were assailed by the perfume of
     her dress and body, as though the warmth within her, which had
     never been for him, were struggling to show its presence. And he
     turned on his heel. He walked out and away, as if someone with a
     whip were after him, not even looking for a cab, glad of the
     empty Embankment and the cold river, and the thick-strewn shadows
     of the plane-tree leaves—confused, flurried, sore at heart, and
     vaguely disturbed, as though he had made some deep mistake whose
     consequences he could not foresee. And the fantastic thought
     suddenly assailed him if instead of, “I think you had better go,”
     she had said, “I think you had better stay!” What should he have
     felt, what would he have done? That cursed attraction of her was
     there for him even now, after all these years of estrangement and
     bitter thoughts. It was there, ready to mount to his head at a
     sign, a touch. “I was a fool to go!” he muttered. “I’ve advanced
     nothing. Who could imagine? I never thought!” Memory, flown back
     to the first years of his marriage, played him torturing tricks.
     She had not deserved to keep her beauty—the beauty he had owned
     and known so well. And a kind of bitterness at the tenacity of
     his own admiration welled up in him. Most men would have hated
     the sight of her, as she had deserved. She had spoiled his life,
     wounded his pride to death, defrauded him of a son. And yet the
     mere sight of her, cold and resisting as ever, had this power to
     upset him utterly! It was some damned magnetism she had! And no
     wonder if, as she asserted; she had lived untouched these last
     twelve years. So Bosinney—cursed be his memory!—had lived on all
     this time with her! Soames could not tell whether he was glad of
     that knowledge or no.

     Nearing his Club at last he stopped to buy a paper. A headline
     ran: “Boers reported to repudiate suzerainty!” Suzerainty! “Just
     like her!” he thought: “she always did. Suzerainty! I still have
     it by rights. She must be awfully lonely in that wretched little
     flat!”




     CHAPTER XII ON FORSYTE ’CHANGE


     Soames belonged to two clubs, “The Connoisseurs,” which he put on
     his cards and seldom visited, and “The Remove,” which he did not
     put on his cards and frequented. He had joined this Liberal
     institution five years ago, having made sure that its members
     were now nearly all sound Conservatives in heart and pocket, if
     not in principle. Uncle Nicholas had put him up. The fine
     reading-room was decorated in the Adam style.

     On entering that evening he glanced at the tape for any news
     about the Transvaal, and noted that Consols were down
     seven-sixteenths since the morning. He was turning away to seek
     the reading-room when a voice behind him said:

     “Well, Soames, that went off all right.”

     It was Uncle Nicholas, in a frock-coat and his special cut-away
     collar, with a black tie passed through a ring. Heavens! How
     young and dapper he looked at eighty-two!

     “I think Roger’d have been pleased,” his uncle went on. “The
     thing was very well done. Blackley’s? I’ll make a note of them.
     Buxton’s done me no good. These Boers are upsetting me—that
     fellow Chamberlain’s driving the country into war. What do you
     think?”

     “Bound to come,” murmured Soames.

     Nicholas passed his hand over his thin, clean-shaven cheeks, very
     rosy after his summer cure; a slight pout had gathered on his
     lips. This business had revived all his Liberal principles.

     “I mistrust that chap; he’s a stormy petrel. House-property will
     go down if there’s war. You’ll have trouble with Roger’s estate.
     I often told him he ought to get out of some of his houses. He
     was an opinionated beggar.”

     “There was a pair of you!” thought Soames. But he never argued
     with an uncle, in that way preserving their opinion of him as “a
     long-headed chap,” and the legal care of their property.

     “They tell me at Timothy’s,” said Nicholas, lowering his voice,
     “that Dartie has gone off at last. That’ll be a relief to your
     father. He was a rotten egg.”

     Again Soames nodded. If there was a subject on which the Forsytes
     really agreed, it was the character of Montague Dartie.

     “You take care,” said Nicholas, “or he’ll turn up again. Winifred
     had better have the tooth out, I should say. No use preserving
     what’s gone bad.”

     Soames looked at him sideways. His nerves, exacerbated by the
     interview he had just come through, disposed him to see a
     personal allusion in those words.

     “I’m advising her,” he said shortly.

     “Well,” said Nicholas, “the brougham’s waiting; I must get home.
     I’m very poorly. Remember me to your father.”

     And having thus reconsecrated the ties of blood, he passed down
     the steps at his youthful gait and was wrapped into his fur coat
     by the junior porter.

     “I’ve never known Uncle Nicholas other than ‘very poorly,’” mused
     Soames, “or seen him look other than everlasting. What a family!
     Judging by him, I’ve got thirty-eight years of health before me.
     Well, I’m not going to waste them.” And going over to a mirror he
     stood looking at his face. Except for a line or two, and three or
     four grey hairs in his little dark moustache, had he aged any
     more than Irene? The prime of life—he and she in the very prime
     of life! And a fantastic thought shot into his mind. Absurd!
     Idiotic! But again it came. And genuinely alarmed by the
     recurrence, as one is by the second fit of shivering which
     presages a feverish cold, he sat down on the weighing machine.
     Eleven stone! He had not varied two pounds in twenty years. What
     age was she? Nearly thirty-seven—not too old to have a child—not
     at all! Thirty-seven on the ninth of next month. He remembered
     her birthday well—he had always observed it religiously, even
     that last birthday so soon before she left him, when he was
     almost certain she was faithless. Four birthdays in his house. He
     had looked forward to them, because his gifts had meant a
     semblance of gratitude, a certain attempt at warmth. Except,
     indeed, that last birthday—which had tempted him to be too
     religious! And he shied away in thought. Memory heaps dead leaves
     on corpse-like deeds, from under which they do but vaguely offend
     the sense. And then he thought suddenly: “I could send her a
     present for her birthday. After all, we’re Christians!
     Couldn’t!—couldn’t we join up again!” And he uttered a deep sigh
     sitting there. Annette! Ah! but between him and Annette was the
     need for that wretched divorce suit! And how?

     “A man can always work these things, if he’ll take it on
     himself,” Jolyon had said.

     But why should he take the scandal on himself with his whole
     career as a pillar of the law at stake? It was not fair! It was
     quixotic! Twelve years’ separation in which he had taken no steps
     to free himself put out of court the possibility of using her
     conduct with Bosinney as a ground for divorcing her. By doing
     nothing to secure relief he had acquiesced, even if the evidence
     could now be gathered, which was more than doubtful. Besides, his
     own pride would never let him use that old incident, he had
     suffered from it too much. No! Nothing but fresh misconduct on
     her part—but she had denied it; and—almost—he had believed her.
     Hung up! Utterly hung up!

     He rose from the scooped-out red velvet seat with a feeling of
     constriction about his vitals. He would never sleep with this
     going on in him! And, taking coat and hat again, he went out,
     moving eastward. In Trafalgar Square he became aware of some
     special commotion travelling towards him out of the mouth of the
     Strand. It materialised in newspaper men calling out so loudly
     that no words whatever could be heard. He stopped to listen, and
     one came by.

     “Payper! Special! Ultimatium by Krooger! Declaration of war!”
     Soames bought the paper. There it was in the stop press...! His
     first thought was: “The Boers are committing suicide.” His
     second: “Is there anything still I ought to sell?” If so he had
     missed the chance—there would certainly be a slump in the city
     to-morrow. He swallowed this thought with a nod of defiance. That
     ultimatum was insolent—sooner than let it pass he was prepared to
     lose money. They wanted a lesson, and they would get it; but it
     would take three months at least to bring them to heel. There
     weren’t the troops out there; always behind time, the Government!
     Confound those newspaper rats! What was the use of waking
     everybody up? Breakfast to-morrow was quite soon enough. And he
     thought with alarm of his father. They would cry it down Park
     Lane. Hailing a hansom, he got in and told the man to drive
     there.

     James and Emily had just gone up to bed, and after communicating
     the news to Warmson, Soames prepared to follow. He paused by
     after-thought to say:

     “What do you think of it, Warmson?”

     The butler ceased passing a hat brush over the silk hat Soames
     had taken off, and, inclining his face a little forward, said in
     a low voice: “Well, sir, they ’aven’t a chance, of course; but
     I’m told they’re very good shots. I’ve got a son in the
     Inniskillings.”

     “You, Warmson? Why, I didn’t know you were married.”

     “No, sir. I don’t talk of it. I expect he’ll be going out.”

     The slighter shock Soames had felt on discovering that he knew so
     little of one whom he thought he knew so well was lost in the
     slight shock of discovering that the war might touch one
     personally. Born in the year of the Crimean War, he had only come
     to consciousness by the time the Indian Mutiny was over; since
     then the many little wars of the British Empire had been entirely
     professional, quite unconnected with the Forsytes and all they
     stood for in the body politic. This war would surely be no
     exception. But his mind ran hastily over his family. Two of the
     Haymans, he had heard, were in some Yeomanry or other—it had
     always been a pleasant thought, there was a certain distinction
     about the Yeomanry; they wore, or used to wear, a blue uniform
     with silver about it, and rode horses. And Archibald, he
     remembered, had once on a time joined the Militia, but had given
     it up because his father, Nicholas, had made such a fuss about
     his “wasting his time peacocking about in a uniform.” Recently he
     had heard somewhere that young Nicholas’ eldest, very young
     Nicholas, had become a Volunteer. “No,” thought Soames, mounting
     the stairs slowly, “there’s nothing in that!”

     He stood on the landing outside his parents’ bed and dressing
     rooms, debating whether or not to put his nose in and say a
     reassuring word. Opening the landing window, he listened. The
     rumble from Piccadilly was all the sound he heard, and with the
     thought, “If these motor-cars increase, it’ll affect house
     property,” he was about to pass on up to the room always kept
     ready for him when he heard, distant as yet, the hoarse rushing
     call of a newsvendor. There it was, and coming past the house! He
     knocked on his mother’s door and went in.

     His father was sitting up in bed, with his ears pricked under the
     white hair which Emily kept so beautifully cut. He looked pink,
     and extraordinarily clean, in his setting of white sheet and
     pillow, out of which the points of his high, thin, nightgowned
     shoulders emerged in small peaks. His eyes alone, grey and
     distrustful under their withered lids, were moving from the
     window to Emily, who in a wrapper was walking up and down,
     squeezing a rubber ball attached to a scent bottle. The room
     reeked faintly of the eau-de-Cologne she was spraying.

     “All right!” said Soames, “it’s not a fire. The Boers have
     declared war—that’s all.”

     Emily stopped her spraying.

     “Oh!” was all she said, and looked at James.

     Soames, too, looked at his father. He was taking it differently
     from their expectation, as if some thought, strange to them, were
     working in him.

     “H’m!” he muttered suddenly, “I shan’t live to see the end of
     this.”

     “Nonsense, James! It’ll be over by Christmas.”

     “What do you know about it?” James answered her with asperity.
     “It’s a pretty mess at this time of night, too!” He lapsed into
     silence, and his wife and son, as if hypnotised, waited for him
     to say: “I can’t tell—I don’t know; I knew how it would be!” But
     he did not. The grey eyes shifted, evidently seeing nothing in
     the room; then movement occurred under the bedclothes, and the
     knees were drawn up suddenly to a great height.

     “They ought to send out Roberts. It all comes from that fellow
     Gladstone and his Majuba.”

     The two listeners noted something beyond the usual in his voice,
     something of real anxiety. It was as if he had said: “I shall
     never see the old country peaceful and safe again. I shall have
     to die before I know she’s won.” And in spite of the feeling that
     James must not be encouraged to be fussy, they were touched.
     Soames went up to the bedside and stroked his father’s hand which
     had emerged from under the bedclothes, long and wrinkled with
     veins.

     “Mark my words!” said James, “consols will go to par. For all I
     know, Val may go and enlist.”

     “Oh, come, James!” cried Emily, “you talk as if there were
     danger.”

     Her comfortable voice seemed to soothe James for once.

     “Well,” he muttered, “I told you how it would be. I don’t know,
     I’m sure—nobody tells me anything. Are you sleeping here, my
     boy?”

     The crisis was past, he would now compose himself to his normal
     degree of anxiety; and, assuring his father that he was sleeping
     in the house, Soames pressed his hand, and went up to his room.

     The following afternoon witnessed the greatest crowd Timothy’s
     had known for many a year. On national occasions, such as this,
     it was, indeed, almost impossible to avoid going there. Not that
     there was any danger or rather only just enough to make it
     necessary to assure each other that there was none.

     Nicholas was there early. He had seen Soames the night
     before—Soames had said it was bound to come. This old Kruger was
     in his dotage—why, he must be seventy-five if he was a day!

     (Nicholas was eighty-two.) What had Timothy said? He had had a
     fit after Majuba. These Boers were a grasping lot! The
     dark-haired Francie, who had arrived on his heels, with the
     contradictious touch which became the free spirit of a daughter
     of Roger, chimed in:

     “Kettle and pot, Uncle Nicholas. What price the Uitlanders?” What
     price, indeed! A new expression, and believed to be due to her
     brother George.

     Aunt Juley thought Francie ought not to say such a thing. Dear
     Mrs. MacAnder’s boy, Charlie MacAnder, was one, and no one could
     call him grasping. At this Francie uttered one of her _mots_,
     scandalising, and so frequently repeated:

     “Well, his father’s a Scotchman, and his mother’s a cat.”

     Aunt Juley covered her ears, too late, but Aunt Hester smiled; as
     for Nicholas, he pouted—witticism of which he was not the author
     was hardly to his taste. Just then Marian Tweetyman arrived,
     followed almost immediately by young Nicholas. On seeing his son,
     Nicholas rose.

     “Well, I must be going,” he said, “Nick here will tell you
     what’ll win the race.” And with this hit at his eldest, who, as a
     pillar of accountancy, and director of an insurance company, was
     no more addicted to sport than his father had ever been, he
     departed. Dear Nicholas! What race was that? Or was it only one
     of his jokes? He was a wonderful man for his age! How many lumps
     would dear Marian take? And how were Giles and Jesse? Aunt Juley
     supposed their Yeomanry would be very busy now, guarding the
     coast, though of course the Boers had no ships. But one never
     knew what the French might do if they had the chance, especially
     since that dreadful Fashoda scare, which had upset Timothy so
     terribly that he had made no investments for months afterwards.
     It was the ingratitude of the Boers that was so dreadful, after
     everything had been done for them—Dr. Jameson imprisoned, and he
     was so nice, Mrs. MacAnder had always said. And Sir Alfred Milner
     sent out to talk to them—such a clever man! She didn’t know what
     they wanted.

     But at this moment occurred one of those sensations—so precious
     at Timothy’s—which great occasions sometimes bring forth:

     “Miss June Forsyte.”

     Aunts Juley and Hester were on their feet at once, trembling from
     smothered resentment, and old affection bubbling up, and pride at
     the return of a prodigal June! Well, this _was_ a surprise! Dear
     June—after all these years! And how well she was looking! Not
     changed at all! It was almost on their lips to add, “And how is
     your dear grandfather?” forgetting in that giddy moment that poor
     dear Jolyon had been in his grave for seven years now.

     Ever the most courageous and downright of all the Forsytes, June,
     with her decided chin and her spirited eyes and her hair like
     flame, sat down, slight and short, on a gilt chair with a
     bead-worked seat, for all the world as if ten years had not
     elapsed since she had been to see them—ten years of travel and
     independence and devotion to lame ducks. Those ducks of late had
     been all definitely painters, etchers, or sculptors, so that her
     impatience with the Forsytes and their hopelessly inartistic
     outlook had become intense. Indeed, she had almost ceased to
     believe that her family existed, and looked round her now with a
     sort of challenging directness which brought exquisite discomfort
     to the roomful. She had not expected to meet any of them but “the
     poor old things”; and why she had come to see _them_ she hardly
     knew, except that, while on her way from Oxford Street to a
     studio in Latimer Road, she had suddenly remembered them with
     compunction as two long-neglected old lame ducks.

     Aunt Juley broke the hush again. “We’ve just been saying, dear,
     how dreadful it is about these Boers! And what an impudent thing
     of that old Kruger!”

     “Impudent!” said June. “I think he’s quite right. What business
     have we to meddle with them? If he turned out all those wretched
     Uitlanders it would serve them right. They’re only after money.”

     The silence of sensation was broken by Francie saying:

     “What? Are you a pro-Boer?” (undoubtedly the first use of that
     expression).

     “Well! Why can’t we leave them alone?” said June, just as, in the
     open doorway, the maid said “Mr. Soames Forsyte.” Sensation on
     sensation! Greeting was almost held up by curiosity to see how
     June and he would take this encounter, for it was shrewdly
     suspected, if not quite known, that they had not met since that
     old and lamentable affair of her fiance Bosinney with Soames’
     wife. They were seen to just touch each other’s hands, and look
     each at the other’s left eye only. Aunt Juley came at once to the
     rescue:

     “Dear June is so original. Fancy, Soames, she thinks the Boers
     are not to blame.”

     “They only want their independence,” said June; “and why
     shouldn’t they have it?”

     “Because,” answered Soames, with his smile a little on one side,
     “they happen to have agreed to our suzerainty.”

     “Suzerainty!” repeated June scornfully; “we shouldn’t like
     anyone’s suzerainty over us.”

     “They got advantages in payment,” replied Soames; “a contract is
     a contract.”

     “Contracts are not always just,” fumed out June, “and when
     they’re not, they ought to be broken. The Boers are much the
     weaker. We could afford to be generous.”

     Soames sniffed. “That’s mere sentiment,” he said.

     Aunt Hester, to whom nothing was more awful than any kind of
     disagreement, here leaned forward and remarked decisively:

     “What lovely weather it has been for the time of year?”

     But June was not to be diverted.

     “I don’t know why sentiment should be sneered at. It’s the best
     thing in the world.” She looked defiantly round, and Aunt Juley
     had to intervene again:

     “Have you bought any pictures lately, Soames?”

     Her incomparable instinct for the wrong subject had not failed
     her. Soames flushed. To disclose the name of his latest purchases
     would be like walking into the jaws of disdain. For somehow they
     all knew of June’s predilection for “genius” not yet on its legs,
     and her contempt for “success” unless she had had a finger in
     securing it.

     “One or two,” he muttered.

     But June’s face had changed; the Forsyte within her was seeing
     its chance. Why should not Soames buy some of the pictures of
     Eric Cobbley—her last lame duck? And she promptly opened her
     attack: Did Soames know his work? It was so wonderful. He was the
     coming man.

     Oh, yes, Soames knew his work. It was in his view “splashy,” and
     would never get hold of the public.

     June blazed up.

     “Of course it won’t; that’s the last thing one would wish for. I
     thought you were a connoisseur, not a picture-dealer.”

     “Of course Soames is a connoisseur,” Aunt Juley said hastily; “he
     has wonderful taste—he can always tell beforehand what’s going to
     be successful.”

     “Oh!” gasped June, and sprang up from the bead-covered chair, “I
     hate that standard of success. Why can’t people buy things
     because they like them?”

     “You mean,” said Francie, “because _you_ like them.”

     And in the slight pause young Nicholas was heard saying gently
     that Violet (his fourth) was taking lessons in pastel, he didn’t
     know if they were any use.

     “Well, good-bye, Auntie,” said June; “I must get on,” and kissing
     her aunts, she looked defiantly round the room, said “Good-bye”
     again, and went. A breeze seemed to pass out with her, as if
     everyone had sighed.

     The third sensation came before anyone had time to speak:

     “Mr. James Forsyte.”

     James came in using a stick slightly and wrapped in a fur coat
     which gave him a fictitious bulk.

     Everyone stood up. James was so old; and he had not been at
     Timothy’s for nearly two years.

     “It’s hot in here,” he said.

     Soames divested him of his coat, and as he did so could not help
     admiring the glossy way his father was turned out. James sat
     down, all knees, elbows, frock-coat, and long white whiskers.

     “What’s the meaning of that?” he said.

     Though there was no apparent sense in his words, they all knew
     that he was referring to June. His eyes searched his son’s face.

     “I thought I’d come and see for myself. What have they answered
     Kruger?”

     Soames took out an evening paper, and read the headline.

     “‘Instant action by our Government—state of war existing!’”

     “Ah!” said James, and sighed. “I was afraid they’d cut and run
     like old Gladstone. We shall finish with them this time.”

     All stared at him. James! Always fussy, nervous, anxious! James
     with his continual, “I told you how it would be!” and his
     pessimism, and his cautious investments. There was something
     uncanny about such resolution in this the oldest living Forsyte.

     “Where’s Timothy?” said James. “He ought to pay attention to
     this.”

     Aunt Juley said she didn’t know; Timothy had not said much at
     lunch to-day. Aunt Hester rose and threaded her way out of the
     room, and Francie said rather maliciously:

     “The Boers are a hard nut to crack, Uncle James.”

     “H’m!” muttered James. “Where do you get your information? Nobody
     tells me.”

     Young Nicholas remarked in his mild voice that Nick (his eldest)
     was now going to drill regularly.

     “Ah!” muttered James, and stared before him—his thoughts were on
     Val. “He’s got to look after his mother,” he said, “he’s got no
     time for drilling and that, with that father of his.” This
     cryptic saying produced silence, until he spoke again.

     “What did June want here?” And his eyes rested with suspicion on
     all of them in turn. “Her father’s a rich man now.” The
     conversation turned on Jolyon, and when he had been seen last. It
     was supposed that he went abroad and saw all sorts of people now
     that his wife was dead; his water-colours were on the line, and
     he was a successful man. Francie went so far as to say:

     “I should like to see him again; he was rather a dear.”

     Aunt Juley recalled how he had gone to sleep on the sofa one day,
     where James was sitting. He had always been very amiable; what
     did Soames think?

     Knowing that Jolyon was Irene’s trustee, all felt the delicacy of
     this question, and looked at Soames with interest. A faint pink
     had come up in his cheeks.

     “He’s going grey,” he said.

     Indeed! Had Soames seen him? Soames nodded, and the pink
     vanished.

     James said suddenly: “Well—I don’t know, I can’t tell.”

     It so exactly expressed the sentiment of everybody present that
     there was something behind everything, that nobody responded. But
     at this moment Aunt Hester returned.

     “Timothy,” she said in a low voice, “Timothy has bought a map,
     and he’s put in—he’s put in three flags.”

     Timothy had...! A sigh went round the company.

     If Timothy had indeed put in three flags already, well!—it showed
     what the nation could do when it was roused. The war was as good
     as over.




     CHAPTER XIII JOLYON FINDS OUT WHERE HE IS


     Jolyon stood at the window in Holly’s old night nursery,
     converted into a studio, not because it had a north light, but
     for its view over the prospect away to the Grand Stand at Epsom.
     He shifted to the side window which overlooked the stableyard,
     and whistled down to the dog Balthasar who lay for ever under the
     clock tower. The old dog looked up and wagged his tail. “Poor old
     boy!” thought Jolyon, shifting back to the other window.

     He had been restless all this week, since his attempt to
     prosecute trusteeship, uneasy in his conscience which was ever
     acute, disturbed in his sense of compassion which was easily
     excited, and with a queer sensation as if his feeling for beauty
     had received some definite embodiment. Autumn was getting hold of
     the old oak-tree, its leaves were browning. Sunshine had been
     plentiful and hot this summer. As with trees, so with men’s
     lives! “_I_ ought to live long,” thought Jolyon; “I’m getting
     mildewed for want of heat. If I can’t work, I shall be off to
     Paris.” But memory of Paris gave him no pleasure. Besides, how
     could he go? He must stay and see what Soames was going to do.
     “I’m her trustee. I can’t leave her unprotected,” he thought. It
     had been striking him as curious how very clearly he could still
     see Irene in her little drawing-room which he had only twice
     entered. Her beauty must have a sort of poignant harmony! No
     literal portrait would ever do her justice; the essence of her
     was—ah I what?... The noise of hoofs called him back to the other
     window. Holly was riding into the yard on her long-tailed
     “palfrey.” She looked up and he waved to her. She had been rather
     silent lately; getting old, he supposed, beginning to want her
     future, as they all did—youngsters!

     Time was certainly the devil! And with the feeling that to waste
     this swift-travelling commodity was unforgivable folly, he took
     up his brush. But it was no use; he could not concentrate his
     eye—besides, the light was going. “I’ll go up to town,” he
     thought. In the hall a servant met him.

     “A lady to see you, sir; Mrs. Heron.”

     Extraordinary coincidence! Passing into the picture-gallery, as
     it was still called, he saw Irene standing over by the window.

     She came towards him saying:

     “I’ve been trespassing; I came up through the coppice and garden.
     I always used to come that way to see Uncle Jolyon.”

     “You couldn’t trespass here,” replied Jolyon; “history makes that
     impossible. I was just thinking of you.”

     Irene smiled. And it was as if something shone through; not mere
     spirituality—serener, completer, more alluring.

     “History!” she answered; “I once told Uncle Jolyon that love was
     for ever. Well, it isn’t. Only aversion lasts.”

     Jolyon stared at her. Had she got over Bosinney at last?

     “Yes!” he said, “aversion’s deeper than love or hate because it’s
     a natural product of the nerves, and we don’t change them.”

     “I came to tell you that Soames has been to see me. He said a
     thing that frightened me. He said: ‘You are still my wife!’”

     “What!” ejaculated Jolyon. “You ought not to live alone.” And he
     continued to stare at her, afflicted by the thought that where
     Beauty was, nothing ever ran quite straight, which, no doubt, was
     why so many people looked on it as immoral.

     “What more?”

     “He asked me to shake hands.”

     “Did you?”

     “Yes. When he came in I’m sure he didn’t want to; he changed
     while he was there.”

     “Ah! you certainly ought not to go on living there alone.”

     “I know no woman I could ask; and I can’t take a lover to order,
     Cousin Jolyon.”

     “Heaven forbid!” said Jolyon. “What a damnable position! Will you
     stay to dinner? No? Well, let me see you back to town; I wanted
     to go up this evening.”

     “Truly?”

     “Truly. I’ll be ready in five minutes.”

     On that walk to the station they talked of pictures and music,
     contrasting the English and French characters and the difference
     in their attitude to Art. But to Jolyon the colours in the hedges
     of the long straight lane, the twittering of chaffinches who kept
     pace with them, the perfume of weeds being already burned, the
     turn of her neck, the fascination of those dark eyes bent on him
     now and then, the lure of her whole figure, made a deeper
     impression than the remarks they exchanged. Unconsciously he held
     himself straighter, walked with a more elastic step.

     In the train he put her through a sort of catechism as to what
     she did with her days.

     Made her dresses, shopped, visited a hospital, played her piano,
     translated from the French.

     She had regular work from a publisher, it seemed, which
     supplemented her income a little. She seldom went out in the
     evening. “I’ve been living alone so long, you see, that I don’t
     mind it a bit. I believe I’m naturally solitary.”

     “I don’t believe that,” said Jolyon. “Do you know many people?”

     “Very few.”

     At Waterloo they took a hansom, and he drove with her to the door
     of her mansions. Squeezing her hand at parting, he said:

     “You know, you could always come to us at Robin Hill; you must
     let me know everything that happens. Good-bye, Irene.”

     “Good-bye,” she answered softly.

     Jolyon climbed back into his cab, wondering why he had not asked
     her to dine and go to the theatre with him. Solitary, starved,
     hung-up life that she had! “Hotch Potch Club,” he said through
     the trap-door. As his hansom debouched on to the Embankment, a
     man in top-hat and overcoat passed, walking quickly, so close to
     the wall that he seemed to be scraping it.

     “By Jove!” thought Jolyon; “Soames himself! What’s _he_ up to
     now?” And, stopping the cab round the corner, he got out and
     retraced his steps to where he could see the entrance to the
     mansions. Soames had halted in front of them, and was looking up
     at the light in her windows. “If he goes in,” thought Jolyon,
     “what shall I do? What have I the right to do?” What the fellow
     had said was true. She was still his wife, absolutely without
     protection from annoyance! “Well, if he goes in,” he thought, “I
     follow.” And he began moving towards the mansions. Again Soames
     advanced; he was in the very entrance now. But suddenly he
     stopped, spun round on his heel, and came back towards the river.
     “What now?” thought Jolyon. “In a dozen steps he’ll recognise
     me.” And he turned tail. His cousin’s footsteps kept pace with
     his own. But he reached his cab, and got in before Soames had
     turned the corner. “Go on!” he said through the trap. Soames’
     figure ranged up alongside.

     “Hansom!” he said. “Engaged? Hallo!”

     “Hallo!” answered Jolyon. “You?”

     The quick suspicion on his cousin’s face, white in the lamplight,
     decided him.

     “I can give you a lift,” he said, “if you’re going West.”

     “Thanks,” answered Soames, and got in.

     “I’ve been seeing Irene,” said Jolyon when the cab had started.

     “Indeed!”

     “You went to see her yesterday yourself, I understand.”

     “I did,” said Soames; “she’s my wife, you know.”

     The tone, the half-lifted sneering lip, roused sudden anger in
     Jolyon; but he subdued it.

     “You ought to know best,” he said, “but if you want a divorce
     it’s not very wise to go seeing her, is it? One can’t run with
     the hare and hunt with the hounds?”

     “You’re very good to warn me,” said Soames, “but I have not made
     up my mind.”

     “_She_ has,” said Jolyon, looking straight before him; “you can’t
     take things up, you know, as they were twelve years ago.”

     “That remains to be seen.”

     “Look here!” said Jolyon, “she’s in a damnable position, and I am
     the only person with any legal say in her affairs.”

     “Except myself,” retorted Soames, “who am also in a damnable
     position. Hers is what she made for herself; mine what she made
     for me. I am not at all sure that in her own interests I shan’t
     require her to return to me.”

     “What!” exclaimed Jolyon; and a shiver went through his whole
     body.

     “I don’t know what you may mean by ‘what,’” answered Soames
     coldly; “your say in her affairs is confined to paying out her
     income; please bear that in mind. In choosing not to disgrace her
     by a divorce, I retained my rights, and, as I say, I am not at
     all sure that I shan’t require to exercise them.”

     “My God!” ejaculated Jolyon, and he uttered a short laugh.

     “Yes,” said Soames, and there was a deadly quality in his voice.
     “I’ve not forgotten the nickname your father gave me, ‘The man of
     property’. I’m not called names for nothing.”

     “This is fantastic,” murmured Jolyon. Well, the fellow couldn’t
     force his wife to live with him. Those days were past, anyway!
     And he looked around at Soames with the thought: “Is he real,
     this man?” But Soames looked very real, sitting square yet almost
     elegant with the clipped moustache on his pale face, and a tooth
     showing where a lip was lifted in a fixed smile. There was a long
     silence, while Jolyon thought: “Instead of helping her, I’ve made
     things worse.” Suddenly Soames said:

     “It would be the best thing that could happen to her in many
     ways.”

     At those words such a turmoil began taking place in Jolyon that
     he could barely sit still in the cab. It was as if he were boxed
     up with hundreds of thousands of his countrymen, boxed up with
     that something in the national character which had always been to
     him revolting, something which he knew to be extremely natural
     and yet which seemed to him inexplicable—their intense belief in
     contracts and vested rights, their complacent sense of virtue in
     the exaction of those rights. Here beside him in the cab was the
     very embodiment, the corporeal sum as it were, of the possessive
     instinct—his own kinsman, too! It was uncanny and intolerable!
     “But there’s something more in it than that!” he thought with a
     sick feeling. “The dog, they say, returns to his vomit! The sight
     of her has reawakened something. Beauty! The devil’s in it!”

     “As I say,” said Soames, “I have not made up my mind. I shall be
     obliged if you will kindly leave her quite alone.”

     Jolyon bit his lips; he who had always hated rows almost welcomed
     the thought of one now.

     “I can give you no such promise,” he said shortly.

     “Very well,” said Soames, “then we know where we are. I’ll get
     down here.” And stopping the cab he got out without word or sign
     of farewell. Jolyon travelled on to his Club.

     The first news of the war was being called in the streets, but he
     paid no attention. What could he do to help her? If only his
     father were alive! _He_ could have done so much! But why could he
     not do all that his father could have done? Was he not old
     enough?—turned fifty and twice married, with grown-up daughters
     and a son. “Queer,” he thought. “If she were plain I shouldn’t be
     thinking twice about it. Beauty is the devil, when you’re
     sensitive to it!” And into the Club reading-room he went with a
     disturbed heart. In that very room he and Bosinney had talked one
     summer afternoon; he well remembered even now the disguised and
     secret lecture he had given that young man in the interests of
     June, the diagnosis of the Forsytes he had hazarded; and how he
     had wondered what sort of woman it was he was warning him
     against. And now! He was almost in want of a warning himself.
     “It’s deuced funny!” he thought, “really deuced funny!”

     CHAPTER XIV SOAMES DISCOVERS WHAT HE WANTS

     It is so much easier to say, “Then we know where we are,” than to
     mean anything particular by the words. And in saying them Soames
     did but vent the jealous rankling of his instincts. He got out of
     the cab in a state of wary anger—with himself for not having seen
     Irene, with Jolyon for having seen her; and now with his
     inability to tell exactly what he wanted.

     He had abandoned the cab because he could not bear to remain
     seated beside his cousin, and walking briskly eastwards he
     thought: “I wouldn’t trust that fellow Jolyon a yard. Once
     outcast, always outcast!” The chap had a natural sympathy
     with—with—laxity (he had shied at the word sin, because it was
     too melodramatic for use by a Forsyte).

     Indecision in desire was to him a new feeling. He was like a
     child between a promised toy and an old one which had been taken
     away from him; and he was astonished at himself. Only last Sunday
     desire had seemed simple—just his freedom and Annette. “I’ll go
     and dine there,” he thought. To see her might bring back his
     singleness of intention, calm his exasperation, clear his mind.

     The restaurant was fairly full—a good many foreigners and folk
     whom, from their appearance, he took to be literary or artistic.
     Scraps of conversation came his way through the clatter of plates
     and glasses. He distinctly heard the Boers sympathised with, the
     British Government blamed. “Don’t think much of their clientèle,”
     he thought. He went stolidly through his dinner and special
     coffee without making his presence known, and when at last he had
     finished, was careful not to be seen going towards the sanctum of
     Madame Lamotte. They were, as he entered, having supper—such a
     much nicer-looking supper than the dinner he had eaten that he
     felt a kind of grief—and they greeted him with a surprise so
     seemingly genuine that he thought with sudden suspicion: “I
     believe they knew I was here all the time.” He gave Annette a
     look furtive and searching. So pretty, seemingly so candid; could
     she be angling for him? He turned to Madame Lamotte and said:

     “I’ve been dining here.”

     Really! If she had only known! There were dishes she could have
     recommended; what a pity! Soames was confirmed in his suspicion.
     “I must look out what I’m doing!” he thought sharply.

     “Another little cup of very special coffee, _monsieur;_ a
     liqueur, Grand Marnier?” and Madame Lamotte rose to order these
     delicacies.

     Alone with Annette Soames said, “Well, Annette?” with a defensive
     little smile about his lips.

     The girl blushed. This, which last Sunday would have set his
     nerves tingling, now gave him much the same feeling a man has
     when a dog that he owns wriggles and looks at him. He had a
     curious sense of power, as if he could have said to her, “Come
     and kiss me,” and she would have come. And yet—it was strange—but
     there seemed another face and form in the room too; and the itch
     in his nerves, was it for that—or for this? He jerked his head
     towards the restaurant and said: “You have some queer customers.
     Do you like this life?”

     Annette looked up at him for a moment, looked down, and played
     with her fork.

     “No,” she said, “I do not like it.”

     “I’ve got her,” thought Soames, “if I want her. But do I want
     her?” She was graceful, she was pretty—very pretty; she was
     fresh, she had taste of a kind. His eyes travelled round the
     little room; but the eyes of his mind went another journey—a
     half-light, and silvery walls, a satinwood piano, a woman
     standing against it, reined back as it were from him—a woman with
     white shoulders that he knew, and dark eyes that he had sought to
     know, and hair like dull dark amber. And as in an artist who
     strives for the unrealisable and is ever thirsty, so there rose
     in him at that moment the thirst of the old passion he had never
     satisfied.

     “Well,” he said calmly, “you’re young. There’s everything before
     _you_.”

     Annette shook her head.

     “I think sometimes there is nothing before me but hard work. I am
     not so in love with work as mother.”

     “Your mother is a wonder,” said Soames, faintly mocking; “she
     will never let failure lodge in her house.”

     Annette sighed. “It must be wonderful to be rich.”

     “Oh! You’ll be rich some day,” answered Soames, still with that
     faint mockery; “don’t be afraid.”

     Annette shrugged her shoulders. “_Monsieur_ is very kind.” And
     between her pouting lips she put a chocolate.

     “Yes, my dear,” thought Soames, “they’re very pretty.”

     Madame Lamotte, with coffee and liqueur, put an end to that
     colloquy. Soames did not stay long.

     Outside in the streets of Soho, which always gave him such a
     feeling of property improperly owned, he mused. If only Irene had
     given him a son, he wouldn’t now be squirming after women! The
     thought had jumped out of its little dark sentry-box in his inner
     consciousness. A son—something to look forward to, something to
     make the rest of life worth while, something to leave himself to,
     some perpetuity of self. “If I had a son,” he thought bitterly,
     “a proper legal son, I could make shift to go on as I used. One
     woman’s much the same as another, after all.” But as he walked he
     shook his head. No! 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!” Why should he be put to the
     shifts and the sordid disgraces and the lurking defeats of the
     Divorce Court, when there she was like an empty house only
     waiting to be retaken into use and possession by him who legally
     owned her? To one so secretive as Soames the thought of reentry
     into quiet possession of his own property with nothing given away
     to the world was intensely alluring. “No,” he mused, “I’m glad I
     went to see that girl. I know now what I want most. If only Irene
     will come back I’ll be as considerate as she wishes; she could
     live her own life; but perhaps—perhaps she would come round to
     me.” There was a lump in his throat. And doggedly along by the
     railings of the Green Park, towards his father’s house, he went,
     trying to tread on his shadow walking before him in the brilliant
     moonlight.




     PART II

     CHAPTER I THE THIRD GENERATION


     Jolly Forsyte was strolling down High Street, Oxford, on a
     November afternoon; Val Dartie was strolling up. Jolly had just
     changed out of boating flannels and was on his way to the
     “Frying-pan,” to which he had recently been elected. Val had just
     changed out of riding clothes and was on his way to the fire—a
     bookmaker’s in Cornmarket.

     “Hallo!” said Jolly.

     “Hallo!” replied Val.

     The cousins had met but twice, Jolly, the second-year man, having
     invited the freshman to breakfast; and last evening they had seen
     each other again under somewhat exotic circumstances.

     Over a tailor’s in the Cornmarket resided one of those privileged
     young beings called minors, whose inheritances are large, whose
     parents are dead, whose guardians are remote, and whose instincts
     are vicious. At nineteen he had commenced one of those careers
     attractive and inexplicable to ordinary mortals for whom a single
     bankruptcy is good as a feast. Already famous for having the only
     roulette table then to be found in Oxford, he was anticipating
     his expectations at a dazzling rate. He out-crummed Crum, though
     of a sanguine and rather beefy type which lacked the latter’s
     fascinating languor. For Val it had been in the nature of baptism
     to be taken there to play roulette; in the nature of confirmation
     to get back into college, after hours, through a window whose
     bars were deceptive. Once, during that evening of delight,
     glancing up from the seductive green before him, he had caught
     sight, through a cloud of smoke, of his cousin standing opposite.
     “_Rouge gagne, impair, et manque!_” He had not seen him again.

     “Come in to the Frying-pan and have tea,” said Jolly, and they
     went in.

     A stranger, seeing them together, would have noticed an
     unseizable resemblance between these second cousins of the third
     generations of Forsytes; the same bone formation in face, though
     Jolly’s eyes were darker grey, his hair lighter and more wavy.

     “Tea and buttered buns, waiter, please,” said Jolly.

     “Have one of my cigarettes?” said Val. “I saw you last night. How
     did you do?”

     “I didn’t play.”

     “I won fifteen quid.”

     Though desirous of repeating a whimsical comment on gambling he
     had once heard his father make—“When you’re fleeced you’re sick,
     and when you fleece you’re sorry”—Jolly contented himself with:

     “Rotten game, I think; I was at school with that chap. He’s an
     awful fool.”

     “Oh! I don’t know,” said Val, as one might speak in defence of a
     disparaged god; “he’s a pretty good sport.”

     They exchanged whiffs in silence.

     “You met my people, didn’t you?” said Jolly. “They’re coming up
     to-morrow.”

     Val grew a little red.

     “Really! I can give you a rare good tip for the Manchester
     November handicap.”

     “Thanks, I only take interest in the classic races.”

     “You can’t make any money over them,” said Val.

     “I hate the ring,” said Jolly; “there’s such a row and stink. I
     like the paddock.”

     “I like to back my judgment,” answered Val.

     Jolly smiled; his smile was like his father’s.

     “I haven’t got any. I always lose money if I bet.”

     “You have to buy experience, of course.”

     “Yes, but it’s all messed-up with doing people in the eye.”

     “Of course, or they’ll do you—that’s the excitement.”

     Jolly looked a little scornful.

     “What do you do with yourself? Row?”

     “No—ride, and drive about. I’m going to play polo next term, if I
     can get my granddad to stump up.”

     “That’s old Uncle James, isn’t it? What’s he like?”

     “Older than forty hills,” said Val, “and always thinking he’s
     going to be ruined.”

     “I suppose my granddad and he were brothers.”

     “I don’t believe any of that old lot were sportsmen,” said Val;
     “they must have worshipped money.”

     “Mine didn’t!” said Jolly warmly.

     Val flipped the ash off his cigarette.

     “Money’s only fit to spend,” he said; “I wish the deuce I had
     more.”

     Jolly gave him that direct upward look of judgment which he had
     inherited from old Jolyon: One didn’t talk about money! And again
     there was silence, while they drank tea and ate the buttered
     buns.

     “Where are your people going to stay?” asked Val, elaborately
     casual.

     “‘Rainbow.’ What do you think of the war?”

     “Rotten, so far. The Boers aren’t sports a bit. Why don’t they
     come out into the open?”

     “Why should they? They’ve got everything against them except
     their way of fighting. I rather admire them.”

     “They can ride and shoot,” admitted Val, “but they’re a lousy
     lot. Do you know Crum?”

     “Of Merton? Only by sight. He’s in that fast set too, isn’t he?
     Rather La-di-da and Brummagem.”

     Val said fixedly: “He’s a friend of mine.”

     “Oh! Sorry!” And they sat awkwardly staring past each other,
     having pitched on their pet points of snobbery. For Jolly was
     forming himself unconsciously on a set whose motto was:

     “We defy you to bore us. Life isn’t half long enough, and we’re
     going to talk faster and more crisply, do more and know more, and
     dwell less on any subject than you can possibly imagine. We are
     ‘the best’—made of wire and whipcord.” And Val was unconsciously
     forming himself on a set whose motto was: “We defy you to
     interest or excite us. We have had every sensation, or if we
     haven’t, we pretend we have. We are so exhausted with living that
     no hours are too small for us. We will lose our shirts with
     equanimity. We have flown fast and are past everything. All is
     cigarette smoke. Bismillah!” Competitive spirit, bone-deep in the
     English, was obliging those two young Forsytes to have ideals;
     and at the close of a century ideals are mixed. The aristocracy
     had already in the main adopted the “jumping-Jesus” principle;
     though here and there one like Crum—who was an “honourable”—stood
     starkly languid for that gambler’s Nirvana which had been the
     _summum bonum_ of the old “dandies” and of “the mashers” in the
     eighties. And round Crum were still gathered a forlorn hope of
     blue-bloods with a plutocratic following.

     But there was between the cousins another far less obvious
     antipathy—coming from the unseizable family resemblance, which
     each perhaps resented; or from some half-consciousness of that
     old feud persisting still between their branches of the clan,
     formed within them by odd words or half-hints dropped by their
     elders. And Jolly, tinkling his teaspoon, was musing: “His
     tie-pin and his waistcoat and his drawl and his betting—good
     Lord!”

     And Val, finishing his bun, was thinking: “He’s rather a young
     beast!”

     “I suppose you’ll be meeting your people?” he said, getting up.
     “I wish you’d tell them I should like to show them over
     B.N.C.—not that there’s anything much there—if they’d care to
     come.”

     “Thanks, I’ll ask them.”

     “Would they lunch? I’ve got rather a decent scout.”

     Jolly doubted if they would have time.

     “You’ll ask them, though?”

     “Very good of you,” said Jolly, fully meaning that they should
     not go; but, instinctively polite, he added: “You’d better come
     and have dinner with us to-morrow.”

     “Rather. What time?”

     “Seven-thirty.”

     “Dress?”

     “No.” And they parted, a subtle antagonism alive within them.

     Holly and her father arrived by a midday train. It was her first
     visit to the city of spires and dreams, and she was very silent,
     looking almost shyly at the brother who was part of this
     wonderful place. After lunch she wandered, examining his
     household gods with intense curiosity. Jolly’s sitting-room was
     panelled, and Art represented by a set of Bartolozzi prints which
     had belonged to old Jolyon, and by college photographs—of young
     men, live young men, a little heroic, and to be compared with her
     memories of Val. Jolyon also scrutinised with care that evidence
     of his boy’s character and tastes.

     Jolly was anxious that they should see him rowing, so they set
     forth to the river. Holly, between her brother and her father,
     felt elated when heads were turned and eyes rested on her. That
     they might see him to the best advantage they left him at the
     Barge and crossed the river to the towing-path. Slight in
     build—for of all the Forsytes only old Swithin and George were
     beefy—Jolly was rowing “Two” in a trial eight. He looked very
     earnest and strenuous. With pride Jolyon thought him the
     best-looking boy of the lot; Holly, as became a sister, was more
     struck by one or two of the others, but would not have said so
     for the world. The river was bright that afternoon, the meadows
     lush, the trees still beautiful with colour. Distinguished peace
     clung around the old city; Jolyon promised himself a day’s
     sketching if the weather held. The Eight passed a second time,
     spurting home along the Barges—Jolly’s face was very set, so as
     not to show that he was blown. They returned across the river and
     waited for him.

     “Oh!” said Jolly in the Christ Church meadows, “I had to ask that
     chap Val Dartie to dine with us to-night. He wanted to give you
     lunch and show you B.N.C., so I thought I’d better; then you
     needn’t go. I don’t like him much.”

     Holly’s rather sallow face had become suffused with pink.

     “Why not?”

     “Oh! I don’t know. He seems to me rather showy and bad form. What
     are his people like, Dad? He’s only a second cousin, isn’t he?”

     Jolyon took refuge in a smile.

     “Ask Holly,” he said; “she saw his uncle.”

     “I _liked_ Val,” Holly answered, staring at the ground before
     her; “his uncle looked—awfully different.” She stole a glance at
     Jolly from under her lashes.

     “Did you ever,” said Jolyon with whimsical intention, “hear our
     family history, my dears? It’s quite a fairy tale. The first
     Jolyon Forsyte—at all events the first we know anything of, and
     that would be your great-great-grandfather—dwelt in the land of
     Dorset on the edge of the sea, being by profession an
     ‘agriculturalist,’ as your great-aunt put it, and the son of an
     agriculturist—farmers, in fact; your grandfather used to call
     them, ‘Very small beer.’” He looked at Jolly to see how his
     lordliness was standing it, and with the other eye noted Holly’s
     malicious pleasure in the slight drop of her brother’s face.

     “We may suppose him thick and sturdy, standing for England as it
     was before the Industrial Era began. The second Jolyon
     Forsyte—your great-grandfather, Jolly; better known as Superior
     Dosset Forsyte—built houses, so the chronicle runs, begat ten
     children, and migrated to London town. It is known that he drank
     sherry. We may suppose him representing the England of Napoleon’s
     wars, and general unrest. The eldest of his six sons was the
     third Jolyon, your grandfather, my dears—tea merchant and
     chairman of companies, one of the soundest Englishmen who ever
     lived—and to me the dearest.” Jolyon’s voice had lost its irony,
     and his son and daughter gazed at him solemnly, “He was just and
     tenacious, tender and young at heart. You remember him, and I
     remember him. Pass to the others! Your great-uncle James, that’s
     young Val’s grandfather, had a son called Soames—whereby hangs a
     tale of no love lost, and I don’t think I’ll tell it you. James
     and the other eight children of ‘Superior Dosset,’ of whom there
     are still five alive, may be said to have represented Victorian
     England, with its principles of trade and individualism at five
     per cent. and your money back—if you know what that means. At all
     events they’ve turned thirty thousand pounds into a cool million
     between them in the course of their long lives. They never did a
     wild thing—unless it was your great-uncle Swithin, who I believe
     was once swindled at thimble-rig, and was called ‘Four-in-hand
     Forsyte’ because he drove a pair. Their day is passing, and their
     type, not altogether for the advantage of the country. They were
     pedestrian, but they too were sound. I am the fourth Jolyon
     Forsyte—a poor holder of the name—”

     “No, Dad,” said Jolly, and Holly squeezed his hand.

     “Yes,” repeated Jolyon, “a poor specimen, representing, I’m
     afraid, nothing but the end of the century, unearned income,
     amateurism, and individual liberty—a different thing from
     individualism, Jolly. You are the fifth Jolyon Forsyte, old man,
     and you open the ball of the new century.”

     As he spoke they turned in through the college gates, and Holly
     said: “It’s fascinating, Dad.”

     None of them quite knew what she meant. Jolly was grave.

     The Rainbow, distinguished, as only an Oxford hostel can be, for
     lack of modernity, provided one small oak-panelled private
     sitting-room, in which Holly sat to receive, white-frocked, shy,
     and alone, when the only guest arrived. Rather as one would touch
     a moth, Val took her hand. And wouldn’t she wear this “measly
     flower”. It would look ripping in her hair. He removed a gardenia
     from his coat.

     “Oh! No, thank you—I couldn’t!” But she took it and pinned it at
     her neck, having suddenly remembered that word “showy”. Val’s
     buttonhole would give offence; and she so much wanted Jolly to
     like him. Did she realise that Val was at his best and quietest
     in her presence, and was that, perhaps, half the secret of his
     attraction for her?

     “I never said anything about our ride, Val.”

     “Rather not! It’s just between us.”

     By the uneasiness of his hands and the fidgeting of his feet he
     was giving her a sense of power very delicious; a soft feeling
     too—the wish to make him happy.

     “Do tell me about Oxford. It must be ever so lovely.”

     Val admitted that it was frightfully decent to do what you liked;
     the lectures were nothing; and there were some very good chaps.
     “Only,” he added, “of course I wish I was in town, and could come
     down and see you.”

     Holly moved one hand shyly on her knee, and her glance dropped.

     “You haven’t forgotten,” he said, suddenly gathering courage,
     “that we’re going mad-rabbiting together?”

     Holly smiled.

     “Oh! That was only make-believe. One can’t do that sort of thing
     after one’s grown up, you know.”

     “Dash it! cousins can,” said Val. “Next Long Vac.—it begins in
     June, you know, and goes on for ever—we’ll watch our chance.”

     But, though the thrill of conspiracy ran through her veins, Holly
     shook her head. “It won’t come off,” she murmured.

     “Won’t it!” said Val fervently; “who’s going to stop it? Not your
     father or your brother.”

     At this moment Jolyon and Jolly came in; and romance fled into
     Val’s patent leather and Holly’s white satin toes, where it
     itched and tingled during an evening not conspicuous for
     open-heartedness.

     Sensitive to atmosphere, Jolyon soon felt the latent antagonism
     between the boys, and was puzzled by Holly; so he became
     unconsciously ironical, which is fatal to the expansiveness of
     youth. A letter, handed to him after dinner, reduced him to a
     silence hardly broken till Jolly and Val rose to go. He went out
     with them, smoking his cigar, and walked with his son to the
     gates of Christ Church. Turning back, he took out the letter and
     read it again beneath a lamp.

     “DEAR JOLYON,
         “Soames came again to-night—my thirty-seventh birthday. You
         were right, I mustn’t stay here. I’m going to-morrow to the
         Piedmont Hotel, but I won’t go abroad without seeing you. I
         feel lonely and down-hearted.

     “Yours affectionately,
     “IRENE.”

     He folded the letter back into his pocket and walked on,
     astonished at the violence of his feelings. What had the fellow
     said or done?

     He turned into High Street, down the Turf, and on among a maze of
     spires and domes and long college fronts and walls, bright or
     dark-shadowed in the strong moonlight. In this very heart of
     England’s gentility it was difficult to realise that a lonely
     woman could be importuned or hunted, but what else could her
     letter mean? Soames must have been pressing her to go back to him
     again, with public opinion and the Law on his side, too!
     “Eighteen-ninety-nine!,” he thought, gazing at the broken glass
     shining on the top of a villa garden wall; “but when it comes to
     property we’re still a heathen people! I’ll go up to-morrow
     morning. I dare say it’ll be best for her to go abroad.” Yet the
     thought displeased him. Why should Soames hunt her out of
     England! Besides, he might follow, and out there she would be
     still more helpless against the attentions of her own husband! “I
     must tread warily,” he thought; “that fellow could make himself
     very nasty. I didn’t like his manner in the cab the other night.”
     His thoughts turned to his daughter June. Could she help? Once on
     a time Irene had been her greatest friend, and now she was a
     “lame duck,” such as must appeal to June’s nature! He determined
     to wire to his daughter to meet him at Paddington Station.
     Retracing his steps towards the Rainbow he questioned his own
     sensations. Would he be upsetting himself over every woman in
     like case? No! he would not. The candour of this conclusion
     discomfited him; and, finding that Holly had gone up to bed, he
     sought his own room. But he could not sleep, and sat for a long
     time at his window, huddled in an overcoat, watching the
     moonlight on the roofs.

     Next door Holly too was awake, thinking of the lashes above and
     below Val’s eyes, especially below; and of what she could do to
     make Jolly like him better. The scent of the gardenia was strong
     in her little bedroom, and pleasant to her.

     And Val, leaning out of his first-floor window in B.N.C., was
     gazing at a moonlit quadrangle without seeing it at all, seeing
     instead Holly, slim and white-frocked, as she sat beside the fire
     when he first went in.

     But Jolly, in his bedroom narrow as a ghost, lay with a hand
     beneath his cheek and dreamed he was with Val in one boat, rowing
     a race against him, while his father was calling from the
     towpath: “Two! Get your hands away there, bless you!”




     CHAPTER II SOAMES PUTS IT TO THE TOUCH


     Of all those radiant firms which emblazon with their windows the
     West End of London, Gaves and Cortegal were considered by Soames
     the most “attractive” word just coming into fashion. He had never
     had his Uncle Swithin’s taste in precious stones, and the
     abandonment by Irene when she left his house in 1887 of all the
     glittering things he had given her had disgusted him with this
     form of investment. But he still knew a diamond when he saw one,
     and during the week before her birthday he had taken occasion, on
     his way into the Poultry or his way out therefrom, to dally a
     little before the greater jewellers where one got, if not one’s
     money’s worth, at least a certain cachet with the goods.

     Constant cogitation since his drive with Jolyon had convinced him
     more and more of the supreme importance of this moment in his
     life, the supreme need for taking steps and those not wrong. And,
     alongside the dry and reasoned sense that it was now or never
     with his self-preservation, now or never if he were to range
     himself and found a family, went the secret urge of his senses
     roused by the sight of her who had once been a passionately
     desired wife, and the conviction that it was a sin against common
     sense and the decent secrecy of Forsytes to waste the wife he
     had.

     In an opinion on Winifred’s case, Dreamer, Q.C.—he would much
     have preferred Waterbuck, but they had made him a judge (so late
     in the day as to rouse the usual suspicion of a political
     job)—had advised that they should go forward and obtain
     restitution of conjugal rights, a point which to Soames had never
     been in doubt. When they had obtained a decree to that effect
     they must wait to see if it was obeyed. If not, it would
     constitute legal desertion, and they should obtain evidence of
     misconduct and file their petition for divorce. All of which
     Soames knew perfectly well. They had marked him ten and one. This
     simplicity in his sister’s case only made him the more desperate
     about the difficulty in his own. Everything, in fact, was driving
     him towards the simple solution of Irene’s return. If it were
     still against the grain with her, had _he_ not feelings to
     subdue, injury to forgive, pain to forget? He at least had never
     injured her, and this was a world of compromise! He could offer
     her so much more than she had now. He would be prepared to make a
     liberal settlement on her which could not be upset. He often
     scrutinised his image in these days. He had never been a peacock
     like that fellow Dartie, or fancied himself a woman’s man, but he
     had a certain belief in his own appearance—not unjustly, for it
     was well-coupled and preserved, neat, healthy, pale, unblemished
     by drink or excess of any kind. The Forsyte jaw and the
     concentration of his face were, in his eyes, virtues. So far as
     he could tell there was no feature of him which need inspire
     dislike.

     Thoughts and yearnings, with which one lives daily, become
     natural, even if far-fetched in their inception. If he could only
     give tangible proof enough of his determination to let bygones be
     bygones, and to do all in his power to please her, why should she
     not come back to him?

     He entered Gaves and Cortegal’s therefore, on the morning of
     November the 9th, to buy a certain diamond brooch. “Four
     twenty-five and dirt cheap, sir, at the money. It’s a lady’s
     brooch.” There was that in his mood which made him accept without
     demur. And he went on into the Poultry with the flat green
     morocco case in his breast pocket. Several times that day he
     opened it to look at the seven soft shining stones in their
     velvet oval nest.

     “If the lady doesn’t like it, sir, happy to exchange it any time.
     But there’s no fear of that.” If only there were not! He got
     through a vast amount of work, only soother of the nerves he
     knew. A cablegram came while he was in the office with details
     from the agent in Buenos Aires, and the name and address of a
     stewardess who would be prepared to swear to what was necessary.
     It was a timely spur to Soames, with his rooted distaste for the
     washing of dirty linen in public. And when he set forth by
     Underground to Victoria Station he received a fresh impetus
     towards the renewal of his married life from the account in his
     evening paper of a fashionable divorce suit. The homing instinct
     of all true Forsytes in anxiety and trouble, the corporate
     tendency which kept them strong and solid, made him choose to
     dine at Park Lane. He neither could nor would breathe a word to
     his people of his intention—too reticent and proud—but the
     thought that at least they would be glad if they knew, and wish
     him luck, was heartening.

     James was in lugubrious mood, for the fire which the impudence of
     Kruger’s ultimatum had lit in him had been cold-watered by the
     poor success of the last month, and the exhortations to effort in
     _The Times_. He didn’t know where it would end. Soames sought to
     cheer him by the continual use of the word Buller. But James
     couldn’t tell! There was Colley—and he got stuck on that hill,
     and this Ladysmith was down in a hollow, and altogether it looked
     to him a “pretty kettle of fish”; he thought they ought to be
     sending the sailors—they were the chaps, they did a lot of good
     in the Crimea. Soames shifted the ground of consolation. Winifred
     had heard from Val that there had been a “rag” and a bonfire on
     Guy Fawkes Day at Oxford, and that he had escaped detection by
     blacking his face.

     “Ah!” James muttered, “he’s a clever little chap.” But he shook
     his head shortly afterwards and remarked that he didn’t know what
     would become of him, and looking wistfully at his son, murmured
     on that Soames had never had a boy. He would have liked a
     grandson of his own name. And now—well, there it was!

     Soames flinched. He had not expected such a challenge to disclose
     the secret in his heart. And Emily, who saw him wince, said:

     “Nonsense, James; don’t talk like that!”

     But James, not looking anyone in the face, muttered on. There
     were Roger and Nicholas and Jolyon; they all had grandsons. And
     Swithin and Timothy had never married. He had done his best; but
     he would soon be gone now. And, as though he had uttered words of
     profound consolation, he was silent, eating brains with a fork
     and a piece of bread, and swallowing the bread.

     Soames excused himself directly after dinner. It was not really
     cold, but he put on his fur coat, which served to fortify him
     against the fits of nervous shivering to which he had been
     subject all day. Subconsciously, he knew that he looked better
     thus than in an ordinary black overcoat. Then, feeling the
     morocco case flat against his heart, he sallied forth. He was no
     smoker, but he lit a cigarette, and smoked it gingerly as he
     walked along. He moved slowly down the Row towards Knightsbridge,
     timing himself to get to Chelsea at nine-fifteen. What did she do
     with herself evening after evening in that little hole? How
     mysterious women were! One lived alongside and knew nothing of
     them. What could she have seen in that fellow Bosinney to send
     her mad? For there was madness after all in what she had
     done—crazy moonstruck madness, in which all sense of values had
     been lost, and her life and his life ruined! And for a moment he
     was filled with a sort of exaltation, as though he were a man
     read of in a story who, possessed by the Christian spirit, would
     restore to her all the prizes of existence, forgiving and
     forgetting, and becoming the godfather of her future. Under a
     tree opposite Knightsbridge Barracks, where the moonlight struck
     down clear and white, he took out once more the morocco case, and
     let the beams draw colour from those stones. Yes, they were of
     the first water! But, at the hard closing snap of the case,
     another cold shiver ran through his nerves; and he walked on
     faster, clenching his gloved hands in the pockets of his coat,
     almost hoping she would not be in. The thought of how mysterious
     she was again beset him. Dining alone there night after night—in
     an evening dress, too, as if she were making believe to be in
     society! Playing the piano—to herself! Not even a dog or cat, so
     far as he had seen. And that reminded him suddenly of the mare he
     kept for station work at Mapledurham. If ever he went to the
     stable, there she was quite alone, half asleep, and yet, on her
     home journeys going more freely than on her way out, as if
     longing to be back and lonely in her stable! “I would treat her
     well,” he thought incoherently. “I would be very careful.” And
     all that capacity for home life of which a mocking Fate seemed
     for ever to have deprived him swelled suddenly in Soames, so that
     he dreamed dreams opposite South Kensington Station. In the
     King’s Road a man came slithering out of a public house playing a
     concertina. Soames watched him for a moment dance crazily on the
     pavement to his own drawling jagged sounds, then crossed over to
     avoid contact with this piece of drunken foolery. A night in the
     lock-up! What asses people were! But the man had noticed his
     movement of avoidance, and streams of genial blasphemy followed
     him across the street. “I hope they’ll run him in,” thought
     Soames viciously. “To have ruffians like that about, with women
     out alone!” A woman’s figure in front had induced this thought.
     Her walk seemed oddly familiar, and when she turned the corner
     for which he was bound, his heart began to beat. He hastened on
     to the corner to make certain. Yes! It was Irene; he could not
     mistake her walk in that little drab street. She threaded two
     more turnings, and from the last corner he saw her enter her
     block of flats. To make sure of her now, he ran those few paces,
     hurried up the stairs, and caught her standing at her door. He
     heard the latchkey in the lock, and reached her side just as she
     turned round, startled, in the open doorway.

     “Don’t be alarmed,” he said, breathless. “I happened to see you.
     Let me come in a minute.”

     She had put her hand up to her breast, her face was colourless,
     her eyes widened by alarm. Then seeming to master herself, she
     inclined her head, and said: “Very well.”

     Soames closed the door. He, too, had need to recover, and when
     she had passed into the sitting-room, waited a full minute,
     taking deep breaths to still the beating of his heart. At this
     moment, so fraught with the future, to take out that morocco case
     seemed crude. Yet, not to take it out left him there before her
     with no preliminary excuse for coming. And in this dilemma he was
     seized with impatience at all this paraphernalia of excuse and
     justification. This was a scene—it could be nothing else, and he
     must face it. He heard her voice, uncomfortably, pathetically
     soft:

     “Why have you come again? Didn’t you understand that I would
     rather you did not?”

     He noticed her clothes—a dark brown velvet corduroy, a sable boa,
     a small round toque of the same. They suited her admirably. She
     had money to spare for dress, evidently! He said abruptly:

     “It’s your birthday. I brought you this,” and he held out to her
     the green morocco case.

     “Oh! No-no!”

     Soames pressed the clasp; the seven stones gleamed out on the
     pale grey velvet.

     “Why not?” he said. “Just as a sign that you don’t bear me
     ill-feeling any longer.”

     “I couldn’t.”

     Soames took it out of the case.

     “Let me just see how it looks.”

     She shrank back.

     He followed, thrusting his hand with the brooch in it against the
     front of her dress. She shrank again.

     Soames dropped his hand.

     “Irene,” he said, “let bygones be bygones. If _I_ can, surely you
     might. Let’s begin again, as if nothing had been. Won’t you?” His
     voice was wistful, and his eyes, resting on her face, had in them
     a sort of supplication.

     She, who was standing literally with her back against the wall,
     gave a little gulp, and that was all her answer. Soames went on:

     “Can you really want to live all your days half-dead in this
     little hole? Come back to me, and I’ll give you all you want. You
     shall live your own life; I swear it.”

     He saw her face quiver ironically.

     “Yes,” he repeated, “but I mean it this time. I’ll only ask one
     thing. I just want—I just want a son. Don’t look like that! I
     want one. It’s hard.” His voice had grown hurried, so that he
     hardly knew it for his own, and twice he jerked his head back as
     if struggling for breath. It was the sight of her eyes fixed on
     him, dark with a sort of fascinated fright, which pulled him
     together and changed that painful incoherence to anger.

     “Is it so very unnatural?” he said between his teeth, “Is it
     unnatural to want a child from one’s own wife? You wrecked our
     life and put this blight on everything. We go on only half alive,
     and without any future. Is it so very unflattering to you that in
     spite of everything I—I still want you for my wife? Speak, for
     Goodness’ sake! do speak.”

     Irene seemed to try, but did not succeed.

     “I don’t want to frighten you,” said Soames more gently. “Heaven
     knows. I only want you to see that I can’t go on like this. I
     want you back. I want you.”

     Irene raised one hand and covered the lower part of her face, but
     her eyes never moved from his, as though she trusted in them to
     keep him at bay. And all those years, barren and bitter,
     since—ah! when?—almost since he had first known her, surged up in
     one great wave of recollection in Soames; and a spasm that for
     his life he could not control constricted his face.

     “It’s not too late,” he said; “it’s not—if you’ll only believe
     it.”

     Irene uncovered her lips, and both her hands made a writhing
     gesture in front of her breast. Soames seized them.

     “Don’t!” she said under her breath. But he stood holding on to
     them, trying to stare into her eyes which did not waver. Then she
     said quietly:

     “I am alone here. You won’t behave again as you once behaved.”

     Dropping her hands as though they had been hot irons, he turned
     away. Was it possible that there could be such relentless
     unforgiveness! Could that one act of violent possession be still
     alive within her? Did it bar him thus utterly? And doggedly he
     said, without looking up:

     “I am not going till you’ve answered me. I am offering what few
     men would bring themselves to offer, I want a—a reasonable
     answer.”

     And almost with surprise he heard her say:

     “You can’t have a reasonable answer. Reason has nothing to do
     with it. You can only have the brutal truth: I would rather die.”

     Soames stared at her.

     “Oh!” he said. And there intervened in him a sort of paralysis of
     speech and movement, the kind of quivering which comes when a man
     has received a deadly insult, and does not yet know how he is
     going to take it, or rather what it is going to do with him.

     “Oh!” he said again, “as bad as that? Indeed! You would rather
     die. That’s pretty!”

     “I am sorry. You wanted me to answer. I can’t help the truth, can
     I?”

     At that queer spiritual appeal Soames turned for relief to
     actuality. He snapped the brooch back into its case and put it in
     his pocket.

     “The truth!” he said; “there’s no such thing with women. It’s
     nerves—nerves.”

     He heard the whisper:

     “Yes; nerves don’t lie. Haven’t you discovered that?” He was
     silent, obsessed by the thought: “I _will_ hate this woman. I
     _will_ hate her.” That was the trouble! If only he could! He shot
     a glance at her who stood unmoving against the wall with her head
     up and her hands clasped, for all the world as if she were going
     to be shot. And he said quickly:

     “I don’t believe a word of it. You have a lover. If you hadn’t,
     you wouldn’t be such a—such a little idiot.” He was conscious,
     before the expression in her eyes, that he had uttered something
     of a non-sequitur, and dropped back too abruptly into the verbal
     freedom of his connubial days. He turned away to the door. But he
     could not go out. Something within him—that most deep and secret
     Forsyte quality, the impossibility of letting go, the
     impossibility of seeing the fantastic and forlorn nature of his
     own tenacity—prevented him. He turned about again, and there
     stood, with his back against the door, as hers was against the
     wall opposite, quite unconscious of anything ridiculous in this
     separation by the whole width of the room.

     “Do you ever think of anybody but yourself?” he said.

     Irene’s lips quivered; then she answered slowly:

     “Do you ever think that I found out my mistake—my hopeless,
     terrible mistake—the very first week of our marriage; that I went
     on trying three years—you know I went on trying? Was it for
     myself?”

     Soames gritted his teeth. “God knows what it was. I’ve never
     understood you; I shall never understand you. You had everything
     you wanted; and you can have it again, and more. What’s the
     matter with me? I ask you a plain question: What is it?”
     Unconscious of the pathos in that enquiry, he went on
     passionately: “I’m not lame, I’m not loathsome, I’m not a boor,
     I’m not a fool. What is it? What’s the mystery about me?”

     Her answer was a long sigh.

     He clasped his hands with a gesture that for him was strangely
     full of expression. “When I came here to-night I was—I hoped—I
     meant everything that I could to do away with the past, and start
     fair again. And you meet me with ‘nerves,’ and silence, and
     sighs. There’s nothing tangible. It’s like—it’s like a spider’s
     web.”

     “Yes.”

     That whisper from across the room maddened Soames afresh.

     “Well, I don’t choose to be in a spider’s web. I’ll cut it.” He
     walked straight up to her. “Now!” What he had gone up to her to
     do he really did not know. But when he was close, the old
     familiar scent of her clothes suddenly affected him. He put his
     hands on her shoulders and bent forward to kiss her. He kissed
     not her lips, but a little hard line where the lips had been
     drawn in; then his face was pressed away by her hands; he heard
     her say: “Oh! No!” Shame, compunction, sense of futility flooded
     his whole being, he turned on his heel and went straight out.




     CHAPTER III VISIT TO IRENE


     Jolyon found June waiting on the platform at Paddington. She had
     received his telegram while at breakfast. Her abode—a studio and
     two bedrooms in a St. John’s Wood garden—had been selected by her
     for the complete independence which it guaranteed. Unwatched by
     Mrs. Grundy, unhindered by permanent domestics, she could receive
     lame ducks at any hour of day or night, and not seldom had a duck
     without studio of its own made use of June’s. She enjoyed her
     freedom, and possessed herself with a sort of virginal passion;
     the warmth which she would have lavished on Bosinney, and of
     which—given her Forsyte tenacity—he must surely have tired, she
     now expended in championship of the underdogs and budding
     “geniuses” of the artistic world. She lived, in fact, to turn
     ducks into the swans she believed they were. The very fervour of
     her protection warped her judgments. But she was loyal and
     liberal; her small eager hand was ever against the oppressions of
     academic and commercial opinion, and though her income was
     considerable, her bank balance was often a minus quantity.

     She had come to Paddington Station heated in her soul by a visit
     to Eric Cobbley. A miserable Gallery had refused to let that
     straight-haired genius have his one-man show after all. Its
     impudent manager, after visiting his studio, had expressed the
     opinion that it would only be a “one-horse show from the selling
     point of view.” This crowning example of commercial cowardice
     towards her favourite lame duck—and he so hard up, with a wife
     and two children, that he had caused her account to be
     overdrawn—was still making the blood glow in her small, resolute
     face, and her red-gold hair to shine more than ever. She gave her
     father a hug, and got into a cab with him, having as many fish to
     fry with him as he with her. It became at once a question which
     would fry them first.

     Jolyon had reached the words: “My dear, I want you to come with
     me,” when, glancing at her face, he perceived by her blue eyes
     moving from side to side—like the tail of a preoccupied cat—that
     she was not attending. “Dad, is it true that I absolutely can’t
     get at any of my money?”

     “Only the income, fortunately, my love.”

     “How perfectly beastly! Can’t it be done somehow? There must be a
     way. I know I could buy a small Gallery for ten thousand pounds.”

     “A small Gallery,” murmured Jolyon, “seems a modest desire. But
     your grandfather foresaw it.”

     “I think,” cried June vigorously, “that all this care about money
     is awful, when there’s so much genius in the world simply crushed
     out for want of a little. I shall never marry and have children;
     why shouldn’t I be able to do some good instead of having it all
     tied up in case of things which will never come off?”

     “Our name is Forsyte, my dear,” replied Jolyon in the ironical
     voice to which his impetuous daughter had never quite grown
     accustomed; “and Forsytes, you know, are people who so settle
     their property that their grandchildren, in case they should die
     before their parents, have to make wills leaving the property
     that will only come to themselves when their parents die. Do you
     follow that? Nor do I, but it’s a fact, anyway; we live by the
     principle that so long as there is a possibility of keeping
     wealth in the family it must not go out; if you die unmarried,
     your money goes to Jolly and Holly and their children if they
     marry. Isn’t it pleasant to know that whatever you do you can
     none of you be destitute?”

     “But can’t I borrow the money?”

     Jolyon shook his head. “You could rent a Gallery, no doubt, if
     you could manage it out of your income.”

     June uttered a contemptuous sound.

     “Yes; and have no income left to help anybody with.”

     “My dear child,” murmured Jolyon, “wouldn’t it come to the same
     thing?”

     “No,” said June shrewdly, “I could buy for ten thousand; that
     would only be four hundred a year. But I should have to pay a
     thousand a year rent, and that would only leave me five hundred.
     If I had the Gallery, Dad, think what I could do. I could make
     Eric Cobbley’s name in no time, and ever so many others.”

     “Names worth making make themselves in time.”

     “When they’re dead.”

     “Did you ever know anybody living, my dear, improved by having
     his name made?”

     “Yes, you,” said June, pressing his arm.

     Jolyon started. “I?” he thought. “Oh! Ah! Now she’s going to ask
     me to do something. We take it out, we Forsytes, each in our
     different ways.”

     June came closer to him in the cab.

     “Darling,” she said, “you buy the Gallery, and I’ll pay you four
     hundred a year for it. Then neither of us will be any the worse
     off. Besides, it’s a splendid investment.”

     Jolyon wriggled. “Don’t you think,” he said, “that for an artist
     to buy a Gallery is a bit dubious? Besides, ten thousand pounds
     is a lump, and I’m not a commercial character.”

     June looked at him with admiring appraisement.

     “Of course you’re not, but you’re awfully businesslike. And I’m
     sure we could make it pay. It’ll be a perfect way of scoring off
     those wretched dealers and people.” And again she squeezed her
     father’s arm.

     Jolyon’s face expressed quizzical despair.

     “Where is this desirable Gallery? Splendidly situated, I
     suppose?”

     “Just off Cork Street.”

     “Ah!” thought Jolyon, “I knew it was just off somewhere. Now for
     what I want out of _her!_”

     “Well, I’ll think of it, but not just now. You remember Irene? I
     want you to come with me and see her. Soames is after her again.
     She might be safer if we could give her asylum somewhere.”

     The word asylum, which he had used by chance, was of all most
     calculated to rouse June’s interest.

     “Irene! I haven’t seen her since! Of course! I’d love to help
     her.”

     It was Jolyon’s turn to squeeze her arm, in warm admiration for
     this spirited, generous-hearted little creature of his begetting.

     “Irene is proud,” he said, with a sidelong glance, in sudden
     doubt of June’s discretion; “she’s difficult to help. We must
     tread gently. This is the place. I wired her to expect us. Let’s
     send up our cards.”

     “I can’t bear Soames,” said June as she got out; “he sneers at
     everything that isn’t successful.”

     Irene was in what was called the “Ladies’ drawing-room” of the
     Piedmont Hotel.

     Nothing if not morally courageous, June walked straight up to her
     former friend, kissed her cheek, and the two settled down on a
     sofa never sat on since the hotel’s foundation. Jolyon could see
     that Irene was deeply affected by this simple forgiveness.

     “So Soames has been worrying you?” he said.

     “I had a visit from him last night; he wants me to go back to
     him.”

     “You’re not going, of course?” cried June.

     Irene smiled faintly and shook her head. “But his position is
     horrible,” she murmured.

     “It’s his own fault; he ought to have divorced you when he
     could.”

     Jolyon remembered how fervently in the old days June had hoped
     that no divorce would smirch her dead and faithless lover’s name.

     “Let us hear what Irene _is_ going to do,” he said.

     Irene’s lips quivered, but she spoke calmly.

     “I’d better give him fresh excuse to get rid of me.”

     “How horrible!” cried June.

     “What else can I do?”

     “Out of the question,” said Jolyon very quietly, “_sans amour_.”

     He thought she was going to cry; but, getting up quickly, she
     half turned her back on them, and stood regaining control of
     herself.

     June said suddenly:

     “Well, I shall go to Soames and tell him he must leave you alone.
     What does he want at his age?”

     “A child. It’s not unnatural”

     “A child!” cried June scornfully. “Of course! To leave his money
     to. If he wants one badly enough let him take somebody and have
     one; then you can divorce him, and he can marry her.”

     Jolyon perceived suddenly that he had made a mistake to bring
     June—her violent partizanship was fighting Soames’ battle.

     “It would be best for Irene to come quietly to us at Robin Hill,
     and see how things shape.”

     “Of course,” said June; “only....”

     Irene looked full at Jolyon—in all his many attempts afterwards
     to analyze that glance he never could succeed.

     “No! I should only bring trouble on you all. I will go abroad.”

     He knew from her voice that this was final. The irrelevant
     thought flashed through him: “Well, I could see her there.” But
     he said:

     “Don’t you think you would be more helpless abroad, in case he
     followed?”

     “I don’t know. I can but try.”

     June sprang up and paced the room. “It’s all horrible,” she said.
     “Why should people be tortured and kept miserable and helpless
     year after year by this disgusting sanctimonious law?” But
     someone had come into the room, and June came to a standstill.
     Jolyon went up to Irene:

     “Do you want money?”

     “No.”

     “And would you like me to let your flat?”

     “Yes, Jolyon, please.”

     “When shall you be going?”

     “To-morrow.”

     “You won’t go back there in the meantime, will you?” This he said
     with an anxiety strange to himself.

     “No; I’ve got all I want here.”

     “You’ll send me your address?”

     She put out her hand to him. “I feel you’re a rock.”

     “Built on sand,” answered Jolyon, pressing her hand hard; “but
     it’s a pleasure to do anything, at any time, remember that. And
     if you change your mind...! Come along, June; say good-bye.”

     June came from the window and flung her arms round Irene.

     “Don’t think of him,” she said under her breath; “enjoy yourself,
     and bless you!”

     With a memory of tears in Irene’s eyes, and of a smile on her
     lips, they went away extremely silent, passing the lady who had
     interrupted the interview and was turning over the papers on the
     table.

     Opposite the National Gallery June exclaimed:

     “Of all undignified beasts and horrible laws!”

     But Jolyon did not respond. He had something of his father’s
     balance, and could see things impartially even when his emotions
     were roused. Irene was right; Soames’ position was as bad or
     worse than her own. As for the law—it catered for a human nature
     of which it took a naturally low view. And, feeling that if he
     stayed in his daughter’s company he would in one way or another
     commit an indiscretion, he told her he must catch his train back
     to Oxford; and hailing a cab, left her to Turner’s water-colours,
     with the promise that he would think over that Gallery.

     But he thought over Irene instead. Pity, they said, was akin to
     love! If so he was certainly in danger of loving her, for he
     pitied her profoundly. To think of her drifting about Europe so
     handicapped and lonely! “I hope to goodness she’ll keep her
     head!” he thought; “she might easily grow desperate.” In fact,
     now that she had cut loose from her poor threads of occupation,
     he couldn’t imagine how she would go on—so beautiful a creature,
     hopeless, and fair game for anyone! In his exasperation was more
     than a little fear and jealousy. Women did strange things when
     they were driven into corners. “I wonder what Soames will do
     now!” he thought. “A rotten, idiotic state of things! And I
     suppose they would say it was her own fault.” Very preoccupied
     and sore at heart, he got into his train, mislaid his ticket, and
     on the platform at Oxford took his hat off to a lady whose face
     he seemed to remember without being able to put a name to her,
     not even when he saw her having tea at the Rainbow.




     CHAPTER IV WHERE FORSYTES FEAR TO TREAD


     Quivering from the defeat of his hopes, with the green morocco
     case still flat against his heart, Soames revolved thoughts
     bitter as death. A spider’s web! Walking fast, and noting nothing
     in the moonlight, he brooded over the scene he had been through,
     over the memory of her figure rigid in his grasp. And the more he
     brooded, the more certain he became that she had a lover—her
     words, “I would sooner die!” were ridiculous if she had not. Even
     if she had never loved him, she had made no fuss until Bosinney
     came on the scene. No; she was in love again, or she would not
     have made that melodramatic answer to his proposal, which in all
     the circumstances was reasonable! Very well! That simplified
     matters.

     “I’ll take steps to know where I am,” he thought; “I’ll go to
     Polteed’s the first thing tomorrow morning.”

     But even in forming that resolution he knew he would have trouble
     with himself. He had employed Polteed’s agency several times in
     the routine of his profession, even quite lately over Dartie’s
     case, but he had never thought it possible to employ them to
     watch his own wife.

     It was too insulting to himself!

     He slept over that project and his wounded pride—or rather, kept
     vigil. Only while shaving did he suddenly remember that she
     called herself by her maiden name of Heron. Polteed would not
     know, at first at all events, whose wife she was, would not look
     at him obsequiously and leer behind his back. She would just be
     the wife of one of his clients. And that would be true—for was he
     not his own solicitor?

     He was literally afraid not to put his design into execution at
     the first possible moment, lest, after all, he might fail
     himself. And making Warmson bring him an early cup of coffee; he
     stole out of the house before the hour of breakfast. He walked
     rapidly to one of those small West End streets where Polteed’s
     and other firms ministered to the virtues of the wealthier
     classes. Hitherto he had always had Polteed to see him in the
     Poultry; but he well knew their address, and reached it at the
     opening hour. In the outer office, a room furnished so cosily
     that it might have been a money-lender’s, he was attended by a
     lady who might have been a schoolmistress.

     “I wish to see Mr. Claud Polteed. He knows me—never mind my
     name.”

     To keep everybody from knowing that he, Soames Forsyte, was
     reduced to having his wife spied on, was the overpowering
     consideration.

     Mr. Claud Polteed—so different from Mr. Lewis Polteed—was one of
     those men with dark hair, slightly curved noses, and quick brown
     eyes, who might be taken for Jews but are really Phœnicians; he
     received Soames in a room hushed by thickness of carpet and
     curtains. It was, in fact, confidentially furnished, without
     trace of document anywhere to be seen.

     Greeting Soames deferentially, he turned the key in the only door
     with a certain ostentation.

     “If a client sends for me,” he was in the habit of saying, “he
     takes what precaution he likes. If he comes here, we convince him
     that we have no leakages. I may safely say we lead in security,
     if in nothing else....Now, sir, what can I do for you?”

     Soames’ gorge had risen so that he could hardly speak. It was
     absolutely necessary to hide from this man that he had any but
     professional interest in the matter; and, mechanically, his face
     assumed its sideway smile.

     “I’ve come to you early like this because there’s not an hour to
     lose”—if he lost an hour he might fail himself yet! “Have you a
     really trustworthy woman free?”

     Mr. Polteed unlocked a drawer, produced a memorandum, ran his
     eyes over it, and locked the drawer up again.

     “Yes,” he said; “the very woman.”

     Soames had seated himself and crossed his legs—nothing but a
     faint flush, which might have been his normal complexion,
     betrayed him.

     “Send her off at once, then, to watch a Mrs. Irene Heron of Flat
     C, Truro Mansions, Chelsea, till further notice.”

     “Precisely,” said Mr. Polteed; “divorce, I presume?” and he blew
     into a speaking-tube. “Mrs. Blanch in? I shall want to speak to
     her in ten minutes.”

     “Deal with any reports yourself,” resumed Soames, “and send them
     to me personally, marked confidential, sealed and registered. My
     client exacts the utmost secrecy.”

     Mr. Polteed smiled, as though saying, “You are teaching your
     grandmother, my dear sir;” and his eyes slid over Soames’ face
     for one unprofessional instant.

     “Make his mind perfectly easy,” he said. “Do you smoke?”

     “No,” said Soames. “Understand me: Nothing may come of this. If a
     name gets out, or the watching is suspected, it may have very
     serious consequences.”

     Mr. Polteed nodded. “I can put it into the cipher category. Under
     that system a name is never mentioned; we work by numbers.”

     He unlocked another drawer and took out two slips of paper, wrote
     on them, and handed one to Soames.

     “Keep that, sir; it’s your key. I retain this duplicate. The case
     we’ll call 7x. The party watched will be 17; the watcher 19; the
     Mansions 25; yourself—I should say, your firm—31; my firm 32,
     myself 2. In case you should have to mention your client in
     writing I have called him 43; any person we suspect will be 47; a
     second person 51. Any special hint or instruction while we’re
     about it?”

     “No,” said Soames; “that is—every consideration compatible.”

     Again Mr. Polteed nodded. “Expense?”

     Soames shrugged. “In reason,” he answered curtly, and got up.
     “Keep it entirely in your own hands.”

     “Entirely,” said Mr. Polteed, appearing suddenly between him and
     the door. “I shall be seeing you in that other case before long.
     Good morning, sir.” His eyes slid unprofessionally over Soames
     once more, and he unlocked the door.

     “Good morning,” said Soames, looking neither to right nor left.

     Out in the street he swore deeply, quietly, to himself. A
     spider’s web, and to cut it he must use this spidery, secret,
     unclean method, so utterly repugnant to one who regarded his
     private life as his most sacred piece of property. But the die
     was cast, he could not go back. And he went on into the Poultry,
     and locked away the green morocco case and the key to that cipher
     destined to make crystal-clear his domestic bankruptcy.

     Odd that one whose life was spent in bringing to the public eye
     all the private coils of property, the domestic disagreements of
     others, should dread so utterly the public eye turned on his own;
     and yet not odd, for who should know so well as he the whole
     unfeeling process of legal regulation.

     He worked hard all day. Winifred was due at four o’clock; he was
     to take her down to a conference in the Temple with Dreamer Q.C.,
     and waiting for her he re-read the letter he had caused her to
     write the day of Dartie’s departure, requiring him to return.

     “DEAR MONTAGUE,
         “I have received your letter with the news that you have left
         me for ever and are on your way to Buenos Aires. It has
         naturally been a great shock. I am taking this earliest
         opportunity of writing to tell you that I am prepared to let
         bygones be bygones if you will return to me at once. I beg
         you to do so. I am very much upset, and will not say any more
         now. I am sending this letter registered to the address you
         left at your Club. Please cable to me.

     “Your still affectionate wife,
     “WINIFRED DARTIE.”

     Ugh! What bitter humbug! He remembered leaning over Winifred
     while she copied what he had pencilled, and how she had said,
     laying down her pen, “Suppose he comes, Soames!” in such a
     strange tone of voice, as if she did not know her own mind. “He
     won’t come,” he had answered, “till he’s spent his money. That’s
     why we must act at once.” Annexed to the copy of that letter was
     the original of Dartie’s drunken scrawl from the Iseeum Club.
     Soames could have wished it had not been so manifestly penned in
     liquor. Just the sort of thing the Court would pitch on. He
     seemed to hear the Judge’s voice say: “You took this seriously!
     Seriously enough to write him as you did? Do you think he meant
     it?” Never mind! The fact was clear that Dartie had sailed and
     had not returned. Annexed also was his cabled answer: “Impossible
     return. Dartie.” Soames shook his head. If the whole thing were
     not disposed of within the next few months the fellow would turn
     up again like a bad penny. It saved a thousand a year at least to
     get rid of him, besides all the worry to Winifred and his father.
     “I must stiffen Dreamer’s back,” he thought; “we must push it
     on.”

     Winifred, who had adopted a kind of half-mourning which became
     her fair hair and tall figure very well, arrived in James’
     barouche drawn by James’ pair. Soames had not seen it in the City
     since his father retired from business five years ago, and its
     incongruity gave him a shock. “Times are changing,” he thought;
     “one doesn’t know what’ll go next!” Top hats even were scarcer.
     He enquired after Val. Val, said Winifred, wrote that he was
     going to play polo next term. She thought he was in a very good
     set. She added with fashionably disguised anxiety: “Will there be
     much publicity about my affair, Soames? _Must_ it be in the
     papers? It’s so bad for him, and the girls.”

     With his own calamity all raw within him, Soames answered:

     “The papers are a pushing lot; it’s very difficult to keep things
     out. They pretend to be guarding the public’s morals, and they
     corrupt them with their beastly reports. But we haven’t got to
     that yet. We’re only seeing Dreamer to-day on the restitution
     question. Of course he understands that it’s to lead to a
     divorce; but you must seem genuinely anxious to get Dartie
     back—you might practise that attitude to-day.”

     Winifred sighed.

     “Oh! What a clown Monty’s been!” she said.

     Soames gave her a sharp look. It was clear to him that she could
     not take her Dartie seriously, and would go back on the whole
     thing if given half a chance. His own instinct had been firm in
     this matter from the first. To save a little scandal now would
     only bring on his sister and her children real disgrace and
     perhaps ruin later on if Dartie were allowed to hang on to them,
     going down-hill and spending the money James would leave his
     daughter. Though it _was_ all tied up, that fellow would milk the
     settlements somehow, and make his family pay through the nose to
     keep him out of bankruptcy or even perhaps gaol! They left the
     shining carriage, with the shining horses and the shining-hatted
     servants on the Embankment, and walked up to Dreamer Q.C.’s
     Chambers in Crown Office Row.

     “Mr. Bellby is here, sir,” said the clerk; “Mr. Dreamer will be
     ten minutes.”

     Mr. Bellby, the junior—not as junior as he might have been, for
     Soames only employed barristers of established reputation; it
     was, indeed, something of a mystery to him how barristers ever
     managed to establish that which made him employ them—Mr. Bellby
     was seated, taking a final glance through his papers. He had come
     from Court, and was in wig and gown, which suited a nose jutting
     out like the handle of a tiny pump, his small shrewd blue eyes,
     and rather protruding lower lip—no better man to supplement and
     stiffen Dreamer.

     The introduction to Winifred accomplished, they leaped the
     weather and spoke of the war. Soames interrupted suddenly:

     “If he doesn’t comply we can’t bring proceedings for six months.
     I want to get on with the matter, Bellby.”

     Mr. Bellby, who had the ghost of an Irish brogue, smiled at
     Winifred and murmured: “The Law’s delays, Mrs. Dartie.”

     “Six months!” repeated Soames; “it’ll drive it up to June! We
     shan’t get the suit on till after the long vacation. We must put
     the screw on, Bellby”—he would have all his work cut out to keep
     Winifred up to the scratch.

     “Mr. Dreamer will see you now, sir.”

     They filed in, Mr. Bellby going first, and Soames escorting
     Winifred after an interval of one minute by his watch.

     Dreamer Q.C., in a gown but divested of wig, was standing before
     the fire, as if this conference were in the nature of a treat; he
     had the leathery, rather oily complexion which goes with great
     learning, a considerable nose with glasses perched on it, and
     little greyish whiskers; he luxuriated in the perpetual cocking
     of one eye, and the concealment of his lower with his upper lip,
     which gave a smothered turn to his speech. He had a way, too, of
     coming suddenly round the corner on the person he was talking to;
     this, with a disconcerting tone of voice, and a habit of growling
     before he began to speak—had secured a reputation second in
     Probate and Divorce to very few. Having listened, eye cocked, to
     Mr. Bellby’s breezy recapitulation of the facts, he growled, and
     said:

     “I know all that;” and coming round the corner at Winifred,
     smothered the words:

     “We want to get him back, don’t we, Mrs. Dartie?”

     Soames interposed sharply:

     “My sister’s position, of course, is intolerable.”

     Dreamer growled. “Exactly. Now, can we rely on the cabled
     refusal, or must we wait till after Christmas to give him a
     chance to have written—that’s the point, isn’t it?”

     “The sooner....” Soames began.

     “What do you say, Bellby?” said Dreamer, coming round his corner.

     Mr. Bellby seemed to sniff the air like a hound.

     “We won’t be on till the middle of December. We’ve no need to
     give um more rope than that.”

     “No,” said Soames, “why should my sister be incommoded by his
     choosing to go...”

     “To Jericho!” said Dreamer, again coming round his corner; “quite
     so. People oughtn’t to go to Jericho, ought they, Mrs. Dartie?”
     And he raised his gown into a sort of fantail. “I agree. We can
     go forward. Is there anything more?”

     “Nothing at present,” said Soames meaningly; “I wanted you to see
     my sister.”

     Dreamer growled softly: “Delighted. Good evening!” And let fall
     the protection of his gown.

     They filed out. Winifred went down the stairs. Soames lingered.
     In spite of himself he was impressed by Dreamer.

     “The evidence is all right, I think,” he said to Bellby. “Between
     ourselves, if we don’t get the thing through quick, we never may.
     D’you think _he_ understands that?”

     “I’ll make um,” said Bellby. “Good man though—good man.”

     Soames nodded and hastened after his sister. He found her in a
     draught, biting her lips behind her veil, and at once said:

     “The evidence of the stewardess will be very complete.”

     Winifred’s face hardened; she drew herself up, and they walked to
     the carriage. And, all through that silent drive back to Green
     Street, the souls of both of them revolved a single thought:
     “Why, oh! why should I have to expose my misfortune to the public
     like this? Why have to employ spies to peer into my private
     troubles? They were not of my making.”




     CHAPTER V JOLLY SITS IN JUDGMENT


     The possessive instinct, which, so determinedly balked, was
     animating two members of the Forsyte family towards riddance of
     what they could no longer possess, was hardening daily in the
     British body politic. Nicholas, originally so doubtful concerning
     a war which must affect property, had been heard to say that
     these Boers were a pig-headed lot; they were causing a lot of
     expense, and the sooner they had their lesson the better. _He_
     would send out Wolseley! Seeing always a little further than
     other people—whence the most considerable fortune of all the
     Forsytes—he had perceived already that Buller was not the man—“a
     bull of a chap, who just went butting, and if they didn’t look
     out Ladysmith would fall.” This was early in December, so that
     when Black Week came, he was enabled to say to everybody: “I told
     you so.” During that week of gloom such as no Forsyte could
     remember, very young Nicholas attended so many drills in his
     corps, “The Devil’s Own,” that young Nicholas consulted the
     family physician about his son’s health and was alarmed to find
     that he was perfectly sound. The boy had only just eaten his
     dinners and been called to the bar, at some expense, and it was
     in a way a nightmare to his father and mother that he should be
     playing with military efficiency at a time when military
     efficiency in the civilian population might conceivably be
     wanted. His grandfather, of course, pooh-poohed the notion, too
     thoroughly educated in the feeling that no British war could be
     other than little and professional, and profoundly distrustful of
     Imperial commitments, by which, moreover, he stood to lose, for
     he owned De Beers, now going down fast, more than a sufficient
     sacrifice on the part of his grandson.

     At Oxford, however, rather different sentiments prevailed. The
     inherent effervescence of conglomerate youth had, during the two
     months of the term before Black Week, been gradually
     crystallising out into vivid oppositions. Normal adolescence,
     ever in England of a conservative tendency though not taking
     things too seriously, was vehement for a fight to a finish and a
     good licking for the Boers. Of this larger faction Val Dartie was
     naturally a member. Radical youth, on the other hand, a small but
     perhaps more vocal body, was for stopping the war and giving the
     Boers autonomy. Until Black Week, however, the groups were
     amorphous, without sharp edges, and argument remained but
     academic. Jolly was one of those who knew not where he stood. A
     streak of his grandfather old Jolyon’s love of justice prevented,
     him from seeing one side only. Moreover, in his set of “the best”
     there was a “jumping-Jesus” of extremely advanced opinions and
     some personal magnetism. Jolly wavered. His father, too, seemed
     doubtful in his views. And though, as was proper at the age of
     twenty, he kept a sharp eye on his father, watchful for defects
     which might still be remedied, still that father had an “air”
     which gave a sort of glamour to his creed of ironic tolerance.
     Artists, of course, were notoriously Hamlet-like, and to this
     extent one must discount for one’s father, even if one loved him.
     But Jolyon’s original view, that to “put your nose in where you
     aren’t wanted” (as the Uitlanders had done) “and then work the
     oracle till you get on top is not being quite the clean potato,”
     had, whether founded in fact or no, a certain attraction for his
     son, who thought a deal about gentility. On the other hand Jolly
     could not abide such as his set called “cranks,” and Val’s set
     called “smugs,” so that he was still balancing when the clock of
     Black Week struck. One—two—three, came those ominous repulses at
     Stormberg, Magersfontein, Colenso. The sturdy English soul
     reacting after the first cried, “Ah! but Methuen!” after the
     second: “Ah! but Buller!” then, in inspissated gloom, hardened.
     And Jolly said to himself: “No, damn it! We’ve got to lick the
     beggars now; I don’t care whether we’re right or wrong.” And, if
     he had known it, his father was thinking the same thought.

     That next Sunday, last of the term, Jolly was bidden to wine with
     “one of the best.” After the second toast, “Buller and damnation
     to the Boers,” drunk—no heel taps—in the college Burgundy, he
     noticed that Val Dartie, also a guest, was looking at him with a
     grin and saying something to his neighbour. He was sure it was
     disparaging. The last boy in the world to make himself
     conspicuous or cause public disturbance, Jolly grew rather red
     and shut his lips. The queer hostility he had always felt towards
     his second-cousin was strongly and suddenly reinforced. “All
     right!” he thought, “you wait, my friend!” More wine than was
     good for him, as the custom was, helped him to remember, when
     they all trooped forth to a secluded spot, to touch Val on the
     arm.

     “What did you say about me in there?”

     “Mayn’t I say what I like?”

     “No.”

     “Well, I said you were a pro-Boer—and so you are!”

     “You’re a liar!”

     “D’you want a row?”

     “Of course, but not here; in the garden.”

     “All right. Come on.”

     They went, eyeing each other askance, unsteady, and unflinching;
     they climbed the garden railings. The spikes on the top slightly
     ripped Val’s sleeve, and occupied his mind. Jolly’s mind was
     occupied by the thought that they were going to fight in the
     precincts of a college foreign to them both. It was not the
     thing, but never mind—the young beast!

     They passed over the grass into very nearly darkness, and took
     off their coats.

     “You’re not screwed, are you?” said Jolly suddenly. “I can’t
     fight you if you’re screwed.”

     “No more than you.”

     “All right then.”

     Without shaking hands, they put themselves at once into postures
     of defence. They had drunk too much for science, and so were
     especially careful to assume correct attitudes, until Jolly smote
     Val almost accidentally on the nose. After that it was all a dark
     and ugly scrimmage in the deep shadow of the old trees, with no
     one to call “time,” till, battered and blown, they unclinched and
     staggered back from each other, as a voice said:

     “Your names, young gentlemen?”

     At this bland query spoken from under the lamp at the garden
     gate, like some demand of a god, their nerves gave way, and
     snatching up their coats, they ran at the railings, shinned up
     them, and made for the secluded spot whence they had issued to
     the fight. Here, in dim light, they mopped their faces, and
     without a word walked, ten paces apart, to the college gate. They
     went out silently, Val going towards the Broad along the Brewery,
     Jolly down the lane towards the High. His head, still fumed, was
     busy with regret that he had not displayed more science, passing
     in review the counters and knockout blows which he had not
     delivered. His mind strayed on to an imagined combat, infinitely
     unlike that which he had just been through, infinitely gallant,
     with sash and sword, with thrust and parry, as if he were in the
     pages of his beloved Dumas. He fancied himself La Mole, and
     Aramis, Bussy, Chicot, and D’Artagnan rolled into one, but he
     quite failed to envisage Val as Coconnas, Brissac, or Rochefort.
     The fellow was just a confounded cousin who didn’t come up to
     Cocker. Never mind! He had given him one or two. “Pro-Boer!” The
     word still rankled, and thoughts of enlisting jostled his aching
     head; of riding over the veldt, firing gallantly, while the Boers
     rolled over like rabbits. And, turning up his smarting eyes, he
     saw the stars shining between the housetops of the High, and
     himself lying out on the Karoo (whatever that was) rolled in a
     blanket, with his rifle ready and his gaze fixed on a glittering
     heaven.

     He had a fearful “head” next morning, which he doctored, as
     became one of “the best,” by soaking it in cold water, brewing
     strong coffee which he could not drink, and only sipping a little
     Hock at lunch. The legend that “some fool” had run into him round
     a corner accounted for a bruise on his cheek. He would on no
     account have mentioned the fight, for, on second thoughts, it
     fell far short of his standards.

     The next day he went “down,” and travelled through to Robin Hill.
     Nobody was there but June and Holly, for his father had gone to
     Paris. He spent a restless and unsettled Vacation, quite out of
     touch with either of his sisters. June, indeed, was occupied with
     lame ducks, whom, as a rule, Jolly could not stand, especially
     that Eric Cobbley and his family, “hopeless outsiders,” who were
     always littering up the house in the Vacation. And between Holly
     and himself there was a strange division, as if she were
     beginning to have opinions of her own, which was so—unnecessary.
     He punched viciously at a ball, rode furiously but alone in
     Richmond Park, making a point of jumping the stiff, high hurdles
     put up to close certain worn avenues of grass—keeping his nerve
     in, he called it. Jolly was more afraid of being afraid than most
     boys are. He bought a rifle, too, and put a range up in the home
     field, shooting across the pond into the kitchen-garden wall, to
     the peril of gardeners, with the thought that some day, perhaps,
     he would enlist and save South Africa for his country. In fact,
     now that they were appealing for Yeomanry recruits the boy was
     thoroughly upset. Ought he to go? None of “the best,” so far as
     he knew—and he was in correspondence with several—were thinking
     of joining. If they _had_ been making a move he would have gone
     at once—very competitive, and with a strong sense of form, he
     could not bear to be left behind in anything—but to do it off his
     own bat might look like “swagger”. because of course it wasn’t
     really necessary. Besides, he did not want to go, for the other
     side of this young Forsyte recoiled from leaping before he
     looked. It was altogether mixed pickles within him, hot and
     sickly pickles, and he became quite unlike his serene and rather
     lordly self.

     And then one day he saw that which moved him to uneasy wrath—two
     riders, in a glade of the Park close to the Ham Gate, of whom she
     on the left-hand was most assuredly Holly on her silver roan, and
     he on the right-hand as assuredly that “squirt” Val Dartie. His
     first impulse was to urge on his own horse and demand the meaning
     of this portent, tell the fellow to “bunk,” and take Holly home.
     His second—to feel that he would look a fool if they refused. He
     reined his horse in behind a tree, then perceived that it was
     equally impossible to spy on them. Nothing for it but to go home
     and await her coming! Sneaking out with that young bounder! He
     could not consult with June, because she had gone up that morning
     in the train of Eric Cobbley and his lot. And his father was
     still in “that rotten Paris.” He felt that this was emphatically
     one of those moments for which he had trained himself,
     assiduously, at school, where he and a boy called Brent had
     frequently set fire to newspapers and placed them in the centre
     of their studies to accustom them to coolness in moments of
     danger. He did not feel at all cool waiting in the stable-yard,
     idly stroking the dog Balthasar, who queasy as an old fat monk,
     and sad in the absence of his master, turned up his face, panting
     with gratitude for this attention. It was half an hour before
     Holly came, flushed and ever so much prettier than she had any
     right to look. He saw her look at him quickly—guiltily of
     course—then followed her in, and, taking her arm, conducted her
     into what had been their grandfather’s study. The room, not much
     used now, was still vaguely haunted for them both by a presence
     with which they associated tenderness, large drooping white
     moustaches, the scent of cigar smoke, and laughter. Here Jolly,
     in the prime of his youth, before he went to school at all, had
     been wont to wrestle with his grandfather, who even at eighty had
     an irresistible habit of crooking his leg. Here Holly, perched on
     the arm of the great leather chair, had stroked hair curving
     silvery over an ear into which she would whisper secrets. Through
     that window they had all three sallied times without number to
     cricket on the lawn, and a mysterious game called “Wopsy-doozle,”
     not to be understood by outsiders, which made old Jolyon very
     hot. Here once on a warm night Holly had appeared in her
     “nighty,” having had a bad dream, to have the clutch of it
     released. And here Jolly, having begun the day badly by
     introducing fizzy magnesia into Mademoiselle Beauce’s new-laid
     egg, and gone on to worse, had been sent down (in the absence of
     his father) to the ensuing dialogue:

     “Now, my boy, you mustn’t go on like this.”

     “Well, she boxed my ears, Gran, so I only boxed hers, and then
     she boxed mine again.”

     “Strike a lady? That’ll never do! Have you begged her pardon?”

     “Not yet.”

     “Then you must go and do it at once. Come along.”

     “But she began it, Gran; and she had two to my one.”

     “My dear, it was an outrageous thing to do.”

     “Well, she lost her temper; and I didn’t lose mine.”

     “Come along.”

     “You come too, then, Gran.”

     “Well—this time only.”

     And they had gone hand in hand.

     Here—where the Waverley novels and Byron’s works and Gibbon’s
     _Roman Empire_ and Humboldt’s _Cosmos_, and the bronzes on the
     mantelpiece, and that masterpiece of the oily school, “Dutch
     Fishing-Boats at Sunset,” were fixed as fate, and for all sign of
     change old Jolyon might have been sitting there still, with legs
     crossed, in the arm chair, and domed forehead and deep eyes grave
     above _The Times_—here they came, those two grandchildren. And
     Jolly said:

     “I saw you and that fellow in the Park.”

     The sight of blood rushing into her cheeks gave him some
     satisfaction; she _ought_ to be ashamed!

     “Well?” she said.

     Jolly was surprised; he had expected more, or less.

     “Do you know,” he said weightily, “that he called me a pro-Boer
     last term? And I had to fight him.”

     “Who won?”

     Jolly wished to answer: “I should have,” but it seemed beneath
     him.

     “Look here!” he said, “what’s the meaning of it? Without telling
     anybody!”

     “Why should I? Dad isn’t here; why shouldn’t I ride with him?”

     “You’ve got me to ride with. I think he’s an awful young rotter.”

     Holly went pale with anger.

     “He isn’t. It’s your own fault for not liking him.”

     And slipping past her brother she went out, leaving him staring
     at the bronze Venus sitting on a tortoise, which had been
     shielded from him so far by his sister’s dark head under her soft
     felt riding hat. He felt queerly disturbed, shaken to his young
     foundations. A lifelong domination lay shattered round his feet.
     He went up to the Venus and mechanically inspected the tortoise.

     Why didn’t he like Val Dartie? He could not tell. Ignorant of
     family history, barely aware of that vague feud which had started
     thirteen years before with Bosinney’s defection from June in
     favour of Soames’ wife, knowing really almost nothing about Val
     he was at sea. He just _did_ dislike him. The question, however,
     was: What should he do? Val Dartie, it was true, was a
     second-cousin, but it was not the thing for Holly to go about
     with him. And yet to “tell” of what he had chanced on was against
     his creed. In this dilemma he went and sat in the old leather
     chair and crossed his legs. It grew dark while he sat there
     staring out through the long window at the old oak-tree, ample
     yet bare of leaves, becoming slowly just a shape of deeper dark
     printed on the dusk.

     “Grandfather!” he thought without sequence, and took out his
     watch. He could not see the hands, but he set the repeater going.
     “Five o’clock!” His grandfather’s first gold hunter watch,
     butter-smooth with age—all the milling worn from it, and dented
     with the mark of many a fall. The chime was like a little voice
     from out of that golden age, when they first came from St. John’s
     Wood, London, to this house—came driving with grandfather in his
     carriage, and almost instantly took to the trees. Trees to climb,
     and grandfather watering the geranium-beds below! What was to be
     done? Tell Dad he must come home? Confide in June?—only she was
     so—so sudden! Do nothing and trust to luck? After all, the Vac.
     would soon be over. Go up and see Val and warn him off? But how
     get his address? Holly wouldn’t give it him! A maze of paths, a
     cloud of possibilities! He lit a cigarette. When he had smoked it
     halfway through his brow relaxed, almost as if some thin old hand
     had been passed gently over it; and in his ear something seemed
     to whisper: “Do nothing; be nice to Holly, be nice to her, my
     dear!” And Jolly heaved a sigh of contentment, blowing smoke
     through his nostrils....

     But up in her room, divested of her habit, Holly was still
     frowning. “He is _not_—he is _not!_” were the words which kept
     forming on her lips.




     CHAPTER VI JOLYON IN TWO MINDS


     A little private hotel over a well-known restaurant near the Gare
     St. Lazare was Jolyon’s haunt in Paris. He hated his fellow
     Forsytes abroad—vapid as fish out of water in their well-trodden
     runs, the Opera, Rue de Rivoli, and Moulin Rouge. Their air of
     having come because they wanted to be somewhere else as soon as
     possible annoyed him. But no other Forsyte came near this haunt,
     where he had a wood fire in his bedroom and the coffee was
     excellent. Paris was always to him more attractive in winter. The
     acrid savour from woodsmoke and chestnut-roasting braziers, the
     sharpness of the wintry sunshine on bright rays, the open cafés
     defying keen-aired winter, the self-contained brisk boulevard
     crowds, all informed him that in winter Paris possessed a soul
     which, like a migrant bird, in high summer flew away.

     He spoke French well, had some friends, knew little places where
     pleasant dishes could be met with, queer types observed. He felt
     philosophic in Paris, the edge of irony sharpened; life took on a
     subtle, purposeless meaning, became a bunch of flavours tasted, a
     darkness shot with shifting gleams of light.

     When in the first week of December he decided to go to Paris, he
     was far from admitting that Irene’s presence was influencing him.
     He had not been there two days before he owned that the wish to
     see her had been more than half the reason. In England one did
     not admit what was natural. He had thought it might be well to
     speak to her about the letting of her flat and other matters, but
     in Paris he at once knew better. There was a glamour over the
     city. On the third day he wrote to her, and received an answer
     which procured him a pleasurable shiver of the nerves:

     “MY DEAR JOLYON,
         “It will be a happiness for me to see you.

     “IRENE.”

     He took his way to her hotel on a bright day with a feeling such
     as he had often had going to visit an adored picture. No woman,
     so far as he remembered, had ever inspired in him this special
     sensuous and yet impersonal sensation. He was going to sit and
     feast his eyes, and come away knowing her no better, but ready to
     go and feast his eyes again to-morrow. Such was his feeling, when
     in the tarnished and ornate little lounge of a quiet hotel near
     the river she came to him preceded by a small page-boy who
     uttered the word, “_Madame_,” and vanished. Her face, her smile,
     the poise of her figure, were just as he had pictured, and the
     expression of her face said plainly: “A friend!”

     “Well,” he said, “what news, poor exile?”

     “None.”

     “Nothing from Soames?”

     “Nothing.”

     “I have let the flat for you, and like a good steward I bring you
     some money. How do you like Paris?”

     While he put her through this catechism, it seemed to him that he
     had never seen lips so fine and sensitive, the lower lip curving
     just a little upwards, the upper touched at one corner by the
     least conceivable dimple. It was like discovering a woman in what
     had hitherto been a sort of soft and breathed-on statue, almost
     impersonally admired. She owned that to be alone in Paris was a
     little difficult; and yet, Paris was so full of its own life that
     it was often, she confessed, as innocuous as a desert. Besides,
     the English were not liked just now!

     “That will hardly be your case,” said Jolyon; “you should appeal
     to the French.”

     “It has its disadvantages.”

     Jolyon nodded.

     “Well, you must let _me_ take you about while I’m here. We’ll
     start to-morrow. Come and dine at my pet restaurant; and we’ll go
     to the Opéra-Comique.”

     It was the beginning of daily meetings.

     Jolyon soon found that for those who desired a static condition
     of the affections, Paris was at once the first and last place in
     which to be friendly with a pretty woman. Revelation was
     alighting like a bird in his heart, singing: “_Elle est ton rêve!
     Elle est ton rêve!_” Sometimes this seemed natural, sometimes
     ludicrous—a bad case of elderly rapture. Having once been
     ostracised by Society, he had never since had any real regard for
     conventional morality; but the idea of a love which she could
     never return—and how could she at his age?—hardly mounted beyond
     his subconscious mind. He was full, too, of resentment, at the
     waste and loneliness of her life. Aware of being some comfort to
     her, and of the pleasure she clearly took in their many little
     outings, he was amiably desirous of doing and saying nothing to
     destroy that pleasure. It was like watching a starved plant draw
     up water, to see her drink in his companionship. So far as they
     could tell, no one knew her address except himself; she was
     unknown in Paris, and he but little known, so that discretion
     seemed unnecessary in those walks, talks, visits to concerts,
     picture-galleries, theatres, little dinners, expeditions to
     Versailles, St. Cloud, even Fontainebleau. And time fled—one of
     those full months without past to it or future. What in his youth
     would certainly have been headlong passion, was now perhaps as
     deep a feeling, but far gentler, tempered to protective
     companionship by admiration, hopelessness, and a sense of
     chivalry—arrested in his veins at least so long as she was there,
     smiling and happy in their friendship, and always to him more
     beautiful and spiritually responsive: for her philosophy of life
     seemed to march in admirable step with his own, conditioned by
     emotion more than by reason, ironically mistrustful, susceptible
     to beauty, almost passionately humane and tolerant, yet subject
     to instinctive rigidities of which as a mere man he was less
     capable. And during all this companionable month he never quite
     lost that feeling with which he had set out on the first day as
     if to visit an adored work of art, a well-nigh impersonal desire.
     The future—inexorable pendant to the present he took care not to
     face, for fear of breaking up his untroubled manner; but he made
     plans to renew this time in places still more delightful, where
     the sun was hot and there were strange things to see and paint.
     The end came swiftly on the 20th of January with a telegram:

     “Have enlisted in Imperial Yeomanry.—JOLLY.”

     Jolyon received it just as he was setting out to meet her at the
     Louvre. It brought him up with a round turn. While he was
     lotus-eating here, his boy, whose philosopher and guide he ought
     to be, had taken this great step towards danger, hardship,
     perhaps even death. He felt disturbed to the soul, realising
     suddenly how Irene had twined herself round the roots of his
     being. Thus threatened with severance, the tie between them—for
     it had become a kind of tie—no longer had impersonal quality. The
     tranquil enjoyment of things in common, Jolyon perceived, was
     gone for ever. He saw his feeling as it was, in the nature of an
     infatuation. Ridiculous, perhaps, but so real that sooner or
     later it must disclose itself. And now, as it seemed to him, he
     could not, must not, make any such disclosure. The news of Jolly
     stood inexorably in the way. He was proud of this enlistment;
     proud of his boy for going off to fight for the country; for on
     Jolyon’s pro-Boerism, too, Black Week had left its mark. And so
     the end was reached before the beginning! Well, luckily he had
     never made a sign!

     When he came into the Gallery she was standing before the “Virgin
     of the Rocks,” graceful, absorbed, smiling and unconscious. “Have
     I to give up seeing _that?_” he thought. “It’s unnatural, so long
     as she’s willing that I should see her.” He stood, unnoticed,
     watching her, storing up the image of her figure, envying the
     picture on which she was bending that long scrutiny. Twice she
     turned her head towards the entrance, and he thought: “That’s for
     me!” At last he went forward.

     “Look!” he said.

     She read the telegram, and he heard her sigh.

     That sigh, too, was for him! His position was really cruel! To be
     loyal to his son he must just shake her hand and go. To be loyal
     to the feeling in his heart he must at least tell her what that
     feeling was. Could she, would she understand the silence in which
     he was gazing at that picture?

     “I’m afraid I must go home at once,” he said at last. “I shall
     miss all this awfully.”

     “So shall I; but, of course, you must go.”

     “Well!” said Jolyon holding out his hand.

     Meeting her eyes, a flood of feeling nearly mastered him.

     “Such is life!” he said. “Take care of yourself, my dear!”

     He had a stumbling sensation in his legs and feet, as if his
     brain refused to steer him away from her. From the doorway, he
     saw her lift her hand and touch its fingers with her lips. He
     raised his hat solemnly, and did not look back again.




     CHAPTER VII DARTIE VERSUS DARTIE


     The suit—Dartie _versus_ Dartie—for restitution of those conjugal
     rights concerning which Winifred was at heart so deeply
     undecided, followed the laws of subtraction towards day of
     judgment. This was not reached before the Courts rose for
     Christmas, but the case was third on the list when they sat
     again. Winifred spent the Christmas holidays a thought more
     fashionably than usual, with the matter locked up in her low-cut
     bosom. James was particularly liberal to her that Christmas,
     expressing thereby his sympathy, and relief, at the approaching
     dissolution of her marriage with that “precious rascal,” which
     his old heart felt but his old lips could not utter.

     The disappearance of Dartie made the fall in Consols a
     comparatively small matter; and as to the scandal—the real animus
     he felt against that fellow, and the increasing lead which
     property was attaining over reputation in a true Forsyte about to
     leave this world, served to drug a mind from which all allusions
     to the matter (except his own) were studiously kept. What worried
     him as a lawyer and a parent was the fear that Dartie might
     suddenly turn up and obey the Order of the Court when made. That
     would be a pretty how-de-do! The fear preyed on him in fact so
     much that, in presenting Winifred with a large Christmas cheque,
     he said: “It’s chiefly for that chap out there; to keep him from
     coming back.” It was, of course, to pitch away good money, but
     all in the nature of insurance against that bankruptcy which
     would no longer hang over him if only the divorce went through;
     and he questioned Winifred rigorously until she could assure him
     that the money had been sent. Poor woman!—it cost her many a pang
     to send what must find its way into the vanity-bag of “that
     creature!” Soames, hearing of it, shook his head. They were not
     dealing with a Forsyte, reasonably tenacious of his purpose. It
     was very risky without knowing how the land lay out there. Still,
     it would look well with the Court; and he would see that Dreamer
     brought it out. “I wonder,” he said suddenly, “where that ballet
     goes after the Argentine”; never omitting a chance of reminder;
     for he knew that Winifred still had a weakness, if not for
     Dartie, at least for not laundering him in public. Though not
     good at showing admiration, he admitted that she was behaving
     extremely well, with all her children at home gaping like young
     birds for news of their father—Imogen just on the point of coming
     out, and Val very restive about the whole thing. He felt that Val
     was the real heart of the matter to Winifred, who certainly loved
     him beyond her other children. The boy could spoke the wheel of
     this divorce yet if he set his mind to it. And Soames was very
     careful to keep the proximity of the preliminary proceedings from
     his nephew’s ears. He did more. He asked him to dine at the
     Remove, and over Val’s cigar introduced the subject which he knew
     to be nearest to his heart.

     “I hear,” he said, “that you want to play polo up at Oxford.”

     Val became less recumbent in his chair.

     “Rather!” he said.

     “Well,” continued Soames, “that’s a very expensive business. Your
     grandfather isn’t likely to consent to it unless he can make sure
     that he’s not got any other drain on him.” And he paused to see
     whether the boy understood his meaning.

     Val’s thick dark lashes concealed his eyes, but a slight grimace
     appeared on his wide mouth, and he muttered:

     “I suppose you mean my Dad!”

     “Yes,” said Soames; “I’m afraid it depends on whether he
     continues to be a drag or not;” and said no more, letting the boy
     dream it over.

     But Val was also dreaming in those days of a silver-roan palfrey
     and a girl riding it. Though Crum was in town and an introduction
     to Cynthia Dark to be had for the asking, Val did not ask;
     indeed, he shunned Crum and lived a life strange even to himself,
     except in so far as accounts with tailor and livery stable were
     concerned. To his mother, his sisters, his young brother, he
     seemed to spend this Vacation in “seeing fellows,” and his
     evenings sleepily at home. They could not propose anything in
     daylight that did not meet with the one response: “Sorry; I’ve
     got to see a fellow”; and he was put to extraordinary shifts to
     get in and out of the house unobserved in riding clothes; until,
     being made a member of the Goat’s Club, he was able to transport
     them there, where he could change unregarded and slip off on his
     hack to Richmond Park. He kept his growing sentiment religiously
     to himself. Not for a world would he breathe to the “fellows,”
     whom he was not “seeing,” anything so ridiculous from the point
     of view of their creed and his. But he could not help its
     destroying his other appetites. It was coming between him and the
     legitimate pleasures of youth at last on its own in a way which
     must, he knew, make him a milksop in the eyes of Crum. All he
     cared for was to dress in his last-created riding togs, and steal
     away to the Robin Hill Gate, where presently the silver roan
     would come demurely sidling with its slim and dark-haired rider,
     and in the glades bare of leaves they would go off side by side,
     not talking very much, riding races sometimes, and sometimes
     holding hands. More than once of an evening, in a moment of
     expansion, he had been tempted to tell his mother how this shy
     sweet cousin had stolen in upon him and wrecked his “life.” But
     bitter experience, that all persons above thirty-five were
     spoil-sports, prevented him. After all, he supposed he would have
     to go through with College, and she would have to “come out,”
     before they could be married; so why complicate things, so long
     as he could see her? Sisters were teasing and unsympathetic
     beings, a brother worse, so there was no one to confide in. Ah!
     And this beastly divorce business! What a misfortune to have a
     name which other people hadn’t! If only he had been called Gordon
     or Scott or Howard or something fairly common! But Dartie—there
     wasn’t another in the directory! One might as well have been
     named Morkin for all the covert it afforded! So matters went on,
     till one day in the middle of January the silver-roan palfrey and
     its rider were missing at the tryst. Lingering in the cold, he
     debated whether he should ride on to the house: But Jolly might
     be there, and the memory of their dark encounter was still fresh
     within him. One could not be always fighting with her brother! So
     he returned dismally to town and spent an evening plunged in
     gloom. At breakfast next day he noticed that his mother had on an
     unfamiliar dress and was wearing her hat. The dress was black
     with a glimpse of peacock blue, the hat black and large—she
     looked exceptionally well. But when after breakfast she said to
     him, “Come in here, Val,” and led the way to the drawing-room, he
     was at once beset by qualms. Winifred carefully shut the door and
     passed her handkerchief over her lips; inhaling the violette de
     Parme with which it had been soaked, Val thought: “Has she found
     out about Holly?”

     Her voice interrupted

     “Are you going to be nice to me, dear boy?”

     Val grinned doubtfully.

     “Will you come with me this morning....”

     “I’ve got to see....” began Val, but something in her face
     stopped him. “I say,” he said, “you don’t mean....”

     “Yes, I have to go to the Court this morning.” Already!—that d—-d
     business which he had almost succeeded in forgetting, since
     nobody ever mentioned it. In self-commiseration he stood picking
     little bits of skin off his fingers. Then noticing that his
     mother’s lips were all awry, he said impulsively: “All right,
     mother; I’ll come. The brutes!” What brutes he did not know, but
     the expression exactly summed up their joint feeling, and
     restored a measure of equanimity.

     “I suppose I’d better change into a ‘shooter,’” he muttered,
     escaping to his room. He put on the “shooter,” a higher collar, a
     pearl pin, and his neatest grey spats, to a somewhat blasphemous
     accompaniment. Looking at himself in the glass, he said, “Well,
     I’m damned if I’m going to show anything!” and went down. He
     found his grandfather’s carriage at the door, and his mother in
     furs, with the appearance of one going to a Mansion House
     Assembly. They seated themselves side by side in the closed
     barouche, and all the way to the Courts of Justice Val made but
     one allusion to the business in hand. “There’ll be nothing about
     those pearls, will there?”

     The little tufted white tails of Winifred’s muff began to shiver.

     “Oh, no,” she said, “it’ll be quite harmless to-day. Your
     grandmother wanted to come too, but I wouldn’t let her. I thought
     you could take care of me. You look so nice, Val. Just pull your
     coat collar up a little more at the back—that’s right.”

     “If they bully you....” began Val.

     “Oh! they won’t. I shall be very cool. It’s the only way.”

     “They won’t want me to give evidence or anything?”

     “No, dear; it’s all arranged.” And she patted his hand. The
     determined front she was putting on it stayed the turmoil in
     Val’s chest, and he busied himself in drawing his gloves off and
     on. He had taken what he now saw was the wrong pair to go with
     his spats; they should have been grey, but were deerskin of a
     dark tan; whether to keep them on or not he could not decide.
     They arrived soon after ten. It was his first visit to the Law
     Courts, and the building struck him at once.

     “By Jove!” he said as they passed into the hall, “this’d make
     four or five jolly good racket courts.”

     Soames was awaiting them at the foot of some stairs.

     “Here you are!” he said, without shaking hands, as if the event
     had made them too familiar for such formalities. “It’s Happerly
     Browne, Court I. We shall be on first.”

     A sensation such as he had known when going in to bat was playing
     now in the top of Val’s chest, but he followed his mother and
     uncle doggedly, looking at no more than he could help, and
     thinking that the place smelled “fuggy.” People seemed to be
     lurking everywhere, and he plucked Soames by the sleeve.

     “I say, Uncle, you’re not going to let those beastly papers in,
     are you?”

     Soames gave him the sideway look which had reduced many to
     silence in its time.

     “In here,” he said. “You needn’t take off your furs, Winifred.”

     Val entered behind them, nettled and with his head up. In this
     confounded hole everybody—and there were a good many of
     them—seemed sitting on everybody else’s knee, though really
     divided from each other by pews; and Val had a feeling that they
     might all slip down together into the well. This, however, was
     but a momentary vision—of mahogany, and black gowns, and white
     blobs of wigs and faces and papers, all rather secret and
     whispery—before he was sitting next his mother in the front row,
     with his back to it all, glad of her violette de Parme, and
     taking off his gloves for the last time. His mother was looking
     at him; he was suddenly conscious that she had really wanted him
     there next to her, and that he counted for something in this
     business.

     All right! He would show them! Squaring his shoulders, he crossed
     his legs and gazed inscrutably at his spats. But just then an
     “old Johnny” in a gown and long wig, looking awfully like a funny
     raddled woman, came through a door into the high pew opposite,
     and he had to uncross his legs hastily, and stand up with
     everybody else.

     “Dartie _versus_ Dartie!”

     It seemed to Val unspeakably disgusting to have one’s name called
     out like this in public! And, suddenly conscious that someone
     nearly behind him had begun talking about his family, he screwed
     his face round to see an old be-wigged buffer, who spoke as if he
     were eating his own words—queer-looking old cuss, the sort of man
     he had seen once or twice dining at Park Lane and punishing the
     port; he knew now where they “dug them up.” All the same he found
     the old buffer quite fascinating, and would have continued to
     stare if his mother had not touched his arm. Reduced to gazing
     before him, he fixed his eyes on the Judge’s face instead. Why
     should that old “sportsman” with his sarcastic mouth and his
     quick-moving eyes have the power to meddle with their private
     affairs—hadn’t he affairs of his own, just as many, and probably
     just as nasty? And there moved in Val, like an illness, all the
     deep-seated individualism of his breed. The voice behind him
     droned along: “Differences about money matters—extravagance of
     the respondent” (What a word! Was that his father?)—“strained
     situation—frequent absences on the part of Mr. Dartie. My client,
     very rightly, your Ludship will agree, was anxious to check a
     course—but lead to ruin—remonstrated—gambling at cards and on the
     racecourse—” (“That’s right!” thought Val, “pile it on!”) “Crisis
     early in October, when the respondent wrote her this letter from
     his Club.” Val sat up and his ears burned. “I propose to read it
     with the emendations necessary to the epistle of a gentleman who
     has been—shall we say dining, me Lud?”

     “Old brute!” thought Val, flushing deeper; “you’re not paid to
     make jokes!”

     “‘You will not get the chance to insult me again in my own house.
     I am leaving the country to-morrow. It’s played out’—an
     expression, your Ludship, not unknown in the mouths of those who
     have not met with conspicuous success.”

     “Sniggering owls!” thought Val, and his flush deepened.

     “‘I am tired of being insulted by you.’ My client will tell your
     Ludship that these so-called insults consisted in her calling him
     ‘the limit’,—a very mild expression, I venture to suggest, in all
     the circumstances.”

     Val glanced sideways at his mother’s impassive face, it had a
     hunted look in the eyes. “Poor mother,” he thought, and touched
     her arm with his own. The voice behind droned on.

     “‘I am going to live a new life. M. D.’”

     “And next day, me Lud, the respondent left by the steamship
     _Tuscarora_ for Buenos Aires. Since then we have nothing from him
     but a cabled refusal in answer to the letter which my client
     wrote the following day in great distress, begging him to return
     to her. With your Ludship’s permission. I shall now put Mrs.
     Dartie in the box.”

     When his mother rose, Val had a tremendous impulse to rise too
     and say: “Look here! I’m going to see you jolly well treat her
     decently.” He subdued it, however; heard her saying, “the truth,
     the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” and looked up. She
     made a rich figure of it, in her furs and large hat, with a
     slight flush on her cheek-bones, calm, matter-of-fact; and he
     felt proud of her thus confronting all these “confounded
     lawyers.” The examination began. Knowing that this was only the
     preliminary to divorce, Val followed with a certain glee the
     questions framed so as to give the impression that she really
     wanted his father back. It seemed to him that they were “foxing
     Old Bagwigs finely.”

     And he received a most unpleasant jar when the Judge said
     suddenly:

     “Now, why did your husband leave you—not because you called him
     ‘the limit,’ you know?”

     Val saw his uncle lift his eyes to the witness box, without
     moving his face; heard a shuffle of papers behind him; and
     instinct told him that the issue was in peril. Had Uncle Soames
     and the old buffer behind made a mess of it? His mother was
     speaking with a slight drawl.

     “No, my Lord, but it had gone on a long time.”

     “What had gone on?”

     “Our differences about money.”

     “But you supplied the money. Do you suggest that he left you to
     better his position?”

     “The brute! The old brute, and nothing but the brute!” thought
     Val suddenly. “He smells a rat he’s trying to get at the pastry!”
     And his heart stood still. If—if he did, then, of course, he
     would know that his mother didn’t really want his father back.
     His mother spoke again, a thought more fashionably.

     “No, my Lord, but you see I had refused to give him any more
     money. It took him a long time to believe that, but he did at
     last—and when he did....”

     “I see, you had refused. But you’ve sent him some since.”

     “My Lord, I wanted him back.”

     “And you thought that would bring him?”

     “I don’t know, my Lord, I acted on my father’s advice.”

     Something in the Judge’s face, in the sound of the papers behind
     him, in the sudden crossing of his uncle’s legs, told Val that
     she had made just the right answer. “Crafty!” he thought; “by
     Jove, what humbug it all is!”

     The Judge was speaking:

     “Just one more question, Mrs. Dartie. Are you still fond of your
     husband?”

     Val’s hands, slack behind him, became fists. What business had
     that Judge to make things human suddenly? To make his mother
     speak out of her heart, and say what, perhaps, she didn’t know
     herself, before all these people! It wasn’t decent. His mother
     answered, rather low: “Yes, my Lord.” Val saw the Judge nod.
     “Wish I could take a cock-shy at your head!” he thought
     irreverently, as his mother came back to her seat beside him.
     Witnesses to his father’s departure and continued absence
     followed—one of their own maids even, which struck Val as
     particularly beastly; there was more talking, all humbug; and
     then the Judge pronounced the decree for restitution, and they
     got up to go. Val walked out behind his mother, chin squared,
     eyelids drooped, doing his level best to despise everybody. His
     mother’s voice in the corridor roused him from an angry trance.

     “You behaved beautifully, dear. It was such a comfort to have
     you. Your uncle and I are going to lunch.”

     “All right,” said Val; “I shall have time to go and see that
     fellow.” And, parting from them abruptly, he ran down the stairs
     and out into the air. He bolted into a hansom, and drove to the
     Goat’s Club. His thoughts were on Holly and what he must do
     before her brother showed her this thing in to-morrow’s paper.

     When Val had left them Soames and Winifred made their way to the
     Cheshire Cheese. He had suggested it as a meeting place with Mr.
     Bellby. At that early hour of noon they would have it to
     themselves, and Winifred had thought it would be “amusing” to see
     this far-famed hostelry. Having ordered a light repast, to the
     consternation of the waiter, they awaited its arrival together
     with that of Mr. Bellby, in silent reaction after the hour and a
     half’s suspense on the tenterhooks of publicity. Mr. Bellby
     entered presently, preceded by his nose, as cheerful as they were
     glum. Well! they had got the decree of restitution, and what was
     the matter with that!

     “Quite,” said Soames in a suitably low voice, “but we shall have
     to begin again to get evidence. He’ll probably try the divorce—it
     will look fishy if it comes out that we knew of misconduct from
     the start. His questions showed well enough that he doesn’t like
     this restitution dodge.”

     “Pho!” said Mr. Bellby cheerily, “he’ll forget! Why, man, he’ll
     have tried a hundred cases between now and then. Besides, he’s
     bound by precedent to give ye your divorce, if the evidence is
     satisfactory. We won’t let um know that Mrs. Dartie had knowledge
     of the facts. Dreamer did it very nicely—he’s got a fatherly
     touch about um!”

     Soames nodded.

     “And I compliment ye, Mrs. Dartie,” went on Mr. Bellby; “ye’ve a
     natural gift for giving evidence. Steady as a rock.”

     Here the waiter arrived with three plates balanced on one arm,
     and the remark: “I ’urried up the pudden, sir. You’ll find plenty
     o’ lark in it to-day.”

     Mr. Bellby applauded his forethought with a dip of his nose. But
     Soames and Winifred looked with dismay at their light lunch of
     gravified brown masses, touching them gingerly with their forks
     in the hope of distinguishing the bodies of the tasty little
     song-givers. Having begun, however, they found they were hungrier
     than they thought, and finished the lot, with a glass of port
     apiece. Conversation turned on the war. Soames thought Ladysmith
     would fall, and it might last a year. Bellby thought it would be
     over by the summer. Both agreed that they wanted more men. There
     was nothing for it but complete victory, since it was now a
     question of prestige. Winifred brought things back to more solid
     ground by saying that she did not want the divorce suit to come
     on till after the summer holidays had begun at Oxford, then the
     boys would have forgotten about it before Val had to go up again;
     the London season too would be over. The lawyers reassured her,
     an interval of six months was necessary—after that the earlier
     the better. People were now beginning to come in, and they
     parted—Soames to the city, Bellby to his chambers, Winifred in a
     hansom to Park Lane to let her mother know how she had fared. The
     issue had been so satisfactory on the whole that it was
     considered advisable to tell James, who never failed to say day
     after day that he didn’t know about Winifred’s affair, he
     couldn’t tell. As his sands ran out; the importance of mundane
     matters became increasingly grave to him, as if he were feeling:
     “I must make the most of it, and worry well; I shall soon have
     nothing to worry about.”

     He received the report grudgingly. It was a new-fangled way of
     going about things, and he didn’t know! But he gave Winifred a
     cheque, saying:

     “I expect you’ll have a lot of expense. That’s a new hat you’ve
     got on. Why doesn’t Val come and see us?”

     Winifred promised to bring him to dinner soon. And, going home,
     she sought her bedroom where she could be alone. Now that her
     husband had been ordered back into her custody with a view to
     putting him away from her for ever, she would try once more to
     find out from her sore and lonely heart what she really wanted.




     CHAPTER VIII THE CHALLENGE


     The morning had been misty, verging on frost, but the sun came
     out while Val was jogging towards the Roehampton Gate, whence he
     would canter on to the usual tryst. His spirits were rising
     rapidly. There had been nothing so very terrible in the morning’s
     proceedings beyond the general disgrace of violated privacy. “If
     we were engaged!” he thought, “what happens wouldn’t matter.” He
     felt, indeed, like human society, which kicks and clamours at the
     results of matrimony, and hastens to get married. And he galloped
     over the winter-dried grass of Richmond Park, fearing to be late.
     But again he was alone at the trysting spot, and this second
     defection on the part of Holly upset him dreadfully. He could not
     go back without seeing her to-day! Emerging from the Park, he
     proceeded towards Robin Hill. He could not make up his mind for
     whom to ask. Suppose her father were back, or her sister or
     brother were in! He decided to gamble, and ask for them all
     first, so that if he were in luck and they were not there, it
     would be quite natural in the end to ask for Holly; while if any
     of them _were_ in—an “excuse for a ride” must be his saving
     grace.

     “Only Miss Holly is in, sir.”

     “Oh! thanks. Might I take my horse round to the stables? And
     would you say—her cousin, Mr. Val Dartie.”

     When he returned she was in the hall, very flushed and shy. She
     led him to the far end, and they sat down on a wide window-seat.

     “I’ve been awfully anxious,” said Val in a low voice. “What’s the
     matter?”

     “Jolly knows about our riding.”

     “Is he in?”

     “No; but I expect he will be soon.”

     “Then!” cried Val, and diving forward, he seized her hand. She
     tried to withdraw it, failed, gave up the attempt, and looked at
     him wistfully.

     “First of all,” he said, “I want to tell you something about my
     family. My Dad, you know, isn’t altogether—I mean, he’s left my
     mother and they’re trying to divorce him; so they’ve ordered him
     to come back, you see. You’ll see that in the paper to-morrow.”

     Her eyes deepened in colour and fearful interest; her hand
     squeezed his. But the gambler in Val was roused now, and he
     hurried on:

     “Of course there’s nothing very much at present, but there will
     be, I expect, before it’s over; divorce suits are beastly, you
     know. I wanted to tell you, because—because—you ought to
     know—if—” and he began to stammer, gazing at her troubled eyes,
     “if—if you’re going to be a darling and love me, Holly. I love
     you—ever so; and I want to be engaged.” He had done it in a
     manner so inadequate that he could have punched his own head; and
     dropping on his knees, he tried to get nearer to that soft,
     troubled face. “You do love me—don’t you? If you don’t I....”
     There was a moment of silence and suspense, so awful that he
     could hear the sound of a mowing-machine far out on the lawn
     pretending there was grass to cut. Then she swayed forward; her
     free hand touched his hair, and he gasped: “Oh, Holly!”

     Her answer was very soft: “Oh, Val!”

     He had dreamed of this moment, but always in an imperative mood,
     as the masterful young lover, and now he felt humble, touched,
     trembly. He was afraid to stir off his knees lest he should break
     the spell; lest, if he did, she should shrink and deny her own
     surrender—so tremulous was she in his grasp, with her eyelids
     closed and his lips nearing them. Her eyes opened, seemed to swim
     a little; he pressed his lips to hers. Suddenly he sprang up;
     there had been footsteps, a sort of startled grunt. He looked
     round. No one! But the long curtains which barred off the outer
     hall were quivering.

     “My God! Who was that?”

     Holly too was on her feet.

     “Jolly, I expect,” she whispered.

     Val clenched fists and resolution.

     “All right!” he said, “I don’t care a bit now we’re engaged,” and
     striding towards the curtains, he drew them aside. There at the
     fireplace in the hall stood Jolly, with his back elaborately
     turned. Val went forward. Jolly faced round on him.

     “I beg your pardon for hearing,” he said.

     With the best intentions in the world, Val could not help
     admiring him at that moment; his face was clear, his voice quiet,
     he looked somehow distinguished, as if acting up to principle.

     “Well!” Val said abruptly, “it’s nothing to you.”

     “Oh!” said Jolly; “you come this way,” and he crossed the hall.
     Val followed. At the study door he felt a touch on his arm;
     Holly’s voice said:

     “I’m coming too.”

     “No,” said Jolly.

     “Yes,” said Holly.

     Jolly opened the door, and they all three went in. Once in the
     little room, they stood in a sort of triangle on three corners of
     the worn Turkey carpet; awkwardly upright, not looking at each
     other, quite incapable of seeing any humour in the situation.

     Val broke the silence.

     “Holly and I are engaged.”

     Jolly stepped back and leaned against the lintel of the window.

     “This is our house,” he said; “I’m not going to insult you in it.
     But my father’s away. I’m in charge of my sister. You’ve taken
     advantage of me.

     “I didn’t mean to,” said Val hotly.

     “I think you did,” said Jolly. “If you hadn’t meant to, you’d
     have spoken to me, or waited for my father to come back.”

     “There were reasons,” said Val.

     “What reasons?”

     “About my family—I’ve just told her. I wanted her to know before
     things happen.”

     Jolly suddenly became less distinguished.

     “You’re kids,” he said, “and you know you are.

     “I am _not_ a kid,” said Val.

     “You are—you’re not twenty.”

     “Well, what are you?”

     “I _am_ twenty,” said Jolly.

     “Only just; anyway, I’m as good a man as you.”

     Jolly’s face crimsoned, then clouded. Some struggle was evidently
     taking place in him; and Val and Holly stared at him, so clearly
     was that struggle marked; they could even hear him breathing.
     Then his face cleared up and became oddly resolute.

     “We’ll see that,” he said. “I dare you to do what I’m going to
     do.”

     “Dare me?”

     Jolly smiled. “Yes,” he said, “dare you; and I know very well you
     won’t.”

     A stab of misgiving shot through Val; this was riding very blind.

     “I haven’t forgotten that you’re a fire-eater,” said Jolly
     slowly, “and I think that’s about all you are; or that you called
     me a pro-Boer.”

     Val heard a gasp above the sound of his own hard breathing, and
     saw Holly’s face poked a little forward, very pale, with big
     eyes.

     “Yes,” went on Jolly with a sort of smile, “we shall soon see.
     I’m going to join the Imperial Yeomanry, and I dare you to do the
     same, Mr. Val Dartie.”

     Val’s head jerked on its stem. It was like a blow between the
     eyes, so utterly unthought of, so extreme and ugly in the midst
     of his dreaming; and he looked at Holly with eyes grown suddenly,
     touchingly haggard.

     “Sit down!” said Jolly. “Take your time! Think it over well.” And
     he himself sat down on the arm of his grandfather’s chair.

     Val did not sit down; he stood with hands thrust deep into his
     breeches’ pockets—hands clenched and quivering. The full
     awfulness of this decision one way or the other knocked at his
     mind with double knocks as of an angry postman. If he did not
     take that “dare” he was disgraced in Holly’s eyes, and in the
     eyes of that young enemy, her brute of a brother. Yet if he took
     it, ah! then all would vanish—her face, her eyes, her hair, her
     kisses just begun!

     “Take your time,” said Jolly again; “I don’t want to be unfair.”

     And they both looked at Holly. She had recoiled against the
     bookshelves reaching to the ceiling; her dark head leaned against
     Gibbon’s _Roman Empire_, her eyes in a sort of soft grey agony
     were fixed on Val. And he, who had not much gift of insight, had
     suddenly a gleam of vision. She would be proud of her
     brother—that enemy! She would be ashamed of him! His hands came
     out of his pockets as if lifted by a spring.

     “All right!” he said. “Done!”

     Holly’s face—oh! it was queer! He saw her flush, start forward.
     He had done the right thing—her face was shining with wistful
     admiration. Jolly stood up and made a little bow as who should
     say: “You’ve passed.”

     “To-morrow, then,” he said, “we’ll go together.”

     Recovering from the impetus which had carried him to that
     decision, Val looked at him maliciously from under his lashes.
     “All right,” he thought, “one to you. I shall have to join—but
     I’ll get back on you somehow.” And he said with dignity: “I shall
     be ready.”

     “We’ll meet at the main Recruiting Office, then,” said Jolly, “at
     twelve o’clock.” And, opening the window, he went out on to the
     terrace, conforming to the creed which had made him retire when
     he surprised them in the hall.

     The confusion in the mind of Val thus left alone with her for
     whom he had paid this sudden price was extreme. The mood of
     “showing-off” was still, however, uppermost. One must do the
     wretched thing with an air.

     “We shall get plenty of riding and shooting, anyway,” he said;
     “that’s one comfort.” And it gave him a sort of grim pleasure to
     hear the sigh which seemed to come from the bottom of her heart.

     “Oh! the war’ll soon be over,” he said; “perhaps we shan’t even
     have to go out. I don’t care, except for you.” He would be out of
     the way of that beastly divorce. It was an ill-wind! He felt her
     warm hand slip into his. Jolly thought he had stopped their
     loving each other, did he? He held her tightly round the waist,
     looking at her softly through his lashes, smiling to cheer her
     up, promising to come down and see her soon, feeling somehow six
     inches taller and much more in command of her than he had ever
     dared feel before. Many times he kissed her before he mounted and
     rode back to town. So, swiftly, on the least provocation, does
     the possessive instinct flourish and grow.




     CHAPTER IX DINNER AT JAMES’


     Dinner parties were not now given at James’ in Park Lane—to every
     house the moment comes when Master or Mistress is no longer “up
     to it”. no more can nine courses be served to twenty mouths above
     twenty fine white expanses; nor does the household cat any longer
     wonder why she is suddenly shut up.

     So with something like excitement Emily—who at seventy would
     still have liked a little feast and fashion now and then—ordered
     dinner for six instead of two, herself wrote a number of foreign
     words on cards, and arranged the flowers—mimosa from the Riviera,
     and white Roman hyacinths not from Rome. There would only be, of
     course, James and herself, Soames, Winifred, Val, and Imogen—but
     she liked to pretend a little and dally in imagination with the
     glory of the past. She so dressed herself that James remarked:

     “What are you putting on that thing for? You’ll catch cold.”

     But Emily knew that the necks of women are protected by love of
     shining, unto fourscore years, and she only answered:

     “Let me put you on one of those dickies I got you, James; then
     you’ll only have to change your trousers, and put on your velvet
     coat, and there you’ll be. Val likes you to look nice.”

     “Dicky!” said James. “You’re always wasting your money on
     something.”

     But he suffered the change to be made till his neck also shone,
     murmuring vaguely:

     “He’s an extravagant chap, I’m afraid.”

     A little brighter in the eye, with rather more colour than usual
     in his cheeks, he took his seat in the drawing-room to wait for
     the sound of the front-door bell.

     “I’ve made it a proper dinner party,” Emily said comfortably; “I
     thought it would be good practice for Imogen—she must get used to
     it now she’s coming out.”

     James uttered an indeterminate sound, thinking of Imogen as she
     used to climb about his knee or pull Christmas crackers with him.

     “She’ll be pretty,” he muttered, “I shouldn’t wonder.”

     “She _is_ pretty,” said Emily; “she ought to make a good match.”

     “There you go,” murmured James; “she’d much better stay at home
     and look after her mother.” A second Dartie carrying off his
     pretty granddaughter would finish him! He had never quite
     forgiven Emily for having been as much taken in by Montague
     Dartie as he himself had been.

     “Where’s Warmson?” he said suddenly. “I should like a glass of
     Madeira to-night.”

     “There’s champagne, James.”

     James shook his head. “No body,” he said; “I can’t get any good
     out of it.”

     Emily reached forward on her side of the fire and rang the bell.

     “Your master would like a bottle of Madeira opened, Warmson.”

     “No, no!” said James, the tips of his ears quivering with
     vehemence, and his eyes fixed on an object seen by him alone.
     “Look here, Warmson, you go to the inner cellar, and on the
     middle shelf of the end bin on the left you’ll see seven bottles;
     take the one in the centre, and don’t shake it. It’s the last of
     the Madeira I had from Mr. Jolyon when we came in here—never been
     moved; it ought to be in prime condition still; but I don’t know,
     I can’t tell.”

     “Very good, sir,” responded the withdrawing Warmson.

     “I was keeping it for our golden wedding,” said James suddenly,
     “but I shan’t live three years at my age.”

     “Nonsense, James,” said Emily, “don’t talk like that.”

     “I ought to have got it up myself,” murmured James, “he’ll shake
     it as likely as not.” And he sank into silent recollection of
     long moments among the open gas-jets, the cobwebs and the good
     smell of wine-soaked corks, which had been appetiser to so many
     feasts. In the wine from that cellar was written the history of
     the forty odd years since he had come to the Park Lane house with
     his young bride, and of the many generations of friends and
     acquaintances who had passed into the unknown; its depleted bins
     preserved the record of family festivity—all the marriages,
     births, deaths of his kith and kin. And when he was gone there it
     would be, and he didn’t know what would become of it. It’d be
     drunk or spoiled, he shouldn’t wonder!

     From that deep reverie the entrance of his son dragged him,
     followed very soon by that of Winifred and her two eldest.

     They went down arm-in-arm—James with Imogen, the debutante,
     because his pretty grandchild cheered him; Soames with Winifred;
     Emily with Val, whose eyes lighting on the oysters brightened.
     This was to be a proper full “blowout” with “fizz” and port! And
     he felt in need of it, after what he had done that day, as yet
     undivulged. After the first glass or two it became pleasant to
     have this bombshell up his sleeve, this piece of sensational
     patriotism, or example, rather, of personal daring, to
     display—for his pleasure in what he had done for his Queen and
     Country was so far entirely personal. He was now a “blood,”
     indissolubly connected with guns and horses; he had a right to
     swagger—not, of course, that he was going to. He should just
     announce it quietly, when there was a pause. And, glancing down
     the menu, he determined on “Bombe aux fraises” as the proper
     moment; there would be a certain solemnity while they were eating
     that. Once or twice before they reached that rosy summit of the
     dinner he was attacked by remembrance that his grandfather was
     never told anything! Still, the old boy was drinking Madeira, and
     looking jolly fit! Besides, he ought to be pleased at this
     set-off to the disgrace of the divorce. The sight of his uncle
     opposite, too, was a sharp incentive. He was so far from being a
     sportsman that it would be worth a lot to see his face. Besides,
     better to tell his mother in this way than privately, which might
     upset them both! He was sorry for her, but after all one couldn’t
     be expected to feel much for others when one had to part from
     Holly.

     His grandfather’s voice travelled to him thinly. “Val, try a
     little of the Madeira with your ice. You won’t get that up at
     college.”

     Val watched the slow liquid filling his glass, the essential oil
     of the old wine glazing the surface; inhaled its aroma, and
     thought: “Now for it!” It was a rich moment. He sipped, and a
     gentle glow spread in his veins, already heated. With a rapid
     look round, he said, “I joined the Imperial Yeomanry to-day,
     Granny,” and emptied his glass as though drinking the health of
     his own act.

     “What!” It was his mother’s desolate little word.

     “Young Jolly Forsyte and I went down there together.”

     “You didn’t sign?” from Uncle Soames.

     “Rather! We go into camp on Monday.”

     “I _say!_” cried Imogen.

     All looked at James. He was leaning forward with his hand behind
     his ear.

     “What’s that?” he said. “What’s he saying? I can’t hear.”

     Emily reached forward to pat Val’s hand.

     “It’s only that Val has joined the Yeomanry, James; it’s very
     nice for him. He’ll look his best in uniform.”

     “Joined the—rubbish!” came from James, tremulously loud. “You
     can’t see two yards before your nose. He—he’ll have to go out
     there. Why! he’ll be fighting before he knows where he is.”

     Val saw Imogen’s eyes admiring him, and his mother still and
     fashionable with her handkerchief before her lips.

     Suddenly his uncle spoke.

     “You’re under age.”

     “I thought of that,” smiled Val; “I gave my age as twenty-one.”

     He heard his grandmother’s admiring, “Well, Val, that was plucky
     of you;” was conscious of Warmson deferentially filling his
     champagne glass; and of his grandfather’s voice moaning: “_I_
     don’t know what’ll become of you if you go on like this.”

     Imogen was patting his shoulder, his uncle looking at him
     sidelong; only his mother sat unmoving, till, affected by her
     stillness, Val said:

     “It’s all right, you know; we shall soon have them on the run. I
     only hope I shall come in for something.”

     He felt elated, sorry, tremendously important all at once. This
     would show Uncle Soames, and all the Forsytes, how to be
     sportsmen. He had certainly done something heroic and exceptional
     in giving his age as twenty-one.

     Emily’s voice brought him back to earth.

     “You mustn’t have a second glass, James. Warmson!”

     “Won’t they be astonished at Timothy’s!” burst out Imogen. “I’d
     give anything to see their faces. Do you have a sword, Val, or
     only a popgun?”

     “What made you?”

     His uncle’s voice produced a slight chill in the pit of Val’s
     stomach. Made him? How answer that? He was grateful for his
     grandmother’s comfortable:

     “Well, I think it’s very plucky of Val. I’m sure he’ll make a
     splendid soldier; he’s just the figure for it. We shall all be
     proud of him.”

     “What had young Jolly Forsyte to do with it? Why did you go
     together?” pursued Soames, uncannily relentless. “I thought you
     weren’t friendly with him?”

     “I’m not,” mumbled Val, “but I wasn’t going to be beaten by
     _him_.” He saw his uncle look at him quite differently, as if
     approving. His grandfather was nodding too, his grandmother
     tossing her head. They all approved of his not being beaten by
     that cousin of his. There must be a reason! Val was dimly
     conscious of some disturbing point outside his range of vision;
     as it might be, the unlocated centre of a cyclone. And, staring
     at his uncle’s face, he had a quite unaccountable vision of a
     woman with dark eyes, gold hair, and a white neck, who smelt
     nice, and had pretty silken clothes which he had liked feeling
     when he was quite small. By Jove, yes! Aunt Irene! She used to
     kiss him, and he had bitten her arm once, playfully, because he
     liked it—so soft. His grandfather was speaking:

     “What’s his father doing?”

     “He’s away in Paris,” Val said, staring at the very queer
     expression on his uncle’s face, like—like that of a snarling dog.

     “Artists!” said James. The word coming from the very bottom of
     his soul, broke up the dinner.

     Opposite his mother in the cab going home, Val tasted the
     after-fruits of heroism, like medlars over-ripe.

     She only said, indeed, that he must go to his tailor’s at once
     and have his uniform properly made, and not just put up with what
     they gave him. But he could feel that she was very much upset. It
     was on his lips to console her with the spoken thought that he
     would be out of the way of that beastly divorce, but the presence
     of Imogen, and the knowledge that his mother would _not_ be out
     of the way, restrained him. He felt aggrieved that she did not
     seem more proud of him. When Imogen had gone to bed, he risked
     the emotional.

     “I’m awfully sorry to have to leave you, Mother.”

     “Well, I must make the best of it. We must try and get you a
     commission as soon as we can; then you won’t have to rough it so.
     Do you know any drill, Val?”

     “Not a scrap.”

     “I hope they won’t worry you much. I must take you about to get
     the things to-morrow. Good-night; kiss me.”

     With that kiss, soft and hot, between his eyes, and those words,
     “I hope they won’t worry you much,” in his ears, he sat down to a
     cigarette, before a dying fire. The heat was out of him—the glow
     of cutting a dash. It was all a damned heart-aching bore. “I’ll
     be even with that chap Jolly,” he thought, trailing up the
     stairs, past the room where his mother was biting her pillow to
     smother a sense of desolation which was trying to make her sob.

     And soon only one of the diners at James’ was awake—Soames, in
     his bedroom above his father’s.

     So that fellow Jolyon was in Paris—what was he doing there?
     Hanging round Irene! The last report from Polteed had hinted that
     there might be something soon. Could it be this? That fellow,
     with his beard and his cursed amused way of speaking—son of the
     old man who had given him the nickname “Man of Property,” and
     bought the fatal house from him. Soames had ever resented having
     had to sell the house at Robin Hill; never forgiven his uncle for
     having bought it, or his cousin for living in it.

     Reckless of the cold, he threw his window up and gazed out across
     the Park. Bleak and dark the January night; little sound of
     traffic; a frost coming; bare trees; a star or two. “I’ll see
     Polteed to-morrow,” he thought. “By God! I’m mad, I think, to
     want her still. That fellow! If...? Um! No!”




     CHAPTER X DEATH OF THE DOG BALTHASAR


     Jolyon, who had crossed from Calais by night, arrived at Robin
     Hill on Sunday morning. He had sent no word beforehand, so walked
     up from the station, entering his domain by the coppice gate.
     Coming to the log seat fashioned out of an old fallen trunk, he
     sat down, first laying his overcoat on it.

     “Lumbago!” he thought; “that’s what love ends in at my time of
     life!” And suddenly Irene seemed very near, just as she had been
     that day of rambling at Fontainebleau when they had sat on a log
     to eat their lunch. Hauntingly near! Odour drawn out of fallen
     leaves by the pale-filtering sunlight soaked his nostrils. “I’m
     glad it isn’t spring,” he thought. With the scent of sap, and the
     song of birds, and the bursting of the blossoms, it would have
     been unbearable! “I hope I shall be over it by then, old fool
     that I am!” and picking up his coat, he walked on into the field.
     He passed the pond and mounted the hill slowly.

     Near the top a hoarse barking greeted him. Up on the lawn above
     the fernery he could see his old dog Balthasar. The animal, whose
     dim eyes took his master for a stranger, was warning the world
     against him. Jolyon gave his special whistle. Even at that
     distance of a hundred yards and more he could see the dawning
     recognition in the obese brown-white body. The old dog got off
     his haunches, and his tail, close-curled over his back, began a
     feeble, excited fluttering; he came waddling forward, gathered
     momentum, and disappeared over the edge of the fernery. Jolyon
     expected to meet him at the wicket gate, but Balthasar was not
     there, and, rather alarmed, he turned into the fernery. On his
     fat side, looking up with eyes already glazing, the old dog lay.

     “What is it, my poor old man?” cried Jolyon. Balthasar’s curled
     and fluffy tail just moved; his filming eyes seemed saying: “I
     can’t get up, master, but I’m glad to see you.”

     Jolyon knelt down; his eyes, very dimmed, could hardly see the
     slowly ceasing heave of the dog’s side. He raised the head a
     little—very heavy.

     “What is it, dear man? Where are you hurt?” The tail fluttered
     once; the eyes lost the look of life. Jolyon passed his hands all
     over the inert warm bulk. There was nothing—the heart had simply
     failed in that obese body from the emotion of his master’s
     return. Jolyon could feel the muzzle, where a few whitish
     bristles grew, cooling already against his lips. He stayed for
     some minutes kneeling; with his hand beneath the stiffening head.
     The body was very heavy when he bore it to the top of the field;
     leaves had drifted there, and he strewed it with a covering of
     them; there was no wind, and they would keep him from curious
     eyes until the afternoon. “I’ll bury him myself,” he thought.
     Eighteen years had gone since he first went into the St. John’s
     Wood house with that tiny puppy in his pocket. Strange that the
     old dog should die just now! Was it an omen? He turned at the
     gate to look back at that russet mound, then went slowly towards
     the house, very choky in the throat.

     June was at home; she had come down hotfoot on hearing the news
     of Jolly’s enlistment. His patriotism had conquered her feeling
     for the Boers. The atmosphere of his house was strange and
     pocketty when Jolyon came in and told them of the dog Balthasar’s
     death. The news had a unifying effect. A link with the past had
     snapped—the dog Balthasar! Two of them could remember nothing
     before his day; to June he represented the last years of her
     grandfather; to Jolyon that life of domestic stress and aesthetic
     struggle before he came again into the kingdom of his father’s
     love and wealth! And he was gone!

     In the afternoon he and Jolly took picks and spades and went out
     to the field. They chose a spot close to the russet mound, so
     that they need not carry him far, and, carefully cutting off the
     surface turf, began to dig. They dug in silence for ten minutes,
     and then rested.

     “Well, old man,” said Jolyon, “so you thought you ought?”

     “Yes,” answered Jolly; “I don’t want to a bit, of course.”

     How exactly those words represented Jolyon’s own state of mind

     “I admire you for it, old boy. I don’t believe I should have done
     it at your age—too much of a Forsyte, I’m afraid. But I suppose
     the type gets thinner with each generation. Your son, if you have
     one, may be a pure altruist; who knows?”

     “He won’t be like me, then, Dad; I’m beastly selfish.”

     “No, my dear, that you clearly are not.” Jolly shook his head,
     and they dug again.

     “Strange life a dog’s,” said Jolyon suddenly: “The only
     four-footer with rudiments of altruism and a sense of God!”

     Jolly looked at his father.

     “Do you believe in God, Dad? I’ve never known.”

     At so searching a question from one to whom it was impossible to
     make a light reply, Jolyon stood for a moment feeling his back
     tried by the digging.

     “What do you mean by God?” he said; “there are two irreconcilable
     ideas of God. There’s the Unknowable Creative Principle—one
     believes in That. And there’s the Sum of altruism in
     man—naturally one believes in That.”

     “I see. That leaves out Christ, doesn’t it?”

     Jolyon stared. Christ, the link between those two ideas! Out of
     the mouth of babes! Here was orthodoxy scientifically explained
     at last! The sublime poem of the Christ life was man’s attempt to
     join those two irreconcilable conceptions of God. And since the
     Sum of human altruism was as much a part of the Unknowable
     Creative Principle as anything else in Nature and the Universe, a
     worse link might have been chosen after all! Funny—how one went
     through life without seeing it in that sort of way!

     “What do _you_ think, old man?” he said.

     Jolly frowned. “Of course, my first year we talked a good bit
     about that sort of thing. But in the second year one gives it up;
     I don’t know why—it’s awfully interesting.”

     Jolyon remembered that he also had talked a good deal about it
     his first year at Cambridge, and given it up in his second.

     “I suppose,” said Jolly, “it’s the second God, you mean, that old
     Balthasar had a sense of.”

     “Yes, or he would never have burst his poor old heart because of
     something outside himself.”

     “But wasn’t that just selfish emotion, really?”

     Jolyon shook his head. “No, dogs are not pure Forsytes, they love
     something outside themselves.”

     Jolly smiled.

     “Well, I think I’m one,” he said. “You know, I only enlisted
     because I dared Val Dartie to.”

     “But why?”

     “We bar each other,” said Jolly shortly.

     “Ah!” muttered Jolyon. So the feud went on, unto the third
     generation—this modern feud which had no overt expression?

     “Shall I tell the boy about it?” he thought. But to what end—if
     he had to stop short of his own part?

     And Jolly thought: “It’s for Holly to let him know about that
     chap. If she doesn’t, it means she doesn’t want him told, and I
     should be sneaking. Anyway, I’ve stopped it. I’d better leave
     well alone!”

     So they dug on in silence, till Jolyon said:

     “Now, old man, I think it’s big enough.” And, resting on their
     spades, they gazed down into the hole where a few leaves had
     drifted already on a sunset wind.

     “I can’t bear this part of it,” said Jolyon suddenly.

     “Let me do it, Dad. He never cared much for me.”

     Jolyon shook his head.

     “We’ll lift him very gently, leaves and all. I’d rather not see
     him again. I’ll take his head. Now!”

     With extreme care they raised the old dog’s body, whose faded tan
     and white showed here and there under the leaves stirred by the
     wind. They laid it, heavy, cold, and unresponsive, in the grave,
     and Jolly spread more leaves over it, while Jolyon, deeply afraid
     to show emotion before his son, began quickly shovelling the
     earth on to that still shape. There went the past! If only there
     were a joyful future to look forward to! It was like stamping
     down earth on one’s own life. They replaced the turf carefully on
     the smooth little mound, and, grateful that they had spared each
     other’s feelings, returned to the house arm-in-arm.




     CHAPTER XI TIMOTHY STAYS THE ROT


     On Forsyte ’Change news of the enlistment spread fast, together
     with the report that June, not to be outdone, was going to become
     a Red Cross nurse. These events were so extreme, so subversive of
     pure Forsyteism, as to have a binding effect upon the family, and
     Timothy’s was thronged next Sunday afternoon by members trying to
     find out what they thought about it all, and exchange with each
     other a sense of family credit. Giles and Jesse Hayman would no
     longer defend the coast but go to South Africa quite soon; Jolly
     and Val would be following in April; as to June—well, you never
     knew what she would really do.

     The retirement from Spion Kop and the absence of any good news
     from the seat of war imparted an air of reality to all this,
     clinched in startling fashion by Timothy. The youngest of the old
     Forsytes—scarcely eighty, in fact popularly supposed to resemble
     their father, “Superior Dosset,” even in his best-known
     characteristic of drinking Sherry—had been invisible for so many
     years that he was almost mythical. A long generation had elapsed
     since the risks of a publisher’s business had worked on his
     nerves at the age of forty, so that he had got out with a mere
     thirty-five thousand pounds in the world, and started to make his
     living by careful investment. Putting by every year, at compound
     interest, he had doubled his capital in forty years without
     having once known what it was like to shake in his shoes over
     money matters. He was now putting aside some two thousand a year,
     and, with the care he was taking of himself, expected, so Aunt
     Hester said, to double his capital again before he died. What he
     would do with it then, with his sisters dead and himself dead,
     was often mockingly queried by free spirits such as Francie,
     Euphemia, or young Nicholas’ second, Christopher, whose spirit
     was so free that he had actually said he was going on the stage.
     All admitted, however, that this was best known to Timothy
     himself, and possibly to Soames, who never divulged a secret.

     Those few Forsytes who had seen him reported a man of thick and
     robust appearance, not very tall, with a brown-red complexion,
     grey hair, and little of the refinement of feature with which
     most of the Forsytes had been endowed by “Superior Dosset’s”
     wife, a woman of some beauty and a gentle temperament. It was
     known that he had taken surprising interest in the war, sticking
     flags into a map ever since it began, and there was uneasiness as
     to what would happen if the English were driven into the sea,
     when it would be almost impossible for him to put the flags in
     the right places. As to his knowledge of family movements or his
     views about them, little was known, save that Aunt Hester was
     always declaring that he was very upset. It was, then, in the
     nature of a portent when Forsytes, arriving on the Sunday after
     the evacuation of Spion Kop, became conscious, one after the
     other, of a presence seated in the only really comfortable
     armchair, back to the light, concealing the lower part of his
     face with a large hand, and were greeted by the awed voice of
     Aunt Hester:

     “Your Uncle Timothy, my dear.”

     Timothy’s greeting to them all was somewhat identical; and
     rather, as it were, passed over by him than expressed:

     “How de do? How de do? ’Xcuse me gettin’ up!”

     Francie was present, and Eustace had come in his car; Winifred
     had brought Imogen, breaking the ice of the restitution
     proceedings with the warmth of family appreciation at Val’s
     enlistment; and Marian Tweetyman with the last news of Giles and
     Jesse. These with Aunt Juley and Hester, young Nicholas,
     Euphemia, and—of all people!—George, who had come with Eustace in
     the car, constituted an assembly worthy of the family’s palmiest
     days. There was not one chair vacant in the whole of the little
     drawing-room, and anxiety was felt lest someone else should
     arrive.

     The constraint caused by Timothy’s presence having worn off a
     little, conversation took a military turn. George asked Aunt
     Juley when she was going out with the Red Cross, almost reducing
     her to a state of gaiety; whereon he turned to Nicholas and said:

     “Young Nick’s a warrior bold, isn’t he? When’s he going to don
     the wild khaki?”

     Young Nicholas, smiling with a sort of sweet deprecation,
     intimated that of course his mother was very anxious.

     “The Dromios are off, I hear,” said George, turning to Marian
     Tweetyman; “we shall all be there soon. _En avant_, the Forsytes!
     Roll, bowl, or pitch! Who’s for a cooler?”

     Aunt Juley gurgled, George was _so_ droll! Should Hester get
     Timothy’s map? Then he could show them all where they were.

     At a sound from Timothy, interpreted as assent, Aunt Hester left
     the room.

     George pursued his image of the Forsyte advance, addressing
     Timothy as Field Marshal; and Imogen, whom he had noted at once
     for “a pretty filly,”—as Vivandière; and holding his top hat
     between his knees, he began to beat it with imaginary drumsticks.
     The reception accorded to his fantasy was mixed. All
     laughed—George was licensed; but all felt that the family was
     being “rotted”; and this seemed to them unnatural, now that it
     was going to give five of its members to the service of the
     Queen. George might go too far; and there was relief when he got
     up, offered his arm to Aunt Juley, marched up to Timothy, saluted
     him, kissed his aunt with mock passion, said, “Oh! what a treat,
     dear papa! Come on, Eustace!” and walked out, followed by the
     grave and fastidious Eustace, who had never smiled.

     Aunt Juley’s bewildered, “Fancy not waiting for the map! You
     mustn’t mind him, Timothy. He’s _so_ droll!” broke the hush, and
     Timothy removed the hand from his mouth.

     “I don’t know what things are comin’ to,” he was heard to say.
     “What’s all this about goin’ out there? That’s not the way to
     beat those Boers.”

     Francie alone had the hardihood to observe: “What is, then, Uncle
     Timothy?”

     “All this new-fangled volunteerin’ and expense—lettin’ money out
     of the country.”

     Just then Aunt Hester brought in the map, handling it like a baby
     with eruptions. With the assistance of Euphemia it was laid on
     the piano, a small Colwood grand, last played on, it was
     believed, the summer before Aunt Ann died, thirteen years ago.
     Timothy rose. He walked over to the piano, and stood looking at
     his map while they all gathered round.

     “There you are,” he said; “that’s the position up to date; and
     very poor it is. H’m!”

     “Yes,” said Francie, greatly daring, “but how are you going to
     alter it, Uncle Timothy, without more men?”

     “Men!” said Timothy; “you don’t want men—wastin’ the country’s
     money. You want a Napoleon, he’d settle it in a month.”

     “But if you haven’t got him, Uncle Timothy?”

     “That’s their business,” replied Timothy. “What have we kept the
     Army up for—to eat their heads off in time of peace! They ought
     to be ashamed of themselves, comin’ on the country to help them
     like this! Let every man stick to his business, and we shall get
     on.”

     And looking round him, he added almost angrily:

     “Volunteerin’, indeed! Throwin’ good money after bad! We must
     save! Conserve energy that’s the only way.” And with a prolonged
     sound, not quite a sniff and not quite a snort, he trod on
     Euphemia’s toe, and went out, leaving a sensation and a faint
     scent of barley-sugar behind him.

     The effect of something said with conviction by one who has
     evidently made a sacrifice to say it is ever considerable. And
     the eight Forsytes left behind, all women except young Nicholas,
     were silent for a moment round the map. Then Francie said:

     “Really, I think he’s right, you know. After all, what is the
     Army for? They ought to have known. It’s only encouraging them.”

     “My dear!” cried Aunt Juley, “but they’ve been so progressive.
     Think of their giving up their scarlet. They were always so proud
     of it. And now they all look like convicts. Hester and I were
     saying only yesterday we were sure they must feel it very much.
     Fancy what the Iron Duke would have said!”

     “The new colour’s very smart,” said Winifred; “Val looks quite
     nice in his.”

     Aunt Juley sighed.

     “I do so wonder what Jolyon’s boy is like. To think we’ve never
     seen him! His father must be so proud of him.”

     “His father’s in Paris,” said Winifred.

     Aunt Hester’s shoulder was seen to mount suddenly, as if to ward
     off her sister’s next remark, for Juley’s crumpled cheeks had
     gushed.

     “We had dear little Mrs. MacAnder here yesterday, just back from
     Paris. And whom d’you think she saw there in the street? You’ll
     never guess.”

     “We shan’t try, Auntie,” said Euphemia.

     “Irene! Imagine! After all this time; walking with a fair
     beard....”

     “Auntie! you’ll kill me! A fair beard....”

     “I was going to say,” said Aunt Juley severely, “a fair-bearded
     gentleman. And not a day older; she was always so pretty,” she
     added, with a sort of lingering apology.

     “Oh! tell us about her, Auntie,” cried Imogen; “I can just
     remember her. She’s the skeleton in the family cupboard, isn’t
     she? And they’re such fun.”

     Aunt Hester sat down. Really, Juley had done it now!

     “She wasn’t much of a skeleton as I remember her,” murmured
     Euphemia, “extremely well-covered.”

     “My dear!” said Aunt Juley, “what a peculiar way of putting
     it—not very nice.”

     “No, but what _was_ she like?” persisted Imogen.

     “I’ll tell you, my child,” said Francie; “a kind of modern Venus,
     very well-dressed.”

     Euphemia said sharply: “Venus was never dressed, and she had blue
     eyes of melting sapphire.”

     At this juncture Nicholas took his leave.

     “Mrs. Nick is awfully strict,” said Francie with a laugh.

     “She has six children,” said Aunt Juley; “it’s very proper she
     should be careful.”

     “Was Uncle Soames awfully fond of her?” pursued the inexorable
     Imogen, moving her dark luscious eyes from face to face.

     Aunt Hester made a gesture of despair, just as Aunt Juley
     answered:

     “Yes, your Uncle Soames was very much attached to her.”

     “I suppose she ran off with someone?”

     “No, certainly not; that is—not precisely.”

     “What did she do, then, Auntie?”

     “Come along, Imogen,” said Winifred, “we must be getting back.”

     But Aunt Juley interjected resolutely: “She—she didn’t behave at
     all well.”

     “Oh, bother!” cried Imogen; “that’s as far as I ever get.”

     “Well, my dear,” said Francie, “she had a love affair which ended
     with the young man’s death; and then she left your uncle. I
     always rather liked her.”

     “She used to give me chocolates,” murmured Imogen, “and smell
     nice.”

     “Of course!” remarked Euphemia.

     “Not of course at all!” replied Francie, who used a particularly
     expensive essence of gillyflower herself.

     “I can’t think what we are about,” said Aunt Juley, raising her
     hands, “talking of such things!”

     “Was she divorced?” asked Imogen from the door.

     “Certainly not,” cried Aunt Juley; “that is—certainly not.”

     A sound was heard over by the far door. Timothy had re-entered
     the back drawing-room. “I’ve come for my map,” he said. “Who’s
     been divorced?”

     “No one, Uncle,” replied Francie with perfect truth.

     Timothy took his map off the piano.

     “Don’t let’s have anything of that sort in the family,” he said.
     “All this enlistin’s bad enough. The country’s breakin’ up; I
     don’t know what we’re comin’ to.” He shook a thick finger at the
     room: “Too many women nowadays, and they don’t know what they
     want.”

     So saying, he grasped the map firmly with both hands, and went
     out as if afraid of being answered.

     The seven women whom he had addressed broke into a subdued
     murmur, out of which emerged Francie’s, “Really, the Forsytes!”
     and Aunt Juley’s: “He must have his feet in mustard and hot water
     to-night, Hester; will you tell Jane? The blood has gone to his
     head again, I’m afraid....”

     That evening, when she and Hester were sitting alone after
     dinner, she dropped a stitch in her crochet, and looked up:

     “Hester, I can’t think where I’ve heard that dear Soames wants
     Irene to come back to him again. Who was it told us that George
     had made a funny drawing of him with the words, ‘He won’t be
     happy till he gets it’.”

     “Eustace,” answered Aunt Hester from behind _The Times;_ “he had
     it in his pocket, but he wouldn’t show it us.”

     Aunt Juley was silent, ruminating. The clock ticked, _The Times_
     crackled, the fire sent forth its rustling purr. Aunt Juley
     dropped another stitch.

     “Hester,” she said, “I have had such a dreadful thought.”

     “Then don’t tell me,” said Aunt Hester quickly.

     “Oh! but I must. You can’t think how dreadful!” Her voice sank to
     a whisper:

     “Jolyon—Jolyon, they say, has a—has a fair beard, now.”




     CHAPTER XII PROGRESS OF THE CHASE


     Two days after the dinner at James’, Mr. Polteed provided Soames
     with food for thought.

     “A gentleman,” he said, consulting the key concealed in his left
     hand, “47 as we say, has been paying marked attention to 17
     during the last month in Paris. But at present there seems to
     have been nothing very conclusive. The meetings have all been in
     public places, without concealment—restaurants, the Opera, the
     Comique, the Louvre, Luxembourg Gardens, lounge of the hotel, and
     so forth. She has not yet been traced to his rooms, nor _vice
     versa_. They went to Fontainebleau—but nothing of value. In
     short, the situation is promising, but requires patience.” And,
     looking up suddenly, he added:

     “One rather curious point—47 has the same name as—er—31!”

     “The fellow knows I’m her husband,” thought Soames.

     “Christian name—an odd one—Jolyon,” continued Mr. Polteed. “We
     know his address in Paris and his residence here. We don’t wish,
     of course, to be running a wrong hare.”

     “Go on with it, but be careful,” said Soames doggedly.

     Instinctive certainty that this detective fellow had fathomed his
     secret made him all the more reticent.

     “Excuse me,” said Mr. Polteed, “I’ll just see if there’s anything
     fresh in.”

     He returned with some letters. Relocking the door, he glanced at
     the envelopes.

     “Yes, here’s a personal one from 19 to myself.”

     “Well?” said Soames.

     “Um!” said Mr. Polteed, “she says: ‘47 left for England to-day.
     Address on his baggage: Robin Hill. Parted from 17 in Louvre
     Gallery at 3.30; nothing very striking. Thought it best to stay
     and continue observation of 17. You will deal with 47 in England
     if you think desirable, no doubt.’” And Mr. Polteed lifted an
     unprofessional glance on Soames, as though he might be storing
     material for a book on human nature after he had gone out of
     business. “Very intelligent woman, 19, and a wonderful make-up.
     Not cheap, but earns her money well. There’s no suspicion of
     being shadowed so far. But after a time, as you know, sensitive
     people are liable to get the feeling of it, without anything
     definite to go on. I should rather advise letting-up on 17, and
     keeping an eye on 47. We can’t get at correspondence without
     great risk. I hardly advise that at this stage. But you can tell
     your client that it’s looking up very well.” And again his
     narrowed eyes gleamed at his taciturn customer.

     “No,” said Soames suddenly, “I prefer that you should keep the
     watch going discreetly in Paris, and not concern yourself with
     this end.”

     “Very well,” replied Mr. Polteed, “we can do it.”

     “What—what is the manner between them?”

     “I’ll read you what she says,” said Mr. Polteed, unlocking a
     bureau drawer and taking out a file of papers; “she sums it up
     somewhere confidentially. Yes, here it is! ‘17 very
     attractive—conclude 47, longer in the tooth’ (slang for age, you
     know)—‘distinctly gone—waiting his time—17 perhaps holding off
     for terms, impossible to say without knowing more. But inclined
     to think on the whole—doesn’t know her mind—likely to act on
     impulse some day. Both have style.’”

     “What does that mean?” said Soames between close lips.

     “Well,” murmured Mr. Polteed with a smile, showing many white
     teeth, “an expression we use. In other words, it’s not likely to
     be a weekend business—they’ll come together seriously or not at
     all.”

     “H’m!” muttered Soames, “that’s all, is it?”

     “Yes,” said Mr. Polteed, “but quite promising.”

     “Spider!” thought Soames. “Good-day!”

     He walked into the Green Park that he might cross to Victoria
     Station and take the Underground into the City. For so late in
     January it was warm; sunlight, through the haze, sparkled on the
     frosty grass—an illumined cobweb of a day.

     Little spiders—and great spiders! And the greatest spinner of
     all, his own tenacity, for ever wrapping its cocoon of threads
     round any clear way out. What was that fellow hanging round Irene
     for? Was it really as Polteed suggested? Or was Jolyon but taking
     compassion on her loneliness, as he would call it—sentimental
     radical chap that he had always been? If it were, indeed, as
     Polteed hinted! Soames stood still. It could not be! The fellow
     was seven years older than himself, no better looking! No richer!
     What attraction had he?

     “Besides, he’s come back,” he thought; “that doesn’t look—I’ll go
     and see him!” and, taking out a card, he wrote:

     “If you can spare half an hour some afternoon this week, I shall
     be at the Connoisseurs any day between 5.30 and 6, or I could
     come to the Hotch Potch if you prefer it. I want to see you.—S.
     F.”

     He walked up St. James’s Street and confided it to the porter at
     the Hotch Potch.

     “Give Mr. Jolyon Forsyte this as soon as he comes in,” he said,
     and took one of the new motor cabs into the City....

     Jolyon received that card the same afternoon, and turned his face
     towards the Connoisseurs. What did Soames want now? Had he got
     wind of Paris? And stepping across St. James’s Street, he
     determined to make no secret of his visit. “But it won’t do,” he
     thought, “to let him know _she’s_ there, unless he knows
     already.” In this complicated state of mind he was conducted to
     where Soames was drinking tea in a small bay-window.

     “No tea, thanks,” said Jolyon, “but I’ll go on smoking if I may.”

     The curtains were not yet drawn, though the lamps outside were
     lighted; the two cousins sat waiting on each other.

     “You’ve been in Paris, I hear,” said Soames at last.

     “Yes; just back.”

     “Young Val told me; he and your boy are going off, then?” Jolyon
     nodded.

     “You didn’t happen to see Irene, I suppose. It appears she’s
     abroad somewhere.”

     Jolyon wreathed himself in smoke before he answered: “Yes, I saw
     her.”

     “How was she?”

     “Very well.”

     There was another silence; then Soames roused himself in his
     chair.

     “When I saw you last,” he said, “I was in two minds. We talked,
     and you expressed your opinion. I don’t wish to reopen that
     discussion. I only wanted to say this: My position with her is
     extremely difficult. I don’t want you to go using your influence
     against me. What happened is a very long time ago. I’m going to
     ask her to let bygones be bygones.”

     “You have asked her, you know,” murmured Jolyon.

     “The idea was new to her then; it came as a shock. But the more
     she thinks of it, the more she must see that it’s the only way
     out for both of us.”

     “That’s not my impression of her state of mind,” said Jolyon with
     particular calm. “And, forgive my saying, you misconceive the
     matter if you think reason comes into it at all.”

     He saw his cousin’s pale face grow paler—he had used, without
     knowing it, Irene’s own words.

     “Thanks,” muttered Soames, “but I see things perhaps more plainly
     than you think. I only want to be sure that you won’t try to
     influence her against me.”

     “I don’t know what makes you think I have any influence,” said
     Jolyon; “but if I have I’m bound to use it in the direction of
     what I think is her happiness. I am what they call a ‘feminist,’
     I believe.”

     “Feminist!” repeated Soames, as if seeking to gain time. “Does
     that mean that you’re against me?”

     “Bluntly,” said Jolyon, “I’m against any woman living with any
     man whom she definitely dislikes. It appears to me rotten.”

     “And I suppose each time you see her you put your opinions into
     her mind.”

     “I am not likely to be seeing her.”

     “Not going back to Paris?”

     “Not so far as I know,” said Jolyon, conscious of the intent
     watchfulness in Soames’ face.

     “Well, that’s all I had to say. Anyone who comes between man and
     wife, you know, incurs heavy responsibility.”

     Jolyon rose and made him a slight bow.

     “Good-bye,” he said, and, without offering to shake hands, moved
     away, leaving Soames staring after him. “We Forsytes,” thought
     Jolyon, hailing a cab, “are very civilised. With simpler folk
     that might have come to a row. If it weren’t for my boy going to
     the war....” The war! A gust of his old doubt swept over him. A
     precious war! Domination of peoples or of women! Attempts to
     master and possess those who did not want you! The negation of
     gentle decency! Possession, vested rights; and anyone ‘agin’
     ’em—outcast! “Thank Heaven!” he thought, “_I always_ felt ‘agin’
     ’em, anyway!” Yes! Even before his first disastrous marriage he
     could remember fuming over the bludgeoning of Ireland, or the
     matrimonial suits of women trying to be free of men they loathed.
     Parsons would have it that freedom of soul and body were quite
     different things! Pernicious doctrine! Body and soul could not
     thus be separated. Free will was the strength of any tie, and not
     its weakness. “I ought to have told Soames,” he thought, “that I
     think him comic. Ah! but he’s tragic, too!” Was there anything,
     indeed, more tragic in the world than a man enslaved by his own
     possessive instinct, who couldn’t see the sky for it, or even
     enter fully into what another person felt! “I must write and warn
     her,” he thought; “he’s going to have another try.” And all the
     way home to Robin Hill he rebelled at the strength of that duty
     to his son which prevented him from posting back to Paris....

     But Soames sat long in his chair, the prey of a no less gnawing
     ache—a jealous ache, as if it had been revealed to him that this
     fellow held precedence of himself, and had spun fresh threads of
     resistance to his way out. “Does that mean that you’re against
     me?” he had got nothing out of that disingenuous question.
     Feminist! Phrasey fellow! “I mustn’t rush things,” he thought. “I
     have some breathing space; he’s not going back to Paris, unless
     he was lying. I’ll let the spring come!” Though how the spring
     could serve him, save by adding to his ache, he could not tell.
     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 opened his eyes—so vividly he had seen her! A woman
     _was_ passing below, but not she! Oh no, there was nothing there!




     CHAPTER XIII “HERE WE ARE AGAIN!”


     Imogen’s frocks for her first season exercised the judgment of
     her mother and the purse of her grandfather all through the month
     of March. With Forsyte tenacity Winifred quested for perfection.
     It took her mind off the slowly approaching rite which would give
     her a freedom but doubtfully desired; took her mind, too, off her
     boy and his fast approaching departure for a war from which the
     news remained disquieting. Like bees busy on summer flowers, or
     bright gadflies hovering and darting over spiky autumn blossoms,
     she and her “little daughter,” tall nearly as herself and with a
     bust measurement not far inferior, hovered in the shops of Regent
     Street, the establishments of Hanover Square and of Bond Street,
     lost in consideration and the feel of fabrics. Dozens of young
     women of striking deportment and peculiar gait paraded before
     Winifred and Imogen, draped in “creations.” The models—“Very new,
     modom; quite the latest thing—” which those two reluctantly
     turned down, would have filled a museum; the models which they
     were obliged to have nearly emptied James’ bank. It was no good
     doing things by halves, Winifred felt, in view of the need for
     making this first and sole untarnished season a conspicuous
     success. Their patience in trying the patience of those
     impersonal creatures who swam about before them could alone have
     been displayed by such as were moved by faith. It was for
     Winifred a long prostration before her dear goddess Fashion,
     fervent as a Catholic might make before the Virgin; for Imogen an
     experience by no means too unpleasant—she often looked so nice,
     and flattery was implicit everywhere: in a word it was “amusing.”

     On the afternoon of the 20th of March, having, as it were, gutted
     Skywards, they had sought refreshment over the way at Caramel and
     Baker’s, and, stored with chocolate frothed at the top with
     cream, turned homewards through Berkeley Square of an evening
     touched with spring. Opening the door—freshly painted a light
     olive-green; nothing neglected that year to give Imogen a good
     send-off—Winifred passed towards the silver basket to see if
     anyone had called, and suddenly her nostrils twitched. What was
     that scent?

     Imogen had taken up a novel sent from the library, and stood
     absorbed. Rather sharply, because of the queer feeling in her
     breast, Winifred said:

     “Take that up, dear, and have a rest before dinner.”

     Imogen, still reading, passed up the stairs. Winifred heard the
     door of her room slammed to, and drew a long savouring breath.
     Was it spring tickling her senses—whipping up nostalgia for her
     “clown,” against all wisdom and outraged virtue? A male scent! A
     faint reek of cigars and lavender-water not smelt since that
     early autumn night six months ago, when she had called him “the
     limit.” Whence came it, or was it ghost of scent—sheer emanation
     from memory? She looked round her. Nothing—not a thing, no
     tiniest disturbance of her hall, nor of the diningroom. A little
     day-dream of a scent—illusory, saddening, silly! In the silver
     basket were new cards, two with “Mr. and Mrs. Polegate Thom,” and
     one with “Mr. Polegate Thom” thereon; she sniffed them, but they
     smelled severe. “I must be tired,” she thought, “I’ll go and lie
     down.” Upstairs the drawing-room was darkened, waiting for some
     hand to give it evening light; and she passed on up to her
     bedroom. This, too, was half-curtained and dim, for it was six
     o’clock. Winifred threw off her coat—that scent again!—then
     stood, as if shot, transfixed against the bed-rail. Something
     dark had risen from the sofa in the far corner. A word of
     horror—in her family—escaped her: “God!”

     “It’s I—Monty,” said a voice.

     Clutching the bed-rail, Winifred reached up and turned the switch
     of the light hanging above her dressing-table. He appeared just
     on the rim of the light’s circumference, emblazoned from the
     absence of his watch-chain down to boots neat and sooty brown,
     but—yes!—split at the toecap. His chest and face were shadowy.
     Surely he was thin—or was it a trick of the light? He advanced,
     lighted now from toe-cap to the top of his dark head—surely a
     little grizzled! His complexion had darkened, sallowed; his black
     moustache had lost boldness, become sardonic; there were lines
     which she did not know about his face. There was no pin in his
     tie. His suit—ah!—she knew that—but how unpressed, unglossy! She
     stared again at the toe-cap of his boot. Something big and
     relentless had been “at him,” had turned and twisted, raked and
     scraped him. And she stayed, not speaking, motionless, staring at
     that crack across the toe.

     “Well!” he said, “I got the order. I’m back.”

     Winifred’s bosom began to heave. The nostalgia for her husband
     which had rushed up with that scent was struggling with a deeper
     jealousy than any she had felt yet. There he was—a dark, and as
     if harried, shadow of his sleek and brazen self! What force had
     done this to him—squeezed him like an orange to its dry rind!
     That woman!

     “I’m back,” he said again. “I’ve had a beastly time. By God! I
     came steerage. I’ve got nothing but what I stand up in, and that
     bag.”

     “And who has the rest?” cried Winifred, suddenly alive. “How
     dared you come? You knew it was just for divorce that you got
     that order to come back. Don’t touch me!”

     They held each to the rail of the big bed where they had spent so
     many years of nights together. Many times, yes—many times she had
     wanted him back. But now that he had come she was filled with
     this cold and deadly resentment. He put his hand up to his
     moustache; but did not frizz and twist it in the old familiar
     way, he just pulled it downwards.

     “Gad!” he said: “If you knew the time I’ve had!”

     “I’m glad I don’t!”

     “Are the kids all right?”

     Winifred nodded. “How did you get in?”

     “With my key.”

     “Then the maids don’t know. You can’t stay here, Monty.”

     He uttered a little sardonic laugh.

     “Where then?”

     “Anywhere.”

     “Well, look at me! That—that damned....”

     “If you mention _her_,” cried Winifred, “I go straight out to
     Park Lane and I don’t come back.”

     Suddenly he did a simple thing, but so uncharacteristic that it
     moved her. He shut his eyes. It was as if he had said: “All
     right! I’m dead to the world!”

     “You can have a room for the night,” she said; “your things are
     still here. Only Imogen is at home.”

     He leaned back against the bed-rail. “Well, it’s in your hands,”
     and his own made a writhing movement. “I’ve been through it. You
     needn’t hit too hard—it isn’t worth while. I’ve been frightened;
     I’ve been frightened, Freddie.”

     That old pet name, disused for years and years, sent a shiver
     through Winifred.

     “What am I to do with him?” she thought. “What in God’s name am I
     to do with him?”

     “Got a cigarette?”

     She gave him one from a little box she kept up there for when she
     couldn’t sleep at night, and lighted it. With that action the
     matter-of-fact side of her nature came to life again.

     “Go and have a hot bath. I’ll put some clothes out for you in the
     dressing-room. We can talk later.”

     He nodded, and fixed his eyes on her—they looked half-dead, or
     was it that the folds in the lids had become heavier?

     “He’s not the same,” she thought. He would never be quite the
     same again! But what would he be?

     “All right!” he said, and went towards the door. He even moved
     differently, like a man who has lost illusion and doubts whether
     it is worth while to move at all.

     When he was gone, and she heard the water in the bath running,
     she put out a complete set of garments on the bed in his
     dressing-room, then went downstairs and fetched up the biscuit
     box and whisky. Putting on her coat again, and listening a moment
     at the bathroom door, she went down and out. In the street she
     hesitated. Past seven o’clock! Would Soames be at his Club or at
     Park Lane? She turned towards the latter. Back!

     Soames had always feared it—she had sometimes hoped it.... Back!
     So like him—clown that he was—with this: “Here we are again!” to
     make fools of them all—of the Law, of Soames, of herself!

     Yet to have done with the Law, not to have that murky cloud
     hanging over her and the children! What a relief! Ah! but how to
     accept his return? That “woman” had ravaged him, taken from him
     passion such as he had never bestowed on herself, such as she had
     not thought him capable of. There was the sting! That selfish,
     blatant “clown” of hers, whom she herself had never really
     stirred, had been swept and ungarnished by another woman!
     Insulting! Too insulting! Not right, not decent to take him back!
     And yet she had asked for him; the Law perhaps would make her
     now! He was as much her husband as ever—she had put herself out
     of court! And all he wanted, no doubt, was money—to keep him in
     cigars and lavender-water! That scent! “After all, I’m not old,”
     she thought, “not old yet!” But that woman who had reduced him to
     those words: “I’ve been through it. I’ve been
     frightened—frightened, Freddie!” She neared her father’s house,
     driven this way and that, while all the time the Forsyte undertow
     was drawing her to deep conclusion that after all he was her
     property, to be held against a robbing world. And so she came to
     James’.

     “Mr. Soames? In his room? I’ll go up; don’t say I’m here.”

     Her brother was dressing. She found him before a mirror, tying a
     black bow with an air of despising its ends.

     “Hullo!” he said, contemplating her in the glass; “what’s wrong?”

     “Monty!” said Winifred stonily.

     Soames spun round. “What!”

     “Back!”

     “Hoist,” muttered Soames, “with our own petard. Why the deuce
     didn’t you let me try cruelty? I always knew it was too much risk
     this way.”

     “Oh! Don’t talk about that! What shall I do?”

     Soames answered, with a deep, deep sound.

     “Well?” said Winifred impatiently.

     “What has he to say for himself?”

     “Nothing. One of his boots is split across the toe.”

     Soames stared at her.

     “Ah!” he said, “of course! On his beam ends. So—it begins again!
     This’ll about finish father.”

     “Can’t we keep it from him?”

     “Impossible. He has an uncanny flair for anything that’s
     worrying.”

     And he brooded, with fingers hooked into his blue silk braces.
     “There ought to be some way in law,” he muttered, “to make him
     safe.”

     “No,” cried Winifred, “I won’t be made a fool of again; I’d
     sooner put up with him.”

     The two stared at each other. Their hearts were full of feeling,
     but they could give it no expression—Forsytes that they were.

     “Where did you leave him?”

     “In the bath,” and Winifred gave a little bitter laugh. “The only
     thing he’s brought back is lavender-water.”

     “Steady!” said Soames, “you’re thoroughly upset. I’ll go back
     with you.”

     “What’s the use?”

     “We ought to make terms with him.”

     “Terms! It’ll always be the same. When he recovers—cards and
     betting, drink and...!” She was silent, remembering the look on
     her husband’s face. The burnt child—the burnt child. Perhaps...!

     “Recovers?” replied Soames: “Is he ill?”

     “No; burnt out; that’s all.”

     Soames took his waistcoat from a chair and put it on, he took his
     coat and got into it, he scented his handkerchief with
     eau-de-Cologne, threaded his watch-chain, and said: “We haven’t
     any luck.”

     And in the midst of her own trouble Winifred was sorry for him,
     as if in that little saying he had revealed deep trouble of his
     own.

     “I’d like to see mother,” she said.

     “She’ll be with father in their room. Come down quietly to the
     study. I’ll get her.”

     Winifred stole down to the little dark study, chiefly remarkable
     for a Canaletto too doubtful to be placed elsewhere, and a fine
     collection of Law Reports unopened for many years. Here she
     stood, with her back to maroon-coloured curtains close-drawn,
     staring at the empty grate, till her mother came in followed by
     Soames.

     “Oh! my poor dear!” said Emily: “How miserable you look in here!
     This is too bad of him, really!”

     As a family they had so guarded themselves from the expression of
     all unfashionable emotion that it was impossible to go up and
     give her daughter a good hug. But there was comfort in her
     cushioned voice, and her still dimpled shoulders under some rare
     black lace. Summoning pride and the desire not to distress her
     mother, Winifred said in her most off-hand voice:

     “It’s all right, Mother; no good fussing.”

     “I don’t see,” said Emily, looking at Soames, “why Winifred
     shouldn’t tell him that she’ll prosecute him if he doesn’t keep
     off the premises. He took her pearls; and if he’s not brought
     them back, that’s quite enough.”

     Winifred smiled. They would all plunge about with suggestions of
     this and that, but she knew already what she would be doing, and
     that was—nothing. The feeling that, after all, she had won a sort
     of victory, retained her property, was every moment gaining
     ground in her. No! if she wanted to punish him, she could do it
     at home without the world knowing.

     “Well,” said Emily, “come into the dining-room comfortably—you
     must stay and have dinner with us. Leave it to me to tell your
     father.” And, as Winifred moved towards the door, she turned out
     the light. Not till then did they see the disaster in the
     corridor.

     There, attracted by light from a room never lighted, James was
     standing with his duncoloured camel-hair shawl folded about him,
     so that his arms were not free and his silvered head looked cut
     off from his fashionably trousered legs as if by an expanse of
     desert. He stood, inimitably stork-like, with an expression as if
     he saw before him a frog too large to swallow.

     “What’s all this?” he said. “Tell your father? You never tell me
     anything.”

     The moment found Emily without reply. It was Winifred who went up
     to him, and, laying one hand on each of his swathed, helpless
     arms, said:

     “Monty’s not gone bankrupt, Father. He’s only come back.”

     They all three expected something serious to happen, and were
     glad she had kept that grip of his arms, but they did not know
     the depth of root in that shadowy old Forsyte. Something wry
     occurred about his shaven mouth and chin, something scratchy
     between those long silvery whiskers. Then he said with a sort of
     dignity: “He’ll be the death of me. I knew how it would be.”

     “You mustn’t worry, Father,” said Winifred calmly. “I mean to
     make him behave.”

     “Ah!” said James. “Here, take this thing off, I’m hot.” They
     unwound the shawl. He turned, and walked firmly to the
     dining-room.

     “I don’t want any soup,” he said to Warmson, and sat down in his
     chair. They all sat down too, Winifred still in her hat, while
     Warmson laid the fourth place. When he left the room, James said:
     “What’s he brought back?”

     “Nothing, Father.”

     James concentrated his eyes on his own image in a tablespoon.
     “Divorce!” he muttered; “rubbish! What was I about? I ought to
     have paid him an allowance to stay out of England. Soames you go
     and propose it to him.”

     It seemed so right and simple a suggestion that even Winifred was
     surprised when she said: “No, I’ll keep him now he’s back; he
     must just behave—that’s all.”

     They all looked at her. It had always been known that Winifred
     had pluck.

     “Out there!” said James elliptically, “who knows what
     cut-throats! You look for his revolver! Don’t go to bed without.
     You ought to have Warmson to sleep in the house. I’ll see him
     myself tomorrow.”

     They were touched by this declaration, and Emily said
     comfortably: “That’s right, James, we won’t have any nonsense.”

     “Ah!” muttered James darkly, “I can’t tell.”

     The advent of Warmson with fish diverted conversation.

     When, directly after dinner, Winifred went over to kiss her
     father good-night, he looked up with eyes so full of question and
     distress that she put all the comfort she could into her voice.

     “It’s all right, Daddy, dear; don’t worry. I shan’t need
     anyone—he’s quite bland. I shall only be upset if you worry.
     Good-night, bless you!”

     James repeated the words, “Bless you!” as if he did not quite
     know what they meant, and his eyes followed her to the door.

     She reached home before nine, and went straight upstairs.

     Dartie was lying on the bed in his dressing-room, fully redressed
     in a blue serge suit and pumps; his arms were crossed behind his
     head, and an extinct cigarette drooped from his mouth.

     Winifred remembered ridiculously the flowers in her window-boxes
     after a blazing summer day; the way they lay, or rather
     stood—parched, yet rested by the sun’s retreat. It was as if a
     little dew had come already on her burnt-up husband.

     He said apathetically: “I suppose you’ve been to Park Lane. How’s
     the old man?”

     Winifred could not help the bitter answer: “Not dead.”

     He winced, actually he winced.

     “Understand, Monty,” she said, “I will _not_ have him worried. If
     you aren’t going to behave yourself, you may go back, you may go
     anywhere. Have you had dinner?”

     No.

     “Would you like some?”

     He shrugged his shoulders.

     “Imogen offered me some. I didn’t want any.”

     Imogen! In the plenitude of emotion Winifred had forgotten her.

     “So you’ve seen her? What did she say?”

     “She gave me a kiss.”

     With mortification Winifred saw his dark sardonic face relaxed.
     “Yes!” she thought, “he cares for her, not for me a bit.”

     Dartie’s eyes were moving from side to side.

     “Does she know about me?” he said.

     It flashed through Winifred that here was the weapon she needed.
     _He minded their knowing!_

     “No. Val knows. The others don’t; they only know you went away.”

     She heard him sigh with relief.

     “But they _shall_ know,” she said firmly, “if you give me cause.”

     “All right!” he muttered, “hit me! I’m down!”

     Winifred went up to the bed. “Look here, Monty! I don’t want to
     hit you. I don’t want to hurt you. I shan’t allude to anything.
     I’m not going to worry. What’s the use?” She was silent a moment.
     “I can’t stand any more, though, and I won’t! You’d better know.
     You’ve made me suffer. But I used to be fond of you. For the sake
     of that....” She met the heavy-lidded gaze of his brown eyes with
     the downward stare of her green-grey eyes; touched his hand
     suddenly, turned her back, and went into her room.

     She sat there a long time before her glass, fingering her rings,
     thinking of this subdued dark man, almost a stranger to her, on
     the bed in the other room; resolutely not “worrying,” but gnawed
     by jealousy of what he had been through, and now and again just
     visited by pity.




     CHAPTER XIV OUTLANDISH NIGHT


     Soames doggedly let the spring come—no easy task for one
     conscious that time was flying, his birds in the bush no nearer
     the hand, no issue from the web anywhere visible. Mr. Polteed
     reported nothing, except that his watch went on—costing a lot of
     money. Val and his cousin were gone to the war, whence came news
     more favourable; Dartie was behaving himself so far; James had
     retained his health; business prospered almost terribly—there was
     nothing to worry Soames except that he was “held up,” could make
     no step in any direction.

     He did not exactly avoid Soho, for he could not afford to let
     them think that he had “piped off,” as James would have put it—he
     might want to “pipe on” again at any minute. But he had to be so
     restrained and cautious that he would often pass the door of the
     Restaurant Bretagne without going in, and wander out of the
     purlieus of that region which always gave him the feeling of
     having been possessively irregular.

     He wandered thus one May night into Regent Street and the most
     amazing crowd he had ever seen; a shrieking, whistling, dancing,
     jostling, grotesque and formidably jovial crowd, with false noses
     and mouth-organs, penny whistles and long feathers, every
     appanage of idiocy, as it seemed to him. Mafeking! Of course, it
     had been relieved! Good! But was that an excuse? Who were these
     people, what were they, where had they come from into the West
     End? His face was tickled, his ears whistled into. Girls cried:
     “Keep your hair on, stucco!” A youth so knocked off his top-hat
     that he recovered it with difficulty. Crackers were exploding
     beneath his nose, between his feet. He was bewildered,
     exasperated, offended. This stream of people came from every
     quarter, as if impulse had unlocked flood-gates, let flow waters
     of whose existence he had heard, perhaps, but believed in never.
     This, then, was the populace, the innumerable living negation of
     gentility and Forsyteism. This was—egad!—Democracy! It stank,
     yelled, was hideous! In the East End, or even Soho, perhaps—but
     here in Regent Street, in Piccadilly! What were the police about!
     In 1900, Soames, with his Forsyte thousands, had never seen the
     cauldron with the lid off; and now looking into it, could hardly
     believe his scorching eyes. The whole thing was unspeakable!
     These people had no restraint, they seemed to think him funny;
     such swarms of them, rude, coarse, laughing—and what laughter!

     Nothing sacred to them! He shouldn’t be surprised if they began
     to break windows. In Pall Mall, past those august dwellings, to
     enter which people paid sixty pounds, this shrieking, whistling,
     dancing dervish of a crowd was swarming. From the Club windows
     his own kind were looking out on them with regulated amusement.
     They didn’t realise! Why, this was serious—might come to
     anything! The crowd was cheerful, but some day they would come in
     different mood! He remembered there had been a mob in the late
     eighties, when he was at Brighton; they had smashed things and
     made speeches. But more than dread, he felt a deep surprise. They
     were hysterical—it wasn’t English! And all about the relief of a
     little town as big as—Watford, six thousand miles away.
     Restraint, reserve! Those qualities to him more dear almost than
     life, those indispensable attributes of property and culture,
     where were they? It wasn’t English! No, it wasn’t English! So
     Soames brooded, threading his way on. It was as if he had
     suddenly caught sight of someone cutting the covenant “for quiet
     possession” out of his legal documents; or of a monster lurking
     and stalking out in the future, casting its shadow before. Their
     want of stolidity, their want of reverence! It was like
     discovering that nine-tenths of the people of England were
     foreigners. And if that were so—then, anything might happen!

     At Hyde Park Corner he ran into George Forsyte, very sunburnt
     from racing, holding a false nose in his hand.

     “Hallo, Soames!” he said, “have a nose!”

     Soames responded with a pale smile.

     “Got this from one of these sportsmen,” went on George, who had
     evidently been dining; “had to lay him out—for trying to bash my
     hat. I say, one of these days we shall have to fight these chaps,
     they’re getting so damned cheeky—all radicals and socialists.
     They want our goods. You tell Uncle James that, it’ll make him
     sleep.”

     “_In vino veritas_,” thought Soames, but he only nodded, and
     passed on up Hamilton Place. There was but a trickle of
     roysterers in Park Lane, not very noisy. And looking up at the
     houses he thought: “After all, we’re the backbone of the country.
     They won’t upset us easily. Possession’s nine points of the law.”

     But, as he closed the door of his father’s house behind him, all
     that queer outlandish nightmare in the streets passed out of his
     mind almost as completely as if, having dreamed it, he had
     awakened in the warm clean morning comfort of his
     spring-mattressed bed.

     Walking into the centre of the great empty drawing-room, he stood
     still.

     A wife! Somebody to talk things over with. One had a right! Damn
     it! One had a right!




     PART III

     CHAPTER I SOAMES IN PARIS


     Soames had travelled little. Aged nineteen he had made the “petty
     tour” with his father, mother, and Winifred—Brussels, the Rhine,
     Switzerland, and home by way of Paris. Aged twenty-seven, just
     when he began to take interest in pictures, he had spent five hot
     weeks in Italy, looking into the Renaissance—not so much in it as
     he had been led to expect—and a fortnight in Paris on his way
     back, looking into himself, as became a Forsyte surrounded by
     people so strongly self-centred and “foreign” as the French. His
     knowledge of their language being derived from his public school,
     he did not understand them when they spoke. Silence he had found
     better for all parties; one did not make a fool of oneself. He
     had disliked the look of the men’s clothes, the closed-in cabs,
     the theatres which looked like bee-hives, the Galleries which
     smelled of beeswax. He was too cautious and too shy to explore
     that side of Paris supposed by Forsytes to constitute its
     attraction under the rose; and as for a collector’s bargain—not
     one to be had! As Nicholas might have put it—they were a grasping
     lot. He had come back uneasy, saying Paris was overrated.

     When, therefore, in June of 1900 he went to Paris, it was but his
     third attempt on the centre of civilisation. This time, however,
     the mountain was going to Mahomet; for he felt by now more deeply
     civilised than Paris, and perhaps he really was. Moreover, he had
     a definite objective. This was no mere genuflexion to a shrine of
     taste and immorality, but the prosecution of his own legitimate
     affairs. He went, indeed, because things were getting past a
     joke. The watch went on and on, and—nothing—nothing! Jolyon had
     never returned to Paris, and no one else was “suspect!” Busy with
     new and very confidential matters, Soames was realising more than
     ever how essential reputation is to a solicitor. But at night and
     in his leisure moments he was ravaged by the thought that time
     was always flying and money flowing in, and his own future as
     much “in irons” as ever. Since Mafeking night he had become aware
     that a “young fool of a doctor” was hanging round Annette. Twice
     he had come across him—a cheerful young fool, not more than
     thirty.

     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. If he failed again—well, he
     would see what she did with herself, anyway!

     He went to an hotel in the Rue Caumartin, highly recommended to
     Forsytes, where practically nobody spoke French. He had formed no
     plan. He did not want to startle her; yet must contrive that she
     had no chance to evade him by flight. And next morning he set out
     in bright weather.

     Paris had an air of gaiety, a sparkle over its star-shape which
     almost annoyed Soames. He stepped gravely, his nose lifted a
     little sideways in real curiosity. He desired now to understand
     things French. Was not Annette French? There was much to be got
     out of his visit, if he could only get it. In this laudable mood
     and the Place de la Concorde he was nearly run down three times.
     He came on the “Cours la Reine,” where Irene’s hotel was
     situated, almost too suddenly, for he had not yet fixed on his
     procedure. Crossing over to the river side, he noted the
     building, white and cheerful-looking, with green sunblinds, seen
     through a screen of plane-tree leaves. And, conscious that it
     would be far better to meet her casually in some open place than
     to risk a call, he sat down on a bench whence he could watch the
     entrance. It was not quite eleven o’clock, and improbable that
     she had yet gone out. Some pigeons were strutting and preening
     their feathers in the pools of sunlight between the shadows of
     the plane-trees. A workman in a blue blouse passed, and threw
     them crumbs from the paper which contained his dinner. A
     “_bonne_” coiffed with ribbon shepherded two little girls with
     pig-tails and frilled drawers. A cab meandered by, whose _cocher_
     wore a blue coat and a black-glazed hat. To Soames a kind of
     affectation seemed to cling about it all, a sort of
     picturesqueness which was out of date. A theatrical people, the
     French! He lit one of his rare cigarettes, with a sense of injury
     that Fate should be casting his life into outlandish waters. He
     shouldn’t wonder if Irene quite enjoyed this foreign life; she
     had never been properly English—even to look at! And he began
     considering which of those windows could be hers under the green
     sunblinds. How could he word what he had come to say so that it
     might pierce the defence of her proud obstinacy? He threw the
     fag-end of his cigarette at a pigeon, with the thought: “I can’t
     stay here for ever twiddling my thumbs. Better give it up and
     call on her in the late afternoon.” But he still sat on, heard
     twelve strike, and then half-past. “I’ll wait till one,” he
     thought, “while I’m about it.” But just then he started up, and
     shrinkingly sat down again. A woman had come out in a
     cream-coloured frock, and was moving away under a fawn-coloured
     parasol. Irene herself! He waited till she was too far away to
     recognise him, then set out after her. She was strolling as
     though she had no particular objective; moving, if he remembered
     rightly, toward the Bois de Boulogne. For half an hour at least
     he kept his distance on the far side of the way till she had
     passed into the Bois itself. Was she going to meet someone after
     all? Some confounded Frenchman—one of those “Bel Ami” chaps,
     perhaps, who had nothing to do but hang about women—for he had
     read that book with difficulty and a sort of disgusted
     fascination. He followed doggedly along a shady alley, losing
     sight of her now and then when the path curved. And it came back
     to him how, long ago, one night in Hyde Park he had slid and
     sneaked from tree to tree, from seat to seat, hunting blindly,
     ridiculously, in burning jealousy for her and young Bosinney. The
     path bent sharply, and, hurrying, he came on her sitting in front
     of a small fountain—a little green-bronze Niobe veiled in hair to
     her slender hips, gazing at the pool she had wept: He came on her
     so suddenly that he was past before he could turn and take off
     his hat. She did not start up. She had always had great
     self-command—it was one of the things he most admired in her, one
     of his greatest grievances against her, because he had never been
     able to tell what she was thinking. Had she realised that he was
     following? Her self-possession made him angry; and, disdaining to
     explain his presence, he pointed to the mournful little Niobe,
     and said:

     “That’s rather a good thing.”

     He could see, then, that she was struggling to preserve her
     composure.

     “I didn’t want to startle you; is this one of your haunts?”

     “Yes.”

     “A little lonely.” As he spoke, a lady, strolling by, paused to
     look at the fountain and passed on.

     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.

     “None! None! None! You may hunt me to the grave. I will not
     come.”

     Outraged and on edge, Soames recoiled.

     “Don’t make a scene!” he said sharply. And they both stood
     motionless, staring at the little Niobe, whose greenish flesh the
     sunlight was burnishing.

     “That’s your last word, then,” muttered Soames, clenching his
     hands; “you condemn us both.”

     Irene bent her head. “I can’t come back. Good-bye!”

     A feeling of monstrous injustice flared up in Soames.

     “Stop!” he said, “and listen to me a moment. You gave me a sacred
     vow—you came to me without a penny. You had all I could give you.
     You broke that vow without cause, you made me a by-word; you
     refused me a child; you’ve left me in prison; you—you still move
     me so that I want you—I want you. Well, what do you think of
     yourself?”

     Irene turned, her face was deadly pale, her eyes burning dark.

     “God made me as I am,” she said; “wicked if you like—but not so
     wicked that I’ll give myself again to a man I hate.”

     The sunlight gleamed on her hair as she moved away, and seemed to
     lay a caress all down her clinging cream-coloured frock.

     Soames could neither speak nor move. That word “hate”—so extreme,
     so primitive—made all the Forsyte in him tremble. With a deep
     imprecation he strode away from where she had vanished, and ran
     almost into the arms of the lady sauntering back—the fool, the
     shadowing fool!

     He was soon dripping with perspiration, in the depths of the
     Bois.

     “Well,” he thought, “I need have no consideration for her now;
     she has not a grain of it for me. I’ll show her this very day
     that she’s my wife still.”

     But on the way home to his hotel, he was forced to the conclusion
     that he did not know what he meant. One could not make scenes in
     public, and short of scenes in public what was there he could do?
     He almost cursed his own thin-skinnedness. She might deserve no
     consideration; but he—alas! deserved some at his own hands. And
     sitting lunchless in the hall of his hotel, with tourists passing
     every moment, Baedeker in hand, he was visited by black
     dejection. In irons! His whole life, with every natural instinct
     and every decent yearning gagged and fettered, and all because
     Fate had driven him seventeen years ago to set his heart upon
     this woman—so utterly, that even now he had no real heart to set
     on any other! Cursed was the day he had met her, and his eyes for
     seeing in her anything but the cruel Venus she was! And yet,
     still seeing her with the sunlight on the clinging China crepe of
     her gown, he uttered a little groan, so that a tourist who was
     passing, thought: “Man in pain! Let’s see! what did I have for
     lunch?”

     Later, in front of a café near the Opera, over a glass of cold
     tea with lemon and a straw in it, he took the malicious
     resolution to go and dine at her hotel. If she were there, he
     would speak to her; if she were not, he would leave a note. He
     dressed carefully, and wrote as follows:

     “Your idyll with that fellow Jolyon Forsyte is known to me at all
     events. If you pursue it, understand that I will leave no stone
     unturned to make things unbearable for him.

     ‘S. F.’”

     He sealed this note but did not address it, refusing to write the
     maiden name which she had impudently resumed, or to put the word
     Forsyte on the envelope lest she should tear it up unread. Then
     he went out, and made his way through the glowing streets,
     abandoned to evening pleasure-seekers. Entering her hotel, he
     took his seat in a far corner of the dining-room whence he could
     see all entrances and exits. She was not there. He ate little,
     quickly, watchfully. She did not come. He lingered in the lounge
     over his coffee, drank two liqueurs of brandy. But still she did
     not come. He went over to the keyboard and examined the names.
     Number twelve, on the first floor! And he determined to take the
     note up himself. He mounted red-carpeted stairs, past a little
     salon; eight-ten-twelve! Should he knock, push the note under,
     or...? He looked furtively round and turned the handle. The door
     opened, but into a little space leading to another door; he
     knocked on that—no answer. The door was locked. It fitted very
     closely to the floor; the note would not go under. He thrust it
     back into his pocket, and stood a moment listening. He felt
     somehow certain that she was not there. And suddenly he came
     away, passing the little salon down the stairs. He stopped at the
     bureau and said:

     “Will you kindly see that Mrs. Heron has this note?”

     “Madame Heron left to-day, Monsieur—suddenly, about three
     o’clock. There was illness in her family.”

     Soames compressed his lips. “Oh!” he said; “do you know her
     address?”

     “_Non, Monsieur_. England, I think.”

     Soames put the note back into his pocket and went out. He hailed
     an open horse-cab which was passing.

     “Drive me anywhere!”

     The man, who, obviously, did not understand, smiled, and waved
     his whip. And Soames was borne along in that little
     yellow-wheeled Victoria all over star-shaped Paris, with here and
     there a pause, and the question, “_C’est par ici, Monsieur?_”
     “No, go on,” till the man gave it up in despair, and the
     yellow-wheeled chariot continued to roll between the tall,
     flat-fronted shuttered houses and plane-tree avenues—a little
     Flying Dutchman of a cab.

     “Like my life,” thought Soames, “without object, on and on!”




     CHAPTER II IN THE WEB


     Soames returned to England the following day, and on the third
     morning received a visit from Mr. Polteed, who wore a flower and
     carried a brown billycock hat. Soames motioned him to a seat.

     “The news from the war is not so bad, is it?” said Mr. Polteed.
     “I hope I see you well, sir.”

     “Thanks! quite.”

     Mr. Polteed leaned forward, smiled, opened his hand, looked into
     it, and said softly:

     “I think we’ve done your business for you at last.”

     “What?” ejaculated Soames.

     “Nineteen reports quite suddenly what I think we shall be
     justified in calling conclusive evidence,” and Mr. Polteed
     paused.

     “Well?”

     “On the 10th instant, after witnessing an interview between 17
     and a party, earlier in the day, 19 can swear to having seen him
     coming out of her bedroom in the hotel about ten o’clock in the
     evening. With a little care in the giving of the evidence that
     will be enough, especially as 17 has left Paris—no doubt with the
     party in question. In fact, they both slipped off, and we haven’t
     got on to them again, yet; but we shall—we shall. She’s worked
     hard under very difficult circumstances, and I’m glad she’s
     brought it off at last.” Mr. Polteed took out a cigarette, tapped
     its end against the table, looked at Soames, and put it back. The
     expression on his client’s face was not encouraging.

     “Who is this new person?” said Soames abruptly.

     “That we don’t know. She’ll swear to the fact, and she’s got his
     appearance pat.”

     Mr. Polteed took out a letter, and began reading:

     “‘Middle-aged, medium height, blue dittoes in afternoon, evening
     dress at night, pale, dark hair, small dark moustache, flat
     cheeks, good chin, grey eyes, small feet, guilty look....’”

     Soames rose and went to the window. He stood there in sardonic
     fury. Congenital idiot—spidery congenital idiot! Seven months at
     fifteen pounds a week—to be tracked down as his own wife’s lover!
     Guilty look! He threw the window open.

     “It’s hot,” he said, and came back to his seat.

     Crossing his knees, he bent a supercilious glance on Mr. Polteed.

     “I doubt if that’s quite good enough,” he said, drawling the
     words, “with no name or address. I think you may let that lady
     have a rest, and take up our friend 47 at this end.” Whether
     Polteed had spotted him he could not tell; but he had a mental
     vision of him in the midst of his cronies dissolved in
     inextinguishable laughter. “Guilty look!” Damnation!

     Mr. Polteed said in a tone of urgency, almost of pathos: “I
     assure you we have put it through sometimes on less than that.
     It’s Paris, you know. Attractive woman living alone. Why not risk
     it, sir? We might screw it up a peg.”

     Soames had sudden insight. The fellow’s professional zeal was
     stirred: “Greatest triumph of my career; got a man his divorce
     through a visit to his own wife’s bedroom! Something to talk of
     there, when I retire!” And for one wild moment he thought: “Why
     not?” After all, hundreds of men of medium height had small feet
     and a guilty look!

     “I’m not authorised to take any risk!” he said shortly.

     Mr. Polteed looked up.

     “Pity,” he said, “quite a pity! That other affair seemed very
     costive.”

     Soames rose.

     “Never mind that. Please watch 47, and take care not to find a
     mare’s nest. Good-morning!”

     Mr. Polteed’s eye glinted at the words “mare’s nest!”

     “Very good. You shall be kept informed.”

     And Soames was alone again. The spidery, dirty, ridiculous
     business! Laying his arms on the table, he leaned his forehead on
     them. Full ten minutes he rested thus, till a managing clerk
     roused him with the draft prospectus of a new issue of shares,
     very desirable, in Manifold and Topping’s. That afternoon he left
     work early and made his way to the Restaurant Bretagne. Only
     Madame Lamotte was in. Would _Monsieur_ have tea with her?

     Soames bowed.

     When they were seated at right angles to each other in the little
     room, he said abruptly:

     “I want a talk with you, _Madame_.”

     The quick lift of her clear brown eyes told him that she had long
     expected such words.

     “I have to ask you something first: That young doctor—what’s his
     name? Is there anything between him and Annette?”

     Her whole personality had become, as it were, like jet—clear-cut,
     black, hard, shining.

     “Annette is young,” she said; “so is _monsieur le docteur_.
     Between young people things move quickly; but Annette is a good
     daughter. Ah! what a jewel of a nature!”

     The least little smile twisted Soames’ lips.

     “Nothing definite, then?”

     “But definite—no, indeed! The young man is veree nice, but—what
     would you? There is no money at present.”

     She raised her willow-patterned tea-cup; Soames did the same.
     Their eyes met.

     “I am a married man,” he said, “living apart from my wife for
     many years. I am seeking to divorce her.”

     Madame Lamotte put down her cup. Indeed! What tragic things there
     were! The entire absence of sentiment in her inspired a queer
     species of contempt in Soames.

     “I am a rich man,” he added, fully conscious that the remark was
     not in good taste. “It is useless to say more at present, but I
     think you understand.”

     Madame’s eyes, so open that the whites showed above them, looked
     at him very straight.

     “_Ah! ça—mais nous avons le temps!_” was all she said. “Another
     little cup?” Soames refused, and, taking his leave, walked
     westward.

     He had got that off his mind; she would not let Annette commit
     herself with that cheerful young ass until...! But what chance of
     his ever being able to say: “I’m free?” What chance? The future
     had lost all semblance of reality. He felt like a fly, entangled
     in cobweb filaments, watching the desirable freedom of the air
     with pitiful eyes.

     He was short of exercise, and wandered on to Kensington Gardens,
     and down Queen’s Gate towards Chelsea. Perhaps she had gone back
     to her flat. That at all events he could find out. For since that
     last and most ignominious repulse his wounded self-respect had
     taken refuge again in the feeling that she must have a lover. He
     arrived before the little Mansions at the dinner-hour. No need to
     enquire! A grey-haired lady was watering the flower-boxes in her
     window. It was evidently let. And he walked slowly past again,
     along the river—an evening of clear, quiet beauty, all harmony
     and comfort, except within his heart.




     CHAPTER III RICHMOND PARK


     On the afternoon that Soames crossed to France a cablegram was
     received by Jolyon at Robin Hill:

     “Your son down with enteric no immediate danger will cable
     again.”

     It reached a household already agitated by the imminent departure
     of June, whose berth was booked for the following day. She was,
     indeed, in the act of confiding Eric Cobbley and his family to
     her father’s care when the message arrived.

     The resolution to become a Red Cross nurse, taken under stimulus
     of Jolly’s enlistment, had been loyally fulfilled with the
     irritation and regret which all Forsytes feel at what curtails
     their individual liberties. Enthusiastic at first about the
     “wonderfulness” of the work, she had begun after a month to feel
     that she could train herself so much better than others could
     train her. And if Holly had not insisted on following her
     example, and being trained too, she must inevitably have “cried
     off.” The departure of Jolly and Val with their troop in April
     had further stiffened her failing resolve. But now, on the point
     of departure, the thought of leaving Eric Cobbley, with a wife
     and two children, adrift in the cold waters of an unappreciative
     world weighed on her so that she was still in danger of backing
     out. The reading of that cablegram, with its disquieting reality,
     clinched the matter. She saw herself already nursing Jolly—for of
     course they would let her nurse her own brother! Jolyon—ever wide
     and doubtful—had no such hope. Poor June!

     Could any Forsyte of her generation grasp how rude and brutal
     life was? Ever since he knew of his boy’s arrival at Cape Town
     the thought of him had been a kind of recurrent sickness in
     Jolyon. He could not get reconciled to the feeling that Jolly was
     in danger all the time. The cablegram, grave though it was, was
     almost a relief. He was now safe from bullets, anyway. And
     yet—this enteric was a virulent disease! _The Times_ was full of
     deaths therefrom. Why could _he_ not be lying out there in that
     up-country hospital, and his boy safe at home? The un-Forsytean
     self-sacrifice of his three children, indeed, had quite
     bewildered Jolyon. He would eagerly change places with Jolly,
     because he loved his boy; but no such personal motive was
     influencing _them_. He could only think that it marked the
     decline of the Forsyte type.

     Late that afternoon Holly came out to him under the old oak-tree.
     She had grown up very much during these last months of hospital
     training away from home. And, seeing her approach, he thought:
     “She has more sense than June, child though she is; more wisdom.
     Thank God _she_ isn’t going out.” She had seated herself in the
     swing, very silent and still. “She feels this,” thought Jolyon,
     “as much as I” and, seeing her eyes fixed on him, he said: “Don’t
     take it to heart too much, my child. If he weren’t ill, he might
     be in much greater danger.”

     Holly got out of the swing.

     “I want to tell you something, Dad. It was through me that Jolly
     enlisted and went out.”

     “How’s that?”

     “When you were away in Paris, Val Dartie and I fell in love. We
     used to ride in Richmond Park; we got engaged. Jolly found it
     out, and thought he ought to stop it; so he dared Val to enlist.
     It was all my fault, Dad; and I want to go out too. Because if
     anything happens to either of them I should feel awful. Besides,
     I’m just as much trained as June.”

     Jolyon gazed at her in a stupefaction that was tinged with irony.
     So this was the answer to the riddle he had been asking himself;
     and his three children were Forsytes after all. Surely Holly
     might have told him all this before! But he smothered the
     sarcastic sayings on his lips. Tenderness to the young was
     perhaps the most sacred article of his belief. He had got, no
     doubt, what he deserved. Engaged! So this was why he had so lost
     touch with her! And to young Val Dartie—nephew of Soames—in the
     other camp! It was all terribly distasteful. He closed his easel,
     and set his drawing against the tree.

     “Have you told June?”

     “Yes; she says she’ll get me into her cabin somehow. It’s a
     single cabin; but one of us could sleep on the floor. If you
     consent, she’ll go up now and get permission.”

     “Consent?” thought Jolyon. “Rather late in the day to ask for
     that!” But again he checked himself.

     “You’re too young, my dear; they won’t let you.”

     “June knows some people that she helped to go to Cape Town. If
     they won’t let me nurse yet, I could stay with them and go on
     training there. Let me go, Dad!”

     Jolyon smiled because he could have cried.

     “I never stop anyone from doing anything,” he said.

     Holly flung her arms round his neck.

     “Oh! Dad, you are the best in the world.”

     “That means the worst,” thought Jolyon. If he had ever doubted
     his creed of tolerance he did so then.

     “I’m not friendly with Val’s family,” he said, “and I don’t know
     Val, but Jolly didn’t like him.”

     Holly looked at the distance and said:

     “I love him.”

     “That settles it,” said Jolyon dryly, then catching the
     expression on her face, he kissed her, with the thought: “Is
     anything more pathetic than the faith of the young?” Unless he
     actually forbade her going it was obvious that he must make the
     best of it, so he went up to town with June. Whether due to her
     persistence, or the fact that the official they saw was an old
     school friend of Jolyon’s, they obtained permission for Holly to
     share the single cabin. He took them to Surbiton station the
     following evening, and they duly slid away from him, provided
     with money, invalid foods, and those letters of credit without
     which Forsytes do not travel.

     He drove back to Robin Hill under a brilliant sky to his late
     dinner, served with an added care by servants trying to show him
     that they sympathised, eaten with an added scrupulousness to show
     them that he appreciated their sympathy. But it was a real relief
     to get to his cigar on the terrace of flag-stones—cunningly
     chosen by young Bosinney for shape and colour—with night closing
     in around him, so beautiful a night, hardly whispering in the
     trees, and smelling so sweet that it made him ache. The grass was
     drenched with dew, and he kept to those flagstones, up and down,
     till presently it began to seem to him that he was one of three,
     not wheeling, but turning right about at each end, so that his
     father was always nearest to the house, and his son always
     nearest to the terrace edge. Each had an arm lightly within his
     arm; he dared not lift his hand to his cigar lest he should
     disturb them, and it burned away, dripping ash on him, till it
     dropped from his lips, at last, which were getting hot. They left
     him then, and his arms felt chilly. Three Jolyons in one Jolyon
     they had walked.

     He stood still, counting the sounds—a carriage passing on the
     highroad, a distant train, the dog at Gage’s farm, the whispering
     trees, the groom playing on his penny whistle. A multitude of
     stars up there—bright and silent, so far off! No moon as yet!
     Just enough light to show him the dark flags and swords of the
     iris flowers along the terrace edge—his favourite flower that had
     the night’s own colour on its curving crumpled petals. He turned
     round to the house. Big, unlighted, not a soul beside himself to
     live in all that part of it. Stark loneliness! He could not go on
     living here alone. And yet, so long as there was beauty, why
     should a man feel lonely? The answer—as to some idiot’s
     riddle—was: Because he did. The greater the beauty, the greater
     the loneliness, for at the back of beauty was harmony, and at the
     back of harmony was—union. Beauty could not comfort if the soul
     were out of it. The night, maddeningly lovely, with bloom of
     grapes on it in starshine, and the breath of grass and honey
     coming from it, he could not enjoy, while she who was to him the
     life of beauty, its embodiment and essence, was cut off from him,
     utterly cut off now, he felt, by honourable decency.

     He made a poor fist of sleeping, striving too hard after that
     resignation which Forsytes find difficult to reach, bred to their
     own way and left so comfortably off by their fathers. But after
     dawn he dozed off, and soon was dreaming a strange dream.

     He was on a stage with immensely high rich curtains—high as the
     very stars—stretching in a semi-circle from footlights to
     footlights. He himself was very small, a little black restless
     figure roaming up and down; and the odd thing was that he was not
     altogether himself, but Soames as well, so that he was not only
     experiencing but watching. This figure of himself and Soames was
     trying to find a way out through the curtains, which, heavy and
     dark, kept him in. Several times he had crossed in front of them
     before he saw with delight a sudden narrow rift—a tall chink of
     beauty the colour of iris flowers, like a glimpse of Paradise,
     remote, ineffable. Stepping quickly forward to pass into it, he
     found the curtains closing before him. Bitterly disappointed
     he—or was it Soames?—moved on, and there was the chink again
     through the parted curtains, which again closed too soon. This
     went on and on and he never got through till he woke with the
     word “Irene” on his lips. The dream disturbed him badly,
     especially that identification of himself with Soames.

     Next morning, finding it impossible to work, he spent hours
     riding Jolly’s horse in search of fatigue. And on the second day
     he made up his mind to move to London and see if he could not get
     permission to follow his daughters to South Africa. He had just
     begun to pack the following morning when he received this letter:

     “GREEN HOTEL,
     “RICHMOND.
     “_June_ 13.

      “MY DEAR JOLYON,
         “You will be surprised to see how near I am to you. Paris
         became impossible—and I have come here to be within reach of
         your advice. I would so love to see you again. Since you left
         Paris I don’t think I have met anyone I could really talk to.
         Is all well with you and with your boy? No one knows, I
         think, that I am here at present.

     “Always your friend,
     “IRENE.”

     Irene within three miles of him!—and again in flight! He stood
     with a very queer smile on his lips. This was more than he had
     bargained for!

     About noon he set out on foot across Richmond Park, and as he
     went along, he thought: “Richmond Park! By Jove, it suits us
     Forsytes!” Not that Forsytes lived there—nobody lived there save
     royalty, rangers, and the deer—but in Richmond Park Nature was
     allowed to go so far and no further, putting up a brave show of
     being natural, seeming to say: “Look at my instincts—they are
     almost passions, very nearly out of hand, but not quite, of
     course; the very hub of possession is to possess oneself.” Yes!
     Richmond Park possessed itself, even on that bright day of June,
     with arrowy cuckoos shifting the tree-points of their calls, and
     the wood doves announcing high summer.

     The Green Hotel, which Jolyon entered at one o’clock, stood
     nearly opposite that more famous hostelry, the Crown and Sceptre;
     it was modest, highly respectable, never out of cold beef,
     gooseberry tart, and a dowager or two, so that a carriage and
     pair was almost always standing before the door.

     In a room draped in chintz so slippery as to forbid all emotion,
     Irene was sitting on a piano stool covered with crewel work,
     playing “Hansel and Gretel” out of an old score. Above her on a
     wall, not yet Morris-papered, was a print of the Queen on a pony,
     amongst deer-hounds, Scotch caps, and slain stags; beside her in
     a pot on the window-sill was a white and rosy fuchsia. The
     Victorianism of the room almost talked; and in her clinging frock
     Irene seemed to Jolyon like Venus emerging from the shell of the
     past century.

     “If the proprietor had eyes,” he said, “he would show you the
     door; you have broken through his decorations.” Thus lightly he
     smothered up an emotional moment. Having eaten cold beef, pickled
     walnut, gooseberry tart, and drunk stone-bottle ginger-beer, they
     walked into the Park, and light talk was succeeded by the silence
     Jolyon had dreaded.

     “You haven’t told me about Paris,” he said at last.

     “No. I’ve been shadowed for a long time; one gets used to that.
     But then Soames came. By the little Niobe—the same story; would I
     go back to him?”

     “Incredible!”

     She had spoken without raising her eyes, but she looked up now.
     Those dark eyes clinging to his said as no words could have: “I
     have come to an end; if you want me, here I am.”

     For sheer emotional intensity had he ever—old as he was—passed
     through such a moment?

     The words: “Irene, I adore you!” almost escaped him. Then, with a
     clearness of which he would not have believed mental vision
     capable, he saw Jolly lying with a white face turned to a white
     wall.

     “My boy is very ill out there,” he said quietly.

     Irene slipped her arm through his.

     “Let’s walk on; I understand.”

     No miserable explanation to attempt! She had understood! And they
     walked on among the bracken, knee-high already, between the
     rabbit-holes and the oak-trees, talking of Jolly. He left her two
     hours later at the Richmond Hill Gate, and turned towards home.

     “She knows of my feeling for her, then,” he thought. Of course!
     One could not keep knowledge of that from such a woman!




     CHAPTER IV OVER THE RIVER


     Jolly was tired to death of dreams. They had left him now too wan
     and weak to dream again; left him to lie torpid, faintly
     remembering far-off things; just able to turn his eyes and gaze
     through the window near his cot at the trickle of river running
     by in the sands, at the straggling milk-bush of the Karoo beyond.
     He knew what the Karoo was now, even if he had not seen a Boer
     roll over like a rabbit, or heard the whine of flying bullets.
     This pestilence had sneaked on him before he had smelled powder.
     A thirsty day and a rash drink, or perhaps a tainted fruit—who
     knew? Not he, who had not even strength left to grudge the evil
     thing its victory—just enough to know that there were many lying
     here with him, that he was sore with frenzied dreaming; just
     enough to watch that thread of river and be able to remember
     faintly those far-away things....

     The sun was nearly down. It would be cooler soon. He would have
     liked to know the time—to feel his old watch, so butter-smooth,
     to hear the repeater strike. It would have been friendly,
     home-like. He had not even strength to remember that the old
     watch was last wound the day he began to lie here. The pulse of
     his brain beat so feebly that faces which came and went, nurse’s,
     doctor’s, orderly’s, were indistinguishable, just one indifferent
     face; and the words spoken about him meant all the same thing,
     and that almost nothing. Those things he used to do, though far
     and faint, were more distinct—walking past the foot of the old
     steps at Harrow “bill”—“Here, sir! Here, sir!”—wrapping boots in
     the Westminster Gazette, greenish paper, shining
     boots—grandfather coming from somewhere dark—a smell of earth—the
     mushroom house! Robin Hill! Burying poor old Balthasar in the
     leaves! Dad! Home....

     Consciousness came again with noticing that the river had no
     water in it—someone was speaking too. Want anything? No. What
     could one want? Too weak to want—only to hear his watch
     strike....

     Holly! She wouldn’t bowl properly. Oh! Pitch them up! Not
     sneaks!... “Back her, Two and Bow!” He was Two!... Consciousness
     came once more with a sense of the violet dusk outside, and a
     rising blood-red crescent moon. His eyes rested on it fascinated;
     in the long minutes of brain-nothingness it went moving up and
     up....

     “He’s going, doctor!” Not pack boots again? Never? “Mind your
     form, Two!” Don’t cry! Go quietly—over the river—sleep!... Dark?
     If somebody would—strike—his—watch!...




     CHAPTER V SOAMES ACTS


     A sealed letter in the handwriting of Mr. Polteed remained
     unopened in Soames’ pocket throughout two hours of sustained
     attention to the affairs of the “New Colliery Company,” which,
     declining almost from the moment of old Jolyon’s retirement from
     the Chairmanship, had lately run down so fast that there was now
     nothing for it but a “winding-up.” He took the letter out to
     lunch at his City Club, sacred to him for the meals he had eaten
     there with his father in the early seventies, when James used to
     like him to come and see for himself the nature of his future
     life.

     Here in a remote corner before a plate of roast mutton and mashed
     potato, he read:

     “DEAR SIR,
         “In accordance with your suggestion we have duly taken the
         matter up at the other end with gratifying results.
         Observation of 47 has enabled us to locate 17 at the Green
         Hotel, Richmond. The two have been observed to meet daily
         during the past week in Richmond Park. Nothing absolutely
         crucial has so far been notified. But in conjunction with
         what we had from Paris at the beginning of the year, I am
         confident we could now satisfy the Court. We shall, of
         course, continue to watch the matter until we hear from you.

     “Very faithfully yours,
     “CLAUD POLTEED.”

     Soames read it through twice and beckoned to the waiter:

     “Take this away; it’s cold.”

     “Shall I bring you some more, sir?”

     “No. Get me some coffee in the other room.”

     And, paying for what he had not eaten, he went out, passing two
     acquaintances without sign of recognition.

     “Satisfy the Court!” he thought, sitting at a little round marble
     table with the coffee before him. That fellow Jolyon! He poured
     out his coffee, sweetened and drank it. He would disgrace him in
     the eyes of his own children! And rising, with that resolution
     hot within him, he found for the first time the inconvenience of
     being his own solicitor. He could not treat this scandalous
     matter in his own office. He must commit the soul of his private
     dignity to a stranger, some other professional dealer in family
     dishonour. Who was there he could go to? Linkman and Laver in
     Budge Row, perhaps—reliable, not too conspicuous, only nodding
     acquaintances. But before he saw them he must see Polteed again.
     But at this thought Soames had a moment of sheer weakness. To
     part with his secret? How find the words? How subject himself to
     contempt and secret laughter? Yet, after all, the fellow knew
     already—oh yes, he knew! And, feeling that he must finish with it
     now, he took a cab into the West End.

     In this hot weather the window of Mr. Polteed’s room was
     positively open, and the only precaution was a wire gauze,
     preventing the intrusion of flies. Two or three had tried to come
     in, and been caught, so that they seemed to be clinging there
     with the intention of being devoured presently. Mr. Polteed,
     following the direction of his client’s eye, rose apologetically
     and closed the window.

     “Posing ass!” thought Soames. Like all who fundamentally believe
     in themselves he was rising to the occasion, and, with his little
     sideway smile, he said: “I’ve had your letter. I’m going to act.
     I suppose you know who the lady you’ve been watching really is?”
     Mr. Polteed’s expression at that moment was a masterpiece. It so
     clearly said: “Well, what do you think? But mere professional
     knowledge, I assure you—pray forgive it!” He made a little half
     airy movement with his hand, as who should say: “Such things—such
     things will happen to us all!”

     “Very well, then,” said Soames, moistening his lips: “there’s no
     need to say more. I’m instructing Linkman and Laver of Budge Row
     to act for me. I don’t want to hear your evidence, but kindly
     make your report to them at five o’clock, and continue to observe
     the utmost secrecy.”

     Mr. Polteed half closed his eyes, as if to comply at once. “My
     dear sir,” he said.

     “Are you convinced,” asked Soames with sudden energy, “that there
     is enough?”

     The faintest movement occurred to Mr. Polteed’s shoulders.

     “You can risk it,” he murmured; “with what we have, and human
     nature, you can risk it.”

     Soames rose. “You will ask for Mr. Linkman. Thanks; don’t get
     up.” He could not bear Mr. Polteed to slide as usual between him
     and the door. In the sunlight of Piccadilly he wiped his
     forehead. This had been the worst of it—he could stand the
     strangers better. And he went back into the City to do what still
     lay before him.

     That evening in Park Lane, watching his father dine, he was
     overwhelmed by his old longing for a son—a son, to watch _him_
     eat as he went down the years, to be taken on _his_ knee as James
     on a time had been wont to take him; a son of his own begetting,
     who could understand him because he was the same flesh and
     blood—understand, and comfort him, and become more rich and
     cultured than himself because he would start even better off. To
     get old—like that thin, grey wiry-frail figure sitting there—and
     be quite alone with possessions heaping up around him; to take no
     interest in anything because it had no future and must pass away
     from him to hands and mouths and eyes for whom he cared no jot!
     No! He would force it through now, and be free to marry, and have
     a son to care for him before he grew to be like the old old man
     his father, wistfully watching now his sweetbread, now his son.

     In that mood he went up to bed. But, lying warm between those
     fine linen sheets of Emily’s providing, he was visited by
     memories and torture. Visions of Irene, almost the solid feeling
     of her body, beset him. Why had he ever been fool enough to see
     her again, and let this flood back on him so that it was pain to
     think of her with that fellow—that stealing fellow.




     CHAPTER VI A SUMMER DAY


     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!

     “Besides,” he thought honestly, “who knows whether, even for my
     boy’s sake, I could have stood this state of things much longer?
     Anyway, her neck will be out of chancery at last!” Thus absorbed,
     he was hardly conscious of the heavy heat. The sky had become
     overcast, purplish with little streaks of white. A heavy
     heat-drop plashed a little star pattern in the dust of the road
     as he entered the Park. “Phew!” he thought, “thunder! I hope
     she’s not come to meet me; there’s a ducking up there!” But at
     that very minute he saw Irene coming towards the Gate. “We must
     scuttle back to Robin Hill,” he thought.

     The storm had passed over the Poultry at four o’clock, bringing
     welcome distraction to the clerks in every office. Soames was
     drinking a cup of tea when a note was brought in to him:

     “DEAR SIR,

     _Forsyte v. Forsyte and Forsyte_

         “In accordance with your instructions, we beg to inform you
         that we personally served the respondent and co-respondent in
         this suit to-day, at Richmond, and Robin Hill, respectively.

     “Faithfully yours,
     “LINKMAN AND LAVER.”

     For some minutes Soames stared at that note. Ever since he had
     given those instructions he had been tempted to annul them. It
     was so scandalous, such a general disgrace! The evidence, too,
     what he had heard of it, had never seemed to him conclusive;
     somehow, he believed less and less that those two had gone all
     lengths. But this, of course, would drive them to it; and he
     suffered from the thought. That fellow to have her love, where he
     had failed! Was it too late? Now that they had been brought up
     sharp by service of this petition, had he not a lever with which
     he could force them apart? “But if I don’t act at once,” he
     thought, “it will be too late, now they’ve had this thing. I’ll
     go and see him; I’ll go down!”

     And, sick with nervous anxiety, he sent out for one of the
     “new-fangled” motor-cabs. It might take a long time to run that
     fellow to ground, and Goodness knew what decision they might come
     to after such a shock! “If I were a theatrical ass,” he thought,
     “I suppose I should be taking a horse-whip or a pistol or
     something!” He took instead a bundle of papers in the case of
     “Magentie versus Wake,” intending to read them on the way down.
     He did not even open them, but sat quite still, jolted and
     jarred, unconscious of the draught down the back of his neck, or
     the smell of petrol. He must be guided by the fellow’s attitude;
     the great thing was to keep his head!

     London had already begun to disgorge its workers as he neared
     Putney Bridge; the ant-heap was on the move outwards. What a lot
     of ants, all with a living to get, holding on by their eyelids in
     the great scramble! Perhaps for the first time in his life Soames
     thought: “_I_ could let go if I liked! Nothing could touch me; I
     could snap my fingers, live as I wished—enjoy myself!” No! One
     could not live as he had and just drop it all—settle down in
     Capua, to spend the money and reputation he had made. A man’s
     life was what he possessed and sought to possess. Only fools
     thought otherwise—fools, and socialists, and libertines!

     The cab was passing villas now, going a great pace. “Fifteen
     miles an hour, I should think!” he mused; “this’ll take people
     out of town to live!” and he thought of its bearing on the
     portions of London owned by his father—he himself had never taken
     to that form of investment, the gambler in him having all the
     outlet needed in his pictures. And the cab sped on, down the hill
     past Wimbledon Common. This interview! Surely a man of fifty-two
     with grown-up children, and hung on the line, would not be
     reckless. “He won’t want to disgrace the family,” he thought; “he
     was as fond of his father as I am of mine, and they were
     brothers. That woman brings destruction—what is it in her? I’ve
     never known.” The cab branched off, along the side of a wood, and
     he heard a late cuckoo calling, almost the first he had heard
     that year. He was now almost opposite the site he had originally
     chosen for his house, and which had been so unceremoniously
     rejected by Bosinney in favour of his own choice. He began
     passing his handkerchief over his face and hands, taking deep
     breaths to give him steadiness. “Keep one’s head,” he thought,
     “keep one’s head!”

     The cab turned in at the drive which might have been his own, and
     the sound of music met him. He had forgotten the fellow’s
     daughters.

     “I may be out again directly,” he said to the driver, “or I may
     be kept some time”; and he rang the bell.

     Following the maid through the curtains into the inner hall, he
     felt relieved that the impact of this meeting would be broken by
     June or Holly, whichever was playing in there, so that with
     complete surprise he saw Irene at the piano, and Jolyon sitting
     in an armchair listening. They both stood up. Blood surged into
     Soames’ brain, and all his resolution to be guided by this or
     that left him utterly. The look of his farmer forbears—dogged
     Forsytes down by the sea, from “Superior Dosset” back—grinned out
     of his face.

     “Very pretty!” he said.

     He heard the fellow murmur:

     “This is hardly the place—we’ll go to the study, if you don’t
     mind.” And they both passed him through the curtain opening. In
     the little room to which he followed them, Irene stood by the
     open window, and the “fellow” close to her by a big chair. Soames
     pulled the door to behind him with a slam; the sound carried him
     back all those years to the day when he had shut out Jolyon—shut
     him out for meddling with his affairs.

     “Well,” he said, “what have you to say for yourselves?”

     The fellow had the effrontery to smile.

     “What we have received to-day has taken away your right to ask. I
     should imagine you will be glad to have your neck out of
     chancery.”

     “Oh!” said Soames; “you think so! I came to tell you that I’ll
     divorce her with every circumstance of disgrace to you both,
     unless you swear to keep clear of each other from now on.”

     He was astonished at his fluency, because his mind was stammering
     and his hands twitching. Neither of them answered; but their
     faces seemed to him as if contemptuous.

     “Well,” he said; “you—Irene?”

     Her lips moved, but Jolyon laid his hand on her arm.

     “Let her alone!” said Soames furiously. “Irene, will you swear
     it?”

     “No.”

     “Oh! and you?”

     “Still less.”

     “So then you’re guilty, are you?”

     “Yes, guilty.” It was Irene speaking in that serene voice, with
     that unreached air which had maddened him so often; and, carried
     beyond himself, he cried:

     “_You_ are a devil.”

     “Go out! Leave this house, or I’ll do you an injury.”

     That fellow to talk of injuries! Did he know how near his throat
     was to being scragged?

     “A trustee,” he said, “embezzling trust property! A thief,
     stealing his cousin’s wife.”

     “Call me what you like. You have chosen your part, we have chosen
     ours. Go out!”

     If he had brought a weapon Soames might have used it at that
     moment.

     “I’ll make you pay!” he said.

     “I shall be very happy.”

     At that deadly turning of the meaning of his speech by the son of
     him who had nicknamed him “the man of property,” Soames stood
     glaring. It was ridiculous!

     There they were, kept from violence by some secret force. No blow
     possible, no words to meet the case. But he could not, did not
     know how to turn and go away. His eyes fastened on Irene’s
     face—the last time he would ever see that fatal face—the last
     time, no doubt!

     “You,” he said suddenly, “I hope you’ll treat him as you treated
     me—that’s all.”

     He saw her wince, and with a sensation not quite triumph, not
     quite relief, he wrenched open the door, passed out through the
     hall, and got into his cab. He lolled against the cushion with
     his eyes shut. Never in his life had he been so near to murderous
     violence, never so thrown away the restraint which was his second
     nature. He had a stripped and naked feeling, as if all virtue had
     gone out of him—life meaningless, mind-striking work. Sunlight
     streamed in on him, but he felt cold. The scene he had passed
     through had gone from him already, what was before him would not
     materialise, he could catch on to nothing; and he felt
     frightened, as if he had been hanging over the edge of a
     precipice, as if with another turn of the screw sanity would have
     failed him. “I’m not fit for it,” he thought; “I mustn’t—I’m not
     fit for it.” The cab sped on, and in mechanical procession trees,
     houses, people passed, but had no significance. “I feel very
     queer,” he thought; “I’ll take a Turkish bath.—I’ve been very
     near to something. It won’t do.” The cab whirred its way back
     over the bridge, up the Fulham Road, along the Park.

     “To the Hammam,” said Soames.

     Curious that on so warm a summer day, heat should be so
     comforting! Crossing into the hot room he met George Forsyte
     coming out, red and glistening.

     “Hallo!” said George; “what are you training for? You’ve not got
     much superfluous.”

     Buffoon! Soames passed him with his sideway smile. Lying back,
     rubbing his skin uneasily for the first signs of perspiration, he
     thought: “Let them laugh! I _won’t_ feel anything! I can’t stand
     violence! It’s not good for me!”




     CHAPTER VII A SUMMER NIGHT


     Soames left dead silence in the little study. “Thank you for that
     good lie,” said Jolyon suddenly. “Come out—the air in here is not
     what it was!”

     In front of a long high southerly wall on which were trained
     peach-trees the two walked up and down in silence. Old Jolyon had
     planted some cupressus-trees, at intervals, between this grassy
     terrace and the dipping meadow full of buttercups and ox-eyed
     daisies; for twelve years they had flourished, till their dark
     spiral shapes had quite a look of Italy. Birds fluttered softly
     in the wet shrubbery; the swallows swooped past, with a
     steel-blue sheen on their swift little bodies; the grass felt
     springy beneath the feet, its green refreshed; butterflies chased
     each other. After that painful scene the quiet of Nature was
     wonderfully poignant. Under the sun-soaked wall ran a narrow
     strip of garden-bed full of mignonette and pansies, and from the
     bees came a low hum in which all other sounds were set—the mooing
     of a cow deprived of her calf, the calling of a cuckoo from an
     elm-tree at the bottom of the meadow. Who would have thought that
     behind them, within ten miles, London began—that London of the
     Forsytes, with its wealth, its misery; its dirt and noise; its
     jumbled stone isles of beauty, its grey sea of hideous brick and
     stucco? That London which had seen Irene’s early tragedy, and
     Jolyon’s own hard days; that web; that princely workhouse of the
     possessive instinct!

     And while they walked Jolyon pondered those words: “I hope you’ll
     treat him as you treated me.” That would depend on himself. Could
     he trust himself? Did Nature permit a Forsyte not to make a slave
     of what he adored? Could beauty be confided to him? Or should she
     not be just a visitor, coming when she would, possessed for
     moments which passed, to return only at her own choosing? “We are
     a breed of spoilers!” thought Jolyon, “close and greedy; the
     bloom of life is not safe with us. Let her come to me as she
     will, when she will, not at all if she will not. Let me be just
     her stand-by, her perching-place; never—never her cage!”

     She was the chink of beauty in his dream. Was he to pass through
     the curtains now and reach her? Was the rich stuff of many
     possessions, the close encircling fabric of the possessive
     instinct walling in that little black figure of himself, and
     Soames—was it to be rent so that he could pass through into his
     vision, find there something not of the senses only? “Let me,” he
     thought, “ah! let me only know how not to grasp and destroy!”

     But at dinner there were plans to be made. To-night she would go
     back to the hotel, but tomorrow he would take her up to London.
     He must instruct his solicitor—Jack Herring. Not a finger must be
     raised to hinder the process of the Law. Damages exemplary,
     judicial strictures, costs, what they liked—let it go through at
     the first moment, so that her neck might be out of chancery at
     last! To-morrow he would see Herring—they would go and see him
     together. And then—abroad, leaving no doubt, no difficulty about
     evidence, making the lie she had told into the truth. He looked
     round at her; and it seemed to his adoring eyes that more than a
     woman was sitting there. The spirit of universal beauty, deep,
     mysterious, which the old painters, Titian, Giorgione,
     Botticelli, had known how to capture and transfer to the faces of
     their women—this flying beauty seemed to him imprinted on her
     brow, her hair, her lips, and in her eyes.

     “And this is to be mine!” he thought. “It frightens me!”

     After dinner they went out on to the terrace to have coffee. They
     sat there long, the evening was so lovely, watching the summer
     night come very slowly on. It was still warm and the air smelled
     of lime blossom—early this summer. Two bats were flighting with
     the faint mysterious little noise they make. He had placed the
     chairs in front of the study window, and moths flew past to visit
     the discreet light in there. There was no wind, and not a whisper
     in the old oak-tree twenty yards away! The moon rose from behind
     the copse, nearly full; and the two lights struggled, till
     moonlight conquered, changing the colour and quality of all the
     garden, stealing along the flagstones, reaching their feet,
     climbing up, changing their faces.

     “Well,” said Jolyon at last, “you’ll be tired, dear; we’d better
     start. The maid will show you Holly’s room,” and he rang the
     study bell. The maid who came handed him a telegram. Watching her
     take Irene away, he thought: “This must have come an hour or more
     ago, and she didn’t bring it out to us! That shows! Well, we’ll
     be hung for a sheep soon!” And, opening the telegram, he read:

     “JOLYON FORSYTE, Robin Hill.—Your son passed painlessly away on
     June 20th. Deep sympathy”—some name unknown to him.

     He dropped it, spun round, stood motionless. The moon shone in on
     him; a moth flew in his face. The first day of all that he had
     not thought almost ceaselessly of Jolly. He went blindly towards
     the window, struck against the old armchair—his father’s—and sank
     down on to the arm of it. He sat there huddled forward, staring
     into the night. Gone out like a candle flame; far from home, from
     love, all by himself, in the dark! His boy! From a little chap
     always so good to him—so friendly! Twenty years old, and cut down
     like grass—to have no life at all! “I didn’t really know him,” he
     thought, “and he didn’t know me; but we loved each other. It’s
     only love that matters.”

     To die out there—lonely—wanting them—wanting home! This seemed to
     his Forsyte heart more painful, more pitiful than death itself.
     No shelter, no protection, no love at the last! And all the
     deeply rooted clanship in him, the family feeling and essential
     clinging to his own flesh and blood which had been so strong in
     old Jolyon was so strong in all the Forsytes—felt outraged, cut,
     and torn by his boy’s lonely passing. Better far if he had died
     in battle, without time to long for them to come to him, to call
     out for them, perhaps, in his delirium!

     The moon had passed behind the oak-tree now, endowing it with
     uncanny life, so that it seemed watching him—the oak-tree his boy
     had been so fond of climbing, out of which he had once fallen and
     hurt himself, and hadn’t cried!

     The door creaked. He saw Irene come in, pick up the telegram and
     read it. He heard the faint rustle of her dress. She sank on her
     knees close to him, and he forced himself to smile at her. She
     stretched up her arms and drew his head down on her shoulder. The
     perfume and warmth of her encircled him; her presence gained
     slowly his whole being.




     CHAPTER VIII JAMES IN WAITING


     Sweated to serenity, Soames dined at the Remove and turned his
     face toward Park Lane. His father had been unwell lately. This
     would have to be kept from him! Never till that moment had he
     realised how much the dread of bringing James’ grey hairs down
     with sorrow to the grave had counted with him; how intimately it
     was bound up with his own shrinking from scandal. His affection
     for his father, always deep, had increased of late years with the
     knowledge that James looked on him as the real prop of his
     decline. It seemed pitiful that one who had been so careful all
     his life and done so much for the family name—so that it was
     almost a byword for solid, wealthy respectability—should at his
     last gasp have to see it in all the newspapers. This was like
     lending a hand to Death, that final enemy of Forsytes. “I must
     tell mother,” he thought, “and when it comes on, we must keep the
     papers from him somehow. He sees hardly anyone.” Letting himself
     in with his latchkey, he was beginning to ascend he stairs when
     he became conscious of commotion on the second-floor landing. His
     mother’s voice was saying:

     “Now, James, you’ll catch cold. Why can’t you wait quietly?”

     His father’s answering

     “Wait? I’m always waiting. Why doesn’t he come in?”

     “You can speak to him to-morrow morning, instead of making a guy
     of yourself on the landing.”

     “He’ll go up to bed, I shouldn’t wonder. I shan’t sleep.”

     “Now come back to bed, James.”

     “Um! I might die before to-morrow morning for all you can tell.”

     “You shan’t have to wait till to-morrow morning; I’ll go down and
     bring him up. Don’t fuss!”

     “There you go—always so cock-a-hoop. He mayn’t come in at all.”

     “Well, if he doesn’t come in you won’t catch him by standing out
     here in your dressing-gown.”

     Soames rounded the last bend and came in sight of his father’s
     tall figure wrapped in a brown silk quilted gown, stooping over
     the balustrade above. Light fell on his silvery hair and
     whiskers, investing his head with a sort of halo.

     “Here he is!” he heard him say in a voice which sounded injured,
     and his mother’s comfortable answer from the bedroom door:

     “That’s all right. Come in, and I’ll brush your hair.” James
     extended a thin, crooked finger, oddly like the beckoning of a
     skeleton, and passed through the doorway of his bedroom.

     “What is it?” thought Soames. “What has he got hold of now?”

     His father was sitting before the dressing-table sideways to the
     mirror, while Emily slowly passed two silver-backed brushes
     through and through his hair. She would do this several times a
     day, for it had on him something of the effect produced on a cat
     by scratching between its ears.

     “There you are!” he said. “I’ve been waiting.”

     Soames stroked his shoulder, and, taking up a silver button-hook,
     examined the mark on it.

     “Well,” he said, “you’re looking better.”

     James shook his head.

     “I want to say something. Your mother hasn’t heard.” He announced
     Emily’s ignorance of what he hadn’t told her, as if it were a
     grievance.

     “Your father’s been in a great state all the evening. I’m sure I
     don’t know what about.”

     The faint “whisk-whisk” of the brushes continued the soothing of
     her voice.

     “No! you know nothing,” said James. “Soames can tell me.” And,
     fixing his grey eyes, in which there was a look of strain,
     uncomfortable to watch, on his son, he muttered:

     “I’m getting on, Soames. At my age I can’t tell. I might die any
     time. There’ll be a lot of money. There’s Rachel and Cicely got
     no children; and Val’s out there—that chap his father will get
     hold of all he can. And somebody’ll pick up Imogen, I shouldn’t
     wonder.”

     Soames listened vaguely—he had heard all this before.
     Whish-whish! went the brushes.

     “If that’s all!” said Emily.

     “All!” cried James; “it’s nothing. I’m coming to that.” And again
     his eyes strained pitifully at Soames.

     “It’s you, my boy,” he said suddenly; “you ought to get a
     divorce.”

     That word, from those of all lips, was almost too much for
     Soames’ composure. His eyes reconcentrated themselves quickly on
     the buttonhook, and as if in apology James hurried on:

     “I don’t know what’s become of her—they say she’s abroad. Your
     Uncle Swithin used to admire her—he was a funny fellow.” (So he
     always alluded to his dead twin—“The Stout and the Lean of it,”
     they had been called.) “She wouldn’t be alone, I should say.” And
     with that summing-up of the effect of beauty on human nature, he
     was silent, watching his son with eyes doubting as a bird’s.
     Soames, too, was silent. Whish-whish went the brushes.

     “Come, James! Soames knows best. It’s his business.”

     “Ah!” said James, and the word came from deep down; “but there’s
     all my money, and there’s his—who’s it to go to? And when he dies
     the name goes out.”

     Soames replaced the button-hook on the lace and pink silk of the
     dressing-table coverlet.

     “The name?” said Emily, “there are all the other Forsytes.”

     “As if that helped me,” muttered James. “I shall be in my grave,
     and there’ll be nobody, unless he marries again.”

     “You’re quite right,” said Soames quietly; “I’m getting a
     divorce.”

     James’ eyes almost started from his head.

     “What?” he cried. “There! nobody tells me anything.”

     “Well,” said Emily, “who would have imagined you wanted it? My
     dear boy, that _is_ a surprise, after all these years.”

     “It’ll be a scandal,” muttered James, as if to himself; “but I
     can’t help that. Don’t brush so hard. When’ll it come on?”

     “Before the Long Vacation; it’s not defended.”

     James’ lips moved in secret calculation. “I shan’t live to see my
     grandson,” he muttered.

     Emily ceased brushing. “Of course you will, James. Soames will be
     as quick as he can.”

     There was a long silence, till James reached out his arm.

     “Here! let’s have the eau-de-Cologne,” and, putting it to his
     nose, he moved his forehead in the direction of his son. Soames
     bent over and kissed that brow just where the hair began. A
     relaxing quiver passed over James’ face, as though the wheels of
     anxiety within were running down.

     “I’ll get to bed,” he said; “I shan’t want to see the papers when
     that comes. They’re a morbid lot; I can’t pay attention to them,
     I’m too old.”

     Queerly affected, Soames went to the door; he heard his father
     say:

     “Here, I’m tired. I’ll say a prayer in bed.”

     And his mother answering

     “That’s right, James; it’ll be ever so much more comfy.”




     CHAPTER IX OUT OF THE WEB


     On Forsyte ’Change the announcement of Jolly’s death, among a
     batch of troopers, caused mixed sensation. Strange to read that
     Jolyon Forsyte (fifth of the name in direct descent) had died of
     disease in the service of his country, and not be able to feel it
     personally. It revived the old grudge against his father for
     having estranged himself. For such was still the prestige of old
     Jolyon that the other Forsytes could never quite feel, as might
     have been expected, that it was they who had cut off his
     descendants for irregularity. The news increased, of course, the
     interest and anxiety about Val; but then Val’s name was Dartie,
     and even if he were killed in battle or got the Victoria Cross,
     it would not be at all the same as if his name were Forsyte. Not
     even casualty or glory to the Haymans would be really
     satisfactory. Family pride felt defrauded.

     How the rumour arose, then, that “something very dreadful, my
     dear,” was pending, no one, least of all Soames, could tell,
     secret as he kept everything. Possibly some eye had seen “Forsyte
     _v._ Forsyte and Forsyte,” in the cause list; and had added it to
     “Irene in Paris with a fair beard.” Possibly some wall at Park
     Lane had ears. The fact remained that it _was_ known—whispered
     among the old, discussed among the young—that family pride must
     soon receive a blow.

     Soames, paying one of his Sunday visits to Timothy’s—paying it
     with the feeling that after the suit came on he would be paying
     no more—felt knowledge in the air as he came in. Nobody, of
     course, dared speak of it before him, but each of the four other
     Forsytes present held their breath, aware that nothing could
     prevent Aunt Juley from making them all uncomfortable. She looked
     so piteously at Soames, she checked herself on the point of
     speech so often, that Aunt Hester excused herself and said she
     must go and bathe Timothy’s eye—he had a sty coming. Soames,
     impassive, slightly supercilious, did not stay long. He went out
     with a curse stifled behind his pale, just smiling lips.

     Fortunately for the peace of his mind, cruelly tortured by the
     coming scandal, he was kept busy day and night with plans for his
     retirement—for he had come to that grim conclusion. To go on
     seeing all those people who had known him as a “long-headed
     chap,” an astute adviser—after _that_—no! The fastidiousness and
     pride which was so strangely, so inextricably blended in him with
     possessive obtuseness, revolted against the thought. He would
     retire, live privately, go on buying pictures, make a great name
     as a collector—after all, his heart was more in that than it had
     ever been in Law. In pursuance of this now fixed resolve, he had
     to get ready to amalgamate his business with another firm without
     letting people know, for that would excite curiosity and make
     humiliation cast its shadow before. He had pitched on the firm of
     Cuthcott, Holliday and Kingson, two of whom were dead. The full
     name after the amalgamation would therefore be Cuthcott,
     Holliday, Kingson, Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte. But after debate
     as to which of the dead still had any influence with the living,
     it was decided to reduce the title to Cuthcott, Kingson and
     Forsyte, of whom Kingson would be the active and Soames the
     sleeping partner. For leaving his name, prestige, and clients
     behind him, Soames would receive considerable value.

     One night, as befitted a man who had arrived at so important a
     stage of his career, he made a calculation of what he was worth,
     and after writing off liberally for depreciation by the war,
     found his value to be some hundred and thirty thousand pounds. At
     his father’s death, which could not, alas, be delayed much
     longer, he must come into at least another fifty thousand, and
     his yearly expenditure at present just reached two. Standing
     among his pictures, he saw before him a future full of bargains
     earned by the trained faculty of knowing better than other
     people. Selling what was about to decline, keeping what was still
     going up, and exercising judicious insight into future taste, he
     would make a unique collection, which at his death would pass to
     the nation under the title “Forsyte Bequest.”

     If the divorce went through, he had determined on his line with
     Madame Lamotte. She had, he knew, but one real ambition—to live
     on her “_rentes_” in Paris near her grandchildren. He would buy
     the goodwill of the Restaurant Bretagne at a fancy price. Madame
     would live like a Queen-Mother in Paris on the interest, invested
     as she would know how. (Incidentally Soames meant to put a
     capable manager in her place, and make the restaurant pay good
     interest on his money. There were great possibilities in Soho.)
     On Annette he would promise to settle fifteen thousand pounds
     (whether designedly or not), precisely the sum old Jolyon had
     settled on “that woman.”

     A letter from Jolyon’s solicitor to his own had disclosed the
     fact that “those two” were in Italy. And an opportunity had been
     duly given for noting that they had first stayed at an hotel in
     London. The matter was clear as daylight, and would be disposed
     of in half an hour or so; but during that half-hour he, Soames,
     would go down to hell; and after that half-hour all bearers of
     the Forsyte name would feel the bloom was off the rose. He had no
     illusions like Shakespeare that roses by any other name would
     smell as sweet. The name was a possession, a concrete, unstained
     piece of property, the value of which would be reduced some
     twenty per cent. at least. Unless it were Roger, who had once
     refused to stand for Parliament, and—oh, irony!—Jolyon, hung on
     the line, there had never been a distinguished Forsyte. But that
     very lack of distinction was the name’s greatest asset. It was a
     private name, intensely individual, and his own property; it had
     never been exploited for good or evil by intrusive report. He and
     each member of his family owned it wholly, sanely, secretly,
     without any more interference from the public than had been
     necessitated by their births, their marriages, their deaths. And
     during these weeks of waiting and preparing to drop the Law, he
     conceived for that Law a bitter distaste, so deeply did he resent
     its coming violation of his name, forced on him by the need he
     felt to perpetuate that name in a lawful manner. The monstrous
     injustice of the whole thing excited in him a perpetual
     suppressed fury. He had asked no better than to live in spotless
     domesticity, and now he must go into the witness box, after all
     these futile, barren years, and proclaim his failure to keep his
     wife—incur the pity, the amusement, the contempt of his kind. It
     was all upside down. She and that fellow ought to be the
     sufferers, and they—were in Italy! In these weeks the Law he had
     served so faithfully, looked on so reverently as the guardian of
     all property, seemed to him quite pitiful. What could be more
     insane than to tell a man that he owned his wife, and punish him
     when someone unlawfully took her away from him? Did the Law not
     know that a man’s name was to him the apple of his eye, that it
     was far harder to be regarded as cuckold than as seducer? He
     actually envied Jolyon the reputation of succeeding where he,
     Soames, had failed. The question of damages worried him, too. He
     wanted to make that fellow suffer, but he remembered his cousin’s
     words, “I shall be very happy,” with the uneasy feeling that to
     claim damages would make not Jolyon but himself suffer; he felt
     uncannily that Jolyon would rather like to pay them—the chap was
     so loose. Besides, to claim damages was not the thing to do. The
     claim, indeed, had been made almost mechanically; and as the hour
     drew near Soames saw in it just another dodge of this insensitive
     and topsy-turvy Law to make him ridiculous; so that people might
     sneer and say: “Oh, yes, he got quite a good price for her!” And
     he gave instructions that his Counsel should state that the money
     would be given to a Home for Fallen Women. He was a long time
     hitting off exactly the right charity; but, having pitched on it,
     he used to wake up in the night and think: “It won’t do, too
     lurid; it’ll draw attention. Something quieter—better taste.” He
     did not care for dogs, or he would have named them; and it was in
     desperation at last—for his knowledge of charities was
     limited—that he decided on the blind. That could not be
     inappropriate, and it would make the Jury assess the damages
     high.

     A good many suits were dropping out of the list, which happened
     to be exceptionally thin that summer, so that his case would be
     reached before August. As the day grew nearer, Winifred was his
     only comfort. She showed the fellow-feeling of one who had been
     through the mill, and was the “femme-sole” in whom he confided,
     well knowing that she would not let Dartie into her confidence.
     That ruffian would be only too rejoiced! At the end of July, on
     the afternoon before the case, he went in to see her. They had
     not yet been able to leave town, because Dartie had already spent
     their summer holiday, and Winifred dared not go to her father for
     more money while he was waiting not to be told anything about
     this affair of Soames.

     Soames found her with a letter in her hand.

     “That from Val,” he asked gloomily. “What does he say?”

     “He says he’s married,” said Winifred.

     “Whom to, for Goodness’ sake?”

     Winifred looked up at him.

     “To Holly Forsyte, Jolyon’s daughter.”

     “What?”

     “He got leave and did it. I didn’t even know he knew her.
     Awkward, isn’t it?”

     Soames uttered a short laugh at that characteristic minimisation.

     “Awkward! Well, I don’t suppose they’ll hear about this till they
     come back. They’d better stay out there. That fellow will give
     her money.”

     “But I want Val back,” said Winifred almost piteously; “I miss
     him, he helps me to get on.”

     “I know,” murmured Soames. “How’s Dartie behaving now?”

     “It might be worse; but it’s always money. Would you like me to
     come down to the Court to-morrow, Soames?”

     Soames stretched out his hand for hers. The gesture so betrayed
     the loneliness in him that she pressed it between her two.

     “Never mind, old boy. You’ll feel ever so much better when it’s
     all over.”

     “I don’t know what I’ve done,” said Soames huskily; “I never
     have. It’s all upside down. I was fond of her; I’ve always been.”

     Winifred saw a drop of blood ooze out of his lip, and the sight
     stirred her profoundly.

     “Of course,” she said, “it’s been _too_ bad of her all along! But
     what shall I do about this marriage of Val’s, Soames? I don’t
     know how to write to him, with this coming on. You’ve seen that
     child. Is she pretty?”

     “Yes, she’s pretty,” said Soames. “Dark—lady-like enough.”

     “That doesn’t sound so bad,” thought Winifred. “Jolyon had
     style.”

     “It is a coil,” she said. “What will father say?

     “Mustn’t be told,” said Soames. “The war’ll soon be over now,
     you’d better let Val take to farming out there.”

     It was tantamount to saying that his nephew was lost.

     “I haven’t told Monty,” Winifred murmured desolately.

     The case was reached before noon next day, and was over in little
     more than half an hour. Soames—pale, spruce, sad-eyed in the
     witness-box—had suffered so much beforehand that he took it all
     like one dead. The moment the decree nisi was pronounced he left
     the Courts of Justice.

     Four hours until he became public property! “Solicitor’s divorce
     suit!” A surly, dogged anger replaced that dead feeling within
     him. “Damn them all!” he thought; “I won’t run away. I’ll act as
     if nothing had happened.” And in the sweltering heat of Fleet
     Street and Ludgate Hill he walked all the way to his City Club,
     lunched, and went back to his office. He worked there stolidly
     throughout the afternoon.

     On his way out he saw that his clerks knew, and answered their
     involuntary glances with a look so sardonic that they were
     immediately withdrawn. In front of St. Paul’s, he stopped to buy
     the most gentlemanly of the evening papers. Yes! there he was!
     “Well-known solicitor’s divorce. Cousin co-respondent. Damages
     given to the blind”—so, they had got that in! At every other
     face, he thought: “I wonder if you know!” And suddenly he felt
     queer, as if something were racing round in his head.

     What was this? He was letting it get hold of him! He mustn’t! He
     would be ill. He mustn’t think! He would get down to the river
     and row about, and fish. “I’m not going to be laid up,” he
     thought.

     It flashed across him that he had something of importance to do
     before he went out of town. Madame Lamotte! He must explain the
     Law. Another six months before he was really free! Only he did
     not want to see Annette! And he passed his hand over the top of
     his head—it was very hot.

     He branched off through Covent Garden. On this sultry day of late
     July the garbage-tainted air of the old market offended him, and
     Soho seemed more than ever the disenchanted home of
     rapscallionism. Alone, the Restaurant Bretagne, neat, daintily
     painted, with its blue tubs and the dwarf trees therein, retained
     an aloof and Frenchified self-respect. It was the slack hour, and
     pale trim waitresses were preparing the little tables for dinner.
     Soames went through into the private part. To his discomfiture
     Annette answered his knock. She, too, looked pale and dragged
     down by the heat.

     “You are quite a stranger,” she said languidly.

     Soames smiled.

     “I haven’t wished to be; I’ve been busy.”

     “Where’s your mother, Annette? I’ve got some news for her.”

     “Mother is not in.”

     It seemed to Soames that she looked at him in a queer way. What
     did she know? How much had her mother told her? The worry of
     trying to make that out gave him an alarming feeling in the head.
     He gripped the edge of the table, and dizzily saw Annette come
     forward, her eyes clear with surprise. He shut his own and said:

     “It’s all right. I’ve had a touch of the sun, I think.” The sun!
     What he had was a touch of darkness! Annette’s voice, French and
     composed, said:

     “Sit down, it will pass, then.” Her hand pressed his shoulder,
     and Soames sank into a chair. When the dark feeling dispersed,
     and he opened his eyes, she was looking down at him. What an
     inscrutable and odd expression for a girl of twenty!

     “Do you feel better?”

     “It’s nothing,” said Soames. Instinct told him that to be feeble
     before her was not helping him—age was enough handicap without
     that. Will-power was his fortune with Annette, he had lost ground
     these latter months from indecision—he could not afford to lose
     any more. He got up, and said:

     “I’ll write to your mother. I’m going down to my river house for
     a long holiday. I want you both to come there presently and stay.
     It’s just at its best. You will, won’t you?”

     “It will be veree nice.” A pretty little roll of that “r” but no
     enthusiasm. And rather sadly he added:

     “You’re feeling the heat, too, aren’t you, Annette? It’ll do you
     good to be on the river. Good-night.” Annette swayed forward.
     There was a sort of compunction in the movement.

     “Are you fit to go? Shall I give you some coffee?”

     “No,” said Soames firmly. “Give me your hand.”

     She held out her hand, and Soames raised it to his lips. When he
     looked up, her face wore again that strange expression. “I can’t
     tell,” he thought, as he went out; “but I mustn’t think—I mustn’t
     worry.”

     But worry he did, walking toward Pall Mall. English, not of her
     religion, middle-aged, scarred as it were by domestic tragedy,
     what had he to give her? Only wealth, social position, leisure,
     admiration! It was much, but was it enough for a beautiful girl
     of twenty? He felt so ignorant about Annette. He had, too, a
     curious fear of the French nature of her mother and herself. They
     knew so well what they wanted. They were almost Forsytes. They
     would never grasp a shadow and miss a substance.

     The tremendous effort it was to write a simple note to Madame
     Lamotte when he reached his Club warned him still further that he
     was at the end of his tether.

     “MY DEAR MADAME (he said),
         “You will see by the enclosed newspaper cutting that I
         obtained my decree of divorce to-day. By the English Law I
         shall not, however, be free to marry again till the decree is
         confirmed six months hence. In the meanwhile I have the honor
         to ask to be considered a formal suitor for the hand of your
         daughter. I shall write again in a few days and beg you both
         to come and stay at my river house.

     “I am, dear Madame,
     “Sincerely yours,
     “SOAMES FORSYTE.”

     Having sealed and posted this letter, he went into the
     dining-room. Three mouthfuls of soup convinced him that he could
     not eat; and, causing a cab to be summoned, he drove to
     Paddington Station and took the first train to Reading. He
     reached his house just as the sun went down, and wandered out on
     to the lawn. The air was drenched with the scent of pinks and
     picotees in his flower-borders. A stealing coolness came off the
     river.

     Rest—peace! Let a poor fellow rest! Let not worry and shame and
     anger chase like evil night-birds in his head! Like those doves
     perched half-sleeping on their dovecot, like the furry creatures
     in the woods on the far side, and the simple folk in their
     cottages, like the trees and the river itself, whitening fast in
     twilight, like the darkening cornflower-blue sky where stars were
     coming up—let him cease _from himself_, and rest!




     CHAPTER X PASSING OF AN AGE


     The marriage of Soames with Annette took place in Paris on the
     last day of January, 1901, with such privacy that not even Emily
     was told until it was accomplished.

     The day after the wedding he brought her to one of those quiet
     hotels in London where greater expense can be incurred for less
     result than anywhere else under heaven. Her beauty in the best
     Parisian frocks was giving him more satisfaction than if he had
     collected a perfect bit of china, or a jewel of a picture; he
     looked forward to the moment when he would exhibit her in Park
     Lane, in Green Street, and at Timothy’s.

     If some one had asked him in those days, “In confidence—are you
     in love with this girl?” he would have replied: “In love? What is
     love? If you mean do I feel to her as I did towards Irene in
     those old days when I first met her and she would not have me;
     when I sighed and starved after her and couldn’t rest a minute
     until she yielded—no! If you mean do I admire her youth and
     prettiness, do my senses ache a little when I see her moving
     about—yes! Do I think she will keep me straight, make me a
     creditable wife and a good mother for my children?—again, yes!”

     “What more do I need? and what more do three-quarters of the
     women who are married get from the men who marry them?” And if
     the enquirer had pursued his query, “And do you think it was fair
     to have tempted this girl to give herself to you for life unless
     you have really touched her heart?” he would have answered: “The
     French see these things differently from us. They look at
     marriage from the point of view of establishments and children;
     and, from my own experience, I am not at all sure that theirs is
     not the sensible view. I shall not expect this time more than I
     can get, or she can give. Years hence I shouldn’t be surprised if
     I have trouble with her; but I shall be getting old, I shall have
     children by then. I shall shut my eyes. I have had my great
     passion; hers is perhaps to come—I don’t suppose it will be for
     me. I offer her a great deal, and I don’t expect much in return,
     except children, or at least a son. But one thing I am sure
     of—she has very good sense!”

     And if, insatiate, the enquirer had gone on, “You do not look,
     then, for spiritual union in this marriage?” Soames would have
     lifted his sideway smile, and rejoined: “That’s as it may be. If
     I get satisfaction for my senses, perpetuation of myself; good
     taste and good humour in the house; it is all I can expect at my
     age. I am not likely to be going out of my way towards any
     far-fetched sentimentalism.” Whereon, the enquirer must in good
     taste have ceased enquiry.

     The Queen was dead, and the air of the greatest city upon earth
     grey with unshed tears. Fur-coated and top-hatted, with Annette
     beside him in dark furs, Soames crossed Park Lane on the morning
     of the funeral procession, to the rails in Hyde Park. Little
     moved though he ever was by public matters, this event, supremely
     symbolical, this summing-up of a long rich period, impressed his
     fancy. In ’37, when she came to the throne, “Superior Dosset” was
     still building houses to make London hideous; and James, a
     stripling of twenty-six, just laying the foundations of his
     practice in the Law. Coaches still ran; men wore stocks, shaved
     their upper lips, ate oysters out of barrels; “tigers” swung
     behind cabriolets; women said, “La!” and owned no property; there
     were manners in the land, and pigsties for the poor; unhappy
     devils were hanged for little crimes, and Dickens had but just
     begun to write. Well-nigh two generations had slipped by—of
     steamboats, railways, telegraphs, bicycles, electric light,
     telephones, and now these motorcars—of such accumulated wealth,
     that eight per cent. had become three, and Forsytes were numbered
     by the thousand! Morals had changed, manners had changed, men had
     become monkeys twice-removed, God had become Mammon—Mammon so
     respectable as to deceive himself: Sixty-four years that favoured
     property, and had made the upper middle class; buttressed,
     chiselled, polished it, till it was almost indistinguishable in
     manners, morals, speech, appearance, habit, and soul from the
     nobility. An epoch which had gilded individual liberty so that if
     a man had money, he was free in law and fact, and if he had not
     money he was free in law and not in fact. An era which had
     canonised hypocrisy, so that to seem to be respectable was to be.
     A great Age, whose transmuting influence nothing had escaped save
     the nature of man and the nature of the Universe.

     And to witness the passing of this Age, London—its pet and
     fancy—was pouring forth her citizens through every gate into Hyde
     Park, hub of Victorianism, happy hunting-ground of Forsytes.
     Under the grey heavens, whose drizzle just kept off, the dark
     concourse gathered to see the show. The “good old” Queen, full of
     years and virtue, had emerged from her seclusion for the last
     time to make a London holiday. From Houndsditch, Acton, Ealing,
     Hampstead, Islington, and Bethnal Green; from Hackney, Hornsey,
     Leytonstone, Battersea, and Fulham; and from those green pastures
     where Forsytes flourish—Mayfair and Kensington, St. James’ and
     Belgravia, Bayswater and Chelsea and the Regent’s Park, the
     people swarmed down on to the roads where death would presently
     pass with dusky pomp and pageantry. Never again would a Queen
     reign so long, or people have a chance to see so much history
     buried for their money. A pity the war dragged on, and that the
     Wreath of Victory could not be laid upon her coffin! All else
     would be there to follow and commemorate—soldiers, sailors,
     foreign princes, half-masted bunting, tolling bells, and above
     all the surging, great, dark-coated crowd, with perhaps a simple
     sadness here and there deep in hearts beneath black clothes put
     on by regulation. After all, more than a Queen was going to her
     rest, a woman who had braved sorrow, lived well and wisely
     according to her lights.

     Out in the crowd against the railings, with his arm hooked in
     Annette’s, Soames waited. Yes! the Age was passing! What with
     this Trade Unionism, and Labour fellows in the House of Commons,
     with continental fiction, and something in the general feel of
     everything, not to be expressed in words, things were very
     different; he recalled the crowd on Mafeking night, and George
     Forsyte saying: “They’re all socialists, they want our goods.”
     Like James, Soames didn’t know, he couldn’t tell—with Edward on
     the throne! Things would never be as safe again as under good old
     Viccy! Convulsively he pressed his young wife’s arm. There, at
     any rate, was something substantially his own, domestically
     certain again at last; something which made property worth
     while—a real thing once more. Pressed close against her and
     trying to ward others off, Soames was content. The crowd swayed
     round them, ate sandwiches and dropped crumbs; boys who had
     climbed the plane-trees chattered above like monkeys, threw twigs
     and orange-peel. It was past time; they should be coming soon!
     And, suddenly, a little behind them to the left, he saw a tallish
     man with a soft hat and short grizzling beard, and a tallish
     woman in a little round fur cap and veil. Jolyon and Irene
     talking, smiling at each other, close together like Annette and
     himself! They had not seen him; and stealthily, with a very queer
     feeling in his heart, Soames watched those two. They looked
     happy! What had they come here for—inherently illicit creatures,
     rebels from the Victorian ideal? What business had they in this
     crowd? Each of them twice exiled by morality—making a boast, as
     it were, of love and laxity! He watched them fascinated;
     admitting grudgingly even with his arm thrust through Annette’s
     that—that she—Irene—No! he would _not_ admit it; and he turned
     his eyes away. He would _not_ see them, and let the old
     bitterness, the old longing rise up within him! And then Annette
     turned to him and said: “Those two people, Soames; they know you,
     I am sure. Who are they?”

     Soames nosed sideways.

     “What people?”

     “There, you see them; just turning away. They know you.”

     “No,” Soames answered; “a mistake, my dear.”

     “A lovely face! And how she walk! _Elle est très distinguée!_”

     Soames looked then. Into his life, out of his life she had walked
     like that swaying and erect, remote, unseizable; ever eluding the
     contact of his soul! He turned abruptly from that receding vision
     of the past.

     “You’d better attend,” he said, “they’re coming now!”

     But while he stood, grasping her arm, seemingly intent on the
     head of the procession, he was quivering with the sense of always
     missing something, with instinctive regret that he had not got
     them both.

     Slow came the music and the march, till, in silence, the long
     line wound in through the Park gate. He heard Annette whisper,
     “How sad it is and beautiful!” felt the clutch of her hand as she
     stood up on tiptoe; and the crowd’s emotion gripped him. There it
     was—the bier of the Queen, coffin of the Age slow passing! And as
     it went by there came a murmuring groan from all the long line of
     those who watched, a sound such as Soames had never heard, so
     unconscious, primitive, deep and wild, that neither he nor any
     knew whether they had joined in uttering it. Strange sound,
     indeed! Tribute of an Age to its own death.... Ah! Ah!... The
     hold on life had slipped. That which had seemed eternal was gone!
     The Queen—God bless her!

     It moved on with the bier, that travelling groan, as a fire moves
     on over grass in a thin line; it kept step, and marched alongside
     down the dense crowds mile after mile. It was a human sound, and
     yet inhuman, pushed out by animal subconsciousness, by intimate
     knowledge of universal death and change. None of us—none of us
     can hold on for ever!

     It left silence for a little—a very little time, till tongues
     began, eager to retrieve interest in the show. Soames lingered
     just long enough to gratify Annette, then took her out of the
     Park to lunch at his father’s in Park Lane....

     James had spent the morning gazing out of his bedroom window. The
     last show he would see, last of so many! So she was gone! Well,
     she was getting an old woman. Swithin and he had seen her
     crowned—slim slip of a girl, not so old as Imogen! She had got
     very stout of late. Jolyon and he had seen her married to that
     German chap, her husband—he had turned out all right before he
     died, and left her with that son of his. And he remembered the
     many evenings he and his brothers and their cronies had wagged
     their heads over their wine and walnuts and that fellow in his
     salad days. And now he had come to the throne. They said he had
     steadied down—he didn’t know—couldn’t tell! He’d make the money
     fly still, he shouldn’t wonder. What a lot of people out there!
     It didn’t seem so very long since he and Swithin stood in the
     crowd outside Westminster Abbey when she was crowned, and Swithin
     had taken him to Cremorne afterwards—racketty chap, Swithin; no,
     it didn’t seem much longer ago than Jubilee Year, when he had
     joined with Roger in renting a balcony in Piccadilly.

     Jolyon, Swithin, Roger all gone, and he would be ninety in
     August! And there was Soames married again to a French girl. The
     French were a queer lot, but they made good mothers, he had
     heard. Things changed! They said this German Emperor was here for
     the funeral, his telegram to old Kruger had been in shocking
     taste. He should not be surprised if that chap made trouble some
     day. Change! H’m! Well, they must look after themselves when he
     was gone: he didn’t know where he’d be! And now Emily had asked
     Dartie to lunch, with Winifred and Imogen, to meet Soames’
     wife—she was always doing something. And there was Irene living
     with that fellow Jolyon, they said. He’d marry her now, he
     supposed.

     “My brother Jolyon,” he thought, “what would he have said to it
     all?” And somehow the utter impossibility of knowing what his
     elder brother, once so looked up to, would have said, so worried
     James that he got up from his chair by the window, and began
     slowly, feebly to pace the room.

     “She was a pretty thing, too,” he thought; “I was fond of her.
     Perhaps Soames didn’t suit her—I don’t know—I can’t tell. We
     never had any trouble with _our_ wives.” Women had changed
     everything had changed! And now the Queen was dead—well, there it
     was! A movement in the crowd brought him to a standstill at the
     window, his nose touching the pane and whitening from the chill
     of it. They had got her as far as Hyde Park Corner—they were
     passing now! Why didn’t Emily come up here where she could see,
     instead of fussing about lunch. He missed her at that
     moment—missed her! Through the bare branches of the plane-trees
     he could just see the procession, could see the hats coming off
     the people’s heads—a lot of them would catch colds, he shouldn’t
     wonder! A voice behind him said:

     “You’ve got a capital view here, James!”

     “_There_ you are!” muttered James; “why didn’t you come before?
     You might have missed it!”

     And he was silent, staring with all his might.

     “What’s the noise?” he asked suddenly.

     “There’s no noise,” returned Emily; “what are you thinking
     of?—they wouldn’t cheer.”

     “I can hear it.”

     “Nonsense, James!”

     No sound came through those double panes; what James heard was
     the groaning in his own heart at sight of his Age passing.

     “Don’t you ever tell me where I’m buried,” he said suddenly. “I
     shan’t want to know.” And he turned from the window. There she
     went, the old Queen; she’d had a lot of anxiety—she’d be glad to
     be out of it, he should think!

     Emily took up the hair-brushes.

     “There’ll be just time to brush your head,” she said, “before
     they come. You must look your best, James.”

     “Ah!” muttered James; “they say she’s pretty.”

     The meeting with his new daughter-in-law took place in the
     dining-room. James was seated by the fire when she was brought
     in. He placed, his hands on the arms of the chair and slowly
     raised himself. Stooping and immaculate in his frock-coat, thin
     as a line in Euclid, he received Annette’s hand in his; and the
     anxious eyes of his furrowed face, which had lost its colour now,
     doubted above her. A little warmth came into them and into his
     cheeks, refracted from her bloom.

     “How are you?” he said. “You’ve been to see the Queen, I suppose?
     Did you have a good crossing?”

     In this way he greeted her from whom he hoped for a grandson of
     his name.

     Gazing at him, so old, thin, white, and spotless, Annette
     murmured something in French which James did not understand.

     “Yes, yes,” he said, “you want your lunch, I expect. Soames, ring
     the bell; we won’t wait for that chap Dartie.” But just then they
     arrived. Dartie had refused to go out of his way to see “the old
     girl.” With an early cocktail beside him, he had taken a “squint”
     from the smoking-room of the Iseeum, so that Winifred and Imogen
     had been obliged to come back from the Park to fetch him thence.
     His brown eyes rested on Annette with a stare of almost startled
     satisfaction. The second beauty that fellow Soames had picked up!
     What women could see in him! Well, she would play him the same
     trick as the other, no doubt; but in the meantime he was a lucky
     devil! And he brushed up his moustache, having in nine months of
     Green Street domesticity regained almost all his flesh and his
     assurance. Despite the comfortable efforts of Emily, Winifred’s
     composure, Imogen’s enquiring friendliness, Dartie’s showing-off,
     and James’ solicitude about her food, it was not, Soames felt, a
     successful lunch for his bride. He took her away very soon.

     “That Monsieur Dartie,” said Annette in the cab, “_je n’aime pas
     ce type-là!_”

     “No, by George!” said Soames.

     “Your sister is veree amiable, and the girl is pretty. Your
     father is veree old. I think your mother has trouble with him; I
     should not like to be her.”

     Soames nodded at the shrewdness, the clear hard judgment in his
     young wife; but it disquieted him a little. The thought may have
     just flashed through him, too: “When I’m eighty she’ll be
     fifty-five, having trouble with me!”

     “There’s just one other house of my relations I must take you
     to,” he said; “you’ll find it funny, but we must get it over; and
     then we’ll dine and go to the theatre.”

     In this way he prepared her for Timothy’s. But Timothy’s was
     different. They were _delighted_ to see dear Soames after this
     long long time; and so this was Annette!

     “You are _so_ pretty, my dear; almost too young and pretty for
     dear Soames, aren’t you? But he’s very attentive and careful—such
     a good hush....” Aunt Juley checked herself, and placed her lips
     just under each of Annette’s eyes—she afterwards described them
     to Francie, who dropped in, as: “Cornflower-blue, so pretty, I
     quite wanted to kiss them. I must say dear Soames is a perfect
     connoisseur. In her French way, and not so very French either, I
     think she’s as pretty—though not so distinguished, not so
     alluring—as Irene. Because she was alluring, wasn’t she? with
     that white skin and those dark eyes, and that hair, _couleur
     de_—what was it? I always forget.”

     “_Feuille morte_,” Francie prompted.

     “Of course, dead leaves—so strange. I remember when I was a girl,
     before we came to London, we had a foxhound puppy—to ‘walk’ it
     was called then; it had a tan top to its head and a white chest,
     and beautiful dark brown eyes, and it was a lady.”

     “Yes, auntie,” said Francie, “but I don’t see the connection.”

     “Oh!” replied Aunt Juley, rather flustered, “it was so alluring,
     and her eyes and hair, you know....” She was silent, as if
     surprised in some indelicacy. “_Feuille morte_,” she added
     suddenly; “Hester—do remember that!”....

     Considerable debate took place between the two sisters whether
     Timothy should or should not be summoned to see Annette.

     “Oh, don’t bother!” said Soames.

     “But it’s no trouble, only of course Annette’s being French might
     upset him a little. He was so scared about Fashoda. I think
     perhaps we had better not run the risk, Hester. It’s nice to have
     her all to ourselves, isn’t it? And how are you, Soames? Have you
     quite got over your....”

     Hester interposed hurriedly:

     “What do you think of London, Annette?”

     Soames, disquieted, awaited the reply. It came, sensible,
     composed: “Oh! I know London. I have visited before.”

     He had never ventured to speak to her on the subject of the
     restaurant. The French had different notions about gentility, and
     to shrink from connection with it might seem to her ridiculous;
     he had waited to be married before mentioning it; and now he
     wished he hadn’t.

     “And what part do you know best?” said Aunt Juley.

     “Soho,” said Annette simply.

     Soames snapped his jaw.

     “Soho?” repeated Aunt Juley; “Soho?”

     “That’ll go round the family,” thought Soames.

     “It’s very French, and interesting,” he said.

     “Yes,” murmured Aunt Juley, “your Uncle Roger had some houses
     there once; he was always having to turn the tenants out, I
     remember.”

     Soames changed the subject to Mapledurham.

     “Of course,” said Aunt Juley, “you will be going down there soon
     to settle in. We are all so looking forward to the time when
     Annette has a dear little....”

     “Juley!” cried Aunt Hester desperately, “ring tea!”

     Soames dared not wait for tea, and took Annette away.

     “I shouldn’t mention Soho if I were you,” he said in the cab.
     “It’s rather a shady part of London; and you’re altogether above
     that restaurant business now; I mean,” he added, “I want you to
     know nice people, and the English are fearful snobs.”

     Annette’s clear eyes opened; a little smile came on her lips.

     “Yes?” she said.

     “H’m!” thought Soames, “that’s meant for me!” and he looked at
     her hard. “She’s got good business instincts,” he thought. “I
     must make her grasp it once for all!”

     “Look here, Annette! it’s very simple, only it wants
     understanding. Our professional and leisured classes still think
     themselves a cut above our business classes, except of course the
     very rich. It may be stupid, but there it is, you see. It isn’t
     advisable in England to let people know that you ran a restaurant
     or kept a shop or were in any kind of trade. It may have been
     extremely creditable, but it puts a sort of label on you; you
     don’t have such a good time, or meet such nice people—that’s
     all.”

     “I see,” said Annette; “it is the same in France.”

     “Oh!” murmured Soames, at once relieved and taken aback. “Of
     course, class is everything, really.”

     “Yes,” said Annette; “_comme vous êtes sage_.”

     “That’s all right,” thought Soames, watching her lips, “only
     she’s pretty cynical.” His knowledge of French was not yet such
     as to make him grieve that she had not said “tu.” He slipped his
     arm round her, and murmured with an effort:

     “_Et vous êtes ma belle femme_.”

     Annette went off into a little fit of laughter.

     “_Oh, non!_” she said. “_Oh, non! ne parlez pas Français_,
     Soames. What is that old lady, your aunt, looking forward to?”

     Soames bit his lip. “God knows!” he said; “she’s always saying
     something;” but he knew better than God.




     CHAPTER XI SUSPENDED ANIMATION


     The war dragged on. Nicholas had been heard to say that it would
     cost three hundred millions if it cost a penny before they’d done
     with it! The income-tax was seriously threatened. Still, there
     would be South Africa for their money, once for all. And though
     the possessive instinct felt badly shaken at three o’clock in the
     morning, it recovered by breakfast-time with the recollection
     that one gets nothing in this world without paying for it. So, on
     the whole, people went about their business much as if there were
     no war, no concentration camps, no slippery de Wet, no feeling on
     the Continent, no anything unpleasant. Indeed, the attitude of
     the nation was typified by Timothy’s map, whose animation was
     suspended—for Timothy no longer moved the flags, and they could
     not move themselves, not even backwards and forwards as they
     should have done.

     Suspended animation went further; it invaded Forsyte ’Change, and
     produced a general uncertainty as to what was going to happen
     next. 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! Nothing to be had out of admitting that it had been a
     “nasty jar”—in the phraseology of the day.

     But what would happen now that both Soames and Jolyon were
     married again? That was very intriguing. George was known to have
     laid Eustace six to four on a little Jolyon before a little
     Soames. George was so droll! It was rumoured, too, that he and
     Dartie had a bet as to whether James would attain the age of
     ninety, though which of them had backed James no one knew.

     Early in May, Winifred came round to say that Val had been
     wounded in the leg by a spent bullet, and was to be discharged.
     His wife was nursing him. He would have a little limp—nothing to
     speak of. He wanted his grandfather to buy him a farm out there
     where he could breed horses. Her father was giving Holly eight
     hundred a year, so they could be quite comfortable, because his
     grandfather would give Val five, he had said; but as to the farm,
     he didn’t know—couldn’t tell: he didn’t want Val to go throwing
     away his money.

     “But you know,” said Winifred, “he must do something.”

     Aunt Hester thought that perhaps his dear grandfather was wise,
     because if he didn’t buy a farm it couldn’t turn out badly.

     “But Val loves horses,” said Winifred. “It’d be such an
     occupation for him.”

     Aunt Juley thought that horses were very uncertain, had not
     Montague found them so?

     “Val’s different,” said Winifred; “he takes after me.”

     Aunt Juley was sure that dear Val was very clever. “I always
     remember,” she added, “how he gave his bad penny to a beggar. His
     dear grandfather was so pleased. He thought it showed such
     presence of mind. I remember his saying that he ought to go into
     the Navy.”

     Aunt Hester chimed in: Did not Winifred think that it was much
     better for the young people to be secure and not run any risk at
     their age?

     “Well,” said Winifred, “if they were in London, perhaps; in
     London it’s amusing to do nothing. But out there, of course,
     he’ll simply get bored to death.”

     Aunt Hester thought that it would be nice for him to work, if he
     were quite sure not to lose by it. It was not as if they had no
     money. Timothy, of course, had done so well by retiring. Aunt
     Juley wanted to know what Montague had said.

     Winifred did not tell her, for Montague had merely remarked:
     “Wait till the old man dies.”

     At this moment Francie was announced. Her eyes were brimming with
     a smile.

     “Well,” she said, “what do you think of it?”

     “Of what, dear?”

     “In _The Times_ this morning.”

     “We haven’t seen it, we always read it after dinner; Timothy has
     it till then.”

     Francie rolled her eyes.

     “Do you think you _ought_ to tell us?” said Aunt Juley. “What
     _was_ it?”

     “Irene’s had a son at Robin Hill.”

     Aunt Juley drew in her breath. “But,” she said, “they were only
     married in March!”

     “Yes, Auntie; isn’t it interesting?”

     “Well,” said Winifred, “I’m glad. I was sorry for Jolyon losing
     his boy. It might have been Val.”

     Aunt Juley seemed to go into a sort of dream. “I wonder,” she
     murmured, “what dear Soames will think? He has so wanted to have
     a son himself. A little bird has always told me that.”

     “Well,” said Winifred, “he’s going to—bar accidents.”

     Gladness trickled out of Aunt Juley’s eyes.

     “How delightful!” she said. “When?”

     “November.”

     Such a lucky month! But she did wish it could be sooner. It was a
     long time for James to wait, at his age!

     To wait! They dreaded it for James, but they were used to it
     themselves. Indeed, it was their great distraction. To wait! For
     _The Times_ to read; for one or other of their nieces or nephews
     to come in and cheer them up; for news of Nicholas’ health; for
     that decision of Christopher’s about going on the stage; for
     information concerning the mine of Mrs. MacAnder’s nephew; for
     the doctor to come about Hester’s inclination to wake up early in
     the morning; for books from the library which were always out;
     for Timothy to have a cold; for a nice quiet warm day, not too
     hot, when they could take a turn in Kensington Gardens. To wait,
     one on each side of the hearth in the drawing-room, for the clock
     between them to strike; their thin, veined, knuckled hands plying
     knitting-needles and crochet-hooks, their hair ordered to
     stop—like Canute’s waves—from any further advance in colour. To
     wait in their black silks or satins for the Court to say that
     Hester might wear her dark green, and Juley her darker maroon. To
     wait, slowly turning over and over, in their old minds the little
     joys and sorrows, events and expectancies, of their little family
     world, as cows chew patient cuds in a familiar field. And this
     new event was so well worth waiting for. Soames had always been
     their pet, with his tendency to give them pictures, and his
     almost weekly visits which they missed so much, and his need for
     their sympathy evoked by the wreck of his first marriage. This
     new event—the birth of an heir to Soames—was so important for
     him, and for his dear father, too, that James might not have to
     die without some certainty about things. James did so dislike
     uncertainty; and with Montague, of course, he could not feel
     really satisfied to leave no grand-children but the young
     Darties. After all, one’s own name did count! And as James’
     ninetieth birthday neared they wondered what precautions he was
     taking. He would be the first of the Forsytes to reach that age,
     and set, as it were, a new standard in holding on to life. That
     was so important, they felt, at their ages eighty-seven and
     eighty-five; though they did not want to think of themselves when
     they had Timothy, who was not yet eighty-two, to think of. There
     was, of course, a better world. “In my Father’s house are many
     mansions” was one of Aunt Juley’s favourite sayings—it always
     comforted her, with its suggestion of house property, which had
     made the fortune of dear Roger. The Bible was, indeed, a great
     resource, and on _very_ fine Sundays there was church in the
     morning; and sometimes Juley would steal into Timothy’s study
     when she was sure he was out, and just put an open New Testament
     casually among the books on his little table—he was a great
     reader, of course, having been a publisher. But she had noticed
     that Timothy was always cross at dinner afterwards. And Smither
     had told her more than once that she had picked books off the
     floor in doing the room. Still, with all that, they did feel that
     heaven could not be quite so cosy as the rooms in which they and
     Timothy had been waiting so long. Aunt Hester, especially, could
     not bear the thought of the exertion. Any change, or rather the
     thought of a change—for there never _was_ any—always upset her
     very much. Aunt Juley, who had more spirit, sometimes thought it
     would be quite exciting; she had so enjoyed that visit to
     Brighton the year dear Susan died. But then Brighton one knew was
     nice, and it was so difficult to tell what heaven would be like,
     so on the whole she was more than content to wait.

     On the morning of James’ birthday, August the 5th, they felt
     extraordinary animation, and little notes passed between them by
     the hand of Smither while they were having breakfast in their
     beds. Smither must go round and take their love and little
     presents and find out how Mr. James was, and whether he had
     passed a good night with all the excitement. And on the way back
     would Smither call in at Green Street—it was a little out of her
     way, but she could take the bus up Bond Street afterwards; it
     would be a nice little change for her—and ask dear Mrs. Dartie to
     be sure and look in before she went out of town.

     All this Smither did—an undeniable servant trained many years ago
     under Aunt Ann to a perfection not now procurable. Mr. James, so
     Mrs. James said, had passed an excellent night, he sent his love;
     Mrs. James had said he was very funny and had complained that he
     didn’t know what all the fuss was about. Oh! and Mrs. Dartie sent
     her love, and she would come to tea.

     Aunts Juley and Hester, rather hurt that their presents had not
     received special mention—they forgot every year that James could
     not bear to receive presents, “throwing away their money on him,”
     as he always called it—were “delighted”; it showed that James was
     in good spirits, and that was so important for him. And they
     began to wait for Winifred. She came at four, bringing Imogen,
     and Maud, just back from school, and “getting such a pretty girl,
     too,” so that it was extremely difficult to ask for news about
     Annette. Aunt Juley, however, summoned courage to enquire whether
     Winifred had heard anything, and if Soames was anxious.

     “Uncle Soames is always anxious, Auntie,” interrupted Imogen; “he
     can’t be happy now he’s got it.”

     The words struck familiarly on Aunt Juley’s ears. Ah! yes; that
     funny drawing of George’s, which had _not_ been shown them! But
     what did Imogen mean? That her uncle always wanted more than he
     could have? It was not at all nice to think like that.

     Imogen’s voice rose clear and clipped:

     “Imagine! Annette’s only two years older than me; it must be
     awful for her, married to Uncle Soames.”

     Aunt Juley lifted her hands in horror.

     “My dear,” she said, “you don’t know what you’re talking about.
     Your Uncle Soames is a match for anybody. He’s a very clever man,
     and good-looking and wealthy, and most considerate and careful,
     and not at all old, considering everything.”

     Imogen, turning her luscious glance from one to the other of the
     “old dears,” only smiled.

     “I hope,” said Aunt Juley quite severely, “that _you_ will marry
     as good a man.”

     “_I_ shan’t marry a good man, Auntie,” murmured Imogen; “they’re
     dull.”

     “If you go on like this,” replied Aunt Juley, still very much
     upset, “you won’t marry anybody. We’d better not pursue the
     subject;” and turning to Winifred, she said: “How is Montague?”

     That evening, while they were waiting for dinner, she murmured:

     “I’ve told Smither to get up half a bottle of the sweet
     champagne, Hester. I think we ought to drink dear James’ health,
     and—and the health of Soames’ wife; only, let’s keep that quite
     secret. I’ll just say like this, ‘And _you know_, Hester!’ and
     then we’ll drink. It might upset Timothy.”

     “It’s more likely to upset us,” said Aunt Nester. “But we must, I
     suppose; for such an occasion.”

     “Yes,” said Aunt Juley rapturously, “it _is_ an occasion! Only
     fancy if he has a dear little boy, to carry the family on! I do
     feel it so important, now that Irene has had a son. Winifred says
     George is calling Jolyon ‘The Three-Decker,’ because of his three
     families, you know! George _is_ droll. And fancy! Irene is living
     after all in the house Soames had built for them both. It does
     seem hard on dear Soames; and he’s always been so regular.”

     That night in bed, excited and a little flushed still by her
     glass of wine and the secrecy of the second toast, she lay with
     her prayer-book opened flat, and her eyes fixed on a ceiling
     yellowed by the light from her reading-lamp. Young things! It was
     so nice for them all! And she would be so happy if she could see
     dear Soames happy. But, of course, he must be now, in spite of
     what Imogen had said. He would have all that he wanted: property,
     and wife, and children! And he would live to a green old age,
     like his dear father, and forget all about Irene and that
     dreadful case. If only she herself could be here to buy his
     children their first rocking-horse! Smither should choose it for
     her at the stores, nice and dappled. Ah! how Roger used to rock
     her until she fell off! Oh dear! that was a long time ago! It
     _was!_ “In my Father’s house are many mansions—”A little
     scrattling noise caught her ear—“but no mice!” she thought
     mechanically. The noise increased. There! it _was_ a mouse! How
     naughty of Smither to say there wasn’t! It would be eating
     through the wainscot before they knew where they were, and they
     would have to have the builders in. They were such destructive
     things! And she lay, with her eyes just moving, following in her
     mind that little scrattling sound, and waiting for sleep to
     release her from it.




     CHAPTER XII BIRTH OF A FORSYTE


     Soames walked out of the garden door, crossed the lawn, stood on
     the path above the river, turned round and walked back to the
     garden door, without having realised that he had moved. The sound
     of wheels crunching the drive convinced him that time had passed,
     and the doctor gone. What, exactly, had he said?

     “This is the position, Mr. Forsyte. I can make pretty certain of
     her life if I operate, but the baby will be born dead. If I don’t
     operate, the baby will most probably be born alive, but it’s a
     great risk for the mother—a great risk. In either case I don’t
     think she can ever have another child. In her state she obviously
     can’t decide for herself, and we can’t wait for her mother. It’s
     for you to make the decision, while I’m getting what’s necessary.
     I shall be back within the hour.”

     The decision! What a decision! No time to get a specialist down!
     No time for anything!

     The sound of wheels died away, but Soames still stood intent;
     then, suddenly covering his ears, he walked back to the river. To
     come before its time like this, with no chance to foresee
     anything, not even to get her mother here! It was for her mother
     to make that decision, and she couldn’t arrive from Paris till
     to-night! If only he could have understood the doctor’s jargon,
     the medical niceties, so as to be sure he was weighing the
     chances properly; but they were Greek to him—like a legal problem
     to a layman. And yet he _must_ decide! He brought his hand away
     from his brow wet, though the air was chilly. These sounds which
     came from her room! To go back there would only make it more
     difficult. He must be calm, clear. On the one hand life, nearly
     certain, of his young wife, death quite certain, of his child;
     and—no more children afterwards! On the other, death _perhaps_ of
     his wife, nearly certain life for the child; and—no more children
     afterwards! Which to choose?.... It had rained this last
     fortnight—the river was very full, and in the water, collected
     round the little house-boat moored by his landing-stage, were
     many leaves from the woods above, brought off by a frost. 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.
     Would he have hesitated then? Not a moment! Operate, operate!
     Make certain of her life! No decision—a mere instinctive cry for
     help, in spite of his knowledge, even then, that she did not love
     him! But this! Ah! there was nothing overmastering in his feeling
     for Annette! Many times these last months, especially since she
     had been growing frightened, he had wondered. She had a will of
     her own, was selfish in her French way. And yet—so pretty! What
     would she wish—to take the risk. “I know she wants the child,” he
     thought. “If it’s born dead, and no more chance afterwards—it’ll
     upset her terribly. No more chance! All for nothing! Married life
     with her for years and years without a child. Nothing to steady
     her! She’s too young. Nothing to look forward to, for her—for me!
     _For me!_” He struck his hands against his chest! Why couldn’t he
     think without bringing himself in—get out of himself and see what
     he ought to do? The thought hurt him, then lost edge, as if it
     had come in contact with a breastplate. Out of oneself!
     Impossible! Out into soundless, scentless, touchless, sightless
     space! The very idea was ghastly, futile! And touching there the
     bedrock of reality, the bottom of his Forsyte spirit, Soames
     rested for a moment. When one ceased, all ceased; it might go on,
     but there’d be nothing in it!

     He looked at his watch. In half an hour the doctor would be back.
     He _must_ decide! If against the operation and she died, how face
     her mother and the doctor afterwards? How face his own
     conscience? It was _his_ child that she was having. If for the
     operation—then he condemned them both to childlessness. And for
     what else had he married her but to have a lawful heir? And his
     father—at death’s door, waiting for the news! “It’s cruel!” he
     thought; “I ought never to have such a thing to settle! It’s
     cruel!” He turned towards the house. Some deep, simple way of
     deciding! He took out a coin, and put it back. If he spun it, he
     knew he would not abide by what came up! He went into the
     dining-room, furthest away from that room whence the sounds
     issued. The doctor had said there was a chance. In here that
     chance seemed greater; the river did not flow, nor the leaves
     fall. A fire was burning. Soames unlocked the tantalus. He hardly
     ever touched spirits, but now—he poured himself out some whisky
     and drank it neat, craving a faster flow of blood. “That fellow
     Jolyon,” he thought; “he had children already. He has the woman I
     really loved; and now a son by her! And I—I’m asked to destroy my
     only child! Annette _can’t_ die; it’s not possible. She’s
     strong!”

     He was still standing sullenly at the sideboard when he heard the
     doctor’s carriage, and went out to him. He had to wait for him to
     come downstairs.

     “Well, doctor?”

     “The situation’s the same. Have you decided?”

     “Yes,” said Soames; “don’t operate!”

     “Not? You understand—the risk’s great?”

     In Soames’ set face nothing moved but the lips.

     “You said there was a chance?”

     “A chance, yes; not much of one.”

     “You say the baby _must_ be born dead if you do?”

     “Yes.”

     “Do you still think that in any case she can’t have another?”

     “One can’t be absolutely sure, but it’s most unlikely.”

     “She’s strong,” said Soames; “we’ll take the risk.”

     The doctor looked at him very gravely. “It’s on your shoulders,”
     he said; “with my own wife, I couldn’t.”

     Soames’ chin jerked up as if someone had hit him.

     “Am I of any use up there?” he asked.

     “No; keep away.”

     “I shall be in my picture-gallery, then; you know where.”

     The doctor nodded, and went upstairs.

     Soames continued to stand, listening. “By this time to-morrow,”
     he thought, “I may have her death on my hands.” No! it was
     unfair—monstrous, to put it that way! Sullenness dropped on him
     again, and he went up to the gallery. He stood at the window. The
     wind was in the north; it was cold, clear; very blue sky, heavy
     ragged white clouds chasing across; the river blue, too, through
     the screen of goldening trees; the woods all rich with colour,
     glowing, burnished—an early autumn. If it were his own life,
     would he be taking that risk? “But _she’d_ take the risk of
     losing me,” he thought, “sooner than lose her child! She doesn’t
     really love me!” What could one expect—a girl and French? The one
     thing really vital to them both, vital to their marriage and
     their futures, was a child! “I’ve been through a lot for this,”
     he thought, “I’ll hold on—hold on. There’s a chance of keeping
     both—a chance!” One kept till things were taken—one naturally
     kept! He began walking round the gallery. He had made one
     purchase lately which he knew was a fortune in itself, and he
     halted before it—a girl with dull gold hair which looked like
     filaments of metal gazing at a little golden monster she was
     holding in her hand. Even at this tortured moment he could just
     feel the extraordinary nature of the bargain he had made—admire
     the quality of the table, the floor, the chair, the girl’s
     figure, the absorbed expression on her face, the dull gold
     filaments of her hair, the bright gold of the little monster.
     Collecting pictures; growing richer, richer! What use, if...! He
     turned his back abruptly on the picture, and went to the window.
     Some of his doves had flown up from their perches round the
     dovecot, and were stretching their wings in the wind. In the
     clear sharp sunlight their whiteness almost flashed. They flew
     far, making a flung-up hieroglyphic against the sky. Annette fed
     the doves; it was pretty to see her. They took it out of her
     hand; they knew she was matter-of-fact. A choking sensation came
     into his throat. She would not—could not die! She was too—too
     sensible; and she was strong, really strong, like her mother, in
     spite of her fair prettiness.

     It was already growing dark when at last he opened the door, and
     stood listening. Not a sound! A milky twilight crept about the
     stairway and the landings below. He had turned back when a sound
     caught his ear. Peering down, he saw a black shape moving, and
     his heart stood still. What was it? Death? The shape of Death
     coming from her door? No! only a maid without cap or apron. She
     came to the foot of his flight of stairs and said breathlessly:

     “The doctor wants to see you, sir.”

     He ran down. She stood flat against the wall to let him pass, and
     said:

     “Oh, Sir! it’s over.”

     “Over?” said Soames, with a sort of menace; “what d’you mean?”

     “It’s born, sir.”

     He dashed up the four steps in front of him, and came suddenly on
     the doctor in the dim passage. The man was wiping his brow.

     “Well?” he said; “quick!”

     “Both living; it’s all right, I think.”

     Soames stood quite still, covering his eyes.

     “I congratulate you,” he heard the doctor say; “it was touch and
     go.”

     Soames let fall the hand which was covering his face.

     “Thanks,” he said; “thanks very much. What is it?”

     “Daughter—luckily; a son would have killed her—the head.”

     A daughter!

     “The utmost care of both,” he hears the doctor say, “and we shall
     do. When does the mother come?”

     “To-night, between nine and ten, I hope.”

     “I’ll stay till then. Do you want to see them?”

     “Not now,” said Soames; “before you go. I’ll have dinner sent up
     to you.” And he went downstairs.

     Relief unspeakable, and yet—a daughter! It seemed to him unfair.
     To have taken that risk—to have been through this agony—and what
     agony!—for a daughter! He stood before the blazing fire of wood
     logs in the hall, touching it with his toe and trying to readjust
     himself. “My father!” he thought. A bitter disappointment, no
     disguising it! One never got all one wanted in this life! And
     there was no other—at least, if there was, it was no use!

     While he was standing there, a telegram was brought him.

     “Come up at once, your father sinking fast.—MOTHER.”

     He read it with a choking sensation. One would have thought he
     couldn’t feel anything after these last hours, but he felt this.
     Half-past seven, a train from Reading at nine, and madame’s
     train, if she had caught it, came in at eight-forty—he would meet
     that, and go on. He ordered the carriage, ate some dinner
     mechanically, and went upstairs. The doctor came out to him.

     “They’re sleeping.”

     “I won’t go in,” said Soames with relief. “My father’s dying; I
     have to—go up. Is it all right?”

     The doctor’s face expressed a kind of doubting admiration. “If
     they were all as unemotional” he might have been saying.

     “Yes, I think you may go with an easy mind. You’ll be down soon?”

     “To-morrow,” said Soames. “Here’s the address.”

     The doctor seemed to hover on the verge of sympathy.

     “Good-night!” said Soames abruptly, and turned away. He put on
     his fur coat. Death! It was a chilly business. He smoked a
     cigarette in the carriage—one of his rare cigarettes. The night
     was windy and flew on black wings; the carriage lights had to
     search out the way. His father! That old, old man! A comfortless
     night—to die!

     The London train came in just as he reached the station, and
     Madame Lamotte, substantial, dark-clothed, very yellow in the
     lamplight, came towards the exit with a dressing-bag.

     “This all you have?” asked Soames.

     “But yes; I had not the time. How is my little one?”

     “Doing well—both. A girl!”

     “A girl! What joy! I had a frightful crossing!”

     Her black bulk, solid, unreduced by the frightful crossing,
     climbed into the brougham.

     “And you, _mon cher?_”

     “My father’s dying,” said Soames between his teeth. “I’m going
     up. Give my love to Annette.”

     “_Tiens!_” murmured Madame Lamotte; “_quel malheur!_”

     Soames took his hat off, and moved towards his train. “The
     French!” he thought.




     CHAPTER XIII JAMES IS TOLD


     A simple cold, caught in the room with double windows, where the
     air and the people who saw him were filtered, as it were, the
     room he had not left since the middle of September—and James was
     in deep waters. A little cold, passing his little strength and
     flying quickly to his lungs. “He mustn’t catch cold,” the doctor
     had declared, and he had gone and caught it. When he first felt
     it in his throat he had said to his nurse—for he had one
     now—“There, I knew how it would be, airing the room like that!”
     For a whole day he was highly nervous about himself and went in
     advance of all precautions and remedies; drawing every breath
     with extreme care and having his temperature taken every hour.
     Emily was not alarmed.

     But next morning when she went in the nurse whispered: “He won’t
     have his temperature taken.”

     Emily crossed to the side of the bed where he was lying, and said
     softly, “How do you feel, James?” holding the thermometer to his
     lips. James looked up at her.

     “What’s the good of that?” he murmured huskily; “I don’t want to
     know.”

     Then she _was_ alarmed. He breathed with difficulty, he looked
     terribly frail, white, with faint red discolorations. She had
     “had trouble” with him, Goodness knew; but he was James, had been
     James for nearly fifty years; she couldn’t remember or imagine
     life without James—James, behind all his fussiness, his
     pessimism, his crusty shell, deeply affectionate, really kind and
     generous to them all!

     All that day and the next he hardly uttered a word, but there was
     in his eyes a noticing of everything done for him, a look on his
     face which told her he was fighting; and she did not lose hope.
     His very stillness, the way he conserved every little scrap of
     energy, showed the tenacity with which he was fighting. It
     touched her deeply; and though her face was composed and
     comfortable in the sick-room, tears ran down her cheeks when she
     was out of it.

     About tea-time on the third day—she had just changed her dress,
     keeping her appearance so as not to alarm him, because he noticed
     everything—she saw a difference. “It’s no use; I’m tired,” was
     written plainly across that white face, and when she went up to
     him, he muttered: “Send for Soames.”

     “Yes, James,” she said comfortably; “all right—at once.” And she
     kissed his forehead. A tear dropped there, and as she wiped it
     off she saw that his eyes looked grateful. Much upset, and
     without hope now, she sent Soames the telegram.

     When he entered out of the black windy night, the big house was
     still as a grave. Warmson’s broad face looked almost narrow; he
     took the fur coat with a sort of added care, saying:

     “Will you have a glass of wine, sir?”

     Soames shook his head, and his eyebrows made enquiry.

     Warmson’s lips twitched. “He’s asking for you, sir;” and suddenly
     he blew his nose. “It’s a long time, sir,” he said, “that I’ve
     been with Mr. Forsyte—a long time.”

     Soames left him folding the coat, and began to mount the stairs.
     This house, where he had been born and sheltered, had never
     seemed to him so warm, and rich, and cosy, as during this last
     pilgrimage to his father’s room. It was not his taste; but in its
     own substantial, lincrusta way it was the acme of comfort and
     security. And the night was so dark and windy; the grave so cold
     and lonely!

     He paused outside the door. No sound came from within. He turned
     the handle softly and was in the room before he was perceived.
     The light was shaded. His mother and Winifred were sitting on the
     far side of the bed; the nurse was moving away from the near side
     where was an empty chair. “For me!” thought Soames. As he moved
     from the door his mother and sister rose, but he signed with his
     hand and they sat down again. He went up to the chair and stood
     looking at his father. James’ breathing was as if strangled; his
     eyes were closed. And in Soames, looking on his father so worn
     and white and wasted, listening to his strangled breathing, there
     rose a passionate vehemence of anger against Nature, cruel,
     inexorable Nature, kneeling on the chest of that wisp of a body,
     slowly pressing out the breath, pressing out the life of the
     being who was dearest to him in the world. His father, of all
     men, had lived a careful life, moderate, abstemious, and this was
     his reward—to have life slowly, painfully squeezed out of him!
     And, without knowing that he spoke, he said: “It’s cruel!”

     He saw his mother cover her eyes and Winifred bow her face
     towards the bed. Women! They put up with things so much better
     than men. He took a step nearer to his father. For three days
     James had not been shaved, and his lips and chin were covered
     with hair, hardly more snowy than his forehead. It softened his
     face, gave it a queer look already not of this world. His eyes
     opened. Soames went quite close and bent over. The lips moved.

     “Here I am, Father:”

     “Um—what—what news? They never tell....” the voice died, and a
     flood of emotion made Soames’ face work so that he could not
     speak. Tell him?—yes. But what? He made a great effort, got his
     lips together, and said:

     “Good news, dear, good—Annette, a son.”

     “Ah!” It was the queerest sound, ugly, relieved, pitiful,
     triumphant—like the noise a baby makes getting what it wants. The
     eyes closed, and that strangled sound of breathing began again.
     Soames recoiled to the chair and stonily sat down. The lie he had
     told, based, as it were, on some deep, temperamental instinct
     that after death James would not know the truth, had taken away
     all power of feeling for the moment. His arm brushed against
     something. It was his father’s naked foot. In the struggle to
     breathe he had pushed it out from under the clothes. Soames took
     it in his hand, a cold foot, light and thin, white, very cold.
     What use to put it back, to wrap up that which must be colder
     soon! He warmed it mechanically with his hand, listening to his
     father’s laboured breathing; while the power of feeling rose
     again within him. A little sob, quickly smothered, came from
     Winifred, but his mother sat unmoving with her eyes fixed on
     James. Soames signed to the nurse.

     “Where’s the doctor?” he whispered.

     “He’s been sent for.”

     “Can’t you do anything to ease his breathing?”

     “Only an injection; and he can’t stand it. The doctor said, while
     he was fighting....”

     “He’s not fighting,” whispered Soames, “he’s being slowly
     smothered. It’s awful.”

     James stirred uneasily, as if he knew what they were saying.
     Soames rose and bent over him. James feebly moved his two hands,
     and Soames took them.

     “He wants to be pulled up,” whispered the nurse.

     Soames pulled. He thought he pulled gently, but a look almost of
     anger passed over James’ face. The nurse plumped the pillows.
     Soames laid the hands down, and bending over kissed his father’s
     forehead. As he was raising himself again, James’ eyes bent on
     him a look which seemed to come from the very depths of what was
     left within. “I’m done, my boy,” it seemed to say, “take care of
     them, take care of yourself; take care—I leave it all to you.”

     “Yes, Yes,” Soames whispered, “yes, yes.”

     Behind him the nurse did he knew not what, for his father made a
     tiny movement of repulsion as if resenting that interference; and
     almost at once his breathing eased away, became quiet; he lay
     very still. The strained expression on his face passed, a curious
     white tranquillity took its place. His eyelids quivered, rested;
     the whole face rested; at ease. Only by the faint puffing of his
     lips could they tell that he was breathing. Soames sank back on
     his chair, and fell to cherishing the foot again. He heard the
     nurse quietly crying over there by the fire; curious that she, a
     stranger, should be the only one of them who cried! He heard the
     quiet lick and flutter of the fire flames. One more old Forsyte
     going to his long rest—wonderful, they were!—wonderful how he had
     held on! His mother and Winifred were leaning forward, hanging on
     the sight of James’ lips. But Soames bent sideways over the feet,
     warming them both; they gave him comfort, colder and colder
     though they grew. Suddenly he started up; a sound, a dreadful
     sound such as he had never heard, was coming from his father’s
     lips, as if an outraged heart had broken with a long moan. What a
     strong heart, to have uttered that farewell! It ceased. Soames
     looked into the face. No motion; no breath! Dead! He kissed the
     brow, turned round and went out of the room. He ran upstairs to
     the bedroom, his old bedroom, still kept for him; flung himself
     face down on the bed, and broke into sobs which he stilled with
     the pillow....

     A little later he went downstairs and passed into the room. James
     lay alone, wonderfully calm, free from shadow and anxiety, with
     the gravity on his ravaged face which underlies great age, the
     worn fine gravity of old coins.

     Soames looked steadily at that face, at the fire, at all the room
     with windows thrown open to the London night.

     “Good-bye!” he whispered, and went out.




     CHAPTER XIV HIS


     He had much to see to, that night and all next day. A telegram at
     breakfast reassured him about Annette, and he only caught the
     last train back to Reading, with Emily’s kiss on his forehead and
     in his ears her words:

     “I don’t know what I should have done without you, my dear boy.”

     He reached his house at midnight. The weather had changed, was
     mild again, as though, having finished its work and sent a
     Forsyte to his last account, it could relax. A second telegram,
     received at dinner-time, had confirmed the good news of Annette,
     and, instead of going in, Soames passed down through the garden
     in the moonlight to his houseboat. He could sleep there quite
     well. Bitterly tired, he lay down on the sofa in his fur coat and
     fell asleep. He woke soon after dawn and went on deck. He stood
     against the rail, looking west where the river swept round in a
     wide curve under the woods. In Soames, appreciation of natural
     beauty was curiously like that of his farmer ancestors, a sense
     of grievance if it wasn’t there, sharpened, no doubt, and
     civilised, by his researches among landscape painting. But dawn
     has power to fertilise the most matter-of-fact vision, and he was
     stirred. It was another world from the river he knew, under that
     remote cool light; a world into which man had not entered, an
     unreal world, like some strange shore sighted by discovery. Its
     colour was not the colour of convention, was hardly colour at
     all; its shapes were brooding yet distinct; its silence stunning;
     it had no scent. Why it should move him he could not tell, unless
     it were that he felt so alone in it, bare of all relationship and
     all possessions. Into such a world his father might be voyaging,
     for all resemblance it had to the world he had left. And Soames
     took refuge from it in wondering what painter could have done it
     justice. The white-grey water was like—like the belly of a fish!
     Was it possible that this world on which he looked was all
     private property, except the water—and even that was tapped! No
     tree, no shrub, not a blade of grass, not a bird or beast, not
     even a fish that was not owned. And once on a time all this was
     jungle and marsh and water, and weird creatures roamed and
     sported without human cognizance to give them names; rotting
     luxuriance had rioted where those tall, carefully planted woods
     came down to the water, and marsh-misted reeds on that far side
     had covered all the pasture. Well! they had got it under,
     kennelled it all up, labelled it, and stowed it in lawyers’
     offices. And a good thing too! But once in a way, as now, the
     ghost of the past came out to haunt and brood and whisper to any
     human who chanced to be awake: “Out of my unowned loneliness you
     all came, into it some day you will all return.”

     And Soames, who felt the chill and the eeriness of that world—new
     to him and so very old: the world, unowned, visiting the scene of
     its past—went down and made himself tea on a spirit-lamp. When he
     had drunk it, he took out writing materials and wrote two
     paragraphs:

     “On the 20th instant at his residence in Park Lane, James
     Forsyte, in his ninety-first year. Funeral at noon on the 24th at
     Highgate. No flowers by request.”

     “On the 20th instant at The Shelter; Mapledurham, Annette, wife
     of Soames Forsyte, of a daughter.” And underneath on the
     blottingpaper he traced the word “son.”

     It was eight o’clock in an ordinary autumn world when he went
     across to the house. Bushes across the river stood round and
     bright-coloured out of a milky haze; the wood-smoke went up blue
     and straight; and his doves cooed, preening their feathers in the
     sunlight.

     He stole up to his dressing-room, bathed, shaved, put on fresh
     linen and dark clothes.

     Madame Lamotte was beginning her breakfast when he went down.

     She looked at his clothes, said, “Don’t tell me!” and pressed his
     hand. “Annette is prettee well. But the doctor say she can never
     have no more children. You knew that?” Soames nodded. “It’s a
     pity. _Mais la petite est adorable. Du café?_”

     Soames got away from her as soon as he could. She offended
     him—solid, matter-of-fact, quick, clear—_French_. He could not
     bear her vowels, her “r’s”. he resented the way she had looked at
     him, as if it were his fault that Annette could never bear him a
     son! His fault! He even resented her cheap adoration of the
     daughter he had not yet seen.

     Curious how he jibbed away from sight of his wife and child!

     One would have thought he must have rushed up at the first
     moment. On the contrary, he had a sort of physical shrinking from
     it—fastidious possessor that he was. He was afraid of what
     Annette was thinking of him, author of her agonies, afraid of the
     look of the baby, afraid of showing his disappointment with the
     present and—the future.

     He spent an hour walking up and down the drawing-room before he
     could screw his courage up to mount the stairs and knock on the
     door of their room.

     Madame Lamotte opened it.

     “Ah! At last you come! _Elle vous attend!_” She passed him, and
     Soames went in with his noiseless step, his jaw firmly set, his
     eyes furtive.

     Annette was very pale and very pretty lying there. The baby was
     hidden away somewhere; he could not see it. He went up to the
     bed, and with sudden emotion bent and kissed her forehead.

     “Here you are then, Soames,” she said. “I am not so bad now. But
     I suffered terribly, terribly. I am glad I cannot have any more.
     Oh! how I suffered!”

     Soames stood silent, stroking her hand; words of endearment, of
     sympathy, absolutely would not come; the thought passed through
     him: “An English girl wouldn’t have said that!” At this moment he
     knew with certainty that he would never be near to her in spirit
     and in truth, nor she to him. He had collected her—that was all!
     And Jolyon’s words came rushing into his mind: “I should imagine
     you will be glad to have your neck out of chancery.” Well, he had
     got it out! Had he got it in again?

     “We must feed you up,” he said, “you’ll soon be strong.”

     “Don’t you want to see baby, Soames? She is asleep.”

     “Of course,” said Soames, “very much.”

     He passed round the foot of the bed to the other side and stood
     staring. For the first moment what he saw was much what he had
     expected to see—a baby. But as he stared and the baby breathed
     and made little sleeping movements with its tiny features, it
     seemed to assume an individual shape, grew to be like a picture,
     a thing he would know again; not repulsive, strangely bud-like
     and touching. It had dark hair. He touched it with his finger, he
     wanted to see its eyes. They opened, they were dark—whether blue
     or brown he could not tell. The eyes winked, stared, they had a
     sort of sleepy depth in them. And suddenly his heart felt queer,
     warm, as if elated.

     “_Ma petite fleur!_” Annette said softly.

     “Fleur,” repeated Soames: “Fleur! we’ll call her that.”

     The sense of triumph and renewed possession swelled within him.

     By God! this—this thing was his! By God! this—this thing was
     _his!_




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