CHAPTER XIV SOAMES SITS ON THE STAIRS

Soames went up-stairs that night with the feeling that he had

gone too far. He was prepared to offer excuses for his words.

He turned out the gas still burning in the passage outside their

room. Pausing, with his hand on the knob of the door, he tried to

shape his apology, for he had no intention of letting her see

that he was nervous.

But the door did not open, nor when he pulled it and turned the

handle firmly. She must have locked it for some reason, and

forgotten.

Entering his dressing-room, where the gas was also lighted and

burning low, he went quickly to the other door. That too was

locked. Then he noticed that the camp bed which he occasionally

used was prepared, and his sleeping-suit laid out upon it. He put

his hand up to his forehead, and brought it away wet. It dawned

on him that he was barred out.

He went back to the door, and rattling the handle stealthily,

called: “Unlock the door, do you hear? Unlock the door!”

There was a faint rustling, but no answer.

“Do you hear? Let me in at once—I insist on being let in!”

He could catch the sound of her breathing close to the door, like

the breathing of a creature threatened by danger.

There was something terrifying in this inexorable silence, in the

impossibility of getting at her. He went back to the other door,

and putting his whole weight against it, tried to burst it open.

The door was a new one—he had had them renewed himself, in

readiness for their coming in after the honeymoon. In a rage he

lifted his foot to kick in the panel; the thought of the servants

restrained him, and he felt suddenly that he was beaten.

Flinging himself down in the dressing-room, he took up a book.

But instead of the print he seemed to see his wife—with her

yellow hair flowing over her bare shoulders, and her great dark

eyes—standing like an animal at bay. And the whole meaning of her

act of revolt came to him. She meant it to be for good.

He could not sit still, and went to the door again. He could

still hear her, and he called: “Irene! Irene!”

He did not mean to make his voice pathetic.

In ominous answer, the faint sounds ceased. He stood with

clenched hands, thinking.

Presently he stole round on tiptoe, and running suddenly at the

other door, made a supreme effort to break it open. It creaked,

but did not yield. He sat down on the stairs and buried his face

in his hands.

For a long time he sat there in the dark, the moon through the

skylight above laying a pale smear which lengthened slowly

towards him down the stairway. He tried to be philosophical.

Since she had locked her doors she had no further claim as a

wife, and he would console himself with other women.

It was but a spectral journey he made among such delights—he had

no appetite for these exploits. He had never had much, and he had

lost the habit. He felt that he could never recover it. His

hunger could only be appeased by his wife, inexorable and

frightened, behind these shut doors. No other woman could help

him.

This conviction came to him with terrible force out there in the

dark.

His philosophy left him; and surly anger took its place. Her

conduct was immoral, inexcusable, worthy of any punishment within

his power. He desired no one but her, and she refused him!

She must really hate him, then! He had never believed it yet. He

did not believe it now. It seemed to him incredible. He felt as

though he had lost for ever his power of judgment. If she, so

soft and yielding as he had always judged her, could take this

decided step—what could not happen?

Then he asked himself again if she were carrying on an intrigue

with Bosinney. He did not believe that she was; he could not

afford to believe such a reason for her conduct—the thought was

not to be faced.

It would be unbearable to contemplate the necessity of making his

marital relations public property. Short of the most convincing

proofs he must still refuse to believe, for he did not wish to

punish himself. And all the time at heart—he _did_ believe.

The moonlight cast a greyish tinge over his figure, hunched

against the staircase wall.

Bosinney was in love with her! He hated the fellow, and would not

spare him now. He could and would refuse to pay a penny piece

over twelve thousand and fifty pounds—the extreme limit fixed in

the correspondence; or rather he would pay, he would pay and sue

him for damages. He would go to Jobling and Boulter and put the

matter in their hands. He would ruin the impecunious beggar! And

suddenly—though what connection between the thoughts?—he

reflected that Irene had no money either. They were both beggars.

This gave him a strange satisfaction.

The silence was broken by a faint creaking through the wall. She

was going to bed at last. Ah! Joy and pleasant dreams! If she

threw the door open wide he would not go in now!

But his lips, that were twisted in a bitter smile, twitched; he

covered his eyes with his hands....

It was late the following afternoon when Soames stood in the

dining-room window gazing gloomily into the Square.

The sunlight still showered on the plane-trees, and in the breeze

their gay broad leaves shone and swung in rhyme to a barrel organ

at the corner. It was playing a waltz, an old waltz that was out

of fashion, with a fateful rhythm in the notes; and it went on

and on, though nothing indeed but leaves danced to the tune.

The woman did not look too gay, for she was tired; and from the

tall houses no one threw her down coppers. She moved the organ

on, and three doors off began again.

It was the waltz they had played at Roger’s when Irene had danced

with Bosinney; and the perfume of the gardenias she had worn came

back to Soames, drifted by the malicious music, as it had been

drifted to him then, when she passed, her hair glistening, her

eyes so soft, drawing Bosinney on and on down an endless

ballroom.

The organ woman plied her handle slowly; she had been grinding

her tune all day—grinding it in Sloane Street hard by, grinding

it perhaps to Bosinney himself.

Soames turned, took a cigarette from the carven box, and walked

back to the window. The tune had mesmerized him, and there came

into his view Irene, her sunshade furled, hastening homewards

down the Square, in a soft, rose-coloured blouse with drooping

sleeves, that he did not know. She stopped before the organ, took

out her purse, and gave the woman money.

Soames shrank back and stood where he could see into the hall.

She came in with her latch-key, put down her sunshade, and stood

looking at herself in the glass. Her cheeks were flushed as if

the sun had burned them; her lips were parted in a smile. She

stretched her arms out as though to embrace herself, with a laugh

that for all the world was like a sob.

Soames stepped forward.

“Very-pretty!” he said.

But as though shot she spun round, and would have passed him up

the stairs. He barred the way.

“Why such a hurry?” he said, and his eyes fastened on a curl of

hair fallen loose across her ear....

He hardly recognised her. She seemed on fire, so deep and rich

the colour of her cheeks, her eyes, her lips, and of the unusual

blouse she wore.

She put up her hand and smoothed back the curl. She was breathing

fast and deep, as though she had been running, and with every

breath perfume seemed to come from her hair, and from her body,

like perfume from an opening flower.

“I don’t like that blouse,” he said slowly, “it’s a soft,

shapeless thing!”

He lifted his finger towards her breast, but she dashed his hand

aside.

“Don’t touch me!” she cried.

He caught her wrist; she wrenched it away.

“And where may you have been?” he asked.

“In heaven—out of this house!” With those words she fled

upstairs.

Outside—in thanksgiving—at the very door, the organ-grinder was

playing the waltz.

And Soames stood motionless. What prevented him from following

her?

Was it that, with the eyes of faith, he saw Bosinney looking down

from that high window in Sloane Street, straining his eyes for

yet another glimpse of Irene’s vanished figure, cooling his

flushed face, dreaming of the moment when she flung herself on

his breast—the scent of her still in the air around, and the

sound of her laugh that was like a sob?

PART III

CHAPTER I MRS. MACANDER’S EVIDENCE

Many people, no doubt, including the editor of the “Ultra

Vivisectionist,” then in the bloom of its first youth, would say

that Soames was less than a man not to have removed the locks

from his wife’s doors, and, after beating her soundly, resumed

wedded happiness.

Brutality is not so deplorably diluted by humaneness as it used

to be, yet a sentimental segment of the population may still be

relieved to learn that he did none of these things. For active

brutality is not popular with Forsytes; they are too circumspect,

and, on the whole, too softhearted. And in Soames there was some

common pride, not sufficient to make him do a really generous

action, but enough to prevent his indulging in an extremely mean

one, except, perhaps, in very hot blood. Above all this a true

Forsyte refused to feel himself ridiculous. Short of actually

beating his wife, he perceived nothing to be done; he therefore

accepted the situation without another word.

Throughout the summer and autumn he continued to go to the

office, to sort his pictures, and ask his friends to dinner.

He did not leave town; Irene refused to go away. The house at

Robin Hill, finished though it was, remained empty and ownerless.

Soames had brought a suit against the Buccaneer, in which he

claimed from him the sum of three hundred and fifty pounds.

A firm of solicitors, Messrs. Freak and Able, had put in a

defence on Bosinney’s behalf. Admitting the facts, they raised a

point on the correspondence which, divested of legal phraseology,

amounted to this: To speak of “a _free_ hand in the terms of this

correspondence” is an Irish bull.

By a chance, fortuitous but not improbable in the close borough

of legal circles, a good deal of information came to Soames’s ear

anent this line of policy, the working partner in his firm,

Bustard, happening to sit next at dinner at Walmisley’s, the

Taxing Master, to young Chankery, of the Common Law Bar.

The necessity for talking what is known as “shop,” which comes on

all lawyers with the removal of the ladies, caused Chankery, a

young and promising advocate, to propound an impersonal conundrum

to his neighbour, whose name he did not know, for, seated as he

permanently was in the background, Bustard had practically no

name.

He had, said Chankery, a case coming on with a “very nice point.”

He then explained, preserving every professional discretion, the

riddle in Soames’s case. Everyone, he said, to whom he had

spoken, thought it a nice point. The issue was small

unfortunately, “though d——d serious for his client he

believed”—Walmisley’s champagne was bad but plentiful. A Judge

would make short work of it, he was afraid. He intended to make a

big effort—the point was a nice one. What did his neighbour say?

Bustard, a model of secrecy, said nothing. He related the

incident to Soames however with some malice, for this quiet man

was capable of human feeling, ending with his own opinion that

the point _was_ “a very nice one.”

In accordance with his resolve, our Forsyte had put his interests

into the hands of Jobling and Boulter. From the moment of doing

so he regretted that he had not acted for himself. On receiving a

copy of Bosinney’s defence he went over to their offices.

Boulter, who had the matter in hand, Jobling having died some

years before, told him that in his opinion it was rather a nice

point; he would like counsel’s opinion on it.

Soames told him to go to a good man, and they went to Waterbuck,

Q.C., marking him ten and one, who kept the papers six weeks and

then wrote as follows:

“In my opinion the true interpretation of this correspondence

depends very much on the intention of the parties, and will turn

upon the evidence given at the trial. I am of opinion that an

attempt should be made to secure from the architect an admission

that he understood he was not to spend at the outside more than

twelve thousand and fifty pounds. With regard to the expression,

‘a free hand in the terms of this correspondence,’ to which my

attention is directed, the point is a nice one; but I am of

opinion that upon the whole the ruling in ‘Boileau _v_. The

Blasted Cement Co., Ltd.,’ will apply.”

Upon this opinion they acted, administering interrogatories, but

to their annoyance Messrs. Freak and Able answered these in so

masterly a fashion that nothing whatever was admitted and that

without prejudice.

It was on October 1 that Soames read Waterbuck’s opinion, in the

dining-room before dinner.

It made him nervous; not so much because of the case of “Boileau

_v_. The Blasted Cement Co., Ltd.,” as that the point had lately

begun to seem to him, too, a nice one; there was about it just

that pleasant flavour of subtlety so attractive to the best legal

appetites. To have his own impression confirmed by Waterbuck,

Q.C., would have disturbed any man.

He sat thinking it over, and staring at the empty grate, for

though autumn had come, the weather kept as gloriously fine that

jubilee year as if it were still high August. It was not pleasant

to be disturbed; he desired too passionately to set his foot on

Bosinney’s neck.

Though he had not seen the architect since the last afternoon at

Robin Hill, he was never free from the sense of his

presence—never free from the memory of his worn face with its

high cheek bones and enthusiastic eyes. It would not be too much

to say that he had never got rid of the feeling of that night

when he heard the peacock’s cry at dawn—the feeling that Bosinney

haunted the house. And every man’s shape that he saw in the dark

evenings walking past, seemed that of him whom George had so

appropriately named the Buccaneer.

Irene still met him, he was certain; where, or how, he neither

knew, nor asked; deterred by a vague and secret dread of too much

knowledge. It all seemed subterranean nowadays.

Sometimes when he questioned his wife as to where she had been,

which he still made a point of doing, as every Forsyte should,

she looked very strange. Her self-possession was wonderful, but

there were moments when, behind the mask of her face, inscrutable

as it had always been to him, lurked an expression he had never

been used to see there.

She had taken to lunching out too; when he asked Bilson if her

mistress had been in to lunch, as often as not she would answer:

“No, sir.”

He strongly disapproved of her gadding about by herself, and told

her so. But she took no notice. There was something that angered,

amazed, yet almost amused him about the calm way in which she

disregarded his wishes. It was really as if she were hugging to

herself the thought of a triumph over him.

He rose from the perusal of Waterbuck, Q.C.’s opinion, and, going

upstairs, entered her room, for she did not lock her doors till

bed-time—she had the decency, he found, to save the feelings of

the servants. She was brushing her hair, and turned to him with

strange fierceness.

“What do you want?” she said. “Please leave my room!”

He answered: “I want to know how long this state of things

between us is to last? I have put up with it long enough.”

“Will you please leave my room?”

“Will you treat me as your husband?”

“No.”

“Then, I shall take steps to make you.”

“Do!”

He stared, amazed at the calmness of her answer. Her lips were

compressed in a thin line; her hair lay in fluffy masses on her

bare shoulders, in all its strange golden contrast to her dark

eyes—those eyes alive with the emotions of fear, hate, contempt,

and odd, haunting triumph.

“Now, please, will you leave my room?” He turned round, and went

sulkily out.

He knew very well that he had no intention of taking steps, and

he saw that she knew too—knew that he was afraid to.

It was a habit with him to tell her the doings of his day: how

such and such clients had called; how he had arranged a mortgage

for Parkes; how that long-standing suit of Fryer _v_. Forsyte was

getting on, which, arising in the preternaturally careful

disposition of his property by his great uncle Nicholas, who had

tied it up so that no one could get at it at all, seemed likely

to remain a source of income for several solicitors till the Day

of Judgment.

And how he had called in at Jobson’s, and seen a Boucher sold,

which he had just missed buying of Talleyrand and Sons in Pall

Mall.

He had an admiration for Boucher, Watteau, and all that school.

It was a habit with him to tell her all these matters, and he

continued to do it even now, talking for long spells at dinner,

as though by the volubility of words he could conceal from

himself the ache in his heart.

Often, if they were alone, he made an attempt to kiss her when

she said good-night. He may have had some vague notion that some

night she would let him; or perhaps only the feeling that a

husband ought to kiss his wife. Even if she hated him, he at all

events ought not to put himself in the wrong by neglecting this

ancient rite.

And why did she hate him? Even now he could not altogether

believe it. It was strange to be hated!—the emotion was too

extreme; yet he hated Bosinney, that Buccaneer, that prowling

vagabond, that night-wanderer. For in his thoughts Soames always

saw him lying in wait—wandering. Ah, but he must be in very low

water! Young Burkitt, the architect, had seen him coming out of a

third-rate restaurant, looking terribly down in the mouth!

During all the hours he lay awake, thinking over the situation,

which seemed to have no end—unless she should suddenly come to

her senses—never once did the thought of separating from his wife

seriously enter his head....

And the Forsytes! What part did they play in this stage of

Soames’s subterranean tragedy?

Truth to say, little or none, for they were at the sea.

From hotels, hydropathics, or lodging-houses, they were bathing

daily; laying in a stock of ozone to last them through the

winter.

Each section, in the vineyard of its own choosing, grew and

culled and pressed and bottled the grapes of a pet sea-air.

The end of September began to witness their several returns.

In rude health and small omnibuses, with considerable colour in

their cheeks, they arrived daily from the various termini. The

following morning saw them back at their vocations.

On the next Sunday Timothy’s was thronged from lunch till dinner.

Amongst other gossip, too numerous and interesting to relate,

Mrs. Septimus Small mentioned that Soames and Irene had not been

away.

It remained for a comparative outsider to supply the next

evidence of interest.

It chanced that one afternoon late in September, Mrs. MacAnder,

Winifred Dartie’s greatest friend, taking a constitutional, with

young Augustus Flippard, on her bicycle in Richmond Park, passed

Irene and Bosinney walking from the bracken towards the Sheen

Gate.

Perhaps the poor little woman was thirsty, for she had ridden

long on a hard, dry road, and, as all London knows, to ride a

bicycle and talk to young Flippard will try the toughest

constitution; or perhaps the sight of the cool bracken grove,

whence “those two” were coming down, excited her envy. The cool

bracken grove on the top of the hill, with the oak boughs for

roof, where the pigeons were raising an endless wedding hymn, and

the autumn, humming, whispered to the ears of lovers in the fern,

while the deer stole by. The bracken grove of irretrievable

delights, of golden minutes in the long marriage of heaven and

earth! The bracken grove, sacred to stags, to strange tree-stump

fauns leaping around the silver whiteness of a birch-tree nymph

at summer dusk.

This lady knew all the Forsytes, and having been at Jun’s “at

home,” was not at a loss to see with whom she had to deal. Her

own marriage, poor thing, had not been successful, but having had

the good sense and ability to force her husband into pronounced

error, she herself had passed through the necessary divorce

proceedings without incurring censure.

She was therefore a judge of all that sort of thing, and lived in

one of those large buildings, where in small sets of apartments,

are gathered incredible quantities of Forsytes, whose chief

recreation out of business hours is the discussion of each

other’s affairs.

Poor little woman, perhaps she was thirsty, certainly she was

bored, for Flippard was a wit. To see “those two” in so unlikely

a spot was quite a merciful “pick-me-up.”

At the MacAnder, like all London, Time pauses.

This small but remarkable woman merits attention; her all-seeing

eye and shrewd tongue were inscrutably the means of furthering

the ends of Providence.

With an air of being in at the death, she had an almost

distressing power of taking care of herself. She had done more,

perhaps, in her way than any woman about town to destroy the

sense of chivalry which still clogs the wheel of civilization. So

smart she was, and spoken of endearingly as “the little

MacAnder!”

Dressing tightly and well, she belonged to a Woman’s Club, but

was by no means the neurotic and dismal type of member who was

always thinking of her rights. She took her rights unconsciously,

they came natural to her, and she knew exactly how to make the

most of them without exciting anything but admiration amongst

that great class to whom she was affiliated, not precisely

perhaps by manner, but by birth, breeding, and the true, the

secret gauge, a sense of property.

The daughter of a Bedfordshire solicitor, by the daughter of a

clergyman, she had never, through all the painful experience of

being married to a very mild painter with a cranky love of

Nature, who had deserted her for an actress, lost touch with the

requirements, beliefs, and inner feeling of Society; and, on

attaining her liberty, she placed herself without effort in the

very van of Forsyteism.

Always in good spirits, and “full of information,” she was

universally welcomed. She excited neither surprise nor

disapprobation when encountered on the Rhine or at Zermatt,

either alone, or travelling with a lady and two gentlemen; it was

felt that she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself;

and the hearts of all Forsytes warmed to that wonderful instinct,

which enabled her to enjoy everything without giving anything

away. It was generally felt that to such women as Mrs. MacAnder

should we look for the perpetuation and increase of our best type

of woman. She had never had any children.

If there was one thing more than another that she could not stand

it was one of those soft women with what men called “charm” about

them, and for Mrs. Soames she always had an especial dislike.

Obscurely, no doubt, she felt that if charm were once admitted as

the criterion, smartness and capability must go to the wall; and

she hated—with a hatred the deeper that at times this so-called

charm seemed to disturb all calculations—the subtle seductiveness

which she could not altogether overlook in Irene.

She said, however, that she could see nothing in the woman—there

was no “go” about her—she would never be able to stand up for

herself—anyone could take advantage of her, that was plain—she

could not see in fact what men found to admire!

She was not really ill-natured, but, in maintaining her position

after the trying circumstances of her married life, she had found

it so necessary to be “full of information,” that the idea of

holding her tongue about “those two” in the Park never occurred

to her.

And it so happened that she was dining that very evening at

Timothy’s, where she went sometimes to “cheer the old things up,”

as she was wont to put it. The same people were always asked to

meet her: Winifred Dartie and her husband; Francie, because she

belonged to the artistic circles, for Mrs. MacAnder was known to

contribute articles on dress to “The Ladies Kingdom Come”. and

for her to flirt with, provided they could be obtained, two of

the Hayman boys, who, though they never said anything, were

believed to be fast and thoroughly intimate with all that was

latest in smart Society.

At twenty-five minutes past seven she turned out the electric

light in her little hall, and wrapped in her opera cloak with the

chinchilla collar, came out into the corridor, pausing a moment

to make sure she had her latch-key. These little self-contained

flats were convenient; to be sure, she had no light and no air,

but she could shut it up whenever she liked and go away. There

was no bother with servants, and she never felt tied as she used

to when poor, dear Fred was always about, in his mooney way. She

retained no rancour against poor, dear Fred, he was such a fool;

but the thought of that actress drew from her, even now, a

little, bitter, derisive smile.

Firmly snapping the door to, she crossed the corridor, with its

gloomy, yellow-ochre walls, and its infinite vista of brown,

numbered doors. The lift was going down; and wrapped to the ears

in the high cloak, with every one of her auburn hairs in its

place, she waited motionless for it to stop at her floor. The

iron gates clanked open; she entered. There were already three

occupants, a man in a great white waistcoat, with a large, smooth

face like a baby’s, and two old ladies in black, with mittened

hands.

Mrs. MacAnder smiled at them; she knew everybody; and all these

three, who had been admirably silent before, began to talk at

once. This was Mrs. MacAnder’s successful secret. She provoked

conversation.

Throughout a descent of five stories the conversation continued,

the lift boy standing with his back turned, his cynical face

protruding through the bars.

At the bottom they separated, the man in the white waistcoat

sentimentally to the billiard room, the old ladies to dine and

say to each other: “A dear little woman!” “Such a rattle!” and

Mrs. MacAnder to her cab.

When Mrs. MacAnder dined at Timothy’s, the conversation (although

Timothy himself could never be induced to be present) took that

wider, man-of-the-world tone current among Forsytes at large, and

this, no doubt, was what put her at a premium there.

Mrs. Small and Aunt Hester found it an exhilarating change. “If

only,” they said, “Timothy would meet her!” It was felt that she

would do him good. She could tell you, for instance, the latest

story of Sir Charles Fiste’s son at Monte Carlo; who was the real

heroine of Tynemouth Eddy’s fashionable novel that everyone was

holding up their hands over, and what they were doing in Paris

about wearing bloomers. She was so sensible, too, knowing all

about that vexed question, whether to send young Nicholas’ eldest

into the navy as his mother wished, or make him an accountant as

his father thought would be safer. She strongly deprecated the

navy. If you were not exceptionally brilliant or exceptionally

well connected, they passed you over so disgracefully, and what

was it after all to look forward to, even if you became an

admiral—a pittance! An accountant had many more chances, but let

him be put with a good firm, where there was no risk at starting!

Sometimes she would give them a tip on the Stock Exchange; not

that Mrs. Small or Aunt Hester ever took it. They had indeed no

money to invest; but it seemed to bring them into such exciting

touch with the realities of life. It was an event. They would ask

Timothy, they said. But they never did, knowing in advance that

it would upset him. Surreptitiously, however, for weeks after

they would look in that paper, which they took with respect on

account of its really fashionable proclivities, to see whether

“Bright’s Rubies” or “The Woollen Mackintosh Company” were up or

down. Sometimes they could not find the name of the company at

all; and they would wait until James or Roger or even Swithin

came in, and ask them in voices trembling with curiosity how that

“Bolivia Lime and Speltrate” was doing—they could not find it in

the paper.

And Roger would answer: “What do you want to know for? Some

trash! You’ll go burning your fingers—investing your money in

lime, and things you know nothing about! Who told you?” and

ascertaining what they had been told, he would go away, and,

making inquiries in the City, would perhaps invest some of his

own money in the concern.

It was about the middle of dinner, just in fact as the saddle of

mutton had been brought in by Smither, that Mrs. MacAnder,

looking airily round, said: “Oh! and whom do you think I passed

to-day in Richmond Park? You’ll never guess—Mrs. Soames and—Mr.

Bosinney. They must have been down to look at the house!”

Winifred Dartie coughed, and no one said a word. It was the piece

of evidence they had all unconsciously been waiting for.

To do Mrs. MacAnder justice, she had been to Switzerland and the

Italian lakes with a party of three, and had not heard of

Soames’s rupture with his architect. She could not tell,

therefore, the profound impression her words would make.

Upright and a little flushed, she moved her small, shrewd eyes

from face to face, trying to gauge the effect of her words. On

either side of her a Hayman boy, his lean, taciturn, hungry face

turned towards his plate, ate his mutton steadily.

These two, Giles and Jesse, were so alike and so inseparable that

they were known as the Dromios. They never talked, and seemed

always completely occupied in doing nothing. It was popularly

supposed that they were cramming for an important examination.

They walked without hats for long hours in the Gardens attached

to their house, books in their hands, a fox-terrier at their

heels, never saying a word, and smoking all the time. Every

morning, about fifty yards apart, they trotted down Campden Hill

on two lean hacks, with legs as long as their own, and every

morning about an hour later, still fifty yards apart, they

cantered up again. Every evening, wherever they had dined, they

might be observed about half-past ten, leaning over the

balustrade of the Alhambra promenade.

They were never seen otherwise than together; in this way passing

their lives, apparently perfectly content.

Inspired by some dumb stirring within them of the feelings of

gentlemen, they turned at this painful moment to Mrs. MacAnder,

and said in precisely the same voice: “Have you seen the...?”

Such was her surprise at being thus addressed that she put down

her fork; and Smither, who was passing, promptly removed her

plate. Mrs. MacAnder, however, with presence of mind, said

instantly: “I must have a little more of that nice mutton.”

But afterwards in the drawing—room she sat down by Mrs. Small,

determined to get to the bottom of the matter. And she began:

“What a charming woman, Mrs. Soames; such a sympathetic

temperament! Soames is a really lucky man!”

Her anxiety for information had not made sufficient allowance for

that inner Forsyte skin which refuses to share its troubles with

outsiders.

Mrs. Septimus Small, drawing herself up with a creak and rustle

of her whole person, said, shivering in her dignity:

“My dear, it is a subject we do not talk about!”

CHAPTER II NIGHT IN THE PARK

Although with her infallible instinct Mrs. Small had said the

very thing to make her guest “more intriguee than ever,” it is

difficult to see how else she could truthfully have spoken.

It was not a subject which the Forsytes could talk about even

among themselves—to use the word Soames had invented to

characterize to himself the situation, it was “subterranean.”

Yet, within a week of Mrs. MacAnder’s encounter in Richmond Park,

to all of them—save Timothy, from whom it was carefully kept—to

James on his domestic beat from the Poultry to Park Lane, to

George the wild one, on his daily adventure from the bow window

at the Haversnake to the billiard room at the “Red Pottle,” was

it known that “those two” had gone to extremes.

George (it was he who invented many of those striking expressions

still current in fashionable circles) voiced the sentiment more

accurately than any one when he said to his brother Eustace that

“the Buccaneer” was “going it”. he expected Soames was about “fed

up.”

It was felt that he must be, and yet, what could be done? He

ought perhaps to take steps; but to take steps would be

deplorable.

Without an open scandal which they could not see their way to

recommending, it was difficult to see what steps could be taken.

In this impasse, the only thing was to say nothing to Soames, and

nothing to each other; in fact, to pass it over.

By displaying towards Irene a dignified coldness, some impression

might be made upon her; but she was seldom now to be seen, and

there seemed a slight difficulty in seeking her out on purpose to

show her coldness. Sometimes in the privacy of his bedroom James

would reveal to Emily the real suffering that his son’s

misfortune caused him.

“_I_ can’t tell,” he would say; “it worries me out of my life.

There’ll be a scandal, and that’ll do him no good. I shan’t say

anything to him. There might be nothing in it. What do you think?

She’s very artistic, they tell me. What? Oh, you’re a ‘regular

Juley’! Well, I don’t know; I expect the worst. This is what

comes of having no children. I knew how it would be from the

first. They never told me they didn’t mean to have any

children—nobody tells me anything!”

On his knees by the side of the bed, his eyes open and fixed with

worry, he would breathe into the counterpane. Clad in his

nightshirt, his neck poked forward, his back rounded, he

resembled some long white bird.

“Our Father—,” he repeated, turning over and over again the

thought of this possible scandal.

Like old Jolyon, he, too, at the bottom of his heart set the

blame of the tragedy down to family interference. What business

had that lot—he began to think of the Stanhope Gate branch,

including young Jolyon and his daughter, as “that lot”—to

introduce a person like this Bosinney into the family? (He had

heard George’s soubriquet, “The Buccaneer,” but he could make

nothing of that—the young man was an architect.)

He began to feel that his brother Jolyon, to whom he had always

looked up and on whose opinion he had relied, was not quite what

he had expected.

Not having his eldest brother’s force of character, he was more

sad than angry. His great comfort was to go to Winifred’s, and

take the little Darties in his carriage over to Kensington

Gardens, and there, by the Round Pond, he could often be seen

walking with his eyes fixed anxiously on little Publius Dartie’s

sailing-boat, which he had himself freighted with a penny, as

though convinced that it would never again come to shore; while

little Publius—who, James delighted to say, was not a bit like

his father skipping along under his lee, would try to get him to

bet another that it never would, having found that it always did.

And James would make the bet; he always paid—sometimes as many as

three or four pennies in the afternoon, for the game seemed never

to pall on little Publius—and always in paying he said: “Now,

that’s for your money-box. Why, you’re getting quite a rich man!”

The thought of his little grandson’s growing wealth was a real

pleasure to him. But little Publius knew a sweet-shop, and a

trick worth two of that.

And they would walk home across the Park, James’ figure, with

high shoulders and absorbed and worried face, exercising its

tall, lean protectorship, pathetically unregarded, over the

robust child-figures of Imogen and little Publius.

But those Gardens and that Park were not sacred to James.

Forsytes and tramps, children and lovers, rested and wandered day

after day, night after night, seeking one and all some freedom

from labour, from the reek and turmoil of the streets.

The leaves browned slowly, lingering with the sun and summer-like

warmth of the nights.

On Saturday, October 5, the sky that had been blue all day

deepened after sunset to the bloom of purple grapes. There was no

moon, and a clear dark, like some velvety garment, was wrapped

around the trees, whose thinned branches, resembling plumes,

stirred not in the still, warm air. All London had poured into

the Park, draining the cup of summer to its dregs.

Couple after couple, from every gate, they streamed along the

paths and over the burnt grass, and one after another, silently

out of the lighted spaces, stole into the shelter of the feathery

trees, where, blotted against some trunk, or under the shadow of

shrubs, they were lost to all but themselves in the heart of the

soft darkness.

To fresh-comers along the paths, these forerunners formed but

part of that passionate dusk, whence only a strange murmur, like

the confused beating of hearts, came forth. But when that murmur

reached each couple in the lamp-light their voices wavered, and

ceased; their arms enlaced, their eyes began seeking, searching,

probing the blackness. Suddenly, as though drawn by invisible

hands, they, too, stepped over the railing, and, silent as

shadows, were gone from the light.

The stillness, enclosed in the far, inexorable roar of the town,

was alive with the myriad passions, hopes, and loves of

multitudes of struggling human atoms; for in spite of the

disapproval of that great body of Forsytes, the Municipal

Council—to whom Love had long been considered, next to the Sewage

Question, the gravest danger to the community—a process was going

on that night in the Park, and in a hundred other parks, without

which the thousand factories, churches, shops, taxes, and drains,

of which they were custodians, were as arteries without blood, a

man without a heart.

The instincts of self-forgetfulness, of passion, and of love,

hiding under the trees, away from the trustees of their

remorseless enemy, the “sense of property,” were holding a

stealthy revel, and Soames, returning from Bayswater—for he had

been alone to dine at Timothy’s walking home along the water,

with his mind upon that coming lawsuit, had the blood driven from

his heart by a low laugh and the sound of kisses. He thought of

writing to _The Times_ the next morning, to draw the attention of

the Editor to the condition of our parks. He did not, however,

for he had a horror of seeing his name in print.

But starved as he was, the whispered sounds in the stillness, the

half-seen forms in the dark, acted on him like some morbid

stimulant. He left the path along the water and stole under the

trees, along the deep shadow of little plantations, where the

boughs of chestnut trees hung their great leaves low, and there

was blacker refuge, shaping his course in circles which had for

their object a stealthy inspection of chairs side by side,

against tree-trunks, of enlaced lovers, who stirred at his

approach.

Now he stood still on the rise overlooking the Serpentine, where,

in full lamp-light, black against the silver water, sat a couple

who never moved, the woman’s face buried on the man’s neck—a

single form, like a carved emblem of passion, silent and

unashamed.

And, stung by the sight, Soames hurried on deeper into the shadow

of the trees.

In this search, who knows what he thought and what he sought?

Bread for hunger—light in darkness? Who knows what he expected to

find—impersonal knowledge of the human heart—the end of his

private subterranean tragedy—for, again, who knew, but that each

dark couple, unnamed, unnameable, might not be he and she?

But it could not be such knowledge as this that he was

seeking—the wife of Soames Forsyte sitting in the Park like a

common wench! Such thoughts were inconceivable; and from tree to

tree, with his noiseless step, he passed.

Once he was sworn at; once the whisper, “If only it could always

be like this!” sent the blood flying again from his heart, and he

waited there, patient and dogged, for the two to move. But it was

only a poor thin slip of a shop-girl in her draggled blouse who

passed him, clinging to her lover’s arm.

A hundred other lovers too whispered that hope in the stillness

of the trees, a hundred other lovers clung to each other.

But shaking himself with sudden disgust, Soames returned to the

path, and left that seeking for he knew not what.

CHAPTER III MEETING AT THE BOTANICAL

Young Jolyon, whose circumstances were not those of a Forsyte,

found at times a difficulty in sparing the money needful for

those country jaunts and researches into Nature, without having

prosecuted which no watercolour artist ever puts brush to paper.

He was frequently, in fact, obliged to take his colour-box into

the Botanical Gardens, and there, on his stool, in the shade of a

monkey-puzzler or in the lee of some India-rubber plant, he would

spend long hours sketching.

An Art critic who had recently been looking at his work had

delivered himself as follows:

“In a way your drawings are very good; tone and colour, in some

of them certainly quite a feeling for Nature. But, you see,

they’re so scattered; you’ll never get the public to look at

them. Now, if you’d taken a definite subject, such as ‘London by

Night,’ or ‘The Crystal Palace in the Spring,’ and made a regular

series, the public would have known at once what they were

looking at. I can’t lay too much stress upon that. All the men

who are making great names in Art, like Crum Stone or Bleeder,

are making them by avoiding the unexpected; by specializing and

putting their works all in the same pigeon-hole, so that the

public know at once where to go. And this stands to reason, for

if a man’s a collector he doesn’t want people to smell at the

canvas to find out whom his pictures are by; he wants them to be

able to say at once, ‘A capital Forsyte!’ It is all the more

important for you to be careful to choose a subject that they can

lay hold of on the spot, since there’s no very marked originality

in your style.”

Young Jolyon, standing by the little piano, where a bowl of dried

rose leaves, the only produce of the garden, was deposited on a

bit of faded damask, listened with his dim smile.

Turning to his wife, who was looking at the speaker with an angry

expression on her thin face, he said:

“You see, dear?”

“I do _not_,” she answered in her staccato voice, that still had

a little foreign accent; “your style _has_ originality.”

The critic looked at her, smiled’ deferentially, and said no

more. Like everyone else, he knew their history.

The words bore good fruit with young Jolyon; they were contrary

to all that he believed in, to all that he theoretically held

good in his Art, but some strange, deep instinct moved him

against his will to turn them to profit.

He discovered therefore one morning that an idea had come to him

for making a series of watercolour drawings of London. How the

idea had arisen he could not tell; and it was not till the

following year, when he had completed and sold them at a very

fair price, that in one of his impersonal moods, he found himself

able to recollect the Art critic, and to discover in his own

achievement another proof that he was a Forsyte.

He decided to commence with the Botanical Gardens, where he had

already made so many studies, and chose the little artificial

pond, sprinkled now with an autumn shower of red and yellow

leaves, for though the gardeners longed to sweep them off, they

could not reach them with their brooms. The rest of the gardens

they swept bare enough, removing every morning Nature’s rain of

leaves; piling them in heaps, whence from slow fires rose the

sweet, acrid smoke that, like the cuckoo’s note for spring, the

scent of lime trees for the summer, is the true emblem of the

fall. The gardeners’ tidy souls could not abide the gold and

green and russet pattern on the grass. The gravel paths must lie

unstained, ordered, methodical, without knowledge of the

realities of life, nor of that slow and beautiful decay which

flings crowns underfoot to star the earth with fallen glories,

whence, as the cycle rolls, will leap again wild spring.

Thus each leaf that fell was marked from the moment when it

fluttered a good-bye and dropped, slow turning, from its twig.

But on that little pond the leaves floated in peace, and praised

Heaven with their hues, the sunlight haunting over them.

And so young Jolyon found them.

Coming there one morning in the middle of October, he was

disconcerted to find a bench about twenty paces from his stand

occupied, for he had a proper horror of anyone seeing him at

work.

A lady in a velvet jacket was sitting there, with her eyes fixed

on the ground. A flowering laurel, however, stood between, and,

taking shelter behind this, young Jolyon prepared his easel.

His preparations were leisurely; he caught, as every true artist

should, at anything that might delay for a moment the effort of

his work, and he found himself looking furtively at this unknown

dame.

Like his father before him, he had an eye for a face. This face

was charming!

He saw a rounded chin nestling in a cream ruffle, a delicate face

with large dark eyes and soft lips. A black “picture” hat

concealed the hair; her figure was lightly poised against the

back of the bench, her knees were crossed; the tip of a

patent-leather shoe emerged beneath her skirt. There was

something, indeed, inexpressibly dainty about the person of this

lady, but young Jolyon’s attention was chiefly riveted by the

look on her face, which reminded him of his wife. It was as

though its owner had come into contact with forces too strong for

her. It troubled him, arousing vague feelings of attraction and

chivalry. Who was she? And what doing there, alone?

Two young gentlemen of that peculiar breed, at once forward and

shy, found in the Regent’s Park, came by on their way to lawn

tennis, and he noted with disapproval their furtive stares of

admiration. A loitering gardener halted to do something

unnecessary to a clump of pampas grass; he, too, wanted an excuse

for peeping. A gentleman, old, and, by his hat, a professor of

horticulture, passed three times to scrutinize her long and

stealthily, a queer expression about his lips.

With all these men young Jolyon felt the same vague irritation.

She looked at none of them, yet was he certain that every man who

passed would look at her like that.

Her face was not the face of a sorceress, who in every look holds

out to men the offer of pleasure; it had none of the “devil’s

beauty” so highly prized among the first Forsytes of the land;

neither was it of that type, no less adorable, associated with

the box of chocolate; it was not of the spiritually passionate,

or passionately spiritual order, peculiar to house-decoration and

modern poetry; nor did it seem to promise to the playwright

material for the production of the interesting and neurasthenic

figure, who commits suicide in the last act.

In shape and colouring, in its soft persuasive passivity, its

sensuous purity, this woman’s face reminded him of Titian’s

“Heavenly Love,” a reproduction of which hung over the sideboard

in his dining-room. And her attraction seemed to be in this soft

passivity, in the feeling she gave that to pressure she must

yield.

For what or whom was she waiting, in the silence, with the trees

dropping here and there a leaf, and the thrushes strutting close

on grass, touched with the sparkle of the autumn rime? Then her

charming face grew eager, and, glancing round, with almost a

lover’s jealousy, young Jolyon saw Bosinney striding across the

grass.

Curiously he watched the meeting, the look in their eyes, the

long clasp of their hands. They sat down close together, linked

for all their outward discretion. He heard the rapid murmur of

their talk; but what they said he could not catch.

He had rowed in the galley himself! He knew the long hours of

waiting and the lean minutes of a half-public meeting; the

tortures of suspense that haunt the unhallowed lover.

It required, however, but a glance at their two faces to see that

this was none of those affairs of a season that distract men and

women about town; none of those sudden appetites that wake up

ravening, and are surfeited and asleep again in six weeks. This

was the real thing! This was what had happened to himself! Out of

this anything might come!

Bosinney was pleading, and she so quiet, so soft, yet immovable

in her passivity, sat looking over the grass.

Was he the man to carry her off, that tender, passive being, who

would never stir a step for herself? Who had given him all

herself, and would die for him, but perhaps would never run away

with him!

It seemed to young Jolyon that he could hear her saying: “But,

darling, it would ruin you!” For he himself had experienced to

the full the gnawing fear at the bottom of each woman’s heart

that she is a drag on the man she loves.

And he peeped at them no more; but their soft, rapid talk came to

his ears, with the stuttering song of some bird who seemed trying

to remember the notes of spring: Joy—tragedy? Which—which?

And gradually their talk ceased; long silence followed.

“And where does Soames come in?” young Jolyon thought. “People

think she is concerned about the sin of deceiving her husband!

Little they know of women! She’s eating, after starvation—taking

her revenge! And Heaven help her—for he’ll take his.”

He heard the swish of silk, and, spying round the laurel, saw

them walking away, their hands stealthily joined....

At the end of July old Jolyon had taken his grand-daughter to the

mountains; and on that visit (the last they ever paid) June

recovered to a great extent her health and spirits. In the

hotels, filled with British Forsytes—for old Jolyon could not

bear a “set of Germans,” as he called all foreigners—she was

looked upon with respect—the only grand-daughter of that

fine-looking, and evidently wealthy, old Mr. Forsyte. She did not

mix freely with people—to mix freely with people was not Jun’s

habit—but she formed some friendships, and notably one in the

Rhone Valley, with a French girl who was dying of consumption.

Determining at once that her friend should not die, she forgot,

in the institution of a campaign against Death, much of her own

trouble.

Old Jolyon watched the new intimacy with relief and disapproval;

for this additional proof that her life was to be passed amongst

“lame ducks” worried him. Would she never make a friendship or

take an interest in something that would be of real benefit to

her?

“Taking up with a parcel of foreigners,” he called it. He often,

however, brought home grapes or roses, and presented them to

“Mam’zelle” with an ingratiating twinkle.

Towards the end of September, in spite of Jun’s disapproval,

Mademoiselle Vigor breathed her last in the little hotel at St.

Luc, to which they had moved her; and June took her defeat so

deeply to heart that old Jolyon carried her away to Paris. Here,

in contemplation of the “Venus de Milo” and the “Madeleine,” she

shook off her depression, and when, towards the middle of

October, they returned to town, her grandfather believed that he

had effected a cure.

No sooner, however, had they established themselves in Stanhope

Gate than he perceived to his dismay a return of her old absorbed

and brooding manner. She would sit, staring in front of her, her

chin on her hand, like a little Norse spirit, grim and intent,

while all around in the electric light, then just installed,

shone the great, drawing-room brocaded up to the frieze, full of

furniture from Baple and Pullbred’s. And in the huge gilt mirror

were reflected those Dresden china groups of young men in tight

knee breeches, at the feet of full-bosomed ladies nursing on

their laps pet lambs, which old Jolyon had bought when he was a

bachelor and thought so highly of in these days of degenerate

taste. He was a man of most open mind, who, more than any Forsyte

of them all, had moved with the times, but he could never forget

that he had bought these groups at Jobson’s, and given a lot of

money for them. He often said to June, with a sort of

disillusioned contempt:

“_You_ don’t care about them! They’re not the gimcrack things you

and your friends like, but they cost me seventy pounds!” He was

not a man who allowed his taste to be warped when he knew for

solid reasons that it was sound.

One of the first things that June did on getting home was to go

round to Timothy’s. She persuaded herself that it was her duty to

call there, and cheer him with an account of all her travels; but

in reality she went because she knew of no other place where, by

some random speech, or roundabout question, she could glean news

of Bosinney.

They received her most cordially: And how was her dear

grandfather? He had not been to see them since May. Her Uncle

Timothy was very poorly, he had had a lot of trouble with the

chimney-sweep in his bedroom; the stupid man had let the soot

down the chimney! It had quite upset her uncle.

June sat there a long time, dreading, yet passionately hoping,

that they would speak of Bosinney.

But paralyzed by unaccountable discretion, Mrs. Septimus Small

let fall no word, neither did she question June about him. In

desperation the girl asked at last whether Soames and Irene were

in town—she had not yet been to see anyone.

It was Aunt Hester who replied: Oh, yes, they were in town, they

had not been away at all. There was some little difficulty about

the house, she believed. June had heard, no doubt! She had better

ask her Aunt Juley!

June turned to Mrs. Small, who sat upright in her chair, her

hands clasped, her face covered with innumerable pouts. In answer

to the girl’s look she maintained a strange silence, and when she

spoke it was to ask June whether she had worn night-socks up in

those high hotels where it must be so cold of a night.

June answered that she had not, she hated the stuffy things; and

rose to leave.

Mrs. Small’s infallibly chosen silence was far more ominous to

her than anything that could have been said.

Before half an hour was over she had dragged the truth from Mrs.

Baynes in Lowndes Square, that Soames was bringing an action

against Bosinney over the decoration of the house.

Instead of disturbing her, the news had a strangely calming

effect; as though she saw in the prospect of this struggle new

hope for herself. She learnt that the case was expected to come

on in about a month, and there seemed little or no prospect of

Bosinney’s success.

“And whatever he’ll do I can’t think,” said Mrs. Baynes; “it’s

very dreadful for him, you know—he’s got no money—he’s very hard

up. And we can’t help him, I’m sure. I’m told the money-lenders

won’t lend if you have no security, and he has none—none at all.”

Her embonpoint had increased of late; she was in the full swing

of autumn organization, her writing-table literally strewn with

the menus of charity functions. She looked meaningly at June,

with her round eyes of parrot-grey.

The sudden flush that rose on the girl’s intent young face—she

must have seen spring up before her a great hope—the sudden

sweetness of her smile, often came back to Lady Baynes in after

years (Baynes was knighted when he built that public Museum of

Art which has given so much employment to officials, and so

little pleasure to those working classes for whom it was

designed).

The memory of that change, vivid and touching, like the breaking

open of a flower, or the first sun after long winter, the memory,

too, of all that came after, often intruded itself,

unaccountably, inopportunely on Lady Baynes, when her mind was

set upon the most important things.

This was the very afternoon of the day that young Jolyon

witnessed the meeting in the Botanical Gardens, and on this day,

too, old Jolyon paid a visit to his solicitors, Forsyte, Bustard,

and Forsyte, in the Poultry. Soames was not in, he had gone down

to Somerset House; Bustard was buried up to the hilt in papers

and that inaccessible apartment, where he was judiciously placed,

in order that he might do as much work as possible; but James was

in the front office, biting a finger, and lugubriously turning

over the pleadings in Forsyte _v_. Bosinney.

This sound lawyer had only a sort of luxurious dread of the “nice

point,” enough to set up a pleasurable feeling of fuss; for his

good practical sense told him that if he himself were on the

Bench he would not pay much attention to it. But he was afraid

that this Bosinney would go bankrupt and Soames would have to

find the money after all, and costs into the bargain. And behind

this tangible dread there was always that intangible trouble,

lurking in the background, intricate, dim, scandalous, like a bad

dream, and of which this action was but an outward and visible

sign.

He raised his head as old Jolyon came in, and muttered: “How are

you, Jolyon? Haven’t seen you for an age. You’ve been to

Switzerland, they tell me. This young Bosinney, he’s got himself

into a mess. I knew how it would be!” He held out the papers,

regarding his elder brother with nervous gloom.

Old Jolyon read them in silence, and while he read them James

looked at the floor, biting his fingers the while.

Old Jolyon pitched them down at last, and they fell with a thump

amongst a mass of affidavits in “_re_ Buncombe, deceased,” one of

the many branches of that parent and profitable tree, “Fryer _v_.

Forsyte.”

“I don’t know what Soames is about,” he said, “to make a fuss

over a few hundred pounds. I thought he was a man of property.”

James’ long upper lip twitched angrily; he could not bear his son

to be attacked in such a spot.

“It’s not the money,” he began, but meeting his brother’s glance,

direct, shrewd, judicial, he stopped.

There was a silence.

“I’ve come in for my Will,” said old Jolyon at last, tugging at

his moustache.

James’ curiosity was roused at once. Perhaps nothing in this life

was more stimulating to him than a Will; it was the supreme deal

with property, the final inventory of a man’s belongings, the

last word on what he was worth. He sounded the bell.

“Bring in Mr. Jolyon’s Will,” he said to an anxious, dark-haired

clerk.

“You going to make some alterations?” And through his mind there

flashed the thought: “Now, am I worth as much as he?”

Old Jolyon put the Will in his breast pocket, and James twisted

his long legs regretfully.

“You’ve made some nice purchases lately, they tell me,” he said.

“I don’t know where you get your information from,” answered old

Jolyon sharply. “When’s this action coming on? Next month? I

can’t tell what you’ve got in your minds. You must manage your

own affairs; but if you take my advice, you’ll settle it out of

Court. Good-bye!” With a cold handshake he was gone.

James, his fixed grey-blue eye corkscrewing round some secret

anxious image, began again to bite his finger.

Old Jolyon took his Will to the offices of the New Colliery

Company, and sat down in the empty Board Room to read it through.

He answered “Down-by-the-starn” Hemmings so tartly when the

latter, seeing his Chairman seated there, entered with the new

Superintendent’s first report, that the Secretary withdrew with

regretful dignity; and sending for the transfer clerk, blew him

up till the poor youth knew not where to look.

It was not—by George—as he (Down-by-the-starn) would have him

know, for a whippersnapper of a young fellow like him, to come

down to that office, and think that he was God Almighty. He

(Down-by-the-starn) had been head of that office for more years

than a boy like him could count, and if he thought that when he

had finished all his work, he could sit there doing nothing, he

did not know him, Hemmings (Down-by-the-starn), and so forth.

On the other side of the green baize door old Jolyon sat at the

long, mahogany-and-leather board table, his thick, loose-jointed,

tortoiseshell eye-glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, his

gold pencil moving down the clauses of his Will.

It was a simple affair, for there were none of those vexatious

little legacies and donations to charities, which fritter away a

man’s possessions, and damage the majestic effect of that little

paragraph in the morning papers accorded to Forsytes who die with

a hundred thousand pounds.

A simple affair. Just a bequest to his son of twenty thousand,

and “as to the residue of my property of whatsoever kind whether

realty or personalty, or partaking of the nature of either—upon

trust to pay the proceeds rents annual produce dividends or

interest thereof and thereon to my said grand-daughter June

Forsyte or her assigns during her life to be for her sole use and

benefit and without, etc... and from and after her death or

decease upon trust to convey assign transfer or make over the

said last-mentioned lands hereditaments premises trust moneys

stocks funds investments and securities or such as shall then

stand for and represent the same unto such person or persons

whether one or more for such intents purposes and uses and

generally in such manner way and form in all respects as the said

June Forsyte notwithstanding coverture shall by her last Will and

Testament or any writing or writings in the nature of a Will

testament or testamentary disposition to be by her duly made

signed and published direct appoint or make over give and dispose

of the same And in default etc.... Provided always...” and so on,

in seven folios of brief and simple phraseology.

The Will had been drawn by James in his palmy days. He had

foreseen almost every contingency.

Old Jolyon sat a long time reading this Will; at last he took

half a sheet of paper from the rack, and made a prolonged pencil

note; then buttoning up the Will, he caused a cab to be called

and drove to the offices of Paramor and Herring, in Lincoln’s Inn

Fields. Jack Herring was dead, but his nephew was still in the

firm, and old Jolyon was closeted with him for half an hour.

He had kept the hansom, and on coming out, gave the driver the

address—3, Wistaria Avenue.

He felt a strange, slow satisfaction, as though he had scored a

victory over James and the man of property. They should not poke

their noses into his affairs any more; he had just cancelled

their trusteeships of his Will; he would take the whole of his

business out of their hands, and put it into the hands of young

Herring, and he would move the business of his Companies too. If

that young Soames were such a man of property, he would never

miss a thousand a year or so; and under his great white moustache

old Jolyon grimly smiled. He felt that what he was doing was in

the nature of retributive justice, richly deserved.

Slowly, surely, with the secret inner process that works the

destruction of an old tree, the poison of the wounds to his

happiness, his will, his pride, had corroded the comely edifice

of his philosophy. Life had worn him down on one side, till, like

that family of which he was the head, he had lost balance.

To him, borne northwards towards his son’s house, the thought of

the new disposition of property, which he had just set in motion,

appeared vaguely in the light of a stroke of punishment, levelled

at that family and that Society, of which James and his son

seemed to him the representatives. He had made a restitution to

young Jolyon, and restitution to young Jolyon satisfied his

secret craving for revenge—revenge against Time, sorrow, and

interference, against all that incalculable sum of disapproval

that had been bestowed by the world for fifteen years on his only

son. It presented itself as the one possible way of asserting

once more the domination of his will; of forcing James, and

Soames, and the family, and all those hidden masses of Forsytes—a

great stream rolling against the single dam of his obstinacy—to

recognise once and for all that _he would be master_. It was

sweet to think that at last he was going to make the boy a richer

man by far than that son of James, that “man of property.” And it

was sweet to give to Jo, for he loved his son.

Neither young Jolyon nor his wife were in (young Jolyon indeed

was not back from the Botanical), but the little maid told him

that she expected the master at any moment:

“He’s always at ’ome to tea, sir, to play with the children.”

Old Jolyon said he would wait; and sat down patiently enough in

the faded, shabby drawing room, where, now that the summer

chintzes were removed, the old chairs and sofas revealed all

their threadbare deficiencies. He longed to send for the

children; to have them there beside him, their supple bodies

against his knees; to hear Jolly’s: “Hallo, Gran!” and see his

rush; and feel Holly’s soft little hand stealing up against his

cheek. But he would not. There was solemnity in what he had come

to do, and until it was over he would not play. He amused himself

by thinking how with two strokes of his pen he was going to

restore the look of caste so conspicuously absent from everything

in that little house; how he could fill these rooms, or others in

some larger mansion, with triumphs of art from Baple and

Pullbred’s; how he could send little Jolly to Harrow and Oxford

(he no longer had faith in Eton and Cambridge, for his son had

been there); how he could procure little Holly the best musical

instruction, the child had a remarkable aptitude.

As these visions crowded before him, causing emotion to swell his

heart, he rose, and stood at the window, looking down into the

little walled strip of garden, where the pear-tree, bare of

leaves before its time, stood with gaunt branches in the

slow-gathering mist of the autumn afternoon. The dog Balthasar,

his tail curled tightly over a piebald, furry back, was walking

at the farther end, sniffing at the plants, and at intervals

placing his leg for support against the wall.

And old Jolyon mused.

What pleasure was there left but to give? It was pleasant to

give, when you could find one who would be thankful for what you

gave—one of your own flesh and blood! There was no such

satisfaction to be had out of giving to those who did not belong

to you, to those who had no claim on you! Such giving as that was

a betrayal of the individualistic convictions and actions of his

life, of all his enterprise, his labour, and his moderation, of

the great and proud fact that, like tens of thousands of Forsytes

before him, tens of thousands in the present, tens of thousands

in the future, he had always made his own, and held his own, in

the world.

And, while he stood there looking down on the smut-covered

foliage of the laurels, the black-stained grass-plot, the

progress of the dog Balthasar, all the suffering of the fifteen

years during which he had been baulked of legitimate enjoyment

mingled its gall with the sweetness of the approaching moment.

Young Jolyon came at last, pleased with his work, and fresh from

long hours in the open air. On hearing that his father was in the

drawing room, he inquired hurriedly whether Mrs. Forsyte was at

home, and being informed that she was not, heaved a sigh of

relief. Then putting his painting materials carefully in the

little coat-closet out of sight, he went in.

With characteristic decision old Jolyon came at once to the

point. “I’ve been altering my arrangements, Jo,” he said. “You

can cut your coat a bit longer in the future—I’m settling a

thousand a year on you at once. June will have fifty thousand at

my death; and you the rest. That dog of yours is spoiling the

garden. I shouldn’t keep a dog, if I were you!”

The dog Balthasar, seated in the centre of the lawn, was

examining his tail.

Young Jolyon looked at the animal, but saw him dimly, for his

eyes were misty.

“Yours won’t come short of a hundred thousand, my boy,” said old

Jolyon; “I thought you’d better know. I haven’t much longer to

live at my age. I shan’t allude to it again. How’s your wife?

And—give her my love.”

Young Jolyon put his hand on his father’s shoulder, and, as

neither spoke, the episode closed.

Having seen his father into a hansom, young Jolyon came back to

the drawing-room and stood, where old Jolyon had stood, looking

down on the little garden. He tried to realize all that this

meant to him, and, Forsyte that he was, vistas of property were

opened out in his brain; the years of half rations through which

he had passed had not sapped his natural instincts. In extremely

practical form, he thought of travel, of his wife’s costume, the

children’s education, a pony for Jolly, a thousand things; but in

the midst of all he thought, too, of Bosinney and his mistress,

and the broken song of the thrush. Joy—tragedy! Which? Which?

The old past—the poignant, suffering, passionate, wonderful past,

that no money could buy, that nothing could restore in all its

burning sweetness—had come back before him.

When his wife came in he went straight up to her and took her in

his arms; and for a long time he stood without speaking, his eyes

closed, pressing her to him, while she looked at him with a

wondering, adoring, doubting look in her eyes.

CHAPTER IV VOYAGE INTO THE INFERNO

The morning after a certain night on which Soames at last

asserted his rights and acted like a man, he breakfasted alone.

He breakfasted by gaslight, the fog of late November wrapping the

town as in some monstrous blanket till the trees of the Square

even were barely visible from the dining-room window.

He ate steadily, but at times a sensation as though he could not

swallow attacked him. Had he been right to yield to his

overmastering hunger of the night before, and break down the

resistance which he had suffered now too long from this woman who

was his lawful and solemnly constituted helpmate?

He was strangely haunted by the recollection of her face, from

before which, to soothe her, he had tried to pull her hands—of

her terrible smothered sobbing, the like of which he had never

heard, and still seemed to hear; and he was still haunted by the

odd, intolerable feeling of remorse and shame he had felt, as he

stood looking at her by the flame of the single candle, before

silently slinking away.

And somehow, now that he had acted like this, he was surprised at

himself.

Two nights before, at Winifred Dartie’s, he had taken Mrs.

MacAnder into dinner. She had said to him, looking in his face

with her sharp, greenish eyes: “And so your wife is a great

friend of that Mr. Bosinney’s?”

Not deigning to ask what she meant, he had brooded over her

words.

They had roused in him a fierce jealousy, which, with the

peculiar perversion of this instinct, had turned to fiercer

desire.

Without the incentive of Mrs. MacAnder’s words he might never

have done what he had done. Without their incentive and the

accident of finding his wife’s door for once unlocked, which had

enabled him to steal upon her asleep.

Slumber had removed his doubts, but the morning brought them

again. One thought comforted him: No one would know—it was not

the sort of thing that she would speak about.

And, indeed, when the vehicle of his daily business life, which

needed so imperatively the grease of clear and practical thought,

started rolling once more with the reading of his letters, those

nightmare-like doubts began to assume less extravagant importance

at the back of his mind. The incident was really not of great

moment; women made a fuss about it in books; but in the cool

judgment of right-thinking men, of men of the world, of such as

he recollected often received praise in the Divorce Court, he had

but done his best to sustain the sanctity of marriage, to prevent

her from abandoning her duty, possibly, if she were still seeing

Bosinney, from....

No, he did not regret it.

Now that the first step towards reconciliation had been taken,

the rest would be comparatively—comparatively....

He, rose and walked to the window. His nerve had been shaken. The

sound of smothered sobbing was in his ears again. He could not

get rid of it.

He put on his fur coat, and went out into the fog; having to go

into the City, he took the underground railway from Sloane Square

station.

In his corner of the first-class compartment filled with City men

the smothered sobbing still haunted him, so he opened _The Times_

with the rich crackle that drowns all lesser sounds, and,

barricaded behind it, set himself steadily to con the news.

He read that a Recorder had charged a grand jury on the previous

day with a more than usually long list of offences. He read of

three murders, five manslaughters, seven arsons, and as many as

eleven rapes—a surprisingly high number—in addition to many less

conspicuous crimes, to be tried during a coming Sessions; and

from one piece of news he went on to another, keeping the paper

well before his face.

And still, inseparable from his reading, was the memory of

Irene’s tear-stained face, and the sounds from her broken heart.

The day was a busy one, including, in addition to the ordinary

affairs of his practice, a visit to his brokers, Messrs. Grin and

Grinning, to give them instructions to sell his shares in the New

Colliery Co., Ltd., whose business he suspected, rather than

knew, was stagnating (this enterprise afterwards slowly declined,

and was ultimately sold for a song to an American syndicate); and

a long conference at Waterbuck, Q.C.’s chambers, attended by

Boulter, by Fiske, the junior counsel, and Waterbuck, Q.C.,

himself.

The case of Forsyte _v_. Bosinney was expected to be reached on

the morrow, before Mr. Justice Bentham.

Mr. Justice Bentham, a man of common-sense rather than too great

legal knowledge, was considered to be about the best man they

could have to try the action. He was a “strong” Judge.

Waterbuck, Q.C., in pleasing conjunction with an almost rude

neglect of Boulter and Fiske paid to Soames a good deal of

attention, by instinct or the sounder evidence of rumour, feeling

him to be a man of property.

He held with remarkable consistency to the opinion he had already

expressed in writing, that the issue would depend to a great

extent on the evidence given at the trial, and in a few well

directed remarks he advised Soames not to be too careful in

giving that evidence. “A little bluffness, Mr. Forsyte,” he said,

“a little bluffness,” and after he had spoken he laughed firmly,

closed his lips tight, and scratched his head just below where he

had pushed his wig back, for all the world like the

gentleman-farmer for whom he loved to be taken. He was considered

perhaps the leading man in breach of promise cases.

Soames used the underground again in going home.

The fog was worse than ever at Sloane Square station. Through the

still, thick blur, men groped in and out; women, very few,

grasped their reticules to their bosoms and handkerchiefs to

their mouths; crowned with the weird excrescence of the driver,

haloed by a vague glow of lamp-light that seemed to drown in

vapour before it reached the pavement, cabs loomed dim-shaped

ever and again, and discharged citizens, bolting like rabbits to

their burrows.

And these shadowy figures, wrapped each in his own little shroud

of fog, took no notice of each other. In the great warren, each

rabbit for himself, especially those clothed in the more

expensive fur, who, afraid of carriages on foggy days, are driven

underground.

One figure, however, not far from Soames, waited at the station

door.

Some buccaneer or lover, of whom each Forsyte thought: “Poor

devil! looks as if he were having a bad time!” Their kind hearts

beat a stroke faster for that poor, waiting, anxious lover in the

fog; but they hurried by, well knowing that they had neither time

nor money to spare for any suffering but their own.

Only a policeman, patrolling slowly and at intervals, took an

interest in that waiting figure, the brim of whose slouch hat

half hid a face reddened by the cold, all thin, and haggard, over

which a hand stole now and again to smooth away anxiety, or renew

the resolution that kept him waiting there. But the waiting lover

(if lover he were) was used to policemen’s scrutiny, or too

absorbed in his anxiety, for he never flinched. A hardened case,

accustomed to long trysts, to anxiety, and fog, and cold, if only

his mistress came at last. Foolish lover! Fogs last until the

spring; there is also snow and rain, no comfort anywhere; gnawing

fear if you bring her out, gnawing fear if you bid her stay at

home!

“Serve him right; he should arrange his affairs better!”

So any respectable Forsyte. Yet, if that sounder citizen could

have listened at the waiting lover’s heart, out there in the fog

and the cold, he would have said again: “Yes, poor devil he’s

having a bad time!”

Soames got into his cab, and, with the glass down, crept along

Sloane Street, and so along the Brompton Road, and home. He

reached his house at five.

His wife was not in. She had gone out a quarter of an hour

before. Out at such a time of night, into this terrible fog! What

was the meaning of that?

He sat by the dining-room fire, with the door open, disturbed to

the soul, trying to read the evening paper. A book was no good—in

daily papers alone was any narcotic to such worry as his. From

the customary events recorded in the journal he drew some

comfort. “Suicide of an actress”—“Grave indisposition of a

Statesman” (that chronic sufferer)—“Divorce of an army

officer”—“Fire in a colliery”—he read them all. They helped him a

little—prescribed by the greatest of all doctors, our natural

taste.

It was nearly seven when he heard her come in.

The incident of the night before had long lost its importance

under stress of anxiety at her strange sortie into the fog. But

now that Irene was home, the memory of her broken-hearted sobbing

came back to him, and he felt nervous at the thought of facing

her.

She was already on the stairs; her grey fur coat hung to her

knees, its high collar almost hid her face, she wore a thick

veil.

She neither turned to look at him nor spoke. No ghost or stranger

could have passed more silently.

Bilson came to lay dinner, and told him that Mrs. Forsyte was not

coming down; she was having the soup in her room.

For once Soames did not “change”; it was, perhaps, the first time

in his life that he had sat down to dinner with soiled cuffs,

and, not even noticing them, he brooded long over his wine. He

sent Bilson to light a fire in his picture-room, and presently

went up there himself.

Turning on the gas, he heaved a deep sigh, as though amongst

these treasures, the backs of which confronted him in stacks,

around the little room, he had found at length his peace of mind.

He went straight up to the greatest treasure of them all, an

undoubted Turner, and, carrying it to the easel, turned its face

to the light. There had been a movement in Turners, but he had

not been able to make up his mind to part with it. He stood for a

long time, his pale, clean-shaven face poked forward above his

stand-up collar, looking at the picture as though he were adding

it up; a wistful expression came into his eyes; he found,

perhaps, that it came to too little. He took it down from the

easel to put it back against the wall; but, in crossing the room,

stopped, for he seemed to hear sobbing.

It was nothing—only the sort of thing that had been bothering him

in the morning. And soon after, putting the high guard before the

blazing fire, he stole downstairs.

Fresh for the morrow! was his thought. It was long before he went

to sleep....

It is now to George Forsyte that the mind must turn for light on

the events of that fog-engulfed afternoon.

The wittiest and most sportsmanlike of the Forsytes had passed

the day reading a novel in the paternal mansion at Princes’

Gardens. Since a recent crisis in his financial affairs he had

been kept on parole by Roger, and compelled to reside “at home.”

Towards five o’clock he went out, and took train at South

Kensington Station (for everyone to-day went Underground). His

intention was to dine, and pass the evening playing billiards at

the Red Pottle—that unique hostel, neither club, hotel, nor good

gilt restaurant.

He got out at Charing Cross, choosing it in preference to his

more usual St. James’s Park, that he might reach Jermyn Street by

better lighted ways.

On the platform his eyes—for in combination with a composed and

fashionable appearance, George had sharp eyes, and was always on

the look-out for fillips to his sardonic humour—his eyes were

attracted by a man, who, leaping from a first-class compartment,

staggered rather than walked towards the exit.

“So ho, my bird!” said George to himself; “why, it’s “the

Buccaneer!”” and he put his big figure on the trail. Nothing

afforded him greater amusement than a drunken man.

Bosinney, who wore a slouch hat, stopped in front of him, spun

around, and rushed back towards the carriage he had just left. He

was too late. A porter caught him by the coat; the train was

already moving on.

George’s practised glance caught sight of the face of a lady clad

in a grey fur coat at the carriage window. It was Mrs. Soames—and

George felt that this was interesting!

And now he followed Bosinney more closely than ever—up the

stairs, past the ticket collector into the street. In that

progress, however, his feelings underwent a change; no longer

merely curious and amused, he felt sorry for the poor fellow he

was shadowing. “The Buccaneer” was not drunk, but seemed to be

acting under the stress of violent emotion; he was talking to

himself, and all that George could catch were the words “Oh,

God!” Nor did he appear to know what he was doing, or where

going; but stared, hesitated, moved like a man out of his mind;

and from being merely a joker in search of amusement, George felt

that he must see the poor chap through.

He had “taken the knock”—“taken the knock!” And he wondered what

on earth Mrs. Soames had been saying, what on earth she had been

telling him in the railway carriage. She had looked bad enough

herself! It made George sorry to think of her travelling on with

her trouble all alone.

He followed close behind Bosinney’s elbow—tall, burly figure,

saying nothing, dodging warily—and shadowed him out into the fog.

There was something here beyond a jest! He kept his head

admirably, in spite of some excitement, for in addition to

compassion, the instincts of the chase were roused within him.

Bosinney walked right out into the thoroughfare—a vast muffled

blackness, where a man could not see six paces before him; where,

all around, voices or whistles mocked the sense of direction; and

sudden shapes came rolling slow upon them; and now and then a

light showed like a dim island in an infinite dark sea.

And fast into this perilous gulf of night walked Bosinney, and

fast after him walked George. If the fellow meant to put his

“twopenny” under a ’bus, he would stop it if he could! Across the

street and back the hunted creature strode, not groping as other

men were groping in that gloom, but driven forward as though the

faithful George behind wielded a knout; and this chase after a

haunted man began to have for George the strangest fascination.

But it was now that the affair developed in a way which ever

afterwards caused it to remain green in his mind. Brought to a

stand-still in the fog, he heard words which threw a sudden light

on these proceedings. What Mrs. Soames had said to Bosinney in

the train was now no longer dark. George understood from those

mutterings that Soames had exercised his rights over an estranged

and unwilling wife in the greatest—the supreme act of property.

His fancy wandered in the fields of this situation; it impressed

him; he guessed something of the anguish, the sexual confusion

and horror in Bosinney’s heart. And he thought: “Yes, it’s a bit

thick! I don’t wonder the poor fellow is half-cracked!”

He had run his quarry to earth on a bench under one of the lions

in Trafalgar Square, a monster sphynx astray like themselves in

that gulf of darkness. Here, rigid and silent, sat Bosinney, and

George, in whose patience was a touch of strange brotherliness,

took his stand behind. He was not lacking in a certain delicacy—a

sense of form—that did not permit him to intrude upon this

tragedy, and he waited, quiet as the lion above, his fur collar

hitched above his ears concealing the fleshy redness of his

cheeks, concealing all but his eyes with their sardonic,

compassionate stare. And men kept passing back from business on

the way to their clubs—men whose figures shrouded in cocoons of

fog came into view like spectres, and like spectres vanished.

Then even in his compassion George’s Quilpish humour broke forth

in a sudden longing to pluck these spectres by the sleeve, and

say:

“Hi, you Johnnies! You don’t often see a show like this! Here’s a

poor devil whose mistress has just been telling him a pretty

little story of her husband; walk up, walk up! He’s taken the

knock, you see.”

In fancy he saw them gaping round the tortured lover; and grinned

as he thought of some respectable, newly-married spectre enabled

by the state of his own affections to catch an inkling of what

was going on within Bosinney; he fancied he could see his mouth

getting wider and wider, and the fog going down and down. For in

George was all that contempt of the middle-class—especially of

the married middle-class—peculiar to the wild and sportsmanlike

spirits in its ranks.

But he began to be bored. Waiting was not what he had bargained

for.

“After all,” he thought, “the poor chap will get over it; not the

first time such a thing has happened in this little city!” But

now his quarry again began muttering words of violent hate and

anger. And following a sudden impulse George touched him on the

shoulder.

Bosinney spun round.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

George could have stood it well enough in the light of the gas

lamps, in the light of that everyday world of which he was so

hardy a connoisseur; but in this fog, where all was gloomy and

unreal, where nothing had that matter-of-fact value associated by

Forsytes with earth, he was a victim to strange qualms, and as he

tried to stare back into the eyes of this maniac, he thought:

“If I see a bobby, I’ll hand him over; he’s not fit to be at

large.”

But waiting for no answer, Bosinney strode off into the fog, and

George followed, keeping perhaps a little further off, yet more

than ever set on tracking him down.

“He can’t go on long like this,” he thought. “It’s God’s own

miracle he’s not been run over already.” He brooded no more on

policemen, a sportsman’s sacred fire alive again within him.

Into a denser gloom than ever Bosinney held on at a furious pace;

but his pursuer perceived more method in his madness—he was

clearly making his way westwards.

“He’s really going for Soames!” thought George. The idea was

attractive. It would be a sporting end to such a chase. He had

always disliked his cousin.

The shaft of a passing cab brushed against his shoulder and made

him leap aside. He did not intend to be killed for the Buccaneer,

or anyone. Yet, with hereditary tenacity, he stuck to the trail

through vapour that blotted out everything but the shadow of the

hunted man and the dim moon of the nearest lamp.

Then suddenly, with the instinct of a town-stroller, George knew

himself to be in Piccadilly. Here he could find his way

blindfold; and freed from the strain of geographical uncertainty,

his mind returned to Bosinney’s trouble.

Down the long avenue of his man-about-town experience, bursting,

as it were, through a smirch of doubtful amours, there stalked to

him a memory of his youth. A memory, poignant still, that brought

the scent of hay, the gleam of moonlight, a summer magic, into

the reek and blackness of this London fog—the memory of a night

when in the darkest shadow of a lawn he had overheard from a

woman’s lips that he was not her sole possessor. And for a moment

George walked no longer in black Piccadilly, but lay again, with

hell in his heart, and his face to the sweet-smelling, dewy

grass, in the long shadow of poplars that hid the moon.

A longing seized him to throw his arm round the Buccaneer, and

say, “Come, old boy. Time cures all. Let’s go and drink it off!”

But a voice yelled at him, and he started back. A cab rolled out

of blackness, and into blackness disappeared. And suddenly George

perceived that he had lost Bosinney. He ran forward and back,

felt his heart clutched by a sickening fear, the dark fear which

lives in the wings of the fog. Perspiration started out on his

brow. He stood quite still, listening with all his might.

“And then,” as he confided to Dartie the same evening in the

course of a game of billiards at the Red Pottle, “I lost him.”

Dartie twirled complacently at his dark moustache. He had just

put together a neat break of twenty-three,—failing at a “Jenny.”

“And who was _she?_” he asked.

George looked slowly at the “man of the world’s” fattish, sallow

face, and a little grim smile lurked about the curves of his

cheeks and his heavy-lidded eyes.

“No, no, my fine fellow,” he thought, “I’m not going to tell

_you_.” For though he mixed with Dartie a good deal, he thought

him a bit of a cad.

“Oh, some little love-lady or other,” he said, and chalked his

cue.

“A love-lady!” exclaimed Dartie—he used a more figurative

expression. “I made sure it was our friend Soa....”

“Did you?” said George curtly. “Then damme you’ve made an error.”

He missed his shot. He was careful not to allude to the subject

again till, towards eleven o’clock, having, in his poetic

phraseology, “looked upon the drink when it was yellow,” he drew

aside the blind, and gazed out into the street. The murky

blackness of the fog was but faintly broken by the lamps of the

“Red Pottle,” and no shape of mortal man or thing was in sight.

“I can’t help thinking of that poor Buccaneer,” he said. “He may

be wandering out there now in that fog. If he’s not a corpse,” he

added with strange dejection.

“Corpse!” said Dartie, in whom the recollection of his defeat at

Richmond flared up. “_He’s_ all right. Ten to one if he wasn’t

tight!”

George turned on him, looking really formidable, with a sort of

savage gloom on his big face.

“Dry up!” he said. “Don’t I tell you he’s ‘taken the knock!’”

CHAPTER V THE TRIAL

In the morning of his case, which was second in the list, Soames

was again obliged to start without seeing Irene, and it was just

as well, for he had not as yet made up his mind what attitude to

adopt towards her.

He had been requested to be in court by half-past ten, to provide

against the event of the first action (a breach of promise)

collapsing, which however it did not, both sides showing a

courage that afforded Waterbuck, Q.C., an opportunity for

improving his already great reputation in this class of case. He

was opposed by Ram, the other celebrated breach of promise man.

It was a battle of giants.

The court delivered judgment just before the luncheon interval.

The jury left the box for good, and Soames went out to get

something to eat. He met James standing at the little

luncheon-bar, like a pelican in the wilderness of the galleries,

bent over a sandwich with a glass of sherry before him. The

spacious emptiness of the great central hall, over which father

and son brooded as they stood together, was marred now and then

for a fleeting moment by barristers in wig and gown hurriedly

bolting across, by an occasional old lady or rusty-coated man,

looking up in a frightened way, and by two persons, bolder than

their generation, seated in an embrasure arguing. The sound of

their voices arose, together with a scent as of neglected wells,

which, mingling with the odour of the galleries, combined to form

the savour, like nothing but the emanation of a refined cheese,

so indissolubly connected with the administration of British

Justice.

It was not long before James addressed his son.

“When’s your case coming on? I suppose it’ll be on directly. I

shouldn’t wonder if this Bosinney’d say anything; I should think

he’d have to. He’ll go bankrupt if it goes against him.” He took

a large bite at his sandwich and a mouthful of sherry. “Your

mother,” he said, “wants you and Irene to come and dine

to-night.”

A chill smile played round Soames’s lips; he looked back at his

father. Anyone who had seen the look, cold and furtive, thus

interchanged, might have been pardoned for not appreciating the

real understanding between them. James finished his sherry at a

draught.

“How much?” he asked.

On returning to the court Soames took at once his rightful seat

on the front bench beside his solicitor. He ascertained where his

father was seated with a glance so sidelong as to commit nobody.

James, sitting back with his hands clasped over the handle of his

umbrella, was brooding on the end of the bench immediately behind

counsel, whence he could get away at once when the case was over.

He considered Bosinney’s conduct in every way outrageous, but he

did not wish to run up against him, feeling that the meeting

would be awkward.

Next to the Divorce Court, this court was, perhaps, the favourite

emporium of justice, libel, breach of promise, and other

commercial actions being frequently decided there. Quite a

sprinkling of persons unconnected with the law occupied the back

benches, and the hat of a woman or two could be seen in the

gallery.

The two rows of seats immediately in front of James were

gradually filled by barristers in wigs, who sat down to make

pencil notes, chat, and attend to their teeth; but his interest

was soon diverted from these lesser lights of justice by the

entrance of Waterbuck, Q.C., with the wings of his silk gown

rustling, and his red, capable face supported by two short, brown

whiskers. The famous Q.C. looked, as James freely admitted, the

very picture of a man who could heckle a witness.

For all his experience, it so happened that he had never seen

Waterbuck, Q.C., before, and, like many Forsytes in the lower

branch of the profession, he had an extreme admiration for a good

cross-examiner. The long, lugubrious folds in his cheeks relaxed

somewhat after seeing him, especially as he now perceived that

Soames alone was represented by silk.

Waterbuck, Q.C., had barely screwed round on his elbow to chat

with his Junior before Mr. Justice Bentham himself appeared—a

thin, rather hen-like man, with a little stoop, clean-shaven

under his snowy wig. Like all the rest of the court, Waterbuck

rose, and remained on his feet until the judge was seated. James

rose but slightly; he was already comfortable, and had no opinion

of Bentham, having sat next but one to him at dinner twice at the

Bumley Tomms’. Bumley Tomm was rather a poor thing, though he had

been so successful. James himself had given him his first brief.

He was excited, too, for he had just found out that Bosinney was

not in court.

“Now, what’s he mean by that?” he kept on thinking.

The case having been called on, Waterbuck, Q.C., pushing back his

papers, hitched his gown on his shoulder, and, with a

semi-circular look around him, like a man who is going to bat,

arose and addressed the Court.

The facts, he said, were not in dispute, and all that his

Lordship would be asked was to interpret the correspondence which

had taken place between his client and the defendant, an

architect, with reference to the decoration of a house. He would,

however, submit that this correspondence could only mean one very

plain thing. After briefly reciting the history of the house at

Robin Hill, which he described as a mansion, and the actual facts

of expenditure, he went on as follows:

“My client, Mr. Soames Forsyte, is a gentleman, a man of

property, who would be the last to dispute any legitimate claim

that might be made against him, but he has met with such

treatment from his architect in the matter of this house, over

which he has, as your lordship has heard, already spent some

twelve—some twelve thousand pounds, a sum considerably in advance

of the amount he had originally contemplated, that as a matter of

principle—and this I cannot too strongly emphasize—as a matter of

principle, and in the interests of others, he has felt himself

compelled to bring this action. The point put forward in defence

by the architect I will suggest to your lordship is not worthy of

a moment’s serious consideration.” He then read the

correspondence.

His client, “a man of recognised position,” was prepared to go

into the box, and to swear that he never did authorize, that it

was never in his mind to authorize, the expenditure of any money

beyond the extreme limit of twelve thousand and fifty pounds,

which he had clearly fixed; and not further to waste the time of

the court, he would at once call Mr. Forsyte.

Soames then went into the box. His whole appearance was striking

in its composure. His face, just supercilious enough, pale and

clean-shaven, with a little line between the eyes, and compressed

lips; his dress in unostentatious order, one hand neatly gloved,

the other bare. He answered the questions put to him in a

somewhat low, but distinct voice. His evidence under

cross-examination savoured of taciturnity.

Had he not used the expression, “a free hand”? No.

“Come, come!”

The expression he had used was “a free hand in the terms of this

correspondence.”

“Would you tell the Court that that was English?”

“Yes!”

“What do you say it means?”

“What it says!”

“Are you prepared to deny that it is a contradiction in terms?”

“Yes.”

“You are not an Irishman?”

“No.”

“Are you a well-educated man?”

“Yes.”

“And yet you persist in that statement?”

“Yes.”

Throughout this and much more cross-examination, which turned

again and again around the “nice point,” James sat with his hand

behind his ear, his eyes fixed upon his son.

He was proud of him! He could not but feel that in similar

circumstances he himself would have been tempted to enlarge his

replies, but his instinct told him that this taciturnity was the

very thing. He sighed with relief, however, when Soames, slowly

turning, and without any change of expression, descended from the

box.

When it came to the turn of Bosinney’s Counsel to address the

Judge, James redoubled his attention, and he searched the Court

again and again to see if Bosinney were not somewhere concealed.

Young Chankery began nervously; he was placed by Bosinney’s

absence in an awkward position. He therefore did his best to turn

that absence to account.

He could not but fear—he said—that his client had met with an

accident. He had fully expected him there to give evidence; they

had sent round that morning both to Mr. Bosinney’s office and to

his rooms (though he knew they were one and the same, he thought

it was as well not to say so), but it was not known where he was,

and this he considered to be ominous, knowing how anxious Mr.

Bosinney had been to give his evidence. He had not, however, been

instructed to apply for an adjournment, and in default of such

instruction he conceived it his duty to go on. The plea on which

he somewhat confidently relied, and which his client, had he not

unfortunately been prevented in some way from attending, would

have supported by his evidence, was that such an expression as a

“free hand” could not be limited, fettered, and rendered

unmeaning, by any verbiage which might follow it. He would go

further and say that the correspondence showed that whatever he

might have said in his evidence, Mr. Forsyte had in fact never

contemplated repudiating liability on any of the work ordered or

executed by his architect. The defendant had certainly never

contemplated such a contingency, or, as was demonstrated by his

letters, he would never have proceeded with the work—a work of

extreme delicacy, carried out with great care and efficiency, to

meet and satisfy the fastidious taste of a connoisseur, a rich

man, a man of property. He felt strongly on this point, and

feeling strongly he used, perhaps, rather strong words when he

said that this action was of a most unjustifiable, unexpected,

indeed—unprecedented character. If his Lordship had had the

opportunity that he himself had made it his duty to take, to go

over this very fine house and see the great delicacy and beauty

of the decorations executed by his client—an artist in his most

honourable profession—he felt convinced that not for one moment

would his Lordship tolerate this, he would use no stronger word

than daring attempt to evade legitimate responsibility.

Taking the text of Soames’s letters, he lightly touched on

“Boileau _v_. The Blasted Cement Company, Limited.” “It is

doubtful,” he said, “what that authority has decided; in any case

I would submit that it is just as much in my favour as in my

friend’s.” He then argued the “nice point” closely. With all due

deference he submitted that Mr. Forsyte’s expression nullified

itself. His client not being a rich man, the matter was a serious

one for him; he was a very talented architect, whose professional

reputation was undoubtedly somewhat at stake. He concluded with a

perhaps too personal appeal to the Judge, as a lover of the arts,

to show himself the protector of artists, from what was

occasionally—he said occasionally—the too iron hand of capital.

“What,” he said, “will be the position of the artistic

professions, if men of property like this Mr. Forsyte refuse, and

are allowed to refuse, to carry out the obligations of the

commissions which they have given.” He would now call his client,

in case he should at the last moment have found himself able to

be present.

The name Philip Baynes Bosinney was called three times by the

Ushers, and the sound of the calling echoed with strange

melancholy throughout the Court and Galleries.

The crying of this name, to which no answer was returned, had

upon James a curious effect: it was like calling for your lost

dog about the streets. And the creepy feeling that it gave him,

of a man missing, grated on his sense of comfort and security—on

his cosiness. Though he could not have said why, it made him feel

uneasy.

He looked now at the clock—a quarter to three! It would be all

over in a quarter of an hour. Where could the young fellow be?

It was only when Mr. Justice Bentham delivered judgment that he

got over the turn he had received.

Behind the wooden erection, by which he was fenced from more

ordinary mortals, the learned Judge leaned forward. The electric

light, just turned on above his head, fell on his face, and

mellowed it to an orange hue beneath the snowy crown of his wig;

the amplitude of his robes grew before the eye; his whole figure,

facing the comparative dusk of the Court, radiated like some

majestic and sacred body. He cleared his throat, took a sip of

water, broke the nib of a quill against the desk, and, folding

his bony hands before him, began.

To James he suddenly loomed much larger than he had ever thought

Bentham would loom. It was the majesty of the law; and a person

endowed with a nature far less matter-of-fact than that of James

might have been excused for failing to pierce this halo, and

disinter therefrom the somewhat ordinary Forsyte, who walked and

talked in every-day life under the name of Sir Walter Bentham.

He delivered judgment in the following words:

“The facts in this case are not in dispute. On May 15 last the

defendant wrote to the plaintiff, requesting to be allowed to

withdraw from his professional position in regard to the

decoration of the plaintiff’s house, unless he were given ‘a free

hand.’ The plaintiff, on May 17, wrote back as follows: ‘In

giving you, in accordance with your request, this free hand, I

wish you to clearly understand that the total cost of the house

as handed over to me completely decorated, inclusive of your fee

(as arranged between us) must not exceed twelve thousand pounds.’

To this letter the defendant replied on May 18: ‘If you think

that in such a delicate matter as decoration I can bind myself to

the exact pound, I am afraid you are mistaken.’ On May 19 the

plaintiff wrote as follows: ‘I did not mean to say that if you

should exceed the sum named in my letter to you by ten or twenty

or even fifty pounds there would be any difficulty between us.

You have a free hand in the terms of this correspondence, and I

hope you will see your way to completing the decorations.’ On May

20 the defendant replied thus shortly: ‘Very well.’

“In completing these decorations, the defendant incurred

liabilities and expenses which brought the total cost of this

house up to the sum of twelve thousand four hundred pounds, all

of which expenditure has been defrayed by the plaintiff. This

action has been brought by the plaintiff to recover from the

defendant the sum of three hundred and fifty pounds expended by

him in excess of a sum of twelve thousand and fifty pounds,

alleged by the plaintiff to have been fixed by this

correspondence as the maximum sum that the defendant had

authority to expend.

“The question for me to decide is whether or no the defendant is

liable to refund to the plaintiff this sum. In my judgment he is

so liable.

“What in effect the plaintiff has said is this ‘I give you a free

hand to complete these decorations, provided that you keep within

a total cost to me of twelve thousand pounds. If you exceed that

sum by as much as fifty pounds, I will not hold you responsible;

beyond that point you are no agent of mine, and I shall repudiate

liability.’ It is not quite clear to me whether, had the

plaintiff in fact repudiated liability under his agent’s

contracts, he would, under all the circumstances, have been

successful in so doing; but he has not adopted this course. He

has accepted liability, and fallen back upon his rights against

the defendant under the terms of the latter’s engagement.

“In my judgment the plaintiff is entitled to recover this sum

from the defendant.

“It has been sought, on behalf of the defendant, to show that no

limit of expenditure was fixed or intended to be fixed by this

correspondence. If this were so, I can find no reason for the

plaintiff’s importation into the correspondence of the figures of

twelve thousand pounds and subsequently of fifty pounds. The

defendant’s contention would render these figures meaningless. It

is manifest to me that by his letter of May 20 he assented to a

very clear proposition, by the terms of which he must be held to

be bound.

“For these reasons there will be judgment for the plaintiff for

the amount claimed with costs.”

James sighed, and stooping, picked up his umbrella which had

fallen with a rattle at the words “importation into this

correspondence.”

Untangling his legs, he rapidly left the Court; without waiting

for his son, he snapped up a hansom cab (it was a clear, grey

afternoon) and drove straight to Timothy’s where he found

Swithin; and to him, Mrs. Septimus Small, and Aunt Hester, he

recounted the whole proceedings, eating two muffins not

altogether in the intervals of speech.

“Soames did very well,” he ended; “he’s got his head screwed on

the right way. This won’t please Jolyon. It’s a bad business for

that young Bosinney; he’ll go bankrupt, I shouldn’t wonder,” and

then after a long pause, during which he had stared disquietly

into the fire, he added:

“He wasn’t there—now why?”

There was a sound of footsteps. The figure of a thick-set man,

with the ruddy brown face of robust health, was seen in the back

drawing-room. The forefinger of his upraised hand was outlined

against the black of his frock coat. He spoke in a grudging

voice.

“Well, James,” he said, “I can’t—I can’t stop,” and turning

round, he walked out.

It was Timothy.

James rose from his chair. “There!” he said, “there! I knew there

was something wro....” He checked himself, and was silent,

staring before him, as though he had seen a portent.

CHAPTER VI SOAMES BREAKS THE NEWS

In leaving the Court Soames did not go straight home. He felt

disinclined for the City, and drawn by need for sympathy in his

triumph, he, too, made his way, but slowly and on foot, to

Timothy’s in the Bayswater Road.

His father had just left; Mrs. Small and Aunt Hester, in

possession of the whole story, greeted him warmly. They were sure

he was hungry after all that evidence. Smither should toast him

some more muffins, his dear father had eaten them all. He must

put his legs up on the sofa; and he must have a glass of prune

brandy too. It was so strengthening.

Swithin was still present, having lingered later than his wont,

for he felt in want of exercise. On hearing this suggestion, he

“pished.” A pretty pass young men were coming to! His own liver

was out of order, and he could not bear the thought of anyone

else drinking prune brandy.

He went away almost immediately, saying to Soames: “And how’s

your wife? You tell her from me that if she’s dull, and likes to

come and dine with me quietly, I’ll give her such a bottle of

champagne as she doesn’t get every day.” Staring down from his

height on Soames he contracted his thick, puffy, yellow hand as

though squeezing within it all this small fry, and throwing out

his chest he waddled slowly away.

Mrs. Small and Aunt Hester were left horrified. Swithin was so

droll!

They themselves were longing to ask Soames how Irene would take

the result, yet knew that they must not; he would perhaps say

something of his own accord, to throw some light on this, the

present burning question in their lives, the question that from

necessity of silence tortured them almost beyond bearing; for

even Timothy had now been told, and the effect on his health was

little short of alarming. And what, too, would June do? This,

also, was a most exciting, if dangerous speculation!

They had never forgotten old Jolyon’s visit, since when he had

not once been to see them; they had never forgotten the feeling

it gave all who were present, that the family was no longer what

it had been—that the family was breaking up.

But Soames gave them no help, sitting with his knees crossed,

talking of the Barbizon school of painters, whom he had just

discovered. These were the coming men, he said; he should not

wonder if a lot of money were made over them; he had his eye on

two pictures by a man called Corot, charming things; if he could

get them at a reasonable price he was going to buy them—they

would, he thought, fetch a big price some day.

Interested as they could not but be, neither Mrs. Septimus Small

nor Aunt Hester could entirely acquiesce in being thus put off.

It was interesting—most interesting—and then Soames was so clever

that they were sure he would do something with those pictures if

anybody could; but what was his plan now that he had won his

case; was he going to leave London at once, and live in the

country, or what was he going to do?

Soames answered that he did not know, he thought they should be

moving soon. He rose and kissed his aunts.

No sooner had Aunt Juley received this emblem of departure than a

change came over her, as though she were being visited by

dreadful courage; every little roll of flesh on her face seemed

trying to escape from an invisible, confining mask.

She rose to the full extent of her more than medium height, and

said: “It has been on my mind a long time, dear, and if nobody

else will tell you, I have made up my mind that....”

Aunt Hester interrupted her: “Mind, Julia, you do it....” she

gasped—“on your own responsibility!”

Mrs. Small went on as though she had not heard: “I think you

_ought_ to know, dear, that Mrs. MacAnder saw Irene walking in

Richmond Park with Mr. Bosinney.”

Aunt Hester, who had also risen, sank back in her chair, and

turned her face away. Really Juley was too—she should not do such

things when she—Aunt Hester, was in the room; and, breathless

with anticipation, she waited for what Soames would answer.

He had flushed the peculiar flush which always centred between

his eyes; lifting his hand, and, as it were, selecting a finger,

he bit a nail delicately; then, drawling it out between set lips,

he said: “Mrs. MacAnder is a cat!”

Without waiting for any reply, he left the room.

When he went into Timothy’s he had made up his mind what course

to pursue on getting home. He would go up to Irene and say:

“Well, I’ve won my case, and there’s an end of it! I don’t want

to be hard on Bosinney; I’ll see if we can’t come to some

arrangement; he shan’t be pressed. And now let’s turn over a new

leaf! We’ll let the house, and get out of these fogs. We’ll go

down to Robin Hill at once. I—I never meant to be rough with you!

Let’s shake hands—and—” Perhaps she would let him kiss her, and

forget!

When he came out of Timothy’s his intentions were no longer so

simple. The smouldering jealousy and suspicion of months blazed

up within him. He would put an end to that sort of thing once and

for all; he would not have her drag his name in the dirt! If she

could not or would not love him, as was her duty and his

right—she should not play him tricks with anyone else! He would

tax her with it; threaten to divorce her! That would make her

behave; she would never face that. But—but—what if she did? He

was staggered; this had not occurred to him.

What if she did? What if she made him a confession? How would he

stand then? He would have to bring a divorce!

A divorce! Thus close, the word was paralyzing, so utterly at

variance with all the principles that had hitherto guided his

life. Its lack of compromise appalled him; he felt—like the

captain of a ship, going to the side of his vessel, and, with his

own hands throwing over the most precious of his bales. This

jettisoning of his property with his own hand seemed uncanny to

Soames. It would injure him in his profession: He would have to

get rid of the house at Robin Hill, on which he had spent so much

money, so much anticipation—and at a sacrifice. And she! She

would no longer belong to him, not even in name! She would pass

out of his life, and he—he should never see her again!

He traversed in the cab the length of a street without getting

beyond the thought that he should never see her again!

But perhaps there was nothing to confess, even now very likely

there was nothing to confess. Was it wise to push things so far?

Was it wise to put himself into a position where he might have to

eat his words? The result of this case would ruin Bosinney; a

ruined man was desperate, but—what could he do? He might go

abroad, ruined men always went abroad. What could _they_ do—if

indeed it _was_ “_they_”—without money? It would be better to

wait and see how things turned out. If necessary, he could have

her watched. The agony of his jealousy (for all the world like

the crisis of an aching tooth) came on again; and he almost cried

out. But he must decide, fix on some course of action before he

got home. When the cab drew up at the door, he had decided

nothing.

He entered, pale, his hands moist with perspiration, dreading to

meet her, burning to meet her, ignorant of what he was to say or

do.

The maid Bilson was in the hall, and in answer to his question:

“Where is your mistress?” told him that Mrs. Forsyte had left the

house about noon, taking with her a trunk and bag.

Snatching the sleeve of his fur coat away from her grasp, he

confronted her:

“What?” he exclaimed; “what’s that you said?” Suddenly

recollecting that he must not betray emotion, he added: “What

message did she leave?” and noticed with secret terror the

startled look of the maid’s eyes.

“Mrs. Forsyte left no message, sir.”

“No message; very well, thank you, that will do. I shall be

dining out.”

The maid went downstairs, leaving him still in his fur coat, idly

turning over the visiting cards in the porcelain bowl that stood

on the carved oak rug chest in the hall.

Mr. and Mrs. Bareham Culcher.

Mrs. Septimus Small.

Mrs. Baynes.

Mr. Solomon Thornworthy.

Lady Bellis.

Miss Hermione Bellis.

Miss Winifred Bellis.

Miss Ella Bellis.

Who the devil were all these people? He seemed to have forgotten

all familiar things. The words “no message—a trunk, and a bag,”

played a hide-and-seek in his brain. It was incredible that she

had left no message, and, still in his fur coat, he ran upstairs

two steps at a time, as a young married man when he comes home

will run up to his wife’s room.

Everything was dainty, fresh, sweet-smelling; everything in

perfect order. On the great bed with its lilac silk quilt, was

the bag she had made and embroidered with her own hands to hold

her sleeping things; her slippers ready at the foot; the sheets

even turned over at the head as though expecting her.

On the table stood the silver-mounted brushes and bottles from

her dressing bag, his own present. There must, then, be some

mistake. What bag had she taken? He went to the bell to summon

Bilson, but remembered in time that he must assume knowledge of

where Irene had gone, take it all as a matter of course, and

grope out the meaning for himself.

He locked the doors, and tried to think, but felt his brain going

round; and suddenly tears forced themselves into his eyes.

Hurriedly pulling off his coat, he looked at himself in the

mirror.

He was too pale, a greyish tinge all over his face; he poured out

water, and began feverishly washing.

Her silver-mounted brushes smelt faintly of the perfumed lotion

she used for her hair; and at this scent the burning sickness of

his jealousy seized him again.

Struggling into his fur, he ran downstairs and out into the

street.

He had not lost all command of himself, however, and as he went

down Sloane Street he framed a story for use, in case he should

not find her at Bosinney’s. But if he should? His power of

decision again failed; he reached the house without knowing what

he should do if he did find her there.

It was after office hours, and the street door was closed; the

woman who opened it could not say whether Mr. Bosinney were in or

no; she had not seen him that day, not for two or three days; she

did not attend to him now, nobody attended to him, he....

Soames interrupted her, he would go up and see for himself. He

went up with a dogged, white face.

The top floor was unlighted, the door closed, no one answered his

ringing, he could hear no sound. He was obliged to descend,

shivering under his fur, a chill at his heart. Hailing a cab, he

told the man to drive to Park Lane.

On the way he tried to recollect when he had last given her a

cheque; she could not have more than three or four pounds, but

there were her jewels; and with exquisite torture he remembered

how much money she could raise on these; enough to take them

abroad; enough for them to live on for months! He tried to

calculate; the cab stopped, and he got out with the calculation

unmade.

The butler asked whether Mrs. Soames was in the cab, the master

had told him they were both expected to dinner.

Soames answered: “No. Mrs. Forsyte has a cold.”

The butler was sorry.

Soames thought he was looking at him inquisitively, and

remembering that he was not in dress clothes, asked: “Anybody

here to dinner, Warmson?”

“Nobody but Mr. and Mrs. Dartie, sir.”

Again it seemed to Soames that the butler was looking curiously

at him. His composure gave way.

“What are you looking at?” he said. “What’s the matter with me,

eh?”

The butler blushed, hung up the fur coat, murmured something that

sounded like: “Nothing, sir, I’m sure, sir,” and stealthily

withdrew.

Soames walked upstairs. Passing the drawing-room without a look,

he went straight up to his mother’s and father’s bedroom.

James, standing sideways, the concave lines of his tall, lean

figure displayed to advantage in shirt-sleeves and evening

waistcoat, his head bent, the end of his white tie peeping askew

from underneath one white Dundreary whisker, his eyes peering

with intense concentration, his lips pouting, was hooking the top

hooks of his wife’s bodice. Soames stopped; he felt half-choked,

whether because he had come upstairs too fast, or for some other

reason. He—he himself had never—never been asked to....

He heard his father’s voice, as though there were a pin in his

mouth, saying: “Who’s that? Who’s there? What d’you want?” His

mother’s: “Here, Félice, come and hook this; your master’ll never

get done.”

He put his hand up to his throat, and said hoarsely:

“It’s I—Soames!”

He noticed gratefully the affectionate surprise in Emily’s:

“Well, my dear boy?” and James’, as he dropped the hook: “What,

Soames! What’s brought you up? Aren’t you well?”

He answered mechanically: “I’m all right,” and looked at them,

and it seemed impossible to bring out his news.

James, quick to take alarm, began: “You don’t look well. I expect

you’ve taken a chill—it’s liver, I shouldn’t wonder. Your

mother’ll give you....”

But Emily broke in quietly: “Have you brought Irene?”

Soames shook his head.

“No,” he stammered, “she—she’s left me!”

Emily deserted the mirror before which she was standing. Her

tall, full figure lost its majesty and became very human as she

came running over to Soames.

“My dear boy! My _dear_ boy!”

She put her lips to his forehead, and stroked his hand.

James, too, had turned full towards his son; his face looked

older.

“Left you?” he said. “What d’you mean—left you? You never told me

she was going to leave you.”

Soames answered surlily: “How could I tell? What’s to be done?”

James began walking up and down; he looked strange and stork-like

without a coat. “What’s to be done!” he muttered. “How should I

know what’s to be done? What’s the good of asking me? Nobody

tells me anything, and then they come and ask me what’s to be

done; and I should like to know how I’m to tell them! Here’s your

mother, there she stands; _she_ doesn’t say anything. What _I_

should say you’ve got to do is to follow her..”

Soames smiled; his peculiar, supercilious smile had never before

looked pitiable.

“I don’t know where she’s gone,” he said.

“Don’t know where she’s gone!” said James. “How d’you mean, don’t

know where she’s gone? Where d’you suppose she’s gone? She’s gone

after that young Bosinney, that’s where she’s gone. I knew how it

would be.”

Soames, in the long silence that followed, felt his mother

pressing his hand. And all that passed seemed to pass as though

his own power of thinking or doing had gone to sleep.

His father’s face, dusky red, twitching as if he were going to

cry, and words breaking out that seemed rent from him by some

spasm in his soul.

“There’ll be a scandal; I always said so.” Then, no one saying

anything: “And there you stand, you and your mother!”

And Emily’s voice, calm, rather contemptuous: “Come, now, James!

Soames will do all that he can.”

And James, staring at the floor, a little brokenly: “Well, I

can’t help you; I’m getting old. Don’t you be in too great a

hurry, my boy.”

And his mother’s voice again: “Soames will do all he can to get

her back. We won’t talk of it. It’ll all come right, I dare say.”

And James: “Well, I can’t see how it can come right. And if she

hasn’t gone off with that young Bosinney, my advice to you is not

to listen to her, but to follow her and get her back.”

Once more Soames felt his mother stroking his hand, in token of

her approval, and as though repeating some form of sacred oath,

he muttered between his teeth: “I will!”

All three went down to the drawing-room together. There, were

gathered the three girls and Dartie; had Irene been present, the

family circle would have been complete.

James sank into his armchair, and except for a word of cold

greeting to Dartie, whom he both despised and dreaded, as a man

likely to be always in want of money, he said nothing till dinner

was announced. Soames, too, was silent; Emily alone, a woman of

cool courage, maintained a conversation with Winifred on trivial

subjects. She was never more composed in her manner and

conversation than that evening.

A decision having been come to not to speak of Irene’s flight, no

view was expressed by any other member of the family as to the

right course to be pursued; there can be little doubt, from the

general tone adopted in relation to events as they afterwards

turned out, that James’s advice: “Don’t you listen to her, follow

her and get her back!” would, with here and there an exception,

have been regarded as sound, not only in Park Lane, but amongst

the Nicholases, the Rogers, and at Timothy’s. Just as it would

surely have been endorsed by that wider body of Forsytes all over

London, who were merely excluded from judgment by ignorance of

the story.

In spite then of Emily’s efforts, the dinner was served by

Warmson and the footman almost in silence. Dartie was sulky, and

drank all he could get; the girls seldom talked to each other at

any time. James asked once where June was, and what she was doing

with herself in these days. No one could tell him. He sank back

into gloom. Only when Winifred recounted how little Publius had

given his bad penny to a beggar, did he brighten up.

“Ah!” he said, “that’s a clever little chap. I don’t know what’ll

become of him, if he goes on like this. An intelligent little

chap, I call him!” But it was only a flash.

The courses succeeded one another solemnly, under the electric

light, which glared down onto the table, but barely reached the

principal ornament of the walls, a so-called “Sea Piece by

Turner,” almost entirely composed of cordage and drowning men.

Champagne was handed, and then a bottle of James’ prehistoric

port, but as by the chill hand of some skeleton.