And so a month went by—a month of summer in the fields, and in

his heart, with summer’s heat and the fatigue thereof. Who could

have believed a few weeks back that he would have looked forward

to his son’s and his grand-daughter’s return with something like

dread! There was such a delicious freedom, such recovery of that

independence a man enjoys before he founds a family, about these

weeks of lovely weather, and this new companionship with one who

demanded nothing, and remained always a little unknown, retaining

the fascination of mystery. It was like a draught of wine to him

who has been drinking water for so long that he has almost

forgotten the stir wine brings to his blood, the narcotic to his

brain. The flowers were coloured brighter, scents and music and

the sunlight had a living value—were no longer mere reminders of

past enjoyment. There was something now to live for which stirred

him continually to anticipation. He lived in that, not in

retrospection; the difference is considerable to any so old as

he. The pleasures of the table, never of much consequence to one

naturally abstemious, had lost all value. He ate little, without

knowing what he ate; and every day grew thinner and more worn to

look at. He was again a “threadpaper”. and to this thinned form

his massive forehead, with hollows at the temples, gave more

dignity than ever. He was very well aware that he ought to see

the doctor, but liberty was too sweet. He could not afford to pet

his frequent shortness of breath and the pain in his side at the

expense of liberty. Return to the vegetable existence he had led

among the agricultural journals with the life-size mangold

wurzels, before this new attraction came into his life—no! He

exceeded his allowance of cigars. Two a day had always been his

rule. Now he smoked three and sometimes four—a man will when he

is filled with the creative spirit. But very often he thought: “I

must give up smoking, and coffee; I must give up rattling up to

town.” But he did not; there was no one in any sort of authority

to notice him, and this was a priceless boon. The servants

perhaps wondered, but they were, naturally, dumb. Mam’zelle

Beauce was too concerned with her own digestion, and too

“well-brrred” to make personal allusions. Holly had not as yet an

eye for the relative appearance of him who was her plaything and

her god. It was left for Irene herself to beg him to eat more, to

rest in the hot part of the day, to take a tonic, and so forth.

But she did not tell him that she was the cause of his

thinness—for one cannot see the havoc oneself is working. A man

of eighty-five has no passions, but the Beauty which produces

passion works on in the old way, till death closes the eyes which

crave the sight of Her.

On the first day of the second week in July he received a letter

from his son in Paris to say that they would all be back on

Friday. This had always been more sure than Fate; but, with the

pathetic improvidence given to the old, that they may endure to

the end, he had never quite admitted it. Now he did, and

something would have to be done. He had ceased to be able to

imagine life without this new interest, but that which is not

imagined sometimes exists, as Forsytes are perpetually finding to

their cost. He sat in his old leather chair, doubling up the

letter, and mumbling with his lips the end of an unlighted cigar.

After to-morrow his Tuesday expeditions to town would have to be

abandoned. He could still drive up, perhaps, once a week, on the

pretext of seeing his man of business. But even that would be

dependent on his health, for now they would begin to fuss about

him. The lessons! The lessons must go on! She must swallow down

her scruples, and June must put her feelings in her pocket. She

had done so once, on the day after the news of Bosinney’s death;

what she had done then, she could surely do again now. Four years

since that injury was inflicted on her—not Christian to keep the

memory of old sores alive. June’s will was strong, but his was

stronger, for his sands were running out. Irene was soft, surely

she would do this for him, subdue her natural shrinking, sooner

than give him pain! The lessons must continue; for if they did,

he was secure. And lighting his cigar at last, he began trying to

shape out how to put it to them all, and explain this strange

intimacy; how to veil and wrap it away from the naked truth—that

he could not bear to be deprived of the sight of beauty. Ah!

Holly! Holly was fond of her, Holly liked her lessons. She would

save him—his little sweet! And with that happy thought he became

serene, and wondered what he had been worrying about so

fearfully. He must not worry, it left him always curiously weak,

and as if but half present in his own body.

That evening after dinner he had a return of the dizziness,

though he did not faint. He would not ring the bell, because he

knew it would mean a fuss, and make his going up on the morrow

more conspicuous. When one grew old, the whole world was in

conspiracy to limit freedom, and for what reason?—just to keep

the breath in him a little longer. He did not want it at such

cost. Only the dog Balthasar saw his lonely recovery from that

weakness; anxiously watched his master go to the sideboard and

drink some brandy, instead of giving him a biscuit. When at last

old Jolyon felt able to tackle the stairs he went up to bed. And,

though still shaky next morning, the thought of the evening

sustained and strengthened him. It was always such a pleasure to

give her a good dinner—he suspected her of undereating when she

was alone; and, at the opera to watch her eyes glow and brighten,

the unconscious smiling of her lips. She hadn’t much pleasure,

and this was the last time he would be able to give her that

treat. But when he was packing his bag he caught himself wishing

that he had not the fatigue of dressing for dinner before him,

and the exertion, too, of telling her about June’s return.

The opera that evening was “Carmen,” and he chose the last

_entr’acte_ to break the news, instinctively putting it off till

the latest moment.

She took it quietly, queerly; in fact, he did not know how she

had taken it before the wayward music lifted up again and silence

became necessary. The mask was down over her face, that mask

behind which so much went on that he could not see. She wanted

time to think it over, no doubt! He would not press her, for she

would be coming to give her lesson to-morrow afternoon, and he

should see her then when she had got used to the idea. In the cab

he talked only of the Carmen; he had seen better in the old days,

but this one was not bad at all. When he took her hand to say

good-night, she bent quickly forward and kissed his forehead.

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

“To-morrow then,” he said. “Good-night. Sleep well.” She echoed

softly: “Sleep well” and from the cab window, already moving

away, he saw her face screwed round towards him, and her hand put

out in a gesture which seemed to linger.

He sought his room slowly. They never gave him the same, and he

could not get used to these “spick-and-spandy” bedrooms with new

furniture and grey-green carpets sprinkled all over with pink

roses. He was wakeful and that wretched Habanera kept throbbing

in his head.

His French had never been equal to its words, but its sense he

knew, if it had any sense, a gipsy thing—wild and unaccountable.

Well, there _was_ in life something which upset all your care and

plans—something which made men and women dance to its pipes. And

he lay staring from deep-sunk eyes into the darkness where the

unaccountable held sway. You thought you had hold of life, but it

slipped away behind you, took you by the scruff of the neck,

forced you here and forced you there, and then, likely as not,

squeezed life out of you! It took the very stars like that, he

shouldn’t wonder, rubbed their noses together and flung them

apart; it had never done playing its pranks. Five million people

in this great blunderbuss of a town, and all of them at the mercy

of that Life-Force, like a lot of little dried peas hopping about

on a board when you struck your fist on it. Ah, well! Himself

would not hop much longer—a good long sleep would do him good!

How hot it was up here!—how noisy! His forehead burned; she had

kissed it just where he always worried; just there—as if she had

known the very place and wanted to kiss it all away for him. But,

instead, her lips left a patch of grievous uneasiness. She had

never spoken in quite that voice, had never before made that

lingering gesture or looked back at him as she drove away.

He got out of bed and pulled the curtains aside; his room faced

down over the river. There was little air, but the sight of that

breadth of water flowing by, calm, eternal, soothed him. “The

great thing,” he thought “is not to make myself a nuisance. I’ll

think of my little sweet, and go to sleep.” But it was long

before the heat and throbbing of the London night died out into

the short slumber of the summer morning. And old Jolyon had but

forty winks.

When he reached home next day he went out to the flower garden,

and with the help of Holly, who was very delicate with flowers,

gathered a great bunch of carnations. They were, he told her, for

“the lady in grey”—a name still bandied between them; and he put

them in a bowl in his study where he meant to tackle Irene the

moment she came, on the subject of June and future lessons. Their

fragrance and colour would help. After lunch he lay down, for he

felt very tired, and the carriage would not bring her from the

station till four o’clock. But as the hour approached he grew

restless, and sought the schoolroom, which overlooked the drive.

The sun-blinds were down, and Holly was there with Mademoiselle

Beauce, sheltered from the heat of a stifling July day, attending

to their silkworms. Old Jolyon had a natural antipathy to these

methodical creatures, whose heads and colour reminded him of

elephants; who nibbled such quantities of holes in nice green

leaves; and smelled, as he thought, horrid. He sat down on a

chintz-covered windowseat whence he could see the drive, and get

what air there was; and the dog Balthasar who appreciated chintz

on hot days, jumped up beside him. Over the cottage piano a

violet dust-sheet, faded almost to grey, was spread, and on it

the first lavender, whose scent filled the room. In spite of the

coolness here, perhaps because of that coolness the beat of life

vehemently impressed his ebbed-down senses. Each sunbeam which

came through the chinks had annoying brilliance; that dog smelled

very strong; the lavender perfume was overpowering; those

silkworms heaving up their grey-green backs seemed horribly

alive; and Holly’s dark head bent over them had a wonderfully

silky sheen. A marvellous cruelly strong thing was life when you

were old and weak; it seemed to mock you with its multitude of

forms and its beating vitality. He had never, till those last few

weeks, had this curious feeling of being with one half of him

eagerly borne along in the stream of life, and with the other

half left on the bank, watching that helpless progress. Only when

Irene was with him did he lose this double consciousness.

Holly turned her head, pointed with her little brown fist to the

piano—for to point with a finger was not “well-brrred”—and said

slyly:

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

Old Jolyon’s heart gave a flutter, and for a second the room was

clouded; then it cleared, and he said with a twinkle:

“Who’s been dressing her up?”

“Mam’zelle.”

“Hollee! Don’t be foolish!”

That prim little Frenchwoman! She hadn’t yet got over the music

lessons being taken away from her. That wouldn’t help. His little

sweet was the only friend they had. Well, they were her lessons.

And he shouldn’t budge shouldn’t budge for anything. He stroked

the warm wool on Balthasar’s head, and heard Holly say: “When

mother’s home, there won’t be any changes, will there? She

doesn’t like strangers, you know.”

The child’s words seemed to bring the chilly atmosphere of

opposition about old Jolyon, and disclose all the menace to his

new-found freedom. Ah! He would have to resign himself to being

an old man at the mercy of care and love, or fight to keep this

new and prized companionship; and to fight tired him to death.

But his thin, worn face hardened into resolution till it appeared

all Jaw. This was his house, and his affair; he should not budge!

He looked at his watch, old and thin like himself; he had owned

it fifty years. Past four already! And kissing the top of Holly’s

head in passing, he went down to the hall. He wanted to get hold

of her before she went up to give her lesson. At the first sound

of wheels he stepped out into the porch, and saw at once that the

victoria was empty.

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

Old Jolyon gave him a sharp upward look, his eyes seemed to push

away that fat chap’s curiosity, and defy him to see the bitter

disappointment he was feeling.

“Very well,” he said, and turned back into the house. He went to

his study and sat down, quivering like a leaf. What did this

mean? She might have lost her train, but he knew well enough she

hadn’t. “Good-bye, dear Uncle Jolyon.” Why “Good-bye” and not

“Good-night”. And that hand of hers lingering in the air. And her

kiss. What did it mean? Vehement alarm and irritation took

possession of him. He got up and began to pace the Turkey carpet,

between window and wall. She was going to give him up! He felt it

for certain—and he defenceless. An old man wanting to look on

beauty! It was ridiculous! Age closed his mouth, paralysed his

power to fight. He had no right to what was warm and living, no

right to anything but memories and sorrow. He could not plead

with her; even an old man has his dignity. Defenceless! For an

hour, lost to bodily fatigue, he paced up and down, past the bowl

of carnations he had plucked, which mocked him with its scent. Of

all things hard to bear, the prostration of will-power is

hardest, for one who has always had his way. Nature had got him

in its net, and like an unhappy fish he turned and swam at the

meshes, here and there, found no hole, no breaking point. They

brought him tea at five o’clock, and a letter. For a moment hope

beat up in him. He cut the envelope with the butter knife, and

read:

“DEAREST UNCLE JOLYON,—I can’t bear to write anything that may

disappoint you, but I was too cowardly to tell you last night. I

feel I can’t come down and give Holly any more lessons, now that

June is coming back. Some things go too deep to be forgotten. It

has been such a joy to see you and Holly. Perhaps I shall still

see you sometimes when you come up, though I’m sure it’s not good

for you; I can see you are tiring yourself too much. I believe

you ought to rest quite quietly all this hot weather, and now you

have your son and June coming back you will be so happy. Thank

you a million times for all your sweetness to me.

“Lovingly your

IRENE.”

So, there it was! Not good for him to have pleasure and what he

chiefly cared about; to try and put off feeling the inevitable

end of all things, the approach of death with its stealthy,

rustling footsteps. Not good for him! Not even she could see how

she was his new lease of interest in life, the incarnation of all

the beauty he felt slipping from him.

His tea grew cold, his cigar remained unlit; and up and down he

paced, torn between his dignity and his hold on life. Intolerable

to be squeezed out slowly, without a say of your own, to live on

when your will was in the hands of others bent on weighing you to

the ground with care and love. Intolerable! He would see what

telling her the truth would do—the truth that he wanted the sight

of her more than just a lingering on. He sat down at his old

bureau and took a pen. But he could not write. There was

something revolting in having to plead like this; plead that she

should warm his eyes with her beauty. It was tantamount to

confessing dotage. He simply could not. And instead, he wrote:

“I had hoped that the memory of old sores would not be allowed to

stand in the way of what is a pleasure and a profit to me and my

little grand-daughter. But old men learn to forego their whims;

they are obliged to, even the whim to live must be foregone

sooner or later; and perhaps the sooner the better.

“My love to you,

“JOLYON FORSYTE.”

“Bitter,” he thought, “but I can’t help it. I’m tired.” He sealed

and dropped it into the box for the evening post, and hearing it

fall to the bottom, thought: “There goes all I’ve looked forward

to!”

That evening after dinner which he scarcely touched, after his

cigar which he left half-smoked for it made him feel faint, he

went very slowly upstairs and stole into the night-nursery. He

sat down on the window-seat. A night-light was burning, and he

could just see Holly’s face, with one hand underneath the cheek.

An early cockchafer buzzed in the Japanese paper with which they

had filled the grate, and one of the horses in the stable stamped

restlessly. To sleep like that child! He pressed apart two rungs

of the venetian blind and looked out. The moon was rising,

blood-red. He had never seen so red a moon. The woods and fields

out there were dropping to sleep too, in the last glimmer of the

summer light. And beauty, like a spirit, walked. “I’ve had a long

life,” he thought, “the best of nearly everything. I’m an

ungrateful chap; I’ve seen a lot of beauty in my time. Poor young

Bosinney said I had a sense of beauty. There’s a man in the moon

to-night!” A moth went by, another, another. “Ladies in grey!” He

closed his eyes. A feeling that he would never open them again

beset him; he let it grow, let himself sink; then, with a shiver,

dragged the lids up. There was something wrong with him, no

doubt, deeply wrong; he would have to have the doctor after all.

It didn’t much matter now! Into that coppice the moonlight would

have crept; there would be shadows, and those shadows would be

the only things awake. No birds, beasts, flowers, insects; Just

the shadows —moving; “Ladies in grey!” Over that log they would

climb; would whisper together. She and Bosinney! Funny thought!

And the frogs and little things would whisper too! How the clock

ticked, in here! It was all eerie—out there in the light of that

red moon; in here with the little steady night-light and, the

ticking clock and the nurse’s dressing-gown hanging from the edge

of the screen, tall, like a woman’s figure. “Lady in grey!” And a

very odd thought beset him: Did she exist? Had she ever come at

all? Or was she but the emanation of all the beauty he had loved

and must leave so soon? The violet-grey spirit with the dark eyes

and the crown of amber hair, who walks the dawn and the

moonlight, and at blue-bell time? What was she, who was she, did

she exist? He rose and stood a moment clutching the window-sill,

to give him a sense of reality again; then began tiptoeing

towards the door. He stopped at the foot of the bed; and Holly,

as if conscious of his eyes fixed on her, stirred, sighed, and

curled up closer in defence. He tiptoed on and passed out into

the dark passage; reached his room, undressed at once, and stood

before a mirror in his night-shirt. What a scarecrow—with temples

fallen in, and thin legs! His eyes resisted his own image, and a

look of pride came on his face. All was in league to pull him

down, even his reflection in the glass, but he was not down—yet!

He got into bed, and lay a long time without sleeping, trying to

reach resignation, only too well aware that fretting and

disappointment were very bad for him.

He woke in the morning so unrefreshed and strengthless that he

sent for the doctor. After sounding him, the fellow pulled a face

as long as your arm, and ordered him to stay in bed and give up

smoking. That was no hardship; there was nothing to get up for,

and when he felt ill, tobacco always lost its savour. He spent

the morning languidly with the sun-blinds down, turning and

re-turning _The Times_, not reading much, the dog Balthasar lying

beside his bed. With his lunch they brought him a telegram,

running thus:

“Your letter received coming down this afternoon will be with you

at four-thirty. Irene.”

Coming down! After all! Then she did exist—and he was not

deserted. Coming down! A glow ran through his limbs; his cheeks

and forehead felt hot. He drank his soup, and pushed the

tray-table away, lying very quiet until they had removed lunch

and left him alone; but every now and then his eyes twinkled.

Coming down! His heart beat fast, and then did not seem to beat

at all. At three o’clock he got up and dressed deliberately,

noiselessly. Holly and Mam’zelle would be in the schoolroom, and

the servants asleep after their dinner, he shouldn’t wonder. He

opened his door cautiously, and went downstairs. In the hall the

dog Balthasar lay solitary, and, followed by him, old Jolyon

passed into his study and out into the burning afternoon. He

meant to go down and meet her in the coppice, but felt at once he

could not manage that in this heat. He sat down instead under the

oak tree by the swing, and the dog Balthasar, who also felt the

heat, lay down beside him. He sat there smiling. What a revel of

bright minutes! What a hum of insects, and cooing of pigeons! It

was the quintessence of a summer day. Lovely! And he was

happy—happy as a sand-boy, whatever that might be. She was

coming; she had not given him up! He had everything in life he

wanted—except a little more breath, and less weight—just here! He

would see her when she emerged from the fernery, come swaying

just a little, a violet-grey figure passing over the daisies and

dandelions and “soldiers” on the lawn—the soldiers with their

flowery crowns. He would not move, but she would come up to him

and say: “Dear Uncle Jolyon, I am sorry!” and sit in the swing

and let him look at her and tell her that he had not been very

well but was all right now; and that dog would lick her hand.

That dog knew his master was fond of her; that dog was a good

dog.

It was quite shady under the tree; the sun could not get at him,

only make the rest of the world bright so that he could see the

Grand Stand at Epsom away out there, very far, and the cows

cropping the clover in the field and swishing at the flies with

their tails. He smelled the scent of limes, and lavender. Ah!

that was why there was such a racket of bees. They were

excited—busy, as his heart was busy and excited. Drowsy, too,

drowsy and drugged on honey and happiness; as his heart was

drugged and drowsy. Summer—summer—they seemed saying; great bees

and little bees, and the flies too!

The stable clock struck four; in half an hour she would be here.

He would have just one tiny nap, because he had had so little

sleep of late; and then he would be fresh for her, fresh for

youth and beauty, coming towards him across the sunlit lawn—lady

in grey! And settling back in his chair he closed his eyes. Some

thistle-down came on what little air there was, and pitched on

his moustache more white than itself. He did not know; but his

breathing stirred it, caught there. A ray of sunlight struck

through and lodged on his boot. A bumble-bee alighted and

strolled on the crown of his Panama hat. And the delicious surge

of slumber reached the brain beneath that hat, and the head

swayed forward and rested on his breast. Summer—summer! So went

the hum.

The stable clock struck the quarter past. The dog Balthasar

stretched and looked up at his master. The thistledown no longer

moved. The dog placed his chin over the sunlit foot. It did not

stir. The dog withdrew his chin quickly, rose, and leaped on old

Jolyon’s lap, looked in his face, whined; then, leaping down, sat

on his haunches, gazing up. And suddenly he uttered a long, long

howl.

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

master.

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

IN CHANCERY

Two households both alike in dignity,

From ancient grudge, break into new mutiny.

—_Romeo and Juliet_

TO JESSIE AND JOSEPH CONRAD

PART 1

CHAPTER I AT TIMOTHY’S

The possessive instinct never stands still. Through florescence

and feud, frosts and fires, it followed the laws of progression

even in the Forsyte family which had believed it fixed for ever.

Nor can it be dissociated from environment any more than the

quality of potato from the soil.

The historian of the English eighties and nineties will, in his

good time, depict the somewhat rapid progression from

self-contented and contained provincialism to still more

self-contented if less contained imperialism—in other words, the

“possessive” instinct of the nation on the move. And so, as if in

conformity, was it with the Forsyte family. They were spreading

not merely on the surface, but within.

When, in 1895, Susan Hayman, the married Forsyte sister, followed

her husband at the ludicrously low age of seventy-four, and was

cremated, it made strangely little stir among the six old

Forsytes left. For this apathy there were three causes. First:

the almost surreptitious burial of old Jolyon in 1892 down at

Robin Hill—first of the Forsytes to desert the family grave at

Highgate. That burial, coming a year after Swithin’s entirely

proper funeral, had occasioned a great deal of talk on Forsyte

’Change, the abode of Timothy Forsyte on the Bayswater Road,

London, which still collected and radiated family gossip.

Opinions ranged from the lamentation of Aunt Juley to the

outspoken assertion of Francie that it was “a jolly good thing to

stop all that stuffy Highgate business.” Uncle Jolyon in his

later years—indeed, ever since the strange and lamentable affair

between his granddaughter June’s lover, young Bosinney, and

Irene, his nephew Soames Forsyte’s wife—had noticeably rapped the

family’s knuckles; and that way of his own which he had always

taken had begun to seem to them a little wayward. The philosophic

vein in him, of course, had always been too liable to crop out of

the strata of pure Forsyteism, so they were in a way prepared for

his interment in a strange spot. But the whole thing was an odd

business, and when the contents of his Will became current coin

on Forsyte ’Change, a shiver had gone round the clan. Out of his

estate (£145,304 gross, with liabilities £35 7s. 4d.) he had

actually left £15,000 to “whomever do you think, my dear? To

_Irene!_” that runaway wife of his nephew Soames; Irene, a woman

who had almost disgraced the family, and—still more amazing was

to him no blood relation. Not out and out, of course; only a life

interest—only the income from it! Still, there it was; and old

Jolyon’s claim to be the perfect Forsyte was ended once for all.

That, then, was the first reason why the burial of Susan

Hayman—at Woking—made little stir.

The second reason was altogether more expansive and imperial.

Besides the house on Campden Hill, Susan had a place (left her by

Hayman when he died) just over the border in Hants, where the

Hayman boys had learned to be such good shots and riders, as it

was believed, which was of course nice for them, and creditable

to everybody; and the fact of owning something really countrified

seemed somehow to excuse the dispersion of her remains—though

what could have put cremation into her head they could not think!

The usual invitations, however, had been issued, and Soames had

gone down and young Nicholas, and the Will had been quite

satisfactory so far as it went, for she had only had a life

interest; and everything had gone quite smoothly to the children

in equal shares.

The third reason why Susan’s burial made little stir was the most

expansive of all. It was summed up daringly by Euphemia, the

pale, the thin: “Well, _I_ think people have a right to their own

bodies, even when they’re dead.” Coming from a daughter of

Nicholas, a Liberal of the old school and most tyrannical, it was

a startling remark—showing in a flash what a lot of water had run

under bridges since the death of Aunt Ann in ’86, just when the

proprietorship of Soames over his wife’s body was acquiring the

uncertainty which had led to such disaster. Euphemia, of course,

spoke like a child, and had no experience; for though well over

thirty by now, her name was still Forsyte. But, making all

allowances, her remark did undoubtedly show expansion of the

principle of liberty, decentralisation and shift in the central

point of possession from others to oneself. When Nicholas heard

his daughter’s remark from Aunt Hester he had rapped out: “Wives

and daughters! There’s no end to their liberty in these days. I

knew that ‘Jackson’ case would lead to things—lugging in Habeas

Corpus like that!” He had, of course, never really forgiven the

Married Woman’s Property Act, which would so have interfered with

him if he had not mercifully married before it was passed. But,

in truth, there was no denying the revolt among the younger

Forsytes against being owned by others; that, as it were,

Colonial disposition to own oneself, which is the paradoxical

forerunner of Imperialism, was making progress all the time. They

were all now married, except George, confirmed to the Turf and

the Iseeum Club; Francie, pursuing her musical career in a studio

off the King’s Road, Chelsea, and still taking “lovers” to

dances; Euphemia, living at home and complaining of Nicholas; and

those two Dromios, Giles and Jesse Hayman. Of the third

generation there were not very many—young Jolyon had three,

Winifred Dartie four, young Nicholas six already, young Roger had

one, Marian Tweetyman one; St. John Hayman two. But the rest of

the sixteen married—Soames, Rachel and Cicely of James’ family;

Eustace and Thomas of Roger’s; Ernest, Archibald and Florence of

Nicholas’. Augustus and Annabel Spender of the Hayman’s—were

going down the years unreproduced.

Thus, of the ten old Forsytes twenty-one young Forsytes had been

born; but of the twenty-one young Forsytes there were as yet only

seventeen descendants; and it already seemed unlikely that there

would be more than a further unconsidered trifle or so. A student

of statistics must have noticed that the birth rate had varied in

accordance with the rate of interest for your money. Grandfather

“Superior Dosset” Forsyte in the early nineteenth century had

been getting ten per cent. for his, hence ten children. Those

ten, leaving out the four who had not married, and Juley, whose

husband Septimus Small had, of course, died almost at once, had

averaged from four to five per cent. for theirs, and produced

accordingly. The twenty-one whom they produced were now getting

barely three per cent. in the Consols to which their father had

mostly tied the Settlements they made to avoid death duties, and

the six of them who had been reproduced had seventeen children,

or just the proper two and five-sixths per stem.

There were other reasons, too, for this mild reproduction. A

distrust of their earning powers, natural where a sufficiency is

guaranteed, together with the knowledge that their fathers did

not die, kept them cautious. If one had children and not much

income, the standard of taste and comfort must of necessity go

down; what was enough for two was not enough for four, and so

on—it would be better to wait and see what Father did. Besides,

it was nice to be able to take holidays unhampered. Sooner in

fact than own children, they preferred to concentrate on the

ownership of themselves, conforming to the growing tendency _fin

de siècle_, as it was called. In this way, little risk was run,

and one would be able to have a motor-car. Indeed, Eustace

already had one, but it had shaken him horribly, and broken one

of his eye teeth; so that it would be better to wait till they

were a little safer. In the meantime, no more children! Even

young Nicholas was drawing in his horns, and had made no addition

to his six for quite three years.

The corporate decay, however, of the Forsytes, their dispersion

rather, of which all this was symptomatic, had not advanced so

far as to prevent a rally when Roger Forsyte died in 1899. It had

been a glorious summer, and after holidays abroad and at the sea

they were practically all back in London, when Roger with a touch

of his old originality had suddenly breathed his last at his own

house in Princes Gardens. At Timothy’s it was whispered sadly

that poor Roger had always been eccentric about his digestion—had

he not, for instance, preferred German mutton to all the other

brands?

Be that as it may, his funeral at Highgate had been perfect, and

coming away from it Soames Forsyte made almost mechanically for

his Uncle Timothy’s in the Bayswater Road. The “Old Things”—Aunt

Juley and Aunt Hester—would like to hear about it. His

father—James—at eighty-eight had not felt up to the fatigue of

the funeral; and Timothy himself, of course, had not gone; so

that Nicholas had been the only brother present. Still, there had

been a fair gathering; and it would cheer Aunts Juley and Hester

up to know. The kindly thought was not unmixed with the

inevitable longing to get something out of everything you do,

which is the chief characteristic of Forsytes, and indeed of the

saner elements in every nation. In this practice of taking family

matters to Timothy’s in the Bayswater Road, Soames was but

following in the footsteps of his father, who had been in the

habit of going at least once a week to see his sisters at

Timothy’s, and had only given it up when he lost his nerve at

eighty-six, and could not go out without Emily. To go with Emily

was of no use, for who could really talk to anyone in the

presence of his own wife? Like James in the old days, Soames

found time to go there nearly every Sunday, and sit in the little

drawing-room into which, with his undoubted taste, he had

introduced a good deal of change and china not quite up to his

own fastidious mark, and at least two rather doubtful Barbizon

pictures, at Christmastides. He himself, who had done extremely

well with the Barbizons, had for some years past moved towards

the Marises, Israels, and Mauve, and was hoping to do better. In

the riverside house which he now inhabited near Mapledurham he

had a gallery, beautifully hung and lighted, to which few London

dealers were strangers. It served, too, as a Sunday afternoon

attraction in those week-end parties which his sisters, Winifred

or Rachel, occasionally organised for him. For though he was but

a taciturn showman, his quiet collected determinism seldom failed

to influence his guests, who knew that his reputation was

grounded not on mere aesthetic fancy, but on his power of gauging

the future of market values. When he went to Timothy’s he almost

always had some little tale of triumph over a dealer to unfold,

and dearly he loved that coo of pride with which his aunts would

greet it. This afternoon, however, he was differently animated,

coming from Roger’s funeral in his neat dark clothes—not quite

black, for after all an uncle was but an uncle, and his soul

abhorred excessive display of feeling. Leaning back in a

marqueterie chair and gazing down his uplifted nose at the

sky-blue walls plastered with gold frames, he was noticeably

silent. Whether because he had been to a funeral or not, the

peculiar Forsyte build of his face was seen to the best advantage

this afternoon—a face concave and long, with a jaw which divested

of flesh would have seemed extravagant: altogether a chinny face

though not at all ill-looking. He was feeling more strongly than

ever that Timothy’s was hopelessly “rum-ti-too” and the souls of

his aunts dismally mid-Victorian. The subject on which alone he

wanted to talk—his own undivorced position—was unspeakable. And

yet it occupied his mind to the exclusion of all else. It was

only since the Spring that this had been so and a new feeling

grown up which was egging him on towards what he knew might well

be folly in a Forsyte of forty-five. More and more of late he had

been conscious that he was “getting on.” The fortune already

considerable when he conceived the house at Robin Hill which had

finally wrecked his marriage with Irene, had mounted with

surprising vigour in the twelve lonely years during which he had

devoted himself to little else. He was worth to-day well over a

hundred thousand pounds, and had no one to leave it to—no real

object for going on with what was his religion. Even if he were

to relax his efforts, money made money, and he felt that he would

have a hundred and fifty thousand before he knew where he was.

There had always been a strongly domestic, philoprogenitive side

to Soames; baulked and frustrated, it had hidden itself away, but

now had crept out again in this his “prime of life.” Concreted

and focussed of late by the attraction of a girl’s undoubted

beauty, it had become a veritable prepossession.

And this girl was French, not likely to lose her head, or accept

any unlegalised position. Moreover, Soames himself disliked the

thought of that. He had tasted of the sordid side of sex during

those long years of forced celibacy, secretively, and always with

disgust, for he was fastidious, and his sense of law and order

innate. He wanted no hole and corner liaison. A marriage at the

Embassy in Paris, a few months’ travel, and he could bring

Annette back quite separated from a past which in truth was not

too distinguished, for she only kept the accounts in her mother’s

Soho Restaurant; he could bring her back as something very new

and chic with her French taste and self-possession, to reign at

“The Shelter” near Mapledurham. On Forsyte ’Change and among his

riverside friends it would be current that he had met a charming

French girl on his travels and married her. There would be the

flavour of romance, and a certain _cachet_ about a French wife.

No! He was not at all afraid of that. It was only this cursed

undivorced condition of his, and—and the question whether Annette

would take him, which he dared not put to the touch until he had

a clear and even dazzling future to offer her.

In his aunts’ drawing-room he heard with but muffled ears those

usual questions: How was his dear father? Not going out, of

course, now that the weather was turning chilly? Would Soames be

sure to tell him that Hester had found boiled holly leaves most

comforting for that pain in her side; a poultice every three

hours, with red flannel afterwards. And could he relish just a

little pot of their very best prune preserve—it was so delicious

this year, and had such a wonderful effect. Oh! and about the

Darties—_had_ Soames heard that dear Winifred was having a most

distressing time with Montague? Timothy thought she really ought

to have protection It was said—but Soames mustn’t take this for

certain—that he had given some of Winifred’s jewellery to a

dreadful dancer. It was such a bad example for dear Val just as

he was going to college. Soames had not heard? Oh, but he must go

and see his sister and look into it at once! And did he think

these Boers were really going to resist? Timothy was in quite a

stew about it. The price of Consols was so high, and he had such

a lot of money in them. Did Soames think they must go down if

there was a war? Soames nodded. But it would be over very

quickly. It would be so bad for Timothy if it wasn’t. And of

course Soames’ dear father would feel it very much at his age.

Luckily poor dear Roger had been spared this dreadful anxiety.

And Aunt Juley with a little handkerchief wiped away the large

tear trying to climb the permanent pout on her now quite withered

left cheek; she was remembering dear Roger, and all his

originality, and how he used to stick pins into her when they

were little together. Aunt Hester, with her instinct for avoiding

the unpleasant, here chimed in: Did Soames think they would make

Mr. Chamberlain Prime Minister at once? He would settle it all so

quickly. She would like to see that old Kruger sent to St.

Helena. She could remember so well the news of Napoleon’s death,

and what a relief it had been to his grandfather. Of course she

and Juley—“We were in pantalettes then, my dear”—had not felt it

much at the time.

Soames took a cup of tea from her, drank it quickly, and ate

three of those macaroons for which Timothy’s was famous. His

faint, pale, supercilious smile had deepened just a little.

Really, his family remained hopelessly provincial, however much

of London they might possess between them. In these go-ahead days

their provincialism stared out even more than it used to. Why,

old Nicholas was still a Free Trader, and a member of that

antediluvian home of Liberalism, the Remove Club—though, to be

sure, the members were pretty well all Conservatives now, or he

himself could not have joined; and Timothy, they said, still wore

a nightcap. Aunt Juley spoke again. Dear Soames was looking so

well, hardly a day older than he did when dear Ann died, and they

were all there together, dear Jolyon, and dear Swithin, and dear

Roger. She paused and caught the tear which had climbed the pout

on her right cheek. Did he—did he ever hear anything of Irene

nowadays? Aunt Hester visibly interposed her shoulder. Really,

Juley was always saying something! The smile left Soames’ face,

and he put his cup down. Here was his subject broached for him,

and for all his desire to expand, he could not take advantage.

Aunt Juley went on rather hastily:

“They say dear Jolyon first left her that fifteen thousand out

and out; then of course he saw it would not be right, and made it

for her life only.”

Had Soames heard that?

Soames nodded.

“Your cousin Jolyon is a widower now. He is her trustee; you knew

that, of course?”

Soames shook his head. He did know, but wished to show no

interest. Young Jolyon and he had not met since the day of

Bosinney’s death.

“He must be quite middle-aged by now,” went on Aunt Juley

dreamily. “Let me see, he was born when your dear uncle lived in

Mount Street; long before they went to Stanhope Gate in December.

Just before that dreadful Commune. Over fifty! Fancy that! Such a

pretty baby, and we were all so proud of him; the very first of

you all.” Aunt Juley sighed, and a lock of not quite her own hair

came loose and straggled, so that Aunt Hester gave a little

shiver. Soames rose, he was experiencing a curious piece of

self-discovery. That old wound to his pride and self-esteem was

not yet closed. He had come thinking he could talk of it, even

wanting to talk of his fettered condition, and—behold! he was

shrinking away from this reminder by Aunt Juley, renowned for her

Malapropisms.

Oh, Soames was not going already!

Soames smiled a little vindictively, and said:

“Yes. Good-bye. Remember me to Uncle Timothy!” And, leaving a

cold kiss on each forehead, whose wrinkles seemed to try and

cling to his lips as if longing to be kissed away, he left them

looking brightly after him—dear Soames, it had been so good of

him to come to-day, when they were not feeling very...!

With compunction tweaking at his chest Soames descended the

stairs, where was always that rather pleasant smell of camphor

and port wine, and house where draughts are not permitted. The

poor old things—he had not meant to be unkind! And in the street

he instantly forgot them, repossessed by the image of Annette and

the thought of the cursed coil around him. Why had he not pushed

the thing through and obtained divorce when that wretched

Bosinney was run over, and there was evidence galore for the

asking! And he turned towards his sister Winifred Dartie’s

residence in Green Street, Mayfair.

CHAPTER II EXIT A MAN OF THE WORLD

That a man of the world so subject to the vicissitudes of

fortunes as Montague Dartie should still be living in a house he

had inhabited twenty years at least would have been more

noticeable if the rent, rates, taxes, and repairs of that house

had not been defrayed by his father-in-law. By that simple if

wholesale device James Forsyte had secured a certain stability in

the lives of his daughter and his grandchildren. After all, there

is something invaluable about a safe roof over the head of a

sportsman so dashing as Dartie. Until the events of the last few

days he had been almost-supernaturally steady all this year. The

fact was he had acquired a half share in a filly of George

Forsyte’s, who had gone irreparably on the turf, to the horror of

Roger, now stilled by the grave. Sleeve-links, by Martyr, out of

Shirt-on-fire, by Suspender, was a bay filly, three years old,

who for a variety of reasons had never shown her true form. With

half ownership of this hopeful animal, all the idealism latent

somewhere in Dartie, as in every other man, had put up its head,

and kept him quietly ardent for months past. When a man has some

thing good to live for it is astonishing how sober he becomes;

and what Dartie had was really good—a three to one chance for an

autumn handicap, publicly assessed at twenty-five to one. The

old-fashioned heaven was a poor thing beside it, and his shirt

was on the daughter of Shirt-on-fire. But how much more than his

shirt depended on this granddaughter of Suspender! At that roving

age of forty-five, trying to Forsytes—and, though perhaps less

distinguishable from any other age, trying even to

Darties—Montague had fixed his current fancy on a dancer. It was

no mean passion, but without money, and a good deal of it, likely

to remain a love as airy as her skirts; and Dartie never had any

money, subsisting miserably on what he could beg or borrow from

Winifred—a woman of character, who kept him because he was the

father of her children, and from a lingering admiration for those

now-dying Wardour Street good looks which in their youth had

fascinated her. She, together with anyone else who would lend him

anything, and his losses at cards and on the turf (extraordinary

how some men make a good thing out of losses!) were his whole

means of subsistence; for James was now too old and nervous to

approach, and Soames too formidably adamant. It is not too much

to say that Dartie had been living on hope for months. He had

never been fond of money for itself, had always despised the

Forsytes with their investing habits, though careful to make such

use of them as he could. What he liked about money was what it

bought—personal sensation.

“No real sportsman cares for money,” he would say, borrowing a

“pony” if it was no use trying for a “monkey.” There was

something delicious about Montague Dartie. He was, as George

Forsyte said, a “daisy.”

The morning of the Handicap dawned clear and bright, the last day

of September, and Dartie who had travelled to Newmarket the night

before, arrayed himself in spotless checks and walked to an

eminence to see his half of the filly take her final canter: If

she won he would be a cool three thou. in pocket—a poor enough

recompense for the sobriety and patience of these weeks of hope,

while they had been nursing her for this race. But he had not

been able to afford more. Should he “lay it off” at the eight to

one to which she had advanced? This was his single thought while

the larks sang above him, and the grassy downs smelled sweet, and

the pretty filly passed, tossing her head and glowing like satin.

After all, if he lost it would not be he who paid, and to “lay it

off” would reduce his winnings to some fifteen hundred—hardly

enough to purchase a dancer out and out. Even more potent was the

itch in the blood of all the Darties for a real flutter. And

turning to George he said: “She’s a clipper. She’ll win hands

down; I shall go the whole hog.” George, who had laid off every

penny, and a few besides, and stood to win, however it came out,

grinned down on him from his bulky height, with the words: “So

ho, my wild one!” for after a chequered apprenticeship weathered

with the money of a deeply complaining Roger, his Forsyte blood

was beginning to stand him in good stead in the profession of

owner.

There are moments of disillusionment in the lives of men from

which the sensitive recorder shrinks. Suffice it to say that the

good thing fell down. Sleeve-links finished in the ruck. Dartie’s

shirt was lost.

Between the passing of these things and the day when Soames

turned his face towards Green Street, what had not happened!

When a man with the constitution of Montague Dartie has exercised

self-control for months from religious motives, and remains

unrewarded, he does not curse God and die, he curses God and

lives, to the distress of his family.

Winifred—a plucky woman, if a little too fashionable—who had

borne the brunt of him for exactly twenty-one years, had never

really believed that he would do what he now did. Like so many

wives, she thought she knew the worst, but she had not yet known

him in his forty-fifth year, when he, like other men, felt that

it was now or never. Paying on the 2nd of October a visit of

inspection to her jewel case, she was horrified to observe that

her woman’s crown and glory was gone—the pearls which Montague

had given her in ’86, when Benedict was born, and which James had

been compelled to pay for in the spring of ’87, to save scandal.

She consulted her husband at once. He “pooh-poohed” the matter.

They would turn up! Nor till she said sharply: “Very well, then,

Monty, I shall go down to Scotland Yard _myself_,” did he consent

to take the matter in hand. Alas! that the steady and resolved

continuity of design necessary to the accomplishment of sweeping

operations should be liable to interruption by drink. That night

Dartie returned home without a care in the world or a particle of

reticence. Under normal conditions Winifred would merely have

locked her door and let him sleep it off, but torturing suspense

about her pearls had caused her to wait up for him. Taking a

small revolver from his pocket and holding on to the dining

table, he told her at once that he did not care a cursh whether

she lived s’long as she was quiet; but he himself wash tired

orsdquo; life. Winifred, holding onto the other side of the

dining table, answered:

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

Placing the revolver against his chest, Dartie had pulled the

trigger several times. It was not loaded. Dropping it with an

imprecation, he had muttered: “For shake o’ the children,” and

sank into a chair. Winifred, having picked up the revolver, gave

him some soda water. The liquor had a magical effect. Life had

illused him; Winifred had never “unshtood’m.” If he hadn’t the

right to take the pearls he had given her himself, who had? That

Spanish filly had got’m. If Winifred had any ’jection he w’d

cut—her—throat. What was the matter with that? (Probably the

first use of that celebrated phrase—so obscure are the origins of

even the most classical language!)

Winifred, who had learned self-containment in a hard school,

looked up at him, and said: “Spanish filly! Do you mean that girl

we saw dancing in the Pandemonium Ballet? Well, you are a thief

and a blackguard.” It had been the last straw on a sorely loaded

consciousness; reaching up from his chair Dartie seized his

wife’s arm, and recalling the achievements of his boyhood,

twisted it. Winifred endured the agony with tears in her eyes,

but no murmur. Watching for a moment of weakness, she wrenched it

free; then placing the dining table between them, said between

her teeth: “You are the limit, Monty.” (Undoubtedly the inception

of that phrase—so is English formed under the stress of

circumstances.) Leaving Dartie with foam on his dark moustache

she went upstairs, and, after locking her door and bathing her

arm in hot water, lay awake all night, thinking of her pearls

adorning the neck of another, and of the consideration her

husband had presumably received therefor.

The man of the world awoke with a sense of being lost to that

world, and a dim recollection of having been called a “limit.” He

sat for half an hour in the dawn and the armchair where he had

slept—perhaps the unhappiest half-hour he had ever spent, for

even to a Dartie there is something tragic about an end. And he

knew that he had reached it. Never again would he sleep in his

dining-room and wake with the light filtering through those

curtains bought by Winifred at Nickens and Jarveys with the money

of James. Never again eat a devilled kidney at that rose-wood

table, after a roll in the sheets and a hot bath. He took his

note case from his dress coat pocket. Four hundred pounds, in

fives and tens—the remainder of the proceeds of his half of

Sleeve-links, sold last night, cash down, to George Forsyte, who,

having won over the race, had not conceived the sudden dislike to

the animal which he himself now felt. The ballet was going to

Buenos Aires the day after to-morrow, and he was going too. Full

value for the pearls had not yet been received; he was only at

the soup.

He stole upstairs. Not daring to have a bath, or shave (besides,

the water would be cold), he changed his clothes and packed

stealthily all he could. It was hard to leave so many shining

boots, but one must sacrifice something. Then, carrying a valise

in either hand, he stepped out onto the landing. The house was

very quiet—that house where he had begotten his four children. It

was a curious moment, this, outside the room of his wife, once

admired, if not perhaps loved, who had called him “the limit.” He

steeled himself with that phrase, and tiptoed on; but the next

door was harder to pass. It was the room his daughters slept in.

Maud was at school, but Imogen would be lying there; and moisture

came into Dartie’s early morning eyes. She was the most like him

of the four, with her dark hair, and her luscious brown glance.

Just coming out, a pretty thing! He set down the two valises.

This almost formal abdication of fatherhood hurt him. The morning

light fell on a face which worked with real emotion. Nothing so

false as penitence moved him; but genuine paternal feeling, and

that melancholy of “never again.” He moistened his lips; and

complete irresolution for a moment paralysed his legs in their

check trousers. It was hard—hard to be thus compelled to leave

his home! “D—-nit!” he muttered, “I never thought it would come

to this.” Noises above warned him that the maids were beginning

to get up. And grasping the two valises, he tiptoed on

downstairs. His cheeks were wet, and the knowledge of that was

comforting, as though it guaranteed the genuineness of his

sacrifice. He lingered a little in the rooms below, to pack all

the cigars he had, some papers, a crush hat, a silver cigarette

box, a Ruff’s Guide. Then, mixing himself a stiff whisky and

soda, and lighting a cigarette, he stood hesitating before a

photograph of his two girls, in a silver frame. It belonged to

Winifred. “Never mind,” he thought; “she can get another taken,

and I can’t!” He slipped it into the valise. Then, putting on his

hat and overcoat, he took two others, his best malacca cane, an

umbrella, and opened the front door. Closing it softly behind

him, he walked out, burdened as he had never been in all his

life, and made his way round the corner to wait there for an

early cab to come by.

Thus had passed Montague Dartie in the forty-fifth year of his

age from the house which he had called his own.

When Winifred came down, and realised that he was not in the

house, her first feeling was one of dull anger that he should

thus elude the reproaches she had carefully prepared in those

long wakeful hours. He had gone off to Newmarket or Brighton,

with that woman as likely as not. Disgusting! Forced to a

complete reticence before Imogen and the servants, and aware that

her father’s nerves would never stand the disclosure, she had

been unable to refrain from going to Timothy’s that afternoon,

and pouring out the story of the pearls to Aunts Juley and Hester

in utter confidence. It was only on the following morning that

she noticed the disappearance of that photograph. What did it

mean? Careful examination of her husband’s relics prompted the

thought that he had gone for good. As that conclusion hardened

she stood quite still in the middle of his dressing-room, with

all the drawers pulled out, to try and realise what she was

feeling. By no means easy! Though he was “the limit” he was yet

her property, and for the life of her she could not but feel the

poorer. To be widowed yet not widowed at forty-two; with four

children; made conspicuous, an object of commiseration! Gone to

the arms of a Spanish Jade! Memories, feelings, which she had

thought quite dead, revived within her, painful, sullen,

tenacious. Mechanically she closed drawer after drawer, went to

her bed, lay on it, and buried her face in the pillows. She did

not cry. What was the use of that? When she got off her bed to go

down to lunch she felt as if only one thing could do her good,

and that was to have Val home. He—her eldest boy—who was to go to

Oxford next month at James’ expense, was at Littlehampton taking

his final gallops with his trainer for Smalls, as he would have

phrased it following his father’s diction. She caused a telegram

to be sent to him.

“I must see about his clothes,” she said to Imogen; “I can’t have

him going up to Oxford all anyhow. Those boys are so particular.”

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

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

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

Exam.”

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

With an innocent shrewd look at her mother’s face, Imogen kept

silence. It was father, of course! Val did come “like a shot” at

six o’clock.

Imagine a cross between a pickle and a Forsyte and you have young

Publius Valerius Dartie. A youth so named could hardly turn out

otherwise. When he was born, Winifred, in the heyday of spirits,

and the craving for distinction, had determined that her children

should have names such as no others had ever had. (It was a

mercy—she felt now—that she had just not named Imogen Thisbe.)

But it was to George Forsyte, always a wag, that Val’s

christening was due. It so happened that Dartie, dining with him

a week after the birth of his son and heir, had mentioned this

aspiration of Winifred’s.

“Call him Cato,” said George, “it’ll be damned piquant!” He had

just won a tenner on a horse of that name.

“Cato!” Dartie had replied—they were a little ‘on’ as the phrase

was even in those days—“it’s not a Christian name.”

“Halo you!” George called to a waiter in knee breeches. “Bring me

the _Encyc’pedia Brit_. from the Library, letter C.”

The waiter brought it.

“Here you are!” said George, pointing with his cigar: “Cato

Publius Valerius by Virgil out of Lydia. That’s what you want.

Publius Valerius is Christian enough.”

Dartie, on arriving home, had informed Winifred. She had been

charmed. It was so “chic.” And Publius Valerius became the baby’s

name, though it afterwards transpired that they had got hold of

the inferior Cato. In 1890, however, when little Publius was

nearly ten, the word “chic” went out of fashion, and sobriety

came in; Winifred began to have doubts. They were confirmed by

little Publius himself who returned from his first term at school

complaining that life was a burden to him—they called him Pubby.

Winifred—a woman of real decision—promptly changed his school and

his name to Val, the Publius being dropped even as an initial.

At nineteen he was a limber, freckled youth with a wide mouth,

light eyes, long dark lashes; a rather charming smile,

considerable knowledge of what he should not know, and no

experience of what he ought to do. Few boys had more narrowly

escaped being expelled—the engaging rascal. After kissing his

mother and pinching Imogen, he ran upstairs three at a time, and

came down four, dressed for dinner. He was awfully sorry, but his

“trainer,” who had come up too, had asked him to dine at the

Oxford and Cambridge; it wouldn’t do to miss—the old chap would

be hurt. Winifred let him go with an unhappy pride. She had

wanted him at home, but it was very nice to know that his tutor

was so fond of him. He went out with a wink at Imogen, saying: “I

say, Mother, could I have two plover’s eggs when I come

in?—cook’s got some. They top up so jolly well. Oh! and look

here—have you any money?—I had to borrow a fiver from old

Snobby.”

Winifred, looking at him with fond shrewdness, answered:

“My dear, you _are_ naughty about money. But you shouldn’t pay

him to-night, anyway; you’re his guest. How nice and slim he

looked in his white waistcoat, and his dark thick lashes!”

“Oh, but we may go to the theatre, you see, Mother; and I think I

ought to stand the tickets; he’s always hard up, you know.”

Winifred produced a five-pound note, saying:

“Well, perhaps you’d better pay him, but you mustn’t stand the

tickets too.”

Val pocketed the fiver.

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

He went out with his head up and his hat cocked joyously,

sniffing the air of Piccadilly like a young hound loosed into

covert. Jolly good biz! After that mouldy old slow hole down

there!

He found his “tutor,” not indeed at the Oxford and Cambridge, but

at the Goat’s Club. This “tutor” was a year older than himself, a

good-looking youth, with fine brown eyes, and smooth dark hair, a

small mouth, an oval face, languid, immaculate, cool to a degree,

one of those young men who without effort establish moral

ascendancy over their companions. He had missed being expelled

from school a year before Val, had spent that year at Oxford, and

Val could almost see a halo round his head. His name was Crum,

and no one could get through money quicker. It seemed to be his

only aim in life—dazzling to young Val, in whom, however, the

Forsyte would stand apart, now and then, wondering where the

value for that money was.

They dined quietly, in style and taste; left the Club smoking

cigars, with just two bottles inside them, and dropped into

stalls at the Liberty. For Val the sound of comic songs, the

sight of lovely legs were fogged and interrupted by haunting

fears that he would never equal Crum’s quiet dandyism. His

idealism was roused; and when that is so, one is never quite at

ease. Surely he had too wide a mouth, not the best cut of

waistcoat, no braid on his trousers, and his lavender gloves had

no thin black stitchings down the back. Besides, he laughed too

much—Crum never laughed, he only smiled, with his regular dark

brows raised a little so that they formed a gable over his just

drooped lids. No! he would never be Crum’s equal. All the same it

was a jolly good show, and Cynthia Dark simply ripping. Between

the acts Crum regaled him with particulars of Cynthia’s private

life, and the awful knowledge became Val’s that, if he liked,

Crum could go behind. He simply longed to say: “I say, take me!”

but dared not, because of his deficiencies; and this made the

last act or two almost miserable. On coming out Crum said: “It’s

half an hour before they close; let’s go on to the Pandemonium.”

They took a hansom to travel the hundred yards, and seats costing

seven-and-six apiece because they were going to stand, and walked

into the Promenade. It was in these little things, this utter

negligence of money that Crum had such engaging polish. The

ballet was on its last legs and night, and the traffic of the

Promenade was suffering for the moment. Men and women were

crowded in three rows against the barrier. The whirl and dazzle

on the stage, the half dark, the mingled tobacco fumes and

women’s scent, all that curious lure to promiscuity which belongs

to Promenades, began to free young Val from his idealism. He

looked admiringly in a young woman’s face, saw she was not young,

and quickly looked away. Shades of Cynthia Dark! The young

woman’s arm touched his unconsciously; there was a scent of musk

and mignonette. Val looked round the corner of his lashes.

Perhaps she _was_ young, after all. Her foot trod on his; she

begged his pardon. He said:

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

“Oh, I’m tired of it; aren’t you?”

Young Val smiled—his wide, rather charming smile. Beyond that he

did not go—not yet convinced. The Forsyte in him stood out for

greater certainty. And on the stage the ballet whirled its

kaleidoscope of snow-white, salmon-pink, and emerald-green and

violet and seemed suddenly to freeze into a stilly spangled

pyramid. Applause broke out, and it was over! Maroon curtains had

cut it off. The semi-circle of men and women round the barrier

broke up, the young woman’s arm pressed his. A little way off

disturbance seemed centring round a man with a pink carnation;

Val stole another glance at the young woman, who was looking

towards it. Three men, unsteady, emerged, walking arm in arm. The

one in the centre wore the pink carnation, a white waistcoat, a

dark moustache; he reeled a little as he walked. Crum’s voice

said slow and level: “Look at that bounder, he’s screwed!” Val

turned to look. The “bounder” had disengaged his arm, and was

pointing straight at them. Crum’s voice, level as ever, said:

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

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

a son!”

Val saw. It was his father! He could have sunk into the crimson

carpet. It was not the meeting in this place, not even that his

father was “screwed”. it was Crum’s word “bounder,” which, as by

heavenly revelation, he perceived at that moment to be true. Yes,

his father looked a bounder with his dark good looks, and his

pink carnation, and his square, self-assertive walk. And without

a word he ducked behind the young woman and slipped out of the

Promenade. He heard the word, “Val!” behind him, and ran down

deep-carpeted steps past the “chuckersout,” into the Square.

To be ashamed of his own father is perhaps the bitterest

experience a young man can go through. It seemed to Val, hurrying

away, that his career had ended before it had begun. How could he

go up to Oxford now amongst all those chaps, those splendid

friends of Crum’s, who would know that his father was a

“bounder”. And suddenly he hated Crum. Who the devil was Crum, to

say that? If Crum had been beside him at that moment, he would

certainly have been jostled off the pavement. His own father—his

own! A choke came up in his throat, and he dashed his hands down

deep into his overcoat pockets. Damn Crum! He conceived the wild

idea of running back and fending his father, taking him by the

arm and walking about with him in front of Crum; but gave it up

at once and pursued his way down Piccadilly. A young woman

planted herself before him. “Not so angry, darling!” He shied,

dodged her, and suddenly became quite cool. If Crum ever said a

word, he would jolly well punch his head, and there would be an

end of it. He walked a hundred yards or more, contented with that

thought, then lost its comfort utterly. It wasn’t simple like

that! He remembered how, at school, when some parent came down

who did not pass the standard, it just clung to the fellow

afterwards. It was one of those things nothing could remove. Why

had his mother married his father, if he was a “bounder”. It was

bitterly unfair—jolly low-down on a fellow to give him a

“bounder” for father. The worst of it was that now Crum had

spoken the word, he realised that he had long known

subconsciously that his father was not “the clean potato.” It was

the beastliest thing that had ever happened to him—beastliest

thing that had ever happened to any fellow! And, down-hearted as

he had never yet been, he came to Green Street, and let himself

in with a smuggled latch-key. In the dining-room his plover’s

eggs were set invitingly, with some cut bread and butter, and a

little whisky at the bottom of a decanter—just enough, as

Winifred had thought, for him to feel himself a man. It made him

sick to look at them, and he went upstairs.

Winifred heard him pass, and thought: “The dear boy’s in. Thank

goodness! If he takes after his father I don’t know what I shall

do! But he won’t he’s like me. Dear Val!”

CHAPTER III SOAMES PREPARES TO TAKE STEPS

When Soames entered his sister’s little Louis Quinze

drawing-room, with its small balcony, always flowered with

hanging geraniums in the summer, and now with pots of Lilium

Auratum, he was struck by the immutability of human affairs. It

looked just the same as on his first visit to the newly married

Darties twenty-one years ago. He had chosen the furniture

himself, and so completely that no subsequent purchase had ever

been able to change the room’s atmosphere. Yes, he had founded

his sister well, and she had wanted it. Indeed, it said a great

deal for Winifred that after all this time with Dartie she

remained well-founded. From the first Soames had nosed out

Dartie’s nature from underneath the plausibility, _savoir faire_,

and good looks which had dazzled Winifred, her mother, and even

James, to the extent of permitting the fellow to marry his

daughter without bringing anything but shares of no value into

settlement.

Winifred, whom he noticed next to the furniture, was sitting at

her Buhl bureau with a letter in her hand. She rose and came

towards him. Tall as himself, strong in the cheekbones, well

tailored, something in her face disturbed Soames. She crumpled

the letter in her hand, but seemed to change her mind and held it

out to him. He was her lawyer as well as her brother.

Soames read, on Iseeum Club paper, these words:

‘You will not get chance to insult in my own again. I am leaving

country to-morrow. It’s played out. I’m tired of being insulted

by you. You’ve brought on yourself. No self-respecting man can

stand it. I shall not ask you for anything again. Good-bye. I

took the photograph of the two girls. Give them my love. I don’t

care what your family say. It’s all their doing. I’m going to

live new life.

‘M.D.’

This after-dinner note had a splotch on it not yet quite dry. He

looked at Winifred—the splotch had clearly come from her; and he

checked the words: “Good riddance!” Then it occurred to him that

with this letter she was entering that very state which he

himself so earnestly desired to quit—the state of a Forsyte who

was not divorced.

Winifred had turned away, and was taking a long sniff from a

little gold-topped bottle. A dull commiseration, together with a

vague sense of injury, crept about Soames’ heart. He had come to

her to talk of his own position, and get sympathy, and here was

she in the same position, wanting of course to talk of it, and

get sympathy from him. It was always like that! Nobody ever

seemed to think that he had troubles and interests of his own. He

folded up the letter with the splotch inside, and said:

“What’s it all about, now?”

Winifred recited the story of the pearls calmly.

“Do you think he’s really gone, Soames? You see the state he was

in when he wrote that.”

Soames who, when he desired a thing, placated Providence by

pretending that he did not think it likely to happen, answered:

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

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

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

“Then he’s sure to be there.”

Soames, whose good sense applauded his sister’s acumen, said

grudgingly: “Well, I’ll go round. Have you said anything in Park

Lane?”

“I’ve told Emily,” returned Winifred, who retained that “chic”

way of describing her mother. “Father would have a fit.”

Indeed, anything untoward was now sedulously kept from James.

With another look round at the furniture, as if to gauge his

sister’s exact position, Soames went out towards Piccadilly. The

evening was drawing in—a touch of chill in the October haze. He

walked quickly, with his close and concentrated air. He must get

through, for he wished to dine in Soho. On hearing from the hall

porter at the Iseeum that Mr. Dartie had not been in to-day, he

looked at the trusty fellow and decided only to ask if Mr. George

Forsyte was in the Club. He was. Soames, who always looked

askance at his cousin George, as one inclined to jest at his

expense, followed the pageboy, slightly reassured by the thought

that George had just lost his father. He must have come in for

about thirty thousand, besides what he had under that settlement

of Roger’s, which had avoided death duty. He found George in a

bow-window, staring out across a half-eaten plate of muffins. His

tall, bulky, black-clothed figure loomed almost threatening,

though preserving still the supernatural neatness of the racing

man. With a faint grin on his fleshy face, he said:

“Hallo, Soames! Have a muffin?”

“No, thanks,” murmured Soames; and, nursing his hat, with the

desire to say something suitable and sympathetic, added:

“How’s your mother?”

“Thanks,” said George; “so-so. Haven’t seen you for ages. You

never go racing. How’s the City?”

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

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

“Flitted, made a bolt to Buenos Aires with the fair Lola. Good

for Winifred and the little Darties. He’s a treat.”

Soames nodded. Naturally inimical as these cousins were, Dartie

made them kin.

“Uncle James’ll sleep in his bed now,” resumed George; “I suppose

he’s had a lot off you, too.”

Soames smiled.

“Ah! You saw him further,” said George amicably. “He’s a real

rouser. Young Val will want a bit of looking after. I was always

sorry for Winifred. She’s a plucky woman.”

Again Soames nodded. “I must be getting back to her,” he said;

“she just wanted to know for certain. We may have to take steps.

I suppose there’s no mistake?”

“It’s quite O.K.,” said George—it was he who invented so many of

those quaint sayings which have been assigned to other sources.

“He was drunk as a lord last night; but he went off all right

this morning. His ship’s the _Tuscarora;_” and, fishing out a

card, he read mockingly:

“‘Mr. Montague Dartie, Poste Restante, Buenos Aires.’ I should

hurry up with the steps, if I were you. He fairly fed me up last

night.”

“Yes,” said Soames; “but it’s not always easy.” Then, conscious

from George’s eyes that he had roused reminiscence of his own

affair, he got up, and held out his hand. George rose too.

“Remember me to Winifred.... You’ll enter her for the Divorce

Stakes straight off if you ask me.”

Soames took a sidelong look back at him from the doorway. George

had seated himself again and was staring before him; he looked

big and lonely in those black clothes. Soames had never known him

so subdued. “I suppose he feels it in a way,” he thought. “They

must have about fifty thousand each, all told. They ought to keep

the estate together. If there’s a war, house property will go

down. Uncle Roger was a good judge, though.” And the face of

Annette rose before him in the darkening street; her brown hair

and her blue eyes with their dark lashes, her fresh lips and

cheeks, dewy and blooming in spite of London, her perfect French

figure. “Take steps!” he thought. Re-entering Winifred’s house he

encountered Val, and they went in together. An idea had occurred

to Soames. His cousin Jolyon was Irene’s trustee, the first step

would be to go down and see him at Robin Hill. Robin Hill! The

odd—the very odd feeling those words brought back! Robin Hill—the

house Bosinney had built for him and Irene—the house they had

never lived in—the fatal house! And Jolyon lived there now! H’m!

And suddenly he thought: “They say he’s got a boy at Oxford! Why

not take young Val down and introduce them! It’s an excuse! Less

bald—very much less bald!” So, as they went upstairs, he said to

Val:

“You’ve got a cousin at Oxford; you’ve never met him. I should

like to take you down with me to-morrow to where he lives and

introduce you. You’ll find it useful.”

Val, receiving the idea with but moderate transports, Soames

clinched it.

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

you’ll enjoy it.”

On the threshold of the drawing-room he recalled with an effort

that the steps he contemplated concerned Winifred at the moment,

not himself.

Winifred was still sitting at her Buhl bureau.

“It’s quite true,” he said; “he’s gone to Buenos Aires, started

this morning—we’d better have him shadowed when he lands. I’ll

cable at once. Otherwise we may have a lot of expense. The sooner

these things are done the better. I’m always regretting that I

didn’t...” he stopped, and looked sidelong at the silent

Winifred. “By the way,” he went on, “can you prove cruelty?”

Winifred said in a dull voice:

“I don’t know. What is cruelty?”

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

Winifred shook herself, and her jaw grew square.

“He twisted my arm. Or would pointing a pistol count? Or being

too drunk to undress himself, or—No—I can’t bring in the

children.”

“No,” said Soames; “no! I wonder! Of course, there’s legal

separation—we can get that. But separation! Um!”

“What does it mean?” asked Winifred desolately.

“That he can’t touch you, or you him; you’re both of you married

and unmarried.” And again he grunted. What was it, in fact, but

his own accursed position, legalised! No, he would not put her

into that!

“It must be divorce,” he said decisively; “failing cruelty,

there’s desertion. There’s a way of shortening the two years,

now. We get the Court to give us restitution of conjugal rights.

Then if he doesn’t obey, we can bring a suit for divorce in six

months’ time. Of course you don’t want him back. But they won’t

know that. Still, there’s the risk that he might come. I’d rather

try cruelty.”

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

“Well,” Soames murmured, “perhaps there isn’t much risk so long

as he’s infatuated and got money. Don’t say anything to anybody,

and don’t pay any of his debts.”

Winifred sighed. In spite of all she had been through, the sense

of loss was heavy on her. And this idea of not paying his debts

any more brought it home to her as nothing else yet had. Some

richness seemed to have gone out of life. Without her husband,

without her pearls, without that intimate sense that she made a

brave show above the domestic whirlpool, she would now have to

face the world. She felt bereaved indeed.

And into the chilly kiss he placed on her forehead, Soames put

more than his usual warmth.

“I have to go down to Robin Hill to-morrow,” he said, “to see

young Jolyon on business. He’s got a boy at Oxford. I’d like to

take Val with me and introduce him. Come down to ‘The Shelter’

for the week-end and bring the children. Oh! by the way, no, that

won’t do; I’ve got some other people coming.” So saying, he left

her and turned towards Soho.

CHAPTER IV SOHO

Of all quarters in the queer adventurous amalgam called London,

Soho is perhaps least suited to the Forsyte spirit. “So-ho, my

wild one!” George would have said if he had seen his cousin going

there. Untidy, full of Greeks, Ishmaelites, cats, Italians,

tomatoes, restaurants, organs, coloured stuffs, queer names,

people looking out of upper windows, it dwells remote from the

British Body Politic. Yet has it haphazard proprietary instincts

of its own, and a certain possessive prosperity which keeps its

rents up when those of other quarters go down. For long years

Soames’ acquaintanceship with Soho had been confined to its

Western bastion, Wardour Street. Many bargains had he picked up

there. Even during those seven years at Brighton after Bosinney’s

death and Irene’s flight, he had bought treasures there

sometimes, though he had no place to put them; for when the

conviction that his wife had gone for good at last became firm

within him, he had caused a board to be put up in Montpellier

Square:

FOR SALE

THE LEASE OF THIS DESIRABLE RESIDENCE

Enquire of Messrs. Lesson and Tukes, Court Street, Belgravia.

It had sold within a week—that desirable residence, in the shadow

of whose perfection a man and a woman had eaten their hearts out.

Of a misty January evening, just before the board was taken down,

Soames had gone there once more, and stood against the Square

railings, looking at its unlighted windows, chewing the cud of

possessive memories which had turned so bitter in the mouth. Why

had she never loved him? Why? She had been given all she had

wanted, and in return had given him, for three long years, all he

had wanted—except, indeed, her heart. He had uttered a little

involuntary groan, and a passing policeman had glanced

suspiciously at him who no longer possessed the right to enter

that green door with the carved brass knocker beneath the board

“For Sale!” A choking sensation had attacked his throat, and he

had hurried away into the mist. That evening he had gone to

Brighton to live....

Approaching Malta Street, Soho, and the Restaurant Bretagne,

where Annette would be drooping her pretty shoulders over her

accounts, Soames thought with wonder of those seven years at

Brighton. How had he managed to go on so long in that town devoid

of the scent of sweetpeas, where he had not even space to put his

treasures? True, those had been years with no time at all for

looking at them—years of almost passionate money-making, during

which Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte had become solicitors to more

limited Companies than they could properly attend to. Up to the

City of a morning in a Pullman car, down from the City of an

evening in a Pullman car. Law papers again after dinner, then the

sleep of the tired, and up again next morning. Saturday to Monday

was spent at his Club in town—curious reversal of customary

procedure, based on the deep and careful instinct that while

working so hard he needed sea air to and from the station twice a

day, and while resting must indulge his domestic affections. The

Sunday visit to his family in Park Lane, to Timothy’s, and to

Green Street; the occasional visits elsewhere had seemed to him

as necessary to health as sea air on weekdays. Even since his

migration to Mapledurham he had maintained those habits until—he

had known Annette.

Whether Annette had produced the revolution in his outlook, or

that outlook had produced Annette, he knew no more than we know

where a circle begins. It was intricate and deeply involved with

the growing consciousness that property without anyone to leave

it to is the negation of true Forsyteism. To have an heir, some

continuance of self, who would begin where he left off—ensure, in

fact, that he would not leave off—had quite obsessed him for the

last year and more. After buying a bit of Wedgwood one evening in

April, he had dropped into Malta Street to look at a house of his

father’s which had been turned into a restaurant—a risky

proceeding, and one not quite in accordance with the terms of the

lease. He had stared for a little at the outside painted a good

cream colour, with two peacock-blue tubs containing little

bay-trees in a recessed doorway—and at the words “Restaurant

Bretagne” above them in gold letters, rather favourably

impressed. Entering, he had noticed that several people were

already seated at little round green tables with little pots of

fresh flowers on them and Brittany-ware plates, and had asked of

a trim waitress to see the proprietor. They had shown him into a

back room, where a girl was sitting at a simple bureau covered

with papers, and a small round, table was laid for two. The

impression of cleanliness, order, and good taste was confirmed

when the girl got up, saying, “You wish to see _Maman,

Monsieur?_” in a broken accent.

“Yes,” Soames had answered, “I represent your landlord; in fact,

I’m his son.”

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

gentleman.”

He was pleased that the girl seemed impressed, because it showed

business instinct; and suddenly he noticed that she was

remarkably pretty—so remarkably pretty that his eyes found a

difficulty in leaving her face. When she moved to put a chair for

him, she swayed in a curious subtle way, as if she had been put

together by someone with a special secret skill; and her face and

neck, which was a little bared, looked as fresh as if they had

been sprayed with dew. Probably at this moment Soames decided

that the lease had not been violated; though to himself and his

father he based the decision on the efficiency of those illicit

adaptations in the building, on the signs of prosperity, and the

obvious business capacity of Madame Lamotte. He did not, however,

neglect to leave certain matters to future consideration, which

had necessitated further visits, so that the little back room had

become quite accustomed to his spare, not unsolid, but

unobtrusive figure, and his pale, chinny face with clipped

moustache and dark hair not yet grizzling at the sides.

“_Un Monsieur très distingué_,” Madame Lamotte found him; and

presently, “_Très amical, très gentil_,” watching his eyes upon

her daughter.

She was one of those generously built, fine-faced, dark-haired

Frenchwomen, whose every action and tone of voice inspire perfect

confidence in the thoroughness of their domestic tastes, their

knowledge of cooking, and the careful increase of their bank

balances.

After those visits to the Restaurant Bretagne began, other visits

ceased—without, indeed, any definite decision, for Soames, like

all Forsytes, and the great majority of their countrymen, was a

born empiricist. But it was this change in his mode of life which

had gradually made him so definitely conscious that he desired to

alter his condition from that of the unmarried married man to

that of the married man remarried.

Turning into Malta Street on this evening of early October, 1899,

he bought a paper to see if there were any after-development of

the Dreyfus case—a question which he had always found useful in

making closer acquaintanceship with Madame Lamotte and her

daughter, who were Catholic and anti-Dreyfusard.

Scanning those columns, Soames found nothing French, but noticed

a general fall on the Stock Exchange and an ominous leader about

the Transvaal. He entered, thinking: “War’s a certainty. I shall

sell my consols.” Not that he had many, personally, the rate of

interest was too wretched; but he should advise his

Companies—consols would assuredly go down. A look, as he passed

the doorways of the restaurant, assured him that business was

good as ever, and this, which in April would have pleased him,

now gave him a certain uneasiness. If the steps which he had to

take ended in his marrying Annette, he would rather see her

mother safely back in France, a move to which the prosperity of

the Restaurant Bretagne might become an obstacle. He would have

to buy them out, of course, for French people only came to

England to make money; and it would mean a higher price. And then

that peculiar sweet sensation at the back of his throat, and a

slight thumping about the heart, which he always experienced at

the door of the little room, prevented his thinking how much it

would cost.

Going in, he was conscious of an abundant black skirt vanishing

through the door into the restaurant, and of Annette with her

hands up to her hair. It was the attitude in which of all others

he admired her—so beautifully straight and rounded and supple.

And he said:

“I just came in to talk to your mother about pulling down that

partition. No, don’t call her.”

“_Monsieur_ will have supper with us? It will be ready in ten

minutes.” Soames, who still held her hand, was overcome by an

impulse which surprised him.

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

know how pretty you look, Annette?”

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

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

Annette made a little expressive gesture with her hands; a smile

was crinkling her red lips untouched by salve.

And, looking at those lips, Soames said:

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

“Oh, I like London. Paris, of course. But London is better than

Orleans, and the English country is so beautiful. I have been to

Richmond last Sunday.”

Soames went through a moment of calculating struggle.

Mapledurham! Dared he? After all, dared he go so far as that, and

show her what there was to look forward to! Still! Down there one

could say things. In this room it was impossible.

“I want you and your mother,” he said suddenly, “to come for the

afternoon next Sunday. My house is on the river, it’s not too

late in this weather; and I can show you some good pictures. What

do you say?”

Annette clasped her hands.

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

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

He need say no more to her this evening, and risk giving himself

away. But had he not already said too much? Did one ask

restaurant proprietors with pretty daughters down to one’s

country house without design? Madame Lamotte would see, if

Annette didn’t. Well! there was not much that Madame did not see.

Besides, this was the second time he had stayed to supper with

them; he owed them hospitality.

Walking home towards Park Lane—for he was staying at his

father’s—with the impression of Annette’s soft clever hand within

his own, his thoughts were pleasant, slightly sensual, rather

puzzled. Take steps! What steps? How? Dirty linen washed in

public? Pah! With his reputation for sagacity, for

far-sightedness and the clever extrication of others, he, who

stood for proprietary interests, to become the plaything of that

Law of which he was a pillar! There was something revolting in

the thought! Winifred’s affair was bad enough! To have a double

dose of publicity in the family! Would not a liaison be better

than that—a liaison, and a son he could adopt? But dark, solid,

watchful, Madame Lamotte blocked the avenue of that vision. No!

that would not work. It was not as if Annette could have a real

passion for him; one could not expect that at his age. If her

mother wished, if the worldly advantage were manifestly

great—perhaps! If not, refusal would be certain. Besides, he

thought: “I’m not a villain. I don’t want to hurt her; and I

don’t want anything underhand. But I do want her, and I want a

son! There’s nothing for it but divorce—somehow—anyhow—divorce!”

Under the shadow of the plane-trees, in the lamplight, he passed

slowly along the railings of the Green Park. Mist clung there

among the bluish tree shapes, beyond range of the lamps. How many

hundred times he had walked past those trees from his father’s

house in Park Lane, when he was quite a young man; or from his

own house in Montpellier Square in those four years of married

life! And, to-night, making up his mind to free himself if he

could of that long useless marriage tie, he took a fancy to walk

on, in at Hyde Park Corner, out at Knightsbridge Gate, just as he

used to when going home to Irene in the old days. What could she

be like now?—how had she passed the years since he last saw her,

twelve years in all, seven already since Uncle Jolyon left her

that money? Was she still beautiful? Would he know her if he saw

her? “I’ve not changed much,” he thought; “I expect she has. She

made me suffer.” He remembered suddenly one night, the first on

which he went out to dinner alone—an old Malburian dinner—the

first year of their marriage. With what eagerness he had hurried

back; and, entering softly as a cat, had heard her playing.

Opening the drawing-room door noiselessly, he had stood watching

the expression on her face, different from any he knew, so much

more open, so confiding, as though to her music she was giving a

heart he had never seen. And he remembered how she stopped and

looked round, how her face changed back to that which he did

know, and what an icy shiver had gone through him, for all that

the next moment he was fondling her shoulders. Yes, she had made

him suffer! Divorce! It seemed ridiculous, after all these years

of utter separation! But it would have to be. No other way! “The

question,” he thought with sudden realism, “is—which of us? She

or me? She deserted me. She ought to pay for it. There’ll be

someone, I suppose.” Involuntarily he uttered a little snarling

sound, and, turning, made his way back to Park Lane.

CHAPTER V JAMES SEES VISIONS

The butler himself opened the door, and closing it softly,

detained Soames on the inner mat.

“The master’s poorly, sir,” he murmured. “He wouldn’t go to bed

till you came in. He’s still in the diningroom.”

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

accustomed.

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

“Nervous, sir, I think. Might be the funeral; might be Mrs.

Dartie’s comin’ round this afternoon. I think he overheard

something. I’ve took him in a negus. The mistress has just gone

up.”

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

“All right, Warmson, you can go to bed; I’ll take him up myself.”

And he passed into the dining-room.

James was sitting before the fire, in a big armchair, with a

camel-hair shawl, very light and warm, over his frock-coated

shoulders, on to which his long white whiskers drooped. His white

hair, still fairly thick, glistened in the lamplight; a little

moisture from his fixed, light-grey eyes stained the cheeks,

still quite well coloured, and the long deep furrows running to

the corners of the clean-shaven lips, which moved as if mumbling

thoughts. His long legs, thin as a crow’s, in shepherd’s plaid

trousers, were bent at less than a right angle, and on one knee a

spindly hand moved continually, with fingers wide apart and

glistening tapered nails. Beside him, on a low stool, stood a

half-finished glass of negus, bedewed with beads of heat. There

he had been sitting, with intervals for meals, all day. At

eighty-eight he was still organically sound, but suffering

terribly from the thought that no one ever told him anything. It

is, indeed, doubtful how he had become aware that Roger was being

buried that day, for Emily had kept it from him. She was always

keeping things from him. Emily was only seventy! James had a

grudge against his wife’s youth. He felt sometimes that he would

never have married her if he had known that she would have so

many years before her, when he had so few. It was not natural.

She would live fifteen or twenty years after he was gone, and

might spend a lot of money; she had always had extravagant

tastes. For all he knew she might want to buy one of these

motor-cars. Cicely and Rachel and Imogen and all the young

people—they all rode those bicycles now and went off Goodness

knew where. And now Roger was gone. He didn’t know—couldn’t tell!

The family was breaking up. Soames would know how much his uncle

had left. Curiously he thought of Roger as Soames’ uncle not as

his own brother. Soames! It was more and more the one solid spot

in a vanishing world. Soames was careful; he was a warm man; but

he had no one to leave his money to. There it was! He didn’t

know! And there was that fellow Chamberlain! For James’ political

principles had been fixed between ’70 and ’85 when “that rascally

Radical” had been the chief thorn in the side of property and he

distrusted him to this day in spite of his conversion; he would

get the country into a mess and make money go down before he had

done with it. A stormy petrel of a chap! Where was Soames? He had

gone to the funeral of course which they had tried to keep from

him. He knew that perfectly well; he had seen his son’s trousers.

Roger! Roger in his coffin! He remembered how, when they came up

from school together from the West, on the box seat of the old

Slowflyer in 1824, Roger had got into the “boot” and gone to

sleep. James uttered a thin cackle. A funny fellow—Roger—an

original! He didn’t know! Younger than himself, and in his

coffin! The family was breaking up. There was Val going to the

university; he never came to see him now. He would cost a pretty

penny up there. It was an extravagant age. And all the pretty

pennies that his four grandchildren would cost him danced before

James’ eyes. He did not grudge them the money, but he grudged

terribly the risk which the spending of that money might bring on

them; _he grudged the diminution of security_. And now that

Cicely had married, she might be having children too. He didn’t

know—couldn’t tell! Nobody thought of anything but spending money

in these days, and racing about, and having what they called “a

good time.” A motor-car went past the window. Ugly great

lumbering thing, making all that racket! But there it was, the

country rattling to the dogs! People in such a hurry that they

couldn’t even care for style—a neat turnout like his barouche and

bays was worth all those new-fangled things. And consols at 116!

There must be a lot of money in the country. And now there was

this old Kruger! They had tried to keep old Kruger from him. But

he knew better; there would be a pretty kettle of fish out there!

He had known how it would be when that fellow Gladstone—dead now,

thank God! made such a mess of it after that dreadful business at

Majuba. He shouldn’t wonder if the Empire split up and went to

pot. And this vision of the Empire going to pot filled a full

quarter of an hour with qualms of the most serious character. He

had eaten a poor lunch because of them. But it was after lunch

that the real disaster to his nerves occurred. He had been dozing

when he became aware of voices—low voices. Ah! they never told

him anything! Winifred’s and her mother’s. “Monty!” That fellow

Dartie—always that fellow Dartie! The voices had receded; and

James had been left alone, with his ears standing up like a

hare’s, and fear creeping about his inwards. Why did they leave

him alone? Why didn’t they come and tell him? And an awful

thought, which through long years had haunted him, concreted

again swiftly in his brain. Dartie had gone bankrupt—fraudulently

bankrupt, and to save Winifred and the children, he—James—would

have to pay! Could he—could Soames turn him into a limited

company? No, he couldn’t! There it was! With every minute before

Emily came back the spectre fiercened. Why, it might be forgery!

With eyes fixed on the doubted Turner in the centre of the wall,

James suffered tortures. He saw Dartie in the dock, his

grandchildren in the gutter, and himself in bed. He saw the

doubted Turner being sold at Jobson’s, and all the majestic

edifice of property in rags. He saw in fancy Winifred

unfashionably dressed, and heard in fancy Emily’s voice saying:

“Now, don’t fuss, James!” She was always saying: “Don’t fuss!”

She had no nerves; he ought never to have married a woman

eighteen years younger than himself. Then Emily’s real voice

said:

“Have you had a nice nap, James?”

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

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

Emily’s self-possession never deserted her.

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

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

“Fiddle!”

James made a great effort, and rose to the full height of his

stork-like figure.

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

The destruction of that fixed idea seemed to Emily all that

mattered at the moment.

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

If she had said “He’s gone to Mars” she could not have dealt

James a more stunning blow; his imagination, invested entirely in

British securities, could as little grasp one place as the other.

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

he take?”

Agitated within by Winifred’s news, and goaded by the constant

reiteration of this jeremiad, Emily said calmly:

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

“What!” said James, and sat down.

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

said:

“Now, don’t fuss, James!”

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

“I paid for them,” he said tremblingly; “he’s a thief! I—I knew

how it would be. He’ll be the death of me; he ....” Words failed

him and he sat quite still. Emily, who thought she knew him so

well, was alarmed, and went towards the sideboard where she kept

some sal volatile. She could not see the tenacious Forsyte spirit

working in that thin, tremulous shape against the extravagance of

the emotion called up by this outrage on Forsyte principles—the

Forsyte spirit deep in there, saying: “You mustn’t get into a

fantod, it’ll never do. You won’t digest your lunch. You’ll have

a fit!” All unseen by her, it was doing better work in James than

sal volatile.

“Drink this,” she said.

James waved it aside.

“What was Winifred about,” he said, “to let him take her pearls?”

Emily perceived the crisis past.

“She can have mine,” she said comfortably. “I never wear them.

She’d better get a divorce.”

“There you go!” said James. “Divorce! We’ve never had a divorce

in the family. Where’s Soames?”

“He’ll be in directly.”

“No, he won’t,” said James, almost fiercely; “he’s at the

funeral. You think I know nothing.”

“Well,” said Emily with calm, “you shouldn’t get into such fusses

when we tell you things.” And plumping up his cushions, and

putting the sal volatile beside him, she left the room.

But James sat there seeing visions—of Winifred in the Divorce

Court, and the family name in the papers; of the earth falling on

Roger’s coffin; of Val taking after his father; of the pearls he

had paid for and would never see again; of money back at four per

cent., and the country going to the dogs; and, as the afternoon

wore into evening, and tea-time passed, and dinnertime, those

visions became more and more mixed and menacing—of being told

nothing, till he had nothing left of all his wealth, and they

told him nothing of it. Where was Soames? Why didn’t he come

in?... His hand grasped the glass of negus, he raised it to

drink, and saw his son standing there looking at him. A little

sigh of relief escaped his lips, and putting the glass down, he

said:

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

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

A wave of assuagement passed over James’ brain. Soames knew.

Soames was the only one of them all who had sense. Why couldn’t

he come and live at home? He had no son of his own. And he said

plaintively:

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

Again Soames nodded; the mask of his countenance betrayed no

understanding, but he went closer, and as if by accident touched

his father’s shoulder.

“They sent their love to you at Timothy’s,” he said. “It went off

all right. I’ve been to see Winifred. I’m going to take steps.”

And he thought: “Yes, and you mustn’t hear of them.”

James looked up; his long white whiskers quivered, his thin

throat between the points of his collar looked very gristly and

naked.

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

anything.”

Soames’ heart twitched.

“Well, it’s all right. There’s nothing to worry about. Will you

come up now?” and he put his hand under his father’s arm.

James obediently and tremulously raised himself, and together

they went slowly across the room, which had a rich look in the

firelight, and out to the stairs. Very slowly they ascended.

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

“Good-night, father,” answered Soames. His hand stroked down the

sleeve beneath the shawl; it seemed to have almost nothing in it,

so thin was the arm. And, turning away from the light in the

opening doorway, he went up the extra flight to his own bedroom.

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

want a son_.”

CHAPTER VI NO-LONGER-YOUNG JOLYON AT HOME

Trees take little account of time, and the old oak on the upper

lawn at Robin Hill looked no day older than when Bosinney

sprawled under it and said to Soames: “Forsyte, I’ve found the

very place for your house.” Since then Swithin had dreamed, and

old Jolyon died, beneath its branches. And now, close to the

swing, no-longer-young Jolyon often painted there. Of all spots

in the world it was perhaps the most sacred to him, for he had

loved his father.

Contemplating its great girth—crinkled and a little mossed, but

not yet hollow—he would speculate on the passage of time. That

tree had seen, perhaps, all real English history; it dated, he

shouldn’t wonder, from the days of Elizabeth at least. His own

fifty years were as nothing to its wood. When the house behind

it, which he now owned, was three hundred years of age instead of

twelve, that tree might still be standing there, vast and

hollow—for who would commit such sacrilege as to cut it down? A

Forsyte might perhaps still be living in that house, to guard it

jealously. And Jolyon would wonder what the house would look like

coated with such age. Wistaria was already about its walls—the

new look had gone. Would it hold its own and keep the dignity

Bosinney had bestowed on it, or would the giant London have

lapped it round and made it into an asylum in the midst of a

jerry-built wilderness? Often, within and without of it, he was

persuaded that Bosinney had been moved by the spirit when he

built. He had put his heart into that house, indeed! It might

even become one of the “homes of England”—a rare achievement for

a house in these degenerate days of building. And the aesthetic

spirit, moving hand in hand with his Forsyte sense of possessive

continuity, dwelt with pride and pleasure on his ownership

thereof. There was the smack of reverence and ancestor-worship

(if only for one ancestor) in his desire to hand this house down

to his son and his son’s son. His father had loved the house, had

loved the view, the grounds, that tree; his last years had been

happy there, and no one had lived there before him. These last

eleven years at Robin Hill had formed in Jolyon’s life as a

painter, the important period of success. He was now in the very

van of water-colour art, hanging on the line everywhere. His

drawings fetched high prices. Specialising in that one medium

with the tenacity of his breed, he had “arrived”—rather late, but

not too late for a member of the family which made a point of

living for ever. His art had really deepened and improved. In

conformity with his position he had grown a short fair beard,

which was just beginning to grizzle, and hid his Forsyte chin;

his brown face had lost the warped expression of his ostracised

period—he looked, if anything, younger. The loss of his wife in

1894 had been one of those domestic tragedies which turn out in

the end for the good of all. He had, indeed, loved her to the

last, for his was an affectionate spirit, but she had become

increasingly difficult: jealous of her step-daughter June,

jealous even of her own little daughter Holly, and making

ceaseless plaint that he could not love her, ill as she was, and

“useless to everyone, and better dead.” He had mourned her

sincerely, but his face had looked younger since she died. If she

could only have believed that she made him happy, how much

happier would the twenty years of their companionship have been!

June had never really got on well with her who had reprehensibly

taken her own mother’s place; and ever since old Jolyon died she

had been established in a sort of studio in London. But she had

come back to Robin Hill on her stepmother’s death, and gathered

the reins there into her small decided hands. Jolly was then at

Harrow; Holly still learning from Mademoiselle Beauce. There had

been nothing to keep Jolyon at home, and he had removed his grief

and his paint-box abroad. There he had wandered, for the most

part in Brittany, and at last had fetched up in Paris. He had

stayed there several months, and come back with the younger face

and the short fair beard. Essentially a man who merely lodged in

any house, it had suited him perfectly that June should reign at

Robin Hill, so that he was free to go off with his easel where

and when he liked. She was inclined, it is true, to regard the

house rather as an asylum for her _protégés;_ but his own outcast

days had filled Jolyon for ever with sympathy towards an outcast,

and June’s “lame ducks” about the place did not annoy him. By all

means let her have them down—and feed them up; and though his

slightly cynical humour perceived that they ministered to his

daughter’s love of domination as well as moved her warm heart, he

never ceased to admire her for having so many ducks. He fell,

indeed, year by year into a more and more detached and brotherly

attitude towards his own son and daughters, treating them with a

sort of whimsical equality. When he went down to Harrow to see

Jolly, he never quite knew which of them was the elder, and would

sit eating cherries with him out of one paper bag, with an

affectionate and ironical smile twisting up an eyebrow and

curling his lips a little. And he was always careful to have

money in his pocket, and to be modish in his dress, so that his

son need not blush for him. They were perfect friends, but never

seemed to have occasion for verbal confidences, both having the

competitive self-consciousness of Forsytes. They knew they would

stand by each other in scrapes, but there was no need to talk

about it. Jolyon had a striking horror—partly original sin, but

partly the result of his early immorality—of the moral attitude.

The most he could ever have said to his son would have been:

“Look here, old man; don’t forget you’re a gentleman,” and then

have wondered whimsically whether that was not a snobbish

sentiment. The great cricket match was perhaps the most searching

and awkward time they annually went through together, for Jolyon

had been at Eton. They would be particularly careful during that

match, continually saying: “Hooray! Oh! hard luck, old man!” or

“Hooray! Oh! bad luck, Dad!” to each other, when some disaster at

which their hearts bounded happened to the opposing school. And

Jolyon would wear a grey top hat, instead of his usual soft one,

to save his son’s feelings, for a black top hat he could not

stomach. When Jolly went up to Oxford, Jolyon went up with him,

amused, humble, and a little anxious not to discredit his boy

amongst all these youths who seemed so much more assured and old

than himself. He often thought, “Glad I’m a painter” for he had

long dropped under-writing at Lloyds—“it’s so innocuous. You

can’t look down on a painter—you can’t take him seriously

enough.” For Jolly, who had a sort of natural lordliness, had

passed at once into a very small set, who secretly amused his

father. The boy had fair hair which curled a little, and his

grandfather’s deepset iron-grey eyes. He was well-built and very

upright, and always pleased Jolyon’s aesthetic sense, so that he

was a tiny bit afraid of him, as artists ever are of those of

their own sex whom they admire physically. On that occasion,

however, he actually did screw up his courage to give his son

advice, and this was it:

“Look here, old man, you’re bound to get into debt; mind you come

to me at once. Of course, I’ll always pay them. But you might

remember that one respects oneself more afterwards if one pays

one’s own way. And don’t ever borrow, except from me, will you?”

And Jolly had said:

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

“And there’s just one other thing. I don’t know much about

morality and that, but there is this: It’s always worth while

before you do anything to consider whether it’s going to hurt

another person more than is absolutely necessary.”

Jolly had looked thoughtful, and nodded, and presently had

squeezed his father’s hand. And Jolyon had thought: “I wonder if

I had the right to say that?” He always had a sort of dread of

losing the dumb confidence they had in each other; remembering

how for long years he had lost his own father’s, so that there

had been nothing between them but love at a great distance. He

under-estimated, no doubt, the change in the spirit of the age

since he himself went up to Cambridge in ’65; and perhaps he

underestimated, too, his boy’s power of understanding that he was

tolerant to the very bone. It was that tolerance of his, and

possibly his scepticism, which ever made his relations towards

June so queerly defensive. She was such a decided mortal; knew

her own mind so terribly well; wanted things so inexorably until

she got them—and then, indeed, often dropped them like a hot

potato. Her mother had been like that, whence had come all those

tears. Not that his incompatibility with his daughter was

anything like what it had been with the first Mrs. Young Jolyon.

One could be amused where a daughter was concerned; in a wife’s

case one could not be amused. To see June set her heart and jaw

on a thing until she got it was all right, because it was never

anything which interfered fundamentally with Jolyon’s liberty—the

one thing on which his jaw was also absolutely rigid, a

considerable jaw, under that short grizzling beard. Nor was there

ever any necessity for real heart-to-heart encounters. One could

break away into irony—as indeed he often had to. But the real

trouble with June was that she had never appealed to his

aesthetic sense, though she might well have, with her red-gold

hair and her viking-coloured eyes, and that touch of the

Berserker in her spirit. It was very different with Holly, soft

and quiet, shy and affectionate, with a playful imp in her

somewhere. He watched this younger daughter of his through the

duckling stage with extraordinary interest. Would she come out a

swan? With her sallow oval face and her grey wistful eyes and

those long dark lashes, she might, or she might not. Only this

last year had he been able to guess. Yes, she would be a

swan—rather a dark one, always a shy one, but an authentic swan.

She was eighteen now, and Mademoiselle Beauce was gone—the

excellent lady had removed, after eleven years haunted by her

continuous reminiscences of the “well-brrred little Tayleurs,” to

another family whose bosom would now be agitated by her

reminiscences of the “well-brrred little Forsytes.” She had

taught Holly to speak French like herself.

Portraiture was not Jolyon’s forte, but he had already drawn his

younger daughter three times, and was drawing her a fourth, on

the afternoon of October 4th, 1899, when a card was brought to

him which caused his eyebrows to go up:

MR. SOAMES FORSYTE

THE SHELTER, CONNOISSEURS CLUB, MAPLEDURHAM.

ST. JAMES’S.

But here the Forsyte Saga must digress again....

To return from a long travel in Spain to a darkened house, to a

little daughter bewildered with tears, to the sight of a loved

father lying peaceful in his last sleep, had never been, was

never likely to be, forgotten by so impressionable and

warm-hearted a man as Jolyon. A sense as of mystery, too, clung

to that sad day, and about the end of one whose life had been so

well-ordered, balanced, and above-board. It seemed incredible

that his father could thus have vanished without, as it were,

announcing his intention, without last words to his son, and due

farewells. And those incoherent allusions of little Holly to “the

lady in grey,” of Mademoiselle Beauce to a Madame Errant (as it

sounded) involved all things in a mist, lifted a little when he

read his father’s will and the codicil thereto. It had been his

duty as executor of that will and codicil to inform Irene, wife

of his cousin Soames, of her life interest in fifteen thousand

pounds. He had called on her to explain that the existing

investment in India Stock, ear-marked to meet the charge, would

produce for her the interesting net sum of £430 odd a year, clear

of income tax. This was but the third time he had seen his cousin

Soames’ wife—if indeed she was still his wife, of which he was

not quite sure. He remembered having seen her sitting in the

Botanical Gardens waiting for Bosinney—a passive, fascinating

figure, reminding him of Titian’s “Heavenly Love,” and again,

when, charged by his father, he had gone to Montpellier Square on

the afternoon when Bosinney’s death was known. He still recalled

vividly her sudden appearance in the drawing-room doorway on that

occasion—her beautiful face, passing from wild eagerness of hope

to stony despair; remembered the compassion he had felt, Soames’

snarling smile, his words, “We are not at home!” and the slam of

the front door.

This third time he saw a face and form more beautiful—freed from

that warp of wild hope and despair. Looking at her, he thought:

“Yes, you are just what the Dad would have admired!” And the

strange story of his father’s Indian summer became slowly clear

to him. She spoke of old Jolyon with reverence and tears in her

eyes. “He was so wonderfully kind to me; I don’t know why. He

looked so beautiful and peaceful sitting in that chair under the

tree; it was I who first came on him sitting there, you know.

Such a lovely day. I don’t think an end could have been happier.

We should all like to go out like that.”

“Quite right!” he had thought. “We should all like to go out in

full summer with beauty stepping towards us across a lawn.”

And looking round the little, almost empty drawing-room, he had

asked her what she was going to do now. “I am going to live again

a little, Cousin Jolyon. It’s wonderful to have money of one’s

own. I’ve never had any. I shall keep this flat, I think; I’m

used to it; but I shall be able to go to Italy.”

“Exactly!” Jolyon had murmured, looking at her faintly smiling

lips; and he had gone away thinking: “A fascinating woman! What a

waste! I’m glad the Dad left her that money.” He had not seen her

again, but every quarter he had signed her cheque, forwarding it

to her bank, with a note to the Chelsea flat to say that he had

done so; and always he had received a note in acknowledgment,

generally from the flat, but sometimes from Italy; so that her

personality had become embodied in slightly scented grey paper,

an upright fine handwriting, and the words, “Dear Cousin Jolyon.”

Man of property that he now was, the slender cheque he signed

often gave rise to the thought: “Well, I suppose she just

manages”; sliding into a vague wonder how she was faring

otherwise in a world of men not wont to let beauty go

unpossessed. At first Holly had spoken of her sometimes, but

“ladies in grey” soon fade from children’s memories; and the

tightening of June’s lips in those first weeks after her

grandfather’s death whenever her former friend’s name was

mentioned, had discouraged allusion. Only once, indeed, had June

spoken definitely: “I’ve forgiven her. I’m frightfully glad she’s

independent now....”

On receiving Soames’ card, Jolyon said to the maid—for he could

not abide butlers—“Show him into the study, please, and say I’ll

be there in a minute”; and then he looked at Holly and asked:

“Do you remember ‘the lady in grey,’ who used to give you

music-lessons?”

“Oh yes, why? Has she come?”

Jolyon shook his head, and, changing his holland blouse for a

coat, was silent, perceiving suddenly that such history was not

for those young ears. His face, in fact, became whimsical

perplexity incarnate while he journeyed towards the study.

Standing by the french-window, looking out across the terrace at

the oak tree, were two figures, middle-aged and young, and he

thought: “Who’s that boy? Surely they never had a child.”

The elder figure turned. The meeting of those two Forsytes of the

second generation, so much more sophisticated than the first, in

the house built for the one and owned and occupied by the other,

was marked by subtle defensiveness beneath distinct attempt at

cordiality. “Has he come about his wife?” Jolyon was thinking;

and Soames, “How shall I begin?” while Val, brought to break the

ice, stood negligently scrutinising this “bearded pard” from

under his dark, thick eyelashes.

“This is Val Dartie,” said Soames, “my sister’s son. He’s just

going up to Oxford. I thought I’d like him to know your boy.”

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

“B.N.C.,” replied Val.

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

“Thanks awfully.”

“Holly’s in—if you could put up with a female relation, she’d

show you round. You’ll find her in the hall if you go through the

curtains. I was just painting her.”

With another “Thanks, awfully!” Val vanished, leaving the two

cousins with the ice unbroken.

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

Jolyon winced. He had been out of touch with the Forsyte family

at large for twenty-six years, but they were connected in his

mind with Frith’s “Derby Day” and Landseer prints. He had heard

from June that Soames was a connoisseur, which made it worse. He

had become aware, too, of a curious sensation of repugnance.

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

“No,” answered Soames between close lips, “not since—as a matter

of fact, it’s about that I’ve come. You’re her trustee, I’m

told.”

Jolyon nodded.

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

of it.”

Jolyon found no more appropriate answer than:

“Won’t you smoke?”

“No, thanks.”

Jolyon himself lit a cigarette.

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

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

cigarette.

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

Jolyon nodded. He did not mean to give her address without

permission. Soames seemed to divine his thought.

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

“What exactly do you want?”

“She deserted me. I want a divorce.”

“Rather late in the day, isn’t it?”

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

“I don’t know much about these things—at least, I’ve forgotten,”

said Jolyon with a wry smile. He himself had had to wait for

death to grant him a divorce from the first Mrs. Jolyon. “Do you

wish me to see her about it?”

Soames raised his eyes to his cousin’s face. “I suppose there’s

someone,” he said.

A shrug moved Jolyon’s shoulders.

“I don’t know at all. I imagine you may have both lived as if the

other were dead. It’s usual in these cases.”

Soames turned to the window. A few early fallen oak-leaves

strewed the terrace already, and were rolling round in the wind.

Jolyon saw the figures of Holly and Val Dartie moving across the

lawn towards the stables. “I’m not going to run with the hare and

hunt with the hounds,” he thought. “I must act for her. The Dad

would have wished that.” And for a swift moment he seemed to see

his father’s figure in the old armchair, just beyond Soames,

sitting with knees crossed, _The Times_ in his hand. It vanished.

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

“Why he should have been I don’t know,” Soames answered without

looking round. “She brought trouble to your daughter June; she

brought trouble to everyone. I gave her all she wanted. I would

have given her even—forgiveness—but she chose to leave me.”

In Jolyon compassion was checked by the tone of that close voice.

What was there in the fellow that made it so difficult to be

sorry for him?

“I can go and see her, if you like,” he said. “I suppose she

might be glad of a divorce, but I know nothing.”

Soames nodded.

“Yes, please go. As I say, I know her address; but I’ve no wish

to see her.” His tongue was busy with his lips, as if they were

very dry.

“You’ll have some tea?” said Jolyon, stifling the words: “And see

the house.” And he led the way into the hall. When he had rung

the bell and ordered tea, he went to his easel to turn his

drawing to the wall. He could not bear, somehow, that his work

should be seen by Soames, who was standing there in the middle of

the great room which had been designed expressly to afford wall

space for his own pictures. In his cousin’s face, with its

unseizable family likeness to himself, and its chinny, narrow,

concentrated look, Jolyon saw that which moved him to the

thought: “That chap could never forget anything—nor ever give

himself away. He’s pathetic!”

CHAPTER VII THE COLT AND THE FILLY

When young Val left the presence of the last generation he was

thinking: “This is jolly dull! Uncle Soames does take the bun. I

wonder what this filly’s like?” He anticipated no pleasure from

her society; and suddenly he saw her standing there looking at

him. Why, she was pretty! What luck!

“I’m afraid you don’t know me,” he said. “My name’s Val

Dartie—I’m once removed, second cousin, something like that, you

know. My mother’s name was Forsyte.”

Holly, whose slim brown hand remained in his because she was too

shy to withdraw it, said:

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

“Tons. They’re awful—most of them. At least, I don’t know—some of

them. One’s relations always are, aren’t they?”

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

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

course.”

Holly looked at him—the wistful candour in those grey eyes gave

young Val a sudden feeling that he must protect her.

“I mean there are people and people,” he added astutely. “Your

dad looks awfully decent, for instance.”

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

A flush mounted in Val’s cheeks—that scene in the Pandemonium

promenade—the dark man with the pink carnation developing into

his own father! “But you know what the Forsytes are,” he said

almost viciously. “Oh! I forgot; you don’t.”

“What are they?”

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

Soames!”

“I’d like to,” said Holly.

Val resisted a desire to run his arm through hers. “Oh! no,” he

said, “let’s go out. You’ll see him quite soon enough. What’s

your brother like?”

Holly led the way on to the terrace and down to the lawn without

answering. How describe Jolly, who, ever since she remembered

anything, had been her lord, master, and ideal?

“Does he sit on you?” said Val shrewdly. “I shall be knowing him

at Oxford. Have you got any horses?”

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

“Rather!”

They passed under the oak tree, through a thin shrubbery, into

the stable-yard. There under a clock-tower lay a fluffy

brown-and-white dog, so old that he did not get up, but faintly

waved the tail curled over his back.

“That’s Balthasar,” said Holly; “he’s so old—awfully old, nearly

as old as I am. Poor old boy! He’s devoted to Dad.”

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

“No! but he’s a darling,” and she bent down to stroke the dog.

Gentle and supple, with dark covered head and slim browned neck

and hands, she seemed to Val strange and sweet, like a thing

slipped between him and all previous knowledge.

“When grandfather died,” she said, “he wouldn’t eat for two days.

He saw him die, you know.”

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

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

In a loose-box stood a silver roan of about fifteen hands, with a

long black tail and mane. “This is mine—Fairy.”

“Ah!” said Val, “she’s a jolly palfrey. But you ought to bang her

tail. She’d look much smarter.” Then catching her wondering look,

he thought suddenly: “I don’t know—anything she likes!” And he

took a long sniff of the stable air. “Horses are ripping, aren’t

they? My Dad...” he stopped.

“Yes?” said Holly.

An impulse to unbosom himself almost overcame him—but not quite.

“Oh! I don’t know he’s often gone a mucker over them. I’m jolly

keen on them too—riding and hunting. I like racing awfully, as

well; I should like to be a gentleman rider.” And oblivious of

the fact that he had but one more day in town, with two

engagements, he plumped out:

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

Richmond Park?”

Holly clasped her hands.

“Oh yes! I simply love riding. But there’s Jolly’s horse; why

don’t you ride him? Here he is. We could go after tea.”

Val looked doubtfully at his trousered legs.

He had imagined them immaculate before her eyes in high brown

boots and Bedford cords.

“I don’t much like riding his horse,” he said. “He mightn’t like

it. Besides, Uncle Soames wants to get back, I expect. Not that I

believe in buckling under to him, you know. You haven’t got an

uncle, have you? This is rather a good beast,” he added,

scrutinising Jolly’s horse, a dark brown, which was showing the

whites of its eyes. “You haven’t got any hunting here, I

suppose?”

“No; I don’t know that I want to hunt. It must be awfully

exciting, of course; but it’s cruel, isn’t it? June says so.”

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

“My sister—my half-sister, you know—much older than me.” She had

put her hands up to both cheeks of Jolly’s horse, and was rubbing

her nose against its nose with a gentle snuffling noise which

seemed to have an hypnotic effect on the animal. Val contemplated

her cheek resting against the horse’s nose, and her eyes gleaming

round at him. “She’s really a duck,” he thought.

They returned to the house less talkative, followed this time by

the dog Balthasar, walking more slowly than anything on earth,

and clearly expecting them not to exceed his speed limit.

“This is a ripping place,” said Val from under the oak tree,

where they had paused to allow the dog Balthasar to come up.

“Yes,” said Holly, and sighed. “Of course I want to go

everywhere. I wish I were a gipsy.”

“Yes, gipsies are jolly,” replied Val, with a conviction which

had just come to him; “you’re rather like one, you know.”

Holly’s face shone suddenly and deeply, like dark leaves gilded

by the sun.

“To go mad-rabbiting everywhere and see everything, and live in

the open—oh! wouldn’t it be fun?”

“Let’s do it!” said Val.

“Oh yes, let’s!”

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

Then Holly perceived the quaintness and gushed.

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

too.

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

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

“Let’s go down!”

Holly glanced back at the house.

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

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

When they re-entered the hall gallery the sight of two

middle-aged Forsytes drinking tea together had its magical

effect, and they became quite silent. It was, indeed, an

impressive spectacle. The two were seated side by side on an

arrangement in marqueterie which looked like three silvery pink

chairs made one, with a low tea-table in front of them. They

seemed to have taken up that position, as far apart as the seat

would permit, so that they need not look at each other too much;

and they were eating and drinking rather than talking—Soames with

his air of despising the tea-cake as it disappeared, Jolyon of

finding himself slightly amusing. To the casual eye neither would

have seemed greedy, but both were getting through a good deal of

sustenance. The two young ones having been supplied with food,

the process went on silent and absorbative, till, with the advent

of cigarettes, Jolyon said to Soames:

“And how’s Uncle James?”

“Thanks, very shaky.”

“We’re a wonderful family, aren’t we? The other day I was

calculating the average age of the ten old Forsytes from my

father’s family Bible. I make it eighty-four already, and five

still living. They ought to beat the record;” and looking

whimsically at Soames, he added:

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

Soames smiled. “Do you really think I shall admit that I’m not

their equal”. he seemed to be saying, “or that I’ve got to give

up anything, especially life?”

“We may live to their age, perhaps,” pursued Jolyon, “but

self-consciousness is a handicap, you know, and that’s the

difference between us. We’ve lost conviction. How and when

self-consciousness was born I never can make out. My father had a

little, but I don’t believe any other of the old Forsytes ever

had a scrap. Never to see yourself as others see you, it’s a

wonderful preservative. The whole history of the last century is

in the difference between us. And between us and you,” he added,

gazing through a ring of smoke at Val and Holly, uncomfortable

under his quizzical regard, “there’ll be—another difference. I

wonder what.”

Soames took out his watch.

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

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

full.

“Why should I?” Soames answered simply.

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

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

surreptitious squeeze.

“Look out for me to-morrow,” he whispered; “three o’clock. I’ll

wait for you in the road; it’ll save time. We’ll have a ripping

ride.” He gazed back at her from the lodge gate, and, but for the

principles of a man about town, would have waved his hand. He

felt in no mood to tolerate his uncle’s conversation. But he was

not in danger. Soames preserved a perfect muteness, busy with

far-away thoughts.

The yellow leaves came down about those two walking the mile and

a half which Soames had traversed so often in those long-ago days

when he came down to watch with secret pride the building of the

house—that house which was to have been the home of him and her

from whom he was now going to seek release. He looked back once,

up that endless vista of autumn lane between the yellowing

hedges. What an age ago! “I don’t want to see her,” he had said

to Jolyon. Was that true? “I may have to,” he thought; and he

shivered, seized by one of those queer shudderings that they say

mean footsteps on one’s grave. A chilly world! A queer world! And

glancing sidelong at his nephew, he thought: “Wish I were his

age! I wonder what she’s like now!”

CHAPTER VIII JOLYON PROSECUTES TRUSTEESHIP

When those two were gone Jolyon did not return to his painting,

for daylight was failing, but went to the study, craving

unconsciously a revival of that momentary vision of his father

sitting in the old leather chair with his knees crossed and his

straight eyes gazing up from under the dome of his massive brow.

Often in this little room, cosiest in the house, Jolyon would

catch a moment of communion with his father. Not, indeed, that he

had definitely any faith in the persistence of the human

spirit—the feeling was not so logical—it was, rather, an

atmospheric impact, like a scent, or one of those strong

animistic impressions from forms, or effects of light, to which

those with the artist’s eye are especially prone. Here only—in

this little unchanged room where his father had spent the most of

his waking hours—could be retrieved the feeling that he was not

quite gone, that the steady counsel of that old spirit and the

warmth of his masterful lovability endured.

What would his father be advising now, in this sudden

recrudescence of an old tragedy—what would he say to this menace

against her to whom he had taken such a fancy in the last weeks

of his life? “I must do my best for her,” thought Jolyon; “he

left her to me in his will. But what _is_ the best?”

And as if seeking to regain the sapience, the balance and shrewd

common sense of that old Forsyte, he sat down in the ancient

chair and crossed his knees. But he felt a mere shadow sitting

there; nor did any inspiration come, while the fingers of the

wind tapped on the darkening panes of the french-window.