The seven women whom he had addressed broke into a subdued

murmur, out of which emerged Francie’s, “Really, the Forsytes!”

and Aunt Juley’s: “He must have his feet in mustard and hot water

to-night, Hester; will you tell Jane? The blood has gone to his

head again, I’m afraid....”

That evening, when she and Hester were sitting alone after

dinner, she dropped a stitch in her crochet, and looked up:

“Hester, I can’t think where I’ve heard that dear Soames wants

Irene to come back to him again. Who was it told us that George

had made a funny drawing of him with the words, ‘He won’t be

happy till he gets it’.”

“Eustace,” answered Aunt Hester from behind _The Times;_ “he had

it in his pocket, but he wouldn’t show it us.”

Aunt Juley was silent, ruminating. The clock ticked, _The Times_

crackled, the fire sent forth its rustling purr. Aunt Juley

dropped another stitch.

“Hester,” she said, “I have had such a dreadful thought.”

“Then don’t tell me,” said Aunt Hester quickly.

“Oh! but I must. You can’t think how dreadful!” Her voice sank to

a whisper:

“Jolyon—Jolyon, they say, has a—has a fair beard, now.”

CHAPTER XII PROGRESS OF THE CHASE

Two days after the dinner at James’, Mr. Polteed provided Soames

with food for thought.

“A gentleman,” he said, consulting the key concealed in his left

hand, “47 as we say, has been paying marked attention to 17

during the last month in Paris. But at present there seems to

have been nothing very conclusive. The meetings have all been in

public places, without concealment—restaurants, the Opera, the

Comique, the Louvre, Luxembourg Gardens, lounge of the hotel, and

so forth. She has not yet been traced to his rooms, nor _vice

versa_. They went to Fontainebleau—but nothing of value. In

short, the situation is promising, but requires patience.” And,

looking up suddenly, he added:

“One rather curious point—47 has the same name as—er—31!”

“The fellow knows I’m her husband,” thought Soames.

“Christian name—an odd one—Jolyon,” continued Mr. Polteed. “We

know his address in Paris and his residence here. We don’t wish,

of course, to be running a wrong hare.”

“Go on with it, but be careful,” said Soames doggedly.

Instinctive certainty that this detective fellow had fathomed his

secret made him all the more reticent.

“Excuse me,” said Mr. Polteed, “I’ll just see if there’s anything

fresh in.”

He returned with some letters. Relocking the door, he glanced at

the envelopes.

“Yes, here’s a personal one from 19 to myself.”

“Well?” said Soames.

“Um!” said Mr. Polteed, “she says: ‘47 left for England to-day.

Address on his baggage: Robin Hill. Parted from 17 in Louvre

Gallery at 3.30; nothing very striking. Thought it best to stay

and continue observation of 17. You will deal with 47 in England

if you think desirable, no doubt.’” And Mr. Polteed lifted an

unprofessional glance on Soames, as though he might be storing

material for a book on human nature after he had gone out of

business. “Very intelligent woman, 19, and a wonderful make-up.

Not cheap, but earns her money well. There’s no suspicion of

being shadowed so far. But after a time, as you know, sensitive

people are liable to get the feeling of it, without anything

definite to go on. I should rather advise letting-up on 17, and

keeping an eye on 47. We can’t get at correspondence without

great risk. I hardly advise that at this stage. But you can tell

your client that it’s looking up very well.” And again his

narrowed eyes gleamed at his taciturn customer.

“No,” said Soames suddenly, “I prefer that you should keep the

watch going discreetly in Paris, and not concern yourself with

this end.”

“Very well,” replied Mr. Polteed, “we can do it.”

“What—what is the manner between them?”

“I’ll read you what she says,” said Mr. Polteed, unlocking a

bureau drawer and taking out a file of papers; “she sums it up

somewhere confidentially. Yes, here it is! ‘17 very

attractive—conclude 47, longer in the tooth’ (slang for age, you

know)—‘distinctly gone—waiting his time—17 perhaps holding off

for terms, impossible to say without knowing more. But inclined

to think on the whole—doesn’t know her mind—likely to act on

impulse some day. Both have style.’”

“What does that mean?” said Soames between close lips.

“Well,” murmured Mr. Polteed with a smile, showing many white

teeth, “an expression we use. In other words, it’s not likely to

be a weekend business—they’ll come together seriously or not at

all.”

“H’m!” muttered Soames, “that’s all, is it?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Polteed, “but quite promising.”

“Spider!” thought Soames. “Good-day!”

He walked into the Green Park that he might cross to Victoria

Station and take the Underground into the City. For so late in

January it was warm; sunlight, through the haze, sparkled on the

frosty grass—an illumined cobweb of a day.

Little spiders—and great spiders! And the greatest spinner of

all, his own tenacity, for ever wrapping its cocoon of threads

round any clear way out. What was that fellow hanging round Irene

for? Was it really as Polteed suggested? Or was Jolyon but taking

compassion on her loneliness, as he would call it—sentimental

radical chap that he had always been? If it were, indeed, as

Polteed hinted! Soames stood still. It could not be! The fellow

was seven years older than himself, no better looking! No richer!

What attraction had he?

“Besides, he’s come back,” he thought; “that doesn’t look—I’ll go

and see him!” and, taking out a card, he wrote:

“If you can spare half an hour some afternoon this week, I shall

be at the Connoisseurs any day between 5.30 and 6, or I could

come to the Hotch Potch if you prefer it. I want to see you.—S.

F.”

He walked up St. James’s Street and confided it to the porter at

the Hotch Potch.

“Give Mr. Jolyon Forsyte this as soon as he comes in,” he said,

and took one of the new motor cabs into the City....

Jolyon received that card the same afternoon, and turned his face

towards the Connoisseurs. What did Soames want now? Had he got

wind of Paris? And stepping across St. James’s Street, he

determined to make no secret of his visit. “But it won’t do,” he

thought, “to let him know _she’s_ there, unless he knows

already.” In this complicated state of mind he was conducted to

where Soames was drinking tea in a small bay-window.

“No tea, thanks,” said Jolyon, “but I’ll go on smoking if I may.”

The curtains were not yet drawn, though the lamps outside were

lighted; the two cousins sat waiting on each other.

“You’ve been in Paris, I hear,” said Soames at last.

“Yes; just back.”

“Young Val told me; he and your boy are going off, then?” Jolyon

nodded.

“You didn’t happen to see Irene, I suppose. It appears she’s

abroad somewhere.”

Jolyon wreathed himself in smoke before he answered: “Yes, I saw

her.”

“How was she?”

“Very well.”

There was another silence; then Soames roused himself in his

chair.

“When I saw you last,” he said, “I was in two minds. We talked,

and you expressed your opinion. I don’t wish to reopen that

discussion. I only wanted to say this: My position with her is

extremely difficult. I don’t want you to go using your influence

against me. What happened is a very long time ago. I’m going to

ask her to let bygones be bygones.”

“You have asked her, you know,” murmured Jolyon.

“The idea was new to her then; it came as a shock. But the more

she thinks of it, the more she must see that it’s the only way

out for both of us.”

“That’s not my impression of her state of mind,” said Jolyon with

particular calm. “And, forgive my saying, you misconceive the

matter if you think reason comes into it at all.”

He saw his cousin’s pale face grow paler—he had used, without

knowing it, Irene’s own words.

“Thanks,” muttered Soames, “but I see things perhaps more plainly

than you think. I only want to be sure that you won’t try to

influence her against me.”

“I don’t know what makes you think I have any influence,” said

Jolyon; “but if I have I’m bound to use it in the direction of

what I think is her happiness. I am what they call a ‘feminist,’

I believe.”

“Feminist!” repeated Soames, as if seeking to gain time. “Does

that mean that you’re against me?”

“Bluntly,” said Jolyon, “I’m against any woman living with any

man whom she definitely dislikes. It appears to me rotten.”

“And I suppose each time you see her you put your opinions into

her mind.”

“I am not likely to be seeing her.”

“Not going back to Paris?”

“Not so far as I know,” said Jolyon, conscious of the intent

watchfulness in Soames’ face.

“Well, that’s all I had to say. Anyone who comes between man and

wife, you know, incurs heavy responsibility.”

Jolyon rose and made him a slight bow.

“Good-bye,” he said, and, without offering to shake hands, moved

away, leaving Soames staring after him. “We Forsytes,” thought

Jolyon, hailing a cab, “are very civilised. With simpler folk

that might have come to a row. If it weren’t for my boy going to

the war....” The war! A gust of his old doubt swept over him. A

precious war! Domination of peoples or of women! Attempts to

master and possess those who did not want you! The negation of

gentle decency! Possession, vested rights; and anyone ‘agin’

’em—outcast! “Thank Heaven!” he thought, “_I always_ felt ‘agin’

’em, anyway!” Yes! Even before his first disastrous marriage he

could remember fuming over the bludgeoning of Ireland, or the

matrimonial suits of women trying to be free of men they loathed.

Parsons would have it that freedom of soul and body were quite

different things! Pernicious doctrine! Body and soul could not

thus be separated. Free will was the strength of any tie, and not

its weakness. “I ought to have told Soames,” he thought, “that I

think him comic. Ah! but he’s tragic, too!” Was there anything,

indeed, more tragic in the world than a man enslaved by his own

possessive instinct, who couldn’t see the sky for it, or even

enter fully into what another person felt! “I must write and warn

her,” he thought; “he’s going to have another try.” And all the

way home to Robin Hill he rebelled at the strength of that duty

to his son which prevented him from posting back to Paris....

But Soames sat long in his chair, the prey of a no less gnawing

ache—a jealous ache, as if it had been revealed to him that this

fellow held precedence of himself, and had spun fresh threads of

resistance to his way out. “Does that mean that you’re against

me?” he had got nothing out of that disingenuous question.

Feminist! Phrasey fellow! “I mustn’t rush things,” he thought. “I

have some breathing space; he’s not going back to Paris, unless

he was lying. I’ll let the spring come!” Though how the spring

could serve him, save by adding to his ache, he could not tell.

And gazing down into the street, where figures were passing from

pool to pool of the light from the high lamps, he thought:

“Nothing seems any good—nothing seems worth while. I’m

lonely—that’s the trouble.”

He closed his eyes; and at once he seemed to see Irene, in a dark

street below a church—passing, turning her neck so that he caught

the gleam of her eyes and her white forehead under a little dark

hat, which had gold spangles on it and a veil hanging down

behind. He opened his eyes—so vividly he had seen her! A woman

_was_ passing below, but not she! Oh no, there was nothing there!

CHAPTER XIII “HERE WE ARE AGAIN!”

Imogen’s frocks for her first season exercised the judgment of

her mother and the purse of her grandfather all through the month

of March. With Forsyte tenacity Winifred quested for perfection.

It took her mind off the slowly approaching rite which would give

her a freedom but doubtfully desired; took her mind, too, off her

boy and his fast approaching departure for a war from which the

news remained disquieting. Like bees busy on summer flowers, or

bright gadflies hovering and darting over spiky autumn blossoms,

she and her “little daughter,” tall nearly as herself and with a

bust measurement not far inferior, hovered in the shops of Regent

Street, the establishments of Hanover Square and of Bond Street,

lost in consideration and the feel of fabrics. Dozens of young

women of striking deportment and peculiar gait paraded before

Winifred and Imogen, draped in “creations.” The models—“Very new,

modom; quite the latest thing—” which those two reluctantly

turned down, would have filled a museum; the models which they

were obliged to have nearly emptied James’ bank. It was no good

doing things by halves, Winifred felt, in view of the need for

making this first and sole untarnished season a conspicuous

success. Their patience in trying the patience of those

impersonal creatures who swam about before them could alone have

been displayed by such as were moved by faith. It was for

Winifred a long prostration before her dear goddess Fashion,

fervent as a Catholic might make before the Virgin; for Imogen an

experience by no means too unpleasant—she often looked so nice,

and flattery was implicit everywhere: in a word it was “amusing.”

On the afternoon of the 20th of March, having, as it were, gutted

Skywards, they had sought refreshment over the way at Caramel and

Baker’s, and, stored with chocolate frothed at the top with

cream, turned homewards through Berkeley Square of an evening

touched with spring. Opening the door—freshly painted a light

olive-green; nothing neglected that year to give Imogen a good

send-off—Winifred passed towards the silver basket to see if

anyone had called, and suddenly her nostrils twitched. What was

that scent?

Imogen had taken up a novel sent from the library, and stood

absorbed. Rather sharply, because of the queer feeling in her

breast, Winifred said:

“Take that up, dear, and have a rest before dinner.”

Imogen, still reading, passed up the stairs. Winifred heard the

door of her room slammed to, and drew a long savouring breath.

Was it spring tickling her senses—whipping up nostalgia for her

“clown,” against all wisdom and outraged virtue? A male scent! A

faint reek of cigars and lavender-water not smelt since that

early autumn night six months ago, when she had called him “the

limit.” Whence came it, or was it ghost of scent—sheer emanation

from memory? She looked round her. Nothing—not a thing, no

tiniest disturbance of her hall, nor of the diningroom. A little

day-dream of a scent—illusory, saddening, silly! In the silver

basket were new cards, two with “Mr. and Mrs. Polegate Thom,” and

one with “Mr. Polegate Thom” thereon; she sniffed them, but they

smelled severe. “I must be tired,” she thought, “I’ll go and lie

down.” Upstairs the drawing-room was darkened, waiting for some

hand to give it evening light; and she passed on up to her

bedroom. This, too, was half-curtained and dim, for it was six

o’clock. Winifred threw off her coat—that scent again!—then

stood, as if shot, transfixed against the bed-rail. Something

dark had risen from the sofa in the far corner. A word of

horror—in her family—escaped her: “God!”

“It’s I—Monty,” said a voice.

Clutching the bed-rail, Winifred reached up and turned the switch

of the light hanging above her dressing-table. He appeared just

on the rim of the light’s circumference, emblazoned from the

absence of his watch-chain down to boots neat and sooty brown,

but—yes!—split at the toecap. His chest and face were shadowy.

Surely he was thin—or was it a trick of the light? He advanced,

lighted now from toe-cap to the top of his dark head—surely a

little grizzled! His complexion had darkened, sallowed; his black

moustache had lost boldness, become sardonic; there were lines

which she did not know about his face. There was no pin in his

tie. His suit—ah!—she knew that—but how unpressed, unglossy! She

stared again at the toe-cap of his boot. Something big and

relentless had been “at him,” had turned and twisted, raked and

scraped him. And she stayed, not speaking, motionless, staring at

that crack across the toe.

“Well!” he said, “I got the order. I’m back.”

Winifred’s bosom began to heave. The nostalgia for her husband

which had rushed up with that scent was struggling with a deeper

jealousy than any she had felt yet. There he was—a dark, and as

if harried, shadow of his sleek and brazen self! What force had

done this to him—squeezed him like an orange to its dry rind!

That woman!

“I’m back,” he said again. “I’ve had a beastly time. By God! I

came steerage. I’ve got nothing but what I stand up in, and that

bag.”

“And who has the rest?” cried Winifred, suddenly alive. “How

dared you come? You knew it was just for divorce that you got

that order to come back. Don’t touch me!”

They held each to the rail of the big bed where they had spent so

many years of nights together. Many times, yes—many times she had

wanted him back. But now that he had come she was filled with

this cold and deadly resentment. He put his hand up to his

moustache; but did not frizz and twist it in the old familiar

way, he just pulled it downwards.

“Gad!” he said: “If you knew the time I’ve had!”

“I’m glad I don’t!”

“Are the kids all right?”

Winifred nodded. “How did you get in?”

“With my key.”

“Then the maids don’t know. You can’t stay here, Monty.”

He uttered a little sardonic laugh.

“Where then?”

“Anywhere.”

“Well, look at me! That—that damned....”

“If you mention _her_,” cried Winifred, “I go straight out to

Park Lane and I don’t come back.”

Suddenly he did a simple thing, but so uncharacteristic that it

moved her. He shut his eyes. It was as if he had said: “All

right! I’m dead to the world!”

“You can have a room for the night,” she said; “your things are

still here. Only Imogen is at home.”

He leaned back against the bed-rail. “Well, it’s in your hands,”

and his own made a writhing movement. “I’ve been through it. You

needn’t hit too hard—it isn’t worth while. I’ve been frightened;

I’ve been frightened, Freddie.”

That old pet name, disused for years and years, sent a shiver

through Winifred.

“What am I to do with him?” she thought. “What in God’s name am I

to do with him?”

“Got a cigarette?”

She gave him one from a little box she kept up there for when she

couldn’t sleep at night, and lighted it. With that action the

matter-of-fact side of her nature came to life again.

“Go and have a hot bath. I’ll put some clothes out for you in the

dressing-room. We can talk later.”

He nodded, and fixed his eyes on her—they looked half-dead, or

was it that the folds in the lids had become heavier?

“He’s not the same,” she thought. He would never be quite the

same again! But what would he be?

“All right!” he said, and went towards the door. He even moved

differently, like a man who has lost illusion and doubts whether

it is worth while to move at all.

When he was gone, and she heard the water in the bath running,

she put out a complete set of garments on the bed in his

dressing-room, then went downstairs and fetched up the biscuit

box and whisky. Putting on her coat again, and listening a moment

at the bathroom door, she went down and out. In the street she

hesitated. Past seven o’clock! Would Soames be at his Club or at

Park Lane? She turned towards the latter. Back!

Soames had always feared it—she had sometimes hoped it.... Back!

So like him—clown that he was—with this: “Here we are again!” to

make fools of them all—of the Law, of Soames, of herself!

Yet to have done with the Law, not to have that murky cloud

hanging over her and the children! What a relief! Ah! but how to

accept his return? That “woman” had ravaged him, taken from him

passion such as he had never bestowed on herself, such as she had

not thought him capable of. There was the sting! That selfish,

blatant “clown” of hers, whom she herself had never really

stirred, had been swept and ungarnished by another woman!

Insulting! Too insulting! Not right, not decent to take him back!

And yet she had asked for him; the Law perhaps would make her

now! He was as much her husband as ever—she had put herself out

of court! And all he wanted, no doubt, was money—to keep him in

cigars and lavender-water! That scent! “After all, I’m not old,”

she thought, “not old yet!” But that woman who had reduced him to

those words: “I’ve been through it. I’ve been

frightened—frightened, Freddie!” She neared her father’s house,

driven this way and that, while all the time the Forsyte undertow

was drawing her to deep conclusion that after all he was her

property, to be held against a robbing world. And so she came to

James’.

“Mr. Soames? In his room? I’ll go up; don’t say I’m here.”

Her brother was dressing. She found him before a mirror, tying a

black bow with an air of despising its ends.

“Hullo!” he said, contemplating her in the glass; “what’s wrong?”

“Monty!” said Winifred stonily.

Soames spun round. “What!”

“Back!”

“Hoist,” muttered Soames, “with our own petard. Why the deuce

didn’t you let me try cruelty? I always knew it was too much risk

this way.”

“Oh! Don’t talk about that! What shall I do?”

Soames answered, with a deep, deep sound.

“Well?” said Winifred impatiently.

“What has he to say for himself?”

“Nothing. One of his boots is split across the toe.”

Soames stared at her.

“Ah!” he said, “of course! On his beam ends. So—it begins again!

This’ll about finish father.”

“Can’t we keep it from him?”

“Impossible. He has an uncanny flair for anything that’s

worrying.”

And he brooded, with fingers hooked into his blue silk braces.

“There ought to be some way in law,” he muttered, “to make him

safe.”

“No,” cried Winifred, “I won’t be made a fool of again; I’d

sooner put up with him.”

The two stared at each other. Their hearts were full of feeling,

but they could give it no expression—Forsytes that they were.

“Where did you leave him?”

“In the bath,” and Winifred gave a little bitter laugh. “The only

thing he’s brought back is lavender-water.”

“Steady!” said Soames, “you’re thoroughly upset. I’ll go back

with you.”

“What’s the use?”

“We ought to make terms with him.”

“Terms! It’ll always be the same. When he recovers—cards and

betting, drink and...!” She was silent, remembering the look on

her husband’s face. The burnt child—the burnt child. Perhaps...!

“Recovers?” replied Soames: “Is he ill?”

“No; burnt out; that’s all.”

Soames took his waistcoat from a chair and put it on, he took his

coat and got into it, he scented his handkerchief with

eau-de-Cologne, threaded his watch-chain, and said: “We haven’t

any luck.”

And in the midst of her own trouble Winifred was sorry for him,

as if in that little saying he had revealed deep trouble of his

own.

“I’d like to see mother,” she said.

“She’ll be with father in their room. Come down quietly to the

study. I’ll get her.”

Winifred stole down to the little dark study, chiefly remarkable

for a Canaletto too doubtful to be placed elsewhere, and a fine

collection of Law Reports unopened for many years. Here she

stood, with her back to maroon-coloured curtains close-drawn,

staring at the empty grate, till her mother came in followed by

Soames.

“Oh! my poor dear!” said Emily: “How miserable you look in here!

This is too bad of him, really!”

As a family they had so guarded themselves from the expression of

all unfashionable emotion that it was impossible to go up and

give her daughter a good hug. But there was comfort in her

cushioned voice, and her still dimpled shoulders under some rare

black lace. Summoning pride and the desire not to distress her

mother, Winifred said in her most off-hand voice:

“It’s all right, Mother; no good fussing.”

“I don’t see,” said Emily, looking at Soames, “why Winifred

shouldn’t tell him that she’ll prosecute him if he doesn’t keep

off the premises. He took her pearls; and if he’s not brought

them back, that’s quite enough.”

Winifred smiled. They would all plunge about with suggestions of

this and that, but she knew already what she would be doing, and

that was—nothing. The feeling that, after all, she had won a sort

of victory, retained her property, was every moment gaining

ground in her. No! if she wanted to punish him, she could do it

at home without the world knowing.

“Well,” said Emily, “come into the dining-room comfortably—you

must stay and have dinner with us. Leave it to me to tell your

father.” And, as Winifred moved towards the door, she turned out

the light. Not till then did they see the disaster in the

corridor.

There, attracted by light from a room never lighted, James was

standing with his duncoloured camel-hair shawl folded about him,

so that his arms were not free and his silvered head looked cut

off from his fashionably trousered legs as if by an expanse of

desert. He stood, inimitably stork-like, with an expression as if

he saw before him a frog too large to swallow.

“What’s all this?” he said. “Tell your father? You never tell me

anything.”

The moment found Emily without reply. It was Winifred who went up

to him, and, laying one hand on each of his swathed, helpless

arms, said:

“Monty’s not gone bankrupt, Father. He’s only come back.”

They all three expected something serious to happen, and were

glad she had kept that grip of his arms, but they did not know

the depth of root in that shadowy old Forsyte. Something wry

occurred about his shaven mouth and chin, something scratchy

between those long silvery whiskers. Then he said with a sort of

dignity: “He’ll be the death of me. I knew how it would be.”

“You mustn’t worry, Father,” said Winifred calmly. “I mean to

make him behave.”

“Ah!” said James. “Here, take this thing off, I’m hot.” They

unwound the shawl. He turned, and walked firmly to the

dining-room.

“I don’t want any soup,” he said to Warmson, and sat down in his

chair. They all sat down too, Winifred still in her hat, while

Warmson laid the fourth place. When he left the room, James said:

“What’s he brought back?”

“Nothing, Father.”

James concentrated his eyes on his own image in a tablespoon.

“Divorce!” he muttered; “rubbish! What was I about? I ought to

have paid him an allowance to stay out of England. Soames you go

and propose it to him.”

It seemed so right and simple a suggestion that even Winifred was

surprised when she said: “No, I’ll keep him now he’s back; he

must just behave—that’s all.”

They all looked at her. It had always been known that Winifred

had pluck.

“Out there!” said James elliptically, “who knows what

cut-throats! You look for his revolver! Don’t go to bed without.

You ought to have Warmson to sleep in the house. I’ll see him

myself tomorrow.”

They were touched by this declaration, and Emily said

comfortably: “That’s right, James, we won’t have any nonsense.”

“Ah!” muttered James darkly, “I can’t tell.”

The advent of Warmson with fish diverted conversation.

When, directly after dinner, Winifred went over to kiss her

father good-night, he looked up with eyes so full of question and

distress that she put all the comfort she could into her voice.

“It’s all right, Daddy, dear; don’t worry. I shan’t need

anyone—he’s quite bland. I shall only be upset if you worry.

Good-night, bless you!”

James repeated the words, “Bless you!” as if he did not quite

know what they meant, and his eyes followed her to the door.

She reached home before nine, and went straight upstairs.

Dartie was lying on the bed in his dressing-room, fully redressed

in a blue serge suit and pumps; his arms were crossed behind his

head, and an extinct cigarette drooped from his mouth.

Winifred remembered ridiculously the flowers in her window-boxes

after a blazing summer day; the way they lay, or rather

stood—parched, yet rested by the sun’s retreat. It was as if a

little dew had come already on her burnt-up husband.

He said apathetically: “I suppose you’ve been to Park Lane. How’s

the old man?”

Winifred could not help the bitter answer: “Not dead.”

He winced, actually he winced.

“Understand, Monty,” she said, “I will _not_ have him worried. If

you aren’t going to behave yourself, you may go back, you may go

anywhere. Have you had dinner?”

No.

“Would you like some?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Imogen offered me some. I didn’t want any.”

Imogen! In the plenitude of emotion Winifred had forgotten her.

“So you’ve seen her? What did she say?”

“She gave me a kiss.”

With mortification Winifred saw his dark sardonic face relaxed.

“Yes!” she thought, “he cares for her, not for me a bit.”

Dartie’s eyes were moving from side to side.

“Does she know about me?” he said.

It flashed through Winifred that here was the weapon she needed.

_He minded their knowing!_

“No. Val knows. The others don’t; they only know you went away.”

She heard him sigh with relief.

“But they _shall_ know,” she said firmly, “if you give me cause.”

“All right!” he muttered, “hit me! I’m down!”

Winifred went up to the bed. “Look here, Monty! I don’t want to

hit you. I don’t want to hurt you. I shan’t allude to anything.

I’m not going to worry. What’s the use?” She was silent a moment.

“I can’t stand any more, though, and I won’t! You’d better know.

You’ve made me suffer. But I used to be fond of you. For the sake

of that....” She met the heavy-lidded gaze of his brown eyes with

the downward stare of her green-grey eyes; touched his hand

suddenly, turned her back, and went into her room.

She sat there a long time before her glass, fingering her rings,

thinking of this subdued dark man, almost a stranger to her, on

the bed in the other room; resolutely not “worrying,” but gnawed

by jealousy of what he had been through, and now and again just

visited by pity.

CHAPTER XIV OUTLANDISH NIGHT

Soames doggedly let the spring come—no easy task for one

conscious that time was flying, his birds in the bush no nearer

the hand, no issue from the web anywhere visible. Mr. Polteed

reported nothing, except that his watch went on—costing a lot of

money. Val and his cousin were gone to the war, whence came news

more favourable; Dartie was behaving himself so far; James had

retained his health; business prospered almost terribly—there was

nothing to worry Soames except that he was “held up,” could make

no step in any direction.

He did not exactly avoid Soho, for he could not afford to let

them think that he had “piped off,” as James would have put it—he

might want to “pipe on” again at any minute. But he had to be so

restrained and cautious that he would often pass the door of the

Restaurant Bretagne without going in, and wander out of the

purlieus of that region which always gave him the feeling of

having been possessively irregular.

He wandered thus one May night into Regent Street and the most

amazing crowd he had ever seen; a shrieking, whistling, dancing,

jostling, grotesque and formidably jovial crowd, with false noses

and mouth-organs, penny whistles and long feathers, every

appanage of idiocy, as it seemed to him. Mafeking! Of course, it

had been relieved! Good! But was that an excuse? Who were these

people, what were they, where had they come from into the West

End? His face was tickled, his ears whistled into. Girls cried:

“Keep your hair on, stucco!” A youth so knocked off his top-hat

that he recovered it with difficulty. Crackers were exploding

beneath his nose, between his feet. He was bewildered,

exasperated, offended. This stream of people came from every

quarter, as if impulse had unlocked flood-gates, let flow waters

of whose existence he had heard, perhaps, but believed in never.

This, then, was the populace, the innumerable living negation of

gentility and Forsyteism. This was—egad!—Democracy! It stank,

yelled, was hideous! In the East End, or even Soho, perhaps—but

here in Regent Street, in Piccadilly! What were the police about!

In 1900, Soames, with his Forsyte thousands, had never seen the

cauldron with the lid off; and now looking into it, could hardly

believe his scorching eyes. The whole thing was unspeakable!

These people had no restraint, they seemed to think him funny;

such swarms of them, rude, coarse, laughing—and what laughter!

Nothing sacred to them! He shouldn’t be surprised if they began

to break windows. In Pall Mall, past those august dwellings, to

enter which people paid sixty pounds, this shrieking, whistling,

dancing dervish of a crowd was swarming. From the Club windows

his own kind were looking out on them with regulated amusement.

They didn’t realise! Why, this was serious—might come to

anything! The crowd was cheerful, but some day they would come in

different mood! He remembered there had been a mob in the late

eighties, when he was at Brighton; they had smashed things and

made speeches. But more than dread, he felt a deep surprise. They

were hysterical—it wasn’t English! And all about the relief of a

little town as big as—Watford, six thousand miles away.

Restraint, reserve! Those qualities to him more dear almost than

life, those indispensable attributes of property and culture,

where were they? It wasn’t English! No, it wasn’t English! So

Soames brooded, threading his way on. It was as if he had

suddenly caught sight of someone cutting the covenant “for quiet

possession” out of his legal documents; or of a monster lurking

and stalking out in the future, casting its shadow before. Their

want of stolidity, their want of reverence! It was like

discovering that nine-tenths of the people of England were

foreigners. And if that were so—then, anything might happen!

At Hyde Park Corner he ran into George Forsyte, very sunburnt

from racing, holding a false nose in his hand.

“Hallo, Soames!” he said, “have a nose!”

Soames responded with a pale smile.

“Got this from one of these sportsmen,” went on George, who had

evidently been dining; “had to lay him out—for trying to bash my

hat. I say, one of these days we shall have to fight these chaps,

they’re getting so damned cheeky—all radicals and socialists.

They want our goods. You tell Uncle James that, it’ll make him

sleep.”

“_In vino veritas_,” thought Soames, but he only nodded, and

passed on up Hamilton Place. There was but a trickle of

roysterers in Park Lane, not very noisy. And looking up at the

houses he thought: “After all, we’re the backbone of the country.

They won’t upset us easily. Possession’s nine points of the law.”

But, as he closed the door of his father’s house behind him, all

that queer outlandish nightmare in the streets passed out of his

mind almost as completely as if, having dreamed it, he had

awakened in the warm clean morning comfort of his

spring-mattressed bed.

Walking into the centre of the great empty drawing-room, he stood

still.

A wife! Somebody to talk things over with. One had a right! Damn

it! One had a right!

PART III

CHAPTER I SOAMES IN PARIS

Soames had travelled little. Aged nineteen he had made the “petty

tour” with his father, mother, and Winifred—Brussels, the Rhine,

Switzerland, and home by way of Paris. Aged twenty-seven, just

when he began to take interest in pictures, he had spent five hot

weeks in Italy, looking into the Renaissance—not so much in it as

he had been led to expect—and a fortnight in Paris on his way

back, looking into himself, as became a Forsyte surrounded by

people so strongly self-centred and “foreign” as the French. His

knowledge of their language being derived from his public school,

he did not understand them when they spoke. Silence he had found

better for all parties; one did not make a fool of oneself. He

had disliked the look of the men’s clothes, the closed-in cabs,

the theatres which looked like bee-hives, the Galleries which

smelled of beeswax. He was too cautious and too shy to explore

that side of Paris supposed by Forsytes to constitute its

attraction under the rose; and as for a collector’s bargain—not

one to be had! As Nicholas might have put it—they were a grasping

lot. He had come back uneasy, saying Paris was overrated.

When, therefore, in June of 1900 he went to Paris, it was but his

third attempt on the centre of civilisation. This time, however,

the mountain was going to Mahomet; for he felt by now more deeply

civilised than Paris, and perhaps he really was. Moreover, he had

a definite objective. This was no mere genuflexion to a shrine of

taste and immorality, but the prosecution of his own legitimate

affairs. He went, indeed, because things were getting past a

joke. The watch went on and on, and—nothing—nothing! Jolyon had

never returned to Paris, and no one else was “suspect!” Busy with

new and very confidential matters, Soames was realising more than

ever how essential reputation is to a solicitor. But at night and

in his leisure moments he was ravaged by the thought that time

was always flying and money flowing in, and his own future as

much “in irons” as ever. Since Mafeking night he had become aware

that a “young fool of a doctor” was hanging round Annette. Twice

he had come across him—a cheerful young fool, not more than

thirty.

Nothing annoyed Soames so much as cheerfulness—an indecent,

extravagant sort of quality, which had no relation to facts. The

mixture of his desires and hopes was, in a word, becoming

torture; and lately the thought had come to him that perhaps

Irene knew she was being shadowed: It was this which finally

decided him to go and see for himself; to go and once more try to

break down her repugnance, her refusal to make her own and his

path comparatively smooth once more. If he failed again—well, he

would see what she did with herself, anyway!

He went to an hotel in the Rue Caumartin, highly recommended to

Forsytes, where practically nobody spoke French. He had formed no

plan. He did not want to startle her; yet must contrive that she

had no chance to evade him by flight. And next morning he set out

in bright weather.

Paris had an air of gaiety, a sparkle over its star-shape which

almost annoyed Soames. He stepped gravely, his nose lifted a

little sideways in real curiosity. He desired now to understand

things French. Was not Annette French? There was much to be got

out of his visit, if he could only get it. In this laudable mood

and the Place de la Concorde he was nearly run down three times.

He came on the “Cours la Reine,” where Irene’s hotel was

situated, almost too suddenly, for he had not yet fixed on his

procedure. Crossing over to the river side, he noted the

building, white and cheerful-looking, with green sunblinds, seen

through a screen of plane-tree leaves. And, conscious that it

would be far better to meet her casually in some open place than

to risk a call, he sat down on a bench whence he could watch the

entrance. It was not quite eleven o’clock, and improbable that

she had yet gone out. Some pigeons were strutting and preening

their feathers in the pools of sunlight between the shadows of

the plane-trees. A workman in a blue blouse passed, and threw

them crumbs from the paper which contained his dinner. A

“_bonne_” coiffed with ribbon shepherded two little girls with

pig-tails and frilled drawers. A cab meandered by, whose _cocher_

wore a blue coat and a black-glazed hat. To Soames a kind of

affectation seemed to cling about it all, a sort of

picturesqueness which was out of date. A theatrical people, the

French! He lit one of his rare cigarettes, with a sense of injury

that Fate should be casting his life into outlandish waters. He

shouldn’t wonder if Irene quite enjoyed this foreign life; she

had never been properly English—even to look at! And he began

considering which of those windows could be hers under the green

sunblinds. How could he word what he had come to say so that it

might pierce the defence of her proud obstinacy? He threw the

fag-end of his cigarette at a pigeon, with the thought: “I can’t

stay here for ever twiddling my thumbs. Better give it up and

call on her in the late afternoon.” But he still sat on, heard

twelve strike, and then half-past. “I’ll wait till one,” he

thought, “while I’m about it.” But just then he started up, and

shrinkingly sat down again. A woman had come out in a

cream-coloured frock, and was moving away under a fawn-coloured

parasol. Irene herself! He waited till she was too far away to

recognise him, then set out after her. She was strolling as

though she had no particular objective; moving, if he remembered

rightly, toward the Bois de Boulogne. For half an hour at least

he kept his distance on the far side of the way till she had

passed into the Bois itself. Was she going to meet someone after

all? Some confounded Frenchman—one of those “Bel Ami” chaps,

perhaps, who had nothing to do but hang about women—for he had

read that book with difficulty and a sort of disgusted

fascination. He followed doggedly along a shady alley, losing

sight of her now and then when the path curved. And it came back

to him how, long ago, one night in Hyde Park he had slid and

sneaked from tree to tree, from seat to seat, hunting blindly,

ridiculously, in burning jealousy for her and young Bosinney. The

path bent sharply, and, hurrying, he came on her sitting in front

of a small fountain—a little green-bronze Niobe veiled in hair to

her slender hips, gazing at the pool she had wept: He came on her

so suddenly that he was past before he could turn and take off

his hat. She did not start up. She had always had great

self-command—it was one of the things he most admired in her, one

of his greatest grievances against her, because he had never been

able to tell what she was thinking. Had she realised that he was

following? Her self-possession made him angry; and, disdaining to

explain his presence, he pointed to the mournful little Niobe,

and said:

“That’s rather a good thing.”

He could see, then, that she was struggling to preserve her

composure.

“I didn’t want to startle you; is this one of your haunts?”

“Yes.”

“A little lonely.” As he spoke, a lady, strolling by, paused to

look at the fountain and passed on.

Irene’s eyes followed her.

“No,” she said, prodding the ground with her parasol, “never

lonely. One has always one’s shadow.”

Soames understood; and, looking at her hard, he exclaimed:

“Well, it’s your own fault. You can be free of it at any moment.

Irene, come back to me, and be free.”

Irene laughed.

“Don’t!” cried Soames, stamping his foot; “it’s inhuman. Listen!

Is there any condition I can make which will bring you back to

me? If I promise you a separate house—and just a visit now and

then?”

Irene rose, something wild suddenly in her face and figure.

“None! None! None! You may hunt me to the grave. I will not

come.”

Outraged and on edge, Soames recoiled.

“Don’t make a scene!” he said sharply. And they both stood

motionless, staring at the little Niobe, whose greenish flesh the

sunlight was burnishing.

“That’s your last word, then,” muttered Soames, clenching his

hands; “you condemn us both.”

Irene bent her head. “I can’t come back. Good-bye!”

A feeling of monstrous injustice flared up in Soames.

“Stop!” he said, “and listen to me a moment. You gave me a sacred

vow—you came to me without a penny. You had all I could give you.

You broke that vow without cause, you made me a by-word; you

refused me a child; you’ve left me in prison; you—you still move

me so that I want you—I want you. Well, what do you think of

yourself?”

Irene turned, her face was deadly pale, her eyes burning dark.

“God made me as I am,” she said; “wicked if you like—but not so

wicked that I’ll give myself again to a man I hate.”

The sunlight gleamed on her hair as she moved away, and seemed to

lay a caress all down her clinging cream-coloured frock.

Soames could neither speak nor move. That word “hate”—so extreme,

so primitive—made all the Forsyte in him tremble. With a deep

imprecation he strode away from where she had vanished, and ran

almost into the arms of the lady sauntering back—the fool, the

shadowing fool!

He was soon dripping with perspiration, in the depths of the

Bois.

“Well,” he thought, “I need have no consideration for her now;

she has not a grain of it for me. I’ll show her this very day

that she’s my wife still.”

But on the way home to his hotel, he was forced to the conclusion

that he did not know what he meant. One could not make scenes in

public, and short of scenes in public what was there he could do?

He almost cursed his own thin-skinnedness. She might deserve no

consideration; but he—alas! deserved some at his own hands. And

sitting lunchless in the hall of his hotel, with tourists passing

every moment, Baedeker in hand, he was visited by black

dejection. In irons! His whole life, with every natural instinct

and every decent yearning gagged and fettered, and all because

Fate had driven him seventeen years ago to set his heart upon

this woman—so utterly, that even now he had no real heart to set

on any other! Cursed was the day he had met her, and his eyes for

seeing in her anything but the cruel Venus she was! And yet,

still seeing her with the sunlight on the clinging China crepe of

her gown, he uttered a little groan, so that a tourist who was

passing, thought: “Man in pain! Let’s see! what did I have for

lunch?”

Later, in front of a café near the Opera, over a glass of cold

tea with lemon and a straw in it, he took the malicious

resolution to go and dine at her hotel. If she were there, he

would speak to her; if she were not, he would leave a note. He

dressed carefully, and wrote as follows:

“Your idyll with that fellow Jolyon Forsyte is known to me at all

events. If you pursue it, understand that I will leave no stone

unturned to make things unbearable for him.

‘S. F.’”

He sealed this note but did not address it, refusing to write the

maiden name which she had impudently resumed, or to put the word

Forsyte on the envelope lest she should tear it up unread. Then

he went out, and made his way through the glowing streets,

abandoned to evening pleasure-seekers. Entering her hotel, he

took his seat in a far corner of the dining-room whence he could

see all entrances and exits. She was not there. He ate little,

quickly, watchfully. She did not come. He lingered in the lounge

over his coffee, drank two liqueurs of brandy. But still she did

not come. He went over to the keyboard and examined the names.

Number twelve, on the first floor! And he determined to take the

note up himself. He mounted red-carpeted stairs, past a little

salon; eight-ten-twelve! Should he knock, push the note under,

or...? He looked furtively round and turned the handle. The door

opened, but into a little space leading to another door; he

knocked on that—no answer. The door was locked. It fitted very

closely to the floor; the note would not go under. He thrust it

back into his pocket, and stood a moment listening. He felt

somehow certain that she was not there. And suddenly he came

away, passing the little salon down the stairs. He stopped at the

bureau and said:

“Will you kindly see that Mrs. Heron has this note?”

“Madame Heron left to-day, Monsieur—suddenly, about three

o’clock. There was illness in her family.”

Soames compressed his lips. “Oh!” he said; “do you know her

address?”

“_Non, Monsieur_. England, I think.”

Soames put the note back into his pocket and went out. He hailed

an open horse-cab which was passing.

“Drive me anywhere!”

The man, who, obviously, did not understand, smiled, and waved

his whip. And Soames was borne along in that little

yellow-wheeled Victoria all over star-shaped Paris, with here and

there a pause, and the question, “_C’est par ici, Monsieur?_”

“No, go on,” till the man gave it up in despair, and the

yellow-wheeled chariot continued to roll between the tall,

flat-fronted shuttered houses and plane-tree avenues—a little

Flying Dutchman of a cab.

“Like my life,” thought Soames, “without object, on and on!”

CHAPTER II IN THE WEB

Soames returned to England the following day, and on the third

morning received a visit from Mr. Polteed, who wore a flower and

carried a brown billycock hat. Soames motioned him to a seat.

“The news from the war is not so bad, is it?” said Mr. Polteed.

“I hope I see you well, sir.”

“Thanks! quite.”

Mr. Polteed leaned forward, smiled, opened his hand, looked into

it, and said softly:

“I think we’ve done your business for you at last.”

“What?” ejaculated Soames.

“Nineteen reports quite suddenly what I think we shall be

justified in calling conclusive evidence,” and Mr. Polteed

paused.

“Well?”

“On the 10th instant, after witnessing an interview between 17

and a party, earlier in the day, 19 can swear to having seen him

coming out of her bedroom in the hotel about ten o’clock in the

evening. With a little care in the giving of the evidence that

will be enough, especially as 17 has left Paris—no doubt with the

party in question. In fact, they both slipped off, and we haven’t

got on to them again, yet; but we shall—we shall. She’s worked

hard under very difficult circumstances, and I’m glad she’s

brought it off at last.” Mr. Polteed took out a cigarette, tapped

its end against the table, looked at Soames, and put it back. The

expression on his client’s face was not encouraging.

“Who is this new person?” said Soames abruptly.

“That we don’t know. She’ll swear to the fact, and she’s got his

appearance pat.”

Mr. Polteed took out a letter, and began reading:

“‘Middle-aged, medium height, blue dittoes in afternoon, evening

dress at night, pale, dark hair, small dark moustache, flat

cheeks, good chin, grey eyes, small feet, guilty look....’”

Soames rose and went to the window. He stood there in sardonic

fury. Congenital idiot—spidery congenital idiot! Seven months at

fifteen pounds a week—to be tracked down as his own wife’s lover!

Guilty look! He threw the window open.

“It’s hot,” he said, and came back to his seat.

Crossing his knees, he bent a supercilious glance on Mr. Polteed.

“I doubt if that’s quite good enough,” he said, drawling the

words, “with no name or address. I think you may let that lady

have a rest, and take up our friend 47 at this end.” Whether

Polteed had spotted him he could not tell; but he had a mental

vision of him in the midst of his cronies dissolved in

inextinguishable laughter. “Guilty look!” Damnation!

Mr. Polteed said in a tone of urgency, almost of pathos: “I

assure you we have put it through sometimes on less than that.

It’s Paris, you know. Attractive woman living alone. Why not risk

it, sir? We might screw it up a peg.”

Soames had sudden insight. The fellow’s professional zeal was

stirred: “Greatest triumph of my career; got a man his divorce

through a visit to his own wife’s bedroom! Something to talk of

there, when I retire!” And for one wild moment he thought: “Why

not?” After all, hundreds of men of medium height had small feet

and a guilty look!

“I’m not authorised to take any risk!” he said shortly.

Mr. Polteed looked up.

“Pity,” he said, “quite a pity! That other affair seemed very

costive.”

Soames rose.

“Never mind that. Please watch 47, and take care not to find a

mare’s nest. Good-morning!”

Mr. Polteed’s eye glinted at the words “mare’s nest!”

“Very good. You shall be kept informed.”

And Soames was alone again. The spidery, dirty, ridiculous

business! Laying his arms on the table, he leaned his forehead on

them. Full ten minutes he rested thus, till a managing clerk

roused him with the draft prospectus of a new issue of shares,

very desirable, in Manifold and Topping’s. That afternoon he left

work early and made his way to the Restaurant Bretagne. Only

Madame Lamotte was in. Would _Monsieur_ have tea with her?

Soames bowed.

When they were seated at right angles to each other in the little

room, he said abruptly:

“I want a talk with you, _Madame_.”

The quick lift of her clear brown eyes told him that she had long

expected such words.

“I have to ask you something first: That young doctor—what’s his

name? Is there anything between him and Annette?”

Her whole personality had become, as it were, like jet—clear-cut,

black, hard, shining.

“Annette is young,” she said; “so is _monsieur le docteur_.

Between young people things move quickly; but Annette is a good

daughter. Ah! what a jewel of a nature!”

The least little smile twisted Soames’ lips.

“Nothing definite, then?”

“But definite—no, indeed! The young man is veree nice, but—what

would you? There is no money at present.”

She raised her willow-patterned tea-cup; Soames did the same.

Their eyes met.

“I am a married man,” he said, “living apart from my wife for

many years. I am seeking to divorce her.”

Madame Lamotte put down her cup. Indeed! What tragic things there

were! The entire absence of sentiment in her inspired a queer

species of contempt in Soames.

“I am a rich man,” he added, fully conscious that the remark was

not in good taste. “It is useless to say more at present, but I

think you understand.”

Madame’s eyes, so open that the whites showed above them, looked

at him very straight.

“_Ah! ça—mais nous avons le temps!_” was all she said. “Another

little cup?” Soames refused, and, taking his leave, walked

westward.

He had got that off his mind; she would not let Annette commit

herself with that cheerful young ass until...! But what chance of

his ever being able to say: “I’m free?” What chance? The future

had lost all semblance of reality. He felt like a fly, entangled

in cobweb filaments, watching the desirable freedom of the air

with pitiful eyes.

He was short of exercise, and wandered on to Kensington Gardens,

and down Queen’s Gate towards Chelsea. Perhaps she had gone back

to her flat. That at all events he could find out. For since that

last and most ignominious repulse his wounded self-respect had

taken refuge again in the feeling that she must have a lover. He

arrived before the little Mansions at the dinner-hour. No need to

enquire! A grey-haired lady was watering the flower-boxes in her

window. It was evidently let. And he walked slowly past again,

along the river—an evening of clear, quiet beauty, all harmony

and comfort, except within his heart.

CHAPTER III RICHMOND PARK

On the afternoon that Soames crossed to France a cablegram was

received by Jolyon at Robin Hill:

“Your son down with enteric no immediate danger will cable

again.”

It reached a household already agitated by the imminent departure

of June, whose berth was booked for the following day. She was,

indeed, in the act of confiding Eric Cobbley and his family to

her father’s care when the message arrived.

The resolution to become a Red Cross nurse, taken under stimulus

of Jolly’s enlistment, had been loyally fulfilled with the

irritation and regret which all Forsytes feel at what curtails

their individual liberties. Enthusiastic at first about the

“wonderfulness” of the work, she had begun after a month to feel

that she could train herself so much better than others could

train her. And if Holly had not insisted on following her

example, and being trained too, she must inevitably have “cried

off.” The departure of Jolly and Val with their troop in April

had further stiffened her failing resolve. But now, on the point

of departure, the thought of leaving Eric Cobbley, with a wife

and two children, adrift in the cold waters of an unappreciative

world weighed on her so that she was still in danger of backing

out. The reading of that cablegram, with its disquieting reality,

clinched the matter. She saw herself already nursing Jolly—for of

course they would let her nurse her own brother! Jolyon—ever wide

and doubtful—had no such hope. Poor June!

Could any Forsyte of her generation grasp how rude and brutal

life was? Ever since he knew of his boy’s arrival at Cape Town

the thought of him had been a kind of recurrent sickness in

Jolyon. He could not get reconciled to the feeling that Jolly was

in danger all the time. The cablegram, grave though it was, was

almost a relief. He was now safe from bullets, anyway. And

yet—this enteric was a virulent disease! _The Times_ was full of

deaths therefrom. Why could _he_ not be lying out there in that

up-country hospital, and his boy safe at home? The un-Forsytean

self-sacrifice of his three children, indeed, had quite

bewildered Jolyon. He would eagerly change places with Jolly,

because he loved his boy; but no such personal motive was

influencing _them_. He could only think that it marked the

decline of the Forsyte type.

Late that afternoon Holly came out to him under the old oak-tree.

She had grown up very much during these last months of hospital

training away from home. And, seeing her approach, he thought:

“She has more sense than June, child though she is; more wisdom.

Thank God _she_ isn’t going out.” She had seated herself in the

swing, very silent and still. “She feels this,” thought Jolyon,

“as much as I” and, seeing her eyes fixed on him, he said: “Don’t

take it to heart too much, my child. If he weren’t ill, he might

be in much greater danger.”

Holly got out of the swing.

“I want to tell you something, Dad. It was through me that Jolly

enlisted and went out.”

“How’s that?”

“When you were away in Paris, Val Dartie and I fell in love. We

used to ride in Richmond Park; we got engaged. Jolly found it

out, and thought he ought to stop it; so he dared Val to enlist.

It was all my fault, Dad; and I want to go out too. Because if

anything happens to either of them I should feel awful. Besides,

I’m just as much trained as June.”

Jolyon gazed at her in a stupefaction that was tinged with irony.

So this was the answer to the riddle he had been asking himself;

and his three children were Forsytes after all. Surely Holly

might have told him all this before! But he smothered the

sarcastic sayings on his lips. Tenderness to the young was

perhaps the most sacred article of his belief. He had got, no

doubt, what he deserved. Engaged! So this was why he had so lost

touch with her! And to young Val Dartie—nephew of Soames—in the

other camp! It was all terribly distasteful. He closed his easel,

and set his drawing against the tree.

“Have you told June?”

“Yes; she says she’ll get me into her cabin somehow. It’s a

single cabin; but one of us could sleep on the floor. If you

consent, she’ll go up now and get permission.”

“Consent?” thought Jolyon. “Rather late in the day to ask for

that!” But again he checked himself.

“You’re too young, my dear; they won’t let you.”

“June knows some people that she helped to go to Cape Town. If

they won’t let me nurse yet, I could stay with them and go on

training there. Let me go, Dad!”

Jolyon smiled because he could have cried.

“I never stop anyone from doing anything,” he said.

Holly flung her arms round his neck.

“Oh! Dad, you are the best in the world.”

“That means the worst,” thought Jolyon. If he had ever doubted

his creed of tolerance he did so then.

“I’m not friendly with Val’s family,” he said, “and I don’t know

Val, but Jolly didn’t like him.”

Holly looked at the distance and said:

“I love him.”

“That settles it,” said Jolyon dryly, then catching the

expression on her face, he kissed her, with the thought: “Is

anything more pathetic than the faith of the young?” Unless he

actually forbade her going it was obvious that he must make the

best of it, so he went up to town with June. Whether due to her

persistence, or the fact that the official they saw was an old

school friend of Jolyon’s, they obtained permission for Holly to

share the single cabin. He took them to Surbiton station the

following evening, and they duly slid away from him, provided

with money, invalid foods, and those letters of credit without

which Forsytes do not travel.

He drove back to Robin Hill under a brilliant sky to his late

dinner, served with an added care by servants trying to show him

that they sympathised, eaten with an added scrupulousness to show

them that he appreciated their sympathy. But it was a real relief

to get to his cigar on the terrace of flag-stones—cunningly

chosen by young Bosinney for shape and colour—with night closing

in around him, so beautiful a night, hardly whispering in the

trees, and smelling so sweet that it made him ache. The grass was

drenched with dew, and he kept to those flagstones, up and down,

till presently it began to seem to him that he was one of three,

not wheeling, but turning right about at each end, so that his

father was always nearest to the house, and his son always

nearest to the terrace edge. Each had an arm lightly within his

arm; he dared not lift his hand to his cigar lest he should

disturb them, and it burned away, dripping ash on him, till it

dropped from his lips, at last, which were getting hot. They left

him then, and his arms felt chilly. Three Jolyons in one Jolyon

they had walked.

He stood still, counting the sounds—a carriage passing on the

highroad, a distant train, the dog at Gage’s farm, the whispering

trees, the groom playing on his penny whistle. A multitude of

stars up there—bright and silent, so far off! No moon as yet!

Just enough light to show him the dark flags and swords of the

iris flowers along the terrace edge—his favourite flower that had

the night’s own colour on its curving crumpled petals. He turned

round to the house. Big, unlighted, not a soul beside himself to

live in all that part of it. Stark loneliness! He could not go on

living here alone. And yet, so long as there was beauty, why

should a man feel lonely? The answer—as to some idiot’s

riddle—was: Because he did. The greater the beauty, the greater

the loneliness, for at the back of beauty was harmony, and at the

back of harmony was—union. Beauty could not comfort if the soul

were out of it. The night, maddeningly lovely, with bloom of

grapes on it in starshine, and the breath of grass and honey

coming from it, he could not enjoy, while she who was to him the

life of beauty, its embodiment and essence, was cut off from him,

utterly cut off now, he felt, by honourable decency.

He made a poor fist of sleeping, striving too hard after that

resignation which Forsytes find difficult to reach, bred to their

own way and left so comfortably off by their fathers. But after

dawn he dozed off, and soon was dreaming a strange dream.

He was on a stage with immensely high rich curtains—high as the

very stars—stretching in a semi-circle from footlights to

footlights. He himself was very small, a little black restless

figure roaming up and down; and the odd thing was that he was not

altogether himself, but Soames as well, so that he was not only

experiencing but watching. This figure of himself and Soames was

trying to find a way out through the curtains, which, heavy and

dark, kept him in. Several times he had crossed in front of them

before he saw with delight a sudden narrow rift—a tall chink of

beauty the colour of iris flowers, like a glimpse of Paradise,

remote, ineffable. Stepping quickly forward to pass into it, he

found the curtains closing before him. Bitterly disappointed

he—or was it Soames?—moved on, and there was the chink again

through the parted curtains, which again closed too soon. This

went on and on and he never got through till he woke with the

word “Irene” on his lips. The dream disturbed him badly,

especially that identification of himself with Soames.

Next morning, finding it impossible to work, he spent hours

riding Jolly’s horse in search of fatigue. And on the second day

he made up his mind to move to London and see if he could not get

permission to follow his daughters to South Africa. He had just

begun to pack the following morning when he received this letter:

“GREEN HOTEL,

“RICHMOND.

“_June_ 13.

“MY DEAR JOLYON,

“You will be surprised to see how near I am to you. Paris

became impossible—and I have come here to be within reach of

your advice. I would so love to see you again. Since you left

Paris I don’t think I have met anyone I could really talk to.

Is all well with you and with your boy? No one knows, I

think, that I am here at present.

“Always your friend,

“IRENE.”

Irene within three miles of him!—and again in flight! He stood

with a very queer smile on his lips. This was more than he had

bargained for!

About noon he set out on foot across Richmond Park, and as he

went along, he thought: “Richmond Park! By Jove, it suits us

Forsytes!” Not that Forsytes lived there—nobody lived there save

royalty, rangers, and the deer—but in Richmond Park Nature was

allowed to go so far and no further, putting up a brave show of

being natural, seeming to say: “Look at my instincts—they are

almost passions, very nearly out of hand, but not quite, of

course; the very hub of possession is to possess oneself.” Yes!

Richmond Park possessed itself, even on that bright day of June,

with arrowy cuckoos shifting the tree-points of their calls, and

the wood doves announcing high summer.

The Green Hotel, which Jolyon entered at one o’clock, stood

nearly opposite that more famous hostelry, the Crown and Sceptre;

it was modest, highly respectable, never out of cold beef,

gooseberry tart, and a dowager or two, so that a carriage and

pair was almost always standing before the door.

In a room draped in chintz so slippery as to forbid all emotion,

Irene was sitting on a piano stool covered with crewel work,

playing “Hansel and Gretel” out of an old score. Above her on a

wall, not yet Morris-papered, was a print of the Queen on a pony,

amongst deer-hounds, Scotch caps, and slain stags; beside her in

a pot on the window-sill was a white and rosy fuchsia. The

Victorianism of the room almost talked; and in her clinging frock

Irene seemed to Jolyon like Venus emerging from the shell of the

past century.

“If the proprietor had eyes,” he said, “he would show you the

door; you have broken through his decorations.” Thus lightly he

smothered up an emotional moment. Having eaten cold beef, pickled

walnut, gooseberry tart, and drunk stone-bottle ginger-beer, they

walked into the Park, and light talk was succeeded by the silence

Jolyon had dreaded.

“You haven’t told me about Paris,” he said at last.

“No. I’ve been shadowed for a long time; one gets used to that.

But then Soames came. By the little Niobe—the same story; would I

go back to him?”

“Incredible!”

She had spoken without raising her eyes, but she looked up now.

Those dark eyes clinging to his said as no words could have: “I

have come to an end; if you want me, here I am.”

For sheer emotional intensity had he ever—old as he was—passed

through such a moment?

The words: “Irene, I adore you!” almost escaped him. Then, with a

clearness of which he would not have believed mental vision

capable, he saw Jolly lying with a white face turned to a white

wall.

“My boy is very ill out there,” he said quietly.

Irene slipped her arm through his.

“Let’s walk on; I understand.”

No miserable explanation to attempt! She had understood! And they

walked on among the bracken, knee-high already, between the

rabbit-holes and the oak-trees, talking of Jolly. He left her two

hours later at the Richmond Hill Gate, and turned towards home.

“She knows of my feeling for her, then,” he thought. Of course!

One could not keep knowledge of that from such a woman!

CHAPTER IV OVER THE RIVER

Jolly was tired to death of dreams. They had left him now too wan

and weak to dream again; left him to lie torpid, faintly

remembering far-off things; just able to turn his eyes and gaze

through the window near his cot at the trickle of river running

by in the sands, at the straggling milk-bush of the Karoo beyond.

He knew what the Karoo was now, even if he had not seen a Boer

roll over like a rabbit, or heard the whine of flying bullets.

This pestilence had sneaked on him before he had smelled powder.

A thirsty day and a rash drink, or perhaps a tainted fruit—who

knew? Not he, who had not even strength left to grudge the evil

thing its victory—just enough to know that there were many lying

here with him, that he was sore with frenzied dreaming; just

enough to watch that thread of river and be able to remember

faintly those far-away things....

The sun was nearly down. It would be cooler soon. He would have

liked to know the time—to feel his old watch, so butter-smooth,

to hear the repeater strike. It would have been friendly,

home-like. He had not even strength to remember that the old

watch was last wound the day he began to lie here. The pulse of

his brain beat so feebly that faces which came and went, nurse’s,

doctor’s, orderly’s, were indistinguishable, just one indifferent

face; and the words spoken about him meant all the same thing,

and that almost nothing. Those things he used to do, though far

and faint, were more distinct—walking past the foot of the old

steps at Harrow “bill”—“Here, sir! Here, sir!”—wrapping boots in

the Westminster Gazette, greenish paper, shining

boots—grandfather coming from somewhere dark—a smell of earth—the

mushroom house! Robin Hill! Burying poor old Balthasar in the

leaves! Dad! Home....

Consciousness came again with noticing that the river had no

water in it—someone was speaking too. Want anything? No. What

could one want? Too weak to want—only to hear his watch

strike....

Holly! She wouldn’t bowl properly. Oh! Pitch them up! Not

sneaks!... “Back her, Two and Bow!” He was Two!... Consciousness

came once more with a sense of the violet dusk outside, and a

rising blood-red crescent moon. His eyes rested on it fascinated;

in the long minutes of brain-nothingness it went moving up and

up....

“He’s going, doctor!” Not pack boots again? Never? “Mind your

form, Two!” Don’t cry! Go quietly—over the river—sleep!... Dark?

If somebody would—strike—his—watch!...

CHAPTER V SOAMES ACTS

A sealed letter in the handwriting of Mr. Polteed remained

unopened in Soames’ pocket throughout two hours of sustained

attention to the affairs of the “New Colliery Company,” which,

declining almost from the moment of old Jolyon’s retirement from

the Chairmanship, had lately run down so fast that there was now

nothing for it but a “winding-up.” He took the letter out to

lunch at his City Club, sacred to him for the meals he had eaten

there with his father in the early seventies, when James used to

like him to come and see for himself the nature of his future

life.

Here in a remote corner before a plate of roast mutton and mashed

potato, he read:

“DEAR SIR,

“In accordance with your suggestion we have duly taken the

matter up at the other end with gratifying results.

Observation of 47 has enabled us to locate 17 at the Green

Hotel, Richmond. The two have been observed to meet daily

during the past week in Richmond Park. Nothing absolutely

crucial has so far been notified. But in conjunction with

what we had from Paris at the beginning of the year, I am

confident we could now satisfy the Court. We shall, of

course, continue to watch the matter until we hear from you.

“Very faithfully yours,

“CLAUD POLTEED.”

Soames read it through twice and beckoned to the waiter:

“Take this away; it’s cold.”

“Shall I bring you some more, sir?”

“No. Get me some coffee in the other room.”

And, paying for what he had not eaten, he went out, passing two

acquaintances without sign of recognition.

“Satisfy the Court!” he thought, sitting at a little round marble

table with the coffee before him. That fellow Jolyon! He poured

out his coffee, sweetened and drank it. He would disgrace him in

the eyes of his own children! And rising, with that resolution

hot within him, he found for the first time the inconvenience of

being his own solicitor. He could not treat this scandalous

matter in his own office. He must commit the soul of his private

dignity to a stranger, some other professional dealer in family

dishonour. Who was there he could go to? Linkman and Laver in

Budge Row, perhaps—reliable, not too conspicuous, only nodding

acquaintances. But before he saw them he must see Polteed again.

But at this thought Soames had a moment of sheer weakness. To

part with his secret? How find the words? How subject himself to

contempt and secret laughter? Yet, after all, the fellow knew

already—oh yes, he knew! And, feeling that he must finish with it

now, he took a cab into the West End.

In this hot weather the window of Mr. Polteed’s room was

positively open, and the only precaution was a wire gauze,

preventing the intrusion of flies. Two or three had tried to come

in, and been caught, so that they seemed to be clinging there

with the intention of being devoured presently. Mr. Polteed,

following the direction of his client’s eye, rose apologetically

and closed the window.

“Posing ass!” thought Soames. Like all who fundamentally believe

in themselves he was rising to the occasion, and, with his little

sideway smile, he said: “I’ve had your letter. I’m going to act.

I suppose you know who the lady you’ve been watching really is?”

Mr. Polteed’s expression at that moment was a masterpiece. It so

clearly said: “Well, what do you think? But mere professional

knowledge, I assure you—pray forgive it!” He made a little half

airy movement with his hand, as who should say: “Such things—such

things will happen to us all!”

“Very well, then,” said Soames, moistening his lips: “there’s no

need to say more. I’m instructing Linkman and Laver of Budge Row

to act for me. I don’t want to hear your evidence, but kindly

make your report to them at five o’clock, and continue to observe

the utmost secrecy.”

Mr. Polteed half closed his eyes, as if to comply at once. “My

dear sir,” he said.

“Are you convinced,” asked Soames with sudden energy, “that there

is enough?”

The faintest movement occurred to Mr. Polteed’s shoulders.

“You can risk it,” he murmured; “with what we have, and human

nature, you can risk it.”

Soames rose. “You will ask for Mr. Linkman. Thanks; don’t get

up.” He could not bear Mr. Polteed to slide as usual between him

and the door. In the sunlight of Piccadilly he wiped his

forehead. This had been the worst of it—he could stand the

strangers better. And he went back into the City to do what still

lay before him.

That evening in Park Lane, watching his father dine, he was

overwhelmed by his old longing for a son—a son, to watch _him_

eat as he went down the years, to be taken on _his_ knee as James

on a time had been wont to take him; a son of his own begetting,

who could understand him because he was the same flesh and

blood—understand, and comfort him, and become more rich and

cultured than himself because he would start even better off. To

get old—like that thin, grey wiry-frail figure sitting there—and

be quite alone with possessions heaping up around him; to take no

interest in anything because it had no future and must pass away

from him to hands and mouths and eyes for whom he cared no jot!

No! He would force it through now, and be free to marry, and have

a son to care for him before he grew to be like the old old man

his father, wistfully watching now his sweetbread, now his son.

In that mood he went up to bed. But, lying warm between those

fine linen sheets of Emily’s providing, he was visited by

memories and torture. Visions of Irene, almost the solid feeling

of her body, beset him. Why had he ever been fool enough to see

her again, and let this flood back on him so that it was pain to

think of her with that fellow—that stealing fellow.

CHAPTER VI A SUMMER DAY

His boy was seldom absent from Jolyon’s mind in the days which

followed the first walk with Irene in Richmond Park. No further

news had come; enquiries at the War Office elicited nothing; nor

could he expect to hear from June and Holly for three weeks at

least. In these days he felt how insufficient were his memories

of Jolly, and what an amateur of a father he had been. There was

not a single memory in which anger played a part; not one

reconciliation, because there had never been a rupture; nor one

heart-to-heart confidence, not even when Jolly’s mother died.

Nothing but half-ironical affection. He had been too afraid of

committing himself in any direction, for fear of losing his

liberty, or interfering with that of his boy.

Only in Irene’s presence had he relief, highly complicated by the

ever-growing perception of how divided he was between her and his

son. With Jolly was bound up all that sense of continuity and

social creed of which he had drunk deeply in his youth and again

during his boy’s public school and varsity life—all that sense of

not going back on what father and son expected of each other.

With Irene was bound up all his delight in beauty and in Nature.

And he seemed to know less and less which was the stronger within

him. From such sentimental paralysis he was rudely awakened,

however, one afternoon, just as he was starting off to Richmond,

by a young man with a bicycle and a face oddly familiar, who came

forward faintly smiling.

“Mr. Jolyon Forsyte? Thank you!” Placing an envelope in Jolyon’s

hand he wheeled off the path and rode away. Bewildered, Jolyon

opened it.

“Admiralty Probate and Divorce, Forsyte _v._ Forsyte and

Forsyte!”

A sensation of shame and disgust was followed by the instant

reaction “Why, here’s the very thing you want, and you don’t like

it!” But she must have had one too; and he must go to her at

once. He turned things over as he went along. It was an ironical

business. For, whatever the Scriptures said about the heart, it

took more than mere longings to satisfy the law. They could

perfectly well defend this suit, or at least in good faith try

to. But the idea of doing so revolted Jolyon. If not her lover in

deed he was in desire, and he knew that she was ready to come to

him. Her face had told him so. Not that he exaggerated her

feeling for him. She had had her grand passion, and he could not

expect another from her at his age. But she had trust in him,

affection for him, and must feel that he would be a refuge.

Surely she would not ask him to defend the suit, knowing that he

adored her! Thank Heaven she had not that maddening British

conscientiousness which refused happiness for the sake of

refusing! She must rejoice at this chance of being free after

seventeen years of death in life! As to publicity, the fat was in

the fire! To defend the suit would not take away the slur. Jolyon

had all the proper feeling of a Forsyte whose privacy is

threatened: If he was to be hung by the Law, by all means let it

be for a sheep! Moreover the notion of standing in a witness box

and swearing to the truth that no gesture, not even a word of

love had passed between them seemed to him more degrading than to

take the tacit stigma of being an adulterer—more truly degrading,

considering the feeling in his heart, and just as bad and painful

for his children. The thought of explaining away, if he could,

before a judge and twelve average Englishmen, their meetings in

Paris, and the walks in Richmond Park, horrified him. The

brutality and hypocritical censoriousness of the whole process;

the probability that they would not be believed—the mere vision

of her, whom he looked on as the embodiment of Nature and of

Beauty, standing there before all those suspicious, gloating eyes

was hideous to him. No, no! To defend a suit only made a London

holiday, and sold the newspapers. A thousand times better accept

what Soames and the gods had sent!

“Besides,” he thought honestly, “who knows whether, even for my

boy’s sake, I could have stood this state of things much longer?

Anyway, her neck will be out of chancery at last!” Thus absorbed,

he was hardly conscious of the heavy heat. The sky had become

overcast, purplish with little streaks of white. A heavy

heat-drop plashed a little star pattern in the dust of the road

as he entered the Park. “Phew!” he thought, “thunder! I hope

she’s not come to meet me; there’s a ducking up there!” But at

that very minute he saw Irene coming towards the Gate. “We must

scuttle back to Robin Hill,” he thought.

The storm had passed over the Poultry at four o’clock, bringing

welcome distraction to the clerks in every office. Soames was

drinking a cup of tea when a note was brought in to him:

“DEAR SIR,

_Forsyte v. Forsyte and Forsyte_

“In accordance with your instructions, we beg to inform you

that we personally served the respondent and co-respondent in

this suit to-day, at Richmond, and Robin Hill, respectively.

“Faithfully yours,

“LINKMAN AND LAVER.”

For some minutes Soames stared at that note. Ever since he had

given those instructions he had been tempted to annul them. It

was so scandalous, such a general disgrace! The evidence, too,

what he had heard of it, had never seemed to him conclusive;

somehow, he believed less and less that those two had gone all

lengths. But this, of course, would drive them to it; and he

suffered from the thought. That fellow to have her love, where he

had failed! Was it too late? Now that they had been brought up

sharp by service of this petition, had he not a lever with which

he could force them apart? “But if I don’t act at once,” he

thought, “it will be too late, now they’ve had this thing. I’ll

go and see him; I’ll go down!”

And, sick with nervous anxiety, he sent out for one of the

“new-fangled” motor-cabs. It might take a long time to run that

fellow to ground, and Goodness knew what decision they might come

to after such a shock! “If I were a theatrical ass,” he thought,

“I suppose I should be taking a horse-whip or a pistol or

something!” He took instead a bundle of papers in the case of

“Magentie versus Wake,” intending to read them on the way down.

He did not even open them, but sat quite still, jolted and

jarred, unconscious of the draught down the back of his neck, or

the smell of petrol. He must be guided by the fellow’s attitude;

the great thing was to keep his head!

London had already begun to disgorge its workers as he neared

Putney Bridge; the ant-heap was on the move outwards. What a lot

of ants, all with a living to get, holding on by their eyelids in

the great scramble! Perhaps for the first time in his life Soames

thought: “_I_ could let go if I liked! Nothing could touch me; I

could snap my fingers, live as I wished—enjoy myself!” No! One

could not live as he had and just drop it all—settle down in

Capua, to spend the money and reputation he had made. A man’s

life was what he possessed and sought to possess. Only fools

thought otherwise—fools, and socialists, and libertines!

The cab was passing villas now, going a great pace. “Fifteen

miles an hour, I should think!” he mused; “this’ll take people

out of town to live!” and he thought of its bearing on the

portions of London owned by his father—he himself had never taken

to that form of investment, the gambler in him having all the

outlet needed in his pictures. And the cab sped on, down the hill

past Wimbledon Common. This interview! Surely a man of fifty-two

with grown-up children, and hung on the line, would not be

reckless. “He won’t want to disgrace the family,” he thought; “he

was as fond of his father as I am of mine, and they were

brothers. That woman brings destruction—what is it in her? I’ve

never known.” The cab branched off, along the side of a wood, and

he heard a late cuckoo calling, almost the first he had heard

that year. He was now almost opposite the site he had originally

chosen for his house, and which had been so unceremoniously

rejected by Bosinney in favour of his own choice. He began

passing his handkerchief over his face and hands, taking deep

breaths to give him steadiness. “Keep one’s head,” he thought,

“keep one’s head!”

The cab turned in at the drive which might have been his own, and

the sound of music met him. He had forgotten the fellow’s

daughters.

“I may be out again directly,” he said to the driver, “or I may

be kept some time”; and he rang the bell.

Following the maid through the curtains into the inner hall, he

felt relieved that the impact of this meeting would be broken by

June or Holly, whichever was playing in there, so that with

complete surprise he saw Irene at the piano, and Jolyon sitting

in an armchair listening. They both stood up. Blood surged into

Soames’ brain, and all his resolution to be guided by this or

that left him utterly. The look of his farmer forbears—dogged

Forsytes down by the sea, from “Superior Dosset” back—grinned out

of his face.

“Very pretty!” he said.

He heard the fellow murmur:

“This is hardly the place—we’ll go to the study, if you don’t

mind.” And they both passed him through the curtain opening. In

the little room to which he followed them, Irene stood by the

open window, and the “fellow” close to her by a big chair. Soames

pulled the door to behind him with a slam; the sound carried him

back all those years to the day when he had shut out Jolyon—shut

him out for meddling with his affairs.

“Well,” he said, “what have you to say for yourselves?”

The fellow had the effrontery to smile.

“What we have received to-day has taken away your right to ask. I

should imagine you will be glad to have your neck out of

chancery.”

“Oh!” said Soames; “you think so! I came to tell you that I’ll

divorce her with every circumstance of disgrace to you both,

unless you swear to keep clear of each other from now on.”

He was astonished at his fluency, because his mind was stammering

and his hands twitching. Neither of them answered; but their

faces seemed to him as if contemptuous.

“Well,” he said; “you—Irene?”

Her lips moved, but Jolyon laid his hand on her arm.

“Let her alone!” said Soames furiously. “Irene, will you swear

it?”

“No.”

“Oh! and you?”

“Still less.”

“So then you’re guilty, are you?”

“Yes, guilty.” It was Irene speaking in that serene voice, with

that unreached air which had maddened him so often; and, carried

beyond himself, he cried:

“_You_ are a devil.”

“Go out! Leave this house, or I’ll do you an injury.”

That fellow to talk of injuries! Did he know how near his throat

was to being scragged?

“A trustee,” he said, “embezzling trust property! A thief,

stealing his cousin’s wife.”

“Call me what you like. You have chosen your part, we have chosen

ours. Go out!”

If he had brought a weapon Soames might have used it at that

moment.

“I’ll make you pay!” he said.

“I shall be very happy.”

At that deadly turning of the meaning of his speech by the son of

him who had nicknamed him “the man of property,” Soames stood

glaring. It was ridiculous!

There they were, kept from violence by some secret force. No blow

possible, no words to meet the case. But he could not, did not

know how to turn and go away. His eyes fastened on Irene’s

face—the last time he would ever see that fatal face—the last

time, no doubt!

“You,” he said suddenly, “I hope you’ll treat him as you treated

me—that’s all.”

He saw her wince, and with a sensation not quite triumph, not

quite relief, he wrenched open the door, passed out through the

hall, and got into his cab. He lolled against the cushion with

his eyes shut. Never in his life had he been so near to murderous

violence, never so thrown away the restraint which was his second

nature. He had a stripped and naked feeling, as if all virtue had

gone out of him—life meaningless, mind-striking work. Sunlight

streamed in on him, but he felt cold. The scene he had passed

through had gone from him already, what was before him would not

materialise, he could catch on to nothing; and he felt

frightened, as if he had been hanging over the edge of a

precipice, as if with another turn of the screw sanity would have

failed him. “I’m not fit for it,” he thought; “I mustn’t—I’m not

fit for it.” The cab sped on, and in mechanical procession trees,

houses, people passed, but had no significance. “I feel very

queer,” he thought; “I’ll take a Turkish bath.—I’ve been very

near to something. It won’t do.” The cab whirred its way back

over the bridge, up the Fulham Road, along the Park.

“To the Hammam,” said Soames.

Curious that on so warm a summer day, heat should be so

comforting! Crossing into the hot room he met George Forsyte

coming out, red and glistening.

“Hallo!” said George; “what are you training for? You’ve not got

much superfluous.”

Buffoon! Soames passed him with his sideway smile. Lying back,

rubbing his skin uneasily for the first signs of perspiration, he

thought: “Let them laugh! I _won’t_ feel anything! I can’t stand

violence! It’s not good for me!”

CHAPTER VII A SUMMER NIGHT

Soames left dead silence in the little study. “Thank you for that

good lie,” said Jolyon suddenly. “Come out—the air in here is not

what it was!”

In front of a long high southerly wall on which were trained

peach-trees the two walked up and down in silence. Old Jolyon had

planted some cupressus-trees, at intervals, between this grassy

terrace and the dipping meadow full of buttercups and ox-eyed

daisies; for twelve years they had flourished, till their dark

spiral shapes had quite a look of Italy. Birds fluttered softly

in the wet shrubbery; the swallows swooped past, with a

steel-blue sheen on their swift little bodies; the grass felt

springy beneath the feet, its green refreshed; butterflies chased

each other. After that painful scene the quiet of Nature was

wonderfully poignant. Under the sun-soaked wall ran a narrow

strip of garden-bed full of mignonette and pansies, and from the

bees came a low hum in which all other sounds were set—the mooing

of a cow deprived of her calf, the calling of a cuckoo from an

elm-tree at the bottom of the meadow. Who would have thought that

behind them, within ten miles, London began—that London of the

Forsytes, with its wealth, its misery; its dirt and noise; its

jumbled stone isles of beauty, its grey sea of hideous brick and

stucco? That London which had seen Irene’s early tragedy, and

Jolyon’s own hard days; that web; that princely workhouse of the

possessive instinct!

And while they walked Jolyon pondered those words: “I hope you’ll

treat him as you treated me.” That would depend on himself. Could

he trust himself? Did Nature permit a Forsyte not to make a slave

of what he adored? Could beauty be confided to him? Or should she

not be just a visitor, coming when she would, possessed for

moments which passed, to return only at her own choosing? “We are

a breed of spoilers!” thought Jolyon, “close and greedy; the

bloom of life is not safe with us. Let her come to me as she

will, when she will, not at all if she will not. Let me be just

her stand-by, her perching-place; never—never her cage!”

She was the chink of beauty in his dream. Was he to pass through

the curtains now and reach her? Was the rich stuff of many

possessions, the close encircling fabric of the possessive

instinct walling in that little black figure of himself, and

Soames—was it to be rent so that he could pass through into his

vision, find there something not of the senses only? “Let me,” he

thought, “ah! let me only know how not to grasp and destroy!”

But at dinner there were plans to be made. To-night she would go

back to the hotel, but tomorrow he would take her up to London.

He must instruct his solicitor—Jack Herring. Not a finger must be

raised to hinder the process of the Law. Damages exemplary,

judicial strictures, costs, what they liked—let it go through at

the first moment, so that her neck might be out of chancery at

last! To-morrow he would see Herring—they would go and see him

together. And then—abroad, leaving no doubt, no difficulty about

evidence, making the lie she had told into the truth. He looked

round at her; and it seemed to his adoring eyes that more than a

woman was sitting there. The spirit of universal beauty, deep,

mysterious, which the old painters, Titian, Giorgione,

Botticelli, had known how to capture and transfer to the faces of

their women—this flying beauty seemed to him imprinted on her

brow, her hair, her lips, and in her eyes.

“And this is to be mine!” he thought. “It frightens me!”

After dinner they went out on to the terrace to have coffee. They

sat there long, the evening was so lovely, watching the summer

night come very slowly on. It was still warm and the air smelled

of lime blossom—early this summer. Two bats were flighting with

the faint mysterious little noise they make. He had placed the

chairs in front of the study window, and moths flew past to visit

the discreet light in there. There was no wind, and not a whisper

in the old oak-tree twenty yards away! The moon rose from behind

the copse, nearly full; and the two lights struggled, till

moonlight conquered, changing the colour and quality of all the

garden, stealing along the flagstones, reaching their feet,

climbing up, changing their faces.

“Well,” said Jolyon at last, “you’ll be tired, dear; we’d better

start. The maid will show you Holly’s room,” and he rang the

study bell. The maid who came handed him a telegram. Watching her

take Irene away, he thought: “This must have come an hour or more

ago, and she didn’t bring it out to us! That shows! Well, we’ll

be hung for a sheep soon!” And, opening the telegram, he read:

“JOLYON FORSYTE, Robin Hill.—Your son passed painlessly away on

June 20th. Deep sympathy”—some name unknown to him.

He dropped it, spun round, stood motionless. The moon shone in on

him; a moth flew in his face. The first day of all that he had

not thought almost ceaselessly of Jolly. He went blindly towards

the window, struck against the old armchair—his father’s—and sank

down on to the arm of it. He sat there huddled forward, staring

into the night. Gone out like a candle flame; far from home, from

love, all by himself, in the dark! His boy! From a little chap

always so good to him—so friendly! Twenty years old, and cut down

like grass—to have no life at all! “I didn’t really know him,” he

thought, “and he didn’t know me; but we loved each other. It’s

only love that matters.”

To die out there—lonely—wanting them—wanting home! This seemed to

his Forsyte heart more painful, more pitiful than death itself.

No shelter, no protection, no love at the last! And all the

deeply rooted clanship in him, the family feeling and essential

clinging to his own flesh and blood which had been so strong in

old Jolyon was so strong in all the Forsytes—felt outraged, cut,

and torn by his boy’s lonely passing. Better far if he had died

in battle, without time to long for them to come to him, to call

out for them, perhaps, in his delirium!

The moon had passed behind the oak-tree now, endowing it with

uncanny life, so that it seemed watching him—the oak-tree his boy

had been so fond of climbing, out of which he had once fallen and

hurt himself, and hadn’t cried!

The door creaked. He saw Irene come in, pick up the telegram and

read it. He heard the faint rustle of her dress. She sank on her

knees close to him, and he forced himself to smile at her. She

stretched up her arms and drew his head down on her shoulder. The

perfume and warmth of her encircled him; her presence gained

slowly his whole being.

CHAPTER VIII JAMES IN WAITING

Sweated to serenity, Soames dined at the Remove and turned his

face toward Park Lane. His father had been unwell lately. This

would have to be kept from him! Never till that moment had he

realised how much the dread of bringing James’ grey hairs down

with sorrow to the grave had counted with him; how intimately it

was bound up with his own shrinking from scandal. His affection

for his father, always deep, had increased of late years with the

knowledge that James looked on him as the real prop of his

decline. It seemed pitiful that one who had been so careful all

his life and done so much for the family name—so that it was

almost a byword for solid, wealthy respectability—should at his

last gasp have to see it in all the newspapers. This was like

lending a hand to Death, that final enemy of Forsytes. “I must

tell mother,” he thought, “and when it comes on, we must keep the

papers from him somehow. He sees hardly anyone.” Letting himself

in with his latchkey, he was beginning to ascend he stairs when

he became conscious of commotion on the second-floor landing. His

mother’s voice was saying:

“Now, James, you’ll catch cold. Why can’t you wait quietly?”

His father’s answering

“Wait? I’m always waiting. Why doesn’t he come in?”

“You can speak to him to-morrow morning, instead of making a guy

of yourself on the landing.”

“He’ll go up to bed, I shouldn’t wonder. I shan’t sleep.”

“Now come back to bed, James.”

“Um! I might die before to-morrow morning for all you can tell.”

“You shan’t have to wait till to-morrow morning; I’ll go down and

bring him up. Don’t fuss!”

“There you go—always so cock-a-hoop. He mayn’t come in at all.”

“Well, if he doesn’t come in you won’t catch him by standing out

here in your dressing-gown.”

Soames rounded the last bend and came in sight of his father’s

tall figure wrapped in a brown silk quilted gown, stooping over

the balustrade above. Light fell on his silvery hair and

whiskers, investing his head with a sort of halo.

“Here he is!” he heard him say in a voice which sounded injured,

and his mother’s comfortable answer from the bedroom door:

“That’s all right. Come in, and I’ll brush your hair.” James

extended a thin, crooked finger, oddly like the beckoning of a

skeleton, and passed through the doorway of his bedroom.

“What is it?” thought Soames. “What has he got hold of now?”

His father was sitting before the dressing-table sideways to the

mirror, while Emily slowly passed two silver-backed brushes

through and through his hair. She would do this several times a

day, for it had on him something of the effect produced on a cat

by scratching between its ears.

“There you are!” he said. “I’ve been waiting.”

Soames stroked his shoulder, and, taking up a silver button-hook,

examined the mark on it.

“Well,” he said, “you’re looking better.”

James shook his head.

“I want to say something. Your mother hasn’t heard.” He announced

Emily’s ignorance of what he hadn’t told her, as if it were a

grievance.

“Your father’s been in a great state all the evening. I’m sure I

don’t know what about.”

The faint “whisk-whisk” of the brushes continued the soothing of

her voice.

“No! you know nothing,” said James. “Soames can tell me.” And,

fixing his grey eyes, in which there was a look of strain,

uncomfortable to watch, on his son, he muttered:

“I’m getting on, Soames. At my age I can’t tell. I might die any

time. There’ll be a lot of money. There’s Rachel and Cicely got

no children; and Val’s out there—that chap his father will get

hold of all he can. And somebody’ll pick up Imogen, I shouldn’t

wonder.”

Soames listened vaguely—he had heard all this before.

Whish-whish! went the brushes.

“If that’s all!” said Emily.

“All!” cried James; “it’s nothing. I’m coming to that.” And again

his eyes strained pitifully at Soames.

“It’s you, my boy,” he said suddenly; “you ought to get a

divorce.”

That word, from those of all lips, was almost too much for

Soames’ composure. His eyes reconcentrated themselves quickly on

the buttonhook, and as if in apology James hurried on:

“I don’t know what’s become of her—they say she’s abroad. Your

Uncle Swithin used to admire her—he was a funny fellow.” (So he

always alluded to his dead twin—“The Stout and the Lean of it,”

they had been called.) “She wouldn’t be alone, I should say.” And

with that summing-up of the effect of beauty on human nature, he

was silent, watching his son with eyes doubting as a bird’s.

Soames, too, was silent. Whish-whish went the brushes.

“Come, James! Soames knows best. It’s his business.”

“Ah!” said James, and the word came from deep down; “but there’s

all my money, and there’s his—who’s it to go to? And when he dies

the name goes out.”

Soames replaced the button-hook on the lace and pink silk of the

dressing-table coverlet.

“The name?” said Emily, “there are all the other Forsytes.”

“As if that helped me,” muttered James. “I shall be in my grave,

and there’ll be nobody, unless he marries again.”

“You’re quite right,” said Soames quietly; “I’m getting a

divorce.”

James’ eyes almost started from his head.

“What?” he cried. “There! nobody tells me anything.”

“Well,” said Emily, “who would have imagined you wanted it? My

dear boy, that _is_ a surprise, after all these years.”

“It’ll be a scandal,” muttered James, as if to himself; “but I

can’t help that. Don’t brush so hard. When’ll it come on?”

“Before the Long Vacation; it’s not defended.”

James’ lips moved in secret calculation. “I shan’t live to see my

grandson,” he muttered.

Emily ceased brushing. “Of course you will, James. Soames will be

as quick as he can.”

There was a long silence, till James reached out his arm.

“Here! let’s have the eau-de-Cologne,” and, putting it to his

nose, he moved his forehead in the direction of his son. Soames

bent over and kissed that brow just where the hair began. A

relaxing quiver passed over James’ face, as though the wheels of

anxiety within were running down.

“I’ll get to bed,” he said; “I shan’t want to see the papers when

that comes. They’re a morbid lot; I can’t pay attention to them,

I’m too old.”

Queerly affected, Soames went to the door; he heard his father

say:

“Here, I’m tired. I’ll say a prayer in bed.”

And his mother answering

“That’s right, James; it’ll be ever so much more comfy.”

CHAPTER IX OUT OF THE WEB

On Forsyte ’Change the announcement of Jolly’s death, among a

batch of troopers, caused mixed sensation. Strange to read that

Jolyon Forsyte (fifth of the name in direct descent) had died of

disease in the service of his country, and not be able to feel it

personally. It revived the old grudge against his father for

having estranged himself. For such was still the prestige of old

Jolyon that the other Forsytes could never quite feel, as might

have been expected, that it was they who had cut off his

descendants for irregularity. The news increased, of course, the

interest and anxiety about Val; but then Val’s name was Dartie,

and even if he were killed in battle or got the Victoria Cross,

it would not be at all the same as if his name were Forsyte. Not

even casualty or glory to the Haymans would be really

satisfactory. Family pride felt defrauded.

How the rumour arose, then, that “something very dreadful, my

dear,” was pending, no one, least of all Soames, could tell,

secret as he kept everything. Possibly some eye had seen “Forsyte

_v._ Forsyte and Forsyte,” in the cause list; and had added it to

“Irene in Paris with a fair beard.” Possibly some wall at Park

Lane had ears. The fact remained that it _was_ known—whispered

among the old, discussed among the young—that family pride must

soon receive a blow.

Soames, paying one of his Sunday visits to Timothy’s—paying it

with the feeling that after the suit came on he would be paying

no more—felt knowledge in the air as he came in. Nobody, of

course, dared speak of it before him, but each of the four other

Forsytes present held their breath, aware that nothing could

prevent Aunt Juley from making them all uncomfortable. She looked

so piteously at Soames, she checked herself on the point of

speech so often, that Aunt Hester excused herself and said she

must go and bathe Timothy’s eye—he had a sty coming. Soames,

impassive, slightly supercilious, did not stay long. He went out

with a curse stifled behind his pale, just smiling lips.

Fortunately for the peace of his mind, cruelly tortured by the

coming scandal, he was kept busy day and night with plans for his

retirement—for he had come to that grim conclusion. To go on

seeing all those people who had known him as a “long-headed

chap,” an astute adviser—after _that_—no! The fastidiousness and

pride which was so strangely, so inextricably blended in him with

possessive obtuseness, revolted against the thought. He would

retire, live privately, go on buying pictures, make a great name

as a collector—after all, his heart was more in that than it had

ever been in Law. In pursuance of this now fixed resolve, he had

to get ready to amalgamate his business with another firm without

letting people know, for that would excite curiosity and make

humiliation cast its shadow before. He had pitched on the firm of

Cuthcott, Holliday and Kingson, two of whom were dead. The full

name after the amalgamation would therefore be Cuthcott,

Holliday, Kingson, Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte. But after debate

as to which of the dead still had any influence with the living,

it was decided to reduce the title to Cuthcott, Kingson and

Forsyte, of whom Kingson would be the active and Soames the

sleeping partner. For leaving his name, prestige, and clients

behind him, Soames would receive considerable value.

One night, as befitted a man who had arrived at so important a

stage of his career, he made a calculation of what he was worth,

and after writing off liberally for depreciation by the war,

found his value to be some hundred and thirty thousand pounds. At

his father’s death, which could not, alas, be delayed much

longer, he must come into at least another fifty thousand, and

his yearly expenditure at present just reached two. Standing

among his pictures, he saw before him a future full of bargains

earned by the trained faculty of knowing better than other

people. Selling what was about to decline, keeping what was still

going up, and exercising judicious insight into future taste, he

would make a unique collection, which at his death would pass to

the nation under the title “Forsyte Bequest.”

If the divorce went through, he had determined on his line with

Madame Lamotte. She had, he knew, but one real ambition—to live

on her “_rentes_” in Paris near her grandchildren. He would buy

the goodwill of the Restaurant Bretagne at a fancy price. Madame

would live like a Queen-Mother in Paris on the interest, invested

as she would know how. (Incidentally Soames meant to put a

capable manager in her place, and make the restaurant pay good

interest on his money. There were great possibilities in Soho.)

On Annette he would promise to settle fifteen thousand pounds

(whether designedly or not), precisely the sum old Jolyon had

settled on “that woman.”

A letter from Jolyon’s solicitor to his own had disclosed the

fact that “those two” were in Italy. And an opportunity had been

duly given for noting that they had first stayed at an hotel in

London. The matter was clear as daylight, and would be disposed

of in half an hour or so; but during that half-hour he, Soames,

would go down to hell; and after that half-hour all bearers of

the Forsyte name would feel the bloom was off the rose. He had no

illusions like Shakespeare that roses by any other name would

smell as sweet. The name was a possession, a concrete, unstained

piece of property, the value of which would be reduced some

twenty per cent. at least. Unless it were Roger, who had once

refused to stand for Parliament, and—oh, irony!—Jolyon, hung on

the line, there had never been a distinguished Forsyte. But that

very lack of distinction was the name’s greatest asset. It was a

private name, intensely individual, and his own property; it had

never been exploited for good or evil by intrusive report. He and

each member of his family owned it wholly, sanely, secretly,

without any more interference from the public than had been

necessitated by their births, their marriages, their deaths. And

during these weeks of waiting and preparing to drop the Law, he

conceived for that Law a bitter distaste, so deeply did he resent

its coming violation of his name, forced on him by the need he

felt to perpetuate that name in a lawful manner. The monstrous

injustice of the whole thing excited in him a perpetual

suppressed fury. He had asked no better than to live in spotless

domesticity, and now he must go into the witness box, after all

these futile, barren years, and proclaim his failure to keep his

wife—incur the pity, the amusement, the contempt of his kind. It

was all upside down. She and that fellow ought to be the

sufferers, and they—were in Italy! In these weeks the Law he had

served so faithfully, looked on so reverently as the guardian of

all property, seemed to him quite pitiful. What could be more

insane than to tell a man that he owned his wife, and punish him

when someone unlawfully took her away from him? Did the Law not

know that a man’s name was to him the apple of his eye, that it

was far harder to be regarded as cuckold than as seducer? He

actually envied Jolyon the reputation of succeeding where he,

Soames, had failed. The question of damages worried him, too. He

wanted to make that fellow suffer, but he remembered his cousin’s

words, “I shall be very happy,” with the uneasy feeling that to

claim damages would make not Jolyon but himself suffer; he felt

uncannily that Jolyon would rather like to pay them—the chap was

so loose. Besides, to claim damages was not the thing to do. The

claim, indeed, had been made almost mechanically; and as the hour

drew near Soames saw in it just another dodge of this insensitive

and topsy-turvy Law to make him ridiculous; so that people might

sneer and say: “Oh, yes, he got quite a good price for her!” And

he gave instructions that his Counsel should state that the money

would be given to a Home for Fallen Women. He was a long time

hitting off exactly the right charity; but, having pitched on it,

he used to wake up in the night and think: “It won’t do, too

lurid; it’ll draw attention. Something quieter—better taste.” He

did not care for dogs, or he would have named them; and it was in

desperation at last—for his knowledge of charities was

limited—that he decided on the blind. That could not be

inappropriate, and it would make the Jury assess the damages

high.

A good many suits were dropping out of the list, which happened

to be exceptionally thin that summer, so that his case would be

reached before August. As the day grew nearer, Winifred was his

only comfort. She showed the fellow-feeling of one who had been

through the mill, and was the “femme-sole” in whom he confided,

well knowing that she would not let Dartie into her confidence.

That ruffian would be only too rejoiced! At the end of July, on

the afternoon before the case, he went in to see her. They had

not yet been able to leave town, because Dartie had already spent

their summer holiday, and Winifred dared not go to her father for

more money while he was waiting not to be told anything about

this affair of Soames.

Soames found her with a letter in her hand.

“That from Val,” he asked gloomily. “What does he say?”

“He says he’s married,” said Winifred.

“Whom to, for Goodness’ sake?”

Winifred looked up at him.

“To Holly Forsyte, Jolyon’s daughter.”

“What?”

“He got leave and did it. I didn’t even know he knew her.

Awkward, isn’t it?”

Soames uttered a short laugh at that characteristic minimisation.

“Awkward! Well, I don’t suppose they’ll hear about this till they

come back. They’d better stay out there. That fellow will give

her money.”

“But I want Val back,” said Winifred almost piteously; “I miss

him, he helps me to get on.”

“I know,” murmured Soames. “How’s Dartie behaving now?”

“It might be worse; but it’s always money. Would you like me to

come down to the Court to-morrow, Soames?”

Soames stretched out his hand for hers. The gesture so betrayed

the loneliness in him that she pressed it between her two.

“Never mind, old boy. You’ll feel ever so much better when it’s

all over.”

“I don’t know what I’ve done,” said Soames huskily; “I never

have. It’s all upside down. I was fond of her; I’ve always been.”

Winifred saw a drop of blood ooze out of his lip, and the sight

stirred her profoundly.

“Of course,” she said, “it’s been _too_ bad of her all along! But

what shall I do about this marriage of Val’s, Soames? I don’t

know how to write to him, with this coming on. You’ve seen that

child. Is she pretty?”

“Yes, she’s pretty,” said Soames. “Dark—lady-like enough.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” thought Winifred. “Jolyon had

style.”

“It is a coil,” she said. “What will father say?

“Mustn’t be told,” said Soames. “The war’ll soon be over now,

you’d better let Val take to farming out there.”

It was tantamount to saying that his nephew was lost.

“I haven’t told Monty,” Winifred murmured desolately.

The case was reached before noon next day, and was over in little

more than half an hour. Soames—pale, spruce, sad-eyed in the

witness-box—had suffered so much beforehand that he took it all

like one dead. The moment the decree nisi was pronounced he left

the Courts of Justice.

Four hours until he became public property! “Solicitor’s divorce

suit!” A surly, dogged anger replaced that dead feeling within

him. “Damn them all!” he thought; “I won’t run away. I’ll act as

if nothing had happened.” And in the sweltering heat of Fleet

Street and Ludgate Hill he walked all the way to his City Club,

lunched, and went back to his office. He worked there stolidly

throughout the afternoon.

On his way out he saw that his clerks knew, and answered their

involuntary glances with a look so sardonic that they were

immediately withdrawn. In front of St. Paul’s, he stopped to buy

the most gentlemanly of the evening papers. Yes! there he was!

“Well-known solicitor’s divorce. Cousin co-respondent. Damages

given to the blind”—so, they had got that in! At every other

face, he thought: “I wonder if you know!” And suddenly he felt

queer, as if something were racing round in his head.

What was this? He was letting it get hold of him! He mustn’t! He

would be ill. He mustn’t think! He would get down to the river

and row about, and fish. “I’m not going to be laid up,” he

thought.

It flashed across him that he had something of importance to do

before he went out of town. Madame Lamotte! He must explain the

Law. Another six months before he was really free! Only he did

not want to see Annette! And he passed his hand over the top of

his head—it was very hot.

He branched off through Covent Garden. On this sultry day of late

July the garbage-tainted air of the old market offended him, and

Soho seemed more than ever the disenchanted home of

rapscallionism. Alone, the Restaurant Bretagne, neat, daintily

painted, with its blue tubs and the dwarf trees therein, retained

an aloof and Frenchified self-respect. It was the slack hour, and

pale trim waitresses were preparing the little tables for dinner.

Soames went through into the private part. To his discomfiture

Annette answered his knock. She, too, looked pale and dragged

down by the heat.

“You are quite a stranger,” she said languidly.

Soames smiled.

“I haven’t wished to be; I’ve been busy.”

“Where’s your mother, Annette? I’ve got some news for her.”

“Mother is not in.”

It seemed to Soames that she looked at him in a queer way. What

did she know? How much had her mother told her? The worry of

trying to make that out gave him an alarming feeling in the head.

He gripped the edge of the table, and dizzily saw Annette come

forward, her eyes clear with surprise. He shut his own and said:

“It’s all right. I’ve had a touch of the sun, I think.” The sun!

What he had was a touch of darkness! Annette’s voice, French and

composed, said:

“Sit down, it will pass, then.” Her hand pressed his shoulder,

and Soames sank into a chair. When the dark feeling dispersed,

and he opened his eyes, she was looking down at him. What an

inscrutable and odd expression for a girl of twenty!

“Do you feel better?”

“It’s nothing,” said Soames. Instinct told him that to be feeble

before her was not helping him—age was enough handicap without

that. Will-power was his fortune with Annette, he had lost ground

these latter months from indecision—he could not afford to lose

any more. He got up, and said:

“I’ll write to your mother. I’m going down to my river house for

a long holiday. I want you both to come there presently and stay.

It’s just at its best. You will, won’t you?”

“It will be veree nice.” A pretty little roll of that “r” but no

enthusiasm. And rather sadly he added:

“You’re feeling the heat, too, aren’t you, Annette? It’ll do you

good to be on the river. Good-night.” Annette swayed forward.

There was a sort of compunction in the movement.

“Are you fit to go? Shall I give you some coffee?”

“No,” said Soames firmly. “Give me your hand.”

She held out her hand, and Soames raised it to his lips. When he

looked up, her face wore again that strange expression. “I can’t

tell,” he thought, as he went out; “but I mustn’t think—I mustn’t

worry.”

But worry he did, walking toward Pall Mall. English, not of her

religion, middle-aged, scarred as it were by domestic tragedy,

what had he to give her? Only wealth, social position, leisure,

admiration! It was much, but was it enough for a beautiful girl

of twenty? He felt so ignorant about Annette. He had, too, a

curious fear of the French nature of her mother and herself. They

knew so well what they wanted. They were almost Forsytes. They

would never grasp a shadow and miss a substance.

The tremendous effort it was to write a simple note to Madame

Lamotte when he reached his Club warned him still further that he

was at the end of his tether.

“MY DEAR MADAME (he said),

“You will see by the enclosed newspaper cutting that I

obtained my decree of divorce to-day. By the English Law I

shall not, however, be free to marry again till the decree is

confirmed six months hence. In the meanwhile I have the honor

to ask to be considered a formal suitor for the hand of your

daughter. I shall write again in a few days and beg you both

to come and stay at my river house.

“I am, dear Madame,

“Sincerely yours,

“SOAMES FORSYTE.”

Having sealed and posted this letter, he went into the

dining-room. Three mouthfuls of soup convinced him that he could

not eat; and, causing a cab to be summoned, he drove to

Paddington Station and took the first train to Reading. He

reached his house just as the sun went down, and wandered out on

to the lawn. The air was drenched with the scent of pinks and

picotees in his flower-borders. A stealing coolness came off the

river.

Rest—peace! Let a poor fellow rest! Let not worry and shame and

anger chase like evil night-birds in his head! Like those doves

perched half-sleeping on their dovecot, like the furry creatures

in the woods on the far side, and the simple folk in their

cottages, like the trees and the river itself, whitening fast in

twilight, like the darkening cornflower-blue sky where stars were

coming up—let him cease _from himself_, and rest!

CHAPTER X PASSING OF AN AGE

The marriage of Soames with Annette took place in Paris on the

last day of January, 1901, with such privacy that not even Emily

was told until it was accomplished.

The day after the wedding he brought her to one of those quiet

hotels in London where greater expense can be incurred for less

result than anywhere else under heaven. Her beauty in the best

Parisian frocks was giving him more satisfaction than if he had

collected a perfect bit of china, or a jewel of a picture; he

looked forward to the moment when he would exhibit her in Park

Lane, in Green Street, and at Timothy’s.

If some one had asked him in those days, “In confidence—are you

in love with this girl?” he would have replied: “In love? What is

love? If you mean do I feel to her as I did towards Irene in

those old days when I first met her and she would not have me;

when I sighed and starved after her and couldn’t rest a minute

until she yielded—no! If you mean do I admire her youth and

prettiness, do my senses ache a little when I see her moving

about—yes! Do I think she will keep me straight, make me a

creditable wife and a good mother for my children?—again, yes!”