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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Man of Property, by John Galsworthy
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
+
+
+Title: The Man of Property
+       The Forsyte Saga, Part 1.
+
+Author: John Galsworthy
+
+Release Date: September 23, 2004 [EBook #2559]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN OF PROPERTY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+Proofing of a previous edition by Fredrik Hausmann
+
+
+
+
+
+[NOTE: The spelling conforms to the original: "s's" instead of our
+"z's"; and "c's" where we would have "s's"; and "...our" as in colour
+and flavour; many interesting double consonants; etc.]
+
+
+
+
+FORSYTE SAGA
+
+I. THE MAN OF PROPERTY
+
+By John Galsworthy
+
+
+VOLUME I
+TO MY WIFE:
+
+     I DEDICATE THE FORSYTE SAGA IN ITS ENTIRETY,
+     BELIEVING IT TO BE OF ALL MY WORKS THE LEAST
+     UNWORTHY OF ONE WITHOUT WHOSE ENCOURAGEMENT,
+     SYMPATHY AND CRITICISM I COULD NEVER HAVE
+     BECOME EVEN SUCH A WRITER AS I AM.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE:
+
+"The Forsyte Saga" was the title originally destined for that part of it
+which is called "The Man of Property"; and to adopt it for the collected
+chronicles of the Forsyte family has indulged the Forsytean tenacity that
+is in all of us.  The word Saga might be objected to on the ground that
+it connotes the heroic and that there is little heroism in these pages.
+But it is used with a suitable irony; and, after all, this long tale,
+though it may deal with folk in frock coats, furbelows, and a gilt-edged
+period, is not devoid of the essential heat of conflict. Discounting for
+the gigantic stature and blood-thirstiness of old days, as they have come
+down to us in fairy-tale and legend, the folk of the old Sagas were
+Forsytes, assuredly, in their possessive instincts, and as little proof
+against the inroads of beauty and passion as Swithin, Soames, or even
+Young Jolyon.  And if heroic figures, in days that never were, seem to
+startle out from their surroundings in fashion unbecoming to a Forsyte of
+the Victorian era, we may be sure that tribal instinct was even then the
+prime force, and that "family" and the sense of home and property counted
+as they do to this day, for all the recent efforts to "talk them out."
+
+So many people have written and claimed that their families were the
+originals of the Forsytes that one has been almost encouraged to believe
+in the typicality of an imagined species.  Manners change and modes
+evolve, and "Timothy's on the Bayswater Road" becomes a nest of the
+unbelievable in all except essentials; we shall not look upon its like
+again, nor perhaps on such a one as James or Old Jolyon.  And yet the
+figures of Insurance Societies and the utterances of Judges reassure us
+daily that our earthly paradise is still a rich preserve, where the wild
+raiders, Beauty and Passion, come stealing in, filching security from
+beneath our noses.  As surely as a dog will bark at a brass band, so will
+the essential Soames in human nature ever rise up uneasily against the
+dissolution which hovers round the folds of ownership.
+
+"Let the dead Past bury its dead" would be a better saying if the Past
+ever died.  The persistence of the Past is one of those tragi-comic
+blessings which each new age denies, coming cocksure on to the stage to
+mouth its claim to a perfect novelty.
+
+But no Age is so new as that!  Human Nature, under its changing
+pretensions and clothes, is and ever will be very much of a Forsyte, and
+might, after all, be a much worse animal.
+
+Looking back on the Victorian era, whose ripeness, decline, and 'fall-of'
+is in some sort pictured in "The Forsyte Saga," we see now that we have
+but jumped out of a frying-pan into a fire.  It would be difficult to
+substantiate a claim that the case of England was better in 1913 than it
+was in 1886, when the Forsytes assembled at Old Jolyon's to celebrate the
+engagement of June to Philip Bosinney.  And in 1920, when again the clan
+gathered to bless the marriage of Fleur with Michael Mont, the state of
+England is as surely too molten and bankrupt as in the eighties it was
+too congealed and low-percented.  If these chronicles had been a really
+scientific study of transition one would have dwelt probably on such
+factors as the invention of bicycle, motor-car, and flying-machine; the
+arrival of a cheap Press; the decline of country life and increase of the
+towns; the birth of the Cinema. Men are, in fact, quite unable to control
+their own inventions; they at best develop adaptability to the new
+conditions those inventions create.
+
+But this long tale is no scientific study of a period; it is rather an
+intimate incarnation of the disturbance that Beauty effects in the lives
+of men.
+
+The figure of Irene, never, as the reader may possibly have observed,
+present, except through the senses of other characters, is a concretion
+of disturbing Beauty impinging on a possessive world.
+
+One has noticed that readers, as they wade on through the salt waters of
+the Saga, are inclined more and more to pity Soames, and to think that in
+doing so they are in revolt against the mood of his creator.  Far from
+it!  He, too, pities Soames, the tragedy of whose life is the very
+simple, uncontrollable tragedy of being unlovable, without quite a thick
+enough skin to be thoroughly unconscious of the fact.  Not even Fleur
+loves Soames as he feels he ought to be loved.  But in pitying Soames,
+readers incline, perhaps, to animus against Irene: After all, they think,
+he wasn't a bad fellow, it wasn't his fault; she ought to have forgiven
+him, and so on!
+
+And, taking sides, they lose perception of the simple truth, which
+underlies the whole story, that where sex attraction is utterly and
+definitely lacking in one partner to a union, no amount of pity, or
+reason, or duty, or what not, can overcome a repulsion implicit in
+Nature.  Whether it ought to, or no, is beside the point; because in fact
+it never does.  And where Irene seems hard and cruel, as in the Bois de
+Boulogne, or the Goupenor Gallery, she is but wisely realistic--knowing
+that the least concession is the inch which precedes the impossible, the
+repulsive ell.
+
+A criticism one might pass on the last phase of the Saga is the complaint
+that Irene and Jolyon those rebels against property--claim spiritual
+property in their son Jon.  But it would be hypercriticism, as the tale
+is told.  No father and mother could have let the boy marry Fleur without
+knowledge of the facts; and the facts determine Jon, not the persuasion
+of his parents. Moreover, Jolyon's persuasion is not on his own account,
+but on Irene's, and Irene's persuasion becomes a reiterated: "Don't think
+of me, think of yourself!" That Jon, knowing the facts, can realise his
+mother's feelings, will hardly with justice be held proof that she is,
+after all, a Forsyte.
+
+But though the impingement of Beauty and the claims of Freedom on a
+possessive world are the main prepossessions of the Forsyte Saga, it
+cannot be absolved from the charge of embalming the upper-middle class.
+As the old Egyptians placed around their mummies the necessaries of a
+future existence, so I have endeavoured to lay beside the, figures of
+Aunts Ann and Juley and Hester, of Timothy and Swithin, of Old Jolyon and
+James, and of their sons, that which shall guarantee them a little life
+here-after, a little balm in the hurried Gilead of a dissolving
+"Progress."
+
+If the upper-middle class, with other classes, is destined to "move on"
+into amorphism, here, pickled in these pages, it lies under glass for
+strollers in the wide and ill-arranged museum of Letters.  Here it rests,
+preserved in its own juice: The Sense of Property.
+1922.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN OF PROPERTY
+
+by JOHN GALSWORTHY
+
+
+
+
+"........  You will answer
+The slaves are ours ....."
+
+--Merchant of Venice.
+
+
+
+
+TO EDWARD GARNETT
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+'AT HOME' AT OLD JOLYON'S
+
+Those privileged to be present at a family festival of the Forsytes have
+seen that charming and instructive sight--an upper middle-class family in
+full plumage.  But whosoever of these favoured persons has possessed the
+gift of psychological analysis (a talent without monetary value and
+properly ignored by the Forsytes), has witnessed a spectacle, not only
+delightful in itself, but illustrative of an obscure human problem.  In
+plainer words, he has gleaned from a gathering of this family--no branch
+of which had a liking for the other, between no three members of whom
+existed anything worthy of the name of sympathy--evidence of that
+mysterious concrete tenacity which renders a family so formidable a unit
+of society, so clear a reproduction of society in miniature.  He has been
+admitted to a vision of the dim roads of social progress, has understood
+something of patriarchal life, of the swarmings of savage hordes, of the
+rise and fall of nations.  He is like one who, having watched a tree grow
+from its planting--a paragon of tenacity, insulation, and success, amidst
+the deaths of a hundred other plants less fibrous, sappy, and
+persistent--one day will see it flourishing with bland, full foliage, in
+an almost repugnant prosperity, at the summit of its efflorescence.
+
+On June 15, eighteen eighty-six, about four of the afternoon, the
+observer who chanced to be present at the house of old Jolyon Forsyte in
+Stanhope Gate, might have seen the highest efflorescence of the Forsytes.
+
+This was the occasion of an 'at home' to celebrate the engagement of Miss
+June Forsyte, old Jolyon's granddaughter, to Mr. Philip Bosinney.  In the
+bravery of light gloves, buff waistcoats, feathers and frocks, the family
+were present, even Aunt Ann, who now but seldom left the corner of her
+brother Timothy's green drawing-room, where, under the aegis of a plume
+of dyed pampas grass in a light blue vase, she sat all day reading and
+knitting, surrounded by the effigies of three generations of Forsytes.
+Even Aunt Ann was there; her inflexible back, and the dignity of her calm
+old face personifying the rigid possessiveness of the family idea.
+
+When a Forsyte was engaged, married, or born, the Forsytes were present;
+when a Forsyte died--but no Forsyte had as yet died; they did not die;
+death being contrary to their principles, they took precautions against
+it, the instinctive precautions of highly vitalized persons who resent
+encroachments on their property.
+
+About the Forsytes mingling that day with the crowd of other guests,
+there was a more than ordinarily groomed look, an alert, inquisitive
+assurance, a brilliant respectability, as though they were attired in
+defiance of something.  The habitual sniff on the face of Soames Forsyte
+had spread through their ranks; they were on their guard.
+
+The subconscious offensiveness of their attitude has constituted old
+Jolyon's 'home' the psychological moment of the family history, made it
+the prelude of their drama.
+
+The Forsytes were resentful of something, not individually, but as a
+family; this resentment expressed itself in an added perfection of
+raiment, an exuberance of family cordiality, an exaggeration of family
+importance, and--the sniff.  Danger--so indispensable in bringing out the
+fundamental quality of any society, group, or individual--was what the
+Forsytes scented; the premonition of danger put a burnish on their
+armour.  For the first time, as a family, they appeared to have an
+instinct of being in contact, with some strange and unsafe thing.
+
+Over against the piano a man of bulk and stature was wearing two
+waistcoats on his wide chest, two waistcoats and a ruby pin, instead of
+the single satin waistcoat and diamond pin of more usual occasions, and
+his shaven, square, old face, the colour of pale leather, with pale eyes,
+had its most dignified look, above his satin stock.  This was Swithin
+Forsyte.  Close to the window, where he could get more than his fair
+share of fresh air, the other twin, James--the fat and the lean of it,
+old Jolyon called these brothers--like the bulky Swithin, over six feet
+in height, but very lean, as though destined from his birth to strike a
+balance and maintain an average, brooded over the scene with his
+permanent stoop; his grey eyes had an air of fixed absorption in some
+secret worry, broken at intervals by a rapid, shifting scrutiny of
+surrounding facts; his cheeks, thinned by two parallel folds, and a long,
+clean-shaven upper lip, were framed within Dundreary whiskers.  In his
+hands he turned and turned a piece of china.  Not far off, listening to a
+lady in brown, his only son Soames, pale and well-shaved, dark-haired,
+rather bald, had poked his chin up sideways, carrying his nose with that
+aforesaid appearance of 'sniff,' as though despising an egg which he knew
+he could not digest.  Behind him his cousin, the tall George, son of the
+fifth Forsyte, Roger, had a Quilpish look on his fleshy face, pondering
+one of his sardonic jests.  Something inherent to the occasion had
+affected them all.
+
+Seated in a row close to one another were three  ladies--Aunts Ann,
+Hester (the two Forsyte maids), and Juley (short for Julia), who not in
+first youth had so far forgotten herself as to marry Septimus Small, a
+man of poor constitution.  She had survived him for many years.  With her
+elder and younger sister she lived now in the house of Timothy, her sixth
+and youngest brother, on the Bayswater Road.  Each of these ladies held
+fans in their hands, and each with some touch of colour, some emphatic
+feather or brooch, testified to the solemnity of the opportunity.
+
+In the centre of the room, under the chandelier, as became a host, stood
+the head of the family, old Jolyon himself.  Eighty years of age, with
+his fine, white hair, his dome-like forehead, his little, dark grey eyes,
+and an immense white moustache, which drooped and spread below the level
+of his strong jaw, he had a patriarchal look, and in spite of lean cheeks
+and hollows at his temples, seemed master of perennial youth.  He held
+himself extremely upright, and his shrewd, steady  eyes had lost none of
+their clear shining.  Thus  he gave an impression of superiority to the
+doubts and dislikes of smaller men.  Having had  his own way for
+innumerable years, he had  earned a prescriptive right to it.  It would
+never have occurred to old Jolyon that it was necessary to wear a look of
+doubt or of defiance.
+
+Between him and the four other brothers who were present, James, Swithin,
+Nicholas, and Roger, there was much difference, much similarity.  In
+turn, each of these four brothers was very different from the other, yet
+they, too, were alike.
+
+Through the varying features and expression of those five faces could be
+marked a certain steadfastness of chin, underlying surface distinctions,
+marking a racial stamp, too prehistoric to trace, too remote and
+permanent to discuss--the  very hall-mark and guarantee of the family
+fortunes.
+
+Among the younger generation, in the tall, bull-like George, in pallid
+strenuous Archibald, in young Nicholas with his sweet and tentative
+obstinacy, in the grave and foppishly determined Eustace, there was this
+same stamp--less meaningful perhaps, but unmistakable--a sign of
+something ineradicable in the family soul. At one time or another during
+the afternoon, all these faces, so dissimilar and so alike, had worn an
+expression of distrust, the object of which was undoubtedly the man whose
+acquaintance they were thus assembled to make.  Philip Bosinney was known
+to be a young man without fortune, but Forsyte girls had become engaged
+to such before, and had actually married them. It was not altogether for
+this reason, therefore, that the minds of the Forsytes misgave them.
+They could not have explained the origin of a misgiving obscured by the
+mist of family gossip.  A story was undoubtedly told that he had paid his
+duty call to Aunts Ann, Juley, and Hester, in a soft grey hat--a soft
+grey hat, not even a new one--a dusty thing with a shapeless crown. "So,
+extraordinary, my dear--so odd," Aunt Hester, passing through the little,
+dark hall (she was rather short-sighted), had tried to 'shoo' it off a
+chair, taking it for a strange, disreputable cat--Tommy had such
+disgraceful friends!  She was disturbed when it did not move.
+
+Like an artist for ever seeking to discover the significant trifle which
+embodies the whole character of a scene, or place, or person, so those
+unconscious artists--the Forsytes had fastened by intuition on this hat;
+it was their significant trifle, the detail in which was embedded the
+meaning of the whole matter; for each had asked himself: "Come, now,
+should I have paid that visit in that hat?" and each had answered "No!"
+and some, with more imagination than others, had added: "It would never
+have come into my head!"
+
+George, on hearing the story, grinned.  The hat had obviously been worn
+as a practical joke!  He himself was a connoisseur of such. "Very
+haughty!" he said, "the wild Buccaneer."
+
+And this mot, the 'Buccaneer,' was bandied from mouth to mouth, till it
+became the favourite mode of alluding to Bosinney.
+
+Her aunts reproached June afterwards about the hat.
+
+"We don't think you ought to let him, dear!" they had said.
+
+June had answered in her imperious brisk way, like the little embodiment
+of will she was:  "Oh! what does it matter?  Phil never knows what he's
+got on!"
+
+No one had credited an answer so outrageous.  A man not to know what he
+had on?  No, no!  What indeed was this young man, who, in becoming
+engaged to June, old Jolyon's acknowledged heiress, had done so well for
+himself?  He was an architect, not in itself a sufficient reason for
+wearing such a hat.  None of the Forsytes happened to be architects, but
+one of them knew two architects who would never have worn such a hat upon
+a call of ceremony in the London season.
+
+Dangerous--ah, dangerous!  June, of course, had not seen this, but,
+though not yet nineteen, she was notorious.  Had she not said to Mrs.
+Soames--who was always so beautifully dressed--that feathers were vulgar?
+Mrs. Soames had actually given up wearing feathers, so dreadfully
+downright was dear June!
+
+These misgivings, this disapproval, and perfectly genuine distrust, did
+not prevent the Forsytes from gathering to old Jolyon's invitation.  An
+'At Home' at Stanhope Gate was a great rarity; none had been held for
+twelve years, not indeed, since old Mrs. Jolyon had died.
+
+Never had there been so full an assembly, for, mysteriously united in
+spite of all their differences, they had taken arms against a common
+peril.  Like cattle when a dog comes into the field, they stood head to
+head and shoulder to shoulder, prepared to run upon and trample the
+invader to death.  They had come, too, no doubt, to get some notion of
+what sort of presents they would ultimately be expected to give; for
+though the question of wedding gifts was usually graduated in this way:
+'What are you givin'?  Nicholas is givin' spoons!'--so very much depended
+on the bridegroom.  If he were sleek, well-brushed, prosperous-looking,
+it was more necessary to give him nice things; he would expect them.  In
+the end each gave exactly what was right and proper, by a species of
+family adjustment arrived at as prices are arrived at on the Stock
+Exchange--the exact niceties being regulated at Timothy's commodious,
+red-brick residence in Bayswater, overlooking the Park, where dwelt Aunts
+Ann, Juley, and Hester.
+
+The uneasiness of the Forsyte family has been justified by the simple
+mention of the hat.  How impossible and wrong would it have been for any
+family, with the regard for appearances which should ever characterize
+the great upper middle-class, to feel otherwise than uneasy!
+
+The author of the uneasiness stood talking to June by the further door;
+his curly hair had a rumpled appearance, as though he found what was
+going on around him unusual.  He had an air, too, of having a joke all to
+himself.  George, speaking aside to his brother, Eustace, said:
+
+"Looks as if he might make a bolt of it--the dashing Buccaneer!"
+
+This 'very singular-looking man,' as Mrs. Small afterwards called him,
+was of medium height and strong build, with a pale, brown face, a
+dust-coloured moustache, very prominent cheek-bones, and hollow checks.
+His forehead sloped back towards the crown of his head, and bulged out in
+bumps over the eyes, like foreheads seen in the Lion-house at the Zoo.
+He had sherry-coloured eyes, disconcertingly inattentive at times.  Old
+Jolyon's coachman, after driving June and Bosinney to the theatre, had
+remarked to the butler:
+
+"I dunno what to make of 'im.  Looks to me for all the world like an
+'alf-tame leopard." And every now and then a Forsyte would come up, sidle
+round, and take a look at him.
+
+June stood in front, fending off this idle curiosity--a little bit of a
+thing, as somebody once said, 'all hair and spirit,' with fearless blue
+eyes, a firm jaw, and a bright colour, whose face and body seemed too
+slender for her crown of red-gold hair.
+
+A tall woman, with a beautiful figure, which some member of the family
+had once compared to a heathen goddess, stood looking at these two with a
+shadowy smile.
+
+Her hands, gloved in French grey, were crossed one over the other, her
+grave, charming face held to one side, and the eyes of all men near were
+fastened on it.  Her figure swayed, so balanced that the very air seemed
+to set it moving.  There was warmth, but little colour, in her cheeks;
+her large, dark eyes were soft.
+
+But it was at her lips--asking a question, giving an answer, with that
+shadowy smile--that men looked; they were sensitive lips, sensuous and
+sweet, and through them seemed to come warmth and perfume like the warmth
+and perfume of a flower.
+
+The engaged couple thus scrutinized were unconscious of this passive
+goddess.  It was Bosinney who first noticed her, and asked her name.
+
+June took her lover up to the woman with the beautiful figure.
+
+"Irene is my greatest chum," she said: "Please be good friends, you two!"
+
+At the little lady's command they all three smiled; and while they were
+smiling, Soames Forsyte, silently appearing from behind the woman with
+the beautiful figure, who was his wife, said:
+
+"Ah! introduce me too!"
+
+He was seldom, indeed, far from Irene's side at public functions, and
+even when separated by the exigencies of social intercourse, could be
+seen following her about with his eyes, in which were strange expressions
+of watchfulness and longing.
+
+At the window his father, James, was still scrutinizing the marks on the
+piece of china.
+
+"I wonder at Jolyon's allowing this engagement," he said to Aunt Ann.
+"They tell me there's no chance of their getting married for years.  This
+young Bosinney" (he made the word a dactyl in opposition to general usage
+of a short o) "has got nothing.  When Winifred married Dartie, I made him
+bring every penny into settlement--lucky thing, too--they'd ha' had
+nothing by this time!"
+
+Aunt Ann looked up from her velvet chair.  Grey curls banded her
+forehead, curls that, unchanged for decades, had extinguished in the
+family all sense of time.  She made no reply, for she rarely spoke,
+husbanding her aged voice; but to James, uneasy of conscience, her look
+was as good as an answer.
+
+"Well," he said, "I couldn't help Irene's having no money. Soames was in
+such a hurry; he got quite thin dancing attendance on her."
+
+Putting the bowl pettishly down on the piano, he let his eyes wander to
+the group by the door.
+
+"It's my opinion," he said unexpectedly, "that it's just as well as it
+is."
+
+Aunt Ann did not ask him to explain this strange utterance.  She knew
+what he was thinking.  If Irene had no money she would not be so foolish
+as to do anything wrong; for they said--they said--she had been asking
+for a separate room; but, of course, Soames had not....
+
+James interrupted her reverie:
+
+"But where," he asked, "was Timothy?  Hadn't he come with them?"
+
+Through Aunt Ann's compressed lips a tender smile forced its way:
+
+"No, he didn't think it wise, with so much of this diphtheria about; and
+he so liable to take things."
+
+James answered:
+
+"Well, HE takes good care of himself.  I can't afford to take the care of
+myself that he does."
+
+Nor was it easy to say which, of admiration, envy, or contempt, was
+dominant in that remark.
+
+Timothy, indeed, was seldom seen.  The baby of the family, a publisher by
+profession, he had some years before, when business was at full tide,
+scented out the stagnation which, indeed, had not yet come, but which
+ultimately, as all agreed, was bound to set in, and, selling his share in
+a firm engaged mainly in the production of religious books, had invested
+the quite conspicuous proceeds in three per cent. consols.  By this act
+he had at once assumed an isolated position, no other Forsyte being
+content with less than four per cent.  for his money; and this isolation
+had slowly and surely undermined a spirit perhaps better than commonly
+endowed with caution.  He had become almost a myth--a kind of incarnation
+of security haunting the background of the Forsyte universe.  He had
+never committed the imprudence of marrying, or encumbering himself in any
+way with children.
+
+James resumed, tapping the piece of china:
+
+"This isn't real old Worcester.  I s'pose Jolyon's told you something
+about the young man.  From all I can learn, he's got no business, no
+income, and no connection worth speaking of; but then, I know
+nothing--nobody tells me anything."
+
+Aunt Ann shook her head.  Over her square-chinned, aquiline old face a
+trembling passed; the spidery fingers of her hands pressed against each
+other and interlaced, as though she were subtly recharging her will.
+
+The eldest by some years of all the Forsytes, she held a peculiar
+position amongst them.  Opportunists and egotists one and all--though
+not, indeed, more so than their neighbours--they quailed before her
+incorruptible figure, and, when opportunities were too strong, what could
+they do but avoid her!
+
+Twisting his long, thin legs, James went on:
+
+"Jolyon, he will have his own way.  He's got no children"--and stopped,
+recollecting the continued existence of old Jolyon's son, young Jolyon,
+June's father, who had made such a mess of it, and done for himself by
+deserting his wife and child and running away with that foreign
+governess.  "Well," he resumed hastily, "if he likes to do these things,
+I s'pose he can afford to.  Now, what's he going to give her?  I s'pose
+he'll give her a thousand a year; he's got nobody else to leave his money
+to."
+
+He stretched out his hand to meet that of a dapper, clean-shaven man,
+with hardly a hair on his head, a long, broken nose, full lips, and cold
+grey eyes under rectangular brows.
+
+"Well, Nick," he muttered, "how are you?"
+
+Nicholas Forsyte, with his bird-like rapidity and the look of a
+preternaturally sage schoolboy (he had made a large fortune, quite
+legitimately, out of the companies of which he was a director), placed
+within that cold palm the tips of his still colder fingers and hastily
+withdrew them.
+
+"I'm bad," he said, pouting--"been bad all the week; don't sleep at
+night.  The doctor can't tell why.  He's a clever fellow, or I shouldn't
+have him, but I get nothing out of him but bills."
+
+"Doctors!" said James, coming down sharp on his words: "I've had all the
+doctors in London for one or another of us.  There's no satisfaction to
+be got out of them; they'll tell you anything. There's Swithin, now.
+What good have they done him?  There he is; he's bigger than ever; he's
+enormous; they can't get his weight down.  Look at him!"
+
+Swithin Forsyte, tall, square, and broad, with a chest like a pouter
+pigeon's in its plumage of bright waistcoats, came strutting towards
+them.
+
+"Er--how are you?" he said in his dandified way, aspirating the 'h'
+strongly (this difficult letter was almost absolutely safe in his
+keeping)--"how are you?"
+
+Each brother wore an air of aggravation as he looked at the other two,
+knowing by experience that they would try to eclipse his ailments.
+
+"We were just saying," said James, "that you don't get any thinner."
+
+Swithin protruded his pale round eyes with the effort of hearing.
+
+"Thinner?  I'm in good case," he said, leaning a little forward, "not one
+of your thread-papers like you!"
+
+But, afraid of losing the expansion of his chest, he leaned back again
+into a state of immobility, for he prized nothing so highly as a
+distinguished appearance.
+
+Aunt Ann turned her old eyes from one to the other.  Indulgent and severe
+was her look.  In turn the three brothers looked at Ann.  She was getting
+shaky.  Wonderful woman!  Eighty-six if a day; might live another ten
+years, and had never been strong. Swithin and James, the twins, were only
+seventy-five, Nicholas a mere baby of seventy or so.  All were strong,
+and the inference was comforting. Of all forms of property their
+respective healths naturally concerned them most.
+
+"I'm very well in myself," proceeded James, "but my nerves are out of
+order.  The least thing worries me to death.  I shall have to go to
+Bath."
+
+"Bath!" said Nicholas.  "I've tried Harrogate.  That's no good. What I
+want is sea air.  There's nothing like Yarmouth.  Now, when I go there I
+sleep...."
+
+"My liver's very bad," interrupted Swithin slowly.  "Dreadful pain here;"
+and he placed his hand on his right side.
+
+"Want of exercise," muttered James, his eyes on the china.  He quickly
+added: "I get a pain there, too."
+
+Swithin reddened, a resemblance to a turkey-cock coming upon his old
+face.
+
+"Exercise!" he said.  "I take plenty: I never use the lift at the Club."
+
+"I didn't know," James hurried out.  "I know nothing about anybody;
+nobody tells me anything...."
+
+Swithin fixed him with a stare:
+
+"What do you do for a pain there?"
+
+James brightened.
+
+"I take a compound...."
+
+"How are you, uncle?"
+
+June stood before him, her resolute small face raised from her little
+height to his great height, and her hand outheld.
+
+The brightness faded from James's visage.
+
+"How are you?" he said, brooding over her.  "So you're going to Wales
+to-morrow to visit your young man's aunts?  You'll have a lot of rain
+there.  This isn't real old Worcester."  He tapped the bowl.  "Now, that
+set I gave your mother when she married was the genuine thing."
+
+June shook hands one by one with her three great-uncles, and turned to
+Aunt Ann.  A very sweet look had come into the old lady's face, she
+kissed the girl's check with trembling fervour.
+
+"Well, my dear," she said, "and so you're going for a whole month!"
+
+The girl passed on, and Aunt Ann looked after her slim little figure.
+The old lady's round, steel grey eyes, over which a film like a bird's
+was beginning to come, followed her wistfully amongst the bustling crowd,
+for people were beginning to say good-bye; and her finger-tips, pressing
+and pressing against each other, were busy again with the recharging of
+her will against that inevitable ultimate departure of her own.
+
+'Yes,' she thought, 'everybody's been most kind; quite a lot of people
+come to congratulate her.  She ought to be very happy.' Amongst the
+throng of people by the door, the well-dressed throng drawn from the
+families of lawyers and doctors, from the Stock Exchange, and all the
+innumerable avocations of the upper-middle class--there were only some
+twenty percent of Forsytes; but to Aunt Ann they seemed all Forsytes--and
+certainly there was not much difference--she saw only her own flesh and
+blood.  It was her world, this family, and she knew no other, had never
+perhaps known any other.  All their little secrets, illnesses,
+engagements, and marriages, how they were getting on, and whether they
+were making money--all this was her property, her delight, her life;
+beyond this only a vague, shadowy mist of facts and persons of no real
+significance.  This it was that she would have to lay down when it came
+to her turn  to die; this which gave to her that importance, that secret
+self-importance, without which none of us can bear to live; and to this
+she clung wistfully, with a greed that grew each day!  If life were
+slipping away from her, this she would retain to the end.
+
+She thought of June's father, young Jolyon, who had run away with that
+foreign girl.  And what a sad blow to his father and to them all.  Such a
+promising young fellow!  A sad blow, though there had been no public
+scandal, most fortunately, Jo's wife seeking for no divorce!  A long time
+ago!  And when June's mother died, six years ago, Jo had married that
+woman, and they had two children now, so she had heard.  Still, he had
+forfeited his right to be there, had cheated her of the complete
+fulfilment of her family pride, deprived her of the rightful pleasure of
+seeing and kissing him of whom she had been so proud, such a promising
+young fellow!  The thought rankled with the bitterness of a
+long-inflicted injury in her tenacious old heart.  A little water stood
+in her eyes.  With a handkerchief of the finest lawn she wiped them
+stealthily.
+
+"Well, Aunt Ann?" said a voice behind.
+
+Soames Forsyte, flat-shouldered, clean-shaven, flat-cheeked,
+flat-waisted, yet with something round and secret about his whole
+appearance, looked downwards and aslant at Aunt Ann, as though trying to
+see through the side of his own nose.
+
+"And what do you think of the engagement?" he asked.
+
+Aunt Ann's eyes rested on him proudly; of all the nephews since young
+Jolyon's departure from the family nest, he was now her favourite, for
+she recognised in him a sure trustee of the family soul that must so soon
+slip beyond her keeping.
+
+"Very nice for the young man," she said; "and he's a good-looking young
+fellow; but I doubt if he's quite the right lover for dear June."
+
+Soames touched the edge of a gold-lacquered lustre.
+
+"She'll tame him," he said, stealthily wetting his finger and rubbing it
+on the knobby bulbs.  "That's genuine old lacquer; you can't get it
+nowadays.  It'd do well in a sale at Jobson's." He spoke with relish, as
+though he felt that he was cheering up his old aunt.  It was seldom he
+was so confidential.  "I wouldn't mind having it myself," he added; "you
+can always get your price for old lacquer."
+
+"You're so clever with all those things," said Aunt Ann.  "And how is
+dear Irene?"
+
+Soames's smile died.
+
+"Pretty well," he said.  "Complains she can't sleep; she sleeps a great
+deal better than I do," and he looked at his wife, who was talking to
+Bosinney by the door.
+
+Aunt Ann sighed.
+
+"Perhaps," she said, "it will be just as well for her not to see so much
+of June.  She's such a decided character, dear June!"
+
+Soames flushed; his flushes passed rapidly over his flat cheeks and
+centered between his eyes, where they remained, the stamp of disturbing
+thoughts.
+
+"I don't know what she sees in that little flibbertigibbet," he burst
+out, but noticing that they were no longer alone, he turned and again
+began examining the lustre.
+
+"They tell me Jolyon's bought another house," said his father's voice
+close by; "he must have a lot of money--he must have more money than he
+knows what to do with!  Montpellier Square, they say; close to Soames!
+They never told me, Irene never tells me anything!"
+
+"Capital position, not two minutes from me," said the voice of Swithin,
+"and from my rooms I can drive to the Club in eight."
+
+The position of their houses was of vital importance to the Forsytes, nor
+was this remarkable, since the whole spirit of their success was embodied
+therein.
+
+Their father, of farming stock, had come from Dorsetshire near the
+beginning of the century.
+
+'Superior Dosset Forsyte, as he was called by his intimates, had been a
+stonemason by trade, and risen to the position of a master-builder.
+
+Towards the end of his life he moved to London, where, building on until
+he died, he was buried at Highgate.  He left over thirty thousand pounds
+between his ten children.  Old Jolyon alluded to him, if at all, as 'A
+hard, thick sort of man; not much refinement about him.' The second
+generation of Forsytes felt indeed that he was not greatly to their
+credit.  The only aristocratic trait they could find in his character was
+a habit of drinking Madeira.
+
+Aunt Hester, an authority on family history, described him thus: "I don't
+recollect that he ever did anything; at least, not in my time.  He was
+er--an owner of houses, my dear.  His hair about your Uncle Swithin's
+colour; rather a square build.  Tall?  No--not very tall" (he had been
+five feet five, with a mottled face); "a fresh-coloured man.  I remember
+he used to drink Madeira; but ask your Aunt Ann.  What was his father?
+He--er--had to do with the land down in Dorsetshire, by the sea."
+
+James once went down to see for himself what sort of place this was that
+they had come from.  He found two old farms, with a cart track rutted
+into the pink earth, leading down to a mill by the beach; a little grey
+church with a buttressed outer wall, and a smaller and greyer chapel.
+The stream which worked the mill came bubbling down in a dozen rivulets,
+and pigs were hunting round that estuary.  A haze hovered over the
+prospect.  Down this hollow, with their feet deep in the mud and their
+faces towards the sea, it appeared that the primeval Forsytes had been
+content to walk Sunday after Sunday for hundreds of years.
+
+Whether or no James had cherished hopes of an inheritance, or of
+something rather distinguished to be found down there, he came back to
+town in a poor way, and went about with a pathetic attempt at making the
+best of a bad job.
+
+"There's very little to be had out of that," he said; "regular country
+little place, old as the hills...."
+
+Its age was felt to be a comfort.  Old Jolyon, in whom a desperate
+honesty welled up at times, would allude to his ancestors as: "Yeomen--I
+suppose very small beer."  Yet he would repeat the word 'yeomen' as if it
+afforded him consolation.
+
+They had all done so well for themselves, these Forsytes, that they were
+all what is called 'of a certain position.' They had shares in all sorts
+of things, not as yet--with the exception of Timothy--in consols, for
+they had no dread in life like that of 3 per cent. for their money.  They
+collected pictures, too, and were supporters of such charitable
+institutions as might be beneficial to their sick domestics.  From their
+father, the builder, they inherited a talent for bricks and mortar.
+Originally, perhaps, members of some primitive sect, they were now in the
+natural course of things members of the Church of England, and caused
+their wives and children to attend with some regularity the more
+fashionable churches of the Metropolis.  To have doubted their
+Christianity would have caused them both pain and surprise.  Some of them
+paid for pews, thus expressing in the most practical form their sympathy
+with the teachings of Christ.
+
+Their residences, placed at stated intervals round the park, watched like
+sentinels, lest the fair heart of this London, where their desires were
+fixed, should slip from their clutches, and leave them lower in their own
+estimations.
+
+There was old Jolyon in Stanhope Place; the Jameses in Park Lane; Swithin
+in the lonely glory of orange and blue chambers in Hyde Park Mansions--he
+had never married, not he--the Soamses in their nest off Knightsbridge;
+the Rogers in Prince's Gardens (Roger was that remarkable Forsyte who had
+conceived and carried out the notion of bringing up his four sons to a
+new profession. "Collect house property, nothing like it," he would say;
+"I never did anything else").
+
+The Haymans again--Mrs. Hayman was the one married Forsyte sister--in a
+house high up on Campden Hill, shaped like a giraffe, and so tall that it
+gave the observer a crick in the neck; the Nicholases in Ladbroke Grove,
+a spacious abode and a great bargain; and last, but not least, Timothy's
+on the Bayswater Road, where Ann, and Juley, and Hester, lived under his
+protection.
+
+But all this time James was musing, and now he inquired of his host and
+brother what he had given for that house in Montpellier Square.  He
+himself had had his eye on a house there for the last two years, but they
+wanted such a price.
+
+Old Jolyon recounted the details of his purchase.
+
+"Twenty-two years to run?" repeated James; "The very house I was
+after--you've given too much for it!"
+
+Old Jolyon frowned.
+
+"It's not that I want it," said James hastily; it wouldn't suit my
+purpose at that price.  Soames knows the house, well--he'll tell you it's
+too dear--his opinion's worth having."
+
+"I don't," said old Jolyon, "care a fig for his opinion."
+
+"Well," murmured James, "you will have your own way--it's a good opinion.
+Good-bye!  We're going to drive down to Hurlingham. They tell me June's
+going to Wales.  You'll be lonely tomorrow. What'll you do with yourself?
+You'd better come and dine with us!"
+
+Old Jolyon refused.  He went down to the front door and saw them into
+their barouche, and twinkled at them, having already forgotten his
+spleen--Mrs. James facing the horses, tall and majestic with auburn hair;
+on her left, Irene--the two husbands, father and son, sitting forward, as
+though they expected something, opposite their wives.  Bobbing and
+bounding upon the spring cushions, silent, swaying to each motion of
+their chariot, old Jolyon watched them drive away under the sunlight.
+
+During the drive the silence was broken by Mrs. James.
+
+"Did you ever see such a collection of rumty-too people?"
+
+Soames, glancing at her beneath his eyelids, nodded, and he saw Irene
+steal at him one of her unfathomable looks.  It is likely enough that
+each branch of the Forsyte family made that remark as they drove away
+from old Jolyon's 'At Home!'
+
+Amongst the last of the departing guests the fourth and fifth brothers,
+Nicholas and Roger, walked away together, directing their steps alongside
+Hyde Park towards the Praed Street Station of the Underground.  Like all
+other Forsytes of a certain age they kept carriages of their own, and
+never took cabs if by any means they could avoid it.
+
+The day was bright, the trees of the Park in the full beauty of mid-June
+foliage; the brothers did not seem to notice phenomena, which
+contributed, nevertheless, to the jauntiness of promenade and
+conversation.
+
+"Yes," said Roger, "she's a good-lookin' woman, that wife of Soames's.
+I'm told they don't get on."
+
+This brother had a high forehead, and the freshest colour of any of the
+Forsytes; his light grey eyes measured the street frontage of the houses
+by the way, and now and then he would level his, umbrella and take a
+'lunar,' as he expressed it, of the varying heights.
+
+"She'd no money," replied Nicholas.
+
+He himself had married a good deal of money, of which, it being then the
+golden age before the Married Women's Property Act, he had mercifully
+been enabled to make a successful use.
+
+"What was her father?"
+
+"Heron was his name, a Professor, so they tell me."
+
+Roger shook his head.
+
+"There's no money in that," he said.
+
+"They say her mother's father was cement."
+
+Roger's face brightened.
+
+"But he went bankrupt," went on Nicholas.
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Roger, "Soames will have trouble with her; you mark my
+words, he'll have trouble--she's got a foreign look."
+
+Nicholas licked his lips.
+
+"She's a pretty woman," and he waved aside a crossing-sweeper.
+
+"How did he get hold of her?" asked Roger presently.  "She must cost him
+a pretty penny in dress!"
+
+"Ann tells me," replied Nicholas, "he was half-cracked about her. She
+refused him five times.  James, he's nervous about it, I can see."
+
+"Ah!" said Roger again; "I'm sorry for James; he had trouble with
+Dartie."  His pleasant colour was heightened by exercise, he swung his
+umbrella to the level of his eye more frequently than ever. Nicholas's
+face also wore a pleasant look.
+
+"Too pale for me," he said, "but her figures capital!"
+
+Roger made no reply.
+
+"I call her distinguished-looking," he said at last--it was the highest
+praise in the Forsyte vocabulary.  "That young Bosinney will never do any
+good for himself.  They say at Burkitt's he's one of these artistic
+chaps--got an idea of improving English architecture; there's no money in
+that!  I should like to hear what Timothy would say to it."
+
+They entered the station.
+
+"What class are you going?  I go second."
+
+"No second for me," said Nicholas;--"you never know what you may catch."
+
+He took a first-class ticket to Notting Hill Gate; Roger a second to
+South Kensington.  The train coming in a minute later, the two brothers
+parted and entered their respective compartments.  Each felt aggrieved
+that the other had not modified his habits to secure his society a little
+longer; but as Roger voiced it in his thoughts:
+
+'Always a stubborn beggar, Nick!'
+
+And as Nicholas expressed it to himself:
+
+'Cantankerous chap Roger--always was!'
+
+There was little sentimentality about the Forsytes.  In that great
+London, which they had conquered and become merged in, what time had they
+to be sentimental?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+OLD JOLYON GOES TO THE OPERA
+
+At five o'clock the following day old Jolyon sat alone, a cigar between
+his lips, and on a table by his side a cup of tea.  He was tired, and
+before he had finished his cigar he fell asleep. A fly settled on his
+hair, his breathing sounded heavy in the drowsy silence, his upper lip
+under the white moustache puffed in and out.  From between the fingers of
+his veined and wrinkled hand the cigar, dropping on the empty hearth,
+burned itself out.
+
+The gloomy little study, with windows of stained glass to exclude the
+view, was full of dark green velvet and heavily-carved mahogany--a suite
+of which old Jolyon was wont to say: 'Shouldn't wonder if it made a big
+price some day!'
+
+It was pleasant to think that in the after life he could get more for
+things than he had given.
+
+In the rich brown atmosphere peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of a
+Forsyte, the Rembrandtesque effect of his great head, with its white
+hair, against the cushion of his high-backed seat, was spoiled by the
+moustache, which imparted a somewhat military look to his face.  An old
+clock that had been with him since before his marriage forty years ago
+kept with its ticking a jealous record of the seconds slipping away
+forever from its old master.
+
+He had never cared for this room, hardly going into it from one year's
+end to another, except to take cigars from the Japanese cabinet in the
+corner, and the room now had its revenge.
+
+His temples, curving like thatches over the hollows beneath, his
+cheek-bones and chin, all were sharpened in his sleep, and there had come
+upon his face the confession that he was an old man.
+
+He woke.  June had gone!  James had said he would be lonely. James had
+always been a poor thing.  He recollected with satisfaction that he had
+bought that house over James's head.
+
+Serve him right for sticking at the price; the only thing the fellow
+thought of was money.  Had he given too much, though?  It wanted a lot of
+doing to--He dared say he would want all his money before he had done
+with this affair of June's.  He ought never to have allowed the
+engagement.  She had met this Bosinney at the house of Baynes, Baynes and
+Bildeboy, the architects.  He believed that Baynes, whom he knew--a bit
+of an old woman--was the young man's uncle by marriage.  After that she'd
+been always running after him; and when she took a thing into her head
+there was no stopping her.  She was continually taking up with 'lame
+ducks' of one sort or another.  This fellow had no money, but she must
+needs become engaged to him--a harumscarum, unpractical chap, who would
+get himself into no end of difficulties.
+
+She had come to him one day in her slap-dash way and told him; and, as if
+it were any consolation, she had added:
+
+"He's so splendid; he's often lived on cocoa for a week!"
+
+"And he wants you to live on cocoa too?"
+
+"Oh no; he is getting into the swim now."
+
+Old Jolyon had taken his cigar from under his white moustaches, stained
+by coffee at the edge, and looked at her, that little slip of a thing who
+had got such a grip of his heart.  He knew more about 'swims' than his
+granddaughter.  But she, having clasped her hands on his knees, rubbed
+her chin against him, making a sound like a purring cat.  And, knocking
+the ash off his cigar, he had exploded in nervous desperation:
+
+"You're all alike: you won't be satisfied till you've got what you want.
+If you must come to grief, you must; I wash my hands of it."
+
+So, he had washed his hands of it, making the condition that they should
+not marry until Bosinney had at least four hundred a year.
+
+"I shan't be able to give you very much," he had said, a formula to which
+June was not unaccustomed.  "Perhaps this What's-his-name will provide
+the cocoa."
+
+He had hardly seen anything of her since it began.  A bad business!  He
+had no notion of giving her a lot of money to enable a fellow he knew
+nothing about to live on in idleness. He had seen that sort of thing
+before; no good ever came of it. Worst of all, he had no hope of shaking
+her resolution; she was as obstinate as a mule, always had been from a
+child.  He didn't see where it was to end.  They must cut their coat
+according to their cloth.  He would not give way till he saw young
+Bosinney with an income of his own.  That June would have trouble with
+the fellow was as plain as a pikestaff; he had no more idea of money than
+a cow.  As to this rushing down to Wales to visit the young man's aunts,
+he fully expected they were old cats.
+
+And, motionless, old Jolyon stared at the wall; but for his open eyes, he
+might have been asleep....  The idea of supposing that young cub Soames
+could give him advice!  He had always been a cub, with his nose in the
+air!  He would be setting up as a man of property next, with a place in
+the country!  A man of property!  H'mph! Like his father, he was always
+nosing out bargains, a cold-blooded young beggar!
+
+He rose, and, going to the cabinet, began methodically stocking his
+cigar-case from a bundle fresh in.  They were not bad at the price, but
+you couldn't get a good cigar, nowadays, nothing to hold a candle to
+those old Superfinos of Hanson and Bridger's. That was a cigar!
+
+The thought, like some stealing perfume, carried him back to those
+wonderful nights at Richmond when after dinner he sat smoking on the
+terrace of the Crown and Sceptre with Nicholas Treffry and Traquair and
+Jack Herring and Anthony Thornworthy. How good his cigars were then!
+Poor old Nick!--dead, and Jack Herring--dead, and Traquair--dead of that
+wife of his, and Thornworthy--awfully shaky (no wonder, with his
+appetite).
+
+Of all the company of those days he himself alone seemed left, except
+Swithin, of course, and he so outrageously big there was no doing
+anything with him.
+
+Difficult to believe it was so long ago; he felt young still!  Of all his
+thoughts, as he stood there counting his cigars, this was the most
+poignant, the most bitter.  With his white head and his loneliness he had
+remained young and green at heart.  And those Sunday afternoons on
+Hampstead Heath, when young Jolyon and he went for a stretch along the
+Spaniard's Road to Highgate, to Child's Hill, and back over the Heath
+again to dine at Jack Straw's Castle--how delicious his cigars were then!
+And such weather!  There was no weather now.
+
+When June was a toddler of five, and every other Sunday he took her to
+the Zoo, away from the society of those two good women, her mother and
+her grandmother, and at the top of the bear den baited his umbrella with
+buns for her favourite bears, how sweet his cigars were then!
+
+Cigars!  He had not even succeeded in out-living his palate--the famous
+palate that in the fifties men swore by, and speaking of him, said:
+"Forsyte's the best palate in London!" The palate that in a sense had
+made his fortune--the fortune of the celebrated tea men, Forsyte and
+Treffry, whose tea, like no other man's tea, had a romantic aroma, the
+charm of a quite singular genuineness. About the house of Forsyte and
+Treffry in the City had clung an air of enterprise and mystery, of
+special dealings in special ships, at special ports, with special
+Orientals.
+
+He had worked at that business!  Men did work in those days! these young
+pups hardly knew the meaning of the word.  He had gone into every detail,
+known everything that went on, sometimes sat up all night over it.  And
+he had always chosen his agents himself, prided himself on it.  His eye
+for men, he used to say, had been the secret of his success, and the
+exercise of this masterful power of selection had been the only part of
+it all that he had really liked.  Not a career for a man of his ability.
+Even now, when the business had been turned into a Limited Liability
+Company, and was declining (he had got out of his shares long ago), he
+felt a sharp chagrin in thinking of that time.  How much better he might
+have done!  He would have succeeded splendidly at the Bar!  He had even
+thought of standing for Parliament.  How often had not Nicholas Treffry
+said to him:
+
+"You could do anything, Jo, if you weren't so d-damned careful of
+yourself!" Dear old Nick!  Such a good fellow, but a racketty chap!  The
+notorious Treffry!  He had never taken any care of himself.  So he was
+dead.  Old Jolyon counted his cigars with a steady hand, and it came into
+his mind to wonder if perhaps he had been too careful of himself.
+
+He put the cigar-case in the breast of his coat, buttoned it in, and
+walked up the long flights to his bedroom, leaning on one foot and the
+other, and helping himself by the bannister.  The house was too big.
+After June was married, if she ever did marry this fellow, as he supposed
+she would, he would let it and go into rooms.  What was the use of
+keeping half a dozen servants eating their heads off?
+
+The butler came to the ring of his bell--a large man with a beard, a soft
+tread, and a peculiar capacity for silence.  Old Jolyon told him to put
+his dress clothes out; he was going to dine at the Club.
+
+How long had the carriage been back from taking Miss June to the station?
+Since two?  Then let him come round at half-past six!
+
+The Club which old Jolyon entered on the stroke of seven was one of those
+political institutions of the upper middle class which have seen better
+days.  In spite of being talked about, perhaps in consequence of being
+talked about, it betrayed a disappointing vitality.  People had grown
+tired of saying that the 'Disunion' was on its last legs.  Old Jolyon
+would say it, too, yet disregarded the fact in a manner truly irritating
+to well-constituted Clubmen.
+
+"Why do you keep your name on?" Swithin often asked him with profound
+vexation.  "Why don't you join the 'Polyglot'?  You can't get a wine like
+our Heidsieck under twenty shillin' a bottle anywhere in London;" and,
+dropping his voice, he added: "There's only five hundred dozen left.  I
+drink it every night of my life."
+
+"I'll think of it," old Jolyon would answer; but when he did think of it
+there was always the question of fifty guineas entrance fee, and it would
+take him four or five years to get in.  He continued to think of it.
+
+He was too old to be a Liberal, had long ceased to believe in the
+political doctrines of his Club, had even been known to allude to them as
+'wretched stuff,' and it afforded him pleasure to continue a member in
+the teeth of principles so opposed to his own.  He had always had a
+contempt for the place, having joined it many years ago when they refused
+to have him at the 'Hotch Potch' owing to his being 'in trade.'  As if he
+were not as good as any of them!  He naturally despised the Club that did
+take him.  The members were a poor lot, many of them in the City
+--stockbrokers, solicitors, auctioneers--what not!  Like most men of
+strong character but not too much originality, old Jolyon set small store
+by the class to which he belonged.  Faithfully he followed their customs,
+social and otherwise, and secretly he thought them 'a common lot.'
+
+Years and philosophy, of which he had his share, had dimmed the
+recollection of his defeat at the 'Hotch Potch'; and now in his thoughts
+it was enshrined as the Queen of Clubs.  He would have been a member all
+these years himself, but, owing to the slipshod way his proposer, Jack
+Herring, had gone to work, they had not known what they were doing in
+keeping him out.  Why! they had taken his son Jo at once, and he believed
+the boy was still a member; he had received a letter dated from there
+eight years ago.
+
+He had not been near the 'Disunion' for months, and the house had
+undergone the piebald decoration which people bestow on old houses and
+old ships when anxious to sell them.
+
+'Beastly colour, the smoking-room!' he thought.  'The dining-room is
+good!'
+
+Its gloomy chocolate, picked out with light green, took his fancy.
+
+He ordered dinner, and sat down in the very corner, at the very table
+perhaps! (things did not progress much at the 'Disunion,' a Club of
+almost Radical principles) at which he and young Jolyon used to sit
+twenty-five years ago, when he was taking the latter to Drury Lane,
+during his holidays.
+
+The boy had loved the theatre, and old Jolyon recalled how he used to sit
+opposite, concealing his excitement under a careful but transparent
+nonchalance.
+
+He ordered himself, too, the very dinner the boy had always chosen-soup,
+whitebait, cutlets, and a tart.  Ah! if he were only opposite now!
+
+The two had not met for fourteen years.  And not for the first time
+during those fourteen years old Jolyon wondered whether he had been a
+little to blame in the matter of his son.  An unfortunate love-affair
+with that precious flirt Danae Thornworthy (now Danae Pellew), Anthony
+Thornworthy's daughter, had thrown him on the rebound into the arms of
+June's mother.  He ought perhaps to have put a spoke in the wheel of
+their marriage; they were too young; but after that experience of Jo's
+susceptibility he had been only too anxious to see him married. And in
+four years the crash had come!  To have approved his son's conduct in
+that crash was, of course, impossible; reason and training--that
+combination of potent factors which stood for his principles--told him of
+this impossibility, and his heart cried out.  The grim remorselessness of
+that business had no pity for hearts.  There was June, the atom with
+flaming hair, who had climbed all over him, twined and twisted herself
+about him--about his heart that was made to be the plaything and beloved
+resort of tiny, helpless things.  With characteristic insight he saw he
+must part with one or with the other; no half-measures could serve in
+such a situation.  In that lay its tragedy.  And the tiny, helpless thing
+prevailed.  He would not run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, and
+so to his son he said good-bye.
+
+That good-bye had lasted until now.
+
+He had proposed to continue a reduced allowance to young Jolyon, but this
+had been refused, and perhaps that refusal had hurt him more than
+anything, for with it had gone the last outlet of his penned-in
+affection; and there had come such tangible and solid proof of rupture as
+only a transaction in property, a bestowal or refusal of such, could
+supply.
+
+His dinner tasted flat.  His pint of champagne was dry and bitter stuff,
+not like the Veuve Clicquots of old days.
+
+Over his cup of coffee, he bethought him that he would go to the opera.
+In the Times, therefore--he had a distrust of other papers--he read the
+announcement for the evening.  It was 'Fidelio.'
+
+Mercifully not one of those new-fangled German pantomimes by that fellow
+Wagner.
+
+Putting on his ancient opera hat, which, with its brim flattened by use,
+and huge capacity, looked like an emblem of greater days, and, pulling
+out an old pair of very thin lavender kid gloves smelling strongly of
+Russia leather, from habitual proximity to the  cigar-case in the pocket
+of his overcoat, he stepped into a hansom.
+
+The cab rattled gaily along the streets, and old Jolyon was struck by
+their unwonted animation.
+
+'The hotels must be doing a tremendous business,' he thought.  A few
+years ago there had been none of these big hotels.  He made a
+satisfactory reflection on some property he had in the neighbourhood.  It
+must be going up in value by leaps and bounds! What traffic!
+
+But from that he began indulging in one of those strange impersonal
+speculations, so uncharacteristic of a Forsyte, wherein lay, in part, the
+secret of his supremacy amongst them. What atoms men were, and what a lot
+of them!  And what would become of them all?
+
+He stumbled as he got out of the cab, gave the man his exact fare, walked
+up to the ticket office to take his stall, and stood there with his purse
+in his hand--he always carried his money in a purse, never having
+approved of that habit of carrying it loosely in the pockets, as so many
+young men did nowadays.  The official leaned out, like an old dog from a
+kennel.
+
+"Why," he said in a surprised voice, "it's Mr. Jolyon Forsyte! So it is!
+Haven't seen you, sir, for years.  Dear me!  Times aren't what they were.
+Why! you and your brother, and that auctioneer--Mr. Traquair, and Mr.
+Nicholas Treffry--you used to have six or seven stalls here regular every
+season.  And how are you, sir?  We don't get younger!"
+
+The colour in old Jolyon's eyes deepened; he paid his guinea. They had
+not forgotten him.  He marched in, to the sounds of the overture, like an
+old war-horse to battle.
+
+Folding his opera hat, he sat down, drew out his lavender gloves in the
+old way, and took up his glasses for a long look round the house.
+Dropping them at last on his folded hat, he fixed his eyes on the
+curtain.  More poignantly than ever he felt that it was all over and done
+with him.  Where were all the women, the pretty women, the house used to
+be so full of?  Where was that old feeling in the heart as he waited for
+one of those great singers?  Where that sensation of the intoxication of
+life and of his own power to enjoy it all?
+
+The greatest opera-goer of his day!  There was no opera now! That fellow
+Wagner had ruined everything; no melody left, nor any voices to sing it.
+Ah! the wonderful singers!  Gone!  He sat watching the old scenes acted,
+a numb feeling at his heart.
+
+From the curl of silver over his ear to the pose of his foot in its
+elastic-sided patent boot, there was nothing clumsy or weak about old
+Jolyon.  He was as upright--very nearly--as in those old times when he
+came every night; his sight was as good--almost as good.  But what a
+feeling of weariness and disillusion!
+
+He had been in the habit all his life of enjoying things, even imperfect
+things--and there had been many imperfect things--he had enjoyed them all
+with moderation, so as to keep himself young.  But now he was deserted by
+his power of enjoyment, by his philosophy, and left with this dreadful
+feeling that it was all done with.  Not even the Prisoners' Chorus, nor
+Florian's Song, had the power to dispel the gloom of his loneliness.
+
+If Jo were only with him!  The boy must be forty by now.  He had wasted
+fourteen years out of the life of his only son.  And Jo was no longer a
+social pariah.  He was married.  Old Jolyon had been unable to refrain
+from marking his appreciation of the action by enclosing his son a cheque
+for L500.  The cheque had been returned in a letter from the 'Hotch
+Potch,' couched in these words.
+
+'MY DEAREST FATHER,
+
+'Your generous gift was welcome as a sign that you might think worse of
+me.  I return it, but should you think fit to invest it for the benefit
+of the little chap (we call him Jolly), who bears our Christian and, by
+courtesy, our surname, I shall be very glad.
+
+'I hope with all my heart that your health is as good as ever.
+
+'Your loving son,
+
+ 'Jo.'
+
+The letter was like the boy.  He had always been an amiable chap. Old
+Jolyon had sent this reply:
+
+'MY DEAR JO,
+
+'The sum (L500) stands in my books for the benefit of your boy, under the
+name of Jolyon Forsyte, and will be duly-credited with interest at 5 per
+cent.  I hope that you are doing well.  My health remains good at
+present.
+
+'With love, I am, 'Your affectionate Father,
+'JOLYON FORSYTE.'
+
+And every year on the 1st of January he had added a hundred and the
+interest.  The sum was mounting up--next New Year's Day it would be
+fifteen hundred and odd pounds!  And it is difficult to say how much
+satisfaction he had got out of that yearly transaction.  But the
+correspondence had ended.
+
+In spite of his love for his son, in spite of an instinct, partly
+constitutional, partly the result, as in thousands of his class, of the
+continual handling and watching of affairs, prompting him to judge
+conduct by results rather than by principle, there was at the bottom of
+his heart a sort of uneasiness.  His son ought, under the circumstances,
+to have gone to the dogs; that law was laid down in all the novels,
+sermons, and plays he had ever read, heard, or witnessed.
+
+After receiving the cheque back there seemed to him to be something wrong
+somewhere.  Why had his son not gone to the dogs?  But, then, who could
+tell?
+
+He had heard, of course--in fact, he had made it his business to find
+out--that Jo lived in St.  John's Wood, that he had a little house in
+Wistaria Avenue with a garden, and took his wife about with him into
+society--a queer sort of society, no doubt--and that they had two
+children--the little chap they called Jolly (considering the
+circumstances the name struck him as cynical, and old Jolyon both feared
+and disliked cynicism), and a girl called Holly, born since the marriage.
+Who could tell what his son's circumstances really were?  He had
+capitalized the income he had inherited from his mother's father
+and joined Lloyd's as an underwriter; he painted pictures,
+too--water-colours.  Old Jolyon knew this, for he had surreptitiously
+bought them from time to time, after chancing to see his son's name
+signed at the bottom of a representation of the river Thames in a
+dealer's window.  He thought them bad, and did not hang them because of
+the signature; he kept them locked up in a drawer.
+
+In the great opera-house a terrible yearning came on him to see his son.
+He remembered the days when he had been wont to slide him, in a brown
+holland suit, to and fro under the arch of his legs; the times when he
+ran beside the boy's pony, teaching him to ride; the day he first took
+him to school.  He had been a loving, lovable little chap!  After he went
+to Eton he had acquired, perhaps, a little too much of that desirable
+manner which old Jolyon knew was only to be obtained at such places and
+at great expense; but he had always been companionable.  Always a
+companion, even after Cambridge--a little far off, perhaps, owing to the
+advantages he had received.  Old Jolyon's feeling towards our public
+schools and 'Varsities never wavered, and he retained touchingly his
+attitude of admiration and mistrust towards a system appropriate to the
+highest in the land, of which he had not himself  been privileged to
+partake....  Now that June had gone and left, or as good as left him, it
+would have been a comfort to see his son again.  Guilty of this treason
+to his family, his principles, his class, old Jolyon fixed his eyes on
+the singer.  A poor thing--a wretched poor thing!  And the Florian a
+perfect stick!
+
+It was over.  They were easily pleased nowadays!
+
+In the crowded street he snapped up a cab under the very nose of a stout
+and much younger gentleman, who had already assumed it to be his own.
+His route lay through Pall Mall, and at the corner, instead of going
+through the Green Park, the cabman turned to drive up St.  James's
+Street.  Old Jolyon put his hand through the trap (he could not bear
+being taken out of his way); in turning, however, he found himself
+opposite the 'Hotch Potch,' and the yearning that had been secretly with
+him the whole evening prevailed.  He called to the driver to stop.  He
+would go in and ask if Jo still belonged there.
+
+He went in.  The hall looked exactly as it did when he used to dine there
+with Jack Herring, and they had the best cook in London; and he looked
+round with the shrewd, straight glance that had caused him all his life
+to be better served than most men.
+
+"Mr. Jolyon Forsyte still a member here?"
+
+"Yes, sir; in the Club now, sir.  What name?"
+
+Old Jolyon was taken aback.
+
+"His father," he said.
+
+And having spoken, he took his stand, back to the fireplace.
+
+Young Jolyon, on the point of leaving the Club, had put on his hat, and
+was in the act of crossing the hall, as the porter met him.  He was no
+longer young, with hair going grey, and face--a narrower replica of his
+father's, with the same large drooping moustache--decidedly worn.  He
+turned pale.  This meeting was terrible after all those years, for
+nothing in the world was so terrible as a scene.  They met and crossed
+hands without a word. Then, with a quaver in his voice, the father said:
+
+"How are you, my boy?"
+
+The son answered:
+
+"How are you, Dad?"
+
+Old Jolyon's hand trembled in its thin lavender glove.
+
+"If you're going my way," he said, "I can give you a lift."
+
+And as though in the habit of taking each other home every night they
+went out and stepped into the cab.
+
+To old Jolyon it seemed that his son had grown.  'More of a man
+altogether,' was his comment.  Over the natural amiability of that son's
+face had come a rather sardonic mask, as though he had found in the
+circumstances of his life the necessity for armour. The features were
+certainly those of a Forsyte, but the expression was more the
+introspective look of a student or philosopher. He had no doubt been
+obliged to look into himself a good deal in the course of those fifteen
+years.
+
+To young Jolyon the first sight of his father was undoubtedly a shock--he
+looked so worn and old.  But in the cab he seemed hardly to have changed,
+still having the calm look so well remembered, still being upright and
+keen-eyed.
+
+"You look well, Dad."
+
+"Middling," old Jolyon answered.
+
+He was the prey of an anxiety that he found he must put into words.
+Having got his son back like this, he felt he must know what was his
+financial position.
+
+"Jo," he said, "I should like to hear what sort of water you're in.  I
+suppose you're in debt?"
+
+He put it this way that his son might find it easier to confess.
+
+Young Jolyon answered in his ironical voice:
+
+"No!  I'm not in debt!"
+
+Old Jolyon saw that he was angry, and touched his hand.  He had run a
+risk.  It was worth it, however, and Jo had never been sulky with him.
+They drove on, without speaking again, to Stanhope Gate.  Old Jolyon
+invited him in, but young Jolyon shook his head.
+
+"June's not here," said his father hastily: "went of to-day on a visit.
+I suppose you know that she's engaged to be married?"
+
+"Already?" murmured young Jolyon'.
+
+Old Jolyon stepped out, and, in paying the cab fare, for the first time
+in his life gave the driver a sovereign in mistake for a shilling.
+
+Placing the coin in his mouth, the cabman whipped his horse secretly on
+the underneath and hurried away.
+
+Old Jolyon turned the key softly in the lock, pushed open the door, and
+beckoned.  His son saw him gravely hanging up his coat, with an
+expression on his face like that of a boy who intends to steal cherries.
+
+The door of the dining-room was open, the gas turned low; a spirit-urn
+hissed on a tea-tray, and close to it a cynical looking cat had fallen
+asleep on the dining-table.  Old Jolyon 'shoo'd' her off at once.  The
+incident was a relief to his feelings; he rattled his opera hat behind
+the animal.
+
+"She's got fleas," he said, following her out of the room. Through the
+door in the hall leading to the basement he called "Hssst!" several
+times, as though assisting the cat's departure, till by some strange
+coincidence the butler appeared below.
+
+"You can go to bed, Parfitt," said old Jolyon.  "I will lock up and put
+out."
+
+When he again entered the dining-room the cat unfortunately preceded him,
+with her tail in the air, proclaiming that she had seen through this
+manouevre for suppressing the butler from the first....
+
+A fatality had dogged old Jolyon's domestic stratagems all his life.
+
+Young Jolyon could not help smiling.  He was very well versed in irony,
+and everything that evening seemed to him ironical.  The episode of the
+cat; the announcement of his own daughter's engagement.  So he had no
+more part or parcel in her than he had in the Puss!  And the poetical
+justice of this appealed to him.
+
+"What is June like now?" he asked.
+
+"She's a little thing," returned old Jolyon; they say she's like me, but
+that's their folly.  She's more like your mother--the same eyes and
+hair."
+
+"Ah! and she is pretty?"
+
+Old Jolyon was too much of a Forsyte to praise anything freely;
+especially anything for which he had a genuine admiration.
+
+"Not bad looking--a regular Forsyte chin.  It'll be lonely here when
+she's gone, Jo."
+
+The look on his face again gave young Jolyon the shock he had felt on
+first seeing his father.
+
+"What will you do with yourself, Dad?  I suppose she's wrapped up in
+him?"
+
+"Do with myself?" repeated old Jolyon with an angry break in his voice.
+"It'll be miserable work living here alone.  I don't know how it's to
+end.  I wish to goodness...."  He checked himself, and added: "The
+question is, what had I better do with this house?"
+
+Young Jolyon looked round the room.  It was peculiarly vast and dreary,
+decorated with the enormous pictures of still life that he remembered as
+a boy--sleeping dogs with their noses resting on bunches of carrots,
+together with onions and grapes lying side by side in mild surprise.  The
+house was a white elephant, but he could not conceive of his father
+living in a smaller place; and all the more did it all seem ironical.
+
+In his great chair with the book-rest sat old Jolyon, the figurehead of
+his family and class and creed, with his white head and dome-like
+forehead, the representative of moderation, and order, and love of
+property.  As lonely an old man as there was in London.
+
+There he sat in the gloomy comfort of the room, a puppet in the power of
+great forces that cared nothing for family or class or creed, but moved,
+machine-like, with dread processes to inscrutable ends.  This was how it
+struck young Jolyon, who had the impersonal eye.
+
+The poor old Dad!  So this was the end, the purpose to which he had lived
+with such magnificent moderation!  To be lonely, and grow older and
+older, yearning for a soul to speak to!
+
+In his turn old Jolyon looked back at his son.  He wanted to talk about
+many things that he had been unable to talk about all these years.  It
+had been impossible to seriously confide in June his conviction that
+property in the Soho quarter would go up in value; his uneasiness about
+that tremendous silence of Pippin, the superintendent of the New Colliery
+Company, of which he had so long been chairman; his disgust at the steady
+fall in American Golgothas, or even to discuss how, by some sort of
+settlement, he could best avoid the payment of those death duties which
+would follow his decease.  Under the influence, however, of a cup of tea,
+which he seemed to stir indefinitely, he began to speak at last.  A new
+vista of life was thus opened up, a promised land of talk, where he could
+find a harbour against the waves of anticipation and regret; where he
+could soothe his soul with the opium of devising how to round off his
+property and make eternal the only part of him that was to remain alive.
+
+Young Jolyon was a good listener; it was his great quality.  He kept his
+eyes fixed on his father's face, putting a question now and then.
+
+The clock struck one before old Jolyon had finished, and at the sound of
+its striking his principles came back.  He took out his watch with a look
+of surprise:
+
+"I must go to bed, Jo," he said.
+
+Young Jolyon rose and held out his hand to help his father up. The old
+face looked worn and hollow again; the eyes were steadily averted.
+
+"Good-bye, my boy; take care of yourself."
+
+A moment passed, and young Jolyon, turning on his, heel, marched out at
+the door.  He could hardly see; his smile quavered.  Never in all the
+fifteen years since he had first found out that life was no simple
+business, had he found it so singularly complicated.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+DINNER AT SWITHIN'S
+
+In Swithin's orange and light-blue dining-room, facing the Park, the
+round table was laid for twelve.
+
+A cut-glass chandelier filled with lighted candles hung like a giant
+stalactite above its centre, radiating over large gilt-framed mirrors,
+slabs of marble on the tops of side-tables, and heavy gold chairs with
+crewel worked seats.  Everything betokened that love of beauty so deeply
+implanted in each family which has had its own way to make into Society,
+out of the more vulgar heart of Nature.  Swithin had indeed an impatience
+of simplicity, a love of ormolu, which had always stamped him amongst his
+associates as a man of great, if somewhat luxurious taste; and out of the
+knowledge that no one could possibly enter his rooms without perceiving
+him to be a man of wealth, he had derived a solid and prolonged happiness
+such as perhaps no other circumstance in life had afforded him.
+
+Since his retirement from land agency, a profession deplorable in his
+estimation, especially as to its auctioneering department, he had
+abandoned himself to naturally aristocratic tastes.
+
+The perfect luxury of his latter days had embedded him like a fly in
+sugar; and his mind, where very little took place from morning till
+night, was the junction of two curiously opposite emotions, a lingering
+and sturdy satisfaction that he had made his own way and his own fortune,
+and a sense that a man of his distinction should never have been allowed
+to soil his mind with work.
+
+He stood at the sideboard in a white waistcoat with large gold and onyx
+buttons, watching his valet screw the necks of three champagne bottles
+deeper into ice-pails.  Between the points of his stand-up collar,
+which--though it hurt him to move--he would on no account have had
+altered, the pale flesh of his under chin remained immovable.  His eyes
+roved from bottle to bottle.  He was debating, and he argued like this:
+Jolyon drinks a glass, perhaps two, he's so careful of himself.  James,
+he can't take his wine nowadays.  Nicholas--Fanny and he would swill
+water he shouldn't wonder!  Soames didn't count; these young nephews
+--Soames was thirty-one--couldn't drink!  But Bosinney?
+
+Encountering in the name of this stranger something outside the range of
+his philosophy, Swithin paused.  A misgiving arose within him!  It was
+impossible to tell!  June was only a girl, in love too!  Emily (Mrs.
+James) liked a good glass of champagne. It was too dry for Juley, poor
+old soul, she had no palate.  As to Hatty Chessman!  The thought of this
+old friend caused a cloud of thought to obscure the perfect glassiness of
+his eyes: He shouldn't wonder if she drank half a bottle!
+
+But in thinking of his remaining guest, an expression like that of a cat
+who is just going to purr stole over his old face: Mrs. Soames!  She
+mightn't take much, but she would appreciate what she drank; it was a
+pleasure to give her good wine!  A pretty woman--and sympathetic to him!
+
+The thought of her was like champagne itself!  A pleasure to give a good
+wine to a young woman who looked so well, who knew how to dress, with
+charming manners, quite distinguished--a pleasure to entertain her.
+Between the points of his collar he gave his head the first small,
+painful oscillation of the evening.
+
+"Adolf!" he said.  "Put in another bottle."
+
+He himself might drink a good deal, for, thanks to that prescription of
+Blight's, he found himself extremely well, and he had been careful to
+take no lunch.  He had not felt so well for weeks.  Puffing out his lower
+lip, he gave his last instructions:
+
+"Adolf, the least touch of the West India when you come to the ham."
+
+Passing into the anteroom, he sat down on the edge of a chair, with his
+knees apart; and his tall, bulky form was wrapped at once in an
+expectant, strange, primeval immobility.  He was ready to rise at a
+moment's notice.  He had not given a dinner-party for months.  This
+dinner in honour of June's engagement had seemed a bore at first (among
+Forsytes the custom of solemnizing engagements by feasts was religiously
+observed), but the labours of sending invitations and ordering the repast
+over, he felt pleasantly stimulated.
+
+And thus sitting, a watch in his hand, fat, and smooth, and golden, like
+a flattened globe of butter, he thought of nothing.
+
+A long man, with side whiskers, who had once been in Swithin's service,
+but was now a greengrocer, entered and proclaimed:
+
+"Mrs. Chessman, Mrs. Septimus Small!"
+
+Two ladies advanced.  The one in front, habited entirely in red, had
+large, settled patches of the same colour in her cheeks, and a hard,
+dashing eye.  She walked at Swithin, holding out a hand cased in a long,
+primrose-coloured glove:
+
+"Well!  Swithin," she said, "I haven't seen you for ages.  How are you?
+Why, my dear boy, how stout you're getting!"
+
+The fixity of Swithin's eye alone betrayed emotion.  A dumb and grumbling
+anger swelled his bosom.  It was vulgar to be stout, to talk of being
+stout; he had a chest, nothing more.  Turning to his sister, he grasped
+her hand, and said in a tone of command:
+
+"Well, Juley."
+
+Mrs. Septimus Small was the tallest of the four sisters; her good, round
+old face had gone a little sour; an innumerable pout clung all over it,
+as if it had been encased in an iron wire mask up to that evening, which,
+being suddenly removed, left little rolls of mutinous flesh all over her
+countenance.  Even her eyes were pouting.  It was thus that she recorded
+her permanent resentment at the loss of Septimus Small.
+
+She had quite a reputation for saying the wrong thing, and, tenacious
+like all her breed, she would hold to it when she had said it, and add to
+it another wrong thing, and so on.  With the decease of her husband the
+family tenacity, the family matter-of-factness, had gone sterile within
+her.  A great talker, when allowed, she would converse without the
+faintest animation for hours together, relating, with epic monotony, the
+innumerable occasions on which Fortune had misused her; nor did she ever
+perceive that her hearers sympathized with Fortune, for her heart was
+kind.
+
+Having sat, poor soul, long by the bedside of Small (a man of poor
+constitution), she had acquired, the habit, and there were countless
+subsequent occasions when she had sat immense periods of time to amuse
+sick people, children, and other helpless persons, and she could never
+divest herself of the feeling that the world was the most ungrateful
+place anybody could live in. Sunday after Sunday she sat at the feet of
+that extremely witty preacher, the Rev. Thomas Scoles, who exercised a
+great influence  over her; but she succeeded in convincing everybody that
+even this was a misfortune.  She had passed into a proverb in the family,
+and when anybody was observed to be peculiarly distressing, he was known
+as a regular 'Juley.' The habit of her mind would have killed anybody but
+a Forsyte at forty; but she was seventy-two, and had never looked better.
+And one felt that there were capacities for enjoyment about her which
+might yet come out.  She owned three canaries, the cat Tommy, and half a
+parrot--in common with her sister Hester;--and these poor creatures (kept
+carefully out of Timothy's way--he was nervous about animals), unlike
+human beings, recognising that she could not help being blighted,
+attached themselves to her passionately.
+
+She was sombrely magnificent this evening in black bombazine, with a
+mauve front cut in a shy triangle, and crowned with a black velvet ribbon
+round the base of her thin throat; black and mauve for evening wear was
+esteemed very chaste by nearly every Forsyte.
+
+Pouting at Swithin, she said:
+
+"Ann has been asking for you.  You haven't been near us for an age!"
+
+Swithin put his thumbs within the armholes of his waistcoat, and replied:
+
+"Ann's getting very shaky; she ought to have a doctor!"
+
+"Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Forsyte!"
+
+Nicholas Forsyte, cocking his rectangular eyebrows, wore a smile. He had
+succeeded during the day in bringing to fruition a scheme for the
+employment of a tribe from Upper India in the gold-mines of Ceylon.  A
+pet plan, carried at last in the teeth of great difficulties--he was
+justly pleased.  It would double the output of his mines, and, as he had
+often forcibly argued, all experience tended to show that a man must die;
+and whether he died of a miserable old age in his own country, or
+prematurely of damp in the bottom of a foreign mine, was surely of little
+consequence, provided that by a change in his mode of life he benefited
+the British Empire.
+
+His ability was undoubted.  Raising his broken nose towards his listener,
+he would add:
+
+"For want of a few hundred of these fellows we haven't paid a dividend
+for years, and look at the price of the shares.  I can't get ten
+shillings for them."
+
+He had been at Yarmouth, too, and had come back feeling that he had added
+at least ten years to his own life.  He grasped Swithin's hand,
+exclaiming in a jocular voice:
+
+"Well, so here we are again!"
+
+Mrs. Nicholas, an effete woman, smiled a smile of frightened jollity
+behind his back.
+
+"Mr. and Mrs. James Forsyte!  Mr. and Mrs. Soames Forsyte!"
+
+Swithin drew his heels together, his deportment ever admirable.
+
+"Well, James, well Emily!  How are you, Soames?  How do you do?"
+
+His hand enclosed Irene's, and his eyes swelled.  She was a pretty
+woman--a little too pale, but her figure, her eyes, her teeth!  Too good
+for that chap Soames!
+
+The gods had given Irene dark brown eyes and golden hair, that strange
+combination, provocative of men's glances, which is said to be the mark
+of a weak character.  And the full, soft pallor of her neck and
+shoulders, above a gold-coloured frock, gave to her personality an
+alluring strangeness.
+
+Soames stood behind, his eyes fastened on his wife's neck.  The hands of
+Swithin's watch, which he still held open in his hand, had left eight
+behind; it was half an hour beyond his dinner-time--he had had no
+lunch--and a strange primeval impatience surged up within him.
+
+"It's not like Jolyon to be late!" he said to Irene, with uncontrollable
+vexation.  "I suppose it'll be June keeping him!"
+
+"People in love are always late," she answered.
+
+Swithin stared at her; a dusky orange dyed his cheeks.
+
+"They've no business to be.  Some fashionable nonsense!"
+
+And behind this outburst the inarticulate violence of primitive
+generations seemed to mutter and grumble.
+
+"Tell me what you think of my new star, Uncle Swithin," said Irene
+softly.
+
+Among the lace in the bosom of her dress was shining a five-pointed star,
+made of eleven diamonds.  Swithin looked at the star.  He had a pretty
+taste in stones; no question could have been more sympathetically devised
+to distract his attention.
+
+"Who gave you that?" he asked.
+
+"Soames."
+
+There was no change in her face, but Swithin's pale eyes bulged as though
+he might suddenly have been afflicted with insight.
+
+"I dare say you're dull at home," he said.  "Any day you like to come and
+dine with me, I'll give you as good a bottle of wine as you'll get in
+London."
+
+"Miss June Forsyte--Mr. Jolyon Forsyte!...  Mr. Boswainey!..."
+
+Swithin moved his arm, and said in a rumbling voice:
+
+"Dinner, now--dinner!"
+
+He took in Irene, on the ground that he had not entertained her since she
+was a bride.  June was the portion of Bosinney, who was placed between
+Irene and his fiancee.  On the other side of June was James with Mrs.
+Nicholas, then old Jolyon with Mrs. James, Nicholas with Hatty Chessman,
+Soames with Mrs. Small, completing, the circle to Swithin again.
+
+Family dinners of the Forsytes observe certain traditions.  There are,
+for instance, no hors d'oeuvre.  The reason for this is unknown.  Theory
+among the younger members traces it to the disgraceful price of oysters;
+it is more probably due to a desire to come to the point, to a good
+practical sense deciding at once that hors d'oeuvre are but poor things.
+The Jameses alone, unable to withstand a custom almost universal in Park
+Lane, are now and then unfaithful.
+
+A silent, almost morose, inattention to each other succeeds to the
+subsidence into their seats, lasting till well into the first entree, but
+interspersed with remarks such as, "Tom's bad again; I can't tell what's
+the matter with him!"  "I suppose Ann doesn't come down in the
+mornings?"--"What's the name of your doctor, Fanny?"  "Stubbs?"  "He's a
+quack!"--"Winifred?  She's got too many children.  Four, isn't it?  She's
+as thin as a lath!"--"What d'you give for this sherry, Swithin?  Too dry
+for me!"
+
+With the second glass of champagne, a kind of hum makes itself heard,
+which, when divested of casual accessories and resolved into its primal
+element, is found to be James telling a story, and this goes on for a
+long time, encroaching sometimes even upon what must universally be
+recognised as the crowning point of a Forsyte feast--'the saddle of
+mutton.'
+
+No Forsyte has given a dinner without providing a saddle of mutton.
+There is something in its succulent solidity which makes it suitable to
+people 'of a certain position.'  It is nourishing and tasty; the sort of
+thing a man remembers eating.  It has a past and a future, like a deposit
+paid into a bank; and it is something that can be argued about.
+
+Each branch of the family tenaciously held to a particular locality--old
+Jolyon swearing by Dartmoor, James by Welsh, Swithin by Southdown,
+Nicholas maintaining that people might sneer, but there was nothing like
+New Zealand!  As for Roger, the 'original' of the brothers, he had been
+obliged to invent a locality of his own, and with an ingenuity worthy of
+a man who had devised a new profession for his sons, he had discovered a
+shop where they sold German; on being remonstrated with, he had proved
+his point by producing a butcher's bill, which showed that he paid more
+than any of the others.  It was on this occasion that old Jolyon, turning
+to June, had said in one of his bursts of philosophy:
+
+"You may depend upon it, they're a cranky lot, the Forsytes--and you'll
+find it out, as you grow older!"
+
+Timothy alone held apart, for though he ate saddle of mutton heartily, he
+was, he said, afraid of it.
+
+To anyone interested psychologically in Forsytes, this great
+saddle-of-mutton trait is of prime importance; not only does it
+illustrate their tenacity, both collectively and as individuals, but it
+marks them as belonging in fibre and instincts to that great class which
+believes in nourishment and flavour, and yields to no sentimental craving
+for beauty.
+
+Younger members of the family indeed would have done without a joint
+altogether, preferring guinea-fowl, or lobster salad--something which
+appealed to the imagination, and had less nourishment--but these were
+females; or, if not, had been corrupted by their wives, or by mothers,
+who having been forced to eat saddle of mutton throughout their married
+lives, had passed a secret hostility towards it into the fibre of their
+sons.
+
+The great saddle-of-mutton controversy at an end, a Tewkesbury ham
+commenced, together with the least touch of West Indian--Swithin was so
+long over this course that he caused a block in the progress of the
+dinner.  To devote himself to it with better heart, he paused in his
+conversation.
+
+From his seat by Mrs. Septimus Small Soames was watching.  He had a
+reason of his own connected with a pet building scheme, for observing
+Bosinney.  The architect might do for his purpose; he looked clever, as
+he sat leaning back in his chair, moodily making little ramparts with
+bread-crumbs.  Soames noted his dress clothes to be well cut, but too
+small, as though made many years ago.
+
+He saw him turn to Irene and say something and her face sparkle as he
+often saw it sparkle at other people--never at himself.  He tried to
+catch what they were saying, but Aunt Juley was speaking.
+
+Hadn't that always seemed very extraordinary to Soames?  Only last Sunday
+dear Mr. Scole, had been so witty in his sermon, so sarcastic, "For
+what," he had said, "shall it profit a man if he gain his own soul, but
+lose all his property?"  That, he had said, was the motto of the
+middle-class; now, what had he meant by that?  Of course, it might be
+what middle-class people believed--she didn't know; what did Soames
+think?
+
+He answered abstractedly: "How should I know?  Scoles is a humbug,
+though, isn't he?"  For Bosinney was looking round the table, as if
+pointing out the peculiarities of the guests, and Soames wondered what he
+was saying.  By her smile Irene was evidently agreeing with his remarks.
+She seemed always to agree with other people.
+
+Her eyes were turned on himself; Soames dropped his glance at once.  The
+smile had died off her lips.
+
+A humbug?  But what did Soames mean?  If Mr. Scoles was a humbug, a
+clergyman--then anybody might be--it was frightful!
+
+"Well, and so they are!" said Soames.
+
+During Aunt Juley's momentary and horrified silence he caught some words
+of Irene's that sounded like: 'Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!'
+
+But Swithin had finished his ham.
+
+"Where do you go for your mushrooms?" he was saying to Irene in a voice
+like a courtier's; "you ought to go to Smileybob's--he'll give 'em you
+fresh.  These little men, they won't take the trouble!"
+
+Irene turned to answer him, and Soames saw Bosinney watching her and
+smiling to himself.  A curious smile the fellow had.  A half-simple
+arrangement, like a child who smiles when he is pleased.  As for George's
+nickname--'The Buccaneer'--he did not think much of that.  And, seeing
+Bosinney turn to June, Soames smiled too, but sardonically--he did not
+like June, who was not looking too pleased.
+
+This was not surprising, for she had just held the following conversation
+with James:
+
+"I stayed on the river on my way home, Uncle James, and saw a beautiful
+site for a house."
+
+James, a slow and thorough eater, stopped the process of mastication.
+
+"Eh?" he said.  "Now, where was that?"
+
+"Close to Pangbourne."
+
+James placed a piece of ham in his mouth, and June waited.
+
+"I suppose you wouldn't know whether the land about there was freehold?"
+he asked at last.  "You wouldn't know anything about the price of land
+about there?"
+
+"Yes," said June; "I made inquiries." Her little resolute face under its
+copper crown was suspiciously eager and aglow.
+
+James regarded her with the air of an inquisitor.
+
+"What?  You're not thinking of buying land!" he ejaculated, dropping his
+fork.
+
+June was greatly encouraged by his interest.  It had long been her pet
+plan that her uncles should benefit themselves and Bosinney by building
+country-houses.
+
+"Of course not," she said.  "I thought it would be such a splendid place
+for--you or--someone to build a country-house!"
+
+James looked at her sideways, and placed a second piece of ham in his
+mouth....
+
+"Land ought to be very dear about there," he said.
+
+What June had taken for personal interest was only the impersonal
+excitement of every Forsyte who hears of something eligible in danger of
+passing into other hands.  But she refused to see the disappearance of
+her chance, and continued to press her point.
+
+"You ought to go into the country, Uncle James.  I wish I had a lot of
+money, I wouldn't live another day in London."
+
+James was stirred to the depths of his long thin figure; he had no idea
+his niece held such downright views.
+
+"Why don't you go into the country?" repeated June; "it would do you a
+lot of good."
+
+"Why?" began James in a fluster.  "Buying land--what good d'you suppose I
+can do buying land, building houses?--I couldn't get four per cent. for
+my money!"
+
+"What does that matter?  You'd get fresh air."
+
+"Fresh air!" exclaimed James; "what should I do with fresh air,"
+
+"I should have thought anybody liked to have fresh air," said June
+scornfully.
+
+James wiped his napkin all over his mouth.
+
+"You don't know the value of money," he said, avoiding her eye.
+
+"No! and I hope I never shall!" and, biting her lip with inexpressible
+mortification, poor June was silent.
+
+Why were her own relations so rich, and Phil never knew where the money
+was coming from for to-morrow's tobacco.  Why couldn't they do something
+for him?  But they were so selfish.  Why couldn't they build
+country-houses?  She had all that naive dogmatism which is so pathetic,
+and sometimes achieves such great results. Bosinney, to whom she turned
+in her discomfiture, was talking to Irene, and a chill fell on June's
+spirit.  Her eyes grew steady with  anger, like old Jolyon's when his
+will was crossed.
+
+James, too, was much disturbed.  He felt as though someone had threatened
+his right to invest his money at five per cent. Jolyon had spoiled her.
+None of his girls would have said such a thing.  James had always been
+exceedingly liberal to his children, and the consciousness of this made
+him feel it all the more deeply.  He trifled moodily with his
+strawberries, then, deluging them with cream, he ate them quickly; they,
+at all events, should not escape him.
+
+No wonder he was upset.  Engaged for fifty-four years (he had been
+admitted a solicitor on the earliest day sanctioned by the law) in
+arranging mortgages, preserving investments at a dead level of high and
+safe interest, conducting negotiations on the principle of securing the
+utmost possible out of other people compatible with safety to his clients
+and himself, in calculations as to the exact pecuniary possibilities of
+all the relations of life, he had come at last to think purely in terms
+of money.  Money was now his light, his medium for seeing, that without
+which he was really unable to see, really not cognisant of phenomena; and
+to have this thing, "I hope I shall never know the value of money!" said
+to his face, saddened and exasperated him.  He knew it to be nonsense, or
+it would have frightened him. What was the world coming to!  Suddenly
+recollecting the story of young Jolyon, however, he felt a little
+comforted, for what could you expect with a father like that!  This
+turned his thoughts into a channel still less pleasant.  What was all
+this talk about Soames and Irene?
+
+As in all self-respecting families, an emporium had been established
+where family secrets were bartered, and family stock priced.  It was
+known on Forsyte 'Change that Irene regretted her marriage.  Her regret
+was disapproved of.  She ought to have known her own mind; no dependable
+woman made these mistakes.
+
+James reflected sourly that they had a nice house (rather small) in an
+excellent position, no children, and no money troubles. Soames was
+reserved about his affairs, but he must be getting a very warm man.  He
+had a capital income from the business--for Soames, like his father, was
+a member of that well-known firm of solicitors, Forsyte, Bustard and
+Forsyte--and had always been very careful.  He had done quite unusually
+well with some mortgages he had taken up, too--a little timely
+foreclosure--most lucky hits!
+
+There was no reason why Irene should not be happy, yet they said she'd
+been asking for a separate room.  He knew where that ended. It wasn't as
+if Soames drank.
+
+James looked at his daughter-in-law.  That unseen glance of his was cold
+and dubious.  Appeal and fear were in it, and a sense of personal
+grievance.  Why should he be worried like this?  It was very likely all
+nonsense; women were funny things!  They exaggerated so, you didn't know
+what to believe; and then, nobody told him anything, he had to find out
+everything for himself. Again he looked furtively at Irene, and across
+from her to Soames.  The latter, listening to Aunt Juley, was looking up,
+under his brows in the direction of Bosinney.
+
+'He's fond of her, I know,' thought James.  'Look at the way he's always
+giving her things.'
+
+And the extraordinary unreasonableness of her disaffection struck him
+with increased force.
+
+It was a pity, too, she was a taking little thing, and he, James, would
+be really quite fond of her if she'd only let him.  She had taken up
+lately with June; that was doing her no good, that was certainly doing
+her no good.  She was getting to have opinions of her own.  He didn't
+know what she wanted with anything of the sort.  She'd a good home, and
+everything she could wish for.  He felt that her friends ought to be
+chosen for her.  To go on like this was dangerous.
+
+June, indeed, with her habit of championing the unfortunate, had dragged
+from Irene a confession, and, in return, had preached the necessity of
+facing the evil, by separation, if need be.  But in the face of these
+exhortations, Irene had kept a brooding silence, as though she found
+terrible the thought of this struggle carried through in cold blood.  He
+would never give her up, she had said to June.
+
+"Who cares?" June cried; "let him do what he likes--you've only to stick
+to it!"  And she had not scrupled to say something of this sort at
+Timothy's; James, when he heard of it, had felt a natural indignation and
+horror.
+
+What if Irene were to take it into her head to--he could hardly frame the
+thought--to leave Soames?  But he felt this thought so unbearable that he
+at once put it away; the shady visions it conjured up, the sound of
+family tongues buzzing in his ears, the horror of the conspicuous
+happening so close to him, to one of his own children!  Luckily, she had
+no money--a beggarly fifty pound a year!  And he thought of the deceased
+Heron, who had had nothing to leave her, with contempt.  Brooding over
+his glass, his long legs twisted under the table, he quite omitted to
+rise when the ladies left the room.  He would have to speak to Soames
+--would have to put him on his guard; they could not go on like this, now
+that such a contingency had occurred to him.  And he noticed with sour
+disfavour that June had left her wine-glasses full of wine.
+
+'That little, thing's at the bottom of it all,' he mused; 'Irene'd never
+have thought of it herself.'  James was a man of imagination.
+
+The voice of Swithin roused him from his reverie.
+
+"I gave four hundred pounds for it," he was saying.  "Of course it's a
+regular work of art."
+
+"Four hundred!  H'm! that's a lot of money!" chimed in Nicholas.
+
+The object alluded to was an elaborate group of statuary in Italian
+marble, which, placed upon a lofty stand (also of marble), diffused an
+atmosphere of culture throughout the room. The subsidiary figures, of
+which there were six, female, nude, and of highly ornate workmanship,
+were all pointing towards the central figure, also nude, and female, who
+was pointing at herself; and all this gave the observer a very pleasant
+sense of her extreme value.  Aunt Juley, nearly opposite, had had the
+greatest difficulty in not looking at it all the evening.
+
+Old Jolyon spoke; it was he who had started the discussion.
+
+"Four hundred fiddlesticks!  Don't tell me you gave four hundred for
+that?"
+
+Between the points of his collar Swithin's chin made the second painful
+oscillatory movement of the evening.
+
+"Four-hundred-pounds, of English money; not a farthing less.  I don't
+regret it.  It's not common English--it's genuine modern Italian!"
+
+Soames raised the corner of his lip in a smile, and looked across at
+Bosinney.  The architect was grinning behind the fumes of his cigarette.
+Now, indeed, he looked more like a buccaneer.
+
+"There's a lot of work about it," remarked James hastily, who was really
+moved by the size of the group.  "It'd sell well at Jobson's."
+
+"The poor foreign dey-vil that made it," went on Swithin, "asked me five
+hundred--I gave him four.  It's worth eight.  Looked half-starved, poor
+dey-vil!"
+
+"Ah!" chimed in Nicholas suddenly, "poor, seedy-lookin' chaps, these
+artists; it's a wonder to me how they live.  Now, there's young
+Flageoletti, that Fanny and the girls are always hav'in' in, to play the
+fiddle; if he makes a hundred a year it's as much as ever he does!"
+
+James shook his head.  "Ah!" he said, "I don't know how they live!"
+
+Old Jolyon had risen, and, cigar in mouth, went to inspect the group at
+close quarters.
+
+"Wouldn't have given two for it!" he pronounced at last.
+
+Soames saw his father and Nicholas glance at each other anxiously; and,
+on the other side of Swithin, Bosinney, still shrouded in smoke.
+
+'I wonder what he thinks of it?' thought Soames, who knew well enough
+that this group was hopelessly vieux jeu; hopelessly of the last
+generation.  There was no longer any sale at Jobson's for such works of
+art.
+
+Swithin's answer came at last.  "You never knew anything about a statue.
+You've got your pictures, and that's all!"
+
+Old Jolyon walked back to his seat, puffing his cigar.  It was not likely
+that he was going to be drawn into an argument with an obstinate beggar
+like Swithin, pig-headed as a mule, who had never known a statue from
+a---straw hat.
+
+"Stucco!" was all he said.
+
+It had long been physically impossible for Swithin to start; his fist
+came down on the table.
+
+"Stucco!  I should like to see anything you've got in your house half as
+good!"
+
+And behind his speech seemed to sound again that rumbling violence of
+primitive generations.
+
+It was James who saved the situation.
+
+"Now, what do you say, Mr. Bosinney?  You're an architect; you ought to
+know all about statues and things!"
+
+Every eye was turned upon Bosinney; all waited with a strange, suspicious
+look for his answer.
+
+And Soames, speaking for the first time, asked:
+
+"Yes, Bosinney, what do you say?"
+
+Bosinney replied coolly:
+
+"The work is a remarkable one."
+
+His words were addressed to Swithin, his eyes smiled slyly at old Jolyon;
+only Soames remained unsatisfied.
+
+"Remarkable for what?"
+
+"For its naivete"
+
+The answer was followed by an impressive silence; Swithin alone was not
+sure whether a compliment was intended.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+PROJECTION OF THE HOUSE
+
+Soames Forsyte walked out of his green-painted front door three days
+after the dinner at Swithin's, and looking back from across the Square,
+confirmed his impression that the house wanted painting.
+
+He had left his wife sitting on the sofa in the drawing-room, her hands
+crossed in her lap, manifestly waiting for him to go out. This was not
+unusual.  It happened, in fact, every day.
+
+He could not understand what she found wrong with him.  It was not as if
+he drank!  Did he run into debt, or gamble, or swear; was he violent;
+were his friends rackety; did he stay out at night?  On the contrary.
+
+The profound, subdued aversion which he felt in his wife was a mystery to
+him, and a source of the most terrible irritation. That she had made a
+mistake, and did not love him, had tried to love him and could not love
+him, was obviously no reason.
+
+He that could imagine so outlandish a cause for his wife's not getting on
+with him was certainly no Forsyte.
+
+Soames was forced, therefore, to set the blame entirely down to his wife.
+He had never met a woman so capable of inspiring affection.  They could
+not go anywhere without his seeing how all the men were attracted by her;
+their looks, manners, voices, betrayed it; her behaviour under this
+attention had been beyond reproach.  That she was one of those women--not
+too common in the Anglo-Saxon race--born to be loved and to love, who
+when not loving are not living, had certainly never even occurred to him.
+Her power of attraction, he regarded as part of her value as his
+property; but it made him, indeed, suspect that she could give as well as
+receive; and she gave him nothing!  'Then why did she marry me?'  was his
+continual thought.  He had, forgotten his courtship; that year and a half
+when he had besieged and lain in wait for her, devising schemes for her
+entertainment, giving her presents, proposing to her periodically, and
+keeping her other admirers away with his perpetual presence.  He had
+forgotten the day when, adroitly taking advantage of an acute phase of
+her dislike to her home surroundings, he crowned his labours with
+success.  If he remembered anything, it was the dainty capriciousness
+with which the gold-haired, dark-eyed girl had treated him.  He certainly
+did not remember the look on her face--strange, passive, appealing--when
+suddenly one day she had yielded, and said that she would marry him.
+
+It had been one of those real devoted wooings which books and people
+praise, when the lover is at length rewarded for hammering the iron till
+it is malleable, and all must be happy ever after as the wedding bells.
+
+Soames walked eastwards, mousing doggedly along on the shady side.
+
+The house wanted doing, up, unless he decided to move into the country,
+and build.
+
+For the hundredth time that month he turned over this problem. There was
+no use in rushing into things!  He was very comfortably off, with an
+increasing income getting on for three thousand a year; but his invested
+capital was not perhaps so large as his father believed--James had a
+tendency to expect that his children should be better off than they were.
+'I can manage eight thousand easily enough,' he thought, 'without calling
+in either Robertson's or Nicholl's.'
+
+He had stopped to look in at a picture shop, for Soames was an 'amateur'
+of pictures, and had a little-room in No.  62, Montpellier Square, full
+of canvases, stacked against the wall, which he had no room to hang.  He
+brought them home with him on his way back from the City, generally after
+dark, and would enter this room on Sunday afternoons, to spend hours
+turning the pictures to the light, examining the marks on their backs,
+and occasionally making notes.
+
+They were nearly all landscapes with figures in the foreground, a sign of
+some mysterious revolt against London, its tall houses, its interminable
+streets, where his life and the lives of his breed and class were passed.
+Every now and then he would take one or two pictures away with him in a
+cab, and stop at Jobson's on his way into the City.
+
+He rarely showed them to anyone; Irene, whose opinion he secretly
+respected and perhaps for that reason never solicited, had only been into
+the room on rare occasions, in discharge of some wifely duty.  She was
+not asked to look at the pictures, and she never did.  To Soames this was
+another grievance.  He hated that pride of hers, and secretly dreaded it.
+
+In the plate-glass window of the picture shop his image stood and looked
+at him.
+
+His sleek hair under the brim of the tall hat had a sheen like the hat
+itself; his cheeks, pale and flat, the line of his clean-shaven lips, his
+firm chin with its greyish shaven tinge, and the buttoned strictness of
+his black cut-away coat, conveyed an appearance of reserve and secrecy,
+of imperturbable, enforced composure; but his eyes, cold,--grey,
+strained--looking, with a line in the brow between them, examined him
+wistfully, as if they knew of a secret weakness.
+
+He noted the subjects of the pictures, the names of the painters, made a
+calculation of their values, but without the satisfaction he usually
+derived from this inward appraisement, and walked on.
+
+No. 62 would do well enough for another year, if he decided to build!
+The times were good for building, money had not been so dear for years;
+and the site he had seen at Robin Hill, when he had gone down there in
+the spring to inspect the Nicholl mortgage--what could be better!  Within
+twelve miles of Hyde Park Corner, the value of the land certain to go up,
+would always fetch more than he gave for it; so that a house, if built in
+really good style, was a first-class investment.
+
+The notion of being the one member of his family with a country house
+weighed but little with him; for to a true Forsyte, sentiment, even the
+sentiment of social position, was a luxury only to be indulged in after
+his appetite for more material pleasure had been satisfied.
+
+To get Irene out of London, away from opportunities of going about and
+seeing people, away from her friends and those who put ideas into her
+head!  That was the thing!  She was too thick with June!  June disliked
+him.  He returned the sentiment.  They were of the same blood.
+
+It would be everything to get Irene out of town.  The house would please
+her she would enjoy messing about with the decoration, she was very
+artistic!
+
+The house must be in good style, something that would always be certain
+to command a price, something unique, like that last house of Parkes,
+which had a tower; but Parkes had himself said that his architect was
+ruinous.  You never knew where you were with those fellows; if they had a
+name they ran you into no end of expense and were conceited into the
+bargain.
+
+And a common architect was no good--the memory of Parkes' tower precluded
+the employment of a common architect:
+
+This was why he had thought of Bosinney.  Since the dinner at Swithin's
+he had made enquiries, the result of which had been meagre, but
+encouraging: "One of the new school."
+
+"Clever?"
+
+"As clever as you like--a bit--a bit up in the air!"
+
+He had not been able to discover what houses Bosinney had built, nor what
+his charges were.  The impression he gathered was that he would be able
+to make his own terms.  The more he reflected on the idea, the more he
+liked it.  It would be keeping the thing in the family, with Forsytes
+almost an instinct; and he would be able to get 'favoured-nation,' if not
+nominal terms--only fair, considering the chance to Bosinney of
+displaying his talents, for this house  must be no common edifice.
+
+Soames reflected complacently on the work it would be sure to bring the
+young man; for, like every Forsyte, he could be a thorough optimist when
+there was anything to be had out of it.
+
+Bosinney's office was in Sloane Street, close at, hand, so that he would
+be able to keep his eye continually on the plans.
+
+Again, Irene would not be to likely to object to leave London if her
+greatest friend's lover were given the job.  June's marriage might depend
+on it.  Irene could not decently stand in the way of June's marriage; she
+would never do that, he knew her too well. And June would be pleased; of
+this he saw the advantage.
+
+Bosinney looked clever, but he had also--and--it was one of his great
+attractions--an air as if he did not quite know on which side his bread
+were buttered; he should be easy to deal with in money matters.  Soames
+made this reflection in no defrauding spirit; it was the natural attitude
+of his mind--of the mind of any good business man--of all those thousands
+of good business men through whom he was threading his way up Ludgate
+Hill.
+
+Thus he fulfilled the inscrutable laws of his great class--of human
+nature itself--when he reflected, with a sense of comfort, that Bosinney
+would be easy to deal with in money matters.
+
+While he elbowed his way on, his eyes, which he usually kept fixed on the
+ground before his feet, were attracted upwards by the dome of St.
+Paul's.  It had a peculiar fascination for him, that old dome, and not
+once, but twice or three times a week, would he halt in his daily
+pilgrimage to enter beneath and stop in the side aisles for five or ten
+minutes, scrutinizing the names and epitaphs on the monuments.  The
+attraction for him of this great church was inexplicable, unless it
+enabled him to concentrate his thoughts on the business of the day.  If
+any affair of particular moment, or demanding peculiar acuteness, was
+weighing on his mind, he invariably went in, to wander with mouse-like
+attention from epitaph to epitaph.  Then retiring in the same noiseless
+way, he would hold steadily on up Cheapside, a thought more of dogged
+purpose in his gait, as though he had seen something which he had made up
+his mind to buy.
+
+He went in this morning, but, instead of stealing from monument to
+monument, turned his eyes upwards to the columns and spacings of the
+walls, and remained motionless.
+
+His uplifted face, with the awed and wistful look which faces take on
+themselves in church, was whitened to a chalky hue in the vast building.
+His gloved hands were clasped in front over the handle of his umbrella.
+He lifted them.  Some sacred inspiration perhaps had come to him.
+
+'Yes,' he thought, 'I must have room to hang my pictures.
+
+That evening, on his return from the City, he called at Bosinney's
+office.  He found the architect in his shirt-sleeves, smoking a pipe, and
+ruling off lines on a plan.  Soames refused a drink, and came at once to
+the point.
+
+"If you've nothing better to do on Sunday, come down with me to Robin
+Hill, and give me your opinion on a building site."
+
+"Are you going to build?"
+
+"Perhaps," said Soames; "but don't speak of it.  I just want your
+opinion."
+
+"Quite so," said the architect.
+
+Soames peered about the room.
+
+"You're rather high up here," he remarked.
+
+Any information he could gather about the nature and scope of Bosinney's
+business would be all to the good.
+
+"It does well enough for me so far," answered the architect. "You're
+accustomed to the swells."
+
+He knocked out his pipe, but replaced it empty between his teeth; it
+assisted him perhaps to carry on the conversation.  Soames noted a hollow
+in each cheek, made as it were by suction.
+
+"What do you pay for an office like this?" said he.
+
+"Fifty too much," replied Bosinney.
+
+This answer impressed Soames favourably.
+
+"I suppose it is dear," he said.  "I'll call for you--on Sunday about
+eleven."
+
+The following Sunday therefore he called for Bosinney in a hansom, and
+drove him to the station.  On arriving at Robin Hill, they found no cab,
+and started to walk the mile and a half to the site.
+
+It was the 1st of August--a perfect day, with a burning sun and cloudless
+sky--and in the straight, narrow road leading up the hill their feet
+kicked up a yellow dust.
+
+"Gravel soil," remarked Soames, and sideways he glanced at the coat
+Bosinney wore.  Into the side-pockets of this coat were thrust bundles of
+papers, and under one arm was carried a queer-looking stick.  Soames
+noted these and other peculiarities.
+
+No one but a clever man, or, indeed, a buccaneer, would have taken such
+liberties with his appearance; and though these eccentricities were
+revolting to Soames, he derived a certain satisfaction from them, as
+evidence of qualities by which he must inevitably profit.  If the fellow
+could build houses, what did his clothes matter?
+
+"I told you," he said, "that I want this house to be a surprise, so don't
+say anything about it.  I never talk of my affairs until they're carried
+through."
+
+Bosinney nodded.
+
+"Let women into your plans," pursued Soames, "and you never know where
+it'll end."
+
+"Ah!" Said Bosinney, "women are the devil!"
+
+This feeling had long been at the--bottom of Soames's heart; he had
+never, however, put it into words.
+
+"Oh!" he Muttered, "so you're beginning to...."  He stopped, but added,
+with an uncontrollable burst of spite: "June's got a temper of her
+own--always had."
+
+"A temper's not a bad thing in an angel."
+
+Soames had never called Irene an angel.  He could not so have violated
+his best instincts, letting other people into the secret of her value,
+and giving himself away.  He made no reply.
+
+They had struck into a half-made road across a warren.  A cart-track led
+at right-angles to a gravel pit, beyond which the chimneys of a cottage
+rose amongst a clump of trees at the border of a thick wood.  Tussocks of
+feathery grass covered the rough surface of the ground, and out of these
+the larks soared into the hate of sunshine.  On the far horizon, over a
+countless succession of fields and hedges, rose a line of downs.
+
+Soames led till they had crossed to the far side, and there he stopped.
+It was the chosen site; but now that he was about to divulge the spot to
+another he had become uneasy.
+
+"The agent lives in that cottage," he said; "he'll give us some
+lunch--we'd better have lunch before we go into this matter."
+
+He again took the lead to the cottage, where the agent, a tall man named
+Oliver, with a heavy face and grizzled beard, welcomed them.  During
+lunch, which Soames hardly touched, he kept looking at Bosinney, and once
+or twice passed his silk handkerchief stealthily over his forehead.  The
+meal came to an end at last, and Bosinney rose.
+
+"I dare say you've got business to talk over," he said; "I'll just go and
+nose about a bit." Without waiting for a reply he strolled out.
+
+Soames was solicitor to this estate, and he spent nearly an hour in the
+agent's company, looking at ground-plans and discussing the Nicholl and
+other mortgages; it was as it were by an afterthought that he brought up
+the question of the building site.
+
+"Your people," he said, "ought to come down in their price to me,
+considering that I shall be the first to build."
+
+Oliver shook his head.
+
+The site you've fixed on, Sir, he said, "is the cheapest we've got.
+Sites at the top of the slope are dearer by a good bit."
+
+"Mind," said Soames, "I've not decided; it's quite possible I shan't
+build at all.  The ground rent's very high."
+
+"Well, Mr. Forsyte, I shall be sorry if you go off, and I think you'll
+make a mistake, Sir.  There's not a bit of land near London with such a
+view as this, nor one that's cheaper, all things considered; we've only
+to advertise, to get a mob of people after it."
+
+They looked at each other.  Their faces said very plainly: 'I respect you
+as a man of business;  and you can't expect me to believe a word you
+say.'
+
+Well, repeated Soames, "I haven't made up my mind; the thing will very
+likely go off!"  With these words, taking up his umbrella, he put his
+chilly hand into the agent's, withdrew it without the faintest pressure,
+and went out into the sun.
+
+He walked slowly back towards the site in deep thought.  His instinct
+told him that what the agent had said was true.  A cheap site.  And the
+beauty of it was, that he knew the agent did not really think it cheap;
+so that his own intuitive knowledge was a victory over the agent's.
+
+'Cheap or not, I mean to have it,'  he thought.
+
+The larks sprang up in front of his feet, the air was full of
+butterflies, a sweet fragrance rose from the wild grasses.  The sappy
+scent of the bracken stole forth from the wood, where, hidden in the
+depths, pigeons were cooing, and from afar on the warm breeze, came the
+rhythmic chiming of church bells.
+
+Soames walked with his eyes on the ground, his lips opening and closing
+as though in anticipation of a delicious morsel.  But when he arrived at
+the site, Bosinney was nowhere to be seen. After waiting some little
+time, he crossed the warren in the direction of the slope.  He would have
+shouted, but dreaded the sound of his voice.
+
+The warren was as lonely as a prairie, its silence only broken by the
+rustle of rabbits bolting to their holes, and the song of the larks.
+
+Soames, the pioneer-leader of the great Forsyte army advancing to the
+civilization of this wilderness, felt his spirit daunted by the
+loneliness, by the invisible singing, and the hot, sweet air. He had
+begun to retrace his steps when he at last caught sight of Bosinney.
+
+The architect was sprawling under a large oak tree, whose trunk, with a
+huge spread of bough and foliage, ragged with age, stood on the verge of
+the rise.
+
+Soames had to touch him on the shoulder before he looked up.
+
+"Hallo!  Forsyte," he said, "I've found the very place for your house!
+Look here!"
+
+Soames stood and looked, then he said, coldly:
+
+"You may be very clever, but this site will cost me half as much again."
+
+"Hang the cost, man.  Look at the view!"
+
+Almost from their feet stretched ripe corn, dipping to a small dark copse
+beyond.  A plain of fields and hedges spread to the distant
+grey-bluedowns.  In a silver streak to the right could be seen the line
+of the river.
+
+The sky was so blue, and the sun so bright, that an eternal summer seemed
+to reign over this prospect.  Thistledown floated round them, enraptured
+by the serenity, of the ether.  The heat danced over the corn, and,
+pervading all, was a soft, insensible hum, like the murmur of bright
+minutes holding revel between earth and heaven.
+
+Soames looked.  In spite of himself, something swelled in his breast.  To
+live here in sight of all this, to be able to point it out to his
+friends, to talk of it, to possess it!  His cheeks flushed.  The warmth,
+the radiance, the glow, were sinking into his senses as, four years
+before, Irene's beauty had sunk into his senses and made him long for
+her.  He stole a glance at Bosinney, whose eyes, the eyes of the
+coachman's 'half-tame leopard,' seemed running wild over the landscape.
+The sunlight had caught the promontories of the fellow's face, the bumpy
+cheekbones, the point of his chin, the vertical ridges above his brow;
+and Soames watched this rugged, enthusiastic, careless face with an
+unpleasant feeling.
+
+A long, soft ripple of wind flowed over the corn, and brought a puff of
+warm air into their faces.
+
+"I could build you a teaser here," said Bosinney, breaking the silence at
+last.
+
+"I dare say," replied Soames, drily.  "You haven't got to pay for it."
+
+"For about eight thousand I could build you a palace."
+
+Soames had become very pale--a struggle was going on within him. He
+dropped his eyes, and said stubbornly:
+
+"I can't afford it."
+
+And slowly, with his mousing walk, he led the way back to the first site.
+
+They spent some time there going into particulars of the projected house,
+and then Soames returned to the agent's cottage.
+
+He came out in about half an hour, and, joining Bosinney, started for the
+station.
+
+"Well," he said, hardly opening his lips, "I've taken that site of yours,
+after all."
+
+And again he was silent, confusedly debating how it was that this fellow,
+whom by habit he despised, should have overborne his own decision.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A FORSYTE MENAGE
+
+Like the enlightened thousands of his class and generation in this great
+city of London, who no longer believe in red velvet chairs, and know that
+groups of modern Italian marble are 'vieux jeu,' Soames Forsyte inhabited
+a house which did what it could. It owned a copper door knocker of
+individual design, windows which had been altered to open outwards,
+hanging flower boxes filled with fuchsias, and at the back (a great
+feature) a little court tiled with jade-green tiles, and surrounded by
+pink hydrangeas in peacock-blue tubs.  Here, under a parchment-coloured
+Japanese sunshade covering the whole end, inhabitants or visitors could
+be screened from the eyes of the curious while they drank tea and
+examined at their leisure the latest of Soames's little silver boxes.
+
+The inner decoration favoured the First Empire and William Morris.  For
+its size, the house was commodious; there were countless nooks resembling
+birds' nests, and little things made of silver were deposited like eggs.
+
+In this general perfection two kinds of fastidiousness were at war.
+There lived here a mistress who would have dwelt daintily on a desert
+island; a master whose daintiness was, as it were, an investment,
+cultivated by the owner for his advancement, in accordance with the laws
+of competition.  This competitive daintiness had caused Soames in his
+Marlborough days to be the first boy into white waistcoats in summer, and
+corduroy waistcoats in winter, had prevented him from ever appearing in
+public with his tie climbing up his collar, and induced him to dust his
+patent leather boots before a great multitude assembled on Speech Day to
+hear him recite Moliere.
+
+Skin-like immaculateness had grown over Soames, as over many Londoners;
+impossible to conceive of him with a hair out of place, a tie deviating
+one-eighth of an inch from the perpendicular, a collar unglossed!  He
+would not have gone without a bath for worlds--it was the fashion to take
+baths; and how bitter was his scorn of people who omitted them!
+
+But Irene could be imagined, like some nymph, bathing in wayside streams,
+for the joy of the freshness and of seeing her own fair body.
+
+In this conflict throughout the house the woman had gone to the wall.  As
+in the struggle between Saxon and Celt still going on within the nation,
+the more impressionable and receptive temperament had had forced on it a
+conventional superstructure.
+
+Thus the house had acquired a close resemblance to hundreds of other
+houses with the same high aspirations, having become: 'That very charming
+little house of the Soames Forsytes, quite individual, my dear--really
+elegant.'
+
+For Soames Forsyte--read James Peabody, Thomas Atkins, or Emmanuel
+Spagnoletti, the name in fact of any upper-middle class Englishman in
+London with any pretensions to taste; and though the decoration be
+different, the phrase is just.
+
+On the evening of August 8, a week after the expedition to Robin Hill, in
+the dining-room of this house--'quite individual, my dear--really
+elegant'--Soames and Irene were seated at dinner.  A hot dinner on
+Sundays was a little distinguishing elegance common to this house and
+many others.  Early in married life Soames had laid down the rule: 'The
+servants must give us hot dinner on Sundays--they've nothing to do but
+play the concertina.'
+
+The custom had produced no revolution.  For--to Soames a rather
+deplorable sign--servants were devoted to Irene, who, in defiance of all
+safe tradition, appeared to recognise their right to a share in the
+weaknesses of human nature.
+
+The happy pair were seated, not opposite each other, but rectangularly,
+at the handsome rosewood table; they dined without a cloth--a
+distinguishing elegance--and so far had not spoken a word.
+
+Soames liked to talk during dinner about business, or what he had been
+buying, and so long as he talked Irene's silence did not distress him.
+This evening he had found it impossible to talk. The decision to build
+had been weighing on his mind all the week, and he had made up his mind
+to tell her.
+
+His nervousness about this disclosure irritated him profoundly; she had
+no business to make him feel like that--a wife and a husband being one
+person.  She had not looked at him once since they sat down; and he
+wondered what on earth she had been thinking about all the time.  It was
+hard, when a man worked as he did, making money for her--yes, and with an
+ache in his heart--that she should sit there, looking--looking as if she
+saw the walls of the room closing in.  It was enough to make a man get up
+and leave the table.
+
+The light from the rose-shaded lamp fell on her neck and arms--Soames
+liked her to dine in a low dress, it gave him an inexpressible feeling of
+superiority to the majority of his acquaintance, whose wives were
+contented with their best high frocks or with tea-gowns, when they dined
+at home.  Under that rosy light her amber-coloured hair and fair skin
+made strange contrast with her dark brown eyes.
+
+Could a man own anything prettier than this dining-table with its deep
+tints, the starry, soft-petalled roses, the ruby-coloured glass, and
+quaint silver furnishing; could a man own anything prettier than the
+woman who sat at it?  Gratitude was no virtue among Forsytes, who,
+competitive, and full of common-sense, had no occasion for it; and Soames
+only experienced a sense of exasperation amounting to pain, that he did
+not own her as it was his right to own her, that he could not, as by
+stretching out his hand to that rose, pluck her and sniff the very
+secrets of her heart.
+
+Out of his other property, out of all the things he had collected, his
+silver, his pictures, his houses, his investments, he got a secret and
+intimate feeling; out of her he got none.
+
+In this house of his there was writing on every wall.  His business-like
+temperament protested against a mysterious warning that she was not made
+for him.  He had married this woman, conquered her, made her his own, and
+it seemed to him contrary to the most fundamental of all laws, the law of
+possession, that he could do no more than own her body--if indeed he
+could do that, which he was beginning to doubt.  If any one had asked him
+if he wanted to own her soul, the question would have seemed to him both
+ridiculous and sentimental.  But he did so want, and the writing said he
+never would.
+
+She was ever silent, passive, gracefully averse; as though terrified lest
+by word, motion, or sign she might lead him to believe that she was fond
+of him; and he asked himself: Must I always go on like this?
+
+Like most novel readers of his generation (and Soames was a great novel
+reader), literature coloured his view of life; and he had imbibed the
+belief that it was only a question of time.
+
+In the end the husband always gained the affection of his wife. Even in
+those cases--a class of book he was not very fond of--which ended in
+tragedy, the wife always died with poignant regrets on her lips, or if it
+were the husband who died--unpleasant thought--threw herself on his body
+in an agony of remorse.
+
+He often took Irene to the theatre, instinctively choosing the modern
+Society Plays with the modern Society conjugal problem, so fortunately
+different from any conjugal problem in real life.  He found that they too
+always ended in the same way, even when there was a lover in the case.
+While he was watching the play Soames often sympathized with the lover;
+but before he reached home again, driving with Irene in a hansom, he saw
+that this would not do, and he was glad the play had ended as it had.
+There was one class of husband that had just then come into fashion, the
+strong, rather rough, but extremely sound man, who was peculiarly
+successful at the end of the play; with this person Soames was really not
+in sympathy, and had it not been for his own position, would have
+expressed his disgust with the fellow.  But he was so conscious of how
+vital to himself was the necessity for being a successful, even a
+'strong,' husband, that he never spoke of a distaste born perhaps by the
+perverse processes of Nature out of a secret fund of brutality in
+himself.
+
+But Irene's silence this evening was exceptional.  He had never before
+seen such an expression on her face.  And since it is always the unusual
+which alarms, Soames was alarmed.  He ate his savoury, and hurried the
+maid as she swept off the crumbs with the silver sweeper.  When she had
+left the room, he filled his glass with wine and said:
+
+"Anybody been here this afternoon?"
+
+"June."
+
+"What did she want?"  It was an axiom with the Forsytes that people did
+not go anywhere unless they wanted something.  "Came to talk about her
+lover, I suppose?"
+
+Irene made no reply.
+
+"It looks to me," continued Soames, "as if she were sweeter on him than
+he is on her.  She's always following him about."
+
+Irene's eyes made him feel uncomfortable.
+
+"You've no business to say such a thing!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Why not?  Anybody can see it."
+
+"They cannot.  And if they could, it's disgraceful to say so."
+
+Soames's composure gave way.
+
+"You're a pretty wife!" he said.  But secretly he wondered at the heat of
+her reply; it was unlike her.  "You're cracked about June!  I can tell
+you one thing: now that she has the Buccaneer in tow, she doesn't care
+twopence about you, and, you'll find it out.  But you won't see so much
+of her in future; we're going to live in the country."
+
+He had been glad to get his news out under cover of this burst of
+irritation.  He had expected a cry of dismay; the silence with which his
+pronouncement was received alarmed him.
+
+"You don't seem interested," he was obliged to add.
+
+"I knew it already."
+
+He looked at her sharply.
+
+"Who told you?"
+
+"June."
+
+"How did she know?"
+
+Irene did not answer.  Baffled and uncomfortable, he said:
+
+"It's a fine thing for Bosinney, it'll be the making of him.  I suppose
+she's told you all about it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+There was another pause, and then Soames said:
+
+"I suppose you don't want to, go?"
+
+Irene made no reply.
+
+"Well, I can't tell what you want.  You never seem contented here."
+
+"Have my wishes anything to do with it?"
+
+She took the vase of roses and left the room.  Soames remained seated.
+Was it for this that he had signed that contract?  Was it for this that
+he was going to spend some ten thousand pounds? Bosinney's phrase came
+back to him: "Women are the devil!"
+
+But presently he grew calmer.  It might have, been worse.  She might have
+flared up.  He had expected something more than this. It was lucky, after
+all, that June had broken the ice for him. She must have wormed it out of
+Bosinney; he might have known she would.
+
+He lighted his cigarette.  After all, Irene had not made a scene! She
+would come round--that was the best of her; she was cold, but not sulky.
+And, puffing the cigarette smoke at a lady-bird on the shining table, he
+plunged into a reverie about the house.  It was no good worrying; he
+would go and make it up presently.  She would be sitting out there in the
+dark, under the Japanese sunshade, knitting.  A beautiful, warm night....
+
+In truth, June had come in that afternoon with shining eyes, and the
+words: "Soames is a brick!  It's splendid for Phil--the very thing for
+him!"
+
+Irene's face remaining dark and puzzled, she went on:
+
+"Your new house at Robin Hill, of course.  What?  Don't you know?"
+
+Irene did not know.
+
+"Oh! then, I suppose I oughtn't to have told you!"  Looking impatiently
+at her friend, she cried: "You look as if you didn't care.  Don't you
+see, it's what I've' been praying for--the very chance he's been wanting
+all this time.  Now you'll see what he can do;" and thereupon she poured
+out the whole story.
+
+Since her own engagement she had not seemed much interested in her
+friend's position; the hours she spent with Irene were given to
+confidences of her own; and at times, for all her affectionate pity, it
+was impossible to keep out of her smile a trace of compassionate contempt
+for the woman who had made such a mistake in her life--such a vast,
+ridiculous mistake.
+
+"He's to have all the decorations as well--a free hand.  It's perfect--"
+June broke into laughter, her little figure quivered gleefully; she
+raised her hand, and struck a blow at a muslin curtain.  "Do you, know I
+even asked Uncle James...." But, with a sudden dislike to mentioning that
+incident, she stopped; and presently, finding her friend so unresponsive,
+went away.  She looked back from the pavement, and Irene was still
+standing in the doorway.  In response to her farewell wave, Irene put her
+hand to her brow, and, turning slowly, shut the door....
+
+Soames went to the drawing-room presently, and peered at her through the
+window.
+
+Out in the shadow of the Japanese sunshade she was sitting very still,
+the lace on her white shoulders stirring with the soft rise and fall of
+her bosom.
+
+But about this silent creature sitting there so motionless, in the dark,
+there seemed a warmth, a hidden fervour of feeling, as if the whole of
+her being had been stirred, and some change were taking place in its very
+depths.
+
+He stole back to the dining-room unnoticed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+JAMES AT LARGE
+
+It was not long before Soames's determination to build went the round of
+the family, and created the flutter that any decision connected with
+property should make among Forsytes.
+
+It was not his fault, for he had been determined that no one should know.
+June, in the fulness of her heart, had told Mrs. Small, giving her leave
+only to tell Aunt Ann--she thought it would cheer her, the poor old
+sweet! for Aunt Ann had kept her room now for many days.
+
+Mrs. Small told Aunt Ann at once, who, smiling as she lay back on her
+pillows, said in her distinct, trembling old voice:
+
+"It's very nice for dear June; but I hope they will be careful--it's
+rather dangerous!"
+
+When she was left alone again, a frown, like a cloud presaging a rainy
+morrow, crossed her face.
+
+While she was lying there so many days the process of recharging her will
+went on all the time; it spread to her face, too, and tightening
+movements were always in action at the corners of her lips.
+
+The maid Smither, who had been in her service since girlhood, and was
+spoken of as "Smither--a good girl--but so slow!"--the maid Smither
+performed every morning with extreme punctiliousness the crowning
+ceremony of that ancient toilet.  Taking from the recesses of their pure
+white band-box those flat, grey curls, the insignia of personal dignity,
+she placed them securely in her mistress's hands, and turned her back.
+
+And every day Aunts Juley and Hester were required to come and report on
+Timothy; what news there was of Nicholas; whether dear June had succeeded
+in getting Jolyon to shorten the engagement, now that Mr. Bosinney was
+building Soames a house; whether young Roger's wife was
+really--expecting; how the operation on Archie had succeeded; and what
+Swithin had done about that empty house in Wigmore Street, where the
+tenant had lost all his money and treated him so badly; above all, about
+Soames; was Irene still--still asking for a separate room?  And every
+morning Smither was told: "I shall be coming down this afternoon,
+Smither, about two o'clock.  I shall want your arm, after all these days
+in bed!"
+
+After telling Aunt Ann, Mrs. Small had spoken of the house in the
+strictest confidence to Mrs. Nicholas, who in her turn had asked Winifred
+Dartie for confirmation, supposing, of course, that, being Soames's
+sister, she would know all about it.  Through her it had in due course
+come round to the ears of James. He had been a good deal agitated.
+
+"Nobody," he said, "told him anything." And, rather than go direct to
+Soames himself, of whose taciturnity he was afraid, he took his umbrella
+and went round to Timothy's.
+
+He found Mrs. Septimus and Hester (who had been told--she was so safe,
+she found it tiring to talk) ready, and indeed eager, to discuss the
+news.  It was very good of dear Soames, they thought, to employ Mr.
+Bosinney, but rather risky.  What had George named him? 'The Buccaneer'
+How droll!  But George was always droll! However, it would be all in the
+family they supposed they must really look upon Mr. Bosinney as belonging
+to the family, though it seemed strange.
+
+James here broke in:
+
+"Nobody knows anything about him.  I don't see what Soames wants with a
+young man like that.  I shouldn't be surprised if Irene had put her oar
+in.  I shall speak to...."
+
+"Soames," interposed Aunt Juley, "told Mr. Bosinney that he didn't wish
+it mentioned.  He wouldn't like it to be talked about, I'm sure, and if
+Timothy knew he would be very vexed, I...."
+
+James put his hand behind his ear:
+
+"What?" he said.  "I'm getting very deaf.  I suppose I don't hear people.
+Emily's got a bad toe.  We shan't be able to start for Wales till the end
+of the month.  There' s always something!" And, having got what he
+wanted, he took his hat and went away.
+
+It was a fine afternoon, and he walked across the Park towards Soames's,
+where he intended to dine, for Emily's toe kept her in bed, and Rachel
+and Cicely were on a visit to the country.  He took the slanting path
+from the Bayswater side of the Row to the Knightsbridge Gate, across a
+pasture of short, burnt grass, dotted with blackened sheep, strewn with
+seated couples and strange waifs; lying prone on their faces, like
+corpses on a field over which the wave of battle has rolled.
+
+He walked rapidly, his head bent, looking neither to right nor, left.
+The appearance of this park, the centre of his own battle-field, where he
+had all his life been fighting, excited no thought or speculation in his
+mind.  These corpses flung down, there, from out the press and turmoil of
+the struggle, these pairs of lovers sitting cheek by jowl for an hour of
+idle Elysium snatched from the monotony of their treadmill, awakened no
+fancies in his mind; he had outlived that kind of imagination; his nose,
+like the nose of a sheep, was fastened to the pastures on which he
+browsed.
+
+One of his tenants had lately shown a disposition to be behind-hand in
+his rent, and it had become a grave question whether he had not better
+turn him out at once, and so run the risk of not re-letting before
+Christmas.  Swithin had just been let in very badly, but it had served
+him right--he had held on too long.
+
+He pondered this as he walked steadily, holding his umbrella carefully by
+the wood, just below the crook of the handle, so as to keep the ferule
+off the ground, and not fray the silk in the middle.  And, with his thin,
+high shoulders stooped, his long legs moving with swift mechanical
+precision, this passage through the Park, where the sun shone with a
+clear flame on so much idleness--on so many human evidences of the
+remorseless battle of Property, raging beyond its ring--was like the
+flight of some land bird across the sea.
+
+He felt a--touch on the arm as he came out at Albert Gate.
+
+It was Soames, who, crossing from the shady side of Piccadilly, where he
+had been walking home from the office, had suddenly appeared alongside.
+
+"Your mother's in bed," said James; "I was, just coming to you, but I
+suppose I shall be in the way."
+
+The outward relations between James and his son were marked by a lack of
+sentiment peculiarly Forsytean, but for all that the two were by no means
+unattached.  Perhaps they regarded one another as an investment;
+certainly they were solicitous of each other's welfare, glad of each
+other's company.  They had never exchanged two words upon the more
+intimate problems of life, or revealed in each other's presence the
+existence of any deep feeling.
+
+Something beyond the power of word-analysis bound them together,
+something hidden deep in the fibre of nations and families--for blood,
+they say, is thicker than water--and neither of them was a cold-blooded
+man.  Indeed, in James love of his children was now the prime motive of
+his existence.  To have creatures who were parts of himself, to whom he
+might transmit the money he saved, was at the root of his saving; and, at
+seventy-five, what was left that could give him pleasure, but--saving?
+The kernel of life was in this saving for his children.
+
+Than James Forsyte, notwithstanding all his 'Jonah-isms,' there was no
+saner man (if the leading symptom of sanity, as we are told, is
+self-preservation, though without doubt Timothy went too far) in all this
+London, of which he owned so much, and loved with such a dumb love, as
+the centre of his opportunities.  He had the marvellous instinctive
+sanity of the middle class.  In him--more than in Jolyon, with his
+masterful will and his moments of tenderness and philosophy--more than in
+Swithin, the martyr to crankiness--Nicholas, the sufferer from
+ability--and Roger, the victim of enterprise--beat the true pulse of
+compromise; of all the brothers he was least remarkable in mind and
+person, and for that reason more likely to live for ever.
+
+To James, more than to any of the others, was "the family" significant
+and dear.  There had always been something primitive and cosy in his
+attitude towards life; he loved the family hearth, he loved gossip, and
+he loved grumbling.  All his decisions were formed of a cream which he
+skimmed off the family mind; and, through that family, off the minds of
+thousands of other families of similar fibre.  Year after year, week
+after week, he went to Timothy's, and in his brother's front
+drawing-room--his legs twisted, his long white whiskers framing his
+clean-shaven mouth--would sit watching the family pot simmer, the cream
+rising to the top; and he would go away sheltered, refreshed, comforted,
+with an indefinable sense of comfort.
+
+Beneath the adamant of his self-preserving instinct there was much real
+softness in James; a visit to Timothy's was like an hour spent in the lap
+of a mother; and the deep craving he himself had for the protection of
+the family wing reacted in turn on his feelings towards his own children;
+it was a nightmare to him to think of them exposed to the treatment of
+the world, in money, health, or reputation.  When his old friend John
+Street's son volunteered for special service, he shook his head
+querulously, and wondered what John Street was about to allow it; and
+when young Street was assagaied, he took it so much to heart that he made
+a point of calling everywhere with the special object of saying: He knew
+how it would be--he'd no patience with them!
+
+When his son-in-law Dartie had that financial crisis, due to speculation
+in Oil Shares, James made himself ill worrying over it; the knell of all
+prosperity seemed to have sounded.  It took him three months and a visit
+to Baden-Baden to get better; there was something terrible in the idea
+that but for his, James's, money, Dartie's name might have appeared in
+the Bankruptcy List.
+
+Composed of a physiological mixture so sound that if he had an earache he
+thought he was dying, he regarded the occasional ailments of his wife and
+children as in the nature of personal grievances, special interventions
+of Providence for the purpose of destroying his peace of mind; but he did
+not believe at all in the ailments of people outside his own immediate
+family, affirming them in every case to be due to neglected liver.
+
+His universal comment was: "What can they expect?  I have it myself, if
+I'm not careful!"
+
+When he went to Soames's that evening he felt that life was hard on him:
+There was Emily with a bad toe, and Rachel gadding about in the country;
+he got no sympathy from anybody; and Ann, she was ill--he did not believe
+she would last through the summer; he had called there three times now
+without her being able to see him! And this idea of Soames's, building a
+house, that would have to be looked into.  As to the trouble with Irene,
+he didn't know what was to come of that--anything might come of it!
+
+He entered 62, Montpellier Square with the fullest intentions of being
+miserable.  It was already half-past seven, and Irene, dressed for
+dinner, was seated in the drawing-room.  She was wearing her
+gold-coloured frock--for, having been displayed at a dinner-party, a
+soiree, and a dance, it was now to be worn at home--and she had adorned
+the bosom with a cascade of lace, on which James's eyes riveted
+themselves at once.
+
+"Where do you get your things?" he said in an aggravated voice. "I never
+see Rachel and Cicely looking half so well.  That rose-point, now--that's
+not real!"
+
+Irene came close, to prove to him that he was in error.
+
+And, in spite of himself, James felt the influence of her deference, of
+the faint seductive perfume exhaling from her.  No self-respecting
+Forsyte surrendered at a blow; so he merely said: He didn't know--he
+expected she was spending a pretty penny on dress.
+
+The gong sounded, and, putting her white arm within his, Irene took him
+into the dining-room.  She seated him in Soames's usual place, round the
+corner on her left.  The light fell softly there, so that he would not be
+worried by the gradual dying of the day; and she began to talk to him
+about himself.
+
+Presently, over James came a change, like the mellowing that steals upon
+a fruit in the, sun; a  sense of being caressed, and praised, and petted,
+and all without the bestowal of a single caress or word of praise.  He
+felt that what he was eating was agreeing with him; he could not get that
+feeling at home; he did not know when he had enjoyed a glass of champagne
+so much, and, on inquiring the brand and price, was surprised to find
+that it was one of which he had a large stock himself, but could never
+drink; he instantly formed the resolution to let his wine merchant know
+that he had been swindled.
+
+Looking up from his food, he remarked:
+
+"You've a lot of nice things about the place.  Now, what did you give for
+that sugar-sifter?  Shouldn't wonder if it was worth money!"
+
+He was particularly pleased with the appearance of a picture, on the wall
+opposite, which he himself had given them:
+
+"I'd no idea it was so good!" he said.
+
+They rose to go into the drawing-room, and James followed Irene closely.
+
+"That's what I call a capital little dinner," he murmured, breathing
+pleasantly down on her shoulder; "nothing heavy--and not too Frenchified.
+But I can't get it at home.  I pay my cook sixty pounds a year, but she
+can't give me a dinner like that!"
+
+He had as yet made no allusion to the building of the house, nor did he
+when Soames, pleading the excuse of business, betook himself to the room
+at the top, where he kept his pictures.
+
+James was left alone with his daughter-in-law.  The glow of the wine, and
+of an excellent liqueur, was still within him.  He felt quite warm
+towards her.  She was really a taking little thing; she listened to you,
+and seemed to understand what you were saying; and, while talking, he
+kept examining her figure, from her bronze-coloured shoes to the waved
+gold of her hair.  She was leaning back in an Empire chair, her shoulders
+poised against the top--her body, flexibly straight and unsupported from
+the hips, swaying when she moved, as though giving to the arms of a
+lover. Her lips were smiling, her eyes half-closed.
+
+It may have been a recognition of danger in the very charm of her
+attitude, or a twang of digestion, that caused a sudden dumbness to fall
+on James.  He did not remember ever having been quite alone with Irene
+before.  And, as he looked at her, an odd feeling crept over him, as
+though he had come across something strange and foreign.
+
+Now what was she thinking about--sitting back like that?
+
+Thus when he spoke it was in a sharper voice, as if he had been awakened
+from a pleasant dream.
+
+"What d'you do with yourself all day?" he said.  "You never come round to
+Park Lane!"
+
+She seemed to be making very lame excuses, and James did not look at her.
+He did not want to believe that she was really avoiding them--it would
+mean too much.
+
+"I expect the fact is, you haven't time," he said; "You're always about
+with June.  I expect you're useful to her with her young man,
+chaperoning, and one thing and another.  They tell me she's never at home
+now; your Uncle Jolyon he doesn't like it, I fancy, being left so much
+alone as he is.  They tell me she's always hanging about for this young
+Bosinney; I suppose he comes here every day.  Now, what do you think of
+him?  D'you think he knows his own mind?  He seems to me a poor thing.  I
+should say the grey mare was the better horse!"
+
+The colour deepened in Irene's face; and James watched her suspiciously.
+
+"Perhaps you don't quite understand Mr. Bosinney," she said.
+
+"Don't understand him!" James hummed out: "Why not?--you can see he's one
+of these artistic chaps.  They say he's clever--they all think they're
+clever.  You know more about him than I do," he added; and again his
+suspicious glance rested on her.
+
+"He is designing a house for Soames," she said softly, evidently trying
+to smooth things over.
+
+"That brings me to what I was going to say," continued James; "I don't
+know what Soames wants with a young man like that; why doesn't he go to a
+first-rate man?"
+
+"Perhaps Mr. Bosinney is first-rate!"
+
+James rose, and took a turn with bent head.
+
+"That's it'," he said, "you young people, you all stick together; you all
+think you know best!"
+
+Halting his tall, lank figure before her, he raised a finger, and
+levelled it at her bosom, as though bringing an indictment against her
+beauty:
+
+"All I can say is, these artistic people, or whatever they call
+themselves, they're as unreliable as they can be; and my advice to you
+is, don't you have too much to do with him!"
+
+Irene smiled; and in the curve of her lips was a strange provocation.
+She seemed to have lost her deference.  Her breast rose and fell as
+though with secret anger; she drew her hands inwards from their rest on
+the arms of her chair until the tips of her fingers met, and her dark
+eyes looked unfathomably at James.
+
+The latter gloomily scrutinized the floor.
+
+"I tell you my opinion," he said, "it's a pity you haven't got a child to
+think about, and occupy you!"
+
+A brooding look came instantly on Irene's face, and even James became
+conscious of the rigidity that took possession of her whole figure
+beneath the softness of its silk and lace clothing.
+
+He was frightened by the effect he had produced, and like most men with
+but little courage, he sought at once to justify himself by bullying.
+
+"You don't seem to care about going about.  Why don't you drive down to
+Hurlingham with us?  And go to the theatre now and then. At your time of
+life you ought to take an interest in things. You're a young woman!"
+
+The brooding look darkened on her face; he grew nervous.
+
+"Well, I know nothing about it," he said; "nobody tells me anything.
+Soames ought to be able to take care of himself.  If he can't take care
+of himself he mustn't look to me--that's all."
+
+Biting the corner of his forefinger he stole a cold, sharp look at his
+daughter-in-law.
+
+He encountered her eyes fixed on his own, so dark and deep, that he
+stopped, and broke into a gentle perspiration.
+
+"Well, I must be going," he said after a short pause, and a minute later
+rose, with a slight appearance of surprise, as though he had expected to
+be asked to stop.  Giving his hand to Irene, he allowed himself to be
+conducted to the door, and let out into the street.  He would not have a
+cab, he would walk, Irene was to say good-night to Soames for him, and if
+she wanted a little gaiety, well, he would drive her down to Richmond any
+day.
+
+He walked home, and going upstairs, woke Emily out of the first sleep she
+had had for four and twenty hours, to tell her that it was his impression
+things were in a bad way at Soames's; on this theme he descanted for half
+an hour, until at last, saying that he would not sleep a wink, he turned
+on his side and instantly began to snore.
+
+In Montpellier Square Soames, who had come from the picture room, stood
+invisible at the top of the stairs, watching Irene sort the letters
+brought by the last post.  She turned back into the drawing-room; but in
+a minute came out, and stood as if listening.  Then she came stealing up
+the stairs, with a kitten in her arms.  He could see her face bent over
+the little beast, which was purring against her neck.  Why couldn't she
+look at him like that?
+
+Suddenly she saw him, and her face changed.
+
+"Any letters for me?" he said.
+
+"Three."
+
+He stood aside, and without another word she passed on into the bedroom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+OLD JOLYON'S PECCADILLO
+
+Old Jolyon came out of Lord's cricket ground that same afternoon with the
+intention of going home.  He had not reached Hamilton Terrace before he
+changed his mind, and hailing a cab, gave the driver an address in
+Wistaria Avenue.  He had taken a resolution.
+
+June had hardly been at home at all that week; she had given him nothing
+of her company for a long time past, not, in fact, since she had become
+engaged to Bosinney.  He never asked her for her company.  It was not his
+habit to ask people for things!  She had just that one idea now--Bosinney
+and his affairs--and she left him stranded in his great house, with a
+parcel of servants, and not a soul to speak to from morning to night.
+His Club was closed for cleaning; his Boards in recess; there was
+nothing, therefore, to take him into the City.  June had wanted him to go
+away; she would not go herself, because Bosinney was in London.
+
+But where was he to go by himself?  He could not go abroad alone; the sea
+upset his liver; he hated hotels.  Roger went to a hydropathic--he was
+not going to begin that at his time of life, those new-fangled places
+we're all humbug!
+
+With such formulas he clothed to himself the desolation of his spirit;
+the lines down his face deepening, his eyes day by day looking forth with
+the melancholy which sat so strangely on a face wont to be strong and
+serene.
+
+And so that afternoon he took this journey through St.  John's Wood, in
+the golden-light that sprinkled the rounded green bushes of the acacia's
+before the little houses, in the summer sunshine that seemed holding a
+revel over the little gardens; and he looked about him with interest; for
+this was a district which no Forsyte entered without open disapproval and
+secret curiosity.
+
+His cab stopped in front of a small house of that peculiar buff colour
+which implies a long immunity from paint.  It had an outer gate, and a
+rustic approach.
+
+He stepped out, his bearing extremely composed; his massive head, with
+its drooping moustache and wings of white hair, very upright, under an
+excessively large top hat; his glance firm, a little angry.  He had been
+driven into this!
+
+"Mrs. Jolyon Forsyte at home?"
+
+"Oh, yes sir!--what name shall I say, if you please, sir?"
+
+Old Jolyon could not help twinkling at the little maid as he gave his
+name.  She seemed to him such a funny little toad!
+
+And he followed her through the dark hall, into a small double,
+drawing-room, where the furniture was covered in chintz, and the little
+maid placed him in a chair.
+
+"They're all in the garden, sir; if you'll kindly take a seat, I'll tell
+them."
+
+Old Jolyon sat down in the chintz-covered chair, and looked around him.
+The whole place seemed to him, as he would have expressed it, pokey;
+there was a certain--he could not tell exactly what--air of shabbiness,
+or rather of making two ends meet, about everything.  As far as he could
+see, not a single piece of furniture was worth a five-pound note.  The
+walls, distempered rather a long time ago, were decorated with
+water-colour sketches; across the ceiling meandered a long crack.
+
+These little houses were all old, second-rate concerns; he should hope
+the rent was under a hundred a year; it hurt him more than he could have
+said, to think of a Forsyte--his own son living in such a place.
+
+The little maid came back.  Would he please to go down into the garden?
+
+Old Jolyon marched out through the French windows.  In descending the
+steps he noticed that they wanted painting.
+
+Young Jolyon, his wife, his two children, and his dog Balthasar, were all
+out there under a pear-tree.
+
+This walk towards them was the most courageous act of old Jolyon's life;
+but no muscle of his face moved, no nervous gesture betrayed him.  He
+kept his deep-set eyes steadily on the enemy.
+
+In those two minutes he demonstrated to perfection all that unconscious
+soundness, balance, and vitality of fibre that made, of him and so many
+others of his class the core of the nation. In the unostentatious conduct
+of their own affairs, to the neglect of everything else, they typified
+the essential individualism, born in the Briton from the natural
+isolation of his country's life.
+
+The dog Balthasar sniffed round the edges of his trousers; this friendly
+and cynical mongrel--offspring of a liaison between a Russian poodle and
+a fox-terrier--had a nose for the unusual.
+
+The strange greetings over, old Jolyon seated himself in a wicker chair,
+and his two grandchildren, one on each side of his knees, looked at him
+silently, never having seen so old a man.
+
+They were unlike, as though recognising the difference set between them
+by the circumstances of their births.  Jolly, the child of sin,
+pudgy-faced, with his tow-coloured hair brushed off his forehead, and a
+dimple in his chin, had an air of stubborn amiability, and the eyes of a
+Forsyte; little Holly, the child of wedlock, was a dark-skinned, solemn
+soul, with her mother's, grey and wistful eyes.
+
+The dog Balthasar, having walked round the three small flower-beds, to
+show his extreme contempt for things at large, had also taken a seat in
+front of old Jolyon, and, oscillating a tail curled by Nature tightly
+over his back, was staring up with eyes that did not blink.
+
+Even in the garden, that sense of things being pokey haunted old Jolyon;
+the wicker chair creaked under his weight; the garden-beds looked
+'daverdy'; on the far side, under the smut-stained wall, cats had made a
+path.
+
+While he and his grandchildren thus regarded each other with the peculiar
+scrutiny, curious yet trustful, that passes between the very young and
+the very old, young Jolyon watched his wife.
+
+The colour had deepened in her thin, oval face, with its straight brows,
+and large, grey eyes.  Her hair, brushed in fine, high curves back from
+her forehead, was going grey, like his own, and this greyness made the
+sudden vivid colour in her cheeks painfully pathetic.
+
+The look on her face, such as he had never seen there before, such as she
+had always hidden from him, was full of secret resentments, and longings,
+and fears.  Her eyes, under their twitching brows, stared painfully.  And
+she was silent.
+
+Jolly alone sustained the conversation; he had many possessions, and was
+anxious that his unknown friend with extremely large moustaches, and
+hands all covered with blue veins, who sat with legs crossed like his own
+father (a habit he was himself trying to acquire), should know it; but
+being a Forsyte, though not yet quite eight years old, he made no mention
+of the thing at the moment dearest to his heart--a camp of soldiers in a
+shop-window, which his father had promised to buy.  No doubt it seemed to
+him too precious; a tempting of Providence to mention it yet.
+
+And the sunlight played through the leaves on that little party of the
+three generations grouped tranquilly under the pear-tree, which had long
+borne no fruit.
+
+Old Jolyon's furrowed face was reddening patchily, as old men's faces
+redden in the sun.  He took one of Jolly's hands in his own; the boy
+climbed on to his knee; and little Holly, mesmerized by this sight, crept
+up to them; the sound of the dog Balthasar's scratching arose
+rhythmically.
+
+Suddenly young Mrs. Jolyon got up and hurried indoors.  A minute later
+her husband muttered an excuse, and followed.  Old Jolyon was left alone
+with his grandchildren.
+
+And Nature with her quaint irony began working in him one of her strange
+revolutions, following her cyclic laws into the depths of his heart.  And
+that tenderness for little children, that passion for the beginnings of
+life which had once made him forsake his son and follow June, now worked
+in him to forsake June and follow these littler things.  Youth, like a
+flame, burned ever in his breast, and to youth he turned, to the round
+little limbs, so reckless, that wanted care, to the small round faces so
+unreasonably solemn or bright, to the treble tongues,  and the shrill,
+chuckling laughter, to the insistent tugging hands, and the feel of small
+bodies against his legs, to all that was young and young, and once more
+young.  And his eyes grew soft, his voice, and thin-veined hands soft,
+and soft his heart within him. And to those small creatures he became at
+once a place of pleasure, a place where they were secure, and could talk
+and laugh and play; till, like sunshine, there radiated from old Jolyon's
+wicker chair the perfect gaiety of three hearts.
+
+But with young Jolyon following to his wife's room it was different.
+
+He found her seated on a chair before her dressing-glass, with her hands
+before her face.
+
+Her shoulders were shaking with sobs.  This passion of hers for suffering
+was mysterious to him.  He had been through a hundred of these moods; how
+he had survived them he never knew, for he could never believe they were
+moods, and that the last hour of his partnership had not struck.
+
+In the night she would be sure to throw her arms round his neck and say:
+"Oh! Jo, how I make you suffer!" as she had done a hundred times before.
+
+He reached out his hand, and, unseen, slipped his razor-case into his
+pocket.  'I cannot stay here,' he thought, 'I must go down!' Without a
+word he left the room, and went back to the lawn.
+
+Old Jolyon had little Holly on his knee; she had taken possession of his
+watch; Jolly, very red in the face, was trying to show that he could
+stand on his head.  The dog Balthasar, as close as he might be to the
+tea-table, had fixed his eyes on the cake.
+
+Young Jolyon felt a malicious desire to cut their enjoyment short.
+
+What business had his father to come and upset his wife like this?  It
+was a shock, after all these years!  He ought to have known; he ought to
+have given them warning; but when did a Forsyte ever imagine that his
+conduct could upset anybody!  And in his thoughts he did old Jolyon
+wrong.
+
+He spoke sharply to the children, and told them to go in to their tea.
+Greatly surprised, for they had never heard their father speak sharply
+before, they went off, hand in hand, little Holly looking back over her
+shoulder.
+
+Young Jolyon poured out the tea.
+
+"My wife's not the thing today," he said, but he knew well enough that
+his father had penetrated the cause of that sudden withdrawal, and almost
+hated the old man for sitting there so calmly.
+
+"You've got a nice little house here," said old Jolyon with a shrewd
+look; "I suppose you've taken a lease of it!"
+
+Young Jolyon nodded.
+
+"I don't like the neighbourhood," said old Jolyon; "a ramshackle lot."
+
+Young Jolyon replied: "Yes, we're a ramshackle lot."'
+
+The silence was now only broken by the sound of the dog Balthasar's
+scratching.
+
+Old Jolyon said simply: "I suppose I oughtn't to have come here, Jo; but
+I get so lonely!"
+
+At these words young Jolyon got up and put his hand on his father's
+shoulder.
+
+In the next house someone was playing over and over again: 'La Donna
+mobile' on an untuned piano; and the little garden had fallen into shade,
+the sun now only reached the wall at the end, whereon basked a crouching
+cat, her yellow eyes turned sleepily down on the dog Balthasar.  There
+was a drowsy hum of very distant traffic; the creepered trellis round the
+garden shut out everything but sky, and house, and pear-tree, with its
+top branches still gilded by the sun.
+
+For some time they sat there, talking but little.  Then old Jolyon rose
+to go, and not a word was said about his coming again.
+
+He walked away very sadly.  What a poor miserable place; and he thought
+of the great, empty house in Stanhope Gate, fit residence for a Forsyte,
+with its huge billiard-room and drawing-room that no one entered from one
+week's end to another.
+
+That woman, whose face he had rather liked, was too thin-skinned by half;
+she gave Jo a bad time he knew!  And those sweet children!  Ah! what a
+piece of awful folly!
+
+He walked towards the Edgware Road, between rows of little houses, all
+suggesting to him (erroneously no doubt, but the prejudices of a Forsyte
+are sacred) shady histories of some sort or kind.
+
+Society, forsooth, the chattering hags and jackanapes--had set themselves
+up to pass judgment on his flesh and blood!  A parcel of old women!  He
+stumped his umbrella on the ground, as though to drive it into the heart
+of that unfortunate body, which had dared to ostracize his son and his
+son's son, in whom he could have lived again!
+
+He stumped his umbrella fiercely; yet he himself had followed Society's
+behaviour for fifteen years--had only today been false to it!
+
+He thought of June, and her dead mother, and the whole story, with all
+his old bitterness.  A wretched business!
+
+He was a long time reaching Stanhope Gate, for, with native perversity,
+being extremely tired, he walked the whole way.
+
+After washing his hands in the lavatory downstairs, he went to the
+dining-room to wait for dinner, the only room he used when June was
+out--it was less lonely so.  The evening paper had not yet come; he had
+finished the Times, there was therefore nothing to do.
+
+The room faced the backwater of traffic, and was very silent.  He
+disliked dogs, but a dog even would have been company.  His gaze,
+travelling round the walls, rested on a picture entitled: 'Group of Dutch
+fishing boats at sunset'; the chef d'oeuvre of his collection.  It gave
+him no pleasure.  He closed his eyes.  He was lonely!  He oughtn't to
+complain, he knew, but he couldn't help it: He was a poor thing--had
+always been a poor thing--no pluck!  Such was his thought.
+
+The butler came to lay the table for dinner, and seeing his master
+apparently asleep, exercised extreme caution in his movements.  This
+bearded man also wore a moustache, which had given rise to grave doubts
+in the minds of many members--of the family--, especially those who, like
+Soames, had been to public schools, and were accustomed to niceness in
+such matters.  Could he really be considered a butler?  Playful spirits
+alluded to him as: 'Uncle Jolyon's Nonconformist'; George, the
+acknowledged wag, had named him: 'Sankey.'
+
+He moved to and fro between the great polished sideboard and the great
+polished table inimitably sleek and soft.
+
+Old Jolyon watched him, feigning sleep.  The fellow was a sneak--he had
+always thought so--who cared about nothing but rattling through his work,
+and getting out to his betting or his woman or goodness knew what!  A
+slug!  Fat too! And didn't care a pin about his master!
+
+But then against his will, came one of those moments of philosophy which
+made old Jolyon different from other Forsytes:
+
+After all why should the man care?  He wasn't paid to care, and why
+expect it?  In this world people couldn't look for affection unless they
+paid for it.  It might be different in the next--he didn't know--couldn't
+tell!  And again he shut his eyes.
+
+Relentless and stealthy, the butler pursued his labours, taking things
+from the various compartments of the sideboard.  His back seemed always
+turned to old Jolyon; thus, he robbed his operations of the unseemliness
+of being carried on in his master's presence; now and then he furtively
+breathed on the silver, and wiped it with a piece of chamois leather.  He
+appeared to pore over the quantities of wine in the decanters, which he
+carried carefully and rather high, letting his heard droop over them
+protectingly.  When he had finished, he stood for over a minute watching
+his master, and in his greenish eyes there was a look of contempt:
+
+After all, this master of his was an old buffer, who hadn't much left in
+him!
+
+Soft as a tom-cat, he crossed the room to press the bell.  His orders
+were 'dinner at seven.' What if his master were asleep; he would soon
+have him out of that; there was the night to sleep in! He had himself to
+think of, for he was due at his Club at half-past eight!
+
+In answer to the ring, appeared a page boy with a silver soup tureen.
+The butler took it from his hands and placed it on the table, then,
+standing by the open door, as though about to usher company into the
+room, he said in a solemn voice:
+
+"Dinner is on the table, sir!"
+
+Slowly old Jolyon got up out of his chair, and sat down at the table to
+eat his dinner.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+PLANS OF THE HOUSE
+
+Forsytes, as is generally admitted, have shells, like that extremely
+useful little animal which is made into Turkish delight, in other words,
+they are never seen, or if seen would not be recognised, without
+habitats, composed of circumstance, property, acquaintances, and wives,
+which seem to move along with them in their passage through a world
+composed of thousands of other Forsytes with their habitats.  Without a
+habitat a Forsyte is inconceivable--he would be like a novel without a
+plot, which is well-known to be an anomaly.
+
+To Forsyte eyes Bosinney appeared to have no habitat, he seemed one of
+those rare and unfortunate men who go through life surrounded by
+circumstance, property, acquaintances, and wives that do not belong to
+them.
+
+His rooms in Sloane Street, on the top floor, outside which, on a plate,
+was his name, 'Philip Baynes Bosinney, Architect,' were not those of a
+Forsyte.--He had no sitting-room apart from his office, but a large
+recess had been screened off to conceal the necessaries of life--a couch,
+an easy chair, his pipes, spirit case, novels and slippers.  The business
+part of the room had the usual furniture; an open cupboard with
+pigeon-holes, a round oak table, a folding wash-stand, some hard chairs,
+a standing desk of large dimensions covered with drawings and designs.
+June had twice been to tea there under the chaperonage of his aunt.
+
+He was believed to have a bedroom at the back.
+
+As far as the family had been able to ascertain his income, it consisted
+of two consulting appointments at twenty pounds a year, together with an
+odd fee once in a way, and--more worthy item--a private annuity under his
+father's will of one hundred and fifty pounds a year.
+
+What had transpired concerning that father was not so reassuring. It
+appeared that he had been a Lincolnshire country doctor of Cornish
+extraction, striking appearance, and Byronic tendencies--a well-known
+figure, in fact, in his county.  Bosinney's uncle by marriage, Baynes, of
+Baynes and Bildeboy, a Forsyte in instincts if not in name, had but
+little that was worthy to relate of his brother-in-law.
+
+"An odd fellow!' he would say: 'always spoke of his three eldest boys as
+'good creatures, but so dull'; they're all doing capitally in the Indian
+Civil!  Philip was the only one he liked. I've heard him talk in the
+queerest way; he once said to me: 'My dear fellow, never let your poor
+wife know what you're thinking of!  But I didn't follow his advice; not
+I!  An eccentric man! He would say to Phil: 'Whether you live like a
+gentleman or not, my boy, be sure you die like one! and he had himself
+embalmed in a frock coat suit, with a satin cravat and a diamond pin.
+Oh, quite an original, I can assure you!"
+
+Of Bosinney himself Baynes would speak warmly, with a certain compassion:
+"He's got a streak of his father's Byronism.  Why, look at the way he
+threw up his chances when he left my office; going off like that for six
+months with a knapsack, and all for what?--to study foreign
+architecture--foreign!  What could he expect?  And there he is--a clever
+young fellow--doesn't make his hundred a year!  Now this engagement is
+the best thing that could have happened--keep him steady; he's one of
+those that go to bed all day and stay up all night, simply because
+they've no method; but no vice about him--not an ounce of vice.  Old
+Forsyte's a rich man!"
+
+Mr. Baynes made himself extremely pleasant to June, who frequently
+visited his house in Lowndes Square at this period.
+
+"This house of your cousin's--what a capital man of business--is the very
+thing for Philip," he would say to her; "you mustn't expect to see too
+much of him just now, my dear young lady.  The good cause--the good
+cause!  The young man must make his way. When I was his age I was at work
+day and night.  My dear wife used to say to me, 'Bobby, don't work too
+hard, think of your health'; but I never spared myself!"
+
+June had complained that her lover found no time to come to Stanhope
+Gate.
+
+The first time he came again they had not been together a quarter of an
+hour before, by one of those coincidences of which she was a mistress,
+Mrs. Septimus Small arrived.  Thereon Bosinney rose and hid himself,
+according to previous arrangement, in the little study, to wait for her
+departure.
+
+"My dear," said Aunt Juley, "how thin he is!  I've often noticed it with
+engaged people; but you mustn't let it get worse. There's Barlow's
+extract of veal; it did your Uncle Swithin a lot of good."
+
+June, her little figure erect before the hearth, her small face quivering
+grimly, for she regarded her aunt's untimely visit in the light of a
+personal injury, replied with scorn:
+
+"It's because he's busy; people who can do anything worth doing are never
+fat!"
+
+Aunt Juley pouted; she herself had always been thin, but the only
+pleasure she derived from the fact was the opportunity of longing to be
+stouter.
+
+"I don't think," she said mournfully, "that you ought to let them call
+him 'The Buccaneer'; people might think it odd, now that he's going to
+build a house for Soames.  I do hope he will be careful; it's so
+important for him.  Soames has such good taste!"
+
+"Taste!" cried June, flaring up at once; "wouldn't give that for his
+taste, or any of the family's!"
+
+Mrs. Small was taken aback.
+
+"Your Uncle Swithin," she said, "always had beautiful taste!  And
+Soames's little house is lovely; you don't mean to say you don't think
+so!"
+
+"H'mph!" said June, "that's only because Irene's there!"
+
+Aunt Juley tried to say something pleasant:
+
+"And how will dear Irene like living in the country?"
+
+June gazed at her intently, with a look in her eyes as if her conscience
+had suddenly leaped up into them; it passed; and an even more intent look
+took its place, as if she had stared that conscience out of countenance.
+She replied imperiously:
+
+"Of course she'll like it; why shouldn't she?"
+
+Mrs. Small grew nervous.
+
+"I didn't know," she said; "I thought she mightn't like to leave her
+friends.  Your Uncle James says she doesn't take enough interest in life.
+We think--I mean Timothy thinks--she ought to go out more.  I expect
+you'll miss her very much!"
+
+June clasped her hands behind her neck.
+
+"I do wish," she cried, "Uncle Timothy wouldn't talk about what doesn't
+concern him!"
+
+Aunt Juley rose to the full height of her tall figure.
+
+"He never talks about what doesn't concern him," she said.
+
+June was instantly compunctious; she ran to her aunt and kissed her.
+
+"I'm very sorry, auntie; but I wish they'd let Irene alone."
+
+Aunt Juley, unable to think of anything further on the subject that would
+be suitable, was silent; she prepared for departure, hooking her black
+silk cape across her chest, and, taking up her green reticule:
+
+"And how is your dear grandfather?" she asked in the hall, "I expect he's
+very lonely now that all your time is taken up with Mr. Bosinney."
+
+She bent and kissed her niece hungrily, and with little, mincing steps
+passed away.
+
+The tears sprang up in June's eyes; running into the little study, where
+Bosinney was sitting at the table drawing birds on the back of an
+envelope, she sank down by his side and cried:
+
+"Oh, Phil! it's all so horrid!"  Her heart was as warm as the colour of
+her hair.
+
+On the following Sunday morning, while Soames was shaving, a message was
+brought him to the effect that Mr. Bosinney was below, and would be glad
+to see him.  Opening the door into his wife's room, he said:
+
+"Bosinney's downstairs.  Just go and entertain him while I finish
+shaving.  I'll be down in a minute.  It's about the plans, I expect."
+
+Irene looked at him, without reply, put the finishing touch to her dress
+and went downstairs.  He could not make her out about this house.  She
+had said nothing against it, and, as far as Bosinney was concerned,
+seemed friendly enough.
+
+From the window of his dressing-room he could see them talking together
+in the little court below.  He hurried on with his shaving, cutting his
+chin twice.  He heard them laugh, and thought to himself: "Well, they get
+on all right, anyway!"
+
+As he expected, Bosinney had come round to fetch him to look at the
+plans.
+
+He took his hat and went over.
+
+The plans were spread on the oak table in the architect's room; and pale,
+imperturbable, inquiring, Soames bent over them for a long time without
+speaking.
+
+He said at last in a puzzled voice:
+
+"It's an odd sort of house!"
+
+A rectangular house of two stories was designed in a quadrangle round a
+covered-in court.  This court, encircled by a gallery on the upper floor,
+was roofed with a glass roof, supported by eight columns running up from
+the ground.
+
+It was indeed, to Forsyte eyes, an odd house.
+
+"There's a lot of room cut to waste," pursued Soames.
+
+Bosinney began to walk about, and Soames did not like the expression on
+his face.
+
+"The principle of this house," said the architect, "was that you should
+have room to breathe--like a gentleman!"
+
+Soames extended his finger and thumb, as if measuring the extent of the
+distinction he should acquire; and replied:
+
+"Oh! yes; I see."
+
+The peculiar look came into Bosinney's face which marked all his
+enthusiasms.
+
+"I've tried to plan you a house here with some self-respect of its own.
+If  you don't like it, you'd better say so.  It's certainly the last
+thing to be considered--who wants self-respect in a house, when you can
+squeeze in an extra lavatory?"  He put his finger suddenly down on the
+left division of the centre oblong: "You can swing a cat here.  This is
+for your pictures, divided from this court by curtains; draw them back
+and you'll have a space of fifty-one by twenty-three six.  This
+double-faced stove in the centre, here, looks one way towards the court,
+one way towards the picture room; this end wall is all window; You've a
+southeast light from that, a north light from the court.  The rest of
+your pictures you can hang round the gallery upstairs, or in the other
+rooms."  "In architecture," he went on--and though looking at Soames he
+did not seem to see him, which gave Soames an unpleasant feeling--"as in
+life, you'll get no self-respect without regularity.  Fellows tell you
+that's old fashioned.  It appears to be peculiar any way; it never occurs
+to us to embody the main principle of life in our buildings; we load our
+houses with decoration, gimcracks, corners, anything to distract the eye.
+On the contrary the eye should rest; get your effects with a few strong
+lines.  The whole thing is regularity there's no self-respect without
+it."
+
+Soames, the unconscious ironist, fixed his gaze on Bosinney's tie, which
+was far from being in the perpendicular; he was unshaven too, and his
+dress not remarkable for order. Architecture appeared to have exhausted
+his regularity.
+
+"Won't it look like a barrack?" he inquired.
+
+He did not at once receive a reply.
+
+"I can see what it is," said Bosinney, "you want one of Littlemaster's
+houses--one of the pretty and commodious sort, where the servants will
+live in garrets, and the front door be sunk so that you may come up
+again.  By all means try Littlemaster, you'll find him a capital fellow,
+I've known him all my life!"
+
+Soames was alarmed.  He had really been struck by the plans, and the
+concealment of his satisfaction had been merely instinctive. It was
+difficult for him to pay a compliment.  He despised people who were
+lavish with their praises.
+
+He found himself now in the embarrassing position of one who must pay a
+compliment or run the risk of losing a good thing. Bosinney was just the
+fellow who might tear up the plans and refuse to act for him; a kind of
+grown-up child!
+
+This grown-up childishness, to which he felt so superior, exercised a
+peculiar and almost mesmeric effect on Soames, for he had never felt
+anything like it in himself.
+
+"Well," he stammered at last, "it's--it's, certainly original."
+
+He had such a private distrust and even dislike of the word 'original'
+that he felt he had not really given himself away by this remark.
+
+Bosinney seemed pleased.  It was the sort of thing that would please a
+fellow like that!  And his success encouraged Soames.
+
+"It's--a big place," he said.
+
+"Space, air, light," he heard Bosinney murmur, "you can't live like a
+gentleman in one of Littlemaster's--he builds for manufacturers."
+
+Soames made a deprecating movement; he had been identified with a
+gentleman; not for a good deal of money now would he be classed with
+manufacturers.  But his innate distrust of general principles revived.
+What the deuce was the good of talking about regularity and self-respect?
+It looked to him as if the house would be cold.
+
+"Irene can't stand the cold!" he said.
+
+"Ah!" said Bosinney sarcastically.  "Your wife?  She doesn't like the
+cold?  I'll see to that; she shan't be cold.  Look here!" he pointed, to
+four marks at regular intervals on the walls of the court.  "I've given
+you hot-water pipes in aluminium casings; you can get them with very good
+designs."
+
+Soames looked suspiciously at these marks.
+
+"It's all very well, all this," he said, "but what's it going to cost?"
+
+The architect took a sheet of paper from his pocket:
+
+"The house, of course, should be built entirely of stone, but, as I
+thought you wouldn't stand that, I've compromised for a facing. It ought
+to have a copper roof, but I've made it green slate.  As it is, including
+metal work, it'll cost you eight thousand five hundred."
+
+"Eight thousand five hundred?" said Soames.  "Why, I gave you an outside
+limit of eight!"
+
+"Can't be done for a penny less," replied Bosinney coolly.
+
+"You must take it or leave it!"
+
+It was the only way, probably, that such a proposition could have been
+made to Soames.  He was nonplussed.  Conscience told him to throw the
+whole thing up.  But the design was good, and he knew it--there was
+completeness about it, and dignity; the servants' apartments were
+excellent too.  He would gain credit by living in a house like that--with
+such individual features, yet perfectly well-arranged.
+
+He continued poring over the plans, while Bosinney went into his bedroom
+to shave and dress.
+
+The two walked back to Montpellier Square in silence, Soames watching him
+out of the corner of his eye.
+
+The Buccaneer was rather a good-looking fellow--so he thought--when he
+was properly got up.
+
+Irene was bending over her flowers when the two men came in.
+
+She spoke of sending across the Park to fetch June.
+
+"No, no," said Soames, "we've still got business to talk over!"
+
+At lunch he was almost cordial, and kept pressing Bosinney to eat.  He
+was pleased to see the architect in such high spirits, and left him to
+spend the afternoon with Irene, while he stole off to his pictures, after
+his Sunday habit.  At tea-time he came down to the drawing-room, and
+found them talking, as he expressed it, nineteen to the dozen.
+
+Unobserved in the doorway, he congratulated himself that things were
+taking the right turn.  It was lucky she and Bosinney got on; she seemed
+to be falling into line with the idea of the new house.
+
+Quiet meditation among his pictures had decided him to spring the five
+hundred if necessary; but he hoped that the afternoon might have softened
+Bosinney's estimates.  It was so purely a matter which Bosinney could
+remedy if he liked; there must be a dozen ways in which he could cheapen
+the production of a house without spoiling the effect.
+
+He awaited, therefore, his opportunity till Irene was handing the
+architect his first cup of tea.  A chink of sunshine through the lace of
+the blinds warmed her cheek, shone in the gold of her hair, and in her
+soft eyes.  Possibly the same gleam deepened Bosinney's colour, gave the
+rather startled look to his face.
+
+Soames hated sunshine, and he at once got up, to draw the blind. Then he
+took his own cup of tea from his wife, and said, more coldly than he had
+intended:
+
+"Can't you see your way to do it for eight thousand after all? There must
+be a lot of little things you could alter."
+
+Bosinney drank off his tea at a gulp, put down his cup, and answered:
+
+"Not one!"
+
+Soames saw that his suggestion had touched some unintelligible point of
+personal vanity.
+
+"Well," he agreed, with sulky resignation; "you must have it your own
+way, I suppose."
+
+A few minutes later Bosinney rose to go, and Soames rose too, to see him
+off the premises.  The architect seemed in absurdly high spirits.  After
+watching him walk away at a swinging pace, Soames returned moodily to the
+drawing-room, where Irene was putting away the music, and, moved by an
+uncontrollable spasm of curiosity, he asked:
+
+"Well, what do you think of 'The Buccaneer'?"
+
+He looked at the carpet while waiting for her answer, and he had to wait
+some time.
+
+"I don't know," she said at last.
+
+"Do you think he's good-looking?"
+
+Irene smiled.  And it seemed to Soames that she was mocking him.
+
+"Yes," she answered; "very."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+DEATH OF AUNT ANN
+
+There came a morning at the end of September when Aunt Ann was unable to
+take from Smither's hands the insignia of personal dignity.  After one
+look at the old face, the doctor, hurriedly sent for, announced that Miss
+Forsyte had passed away in her sleep.
+
+Aunts Juley and Hester were overwhelmed by the shock.  They had never
+imagined such an ending.  Indeed, it is doubtful whether they had ever
+realized that an ending was bound to come. Secretly they felt it
+unreasonable of Ann to have left them like this without a word, without
+even a struggle.  It was unlike her.
+
+Perhaps what really affected them so profoundly was the thought that a
+Forsyte should have let go her grasp on life.  If one, then why not all!
+
+It was a full hour before they could make up their minds to tell Timothy.
+If only it could be kept from him!  If only it could be broken to him by
+degrees!
+
+And long they stood outside his door whispering together.  And when it
+was over they whispered together again.
+
+He would feel it more, they were afraid, as time went on.  Still, he had
+taken it better than could have been expected.  He would keep his bed, of
+course!
+
+They separated, crying quietly.
+
+Aunt Juley stayed in her room, prostrated by the blow.  Her face,
+discoloured by tears, was divided into compartments by the little ridges
+of pouting flesh which had swollen with emotion.  It was impossible to
+conceive of life without Ann, who had lived with her for seventy-three
+years, broken only by the short interregnum of her married life, which
+seemed now so unreal.  At fixed intervals she went to her drawer, and
+took from beneath the lavender bags a fresh pocket-handkerchief.  Her
+warm heart could not bear the thought that Ann was lying there so cold.
+
+Aunt Hester, the silent, the patient, that backwater of the family
+energy, sat in the drawing-room, where the blinds were drawn; and she,
+too, had wept at first, but quietly, without visible effect.  Her guiding
+principle, the conservation of energy, did not abandon her in sorrow.
+She sat, slim, motionless, studying the grate, her hands idle in the lap
+of her black silk dress.  They would want to rouse her into doing
+something, no doubt.  As if there were any good in that!  Doing something
+would not bring back Ann!  Why worry her?
+
+Five o'clock brought three of the brothers, Jolyon and James and Swithin;
+Nicholas was at Yarmouth, and Roger had a bad attack of gout.  Mrs.
+Hayman had been by herself earlier in the day, and, after seeing Ann, had
+gone away, leaving a message for Timothy--which was kept from him--that
+she ought to have been told sooner. In fact, there was a feeling amongst
+them all that they ought to have been told sooner, as though they had
+missed something; and James said:
+
+"I knew how it'd be; I told you she wouldn't last through the summer."
+
+Aunt Hester made no reply; it was nearly October, but what was the good
+of arguing; some people were never satisfied.
+
+She sent up to tell her sister that the brothers were there. Mrs. Small
+came down at once.  She had bathed her face, which was still swollen, and
+though she looked severely at Swithin's trousers, for they were of light
+blue--he had come straight from the club, where the news had reached
+him--she wore a more cheerful expression than usual, the instinct for
+doing the wrong thing being even now too strong for her.
+
+Presently all five went up to look at the body.  Under the pure white
+sheet a quilted counter-pane had been placed, for now, more than ever,
+Aunt Ann had need of warmth; and, the pillows removed, her spine and head
+rested flat, with the semblance of their life-long inflexibility; the
+coif banding the top of her brow was drawn on either side to the level of
+the ears, and between it and the sheet her face, almost as white, was
+turned with closed eyes to the faces of her brothers and sisters.  In its
+extraordinary peace the face was stronger than ever, nearly all bone now
+under the scarce-wrinkled parchment of skin--square jaw and chin,
+cheekbones, forehead with hollow temples, chiselled nose--the fortress of
+an unconquerable spirit that had yielded to death, and in its upward
+sightlessness seemed trying to regain that spirit, to regain the
+guardianship it had just laid down.
+
+Swithin took but one look at the face, and left the room; the sight, he
+said afterwards, made him very queer.  He went downstairs shaking the
+whole house, and, seizing his hat, clambered into his brougham, without
+giving any directions to the coachman.  He was driven home, and all the
+evening sat in his chair without moving.
+
+He could take nothing for dinner but a partridge, with an imperial pint
+of champagne....
+
+Old Jolyon stood at the bottom of the bed, his hands folded in front of
+him.  He alone of those in the room remembered the death of his mother,
+and though he looked at Ann, it was of that he was thinking.  Ann was an
+old woman, but death had come to her at last--death came to all!  His
+face did not move, his gaze seemed travelling from very far.
+
+Aunt Hester stood beside him.  She did not cry now, tears were
+exhausted--her nature refused to permit a further escape of force; she
+twisted her hands, looking not at Ann, but from side to side, seeking
+some way of escaping the effort of realization.
+
+Of all the brothers and sisters James manifested the most emotion.  Tears
+rolled down the parallel furrows of his thin face; where he should go now
+to tell his troubles he did not know; Juley was no good, Hester worse
+than useless!  He felt Ann's death more than he had ever thought he
+should; this would upset him for weeks!
+
+Presently Aunt Hester stole out, and Aunt Juley began moving about, doing
+'what was necessary,' so that twice she knocked against something.  Old
+Jolyon, roused from his reverie, that reverie of the long, long past,
+looked sternly at her, and went away.  James alone was left by the
+bedside; glancing stealthily round, to see that he was not observed, he
+twisted his long body down, placed a kiss on the dead forehead, then he,
+too, hastily left the room.  Encountering Smither in the hall, he began
+to ask her about the funeral, and, finding that she knew nothing,
+complained bitterly that, if they didn't take care, everything would go
+wrong.  She had better send for Mr. Soames--he knew all about that sort
+of thing; her master was very much upset, he supposed--he would want
+looking after; as for her mistresses, they were no good--they had no
+gumption!  They would be ill too, he shouldn't wonder.  She had better
+send for the doctor; it was best to take things in time.  He didn't think
+his sister Ann had had the best opinion; if she'd had Blank she would
+have been alive now.  Smither might send to Park Lane any time she wanted
+advice.  Of course, his carriage was at their service for the funeral.
+He supposed she hadn't such a thing as a glass of claret and a
+biscuit--he had had no lunch!
+
+The days before the funeral passed quietly.  It had long been known, of
+course, that Aunt Ann had left her little property to Timothy.  There
+was, therefore, no reason for the slightest agitation.  Soames, who was
+sole executor, took charge of all arrangements, and in due course sent
+out the following invitation to every male member of the family:
+
+To...........
+
+Your presence is requested at the funeral of Miss Ann Forsyte, in
+Highgate Cemetery, at noon of Oct. 1st.  Carriages will meet at "The
+Bower," Bayswater Road, at 10.45.  No flowers by request.
+'R.S.V.P.'
+
+The morning came, cold, with a high, grey, London sky, and at half-past
+ten the first carriage, that of James, drove up.  It contained James and
+his son-in-law Dartie, a fine man, with a square chest, buttoned very
+tightly into a frock coat, and a sallow, fattish face adorned with dark,
+well-curled moustaches, and that incorrigible commencement of whisker
+which, eluding the strictest attempts at shaving, seems the mark of
+something deeply ingrained in the personality of the shaver, being
+especially noticeable in men who speculate.
+
+Soames, in his capacity of executor, received the guests, for Timothy
+still kept his bed; he would get up after the funeral; and Aunts Juley
+and Hester would not be coming down till all was over, when it was
+understood there would be lunch for anyone who cared to come back.  The
+next to arrive was Roger, still limping from the gout, and encircled by
+three of his sons--young Roger, Eustace, and Thomas.  George, the
+remaining son, arrived almost immediately afterwards in a hansom, and
+paused in the hall to ask Soames how he found undertaking pay.
+
+They disliked each other.
+
+Then came two Haymans--Giles and Jesse perfectly silent, and very well
+dressed, with special creases down their evening trousers. Then old
+Jolyon alone.  Next, Nicholas, with a healthy colour in his face, and a
+carefully veiled sprightliness in every movement of his head and body.
+One of his sons followed him, meek and subdued.  Swithin Forsyte, and
+Bosinney arrived at the same moment,--and stood--bowing precedence to
+each other,--but on the door opening they tried to enter together; they
+renewed their apologies in the hall, and, Swithin, settling his stock,
+which had become disarranged in the struggle, very slowly mounted the
+stairs.  The other Hayman; two married sons of Nicholas, together with
+Tweetyman, Spender, and Warry, the husbands of married Forsyte and Hayman
+daughters.  The company was then complete, twenty-one in all, not a male
+member of the family being absent but Timothy and young Jolyon.
+
+Entering the scarlet and green drawing-room, whose apparel made so vivid
+a setting for their unaccustomed costumes, each tried nervously to find a
+seat, desirous of hiding the emphatic blackness of his trousers.  There
+seemed a sort of indecency in that blackness and in the colour of their
+gloves--a sort of exaggeration of the feelings; and many cast shocked
+looks of secret envy at 'the Buccaneer,' who had no gloves, and was
+wearing grey trousers.  A subdued hum of conversation rose, no one
+speaking of the departed, but each asking after the other, as though
+thereby casting an indirect libation to this event, which they had come
+to honour.
+
+And presently James said:
+
+"Well, I think we ought to be starting."
+
+They went downstairs, and, two and two, as they had been told off in
+strict precedence, mounted the carriages.
+
+The hearse started at a foot's pace; the carriages moved slowly after.
+In the first went old Jolyon with Nicholas; in the second, the twins,
+Swithin and James; in the third, Roger and young Roger; Soames, young
+Nicholas, George, and Bosinney followed in the fourth.  Each of the other
+carriages, eight in all, held three or four of the family; behind them
+came the doctor's brougham; then, at a decent interval, cabs containing
+family clerks and servants; and at the very end, one containing nobody at
+all, but bringing the total cortege up to the number of thirteen.
+
+So long as the procession kept to the highway of the Bayswater Road, it
+retained the foot's-pace, but, turning into less important
+thorough-fares, it soon broke into a trot, and so proceeded, with
+intervals of walking in the more fashionable streets, until it arrived.
+In the first carriage old Jolyon and Nicholas were talking of their
+wills.  In the second the twins, after a single attempt, had lapsed into
+complete silence; both were rather deaf, and the exertion of making
+themselves heard was too great.  Only once James broke this silence:
+
+"I shall have to be looking about for some ground somewhere. What
+arrangements have you made, Swithin?"
+
+And Swithin, fixing him with a dreadful stare, answered:
+
+"Don't talk to me about such things!"
+
+In the third carriage a disjointed conversation was carried on in the
+intervals of looking out to see how far they had got, George remarking,
+"Well, it was really time that the poor old lady went."  He didn't
+believe in people living beyond seventy, Young Nicholas replied mildly
+that the rule didn't seem to apply to the Forsytes.  George said he
+himself intended to commit suicide at sixty.  Young Nicholas, smiling and
+stroking a long chin, didn't think his father would like that theory; he
+had made a lot of money since he was sixty.  Well, seventy was the
+outside limit; it was then time, George said, for them to go and leave
+their money to their children.  Soames, hitherto silent, here joined in;
+he had not forgotten the remark about the 'undertaking,' and, lifting his
+eyelids almost imperceptibly, said it was all very well for people who
+never made money to talk.  He himself intended to live as long as he
+could.  This was a hit at George, who was notoriously hard up.  Bosinney
+muttered abstractedly "Hear, hear!" and, George yawning, the conversation
+dropped.
+
+Upon arriving, the coffin was borne into the chapel, and, two by two, the
+mourners filed in behind it.  This guard of men, all attached to the dead
+by the bond of kinship, was an impressive and singular sight in the great
+city of London, with its overwhelming diversity of life, its innumerable
+vocations, pleasures, duties, its terrible hardness, its terrible call to
+individualism.
+
+The family had gathered to triumph over all this, to give a show of
+tenacious unity, to illustrate gloriously that law of property underlying
+the growth of their tree, by which it had thriven and spread, trunk and
+branches, the sap flowing through all, the full growth reached at the
+appointed time.  The spirit of the old woman lying in her last sleep had
+called them to this demonstration.  It was her final appeal to that unity
+which had been their strength--it was her final triumph that she had died
+while the tree was yet whole.
+
+She was spared the watching of the branches jut out beyond the point of
+balance.  She could not look into the hearts of her followers.  The same
+law that had worked in her, bringing her up from a tall, straight-backed
+slip of a girl to a woman strong and grown, from a woman grown to a woman
+old, angular, feeble, almost witchlike, with individuality all sharpened
+and sharpened, as all rounding from the world's contact fell off from
+her--that same law would work, was working, in the family she had watched
+like a mother.
+
+She had seen it young, and growing, she had seen it strong and grown, and
+before her old eyes had time or strength to see any more, she died.  She
+would have tried, and who knows but she might have kept it young and
+strong, with her old fingers, her trembling kisses--a little longer;
+alas! not even Aunt Ann could fight with Nature.
+
+'Pride comes before a fall!' In accordance with this, the greatest of
+Nature's ironies, the Forsyte family had gathered for a last proud
+pageant before they fell.  Their faces to right and left, in single
+lines, were turned for the most part impassively toward the ground,
+guardians of their thoughts; but here and there, one looking upward, with
+a line between his brows, searched to see some sight on the chapel walls
+too much for him, to be listening to something that appalled.  And the
+responses, low-muttered, in voices through which rose the same tone, the
+same unseizable family ring, sounded weird, as though murmured in hurried
+duplication by a single person.
+
+The service in the chapel over, the mourners filed up again to guard the
+body to the tomb.  The vault stood open, and, round it, men in black were
+waiting.
+
+From that high and sacred field, where thousands of the upper middle
+class lay in their last sleep, the eyes of the Forsytes travelled down
+across the flocks of graves.  There--spreading to the distance, lay
+London, with no sun over it, mourning the loss of its daughter, mourning
+with this family, so dear, the loss of her who was mother and guardian.
+A hundred thousand spires and houses, blurred in the great grey web of
+property, lay there like prostrate worshippers before the grave of this,
+the oldest Forsyte of them all.
+
+A few words, a sprinkle of earth, the thrusting of the coffin home, and
+Aunt Ann had passed to her last rest.
+
+Round the vault, trustees of that passing, the five brothers stood, with
+white heads bowed; they would see that Ann was comfortable where she was
+going.  Her little property must stay behind, but otherwise, all that
+could be should be done....
+
+Then severally, each stood aside, and putting on his hat, turned back to
+inspect the new inscription on the marble of the family vault:
+
+SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF ANN FORSYTE, THE DAUGHTER OF THE ABOVE JOLYON AND
+ANN FORSYTE, WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE THE 27TH DAY OF SEPTEMBER, 1886, AGED
+EIGHTY-SEVEN YEARS AND FOUR DAYS
+
+Soon perhaps, someone else would be wanting an inscription.  It was
+strange and intolerable, for they had not thought somehow, that Forsytes
+could die.  And one and all they had a longing to get away from this
+painfulness, this ceremony which had reminded them of things they could
+not bear to think about--to get away quickly and go about their business
+and forget.
+
+It was cold, too; the wind, like some slow, disintegrating force, blowing
+up the hill over the graves, struck them with its chilly breath; they
+began to split into groups, and as quickly as possible to fill the
+waiting carriages.
+
+Swithin said he should go back to lunch at Timothy's, and he offered to
+take anybody with him in his brougham.  It was considered a doubtful
+privilege to drive with Swithin in his brougham, which was not a large
+one; nobody accepted, and he went off alone.  James and Roger followed
+immediately after; they also would drop in to lunch.  The others
+gradually melted away, Old Jolyon taking three nephews to fill up his
+carriage; he had a want of those young faces.
+
+Soames, who had to arrange some details in the cemetery office, walked
+away with Bosinney.  He had much to talk over with him, and, having
+finished his business, they strolled to Hampstead, lunched together at
+the Spaniard's Inn, and spent a long time in going into practical details
+connected with the building of the house; they then proceeded to the
+tram-line, and came as far as the Marble Arch, where Bosinney went off to
+Stanhope Gate to see June.
+
+Soames felt in excellent spirits when he arrived home, and confided to
+Irene at dinner that he had had a good talk with Bosinney, who really
+seemed a sensible fellow; they had had a capital walk too, which had done
+his liver good--he had been short of exercise for a long time--and
+altogether a very satisfactory day.  If only it hadn't been for poor Aunt
+Ann, he would have taken her to the theatre; as it was, they must make
+the best of an evening at home.
+
+"The Buccaneer asked after you more than once," he said suddenly.  And
+moved by some inexplicable desire to assert his proprietorship, he rose
+from his chair and planted a kiss on his wife's shoulder.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+PROGRESS OF THE HOUSE
+
+The winter had been an open one.  Things in the trade were slack; and as
+Soames had reflected before making up his mind, it had been a good time
+for building.  The shell of the house at Robin Hill was thus completed by
+the end of April.
+
+Now that there was something to be seen for his money, he had been coming
+down once,  twice, even three times a week, and would mouse about among
+the debris for hours, careful never to soil his clothes, moving silently
+through the unfinished brickwork of doorways, or circling round the
+columns in the central court.
+
+And he would stand before them for minutes' together, as though peering
+into the real quality of their substance.
+
+On April 30 he had an appointment with Bosinney to go over the accounts,
+and five minutes before the proper time he entered the tent which the
+architect had pitched for himself close to the old oak tree.
+
+The accounts were already prepared on a folding table, and  with a nod
+Soames sat down to study them.  It was some time before he raised his
+head.
+
+"I can't make them out," he said at last; "they come to nearly seven
+hundred more than they ought"
+
+After a glance at Bosinney's face he went on quickly:
+
+"If you only make a firm stand against these builder chaps you'll get
+them down.  They stick you with everything if you don't look sharp....
+Take ten per cent. off all round.  I shan't mind it's coming out a
+hundred or so over the mark!"
+
+Bosinney shook his head:
+
+"I've taken off every farthing I can!"
+
+Soames pushed back the table with a movement of anger, which sent the
+account sheets fluttering to the ground.
+
+"Then all I can say is," he flustered out, "you've made a pretty mess of
+it!"
+
+"I've told you a dozen times," Bosinney answered sharply, "that there'd
+be extras.  I've pointed them out to you over and over again!"
+
+"I know that," growled Soames: "I shouldn't have objected to a ten pound
+note here and there.  How was I to know that by 'extras' you meant seven
+hundred pounds?"
+
+The qualities of both men had contributed to this not-inconsiderable
+discrepancy.  On the one hand, the architect's devotion to his idea, to
+the image of a house which he had created and believed in--had made him
+nervous of being stopped, or forced to the use of makeshifts; on the
+other, Soames' not less true and wholehearted devotion to the very best
+article that could  be obtained for the money, had rendered him averse to
+believing that things worth thirteen shillings could not be bought with
+twelve.
+
+"I wish I'd never undertaken your house," said Bosinney suddenly. "You
+come down here worrying me out of my life.  You want double the value for
+your money anybody else would, and now that you've got a house that for
+its size is not to be beaten in the county, you don't want to pay for it.
+If you're anxious to be off your bargain, I daresay I can find the
+balance above the estimates myself, but I'm d----d if I do another stroke
+of work for you!"
+
+Soames regained his composure.  Knowing that Bosinney had no capital, he
+regarded this as a wild suggestion.  He saw, too, that he would be kept
+indefinitely out of this house on which he had set his heart, and just at
+the crucial point when the architect's personal care made all the
+difference.  In the meantime there was Irene to be thought of!  She had
+been very queer lately.  He really believed it was only because she had
+taken to Bosinney that she tolerated the idea of the house at all.  It
+would not do to make an open breach with her.
+
+"You needn't get into a rage," he said.  "If I'm willing to put up with
+it, I suppose you needn't cry out.  All I meant was that when you tell me
+a thing is going to cost so much, I like to--well, in fact, I--like to
+know where I am."
+
+"Look here!" said Bosinney, and Soames was both annoyed and surprised by
+the shrewdness of his glance.  "You've got my services dirt cheap.  For
+the kind of work I've put into this house, and the amount of time I've
+given to it, you'd have had to pay Littlemaster or some other fool four
+times as much.  What you want, in fact, is a first-rate man for a
+fourth-rate fee, and that's exactly what you've got!"
+
+Soames saw that he really meant what he said, and, angry though he was,
+the consequences of a row rose before him too vividly. He saw his house
+unfinished, his wife rebellious, himself a laughingstock.
+
+"Let's go over it," he said sulkily, "and see how the money's gone."
+
+"Very well," assented Bosinney.  "But we'll hurry up, if you don't mind.
+I have to get back in time to take June to the theatre."
+
+Soames cast a stealthy look at him, and said: "Coming to our place, I
+suppose to meet her?" He was always coming to their place!
+
+There had been rain the night before-a spring rain, and the earth smelt
+of sap and wild grasses.  The warm, soft breeze swung the leaves and the
+golden buds of the old oak tree, and in the sunshine the blackbirds were
+whistling their hearts out.
+
+It was such a spring day as breathes into a man an ineffable yearning, a
+painful sweetness, a longing that makes him stand motionless, looking at
+the leaves or grass, and fling out his arms to embrace he knows not what.
+The earth gave forth a fainting warmth, stealing up through the chilly
+garment in which winter had wrapped her.  It was her long caress of
+invitation, to draw men down to lie within her arms, to roll their bodies
+on her, and put their lips to her breast.
+
+On just such a day as this Soames had got from Irene the promise he had
+asked her for so often.  Seated on the fallen trunk of a tree, he had
+promised for the twentieth time that if their marriage were not a
+success, she should be as free as if she had never married him!
+
+"Do you swear it?" she had said.  A few days back she had reminded him of
+that oath.  He had answered: "Nonsense!  I couldn't have sworn any such
+thing!"  By some awkward fatality he remembered it now.  What queer
+things men would swear for the sake of women!  He would have sworn it at
+any time to gain her! He would swear it now, if thereby he could touch
+her--but nobody could touch her, she was cold-hearted!
+
+And memories crowded on him with the fresh, sweet savour of the spring
+wind-memories of his courtship.
+
+In the spring of the year 1881 he was visiting his old school-fellow and
+client, George Liversedge, of Branksome, who, with the view of developing
+his pine-woods in the neighbourhood of Bournemouth, had placed the
+formation of the company necessary to the scheme in Soames's hands.  Mrs.
+Liversedge, with a sense of the fitness of things, had given a musical
+tea in his honour. Later in the course of this function, which Soames, no
+musician, had regarded as an unmitigated bore, his eye had been caught by
+the face of a girl dressed in mourning, standing by herself.  The lines
+of her tall, as yet rather thin figure, showed through the wispy,
+clinging stuff of her black dress, her black-gloved hands were crossed in
+front of her, her lips slightly parted, and her large, dark eyes wandered
+from face to face.  Her hair, done low on her neck, seemed to gleam above
+her black collar like coils of shining metal.  And as Soames stood
+looking at her, the sensation that most men have felt at one time or
+another went stealing through him--a peculiar satisfaction of the senses,
+a peculiar certainty, which novelists and old ladies call love at first
+sight.  Still stealthily watching her, he at once made his way to his
+hostess, and stood doggedly waiting for the music to cease.
+
+"Who is that girl with yellow hair and dark eyes?" he asked.
+
+"That--oh!  Irene Heron.  Her father, Professor Heron, died this year.
+She lives with her stepmother.  She's a nice girl, a pretty girl, but no
+money!"
+
+"Introduce me, please," said Soames.
+
+It was very little that he found to say, nor did he find her responsive
+to that little.  But he went away with the resolution to see her again.
+He effected his object by chance, meeting her on the pier with her
+stepmother, who had the habit of walking there from twelve to one of a
+forenoon.  Soames made this lady's acquaintance with alacrity, nor was it
+long before he perceived in her the ally he was looking for.  His keen
+scent for the commercial side of family life soon told him that Irene
+cost her stepmother more than the fifty pounds a year she brought her; it
+also told him that Mrs. Heron, a woman yet in the prime of life, desired
+to be married again.  The strange ripening beauty of her stepdaughter
+stood in the way of this desirable consummation. And Soames, in his
+stealthy tenacity, laid his plans.
+
+He left Bournemouth without having given himself away, but in a month's
+time came back, and this time he spoke, not to the girl, but to her
+stepmother.  He had made up his mind, he said; he would wait any time.
+And he had long to wait, watching Irene bloom, the lines of her young
+figure softening, the stronger blood deepening the gleam of her eyes, and
+warming her face to a creamy glow; and at each visit he proposed to her,
+and when that visit was at an end, took her refusal away with him, back
+to London, sore at heart, but steadfast and silent as the grave.  He
+tried to come at the secret springs of her resistance; only once had he a
+gleam of light.  It was at one of those assembly dances, which afford the
+only outlet to the passions of the population of seaside watering-places.
+He was sitting with her in an embrasure, his senses tingling with the
+contact of the waltz. She had looked at him over her, slowly waving fan;
+and he had lost his head.  Seizing that moving wrist, he pressed his lips
+to the flesh of her arm.  And she had shuddered--to this day he had not
+forgotten that shudder--nor the look so passionately averse she had given
+him.
+
+A year after that she had yielded.  What had made her yield he could
+never make out; and from Mrs. Heron, a woman of some diplomatic talent,
+he learnt nothing.  Once after they were married he asked her, "What made
+you refuse me so often?"  She had answered by a strange silence.  An
+enigma to him from the day that he first saw her, she was an enigma to
+him still....
+
+Bosinney was waiting for him at the door; and on his rugged,
+good-looking, face was a queer, yearning, yet happy look, as though he
+too saw a promise of bliss in the spring sky, sniffed a coming happiness
+in the spring air.  Soames looked at him waiting there.  What was the
+matter with the fellow that he looked so happy?  What was he waiting for
+with that smile on his lips and in his eyes?  Soames could not see that
+for which Bosinney was waiting as he stood there drinking in the
+flower-scented wind. And once more he felt baffled in the presence of
+this man whom by habit he despised.  He hastened on to the house.
+
+"The only colour for those tiles," he heard Bosinney say,--"is ruby with
+a grey tint in the stuff, to give a transparent effect. I should like
+Irene's opinion.  I'm ordering the purple leather curtains for the
+doorway of this court; and if you distemper the drawing-room ivory cream
+over paper, you'll get an illusive look. You want to aim all through the
+decorations at what I call charm."
+
+Soames said: "You mean that my wife has charm!"
+
+Bosinney evaded the question.
+
+"You should have a clump of iris plants in the centre of that court."
+
+Soames smiled superciliously.
+
+"I'll look into Beech's some time," he said, "and see what's
+appropriate!"
+
+They found little else to say to each other, but on the way to the
+Station Soames asked:
+
+"I suppose you find Irene very artistic."
+
+"Yes." The abrupt answer was as distinct a snub as saying: "If you want
+to discuss her you can do it with someone else!"
+
+And the slow, sulky anger Soames had felt all the afternoon burned the
+brighter within him.
+
+Neither spoke again till they were close to the Station, then Soames
+asked:
+
+"When do you expect to have finished?"
+
+"By the end of June, if you really wish me to decorate as well."
+
+Soames nodded.  "But you quite understand," he said, "that the house is
+costing me a lot beyond what I contemplated.  I may as well tell you that
+I should have thrown it up, only I'm not in the habit of giving up what
+I've set my mind on."
+
+Bosinney made no reply.  And Soames gave him askance a look of dogged
+dislike--for in spite of his fastidious air and that supercilious,
+dandified taciturnity, Soames, with his set lips and squared chin, was
+not unlike a bulldog....
+
+When, at seven o'clock that evening, June arrived at 62, Montpellier
+Square, the maid Bilson told her that Mr. Bosinney was in the
+drawing-room; the mistress--she said--was dressing, and would be down in
+a minute.  She would tell her that Miss June was here.
+
+June stopped her at once.
+
+"All right, Bilson," she said, "I'll just go in.  You, needn't hurry Mrs.
+Soames."
+
+She took off her cloak, and Bilson, with an understanding look, did not
+even open the drawing-room door for her, but ran downstairs.
+
+June paused for a moment to look at herself in the little old-fashioned
+silver mirror above the oaken rug chest--a slim, imperious young figure,
+with a small resolute face, in a white frock, cut moon-shaped at the base
+of a neck too slender for her crown of twisted red-gold hair.
+
+She opened the drawing-room door softly, meaning to take him by surprise.
+The room was filled with a sweet hot scent of flowering azaleas.
+
+She took a long breath of the perfume, and heard Bosinney's voice, not in
+the room, but quite close, saying.
+
+"Ah! there were such heaps of things I wanted to talk about, and now we
+shan't have time!"
+
+Irene's voice answered: "Why not at dinner?"
+
+"How can one talk...."
+
+June's first thought was to go away, but instead she crossed to the long
+window opening on the little court.  It was from there that the scent of
+the azaleas came, and, standing with their backs to her, their faces
+buried in the golden-pink blossoms, stood her lover and Irene.
+
+Silent but unashamed, with flaming cheeks and angry eyes, the girl
+watched.
+
+"Come on Sunday by yourself--We can go over the house together."
+
+June saw Irene look up at him through her screen of blossoms.  It was not
+the look of a coquette, but--far worse to the watching girl--of a woman
+fearful lest that look should say too much.
+
+"I've promised to go for a drive with Uncle...."
+
+"The big one!  Make him bring you; it's only ten miles--the very thing
+for his horses."
+
+"Poor old Uncle Swithin!"
+
+A wave of the azalea scent drifted into June's face; she felt sick and
+dizzy.
+
+"Do! ah! do!"
+
+"But why?"
+
+"I must see you there--I thought you'd like to help me...."
+
+The answer seemed to the girl to come softly with a tremble from amongst
+the blossoms: "So I do!"
+
+And she stepped into the open space of the window.
+
+"How stuffy it is here!" she said; "I can't bear this scent!"
+
+Her eyes, so angry and direct, swept both their faces.
+
+"Were you talking about the house?  I haven't seen it yet, you
+know--shall we all go on Sunday?"'
+
+From Irene's face the colour had flown.
+
+"I am going for a drive that day with Uncle Swithin," she answered.
+
+"Uncle Swithin!  What does he matter?  You can throw him over!"
+
+"I am not in the habit of throwing people over!"
+
+There was a sound of footsteps and June saw Soames standing just behind
+her.
+
+"Well! if you are all ready," said Irene, looking from one to the other
+with a strange smile, "dinner is too!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+JUNE'S  TREAT
+
+Dinner began in silence; the women facing one another, and the men.
+
+In silence the soup was finished--excellent, if a little thick; and fish
+was brought.  In silence it was handed.
+
+Bosinney ventured: "It's the first spring day."
+
+Irene echoed softly: "Yes--the first spring day."
+
+"Spring!" said June: "there isn't a breath of air!" No one replied.
+
+The fish was taken away, a fine fresh sole from Dover.  And Bilson
+brought champagne, a bottle swathed around the neck with white....
+
+Soames said: "You'll find it dry."
+
+Cutlets were handed, each pink-frilled about the legs.  They were refused
+by June, and silence fell.
+
+Soames said: "You'd better take a cutlet, June; there's nothing coming."
+
+But June again refused, so they were borne away.  And then Irene asked:
+"Phil, have you heard my blackbird?"
+
+Bosinney answered: "Rather--he's got a hunting-song.  As I came round I
+heard him in the Square."
+
+"He's such a darling!"
+
+"Salad, sir?" Spring chicken was removed.
+
+But Soames was speaking: "The asparagus is very poor.  Bosinney, glass of
+sherry with your sweet?  June, you're drinking nothing!"
+
+June said: "You know I never do.  Wine's such horrid stuff!"
+
+An apple charlotte came upon a silver dish, and smilingly Irene said:
+"The azaleas are so wonderful this year!"
+
+To this Bosinney murmured: "Wonderful! The scent's extraordinary!"
+
+June said: "How can you like the scent?  Sugar, please, Bilson."
+
+Sugar was handed her, and Soames remarked: "This charlottes good!"
+
+The charlotte was removed.  Long silence followed.  Irene, beckoning,
+said: "Take out the azalea, Bilson.  Miss June can't bear the scent."
+
+"No; let it stay," said June.
+
+Olives from France, with Russian caviare, were placed on little plates.
+And Soames remarked: "Why can't we have the Spanish?" But no one
+answered.
+
+The olives were removed.  Lifting her tumbler June demanded: "Give me
+some water, please."  Water was given her.  A silver tray was brought,
+with German plums.  There was a lengthy pause.  In perfect harmony all
+were eating them.
+
+Bosinney counted up the stones: "This year--next year--some time."
+
+Irene finished softly: "Never! There was such a glorious sunset. The
+sky's all ruby still--so beautiful!"
+
+He answered: "Underneath the dark."
+
+Their eyes had met, and June cried scornfully: "A London sunset!"
+
+Egyptian cigarettes were handed in a silver box.  Soames, taking one,
+remarked: "What time's your play begin?"
+
+No one replied, and Turkish coffee followed in enamelled cups.
+
+Irene, smiling quietly, said: "If only...."
+
+"Only what?" said June.
+
+"If only it could always be the spring!"
+
+Brandy was handed; it was pale and old.
+
+Soames said: "Bosinney, better take some brandy."
+
+Bosinney took a glass; they all arose.
+
+"You want a cab?" asked Soames.
+
+June answered: "No! My cloaks please, Bilson."  Her cloak was brought.
+
+Irene, from the window, murmured: "Such a lovely night!  The stars are
+coming out!"
+
+Soames added: "Well, I hope you'll both enjoy yourselves."
+
+From the door June answered: "Thanks.  Come, Phil."
+
+Bosinney cried: "I'm coming."
+
+Soames smiled a sneering smile, and said: "I wish you luck!"
+
+And at the door Irene watched them go.
+
+Bosinney called: "Good night!"
+
+"Good night!" she answered softly....
+
+June made her lover take her on the top of a 'bus, saying she wanted air,
+and there sat silent, with her face to the breeze.
+
+The driver turned once or twice, with the intention of venturing a
+remark, but thought better of it.  They were a lively couple! The spring
+had got into his blood, too; he felt the need for letting steam escape,
+and clucked his tongue, flourishing his whip, wheeling his horses, and
+even they, poor things, had smelled the spring, and for a brief half-hour
+spurned the pavement with happy hoofs.
+
+The whole town was alive; the boughs, curled upward with their decking of
+young leaves, awaited some gift the breeze could bring.  New-lighted
+lamps were gaining mastery, and the faces of the crowd showed pale under
+that glare, while on high the great white clouds slid swiftly, softly,
+over the purple sky.
+
+Men in, evening dress had thrown back overcoats, stepping jauntily up the
+steps of Clubs; working folk loitered; and women--those women who at
+that time of night are solitary--solitary and moving eastward in a
+stream--swung slowly along, with expectation in their gait, dreaming of
+good wine and a good supper, or--for an unwonted minute, of kisses given
+for love.
+
+Those countless figures, going their ways under the lamps and the
+moving-sky, had one and all received some restless blessing from the stir
+of spring.  And one and all, like those clubmen with their opened coats,
+had shed something of caste, and creed, and custom, and by the cock of
+their hats, the pace of their walk, their laughter, or their silence,
+revealed their common kinship under the passionate heavens.
+
+Bosinney and June entered the theatre in silence, and mounted to their
+seats in the upper boxes.  The piece had just begun, and the
+half-darkened house, with its rows of creatures peering all one way,
+resembled a great garden of flowers turning their faces to the sun.
+
+June had never before been in the upper boxes.  From the age of fifteen
+she had habitually accompanied her grandfather to the stalls, and not
+common stalls, but the best seats in the house, towards the centre of the
+third row, booked by old Jolyon, at Grogan and Boyne's, on his way home
+from the City, long before the day; carried in his overcoat pocket,
+together with his cigar-case and his old kid gloves, and handed to June
+to keep till the appointed night.  And in those stalls--an erect old
+figure with a serene white head, a little figure, strenuous and eager,
+with a red-gold head--they would sit through every kind of play, and on
+the way home old Jolyon would say of the principal actor: "Oh, he's a
+poor stick!  You should have seen little Bobson!"
+
+She had looked forward to this evening with keen delight; it was stolen,
+chaperone-less, undreamed of at Stanhope Gate, where she was supposed to
+be at Soames'.  She had expected reward for her subterfuge, planned for
+her lover's sake; she had expected it to break up the thick, chilly
+cloud, and make the relations between them which of late had been so
+puzzling, so tormenting--sunny and simple again as they had been before
+the winter.  She had come with the intention of saying something
+definite; and she looked at the stage with a furrow between her brows,
+seeing nothing, her hands squeezed together in her lap.  A swarm of
+jealous suspicions stung and stung her.
+
+If Bosinney was conscious of her trouble he made no sign.
+
+The curtain dropped.  The first act had come to an end.
+
+"It's awfully hot here!" said the girl; "I should like to go out."
+
+She was very white, and she knew--for with her nerves thus sharpened she
+saw everything--that he was both uneasy and compunctious.
+
+At the back of the theatre an open balcony hung over the street; she took
+possession of this, and stood leaning there without a word, waiting for
+him to begin.
+
+At last she could bear it no longer.
+
+"I want to say something to you, Phil," she said.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+The defensive tone of his voice brought the colour flying to her cheek,
+the words flying to her lips: "You don't give me a chance to be nice to
+you; you haven't for ages now!"
+
+Bosinney stared down at the street.  He made no answer....
+
+June cried passionately: "You know I want to do everything for you--that
+I want to be everything to you...."
+
+A hum rose from the street, and, piercing it with a sharp 'ping,' the
+bell sounded for the raising of the curtain. June did not stir.  A
+desperate struggle was going on within her.  Should she put everything to
+the proof?  Should she challenge directly that influence, that attraction
+which was driving him away from her?  It was her nature to challenge, and
+she said: "Phil, take me to see the house on Sunday!"
+
+With a smile quivering and breaking on her lips, and trying, how hard,
+not to show that she was watching, she searched his face, saw it waver
+and hesitate, saw a troubled line come between his brows, the blood rush
+into his face.  He answered: "Not Sunday, dear; some other day!"
+
+"Why not Sunday?  I shouldn't be in the way on Sunday."
+
+He made an evident effort, and said: "I have an engagement."
+
+"You are going to take...."
+
+His eyes grew angry; he shrugged his shoulders, and answered: "An
+engagement that will prevent my taking you to see the house!"
+
+June bit her lip till the blood came, and walked back to her seat without
+another word, but she could not help the tears of rage rolling down her
+face.  The house had been mercifully darkened for a crisis, and no one
+could see her trouble.
+
+Yet in this world of Forsytes let no man think himself immune from
+observation.
+
+In the third row behind, Euphemia, Nicholas's youngest daughter, with her
+married-sister, Mrs. Tweetyman, were watching.
+
+They reported at Timothy's, how they had seen June and her fiance at the
+theatre.
+
+"In the stalls?"  "No, not in the...."  "Oh! in the dress circle, of
+course.  That seemed to be quite fashionable nowadays with young people!"
+
+Well--not exactly.  In the....  Anyway, that engagement wouldn't last
+long.  They had never seen anyone look so thunder and lightningy as that
+little June!  With tears of enjoyment in their eyes, they related how she
+had kicked a man's hat as she returned to her seat in the middle of an
+act, and how the man had looked. Euphemia had a noted, silent laugh,
+terminating most disappointingly in squeaks; and when Mrs. Small, holding
+up her hands, said: "My dear!  Kicked a ha-at?" she let out such a number
+of these that she had to be recovered with smelling-salts.  As she went
+away she said to Mrs. Tweetyman:
+
+"Kicked a--ha-at!  Oh! I shall die."
+
+For 'that little June' this evening, that was to have been 'her treat,'
+was the most miserable she had ever spent.  God knows she tried to stifle
+her pride, her suspicion, her jealousy!
+
+She parted from Bosinney at old Jolyon's door without breaking down; the
+feeling that her lover must be conquered was strong enough to sustain her
+till his retiring footsteps brought home the true extent of her
+wretchedness.
+
+The noiseless 'Sankey' let her in.  She would have slipped up to her own
+room, but old Jolyon, who had heard her entrance, was in the dining-room
+doorway.
+
+"Come in and have your milk," he said.  "It's been kept hot for you.
+You're very late.  Where have you been?"
+
+June stood at the fireplace, with a foot on the fender and an arm on the
+mantelpiece, as her grandfather had done when he came in that night of
+the opera.  She was too near a breakdown to care what she told him.
+
+"We dined at Soames's."
+
+"H'm! the man of property!  His wife there and Bosinney?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Old Jolyon's glance was fixed on her with the penetrating gaze from which
+it was difficult to hide; but she was not looking at him, and when she
+turned her face, he dropped his scrutiny at once.  He had seen enough,
+and too much.  He bent down to lift the cup of milk for her from the
+hearth, and, turning away, grumbled: "You oughtn't to stay out so late;
+it makes you fit for nothing."
+
+He was invisible now behind his paper, which he turned with a vicious
+crackle; but when June came up to kiss him, he said: "Good-night, my
+darling," in a tone so tremulous and unexpected, that it was all the girl
+could do to get out of the room without breaking into the fit of sobbing
+which lasted her well on into the night.
+
+When the door was closed, old Jolyon dropped his paper, and stared long
+and anxiously in front of him.
+
+'The beggar!' he thought.  'I always knew she'd have trouble with him!'
+
+Uneasy doubts and suspicions, the more poignant that he felt himself
+powerless to check or control the march of events, came crowding upon
+him.
+
+Was the fellow going to jilt her?  He longed to go and say to him: "Look
+here, you sir!  Are you going to jilt my grand-daughter?"  But how could
+he?  Knowing little or nothing, he was yet certain, with his unerring
+astuteness, that there was something going on.  He suspected Bosinney of
+being too much at Montpellier Square.
+
+'This fellow,' he thought, 'may not be a scamp; his face is not a bad
+one, but he's a queer fish.  I don't know what to make of him.  I shall
+never know what to make of him!  They tell me he works like a nigger, but
+I see no good coming of it.  He's unpractical, he has no method.  When he
+comes here, he sits as glum as a monkey.  If I ask him what wine he'll
+have, he says: "Thanks, any wine." If I offer him a cigar, he smokes it
+as if it were a twopenny German thing.  I never see him looking at June
+as he ought to look at her; and yet, he's not after her money.  If she
+were to make a sign, he'd be off his bargain to-morrow.  But she
+won't--not she!  She'll stick to him!  She's as obstinate as fate--She'll
+never let go!'
+
+Sighing deeply, he turned the paper; in its columns, perchance he might
+find consolation.
+
+And upstairs in her room June sat at her open window, where the spring
+wind came, after its revel across the Park, to cool her hot cheeks and
+burn her heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+DRIVE WITH SWITHIN
+
+Two lines of a certain song in a certain famous old school's songbook run
+as follows:
+
+'How the buttons on his blue frock shone, tra-la-la! How he carolled and
+he sang, like a bird!....'
+
+Swithin did not exactly carol and sing like a bird, but he felt almost
+like endeavouring to hum a tune, as he stepped out of Hyde Park
+Mansions, and contemplated his horses drawn up before the door.
+
+The afternoon was as balmy as a day in June, and to complete the simile
+of the old song, he had put on a blue frock-coat, dispensing with an
+overcoat, after sending Adolf down three times to make sure that there
+was not the least suspicion of east in the wind; and the frock-coat was
+buttoned so tightly around his personable form, that, if the buttons did
+not shine, they might pardonably have done so.  Majestic on the pavement
+he fitted on a pair of dog-skin gloves; with his large bell-shaped top
+hat, and his great stature and bulk he looked too primeval for a Forsyte.
+His thick white hair, on which Adolf had bestowed a touch of pomatum,
+exhaled the fragrance of opoponax and cigars--the celebrated Swithin
+brand, for which he paid one hundred and forty shillings the hundred, and
+of which old Jolyon had unkindly said, he wouldn't smoke them as a gift;
+they wanted the stomach of a horse!
+
+"Adolf!"
+
+"Sare!"
+
+"The new plaid rug!"
+
+He would never teach that fellow to look smart; and Mrs. Soames he felt
+sure, had an eye!
+
+"The phaeton hood down; I am going--to--drive--a--lady!"
+
+A pretty woman would want to show off her frock; and well--he was going
+to drive a lady!  It was like a new beginning to the good old days.
+
+Ages since he had driven a woman!  The last time, if he remembered, it
+had been Juley; the poor old soul had been as nervous as a cat the whole
+time, and so put him out of patience that, as he dropped her in the
+Bayswater Road, he had said: "Well I'm d---d if I ever drive you again!"
+And he never had, not he!
+
+Going up to his horses' heads, he examined their bits; not that he knew
+anything about bits--he didn't pay his coachman sixty pounds a  year to
+do his work for him, that had never been his principle.  Indeed, his
+reputation as a horsey man rested mainly on the fact that once, on Derby
+Day, he had been welshed by some thimble-riggers.  But someone at the
+Club, after seeing him drive his greys up to the door--he always drove
+grey horses, you got more style for the money, some thought--had called
+him 'Four-in-hand Forsyte.' The name having reached his ears through that
+fellow Nicholas Treffry, old Jolyon's dead partner, the great driving man
+notorious for more carriage accidents than any man in the
+kingdom--Swithin had ever after conceived it right to act up to it.  The
+name had taken his fancy, not because he had ever driven four-in-hand, or
+was ever likely to, but because of something distinguished in the sound.
+Four-in-hand Forsyte!  Not bad!  Born too soon, Swithin had missed his
+vocation.  Coming upon London twenty years later, he could not have
+failed to have become a stockbroker, but at the time when he was obliged
+to select, this great profession had not as yet became the chief glory of
+the upper-middle class.  He had literally been forced into land agency.
+
+Once in the driving seat, with the reins handed to him, and blinking over
+his pale old cheeks in the full sunlight, he took a slow look
+round--Adolf was already up behind; the cockaded groom at the horses'
+heads stood ready to let go; everything was prepared for the signal, and
+Swithin gave it.  The equipage dashed forward, and before you could say
+Jack Robinson, with a rattle and flourish drew up at Soames' door.
+
+Irene came out at once, and stepped in--he afterward described it at
+Timothy's--"as light as--er--Taglioni, no fuss about it, no wanting this
+or wanting that;" and above all, Swithin dwelt on this, staring at Mrs.
+Septimus in a way that disconcerted her a good deal, "no silly
+nervousness!"  To Aunt Hester he portrayed Irene's hat.  "Not one of your
+great flopping things, sprawling about, and catching the dust, that women
+are so fond of nowadays, but a neat little--" he made a circular motion
+of his hand, "white veil--capital taste."
+
+"What was it made of?" inquired Aunt Hester, who manifested a languid but
+permanent excitement at any mention of dress.
+
+"Made of?" returned Swithin; "now how should I know?"
+
+He sank into silence so profound that Aunt Hester began to be afraid he
+had fallen into a trance.  She did not try to rouse him herself, it not
+being her custom.
+
+'I wish somebody would come,' she thought; 'I don't like the look of
+him!'
+
+But suddenly Swithin returned to life.  "Made of" he wheezed out slowly,
+"what should it be made of?"
+
+They had not gone four miles before Swithin received the impression that
+Irene liked driving with him.  Her face was so soft behind that white
+veil, and her dark eyes shone so in the spring light, and whenever he
+spoke she raised them to him and smiled.
+
+On Saturday morning Soames had found her at her writing-table with a note
+written to Swithin, putting him off.  Why did she want to put him off? he
+asked.  She might put her own people off when she liked, he would not
+have her putting off his people!
+
+She had looked at him intently, had torn up the note, and said: "Very
+well!"
+
+And then she began writing another.  He took a casual glance presently,
+and saw that it was addressed to Bosinney.
+
+"What are you writing to him about?" he asked.
+
+Irene, looking at him again with that intent look, said quietly:
+"Something he wanted me to do for him!"
+
+"Humph!" said Soames,--"Commissions!"
+
+"You'll have your work cut out if you begin that sort of thing!" He said
+no more.
+
+Swithin opened his eyes at the mention of Robin Hill; it was a long way
+for his horses, and he always dined at half-past seven, before the rush
+at the Club began; the new chef took more trouble with an early dinner--a
+lazy rascal!
+
+He would like to have a look at the house, however.  A house appealed to
+any Forsyte, and especially to one who had been an auctioneer.  After all
+he said the distance was nothing.  When he was a younger man he had had
+rooms at Richmond for many years, kept his carriage and pair there, and
+drove them up and down to business every day of his life.
+
+Four-in-hand Forsyte they called him!  His T-cart, his horses had been
+known from Hyde Park Corner to the Star and Garter.  The Duke of Z....
+wanted to get hold of them, would have given him double the money, but he
+had kept them; know a good thing when you have it, eh?  A look of solemn
+pride came portentously on his shaven square old face, he rolled his head
+in his stand-up collar, like a turkey-cock preening himself.
+
+She was really--a charming woman!  He enlarged upon her frock afterwards
+to Aunt Juley, who held up her hands at his way of putting it.
+
+Fitted her like a skin--tight as a drum; that was how he liked 'em, all
+of a piece, none of your daverdy, scarecrow women!  He gazed at Mrs.
+Septimus Small, who took after James--long and thin.
+
+"There's style about her," he went on, "fit for a king!  And she's so
+quiet with it too!"
+
+"She seems to have made quite a conquest of you, any way," drawled Aunt
+Hester from her corner.
+
+Swithin heard extremely well when anybody attacked him.
+
+"What's that?" he said.  "I know a--pretty--woman when I see one, and all
+I can say is, I don't see the young man about that's fit for her; but
+perhaps--you--do, come, perhaps--you-do!"
+
+"Oh?" murmured Aunt Hester, "ask Juley!"
+
+Long before they reached Robin Hill, however, the unaccustomed airing had
+made him terribly sleepy; he drove with his eyes closed, a life-time of
+deportment alone keeping his tall and bulky form from falling askew.
+
+Bosinney, who was watching, came out to meet them, and all three entered
+the house together; Swithin in front making play with a stout
+gold-mounted Malacca cane, put into his hand by Adolf, for his knees were
+feeling the effects of their long stay in the same position.  He had
+assumed his fur coat, to guard against the draughts of the unfinished
+house.
+
+The staircase--he said--was handsome! the baronial style!  They would
+want some statuary about!  He came to a standstill between the columns of
+the doorway into the inner court, and held out his cane inquiringly.
+
+What was this to be--this vestibule, or whatever they called it? But
+gazing at the skylight, inspiration came to him.
+
+"Ah! the billiard-room!"
+
+When told it was to be a tiled court with plants in the centre, he turned
+to Irene:
+
+"Waste this on plants?  You take my advice and have a billiard table
+here!"
+
+Irene smiled.  She had lifted her veil, banding it like a nun's coif
+across her forehead, and the smile of her dark eyes below this seemed to
+Swithin more charming than ever.  He nodded.  She would take his advice
+he saw.
+
+He had little to say of the drawing or dining-rooms, which he described
+as "spacious"; but fell into such raptures as he permitted to a man of
+his dignity, in the wine-cellar, to which he descended by stone steps,
+Bosinney going first with a light.
+
+"You'll have room here," he said, "for six or seven hundred dozen--a very
+pooty little cellar!"
+
+Bosinney having expressed the wish to show them the house from the copse
+below, Swithin came to a stop.
+
+"There's a fine view from here," he remarked; "you haven't such a thing
+as a chair?"
+
+A chair was brought him from Bosinney's tent.
+
+"You go down," he said blandly; "you two!  I'll sit here and look at the
+view."
+
+He sat down by the oak tree, in the sun; square and upright, with one
+hand stretched out, resting on the nob of his cane, the other planted on
+his knee; his fur coat thrown open, his hat, roofing with its flat top
+the pale square of his face; his stare, very blank, fixed on the
+landscape.
+
+He nodded to them as they went off down through the fields.  He was,
+indeed, not sorry to be left thus for a quiet moment of reflection.  The
+air was balmy, not too much heat in the sun; the prospect a fine one, a
+remarka....  His head fell a little to one side; he jerked it up and
+thought: Odd!  He--ah!  They were waving to him from the bottom!  He put
+up his hand, and moved it more than once.  They were active--the prospect
+was remar.... His head fell to the left, he jerked it up at once; it fell
+to the right.  It remained there; he was asleep.
+
+And asleep, a sentinel on the--top of the rise, he  appeared to rule over
+this prospect--remarkable--like some image blocked out by the special
+artist, of primeval Forsytes in pagan days, to record the domination of
+mind over matter!
+
+And all the unnumbered generations of his yeoman ancestors, wont of a
+Sunday to stand akimbo surveying their little plots of land, their grey
+unmoving eyes hiding their instinct with its hidden roots of violence,
+their instinct for possession to the exclusion of all the world--all
+these unnumbered generations seemed to sit there with him on the top of
+the rise.
+
+But from him, thus slumbering, his jealous Forsyte spirit travelled far,
+into God-knows-what jungle of fancies; with those two young people, to
+see what they were doing down there in the copse--in the copse where the
+spring was running riot with the scent of sap and bursting buds, the song
+of birds innumerable, a carpet of bluebells and sweet growing things, and
+the sun caught like gold in the tops of the trees; to see what they were
+doing, walking along there so close together on the path that was too
+narrow; walking along there so close that they were always touching; to
+watch Irene's eyes, like dark thieves, stealing the heart out of the
+spring.  And a great unseen chaperon, his spirit was there, stopping with
+them to look at the little furry corpse of a mole, not dead an hour, with
+his mushroom-and-silver coat untouched by the rain or dew; watching over
+Irene's bent head, and the soft look of her pitying eyes; and over that
+young man's head, gazing at her so hard, so strangely.  Walking on with
+them, too, across the open space where a wood-cutter had been at work,
+where the bluebells were trampled down, and a trunk had swayed and
+staggered down from its gashed stump.  Climbing it with them, over, and
+on to the very edge of the copse, whence there stretched an undiscovered
+country, from far away in which came the sounds, 'Cuckoo-cuckoo!'
+
+Silent, standing with them there, and uneasy at their silence! Very
+queer, very strange!
+
+Then back again, as though guilty, through the wood--back to the cutting,
+still silent, amongst the songs of birds that never ceased, and the wild
+scent--hum! what was it--like that herb they put in--back to the log
+across the path....
+
+And then unseen, uneasy, flapping above them, trying to make noises, his
+Forsyte spirit watched her balanced on the log, her pretty figure
+swaying, smiling down at that young man gazing up with such strange,
+shining eyes, slipping now--a--ah! falling, o--oh! sliding--down his
+breast; her soft, warm body clutched, her head bent back from his lips;
+his kiss; her recoil; his cry: "You must know--I love you!"  Must
+know--indeed, a pretty...? Love!  Hah!
+
+Swithin awoke; virtue had gone out of him.  He had a taste in his mouth.
+Where was he?
+
+Damme!  He had been asleep!
+
+He had dreamed something about a new soup, with a taste of mint in it.
+
+Those young people--where had they got to?  His left leg had pins and
+needles.
+
+"Adolf!"  The rascal was not there; the rascal was asleep somewhere.
+
+He stood up, tall, square, bulky in his fur, looking anxiously down over
+the fields, and presently he saw them coming.
+
+Irene was in front; that young fellow--what had they nicknamed him--'The
+Buccaneer?' looked precious hangdog there behind her; had got a flea in
+his ear, he shouldn't wonder.  Serve him right, taking her down all that
+way to look at the house!  The proper place to look at a house from was
+the lawn.
+
+They saw him.  He extended his arm, and moved it spasmodically to
+encourage them.  But they had stopped.  What were they standing there
+for, talking--talking?  They came on again.  She had been, giving him a
+rub, he had not the least doubt of it, and no wonder, over a house like
+that--a great ugly thing, not the sort of house he was accustomed to.
+
+He looked intently at their faces, with his pale, immovable stare.  That
+young man looked very queer!
+
+"You'll never make anything of this!" he said tartly, pointing at the
+mansion;--"too newfangled!"
+
+Bosinney gazed at him as though he had not heard; and Swithin afterwards
+described him to Aunt Hester as "an extravagant sort of fellow very odd
+way of looking at you--a bumpy beggar!"
+
+What gave rise to this sudden piece of psychology he did not state;
+possibly Bosinney's, prominent forehead and cheekbones and chin, or
+something hungry in his face, which quarrelled with Swithin's conception
+of the calm satiety that should characterize the perfect gentleman.
+
+He brightened up at the mention of tea.  He had a contempt for tea--his
+brother Jolyon had been in tea; made a lot of money by it--but he was so
+thirsty, and had such a taste in his mouth, that he was prepared to drink
+anything.  He longed to inform Irene of the taste in his mouth--she was
+so sympathetic--but it would not be a distinguished thing to do; he
+rolled his tongue round, and faintly smacked it against his palate.
+
+In a far corner of the tent Adolf was bending his cat-like moustaches
+over a kettle.  He left it at once to draw the cork of a pint-bottle of
+champagne.  Swithin smiled, and, nodding at Bosinney, said: "Why, you're
+quite a Monte Cristo!"  This celebrated novel--one of the half-dozen he
+had read--had produced an extraordinary impression on his mind.
+
+Taking his glass from the table, he held it away from him to scrutinize
+the colour; thirsty as he was, it was not likely that he was going to
+drink trash!  Then, placing it to his lips, he took a sip.
+
+"A very nice wine," he said at last, passing it before his nose; "not the
+equal of my Heidsieck!"
+
+It was at this moment that the idea came to him which he afterwards
+imparted at Timothy's in this nutshell: "I shouldn't wonder a bit if that
+architect chap were sweet upon Mrs. Soames!"
+
+And from this moment his pale, round eyes never ceased to bulge with the
+interest of his discovery.
+
+"The fellow," he said to Mrs. Septimus, "follows her about with his eyes
+like a dog--the bumpy beggar!  I don't wonder at it--she's a very
+charming woman, and, I should say, the pink of discretion!"  A vague
+consciousness of perfume caging about Irene, like that from a flower with
+half-closed petals and a passionate heart, moved him to the creation of
+this image.  "But I wasn't sure of it," he said, "till I saw him pick up
+her handkerchief."
+
+Mrs. Small's eyes boiled with excitement.
+
+"And did he give it her back?" she asked.
+
+"Give it back?" said Swithin: "I saw him slobber on it when he thought I
+wasn't looking!"
+
+Mrs. Small gasped--too interested to speak.
+
+"But she gave him no encouragement," went on Swithin; he stopped, and
+stared for a minute or two in the way that alarmed Aunt Hester so--he had
+suddenly recollected that, as they were starting back in the phaeton, she
+had given Bosinney her hand a second time, and let it stay there too....
+He had touched his horses smartly with the whip, anxious to get her all
+to himself. But she had looked back, and she had not answered his first
+question; neither had he been able to see her face--she had kept it
+hanging down.
+
+There is somewhere a picture, which Swithin has not seen, of a man
+sitting on a rock, and by him, immersed in the still, green water, a
+sea-nymph lying on her back, with her hand on her naked breast.  She has
+a half-smile on her face--a smile of hopeless surrender and of secret
+joy.
+
+Seated by Swithin's side, Irene may have been smiling like that.
+
+When, warmed by champagne, he had her all to himself, he unbosomed
+himself of his wrongs; of his smothered resentment against the new chef
+at the club; his worry over the house in Wigmore Street, where the
+rascally tenant had gone bankrupt through helping his brother-in-law as
+if charity did not begin at home; of his deafness, too, and that pain he
+sometimes got in his right side.  She listened, her eyes swimming under
+their lids. He thought she was thinking deeply of his troubles, and
+pitied himself terribly.  Yet in his fur coat, with frogs across the
+breast, his top hat aslant, driving this beautiful woman, he had never
+felt more distinguished.
+
+A coster, however, taking his girl for a Sunday airing, seemed to have
+the same impression about himself.  This person had flogged his donkey
+into a gallop alongside, and sat, upright as a waxwork, in his shallopy
+chariot, his chin settled pompously on a red handkerchief, like Swithin's
+on his full cravat; while his girl, with the ends of a fly-blown boa
+floating out behind, aped a woman of fashion.  Her swain moved a stick
+with a ragged bit of string dangling from the end, reproducing with
+strange fidelity the circular flourish of Swithin's whip, and rolled his
+head at his lady with a leer that had a weird likeness to Swithin's
+primeval stare.
+
+Though for a time unconscious of the lowly ruffian's presence, Swithin
+presently took it into his head that he was being guyed. He laid his
+whip-lash across the mares flank.  The two chariots, however, by some
+unfortunate fatality continued abreast. Swithin's yellow, puffy face grew
+red; he raised his whip to lash the costermonger, but was saved from so
+far forgetting his dignity by a special intervention of Providence.  A
+carriage driving out through a gate forced phaeton and donkey-cart into
+proximity; the wheels grated, the lighter vehicle skidded, and was
+overturned.
+
+Swithin did not look round.  On no account would he have pulled up to
+help the ruffian.  Serve him right if he had broken his neck!
+
+But he could not if he would.  The greys had taken alarm.  The phaeton
+swung from side to side, and people raised frightened faces as they went
+dashing past.  Swithin's great arms, stretched at full length, tugged at
+the reins.  His cheeks were puffed, his lips compressed, his swollen face
+was of a dull, angry red.
+
+Irene had her hand on the rail, and at every lurch she gripped it
+tightly.  Swithin heard her ask:
+
+"Are we going to have an accident, Uncle Swithin?"
+
+He gasped out between his pants: "It's nothing; a--little fresh!"
+
+"I've never been in an accident."
+
+"Don't you move!"  He took a look at her.  She was smiling, perfectly
+calm.  "Sit still," he repeated.  "Never fear, I'll get you home!"
+
+And in the midst of all his terrible efforts, he was surprised to hear
+her answer in a voice not like her own:
+
+"I don't care if I never get home!"
+
+The carriage giving a terrific lurch, Swithin's exclamation was jerked
+back into his throat.  The horses, winded by the rise of a hill, now
+steadied to a trot, and finally stopped of their own accord.
+
+"When"--Swithin described it at Timothy's--"I pulled 'em up, there she
+was as cool as myself.  God bless my soul! she behaved as if she didn't
+care whether she broke her neck or not!  What was it she said: 'I don't
+care if I never get home?"  Leaning over the handle of his cane, he
+wheezed out, to Mrs. Small's terror: "And I'm not altogether surprised,
+with a finickin' feller like young Soames for a husband!"
+
+It did not occur to him to wonder what Bosinney had done after they had
+left him there alone; whether he had gone wandering about like the dog to
+which Swithin had compared him; wandering down to that copse where the
+spring was still in riot, the cuckoo still calling from afar; gone down
+there with her handkerchief pressed to lips, its fragrance mingling with
+the scent of mint and thyme.  Gone down there with such a wild, exquisite
+pain in his heart that he could have cried out among the trees.  Or what,
+indeed, the fellow had done.  In fact, till he came to Timothy's, Swithin
+had forgotten all about him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+JAMES GOES TO SEE FOR HIMSELF
+
+Those ignorant of Forsyte 'Change would not, perhaps, foresee all the
+stir made by Irene's visit to the house.
+
+After Swithin had related at Timothy's the full story of his memorable
+drive, the same, with the least suspicion of curiosity, the merest touch
+of malice, and a real desire to do good, was passed on to June.
+
+"And what a dreadful thing to say, my dear!" ended Aunt Juley; "that
+about not going home.  What did she mean?"
+
+It was a strange recital for the girl.  She heard it flushing painfully,
+and, suddenly, with a curt handshake, took her departure.
+
+"Almost rude!" Mrs. Small said to Aunt Hester, when June was gone.
+
+The proper construction was put on her reception of the news. She was
+upset.  Something was therefore very wrong.  Odd!  She and Irene had been
+such friends!
+
+It all tallied too well with whispers and hints that had been going about
+for some time past.  Recollections of Euphemia's account of the visit to
+the theatre--Mr. Bosinney always at Soames's?  Oh, indeed!  Yes, of
+course, he would be about the house!  Nothing open.  Only upon the
+greatest, the most important provocation was it necessary to say anything
+open on Forsyte 'Change.  This machine was too nicely adjusted; a hint,
+the merest trifling expression of regret or doubt, sufficed to set the
+family soul so sympathetic--vibrating.  No one desired that harm should
+come of these vibrations--far from it; they were set in motion with the
+best intentions, with the feeling, that each member of the family had a
+stake in the family soul.
+
+And much kindness lay at the bottom of the gossip; it would frequently
+result in visits of condolence being made, in accordance with the customs
+of Society, thereby conferring a real benefit upon the sufferers, and
+affording consolation to the sound, who felt pleasantly that someone at
+all events was suffering from that from which they themselves were not
+suffering.  In fact, it was simply a desire to keep things well-aired,
+the desire which animates the Public Press, that brought James, for
+instance, into communication with Mrs. Septimus, Mrs. Septimus, with the
+little Nicholases, the little Nicholases with who-knows-whom, and so on.
+That great class to which they had risen, and now belonged, demanded a
+certain candour, a still more certain reticence.  This combination
+guaranteed their membership.
+
+Many of the younger Forsytes felt, very naturally, and would openly
+declare, that they did not want their affairs pried into; but so powerful
+was the invisible, magnetic current of family gossip, that for the life
+of them they could not help knowing all about everything.  It was felt to
+be hopeless.
+
+One of them (young Roger) had made an heroic attempt to free the rising
+generation, by speaking of Timothy as an 'old cat.' The effort had justly
+recoiled upon himself; the words, coming round in the most delicate way
+to Aunt Juley's ears, were repeated by her in a shocked voice to Mrs.
+Roger, whence they returned again to young Roger.
+
+And, after all, it was only the wrong-doers who suffered; as, for
+instance, George, when he lost all that money playing billiards; or young
+Roger himself, when he was so dreadfully near to marrying the girl to
+whom, it was whispered, he was already married by the laws of Nature; or
+again Irene, who was thought, rather than said, to be in danger.
+
+All this was not only pleasant but salutary.  And it made so many hours
+go lightly at Timothy's in the Bayswater Road; so many hours that must
+otherwise have been sterile and heavy to those three who lived there; and
+Timothy's was but one of hundreds of such homes in this City of
+London--the homes of neutral persons of the secure classes, who are out
+of the battle themselves, and must find their reason for existing, in the
+battles of others.
+
+But for the sweetness of family gossip, it must indeed have been lonely
+there.  Rumours and tales, reports, surmises--were they not the children
+of the house, as dear and precious as the prattling babes the brother and
+sisters had missed in their own journey?  To talk about them was as near
+as they could get to the possession of all those children and
+grandchildren, after whom their soft hearts yearned.  For though it is
+doubtful whether Timothy's heart yearned, it is indubitable that at the
+arrival of each fresh Forsyte child he was quite upset.
+
+Useless for young Roger to say, "Old cat!" for Euphemia to hold up her
+hands and cry: "Oh! those three!" and break into her silent laugh with
+the squeak at the end.  Useless, and not too kind.
+
+The situation which at this stage might seem, and especially to Forsyte
+eyes, strange--not to  say 'impossible'--was, in view of certain facts,
+not so strange after all.  Some things had been lost sight of.  And
+first, in the security bred of many harmless marriages, it had been
+forgotten that Love is no hot-house flower, but a wild plant, born of  a
+wet night, born of an hour of sunshine; sprung  from wild seed, blown
+along the road by a wild wind.  A wild plant that, when it blooms by
+chance within the hedge of our gardens, we call a flower; and when it
+blooms outside we call a  weed; but, flower or weed, whose scent and
+colour  are always, wild!  And further--the facts and figures of their
+own lives being against the perception of this truth--it was not
+generally recognised by Forsytes that, where, this wild plant springs,
+men and women  are but moths around the pale, flame-like  blossom.
+
+It was long since young Jolyon's escapade--there was danger of a
+tradition again arising that people in their position never cross the
+hedge to pluck that flower; that one could reckon on having love, like
+measles, once in due season, and getting over it comfortably for all
+time--as with measles, on a soothing mixture of butter and honey--in the
+arms of wedlock.
+
+Of all those whom this strange rumour about Bosinney and Mrs. Soames
+reached, James was the most affected.  He had long forgotten how he had
+hovered, lanky and pale, in side whiskers of chestnut hue, round Emily,
+in the days of his own courtship.  He had long forgotten the small house
+in the purlieus of Mayfair, where he had spent the early days of his
+married life, or rather, he had long forgotten the early days, not the
+small house,--a Forsyte never forgot a house--he had afterwards sold it
+at a clear profit of four hundred pounds.
+
+He had long forgotten those days, with their hopes and fears and doubts
+about the prudence of the match (for Emily, though pretty, had nothing,
+and he himself at that time was making a bare thousand a year), and that
+strange, irresistible attraction which had drawn him on, till he felt he
+must die if he could not marry the girl with the fair hair, looped so
+neatly back, the fair arms emerging from a skin-tight bodice, the fair
+form decorously shielded by a cage of really stupendous circumference.
+
+James had passed through the fire, but he had passed also through the
+river of years which washes out the fire; he had experienced the saddest
+experience of all--forgetfulness of what it was like to be in love.
+
+Forgotten!  Forgotten so long, that he had forgotten even that he had
+forgotten.
+
+And now this rumour had come upon him, this rumour about his son's wife;
+very vague, a shadow dodging among the palpable, straightforward
+appearances of things, unreal, unintelligible as a ghost, but carrying
+with it, like a ghost, inexplicable terror.
+
+He tried to bring it home to his mind, but it was no more use than trying
+to apply to himself one of those tragedies he read of daily in his
+evening paper.  He simply could not.  There could be nothing in it.  It
+was all their nonsense.  She didn't get on with Soames as well as she
+might, but she was a good little thing--a good little thing!
+
+Like the not inconsiderable majority of men, James relished a nice little
+bit of scandal, and would say, in a matter-of-fact tone, licking his
+lips, "Yes, yes--she and young Dyson; they tell me they're living at
+Monte Carlo!"
+
+But the significance of an affair of this sort--of its past, its present,
+or its future--had never struck him.  What it meant, what torture and
+raptures had gone to its construction, what slow, overmastering fate had
+lurked within the facts, very naked, sometimes sordid, but generally
+spicy, presented to his gaze.  He was not in the habit of blaming,
+praising, drawing deductions, or generalizing at all about such things;
+he simply listened rather greedily, and repeated what he was told,
+finding considerable benefit from the practice, as from the consumption
+of a sherry and bitters before a meal.
+
+Now, however, that such a thing--or rather the rumour, the breath of
+it--had come near him personally, he felt as in a fog, which filled his
+mouth full of a bad, thick flavour, and made it difficult to draw breath.
+
+A scandal!  A possible scandal!
+
+To repeat this word to himself thus was the only way in which he could
+focus or make it thinkable.  He had forgotten the sensations necessary
+for understanding the progress, fate, or meaning of any such business; he
+simply could no longer grasp the possibilities of people running any risk
+for the sake of passion.
+
+Amongst all those persons of his acquaintance, who went into the City day
+after day and did their business there, whatever it was, and in their
+leisure moments bought shares, and houses, and ate dinners, and played
+games, as he was told, it would have seemed to him ridiculous to suppose
+that there were any who would run risks for the sake of anything so
+recondite, so figurative, as passion.
+
+Passion!  He seemed, indeed, to have heard of it, and rules such as 'A
+young man and a young woman ought never to be trusted together' were
+fixed in his mind as the parallels of latitude are fixed on a map (for
+all Forsytes, when it comes to 'bed-rock' matters of fact, have quite a
+fine taste in realism); but as to anything else--well, he could only
+appreciate it at all through the catch-word 'scandal.'
+
+Ah! but there was no truth in it--could not be.  He was not afraid; she
+was really a good little thing.  But there it was when you got a thing
+like that into your mind.  And James was of a nervous temperament--one of
+those men whom things will not leave alone, who suffer tortures from
+anticipation and indecision.  For fear of letting something slip that he
+might otherwise secure, he was physically unable to make up his mind
+until absolutely certain that, by not making it up, he would suffer loss.
+
+In life, however, there were many occasions when the business of making
+up his mind did not even rest with himself, and this was one of them.
+
+What could he do?  Talk it over with Soames?  That would only make
+matters worse.  And, after all, there was nothing in it, he felt sure.
+
+It was all that house.  He had mistrusted the idea from the first.  What
+did Soames want to go into the country for?  And, if he must go spending
+a lot of money building himself a house, why not have a first-rate man,
+instead of this young Bosinney, whom nobody knew anything about?  He had
+told them how it would be. And he had heard that the house was costing
+Soames a pretty penny beyond what he had reckoned on spending.
+
+This fact, more than any other, brought home to James the real danger of
+the situation.  It was always like this with these 'artistic' chaps; a
+sensible man should have nothing to say to them.  He had warned Irene,
+too.  And see what had come of it!
+
+And it suddenly sprang into James's mind that he ought to go and see for
+himself.  In the midst of that fog of uneasiness in which his mind was
+enveloped the notion that he could go and look at the house afforded him
+inexplicable satisfaction.  It may have been simply the decision to do
+something--more possibly the fact that he was going to look at a
+house--that gave him relief. He felt that in staring at an edifice of
+bricks and mortar, of wood and stone, built by the suspected man himself,
+he would be looking into the heart of that rumour about Irene.
+
+Without saying a word, therefore, to anyone, he took a hansom to the
+station and proceeded by train to Robin Hill; thence--there being no
+'flies,' in accordance with the custom of the neighbourhood--he found
+himself obliged to walk.
+
+He started slowly up the hill, his angular knees and high shoulders bent
+complainingly, his eyes fixed on his feet, yet, neat for all that, in his
+high hat and his frock-coat, on which was the speckless gloss imparted by
+perfect superintendence. Emily saw to that; that is, she did not, of
+course, see to it--people of good position not seeing to each other's
+buttons, and Emily was of good position--but she saw that the butler saw
+to it.
+
+He had to ask his way three times; on each occasion he repeated the
+directions given him, got the man to repeat them, then repeated them a
+second time, for he was naturally of a talkative disposition, and one
+could not be too careful in a new neighbourhood.
+
+He kept assuring them that it was a new house he was looking for; it was
+only, however, when he was shown the roof through the trees that he could
+feel really satisfied that he had not been directed entirely wrong.
+
+A heavy sky seemed to cover the world with the grey whiteness of a
+whitewashed ceiling.  There was no freshness or fragrance in the air.  On
+such a day even British workmen scarcely cared to do more then they were
+obliged, and moved about their business without the drone of talk which
+whiles away the pangs of labour.
+
+Through spaces of the unfinished house, shirt-sleeved figures worked
+slowly, and sounds arose--spasmodic knockings, the scraping of metal, the
+sawing of wood, with the rumble of wheelbarrows along boards; now and
+again the foreman's dog, tethered by a string to an oaken beam, whimpered
+feebly, with a sound like the singing of a kettle.
+
+The fresh-fitted window-panes, daubed each with a white patch in the
+centre, stared out at James like the eyes of a blind dog.
+
+And the building chorus went on, strident and mirthless under the
+grey-white sky.  But the thrushes, hunting amongst the fresh-turned earth
+for worms, were silent quite.
+
+James picked his way among the heaps of gravel--the drive was being
+laid--till he came opposite the porch.  Here he stopped and raised his
+eyes.  There was but little to see from this point of view, and that
+little he took in at once; but he stayed in this position many minutes,
+and who shall know of what he thought.
+
+His china-blue eyes under white eyebrows that jutted out in little horns,
+never stirred; the long upper lip of his wide mouth, between the fine
+white whiskers, twitched once or twice; it was easy to see from that
+anxious rapt expression, whence Soames derived the handicapped look which
+sometimes came upon his face.  James might have been saying to himself:
+'I don't know--life's a tough job.'
+
+In this position Bosinney surprised him.
+
+James brought his eyes down from whatever bird's-nest they had been
+looking for in the sky to Bosinney's face, on which was a kind of
+humorous scorn.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Forsyte?  Come down to see for yourself?"
+
+It was exactly what James, as we know, had come for, and he was made
+correspondingly uneasy.  He held out his hand, however, saying:
+
+"How are you?" without looking at Bosinney.
+
+The latter made way for him with an ironical smile.
+
+James scented something suspicious in this courtesy.  "I should like to
+walk round the outside first," he said, "and see what you've been doing!"
+
+A flagged terrace of rounded stones with a list of two or three inches to
+port had been laid round the south-east and south-west sides of the
+house, and ran with a bevelled edge into mould, which was in preparation
+for being turfed; along this terrace James led the way.
+
+"Now what did this cost?" he asked, when he saw the terrace extending
+round the corner.
+
+"What should you think?" inquired Bosinney.
+
+"How should I know?" replied James somewhat nonplussed; "two or three
+hundred, I dare say!"
+
+"The exact sum!"
+
+James gave him a sharp look, but the architect appeared unconscious, and
+he put the answer down to mishearing.
+
+On arriving at the garden entrance, he stopped to look at the view.
+
+"That ought to come down," he said, pointing to the oak-tree.
+
+"You think so?  You think that with the tree there you don't get enough
+view for your money."
+
+Again James eyed him suspiciously--this young man had a peculiar way of
+putting things: "Well!" he said, with a perplexed, nervous, emphasis, "I
+don't see what you want with a tree."
+
+"It shall come down to-morrow," said Bosinney.
+
+James was alarmed.  "Oh," he said, "don't go saying I said it was to come
+down!  I know nothing about it!"
+
+"No?"
+
+James went on in a fluster: "Why, what should I know about it? It's
+nothing to do with me!  You do it on your own responsibility."
+
+"You'll allow me to mention your name?"
+
+James grew more and more alarmed: "I don't know what you want mentioning
+my name for," he muttered; "you'd better leave the tree alone.  It's not
+your tree!"
+
+He took out a silk handkerchief and wiped his brow.  They entered the
+house.  Like Swithin, James was impressed by the inner court-yard.
+
+"You must have spent a douce of a lot of money here," he said, after
+staring at the columns and gallery for some time.  "Now, what did it cost
+to put up those columns?"
+
+"I can't tell you off-hand," thoughtfully answered Bosinney, "but I know
+it was a deuce of a lot!"
+
+"I should think so," said James.  "I should...."  He caught the
+architect's eye, and broke off.  And now, whenever he came to anything of
+which he desired to know the cost, he stifled that curiosity.
+
+Bosinney appeared determined that he should see everything, and had not
+James been of too 'noticing' a nature, he would certainly have found
+himself going round the house a second time. He seemed so anxious to be
+asked questions, too, that James felt he must be on his guard.  He began
+to suffer from his exertions, for, though wiry enough for a man of his
+long build, he was seventy-five years old.
+
+He grew discouraged; he seemed no nearer to anything, had not obtained
+from his inspection any of the knowledge he had vaguely hoped for.  He
+had merely increased his dislike and mistrust of this young man, who had
+tired him out with his politeness, and in whose manner he now certainly
+detected mockery.
+
+The fellow was sharper than he had thought, and better-looking than he
+had hoped.  He had a--a 'don't care' appearance that James, to whom risk
+was the most intolerable thing in life, did not appreciate; a peculiar
+smile, too, coming when least expected; and very queer eyes.  He reminded
+James, as he said afterwards, of a hungry cat.  This was as near as he
+could get, in conversation with Emily, to a description of the peculiar
+exasperation, velvetiness, and mockery, of which Bosinney's manner had
+been composed.
+
+At last, having seen all that was to be seen, he came out again at the
+door where he had gone in; and now, feeling that he was wasting time and
+strength and money, all for nothing, he took the courage of a Forsyte in
+both hands, and, looking sharply at Bosinney, said:
+
+"I dare say you see a good deal of my daughter-in-law; now, what does she
+think of the house?  But she hasn't seen it, I suppose?"
+
+This he said, knowing all about Irene's visit not, of course, that there
+was anything in the visit, except that extraordinary remark she had made
+about 'not caring to get home'--and the story of how June had taken the
+news!
+
+He had determined, by this way of putting the question, to give Bosinney
+a chance, as he said to himself.
+
+The latter was long in answering, but kept his eyes with uncomfortable
+steadiness on James.
+
+"She has seen the house, but I can't tell you what she thinks of it."
+
+Nervous and baffled, James was constitutionally prevented from letting
+the matter drop.
+
+"Oh!" he said, "she has seen it?  Soames brought her down, I suppose?"
+
+Bosinney smilingly replied: "Oh, no!"
+
+"What, did she come down alone?"
+
+"Oh, no!"
+
+"Then--who brought her?"
+
+"I really don't know whether I ought to tell you who brought her."
+
+To James, who knew that it was Swithin, this answer appeared
+incomprehensible.
+
+"Why!" he stammered, "you know that...." but he stopped, suddenly
+perceiving his danger.
+
+"Well," he said, "if you don't want to tell me I suppose you won't!
+Nobody tells me anything."
+
+Somewhat to his surprise Bosinney asked him a question.
+
+"By the by," he said, "could you tell me if there are likely to be any
+more of you coming down?  I should like to be on the spot!"
+
+"Any more?" said James bewildered, "who should there be more?  I don't
+know of any more.  Good-bye?"
+
+Looking at the ground he held out his hand, crossed the palm of it with
+Bosinney's, and taking his umbrella just above the silk, walked away
+along the terrace.
+
+Before he turned the corner he glanced back, and saw Bosinney following
+him slowly--'slinking along the wall' as he put it to himself, 'like a
+great cat.' He paid no attention when the young fellow raised his hat.
+
+Outside the drive, and out of sight, he slackened his pace still more.
+Very slowly, more bent than when he came, lean, hungry, and disheartened,
+he made his way back to the station.
+
+The Buccaneer, watching him go so sadly home, felt sorry perhaps for his
+behaviour to the old man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+SOAMES AND BOSINNEY CORRESPOND
+
+James said nothing to his son of this visit to the house; but, having
+occasion to go to Timothy's on morning on a matter connected with a
+drainage scheme which was being forced by the sanitary authorities on his
+brother, he mentioned it there.
+
+It was not, he said, a bad house.  He could see that a good deal could be
+made of it.  The fellow was clever in his way, though what it was going
+to cost Soames before it was done with he didn't know.
+
+Euphemia Forsyte, who happened to be in the room--she had come round to
+borrow the Rev. Mr. Scoles' last novel, 'Passion and Paregoric', which
+was having such a vogue--chimed in.
+
+"I saw Irene yesterday at the Stores; she and Mr. Bosinney were having a
+nice little chat in the Groceries."
+
+It was thus, simply, that she recorded a scene which had really made a
+deep and complicated impression on her.  She had been hurrying to the
+silk department of the Church and Commercial Stores--that Institution
+than which, with its admirable system, admitting only guaranteed persons
+on a basis of payment before delivery, no emporium can be more highly
+recommended to Forsytes--to match a piece of prunella silk for her
+mother, who was waiting in the carriage outside.
+
+Passing through the Groceries her eye was unpleasantly attracted by the
+back view of a very beautiful figure.  It was so charmingly proportioned,
+so balanced, and so well clothed, that Euphemia's instinctive propriety
+was at once alarmed; such figures, she knew, by intuition rather than
+experience, were rarely connected with virtue--certainly never in her
+mind, for her own back was somewhat difficult to fit.
+
+Her suspicions were fortunately confirmed.  A young man coming from the
+Drugs had snatched off his hat, and was accosting the lady with the
+unknown back.
+
+It was then that she saw with whom she had to deal; the lady was
+undoubtedly Mrs. Soames, the young man Mr. Bosinney.  Concealing herself
+rapidly over the purchase of a box of Tunisian dates, for she was
+impatient of awkwardly meeting people with parcels in her hands, and at
+the busy time of the morning, she was quite unintentionally an interested
+observer of their little interview.
+
+Mrs. Soames, usually somewhat pale, had a delightful colour in her
+cheeks; and Mr. Bosinney's manner was strange, though attractive (she
+thought him rather a distinguished-looking man, and George's name for
+him, 'The Buccaneer'--about which there was something romantic--quite
+charming).  He seemed to be pleading. Indeed, they talked so
+earnestly--or, rather, he talked so earnestly, for Mrs. Soames did not
+say much--that they caused, inconsiderately, an eddy in the traffic.  One
+nice old General, going towards Cigars, was obliged to step quite out of
+the way, and chancing to look up and see Mrs. Soames' face, he actually
+took off his hat, the old fool!  So like a man!
+
+But it was Mrs. Soames' eyes that worried Euphemia.  She never once
+looked at Mr. Bosinney until he moved on, and then she looked after him.
+And, oh, that look!
+
+On that look Euphemia had spent much anxious thought.  It is not too much
+to say that it had hurt her with its dark, lingering softness, for all
+the world as though the woman wanted to drag him back, and unsay
+something she had been saying.
+
+Ah, well, she had had no time to go deeply into the matter just then,
+with that prunella silk on her hands; but she was 'very intriguee'--very!
+She had just nodded to Mrs. Soames, to show her that she had seen; and,
+as she confided, in talking it over afterwards, to her chum Francie
+(Roger's daughter), "Didn't she look caught out just? ...."
+
+James, most averse at the first blush to accepting any news confirmatory
+of his own poignant suspicions, took her up at once.
+
+"Oh" he said, "they'd be after wall-papers no doubt."
+
+Euphemia smiled.  "In the Groceries?" she said softly; and, taking
+'Passion and Paregoric' from the table, added: "And so you'll lend me
+this, dear Auntie?  Good-bye!" and went away.
+
+James left almost immediately after; he was late as it was.
+
+When he reached the office of Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte, he found
+Soames, sitting in his revolving, chair, drawing up a defence.  The
+latter greeted his father with a curt good-morning, and, taking an
+envelope from his pocket, said:
+
+"It may interest you to look through this."
+
+James read as follows:
+
+309D, SLOANE STREET, May 15.
+'DEAR FORSYTE,
+
+'The construction of your house being now completed, my duties as
+architect have come to an end.  If I am to go on with the business of
+decoration, which at your request I undertook, I should like you to
+clearly understand that I must have a free hand.
+
+'You never come down without suggesting something that goes counter to my
+scheme.  I have here three letters from you, each of which recommends an
+article I should never dream of putting in.  I had your father here
+yesterday afternoon, who made further valuable suggestions.
+
+'Please make up your mind, therefore, whether you want me to decorate for
+you, or to retire which on the whole I should prefer to do.
+
+'But understand that, if I decorate, I decorate alone, without
+interference of any sort.
+
+If I do the thing, I will do it thoroughly, but I must have a free hand.
+
+'Yours truly,
+'PHILIP BOSINNEY.'
+
+The exact and immediate cause of this letter cannot, of course, be told,
+though it is not improbable that Bosinney may have been moved by some
+sudden revolt against his position towards Soames--that eternal position
+of Art towards Property--which is so admirably summed up, on the back of
+the most indispensable of modern appliances, in a sentence comparable to
+the very finest in Tacitus:
+
+THOS.  T.  SORROW, Inventor. BERT M.  PADLAND, Proprietor.
+
+"What are you going to say to him?" James asked.
+
+Soames did not even turn his head.  "I haven't made up my mind," he said,
+and went on with his defence.
+
+A client of his, having put some buildings on a piece of ground that did
+not belong to him, had been suddenly and most irritatingly warned to take
+them off again.  After carefully going into the facts, however, Soames
+had seen his way to advise that his client had what was known as a title
+by possession, and that, though undoubtedly the ground did not belong to
+him, he was entitled to keep it, and had better do so; and he was now
+following up this advice by taking steps to--as the sailors say--'make
+it so.'
+
+He had a distinct reputation for sound advice; people saying of him: "Go
+to young Forsyte--a long-headed fellow!" and he prized this reputation
+highly.
+
+His natural taciturnity was in his favour; nothing could be more
+calculated to give people, especially people with property (Soames had no
+other clients), the impression that he was a safe man.  And he was safe.
+Tradition, habit, education, inherited aptitude, native caution, all
+joined to form a solid professional honesty, superior to temptation--from
+the very fact that it was built on an innate avoidance of risk.  How
+could he fall, when his soul abhorred circumstances which render a fall
+possible--a man cannot fall off the floor!
+
+And those countless Forsytes, who, in the course of innumerable
+transactions concerned with property of all sorts (from wives to water
+rights), had occasion for the services of a safe man, found it both
+reposeful and profitable to confide in Soames. That slight
+superciliousness of his, combined with an air of mousing amongst
+precedents, was in his favour too--a man would not be supercilious unless
+he knew!
+
+He was really at the head of the business, for though James still came
+nearly every day to, see for himself, he did little now but sit in his
+chair, twist his legs, slightly confuse things already decided, and
+presently go away again, and the other partner, Bustard, was a poor
+thing, who did a great deal of work, but whose opinion was never taken.
+
+So Soames went steadily on with his defence.  Yet it would be idle to say
+that his mind was at ease.  He was suffering from a sense of impending
+trouble, that had haunted him for some time past.  He tried to think it
+physical--a condition of his liver--but knew that it was not.
+
+He looked at his watch.  In a quarter of an hour he was due at the
+General Meeting of the New Colliery Company--one of Uncle Jolyon's
+concerns; he should see Uncle Jolyon there, and say something to him
+about Bosinney--he had not made up his mind what, but something--in any
+case he should not answer this letter until he had seen Uncle Jolyon.  He
+got up and methodically put away the draft of his defence.  Going into a
+dark little cupboard, he turned up the light, washed his hands with a
+piece of brown Windsor soap, and dried them on a roller towel.  Then he
+brushed his hair, paying strict attention to the parting, turned down the
+light, took his hat, and saying he would be back at half-past two,
+stepped into the Poultry.
+
+It was not far to the Offices of the New Colliery Company in Ironmonger
+Lane, where, and not at the Cannon Street Hotel, in accordance with the
+more ambitious practice of other companies, the General Meeting was
+always held.  Old Jolyon had from the first set his face against the
+Press.  What business--he said--had the Public with his concerns!
+
+Soames arrived on the stroke of time, and took his seat alongside the
+Board, who, in a row, each Director behind his own ink-pot, faced their
+Shareholders.
+
+In the centre of this row old Jolyon, conspicuous in his black,
+tightly-buttoned frock-coat and his white moustaches, was leaning back
+with finger tips crossed on a copy of the Directors' report and accounts.
+
+On his right hand, always a little larger than life, sat the Secretary,
+'Down-by-the-starn' Hemmings; an all-too-sad sadness beaming in his fine
+eyes; his iron-grey beard, in mourning like the rest of him, giving the
+feeling of an all-too-black tie behind it.
+
+The occasion indeed was a melancholy one, only six weeks having elapsed
+since that telegram had come from Scorrier, the mining expert, on a
+private mission to the Mines, informing them that Pippin, their
+Superintendent, had committed suicide in endeavouring, after his
+extraordinary two years' silence, to write a letter to his Board.  That
+letter was on the table now; it would be read to the Shareholders, who
+would of course be put into possession of all the facts.
+
+Hemmings had often said to Soames, standing with his coat-tails divided
+before the fireplace:
+
+"What our Shareholders don't know about our affairs isn't worth knowing.
+You may take that from me, Mr. Soames."
+
+On one occasion, old Jolyon being present, Soames recollected a little
+unpleasantness.  His uncle had looked up sharply and said: "Don't talk
+nonsense, Hemmings!  You mean that what they do know isn't worth
+knowing!" Old Jolyon detested humbug.
+
+Hemmings, angry-eyed, and wearing a smile like that of a trained poodle,
+had replied in an outburst of artificial applause: "Come, now, that's
+good, sir--that's very good.  Your uncle will have his joke!"
+
+The next time he had seen Soames he had taken the opportunity of saying
+to him: "The chairman's getting very old!--I can't get him to understand
+things; and he's so wilful--but what can you expect, with a chin like
+his?"
+
+Soames had nodded.
+
+Everyone knew that Uncle Jolyon's chin was a caution.  He was looking
+worried to-day, in spite of his General Meeting look; he (Soames) should
+certainly speak to him about Bosinney.
+
+Beyond old Jolyon on the left was little Mr. Booker, and he, too, wore
+his General Meeting look, as though searching for some particularly
+tender shareholder.  And next him was the deaf director, with a frown;
+and beyond the deaf director, again, was old Mr. Bleedham, very bland,
+and having an air of conscious virtue--as well he might, knowing that the
+brown-paper parcel he always brought to the Board-room was concealed
+behind his hat (one of that old-fashioned class, of flat-brimmed top-hats
+which go with very large bow ties, clean-shaven lips, fresh cheeks, and
+neat little, white whiskers).
+
+Soames always attended the General Meeting; it was considered better that
+he should do so, in case 'anything should arise!' He glanced round with
+his close, supercilious air at the walls of the room, where hung plans of
+the mine and harbour, together with a large photograph of a shaft leading
+to a working which had proved quite remarkably unprofitable.  This
+photograph--a witness to the eternal irony underlying commercial
+enterprise till retained its position on the--wall, an effigy of the
+directors' pet, but dead, lamb.
+
+And now old Jolyon rose, to present the report and accounts.
+
+Veiling under a Jove-like serenity that perpetual antagonism deep-seated
+in the bosom of a director towards his shareholders, he faced them
+calmly.  Soames faced them too.  He knew most of them by sight.  There
+was old Scrubsole, a tar man, who always came, as Hemmings would say, 'to
+make himself nasty,' a cantankerous-looking old fellow with a red face, a
+jowl, and an enormous low-crowned hat reposing on his knee.  And the Rev.
+Mr. Boms, who always proposed a vote of thanks to the chairman, in which
+he invariably expressed the hope that the Board would not forget to
+elevate their employees, using the word with a double e, as being more
+vigorous and Anglo-Saxon (he had the strong Imperialistic tendencies of
+his cloth).  It was his salutary custom to buttonhole a director
+afterwards, and ask him whether he thought the coming year would be good
+or bad; and, according to the trend of the answer, to buy or sell three
+shares within the ensuing fortnight.
+
+And there was that military man, Major O'Bally, who could not help
+speaking, if only to second the re-election of the auditor, and who
+sometimes caused serious consternation by taking toasts--proposals
+rather--out of the hands of persons who had been flattered with little
+slips of paper, entrusting the said proposals to their care.
+
+These made up the lot, together with four or five strong, silent
+shareholders, with whom Soames could sympathize--men of business, who
+liked to keep an eye on their affairs for themselves, without being
+fussy--good, solid men, who came to the City every day and went back in
+the evening to good, solid wives.
+
+Good, solid wives!  There was something in that thought which roused the
+nameless uneasiness in Soames again.
+
+What should he say to his uncle?  What answer should he make to this
+letter?
+
+.  .  .  .  "If any shareholder has any question to put, I shall be glad
+to answer it." A soft thump.  Old Jolyon had let the report and accounts
+fall, and stood twisting his tortoise-shell glasses between thumb and
+forefinger.
+
+The ghost of a smile appeared on Soames' face.  They had better hurry up
+with their questions!  He well knew his uncle's method (the ideal one) of
+at once saying: "I propose, then, that the report and accounts be
+adopted!"  Never let them get their wind--shareholders were notoriously
+wasteful of time!
+
+A tall, white-bearded man, with a gaunt, dissatisfied face, arose:
+
+"I believe I am in order, Mr. Chairman, in raising a question on this
+figure of  L5000 in the accounts.  'To the widow and family"' (he looked
+sourly round), "'of our late superintendent,' who so--er--ill-advisedly
+(I say--ill-advisedly) committed suicide, at a time when his services
+were of the utmost value to this Company.  You have stated that the
+agreement which he has so unfortunately cut short with his own hand was
+for a period of five years, of which one only had expired--I--"
+
+Old Jolyon made a gesture of impatience.
+
+"I believe I am in order, Mr. Chairman--I ask whether this amount paid,
+or proposed to be paid, by the Board to the er--deceased--is for
+services which might have been rendered to the Company--had he not
+committed suicide?"
+
+"It is in recognition of past services, which we all know--you as well as
+any of us--to have been of vital value."
+
+"Then, sir, all I have to say is that the services being past, the amount
+is too much."
+
+The shareholder sat down.
+
+Old Jolyon waited a second and said: "I now propose that the report
+and--"
+
+The shareholder rose again: "May I ask if the Board realizes that it is
+not their money which--I don't hesitate to say that if it were their
+money...."
+
+A second shareholder, with a round, dogged face, whom Soames recognised
+as the late superintendent's brother-in-law, got up and said warmly: "In
+my opinion, sir, the sum is not enough!"
+
+The Rev. Mr. Boms now rose to his feet.  "If I may venture to express
+myself," he said, "I should say that the fact of the--er--deceased
+having committed suicide should weigh very heavily--very heavily with
+our worthy chairman.  I have no doubt it has weighed with him, for--I say
+this for myself and I think for everyone present (hear, hear)--he enjoys
+our confidence in a high degree.  We all desire, I should hope, to be
+charitable.  But I feel sure" (he-looked severely at the late
+superintendent's brother-in-law) "that he will in some way, by some
+written expression, or better perhaps by reducing the amount, record our
+grave disapproval that so promising and valuable a life should have been
+thus impiously removed from a sphere where both its own interests and--if
+I may say so--our interests so imperatively demanded its continuance.  We
+should not--nay, we may not--countenance so grave a dereliction of all
+duty, both human and divine."
+
+The reverend gentleman resumed his seat.  The late superintendent's
+brother-in-law again rose: "What I have said I stick to," he said; "the
+amount is not enough!"
+
+The first shareholder struck in: "I challenge the legality of the
+payment.  In my opinion this payment is not legal.  The Company's
+solicitor is present; I believe I am in order in asking him the
+question."
+
+All eyes were now turned upon Soames.  Something had arisen!
+
+He stood up, close-lipped and cold; his nerves inwardly fluttered, his
+attention tweaked away at last from contemplation of that cloud looming
+on the horizon of his mind.
+
+"The point," he said in a low, thin voice, "is by no means clear. As
+there is no possibility of future consideration being received, it is
+doubtful whether the payment is strictly legal. If it is desired, the
+opinion of the court could be taken."
+
+The superintendent's brother-in-law frowned, and said in a meaning tone:
+"We have no doubt the opinion of the court could be taken.  May I ask the
+name of the gentleman who has given us that striking piece of
+information?  Mr. Soames Forsyte?  Indeed!"  He looked from Soames to old
+Jolyon in a pointed manner.
+
+A flush coloured Soames' pale cheeks, but his superciliousness did not
+waver.  Old Jolyon fixed his eyes on the speaker.
+
+"If," he said, "the late superintendents brother-in-law has nothing more
+to say, I propose that the report and accounts...."
+
+At this moment, however, there rose one of those five silent, stolid
+shareholders, who had excited Soames' sympathy.  He said:
+
+"I deprecate the proposal altogether.  We are expected to give charity to
+this man's wife and children, who, you tell us, were dependent on him.
+They may have been; I do not care whether they were or not.  I object to
+the whole thing on principle.  It is high time a stand was made against
+this sentimental humanitarianism.  The country is eaten up with it.  I
+object to my money being paid to these people of whom I know nothing, who
+have done nothing to earn it.  I object in toto; it is not business.  I
+now move that the report and accounts be put back, and amended by
+striking out the grant altogether."
+
+Old Jolyon had remained standing while the strong, silent man was
+speaking.  The speech awoke an echo in all hearts, voicing, as it did,
+the worship of strong men, the movement against generosity, which had at
+that time already commenced among the saner members of the community.
+
+The words 'it is not business' had moved even the Board; privately
+everyone felt that indeed it was not.  But they knew also the chairman's
+domineering temper and tenacity.  He, too, at heart must feel that it was
+not business; but he was committed to his own proposition.  Would he go
+back upon it?  It was thought to be unlikely.
+
+All waited with interest.  Old Jolyon held up his hand; dark-rimmed
+glasses depending between his finger and thumb quivered slightly with a
+suggestion of menace.
+
+He addressed the strong, silent shareholder.
+
+"Knowing, as you do, the efforts of our late superintendent upon the
+occasion of the explosion at the mines, do you seriously wish me to put
+that amendment, sir?"
+
+"I do."
+
+Old Jolyon put the amendment.
+
+"Does anyone second this?" he asked, looking calmly round.
+
+And it was then that Soames, looking at his uncle, felt the power of will
+that was in that old man.  No one stirred.  Looking straight into the
+eyes of the strong, silent shareholder, old Jolyon said:
+
+"I now move, 'That the report and accounts for the year 1886 be received
+and adopted.' You second that?  Those in favour signify the same in the
+usual way.  Contrary--no.  Carried.  The next business, gentlemen...."
+
+Soames smiled.  Certainly Uncle Jolyon had a way with him!
+
+But now his attention relapsed upon Bosinney.
+
+Odd how that fellow haunted his thoughts, even in business hours.
+
+Irene's visit to the house--but there was nothing in that, except that
+she might have told him; but then, again, she never did tell him
+anything.  She was more silent, more touchy, every day.  He wished to God
+the house were finished, and they were in it, away from London.  Town did
+not suit her; her nerves were not strong enough.  That nonsense of the
+separate room had cropped up again!
+
+The meeting was breaking up now.  Underneath the photograph of the lost
+shaft Hemmings was buttonholed by the Rev. Mr. Boms. Little Mr. Booker,
+his bristling eyebrows wreathed in angry smiles, was having a parting
+turn-up with old Scrubsole.  The two hated each other like poison.  There
+was some matter of a tar-contract between them, little Mr. Booker having
+secured it from the Board for a nephew of his, over old Scrubsole's head.
+Soames had heard that from Hemmings, who liked a gossip, more especially
+about his directors, except, indeed, old Jolyon, of whom he was afraid.
+
+Soames awaited his opportunity.  The last shareholder was vanishing
+through the door, when he approached his uncle, who was putting on his
+hat.
+
+"Can I speak to you for a minute, Uncle Jolyon?"
+
+It is uncertain what Soames expected to get out of this interview.
+
+Apart from that somewhat mysterious awe in which Forsytes in general held
+old Jolyon, due to his philosophic twist, or perhaps--as Hemmings would
+doubtless have said--to his chin, there was, and always had been, a
+subtle antagonism between the younger man and the old.  It had lurked
+under their dry manner of greeting, under their non-committal allusions
+to each other, and arose perhaps from old Jolyon's perception of the
+quiet tenacity ('obstinacy,' he rather naturally called it) of the young
+man, of a secret doubt whether he could get his own way with him.
+
+Both these Forsytes, wide asunder as the poles in many respects,
+possessed in their different ways--to a greater degree than the rest of
+the family--that essential quality of tenacious and prudent insight into
+'affairs,' which is the highwater mark of their great class.  Either of
+them, with a little luck and opportunity, was equal to a lofty career;
+either of them would have made a good financier, a great contractor, a
+statesman, though old Jolyon, in certain of his moods when under the
+influence of a cigar or of Nature--would have been capable of, not
+perhaps despising, but certainly of questioning, his own high position,
+while Soames, who never smoked cigars, would not.
+
+Then, too, in old Jolyon's mind there was always the secret ache, that
+the son of James--of James, whom he had always thought such a poor thing,
+should be pursuing the paths of success, while his own son...!
+
+And last, not least--for he was no more outside the radiation of family
+gossip than any other Forsyte--he had now heard the sinister, indefinite,
+but none the less disturbing rumour about Bosinney, and his pride was
+wounded to the quick.
+
+Characteristically, his irritation turned not against Irene but against
+Soames.  The idea that his nephew's wife (why couldn't the fellow take
+better care of her--Oh! quaint injustice! as though Soames could
+possibly take more care!)--should be drawing to herself June's lover, was
+intolerably humiliating.  And seeing the danger, he did not, like James,
+hide it away in sheer nervousness, but owned with the dispassion of his
+broader outlook, that it was not unlikely; there was something very
+attractive about Irene!
+
+He had a presentiment on the subject of Soames' communication as they
+left the Board Room together, and went out into the noise and hurry of
+Cheapside.  They walked together a good minute without speaking, Soames
+with his mousing, mincing step, and old Jolyon upright and using his
+umbrella languidly as a walking-stick.
+
+They turned presently into comparative quiet, for old Jolyon's way to a
+second Board led him in the direction of Moorage Street.
+
+Then Soames, without lifting his eyes, began: "I've had this letter from
+Bosinney.  You see what he says; I thought I'd let you know.  I've spent
+a lot more than I intended on this house, and I want the position to be
+clear."
+
+Old Jolyon ran his eyes unwillingly over the letter: "What he says is
+clear enough," he said.
+
+"He talks about 'a free hand,'" replied Soames.
+
+Old Jolyon looked at him.  The long-suppressed irritation and antagonism
+towards this young fellow, whose affairs were beginning to intrude upon
+his own, burst from him.
+
+"Well, if you don't trust him, why do you employ him?"
+
+Soames stole a sideway look: "It's much too late to go into that," he
+said, "I only want it to be quite understood that if I give him a free
+hand, he doesn't let me in.  I thought if you were to speak to him, it
+would carry more weight!"
+
+"No," said old Jolyon abruptly; "I'll have nothing to do with it!"
+
+The words of both uncle and nephew gave the impression of unspoken
+meanings, far more important, behind.  And the look they interchanged was
+like a revelation of this consciousness.
+
+"Well," said Soames; "I thought, for June's sake, I'd tell you, that's
+all; I thought you'd better know I shan't stand any nonsense!"
+
+"What is that to me?" old Jolyon took him up.
+
+"Oh! I don't know," said Soames, and flurried by that sharp look he was
+unable to say more.  "Don't say I didn't tell you," he added sulkily,
+recovering his composure.
+
+"Tell me!" said old Jolyon; "I don't know what you mean.  You come
+worrying me about a thing like this.  I don't want to hear about your
+affairs; you must manage them yourself!"
+
+"Very well," said Soames immovably, "I will!"
+
+"Good-morning, then," said old Jolyon, and they parted.
+
+Soames retraced his steps, and going into a celebrated eating-house,
+asked for a plate of smoked salmon and a glass of Chablis; he seldom ate
+much in the middle of the day, and generally ate standing, finding the
+position beneficial to his liver, which was very sound, but to which he
+desired to put down all his troubles.
+
+When he had finished he went slowly back to his office, with bent head,
+taking no notice of the swarming thousands on the pavements, who in their
+turn took no notice of him.
+
+The evening post carried the following reply to Bosinney:
+
+'FORSYTE, BUSTARD AND FORSYTE, 'Commissioners for Oaths, '92001, BRANCH
+LANE, POULTRY, E.C.,
+
+'May 17, 1887.
+'DEAR BOSINNEY,
+
+'I have, received your letter, the terms of which not a little surprise
+me.  I was under the impression that you had, and have had all along, a
+"free hand"; for I do not recollect that any suggestions I have been so
+unfortunate as to make have met with your approval.  In giving you, in
+accordance with your request, this "free hand," I wish you to clearly
+understand that the total cost of the house as handed over to me
+completely decorated, inclusive of your fee (as arranged between us),
+must not exceed twelve thousand pounds--L12,000.  This gives you an ample
+margin, and, as you know, is far more than I originally contemplated.
+
+'I am, 'Yours truly,
+
+ 'SOAMES FORSYTE.'
+
+On the following day he received a note from Bosinney:
+
+'PHILIP BAYNES BOSINNEY, 'Architect, '309D, SLOANE STREET, S.W., 'May 18.
+'DEAR FORSYTE,
+
+'If you think that in such a delicate matter as decoration I can bind
+myself to the exact pound, I am afraid you are mistaken.  I can see that
+you are tired of the arrangement, and of me, and I had better, therefore,
+resign.
+
+'Yours faithfully,
+'PHILIP BAYNES BOSINNEY.'
+
+Soames pondered long and painfully over his answer, and late at night in
+the dining-room, when Irene had gone to bed, he composed the following:
+
+'62, MONTPELLIER SQUARE, S.W., 'May 19, 1887.
+'DEAR BOSINNEY,
+
+'I think that in both our interests it would be extremely undesirable
+that matters should be so left at this stage.  I did not mean to say that
+if you should exceed the sum named in my letter to you by ten or twenty
+or even fifty pounds, there would be any difficulty between us.  This
+being so, I should like you to reconsider your answer.  You have a "free
+hand" in the terms of this correspondence, and I hope you will see your
+way to completing the decorations, in the matter of which I know it is
+difficult to be absolutely exact.
+
+'Yours truly,
+'SOAMES FORSYTE.'
+
+Bosinney's answer, which came in the course of the next day, was:
+
+'May 20.
+'DEAR FORSYTE,
+
+'Very well.
+'PH.  BOSINNEY.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+OLD JOLYON AT THE ZOO
+
+Old Jolyon disposed of his second Meeting--an ordinary Board--summarily.
+He was so dictatorial that his fellow directors were left in cabal over
+the increasing domineeringness of old Forsyte, which they were far from
+intending to stand much longer, they said.
+
+He went out by Underground to Portland Road Station, whence he took a cab
+and drove to the Zoo.
+
+He had an assignation there, one of those assignations that had lately
+been growing more frequent, to which his increasing uneasiness about June
+and the 'change in her,' as he expressed it, was driving him.
+
+She buried herself away, and was growing thin; if he spoke to her he got
+no answer, or had his head snapped off, or she looked as if she would
+burst into tears.  She was as changed as she could be, all through this
+Bosinney.  As for telling him about anything, not a bit of it!
+
+And he would sit for long spells brooding, his paper unread before him, a
+cigar extinct between his lips.  She had been such a companion to him
+ever since she was three years old!  And he loved her so!
+
+Forces regardless of family or class or custom were beating down his
+guard; impending events over which he had no control threw their shadows
+on his head.  The irritation of one accustomed to have his way was roused
+against he knew not what.
+
+Chafing at the slowness of his cab, he reached the Zoo door; but, with
+his sunny instinct for seizing the good of each moment, he forgot his
+vexation as he walked towards the tryst.
+
+From the stone terrace above the bear-pit his son and his two
+grandchildren came hastening down when they saw old Jolyon coming, and
+led him away towards the lion-house.  They supported him on either side,
+holding one to each of his hands,--whilst Jolly, perverse like his
+father, carried his grandfather's umbrella in such a way as to catch
+people's legs with the crutch of the handle.
+
+Young Jolyon followed.
+
+It was as good as a play to see his father with the children, but such a
+play as brings smiles with tears behind.  An old man and two small
+children walking together can be seen at any hour of the day; but the
+sight of old Jolyon, with Jolly and Holly seemed to young Jolyon a
+special peep-show of the things that lie at the bottom of our hearts.
+The complete surrender of that erect old figure to those little figures
+on either hand was too poignantly tender, and, being a man of an habitual
+reflex action, young Jolyon swore softly under his breath.  The show
+affected him in a way unbecoming to a Forsyte, who is nothing if not
+undemonstrative.
+
+Thus they reached the lion-house.
+
+There had been a morning fete at the Botanical Gardens, and a large
+number of Forsy...'--that is, of well-dressed people who kept carriages
+had brought them on to the Zoo, so as to have more, if possible, for
+their money, before going back to Rutland Gate or Bryanston Square.
+
+"Let's go on to the Zoo," they had said to each other; "it'll be great
+fun!"  It was a shilling day; and there would not be all those horrid
+common people.
+
+In front of the long line of cages they were collected in rows, watching
+the tawny, ravenous beasts behind the bars await their only pleasure of
+the four-and-twenty hours.  The hungrier the beast, the greater the
+fascination.  But whether because the spectators envied his appetite, or,
+more humanely, because it was so soon to be satisfied, young Jolyon could
+not tell. Remarks kept falling on his ears: "That's a nasty-looking
+brute, that tiger!"  "Oh, what a love!  Look at his little mouth!" "Yes,
+he's rather nice!  Don't go too near, mother."
+
+And frequently, with little pats, one or another would clap their hands
+to their pockets behind and look round, as though expecting young Jolyon
+or some disinterested-looking person to relieve them of the contents.
+
+A well-fed man in a white waistcoat said slowly through his teeth: "It's
+all greed; they can't be hungry.  Why, they take no exercise."  At these
+words a tiger snatched a piece of bleeding liver, and the fat man
+laughed.  His wife, in a Paris model frock and gold nose-nippers,
+reproved him: "How can you laugh, Harry? Such a horrid sight!"
+
+Young Jolyon frowned.
+
+The circumstances of his life, though he had ceased to take a too
+personal view of them, had left him subject to an intermittent contempt;
+and the class to which he had belonged--the carriage class--especially
+excited his sarcasm.
+
+To shut up a lion or tiger in confinement was surely a horrible
+barbarity.  But no cultivated person would admit this.
+
+The idea of its being barbarous to confine wild animals had probably
+never even occurred to his father for instance; he belonged to the old
+school, who considered it at once humanizing and educational to confine
+baboons and panthers, holding the view, no doubt, that in course of time
+they might induce these creatures not so unreasonably to die of misery
+and heart-sickness against the bars of their cages, and put the society
+to the expense of getting others!  In his eyes, as in the eyes of all
+Forsytes, the pleasure of seeing these beautiful creatures in a state of
+captivity far outweighed the inconvenience of imprisonment to beasts whom
+God had so improvidently placed in a state of freedom!  It was for the
+animals good, removing them at once from the countless dangers of open
+air and exercise, and enabling them to exercise their functions in the
+guaranteed seclusion of a private compartment! Indeed, it was doubtful
+what wild animals were made for but to be shut up in cages!
+
+But as young Jolyon had in his constitution the elements of impartiality,
+he reflected that to stigmatize as barbarity that which was merely lack
+of imagination must be wrong; for none who held these views had been
+placed in a similar position to the animals they caged, and could not,
+therefore, be expected to enter into their sensations.   It was not until
+they were leaving the gardens--Jolly and Holly in a state of blissful
+delirium--that old Jolyon found an opportunity of speaking to his son on
+the matter next his heart.  "I don't know what to make of it," he said;
+"if she's to go on as she's going on now, I can't tell what's  to come.
+I wanted her to see the doctor, but she  won't. She's not a bit like me.
+She's your mother  all over.  Obstinate as a mule!  If she doesn't want
+to do a thing, she won't, and there's an end of it!"
+
+Young Jolyon smiled; his eyes had wandered  to his father's chin. 'A pair
+of you,' he thought,  but he said nothing.
+
+"And then," went on old Jolyon, "there's this  Bosinney.  I should like
+to punch the fellow's head, but I can't, I suppose, though--I don't see
+why you shouldn't," he added doubtfully.
+
+"What has he done?  Far better that it should come to an end, if they
+don't hit it off!"
+
+Old Jolyon looked at his son.  Now they had actually come to discuss a
+subject connected with the relations between the sexes he felt
+distrustful.  Jo would be sure to hold some loose view or other.
+
+"Well, I don't know what you think," he said; "I dare say your sympathy's
+with him--shouldn't be surprised; but I think he's behaving precious
+badly, and if he comes my way I shall tell him so."  He dropped the
+subject.
+
+It was impossible to discuss with his son the true nature and meaning of
+Bosinney's defection.  Had not his son done the very same thing (worse,
+if possible) fifteen years ago?  There seemed no end to the consequences
+of that piece of folly.
+
+Young Jolyon also was silent; he had quickly penetrated his father's
+thought, for, dethroned from the high seat of an obvious and
+uncomplicated view of things, he had become both perceptive and subtle.
+
+The attitude he had adopted towards sexual matters fifteen years before,
+however, was too different from his father's.  There was no bridging the
+gulf.
+
+He said coolly: "I suppose he's fallen in love with some other woman?"
+
+Old Jolyon gave him a dubious look: "I can't tell," he said; "they say
+so!"
+
+"Then, it's probably true," remarked young Jolyon unexpectedly; "and I
+suppose they've told you who she is?"
+
+"Yes," said old Jolyon, "Soames's wife!"
+
+Young Jolyon did not whistle: The circumstances of his own life had
+rendered him incapable of whistling on such a subject, but he looked at
+his father, while the ghost of a smile hovered over his face.
+
+If old Jolyon saw, he took no notice.
+
+"She and June were bosom friends!" he muttered.
+
+"Poor little June!" said young Jolyon softly.  He thought of his daughter
+still as a babe of three.
+
+Old Jolyon came to a sudden halt.
+
+"I don't believe a word of it," he said, "it's some old woman's tale.
+Get me a cab, Jo, I'm tired to death!"
+
+They stood at a corner to see if an empty cab would come along, while
+carriage after carriage drove past, bearing Forsytes of all descriptions
+from the Zoo.  The harness, the liveries, the gloss on the horses' coats,
+shone and glittered in the May sunlight, and each equipage, landau,
+sociable, barouche, Victoria, or brougham, seemed to roll out proudly
+from its wheels:
+
+'I and my horses and my men you know,' Indeed the whole turn-out have
+cost a pot. But we were worth it every penny.  Look At Master and at
+Missis now, the dawgs! Ease with security--ah! that's the ticket!
+
+And such, as everyone knows, is fit accompaniment for a perambulating
+Forsyte.
+
+Amongst these carriages was a barouche coming at a greater pace than the
+others, drawn by a pair of bright bay horses.  It swung on its high
+springs, and the four people who filled it seemed rocked as in a cradle.
+
+This chariot attracted young Jolyon's attention; and suddenly, on the
+back seat, he recognised his Uncle James, unmistakable in spite of the
+increased whiteness of his whiskers; opposite, their backs defended by
+sunshades, Rachel Forsyte and her elder but married sister, Winifred
+Dartie, in irreproachable toilettes, had posed their heads haughtily,
+like two of the birds they had been seeing at the Zoo; while by James'
+side reclined Dartie, in a brand-new frock-coat buttoned tight and
+square, with a large expanse of carefully shot linen protruding below
+each wristband.
+
+An extra, if subdued, sparkle, an added touch of the best gloss or
+varnish characterized this vehicle, and seemed to distinguish it from all
+the others, as though by some happy extravagance--like that which marks
+out the real 'work of art' from the ordinary 'picture'--it were
+designated as the typical car, the very throne of Forsytedom.
+
+Old Jolyon did not see them pass; he was petting poor Holly who was
+tired, but those in the carriage had taken in the little group; the
+ladies' heads tilted suddenly, there was a spasmodic screening movement
+of parasols; James' face protruded naively, like the head of a long bird,
+his mouth slowly opening.  The shield-like rounds of the parasols grew
+smaller and smaller, and vanished.
+
+Young Jolyon saw that he had been recognised, even by Winifred, who could
+not have been more than fifteen when he had forfeited the right to be
+considered a Forsyte.
+
+There was not much change in them!  He remembered the exact look of their
+turn-out all that time ago: Horses, men, carriage--all different now, no
+doubt--but of the precise stamp of fifteen years before; the same neat
+display, the same nicely calculated arrogance ease with security!  The
+swing exact, the pose of the sunshades exact, exact the spirit of the
+whole thing.
+
+And in the sunlight, defended by the haughty shields of parasols,
+carriage after carriage went by.
+
+"Uncle James has just passed, with his female folk," said young Jolyon.
+
+His father looked black.  "Did your uncle see us?  Yes?  Hmph! What's he
+want, coming down into these parts?"
+
+An empty cab drove up at this moment, and old Jolyon stopped it.
+
+"I shall see you again before long, my boy!" he said.  "Don't you go
+paying any attention to what I've been saying about young Bosinney--I
+don't believe a word of it!"
+
+Kissing the children, who tried to detain him, he stepped in and was
+borne away.
+
+Young Jolyon, who had taken Holly up in his arms, stood motionless at the
+corner, looking after the cab.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+AFTERNOON AT TIMOTHY'S
+
+If old Jolyon, as he got into his cab, had said: 'I won't believe a word
+of it!' he would more truthfully have expressed his sentiments.
+
+The notion that James and his womankind had seen him in the company of
+his son had awakened in him not only the impatience he always felt when
+crossed, but that secret hostility natural between brothers, the roots of
+which--little nursery rivalries--sometimes toughen and deepen as life
+goes on, and, all hidden, support a plant capable of producing in season
+the bitterest fruits.
+
+Hitherto there had been between these six brothers no more unfriendly
+feeling than that caused by the secret and natural doubt that the others
+might be richer than themselves; a feeling increased to the pitch of
+curiosity by the approach of death--that end of all handicaps--and the
+great 'closeness' of their man of business, who, with some sagacity,
+would profess to Nicholas ignorance of James' income, to James ignorance
+of old Jolyon's, to Jolyon ignorance of Roger's, to Roger ignorance of
+Swithin's, while to Swithin he would say most irritatingly that Nicholas
+must be a rich man.  Timothy alone was exempt, being in gilt-edged
+securities.
+
+But now, between two of them at least, had arisen a very different sense
+of injury.  From the moment when James had the impertinence to pry into
+his affairs--as he put it--old Jolyon no longer chose to credit this
+story about Bosinney.  His grand-daughter slighted through a member of
+'that fellow's' family! He made up his mind that Bosinney was maligned.
+There must be some other reason for his defection.
+
+June had flown out at him, or something; she was as touchy as she could
+be!
+
+He would, however, let Timothy have a bit of his mind, and see if he
+would go on dropping hints!  And he would not let the grass grow under
+his feet either, he would go there at once, and take very good care that
+he didn't have to go again on the same errand.
+
+He saw James' carriage blocking the pavement in front of 'The Bower.' So
+they had got there before him--cackling about having seen him, he dared
+say!  And further on, Swithin's greys were turning their noses towards
+the noses of James' bays, as though in conclave over the family, while
+their coachmen were in conclave above.
+
+Old Jolyon, depositing his hat on the chair in the narrow hall, where
+that hat of Bosinney's had so long ago been mistaken for a cat, passed
+his thin hand grimly over his face with its great drooping white
+moustaches, as though to remove all traces of expression, and made his
+way upstairs.
+
+He found the front drawing-room full.  It was full enough at the best of
+times--without visitors--without any one in it--for Timothy and his
+sisters, following the tradition of their generation, considered that a
+room was not quite 'nice' unless it was 'properly' furnished.  It held,
+therefore, eleven chairs, a sofa, three tables, two cabinets, innumerable
+knicknacks, and part of a large grand piano.  And now, occupied by Mrs.
+Small, Aunt Hester, by Swithin, James, Rachel, Winifred, Euphemia, who
+had come in again to return 'Passion and Paregoric' which she had read at
+lunch, and her chum Frances, Roger's daughter (the musical Forsyte, the
+one who composed songs), there was only one chair left unoccupied,
+except, of course, the two that nobody ever sat on--and the only standing
+room was occupied by the cat, on whom old Jolyon promptly stepped.
+
+In these days it was by no means unusual for Timothy to have so many
+visitors.  The family had always, one and all, had a real respect for
+Aunt Ann, and now that she was gone, they were coming far more frequently
+to The Bower, and staying longer.
+
+Swithin had been the first to arrive, and seated torpid in a red satin
+chair with a gilt back, he gave every appearance of lasting the others
+out.  And symbolizing Bosinney's name 'the big one,' with his great
+stature and bulk, his thick white hair, his puffy immovable shaven face,
+he looked more primeval than ever in the highly upholstered room.
+
+His conversation, as usual of late, had turned at once upon Irene, and he
+had lost no time in giving Aunts Juley and Hester his opinion with regard
+to this rumour he heard was going about. No--as he said--she might want a
+bit of flirtation--a pretty woman must have her fling; but more than that
+he did not believe. Nothing open; she had too much good sense, too much
+proper appreciation of what was due to her position, and to the family!
+No sc...,  he was going to say 'scandal' but the very idea was so
+preposterous that he waved his hand as though to say--'but let that
+pass!'
+
+Granted that Swithin took a bachelor's view of the situation--still what
+indeed was not due to that family in which so many had done so well for
+themselves, had attained a certain position?  If he had heard in dark,
+pessimistic moments the words 'yeomen' and 'very small beer' used in
+connection with his origin, did he believe them?
+
+No! he cherished, hugging it pathetically to his bosom the secret theory
+that there was something distinguished somewhere in his ancestry.
+
+"Must be," he once said to young Jolyon, before the latter went to the
+bad.  "Look at us, we've got on!  There must be good blood in us
+somewhere."
+
+He had been fond of young Jolyon: the boy had been in a good set at
+College, had known that old ruffian Sir Charles Fiste's sons--a pretty
+rascal one of them had turned out, too; and there was style about him--it
+was a thousand pities he had run off with that half-foreign governess!
+If he must go off like that why couldn't he have chosen someone who would
+have done them credit! And what was he now?--an underwriter at Lloyd's;
+they said he even painted pictures--pictures!  Damme! he might have ended
+as Sir Jolyon Forsyte, Bart., with a seat in Parliament, and a place in
+the country!
+
+It was Swithin who, following the impulse which sooner or later urges
+thereto some member of every great family, went to the Heralds' Office,
+where they assured him that he was undoubtedly of the same family as the
+well-known Forsites with an 'i,' whose arms were 'three dexter buckles on
+a sable ground gules,' hoping no doubt to get him to take them up.
+
+Swithin, however, did not do this, but having ascertained that the crest
+was a 'pheasant proper,' and the motto 'For Forsite,' he had the pheasant
+proper placed upon his carriage and the buttons of his coachman, and both
+crest and motto on his writing-paper.  The arms he hugged to himself,
+partly because, not having paid for them, he thought it would look
+ostentatious to put them on his carriage, and he hated ostentation, and
+partly because he, like any practical man all over the country, had a
+secret dislike and contempt for things he could not understand he found
+it hard, as anyone might, to swallow 'three dexter buckles on a sable
+ground gules.'
+
+He never forgot, however, their having told him that if he paid for them
+he would be entitled to use them, and it strengthened his conviction that
+he was a gentleman.  Imperceptibly the rest of the family absorbed the
+'pheasant proper,' and some, more serious than others, adopted the motto;
+old Jolyon, however, refused to use the latter, saying that it was humbug
+meaning nothing, so far as he could see.
+
+Among the older generation it was perhaps known at bottom from what great
+historical event they derived their crest; and if pressed on the subject,
+sooner than tell a lie--they did not like telling lies, having an
+impression that only Frenchmen and Russians told them--they would confess
+hurriedly that Swithin had got hold of it somehow.
+
+Among the younger generation the matter was wrapped in a discretion
+proper.  They did not want to hurt the feelings of their elders, nor to
+feel ridiculous themselves; they simply used the crest....
+
+"No," said Swithin, "he had had an opportunity of seeing for himself, and
+what he should say was, that there was nothing in her manner to that
+young Buccaneer or Bosinney or whatever his name was, different from her
+manner to himself; in fact, he should rather say...." But here the
+entrance of Frances and Euphemia put an unfortunate stop to the
+conversation, for this was not a subject which could be discussed before
+young people.
+
+And though Swithin was somewhat upset at being stopped like this on the
+point of saying something important, he soon recovered his affability.
+He was rather fond of Frances--Francie, as she was called in the family.
+She was so smart, and they told him she made a pretty little pot of
+pin-money by her songs; he called it very clever of her.
+
+He rather prided himself indeed on a liberal attitude towards women, not
+seeing any reason why they shouldn't paint pictures, or write tunes, or
+books even, for the matter of that, especially if they could turn a
+useful penny by it; not at all--kept them out of mischief.  It was not as
+if they were men!
+
+'Little Francie,' as she was usually called with good-natured contempt,
+was an important personage, if only as a standing illustration of the
+attitude of Forsytes towards the Arts.  She was not really 'little,' but
+rather tall, with dark hair for a Forsyte, which, together with a grey
+eye, gave her what was called 'a Celtic appearance.' She wrote songs with
+titles like 'Breathing Sighs,' or 'Kiss me, Mother, ere I die,' with a
+refrain like an anthem:
+
+    'Kiss me, Mother, ere I die;
+     Kiss me-kiss me, Mother, ah!
+     Kiss, ah! kiss me e-ere I--
+     Kiss me, Mother, ere I d-d-die!'
+
+She wrote the words to them herself, and other poems.  In lighter moments
+she wrote waltzes, one of which, the 'Kensington Coil,' was almost
+national to Kensington, having a sweet dip in it.
+
+It was very original.  Then there were her 'Songs for Little People,' at
+once educational and witty, especially 'Gran'ma's Porgie,' and that
+ditty, almost prophetically imbued with the coming Imperial spirit,
+entitled 'Black Him In His Little Eye.'
+
+Any publisher would take these, and reviews like 'High Living,' and the
+'Ladies' Genteel Guide' went into raptures over: 'Another of Miss Francie
+Forsyte's spirited ditties, sparkling and pathetic.  We ourselves were
+moved to tears and laughter.  Miss Forsyte should go far.'
+
+With the true instinct of her breed, Francie had made a point of knowing
+the right people--people who would write about her, and talk about her,
+and people in Society, too--keeping a mental register of just where to
+exert her fascinations, and an eye on that steady scale of rising prices,
+which in her mind's eye represented the future.  In this way she caused
+herself to be universally respected.
+
+Once, at a time when her emotions were whipped by an attachment--for the
+tenor of Roger's life, with its whole-hearted collection of house
+property, had induced in his only daughter a tendency towards
+passion--she turned to great and sincere work, choosing the sonata form,
+for the violin.  This was the only one of her productions that troubled
+the Forsytes.  They felt at once that it would not sell.
+
+Roger, who liked having a clever daughter well enough, and often alluded
+to the amount of pocket-money she made for herself, was upset by this
+violin sonata.
+
+"Rubbish like that!" he called it.  Francie had borrowed young
+Flageoletti from Euphemia, to play it in the drawing-room at Prince's
+Gardens.
+
+As a matter of fact Roger was right.  It was rubbish, but--annoying! the
+sort of rubbish that wouldn't sell.  As every Forsyte knows, rubbish that
+sells is not rubbish at all--far from it.
+
+And yet, in spite of the sound common sense which fixed the worth of art
+at what it would fetch, some of the Forsytes--Aunt Hester, for instance,
+who had always been musical--could not help regretting that Francie's
+music was not 'classical'; the same with her poems.  But then, as Aunt
+Hester said, they didn't see any poetry nowadays, all the poems were
+'little light things.'
+
+There was nobody who could write a poem like 'Paradise Lost,' or 'Childe
+Harold'; either of which made you feel that you really had read
+something.  Still, it was nice for Francie to have something to occupy
+her; while other girls were spending money shopping she was making it!
+
+And both Aunt Hester and Aunt Juley were always ready to listen to the
+latest story of how Francie had got her price increased.
+
+They listened now, together with Swithin, who sat pretending not to, for
+these young people talked so fast and mumbled so, he never could catch
+what they said.
+
+"And I can't think," said Mrs. Septimus, "how you do it.  I should never
+have the audacity!"
+
+Francie smiled lightly.  "I'd much rather deal with a man than a woman.
+Women are so sharp!"
+
+"My dear," cried Mrs. Small, "I'm sure we're not."
+
+Euphemia went off into her silent laugh, and, ending with the squeak,
+said, as though being strangled: "Oh, you'll kill me some day, auntie."
+
+Swithin saw no necessity to laugh; he detested people laughing when he
+himself perceived no joke.  Indeed, he detested Euphemia altogether, to
+whom he always alluded as 'Nick's daughter, what's she called--the pale
+one?'  He had just missed being her god-father--indeed, would have been,
+had he not taken a firm stand against her outlandish name.  He hated
+becoming a godfather. Swithin then said to Francie with dignity: "It's a
+fine day--er--for the time of year." But Euphemia, who knew perfectly
+well that he had refused to be her godfather, turned to Aunt Hester, and
+began telling her how she had seen Irene--Mrs. Soames--at the Church and
+Commercial Stores.
+
+"And Soames was with her?" said Aunt Hester, to whom Mrs. Small had as
+yet had no opportunity of relating the incident.
+
+"Soames with her?  Of course not!"
+
+"But was she all alone in London?"
+
+"Oh, no; there was Mr. Bosinney with her.  She was perfectly dressed."
+
+But Swithin, hearing the name Irene, looked severely at Euphemia, who, it
+is true, never did look well in a dress, whatever she may have done on
+other occasions, and said:
+
+"Dressed like a lady, I've no doubt.  It's a pleasure to see her."
+
+At this moment James and his daughters were announced.  Dartie, feeling
+badly in want of a drink, had pleaded an appointment with his dentist,
+and, being put down at the Marble Arch, had got into a hansom, and was
+already seated in the window of his club in Piccadilly.
+
+His wife, he told his cronies, had wanted to take him to pay some calls.
+It was not in his line--not exactly.  Haw!
+
+Hailing the waiter, he sent him out to the hall to see what had won the
+4.30 race.  He was dog-tired, he said, and that was a fact; had been
+drivin' about with his wife to 'shows' all the afternoon.  Had put his
+foot down at last.  A fellow must live his own life.
+
+At this moment, glancing out of the bay window--for he loved this seat
+whence he could see everybody pass--his eye unfortunately, or perhaps
+fortunately, chanced to light on the figure of Soames, who was mousing
+across the road from the Green Park-side, with the evident intention of
+coming in, for he, too, belonged to 'The Iseeum.'
+
+Dartie sprang to his feet; grasping his glass, he muttered something
+about 'that 4.30 race,' and swiftly withdrew to the card-room, where
+Soames never came.  Here, in complete isolation and a dim light, he lived
+his own life till half past seven, by which hour he knew Soames must
+certainly have left the club.
+
+It would not do, as he kept repeating to himself whenever he felt the
+impulse to join the gossips in the bay-window getting too strong for
+him--it absolutely would not do, with finances as low as his, and the
+'old man' (James) rusty ever since that business over the oil shares,
+which was no fault of his, to risk a row with Winifred.
+
+If Soames were to see him in the club it would be sure to come round to
+her that he wasn't at the dentist's at all.  He never knew a family where
+things 'came round' so.  Uneasily, amongst the green baize card-tables, a
+frown on his olive coloured face, his check trousers crossed, and
+patent-leather boots shining through the gloom, he sat biting his
+forefinger, and wondering where the deuce he was to get the money if
+Erotic failed to win the Lancashire Cup.
+
+His thoughts turned gloomily to the Forsytes.  What a set they were!
+There was no getting anything out of them--at least, it was a matter of
+extreme difficulty.  They were so d---d particular about money matters;
+not a sportsman amongst the lot, unless it were George.  That fellow
+Soames, for instance, would have a ft if you tried to borrow a tenner
+from him, or, if he didn't have a fit, he looked at you with his cursed
+supercilious smile, as if you were a lost soul because you were in want
+of money.
+
+And that wife of his (Dartie's mouth watered involuntarily), he had tried
+to be on good terms with her, as one naturally would with any pretty
+sister-in-law, but he would be cursed if the (he mentally used a coarse
+word)--would have anything to say to him--she looked at him, indeed, as
+if he were dirt--and yet she could go far enough, he wouldn't mind
+betting.  He knew women; they weren't made with soft eyes and figures
+like that for nothing, as that fellow Soames would jolly soon find out,
+if there were anything in what he had heard about this Buccaneer Johnny.
+
+Rising from his chair, Dartie took a turn across the room, ending in
+front of the looking-glass over the marble chimney-piece; and there he
+stood for a long time contemplating in the glass the reflection of his
+face.  It had that look, peculiar to some men, of having been steeped in
+linseed oil, with its waxed dark moustaches and the little distinguished
+commencements of side whiskers; and concernedly he felt the promise of a
+pimple on the side of his slightly curved and fattish nose.
+
+In the meantime old Jolyon had found the remaining chair in Timothy's
+commodious drawing-room.  His advent had obviously put a stop to the
+conversation, decided awkwardness having set in. Aunt Juley, with her
+well-known kindheartedness, hastened to set people at their ease again.
+
+"Yes, Jolyon," she said, "we were just saying that you haven't been here
+for a long time; but we mustn't be surprised.  You're busy, of course?
+James was just saying what a busy time of year...."
+
+"Was he?" said old Jolyon, looking hard at James.  "It wouldn't be half
+so busy if everybody minded their own business."
+
+James, brooding in a small chair from which his knees ran uphill, shifted
+his feet uneasily, and put one of them down on the cat, which had
+unwisely taken refuge from old Jolyon beside him.
+
+"Here, you've got a cat here," he said in an injured voice, withdrawing
+his foot nervously as he felt it squeezing into the soft, furry body.
+
+"Several," said old Jolyon, looking at one face and another; "I trod on
+one just now."
+
+A silence followed.
+
+Then Mrs. Small, twisting her fingers and gazing round with 'pathetic
+calm', asked: "And how is dear June?"
+
+A twinkle of humour shot through the sternness of old Jolyon's eyes.
+Extraordinary old woman, Juley!  No one quite like her for saying the
+wrong thing!
+
+"Bad!" he said; "London don't agree with her--too many people about, too
+much clatter and chatter by half."  He laid emphasis on the words, and
+again looked James in the face.
+
+Nobody spoke.
+
+A feeling of its being too dangerous to take a step in any direction, or
+hazard any remark, had fallen on them all. Something of the sense of the
+impending, that comes over the spectator of a Greek tragedy, had entered
+that upholstered room, filled with those white-haired, frock-coated old
+men, and fashionably attired women, who were all of the same blood,
+between all of whom existed an unseizable resemblance.
+
+Not that they were conscious of it--the visits of such fateful, bitter
+spirits are only felt.
+
+Then Swithin rose.  He would not sit there, feeling like that--he was not
+to be put down by anyone!  And, manoeuvring round the room with added
+pomp, he shook hands with each separately.
+
+"You tell Timothy from me," he said, "that he coddles himself too much!"
+Then, turning to Francie, whom he considered 'smart,' he added: "You come
+with me for a drive one of these days."  But this conjured up the vision
+of that other eventful drive which had been so much talked about, and he
+stood quite still for a second, with glassy eyes, as though waiting to
+catch up with the significance of what he himself had said; then,
+suddenly recollecting that he didn't care a damn, he turned to old
+Jolyon: "Well, good-bye, Jolyon!  You shouldn't go about without an
+overcoat; you'll be getting sciatica or something!"  And, kicking the cat
+slightly with the pointed tip of his patent leather boot, he took his
+huge form away.
+
+When he had gone everyone looked secretly at the others, to see how they
+had taken the mention of the word 'drive'--the word which had become
+famous, and acquired an overwhelming importance, as the only official--so
+to speak--news in connection with the vague and sinister rumour clinging
+to the family tongue.
+
+Euphemia, yielding to an impulse, said with a short laugh: "I'm glad
+Uncle Swithin doesn't ask me to go for drives."
+
+Mrs. Small, to reassure her and smooth over any little awkwardness the
+subject might have, replied: "My dear, he likes to take somebody well
+dressed, who will do him a little credit. I shall never forget the drive
+he took me.  It was an experience!"  And her chubby round old face was
+spread for a moment with a strange contentment; then broke into pouts,
+and tears came into her eyes.  She was thinking of that long ago driving
+tour she had once taken with Septimus Small.
+
+James, who had relapsed into his nervous brooding in the little chair,
+suddenly roused himself: "He's a funny fellow, Swithin," he said, but in
+a half-hearted way.
+
+Old Jolyon's silence, his stern eyes, held them all in a kind of
+paralysis.  He was disconcerted himself by the effect of his own
+words--an effect which seemed to deepen the importance of the very rumour
+he had come to scotch; but he was still angry.
+
+He had not done with them yet--No, no--he would give them another rub or
+two.
+
+He did not wish to rub his nieces, he had no quarrel with them--a young
+and presentable female always appealed to old Jolyon's clemency--but that
+fellow James, and, in a less degree perhaps, those others, deserved all
+they would get.  And he, too, asked for Timothy.
+
+As though feeling that some danger threatened her younger brother, Aunt
+Juley suddenly offered him tea: "There it is," she said, "all cold and
+nasty, waiting for you in the back drawing room, but Smither shall make
+you some fresh."
+
+Old Jolyon rose: "Thank you," he said, looking straight at James, "but
+I've no time for tea, and--scandal, and the rest of it! It's time I was
+at home.  Good-bye, Julia; good-bye, Hester; good-bye, Winifred."
+
+Without more ceremonious adieux, he marched out.
+
+Once again in his cab, his anger evaporated, for so it ever was with his
+wrath--when he had rapped out, it was gone.  Sadness came over his
+spirit.  He had stopped their mouths, maybe, but at what a cost!  At the
+cost of certain knowledge that the rumour he had been resolved not to
+believe was true.  June was abandoned, and for the wife of that fellow's
+son!  He felt it was true, and hardened himself to treat it as if it were
+not; but the pain he hid beneath this resolution began slowly, surely, to
+vent itself in a blind resentment against James and his son.
+
+The six women and one man left behind in the little drawing-room began
+talking as easily as might be after such an occurrence, for though each
+one of them knew for a fact that he or she never talked scandal, each one
+of them also knew that the other six did; all were therefore angry and at
+a loss.  James only was silent, disturbed, to the bottom of his soul.
+
+Presently Francie said: "Do you know, I think Uncle Jolyon is terribly
+changed this last year.  What do you think, Aunt Hester?"
+
+Aunt Hester made a little movement of recoil: "Oh, ask your Aunt Julia!"
+she said; "I know nothing about it."
+
+No one else was afraid of assenting, and James muttered gloomily at the
+floor: "He's not half the man he was."
+
+"I've noticed it a long time," went on Francie; "he's aged tremendously."
+
+Aunt Juley shook her head; her face seemed suddenly to have become one
+immense pout.
+
+"Poor dear Jolyon," she said, "somebody ought to see to it for him!"
+
+There was again silence; then, as though in terror of being left
+solitarily behind, all five visitors rose simultaneously, and took their
+departure.
+
+Mrs. Small, Aunt Hester, and their cat were left once more alone, the
+sound of a door closing in the distance announced the approach of
+Timothy.
+
+That evening, when Aunt Hester had just got off to sleep in the back
+bedroom that used to be Aunt Juley's before Aunt Juley took Aunt Ann's,
+her door was opened, and Mrs. Small, in a pink night-cap, a candle in her
+hand, entered: "Hester!" she said. "Hester!"
+
+Aunt Hester faintly rustled the sheet.
+
+"Hester," repeated Aunt Juley, to make quite sure that she had awakened
+her, "I am quite troubled about poor dear Jolyon. What," Aunt Juley dwelt
+on the word, "do you think ought to be done?"
+
+Aunt Hester again rustled the sheet, her voice was heard faintly
+pleading: "Done?  How should I know?"
+
+Aunt Juley turned away satisfied, and closing the door with extra
+gentleness so as not to disturb dear Hester, let it slip through her
+fingers and fall to with a 'crack.'
+
+Back in her own room, she stood at the window gazing at the moon over the
+trees in the Park, through a chink in the muslin curtains, close drawn
+lest anyone should see.  And there, with her face all round and pouting
+in its pink cap, and her eyes wet, she thought of 'dear Jolyon,' so old
+and so lonely, and how she could be of some use to him; and how he would
+come to love her, as she had never been loved since--since poor Septimus
+went away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+DANCE AT ROGER'S
+
+Roger's house in Prince's Gardens was brilliantly alight.  Large numbers
+of wax candles had been collected and placed in cut-glass chandeliers,
+and the parquet floor of the long, double drawing-room reflected these
+constellations.  An appearance of real spaciousness had been secured by
+moving out all the furniture on to the upper landings, and enclosing the
+room with those strange appendages of civilization known as 'rout' seats.
+In a remote corner, embowered in palms, was a cottage piano, with a copy
+of the 'Kensington Coil' open on the music-stand.
+
+Roger had objected to a band.  He didn't see in the least what they
+wanted with a band; he wouldn't go to the expense, and there was an end
+of it.  Francie (her mother, whom Roger had long since reduced to chronic
+dyspepsia, went to bed on such occasions), had been obliged to content
+herself with supplementing the piano by a young man who played the
+cornet, and she so arranged with palms that anyone who did not look into
+the heart of things might imagine there were several musicians secreted
+there.  She made up her mind to tell them to play loud--there was a lot
+of music in a cornet, if the man would only put his soul into it.
+
+In the more cultivated American tongue, she was 'through' at
+last--through that tortuous labyrinth of make-shifts, which must be
+traversed before fashionable display can be combined with the sound
+economy of a Forsyte.  Thin but brilliant, in her maize-coloured frock
+with much tulle about the shoulders, she went from place to place,
+fitting on her gloves, and casting her eye over it all.
+
+To the hired butler (for Roger only kept maids) she spoke about the wine.
+Did he quite understand that Mr. Forsyte wished a dozen bottles of the
+champagne from Whiteley's to be put out? But if that were finished (she
+did not suppose it would be, most of the ladies would drink water, no
+doubt), but if it were, there was the champagne cup, and he must do the
+best he could with that.
+
+She hated having to say this sort of thing to a butler, it was so infra
+dig.; but what could you do with father?  Roger, indeed, after making
+himself consistently disagreeable about the dance, would come down
+presently, with his fresh colour and bumpy forehead, as though he had
+been its promoter; and he would smile, and probably take the prettiest
+woman in to supper; and at two o'clock, just as they were getting into
+the swing, he would go up secretly to the musicians and tell them to play
+'God Save the Queen,' and go away.
+
+Francie devoutly hoped he might soon get tired, and slip off to bed.
+
+The three or four devoted girl friends who were staying in the house for
+this dance had partaken with her, in a small, abandoned room upstairs, of
+tea and cold chicken-legs, hurriedly served; the men had been sent out to
+dine at Eustace's Club, it being felt that they must be fed up.
+
+Punctually on the stroke of nine arrived Mrs. Small alone.  She made
+elaborate apologies for the absence of Timothy, omitting all mention of
+Aunt Hester, who, at the last minute, had said she could not be bothered.
+Francie received her effusively, and placed her on a rout seat, where she
+left her, pouting and solitary in lavender-coloured satin--the first time
+she had worn colour since Aunt Ann's death.
+
+The devoted maiden friends came now from their rooms, each by magic
+arrangement in a differently coloured frock, but all with the same
+liberal allowance of tulle on the shoulders and at the bosom--for they
+were, by some fatality, lean to a girl.  They were all taken up to Mrs.
+Small.  None stayed with her more than a few seconds, but clustering
+together talked and twisted their programmes, looking secretly at the
+door for the first appearance of a man.
+
+Then arrived in a group a number of Nicholases, always punctual--the
+fashion up Ladbroke Grove way; and close behind them Eustace and his men,
+gloomy and smelling rather of smoke.
+
+Three or four of Francie's lovers now appeared, one after the other; she
+had made each promise to come early.  They were all clean-shaven and
+sprightly, with that peculiar kind of young-man sprightliness which had
+recently invaded Kensington; they did not seem to mind each other's
+presence in the least, and wore their ties bunching out at the ends,
+white waistcoats, and socks with clocks.  All had handkerchiefs concealed
+in their cuffs.  They moved buoyantly, each armoured in professional
+gaiety, as though he had come to do great deeds.  Their faces when they
+danced, far from wearing the traditional solemn look of the dancing
+Englishman, were irresponsible, charming, suave; they bounded, twirling
+their partners at great pace, without pedantic attention to the rhythm of
+the music.
+
+At other dancers they looked with a kind of airy scorn--they, the light
+brigade, the heroes of a hundred Kensington 'hops'--from whom alone could
+the right manner and smile and step be hoped.
+
+After this the stream came fast; chaperones silting up along the wall
+facing the entrance, the volatile element swelling the eddy in the larger
+room.
+
+Men were scarce, and wallflowers wore their peculiar, pathetic
+expression, a patient, sourish smile which seemed to say: "Oh, no! don't
+mistake me, I know you are not coming up to me.  I can hardly expect
+that!"  And Francie would plead with one of her lovers, or with some
+callow youth: "Now, to please me, do let me introduce you to Miss Pink;
+such a nice girl, really!" and she would bring him up, and say: "Miss
+Pink--Mr. Gathercole.  Can you spare him a dance?"  Then Miss Pink,
+smiling her forced smile, colouring a little, answered: "Oh! I think so!"
+and screening her empty card, wrote on it the name of Gathercole,
+spelling it passionately in the district that he proposed, about the
+second extra.
+
+But when the youth had murmured that it was hot, and passed, she relapsed
+into her attitude of hopeless expectation, into her patient, sourish
+smile.
+
+Mothers, slowly fanning their faces, watched their daughters, and in
+their eyes could be read all the story of those daughters' fortunes.  As
+for themselves, to sit hour after hour, dead tired, silent, or talking
+spasmodically--what did it matter, so long as the girls were having a
+good time!  But to see them neglected and passed by!  Ah! they smiled,
+but their eyes stabbed like the eyes of an offended swan; they longed to
+pluck young Gathercole by the slack of his dandified breeches, and drag
+him to their daughters--the jackanapes!
+
+And all the cruelties and hardness of life, its pathos and unequal
+chances, its conceit, self-forgetfulness, and patience, were presented on
+the battle-field of this Kensington ball-room.
+
+Here and there, too, lovers--not lovers like Francie's, a peculiar breed,
+but simply lovers--trembling, blushing, silent, sought each other by
+flying glances, sought to meet and touch in the mazes of the dance, and
+now and again dancing together, struck some beholder by the light in
+their eyes.
+
+Not a second before ten o'clock came the Jameses--Emily, Rachel, Winifred
+(Dartie had been left behind, having on a former occasion drunk too much
+of Roger's champagne), and Cicely, the youngest, making her debut; behind
+them, following in a hansom from the paternal mansion where they had
+dined, Soames and Irene.
+
+All these ladies had shoulder-straps and no tulle--thus showing at once,
+by a bolder exposure of flesh, that they came from the more fashionable
+side of the Park.
+
+Soames, sidling back from the contact of the dancers, took up a position
+against the wall.  Guarding himself with his pale smile, he stood
+watching.  Waltz after waltz began and ended, couple after couple brushed
+by with smiling lips, laughter, and snatches of talk; or with set lips,
+and eyes searching the throng; or again, with silent, parted lips, and
+eyes on each other.  And the scent of festivity, the odour of flowers,
+and hair, of essences that women love, rose suffocatingly in the heat of
+the summer night.
+
+Silent, with something of scorn in his smile, Soames seemed to notice
+nothing; but now and again his eyes, finding that which they sought,
+would fix themselves on a point in the shifting throng, and the smile die
+off his lips.
+
+He danced with no one.  Some fellows danced with their wives; his sense
+of 'form' had never permitted him to dance with Irene since their
+marriage, and the God of the Forsytes alone can tell whether this was a
+relief to him or not.
+
+She passed, dancing with other men, her dress, iris-coloured, floating
+away from her feet.  She danced well; he was tired of hearing women say
+with an acid smile: "How beautifully your wife dances, Mr. Forsyte--it's
+quite a pleasure to watch her!"  Tired of answering them with his
+sidelong glance: "You think so?"
+
+A young couple close by flirted a fan by turns, making an unpleasant
+draught.  Francie and one of her lovers stood near. They were talking of
+love.
+
+He heard Roger's voice behind, giving an order about supper to a servant.
+Everything was very second-class!  He wished that he had not come!  He
+had asked Irene whether she wanted him; she had answered with that
+maddening smile of hers "Oh, no!"
+
+Why had he come?  For the last quarter of an hour he had not even seen
+her.  Here was George advancing with his Quilpish face; it was too late
+to get out of his way.
+
+"Have you seen 'The Buccaneer'?" said this licensed wag; "he's on the
+warpath--hair cut and everything!"
+
+Soames said he had not, and crossing the room, half-empty in an interval
+of the dance, he went out on the balcony, and looked down into the
+street.
+
+A carriage had driven up with late arrivals, and round the door hung some
+of those patient watchers of the London streets who spring up to the call
+of light or music; their faces, pale and upturned above their black and
+rusty figures, had an air of stolid watching that annoyed Soames.  Why
+were they allowed to hang about; why didn't the bobby move them on?
+
+But the policeman took no notice of them; his feet were planted apart on
+the strip of crimson carpet stretched across the pavement; his face,
+under the helmet, wore the same stolid, watching look as theirs.
+
+Across the road, through the railings, Soames could see the branches of
+trees shining, faintly stirring in the breeze, by the gleam of the street
+lamps; beyond, again, the upper lights of the houses on the other side,
+so many eyes looking down on the quiet blackness of the garden; and over
+all, the sky, that wonderful London sky, dusted with the innumerable
+reflection of countless lamps; a dome woven over between its stars with
+the refraction of human needs and human fancies--immense mirror of pomp
+and misery that night after night stretches its kindly mocking over miles
+of houses and gardens, mansions and squalor, over Forsytes, policemen,
+and patient watchers in the streets.
+
+Soames turned away, and, hidden in the recess, gazed into the lighted
+room.  It was cooler out there.  He saw the new arrivals, June and her
+grandfather, enter.  What had made them so late? They stood by the
+doorway.  They looked fagged.  Fancy Uncle Jolyon turning out at this
+time of night!  Why hadn't June come to Irene, as she usually did, and it
+occurred to him suddenly that he had seen nothing of June for a long time
+now.
+
+Watching her face with idle malice, he saw it change, grow so pale that
+he thought she would drop, then flame out crimson. Turning to see at what
+she was looking, he saw his wife on Bosinney's arm, coming from the
+conservatory at the end of the room.  Her eyes were raised to his, as
+though answering some question he had asked, and he was gazing at her
+intently.
+
+Soames looked again at June.  Her hand rested on old Jolyon's arm; she
+seemed to be making a request.  He saw a surprised look on his uncle's
+face; they turned and passed through the door out of his sight.
+
+The music began again--a waltz--and, still as a statue in the recess of
+the window, his face unmoved, but no smile on his lips, Soames waited.
+Presently, within a yard of the dark balcony, his wife and Bosinney
+passed.  He caught the perfume of the gardenias that she wore, saw the
+rise and fall of her bosom, the languor in her eyes, her parted lips, and
+a look on her face that he did not know.  To the slow, swinging measure
+they danced by, and it seemed to him that they clung to each other; he
+saw her raise her eyes, soft and dark, to Bosinney's, and drop them
+again.
+
+Very white, he turned back to the balcony, and leaning on it, gazed down
+on the Square; the figures were still there looking up at the light with
+dull persistency, the policeman's face, too, upturned, and staring, but
+he saw nothing of them.  Below, a carriage drew up, two figures got in,
+and drove away....
+
+That evening June and old Jolyon sat down to dinner at the usual hour.
+The girl was in her customary high-necked frock, old Jolyon had not
+dressed.
+
+At breakfast she had spoken of the dance at Uncle Roger's, she wanted to
+go; she had been stupid enough, she said, not to think of asking anyone
+to take her.  It was too late now.
+
+Old Jolyon lifted his keen eyes.  June was used to go to dances with
+Irene as a matter of course! and deliberately fixing his gaze on her, he
+asked: "Why don't you get Irene?"
+
+No!  June did not want to ask Irene; she would only go if--if her
+grandfather wouldn't mind just for once for a little time!
+
+At her look, so eager and so worn, old Jolyon had grumblingly consented.
+He did not know what she wanted, he said, with going to a dance like
+this, a poor affair, he would wager; and she no more fit for it than a
+cat!  What she wanted was sea air, and after his general meeting of the
+Globular Gold Concessions he was ready to take her.  She didn't want to
+go away?  Ah! she would knock herself up!  Stealing a mournful look at
+her, he went on with his breakfast.
+
+June went out early, and wandered restlessly about in the heat. Her
+little light figure that lately had moved so languidly about its
+business, was all on fire.  She bought herself some flowers. She
+wanted--she meant to look her best.  He would be there!  She knew well
+enough that he had a card.  She would show him that she did not care.
+But deep down in her heart she resolved that evening to win him back.
+She came in flushed, and talked brightly all lunch; old Jolyon was there,
+and he was deceived.
+
+In the afternoon she was overtaken by a desperate fit of sobbing. She
+strangled the noise against the pillows of her bed, but when at last it
+ceased she saw in the glass a swollen face with reddened eyes, and violet
+circles round them.  She stayed in the darkened room till dinner time.
+
+All through that silent meal the struggle went on within her.
+
+She looked so shadowy and exhausted that old Jolyon told 'Sankey' to
+countermand the carriage, he would not have her going out.... She was to
+go to bed!  She made no resistance.  She went up to her room, and sat in
+the dark.  At ten o'clock she rang for her maid.
+
+"Bring some hot water, and go down and tell Mr. Forsyte that I feel
+perfectly rested.  Say that if he's too tired I can go to the dance by
+myself."
+
+The maid looked askance, and June turned on her imperiously. "Go," she
+said, "bring the hot water at once!"
+
+Her ball-dress still lay on the sofa, and with a sort of fierce care she
+arrayed herself, took the flowers in her hand, and went down, her small
+face carried high under its burden of hair.  She could hear old Jolyon in
+his room as she passed.
+
+Bewildered and vexed, he was dressing.  It was past ten, they would not
+get there till eleven; the girl was mad.  But he dared not cross her--the
+expression of her face at dinner haunted him.
+
+With great ebony brushes he smoothed his hair till it shone like silver
+under the light; then he, too, came out on the gloomy staircase.
+
+June met him below, and, without a word, they went to the carriage.
+
+When, after that drive which seemed to last for ever, she entered Roger's
+drawing-room, she disguised under a mask of resolution a very torment of
+nervousness and emotion.  The feeling of shame at what might be called
+'running after him' was smothered by the dread that he might not be
+there, that she might not see him after all, and by that dogged
+resolve--somehow, she did not know how--to win him back.
+
+The sight of the ballroom, with its gleaming floor, gave her a feeling of
+joy, of triumph, for she loved dancing, and when dancing she floated, so
+light was she, like a strenuous, eager little spirit.  He would surely
+ask her to dance, and if he danced with her it would all be as it was
+before.  She looked about her eagerly.
+
+The sight of Bosinney coming with Irene from the conservatory, with that
+strange look of utter absorption on his face, struck her too suddenly.
+They had not seen--no one should see--her distress, not even her
+grandfather.
+
+She put her hand on Jolyon's arm, and said very low:
+
+"I must go home, Gran; I feel ill."
+
+He hurried her away, grumbling to himself that he had known how it would
+be.
+
+To her he said nothing; only when they were once more in the carriage,
+which by some fortunate chance had lingered near the door, he asked her:
+"What is it, my darling?"
+
+Feeling her whole slender body shaken by sobs, he was terribly alarmed.
+She must have Blank to-morrow.  He would insist upon it.  He could not
+have her like this....  There, there!
+
+June mastered her sobs, and squeezing his hand feverishly, she lay back
+in her corner, her face muffled in a shawl.
+
+He could only see her eyes, fixed and staring in the dark, but he did not
+cease to stroke her hand with his thin fingers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+EVENING AT RICHMOND
+
+Other eyes besides the eyes of June and of Soames had seen 'those two'
+(as Euphemia had already begun to call them) coming from the
+conservatory; other eyes had noticed the look on Bosinney's face.
+
+There are moments when Nature reveals the passion hidden beneath the
+careless calm of her ordinary moods--violent spring flashing white on
+almond-blossom through the purple clouds; a snowy, moonlit peak, with its
+single star, soaring up to the passionate blue; or against the flames of
+sunset, an old yew-tree standing dark guardian of some fiery secret.
+
+There are moments, too, when in a picture-gallery, a work, noted by the
+casual spectator as '......Titian--remarkably fine,' breaks through the
+defences of some Forsyte better lunched perhaps than his fellows, and
+holds him spellbound in a kind of ecstasy.  There are things, he
+feels--there are things here which--well, which are things.  Something
+unreasoning, unreasonable, is upon him; when he tries to define it with
+the precision of a practical man, it eludes him, slips away, as the glow
+of the wine he has drunk is slipping away, leaving him cross, and
+conscious of his liver.  He feels that he has been extravagant, prodigal
+of something; virtue has gone out of him. He did not desire this glimpse
+of what lay under the three stars of his catalogue.  God forbid that he
+should know anything about the forces of Nature!  God forbid that he
+should admit for a moment that there are such things!  Once admit that,
+and where was he?  One paid a shilling for entrance, and another for the
+programme.
+
+The look which June had seen, which other Forsytes had seen, was like the
+sudden flashing of a candle through a hole in some imaginary canvas,
+behind which it was being moved--the sudden flaming-out of a vague,
+erratic glow, shadowy and enticing.  It brought home to onlookers the
+consciousness that dangerous forces were at work.  For a moment they
+noticed it with pleasure, with interest, then felt they must not notice
+it at all.
+
+It supplied, however, the reason of June's coming so late and
+disappearing again without dancing, without even shaking hands with her
+lover.  She was ill, it was said, and no wonder.
+
+But here they looked at each other guiltily.  They had no desire to
+spread scandal, no desire to be ill-natured.  Who would have? And to
+outsiders no word was breathed, unwritten law keeping them silent.
+
+Then came the news that June had gone to the seaside with old Jolyon.
+
+He had carried her off to Broadstairs, for which place there was just
+then a feeling, Yarmouth having lost caste, in spite of Nicholas, and no
+Forsyte going to the sea without intending to have an air for his money
+such as would render him bilious in a week.  That fatally aristocratic
+tendency of the first Forsyte to drink Madeira had left his descendants
+undoubtedly accessible.
+
+So June went to the sea.  The family awaited developments; there was
+nothing else to do.
+
+But how far--how far had 'those two' gone?  How far were they going to
+go?  Could they really be going at all?  Nothing could surely come of it,
+for neither of them had any money.  At the most a flirtation, ending, as
+all such attachments should, at the proper time.
+
+Soames' sister, Winifred Dartie, who had imbibed with the breezes of
+Mayfair--she lived in Green Street--more fashionable principles in regard
+to matrimonial behaviour than were current, for instance, in Ladbroke
+Grove, laughed at the idea of there being anything in it.  The 'little
+thing'--Irene was taller than herself, and it was real testimony to the
+solid worth of a Forsyte that she should always thus be a 'little
+thing'--the little thing was bored.  Why shouldn't she amuse herself?
+Soames was rather tiring; and as to Mr. Bosinney--only that buffoon
+George would have called him the Buccaneer--she maintained that he was
+very chic.
+
+This dictum--that Bosinney was chic--caused quit a sensation.  It failed
+to convince.  That he was 'good-looking in a way' they were prepared to
+admit, but that anyone could call a man with his pronounced cheekbones,
+curious eyes, and soft felt hats chic was only another instance of
+Winifred's extravagant way of running after something new.
+
+It was that famous summer when extravagance was fashionable, when the
+very earth was extravagant, chestnut-trees spread with blossom, and
+flowers drenched in perfume, as they had never been before; when roses
+blew in every garden; and for the swarming stars the nights had hardly
+space; when every day and all day long the sun, in full armour, swung his
+brazen shield above the Park, and people did strange things, lunching and
+dining in the open air.  Unprecedented was the tale of cabs and carriages
+that streamed across the bridges of the shining river, bearing the
+upper-middle class in thousands to the green glories of Bushey, Richmond,
+Kew, and Hampton Court.  Almost every family with any pretensions to be
+of the carriage-class paid one visit that year to the horse-chestnuts at
+Bushey, or took one drive amongst the Spanish chestnuts of Richmond Park.
+Bowling smoothly, if dustily, along, in a cloud of their own creation,
+they would stare fashionably at the antlered heads which the great slow
+deer raised out of a forest of bracken that promised to autumn lovers
+such cover as was never seen before.  And now and again, as the amorous
+perfume of chestnut flowers and of fern was drifted too near, one would
+say to the other: "My dear!  What a peculiar scent!"
+
+And the lime-flowers that year were of rare prime, near honey-coloured.
+At the corners of London squares they gave out, as the sun went down, a
+perfume sweeter than the honey bees had taken--a perfume that stirred a
+yearning unnamable in the hearts of Forsytes and their peers, taking the
+cool after dinner in the precincts of those gardens to which they alone
+had keys.
+
+And that yearning made them linger amidst the dim shapes of flower-beds
+in the failing daylight, made them turn, and turn, and turn again, as
+though lovers were waiting for them--waiting for the last light to die
+away under the shadow of the branches.
+
+Some vague sympathy evoked by the scent of the limes, some sisterly
+desire to see for herself, some idea of demonstrating the soundness of
+her dictum that there was 'nothing in it'; or merely the craving to drive
+down to Richmond, irresistible that summer, moved the mother of the
+little Darties (of little Publius, of Imogen, Maud, and Benedict) to
+write the following note to her sister-in-law:
+
+'DEAR IRENE, 'June 30.
+
+'I hear that Soames is going to Henley tomorrow for the night.  I thought
+it would be great fun if we made up a little party and drove down to,
+Richmond.  Will you ask Mr. Bosinney, and I will get young Flippard.
+
+'Emily (they called their mother Emily--it was so chic) will lend us the
+carriage.  I will call for you and your young man at seven o'clock.
+
+'Your affectionate sister,
+'WINIFRED DARTIE.
+
+'Montague believes the dinner at the Crown and Sceptre to be quite
+eatable.'
+
+Montague was Dartie's second and better known name--his first being
+Moses; for he was nothing if not a man of the world.
+
+Her plan met with more opposition from Providence than so benevolent a
+scheme deserved.  In the first place young Flippard wrote:
+
+'DEAR Mrs. DARTIE,
+
+'Awfully sorry.  Engaged two deep.
+
+'Yours,
+'AUGUSTUS FLIPPARD.'
+
+It was late to send into the by-ways and hedges to remedy this
+misfortune.  With the promptitude and conduct of a mother, Winifred fell
+back on her husband.  She had, indeed, the decided but tolerant
+temperament that goes with a good deal of profile, fair hair, and
+greenish eyes.  She was seldom or never at a loss; or if at a loss, was
+always able to convert it into a gain.
+
+Dartie, too, was in good feather.  Erotic had failed to win the
+Lancashire Cup.  Indeed, that celebrated animal, owned as he was by a
+pillar of the turf, who had secretly laid many thousands against him, had
+not even started.  The forty-eight hours that followed his scratching
+were among the darkest in Dartie's life.
+
+Visions of James haunted him day and night.  Black thoughts about Soames
+mingled with the faintest hopes.  On the Friday night he got drunk, so
+greatly was he affected.  But on Saturday morning the true Stock Exchange
+instinct triumphed within him.  Owing some hundreds, which by no
+possibility could he pay, he went into town and put them all on
+Concertina for the Saltown Borough Handicap.
+
+As he said to Major Scrotton, with whom he lunched at the Iseeum: "That
+little Jew boy, Nathans, had given him the tip.  He didn't care a cursh.
+He wash in--a mucker.  If it didn't come up--well then, damme, the old
+man would have to pay!"
+
+A bottle of Pol Roger to his own cheek had given him a new contempt for
+James.
+
+It came up.  Concertina was squeezed home by her neck--a terrible squeak!
+But, as Dartie said: There was nothing like pluck!
+
+He was by no means averse to the expedition to Richmond.  He would
+'stand' it himself!  He cherished an admiration for Irene, and wished to
+be on more playful terms with her.
+
+At half-past five the Park Lane footman came round to say: Mrs. Forsyte
+was very sorry, but one of the horses was coughing!
+
+Undaunted by this further blow, Winifred at once despatched little
+Publius (now aged seven) with the nursery governess to Montpellier
+Square.
+
+They would go down in hansoms and meet at the Crown and Sceptre at 7.45.
+
+Dartie, on being told, was pleased enough.  It was better than going down
+with your back to the horses!  He had no objection to driving down with
+Irene.  He supposed they would pick up the others at Montpellier Square,
+and swop hansoms there?
+
+Informed that the meet was at the Crown and Sceptre, and that he would
+have to drive with his wife, he turned sulky, and said it was d---d slow!
+
+At seven o'clock they started, Dartie offering to bet the driver
+half-a-crown he didn't do it in the three-quarters of an hour.
+
+Twice only did husband and wife exchange remarks on the way.
+
+Dartie said: "It'll put Master Soames's nose out of joint to hear his
+wife's been drivin' in a hansom with Master Bosinney!"
+
+Winifred replied: "Don't talk such nonsense, Monty!"
+
+"Nonsense!" repeated Dartie.  "You don't know women, my fine lady!"
+
+On the other occasion he merely asked: "How am I looking?  A bit puffy
+about the gills?  That fizz old George is so fond of is a windy wine!"
+
+He had been lunching with George Forsyte at the Haversnake.
+
+Bosinney and Irene had arrived before them.  They were standing in one of
+the long French windows overlooking the river.
+
+Windows that summer were open all day long, and all night too, and day
+and night the scents of flowers and trees came in, the hot scent of
+parching grass, and the cool scent of the heavy dews.
+
+To the eye of the observant Dartie his two guests did not appear to be
+making much running, standing there close together, without a word.
+Bosinney was a hungry-looking creature--not much go about him.
+
+He left them to Winifred, however, and busied himself to order the
+dinner.
+
+A Forsyte will require good, if not delicate feeding, but a Dartie will
+tax the resources of a Crown and Sceptre.  Living as he does, from hand
+to mouth, nothing is too good for him to eat; and he will eat it.  His
+drink, too, will need to be carefully provided; there is much drink in
+this country 'not good enough' for a Dartie; he will have the best.
+Paying for things vicariously, there is no reason why he should stint
+himself.  To stint yourself is the mark of a fool, not of a Dartie.
+
+The best of everything!  No sounder principle on which a man can base his
+life, whose father-in-law has a very considerable income, and a
+partiality for his grandchildren.
+
+With his not unable eye Dartie had spotted this weakness in James the
+very first year after little Publius's arrival (an error); he had
+profited by his perspicacity.  Four little Darties were now a sort of
+perpetual insurance.
+
+The feature of the feast was unquestionably the red mullet.  This
+delectable fish, brought from a considerable distance in a state of
+almost perfect preservation, was first fried, then boned, then served in
+ice, with Madeira punch in place of sauce, according to a recipe known to
+a few men of the world.
+
+Nothing else calls for remark except the payment of the bill by Dartie.
+
+He had made himself extremely agreeable throughout the meal; his bold,
+admiring stare seldom abandoning Irene's face and figure. As he was
+obliged to confess to himself, he got no change out of her--she was cool
+enough, as cool as her shoulders looked under their veil of creamy lace.
+He expected to have caught her out in some little game with Bosinney; but
+not a bit of it, she kept up her end remarkably well.  As for that
+architect chap, he was as glum as a bear with a sore head--Winifred could
+barely get a word out of him; he ate nothing, but he certainly took his
+liquor, and his face kept getting whiter, and his eyes looked queer.
+
+It was all very amusing.
+
+For Dartie himself was in capital form, and talked freely, with a certain
+poignancy, being no fool.  He told two or three stories verging on the
+improper, a concession to the company, for his stories were not used to
+verging.  He proposed Irene's health in a mock speech.  Nobody drank it,
+and Winifred said: "Don't be such a clown, Monty!"
+
+At her suggestion they went after dinner to the public terrace
+overlooking the river.
+
+"I should like to see the common people making love," she said, "it's
+such fun!"
+
+There were numbers of them walking in the cool, after the day's heat, and
+the air was alive with the sound of voices, coarse and loud, or soft as
+though murmuring secrets.
+
+It was not long before Winifred's better sense--she was the only Forsyte
+present--secured them an empty bench.  They sat down in a row.  A heavy
+tree spread a thick canopy above their heads, and the haze darkened
+slowly over the river.
+
+Dartie sat at the end, next to him Irene, then Bosinney, then Winifred.
+There was hardly room for four, and the man of the world could feel
+Irene's arm crushed against his own; he knew that she could not withdraw
+it without seeming rude, and this amused him; he devised every now and
+again a movement that would bring her closer still.  He thought: 'That
+Buccaneer Johnny shan't have it all to himself!  It's a pretty tight fit,
+certainly!'
+
+From far down below on the dark river came drifting the tinkle of a
+mandoline, and voices singing the old round:
+
+'A boat, a boat, unto the ferry, For we'll go over and be merry; And
+laugh, and quaff, and drink brown sherry!'
+
+And suddenly the moon appeared, young and tender, floating up on her back
+from behind a tree; and as though she had breathed, the air was cooler,
+but down that cooler air came always the warm odour of the limes.
+
+Over his cigar Dartie peered round at Bosinney, who was sitting with his
+arms crossed, staring straight in front of him, and on his face the look
+of a man being tortured.
+
+And Dartie shot a glance at the face between, so veiled by the
+overhanging shadow that it was but like a darker piece of the darkness
+shaped and breathed on; soft, mysterious, enticing.
+
+A hush had fallen on the noisy terrace, as if all the strollers were
+thinking secrets too precious to be spoken.
+
+And Dartie thought: 'Women!'
+
+The glow died above the river, the singing ceased; the young moon hid
+behind a tree, and all was dark.  He pressed himself against Irene.
+
+He was not alarmed at the shuddering that ran through the limbs he
+touched, or at the troubled, scornful look of her eyes.  He felt her
+trying to draw herself away, and smiled.
+
+It must be confessed that the man of the world had drunk quite as much as
+was good for him.
+
+With thick lips parted under his well-curled moustaches, and his bold
+eyes aslant upon her, he had the malicious look of a satyr.
+
+Along the pathway of sky between the hedges of the tree tops the stars
+clustered forth; like mortals beneath, they seemed to shift and swarm and
+whisper.  Then on the terrace the buzz broke out once more, and Dartie
+thought: 'Ah! he's a poor, hungry-looking devil, that Bosinney!' and
+again he pressed himself against Irene.
+
+The movement deserved a better success.  She rose, and they all followed
+her.
+
+The man of the world was more than ever determined to see what she was
+made of.  Along the terrace he kept close at her elbow. He had within him
+much good wine.  There was the long drive home, the long drive and the
+warm dark and the pleasant closeness of the hansom cab--with its
+insulation from the world devised by some great and good man.  That
+hungry architect chap might drive with his wife--he wished him joy of
+her!  And, conscious that his voice was not too steady, he was careful
+not to speak; but a smile had become fixed on his thick lips.
+
+They strolled along toward the cabs awaiting them at the farther end.
+His plan had the merit of all great plans, an almost brutal simplicity he
+would merely keep at her elbow till she got in, and get in quickly after
+her.
+
+But when Irene reached the cab she did not get in; she slipped, instead,
+to the horse's head.  Dartie was not at the moment sufficiently master of
+his legs to follow.  She stood stroking the horse's nose, and, to his
+annoyance, Bosinney was at her side first.  She turned and spoke to him
+rapidly, in a low voice; the words 'That man' reached Dartie.  He stood
+stubbornly by the cab step, waiting for her to come back.  He knew a
+trick worth two of that!
+
+Here, in the lamp-light, his figure (no more than medium height), well
+squared in its white evening waistcoat, his light overcoat flung over his
+arm, a pink flower in his button-hole, and on his dark face that look of
+confident, good-humoured insolence, he was at his best--a thorough man of
+the world.
+
+Winifred was already in her cab.  Dartie reflected that Bosinney would
+have a poorish time in that cab if he didn't look sharp! Suddenly he
+received a push which nearly overturned him in the road.  Bosinney's
+voice hissed in his ear: "I am taking Irene back; do you understand?"  He
+saw a face white with passion, and eyes that glared at him like a wild
+cat's.
+
+"Eh?" he stammered.  "What?  Not a bit.  You take my wife!"
+
+"Get away!" hissed Bosinney--"or I'll throw you into the road!"
+
+Dartie recoiled; he saw as plainly as possible that the fellow meant it.
+In the space he made Irene had slipped by, her dress brushed his legs.
+Bosinney stepped in after her.
+
+"Go on!" he heard the Buccaneer cry.  The cabman flicked his horse.  It
+sprang forward.
+
+Dartie stood for a moment dumbfounded; then, dashing at the cab where his
+wife sat, he scrambled in.
+
+"Drive on!" he shouted to the driver, "and don't you lose sight of that
+fellow in front!"
+
+Seated by his wife's side, he burst into imprecations.  Calming himself
+at last with a supreme effort, he added: "A pretty mess you've made of
+it, to let the Buccaneer drive home with her; why on earth couldn't you
+keep hold of him?  He's mad with love; any fool can see that!"
+
+He drowned Winifred's rejoinder with fresh calls to the Almighty; nor was
+it until they reached Barnes that he ceased a Jeremiad, in the course of
+which he had abused her, her father, her brother, Irene, Bosinney, the
+name of Forsyte, his own children, and cursed the day when he had ever
+married.
+
+Winifred, a woman of strong character, let him have his say, at the end
+of which he lapsed into sulky silence.  His angry eyes never deserted the
+back of that cab, which, like a lost chance, haunted the darkness in
+front of him.
+
+Fortunately he could not hear Bosinney's passionate pleading--that
+pleading which the man of the world's conduct had let loose like a flood;
+he could not see Irene shivering, as though some garment had been torn
+from her, nor her eyes, black and mournful, like the eyes of a beaten
+child.  He could not hear Bosinney entreating, entreating, always
+entreating; could not hear her sudden, soft weeping, nor see that poor,
+hungry-looking devil, awed and trembling, humbly touching her hand.
+
+In Montpellier Square their cabman, following his instructions to the
+letter, faithfully drew up behind the cab in front.  The Darties saw
+Bosinney spring out, and Irene follow, and hasten up the steps with bent
+head.  She evidently had her key in her hand, for she disappeared at
+once.  It was impossible to tell whether she had turned to speak to
+Bosinney.
+
+The latter came walking past their cab; both husband and wife had an
+admirable view of his face in the light of a street lamp.  It was working
+with violent emotion.
+
+"Good-night, Mr. Bosinney!" called Winifred.
+
+Bosinney started, clawed off his hat, and hurried on.  He had obviously
+forgotten their existence.
+
+"There!" said Dartie, "did you see the beast's face?  What did I say?
+Fine games!"  He improved the occasion.
+
+There had so clearly been a crisis in the cab that Winifred was unable to
+defend her theory.
+
+She said: "I shall say nothing about it.  I don't see any use in making a
+fuss!"
+
+With that view Dartie at once concurred; looking upon James as a private
+preserve, he disapproved of his being disturbed by the troubles of
+others.
+
+"Quite right," he said; "let Soames look after himself.  He's jolly well
+able to!"
+
+Thus speaking, the Darties entered their habitat in Green Street, the
+rent of which was paid by James, and sought a well-earned rest.  The hour
+was midnight, and no Forsytes remained abroad in the streets to spy out
+Bosinney's wanderings; to see him return and stand against the rails of
+the Square garden, back from the glow of the street lamp; to see him
+stand there in the shadow of trees, watching the house where in the dark
+was hidden she whom he would have given the world to see for a single
+minute--she who was now to him the breath of the lime-trees, the meaning
+of the light and the darkness, the very beating of his own heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+DIAGNOSIS OF A FORSYTE
+
+It is in the nature of a Forsyte to be ignorant that he is a Forsyte; but
+young Jolyon was well aware of being one.  He had not known it till after
+the decisive step which had made him an outcast; since then the knowledge
+had been with him continually. He felt it throughout his alliance,
+throughout all his dealings with his second wife, who was emphatically
+not a Forsyte.
+
+He knew that if he had not possessed in great measure the eye for what he
+wanted, the tenacity to hold on to it, the sense of the folly of wasting
+that for which he had given so big a price--in other words, the 'sense of
+property' he could never have retained her (perhaps never would have
+desired to retain her) with him through all the financial troubles,
+slights, and misconstructions of those fifteen years; never have induced
+her to marry him on the death of his first wife; never have lived it all
+through, and come up, as it were, thin, but smiling.
+
+He was one of those men who, seated cross-legged like miniature Chinese
+idols in the cages of their own hearts, are ever smiling at themselves a
+doubting smile.  Not that this smile, so intimate and eternal, interfered
+with his actions, which, like his chin and his temperament, were quite a
+peculiar blend of softness and determination.
+
+He was conscious, too, of being a Forsyte in his work, that painting of
+water-colours to which he devoted so much energy, always with an eye on
+himself, as though he could not take so unpractical a pursuit quite
+seriously, and always with a certain queer uneasiness that he did not
+make more money at it.
+
+It was, then, this consciousness of what it meant to be a Forsyte, that
+made him receive the following letter from old Jolyon, with a mixture of
+sympathy and disgust:
+
+'SHELDRAKE HOUSE,
+     'BROADSTAIRS,
+
+'July 1. 'MY DEAR JO,'
+
+(The Dad's handwriting had altered very little in the thirty odd years
+that he remembered it.)
+
+'We have been here now a fortnight, and have had good weather on the
+whole.  The air is bracing, but my liver is out of order, and I shall be
+glad enough to get back to town.  I cannot say much for June, her health
+and spirits are very indifferent, and I don't see what is to come of it.
+She says nothing, but it is clear that she is harping on this engagement,
+which is an engagement and no engagement, and--goodness knows what.  I
+have grave doubts whether she ought to be allowed to return to London in
+the present state of affairs, but she is so self-willed that she might
+take it into her head to come up at any moment.  The fact is someone
+ought to speak to Bosinney and ascertain what he means.  I'm afraid of
+this myself, for I should certainly rap him over the knuckles, but I
+thought that you, knowing him at the Club, might put in a word, and get
+to ascertain what the fellow is about.  You will of course in no way
+commit June.  I shall be glad to hear from you in the course of a few
+days whether you have succeeded in gaining any information.  The
+situation is very distressing to me, I worry about it at night.
+
+With my love to Jolly and Holly.
+'I am,
+     'Your affect.  father,
+'JOLYON FORSYTE.'
+
+Young Jolyon pondered this letter so long and seriously that his wife
+noticed his preoccupation, and asked him what was the matter.  He
+replied: "Nothing."
+
+It was a fixed principle with him never to allude to June.  She might
+take alarm, he did not know what she might think; he hastened, therefore,
+to banish from his manner all traces of absorption, but in this he was
+about as successful as his father would have been, for he had inherited
+all old Jolyon's transparency in matters of domestic finesse; and young
+Mrs. Jolyon, busying herself over the affairs of the house, went about
+with tightened lips, stealing at him unfathomable looks.
+
+He started for the Club in the afternoon with the letter in his pocket,
+and without having made up his mind.
+
+To sound a man as to 'his intentions' was peculiarly unpleasant to him;
+nor did his own anomalous position diminish this unpleasantness.  It was
+so like his family, so like all the people they knew and mixed with, to
+enforce what they called their rights over a man, to bring  him up to the
+mark; so like them to carry their business principles into their private
+relations.
+
+And how that phrase in the letter--'You will, of course, in no way commit
+June'--gave the whole thing away.
+
+Yet the letter, with the personal grievance, the concern for June, the
+'rap over the knuckles,' was all so natural.  No wonder his father wanted
+to know what Bosinney meant, no wonder he was angry.
+
+It was difficult to refuse!  But why give the thing to him to do? That
+was surely quite unbecoming; but so long as a Forsyte got what he was
+after, he was not too particular about the means, provided appearances
+were saved.
+
+How should he set about it, or how refuse?  Both seemed impossible. So,
+young Jolyon!
+
+He arrived at the Club at three o'clock, and the first person he saw was
+Bosinney himself, seated in a corner, staring out of the window.
+
+Young Jolyon sat down not far off, and began nervously to reconsider his
+position.  He looked covertly at Bosinney sitting there unconscious.  He
+did not know him very well, and studied him attentively for perhaps the
+first time; an unusual looking man, unlike in dress, face, and manner to
+most of the other members of the Club--young Jolyon himself, however
+different he had become in mood and temper, had always retained the neat
+reticence of Forsyte appearance.  He alone among Forsytes was ignorant of
+Bosinney's nickname.  The man was unusual, not eccentric, but unusual; he
+looked worn, too, haggard, hollow in the cheeks beneath those broad, high
+cheekbones, though without any appearance of ill-health, for he was
+strongly built, with curly hair that seemed to show all the vitality of a
+fine constitution.
+
+Something in his face and attitude touched young Jolyon.  He knew what
+suffering was like, and this man looked as if he were suffering.
+
+He got up and touched his arm.
+
+Bosinney started, but exhibited no sign of embarrassment on seeing who it
+was.
+
+Young Jolyon sat down.
+
+"I haven't seen you for a long time," he said.  "How are you getting on
+with  my cousin's house?"
+
+"It'll be finished in about a week."
+
+"I congratulate you!"
+
+"Thanks--I don't know that it's much of a subject for congratulation."
+
+"No?" queried young Jolyon; "I should have thought you'd be glad to get a
+long job like that off your hands; but I suppose you feel it much as I do
+when I part with a picture--a sort of child?"
+
+He looked kindly at Bosinney.
+
+"Yes," said the latter more cordially, "it goes out from you and there's
+an end of it.  I didn't know you painted."
+
+"Only water-colours; I can't say I believe in my work."
+
+"Don't believe in it?  There--how can you do it?  Work's no use unless
+you believe in it!"
+
+"Good," said young Jolyon; "it's exactly what I've always said.
+By-the-bye, have you noticed that whenever one says 'Good,' one always
+adds 'it's exactly what I've always said'!  But if you ask me how I do
+it, I answer, because I'm a Forsyte."
+
+"A Forsyte!  I never thought of you as one!"
+
+"A Forsyte," replied young Jolyon, "is not an uncommon animal. There are
+hundreds among the members of this Club.  Hundreds out there in the
+streets; you meet them wherever you go!"
+
+"And how do you tell them, may I ask?" said Bosinney.
+
+"By their sense of property.  A Forsyte takes a practical--one might say
+a commonsense--view of things, and a practical view of things is based
+fundamentally on a sense of property.  A Forsyte, you will notice, never
+gives himself away."
+
+"Joking?"
+
+Young Jolyon's eye twinkled.
+
+"Not much.  As a Forsyte myself, I have no business to talk.  But I'm a
+kind of thoroughbred mongrel; now, there's no mistaking you: You're as
+different from me as I am from my Uncle James, who is the perfect
+specimen of a Forsyte.  His sense of property is extreme, while you have
+practically none.  Without me in between, you would seem like a different
+species.  I'm the missing link. We are, of course, all of us the slaves
+of property, and I admit that it's a question of degree, but what I call
+a 'Forsyte' is a man who is decidedly more than less a slave of property.
+He knows a good thing, he knows a safe thing, and his grip on
+property--it doesn't matter whether it be wives, houses, money, or
+reputation--is his hall-mark."
+
+"Ah!" murmured Bosinney.  "You should patent the word."
+
+"I should like," said young Jolyon, "to lecture on it:
+
+"Properties and quality of a Forsyte: This little animal, disturbed by
+the ridicule of his own sort, is unaffected in his motions by the
+laughter of strange creatures (you or I). Hereditarily disposed to
+myopia, he recognises only the persons of his own species, amongst which
+he passes an existence of competitive tranquillity."
+
+"You talk of them," said Bosinney, "as if they were half England."
+
+"They are," repeated young Jolyon, "half England, and the better half,
+too, the safe half, the three per cent. half, the half that counts.  It's
+their wealth and security that makes everything possible; makes your art
+possible, makes literature, science, even religion, possible.  Without
+Forsytes, who believe in none of these things, and habitats but turn them
+all to use, where should we be?  My dear sir, the Forsytes are the
+middlemen, the commercials, the pillars of society, the cornerstones of
+convention; everything that is admirable!"
+
+"I don't know whether I catch your drift," said Bosinney, "but I fancy
+there are plenty of Forsytes, as you call them, in my profession."
+
+"Certainly," replied young Jolyon.  "The great majority of architects,
+painters, or writers have no principles, like any other Forsytes.  Art,
+literature, religion, survive by virtue of the few cranks who really
+believe in such things, and the many Forsytes who make a commercial use
+of them.  At a low estimate, three-fourths of our Royal Academicians are
+Forsytes, seven-eighths of our novelists, a large proportion of the
+press. Of science I can't speak; they are magnificently represented in
+religion; in the House of Commons perhaps more numerous than anywhere;
+the aristocracy speaks for itself.  But I'm not laughing.  It is
+dangerous to go against the majority and what a majority!"  He fixed his
+eyes on Bosinney: "It's dangerous to let anything carry you away--a
+house, a picture, a--woman!"
+
+They looked at each other.--And, as though he had done that which no
+Forsyte did--given himself away, young Jolyon drew into his shell.
+Bosinney broke the silence.
+
+"Why do you take your own people as the type?" said he.
+
+"My people," replied young Jolyon, "are not very extreme, and they have
+their own private peculiarities, like every other family, but they
+possess in a remarkable degree those two qualities which are the real
+tests of a Forsyte--the power of never being able to give yourself up to
+anything soul and body, and the 'sense of property'."
+
+Bosinney smiled: "How about the big one, for instance?"
+
+"Do you mean Swithin?" asked young Jolyon.  "Ah! in Swithin there's
+something primeval still.  The town and middle-class life haven't
+digested him yet.  All the old centuries of farm work and brute force
+have settled in him, and there they've stuck, for all he's so
+distinguished."
+
+Bosinney seemed to ponder.  "Well, you've hit your cousin Soames off to
+the life," he said suddenly.  "He'll never blow his brains out."
+
+Young Jolyon shot at him a penetrating glance.
+
+"No," he said; "he won't.  That's why he's to be reckoned with. Look out
+for their grip!  It's easy to laugh, but don't mistake me.  It doesn't do
+to despise a Forsyte; it doesn't do to disregard them!"
+
+"Yet you've done it yourself!"
+
+Young Jolyon acknowledged the hit by losing his smile.
+
+"You forget," he said with a queer pride, "I can hold on, too--I'm a
+Forsyte myself.  We're all in the path of great forces. The man who
+leaves the shelter of the wall--well--you know what I mean.  I don't," he
+ended very low, as though uttering a threat, "recommend every man
+to-go-my-way.  It depends."
+
+The colour rushed into Bosinney's face, but soon receded, leaving it
+sallow-brown as before.  He gave a short laugh, that left his lips fixed
+in a queer, fierce smile; his eyes mocked young Jolyon.
+
+"Thanks," he said.  "It's deuced kind of you.  But you're not the only
+chaps that can hold on."  He rose.
+
+Young Jolyon looked after him as he walked away, and, resting his head on
+his hand, sighed.
+
+In the drowsy, almost empty room the only sounds were the rustle of
+newspapers, the scraping of matches being struck.  He stayed a long time
+without moving, living over again those days when he, too, had sat long
+hours watching the clock, waiting for the minutes to pass--long hours
+full of the torments of uncertainty, and of a fierce, sweet aching; and
+the slow, delicious agony of that season came back to him with its old
+poignancy.  The sight of Bosinney, with his haggard face, and his
+restless eyes always wandering to the clock, had roused in him a pity,
+with which was mingled strange, irresistible envy.
+
+He knew the signs so well.  Whither was he going--to what sort of fate?
+What kind of woman was it who was drawing him to her by that magnetic
+force which no consideration of honour, no principle, no interest could
+withstand; from which the only escape was flight.
+
+Flight!  But why should Bosinney fly?  A man fled when he was in danger
+of destroying hearth and home, when there were children, when he felt
+himself trampling down ideals, breaking something. But here, so he had
+heard, it was all broken to his hand.
+
+He himself had not fled, nor would he fly if it were all to come over
+again.  Yet he had gone further than Bosinney, had broken up his own
+unhappy home, not someone else's: And the old saying came back to him: 'A
+man's fate lies in his own heart.'
+
+In his own heart!  The proof of the pudding was in the eating--Bosinney
+had still to eat his pudding.
+
+His thoughts passed to the woman, the woman whom he did not know, but the
+outline of whose story he had heard.
+
+An unhappy marriage!  No ill-treatment--only that indefinable malaise,
+that terrible blight which killed all sweetness under Heaven; and so from
+day to day, from night to night, from week to week, from year to year,
+till death should end it.
+
+But young Jolyon, the bitterness of whose own feelings time had assuaged,
+saw Soames' side of the question too.  Whence should a man like his
+cousin, saturated with all the prejudices and beliefs of his class, draw
+the insight or inspiration necessary to break up this life?  It was a
+question of imagination, of projecting himself into the future beyond the
+unpleasant gossip, sneers, and tattle that followed on such separations,
+beyond the passing pangs that the lack of the sight of her would cause,
+beyond the grave disapproval of the worthy.  But few men, and especially
+few men of Soames' class, had imagination enough for that.  A deal of
+mortals in this world, and not enough imagination to go round!  And sweet
+Heaven, what a difference between theory and practice; many a man,
+perhaps even Soames, held chivalrous views on such matters, who when the
+shoe pinched found a distinguishing factor that made of himself an
+exception.
+
+Then, too, he distrusted his judgment.  He had been through the
+experience himself, had tasted too the dregs the bitterness of an unhappy
+marriage, and how could he take the wide and dispassionate view of those
+who had never been within sound of the battle? His evidence was too
+first-hand--like the evidence on military matters of a soldier who has
+been through much active service, against that of civilians who have not
+suffered the disadvantage of seeing things too close.  Most people would
+consider such a marriage as that of Soames and Irene quite fairly
+successful; he had money, she had beauty; it was a case for compromise.
+There was no reason why they should not jog along, even if they hated
+each other.  It would not matter if they went their own ways a little so
+long as the decencies were observed--the sanctity of the marriage tie, of
+the common home, respected. Half the marriages of the upper classes were
+conducted on these lines: Do not offend the susceptibilities of Society;
+do not offend the susceptibilities of the Church.  To avoid offending
+these is worth the sacrifice of any private feelings.  The advantages of
+the stable home are visible, tangible, so many pieces of property; there
+is no risk in the statu quo.  To break up a home is at the best a
+dangerous experiment, and selfish into the bargain.
+
+This was the case for the defence, and young Jolyon sighed.
+
+'The core of it all,' he thought, 'is property, but there are many people
+who would not like it put that way.  To them it is "the sanctity of the
+marriage tie"; but the sanctity of the marriage tie is dependent on the
+sanctity of the family, and the sanctity of the family is dependent on
+the sanctity of property. And yet I imagine all these people are
+followers of One who never owned anything.  It is curious!
+
+And again young Jolyon sighed.
+
+'Am I going on my way home to ask any poor devils I meet to share my
+dinner, which will then be too little for myself, or, at all events, for
+my wife, who is necessary to my health and happiness? It may be that
+after all Soames does well to exercise his rights and support by his
+practice the sacred principle of property which benefits us all, with the
+exception of those who suffer by the process.'
+
+And so he left his chair, threaded his way through the maze of seats,
+took his hat, and languidly up the hot streets crowded with carriages,
+reeking with dusty odours, wended his way home.
+
+Before reaching Wistaria Avenue he removed old Jolyon's letter from his
+pocket, and tearing it carefully into tiny pieces, scattered them in the
+dust of the road.
+
+He let himself in with his key, and called his wife's name.  But she had
+gone out, taking Jolly and Holly, and the house was empty; alone in the
+garden the dog Balthasar lay in the shade snapping at flies.
+
+Young Jolyon took his seat there, too, under the pear-tree that bore no
+fruit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+BOSINNEY ON PAROLE
+
+The day after the evening at Richmond Soames returned from Henley by a
+morning train.  Not constitutionally interested in amphibious sports, his
+visit had been one of business rather than pleasure, a client of some
+importance having asked him down.
+
+He went straight to the City, but finding things slack, he left at three
+o'clock, glad of this chance to get home quietly.  Irene did not expect
+him.  Not that he had any desire to spy on her actions, but there was no
+harm in thus unexpectedly surveying the scene.
+
+After changing to Park clothes he went into the drawing-room. She was
+sitting idly in the corner of the sofa, her favourite seat; and there
+were circles under her eyes, as though she had not slept.
+
+He asked: "How is it you're in?  Are you expecting somebody?"
+
+"Yes that is, not particularly."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Mr. Bosinney said he might come."
+
+"Bosinney.  He ought to be at work."
+
+To this she made no answer.
+
+"Well," said Soames, "I want you to come out to the Stores with me, and
+after that we'll go to the Park."
+
+"I don't want to go out; I have a headache."
+
+Soames replied: "If ever I want you to do anything, you've always got a
+headache.  It'll do you good to come and sit under the trees."
+
+She did not answer.
+
+Soames was silent for some minutes; at last he said: "I don't know what
+your idea of a wife's duty is.  I never have known!"
+
+He had not expected her to reply, but she did.
+
+"I have tried to do what you want; it's not my fault that I haven't been
+able to put my heart into it."
+
+"Whose fault is it, then?" He watched her askance.
+
+"Before we were married you promised to let me go if our marriage was not
+a success.  Is it a success?"
+
+Soames frowned.
+
+"Success," he stammered--"it would be a success if you behaved yourself
+properly!"
+
+"I have tried," said Irene.  "Will you let me go?"
+
+Soames turned away.  Secretly alarmed, he took refuge in bluster.
+
+"Let you go?  You don't know what you're talking about.  Let you go?  How
+can I let you go?  We're married, aren't we?  Then, what are you talking
+about?  For God's sake, don't let's have any of this sort of nonsense!
+Get your hat on, and come and sit in the Park."
+
+"Then, you won't let me go?"
+
+He felt her eyes resting on him with a strange, touching look.
+
+"Let you go!" he said; "and what on earth would you do with yourself if I
+did?  You've got no money!"
+
+"I could manage somehow."
+
+He took a swift turn up and down the room; then came and stood before
+her.
+
+"Understand," he said, "once and for all, I won't have you say this sort
+of thing.  Go and get your hat on!"
+
+She did not move.
+
+"I suppose," said Soames, "you don't want to miss Bosinney if he comes!"
+
+Irene got up slowly and left the room.  She came down with her hat on.
+
+They went out.
+
+In the Park, the motley hour of mid-afternoon, when foreigners and other
+pathetic folk drive, thinking themselves to be in fashion, had passed;
+the right, the proper, hour had come, was nearly gone, before Soames and
+Irene seated themselves under the Achilles statue.
+
+It was some time since he had enjoyed her company in the Park. That was
+one of the past delights of the first two seasons of his married life,
+when to feel himself the possessor of this gracious creature before all
+London had been his greatest, though secret, pride.  How many afternoons
+had he not sat beside her, extremely neat, with light grey gloves and
+faint, supercilious smile, nodding to acquaintances, and now and again
+removing his hat.
+
+His light grey gloves were still on his hands, and on his lips his smile
+sardonic, but where the feeling in his heart?
+
+The seats were emptying fast, but still he kept her there, silent and
+pale, as though to work out a secret punishment.  Once or twice he made
+some comment, and she bent her head, or answered "Yes" with a tired
+smile.
+
+Along the rails a man was walking so fast that people stared after him
+when he passed.
+
+"Look at that ass!" said Soames; "he must be mad to walk like that in
+this heat!"
+
+He turned; Irene had made a rapid movement.
+
+"Hallo!" he said: "it's our friend the Buccaneer!"
+
+And he sat still, with his sneering smile, conscious that Irene was
+sitting still, and smiling too.
+
+"Will she bow to him?" he thought.
+
+But she made no sign.
+
+Bosinney reached the end of the rails, and came walking back amongst the
+chairs, quartering his ground like a pointer.  When he saw them he
+stopped dead, and raised his hat.
+
+The smile never left Soames' face; he also took off his hat.
+
+Bosinney came up, looking exhausted, like a man after hard physical
+exercise; the sweat stood in drops on his brow, and Soames' smile seemed
+to say: "You've had a trying time, my friend ......What are you doing in
+the Park?" he asked.  "We thought you despised such frivolity!"
+
+Bosinney did not seem to hear; he made his answer to Irene: "I've been
+round to your place; I hoped I should find you in."
+
+Somebody tapped Soames on the back, and spoke to him; and in the exchange
+of those platitudes over his shoulder, he missed her answer, and took a
+resolution.
+
+"We're just going in," he said to Bosinney; "you'd better come back to
+dinner with us." Into that invitation he put a strange bravado, a
+stranger pathos: "You, can't deceive me," his look and voice seemed
+saying, "but see--I trust you--I'm not afraid of you!"
+
+They started back to Montpellier Square together, Irene between them.  In
+the crowded streets Soames went on in front.  He did not listen to their
+conversation; the strange resolution of trustfulness he had taken seemed
+to animate even his secret conduct.  Like a gambler, he said to himself:
+'It's a card I dare not throw away--I must play it for what it's worth.
+I have not too many chances.'
+
+He dressed slowly, heard her leave her room and go downstairs, and, for
+full five minutes after, dawdled about in his dressing-room.  Then he
+went down, purposely shutting the door loudly to show that he was coming.
+He found them standing by the hearth, perhaps talking, perhaps not; he
+could not say.
+
+He played his part out in the farce, the long evening through--his
+manner to his guest more friendly than it had ever been before; and when
+at last Bosinney went, he said: "You must come again soon; Irene likes to
+have you to talk about the house!" Again his voice had the strange
+bravado and the stranger pathos; but his hand was cold as ice.
+
+Loyal to his resolution, he turned away from their parting, turned away
+from his wife as she stood under the hanging lamp to say good-night--away
+from the sight of her golden head shining so under the light, of her
+smiling mournful lips; away from the sight of Bosinney's eyes looking at
+her, so like a dog's looking at its master.
+
+And he went to bed with the certainty that Bosinney was in love with his
+wife.
+
+The summer night was hot, so hot and still that through every opened
+window came in but hotter air.  For long hours he lay listening to her
+breathing.
+
+She could sleep, but he must lie awake.  And, lying awake, he hardened
+himself to play the part of the serene and trusting husband.
+
+In the small hours he slipped out of bed, and passing into his
+dressing-room, leaned by the open window.
+
+He could hardly breathe.
+
+A night four years ago came back to him--the night but one before his
+marriage; as hot and stifling as this.
+
+He remembered how he had lain in a long cane chair in the window of his
+sitting-room off Victoria Street.  Down below in a side street a man had
+banged at a door, a woman had cried out; he remembered, as though it were
+now, the sound of the scuffle, the slam of the door, the dead silence
+that followed.  And then the early water-cart, cleansing the reek of the
+streets, had approached through the strange-seeming, useless lamp-light;
+he seemed to hear again its rumble, nearer and nearer, till it passed and
+slowly died away.
+
+He leaned far out of the dressing-room window over the little court
+below, and saw the first light spread.  The outlines of dark walls and
+roofs were blurred for a moment, then came out sharper than before.
+
+He remembered how that other night he had watched the lamps paling all
+the length of Victoria Street; how he had hurried on his clothes and gone
+down into the street, down past houses and squares, to the street where
+she was staying, and there had stood and looked at the front of the
+little house, as still and grey as the face of a dead man.
+
+And suddenly it shot through his mind; like a sick man's fancy: What's he
+doing?--that fellow who haunts me, who was here this evening, who's in
+love with my wife--prowling out there, perhaps, looking for her as I know
+he was looking for her this afternoon; watching my house now, for all I
+can tell!
+
+He stole across the landing to the front of the house, stealthily drew
+aside a blind, and raised a window.
+
+The grey light clung about the trees of the square, as though Night, like
+a great downy moth, had brushed them with her wings. The lamps were still
+alight, all pale, but not a soul stirred--no living thing in sight.
+
+Yet suddenly, very faint, far off in the deathly stillness, he heard a
+cry writhing, like the voice of some wandering soul barred out of heaven,
+and crying for its happiness.  There it was again--again!  Soames shut
+the window, shuddering.
+
+Then he thought: 'Ah! it's only the peacocks, across the water.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+JUNE PAYS SOME CALLS
+
+Jolyon stood in the narrow hall at Broadstairs, inhaling that odour of
+oilcloth and herrings which permeates all respectable seaside
+lodging-houses.  On a chair--a shiny leather chair, displaying its
+horsehair through a hole in the top left-hand corner--stood a black
+despatch case.  This he was filling with papers, with the Times, and a
+bottle of Eau-de Cologne.  He had meetings that day of the 'Globular Gold
+Concessions' and the 'New Colliery Company, Limited,' to which he was
+going up, for he never missed a Board; to 'miss a Board' would be one
+more piece of evidence that he was growing old, and this his jealous
+Forsyte spirit could not bear.
+
+His eyes, as he filled that black despatch case, looked as if at any
+moment they might blaze up with anger.  So gleams the eye of a schoolboy,
+baited by a ring of his companions; but he controls himself, deterred by
+the fearful odds against him.  And old Jolyon controlled himself, keeping
+down, with his masterful restraint now slowly wearing out, the irritation
+fostered in him by the conditions of his life.
+
+He had received from his son an unpractical letter, in which by rambling
+generalities the boy seemed trying to get out of answering a plain
+question.  'I've seen Bosinney,' he said; 'he is not a criminal.  The
+more I see of people the more I am convinced that they are never good or
+bad--merely comic, or pathetic.  You probably don't agree with me!'
+
+Old Jolyon did not; he considered it cynical to so express oneself; he
+had not yet reached that point of old age when even Forsytes, bereft of
+those illusions and principles which they have cherished carefully for
+practical purposes but never believed in, bereft of all corporeal
+enjoyment, stricken to the very heart by having nothing left to hope
+for--break through the barriers of reserve and say things they would
+never have believed themselves capable of saying.
+
+Perhaps he did not believe in 'goodness' and 'badness' any more than his
+son; but as he would have said: He didn't know--couldn't tell; there
+might be something in it; and why, by an unnecessary expression of
+disbelief, deprive yourself of possible advantage?
+
+Accustomed to spend his holidays among the mountains, though (like a true
+Forsyte) he had never attempted anything too adventurous or too
+foolhardy, he had been passionately fond of them.  And when the wonderful
+view (mentioned in Baedeker--'fatiguing but repaying')--was disclosed to
+him after the effort of the climb, he had doubtless felt the existence of
+some great, dignified principle crowning the chaotic strivings, the petty
+precipices, and ironic little dark chasms of life.  This was as near to
+religion, perhaps, as his practical spirit had ever gone.
+
+But it was many years since he had been to the mountains.  He had taken
+June there two seasons running, after his wife died, and had realized
+bitterly that his walking days were over.
+
+To that old mountain--given confidence in a supreme order of things he
+had long been a stranger.
+
+He knew himself to be old, yet he felt young; and this troubled him.  It
+troubled and puzzled him, too, to think that he, who had always been so
+careful, should be father and grandfather to such as seemed born to
+disaster.  He had nothing to say against Jo--who could say anything
+against the boy, an amiable chap?--but his position was deplorable, and
+this business of June's nearly as bad.  It seemed like a fatality, and a
+fatality was one of those things no man of his character could either
+understand or put up with.
+
+In writing to his son he did not really hope that anything would come of
+it.  Since the ball at Roger's he had seen too clearly how the land
+lay--he could put two and two together quicker than most men--and, with
+the example of his own son before his eyes, knew better than any Forsyte
+of them all that the pale flame singes men's wings whether they will or
+no.
+
+In the days before June's engagement, when she and Mrs. Soames were
+always together, he had seen enough of Irene to feel the spell she cast
+over men.  She was not a flirt, not even a coquette--words dear to the
+heart of his generation, which loved to define things by a good, broad,
+inadequate word--but she was dangerous.  He could not say why.  Tell him
+of a quality innate in some women--a seductive power beyond their own
+control!  He would but answer: 'Humbug!'  She was dangerous, and there
+was an end of it.  He wanted to close his eyes to that affair.  If it
+was, it was; he did not want to hear any more about it--he only wanted to
+save June's position and her peace of mind.  He still hoped she might
+once more become a comfort to himself.
+
+And so he had written.  He got little enough out of the answer. As to
+what young Jolyon had made of the interview, there was practically only
+the queer sentence: 'I gather that he's in the stream.' The stream!  What
+stream?  What was this new-fangled way of talking?
+
+He sighed, and folded the last of the papers under the flap of the bag;
+he knew well enough what was meant.
+
+June came out of the dining-room, and helped him on with his summer coat.
+From her costume, and the expression of her little resolute face, he saw
+at once what was coming.
+
+"I'm going with you," she said.
+
+"Nonsense, my dear; I go straight into the City.  I can't have you
+racketting about!"
+
+"I must see old Mrs. Smeech."
+
+"Oh, your precious 'lame ducks!" grumbled out old Jolyon.  He did not
+believe her excuse, but ceased his opposition.  There was no doing
+anything with that pertinacity of hers.
+
+At Victoria he put her into the carriage which had been ordered for
+himself--a characteristic action, for he had no petty selfishnesses.
+
+"Now, don't you go tiring yourself, my darling," he said, and took a cab
+on into the city.
+
+June went first to a back-street in Paddington, where Mrs. Smeech, her
+'lame duck,' lived--an aged person, connected with the charring interest;
+but after half an hour spent in hearing her habitually lamentable
+recital, and dragooning her into temporary comfort, she went on to
+Stanhope Gate.  The great house was closed and dark.
+
+She had decided to learn something at all costs.  It was better to face
+the worst, and have it over.  And this was her plan: To go first to
+Phil's aunt, Mrs. Baynes, and, failing information there, to Irene
+herself.  She had no clear notion of what she would gain by these visits.
+
+At three o'clock she was in Lowndes Square.  With a woman's instinct when
+trouble is to be faced, she had put on her best frock, and went to the
+battle with a glance as courageous as old Jolyon's itself.  Her tremors
+had passed into eagerness.
+
+Mrs. Baynes, Bosinney's aunt (Louisa was her name), was in her kitchen
+when June was announced, organizing the cook, for she was an excellent
+housewife, and, as Baynes always said, there was 'a lot in a good
+dinner.'  He did his best work after dinner.  It was Baynes who built
+that remarkably fine row of tall crimson houses in Kensington which
+compete with so many others for the title of 'the ugliest in London.'
+
+On hearing June's name, she went hurriedly to her bedroom, and, taking
+two large bracelets from a red morocco case in a locked drawer, put them
+on her white wrists--for she possessed in a remarkable degree that 'sense
+of property,' which, as we know, is the touchstone of Forsyteism, and the
+foundation of good morality.
+
+Her figure, of medium height and broad build, with a tendency to
+embonpoint, was reflected by the mirror of her whitewood wardrobe, in a
+gown made under her own organization, of one of those half-tints,
+reminiscent of the distempered walls of corridors in large hotels.  She
+raised her hands to her hair, which she wore a la Princesse de Galles,
+and touched it here and there, settling it more firmly on her head, and
+her eyes were full of an unconscious realism, as though she were looking
+in the face one of life's sordid facts, and making the best of it.  In
+youth her cheeks had been of cream and roses, but they were mottled now
+by middle-age, and again that hard, ugly directness came into her eyes as
+she dabbed a powder-puff across her forehead.  Putting the puff down, she
+stood quite still before the glass, arranging a smile over her high,
+important nose, her, chin, (never large, and now growing smaller with the
+increase of her neck), her thin-lipped, down-drooping mouth.  Quickly,
+not to lose the effect, she grasped her skirts strongly in both hands,
+and went downstairs.
+
+She had been hoping for this visit for some time past.  Whispers had
+reached her that things were not all right between her nephew and his
+fiancee.  Neither of them had been near her for weeks. She had asked Phil
+to dinner many times; his invariable answer had been 'Too busy.'
+
+Her instinct was alarmed, and the instinct in such matters of this
+excellent woman was keen.  She ought to have been a Forsyte; in young
+Jolyon's sense of the word, she certainly had that privilege, and merits
+description as such.
+
+She had married off her three daughters in a way that people said was
+beyond their deserts, for they had the professional plainness only to be
+found, as a rule, among the female kind of the more legal callings.  Her
+name was upon the committees of numberless charities connected with the
+Church-dances, theatricals, or bazaars--and she never lent her name
+unless sure beforehand that everything had been thoroughly organized.
+
+She believed, as she often said, in putting things on a commercial basis;
+the proper function of the Church, of charity, indeed, of everything, was
+to strengthen the fabric of 'Society.' Individual action, therefore, she
+considered immoral. Organization was the only thing, for by organization
+alone could you feel sure that you were getting a return for your money.
+Organization--and again, organization!  And there is no doubt that she
+was what old Jolyon called her--"a 'dab' at that"--he went further, he
+called her "a humbug."
+
+The enterprises to which she lent her name were organized so admirably
+that by the time the takings were handed over, they were indeed skim milk
+divested of all cream of human kindness. But as she often justly
+remarked, sentiment was to be deprecated. She was, in fact, a little
+academic.
+
+This great and good woman, so highly thought of in ecclesiastical
+circles, was one of the principal priestesses in the temple of
+Forsyteism, keeping alive day and night a sacred flame to the God of
+Property, whose altar is inscribed with those inspiring words: 'Nothing
+for nothing, and really remarkably little for sixpence.'
+
+When she entered a room it was felt that something substantial had come
+in, which was probably the reason of her popularity as a patroness.
+People liked something substantial when they had paid money for it; and
+they would look at her--surrounded by her staff in charity ballrooms,
+with her high nose and her broad, square figure, attired in an uniform
+covered with sequins--as though she were a general.
+
+The only thing against her was that she had not a double name. She was a
+power in upper middle-class society, with its hundred sets and circles,
+all intersecting on the common battlefield of charity functions, and on
+that battlefield brushing skirts so pleasantly with the skirts of Society
+with the capital 'S.' She was a power in society with the smaller 's,'
+that larger, more significant, and more powerful body, where the
+commercially Christian institutions, maxims, and 'principle,' which Mrs.
+Baynes embodied, were real life-blood, circulating freely, real business
+currency, not merely the sterilized imitation that flowed in the veins of
+smaller Society with the larger 'S.' People who knew her felt her to be
+sound--a sound woman, who never gave herself away, nor anything else, if
+she could possibly help it.
+
+She had been on the worst sort of terms with Bosinney's father, who had
+not infrequently made her the object of an unpardonable ridicule.  She
+alluded to him now that he was gone as her 'poor, dear, irreverend
+brother.'
+
+She greeted June with the careful effusion of which she was a mistress, a
+little afraid of her as far as a woman of her eminence in the commercial
+and Christian world could be afraid--for so slight a girl June had a
+great dignity, the fearlessness of her eyes gave her that.  And Mrs.
+Baynes, too, shrewdly recognized that behind the uncompromising frankness
+of June's manner there was much of the Forsyte.  If the girl had been
+merely frank and courageous, Mrs. Baynes would have thought her 'cranky,'
+and despised her; if she had been merely a Forsyte, like Francie--let us
+say--she would have patronized her from sheer weight of metal; but June,
+small though she was--Mrs. Baynes habitually admired quantity--gave her
+an uneasy feeling; and she placed her in a chair opposite the light.
+
+There was another reason for her respect which Mrs. Baynes, too good a
+churchwoman to be worldly, would have been the last to admit--she often
+heard her husband describe old Jolyon as extremely well off, and was
+biassed towards his granddaughter for the soundest of all reasons.
+To-day she felt the emotion with which we read a novel describing a hero
+and an inheritance, nervously anxious lest, by some frightful lapse of
+the novelist, the young man should be left without it at the end.
+
+Her manner was warm; she had never seen so clearly before how
+distinguished and desirable a girl this was.  She asked after old
+Jolyon's health.  A wonderful man for his age; so upright, and young
+looking, and how old was he?  Eighty-one!  She would never have thought
+it!  They were at the sea!  Very nice for them; she supposed June heard
+from Phil every day?  Her light grey eyes became more prominent as she
+asked this question; but the girl met the glance without flinching.
+
+"No," she said, "he never writes!"
+
+Mrs. Baynes's eyes dropped; they had no intention of doing so, but they
+did.  They recovered immediately.
+
+"Of course not.  That's Phil all over--he was always like that!"
+
+"Was he?" said June.
+
+The brevity of the answer caused Mrs. Baynes's bright smile a moment's
+hesitation; she disguised it by a quick movement, and spreading her
+skirts afresh, said: "Why, my dear--he's quite the most harum-scarum
+person; one never pays the slightest attention to what he does!"
+
+The conviction came suddenly to June that she was wasting her time; even
+were she to put a question point-blank, she would never get anything out
+of this woman.
+
+'Do you see him?' she asked, her face crimsoning.
+
+The perspiration broke out on Mrs. Baynes' forehead beneath the powder.
+
+"Oh, yes!  I don't remember when he was here last--indeed, we haven't
+seen much of him lately.  He's so busy with your cousin's house; I'm told
+it'll be finished directly.  We must organize a little dinner to
+celebrate the event; do come and stay the night with us!"
+
+"Thank you," said June.  Again she thought: 'I'm only wasting my time.
+This woman will tell me nothing.'
+
+She got up to go.  A change came over Mrs. Baynes.  She rose too; her
+lips twitched, she fidgeted her hands.  Something was evidently very
+wrong, and she did not dare to ask this girl, who stood there, a slim,
+straight little figure, with her decided face, her set jaw, and resentful
+eyes.  She was not accustomed to be afraid of asking question's--all
+organization was based on the asking of questions!
+
+But the issue was so grave that her nerve, normally strong, was fairly
+shaken; only that morning her husband had said: "Old Mr. Forsyte must be
+worth well over a hundred thousand pounds!"
+
+And this girl stood there, holding out her hand--holding out her hand!
+
+The chance might be slipping away--she couldn't tell--the chance of
+keeping her in the family, and yet she dared not speak.
+
+Her eyes followed June to the door.
+
+It closed.
+
+Then with an exclamation Mrs. Baynes ran forward, wobbling her bulky
+frame from side to side, and opened it again.
+
+Too late!  She heard the front door click, and stood still, an expression
+of real anger and mortification on her face.
+
+June went along the Square with her bird-like quickness.  She detested
+that woman now whom in happier days she had been accustomed to think so
+kind.  Was she always to be put off thus, and forced to undergo this
+torturing suspense?
+
+She would go to Phil himself, and ask him what he meant.  She had the
+right to know.  She hurried on down Sloane Street till she came to
+Bosinney's number.  Passing the swing-door at the bottom, she ran up the
+stairs, her heart thumping painfully.
+
+At the top of the third flight she paused for breath, and holding on to
+the bannisters, stood listening.  No sound came from above.
+
+With a very white face she mounted the last flight.  She saw the door,
+with his name on the plate.  And the resolution that had brought her so
+far evaporated.
+
+The full meaning of her conduct came to her.  She felt hot all over; the
+palms of her hands were moist beneath the thin silk covering of her
+gloves.
+
+She drew back to the stairs, but did not descend.  Leaning against the
+rail she tried to get rid of a feeling of being choked; and she gazed at
+the door with a sort of dreadful courage.  No! she refused to go down.
+Did it matter what people thought of her?  They would never know!  No one
+would help her if she did not help herself!  She would go through with
+it.
+
+Forcing herself, therefore, to leave the support of the wall, she rang
+the bell.  The door did not open, and all her shame and fear suddenly
+abandoned her; she rang again and again, as though in spite of its
+emptiness she could drag some response out of that closed room, some
+recompense for the shame and fear that visit had cost her.  It did not
+open; she left off ringing, and, sitting down at the top of the stairs,
+buried her face in her hands.
+
+Presently she stole down, out into the air.  She felt as though she had
+passed through a bad illness, and had no desire now but to get home as
+quickly as she could.  The people she met seemed to know where she had
+been, what she had been doing; and suddenly--over on the opposite side,
+going towards his rooms from the direction of Montpellier Square--she saw
+Bosinney himself.
+
+She made a movement to cross into the traffic.  Their eyes met, and he
+raised his hat.  An omnibus passed, obscuring her view; then, from the
+edge of the pavement, through a gap in the traffic, she saw him walking
+on.
+
+And June stood motionless, looking after him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+PERFECTION OF THE HOUSE
+
+'One mockturtle, clear; one oxtail; two glasses of port.'
+
+In the upper room at French's, where a Forsyte could still get heavy
+English food, James and his son were sitting down to lunch.
+
+Of all eating-places James liked best to come here; there was something
+unpretentious, well-flavoured, and filling about it, and though he had
+been to a certain extent corrupted by the necessity for being
+fashionable, and the trend of habits keeping pace with an income that
+would increase, he still hankered in quiet City moments after the tasty
+fleshpots of his earlier days. Here you were served by hairy English
+waiters in aprons; there was sawdust on the floor, and three round gilt
+looking-glasses hung just above the line of sight.  They had only
+recently done away with the cubicles, too, in which you could have your
+chop, prime chump, with a floury-potato, without seeing your neighbours,
+like a gentleman.
+
+He tucked the top corner of his napkin behind the third button of his
+waistcoat, a practice he had been obliged to abandon years ago in the
+West End.  He felt that he should relish his soup--the entire morning had
+been given to winding up the estate of an old friend.
+
+After filling his mouth with household bread, stale, he at once began:
+"How are you going down to Robin Hill?  You going to take Irene?  You'd
+better take her.  I should think there'll be a lot that'll want seeing
+to."
+
+Without looking up, Soames answered: "She won't go."
+
+"Won't go?  What's the meaning of that?  She's going to live in the
+house, isn't she?"
+
+Soames made no reply.
+
+"I don't know what's coming to women nowadays," mumbled James; "I never
+used to have any trouble with them.  She's had too much liberty.  She's
+spoiled...."
+
+Soames lifted his eyes: "I won't have anything said against her," he said
+unexpectedly.
+
+The silence was only broken now by the supping of James's soup.
+
+The waiter brought the two glasses of port, but Soames stopped him.
+
+"That's not the way to serve port," he said; "take them away, and bring
+the bottle."
+
+Rousing himself from his reverie over the soup, James took one of his
+rapid shifting surveys of surrounding facts.
+
+"Your mother's in bed," he said; "you can have the carriage to take you
+down.  I should think Irene'd like the drive.  This young Bosinney'll be
+there, I suppose, to show you over"
+
+Soames nodded.
+
+"I should like to go and see for myself what sort of a job he's made
+finishing off," pursued James.  "I'll just drive round and pick you both
+up."
+
+"I am going down by train," replied Soames.  "If you like to drive round
+and see, Irene might go with you, I can't tell."
+
+He signed to the waiter to bring the bill, which James paid.
+
+They parted at St. Paul's, Soames branching off to the station, James
+taking his omnibus westwards.
+
+He had secured the corner seat next the conductor, where his long legs
+made it difficult for anyone to get in, and at all who passed him he
+looked resentfully, as if they had no business to be using up his air.
+
+He intended to take an opportunity this afternoon of speaking to Irene.
+A word in time saved nine; and now that she was going to live in the
+country there was a chance for her to turn over a new leaf!  He could see
+that Soames wouldn't stand very much more of her goings on!
+
+It did not occur to him to define what he meant by her 'goings on'; the
+expression was wide, vague, and suited to a Forsyte. And James had more
+than his common share of courage after lunch.
+
+On reaching home, he ordered out the barouche, with special instructions
+that the groom was to go too.  He wished to be kind to her, and to give
+her every chance.
+
+When the door of No.62 was opened he could distinctly hear her singing,
+and said so at once, to prevent any chance of being denied entrance.
+
+Yes, Mrs. Soames was in, but the maid did not know if she was seeing
+people.
+
+James, moving with the rapidity that ever astonished the observers of his
+long figure and absorbed expression, went forthwith into the drawing-room
+without permitting this to be ascertained.  He found Irene seated at the
+piano with her hands arrested on the keys, evidently listening to the
+voices in the hall.  She greeted him without smiling.
+
+"Your mother-in-law's in bed," he began, hoping at once to enlist her
+sympathy.  "I've got the carriage here.  Now, be a good girl, and put on
+your hat and come with me for a drive.  It'll do you good!"
+
+Irene looked at him as though about to refuse, but, seeming to change her
+mind, went upstairs, and came down again with her hat on.
+
+"Where are you going to take me?" she asked.
+
+"We'll just go down to Robin Hill," said James, spluttering out his words
+very quick; "the horses want exercise, and I should like to see what
+they've been doing down there."
+
+Irene hung back, but again changed her mind, and went out to the
+carriage, James brooding over her closely, to make quite sure.
+
+It was not before he had got her more than half way that he began:
+"Soames is very fond of you--he won't have anything said against you; why
+don't you show him more affection?"
+
+Irene flushed, and said in a low voice: "I can't show what I haven't
+got."
+
+James looked at her sharply; he felt that now he had her in his own
+carriage, with his own horses and servants, he was really in command of
+the situation.  She could not put him off; nor would she make a scene in
+public.
+
+"I can't think what you're about," he said.  "He's a very good husband!"
+
+Irene's answer was so low as to be almost inaudible among the sounds of
+traffic.  He caught the words: "You are not married to him!"
+
+"What's that got to do with it?  He's given you everything you want.
+He's always ready to take you anywhere, and now he's built you this house
+in the country.  It's not as if you had anything of your own."
+
+"No."
+
+Again James looked at her; he could not make out the expression on her
+face.  She looked almost as if she were going to cry, and yet....
+
+"I'm sure," he muttered hastily, "we've all tried to be kind to you."
+
+Irene's lips quivered; to his dismay James saw a tear steal down her
+cheek.  He felt a choke rise in his own throat.
+
+"We're all fond of you," he said, "if you'd only"--he was going to say,
+"behave yourself," but changed it to--"if you'd only be more of a wife to
+him."
+
+Irene did not answer, and James, too, ceased speaking.  There was
+something in her silence which disconcerted him; it was not the silence
+of obstinacy, rather that of acquiescence in all that he could find to
+say.  And yet he felt as if he had not had the last word.  He could not
+understand this.
+
+He was unable, however, to long keep silence.
+
+"I suppose that young Bosinney," he said, "will be getting married to
+June now?"
+
+Irene's face changed.  "I don't know," she said; "you should ask her."
+
+"Does she write to you?" No.
+
+"How's that?" said James.  "I thought you and she were such great
+friends."
+
+Irene turned on him.  "Again," she said, "you should ask her!"
+
+"Well," flustered James, frightened by her look, "it's very odd that I
+can't get a plain answer to a plain question, but there it is."
+
+He sat ruminating over his rebuff, and burst out at last:
+
+"Well, I've warned you.  You won't look ahead.  Soames he doesn't say
+much, but I can see he won't stand a great deal more of this sort of
+thing.  You'll have nobody but yourself to blame, and, what's more,
+you'll get no sympathy from anybody."
+
+Irene bent her head with a little smiling bow.  "I am very much obliged
+to you."
+
+James did not know what on earth to answer.
+
+The bright hot morning had changed slowly to a grey, oppressive
+afternoon; a heavy bank of clouds, with the yellow tinge of coming
+thunder, had risen in the south, and was creeping up.
+
+The branches of the trees dropped motionless across the road without the
+smallest stir of foliage.  A faint odour of glue from the heated horses
+clung in the thick air; the coachman and groom, rigid and unbending,
+exchanged stealthy murmurs on the box, without ever turning their heads.
+
+To James' great relief they reached the house at last; the silence and
+impenetrability of this woman by his side, whom he had always thought so
+soft and mild, alarmed him.
+
+The carriage put them down at the door, and they entered.
+
+The hall was cool, and so still that it was like passing into a tomb; a
+shudder ran down James's spine.  He quickly lifted the heavy leather
+curtains between the columns into the inner court.
+
+He could not restrain an exclamation of approval.
+
+The decoration was really in excellent taste.  The dull ruby tiles that
+extended from the foot of the walls to the verge of a circular clump of
+tall iris plants, surrounding in turn a sunken basin of white marble
+filled with water, were obviously of the best quality.  He admired
+extremely the purple leather curtains drawn along one entire side,
+framing a huge white-tiled stove. The central partitions of the skylight
+had been slid back, and the warm air from outside penetrated into the
+very heart of the house.
+
+He stood, his hands behind him, his head bent back on his high, narrow
+shoulders, spying the tracery on the columns and the pattern of the
+frieze which ran round the ivory-coloured walls under the gallery.
+Evidently, no pains had been spared.  It was quite the house of a
+gentleman.  He went up to the curtains, and, having discovered how they
+were worked, drew them asunder and disclosed the picture-gallery, ending
+in a great window taking up the whole end of the room.  It had a black
+oak floor, and its walls, again, were of ivory white.  He went on
+throwing open doors, and peeping in.  Everything was in apple-pie order,
+ready for immediate occupation.
+
+He turned round at last to speak to Irene, and saw her standing over in
+the garden entrance, with her husband and Bosinney.
+
+Though not remarkable for sensibility, James felt at once that something
+was wrong.  He went up to them, and, vaguely alarmed, ignorant of the
+nature of the trouble, made an attempt to smooth things over.
+
+"How are you, Mr. Bosinney?" he said, holding out his hand. "You've been
+spending money pretty freely down here, I should say!"
+
+Soames turned his back, and walked away.
+
+James looked from Bosinney's frowning face to Irene, and, in his
+agitation, spoke his thoughts aloud: "Well, I can't tell what's the
+matter.  Nobody tells me anything!"  And, making off after his son, he
+heard Bosinney's short laugh, and his "Well, thank God! You look so...."
+Most unfortunately he lost the rest.
+
+What had happened?  He glanced back.  Irene was very close to the
+architect, and her face not like the face he knew of her.  He hastened up
+to his son.
+
+Soames was pacing the picture-gallery.
+
+"What's the matter?" said James.  "What's all this?"
+
+Soames looked at him with his supercilious calm unbroken, but James knew
+well enough that he was violently angry.
+
+"Our friend," he said, "has exceeded his instructions again, that's all.
+So much the worse for him this time."
+
+He turned round and walked back towards the door.  James followed
+hurriedly, edging himself in front.  He saw Irene take her finger from
+before her lips, heard her say something in her ordinary voice, and began
+to speak before he reached them.
+
+"There's a storm coming on.  We'd better get home.  We can't take you, I
+suppose, Mr. Bosinney?  No, I suppose not.  Then, good-bye!"  He held out
+his hand.  Bosinney did not take it, but, turning with a laugh, said:
+
+"Good-bye, Mr. Forsyte.  Don't get caught in the storm!" and walked away.
+
+"Well," began James, "I don't know...."
+
+But the 'sight of Irene's face stopped him.  Taking hold of his
+daughter-in-law by the elbow, he escorted her towards the carriage.  He
+felt certain, quite certain, they had been making some appointment or
+other....
+
+Nothing in this world is more sure to upset a Forsyte than the discovery
+that something on which he has stipulated to spend a certain sum has cost
+more.  And this is reasonable, for upon the accuracy of his estimates the
+whole policy of his life is ordered.  If he cannot rely on definite
+values of property, his compass is amiss; he is adrift upon bitter waters
+without a helm.
+
+After writing to Bosinney in the terms that have already been chronicled,
+Soames had dismissed the cost of the house from his mind.  He believed
+that he had made the matter of the final cost so very plain that the
+possibility of its being again exceeded had really never entered his
+head.  On hearing from Bosinney that his limit of twelve thousand pounds
+would be exceeded by something like four hundred, he had grown white with
+anger.  His original estimate of the cost of the house completed had been
+ten thousand pounds, and he had often blamed himself severely for
+allowing himself to be led into repeated excesses.  Over this last
+expenditure, however, Bosinney had put himself completely in the wrong.
+How on earth a fellow could make such an ass of himself Soames could not
+conceive; but he had done so, and all the rancour and hidden jealousy
+that had been burning against him for so long was now focussed in rage at
+this crowning piece of extravagance.  The attitude of the confident and
+friendly husband was gone.  To preserve property--his wife--he had
+assumed it, to preserve property of another kind he lost it now.
+
+"Ah!" he had said to Bosinney when he could speak, "and I suppose you're
+perfectly contented with yourself.  But I may as well tell you that
+you've altogether mistaken your man!"
+
+What he meant by those words he did not quite know at the time, but after
+dinner he looked up the correspondence between himself and Bosinney to
+make quite sure.  There could be no two opinions about it--the fellow had
+made himself liable for that extra four hundred, or, at all events, for
+three hundred and fifty of it, and he would have to make it good.
+
+He was looking at his wife's face when he came to this conclusion. Seated
+in her usual seat on the sofa, she was altering the lace on a collar.
+She had not once spoken to him all the evening.
+
+He went up to the mantelpiece, and contemplating his face in the mirror
+said: "Your friend the Buccaneer has made a fool of himself; he will have
+to pay for it!"
+
+She looked at him scornfully, and answered: "I don't know what you are
+talking about!"
+
+"You soon will.  A mere trifle, quite beneath your contempt--four hundred
+pounds."
+
+"Do you mean that you are going to make him pay that towards this
+hateful, house?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"And you know he's got nothing?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then you are meaner than I thought you."
+
+Soames turned from the mirror, and unconsciously taking a china cup from
+the mantelpiece, clasped his hands around it as though praying.  He saw
+her bosom rise and fall, her eyes darkening with anger, and taking no
+notice of the taunt, he asked quietly:
+
+"Are you carrying on a flirtation with Bosinney?"
+
+"No, I am not!"
+
+Her eyes met his, and he looked away.  He neither believed nor
+disbelieved her, but he knew that he had made a mistake in asking; he
+never had known, never would know, what she was thinking.  The sight of
+her inscrutable face, the thought of all the hundreds of evenings he had
+seen her sitting there like that soft and passive, but unreadable,
+unknown, enraged him beyond measure.
+
+"I believe you are made of stone," he said, clenching his fingers so hard
+that he broke the fragile cup.  The pieces fell into the grate.  And
+Irene smiled.
+
+"You seem to forget," she said, "that cup is not!"
+
+Soames gripped her arm.  "A good beating," he said, "is the only thing
+that would bring you to your senses," but turning on his heel, he left
+the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+SOAMES SITS ON THE STAIRS
+
+Soames went upstairs that night that he had gone too far.  He was
+prepared to offer excuses for his words.
+
+He turned out the gas still burning in the passage outside their room.
+Pausing, with his hand on the knob of the door, he tried to shape his
+apology, for he had no intention of letting her see that he was nervous.
+
+But the door did not open, nor when he pulled it and turned the handle
+firmly.  She must have locked it for some reason, and forgotten.
+
+Entering his dressing-room where the gas was also light and burning low,
+he went quickly to the other door.  That too was locked.  Then he noticed
+that the camp bed which he occasionally used was prepared, and his
+sleeping-suit laid out upon it.  He put his hand up to his forehead, and
+brought it away wet.  It dawned on him that he was barred out.
+
+He went back to the door, and rattling the handle stealthily, called:
+"Unlock the door, do you hear?  Unlock the door!"
+
+There was a faint rustling, but no answer.
+
+"Do you hear?  Let me in at once--I insist on being let in!"
+
+He could catch the sound of her breathing close to the door, like the
+breathing of a creature threatened by danger.
+
+There was something terrifying in this inexorable silence, in the
+impossibility of getting at her.  He went back to the other door, and
+putting his whole weight against it, tried to burst it open. The door was
+a new one--he had had them renewed himself, in readiness for their coming
+in after the honeymoon.  In a rage he lifted his foot to kick in the
+panel; the thought of the servants restrained him, and he felt suddenly
+that he was beaten.
+
+Flinging himself down in the dressing-room, he took up a book.
+
+But instead of the print he seemed to see his wife--with her yellow hair
+flowing over her bare shoulders, and her great dark eyes--standing like
+an animal at bay.  And the whole meaning of her act of revolt came to
+him.  She meant it to be for good.
+
+He could not sit still, and went to the door again.  He could still hear
+her, and he called: "Irene!  Irene!"
+
+He did not mean to make his voice pathetic.
+
+In ominous answer, the faint sounds ceased.  He stood with clenched
+hands, thinking.
+
+Presently he stole round on tiptoe, and running suddenly at the other
+door, made a supreme effort to break it open.  It creaked, but did not
+yield.  He sat down on the stairs and buried his face in his hands.
+
+For a long time he sat there in the dark, the moon through the skylight
+above laying a pale smear which lengthened slowly towards him down the
+stairway.  He tried to be philosophical.
+
+Since she had locked her doors she had no further claim as a wife, and he
+would console himself with other women.
+
+It was but a spectral journey he made among such delights--he had no
+appetite for these exploits.  He had never had much, and he had lost the
+habit.  He felt that he could never recover it.  His hunger could only be
+appeased by his wife, inexorable and frightened, behind these shut doors.
+No other woman could help him.
+
+This conviction came to him with terrible force out there in the dark.
+
+His philosophy left him; and surly anger took its place.  Her conduct was
+immoral, inexcusable, worthy of any punishment within his power.  He
+desired no one but her, and she refused him!
+
+She must really hate him, then!  He had never believed it yet. He did not
+believe it now.  It seemed to him incredible.  He felt as though he had
+lost for ever his power of judgment.  If she, so soft and yielding as he
+had always judged her, could take this decided step--what could not
+happen?
+
+Then he asked himself again if she were carrying on an intrigue with
+Bosinney.  He did not believe that she was; he could not afford to
+believe such a reason for her conduct--the thought was not to be faced.
+
+It would be unbearable to contemplate the necessity of making his marital
+relations public property.  Short of the most convincing proofs he must
+still refuse to believe, for he did not wish to punish himself.  And all
+the time at heart--he did believe.
+
+The moonlight cast a greyish tinge over his figure, hunched against the
+staircase wall.
+
+Bosinney was in love with her!  He hated the fellow, and would not spare
+him now.  He could and would refuse to pay a penny piece over twelve
+thousand and fifty pounds--the extreme limit fixed in the correspondence;
+or rather he would pay, he would pay and sue him for damages.  He would
+go to Jobling and Boulter and put the matter in their hands.  He would
+ruin the impecunious beggar!  And suddenly--though what connection
+between the thoughts?--he reflected that Irene had no money either.  They
+were both beggars.  This gave him a strange satisfaction.
+
+The silence was broken by a faint creaking through the wall.  She was
+going to bed at last.  Ah! Joy and pleasant dreams!  If she threw the
+door open wide he would not go in now!
+
+But his lips, that were twisted in a bitter smile, twitched; he covered
+his eyes with his hands....
+
+It was late the following afternoon when Soames stood in the dining-room
+window gazing gloomily into the Square.
+
+The sunlight still showered on the plane-trees, and in the breeze their
+gay broad leaves shone and swung in rhyme to a barrel organ at the
+corner.  It was playing a waltz, an old waltz that was out of fashion,
+with a fateful rhythm in the notes; and it went on and on, though nothing
+indeed but leaves danced to the tune.
+
+The woman did not look too gay, for she was tired; and from the tall
+houses no one threw her down coppers.  She moved the organ on, and three
+doors off began again.
+
+It was the waltz they had played at Roger's when Irene had danced with
+Bosinney; and the perfume of the gardenias she had worn came back to
+Soames, drifted by the malicious music, as it had been drifted to him
+then, when she passed, her hair glistening, her eyes so soft, drawing
+Bosinney on and on down an endless ballroom.
+
+The organ woman plied her handle slowly; she had been grinding her tune
+all day-grinding it in Sloane Street hard by, grinding it perhaps to
+Bosinney himself.
+
+Soames turned, took a cigarette from the carven box, and walked back to
+the window.  The tune had mesmerized him, and there came into his view
+Irene, her sunshade furled, hastening homewards down the Square, in a
+soft, rose-coloured blouse with drooping sleeves, that he did not know.
+She stopped before the organ, took out her purse, and gave the woman
+money.
+
+Soames shrank back and stood where he could see into the hall.
+
+She came in with her latch-key, put down her sunshade, and stood looking
+at herself in the glass.  Her cheeks were flushed as if the sun had
+burned them; her lips were parted in a smile.  She stretched her arms out
+as though to embrace herself, with a laugh that for all the world was
+like a sob.
+
+Soames stepped forward.
+
+"Very-pretty!" he said.
+
+But as though shot she spun round, and would have passed him up the
+stairs.  He barred the way.
+
+"Why such a hurry?" he said, and his eyes fastened on a curl of hair
+fallen loose across her ear....
+
+He hardly recognised her.  She seemed on fire, so deep and rich the
+colour of her cheeks, her eyes, her lips, and of the unusual blouse she
+wore.
+
+She put up her hand and smoothed back the curl.  She was breathing fast
+and deep, as though she had been running, and with every breath perfume
+seemed to come from her hair, and from her body, like perfume from an
+opening flower.
+
+"I don't like that blouse," he said slowly, "it's a soft, shapeless
+thing!"
+
+He lifted his finger towards her breast, but she dashed his hand aside.
+
+"Don't touch me!" she cried.
+
+He caught her wrist; she wrenched it away.
+
+"And where may you have been?" he asked.
+
+"In heaven--out of this house!"  With those words she fled upstairs.
+
+Outside--in thanksgiving--at the very door, the organ-grinder was playing
+the waltz.
+
+And Soames stood motionless.  What prevented him from following her?
+
+Was it that, with the eyes of faith, he saw Bosinney looking down from
+that high window in Sloane Street, straining his eyes for yet another
+glimpse of Irene's vanished figure, cooling his flushed face, dreaming of
+the moment when she flung herself on his breast--the scent of her still
+in the air around, and the sound of her laugh that was like a sob?
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Mrs. MACANDER'S EVIDENCE
+
+Many  people, no doubt, including the editor of the 'Ultra
+Vivisectionist,' then in the bloom of its first youth, would say that
+Soames was less than a man not to have removed the locks from his wife's
+doors, and, after beating her soundly, resumed wedded happiness.
+
+Brutality is not so deplorably diluted by humaneness as it used to be,
+yet a sentimental segment of the population may still be relieved to
+learn that he did none of these things.  For active brutality is not
+popular with Forsytes; they are too circumspect, and, on the whole, too
+softhearted.  And in Soames there was some common pride, not sufficient
+to make him do a really generous action, but enough to prevent his
+indulging in an extremely mean one, except, perhaps, in very hot blood.
+Above all this a true Forsyte refused to feel himself ridiculous.  Short
+of actually beating his wife, he perceived nothing to be done; he
+therefore accepted the situation without another word.
+
+Throughout the summer and autumn he continued to go to the office, to
+sort his pictures, and ask his friends to dinner.
+
+He did not leave town; Irene refused to go away.  The house at Robin
+Hill, finished though it was, remained empty and ownerless. Soames had
+brought a suit against the Buccaneer, in which he claimed from him the
+sum of three hundred and fifty pounds.
+
+A firm of solicitors, Messrs.  Freak and Able, had put in a defence on
+Bosinney's behalf.  Admitting the facts, they raised a point on the
+correspondence which, divested of legal phraseology, amounted to this: To
+speak of 'a free hand in the terms of this correspondence' is an Irish
+bull.
+
+By a chance, fortuitous but not improbable in the close borough of legal
+circles, a good deal of information came to Soames' ear anent this line
+of policy, the working partner in his firm, Bustard, happening to sit
+next at dinner at Walmisley's, the Taxing Master, to young Chankery, of
+the Common Law Bar.
+
+The necessity for talking what is known as 'shop,' which comes on all
+lawyers with the removal of the ladies, caused Chankery, a young and
+promising advocate, to propound an impersonal conundrum to his neighbour,
+whose name he did not know, for, seated as he permanently was in the
+background, Bustard had practically no name.
+
+He had, said Chankery, a case coming on with a 'very nice point.' He then
+explained, preserving every professional discretion, the riddle in
+Soames' case.  Everyone, he said, to whom he had spoken, thought it a
+nice point.  The issue was small unfortunately, 'though d----d serious
+for his client he believed'--Walmisley's champagne was bad but plentiful.
+A Judge would make short work of it, he was afraid.  He intended to make
+a big effort--the point was a nice one.  What did his neighbour say?
+
+Bustard, a model of secrecy, said nothing.  He related the incident to
+Soames however with some malice, for this quiet man was capable of human
+feeling, ending with his own opinion that the point was 'a very nice
+one.'
+
+In accordance with his resolve, our Forsyte had put his interests into
+the hands of Jobling and Boulter.  From the moment of doing so he
+regretted that he had not acted for himself.  On receiving a copy of
+Bosinney's defence he went over to their offices.
+
+Boulter, who had the matter in hand, Jobling having died some years
+before, told him that in his opinion it was rather a nice point; he would
+like counsel's opinion on it.
+
+Soames told him to go to a good man, and they went to Waterbuck, Q.C.,
+marking him ten and one, who kept the papers six weeks and then wrote as
+follows:
+
+'In my opinion the true interpretation of this correspondence depends
+very much on the intention of the parties, and will turn upon the
+evidence given at the trial.  I am of opinion that an attempt should be
+made to secure from the architect an admission that he understood he was
+not to spend at the outside more than twelve thousand and fifty pounds.
+With regard to the expression, "a free hand in the terms of this
+correspondence," to which my attention is directed, the point is a nice
+one; but I am of opinion that upon the whole the ruling in "Boileau v.
+The Blasted Cement Co., Ltd.," will apply.'
+
+Upon this opinion they acted, administering interrogatories, but to their
+annoyance Messrs.  Freak and Able answered these in so masterly a fashion
+that nothing whatever was admitted and that without prejudice.
+
+It was on October 1 that Soames read Waterbuck's opinion, in the
+dining-room before dinner.
+
+It made him nervous; not so much because of the case of 'Boileau v. The
+Blasted Cement Co., Ltd.,' as that the point had lately begun to seem to
+him, too, a nice one; there was about it just that pleasant flavour of
+subtlety so attractive to the best legal appetites.  To have his own
+impression confirmed by Waterbuck, Q.C., would have disturbed any man.
+
+He sat thinking it over, and staring at the empty grate, for though
+autumn had come, the weather kept as gloriously fine that jubilee year as
+if it were still high August.  It was not pleasant to be disturbed; he
+desired too passionately to set his foot on Bosinney's neck.
+
+Though he had not seen the architect since the last afternoon at Robin
+Hill, he was never free from the sense of his presence--never free from
+the memory of his worn face with its high cheek bones and enthusiastic
+eyes.  It would not be too much to say that he had never got rid of the
+feeling of that night when he heard the peacock's cry at dawn--the
+feeling that Bosinney haunted the house.  And every man's shape that he
+saw in the dark evenings walking past, seemed that of him whom George had
+so appropriately named the Buccaneer.
+
+Irene still met him, he was certain; where, or how, he neither knew, nor
+asked; deterred by a vague and secret dread of too much knowledge.  It
+all seemed subterranean nowadays.
+
+Sometimes when he questioned his wife as to where she had been, which he
+still made a point of doing, as every Forsyte should, she looked very
+strange.  Her self-possession was wonderful, but there were moments when,
+behind the mask of her face, inscrutable as it had always been to him,
+lurked an expression he had never been used to see there.
+
+She had taken to lunching out too; when he asked Bilson if her mistress
+had been in to lunch, as often as not she would answer: "No, sir."
+
+He strongly disapproved of her gadding about by herself, and told her so.
+But she took no notice.  There was something that angered, amazed, yet
+almost amused him about the calm way in which she disregarded his wishes.
+It was really as if she were hugging to herself the thought of a triumph
+over him.
+
+He rose from the perusal of Waterbuck, Q.C.'s opinion, and, going
+upstairs, entered her room, for she did not lock her doors till
+bed-time--she had the decency, he found, to save the feelings of the
+servants.  She was brushing her hair, and turned to him with strange
+fierceness.
+
+"What do you want?" she said.  "Please leave my room!"
+
+He answered: "I want to know how long this state of things between us is
+to last?  I have put up with it long enough."
+
+"Will you please leave my room?"
+
+"Will you treat me as your husband?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then, I shall take steps to make you."
+
+"Do!"
+
+He stared, amazed at the calmness of her answer.  Her lips were
+compressed in a thin line; her hair lay in fluffy masses on her bare
+shoulders, in all its strange golden contrast to her dark eyes--those
+eyes alive with the emotions of fear, hate, contempt, and odd, haunting
+triumph.
+
+"Now, please, will you leave my room?" He turned round, and went sulkily
+out.
+
+He knew very well that he had no intention of taking steps, and he saw
+that she knew too--knew that he was afraid to.
+
+It was a habit with him to tell her the doings of his day: how such and
+such clients had called; how he had arranged a mortgage for Parkes; how
+that long-standing suit of Fryer v. Forsyte was getting on, which,
+arising in the preternaturally careful disposition of his property by his
+great uncle Nicholas, who had tied it up so that no one could get at it
+at all, seemed likely to remain a source of income for several solicitors
+till the Day of Judgment.
+
+And how he had called in at Jobson's, and seen a Boucher sold, which he
+had just missed buying of Talleyrand and Sons in Pall Mall.
+
+He had an admiration for Boucher, Watteau, and all that school. It was a
+habit with him to tell her all these matters, and he continued to do it
+even now, talking for long spells at dinner, as though by the volubility
+of words he could conceal from himself the ache in his heart.
+
+Often, if they were alone, he made an attempt to kiss her when she said
+good-night.  He may have had some vague notion that some night she would
+let him; or perhaps only the feeling that a husband ought to kiss his
+wife.  Even if she hated him, he at all events ought not to put himself
+in the wrong by neglecting this ancient rite.
+
+And why did she hate him?  Even now he could not altogether believe it.
+It was strange to be hated!--the emotion was too extreme; yet he hated
+Bosinney, that Buccaneer, that prowling vagabond, that night-wanderer.
+For in his thoughts Soames always saw him lying in wait--wandering.  Ah,
+but he must be in very low water!  Young Burkitt, the architect, had seen
+him coming out of a third-rate restaurant, looking terribly down in the
+mouth!
+
+During all the hours he lay awake, thinking over the situation, which
+seemed to have no end--unless she should suddenly come to her
+senses--never once did the thought of separating from his wife seriously
+enter his head....
+
+And the Forsytes!  What part did they play in this stage of Soames'
+subterranean tragedy?
+
+Truth to say, little or none, for they were at the sea.
+
+From hotels, hydropathics, or lodging-houses, they were bathing daily;
+laying in a stock of ozone to last them through the winter.
+
+Each section, in the vineyard of its own choosing, grew and culled and
+pressed and bottled the grapes of a pet sea-air.
+
+The end of September began to witness their several returns.
+
+In rude health and small omnibuses, with considerable colour in their
+cheeks, they arrived daily from the various termini.  The following
+morning saw them back at their vocations.
+
+On the next Sunday Timothy's was thronged from lunch till dinner.
+
+Amongst other gossip, too numerous and interesting to relate, Mrs.
+Septimus Small mentioned that Soames and Irene had not been away.
+
+It remained for a comparative outsider to supply the next evidence of
+interest.
+
+It chanced that one afternoon late in September, Mrs. MacAnder, Winifred
+Dartie's greatest friend, taking a constitutional, with young Augustus
+Flippard, on her bicycle in Richmond Park, passed Irene and Bosinney
+walking from the bracken towards the Sheen Gate.
+
+Perhaps the poor little woman was thirsty, for she had ridden long on a
+hard, dry road, and, as all London knows, to ride a bicycle and talk to
+young Flippard will try the toughest constitution; or perhaps the sight
+of the cool bracken grove, whence 'those two' were coming down, excited
+her envy.  The cool bracken grove on the top of the hill, with the oak
+boughs for roof, where the pigeons were raising an endless wedding hymn,
+and the autumn, humming, whispered to the ears of lovers in the fern,
+while the deer stole by.  The bracken grove of irretrievable delights, of
+golden minutes in the long marriage of heaven and earth!  The bracken
+grove, sacred to stags, to strange tree-stump fauns leaping around the
+silver whiteness of a birch-tree nymph at summer dusk.
+
+This lady knew all the Forsytes, and having been at June's 'at home,' was
+not at a loss to see with whom she had to deal.  Her own marriage, poor
+thing, had not been successful, but having had the good sense and ability
+to force her husband into pronounced error, she herself had passed
+through the necessary divorce proceedings without incurring censure.
+
+She was therefore a judge of all that sort of thing, and lived in one of
+those large buildings, where in small sets of apartments, are gathered
+incredible quantities of Forsytes, whose chief recreation out of business
+hours is the discussion of each other's affairs.
+
+Poor little woman, perhaps she was thirsty, certainly she was bored, for
+Flippard was a wit.  To see 'those two' in so unlikely a spot was quite a
+merciful 'pick-me-up.'
+
+At the MacAnder, like all London, Time pauses.
+
+This small but remarkable woman merits attention; her all-seeing eye and
+shrewd tongue were inscrutably the means of furthering the ends of
+Providence.
+
+With an air of being in at the death, she had an almost distressing power
+of taking care of herself.  She had done more, perhaps, in her way than
+any woman about town to destroy the sense of chivalry which still clogs
+the wheel of civilization. So smart she was, and spoken of endearingly as
+'the little MacAnder!'
+
+Dressing tightly and well, she belonged to a Woman's Club, but was by no
+means the neurotic and dismal type of member who was always thinking of
+her rights.  She took her rights unconsciously, they came natural to her,
+and she knew exactly how to make the most of them without exciting
+anything but admiration amongst that great class to whom she was
+affiliated, not precisely perhaps by manner, but by birth, breeding, and
+the true, the secret gauge, a sense of property.
+
+The daughter of a Bedfordshire solicitor, by the daughter of a clergyman,
+she had never, through all the painful experience of being married to a
+very mild painter with a cranky love of Nature, who had deserted her for
+an actress, lost touch with the requirements, beliefs, and inner feeling
+of Society; and, on attaining her liberty, she placed herself without
+effort in the very van of Forsyteism.
+
+Always in good spirits, and 'full of information,' she was universally
+welcomed.  She excited neither surprise nor disapprobation when
+encountered on the Rhine or at Zermatt, either alone, or travelling with
+a lady and two gentlemen; it was felt that she was perfectly capable of
+taking care of herself; and the hearts of all Forsytes warmed to that
+wonderful instinct, which enabled her to enjoy everything without giving
+anything away.  It was generally felt that to such women as Mrs. MacAnder
+should we look for the perpetuation and increase of our best type of
+woman.  She had never had any children.
+
+If there was one thing more than another that she could not stand it was
+one of those soft women with what men called 'charm' about them, and for
+Mrs. Soames she always had an especial dislike.
+
+Obscurely, no doubt, she felt that if charm were once admitted as the
+criterion, smartness and capability must go to the wall; and she
+hated--with a hatred the deeper that at times this so-called charm seemed
+to disturb all calculations--the subtle seductiveness which she could not
+altogether overlook in Irene.
+
+She said, however, that she could see nothing in the woman--there was no
+'go' about her--she would never be able to stand up for herself--anyone
+could take advantage of her, that was plain--she could not see in fact
+what men found to admire!
+
+She was not really ill-natured, but, in maintaining her position after
+the trying circumstances of her married life, she had found it so
+necessary to be 'full of information,' that the idea of holding her
+tongue about 'those two' in the Park never occurred to her.
+
+And it so happened that she was dining that very evening at Timothy's,
+where she went sometimes to 'cheer the old things up,' as she was wont to
+put it.  The same people were always asked to meet her: Winifred Dartie
+and her husband; Francie, because she belonged to the artistic circles,
+for Mrs. MacAnder was known to contribute articles on dress to 'The
+Ladies Kingdom Come'; and for her to flirt with, provided they could be
+obtained, two of the Hayman boys, who, though they never said anything,
+were believed to be fast and thoroughly intimate with all that was latest
+in smart Society.
+
+At twenty-five minutes past seven she turned out the electric light in
+her little hall, and wrapped in her opera cloak with the chinchilla
+collar, came out into the corridor, pausing a moment to make sure she had
+her latch-key.  These little self-contained flats were convenient; to be
+sure, she had no light and no air, but she could shut it up whenever she
+liked and go away.  There was no bother with servants, and she never felt
+tied as she used to when poor, dear Fred was always about, in his mooney
+way.  She retained no rancour against poor, dear Fred, he was such a
+fool; but the thought of that actress drew from her, even now, a little,
+bitter, derisive smile.
+
+Firmly snapping the door to, she crossed the corridor, with its gloomy,
+yellow-ochre walls, and its infinite vista of brown, numbered doors.  The
+lift was going down; and wrapped to the ears in the high cloak, with
+every one of her auburn hairs in its place, she waited motionless for it
+to stop at her floor.  The iron gates clanked open; she entered.  There
+were already three occupants, a man in a great white waistcoat, with a
+large, smooth face like a baby's, and two old ladies in black, with
+mittened hands.
+
+Mrs. MacAnder smiled at them; she knew everybody; and all these three,
+who had been admirably silent before, began to talk at once.  This was
+Mrs. MacAnder's successful secret.  She provoked conversation.
+
+Throughout a descent of five stories the conversation continued, the lift
+boy standing with his back turned, his cynical face protruding through
+the bars.
+
+At the bottom they separated, the man in the white waistcoat
+sentimentally to the billiard room, the old ladies to dine and say to
+each other: "A dear little woman!"  "Such a rattle!" and Mrs. MacAnder to
+her cab.
+
+When Mrs. MacAnder dined at Timothy's, the conversation (although Timothy
+himself could never be induced to be present) took that wider,
+man-of-the-world tone current among Forsytes at large, and this, no
+doubt, was what put her at a premium there.
+
+Mrs. Small and Aunt Hester found it an exhilarating change.  "If only,"
+they said, "Timothy would meet her!"  It was felt that she would do him
+good.  She could tell you, for instance, the latest story of Sir Charles
+Fiste's son at Monte Carlo; who was the real heroine of Tynemouth Eddy's
+fashionable novel that everyone was holding up their hands over, and what
+they were doing in Paris about wearing bloomers.  She was so sensible,
+too, knowing all about that vexed question, whether to send young
+Nicholas' eldest into the navy as his mother wished, or make him an
+accountant as his father thought would be safer.  She strongly deprecated
+the navy.  If you were not exceptionally brilliant or exceptionally well
+connected, they passed you over so disgracefully, and what was it after
+all to look forward to, even if you became an admiral--a pittance!  An
+accountant had many more chances, but let him be put with a good firm,
+where there was no risk at starting!
+
+Sometimes she would give them a tip on the Stock Exchange; not that Mrs.
+Small or Aunt Hester ever took it.  They had indeed no money to invest;
+but it seemed to bring them into such exciting touch with the realities
+of life.  It was an event.  They would ask Timothy, they said.  But they
+never did, knowing in advance that it would upset him.  Surreptitiously,
+however, for weeks after they would look in that paper, which they took
+with respect on account of its really fashionable proclivities, to see
+whether 'Bright's Rubies' or 'The Woollen Mackintosh Company' were up or
+down.  Sometimes they could not find the name of the company at all; and
+they would wait until James or Roger or even Swithin came in, and ask
+them in voices trembling with curiosity how that 'Bolivia Lime and
+Speltrate' was doing--they could not find it in the paper.
+
+And Roger would answer: "What do you want to know for?  Some trash!
+You'll go burning your fingers--investing your money in lime, and things
+you know nothing about!  Who told you?" and ascertaining what they had
+been told, he would go away, and, making inquiries in the City, would
+perhaps invest some of his own money in the concern.
+
+It was about the middle of dinner, just in fact as the saddle of mutton
+had been brought in by Smither, that Mrs. MacAnder, looking airily round,
+said: "Oh! and whom do you think I passed to-day in Richmond Park?
+You'll never guess--Mrs. Soames and--Mr. Bosinney.  They must have been
+down to look at the house!"
+
+Winifred Dartie coughed, and no one said a word.  It was the piece of
+evidence they had all unconsciously been waiting for.
+
+To do Mrs. MacAnder justice, she had been to Switzerland and the Italian
+lakes with a party of three, and had not heard of Soames' rupture with
+his architect.  She could not tell, therefore, the profound impression
+her words would make.
+
+Upright and a little flushed, she moved her small, shrewd eyes from face
+to face, trying to gauge the effect of her words.  On either side of her
+a Hayman boy, his lean, taciturn, hungry face turned towards his plate,
+ate his mutton steadily.
+
+These two, Giles and Jesse, were so alike and so inseparable that they
+were known as the Dromios.  They never talked, and seemed always
+completely occupied in doing nothing.  It was popularly supposed that
+they were cramming for an important examination. They walked without hats
+for long hours in the Gardens attached to their house, books in their
+hands, a fox-terrier at their heels, never saying a word, and smoking all
+the time.  Every morning, about fifty yards apart, they trotted down
+Campden Hill on two lean hacks, with legs as long as their own, and every
+morning about an hour later, still fifty yards apart, they cantered up
+again.  Every evening, wherever they had dined, they might be observed
+about half-past ten, leaning over the balustrade of the Alhambra
+promenade.
+
+They were never seen otherwise than together; in this way passing their
+lives, apparently perfectly content.
+
+Inspired by some dumb stirring within them of the feelings of gentlemen,
+they turned at this painful moment to Mrs. MacAnder, and said in
+precisely the same voice: "Have you seen the...?"
+
+Such was her surprise at being thus addressed that she put down her fork;
+and Smither, who was passing, promptly removed her plate.  Mrs. MacAnder,
+however, with presence of mind, said instantly: "I must have a little
+more of that nice mutton."
+
+But afterwards in the drawing--room she sat down by Mrs. Small,
+determined to get to the bottom of the matter.  And she began:
+
+"What a charming woman, Mrs. Soames; such a sympathetic temperament!
+Soames is a really lucky man!"
+
+Her anxiety for information had not made sufficient allowance for that
+inner Forsyte skin which refuses to share its troubles with outsiders.
+
+Mrs. Septimus Small, drawing herself up with a creak and rustle of her
+whole person, said, shivering in her dignity:
+
+"My dear, it is a subject we do not talk about!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+NIGHT IN THE PARK
+
+Although with her infallible instinct Mrs. Small had said the very thing
+to make her guest 'more intriguee than ever,' it is difficult to see how
+else she could truthfully have spoken.
+
+It was not a subject which the Forsytes could talk about even among
+themselves--to use the word Soames had invented to characterize to
+himself the situation, it was 'subterranean.'
+
+Yet, within a week of Mrs. MacAnder's encounter in Richmond Park, to all
+of them--save Timothy, from whom it was carefully kept--to James on his
+domestic beat from the Poultry to Park Lane, to George the wild one, on
+his daily adventure from the bow window at the Haversnake to the billiard
+room at the 'Red Pottle,' was it known that 'those two' had gone to
+extremes.
+
+George (it was he who invented many of those striking expressions still
+current in fashionable circles) voiced the sentiment more accurately than
+any one when he said to his brother Eustace that 'the Buccaneer' was
+'going it'; he expected Soames was about 'fed up.'
+
+It was felt that he must be, and yet, what could be done?  He ought
+perhaps to take steps; but to take steps would be deplorable.
+
+Without an open scandal which they could not see their way to
+recommending, it was difficult to see what steps could be taken. In this
+impasse, the only thing was to say nothing to Soames, and nothing to each
+other; in fact, to pass it over.
+
+By displaying towards Irene a dignified coldness, some impression might
+be made upon her; but she was seldom now to be seen, and there seemed a
+slight difficulty in seeking her out on purpose to show her coldness.
+Sometimes in the privacy of his bedroom James would reveal to Emily the
+real suffering that his son's misfortune caused him.
+
+"I can't tell," he would say; "it worries me out of my life. There'll be
+a scandal, and that'll do him no good.  I shan't say anything to him.
+There might be nothing in it.  What do you think?  She's very artistic,
+they tell me.  What?  Oh, you're a 'regular Juley!  Well, I don't know; I
+expect the worst.  This is what comes of having no children.  I knew how
+it would be from the first.  They never told me they didn't mean to have
+any children--nobody tells me anything!"
+
+On his knees by the side of the bed, his eyes open and fixed with worry,
+he would breathe into the counterpane.  Clad in his nightshirt, his neck
+poked forward, his back rounded, he resembled some long white bird.
+
+"Our Father-," he repeated, turning over and over again the thought of
+this possible scandal.
+
+Like old Jolyon, he, too, at the bottom of his heart set the blame of the
+tragedy down to family interference.  What business had that lot--he
+began to think of the Stanhope Gate branch, including young Jolyon and
+his daughter, as 'that lot'--to introduce a person like this Bosinney
+into the family?  (He had heard George's soubriquet, 'The Buccaneer,' but
+he could make nothing of that--the young man was an architect.)
+
+He began to feel that his brother Jolyon, to whom he had always looked up
+and on whose opinion he had relied, was not quite what he had expected.
+
+Not having his eldest brother's force of character, he was more sad than
+angry.  His great comfort was to go to Winifred's, and take the little
+Darties in his carriage over to Kensington Gardens, and there, by the
+Round Pond, he could often be seen walking with his eyes fixed anxiously
+on little Publius Dartie's sailing-boat, which he had himself freighted
+with a penny, as though convinced that it would never again come to
+shore; while little Publius--who, James delighted to say, was not a bit
+like his father skipping along under his lee, would try to get him to bet
+another that it never would, having found that it always did. And James
+would make the bet; he always paid--sometimes as many as three or four
+pennies in the afternoon, for the game seemed never to pall on little
+Publius--and always in paying he said: "Now, that's for your money-box.
+Why, you're getting quite a rich man!"  The thought of his little
+grandson's growing wealth was a real pleasure to him.  But little Publius
+knew a sweet-shop, and a trick worth two of that.
+
+And they would walk home across the Park, James' figure, with high
+shoulders and absorbed and worried face, exercising its tall, lean
+protectorship, pathetically unregarded, over the robust child-figures of
+Imogen and little Publius.
+
+But those Gardens and that Park were not sacred to James. Forsytes and
+tramps, children and lovers, rested and wandered day after day, night
+after night, seeking one and all some freedom from labour, from the reek
+and turmoil of the streets.
+
+The leaves browned slowly, lingering with the sun and summer-like warmth
+of the nights.
+
+On Saturday, October 5, the sky that had been blue all day deepened after
+sunset to the bloom of purple grapes.  There was no moon, and a clear
+dark, like some velvety garment, was wrapped around the trees, whose
+thinned branches, resembling plumes, stirred not in the still, warm air.
+All London had poured into the Park, draining the cup of summer to its
+dregs.
+
+Couple after couple, from every gate, they streamed along the paths and
+over the burnt grass, and one after another, silently out of the lighted
+spaces, stole into the shelter of the feathery trees, where, blotted
+against some trunk, or under the shadow of shrubs, they were lost to all
+but themselves in the heart of the soft darkness.
+
+To fresh-comers along the paths, these forerunners formed but part of
+that passionate dusk, whence only a strange murmur, like the confused
+beating of hearts, came forth.  But when that murmur reached each couple
+in the lamp-light their voices wavered, and ceased; their arms enlaced,
+their eyes began seeking, searching, probing the blackness.  Suddenly, as
+though drawn by invisible hands, they, too, stepped over the railing,
+and, silent as shadows, were gone from the light.
+
+The stillness, enclosed in the far, inexorable roar of the town, was
+alive with the myriad passions, hopes, and loves of multitudes of
+struggling human atoms; for in spite of the disapproval of that great
+body of Forsytes, the Municipal Council--to whom Love had long been
+considered, next to the Sewage Question, the gravest danger to the
+community--a process was going on that night in the Park, and in a
+hundred other parks, without which the thousand factories, churches,
+shops, taxes, and drains, of which they were custodians, were as arteries
+without blood, a man without a heart.
+
+The instincts of self-forgetfulness, of passion, and of love, hiding
+under the trees, away from the trustees of their remorseless enemy, the
+'sense of property,' were holding a stealthy revel, and Soames, returning
+from Bayswater for he had been alone to dine at Timothy's walking home
+along the water, with his mind upon that coming lawsuit, had the blood
+driven from his heart by a low laugh and the sound of kisses.  He thought
+of writing to the Times the next morning, to draw the attention of the
+Editor to the condition of our parks.  He did not, however, for he had a
+horror of seeing his name in print.
+
+But starved as he was, the whispered sounds in the stillness, the
+half-seen forms in the dark, acted on him like some morbid stimulant.  He
+left the path along the water and stole under the trees, along the deep
+shadow of little plantations, where the boughs of chestnut trees hung
+their great leaves low, and there was blacker refuge, shaping his course
+in circles which had for their object a stealthy inspection of chairs
+side by side, against tree-trunks, of enlaced lovers, who stirred at his
+approach.
+
+Now he stood still on the rise overlooking the Serpentine, where, in full
+lamp-light, black against the silver water, sat a couple who never moved,
+the woman's face buried on the man's neck--a single form, like a carved
+emblem of passion, silent and unashamed.
+
+And, stung by the sight, Soames hurried on deeper into the shadow of the
+trees.
+
+In this search, who knows what he thought and what he sought? Bread for
+hunger--light in darkness?  Who knows what he expected to
+find--impersonal knowledge of the human heart--the end of his private
+subterranean tragedy--for, again, who knew, but that each dark couple,
+unnamed, unnameable, might not be he and she?
+
+But it could not be such knowledge as this that he was seeking--the wife
+of Soames Forsyte sitting in the Park like a common wench!  Such thoughts
+were inconceivable; and from tree to tree, with his noiseless step, he
+passed.
+
+Once he was sworn at; once the whisper, "If only it could always be like
+this!" sent the blood flying again from his heart, and he waited there,
+patient and dogged, for the two to move.  But it was only a poor thin
+slip of a shop-girl in her draggled blouse who passed him, clinging to
+her lover's arm.
+
+A hundred other lovers too whispered that hope in the stillness of the
+trees, a hundred other lovers clung to each other.
+
+But shaking himself with sudden disgust, Soames returned to the path, and
+left that seeking for he knew not what.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+MEETING AT THE BOTANICAL
+
+Young Jolyon, whose circumstances were not those of a Forsyte, found at
+times a difficulty in sparing the money needful for those country jaunts
+and researches into Nature, without having prosecuted which no
+watercolour artist ever puts brush to paper.
+
+He was frequently, in fact, obliged to take his colour-box into the
+Botanical Gardens, and there, on his stool, in the shade of a
+monkey-puzzler or in the lee of some India-rubber plant, he would spend
+long hours sketching.
+
+An Art critic who had recently been looking at his work had delivered
+himself as follows:
+
+"In a way your drawings are very good; tone and colour, in some of them
+certainly quite a feeling for Nature.  But, you see, they're so
+scattered; you'll never get the public to look at them.  Now, if you'd
+taken a definite subject, such as 'London by Night,' or 'The Crystal
+Palace in the Spring,' and made a regular series, the public would have
+known at once what they were looking at.  I can't lay too much stress
+upon that.  All the men who are making great names in Art, like Crum
+Stone or Bleeder, are making them by avoiding the unexpected; by
+specializing and putting their works all in the same pigeon-hole, so that
+the public know pat once where to go.  And this stands to reason, for if
+a man's a collector he doesn't want people to smell at the canvas to find
+out whom his pictures are by; he wants them to be able to say at once, 'A
+capital Forsyte!'  It is all the more important for you to be careful to
+choose a subject that they can lay hold of on the spot, since there's no
+very marked originality in your style."
+
+Young Jolyon, standing by the little piano, where a bowl of dried rose
+leaves, the only produce of the garden, was deposited on a bit of faded
+damask, listened with his dim smile.
+
+Turning to his wife, who was looking at the speaker with an angry
+expression on her thin face, he said:
+
+"You see, dear?"
+
+"I do not," she answered in her staccato voice, that still had a little
+foreign accent; "your style has originality."
+
+The critic looked at her, smiled' deferentially, and said no more.  Like
+everyone else, he knew their history.
+
+The words bore good fruit with young Jolyon; they were contrary to all
+that he believed in, to all that he theoretically held good in his Art,
+but some strange, deep instinct moved him against his will to turn them
+to profit.
+
+He discovered therefore one morning that an idea had come to him for
+making a series of watercolour drawings of London.  How the idea had
+arisen he could not tell; and it was not till the following year, when he
+had completed and sold them at a very fair price, that in one of his
+impersonal moods, he found himself able to recollect the Art critic, and
+to discover in his own achievement another proof that he was a Forsyte.
+
+He decided to commence with the Botanical Gardens, where he had already
+made so many studies, and chose the little artificial pond, sprinkled now
+with an autumn shower of red and yellow leaves, for though the gardeners
+longed to sweep them off, they could not reach them with their brooms.
+The rest of the gardens they swept bare enough, removing every morning
+Nature's rain of leaves; piling them in heaps, whence from slow fires
+rose the sweet, acrid smoke that, like the cuckoo's note for spring, the
+scent of lime trees for the summer, is the true emblem of the fall.  The
+gardeners' tidy souls could not abide the gold and green and russet
+pattern on the grass.  The gravel paths must lie unstained, ordered,
+methodical, without knowledge of the realities of life, nor of that slow
+and beautiful decay which flings crowns underfoot to star the earth with
+fallen glories, whence, as the cycle rolls, will leap again wild spring.
+
+Thus each leaf that fell was marked from the moment when it fluttered a
+good-bye and dropped, slow turning, from its twig.
+
+But on that little pond the leaves floated in peace, and praised Heaven
+with their hues, the sunlight haunting over them.
+
+And so young Jolyon found them.
+
+Coming there one morning in the middle of October, he was disconcerted to
+find a bench about twenty paces from his stand occupied, for he had a
+proper horror of anyone seeing him at work.
+
+A lady in a velvet jacket was sitting there, with her eyes fixed on the
+ground.  A flowering laurel, however, stood between, and, taking shelter
+behind this, young Jolyon prepared his easel.
+
+His preparations were leisurely; he caught, as every true artist should,
+at anything that might delay for a moment the effort of his work, and he
+found himself looking furtively at this unknown dame.
+
+Like his father before him, he had an eye for a face.  This face was
+charming!
+
+He saw a rounded chin nestling in a cream ruffle, a delicate face with
+large dark eyes and soft lips.  A black 'picture' hat concealed the hair;
+her figure was lightly poised against the back of the bench, her knees
+were crossed; the tip of a patent-leather shoe emerged beneath her skirt.
+There was something, indeed, inexpressibly dainty about the person of
+this lady, but young Jolyon's attention was chiefly riveted by the look
+on her face, which reminded him of his wife.  It was as though its owner
+had come into contact with forces too strong for her.  It troubled him,
+arousing vague feelings of attraction and chivalry.  Who was she?  And
+what doing there, alone?
+
+Two young gentlemen of that peculiar breed, at once forward and shy,
+found in the Regent's Park, came by on their way to lawn tennis, and he
+noted with disapproval their furtive stares of admiration.  A loitering
+gardener halted to do something unnecessary to a clump of pampas grass;
+he, too, wanted an excuse for peeping.  A gentleman, old, and, by his
+hat, a professor of horticulture, passed three times to scrutinize her
+long and stealthily, a queer expression about his lips.
+
+With all these men young Jolyon felt the same vague irritation. She
+looked at none of them, yet was he certain that every man who passed
+would look at her like that.
+
+Her face was not the face of a sorceress, who in every look holds out to
+men the offer of pleasure; it had none of the 'devil's beauty' so highly
+prized among the first Forsytes of the land; neither was it of that type,
+no less adorable, associated with the box of chocolate; it was not of the
+spiritually passionate, or passionately spiritual order, peculiar to
+house-decoration and modern poetry; nor did it seem to promise to the
+playwright material for the production of the interesting and
+neurasthenic figure, who commits suicide in the last act.
+
+In shape and colouring, in its soft persuasive passivity, its sensuous
+purity, this woman's face reminded him of Titian's 'Heavenly Love,' a
+reproduction of which hung over the sideboard in his dining-room.  And
+her attraction seemed to be in this soft passivity, in the feeling she
+gave that to pressure she must yield.
+
+For what or whom was she waiting, in the silence, with the trees dropping
+here and there a leaf, and the thrushes strutting close on grass, touched
+with the sparkle of the autumn rime?  Then her charming face grew eager,
+and, glancing round, with almost a lover's jealousy, young Jolyon saw
+Bosinney striding across the grass.
+
+Curiously he watched the meeting, the look in their eyes, the long clasp
+of their hands.  They sat down close together, linked for all their
+outward discretion.  He heard the rapid murmur of their talk; but what
+they said he could not catch.
+
+He had rowed in the galley himself!  He knew the long hours of waiting
+and the lean minutes of a half-public meeting; the tortures of suspense
+that haunt the unhallowed lover.
+
+It required, however, but a glance at their two faces to see that this
+was none of those affairs of a season that distract men and women about
+town; none of those sudden appetites that wake up ravening, and are
+surfeited and asleep again in six weeks.  This was the real thing!  This
+was what had happened to himself!  Out of this anything might come!
+
+Bosinney was pleading, and she so quiet, so soft, yet immovable in her
+passivity, sat looking over the grass.
+
+Was he the man to carry her off, that tender, passive being, who would
+never stir a step for herself?  Who had given him all herself, and would
+die for him, but perhaps would never run away with him!
+
+It seemed to young Jolyon that he could hear her saying: "But, darling,
+it would ruin you!"  For he himself had experienced to the full the
+gnawing fear at the bottom of each woman's heart that she is a drag on
+the man she loves.
+
+And he peeped at them no more; but their soft, rapid talk came to his
+ears, with the stuttering song of some bird who seemed trying to remember
+the notes of spring: Joy--tragedy?  Which--which?
+
+And gradually their talk ceased; long silence followed.
+
+'And where does Soames come in?' young Jolyon thought.  'People think she
+is concerned about the sin of deceiving her husband! Little they know of
+women!  She's eating, after starvation--taking her revenge!  And Heaven
+help her--for he'll take his.'
+
+He heard the swish of silk, and, spying round the laurel, saw them
+walking away, their hands stealthily joined....
+
+At the end of July old Jolyon had taken his grand-daughter to the
+mountains; and on that visit (the last they ever paid) June recovered to
+a great extent her health and spirits.  In the hotels, filled with
+British Forsytes--for old Jolyon could not bear a 'set of Germans,' as he
+called all foreigners--she was looked upon with respect--the only
+grand-daughter of that fine-looking, and evidently wealthy, old Mr.
+Forsyte.  She did not mix freely with people--to mix freely with people
+was not June's habit--but she formed some friendships, and notably one in
+the Rhone Valley, with a French girl who was dying of consumption.
+
+Determining at once that her friend should not die, she forgot, in the
+institution of a campaign against Death, much of her own trouble.
+
+Old Jolyon watched the new intimacy with relief and disapproval; for this
+additional proof that her life was to be passed amongst 'lame ducks'
+worried him.  Would she never make a friendship or take an interest in
+something that would be of real benefit to her?
+
+'Taking up with a parcel of foreigners,' he called it.  He often,
+however, brought home  grapes or roses, and presented them to 'Mam'zelle'
+with an ingratiating twinkle.
+
+Towards the end of September, in spite of June's disapproval,
+Mademoiselle Vigor breathed her last in the little hotel at St. Luc, to
+which they had moved her; and June took her defeat so deeply to heart
+that old Jolyon carried her away to Paris.  Here, in contemplation of the
+'Venus de Milo' and the 'Madeleine,' she shook off her depression, and
+when, towards the middle of October, they returned to town, her
+grandfather believed that he had effected a cure.
+
+No sooner, however, had they established themselves in Stanhope Gate than
+he perceived to his dismay a return of her old absorbed and brooding
+manner.  She would sit, staring in front of her, her chin on her hand,
+like a little Norse spirit, grim and intent, while all around in the
+electric light, then just installed, shone the great, drawing-room
+brocaded up to the frieze, full of furniture from Baple and Pullbred's.
+And in the huge gilt mirror were reflected those Dresden china groups of
+young men in tight knee breeches, at the feet of full-bosomed ladies
+nursing on their laps pet lambs, which old Jolyon had bought when he was
+a bachelor and thought so highly of in these days of degenerate taste.
+He was a man of most open mind, who, more than any Forsyte of them all,
+had moved with the times, but he could never forget that he had bought
+these groups at Jobson's, and given a lot of money for them.  He often
+said to June, with a sort of disillusioned contempt:
+
+"You don't care about them!  They're not the gimcrack things you and your
+friends like, but they cost me seventy pounds!"  He was not a man who
+allowed his taste to be warped when he knew for solid reasons that it was
+sound.
+
+One of the first things that June did on getting home was to go round to
+Timothy's.  She persuaded herself that it was her duty to call there, and
+cheer him with an account of all her travels; but in reality she went
+because she knew of no other place where, by some random speech, or
+roundabout question, she could glean news of Bosinney.
+
+They received her most cordially: And how was her dear grandfather?  He
+had not been to see them since May.  Her Uncle Timothy was very poorly,
+he had had a lot of trouble with the chimney-sweep in his bedroom; the
+stupid man had let the soot down the chimney!  It had quite upset her
+uncle.
+
+June sat there a long time, dreading, yet passionately hoping, that they
+would speak of Bosinney.
+
+But paralyzed by unaccountable discretion, Mrs. Septimus Small let fall
+no word, neither did she question June about him.  In desperation the
+girl asked at last whether Soames and Irene were in town--she had not yet
+been to see anyone.
+
+It was Aunt Hester who replied: Oh, yes, they were in town, they had not
+been away at all.  There was some little difficulty about the house, she
+believed.  June had heard, no doubt!  She had better ask her Aunt Juley!
+
+June turned to Mrs. Small, who sat upright in her chair, her hands
+clasped, her face covered with innumerable pouts.  In answer to the
+girl's look she maintained a strange silence, and when she spoke it was
+to ask June whether she had worn night-socks up in those high hotels
+where it must be so cold of a night.
+
+June answered that she had not, she hated the stuffy things; and rose to
+leave.
+
+Mrs. Small's infallibly chosen silence was far more ominous to her than
+anything that could have been said.
+
+Before half an hour was over she had dragged the truth from Mrs. Baynes
+in Lowndes Square, that Soames was bringing an action against Bosinney
+over the decoration of the house.
+
+Instead of disturbing her, the news had a strangely calming effect; as
+though she saw in the prospect of this struggle new hope for herself.
+She learnt that the case was expected to come on in about a month, and
+there seemed little or no prospect of Bosinney's success.
+
+"And whatever he'll do I can't think," said Mrs. Baynes; "it's very
+dreadful for him, you know--he's got no money--he's very hard up.  And we
+can't help him, I'm sure.  I'm told the money-lenders won't lend if you
+have no security, and he has none--none at all."
+
+Her embonpoint had increased of late; she was in the full swing of autumn
+organization, her writing-table literally strewn with the menus of
+charity functions.  She looked meaningly at June, with her round eyes of
+parrot-grey.
+
+The sudden flush that rose on the girl's intent young face--she must have
+seen spring up before her a great hope--the sudden sweetness of her
+smile, often came back to Lady Baynes in after years (Baynes was knighted
+when he built that public Museum of Art which has given so much
+employment to officials, and so little pleasure to those working classes
+for whom it was designed).
+
+The memory of that change, vivid and touching, like the breaking open of
+a flower, or the first sun after long winter, the memory, too, of all
+that came after, often intruded itself, unaccountably, inopportunely on
+Lady Baynes, when her mind was set upon the most important things.
+
+This was the very afternoon of the day that young Jolyon witnessed the
+meeting in the Botanical Gardens, and on this day, too, old Jolyon paid a
+visit to his solicitors, Forsyte, Bustard, and Forsyte, in the Poultry.
+Soames was not in, he had gone down to Somerset House; Bustard was buried
+up to the hilt in papers and that inaccessible apartment, where he was
+judiciously placed, in order that he might do as much work as possible;
+but James was in the front office, biting a finger, and lugubriously
+turning over the pleadings in Forsyte v. Bosinney.
+
+This sound lawyer had only a sort of luxurious dread of the 'nice point,'
+enough to set up a pleasurable feeling of fuss; for his good practical
+sense told him that if he himself were on the Bench he would not pay much
+attention to it.  But he was afraid that this Bosinney would go bankrupt
+and Soames would have to find the money after all, and costs into the
+bargain.  And behind this tangible dread there was always that intangible
+trouble, lurking in the background, intricate, dim, scandalous, like a
+bad dream, and of which this action was but an outward and visible sign.
+
+He raised his head as old Jolyon came in, and muttered: "How are you,
+Jolyon?  Haven't seen you for an age.  You've been to Switzerland, they
+tell me.  This young Bosinney, he's got himself into a mess.  I knew how
+it would be!"  He held out the papers, regarding his elder brother with
+nervous gloom.
+
+Old Jolyon read them in silence, and while he read them James looked at
+the floor, biting his fingers the while.
+
+Old Jolyon pitched them down at last, and they fell with a thump amongst
+a mass of affidavits in 're Buncombe, deceased,' one of the many branches
+of that parent and profitable tree, 'Fryer v. Forsyte.'
+
+"I don't know what Soames is about," he said, "to make a fuss over a few
+hundred pounds.  I thought he was a man of property."
+
+James' long upper lip twitched angrily; he could not bear his son to be
+attacked in such a spot.
+
+"It's not the money," he began, but meeting his brother's glance, direct,
+shrewd, judicial, he stopped.
+
+There was a silence.
+
+"I've come in for my Will," said old Jolyon at last, tugging at his
+moustache.
+
+James' curiosity was roused at once.  Perhaps nothing in this life was
+more stimulating to him than a Will; it was the supreme deal with
+property, the final inventory of a man's belongings, the last word on
+what he was worth.  He sounded the bell.
+
+"Bring in Mr. Jolyon's Will," he said to an anxious, dark-haired clerk.
+
+"You going to make some alterations?" And through his mind there flashed
+the thought: 'Now, am I worth as much as he?'
+
+Old Jolyon put the Will in his breast pocket, and James twisted his long
+legs regretfully.
+
+"You've made some nice purchases lately, they tell me," he said.
+
+"I don't know where you get your information from," answered old Jolyon
+sharply.  "When's this action coming on?  Next month?  I can't tell what
+you've got in your minds.  You must manage your own affairs; but if you
+take my advice, you'll settle it out of Court.  Good-bye!"  With a cold
+handshake he was gone.
+
+James, his fixed grey-blue eye corkscrewing round some secret anxious
+image, began again to bite his finger.
+
+Old Jolyon took his Will to the offices of the New Colliery Company, and
+sat down in the empty Board Room to read it through. He answered
+'Down-by-the-starn' Hemmings so tartly when the latter, seeing his
+Chairman seated there, entered with the new Superintendent's first
+report, that the Secretary withdrew with regretful dignity; and sending
+for the transfer clerk, blew him up till the poor youth knew not where to
+look.
+
+It was not--by George--as he (Down-by-the-starn) would have him know, for
+a whippersnapper of a young fellow like him, to come down to that office,
+and think that he was God Almighty.  He (Down-by-the-starn) had been head
+of that office for more years than a boy like him could count, and if he
+thought that when he had finished all his work, he could sit there doing
+nothing, he did not know him, Hemmings (Down-by-the-starn), and so forth.
+
+On the other side of the green baize door old Jolyon sat at the long,
+mahogany-and-leather board table, his thick, loose-jointed, tortoiseshell
+eye-glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, his gold pencil moving
+down the clauses of his Will.
+
+It was a simple affair, for there were none of those vexatious little
+legacies and donations to charities, which fritter away a man's
+possessions, and damage the majestic effect of that little paragraph in
+the morning papers accorded to Forsytes who die with a hundred thousand
+pounds.
+
+A simple affair.  Just a bequest to his son of twenty thousand, and 'as
+to the residue of my property of whatsoever kind whether realty or
+personalty, or partaking of the nature of either--upon trust to pay the
+proceeds rents annual produce dividends or interest thereof and thereon
+to my said grand-daughter June Forsyte or her assigns during her life to
+be for her sole use and benefit and without, etc... and from and after
+her death or decease upon trust to convey assign transfer or make over
+the said last-mentioned lands hereditaments premises trust moneys stocks
+funds investments and securities or such as shall then stand for and
+represent the same unto such person or persons whether one or more for
+such intents purposes and uses and generally in such manner way and form
+in all respects as the said June Forsyte notwithstanding coverture shall
+by her last Will and Testament or any writing or writings in the nature
+of a Will testament or testamentary disposition to be by her duly made
+signed and published direct appoint or make over give and dispose of the
+same And in default etc....  Provided always...' and so on, in seven
+folios of brief and simple phraseology.
+
+The Will had been drawn by James in his palmy days.  He had foreseen
+almost every contingency.
+
+Old Jolyon sat a long time reading this Will; at last he took half a
+sheet of paper from the rack, and made a prolonged pencil note; then
+buttoning up the Will, he caused a cab to be called and drove to the
+offices of Paramor and Herring, in Lincoln's Inn Fields.  Jack Herring
+was dead, but his nephew was still in the firm, and old Jolyon was
+closeted with him for half an hour.
+
+He had kept the hansom, and on coming out, gave the driver the
+address--3, Wistaria Avenue.
+
+He felt a strange, slow satisfaction, as though he had scored a victory
+over James and the man of property.  They should not poke their noses
+into his affairs any more; he had just cancelled their trusteeships of
+his Will; he would take the whole of his business out of their hands, and
+put it into the hands of young Herring, and he would move the business of
+his Companies too.  If that young Soames were such a man of property, he
+would never miss a thousand a year or so; and under his great white
+moustache old Jolyon grimly smiled.  He felt that what he was doing was
+in the nature of retributive justice, richly deserved.
+
+Slowly, surely, with the secret inner process that works the destruction
+of an old tree, the poison of the wounds to his happiness, his will, his
+pride, had corroded the comely edifice of his philosophy.  Life had worn
+him down on one side, till, like that family of which he was the head, he
+had lost balance.
+
+To him, borne northwards towards his son's house, the thought of the new
+disposition of property, which he had just set in motion, appeared
+vaguely in the light of a stroke of punishment, levelled at that family
+and that Society, of which James and his son seemed to him the
+representatives.  He had made a restitution to young Jolyon, and
+restitution to young Jolyon satisfied his secret craving for
+revenge-revenge against Time, sorrow, and interference, against all that
+incalculable sum of disapproval that had been bestowed by the world for
+fifteen years on his only son.  It presented itself as the one possible
+way of asserting once more the domination of his will; of forcing James,
+and Soames, and the family, and all those hidden masses of Forsytes--a
+great stream rolling against the single dam of his obstinacy--to
+recognise once and for all that he would be master.  It was sweet to
+think that at last he was going to make the boy a richer man by far than
+that son of James, that 'man of property.' And it was sweet to give to
+Jo, for he loved his son.
+
+Neither young Jolyon nor his wife were in (young Jolyon indeed was not
+back from the Botanical), but the little maid told him that she expected
+the master at any moment:
+
+"He's always at 'ome to tea, sir, to play with the children."
+
+Old Jolyon said he would wait; and sat down patiently enough in the
+faded, shabby drawing room, where, now that the summer chintzes were
+removed, the old chairs and sofas revealed all their threadbare
+deficiencies.  He longed to send for the children; to have them there
+beside him, their supple bodies against his knees; to hear Jolly's:
+"Hallo, Gran!" and see his rush; and feel Holly's soft little hand
+stealing up against his cheek.  But he would not.  There was solemnity in
+what he had come to do, and until it was over he would not play.  He
+amused himself by thinking how with two strokes of his pen he was going
+to restore the look of caste so conspicuously absent from everything in
+that little house; how he could fill these rooms, or others in some
+larger mansion, with triumphs of art from Baple and Pullbred's; how he
+could send little Jolly to Harrow and Oxford (he no longer had faith in
+Eton and Cambridge, for his son had been there); how he could procure
+little Holly the best musical instruction, the child had a remarkable
+aptitude.
+
+As these visions crowded before him, causing emotion to swell his heart,
+he rose, and stood at the window, looking down into the little walled
+strip of garden, where the pear-tree, bare of leaves before its time,
+stood with gaunt branches in the slow-gathering mist of the autumn
+afternoon.  The dog Balthasar, his tail curled tightly over a piebald,
+furry back, was walking at the farther end, sniffing at the plants, and
+at intervals placing his leg for support against the wall.
+
+And old Jolyon mused.
+
+What pleasure was there left but to give?  It was pleasant to give, when
+you could find one who would be thankful for what you gave--one of your
+own flesh and blood!  There was no such satisfaction to be had out of
+giving to those who did not belong to you, to those who had no claim on
+you!  Such giving as that was a betrayal of the individualistic
+convictions and actions of his life, of all his enterprise, his labour,
+and his moderation, of the great and proud fact that, like tens of
+thousands of Forsytes before him, tens of thousands in the present, tens
+of thousands in the future, he had always made his own, and held his own,
+in the world.
+
+And, while he stood there looking down on the smut-covered foliage of the
+laurels, the black-stained grass-plot, the progress of the dog Balthasar,
+all the suffering of the fifteen years during which he had been baulked
+of legitimate enjoyment mingled its gall with the sweetness of the
+approaching moment.
+
+Young Jolyon came at last, pleased with his work, and fresh from long
+hours in the open air.  On hearing that his father was in the drawing
+room, he inquired hurriedly whether Mrs. Forsyte was at home, and being
+informed that she was not, heaved a sigh of relief.  Then putting his
+painting materials carefully in the little coat-closet out of sight, he
+went in.
+
+With characteristic decision old Jolyon came at once to the point.  "I've
+been altering my arrangements, Jo," he said.  "You can cut your coat a
+bit longer in the future--I'm settling a thousand a year on you at once.
+June will have fifty thousand at my death; and you the rest.  That dog of
+yours is spoiling the garden.  I shouldn't keep a dog, if I were you!"
+
+The dog Balthasar, seated in the centre of the lawn, was examining his
+tail.
+
+Young Jolyon looked at the animal, but saw him dimly, for his eyes were
+misty.
+
+"Yours won't come short of a hundred thousand, my boy," said old Jolyon;
+"I thought you'd better know.  I haven't much longer to live at my age.
+I shan't allude to it again.  How's your wife? And--give her my love."
+
+Young Jolyon put his hand on his father's shoulder, and, as neither
+spoke, the episode closed.
+
+Having seen his father into a hansom, young Jolyon came back to the
+drawing-room and stood, where old Jolyon had stood, looking down on the
+little garden.  He tried to realize all that this meant to him, and,
+Forsyte that he was, vistas of property were opened out in his brain; the
+years of half rations through which he had passed had not sapped his
+natural instincts.  In extremely practical form, he thought of travel, of
+his wife's costume, the children's education, a pony for Jolly, a
+thousand things; but in the midst of all he thought, too, of Bosinney and
+his mistress, and the broken song of the thrush.  Joy--tragedy!  Which?
+Which?
+
+The old past--the poignant, suffering, passionate, wonderful past, that
+no money could buy, that nothing could restore in all its burning
+sweetness--had come back before him.
+
+When his wife came in he went straight up to her and took her in his
+arms; and for a long time he stood without speaking, his eyes closed,
+pressing her to him, while she looked at him with a wondering, adoring,
+doubting look in her eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+VOYAGE INTO THE INFERNO
+
+The morning after a certain night on which Soames at last asserted his
+rights and acted like a man, he breakfasted alone.
+
+He breakfasted by gaslight, the fog of late November wrapping the town as
+in some monstrous blanket till the trees of the Square even were barely
+visible from the dining-room window.
+
+He ate steadily, but at times a sensation as though he could not swallow
+attacked him.  Had he been right to yield to his overmastering hunger of
+the night before, and break down the resistance which he had suffered now
+too long from this woman who was his lawful and solemnly constituted
+helpmate?
+
+He was strangely haunted by the recollection of her face, from before
+which, to soothe her, he had tried to pull her hands--of her terrible
+smothered sobbing, the like of which he had never heard, and still seemed
+to hear; and he was still haunted by the odd, intolerable feeling of
+remorse and shame he had felt, as he stood looking at her by the flame of
+the single candle, before silently slinking away.
+
+And somehow, now that he had acted like this, he was surprised at
+himself.
+
+Two nights before, at Winifred Dartie's, he had taken Mrs. MacAnder into
+dinner.  She had said to him, looking in his face with her sharp,
+greenish eyes: "And so your wife is a great friend of that Mr.
+Bosinney's?"
+
+Not deigning to ask what she meant, he had brooded over her words.
+
+They had roused in him a fierce jealousy, which, with the peculiar
+perversion of this instinct, had turned to fiercer desire.
+
+Without the incentive of Mrs. MacAnder's words he might never have done
+what he had done.  Without their incentive and the accident of finding
+his wife's door for once unlocked, which had enabled him to steal upon
+her asleep.
+
+Slumber had removed his doubts, but the morning brought them again.  One
+thought comforted him: No one would know--it was not the sort of thing
+that she would speak about.
+
+And, indeed, when the vehicle of his daily business life, which needed so
+imperatively the grease of clear and practical thought, started rolling
+once more with the reading of his letters, those nightmare-like doubts
+began to assume less extravagant importance at the back of his mind.  The
+incident was really not of great moment; women made a fuss about it in
+books; but in the cool judgment of right-thinking men, of men of the
+world, of such as he recollected often received praise in the Divorce
+Court, he had but done his best to sustain the sanctity of marriage, to
+prevent her from abandoning her duty, possibly, if she were still seeing
+Bosinney, from....
+
+No, he did not regret it.
+
+Now that the first step towards reconciliation had been taken, the rest
+would be comparatively--comparatively....
+
+He, rose and walked to the window.  His nerve had been shaken. The sound
+of smothered sobbing was in his ears again.  He could not get rid of it.
+
+He put on his fur coat, and went out into the fog; having to go into the
+City, he took the underground railway from Sloane Square station.
+
+In his corner of the first-class compartment filled with City men the
+smothered sobbing still haunted him, so he opened the Times with the rich
+crackle that drowns all lesser sounds, and, barricaded behind it, set
+himself steadily to con the news.
+
+He read that a Recorder had charged a grand jury on the previous day with
+a more than usually long list of offences.  He read of three murders,
+five manslaughters, seven arsons, and as many as eleven rapes--a
+surprisingly high number--in addition to many less conspicuous crimes, to
+be tried during a coming Sessions; and from one piece of news he went on
+to another, keeping the paper well before his face.
+
+And still, inseparable from his reading, was the memory of Irene's
+tear-stained face, and the sounds from her broken heart.
+
+The day was a busy one, including, in addition to the ordinary affairs of
+his practice, a visit to his brokers, Messrs. Grin and Grinning, to give
+them instructions to sell his shares in the New Colliery Co., Ltd., whose
+business he suspected, rather than knew, was stagnating (this enterprise
+afterwards slowly declined, and was ultimately sold for a song to an
+American syndicate); and a long conference at Waterbuck, Q.C.'s chambers,
+attended by Boulter, by Fiske, the junior counsel, and Waterbuck, Q.C.,
+himself.
+
+The case of Forsyte v. Bosinney was expected to be reached on the morrow,
+before Mr. Justice Bentham.
+
+Mr. Justice Bentham, a man of common-sense rather than too great legal
+knowledge, was considered to be about the best man they could have to try
+the action.  He was a 'strong' Judge.
+
+Waterbuck, Q.C., in pleasing conjunction with an almost rude neglect of
+Boulter and Fiske paid to Soames a good deal of attention, by instinct or
+the sounder evidence of rumour, feeling him to be a man of property.
+
+He held with remarkable consistency to the opinion he had already
+expressed in writing, that the issue would depend to a great extent on
+the evidence given at the trial, and in a few well directed remarks he
+advised Soames not to be too careful in giving that evidence.  "A little
+bluffness, Mr. Forsyte," he said, "a little bluffness," and after he had
+spoken he laughed firmly, closed his lips tight, and scratched his head
+just below where he had pushed his wig back, for all the world like the
+gentleman-farmer for whom he loved to be taken.  He was considered
+perhaps the leading man in breach of promise cases.
+
+Soames used the underground again in going home.
+
+The fog was worse than ever at Sloane Square station.  Through the still,
+thick blur, men groped in and out; women, very few, grasped their
+reticules to their bosoms and handkerchiefs to their mouths; crowned with
+the weird excrescence of the driver, haloed by a vague glow of lamp-light
+that seemed to drown in vapour before it reached the pavement, cabs
+loomed dim-shaped ever and again, and discharged citizens, bolting like
+rabbits to their burrows.
+
+And these shadowy figures, wrapped each in his own little shroud of fog,
+took no notice of each other.  In the great warren, each rabbit for
+himself, especially those clothed in the more expensive fur, who, afraid
+of carriages on foggy days, are driven underground.
+
+One figure, however, not far from Soames, waited at the station door.
+
+Some buccaneer or lover, of whom each Forsyte thought: 'Poor devil! looks
+as if he were having a bad time!'  Their kind hearts beat a stroke faster
+for that poor, waiting, anxious lover in the fog; but they hurried by,
+well knowing that they had neither time nor money to spare for any
+suffering but their own.
+
+Only a policeman, patrolling slowly and at intervals, took an interest in
+that waiting figure, the brim of whose slouch hat half hid a face
+reddened by the cold, all thin, and haggard, over which a hand stole now
+and again to smooth away anxiety, or renew the resolution that kept him
+waiting there.  But the waiting lover (if lover he were) was used to
+policemen's scrutiny, or too absorbed in his anxiety, for he never
+flinched.  A hardened case, accustomed to long trysts, to anxiety, and
+fog, and cold, if only his mistress came at last.  Foolish lover!  Fogs
+last until the spring; there is also snow and rain, no comfort anywhere;
+gnawing fear if you bring her out, gnawing fear if you bid her stay at
+home!
+
+"Serve him right; he should arrange his affairs better!"
+
+So any respectable Forsyte.  Yet, if that sounder citizen could have
+listened at the waiting lover's heart, out there in the fog and the cold,
+he would have said again: "Yes, poor devil he's having a bad time!"
+
+Soames got into his cab, and, with the glass down, crept along Sloane
+Street, and so along the Brompton Road, and home.  He reached his house
+at five.
+
+His wife was not in.  She had gone out a quarter of an hour before.  Out
+at such a time of night, into this terrible fog! What was the meaning of
+that?
+
+He sat by the dining-room fire, with the door open, disturbed to the
+soul, trying to read the evening paper.  A book was no good--in daily
+papers alone was any narcotic to such worry as his. From the customary
+events recorded in the journal he drew some comfort.  'Suicide of an
+actress'--'Grave indisposition of a Statesman' (that chronic
+sufferer)--'Divorce of an army officer'--'Fire in a colliery'--he read
+them all.  They helped him a little--prescribed by the greatest of all
+doctors, our natural taste.
+
+It was nearly seven when he heard her come in.
+
+The incident of the night before had long lost its importance under
+stress of anxiety at her strange sortie into the fog.  But now that Irene
+was home, the memory of her broken-hearted sobbing came back to him, and
+he felt nervous at the thought of facing her.
+
+She was already on the stairs; her grey fur coat hung to her knees, its
+high collar almost hid her face, she wore a thick veil.
+
+She neither turned to look at him nor spoke.  No ghost or stranger could
+have passed more silently.
+
+Bilson came to lay dinner, and told him that Mrs. Forsyte was not coming
+down; she was having the soup in her room.
+
+For once Soames did not 'change'; it was, perhaps, the first time in his
+life that he had sat down to dinner with soiled cuffs, and, not even
+noticing them, he brooded long over his wine.  He sent Bilson to light a
+fire in his picture-room, and presently went up there himself.
+
+Turning on the gas, he heaved a deep sigh, as though amongst these
+treasures, the backs of which confronted him in stacks, around the little
+room, he had found at length his peace of mind. He went straight up to
+the greatest treasure of them all, an undoubted Turner, and, carrying it
+to the easel, turned its face to the light.  There had been a movement in
+Turners, but he had not been able to make up his mind to part with it.
+He stood for a long time, his pale, clean-shaven face poked forward above
+his stand-up collar, looking at the picture as though he were adding it
+up; a wistful expression came into his eyes; he found, perhaps, that it
+came to too little.  He took it down from the easel to put it back
+against the wall; but, in crossing the room, stopped, for he seemed to
+hear sobbing.
+
+It was nothing--only the sort of thing that had been bothering him in the
+morning.  And soon after, putting the high guard before the blazing fire,
+he stole downstairs.
+
+Fresh for the morrow! was his thought.  It was long before he went to
+sleep....
+
+It is now to George Forsyte that the mind must turn for light on the
+events of that fog-engulfed afternoon.
+
+The wittiest and most sportsmanlike of the Forsytes had passed the day
+reading a novel in the paternal mansion at Princes' Gardens.  Since a
+recent crisis in his financial affairs he had been kept on parole by
+Roger, and compelled to reside 'at home.'
+
+Towards five o'clock he went out, and took train at South Kensington
+Station (for everyone to-day went Underground).  His intention was to
+dine, and pass the evening playing billiards at the Red Pottle--that
+unique hostel, neither club, hotel, nor good gilt restaurant.
+
+He got out at Charing Cross, choosing it in preference to his more usual
+St.  James's Park, that he might reach Jermyn Street by better lighted
+ways.
+
+On the platform his eyes--for in combination with a composed and
+fashionable appearance, George had sharp eyes, and was always on the
+look-out for fillips to his sardonic humour--his eyes were attracted by a
+man, who, leaping from a first-class compartment, staggered rather than
+walked towards the exit.
+
+'So ho, my bird!' said George to himself; 'why, it's "the Buccaneer!"'
+and he put his big figure on the trail.  Nothing afforded him greater
+amusement than a drunken man.
+
+Bosinney, who wore a slouch hat, stopped in front of him, spun around,
+and rushed back towards the carriage he had just left. He was too late.
+A porter caught him by the coat; the train was already moving on.
+
+George's practised glance caught sight of the face of a lady clad in a
+grey fur coat at the carriage window.  It was Mrs. Soames--and George
+felt that this was interesting!
+
+And now he followed Bosinney more closely than ever--up the stairs, past
+the ticket collector into the street.  In that progress, however, his
+feelings underwent a change; no longer merely curious and amused, he felt
+sorry for the poor fellow he was shadowing.  'The Buccaneer' was not
+drunk, but seemed to be acting under the stress of violent emotion; he
+was talking to himself, and all that George could catch were the words
+"Oh, God!"  Nor did he appear to know what he was doing, or where going;
+but stared, hesitated, moved like a man out of his mind; and from being
+merely a joker in search of amusement, George felt that he must see the
+poor chap through.
+
+He had 'taken the knock'--'taken the knock!'  And he wondered what on
+earth Mrs. Soames had been saying, what on earth she had been telling him
+in the railway carriage.  She had looked bad enough herself!  It made
+George sorry to think of her travelling on with her trouble all alone.
+
+He followed close behind Bosinney's elbow--tall, burly figure, saying
+nothing, dodging warily--and shadowed him out into the fog.
+
+There was something here beyond a jest!  He kept his head admirably, in
+spite of some excitement, for in addition to compassion, the instincts of
+the chase were roused within him.
+
+Bosinney walked right out into the thoroughfare--a vast muffled
+blackness, where a man could not see six paces before him; where, all
+around, voices or whistles mocked the sense of direction; and sudden
+shapes came rolling slow upon them; and now and then a light showed like
+a dim island in an infinite dark sea.
+
+And fast into this perilous gulf of night walked Bosinney, and fast after
+him walked George.  If the fellow meant to put his 'twopenny' under a
+'bus, he would stop it if he could!  Across the street and back the
+hunted creature strode, not groping as other men were groping in that
+gloom, but driven forward as though the faithful George behind wielded a
+knout; and this chase after a haunted man began to have for George the
+strangest fascination.
+
+But it was now that the affair developed in a way which ever afterwards
+caused it to remain green in his mind.  Brought to a stand-still in the
+fog, he heard words which threw a sudden light on these proceedings.
+What Mrs. Soames had said to Bosinney in the train was now no longer
+dark.  George understood from those mutterings that Soames had exercised
+his rights over an estranged and unwilling wife in the greatest--the
+supreme act of property.
+
+His fancy wandered in the fields of this situation; it impressed him; he
+guessed something of the anguish, the sexual confusion and horror in
+Bosinney's heart.  And he thought: 'Yes, it's a bit thick!  I don't
+wonder the poor fellow is half-cracked!'
+
+He had run his quarry to earth on a bench under one of the lions in
+Trafalgar Square, a monster sphynx astray like themselves in that gulf of
+darkness.  Here, rigid and silent, sat Bosinney, and George, in whose
+patience was a touch of strange brotherliness, took his stand behind.  He
+was not lacking in a certain delicacy--a sense of form--that did not
+permit him to intrude upon this tragedy, and he waited, quiet as the lion
+above, his fur collar hitched above his ears concealing the fleshy
+redness of his cheeks, concealing all but his eyes with their sardonic,
+compassionate stare.  And men kept passing back from business on the way
+to their clubs--men whose figures shrouded in cocoons of fog came into
+view like spectres, and like spectres vanished. Then even in his
+compassion George's Quilpish humour broke forth in a sudden longing to
+pluck these spectres by the sleeve, and say:
+
+"Hi, you Johnnies!  You don't often see a show like this!  Here's a poor
+devil whose mistress has just been telling him a pretty little story of
+her husband; walk up, walk up!  He's taken the knock, you see."
+
+In fancy he saw them gaping round the tortured lover; and grinned as he
+thought of some respectable, newly-married spectre enabled by the state
+of his own affections to catch an inkling of what was going on within
+Bosinney; he fancied he could see his mouth getting wider and wider, and
+the fog going down and down.  For in George was all that contempt of the
+of the married middle-class--peculiar to the wild and sportsmanlike
+spirits in its ranks.
+
+But he began to be bored.  Waiting was not what he had bargained for.
+
+'After all,' he thought, 'the poor chap will get over it; not the first
+time such a thing has happened in this little city!' But now his quarry
+again began muttering words of violent hate and anger.  And following a
+sudden impulse George touched him on the shoulder.
+
+Bosinney spun round.
+
+"Who are you?  What do you want?"
+
+George could have stood it well enough in the light of the gas lamps, in
+the light of that everyday world of which he was so hardy a connoisseur;
+but in this fog, where all was gloomy and unreal, where nothing had that
+matter-of-fact value associated by Forsytes with earth, he was a victim
+to strange qualms, and as he tried to stare back into the eyes of this
+maniac, he thought:
+
+'If I see a bobby, I'll hand him over; he's not fit to be at large.'
+
+But waiting for no answer, Bosinney strode off into the fog, and George
+followed, keeping perhaps a little further off, yet more than ever set on
+tracking him down.
+
+'He can't go on long like this,' he thought.  'It's God's own miracle
+he's not been run over already.' He brooded no more on policemen, a
+sportsman's sacred fire alive again within him.
+
+Into a denser gloom than ever Bosinney held on at a furious pace; but his
+pursuer perceived more method in his madness--he was clearly making his
+way westwards.
+
+'He's really going for Soames!' thought George.  The idea was attractive.
+It would be a sporting end to such a chase.  He had always disliked his
+cousin.
+
+The shaft of a passing cab brushed against his shoulder and made him leap
+aside.  He did not intend to be killed for the Buccaneer, or anyone.
+Yet, with hereditary tenacity, he stuck to the trail through vapour that
+blotted out everything but the shadow of the hunted man and the dim moon
+of the nearest lamp.
+
+Then suddenly, with the instinct of a town-stroller, George knew himself
+to be in Piccadilly.  Here he could find his way blindfold; and freed
+from the strain of geographical uncertainty, his mind returned to
+Bosinney's trouble.
+
+Down the long avenue of his man-about-town experience, bursting, as it
+were, through a smirch of doubtful amours, there stalked to him a memory
+of his youth.  A memory, poignant still, that brought the scent of hay,
+the gleam of moonlight, a summer magic, into the reek and blackness of
+this London fog--the memory of a night when in the darkest shadow of a
+lawn he had overheard from a woman's lips that he was not her sole
+possessor.  And for a moment George walked no longer in black Piccadilly,
+but lay again, with hell in his heart, and his face to the
+sweet-smelling, dewy grass, in the long shadow of poplars that hid the
+moon.
+
+A longing seized him to throw his arm round the Buccaneer, and say,
+"Come, old boy.  Time cures all.  Let's go and drink it off!"
+
+But a voice yelled at him, and he started back.  A cab rolled out of
+blackness, and into blackness disappeared.  And suddenly George perceived
+that he had lost Bosinney.  He ran forward and back, felt his heart
+clutched by a sickening fear, the dark fear which lives in the wings of
+the fog.  Perspiration started out on his brow.  He stood quite still,
+listening with all his might.
+
+"And then," as he confided to Dartie the same evening in the course of a
+game of billiards at the Red Pottle, "I lost him."
+
+Dartie twirled complacently at his dark moustache.  He had just put
+together a neat break of twenty-three,--failing at a 'Jenny.' "And who
+was she?" he asked.
+
+George looked slowly at the 'man of the world's' fattish, sallow face,
+and a little grim smile lurked about the curves of his cheeks and his
+heavy-lidded eyes.
+
+'No, no, my fine fellow,' he thought, 'I'm not going to tell you.' For
+though he mixed with Dartie a good deal, he thought him a bit of a cad.
+
+"Oh, some little love-lady or other," he said, and chalked his cue.
+
+"A love-lady!" exclaimed Dartie--he used a more figurative expression.
+"I made sure it was our friend Soa...."
+
+"Did you?" said George curtly.  "Then damme you've made an error."
+
+He missed his shot.  He was careful not to allude to the subject again
+till, towards eleven o'clock, having, in his poetic phraseology, 'looked
+upon the drink when it was yellow,' he drew aside the blind, and gazed
+out into the street.  The murky blackness of the fog was but faintly
+broken by the lamps of the 'Red Pottle,' and no shape of mortal man or
+thing was in sight.
+
+"I can't help thinking of that poor Buccaneer," he said.  "He may be
+wandering out there now in that fog.  If he's not a corpse," he added
+with strange dejection.
+
+"Corpse!" said Dartie, in whom the recollection of his defeat at Richmond
+flared up.  "He's all right.  Ten to one if he wasn't tight!"
+
+George turned on him, looking really formidable, with a sort of savage
+gloom on his big face.
+
+"Dry up!" he said.  "Don't I tell you he's 'taken the knock!"'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE TRIAL
+
+In the morning of his case, which was second in the list, Soames was
+again obliged to start without seeing Irene, and it was just as well, for
+he had not as yet made up his mind what attitude to adopt towards her.
+
+He had been requested to be in court by half-past ten, to provide against
+the event of the first action (a breach of promise) collapsing, which
+however it did not, both sides showing a courage that afforded Waterbuck,
+Q.C., an opportunity for improving his already great reputation in this
+class of case.  He was opposed by Ram, the other celebrated breach of
+promise man. It was a battle of giants.
+
+The court delivered judgment just before the luncheon interval. The jury
+left the box for good, and Soames went out to get something to eat.  He
+met James standing at the little luncheon-bar, like a pelican in the
+wilderness of the galleries, bent over a sandwich with a glass of sherry
+before him.  The spacious emptiness of the great central hall, over which
+father and son brooded as they stood together, was marred now and then
+for a fleeting moment by barristers in wig and gown hurriedly bolting
+across, by an occasional old lady or rusty-coated man, looking up in a
+frightened way, and by two persons, bolder than their generation, seated
+in an embrasure arguing.  The sound of their voices arose, together with
+a scent as of neglected wells, which, mingling with the odour of the
+galleries, combined to form the savour, like nothing but the emanation of
+a refined cheese, so indissolubly connected with the administration of
+British Justice.
+
+It was not long before James addressed his son.
+
+"When's your case coming on?  I suppose it'll be on directly.  I
+shouldn't wonder if this Bosinney'd say anything; I should think he'd
+have to.  He'll go bankrupt if it goes against him." He took a large bite
+at his sandwich and a mouthful of sherry.  "Your mother," he said, "wants
+you and Irene to come and dine to-night."
+
+A chill smile played round Soames' lips; he looked back at his father.
+Anyone who had seen the look, cold and furtive, thus interchanged, might
+have been pardoned for not appreciating the real understanding between
+them.  James finished his sherry at a draught.
+
+"How much?" he asked.
+
+On returning to the court Soames took at once his rightful seat on the
+front bench beside his solicitor.  He ascertained where his father was
+seated with a glance so sidelong as to commit nobody.
+
+James, sitting back with his hands clasped over the handle of his
+umbrella, was brooding on the end of the bench immediately behind
+counsel, whence he could get away at once when the case was over. He
+considered Bosinney's conduct in every way outrageous, but he did not
+wish to run up against him, feeling that the meeting would be awkward.
+
+Next to the Divorce Court, this court was, perhaps, the favourite
+emporium of justice, libel, breach of promise, and other commercial
+actions being frequently decided there.  Quite a sprinkling of persons
+unconnected with the law occupied the back benches, and the hat of a
+woman or two could be seen in the gallery.
+
+The two rows of seats immediately in front of James were gradually filled
+by barristers in wigs, who sat down to make pencil notes, chat, and
+attend to their teeth; but his interest was soon diverted from these
+lesser lights of justice by the entrance of Waterbuck, Q.C., with the
+wings of his silk gown rustling, and his red, capable face supported by
+two short, brown whiskers.  The famous Q.C. looked, as James freely
+admitted, the very picture of a man who could heckle a witness.
+
+For all his experience, it so happened that he had never seen Waterbuck,
+Q.C., before, and, like many Forsytes in the lower branch of the
+profession, he had an extreme admiration for a good cross-examiner.  The
+long, lugubrious folds in his cheeks relaxed somewhat after seeing him,
+especially as he now perceived that Soames alone was represented by silk.
+
+Waterbuck, Q.C., had barely screwed round on his elbow to chat with his
+Junior before Mr. Justice Bentham himself appeared--a thin, rather
+hen-like man, with a little stoop, clean-shaven under his snowy wig.
+Like all the rest of the court, Waterbuck rose, and remained on his feet
+until the judge was seated.  James rose but slightly; he was already
+comfortable, and had no opinion of Bentham, having sat next but one to
+him at dinner twice at the Bumley Tomms'.  Bumley Tomm was rather a poor
+thing, though he had been so successful.  James himself had given him his
+first brief.  He was excited, too, for he had just found out that
+Bosinney was not in court.
+
+'Now, what's he mean by that?' he kept on thinking.
+
+The case having been called on, Waterbuck, Q.C., pushing back his papers,
+hitched his gown on his shoulder, and, with a semi-circular look around
+him, like a man who is going to bat, arose and addressed the Court.
+
+The facts, he said, were not in dispute, and all that his Lordship would
+be asked was to interpret the correspondence which had taken place
+between his client and the defendant, an architect, with reference to the
+decoration of a house.  He would, however, submit that this
+correspondence could only mean one very plain thing.  After briefly
+reciting the history of the house at Robin Hill, which he described as a
+mansion, and the actual facts of expenditure, he went on as follows:
+
+"My client, Mr. Soames Forsyte, is a gentleman, a man of property, who
+would be the last to dispute any legitimate claim that might be made
+against him, but he has met with such treatment from his architect in the
+matter of this house, over which he has, as your lordship has heard,
+already spent some twelve--some twelve thousand pounds, a sum
+considerably in advance of the amount he had originally contemplated,
+that as a matter of principle--and this I cannot too strongly
+emphasize--as a matter of principle, and in the interests of others, he
+has felt himself compelled to bring this action.  The point put forward
+in defence by the architect I will suggest to your lordship is not worthy
+of a moment's serious consideration."  He then read the correspondence.
+
+His client, "a man of recognised position," was prepared to go into the
+box, and to swear that he never did authorize, that it was never in his
+mind to authorize, the expenditure of any money beyond the extreme limit
+of twelve thousand and fifty pounds, which he had clearly fixed; and not
+further to waste the time of the court, he would at once call Mr.
+Forsyte.
+
+Soames then went into the box.  His whole appearance was striking in its
+composure.  His face, just supercilious enough, pale and clean-shaven,
+with a little line between the eyes, and compressed lips; his dress in
+unostentatious order, one hand neatly gloved, the other bare.  He
+answered the questions put to him in a somewhat low, but distinct voice.
+His evidence under cross-examination savoured of taciturnity.
+
+Had he not used the expression, "a free hand"?  No.
+
+"Come, come!"
+
+The expression he had used was 'a free hand in the terms of this
+correspondence.'
+
+"Would you tell the Court that that was English?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"What do you say it means?"
+
+"What it says!"
+
+"Are you prepared to deny that it is a contradiction in terms?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You are not an Irishman?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Are you a well-educated man?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And yet you persist in that statement?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Throughout this and much more cross-examination, which turned again and
+again around the 'nice point,' James sat with his hand behind his ear,
+his eyes fixed upon his son.
+
+He was proud of him!  He could not but feel that in similar circumstances
+he himself would have been tempted to enlarge his replies, but his
+instinct told him that this taciturnity was the very thing.  He sighed
+with relief, however, when Soames, slowly turning, and without any change
+of expression, descended from the box.
+
+When it came to the turn of Bosinney's Counsel to address the Judge,
+James redoubled his attention, and he searched the Court again and again
+to see if Bosinney were not somewhere concealed.
+
+Young Chankery began nervously; he was placed by Bosinney's absence in an
+awkward position.  He therefore did his best to turn that absence to
+account.
+
+He could not but fear--he said--that his client had met with an accident.
+He had fully expected him there to give evidence; they had sent round
+that morning both to Mr. Bosinney's office and to his rooms (though he
+knew they were one and the same, he thought it was as well not to say
+so), but it was not known where he was, and this he considered to be
+ominous, knowing how anxious Mr. Bosinney had been to give his evidence.
+He had not, however, been instructed to apply for an adjournment, and in
+default of such instruction he conceived it his duty to go on.  The plea
+on which he somewhat confidently relied, and which his client, had he not
+unfortunately been prevented in some way from attending, would have
+supported by his evidence, was that such an expression as a 'free hand'
+could not be limited, fettered, and rendered unmeaning, by any verbiage
+which might follow it.  He would go further and say that the
+correspondence showed that whatever he might have said in his evidence,
+Mr. Forsyte had in fact never contemplated repudiating liability on any
+of the work ordered or executed by his architect.  The defendant had
+certainly never contemplated such a contingency, or, as was demonstrated
+by his letters, he would never have proceeded with the work--a work of
+extreme delicacy, carried out with great care and efficiency, to meet and
+satisfy the fastidious taste of a connoisseur, a rich man, a man of
+property.  He felt strongly on this point, and feeling strongly he used,
+perhaps, rather strong words when he said that this action was of a most
+unjustifiable, unexpected, indeed--unprecedented character.  If his
+Lordship had had the opportunity that he himself had made it his duty to
+take, to go over this very fine house and see the great delicacy and
+beauty of the decorations executed by his client--an artist in his most
+honourable profession--he felt convinced that not for one moment would
+his Lordship tolerate this, he would use no stronger word than daring
+attempt to evade legitimate responsibility.
+
+Taking the text of Soames' letters, he lightly touched on 'Boileau v. The
+Blasted Cement Company, Limited.'  "It is doubtful," he said, "what that
+authority has decided; in any case I would submit that it is just as much
+in my favour as in my friend's."  He then argued the 'nice point'
+closely.  With all due deference he submitted that Mr. Forsyte's
+expression nullified itself.  His client not being a rich man, the matter
+was a serious one for him; he was a very talented architect, whose
+professional reputation was undoubtedly somewhat at stake. He concluded
+with a perhaps too personal appeal to the Judge, as a lover of the arts,
+to show himself the protector of artists, from what was occasionally--he
+said occasionally--the too iron hand of capital.  "What," he said, "will
+be the position of the artistic professions, if men of property like this
+Mr. Forsyte refuse, and are allowed to refuse, to carry out the
+obligations of the commissions which they have given."  He would now call
+his client, in case he should at the last moment have found himself able
+to be present.
+
+The name Philip Baynes Bosinney was called three times by the Ushers, and
+the sound of the calling echoed with strange melancholy throughout the
+Court and Galleries.
+
+The crying of this name, to which no answer was returned, had upon James
+a curious effect: it was like calling for your lost dog about the
+streets.  And the creepy feeling that it gave him, of a man missing,
+grated on his sense of comfort and security-on his cosiness.  Though he
+could not have said why, it made him feel uneasy.
+
+He looked now at the clock--a quarter to three!  It would be all over in
+a quarter of an hour.  Where could the young fellow be?
+
+It was only when Mr. Justice Bentham delivered judgment that he got over
+the turn he had received.
+
+Behind the wooden erection, by which he was fenced from more ordinary
+mortals, the learned Judge leaned forward.  The electric light, just
+turned on above his head, fell on his face, and mellowed it to an orange
+hue beneath the snowy crown of his wig; the amplitude of his robes grew
+before the eye; his whole figure, facing the comparative dusk of the
+Court, radiated like some majestic and sacred body.  He cleared his
+throat, took a sip of water, broke the nib of a quill against the desk,
+and, folding his bony hands before him, began.
+
+To James he suddenly loomed much larger than he had ever thought Bentham
+would loom.  It was the majesty of the law; and a person endowed with a
+nature far less matter-of-fact than that of James might have been excused
+for failing to pierce this halo, and disinter therefrom the somewhat
+ordinary Forsyte, who walked and talked in every-day life under the name
+of Sir Walter Bentham.
+
+He delivered judgment in the following words:
+
+"The facts in this case are not in dispute.  On May 15 last the defendant
+wrote to the plaintiff, requesting to be allowed to withdraw from his
+professional position in regard to the decoration of the plaintiff's
+house, unless he were given 'a free hand.'  The plaintiff, on May 17,
+wrote back as follows: 'In giving you, in accordance with your request,
+this free hand, I wish you to clearly understand that the total cost of
+the house as handed over to me completely decorated, inclusive of your
+fee (as arranged between us) must not exceed twelve thousand pounds.' To
+this letter the defendant replied on May 18: 'If you think that in such a
+delicate matter as decoration I can bind myself to the exact pound, I am
+afraid you are mistaken.'  On May 19 the plaintiff wrote as follows: 'I
+did not mean to say that if you should exceed the sum named in my letter
+to you by ten or twenty or even fifty pounds there would be any
+difficulty between us. You have a free hand in the terms of this
+correspondence, and I hope you will see your way to completing the
+decorations.'  On May 20 the defendant replied thus shortly: 'Very well.'
+
+"In completing these decorations, the defendant incurred liabilities and
+expenses which brought the total cost of this house up to the sum of
+twelve thousand four hundred pounds, all of which expenditure has been
+defrayed by the plaintiff.  This action has been brought by the plaintiff
+to recover from the defendant the sum of three hundred and fifty pounds
+expended by him in excess of a sum of twelve thousand and fifty pounds,
+alleged by the plaintiff to have been fixed by this correspondence as the
+maximum sum that the defendant had authority to expend.
+
+"The question for me to decide is whether or no the defendant is liable
+to refund to the plaintiff this sum.  In my judgment he is so liable.
+
+"What in effect the plaintiff has said is this 'I give you a free hand to
+complete these decorations, provided that you keep within a total cost to
+me of twelve thousand pounds.  If you exceed that sum by as much as fifty
+pounds, I will not hold you responsible; beyond that point you are no
+agent of mine, and I shall repudiate liability.' It is not quite clear to
+me whether, had the plaintiff in fact repudiated liability under his
+agent's contracts, he would, under all the circumstances, have been
+successful in so doing; but he has not adopted this course.  He has
+accepted liability, and fallen back upon his rights against the defendant
+under the terms of the latter's engagement.
+
+"In my judgment the plaintiff is entitled to recover this sum from the
+defendant.
+
+"It has been sought, on behalf of the defendant, to show that no limit of
+expenditure was fixed or intended to be fixed by this correspondence.  If
+this were so, I can find no reason for the plaintiff's importation into
+the correspondence of the figures of twelve thousand pounds and
+subsequently of fifty pounds.  The defendant's contention would render
+these figures meaningless. It is manifest to me that by his letter of May
+20 he assented to a very clear proposition, by the terms of which he must
+be held to be bound.
+
+"For these reasons there will be judgment for the plaintiff for the
+amount claimed with costs."
+
+James sighed, and stooping, picked up his umbrella which had fallen with
+a rattle at the words 'importation into this correspondence.'
+
+Untangling his legs, he rapidly left the Court; without waiting for his
+son, he snapped up a hansom cab (it was a clear, grey afternoon) and
+drove straight to Timothy's where he found Swithin; and to him, Mrs.
+Septimus Small, and Aunt Hester, he recounted the whole proceedings,
+eating two muffins not altogether in the intervals of speech.
+
+"Soames did very well," he ended; "he's got his head screwed on the right
+way.  This won't please Jolyon.  It's a bad business for that young
+Bosinney; he'll go bankrupt, I shouldn't wonder," and then after a long
+pause, during which he had stared disquietly into the fire, he added:
+
+"He wasn't there--now why?"
+
+There was a sound of footsteps.  The figure of a thick-set man, with the
+ruddy brown face of robust health, was seen in the back drawing-room.
+The forefinger of his upraised hand was outlined against the black of his
+frock coat.  He spoke in a grudging voice.
+
+"Well, James," he said, "I can't--I can't stop," and turning round, he
+walked out.
+
+It was Timothy.
+
+James rose from his chair.  "There!" he said, "there!  I knew there was
+something wro...."  He checked himself, and was silent, staring before
+him, as though he had seen a portent.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+SOAMES BREAKS THE NEWS
+
+In leaving the Court Soames did not go straight home.  He felt
+disinclined for the City, and drawn by need for sympathy in his triumph,
+he, too, made his way, but slowly and on foot, to Timothy's in the
+Bayswater Road.
+
+His father had just left; Mrs. Small and Aunt Hester, in possession of
+the whole story, greeted him warmly.  They were sure he was hungry after
+all that evidence.  Smither should toast him some more muffins, his dear
+father had eaten them all.  He must put his legs up on the sofa; and he
+must have a glass of prune brandy too.  It was so strengthening.
+
+Swithin was still present, having lingered later than his wont, for he
+felt in want of exercise.  On hearing this suggestion, he 'pished.' A
+pretty pass young men were coming to!  His own liver was out of order,
+and he could not bear the thought of anyone else drinking prune brandy.
+
+He went away almost immediately, saying to Soames: "And how's your wife?
+You tell her from me that if she's dull, and likes to come and dine with
+me quietly, I'll give her such a bottle of champagne as she doesn't get
+every day."  Staring down from his height on Soames he contracted his
+thick, puffy, yellow hand as though squeezing within it all this small
+fry, and throwing out his chest he waddled slowly away.
+
+Mrs. Small and Aunt Hester were left horrified.  Swithin was so droll!
+
+They themselves were longing to ask Soames how Irene would take the
+result, yet knew that they must not; he would perhaps say something of
+his own accord, to throw some light on this, the present burning question
+in their lives, the question that from necessity of silence tortured them
+almost beyond bearing; for even Timothy had now been told, and the effect
+on his health was little short of alarming.  And what, too, would June
+do?  This, also, was a most exciting, if dangerous speculation!
+
+They had never forgotten old Jolyon's visit, since when he had not once
+been to see them; they had never forgotten the feeling it gave all who
+were present, that the family was no longer what it had been--that the
+family was breaking up.
+
+But Soames gave them no help, sitting with his knees crossed, talking of
+the Barbizon school of painters, whom he had just discovered.  These were
+the coming men, he said; he should not wonder if a lot of money were made
+over them; he had his eye on two pictures by a man called Corot, charming
+things; if he could get them at a reasonable price he was going to buy
+them--they would, he thought, fetch a big price some day.
+
+Interested as they could not but be, neither Mrs. Septimus Small nor Aunt
+Hester could entirely acquiesce in being thus put off.
+
+It was interesting--most interesting--and then Soames was so clever that
+they were sure he would do something with those pictures if anybody
+could; but what was his plan now that he had won his case; was he going
+to leave London at once, and live in the country, or what was he going to
+do?
+
+Soames answered that he did not know, he thought they should be moving
+soon.  He rose and kissed his aunts.
+
+No sooner had Aunt Juley received this emblem of departure than a change
+came over her, as though she were being visited by dreadful courage;
+every little roll of flesh on her face seemed trying to escape from an
+invisible, confining mask.
+
+She rose to the full extent of her more than medium height, and said: "It
+has been on my mind a long time, dear, and if nobody else will tell you,
+I have made up my mind that...."
+
+Aunt Hester interrupted her: "Mind, Julia, you do it...." she gasped--"on
+your own responsibility!"
+
+Mrs. Small went on as though she had not heard: "I think you ought to
+know, dear, that Mrs. MacAnder saw Irene walking in Richmond Park with
+Mr. Bosinney."
+
+Aunt Hester, who had also risen, sank back in her chair, and turned her
+face away.  Really Juley was too--she should not do such things when
+she--Aunt Hester, was in the room; and, breathless with anticipation, she
+waited for what Soames would answer.
+
+He had flushed the peculiar flush which always centred between his eyes;
+lifting his hand, and, as it were, selecting a finger, he bit a nail
+delicately; then, drawling it out between set lips, he said: "Mrs.
+MacAnder is a cat!"
+
+Without waiting for any reply, he left the room.
+
+When he went into Timothy's he had made up his mind what course to pursue
+on getting home.  He would go up to Irene and say:
+
+"Well, I've won my case, and there's an end of it!  I don't want to be
+hard on Bosinney; I'll see if we can't come to some arrangement; he
+shan't be pressed.  And now let's turn over a new leaf!  We'll let the
+house, and get out of these fogs.  We'll go down to Robin Hill at once.
+I--I never meant to be rough with you!  Let's shake hands--and--"
+Perhaps she would let him kiss her, and forget!
+
+When he came out of Timothy's his intentions were no longer so simple.
+The smouldering jealousy and suspicion of months blazed up within him.
+He would put an end to that sort of thing once and for all; he would not
+have her drag his name in the dirt!  If she could not or would not love
+him, as was her duty and his right--she should not play him tricks with
+anyone else!  He would tax her with it; threaten to divorce her!  That
+would make her behave; she would never face that.  But--but--what if she
+did? He was staggered; this had not occurred to him.
+
+What if she did?  What if she made him a confession?  How would he stand
+then?  He would have to bring a divorce!
+
+A divorce!  Thus close, the word was paralyzing, so utterly at variance
+with all the principles that had hitherto guided his life.  Its lack of
+compromise appalled him; he felt--like the captain of a ship, going to
+the side of his vessel, and, with his own hands throwing over the most
+precious of his bales.  This jettisoning of his property with his own
+hand seemed uncanny to Soames.  It would injure him in his profession: He
+would have to get rid of the house at Robin Hill, on which he had spent
+so much money, so much anticipation--and at a sacrifice.  And she!  She
+would no longer belong to him, not even in name!  She would pass out of
+his life, and he--he should never see her again!
+
+He traversed in the cab the length of a street without getting beyond the
+thought that he should never see her again!
+
+But perhaps there was nothing to confess, even now very likely there was
+nothing to confess.  Was it wise to push things so far? Was it wise to
+put himself into a position where he might have to eat his words?  The
+result of this case would ruin Bosinney; a ruined man was desperate,
+but--what could he do?  He might go abroad, ruined men always went
+abroad.  What could they do--if indeed it was 'they'--without money?  It
+would be better to wait and see how things turned out.  If necessary, he
+could have her watched.  The agony of his jealousy (for all the world
+like the crisis of an aching tooth) came on again; and he almost cried
+out.  But he must decide, fix on some course of action before he got
+home.  When the cab drew up at the door, he had decided nothing.
+
+He entered, pale, his hands moist with perspiration, dreading to meet
+her, burning to meet her, ignorant of what he was to say or do.
+
+The maid Bilson was in the hall, and in answer to his question: "Where is
+your mistress?" told him that Mrs. Forsyte had left the house about noon,
+taking with her a trunk and bag.
+
+Snatching the sleeve of his fur coat away from her grasp, he confronted
+her:
+
+"What?" he exclaimed; "what's that you said?" Suddenly recollecting that
+he must not betray emotion, he added: "What message did she leave?" and
+noticed with secret terror the startled look of the maid's eyes.
+
+"Mrs. Forsyte left no message, sir."
+
+"No message; very well, thank you, that will do.  I shall be dining out."
+
+The maid went downstairs, leaving him still in his fur coat, idly turning
+over the visiting cards in the porcelain bowl that stood on the carved
+oak rug chest in the hall.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Bareham Culcher. Mrs. Septimus Small. Mrs. Baynes. Mr.
+Solomon Thornworthy. Lady Bellis. Miss Hermione Bellis. Miss Winifred
+Bellis. Miss Ella Bellis.
+
+Who the devil were all these people?  He seemed to have forgotten all
+familiar things.  The words 'no message--a trunk, and a bag,' played a
+hide-and-seek in his brain.  It was incredible that she had left no
+message, and, still in his fur coat, he ran upstairs two steps at a time,
+as a young married man when he comes home will run up to his wife's room.
+
+Everything was dainty, fresh, sweet-smelling; everything in perfect
+order.  On the great bed with its lilac silk quilt, was the bag she had
+made and embroidered with her own hands to hold her sleeping things; her
+slippers ready at the foot; the sheets even turned over at the head as
+though expecting her.
+
+On the table stood the silver-mounted brushes and bottles from her
+dressing bag, his own present.  There must, then, be some mistake.  What
+bag had she taken?  He went to the bell to summon Bilson, but remembered
+in time that he must assume knowledge of where Irene had gone, take it
+all as a matter of course, and grope out the meaning for himself.
+
+He locked the doors, and tried to think, but felt his brain going round;
+and suddenly tears forced themselves into his eyes.
+
+Hurriedly pulling off his coat, he looked at himself in the mirror.
+
+He was too pale, a greyish tinge all over his face; he poured out water,
+and began feverishly washing.
+
+Her silver-mounted brushes smelt faintly of the perfumed lotion she used
+for her hair; and at this scent the burning sickness of his jealousy
+seized him again.
+
+Struggling into his fur, he ran downstairs and out into the street.
+
+He had not lost all command of himself, however, and as he went down
+Sloane Street he framed a story for use, in case he should not find her
+at Bosinney's.  But if he should?  His power of decision again failed; he
+reached the house without knowing what he should do if he did find her
+there.
+
+It was after office hours, and the street door was closed; the woman who
+opened it could not say whether Mr. Bosinney were in or no; she had not
+seen him that day, not for two or three days; she did not attend to him
+now, nobody attended to him, he....
+
+Soames interrupted her, he would go up and see for himself.  He went up
+with a dogged, white face.
+
+The top floor was unlighted, the door closed, no one answered his
+ringing, he could hear no sound.  He was obliged to descend, shivering
+under his fur, a chill at his heart.  Hailing a cab, he told the man to
+drive to Park Lane.
+
+On the way he tried to recollect when he had last given her a cheque; she
+could not have more than three or four pounds, but there were her jewels;
+and with exquisite torture he remembered how much money she could raise
+on these; enough to take them abroad; enough for them to live on for
+months!  He tried to calculate; the cab stopped, and he got out with the
+calculation unmade.
+
+The butler asked whether Mrs. Soames was in the cab, the master had told
+him they were both expected to dinner.
+
+Soames answered: "No.  Mrs. Forsyte has a cold."
+
+The butler was sorry.
+
+Soames thought he was looking at him inquisitively, and remembering that
+he was not in dress clothes, asked: "Anybody here to dinner, Warmson?"
+
+"Nobody but Mr. and Mrs. Dartie, sir."
+
+Again it seemed to Soames that the butler was looking curiously at him.
+His composure gave way.
+
+"What are you looking at?" he said.  "What's the matter with me, eh?"
+
+The butler blushed, hung up the fur coat, murmured something that sounded
+like: "Nothing, sir, I'm sure, sir," and stealthily withdrew.
+
+Soames walked upstairs.  Passing the drawing-room without a look, he went
+straight up to his mother's and father's bedroom.
+
+James, standing sideways, the concave lines of his tall, lean figure
+displayed to advantage in shirt-sleeves and evening waistcoat, his head
+bent, the end of his white tie peeping askew from underneath one white
+Dundreary whisker, his eyes peering with intense concentration, his lips
+pouting, was hooking the top hooks of his wife's bodice.  Soames stopped;
+he felt half-choked, whether because he had come upstairs too fast, or
+for some other reason.  He--he himself had never--never been asked to....
+
+He heard his father's voice, as though there were a pin in his mouth,
+saying: "Who's that?  Who's there?  What d'you want?" His mother's:
+"Here, Felice, come and hook this; your master'll never get done."
+
+He put his hand up to his throat, and said hoarsely:
+
+"It's I--Soames!"
+
+He noticed gratefully the affectionate surprise in Emily's: "Well, my
+dear boy?" and James', as he dropped the hook: "What, Soames!  What's
+brought you up?  Aren't you well?"
+
+He answered mechanically: "I'm all right," and looked at them, and it
+seemed impossible to bring out his news.
+
+James, quick to take alarm, began: "You don't look well.  I expect you've
+taken a chill--it's liver, I shouldn't wonder. Your mother'll give
+you...."
+
+But Emily broke in quietly: "Have you brought Irene?"
+
+Soames shook his head.
+
+"No," he stammered, "she--she's left me!"
+
+Emily deserted the mirror before which she was standing.  Her tall, full
+figure lost its majesty and became very human as she came running over to
+Soames.
+
+"My dear boy!  My dear boy!"
+
+She put her lips to his forehead, and stroked his hand.
+
+James, too, had turned full towards his son; his face looked older.
+
+"Left you?" he said.  "What d'you mean--left you?  You never told me she
+was going to leave you."
+
+Soames answered surlily: "How could I tell?  What's to be done?"
+
+James began walking up and down; he looked strange and stork-like without
+a coat.  "What's to be done!" he muttered.  "How should I know what's to
+be done?  What's the good of asking me?  Nobody tells me anything, and
+then they come and ask me what's to be done; and I should like to know
+how I'm to tell them!  Here's your mother, there she stands; she doesn't
+say anything.  What I should say you've got to do is to follow her.."
+
+Soames smiled; his peculiar, supercilious smile had never before looked
+pitiable.
+
+"I don't know where she's gone," he said.
+
+"Don't know where she's gone!" said James.  "How d'you mean, don't know
+where she's gone?  Where d'you suppose she's gone? She's gone after that
+young Bosinney, that's where she's gone.  I knew how it would be."
+
+Soames, in the long silence that followed, felt his mother pressing his
+hand.  And all that passed seemed to pass as though his own power of
+thinking or doing had gone to sleep.
+
+His father's face, dusky red, twitching as if he were going to cry, and
+words breaking out that seemed rent from him by some spasm in his soul.
+
+"There'll be a scandal; I always said so."  Then, no one saying anything:
+"And there you stand, you and your mother!"
+
+And Emily's voice, calm, rather contemptuous: "Come, now, James! Soames
+will do all that he can."
+
+And James, staring at the floor, a little brokenly: "Well, I can't help
+you; I'm getting old.  Don't you be in too great a hurry, my boy."
+
+And his mother's voice again: "Soames will do all he can to get her back.
+We won't talk of it.  It'll all come right, I dare say."
+
+And James: "Well, I can't see how it can come right.  And if she hasn't
+gone off with that young Bosinney, my advice to you is not to listen to
+her, but to follow her and get her back."
+
+Once more Soames felt his mother stroking his hand, in token of her
+approval, and as though repeating some form of sacred oath, he muttered
+between his teeth: "I will!"
+
+All three went down to the drawing-room together.  There, were gathered
+the three girls and Dartie; had Irene been present, the family circle
+would have been complete.
+
+James sank into his armchair, and except for a word of cold greeting to
+Dartie, whom he both despised and dreaded, as a man likely to be always
+in want of money, he said nothing till dinner was announced.  Soames,
+too, was silent; Emily alone, a woman of cool courage, maintained a
+conversation with Winifred on trivial subjects.  She was never more
+composed in her manner and conversation than that evening.
+
+A decision having been come to not to speak of Irene's flight, no view
+was expressed by any other member of the family as to the right course to
+be pursued; there can be little doubt, from the general tone adopted in
+relation to events as they afterwards turned out, that James's advice:
+"Don't you listen to her, follow-her and get her back!" would, with here
+and there an exception, have been regarded as sound, not only in Park
+Lane, but amongst the Nicholases, the Rogers, and at Timothy's.  Just as
+it would surely have been endorsed by that wider body of Forsytes all
+over London, who were merely excluded from judgment by ignorance of the
+story.
+
+In spite then of Emily's efforts, the dinner was served by Warmson and
+the footman almost in silence.  Dartie was sulky, and drank all he could
+get; the girls seldom talked to each other at any time.  James asked once
+where June was, and what she was doing with herself in these days.  No
+one could tell him.  He sank back into gloom.  Only when Winifred
+recounted how little Publius had given his bad penny to a beggar, did he
+brighten up.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "that's a clever little chap.  I don't know what'll become
+of him, if he goes on like this.  An intelligent little chap, I call
+him!" But it was only a flash.
+
+The courses succeeded one another solemnly, under the electric light,
+which glared down onto the table, but barely reached the principal
+ornament of the walls, a so-called 'Sea Piece by Turner,' almost entirely
+composed of cordage and drowning men.
+
+Champagne was handed, and then a bottle of James' prehistoric port, but
+as by the chill hand of some skeleton.
+
+At ten o'clock Soames left; twice in reply to questions, he had said that
+Irene was not well; he felt he could no longer trust himself.  His mother
+kissed him with her large soft kiss, and he pressed her hand, a flush of
+warmth in his cheeks.  He walked away in the cold wind, which whistled
+desolately round the corners of the streets, under a sky of clear
+steel-blue, alive with stars; he noticed neither their frosty greeting,
+nor the crackle of the curled-up plane-leaves, nor the night-women
+hurrying in their shabby furs, nor the pinched faces of vagabonds at
+street corners.  Winter was come!  But Soames hastened home, oblivious;
+his hands trembled as he took the late letters from the gilt wire cage
+into which they had been thrust through the slit in the door.'
+
+None from Irene!
+
+He went into the dining-room; the fire was bright there, his chair drawn
+up to it, slippers ready, spirit case, and carven cigarette box on the
+table; but after staring at it all for a minute or two, he turned out the
+light and went upstairs. There was a fire too in his dressing-room, but
+her room was dark and cold.  It was into this room that Soames went.
+
+He made a great illumination with candles, and for a long time continued
+pacing up and down between the bed and the door.  He could not get used
+to the thought that she had really left him, and as though still
+searching for some message, some reason, some reading of all the mystery
+of his married life, he began opening every recess and drawer.
+
+There were her dresses; he had always liked, indeed insisted, that she
+should be well-dressed--she had taken very few; two or three at most, and
+drawer after drawer; full of linen and silk things, was untouched.
+
+Perhaps after all it was only a freak, and she had gone to the seaside
+for a few days' change.  If only that were so, and she were really coming
+back, he would never again do as he had done that fatal night before
+last, never again run that risk--though it was her duty, her duty as a
+wife; though she did belong to him--he would never again run that risk;
+she was evidently not quite right in her head!
+
+He stooped over the drawer where she kept her jewels; it was not locked,
+and came open as he pulled; the jewel box had the key in it.  This
+surprised him until he remembered that it was sure to be empty.  He
+opened it.
+
+It was far from empty.  Divided, in little green velvet compartments,
+were all the things he had given her, even her watch, and stuck into the
+recess that contained--the watch was a three-cornered note addressed
+'Soames Forsyte,' in Irene's handwriting:
+
+'I think I have taken nothing that you or your people have given me.'
+And that was all.
+
+He looked at the clasps and bracelets of diamonds and pearls, at the
+little flat gold watch with a great diamond set in sapphires, at the
+chains and rings, each in its nest, and the tears rushed up in his eyes
+and dropped upon them.
+
+Nothing that she could have done, nothing that she had done, brought home
+to him like this the inner significance of her act. For the moment,
+perhaps, he understood nearly all there was to understand--understood
+that she loathed him, that she had loathed him for years, that for all
+intents and purposes they were like people living in different worlds,
+that there was no hope for him, never had been; even, that she had
+suffered--that she was to be pitied.
+
+In that moment of emotion he betrayed the Forsyte in him--forgot himself,
+his interests, his property--was capable of almost anything; was lifted
+into the pure ether of the selfless and unpractical.
+
+Such moments pass quickly.
+
+And as though with the tears he had purged himself of weakness, he got
+up, locked the box, and slowly, almost trembling, carried it with him
+into the other room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+JUNE'S VICTORY
+
+June had waited for her chance, scanning the duller columns of the
+journals, morning and evening with an assiduity which at first puzzled
+old Jolyon; and when her chance came, she took it with all the
+promptitude and resolute tenacity of her character.
+
+She will always remember best in her life that morning when at last she
+saw amongst the reliable Cause List of the Times newspaper, under the
+heading of Court XIII, Mr. Justice Bentham, the case of Forsyte v.
+Bosinney.
+
+Like a gambler who stakes his last piece of money, she had prepared to
+hazard her all upon this throw; it was not her nature to contemplate
+defeat.  How, unless with the instinct of a woman in love, she knew that
+Bosinney's discomfiture in this action was assured, cannot be told--on
+this assumption, however, she laid her plans, as upon a certainty.
+
+Half past eleven found her at watch in the gallery of Court XIII., and
+there she remained till the case of Forsyte v. Bosinney was over.
+Bosinney's absence did not disquiet her; she had felt instinctively that
+he would not defend himself.  At the end of the judgment she hastened
+down, and took a cab to his rooms.
+
+She passed the open street-door and the offices on the three lower floors
+without attracting notice; not till she reached the top did her
+difficulties begin.
+
+Her ring was not answered; she had now to make up her mind whether she
+would go down and ask the caretaker in the basement to let her in to
+await Mr. Bosinney's return, or remain patiently outside the door,
+trusting that no one would, come up.  She decided on the latter course.
+
+A quarter of an hour had passed in freezing vigil on the landing, before
+it occurred to her that Bosinney had been used to leave the key of his
+rooms under the door-mat.  She looked and found it there.  For some
+minutes she could not decide to make use of it; at last she let herself
+in and left the door open that anyone who came might see she was there on
+business.
+
+This was not the same June who had paid the trembling visit five months
+ago; those months of suffering and restraint had made her less sensitive;
+she had dwelt on this visit so long, with such minuteness, that its
+terrors were discounted beforehand.  She was not there to fail this time,
+for if she failed no one could help her.
+
+Like some mother beast on the watch over her young, her little quick
+figure never stood still in that room, but wandered from wall to wall,
+from window to door, fingering now one thing, now another.  There was
+dust everywhere, the room could not have been cleaned for weeks, and
+June, quick to catch at anything that should buoy up her hope, saw in it
+a sign that he had been obliged, for economy's sake, to give up his
+servant.
+
+She looked into the bedroom; the bed was roughly made, as though by the
+hand of man.  Listening intently, she darted in, and peered into his
+cupboards.  A few shirts and collars, a pair of muddy boots--the room was
+bare even of garments.
+
+She stole back to the sitting-room, and now she noticed the absence of
+all the little things he had set store by.  The clock that had been his
+mother's, the field-glasses that had hung over the sofa; two really
+valuable old prints of Harrow, where his father had been at school, and
+last, not least, the piece of Japanese pottery she herself had given him.
+All were gone; and in spite of the rage roused within her championing
+soul at the thought that the world should treat him thus, their
+disappearance augured happily for the success of her plan.
+
+It was while looking at the spot where the piece of Japanese pottery had
+stood that she felt a strange certainty of being watched, and, turning,
+saw Irene in the open doorway.
+
+The two stood gazing at each other for a minute in silence; then June
+walked forward and held out her hand.  Irene did not take it.
+
+When her hand was refused, June put it behind her.  Her eyes grew steady
+with anger; she waited for Irene to speak; and thus waiting, took in,
+with who-knows-what rage of jealousy, suspicion, and curiosity, every
+detail of her friend's face and dress and figure.
+
+Irene was clothed in her long grey fur; the travelling cap on her head
+left a wave of gold hair visible above her forehead.  The soft fullness
+of the coat made her face as small as a child's.
+
+Unlike June's cheeks, her cheeks had no colour in them, but were ivory
+white and pinched as if with cold.  Dark circles lay round her eyes.  In
+one hand she held a bunch of violets.
+
+She looked back at June, no smile on her lips; and with those great dark
+eyes fastened on her, the girl, for all her startled anger, felt
+something of the old spell.
+
+She spoke first, after all.
+
+"What have you come for?"  But the feeling that she herself was being
+asked the same question, made her add: "This horrible case. I came to
+tell him--he has lost it."
+
+Irene did not speak, her eyes never moved from June's face, and the girl
+cried:
+
+"Don't stand there as if you were made of stone!"
+
+Irene laughed: "I wish to God I were!"
+
+But June turned away: "Stop!" she cried, "don't tell me!  I don't want to
+hear!  I don't want to hear what you've come for.  I don't want to hear!"
+And like some uneasy spirit, she began swiftly walking to and fro.
+Suddenly she broke out:
+
+"I was here first.  We can't both stay here together!"
+
+On Irene's face a smile wandered up, and died out like a flicker of
+firelight.  She did not move.  And then it was that June perceived under
+the softness and immobility of this figure something desperate and
+resolved; something not to be turned away, something dangerous.  She tore
+off her hat, and, putting both hands to her brow, pressed back the bronze
+mass of her hair.
+
+"You have no right here!" she cried defiantly.
+
+Irene answered: "I have no right anywhere!
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I have left Soames.  You always wanted me to!"
+
+June put her hands over her ears.
+
+"Don't!  I don't want to hear anything--I don't want to know anything.
+It's impossible to fight with you!  What makes you stand like that?  Why
+don't you go?"
+
+Irene's lips moved; she seemed to be saying: "Where should I go?"
+
+June turned to the window.  She could see the face of a clock down in the
+street.  It was nearly four.  At any moment he might come!  She looked
+back across her shoulder, and her face was distorted with anger.
+
+But Irene had not moved; in her gloved hands she ceaselessly turned and
+twisted the little bunch of violets.
+
+The tears of rage and disappointment rolled down June's cheeks.
+
+"How could you come?" she said.  "You have been a false friend to me!"
+
+Again Irene laughed.  June saw that she had played a wrong card, and
+broke down.
+
+"Why have you come?" she sobbed.  "You've ruined my life, and now you
+want to ruin his!"
+
+Irene's mouth quivered; her eyes met June's with a look so mournful that
+the girl cried out in the midst of her sobbing, "No, no!"
+
+But Irene's head bent till it touched her breast.  She turned, and went
+quickly out, hiding her lips with the little bunch of violets.
+
+June ran to the door.  She heard the footsteps going down and down.  She
+called out: "Come back, Irene!  Come back!"
+
+The footsteps died away....
+
+Bewildered and torn, the girl stood at the top of the stairs. Why had
+Irene gone, leaving her mistress of the field?  What did it mean?  Had
+she really given him up to her?  Or had she...?  And she was the prey of
+a gnawing uncertainty....  Bosinney did not come....
+
+About six o'clock that afternoon old Jolyon returned from Wistaria
+Avenue, where now almost every day he spent some hours, and asked if his
+grand-daughter were upstairs.  On being told that she had just come in,
+he sent up to her room to request her to come down and speak to him.
+
+He had made up his mind to tell her that he was reconciled with her
+father.  In future bygones must be bygones.  He would no longer live
+alone, or practically alone, in this great house; he was going to give it
+up, and take one in the country for his son, where they could all go and
+live together.  If June did not like this, she could have an allowance
+and live by herself.  It wouldn't make much difference to her, for it was
+a long time since she had shown him any affection.
+
+But when June came down, her face was pinched and piteous; there was a
+strained, pathetic look in her eyes.  She snuggled up in her old attitude
+on the arm of his chair, and what he said compared but poorly with the
+clear, authoritative, injured statement he had thought out with much
+care.  His heart felt sore, as the great heart of a mother-bird feels
+sore when its youngling flies and bruises its wing.  His words halted, as
+though he were apologizing for having at last deviated from the path of
+virtue, and succumbed, in defiance of sounder principles, to his more
+natural instincts.
+
+He seemed nervous lest, in thus announcing his intentions, he should be
+setting his granddaughter a bad example; and now that he came to the
+point, his way of putting the suggestion that, if she didn't like it, she
+could live by herself and lump it, was delicate in the extreme.'
+
+"And if, by any chance, my darling," he said, "you found you didn't get
+on--with them, why, I could make that all right.  You could have what you
+liked.  We could find a little flat in London where you could set up, and
+I could be running to continually. But the children," he added, "are dear
+little things!"
+
+Then, in the midst of this grave, rather transparent, explanation of
+changed policy, his eyes twinkled.  "This'll astonish Timothy's weak
+nerves.  That precious young thing will have something to say about this,
+or I'm a Dutchman!"
+
+June had not yet spoken.  Perched thus on the arm of his chair, with her
+head above him, her face was invisible.  But presently he felt her warm
+cheek against his own, and knew that, at all events, there was nothing
+very alarming in her attitude towards his news.  He began to take
+courage.
+
+"You'll like your father," he said--"an amiable chap.  Never was much
+push about him, but easy to get on with.  You'll find him artistic and
+all that."
+
+And old Jolyon bethought him of the dozen or so water-colour drawings all
+carefully locked up in his bedroom; for now that his son was going to
+become a man of property he did not think them quite such poor things as
+heretofore.
+
+"As to your--your stepmother," he said, using the word with some little
+difficulty, "I call her a refined woman--a bit of a Mrs. Gummidge, I
+shouldn't wonder--but very fond of Jo.  And the children," he
+repeated--indeed, this sentence ran like music through all his solemn
+self-justification--"are sweet little things!"
+
+If June had known, those words but reincarnated that tender love for
+little children, for the young and weak, which in the past had made him
+desert his son for her tiny self, and now, as the cycle rolled, was
+taking him from her.
+
+But he began to get alarmed at her silence, and asked impatiently: "Well,
+what do you say?"
+
+June slid down to his knee, and she in her turn began her tale. She
+thought it would all go splendidly; she did not see any difficulty, and
+she did not care a bit what people thought.
+
+Old Jolyon wriggled.  H'm! then people would think!  He had thought that
+after all these years perhaps they wouldn't!  Well, he couldn't help it!
+Nevertheless, he could not approve of his granddaughter's way of putting
+it--she ought to mind what people thought!
+
+Yet he said nothing.  His feelings were too mixed, too inconsistent for
+expression.
+
+No--went on June he did not care; what business was it of theirs? There
+was only one thing--and with her cheek pressing against his knee, old
+Jolyon knew at once that this something was no trifle: As he was going to
+buy a house in the country, would he not--to please her--buy that
+splendid house of Soames' at Robin Hill?  It was finished, it was
+perfectly beautiful, and no one would live in it now.  They would all be
+so happy there.
+
+Old Jolyon was on the alert at once.  Wasn't the 'man of property' going
+to live in his new house, then?  He never alluded to Soames now but under
+this title.
+
+"No"--June said--"he was not; she knew that he was not!"
+
+How did she know?
+
+She could not tell him, but she knew.  She knew nearly for certain!  It
+was most unlikely; circumstances had changed! Irene's words still rang in
+her head: "I have left Soames. Where should I go?"
+
+But she kept silence about that.
+
+If her grandfather would only buy it and settle that wretched claim that
+ought never to have been made on Phil!  It would be the very best thing
+for everybody, and everything--everything might come straight.
+
+And June put her lips to his forehead, and pressed them close.
+
+But old Jolyon freed himself from her caress, his face wore the judicial
+look which came upon it when he dealt with affairs.  He asked: What did
+she mean?  There was something behind all this--had she been seeing
+Bosinney?
+
+June answered: "No; but I have been to his rooms."
+
+"Been to his rooms?  Who took you there?"
+
+June faced him steadily.  "I went alone.  He has lost that case. I don't
+care whether it was right or wrong.  I want to help him; and I will!"
+
+Old Jolyon asked again: "Have you seen him?" His glance seemed to pierce
+right through the girl's eyes into her soul.
+
+Again June answered: "No; he was not there.  I waited, but he did not
+come."
+
+Old Jolyon made a movement of relief.  She had risen and looked down at
+him; so slight, and light, and young, but so fixed, and so determined;
+and disturbed, vexed, as he was, he could not frown away that fixed look.
+The feeling of being beaten, of the reins having slipped, of being old
+and tired, mastered him.
+
+"Ah!" he said at last, "you'll get yourself into a mess one of these
+days, I can see.  You want your own way in everything."
+
+Visited by one of his strange bursts of philosophy, he added: "Like that
+you were born; and like that you'll stay until you die!"
+
+And he, who in his dealings with men of business, with Boards, with
+Forsytes of all descriptions, with such as were not Forsytes, had always
+had his own way, looked at his indomitable grandchild sadly--for he felt
+in her that quality which above all others he unconsciously admired.
+
+"Do you know what they say is going on?" he said slowly.
+
+June crimsoned.
+
+"Yes--no!  I know--and I don't know--I don't care!" and she stamped her
+foot.
+
+"I believe," said old Jolyon, dropping his eyes, "that you'd have him if
+he were dead!"
+
+There was a long silence before he spoke again.
+
+"But as to buying this house--you don't know what you're talking about!"
+
+June said that she did.  She knew that he could get it if he wanted.  He
+would only have to give what it cost.
+
+"What it cost!  You know nothing about it.  I won't go to Soames--I'll
+have nothing more to do with that young man."
+
+"But you needn't; you can go to Uncle James.  If you can't buy the house,
+will you pay his lawsuit claim?  I know he is terribly hard up--I've seen
+it.  You can stop it out of my money!"
+
+A twinkle came into old Jolyon's eyes.
+
+"Stop it out of your money!  A pretty way.  And what will you do, pray,
+without your money?"
+
+But secretly, the idea of wresting the house from James and his son had
+begun to take hold of him.  He had heard on Forsyte 'Change much comment,
+much rather doubtful praise of this house. It was 'too artistic,' but a
+fine place.  To take from the 'man of property' that on which he had set
+his heart, would be a crowning triumph over James, practical proof that
+he was going to make a man of property of Jo, to put him back in his
+proper position, and there to keep him secure.  Justice once for all on
+those who had chosen to regard his son as a poor, penniless outcast.
+
+He would see, he would see!  It might be out of the question; he was not
+going to pay a fancy price, but if it could be done, why, perhaps he
+would do it!
+
+And still more secretly he knew that he could not refuse her.
+
+But he did not commit himself.  He would think it over--he said to June.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+BOSINNEY'S DEPARTURE
+
+Old Jolyon  was not given to hasty decisions; it is probable that he
+would have continued to think over the purchase of the house at Robin
+Hill, had not June's face told him that he would have no peace until he
+acted.
+
+At breakfast next morning she asked him what time she should order the
+carriage.
+
+"Carriage!" he said, with some appearance of innocence; "what for?  I'm
+not going out!"
+
+She answered: "If you don't go early, you won't catch Uncle James before
+he goes into the City."
+
+"James! what about your Uncle James?"
+
+"The house," she replied, in such a voice that he no longer pretended
+ignorance.
+
+"I've not made up my mind," he said.
+
+"You must!  You must!  Oh! Gran--think of me!"
+
+Old Jolyon grumbled out: "Think of you--I'm always thinking of you, but
+you don't think of yourself; you don't think what you're letting yourself
+in for.  Well, order the carriage at ten!"
+
+At a quarter past he was placing his umbrella in the stand at Park
+Lane--he did not choose to relinquish his hat and coat; telling Warmson
+that he wanted to see his master, he went, without being announced, into
+the study, and sat down.
+
+James was still in the dining-room talking to Soames, who had come round
+again before breakfast.  On hearing who his visitor was, he muttered
+nervously: "Now, what's he want, I wonder?"
+
+He then got up.
+
+"Well," he said to Soames, "don't you go doing anything in a hurry.  The
+first thing is to find out where she is--I should go to Stainer's about
+it; they're the best men, if they can't find her, nobody can." And
+suddenly moved to strange softness, he muttered to himself, "Poor little
+thing, I can't tell what she was thinking about!" and went out blowing
+his nose.
+
+Old Jolyon did not rise on seeing his brother, but held out his hand, and
+exchanged with him the clasp of a Forsyte.
+
+James took another chair by the table, and leaned his head on his hand.
+
+"Well," he said, "how are you?  We don't see much of you nowadays!"
+
+Old Jolyon paid no attention to the remark.
+
+"How's Emily?" he asked; and waiting for no reply, went on "I've come to
+see you about this affair of young Bosinney's.  I'm told that new house
+of his is a white elephant."
+
+"I don't know anything about a white elephant," said James, "I know he's
+lost his case, and I should say he'll go bankrupt."
+
+Old Jolyon was not slow to seize the opportunity this gave him.
+
+"I shouldn't wonder a bit!" he agreed; "and if he goes bankrupt, the 'man
+of property'--that is, Soames'll be out of pocket.  Now, what I was
+thinking was this: If he's not going to live there...."
+
+Seeing both surprise and suspicion in James' eye, he quickly went on: "I
+don't want to know anything; I suppose Irene's put her foot down--it's
+not material to me.  But I'm thinking of a house in the country myself,
+not too far from London, and if it suited me I don't say that I mightn't
+look at it, at a price."
+
+James listened to this statement with a strange mixture of doubt,
+suspicion, and relief, merging into a dread of something behind, and
+tinged with the remains of his old undoubted reliance upon his elder
+brother's good faith and judgment.  There was anxiety, too, as to what
+old Jolyon could have heard and how he had heard it; and a sort of
+hopefulness arising from the thought that if June's connection with
+Bosinney were completely at an end, her grandfather would hardly seem
+anxious to help the young fellow. Altogether he was puzzled; as he did
+not like either to show this, or to commit himself in any way, he said:
+
+"They tell me you're altering your Will in favour of your son."
+
+He had not been told this; he had merely added the fact of having seen
+old Jolyon with his son and grandchildren to the fact that he had taken
+his Will away from Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte. The shot went home.
+
+"Who told you that?" asked old Jolyon.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," said James; "I can't remember names--I know
+somebody told me Soames spent a lot of money on this house; he's not
+likely to part with it except at a good price."
+
+"Well," said old Jolyon, "if, he thinks I'm going to pay a fancy price,
+he's mistaken.  I've not got the money to throw away that he seems to
+have.  Let him try and sell it at a forced sale, and see what he'll get.
+It's not every man's house, I hear!"
+
+James, who was secretly also of this opinion, answered: "It's a
+gentleman's house.  Soames is here now if you'd like to see him."
+
+"No," said old Jolyon, "I haven't got as far as that; and I'm not likely
+to, I can see that very well if I'm met in this manner!"
+
+James was a little cowed; when it came to the actual figures of a
+commercial transaction he was sure of himself, for then he was dealing
+with facts, not with men; but preliminary negotiations such as these made
+him nervous--he never knew quite how far he could go.
+
+"Well," he said, "I know nothing about it.  Soames, he tells me nothing;
+I should think he'd entertain it--it's a question of price."
+
+"Oh!" said old Jolyon, "don't let him make a favour of it!" He placed his
+hat on his head in dudgeon.
+
+The door was opened and Soames came in.
+
+"There's a policeman out here," he said with his half smile, "for Uncle
+Jolyon."
+
+Old Jolyon looked at him angrily, and James said: "A policeman? I don't
+know anything about a policeman.  But I suppose you know something about
+him," he added to old Jolyon with a look of suspicion: "I suppose you'd
+better see him!"
+
+In the hall an Inspector of Police stood stolidly regarding with
+heavy-lidded pale-blue eyes the fine old English furniture picked up by
+James at the famous Mavrojano sale in Portman Square. "You'll find my
+brother in there," said James.
+
+The Inspector raised his fingers respectfully to his peaked cap, and
+entered the study.
+
+James saw him go in with a strange sensation.
+
+"Well," he said to Soames, "I suppose we must wait and see what he wants.
+Your uncle's been here about the house!"
+
+He returned with Soames into the dining-room, but could not rest.
+
+"Now what does he want?" he murmured again.
+
+"Who?" replied Soames: "the Inspector?  They sent him round from Stanhope
+Gate, that's all I know.  That 'nonconformist' of Uncle Jolyon's has been
+pilfering, I shouldn't wonder!"
+
+But in spite of his calmness, he too was ill at ease.
+
+At the end of ten minutes old Jolyon came in.  He walked up to the table,
+and stood there perfectly silent pulling at his long white moustaches.
+James gazed up at him with opening mouth; he had never seen his brother
+look like this.
+
+Old Jolyon raised his hand, and said slowly:
+
+"Young Bosinney has been run over in the fog and killed."
+
+Then standing above his brother and his nephew, and looking down at him
+with his deep eyes:
+
+"There's--some--talk--of--suicide," he said.
+
+James' jaw dropped.  "Suicide!  What should he do that for?"
+
+Old Jolyon answered sternly: "God knows, if you and your son don't!"
+
+But James did not reply.
+
+For all men of great age, even for all Forsytes, life has had bitter
+experiences.  The passer-by, who sees them wrapped in cloaks of custom,
+wealth, and comfort, would never suspect that such black shadows had
+fallen on their roads.  To every man of great age--to Sir Walter Bentham
+himself--the idea of suicide has once at least been present in the
+ante-room of his soul; on the threshold, waiting to enter, held out from
+the inmost chamber by some chance reality, some vague fear, some painful
+hope.  To Forsytes that final renunciation of property is hard.  Oh! it
+is hard!  Seldom--perhaps never--can they achieve, it; and yet, how near
+have they not sometimes been!
+
+So even with James!  Then in the medley of his thoughts, he broke out:
+"Why I saw it in the paper yesterday: 'Run over in the fog!' They didn't
+know his name!" He turned from one face to the other in his confusion of
+soul; but instinctively all the time he was rejecting that rumour of
+suicide.  He dared not entertain this thought, so against his interest,
+against the interest of his son, of every Forsyte.  He strove against it;
+and as his nature ever unconsciously rejected that which it could not
+with safety accept, so gradually he overcame this fear.  It was an
+accident! It must have been!
+
+Old Jolyon broke in on his reverie.
+
+"Death was instantaneous.  He lay all day yesterday at the hospital.
+There was nothing to tell them who he was.  I am going there now; you and
+your son had better come too."
+
+No one opposing this command he led the way from the room.
+
+The day was still and clear and bright, and driving over to Park Lane
+from Stanhope Gate, old Jolyon had had the carriage open. Sitting back on
+the padded cushions, finishing his cigar, he had noticed with pleasure
+the keen crispness of the air, the bustle of the cabs and people; the
+strange, almost Parisian, alacrity that the first fine day will bring
+into London streets after a spell of fog or rain.  And he had felt so
+happy; he had not felt like it for months.  His confession to June was
+off his mind; he had the prospect of his son's, above all, of his
+grandchildren's company in the future--(he had appointed to meet young
+Jolyon at the Hotch Potch that very manning to--discuss it again); and
+there was the pleasurable excitement of a coming encounter, a coming
+victory, over James and the 'man of property' in the matter of the house.
+
+He had the carriage closed now; he had no heart to look on gaiety; nor
+was it right that Forsytes should be seen driving with an Inspector of
+Police.
+
+In that carriage the Inspector spoke again of the death:
+
+"It was not so very thick--Just there.  The driver says the gentleman
+must have had time to see what he was about, he seemed to walk right into
+it.  It appears that he was very hard up, we found several pawn tickets
+at his rooms, his account at the bank is overdrawn, and there's this case
+in to-day's papers;" his cold blue eyes travelled from one to another of
+the three Forsytes in the carriage.
+
+Old Jolyon watching from his corner saw his brother's face change, and
+the brooding, worried, look deepen on it.  At the Inspector's words,
+indeed, all James' doubts and fears revived. Hard-up--pawn-tickets--an
+overdrawn account!  These words that had all his life been a far-off
+nightmare to him, seemed to make uncannily real that suspicion of suicide
+which must on no account be entertained.  He sought his son's eye; but
+lynx-eyed, taciturn, immovable, Soames gave no answering look.  And to
+old Jolyon watching, divining the league of mutual defence between them,
+there came an overmastering desire to have his own son at his side, as
+though this visit to the dead man's body was a battle in which otherwise
+he must single-handed meet those two. And the thought of how to keep
+June's name out of the business kept whirring in his brain.  James had
+his son to support him! Why should he not send for Jo?
+
+Taking out his card-case, he pencilled the following message:
+
+'Come round at once.  I've sent the carriage for you.'
+
+On getting out he gave this card to his coachman, telling him to
+drive--as fast as possible to the Hotch Potch Club, and if Mr. Jolyon
+Forsyte were there to give him the card and bring him at once.  If not
+there yet, he was to wait till he came.
+
+He followed the others slowly up the steps, leaning on his umbrella, and
+stood a moment to get his breath.  The Inspector said: "This is the
+mortuary, sir.  But take your time."
+
+In the bare, white-walled room, empty of all but a streak of sunshine
+smeared along the dustless floor, lay a form covered by a sheet.  With a
+huge steady hand the Inspector took the hem and turned it back.  A
+sightless face gazed up at them, and on either side of that sightless
+defiant face the three Forsytes gazed down; in each one of them the
+secret emotions, fears, and pity of his own nature rose and fell like the
+rising, falling waves of life, whose wish those white walls barred out
+now for ever from Bosinney.  And in each one of them the trend of his
+nature, the odd essential spring, which moved him in fashions minutely,
+unalterably different from those of every other human being, forced him
+to a different attitude of thought.  Far from the others, yet inscrutably
+close, each stood thus, alone with death, silent, his eyes lowered.
+
+The Inspector asked softly:
+
+"You identify the gentleman, sir?"
+
+Old Jolyon raised his head and nodded.  He looked at his brother
+opposite, at that long lean figure brooding over the dead man, with face
+dusky red, and strained grey eyes; and at the figure of Soames white and
+still by his father's side.  And all that he had felt against those two
+was gone like smoke in the long white presence of Death.  Whence comes
+it, how comes it--Death?  Sudden reverse of all that goes before; blind
+setting forth on a path that leads to where?  Dark quenching of the fire!
+The heavy, brutal crushing--out that all men must go through, keeping
+their eyes clear and brave unto the end!  Small and of no import, insects
+though they are!  And across old Jolyon's face there flitted a gleam, for
+Soames, murmuring to the Inspector, crept noiselessly away.
+
+Then suddenly James raised his eyes.  There was a queer appeal in that
+suspicious troubled look: "I know I'm no match for you," it seemed to
+say.  And, hunting for handkerchief he wiped his brow; then, bending
+sorrowful and lank over the dead man, he too turned and hurried out.
+
+Old Jolyon stood, still as death, his eyes fixed on the body. Who shall
+tell of what he was thinking?  Of himself, when his hair was brown like
+the hair of that young fellow dead before him?  Of himself, with his
+battle just beginning, the long, long battle he had loved; the battle
+that was over for this young man almost before it had begun?  Of his
+grand-daughter, with her broken hopes?  Of that other woman?  Of the
+strangeness, and the pity of it?  And the irony, inscrutable, and bitter
+of that end? Justice!  There was no justice for men, for they were ever
+in the dark!
+
+Or perhaps in his philosophy he thought: Better to be out of, it all!
+Better to have done with it, like this poor youth....
+
+Some one touched him on the arm.
+
+A tear started up and wetted his eyelash.  "Well," he said, "I'm no good
+here.  I'd better be going.  You'll come to me as soon as you can, Jo,"
+and with his head bowed he went away.
+
+It was young Jolyon's turn to take his stand beside the dead man, round
+whose fallen body he seemed to see all the Forsytes breathless, and
+prostrated.  The stroke had fallen too swiftly.
+
+The forces underlying every tragedy--forces that take no denial, working
+through cross currents to their ironical end, had met and fused with a
+thunder-clap, flung out the victim, and flattened to the ground all those
+that stood around.
+
+Or so at all events young Jolyon seemed to see them, lying around
+Bosinney's body.
+
+He asked the Inspector to tell him what had happened, and the latter,
+like a man who does not every day get such a chance, again detailed such
+facts as were known.
+
+"There's more here, sir, however," he said, "than meets the eye. I don't
+believe in suicide, nor in pure accident, myself.  It's more likely I
+think that he was suffering under great stress of mind, and took no
+notice of things about him.  Perhaps you can throw some light on these."
+
+He took from his pocket a little packet and laid it on the table.
+Carefully undoing it, he revealed a lady's handkerchief, pinned through
+the folds with a pin of discoloured Venetian gold, the stone of which had
+fallen from the socket.  A scent of dried violets rose to young Jolyon's
+nostrils.
+
+"Found in his breast pocket," said the Inspector; "the name has been cut
+away!"
+
+Young Jolyon with difficulty answered: "I'm afraid I cannot help you!"
+But vividly there rose before him the face he had seen light up, so
+tremulous and glad, at Bosinney's coming!  Of her he thought more than of
+his own daughter, more than of them all--of her with the dark, soft
+glance, the delicate passive face, waiting for the dead man, waiting even
+at that moment, perhaps, still and patient in the sunlight.
+
+He walked sorrowfully away from the hospital towards his father's house,
+reflecting that this death would break up the Forsyte family.  The stroke
+had indeed slipped past their defences into the very wood of their tree.
+They might flourish to all appearance as before, preserving a brave show
+before the eyes of London, but the trunk was dead, withered by the same
+flash that had stricken down Bosinney.  And now the saplings would take
+its place, each one a new custodian of the sense of property.
+
+Good forest of Forsytes! thought young Jolyon--soundest timber of our
+land!
+
+Concerning the cause of this death--his family would doubtless reject
+with vigour the suspicion of suicide, which was so compromising!  They
+would take it as an accident, a stroke of fate.  In their hearts they
+would even feel it an intervention of Providence, a retribution--had not
+Bosinney endangered their two most priceless possessions, the pocket and
+the hearth?  And they would talk of 'that unfortunate accident of young
+Bosinney's,' but perhaps they would not talk--silence might be better!
+
+As for himself, he regarded the bus-driver's account of the accident as
+of very little value.  For no one so madly in love committed suicide for
+want of money; nor was Bosinney the sort of fellow to set much store by a
+financial crisis.  And so he too rejected this theory of suicide, the
+dead man's face rose too clearly before him.  Gone in the heyday of his
+summer--and to believe thus that an accident had cut Bosinney off in the
+full sweep of his passion was more than ever pitiful to young Jolyon.
+
+Then came a vision of Soames' home as it now was, and must be hereafter.
+The streak of lightning had flashed its clear uncanny gleam on bare bones
+with grinning spaces between, the disguising flesh was gone....
+
+In the dining-room at Stanhope Gate old Jolyon was sitting alone when his
+son came in.  He looked very wan in his great armchair. And his eyes
+travelling round the walls with their pictures of still life, and the
+masterpiece 'Dutch fishing-boats at Sunset' seemed as though passing
+their gaze over his life with its hopes, its gains, its achievements.
+
+"Ah! Jo!" he said, "is that you?  I've told poor little June. But that's
+not all of it.  Are you going to Soames'?  She's brought it on herself, I
+suppose; but somehow I can't bear to think of her, shut up there--and all
+alone." And holding up his thin, veined hand, he clenched it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+IRENE'S RETURN
+
+After leaving James and old Jolyon in the mortuary of the hospital,
+Soames hurried aimlessly along the streets.
+
+The tragic event of Bosinney's death altered the complexion of
+everything.  There was no longer the same feeling that to lose a minute
+would be fatal, nor would he now risk communicating the fact of his
+wife's flight to anyone till the inquest was over.
+
+That morning he had risen early, before the postman came, had taken the
+first-post letters from the box himself, and, though there had been none
+from Irene, he had made an opportunity of telling Bilson that her
+mistress was at the sea; he would probably, he said, be going down
+himself from Saturday to Monday. This had given him time to breathe, time
+to leave no stone unturned to find her.
+
+But now, cut off from taking steps by Bosinney's death--that strange
+death, to think of which was like putting a hot iron to his heart, like
+lifting a great weight from it--he did not know how to pass his day; and
+he wandered here and there through the streets, looking at every face he
+met, devoured by a hundred anxieties.
+
+And as he wandered, he thought of him who had finished his wandering, his
+prowling, and would never haunt his house again.
+
+Already in the afternoon he passed posters announcing the identity of the
+dead man, and bought the papers to see what they said.  He would stop
+their mouths if he could, and he went into the City, and was closeted
+with Boulter for a long time.
+
+On his way home, passing the steps of Jobson's about half past four, he
+met George Forsyte, who held out an evening paper to Soames, saying:
+
+"Here! Have you seen this about the poor Buccaneer?"
+
+Soames answered stonily: "Yes."
+
+George stared at him.  He had never liked Soames; he now held him
+responsible for Bosinney's death.  Soames had done for him--done for him
+by that act of property that had sent the Buccaneer to run amok that
+fatal afternoon.
+
+'The poor fellow,' he was thinking, 'was so cracked with jealousy, so
+cracked for his vengeance, that he heard nothing of the omnibus in that
+infernal fog.'
+
+Soames had done for him!  And this judgment was in George's eyes.
+
+"They talk of suicide here," he said at last.  "That cat won't jump."
+
+Soames shook his head.  "An accident," he muttered.
+
+Clenching his fist on the paper, George crammed it into his pocket.  He
+could not resist a parting shot.
+
+"H'mm!  All flourishing at home?  Any little Soameses yet?"
+
+With a face as white as the steps of Jobson's, and a lip raised as if
+snarling, Soames brushed past him and was gone....
+
+On reaching home, and entering the little lighted hall with his latchkey,
+the first thing that caught his eye was his wife's gold-mounted umbrella
+lying on the rug chest.  Flinging off his fur coat, he hurried to the
+drawing-room.
+
+The curtains were drawn for the night, a bright fire of cedar-logs burned
+in the grate, and by its light he saw Irene sitting in her usual corner
+on the sofa.  He shut the door softly, and went towards her.  She did not
+move, and did not seem to see him.
+
+"So you've come back?" he said.  "Why are you sitting here in the dark?"
+
+Then he caught sight of her face, so white and motionless that it seemed
+as though the blood must have stopped flowing in her veins; and her eyes,
+that looked enormous, like the great, wide, startled brown eyes of an
+owl.
+
+Huddled in her grey fur against the sofa cushions, she had a strange
+resemblance to a captive owl, bunched fir its soft feathers against the
+wires of a cage.  The supple erectness of her figure was gone, as though
+she had been broken by cruel exercise; as though there were no longer any
+reason for being beautiful, and supple, and erect.
+
+"So you've come back," he repeated.
+
+She never looked up, and never spoke, the firelight playing over her
+motionless figure.
+
+Suddenly she tried to rise, but he prevented her; it was then that he
+understood.
+
+She had come back like an animal wounded to death, not knowing where to
+turn, not knowing what she was doing.  The sight of her figure, huddled
+in the fur, was enough.
+
+He knew then for certain that Bosinney had been her lover; knew that she
+had seen the report of his death--perhaps, like himself, had bought a
+paper at the draughty corner of a street, and read it.
+
+She had come back then of her own accord, to the cage she had pined to be
+free of--and taking in all the tremendous significance of this, he longed
+to cry: "Take your hated body, that I love, out of my house!  Take away
+that pitiful white face, so cruel and soft--before I crush it.  Get out
+of my sight; never let me see you again!"
+
+And, at those unspoken words, he seemed to see her rise and move away,
+like a woman in a terrible dream, from which she was fighting to
+awake--rise and go out into the dark and cold, without a thought of him,
+without so much as the knowledge of his presence.
+
+Then he cried, contradicting what he had not yet spoken, "No; stay
+there!" And turning away from her, he sat down in his accustomed chair on
+the other side of the hearth.
+
+They sat in silence.
+
+And Soames thought: 'Why is all this?  Why should I suffer so? What have
+I done?  It is not my fault!'
+
+Again he looked at her, huddled like a bird that is shot and dying, whose
+poor breast you see panting as the air is taken from it, whose poor eyes
+look at you who have shot it, with a slow, soft, unseeing look, taking
+farewell of all that is good--of the sun, and the air, and its mate.
+
+So they sat, by the firelight, in the silence, one on each side of the
+hearth.
+
+And the fume of the burning cedar logs, that he loved so well, seemed to
+grip Soames by the throat till he could bear it no longer.  And going out
+into the hall he flung the door wide, to gulp down the cold air that came
+in; then without hat or overcoat went out into the Square.
+
+Along the garden rails a half-starved cat came rubbing her way towards
+him, and Soames thought: 'Suffering! when will it cease, my suffering?'
+
+At a front door across the way was a man of his acquaintance named
+Rutter, scraping his boots, with an air of 'I am master here.' And Soames
+walked on.
+
+From far in the clear air the bells of the church where he and Irene had
+been married were pealing in 'practice' for the advent of Christ, the
+chimes ringing out above the sound of traffic.  He felt a craving for
+strong drink, to lull him to indifference, or rouse him to fury.  If only
+he could burst out of himself, out of this web that for the first time in
+his life he felt around him. If only he could surrender to the thought:
+'Divorce her--turn her out!  She has forgotten you.  Forget her!'
+
+If only he could surrender to the thought: 'Let her go--she has suffered
+enough!'
+
+If only he could surrender to the desire: 'Make a slave of her--she is
+in your power!'
+
+If only even he could surrender to the sudden vision: 'What does it all
+matter?'  Forget himself for a minute, forget that it mattered what he
+did, forget that whatever he did he must sacrifice something.
+
+If only he could act on an impulse!
+
+He could forget nothing; surrender to no thought, vision, or desire; it
+was all too serious; too close around him, an unbreakable cage.
+
+On the far side of the Square newspaper boys were calling their evening
+wares, and the ghoulish cries mingled and jangled with the sound of those
+church bells.
+
+Soames covered his ears.  The thought flashed across him that but for a
+chance, he himself, and not Bosinney, might be lying dead, and she,
+instead of crouching there like a shot bird with those dying eyes....
+
+Something soft touched his legs, the cat was rubbing herself against
+them.  And a sob that shook him from head to foot burst from Soames'
+chest.  Then all was still again in the dark, where the houses seemed to
+stare at him, each with a master and mistress of its own, and a secret
+story of happiness or sorrow.
+
+And suddenly he saw that his own door was open, and black against the
+light from the hall a man standing with his back turned. Something slid
+too in his breast, and he stole up close behind.
+
+He could see his own fur coat flung across the carved oak chair; the
+Persian rugs; the silver bowls, the rows of porcelain plates arranged
+along the walls, and this unknown man who was standing there.
+
+And sharply he asked: "What is it you want, sir?"
+
+The visitor turned.  It was young Jolyon.
+
+"The door was open," he said.  "Might I see your wife for a minute, I
+have a message for her?"
+
+Soames gave him a strange, sidelong stare.
+
+"My wife can see no one," he muttered doggedly.
+
+Young Jolyon answered gently: "I shouldn't keep her a minute."
+
+Soames brushed by him and barred the way.
+
+"She can see no one," he said again.
+
+Young Jolyon's glance shot past him into the hall, and Soames turned.
+There in the drawing-room doorway stood Irene, her eyes were wild and
+eager, her lips were parted, her hands outstretched.  In the sight of
+both men that light vanished from her face; her hands dropped to her
+sides; she stood like stone.
+
+Soames spun round, and met his visitor's eyes, and at the look he saw in
+them, a sound like a snarl escaped him.  He drew his lips back in the
+ghost of a smile.
+
+"This is my house," he said; "I manage my own affairs.  I've told you
+once--I tell you again; we are not at home."
+
+And in young Jolyon's face he slammed the door.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Man of Property, by John Galsworthy
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diff --git a/old/23092004.2559.zip b/old/23092004.2559.zip
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext Man of Property, by John Galsworthy
+#4 in our series by John Galsworthy
+#1 in our series of The Forsyte Saga
+
+
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+Title:  Man of Property
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+Author:  John Galsworthy
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+March, 2001  [Etext #2559]
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext Man of Property, by John Galsworthy
+*****This file should be named mnprp10.txt or mnprp10.zip******
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+This etext was prepared by David Widger, < widger@cecomet.net >
+
+
+
+
+
+[Spelling conforms to the original: "s's" instead of our "z's";
+and "c's" where we would have "s's"; and "...our" as in colour
+and flavour; many interesting double consonants; etc.]
+
+
+
+
+
+Man of Property
+
+by John Galsworthy
+
+
+
+
+THE WORKS OF JOHN GALSWORTHY
+
+VOLUME I
+
+
+
+
+TO MY WIFE:
+
+I DEDICATE THE FORSYTE SAGA IN ITS ENTIRETY,
+BELIEVING IT TO BE OF ALL MY WORKS THE LEAST
+UNWORTHY OF ONE  WITHOUT WHOSE ENCOURAGEMENT,
+SYMPATHY AND CRITICISM COULD NEVER HAVE
+BECOME EVEN SUCH A WRITER AS I AM.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE:
+
+"The Forsyte Saga" was the title originally destined for that
+part of it which is called "The Man of Property"; and to adopt it
+for the collected chronicles of the Forsyte family has indulged
+the Forsytean tenacity that is in all of us.  The word Saga might
+be objected to on the ground that it connotes the heroic and that
+there is little heroism in these pages.  But it is used with a
+suitable irony; and, after all, this long tale, though it may
+deal with folk in frock coats, furbelows, and a gilt-edged
+period, is not devoid of the essential beat of conflict.
+Discounting for the gigantic stature and blood-thirstiness of old
+days, as they have come down to us in fairy-tale and legend, the
+folk of the old Sagas were Forsytes, assuredly, in their
+possessive instincts, and as little proof against the inroads of
+beauty and passion as Swithin, Soames, or even Young Jolyon.  And
+if heroic figures, in days that never were, seem to startle out
+from their surroundings in fashion unbecoming to a Forsyte of the
+Victorian era, we may be sure that tribal instinct was even then
+the prime force, and that "family" and the sense of home and
+property counted as they do to this day, for all the recent
+efforts to "talk them out."
+
+So many people have written and claimed that their families were
+the originals of the Forsytes that one has been almost encouraged
+to believe in the typicality of an imagined species.  Manners
+change and modes evolve, and "Timothy's on the Bayswater Road"
+becomes a nest of the unbelievable in all except essentials; we
+shall not look upon its like again, nor perhaps on such a one as
+James or Old Jolyon.  And yet the figures of Insurance Societies
+and the utterances of Judges reassure us daily that our earthly
+paradise is still a rich preserve, where the wild raiders, Beauty
+and Passion, come stealing in, filching security from beneath our
+noses.  As surely as a dog will bark at a brass band, so will the
+essential Soames in human nature ever rise up uneasily against
+the dissolution which hovers round the folds of ownership.
+
+"Let the dead Past bury its dead" would be a better saying if the
+Past ever died.  The persistence of the Past is one of those
+tragi-comic blessings which each new age denies, coming cocksure
+on to the stage to mouth its claim to a perfect novelty.
+
+But no Age is so new as that!  Human Nature, under its changing
+pretensions and clothes, is and ever will be very much of a
+Forsyte, and might, after all, be a much worse animal.
+
+Looking back on the Victorian era, whose ripeness, decline, and
+'fall-of' is in some sort pictured in "The Forsyte Saga," we see
+now that we have but jumped out of a frying-pan into a fire.  It
+would be difficult to substantiate a claim that the case of
+England was better in 1913 than it was in 1886, when the Forsytes
+assembled at Old Jolyon's to celebrate the engagement of June to
+Philip Bosinney.  And in 1920, when again the clan gathered to
+bless the marriage of Fleur with Michael Mont, the state of
+England is as surely too molten and bankrupt as in the eighties
+it was too congealed and low-percented.  If these chronicles had
+
+been a really scientific study of transition one would have dwelt
+probably on such factors as the invention of bicycle, motor-car,
+and flying-machine; the arrival of a cheap Press; the decline of
+country life and increase of the towns; the birth of the Cinema.
+Men are, in fact, quite unable to control their own inventions;
+they at best develop adaptability to the new conditions those
+inventions create.
+
+But this long tale is no scientific study of a period; it is
+rather an intimate incarnation of the disturbance that Beauty
+effects in the lives of men.
+
+The figure of Irene, never, as the reader may possibly have
+observed, present, except through the senses of other characters,
+is a concretion of disturbing Beauty impinging on a possessive
+world.
+
+One has noticed that readers, as they wade on through the salt
+waters of the Saga, are inclined more and more to pity Soames,
+and to think that in doing so they are in revolt against the mood
+of his creator.  Far from it!  He, too, pities Soames, the
+tragedy of whose life is the very simple, uncontrollable tragedy
+of being unlovable, without quite a thick enough skin to be
+thoroughly unconscious of the fact.  Not even Fleur loves Soames
+as he feels he ought to be loved.  But in pitying Soames, readers
+incline, perhaps, to animus against Irene: After all, they think,
+he wasn't a bad fellow, it wasn't his fault; she ought to have
+forgiven him, and so on!
+
+And, taking sides, they lose perception of the simple truth,
+which underlies the whole story, that where sex attraction is
+utterly and definitely lacking in one partner to a union, no
+amount of pity, or reason, or duty, or what not, can overcome a
+repulsion implicit in Nature.  Whether it ought to, or no, is
+beside the point; because in fact it never does.  And where Irene
+seems hard and cruel, as in the Bois de Boulogne, or the Goupenor
+Gallery, she is but wisely realistic--knowing that the least
+concession is the inch which precedes the impossible, the
+repulsive ell.
+
+A criticism one might pass on the last phase of the Saga is the
+complaint that Irene and Jolyon those rebels against property--
+claim spiritual property in their son Jon.  But it would be
+hypercriticism, as the tale is told.  No father and mother could
+have let the boy marry Fleur without knowledge of the facts; and
+the facts determine Jon, not the persuasion of his parents.
+Moreover, Jolyon's persuasion is not on his own account, but on
+Irene's, and Irene's persuasion becomes a reiterated: "Don't
+think of me, think of yourself!" That Jon, knowing the facts, can
+realise his mother's feelings, will hardly with justice be held
+proof that she is, after all, a Forsyte.
+
+But though the impingement of Beauty and the claims of Freedom on
+a possessive world are the main prepossessions of the Forsyte
+Saga, it cannot be absolved from the charge of embalming the
+upper-middle class.  As the old Egyptians placed around their
+mummies the necessaries of a future existence, so I have
+endeavoured to lay beside the, figures of Aunts Ann and Juley and
+Hester, of Timothy and Swithin, of Old Jolyon and James, and of
+their sons, that which shall guarantee them a little life here-
+after, a little balm in the hurried Gilead of a dissolving
+"Progress."
+
+If the upper-middle class, with other classes, is destined to
+"move on" into amorphism, here, pickled in these pages, it lies
+under glass for strollers in the wide and ill-arranged museum of
+Letters.  Here it rests, preserved in its own juice: The Sense
+of Property.
+
+1922.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN OF PROPERTY
+
+by JOHN GALSWORTHY
+
+
+
+
+"........  You will answer
+The slaves are ours ....."
+-Merchant of Venice.
+
+
+
+
+TO EDWARD GARNETT
+
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+'AT HOME' AT OLD JOLYON'S
+
+
+Those privileged to be present at a family festival of the
+Forsytes have seen that charming and instructive sight--an upper
+middle-class family in full plumage.  But whosoever of these
+favoured persons has possessed the gift of psychological analysis
+(a talent without monetary value and properly ignored by the
+Forsytes), has witnessed a spectacle, not only delightful in
+itself, but illustrative of an obscure human problem.  In plainer
+words, he has gleaned from a gathering of this family--no branch
+of which had a liking for the other, between no three members of
+whom existed anything worthy of the name of sympathy--evidence of
+that mysterious concrete tenacity which renders a family so
+formidable a unit of society, so clear a reproduction of society
+in miniature.  He has been admitted to a vision of the dim roads
+of social progress, has understood something of patriarchal life,
+of the swarmings of savage hordes, of the rise and fall of
+nations.  He is like one who, having watched a tree grow from its
+planting--a paragon of tenacity, insulation, and success, amidst
+the deaths of a hundred other plants less fibrous, sappy, and
+persistent--one day will see it flourishing with bland, full
+foliage, in an almost repugnant prosperity, at the summit of its
+efflorescence.
+
+On June 15, eighteen eighty-six, about four of the afternoon, the
+observer who chanced to be present at the house of old Jolyon
+Forsyte in Stanhope Gate, might have seen the highest
+efflorescence of the Forsytes.
+
+This was the occasion of an 'at home' to celebrate the engagement
+of Miss June Forsyte, old Jolyon's granddaughter, to Mr. Philip
+Bosinney.  In the bravery of light gloves, buff waistcoats,
+feathers and frocks, the family were present, even Aunt Ann, who
+now but seldom left the comer of her brother Timothy's green
+drawing-room, where, under the aegis of a plume of dyed pampas
+grass in a light blue vase, she sat all day reading and knitting,
+surrounded by the effigies of three generations of Forsytes.
+Even Aunt Ann was there; her inflexible back, and the dignity of
+her calm old face personifying the rigid possessiveness of the
+family idea.
+
+When a Forsyte was engaged, married, or born, the Forsytes were
+present; when a Forsyte died--but no Forsyte had as yet died;
+they did not die; death being contrary to their principles, they
+took precautions against it, the instinctive precautions of
+highly vitalized persons who resent encroachments on their
+property.
+
+About the Forsytes mingling that day with the crowd of other
+guests, there was a more than ordinarily groomed look, an alert,
+inquisitive assurance, a brilliant respectability, as though they
+were attired in defiance of something.  The habitual sniff on the
+face of Soames Forsyte had spread through their ranks; they were
+on their guard.
+
+The subconscious offensiveness of their attitude has constituted
+old Jolyon's 'home' the psychological moment of the family
+history, made it the prelude of their drama.
+
+The Forsytes were resentful of something, not individually, but
+as a family; this resentment expressed itself in an added
+perfection of raiment, an exuberance of family cordiality, an
+exaggeration of family importance, and--the sniff.  Danger--so
+indispensable in bringing out the fundamental quality of any
+society, group, or individual--was what the Forsytes scented; the
+premonition of danger put a burnish on their armour.  For the
+first time, as a family, they appeared to have an instinct of
+being in contact, with some strange and unsafe thing.
+
+Over against the piano a man of bulk and stature was wearing two
+waistcoats on his wide chest, two waistcoats and a ruby pin,
+instead of the single satin waistcoat and diamond pin of, more
+usual occasions, and his shaven, square, old -face, the colour of
+pale leather, with pale eyes, had its most dignified look, above
+his satin stock.  This was Swithin Forsyte.  Close to the window,
+where he could get more than his fair share of fresh air, the
+other twin, James--the fat and the lean of it, old Jolyon called
+these brothers--like the bulky Swithin, over six feet in height,
+but very lean, as though destined from his birth to strike a
+balance and maintain an average, brooded over the scene with his
+permanent stoop; his grey eyes had an air of fixed absorption in
+some secret worry, broken at intervals by a rapid, shifting
+scrutiny of surrounding facts; his cheeks, thinned by two
+parallel folds, and a long, clean-shaven upper lip, were framed
+within Dundreary whiskers.  In his hands he turned and turned a
+piece of china.  Not far off, listening to a lady in brown, his
+only son Soames, pale and well-shaved, dark-haired, rather bald,
+had poked his chin up sideways, carrying his nose with that
+aforesaid appearance of 'sniff,' as though despising an egg which
+he knew he could not digest.  Behind him his cousin, the tall
+George, son of the fifth Forsyte, Roger, had a Quilpish look on
+his fleshy face, pondering one of his sardonic jests.  Something
+inherent to the occasion had affected them all.
+
+Seated in a row close to one another were three  ladies--Aunts
+Ann, Hester (the two Forsyte maids), and Juley (short for Julia),
+who not in first youth had so far forgotten herself as to marry
+Septimus Small, a man of poor constitution.  She had survived him
+for many years.  With her elder and younger sister she lived now
+in the house of Timothy, her sixth and youngest brother, on the
+Bayswater Road.  Each of these ladies held fans in their hands,
+and each with some touch of Colour, some emphatic feather or
+brooch, testified to the solemnity of the opportunity.
+
+In the centre of the room, under the chandelier, as became a
+host, stood the head of the family, old Jolyon himself.  Eighty
+years of age, with his fine, white hair, his dome-like forehead,
+his little, dark grey eyes, and an immense white moustache, which
+drooped and spread below the level of his strong jaw, he had a
+patriarchal look, and in spite of lean cheeks and hollows at his
+temples, seemed master of perennial youth.  He held him self
+extremely upright, and his shrewd, steady  eyes had lost none of
+their clear shining.  Thus  he gave an impression of superiority
+to the  doubts and dislikes of smaller men.  Having had  his own
+way for innumerable years, he had  earned a prescriptive right to
+it.  It would never have occurred to old Jolyon that it was
+necessary to wear a look of doubt or of defiance.
+
+Between him and the four other brothers who were present, James,
+Swithin, Nicholas, and Roger, there was much difference, much
+similarity.  In turn, each of these four brothers was very
+different from the other, yet they, too, were alike.
+
+Through the varying features and expression  of those five faces
+could be marked a certain  steadfastness of chin, underlying
+surface distinctions, marking a racial stamp, too prehistoric to
+trace, too remote and permanent to discuss--the  very hall-mark
+and guarantee of the family for tunes.
+
+Among the younger generation, in the tall, bull-like George, in
+pallid strenuous Archibald, in young Nicholas with his sweet and
+tentative obstinacy, in the grave and foppishly determined
+Eustace, there was this same stamp--less meaningful perhaps, but
+unmistakable--a sign of something ineradicable in the family
+soul. At one time or another during the afternoon, all these
+faces, so dissimilar and so alike, had worn an expression of
+distrust, the object of which was undoubtedly the man whose
+acquaintance they were thus assembled to make.  Philip Bosinney
+was known to be a young man without fortune, but Forsyte girls
+had become engaged to such before, and had actually married them.
+It was not altogether for this reason, therefore, that the minds
+of the Forsytes misgave them.  They could not have explained the
+origin of a misgiving obscured by the mist of family gossip.  A
+story was undoubtedly told that he had paid his duty call to
+Aunts Ann, Juley, and Hester, in a soft grey hat--a soft grey
+hat, not even a new one--a dusty thing with a shapeless crown.
+"So, extraordinary, my dear--so odd," Aunt Hester, passing
+through the little, dark hall (she was rather short-sighted), had
+tried to 'shoo' it off a chair, taking it for a strange,
+disreputable cat--Tommy had such disgraceful friends!  She was
+disturbed when it did not move.  Like an artist for ever seeking
+to discover the significant trifle which embodies the whole
+character of a scene, or place, or person, so those unconscious
+artists--the Forsytes had fastened by intuition on this hat; it
+was their significant trifle, the detail in which was embedded
+the meaning of the whole matter; for each had asked himself:
+"Come, now, should I have paid that visit in that hat?" and each
+had answered "No!" and some, with more imagination than others,
+had added: "It would never have come into my head!"
+
+George, on hearing the story, grinned.  The hat had obviously
+been worn as a practical joke!  He himself was a connoisseur of
+such. "Very haughty!" he said, "the wild Buccaneer."
+
+And this mot, the 'Buccaneer,' was bandied from mouth to mouth,
+till it became the favourite mode of alluding to Bosinney.
+
+Her aunts reproached June afterwards about the hat.
+
+"We don't think you ought to let him, dear!" they had said.
+
+June had answered in her imperious brisk way, like the little
+embodiment of will she was:  "Oh! what does it matter?  Phil
+never knows what he's got on!"
+
+No one had credited an answer so outrageous.  A man not to know
+what he had on?  No, no!  What indeed was this young man, who, in
+becoming engaged to June, old Jolyon's acknowledged heiress, had
+done so well for himself?  He was an architect, not in itself a
+sufficient reason for wearing such a hat.  None of the Forsytes
+happened to be architects, but one of them knew two architects
+who would never have worn such a hat upon a call of ceremony in
+the London season.
+
+Dangerous--ah, dangerous!  June, of course, had not seen this,
+but, though not yet nineteen, she was notorious.  Had she not
+said to Mrs. Soames--who was always so beautifully dressed--that
+feathers were vulgar?  Mrs. Soames had actually given up wearing
+feathers, so dreadfully downright was dear June!
+
+These misgivings, this disapproval, and perfectly genuine
+distrust, did not prevent the Forsytes from gathering to old
+Jolyon's invitation.  An 'At Home' at Stanhope Gate was a great
+rarity; none had been held for twelve years, not indeed, since
+old Mrs. Jolyon had died.
+
+Never had there been so full an assembly, for, mysteriously
+united in spite of all their differences, they had taken arms
+against a common peril.  Like cattle when a dog comes into the
+field, they stood head to head and shoulder to shoulder, prepared
+to run upon and trample the invader to death.  They had come,
+too, no doubt, to get some notion of what sort of presents they
+would ultimately be expected to give; for though the question of
+wedding gifts was usually graduated in this way: 'What are you
+givin?  Nicholas is givin' spoons!"--so very much depended on the
+bridegroom.  If he were sleek, well-brushed, prosperous-looking,
+it was more necessary to give him nice things; he would expect
+them.  In the end each gave exactly what was right and proper, by
+a species of family adjustment arrived at as prices are arrived
+at on the Stock Exchange--the exact niceties being regulated at
+Timothy's commodious, red-brick residence in Bayswater,
+overlooking the Park, where dwelt Aunts Ann, Juley, and Hester.
+
+The uneasiness of the Forsyte family has been justified by the
+simple mention of the hat.  How impossible and wrong would it
+have been for any family, with the regard for appearances which
+should ever characterize, the great upper middle-class, to feel
+otherwise than uneasy!
+
+The author of the uneasiness stood talking to June by the further
+door; his curly hair had a rumpled appearance, as though he found
+what was going on around him unusual.  He had an air, too, of
+having a joke all to himself.  George, speaking aside to his
+brother, Eustace, said:
+
+"Looks as if he might make a bolt of it--the dashing Buccaneer!"
+
+This 'very singular-looking man,' as Mrs. Small afterwards called
+him, was of medium height and strong build, with a pale, brown
+face, a dust-coloured moustache, very prominent cheek-bones, and
+hollow checks.  His forehead sloped back towards the crown of his
+head, and bulged out in bumps over the eyes, like foreheads seen
+in the Lion-house at the Zoo.  He had sherry-coloured eyes,
+disconcertingly inattentive at times.  Old Jolyon's coachman,
+after driving June and Bosinney to the theatre, had remarked to
+the butler:
+
+"I dunno what to make of 'im.  Looks to me for all the world like
+an 'alf-tame leopard." And every now and then a Forsyte would
+come up, sidle round, and take a look at him.
+
+June stood in front, fending off this idle curiosity--a little
+bit of a thing, as somebody once said, 'all hair and spirit,'
+with fearless blue eyes, a firm jaw, and a bright colour, whose
+face and body seemed too slender for her crown of red-gold hair.
+
+A tall woman, with a beautiful figure, which some member of the
+family had once compared to a heathen goddess, stood looking at
+these two with a shadowy smile.
+
+Her hands, gloved in French grey, were crossed one over the
+other, her grave, charming face held to one side, and the eyes of
+all men near were fastened on it.  Her figure swayed, so balanced
+that the very air seemed to set it moving.  There was warmth, but
+little colour, in her cheeks; her large, dark eyes were soft.
+
+But it was at her lips--asking a question, giving an answer, with
+that shadowy smile--that men looked; they were sensitive lips,
+sensuous and sweet, and through them seemed to come warmth and
+perfume like the warmth and perfume of a flower.
+
+The engaged couple thus scrutinized were unconscious of this
+passive goddess.  It was Bosinney who first noticed her, and
+asked her name.
+
+June took her lover up to the woman with the beautiful figure.
+
+"Irene is my greatest chum," she said: "Please be good friends,
+you two!"
+
+At the little lady's command they all three smiled; and while
+they were smiling, Soames Forsyte, silently appearing from behind
+the woman with the beautiful figure, who was his wife, said:
+
+"Ah!  introduce me too!"
+
+He was seldom, indeed, far from Irene's side at public functions,
+and even when separated by, the exigencies of social intercourse,
+could be seen following her about with his eyes, in which were
+strange expressions of watchfulness and longing.
+
+At the window his father, James, was still scrutinizing the marks
+on the piece of china..
+
+"I wonder at Jolyon's allowing this engagement," he said to Aunt
+Ann.  "They tell me there's no chance of their getting married
+for years.  This young Bosinney" (he made the word a dactyl in
+opposition to general usage of a short o) "has got nothing.  When
+Winifred married Dartie, I made him bring every penny into
+settlement--lucky thing, too--they'd ha' had nothing by this
+time!"
+
+Aunt Ann looked up from her velvet chair.  Grey curls banded her
+forehead, curls that, unchanged for decades, had extinguished in
+the family all sense of time.  She made no reply, for she rarely
+spoke, husbanding her aged voice; but to James, uneasy of
+conscience, her look was as good as an answer.
+
+"Well," he said, "I couldn't help Irene's having no money.
+Soames was in such a hurry; he got quite thin dancing attendance
+on her."
+
+Putting the bowl pettishly down on the piano, he let his eyes
+wander to the group by the door.
+
+"It's my opinion," he said unexpectedly, "that it's just as well
+
+as it is."
+
+Aunt Ann did not ask him to explain this strange utterance.  She
+knew what he was thinking.  If Irene had no money she would not
+be so foolish as to do anything wrong; for they said--they said--
+she had been asking for a separate room; but, of course, Soames
+had not....
+
+James interrupted her reverie:
+
+"But where," he asked, "was Timothy?  Hadn't he come with them?"
+
+Through Aunt Ann's compressed lips a tender smile forced its way:
+
+"No, he didn't think it wise, with so much of this diphtheria
+about; and he so liable to take things."
+
+James answered:
+
+"Well, be takes good care of himself.  I can't afford to take the
+care of myself that he does."
+
+Nor was it easy to say which, of admiration, envy, or contempt,
+was dominant in that remark.
+
+Timothy, indeed, was seldom seen.  The baby of the family, a
+publisher by profession, he had some years before, when business
+was at full tide, scented out the stagnation which, indeed, had
+not yet come, but which ultimately, as all agreed, was bound to
+set in, and, selling his share in a firm engaged mainly in the
+production of religious books, had invested the quite conspicuous
+proceeds in three per cent. consols.  By this act he had at once
+assumed an isolated position, no other Forsyte being content with
+less than four per cent.  for his money; and this isolation had
+slowly and surely undermined a spirit perhaps better than
+commonly endowed with caution.  He had become almost a myth--a
+kind of incarnation of security haunting the background of the
+Forsyte universe.  He had never committed the imprudence of
+marrying, or encumbering himself in any way with children.
+
+James resumed, tapping the piece of china:
+
+"This isn't real old Worcester.  I s'pose Jolyon's told you
+something about the young man.  From all I can learn, he's got no
+business, no income, and no connection worth speaking of; but
+then, I know nothing--nobody tells me anything."
+
+Aunt Ann shook her head.  Over her square-chinned, aquiline old
+face a trembling passed; the spidery fingers of her hands pressed
+against each other and interlaced, as though she were subtly
+recharging her will.
+
+The eldest by some years of all the Forsytes, she held a peculiar
+position amongst them.  Opportunists and egotists one and all--
+though not, indeed, more so than their neighbours--they quailed
+before her incorruptible figure, and, when opportunities were too
+strong, what could they do but avoid her!
+
+Twisting his long, thin legs, James went on:
+
+"Jolyon, he will have his own way.  He's got no children"--and
+stopped, recollecting the continued existence of old Jolyon's
+son, young Jolyon, June's father, who had made such a mess of it,
+and done for himself by deserting his wife and child and running
+away with that foreign governess.  "Well," he resumed hastily,
+"if he likes to do these things, I s'pose he can afford to.  Now,
+what's he going to give her?  I s'pose he'll give her a thousand
+a year; he's got nobody else to leave his money to."
+
+He stretched out his hand to meet that of a dapper, clean-shaven
+man, with hardly a hair on his head, a long, broken nose, full
+lips, and cold grey eyes under rectangular brows.
+
+"Well, Nick," he muttered, "how are you?"
+
+Nicholas Forsyte, with his bird-like rapidity and the look of a
+preternaturally sage schoolboy (he had made a large fortune,
+quite legitimately, out of the companies of which he was a
+director), placed within that cold palm the tips of his still
+colder fingers and hastily withdrew them.
+
+"I'm bad," he said, pouting--"been bad all the week; don't sleep
+at night.  The doctor can't tell why.  He's a clever fellow, or I
+shouldn't have him, but I get nothing out of him but bills."
+
+"Doctors!" said James, coming down sharp on his words: "I've had
+all the doctors in London for one or another of us.  There's no
+satisfaction to be got out of them; they'll tell you anything.
+There's Swithin, now.  What good have they done him?  There he
+is; he's bigger than ever; he's enormous; they can't get his
+weight down.  Look at him!"
+
+Swithin Forsyte, tall, square, and broad, with a chest like a
+pouter pigeon's in its plumage of bright waistcoats, came
+strutting towards them.
+
+"Er--how are you?" he said in his dandified way, aspirating the
+'h' strongly (this difficult letter was almost absolutely safe in
+his keeping)--"how are you?"
+
+Each brother wore an air of aggravation as he looked at the other
+two, knowing by experience that they would try to eclipse his
+ailments.
+
+"We were just saying," said James, "that you don't get any
+thinner."
+
+Swithin protruded his pale round eyes with the effort of hearing.
+
+"Thinner?  I'm in good case," he said, leaning a little forward,
+"not one of your thread-papers like you!"
+
+But, afraid of losing the expansion of his chest, he leaned back
+again into a state of immobility, for he prized nothing so highly
+as a distinguished appearance.
+
+Aunt Ann turned her old eyes from one to the other.  Indulgent
+and severe was her look.  In turn the three brothers looked at
+Ann.  She was getting shaky.  Wonderful woman!  Eighty-six if a
+day; might live another ten years, and had never been strong.
+Swithin and James, the twins, were only seventy-five, Nicholas a
+mere baby of seventy or so.  All were strong, and the inference
+was comforting. Of all forms of property their respective healths
+naturally concerned them most.
+
+"I'm very well in myself," proceeded James, "but my nerves are
+out of order.  The least thing worries me to death.  I shall have
+to go to Bath."
+
+"Bath!" said Nicholas.  "I've tried Harrogate.  That's no good.
+What I want is sea air.  There's nothing like Yarmouth.  Now,
+when I go there I sleep...."
+
+"My liver's very bad," interrupted Swithin slowly.  "Dreadful
+pain here;" and he placed his hand on his right side.
+
+"Want of exercise," muttered James, his eyes on the china.  He
+quickly added: "I get a pain there, too."
+
+Swithin reddened, a resemblance to a turkey-cock coming upon his
+old face.
+
+"Exercise!" he said.  "I take plenty: I never use the lift at the
+Club."
+
+"I didn't know," James hurried out.  "I know nothing about
+anybody; nobody tells me anything...."
+
+Swithin fixed him with a stare:
+
+"What do you do for a pain there?"
+
+James brightened.
+
+"I take a compound...."
+
+"How are you, uncle?"
+
+June stood before him, her resolute small face raised from her
+little height to his great height, and her hand outheld.
+
+The brightness faded from James's visage.
+
+"How are you?" he said, brooding over her.  "So you're going to
+Wales to-morrow to visit your young man's aunts?  You'll have a
+lot of rain there.  This isn't real old Worcester."  He tapped the
+bowl.  "Now, that set I gave your mother when she married was the
+genuine thing."
+
+June shook hands one by one with her three great-uncles, and
+turned to Aunt Ann.  A very sweet look had come into the old
+lady's face, she kissed the girl's check with trembling fervour.
+
+"Well, my dear," she said, "and so you're going for, a whole
+month!"
+
+The girl passed on, and Aunt Ann looked after her slim little
+figure.  The old lady's round, steel grey eyes, over which a film
+like a bird's was beginning to come, followed her wistfully
+amongst the bustling crowd, for people were beginning to
+say good-bye; and her finger-tips, pressing and pressing against
+each other, were busy again with the recharging of her will
+against that inevitable ultimate departure of her own.
+
+'Yes,' she thought, 'everybody's been most kind; quite a lot of
+people come to congratulate her.  She ought to be very happy.'
+Amongst the throng of people by the door, the well-dressed throng
+drawn from the families of lawyers and doctors, from the Stock
+Exchange, and all the innumerable avocations of the upper-middle
+class--there were only some twenty percent of Forsytes; but to
+Aunt Ann they seemed all Forsytes--and certainly there was not
+much difference--she saw only her own flesh and blood.  It was
+her world, this family, and she knew no other, had never perhaps
+known any other.  All their little secrets, illnesses,
+engagements, and marriages, how they were getting on, and whether
+they were making money--all this was her property, her delight,
+her life; beyond this only a vague, shadowy mist of--facts and
+persons of no real significance.  This it was that she would have
+to lay down when it came to her turn  to die; this which gave to
+
+her that importance, that secret self-importance, without which
+none of us can bear to live; and to this she clung wistfully,
+with a greed that grew each day!  If life were slipping away from
+her, this she would retain to the end.
+
+She thought of June's father, young Jolyon, who had run away with
+that foreign girl.  And what a sad blow to his father and to them
+all.  Such a promising young fellow!  A sad blow, though there
+had been no public scandal, most fortunately, Jo's wife seeking
+for no divorce!  A long time ago!  And when June's mother died,
+six years ago, Jo had married that woman, and they had two
+children now, so she had heard.  Still, he had forfeited his
+right to be there, had cheated her of the complete fulfilment of
+her family pride, deprived her of the rightful pleasure of seeing
+and kissing him of whom she had been so proud, such a promising
+young fellow!  The thought rankled with the bitterness of a
+long-inflicted injury in her tenacious old heart.  A little water
+stood in her eyes.  With a handkerchief of the finest lawn she
+wiped them stealthily.
+
+"Well, Aunt Ann?" said a voice behind.
+
+Soames Forsyte, flat-shouldered, clean-shaven, flat-cheeked,
+flat-waisted, yet with something round and secret about his whole
+appearance, looked downwards and aslant at Aunt Ann, as though
+trying to see through the side of his own nose.
+
+"And what do you think of the engagement?" he asked.
+
+Aunt Ann's eyes rested on him proudly; of all the nephews since
+young Jolyon's departure from the family nest, he was now her
+favourite, for she recognised in him a sure trustee of the family
+soul that must so soon slip beyond her keeping.
+
+"Very nice for the young man," she said; "and he's a good-looking
+young fellow; but I doubt if he's quite the right lover for dear
+June."
+
+Soames touched the edge of a gold-lacquered lustre.
+
+"She'll tame him," he said, stealthily wetting his finger and
+rubbing it on the knobby bulbs.  "That's genuine old lacquer; you
+can't get it nowadays.  It'd do well in a sale at Jobson's." He
+spoke with relish, as though he felt that he was cheering up his
+old aunt.  It was seldom he was so confidential.  "I wouldn't
+mind having it myself," he added; "you can always get your price
+for old lacquer."
+
+"You're so clever with all those things," said Aunt Ann.  "And
+how is dear Irene?"
+
+Soames's smile died.
+
+"Pretty well," he said.  "Complains she can't sleep; she sleeps a
+great deal better than I do," and he looked at his wife, who was
+talking to Bosinney by the door.
+
+Aunt Ann sighed.
+
+"Perhaps," she said, "it will be just as well for her not to see
+so much of June.  She's such a decided character, dear June!"
+
+Soames flushed; his flushes passed rapidly over his flat cheeks
+and centered between his eyes, where they remained, the stamp of
+disturbing thoughts.
+
+"I don't know what she sees in that little flibbertigibbet," he
+burst out, but noticing that they were no longer alone, he turned
+and again began examining the lustre.
+
+"They tell me Jolyon's bought another house," said his father's
+voice close by; "he must have a lot of money--he must have more
+money than he knows what to do with!  Montpellier Square, they
+say; close to Soames!  They never told me, Irene never tells me
+anything!"
+
+"Capital position, not two minutes from me," said the voice of
+Swithin, "and from my rooms I can drive to the Club in eight."
+
+The position of their houses was of vital importance to the
+Forsytes, nor was this remarkable, since the whole spirit of
+their success was embodied therein.
+
+Their father, of farming stock, had come from Dorsetshire near
+the beginning of the century.
+
+'Superior Dosset Forsyte, as he was called by his intimates, had
+been a stonemason by trade, and risen to the position of a
+master-builder.
+
+Towards the end of his life he moved to London, where, building
+on until he died, he was buried at Highgate.  He left over thirty
+thousand pounds between his ten children.  Old Jolyon alluded to
+him, if at all, as 'A hard, thick sort of man; not much
+refinement about him.' The second generation of Forsytes felt
+indeed that, he was not greatly to their credit.  The only
+aristocratic trait they could find in his character was a habit
+of drinking Madeira.
+
+Aunt Hester, an authority on family history, described him thus:
+"I don't recollect that he ever did anything; at least, not in my
+time.  He was  er--an owner of houses, my dear.  His hair about
+your Uncle Swithin's colour; rather a square build.  Tall?  No--
+not very tall" (he had been five feet, five, with a mottled
+face); "a fresh-coloured man.  I remember he used to drink
+Madeira; but ask your Aunt Ann.  What was his father?  He--er--
+had to do with the land down in Dorsetshire, by the sea."
+
+James once went down to see for himself what sort of place this
+was that they had come from.  He found two old farms, with a cart
+track rutted into the pink earth, leading down to a mill by the
+beach; a little grey church with a buttressed outer wall, and a
+smaller and greyer chapel.  The stream which worked the mill came
+bubbling down in a dozen rivulets, and pigs were hunting round
+that estuary.  A haze hovered over the prospect.  Down this
+hollow, with their feet deep in the mud and their faces towards
+the sea, it appeared that the primeval Forsytes had been content
+to walk Sunday after Sunday for hundreds of years.
+
+Whether or no James had cherished hopes of an inheritance, or of
+something rather distinguished to be found down there, he came
+back to town in a poor way, and went about with a pathetic
+attempt at making the best of a bad job.
+
+"There's very little to be had out of that," he said; "regular
+country little place, old as the hills...."
+
+Its age was felt to be a comfort.  Old Jolyon, in whom a
+desperate honesty welled up at times, would allude to his
+ancestors as: "Yeomen--I suppose very small beer."  Yet he would
+repeat the word 'yeomen' as if it afforded him consolation.
+
+They had all done so well for themselves, these Forsytes, that
+they were all what is called 'of a certain position.' They had
+shares in all sorts of things, not as yet--with the exception of
+Timothy--in consols, for they had no dread in life like that of
+3 per cent. for their money.  They collected pictures, too, and
+were supporters of such charitable  institutions as might be
+beneficial to their sick domestics.  From their father, the
+builder, they inherited a talent for bricks and mortar.
+Originally, perhaps, members of some primitive sect, they were
+now in the natural course of things members of the Church of
+England, and caused their wives and children to attend with some
+regularity the more fashionable churches of the Metropolis.  To
+have doubted their Christianity would have caused them both pain
+and surprise.  Some of them paid for pews, thus expressing in the
+most practical form their sympathy with the teachings of Christ.
+
+Their residences, placed at stated intervals round the park,
+watched like sentinels, lest the fair heart of this London, where
+their desires were fixed, should slip from their clutches, and
+leave them lower in their own estimations.
+
+There was old Jolyon in Stanhope Place; the Jameses in Park Lane;
+Swithin in the lonely glory of orange and blue chambers in Hyde
+Park Mansions--he had never married, not he--the Soamses in their
+nest off Knightsbridge; the Rogers in Prince's Gardens (Roger was
+that remarkable Forsyte who had conceived and carried out the
+notion of bringing up his four sons to a new profession.
+
+"Collect house property, nothing like it," he would say; "I never
+did anything else").
+
+The Haymans again--Mrs. Hayman was the one married Forsyte
+sister--in a house high up on Campden Hill, shaped like a
+giraffe, and so tall that it gave the observer a crick in the
+neck; the Nicholases in Ladbroke Grove, a spacious abode and a
+great bargain; and last, but not least, Timothy's on the
+Bayswater Road, where Ann, and Juley, and Hester, lived under his
+protection.
+
+But all this time James was musing, and now he inquired of his
+host and brother what he had given for that house in Montpellier
+Square.  He himself had had his eye on a house there for the last
+two years, but they wanted such a price.
+
+Old Jolyon recounted the details of his purchase.
+
+"Twenty-two years to run?" repeated James; "The very house I was
+after--you've given too much for it!"
+
+Old Jolyon frowned.
+
+"It's not that I want it," said James hastily; it wouldn't suit
+my purpose at that price.  Soames knows the house, well--he'll
+tell you it's too dear--his opinion's worth having."
+
+"I don't," said old Jolyon, "care a fig for his opinion."
+
+"Well," murmured James, "you will have your own way--it's a good
+opinion.  Good-bye!  We're going to drive down to Hurlingham.
+They tell me June's going to Wales.  You'll be lonely tomorrow.
+What'll you do with yourself?  You'd better come and dine with
+us!"
+
+Old Jolyon refused.  He went down to the front door and saw them
+into their barouche, and twinkled at them, having already
+forgotten his spleen--Mrs. James facing the horses, tall and
+majestic with auburn hair; on her left, Irene--the two husbands,
+father and son, sitting forward, as though they expected
+something, opposite their wives.  Bobbing and bounding upon the
+
+spring cushions, silent, swaying to each motion of their chariot,
+old Jolyon watched them drive away under the sunlight.
+
+During the drive the silence was broken by Mrs. James.
+
+"Did you ever see such a collection of rumty-too people?"
+
+Soames, glancing at her beneath his eyelids, nodded, and he saw
+Irene steal at him one of her unfathomable looks.  It is likely
+enough that each branch of the Forsyte family made that remark as
+they drove away from old Jolyon's 'At Home!'
+
+Amongst the last of the departing guests the fourth and fifth
+brothers, Nicholas and Roger, walked away together, directing
+their steps alongside Hyde Park towards the Praed Street Station
+of the Underground.  Like all other Forsytes of a certain age
+they kept carriages of their own, and never took cabs if by any
+means they could avoid it.
+
+The day was bright, the trees of the Park in the full beauty of
+mid-June foliage; the brothers did not seem to notice phenomena,
+which contributed, nevertheless, to the jauntiness of promenade
+and conversation.
+
+"Yes," said Roger, "she's a good-lookin' woman, that wife of
+Soames's.  I'm told they don't get on."
+
+This brother had a high forehead, and the freshest colour of any
+of the Forsytes; his light grey eyes measured the street frontage
+of the houses by the way, and now and then he would level his,
+umbrella and take a 'lunar,' as he expressed it, of the varying
+heights.
+
+"She'd no money," replied Nicholas.
+
+He himself had married a good deal of money, of which, it being
+then the golden age before the Married Women's Property Act, he
+had mercifully been enabled to make a successful use.
+
+"What was her father?"
+
+"Heron was his name, a Professor, so they tell me."
+
+Roger shook his head.
+
+"There's no money in that," he said.
+
+"They say her mother's father was cement."
+
+Roger's face brightened.
+
+"But he went bankrupt," went on Nicholas.
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Roger, "Soames will have trouble with her; you
+mark my words, he'll have trouble--she's got a foreign look."
+
+Nicholas licked his lips.
+
+"She's a pretty woman," and he waved aside a crossing-sweeper.
+
+"How did he get hold of her?" asked Roger presently.  "She must
+cost him a pretty penny in dress!"
+
+"Ann tells me," replied Nicholas," he was half-cracked about her.
+She refused him five times.  James, he's nervous about it, I can
+see."
+
+"Ah!" said Roger again; "I'm sorry for James; he had trouble with
+Dartie."  His pleasant colour was heightened by exercise, he swung
+his umbrella to the level of his eye more frequently than ever.
+Nicholas's face also wore a pleasant look.
+
+"Too pale for me," he said, "but her figures capital!"
+
+Roger made no reply.
+
+"I call her distinguished-looking," he said at last--it was the
+highest praise in the Forsyte vocabulary.  "That young Bosinney
+will never do any good for himself.  They say at Burkitt's he's
+one of these artistic chaps--got an idea of improving English
+architecture; there's no money in that!  I should like to hear
+what Timothy would say to it."
+
+They entered the station.
+
+"What class are you going?  I go second."
+
+"No second for me," said Nicholas;--"you never know what you may
+catch."
+
+He took a first-class ticket to Notting Hill Gate; Roger a second
+to South Kensington.  The train coming in a minute later, the two
+brothers parted and entered their respective compartments.  Each
+felt aggrieved that the other had not modified his habits to
+secure his society a little longer; but as Roger voiced it in his
+thoughts:
+'Always a stubborn beggar, Nick!'
+
+And as Nicholas expressed it to himself:
+
+'Cantankerous chap Roger--always was!'
+
+There was little sentimentality about the Forsytes.  In that
+great London, which they had conquered and become merged in, what
+time had they to be sentimental?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+OLD JOLYON GOES TO THE OPERA
+
+
+At five o'clock the following day old Jolyon sat alone, a cigar
+between his lips, and on a table by his side a cup of tea.  He
+was tired, and  before he had finished his cigar he fell asleep.
+A fly settled on his hair, his breathing sounded heavy in the
+drowsy silence, his upper lip under the white moustache puffed in
+and out.  From between the fingers of his veined and wrinkled
+hand the 'cigar, dropping on the empty hearth, burned itself out.
+
+The gloomy little, study, with windows of stained glass to
+exclude the view, was full of dark green velvet and
+heavily-carved mahogany--a suite of which old Jolyon was wont to
+say: 'Shouldn't wonder if it made a big price some day!'
+
+It was pleasant to think that in the after life he could get more
+for things than he had given.
+
+In the rich brown atmosphere peculiar to back rooms in the
+mansion of a Forsyte, the Rembrandtesque effect of his great
+head, with its white hair, against the cushion of his high-backed
+seat, was spoiled by the moustache, which imparted a somewhat
+military look to his face.  An old clock that had been with him
+since before his marriage forty years ago kept with its ticking a
+jealous record of the seconds slipping away forever from its old
+master.
+
+He had never cared for this room, hardly going into it from one
+year's end to another, except to take cigars from the Japanese
+cabinet in the corner, and the room now had its revenge.
+
+His temples, curving like thatches over the hollows beneath, his
+cheek-bones and chin, all were sharpened in his sleep, and there
+had come upon his face the confession that he was an old man.
+
+He woke.  June had gone!  James had said he would be lonely.
+James had always been a poor thing.  He recollected with
+satisfaction that he had bought that house over James's head.
+
+Serve him right for sticking at the price; the only thing the
+fellow thought of was money.  Had he given too much, though?  It
+wanted a lot of doing to--He dared say he would want all his
+money before he had done with this affair of June's.  He ought
+never to have allowed the engagement.  She had met this Bosinney
+At the house of Baynes, Baynes and Bildeboy, the architects.  He
+believed that Baynes, whom he knew--a bit of an old woman--was
+the young man's uncle by marriage.  After that she'd been always
+running after him; and when she took a thing into her head there
+was no stopping her.  She was continually taking up with 'lame
+ducks' of one sort or another.  This fellow had no money, but she
+must needs become engaged to him--a harumscarum, unpractical
+chap, who would get himself into no end of difficulties.
+
+She had come to him one day in her slap-dash way and told him;
+and, as if it were any consolation, she had added:
+
+"He's so splendid; he's often lived on cocoa for a week!"
+
+"And he wants you to live on cocoa too?"
+
+"Oh no; he is getting into the swim now."
+
+Old Jolyon had taken his cigar from under his white moustaches,
+stained by coffee at the edge, and looked at her, that little
+slip of a thing who had got such a grip of his heart.  He knew
+more about 'swims' than his granddaughter.  But she, having
+clasped her hands on his knees, rubbed her chin against him,
+making a sound like a purring cat.  And, knocking the ash off his
+cigar, he had exploded in nervous desperation:
+
+"You're all alike: you won't be satisfied till you've got what
+you want.  If you must come to grief, you must; I wash my hands
+of it."
+
+So, he had washed his hands of it, making the condition that they
+should not marry until Bosinney had at least four hundred a year.
+
+"I shan't be able to give you very much," he had said, a formula
+to which June was not unaccustomed."  Perhaps this What's-his-
+name will provide the cocoa."
+
+He had hardly seen anything of her since it began.  A bad
+business!  He had no notion of giving her a lot of money to
+enable a fellow he knew nothing about to live on in idleness.
+He had seen that sort of thing before; no good ever came of it.
+Worst of all, he had no hope of shaking her resolution; she was
+as obstinate as a mule, always had been from a child.  He didn't
+see where it was to end.  They must cut their coat according to
+their cloth.  He would not give way till he saw young Bosinney
+
+with an income of his own.  That June would have trouble with the
+fellow was as plain as a pikestaff; he had no more idea of money
+than a cow.  As to this rushing down to Wales to visit the young
+man's aunts, he fully expected they were old cats.
+
+And, motionless, old Jolyon stared at the wall; but for his open
+eyes, he might have been asleep....  The idea of supposing that
+young cub Soames could give him advice!  He had always been a
+cub, with his nose in the air!  He would be setting up as a man
+of property next, with a place in the country!  A man of
+property!  H'mph! Like his father, he was always nosing out
+bargains, a cold-blooded young beggar!
+
+He rose, and, going to the cabinet, began methodically stocking
+his, cigar-case from a bundle fresh in.  They were not bad at the
+price, but you couldn't get a good cigar, nowadays, nothing to
+hold a candle to those old Superfinos of Hanson and Bridger's.
+That was a cigar!
+
+The thought, like some stealing perfume, carried him back to
+those wonderful nights at Richmond when after dinner he sat
+smoking on the terrace of the Crown and Sceptre with Nicholas
+Treffry and Traquair and Jack Herring and Anthony Thornworthy.
+How good his cigars were then!  Poor old Nick!--dead, and Jack
+Herringdead, and Traquair--dead of that wife of his, and
+Thornworthy--awfully shaky (no wonder, with his appetite).
+
+Of all the company of those days he himself alone seemed left,
+except Swithin, of course, and he so outrageously big there was
+no doing anything with him.
+
+Difficult to believe it was so long ago; he felt young still!  Of
+all his thoughts, as he stood there counting his cigars, this was
+the most poignant, the most bitter.  With his white head and his
+loneliness he had remained young and green at heart.  And those
+Sunday afternoons on Hampstead Heath, when young Jolyon and he
+went for a stretch along the Spaniard's Road to Highgate, to
+Child's Hill, and back over the Heath again to dine at Jack
+Straw's Castle--how delicious his cigars were then!  And such
+weather!  There was no weather now.
+
+When June was a toddler of five, and every other Sunday he took
+her to the Zoo, away from the society of those two good women,
+her mother and her grandmother, and at the top of the bear den
+baited his umbrella with buns for her favourite bears, how sweet
+his cigars were then!
+
+Cigars!  He had not even succeeded in out-living his palate--the
+famous palate that in the fifties men swore by, and speaking of
+him, said: "Forsyte=s the best palate in London!" The palate that
+in a sense had made his fortune--the fortune of the celebrated
+tea men, Forsyte and Treffry, whose tea, like no other man's tea,
+had a romantic aroma, the charm of a quite singular genuineness.
+About the house of Forsyte and Treffry in the City had clung an
+air of enterprise and mystery, of special dealings in special
+ships, at special ports, with special Orientals.
+
+He had worked at that business!  Men did work in those days!
+these young pups hardly knew the meaning of the word.  He had
+gone into every detail, known everything that went on, sometimes
+sat up all night over it.  And he had always chosen his agents
+himself, prided himself on it.  His eye for men, he used to say,
+had been the secret of his success, and the exercise of this
+masterful power of selection had been the only part of it all
+that he had really liked.  Not a career for a man of his ability.
+Even now, when the business had been turned into a Limited
+Liability Company, and was declining (he had got out of his
+shares long ago), he felt a sharp chagrin in thinking of that
+time.  How much better he might have done!  He would have
+succeeded splendidly at the Bar!  He had even thought of standing
+for Parliament.  How often had not Nicholas Treffry said to him:
+
+"You could do anything, Jo, if you weren't so d-damned careful of
+yourself!" Dear old Nick!  Such a good fellow, but a racketty
+chap!  The notorious Treffry!  He had never taken any care of
+himself.  So he was dead.  Old Jolyon counted his cigars with a
+steady hand, and it came into his mind to wonder if perhaps he
+had been too careful of himself.
+
+He put the cigar-case in the breast of his coat, buttoned it in,
+and walked up the long flights to his bedroom, leaning on one
+foot and the other, and helping himself by the bannister.  The
+house was too big.  After June was married, if she ever did marry
+this fellow, as he supposed she would, he would let it and go
+into rooms.  What was the use of keeping half a dozen servants
+eating their heads off?
+
+The butler came to the ring of his bell--a large man with a
+beard, a soft tread, and a peculiar capacity for silence.  Old
+Jolyon told him to put his dress clothes out; he was going to
+dine at the Club.
+
+How long had the carriage been back from taking Miss June to the
+station?  Since two?  Then let him come round at half-past six!
+
+The Club which old Jolyon entered on the stroke of seven was one
+of those political institutions of the upper middle class which
+have seen better days.  In spite of being talked about, perhaps
+in consequence of being talked about, it betrayed a disappointing
+vitality.  People had grown tired of saying that the 'Disunion'
+was on its last legs.  Old Jolyon would say it, too, yet
+disregarded the fact in a manner truly irritating to
+well-constituted Clubmen.
+
+"Why do you keep your name on?" Swithin often asked him with
+profound vexation.  "Why don't you join the 'Polyglot?  You can't
+get a wine like our Heidsieck under twenty shillin' a bottle
+anywhere in London;" and, dropping his voice, he added: "There's
+only five hundred dozen left.  I drink it every night of my
+life."
+
+I'll think of it," old Jolyon would answer; but when he did think
+of it there was always the question of fifty guineas entrance
+fee, and it would take him four or five years to get in.  He
+continued to think of it.
+
+He was too old to be a Liberal, had long ceased to believe in the
+political doctrines of his Club, had even been known to allude to
+them as 'wretched stuff,' and it afforded him pleasure to
+continue a member in the teeth of principles so opposed to his
+own.  He had always had a contempt for the place, having joined
+it many years ago when they refused to have him at the 'Hotch
+Potch' owing to his being 'in trade.'  As if he were not as good
+as any of them!  He naturally despised the Club that did take
+him.  The members were a poor lot, many of them in the City--
+stockbrokers, solicitors, auctioneers--what not!  Like most men
+of strong character but not too much originality, old Jolyon set
+small store by the class to which he belonged.  Faithfully he
+followed their customs, social and otherwise, and secretly he
+thought them 'a common lot.'
+
+Years and philosophy, of which he had his share, had dimmed the
+recollection of his defeat at the 'Hotch Potch'; and now in his
+thoughts it was enshrined as the Queen of Clubs.  He would have
+been a member all these years himself, but, owing to the slipshod
+way his proposer, Jack Herring, had gone to work, they had not
+known what they were doing in keeping him out.  Why! they had
+taken his son Jo at once, and he believed the boy was still a
+member; he had received a letter dated from there eight years
+ago.
+
+He had not been near the 'Disunion' for months, and the house had
+undergone the piebald decoration which people bestow on old
+houses and old ships when anxious to sell them.
+
+'Beastly colour, the smoking-room!' he thought.  'The dining-room
+is good!'
+
+Its gloomy chocolate, picked out with light green, took his
+fancy.
+
+He ordered dinner, and sat down in the very corner, at the very
+table perhaps I (things did not progress much at the 'Disunion,'
+a Club of almost Radical principles) at which he and young Jolyon
+used to sit twenty-five years ago, when he was taking the latter
+to Drury Lane, during his holidays.
+
+The boy had--loved the theatre, and old Jolyon recalled how he
+used to sit opposite, concealing his excitement under a careful
+but transparent nonchalance.
+
+He ordered himself, too, the very dinner the boy had always
+chosen-soup, whitebait, cutlets, and a tart.  Ah! if he were
+only opposite now!
+
+The two had not met for fourteen years.  And not for the first
+time during those fourteen years old Jolyon wondered whether he
+had been a little to blame in the matter of his son.  An
+unfortunate love-affair with that precious flirt Danae Thorn-
+worthy (now Danae Pellew), Anthony Thornworthy's daughter, had
+thrown him on the rebound into the arms of June's mother.  He
+ought perhaps to have put a spoke in the wheel of their marriage;
+they were too young; but after that experience of Jo's
+susceptibility he had been only too anxious to see him married.
+And in four years the crash had come!  To have approved his son's
+conduct in that crash was, of course, impossible; reason and
+training--that combination of potent factors which stood for his
+principles--told him of this impossibility, and his heart cried
+out.  The grim remorselessness of that business had no pity for
+hearts.  There was June, the atom with flaming hair, who had
+climbed all over him, twined and twisted herself about him--about
+his heart that was made to be the plaything and beloved resort of
+tiny, helpless things.  With characteristic insight he saw he
+must part with one or with the other; no half-measures could
+serve in such a situation.  In that lay its tragedy.  And the
+tiny, helpless thing prevailed.  He would not run with the hare
+and hunt with the hounds, and so to his son he said good-bye.
+
+That good-bye had lasted until now.
+
+He had proposed to continue a reduced allowance to young Jolyon,
+but this had been refused, and perhaps that refusal had hurt him
+more than anything, for with it had gone the last outlet of his
+penned-in affection; and there had come such tangible and solid
+proof of rupture as only a transaction in property, a bestowal or
+refusal of such, could supply.
+
+His dinner tasted flat.  His pint of champagne was dry and bitter
+stuff, not like the Veuve Clicquots of old days.
+
+Over his cup of coffee, he bethought him that he would go to the
+opera.  In the Times, therefore--he had a distrust of other
+papers--he read the announcement for the evening.  It was
+'Fidelio."
+
+Mercifully not one of those new-fangled German pantomimes by that
+fellow Wagner.
+
+Putting on his ancient opera hat, which, with its brim flattened
+by use, and huge capacity, looked like an emblem of greater days,
+and, pulling out an old pair of very thin lavender kid gloves
+smelling strongly of Russia leather, from habitual proximity to
+the  cigar-case in the pocket of his overcoat, he stepped into a
+hansom.
+
+The cab rattled gaily along the streets, and old Jolyon was
+struck by their unwonted animation.
+
+'The hotels must be doing a tremendous business,' he thought.  A
+few years ago there had been none of these big hotels.  He made
+a satisfactory reflection on some property he had in the
+neighbourhood.  It must be going up in value by leaps and bounds!
+What traffic!
+
+But from that he began indulging in one of those strange
+impersonal speculations, so uncharacteristic of a Forsyte,
+wherein lay, in part, the secret of his supremacy amongst them.
+What atoms men were, and what a lot of them!  And what would
+become of them all?
+
+He stumbled as he got out of the cab, gave the man his exact
+fare, walked up to the ticket office to take his stall, and stood
+there with his purse in his hand--he always carried his money in
+a purse, never having approved of that habit of carrying it
+loosely in the pockets, as so many young men did nowadays.  The
+official leaned out, like an old dog from a kennel.
+
+"Why," he said in a surprised voice, "it's Mr. Jolyon Forsyte!
+So it is!  Haven't seen you, sir, for years.  Dear me!  Times
+aren't what they were.  Why! you and your brother, and that
+auctioneer--Mr. Traquair, and Mr. Nicholas Treffry--you used to
+have six or seven stalls here regular every season.  And how are
+you, sir?  We don't get younger!"
+
+The colour in old Jolyon's eyes deepened; he paid his guinea.
+They had not forgotten him.  He marched in, to the sounds of the
+overture, like an old war-horse to battle.
+
+Folding his opera hat, he sat down, drew out his lavender gloves
+in the old way, and took up his glasses for a long look round the
+house.  Dropping them at last on his folded hat, he fixed his
+eyes on the curtain.  More poignantly than ever he felt that it
+was all over and done with him.  Where were all the women, the
+pretty women, the house used to be so full of?  Where was that
+old feeling in the heart as he waited for one of those great
+singers.?  Where that sensation of the intoxication of life and
+of his own power to enjoy it all?
+
+The greatest opera-goer of his day!  There was no opera now!
+That fellow Wagner had ruined everything; no melody left, nor any
+voices to sing it.  Ah! the wonderful singers!  Gone!  He sat
+watching the old scenes acted, a numb feeling at his heart.
+
+>From the curl of silver over his ear to the pose of his foot in
+its elastic-sided patent boot, there was nothing clumsy or weak
+about old Jolyon.  He was as upright--very nearly--as in those
+old times when he came every night; his sight was as good--almost
+as good.  But what a feeling of weariness and disillusion!
+
+He had been in the habit all his life of enjoying things, even
+imperfect things--and there had been many imperfect things--he
+had enjoyed them all with moderation, so as to keep himself
+young.  But now he was deserted by his power of enjoyment, by his
+philosophy) and left with this dreadful feeling that it was all
+done with.  Not even the Prisoners' Chorus, nor Florian's Song,
+had the power to dispel the gloom of his loneliness.
+
+If Jo, were only with him!  The boy must be forty by now.  He had
+wasted fourteen years out of the life of his only son.  And Jo
+was no longer a social pariah.  He was married.  Old Jolyon had
+been unable to refrain from marking his appreciation of the
+action by enclosing his son a cheque for L500.  The cheque had
+been returned in a letter from the 'Hotch Potch,' couched in
+these words.
+
+
+'MY DEAREST FATHER,
+
+'Your generous gift was welcome as a sign that you might think
+worse of me.  I return it, but should you think fit to invest it
+for the benefit of the little chap (we call him Jolly), who bears
+our Christian and, by courtesy, our surname, I shall be very
+glad.
+
+'I hope with all my heart that your health is as good as ever.
+
+'Your loving son,
+
+ 'Jo.'
+
+
+The letter was like the boy.  He had always been an amiable chap.
+Old Jolyon had sent this reply:
+
+
+'MY DEAR JO,
+
+'The sum (L500) stands in my books for the benefit of your boy,
+under the name of Jolyon Forsyte, and will be duly-credited with
+interest at 5 per cent.  I hope that you are doing well.  My
+health remains good at present.
+
+'With love, I am,
+'Your affectionate Father,
+
+'JOLYON FORSYTE.'
+
+
+And every, year on the 1st of January he had added a hundred and
+the interest.  The sum was mounting up--next New Year's Day it
+would be fifteen hundred and odd pounds!  And it is difficult to
+say how much satisfaction he had got out of that yearly
+transaction.  But the correspondence had ended.
+
+In spite of his love for his son, in spite of an instinct, partly
+constitutional, partly the result, as in thousands of his class,
+of the continual handling and watching of affairs, prompting him
+to judge conduct by results rather than by principle, there was
+at the bottom of his heart a sort of uneasiness.  His son ought,
+under the circumstances, to have gone to the dogs; that law was
+laid down in all the novels, sermons, and plays he had ever read,
+heard, or witnessed.
+
+After receiving the cheque back there seemed to him to be
+something wrong somewhere.  Why had his son, not gone to--the
+dogs?  But, then, who could tell?
+
+He had heard,.  of course--in fact, he had made it his business
+to find out--that Jo lived in St.  John's Wood, that he had a
+little house in Wistaria Avenue with a garden, and took his wife
+about with, him into society--a queer sort of society, no doubt--
+and that they had two children--the little chap they called Jolly
+(considering the circumstances the name struck him as cynical,
+and old Jolyon both feared and disliked cynicism), and a girl
+called Holly, born since the marriage.  Who could tell what his
+son's circumstances really were?  He had capitalized the income
+he had inherited from his mother's father and joined Lloyd's as
+an underwriter; he painted pictures, too--water-colours.  Old
+Jolyon knew this, for he had surreptitiously bought them from
+time to time, after chancing to see his son's name signed at the
+bottom of a representation of the river Thames in a dealer's
+window.  He thought them bad, and did not hang them because of
+the signature; he kept them locked up in a drawer.
+
+In the great opera-house a terrible yearning came on him to see
+his son.  He remembered the days when he had been wont to slide
+him, in a brown holland suit, to and fro under the arch of his
+legs; the times when he ran beside the boy's pony, teaching him
+to ride; the day he first took him to school.  He had been a
+loving, lovable little chap!  After he went to Eton he had
+acquired, perhaps, a little too much of that desirable manner
+which old Jolyon knew was only to be obtained at such places and
+at great expense; but he had always been companionable.  Always a
+companion, even after Cambridge--a little far off, perhaps, owing
+to the advantages he had received.  Old Jolyon's feeling towards
+our public schools and 'Varsities never wavered, and he retained
+touchingly his attitude of admiration and mistrust towards a
+system appropriate to the highest in the land, of which he had
+not himself  been privileged to partake....  Now that June had
+gone and left, or as good as left him, it would have been a
+comfort to see his son again.  Guilty of this treason to his
+family, his principles, his class, old Jolyon fixed his eyes on
+the singer.  A poor thing--a wretched poor thing!  And the
+Florian a perfect stick!
+
+It was over.  They were easily pleased nowadays!
+
+In the crowded street he snapped up a cab under the very nose of
+a stout and much younger gentleman, who had already assumed it to
+be his own.  His route lay through Pall Mall, and at the corner,
+instead of going through the Green Park, the cabman turned to
+drive up St.  James's Street.  Old Jolyon put his hand through
+the trap (he could not bear being taken out of his way); in
+turning, however, he found himself opposite the 'Hotch Potch, '
+and the yearning that had been secretly with him the whole
+evening prevailed.  He called to the driver to stop.  He would go
+in and ask if Jo still belonged there.
+
+He went in.  The hall looked exactly as it did when he used to
+dine there with Jack Herring, and they had the best cook in
+London; and he looked round with the shrewd, straight glance that
+had caused him all his life to be better served than most men.
+
+"Mr. Jolyon Forsyte still a member here?"
+
+"Yes, sir; in the Club now, sir.  What name?"
+
+Old Jolyon was taken aback.
+
+"His father," he said.
+
+And having spoken, he took his stand, back to the fireplace.
+
+Young Jolyon, on the point of leaving the Club, had put on his
+hat, and was in the act of crossing the hall, as the porter met
+him.  He was no longer young, with hair going grey, and face--a
+narrower replica of his father's, with the same large drooping
+moustache--decidedly worn.  He turned pale.  This meeting was
+terrible after all those years, for nothing in the world was so
+terrible as a scene.  They met and crossed hands without a word.
+Then, with a quaver in his voice, the father said:
+
+"How are you, my boy?"
+
+The son answered:
+
+"How are you, Dad?"
+
+Old Jolyon's hand trembled in its thin lavender glove.
+
+If you're going my way," he said, "I can give you a lift."
+
+And as though in the habit of taking each other home every night
+they went out and stepped into the cab.
+
+To old Jolyon it seemed that his son had grown.  'More of a man
+altogether,' was his comment.  Over the natural amiability of
+that son's face had come a rather sardonic mask, as though he had
+found in the circumstances of his life the necessity for armour.
+The features were certainly those of a Forsyte, but the expression
+was more the introspective look of a student or philosopher.
+He had no doubt been obliged to look into himself a good deal in
+the course of those fifteen years.
+
+To young Jolyon the first sight of his father was undoubtedly a
+shock--he looked so worn and old.  But in the cab he seemed
+hardly to have changed, still having the calm look so well
+remembered, still being upright and, keen-eyed.
+
+"You look well, Dad."
+
+"Middling," old Jolyon answered.
+
+He was the prey of an anxiety that he found he must put into
+words.  Having got his son back like this, he felt he must know
+what was his financial position.
+
+"Jo," he said, "I should like to hear what sort of water you're
+in.  I suppose you're in debt?"
+
+He put it this way that his son might find it easier to confess.
+
+Young Jolyon answered in his ironical voice:
+
+"No!  I'm not in debt!"
+
+Old Jolyon saw that he was angry, and touched his hand.  He had
+run a risk.  It was worth it, however, and Jo had never been
+sulky with him.  They drove on, without speaking again, to
+Stanhope Gate.  Old Jolyon invited him in, but young Jolyon shook
+his head.
+
+"June's not here," said his father hastily: "went of to-day on a
+visit.  I suppose you know that she's engaged to be married?"
+
+"Already?" murmured young Jolyon'.
+
+Old Jolyon stepped out, and, in paying the cab fare, for the
+first time in his life gave the driver a sovereign in mistake for
+a shilling.
+
+Placing the coin in his mouth, the cabman whipped his horse
+secretly on the underneath and hurried away.
+
+Old Jolyon turned the key softly in the lock, pushed open the
+door, and beckoned.  His son saw him gravely hanging up his coat,
+with an expression on his face like that of a boy who intends to
+steal cherries.
+
+The door of the dining-room was open, the gas turned low; a
+spirit-urn hissed on a tea-tray, and close to it a cynical
+looking cat had fallen asleep on the dining-table.  Old Jolyon
+'shoo'd' her off at once.  The incident was a relief to his
+feelings; he rattled his opera hat behind the animal.
+
+"She's got fleas," he said, following her out of the room.
+Through the door in the hall leading to the basement he called
+"Hssst!" several times, as though assisting the cat's departure,
+till by some strange coincidence the butler appeared below.
+
+"You can go to bed, Parfitt," said old Jolyon.  "I will lock up
+and put out."
+
+When he again entered the dining-room the cat unfortunately
+preceded him, with her tail in the air, proclaiming that she had
+seen through this manouevre for suppressing the butler from the
+first....
+
+A fatality had dogged old Jolyon's domestic stratagems all his
+life.
+
+Young Jolyon could not help smiling.  He was very well versed in
+irony, and everything that evening seemed to him ironical.  The
+episode of the cat; the announcement of his own daughter's
+engagement.  So he had no more part or parcel in her than he had
+in the Puss!  And the poetical justice of this appealed to him.
+
+"What is June like now?" he asked.
+
+"She's a little thing," returned old Jolyon; they say she's like
+me, but that's their folly.  She's more like your mother--the
+same eyes and hair."
+
+"Ah!  and she is pretty?"
+
+Old Jolyon was too much of a Forsyte to praise anything freely;
+especially anything for which he had a genuine admiration.
+
+"Not bad looking--a regular Forsyte chin.  It'll be lonely here
+when she's gone, Jo."
+
+The look on his face again gave young Jolyon the shock he had
+felt on first seeing his father.
+
+"What will you do with yourself, Dad?  I suppose she's wrapped up
+in him?"
+
+"Do with myself?" repeated old Jolyon with an angry break in his
+voice.  "It'll be miserable work living here alone.  I don't know
+how it's to end.  I wish to goodness...."  He checked himself, and
+added: "The question is, what had I better do with this house?"
+
+Young Jolyon looked round the room.  It was peculiarly vast and
+dreary, decorated with the enormous pictures of still life that
+he remembered as a boy--sleeping dogs with their noses resting on
+bunches of carrots, together with onions and grapes lying side by
+side in mild surprise.  The house was a white elephant, but he
+could not conceive of his father living in a smaller place; and
+all the more did it all seem ironical.
+
+In his great chair with the book-rest sat old Jolyon, the
+figurehead of his family and class and creed, with his white head
+and dome-like forehead, the representative of moderation, and
+order, and love of property.  As lonely an old man as there was
+in London.
+
+There he sat in the gloomy comfort of the room, a puppet in the
+power of great forces that cared nothing for family or class or
+creed, but moved, machine-like, with dread processes to
+inscrutable ends.  This was how it struck young Jolyon, who had
+the impersonal eye.
+
+The poor old Dad!  So this was the end, the purpose to which he
+had lived with such magnificent moderation!  To be lonely, and
+grow older and older, yearning for a soul to speak to!
+
+In his turn old Jolyon looked back at his son.  He wanted to talk
+about many things that he had been unable to talk about all these
+years.  It had been impossible to seriously confide in June his
+conviction that property in the Soho quarter would go up in
+value; his uneasiness about that tremendous silence of Pippin,
+the superintendent of the New Colliery Company, of which he had
+so long been chairman; his disgust at the steady fall in American
+Golgothas, or even to discuss how, by some sort of settlement, he
+could best avoid the payment of those death duties which would
+follow his decease.  Under the influence, however, of a cup of
+tea, which he seemed to stir indefinitely, he began to speak at
+last.  A new vista of life was thus opened up, a promised land of
+talk, where he could find a harbour against the waves of
+anticipation and regret; where he could soothe his soul with the
+opium of devising how to round off his property and make eternal
+the only part of him that was to remain alive.
+
+Young Jolyon was a good listener; it was his great quality.  He
+kept his eyes fixed on his father's face, putting a question now
+and then.
+
+The clock struck one before old Jolyon had finished, and at the
+sound of its striking his principles came back.  He took out his
+watch with a look of surprise:
+
+"I must go to bed, Jo," he said.
+
+Young Jolyon rose and held out his hand to help his father up.
+The old face looked worn and hollow again; the eyes were steadily
+averted.
+
+"Good-bye, my boy; take care of yourself."
+
+A moment passed, and young Jolyon, turning on his, heel, marched
+out at the door.  He could hardly see; his smile quavered.  Never
+in all the fifteen years since he had first found out that life
+was no simple business, had he found it so singularly
+complicated.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+DINNER AT SWITHIN'S
+
+
+In Swithin's orange and light-blue dining-room, facing the Park,
+the round table was laid for twelve.
+
+A cut-glass chandelier filled with lighted candles hung like a
+giant stalactite above its centre, radiating over large
+gilt-framed mirrors, slabs of marble on the tops of side-tables,
+and heavy gold chairs with crewel worked seats.  Everything
+betokened that love of beauty so deeply implanted in each family
+which has had its own way to make into Society, out of the more
+vulgar heart of Nature.  Swithin had indeed an impatience of
+simplicity, a love of ormolu, which had always stamped him
+amongst his associates as a man of great, if somewhat luxurious
+taste; and out of the knowledge that no one could possibly enter
+his rooms without perceiving him to be a man of wealth, he had
+derived a solid and prolonged happiness such as perhaps no other
+circumstance in life had afforded him.
+
+Since his retirement from land agency, a profession deplorable in
+his estimation, especially as to its auctioneering department, he
+had abandoned himself to naturally aristocratic tastes.
+
+The perfect luxury of his latter days had embedded him like a fly
+in sugar; and his mind, where very little took place from morning
+till night, was the junction of two curiously opposite emotions,
+a lingering and sturdy satisfaction that he had made his own way
+and his own fortune, and a sense that a man of his distinction
+should never have been allowed to soil his mind with work.
+
+He stood at the sideboard in a white waistcoat with large gold
+and onyx buttons, watching his valet screw the necks of three
+champagne bottles deeper into ice-pails.  Between the points of
+his stand-up collar, which--though it hurt him to move--he would
+on no account have had altered, the pale flesh of his under chin
+remained immovable.  His eyes roved from bottle to bottle.  He
+was debating, and he argued like this: Jolyon drinks a glass,
+perhaps two, he's so careful of himself.  James, he can't take
+his wine nowadays.  Nicholas--Fanny and he would swill water he
+shouldn't wonder!  Soames didn't count; these young nephews--
+Soames was thirty-one--couldn't drink!  But Bosinney?
+
+Encountering in the name of this stranger something outside the
+range of his philosophy, Swithin paused.  A misgiving arose
+within him!  It was impossible to tell!  June was only a girl, in
+love too!  Emily (Mrs. James) liked a good glass of champagne.
+It was too dry for Juley, poor old soul, she had no palate.  As
+to Hatty Chessman!  The thought of this old friend caused a cloud
+of thought to obscure the perfect glassiness of his eyes: He
+shouldn't wonder if she drank half a bottle!
+
+But in thinking of his remaining guest, an expression like that
+of a cat who is just going to purr stole over his old face: Mrs.
+Soames!  She mightn't take much, but she would appreciate what
+she drank; it was a pleasure to give her good wine!  A pretty
+woman--and sympathetic to him!
+
+The thought of her was like champagne itself!  A pleasure to give
+a good wine to a young woman who looked so well, who knew how to
+dress, with charming manners, quite distinguished--a pleasure to
+entertain her.  Between the points of his collar he gave his head
+the first small, painful oscillation of the evening.
+
+"Adolf!" he said.  "Put in another bottle."
+
+He himself might drink a good deal, for, thanks to that
+prescription of Blight's, he found himself extremely well, and he
+had been careful to take no lunch.  He had not felt so well for
+weeks.  Puffing out his lower lip, he gave his last instructions:
+
+"Adolf, the least touch of the West India when you come to the
+ham."
+
+Passing into the anteroom, he sat down on the edge of a chair,
+with his knees apart; and his tall, bulky form was wrapped at
+once in an expectant, strange, primeval immobility.  He was ready
+to rise at a moment's notice.  He had not given a dinner-party
+for months.  This dinner in honour of June's engagement had
+seemed a bore at first (among Forsytes the custom of solemnizing
+engagements by feasts was religiously observed), but the labours
+of sending invitations and ordering the repast over, he felt
+pleasantly stimulated.
+
+And thus sitting, a watch in his hand, fat, and smooth, and
+golden, like a flattened globe of butter, he thought of nothing.
+
+A long man, with side whiskers, who had once been in Swithin's
+service, but was now a greengrocer, entered and proclaimed:
+
+"Mrs. Chessman, Mrs. Septimus Small!"
+
+Two ladies advanced.  The one in front, habited entirely in red,
+had large, settled patches of the same colour in her cheeks, and
+a hard, dashing eye.  She walked at Swithin, holding out a hand
+cased in a long, primrose-coloured glove:
+
+Well!  Swithin," she said, "I haven't seen you for ages.  How are
+you?  Why, my dear boy, how stout you're getting!"
+
+The fixity of Swithin's eye alone betrayed emotion.  A dumb and
+grumbling anger swelled his bosom.  It was vulgar to be stout, to
+talk of being stout; he had a chest, nothing more.  Turning to
+his sister, he grasped her hand, and said in a tone of command:
+
+"Well, Juley."
+
+Mrs. Septimus Small was the tallest of the four sisters; her
+good, round old face had gone a little sour; an innumerable pout
+clung all over it, as if it had been encased in an iron wire mask
+up to that evening, which, being suddenly removed, left little
+rolls of mutinous flesh all over her countenance.  Even her eyes
+were pouting.  It was thus that she recorded her permanent
+resentment at the loss of Septimus Small.
+
+She had quite a reputation for saying the wrong thing, and,
+tenacious like all her breed, she would hold to it when she had
+said it, and add to it another wrong thing, and so on.  With the
+decease of her husband the family tenacity, the family
+matter-of-factness, had gone sterile within her.  A great talker,
+when allowed, she would converse without the faintest animation
+for hours together, relating, with epic monotony, the innumerable
+occasions on which Fortune had misused her; nor did she ever
+perceive that her  hearers sympathized with Fortune, for her
+heart was kind.
+
+Having sat, poor soul, long by the bedside of Small (a man of
+poor constitution), she had acquired, the habit, and there were
+countless subsequent occasions when she had sat immense periods
+of time to amuse sick people, children, and other helpless
+persons, and she could never divest herself of the feeling that
+the world was the most ungrateful place anybody could live in.
+Sunday after Sunday she sat at the feet of that extremely witty
+preacher, the Rev. Thomas Scoles, who exercised a great
+influence  over her; but she succeeded in convincing everybody
+that even this was a misfortune.  She had passed into a proverb
+in the family, and when anybody was observed to be peculiarly
+distressing, he was known as a regular 'Juley.' The habit of her
+mind would have killed anybody but a Forsyte at forty; but she
+was seventy-two, and had never looked better.  And one felt that
+there were capacities for enjoyment about her which might yet
+come out.  She owned three canaries, the cat Tommy, and half a
+parrot--in common with her sister Hester;--and these poor
+creatures (kept carefully out of Timothy's way--he was nervous
+about animals), unlike human beings, recognising that she could
+not help being blighted, attached themselves to her passionately.
+
+She was sombrely magnificent this evening in black bombazine,
+with a mauve front cut in a shy triangle, and crowned with a
+black velvet ribbon round the base of her thin throat; black and
+
+mauve for evening wear was esteemed very chaste by nearly every
+Forsyte.
+
+Pouting at Swithin, she said:
+
+"Ann has been asking for you.  You haven't been near us for an
+age!"
+
+Swithin put his thumbs within the armholes of his waistcoat, and
+replied:
+
+"Ann's getting very shaky; she ought to have a doctor!"
+
+"Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Forsyte!"
+
+Nicholas Forsyte, cocking his rectangular eyebrows, wore a smile.
+He had succeeded during the day in bringing to fruition a scheme
+for the employment of a tribe from Upper India in the gold-mines
+of Ceylon.  A pet plan, carried at last in the teeth of great
+difficulties--he was justly pleased.  It would double the output
+of his mines, and, as he had often forcibly argued, all
+experience tended to show that a man must die; and whether he
+died of a miserable old age in his own country, or prematurely of
+damp in the bottom of a foreign mine, was surely of little
+consequence, provided that by a change in his mode of life he
+benefited the British Empire.
+
+His ability was undoubted.  Raising his broken nose towards his
+listener, he would add:
+
+"For want of a few hundred of these fellows we haven't paid a
+dividend for years, and look at the price of the shares.  I can't
+get ten shillings for them."
+
+He had been at Yarmouth, too, and had come back feeling that he
+had added at least ten years to his own life.  He grasped
+Swithin's hand, exclaiming in a jocular voice:
+
+"Well, so here we are again!"
+
+Mrs. Nicholas, an effete woman, smiled a smile of frightened
+jollity behind his back.
+
+"Mr. and Mrs. James Forsyte!  Mr. and Mrs. Soames Forsyte!"
+
+Swithin drew his heels together, his deportment ever admirable.
+
+"Well, James, well Emily!  How are you, Soames?  How do you do?"
+
+His hand enclosed Irene's, and his eyes swelled.  She was a
+pretty woman--a little too pale, but her figure, her eyes, her
+teeth!  Too good for that chap Soames!
+
+The gods had given Irene dark brown eyes and golden hair, that
+strange combination, provocative of men's glances, which is said
+to be the mark of a weak character.  And the full, soft pallor of
+her neck and shoulders, above a gold-coloured frock, gave to her
+personality an alluring strangeness.
+
+Soames stood behind, his eyes fastened on his wife's neck.  The
+hands of Swithin's watch, which he still held open in his hand,
+had left eight behind; it was half an hour beyond his
+dinner-time--he had had no lunch--and a strange primeval
+impatience surged up within him.
+
+"It's not like Jolyon to be late!" he said to Irene, with
+uncontrollable vexation.  "I suppose it'll be June keeping him!"
+
+"People in love are always late," she answered.
+
+Swithin stared at her; a dusky orange dyed his cheeks.
+
+"They've no business to be.  Some fashionable nonsense!"
+
+And behind this outburst the inarticulate violence of primitive
+generations seemed to mutter and grumble.
+
+"Tell me what you think of my new star, Uncle Swithin," said
+Irene softly.
+
+Among the lace in the bosom of her dress was shining a
+five-pointed star, made of eleven diamonds.  Swithin looked at
+the star.  He had a pretty taste in stones; no question could
+have been more sympathetically devised to distract his attention.
+
+"Who gave you that?" he asked.
+
+"Soames."
+
+There was no change in her face, but Swithin's pale eyes bulged
+as though he might suddenly have been afflicted with insight.
+
+"I dare say you're dull at home," he said.  "Any day you like to
+come and dine with me, I'll give you as good a bottle of wine as
+you'll get in London."
+
+Miss June Forsyte--Mr. Jolyon Forsyte!...  Mr. Boswainey!..."
+
+Swithin moved his arm, and said in a rumbling voice:
+
+"Dinner, now--dinner!"
+
+He took in Irene, on the ground that he had not entertained her
+since she was a bride.  June was the portion of Bosinney, who was
+placed between Irene and his fiancee.  On the other side of June
+was James with Mrs. Nicholas, then old Jolyon with Mrs. James,
+Nicholas with Hatty Chessman, Soames with Mrs. Small, completing,
+the circle to Swithin again.
+
+Family dinners of the Forsytes observe certain traditions.  There
+are, for instance, no hors d'oeuvre.  The reason for this is
+unknown.  Theory among the younger members traces it to the
+disgraceful price of oysters; it is more probably due to a desire
+to come to the point, to a good practical sense deciding at once
+that hors d'oeuvre are but poor things.  The Jameses alone,
+unable to withstand a custom almost universal in Park Lane, are
+now and then unfaithful.
+
+A silent, almost morose, inattention to each other succeeds to
+the subsidence into their seats, lasting till well into the first
+entree, but interspersed with remarks such as, "Tom's bad again;
+I can't tell what's the matter with him!"  "I suppose Ann doesn't
+come down in the mornings?"--"What's the name of your doctor,
+Fanny?  "Stubbs?  He's a quack!"--"Winifred?  She's got too many
+children.  Four, isn't it?  She's as thin as a lath!"--"What
+d'you give for this sherry, Swithin?  Too dry for me!"
+
+With the second glass of champagne, a kind of hum makes itself
+heard, which, when divested of casual, accessories and resolved
+into its primal element, is found to be James telling a story,
+and this goes on for a long time, encroaching sometimes even upon
+what must universally be recognised as the crowning point of a
+Forsyte feast--'the saddle of mutton.'
+
+No Forsyte has given a dinner without providing a saddle of
+mutton.  There is something in its succulent solidity which makes
+it suitable to people 'of a certain position.'  It is nourishing
+and tasty; the sort of thing a man remembers eating.  It has a
+past and a future, like a deposit paid into a bank; and it is
+something that can be argued about.
+
+Each branch of the family tenaciously held to a particular
+locality--old Jolyon swearing by Dartmoor, James by Welsh,
+Swithin by Southdown, Nicholas maintaining that people might
+sneer, but there was nothing like New Zealand!  As for Roger, the
+'original' of the brothers, he had been obliged to invent a
+locality of his own, and with an ingenuity worthy of a man who
+had devised a new profession for his sons, he had discovered a
+shop where they sold German; on being remonstrated with, he had
+proved his point by producing a butcher's bill, which showed that
+he paid more than any of the others.  It was on this occasion
+that old Jolyon, turning to June, had said in one of his bursts
+of philosophy:
+
+"You may depend upon it, they're a cranky lot, the Forsytes--and
+you'll find it out, as you grow older!"
+
+Timothy alone held apart, for though he ate saddle of mutton
+heartily, he was, he said, afraid of it.
+
+To anyone interested psychologically in Forsytes, this great
+saddle-of-mutton trait is of prime importance; not only does it
+illustrate their tenacity, both collectively and as individuals,
+but it marks them as belonging in fibre and instincts to that
+great class which believes in nourishment and flavour, and yields
+to no sentimental craving for beauty.
+
+Younger members of the family indeed would have done without a
+joint altogether, preferring guinea-fowl, or lobster salad--
+something which appealed to the imagination, and had less
+nourishment--but these were females; or, if not, had been
+corrupted by their wives, or by mothers, who having been forced
+to eat saddle of mutton throughout their married lives, had
+passed a secret hostility towards it into the fibre of their
+sons.
+
+The great saddle-of-mutton controversy at an end, a Tewkesbury
+ham commenced, together with the least touch of West Indian--
+Swithin was so long over this course that he caused a block in
+the progress of the dinner.  To devote himself to it with better
+heart, he paused in his conversation.
+
+>From his seat by Mrs. Septimus Small Soames was watching.  He had
+a reason of his own connected with a pet building scheme, for
+observing Bosinney.  The architect might do for his purpose; he
+looked clever, as he sat leaning back in his chair, moodily
+making little ramparts with bread-crumbs.  Soames noted his dress
+clothes to be well cut, but too small, as though made many years
+ago.
+
+He saw him turn to Irene and say something and her face sparkle
+as he often saw it sparkle at other people--never at himself.  He
+tried to catch what they were saying, but Aunt Juley was
+speaking.
+
+Hadn't that always seemed very extraordinary to Soames?  Only
+last Sunday dear Mr. Scole, had been so witty in his sermon, so
+sarcastic, "For what," he had said, "shall it profit a mar if he
+gain his own soul, but lose all his property?"  That, he had
+said, was the motto of the middle-class; now, what had he meant
+by that?  Of course, it might be what middle-class people
+believed--she didn't know; what did Soames think?
+
+He answered abstractedly: "How should I know?  Scoles is a
+humbug, though, isn't he?"  For Bosinney was looking round the
+table, as if pointing out the peculiarities of the guests, and
+Soames wondered what he was saying.  By her smile Irene was
+evidently agreeing with his remarks.  She seemed always to agree
+with other people.
+
+Her eyes were turned on himself; Soames dropped his glance at
+once.  The smile had died off her lips.
+
+A humbug?  But what did Soames mean?  If Mr. Scoles was a humbug,
+a clergyman--then anybody might be--it was frightful!
+
+"Well, and so they are!" said Soames.
+
+During Aunt Juley's momentary and horrified silence he caught
+some words of Irene's that sounded like: 'Abandon hope, all ye
+who enter here!'
+
+But Swithin had finished his ham.
+
+"Where do you go for your mushrooms?" he was saying to Irene in a
+voice like a courtier's; "you ought to go to Smileybob's he'll
+give 'em you fresh.  These little men, they won't take the
+trouble!"
+
+Irene turned to answer him, and Soames saw Bosinney watching her
+and smiling to himself.  A curious smile the fellow had.  A
+half-simple arrangement, like a child who smiles when he is
+pleased.  As for George's nickname--'The Buccaneer'--he did not
+think much of that.  And, seeing Bosinney turn to June, Soames
+smiled too, but sardonically--he did not like June, who was not
+looking too pleased.
+
+This was not surprising, for she had just held the following
+conversation with James:
+
+"I stayed on the river on my way home, Uncle James, and saw a
+beautiful site for a house."
+
+James, a slow and thorough eater, stopped the process of
+mastication.
+
+"Eh?" he said.  "Now, where was that?"
+
+"Close to Pangbourne."
+
+James placed a piece of ham in his mouth, and June waited.
+
+"I suppose you wouldn't know whether the land about there was
+freehold?" he asked at last.  "You wouldn't know anything about
+the price of land about there?"
+
+"Yes," said June; "I made inquiries." Her little resolute face
+under its copper crown was suspiciously eager and aglow.
+
+James regarded her with the air of an inquisitor.
+
+"What?  You're not thinking of buying land!" he ejaculated,
+dropping his fork.
+
+June was greatly encouraged by his interest.  It had long been
+her pet plan that her uncles should benefit themselves and
+Bosinney by building country-houses.
+
+"Of course not," she said.  "I thought it would be such a
+splendid place for--you or--someone to build a country-house!"
+
+James looked at her sideways, and placed a second piece of ham in
+his mouth....
+
+"Land ought to be very dear about there," be said.
+
+What June had taken for personal interest was only the impersonal
+excitement of every Forsyte who hears of something eligible in
+danger of passing into other hands.  But she refused to see the
+disappearance of her chance, and continued to press her point.
+
+"You ought to go into the country, Uncle James.  I wish I had a
+lot of money, I wouldn't live another day in London."
+
+James was stirred to the depths of his long thin figure; he had
+no idea his niece held such downright views.
+
+"Why don't you go into the country?" repeated June; "it would do
+you a lot of good."
+
+"Why?" began James in a fluster.  "Buying land--what good d'you
+suppose I can do buying land, building houses?--I couldn't get
+four per cent. for my money!"
+
+"What does that matter?  You'd get fresh air."
+
+"Fresh air!" exclaimed James; "what should I do with fresh air,"
+
+"I should have thought anybody liked to have fresh air," said
+June scornfully.
+
+James wiped his napkin all over his mouth.
+
+"You don't know the value of money," he said, avoiding her eye.
+
+"No! and I hope I never shall!" and, biting her lip with
+inexpressible mortification, poor June was silent.
+
+Why were her own relations so rich, and Phil never knew where the
+money was coming from for to-morrow's tobacco.  Why couldn't they
+do something for him?  But they were so selfish.  Why couldn't
+they build country-houses?  She had all that naive dogmatism
+which is so pathetic, and sometimes achieves such great results.
+Bosinney, to whom she turned in her, discomfiture, was talking to
+Irene, and a chill fell on June's spirit.  Her eyes grew steady
+with  anger, like old Jolyon's when his will was crossed.
+
+James, too, was much disturbed.  He felt as though someone had
+threatened his right to invest his money at five per cent.
+Jolyon had spoiled her.  None of his girls would have said such a
+thing.  James had always been exceedingly liberal to his
+children, and the consciousness of this made him feel it all the
+more deeply.  He trifled moodily with his strawberries, then,
+deluging them with cream, he ate them quickly; they, at all
+events, should not escape him.
+
+No wonder he was upset.  Engaged for fifty-four years (he had
+been admitted a solicitor on the earliest day sanctioned by the
+law) in arranging mortgages, preserving investments at a dead
+level of high and safe interest, conducting negotiations on the
+principle of securing the utmost possible out of other people
+compatible with safety to his clients and himself, in
+calculations as to the exact pecuniary possibilities of all the
+relations of life, he had come at last to think purely in terms
+of money.  Money was now his light, his medium for seeing, that
+without which he was really unable to see, really not cognisant
+of phenomena; and to have this thing, "I hope I shall never know
+the value of money!" said to his face, saddened and exasperated
+him.  He knew it to be nonsense, or it would have frightened him.
+What was the world coming to!  Suddenly recollecting the story of
+young Jolyon, however,(he felt a little comforted, for what could
+you expect with a father like that!  This turned his thoughts
+into a channel still less pleasant.  What was all this talk about
+Soames and Irene?
+
+As in all self-respecting families, an emporium had been
+established where family secrets were bartered, and family stock
+priced.  It was known on Forsyte 'Change that Irene regretted her
+marriage.  Her regret was disapproved of.  She ought to have
+known her own mind; no dependable woman made these mistakes.
+
+James reflected sourly that they had a nice house (rather small)
+in an excellent position, no children, and no money troubles.
+Soames was reserved about his affairs, but he must be getting a
+very warm man.  He had a capital income from the business--for
+Soames, like his father, was a member of that well-known firm of
+solicitors, Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte--and had always been very
+careful.  He had done quite unusually well with some mortgages he
+had taken up, too--a little timely foreclosure--most lucky hits!
+
+There was no reason why Irene should not be happy, yet they said
+she'd been asking for a separate room.  He knew where that ended.
+It wasn't as if Soames drank,
+
+James looked at his daughter-in-law.  That unseen glance of his
+was cold and dubious.  Appeal and fear were in it, and a sense of
+personal grievance.  Why should he be worried like this?  It was
+very likely all nonsense; women were funny things!  They
+exaggerated so, you didn't know what to believe; and then, nobody
+told him anything, he had to find out everything for himself.
+Again he looked furtively at Irene, and across from her to
+Soames.  The latter, listening to Aunt Juley, was looking up,
+under his brows in the direction of Bosinney.
+
+'He's fond of her, I know,' thought James.  'Look at the way he's
+always giving her things.'
+
+And the extraordinary unreasonableness of her disaffection struck
+him with increased force.
+
+It was a pity, too, she was a taking little thing, and he, James,
+would be really quite fond of her if she'd only let him.  She had
+taken up lately with June; that was doing her no good, that was
+certainly doing her no good.  She was getting to have opinions of
+her own.  He didn't know what she wanted with anything of the
+sort.  She'd a good home, and everything she could wish for.  He
+felt that her friends ought to be chosen for her.  To go on like
+this was dangerous.
+
+June, indeed, with her habit of championing the unfortunate, had
+dragged from Irene a confession, and, in return, had preached the
+necessity of facing the evil, by separation, if need be.  But in
+the face of these exhortations, Irene had kept a brooding silence,
+as though she found terrible the thought of this struggle carried
+through in cold blood.  He would never give her up, she had said
+to June.
+
+"Who cares?" June cried; "let him do what he likes--you've only
+to stick to it!"  And she had not scrupled to say something of
+this sort at Timothy's; James, when he heard of it, had felt a
+natural indignation and horror.
+
+What if Irene were to take it into her head to--he could hardly
+frame the thought--to leave Soames?  But he felt this thought so
+unbearable that he at once put it away; the shady visions it
+conjured up, the sound of family tongues buzzing in his ears, the
+horror of the conspicuous happening so close to him, to one of
+his own children!  Luckily, she had no money--a beggarly fifty
+pound a year!  And he thought of the deceased Heron, who had had
+nothing to leave her, with contempt.  Brooding over his glass,
+his long legs twisted under the table, he quite omitted to rise
+when the ladies left the room.  He would have to speak to Soames-
+-would have to put him on his guard; they could not go on like
+this, now that such a contingency had occurred to him.  And he
+noticed with sour disfavour that June had left her wine-glasses
+full of wine.
+
+'That little, thing's at the bottom of it all,' he mused;
+'Irene'd never have thought of it herself.'  James was a man of
+imagination.
+
+The voice of Swithin roused him from his reverie.
+
+"I gave four hundred pounds for it," he was saying.  "Of course
+it's a regular work of art."
+
+"Four hundred!  H'm! that's a lot of money!" chimed in Nicholas.
+
+The object alluded to was an elaborate group of statuary in
+Italian marble, which, placed upon a lofty stand (also of
+marble), diffused an atmosphere of culture throughout the room.
+The subsidiary figures, of which there were six, female, nude,
+and of highly ornate workmanship, were all pointing towards the
+central figure, also nude, and female, who was pointing at
+herself; and all this gave the observer a very pleasant sense of
+her extreme value.  Aunt Juley, nearly opposite, had had the
+greatest difficulty in not looking, at it all the evening.
+
+Old Jolyon spoke; it was he who had started the discussion.,
+
+"Four hundred fiddlesticks!  Don't tell me you gave four hundred
+for that?"
+
+Between the points of his collar Swithin's chin made the second
+painful oscillatory movement of the evening."
+
+Four-hundred-pounds, of English money; not a farthing less.  I
+don't regret it.  It's not common English--it's genuine modern
+Italian!"
+
+Soames raised the comer of his lip in a smile, and looked across
+at Bosinney.  The architect was grinning behind the fumes of his
+cigarette.  Now, indeed, he looked more like a buccaneer.
+
+"There's a lot of work about it," remarked James hastily, who was
+really moved by the size of the group.  "It'd sell well at
+Jobson's."
+
+"The poor foreign dey-vil that made it, "went on Swithin," asked
+me five hundred--I gave him four.  It's worth eight.  Looked
+half-starved, poor dey-vil!
+
+"Ah!" chimed in Nicholas suddenly, "poor, seedy-lookin' chaps,
+these artists; it's a wonder to me how they live.  Now, there's
+young Flageoletti, that Fanny and the girls are always hav'in'
+in, to play the fiddle; if he makes a hundred a year it's as much
+as ever he does!"
+
+James shook his head.  "Ah!" he said, "I don't know how they
+live!"
+
+Old Jolyon had risen, and, cigar in mouth, went to inspect the
+group at close quarters.
+
+"Wouldn't have given two for it!" he pronounced at last.
+
+Soames saw his father and Nicholas glance at each other
+anxiously; and, on the other side of Swithin, Bosinney, still
+shrouded in smoke.
+
+'I wonder what he thinks of it?' thought Soames, who knew well
+enough that this group was hopelessly vieux jeu; hopelessly of
+the last generation.  There was no longer any sale at Jobson's
+for such works of art.
+
+Swithin's answer came at last.  "You never knew anything about a
+statue.  You've got your pictures, and that's all!"
+
+Old Jolyon walked back to his seat, puffing his cigar.  It was
+not likely that he was going to be drawn into an argument with an
+obstinate beggar like Swithin, pig-headed as a mule, who had
+never known a statue from a---straw hat.
+
+"Stucco!" was all he said.
+
+It had long been physically impossible for Swithin to start; his
+fist came down on the table.
+
+"Stucco!  I should like to see anything you've got in your house
+half as good!"
+
+And behind his speech seemed to sound again that rumbling
+violence of primitive generations.
+
+It was James who saved the situation.
+
+"Now, what do you say, Mr. Bosinney?  You're an architect; you
+ought to know all about statues and things!"
+
+Every eye was turned upon Bosinney; all waited with a strange,
+suspicious look for his answer.
+
+And Soames, speaking for the first time, 'asked:
+
+"Yes, Bosinney, what do you say?"
+
+Bosinney replied coolly:
+
+"The work is a remarkable one."
+
+His words were addressed to Swithin, his eyes smiled slyly at old
+Jolyon; only Soames remained unsatisfied.
+
+"Remarkable for what?"
+
+"For its naivete"
+
+The answer was followed by an impressive silence; Swithin alone
+was not sure whether a compliment was intended.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+PROJECTION OF THE HOUSE
+
+
+Soames Forsyte walked out of his green-painted front door three
+days after the dinner at Swithin's, and looking back from across
+the Square, confirmed his impression that the house wanted
+painting.
+
+He had left his wife sitting on the sofa in the drawing-room, her
+hands crossed in her lap, manifestly waiting for him to go out.
+This was not unusual.  It happened, in fact, every day.
+
+He could not understand what she found wrong with him.  It was
+not as if he drank!  Did he run into debt, or gamble, or swear;
+was he violent; were his friends rackety; did he stay out at
+night?  On the contrary.
+
+The profound, subdued aversion which he felt in his wife was a
+mystery to him, and a source of the most terrible irritation.
+That she had made a mistake, and did not love him, had tried to
+love him and could not love him, was obviously no reason.
+
+He that could imagine so outlandish a cause for his wife's not
+getting on with him was certainly no Forsyte.
+
+Soames was forced, therefore, to set the blame entirely down to
+his wife.  He had never met a woman so capable of inspiring
+affection.  They could not go anywhere without his seeing how all
+the men were attracted by her; their looks, manners, voices,
+betrayed it; her behaviour under this attention had been beyond
+reproach.  That she was one of those women--not too common in the
+Anglo-Saxon race--born to be loved and to love, who when not
+loving are not living, had certainly never even occurred to him.
+Her power of attraction, he regarded as part of her value as his
+property; but it made him, indeed, suspect that she could give as
+well as receive; and she gave him nothing!  'Then why did she
+marry me?'  was his continual thought.  He had, forgotten his
+courtship; that year and a half when he had besieged and lain in
+wait for her, devising schemes for her entertainment, giving her
+presents, proposing to her periodically, and keeping her other
+admirers away with his perpetual presence.  He had forgotten the
+day when, adroitly taking advantage of an acute phase of her
+dislike to her home surroundings, he crowned his labours with
+success.  If he remembered anything, it was the dainty
+capriciousness with which the gold-haired, dark-eyed girl had
+treated him.  He certainly did not remember the look on her face-
+-strange, passive, appealing--when suddenly one day she had
+yielded, and said that she would marry him.
+
+It had been one of those real devoted wooings which books and
+people praise, when the lover is at length rewarded for hammering
+the iron till it is malleable, and all must be happy ever after
+as the wedding bells.
+
+Soames walked eastwards, mousing doggedly along on the shady
+side.
+
+The house wanted doing, up, unless he decided to move into the
+country, and build.
+
+For the hundredth time that month he turned over this problem.
+There was no use in rushing into things!  He was very comfortably
+off, with an increasing income getting on for three thousand a
+year; but his invested capital was not perhaps so large as his
+father believed--James had a tendency to expect that his children
+should be better off than they were.  'I can manage eight
+thousand easily enough,' he thought, 'without calling in either
+
+Robertson's or Nicholl's.'
+
+He had stopped to look in at a picture shop, for Soames was an
+'amateur' of pictures, and had a little-room in No.  62,
+Montpellier Square, full of canvases, stacked against the wall,
+which he had no room to hang.  He brought them home with him on
+his way back from the City, generally after dark, and would enter
+this room on Sunday afternoons, to spend hours turning the
+pictures to the light, examining the marks on their backs, and
+occasionally making notes.
+
+They were nearly all landscapes with figures in the foreground, a
+sign of some mysterious revolt against London, its tall houses,
+its interminable streets, where his life and the lives of his
+breed and class were passed.  Every now and then he would take
+one or two pictures away with him in a cab, and stop at Jobson's
+on his way into the City.
+
+He rarely showed them to anyone; Irene, whose opinion he secretly
+respected and perhaps for that reason never solicited, had only
+been into the room on rare occasions, in discharge of some wifely
+duty.  She was not asked to look at the pictures, and she never
+did.  To Soames this was another grievance.  He hated that pride
+of hers, and secretly dreaded it.
+
+In the plate-glass window of the picture shop his image stood and
+looked at him.
+
+His sleek hair under the brim of the tall hat had a sheen like
+the hat itself; his cheeks, pale and flat, the line of his
+clean-shaven lips, his firm chin with its greyish shaven tinge,
+and the buttoned strictness of his black cut-away coat, conveyed
+an appearance of reserve and secrecy, of imperturbable, enforced
+composure; but his eyes, cold,--grey, strained--looking, with a
+line in the brow between them, examined him wistfully, as if they
+knew of a secret weakness.
+
+He noted the subjects of the pictures, the names of the painters,
+made a calculation of their values, but without the satisfaction
+he usually derived from this inward appraisement, and walked on.
+
+No. 62 would do well enough for another year, if he decided to
+build!  The times were good for building, money had not been so
+dear for years; and the site he had seen at Robin Hill, when he
+had gone down there in the spring to inspect the Nicholl
+mortgage--what could be better!  Within twelve miles of Hyde Park
+Corner, the value of the land certain to go up, would always
+fetch more than he gave for it; so that a house, if built in
+really good style, was a first-class investment.
+
+The notion of being the one member of his family with a country
+house weighed but little with him; for to a true Forsyte,
+sentiment, even the sentiment of social position, was a luxury
+only to be indulged in after his appetite for more material
+pleasure had been satisfied.
+
+To get Irene out of London, away from opportunities of going
+about and seeing people, away from her friends and those who put
+ideas into her head!  That was the thing!  She was too thick with
+June!  June disliked him.  He returned the sentiment.  They were
+of the same blood.
+
+It would be everything to get Irene out of town.  The house would
+please her she would enjoy messing about with the decoration, she
+was very artistic!
+
+The house must be in good style, something that would always be
+certain to command a price, something unique, like that last
+house of Parkes, which had a tower; but Parkes had himself said
+that his architect was ruinous.  You never knew where you were
+with those fellows; if they had a name they ran you into no end
+of expense and were conceited into the bargain.
+
+And a common architect was no good--the memory of Parkes' tower
+precluded the employment of a common architect:
+
+This was why he had thought of Bosinney.  Since the dinner at
+Swithin's he had made enquiries, the result of which had been
+meagre, but encouraging: "One of the new school."
+
+"Clever?"
+
+"As clever as you like--a bit--a bit up in the air!"
+
+He had not been able to discover what houses Bosinney had built,
+nor what his charges were.  The impression he gathered was that
+he would be able to make his own terms.  The more he reflected on
+the idea, the more he liked it.  It would be keeping the thing in
+the family, with Forsytes almost an instinct; and he would be
+able to get 'favoured-nation,' if not nominal terms--only fair,
+considering the chance to Bosinney of displaying his talents, for
+this house  must be no common edifice.
+
+Soames reflected complacently on the work it would be sure to
+bring the young man; for, like every Forsyte, he could be a
+thorough optimist when there was anything to be had out of it.
+
+Bosinney's office was in Sloane Street, close at, hand, so that
+he would be able to keep his eye continually on the plans.
+
+Again, Irene would not be to likely to object to leave London if
+her greatest friend's lover were given the job.  June's marriage
+might depend on it.  Irene could not decently stand in the way of
+June's marriage; she would never do that, he knew her too well.
+And June would be pleased; of this he saw the advantage.
+
+Bosinney looked clever, but he had also--and--it was one of his
+great attractions--an air as if he did not quite know on which
+side his bread were buttered; he should be easy to deal with in
+money matters.  Soames made this reflection in no defrauding
+spirit; it was the natural attitude of his mind--of the mind of
+any good business man--of all those thousands of good business
+men through whom he was threading his way up Ludgate Hill.
+
+Thus he fulfilled the inscrutable laws of his great class--of
+human nature itself--when he reflected, with a sense of comfort,
+that Bosinney would be easy to deal with in money matters.
+
+While he elbowed his way on, his eyes, which he usually kept
+fixed on the ground before his feet, were attracted upwards by
+the dome of St.  Paul's.  It had a peculiar fascination for him,
+that old dome, and not once, but twice or three times a week,
+would he halt in his daily pilgrimage to enter beneath and stop
+in the side aisles for five or ten minutes, scrutinizing the
+names and epitaphs on the monuments.  The attraction for him of
+this great church was inexplicable, unless it enabled him to
+concentrate his thoughts on the business of the day.  If any
+affair of particular moment, or demanding peculiar acuteness, was
+weighing on his mind, he invariably went in, to wander with
+mouse-like attention from epitaph to epitaph.  Then retiring in
+the same noiseless way, he would hold steadily on up Cheapside, a
+thought more of dogged purpose in his gait, as though he had seen
+something which he had made up his mind to buy.
+
+He went in this morning, but, instead of stealing from monument
+to monument, turned his eyes upwards to the columns and spacings
+of the walls, and remained motionless.
+
+His uplifted face, with the awed and wistful look which faces
+take on themselves in church, was whitened to a chalky hue in the
+vast building.  His gloved hands were clasped in front over the
+handle of his umbrella.  He lifted them.  Some sacred inspiration
+perhaps had come to him.
+
+'Yes,' he thought, 'I must have room to hang my pictures.
+
+That evening, on his return from the City, he called at
+Bosinney's office.  He found the architect in his shirt-sleeves,
+smoking a pipe, and ruling off lines on a plan.  Soames refused a
+drink, and came at once to the point.
+
+"If you've nothing better to do on Sunday, come down with me to
+Robin Hill, and give me your opinion on a building site."
+
+"Are you going to build?"
+
+"Perhaps," said Soames; "but don't speak of it.  I just want your
+opinion."
+
+"Quite so," said the architect.
+
+Soames peered about the room.
+
+"You're rather high up here," he remarked.
+
+Any information he could gather about the nature and scope of
+Bosinney's business would be all to the good.
+
+"It does well enough for me so far," answered the architect.
+"You're accustomed to the swells."
+
+He knocked out his pipe, but replaced it empty between his teeth;
+it assisted him perhaps to carry on the conversation.  Soames
+noted a hollow in each cheek, made as it were by suction.
+
+"What do you pay for an office like this?" said he.
+
+"Fifty too much," replied Bosinney.
+
+This answer impressed Soames favourably.
+
+"I suppose it is dear," he said.  "I'll call for you--on Sunday
+about eleven." .
+
+The following Sunday therefore he called for Bosinney in a
+hansom, and drove him to the station.  On arriving at Robin Hill,
+they found no cab, and started to walk the mile and a half to the
+site.
+
+It was the 1st of August--a perfect day, with a burning sun and
+cloudless sky--and in the straight, narrow road leading up the
+hill their feet kicked up a yellow dust.
+
+"Gravel soil," remarked Soames, and sideways he glanced at the
+coat Bosinney wore.  Into the side-pockets of this coat were
+thrust bundles of papers, and under one arm was carried a queer-
+looking stick.  Soames noted these and other peculiarities.
+
+No one but a clever man, or, indeed, a buccaneer, would have
+taken such liberties with his appearance; and though these
+eccentricities were revolting to Soames, he derived a certain
+satisfaction from them, as evidence of qualities by which he must
+inevitably profit.  If the fellow could build houses, what did
+his clothes matter?
+
+"I told you," he said, "that I want this house to be a surprise,
+so don't say anything about it.  I never talk of my affairs until
+they're carried through."
+
+Bosinney nodded.
+
+"Let women into your plans," pursued Soames, "and you never know
+where it'll end."
+
+"Ah!" Said Bosinney, "women are the devil!"
+
+This feeling had long been at the--bottom of Soames's heart; he
+had never, however, put it into words.
+
+"Oh!" he Muttered, "so you're beginning to...."  He stopped, but
+added, with an uncontrollable burst of spite: "June's got a
+temper of her own--always had."
+
+"A temper's not a bad thing in an angel."
+
+Soames had never called Irene an angel.  He could not so have
+violated his best instincts, letting other people into the secret
+of her value, and giving himself away.  He made no reply.
+
+They had struck into a half-made road across a warren.  A
+cart-track led at right-angles to a gravel pit, beyond which the
+chimneys of a cottage rose amongst a clump of trees at the border
+of a thick wood.  Tussocks of feathery grass covered the rough
+surface of the ground, and out of these the larks soared into the
+hate of sunshine.  On the far horizon, over a countless
+succession of fields and hedges, rose a line of downs.
+
+Soames led till they had crossed to the far side, and there he
+stopped.  It was the chosen site; but now that he was about to
+divulge the spot to another he had become uneasy.
+
+"The agent lives in that cottage," he said; "he'll give us some
+lunch--we'd better have lunch before we go into this matter."
+
+He again took the lead to the cottage, where the agent, a tall
+man named Oliver, with a heavy face and grizzled beard, welcomed
+them.  During lunch, which Soames hardly touched, he kept looking
+at Bosinney, and once or twice passed his silk handkerchief
+stealthily over his forehead.  The meal came to an end at last,
+and Bosinney rose.
+
+"I dare say you've got business to talk over," he said; "I'll
+just go and nose about a bit." Without waiting for a reply he
+strolled out.
+
+Soames was solicitor to this estate, and he spent nearly an hour
+in the agent's company, looking at ground-plans and discussing
+the Nicholl and other mortgages; it was as it were by an
+afterthought that he brought up the question of the building
+site.
+
+"Your people," he said, "ought to come down in their price to me,
+considering that I shall be the first to build."
+
+Oliver shook his head.
+
+The site you've fixed on, Sir, he said, "is the cheapest we've
+got.  Sites at the top of the slope are dearer by a good bit."
+
+"Mind," said Soames," I've not decided; it's quite possible I
+shan't build at all.  The ground rent's very high."
+
+"Well, Mr. Forsyte, I shall be sorry if you go off, and I think
+you'll make a mistake, Sir.  There's not a bit of land near
+London with such a view as this, nor one that's cheaper, all
+things considered; we've only to advertise, to get a mob of
+people after it."
+
+They looked at each other.  Their faces said very plainly: 'I
+respect you as a man of business;  and you can't expect me to
+believe a word you say.'
+
+Well, repeated Soames, "I haven't made up my mind; the thing will
+very likely go off!"  With these words, taking up his umbrella,
+he put his chilly hand into the agent's, withdrew it without the
+faintest pressure, and went out into the sun.
+
+He walked slowly back towards the site in deep thought.  His
+instinct told him that what the agent had said was true.  A cheap
+site.  And the beauty of it was, that he knew the agent did not
+really think it cheap; so that his own intuitive knowledge was a
+victory over the agent's.
+
+'Cheap or not, I mean to have it,'  he thought.
+
+The larks sprang up in front of his feet, the air was full of
+butterflies, a sweet fragrance rose from the wild grasses.  The
+sappy scent of the bracken stole forth from the wood, where,
+hidden in the depths, pigeons were cooing., and from afar on the
+warm breeze, came the rhythmic chiming of church bells.
+
+Soames walked with his eyes on the ground, his lips opening and
+closing as though in anticipation of a delicious morsel.  But
+when he arrived at the site, Bosinney was nowhere to be seen.
+After waiting some little time, he crossed the warren in the
+direction of the slope.  He would have shouted, but dreaded the
+sound of his voice .
+
+The warren was as lonely as a prairie, its silence only broken by
+the rustle of rabbits bolting to their holes, and the song of the
+larks.
+
+Soames, the pioneer-leader of the great Forsyte army advancing to
+the civilization of this wilderness, felt his spirit daunted by
+the loneliness, by the invisible singing, and the hot, sweet air.
+He had begun to retrace his steps when he at last caught sight of
+Bosinney.
+
+The architect was sprawling under a large oak tree, whose trunk,
+with a huge spread of bough and foliage, ragged with age, stood
+on the verge of the rise.
+
+Soames had to touch him on the shoulder before he looked up.
+
+"Hallo!  Forsyte," he said, "I've found the very place for your
+house!  Look here!"
+
+Soames stood and looked, then he said, coldly:
+
+"You may be very clever, but this site will cost me half as much
+again."
+
+"Hang the cost, man.  Look at the view!"
+
+Almost from their feet stretched ripe corn, dipping to a small
+dark copse beyond.  A plain of fields and hedges spread to the
+distant grey-bluedowns.  In a silver streak to the right could be
+seen the line of the river.
+
+The sky was so blue, and the sun so bright, that an eternal
+summer seemed to reign over this prospect.  Thistledown floated
+round them, enraptured by the serenity, of the ether.  The heat
+danced over the corn, and, pervading all, was a soft, insensible
+hum, like the murmur of bright minutes holding revel between
+earth and heaven.
+
+Soames looked.  In spite of himself, something swelled in his
+breast.  To live here in sight of all this, to be able to point
+it out to his friends, to talk of it, to possess it!  His cheeks
+flushed.  The warmth, the radiance, the glow, were sinking into
+his senses as, four years before, Irene's beauty had sunk into
+his senses and made him long for her.  He stole a glance at
+Bosinney, whose eyes, the eyes of the coachman's 'half-tame
+leopard,' seemed running wild over the landscape.  The sunlight
+had caught the promontories of the fellow"s face, the bumpy
+cheekbones, the point of his chin, the vertical ridges above his
+brow; and Soames watched this rugged, enthusiastic, careless face
+with an unpleasant feeling.
+
+A long, soft ripple of wind flowed over the corn, and brought a
+puff of warm air into their faces.
+
+"I could build you a teaser here," said Bosinney, breaking the
+silence at last.
+
+"I dare say," replied Soames, drily.  "You haven't got to pay for
+it."
+
+"For about eight thousand I could build you a palace."
+
+Soames had become very pale--a struggle was going on within him.
+He dropped his eyes, and said stubbornly:
+
+"I can't afford it."
+
+And slowly, with his mousing walk, he led the way back to the
+first site.
+
+They spent some time there going into particulars of the
+projected house, and then Soames returned to the agent's cottage.
+
+He came out in about half an hour, and, joining Bosinney,
+started for the station.
+
+"Well," he said, hardly opening his lips, "I've taken that site
+of yours, after all."
+
+And again he was silent, confusedly debating how it was that this
+fellow, whom by habit he despised, should have overborne his own
+decision.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A FORSYTE MENAGE
+
+
+Like the enlightened thousands of his class and generation in
+this great city of London, who no longer believe in red velvet
+chairs, and know that groups of modern Italian marble are 'vieux
+jeu,' Soames Forsyte inhabited a house which did what it could.
+It owned a copper door knocker of individual design, windows
+which had been altered to open outwards, hanging flower boxes
+filled with fuchsias, and at the back (a great feature) a little
+court tiled with jade-green tiles, and surrounded by pink
+hydrangeas in peacock-blue tubs.  Here, under a parchment-
+coloured Japanese sunshade covering the whole end, inhabitants
+or visitors could be screened from the eyes of the curious
+while they drank tea and examined at their leisure the latest
+of Soames's little silver boxes..
+
+The inner decoration favoured the First Empire and William
+Morris.  For its size, the house was commodious; there were
+countless nooks resembling birds' nests, and little things made
+of silver were deposited like eggs.
+
+In this general perfection two kinds of fastidiousness were at
+war.  There lived here a mistress who would have dwelt daintily
+on a desert island; a master whose daintiness was, as it were, an
+investment, cultivated by the owner for his advancement, in
+accordance with the laws of competition.  This competitive
+daintiness had caused Soames in his Marlborough days to be the
+first boy into white waistcoats in summer, and corduroy
+waistcoats in winter, had prevented him from ever appearing in,
+public with his tie climbing up his collar, and induced him to
+dust his patent leather boots before a great multitude assembled
+on Speech Day to hear him recite Moliere.
+
+Skin-like immaculateness had grown over Soames, as over many
+Londoners; impossible to conceive of him with a hair out of
+place, a tie deviating one-eighth of an inch from the
+perpendicular, a collar unglossed!  He would not have gone
+without a bath for worlds--it was the fashion to take baths; and
+how bitter was his scorn of people who omitted them!
+
+But Irene could be imagined, like some nymph, bathing in wayside
+streams, for the joy of the freshness and of seeing her own fair
+body.
+
+In this conflict throughout the house the woman had gone to the
+wall.  As in the struggle between Saxon and Celt still going on
+within the nation, the more impressionable and receptive
+temperament had had forced on it a conventional superstructure.
+
+Thus the house had acquired a close resemblance to hundreds of
+other houses with the same high aspirations, having become: 'That
+very charming little house of the Soames Forsytes, quite
+individual, my dear--really elegant.'
+
+For Soames Forsyte--read James Peabody, Thomas Atkins, or
+Emmanuel Spagnoletti, the name in fact of any upper-middle class
+Englishman in London with any pretensions to taste; and though
+the decoration be different, the phrase is just.
+
+On the evening of August 8, a week after the expedition to Robin
+Hill, in the dining-room of this house--'quite individual, my
+dear--really elegant'- Soames and Irene were seated at dinner.  A
+hot dinner on Sundays was a little distinguishing elegance common
+to this house and many others.  Early in married life Soames had
+laid down the rule: 'The servants must give us hot dinner on
+Sundays--they've nothing to do but play the concertina.'
+
+The custom had produced no revolution.  For--to Soames a rather
+deplorable sign--servants were devoted to Irene, who, in defiance
+of all safe tradition, appeared to recognise their right to a
+share in the weaknesses of human nature.
+
+The happy pair were seated, not opposite each other, but
+rectangularly, at the handsome rosewood table; they dined without
+a cloth--a distinguishing elegance--and so far had not spoken a
+word.
+
+Soames liked to talk during dinner about business, or what he had
+been buying, and so long as he talked Irene's silence did not
+distress him.  This evening he had found it impossible to talk.
+The decision to build had been weighing on his mind all the week,
+and he had made up his mind to tell her.
+
+His nervousness about this disclosure irritated him profoundly;
+she had no business to make him feel like that--a wife and a
+husband being one person.  She had not looked at him once since
+they sat down; and he wondered what on earth she had been
+thinking about all the time.  It was hard, when a man worked as
+he did, making money for her--yes, and with an ache in his heart-
+-that she should sit there, looking--looking as if she saw the
+walls of the room closing in.  It was enough to make a man get up
+and leave the table.
+
+The light from the rose-shaded lamp fell on her neck and arms--
+Soames liked her to dine in a low dress, it gave him an
+inexpressible feeling of superiority to the majority of his
+acquaintance, whose wives were contented with their best high
+frocks or with tea-gowns, when they dined at home.  Under that
+rosy light her amber-coloured hair and fair skin made strange
+contrast with her dark brown eyes.
+
+Could a man own anything prettier than this dining-table with its
+deep tints, the starry, soft-petalled roses, the ruby-coloured
+glass, and quaint silver furnishing; could a man own anything
+prettier than the woman who sat at it?  Gratitude was no virtue
+among Forsytes, who, competitive, and full of common-sense, had
+no occasion for it; and Soames only experienced a sense of
+exasperation amounting to pain, that he did not own her as it was
+his right, to own her, that he could not, as by stretching out
+his hand to that rose, pluck her and sniff the very secrets of
+her heart.
+
+Out of his other property, out of all the things he had
+collected, his silver, his pictures, his houses, his investments,
+he got a secret and intimate feeling; out of her he got none.
+
+In this house of his there was writing on every wall.  His
+business-like temperament protested against a mysterious warning
+that she was not made for him.  He had married this woman,
+conquered her, made her his own, and it seemed to him contrary to
+the most fundamental of all laws, the law of possession, that he
+could do no more than own her body--if indeed he could do that,
+which he was beginning to doubt.  If any one had asked him if he
+wanted to own her soul, the question would have seemed to him
+both ridiculous and sentimental.  But he did so want, and the
+writing said he never would.
+
+She was ever silent, passive, gracefully averse; as though
+terrified lest by word, motion, or sign she might lead him to
+believe that she was fond of him; and he asked himself: Must I
+always go on like this?
+
+Like most novel readers of his generation (and Soames was a great
+novel reader), literature coloured his view of life; and he had
+imbibed the belief that it was only a question of time.
+
+In the end the husband always gained the affection of his wife.
+Even in those cases--a class of book he was not very fond of--
+which ended in tragedy, the wife always died with poignant
+regrets on her lips, or if it were the husband who died--
+unpleasant thought--threw herself on his body in an agony of
+remorse.
+
+He often took Irene to the theatre, instinctively choosing the
+modern Society Plays with the modern Society conjugal problem, so
+fortunately different from any conjugal problem in real life.  He
+found that they too always ended in the same way, even when there
+was a lover in the case.  While he was watching the play Soames
+often sympathized with the lover; but before he reached home
+again, driving with Irene in a hansom, he saw that this would not
+do, and he was glad the play had ended as it had.  There was one
+class of husband that had just then come into fashion, the
+strong, rather rough, but extremely sound man, who was peculiarly
+successful at the end of the play; with this person Soames was
+really not in sympathy, and had it not been for his own position,
+would have expressed his disgust with the fellow.  But he was so
+conscious of how vital to himself was the necessity for being a
+successful, even a 'strong,' husband, that be never spoke of a
+distaste born perhaps by the perverse processes of Nature out of
+a secret fund of brutality in himself.
+
+But Irene's silence this evening was exceptional.  He had never
+before seen such an expression on her face.  And since it is
+always the unusual which alarms, Soames was alarmed.  He ate his
+savoury, and hurried the maid as she swept off the crumbs with
+the silver sweeper.  When she had left the room, he filled his.
+glass with wine and said:
+
+"Anybody been here this afternoon?"
+
+"June."
+
+"What did she want?"  It was an axiom with the Forsytes that
+people did not go anywhere unless they wanted something.  "Came
+to talk about her lover, I suppose?"
+
+Irene made no reply.
+
+It looks to me," continued Soames, "as if she were sweeter on him
+than he is on her.  She's always following him about."
+
+Irene's eyes made him feel uncomfortable.
+
+"You've no business to say such a thing!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Why not?  Anybody can see it."
+
+"They cannot.  And if they could, it's disgraceful to say so."
+
+Soames's composure gave way.
+
+"You're a pretty wife!" he said.  But secretly he wondered at the
+heat of her reply; it was unlike her.  "You're cracked about
+June!  I can tell you one thing: now that she has the Buccaneer
+in tow, she doesn't care twopence about you, and, you'll find it
+out.  But you won't see so much of her in future; we're going to
+live in the country."
+
+He had been glad to get his news out under cover of this burst of
+irritation.  He had expected a cry of dismay; the silence with
+which his pronouncement was received alarmed him.
+
+"You don't seem interested," he was obliged to add.
+
+"I knew it already."
+
+He looked at her sharply.
+
+"Who told you?"
+
+"June."
+
+"How did she know?"
+
+Irene did not answer.  Baffled and uncomfortable, he said:
+
+"It's a fine thing for Bosinney, it'll be the making of him.  I
+suppose she's told you all about it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+There was another pause, and then Soames said:
+
+"I suppose you don't want to, go?"
+
+Irene made no reply.
+
+"Well, I can't tell what you want.  You never seem contented
+here."
+
+"Have my wishes anything to do with it?"
+
+She took the vase of roses and left the room.  Soames remained
+seated.  Was it for this that he had signed that contract?  Was
+it for this that he was going to spend some, ten thousand pounds?
+Bosinney"s phrase came back to him: "Women are the devil!"
+
+But presently he grew calmer.  It might have, been worse.  She
+might have flared up.  He had expected something more than this.
+It was lucky, after all, that June had broken the ice for him.
+She must have wormed it out of Bosinney; he might have known she
+would.
+
+He lighted his cigarette.  After all, Irene had not made a scene!
+She would come round--that was the best of her; she was cold, but
+not sulky.  And, puffing the cigarette smoke at a lady-bird on
+the shining table, he plunged into a reverie about the house.  It
+was no good worrying; he would go and make it up presently.  She
+would be sitting out there in the dark, under the Japanese
+sunshade, knitting.  A beautiful, warm night....
+
+In truth, June had come in that afternoon with shining eyes, and
+the words: "Soames is a brick!  It's splendid for Phil--the very
+thing for him!"
+
+Irene's face remaining dark and puzzled, she went on:
+
+"Your new house at Robin Hill, of course.  What?  Don't you
+know?"
+
+Irene did not know.
+
+"Oh! then, I suppose I oughtn't to have told you!" Looking
+impatiently at her friend,, she cried: "You look as if you didn't
+care.  Don't you see, it's what I've' been praying for--the very
+chance he's been wanting all this time.  Now you'll see what he
+can do;" and thereupon she poured out the whole story.
+
+Since her own engagement she had not seemed much interested in
+her friend's position; the hours she spent with Irene were given
+to confidences of her own; and at times, for all her affectionate
+pity, it was impossible to keep out of her smile a trace of
+compassionate contempt for the woman who had made such a mistake
+in her life--such a vast, ridiculous mistake.
+
+"He's to have all the decorations as well--a free hand.  It's
+perfect--"June broke into laughter, her little figure quivered
+gleefully; she raised her hand, and struck a blow at a muslin
+curtain.  "Do you, know I even asked Uncle James...." But, with a
+sudden dislike to mentioning that incident, she stopped; and
+presently, finding her friend so unresponsive, went away.  She
+looked back from the pavement, and Irene was still standing in
+the doorway.  In response to her farewell wave, Irene put her
+hand to her brow, and, turning slowly, shut the door....
+
+Soames went to the drawing-room presently, and peered at her
+through the window.
+
+Out in the shadow of the Japanese sunshade she was sitting very
+still, the lace on her white shoulders stirring with the soft
+rise and fall of her bosom.
+
+But about this silent creature sitting there so motionless, in
+the dark, there seemed a warmth, a hidden fervour of feeling, as
+if the whole of her being had been stirred, and some change were
+taking place in its very depths.
+
+He stole back to the dining-room unnoticed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+JAMES AT LARGE
+
+
+It was not long before Soames's determination to build went the
+round of the family, and created the flutter that any decision
+connected with property should make among Forsytes.
+
+It was not his fault, for he had been determined that no one
+should know.  June, in the fulness of her heart had told Mrs.
+Small, giving her leave only to tell Aunt Ann--she thought it
+would cheer her, the poor old sweet! for Aunt Ann had kept her
+room now for many days.
+
+Mrs. Small told Aunt Ann at once, who, smiling as she lay back on
+her pillows, said in her distinct, trembling old voice:
+
+"It's very nice for dear June; but I hope they will be careful--
+it's rather dangerous!"
+
+When she was left alone again, a frown, like a cloud presaging a
+rainy morrow, crossed her face.
+
+While she was lying there so many days the process of recharging
+her will went on all the time; it spread to her face, too, and
+tightening movements were always in action at the corners of her
+lips.
+
+The maid Smither, who had been in her service since girlhood, and
+was spoken of as "Smither--a good girl--but so slow!"--the maid
+Smither performed every morning with extreme punctiliousness the
+crowning ceremony of that ancient toilet.  Taking from the
+recesses of their, pure white band-box those flat, grey curls,
+the insignia of personal dignity, she placed them securely in her
+mistress's hands, and turned her back.
+
+And every day Aunts Juley and Hester were required to come and
+report on Timothy; what news there was of Nicholas; whether dear
+June had succeeded in getting Jolyon to shorten the engagement,
+now that Mr. Bosinney was building Soames a house; whether young
+Roger's wife was really--expecting; how the operation on Archie
+had succeeded; and what Swithin.  had done about that empty house
+in Wigmore Street, where the tenant had lost all his money and
+treated him so badly; above all, about Soames; was Irene still--
+still asking for a separate room?  And every morning Smither was
+told: "I shall be coming down this afternoon, Smither, about two
+o'clock.  I shall want your arm, after all these days in bed!"
+
+After telling Aunt Ann, Mrs. Small had spoken of the house in the
+strictest confidence to Mrs. Nicholas, who in her turn had asked
+Winifred Dartie for confirmation, supposing, of course, that,
+being Soames's sister, she would know all about it.  Through her
+it had in due course come round to the ears of James. He had been
+a good deal agitated.
+
+"Nobody," he said, "told him anything." And, rather than go
+direct to Soames himself, of whose taciturnity he was afraid, he
+took his umbrella and went round to Timothy's.
+
+He found Mrs. Septimus and Hester (who had been told--she was so
+safe, she found it tiring to talk) ready, and indeed eager, to
+discuss the news.  It was very good of dear Soames, they thought,
+to employ Mr. Bosinney, but rather risky.  What had George named
+him? 'The Buccaneer' How droll!  But George was always droll!
+However, it would be all in the family they supposed they must
+really look upon Mr. Bosinney as belonging to the family, though
+it seemed strange.
+
+James here broke in:
+
+"Nobody knows anything about him.  I don't see what Soames wants
+with a young man like that.  I shouldn't be surprised if Irene
+had put her oar in.  I shall speak to...."
+
+"Soames," interposed Aunt Juley, "told Mr. Bosinney that he
+didn't wish it mentioned.  He wouldn't like it to be talked
+about, I'm sure, and if Timothy knew he would be very vexed,
+I...."
+
+James put his hand behind his ear:
+
+"What?" he said.  "I'm getting very deaf.  I suppose I don't hear
+people.  Emily's got a bad toe.  We shan't be able to start for
+Wales till the end of the month.  There' s always something!"
+And, having got what he wanted, he took his hat and went away.
+
+It was a fine afternoon, and he walked across the Park towards
+Soames's, where he intended to dine, for Emily's toe kept her in
+bed, and Rachel and Cicely were on a visit to the country.  He
+took the slanting path from the Bayswater side of the Row to the
+Knightsbridge Gate, across a pasture of short, burnt grass,
+dotted with blackened sheep, strewn with seated couples and
+strange waifs; lying prone on their faces, like corpses on a
+field over which the wave of battle has rolled.
+
+He walked rapidly, his head bent, looking neither to right nor,
+left.  The appearance of this park, the centre of his own
+battle-field, where he had all his life been fighting, excited no
+thought or speculation in his, mind.  These corpses flung down,
+there, from out the press and turmoil of the struggle, these
+pairs of lovers sitting cheek by jowl for an hour of idle Elysium
+snatched from the monotony of their treadmill, awakened no
+fancies in his mind; he had outlived that kind of imagination;
+his nose, like the nose of a sheep, was fastened to the pastures
+on which he browsed.
+
+One of his tenants had lately shown a disposition to be
+behind-hand in his rent, and it had become a grave question
+whether he had not better turn him out at once, and so run the
+risk of not re-letting before Christmas.  Swithin had just been
+let in very badly, but it had served him right--he had held on
+too long.
+
+He pondered this as he walked steadily, holding his umbrella
+carefully by the wood, just below the crook of the handle, so as
+to keep the ferule off the ground, and not fray the silk in the
+middle.  And, with his thin, high shoulders stooped, his long
+legs moving with swift mechanical precision, this passage through
+the Park, where the sun shone with a clear flame on so much
+idleness--on so many human evidences of the remorseless battle of
+Property, raging beyond its ring--was like the flight of some
+land bird across the sea.
+
+He felt a--touch on the arm as he came out at, Albert Gate.
+
+It was Soames, who, crossing from the shady side of Piccadilly,
+where he had been walking home from the office, had suddenly
+appeared alongside.
+
+"Your mother's in bed," said James; "I was, just coming to you,
+but I suppose I shall be in the way."
+
+The outward relations between James and his son were marked by a
+lack of sentiment peculiarly Forsytean, but for all that the two
+were by no means unattached.  Perhaps they regarded one another
+as an investment; certainly they were solicitous of each other's
+welfare, glad of each other's company.  They had never exchanged
+two words upon the more intimate problems of life, or revealed in
+each other's presence the existence of any deep feeling.
+
+Something beyond the power of word-analysis bound them together,
+something hidden deep in the fibre of nations and families--for
+blood, they say, is thicker than water--and neither of them was a
+cold-blooded man.  Indeed, in James love of his children was now
+the prime motive of his existence.  To have creatures who were
+parts of himself, to whom he might transmit the money he saved,
+was at the root of his saving; and, at seventy-five, what was
+left that could give him pleasure, but--saving?  The kernel of
+life was in this saving for his children.
+
+Than James Forsyte, notwithstanding all his 'Jonah-isms,' there
+was no saner man (if the leading symptom of sanity, as we are
+told, is self-preservation, though without doubt Timothy went too
+far) in all this London, of which he owned so much, and loved
+with such a dumb love, as the centre of his opportunities.  He
+had the marvellous instinctive sanity of the middle class.  In
+him--more than in Jolyon, with his masterful will and his moments
+of tenderness and philosophy--more than in Swithin, the martyr to
+crankiness--Nicholas, the sufferer from ability--and Roger, the
+victim of enterprise--beat the true pulse of compromise; of all
+the brothers he was least remarkable in mind and person, and for
+that reason more likely to live for ever.
+
+To James, more than to any of the others, was "the family'
+significant and dear.  There had always been something primitive
+and cosy in his attitude towards life; he loved the family
+hearth, he loved gossip, and he loved grumbling.  All his
+decisions were formed of a cream which he skimmed off the family
+mind; and, through that family, off the minds of thousands of
+other families of similar fibre.  Year after year, week after
+week, he went to Timothy's, and in his brother's front
+drawing-room--his legs twisted, his long white whiskers framing
+his clean-shaven mouth would sit watching the family pot simmer,
+the cream rising to the top; and he would go away sheltered,
+refreshed, comforted, with an indefinable sense of comfort.
+
+Beneath the adamant of his self-preserving instinct there was
+much real softness in James; a visit to Timothy's was like an
+hour spent in the lap of a mother; and the deep craving he
+himself had for the protection of the family wing reacted in turn
+on his feelings towards his own children; it was a nightmare to
+him to think of them.  exposed to the treatment of the world, in
+money, health, or reputation.  When his old friend John Street's
+son volunteered for special service, he shook his head
+querulously, and wondered what John Street was about to allow it;
+and when young Street was assagaied, he took it so much to heart
+that he made a point of calling everywhere with the special
+object of saying: He knew how it would be--he'd no patience with
+them!
+
+When his son-in-law Dartie had that financial crisis, due to
+speculation in Oil Shares, James made himself ill worrying over
+it; the knell of all prosperity seemed to have sounded.  It took
+him three months and a visit to Baden-Baden to get better; there
+was something terrible in the idea that but for his, James's,
+money, Dartie's name might have appeared in the Bankruptcy List.
+
+Composed of a physiological mixture so sound that if he had an
+earache he thought he was dying, he regarded the occasional
+ailments of his wife and children as in the nature of personal
+grievances, special interventions of Providence for the purpose
+of destroying his peace of mind; but he did not believe at all in
+the ailments of people outside his own immediate family,
+affirming them in every case to be due to neglected liver.
+
+His universal comment was: "What can they expect?  I have it
+myself, if I'm not careful!"
+
+When he went to Soames's that evening he felt that life was hard
+on him: There was Emily with a bad toe, and Rachel gadding about
+in the country; he got no sympathy from anybody; and Ann, she was
+ill--he did not believe she would last through the summer; he had
+called there three times now without her being able to see him!
+And this idea of Soames's, building a house, that would have to
+be looked into.  As to the trouble with Irene, he didn't know
+what was to come of that--anything might come of it!
+
+He entered 62, Montpellier Square with the fullest intentions of
+being miserable.  It was already half-past seven, and Irene,
+dressed for dinner, was seated in the drawing- room.  She was
+wearing her gold-coloured frock--for, having been displayed at a
+dinner-party, a soiree, and a dance, it was now to be worn at
+home--and she had adorned the bosom with a cascade of lace, on
+which James's eyes riveted themselves at once.
+
+"Where do you get your things?" he said in an aggravated voice.
+"I never see Rachel and Cicely looking half so well.  That
+rose-point, now--that's not real!"
+
+Irene came close, to prove to him that he was in error.
+
+And, in spite of himself, James felt the influence of her
+deference, of the faint seductive perfume exhaling from her.  No
+self-respecting Forsyte surrendered at a blow; so he merely said:
+He didn't know--he expected she was spending a pretty penny on
+dress.
+
+The gong sounded, and, putting her white arm within his, Irene
+took him into the dining-room.  She seated him in Soames's usual
+place, round the corner on her left.  The light fell softly
+there, so that he would not be worried by the gradual dying of
+the day; and she began to talk to him about himself.
+
+Presently, over James came a change, like the mellowing that
+steals upon a fruit in the, sun; a  sense of being caressed, and
+praised, and petted, and all without the bestowal of a single
+caress or word of praise.  He felt that what he was eating was
+agreeing with him; he could not get that feeling at home; he did
+not know when he had enjoyed a glass of champagne so much, and,
+on inquiring the brand and price, was surprised to find that it
+was one of which he had a large stock himself, but could never
+drink; he instantly formed the resolution to let his wine
+merchant know that he had been swindled.
+
+Looking up from his food, he remarked:
+
+"You've a lot of nice things about the place.  Now, what did you
+give for that sugar-sifter?  Shouldn't wonder if it was worth
+money!"
+
+He was particularly pleased with the appearance of a picture, on
+the wall opposite, which he himself had given them:
+
+"I'd no idea it was so good!" he said.
+
+They rose to go into the drawing-room, and James followed Irene
+closely.
+
+"That's what I call a capital little dinner," he murmured,
+breathing pleasantly down on her shoulder; "nothing heavy--and
+not too Frenchified.  But I can't get it at home.  I pay my cook
+sixty pounds a year, but she can't give me a dinner like that!"
+
+He had as yet made no allusion to the building of the house, nor
+did he when Soames, pleading the excuse of business, betook
+himself to the room at the top, where he kept his pictures.
+
+James was left alone with his daughter-in-law.  The glow of the
+wine, and of an excellent liqueur, was still within him.  He felt
+quite warm towards her.  She was really a taking little thing;
+she listened to you, and seemed to understand what you were
+saying; and, while talking, he kept examining her figure, from
+her bronze-coloured shoes to the waved gold of her hair.  She was
+leaning back in an Empire chair, her shoulders poised against the
+top--her body, flexibly straight and unsupported from the hips,
+swaying when she moved, as though giving to the arms of a lover.
+Her lips were smiling, her eyes half-closed.
+
+It may have been a recognition of danger in the very charm of her
+attitude, or a twang of digestion, that caused a sudden dumbness
+to fall on James.  He did not remember ever having, been quite
+alone with Irene before.  And, as he looked at her, an odd
+feeling crept over him, as though he had come across something
+strange and foreign.
+
+Now what was she thinking about--sitting back like that?
+
+Thus when he spoke it was in a sharper voice, as if he had been
+awakened from a pleasant dream.
+
+"What d'you do with yourself all day?" he said.  "You never come
+round to Park Lane!"
+
+She seemed to be making very lame excuses, and James did not look
+
+at her.  He did not want to believe that she was really avoiding
+them--it would mean too much.
+
+"I expect the fact is, you haven't time," he said; "You're always
+about with June.  I expect you're useful to her with her young
+man, chaperoning, and one thing and another.  They tell me she's
+never at home now; your Uncle Jolyon he doesn't like it, I fancy,
+being left so much alone as he is.  They tell me she's always
+hanging about for this young Bosinney; I suppose he comes here
+every day.  Now, what do you think of him?  D'you think he knows
+his own mind?  He seems to me a poor thing.  I should say the
+grey mare was the better horse!"
+
+The colour deepened in Irene's face; and James watched her
+suspiciously.
+
+"Perhaps you don't quite understand Mr. Bosinney," she said.
+
+"Don't understand him!" James humied out: "Why not?--you can see
+he's one of these artistic chaps.  They say he's clever--they all
+think they're clever.  You know more about him than I do," he
+added; and again his suspicious glance rested on her.
+
+"He is designing a house for Soames," she said softly, evidently
+trying to smooth things over.
+
+"That brings me to what I was going to say," continued James; "I
+don't know what Soames wants with a young man like that; why
+doesn't he go to a first-rate man?"
+
+"Perhaps Mr. Bosinney is first-rate!"
+
+James rose, and took a turn with bent head.
+
+"That's it'," he said, "you young people, you all stick together;
+you all think you know best!"
+
+Halting his tall, lank figure before her, he raised a finger, and
+levelled it at her bosom, as though bringing an indictment
+against her beauty:
+
+"All I can say is, these artistic people, or whatever they call
+themselves, they're as unreliable as they can be; and my advice
+to you is, don't you have too much to do with him!"
+
+Irene smiled; and in the curve of her lips was a strange
+provocation.  She seemed to have lost her deference.  Her breast
+rose and fell as though with secret anger; she drew her hands
+inwards from their rest on the arms of her chair until the tips
+of her fingers met, and her dark eyes looked unfathomably at
+James.
+
+The latter gloomily scrutinized the floor.
+
+"I tell you my opinion," he said, "it's a pity you haven't got a
+child to think about, and occupy you!
+
+A brooding look came instantly on Irene's face, and even James
+became conscious of the rigidity that took possession of her
+whole figure beneath the softness of its silk and lace clothing.
+
+He was frightened by the effect he had produced, and like most
+men with but little courage, he sought at once to justify himself
+by bullying.
+
+"You don't seem to care about going about.  Why don't you drive
+down to Hurlingham with us?  And go to the theatre now and then.
+At your time of life you ought to take an interest in things.
+You're a young woman!"
+
+The brooding look darkened on her face; he grew nervous.
+
+"Well, I know nothing about it," he said; "nobody tells me
+anything.  Soames ought to be able to take care of himself.  If
+he can't take care of himself he mustn't look to me--that's all."
+
+Biting the corner of his forefinger he stole a cold, sharp look
+at his daughter-in-law.
+
+He encountered her eyes fixed on his own, so dark and deep, that
+he stopped, and broke into a gentle perspiration.
+
+"Well, I must be going," he said after a short pause, and a
+minute later rose, with a slight appearance of surprise, as
+though he had expected to be asked to stop.  Giving his hand to
+Irene, he allowed himself to be conducted to the door, and let
+out into the street.  He would not have a cab, he would walk,
+Irene was to say good-night to Soames for him, and if she wanted
+a little gaiety, well, he would drive her down to Richmond any
+day.
+
+He walked home, and going upstairs, woke Emily out of the first
+sleep she had had for four and twenty hours, to tell her that it
+was his impression things were in a bad way at Soames's; on this
+theme he descanted for half an hour, until at last, saying that
+he would not sleep a wink, he turned on his side and instantly
+began to snore.
+
+In Montpellier Square Soames, who had come from the picture room,
+stood invisible at the top of the stairs, watching Irene sort the
+letters brought by the last post.  She turned back into the
+drawing-room; but in a minute came out, and stood as if
+listening.  Then she came stealing up the stairs, with a kitten
+in her arms.  He could see her face bent over the little beast,
+which was purring against her neck.  Why couldn't she look at him
+like that?
+
+Suddenly she saw him, and her face changed.
+
+"Any letters for me?" he said.
+
+"Three."
+
+He stood aside, and without another word she passed on into the
+bedroom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+OLD JOLYON'S PECCADILLO
+
+
+Old Jolyon came out of Lord's cricket ground that same afternoon
+with the intention of going home.  He had not reached Hamilton
+Terrace before he changed his mind, and hailing a cab, gave the
+driver an address in Wistaria Avenue.  He had taken a resolution.
+
+June had hardly been at home at all that week; she had given him
+nothing of her company for a long time past, not, in fact, since
+she had become engaged to Bosinney.  He never asked her for her
+company.  It was not his habit to ask people for things!  She had
+just that one idea now--Bosinney and his affairs--and she left
+him stranded in his great house, with a parcel of servants, and
+not a soul to speak to from morning to night.  His Club was
+closed for cleaning; his Boards in recess; there was nothing,
+therefore, to take him into the City.  June had wanted him to go
+away; she would not go herself, because Bosinney was in London.
+
+But where was he to go by himself?  He could not go abroad alone;
+the sea upset his liver; he hated hotels.  Roger went to a
+hydropathic--he was--not going to begin that at his time of life,
+those new-fangled places we're all humbug!
+
+With such formulas he clothed to himself the desolation of his
+spirit; the lines down his face deepening, his eyes day by day
+looking forth with the melancholy which sat so strangely on a
+face wont to be strong and serene.
+
+And so that afternoon he took this journey through St.  John's
+Wood, in the golden-light that sprinkled the rounded green bushes
+of the acacia's before the little houses, in the summer sunshine
+that seemed holding a revel over the little gardens; and he
+looked about him with interest; for this was a district which no
+Forsyte entered without open disapproval and secret curiosity.
+
+His cab stopped in front of a small house of that peculiar buff
+colour which implies a long immunity from paint.  It had an outer
+gate, and a rustic approach.
+
+He stepped out, his bearing extremely composed; his massive head,
+with its drooping moustache and wings of white hair, very
+upright, under an excessively large top hat; his glance firm, a
+little angry.  He had been driven into this!
+
+"Mrs. Jolyon Forsyte at home?"
+
+"Oh, yes sir!--what name shall I say, if you please, sir?"
+
+Old Jolyon could not help twinkling at the little maid as he gave
+his name.  She seemed to him such a funny little toad!
+
+And he followed her through the dark hall, into a small double,
+drawing-room, where the furniture was covered in chintz, and the
+little maid placed him in a chair.
+
+"They're all in the garden, sir; if you'll kindly take a seat,
+I'll tell them."
+
+Old Jolyon sat down in the chintz-covered chair, and looked
+around him.  The whole place seemed to him, as he would have
+expressed it, pokey; there was a certain--he could not tell
+exactly what--air of shabbiness, or rather of making two ends
+meet, about everything.  As far as he could see, not a single
+piece of furniture was worth a five-pound note.  The walls,
+distempered rather a long time ago, were decorated with
+water-colour sketches; across the ceiling meandered a long crack.
+
+These little houses were all old, second-rate concerns; he should
+hope the rent was under a hundred a year; it hurt him more than
+he could have said, to think of a Forsyte--his own son living in
+such a place.
+
+The little maid came back.  Would he please to go down into the
+garden?
+
+Old Jolyon marched out through the French windows.  In descending
+the steps he noticed that they wanted painting.
+
+Young Jolyon, his wife, his two children, and his dog Balthasar,
+were all out there under a pear-tree.
+
+This walk towards them was the most courageous act of old
+Jolyon's life; but no muscle of his face moved, no nervous
+gesture betrayed him.  He kept his deep-set eyes steadily on the
+enemy.
+
+In those two minutes he demonstrated to perfection all that
+unconscious soundness, balance, and vitality of fibre that made,
+of him and so many others of his class the core of the nation.
+In the unostentatious conduct of their own affairs, to the
+neglect of everything else, they typified the essential
+individualism, born in the Briton from the natural isolation of
+his country's life.
+
+The dog Balthasar sniffed round the edges of his trousers; this
+friendly and cynical mongrel offspring of a liaison between a
+Russian poodle and a fox-terrier--had a nose for the unusual.
+
+The strange greetings over, old Jolyon seated himself in a wicker
+chair, and his two grandchildren, one on each side of his knees,
+looked at him silently, never having seen so old a man.
+
+They were unlike, as though recognising the difference set
+between them by the circumstances of their births.  Jolly, the
+child of sin, pudgy-faced, with his tow-coloured hair brushed off
+his forehead, and a dimple in his chin, had an air of stubborn
+amiability, and the eyes of a Forsyte; little Holly, the child of
+wedlock, was a dark-skinned, solemn soul, with her mother's, grey
+and wistful eyes.
+
+The dog Balthasar, having walked round the three small flower-
+beds, to show his extreme contempt for things at large, had also
+taken a seat in front of old Jolyon, and, oscillating a tail
+curled by Nature tightly over his back, was staring up with
+eyes that did not blink.
+
+Even in the garden, that sense of things being pokey haunted old
+Jolyon; the wicker chair creaked under his weight; the
+garden-beds looked 'daverdy'; on the far side, under the smut-
+stained wall, cats had made a path.
+
+While he and his grandchildren thus regarded each other with the
+peculiar scrutiny, curious yet trustful, that passes between the
+very young and the very old, young Jolyon watched his wife.
+
+The colour had deepened in her thin, oval face, with its straight
+brows, and large, grey eyes.  Her hair, brushed in fine, high
+curves back from her forehead, was going grey, like his own, and
+this greyness made the sudden vivid colour in her cheeks
+painfully pathetic.
+
+The look on her face, such as he had never seen there before,
+such as she had always hidden from him, was full of secret
+resentments, and longings, and fears.  Her eyes, under their
+twitching brows, stared painfully.  And she was silent.
+
+Jolly alone sustained the conversation; he had many possessions,
+and was anxious that his unknown friend with extremely large
+moustaches, and hands all covered with blue veins, who sat with
+legs crossed like his own father (a habit he was himself trying
+to acquire), should know it; but being a Forsyte, though not yet
+quite eight years old, he made no mention of the thing at the
+moment dearest to his heart--a camp of soldiers in a shop-window,
+which his father had promised to buy.  No doubt it seemed to him
+too precious; a tempting of Providence to mention it yet.
+
+And the sunlight played through the leaves on that little party
+of the three generations grouped tranquilly under the pear-tree,
+which had long borne no fruit.
+
+Old Jolyon's furrowed face was reddening patchily, as old men's
+faces redden in the sun.  He took one of Jolly's hands in his
+own; the boy climbed on to his knee; and little Holly, mesmerized
+by this sight, crept up to them; the sound of the dog Balthasar's
+scratching arose rhythmically.
+
+Suddenly young Mrs. Jolyon got up and hurried indoors.  A minute
+later her husband muttered an excuse, and followed.  Old Jolyon
+was left alone with his grandchildren.
+
+And Nature with her quaint irony began working in him one of her
+strange revolutions, following her cyclic laws into the depths of
+his heart.  And that tenderness for little children, that passion
+for the beginnings of life which had once made him forsake his
+son and follow June, now worked in him to forsake June and follow
+these littler things.  Youth, like a flame, burned ever in his
+breast, and to youth he turned, to the round little limbs, so
+reckless, that wanted care, to the small round faces so
+unreasonably solemn or bright, to the treble tongues,  and the
+shrill, chuckling laughter, to the insistent tugging hands, and
+the feel of small bodies against his legs, to all that was young
+and young, and once more young.  And his eyes grew soft, his
+voice, and thin-veined hands soft, and soft his heart within him.
+And to those small creatures he became at once a place of
+pleasure, a place where they were secure, and could talk and
+laugh and play; till, like sunshine, there radiated from old
+Jolyon's wicker chair the perfect gaiety of three hearts.
+
+But with young Jolyon following to his wife's room it was
+different.
+
+He found her seated on a chair before her dressing-glass, with
+her hands before her face.
+
+Her shoulders were shaking with sobs.  This passion of hers for
+suffering was mysterious to him.  He had been through a hundred
+of these moods; how he had survived them he never knew, for he
+could never believe they were moods, and that the last hour of
+his partnership had not struck.
+
+In the night she would be sure to throw her o arms round, his
+neck and say: "Oh! Jo, how I make you suffer!" as she had done a
+hundred times before.
+
+He reached out his hand, and, unseen, slipped his razor-case into
+his pocket.
+'I cannot stay here,' he thought, 'I must go down!'  Without a
+word he left the room, and went back to the lawn.
+
+Old Jolyon had little Holly on his knee; she had taken possession
+of his watch; Jolly, very red in the face, was trying to show
+that he could stand on his head.  The dog Balthasar, as close as
+he might be to the tea-table, had fixed his eyes on the cake.
+
+Young Jolyon felt a malicious desire to cut their enjoyment
+short.
+
+What business had his father to come and upset his wife like
+this?  It was a shock, after all these years!  He ought to have
+known; he ought to have given them warning; but when did a
+Forsyte ever imagine that his conduct could upset anybody!  And
+in his thoughts he did old Jolyon wrong.
+
+He spoke sharply to the children, and told them to go in to their
+tea.  Greatly surprised, for they had never heard their father
+speak sharply before, they went off, hand in hand, little Holly
+looking back over her shoulder.
+
+Young Jolyon poured out the tea.
+
+"My wife's not the thing today," he said, but he knew well enough
+that his father had penetrated the cause of that sudden
+withdrawal, and almost hated the old man for sitting there so
+calmly.
+
+"You've got a nice little house here," said old Jolyon with a
+shrewd look; "I suppose you've taken a lease of it!"
+
+Young Jolyon nodded.
+
+"I don't like the neighbourhood," said old Jolyon; "a ramshackle
+lot."
+
+Young Jolyon replied: "Yes, we're a ramshackle lot."'
+
+The silence was now only broken by the sound of the dog
+Balthasar's scratching.
+
+Old Jolyon said simply: "I suppose I oughtn't to have come here,
+Jo; but I get so lonely!"
+
+At these words young Jolyon got up and put his hand on his
+father's shoulder.
+
+In the next house someone was playing over and over again: 'La
+Donna  mobile' on an untuned piano; and the little garden had
+fallen into shade, the sun now only reached the wall at the end,
+whereon basked a crouching cat, her yellow eyes turned sleepily
+down on the dog Balthasar.  There was a drowsy hum of very
+distant traffic; the creepered trellis round the garden shut out
+everything but sky, and house, and pear-tree, with its top
+branches still gilded by the sun.
+
+For some time they sat there, talking but little.  Then old
+Jolyon rose to go, and not a word was said about his coming
+again.
+
+He walked away very sadly.  What a poor miserable place; and he
+thought of the great, empty house in Stanhope Gate, fit residence
+for a Forsyte, with its huge billiard-room and drawing-room that
+no one entered from one week's end to another.
+
+That woman, whose face he had rather liked, was too thin-skinned
+by half; she gave Jo a bad time he knew!  And those sweet
+children!  Ah! what a piece of awful folly!
+
+He walked towards the Edgware Road, between rows of little
+houses, all suggesting to him (erroneously no doubt, but the
+prejudices of a Forsyte are sacred) shady histories of some sort
+or kind.
+
+Society, forsooth, the chattering hags and jackanapes--had set
+themselves up to pass judgment on his flesh and blood!  A parcel
+of old women!  He stumped his umbrella on the ground, as though
+to drive it into the heart of that unfortunate body, which had
+dared to ostracize his son and his son's son, in whom he could
+have lived again!
+
+He stumped his umbrella fiercely; yet he himself had followed
+Society's behaviour for fifteen years--had only today been false
+to it!
+
+He thought of June, and her dead mother, and the whole story,
+with all his old bitterness.  A wretched business!
+
+He was a long time reaching Stanhope Gate, for, with native
+perversity, being extremely tired, he walked the whole way.
+
+After washing his hands in the lavatory downstairs, he went to
+the dining-room to wait for dinner, the only room he used when
+June was out--it was less lonely so.  The evening paper had not
+yet come; he had finished the Times, there was therefore nothing
+to do.
+
+The room faced the backwater of traffic, and was very silent.  He
+disliked dogs, but a dog even would have been company.  His gaze,
+travelling round the walls, rested on a 'picture entitled: 'Group
+of Dutch fishing boats at sunset; the chef d'oeuvre of his
+collection.  It gave him no pleasure.  He closed his eyes.  He
+was lonely!  He oughtn't to complain, he knew, but he couldn't
+help it: He was a poor thing--had always been a poor thing--no
+pluck!  Such was his thought.
+
+The butler came to lay the table for dinner, and seeing his
+master apparently asleep, exercised extreme caution in his
+movements.  This bearded man also wore a moustache, which had
+given rise to grave doubts in the minds of many members--of the
+family--, especially those who, like Soames, had been to public
+schools, and were accustomed to niceness in such matters.  Could
+he really be considered a butler?  Playful spirits alluded to him
+as: 'Uncle Jolyon's Nonconformist'; George, the acknowledged wag,
+had named him: 'Sankey.'
+
+He moved to and fro between the great polished sideboard and the
+great polished table inimitably sleek and soft.
+
+Old Jolyon watched him, feigning sleep.  The fellow was a sneak--
+he had always thought so--who cared about nothing but rattling
+through his work, and getting out to his betting or his woman or
+goodness knew what!  A slug!  Fat too! And didn't care a pin
+about his master!
+
+But then against his will, came one of those moments of
+philosophy which made old Jolyon different from other Forsytes:
+
+After all why should the man care?  He wasn't paid to care, and
+why expect it?  In this world people couldn't look for affection
+unless they paid for it.  It might be different in the next--he
+didn't know--couldn't tell!  And again he shut his eyes.
+
+Relentless and stealthy, the butler pursued his labours, taking
+things from the various compartments of the sideboard.  His back
+seemed always turned to old Jolyon; thus, he robbed his
+operations of the unseemliness of being carried on in his
+master's presence; now and then he furtively breathed on the
+silver, and wiped it with a piece of chamois leather.  He
+appeared to pore over the quantities of wine in the decanters,
+which he carried carefully and rather high, letting his heard
+droop over them protectingly.  When he had finished, he stood for
+over a minute watching his master, and in his greenish eyes there
+was a look of contempt:
+
+After all, this master of his was an old buffer, who hadn't much
+left in him!
+
+Soft as a tom-cat, he crossed the room to press the bell.  His
+orders were 'dinner at seven.' What if his master were asleep; he
+would soon have him out of that; there was the night to sleep in!
+He had himself to think of, for he was due at his Club at
+half-past eight!
+
+In answer to the ring, appeared a page boy with a silver soup
+tureen.  The butler took it from his hands and placed it on the.
+table, then, standing by the open door, as though about to usher
+company into the room, he said in a solemn voice:
+
+"Dinner is on the table, sir!
+
+Slowly old Jolyon got up out of his chair, and sat down at the
+table to eat his dinner.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+PLANS OF THE HOUSE
+
+
+Forsytes, as is generally admitted, have shells, like that
+extremely useful little animal which is made into Turkish
+delight, in other words, they are never seen, or if seen would
+not be recognised, without habitats, composed of circumstance,
+property, acquaintances, and wives, which seem to move along with
+them in their passage through a world composed of thousands of
+other Forsytes with their habitats.  Without a habitat a Forsyte
+is inconceivable--he would be like a novel without a plot, which
+is well-known to be an anomaly.
+
+To Forsyte eyes Bosinney appeared to have no habitat, he seemed
+one of those rare and unfortunate men who go through life
+surrounded by circumstance, property, acquaintances, and wives
+that do not belong to them.
+
+His rooms in Sloane Street, on the top floor, outside which, on a
+plate, was his name, 'Philip Baynes Bosinney, Architect,' were
+not those of a Forsyte.--He had no sitting-room apart from his
+office, but a large recess had been screened off to conceal the
+necessaries of life--a couch, an easy chair, his pipes, spirit
+case, novels and slippers.  The business part of the room had the
+usual furniture; an open cupboard with pigeon-holes, a round oak
+table, a folding wash-stand, some hard chairs, a standing desk of
+large dimensions covered with drawings and designs.  June had
+twice been to tea there under the chaperonage of his aunt.
+
+He was believed to have a bedroom at the back.
+
+As far as the family had been able to ascertain his income, it
+consisted of two consulting appointments at twenty pounds a year,
+together with an odd fee once in a way, and--more worthy item--a
+private annuity under his father's will of one hundred and fifty
+pounds a year.
+
+What had transpired concerning that father was not so reassuring.
+It appeared that he had been a Lincolnshire country doctor of
+Cornish extraction, striking appearance, and Byronic tendencies--
+a well-known figure, in fact, in his county.  Bosinney's uncle by
+marriage, Baynes, of Baynes and Bildeboy, a Forsyte in instincts
+if not in name, had but little that was worthy to relate of his
+brother-in-law.
+
+"An odd fellow!' he would say: 'always spoke of his three eldest
+boys as 'good creatures, but so dull'; they're all doing
+capitally in the Indian Civil!  Philip was the only one he liked.
+I've heard him talk in the queerest way; he once said to me: 'My
+dear fellow, never let your poor wife know what you're thinking
+of!  But I didn't follow his advice; not I!  An eccentric man!
+He would say to Phil: 'Whether you live like a gentleman or not,
+my boy, be sure you die like one!  and he had himself embalmed in
+a frock coat suit, with a satin cravat and a diamond pin.  Oh,
+quite an original, I can assure you I"
+
+Of Bosinney himself Baynes would speak warmly, with a certain
+compassion: "He's got a streak of his father's Byronism.  Why,
+look at the way he threw up his chances when he left my office;
+going off like that for six months with a knapsack, and all for
+what?--to study foreign architecture--foreign!  What could he
+expect?  And there he is--a clever young fellow--doesn't make his
+hundred a year!  Now this engagement is the best thing that could
+have happened--keep him steady; he's one of those that go to bed
+all day and stay up all night, simply because they've no method;
+but no vice about him--not an ounce of vice.  Old Forsyte's a
+rich man!"
+
+Mr. Baynes made himself extremely pleasant to June, who
+frequently visited his house in Lowndes Square at this period.
+
+"This house of your cousin's--what a capital man of business--is
+the very thing for Philip," he would say to her; "you mustn't
+expect to see too much of him just now, my dear young lady.  The
+good cause--the good cause!  The young man must make his way.
+When I was his age I was at work day and night.  My dear wife
+used to say to me, 'Bobby, don't work too hard, think of your
+health'; but I never spared myself!"
+
+June had complained that her lover found no time to come to
+Stanhope Gate.
+
+The first time he came again they had not been together a quarter
+of an hour before, by one of those coincidences of which she was
+a mistress, Mrs. Septimus Small arrived.  Thereon Bosinney rose
+and hid himself, according to previous arrangement, in the little
+study, to wait for her departure.
+
+"My dear," said Aunt Juley, "how thin he is!  I've often noticed
+it with engaged people; but you mustn't let it get worse.
+There's Barlow's extract of veal; it did your Uncle Swithin a lot
+of good."
+
+June, her little figure erect before the hearth, her small face
+quivering grimly, for she regarded her aunt's untimely visit in
+the light of a personal injury, replied with scorn:
+
+"It's because he's busy; people who can do anything worth doing
+are never fat!"
+
+Aunt Juley pouted; she herself had always been thin, but the only
+pleasure she derived from the fact was the opportunity of longing
+to be stouter.
+
+I don't think," she said mournfully, "that you ought to let them
+call him 'The Buccaneer'; people might think it odd, now that
+he's going to build a house for Soames.  I do hope he will be
+careful; it's so important for him.  Soames has such good taste!"
+
+"Taste!" cried June, flaring up at once; "wouldn't give that for
+his taste, or any of the family's!"
+
+Mrs. Small was taken aback.
+
+"Your Uncle Swithin," she said, "always had beautiful taste!  And
+Soames's little house is lovely; you don't mean to say you don't
+think so!"
+
+"H'mph!" said June, "that's only because Irene's there!"
+
+Aunt Juley tried to say something pleasant:
+
+"And how will dear Irene like living in the country?"
+
+June gazed at her intently, with a look in her eyes as if her
+conscience had suddenly leaped up into them; it passed; and an
+even more intent look took its place, as if she had stared that
+conscience out of countenance.  She replied imperiously:
+
+Of course she'll like it; why shouldn't she?"
+
+Mrs. Small grew nervous.
+
+"I didn't know," she said; "I thought she mightn't like to leave
+her friends.  Your Uncle James says she doesn't take enough
+interest in life.  We think--I mean Timothy thinks--she ought to
+go out more.  I expect you'll miss her very much!"
+
+June clasped her hands behind her neck.
+
+"I do wish, "she cried, "Uncle Timothy wouldn't talk about what
+doesn't concern him!"
+
+Aunt Juley rose to the full height of her tall figure.
+
+"He never talks about what doesn't concern him, she said.
+
+June was instantly compunctious; she ran to her aunt and kissed
+her.
+
+"I'm very sorry, auntie; but I wish they'd let Irene alone."
+
+Aunt Juley, unable to think of anything further on the subject
+that would be suitable, was silent; she prepared for departure,
+hooking her black silk cape across her chest, and, taking up her
+green reticule:
+
+"And how is your dear grandfather?" she asked in the hall, "I
+expect he's very lonely now that all your time is taken up with
+Mr. Bosinney."
+
+She bent and kissed her niece hungrily, and with little, mincing
+steps passed away.
+
+The tears sprang up in June's eyes; running into the little
+study, where Bosinney was sitting at the table drawing birds on
+the back of an envelope, she sank down, by his side and cried:
+
+"Oh, Phil! it's all so horrid!"  Her heart was as warm as the
+colour of her hair.
+
+On the following Sunday morning, while Soames was shaving, a
+message was brought him to the effect that Mr. Bosinney was
+below, and would be glad to see him.  Opening the door into his
+wife's room, he said:
+
+"Bosinney's downstairs.  Just go and entertain him while I finish
+shaving.  I'll be down in a minute.  It's about the plans, I
+expect."
+
+Irene looked at him, without reply, put the finishing touch to
+her dress and went downstairs.  He could not make her out about
+this house.  She had said nothing against it, and, as far as
+Bosinney was concerned, seemed friendly enough.
+
+>From the window of his dressing-room he could see them talking
+together in the little court below.  He hurried on with his
+shaving, cutting his chin twice.  He heard them laugh, and
+thought to himself: "Well, they get on all right, anyway!"
+
+As he expected, Bosinney had come round to fetch, him to look at
+the plans.
+
+He took his hat and went over.
+
+The plans were spread on the oak table in the architect's room;
+and pale, imperturbable, inquiring, Soames bent over them for a
+long time without speaking.
+
+He said at last in a puzzled voice:
+
+"It's an odd sort of house!"
+
+A rectangular house of two stories was designed in a quadrangle
+round a covered-in court.  This court, encircled by a gallery on
+the upper floor, was roofed with a glass roof, supported by eight
+columns running up from the ground.
+
+It was indeed, to Forsyte eyes, an odd house.
+
+"There's a lot of room cut to waste," pursued Soames.
+
+Bosinney began to walk about, and Soames did not like the
+expression on his face.
+
+"The principle of this house," said the architect, "was that you
+should have room to breathe--like a gentleman!"
+
+Soames extended his finger and thumb, as if measuring the extent
+of the distinction he should acquire; and replied:
+
+"Oh! yes; I see."
+
+The peculiar look came into Bosinney's face which marked all, his
+enthusiasms.
+
+"I've tried to plan you a house here with some self-respect of
+its own.  If  you don't like it, you'd better say so.  It's
+certainly the last thing to be considered--who wants self-respect
+in a house, when you can squeeze in an extra lavatory?"  He put
+his finger suddenly down on the left division of the centre
+oblong: "You can swing a cat here.  This is for your pictures,
+divided from this court by curtains; draw them back and you'll
+have a space of fifty-one by twenty-three six.  This double-faced
+stove in the centre, here, looks one way towards the court, one
+way towards the picture room; this end wall is all window; You've
+a southeast light from that, a north light from the court.  The
+rest of your pictures you can hang round the gallery upstairs, or
+in the other rooms.  "In architecture," he went on--and though
+looking at Soames he did not seem to see him, which gave Soames
+an unpleasant feeling--"as in life, you'll get no self-respect
+without regularity.  Fellows tell you that's old fashioned.  It
+appears to be peculiar any way; it never occurs to us to embody
+the main principle of life in our buildings; we load our houses
+with decoration, gimcracks, corners, anything to distract the
+eye.  On the contrary the eye should rest; get your effects with
+a few strong lines.  The whole thing is regularity there's no
+self-respect without it."
+
+Soames, the unconscious ironist, fixed his gaze on Bosinney's
+tie, which was far from being in the perpendicular; he was
+unshaven too, and his dress not remarkable for order.
+Architecture appeared to have exhausted his regularity.
+
+"Won't it look like a barrack?" he inquired.
+
+He did not at once receive a reply.
+
+"I can see what it is," said Bosinney, "you want one of Little-
+master's houses--one of the pretty and commodious sort, where the
+servants will live in garrets, and the front door be sunk so that
+you may come up again.  By all means try Littlemaster, you'll
+find him a capital fellow, I've known him all my life!"
+
+Soames was alarmed.  He had really been struck by the plans, and
+the concealment of his satisfaction had been merely instinctive.
+It was difficult for him to pay a compliment.  He despised people
+who were lavish with their praises.
+
+He found himself now in the embarrassing position of one who must
+pay a compliment or run the risk of losing a good thing.
+Bosinney was just the fellow who might tear up the plans and
+refuse to act for him; a kind of grown-up child!
+
+This grown-up childishness, to which he felt so superior,
+exercised a peculiar and almost mesmeric effect on Soames, for he
+had never felt anything like it in himself.
+
+"Well," he stammered at last, "it's--it's, certainly original."
+
+He had such a private distrust and even dislike of the word=original' that he
+felt he had not really given himself away by
+this remark.
+
+Bosinney seemed pleased.  It was the sort of thing that would
+please a fellow like that!  And his success encouraged Soames.
+
+"It's--a big place," he said.
+
+"Space, air, light," he heard Bosinney murmur, "you can't live
+like a gentleman in one of Littlemaster's--he builds for
+manufacturers."
+
+Soames made a deprecating movement; he had been identified with a
+gentleman; not for a good deal of money now would he be classed
+with manufacturers.  But his innate distrust of general
+principles revived.  What the deuce was the good of talking about
+regularity and self-respect?  It looked to him as if the house
+would be cold.
+
+"Irene can't stand the cold!" he said.
+
+"Ah!" said Bosinney sarcastically.  "Your wife?  She doesn't like
+the cold?  I'll see to that; she shan't be cold.  Look here!" he
+pointed, to four marks at regular intervals on the walls of the
+court.  "I've given you hot-water pipes in aluminium casings; you
+can get them with very good designs."
+
+Soames looked suspiciously at these marks.
+
+"It's all very well, all this," he' said, "but what's it going to
+cost?'
+
+The architect took a sheet of paper from his pocket:
+
+"The house, of course, should be built entirely of stone, but, as
+I thought you wouldn't stand that, I've compromised for a facing.
+It ought to have a copper roof, but I've made it green slate.  As
+it is, including metal work, it'll cost you eight thousand five
+hundred."
+
+"Eight thousand five hundred?" said Soames.  "Why, I gave you an
+outside limit of eight!"
+
+"Can't be done for a penny less," replied Bosinney coolly.
+
+"You must take it or leave it!"
+
+It was the only way, probably, that such a proposition could have
+been made to Soames.  He was nonplussed.  Conscience told him to
+throw the whole thing up.  But the design was good, and he knew
+it--there was completeness about it, and dignity; the servants'
+apartments were excellent too.  He would gain credit by living in
+a house like that--with such individual features, yet perfectly.
+well-arranged.
+
+He continued poring over the plans, while Bosinney went into his
+bedroom to shave and dress.
+
+The two walked back to Montpellier Square in silence, Soames
+watching him out of the corner of his eye.
+
+The Buccaneer was rather a good-looking fellow--so he thought--
+when he was properly got up.
+
+Irene was bending over her flowers when the two men came in.
+
+She spoke of sending across the Park to fetch June.
+
+"No, no," said Soames, "we've still got business to talk over!"
+
+At lunch he was almost cordial, and kept pressing Bosinney to
+eat.  He was pleased to see the architect in such high spirits,
+and left him to spend the afternoon with Irene, while he stole
+off to his pictures, after his Sunday habit.  At tea-time he came
+down to the drawing-room, and found them talking, as he expressed
+it, nineteen to the dozen.
+
+Unobserved in the doorway, he congratulated himself that things
+were taking the right turn.  It was lucky she and Bosinney got
+on; she seemed to be falling into line with the idea of the new
+house.
+
+Quiet meditation among his pictures had decided him to spring the
+five hundred if necessary; but he hoped that the afternoon might
+have softened Bosinney's estimates.  It was so purely a matter
+which Bosinney could remedy if he liked; there must be a dozen
+ways in which he could cheapen the production of a house without
+spoiling the effect.
+
+He awaited, therefore, his opportunity till Irene was handing the
+architect his first cup of tea.  A chink of sunshine through the
+lace of the blinds warmed her cheek, shone in the gold of her
+hair, and in her soft eyes.  Possibly the same gleam deepened
+Bosinney's colour, gave the rather startled look to his face.
+
+Soames hated sunshine, and he at once got up, to draw the blind.
+Then he took his own cup of tea from his wife, and said, more
+coldly than he had intended:
+
+"Can't you see your way to do it for eight thousand after all?
+There must be a lot of little things you could alter."
+
+Bosinney drank off his tea at a gulp, put down his cup, and
+answered:
+
+"Not one!"
+
+Soames saw that his suggestion had touched some unintelligible
+point of personal vanity.
+
+"Well," he agreed, with sulky resignation; "you must have it your
+own way, I suppose."
+
+A few minutes later Bosinney rose to go, and Soames rose too, to
+see him off the premises.  The architect seemed in absurdly high
+spirits.  After watching him walk away at a swinging pace, Soames
+returned moodily to the drawing-room, where Irene was putting
+away the music, and, moved by an uncontrollable spasm of
+curiosity, he asked:
+
+"Well, what do you think of 'The Buccaneer'?"
+
+He looked at the carpet while waiting for her answer, and he had
+to wait some time.
+
+"I don't know," she said at last.
+
+"Do you think he's good-looking?"
+
+Irene smiled.  And it seemed to Soames that she was mocking him.
+
+"Yes," she answered; "very."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+DEATH OF AUNT ANN
+
+
+There came a morning at the end of September when Aunt Ann was
+unable to take from Smither's hands the insignia of personal
+dignity.  After one look at the old face, the doctor, hurriedly
+sent for, announced that Miss Forsyte had passed away in her
+sleep.
+
+Aunts Juley and Hester were overwhelmed by the shock.  They had
+never imagined such an ending.  Indeed, it is doubtful whether
+they had ever realized that an ending was bound to come.
+Secretly they felt it unreasonable of Ann to have left them like
+this without a word, without even a struggle.  It was unlike her.
+
+Perhaps what really affected them so profoundly was the thought
+that a Forsyte should have let go her grasp on life.  If one,
+then why not all!
+
+It was a full hour before they could make up their minds to tell
+Timothy.  If only it could be kept from him!  If only it could be
+broken to him by degrees!
+
+And long they stood outside his door whispering together.  And
+when it was over they whispered together again.
+
+He would feel it more, they were afraid, as time went on.  Still,
+he had taken it better than could have been expected.  He would
+keep his bed, of course!
+
+They separated, crying quietly.
+
+Aunt Juley stayed in her room, prostrated by the blow.  Her face,
+discoloured by tears, was divided into compartments by the little
+ridges of pouting flesh which had swollen with emotion.  It was
+impossible to conceive of life without Ann, who had lived with
+her for seventy-three years, broken only by the short interregnum
+of her married life, which seemed now so unreal.  At fixed
+intervals she went to her drawer, and took from beneath the
+lavender bags a fresh pocket-handkerchief.  Her warm heart could
+not bear the thought that Ann was lying there so cold.
+
+Aunt Hester, the silent, the patient, that backwater of the
+family energy, sat in the drawing-room, where the blinds were
+drawn; and she, too, had wept at first, but quietly, without
+visible effect.  Her guiding principle, the conservation of
+energy, did not abandon her in sorrow.  She sat, slim,
+motionless, studying the grate, her hands idle in the lap of her
+black silk dress.  They would want to rouse her into doing
+something, no doubt.  As if there were any good in that!  Doing
+something would not bring back Ann!  Why worry her?
+
+Five o'clock brought three of the brothers, Jolyon and James and
+Swithin; Nicholas was at Yarmouth, and Roger had a bad attack of
+gout.  Mrs. Hayman had been by herself earlier in the day, and,
+after seeing Ann, had gone away, leaving a message for Timothy--
+which was kept from him--that she ought to have been told sooner.
+In fact, there was a feeling amongst them all that they ought to
+have been told sooner, as though they had missed something; and
+James said:
+
+"I knew how it'd be; I told you she wouldn't last through the
+summer."
+
+Aunt Hester made no reply; it was nearly October, but what was
+the good of arguing; some people were never satisfied.
+
+She sent up to tell her sister that the brothers were there.
+Mrs. Small came down at once.  She had bathed her face, which was
+still swollen, and though she looked severely at Swithin's
+trousers, for they were of light blue--he had come straight from
+the club, where the news had reached him she wore a more cheerful
+expression than usual, the instinct for doing the wrong thing
+being even now too strong for her.
+
+Presently all five went up to look at the body.  Under the pure
+white sheet a quilted counter-pane had been placed, for now, more
+than ever, Aunt Ann had need of warmth; and, the pillows removed,
+her spine and head rested flat, with the semblance of their
+life-long inflexibility; the coif banding the top of her brow was
+drawn on either side to the level of the ears, and between it and
+the sheet her face, almost as white, was turned with closed eyes
+to the faces of her brothers and sisters.  In its extraordinary
+peace the face was stronger than ever, nearly all bone now under
+the scarce-wrinkled parchment of skin--square jaw and chin,
+cheekbones, forehead with hollow temples, chiselled nose--the
+fortress of an unconquerable spirit that had yielded to death,
+and in its upward sightlessness seemed trying to regain that
+spirit, to regain the guardianship it had just laid down.
+
+Swithin took but one look at the face, and left the room; the
+sight, he said afterwards, made him very queer.  He went
+downstairs shaking the whole house, and, seizing his hat,
+clambered into his brougham, without giving any directions to the
+coachman.  He was driven home, and all the evening sat in his
+chair without moving.
+
+He could take nothing for dinner but a partridge, with an
+imperial pint of champagne....
+
+Old Jolyon stood at the bottom of the bed, his hands folded in
+front of him.  He alone of those in the room remembered the death
+of his mother, and though he looked at Ann, it was of that he was
+thinking.  Ann was an old woman, but death had come to her at
+last--death came to all!  His face did not move, his gaze seemed
+travelling from very far.
+
+Aunt Hester stood beside him.  She did not cry now, tears were
+exhausted--her nature refused to permit a further escape of
+force; she twisted her hands, looking not at Ann, but from side
+to side, seeking some way of escaping the effort of realization.
+
+Of all the brothers and sisters James manifested the most
+emotion.  Tears rolled down the parallel furrows of his thin
+face; where he should go now to tell his troubles he did not
+know; Juley was no good, Hester worse than useless!  He felt
+Ann's death more than he had ever thought he should; this would
+upset him for weeks!
+
+Presently Aunt Hester stole out, and Aunt Juley began moving
+about, doing 'what was necessary,' so that twice she knocked
+against something.  Old Jolyon, roused from his reverie, that
+reverie of the long, long past, looked sternly at her, and went
+away.  James alone was left by the bedside; glancing stealthily
+round, to see that he was not observed, he twisted his long body
+down, placed a kiss on the dead forehead, then he, too, hastily
+left the room.  Encountering Smither in the hall, he began to ask
+her about the funeral, and, finding that she knew nothing,
+complained bitterly that, if they didn't take care, everything
+would go wrong.  She had better send for Mr. Soames--he knew all
+about that sort of thing; her master was very much upset, he
+supposed--he would want looking after; as for her mistresses,
+they were no good--they had no gumption!  They would be ill too,
+he shouldn't wonder.  She had better send for the doctor; it was
+best to take things in time.  He didn't think his sister Ann had
+had the best opinion; if she'd had Blank she would have been
+alive now.  Smither might send to Park Lane any time she wanted
+advice.  Of course, his carriage was at their service for the
+funeral.  He supposed she hadn't such a thing as a glass of
+claret and a biscuit--he had had no lunch!
+
+The days before the funeral passed quietly.  It had long been
+known, of course, that Aunt Ann had left her little property to
+Timothy.  There was, therefore, no reason for the slightest
+agitation.  Soames, who was sole executor, took charge of all
+arrangements, and in due course sent out the following invitation
+to every male member of the family:
+
+
+To...........
+
+Your presence is requested at the funeral of Miss Ann Forsyte, in
+Highgate Cemetery, at noon of Oct. 1st.  Carriages will meet at
+"The Bower," Bayswater Road, at 10.45.  No flowers by request.
+
+'R.S.V.P.'
+
+
+The morning came, cold, with a high, grey, London sky, and at
+half-past ten the first carriage, that of James, drove up.  It
+contained James and his son-in-law Dartie, a fine man, with a
+square chest, buttoned very tightly into a frock coat, and a
+sallow, fattish face adorned with dark, well-curled moustaches,
+and that incorrigible commencement of whisker which, eluding the
+strictest attempts at shaving, seems the mark of something deeply
+ingrained in the personality of the shaver, being especially
+noticeable in men who speculate.
+
+Soames, in his capacity of executor, received the guests, for
+Timothy still kept his bed; he would get up after the funeral;
+and Aunts Juley and Hester would not be coming down till all was
+over, when it was understood there would be lunch for anyone who
+cared to come back.  The next to arrive was Roger, still limping
+from the gout, and encircled by three of his sons--young Roger,
+Eustace, and Thomas.  George, the remaining son, arrived almost
+immediately afterwards in a hansom, and paused in the hall to ask
+Soames how he found undertaking pay.
+
+They disliked each other.
+
+Then came two Haymans--Giles and Jesse perfectly silent, and very
+well dressed, with special creases down their evening trousers.
+Then old Jolyon alone.  Next, Nicholas, with a healthy colour in
+his face, and a carefully veiled sprightliness in every movement
+of his head and body.  One of his sons followed him, meek and
+subdued.  Swithin Forsyte, and Bosinney arrived at the same
+moment,--and stood--bowing precedence to each other,--but on the
+door opening they tried to enter together; they renewed their
+apologies in the hall, and, Swithin, settling his stock, which
+had become disarranged in the struggle, very slowly mounted the
+stairs.  The other Hayman; two married sons of Nicholas, together
+with Tweetyman, Spender, and Warry, the husbands of married
+Forsyte and Hayman daughters.  The company was then complete,
+twenty-one in all, not a male member of the family being absent
+but Timothy and young Jolyon.
+
+Entering the scarlet and green drawing-room, whose apparel made
+so vivid a setting for their unaccustomed costumes, each tried
+nervously to find a seat, desirous of hiding the emphatic
+blackness of his trousers.  There seemed a sort of indecency in
+that blackness and in the colour of their gloves--a sort of
+exaggeration of the feelings; and many cast shocked looks of
+secret envy at 'the Buccaneer,' who had no gloves, and was
+wearing grey trousers.  A subdued hum of conversation rose, no
+one speaking of the departed, but each asking after the other, as
+though thereby casting an indirect libation to this event, which
+they had come to honour.
+
+And presently James said:
+
+"Well, I think we ought to be starting."
+
+They went downstairs, and, two and two, as they had been told off
+in strict precedence, mounted the carriages.
+
+The hearse started at a foot's pace; the carriages moved slowly
+after.  In the first went old Jolyon with Nicholas; in the
+second, the twins, Swithin and James; in the third, Roger and
+young Roger; Soames, young Nicholas, George, and Bosinney
+followed in the fourth.  Each of the other carriages, eight in
+all, held three or four of the family; behind them came the
+doctor's brougham; then, at a decent interval, cabs containing
+family clerks and servants; and at the very end, one containing
+nobody at all, but bringing the total cortege up to the number of
+thirteen.
+
+So long as the procession kept to the highway of the Bayswater
+Road, it retained the foot's-pace, but, turning into less
+important thorough-fares, it soon broke into a trot, and so
+proceeded, with intervals of walking in the more fashionable
+streets, until it arrived.  In the first carriage old Jolyon and
+Nicholas were talking of their wills.  In the second the twins,
+after a single attempt, had lapsed into complete silence; both
+were rather deaf, and the exertion of making themselves heard was
+too great.  Only once James broke this silence:
+
+"I shall have to be looking about for some ground somewhere.
+What arrangements have you made, Swithin?"
+
+And Swithin, fixing him with a dreadful stare, answered:
+
+"Don't talk to me about such things!"
+
+In the third carriage a disjointed conversation was carried on in
+the intervals of looking out to see how far they had got, George
+remarking, "Well, it was really time that the poor old lady
+went."  He didn't believe in people living beyond seventy, Young
+Nicholas replied mildly that the rule didn't seem to apply to the
+Forsytes.  George said he himself intended to commit suicide at
+sixty.  Young Nicholas, smiling and stroking A long chin, didn't
+think his father would like that theory; he had made a lot of
+money since he was sixty.  Well, seventy was the outside limit;
+it was then time, George said, for them to go and leave their
+money to their children.  Soames, hitherto silent, here joined
+in; he had not forgotten the remark about the 'undertaking,' and,
+lifting his eyelids almost imperceptibly, said it was all very
+well for people who never made money to talk.  He himself
+intended to live as long as he could.  This was a hit at George,
+who was notoriously hard up.  Bosinney muttered abstractedly
+"Hear, hear!" and, George yawning, the conversation dropped.
+
+Upon arriving, the coffin was borne into the chapel, and, two by
+two, the mourners filed in behind it.  This guard of men, all
+attached to the dead by the bond of kinship, was an impressive
+and singular sight in the great city of London, with its
+overwhelming diversity of life, its innumerable vocations,
+pleasures, duties, its terrible hardness, its terrible call to
+individualism.
+
+The family had gathered to triumph over all this, to give a show
+of tenacious unity, to illustrate gloriously that law of property
+underlying the growth of their tree, by which it had thriven and
+spread, trunk and branches, the sap flowing through all, the full
+growth reached at the appointed time.  The spirit of the old
+woman lying in her last sleep had called them to this
+demonstration.  It was her final appeal to that unity which had
+been their strength--it was her final triumph that she had died
+while the tree was yet whole.
+
+She was spared the watching of the branches jut out beyond the
+point of balance.  She could not look into the hearts of her
+followers.  The same law that had worked in her, bringing her up
+from a tall, straight-backed slip of a girl to, a woman strong
+and grown, from a woman grown to a woman old, angular, feeble,
+almost witchlike, with individuality all sharpened and sharpened,
+as all rounding from the world's contact fell off from her--that
+same law would work, was: working, in the family she had watched
+like a mother.
+
+She had seen it young, and growing, she had, seen it strong and
+grown, and before her old eyes had time or strength to see any
+more, she died.  She would have tried, and who knows but she
+might have kept it young and strong, with her old fingers, her
+trembling kisses--a little longer; alas! not even Aunt Ann could
+fight with Nature.
+
+'Pride comes before a fall!' In accordance with this, the
+greatest of Nature's ironies, the Forsyte family had gathered for
+a last proud pageant before they fell.  Their faces to right and
+left, in single lines, were turned for the most part impassively
+toward the ground, guardians of their thoughts; but here and
+there, one looking upward, with a line between his brows,
+searched to see some sight on the chapel walls too much for, him,
+to be listening to something that appalled.  And the, responses,
+low-muttered, in voices through which rose the same tone, the
+same unseizable family ring, sounded weird, as though murmured in
+hurried duplication by a single person.
+
+The service in the chapel over, the mourners filed up again to
+guard the body to the tomb.  The vault stood open, and, round it,
+men in black were waiting.
+
+>From that high and sacred field, where thousands of the upper
+middle class lay in their last sleep, the eyes of the Forsytes
+travelled down across the flocks of graves.  There--spreading to
+the distance, lay London, with no sun over it, mourning the loss
+of its daughter, mourning with this family, so dear, the loss of
+her who was mother and guardian.  A hundred thousand spires and
+houses, blurred in the great grey web of property, lay there like
+prostrate worshippers before the grave of this, the oldest
+Forsyte of them all.
+
+A few words, a sprinkle of earth, the thrusting of the coffin
+home, and Aunt Ann had passed to her last rest.
+
+Round the vault, trustees of that passing, the five brothers
+stood, with white heads bowed; they would see that Ann was
+comfortable where she was.  going.  Her little property must stay
+behind, but otherwise, all that could be should be done....
+
+Then, severally, each stood aside, and putting on his hat, turned
+back to inspect the new inscription on the marble of the family
+vault:
+
+
+SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF ANN FORSYTE,
+THE DAUGHTER OF THE ABOVE JOLYON
+AND ANN FORSYTE, WHO DEPARTED
+THIS LIFE THE 27TH DAY OF SEPTEMBER,
+1886, AGED EIGHTY-SEVEN YEARS AND FOUR DAYS
+
+
+Soon perhaps, someone else would be wanting an inscription.  It
+was strange and intolerable, for they had not thought somehow,
+that Forsytes could die.  And one and all they had a longing to
+get away from this painfulness, this ceremony which had reminded
+them of things they could not bear to think about--to get away
+quickly and go about their business and forget.
+
+It was cold, too; the wind, like some slow, disintegrating force,
+blowing up the hill over the graves, struck them with its chilly
+breath; they began to split into groups, and as quickly as
+possible to fill the waiting carriages.
+
+Swithin said he should go back to lunch at Timothy's, and he
+offered to take anybody with him in his brougham.  It was
+considered a doubtful privilege to drive with Swithin in his
+brougham, which was not a large one; nobody accepted, and he went
+off alone.  James and Roger followed immediately after; they also
+would drop in to lunch.  The others gradually melted away, Old
+Jolyon taking three nephews to fill up his carriage; he had a
+want of those young faces.
+
+Soames, who had to arrange some details in the cemetery office,
+walked away with Bosinney.  He had much to talk over with him,
+and, having finished his business, they strolled to Hampstead,
+lunched together at the Spaniard's Inn, and spent a long time in
+going into practical details connected with the building of the
+house; they then proceeded to the tram-line, and came as far as
+the Marble Arch, where Bosinney went off to Stanhope Gate to see
+June.
+
+Soames felt in excellent spirits when he arrived home, and
+confided to Irene at dinner that he had had a good talk with
+Bosinney, who really seemed a sensible fellow; they had had a
+capital walk too, which had done his liver good--he had been
+short of exercise for a long time--and altogether a very
+satisfactory day.  If only it hadn't been for poor Aunt Ann, he
+would have taken her to the theatre; as it was, they must make
+the best of an evening at home.
+
+"The Buccaneer asked after you more than once," he said
+suddenly.  And moved by some inexplicable desire to assert his
+proprietorship, he rose from his chair and planted a kiss on
+his wife's shoulder.
+
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+PROGRESS OF THE HOUSE
+
+
+The winter had been an open one.  Things in the trade were slack;
+and as Soames had reflected before making up his mind, it had
+been a good time for building.  The shell of the house at Robin
+Hill was thus completed by the end of April.
+
+Now that there was something to be seen for his money, he had
+been coming down once,  twice, even three times a week, and would
+mouse about among the debris for hours, careful never to soil his
+clothes, moving silently through the unfinished brickwork of
+doorways, or circling round the columns in the central court.
+
+And he would stand before them for minutes' together, as though
+peering into the real quality of their substance
+
+On April 30 he had an appointment with Bosinney to go over the
+accounts, and five minutes before the proper time he entered the
+tent which the architect had pitched for himself close to the old
+oak tree.
+
+The Accounts were already prepared on a folding table, and  with
+a nod Soames sat down to study them.  It was some time before he
+raised his head.
+
+"I can't make them out," he said at last; "they come to nearly
+seven hundred more than they ought"
+
+After a glance at Bosinney"s faces he went on quickly:
+
+"If you only make a firm stand against these builder chaps you'll
+get them down.  They stick you with everything if you don't look
+sharp....  Take ten per cent. off all round.  I shan't mind it's
+coming out a hundred or so over the mark!
+
+Bosinney shook his head:
+
+I've taken off every farthing I can!
+
+Soames pushed back the table with a movement of anger, which sent
+the account sheets fluttering to the ground.
+
+"Then all I can say is," he flustered out, "you've made a pretty
+mess of it!"
+
+"I've told you a dozen times," Bosinney answered sharply, that
+there'd be extras.  I've pointed them out to you over and over
+again!"
+
+I know that," growled Soames: "I shouldn't have objected to a ten
+pound note here and there.  How was I to know that by 'extras'
+you meant seven hundred pounds?"
+
+The qualities of both men had contributed to this notinconsider-
+able discrepancy.  On the one hand, the architect's devotion
+to his idea, to the image of a house which he had created and
+believed in--had made him nervous of being stopped, or forced
+to the use of makeshifts; on the other, Soames' not less true
+and wholehearted devotion to the very best article that could  be
+obtained for the money, had rendered him averse to believing that
+things worth thirteen shillings could not be bought with twelve.
+
+I wish I'd never undertaken your house," said Bosinney suddenly.
+"You come down here worrying me out of my life.  You want double
+the value for your money anybody else would, and now that you've
+got a house that for its size is not to be beaten in the county,
+you don't want to pay for it.  If you're anxious to be off your
+bargain, I daresay I can find the balance above the estimates
+myself, but I'm d----d if I do another stroke of work for you!
+
+Soames regained his composure.  Knowing that Bosinney had no
+capital, he regarded this as a wild suggestion.  He saw, too,
+that he would be kept indefinitely out of this house on which he
+had set his heart, and just at the crucial point when the
+architect's personal care made all the difference.  In the
+meantime there was Irene to be thought of!  She had been very
+queer lately.  He really believed it was only because she had
+taken to Bosinney that she tolerated the idea of the house at
+all.  It would not do to make an open breach with her.
+
+"You needn't get into a rage," he said.  "If I'm willing to put
+up with it, I suppose you needn't cry out.  All I meant was that
+when you tell me a thing is going to cost so much, I like to--
+well, in fact, I--like to know where I am."
+
+"Look here!" said Bosinney, and Soames was both annoyed and
+surprised by the shrewdness of his glance.  "You've got my
+services dirt cheap.  For the kind of work I've put into this
+house, and the amount of time I've given to it, you'd have had to
+pay Littlemaster or some other fool four times as much.  What you
+want, in fact, is a first-rate man for a fourth-rate fee, and
+that's exactly what you've got!"
+
+Soames saw that he really meant what he said, and, angry though
+he was, the consequences of a row rose before him too vividly.
+He saw his house unfinished, his wife rebellious, himself a
+laughingstock.
+
+"Let's go over it," he said sulkily, "and see how the money's
+gone."
+
+"Very well," assented Bosinney.  "But we'll hurry up, if you
+don't mind.  I have to get back in time to take June to the
+theatre."
+
+Soames cast a stealthy look at him, and said: "Coming to our
+place, I suppose to meet her?" He was always coming to their
+place!
+
+There had been rain the night before-a spring rain, and the earth
+smelt of sap and wild grasses.  The warm, soft breeze swung the
+leaves and the golden buds of the old oak tree, and in the
+sunshine the blackbirds were whistling their hearts out.
+
+It was such a spring day as breathes into a man an ineffable
+yearning, a painful sweetness, a longing that makes him stand
+motionless, looking at the leaves or grass, and fling out his
+arms to embrace he knows not what.  The earth gave forth a
+fainting warmth, stealing up through the chilly garment in which
+winter had wrapped her.  It was her long caress of invitation, to
+draw men down to lie within her arms, to roll their bodies on
+her, and put their lips to her breast.
+
+On just such a day as this Soames had got from Irene the promise
+he had asked her for so often.  Seated on the fallen trunk of a
+tree, he had promised for the twentieth time that if their
+marriage were not a success, she should be as free as if she had
+never married him!
+
+"Do you swear it?" she had said.  A few days back she had
+reminded him of that oath.  He had answered: "Nonsense!  I
+couldn't have sworn any such thing!"  By some awkward fatality he
+remembered it now.  What queer things men would swear for the
+sake of women!  He would have sworn it at any time to gain her!
+He would swear it now, if thereby he could touch her--but nobody
+could touch her, she was cold-hearted!
+
+And memories crowded on him with the fresh, sweet savour of the
+spring wind-memories of his courtship.
+
+In the spring of the year 1881 he was visiting his old school-
+fellow and client, George Liversedge, of Branksome, who, with
+the view of developing his pine-woods in the neighbourhood of
+Bournemouth, had placed the formation of the company necessary
+to the scheme in Soames's hands.  Mrs. Liversedge, with a sense
+of the fitness of things, had given a musical tea in his honour.
+Later in the course of this function, which Soames, no musician,
+had regarded as an unmitigated bore, his eye had been caught by
+the face of a girl dressed in mourning, standing by herself.  The
+lines of her tall, as yet rather thin figure, showed through the
+wispy, clinging stuff of her black dress, her black-gloved hands
+were crossed in front of her, her lips slightly parted, and her
+large, dark eyes wandered from face to face.  Her hair, done low
+on her neck, seemed to gleam above her black collar like coils of
+shining metal.  And as Soames stood looking at her, the sensation
+that most men have felt at one time or another went stealing
+through him--a peculiar satisfaction of the senses, a peculiar
+certainty, which novelists and old ladies call love at first
+sight.  Still stealthily watching her, he at once made his way to
+his hostess, and stood doggedly waiting for the music to cease.
+
+"Who is that girl with yellow hair and dark eyes?" he asked.
+
+"That--oh!  Irene Heron.  Her father, Professor Heron, died this
+year.  She lives with her stepmother.  She's a nice girl, a
+pretty girl, but no money!"
+
+"Introduce me, please," said Soames.
+
+It was very little that he found to say, nor did he find her
+responsive to that little.  But he went away with the resolution
+to see her again.  He effected his object by chance, meeting her
+on the pier with her stepmother, who had the habit of walking
+there from twelve to one of a forenoon.  Soames made this lady's
+acquaintance with alacrity, nor was it long before he perceived
+in her the ally he was looking for.  His keen scent for the
+commercial side of family life soon told him that Irene cost her
+stepmother more than the fifty pounds a year she brought her; it
+also told him that Mrs. Heron, a woman yet in the prime of life,
+desired to be married again.  The strange ripening beauty of her
+stepdaughter stood in the way of this desirable consummation.
+And Soames, in his stealthy tenacity, laid his plans.
+
+He left Bournemouth without having given, himself away, but in a
+month's time came back, and this time he spoke, not to the girl,
+but to her stepmother.  He had made up his mind, he said; he
+would wait any time.  And he had long to wait, watching Irene
+bloom, the lines of her young figure softening, the stronger
+blood deepening the gleam of her eyes, and warming her face to a
+creamy glow; and at each visit he proposed to her, and when that
+visit was at an end, took her refusal away with him, back to
+London, sore at heart, but steadfast and silent as the grave.  He
+tried to come at the secret springs of her resistance; only once
+had he a gleam of light.  It was at one of those assembly dances,
+which afford the only outlet to the passions of the population of
+seaside watering-places.  He was sitting with her in an
+embrasure, his senses tingling with the contact of the waltz.
+She had looked at him over her, slowly waving fan; and he had
+lost his head.  Seizing that moving wrist, he pressed his lips to
+the flesh of her arm.  And she had shuddered--to this day he had
+not forgotten that shudder--nor the look so passionately averse
+she had given him.
+
+A year after that she had yielded.  What had made her yield he
+could never make out; and from Mrs. Heron, a woman of some
+diplomatic talent, he learnt nothing.  Once after they were
+married he asked her, "What made you refuse me so often?"  She had
+answered by a strange silence.  An enigma to him from the day
+that he first saw her, she was an enigma to him still....
+
+Bosinney was waiting for him at the door; and on his rugged,
+good-looking, face was a queer, yearning, yet happy look, as
+though he too saw a promise of bliss in the spring sky, sniffed a
+coming happiness in the spring air.  Soames looked at him waiting
+there.  What was the matter with the fellow that he looked so
+happy?  What was he waiting for with that smile on his lips and
+in his eyes?  Soames could not see that for which Bosinney was
+waiting as he stood there drinking in the flower-scented wind.
+And once more he felt baffled in the presence of this man whom by
+habit he despised.  He hastened on to the house.
+
+"The only colour for those tiles," he heard Bosinney say,--"is
+ruby with a grey tint in the stuff, to give a transparent effect.
+I should like Irene's opinion.  I'm ordering the purple leather
+curtains for the doorway of this court; and if you distemper the
+drawing-room ivory cream over paper, you'll get an illusive look.
+You want to aim all through the decorations at what I call
+charm."
+
+Soames said: "You mean that my wife has charm!"
+
+Bosinney evaded the question.
+
+"You should have a clump of iris plants in the centre of that
+court."
+
+Soames smiled superciliously.
+
+"I'll look into Beech's some time," he said, "and see what's
+appropriate!"
+
+They, found little else to say to each other, but on the way to
+the Station Soames asked:
+
+"I suppose you find Irene very artistic."
+
+"Yes." The abrupt answer was as distinct a snub as saying: "If
+you want to discuss her you can do it with someone else!"
+
+And the slow, sulky anger Soames had felt all the afternoon
+burned the brighter within him.
+
+Neither spoke again till they were close to the Station, then
+Soames asked:
+
+"When do you expect to have finished?"
+
+"By the end of June, if you really wish me to decorate as well."
+
+Soames nodded.  "But you quite understand,' he said, "that the
+house is costing me a lot beyond what I contemplated.  I may as
+well tell you that I should have thrown it up, only I'm not in
+the habit of giving up what I've set my mind on."
+
+Bosinney made no reply.  And Soames gave him askance a look of
+dogged dislike--for in spite of his fastidious air and that
+supercilious, dandified taciturnity, Soames, with his set lips
+and squared chin, was not unlike a bulldog....
+
+When, at seven o'clock that evening, June arrived at 62,
+Montpellier Square, the maid Bilson told her that Mr. Bosinney
+was in the drawing-room; the mistress--she said--was dressing,
+and would be down in a minute.  She would tell her that Miss June
+was here.
+
+June stopped her at once.
+
+"All right, Bilson," she said, "I'll just go in.  You, needn't
+hurry Mrs. Soames."
+
+She took off her cloak, and Bilson, with an understanding look,
+did not even open the drawing-room door for her, but ran
+downstairs.
+
+June paused for a moment to look at herself in the, little
+old-fashioned silver mirror above the oaken rug chest--a slim,
+imperious young figure, with a small resolute face, in a white
+frock, cut moon-shaped at the base of a neck too slender for her
+crown of twisted red-gold hair.
+
+She opened the drawing-room door softly, meaning to take him by
+surprise.  The room was filled with a sweet hot scent of
+flowering azaleas.
+
+She took a long breath of the perfume, and heard Bosinney's
+voice, not in the room, but quite close, saying.
+
+"Ah!  there were such heaps of things I wanted to talk about, and
+now we shan't have time!"
+
+Irene's voice answered: "Why not at dinner?"
+
+"How can one talk...."
+
+June's first thought was to go away, but instead she crossed to
+the long window opening on the little court.  It was from there
+that the scent of the azaleas came, and, standing with their
+backs to her, their faces buried in the goldenpink blossoms,
+stood her lover and Irene.
+
+Silent but unashamed, with flaming cheeks and angry eyes, the
+girl watched.
+
+"Come on Sunday by yourself--We can go over the house together."
+
+June saw Irene look up at him through her screen of blossoms.  It
+was not the look of a coquette, but--far worse to the watching
+girl--of a woman fearful lest that look should say too much.
+
+"I've promised to go for a drive with Uncle...."
+
+"The big one!  Make him bring you; it's only ten miles--the very
+thing for his horses."
+
+"Poor old Uncle Swithin!"
+
+A wave of the azalea scent drifted into June's face; she felt
+sick and dizzy.
+
+"Do!  ah!  do!"
+
+"But why?"
+
+"I must see you there--I thought you'd like to help me...."
+
+The answer seemed to the girl to come softly with a tremble from
+amongst the blossoms: "So I do!"
+
+And she stepped into the open space of the window.
+
+"How stuffy it is here!" she said; "I can't bear this scent!"
+
+Her eyes, so angry and direct, swept both their faces.
+
+"Were you talking about the house?  I haven't seen it yet, you
+know--shall we all go on Sunday?"'
+
+>From Irene's face the colour had flown.
+
+"I am going for a drive that day with Uncle Swithin," she
+answered.
+
+"Uncle Swithin!  What does he matter?  You can throw him over!"
+
+"I am not in the habit of throwing people over!"
+
+There was a sound of footsteps and June saw Soames standing just
+behind her.
+
+"Well! if you are all ready," said Irene, looking from one to
+the other with a strange smile, "dinner is too!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+JUNE'S  TREAT
+
+
+Dinner began in silence; the women facing one another, and the
+men.
+
+In silence the soup, was finished--excellent, if a little thick;
+and fish was brought.  In silence it was handed.
+
+Bosinney ventured: "It's the first spring day."
+
+Irene echoed softly: Yes--the first spring day.
+
+"Spring!" said June: "there isn't a breath of air!" No one
+replied.
+
+The fish was taken away, a fine fresh sole from Dover.  And
+Bilson brought champagne, a bottle swathed around the neck with
+white....
+
+Soames said: "You'll find it dry."
+
+Cutlets were handed, each pink-frilled about the legs.  They were
+refused by June, and silence fell.
+
+Soames said: "You'd better take a cutlet, June; there's nothing
+coming."
+
+But June again refused, so they were borne away.  And then Irene
+asked: "Phil, have you heard my blackbird?"
+
+Bosinney answered: "Rather--he's got a hunting-song.  As I came
+round I heard him in the Square."
+
+"He's such a darling!"
+
+"Salad, sir?" Spring chicken was removed.
+
+But Soames was speaking: "The asparagus is very poor.  Bosinney,
+glass of sherry with your sweet?  June, you're drinking nothing!"
+
+June said: "You know I never do.  Wine's such horrid stuff!"
+
+An apple charlotte came upon a silver dish, And smilingly Irene
+said: "The azaleas are so wonderful this year!"
+
+To this Bosinney murmured: "Wonderful! The scent's
+extraordinary!"
+
+June said: "How can you like the scent?  Sugar, please, Bilson.'
+
+Sugar was handed her, and Soames remarked: "'This charlottes
+good!"
+
+The charlotte was removed.  Long silence followed.  Irene,
+beckoning, said: "Take out the azalea, Bilson.  Miss June can't
+bear the scent."
+
+"No; let it stay," said June.
+
+Olives from France, with Russian caviare, were placed on little
+plates.  And Soames remarked: "Why can't we have the Spanish?
+But no one answered.
+
+The olives were removed.  Lifting her tumbler June demanded:
+"Give me some water, please."  Water was given her.  A silver tray
+was brought, with German plums.  There was a lengthy pause.  In
+perfect harmony all were eating them.
+
+Bosinney counted up the stones: "This year--next year--some time."
+
+Irene finished softly: "Never! There was such a glorious sunset.
+The sky's all ruby still--so beautiful!"
+
+He answered: "Underneath the dark."
+
+Their eyes had met, and June cried scornfully: "A London sunset!"
+
+Egyptian cigarettes were handed in a silver box.  Soames, taking
+one, remarked: "What time's your play begin?"
+
+No one replied, and Turkish coffee followed in enamelled cups.
+
+Irene, smiling quietly, said: "If only...."
+
+"Only what?" said June.
+
+"If only it could always be the spring!"
+
+Brandy was handed; it was pale and old.
+
+Soames said: "Bosinney, better take some brandy."
+
+Bosinney took a glass; they all arose.
+
+"You want a cab?" asked Soames.
+
+June answered: "No! My cloaks Please, Bilson."  Her cloak was
+brought.
+
+Irene, from the window, murmured: "Such a lovely night!  The
+stars are coming out!"
+
+Soames added: "Well, I hope you'll both enjoy yourselves."
+
+>From the door June answered: "Thanks.  Come, Phil."
+
+Bosinney cried: "I'm coming."
+
+Soames smiled a sneering smile, and said: "I wish you luck!"
+
+And at the door Irene watched them go.
+
+Bosinney called: "Good night!"
+
+"Good night!" she answered softly....
+
+June made her lover take her on the top of a 'bus, saying she
+wanted air, and there sat silent, with her face to the breeze.
+
+The driver turned once or twice, with the intention of venturing
+a remark, but thought better of it.  They were a lively couple!
+The spring had got into his blood, too; he felt the need for
+letting steam escape, and clucked his tongue, flourishing his
+whip, wheeling his horses, and even they, poor things, had
+smelled the spring, and for a brief half-hour spurned the
+pavement with happy hoofs.
+
+The whole town was alive; the boughs, curled upward with their
+decking of young leaves, awaited some gift the breeze could
+bring.  New-lighted lamps were gaining mastery, and the faces of
+the crowd showed pale under that glare, while on high the great
+white clouds slid swiftly, softly, over the purple sky.
+
+Men in, evening dress had thrown back overcoats, stepping
+jauntily up the steps of Clubs; working folk loitered; and women-
+-those women who at that time of night are solitary--solitary and
+moving eastward in a stream--swung slowly along, with expectation
+in their gait, dreaming of good wine and a good supper, or--for
+an unwonted minute, of kisses given for love.
+
+Those countless figures, going their ways under the lamps and the
+moving-sky, had one and all received some restless blessing from
+the stir of spring.  And one and all, like those clubmen with
+their opened coats, had shed something of caste, and creed, and
+custom, and by the cock of their hats, the pace of their walk,
+their laughter, or their silence, revealed their common kinship
+under the passionate heavens.
+
+Bosinney and June entered the theatre in silence, and mounted to
+their seats in the upper boxes.  The piece had just begun, and
+the half-darkened house, with its rows of creatures peering all
+one way, resembled a great garden of flowers turning their faces
+to the sun.
+
+June had never before been in the upper boxes.  From the age of
+fifteen she had habitually accompanied her grandfather to the
+stalls, and not common stalls, but the best seats in the house,
+towards the centre of the third row, booked by old Jolyon, at
+Grogan and Boyne's, on his way home from the City, long before
+the day; carried in his overcoat pocket, together with his
+cigarcase and his old kid gloves, and handed to June to keep till
+the appointed night.  And in those stalls--an erect old figure
+with a serene white head, a little figure, strenuous and eager,
+with a red-gold head--they would sit through every kind of play,
+and on the way home old Jolyon would say of the principal actor:
+"Oh, he's a poor stick!  You should have seen little Bobson!"
+
+She had looked forward to this evening with keen delight; it was
+stolen, chaperone-less, undreamed of at Stanhope Gate, where she
+was supposed to be at Soames'.  She had expected reward for her
+subterfuge, planned for her lover's sake; she had expected it to
+break up the thick, chilly cloud, and make the relations between
+them which of late had been so puzzling, so tormenting--sunny and
+simple again as they had been before the winter.  She had come
+with the intention of saying something definite; and she looked
+at the stage with a furrow between her brows, seeing nothing, her
+hands squeezed together in her lap.  A swarm of jealous
+suspicions stung and stung her.
+
+If Bosinney was conscious of her trouble he made no sign.
+
+The curtain dropped.  The first act had come to an end.
+
+"It's awfully hot here!" said the girl; "I should like to go
+out."
+
+She was very white, and she knew--for with her nerves thus
+sharpened she saw everything--that he was both uneasy and
+compunctious.
+
+At the back of the theatre an open balcony hung over the street;
+she took possession of this, and stood leaning there without a
+word, waiting for him to begin.
+
+At last she could bear it no longer.
+
+"I want to say something to you, Phil," she said.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+The defensive tone of his voice brought the colour flying to her
+cheek, the words flying to her lips: "You don't give me a chance
+to be nice to you; you haven't for ages now!"
+
+Bosinney stared down at the street.  He made no answer....
+
+June cried passionately: "You know I want to do everything for
+you--that I want to be everything to you...."
+
+A hum rose from the--street, and, piercing it with a sharp
+'ping,' the bell sounded for the raising of the curtain, June did
+not stir.  A desperate struggle was going on within her.  Should
+she put everything to the proof?  Should she challenge directly
+that influence, that attraction which was driving him away from
+her?  It was her nature to challenge, and she said: "Phil, take
+me to see the house on Sunday!"
+
+With a smile quivering and breaking on her lips, and trying, how
+hard, not to show that she was watching, she searched his face,
+saw it waver and hesitate, saw a troubled line come between his
+brows, the blood rush into his face.  He answered: "Not Sunday,
+dear; some other day!"
+
+"Why not Sunday?  I shouldn't be in the way on Sunday."
+
+He made an evident effort, and said: I have an engagement."
+
+"You are going to take...."
+
+His eyes grew angry; he shrugged his shoulders, and answered: "An
+engagement that will prevent my taking you to see the house!"
+
+June bit her lip till the blood came, and walked back to her seat
+without another word, but she could not help the tears of rage
+rolling down her face.  The house had been mercifully darkened
+for a crisis, and no one could see her trouble.
+
+Yet in this world of Forsytes let no man think himself immune
+from observation.
+
+In the third row behind, Euphemia, Nicholas's youngest daughter,
+with her married-sister, Mrs. Tweetyman, were watching.
+
+They reported at Timothy's, how they had seen June and her fiance
+at the theatre.
+
+"In the stalls?"  "No, not in the...."  "Oh! in the dress
+circle, of course.  That seemed to be quite fashionable nowadays
+with young people!"
+
+Well--not exactly.  In the....  Anyway, that engagement wouldn't
+last long.  They had never seen anyone look so thunder and
+lightningy as that little June!  With tears of enjoyment in their
+eyes, they related how she had kicked a man's hat as she returned
+to her seat in the middle of an act, and how the man had looked.
+Euphemia had a noted, silent laugh, terminating most disappoint-
+ingly in squeaks; and when Mrs. Small, holding up her hands, said:
+"My dear!  Kicked a ha-at?" she let out such anumber of these that
+she had to be recovered with smelling-salts.  As she went away
+she said to Mrs. Tweetyman:
+
+"Kicked a--ha-at!  Oh!  I shall die."
+
+For 'that little June' this evening, that was to have been 'her
+treat,' was the most miserable she had ever spent.  God knows she
+tried to stifle her pride, her suspicion, her jealousy!
+
+She parted from Bosinney at old Jolyon's door without breaking
+down; the feeling that her lover must be conquered was strong
+enough to sustain her till his retiring footsteps brought home
+the true extent of her wretchedness.
+
+The noiseless 'Sankey' let her in.  She would have slipped up to
+her own room, but old Jolyon, who had heard her entrance, was in
+the dining-room doorway.
+
+"Come in and have your milk," he said.  "It's been kept hot for
+you.  You're very late.  Where have you been?"
+
+June stood at the fireplace, with a foot on the fender and an arm
+on the mantelpiece, as her grandfather had done when he came in
+that night of the opera.  She was too near a breakdown, to care
+what she told him.
+
+"We dined at Soames's."
+
+"H'm!  the man of property!  His wife there and Bosinney?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Old Jolyon's glance was fixed on her with the penetrating gaze
+from which it was difficult to hide; but she was not looking at
+him, and when she turned her face, he dropped his scrutiny at
+once.  He had seen enough, and too much.  He bent down to lift
+the cup of milk for her from the hearth, and, turning away,
+grumbled: "You oughtn't to stay out so late; it makes you fit for
+nothing."
+
+He was invisible now behind his paper, which he turned with a
+vicious crackle; but when June came up to kiss him, he said:
+"Good-night, my darling," in a tone so tremulous and unexpected,
+that it was all the girl could do to get out of the room without
+breaking into the fit of sobbing which lasted her well on into
+the night.
+
+When the door was closed, old Jolyon dropped his paper, and
+stared long and anxiously in front of him.
+
+'The beggar!' he thought.  'I always knew she'd have trouble with
+him!'
+
+Uneasy doubts and suspicions, the more poignant that he felt
+himself powerless to check or control the march of events, came
+crowding upon him.
+
+Was the fellow going to jilt her?  He longed to go and say to
+him: "Look here, you sir!  Are you going to jilt my grand-
+daughter?"  But how could he?  Knowing little or nothing, he
+was yet certain, with his unerring astuteness, that there was
+something going on.  He suspected Bosinney of being too much at
+Montpellier Square.
+
+'This fellow,' he thought, 'may not be a scamp; his face is not a
+bad one, but he's a queer fish.  I don't know what to make of
+him.  I shall never know what to make of him!  They tell me he
+works like a nigger, but I see no good coming of it.  He's
+unpractical, he has no method.  When he comes here, he sits as
+glum as a monkey.  If I ask him what wine he'll have, he says:
+"Thanks, any wine." If I offer him a cigar, he smokes it as if it
+were a twopenny German thing.  I never see him looking at June as
+he ought to look at her; and yet, he's not after her money.  If
+she were to make a sign, he'd be off his bargain to-morrow.  But
+she won't--not she!  She'll stick to him!  She's as obstinate as
+fate--Sh'ell never let go!'
+
+Sighing deeply, he turned the paper; in its columns, perchance he
+might find consolation.
+
+And upstairs in her room June sat at her open window, where the
+spring wind came, after its revel across the Park, to cool her
+hot cheeks and burn her heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+DRIVE WITH SWITHIN
+
+
+Two lines of a certain song in a certain famous old school's
+songbook run as follows:
+
+'How the buttons on his blue frock shone, tra-la-la!
+How he carolled and he sang, like a bird!....'
+
+Swithin did not exactly carol and sing like a bird, but he felt
+almost like endeavouring to hum a tune, as he stepped out of Hyde
+Park  Mansions, and contemplated his horses drawn up before the
+door.
+
+The afternoon was as balmy as a day in June, and to complete the
+simile of the old song, he had put on a blue frock-coat,
+dispensing with an overcoat, after sending Adolf down three times
+to make sure that there was not the least suspicion of east in
+the wind; and the frock-coat was buttoned so tightly around his
+personable form, that, if the buttons did not shine, they might
+pardonably have done so.  Majestic on the pavement he fitted on a
+pair of dog-skin gloves; with his large bell-shaped top hat, and
+his great stature and bulk he looked too primeval for a Forsyte.
+His thick white hair, on which Adolf had bestowed a touch of
+pomatum, exhaled the fragrance of opoponax and cigars--the
+celebrated Swithin brand, for which he paid one hundred and,
+forty shillings the hundred, and of which old Jolyon had unkindly
+said, he wouldn't smoke them as a gift; they wanted the stomach
+of a horse!
+
+"Adolf!"
+
+"Sare!"
+
+"The new plaid rug!
+
+He would never teach that fellow to look smart; and Mrs. Soames
+he felt sure, had an eye!
+
+"The phaeton hood down; I am going--to--drive--a--lady!"
+
+A pretty woman would want to show off her frock; and well--he was
+going to drive a lady!  It was like a new beginning to the good
+old days.
+
+Ages since he had driven a woman!  The last time, if he
+remembered, it had been Juley; the poor old soul had been as
+nervous as a cat the whole time, and so put him out of patience
+that, as he dropped her in the Bayswater Road, he had said: "Well
+I'm d---d if I ever drive you again!"  And he never had, not he!
+
+Going up to his horses' heads, he examined their bits; not that
+he knew anything about bits--he didn't pay his coachman sixty
+pounds a  year to do his work for him, that had never been his
+principle.  Indeed, his reputation as a horsey man rested mainly
+on the fact that once, on Derby Day, he had been welshed by some
+thimble-riggers.  But someone at the Club, after seeing him drive
+his greys up to the door--he always drove grey horses, you got
+more style for the money, some thought--had called him 'Four-
+in-hand Forsyte.' The name having reached his ears through that
+fellow Nicholas Treffry, old Jolyon's dead partner, the great
+driving man notorious for more carriage accidents than any man in
+the kingdom--Swithin had ever after conceived it right to act up
+to it.  The name had taken his fancy, not because he had ever
+driven four-in-hand, or was ever likely to, but because of
+something distinguished in the sound.  Four-in-hand Forsyte!  Not
+bad!  Born too soon, Swithin had missed his vocation.  Coming
+upon London twenty years later, he could not have failed to have
+become a stockbroker, but at the time when he was obliged to
+select, this great profession had not as yet became the chief
+glory of the upper-middle class.  He had literally been forced
+into land agency.
+
+Once in the driving seat, with the reins handed to him, and
+blinking over his pale old cheeks in the full sunlight, he took a
+slow look round--Adolf was already up behind; the cockaded groom
+at the horses' heads stood ready to let go; everything was
+prepared for the signal, and Swithin gave it.  The equipage
+dashed forward, and before you could say Jack Robinson, with a
+rattle and flourish drew up at Soames' door.
+
+Irene came out at once, and stepped in--he afterward described it
+at Timothy's--"as light as--er--Taglioni, no fuss about it, no
+wanting this or wanting that;" and above all, Swithin dwelt on
+this, staring at Mrs. Septimus in a way that disconcerted her a
+good deal, "no silly nervousness!"  To Aunt Hester he portrayed
+Irene's hat.  "Not one of your great flopping things, sprawling
+about, and catching the dust, that women are so fond of nowadays,
+but a neat little--"he made a circular motion of his hand, "white
+veil--capital taste."
+
+"What was it made of?" inquired Aunt Hester, who manifested a
+languid but permanent excitement at any mention of dress.
+
+"Made of?" returned Swithin; "now how should I know?"
+
+He sank into silence so profound that Aunt Hester began to be
+afraid he had fallen into a trance.  She did not try to rouse him
+herself, it not being her custom.
+
+'I wish somebody would come,' she thought; 'I don't like the look
+of him!'
+
+But suddenly Swithin returned to life.  "Made of" he wheezed out
+slowly, "what should it be made of?"
+
+They had not gone four miles before Swithin received the
+impression that Irene liked driving with him.  Her face was so
+soft behind that white veil, and her dark eyes shone so in the
+spring light, and whenever he spoke she raised them to him and
+smiled.
+
+On Saturday morning Soames had found her at her writing-table
+with a note written to Swithin, putting him off.  Why did she
+want to put him off? he asked.  She might put her own people off
+when she liked, he would not have her putting off his people!
+
+She had looked at him intently, had torn up the note, and said:
+"Very well!"
+
+And then she began writing another.  He took a casual glance
+presently, and saw that it was addressed to Bosinney.
+
+"What are you writing to him about?" he asked.
+
+Irene, looking at him again with that intent look, said quietly:
+"Something he wanted me to do for him!"
+
+"Humph!" said Soames,--"Commissions!"
+
+"You'll have your work cut out if you begin that sort of thing!"
+He said no more.
+
+Swithin opened his eyes at the mention of Robin Hill; it was a
+long way for his horses, and he always dined at half-past seven,
+before the rush at the Club began; the new chef took more trouble
+with an early dinner--a lazy rascal!
+
+He would like to have a look at the house, however.  A house
+appealed to any Forsyte, and especially to one who had been an
+auctioneer.  After all he said the distance was nothing.  When he
+was a younger man he had had rooms at Richmond for many years,
+kept his carriage and pair there, and drove them up and down to
+business every day of his life.
+
+Four-in-hand Forsyte they called him!  His T-cart, his horses had
+been known from Hyde Park Corner to the Star and Garter.  The
+Duke of Z....  wanted to get hold of them, would have given him
+double the money, but he had kept them; know a good thing when
+you have it, eh?  A look of solemn pride came portentously on his
+shaven square old face, he rolled his head in his stand-up
+collar, like a turkey-cock preening himself.
+
+She was really--a charming woman!  He enlarged upon her frock
+afterwards to Aunt Juley, who held up her hands at his way of
+putting it.
+
+Fitted her like a skin--tight as a drum; that was how he liked
+'em, all of a piece, none of your daverdy, scarecrow women!  He
+gazed at Mrs. Septimus Small, who took after James--long and
+thin.
+
+"There's style about her," he went on, "fit for a king!  And
+she's so quiet with it too!"
+
+"She seems to have made quite a conquest of you, any way,"
+drawled Aunt Hester from her corner.
+
+Swithin heard extremely well when anybody attacked him.
+
+"What's that?" he said.  "I know a--pretty--woman when I see one,
+and all I can say is, I don't see the young man about that's fit
+for her; but perhaps--you--do, come, perhaps--you -do!"
+
+"Oh?" murmured Aunt Hester, "ask Juley!"
+
+Long before they reached Robin Hill, however, the unaccustomed
+airing had made him terribly sleepy; he drove with his eyes
+closed, a life-time of deportment alone keeping his tall and
+bulky form from falling askew.
+
+Bosinney, who was watching, came out to meet them, and all three
+entered the house together; Swithin in front making play with a
+stout gold-mounted Malacca cane, put into his hand by Adolf, for
+his knees were feeling the effects of their long stay in the same
+position.  He had assumed his fur coat, to guard against the
+draughts of the unfinished house.
+
+The staircase--he said--was handsome! the baronial style!  They
+would want some statuary about!  He came to a standstill between
+the columns of the doorway into the inner court, and held out his
+cane inquiringly.
+
+What was this to be--this vestibule, or whatever they called it?
+But gazing at the skylight, inspiration came to him.
+
+"Ah! the billiard-room!"
+
+When told it was to be a tiled court with plants in the centre,
+he turned to Irene:
+
+"Waste this on plants?  You take my advice and have a billiard
+table here!"
+
+Irene smiled.  She had lifted her veil, banding it like a nun's
+coif across her forehead, and the smile of her dark eyes below
+this seemed to Swithin more charming than ever.  He nodded.  She
+would take his advice he saw.
+
+He had little to say of the drawing or dining-rooms, which he
+described as 'spacious"; but fell into such raptures as he
+permitted to a man of his dignity, in the wine-cellar, to which
+he descended by stone steps, Bosinney going first with a light.
+
+"You'll have room here," he said, "for six or seven hundred.
+dozen--a very pooty little cellar!"
+
+Bosinney having expressed the wish to show them the house from
+the copse below, Swithin came to a stop.
+
+"There's a fine view from here," he remarked; "you haven't such a
+thing as a chair?"
+
+A chair was brought him from Bosinney's tent.
+
+"You go down," he said blandly; "you two!  I'll sit here and look
+at the view."
+
+He sat down by the oak tree, in the sun; square and upright, with
+one hand stretched out, resting on the nob of his cane, the other
+planted on his knee; his fur coat thrown open, his hat, roofing
+with its flat top the pale square of his face; his stare, very
+blank, fixed on the landscape.
+
+He nodded to them as they went, off down through the fields.  He
+was, indeed, not sorry to be left thus for a quiet moment of
+reflection.  The air was balmy, not too much heat in the sun; the
+prospect a fine one, a remarka....  His head fell a little to one
+side; he jerked it up and thought: Odd!  He--ah!  They were
+waving to him from the bottom!  He put up his hand, and moved it
+more than once.  They were active--the prospect was remar....
+His head fell to the left, he jerked it up at once; it fell to
+the right.  It remained there; he was asleep.
+
+And asleep, a sentinel on the--top of the rise, he  appeared to
+rule over this prospect--remarkable--like some image blocked out
+by the special artist, of primeval Forsytes in pagan days, to
+record the domination of mind over matter!
+
+And all the unnumbered generations of his yeoman ancestors, wont
+of a Sunday to stand akimbo surveying their little plots of land,
+their grey unmoving eyes hiding their instinct with its hidden
+roots of violence, their instinct for possession to the exclusion
+of all the world--all these unnumbered generations seemed to sit
+there with him on the top of the rise.
+
+But from him, thus slumbering, his jealous Forsyte spirit
+travelled far, into God-knows-what jungle of fancies; with those
+two young people, to see what they were doing down there in the
+copse--in the copse where the spring was running riot with the
+scent of sap and bursting buds, the song of birds innumerable, a
+carpet of bluebells and sweet growing things, and the sun caught
+like gold in the tops of the trees; to see what they were doing,
+walking along there so close together on the path that was too
+narrow; walking along there so close that they were always
+touching; to watch Irene's eyes, like dark thieves, stealing the
+heart out of the spring.  And a great unseen chaperon, his spirit
+was there, stopping with them to look at the little furry corpse
+of a mole, not dead an hour, with his mushroom--and silver coat
+untouched by the rain or dew; watching over Irene's bent head,
+and the soft look of her pitying eyes; and over that young man's
+head, gazing at her so hard, so strangely.  Walking on with them,
+too, across the open space where a wood-cutter had been at work,
+where the bluebells were trampled down, and a trunk had swayed
+and staggered down from its gashed stump.  Climbing it with them,
+over, and on to the very edge of the copse, whence there
+stretched an undiscovered country, from far away in which came
+the sounds, 'Cuckoo-cuckoo!'
+
+Silent, standing with them there, and uneasy at their silence!
+Very queer, very strange!
+
+Then back again, as though guilty, through the wood--back to the
+cutting, still silent, amongst the songs of birds that never
+ceased, and the wild scent--hum! what was it--like that herb
+they put in--back to the log across the path....
+
+And then unseen, uneasy, flapping above them, trying to make
+noises, his Forsyte spirit watched her balanced on the log, her
+pretty figure swaying, smiling down at that young man gazing up
+with such strange, shining eyes, slipping now--a--ah! falling,
+o--oh!  sliding--down his breast; her soft, warm body clutched,
+her head bent back from his lips; his kiss; her recoil; his cry:
+"You must know--I love you!" Must know--indeed, a pretty...?
+Love!  Hah!
+
+Swithin awoke; virtue had gone out of him.  He had a taste in his
+mouth.  Where was he?
+
+Damme!  He had been asleep!
+
+He had dreamed something about a new soup, with a taste of mint
+in it.
+
+Those young people--where had they got to?  His left leg had pins
+and needles.
+
+"Adolf!"  The rascal was not there; the rascal was asleep
+somewhere.
+
+He stood up, tall, square, bulky in his fur, looking anxiously
+down over the fields, and presently he saw them coming.
+
+Irene was in front; that young fellow--what had they nicknamed
+him--'The Buccaneer?' looked precious hangdog there behind her;
+had got a flea in his ear, he shouldn't wonder.  Serve him right,
+taking her down all that way to look at the house!  The proper
+place to look at a house from was the lawn.
+
+They saw him.  He extended his arm, and moved it spasmodically to
+encourage them.  But they had stopped.  What were they standing
+there for, talking--talking?  They came on again.  She had been,
+giving him a rub, he had not the least doubt of it, and no
+wonder, over a house like that--a great ugly thing, not the sort
+of house be was accustomed to.
+
+He looked intently at their faces, with his pale, immovable
+stare.  That young man looked very queer!
+
+"You'll never make anything of this!" he said tartly, pointing at
+the mansion;--"too newfangled!"
+
+Bosinney gazed at him as though he had not heard; and Swithin
+afterwards described him to, Aunt Hester as "an extravagant sort
+of fellow very odd way of looking at you--a bumpy beggar!"
+
+What gave rise to this sudden piece of psychology he did not
+state; possibly Bosinney's, prominent forehead and cheekbones and
+chin, or something hungry in his face, which quarrelled with
+Swithin's conception of the calm satiety that should characterize
+the perfect gentleman.
+
+He brightened up at the mention of tea.  He had a contempt for
+tea--his brother Jolyon had been in tea; made a lot of money by
+it--but he was so thirsty, and had such a taste in his mouth,
+that he was prepared to drink anything.  He longed to inform
+Irene of the taste in his mouth--she was so sympathetic--but it
+would not be a, distinguished thing to do; he rolled his tongue
+round, and faintly smacked it against his palate.
+
+In a far corner of the tent Adolf was bending his cat-like
+moustaches over a kettle.  He left it at once to draw the cork of
+a pint-bottle of champagne.  Swithin smiled, and, nodding at
+Bosinney, said: "Why, you're quite a Monte Cristo!"  This
+celebrated novel--one of the half-dozen he had read--had produced
+an extraordinary impression on his mind.
+
+Taking his glass from the table, he held it away from him to
+scrutinize the colour; thirsty as he was, it was not likely that
+he was going to drink trash!  Then, placing it to his lips, he
+took a sip.
+
+"A very nice wine," he said at last, passing it before his nose;
+"not the equal of my Heidsieck!"
+
+It was at this moment that the idea came to him which he
+afterwards imparted at Timothy's in this nutshell: "I shouldn't
+wonder a bit if that architect chap were sweet upon Mrs. Soames!"
+
+And from this moment his pale, round eyes never ceased to bulge
+with the interest of his discovery.
+
+"The fellow," he said to Mrs. Septimus, "follows her about with
+his eyes like a dog--the bumpy beggar!  I don't wonder at it--
+she's a very charming woman, and, I should say, the pink of
+discretion!"  A vague consciousness of, perfume caging about
+Irene, like that from a flower with half-closed petals and a
+passionate heart, moved him to the creation of this image.  "But
+I wasn't sure of it," he said, "till I saw him pick up her
+handkerchief."
+
+Mrs. Small's eyes boiled with excitement.
+
+"And did he give it her back?" she asked.
+
+"Give it back?" said Swithin: "I saw him slobber on it when he
+thought I wasn't looking!
+
+Mrs. Small gasped--too interested to speak.
+
+"But she gave him no encouragement," went on Swithin; he stopped,
+and stared for a minute or two in the way that alarmed Aunt
+Hester so--he had suddenly recollected that, as they were
+starting back in the-phaeton, she had given Bosinney her hand a
+second time, and let it stay there too....  He had touched his
+horses smartly with the whip, anxious to get her all to himself.
+But she had looked back, and she had not answered his first
+question; neither had he been able to see her face--she had kept
+it hanging down.
+
+There is somewhere a picture, which Swithin has not seen, of a
+man sitting on a rock, and by him, immersed in the still, green
+water, a sea-nymph lying on her back, with her hand on her naked
+breast.  She has a half-smile on her face--a smile of hopeless
+surrender and of secret joy.
+
+Seated by Swithin's side, Irene may have been smiling like that.
+
+When, warmed by champagne, he had her all to himself, he
+unbosomed himself of his wrongs; of his smothered resentment
+against the new chef at the club; his worry over the house in
+Wigmore Street, where the rascally tenant had gone bankrupt
+through helping his brother-in-law as if charity did not begin at
+home; of his deafness, too, and that pain he sometimes got in his
+right side.  She listened, her eyes swimming under their lids.
+He thought she was thinking deeply of his troubles, and pitied
+himself terribly.  Yet in his fur coat, with frogs across the
+breast, his top hat aslant, driving this beautiful woman, he had
+never felt more distinguished.
+
+A coster, however, taking his girl for a Sunday airing, seemed to
+have the same impression about himself.  This person had flogged
+his donkey into a gallop alongside, and sat, upright as a
+waxwork, in his shallopy chariot, his chin settled pompously on a
+red handkerchief, like Swithin's on his full cravat; while his
+girl, with the ends of a fly-blown boa floating out behind, aped
+a woman of fashion.  Her swain moved a stick with a ragged bit of
+string dangling from the end, reproducing with strange fidelity
+the circular flourish of Swithin's whip, and rolled his head at
+his lady with a leer that had a weird likeness to Swithin's
+primeval stare.
+
+Though for a time unconscious of the lowly ruffian's presence,
+Swithin presently took it into his head that he was being guyed.
+He laid his whip-lash across the mares flank.  The two chariots,
+however, by some unfortunate fatality continued abreast.
+Swithin's yellow, puffy face grew red; he raised his whip to lash
+the costermonger, but was saved from so far forgetting his
+dignity by a special intervention of Providence.  A carriage
+driving out through a gate forced phaeton and donkey-cart into
+proximity; the wheels grated, the lighter vehicle skidded, and
+was overturned.
+
+Swithin did not look round.  On no account would he have pulled
+up to help the ruffian.  Serve him right if he had broken his
+neck!
+
+But he could not if he would.  The greys had taken alarm.  The
+phaeton swung from side to side, and people raised frightened
+faces as they went dashing past.  Swithin's great arms, stretched
+at full length, tugged at the reins.  His cheeks were puffed, his
+lips compressed, his swollen face was of a dull, angry red.
+
+Irene had her hand on the rail, and at every lurch she gripped it
+tightly.  Swithin heard her ask:
+
+"Are we going to have an accident, Uncle Swithin?"
+
+He gasped out between his pants: "It's nothing; a--little fresh!"
+
+"I've never been in an accident."
+
+Don't you move!" He took a look at--her.  She was smiling,
+perfectly calm.  "Sit still," he repeated.  "Never fear, I'll get
+you home!"
+
+And in the midst of all his terrible efforts, he was surprised to
+hear her answer in a voice not like her own:
+
+"I don't care if I never get home!"
+
+The carriage giving a terrific lurch, Swithin's exclamation was
+jerked back into his throat.  The horses, winded by the rise of a
+hill, now steadied to a trot, and finally stopped of their own
+accord.
+
+"When"--Swithin described it at Timothy's--"I pulled 'em up,
+there she was as cool as myself.  God bless my soul! she behaved
+as if she didn't care whether she broke her neck or not!  What
+was it she said: 'I don't care if I never get home?"  Leaning over
+the handle of his cane, he wheezed out, to Mrs. Small's terror:
+"And I'm not altogether surprised, with a finickin' feller like
+young Soames for a husband!"
+
+It did not occur to him to wonder what Bosinney had done after
+they had left him there alone; whether he had gone wandering
+about like the dog to which Swithin had compared him; wandering
+down to that copse where the spring was still in riot, the cuckoo
+still calling from afar; gone down there with her handkerchief
+pressed to lips, its fragrance mingling with the scent of mint
+and thyme.  Gone down there with such a wild, exquisite pain in
+his heart that he could have cried out among the trees.  Or what,
+indeed, the fellow had done.  In fact, till he came to Timothy's,
+Swithin had forgotten all about him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+JAMES GOES TO SEE FOR HIMSELF
+
+
+Those ignorant of Forsyte 'Change would not, perhaps, foresee all
+the stir made by Irene's visit to the house.
+
+After Swithin had related at Timothy's the full story of his
+memorable drive, the same, with the least suspicion of curiosity,
+the merest touch of malice, and a real desire to do good, was
+passed on to June.
+
+"And what a dreadful thing to say, my dear!" ended Aunt Juley;
+"that about not going home.  What did she mean?"
+
+It was a strange recital for the girl.  She heard it flushing
+painfully, and, suddenly, with a curt handshake, took her
+departure.
+
+"Almost rude!" Mrs. Small said to Aunt Hester, when June was
+gone.
+
+The proper construction was put on her reception of the news.
+She was upset.  Something was therefore very wrong.  Odd!  She
+and Irene had been such friends!
+
+It all tallied too well with whispers and hints that had been
+going about for some time past.  Recollections of Euphemia's
+account of the visit to the theatre--Mr. Bosinney always at
+Soames's?  Oh, indeed!  Yes, of course, he would be about the
+house!  Nothing open.  Only upon the greatest, the most important
+provocation was it necessary to say anything open on Forsyte
+'Change.  This machine was too nicely adjusted; a hint, the
+merest trifling expression of regret or doubt, sufficed to set
+the family soul so sympathetic--vibrating.  No one desired that
+harm should come of these vibrations--far from it; they were set
+in motion with the best intentions, with the feeling, that each
+member of the family had a stake in the family soul.
+
+And much kindness lay at the bottom of the gossip; it would
+frequently result in visits of condolence being made, in
+accordance with the customs of Society, thereby conferring a real
+benefit upon the sufferers, and affording consolation to the
+sound, who felt pleasantly that someone at all events was
+suffering from that from which they themselves were not
+suffering.  In fact, it was simply a desire to keep things
+well-aired, the desire which animates the Public Press, that
+brought James, for instance, into communication with Mrs.
+Septimus, Mrs. Septimus, with the little Nicholases, the little
+Nicholases with who-knows-whom, and so on.  That great class to
+which they had risen, and now belonged, demanded a certain
+candour, a still more certain reticence.  This combination
+guaranteed their membership.
+
+Many of the younger Forsytes felt, very naturally, and would
+openly declare, that they did not want their affairs pried into;
+but so powerful was the invisible, magnetic current of family
+gossip, that for the life of them they could not help knowing all
+about everything.  It was felt to be hopeless.
+
+One of them (young Roger) had made an heroic attempt to free the
+rising generation, by speaking of Timothy as an 'old cat.' The
+effort had justly recoiled upon himself; the words, coming round
+in the most delicate way to Aunt Juley's ears, were repeated by
+her in a shocked voice to Mrs. Roger, whence they returned again
+to young Roger.
+
+And, after all, it was only the wrong-doers who suffered; as, for
+instance, George, when he lost all that money playing billiards;
+or young Roger himself, when he was so dreadfully near to
+marrying the girl to whom, it was whispered, he was already
+married by the laws of Nature; or again Irene, who was thought,
+rather than said, to be in danger.
+
+All this was not only pleasant but salutary.  And it made so many
+hours go lightly at Timothy's in the Bayswater Road; so many
+hours that must otherwise have been sterile and heavy to those
+three who lived there; and Timothy's was but one of hundreds of
+such homes in this City of London--the homes of neutral persons
+of the secure classes, who are out of the battle themselves, and
+must find their reason for existing, in the battles of others.
+
+But for the sweetness of family gossip, it must indeed have been
+lonely there.  Rumours and tales, reports, surmises--were they
+not the children of the house, as dear and precious as the
+prattling babes the brother and sisters had missed in their own
+journey?  To talk about them, was as near as they could get to
+the possession of all those children and grandchildren, after
+whom their soft hearts yearned.  For though it is doubtful
+whether Timothy's heart yearned, it is indubitable that at the
+arrival of each fresh Forsyte child he was quite upset.
+
+Useless for young Roger to say, "Old cat!" for Euphemia to hold up
+her hands and cry: "Oh! those three!" and break into her silent
+laugh with the squeak at the end.  Useless, and not too kind.
+
+The situation which at this stage might seem, and especially to
+Forsyte eyes, strange--not to  say 'impossible'--was, in view of
+certain facts, not so strange after all.  Some things had been
+lost sight of.  And first, in the security bred of many harmless
+marriages, it had been forgotten that Love is no hot-house
+flower, but a wild plant, born of  a wet night, born of an hour
+of sunshine; sprung  from wild seed, blown along the road by a
+wild wind.  A wild plant that, when it blooms by chance within
+the hedge of our gardens, we call a flower; and when it blooms
+outside we call a  weed; but, flower or weed, whose scent and
+colour  are always, wild!  And further--the facts and figures of
+their own lives being against the perception of this truth--it
+was not generally recognised by Forsytes that, where, this wild
+plant springs, men and women  are but moths around the pale,
+flame-like  blossom.
+
+It was long since young Jolyon's escapade--there was danger of a
+tradition again arising that people in their position never cross
+the hedge to pluck that flower; that one could reckon on having
+love, like measles, once in due season, and getting over it
+comfortably for all time--as with measles, on a soothing mixture
+of butter and honey--in the arms of wedlock.
+
+Of all those whom this strange rumour about Bosinney and Mrs.
+Soames reached, James was the most affected.  He had long
+forgotten how he had hovered, lanky and pale, in side whiskers of
+chestnut hue, round Emily, in the days of his own courtship.  He
+had long forgotten the small house in the purlieus of Mayfair,
+where he had spent the early days of his married life, or rather,
+he had long forgotten the early days, not the small house,--a
+Forsyte never forgot a house--he had afterwards sold it at a
+clear profit of four hundred pounds.
+
+He had long, forgotten those days, with their hopes and fears and
+doubts about the prudence of the match (for Emily, though pretty,
+had nothing, and he himself at that time was making a bare
+thousand a year), and that strange, irresistible attraction which
+had drawn him on, till he felt he must die if he could not marry
+the girl with the fair hair, looped so neatly back, the fair arms
+emerging from a skin-tight bodice, the fair form decorously
+shielded by a cage of really stupendous circumference.
+
+James had passed through the fire, but he had passed also through
+the river of years which washes out the fire; he had experienced
+the saddest experience of all--forgetfulness of what it was like
+to be in love.
+
+Forgotten!  Forgotten so long, that he had forgotten even that he
+had forgotten.
+
+And now this rumour had come upon him, this rumour about his
+son's wife; very vague, a shadow dodging among the palpable,
+straightforward appearances of things, unreal, unintelligible as
+a ghost, but carrying with it, like a ghost, inexplicable terror.
+
+He tried to bring it home to his mind, but it was no more use
+than trying to apply to himself one of those tragedies he read of
+daily in his evening paper.  He simply could not.  There could be
+nothing in it.  It was all their nonsense.  She didn't get on
+with Soames as well as she might, but she was a good little
+thing--a good little thing!
+
+Like the not inconsiderable majority of men, James relished a
+nice little bit of scandal, and would say, in a matter-of-fact
+tone, licking his lips, "Yes, yes--she and young Dyson; they tell
+me they're living at Monte Carlo!"
+
+But the significance of an affair of this sort--of its past, its
+present, or its future--had never struck him.  What it meant,
+what torture and raptures had gone to its construction, what
+slow, overmastering fate had lurked within the facts, very naked,
+sometimes sordid, but generally spicy, presented to his gaze.  He
+was not in the habit of blaming, praising, drawing deductions, or
+generalizing at all about such things; he simply listened rather
+greedily, and repeated what he was told, finding considerable
+benefit from the practice, as from the consumption of a sherry
+and bitters before a meal.
+
+Now, however, that such a thing--or rather the rumour, the breath
+of it--had come near him personally, he felt as in a fog, which
+filled his mouth full of a bad, thick flavour, and made it
+difficult to draw breath.
+
+A scandal!  A possible scandal!
+
+To repeat this word to himself thus was the only way in which he
+could focus or make it thinkable.  He had forgotten the
+sensations necessary for understanding the progress, fate, or
+meaning of any such business; he simply could no longer grasp the
+possibilities of people running any risk for the sake of passion.
+
+Amongst all those persons of his acquaintance, who went into the
+City day after day and did their business there, whatever it was,
+and in their leisure moments bought shares, and houses, and ate
+dinners, and played games, as he was told, it would have seemed
+to him ridiculous to suppose that there were any who would run
+risks for the sake of anything so recondite, so figurative, as
+passion.
+
+Passion!  He seemed, indeed, to have heard of it, and rules such
+as 'A young man and a young woman ought never to be trusted
+together' were fixed in his mind as the parallels of latitude are
+fixed on a map (for all Forsytes, when it comes to 'bed-rock'
+matters of fact, have quite a fine taste in realism); but as to
+anything else--well, he could only appreciate it at all through
+the catch-word 'scandal.'
+
+Ah! but there was no truth in it--could not be.  He was not
+afraid; she was really a good little thing.  But there it was
+when you got a thing like that into your mind.  And James was of
+a nervous temperament--one of those men whom things will not
+leave alone, who suffer tortures from anticipation and
+indecision.  For fear of letting something slip that he might
+otherwise secure, he was physically unable to make up his mind
+until absolutely certain that, by not making it up, he would
+suffer loss.
+
+In life, however, there were many occasions when the business of
+making up his mind did not even rest with himself, and this was
+one of them.
+
+What could he do?  Talk it over with Soames?  That would only
+make matters worse.  And, after all, there was nothing in it, he
+felt sure.
+
+It was all that house.  He had mistrusted the idea from the
+first.  What did Soames want to go into the country for?  And, if
+he must go spending a lot of money building himself a house, why
+not have a first-rate man, instead of this young Bosinney, whom
+nobody knew anything about?  He had told them, how it would be.
+And he had heard that the house was costing Soames a pretty penny
+beyond what he had reckoned on spending.
+
+This fact, more than any other, brought home to James the real
+danger of the situation.  It was always like this with these
+'artistic' chaps; a sensible man should have nothing to say to
+them.  He had warned Irene, too.  And see what had come of it!
+
+And it suddenly sprang into James's mind that he ought to go and
+see for himself.  In the midst of that fog of uneasiness in which
+his mind was enveloped the notion that he could go and look at
+the house afforded him inexplicable satisfaction.  It may have
+been simply the decision to do something--more possibly the fact
+that he was going to look at a house--that gave him relief.
+He felt that in staring at an edifice of bricks and mortar, of
+wood and stone, built by the suspected man himself, he would be
+looking into the heart of that rumour about Irene.
+
+Without saying a word, therefore, to anyone, he took a hansom to
+the station and proceeded by train to Robin Hill; thence--there
+being no 'flies,' in accordance with the custom of the
+neighbourhood--he found himself obliged to walk.
+
+He started slowly up the hill, his angular knees and high
+shoulders bent complainingly, his eyes fixed on his feet, yet,
+neat for all that, in his high hat and his frock-coat, on which
+was the speckless gloss imparted by perfect superintendence.
+Emily saw to that; that is, she did not, of course, see to it--
+people of good position not seeing to each other's buttons, and
+Emily was of good position--but she saw that the butler saw to
+it.
+
+He had to ask his way three times; on each occasion he repeated
+the directions given him, got the man to repeat them, then
+repeated them a second time, for he was naturally of a talkative
+disposition, and one could not be too careful in a new
+neighbourhood.
+
+He kept assuring them that it was a new house he was looking for;
+it was only, however, when he was shown the roof through the
+trees that he could feel really satisfied that he had not been
+directed entirely wrong.
+
+A heavy sky seemed to cover the world with the grey whiteness of
+a whitewashed ceiling.  There was no freshness or fragrance in
+the air.  On such a day even British workmen scarcely cared to do
+more then they were obliged, and moved about their business
+without the drone of talk which whiles away the pangs of labour.
+
+Through spaces of the unfinished house, shirt-sleeved figures
+worked slowly, and sounds arose--spasmodic knockings, the
+scraping of metal, the sawing of wood, with the rumble of
+wheelbarrows along boards; now and again the foreman's dog,
+tethered by a string to an oaken beam, whimpered feebly, with a
+sound like the singing of a kettle.
+
+The fresh-fitted window-panes, daubed each with a white patch in
+the centre, stared out at James like the eyes of a blind dog.
+
+And the building chorus went on, strident and mirthless under the
+grey-white sky.  But the thrushes, hunting amongst the fresh-
+turned earth for worms, were silent quite.
+
+James picked his way among the heaps of gravel--the drive was
+being laid--till he came opposite the porch.  Here he stopped and
+raised his eyes.  There was but little to see from this point of
+view, and that little he took in at once; but he stayed in this
+position many minutes, and who shall know of what he thought.
+
+His china-blue eyes under white eyebrows that jutted out in
+little horns, never stirred; the long upper lip of his wide
+mouth, between the fine white whiskers, twitched once or twice;
+it was easy to see from that anxious rapt expression, whence
+Soames derived the handicapped look which sometimes came upon his
+face.  James might have been saying to himself: 'I don't know--
+life's a tough job.'
+
+In this position Bosinney surprised him.
+
+James brought his eyes down from whatever bird's-nest they had
+been looking for in the sky to Bosinney's face, on which was a
+kind of humorous scorn.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Forsyte?  Come down to see for yourself?"
+
+It was exactly what James, as we know, had come for, and he was
+made correspondingly uneasy.  He held out his hand, however,
+saying:
+
+"How are you?" without looking at Bosinney.
+
+The latter made way for him with an ironical smile.
+
+James scented something suspicious in this courtesy.  "I should
+like to walk round the outside first," he said, "and see what
+you've been doing!"
+
+A flagged terrace of rounded stones with a list of two or three
+inches to port had been laid round the south-east and south-west
+sides of the house, and ran with a bevelled edge into mould,
+which was in preparation for being turfed; along this terrace
+James led the way.
+
+"Now what did this cost?" he asked, when he saw the terrace
+extending round the corner.
+
+"What should you think?" inquired Bosinney.
+
+"How should I know?" replied James somewhat nonplussed; "two or
+three hundred, I dare say!"
+
+"The exact sum!"
+
+James gave him a sharp look, but the architect appeared
+unconscious, and he put the answer down to mishearing.
+
+On arriving at the garden entrance, he stopped to look at the
+view.
+
+"That ought to come down," he said, pointing to the oak-tree.
+
+"You think so?  You think that with the tree there you don't get
+enough view for your money.
+
+Again James eyed him suspiciously--this young man had a peculiar
+way of putting things: "Well!" he said, with a perplexed,
+nervous, emphasis, "I don't see what you want with a tree."
+
+"It shall come down to-morrow," said Bosinney.
+
+James was alarmed.  "Oh," he said, "don't go saying I said it was
+to come down!  I know nothing about it!"
+
+"No?"
+
+James went on in a fluster: "Why, what should I know about it?
+It's nothing to do with me!  You do it on your own
+responsibility."
+
+"You'll allow me to mention your name?"
+
+James grew more and more alarmed: "I don't know what you want
+mentioning my name for," he muttered; "you'd better leave the
+tree alone.  It's not your tree!"
+
+He took out a silk handkerchief and wiped his brow.  They entered
+the house.  Like Swithin, James was impressed by the inner
+court-yard.
+
+You must have spent a douce of a lot of money here," he said,
+after staring at the columns and gallery for some time.  "Now,
+what did it cost to put up those columns?"
+
+"I can't tell you off-hand," thoughtfully answered Bosinney, "but
+I know it was a deuce of a lot!"
+
+"I should think so," said James.  "I should...."  He caught the
+architect's eye, and broke off.  And now, whenever he came to
+anything of which he desired to know the cost, he stifled that
+curiosity.
+
+Bosinney appeared determined that he should see everything, and
+had not James been of too 'noticing=a nature, he would
+certainly have found himself going round the house a second time.
+He seemed so anxious to be asked questions, too, that James felt
+he must be on his guard.  He began to suffer from his exertions,
+for, though wiry enough for a man of his long build, he was
+seventy-five years old.
+
+He grew discouraged; he seemed no nearer to anything, had not
+obtained from his inspection any of the knowledge he had vaguely
+hoped for.  He had merely increased his dislike and mistrust of
+this young man, who had tired him out with his politeness, and in
+whose manner he now certainly detected mockery.
+
+The fellow was sharper than he had thought, and better-looking
+than he had hoped.  He had a--a 'don't care' appearance that
+James, to whom risk was the most intolerable thing in life, did
+not appreciate; a peculiar smile, too, coming when least
+expected; and very queer eyes.  He reminded James, as he said
+afterwards, of a hungry cat.  This was as near as he could get,
+in conversation with Emily, to a description of the peculiar
+exasperation, velvetiness, and mockery, of which Bosinney's
+manner had been composed.
+
+At last, having seen all that was to be seen, he came out again
+at the door where he had gone in; and now, feeling that he was
+wasting time and strength and money, all for nothing, he took the
+courage of a Forsyte in both hands, and, looking sharply at
+Bosinney, said:
+
+"I dare say you see a good deal of my daughter-in-law; now, what
+does she think of the house?  But she hasn't seen it, I suppose?"
+
+This he said, knowing all about Irene's visit not, of course,
+that there was anything in the visit, except that extraordinary
+remark she had made about 'not caring to get home'--and the story
+of how June had taken the news!
+
+He had determined, by this way of putting the question, to give
+Bosinney a chance, as he said to himself.
+
+The latter was long in answering, but kept his eyes with
+uncomfortable steadiness on James.
+
+"She has seen the house, but I can't tell you what she thinks of,
+it."
+
+Nervous and baffled, James was constitutionally prevented from
+letting the matter drop.
+
+"Oh!" he said, "she has seen it?  Soames brought her down, I
+suppose?"
+
+Bosinney smilingly replied: "Oh, no!"
+
+"What, did she come down alone?"
+
+"Oh, no!"
+
+"Then--who brought her?"
+
+"I really don't know whether I ought to tell you who brought
+her."
+
+To James, who knew that it was Swithin, this answer appeared
+incomprehensible.
+
+"Why!" he stammered, "you know that...." but he stopped, suddenly
+perceiving his danger.
+
+"Well," he said, "if you don't want to tell me I suppose you
+won't!  Nobody tells me anything."
+
+Somewhat to his surprise Bosinney asked him a question.
+
+"By the by," he said, "could you tell me if there are likely to
+be any more of you coming down?  I should like to be on the
+spot!"
+
+"Any more?" said James bewildered, "who should there be more?  I
+don't know of any more.  Good-bye?"
+
+Looking at the ground he held out his hand, crossed the palm of
+it with Bosinney's, and taking his umbrella just above the silk,
+walked away along the terrace.
+
+Before he turned the corner he glanced back, and saw Bosinney
+following him slowly--'slinking along the wall' as he put it to
+himself, 'like a great cat.' He paid no attention when the young
+fellow raised his hat.
+
+Outside the drive, and out of sight, he slackened his pace still
+more.  Very slowly, more bent than when he came, lean, hungry,
+and disheartened, he made his way back to the station.
+
+The Buccaneer, watching him go so sadly home, felt sorry perhaps
+for his behaviour to the old man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+SOAMES AND BOSINNEY CORRESPOND
+
+
+James said nothing to his son of this visit to the house; but,
+having occasion to go to Timothy's on morning on a matter
+connected with a drainage scheme which was being forced by the
+sanitary authorities on his, brother, he mentioned it there.
+
+It was not, he said, a bad house.  He could see that a good deal
+could be made of it.  The fellow was clever in his way, though
+what it was going to cost Soames before it was done with he
+didn't know.
+
+Euphemia Forsyte, who happened to be in the room--she had come
+round to borrow the Rev. Mr. Scoles' last novel, 'Passion and
+Paregoric', which was having such a vogue--chimed in.
+
+"I saw Irene yesterday at the Stores; she and Mr. Bosinney were
+having a nice little chat in the Groceries."
+
+It was thus, simply, that she recorded a scene which had really
+made a deep and complicated impression on her.  She had been
+hurrying to the silk department of the Church and Commercial
+Stores--that Institution than which, with its admirable system,
+admitting only guaranteed persons on a basis of payment before
+delivery, no emporium can be more highly recommended to Forsytes-
+-to match a piece of prunella silk for her mother, who was
+waiting in the carriage outside.
+
+Passing through the Groceries her eye was unpleasantly attracted
+by the back view of a very beautiful, figure.  It was so
+charmingly proportioned, so balanced, and so well clothed, that
+Euphemia's instinctive propriety was at once alarmed; such
+figures, she knew, by intuition rather than experience, were
+rarely connected with virtue--certainly never in her mind, for
+her own back was somewhat difficult to fit.
+
+Her suspicions were fortunately confirmed.  A young man coming
+from the Drugs had snatched off his hat, and was accosting the
+lady with the unknown back.
+
+It was then that she saw with whom she had to deal; the lady was
+undoubtedly Mrs. Soames, the young man Mr. Bosinney.  Concealing
+herself rapidly over the purchase of a box of Tunisian dates, for
+she was impatient of awkwardly meeting people with parcels in her
+
+hands, and at the busy time of the morning, she was quite
+unintentionally an interested observer of their little interview.
+
+Mrs. Soames, usually somewhat pale, had a delightful colour in
+her cheeks; and Mr. Bosinney's manner was strange, though
+attractive (she thought him rather a distinguished-looking man,
+and Georges name for him, 'The Buccaneer--about which there was
+something romantic--quite charming).  He seemed to be pleading.
+Indeed, they talked so earnestly--or, rather, he talked so
+earnestly, for Mrs. Soames did not say much--that they caused,
+inconsiderately, an eddy in the traffic.  One nice old General,
+going towards Cigars, was obliged to step quite out of the way,
+and chancing to look up and see Mrs. Soames' face, he actually
+took off his hat, the old fool!  So like a man!
+
+But it was Mrs. Soames' eyes that worried Euphemia.  She never
+once looked at Mr. Bosinney until he moved on, and then she
+looked after him.  And, oh, that look!
+
+On that look Euphemia had spent much anxious thought.  It is not
+too much to say that it had hurt her with its dark, lingering
+softness, for all the world as though the woman wanted to
+drag him back, and unsay something she had been saying.
+
+Ah, well, she had had no time to go deeply into the matter just
+then, with that prunella silk on her hands; but she was 'very
+intriguee--very!  She had just nodded to Mrs. Soames, to show her
+that she had seen; and, as she confided, in talking it over
+afterwards, to her chum Francie (Roger's daughter), "Didn't she
+look caught out just? ...."
+
+James, most averse at the first blush to accepting any news
+confirmatory of his own poignant suspicions, took her up at once.
+
+"Oh" he said, "they'd be after wall-papers no doubt."
+
+Euphemia smiled.  "In the Groceries?" she said softly; and,
+taking 'Passion and Paregoric' from the table, added: "And so
+you'll lend me this, dear Auntie?  Good-bye!" and went away.
+
+James left almost immediately after; he was late as it was.
+
+When he reached the office of Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte, he
+found Soames, sitting in his revolving, chair, drawing up a
+defence.  The latter greeted his father with a curt good-morning,
+and, taking an envelope from his pocket, said:
+
+"It may interest you to look through this."
+
+James read as follows:
+
+
+309D, SLOANE STREET,
+May 15.
+
+'DEAR FORSYTE,
+
+'The construction of your house being now completed, my duties as
+architect have come to an end.  If I am to go on with the
+business of decoration, which at your request I undertook, I
+should like you to clearly understand that I must have a free
+hand.
+
+'You never come down without suggesting something that goes
+counter to my scheme.  I have here three letters from you, each
+of which recommends an article I should never dream of putting
+in.  I had your father here yesterday afternoon, who made further
+valuable suggestions.
+
+'Please make up your mind, therefore, whether you want me to
+decorate for you, or to retire which on the whole I should prefer
+to do.
+
+'But understand that, if I decorate, I decorate alone, without
+interference of any sort.
+
+If I do the thing, I will do it thoroughly, but I must have a
+free hand.
+
+'Yours truly,
+
+'PHILIP BOSINNEY.'
+
+
+The exact and immediate cause of this letter cannot, of course,
+be told, though it is not improbable that Bosinney may have been
+moved by some sudden revolt against his position towards Soames--
+that eternal position of Art towards Property--which is so
+admirably summed up, on the back of the most indispensable of
+modern appliances, in a sentence comparable to the very finest in
+Tacitus:
+
+
+THOS.  T.  SORROW, Inventor.
+BERT M.  PADLAND, Proprietor.
+
+
+"What are you going to say to him?" James asked.
+
+Soames did not even turn his head.  "I haven't made up my mind,"
+he said, and went on with his defence.
+
+A client of his, having put some buildings on a piece of ground
+that did not belong to him, had been suddenly and most irritat-
+ingly warned to take them off again.  After carefully going into
+the facts, however, Soames had seen his way to advise that his
+client had what was known as a title by possession, and that,
+though undoubtedly the ground did not belong to him, he was
+entitled to keep it, and had better do so; and he was now
+following up this advice by taking steps to--as the sailors say--
+'make it so.'
+
+He had a distinct reputation for sound advice; people saying of
+him: "Go to young Forsyte--a long-headed fellow!" and he prized
+this reputation highly.
+
+His natural taciturnity was in his favour; nothing could be more
+calculated to give people, especially people with property
+(Soames had no other clients), the impression that he was a safe
+man.  And he was safe.  Tradition, habit, education, inherited
+aptitude, native caution, all joined to form a solid professional
+honesty, superior to temptation--from the very fact that it was
+built on an innate avoidance of risk.  How could he fall, when
+his soul abhorred circumstances which render a fall possible--a
+man cannot fall off the floor!
+
+And those countless Forsytes, who, in the course of innumerable
+transactions concerned with property of all sorts (from wives to
+water  rights), had occasion for the services of a safe man,
+found it both reposeful and profitable to confide in Soames.
+That slight superciliousness of his, combined with an air of
+mousing amongst precedents, was in his favour too--a man would
+not be supercilious unless he knew!
+
+He was really at the head of the business, for though James still
+came nearly every day to, see for himself, he did little now but
+sit in his chair, twist his legs, slightly confuse things already
+decided, and presently go away again, and the other partner,
+Bustard, was a poor thing, who did a great deal of work, but
+whose opinion was never taken.
+
+So Soames went steadily on with his defence.  Yet it would be
+idle to say that his mind was at ease.  He was suffering from a
+sense of impending  trouble, that had haunted him for some time
+past.  He tried to think it physical--a condition of his liver--
+but knew that it was not.
+
+He looked at his watch.  In a quarter of an hour he was due at
+the General Meeting of the New Colliery Company--one of Uncle
+Jolyon's concerns; he should see Uncle Jolyon there, and say
+something to him about Bosinney--he had not made up his mind
+what, but something--in any case he should not answer this letter
+until he had seen Uncle Jolyon.  He got up and methodically put
+away the draft of his defence.  Going into a dark little
+cupboard, he turned up the light, washed his hands with a piece
+of brown Windsor soap, and dried them on a roller towel.  Then he
+brushed his hair, paying strict attention to the parting, turned
+down the light, took his hat, and saying he would be back at
+half-past two, stepped into the Poultry.
+
+It was not far to the Offices of the New Colliery Company in
+Ironmonger Lane, where, and not at the Cannon Street Hotel, in
+accordance with the more ambitious practice of other companies,
+the General Meeting was always held.  Old Jolyon had from the
+first set his face against the Press.  What business--he said--
+had the Public with his concerns!
+
+Soames arrived on the stroke of time, and took his seat alongside
+the Board, who, in a row, each Director behind his own ink-pot,
+faced their Shareholders.
+
+In the centre of this row old Jolyon, conspicuous in his black,
+tightly-buttoned frock-coat and his white moustaches, was leaning
+back with finger tips crossed on a copy of the Directors' report
+and accounts.
+
+On his right hand, always a little larger than life, sat the
+Secretary, 'Down-by-the-starn' Hemmings; an all-too-sad sadness
+beaming in his fine eyes; his iron-grey beard, in mourning like
+the rest of him, giving the feeling of an all-too-black tie
+behind it.
+
+The occasion indeed was a melancholy one, only six weeks having
+elapsed since that telegram had come from Scorrier, the mining
+expert, on a private mission to the Mines, informing them that
+Pippin, their Superintendent, had committed suicide in
+endeavouring, after his extraordinary two years' silence, to
+write a letter to his Board.  That letter was on the table now;
+it would be read to the Shareholders, who would of course be put
+into possession of all the facts.
+
+Hemmings had often said to Soames, standing with his coat-tails
+divided before the fireplace:
+
+"What our Shareholders don't know about our affairs isn't worth
+knowing.  You may take that from me, Mr. Soames."
+
+On one occasion, old Jolyon being present, Soames recollected a
+little unpleasantness.  His uncle had looked up sharply and said:
+"Don't talk nonsense, Hemmings!  You mean that what they do know
+isn't worth knowing!" Old Jolyon detested humbug.
+
+Hemmings, angry-eyed, and wearing a smile like that of a trained
+poodle, had replied in an outburst of artificial applause: "Come,
+now, that's good, sir--that's very good.  Your uncle will have
+his joke!"
+
+The next time he had seen Soames: he had taken the opportunity of
+saying to him: "The chairman's getting very old!--I can't get him
+to understand things; and he's so wilful--but what can you
+expect, with a chin like his?"
+
+Soames had nodded.
+
+Everyone knew that Uncle Jolyon's chin was a caution.  He was
+looking worried to-day, in spite of his General Meeting look; he
+(Soames) should certainly speak to him about Bosinney.
+
+Beyond old Jolyon on the left was little Mr. Booker, and he, too,
+wore his General Meeting look, as though searching for some
+particularly tender shareholder.  And next him was the deaf
+director, with a frown; and beyond the deaf director, again, was
+old Mr. Bleedham, very bland, and having an air of conscious
+virtue--as well he might, knowing that the brown-paper parcel he
+always brought to the Board-room was concealed behind his hat
+(one of that old-fashioned class, of flat-brimmed top-hats which
+go with very large bow ties, clean-shaven lips, fresh cheeks, and
+neat little, white whiskers).
+
+Soames always attended the General Meeting; it was considered
+better that he should do so, in case 'anything should arise!' He
+glanced round with his close, supercilious air at the walls of
+the room, where hung plans of the mine and harbour, together with
+a large photograph of a shaft leading to a working which had
+proved quite remarkably unprofitable.  This photograph--a witness
+to the eternal irony underlying commercial enterprise till
+retained its position on the--wall, an effigy of the directors'
+pet, but dead, lamb.
+
+And now old Jolyon rose, to present the report and accounts.
+
+Veiling under a Jove-like serenity that perpetual antagonism
+deep-seated in the bosom of a director towards his shareholders,
+he faced them calmly.  Soames faced them too.  He knew most of
+them by sight.  There was old Scrubsole, a tar man, who always
+came, as Hemmings would say, ' to make himself nasty,' a
+cantankerous-looking old fellow with a red face, a jowl, and an
+enormous low-crowned hat reposing on his knee.  And the Rev. Mr.
+Boms, who always proposed a vote of thanks to the chairman, in
+which he invariably expressed the hope that the Board would not
+forget to elevate their employees, using the word with a double
+e, as being more vigorous and Anglo-Saxon (he had the strong
+Imperialistic tendencies of his cloth).  It was his salutary
+custom to buttonhole a director afterwards, and ask him whether
+he thought the coming year would be good or bad; and, according
+to the trend of the answer, to buy or sell three shares within
+the ensuing fortnight.
+
+And there was that military man, Major O'Bally, who could not
+help speaking, if only to second the re-election of the auditor,
+and who sometimes caused serious consternation by taking toasts--
+proposals rather--out of the hands of persons who had been
+flattered with little slips of paper, entrusting the said
+proposals to their care.
+
+These made up the lot, together with four or five strong, silent
+shareholders, with whom Soames could sympathize--men of business,
+who liked to keep an eye on their affairs for themselves, without
+being fussy--good, solid men, who came to the City every day and
+went back in the evening to good, solid wives.
+
+Good, solid wives!  There was something in that thought which
+roused the nameless uneasiness in Soames again.
+
+What should he say to his uncle?  What answer should he make to
+this letter?
+
+.  .  .  .  "If any shareholder has any question to put, I shall
+be glad to answer it." A soft thump.  Old Jolyon had let the
+report and accounts fall, and stood twisting his tortoise-shell
+glasses between thumb and forefinger.
+
+The ghost of a smile appeared on Soames' face.  They had better
+hurry up with their questions!  He well knew his uncle's method
+(the ideal one) of at once saying: "I propose, then, that the
+report and accounts be adopted!"  Never let them get their wind--
+shareholders were notoriously wasteful of time!
+
+A tall, white-bearded man, with a gaunt, dissatisfied face,
+arose:
+
+"I believe I am in order, Mr. Chairman, in raising a question on
+this figure of  L5000 in the accounts.  'To the widow and
+family"' (he looked sourly round), "'of our late superintendent,'
+who so--er--ill-advisedly (I say--ill-advisedly) committed
+suicide, at a time when his services were of the utmost value to
+this Company.  You have stated that the agreement which he has so
+unfortunately cut short with his own hand was for a period of
+five years, of which one only had expired--I--"
+
+Old Jolyon made a gesture of impatience.
+
+"I believe I am in order, Mr. Chairman--I ask whether this amount
+paid, or proposed to be paid, by the Board to the er--deceased--
+is for services which might have been rendered to the Company--
+had he not committed suicide?"
+
+"It is in recognition of past services, which we all know--you as
+well as any of us--to have been of vital value."
+
+"Then, sir, all I have to say is, that the services being past,
+the amount is too much."
+
+The shareholder sat down.
+
+Old Jolyon waited a second and said: "I now propose that the
+report and--"
+
+The shareholder rose again: "May I ask if the Board realizes
+that it is not their money which--I don't hesitate to say that if
+it were their money...."
+
+A second shareholder, with a round, dogged face, whom Soames
+recognised as the late superintendent's brother-in-law, got up
+and said warmly: "In my opinion, sir, the sum is not enough!"
+
+The Rev. Mr. Boms now rose to his feet.  "If I may venture to
+express myself," he said, "I should say that the fact of the--er-
+-deceased having committed suicide should weigh very heavily--
+very heavily with our worthy chairman.  I have no doubt it has
+weighed with him, for--I say this for myself and I think for
+everyone present (hear, hear)--he enjoys our confidence in a high
+degree.  We all desire, I should hope, to be charitable.  But I
+feel sure" (he-looked severely at the late superintendent's
+brother-in-law) "that he will in some way, by some written
+expression, or better perhaps by reducing the amount, record our
+grave disapproval that so promising and valuable a life should
+have been thus impiously removed from a sphere where both its own
+interests and--if I may say so--our interests so imperatively
+demanded its continuance.  We should not--nay, we may not--
+countenance so grave a dereliction of all duty, both human and
+divine."
+
+The reverend gentleman resumed his seat.  The late super-
+intendent's brother-in-law again rose: "What I have said I
+stick to," he said; "the amount is not enough!"
+
+The first shareholder struck in: "I challenge the legality of the
+payment.  In my opinion this payment is not legal.  The Company's
+solicitor is present; I believe I am in order in asking him the
+question."
+
+All eyes were now turned upon Soames.  Something had arisen!
+
+He stood up, close-lipped and cold; his nerves inwardly
+fluttered, his attention tweaked away at last from contemplation
+of that cloud looming on the horizon of his mind.
+
+"The point," he said in a low, thin voice, "is by no means clear.
+As there is no possibility of future consideration being
+received, it is doubtful whether the payment is strictly legal.
+If it is desired, the opinion of the court could be taken."
+
+The superintendent's brother-in-law frowned, and said in a
+meaning tone: "We have no doubt the opinion of the court could be
+taken.  May I ask the name of the gentleman who has given us that
+striking piece of information?  Mr. Soames Forsyte?  Indeed!"  He
+looked from Soames to old Jolyon in a pointed manner.
+
+A flush coloured Soames' pale cheeks, but his superciliousness
+did not waver.  Old Jolyon fixed his eyes on the speaker.
+
+"If," he said, "the late superintendents brother-in-law has
+nothing more to say, I propose that the report and accounts...."
+
+At this moment, however, there rose one of those five silent,
+stolid shareholders, who had excited Soames' sympathy.  He said:
+
+"I deprecate the proposal altogether.  We are expected to give
+charity to this man's wife and children, who, you tell us, were
+dependent on him.  They may have been; I do not care whether they
+were or not.  I object to the whole thing on principle.  It is
+high time a stand was made against this sentimental human-
+itarianism.  The country is eaten up with it.  I object to
+my money being paid to these people of whom I know nothing, who
+have done nothing to earn it.  I object in toto; it is not
+business.  I now move that the report and accounts be put back,
+and amended by striking out the grant altogether."
+
+Old Jolyon had remained standing while the strong, silent man was
+speaking.  The speech awoke an echo in all hearts, voicing, as it
+did, the worship of strong men, the movement against generosity,
+which had at that time already commenced among the saner members
+of the community.
+
+The words 'it is not business' had moved even the Board;
+privately everyone felt that indeed it was not.  But they knew
+also the chairman's domineering temper and tenacity.  He, too, at
+heart must feel that it was not business; but he was committed to
+his own proposition.  Would he go back upon it?  It was thought
+to be unlikely.
+
+All waited with interest.  Old Jolyon held up his hand;
+dark-rimmed glasses depending between his finger and thumb
+quivered slightly with a suggestion of menace.
+
+He addressed the strong, silent shareholder.
+
+"Knowing, as you do, the efforts of our late superintendent upon
+the occasion of the explosion at the mines, do you seriously wish
+me to put that amendment, sir?"
+
+"I do."
+
+Old Jolyon put the amendment.
+
+"Does anyone second this?" he asked, looking calmly round.
+
+And it was then that Soames, looking at his uncle, felt the power
+of will that was in that old man.  No one stirred.  Looking
+straight into the eyes of the strong, silent shareholder, old
+Jolyon said:
+
+"I now move, 'That the report and accounts for the year 1886 be
+received and adopted.' You second that?  Those in favour signify
+the same in the usual way.  Contrary--no.  Carried.  The next
+business, gentlemen...."
+
+Soames smiled.  Certainly Uncle Jolyon had a way with him!
+
+But now his attention relapsed upon Bosinney.
+
+Odd how that fellow haunted his thoughts, even in business hours.
+
+Irene's visit to the house--but there was nothing in that, except
+that she might have told him; but then, again, she never did tell
+him anything.  She was more silent, more touchy, every day.  He
+wished to God the house were finished, and they were in it, away
+from London.  Town did not suit her; her nerves were not strong
+enough.  That nonsense of the separate room had cropped up again!
+
+The meeting was breaking up now.  Underneath the photograph of
+the lost shaft Hemmings was buttonholed by the Rev. Mr. Boms.
+Little Mr. Booker, his bristling eyebrows wreathed in angry
+smiles, was having a parting turn-up with old Scrubsole.  The two
+hated each other like poison.  There was some matter of a
+tar-contract between them, little Mr. Booker having secured it
+from the Board for a nephew of his, over old Scrubsole's head.
+Soames had heard that from Hemmings, who liked a gossip, more
+especially about his directors, except, indeed, old Jolyon, of
+whom he was afraid.
+
+Soames awaited his opportunity.  The last shareholder was
+vanishing through the door, when he approached his uncle, who was
+putting on his hat.
+
+"Can I speak to you for a minute, Uncle Jolyon?"
+
+It is uncertain what Soames expected to get out of this
+interview.
+
+Apart from that somewhat mysterious awe in which Forsytes: in
+general held old Jolyon, due to his philosophic twist, or
+perhaps--as Hemmings would doubtless have said--to his chin,
+there was, and always had been, a subtle antagonism between the
+younger man and the old.  It had lurked under their dry manner of
+greeting, under their non-committal allusions to each other, and
+arose perhaps from old Jolyon's perception of the quiet tenacity
+('obstinacy,' he rather naturally called it) of the young man, of
+a secret doubt whether he could get his own way with him.
+
+Both these Forsytes, wide asunder as the poles in many respects,
+possessed in their different ways--to a greater degree than the
+rest of the family--that essential quality of tenacious and
+prudent insight into 'affairs,' which is the highwater mark of
+their great class.  Either of them, with a little luck and
+opportunity, was equal to a lofty career; either of them would
+have made a good financier, a great contractor, a statesman,
+though old Jolyon, in certain of his moods when under the
+influence of a cigar or of Nature--would have been capable of,
+not perhaps despising, but certainly of questioning, his own high
+position, while Soames, who never smoked cigars, would not.
+
+Then, too, in old Jolyon's mind there was always the secret ache,
+that the son of James--of James, whom he had always thought such
+a poor thing, should be pursuing the paths of success, while his
+own son...!
+
+And last, not least--for he was no more outside the radiation of
+family gossip than any other Forsyte he had now heard the
+sinister, indefinite, but none the less disturbing rumour about
+Bosinney, and his pride was wounded to the quick.
+
+Characteristically, his irritation turned not against Irene but
+against Soames.  The idea that his nephew's wife (why couldn't
+the fellow take better care of her--Oh!  quaint injustice!  as
+though Soames could possibly take more care!)--should be drawing
+to herself June's lover, was intolerably humiliating.  And seeing
+the danger, he did not, like James, hide it away in sheer
+nervousness, but owned with the dispassion of his broader
+outlook, that it was not unlikely; there was something very
+attractive about Irene!
+
+He had a presentiment on the subject, of Soames' communication as
+they left the Board Room together, and went out into the noise
+and hurry of Cheapside.  They walked together a good minute
+without speaking, Soames with his mousing, mincing step, and old
+Jolyon upright and using his umbrella languidly as a
+walking-stick.
+
+They turned presently into comparative quiet, for old Jolyon's
+way to a second Board led him in the direction of Moorage Street.
+
+Then Soames, without lifting his eyes, began: "I've had this
+letter from Bosinney.  You see what he says; I thought I'd let
+you know.  I've spent a lot more than I intended on this house,
+and I want the position to be clear."
+
+Old Jolyon ran his eyes unwillingly over the letter: "What he
+says is clear enough," he said.
+
+"He talks about 'a free hand,"' replied Soames.
+
+Old Jolyon looked at him.  The long-suppressed irritation and
+antagonism towards this young fellow, whose affairs were
+beginning to intrude upon his own, burst from him.
+
+"Well, if you don't trust him, why do you employ him?"
+
+Soames stole a sideway look: "It's much too late to go into
+that," he said, "I only want it to be quite understood that if I
+give him a free hand, he doesn't let me in.  I thought if you
+were to speak to him, it would carry more weight!"
+
+"No," said old Jolyon abruptly; "I'll have nothing to do with
+it!"
+
+The words of both uncle and nephew gave the impression of
+unspoken meanings, far more important, behind.  And the look they
+interchanged was like a revelation of this consciousness.
+
+"Well," said Soames; "I thought, for June's sake, I'd tell you,
+that's all; I thought You'd better know I shan't stand any
+nonsense!"
+
+"What is that to me?" old Jolyon took him up.
+
+"Oh! I don't know," said Soames, and flurried by that sharp look
+he was unable to say more.  "Don't say I didn't tell you," he
+added sulkily, recovering his composure.
+
+"Tell me!" said old Jolyon; "I don't know what you mean.  You
+come worrying me about a thing like this.  I don't want to hear
+about your affairs; you must manage them yourself!"
+
+"Very well," said Soames immovably, "I will!"
+
+"Good-morning, then," said old Jolyon, and they parted.
+
+Soames retraced his steps, and going into a celebrated eating-
+house, asked for a plate of smoked salmon and a glass of
+Chablis; he seldom ate much in the middle of the day, and
+generally ate standing, finding the position beneficial to his
+liver, which was very sound, but to which he desired to put down
+all his troubles.
+
+When he had finished he went slowly back to his office, with bent
+head, taking no notice of the swarming thousands on the
+pavements, who in their turn took no notice of him.
+
+The evening post carried the following reply to Bosinney:
+
+
+'FORSYTE, BUSTARD AND FORSYTE,
+'Commissioners for Oaths,
+'92001, BRANCH LANE, POULTRY, E.C.,
+
+'May 17, 1887.
+
+'DEAR BOSINNEY,
+
+'I have, received your letter, the terms of which not a little
+surprise me.  I was under the impression that you had, and have
+had all along, a "free hand"; for I do not recollect that any
+suggestions I have been so unfortunate as to make, have met with
+your approval.  In giving you, in accordance with your request,
+this "free hand," I wish you to clearly understand that the total
+cost of the house as handed over to me completely decorated,
+inclusive of your fee (as arranged between us), must not exceed
+twelve thousand pounds--L12,000.  This gives you an ample margin,
+and, as you know, is far more than I originally contemplated.
+
+'I am,
+'Yours truly,
+
+ 'SOAMES FORSYTE.'
+
+
+On the following day he received a note from Bosinney:
+
+
+'PHILIP BAYNES BOSINNEY,
+'Architect,
+'309D, SLOANE STREET, S.W.,
+'May 18.
+
+'DEAR FORSYTE,
+
+'If you think that in such a delicate matter as decoration I can
+bind myself to the exact pound, I am afraid you are mistaken.  I
+can see that you are tired of the arrangement, and of me, and I
+had better, therefore, resign.
+
+'Yours faithfully,
+
+'PHILIP BAYNES BOSINNEY.'
+
+
+Soames pondered long and painfully over his answer, and late at
+night in the dining-room, when Irene had gone to bed, he composed
+the following:
+
+
+'62, MONTPELLIER SQUARE, S.W.,
+'May 19, 1887.
+
+'DEAR BOSINNEY,
+
+'I think that in both our interests it would be extremely
+undesirable that matters should be so left at this stage.  I did
+not mean to say that if you should exceed the sum named in my
+letter to you by ten or twenty or even fifty pounds, there would
+be any difficulty between us.  This being so, I should like you
+to reconsider your answer.  You have a "free hand" in the terms
+of this correspondence, and I hope you will see your way to
+completing the decorations, in the matter of which I know it is
+difficult to be absolutely exact.
+
+'Yours truly,
+
+'SOAMES FORSYTE.'
+
+
+Bosinney's answer, which came in the course of the next day, was:
+
+
+'May 20.
+
+'DEAR FORSYTE,
+
+'Very well.
+
+'PH.  BOSINNEY.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+OLD JOLYON AT THE ZOO
+
+
+Old Jolyon disposed of his second Meeting--an ordinary Board--
+summarily.  He was so dictatorial that his fellow directors were
+left in cabal over the increasing domineeringness of old Forsyte,
+which they were far from intending to stand much longer, they
+said.
+
+He went out by Undergound to Portland Road Station, whence he
+took a cab and drove to the Zoo.
+
+He had an assignation there, one of those assignations that had
+lately been growing more frequent, to which his increasing
+uneasiness about June and the 'change in her,' as he expressed
+it, was driving him.
+
+She buried herself away, and was growing thin; if he spoke to her
+he got no answer, or had his head snapped off, or she looked as
+if she would burst into tears.  She was as changed as she could
+be, all through this Bosinney.  As for telling him about
+anything, not a bit of it!
+
+And he would sit for long spells brooding, his paper unread
+before him, a cigar extinct between his lips.  She had been such
+a companion to him ever since she was three years old!  And he
+loved her so!
+
+Forces regardless of family or class or custom were beating down
+his guard; impending events over which he had no control threw
+their shadows on his head.  The irritation of one accustomed to
+have his way was, roused against he knew not what.
+
+Chafing at the slowness of his cab, he reached the Zoo door; but,
+with his sunny instinct for seizing the good of each moment, he
+forgot his vexation as he walked towards the tryst.
+
+>From the stone terrace above the bear-pit his son and his two
+grandchildren came hastening down when they saw old Jolyon
+coming, and led him away towards the lion-house.  They supported
+him on either side, holding one to each of his hands,--whilst
+Jolly, perverse like his father, carried his grandfather's
+umbrella in such a way as to catch people's legs with the crutch
+of the handle.
+
+Young Jolyon followed.
+
+It was as good as a play to see his father with the children, but
+such a play as brings smiles with tears behind.  An old man and
+two small children walking together can be seen at any hour of
+the day; but the sight of old Jolyon, with Jolly and Holly seemed
+to young Jolyon a special peep-show of the things that lie at the
+bottom of our hearts.  The complete surrender of that erect old
+figure to those little figures on either hand was too poignantly
+tender, and, being a man of an habitual reflex action, young
+Jolyon swore softly under his breath.  The show affected him in a
+way unbecoming to a Forsyte, who is nothing if not undemonstrative.
+
+Thus they reached the lion-house.
+
+There had been a morning fete at the Botanical Gardens, and a
+large number of Forsy...'--that is, of well-dressed people who
+kept carriages had brought them on to the Zoo, so as to have
+more, if possible, for their money, before going back to Rutland
+Gate or Bryanston Square.
+
+"Let's go on to the Zoo," they had said to each other; "it'll be
+great fun!"  It was a shilling day; and there would not be all
+those horrid common people.
+
+In front of the long line of cages they were collected in rows,
+watching the tawny, ravenous beasts behind the bars await their
+only pleasure of the four-and-twenty hours.  The hungrier the
+beast, the greater the fascination.  But whether because the
+spectators envied his appetite, or, more humanely, because it
+was so soon to be satisfied, young Jolyon could not tell.
+Remarks kept falling on his ears: "That's a nasty-looking brute,
+that tiger!"  "Oh, what a love!  Look at his little mouth!"
+"Yes, he's rather nice!  Don't go too near, mother."
+
+And frequently, with little pats, one or another would clap their
+hands to their pockets behind and look round, as though expecting
+young Jolyon or some disinterested-looking person to relieve them
+of the contents.
+
+A well-fed man in a white waistcoat said slowly through his
+teeth: "It's all greed; they can't be hungry.  Why, they take no
+exercise."  At these words a tiger snatched a piece of bleeding
+liver, and the fat man laughed.  His wife, in a Paris model frock
+and gold nose-nippers, reproved him: "How can you laugh, Harry?
+Such a horrid sight!"
+
+Young Jolyon frowned.
+
+The circumstances of his life, though he had ceased to take a too
+personal view of them, had left him subject to an intermittent
+contempt; and the class to which he had belonged--the carriage
+class--especially excited his sarcasm.
+
+To shut up a lion or tiger in confinement was surely a horrible
+barbarity.  But no cultivated person would admit this.
+
+The idea of its being barbarous to confine wild animals had
+probably never even occurred to his father for instance; he
+belonged to the old school, who considered it at once humanizing
+and educational to confine baboons and panthers, holding the
+view, no doubt, that in course of time they might induce these
+creatures not so unreasonably to die of misery and heart-
+sickness.  against the bars of their cages, and put the society
+to the expense of getting others!  In his eyes, as in the eyes
+of all Forsytes, the pleasure of seeing these beautiful
+creatures in a state of captivity far outweighed the
+inconvenience of imprisonment to beasts whom God had so
+improvidently placed in a state of freedom!  It was for the
+animals good, removing them at once from the countless dangers
+of open air and exercise, and enabling them to exercise their
+functions in the guaranteed seclusion of a private compartment!
+Indeed, it was doubtful what wild animals were made for but to be
+shut up in cages!
+
+But as young Jolyon had in his constitution the elements of
+impartiality, he reflected that to stigmatize as barbarity that
+which was merely lack of imagination must be wrong; for none who
+held these views had been placed in a similar position to the
+animals they caged, and could not, therefore, be expected to
+enter into their sensations.   It was not until they were leaving
+the gardens--Jolly and Holly in a state of blissful delirium--
+that old Jolyon found an opportunity of speaking to his son on
+the matter next his heart.  "I don't know what to make of it," he
+said; "if she's to go on as she's going on now, I can't tell
+what's  to come.  I wanted her to see the doctor, but she  won't.
+She's not a bit like me.  She's your mother  all over.  Obstinate
+as a mule!  If she doesn't want  to do a thing, she won't, and
+there's an end of it!"
+
+Young Jolyon smiled; his eyes had wandered  to his father's chin.
+'A pair of you,' he thought,  but he said nothing.
+
+"And then," went on old Jolyon, "there's this  Bosinney.  I
+should like to punch the fellow's head, but I can't, I suppose,
+though--I don't see  why you shouldn't," he added doubtfully.
+
+"What has he done?  Far better that it should come to an end, if
+they don't hit it off!"
+
+Old Jolyon looked at his son.  Now they had actually come to
+discuss a subject connected with the relations between the sexes
+he felt distrustful.  Jo would be sure to hold some loose view or
+other.
+
+"Well, I don't know what you think," he said; "I dare say your
+sympathy's with him--shouldn't be surprised; but I think he's
+behaving precious badly, and if he comes my way I shall tell him
+so."  He dropped the subject.
+
+It was impossible to discuss with his son the true nature and
+meaning of Bosinney's defection.  Had not his son done the very
+same thing (worse, if possible) fifteen years ago?  There seemed
+no end to the consequences of that piece of folly.
+
+Young Jolyon also was silent; he had quickly penetrated his
+father's thought, for, dethroned from the high seat of an obvious
+and uncomplicated view of things, he had become both perceptive
+and subtle.
+
+The attitude he had adopted towards sexual matters fifteen years
+before, however, was too different from his father's.  There was
+no bridging the gulf.
+
+He said coolly: "I suppose he's fallen in love with some other
+woman?"
+
+Old Jolyon gave him a dubious look: "I can't tell," he said;
+"they say so!"
+
+"Then, it's probably true," remarked young Jolyon unexpectedly;
+"and I suppose they've told you who she is?"
+
+"Yes," said old Jolyon, "Soames's wife!"
+
+Young Jolyon did not whistle: The circumstances of his own life
+had rendered him incapable of whistling on such a subject, but he
+looked at his father, while the ghost of a smile hovered over his
+face.
+
+If old Jolyon saw, he took no notice.
+
+"She and June were bosom friends!" he muttered.
+
+"Poor little June!" said young Jolyon softly.  He thought of his
+daughter still as a babe of three.
+
+Old Jolyon came to a sudden halt.
+
+"I don't believe a word of it," he said, "it's some old woman's
+tale.  Get me a cab, Jo, I'm tired to death!"
+
+They stood at a corner to see if an empty cab would come along,
+while carriage after carriage drove past, bearing Forsytes of all
+descriptions from the Zoo.  The harness, the liveries, the gloss
+on the horses' coats, shone and glittered in the May sunlight,
+and each equipage, landau, sociable, barouche, Victoria, or
+brougham, seemed to roll out proudly from its wheels:
+
+
+'I and my horses and my men you know,'
+Indeed the whole turn-out have cost a pot.
+But we were worth it every penny.  Look
+At Master and at Missis now, the dawgs!
+Ease with security--ah!  that's the ticket!
+
+
+And such, as everyone knows, is fit accompaniment for a
+perambulating Forsyte.
+
+Amongst these carriages was a barouche coming at a greater pace
+than the others, drawn by a pair of bright bay horses.  It swung
+on its high springs, and the four people who filled it seemed
+rocked as in a cradle.
+
+This chariot attracted young Jolyon's attention; and suddenly, on
+the back seat, he recognised his Uncle James, unmistakable in
+spite of the increased whiteness of his whiskers; opposite, their
+backs defended by sunshades, Rachel Forsyte and her elder but
+married sister, Winifred Dartie, in irreproachable toilettes, had
+posed their heads haughtily, like two of the birds they had been
+seeing at the Zoo; while by James' side reclined Dartie, in a
+brand-new frock-coat buttoned tight and square, with a large
+expanse of carefully shot linen protruding below each wristband.
+
+An extra, if subdued, sparkle, an added touch of the best gloss
+or varnish characterized this vehicle, and seemed to distinguish
+it from all the others, as though by some happy extravagance--
+like that which marks out the real 'work of art' from the
+ordinary 'picture'--it were designated as the typical car, the
+very throne of Forsytedom.
+
+Old Jolyon did not see them pass; he was petting poor Holly who
+was tired, but those in the carriage had taken in the little
+group; the ladies' heads tilted suddenly, there was a spasmodic
+screening movement of parasols; James' face protruded naively,
+like the head of a long bird, his mouth slowly opening.  The
+shield-like rounds of the parasols grew smaller and smaller, and
+vanished.
+
+Young Jolyon saw that he had been recognised, even by Winifred,
+who could not have been more than fifteen when he had forfeited
+the right to be considered a Forsyte.
+
+There was not much change in them!  He remembered the exact look
+of their turn-out all that time ago: Horses, men, carriage--all
+different now, no doubt--but of the precise stamp of fifteen
+years before; the same neat display, the same nicely calculated
+arrogance ease with security!  The swing exact, the pose of the
+sunshades exact, exact the spirit of the whole thing.
+
+And in the sunlight, defended by the haughty shields of parasols,
+carriage after carriage went by.
+
+"Uncle James has just passed, with his female folk," said young
+Jolyon.
+
+His father looked black.  "Did your uncle see us?  Yes?  Hmph!
+What's he want, coming down into these parts?"
+
+An empty cab drove up at this moment, and old Jolyon stopped it.
+
+"I shall see you again before long, my boy!" he said.  "Don't you
+go paying any attention to what I've been saying about young
+Bosinney--I don't believe a word of it!"
+
+Kissing the children, who tried to detain him, he stepped in and
+was borne away.
+
+Young Jolyon, who had taken Holly up in his arms, stood
+motionless at the corner, looking after the cab.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+AFTERNOON AT TIMOTHY'S
+
+
+If old Jolyon, as he got into his cab, had said: 'I won't believe
+a word of it!' he would more truthfully have expressed his
+sentiments.
+
+The notion that James and his womankind had seen him in the
+company of his son had awakened in him not only the impatience he
+always felt when crossed, but that secret hostility natural
+between brothers, the roots of which--little nursery rivalries--
+sometimes toughen and deepen as life goes on, and, all hidden,
+support a plant capable of producing in season the bitterest
+fruits.
+
+Hitherto there had been between these six brothers no more
+unfriendly feeling than that caused by the secret and natural
+doubt that the others might be richer than themselves; a feeling
+increased to the pitch of curiosity by the approach of death--
+that end of all handicaps--and the great 'closeness' of their man
+of business, who, with some sagacity, would profess to Nicholas
+ignorance of James' income, to James ignorance of old Jolyon's,
+to Jolyon ignorance of Roger's, to Roger ignorance of Swithin's,
+while to Swithin he would say most irritatingly that Nicholas
+must be a rich man.  Timothy alone was exempt, being in
+gilt-edged securities.
+
+But now, between two of them at least, had arisen a very
+different sense of injury.  From the moment when James had the
+impertinence to pry into his affairs--as he put it--old Jolyon no
+longer chose to credit this story about Bosinney.  His grand-
+daughter slighted through a member of 'that fellow's' family!
+He made up his mind that Bosinney was maligned.  There must be
+some other reason for his defection.
+
+June had flown out at him, or something; she was as touchy as she
+could be!
+
+He would, however, let Timothy have a bit of his mind, and see if
+he would go on dropping hints!  And he would not let the grass
+grow under his feet either, he would go there at once, and take
+very good care that he didn't have to go again on the same
+errand.
+
+He saw James' carriage blocking the pavement in front of 'The
+Bower.' So they had got there before him--cackling about having
+seen him, he dared say!  And further on, Swithin's greys were
+turning their noses towards the noses of James' bays, as though
+in conclave over the family, while their coachmen were in
+conclave above.
+
+Old Jolyon, depositing his hat on the chair in the narrow hall,
+where that hat of Bosinney's had so long ago been mistaken for a
+cat, passed his thin hand grimly over his face with its great
+drooping white moustaches, as though to remove all traces of
+expression, and made his way upstairs.
+
+He found the front drawing-room full.  It was full enough at the
+best of times--without visitors--without any one in it--for
+Timothy and his sisters, following the tradition of their
+generation, considered that a room was not quite 'nice' unless it
+was 'properly' furnished.  It held, therefore, eleven chairs, a
+sofa, three tables, two cabinets, innumerable knicknacks, and
+part of a large grand piano.  And now, occupied by Mrs. Small,
+Aunt Hester, by Swithin, James, Rachel, Winifred, Euphemia, who
+had come in again to return 'Passion and Paregoric' which she had
+read at lunch, and her chum Frances, Roger's daughter (the
+musical Forsyte, the one who composed songs), there was only one
+chair left unoccupied, except, of course, the two that nobody
+ever sat on--and the only standing room was occupied by the cat,
+on whom old Jolyon promptly stepped.
+
+In these days it was by no means unusual for Timothy to have so
+many visitors.  The family had always, one and all, had a real
+respect for Aunt Ann, and now that she was gone, they were coming
+far more frequently to The Bower, and staying longer.
+
+Swithin had been the first to arrive, and seated torpid in a red
+satin chair with a gilt back, he gave every appearance of lasting
+the others out.  And symbolizing Bosinney's name 'the big one,'
+with his great stature and bulk, his thick white hair, his puffy
+immovable shaven face, he looked more primeval than ever in the
+highly upholstered room.
+
+His conversation, as usual of late, had turned at once upon
+Irene, and he had lost no time in giving Aunts Juley and Hester
+his opinion with regard to this rumour he heard was going about.
+No--as he said--she might want a bit of flirtation--a pretty
+woman must have her fling; but more than that he did not believe.
+Nothing open; she had too much good sense, too much proper
+appreciation of what was due to her position, and to the family!
+No sc...,  he was going to say 'scandal' but the very idea was so
+preposterous that he waved his hand as though to say--'but let
+that pass!'
+
+Granted that Swithin took a bachelor's view of the situation--
+still what indeed was not due to that family in which so many had
+done so well for themselves, had attained a certain position?  If
+he had heard in dark, pessimistic moments the words 'yeomen' and
+'very small beer' used in connection with his origin, did he
+believe them?
+
+No!  he cherished, hugging it pathetically to his bosom, the
+secret theory that there was something distinguished somewhere in
+his ancestry.
+
+"Must be," he once said to young Jolyon, before the latter went
+to the bad.  "Look at us, we've got on!  There must be good blood
+in us somewhere."
+
+He had been fond of young Jolyon: the boy had been in a good set
+at College, had, known that old ruffian Sir Charles Fiste's
+sons--a pretty rascal one of them had turned out, too; and there
+was style about him--it was a thousand pities he had run off with
+that half-foreign governess!  If he must go off like that why
+couldn't he have chosen someone who would have done them credit!
+And what was he now?--an underwriter at Lloyd's; they said he
+even painted pictures--pictures!  Damme! he might have ended as
+Sir Jolyon Forsyte, Bart., with a seat in Parliament, and a place
+in the country!
+
+It was Swithin who, following the impulse which sooner or later
+urges thereto some member of every great family, went to the
+Heralds' Office, where they assured him that he was undoubtedly
+of the same family as the well-known Forsites with an 'i,' whose
+arms were 'three dexter buckles on a sable ground gules,' hoping
+no doubt to get him to take them up.
+
+Swithin, however, did not do this, but having ascertained that
+the crest was a 'pheasant proper,' and the motto 'For Forsite,'
+he had the pheasant proper placed upon his carriage and the
+buttons of his coachman, and both crest and motto on his
+writing-paper.  The arms he hugged to himself, partly because,
+not having paid for them, he thought it would look ostentatious
+to put them on his carriage, and he hated ostentation, and partly
+because he, like any practical man all over the country, had a
+secret dislike and contempt for things he could not understand he
+found it hard, as anyone might, to swallow 'three dexter buckles
+on a sable ground gules.'
+
+He never forgot, however, their having told him that if he paid
+for them he would be entitled to use them, and it strengthened
+his conviction that he was a gentleman.  Imperceptibly the rest
+of the family absorbed the 'pheasant proper,' and some, more
+serious than others, adopted the motto; old Jolyon, however,
+refused to use the latter, saying that it was humbug meaning
+nothing, so far as he could see.
+
+Among the older generation it was perhaps known at bottom from
+what great historical event they derived their crest; and if
+pressed on the subject, sooner than tell a lie--they did not like
+telling lies, having an impression that only Frenchmen and
+Russians told them--they would confess hurriedly that Swithin had
+got hold of it somehow.
+
+Among the younger generation the matter was wrapped in a
+discretion proper.  They did not want to hurt the feelings of
+their elders, nor to feel ridiculous themselves; they simply used
+the crest....
+
+"No," said Swithin, "he had had an opportunity of seeing for
+himself, and what he should say was, that there was nothing in
+her manner to that young Buccaneer or Bosinney or whatever his
+name was, different from her manner to himself; in fact, he
+should rather say...." But here the entrance of Frances
+and Euphemia put an unfortunate stop to the conversation, for
+this was not a subject which could be discussed before young
+people.
+
+And though Swithin was somewhat upset at being stopped like this
+on the point of saying something important, he soon recovered his
+affability.  He was rather fond of Frances--Francie, as she was
+called in the family.  She was so smart, and they told him she
+made a pretty little pot of pin-money by her songs; he called it
+very clever of her.
+
+He rather prided himself indeed on a liberal attitude towards
+women, not seeing any reason why they shouldn't paint pictures,
+or write tunes, or books even, for the matter of that, especially
+if they could turn a useful penny by it; not at all--kept them
+out of mischief.  It was not as if they were men!
+
+'Little Francie,' as she was usually called with good-natured
+contempt, was an important personage, if only as a standing
+illustration of the attitude of Forsytes towards the Arts.  She
+was not really 'little,' but rather tall, with dark hair for a
+Forsyte, which, together with a grey eye, gave her what was
+called 'a Celtic appearance.' She wrote songs with titles like
+'Breathing Sighs,' or 'Kiss me, Mother, ere I die,' with a
+refrain like an anthem:
+
+
+'Kiss me, Mother, ere I die;
+Kiss me-kiss me, Mother, ah!
+Kiss, ah!  kiss me e-ere I-
+Kiss me, Mother, ere I d-d-die!'
+
+
+She wrote the words to them herself, and other poems.  In lighter
+moments she wrote waltzes, one of which, the 'Kensington Coil,'
+was almost national to Kensington, having a sweet dip in it.
+
+It was very original.  Then there were her 'Songs for Little
+People,' at once educational and witty, especially 'Gran'ma's
+Porgie,' and that ditty, almost prophetically imbued with the
+coming Imperial spirit, entitled 'Black him in his little eye.'
+
+Any publisher would take these, and reviews like 'High Living,'
+and the 'Ladies' Genteel Guide' went into raptures over: 'Another
+of Miss Francie Forsyte's spirited ditties, sparkling and
+pathetic.  We ourselves were moved to tears and laughter.  Miss
+Forsyte should go far.'
+
+With the true instinct of her breed, Francie had made a point of
+knowing the right people--people who would write about her, and
+talk about her, and people in Society, too--keeping a mental
+register of just where to exert her fascinations, and an eye on
+that steady scale of rising prices, which in her mind's eye
+represented the future.  In this way she caused herself to be
+universally respected.
+
+Once, at a time when her emotions were whipped by an attachment--
+for the tenor of Roger's life, with its whole-hearted collection
+of house property, had induced in his only daughter a tendency
+towards passion--she turned to great and sincere work, choosing
+the sonata form, for the violin.  This was the only one of her
+productions that troubled the Forsytes.  They felt at once that
+it would not sell.
+
+Roger, who liked having a clever daughter well enough, and often
+alluded to the amount of pocket-money she made for herself, was
+upset by this violin sonata.
+
+"Rubbish like that!" he called it.  Francie had borrowed young
+Flageoletti from Euphemia, to play it in the drawing-room at
+Prince's Gardens.
+
+As a matter of fact Roger was right.  It was rubbish, but--
+annoying! the sort of rubbish that wouldn't sell.  As every
+Forsyte knows, rubbish that sells is not rubbish at all--far from
+it.
+
+And yet, in spite of the sound common sense which fixed the worth
+of art at what it would fetch, some of the Forsytes--Aunt
+Hester, for instance, who had always been musical--could not help
+regretting that Francie's music was not 'classical'; the same
+with her poems.  But then, as Aunt Hester said, they didn't see
+any poetry nowadays, all the poems were 'little light things.'
+
+There was nobody who could write a poem like 'Paradise Lost,' or
+'Childe Harold'; either of which made you feel that you really
+had read something.  Still, it was nice for Francie to have
+something to occupy her; while other girls were spending money
+shopping she was making it!
+
+And both Aunt Hester and Aunt Juley were always ready to listen
+to the latest story of how Francie had got her price increased.
+
+They listened now, together with Swithin, who sat pretending not
+to, for these young people talked so fast and mumbled so, he
+never could catch what they said.
+
+"And I can't think," said Mrs. Septimus, "how you do it.  I
+should never have the audacity!"
+
+Francie smiled lightly.  "I'd much rather deal with a man than a
+woman.  Women are so sharp!"
+
+"My dear," cried Mrs. Small, "I'm sure we're not."
+
+Euphemia went off into her silent laugh, and, ending with the
+squeak, said, as though being strangled: "Oh, you'll kill me some
+day, auntie."
+
+Swithin saw no necessity to laugh; he detested people laughing
+when he himself perceived no joke.  Indeed, he detested Euphemia
+altogether, to whom he always alluded as 'Nick's daughter, what's
+she called--the pale one?'  He had just missed being her god-
+father--indeed, would have been, had he not taken a firm stand
+against her outlandish name.  He hated becoming a godfather.
+Swithin then said to Francie with dignity: "It's a fine day--
+er--for the time of year." But Euphemia, who knew perfectly well
+that he had refused to be her godfather, turned to Aunt Hester,
+and began telling her how she had seen Irene--Mrs. Soames--at the
+Church and Commercial Stores.
+
+"And Soames was with her?" said Aunt Hester, to whom Mrs. Small
+had as yet had no opportunity of relating the incident.
+
+"Soames with her?  Of course not!"
+
+"But was she all alone in London?"
+
+"Oh, no; there was Mr. Bosinney with her.  She was perfectly
+dressed."
+
+But Swithin, hearing the name Irene, looked severely at Euphemia,
+who, it is true, never did look well in a dress, whatever she may
+have done on other occasions, and said:
+
+"Dressed like a lady, I've no doubt.  It's a pleasure to see
+her."
+
+At this moment James and his daughters were announced.  Dartie,
+feeling badly in want of a drink, had pleaded an appointment with
+his dentist, and, being put down at the Marble Arch, had got into
+a hansom, and was already seated in the window of his club in
+Piccadilly.
+
+His wife, he told his cronies, had wanted to take him to pay some
+calls.  It was not in his line--not exactly.  Haw!
+
+Hailing the waiter, he sent him out to the hall to see what had
+won the 4.30 race.  He was dog-tired, he said, and that was a
+fact; had been drivin' about with his wife to 'shows' all the
+
+afternoon.  Had put his foot down at last.  A fellow must live
+his own life.
+
+At this moment, glancing out of the bay window--for he loved this
+seat whence he could see everybody pass--his eye unfortunately,
+or perhaps fortunately, chanced to light on the figure of Soames,
+who was mousing across the road from the Green Park-side, with
+the evident intention of coming in, for he, too, belonged to 'The
+Iseeum.'
+
+Dartie sprang to his feet; grasping his glass, he muttered
+something about 'that 4.30 race,' and swiftly withdrew to the
+card-room, where Soames never came.  Here, in complete isolation
+and a dim light, he lived his own life till half past seven, by
+which hour he knew Soames must certainly have left the club.
+
+It would not do, as he kept repeating to himself whenever he felt
+the impulse to join the gossips in the bay-window getting too
+strong for him--it absolutely would not do, with finances as low
+as his, and the 'old man' (James) rusty ever since that business
+over the oil shares, which was no fault of his, to risk a row
+with Winifred.
+
+If Soames were to see him in the club it would be sure to come
+round to her that he wasn't at the dentist's at all.  He never
+knew a family where things 'came round' so.  Uneasily, amongst
+the green baize card-tables, a frown on his olive coloured face,
+his check trousers crossed, and patent-leather boots shining
+through the gloom, he sat biting his forefinger, and wondering
+where the deuce he was to get the money if Erotic failed to win
+the Lancashire Cup.
+
+His thoughts turned gloomily to the Forsytes.  What a set they
+were!  There was no getting anything out of them--at least, it
+was a matter of extreme difficulty.  They were so d---d
+particular about money matters; not a sportsman amongst the lot,
+unless it were George.  That fellow Soames, for instance, would
+have a ft if you tried to borrow a tenner from him, or, if he
+didn't have a fit, he looked at you with his cursed supercilious
+smile, as if you were a lost soul because you were in want of
+money.
+
+And that wife of his (Dartie's mouth watered involuntarily), he
+had tried to be on good terms with her, as one naturally would
+with any pretty sister-in-law, but he would be cursed if the (he
+mentally used a coarse word)--would have anything to say to him--
+she looked at him, indeed, as if he were dirt--and yet she could
+go far enough, he wouldn't mind betting.  He knew women; they
+weren't made with soft eyes and figures like that for nothing, as
+that fellow Soames would jolly soon find out, if there were
+anything in what he had heard about this Buccaneer Johnny.
+
+Rising from his chair, Dartie took a turn across the room, ending
+in front of the looking-glass over the marble chimney-piece; and
+there he stood for a long time contemplating in the glass the
+reflection of his face.  It had that look, peculiar to some men,
+of having been steeped in linseed oil, with its waxed dark
+moustaches and the little distinguished commencements of side
+whiskers; and concernedly he felt the promise of a pimple on the
+side of his slightly curved and fattish nose.
+
+In the meantime old Jolyon had found the remaining chair in
+Timothy's commodious drawing-room.  His advent had obviously put
+a stop to the conversation, decided awkwardness having set in.
+Aunt Juley, with her well-known kindheartedness, hastened to set
+people at their ease again.
+
+"Yes, Jolyon," she said, "we were just saying that you haven't
+been here for a long time; but we mustn't be surprised.  You're
+busy, of course?  James was just saying what a busy time of
+year...."
+
+"Was he?" said old Jolyon, looking hard at James.  "It wouldn't
+be half so busy if everybody minded their own business."
+
+James, brooding in a small chair from which his knees ran uphill,
+shifted his feet uneasily, and put one of them down on the cat,
+which had unwisely taken refuge from old Jolyon beside him.
+
+"Here, you've got a cat here," he said in an injured voice,
+withdrawing his foot nervously as he felt it squeezing into the
+soft, furry body.
+
+"Several," said old Jolyon, looking at one face and another; "I
+trod on one just now."
+
+A silence followed.
+
+Then Mrs. Small, twisting her fingers and gazing round with
+'pathetic calm, asked: "And how is dear June?"
+
+A twinkle of humour shot through the sternness of old Jolyon's
+eyes.  Extraordinary old woman, Juley!  No one quite like her for
+saying the wrong thing!
+
+"Bad!" he said; "London don't agree with her--too many people
+about, too much clatter and chatter by half."  He laid emphasis on
+the words, and again looked James in the face.
+
+Nobody spoke.
+
+A feeling of its being too dangerous to take a step in any
+direction, or hazard any remark, had fallen on them all.
+Something of the sense of the impending, that comes over the
+spectator of a Greek tragedy, had entered that upholstered room,
+filled with those white-haired, frockcoated old men, and
+fashionably attired women, who were all of the same blood,
+between all of whom existed an unseizable resemblance.
+
+Not that they were conscious of it--the visits of such fateful,
+bitter spirits are only felt.
+
+Then Swithin rose.  He would not sit there, feeling like that--he
+was not to be put down by anyone!  And, manoeuvring round the
+room with added pomp, he shook hands with each separately.
+
+"You tell Timothy from me," he said, "that he coddles himself too
+much!"  Then, turning to Francie, whom he considered 'smart,' he
+added: "You come with me for a drive one of these days."  But this
+conjured up the vision of that other eventful drive which had
+been so much talked about, and he stood quite still for a second,
+with glassy eyes, as though waiting to catch up with the
+significance of what he himself had said; then, suddenly
+recollecting that he didn't care a damn, he turned to old Jolyon:
+"Well, good-bye, Jolyon!  You shouldn't go about without an
+overcoat; you'll be getting sciatica or something!"  And, kicking
+the cat slightly with the pointed tip of his patent leather boot,
+he took his huge form away.
+
+When he had gone everyone looked secretly at the others, to see
+how they had taken the mention of the word 'drive'--the word
+which had become famous, and acquired an overwhelming importance,
+as the only official--so to speak--news in connection with the
+vague and sinister rumour clinging to the family tongue.
+
+Euphemia, yielding to an impulse, said with a short laugh: "I'm
+glad Uncle Swithin doesn't ask me to go for drives."
+
+Mrs. Small, to reassure her and smooth over any little
+awkwardness the subject might have, replied: "My dear, he likes
+to take somebody well dressed, who will do him a little credit.
+I shall never forget the drive he took me.  It was an
+experience!"  And her chubby round old face was spread for a
+moment with a strange contentment; then broke into pouts, and
+tears came into her eyes.  She was thinking of that long ago
+driving tour she had once taken with Septimus Small.
+
+James, who had relapsed into his nervous brooding in the little
+chair, suddenly roused himself: "He's a funny fellow, Swithin,"
+he said, but in a half-hearted way.
+
+Old Jolyon's silence, his stern eyes, held them all in a kind of
+paralysis.  He was disconcerted himself by the effect of his own
+words--an effect which seemed to deepen the importance of the
+very rumour he had come to scotch; but he was still angry.
+
+He had not done with them yet--No, no--he would give them another
+rub or two
+
+He did not wish to rub his nieces, he had no quarrel with them--a
+young and presentable female always appealed to old Jolyon's
+clemency--but that fellow James, and, in a less degree perhaps,
+those others, deserved all they would get.  And he, too, asked
+for Timothy.
+
+As though feeling that some danger threatened her younger
+brother, Aunt Juley suddenly offered him tea: "There it is," she
+said, "all cold and nasty, waiting for you in the back drawing
+room, but Smither shall make you some fresh."
+
+Old Jolyon rose: "Thank you," he said, looking straight at James,
+"but I've no time for tea, and--scandal, and the rest of it!
+It's time I was at home.  Good-bye, Julia; good-bye, Hester;
+good-bye, Winifred."
+
+Without more ceremonious adieux, he marched out.
+
+Once again in his cab, his anger evaporated, for so it ever was
+with his wrath--when he had rapped out, it was gone.  Sadness
+came over his spirit.  He had stopped their mouths, maybe, but at
+what a cost!  At the cost of certain knowledge that the rumour he
+had been resolved not to believe was true.  June was abandoned,
+and for the wife of that fellow's son!  He felt it was true, and
+hardened himself to treat it as if it were not; but the pain he
+hid beneath this resolution began slowly, surely, to vent itself
+in a blind resentment against James and his son.
+
+The six women and one man left behind in the little drawing-room
+began talking as easily as might be after such an occurrence, for
+though each one of them knew for a fact that he or she never
+talked scandal, each one of them also knew that the other six
+did; all were therefore angry and at a loss.  James only was
+silent, disturbed, to the bottom of his soul.
+
+Presently Francie said: "Do you know, I think Uncle Jolyon is
+terribly changed this last year.  What do you think, Aunt
+Hester?"
+
+Aunt Hester made a little movement of recoil: "Oh, ask your Aunt
+Julia!" she said; "I know nothing about it."
+
+No one else was afraid of assenting, and James muttered gloomily
+at the floor: "He's not half the man he was."
+
+"I've noticed it a long time," went on Francie; "he's aged
+tremendously."
+
+Aunt Juley shook her head; her face seemed suddenly to have
+become one immense pout.
+
+"Poor dear Jolyon," she said, "somebody ought to see to it for
+him!"
+
+There was again silence; then, as though in terror of being left
+solitarily behind, all five visitors rose simultaneously, and
+took their departure.
+
+Mrs. Small, Aunt Hester, and their cat were left once more alone,
+the sound of a door closing in the distance announced the
+approach of Timothy.
+
+That evening, when Aunt Hester had just got off to sleep in the
+back bedroom that used to be Aunt Juley's before Aunt Juley took
+Aunt Ann's, her door was opened, and Mrs. Small, in a pink
+night-cap, a candle in her hand, entered: "Hester!" she said.
+"Hester!"
+
+Aunt Hester faintly rustled the sheet.
+
+"Hester," repeated Aunt Juley, to make quite sure that she had
+awakened her, "I am quite troubled about poor dear Jolyon.
+What," Aunt Juley dwelt on the word, "do you think ought to be
+done?"
+
+Aunt Hester again rustled the sheet, her voice was heard faintly
+pleading: "Done?  How should I know?"
+
+Aunt Juley turned away satisfied, and closing the door with extra
+gentleness so as not to disturb dear Hester, let it slip through
+her fingers and fall to with a 'crack.'
+
+Back in her own room, she stood at the window gazing at the moon
+over the trees in the Park, through a chink in the muslin
+curtains, close drawn lest anyone should see.  And there, with
+her face all round and pouting in its pink cap, and her eyes wet,
+she thought of 'dear Jolyon,' so old and so lonely, and how she
+could be of some use to him; and how he would come to love her,
+as she had never been loved since--since poor Septimus went away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+DANCE AT ROGER'S
+
+
+Roger's house in Prince's Gardens was brilliantly alight.  Large
+numbers of wax candles had been collected and placed in cut-glass
+chandeliers, and the parquet floor of the long, double
+drawing-room reflected these constellations.  An appearance of
+real spaciousness had been secured by moving out all the
+furniture on to the upper landings, and enclosing the room with
+those strange appendages of civilization known as 'rout' seats.
+In a remote corner, embowered in palms, was a cottage piano, with
+a copy of the 'Kensington Coil' open on the music-stand.
+
+Roger had objected to a band.  He didn't see in the least what
+they wanted with a band; he wouldn't go to the expense, and there
+was an end of it.  Francie (her mother, whom Roger had long since
+reduced to chronic dyspepsia, went to bed on such occasions), had
+been obliged to content herself with supplementing the piano by a
+young man who played the cornet, and she so arranged with palms
+that anyone who did not look into the heart of things might
+imagine there were several musicians secreted there.  She made up
+her mind to tell them to play loud--there was a lot of music in a
+cornet, if the man would only put his soul into it.
+
+In the more cultivated American tongue, she was 'through' at
+last--through that tortuous labyrinth of make-shifts, which must
+be traversed before fashionable display can be combined with the
+sound economy of a Forsyte.  Thin but brilliant, in her
+maize-coloured frock with much tulle about the shoulders, she
+went from place to place, fitting on her gloves, and casting her
+eye over it all.
+
+To the hired butler (for Roger only kept maids) she spoke about
+the wine.  Did he quite understand that Mr. Forsyte wished a
+dozen bottles of the champagne from Whiteley's to be put out?
+But if that were finished (she did not suppose it would be, most
+of the ladies would drink water, no doubt), but if it were, there
+was the champagne cup, and he must do the best he could with
+that.
+
+She hated having to say this sort of thing to a butler, it was so
+infra dig.; but what could you do with father?  Roger, indeed,
+after making himself consistently disagreeable about the dance,
+would come down presently, with his fresh colour and bumpy
+
+forehead, as though he had been its promoter; and he would smile,
+and probably take the prettiest woman in to supper; and at two
+o'clock, just as they were getting into the swing, he would go up
+secretly to the musicians and tell them to play 'God Save the
+Queen,' and go away.
+
+Francie devoutly hoped he might soon get tired, and slip off to
+bed.
+
+The three or four devoted girl friends who were staying in the
+house for this dance, had partaken with her, in a small,
+abandoned room upstairs, of tea and cold chicken-legs, hurriedly
+served; the men had been sent out to dine at Eustace's Club, it
+being felt that they must be fed up.
+
+Punctually on the stroke of nine arrived Mrs. Small alone.  She
+made elaborate apologies for the absence of Timothy, omitting all
+mention of Aunt Hester, who, at the last minute, had said she
+could not be bothered.  Francie received her effusively, and
+placed her on a rout seat, where she left her, pouting and
+solitary in lavender-coloured satin--the first time she had worn
+colour since Aunt Ann's death.
+
+The devoted maiden friends came now from their rooms, each by
+magic arrangement in a differently coloured frock, but all with
+the same liberal allowance of tulle on the shoulders and at the
+bosom--for they were, by some fatality, lean to a girl.  They
+were all taken up to Mrs. Small.  None stayed with her more than
+a few seconds, but clustering together talked and twisted their
+programmes, looking secretly at the door for the first appearance
+of a man.
+
+Then arrived in a group a number of Nicholases, always punctual--
+the fashion up Ladbroke Grove way; and close behind them Eustace
+and his men, gloomy and smelling rather of smoke.
+
+Three or four of Francie's lovers now appeared, one after the
+other; she had made each promise to come early.  They were all
+clean-shaven and sprightly, with that peculiar kind of young-man
+sprightliness which had recently invaded Kensington; they did not
+seem to mind each other's presence in the least, and wore their
+ties bunching out at the ends, white waistcoats, and socks with
+clocks.  All had handkerchiefs concealed in their cuffs.  They
+moved buoyantly, each armoured in professional gaiety, as though
+he had come to do great deeds.  Their faces when they danced, far
+from wearing the traditional solemn look of the dancing, English-
+man, were irresponsible, charming, suave; they bounded, twirling
+their partners at great pace, without pedantic attentionto the
+rhythm of the music.
+
+At other dancers they looked with a kind of airy scorn--they, the
+light brigade, the heroes of a hundred Kensington 'hops'--from
+whom alone could the right manner and smile and step be hoped.
+
+After this the stream came fast; chaperones silting up along the
+wall facing the entrance, the volatile element swelling the eddy
+in the larger room.
+
+Men were scarce, and wallflowers wore their peculiar, pathetic
+expression, a patient, sourish smile which seemed to say: "Oh,
+no! don't mistake me, I know you are not coming up to me.  I can
+hardly expect that!"  And Francie would plead with one of her
+lovers, or with some callow youth: "Now, to please me, do let me
+introduce you to Miss Pink; such a nice girl, really!" and she
+would bring him up, and say: "Miss Pink--Mr. Gathercole.  Can you
+spare him a dance?"  Then Miss Pink, smiling her forced smile,
+colouring a little, answered: "Oh! I think so!" and screening
+her empty card, wrote on it the name of Gathercole, spelling it
+passionately in the district that he proposed, about the second
+extra.
+
+But when the youth had murmured that it was hot, and passed, she
+relapsed into her attitude of hopeless expectation, into her
+patient, sourish smile.
+
+Mothers, slowly fanning their faces, watched their daughters, and
+in their eyes could be read all the story of those daughters'
+fortunes.  As for themselves, to sit hour after hour, dead tired,
+silent, or talking spasmodically--what did it matter, so long as
+the girls were having a good time!  But to see them neglected and
+passed by!  Ah! they smiled, but their eyes stabbed like the
+eyes of an offended swan; they longed to pluck young, Gathercole
+by the slack of his dandified breeches, and drag him to their
+daughters--the jackanapes!
+
+And all the cruelties and hardness of life, its pathos and
+unequal chances, its conceit, self-forgetfulness, and patience,
+were presented on the battle-field of this Kensington ball-room.
+
+Here and there, too, lovers--not lovers like Francie's, a
+peculiar breed, but simply lovers--trembling, blushing, silent,
+sought each other by flying glances, sought to meet and touch in
+the mazes of the dance, and now and again dancing together,
+struck some beholder by the light in their eyes.
+
+Not a second before ten o'clock came the Jameses--Emily, Rachel,
+Winifred (Dartie had been left behind, having on a former
+occasion drunk too much of Roger's champagne), and Cicely, the
+youngest, making her debut; behind them, following in a hansom
+from the paternal mansion where they had dined, Soames and Irene.
+
+All these ladies had shoulder-straps and no tulle--thus showing
+at once, by a bolder exposure of flesh, that they came from the
+more fashionable side of the Park.
+
+Soames, sidling back from the contact of the dancers, took up a
+position against the wall.  Guarding himself with his pale smile,
+he stood watching.  Waltz after waltz began and ended, couple
+after couple brushed by with smiling lips, laughter, and snatches
+of talk; or with set lips, and eyes searching the throng; or
+again, with silent, parted lips, and eyes on each other.  And the
+scent of festivity, the odour of flowers, and hair, of essences
+that women love, rose suffocatingly in the heat of the summer
+night.
+
+Silent, with something of scorn in his smile, Soames seemed to
+notice nothing; but now and again his eyes, finding that which
+they sought, would fix themselves on a point in the shifting
+throng, and the smile die off his lips.
+
+He danced with no one.  Some fellows danced with their wives; his
+sense of 'form' had never permitted him to dance with Irene since
+their marriage, and the God of the Forsytes alone can tell
+whether this was a relief to him or not.
+
+She passed, dancing with other men, her dress, iris-coloured,
+floating away from her feet.  She danced well; he was tired of
+hearing women say with an acid smile: "How beautifully your wife
+dances, Mr. Forsyte--it's quite a pleasure to watch her!"  Tired
+of answering them with his sidelong glance: "You think so?"
+
+A young couple close by flirted a fan by turns, making an
+unpleasant draught.  Francie and one of her lovers stood near.
+They were talking of love.
+
+He heard Roger's voice behind, giving an order about supper to a
+servant.  Everything was very second-class!  He wished that he
+had not come!  He had asked Irene whether she wanted him; she had
+answered with that maddening smile of hers "Oh, no!"
+
+Why had he come?  For the last quarter of an hour he had not even
+seen her.  Here was George advancing with his Quilpish face; it
+was too late to get out of his way.
+
+"Have you seen 'The Buccaneer'?" said this licensed wag; "he's on
+the warpath--hair cut and everything!"
+
+Soames said he had not, and crossing the room, half-empty in an
+interval of the dance, he went out on the balcony, and looked
+down into the street.
+
+A carriage had driven up with late arrivals, and round the door
+hung some of those patient watchers of the London streets who
+spring up to the call of light or music; their faces, pale and
+upturned above their black and rusty figures, had an air of
+stolid watching that annoyed Soames.  Why were they allowed to
+hang about; why didn't the bobby move them on?
+
+But the policeman took no notice of them; his feet were planted
+apart on the strip of crimson carpet stretched across the
+pavement; his face, under the helmet, wore the same stolid,
+watching look as theirs.
+
+Across the road, through the railings, Soames could see the
+branches of trees shining, faintly stirring in the breeze, by the
+gleam of the street lamps; beyond, again, the upper lights of the
+houses on the other side, so many eyes looking down on the quiet
+blackness of the garden; and over all, the sky, that wonderful
+London sky, dusted with the innumerable reflection of countless
+lamps; a dome woven over between its stars with the refraction of
+human needs and human fancies--immense mirror of pomp and misery
+that night after night stretches its kindly mocking over miles of
+houses and gardens, mansions and squalor, over Forsytes,
+policemen, and patient watchers in the streets.
+
+Soames turned away, and, hidden in the recess, gazed into the
+lighted room.  It was cooler out there.  He saw the new arrivals,
+June and her grandfather, enter.  What had made them so late?
+They stood by the doorway.  They looked fagged.  Fancy Uncle
+Jolyon turning out at this time of night!  Why hadn't June come
+to Irene, as she usually did, and it occurred to him suddenly
+that he had seen nothing of June for a long time now.
+
+Watching her face with idle malice, he saw it change, grow so
+pale that he thought she would drop, then flame out crimson.
+Turning to see at what she was looking, he saw his wife on
+Bosinney's arm, coming from the conservatory at the end of the
+room.  Her eyes were raised to his, as though answering some
+question he had asked, and he was gazing at her intently.
+
+Soames looked again at June.  Her hand rested on old Jolyon's
+arm; she seemed to be making a request.  He saw a surprised look
+on his uncle's face; they turned and passed through the door out
+of his sight.
+
+The music began again--a waltz--and, still as a statue in the
+recess of the window, his face unmoved, but no smile on his lips,
+Soames waited.  Presently, within a yard of the dark balcony, his
+wife and Bosinney passed.  He caught the perfume of the gardenias
+that she wore, saw the rise and fall of her bosom, the languor in
+her eyes, her parted lips, and a look on her face that he did not
+know.  To the slow, swinging measure they danced by, and it
+seemed to him that they clung to each other; he saw her raise her
+eyes, soft and dark, to Bosinney's, and drop them again.
+
+Very white, he turned back to the balcony, and leaning on it,
+gazed down on the Square; the figures were still there looking up
+at the light with dull persistency, the policeman's face, too,
+upturned, and staring, but he saw nothing of them.  Below, a
+carriage drew up, two figures got in, and drove away....
+
+That evening June and old Jolyon sat down to dinner at the usual
+hour.  The girl was in her customary high-necked frock, old
+Jolyon had not dressed.
+
+At breakfast she had spoken of the dance at Uncle Roger's, she
+wanted to go; she had been stupid enough, she said, not to think
+of asking anyone to take her.  It was too late now.
+
+Old Jolyon lifted his keen eyes.  June was used to go to dances
+with Irene as a matter of course!  And deliberately fixing his
+gaze on her, he asked: "Why don't you get Irene?"
+
+No!  June did not want to ask Irene; she would only go if--if her
+grandfather wouldn't mind just for once for a little time!
+
+At her look, so eager and so worn, old Jolyon had grumblingly
+consented.  He did not know what she wanted, he said, with going
+to a dance like this, a poor affair, he would wager; and she no
+more fit for it than a cat!  What she wanted was sea air, and
+after his general meeting of the Globular Gold Concessions he was
+ready to take her.  She didn't want to go away?  Ah! she would
+knock herself up!  Stealing a mournful look at her, he went on
+with his breakfast.
+
+June went out early, and wandered restlessly about in the heat.
+Her little light figure that lately had moved so languidly about
+its business, was all on fire.  She bought herself some flowers.
+She wanted--she meant to look her best.  He would be there!  She
+knew well enough that he had a card.  She would show him that she
+did not care.  But deep down in her heart she resolved that
+evening to win him back.  She came in flushed, and talked
+brightly all lunch; old Jolyon was there, and he was deceived.
+
+In the afternoon she was overtaken by a desperate fit of sobbing.
+She strangled the noise against the pillows of her bed, but when
+at last it ceased she saw in the glass a swollen face with
+reddened eyes, and violet circles round them.  She stayed in the
+darkened room till dinner time.
+
+All through that silent meal the struggle went on within her.
+
+She looked so shadowy and exhausted that old Jolyon told 'Sankey'
+to countermand the carriage, he would not have her going out....
+She was to go to bed!  She made no resistance.  She went up to
+her room, and sat in the dark.  At ten o'clock she rang for her
+maid.
+
+"Bring some hot water, and go down and tell Mr. Forsyte that I
+feel perfectly rested.  Say that if he's too tired I can go to
+the dance by myself."
+
+The maid looked askance, and June turned on her imperiously.
+"Go," she said, "bring the hot water at once!"
+
+Her ball-dress still lay on the sofa, and with a sort of fierce
+care she arrayed herself, took the flowers in her hand, and went
+down, her small face carried high under its burden of hair.  She
+could hear old Jolyon in his room as she passed.
+
+Bewildered and vexed, he was dressing.  It was past ten, they
+would not get there till eleven; the girl was mad.  But he dared
+not cross her the expression of her face at dinner haunted him.
+
+With great ebony brushes he smoothed his hair till it shone like
+silver under the light; then he, too, came out on the gloomy
+staircase.
+
+June met him below, and, without a word, they went to the
+carriage.
+
+When, after that drive which seemed to last for ever, she entered
+Roger's drawing-room, she disguised under a mask of resolution a
+very torment of nervousness and emotion.  The feeling of shame at
+what might be called 'running after him' was smothered by the
+dread that he might not be there, that she might not see him
+after all, and by that dogged resolve--somehow, she did not know
+how--to win him back.
+
+The sight of the ballroom, with its gleaming floor, gave her a
+feeling of joy, of triumph, for she loved dancing, and when
+dancing she floated, so light was she, like a strenuous, eager
+little spirit.  He would surely ask her to dance, and if he
+danced with her it would all be as it was before.  She looked
+about her eagerly.
+
+The sight of Bosinney coming with Irene from the conservatory,
+with that strange look of utter absorption on his face, struck
+her too suddenly.  They had not seen--no one should see--her
+distress, not even her grandfather.
+
+She put her hand on Jolyon's arm, and said very low:
+
+"I must go home, Gran; I feel ill."
+
+He hurried her away, grumbling to himself that he had known how
+it would be.
+
+To her he said nothing; only when they were once more in the
+carriage, which by some fortunate chance had lingered near the
+door, he asked her: "What is it, my darling?"
+
+Feeling her whole slender body shaken by sobs, he was terribly
+alarmed.  She must have Blank to-morrow.  He would insist upon
+it.  He could not have her like this....  There, there!
+
+June mastered her sobs, and squeezing his hand feverishly, she
+lay back in her corner, her face muffled in a shawl.
+
+He could only see her eyes, fixed and staring in the dark, but he
+did not cease to stroke her hand with his thin fingers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+EVENING AT RICHMOND
+
+
+Other eyes besides the eyes of June and of Soames had seen 'those
+two' (as Euphemia had already begun to call them) coming from the
+conservatory; other eyes had noticed the look on Bosinney's face.
+
+There are moments when Nature reveals the passion hidden beneath
+the careless calm of her ordinary moods--violent spring flashing
+white on almond-blossom through the purple clouds; a snowy,
+moonlit peak, with its single star, soaring up to the passionate
+blue; or against the flames of sunset, an old yew-tree standing
+dark guardian of some fiery secret.
+
+There are moments, too, when in a picture-gallery, a work, noted
+by the casual spectator as '......Titian--remarkably fine,'
+breaks through the defences of some Forsyte better lunched
+perhaps than his fellows, and holds him spellbound in a kind of
+ecstasy.  There are things, he feels--there are things here
+which--well, which are things.  Something unreasoning,
+unreasonable, is upon him; when he tries to define it with the
+precision of a practical man, it eludes him, slips away, as the
+glow of the wine he has drunk is slipping away, leaving him
+cross, and conscious of his liver.  He feels that he has been
+extravagant, prodigal of something; virtue has gone out of him.
+He did not desire this glimpse of what lay under the three stars
+of his catalogue.  God forbid that he should know anything about
+the forces of Nature!  God forbid that he should admit for a
+moment that there are such things!  Once admit that, and where
+was he?  One paid a shilling for entrance, and another for the
+programme.
+
+The look which June had seen, which other Forsytes had seen, was
+like the sudden flashing of a candle through a hole in some
+imaginary canvas, behind which it was being moved--the sudden
+flaming-out of a vague, erratic glow, shadowy and enticing.  It
+brought home to onlookers the consciousness that dangerous forces
+were at work.  For a moment they noticed it with pleasure, with
+interest, then felt they must not notice it at all.
+
+It supplied, however, the reason of June's coming so late and
+disappearing again without dancing, without even shaking hands
+with her lover.  She was ill, it was said, and no wonder.
+
+But here they looked at each other guiltily.  They had no desire
+to spread scandal, no desire to be ill-natured.  Who would have?
+And to outsiders no word was breathed, unwritten law keeping them
+silent.
+
+Then came the news that June had gone to the seaside with old
+Jolyon.
+
+He had carried her off to Broadstairs, for which place there was
+just then a feeling, Yarmouth having lost caste, in spite of
+Nicholas, and no Forsyte going to the sea without intending to
+have an air for his money such as would render him bilious in a
+week.  That fatally aristocratic tendency of the first Forsyte to
+drink Madeira had left his descendants undoubtedly accessible.
+
+So June went to the sea.  The family awaited developments; there
+was nothing else to do.
+
+But how far--how far had 'those two' gone?  How far were they
+going to go?  Could they really be going at all?  Nothing could
+surely come of it, for neither of them had any money.  At the
+most a flirtation, ending, as all such attachments should, at the
+proper time.
+
+Soames' sister, Winifred Dartie, who had imbibed with the breezes
+of Mayfair--she lived in Green Street--more fashionable
+principles in regard to matrimonial behaviour than were current,
+for instance, in Ladbroke Grove, laughed at the idea of there
+being anything in it.  The 'little thing'--Irene was taller than
+herself, and it was real testimony to the solid worth of a
+Forsyte that she should always thus be a 'little thing'--the
+little thing was bored.  Why shouldn't she amuse herself?  Soames
+was rather tiring; and as to Mr. Bosinney--only that buffoon
+George would have called him the Buccaneer--she maintained that
+he was very chic.
+
+This dictum--that Bosinney was chic--caused quit a sensation.  It
+failed to convince.  That he was 'good-looking in a way' they
+were prepared to admit, but that anyone could call a man with his
+pronounced cheekbones, curious eyes, arid soft felt hats chic was
+only another instance of Winifred's extravagant way of running
+after something new.
+
+It was that famous summer when extravagance was fashionable, when
+the very earth was extravagant, chestnut-trees spread with
+blossom, and flowers drenched in perfume, as they had never been
+before; when roses blew in every garden; and for the swarming
+stars the nights had hardly space; when every day and all day
+long the sun, in full armour, swung his brazen shield above the
+Park, and people did strange things, lunching and dining in the
+open air.  Unprecedented was the tale of cabs and carriages that
+streamed across the bridges of the shining river, bearing the
+upper-middle class in thousands to the green glories of Bushey,
+Richmond, Kew, and Hampton Court.  Almost every family with any
+pretensions to be of the carriage-class paid one visit that year
+to the horse-chestnuts at Bushey, or took one drive amongst the
+Spanish chestnuts of Richmond Park.  Bowling smoothly, if
+dustily, along, in a cloud of their own creation, they would
+stare fashionably at the antlered heads which the great slow deer
+raised out of a forest of bracken that promised to autumn lovers
+such cover as was never seen before.  And now and again, as the
+amorous perfume of chestnut flowers and of fern was drifted too
+near, one would say to the other: "My dear!  What a peculiar
+scent!"
+
+And the lime-flowers that year were of rare prime, near
+honey-coloured.  At the corners of London squares they gave out,
+as the sun went down, a perfume sweeter than the honey bees had
+taken--a perfume that stirred a yearning unnamable in the hearts
+of Forsytes and their peers, taking the cool after dinner in the
+precincts of those gardens to which they alone had keys.
+
+And that yearning made them linger amidst the dim shapes of
+flower-beds in the failing daylight, made them turn, and turn,
+and turn again, as though lovers were waiting for them--waiting
+for the last light to die away under the shadow of the branches.
+
+Some vague sympathy evoked by the scent of the limes, some
+sisterly desire to see for herself, some idea of demonstrating
+the soundness of her dictum that there was 'nothing in it'; or
+merely the craving to drive down to Richmond, irresistible that
+summer, moved the mother of the little Darties (of little
+
+Publius, of Imogen, Maud, and Benedict) to write the following
+note to her sister-in-law:
+
+
+'DEAR IRENE,
+'June 30.
+
+'I hear that Soames is going to Henley tomorrow for the night.  I
+thought it would be great fun if we made up a little party and
+drove down to, Richmond.  Will you ask Mr. Bosinney, and I will
+get young Flippard.
+
+'Emily (they called their mother Emily--it was so chic) will lend
+us the carriage.  I will call for you and your young man at seven
+o'clock.
+
+'Your affectionate sister,
+
+'WINIFRED DARTIE.
+
+'Montague believes the dinner at the Crown and Sceptre to be
+quite eatable.'
+
+
+Montague was Dartie's second and better known name--his first
+being Moses; for he was nothing if not a man of the world.
+
+Her plan met with more opposition from Providence than so
+benevolent a scheme deserved.  In the first place young Flippard
+wrote:
+
+
+'DEAR Mrs. DARTIE,
+
+'Awfully sorry.  Engaged two deep.
+
+'Yours,
+
+'AUGUSTUS FLIPPARD.'
+
+
+It was late to send into the byeways and hedges to remedy this
+misfortune.  With the promptitude and conduct of a mother,
+Winifred fell back on her husband.  She had, indeed, the decided
+but tolerant temperament that goes with a good deal of profile,
+fair hair, and greenish eyes.  She was seldom or never at a loss;
+or if at a loss, was always able to convert it into a gain.
+
+Dartie, too, was in good feather.  Erotic had failed to win the
+Lancashire Cup.  Indeed, that celebrated animal, owned as he was
+by a pillar of the turf, who had secretly laid many thousands
+against him, had not even started.  The forty-eight hours that
+followed his scratching were among the darkest in Dartie's life.
+
+Visions of James haunted him day and night.  Black thoughts about
+Soames mingled with the faintest hopes.  On the Friday night he
+got drunk, so greatly was he affected.  But on Saturday morning
+the true Stock Exchange instinct triumphed within him.  Owing
+some hundreds, which by no possibility could he pay, he went into
+town and put them all on Concertina for the Saltown Borough
+Handicap.
+
+As he said to Major Scrotton, with whom he lunched at the Iseeum:
+"That little Jew boy, Nathans, had given him the tip.  He didn't
+care a cursh.  He wash in--a mucker.  If it didn't come up--well
+then, damme, the old man would have to pay!"
+
+A bottle of Pol Roger to his own cheek had given him a new
+contempt for James.
+
+It came up.  Concertina was squeezed home by her neck--a terrible
+squeak!  But, as Dartie said: There was nothing like pluck!
+
+He was by no means averse to the expedition to Richmond.  He
+would 'stand' it himself!  He cherished an admiration for Irene,
+and wished to be on more playful terms with her.
+
+At half-past five the Park Lane footman came round to say: Mrs.
+Forsyte was very sorry, but one of the horses was coughing!
+
+Undaunted by this further blow, Winifred at once despatched
+little Publius (now aged seven) with the nursery governess to
+Montpellier Square.
+
+They would go down in hansoms and meet at the Crown and Sceptre
+at 7.45.
+
+Dartie, on being told, was pleased enough.  It was better than
+going down with your back to the horses!  He had no objection to
+driving down with Irene.  He supposed they would pick up the
+others at Montpellier Square, and swop hansoms there?
+
+Informed that the meet was at the Crown and Sceptre, and that he
+would have to drive with his wife, he turned sulky, and said it
+was d---d slow!
+
+At seven o'clock they started, Dartie offering to bet the driver
+half-a-crown he didn't do it in the three-quarters of an hour.
+
+Twice only did husband and wife exchange remarks on the way.
+
+Dartie said: "It'll put Master Soames's nose out of joint to hear
+his wife's been drivin' in a hansom with Master Bosinney!"
+
+Winifred replied: "Don't talk such nonsense, Monty!"
+
+"Nonsense!" repeated Dartie.  "You don't know women, my fine
+lady!"
+
+On the other occasion he merely asked: "How am I looking?  A bit
+puffy about the gills?  That fizz old George is so fond of is a
+windy wine!"
+
+He had been lunching with George Forsyte at the Haversnake.
+
+Bosinney and Irene had arrived before them.  They were standing
+in one of the long French windows overlooking the river.
+
+Windows that summer were open all day long, and all night too,
+and day and night the scents of flowers and trees came in, the
+hot scent of parching grass, and the cool scent of the heavy
+dews.
+
+To the eye of the observant Dartie his two guests did not appear
+to be making much running, standing there close together, without
+a word.  Bosinney was a hungry-looking creature--not much go
+about him
+
+He left them to Winifred, however, and busied himself to order
+the dinner.
+
+A Forsyte will require good, if not delicate feeding, but a
+Dartie will tax the resources of a Crown and Sceptre.  Living as
+he does, from hand to mouth, nothing is too good for him to eat;
+and he will eat it.  His drink, too, will need to be carefully
+provided; there is much drink in this country 'not good enough'
+for a Dartie; he will have the best.  Paying for things
+vicariously, there is no reason why he should stint himself.  To
+stint yourself is the mark of a fool, not of a Dartie.
+
+The best of everything!  No sounder principle on which a man can
+base his life, whose father-in-law has a very considerable
+income, and a partiality for his grandchildren.
+
+With his not unable eye Dartie had spotted this weakness in James
+the very first year after little Publius's arrival (an error); he
+had profited by his perspicacity.  Four little Darties were now a
+sort of perpetual insurance.
+
+The feature of the feast was unquestionably the red mullet.  This
+delectable fish, brought from a considerable distance in a state
+of almost perfect preservation, was first fried, then boned, then
+served in ice, with Madeira punch in place of sauce, according to
+a recipe known to a few men of the world.
+
+Nothing else calls for remark except the payment of the bill by
+Dartie.
+
+He had made himself extremely agreeable throughout the meal; his
+bold, admiring stare seldom abandoning Irene's face and figure.
+As he was obliged to confess to himself, he got no change out of
+her--she was cool enough, as cool as her shoulders looked under
+their veil of creamy lace.  He expected to have caught her out in
+some little game with Bosinney; but not a bit of it, she kept up
+her end remarkably well.  As for that architect chap, he was as
+glum as a bear with a sore head--Winifred could barely get a word
+out of him; he ate nothing, but he certainly took his liquor, and
+his face kept getting whiter, and his eyes looked queer.
+
+It was all very amusing.
+
+For Dartie himself was in capital form, and talked freely, with a
+certain poignancy, being no fool.  He told two or three stories
+verging on the improper, a concession to the company, for his
+stories were not used to verging.  He proposed Irene's health in
+a mock speech.  Nobody drank it, and Winifred said: "Don't be
+such a clown, Monty!"
+
+At her suggestion they went after dinner to the public terrace
+overlooking the river.
+
+"I should like to see the common people making love," she said,
+"it's such fun!"
+
+There were numbers of them walking in the cool, after the day's
+heat, and the air was alive with the sound of voices, coarse and
+loud, or soft as though murmuring secrets.
+
+It was not long before Winifred's better sense--she was the only
+Forsyte present--secured them an empty bench.  They sat down in a
+row.  A heavy tree spread a thick canopy above their heads, and
+the haze darkened slowly over the river.
+
+Dartie sat at the end, next to him Irene, then Bosinney, then
+Winifred.  There was hardly room for four, and the man of the
+world could feel Irene's arm crushed against his own; he knew
+that she could not withdraw it without seeming rude, and this
+amused him; he devised every now and again a movement that would
+bring her closer still.  He thought: 'That Buccaneer Johnny
+shan't have it all to himself!  It's a pretty tight fit,
+certainly!'
+
+>From far down below on the dark river came drifting the tinkle of
+a mandoline, and voices singing the old round:
+
+'A boat, a boat, unto the ferry,
+For we'll go over and be merry;
+And laugh, and quaff, and drink brown sherry!'
+
+And suddenly the moon appeared, young and tender, floating up on
+her back from behind a tree; and as though she had breathed, the
+air was cooler, but down that cooler air came always the warm
+odour of the limes.
+
+Over his cigar Dartie peered round at Bosinney, who was sitting
+with his arms crossed, staring straight in front of him, and on
+his face the look of a man being tortured.
+
+And Dartie shot a glance at the face between, so veiled by the
+overhanging shadow that it was but like a darker piece of the
+darkness shaped and breathed on; soft, mysterious, enticing.
+
+A hush had fallen on the noisy terrace, as if all the strollers
+were thinking secrets too precious to be spoken.
+
+And Dartie thought: 'Women!'
+
+The glow died above the river, the singing ceased; the young moon
+hid behind a tree, and all was dark.  He pressed himself against
+Irene.
+
+He was not alarmed at the shuddering that ran through the limbs
+he touched, or at the troubled, scornful look of her eyes.  He
+felt her trying to draw herself away, and smiled.
+
+It must be confessed that the man of the world had drunk quite as
+much as was good for him.
+
+With thick lips parted under his well-curled moustaches, and his
+bold eyes aslant upon her, he had the malicious look of a satyr.
+
+Along the pathway of sky between the hedges of the tree tops the
+stars clustered forth; like mortals beneath, they seemed to shift
+and swarm and whisper.  Then on the terrace the buzz broke out
+once more, and Dartie thought: 'Ah!  he's a poor, hungry-looking
+devil, that Bosinney!'and again he pressed himself against Irene.
+
+The movement deserved a better success.  She rose, and they all
+followed her.
+
+The man of the world was more than ever determined to see what
+she was made of.  Along the terrace he kept close at her elbow.
+He had within him much good wine.  There was the long drive home,
+the long drive and the warm dark and the pleasant closeness of
+the hansom cab--with its insulation from the world devised by
+some great and good man.  That hungry architect chap might drive
+with his wife--he wished him joy of her!  And, conscious that his
+voice was not too steady, he was careful not to speak; but a
+smile had become fixed on his thick lips.
+
+They strolled along toward the cabs awaiting them at the farther
+end.  His plan had the merit of all great plans, an almost brutal
+simplicity he would merely keep at her elbow till she got in, and
+get in quickly after her.
+
+But when Irene reached the cab she did not get in; she slipped,
+instead, to the horse's head.  Dartie was not at the moment
+sufficiently master of his legs to follow.  She stood stroking
+the horse's nose, and, to his annoyance, Bosinney was at her side
+first.  She turned and spoke to him rapidly, in a low voice; the
+words 'That man' reached Dartie.  He stood stubbornly by the cab
+step, waiting for her to come back.  He knew a trick worth two of
+that!
+
+Here, in the lamp-light, his figure (no more than medium height),
+well squared in its white evening waistcoat, his light overcoat
+flung over his arm, a pink flower in his button-hole, and on his
+dark face that look of confident, good-humoured insolence, he was
+at his best--a thorough man of the world.
+
+Winifred was already in her cab.  Dartie reflected that Bosinney
+would have a poorish time in that cab if he didn't look sharp!
+Suddenly he received a push which nearly overturned him in the
+road.  Bosinney's voice hissed in his ear: "I am taking Irene
+back; do you understand?"  He saw a face white with passion, and
+eyes that glared at him like a wild cat's.
+
+"Eh?" he stammered.  "What? Not a bit.  You take my wife!"
+
+"Get away!" hissed Bosinney--"or I'll throw you into the road!"
+
+Dartie recoiled; he saw as plainly as possible that the fellow
+meant it.  In the space he made Irene had slipped by, her dress
+brushed his legs.  Bosinney stepped in after her.
+
+"Go on!" he heard the Buccaneer cry.  The cabman flicked his
+horse.  It sprang forward.
+
+Dartie stood for a moment dumbfounded; then, dashing at the cab
+where his wife sat, he scrambled in.
+
+"Drive on!" he shouted to the driver, "and don't you lose sight
+of that fellow in front!"
+
+Seated by his wife's side, he burst into imprecations.  Calming
+himself at last with a supreme effort, he added: "A pretty mess
+you've made of it, to let the Buccaneer drive home with her; why
+on earth couldn't you keep hold of him?  He's mad with love; any
+fool can see that!"
+
+He drowned Winifred's rejoinder with fresh calls to the Almighty;
+nor was it until they reached Barnes that he ceased a Jeremiad,
+in the course of which he had abused her, her father, her
+brother, Irene, Bosinney, the name of Forsyte, his own children,
+and cursed the day when he had ever married.
+
+Winifred, a woman of strong character, let him have his say, at
+the end of which he lapsed into sulky silence.  His angry eyes
+never deserted the back of that cab, which, like a lost chance,
+haunted the darkness in front of him.
+
+Fortunately he could not hear Bosinney's passionate pleading--
+that pleading which the man of the world's conduct had let loose
+like a flood; he could not see Irene shivering, as though some
+garment had been torn from her, nor her eyes, black and mournful,
+like the eyes of a beaten child.  He could not hear Bosinney
+entreating, entreating, always entreating; could not hear her
+sudden, soft weeping, nor see that poor, hungry-looking devil,
+awed and trembling, humbly touching her hand.
+
+In Montpellier Square their cabman, following his instructions to
+the letter, faithfully drew up behind the cab in front.  The
+Darties saw Bosinney spring out, and Irene follow, and hasten up
+the steps with bent head.  She evidently had her key in her hand,
+for she disappeared at once.  It was impossible to tell whether
+she had turned to speak to Bosinney.
+
+The latter came walking past their cab; both husband and wife had
+an admirable view of his face in the light of a street lamp.  It
+was working with violent emotion.
+
+"Good-night, Mr. Bosinney!" called Winifred.
+
+Bosinney started, clawed off his hat, and hurried on.  He had
+obviously forgotten their existence.
+
+"There!" said Dartie, "did you see the beast's face?  What did I
+say?  Fine games!"  He improved the occasion.
+
+There had so clearly been a crisis in the cab that Winifred was
+unable to defend her theory.
+
+She said: "I shall say nothing about it.  I don't see any use in
+making a fuss!"
+
+With that view Dartie at once concurred; looking upon James as a
+private preserve, he disapproved of his being disturbed by the
+troubles of others.
+
+"Quite right," he said; "let Soames look after himself.  He's
+jolly well able to!"
+
+Thus speaking, the Darties entered their habitat in Green Street,
+the rent of which was paid by James, and sought a well-earned
+rest.  The hour was midnight, and no Forsytes remained abroad in
+the streets to spy out Bosinney's wanderings; to see him return
+and stand against the rails of the Square garden, back from the
+glow of the street lamp; to see him stand there in the shadow of
+trees, watching the house where in the dark was hidden she whom
+he would have given the world to see for a single minute--she who
+was now to him the breath of the lime-trees, the meaning of the
+light and the darkness, the very beating of his own heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+DIAGNOSIS OF A FORSYTE
+
+
+It is in the nature of a Forsyte to be ignorant that he is a
+Forsyte; but young Jolyon was well aware of being one.  He had
+not known it till after the decisive step which had made him an
+outcast; since then the knowledge had been with him continually.
+He felt it throughout his alliance, throughout all his dealings
+with his second wife, who was emphatically not a Forsyte.
+
+He knew that if he had not possessed in great measure the eye for
+what he wanted, the tenacity to hold on to it, the sense of the
+folly of wasting that for which he had given so big a price--in
+other words, the 'sense of property' he could never have retained
+her (perhaps never would have desired to retain her) with him
+through all the financial troubles, slights, and misconstructions
+of those fifteen years; never have induced her to marry him on
+the death of his first wife; never have lived it all through, and
+come up, as it were, thin, but smiling.
+
+He was one of those men who, seated cross-legged like miniature
+Chinese idols in the cages of their own hearts, are ever smiling
+at themselves a doubting smile.  Not that this smile, so intimate
+and eternal, interfered with his actions, which, like his chin
+and his temperament, were quite a peculiar blend of softness and
+determination.
+
+He was conscious, too, of being a Forsyte in his work, that
+painting of water-colours to which he devoted so much energy,
+always with an eye on himself, as though he could not take so
+unpractical a pursuit quite seriously, and always with a certain
+queer uneasiness that he did not make more money at it.
+
+It was, then, this consciousness of what it meant to be a
+Forsyte, that made him receive the following letter from old
+Jolyon, with a mixture of sympathy and disgust:
+
+
+'SHELDRAKE HOUSE,
+     'BROADSTAIRS,
+
+'July 1.
+'MY DEAR JO,'
+
+(The Dad's handwriting had altered very little in the thirty odd
+years that he remembered it.)
+
+'We have been here now a fortnight, and have had good weather on
+the whole.  The air is bracing, but my liver is out of order, and
+I shall be glad enough to get back to town.  I cannot say much
+for June, her health and spirits are very indifferent, and I
+don't see what is to come of it.  She says nothing, but it is
+clear that she is harping on this engagement, which is an
+engagement and no engagement, and--goodness knows what.  I have
+grave doubts whether she ought to be allowed to return to London
+in the present state of affairs, but she is so self-willed that
+she might take it into her head to come up at any moment.  The
+fact is someone ought to speak to Bosinney and ascertain what he
+means.  I'm afraid of this myself, for I should certainly rap him
+over the knuckles, but I thought that you, knowing him at the
+Club, might put in a word, and get to ascertain what the fellow
+is about.  You will of course in no way commit June.  I shall be
+glad to hear from you in the course of a few days whether you
+have succeeded in gaining any information.  The situation is very
+distressing to me, I worry about it at night.
+
+With my love to Jolly and Holly.
+'I am,
+     'Your affect.  father,
+
+'JOLYON FORSYTE.'
+
+
+Young Jolyon pondered this letter so long and seriously that his
+wife noticed his preoccupation, and asked him what was the
+matter.  He replied: "Nothing."
+
+It was a fixed principle with him never to allude to June.  She
+might take alarm, he did not know what she might think; he
+hastened, therefore, to banish from his manner all traces of
+absorption, but in this he was about as successful as his father
+would have been, for he had inherited all old Jolyon's
+transparency in matters of domestic finesse; and young Mrs.
+Jolyon, busying herself over the affairs of the house, went about
+with tightened lips, stealing at him unfathomable looks.
+
+He started for the Club in the afternoon with the letter in his
+pocket, and without having made up his mind.
+
+To sound a man as to 'his intentions' was peculiarly unpleasant
+to him; nor did his own anomalous position diminish this
+unpleasantness.  It was so like his family, so like all the
+people they knew and mixed with, to enforce what they called
+their rights over a man, to bring  him up to the mark; so like
+them to carry their business principles into their private
+relations.
+
+And how that phrase in the letter -'You will, of course, in no
+way commit June'--gave the whole thing away.
+
+Yet the letter, with the personal grievance, the concern for
+June, the 'rap over the knuckles,' was all so natural.  No wonder
+his father wanted to know what Bosinney meant, no wonder he was
+angry.
+
+It was difficult to refuse!  But why give the thing to him to do?
+That was surely quite unbecoming; but so long as a Forsyte got
+what he was after, he was not too particular about the means,
+provided appearances were saved.
+
+How should he set about it, or how refuse?  Both seemed impossible.
+So, young Jolyon!
+
+He arrived at the Club at three o'clock, and the first person he
+saw was Bosinney himself, seated in a corner, staring out of the
+window.
+
+Young Jolyon sat down not far off, and began nervously to
+reconsider his position.  He looked covertly at Bosinney sitting
+there unconscious.  He did not know him very well, and studied
+him attentively for perhaps the first time; an unusual looking
+man, unlike in dress, face, and manner to most of the other
+members of the Club--young Jolyon himself, however different he
+had become in mood and temper, had always retained the neat
+reticence of Forsyte appearance.  He alone among Forsytes was
+ignorant of Bosinney's nickname.  The man was unusual, not
+eccentric, but unusual; he looked worn, too, haggard, hollow in
+the cheeks beneath those broad, high cheekbones, though without
+any appearance of ill-health, for he was strongly built, with
+curly hair that seemed to show all the vitality of a fine
+constitution.
+
+Something in his face and attitude touched young Jolyon.  He knew
+what suffering was like, and this man looked as if he were
+suffering.
+
+He got up and touched his arm.
+
+Bosinney started, but exhibited no sign of embarrassment on
+seeing who it was.
+
+Young Jolyon sat down.
+
+"I haven't seen you for a long time," he said.  "How are you
+getting on with  my cousin's house?"
+
+"It'll be finished in about a week."
+
+"I congratulate you!"
+
+"Thanks--I don't know that it's much of a subject for
+congratulation."
+
+"No?" queried young Jolyon; "I should have thought you'd be glad
+to get a long job like that off your hands; but I suppose you
+feel it much as I do when I part with a picture--a sort of
+child?"
+
+He looked kindly at Bosinney.
+
+"Yes," said the latter more cordially, "it goes out from you and
+there's an end of it.  I didn't know you painted."
+
+"Only water-colours; I can't say I believe in my work."
+
+"Don't believe in it?  There--how can you do it?  Work's no use
+unless you believe in it!"
+
+"Good," said young Jolyon; "it's exactly what I've always said.
+By-the-bye, have you noticed that whenever one says 'Good,' one
+always adds 'it's exactly what I've always said'!  But if you ask
+me how I do it, I answer, because I'm a Forsyte."
+
+"A Forsyte!  I never thought of you as one!"
+
+"A Forsyte," replied young Jolyon, "is not an uncommon animal.
+There are hundreds among the members of this Club.  Hundreds out
+there in the streets; you meet them wherever you go!"
+
+"And how do you tell them, may I ask?" said Bosinney.
+
+"By their sense of property.  A Forsyte takes a practical--one
+might say a commonsense--view of things, and a practical view of
+things is based fundamentally on a sense of property.  A Forsyte,
+you will notice, never gives himself away."
+
+"Joking?"
+
+Young Jolyon's eye twinkled.
+
+"Not much.  As a Forsyte myself, I have no business to talk.  But
+I'm a kind of thoroughbred mongrel; now, there's no mistaking
+you: You're as different from me as I am from my Uncle James, who
+is the perfect specimen of a Forsyte.  His sense of property is
+extreme, while you have practically none.  Without me in between,
+you would seem like a different species.  I'm the missing link.
+We are, of course, all of us the slaves of property, and I admit
+that it's a question of degree, but what I call a 'Forsyte' is a
+man who is decidedly more than less a slave of property.  He
+knows a good thing, he knows a safe thing, and his grip on
+property--it doesn't matter whether it be wives, houses, money,
+or reputation--is his hall-mark."
+
+"Ah!" murmured Bosinney.  "You should patent the word."
+
+"I should like," said young Jolyon, "to lecture on it:
+
+"Properties and quality of a Forsyte: This little animal,
+disturbed by the ridicule of his own sort, is unaffected in his
+motions by the laughter of strange creatures (you or I).
+Hereditarily disposed to myopia, he recognises only the persons
+of his own species, amongst which he passes an existence of
+competitive tranquillity."
+
+"You talk of them," said Bosinney, "as if they were half
+England."
+
+"They are," repeated young Jolyon, "half England, and the better
+half, too, the safe half, the three per cent. Half, the half
+that counts.  It's their wealth and security that makes
+everything possible; makes your art possible, makes literature,
+science, even religion, possible.  Without Forsytes, who believe
+in none of these things, and habitats but turn them all to use,
+where should we be?  My dear sir, the Forsytes are the middlemen,
+the commercials, the pillars of society, the cornerstones of
+convention; everything that is admirable!"
+
+"I don't know whether I catch your drift," said Bosinney, "but I
+fancy there are plenty of Forsytes, as you call them, in my
+profession."
+
+"Certainly," replied young Jolyon.  "The great majority of
+architects, painters, or writers have no principles, like any
+other Forsytes.  Art, literature, religion, survive by virtue of
+the few cranks who really believe in such things, and the many
+Forsytes who make a commercial use of them.  At a low estimate,
+three-fourths of our Royal Academicians are Forsytes, seven-
+eighths of our novelists, a large proportion of the press.
+Of science I can't speak; they are magnificently represented in
+religion; in the House of Commons perhaps more numerous than
+anywhere; the aristocracy speaks for itself.  But I'm not
+laughing.  It is dangerous to go against the majority and what a
+majority!"  He fixed his eyes on Bosinney: "It's dangerous to let
+anything carry you away--a house, a picture, a--woman!"
+
+They looked at each other.--And, as though he had done that which
+no Forsyte did--given himself away, young Jolyon drew into his
+shell.  Bosinney broke the silence.
+
+"Why do you take your own people as the type?" said he.
+
+"My people," replied young Jolyon, "are not very extreme, and
+they have their own private peculiarities, like every other
+family, but they possess in a remarkable degree those two
+qualities which are the real tests of a Forsyte--the power of
+never being able to give yourself up to anything soul and body,
+and the 'sense of property'."
+
+Bosinney smiled: "How about the big one, for instance?"
+
+"Do you mean Swithin?" asked young Jolyon.  "Ah! in Swithin
+there's something primeval still.  The town and middle-class
+life haven't digested him yet.  All the old centuries of farmwork
+and brute force have settled in him, and there they've stuck, for
+all he's so distinguished."
+
+Bosinney seemed to ponder.  "Well, you've hit your cousin Soames
+off to the life," he said suddenly.  "He'll never blow his brains
+out."
+
+Young Jolyon shot at him a penetrating glance.
+
+"No," he said; "he won't.  That's why he's to be reckoned with.
+
+Look out for their grip!  It's easy to laugh, but don't mistake
+me.  It doesn't do to despise a Forsyte; it doesn't do to
+disregard them!"
+
+"Yet you've done it yourself!"
+
+Young Jolyon acknowledged the hit by losing his smile.
+
+"You forget," he said with a queer pride, "I can hold on, too--
+I'm a Forsyte myself.  We're all in the path of great forces.
+The man who leaves the shelter of the wall--well--you know what I
+mean.  I don't," he ended very low, as though uttering a threat,
+"recommend every man to-go-my-way.  It depends."
+
+The colour rushed into Bosinney's face, but soon receded, leaving
+it sallow-brown as before.  He gave a short laugh, that left his
+lips fixed in a queer, fierce smile; his eyes mocked young
+Jolyon.
+
+"Thanks," he said.  "It's deuced kind of you.  But you're not the
+only chaps that can hold on."  He rose.
+
+Young Jolyon looked after him as he walked away, and, resting his
+head on his hand, sighed.
+
+In the drowsy, almost empty room the only sounds were the rustle
+of newspapers, the scraping of matches being struck.  He stayed a
+long time without moving, living over again those days when he,
+too, had sat long hours watching the clock, waiting for the
+minutes to pass--long hours full of the torments of uncertainty,
+and of a fierce, sweet aching; and the slow, delicious agony of
+that season came back to him with its old poignancy.  The sight
+of Bosinney, with his haggard face, and his restless eyes always
+wandering to the clock, had roused in him a pity, with which was
+mingled strange, irresistible envy.
+
+He knew the signs so well.  Whither was he going--to what sort of
+fate?  What kind of woman was it who was drawing him to her by
+that magnetic force which no consideration of honour, no
+principle, no interest could withstand; from which the only
+escape was flight.
+
+Flight!  But why should Bosinney fly?  A man fled when he was in
+danger of destroying hearth and home, when there were children,
+when he felt himself trampling down ideals, breaking something.
+But here, so he had heard, it was all broken to his hand.
+
+He himself had not fled, nor would he fly if it were all to come
+over again.  Yet he had gone further than Bosinney, had broken up
+his own unhappy home, not someone else's: And the old saying came
+back to him: 'A man's fate lies in his own heart.'
+
+In his own heart!  The proof of the pudding was in the eating--
+Bosinney had still to eat his pudding.
+
+His thoughts passed to the woman, the woman whom he did not know,
+but the outline of whose story he had heard.
+
+An unhappy marriage!  No ill-treatment--only that indefinable
+malaise, that terrible blight which killed all sweetness under
+Heaven; and so from day to day, from night to night, from week to
+week, from year to year, till death should end it
+
+But young Jolyon, the bitterness of whose own feelings time had
+assuaged, saw Soames' side of the question too.  Whence should a
+man like his cousin, saturated with all the prejudices and
+beliefs of his class, draw the insight or inspiration necessary
+to break up this life?  It was a question of imagination, of
+projecting himself into the future beyond the unpleasant gossip,
+sneers, and tattle that followed on such separations, beyond the
+passing pangs that the lack of the sight of her would cause,
+beyond the grave disapproval of the worthy.  But few men, and
+especially few men of Soames' class, had imagination enough for
+that.  A deal of mortals in this world, and not enough
+imagination to go round!  And sweet Heaven, what a difference
+between theory and practice; many a man, perhaps even Soames,
+held chivalrous views on such matters, who when the shoe pinched
+found a distinguishing factor that made of himself an exception.
+
+Then, too, he distrusted his judgment.  He had been through the
+experience himself, had tasted too the dregs the bitterness of an
+unhappy marriage, and how could he take the wide and dispassionate
+view of those who had never been within sound of the battle?
+His evidence was too first-hand--like the evidence on military
+matters of a soldier who has been through much active service,
+against that of civilians who have not suffered the disadvantage
+of seeing things too close.  Most people would consider such a
+marriage as that of Soames and Irene quite fairly successful;
+he had money, she had beauty; it was a case for compromise.
+There was no reason why they should not jog along, even if they
+hated each other.  It would not matter if they went their own
+ways a little so long as the decencies were observed--the
+sanctity of the marriage tie, of the common home, respected.
+Half the marriages of the upper classes were conducted on these
+lines: Do not offend the susceptibilities of Society; do not
+offend the susceptibilities of the Church.  To avoid offending
+these is worth the sacrifice of any private feelings.  The
+advantages of the stable home are visible, tangible, so many
+pieces of property; there is no risk in the statu quo.  To break
+up a home is at the best a dangerous experiment, and selfish into
+the bargain.
+
+This was the case for the defence, and young Jolyon sighed.
+
+'The core of it all,' he thought, 'is property, but there are
+many people who would not like it put that way.  To them it is
+"the sanctity of the marriage tie"; but the sanctity of the
+marriage tie is dependent on the sanctity of the family, and the
+sanctity of the family is dependent on the sanctity of property.
+And yet I imagine all these people are followers of One who never
+owned anything.  It is curious!'
+
+And again young Jolyon sighed.
+
+'Am I going on my way home to ask any poor devils I meet to share
+my dinner, which will then be too little for myself, or, at all
+events, for my wife, who is necessary to my health and happiness?
+It may be that after all Soames does well to exercise his rights
+and support by his practice the sacred principle of property
+which benefits us all, with the exception of those who suffer by
+the process.'
+
+And so he left his chair, threaded his way through the maze of
+seats, took his hat, and languidly up the hot streets crowded
+with carriages, reeking with dusty odours, wended his way home.
+
+Before reaching Wistaria Avenue he removed old Jolyon's letter
+from his pocket, and tearing it carefully into tiny pieces,
+scattered them in the dust of the road.
+
+He let himself in with his key, and called his wife's name.  But
+she had gone out, taking Jolly and Holly, and the house was
+empty; alone in the garden the dog Balthasar lay in the shade
+snapping at flies.
+
+Young Jolyon took his seat there, too, under the pear-tree that
+bore no fruit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+BOSINNEY ON PAROLE
+
+
+The day after the evening at Richmond Soames returned from Henley
+by a morning train.  Not constitutionally interested in
+amphibious sports, his visit had been one of business rather than
+
+pleasure, a client of some importance having asked him down.
+
+He went straight to the City, but finding things slack, he left
+at three o'clock, glad of this chance to get home quietly.  Irene
+did not expect him.  Not that he had any desire to spy on her
+actions, but there was no harm in thus unexpectedly surveying the
+scene.
+
+After changing to Park clothes he went into the drawing-room.
+She was sitting idly in the corner of the sofa, her favourite
+seat; and there were circles under her eyes, as though she had
+not slept.
+
+He asked: "How is it you're in?  Are you expecting somebody?"
+
+"Yes that is, not particularly."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Mr. Bosinney said he might come."
+
+"Bosinney.  He ought to be at work."
+
+To this she made no answer.
+
+"Well," said Soames, "I want you to come out to the Stores with
+me, and after that we'll go to the Park."
+
+"I don't want to go out; I have a headache."
+
+Soames replied: "If ever I want you to do anything, you've always
+got a headache.  It'll do you good to come and sit under the
+trees."
+
+She did not answer.
+
+Soames was silent for some minutes; at last he said: "I don't
+know what your idea of a wife's duty is.  I never have known!"
+
+He had not expected her to reply, but she did.
+
+"I have tried to do what you want; it's not my fault that I
+haven't been able to put my heart into it."
+
+"Whose fault is it, then?" He watched her askance.
+
+"Before we were married you promised to let me go if our marriage
+was not a success.  Is it a success?"
+
+Soames frowned.
+
+"Success," he stammered--"it would be a success if you behaved
+yourself properly!"
+
+"I have tried," said Irene.  "Will you let me go.
+
+Soames turned away.  Secretly alarmed, he took refuge in bluster.
+
+"Let you go?  You don't know what you're talking about.  Let you
+go?  How can I let you go?  We're married, aren't we?  Then, what
+are you talking about?  For God's sake, don't let's have any of
+this sort of nonsense!  Get your hat on, and come and sit in the
+Park."
+
+"Then, you won't let me go?"
+
+He felt her eyes resting on him with a strange, touching look.
+
+"Let you go!" he said; "and what on earth would you do with
+yourself if I did?  You've got no money!"
+
+"I could manage somehow."
+
+He took a swift turn up and down the room; then came and stood
+before her.
+
+"Understand," he said, "once and for all, I won't have you say
+this sort of thing.  Go and get your hat on!"
+
+She did not move.
+
+"I suppose," said Soames, "you don't want to miss Bosinney if he
+comes!"
+
+Irene got up slowly and left the room.  She came down with her
+hat on.
+
+They went out.
+
+In the Park, the motley hour of mid-afternoon, when foreigners
+and other pathetic folk drive, thinking themselves to be in
+fashion, had passed; the right, the proper, hour had come, was
+nearly gone, before Soames and Irene seated themselves under the
+Achilles statue.
+
+It was some time since he had enjoyed her company in the Park.
+That was one of the past delights of the first two seasons of his
+married life, when to feel himself the possessor of this gracious
+creature before all London had been his greatest, though secret,
+pride.  How many afternoons had he not sat beside her, extremely
+neat, with light grey gloves and faint, supercilious smile,
+nodding to acquaintances, and now and again removing his hat.
+
+His light grey gloves were still on his hands, and on his lips
+his smile sardonic, but where the feeling in his heart?
+
+The seats were emptying fast, but still he kept her there, silent
+and pale, as though to work out a secret punishment.  Once or
+twice he made some comment, and she bent her head, or answered
+"Yes" with a tired smile.
+
+Along the rails a man was walking so fast that people stared
+after him when he passed.
+
+"Look at that ass!" said Soames; "he must be mad to walk like
+that in this heat!"
+
+He turned; Irene had made a rapid movement.
+
+"Hallo!" he said: "it's our friend the Buccaneer!"
+
+And he sat still, with his sneering smile, conscious that Irene
+was sitting still, and smiling too.
+
+"Will she bow to him?" he thought.
+
+But she made no sign.
+
+Bosinney reached the end of the rails, and came walking back
+amongst the chairs, quartering his ground like a pointer.  When
+he saw them he stopped dead, and raised his hat.
+
+The smile never left Soames' face; he also took off his hat.
+
+Bosinney came up, looking exhausted, like a man after hard
+physical exercise; the sweat stood in drops on his brow, and
+Soames' smile seemed to say: "You've had a trying time, my friend
+....  What are you doing in the Park?" he asked.  "We thought
+you despised such frivolity!"
+
+Bosinney did not seem to hear; he made his answer to Irene: "I've
+been round to your place; I hoped I should find you in."
+
+Somebody tapped Soames on the back, and spoke to him; and in the
+exchange of those platitudes over his shoulder, he missed her
+answer, and took a resolution.
+
+"We're just going in," he said to Bosinney; "you'd better come
+back to dinner with us." Into that invitation he put a strange
+bravado, a stranger pathos: "You, can't deceive me," his look and
+voice seemed saying, "but see--I trust you--I'm not afraid of
+you!"
+
+They started back to Montpellier Square together, Irene between
+them.  In the crowded streets Soames went on in front.  He did
+not listen to their conversation; the strange resolution of
+trustfulness he had taken seemed to animate even his secret
+conduct.  Like a gambler, he said to himself: 'It's a card I dare
+not throw away--I must play it for what it's worth.  I have not
+too many chances.'
+
+He dressed slowly, heard her leave her room and go downstairs,
+and, for full five minutes after, dawdled about in his dressing-
+room.  Then he went down, purposely shutting the door loudly to
+show that he was coming.  He found them standing by the hearth,
+perhaps talking, perhaps not; he could not say.
+
+He played his part out in the farce, the long evening through--
+his manner to his guest more friendly than it had ever been
+before; and when at last Bosinney went, he said: "You must come
+again soon; Irene likes to have you to talk about the house!"
+Again his voice had the strange bravado and the stranger pathos;
+but his hand was cold as ice.
+
+Loyal to his resolution, he turned away from their parting,
+turned away from his wife as she stood under the hanging lamp to
+say good-night--away from the sight of her golden head shining so
+under the light, of her smiling mournful lips; away from the
+sight of Bosinney's eyes looking at her, so like a dog's looking
+at its master.
+
+And he went to bed with the certainty that Bosinney was in love
+with his wife.
+
+The summer night was hot, so hot and still that through every
+opened window came in but hotter air.  For long hours he lay
+listening to her breathing.
+
+She could sleep, but he must lie awake.  And, lying awake, he
+hardened himself to play the part of the serene and trusting
+husband.
+
+In the small hours he slipped out of bed, and passing into his
+dressing-room, leaned by the open window.
+
+He could hardly breathe.
+
+A night four years ago came back to him--the night but one before
+his marriage; as hot and stifling as this.
+
+He remembered how he had lain in a long cane chair in the window
+of his sitting-room off Victoria Street.  Down below in a side
+street a man had banged at a door, a woman had cried out; he
+remembered, as though it were now, the sound of the scuffle, the
+slam of the door, the dead silence that followed.  And then the
+early water-cart, cleansing the reek of the streets, had
+approached through the strange-seeming, useless lamp-light; he
+seemed to hear again its rumble, nearer and nearer, till it
+passed and slowly died away.
+
+He leaned far out of the dressing-room window over the little
+court below, and saw the first light spread.  The outlines of
+dark walls and roofs were blurred for a moment, then came out
+sharper than before.
+
+He remembered how that other night he had watched the lamps
+paling all the length of Victoria Street; how he had hurried on
+his clothes and gone down into the street, down past houses and
+squares, to the street where she was staying, and there had stood
+and looked at the front of the little house, as still and grey as
+the face of a dead man.
+
+And suddenly it shot through his mind; like a sick man's fancy:
+What's he doing?--that fellow who haunts me, who was here this
+evening, who's in love with my wife--prowling out there, perhaps,
+looking for her as I know he was looking for her this afternoon;
+watching my house now, for all I can tell!
+
+He stole across the landing to the front of the house, stealthily
+drew aside a blind, and raised a window.
+
+The grey light clung about the trees of the square, as though
+Night, like a great downy moth, had brushed them with her wings.
+The lamps were still alight, all pale, but not a soul stirred--no
+living thing in sight
+
+Yet suddenly, very faint, far off in the deathly stillness, he
+heard a cry writhing, like the voice of some wandering soul
+barred out of heaven, and crying for its happiness.  There it was
+again--again!  Soames shut the window, shuddering.
+
+Then he thought: 'Ah!  it's only the peacocks, across the water.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+JUNE PAYS SOME CALLS
+
+
+
+Jolyon stood in the narrow hall at Broadstairs, inhaling that
+odour of oilcloth and herrings which permeates all respectable
+seaside lodging-houses.  On a chair--a shiny leather chair,
+displaying its horsehair through a hole in the top left-hand
+corner--stood a black despatch case.  This he was filling with
+papers, with the Times, and a bottle of Eau-de Cologne.  He had
+meetings that day of the 'Globular Gold Concessions' and the 'New
+Colliery Company, Limited,' to which he was going up, for he
+never missed a Board; to 'miss a Board' would be one more piece
+of evidence that he was growing old, and this his jealous Forsyte
+spirit could not bear.
+
+His eyes, as he filled that black despatch case, looked as if at
+any moment they might blaze up with anger.  So gleams the eye of
+a schoolboy, baited by a ring of his companions; but he controls
+himself, deterred by the fearful odds against him.  And old
+Jolyon controlled himself, keeping down, with his masterful
+restraint now slowly wearing out, the irritation fostered in him
+by the conditions of his life.
+
+He had received from his son an unpractical letter, in which by
+rambling generalities the boy seemed trying to get out of
+answering a plain question.  'I've seen Bosinney,' he said; 'he
+is not a criminal.  The more I see of people the more I am
+convinced that they are never good or bad--merely comic, or
+pathetic.  You probably don't agree with me!'
+
+Old Jolyon did not; he considered it cynical to so express
+oneself; he had not yet reached that point of old age when even
+Forsytes, bereft of those illusions and principles which they
+have cherished carefully for practical purposes but never
+believed in, bereft of all corporeal enjoyment, stricken to the
+very heart by having nothing left to hope for--break through the
+barriers of reserve and say things they would never have believed
+themselves capable of saying.
+
+Perhaps he did not believe in 'goodness' and 'badness' any more
+than his son; but as he would have said: He didn't know--couldn't
+tell; there might be something in it; and why, by an unnecessary
+expression of disbelief, deprive yourself of possible advantage?
+
+Accustomed to spend his holidays among the mountains, though
+(like a true Forsyte) he had never attempted anything too
+adventurous or too foolhardy, he had been passionately fond of
+them.  And when the wonderful view (mentioned in Baedeker--
+'fatiguing but repaying'--was disclosed to him after the effort
+of the climb, he had doubtless felt the existence of some great,
+dignified principle crowning the chaotic strivings, the petty
+precipices, and ironic little dark chasms of life.  This was as
+near to religion, perhaps, as his practical spirit had ever gone.
+
+But it was many years since he had been to the mountains.  He had
+taken June there two seasons running, after his wife died, and
+had realized bitterly that his walking days were over.
+
+To that old mountain--given confidence in a supreme order of
+things he had long been a stranger.
+
+He knew himself to be old, yet he felt young; and this troubled
+him.  It troubled and puzzled him, too, to think that he, who had
+always been so careful, should be father and grandfather to such
+as seemed born to disaster.  He had nothing to say against Jo--
+who could say anything against the boy, an amiable chap?--but his
+position was deplorable, and this business of June's nearly as
+bad.  It seemed like a fatality, and a fatality was one of those
+things no man of his character could either understand or put up
+with.
+
+In writing to his son he did not really hope that anything would
+come of it.  Since the ball at Roger's he had seen too clearly
+how the land lay--he could put two and two together quicker than
+most men--and, with the example of his own son before his eyes,
+knew better than any Forsyte of them all that the pale flame
+singes men's wings whether they will or no.
+
+In the days before June's engagement, when she and Mrs. Soames
+were always together, he had seen enough of Irene to feel the
+spell she cast over men.  She was not a flirt, not even a
+coquette--words dear to the heart of his generation, which loved
+to define things by a good, broad, inadequate word--but she was
+dangerous.  He could not say why.  Tell him of a quality innate
+in some women--a seductive power beyond their own control!  He
+would but answer: 'Humbug!'  She was dangerous, and there was an
+end of it.  He wanted to close his eyes to that affair.  If it
+was, it was; be did not want to hear any more about it--he only
+wanted to save June's position and her peace of mind.  He still
+hoped she might once more become a comfort to himself.
+
+And so he had written.  He got little enough out of the answer.
+As to what young Jolyon had made of the interview, there was
+practically only the queer sentence: 'I gather that he's in the
+stream.' The stream!  What stream?  What was this new-fangled way
+of talking?
+
+He sighed, and folded the last of the papers under the flap of
+the bag; he knew well enough what was meant.
+
+June came out of the dining-room, and helped him on with his
+summer coat.  From her costume, and the expression of her little
+resolute face, he saw at once what was coming.
+
+"I'm going with you," she said.
+
+"Nonsense, my dear; I go straight into the City.  I can't have
+you racketting about!"
+
+"I must see old Mrs. Smeech."
+
+"Oh, your precious 'lame ducks!" grumbled out old Jolyon.  He
+did not believe her excuse, but ceased his opposition.  There was
+no doing anything with that pertinacity of hers.
+
+At Victoria he put her into the carriage which had been ordered
+for himself--a characteristic action, for he had no petty
+selfishnesses.
+
+"Now, don't you go tiring yourself, my darling," he said, and
+took a cab on into the city.
+
+June went first to a back-street in Paddington, where Mrs.
+Smeech, her 'lame duck,' lived--an aged person, connected with
+the charring interest; but after half an hour spent in hearing
+her habitually lamentable recital, and dragooning her into
+temporary comfort, she went on to Stanhope Gate.  The great house
+was closed and dark.
+
+She had decided to learn something at all costs.  It was better
+to face the worst, and have it over.  And this was her plan: To
+go first to Phil's aunt, Mrs. Baynes, and, failing information
+there, to Irene herself.  She had no clear notion of what she
+would gain by these visits.
+
+At three o'clock she was in Lowndes Square.  With a woman's
+instinct when trouble is to be faced, she had put on her best
+frock, and went to the battle with a glance as courageous as old
+Jolyon's itself.  Her tremors had passed into eagerness.
+
+Mrs. Baynes, Bosinney's aunt (Louisa was her name), was in her
+kitchen when June was announced, organizing the cook, for she was
+an excellent housewife, and, as Baynes always said, there was 'a
+lot in a good dinner.'  He did his best work after dinner.  It was
+Baynes who built that remarkably fine row of tall crimson houses
+in Kensington which compete with so many others for the title of
+'the ugliest in London.'
+
+On hearing June's name, she went hurriedly to her bedroom, and,
+taking two large bracelets from a red morocco case in a locked
+drawer, put them on her white wrists--for she possessed in a
+remarkable degree that 'sense of property,' which, as we know, is
+the touchstone of Forsyteism, and the foundation of good
+morality.
+
+Her figure, of medium height and broad build, with a tendency to
+embonpoint, was reflected by the mirror of her whitewood
+wardrobe, in a gown made under her own organization, of one of
+those half-tints, reminiscent of the distempered walls of
+corridors in large hotels.  She raised her hands to her hair,
+which she wore a la Princesse de Galles, and touched it here and
+there, settling it more firmly on her head, and her eyes were
+full of an unconscious realism, as though she were looking in the
+face one of life's sordid facts, and making the best of it.  In
+youth her cheeks had been of cream and roses, but they were
+mottled now by middle-age, and again that hard, ugly directness
+came into her eyes as she dabbed a powder-puff across her
+forehead.  Putting the puff down, she stood quite still before
+the glass, arranging a smile over her high, important nose, her,
+chin, (never large, and now growing smaller with the increase of
+her neck), her thin-lipped, down-drooping mouth.  Quickly, not to
+lose the effect, she grasped her skirts strongly in both hands,
+and went downstairs.
+
+She had been hoping for this visit for some time past.  Whispers
+had reached her that things were not all right between her nephew
+and his fiancee.  Neither of them had been near her for weeks.
+She had asked Phil to dinner many times; his invariable answer
+had been 'Too busy.'
+
+Her instinct was alarmed, and the instinct in such matters of
+this excellent woman was keen.  She ought to have been a Forsyte;
+in young Jolyon's sense of the word, she certainly had that
+privilege, and merits description as such.
+
+She had married off her three daughters in a way that people said
+was beyond their deserts, for they had the professional plainness
+only to be found, as a rule, among the female kind of the more
+legal callings.  Her name was upon the committees of numberless
+charities connected with the Church-dances, theatricals, or
+bazaars--and she never lent her name unless sure beforehand that
+everything had been thoroughly organized.
+
+She believed, as she often said, in putting things on a commercial
+basis; the proper function of the Church, of charity, indeed,
+of everything, was to strengthen the fabric of 'Society.'
+Individual action, therefore, she considered immoral.
+Organization was the only thing, for by organization alone could
+you feel sure that you were getting a return for your money.
+Organization--and again, organization!  And there is no doubt
+that she was what old Jolyon called her--"a 'dab' at that"--he
+went further, he called her "a humbug."
+
+The enterprises to which she lent her name were organized so
+admirably that by the time the takings were handed over, they
+were indeed skim milk divested of all cream of human kindness.
+But as she often justly remarked, sentiment was to be deprecated.
+She was, in fact, a little academic.
+
+This great and good woman, so highly thought of in ecclesiastical
+circles, was one of the principal priestesses in the temple of
+Forsyteism, keeping alive day and night a sacred flame to the God
+of Property, whose altar is inscribed with those inspiring words:
+'Nothing for nothing, and really remarkably little for sixpence.'
+
+When she entered a room it was felt that something substantial
+had come in, which was probably the reason of her popularity as a
+patroness.  People liked something substantial when they had paid
+money for it; and they would look at her--surrounded by her staff
+in charity ballrooms, with her high nose and her broad, square
+figure, attired in an uniform covered with sequins--as though she
+were a general.
+
+The only thing against her was that she had not a double name.
+She was a power in upper middle-class society, with its hundred
+sets and circles, all intersecting on the common battlefield of
+charity functions, and on that battlefield brushing skirts so
+pleasantly with the skirts of Society with the capital 'S.' She
+was a power in society with the smaller 's,' that larger, more
+significant, and more powerful body, where the commercially
+Christian institutions, maxims, and 'principle,' which Mrs.
+Baynes embodied, were real life-blood, circulating freely, real
+business currency, not merely the sterilized imitation that
+flowed in the veins of smaller Society with the larger ' S.'
+People who knew her felt her to be sound--a sound woman, who
+never gave herself away, nor anything else, if she could possibly
+help it.
+
+She had been on the worst sort of terms with Bosinney's father,
+who had not infrequently made her the object of an unpardonable
+ridicule.  She alluded to him now that he was gone as her 'poor,
+dear, irreverend brother.'
+
+She greeted June with the careful effusion of which she was a
+mistress, a little afraid of her as far as a woman of her
+eminence in the commercial and Christian world could be afraid--
+for so slight a girl June had a great dignity, the fearlessness
+of her eyes gave her that.  And Mrs. Baynes, too, shrewdly
+recognized that behind the uncompromising frankness of June's
+manner there was much of the Forsyte.  If the girl had been
+merely frank and courageous, Mrs. Baynes would have thought her
+'cranky,' and despised her; if she had been merely a Forsyte,
+like Francie--let us say--she would have patronized her from
+sheer weight of metal; but June, small though she was--Mrs.
+Baynes habitually admired quantity--gave her an uneasy feeling;
+and she placed her in a chair opposite the light.
+
+There was another reason for her respect which Mrs. Baynes, too
+good a churchwoman to be worldly, would have been the last to
+admit--she often heard her husband describe old Jolyon as
+extremely well off, and was biassed towards his granddaughter for
+the soundest of all reasons.  To-day she felt the emotion with
+which we read a novel describing a hero and an inheritance,
+nervously anxious lest, by some frightful lapse of the novelist,
+the young man should be left without it at the end.
+
+Her manner was warm; she had never seen so clearly before how
+distinguished and desirable a girl this was.  She asked after old
+Jolyon's health.  A wonderful man for his age; so upright, and
+young looking, and how old was he?  Eighty-one!  She would never
+have thought it!  They were at the sea!  Very nice for them; she
+supposed June heard from Phil every day?  Her light grey eyes
+became more prominent as she asked this question; but the girl
+met the glance without flinching.
+
+"No," she said, "he never writes!"
+
+Mrs. Baynes's eyes dropped; they had no intention of doing so,
+but they did.  They recovered immediately.
+
+"Of course not.  That's Phil all over--he was always like that!"
+
+"Was he?" said June.
+
+The brevity of the answer caused Mrs. Baynes's bright smile a
+moment's hesitation; she disguised it by a quick movement, and
+spreading her skirts afresh, said: "Why, my dear--he's quite the
+most harum-scarum person; one never pays the slightest attention
+to what he does!"
+
+The conviction came suddenly to June that she was wasting her
+time; even were she to put a question point-blank, she would
+never get anything out of this woman.
+
+'Do you see him?' she asked, her face crimsoning.
+
+The perspiration broke out on Mrs. Baynes' forehead beneath the
+powder.
+
+"Oh, yes!  I don't remember when he was here last--indeed, we
+haven't seen much of him lately.  He's so busy with your cousin's
+house; I'm told it'll be finished directly.  We must organize a
+little dinner to celebrate the event; do come and stay the night
+with us!"
+
+"Thank you," said June.  Again she thought: 'I'm only wasting my
+time.  This woman will tell me nothing.'
+
+She got up to go.  A change came over Mrs. Baynes.  She rose too;
+her lips twitched, she fidgeted her hands.  Something was
+evidently very wrong, and she did not dare to ask this girl, who
+stood there, a slim, straight little figure, with her decided
+face, her set jaw, and resentful eyes.  She was not accustomed to
+be afraid of asking question's--all organization was based on
+the asking of questions!
+
+But the issue was so grave that her nerve, normally strong, was
+fairly shaken; only that morning her husband had said: "Old Mr.
+Forsyte must be worth well over a hundred thousand pounds!"
+
+And this girl stood there, holding out her hand--holding out her
+hand!
+
+The chance might be slipping away--she couldn't tell--the chance
+of keeping her in the family, and yet she dared not speak.
+
+Her eyes followed June to the door.
+
+It closed.
+
+Then with an exclamation Mrs. Baynes ran forward, wobbling her
+bulky frame from side to side, and opened it again.
+
+Too late!  She heard the front door click, and stood still, an
+expression of real anger and mortification on her face.
+
+June went along the Square with her bird-like quickness.  She
+detested that woman now whom in happier days she had been
+accustomed to think so kind.  Was she always to be put off thus,
+and forced to undergo this torturing suspense?
+
+She would go to Phil himself, and ask him what he meant.  She had
+the right to know.  She hurried on down Sloane Street till she
+came to Bosinney's number.  Passing the swing-door at the bottom,
+she ran up the stairs, her heart thumping painfully.
+
+At the top of the third flight she paused for breath, and holding
+on to the bannisters, stood listening.  No sound came from above.
+
+With a very white face she mounted the last flight.  She saw the
+door, with his name on the plate.  And the resolution that had
+brought her so far evaporated.
+
+The full meaning of her conduct came to her.  She felt hot all
+over; the palms of her hands were moist beneath the thin silk
+covering of her gloves.
+
+She drew back to the stairs, but did not descend.  Leaning
+against the rail she tried to get rid of a feeling of being
+choked; and she gazed at the door with a sort of dreadful
+courage.  No! she refused to go down.  Did it matter what people
+thought of her?  They would never know!  No one would help her if
+she did not help herself!  She would go through with it.
+
+Forcing herself, therefore, to leave the support of the wall, she
+rang the bell.  The door did not open, and all her shame and fear
+suddenly abandoned her; she rang again and again, as though in
+spite of its emptiness she could drag some response out of that
+closed room, some recompense for the shame and fear that visit
+had cost her.  It did not open; she left off ringing, and,
+sitting down at the top of the stairs, buried her face in her
+hands.
+
+Presently she stole down, out into the air.  She felt as though
+she had passed through a bad illness, and had no desire now but
+to get home as quickly as she could.  The people she met seemed
+to know where she had been, what she had been doing; and
+suddenly--over on the opposite side, going towards his rooms from
+the direction of Montpellier Square--she saw Bosinney himself.
+
+She made a movement to cross into the traffic.  Their eyes met,
+and he raised his hat.  An omnibus passed, obscuring her view;
+then, from the edge of the pavement, through a gap in the
+traffic, she saw him walking on.
+
+And June stood motionless, looking after him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+PERFECTION OF THE HOUSE
+
+
+'One mockturtle, clear; one oxtail; two glasses of port.'
+
+In the upper room at French's, where a Forsyte could still get
+heavy English food, James and his son were sitting down to lunch.
+
+Of all eating-places James liked best to come here; there was
+something unpretentious, well-flavoured, and filling about it,
+and though he had been to a certain extent corrupted by the
+necessity for being fashionable, and the trend of habits keeping
+pace with an income that would increase, he still hankered in
+quiet City moments after the tasty fleshpots of his earlier days.
+Here you were served by hairy English waiters in aprons; there
+was sawdust on the floor, and three round gilt looking-glasses
+hung just above the line of sight.  They had only recently done
+away with the cubicles, too, in which you could have your chop,
+prime chump, with a floury-potato, without seeing your
+neighbours, like a gentleman.
+
+He tucked the top corner of his napkin behind the third button of
+his waistcoat, a practice he had been obliged to abandon years
+ago in the West End.  He felt that he should relish his soup--the
+entire morning had been given to winding up the estate of an old
+friend.
+
+After filling his mouth with household bread, stale, he at once
+began: "How are you going down to Robin Hill?  You going to take
+Irene?  You'd better take her.  I should think there'll be a lot
+that'll want seeing to."
+
+Without looking up, Soames answered: "She won't go."
+
+"Won't go?  What's the meaning of that?  She's going to live in
+the house, isn't she?"
+
+Soames made no reply.
+
+"I don't know what's coming to women nowadays," mumbled James; "I
+never used to have any trouble with them.  She's had too much
+liberty.  She's spoiled...."
+
+Soames lifted his eyes: "I won't have anything said against her,"
+he said unexpectedly.
+
+The silence was only broken now by the supping of James's soup.
+
+The waiter brought the two glasses of port, but Soames stopped
+him.
+
+"That's not the way to serve port," he said; "take them away, and
+bring the bottle."
+
+Rousing himself from his reverie over the soup, James took one of
+his rapid shifting surveys of surrounding facts.
+
+"Your mother's in bed," he said; "you can have the carriage to
+take you down.  I should think Irene'd like the drive.  This
+young Bosinney'll be there, I suppose, to show you over"
+
+Soames nodded.
+
+"I should like to go and see for myself what sort of a job he's
+made finishing off," pursued James.  "I'll just drive round and
+pick you both up."
+
+"I am going down by train," replied Soames.  "If you like to
+drive round and see, Irene might go with you, I can't tell."
+
+He signed to the waiter to bring the bill, which James paid.
+
+They parted at St. Paul's, Soames branching off to the station,
+James taking his omnibus westwards.
+
+He had secured the corner seat next the conductor, where his long
+legs made it difficult for anyone to get in, and at all who
+passed him he looked resentfully, as if they had no business to
+be using up his air.
+
+He intended to take an opportunity this afternoon of speaking to
+Irene.  A word in time saved nine; and now that she was going to
+live in the country there was a chance for her to turn over a new
+leaf!  He could see that Soames wouldn't stand very much more of
+her goings on!
+
+It did not occur to him to define what he meant by her 'goings
+on'; the expression was wide, vague, and suited to a Forsyte.
+And James had more than his common share of courage after lunch.
+
+On reaching home, he ordered out the barouche, with special
+instructions that the groom was to go too.  He wished to be kind
+to her, and to give her every chance.
+
+When the door of No.62 was opened he could distinctly hear her
+singing, and said so at once, to prevent any chance of being
+denied entrance.
+
+Yes, Mrs. Soames was in, but the maid did not know if she was
+seeing people.
+
+James, moving with the rapidity that ever astonished the
+observers of his long figure and absorbed expression, went
+forthwith into the drawing-room without permitting this to be
+ascertained.  He found Irene seated at the piano with her hands
+arrested on the keys, evidently listening to the voices in the
+hall.  She greeted him without smiling.
+
+"Your mother-in-law's in bed," he began, hoping at once to enlist
+her sympathy.  "I've got the carriage here.  Now, be a good girl,
+and put on your hat and come with me for a drive.  It'll do you
+good!"
+
+Irene looked at him as though about to refuse, but, seeming to
+change her mind, went upstairs, and came down again with her hat
+on.
+
+"Where are you going to take me?" she asked.
+
+"We'll just go down to Robin Hill," said James, spluttering out
+his words very quick; "the horses want exercise, and I should
+like to see what they've been doing down there."
+
+Irene hung back, but again changed her mind, and went out to the
+carriage, James brooding over her closely, to make quite sure.
+
+It was not before he had got her more than half way that he
+began: "Soames is very fond of you--he won't have anything said
+against you; why don't you show him more affection?"
+
+Irene flushed, and said in a low voice: "I can't show what I
+haven't got."
+
+James looked at her sharply; he felt that now he had her in his
+own carriage, with his own horses and servants, he was really in
+command of the situation.  She could not put him off; nor would
+she make a scene in public.
+
+"I can't think what you're about," he said.  "He's a very good
+husband!"
+
+Irene's answer was so low as to be almost inaudible among the
+sounds of traffic.  He caught the words: "You are not married to
+him!"
+
+"What's that got to do with it?  He's given you everything you
+want.  He's always ready to take you anywhere, and now he's built
+you this house in the country.  It's not as if you had anything
+of your own."
+
+"No."
+
+Again James looked at her; he could not make out the expression
+on her face.  She looked almost as if she were going to cry, and
+yet....
+
+"I'm sure," he muttered hastily, "we've all tried to be kind to
+you."
+
+Irene's lips quivered; to his dismay James saw a tear steal down
+her cheek.  He felt a choke rise in his own throat.
+
+"We're all fond of you," he said, "if you'd only"--he was going
+to say, "behave yourself," but changed it to--"if you'd only be
+more of a wife to him."
+
+Irene did not answer, and James, too, ceased speaking.  There was
+something in her silence which disconcerted him; it was not the
+silence of obstinacy, rather that of acquiescence in all that he
+could find to say.  And yet he felt as if he had not had the last
+word.  He could not understand this.
+
+He was unable, however, to long keep silence.
+
+"I suppose that young Bosinney," he said, "will be getting
+married to June now?"
+
+Irene's face changed.  "I don't know," she said; "you should ask
+her."
+
+"Does she write to you?" No.
+
+"How's that?" said James.  "I thought you and she were such great
+friends."
+
+Irene turned on him.  "Again," she said, "you should ask her!"
+
+"Well," flustered James, frightened by her look, "it's very odd
+that I can't get a plain answer to a plain question, but there it
+is."
+
+He sat ruminating over his rebuff, and burst out at last:
+
+"Well, I've warned you.  You won't look ahead.  Soames he doesn't
+say much, but I can see he won't stand a great deal more of this
+sort of thing.  You'll have nobody but yourself to blame, and,
+what's more, you'll get no sympathy from anybody."
+
+Irene bent her head with a little smiling bow.  "I am very much
+obliged to you."
+
+James did not know what on earth to answer.
+
+The bright hot morning had changed slowly to a grey, oppressive
+afternoon; a heavy bank of clouds, with the yellow tinge of
+coming thunder, had risen in the south, and was creeping up.
+
+The branches of the trees dropped motionless across the road
+without the smallest stir of foliage.  A faint odour of glue from
+the heated horses clung in the thick air; the coachman and groom,
+rigid and unbending, exchanged stealthy murmurs on the box,
+without ever turning their heads.
+
+To James' great relief they reached the house at last; the
+silence and impenetrability of this woman by his side, whom he
+had always thought so soft and mild, alarmed him.
+
+The carriage put them down at the door, and they entered.
+
+The hall was cool, and so still that it was like passing into a
+tomb; a shudder ran down James's spine.  He quickly lifted the
+heavy leather curtains between the columns into the inner court.
+
+He could not restrain an exclamation of approval.
+
+The decoration was really in excellent taste.  The dull ruby
+tiles that extended from the foot of the walls to the verge of a
+circular clump of tall iris plants, surrounding in turn a sunken
+basin of white marble filled with water, were obviously of the
+best quality.  He admired extremely the purple leather curtains
+drawn along one entire side, framing a huge white-tiled stove.
+The central partitions of the skylight had been slid back, and
+the warm air from outside penetrated into the very heart of the
+house.
+
+He stood, his hands behind him, his head bent back on his high,
+narrow shoulders, spying the tracery on the columns and the
+pattern of the frieze which ran round the, ivory-coloured walls
+under the gallery.  Evidently, no pains had been spared.  It was
+quite the house of a gentleman.  He went up to the curtains, and,
+having discovered how they were worked, drew them asunder and
+disclosed the picture-gallery, ending in a great window taking up
+the whole end of the room.  It had a black oak floor, and its
+walls, again, were of ivory white.  He went on throwing open
+doors, and peeping in.  Everything was in apple-pie order, ready
+for immediate occupation.
+
+He turned round at last to speak to Irene, and saw her standing
+over in the garden entrance, with her husband and Bosinney.
+
+Though not remarkable for sensibility, James felt at once that
+something was wrong.  He went up to them, and, vaguely alarmed,
+ignorant of the nature of the trouble, made an attempt to smooth
+things over.
+
+"How are you, Mr. Bosinney?" he said, holding out his hand.
+"You've been spending money pretty freely down here, I should
+say!"
+
+Soames turned his back, and walked away.
+
+James looked from Bosinney's frowning face to Irene, and, in his
+agitation, spoke his thoughts aloud: "Well, I can't tell what's
+
+the matter.  Nobody tells me anything!"  And, making off after his
+son, he heard Bosinney's short laugh, and his "Well, thank God!
+You look so...." Most unfortunately he lost the rest.
+
+What had happened?  He glanced back.  Irene was very close to the
+architect, and her face not like the face he knew of her.  He
+hastened up to his son.
+
+Soames was pacing the picture-gallery.
+
+"What's the matter?" said James.  "What's all this?"
+
+Soames looked at him with his supercilious calm unbroken, but
+James knew well enough that he was violently angry.
+
+"Our friend," he said, "has exceeded his instructions again,
+that's all.  So much the worse for him this time."
+
+He turned round and walked back towards the door.  James followed
+hurriedly, edging himself in front.  He saw Irene take her finger
+from before her lips, heard her say something in her ordinary
+voice, and began to speak before he reached them.
+
+"There's a storm coming on.  We'd better get home.  We can't take
+you, I suppose, Mr. Bosinney?  No, I suppose not.  Then,
+good-bye!"  He held out his hand.  Bosinney did not take it, but,
+turning with a laugh, said:
+
+"Good-bye, Mr. Forsyte.  Don't get caught in the storm!" and
+walked away.
+
+"Well," began James, "I don't know...."
+
+But the 'sight of Irene's face stopped him.  Taking hold of his
+daughter-in-law by the elbow, he escorted her towards the
+carriage.  He felt certain, quite certain, they had been making
+some appointment or other....
+
+Nothing in this world is more sure to upset a Forsyte than the
+discovery that something on which he has stipulated to spend a
+certain sum has cost more.  And this is reasonable, for upon the
+accuracy of his estimates the whole policy of his life is
+ordered.  If he cannot rely on definite values of property, his
+compass is amiss; he is adrift upon bitter waters without a helm.
+
+After writing to Bosinney in the terms that have already been
+chronicled, Soames had dismissed the cost of the house from his
+mind.  He believed that he had made the matter of the final cost
+so very plain that the possibility of its being again exceeded
+had really never entered his head.  On hearing from Bosinney that
+his limit of twelve thousand pounds would be exceeded by some-
+thing like four hundred, he had grown white with anger.  His
+original estimate of the cost of the house completed had been ten
+thousand pounds, and he had often blamed himself severely for
+allowing himself to be led into repeated excesses.  Over this
+last expenditure, however, Bosinney had put himself completely in
+the wrong.  How on earth a fellow could make such an ass of
+himself Soames could not conceive; but he had done so, and all
+the rancour and hidden jealousy that had been burning against him
+for so long was now focussed in rage at this crowning piece of
+extravagance.  The attitude of the confident and friendly husband
+was gone.  To preserve property--his wife--he had assumed it, to
+preserve property of another kind he lost it now.
+
+"Ah!" he had said to Bosinney when he could speak, "and I suppose
+you're perfectly contented with yourself.  But I may as well tell
+you that you've altogether mistaken your man!"
+
+What he meant by those words he did not quite know at the time,
+but after dinner he looked up the correspondence between himself
+and Bosinney to make quite sure.  There could be no two opinions
+about it--the fellow had made himself liable for that extra four
+hundred, or, at all events, for three hundred and fifty of it,
+and he would have to make it good.
+
+He was looking at his wife's face when he came to this conclusion.
+Seated in her usual seat on the sofa, she was altering the lace
+on a collar.  She had not once spoken to him all the evening.
+
+He went up to the mantelpiece, and contemplating his face in the
+mirror said: "Your friend the Buccaneer has made a fool of
+himself; he will have to pay for it!"
+
+She looked at him scornfully, and answered: "I don't know what
+you are talking about!"
+
+"You soon will.  A mere trifle, quite beneath your contempt--four
+hundred pounds."
+
+"Do you mean that you are going to make him pay that towards this
+hateful, house?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"And you know he's got nothing?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then you are meaner than I thought you."
+
+Soames turned from the mirror, and unconsciously taking a china
+cup from the mantelpiece, clasped his hands around it as though
+praying.  He saw her bosom rise and fall, her eyes darkening with
+anger, and taking no notice of the taunt, he asked quietly:
+
+"Are you carrying on a flirtation with Bosinney?"
+
+"No, I am not!"
+
+Her eyes met his, and he looked away.  He neither believed nor
+disbelieved her, but he knew that he had made a mistake in
+asking; he never had known, never would know, what she was
+thinking.  The sight of her inscrutable face, the thought of all
+the hundreds of evenings he had seen her sitting there like that
+soft and passive, but unreadable, unknown, enraged him beyond
+measure.
+
+"I believe you are made of stone," he said, clenching his fingers
+so hard that he broke the fragile cup.  The pieces fell into the
+grate.  And Irene smiled.
+
+"You seem to forget," she said, "that cup is not!"
+
+Soames gripped her arm.  "A good beating," he said, "is the only
+thing that would bring you to your senses," but turning on his
+heel, he left the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+SOAMES SITS ON THE STAIRS
+
+
+Soames went upstairs that night that he had gone too far.  He was
+prepared to offer excuses for his words.
+
+He turned out the gas still burning in the passage outside their
+room.  Pausing, with his hand on the knob of the door, he tried
+to shape his apology, for he had no intention of letting her see
+that he was nervous.
+
+But the door did not open, nor when he pulled it and turned the
+handle firmly.  She must have locked it for some reason, and
+forgotten.
+
+Entering his dressing-room, where the gas was also light and
+burning low, he went quickly to the other door.  That too was
+locked.  Then he noticed that the camp bed which he occasionally
+used was prepared, and his sleeping-suit laid out upon it.  He
+put his hand up to his forehead, and brought it away wet.  It
+dawned on him that he was barred out.
+
+He went back to the door, and rattling the handle stealthily,
+called: "Unlock the door, do you hear?  Unlock the door!"
+
+There was a faint rustling, but no answer.
+
+"Do you hear?  Let me in at once--I insist on being let in!"
+
+He could catch the sound of her breathing close to the door, like
+the breathing of a creature threatened by danger.
+
+There was something terrifying in this inexorable silence, in the
+impossibility of getting at her.  He went back to the other door,
+and putting his whole weight against it, tried to burst it open.
+The door was a new one--he had had them renewed himself, in
+readiness for their coming in after the honeymoon.  In a rage he
+lifted his foot to kick in the panel; the thought of the servants
+restrained him, and he felt suddenly that he was beaten.
+
+Flinging himself down in the dressing-room, he took up a book.
+
+But instead of the print he seemed to see his wife--with her
+yellow hair flowing over her bare shoulders, and her great dark
+eyes--standing like an animal at bay.  And the whole meaning of
+her act of revolt came to him.  She meant it to be for good.
+
+He could not sit still, and went to the door again.  He could
+still hear her, and he called: "Irene!  Irene!"
+
+He did not mean to make his voice pathetic.
+
+In ominous answer, the faint sounds ceased.  He stood with
+clenched hands, thinking.
+
+Presently he stole round on tiptoe, and running suddenly at the
+other door, made a supreme effort to break it open.  It creaked,
+but did not yield.  He sat down on the stairs and buried his face
+in his hands.
+
+For a long time he sat there in the dark, the moon through the
+skylight above laying a pale smear which lengthened slowly
+towards him down the stairway.  He tried to be philosophical.
+
+Since she had locked her doors she had no further claim as a
+wife, and he would console himself with other women.
+
+It was but a spectral journey he made among such delights--he had
+no appetite for these exploits.  He had never had much, and he
+had lost the habit.  He felt that he could never recover it.  His
+hunger could only be appeased by his wife, inexorable and
+frightened, behind these shut doors.  No other woman could help
+him.
+
+This conviction came to him with terrible force out there in the
+dark.
+
+His philosophy left him; and surly anger took its place.  Her
+conduct was immoral, inexcusable, worthy of any punishment within
+his power.  He desired no one but her, and she refused him!
+
+She must really hate him, then!  He had never believed it yet.
+He did not believe it now.  It seemed to him incredible.  He felt
+as though he had lost for ever his power of judgment.  If she, so
+soft and yielding as he had always judged her, could take this
+decided step--what could not happen?
+
+Then he asked himself again if she were carrying on an intrigue
+with Bosinney.  He did not believe that she was; he could not
+afford to believe such a reason for her conduct--the thought was
+not to be faced.
+
+It would be unbearable to contemplate the necessity of making his
+marital relations public property.  Short of the most convincing
+proofs he must still refuse to believe, for he did not wish to
+punish himself.  And all the time at heart--he did believe.
+
+The moonlight cast a greyish tinge over his figure, hunched
+against the staircase wall.
+
+Bosinney was in love with her!  He hated the fellow, and would
+not spare him now.  He could and would refuse to pay a penny
+piece over twelve thousand and fifty pounds--the extreme limit
+fixed in the correspondence; or rather he would pay, he would pay
+and sue him for damages.  He would go to Jobling and Boulter and
+put the matter in their hands.  He would ruin the impecunious
+beggar!  And suddenly--though what connection between the
+thoughts?--he reflected that Irene had no money either.  They
+were both beggars.  This gave him a strange satisfaction.
+
+The silence was broken by a faint creaking through the wall.  She
+was going to bed at last.  Ah! Joy and pleasant dreams!  If she
+threw the door open wide he would not go in now!
+
+But his lips, that were twisted in a bitter smile, twitched; he
+covered his eyes with his hands....
+
+It was late the following afternoon when Soames stood in the
+dining-room window gazing gloomily into the Square.
+
+The sunlight still showered on the plane-trees, and in the breeze
+their gay broad leaves shone and swung in rhyme to a barrel organ
+at the corner.  It was playing a waltz, an old waltz that was out
+of fashion, with a fateful rhythm in the notes; and it went on
+and on, though nothing indeed but leaves danced to the tune.
+
+The woman did not look too gay, for she was tired; and from the
+tall houses no one threw her down coppers.  She moved the organ
+on, and three doors off began again.
+
+It was the waltz they had played at Roger's when Irene had danced
+with Bosinney; and the perfume of the gardenias she had worn came
+back to Soames, drifted by the malicious music, as it had been
+drifted to him then, when she passed, her hair glistening, her
+eyes so soft, drawing Bosinney on and on down an endless
+ballroom.
+
+The organ woman plied her handle slowly; she had been grinding
+her tune all day-grinding it in Sloane Street hard by, grinding
+it perhaps to Bosinney himself.
+
+Soames turned, took a cigarette from the carven box, and walked
+back to the window.  The tune had mesmerized him, and there came
+into his view Irene, her sunshade furled, hastening homewards
+down the Square, in a soft, rose-coloured blouse with drooping
+sleeves, that he did not know.  She stopped before the organ,
+took out her purse, and gave the woman money.
+
+Soames shrank back and stood where he could see into the hall.
+
+She came in with her latch-key, put down her sunshade, and stood
+looking at herself in the glass.  Her cheeks were flushed as if
+the sun had burned them; her lips were parted in a smile.  She
+stretched her arms out as though to embrace herself, with a laugh
+that for all the world was like a sob.
+
+Soames stepped forward.
+
+"Very-pretty!" he said.
+
+But as though shot she spun round, and would have passed him up
+the stairs.  He barred the way.
+
+"Why such a hurry?" he said, and his eyes fastened on a curl of
+hair fallen loose across her ear....
+
+He hardly recognised her.  She seemed on fire, so deep and rich
+
+the colour of her cheeks, her eyes, her lips, and of the unusual
+blouse she wore.
+
+She put up her hand and smoothed back the curl.  She was
+breathing fast and deep, as though she had been running, and with
+every breath perfume seemed to come from her hair, and from her
+body, like perfume from an opening flower.
+
+"I don't like that blouse," he said slowly, "it's a soft,
+shapeless thing!"
+
+He lifted his finger towards her breast, but she dashed his hand
+aside.
+
+"Don't touch me!" she cried.
+
+He caught her wrist; she wrenched it away.
+
+"And where may you have been?" he asked.
+
+"In heaven--out of this house!"  With those words she fled
+upstairs.
+
+Outside--in thanksgiving--at the very door, the organ-grinder was
+playing the waltz.
+
+And Soames stood motionless.  What prevented him from following
+her?
+
+Was it that, with the eyes of faith, he saw Bosinney looking down
+from that high window in Sloane Street, straining his eyes for
+yet another glimpse of Irene's vanished figure, cooling his
+flushed face, dreaming of the moment when she flung herself on
+his breast--the scent of her still in the air around, and the
+sound of her laugh that was like a sob?
+
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Mrs. MAcANDER'S EVIDENCE
+
+
+Many  people, no doubt, including the editor of the 'Ultra
+Vivisectionist,' then in the bloom of its first youth, would say
+that Soames was less than a man not to have removed the locks
+from his wife's doors, and, after beating her soundly, resumed
+wedded happiness.
+
+Brutality is not so deplorably diluted by humaneness as it used
+to be, yet a sentimental segment of the population may still be
+relieved to learn that he did none of these things.  For active
+brutality, is not popular with Forsytes; they are too
+circumspect, and, on the whole, too softhearted.  And in Soames
+there was some common pride, not sufficient to make him do a
+really generous action, but enough to prevent his indulging in an
+extremely mean one, except, perhaps, in very hot blood.  Above
+all this true Forsyte refused to feel himself ridiculous.  Short
+of actually beating his wife, he perceived nothing to be done; he
+therefore accepted the situation without another word.
+
+Throughout the summer and autumn he continued to go to the
+office, to sort his pictures, and ask his friends to dinner.
+
+He did not leave town; Irene refused to go away.  The house at
+Robin Hill, finished though it was, remained empty and ownerless.
+Soames had brought a suit against the Buccaneer, in which he
+claimed from him the sum of three hundred and fifty pounds.
+
+A firm of solicitors, Messrs.  Freak and Able, had put in a
+defence on Bosinney's behalf.  Admitting the facts, they raised a
+point on the correspondence which, divested of legal phraseology,
+amounted to this: To speak of 'a free hand in the terms of this
+correspondence' is an Irish bull.
+
+By a chance, fortuitous but not improbable in the close borough
+of legal circles, a good deal of information came to Soames' ear
+anent this line of policy, the working partner in his firm,
+Bustard, happening to sit next at dinner at Walmisley's, the
+Taxing Master, to young Chankery, of the Common Law Bar.
+
+The necessity for talking what is known as 'shop,' which comes on
+all lawyers with the removal of the ladies, caused Chankery, a
+young and promising advocate, to propound an impersonal conundrum
+to his neighbour, whose name he did not know, for, seated as he
+permanently was in the background, Bustard had practically no
+name.
+
+He had, said Chankery, a case coming on with a 'very nice point.'
+He then explained, preserving every professional discretion, the
+riddle in Soames' case.  Everyone, he said, to whom he had
+spoken, thought it a nice point.  The issue was small
+unfortunately, 'though d----d serious for his client he
+believed'--Walmisley's champagne was bad but plentiful.  A Judge
+would make short work of it, he was afraid.  He intended to make
+a big effort--the point was a nice one.  What did his neighbour
+say?
+
+Bustard, a model of secrecy, said nothing.  He related the
+incident to Soames however with some malice, for this quiet man
+was capable of human feeling, ending with his own opinion that
+the point was 'a very nice one.'
+
+In accordance with his resolve, our Forsyte had put his interests
+into the hands of Jobling and Boulter.  From the moment of doing
+so he regretted that he had not acted for himself.  On receiving
+a copy of Bosinney's defence he went over to their offices.
+
+Boulter, who had the matter in hand, Jobling having died some
+years before, told him that in his opinion it was rather a nice
+point; he would like counsel's opinion on it.
+
+Soames told him to go to a good man, and they went to Waterbuck,
+Q.C., marking him ten and one, who kept the papers six weeks and
+then wrote as follows
+
+'In my opinion the true interpretation of this correspondence
+depends very much on the intention of the parties, and will turn
+upon the evidence given at the trial.  I am of opinion that an
+attempt should be made to secure from the architect an admission
+that he understood he was not to spend at the outside more than
+twelve thousand and fifty pounds.  With regard to the expression,
+"a free hand in the terms of this correspondence," to which my
+attention is directed, the point is a nice one; but I am of
+opinion that upon the whole the ruling in "Boileau v. The
+Blasted Cement Co., Ltd.," will apply.'
+
+Upon this opinion they acted, administering interrogatories, but
+to their annoyance Messrs.  Freak and Able answered these in so
+masterly a fashion that nothing whatever was admitted and that
+without prejudice.
+
+It was on October 1 that Soames read Waterbuck's opinion, in the
+dining-room before dinner.
+
+It made him nervous; not so much because of the case of 'Boileau
+v. The Blasted Cement Co., Ltd.,' as that the point had lately
+begun to seem to him, too, a nice one; there was about it just
+that pleasant flavour of subtlety so attractive to the best legal
+appetites.  To have his own impression confirmed by Waterbuck,
+Q.C., would have disturbed any man.
+
+He sat thinking it over, and staring at the empty grate, for
+though autumn had come, the weather kept as gloriously fine that
+jubilee year as if it were still high August.  It was not
+pleasant to be disturbed; he desired too passionately to set his
+foot on Bosinney's neck.
+
+Though he had not seen the architect since the last afternoon at
+Robin Hill, he was never free from the sense of his presence--
+never free from the memory of his worn face with its high cheek
+bones and enthusiastic eyes.  It would riot be too much to say
+that he had never got rid of the feeling of that night when he
+heard the peacock's cry at dawn--the feeling that Bosinney
+haunted the house.  And every man's shape that he saw in the dark
+evenings walking past, seemed that of him whom George had so
+appropriately named the Buccaneer.
+
+Irene still met him, he was certain; where, or how, he neither
+knew, nor asked; deterred by a vague and secret dread of too much
+knowledge.  It all seemed subterranean nowadays.
+
+Sometimes when he questioned his wife as to where she had been,
+which he still made a point of doing, as every Forsyte should,
+she looked very strange.  Her self-possession was wonderful, but
+there were moments when, behind the mask of her face, inscrutable
+as it had always been to him, lurked an expression he had never
+been used to see there.
+
+She had taken to lunching out too; when he asked Bilson if her
+mistress had been in to lunch, as often as not she would answer:
+"No, sir."
+
+He strongly disapproved of her gadding about by herself, and told
+her so.  But she took no notice.  There was something that
+angered, amazed, yet almost amused, him about the calm way in
+which she disregarded his wishes.  It was really as if she were
+hugging to herself the thought of a triumph over him.
+
+He rose from the perusal of Waterbuck, Q.C.'s opinion, and, going
+upstairs, entered her room, for she did not lock her doors till
+bed-time--she had the decency, he found, to save the feelings of
+the servants.  She was brushing her hair, and turned to him with
+strange fierceness.
+
+"What do you want?" she said.  "Please leave my room!"
+
+He answered: "I want to know how long this state of things
+between us is to last?  I have put up with it long enough."
+
+"Will you please leave my room?"
+
+"Will you treat me as your husband?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then, I shall take steps to make you."
+
+"Do!"
+
+He stared, amazed at the calmness of her answer.  Her lips were
+compressed in a thin line; her hair lay in fluffy masses on her
+bare shoulders, in all its strange golden contrast to her dark
+eyes--those eyes alive with the emotions of fear, hate, contempt,
+and odd, haunting triumph.
+
+"Now, please, will you leave my room?" He turned round, and went
+sulkily out.
+
+He knew very well that he had no intention of taking steps, and
+he saw that she knew too--knew that he was afraid to.
+
+It was a habit with him to tell her the doings of his day: how
+such and such clients had called; how he had arranged a mortgage
+for Parkes; how that long-standing suit of Fryer v. Forsyte was
+getting on, which, arising in the preternaturally careful
+disposition of his property by his great uncle Nicholas, who had
+tied it up so that no one could get at it at all, seemed likely
+to remain a source of income for several solicitors till the Day
+of Judgment.
+
+And how he had called in at Jobson's, and seen a Boucher sold,
+which he had just missed buying of Talleyrand and Sons in Pall
+Mall.
+
+He had an admiration for Boucher, Watteau, and all that school.
+It was a habit with him to tell her all these matters, and he
+continued to do it even now, talking for long spells at dinner,
+as though by the volubility of words he could conceal from
+himself the ache in his heart.
+
+Often, if they were alone, he made an attempt to kiss her when
+she said good-night.  He may have had some vague notion that some
+night she would let him; or perhaps only the feeling that a
+husband ought to kiss his wife.  Even if she hated him, he at all
+events ought not to put himself in the wrong by neglecting this
+ancient rite.
+
+And why did she hate him?  Even now he could not altogether
+believe it.  It was strange to be hated!--the emotion was too
+extreme; yet he hated Bosinney, that Buccaneer, that prowling
+vagabond, that night-wanderer.  For in his thoughts Soames always
+saw him lying in wait--wandering.  Ah, but he must be in very low
+water!  Young Burkitt, the architect, had seen him coming out of
+a third-rate restaurant, looking terribly down in the mouth!
+
+During all the hours he lay awake, thinking over the situation,
+which seemed to have no end--unless she should suddenly come to
+her senses--never once did the thought of separating from his
+wife seriously enter his head....
+
+And the Forsytes!  What part did they play in this stage of
+Soames' subterranean tragedy?
+
+Truth to say, little or none, for they were at the sea.
+
+>From hotels, hydropathics, or lodging-houses, they were bathing
+daily; laying in a stock of ozone to last them through the
+winter.
+
+Each section, in the vineyard of its own choosing, grew and
+culled and pressed and bottled the grapes of a pet sea-air.
+
+The end of September began to witness their several returns.
+
+In rude health and small omnibuses, with considerable colour in
+their cheeks, they arrived daily from the various termini.  The
+following morning saw them back at their vocations.
+
+On the next Sunday Timothy's was thronged from lunch till dinner.
+
+Amongst other gossip, too numerous and interesting to relate,
+Mrs. Septimus Small mentioned that Soames and Irene had not been
+away.
+
+It remained for a comparative outsider to supply the next
+evidence of interest.
+
+It chanced that one afternoon late in September, Mrs. MacAnder,
+Winifred Dartie's greatest friend, taking a constitutional, with
+young Augustus Flippard, on her bicycle in Richmond Park, passed
+Irene and Bosinney walking from the bracken towards the Sheen
+Gate.
+
+Perhaps the poor little woman was thirsty, for she had ridden
+long on a hard, dry road, and, as all London knows, to ride a
+bicycle and talk to young Flippard will try the toughest
+constitution; or perhaps the sight of the cool bracken grove,
+whence 'those two' were coming down, excited her envy.  The cool
+bracken grove on the top of the hill, with the oak boughs for
+roof, where the pigeons were raising an endless wedding hymn, and
+the autumn, humming, whispered to the ears of lovers in the fern,
+while the deer stole by.  The bracken grove of irretrievable
+delights, of golden minutes in the long marriage of heaven and
+earth!  The bracken grove, sacred to stags, to strange tree-stump
+fauns leaping around the silver whiteness of a birch-tree nymph
+at summer dusk
+
+This lady knew all the Forsytes, and having been at June's 'at
+home,' was not at a loss to see with whom she had to deal.  Her
+own marriage, poor thing, had not been successful, but having
+had the good sense and ability to force her husband into
+pronounced error, she herself had passed through the necessary
+divorce proceedings without incurring censure.
+
+She was therefore a judge of all that sort of thing, and lived in
+one of those large buildings, where in small sets of apartments,
+are gathered incredible quantities of Forsytes, whose chief
+recreation out of business hours is the discussion of each
+other's affairs.
+
+Poor little woman, perhaps she was thirsty, certainly she was
+bored, for Flippard was a wit.  To see 'those two' in so unlikely
+a spot was quite a merciful 'pick-me-up.'
+
+At the MacAnder, like all London, Time pauses.
+
+This small but remarkable woman merits attention; her all-seeing
+eye and shrewd tongue were inscrutably the means of furthering
+the ends of Providence.
+
+With an air of being in at the death, she had an almost
+distressing power of taking care of herself.  She had done more,
+perhaps, in her way than any woman about town to destroy the
+sense of chivalry which still clogs the wheel of civilization.
+So smart she was, and spoken of endearingly as 'the little
+MacAnder!'
+
+Dressing tightly and well, she belonged to a Woman's Club, but
+was by no means the neurotic and dismal type of member who was
+always thinking of her rights.  She took her rights unconsciously,
+they came natural to her, and she knew exactly how to make the
+most of them without exciting anything but admiration amongst
+that great class to whom she was affiliated, not precisely
+perhaps by manner, but by birth, breeding, and the true, the
+secret gauge, a sense of property.
+
+The daughter of a Bedfordshire solicitor, by the daughter of a
+clergyman, she had never, through all the painful experience of
+being married to a very mild painter with a cranky love of
+Nature, who had deserted her for an actress, lost touch with the
+requirements, beliefs, and inner feeling of Society; and, on
+attaining her liberty, she placed herself without effort in the
+very van of Forsyteism.
+
+Always in good spirits, and 'full of information,' she was
+universally welcomed.  She excited neither surprise nor
+disapprobation when encountered on the Rhine or at Zermatt,
+either alone, or travelling with a lady and two gentlemen; it was
+felt that she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself;
+and the hearts of all Forsytes warmed to that wonderful instinct,
+which enabled her to enjoy everything without giving anything
+away.  It was generally felt that to such women as Mrs. MacAnder
+should we look for the perpetuation and increase of our best type
+of woman.  She had never had any children.
+
+If there was one thing more than another that she could not stand
+it was one of those soft women with what men called 'charm' about
+them, and for Mrs. Soames she always had an especial dislike.
+
+Obscurely, no doubt, she felt that if charm were once admitted as
+the criterion, smartness and capability must go to the wall; and
+she hated--with a hatred the deeper that at times this so-called
+charm seemed to disturb all calculations--the subtle seductiveness
+which she could not altogether overlook in Irene.
+
+She said, however, that she could see nothing in the woman--there
+was no 'go' about her--she would never be able to stand up for
+herself--anyone could take advantage of her, that was plain--she
+could not see in fact what men found to admire!
+
+She was not really ill-natured, but, in maintaining her position
+after the trying circumstances of her married life, she had found
+it so necessary to be 'full of information,' that the idea of
+holding her tongue about 'those two' in the Park never occurred
+to her.
+
+And it so happened that she was dining that very evening at
+Timothy's, where she went sometimes to 'cheer the old things up,'
+as she was wont to put it.  The same people were always asked to
+meet her: Winifred Dartie and her husband; Francie, because she
+belonged to the artistic circles, for Mrs. MacAnder was known to
+contribute articles on dress to 'The Ladies Kingdom Come'; and
+for her to flirt with, provided they could be obtained, two of
+the Hayman boys, who, though they never said anything, were
+believed to be fast and thoroughly intimate with all that was
+latest in smart Society.
+
+At twenty-five minutes past seven she turned out the electric
+light in her little hall, and wrapped in her opera cloak with the
+chinchilla collar, came out into the corridor, pausing a moment
+to make sure she had her latch-key.  These little self-contained
+flats were convenient; to be sure, she had no light and no air,
+but she could shut it up whenever she liked and go away.  There
+was no bother with servants, and she never felt tied as she used
+to when poor, dear Fred was always about, in his mooney way.  She
+retained no rancour against poor, dear Fred, he was such a fool;
+but the thought of that actress drew from her, even now, a
+little, bitter, derisive smile.
+
+Firmly snapping the door to, she crossed the corridor, with its
+gloomy, yellow-ochre walls, and its infinite vista of brown,
+numbered doors.  The lift was going down; and wrapped to the ears
+in the high cloak, with every one of her auburn hairs in its
+place, she waited motionless for it to stop at her floor.  The
+iron gates clanked open; she entered.  There were already three
+occupants, a man in a great white waistcoat, with a large, smooth
+face like a baby's, and two old ladies in black, with mittened
+hands.
+
+Mrs. MacAnder smiled at them; she knew everybody; and all these
+three, who had been admirably silent before, began to talk at
+once.  This was Mrs. MacAnder's successful secret.  She provoked
+conversation.
+
+Throughout a descent of five stories the conversation continued,
+the lift boy standing with his back turned, his cynical face
+protruding through the bars.
+
+At the bottom they separated, the man in the white waistcoat
+sentimentally to the billiard room, the old ladies to dine and
+say to each other: "A dear little woman!"  "Such a rattle!" and
+Mrs. MacAnder to her cab.
+
+When Mrs. MacAnder dined at Timothy's, the conversation (although
+Timothy himself could never be induced to be present) took that
+wider, man-of-the-world tone current among Forsytes at large, and
+this, no doubt, was what put her at a premium there.
+
+Mrs. Small and Aunt Hester found it an exhilarating change.  "If
+only," they said, "Timothy would meet her!"  It was felt that she
+would do him good.  She could tell you, for instance, the latest
+story of Sir Charles Fiste's son at Monte Carlo; who was the real
+heroine of Tynemouth Eddy's fashionable novel that everyone was
+holding up their hands over, and what they were doing in Paris
+about wearing bloomers.  She was so sensible, too, knowing all
+about that vexed question, whether to send young Nicholas' eldest
+into the navy as his mother wished, or make him an accountant as
+his father thought would be safer.  She strongly deprecated the
+navy.  If you were not exceptionally brilliant or exceptionally
+well connected, they passed you over so disgracefully, and what
+was it after all to look forward to, even if you became an
+admiral--a pittance!  An accountant had many more chances, but
+let him be put with a good firm, where there was no risk at
+starting!
+
+Sometimes she would give them a tip on the Stock Exchange; not
+that Mrs. Small or Aunt Hester ever took it.  They had indeed no
+money to invest; but it seemed to bring them into such exciting
+touch with the realities of life.  It was an event.  They would
+ask Timothy, they said.  But they never did, knowing in advance
+that it would upset him.  Surreptitiously, however, for weeks
+after they would look in that paper, which they took with respect
+on account of its really fashionable proclivities, to see whether
+'Bright's Rubies' or 'The Woollen Mackintosh Company' were up or
+down.  Sometimes they could not find the name of the company at
+all; and they would wait until James or Roger or even Swithin
+came in, and ask them in voices trembling with curiosity how that
+'Bolivia Lime and Speltrate was doing--they could not find it in
+the paper.
+
+And Roger would answer: "What do you want to know for?  Some
+trash!  You'll go burning your fingers--investing your money in
+lime, and things you know nothing about!  Who told you?" and
+ascertaining what they had been told, he would go away, and,
+making inquiries in the City, would perhaps invest some of his
+own money in the concern.
+
+It was about the middle of dinner, just in fact as the saddle of
+mutton had been brought in by Smither, that Mrs. MacAnder,
+looking airily round, said: "Oh! and whom do you think I passed
+to-day in Richmond Park?  You'll never guess--Mrs. Soames and--
+Mr. Bosinney.  They must have been down to look at the house!"
+
+Winifred Dartie coughed, and no one said a word.  It was the
+piece of evidence they had all unconsciously been waiting for.
+
+To do Mrs. MacAnder justice, she had been to Switzerland and the
+Italian lakes with a party of three, and had not heard of Soames'
+rupture with his architect.  She could not tell, therefore, the
+profound impression her words would make.
+
+Upright and a little flushed, she moved her small, shrewd eyes
+from face to face, trying to gauge the effect of her words.  On
+either side of her a Hayman boy, his lean, taciturn, hungry face
+turned towards his plate, ate his mutton steadily.
+
+These two, Giles and Jesse, were so alike and so inseparable that
+they were known as the Dromios.  They never talked, and seemed
+always completely occupied in doing nothing.  It was popularly
+supposed that they were cramming for an important examination.
+They walked without hats for long hours in the Gardens attached
+to their house, books in their hands, a fox-terrier at their
+heels, never saying a word, and smoking all the time.  Every
+morning, about fifty yards apart, they trotted down Campden Hill
+on two lean hacks, with legs as long as their own, and every
+morning about an hour later, still fifty yards apart, they
+cantered up again.  Every evening, wherever they had dined, they
+might be observed about half-past ten, leaning over the
+balustrade of the Alhambra promenade.
+
+They were never seen otherwise than together; in this way passing
+their lives, apparently perfectly content.
+
+Inspired by some dumb stirring within them of the feelings of
+gentlemen, they turned at this painful moment to Mrs. MacAnder,
+and said in precisely the same voice: "Have you seen the...?"
+
+Such was her surprise at being thus addressed that she put down
+her fork; and Smither, who was passing, promptly removed her
+plate.  Mrs. MacAnder, however, with presence of mind, said
+instantly: "I must have a little more of that nice mutton."
+
+But afterwards in the drawing--room she sat down by Mrs. Small,
+determined to get to the bottom of the matter.  And she began:
+
+"What a charming woman, Mrs. Soames; such a sympathetic
+temperament!  Soames is a really lucky man!"
+
+Her anxiety for information had not made sufficient allowance for
+that inner Forsyte skin which refuses to share its troubles with
+outsiders.
+
+Mrs. Septimus Small, drawing herself up with a creak and rustle
+of her whole person, said, shivering in her dignity:
+
+"My dear, it is a subject we do not talk about!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+NIGHT IN THE PARK
+
+
+Although with her infallible instinct Mrs. Small had said the
+very thing to make her guest 'more intriguee than ever,' it is
+difficult to see how else she could truthfully have spoken.
+
+It was not a subject which the Forsytes could talk about even
+among themselves--to use the word Soames had invented to
+characterize to himself the situation, it was 'subterranean.'
+
+Yet, within a week of Mrs. MacAnder's encounter in Richmond Park,
+to all of them--save Timothy, from whom it was carefully kept--to
+James on his domestic beat from the Poultry to Park Lane, to
+George the wild one, on his daily adventure from the bow window
+at the Haversnake to the billiard room at the 'Red Pottle,' was
+it known that 'those two' had gone to extremes.
+
+George (it was he who invented many of those striking expressions
+still current in fashionable circles) voiced the sentiment more
+accurately than any one when he said to his brother Eustace that
+'the Buccaneer' was 'going it'; he expected Soames was about 'fed
+up.'
+
+It was felt that he must be, and yet, what could be done?  He
+ought perhaps to take steps; but to take steps would be
+deplorable.
+
+Without an open scandal which they could not see their way to
+recommending, it was difficult to see what steps could be taken.
+In this impasse, the only thing was to say nothing to Soames, and
+nothing to each other; in fact, to pass it over.
+
+By displaying towards Irene a dignified coldness, some impression
+might be made upon her; but she was seldom now to be seen, and
+there seemed a slight difficulty in seeking her out on purpose to
+show her coldness.  Sometimes in the privacy of his bedroom James
+would reveal to Emily the real suffering that his son's
+misfortune caused him.
+
+"I can't tell," he would say; "it worries me out of my life.
+There'll be a scandal, and that'll do him no good.  I shan't say
+anything to him.  There might be nothing in it.  What do you
+think?  She's very artistic, they tell me.  What?  Oh, you're a
+'regular Juley!  Well, I don't know; I expect the worst.  This is
+what comes of having no children.  I knew how it would be from
+the first.  They never told me they didn't mean to have any
+children--nobody tells me anything!"
+
+On his knees by the side of the bed, his eyes open and fixed with
+worry, he would breathe into the counterpane.  Clad in his
+nightshirt, his neck poked forward, his back rounded, he
+resembled some long white bird.
+
+"Our Father-," he repeated, turning over and over again the
+thought of this possible scandal.
+
+Like old Jolyon, he, too, at the bottom of his heart set the
+blame of the tragedy down to family interference.  What business
+had that lot--he began to think of the Stanhope Gate branch,
+including young Jolyon and his daughter, as 'that lot'--to
+introduce a person like this Bosinney into the family?  (He had
+heard George's soubriquet, 'The Buccaneer,' but he could make
+nothing of that--the young man was an architect.)
+
+He began to feel that his brother Jolyon, to whom he had always
+looked up and on whose opinion he had relied, was not quite what
+he had expected.
+
+Not having his eldest brother's force of character, he was more
+sad than angry.  His great comfort was to go to Winifred's, and
+take the little Darties in his carriage over to Kensington
+Gardens, and there, by the Round Pond, he could often be seen
+walking with his eyes fixed anxiously on little Publius Dartie's
+sailing-boat, which he had himself freighted with a penny, as
+though convinced that it would never again come to shore; while
+little Publius--who, James delighted to say, was not a bit like
+his father skipping along under his lee, would try to get him to
+bet another that it never would, having found that it always did.
+And James would make the bet; he always paid--sometimes as many
+as three or four pennies in the afternoon, for the game seemed
+never to pall on little Publius--and always in paying he said:
+"Now, that's for your money-box.  Why, you're getting quite a
+rich man!"  The thought of his little grandson's growing wealth
+was a real pleasure to him.  But little Publius knew a
+sweet-shop, and a trick worth two of that.
+
+And they would walk home across the Park, James' figure, with
+high shoulders and absorbed and worried face, exercising its
+tall, lean protectorship, pathetically unregarded, over the
+robust child-figures of Imogen and little Publius.
+
+But those Gardens and that Park were not sacred to James.
+Forsytes and tramps, children and lovers, rested and wandered day
+after day, night after night, seeking one and all some freedom
+from labour, from the reek and turmoil of the streets.
+
+The leaves browned slowly, lingering with the sun and summer-like
+warmth of the nights.
+
+On Saturday, October 5, the sky that had been blue all day
+deepened after sunset to the bloom of purple grapes.  There was
+no moon, and a clear dark, like some velvety garment, was wrapped
+around the trees, whose thinned branches, resembling plumes,
+stirred not in the still, warm air.  All London had poured into
+the Park, draining the cup of summer to its dregs.
+
+Couple after couple, from every gate, they streamed along the
+paths and over the burnt grass, and one after another, silently
+out of the lighted spaces, stole into the shelter of the feathery
+trees, where, blotted against some trunk, or under the shadow of
+shrubs, they were lost to all but themselves in the heart of the
+soft darkness.
+
+To fresh-comers along the paths, these forerunners formed but
+part of that passionate dusk, whence only a strange murmur, like
+the confused beating of hearts, came forth.  But when that murmur
+reached each couple in the lamp-light their voices wavered, and
+ceased; their arms enlaced, their eyes began seeking, searching,
+probing the blackness.  Suddenly, as though drawn by invisible
+hands, they, too, stepped over the railing, and, silent as
+shadows, were gone from the light.
+
+The stillness, enclosed in the far, inexorable roar of the town,
+was alive with the myriad passions, hopes, and loves of
+multitudes of struggling human atoms; for in spite of the
+disapproval of that great body of Forsytes, the Municipal
+Council--to whom Love had long been considered, next to the
+Sewage Question, the gravest danger to the community--a process
+was going on that night in the Park, and in a hundred other
+parks, without which the thousand factories, churches, shops,
+taxes, and drains, of which they were custodians, were as
+arteries without blood, a man without a heart.
+
+The instincts of self-forgetfulness, of passion, and of love,
+hiding under the trees, away from the trustees of their
+remorseless enemy, the 'sense of property,' were holding a
+stealthy revel, and Soames, returning from Bayswater for he had
+been alone to dine at Timothy's walking home along the water,
+with his mind upon that coming lawsuit, had the blood driven from
+his heart by a low laugh and the sound of kisses.  He thought of
+writing to the Times the next morning, to draw the attention of
+the Editor to the condition of our parks.  He did not, however,
+for he had a horror of seeing his name in print.
+
+But starved as he was, the whispered sounds in the stillness, the
+half-seen forms in the dark, acted on him like some morbid
+stimulant.  He left the path along the water and stole under the
+trees, along the deep shadow of little plantations, where the
+boughs of chestnut trees hung their great leaves low, and there
+was blacker refuge, shaping his course in circles which had for
+their object a stealthy inspection of chairs side by side,
+against tree-trunks, of enlaced lovers, who stirred at his
+approach.
+
+Now he stood still on the rise overlooking the Serpentine, where,
+in full lamp-light, black against the silver water, sat a couple
+who never moved, the woman's face buried on the man's neck--a
+single form, like a carved emblem of passion, silent and
+unashamed.
+
+And, stung by the sight, Soames hurried on deeper into the shadow
+of the trees.
+
+In this search, who knows what he thought and what he sought?
+Bread for hunger--light in darkness?  Who knows what he expected
+to find--impersonal knowledge of the human heart--the end of his
+private subterranean tragedy--for, again, who knew, but that each
+dark couple, unnamed, unnameable, might not be he and she?
+
+But it could not be such knowledge as this that he was seeking--
+the wife of Soames Forsyte sitting in the Park like a common
+wench!  Such thoughts were inconceivable; and from tree to tree,
+with his noiseless step, he passed.
+
+Once he was sworn at; once the whisper, "If only it could always
+be like this!" sent the blood flying again from his heart, and he
+waited there, patient and dogged, for the two to move.  But it
+was only a poor thin slip of a shop-girl in her draggled blouse
+who passed him, clinging to her lover's arm.
+
+A hundred other lovers too whispered that hope in the stillness
+of the trees, a hundred other lovers clung to each other.
+
+But shaking himself with sudden disgust, Soames returned to the
+path, and left that seeking for he knew not what.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+MEETING AT THE BOTANICAL
+
+
+Young Jolyon, whose circumstances were not those of a Forsyte,
+found at times a difficulty in sparing the money needful for
+those country jaunts and researches into Nature, without having
+prosecuted which no watercolour artist ever puts brush to paper.
+
+He was frequently, in fact, obliged to take his colour-box into
+the Botanical Gardens, and there, on his stool, in the shade of a
+monkey-puzzler or in the lee of some India-rubber plant, he would
+spend long hours sketching.
+
+An Art critic who had recently been looking at his work had
+delivered himself as follows
+
+"In a way your drawings are very good; tone and colour, in some
+of them certainly quite a feeling for Nature.  But, you see,
+they're so scattered; you'll never get the public to look at
+them.  Now, if you'd taken a definite subject, such as 'London by
+Night,' or 'The Crystal Palace in the Spring,' and made a regular
+series, the public would have known at once what they were
+looking at.  I can't lay too much stress upon that.  All the men
+who are making great names in Art, like Crum Stone or Bleeder,
+are making them by avoiding the unexpected; by specializing and
+putting their works all in the same pigeon-hole, so that the
+public know pat once where to go.  And this stands to reason, for
+if a man's a collector he doesn't want people to smell at the
+canvas to find out whom his pictures are by; he wants them to be
+able to say at once, 'A capital Forsyte!'  It is all the more
+important for you to be careful to choose a subject that they can
+lay hold of on the spot, since there's no very marked originality
+in your style."
+
+Young Jolyon, standing by the little piano, where a bowl of dried
+rose leaves, the only produce of the garden, was deposited on a
+bit of faded damask, listened with his dim smile.
+
+Turning to his wife, who was looking at the speaker with an angry
+expression on her thin face, he said:
+
+"You see, dear?"
+
+"I do not," she answered in her staccato voice, that still had a
+little foreign accent; "your style has originality."
+
+The critic looked at her, smiled' deferentially, and said no
+more.  Like everyone else, he knew their history.
+
+The words bore good fruit with young Jolyon; they were contrary
+to all that he believed in, to all that he theoretically held
+good in his Art, but some strange, deep instinct moved him
+against his will to turn them to profit.
+
+He discovered therefore one morning that an idea had come to him
+for making a series of watercolour drawings of London.  How the
+idea had arisen he could not tell; and it was not till the
+following year, when he had completed and sold them at a very
+fair price, that in one of his impersonal moods, he found himself
+able to recollect the Art critic, and to discover in his own
+achievement another proof that he was a Forsyte.
+
+He decided to commence with the Botanical Gardens, where he had
+already made so many studies, and chose the little artificial
+pond, sprinkled now with an autumn shower of red and yellow
+leaves, for though the gardeners longed to sweep them off, they
+could not reach them with their brooms.  The rest of the gardens
+they swept bare enough, removing every morning Nature's rain of
+leaves; piling them in heaps, whence from slow fires rose the
+sweet, acrid smoke that, like the cuckoo's note for spring, the
+scent of lime trees for the summer, is the true emblem of the
+fall.  The gardeners' tidy souls could not abide the gold and
+green and russet pattern on the grass.  The gravel paths must lie
+unstained, ordered, methodical, without knowledge of the
+realities of life, nor of that slow and beautiful decay which
+flings crowns underfoot to star the earth with fallen glories,
+whence, as the cycle rolls, will leap again wild spring.
+
+Thus each leaf that fell was marked from the moment when it
+fluttered a good-bye and dropped, slow turning, from its twig.
+
+But on that little pond the leaves floated in peace, and praised
+Heaven with their hues, the sunlight haunting over them.
+
+And so young Jolyon found them.
+
+Coming there one morning in the middle of October, he was
+disconcerted to find a bench about twenty paces from his stand
+occupied, for he had a proper horror of anyone seeing him at
+work.
+
+A lady in a velvet jacket was sitting there, with her eyes fixed
+on the ground.  A flowering laurel, however, stood between, and,
+taking shelter behind this, young Jolyon prepared his easel.
+
+His preparations were leisurely; he caught, as every true artist
+should, at anything that might delay for a moment the effort of
+his work, and he found himself looking furtively at this unknown
+dame.
+
+Like his father before him, he had an eye for a face.  This face
+was charming!
+
+He saw a rounded chin nestling in a cream ruffle, a delicate face
+with large dark eyes and soft lips.  A black 'picture' hat
+concealed the hair; her figure was lightly poised against the
+back of the bench, her knees were crossed; the tip of a
+patent-leather shoe emerged beneath her skirt.  There was
+something, indeed, inexpressibly dainty about the person of this
+lady, but young Jolyon's attention was chiefly riveted by the
+look on her face, which reminded him of his wife.  It was as
+though its owner had come into contact with forces too strong for
+her.  It troubled him, arousing vague feelings of attraction and
+chivalry.  Who was she?  And what doing there, alone?
+
+Two young gentlemen of that peculiar breed, at once forward and
+shy, found in the Regent's Park, came by on their way to lawn
+tennis, and he noted with disapproval their furtive stares of
+admiration.  A loitering gardener halted to do something
+unnecessary to a clump of pampas grass; he, too, wanted an excuse
+for peeping.  A gentleman, old, and, by his hat, a professor of
+horticulture, passed three times to scrutinize her long and
+stealthily, a queer expression about his lips.
+
+With all these men young Jolyon felt the same vague irritation.
+She looked at none of them, yet was he certain that every man who
+passed would look at her like that.
+
+Her face was not the face of a sorceress, who in every look holds
+out to men the offer of pleasure; it had none of the 'devil's
+beauty' so highly prized among the first Forsytes of the land;
+neither was it of that type, no less adorable, associated with
+the box of chocolate; it was not of the spiritually passionate,
+or passionately spiritual order, peculiar to house-decoration and
+modern poetry; nor did it seem to promise to the playwright
+material for the production of the interesting and neurasthenic
+figure, who commits suicide in the last act.
+
+In shape and colouring, in its soft persuasive passivity, its
+sensuous purity, this woman's face reminded him of Titian's
+'Heavenly Love,' a reproduction of which hung over the sideboard
+in his dining-room.  And her attraction seemed to be in this soft
+passivity, in the feeling she gave that to pressure she must
+yield.
+
+For what or whom was she waiting, in the silence, with the trees
+dropping here and there a leaf, and the thrushes strutting close
+on grass, touched with the sparkle of the autumn rime?  Then her
+charming face grew eager, and, glancing round, with almost a
+lover's jealousy, young Jolyon saw Bosinney striding across the
+grass.
+
+Curiously he watched the meeting, the look in their eyes, the
+long clasp of their hands.  They sat down close together, linked
+for all their outward discretion.  He heard the rapid murmur of
+their talk; but what they said he could not catch.
+
+He had rowed in the galley himself!  He knew the long hours of
+waiting and the lean minutes of a half-public meeting; the
+tortures of suspense that haunt the unhallowed lover.
+
+It required, however, but a glance at their two faces to see that
+this was none of those affairs of a season that distract men and
+women about town; none of those sudden appetites that wake up
+ravening, and are surfeited and asleep again in six weeks.  This
+was the real thing!  This was what had happened to himself!  Out
+of this anything might come!
+
+Bosinney was pleading, and she so quiet, so soft, yet immovable
+in her passivity, sat looking over the grass.
+
+Was he the man to carry her off, that tender, passive being, who
+would never stir a step for herself?  Who had given him all
+herself, and would die for him, but perhaps would never run away
+with him!
+
+It seemed to young Jolyon that he could hear her saying: "But,
+darling, it would ruin you!"  For he himself had experienced to
+the full the gnawing fear at the bottom of each woman's heart
+that she is a drag on the man she loves.
+
+And he peeped at them no more; but their soft, rapid talk came to
+his ears, with the stuttering song of some bird who seemed trying
+to remember the notes of spring: Joy--tragedy?  Which--which?
+
+And gradually their talk ceased; long silence followed.
+
+'And where does Soames come in?' young Jolyon thought.  'People
+think she is concerned about the sin of deceiving her husband!
+Little they know of women!  She's eating, after starvation--
+taking her revenge!  And Heaven help her--for he'll take his.'
+
+He heard the swish of silk, and, spying round the laurel, saw
+them walking away, their hands stealthily joined....
+
+At the end of July old Jolyon had taken his grand-daughter to the
+mountains; and on that visit (the last they ever paid) June
+recovered to a great extent her health and spirits.  In the
+hotels, filled with British Forsytes--for old Jolyon could not
+bear a 'set of Germans,' as he called all foreigners--she was
+looked upon with respect--the only grand-daughter of that fine-
+looking, and evidently wealthy, old Mr. Forsyte.  She did not mix
+freely with people--to mix freely with people was not June's
+habit--but she formed some friendships, and notably one in the
+Rhone Valley, with a French girl who was dying of consumption.
+
+Determining at once that her friend should not die, she forgot,
+in the institution of a campaign against Death, much of her own
+trouble.
+
+Old Jolyon watched the new intimacy with relief and disapproval;
+for this additional proof that her life was to be passed amongst
+'lame ducks' worried him.  Would she never make a friendship or
+take an interest in something that would be of real benefit to
+her?
+
+'Taking up with a parcel of foreigners,' he called it.  He often,
+however, brought home  grapes or roses, and presented them to
+'Mam'zelle' with an ingratiating twinkle.
+
+Towards the end of September, in spite of June's disapproval,
+Mademoiselle Vigor breathed her last in the little hotel at St.
+Luc, to which they had moved her; and June took her defeat so
+deeply to heart that old Jolyon carried her away to Paris.  Here,
+in contemplation of the 'Venus de Milo' and the 'Madeleine,' she
+shook off her depression, and when, towards the middle of
+October, they returned to town, her grandfather believed that he
+had effected a cure.
+
+No sooner, however, had they established themselves in Stanhope
+Gate than he perceived to his dismay a return of her old absorbed
+and brooding manner.  She would sit, staring in front of her, her
+chin on her hand, like a little Norse spirit, grim and intent,
+while all around in the electric light, then just installed,
+shone the great, drawing-room brocaded up to the frieze, full of
+furniture from Baple and Pullbred's.  And in the huge gilt mirror
+were reflected those Dresden china groups of young men in tight
+knee breeches, at the feet of full-bosomed ladies nursing on
+their laps pet lambs, which old Jolyon had bought when he was a
+bachelor and thought so highly of in these days of degenerate
+taste.  He was a man of most open mind, who, more than any
+Forsyte of them all, had moved with the times, but he could never
+forget that he had bought these groups at Jobson's, and given a
+lot of money for them.  He often said to June, with a sort of
+disillusioned contempt:
+
+"You don't care about them!  They're not the gimcrack things you
+and your friends like, but they cost me seventy pounds!"  He was
+not a man who allowed his taste to be warped when he knew for
+solid reasons that it was sound.
+
+One of the first things that June did on getting home was to go
+round to Timothy's.  She persuaded herself that it was her duty
+to call there, and cheer him with an account of all her travels;
+but in reality she went because she knew of no other place where,
+by some random speech, or roundabout question, she could glean
+news of Bosinney.
+
+They received her most cordially: And how was her dear grand-
+father?  He had not been to see them since May.  Her Uncle
+Timothy was very poorly, he had had a lot of trouble with the
+chimney-sweep in his bedroom; the stupid man had let the soot
+down the chimney!  It had quite upset her uncle.
+
+June sat there a long time, dreading, yet passionately hoping,
+that they would speak of Bosinney.
+
+But paralyzed by unaccountable discretion, Mrs. Septimus Small
+let fall no word, neither did she question June about him.  In
+desperation the girl asked at last whether Soames and Irene were
+in town--she had not yet been to see anyone.
+
+It was Aunt Hester who replied: Oh, yes, they were in town, they
+had not been away at all.  There was some little difficulty about
+the house, she believed.  June had heard, no doubt!  She had
+better ask her Aunt Juley!
+
+June turned to Mrs. Small, who sat upright in her chair, her
+hands clasped, her face covered with innumerable pouts.  In
+answer to the girl's look she maintained a strange silence, and
+when she spoke it was to ask June whether she had worn night-
+socks up in those high hotels where it must be so cold of a
+night.
+
+June answered that she had not, she hated the stuffy things; and
+rose to leave.
+
+Mrs. Small's infallibly chosen silence was far more ominous to
+her than anything that could have been said.
+
+Before half an hour was over she had dragged the truth from Mrs.
+Baynes in Lowndes Square, that Soames was bringing an action
+against Bosinney over the decoration of the house.
+
+Instead of disturbing her, the news had a strangely calming
+effect; as though she saw in the prospect of this struggle new
+hope for herself.  She learnt that the case was expected to come
+on in about a month, and there seemed little or no prospect of
+Bosinney's success.
+
+"And whatever he'll do I can't think," said Mrs. Baynes; "it's
+very dreadful for him, you know--he's got no money--he's very
+hard up.  And we can't help him, I'm sure.  I'm told the
+money-lenders won't lend if you have no security, and he has
+none--none at all."
+
+Her embonpoint had increased of late; she was in the full swing
+of autumn organization, her writing-table literally strewn with
+the menus of charity functions.  She looked meaningly at June,
+with her round eyes of parrot-grey.
+
+The sudden flush that rose on the girl's intent young face--she
+must have seen spring up before her a great hope--the sudden
+sweetness of her smile, often came back to Lady Baynes in after
+years (Baynes was knighted when he built that public Museum of
+Art which has given so much employment to officials, and so
+little pleasure to those working classes for whom it was
+designed).
+
+The memory of that change, vivid and touching, like the breaking
+open of a flower, or the first sun after long winter, the memory,
+too, of all that came after, often intruded itself, unaccountably,
+inopportunely on Lady Baynes, when her mind was set upon the most
+important things.
+
+This was the very afternoon of the day that young Jolyon
+witnessed the meeting in the Botanical Gardens, and on this day,
+too, old Jolyon paid a visit to his solicitors, Forsyte, Bustard,
+and Forsyte, in the Poultry.  Soames was not in, he had gone down
+to Somerset House; Bustard was buried up to the hilt in papers
+and that inaccessible apartment, where he was judiciously placed,
+in order that he might do as much work as possible; but James was
+in the front office, biting a finger, and lugubriously turning
+over the pleadings in Forsyte v. Bosinney.
+
+This sound lawyer had only a sort of luxurious dread of the 'nice
+point,' enough to set up a pleasurable feeling of fuss; for his
+good practical sense told him that if he himself were on the
+Bench he would not pay much attention to it.  But he was afraid
+that this Bosinney would go bankrupt and Soames would have to
+find the money after all, and costs into the bargain.  And behind
+this tangible dread there was always that intangible trouble,
+lurking in the background, intricate, dim, scandalous, like a bad
+dream, and of which this action was but an outward and visible
+sign.
+
+He raised his head as old Jolyon came in, and muttered: "How are
+you, Jolyon?  Haven't seen you for an age.  You've been to
+Switzerland, they tell me.  This young Bosinney, he's got himself
+into a mess.  I knew how it would be!"  He held out the papers,
+regarding his elder brother with nervous gloom.
+
+Old Jolyon read them in silence, and while he read them James
+looked at the floor, biting his fingers the while.
+
+Old Jolyon pitched them down at last, and they fell with a thump
+amongst a mass of affidavits in 're Buncombe, deceased,' one of
+the many branches of that parent and profitable tree, 'Fryer v.
+Forsyte.'
+
+"I don't know what Soames is about," he said, "to make a fuss
+over a few hundred pounds.  I thought he was a man of property."
+
+James'long upper lip twitched angrily; he could not bear his son
+to be attacked in such a spot.
+
+"It's not the money "he began, but meeting his brother's glance,
+direct, shrewd, judicial, he stopped.
+
+There was a silence.
+
+"I've come in for my Will," said old Jolyon at last, tugging at
+his moustache.
+
+James' curiosity was roused at once.  Perhaps nothing in this
+life was more stimulating to him than a Will; it was the supreme
+deal with property, the final inventory of a man's belongings,
+the last word on what he was worth.  He sounded the bell.
+
+"Bring in Mr. Jolyon's Will," he said to an anxious, dark-haired
+clerk.
+
+"You going to make some alterations?" And through his mind there
+flashed the thought: 'Now, am I worth as much as he?'
+
+Old Jolyon put the Will in his breast pocket, and James twisted
+his long legs regretfully.
+
+"You've made some nice purchases lately, they tell me," he said.
+
+"I don't know where you get your information from," answered old
+Jolyon sharply.  "When's this action coming on?  Next month?  I
+can't tell what you've got in your minds.  You must manage your
+own affairs; but if you take my advice, you'll settle it out of
+Court.  Good-bye!"  With a cold handshake he was gone.
+
+James, his fixed grey-blue eye corkscrewing round some secret
+anxious image, began again to bite his finger.
+
+Old Jolyon took his Will to the offices of the New Colliery
+Company, and sat down in the empty Board Room to read it through.
+He answered 'Down-by-the-starn' Hemmings so tartly when the
+latter, seeing his Chairman seated there, entered with the new
+Superintendent's first report, that the Secretary withdrew with
+regretful dignity; and sending for the transfer clerk, blew him
+up till the poor youth knew not where to look.
+
+It was not--by George--as he (Down-by-the-starn) would have him
+know, for a whippersnapper of a young fellow like him, to come
+down to that office, and think that he was God Almighty.  He
+(Down-by-the-starn) had been head of that office for more years
+than a boy like him could count, and if he thought that when he
+had finished all his work, he could sit there doing nothing, he
+did not know him, Hemmings (Down-by-the-starn), and so forth.
+
+On the other side of the green baize door old Jolyon sat at the
+long, mahogany-and-leather board table, his thick, loose-jointed,
+tortoiseshell eye-glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, his
+gold pencil moving down the clauses of his Will.
+
+It was a simple affair, for there were none of those vexatious
+little legacies and donations to charities, which fritter away a
+man's possessions, and damage the majestic effect of that little
+paragraph in the morning papers accorded to Forsytes who die with
+a hundred thousand pounds.
+
+A simple affair.  Just a bequest to his son of twenty thousand,
+and 'as to the residue of my property of whatsoever kind whether
+realty or personalty, or partaking of the nature of either--upon
+trust to pay the proceeds rents annual produce dividends or
+interest thereof and thereon to my said grand-daughter June
+Forsyte or her assigns during her life to be for her sole use and
+benefit and without, etc... and from and after her death or
+decease upon trust to convey assign transfer or make over the
+said last-mentioned lands hereditaments premises trust moneys
+stocks funds investments and securities or such as shall then
+stand for and represent the same unto such person or persons
+whether one or more for such intents purposes and uses and
+generally in such manner way and form in all respects as the said
+June Forsyte notwithstanding coverture shall by her last Will and
+Testament or any writing or writings in the nature of a Will
+testament or testamentary disposition to be by her duly made
+signed and published direct appoint or make over give and dispose
+of the same And in default etc....  Provided always...' and so on,
+in seven folios of brief and simple phraseology.
+
+The Will had been drawn by James in his palmy days.  He had
+foreseen almost every contingency.
+
+Old Jolyon sat a long time reading this Will; at last he took
+half a sheet of paper from the rack, and made a prolonged pencil
+note; then buttoning up the Will, he caused a cab to be called
+and drove to the offices of Paramor and Herring, in Lincoln's Inn
+Fields.  Jack Herring was dead, but his nephew was still in the
+firm, and old Jolyon was closeted with him for half an hour.
+
+He had kept the hansom, and on coming out, gave the driver the
+address--3, Wistaria Avenue.
+
+He felt a strange, slow satisfaction, as though he had scored a
+victory over James and the man of property.  They should not poke
+their noses into his affairs any more; he had just cancelled
+their trusteeships of his Will; he would take the whole of his
+business out of their hands, and put it into the hands of young
+Herring, and he would move the business of his Companies too.  If
+that young Soames were such a man of property, he would never
+miss a thousand a year or so; and under his great white moustache
+old Jolyon grimly smiled.  He felt that what he was doing was in
+the nature of retributive justice, richly deserved.
+
+Slowly, surely, with the secret inner process that works the
+destruction of an old tree, the poison of the wounds to his
+happiness, his will, his pride, had corroded the comely edifice
+of his philosophy.  Life had worn him down on one side, till,
+like that family of which he was the head, he had lost balance.
+
+To him, borne northwards towards his son's house, the thought of
+the new disposition of property, which he had just set in motion,
+appeared vaguely in the light of a stroke of punishment, levelled
+at that family and that Society, of which James and his son
+seemed to him the representatives.  He had made a restitution to
+young Jolyon, and restitution to young Jolyon satisfied his
+secret craving for revenge-revenge against Time, sorrow, and
+interference, against all that incalculable sum of disapproval
+that had been bestowed by the world for fifteen years on his only
+son.  It presented itself as the one possible way of asserting
+once more the domination of his will; of forcing James, and
+Soames, and the family, and all those hidden masses of Forsytes--
+a great stream rolling against the single dam of his obstinacy--
+to recognise once and for all that be would be master.  It was
+sweet to think that at last he was going to make the boy a richer
+man by far than that son of James, that 'man of property.' And it
+was sweet to give to Jo, for he loved his son.
+
+Neither young Jolyon nor his wife were in (young Jolyon indeed
+was not back from the Botanical), but the little maid told him
+that she expected the master at any moment:
+
+"He's always at 'ome to tea, sir, to play with the children."
+
+Old Jolyon said he would wait; and sat down patiently enough in
+the faded, shabby drawing room, where, now that the summer
+chintzes were removed, the old chairs and sofas revealed all
+their threadbare deficiencies.  He longed to send for the
+children; to have them there beside him, their supple bodies
+against his knees; to hear Jolly's: "Hallo, Gran!" and see his
+rush; and feel Holly's soft little hand stealing up against his
+cheek.  But he would not.  There was solemnity in what he had
+come to do, and until it was over he would not play.  He amused
+himself by thinking how with two strokes of his pen he was going
+to restore the look of caste so conspicuously absent from
+everything in that little house; how he could fill these rooms,
+or others in some larger mansion, with triumphs of art from Baple
+and Pullbred's; how he could send little Jolly to Harrow and
+Oxford (he no longer had faith in Eton and Cambridge, for his son
+had been there); how he could procure little Holly the best
+musical instruction, the child had a remarkable aptitude.
+
+As these visions crowded before him, causing emotion to swell his
+heart, he rose, and stood at the window, looking down into the
+little walled strip of garden, where the pear-tree, bare of
+leaves before its time, stood with gaunt branches in the
+slow-gathering mist of the autumn afternoon.  The dog Balthasar,
+his tail curled tightly over a piebald, furry back, was walking
+at the farther end, sniffing at the plants, and at intervals
+placing his leg for support against the wall.
+
+And old Jolyon mused.
+
+What pleasure was there left but to give?  It was pleasant to
+give, when you could find one who would be thankful for what you
+gave--one of your own flesh and blood!  There was no such
+satisfaction to be had out of giving to those who did not belong
+to you, to those who had no claim on you!  Such giving as that
+was a betrayal of the individualistic convictions and actions of
+his life, of all his enterprise, his labour, and his moderation,
+of the great and proud fact that, like tens of thousands of
+Forsytes before him, tens of thousands in the present, tens of
+thousands in the future, he had always made his own, and held his
+own, in the world.
+
+And, while he stood there looking down on the smut-covered
+foliage of the laurels, the blackstained grass-plot, the progress
+of the dog Balthasar, all the suffering of the fifteen years
+during which he had been baulked of legitimate enjoyment mingled
+its gall with the sweetness of the approaching moment.
+
+Young Jolyon came at last, pleased with his work, and fresh from
+long hours in the open air.  On hearing that his father was in
+the drawing room, he inquired hurriedly whether Mrs. Forsyte was
+at home, and being informed that she was not, heaved a sigh of
+relief.  Then putting his painting materials carefully in the
+little coat-closet out of sight, he went in.
+
+With characteristic decision old Jolyon came at once to the
+point.  "I've been altering my arrangements, Jo," he said.  "You
+can cut your coat a bit longer in the future--I'm settling a
+thousand a year on you at once.  June will have fifty thousand at
+my death; and you the rest.  That dog of yours is spoiling the
+garden.  I shouldn't keep a dog, if I were you!"
+
+The dog Balthasar, seated in the centre of the lawn, was
+examining his tail.
+
+Young Jolyon looked at the animal, but saw him dimly, for his
+eyes were misty.
+
+"Yours won't come short of a hundred thousand, my boy," said old
+Jolyon; "I thought you'd better know.  I haven't much longer to
+live at my age.  I shan't allude to it again.  How's your wife?
+
+And--give her my love."
+
+Young Jolyon put his hand on his father's shoulder, and, as
+neither spoke, the episode closed.
+
+Having seen his father into a hansom, young Jolyon came back to
+the drawing-room and stood, where old Jolyon had stood, looking
+down on the little garden.  He tried to realize all that this
+meant to him, and, Forsyte that he was, vistas of property were
+opened out in his brain; the years of half rations through which
+he had passed had not sapped his natural instincts.  In extremely
+practical form, he thought of travel, of his wife's costume, the
+children's education, a pony for Jolly, a thousand things; but in
+the midst of all he thought, too, of Bosinney and his mistress,
+and the broken song of the thrush.  Joy--tragedy!  Which?  Which?
+
+The old past--the poignant, suffering, passionate, wonderful
+past, that no money could buy, that nothing could restore in all
+its burning sweetness--had come back before him.
+
+When his wife came in he went straight up to her and took her in
+his arms; and for a long time he stood without speaking, his eyes
+closed, pressing her to him, while she looked at him with a
+wondering, adoring, doubting look in her eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+VOYAGE INTO THE INFERNO
+
+
+The morning after a certain night on which Soames at last
+asserted his rights and acted like a man, he breakfasted alone.
+
+He breakfasted by gaslight, the fog of late November wrapping the
+town as in some monstrous blanket till the trees of the Square
+even were barely visible from the diningroom window.
+
+He ate steadily, but at times a sensation as though he could not
+swallow attacked him.  Had he been right to yield to his
+overmastering hunger of the night before, and break down the
+resistance which he had suffered now too long from this woman who
+was his lawful and solemnly constituted helpmate?
+
+He was strangely haunted by the recollection of her face, from
+before which, to soothe her, he had tried to pull her hands--of
+her terrible smothered sobbing, the like of which he had never
+heard, and still seemed to hear; and he was still haunted by the
+odd, intolerable feeling of remorse and shame he had felt, as he
+stood looking at her by the flame of the single candle, before
+silently slinking away.
+
+And somehow, now that he had acted like this, he was surprised at
+himself.
+
+Two nights before, at Winifred Dartie's, he had taken Mrs.
+MacAnder into dinner.  She had said to him, looking in his face
+with her sharp, greenish eyes: "And so your wife is a great
+friend of that Mr. Bosinney's?"
+
+Not deigning to ask what she meant, he had brooded over her
+words.
+
+They had roused in him a fierce jealousy, which, with the
+peculiar perversion of this instinct, had turned to fiercer
+desire.
+
+Without the incentive of Mrs. MacAnder's words he might never
+have done what he had done.  Without their incentive and the
+accident of finding his wife's door for once unlocked, which had
+enabled him to steal upon her asleep.
+
+Slumber had removed his doubts, but the morning brought them
+again.  One thought comforted him: No one would know--it was not
+the sort of thing that she would speak about.
+
+And, indeed, when the vehicle of his daily business life, which
+needed so imperatively the grease of clear and practical thought,
+started rolling once more with the reading of his letters, those
+nightmare-like doubts began to assume less extravagant importance
+at the back of his mind.  The incident was really not of great
+moment; women made a fuss about it in books; but in the cool
+judgment of right-thinking men, of men of the world, of such as
+he recollected often received praise in the Divorce Court, he had
+but done his best to sustain the sanctity of marriage, to prevent
+her from abandoning her duty, possibly, if she were still seeing
+Bosinney, from....
+
+No, he did not regret it.
+
+Now that the first step towards reconciliation had been taken,
+the rest would be comparatively--comparatively....
+
+He, rose and walked to the window.  His nerve had been shaken.
+The sound of smothered sobbing was in his ears again.  He could
+not get rid of it.
+
+He put on his fur coat, and went out into the fog; having to go
+into the City, he took the underground railway from Sloane Square
+station.
+
+In his corner of the first-class compartment filled with City men
+the smothered sobbing still haunted him, so he opened the Times
+with the rich crackle that drowns all lesser sounds, and,
+barricaded behind it, set himself steadily to con the news.
+
+He read that a Recorder had charged a grand jury on the previous
+day with a more than usually long list of offences.  He read of
+three murders, five manslaughters, seven arsons, and as many as
+eleven rapes--a surprisingly high number--in addition to many
+less conspicuous crimes, to be tried during a coming Sessions;
+and from one piece of news he went on to another, keeping the
+paper well before his face.
+
+And still, inseparable from his reading, was the memory of
+Irene's tear-stained face, and the sounds from her broken heart.
+
+The day was a busy one, including, in addition to the ordinary
+affairs of his practice, a visit to his brokers, Messrs. Grin
+and Grinning, to give them instructions to sell his shares in the
+New Colliery Co., Ltd., whose business he suspected, rather than
+knew, was stagnating (this enterprise afterwards slowly declined,
+and was ultimately sold for a song to an American syndicate); and
+a long conference at Waterbuck, Q.C.'s chambers, attended by
+Boulter, by Fiske, the junior counsel, and Waterbuck, Q.C.,
+himself.
+
+The case of Forsyte v. Bosinney was expected to be reached on
+the morrow, before Mr. Justice Bentham.
+
+Mr. Justice Bentham, a man of common-sense rather than too great
+legal knowledge, was considered to be about the best man they
+could have to try the action.  He was a 'strong' Judge.
+
+Waterbuck, Q.C., in pleasing conjunction with an almost rude
+neglect of Boulter and Fiske paid to Soames a good deal of
+attention, by instinct or the sounder evidence of rumour, feeling
+him to be a man of property.
+
+He held with remarkable consistency to the opinion he had already
+expressed in writing, that the issue would depend to a great
+extent on the evidence given at the trial, and in a few well
+directed remarks he advised Soames not to be too careful in
+giving that evidence.  "A little bluffness, Mr. Forsyte," he said,
+"a little bluffness," and after he had spoken he laughed firmly,
+closed his lips tight, and scratched his head just below where he
+had pushed his wig back, for all the world like the gentleman-
+farmer for whom he loved to be taken.  He was considered perhaps
+the leading man in breach of promise cases.
+
+Soames used the underground again in going home.
+
+The fog was worse than ever at Sloane Square station.  Through
+the still, thick blur, men groped in and out; women, very few,
+grasped their reticules to their bosoms and handkerchiefs to
+their mouths; crowned with the weird excrescence of the driver,
+haloed by a vague glow of lamp-light that seemed to drown in
+vapour before it reached the pavement, cabs loomed dimshaped ever
+and again, and discharged citizens, bolting like rabbits to their
+burrows.
+
+And these shadowy figures, wrapped each in his own little shroud
+of fog, took no notice of each other.  In the great warren, each
+rabbit for himself, especially those clothed in the more
+expensive fur, who, afraid of carriages on foggy days, are driven
+underground.
+
+One figure, however, not far from Soames, waited at the station
+door.
+
+Some buccaneer or lover, of whom each Forsyte thought: 'Poor
+devil! looks as if he were having a bad time!'  Their kind hearts
+beat a stroke faster for that poor, waiting, anxious lover in the
+fog; but they hurried by, well knowing that they had neither time
+nor money to spare for any suffering but their own.
+
+Only a policeman, patrolling slowly and at intervals, took an
+interest in that waiting figure, the brim of whose slouch hat
+half hid a face reddened by the cold, all thin, and haggard, over
+which a hand stole now and again to smooth away anxiety, or renew
+the resolution that kept him waiting there.  But the waiting
+lover (if lover he were) was used to policemen's scrutiny, or too
+absorbed in his anxiety, for he never flinched.  A hardened case,
+accustomed to long trysts, to anxiety, and fog, and cold, if only
+his mistress came at last.  Foolish lover!  Fogs last until the
+spring; there is also snow and rain, no comfort anywhere; gnawing
+fear if you bring her out, gnawing fear if you bid her stay at
+home!
+
+"Serve him right; he should arrange his affairs better!"
+
+So any respectable Forsyte.  Yet, if that sounder citizen could
+have listened at the waiting lover's heart, out there in the fog
+and the cold, he would have said again: "Yes, poor devil he's
+having a bad time!"
+
+Soames got into his cab, and, with the glass down, crept along
+Sloane Street, and so along the Brompton Road, and home.  He
+reached his house at five.
+
+His wife was not in.  She had gone out a quarter of an hour
+before.  Out at such a time of night, into this terrible fog!
+What was the meaning of that?
+
+He sat by the dining-room fire, with the door open, disturbed to
+the soul, trying to read the evening paper.  A book was no good--
+in daily papers alone was any narcotic to such worry as his.
+>From the customary events recorded in the journal he drew some
+comfort.  'Suicide of an actress'--'Grave indisposition of a
+Statesman' (that chronic sufferer)--'Divorce of an army officer'
+--'Fire in a colliery'--he read them all.  They helped him a
+little--prescribed by the greatest of all doctors, our natural
+taste.
+
+It was nearly seven when he heard her come in.
+
+The incident of the night before had long lost its importance
+under stress of anxiety at her strange sortie into the fog.  But
+now that Irene was home, the memory of her broken-hearted sobbing
+came back to him, and he felt nervous at the thought of facing
+her.
+
+She was already on the stairs; her grey fur coat hung to her
+knees, its high collar almost hid her face, she wore a thick
+veil.
+
+She neither turned to look at him nor spoke.  No ghost or
+stranger could have passed more silently.
+
+Bilson came to lay dinner, and told him that Mrs. Forsyte was not
+coming down; she was having the soup in her room.
+
+For once Soames did not 'change'; it was, perhaps, the first time
+in his life that he had sat down to dinner with soiled cuffs,
+and, not even noticing them, he brooded long over his wine.  He
+sent Bilson to light a fire in his picture-room, and presently
+went up there himself.
+
+Turning on the gas, he heaved a deep sigh, as though amongst
+these treasures, the backs of which confronted him in stacks,
+around the little room, he had found at length his peace of mind.
+He went straight up to the greatest treasure of them all, an
+undoubted Turner, and, carrying it to the easel, turned its face
+to the light.  There had been a movement in Turners, but he had
+not been able to make up his mind to part with it.  He stood for
+a long time, his pale, clean-shaven face poked forward above his
+stand-up collar, looking at the picture as though he were adding
+it up; a wistful expression came into his eyes; he found,
+perhaps, that it came to too little.  He took it down from the
+easel to put it back against the wall; but, in crossing the room,
+stopped, for he seemed to hear sobbing.
+
+It was nothing--only the sort of thing that had been bothering
+him in the morning.  And soon after, putting the high guard
+before the blazing fire, he stole downstairs.
+
+Fresh for the morrow!  was his thought.  It was long before he
+went to sleep....
+
+It is now to George Forsyte that the mind must turn for light on
+the events of that fog-engulfed afternoon.
+
+The wittiest and most sportsmanlike of the Forsytes had passed
+the day reading a novel in the paternal mansion at Princes'
+Gardens.  Since a recent crisis in his financial affairs he had
+been kept on parole by Roger, and compelled to reside 'at home.'
+
+Towards five o'clock he went out, and took train at South
+Kensington Station (for everyone to-day went Underground).  His
+intention was to dine, and pass the evening playing billiards at
+the Red Pottle--that unique hostel, neither club, hotel, nor good
+gilt restaurant.
+
+He got out at Charing Cross, choosing it in preference to his
+more usual St.  James's Park, that he might reach Jermyn Street
+by better lighted ways.
+
+On the platform his eyes--for in combination with a composed and
+fashionable appearance, George had sharp eyes, and was always on
+the look-out for fillips to his sardonic humour--his eyes were
+attracted by a man, who, leaping from a first-class compartment,
+staggered rather than walked towards the exit.
+
+'So ho, my bird!' said George to himself; 'why, it's "the
+Buccaneer!"' and he put his big figure on the trail.  Nothing
+afforded him greater amusement than a drunken man.
+
+Bosinney, who wore a slouch hat, stopped in front of him, spun
+around, and rushed back towards the carriage he had just left.
+He was too late.  A porter caught him by the coat; the train was
+already moving on.
+
+George's practised glance caught sight of the face of a lady clad
+in a grey fur coat at the carriage window.  It was Mrs. Soames--
+and George felt that this was interesting!
+
+And now he followed Bosinney more closely than ever--up the
+stairs, past the ticket collector into the street.  In that
+progress, however, his feelings underwent a change; no longer
+merely curious and amused, he felt sorry for the poor fellow he
+was shadowing.  'The Buccaneer' was not drunk, but seemed to be
+acting under the stress of violent emotion; he was talking to
+himself, and all that George could catch were the words "Oh,
+God!"  Nor did he appear to know what he was doing, or where
+going; but stared, hesitated, moved like a man out of his mind;
+and from being merely a joker in search of amusement, George felt
+that he must see the poor chap through.
+
+He had 'taken the knock'--'taken the knock!'  And he wondered what
+on earth Mrs. Soames had been saying, what on earth she had been
+telling him in the railway carriage.  She had looked bad enough
+herself!  It made George sorry to think of her travelling on with
+her trouble all alone.
+
+He followed close behind Bosinney's elbow--tall, burly figure,
+saying nothing, dodging warily--and shadowed him out into the
+fog.
+
+There was something here beyond a jest!  He kept his head
+admirably, in spite of some excitement, for in addition to
+compassion, the instincts of the chase were roused within him.
+
+Bosinney walked right out into the thoroughfare--a vast muffled
+blackness, where a man could not see six paces before him; where,
+all around, voices or whistles mocked the sense of direction; and
+sudden shapes came rolling slow upon them; and now and then a
+light showed like a dim island in an infinite dark sea.
+
+And fast into this perilous gulf of night walked Bosinney, and
+fast after him walked George.  If the fellow meant to put his
+'twopenny' under a 'bus, he would stop it if he could!  Across
+the street and back the hunted creature strode, not groping as
+other men were groping in that gloom, but driven forward as
+though the faithful George behind wielded a knout; and this chase
+after a haunted man began to have for George the strangest
+fascination.
+
+But it was now that the affair developed in a way which ever
+afterwards caused it to remain green in his mind.  Brought to a
+stand-still in the fog, he heard words which threw a sudden light
+on these proceedings.  What Mrs. Soames had said to Bosinney in
+the train was now no longer dark.  George understood from those
+mutterings that Soames had exercised his rights over an estranged
+and unwilling wife in the greatest--the supreme act of property.
+
+His fancy wandered in the fields of this situation; it impressed
+him; he guessed something of the anguish, the sexual confusion
+and horror in Bosinney's heart.  And he thought: 'Yes, it's a bit
+thick!  I don't wonder the poor fellow is halfcracked!'
+
+He had run his quarry to earth on a bench under one of the lions
+in Trafalgar Square, a monster sphynx astray like themselves in
+that gulf of darkness.  Here, rigid and silent, sat Bosinney, and
+George, in whose patience was a touch of strange brotherliness,
+took his stand behind.  He was not lacking in a certain delicacy-
+-a sense of form--that did not permit him to intrude upon this
+tragedy, and he waited, quiet as the lion above, his fur collar
+hitched above his ears concealing the fleshy redness of his
+cheeks, concealing all but his eyes with their sardonic,
+compassionate stare.  And men kept passing back from business on
+the way to their clubs--men whose figures shrouded in cocoons of
+fog came into view like spectres, and like spectres vanished.
+Then even in his compassion George's Quilpish humour broke forth
+in a sudden longing to pluck these spectres by the sleeve, and
+say:
+
+"Hi, you Johnnies!  You don't often see a show like this!  Here's
+a poor devil whose mistress has just been telling him a pretty
+little story of her husband; walk up, walk up!  He's taken the
+knock, you see."
+
+In fancy he saw them gaping round the tortured lover; and grinned
+as he thought of some respectable, newly-married spectre enabled
+by the state of his own affections to catch an inkling of what
+was going on within Bosinney; he fancied he could see his mouth
+getting wider and wider, and the fog going down and down.  For in
+George was all that contempt of the of the married middle-class--
+peculiar to the wild and sportsmanlike spirits in its ranks.
+
+But he began to be bored.  Waiting was not what he had bargained
+for.
+
+'After all,' he thought, 'the poor chap will get over it; not the
+first time such a thing has happened in this little city!' But
+now his quarry again began muttering words of violent hate and
+anger.  And following a sudden impulse George touched him on the
+shoulder.
+
+Bosinney spun round.
+
+"Who are you?  What do you want?"
+
+George could have stood it well enough in the light of the gas
+lamps, in the light of that everyday world of which he was so
+hardy a connoisseur; but in this fog, where all was gloomy and
+
+unreal, where nothing had that matter-of-fact value associated by
+Forsytes with earth, he was a victim to strange qualms, and as he
+tried to stare back into the eyes of this maniac, he thought:
+
+'If I see a bobby, I'll hand him over; he's not fit to be at
+large.'
+
+But waiting for no answer, Bosinney strode off into the fog, and
+George followed, keeping perhaps a little further off, yet more
+than ever set on tracking him down.
+
+'He can't go on long like this,' he thought.  'It's God's own
+miracle he's not been run over already.' He brooded no more on
+policemen, a sportsman's sacred fire alive again within him.
+
+Into a denser gloom than ever Bosinney held on at a furious pace;
+but his pursuer perceived more method in his madness--he was
+clearly making his way westwards.
+
+'He's really going for Soames!' thought George.  The idea was
+attractive.  It would be a sporting end to such a chase.  He had
+always disliked his cousin.
+
+The shaft of a passing cab brushed against his shoulder and made
+him leap aside.  He did not intend to be killed for the Buccaneer,
+or anyone.  Yet, with hereditary tenacity, he stuck to the trail
+through vapour that blotted out everything but the shadow of the
+hunted man and the dim moon of the nearest lamp.
+
+Then suddenly, with the instinct of a town-stroller, George knew
+himself to be in Piccadilly.  Here he could find his way blindfold;
+and freed from the strain of geographical uncertainty, his mind
+returned to Bosinney's trouble.
+
+Down the long avenue of his man-about-town experience, bursting,
+as it were, through a smirch of doubtful amours, there stalked to
+him a memory of his youth.  A memory, poignant still, that brought
+the scent of hay, the gleam of moonlight, a summer magic, into
+the reek and blackness of this London fog--the memory of a night
+when in the darkest shadow of a lawn he had overheard from a
+woman's lips that he was not her sole possessor.  And for a moment
+George walked no longer in black Piccadilly, but lay again, with
+hell in his heart, and his face to the sweet-smelling, dewy grass,
+in the long shadow of poplars that hid the moon.
+
+A longing seized him to throw his arm round the Buccaneer, and
+say, "Come, old boy.  Time cures all.  Let's go and drink it off!"
+
+But a voice yelled at him, and he started back.  A cab rolled out
+of blackness, and into blackness disappeared.  And suddenly
+George perceived that he had lost Bosinney.  He ran forward and
+back, felt his heart clutched by a sickening fear, the dark fear
+which lives in the wings of the fog.  Perspiration started out on
+his brow.  He stood quite still, listening with all his might.
+
+"And then," as he confided to Dartie the same evening in the
+course of a game of billiards at the Red Pottle, "I lost him."
+
+Dartie twirled complacently at his dark moustache.  He had just
+put together a neat break of twenty-three,--failing at a 'Jenny.'
+"And who was she?" he asked.
+
+George looked slowly at the 'man of the world's' fattish, sallow
+face, and a little grim smile lurked about the curves of his
+cheeks and his heavy-lidded eyes.
+
+'No, no, my fine fellow,' he thought, 'I'm not going to tell
+you.' For though he mixed with Dartie a good deal, he thought him
+a bit of a cad.
+
+"Oh, some little love-lady or other," he said, and chalked his
+cue.
+
+"A love-lady!" exclaimed Dartie--he used a more figurative
+expression.  "I made sure it was our friend Soa...."
+
+"Did you?" said George curtly.  "Then damme you've made an
+error."
+
+He missed his shot.  He was careful not to allude to the subject
+again till, towards eleven o'clock, having, in his poetic
+phraseology, 'looked upon the drink when it was yellow,' he drew
+aside the blind, and gazed out into the street.  The murky
+blackness of the fog was but faintly broken by the lamps of the
+'Red Pottle,' and no shape of mortal man or thing was in sight.
+
+"I can't help thinking of that poor Buccaneer," he said.  "He may
+be wandering out there now in that fog.  If he's not a corpse,"
+he added with strange dejection.
+
+"Corpse!" said Dartie, in whom the recollection of his defeat at
+Richmond flared up.  "He's all right.  Ten to one if he wasn't
+tight!"
+
+George turned on him, looking really formidable, with a sort of
+savage gloom on his big face.
+
+"Dry up!" he said.  "Don't I tell you he's 'taken the knock!"'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE TRIAL
+
+
+In the morning of his case, which was second in the list, Soames
+was again obliged to start without seeing Irene, and it was just
+as well, for he had not as yet made up his mind what attitude to
+adopt towards her.
+
+He had been requested to be in court by half-past ten, to provide
+against the event of the first action (a breach of promise)
+collapsing, which however it did not, both sides showing a
+courage that afforded Waterbuck, Q.C., an opportunity for
+improving his already great reputation in this class of case.  He
+was opposed by Ram, the other celebrated breach of promise man.
+It was a battle of giants.
+
+The court delivered judgment just before the luncheon interval.
+The jury left the box for good, and Soames went out to get
+something to eat.  He met James standing at the little luncheon-
+bar, like a pelican in the wilderness of the galleries, bent over
+a sandwich with a glass of sherry before him.  The spacious
+emptiness of the great central hall, over which father and son
+brooded as they stood together, was marred now and then for a
+fleeting moment by barristers in wig and gown hurriedly bolting
+across, by an occasional old lady or rusty-coated man, looking up
+in a frightened way, and by two persons, bolder than their
+generation, seated in an embrasure arguing.  The sound of their
+voices arose, together with a scent as of neglected wells, which,
+mingling with the odour of the galleries, combined to form the
+savour, like nothing but the emanation of a refined cheese, so
+indissolubly connected with the administration of British
+Justice.
+
+It was not long before James addressed his son.
+
+"When's your case coming on?  I suppose it'll be on directly.  I
+shouldn't wonder if this Bosinney'd say anything; I should think
+he'd have to.  He'll go bankrupt if it goes against him." He took
+a large bite at his sandwich and a mouthful of sherry.  "Your
+mother," he said, "wants you and Irene to come and dine
+to-night."
+
+A chill smile played round Soames' lips; he looked back at his
+father.  Anyone who had seen the look, cold and furtive, thus
+interchanged, might have been pardoned for not appreciating the
+real understanding between them.  James finished his sherry at a
+draught.
+
+"How much?" he asked.
+
+On returning to the court Soames took at once his rightful seat
+on the front bench beside his solicitor.  He ascertained where
+his father was seated with a glance so sidelong as to commit
+nobody.
+
+James, sitting back with his hands clasped over the handle of his
+umbrella, was brooding on the end of the bench immediately behind
+counsel, whence he could get away at once when the case was over.
+He considered Bosinney's conduct in every way outrageous, but he
+did not wish to run up against him, feeling that the meeting
+would be awkward.
+
+Next to the Divorce Court, this court was, perhaps, the favourite
+emporium of justice, libel, breach of promise, and other
+commercial actions being frequently decided there.  Quite a
+sprinkling of persons unconnected with the law occupied the back
+benches, and the hat of a woman or two could be seen in the
+gallery.
+
+The two rows of seats immediately in front of James were
+gradually filled by barristers in wigs, who sat down to make
+pencil notes, chat, and attend to their teeth; but his interest
+was soon diverted from these lesser lights of justice by the
+entrance of Waterbuck, Q.C., with the wings of his silk gown
+rustling, and his red, capable face supported by two short, brown
+whiskers.  The famous Q.C. looked, as James freely admitted, the
+very picture of a man who could heckle a witness.
+
+For all his experience, it so happened that he had never seen
+Waterbuck, Q.C., before, and, like many Forsytes in the lower
+branch of the profession, he had an extreme admiration for a good
+cross-examiner.  The long, lugubrious folds in his cheeks relaxed
+somewhat after seeing him, especially as he now perceived that
+Soames alone was represented by silk.
+
+Waterbuck, Q.C., had barely screwed round on his elbow to chat
+with his Junior before Mr. Justice Bentham himself appeared--a
+thin, rather hen-like man, with a little stoop, clean-shaven
+under his snowy wig.  Like all the rest of the court, Waterbuck
+rose, and remained on his feet until the judge was seated.  James
+rose but slightly; he was already comfortable, and had no opinion
+of Bentham, having sat next but one to him at dinner twice at the
+Bumley Tomms'.  Bumley Tomm was rather a poor thing, though he
+had been so successful.  James himself had given him his first
+brief.  He was excited, too, for he had just found out that
+Bosinney was not in court.
+
+'Now, what's he mean by that?' he kept on thinking.
+
+The case having been called on, Waterbuck, Q.C., pushing back his
+papers, hitched his gown on his shoulder, and, with a
+semi-circular look around him, like a man who is going to bat,
+arose and addressed the Court.
+
+The facts, he said, were not in dispute, and all that his
+Lordship would be asked was to interpret the correspondence which
+had taken place between his client and the defendant, an
+architect, with reference to the decoration of a house.  He
+would, however, submit that this correspondence could only mean
+one very plain thing.  After briefly reciting the history of the
+house at Robin Hill, which he described as a mansion, and the
+actual facts of expenditure, he went on as follows:
+
+"My client, Mr. Soames Forsyte, is a gentleman, a man of
+property, who would be the last to dispute any legitimate claim
+that might be made against him, but he has met with such
+treatment from his architect in the matter of this house, over
+which he has, as your lordship has heard, already spent some
+twelve--some twelve thousand pounds, a sum considerably in
+advance of the amount he had originally contemplated, that as a
+matter of principle--and this I cannot too strongly emphasize--as
+a matter of principle, and in the interests of others, he has
+felt himself compelled to bring this action.  The point put
+forward in defence by the architect I will suggest to your
+lordship is not worthy of a moment's serious consideration."  He
+then read the correspondence.
+
+His client, "a man of recognised position," was prepared to go
+into the box, and to swear that he never did authorize, that it
+was never in his mind to authorize, the expenditure of any money
+beyond the extreme limit of twelve thousand and fifty pounds,
+which he had clearly fixed; and not further to waste the time of
+the court, he would at once call Mr. Forsyte.
+
+Soames then went into the box.  His whole appearance was striking
+in its composure.  His face, just supercilious enough, pale and
+clean-shaven, with a little line between the eyes, and compressed
+lips; his dress in unostentatious order, one hand neatly gloved,
+the other bare.  He answered the questions put to him in a
+somewhat low, but distinct voice.  His evidence under cross-
+examination savoured of taciturnity.
+
+Had he not used the expression, "a free hand"?  No.
+
+"Come, come!"
+
+The expression he had used was 'a free hand in the terms of this
+correspondence.'
+
+"Would you tell the Court that that was English?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"What do you say it means?"
+
+"What it says!"
+
+"Are you prepared to deny that it is a contradiction in terms?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You are not an Irishman?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Are you a well-educated man?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And yet you persist in that statement?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Throughout this and much more cross-examination, which turned
+again and again around the 'nice point,' James sat with his hand
+behind his ear, his eyes fixed upon his son.
+
+He was proud of him!  He could not but feel that in similar
+circumstances he himself would have been tempted to enlarge his
+replies, but his instinct told him that this taciturnity was the
+very thing.  He sighed with relief, however, when Soames, slowly
+turning, and without any change of expression, descended from the
+box.
+
+When it came to the turn of Bosinney's Counsel to address the
+Judge, James redoubled his attention, and he searched the Court
+again and again to see if Bosinney were not somewhere concealed.
+
+Young Chankery began nervously; he was placed by Bosinney's
+absence in an awkward position.  He therefore did his best to
+turn that absence to account.
+
+He could not but fear--he said--that his client had met with an
+accident.  He had fully expected him there to give evidence; they
+had sent round that morning both to Mr. Bosinney's office and to
+his rooms (though he knew they were one and the same, he thought
+it was as well not to say so), but it was not known where he was,
+and this he considered to be ominous, knowing how anxious Mr.
+Bosinney had been to give his evidence.  He had not, however,
+been instructed to apply for an adjournment, and in default of
+such instruction he conceived it his duty to go on.  The plea on
+which he somewhat confidently relied, and which his client, had
+he not unfortunately been prevented in some way from attending,
+would have supported by his evidence, was that such an expression
+as a 'free hand' could not be limited, fettered, and rendered
+unmeaning, by any verbiage which might follow it.  He would go
+further and say that the correspondence showed that whatever he
+might have said in his evidence, Mr. Forsyte had in fact never
+contemplated repudiating liability on any of the work ordered or
+executed by his architect.  The defendant had certainly never
+contemplated such a contingency, or, as was demonstrated by his
+letters, he would never have proceeded with the work--a work of
+extreme delicacy, carried out with great care and efficiency, to
+meet and satisfy the fastidious taste of a connoisseur, a rich
+man, a man of property.  He felt strongly on this point, and
+feeling strongly he used, perhaps, rather strong words when he
+said that this action was of a most unjustifiable, unexpected,
+indeed--unprecedented character.  If his Lordship had had the
+opportunity that he himself had made it his duty to take, to go
+over this very fine house and see the great delicacy and beauty
+of the decorations executed by his client--an artist in his most
+honourable profession--he felt convinced that not for one moment
+would his Lordship tolerate this, he would use no stronger word
+than, daring attempt to evade legitimate responsibility.
+
+Taking the text of Soames' letters, he lightly touched on
+'Boileau v. The Blasted Cement Company, Limited.'  "It is
+doubtful," he said, "what that authority has decided; in any case
+I would submit that it is just as much in my favour as in my
+friend's."  He then argued the 'nice point' closely.  With all
+due deference he submitted that Mr. Forsyte's expression
+nullified itself.  His client not being a rich man, the matter
+was a serious one for him; he was a very talented architect,
+whose professional reputation was undoubtedly somewhat at stake.
+He concluded with a perhaps too personal appeal to the Judge, as
+a lover of the arts, to show himself the protector of artists,
+from what was occasionally--he said occasionally--the too iron
+hand of capital.  "What," he said, "will be the position of the
+artistic professions, if men of property like this Mr. Forsyte
+refuse, and are allowed to refuse, to carry out the obligations
+of the commissions which they have given."  He would now call
+his client, in case he should at the last moment have found
+himself able to be present.
+
+The name Philip Baynes Bosinney was called three times by the
+Ushers, and the sound of the calling echoed with strange
+melancholy throughout the Court and Galleries.
+
+The crying of this name, to which no answer was returned, had
+upon James a curious effect: it was like calling for your lost
+dog about the streets.  And the creepy feeling that it gave him,
+of a man missing, grated on his sense of comfort and security-on
+his cosiness.  Though he could not have said why, it made him
+feel uneasy.
+
+He looked now at the clock--a quarter to three!  It would be all
+over in a quarter of an hour.  Where could the young fellow be?
+
+It was only when Mr. Justice Bentham delivered judgment that he
+got over the turn he had received.
+
+Behind the wooden erection, by which he was fenced from more
+ordinary mortals, the learned Judge leaned forward.  The electric
+light, just turned on above his head, fell on his face, and
+mellowed it to an orange hue beneath the snowy crown of his wig;
+the amplitude of his robes grew before the eye; his whole figure,
+facing the comparative dusk of the Court, radiated like some
+majestic and sacred body.  He cleared his throat, took a sip of
+water, broke the nib of a quill against the desk, and, folding
+his bony hands before him, began.
+
+To James he suddenly loomed much larger than he had ever thought
+Bentham would loom.  It was the majesty of the law; and a person
+endowed with a nature far less matter-of-fact than that of James
+might have been excused for failing to pierce this halo, and
+disinter therefrom the somewhat ordinary Forsyte, who walked and
+talked in every-day life under the name of Sir Walter Bentham.
+
+He delivered judgment in the following words:
+
+"The facts in this case are not in dispute.  On May 15 last the
+defendant wrote to the plaintiff, requesting to be allowed to
+withdraw from his professional position in regard to the
+decoration of the plaintiff's house, unless he were given 'a free
+hand.'  The plaintiff, on May 17, wrote back as follows: 'In
+giving you, in accordance with your request, this free hand, I
+wish you to clearly understand that the total cost of the house
+as handed over to me completely decorated, inclusive of your fee
+(as arranged between us) must not exceed twelve thousand pounds.'
+To this letter the defendant replied on May 18: 'If you think
+
+that in such a delicate matter as decoration I can bind myself to
+the exact pound, I am afraid you are mistaken.'  On May 19 the
+plaintiff wrote as follows: 'I did not mean to say that if you
+should exceed the sum named in my letter to you by ten or twenty
+or even fifty pounds there would be any difficulty between us.
+You have a free hand in the terms of this correspondence, and I
+hope you will see your way to completing the decorations.'  On
+May 20 the defendant replied thus shortly: 'Very well.'
+
+"In completing these decorations, the defendant incurred
+liabilities and expenses which brought the total cost of this
+house up to the sum of twelve thousand four hundred pounds, all
+of which expenditure has been defrayed by the plaintiff.  This
+action has been brought by the plaintiff to recover from the
+defendant the sum of three hundred and fifty pounds expended by
+him in excess of a sum of twelve thousand and fifty pounds,
+alleged by the plaintiff to have been fixed by this
+correspondence as the maximum sum that the defendant had
+authority to expend.
+
+"The question for me to decide is whether or no the defendant is
+liable to refund to the plaintiff this sum.  In my judgment he is
+so liable.
+
+"What in effect the plaintiff has said is this 'I give you a free
+hand to complete these decorations, provided that you keep within
+a total cost to me of twelve thousand pounds.  If you exceed that
+sum by as much as fifty pounds, I will not hold you responsible;
+beyond that point you are no agent of mine, and I shall repudiate
+liability.' It is not quite clear to me whether, had the
+plaintiff in fact repudiated liability under his agent's
+contracts, he would, under all the circumstances, have been
+successful in so doing; but he has not adopted this course.  He
+has accepted liability, and fallen back upon his rights against
+the defendant under the terms of the latter's engagement.
+
+"In my judgment the plaintiff is entitled to recover this sum
+from the defendant.
+
+"It has been sought, on behalf of the defendant, to show that no
+limit of expenditure was fixed or intended to be fixed by this
+correspondence.  If this were so, I can find no reason for the
+plaintiff's importation into the correspondence of the figures of
+twelve thousand pounds and subsequently of fifty pounds.  The
+defendant's contention would render these figures meaningless.
+It is manifest to me that by his letter of May 20 he assented to
+a very clear proposition, by the terms of which he must be held
+to be bound.
+
+"For these reasons there will be judgment for the plaintiff for
+the amount claimed with costs."
+
+James sighed, and stooping, picked up his umbrella which had
+fallen with a rattle at the words 'importation into this
+correspondence.'
+
+Untangling his legs, he rapidly left the Court; without waiting
+for his son, he snapped up a hansom cab (it was a clear, grey
+afternoon) and drove straight to Timothy's where he found
+Swithin; and to him, Mrs. Septimus Small, and Aunt Hester, he
+recounted the whole proceedings, eating two muffins not
+altogether in the intervals of speech.
+
+"Soames did very well," he ended; "he's got his head screwed on
+the right way.  This won't please Jolyon.  It's a bad business
+for that young Bosinney; he'll go bankrupt, I shouldn't wonder,"
+and then after a long pause, during which he had stared
+disquietly into the fire, he added
+
+"He wasn't there--now why?"
+
+There was a sound of footsteps.  The figure of a thick-set man,
+with the ruddy brown face of robust health, was seen in the back
+drawing-room.  The forefinger of his upraised hand was outlined
+against the black of his frock coat.  He spoke in a grudging
+voice.
+
+"Well, James," he said, "I can't--I can't stop," and turning
+round, he walked out.
+
+It was Timothy.
+
+James rose from his chair.  "There!" he said, "there!  I knew
+there was something wro...."  He checked himself, and was silent,
+staring before him, as though he had seen a portent.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+SOAMES BREAKS THE NEWS
+
+
+In leaving the Court Soames did not go straight home.  He felt
+disinclined for the City, and drawn by need for sympathy in his
+triumph, he, too, made his way, but slowly and on foot, to
+Timothy's in the Bayswater Road.
+
+His father had just left; Mrs. Small and Aunt Hester, in
+possession of the whole story, greeted him warmly.  They were
+sure he was hungry after all that evidence.  Smither should toast
+him some more muffins, his dear father had eaten them all.  He
+must put his legs up on the sofa; and he must have a glass of
+prune brandy too.  It was so strengthening.
+
+Swithin was still present, having lingered later than his wont,
+for he felt in want of exercise.  On hearing this suggestion, he
+'pished.' A pretty pass young men were coming to!  His own liver
+was out of order, and he could not bear the thought of anyone
+else drinking prune brandy.
+
+He went away almost immediately, saying to Soames: "And how's
+your wife?  You tell her from me that if she's dull, and likes to
+come and dine with me quietly, I'll give her such a bottle of
+champagne as she doesn't get every day."  Staring down from his
+height on Soames he contracted his thick, puffy, yellow hand as
+though squeezing within it all this small fry, and throwing out
+his chest he waddled slowly away.
+
+Mrs. Small and Aunt Hester were left horrified.  Swithin was so
+droll!
+
+They themselves were longing to ask Soames how Irene would take
+the result, yet knew that they must not; he would perhaps say
+something of his own accord, to throw some light on this, the
+present burning question in their lives, the question that from
+necessity of silence tortured them almost beyond bearing; for
+even Timothy had now been told, and the effect on his health was
+little short of alarming.  And what, too, would June do?  This,
+also, was a most exciting, if dangerous speculation!
+
+They had never forgotten old Jolyon's visit, since when he had
+not once been to see them; they had never forgotten the feeling
+it gave all who were present, that the family was no longer what
+it had been--that the family was breaking up.
+
+But Soames gave them no help, sitting with his knees crossed,
+talking of the Barbizon school of painters, whom he had just
+discovered.  These were the coming men, he said; he should not
+wonder if a lot of money were made over them; he had his eye on
+two pictures by a man called Corot, charming things; if he could
+get them at a reasonable price he was going to buy them--they
+would, he thought, fetch a big price some day.
+
+Interested as they could not but be, neither Mrs. Septimus Small
+nor Aunt Hester could entirely acquiesce in being thus put off.
+
+It was interesting--most interesting--and then Soames was so
+clever that they were sure he would do something with those
+pictures if anybody could; but what was his plan now that he had
+won his case; was he going to leave London at once, and live in
+the country, or what was he going to do?
+
+Soames answered that he did not know, he thought they should be
+moving soon.  He rose and kissed his aunts.
+
+No sooner had Aunt Juley received this emblem of departure than a
+change came over her, as though she were being visited by
+dreadful courage; every little roll of flesh on her face seemed
+trying to escape from an invisible, confining mask.
+
+She rose to the full extent of her more than medium height, and
+said: "It has been on my mind a long time, dear, and if nobody
+else will tell you, I have made up my mind that...."
+
+Aunt Hester interrupted her: "Mind, Julia, you do it...." she
+gasped--"on your own responsibility!"
+
+Mrs. Small went on as though she had not heard: "I think you
+ought to know, dear, that Mrs. MacAnder saw Irene walking in
+Richmond Park with Mr. Bosinney."
+
+Aunt Hester, who had also risen, sank back in her chair, and
+turned her face away.  Really Juley was too--she should not do
+such things when she--Aunt Hester, was in the room; and,
+breathless with anticipation, she waited for what Soames would
+answer.
+
+He had flushed the peculiar flush which always centred between
+his eyes; lifting his hand, and, as it were, selecting a finger,
+he bit a nail delicately; then, drawling it out between set lips,
+he said: "Mrs. MacAnder is a cat!"
+
+Without waiting for any reply, he left the room.
+
+When he went into Timothy's he had made up his mind what course
+to pursue on getting home.  He would go up to Irene and say:
+
+"Well, I've won my case, and there's an end of it!  I don't want
+to be hard on Bosinney; I'll see if we can't come to some
+arrangement; he shan't be pressed.  And now let's turn over a
+new leaf!  We'll let the house, and get out of these fogs.  We'll
+go down to Robin Hill at once.  I--I never meant to be rough with
+you!  Let's shake hands--and--"  Perhaps she would let him kiss
+her, and forget!
+
+When he came out of Timothy's his intentions were no longer so
+simple.  The smouldering jealousy and suspicion of months blazed
+up within him.  He would put an end to that sort of thing once
+and for all; he would not have her drag his name in the dirt!  If
+she could not or would not love him, as was her duty and his
+right--she should not play him tricks with anyone else!  He would
+tax her with it; threaten to divorce her!  That would make her
+behave; she would never face that.  But--but--what if she did?
+He was staggered; this had not occurred to him.
+
+What if she did?  What if she made him a confession?  How would
+he stand then?  He would have to bring a divorce!
+
+A divorce!  Thus close, the word was paralyzing, so utterly at
+variance with all the principles that had hitherto guided his
+life.  Its lack of compromise appalled him; he felt--like the
+captain of a ship, going to the side of his vessel, and, with his
+own hands throwing over the most precious of his bales.  This
+jettisoning of his property with his own hand seemed uncanny to
+Soames.  It would injure him in his profession: He would have to
+get rid of the house at Robin Hill, on which he had spent so much
+money, so much anticipation--and at a sacrifice.  And she!  She
+would no longer belong to him, not even in name!  She would pass
+out of his life, and he--he should never see her again!
+
+He traversed in the cab the length of a street without getting
+beyond the thought that he should never see her again!
+
+But perhaps there was nothing to confess, even now very likely
+there was nothing to confess.  Was it wise to push things so far?
+Was it wise to put himself into a position where he might have to
+eat his words?  The result of this case would ruin Bosinney; a
+ruined man was desperate, but--what could he do?  He might go
+abroad, ruined men always went abroad.  What could they do--if
+indeed it was 'they'--without money?  It would be better to wait
+and see how things turned out.  If necessary, he could have her
+watched.  The agony of his jealousy (for all the world like the
+crisis of an aching tooth) came on again; and he almost cried
+out.  But he must decide, fix on some course of action before he
+got home.  When the cab drew up at the door, he had decided
+nothing.
+
+He entered, pale, his hands moist with perspiration, dreading to
+meet her, burning to meet her, ignorant of what he was to say or
+do.
+
+The maid Bilson was in the hall, and in answer to his question:
+"Where is your mistress?" told him that Mrs. Forsyte had left the
+house about noon, taking with her a trunk and bag.
+
+Snatching the sleeve of his fur coat away from her grasp, he
+confronted her:
+
+"What?" he exclaimed; "what's that you said?" Suddenly
+recollecting that he must not betray emotion, he added: "What
+message did she leave?" and noticed with secret terror the
+startled look of the maid's eyes.
+
+"Mrs. Forsyte left no message, sir."
+
+"No message; very well, thank you, that will do.  I shall be
+dining out."
+
+The maid went downstairs, leaving him still in his fur coat, idly
+turning over the visiting cards in the porcelain bowl that stood
+on the carved oak rug chest in the hall.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Bareham Culcher.
+Mrs. Septimus Small.
+Mrs. Baynes.
+Mr. Solomon Thornworthy.
+Lady Bellis.
+Miss Hermione Bellis.
+Miss Winifred Bellis.
+Miss Ella Bellis.
+
+Who the devil were all these people?  He seemed to have forgotten
+all familiar things.  The words 'no message--a trunk, and a bag,'
+played a hide-and-seek in his brain.  It was incredible that she
+had left no message, and, still in his fur coat, he ran upstairs
+two steps at a time, as a young married man when he comes home
+will run up to his wife's room.
+
+Everything was dainty, fresh, sweet-smelling; everything in
+perfect order.  On the great bed with its lilac silk quilt, was
+the bag she had made and embroidered with her own hands to hold
+her sleeping things; her slippers ready at the foot; the sheets
+even turned over at the head as though expecting her.
+
+On the table stood the silver-mounted brushes and bottles from
+her dressing bag, his own present.  There must, then, be some
+mistake.  What bag had she taken?  He went to the bell to summon
+Bilson, but remembered in time that he must assume knowledge of
+where Irene had gone, take it all as a matter of course, and
+grope out the meaning for himself.
+
+He locked the doors, and tried to think, but felt his brain going
+round; and suddenly tears forced themselves into his eyes.
+
+Hurriedly pulling off his coat, he looked at himself in the
+mirror.
+
+He was too pale, a greyish tinge all over his face; he poured out
+water, and began feverishly washing.
+
+Her silver-mounted brushes smelt faintly of the perfumed lotion
+she used for her hair; and at this scent the burning sickness of
+his jealousy seized him again.
+
+Struggling into his fur, he ran downstairs and out into the
+street.
+
+He had not lost all command of himself, however, and as he went
+down Sloane Street he framed a story for use, in case he should
+not find her at Bosinney's.  But if he should?  His power of
+decision again failed; he reached the house without knowing what
+he should do if he did find her there.
+
+It was after office hours, and the street door was closed; the
+woman who opened it could not say whether Mr. Bosinney were in or
+no; she had not seen him that day, not for two or three days; she
+did not attend to him now, nobody attended to him, he....
+
+Soames interrupted her, he would go up and see for himself.  He
+went up with a dogged, white face.
+
+The top floor was unlighted, the door closed, no one answered his
+ringing, he could hear no sound.  He was obliged to descend,
+shivering under his fur, a chill at his heart.  Hailing a cab, he
+told the man to drive to Park Lane.
+
+On the way he tried to recollect when he had last given her a
+cheque; she could not have more than three or four pounds, but
+there were her jewels; and with exquisite torture he remembered
+how much money she could raise on these; enough to take them
+abroad; enough for them to live on for months!  He tried to
+calculate; the cab stopped, and he got out with the calculation
+unmade.
+
+The butler asked whether Mrs. Soames was in the cab, the master
+had told him they were both expected to dinner.
+
+Soames answered: "No.  Mrs. Forsyte has a cold."
+
+The butler was sorry.
+
+Soames thought he was looking at him inquisitively, and
+remembering that he was not in dress clothes, asked: "Anybody
+here to dinner, Warmson?"
+
+"Nobody but Mr. and Mrs. Dartie, sir."
+
+Again it seemed to Soames that the butler was looking curiously
+at him.  His composure gave way.
+
+"What are you looking at?" he said.  "What's the matter with me,
+eh?"
+
+The butler blushed, hung up the fur coat, murmured something that
+sounded like: "Nothing, sir, I'm sure, sir," and stealthily
+withdrew.
+
+Soames walked upstairs.  Passing the drawing-room without a look,
+he went straight up to his mother's and father's bedroom.
+
+James, standing sideways, the concave lines of his tall, lean
+figure displayed to advantage in shirt-sleeves and evening
+waistcoat, his head bent, the end of his white tie peeping askew
+from underneath one white Dundreary whisker, his eyes peering
+with intense concentration, his lips pouting, was hooking the top
+hooks of his wife's bodice.  Soames stopped; he felt half-choked,
+whether because he had come upstairs too fast, or for some other
+reason.  He--he himself had never--never been asked to....
+
+He heard his father's voice, as though there were a pin in his
+mouth, saying: "Who's that?  Who's there?  What d'you want?" His
+mother's: "Here, Felice, come and hook this; your master'll never
+get done."
+
+He put his hand up to his throat, and said hoarsely:
+
+"It's I--Soames!"
+
+He noticed gratefully the affectionate surprise in Emily's:
+"Well, my dear boy?" and James', as he dropped the hook: "What,
+Soames!  What's brought you up?  Aren't you well?"
+
+He answered mechanically: "I'm all right," and looked at them,
+and it seemed impossible to bring out his news.
+
+James, quick to take alarm, began: "You don't look well.  I
+expect you've taken a chill--it's liver, I shouldn't wonder.
+Your mother'll give you...."
+
+But Emily broke in quietly: "Have you brought Irene?"
+
+Soames shook his head.
+
+"No," he stammered, "she--she's left me!"
+
+Emily deserted the mirror before which she was standing.  Her
+tall, full figure lost its majesty and became very human as she
+came running over to Soames.
+
+"My dear boy!  My dear boy!"
+
+She put her lips to his forehead, and stroked his hand.
+
+James, too, had turned full towards his son; his face looked
+older.
+
+"Left you?" he said.  "What d'you mean--left you?  You never told
+me she was going to leave you."
+
+Soames answered surlily: "How could I tell?  What's to be done?"
+
+James began walking up and down; he looked strange and stork-like
+without a coat.  "What's to be done!" he muttered.  "How should I
+know what's to be done?  What's the good of asking me?  Nobody
+tells me anything, and then they come and ask me what's to be
+done; and I should like to know how I'm to tell them!  Here's
+your mother, there she stands; she doesn't say anything.  What I
+should say you've got to do is to follow her.."
+
+Soames smiled; his peculiar, supercilious smile had never before
+looked pitiable.
+
+"I don't know where she's gone," he said.
+
+"Don't know where she's gone!" said James.  "How d'you mean,
+don't know where she's gone?  Where d'you suppose she's gone?
+She's gone after that young Bosinney, that's where she's gone.  I
+knew how it would be."
+
+Soames, in the long silence that followed, felt his mother
+pressing his hand.  And all that passed seemed to pass as though
+his own power of thinking or doing had gone to sleep.
+
+His father's face, dusky red, twitching as if he were going to
+cry, and words breaking out that seemed rent from him by some
+spasm in his soul.
+
+"There'll be a scandal; I always said so."  Then, no one saying
+anything: "And there you stand, you and your mother!"
+
+And Emily's voice, calm, rather contemptuous: "Come, now, James!
+Soames will do all that he can."
+
+And James, staring at the floor, a little brokenly: "Well, I
+can't help you; I'm getting old.  Don't you be in too great a
+hurry, my boy."
+
+And his mother's voice again: "Soames will do all he can to get
+her back.  We won't talk of it.  It'll all come right, I dare
+say."
+
+And James: "Well, I can't see how it can come right.  And if she
+hasn't gone off with that young Bosinney, my advice to you is not
+to listen to her, but to follow her and get her back."
+
+Once more Soames felt his mother stroking his hand, in token of
+her approval, and as though repeating some form of sacred oath,
+he muttered between his teeth: "I will!"
+
+All three went down to the drawing-room together.  There, were
+gathered the three girls and Dartie; had Irene been present, the
+family circle would have been complete.
+
+James sank into his armchair, and except for a word of cold
+greeting to Dartie, whom he both despised and dreaded, as a man
+likely to be always in want of money, he said nothing till dinner
+was announced.  Soames, too, was silent; Emily alone, a woman of
+cool courage, maintained a conversation with Winifred on trivial
+subjects.  She was never more composed in her manner and
+conversation than that evening.
+
+A decision having been come to not to speak of Irene's flight, no
+view was expressed by any other member of the family as to the
+right course to be pursued; there can be little doubt, from the
+general tone adopted in relation to events as they afterwards
+turned out, that James's advice: "Don't you listen to her,
+follow-her and get her back!" would, with here and there an
+exception, have been regarded as sound, not only in Park Lane,
+but amongst the Nicholases, the Rogers, and at Timothy's.  Just
+as it would surely have been endorsed by that wider body of
+Forsytes all over London, who were merely excluded from judgment
+by ignorance of the story.
+
+In spite then of Emily's efforts, the dinner was served by
+Warmson and the footman almost in silence.  Dartie was sulky, and
+drank all he could get; the girls seldom talked to each other at
+any time.  James asked once where June was, and what she was
+doing with herself in these days.  No one could tell him.  He
+sank back into gloom.  Only when Winifred recounted how little
+Publius had given his bad penny to a beggar, did he brighten up.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "that's a clever little chap.  I don't know
+what'll become of him, if he goes on like this.  An intelligent
+little chap, I call him!" But it was only a flash.
+
+The courses succeeded one another solemnly, under the electric
+light, which glared down onto the table, but barely reached the
+principal ornament of the walls, a so-called 'Sea Piece by
+Turner,' almost entirely composed of cordage and drowning men.
+
+Champagne was handed, and then a bottle of James' prehistoric
+port, but as by the chill hand of some skeleton.
+
+At ten o'clock Soames left; twice in reply to questions, he had
+said that Irene was not well; he felt he could no longer trust
+himself.  His mother kissed him with her large soft kiss, and he
+pressed her hand, a flush of warmth in his cheeks.  He walked
+away in the cold wind, which whistled desolately round the
+corners of the streets, under a sky of clear steel-blue, alive
+with stars; he noticed neither their frosty greeting, nor the
+crackle of the curled-up plane-leaves, nor the night-women
+hurrying in their shabby furs, nor the pinched faces of vagabonds
+at street corners.  Winter was come!  But Soames hastened home,
+oblivious; his hands trembled as he took the late letters from
+the gilt wire cage into which they had been thrust through the
+slit in the door.'
+
+None from Irene!
+
+He went into the dining-room; the fire was bright there, his
+chair drawn up to it, slippers ready, spirit case, and carven
+cigarette box on the table; but after staring at it all for a
+minute or two, he turned out the light and went upstairs.
+There was a fire too in his dressing-room, but her room was
+dark and cold.  It was into this room that Soames went.
+
+He made a great illumination with candles, and for a long time
+continued pacing up and down between the bed and the door.  He
+could not get used to the thought that she had really left him,
+and as though still searching for some message, some reason, some
+reading of all the mystery of his married life, he began opening
+every recess and drawer.
+
+There were her dresses; he had always liked, indeed insisted,
+that she should be well-dressed--she had taken very few; two or
+three at most, and drawer after drawer; full of linen and silk
+things, was untouched.
+
+Perhaps after all it was only a freak, and she had gone to the
+seaside for a few days' change.  If only that were so, and she
+were really coming back, he would never again do as he had done
+that fatal night before last, never again run that risk--though
+it was her duty, her duty as a wife; though she did belong to
+him--he would never again run that risk; she was evidently not
+quite right in her head!
+
+He stooped over the drawer where she kept her jewels; it was not
+locked, and came open as he pulled; the jewel box had the key in
+it.  This surprised him until he remembered that it was sure to
+be empty.  He opened it.
+
+It was far from empty.  Divided, in little green velvet
+compartments, were all the things he had given her, even her
+watch, and stuck into the recess that contained--the watch was a
+three-cornered note addressed 'Soames Forsyte,' in Irene's
+handwriting:
+
+'I think I have taken nothing that you or your people have given
+me.'  And that was all.
+
+He looked at the clasps and bracelets of diamonds and pearls, at
+the little flat gold watch with a great diamond set in sapphires,
+at the chains and rings, each in its nest, and the tears rushed
+up in his eyes and dropped upon them.
+
+Nothing that she could have done, nothing that she had done,
+brought home to him like this the inner significance of her act.
+For the moment, perhaps, he understood nearly all there was to
+understand--understood that she loathed him, that she had loathed
+him for years, that for all intents and purposes they were like
+people living in different worlds, that there was no hope for
+him, never had been; even, that she had suffered--that she was to
+be pitied.
+
+In that moment of emotion he betrayed the Forsyte in him--forgot
+himself, his interests, his property--was capable of almost
+anything; was lifted into the pure ether of the selfless and
+unpractical.
+
+Such moments pass quickly.
+
+And as though with the tears he had purged himself of weakness,
+he got up, locked the box, and slowly, almost trembling, carried
+it with him into the other room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+JUNE'S VICTORY
+
+
+June had waited for her chance, scanning the duller columns of
+the journals, morning and evening with an assiduity which at
+first puzzled old Jolyon; and when her chance came, she took it
+with all the promptitude and resolute tenacity of her character.
+
+She will always remember best in her life that morning when at
+last she saw amongst the reliable Cause List of the Times
+newspaper, under the heading of Court XIII, Mr. Justice Bentham,
+the case of Forsyte v. Bosinney.
+
+Like a gambler who stakes his last piece of money, she had
+prepared to hazard her all upon this throw; it was not her nature
+to contemplate defeat.  How, unless with the instinct of a woman
+in love, she knew that Bosinney's discomfiture in this action was
+assured, cannot be told--on this assumption, however, she laid
+her plans, as upon a certainty.
+
+Half past eleven found her at watch in the gallery of Court
+XIII., and there she remained till the case of Forsyte v.
+Bosinney was over.  Bosinney's absence did not disquiet her; she
+had felt instinctively that he would not defend himself.  At the
+end of the judgment she hastened down, and took a cab to his
+rooms.
+
+She passed the open street-door and the offices on the three
+lower floors without attracting notice; not till she reached the
+top did her difficulties begin.
+
+Her ring was not answered; she had now to make up her mind
+whether she would go down and ask the caretaker in the basement
+to let her in to await Mr. Bosinney's return, or remain patiently
+outside the door, trusting that no one would, come up.  She
+decided on the latter course.
+
+A quarter of an hour had passed in freezing vigil on the landing,
+before it occurred to her that Bosinney had been used to leave
+the key of his rooms under the door-mat.  She looked and found it
+there.  For some minutes she could not decide to make use of it;
+at last she let herself in and left the door open that anyone who
+came might see she was there on business.
+
+This was not the same June who had paid the trembling visit five
+months ago; those months of suffering and restraint had made her
+less sensitive; she had dwelt on this visit so long, with such
+minuteness, that its terrors were discounted beforehand.  She was
+not there to fail this time, for if she failed no one could help
+her.
+
+Like some mother beast on the watch over her young, her little
+quick figure never stood still in that room, but wandered from
+wall to wall, from window to door, fingering now one thing, now
+another.  There was dust everywhere, the room could not have been
+cleaned for weeks, and June, quick to catch at anything that
+should buoy up her hope, saw in it a sign that he had been
+obliged, for economy's sake, to give up his servant.
+
+She looked into the bedroom; the bed was roughly made, as though
+by the hand of man.  Listening intently, she darted in, and
+peered into his cupboards.  A few shirts and collars, a pair of
+muddy boots--the room was bare even of garments.
+
+She stole back to the sitting-room, and now she noticed the
+absence of all the little things he had set store by.  The clock
+that had been his mother's, the field-glasses that had hung over
+the sofa; two really valuable old prints of Harrow, where his
+father had been at school, and last, not least, the piece of
+Japanese pottery she herself had given him.  All were gone; and
+in spite of the rage roused within her championing soul at the
+thought that the world should treat him thus, their disappearance
+augured happily for the success of her plan.
+
+It was while looking at the spot where the piece of Japanese
+pottery had stood that she felt a strange certainty of being
+watched, and, turning, saw Irene in the open doorway.
+
+The two stood gazing at each other for a minute in silence; then
+June walked forward and held out her hand.  Irene did not take
+it.
+
+When her hand was refused, June put it behind her.  Her eyes grew
+steady with anger; she waited for Irene to speak; and thus
+waiting, took in, with who-knows-what rage of jealousy,
+suspicion, and curiosity, every detail of her friend's face and
+dress and figure.
+
+Irene was clothed in her long grey fur; the travelling cap on her
+head left a wave of gold hair visible above her forehead.  The
+soft fullness of the coat made her face as small as a child's.
+
+Unlike June's cheeks, her cheeks had no colour in them, but were
+ivory white and pinched as if with cold.  Dark circles lay round
+her eyes.  In one hand she held a bunch of violets.
+
+She looked back at June, no smile on her lips; and with those
+great dark eyes fastened on her, the girl, for all her startled
+anger, felt something of the old spell.
+
+She spoke first, after all.
+
+"What have you come for?"  But the feeling that she herself was
+being asked the same question, made her add: "This horrible case.
+I came to tell him--he has lost it."
+
+Irene did not speak, her eyes never moved from June's face, and
+the girl cried:
+
+"Don't stand there as if you were made of stone!"
+
+Irene laughed: "I wish to God I were!"
+
+But June turned away: "Stop!" she cried, "don't tell me!  I don't
+want to hear!  I don't want to hear what you've come for.  I
+don't want to hear!" And like some uneasy spirit, she began
+swiftly walking to and fro.  Suddenly she broke out:
+
+"I was here first.  We can't both stay here together!"
+
+On Irene's face a smile wandered up, and died out like a flicker
+of firelight.  She did not move.  And then it was that June
+perceived under the softness arid immobility of this figure
+something desperate and resolved; something not to be turned
+away, something dangerous.  She tore off her hat, and, putting
+both hands to her brow, pressed back the bronze mass of her hair.
+
+"You have no right here!" she cried defiantly.
+
+Irene answered: "I have no right anywhere!
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I have left Soames.  You always wanted me to!"
+
+June put her hands over her ears.
+
+"Don't!  I don't want to hear anything--I don't want to know
+anything.  It's impossible to fight with you!  What makes you
+stand like that?  Why don't you go?"
+
+Irene's lips moved; she seemed to be saying: "Where should I go?"
+
+June turned to the window.  She could see the face of a clock
+down in the street.  It was nearly four.  At any moment he might
+come!  She looked back across her shoulder, and her face was
+distorted with anger.
+
+But Irene had not moved; in her gloved hands she ceaselessly
+turned and twisted the little bunch of violets.
+
+The tears of rage and disappointment rolled down June's cheeks.
+
+"How could you come?" she said.  "You have been a false friend to
+me!"
+
+Again Irene laughed.  June saw that she had played a wrong card,
+and broke down.
+
+"Why have you come?" she sobbed.  "You've ruined my life, and now
+you want to ruin his!"
+
+Irene's mouth quivered; her eyes met June's with a look so
+mournful that the girl cried out in the midst of her sobbing,
+"No, no!"
+
+But Irene's head bent till it touched her breast.  She turned,
+and went quickly out, hiding her lips with the little bunch of
+violets.
+
+June ran to the door.  She heard the footsteps going down and
+down.  She called out: "Come back, Irene!  Come back!"
+
+The footsteps died away....
+
+Bewildered and torn, the girl stood at the top of the stairs.
+Why had Irene gone, leaving her mistress of the field?  What did
+it mean?  Had she really given him up to her?  Or had she...?
+And she was the prey of a gnawing uncertainty....  Bosinney did
+not come....
+
+About six o'clock that afternoon old Jolyon returned from
+Wistaria Avenue, where now almost every day he spent some hours,
+and asked if his grand-daughter were upstairs.  On being told
+that she had just come in, he sent up to her room to request her
+to come down and speak to him.
+
+He had made up his mind to tell her that he was reconciled with
+her father.  In future bygones must be bygones.  He would no
+longer live alone, or practically alone, in this great house; he
+was going to give it up, and take one in the country for his son,
+where they could all go and live together.  If June did not like
+this, she could have an allowance and live by herself.  It
+wouldn't make much difference to her, for it was a long time
+since she had shown him any affection.
+
+But when June came down, her face was pinched and piteous; there
+was a strained, pathetic look in her eyes.  She snuggled up in
+her old attitude on the arm of his chair, and what he said
+compared but poorly with the clear, authoritative, injured
+statement he had thought out with much care.  His heart felt
+sore, as the great heart of a mother-bird feels sore when its
+youngling flies and bruises its wing.  His words halted, as
+though he were apologizing for having at last deviated from the
+path of virtue, and succumbed, in defiance of sounder principles,
+to his more natural instincts.
+
+He seemed nervous lest, in thus announcing his intentions, he
+should be setting his granddaughter a bad example; and now that
+he came to the point, his way of putting the suggestion that, if
+she didn't like it, she could live by herself and lump it, was
+delicate in the extreme.'
+
+"And if, by any chance, my darling," he said, "you found you
+didn't get on--with them, why, I could make that all right.  You
+could have what you liked.  We could find a little flat in London
+where you could set up, and I could be running to continually.
+But the children," he added, "are dear little things!"
+
+Then, in the midst of this grave, rather transparent, explanation
+of changed policy, his eyes twinkled.  "This'll astonish
+Timothy's weak nerves.  That precious young thing will have
+something to say about this, or I'm a Dutchman!"
+
+June had not yet spoken.  Perched thus on the arm of his chair,
+with her head above him, her face was invisible.  But presently
+he felt her warm cheek against his own, and knew that, at all
+events, there was nothing very alarming in her attitude towards
+his news.  He began to take courage.
+
+"You'll like your father," he said--"an amiable chap.  Never was
+much push about him, but easy to get on with.  You'll find him
+artistic and all that."
+
+And old Jolyon bethought him of the dozen or so water-colour
+drawings all carefully locked up in his bedroom; for now that his
+son was going to become a man of property he did not think them
+quite such poor things as heretofore.
+
+"As to your--your stepmother," he said, using the word with some
+little difficulty, "I call her a refined woman--a bit of a Mrs.
+Gummidge, I shouldn't wonder--but very fond of Jo.  And the
+children," he repeated--indeed, this sentence ran like music
+through all his solemn self-justification--"are sweet little
+things!"
+
+If June had known, those words but reincarnated that tender love
+for little children, for the young and weak, which in the past
+had made him desert his son for her tiny self, and now, as the
+cycle rolled, was taking him from her.
+
+But he began to get alarmed at her silence, and asked
+impatiently: "Well, what do you say?"
+
+June slid down to his knee, and she in her turn began her tale.
+She thought it would all go splendidly; she did not see any
+difficulty, and she did not care a bit what people thought.
+
+Old Jolyon wriggled.  H'm! then people would think!  He had
+thought that after all these years perhaps they wouldn't!  Well,
+he couldn't help it!  Nevertheless, he could not approve of his
+granddaughter's way of putting it--she ought to mind what people
+thought!
+
+Yet he said nothing.  His feelings were too mixed, too
+inconsistent for expression.
+
+No--went on June he did not care; what business was it of theirs?
+There was only one thing--and with her cheek pressing against his
+knee, old Jolyon knew at once that this something was no trifle:
+As he was going to buy a house in the country, would he not--to
+please her--buy that splendid house of Soames' at Robin Hill?  It
+was finished, it was perfectly beautiful, and no one would live
+in it now.  They would all be so happy there.
+
+Old Jolyon was on the alert at once.  Wasn't the 'man of
+property' going to live in his new house, then?  He never alluded
+to Soames now but under this title.
+
+"No"--June said--"he was not; she knew that he was not!"
+
+How did she know?
+
+She could not tell him, but she knew.  She knew nearly for
+certain!  It was most unlikely; circumstances had changed!
+Irene's words still rang in her head: "I have left Soames.
+Where should I go?"
+
+But she kept silence about that.
+
+If her grandfather would only buy it and settle that wretched
+claim that ought never to have been made on Phil!  It would be
+the very best thing for everybody, and everything--everything
+might come straight
+
+And June put her lips to his forehead, and pressed them close.
+
+But old Jolyon freed himself from her caress, his face wore the
+judicial look which came upon it when he dealt with affairs.  He
+asked: What did she mean?  There was something behind all this--
+had she been seeing Bosinney?
+
+June answered: "No; but I have been to his rooms."
+
+"Been to his rooms?  Who took you there?"
+
+June faced him steadily.  "I went alone.  He has lost that case.
+I don't care whether it was right or wrong.  I want to help him;
+and I will!"
+
+Old Jolyon asked again: "Have you seen him?" His glance seemed to
+pierce right through the girl's eyes into her soul.
+
+Again June answered: "No; he was not there.  I waited, but he did
+not come."
+
+Old Jolyon made a movement of relief.  She had risen and looked
+down at him; so slight, and light, and young, but so fixed, and
+so determined; and disturbed, vexed, as he was, he could not
+frown away that fixed look.  The feeling of being beaten, of the
+reins having slipped, of being old and tired, mastered him.
+
+"Ah!" he said at last, "you'll get yourself into a mess one of
+these days, I can see.  You want your own way in everything."
+
+Visited by one of his strange bursts of philosophy, he added:
+"Like that you were born; and like that you'll stay until you
+die!"
+
+And he, who in his dealings with men of business, with Boards,
+with Forsytes of all descriptions, with such as were not
+Forsytes, had always had his own way, looked at his indomitable
+grandchild sadly--for he felt in her that quality which above all
+others he unconsciously admired.
+
+"Do you know what they say is going on?" he said slowly.
+
+June crimsoned.
+
+"Yes--no!  I know--and I don't know--I don't care!" and she
+stamped her foot.
+
+"I believe," said old Jolyon, dropping his eyes, "that you'd have
+him if he were dead!'
+
+There was a long silence before he spoke again.
+
+"But as to buying this house--you don't know what you're talking
+about!"
+
+June said that she did.  She knew that he could get it if he
+wanted.  He would only have to give what it cost.
+
+"What it cost!  You know nothing about it.  I won't go to Soames-
+--I'll have nothing more to do with that young man."
+
+"But you needn't; you can go to Uncle James.  If you can't buy
+the house, will you pay his lawsuit claim?  I know he is terribly
+hard up--I've seen it.  You can stop it out of my money!"
+
+A twinkle came into old Jolyon's eyes.
+
+"Stop it out of your money!  A pretty way
+
+And what will you do, pray, without your money?"
+
+But secretly, the idea of wresting the house from James and his
+son had begun to take hold of him.  He had heard on Forsyte
+'Change much comment, much rather doubtful praise of this house.
+It was 'too artistic,' but a fine place.  To take from the 'man
+of property' that on which he had set his heart, would be a
+crowning triumph over James, practical proof that he was going to
+make a man of property of Jo, to put him back in his proper
+position, and there to keep him secure.  Justice once for all on
+those who had chosen to regard his son as a poor, penniless
+outcast.
+
+He would see, he would see!  It might be out of the question; he
+was not going to pay a fancy price, but if it could be done, why,
+perhaps he would do it!
+
+And still more secretly he knew that he could not refuse her.
+
+But he did not commit himself.  He would think it over--he said
+to June.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+BOSINNEY'S DEPARTURE
+
+
+Old Jolyon  was not given to hasty decisions; it is probable that
+he would have continued to think over the purchase of the house
+at Robin Hill, had not June's face told him that he would have no
+peace until he acted.
+
+At breakfast next morning she asked him what time she should
+order the carriage.
+
+"Carriage!" he said, with some appearance of innocence; "what
+for?  I'm not going out!"
+
+She answered: "If you don't go early, you won't catch Uncle James
+before he goes into the City."
+
+"James! what about your Uncle James?"
+
+"The house," she replied, in such a voice that he no longer
+pretended ignorance.
+
+"I've not made up my mind," he said.
+
+"You must!  You must!  Oh! Gran--think of me!"
+
+Old Jolyon grumbled out: "Think of you--I'm always thinking of
+you, but you don't think of yourself; you don't think what you're
+letting yourself in for.  Well, order the carriage at ten!"
+
+At a quarter past he was placing his umbrella in the stand at
+Park Lane--he did not choose to relinquish his hat and coat;
+telling Warmson that he wanted to see his master, he went,
+without being announced, into the study, and sat down.
+
+James was still in the dining-room talking to Soames, who had
+come round again before breakfast.  On hearing who his visitor
+was, he muttered nervously: "Now, what's be want, I wonder?"
+
+He then got up.
+
+"Well," he said to Soames, "don't you go doing anything in a
+hurry.  The first thing is to find out where she is--I should go
+to Stainer's about it; they're the best men, if they can't find
+her, nobody can." And suddenly moved to strange softness, he
+muttered to himself, "Poor little thing, I can't tell what she
+was thinking about!" and went out blowing his nose.
+
+Old Jolyon did not rise on seeing his brother, but held out his
+hand, and exchanged with him the clasp of a Forsyte.
+
+James took another chair by the table, and leaned his head on his
+hand.
+
+"Well," he said, "how are you?  We don't see much of you
+nowadays!"
+
+Old Jolyon paid no attention to the remark.
+
+"How's Emily?" he asked; and waiting for no reply, went on
+"I've come to see you about this affair of young Bosinney's.  I'm
+told that new house of his is a white elephant."
+
+"I don't know anything about a white elephant," said James, "I
+know he's lost his case, and I should say he'll go bankrupt."
+
+Old Jolyon was not slow to seize the opportunity this gave him.
+
+"I shouldn't wonder a bit!" he agreed; "and if he goes bankrupt,
+the 'man of property'--that is, Soames'll be out of pocket.  Now,
+what I was thinking was this: If he's not going to live there...."
+
+Seeing both surprise and suspicion in James' eye, he quickly went
+on: "I don't want to know anything; I suppose Irene's put her
+foot down--it's not material to me.  But I'm thinking of a house
+in the country myself, not too far from London, and if it suited
+me I don't say that I mightn't look at it, at a price."
+
+James listened to this statement with a strange mixture of doubt,
+suspicion, and relief, merging into a dread of something behind,
+and tinged with the remains of his old undoubted reliance upon
+his elder brother's good faith and judgment.  There was anxiety,
+too, as to what old Jolyon could have heard and how he had heard
+it; and a sort of hopefulness arising from the thought that if
+June's connection with Bosinney were completely at an end, her
+grandfather would hardly seem anxious to help the young fellow.
+Altogether he was puzzled; as he did not like either to show
+this, or to commit himself in any way, he said:
+
+"They tell me you're altering your Will in favour of your son."
+
+He had not been told this; he had merely added the fact of having
+seen old Jolyon with his son and grandchildren to the fact that
+he had taken his Will away from Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte.
+The shot went home.
+
+"Who told you that?" asked old Jolyon.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," said James; "I can't remember names--I
+know somebody told me Soames spent a lot of money on this house;
+he's not likely to part with it except at a good price."
+
+"Well," said old Jolyon, "if, he thinks I'm going to pay a fancy
+price, he's mistaken.  I've not got the money to throw away that
+he seems to have.  Let him try and sell it at a forced sale, and
+see what he'll get.  It's not every man's house, I hear!"
+
+James, who was secretly also of this opinion, answered: "It's a
+gentleman's house.  Soames is here now if you'd like to see him."
+
+"No," said old Jolyon, "I haven't got as far as that; and I'm not
+likely to, I can see that very well if I'm met in this manner!"
+
+James was a little cowed; when it came to the actual figures of a
+commercial transaction he was sure of himself, for then he was
+dealing with facts, not with men; but preliminary negotiations
+such as these made him nervous--he never knew quite how far he
+could go.
+
+"Well," he said, "I know nothing about it.  Soames, he tells me
+nothing; I should think he'd entertain it--it's a question of
+price."
+
+"Oh!" said old Jolyon, "don't let him make a favour of it!" He
+placed his hat on his head in dudgeon.
+
+The door was opened and Soames came in.
+
+"There's a policeman out here," he said with his half smile, "for
+Uncle Jolyon."
+
+Old Jolyon looked at him angrily, and James said: "A policeman?
+I don't know anything about a policeman.  But I suppose you know
+something about him," he added to old Jolyon with a look of
+suspicion: "I suppose you'd better see him!"
+
+In the hall an Inspector of Police stood stolidly regarding with
+heavy-lidded pale-blue eyes the fine old English furniture picked
+up by James at the famous Mavrojano sale in Portman Square.
+"You'll find my brother in there," said James.
+
+The Inspector raised his fingers respectfully to his peaked cap,
+and entered the study.
+
+James saw him go in with a strange sensation.
+
+"Well," he said to Soames, "I suppose we must wait and see what
+he wants.  Your uncle's been here about the house!"
+
+He returned with Soames into the dining-room, but could not rest.
+
+"Now what does he want?" he murmured again.
+
+"Who?" replied Soames: "the Inspector?  They sent him round from
+Stanhope Gate, that's all I know.  That 'nonconformist' of Uncle
+Jolyon's has been pilfering, I shouldn't wonder!"
+
+But in spite of his calmness, he too was ill at ease.
+
+At the end of ten minutes old Jolyon came in.  He walked up to
+the table, and stood there perfectly silent pulling at his long
+white moustaches.  James gazed up at him with opening mouth; he
+had never seen his brother look like this.
+
+Old Jolyon raised his hand, and said slowly:
+
+"Young Bosinney has been run over in the fog and killed."
+
+Then standing above his brother and his nephew, and looking down
+at him with his deep eyes:
+
+"There's--some--talk--of--suicide," he said.
+
+James' jaw dropped.  "Suicide!  What should he do that for?"
+
+Old Jolyon answered sternly: "God knows, if you and your son
+don't!"
+
+But James did not reply.
+
+For all men of great age, even for all Forsytes, life has had
+bitter experiences.  The passer-by, who sees them wrapped in
+cloaks of custom, wealth, and comfort, would never suspect that
+such black shadows had fallen on their roads.  To every man of
+great age--to Sir Walter Bentham himself--the idea of suicide has
+once at least been present in the ante-room of his soul; on the
+threshold, waiting to enter, held out from the inmost chamber by
+some chance reality, some vague fear, some painful hope.  To
+Forsytes that final renunciation of property is hard.  Oh! it is
+hard!  Seldom--perhaps never--can they achieve, it; and yet, how
+near have they not sometimes been!
+
+So even with James!  Then in the medley of his thoughts, he broke
+out: "Why I saw it in the paper yesterday: 'Run over in the fog!'
+They didn't know his name!" He turned from one face to the other
+in his confusion of soul; but instinctively all the time he was
+rejecting that rumour of suicide.  He dared not entertain this
+thought, so against his interest, against the interest of his
+son, of every Forsyte.  He strove against it; and as his nature
+ever unconsciously rejected that which it could not with safety
+accept, so gradually he overcame this fear.  It was an accident!
+It must have been!
+
+Old Jolyon broke in on his reverie.
+
+"Death was instantaneous.  He lay all day yesterday at the
+hospital.  There was nothing to tell them who he was.  I am going
+there now; you and your son had better come too."
+
+No one opposing this command he led the way from the room.
+
+The day was still and clear and bright, and driving over to Park
+Lane from Stanhope Gate, old Jolyon had had the carriage open.
+Sitting back on the padded cushions, finishing his cigar, he had
+noticed with pleasure the keen crispness of the air, the bustle
+of the cabs and people; the strange, almost Parisian, alacrity
+that the first fine day will bring into London streets after a
+spell of fog or rain.  And he had felt so happy; he had not felt
+like it for months.  His confession to June was off his mind; he
+had the prospect of his son's, above all, of his grandchildren's
+company in the future--(he had appointed to meet young Jolyon at
+the Hotch Potch that very manning to--discuss it again); and
+there was the pleasurable excitement of a coming encounter, a
+coming victory, over James and the 'man of property' in the
+matter of the house.
+
+He had the carriage closed now; he had no heart to look on
+gaiety; nor was it right that Forsytes should be seen driving
+with an Inspector of Police.
+
+In that carriage the Inspector spoke again of the death:
+
+"It was not so very thick--Just there.  The driver says the
+gentleman must have had time to see what he was about, he seemed
+to walk right into it.  It appears that he was very hard up, we
+found several pawn tickets at his rooms, his account at the bank
+is overdrawn, and there's this case in to-day's papers;" his cold
+blue eyes travelled from one to another of the three Forsytes in
+the carriage.
+
+Old Jolyon watching from his corner saw his brother's face
+change, and the brooding, worried, look deepen on it.  At the
+Inspector's words, indeed, all James' doubts and fears revived.
+Hard-up--pawn-tickets--an overdrawn account!  These words that
+had all his life been a far-off nightmare to him, seemed to make
+uncannily real that suspicion of suicide which must on no account
+be entertained.  He sought his son's eye; but lynx-eyed,
+taciturn, immovable, Soames gave no answering look.  And to old
+Jolyon watching, divining the league of mutual defence between
+them, there came an overmastering desire to have his own son at
+his side, as though this visit to the dead man's body was a
+battle in which otherwise he must single-handed meet those two.
+And the thought of how to keep June's name out of the business
+kept whirring in his brain.  James had his son to support him!
+Why should he not send for Jo?
+
+Taking out his card-case, he pencilled the following message:
+
+'Come round at once.  I've sent the carriage for you.'
+
+On getting out he gave this card to his coachman, telling him to
+drive--as fast as possible to the Hotch Potch Club, and if Mr.
+Jolyon Forsyte were there to give him the card and bring him at
+once.  If not there yet, he was to wait till he came.
+
+He followed the others slowly up the steps, leaning on his
+umbrella, and stood a moment to get his breath.  The Inspector
+said: "This is the mortuary, sir.  But take your time."
+
+In the bare, white-walled room, empty of all but a streak of
+sunshine smeared along the dustless floor, lay a form covered by
+a sheet.  With a huge steady hand the Inspector took the hem and
+turned it back.  A sightless face gazed up at them, and on either
+side of that sightless defiant face the three Forsytes gazed
+down; in each one of them the secret emotions, fears, and pity of
+his own nature rose and fell like the rising, falling waves of
+life, whose wish those white walls barred out now for ever from
+Bosinney.  And in each one of them the trend of his nature, the
+odd essential spring, which moved him in fashions minutely,
+unalterably different from those of every other human being,
+forced him to a different attitude of thought.  Far from the
+others, yet inscrutably close, each stood thus, alone with death,
+silent, his eyes lowered.
+
+The Inspector asked softly:
+
+"You identify the gentleman, sir?"
+
+Old Jolyon raised his head and nodded.  He looked at his brother
+opposite, at that long lean figure brooding over the dead man,
+with face dusky red, and strained grey eyes; and at the figure of
+Soames white and still by his father's side.  And all that he had
+felt against those two was gone like smoke in the long white
+presence of Death.  Whence comes it, how comes it--Death?  Sudden
+reverse of all that goes before; blind setting forth on a path
+that leads to where?  Dark quenching of the fire!  The heavy,
+brutal crushing--out that all men must go through, keeping their
+eyes clear and brave unto the end!  Small and of no import,
+insects though they are!  And across old Jolyon's face there
+flitted a gleam, for Soames, murmuring to the Inspector, crept
+noiselessly away.
+
+Then suddenly James raised his eyes.  There was a queer appeal in
+that suspicious troubled look: "I know I'm no match for you," it
+seemed to say.  And, hunting for handkerchief he wiped his brow;
+then, bending sorrowful and lank over the dead man, he too turned
+and hurried out.
+
+Old Jolyon stood, still as death, his eyes fixed on the body.
+Who shall tell of what he was thinking?  Of himself, when his
+hair was brown like the hair of that young fellow dead before
+him?  Of himself, with his battle just beginning, the long, long
+battle he had loved; the battle that was over for this young man
+almost before it had begun?  Of his grand-daughter, with her
+broken hopes?  Of that other woman?  Of the strangeness, and the
+pity of it?  And the irony, inscrutable, and bitter of that end?
+Justice!  There was no justice for men, for they were ever in the
+dark!
+
+Or perhaps in his philosophy he thought: Better to be out of, it
+all!  Better to have done with it, like this poor youth....
+
+Some one touched him on the arm.
+
+A tear started up and wetted his eyelash.  "Well," he said, "I'm
+no good here.  I'd better be going.  You'll come to me as soon as
+you can, Jo," and with his head bowed he went away.
+
+It was young Jolyon's turn to take his stand beside the dead man,
+round whose fallen body he seemed to see all the Forsytes
+breathless, and prostrated.  The stroke had fallen too swiftly.
+
+The forces underlying every tragedy--forces that take no denial,
+working through cross currents to their ironical end, had met and
+fused with a thunder-clap, flung out the victim, and flattened to
+the ground all those that stood around.
+
+Or so at all events young Jolyon seemed to see them, lying around
+Bosinney's body.
+
+He asked the Inspector to tell him what had happened, and the
+latter, like a man who does not every day get such a chance,
+again detailed such facts as were known.
+
+"There's more here, sir, however," he said, "than meets the eye.
+I don't believe in suicide, nor in pure accident, myself.  It's
+more likely I think that he was suffering under great stress
+of mind, and took no notice of things about him.  Perhaps you can
+throw some light on these."
+
+He took from his pocket a little packet and laid it on the table.
+Carefully undoing it, he revealed a lady's handkerchief, pinned
+through the folds with a pin of discoloured Venetian gold, the
+stone of which had fallen from the socket.  A scent of dried
+violets rose to young Jolyon's nostrils.
+
+"Found in his breast pocket," said the Inspector; "the name has
+been cut away!"
+
+Young Jolyon with difficulty answered: "I'm afraid I cannot help
+you!"  But vividly there rose before him the face he had seen
+light up, so tremulous and glad, at Bosinney's coming!  Of her he
+thought more than of his own daughter, more than of them all--of
+her with the dark, soft glance, the delicate passive face,
+waiting for the dead man, waiting even at that moment, perhaps,
+still and patient in the sunlight.
+
+He walked sorrowfully away from the hospital towards his father's
+house, reflecting that this death would break up the Forsyte
+family.  The stroke had indeed slipped past their defences into
+the very wood of their tree.  They might flourish to all
+appearance as before, preserving a brave show before the eyes of
+London, but the trunk was dead, withered by the same flash that
+had stricken down Bosinney.  And now the saplings would take its
+place, each one a new custodian of the sense of property.
+
+Good forest of Forsytes! thought young Jolyon--soundest timber
+of our land!
+
+Concerning the cause of this death--his family would doubtless
+reject with vigour the suspicion of suicide, which was so
+compromising!  They would take it as an accident, a stroke of
+fate.  In their hearts they would even feel it an intervention of
+Providence, a retribution--had not Bosinney endangered their two
+most priceless possessions, the pocket and the hearth?  And they
+would talk of 'that unfortunate accident of young Bosinney's,'
+but perhaps they would not talk--silence might be better!
+
+As for himself, he regarded the bus-driver's account of the
+accident as of very little value.  For no one so madly in love
+committed suicide for want of money; nor was Bosinney the sort of
+fellow to set much store by a financial crisis.  And so he too
+rejected this theory of suicide, the dead man's face rose too
+clearly before him.  Gone in the heyday of his summer--and to
+believe thus that an accident had cut Bosinney off in the full
+sweep of his passion was more than ever pitiful to young Jolyon.
+
+Then came a vision of Soames' home as it now was, and must be
+hereafter.  The streak of lightning had flashed its clear uncanny
+gleam on bare bones with grinning spaces between, the disguising
+flesh was gone....
+
+In the dining-room at Stanhope Gate old Jolyon was sitting alone
+when his son came in.  He looked very wan in his great armchair.
+And his eyes travelling round the walls with their pictures of
+still life, and the masterpiece 'Dutch fishing-boats at Sunset'
+seemed as though passing their gaze over his life with its hopes,
+its gains, its achievements.
+
+"Ah! Jo!" he said, "is that you?  I've told poor little June.
+But that's not all of it.  Are you going to Soames'?  She's
+brought it on herself, I suppose; but somehow I can't bear to
+think of her, shut up there--and all alone." And holding up his
+thin, veined hand, he clenched it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+IRENE'S RETURN
+
+
+After leaving James and old Jolyon in the mortuary of the
+hospital, Soames hurried aimlessly along the streets.
+
+The tragic event of Bosinney's death altered the complexion of
+everything.  There was no longer the same feeling that to lose a
+minute would be fatal, nor would he now risk communicating the
+fact of his wife's flight to anyone till the inquest was over.
+
+That morning he had risen early, before the postman came, had
+taken the first-post letters from the box himself, and, though
+there had been none from Irene, he had made an opportunity of
+telling Bilson that her mistress was at the sea; he would
+probably, he said, be going down himself from Saturday to Monday.
+This had given him time to breathe, time to leave no stone
+unturned to find her.
+
+But now, cut off from taking steps by Bosinney's death--that
+strange death, to think of which was like putting a hot iron to
+his heart, like lifting a great weight from it--he did not know
+how to pass his day; and he wandered here and there through the
+streets, looking at every face he met, devoured by a hundred
+anxieties.
+
+And as he wandered, he thought of him who had finished his
+wandering, his prowling, and would never haunt his house again.
+
+Already in the afternoon he passed posters announcing the
+identity of the dead man, and bought the papers to see what they
+said.  He would stop their mouths if he could, and he went into
+the City, and was closeted with Boulter for a long time.
+
+On his way home, passing the steps of Jobson's about half past
+four, he met George Forsyte, who held out an evening paper to
+Soames, saying:
+
+"Here! Have you seen this about the poor Buccaneer?"
+
+Soames answered stonily: "Yes."
+
+George stared at him.  He had never liked Soames; he now held him
+responsible for Bosinney's death.  Soames had done for him--done
+for him by that act of property that had sent the Buccaneer to
+run amok that fatal afternoon.
+
+'The poor fellow,' he was thinking, 'was so cracked with
+jealousy, so cracked for his vengeance, that he heard nothing of
+the omnibus in that infernal fog.'
+
+Soames had done for him!  And this judgment was in George's eyes.
+
+"They talk of suicide here," he said at last.  "That cat won't
+jump."
+
+Soames shook his head.  "An accident," he muttered.
+
+Clenching his fist on the paper, George crammed it into his
+pocket.  He could not resist a parting shot.
+
+"H'mm!  All flourishing at home?  Any little Soameses yet?"
+
+With a face as white as the steps of Jobson's, and a lip raised
+as if snarling, Soames brushed past him and was gone....
+
+On reaching home, and entering the little lighted hall with his
+latchkey, the first thing that caught his eye was his wife's
+gold-mounted umbrella lying on the rug chest.  Flinging off his
+fur coat, he hurried to the drawing-room.
+
+The curtains were drawn for the night, a bright fire of
+cedar-logs burned in the grate, and by its light he saw Irene
+sitting in her usual corner on the sofa.  He shut the door
+softly, and went towards her.  She did not move, and did not seem
+to see him.
+
+"So you've come back?" he said.  "Why are you sitting here in the
+dark?"
+
+Then he caught sight of her face, so white and motionless that it
+seemed as though the blood must have stopped flowing in her
+veins; and her eyes, that looked enormous, like the great, wide,
+startled brown eyes of an owl.
+
+Huddled in her grey fur against the sofa cushions, she had a
+strange resemblance to a captive owl, bunched fir its soft
+feathers against the wires of a cage.  The supple erectness of
+her figure was gone, as though she had been broken by cruel
+exercise; as though there were no longer any reason for being
+beautiful, and supple, and erect.
+
+"So you've come back," he repeated.
+
+She never looked up, and never spoke, the firelight playing over
+her motionless figure.
+
+Suddenly she tried to rise, but he prevented her; it was then
+that he understood.
+
+She had come back like an animal wounded to death, not knowing
+where to turn, not knowing what she was doing.  The sight of her
+figure, huddled in the fur, was enough.
+
+He knew then for certain that Bosinney had been her lover; knew
+that she had seen the report of his death--perhaps, like himself,
+had bought a paper at the draughty corner of a street, and read
+it.
+
+She had come back then of her own accord, to the cage she had
+pined to be free of--and taking in all the tremendous
+significance of this, he longed to cry: "Take your hated body,
+that I love, out of my house!  Take away that pitiful white face,
+so cruel and soft--before I crush it.  Get out of my sight; never
+let me see you again!"
+
+And, at those unspoken words, he seemed to see her rise and move
+away, like a woman in a terrible dream, from which she was
+fighting to awake--rise and go out into the dark and cold, without
+a thought of him, without so much as the knowledge of his
+presence.
+
+Then he cried, contradicting what he had not yet spoken, "No;
+stay there!" And turning away from her, he sat down in his
+accustomed chair on the other side of the hearth.
+
+They sat in silence.
+
+And Soames thought: 'Why is all this?  Why should I suffer so?
+What have I done?  It is not my fault!'
+
+Again he looked at her, huddled like a bird that is shot and
+dying, whose poor breast you see panting as the air is taken from
+it, whose poor eyes look at you who have shot it, with a slow,
+soft, unseeing look, taking farewell of all that is good--of the
+sun, and the air, and its mate.
+
+So they sat, by the firelight, in the silence, one on each side
+of the hearth.
+
+And the fume of the burning cedar logs, that he loved so well,
+seemed to grip Soames by the throat till he could bear it no
+longer.  And going out into the hall he flung the door wide, to
+gulp down the cold air that came in; then without hat or overcoat
+went out into the Square.
+
+Along the garden rails a half-starved cat came rubbing her way
+towards him, and Soames thought: 'Suffering!  when will it cease,
+my suffering?'
+
+At a front door across the way was a man of his acquaintance
+named Rutter, scraping his boots, with an air of 'I am master
+here.' And Soames walked on.
+
+>From far in the clear air the bells of the church where he and
+Irene had been married were pealing in 'practice' for the advent
+of Christ, the chimes ringing out above the sound of traffic.  He
+felt a craving for strong drink, to lull him to indifference, or
+rouse him to fury.  If only he could burst out of himself, out of
+this web that for the first time in his life he felt around him.
+If only he could surrender to the thought: 'Divorce her--turn her
+out!  She has forgotten you.  Forget her!'
+
+If only he could surrender to the thought: 'Let her go--she has
+suffered enough!'
+
+If only he could surrender to the desire: 'Make a slave of her--
+she is in your power!'
+
+If only even he could surrender to the sudden vision: 'What does
+it all matter?'  Forget himself for a minute, forget that it
+mattered what he did, forget that whatever he did he must
+sacrifice something.
+
+If only he could act on an impulse!
+
+He could forget nothing; surrender to no thought, vision, or
+desire; it was all too serious; too close around him, an
+unbreakable cage.
+
+On the far side of the Square newspaper boys were calling their
+evening wares, and the ghoulish cries mingled and jangled with
+the sound of those church bells.
+
+Soames covered his ears.  The thought flashed across him that but
+for a chance, he himself, and not Bosinney, might be lying dead,
+and she, instead of crouching there like a shot bird with those
+dying eyes....
+
+Something soft touched his legs, the cat was rubbing herself
+against them.  And a sob that shook him from head to foot burst
+from Soames' chest.  Then all was still again in the dark, where
+the houses seemed to stare at him, each with a master and
+mistress of its own, and a secret story of happiness or sorrow.
+
+And suddenly he saw that his own door was open, and black against
+the light from the hall a man standing with his back turned.
+Something slid too in his breast, and he stole up close behind.
+
+He could see his own fur coat flung across the carved oak chair;
+the Persian rugs; the silver bowls, the rows of porcelain plates
+arranged along the walls, and this unknown man who was standing
+there.
+
+And sharply he asked: "What is it you want, sir?"
+
+The visitor turned.  It was young Jolyon.
+
+"The door was open," he said.  "Might I see your wife for a
+minute, I have a message for her?"
+
+Soames gave him a strange, sidelong stare.
+
+"My wife can see no one," he muttered doggedly.
+
+Young Jolyon answered gently: "I shouldn't keep her a minute."
+
+Soames brushed by him and barred the way.
+
+"She can see no one," he said again.
+
+Young Jolyon's glance shot past him into the hall, and Soames
+turned.  There in the drawing-room doorway stood Irene, her eyes
+were wild and eager, her lips were parted, her hands out-
+stretched.  In the sight of both men that light vanished from
+her face; her hands dropped to her sides; she stood like stone.
+
+Soames spun round, and met his visitor's eyes, and at the look he
+saw in them, a sound like a snarl escaped him.  He drew his lips
+back in the ghost of a smile.
+
+"This is my house," he said; "I manage my own affairs.  I've told
+you once--I tell you again; we are not at home."
+
+And in young Jolyon's face he slammed the door.
+
+
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of Man of Property, by John Galsworthy
+#4 in our series by John Galsworthy
+#1 in our series of The Forsyte Saga
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+Title: Man of Property, by John Galsworthy
+
+Author: John Galsworthy
+
+Release Date: March, 2001 [Etext #2559]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[Most recently updated: December 9, 2001]
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+and flavour; many interesting double consonants; etc.]
+
+
+
+
+FORSYTE SAGA 
+
+I. THE MAN OF PROPERTY
+
+By John Galsworthy
+
+
+
+VOLUME I
+
+
+
+TO MY WIFE:
+
+     I DEDICATE THE FORSYTE SAGA IN ITS ENTIRETY,
+     BELIEVING IT TO BE OF ALL MY WORKS THE LEAST
+     UNWORTHY OF ONE  WITHOUT WHOSE ENCOURAGEMENT,
+     SYMPATHY AND CRITICISM COULD NEVER HAVE
+     BECOME EVEN SUCH A WRITER AS I AM.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE:
+
+"The Forsyte Saga" was the title originally destined for that
+part of it which is called "The Man of Property"; and to adopt it
+for the collected chronicles of the Forsyte family has indulged
+the Forsytean tenacity that is in all of us.  The word Saga might
+be objected to on the ground that it connotes the heroic and that
+there is little heroism in these pages.  But it is used with a
+suitable irony; and, after all, this long tale, though it may
+deal with folk in frock coats, furbelows, and a gilt-edged
+period, is not devoid of the essential beat of conflict.
+Discounting for the gigantic stature and blood-thirstiness of old
+days, as they have come down to us in fairy-tale and legend, the
+folk of the old Sagas were Forsytes, assuredly, in their
+possessive instincts, and as little proof against the inroads of
+beauty and passion as Swithin, Soames, or even Young Jolyon.  And
+if heroic figures, in days that never were, seem to startle out
+from their surroundings in fashion unbecoming to a Forsyte of the
+Victorian era, we may be sure that tribal instinct was even then
+the prime force, and that "family" and the sense of home and
+property counted as they do to this day, for all the recent
+efforts to "talk them out."
+
+So many people have written and claimed that their families were
+the originals of the Forsytes that one has been almost encouraged
+to believe in the typicality of an imagined species.  Manners
+change and modes evolve, and "Timothy's on the Bayswater Road"
+becomes a nest of the unbelievable in all except essentials; we
+shall not look upon its like again, nor perhaps on such a one as
+James or Old Jolyon.  And yet the figures of Insurance Societies
+and the utterances of Judges reassure us daily that our earthly
+paradise is still a rich preserve, where the wild raiders, Beauty
+and Passion, come stealing in, filching security from beneath our
+noses.  As surely as a dog will bark at a brass band, so will the
+essential Soames in human nature ever rise up uneasily against
+the dissolution which hovers round the folds of ownership.
+
+"Let the dead Past bury its dead" would be a better saying if the
+Past ever died.  The persistence of the Past is one of those
+tragi-comic blessings which each new age denies, coming cocksure
+on to the stage to mouth its claim to a perfect novelty.
+
+But no Age is so new as that!  Human Nature, under its changing
+pretensions and clothes, is and ever will be very much of a
+Forsyte, and might, after all, be a much worse animal.
+
+Looking back on the Victorian era, whose ripeness, decline, and
+'fall-of' is in some sort pictured in "The Forsyte Saga," we see
+now that we have but jumped out of a frying-pan into a fire.  It
+would be difficult to substantiate a claim that the case of
+England was better in 1913 than it was in 1886, when the Forsytes
+assembled at Old Jolyon's to celebrate the engagement of June to
+Philip Bosinney.  And in 1920, when again the clan gathered to
+bless the marriage of Fleur with Michael Mont, the state of
+England is as surely too molten and bankrupt as in the eighties
+it was too congealed and low-percented.  If these chronicles had
+
+been a really scientific study of transition one would have dwelt
+probably on such factors as the invention of bicycle, motor-car,
+and flying-machine; the arrival of a cheap Press; the decline of
+country life and increase of the towns; the birth of the Cinema.
+Men are, in fact, quite unable to control their own inventions;
+they at best develop adaptability to the new conditions those
+inventions create.
+
+But this long tale is no scientific study of a period; it is
+rather an intimate incarnation of the disturbance that Beauty
+effects in the lives of men.
+
+The figure of Irene, never, as the reader may possibly have
+observed, present, except through the senses of other characters,
+is a concretion of disturbing Beauty impinging on a possessive
+world.
+
+One has noticed that readers, as they wade on through the salt
+waters of the Saga, are inclined more and more to pity Soames,
+and to think that in doing so they are in revolt against the mood
+of his creator.  Far from it!  He, too, pities Soames, the
+tragedy of whose life is the very simple, uncontrollable tragedy
+of being unlovable, without quite a thick enough skin to be
+thoroughly unconscious of the fact.  Not even Fleur loves Soames
+as he feels he ought to be loved.  But in pitying Soames, readers
+incline, perhaps, to animus against Irene: After all, they think,
+he wasn't a bad fellow, it wasn't his fault; she ought to have
+forgiven him, and so on!
+
+And, taking sides, they lose perception of the simple truth,
+which underlies the whole story, that where sex attraction is
+utterly and definitely lacking in one partner to a union, no
+amount of pity, or reason, or duty, or what not, can overcome a
+repulsion implicit in Nature.  Whether it ought to, or no, is
+beside the point; because in fact it never does.  And where Irene
+seems hard and cruel, as in the Bois de Boulogne, or the Goupenor
+Gallery, she is but wisely realistic--knowing that the least
+concession is the inch which precedes the impossible, the
+repulsive ell.
+
+A criticism one might pass on the last phase of the Saga is the
+complaint that Irene and Jolyon those rebels against property--
+claim spiritual property in their son Jon.  But it would be
+hypercriticism, as the tale is told.  No father and mother could
+have let the boy marry Fleur without knowledge of the facts; and
+the facts determine Jon, not the persuasion of his parents.
+Moreover, Jolyon's persuasion is not on his own account, but on
+Irene's, and Irene's persuasion becomes a reiterated: "Don't
+think of me, think of yourself!" That Jon, knowing the facts, can
+realise his mother's feelings, will hardly with justice be held
+proof that she is, after all, a Forsyte.
+
+But though the impingement of Beauty and the claims of Freedom on
+a possessive world are the main prepossessions of the Forsyte
+Saga, it cannot be absolved from the charge of embalming the
+upper-middle class.  As the old Egyptians placed around their
+mummies the necessaries of a future existence, so I have
+endeavoured to lay beside the, figures of Aunts Ann and Juley and
+Hester, of Timothy and Swithin, of Old Jolyon and James, and of
+their sons, that which shall guarantee them a little life here-
+after, a little balm in the hurried Gilead of a dissolving
+"Progress."
+
+If the upper-middle class, with other classes, is destined to
+"move on" into amorphism, here, pickled in these pages, it lies
+under glass for strollers in the wide and ill-arranged museum of
+Letters.  Here it rests, preserved in its own juice: The Sense
+of Property.
+
+1922.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN OF PROPERTY
+
+by JOHN GALSWORTHY
+
+
+
+
+"........  You will answer
+The slaves are ours ....."
+-Merchant of Venice.
+
+
+
+
+TO EDWARD GARNETT
+
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+'AT HOME' AT OLD JOLYON'S
+
+
+Those privileged to be present at a family festival of the
+Forsytes have seen that charming and instructive sight--an upper
+middle-class family in full plumage.  But whosoever of these
+favoured persons has possessed the gift of psychological analysis
+(a talent without monetary value and properly ignored by the
+Forsytes), has witnessed a spectacle, not only delightful in
+itself, but illustrative of an obscure human problem.  In plainer
+words, he has gleaned from a gathering of this family--no branch
+of which had a liking for the other, between no three members of
+whom existed anything worthy of the name of sympathy--evidence of
+that mysterious concrete tenacity which renders a family so
+formidable a unit of society, so clear a reproduction of society
+in miniature.  He has been admitted to a vision of the dim roads
+of social progress, has understood something of patriarchal life,
+of the swarmings of savage hordes, of the rise and fall of
+nations.  He is like one who, having watched a tree grow from its
+planting--a paragon of tenacity, insulation, and success, amidst
+the deaths of a hundred other plants less fibrous, sappy, and
+persistent--one day will see it flourishing with bland, full
+foliage, in an almost repugnant prosperity, at the summit of its
+efflorescence.
+
+On June 15, eighteen eighty-six, about four of the afternoon, the
+observer who chanced to be present at the house of old Jolyon
+Forsyte in Stanhope Gate, might have seen the highest
+efflorescence of the Forsytes.
+
+This was the occasion of an 'at home' to celebrate the engagement
+of Miss June Forsyte, old Jolyon's granddaughter, to Mr. Philip
+Bosinney.  In the bravery of light gloves, buff waistcoats,
+feathers and frocks, the family were present, even Aunt Ann, who
+now but seldom left the comer of her brother Timothy's green
+drawing-room, where, under the aegis of a plume of dyed pampas
+grass in a light blue vase, she sat all day reading and knitting,
+surrounded by the effigies of three generations of Forsytes.
+Even Aunt Ann was there; her inflexible back, and the dignity of
+her calm old face personifying the rigid possessiveness of the
+family idea.
+
+When a Forsyte was engaged, married, or born, the Forsytes were
+present; when a Forsyte died--but no Forsyte had as yet died;
+they did not die; death being contrary to their principles, they
+took precautions against it, the instinctive precautions of
+highly vitalized persons who resent encroachments on their
+property.
+
+About the Forsytes mingling that day with the crowd of other
+guests, there was a more than ordinarily groomed look, an alert,
+inquisitive assurance, a brilliant respectability, as though they
+were attired in defiance of something.  The habitual sniff on the
+face of Soames Forsyte had spread through their ranks; they were
+on their guard.
+
+The subconscious offensiveness of their attitude has constituted
+old Jolyon's 'home' the psychological moment of the family
+history, made it the prelude of their drama.
+
+The Forsytes were resentful of something, not individually, but
+as a family; this resentment expressed itself in an added
+perfection of raiment, an exuberance of family cordiality, an
+exaggeration of family importance, and--the sniff.  Danger--so
+indispensable in bringing out the fundamental quality of any
+society, group, or individual--was what the Forsytes scented; the
+premonition of danger put a burnish on their armour.  For the
+first time, as a family, they appeared to have an instinct of
+being in contact, with some strange and unsafe thing.
+
+Over against the piano a man of bulk and stature was wearing two
+waistcoats on his wide chest, two waistcoats and a ruby pin,
+instead of the single satin waistcoat and diamond pin of, more
+usual occasions, and his shaven, square, old face, the colour of
+pale leather, with pale eyes, had its most dignified look, above
+his satin stock.  This was Swithin Forsyte.  Close to the window,
+where he could get more than his fair share of fresh air, the
+other twin, James--the fat and the lean of it, old Jolyon called
+these brothers--like the bulky Swithin, over six feet in height,
+but very lean, as though destined from his birth to strike a
+balance and maintain an average, brooded over the scene with his
+permanent stoop; his grey eyes had an air of fixed absorption in
+some secret worry, broken at intervals by a rapid, shifting
+scrutiny of surrounding facts; his cheeks, thinned by two
+parallel folds, and a long, clean-shaven upper lip, were framed
+within Dundreary whiskers.  In his hands he turned and turned a
+piece of china.  Not far off, listening to a lady in brown, his
+only son Soames, pale and well-shaved, dark-haired, rather bald,
+had poked his chin up sideways, carrying his nose with that
+aforesaid appearance of 'sniff,' as though despising an egg which
+he knew he could not digest.  Behind him his cousin, the tall
+George, son of the fifth Forsyte, Roger, had a Quilpish look on
+his fleshy face, pondering one of his sardonic jests.  Something
+inherent to the occasion had affected them all.
+
+Seated in a row close to one another were three  ladies--Aunts
+Ann, Hester (the two Forsyte maids), and Juley (short for Julia),
+who not in first youth had so far forgotten herself as to marry
+Septimus Small, a man of poor constitution.  She had survived him
+for many years.  With her elder and younger sister she lived now
+in the house of Timothy, her sixth and youngest brother, on the
+Bayswater Road.  Each of these ladies held fans in their hands,
+and each with some touch of Colour, some emphatic feather or
+brooch, testified to the solemnity of the opportunity.
+
+In the centre of the room, under the chandelier, as became a
+host, stood the head of the family, old Jolyon himself.  Eighty
+years of age, with his fine, white hair, his dome-like forehead,
+his little, dark grey eyes, and an immense white moustache, which
+drooped and spread below the level of his strong jaw, he had a
+patriarchal look, and in spite of lean cheeks and hollows at his
+temples, seemed master of perennial youth.  He held him self
+extremely upright, and his shrewd, steady  eyes had lost none of
+their clear shining.  Thus  he gave an impression of superiority
+to the  doubts and dislikes of smaller men.  Having had  his own
+way for innumerable years, he had  earned a prescriptive right to
+it.  It would never have occurred to old Jolyon that it was
+necessary to wear a look of doubt or of defiance.
+
+Between him and the four other brothers who were present, James,
+Swithin, Nicholas, and Roger, there was much difference, much
+similarity.  In turn, each of these four brothers was very
+different from the other, yet they, too, were alike.
+
+Through the varying features and expression  of those five faces
+could be marked a certain  steadfastness of chin, underlying
+surface distinctions, marking a racial stamp, too prehistoric to
+trace, too remote and permanent to discuss--the  very hall-mark
+and guarantee of the family for tunes.
+
+Among the younger generation, in the tall, bull-like George, in
+pallid strenuous Archibald, in young Nicholas with his sweet and
+tentative obstinacy, in the grave and foppishly determined
+Eustace, there was this same stamp--less meaningful perhaps, but
+unmistakable--a sign of something ineradicable in the family
+soul. At one time or another during the afternoon, all these
+faces, so dissimilar and so alike, had worn an expression of
+distrust, the object of which was undoubtedly the man whose
+acquaintance they were thus assembled to make.  Philip Bosinney
+was known to be a young man without fortune, but Forsyte girls
+had become engaged to such before, and had actually married them.
+It was not altogether for this reason, therefore, that the minds
+of the Forsytes misgave them.  They could not have explained the
+origin of a misgiving obscured by the mist of family gossip.  A
+story was undoubtedly told that he had paid his duty call to
+Aunts Ann, Juley, and Hester, in a soft grey hat--a soft grey
+hat, not even a new one--a dusty thing with a shapeless crown.
+"So, extraordinary, my dear--so odd," Aunt Hester, passing
+through the little, dark hall (she was rather short-sighted), had
+tried to 'shoo' it off a chair, taking it for a strange,
+disreputable cat--Tommy had such disgraceful friends!  She was
+disturbed when it did not move.  Like an artist for ever seeking
+to discover the significant trifle which embodies the whole
+character of a scene, or place, or person, so those unconscious
+artists--the Forsytes had fastened by intuition on this hat; it
+was their significant trifle, the detail in which was embedded
+the meaning of the whole matter; for each had asked himself:
+"Come, now, should I have paid that visit in that hat?" and each
+had answered "No!" and some, with more imagination than others,
+had added: "It would never have come into my head!"
+
+George, on hearing the story, grinned.  The hat had obviously
+been worn as a practical joke!  He himself was a connoisseur of
+such. "Very haughty!" he said, "the wild Buccaneer."
+
+And this mot, the 'Buccaneer,' was bandied from mouth to mouth,
+till it became the favourite mode of alluding to Bosinney.
+
+Her aunts reproached June afterwards about the hat.
+
+"We don't think you ought to let him, dear!" they had said.
+
+June had answered in her imperious brisk way, like the little
+embodiment of will she was:  "Oh! what does it matter?  Phil
+never knows what he's got on!"
+
+No one had credited an answer so outrageous.  A man not to know
+what he had on?  No, no!  What indeed was this young man, who, in
+becoming engaged to June, old Jolyon's acknowledged heiress, had
+done so well for himself?  He was an architect, not in itself a
+sufficient reason for wearing such a hat.  None of the Forsytes
+happened to be architects, but one of them knew two architects
+who would never have worn such a hat upon a call of ceremony in
+the London season.
+
+Dangerous--ah, dangerous!  June, of course, had not seen this,
+but, though not yet nineteen, she was notorious.  Had she not
+said to Mrs. Soames--who was always so beautifully dressed--that
+feathers were vulgar?  Mrs. Soames had actually given up wearing
+feathers, so dreadfully downright was dear June!
+
+These misgivings, this disapproval, and perfectly genuine
+distrust, did not prevent the Forsytes from gathering to old
+Jolyon's invitation.  An 'At Home' at Stanhope Gate was a great
+rarity; none had been held for twelve years, not indeed, since
+old Mrs. Jolyon had died.
+
+Never had there been so full an assembly, for, mysteriously
+united in spite of all their differences, they had taken arms
+against a common peril.  Like cattle when a dog comes into the
+field, they stood head to head and shoulder to shoulder, prepared
+to run upon and trample the invader to death.  They had come,
+too, no doubt, to get some notion of what sort of presents they
+would ultimately be expected to give; for though the question of
+wedding gifts was usually graduated in this way: 'What are you
+givin?  Nicholas is givin' spoons!'--so very much depended on the
+bridegroom.  If he were sleek, well-brushed, prosperous-looking,
+it was more necessary to give him nice things; he would expect
+them.  In the end each gave exactly what was right and proper, by
+a species of family adjustment arrived at as prices are arrived
+at on the Stock Exchange--the exact niceties being regulated at
+Timothy's commodious, red-brick residence in Bayswater,
+overlooking the Park, where dwelt Aunts Ann, Juley, and Hester.
+
+The uneasiness of the Forsyte family has been justified by the
+simple mention of the hat.  How impossible and wrong would it
+have been for any family, with the regard for appearances which
+should ever characterize, the great upper middle-class, to feel
+otherwise than uneasy!
+
+The author of the uneasiness stood talking to June by the further
+door; his curly hair had a rumpled appearance, as though he found
+what was going on around him unusual.  He had an air, too, of
+having a joke all to himself.  George, speaking aside to his
+brother, Eustace, said:
+
+"Looks as if he might make a bolt of it--the dashing Buccaneer!"
+
+This 'very singular-looking man,' as Mrs. Small afterwards called
+him, was of medium height and strong build, with a pale, brown
+face, a dust-coloured moustache, very prominent cheek-bones, and
+hollow checks.  His forehead sloped back towards the crown of his
+head, and bulged out in bumps over the eyes, like foreheads seen
+in the Lion-house at the Zoo.  He had sherry-coloured eyes,
+disconcertingly inattentive at times.  Old Jolyon's coachman,
+after driving June and Bosinney to the theatre, had remarked to
+the butler:
+
+"I dunno what to make of 'im.  Looks to me for all the world like
+an 'alf-tame leopard." And every now and then a Forsyte would
+come up, sidle round, and take a look at him.
+
+June stood in front, fending off this idle curiosity--a little
+bit of a thing, as somebody once said, 'all hair and spirit,'
+with fearless blue eyes, a firm jaw, and a bright colour, whose
+face and body seemed too slender for her crown of red-gold hair.
+
+A tall woman, with a beautiful figure, which some member of the
+family had once compared to a heathen goddess, stood looking at
+these two with a shadowy smile.
+
+Her hands, gloved in French grey, were crossed one over the
+other, her grave, charming face held to one side, and the eyes of
+all men near were fastened on it.  Her figure swayed, so balanced
+that the very air seemed to set it moving.  There was warmth, but
+little colour, in her cheeks; her large, dark eyes were soft.
+
+But it was at her lips--asking a question, giving an answer, with
+that shadowy smile--that men looked; they were sensitive lips,
+sensuous and sweet, and through them seemed to come warmth and
+perfume like the warmth and perfume of a flower.
+
+The engaged couple thus scrutinized were unconscious of this
+passive goddess.  It was Bosinney who first noticed her, and
+asked her name.
+
+June took her lover up to the woman with the beautiful figure.
+
+"Irene is my greatest chum," she said: "Please be good friends,
+you two!"
+
+At the little lady's command they all three smiled; and while
+they were smiling, Soames Forsyte, silently appearing from behind
+the woman with the beautiful figure, who was his wife, said:
+
+"Ah!  introduce me too!"
+
+He was seldom, indeed, far from Irene's side at public functions,
+and even when separated by, the exigencies of social intercourse,
+could be seen following her about with his eyes, in which were
+strange expressions of watchfulness and longing.
+
+At the window his father, James, was still scrutinizing the marks
+on the piece of china..
+
+"I wonder at Jolyon's allowing this engagement," he said to Aunt
+Ann.  "They tell me there's no chance of their getting married
+for years.  This young Bosinney" (he made the word a dactyl in
+opposition to general usage of a short o) "has got nothing.  When
+Winifred married Dartie, I made him bring every penny into
+settlement--lucky thing, too--they'd ha' had nothing by this
+time!"
+
+Aunt Ann looked up from her velvet chair.  Grey curls banded her
+forehead, curls that, unchanged for decades, had extinguished in
+the family all sense of time.  She made no reply, for she rarely
+spoke, husbanding her aged voice; but to James, uneasy of
+conscience, her look was as good as an answer.
+
+"Well," he said, "I couldn't help Irene's having no money.
+Soames was in such a hurry; he got quite thin dancing attendance
+on her."
+
+Putting the bowl pettishly down on the piano, he let his eyes
+wander to the group by the door.
+
+"It's my opinion," he said unexpectedly, "that it's just as well
+as it is."
+
+Aunt Ann did not ask him to explain this strange utterance.  She
+knew what he was thinking.  If Irene had no money she would not
+be so foolish as to do anything wrong; for they said--they said--
+she had been asking for a separate room; but, of course, Soames
+had not....
+
+James interrupted her reverie:
+
+"But where," he asked, "was Timothy?  Hadn't he come with them?"
+
+Through Aunt Ann's compressed lips a tender smile forced its way:
+
+"No, he didn't think it wise, with so much of this diphtheria
+about; and he so liable to take things."
+
+James answered:
+
+"Well, be takes good care of himself.  I can't afford to take the
+care of myself that he does."
+
+Nor was it easy to say which, of admiration, envy, or contempt,
+was dominant in that remark.
+
+Timothy, indeed, was seldom seen.  The baby of the family, a
+publisher by profession, he had some years before, when business
+was at full tide, scented out the stagnation which, indeed, had
+not yet come, but which ultimately, as all agreed, was bound to
+set in, and, selling his share in a firm engaged mainly in the
+production of religious books, had invested the quite conspicuous
+proceeds in three per cent. consols.  By this act he had at once
+assumed an isolated position, no other Forsyte being content with
+less than four per cent.  for his money; and this isolation had
+slowly and surely undermined a spirit perhaps better than
+commonly endowed with caution.  He had become almost a myth--a
+kind of incarnation of security haunting the background of the
+Forsyte universe.  He had never committed the imprudence of
+marrying, or encumbering himself in any way with children.
+
+James resumed, tapping the piece of china:
+
+"This isn't real old Worcester.  I s'pose Jolyon's told you
+something about the young man.  From all I can learn, he's got no
+business, no income, and no connection worth speaking of; but
+then, I know nothing--nobody tells me anything."
+
+Aunt Ann shook her head.  Over her square-chinned, aquiline old
+face a trembling passed; the spidery fingers of her hands pressed
+against each other and interlaced, as though she were subtly
+recharging her will.
+
+The eldest by some years of all the Forsytes, she held a peculiar
+position amongst them.  Opportunists and egotists one and all--
+though not, indeed, more so than their neighbours--they quailed
+before her incorruptible figure, and, when opportunities were too
+strong, what could they do but avoid her!
+
+Twisting his long, thin legs, James went on:
+
+"Jolyon, he will have his own way.  He's got no children"--and
+stopped, recollecting the continued existence of old Jolyon's
+son, young Jolyon, June's father, who had made such a mess of it,
+and done for himself by deserting his wife and child and running
+away with that foreign governess.  "Well," he resumed hastily,
+"if he likes to do these things, I s'pose he can afford to.  Now,
+what's he going to give her?  I s'pose he'll give her a thousand
+a year; he's got nobody else to leave his money to."
+
+He stretched out his hand to meet that of a dapper, clean-shaven
+man, with hardly a hair on his head, a long, broken nose, full
+lips, and cold grey eyes under rectangular brows.
+
+"Well, Nick," he muttered, "how are you?"
+
+Nicholas Forsyte, with his bird-like rapidity and the look of a
+preternaturally sage schoolboy (he had made a large fortune,
+quite legitimately, out of the companies of which he was a
+director), placed within that cold palm the tips of his still
+colder fingers and hastily withdrew them.
+
+"I'm bad," he said, pouting--"been bad all the week; don't sleep
+at night.  The doctor can't tell why.  He's a clever fellow, or I
+shouldn't have him, but I get nothing out of him but bills."
+
+"Doctors!" said James, coming down sharp on his words: "I've had
+all the doctors in London for one or another of us.  There's no
+satisfaction to be got out of them; they'll tell you anything.
+There's Swithin, now.  What good have they done him?  There he
+is; he's bigger than ever; he's enormous; they can't get his
+weight down.  Look at him!"
+
+Swithin Forsyte, tall, square, and broad, with a chest like a
+pouter pigeon's in its plumage of bright waistcoats, came
+strutting towards them.
+
+"Er--how are you?" he said in his dandified way, aspirating the
+'h' strongly (this difficult letter was almost absolutely safe in
+his keeping)--"how are you?"
+
+Each brother wore an air of aggravation as he looked at the other
+two, knowing by experience that they would try to eclipse his
+ailments.
+
+"We were just saying," said James, "that you don't get any
+thinner."
+
+Swithin protruded his pale round eyes with the effort of hearing.
+
+"Thinner?  I'm in good case," he said, leaning a little forward,
+"not one of your thread-papers like you!"
+
+But, afraid of losing the expansion of his chest, he leaned back
+again into a state of immobility, for he prized nothing so highly
+as a distinguished appearance.
+
+Aunt Ann turned her old eyes from one to the other.  Indulgent
+and severe was her look.  In turn the three brothers looked at
+Ann.  She was getting shaky.  Wonderful woman!  Eighty-six if a
+day; might live another ten years, and had never been strong.
+Swithin and James, the twins, were only seventy-five, Nicholas a
+mere baby of seventy or so.  All were strong, and the inference
+was comforting. Of all forms of property their respective healths
+naturally concerned them most.
+
+"I'm very well in myself," proceeded James, "but my nerves are
+out of order.  The least thing worries me to death.  I shall have
+to go to Bath."
+
+"Bath!" said Nicholas.  "I've tried Harrogate.  That's no good.
+What I want is sea air.  There's nothing like Yarmouth.  Now,
+when I go there I sleep...."
+
+"My liver's very bad," interrupted Swithin slowly.  "Dreadful
+pain here;" and he placed his hand on his right side.
+
+"Want of exercise," muttered James, his eyes on the china.  He
+quickly added: "I get a pain there, too."
+
+Swithin reddened, a resemblance to a turkey-cock coming upon his
+old face.
+
+"Exercise!" he said.  "I take plenty: I never use the lift at the
+Club."
+
+"I didn't know," James hurried out.  "I know nothing about
+anybody; nobody tells me anything...."
+
+Swithin fixed him with a stare:
+
+"What do you do for a pain there?"
+
+James brightened.
+
+"I take a compound...."
+
+"How are you, uncle?"
+
+June stood before him, her resolute small face raised from her
+little height to his great height, and her hand outheld.
+
+The brightness faded from James's visage.
+
+"How are you?" he said, brooding over her.  "So you're going to
+Wales to-morrow to visit your young man's aunts?  You'll have a
+lot of rain there.  This isn't real old Worcester."  He tapped the
+bowl.  "Now, that set I gave your mother when she married was the
+genuine thing."
+
+June shook hands one by one with her three great-uncles, and
+turned to Aunt Ann.  A very sweet look had come into the old
+lady's face, she kissed the girl's check with trembling fervour.
+
+"Well, my dear," she said, "and so you're going for, a whole
+month!"
+
+The girl passed on, and Aunt Ann looked after her slim little
+figure.  The old lady's round, steel grey eyes, over which a film
+like a bird's was beginning to come, followed her wistfully
+amongst the bustling crowd, for people were beginning to
+say good-bye; and her finger-tips, pressing and pressing against
+each other, were busy again with the recharging of her will
+against that inevitable ultimate departure of her own.
+
+'Yes,' she thought, 'everybody's been most kind; quite a lot of
+people come to congratulate her.  She ought to be very happy.'
+Amongst the throng of people by the door, the well-dressed throng
+drawn from the families of lawyers and doctors, from the Stock
+Exchange, and all the innumerable avocations of the upper-middle
+class--there were only some twenty percent of Forsytes; but to
+Aunt Ann they seemed all Forsytes--and certainly there was not
+much difference--she saw only her own flesh and blood.  It was
+her world, this family, and she knew no other, had never perhaps
+known any other.  All their little secrets, illnesses,
+engagements, and marriages, how they were getting on, and whether
+they were making money--all this was her property, her delight,
+her life; beyond this only a vague, shadowy mist of--facts and
+persons of no real significance.  This it was that she would have
+to lay down when it came to her turn  to die; this which gave to
+her that importance, that secret self-importance, without which
+none of us can bear to live; and to this she clung wistfully,
+with a greed that grew each day!  If life were slipping away from
+her, this she would retain to the end.
+
+She thought of June's father, young Jolyon, who had run away with
+that foreign girl.  And what a sad blow to his father and to them
+all.  Such a promising young fellow!  A sad blow, though there
+had been no public scandal, most fortunately, Jo's wife seeking
+for no divorce!  A long time ago!  And when June's mother died,
+six years ago, Jo had married that woman, and they had two
+children now, so she had heard.  Still, he had forfeited his
+right to be there, had cheated her of the complete fulfilment of
+her family pride, deprived her of the rightful pleasure of seeing
+and kissing him of whom she had been so proud, such a promising
+young fellow!  The thought rankled with the bitterness of a
+long-inflicted injury in her tenacious old heart.  A little water
+stood in her eyes.  With a handkerchief of the finest lawn she
+wiped them stealthily.
+
+"Well, Aunt Ann?" said a voice behind.
+
+Soames Forsyte, flat-shouldered, clean-shaven, flat-cheeked,
+flat-waisted, yet with something round and secret about his whole
+appearance, looked downwards and aslant at Aunt Ann, as though
+trying to see through the side of his own nose.
+
+"And what do you think of the engagement?" he asked.
+
+Aunt Ann's eyes rested on him proudly; of all the nephews since
+young Jolyon's departure from the family nest, he was now her
+favourite, for she recognised in him a sure trustee of the family
+soul that must so soon slip beyond her keeping.
+
+"Very nice for the young man," she said; "and he's a good-looking
+young fellow; but I doubt if he's quite the right lover for dear
+June."
+
+Soames touched the edge of a gold-lacquered lustre.
+
+"She'll tame him," he said, stealthily wetting his finger and
+rubbing it on the knobby bulbs.  "That's genuine old lacquer; you
+can't get it nowadays.  It'd do well in a sale at Jobson's." He
+spoke with relish, as though he felt that he was cheering up his
+old aunt.  It was seldom he was so confidential.  "I wouldn't
+mind having it myself," he added; "you can always get your price
+for old lacquer."
+
+"You're so clever with all those things," said Aunt Ann.  "And
+how is dear Irene?"
+
+Soames's smile died.
+
+"Pretty well," he said.  "Complains she can't sleep; she sleeps a
+great deal better than I do," and he looked at his wife, who was
+talking to Bosinney by the door.
+
+Aunt Ann sighed.
+
+"Perhaps," she said, "it will be just as well for her not to see
+so much of June.  She's such a decided character, dear June!"
+
+Soames flushed; his flushes passed rapidly over his flat cheeks
+and centered between his eyes, where they remained, the stamp of
+disturbing thoughts.
+
+"I don't know what she sees in that little flibbertigibbet," he
+burst out, but noticing that they were no longer alone, he turned
+and again began examining the lustre.
+
+"They tell me Jolyon's bought another house," said his father's
+voice close by; "he must have a lot of money--he must have more
+money than he knows what to do with!  Montpellier Square, they
+say; close to Soames!  They never told me, Irene never tells me
+anything!"
+
+"Capital position, not two minutes from me," said the voice of
+Swithin, "and from my rooms I can drive to the Club in eight."
+
+The position of their houses was of vital importance to the
+Forsytes, nor was this remarkable, since the whole spirit of
+their success was embodied therein.
+
+Their father, of farming stock, had come from Dorsetshire near
+the beginning of the century.
+
+'Superior Dosset Forsyte, as he was called by his intimates, had
+been a stonemason by trade, and risen to the position of a
+master-builder.
+
+Towards the end of his life he moved to London, where, building
+on until he died, he was buried at Highgate.  He left over thirty
+thousand pounds between his ten children.  Old Jolyon alluded to
+him, if at all, as 'A hard, thick sort of man; not much
+refinement about him.' The second generation of Forsytes felt
+indeed that, he was not greatly to their credit.  The only
+aristocratic trait they could find in his character was a habit
+of drinking Madeira.
+
+Aunt Hester, an authority on family history, described him thus:
+"I don't recollect that he ever did anything; at least, not in my
+time.  He was  er--an owner of houses, my dear.  His hair about
+your Uncle Swithin's colour; rather a square build.  Tall?  No--
+not very tall" (he had been five feet, five, with a mottled
+face); "a fresh-coloured man.  I remember he used to drink
+Madeira; but ask your Aunt Ann.  What was his father?  He--er--
+had to do with the land down in Dorsetshire, by the sea."
+
+James once went down to see for himself what sort of place this
+was that they had come from.  He found two old farms, with a cart
+track rutted into the pink earth, leading down to a mill by the
+beach; a little grey church with a buttressed outer wall, and a
+smaller and greyer chapel.  The stream which worked the mill came
+bubbling down in a dozen rivulets, and pigs were hunting round
+that estuary.  A haze hovered over the prospect.  Down this
+hollow, with their feet deep in the mud and their faces towards
+the sea, it appeared that the primeval Forsytes had been content
+to walk Sunday after Sunday for hundreds of years.
+
+Whether or no James had cherished hopes of an inheritance, or of
+something rather distinguished to be found down there, he came
+back to town in a poor way, and went about with a pathetic
+attempt at making the best of a bad job.
+
+"There's very little to be had out of that," he said; "regular
+country little place, old as the hills...."
+
+Its age was felt to be a comfort.  Old Jolyon, in whom a
+desperate honesty welled up at times, would allude to his
+ancestors as: "Yeomen--I suppose very small beer."  Yet he would
+repeat the word 'yeomen' as if it afforded him consolation.
+
+They had all done so well for themselves, these Forsytes, that
+they were all what is called 'of a certain position.' They had
+shares in all sorts of things, not as yet--with the exception of
+Timothy--in consols, for they had no dread in life like that of
+3 per cent. for their money.  They collected pictures, too, and
+were supporters of such charitable  institutions as might be
+beneficial to their sick domestics.  From their father, the
+builder, they inherited a talent for bricks and mortar.
+Originally, perhaps, members of some primitive sect, they were
+now in the natural course of things members of the Church of
+England, and caused their wives and children to attend with some
+regularity the more fashionable churches of the Metropolis.  To
+have doubted their Christianity would have caused them both pain
+and surprise.  Some of them paid for pews, thus expressing in the
+most practical form their sympathy with the teachings of Christ.
+
+Their residences, placed at stated intervals round the park,
+watched like sentinels, lest the fair heart of this London, where
+their desires were fixed, should slip from their clutches, and
+leave them lower in their own estimations.
+
+There was old Jolyon in Stanhope Place; the Jameses in Park Lane;
+Swithin in the lonely glory of orange and blue chambers in Hyde
+Park Mansions--he had never married, not he--the Soamses in their
+nest off Knightsbridge; the Rogers in Prince's Gardens (Roger was
+that remarkable Forsyte who had conceived and carried out the
+notion of bringing up his four sons to a new profession.
+
+"Collect house property, nothing like it," he would say; "I never
+did anything else").
+
+The Haymans again--Mrs. Hayman was the one married Forsyte
+sister--in a house high up on Campden Hill, shaped like a
+giraffe, and so tall that it gave the observer a crick in the
+neck; the Nicholases in Ladbroke Grove, a spacious abode and a
+great bargain; and last, but not least, Timothy's on the
+Bayswater Road, where Ann, and Juley, and Hester, lived under his
+protection.
+
+But all this time James was musing, and now he inquired of his
+host and brother what he had given for that house in Montpellier
+Square.  He himself had had his eye on a house there for the last
+two years, but they wanted such a price.
+
+Old Jolyon recounted the details of his purchase.
+
+"Twenty-two years to run?" repeated James; "The very house I was
+after--you've given too much for it!"
+
+Old Jolyon frowned.
+
+"It's not that I want it," said James hastily; it wouldn't suit
+my purpose at that price.  Soames knows the house, well--he'll
+tell you it's too dear--his opinion's worth having."
+
+"I don't," said old Jolyon, "care a fig for his opinion."
+
+"Well," murmured James, "you will have your own way--it's a good
+opinion.  Good-bye!  We're going to drive down to Hurlingham.
+They tell me June's going to Wales.  You'll be lonely tomorrow.
+What'll you do with yourself?  You'd better come and dine with
+us!"
+
+Old Jolyon refused.  He went down to the front door and saw them
+into their barouche, and twinkled at them, having already
+forgotten his spleen--Mrs. James facing the horses, tall and
+majestic with auburn hair; on her left, Irene--the two husbands,
+father and son, sitting forward, as though they expected
+something, opposite their wives.  Bobbing and bounding upon the
+spring cushions, silent, swaying to each motion of their chariot,
+old Jolyon watched them drive away under the sunlight.
+
+During the drive the silence was broken by Mrs. James.
+
+"Did you ever see such a collection of rumty-too people?"
+
+Soames, glancing at her beneath his eyelids, nodded, and he saw
+Irene steal at him one of her unfathomable looks.  It is likely
+enough that each branch of the Forsyte family made that remark as
+they drove away from old Jolyon's 'At Home!'
+
+Amongst the last of the departing guests the fourth and fifth
+brothers, Nicholas and Roger, walked away together, directing
+their steps alongside Hyde Park towards the Praed Street Station
+of the Underground.  Like all other Forsytes of a certain age
+they kept carriages of their own, and never took cabs if by any
+means they could avoid it.
+
+The day was bright, the trees of the Park in the full beauty of
+mid-June foliage; the brothers did not seem to notice phenomena,
+which contributed, nevertheless, to the jauntiness of promenade
+and conversation.
+
+"Yes," said Roger, "she's a good-lookin' woman, that wife of
+Soames's.  I'm told they don't get on."
+
+This brother had a high forehead, and the freshest colour of any
+of the Forsytes; his light grey eyes measured the street frontage
+of the houses by the way, and now and then he would level his,
+umbrella and take a 'lunar,' as he expressed it, of the varying
+heights.
+
+"She'd no money," replied Nicholas.
+
+He himself had married a good deal of money, of which, it being
+then the golden age before the Married Women's Property Act, he
+had mercifully been enabled to make a successful use.
+
+"What was her father?"
+
+"Heron was his name, a Professor, so they tell me."
+
+Roger shook his head.
+
+"There's no money in that," he said.
+
+"They say her mother's father was cement."
+
+Roger's face brightened.
+
+"But he went bankrupt," went on Nicholas.
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Roger, "Soames will have trouble with her; you
+mark my words, he'll have trouble--she's got a foreign look."
+
+Nicholas licked his lips.
+
+"She's a pretty woman," and he waved aside a crossing-sweeper.
+
+"How did he get hold of her?" asked Roger presently.  "She must
+cost him a pretty penny in dress!"
+
+"Ann tells me," replied Nicholas," he was half-cracked about her.
+She refused him five times.  James, he's nervous about it, I can
+see."
+
+"Ah!" said Roger again; "I'm sorry for James; he had trouble with
+Dartie."  His pleasant colour was heightened by exercise, he swung
+his umbrella to the level of his eye more frequently than ever.
+Nicholas's face also wore a pleasant look.
+
+"Too pale for me," he said, "but her figures capital!"
+
+Roger made no reply.
+
+"I call her distinguished-looking," he said at last--it was the
+highest praise in the Forsyte vocabulary.  "That young Bosinney
+will never do any good for himself.  They say at Burkitt's he's
+one of these artistic chaps--got an idea of improving English
+architecture; there's no money in that!  I should like to hear
+what Timothy would say to it."
+
+They entered the station.
+
+"What class are you going?  I go second."
+
+"No second for me," said Nicholas;--"you never know what you may
+catch."
+
+He took a first-class ticket to Notting Hill Gate; Roger a second
+to South Kensington.  The train coming in a minute later, the two
+brothers parted and entered their respective compartments.  Each
+felt aggrieved that the other had not modified his habits to
+secure his society a little longer; but as Roger voiced it in his
+thoughts:
+'Always a stubborn beggar, Nick!'
+
+And as Nicholas expressed it to himself:
+
+'Cantankerous chap Roger--always was!'
+
+There was little sentimentality about the Forsytes.  In that
+great London, which they had conquered and become merged in, what
+time had they to be sentimental?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+OLD JOLYON GOES TO THE OPERA
+
+
+At five o'clock the following day old Jolyon sat alone, a cigar
+between his lips, and on a table by his side a cup of tea.  He
+was tired, and  before he had finished his cigar he fell asleep.
+A fly settled on his hair, his breathing sounded heavy in the
+drowsy silence, his upper lip under the white moustache puffed in
+and out.  From between the fingers of his veined and wrinkled
+hand the 'cigar, dropping on the empty hearth, burned itself out.
+
+The gloomy little, study, with windows of stained glass to
+exclude the view, was full of dark green velvet and
+heavily-carved mahogany--a suite of which old Jolyon was wont to
+say: 'Shouldn't wonder if it made a big price some day!'
+
+It was pleasant to think that in the after life he could get more
+for things than he had given.
+
+In the rich brown atmosphere peculiar to back rooms in the
+mansion of a Forsyte, the Rembrandtesque effect of his great
+head, with its white hair, against the cushion of his high-backed
+seat, was spoiled by the moustache, which imparted a somewhat
+military look to his face.  An old clock that had been with him
+since before his marriage forty years ago kept with its ticking a
+jealous record of the seconds slipping away forever from its old
+master.
+
+He had never cared for this room, hardly going into it from one
+year's end to another, except to take cigars from the Japanese
+cabinet in the corner, and the room now had its revenge.
+
+His temples, curving like thatches over the hollows beneath, his
+cheek-bones and chin, all were sharpened in his sleep, and there
+had come upon his face the confession that he was an old man.
+
+He woke.  June had gone!  James had said he would be lonely.
+James had always been a poor thing.  He recollected with
+satisfaction that he had bought that house over James's head.
+
+Serve him right for sticking at the price; the only thing the
+fellow thought of was money.  Had he given too much, though?  It
+wanted a lot of doing to--He dared say he would want all his
+money before he had done with this affair of June's.  He ought
+never to have allowed the engagement.  She had met this Bosinney
+At the house of Baynes, Baynes and Bildeboy, the architects.  He
+believed that Baynes, whom he knew--a bit of an old woman--was
+the young man's uncle by marriage.  After that she'd been always
+running after him; and when she took a thing into her head there
+was no stopping her.  She was continually taking up with 'lame
+ducks' of one sort or another.  This fellow had no money, but she
+must needs become engaged to him--a harumscarum, unpractical
+chap, who would get himself into no end of difficulties.
+
+She had come to him one day in her slap-dash way and told him;
+and, as if it were any consolation, she had added:
+
+"He's so splendid; he's often lived on cocoa for a week!"
+
+"And he wants you to live on cocoa too?"
+
+"Oh no; he is getting into the swim now."
+
+Old Jolyon had taken his cigar from under his white moustaches,
+stained by coffee at the edge, and looked at her, that little
+slip of a thing who had got such a grip of his heart.  He knew
+more about 'swims' than his granddaughter.  But she, having
+clasped her hands on his knees, rubbed her chin against him,
+making a sound like a purring cat.  And, knocking the ash off his
+cigar, he had exploded in nervous desperation:
+
+"You're all alike: you won't be satisfied till you've got what
+you want.  If you must come to grief, you must; I wash my hands
+of it."
+
+So, he had washed his hands of it, making the condition that they
+should not marry until Bosinney had at least four hundred a year.
+
+"I shan't be able to give you very much," he had said, a formula
+to which June was not unaccustomed."  Perhaps this What's-his-
+name will provide the cocoa."
+
+He had hardly seen anything of her since it began.  A bad
+business!  He had no notion of giving her a lot of money to
+enable a fellow he knew nothing about to live on in idleness.
+He had seen that sort of thing before; no good ever came of it.
+Worst of all, he had no hope of shaking her resolution; she was
+as obstinate as a mule, always had been from a child.  He didn't
+see where it was to end.  They must cut their coat according to
+their cloth.  He would not give way till he saw young Bosinney
+with an income of his own.  That June would have trouble with the
+fellow--was as plain as a pikestaff; he had no more idea of money
+than a cow.  As to this rushing down to Wales to visit the young
+man's aunts, he fully expected they were old cats.
+
+And, motionless, old Jolyon stared at the wall; but for his open
+eyes, he might have been asleep....  The idea of supposing that
+young cub Soames could give him advice!  He had always been a
+cub, with his nose in the air!  He would be setting up as a man
+of property next, with a place in the country!  A man of
+property!  H'mph! Like his father, he was always nosing out
+bargains, a cold-blooded young beggar!
+
+He rose, and, going to the cabinet, began methodically stocking
+his, cigar-case from a bundle fresh in.  They were not bad at the
+price, but you couldn't get a good cigar, nowadays, nothing to
+hold a candle to those old Superfinos of Hanson and Bridger's.
+That was a cigar!
+
+The thought, like some stealing perfume, carried him back to
+those wonderful nights at Richmond when after dinner he sat
+smoking on the terrace of the Crown and Sceptre with Nicholas
+Treffry and Traquair and Jack Herring and Anthony Thornworthy.
+How good his cigars were then!  Poor old Nick!--dead, and Jack
+Herringdead, and Traquair--dead of that wife of his, and
+Thornworthy--awfully shaky (no wonder, with his appetite).
+
+Of all the company of those days he himself alone seemed left,
+except Swithin, of course, and he so outrageously big there was
+no doing anything with him.
+
+Difficult to believe it was so long ago; he felt young still!  Of
+all his thoughts, as he stood there counting his cigars, this was
+the most poignant, the most bitter.  With his white head and his
+loneliness he had remained young and green at heart.  And those
+Sunday afternoons on Hampstead Heath, when young Jolyon and he
+went for a stretch along the Spaniard's Road to Highgate, to
+Child's Hill, and back over the Heath again to dine at Jack
+Straw's Castle--how delicious his cigars were then!  And such
+weather!  There was no weather now.
+
+When June was a toddler of five, and every other Sunday he took
+her to the Zoo, away from the society of those two good women,
+her mother and her grandmother, and at the top of the bear den
+baited his umbrella with buns for her favourite bears, how sweet
+his cigars were then!
+
+Cigars!  He had not even succeeded in out-living his palate--the
+famous palate that in the fifties men swore by, and speaking of
+him, said: "Forsyte=s the best palate in London!" The palate that
+in a sense had made his fortune--the fortune of the celebrated
+tea men, Forsyte and Treffry, whose tea, like no other man's tea,
+had a romantic aroma, the charm of a quite singular genuineness.
+About the house of Forsyte and Treffry in the City had clung an
+air of enterprise and mystery, of special dealings in special
+ships, at special ports, with special Orientals.
+
+He had worked at that business!  Men did work in those days!
+these young pups hardly knew the meaning of the word.  He had
+gone into every detail, known everything that went on, sometimes
+sat up all night over it.  And he had always chosen his agents
+himself, prided himself on it.  His eye for men, he used to say,
+had been the secret of his success, and the exercise of this
+masterful power of selection had been the only part of it all
+that he had really liked.  Not a career for a man of his ability.
+Even now, when the business had been turned into a Limited
+Liability Company, and was declining (he had got out of his
+shares long ago), he felt a sharp chagrin in thinking of that
+time.  How much better he might have done!  He would have
+succeeded splendidly at the Bar!  He had even thought of standing
+for Parliament.  How often had not Nicholas Treffry said to him:
+
+"You could do anything, Jo, if you weren't so d-damned careful of
+yourself!" Dear old Nick!  Such a good fellow, but a racketty
+chap!  The notorious Treffry!  He had never taken any care of
+himself.  So he was dead.  Old Jolyon counted his cigars with a
+steady hand, and it came into his mind to wonder if perhaps he
+had been too careful of himself.
+
+He put the cigar-case in the breast of his coat, buttoned it in,
+and walked up the long flights to his bedroom, leaning on one
+foot and the other, and helping himself by the bannister.  The
+house was too big.  After June was married, if she ever did marry
+this fellow, as he supposed she would, he would let it and go
+into rooms.  What was the use of keeping half a dozen servants
+eating their heads off?
+
+The butler came to the ring of his bell--a large man with a
+beard, a soft tread, and a peculiar capacity for silence.  Old
+Jolyon told him to put his dress clothes out; he was going to
+dine at the Club.
+
+How long had the carriage been back from taking Miss June to the
+station?  Since two?  Then let him come round at half-past six!
+
+The Club which old Jolyon entered on the stroke of seven was one
+of those political institutions of the upper middle class which
+have seen better days.  In spite of being talked about, perhaps
+in consequence of being talked about, it betrayed a disappointing
+vitality.  People had grown tired of saying that the 'Disunion'
+was on its last legs.  Old Jolyon would say it, too, yet
+disregarded the fact in a manner truly irritating to
+well-constituted Clubmen.
+
+"Why do you keep your name on?" Swithin often asked him with
+profound vexation.  "Why don't you join the 'Polyglot?  You can't
+get a wine like our Heidsieck under twenty shillin' a bottle
+anywhere in London;" and, dropping his voice, he added: "There's
+only five hundred dozen left.  I drink it every night of my
+life."
+
+"I'll think of it," old Jolyon would answer; but when he did think
+of it there was always the question of fifty guineas entrance
+fee, and it would take him four or five years to get in.  He
+continued to think of it.
+
+He was too old to be a Liberal, had long ceased to believe in the
+political doctrines of his Club, had even been known to allude to
+them as 'wretched stuff,' and it afforded him pleasure to
+continue a member in the teeth of principles so opposed to his
+own.  He had always had a contempt for the place, having joined
+it many years ago when they refused to have him at the 'Hotch
+Potch' owing to his being 'in trade.'  As if he were not as good
+as any of them!  He naturally despised the Club that did take
+him.  The members were a poor lot, many of them in the City--
+stockbrokers, solicitors, auctioneers--what not!  Like most men
+of strong character but not too much originality, old Jolyon set
+small store by the class to which he belonged.  Faithfully he
+followed their customs, social and otherwise, and secretly he
+thought them 'a common lot.'
+
+Years and philosophy, of which he had his share, had dimmed the
+recollection of his defeat at the 'Hotch Potch'; and now in his
+thoughts it was enshrined as the Queen of Clubs.  He would have
+been a member all these years himself, but, owing to the slipshod
+way his proposer, Jack Herring, had gone to work, they had not
+known what they were doing in keeping him out.  Why! they had
+taken his son Jo at once, and he believed the boy was still a
+member; he had received a letter dated from there eight years
+ago.
+
+He had not been near the 'Disunion' for months, and the house had
+undergone the piebald decoration which people bestow on old
+houses and old ships when anxious to sell them.
+
+'Beastly colour, the smoking-room!' he thought.  'The dining-room
+is good!'
+
+Its gloomy chocolate, picked out with light green, took his
+fancy.
+
+He ordered dinner, and sat down in the very corner, at the very
+table perhaps I (things did not progress much at the 'Disunion,'
+a Club of almost Radical principles) at which he and young Jolyon
+used to sit twenty-five years ago, when he was taking the latter
+to Drury Lane, during his holidays.
+
+The boy had--loved the theatre, and old Jolyon recalled how he
+used to sit opposite, concealing his excitement under a careful
+but transparent nonchalance.
+
+He ordered himself, too, the very dinner the boy had always
+chosen-soup, whitebait, cutlets, and a tart.  Ah! if he were
+only opposite now!
+
+The two had not met for fourteen years.  And not for the first
+time during those fourteen years old Jolyon wondered whether he
+had been a little to blame in the matter of his son.  An
+unfortunate love-affair with that precious flirt Danae Thorn-
+worthy (now Danae Pellew), Anthony Thornworthy's daughter, had
+thrown him on the rebound into the arms of June's mother.  He
+ought perhaps to have put a spoke in the wheel of their marriage;
+they were too young; but after that experience of Jo's
+susceptibility he had been only too anxious to see him married.
+And in four years the crash had come!  To have approved his son's
+conduct in that crash was, of course, impossible; reason and
+training--that combination of potent factors which stood for his
+principles--told him of this impossibility, and his heart cried
+out.  The grim remorselessness of that business had no pity for
+hearts.  There was June, the atom with flaming hair, who had
+climbed all over him, twined and twisted herself about him--about
+his heart that was made to be the plaything and beloved resort of
+tiny, helpless things.  With characteristic insight he saw he
+must part with one or with the other; no half-measures could
+serve in such a situation.  In that lay its tragedy.  And the
+tiny, helpless thing prevailed.  He would not run with the hare
+and hunt with the hounds, and so to his son he said good-bye.
+
+That good-bye had lasted until now.
+
+He had proposed to continue a reduced allowance to young Jolyon,
+but this had been refused, and perhaps that refusal had hurt him
+more than anything, for with it had gone the last outlet of his
+penned-in affection; and there had come such tangible and solid
+proof of rupture as only a transaction in property, a bestowal or
+refusal of such, could supply.
+
+His dinner tasted flat.  His pint of champagne was dry and bitter
+stuff, not like the Veuve Clicquots of old days.
+
+Over his cup of coffee, he bethought him that he would go to the
+opera.  In the Times, therefore--he had a distrust of other
+papers--he read the announcement for the evening.  It was
+'Fidelio.'
+
+Mercifully not one of those new-fangled German pantomimes by that
+fellow Wagner.
+
+Putting on his ancient opera hat, which, with its brim flattened
+by use, and huge capacity, looked like an emblem of greater days,
+and, pulling out an old pair of very thin lavender kid gloves
+smelling strongly of Russia leather, from habitual proximity to
+the  cigar-case in the pocket of his overcoat, he stepped into a
+hansom.
+
+The cab rattled gaily along the streets, and old Jolyon was
+struck by their unwonted animation.
+
+'The hotels must be doing a tremendous business,' he thought.  A
+few years ago there had been none of these big hotels.  He made
+a satisfactory reflection on some property he had in the
+neighbourhood.  It must be going up in value by leaps and bounds!
+What traffic!
+
+But from that he began indulging in one of those strange
+impersonal speculations, so uncharacteristic of a Forsyte,
+wherein lay, in part, the secret of his supremacy amongst them.
+What atoms men were, and what a lot of them!  And what would
+become of them all?
+
+He stumbled as he got out of the cab, gave the man his exact
+fare, walked up to the ticket office to take his stall, and stood
+there with his purse in his hand--he always carried his money in
+a purse, never having approved of that habit of carrying it
+loosely in the pockets, as so many young men did nowadays.  The
+official leaned out, like an old dog from a kennel.
+
+"Why," he said in a surprised voice, "it's Mr. Jolyon Forsyte!
+So it is!  Haven't seen you, sir, for years.  Dear me!  Times
+aren't what they were.  Why! you and your brother, and that
+auctioneer--Mr. Traquair, and Mr. Nicholas Treffry--you used to
+have six or seven stalls here regular every season.  And how are
+you, sir?  We don't get younger!"
+
+The colour in old Jolyon's eyes deepened; he paid his guinea.
+They had not forgotten him.  He marched in, to the sounds of the
+overture, like an old war-horse to battle.
+
+Folding his opera hat, he sat down, drew out his lavender gloves
+in the old way, and took up his glasses for a long look round the
+house.  Dropping them at last on his folded hat, he fixed his
+eyes on the curtain.  More poignantly than ever he felt that it
+was all over and done with him.  Where were all the women, the
+pretty women, the house used to be so full of?  Where was that
+old feeling in the heart as he waited for one of those great
+singers?  Where that sensation of the intoxication of life and
+of his own power to enjoy it all?
+
+The greatest opera-goer of his day!  There was no opera now!
+That fellow Wagner had ruined everything; no melody left, nor any
+voices to sing it.  Ah! the wonderful singers!  Gone!  He sat
+watching the old scenes acted, a numb feeling at his heart.
+
+From the curl of silver over his ear to the pose of his foot in
+its elastic-sided patent boot, there was nothing clumsy or weak
+about old Jolyon.  He was as upright--very nearly--as in those
+old times when he came every night; his sight was as good--almost
+as good.  But what a feeling of weariness and disillusion!
+
+He had been in the habit all his life of enjoying things, even
+imperfect things--and there had been many imperfect things--he
+had enjoyed them all with moderation, so as to keep himself
+young.  But now he was deserted by his power of enjoyment, by his
+philosophy, and left with this dreadful feeling that it was all
+done with.  Not even the Prisoners' Chorus, nor Florian's Song,
+had the power to dispel the gloom of his loneliness.
+
+If Jo, were only with him!  The boy must be forty by now.  He had
+wasted fourteen years out of the life of his only son.  And Jo
+was no longer a social pariah.  He was married.  Old Jolyon had
+been unable to refrain from marking his appreciation of the
+action by enclosing his son a cheque for L500.  The cheque had
+been returned in a letter from the 'Hotch Potch,' couched in
+these words.
+
+
+'MY DEAREST FATHER,
+
+'Your generous gift was welcome as a sign that you might think
+worse of me.  I return it, but should you think fit to invest it
+for the benefit of the little chap (we call him Jolly), who bears
+our Christian and, by courtesy, our surname, I shall be very
+glad.
+
+'I hope with all my heart that your health is as good as ever.
+
+'Your loving son,
+
+ 'Jo.'
+
+
+The letter was like the boy.  He had always been an amiable chap.
+Old Jolyon had sent this reply:
+
+
+'MY DEAR JO,
+
+'The sum (L500) stands in my books for the benefit of your boy,
+under the name of Jolyon Forsyte, and will be duly-credited with
+interest at 5 per cent.  I hope that you are doing well.  My
+health remains good at present.
+
+'With love, I am,
+'Your affectionate Father,
+
+'JOLYON FORSYTE.'
+
+
+And every, year on the 1st of January he had added a hundred and
+the interest.  The sum was mounting up--next New Year's Day it
+would be fifteen hundred and odd pounds!  And it is difficult to
+say how much satisfaction he had got out of that yearly
+transaction.  But the correspondence had ended.
+
+In spite of his love for his son, in spite of an instinct, partly
+constitutional, partly the result, as in thousands of his class,
+of the continual handling and watching of affairs, prompting him
+to judge conduct by results rather than by principle, there was
+at the bottom of his heart a sort of uneasiness.  His son ought,
+under the circumstances, to have gone to the dogs; that law was
+laid down in all the novels, sermons, and plays he had ever read,
+heard, or witnessed.
+
+After receiving the cheque back there seemed to him to be
+something wrong somewhere.  Why had his son, not gone to--the
+dogs?  But, then, who could tell?
+
+He had heard, of course--in fact, he had made it his business
+to find out--that Jo lived in St.  John's Wood, that he had a
+little house in Wistaria Avenue with a garden, and took his wife
+about with, him into society--a queer sort of society, no doubt--
+and that they had two children--the little chap they called Jolly
+(considering the circumstances the name struck him as cynical,
+and old Jolyon both feared and disliked cynicism), and a girl
+called Holly, born since the marriage.  Who could tell what his
+son's circumstances really were?  He had capitalized the income
+he had inherited from his mother's father and joined Lloyd's as
+an underwriter; he painted pictures, too--water-colours.  Old
+Jolyon knew this, for he had surreptitiously bought them from
+time to time, after chancing to see his son's name signed at the
+bottom of a representation of the river Thames in a dealer's
+window.  He thought them bad, and did not hang them because of
+the signature; he kept them locked up in a drawer.
+
+In the great opera-house a terrible yearning came on him to see
+his son.  He remembered the days when he had been wont to slide
+him, in a brown holland suit, to and fro under the arch of his
+legs; the times when he ran beside the boy's pony, teaching him
+to ride; the day he first took him to school.  He had been a
+loving, lovable little chap!  After he went to Eton he had
+acquired, perhaps, a little too much of that desirable manner
+which old Jolyon knew was only to be obtained at such places and
+at great expense; but he had always been companionable.  Always a
+companion, even after Cambridge--a little far off, perhaps, owing
+to the advantages he had received.  Old Jolyon's feeling towards
+our public schools and 'Varsities never wavered, and he retained
+touchingly his attitude of admiration and mistrust towards a
+system appropriate to the highest in the land, of which he had
+not himself  been privileged to partake....  Now that June had
+gone and left, or as good as left him, it would have been a
+comfort to see his son again.  Guilty of this treason to his
+family, his principles, his class, old Jolyon fixed his eyes on
+the singer.  A poor thing--a wretched poor thing!  And the
+Florian a perfect stick!
+
+It was over.  They were easily pleased nowadays!
+
+In the crowded street he snapped up a cab under the very nose of
+a stout and much younger gentleman, who had already assumed it to
+be his own.  His route lay through Pall Mall, and at the corner,
+instead of going through the Green Park, the cabman turned to
+drive up St.  James's Street.  Old Jolyon put his hand through
+the trap (he could not bear being taken out of his way); in
+turning, however, he found himself opposite the 'Hotch Potch, '
+and the yearning that had been secretly with him the whole
+evening prevailed.  He called to the driver to stop.  He would go
+in and ask if Jo still belonged there.
+
+He went in.  The hall looked exactly as it did when he used to
+dine there with Jack Herring, and they had the best cook in
+London; and he looked round with the shrewd, straight glance that
+had caused him all his life to be better served than most men.
+
+"Mr. Jolyon Forsyte still a member here?"
+
+"Yes, sir; in the Club now, sir.  What name?"
+
+Old Jolyon was taken aback.
+
+"His father," he said.
+
+And having spoken, he took his stand, back to the fireplace.
+
+Young Jolyon, on the point of leaving the Club, had put on his
+hat, and was in the act of crossing the hall, as the porter met
+him.  He was no longer young, with hair going grey, and face--a
+narrower replica of his father's, with the same large drooping
+moustache--decidedly worn.  He turned pale.  This meeting was
+terrible after all those years, for nothing in the world was so
+terrible as a scene.  They met and crossed hands without a word.
+Then, with a quaver in his voice, the father said:
+
+"How are you, my boy?"
+
+The son answered:
+
+"How are you, Dad?"
+
+Old Jolyon's hand trembled in its thin lavender glove.
+
+"If you're going my way," he said, "I can give you a lift."
+
+And as though in the habit of taking each other home every night
+they went out and stepped into the cab.
+
+To old Jolyon it seemed that his son had grown.  'More of a man
+altogether,' was his comment.  Over the natural amiability of
+that son's face had come a rather sardonic mask, as though he had
+found in the circumstances of his life the necessity for armour.
+The features were certainly those of a Forsyte, but the expression
+was more the introspective look of a student or philosopher.
+He had no doubt been obliged to look into himself a good deal in
+the course of those fifteen years.
+
+To young Jolyon the first sight of his father was undoubtedly a
+shock--he looked so worn and old.  But in the cab he seemed
+hardly to have changed, still having the calm look so well
+remembered, still being upright and, keen-eyed.
+
+"You look well, Dad."
+
+"Middling," old Jolyon answered.
+
+He was the prey of an anxiety that he found he must put into
+words.  Having got his son back like this, he felt he must know
+what was his financial position.
+
+"Jo," he said, "I should like to hear what sort of water you're
+in.  I suppose you're in debt?"
+
+He put it this way that his son might find it easier to confess.
+
+Young Jolyon answered in his ironical voice:
+
+"No!  I'm not in debt!"
+
+Old Jolyon saw that he was angry, and touched his hand.  He had
+run a risk.  It was worth it, however, and Jo had never been
+sulky with him.  They drove on, without speaking again, to
+Stanhope Gate.  Old Jolyon invited him in, but young Jolyon shook
+his head.
+
+"June's not here," said his father hastily: "went of to-day on a
+visit.  I suppose you know that she's engaged to be married?"
+
+"Already?" murmured young Jolyon'.
+
+Old Jolyon stepped out, and, in paying the cab fare, for the
+first time in his life gave the driver a sovereign in mistake for
+a shilling.
+
+Placing the coin in his mouth, the cabman whipped his horse
+secretly on the underneath and hurried away.
+
+Old Jolyon turned the key softly in the lock, pushed open the
+door, and beckoned.  His son saw him gravely hanging up his coat,
+with an expression on his face like that of a boy who intends to
+steal cherries.
+
+The door of the dining-room was open, the gas turned low; a
+spirit-urn hissed on a tea-tray, and close to it a cynical
+looking cat had fallen asleep on the dining-table.  Old Jolyon
+'shoo'd' her off at once.  The incident was a relief to his
+feelings; he rattled his opera hat behind the animal.
+
+"She's got fleas," he said, following her out of the room.
+Through the door in the hall leading to the basement he called
+"Hssst!" several times, as though assisting the cat's departure,
+till by some strange coincidence the butler appeared below.
+
+"You can go to bed, Parfitt," said old Jolyon.  "I will lock up
+and put out."
+
+When he again entered the dining-room the cat unfortunately
+preceded him, with her tail in the air, proclaiming that she had
+seen through this manouevre for suppressing the butler from the
+first....
+
+A fatality had dogged old Jolyon's domestic stratagems all his
+life.
+
+Young Jolyon could not help smiling.  He was very well versed in
+irony, and everything that evening seemed to him ironical.  The
+episode of the cat; the announcement of his own daughter's
+engagement.  So he had no more part or parcel in her than he had
+in the Puss!  And the poetical justice of this appealed to him.
+
+"What is June like now?" he asked.
+
+"She's a little thing," returned old Jolyon; they say she's like
+me, but that's their folly.  She's more like your mother--the
+same eyes and hair."
+
+"Ah!  and she is pretty?"
+
+Old Jolyon was too much of a Forsyte to praise anything freely;
+especially anything for which he had a genuine admiration.
+
+"Not bad looking--a regular Forsyte chin.  It'll be lonely here
+when she's gone, Jo."
+
+The look on his face again gave young Jolyon the shock he had
+felt on first seeing his father.
+
+"What will you do with yourself, Dad?  I suppose she's wrapped up
+in him?"
+
+"Do with myself?" repeated old Jolyon with an angry break in his
+voice.  "It'll be miserable work living here alone.  I don't know
+how it's to end.  I wish to goodness...."  He checked himself, and
+added: "The question is, what had I better do with this house?"
+
+Young Jolyon looked round the room.  It was peculiarly vast and
+dreary, decorated with the enormous pictures of still life that
+he remembered as a boy--sleeping dogs with their noses resting on
+bunches of carrots, together with onions and grapes lying side by
+side in mild surprise.  The house was a white elephant, but he
+could not conceive of his father living in a smaller place; and
+all the more did it all seem ironical.
+
+In his great chair with the book-rest sat old Jolyon, the
+figurehead of his family and class and creed, with his white head
+and dome-like forehead, the representative of moderation, and
+order, and love of property.  As lonely an old man as there was
+in London.
+
+There he sat in the gloomy comfort of the room, a puppet in the
+power of great forces that cared nothing for family or class or
+creed, but moved, machine-like, with dread processes to
+inscrutable ends.  This was how it struck young Jolyon, who had
+the impersonal eye.
+
+The poor old Dad!  So this was the end, the purpose to which he
+had lived with such magnificent moderation!  To be lonely, and
+grow older and older, yearning for a soul to speak to!
+
+In his turn old Jolyon looked back at his son.  He wanted to talk
+about many things that he had been unable to talk about all these
+years.  It had been impossible to seriously confide in June his
+conviction that property in the Soho quarter would go up in
+value; his uneasiness about that tremendous silence of Pippin,
+the superintendent of the New Colliery Company, of which he had
+so long been chairman; his disgust at the steady fall in American
+Golgothas, or even to discuss how, by some sort of settlement, he
+could best avoid the payment of those death duties which would
+follow his decease.  Under the influence, however, of a cup of
+tea, which he seemed to stir indefinitely, he began to speak at
+last.  A new vista of life was thus opened up, a promised land of
+talk, where he could find a harbour against the waves of
+anticipation and regret; where he could soothe his soul with the
+opium of devising how to round off his property and make eternal
+the only part of him that was to remain alive.
+
+Young Jolyon was a good listener; it was his great quality.  He
+kept his eyes fixed on his father's face, putting a question now
+and then.
+
+The clock struck one before old Jolyon had finished, and at the
+sound of its striking his principles came back.  He took out his
+watch with a look of surprise:
+
+"I must go to bed, Jo," he said.
+
+Young Jolyon rose and held out his hand to help his father up.
+The old face looked worn and hollow again; the eyes were steadily
+averted.
+
+"Good-bye, my boy; take care of yourself."
+
+A moment passed, and young Jolyon, turning on his, heel, marched
+out at the door.  He could hardly see; his smile quavered.  Never
+in all the fifteen years since he had first found out that life
+was no simple business, had he found it so singularly
+complicated.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+DINNER AT SWITHIN'S
+
+
+In Swithin's orange and light-blue dining-room, facing the Park,
+the round table was laid for twelve.
+
+A cut-glass chandelier filled with lighted candles hung like a
+giant stalactite above its centre, radiating over large
+gilt-framed mirrors, slabs of marble on the tops of side-tables,
+and heavy gold chairs with crewel worked seats.  Everything
+betokened that love of beauty so deeply implanted in each family
+which has had its own way to make into Society, out of the more
+vulgar heart of Nature.  Swithin had indeed an impatience of
+simplicity, a love of ormolu, which had always stamped him
+amongst his associates as a man of great, if somewhat luxurious
+taste; and out of the knowledge that no one could possibly enter
+his rooms without perceiving him to be a man of wealth, he had
+derived a solid and prolonged happiness such as perhaps no other
+circumstance in life had afforded him.
+
+Since his retirement from land agency, a profession deplorable in
+his estimation, especially as to its auctioneering department, he
+had abandoned himself to naturally aristocratic tastes.
+
+The perfect luxury of his latter days had embedded him like a fly
+in sugar; and his mind, where very little took place from morning
+till night, was the junction of two curiously opposite emotions,
+a lingering and sturdy satisfaction that he had made his own way
+and his own fortune, and a sense that a man of his distinction
+should never have been allowed to soil his mind with work.
+
+He stood at the sideboard in a white waistcoat with large gold
+and onyx buttons, watching his valet screw the necks of three
+champagne bottles deeper into ice-pails.  Between the points of
+his stand-up collar, which--though it hurt him to move--he would
+on no account have had altered, the pale flesh of his under chin
+remained immovable.  His eyes roved from bottle to bottle.  He
+was debating, and he argued like this: Jolyon drinks a glass,
+perhaps two, he's so careful of himself.  James, he can't take
+his wine nowadays.  Nicholas--Fanny and he would swill water he
+shouldn't wonder!  Soames didn't count; these young nephews--
+Soames was thirty-one--couldn't drink!  But Bosinney?
+
+Encountering in the name of this stranger something outside the
+range of his philosophy, Swithin paused.  A misgiving arose
+within him!  It was impossible to tell!  June was only a girl, in
+love too!  Emily (Mrs. James) liked a good glass of champagne.
+It was too dry for Juley, poor old soul, she had no palate.  As
+to Hatty Chessman!  The thought of this old friend caused a cloud
+of thought to obscure the perfect glassiness of his eyes: He
+shouldn't wonder if she drank half a bottle!
+
+But in thinking of his remaining guest, an expression like that
+of a cat who is just going to purr stole over his old face: Mrs.
+Soames!  She mightn't take much, but she would appreciate what
+she drank; it was a pleasure to give her good wine!  A pretty
+woman--and sympathetic to him!
+
+The thought of her was like champagne itself!  A pleasure to give
+a good wine to a young woman who looked so well, who knew how to
+dress, with charming manners, quite distinguished--a pleasure to
+entertain her.  Between the points of his collar he gave his head
+the first small, painful oscillation of the evening.
+
+"Adolf!" he said.  "Put in another bottle."
+
+He himself might drink a good deal, for, thanks to that
+prescription of Blight's, he found himself extremely well, and he
+had been careful to take no lunch.  He had not felt so well for
+weeks.  Puffing out his lower lip, he gave his last instructions:
+
+"Adolf, the least touch of the West India when you come to the
+ham."
+
+Passing into the anteroom, he sat down on the edge of a chair,
+with his knees apart; and his tall, bulky form was wrapped at
+once in an expectant, strange, primeval immobility.  He was ready
+to rise at a moment's notice.  He had not given a dinner-party
+for months.  This dinner in honour of June's engagement had
+seemed a bore at first (among Forsytes the custom of solemnizing
+engagements by feasts was religiously observed), but the labours
+of sending invitations and ordering the repast over, he felt
+pleasantly stimulated.
+
+And thus sitting, a watch in his hand, fat, and smooth, and
+golden, like a flattened globe of butter, he thought of nothing.
+
+A long man, with side whiskers, who had once been in Swithin's
+service, but was now a greengrocer, entered and proclaimed:
+
+"Mrs. Chessman, Mrs. Septimus Small!"
+
+Two ladies advanced.  The one in front, habited entirely in red,
+had large, settled patches of the same colour in her cheeks, and
+a hard, dashing eye.  She walked at Swithin, holding out a hand
+cased in a long, primrose-coloured glove:
+
+"Well!  Swithin," she said, "I haven't seen you for ages.  How are
+you?  Why, my dear boy, how stout you're getting!"
+
+The fixity of Swithin's eye alone betrayed emotion.  A dumb and
+grumbling anger swelled his bosom.  It was vulgar to be stout, to
+talk of being stout; he had a chest, nothing more.  Turning to
+his sister, he grasped her hand, and said in a tone of command:
+
+"Well, Juley."
+
+Mrs. Septimus Small was the tallest of the four sisters; her
+good, round old face had gone a little sour; an innumerable pout
+clung all over it, as if it had been encased in an iron wire mask
+up to that evening, which, being suddenly removed, left little
+rolls of mutinous flesh all over her countenance.  Even her eyes
+were pouting.  It was thus that she recorded her permanent
+resentment at the loss of Septimus Small.
+
+She had quite a reputation for saying the wrong thing, and,
+tenacious like all her breed, she would hold to it when she had
+said it, and add to it another wrong thing, and so on.  With the
+decease of her husband the family tenacity, the family
+matter-of-factness, had gone sterile within her.  A great talker,
+when allowed, she would converse without the faintest animation
+for hours together, relating, with epic monotony, the innumerable
+occasions on which Fortune had misused her; nor did she ever
+perceive that her  hearers sympathized with Fortune, for her
+heart was kind.
+
+Having sat, poor soul, long by the bedside of Small (a man of
+poor constitution), she had acquired, the habit, and there were
+countless subsequent occasions when she had sat immense periods
+of time to amuse sick people, children, and other helpless
+persons, and she could never divest herself of the feeling that
+the world was the most ungrateful place anybody could live in.
+Sunday after Sunday she sat at the feet of that extremely witty
+preacher, the Rev. Thomas Scoles, who exercised a great
+influence  over her; but she succeeded in convincing everybody
+that even this was a misfortune.  She had passed into a proverb
+in the family, and when anybody was observed to be peculiarly
+distressing, he was known as a regular 'Juley.' The habit of her
+mind would have killed anybody but a Forsyte at forty; but she
+was seventy-two, and had never looked better.  And one felt that
+there were capacities for enjoyment about her which might yet
+come out.  She owned three canaries, the cat Tommy, and half a
+parrot--in common with her sister Hester;--and these poor
+creatures (kept carefully out of Timothy's way--he was nervous
+about animals), unlike human beings, recognising that she could
+not help being blighted, attached themselves to her passionately.
+
+She was sombrely magnificent this evening in black bombazine,
+with a mauve front cut in a shy triangle, and crowned with a
+black velvet ribbon round the base of her thin throat; black and
+mauve for evening wear was esteemed very chaste by nearly every
+Forsyte.
+
+Pouting at Swithin, she said:
+
+"Ann has been asking for you.  You haven't been near us for an
+age!"
+
+Swithin put his thumbs within the armholes of his waistcoat, and
+replied:
+
+"Ann's getting very shaky; she ought to have a doctor!"
+
+"Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Forsyte!"
+
+Nicholas Forsyte, cocking his rectangular eyebrows, wore a smile.
+He had succeeded during the day in bringing to fruition a scheme
+for the employment of a tribe from Upper India in the gold-mines
+of Ceylon.  A pet plan, carried at last in the teeth of great
+difficulties--he was justly pleased.  It would double the output
+of his mines, and, as he had often forcibly argued, all
+experience tended to show that a man must die; and whether he
+died of a miserable old age in his own country, or prematurely of
+damp in the bottom of a foreign mine, was surely of little
+consequence, provided that by a change in his mode of life he
+benefited the British Empire.
+
+His ability was undoubted.  Raising his broken nose towards his
+listener, he would add:
+
+"For want of a few hundred of these fellows we haven't paid a
+dividend for years, and look at the price of the shares.  I can't
+get ten shillings for them."
+
+He had been at Yarmouth, too, and had come back feeling that he
+had added at least ten years to his own life.  He grasped
+Swithin's hand, exclaiming in a jocular voice:
+
+"Well, so here we are again!"
+
+Mrs. Nicholas, an effete woman, smiled a smile of frightened
+jollity behind his back.
+
+"Mr. and Mrs. James Forsyte!  Mr. and Mrs. Soames Forsyte!"
+
+Swithin drew his heels together, his deportment ever admirable.
+
+"Well, James, well Emily!  How are you, Soames?  How do you do?"
+
+His hand enclosed Irene's, and his eyes swelled.  She was a
+pretty woman--a little too pale, but her figure, her eyes, her
+teeth!  Too good for that chap Soames!
+
+The gods had given Irene dark brown eyes and golden hair, that
+strange combination, provocative of men's glances, which is said
+to be the mark of a weak character.  And the full, soft pallor of
+her neck and shoulders, above a gold-coloured frock, gave to her
+personality an alluring strangeness.
+
+Soames stood behind, his eyes fastened on his wife's neck.  The
+hands of Swithin's watch, which he still held open in his hand,
+had left eight behind; it was half an hour beyond his
+dinner-time--he had had no lunch--and a strange primeval
+impatience surged up within him.
+
+"It's not like Jolyon to be late!" he said to Irene, with
+uncontrollable vexation.  "I suppose it'll be June keeping him!"
+
+"People in love are always late," she answered.
+
+Swithin stared at her; a dusky orange dyed his cheeks.
+
+"They've no business to be.  Some fashionable nonsense!"
+
+And behind this outburst the inarticulate violence of primitive
+generations seemed to mutter and grumble.
+
+"Tell me what you think of my new star, Uncle Swithin," said
+Irene softly.
+
+Among the lace in the bosom of her dress was shining a
+five-pointed star, made of eleven diamonds.  Swithin looked at
+the star.  He had a pretty taste in stones; no question could
+have been more sympathetically devised to distract his attention.
+
+"Who gave you that?" he asked.
+
+"Soames."
+
+There was no change in her face, but Swithin's pale eyes bulged
+as though he might suddenly have been afflicted with insight.
+
+"I dare say you're dull at home," he said.  "Any day you like to
+come and dine with me, I'll give you as good a bottle of wine as
+you'll get in London."
+
+"Miss June Forsyte--Mr. Jolyon Forsyte!...  Mr. Boswainey!..."
+
+Swithin moved his arm, and said in a rumbling voice:
+
+"Dinner, now--dinner!"
+
+He took in Irene, on the ground that he had not entertained her
+since she was a bride.  June was the portion of Bosinney, who was
+placed between Irene and his fiancee.  On the other side of June
+was James with Mrs. Nicholas, then old Jolyon with Mrs. James,
+Nicholas with Hatty Chessman, Soames with Mrs. Small, completing,
+the circle to Swithin again.
+
+Family dinners of the Forsytes observe certain traditions.  There
+are, for instance, no hors d'oeuvre.  The reason for this is
+unknown.  Theory among the younger members traces it to the
+disgraceful price of oysters; it is more probably due to a desire
+to come to the point, to a good practical sense deciding at once
+that hors d'oeuvre are but poor things.  The Jameses alone,
+unable to withstand a custom almost universal in Park Lane, are
+now and then unfaithful.
+
+A silent, almost morose, inattention to each other succeeds to
+the subsidence into their seats, lasting till well into the first
+entree, but interspersed with remarks such as, "Tom's bad again;
+I can't tell what's the matter with him!"  "I suppose Ann doesn't
+come down in the mornings?"--"What's the name of your doctor,
+Fanny?"  "Stubbs?"  "He's a quack!"--"Winifred?  She's got too many
+children.  Four, isn't it?  She's as thin as a lath!"--"What
+d'you give for this sherry, Swithin?  Too dry for me!"
+
+With the second glass of champagne, a kind of hum makes itself
+heard, which, when divested of casual, accessories and resolved
+into its primal element, is found to be James telling a story,
+and this goes on for a long time, encroaching sometimes even upon
+what must universally be recognised as the crowning point of a
+Forsyte feast--'the saddle of mutton.'
+
+No Forsyte has given a dinner without providing a saddle of
+mutton.  There is something in its succulent solidity which makes
+it suitable to people 'of a certain position.'  It is nourishing
+and tasty; the sort of thing a man remembers eating.  It has a
+past and a future, like a deposit paid into a bank; and it is
+something that can be argued about.
+
+Each branch of the family tenaciously held to a particular
+locality--old Jolyon swearing by Dartmoor, James by Welsh,
+Swithin by Southdown, Nicholas maintaining that people might
+sneer, but there was nothing like New Zealand!  As for Roger, the
+'original' of the brothers, he had been obliged to invent a
+locality of his own, and with an ingenuity worthy of a man who
+had devised a new profession for his sons, he had discovered a
+shop where they sold German; on being remonstrated with, he had
+proved his point by producing a butcher's bill, which showed that
+he paid more than any of the others.  It was on this occasion
+that old Jolyon, turning to June, had said in one of his bursts
+of philosophy:
+
+"You may depend upon it, they're a cranky lot, the Forsytes--and
+you'll find it out, as you grow older!"
+
+Timothy alone held apart, for though he ate saddle of mutton
+heartily, he was, he said, afraid of it.
+
+To anyone interested psychologically in Forsytes, this great
+saddle-of-mutton trait is of prime importance; not only does it
+illustrate their tenacity, both collectively and as individuals,
+but it marks them as belonging in fibre and instincts to that
+great class which believes in nourishment and flavour, and yields
+to no sentimental craving for beauty.
+
+Younger members of the family indeed would have done without a
+joint altogether, preferring guinea-fowl, or lobster salad--
+something which appealed to the imagination, and had less
+nourishment--but these were females; or, if not, had been
+corrupted by their wives, or by mothers, who having been forced
+to eat saddle of mutton throughout their married lives, had
+passed a secret hostility towards it into the fibre of their
+sons.
+
+The great saddle-of-mutton controversy at an end, a Tewkesbury
+ham commenced, together with the least touch of West Indian--
+Swithin was so long over this course that he caused a block in
+the progress of the dinner.  To devote himself to it with better
+heart, he paused in his conversation.
+
+From his seat by Mrs. Septimus Small Soames was watching.  He had
+a reason of his own connected with a pet building scheme, for
+observing Bosinney.  The architect might do for his purpose; he
+looked clever, as he sat leaning back in his chair, moodily
+making little ramparts with bread-crumbs.  Soames noted his dress
+clothes to be well cut, but too small, as though made many years
+ago.
+
+He saw him turn to Irene and say something and her face sparkle
+as he often saw it sparkle at other people--never at himself.  He
+tried to catch what they were saying, but Aunt Juley was
+speaking.
+
+Hadn't that always seemed very extraordinary to Soames?  Only
+last Sunday dear Mr. Scole, had been so witty in his sermon, so
+sarcastic, "For what," he had said, "shall it profit a mar if he
+gain his own soul, but lose all his property?"  That, he had
+said, was the motto of the middle-class; now, what had he meant
+by that?  Of course, it might be what middle-class people
+believed--she didn't know; what did Soames think?
+
+He answered abstractedly: "How should I know?  Scoles is a
+humbug, though, isn't he?"  For Bosinney was looking round the
+table, as if pointing out the peculiarities of the guests, and
+Soames wondered what he was saying.  By her smile Irene was
+evidently agreeing with his remarks.  She seemed always to agree
+with other people.
+
+Her eyes were turned on himself; Soames dropped his glance at
+once.  The smile had died off her lips.
+
+A humbug?  But what did Soames mean?  If Mr. Scoles was a humbug,
+a clergyman--then anybody might be--it was frightful!
+
+"Well, and so they are!" said Soames.
+
+During Aunt Juley's momentary and horrified silence he caught
+some words of Irene's that sounded like: 'Abandon hope, all ye
+who enter here!'
+
+But Swithin had finished his ham.
+
+"Where do you go for your mushrooms?" he was saying to Irene in a
+voice like a courtier's; "you ought to go to Smileybob's he'll
+give 'em you fresh.  These little men, they won't take the
+trouble!"
+
+Irene turned to answer him, and Soames saw Bosinney watching her
+and smiling to himself.  A curious smile the fellow had.  A
+half-simple arrangement, like a child who smiles when he is
+pleased.  As for George's nickname--'The Buccaneer'--he did not
+think much of that.  And, seeing Bosinney turn to June, Soames
+smiled too, but sardonically--he did not like June, who was not
+looking too pleased.
+
+This was not surprising, for she had just held the following
+conversation with James:
+
+"I stayed on the river on my way home, Uncle James, and saw a
+beautiful site for a house."
+
+James, a slow and thorough eater, stopped the process of
+mastication.
+
+"Eh?" he said.  "Now, where was that?"
+
+"Close to Pangbourne."
+
+James placed a piece of ham in his mouth, and June waited.
+
+"I suppose you wouldn't know whether the land about there was
+freehold?" he asked at last.  "You wouldn't know anything about
+the price of land about there?"
+
+"Yes," said June; "I made inquiries." Her little resolute face
+under its copper crown was suspiciously eager and aglow.
+
+James regarded her with the air of an inquisitor.
+
+"What?  You're not thinking of buying land!" he ejaculated,
+dropping his fork.
+
+June was greatly encouraged by his interest.  It had long been
+her pet plan that her uncles should benefit themselves and
+Bosinney by building country-houses.
+
+"Of course not," she said.  "I thought it would be such a
+splendid place for--you or--someone to build a country-house!"
+
+James looked at her sideways, and placed a second piece of ham in
+his mouth....
+
+"Land ought to be very dear about there," he said.
+
+What June had taken for personal interest was only the impersonal
+excitement of every Forsyte who hears of something eligible in
+danger of passing into other hands.  But she refused to see the
+disappearance of her chance, and continued to press her point.
+
+"You ought to go into the country, Uncle James.  I wish I had a
+lot of money, I wouldn't live another day in London."
+
+James was stirred to the depths of his long thin figure; he had
+no idea his niece held such downright views.
+
+"Why don't you go into the country?" repeated June; "it would do
+you a lot of good."
+
+"Why?" began James in a fluster.  "Buying land--what good d'you
+suppose I can do buying land, building houses?--I couldn't get
+four per cent. for my money!"
+
+"What does that matter?  You'd get fresh air."
+
+"Fresh air!" exclaimed James; "what should I do with fresh air,"
+
+"I should have thought anybody liked to have fresh air," said
+June scornfully.
+
+James wiped his napkin all over his mouth.
+
+"You don't know the value of money," he said, avoiding her eye.
+
+"No! and I hope I never shall!" and, biting her lip with
+inexpressible mortification, poor June was silent.
+
+Why were her own relations so rich, and Phil never knew where the
+money was coming from for to-morrow's tobacco.  Why couldn't they
+do something for him?  But they were so selfish.  Why couldn't
+they build country-houses?  She had all that naive dogmatism
+which is so pathetic, and sometimes achieves such great results.
+Bosinney, to whom she turned in her, discomfiture, was talking to
+Irene, and a chill fell on June's spirit.  Her eyes grew steady
+with  anger, like old Jolyon's when his will was crossed.
+
+James, too, was much disturbed.  He felt as though someone had
+threatened his right to invest his money at five per cent.
+Jolyon had spoiled her.  None of his girls would have said such a
+thing.  James had always been exceedingly liberal to his
+children, and the consciousness of this made him feel it all the
+more deeply.  He trifled moodily with his strawberries, then,
+deluging them with cream, he ate them quickly; they, at all
+events, should not escape him.
+
+No wonder he was upset.  Engaged for fifty-four years (he had
+been admitted a solicitor on the earliest day sanctioned by the
+law) in arranging mortgages, preserving investments at a dead
+level of high and safe interest, conducting negotiations on the
+principle of securing the utmost possible out of other people
+compatible with safety to his clients and himself, in
+calculations as to the exact pecuniary possibilities of all the
+relations of life, he had come at last to think purely in terms
+of money.  Money was now his light, his medium for seeing, that
+without which he was really unable to see, really not cognisant
+of phenomena; and to have this thing, "I hope I shall never know
+the value of money!" said to his face, saddened and exasperated
+him.  He knew it to be nonsense, or it would have frightened him.
+What was the world coming to!  Suddenly recollecting the story of
+young Jolyon, however,(he felt a little comforted, for what could
+you expect with a father like that!)  This turned his thoughts
+into a channel still less pleasant.  What was all this talk about
+Soames and Irene?
+
+As in all self-respecting families, an emporium had been
+established where family secrets were bartered, and family stock
+priced.  It was known on Forsyte 'Change that Irene regretted her
+marriage.  Her regret was disapproved of.  She ought to have
+known her own mind; no dependable woman made these mistakes.
+
+James reflected sourly that they had a nice house (rather small)
+in an excellent position, no children, and no money troubles.
+Soames was reserved about his affairs, but he must be getting a
+very warm man.  He had a capital income from the business--for
+Soames, like his father, was a member of that well-known firm of
+solicitors, Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte--and had always been very
+careful.  He had done quite unusually well with some mortgages he
+had taken up, too--a little timely foreclosure--most lucky hits!
+
+There was no reason why Irene should not be happy, yet they said
+she'd been asking for a separate room.  He knew where that ended.
+It wasn't as if Soames drank,
+
+James looked at his daughter-in-law.  That unseen glance of his
+was cold and dubious.  Appeal and fear were in it, and a sense of
+personal grievance.  Why should he be worried like this?  It was
+very likely all nonsense; women were funny things!  They
+exaggerated so, you didn't know what to believe; and then, nobody
+told him anything, he had to find out everything for himself.
+Again he looked furtively at Irene, and across from her to
+Soames.  The latter, listening to Aunt Juley, was looking up,
+under his brows in the direction of Bosinney.
+
+'He's fond of her, I know,' thought James.  'Look at the way he's
+always giving her things.'
+
+And the extraordinary unreasonableness of her disaffection struck
+him with increased force.
+
+It was a pity, too, she was a taking little thing, and he, James,
+would be really quite fond of her if she'd only let him.  She had
+taken up lately with June; that was doing her no good, that was
+certainly doing her no good.  She was getting to have opinions of
+her own.  He didn't know what she wanted with anything of the
+sort.  She'd a good home, and everything she could wish for.  He
+felt that her friends ought to be chosen for her.  To go on like
+this was dangerous.
+
+June, indeed, with her habit of championing the unfortunate, had
+dragged from Irene a confession, and, in return, had preached the
+necessity of facing the evil, by separation, if need be.  But in
+the face of these exhortations, Irene had kept a brooding silence,
+as though she found terrible the thought of this struggle carried
+through in cold blood.  He would never give her up, she had said
+to June.
+
+"Who cares?" June cried; "let him do what he likes--you've only
+to stick to it!"  And she had not scrupled to say something of
+this sort at Timothy's; James, when he heard of it, had felt a
+natural indignation and horror.
+
+What if Irene were to take it into her head to--he could hardly
+frame the thought--to leave Soames?  But he felt this thought so
+unbearable that he at once put it away; the shady visions it
+conjured up, the sound of family tongues buzzing in his ears, the
+horror of the conspicuous happening so close to him, to one of
+his own children!  Luckily, she had no money--a beggarly fifty
+pound a year!  And he thought of the deceased Heron, who had had
+nothing to leave her, with contempt.  Brooding over his glass,
+his long legs twisted under the table, he quite omitted to rise
+when the ladies left the room.  He would have to speak to Soames-
+-would have to put him on his guard; they could not go on like
+this, now that such a contingency had occurred to him.  And he
+noticed with sour disfavour that June had left her wine-glasses
+full of wine.
+
+'That little, thing's at the bottom of it all,' he mused;
+'Irene'd never have thought of it herself.'  James was a man of
+imagination.
+
+The voice of Swithin roused him from his reverie.
+
+"I gave four hundred pounds for it," he was saying.  "Of course
+it's a regular work of art."
+
+"Four hundred!  H'm! that's a lot of money!" chimed in Nicholas.
+
+The object alluded to was an elaborate group of statuary in
+Italian marble, which, placed upon a lofty stand (also of
+marble), diffused an atmosphere of culture throughout the room.
+The subsidiary figures, of which there were six, female, nude,
+and of highly ornate workmanship, were all pointing towards the
+central figure, also nude, and female, who was pointing at
+herself; and all this gave the observer a very pleasant sense of
+her extreme value.  Aunt Juley, nearly opposite, had had the
+greatest difficulty in not looking, at it all the evening.
+
+Old Jolyon spoke; it was he who had started the discussion.
+
+"Four hundred fiddlesticks!  Don't tell me you gave four hundred
+for that?"
+
+Between the points of his collar Swithin's chin made the second
+painful oscillatory movement of the evening.
+
+"Four-hundred-pounds, of English money; not a farthing less.  I
+don't regret it.  It's not common English--it's genuine modern
+Italian!"
+
+Soames raised the comer of his lip in a smile, and looked across
+at Bosinney.  The architect was grinning behind the fumes of his
+cigarette.  Now, indeed, he looked more like a buccaneer.
+
+"There's a lot of work about it," remarked James hastily, who was
+really moved by the size of the group.  "It'd sell well at
+Jobson's."
+
+"The poor foreign dey-vil that made it, "went on Swithin," asked
+me five hundred--I gave him four.  It's worth eight.  Looked
+half-starved, poor dey-vil!
+
+"Ah!" chimed in Nicholas suddenly, "poor, seedy-lookin' chaps,
+these artists; it's a wonder to me how they live.  Now, there's
+young Flageoletti, that Fanny and the girls are always hav'in'
+in, to play the fiddle; if he makes a hundred a year it's as much
+as ever he does!"
+
+James shook his head.  "Ah!" he said, "I don't know how they
+live!"
+
+Old Jolyon had risen, and, cigar in mouth, went to inspect the
+group at close quarters.
+
+"Wouldn't have given two for it!" he pronounced at last.
+
+Soames saw his father and Nicholas glance at each other
+anxiously; and, on the other side of Swithin, Bosinney, still
+shrouded in smoke.
+
+'I wonder what he thinks of it?' thought Soames, who knew well
+enough that this group was hopelessly vieux jeu; hopelessly of
+the last generation.  There was no longer any sale at Jobson's
+for such works of art.
+
+Swithin's answer came at last.  "You never knew anything about a
+statue.  You've got your pictures, and that's all!"
+
+Old Jolyon walked back to his seat, puffing his cigar.  It was
+not likely that he was going to be drawn into an argument with an
+obstinate beggar like Swithin, pig-headed as a mule, who had
+never known a statue from a---straw hat.
+
+"Stucco!" was all he said.
+
+It had long been physically impossible for Swithin to start; his
+fist came down on the table.
+
+"Stucco!  I should like to see anything you've got in your house
+half as good!"
+
+And behind his speech seemed to sound again that rumbling
+violence of primitive generations.
+
+It was James who saved the situation.
+
+"Now, what do you say, Mr. Bosinney?  You're an architect; you
+ought to know all about statues and things!"
+
+Every eye was turned upon Bosinney; all waited with a strange,
+suspicious look for his answer.
+
+And Soames, speaking for the first time, 'asked:
+
+"Yes, Bosinney, what do you say?"
+
+Bosinney replied coolly:
+
+"The work is a remarkable one."
+
+His words were addressed to Swithin, his eyes smiled slyly at old
+Jolyon; only Soames remained unsatisfied.
+
+"Remarkable for what?"
+
+"For its naivete"
+
+The answer was followed by an impressive silence; Swithin alone
+was not sure whether a compliment was intended.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+PROJECTION OF THE HOUSE
+
+
+Soames Forsyte walked out of his green-painted front door three
+days after the dinner at Swithin's, and looking back from across
+the Square, confirmed his impression that the house wanted
+painting.
+
+He had left his wife sitting on the sofa in the drawing-room, her
+hands crossed in her lap, manifestly waiting for him to go out.
+This was not unusual.  It happened, in fact, every day.
+
+He could not understand what she found wrong with him.  It was
+not as if he drank!  Did he run into debt, or gamble, or swear;
+was he violent; were his friends rackety; did he stay out at
+night?  On the contrary.
+
+The profound, subdued aversion which he felt in his wife was a
+mystery to him, and a source of the most terrible irritation.
+That she had made a mistake, and did not love him, had tried to
+love him and could not love him, was obviously no reason.
+
+He that could imagine so outlandish a cause for his wife's not
+getting on with him was certainly no Forsyte.
+
+Soames was forced, therefore, to set the blame entirely down to
+his wife.  He had never met a woman so capable of inspiring
+affection.  They could not go anywhere without his seeing how all
+the men were attracted by her; their looks, manners, voices,
+betrayed it; her behaviour under this attention had been beyond
+reproach.  That she was one of those women--not too common in the
+Anglo-Saxon race--born to be loved and to love, who when not
+loving are not living, had certainly never even occurred to him.
+Her power of attraction, he regarded as part of her value as his
+property; but it made him, indeed, suspect that she could give as
+well as receive; and she gave him nothing!  'Then why did she
+marry me?'  was his continual thought.  He had, forgotten his
+courtship; that year and a half when he had besieged and lain in
+wait for her, devising schemes for her entertainment, giving her
+presents, proposing to her periodically, and keeping her other
+admirers away with his perpetual presence.  He had forgotten the
+day when, adroitly taking advantage of an acute phase of her
+dislike to her home surroundings, he crowned his labours with
+success.  If he remembered anything, it was the dainty
+capriciousness with which the gold-haired, dark-eyed girl had
+treated him.  He certainly did not remember the look on her face-
+-strange, passive, appealing--when suddenly one day she had
+yielded, and said that she would marry him.
+
+It had been one of those real devoted wooings which books and
+people praise, when the lover is at length rewarded for hammering
+the iron till it is malleable, and all must be happy ever after
+as the wedding bells.
+
+Soames walked eastwards, mousing doggedly along on the shady
+side.
+
+The house wanted doing, up, unless he decided to move into the
+country, and build.
+
+For the hundredth time that month he turned over this problem.
+There was no use in rushing into things!  He was very comfortably
+off, with an increasing income getting on for three thousand a
+year; but his invested capital was not perhaps so large as his
+father believed--James had a tendency to expect that his children
+should be better off than they were.  'I can manage eight
+thousand easily enough,' he thought, 'without calling in either
+
+Robertson's or Nicholl's.'
+
+He had stopped to look in at a picture shop, for Soames was an
+'amateur' of pictures, and had a little-room in No.  62,
+Montpellier Square, full of canvases, stacked against the wall,
+which he had no room to hang.  He brought them home with him on
+his way back from the City, generally after dark, and would enter
+this room on Sunday afternoons, to spend hours turning the
+pictures to the light, examining the marks on their backs, and
+occasionally making notes.
+
+They were nearly all landscapes with figures in the foreground, a
+sign of some mysterious revolt against London, its tall houses,
+its interminable streets, where his life and the lives of his
+breed and class were passed.  Every now and then he would take
+one or two pictures away with him in a cab, and stop at Jobson's
+on his way into the City.
+
+He rarely showed them to anyone; Irene, whose opinion he secretly
+respected and perhaps for that reason never solicited, had only
+been into the room on rare occasions, in discharge of some wifely
+duty.  She was not asked to look at the pictures, and she never
+did.  To Soames this was another grievance.  He hated that pride
+of hers, and secretly dreaded it.
+
+In the plate-glass window of the picture shop his image stood and
+looked at him.
+
+His sleek hair under the brim of the tall hat had a sheen like
+the hat itself; his cheeks, pale and flat, the line of his
+clean-shaven lips, his firm chin with its greyish shaven tinge,
+and the buttoned strictness of his black cut-away coat, conveyed
+an appearance of reserve and secrecy, of imperturbable, enforced
+composure; but his eyes, cold,--grey, strained--looking, with a
+line in the brow between them, examined him wistfully, as if they
+knew of a secret weakness.
+
+He noted the subjects of the pictures, the names of the painters,
+made a calculation of their values, but without the satisfaction
+he usually derived from this inward appraisement, and walked on.
+
+No. 62 would do well enough for another year, if he decided to
+build!  The times were good for building, money had not been so
+dear for years; and the site he had seen at Robin Hill, when he
+had gone down there in the spring to inspect the Nicholl
+mortgage--what could be better!  Within twelve miles of Hyde Park
+Corner, the value of the land certain to go up, would always
+fetch more than he gave for it; so that a house, if built in
+really good style, was a first-class investment.
+
+The notion of being the one member of his family with a country
+house weighed but little with him; for to a true Forsyte,
+sentiment, even the sentiment of social position, was a luxury
+only to be indulged in after his appetite for more material
+pleasure had been satisfied.
+
+To get Irene out of London, away from opportunities of going
+about and seeing people, away from her friends and those who put
+ideas into her head!  That was the thing!  She was too thick with
+June!  June disliked him.  He returned the sentiment.  They were
+of the same blood.
+
+It would be everything to get Irene out of town.  The house would
+please her she would enjoy messing about with the decoration, she
+was very artistic!
+
+The house must be in good style, something that would always be
+certain to command a price, something unique, like that last
+house of Parkes, which had a tower; but Parkes had himself said
+that his architect was ruinous.  You never knew where you were
+with those fellows; if they had a name they ran you into no end
+of expense and were conceited into the bargain.
+
+And a common architect was no good--the memory of Parkes' tower
+precluded the employment of a common architect:
+
+This was why he had thought of Bosinney.  Since the dinner at
+Swithin's he had made enquiries, the result of which had been
+meagre, but encouraging: "One of the new school."
+
+"Clever?"
+
+"As clever as you like--a bit--a bit up in the air!"
+
+He had not been able to discover what houses Bosinney had built,
+nor what his charges were.  The impression he gathered was that
+he would be able to make his own terms.  The more he reflected on
+the idea, the more he liked it.  It would be keeping the thing in
+the family, with Forsytes almost an instinct; and he would be
+able to get 'favoured-nation,' if not nominal terms--only fair,
+considering the chance to Bosinney of displaying his talents, for
+this house  must be no common edifice.
+
+Soames reflected complacently on the work it would be sure to
+bring the young man; for, like every Forsyte, he could be a
+thorough optimist when there was anything to be had out of it.
+
+Bosinney's office was in Sloane Street, close at, hand, so that
+he would be able to keep his eye continually on the plans.
+
+Again, Irene would not be to likely to object to leave London if
+her greatest friend's lover were given the job.  June's marriage
+might depend on it.  Irene could not decently stand in the way of
+June's marriage; she would never do that, he knew her too well.
+And June would be pleased; of this he saw the advantage.
+
+Bosinney looked clever, but he had also--and--it was one of his
+great attractions--an air as if he did not quite know on which
+side his bread were buttered; he should be easy to deal with in
+money matters.  Soames made this reflection in no defrauding
+spirit; it was the natural attitude of his mind--of the mind of
+any good business man--of all those thousands of good business
+men through whom he was threading his way up Ludgate Hill.
+
+Thus he fulfilled the inscrutable laws of his great class--of
+human nature itself--when he reflected, with a sense of comfort,
+that Bosinney would be easy to deal with in money matters.
+
+While he elbowed his way on, his eyes, which he usually kept
+fixed on the ground before his feet, were attracted upwards by
+the dome of St.  Paul's.  It had a peculiar fascination for him,
+that old dome, and not once, but twice or three times a week,
+would he halt in his daily pilgrimage to enter beneath and stop
+in the side aisles for five or ten minutes, scrutinizing the
+names and epitaphs on the monuments.  The attraction for him of
+this great church was inexplicable, unless it enabled him to
+concentrate his thoughts on the business of the day.  If any
+affair of particular moment, or demanding peculiar acuteness, was
+weighing on his mind, he invariably went in, to wander with
+mouse-like attention from epitaph to epitaph.  Then retiring in
+the same noiseless way, he would hold steadily on up Cheapside, a
+thought more of dogged purpose in his gait, as though he had seen
+something which he had made up his mind to buy.
+
+He went in this morning, but, instead of stealing from monument
+to monument, turned his eyes upwards to the columns and spacings
+of the walls, and remained motionless.
+
+His uplifted face, with the awed and wistful look which faces
+take on themselves in church, was whitened to a chalky hue in the
+vast building.  His gloved hands were clasped in front over the
+handle of his umbrella.  He lifted them.  Some sacred inspiration
+perhaps had come to him.
+
+'Yes,' he thought, 'I must have room to hang my pictures.
+
+That evening, on his return from the City, he called at
+Bosinney's office.  He found the architect in his shirt-sleeves,
+smoking a pipe, and ruling off lines on a plan.  Soames refused a
+drink, and came at once to the point.
+
+"If you've nothing better to do on Sunday, come down with me to
+Robin Hill, and give me your opinion on a building site."
+
+"Are you going to build?"
+
+"Perhaps," said Soames; "but don't speak of it.  I just want your
+opinion."
+
+"Quite so," said the architect.
+
+Soames peered about the room.
+
+"You're rather high up here," he remarked.
+
+Any information he could gather about the nature and scope of
+Bosinney's business would be all to the good.
+
+"It does well enough for me so far," answered the architect.
+"You're accustomed to the swells."
+
+He knocked out his pipe, but replaced it empty between his teeth;
+it assisted him perhaps to carry on the conversation.  Soames
+noted a hollow in each cheek, made as it were by suction.
+
+"What do you pay for an office like this?" said he.
+
+"Fifty too much," replied Bosinney.
+
+This answer impressed Soames favourably.
+
+"I suppose it is dear," he said.  "I'll call for you--on Sunday
+about eleven."
+
+The following Sunday therefore he called for Bosinney in a
+hansom, and drove him to the station.  On arriving at Robin Hill,
+they found no cab, and started to walk the mile and a half to the
+site.
+
+It was the 1st of August--a perfect day, with a burning sun and
+cloudless sky--and in the straight, narrow road leading up the
+hill their feet kicked up a yellow dust.
+
+"Gravel soil," remarked Soames, and sideways he glanced at the
+coat Bosinney wore.  Into the side-pockets of this coat were
+thrust bundles of papers, and under one arm was carried a queer-
+looking stick.  Soames noted these and other peculiarities.
+
+No one but a clever man, or, indeed, a buccaneer, would have
+taken such liberties with his appearance; and though these
+eccentricities were revolting to Soames, he derived a certain
+satisfaction from them, as evidence of qualities by which he must
+inevitably profit.  If the fellow could build houses, what did
+his clothes matter?
+
+"I told you," he said, "that I want this house to be a surprise,
+so don't say anything about it.  I never talk of my affairs until
+they're carried through."
+
+Bosinney nodded.
+
+"Let women into your plans," pursued Soames, "and you never know
+where it'll end."
+
+"Ah!" Said Bosinney, "women are the devil!"
+
+This feeling had long been at the--bottom of Soames's heart; he
+had never, however, put it into words.
+
+"Oh!" he Muttered, "so you're beginning to...."  He stopped, but
+added, with an uncontrollable burst of spite: "June's got a
+temper of her own--always had."
+
+"A temper's not a bad thing in an angel."
+
+Soames had never called Irene an angel.  He could not so have
+violated his best instincts, letting other people into the secret
+of her value, and giving himself away.  He made no reply.
+
+They had struck into a half-made road across a warren.  A
+cart-track led at right-angles to a gravel pit, beyond which the
+chimneys of a cottage rose amongst a clump of trees at the border
+of a thick wood.  Tussocks of feathery grass covered the rough
+surface of the ground, and out of these the larks soared into the
+hate of sunshine.  On the far horizon, over a countless
+succession of fields and hedges, rose a line of downs.
+
+Soames led till they had crossed to the far side, and there he
+stopped.  It was the chosen site; but now that he was about to
+divulge the spot to another he had become uneasy.
+
+"The agent lives in that cottage," he said; "he'll give us some
+lunch--we'd better have lunch before we go into this matter."
+
+He again took the lead to the cottage, where the agent, a tall
+man named Oliver, with a heavy face and grizzled beard, welcomed
+them.  During lunch, which Soames hardly touched, he kept looking
+at Bosinney, and once or twice passed his silk handkerchief
+stealthily over his forehead.  The meal came to an end at last,
+and Bosinney rose.
+
+"I dare say you've got business to talk over," he said; "I'll
+just go and nose about a bit." Without waiting for a reply he
+strolled out.
+
+Soames was solicitor to this estate, and he spent nearly an hour
+in the agent's company, looking at ground-plans and discussing
+the Nicholl and other mortgages; it was as it were by an
+afterthought that he brought up the question of the building
+site.
+
+"Your people," he said, "ought to come down in their price to me,
+considering that I shall be the first to build."
+
+Oliver shook his head.
+
+The site you've fixed on, Sir, he said, "is the cheapest we've
+got.  Sites at the top of the slope are dearer by a good bit."
+
+"Mind," said Soames," I've not decided; it's quite possible I
+shan't build at all.  The ground rent's very high."
+
+"Well, Mr. Forsyte, I shall be sorry if you go off, and I think
+you'll make a mistake, Sir.  There's not a bit of land near
+London with such a view as this, nor one that's cheaper, all
+things considered; we've only to advertise, to get a mob of
+people after it."
+
+They looked at each other.  Their faces said very plainly: 'I
+respect you as a man of business;  and you can't expect me to
+believe a word you say.'
+
+Well, repeated Soames, "I haven't made up my mind; the thing will
+very likely go off!"  With these words, taking up his umbrella,
+he put his chilly hand into the agent's, withdrew it without the
+faintest pressure, and went out into the sun.
+
+He walked slowly back towards the site in deep thought.  His
+instinct told him that what the agent had said was true.  A cheap
+site.  And the beauty of it was, that he knew the agent did not
+really think it cheap; so that his own intuitive knowledge was a
+victory over the agent's.
+
+'Cheap or not, I mean to have it,'  he thought.
+
+The larks sprang up in front of his feet, the air was full of
+butterflies, a sweet fragrance rose from the wild grasses.  The
+sappy scent of the bracken stole forth from the wood, where,
+hidden in the depths, pigeons were cooing, and from afar on the
+warm breeze, came the rhythmic chiming of church bells.
+
+Soames walked with his eyes on the ground, his lips opening and
+closing as though in anticipation of a delicious morsel.  But
+when he arrived at the site, Bosinney was nowhere to be seen.
+After waiting some little time, he crossed the warren in the
+direction of the slope.  He would have shouted, but dreaded the
+sound of his voice.
+
+The warren was as lonely as a prairie, its silence only broken by
+the rustle of rabbits bolting to their holes, and the song of the
+larks.
+
+Soames, the pioneer-leader of the great Forsyte army advancing to
+the civilization of this wilderness, felt his spirit daunted by
+the loneliness, by the invisible singing, and the hot, sweet air.
+He had begun to retrace his steps when he at last caught sight of
+Bosinney.
+
+The architect was sprawling under a large oak tree, whose trunk,
+with a huge spread of bough and foliage, ragged with age, stood
+on the verge of the rise.
+
+Soames had to touch him on the shoulder before he looked up.
+
+"Hallo!  Forsyte," he said, "I've found the very place for your
+house!  Look here!"
+
+Soames stood and looked, then he said, coldly:
+
+"You may be very clever, but this site will cost me half as much
+again."
+
+"Hang the cost, man.  Look at the view!"
+
+Almost from their feet stretched ripe corn, dipping to a small
+dark copse beyond.  A plain of fields and hedges spread to the
+distant grey-bluedowns.  In a silver streak to the right could be
+seen the line of the river.
+
+The sky was so blue, and the sun so bright, that an eternal
+summer seemed to reign over this prospect.  Thistledown floated
+round them, enraptured by the serenity, of the ether.  The heat
+danced over the corn, and, pervading all, was a soft, insensible
+hum, like the murmur of bright minutes holding revel between
+earth and heaven.
+
+Soames looked.  In spite of himself, something swelled in his
+breast.  To live here in sight of all this, to be able to point
+it out to his friends, to talk of it, to possess it!  His cheeks
+flushed.  The warmth, the radiance, the glow, were sinking into
+his senses as, four years before, Irene's beauty had sunk into
+his senses and made him long for her.  He stole a glance at
+Bosinney, whose eyes, the eyes of the coachman's 'half-tame
+leopard,' seemed running wild over the landscape.  The sunlight
+had caught the promontories of the fellow's face, the bumpy
+cheekbones, the point of his chin, the vertical ridges above his
+brow; and Soames watched this rugged, enthusiastic, careless face
+with an unpleasant feeling.
+
+A long, soft ripple of wind flowed over the corn, and brought a
+puff of warm air into their faces.
+
+"I could build you a teaser here," said Bosinney, breaking the
+silence at last.
+
+"I dare say," replied Soames, drily.  "You haven't got to pay for
+it."
+
+"For about eight thousand I could build you a palace."
+
+Soames had become very pale--a struggle was going on within him.
+He dropped his eyes, and said stubbornly:
+
+"I can't afford it."
+
+And slowly, with his mousing walk, he led the way back to the
+first site.
+
+They spent some time there going into particulars of the
+projected house, and then Soames returned to the agent's cottage.
+
+He came out in about half an hour, and, joining Bosinney,
+started for the station.
+
+"Well," he said, hardly opening his lips, "I've taken that site
+of yours, after all."
+
+And again he was silent, confusedly debating how it was that this
+fellow, whom by habit he despised, should have overborne his own
+decision.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A FORSYTE MENAGE
+
+
+Like the enlightened thousands of his class and generation in
+this great city of London, who no longer believe in red velvet
+chairs, and know that groups of modern Italian marble are 'vieux
+jeu,' Soames Forsyte inhabited a house which did what it could.
+It owned a copper door knocker of individual design, windows
+which had been altered to open outwards, hanging flower boxes
+filled with fuchsias, and at the back (a great feature) a little
+court tiled with jade-green tiles, and surrounded by pink
+hydrangeas in peacock-blue tubs.  Here, under a parchment-
+coloured Japanese sunshade covering the whole end, inhabitants
+or visitors could be screened from the eyes of the curious
+while they drank tea and examined at their leisure the latest
+of Soames's little silver boxes..
+
+The inner decoration favoured the First Empire and William
+Morris.  For its size, the house was commodious; there were
+countless nooks resembling birds' nests, and little things made
+of silver were deposited like eggs.
+
+In this general perfection two kinds of fastidiousness were at
+war.  There lived here a mistress who would have dwelt daintily
+on a desert island; a master whose daintiness was, as it were, an
+investment, cultivated by the owner for his advancement, in
+accordance with the laws of competition.  This competitive
+daintiness had caused Soames in his Marlborough days to be the
+first boy into white waistcoats in summer, and corduroy
+waistcoats in winter, had prevented him from ever appearing in,
+public with his tie climbing up his collar, and induced him to
+dust his patent leather boots before a great multitude assembled
+on Speech Day to hear him recite Moliere.
+
+Skin-like immaculateness had grown over Soames, as over many
+Londoners; impossible to conceive of him with a hair out of
+place, a tie deviating one-eighth of an inch from the
+perpendicular, a collar unglossed!  He would not have gone
+without a bath for worlds--it was the fashion to take baths; and
+how bitter was his scorn of people who omitted them!
+
+But Irene could be imagined, like some nymph, bathing in wayside
+streams, for the joy of the freshness and of seeing her own fair
+body.
+
+In this conflict throughout the house the woman had gone to the
+wall.  As in the struggle between Saxon and Celt still going on
+within the nation, the more impressionable and receptive
+temperament had had forced on it a conventional superstructure.
+
+Thus the house had acquired a close resemblance to hundreds of
+other houses with the same high aspirations, having become: 'That
+very charming little house of the Soames Forsytes, quite
+individual, my dear--really elegant.'
+
+For Soames Forsyte--read James Peabody, Thomas Atkins, or
+Emmanuel Spagnoletti, the name in fact of any upper-middle class
+Englishman in London with any pretensions to taste; and though
+the decoration be different, the phrase is just.
+
+On the evening of August 8, a week after the expedition to Robin
+Hill, in the dining-room of this house--'quite individual, my
+dear--really elegant'--Soames and Irene were seated at dinner.  A
+hot dinner on Sundays was a little distinguishing elegance common
+to this house and many others.  Early in married life Soames had
+laid down the rule: 'The servants must give us hot dinner on
+Sundays--they've nothing to do but play the concertina.'
+
+The custom had produced no revolution.  For--to Soames a rather
+deplorable sign--servants were devoted to Irene, who, in defiance
+of all safe tradition, appeared to recognise their right to a
+share in the weaknesses of human nature.
+
+The happy pair were seated, not opposite each other, but
+rectangularly, at the handsome rosewood table; they dined without
+a cloth--a distinguishing elegance--and so far had not spoken a
+word.
+
+Soames liked to talk during dinner about business, or what he had
+been buying, and so long as he talked Irene's silence did not
+distress him.  This evening he had found it impossible to talk.
+The decision to build had been weighing on his mind all the week,
+and he had made up his mind to tell her.
+
+His nervousness about this disclosure irritated him profoundly;
+she had no business to make him feel like that--a wife and a
+husband being one person.  She had not looked at him once since
+they sat down; and he wondered what on earth she had been
+thinking about all the time.  It was hard, when a man worked as
+he did, making money for her--yes, and with an ache in his heart-
+-that she should sit there, looking--looking as if she saw the
+walls of the room closing in.  It was enough to make a man get up
+and leave the table.
+
+The light from the rose-shaded lamp fell on her neck and arms--
+Soames liked her to dine in a low dress, it gave him an
+inexpressible feeling of superiority to the majority of his
+acquaintance, whose wives were contented with their best high
+frocks or with tea-gowns, when they dined at home.  Under that
+rosy light her amber-coloured hair and fair skin made strange
+contrast with her dark brown eyes.
+
+Could a man own anything prettier than this dining-table with its
+deep tints, the starry, soft-petalled roses, the ruby-coloured
+glass, and quaint silver furnishing; could a man own anything
+prettier than the woman who sat at it?  Gratitude was no virtue
+among Forsytes, who, competitive, and full of common-sense, had
+no occasion for it; and Soames only experienced a sense of
+exasperation amounting to pain, that he did not own her as it was
+his right, to own her, that he could not, as by stretching out
+his hand to that rose, pluck her and sniff the very secrets of
+her heart.
+
+Out of his other property, out of all the things he had
+collected, his silver, his pictures, his houses, his investments,
+he got a secret and intimate feeling; out of her he got none.
+
+In this house of his there was writing on every wall.  His
+business-like temperament protested against a mysterious warning
+that she was not made for him.  He had married this woman,
+conquered her, made her his own, and it seemed to him contrary to
+the most fundamental of all laws, the law of possession, that he
+could do no more than own her body--if indeed he could do that,
+which he was beginning to doubt.  If any one had asked him if he
+wanted to own her soul, the question would have seemed to him
+both ridiculous and sentimental.  But he did so want, and the
+writing said he never would.
+
+She was ever silent, passive, gracefully averse; as though
+terrified lest by word, motion, or sign she might lead him to
+believe that she was fond of him; and he asked himself: Must I
+always go on like this?
+
+Like most novel readers of his generation (and Soames was a great
+novel reader), literature coloured his view of life; and he had
+imbibed the belief that it was only a question of time.
+
+In the end the husband always gained the affection of his wife.
+Even in those cases--a class of book he was not very fond of--
+which ended in tragedy, the wife always died with poignant
+regrets on her lips, or if it were the husband who died--
+unpleasant thought--threw herself on his body in an agony of
+remorse.
+
+He often took Irene to the theatre, instinctively choosing the
+modern Society Plays with the modern Society conjugal problem, so
+fortunately different from any conjugal problem in real life.  He
+found that they too always ended in the same way, even when there
+was a lover in the case.  While he was watching the play Soames
+often sympathized with the lover; but before he reached home
+again, driving with Irene in a hansom, he saw that this would not
+do, and he was glad the play had ended as it had.  There was one
+class of husband that had just then come into fashion, the
+strong, rather rough, but extremely sound man, who was peculiarly
+successful at the end of the play; with this person Soames was
+really not in sympathy, and had it not been for his own position,
+would have expressed his disgust with the fellow.  But he was so
+conscious of how vital to himself was the necessity for being a
+successful, even a 'strong,' husband, that be never spoke of a
+distaste born perhaps by the perverse processes of Nature out of
+a secret fund of brutality in himself.
+
+But Irene's silence this evening was exceptional.  He had never
+before seen such an expression on her face.  And since it is
+always the unusual which alarms, Soames was alarmed.  He ate his
+savoury, and hurried the maid as she swept off the crumbs with
+the silver sweeper.  When she had left the room, he filled his.
+glass with wine and said:
+
+"Anybody been here this afternoon?"
+
+"June."
+
+"What did she want?"  It was an axiom with the Forsytes that
+people did not go anywhere unless they wanted something.  "Came
+to talk about her lover, I suppose?"
+
+Irene made no reply.
+
+"It looks to me," continued Soames, "as if she were sweeter on him
+than he is on her.  She's always following him about."
+
+Irene's eyes made him feel uncomfortable.
+
+"You've no business to say such a thing!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Why not?  Anybody can see it."
+
+"They cannot.  And if they could, it's disgraceful to say so."
+
+Soames's composure gave way.
+
+"You're a pretty wife!" he said.  But secretly he wondered at the
+heat of her reply; it was unlike her.  "You're cracked about
+June!  I can tell you one thing: now that she has the Buccaneer
+in tow, she doesn't care twopence about you, and, you'll find it
+out.  But you won't see so much of her in future; we're going to
+live in the country."
+
+He had been glad to get his news out under cover of this burst of
+irritation.  He had expected a cry of dismay; the silence with
+which his pronouncement was received alarmed him.
+
+"You don't seem interested," he was obliged to add.
+
+"I knew it already."
+
+He looked at her sharply.
+
+"Who told you?"
+
+"June."
+
+"How did she know?"
+
+Irene did not answer.  Baffled and uncomfortable, he said:
+
+"It's a fine thing for Bosinney, it'll be the making of him.  I
+suppose she's told you all about it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+There was another pause, and then Soames said:
+
+"I suppose you don't want to, go?"
+
+Irene made no reply.
+
+"Well, I can't tell what you want.  You never seem contented
+here."
+
+"Have my wishes anything to do with it?"
+
+She took the vase of roses and left the room.  Soames remained
+seated.  Was it for this that he had signed that contract?  Was
+it for this that he was going to spend some, ten thousand pounds?
+Bosinney's phrase came back to him: "Women are the devil!"
+
+But presently he grew calmer.  It might have, been worse.  She
+might have flared up.  He had expected something more than this.
+It was lucky, after all, that June had broken the ice for him.
+She must have wormed it out of Bosinney; he might have known she
+would.
+
+He lighted his cigarette.  After all, Irene had not made a scene!
+She would come round--that was the best of her; she was cold, but
+not sulky.  And, puffing the cigarette smoke at a lady-bird on
+the shining table, he plunged into a reverie about the house.  It
+was no good worrying; he would go and make it up presently.  She
+would be sitting out there in the dark, under the Japanese
+sunshade, knitting.  A beautiful, warm night....
+
+In truth, June had come in that afternoon with shining eyes, and
+the words: "Soames is a brick!  It's splendid for Phil--the very
+thing for him!"
+
+Irene's face remaining dark and puzzled, she went on:
+
+"Your new house at Robin Hill, of course.  What?  Don't you
+know?"
+
+Irene did not know.
+
+"Oh! then, I suppose I oughtn't to have told you!"  Looking
+impatiently at her friend, she cried: "You look as if you didn't
+care.  Don't you see, it's what I've' been praying for--the very
+chance he's been wanting all this time.  Now you'll see what he
+can do;" and thereupon she poured out the whole story.
+
+Since her own engagement she had not seemed much interested in
+her friend's position; the hours she spent with Irene were given
+to confidences of her own; and at times, for all her affectionate
+pity, it was impossible to keep out of her smile a trace of
+compassionate contempt for the woman who had made such a mistake
+in her life--such a vast, ridiculous mistake.
+
+"He's to have all the decorations as well--a free hand.  It's
+perfect--"June broke into laughter, her little figure quivered
+gleefully; she raised her hand, and struck a blow at a muslin
+curtain.  "Do you, know I even asked Uncle James...." But, with a
+sudden dislike to mentioning that incident, she stopped; and
+presently, finding her friend so unresponsive, went away.  She
+looked back from the pavement, and Irene was still standing in
+the doorway.  In response to her farewell wave, Irene put her
+hand to her brow, and, turning slowly, shut the door....
+
+Soames went to the drawing-room presently, and peered at her
+through the window.
+
+Out in the shadow of the Japanese sunshade she was sitting very
+still, the lace on her white shoulders stirring with the soft
+rise and fall of her bosom.
+
+But about this silent creature sitting there so motionless, in
+the dark, there seemed a warmth, a hidden fervour of feeling, as
+if the whole of her being had been stirred, and some change were
+taking place in its very depths.
+
+He stole back to the dining-room unnoticed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+JAMES AT LARGE
+
+
+It was not long before Soames's determination to build went the
+round of the family, and created the flutter that any decision
+connected with property should make among Forsytes.
+
+It was not his fault, for he had been determined that no one
+should know.  June, in the fulness of her heart had told Mrs.
+Small, giving her leave only to tell Aunt Ann--she thought it
+would cheer her, the poor old sweet! for Aunt Ann had kept her
+room now for many days.
+
+Mrs. Small told Aunt Ann at once, who, smiling as she lay back on
+her pillows, said in her distinct, trembling old voice:
+
+"It's very nice for dear June; but I hope they will be careful--
+it's rather dangerous!"
+
+When she was left alone again, a frown, like a cloud presaging a
+rainy morrow, crossed her face.
+
+While she was lying there so many days the process of recharging
+her will went on all the time; it spread to her face, too, and
+tightening movements were always in action at the corners of her
+lips.
+
+The maid Smither, who had been in her service since girlhood, and
+was spoken of as "Smither--a good girl--but so slow!"--the maid
+Smither performed every morning with extreme punctiliousness the
+crowning ceremony of that ancient toilet.  Taking from the
+recesses of their, pure white band-box those flat, grey curls,
+the insignia of personal dignity, she placed them securely in her
+mistress's hands, and turned her back.
+
+And every day Aunts Juley and Hester were required to come and
+report on Timothy; what news there was of Nicholas; whether dear
+June had succeeded in getting Jolyon to shorten the engagement,
+now that Mr. Bosinney was building Soames a house; whether young
+Roger's wife was really--expecting; how the operation on Archie
+had succeeded; and what Swithin.  had done about that empty house
+in Wigmore Street, where the tenant had lost all his money and
+treated him so badly; above all, about Soames; was Irene still--
+still asking for a separate room?  And every morning Smither was
+told: "I shall be coming down this afternoon, Smither, about two
+o'clock.  I shall want your arm, after all these days in bed!"
+
+After telling Aunt Ann, Mrs. Small had spoken of the house in the
+strictest confidence to Mrs. Nicholas, who in her turn had asked
+Winifred Dartie for confirmation, supposing, of course, that,
+being Soames's sister, she would know all about it.  Through her
+it had in due course come round to the ears of James. He had been
+a good deal agitated.
+
+"Nobody," he said, "told him anything." And, rather than go
+direct to Soames himself, of whose taciturnity he was afraid, he
+took his umbrella and went round to Timothy's.
+
+He found Mrs. Septimus and Hester (who had been told--she was so
+safe, she found it tiring to talk) ready, and indeed eager, to
+discuss the news.  It was very good of dear Soames, they thought,
+to employ Mr. Bosinney, but rather risky.  What had George named
+him? 'The Buccaneer' How droll!  But George was always droll!
+However, it would be all in the family they supposed they must
+really look upon Mr. Bosinney as belonging to the family, though
+it seemed strange.
+
+James here broke in:
+
+"Nobody knows anything about him.  I don't see what Soames wants
+with a young man like that.  I shouldn't be surprised if Irene
+had put her oar in.  I shall speak to...."
+
+"Soames," interposed Aunt Juley, "told Mr. Bosinney that he
+didn't wish it mentioned.  He wouldn't like it to be talked
+about, I'm sure, and if Timothy knew he would be very vexed,
+I...."
+
+James put his hand behind his ear:
+
+"What?" he said.  "I'm getting very deaf.  I suppose I don't hear
+people.  Emily's got a bad toe.  We shan't be able to start for
+Wales till the end of the month.  There' s always something!"
+And, having got what he wanted, he took his hat and went away.
+
+It was a fine afternoon, and he walked across the Park towards
+Soames's, where he intended to dine, for Emily's toe kept her in
+bed, and Rachel and Cicely were on a visit to the country.  He
+took the slanting path from the Bayswater side of the Row to the
+Knightsbridge Gate, across a pasture of short, burnt grass,
+dotted with blackened sheep, strewn with seated couples and
+strange waifs; lying prone on their faces, like corpses on a
+field over which the wave of battle has rolled.
+
+He walked rapidly, his head bent, looking neither to right nor,
+left.  The appearance of this park, the centre of his own
+battle-field, where he had all his life been fighting, excited no
+thought or speculation in his, mind.  These corpses flung down,
+there, from out the press and turmoil of the struggle, these
+pairs of lovers sitting cheek by jowl for an hour of idle Elysium
+snatched from the monotony of their treadmill, awakened no
+fancies in his mind; he had outlived that kind of imagination;
+his nose, like the nose of a sheep, was fastened to the pastures
+on which he browsed.
+
+One of his tenants had lately shown a disposition to be
+behind-hand in his rent, and it had become a grave question
+whether he had not better turn him out at once, and so run the
+risk of not re-letting before Christmas.  Swithin had just been
+let in very badly, but it had served him right--he had held on
+too long.
+
+He pondered this as he walked steadily, holding his umbrella
+carefully by the wood, just below the crook of the handle, so as
+to keep the ferule off the ground, and not fray the silk in the
+middle.  And, with his thin, high shoulders stooped, his long
+legs moving with swift mechanical precision, this passage through
+the Park, where the sun shone with a clear flame on so much
+idleness--on so many human evidences of the remorseless battle of
+Property, raging beyond its ring--was like the flight of some
+land bird across the sea.
+
+He felt a--touch on the arm as he came out at, Albert Gate.
+
+It was Soames, who, crossing from the shady side of Piccadilly,
+where he had been walking home from the office, had suddenly
+appeared alongside.
+
+"Your mother's in bed," said James; "I was, just coming to you,
+but I suppose I shall be in the way."
+
+The outward relations between James and his son were marked by a
+lack of sentiment peculiarly Forsytean, but for all that the two
+were by no means unattached.  Perhaps they regarded one another
+as an investment; certainly they were solicitous of each other's
+welfare, glad of each other's company.  They had never exchanged
+two words upon the more intimate problems of life, or revealed in
+each other's presence the existence of any deep feeling.
+
+Something beyond the power of word-analysis bound them together,
+something hidden deep in the fibre of nations and families--for
+blood, they say, is thicker than water--and neither of them was a
+cold-blooded man.  Indeed, in James love of his children was now
+the prime motive of his existence.  To have creatures who were
+parts of himself, to whom he might transmit the money he saved,
+was at the root of his saving; and, at seventy-five, what was
+left that could give him pleasure, but--saving?  The kernel of
+life was in this saving for his children.
+
+Than James Forsyte, notwithstanding all his 'Jonah-isms,' there
+was no saner man (if the leading symptom of sanity, as we are
+told, is self-preservation, though without doubt Timothy went too
+far) in all this London, of which he owned so much, and loved
+with such a dumb love, as the centre of his opportunities.  He
+had the marvellous instinctive sanity of the middle class.  In
+him--more than in Jolyon, with his masterful will and his moments
+of tenderness and philosophy--more than in Swithin, the martyr to
+crankiness--Nicholas, the sufferer from ability--and Roger, the
+victim of enterprise--beat the true pulse of compromise; of all
+the brothers he was least remarkable in mind and person, and for
+that reason more likely to live for ever.
+
+To James, more than to any of the others, was "the family"
+significant and dear.  There had always been something primitive
+and cosy in his attitude towards life; he loved the family
+hearth, he loved gossip, and he loved grumbling.  All his
+decisions were formed of a cream which he skimmed off the family
+mind; and, through that family, off the minds of thousands of
+other families of similar fibre.  Year after year, week after
+week, he went to Timothy's, and in his brother's front
+drawing-room--his legs twisted, his long white whiskers framing
+his clean-shaven mouth would sit watching the family pot simmer,
+the cream rising to the top; and he would go away sheltered,
+refreshed, comforted, with an indefinable sense of comfort.
+
+Beneath the adamant of his self-preserving instinct there was
+much real softness in James; a visit to Timothy's was like an
+hour spent in the lap of a mother; and the deep craving he
+himself had for the protection of the family wing reacted in turn
+on his feelings towards his own children; it was a nightmare to
+him to think of them.  exposed to the treatment of the world, in
+money, health, or reputation.  When his old friend John Street's
+son volunteered for special service, he shook his head
+querulously, and wondered what John Street was about to allow it;
+and when young Street was assagaied, he took it so much to heart
+that he made a point of calling everywhere with the special
+object of saying: He knew how it would be--he'd no patience with
+them!
+
+When his son-in-law Dartie had that financial crisis, due to
+speculation in Oil Shares, James made himself ill worrying over
+it; the knell of all prosperity seemed to have sounded.  It took
+him three months and a visit to Baden-Baden to get better; there
+was something terrible in the idea that but for his, James's,
+money, Dartie's name might have appeared in the Bankruptcy List.
+
+Composed of a physiological mixture so sound that if he had an
+earache he thought he was dying, he regarded the occasional
+ailments of his wife and children as in the nature of personal
+grievances, special interventions of Providence for the purpose
+of destroying his peace of mind; but he did not believe at all in
+the ailments of people outside his own immediate family,
+affirming them in every case to be due to neglected liver.
+
+His universal comment was: "What can they expect?  I have it
+myself, if I'm not careful!"
+
+When he went to Soames's that evening he felt that life was hard
+on him: There was Emily with a bad toe, and Rachel gadding about
+in the country; he got no sympathy from anybody; and Ann, she was
+ill--he did not believe she would last through the summer; he had
+called there three times now without her being able to see him!
+And this idea of Soames's, building a house, that would have to
+be looked into.  As to the trouble with Irene, he didn't know
+what was to come of that--anything might come of it!
+
+He entered 62, Montpellier Square with the fullest intentions of
+being miserable.  It was already half-past seven, and Irene,
+dressed for dinner, was seated in the drawing-room.  She was
+wearing her gold-coloured frock--for, having been displayed at a
+dinner-party, a soiree, and a dance, it was now to be worn at
+home--and she had adorned the bosom with a cascade of lace, on
+which James's eyes riveted themselves at once.
+
+"Where do you get your things?" he said in an aggravated voice.
+"I never see Rachel and Cicely looking half so well.  That
+rose-point, now--that's not real!"
+
+Irene came close, to prove to him that he was in error.
+
+And, in spite of himself, James felt the influence of her
+deference, of the faint seductive perfume exhaling from her.  No
+self-respecting Forsyte surrendered at a blow; so he merely said:
+He didn't know--he expected she was spending a pretty penny on
+dress.
+
+The gong sounded, and, putting her white arm within his, Irene
+took him into the dining-room.  She seated him in Soames's usual
+place, round the corner on her left.  The light fell softly
+there, so that he would not be worried by the gradual dying of
+the day; and she began to talk to him about himself.
+
+Presently, over James came a change, like the mellowing that
+steals upon a fruit in the, sun; a  sense of being caressed, and
+praised, and petted, and all without the bestowal of a single
+caress or word of praise.  He felt that what he was eating was
+agreeing with him; he could not get that feeling at home; he did
+not know when he had enjoyed a glass of champagne so much, and,
+on inquiring the brand and price, was surprised to find that it
+was one of which he had a large stock himself, but could never
+drink; he instantly formed the resolution to let his wine
+merchant know that he had been swindled.
+
+Looking up from his food, he remarked:
+
+"You've a lot of nice things about the place.  Now, what did you
+give for that sugar-sifter?  Shouldn't wonder if it was worth
+money!"
+
+He was particularly pleased with the appearance of a picture, on
+the wall opposite, which he himself had given them:
+
+"I'd no idea it was so good!" he said.
+
+They rose to go into the drawing-room, and James followed Irene
+closely.
+
+"That's what I call a capital little dinner," he murmured,
+breathing pleasantly down on her shoulder; "nothing heavy--and
+not too Frenchified.  But I can't get it at home.  I pay my cook
+sixty pounds a year, but she can't give me a dinner like that!"
+
+He had as yet made no allusion to the building of the house, nor
+did he when Soames, pleading the excuse of business, betook
+himself to the room at the top, where he kept his pictures.
+
+James was left alone with his daughter-in-law.  The glow of the
+wine, and of an excellent liqueur, was still within him.  He felt
+quite warm towards her.  She was really a taking little thing;
+she listened to you, and seemed to understand what you were
+saying; and, while talking, he kept examining her figure, from
+her bronze-coloured shoes to the waved gold of her hair.  She was
+leaning back in an Empire chair, her shoulders poised against the
+top--her body, flexibly straight and unsupported from the hips,
+swaying when she moved, as though giving to the arms of a lover.
+Her lips were smiling, her eyes half-closed.
+
+It may have been a recognition of danger in the very charm of her
+attitude, or a twang of digestion, that caused a sudden dumbness
+to fall on James.  He did not remember ever having, been quite
+alone with Irene before.  And, as he looked at her, an odd
+feeling crept over him, as though he had come across something
+strange and foreign.
+
+Now what was she thinking about--sitting back like that?
+
+Thus when he spoke it was in a sharper voice, as if he had been
+awakened from a pleasant dream.
+
+"What d'you do with yourself all day?" he said.  "You never come
+round to Park Lane!"
+
+She seemed to be making very lame excuses, and James did not look
+at her.  He did not want to believe that she was really avoiding
+them--it would mean too much.
+
+"I expect the fact is, you haven't time," he said; "You're always
+about with June.  I expect you're useful to her with her young
+man, chaperoning, and one thing and another.  They tell me she's
+never at home now; your Uncle Jolyon he doesn't like it, I fancy,
+being left so much alone as he is.  They tell me she's always
+hanging about for this young Bosinney; I suppose he comes here
+every day.  Now, what do you think of him?  D'you think he knows
+his own mind?  He seems to me a poor thing.  I should say the
+grey mare was the better horse!"
+
+The colour deepened in Irene's face; and James watched her
+suspiciously.
+
+"Perhaps you don't quite understand Mr. Bosinney," she said.
+
+"Don't understand him!" James humied out: "Why not?--you can see
+he's one of these artistic chaps.  They say he's clever--they all
+think they're clever.  You know more about him than I do," he
+added; and again his suspicious glance rested on her.
+
+"He is designing a house for Soames," she said softly, evidently
+trying to smooth things over.
+
+"That brings me to what I was going to say," continued James; "I
+don't know what Soames wants with a young man like that; why
+doesn't he go to a first-rate man?"
+
+"Perhaps Mr. Bosinney is first-rate!"
+
+James rose, and took a turn with bent head.
+
+"That's it'," he said, "you young people, you all stick together;
+you all think you know best!"
+
+Halting his tall, lank figure before her, he raised a finger, and
+levelled it at her bosom, as though bringing an indictment
+against her beauty:
+
+"All I can say is, these artistic people, or whatever they call
+themselves, they're as unreliable as they can be; and my advice
+to you is, don't you have too much to do with him!"
+
+Irene smiled; and in the curve of her lips was a strange
+provocation.  She seemed to have lost her deference.  Her breast
+rose and fell as though with secret anger; she drew her hands
+inwards from their rest on the arms of her chair until the tips
+of her fingers met, and her dark eyes looked unfathomably at
+James.
+
+The latter gloomily scrutinized the floor.
+
+"I tell you my opinion," he said, "it's a pity you haven't got a
+child to think about, and occupy you!"
+
+A brooding look came instantly on Irene's face, and even James
+became conscious of the rigidity that took possession of her
+whole figure beneath the softness of its silk and lace clothing.
+
+He was frightened by the effect he had produced, and like most
+men with but little courage, he sought at once to justify himself
+by bullying.
+
+"You don't seem to care about going about.  Why don't you drive
+down to Hurlingham with us?  And go to the theatre now and then.
+At your time of life you ought to take an interest in things.
+You're a young woman!"
+
+The brooding look darkened on her face; he grew nervous.
+
+"Well, I know nothing about it," he said; "nobody tells me
+anything.  Soames ought to be able to take care of himself.  If
+he can't take care of himself he mustn't look to me--that's all."
+
+Biting the corner of his forefinger he stole a cold, sharp look
+at his daughter-in-law.
+
+He encountered her eyes fixed on his own, so dark and deep, that
+he stopped, and broke into a gentle perspiration.
+
+"Well, I must be going," he said after a short pause, and a
+minute later rose, with a slight appearance of surprise, as
+though he had expected to be asked to stop.  Giving his hand to
+Irene, he allowed himself to be conducted to the door, and let
+out into the street.  He would not have a cab, he would walk,
+Irene was to say good-night to Soames for him, and if she wanted
+a little gaiety, well, he would drive her down to Richmond any
+day.
+
+He walked home, and going upstairs, woke Emily out of the first
+sleep she had had for four and twenty hours, to tell her that it
+was his impression things were in a bad way at Soames's; on this
+theme he descanted for half an hour, until at last, saying that
+he would not sleep a wink, he turned on his side and instantly
+began to snore.
+
+In Montpellier Square Soames, who had come from the picture room,
+stood invisible at the top of the stairs, watching Irene sort the
+letters brought by the last post.  She turned back into the
+drawing-room; but in a minute came out, and stood as if
+listening.  Then she came stealing up the stairs, with a kitten
+in her arms.  He could see her face bent over the little beast,
+which was purring against her neck.  Why couldn't she look at him
+like that?
+
+Suddenly she saw him, and her face changed.
+
+"Any letters for me?" he said.
+
+"Three."
+
+He stood aside, and without another word she passed on into the
+bedroom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+OLD JOLYON'S PECCADILLO
+
+
+Old Jolyon came out of Lord's cricket ground that same afternoon
+with the intention of going home.  He had not reached Hamilton
+Terrace before he changed his mind, and hailing a cab, gave the
+driver an address in Wistaria Avenue.  He had taken a resolution.
+
+June had hardly been at home at all that week; she had given him
+nothing of her company for a long time past, not, in fact, since
+she had become engaged to Bosinney.  He never asked her for her
+company.  It was not his habit to ask people for things!  She had
+just that one idea now--Bosinney and his affairs--and she left
+him stranded in his great house, with a parcel of servants, and
+not a soul to speak to from morning to night.  His Club was
+closed for cleaning; his Boards in recess; there was nothing,
+therefore, to take him into the City.  June had wanted him to go
+away; she would not go herself, because Bosinney was in London.
+
+But where was he to go by himself?  He could not go abroad alone;
+the sea upset his liver; he hated hotels.  Roger went to a
+hydropathic--he was--not going to begin that at his time of life,
+those new-fangled places we're all humbug!
+
+With such formulas he clothed to himself the desolation of his
+spirit; the lines down his face deepening, his eyes day by day
+looking forth with the melancholy which sat so strangely on a
+face wont to be strong and serene.
+
+And so that afternoon he took this journey through St.  John's
+Wood, in the golden-light that sprinkled the rounded green bushes
+of the acacia's before the little houses, in the summer sunshine
+that seemed holding a revel over the little gardens; and he
+looked about him with interest; for this was a district which no
+Forsyte entered without open disapproval and secret curiosity.
+
+His cab stopped in front of a small house of that peculiar buff
+colour which implies a long immunity from paint.  It had an outer
+gate, and a rustic approach.
+
+He stepped out, his bearing extremely composed; his massive head,
+with its drooping moustache and wings of white hair, very
+upright, under an excessively large top hat; his glance firm, a
+little angry.  He had been driven into this!
+
+"Mrs. Jolyon Forsyte at home?"
+
+"Oh, yes sir!--what name shall I say, if you please, sir?"
+
+Old Jolyon could not help twinkling at the little maid as he gave
+his name.  She seemed to him such a funny little toad!
+
+And he followed her through the dark hall, into a small double,
+drawing-room, where the furniture was covered in chintz, and the
+little maid placed him in a chair.
+
+"They're all in the garden, sir; if you'll kindly take a seat,
+I'll tell them."
+
+Old Jolyon sat down in the chintz-covered chair, and looked
+around him.  The whole place seemed to him, as he would have
+expressed it, pokey; there was a certain--he could not tell
+exactly what--air of shabbiness, or rather of making two ends
+meet, about everything.  As far as he could see, not a single
+piece of furniture was worth a five-pound note.  The walls,
+distempered rather a long time ago, were decorated with
+water-colour sketches; across the ceiling meandered a long crack.
+
+These little houses were all old, second-rate concerns; he should
+hope the rent was under a hundred a year; it hurt him more than
+he could have said, to think of a Forsyte--his own son living in
+such a place.
+
+The little maid came back.  Would he please to go down into the
+garden?
+
+Old Jolyon marched out through the French windows.  In descending
+the steps he noticed that they wanted painting.
+
+Young Jolyon, his wife, his two children, and his dog Balthasar,
+were all out there under a pear-tree.
+
+This walk towards them was the most courageous act of old
+Jolyon's life; but no muscle of his face moved, no nervous
+gesture betrayed him.  He kept his deep-set eyes steadily on the
+enemy.
+
+In those two minutes he demonstrated to perfection all that
+unconscious soundness, balance, and vitality of fibre that made,
+of him and so many others of his class the core of the nation.
+In the unostentatious conduct of their own affairs, to the
+neglect of everything else, they typified the essential
+individualism, born in the Briton from the natural isolation of
+his country's life.
+
+The dog Balthasar sniffed round the edges of his trousers; this
+friendly and cynical mongrel offspring of a liaison between a
+Russian poodle and a fox-terrier--had a nose for the unusual.
+
+The strange greetings over, old Jolyon seated himself in a wicker
+chair, and his two grandchildren, one on each side of his knees,
+looked at him silently, never having seen so old a man.
+
+They were unlike, as though recognising the difference set
+between them by the circumstances of their births.  Jolly, the
+child of sin, pudgy-faced, with his tow-coloured hair brushed off
+his forehead, and a dimple in his chin, had an air of stubborn
+amiability, and the eyes of a Forsyte; little Holly, the child of
+wedlock, was a dark-skinned, solemn soul, with her mother's, grey
+and wistful eyes.
+
+The dog Balthasar, having walked round the three small flower-
+beds, to show his extreme contempt for things at large, had also
+taken a seat in front of old Jolyon, and, oscillating a tail
+curled by Nature tightly over his back, was staring up with
+eyes that did not blink.
+
+Even in the garden, that sense of things being pokey haunted old
+Jolyon; the wicker chair creaked under his weight; the
+garden-beds looked 'daverdy'; on the far side, under the smut-
+stained wall, cats had made a path.
+
+While he and his grandchildren thus regarded each other with the
+peculiar scrutiny, curious yet trustful, that passes between the
+very young and the very old, young Jolyon watched his wife.
+
+The colour had deepened in her thin, oval face, with its straight
+brows, and large, grey eyes.  Her hair, brushed in fine, high
+curves back from her forehead, was going grey, like his own, and
+this greyness made the sudden vivid colour in her cheeks
+painfully pathetic.
+
+The look on her face, such as he had never seen there before,
+such as she had always hidden from him, was full of secret
+resentments, and longings, and fears.  Her eyes, under their
+twitching brows, stared painfully.  And she was silent.
+
+Jolly alone sustained the conversation; he had many possessions,
+and was anxious that his unknown friend with extremely large
+moustaches, and hands all covered with blue veins, who sat with
+legs crossed like his own father (a habit he was himself trying
+to acquire), should know it; but being a Forsyte, though not yet
+quite eight years old, he made no mention of the thing at the
+moment dearest to his heart--a camp of soldiers in a shop-window,
+which his father had promised to buy.  No doubt it seemed to him
+too precious; a tempting of Providence to mention it yet.
+
+And the sunlight played through the leaves on that little party
+of the three generations grouped tranquilly under the pear-tree,
+which had long borne no fruit.
+
+Old Jolyon's furrowed face was reddening patchily, as old men's
+faces redden in the sun.  He took one of Jolly's hands in his
+own; the boy climbed on to his knee; and little Holly, mesmerized
+by this sight, crept up to them; the sound of the dog Balthasar's
+scratching arose rhythmically.
+
+Suddenly young Mrs. Jolyon got up and hurried indoors.  A minute
+later her husband muttered an excuse, and followed.  Old Jolyon
+was left alone with his grandchildren.
+
+And Nature with her quaint irony began working in him one of her
+strange revolutions, following her cyclic laws into the depths of
+his heart.  And that tenderness for little children, that passion
+for the beginnings of life which had once made him forsake his
+son and follow June, now worked in him to forsake June and follow
+these littler things.  Youth, like a flame, burned ever in his
+breast, and to youth he turned, to the round little limbs, so
+reckless, that wanted care, to the small round faces so
+unreasonably solemn or bright, to the treble tongues,  and the
+shrill, chuckling laughter, to the insistent tugging hands, and
+the feel of small bodies against his legs, to all that was young
+and young, and once more young.  And his eyes grew soft, his
+voice, and thin-veined hands soft, and soft his heart within him.
+And to those small creatures he became at once a place of
+pleasure, a place where they were secure, and could talk and
+laugh and play; till, like sunshine, there radiated from old
+Jolyon's wicker chair the perfect gaiety of three hearts.
+
+But with young Jolyon following to his wife's room it was
+different.
+
+He found her seated on a chair before her dressing-glass, with
+her hands before her face.
+
+Her shoulders were shaking with sobs.  This passion of hers for
+suffering was mysterious to him.  He had been through a hundred
+of these moods; how he had survived them he never knew, for he
+could never believe they were moods, and that the last hour of
+his partnership had not struck.
+
+In the night she would be sure to throw her o arms round, his
+neck and say: "Oh! Jo, how I make you suffer!" as she had done a
+hundred times before.
+
+He reached out his hand, and, unseen, slipped his razor-case into
+his pocket.
+'I cannot stay here,' he thought, 'I must go down!'  Without a
+word he left the room, and went back to the lawn.
+
+Old Jolyon had little Holly on his knee; she had taken possession
+of his watch; Jolly, very red in the face, was trying to show
+that he could stand on his head.  The dog Balthasar, as close as
+he might be to the tea-table, had fixed his eyes on the cake.
+
+Young Jolyon felt a malicious desire to cut their enjoyment
+short.
+
+What business had his father to come and upset his wife like
+this?  It was a shock, after all these years!  He ought to have
+known; he ought to have given them warning; but when did a
+Forsyte ever imagine that his conduct could upset anybody!  And
+in his thoughts he did old Jolyon wrong.
+
+He spoke sharply to the children, and told them to go in to their
+tea.  Greatly surprised, for they had never heard their father
+speak sharply before, they went off, hand in hand, little Holly
+looking back over her shoulder.
+
+Young Jolyon poured out the tea.
+
+"My wife's not the thing today," he said, but he knew well enough
+that his father had penetrated the cause of that sudden
+withdrawal, and almost hated the old man for sitting there so
+calmly.
+
+"You've got a nice little house here," said old Jolyon with a
+shrewd look; "I suppose you've taken a lease of it!"
+
+Young Jolyon nodded.
+
+"I don't like the neighbourhood," said old Jolyon; "a ramshackle
+lot."
+
+Young Jolyon replied: "Yes, we're a ramshackle lot."'
+
+The silence was now only broken by the sound of the dog
+Balthasar's scratching.
+
+Old Jolyon said simply: "I suppose I oughtn't to have come here,
+Jo; but I get so lonely!"
+
+At these words young Jolyon got up and put his hand on his
+father's shoulder.
+
+In the next house someone was playing over and over again: 'La
+Donna  mobile' on an untuned piano; and the little garden had
+fallen into shade, the sun now only reached the wall at the end,
+whereon basked a crouching cat, her yellow eyes turned sleepily
+down on the dog Balthasar.  There was a drowsy hum of very
+distant traffic; the creepered trellis round the garden shut out
+everything but sky, and house, and pear-tree, with its top
+branches still gilded by the sun.
+
+For some time they sat there, talking but little.  Then old
+Jolyon rose to go, and not a word was said about his coming
+again.
+
+He walked away very sadly.  What a poor miserable place; and he
+thought of the great, empty house in Stanhope Gate, fit residence
+for a Forsyte, with its huge billiard-room and drawing-room that
+no one entered from one week's end to another.
+
+That woman, whose face he had rather liked, was too thin-skinned
+by half; she gave Jo a bad time he knew!  And those sweet
+children!  Ah! what a piece of awful folly!
+
+He walked towards the Edgware Road, between rows of little
+houses, all suggesting to him (erroneously no doubt, but the
+prejudices of a Forsyte are sacred) shady histories of some sort
+or kind.
+
+Society, forsooth, the chattering hags and jackanapes--had set
+themselves up to pass judgment on his flesh and blood!  A parcel
+of old women!  He stumped his umbrella on the ground, as though
+to drive it into the heart of that unfortunate body, which had
+dared to ostracize his son and his son's son, in whom he could
+have lived again!
+
+He stumped his umbrella fiercely; yet he himself had followed
+Society's behaviour for fifteen years--had only today been false
+to it!
+
+He thought of June, and her dead mother, and the whole story,
+with all his old bitterness.  A wretched business!
+
+He was a long time reaching Stanhope Gate, for, with native
+perversity, being extremely tired, he walked the whole way.
+
+After washing his hands in the lavatory downstairs, he went to
+the dining-room to wait for dinner, the only room he used when
+June was out--it was less lonely so.  The evening paper had not
+yet come; he had finished the Times, there was therefore nothing
+to do.
+
+The room faced the backwater of traffic, and was very silent.  He
+disliked dogs, but a dog even would have been company.  His gaze,
+travelling round the walls, rested on a 'picture entitled: 'Group
+of Dutch fishing boats at sunset; the chef d'oeuvre of his
+collection.  It gave him no pleasure.  He closed his eyes.  He
+was lonely!  He oughtn't to complain, he knew, but he couldn't
+help it: He was a poor thing--had always been a poor thing--no
+pluck!  Such was his thought.
+
+The butler came to lay the table for dinner, and seeing his
+master apparently asleep, exercised extreme caution in his
+movements.  This bearded man also wore a moustache, which had
+given rise to grave doubts in the minds of many members--of the
+family--, especially those who, like Soames, had been to public
+schools, and were accustomed to niceness in such matters.  Could
+he really be considered a butler?  Playful spirits alluded to him
+as: 'Uncle Jolyon's Nonconformist'; George, the acknowledged wag,
+had named him: 'Sankey.'
+
+He moved to and fro between the great polished sideboard and the
+great polished table inimitably sleek and soft.
+
+Old Jolyon watched him, feigning sleep.  The fellow was a sneak--
+he had always thought so--who cared about nothing but rattling
+through his work, and getting out to his betting or his woman or
+goodness knew what!  A slug!  Fat too! And didn't care a pin
+about his master!
+
+But then against his will, came one of those moments of
+philosophy which made old Jolyon different from other Forsytes:
+
+After all why should the man care?  He wasn't paid to care, and
+why expect it?  In this world people couldn't look for affection
+unless they paid for it.  It might be different in the next--he
+didn't know--couldn't tell!  And again he shut his eyes.
+
+Relentless and stealthy, the butler pursued his labours, taking
+things from the various compartments of the sideboard.  His back
+seemed always turned to old Jolyon; thus, he robbed his
+operations of the unseemliness of being carried on in his
+master's presence; now and then he furtively breathed on the
+silver, and wiped it with a piece of chamois leather.  He
+appeared to pore over the quantities of wine in the decanters,
+which he carried carefully and rather high, letting his heard
+droop over them protectingly.  When he had finished, he stood for
+over a minute watching his master, and in his greenish eyes there
+was a look of contempt:
+
+After all, this master of his was an old buffer, who hadn't much
+left in him!
+
+Soft as a tom-cat, he crossed the room to press the bell.  His
+orders were 'dinner at seven.' What if his master were asleep; he
+would soon have him out of that; there was the night to sleep in!
+He had himself to think of, for he was due at his Club at
+half-past eight!
+
+In answer to the ring, appeared a page boy with a silver soup
+tureen.  The butler took it from his hands and placed it on the.
+table, then, standing by the open door, as though about to usher
+company into the room, he said in a solemn voice:
+
+"Dinner is on the table, sir!"
+
+Slowly old Jolyon got up out of his chair, and sat down at the
+table to eat his dinner.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+PLANS OF THE HOUSE
+
+
+Forsytes, as is generally admitted, have shells, like that
+extremely useful little animal which is made into Turkish
+delight, in other words, they are never seen, or if seen would
+not be recognised, without habitats, composed of circumstance,
+property, acquaintances, and wives, which seem to move along with
+them in their passage through a world composed of thousands of
+other Forsytes with their habitats.  Without a habitat a Forsyte
+is inconceivable--he would be like a novel without a plot, which
+is well-known to be an anomaly.
+
+To Forsyte eyes Bosinney appeared to have no habitat, he seemed
+one of those rare and unfortunate men who go through life
+surrounded by circumstance, property, acquaintances, and wives
+that do not belong to them.
+
+His rooms in Sloane Street, on the top floor, outside which, on a
+plate, was his name, 'Philip Baynes Bosinney, Architect,' were
+not those of a Forsyte.--He had no sitting-room apart from his
+office, but a large recess had been screened off to conceal the
+necessaries of life--a couch, an easy chair, his pipes, spirit
+case, novels and slippers.  The business part of the room had the
+usual furniture; an open cupboard with pigeon-holes, a round oak
+table, a folding wash-stand, some hard chairs, a standing desk of
+large dimensions covered with drawings and designs.  June had
+twice been to tea there under the chaperonage of his aunt.
+
+He was believed to have a bedroom at the back.
+
+As far as the family had been able to ascertain his income, it
+consisted of two consulting appointments at twenty pounds a year,
+together with an odd fee once in a way, and--more worthy item--a
+private annuity under his father's will of one hundred and fifty
+pounds a year.
+
+What had transpired concerning that father was not so reassuring.
+It appeared that he had been a Lincolnshire country doctor of
+Cornish extraction, striking appearance, and Byronic tendencies--
+a well-known figure, in fact, in his county.  Bosinney's uncle by
+marriage, Baynes, of Baynes and Bildeboy, a Forsyte in instincts
+if not in name, had but little that was worthy to relate of his
+brother-in-law.
+
+"An odd fellow!' he would say: 'always spoke of his three eldest
+boys as 'good creatures, but so dull'; they're all doing
+capitally in the Indian Civil!  Philip was the only one he liked.
+I've heard him talk in the queerest way; he once said to me: 'My
+dear fellow, never let your poor wife know what you're thinking
+of!  But I didn't follow his advice; not I!  An eccentric man!
+He would say to Phil: 'Whether you live like a gentleman or not,
+my boy, be sure you die like one!  and he had himself embalmed in
+a frock coat suit, with a satin cravat and a diamond pin.  Oh,
+quite an original, I can assure you I"
+
+Of Bosinney himself Baynes would speak warmly, with a certain
+compassion: "He's got a streak of his father's Byronism.  Why,
+look at the way he threw up his chances when he left my office;
+going off like that for six months with a knapsack, and all for
+what?--to study foreign architecture--foreign!  What could he
+expect?  And there he is--a clever young fellow--doesn't make his
+hundred a year!  Now this engagement is the best thing that could
+have happened--keep him steady; he's one of those that go to bed
+all day and stay up all night, simply because they've no method;
+but no vice about him--not an ounce of vice.  Old Forsyte's a
+rich man!"
+
+Mr. Baynes made himself extremely pleasant to June, who
+frequently visited his house in Lowndes Square at this period.
+
+"This house of your cousin's--what a capital man of business--is
+the very thing for Philip," he would say to her; "you mustn't
+expect to see too much of him just now, my dear young lady.  The
+good cause--the good cause!  The young man must make his way.
+When I was his age I was at work day and night.  My dear wife
+used to say to me, 'Bobby, don't work too hard, think of your
+health'; but I never spared myself!"
+
+June had complained that her lover found no time to come to
+Stanhope Gate.
+
+The first time he came again they had not been together a quarter
+of an hour before, by one of those coincidences of which she was
+a mistress, Mrs. Septimus Small arrived.  Thereon Bosinney rose
+and hid himself, according to previous arrangement, in the little
+study, to wait for her departure.
+
+"My dear," said Aunt Juley, "how thin he is!  I've often noticed
+it with engaged people; but you mustn't let it get worse.
+There's Barlow's extract of veal; it did your Uncle Swithin a lot
+of good."
+
+June, her little figure erect before the hearth, her small face
+quivering grimly, for she regarded her aunt's untimely visit in
+the light of a personal injury, replied with scorn:
+
+"It's because he's busy; people who can do anything worth doing
+are never fat!"
+
+Aunt Juley pouted; she herself had always been thin, but the only
+pleasure she derived from the fact was the opportunity of longing
+to be stouter.
+
+I don't think," she said mournfully, "that you ought to let them
+call him 'The Buccaneer'; people might think it odd, now that
+he's going to build a house for Soames.  I do hope he will be
+careful; it's so important for him.  Soames has such good taste!"
+
+"Taste!" cried June, flaring up at once; "wouldn't give that for
+his taste, or any of the family's!"
+
+Mrs. Small was taken aback.
+
+"Your Uncle Swithin," she said, "always had beautiful taste!  And
+Soames's little house is lovely; you don't mean to say you don't
+think so!"
+
+"H'mph!" said June, "that's only because Irene's there!"
+
+Aunt Juley tried to say something pleasant:
+
+"And how will dear Irene like living in the country?"
+
+June gazed at her intently, with a look in her eyes as if her
+conscience had suddenly leaped up into them; it passed; and an
+even more intent look took its place, as if she had stared that
+conscience out of countenance.  She replied imperiously:
+
+"Of course she'll like it; why shouldn't she?"
+
+Mrs. Small grew nervous.
+
+"I didn't know," she said; "I thought she mightn't like to leave
+her friends.  Your Uncle James says she doesn't take enough
+interest in life.  We think--I mean Timothy thinks--she ought to
+go out more.  I expect you'll miss her very much!"
+
+June clasped her hands behind her neck.
+
+"I do wish, "she cried, "Uncle Timothy wouldn't talk about what
+doesn't concern him!"
+
+Aunt Juley rose to the full height of her tall figure.
+
+"He never talks about what doesn't concern him," she said.
+
+June was instantly compunctious; she ran to her aunt and kissed
+her.
+
+"I'm very sorry, auntie; but I wish they'd let Irene alone."
+
+Aunt Juley, unable to think of anything further on the subject
+that would be suitable, was silent; she prepared for departure,
+hooking her black silk cape across her chest, and, taking up her
+green reticule:
+
+"And how is your dear grandfather?" she asked in the hall, "I
+expect he's very lonely now that all your time is taken up with
+Mr. Bosinney."
+
+She bent and kissed her niece hungrily, and with little, mincing
+steps passed away.
+
+The tears sprang up in June's eyes; running into the little
+study, where Bosinney was sitting at the table drawing birds on
+the back of an envelope, she sank down, by his side and cried:
+
+"Oh, Phil! it's all so horrid!"  Her heart was as warm as the
+colour of her hair.
+
+On the following Sunday morning, while Soames was shaving, a
+message was brought him to the effect that Mr. Bosinney was
+below, and would be glad to see him.  Opening the door into his
+wife's room, he said:
+
+"Bosinney's downstairs.  Just go and entertain him while I finish
+shaving.  I'll be down in a minute.  It's about the plans, I
+expect."
+
+Irene looked at him, without reply, put the finishing touch to
+her dress and went downstairs.  He could not make her out about
+this house.  She had said nothing against it, and, as far as
+Bosinney was concerned, seemed friendly enough.
+
+From the window of his dressing-room he could see them talking
+together in the little court below.  He hurried on with his
+shaving, cutting his chin twice.  He heard them laugh, and
+thought to himself: "Well, they get on all right, anyway!"
+
+As he expected, Bosinney had come round to fetch, him to look at
+the plans.
+
+He took his hat and went over.
+
+The plans were spread on the oak table in the architect's room;
+and pale, imperturbable, inquiring, Soames bent over them for a
+long time without speaking.
+
+He said at last in a puzzled voice:
+
+"It's an odd sort of house!"
+
+A rectangular house of two stories was designed in a quadrangle
+round a covered-in court.  This court, encircled by a gallery on
+the upper floor, was roofed with a glass roof, supported by eight
+columns running up from the ground.
+
+It was indeed, to Forsyte eyes, an odd house.
+
+"There's a lot of room cut to waste," pursued Soames.
+
+Bosinney began to walk about, and Soames did not like the
+expression on his face.
+
+"The principle of this house," said the architect, "was that you
+should have room to breathe--like a gentleman!"
+
+Soames extended his finger and thumb, as if measuring the extent
+of the distinction he should acquire; and replied:
+
+"Oh! yes; I see."
+
+The peculiar look came into Bosinney's face which marked all, his
+enthusiasms.
+
+"I've tried to plan you a house here with some self-respect of
+its own.  If  you don't like it, you'd better say so.  It's
+certainly the last thing to be considered--who wants self-respect
+in a house, when you can squeeze in an extra lavatory?"  He put
+his finger suddenly down on the left division of the centre
+oblong: "You can swing a cat here.  This is for your pictures,
+divided from this court by curtains; draw them back and you'll
+have a space of fifty-one by twenty-three six.  This double-faced
+stove in the centre, here, looks one way towards the court, one
+way towards the picture room; this end wall is all window; You've
+a southeast light from that, a north light from the court.  The
+rest of your pictures you can hang round the gallery upstairs, or
+in the other rooms."  "In architecture," he went on--and though
+looking at Soames he did not seem to see him, which gave Soames
+an unpleasant feeling--"as in life, you'll get no self-respect
+without regularity.  Fellows tell you that's old fashioned.  It
+appears to be peculiar any way; it never occurs to us to embody
+the main principle of life in our buildings; we load our houses
+with decoration, gimcracks, corners, anything to distract the
+eye.  On the contrary the eye should rest; get your effects with
+a few strong lines.  The whole thing is regularity there's no
+self-respect without it."
+
+Soames, the unconscious ironist, fixed his gaze on Bosinney's
+tie, which was far from being in the perpendicular; he was
+unshaven too, and his dress not remarkable for order.
+Architecture appeared to have exhausted his regularity.
+
+"Won't it look like a barrack?" he inquired.
+
+He did not at once receive a reply.
+
+"I can see what it is," said Bosinney, "you want one of Little-
+master's houses--one of the pretty and commodious sort, where the
+servants will live in garrets, and the front door be sunk so that
+you may come up again.  By all means try Littlemaster, you'll
+find him a capital fellow, I've known him all my life!"
+
+Soames was alarmed.  He had really been struck by the plans, and
+the concealment of his satisfaction had been merely instinctive.
+It was difficult for him to pay a compliment.  He despised people
+who were lavish with their praises.
+
+He found himself now in the embarrassing position of one who must
+pay a compliment or run the risk of losing a good thing.
+Bosinney was just the fellow who might tear up the plans and
+refuse to act for him; a kind of grown-up child!
+
+This grown-up childishness, to which he felt so superior,
+exercised a peculiar and almost mesmeric effect on Soames, for he
+had never felt anything like it in himself.
+
+"Well," he stammered at last, "it's--it's, certainly original."
+
+He had such a private distrust and even dislike of the word--
+'original' that he felt he had not really given himself away by
+this remark.
+
+Bosinney seemed pleased.  It was the sort of thing that would
+please a fellow like that!  And his success encouraged Soames.
+
+"It's--a big place," he said.
+
+"Space, air, light," he heard Bosinney murmur, "you can't live
+like a gentleman in one of Littlemaster's--he builds for
+manufacturers."
+
+Soames made a deprecating movement; he had been identified with a
+gentleman; not for a good deal of money now would he be classed
+with manufacturers.  But his innate distrust of general
+principles revived.  What the deuce was the good of talking about
+regularity and self-respect?  It looked to him as if the house
+would be cold.
+
+"Irene can't stand the cold!" he said.
+
+"Ah!" said Bosinney sarcastically.  "Your wife?  She doesn't like
+the cold?  I'll see to that; she shan't be cold.  Look here!" he
+pointed, to four marks at regular intervals on the walls of the
+court.  "I've given you hot-water pipes in aluminium casings; you
+can get them with very good designs."
+
+Soames looked suspiciously at these marks.
+
+"It's all very well, all this," he said, "but what's it going to
+cost?"
+
+The architect took a sheet of paper from his pocket:
+
+"The house, of course, should be built entirely of stone, but, as
+I thought you wouldn't stand that, I've compromised for a facing.
+It ought to have a copper roof, but I've made it green slate.  As
+it is, including metal work, it'll cost you eight thousand five
+hundred."
+
+"Eight thousand five hundred?" said Soames.  "Why, I gave you an
+outside limit of eight!"
+
+"Can't be done for a penny less," replied Bosinney coolly.
+
+"You must take it or leave it!"
+
+It was the only way, probably, that such a proposition could have
+been made to Soames.  He was nonplussed.  Conscience told him to
+throw the whole thing up.  But the design was good, and he knew
+it--there was completeness about it, and dignity; the servants'
+apartments were excellent too.  He would gain credit by living in
+a house like that--with such individual features, yet perfectly.
+well-arranged.
+
+He continued poring over the plans, while Bosinney went into his
+bedroom to shave and dress.
+
+The two walked back to Montpellier Square in silence, Soames
+watching him out of the corner of his eye.
+
+The Buccaneer was rather a good-looking fellow--so he thought--
+when he was properly got up.
+
+Irene was bending over her flowers when the two men came in.
+
+She spoke of sending across the Park to fetch June.
+
+"No, no," said Soames, "we've still got business to talk over!"
+
+At lunch he was almost cordial, and kept pressing Bosinney to
+eat.  He was pleased to see the architect in such high spirits,
+and left him to spend the afternoon with Irene, while he stole
+off to his pictures, after his Sunday habit.  At tea-time he came
+down to the drawing-room, and found them talking, as he expressed
+it, nineteen to the dozen.
+
+Unobserved in the doorway, he congratulated himself that things
+were taking the right turn.  It was lucky she and Bosinney got
+on; she seemed to be falling into line with the idea of the new
+house.
+
+Quiet meditation among his pictures had decided him to spring the
+five hundred if necessary; but he hoped that the afternoon might
+have softened Bosinney's estimates.  It was so purely a matter
+which Bosinney could remedy if he liked; there must be a dozen
+ways in which he could cheapen the production of a house without
+spoiling the effect.
+
+He awaited, therefore, his opportunity till Irene was handing the
+architect his first cup of tea.  A chink of sunshine through the
+lace of the blinds warmed her cheek, shone in the gold of her
+hair, and in her soft eyes.  Possibly the same gleam deepened
+Bosinney's colour, gave the rather startled look to his face.
+
+Soames hated sunshine, and he at once got up, to draw the blind.
+Then he took his own cup of tea from his wife, and said, more
+coldly than he had intended:
+
+"Can't you see your way to do it for eight thousand after all?
+There must be a lot of little things you could alter."
+
+Bosinney drank off his tea at a gulp, put down his cup, and
+answered:
+
+"Not one!"
+
+Soames saw that his suggestion had touched some unintelligible
+point of personal vanity.
+
+"Well," he agreed, with sulky resignation; "you must have it your
+own way, I suppose."
+
+A few minutes later Bosinney rose to go, and Soames rose too, to
+see him off the premises.  The architect seemed in absurdly high
+spirits.  After watching him walk away at a swinging pace, Soames
+returned moodily to the drawing-room, where Irene was putting
+away the music, and, moved by an uncontrollable spasm of
+curiosity, he asked:
+
+"Well, what do you think of 'The Buccaneer'?"
+
+He looked at the carpet while waiting for her answer, and he had
+to wait some time.
+
+"I don't know," she said at last.
+
+"Do you think he's good-looking?"
+
+Irene smiled.  And it seemed to Soames that she was mocking him.
+
+"Yes," she answered; "very."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+DEATH OF AUNT ANN
+
+
+There came a morning at the end of September when Aunt Ann was
+unable to take from Smither's hands the insignia of personal
+dignity.  After one look at the old face, the doctor, hurriedly
+sent for, announced that Miss Forsyte had passed away in her
+sleep.
+
+Aunts Juley and Hester were overwhelmed by the shock.  They had
+never imagined such an ending.  Indeed, it is doubtful whether
+they had ever realized that an ending was bound to come.
+Secretly they felt it unreasonable of Ann to have left them like
+this without a word, without even a struggle.  It was unlike her.
+
+Perhaps what really affected them so profoundly was the thought
+that a Forsyte should have let go her grasp on life.  If one,
+then why not all!
+
+It was a full hour before they could make up their minds to tell
+Timothy.  If only it could be kept from him!  If only it could be
+broken to him by degrees!
+
+And long they stood outside his door whispering together.  And
+when it was over they whispered together again.
+
+He would feel it more, they were afraid, as time went on.  Still,
+he had taken it better than could have been expected.  He would
+keep his bed, of course!
+
+They separated, crying quietly.
+
+Aunt Juley stayed in her room, prostrated by the blow.  Her face,
+discoloured by tears, was divided into compartments by the little
+ridges of pouting flesh which had swollen with emotion.  It was
+impossible to conceive of life without Ann, who had lived with
+her for seventy-three years, broken only by the short interregnum
+of her married life, which seemed now so unreal.  At fixed
+intervals she went to her drawer, and took from beneath the
+lavender bags a fresh pocket-handkerchief.  Her warm heart could
+not bear the thought that Ann was lying there so cold.
+
+Aunt Hester, the silent, the patient, that backwater of the
+family energy, sat in the drawing-room, where the blinds were
+drawn; and she, too, had wept at first, but quietly, without
+visible effect.  Her guiding principle, the conservation of
+energy, did not abandon her in sorrow.  She sat, slim,
+motionless, studying the grate, her hands idle in the lap of her
+black silk dress.  They would want to rouse her into doing
+something, no doubt.  As if there were any good in that!  Doing
+something would not bring back Ann!  Why worry her?
+
+Five o'clock brought three of the brothers, Jolyon and James and
+Swithin; Nicholas was at Yarmouth, and Roger had a bad attack of
+gout.  Mrs. Hayman had been by herself earlier in the day, and,
+after seeing Ann, had gone away, leaving a message for Timothy--
+which was kept from him--that she ought to have been told sooner.
+In fact, there was a feeling amongst them all that they ought to
+have been told sooner, as though they had missed something; and
+James said:
+
+"I knew how it'd be; I told you she wouldn't last through the
+summer."
+
+Aunt Hester made no reply; it was nearly October, but what was
+the good of arguing; some people were never satisfied.
+
+She sent up to tell her sister that the brothers were there.
+Mrs. Small came down at once.  She had bathed her face, which was
+still swollen, and though she looked severely at Swithin's
+trousers, for they were of light blue--he had come straight from
+the club, where the news had reached him she wore a more cheerful
+expression than usual, the instinct for doing the wrong thing
+being even now too strong for her.
+
+Presently all five went up to look at the body.  Under the pure
+white sheet a quilted counter-pane had been placed, for now, more
+than ever, Aunt Ann had need of warmth; and, the pillows removed,
+her spine and head rested flat, with the semblance of their
+life-long inflexibility; the coif banding the top of her brow was
+drawn on either side to the level of the ears, and between it and
+the sheet her face, almost as white, was turned with closed eyes
+to the faces of her brothers and sisters.  In its extraordinary
+peace the face was stronger than ever, nearly all bone now under
+the scarce-wrinkled parchment of skin--square jaw and chin,
+cheekbones, forehead with hollow temples, chiselled nose--the
+fortress of an unconquerable spirit that had yielded to death,
+and in its upward sightlessness seemed trying to regain that
+spirit, to regain the guardianship it had just laid down.
+
+Swithin took but one look at the face, and left the room; the
+sight, he said afterwards, made him very queer.  He went
+downstairs shaking the whole house, and, seizing his hat,
+clambered into his brougham, without giving any directions to the
+coachman.  He was driven home, and all the evening sat in his
+chair without moving.
+
+He could take nothing for dinner but a partridge, with an
+imperial pint of champagne....
+
+Old Jolyon stood at the bottom of the bed, his hands folded in
+front of him.  He alone of those in the room remembered the death
+of his mother, and though he looked at Ann, it was of that he was
+thinking.  Ann was an old woman, but death had come to her at
+last--death came to all!  His face did not move, his gaze seemed
+travelling from very far.
+
+Aunt Hester stood beside him.  She did not cry now, tears were
+exhausted--her nature refused to permit a further escape of
+force; she twisted her hands, looking not at Ann, but from side
+to side, seeking some way of escaping the effort of realization.
+
+Of all the brothers and sisters James manifested the most
+emotion.  Tears rolled down the parallel furrows of his thin
+face; where he should go now to tell his troubles he did not
+know; Juley was no good, Hester worse than useless!  He felt
+Ann's death more than he had ever thought he should; this would
+upset him for weeks!
+
+Presently Aunt Hester stole out, and Aunt Juley began moving
+about, doing 'what was necessary,' so that twice she knocked
+against something.  Old Jolyon, roused from his reverie, that
+reverie of the long, long past, looked sternly at her, and went
+away.  James alone was left by the bedside; glancing stealthily
+round, to see that he was not observed, he twisted his long body
+down, placed a kiss on the dead forehead, then he, too, hastily
+left the room.  Encountering Smither in the hall, he began to ask
+her about the funeral, and, finding that she knew nothing,
+complained bitterly that, if they didn't take care, everything
+would go wrong.  She had better send for Mr. Soames--he knew all
+about that sort of thing; her master was very much upset, he
+supposed--he would want looking after; as for her mistresses,
+they were no good--they had no gumption!  They would be ill too,
+he shouldn't wonder.  She had better send for the doctor; it was
+best to take things in time.  He didn't think his sister Ann had
+had the best opinion; if she'd had Blank she would have been
+alive now.  Smither might send to Park Lane any time she wanted
+advice.  Of course, his carriage was at their service for the
+funeral.  He supposed she hadn't such a thing as a glass of
+claret and a biscuit--he had had no lunch!
+
+The days before the funeral passed quietly.  It had long been
+known, of course, that Aunt Ann had left her little property to
+Timothy.  There was, therefore, no reason for the slightest
+agitation.  Soames, who was sole executor, took charge of all
+arrangements, and in due course sent out the following invitation
+to every male member of the family:
+
+
+To...........
+
+Your presence is requested at the funeral of Miss Ann Forsyte, in
+Highgate Cemetery, at noon of Oct. 1st.  Carriages will meet at
+"The Bower," Bayswater Road, at 10.45.  No flowers by request.
+
+'R.S.V.P.'
+
+
+The morning came, cold, with a high, grey, London sky, and at
+half-past ten the first carriage, that of James, drove up.  It
+contained James and his son-in-law Dartie, a fine man, with a
+square chest, buttoned very tightly into a frock coat, and a
+sallow, fattish face adorned with dark, well-curled moustaches,
+and that incorrigible commencement of whisker which, eluding the
+strictest attempts at shaving, seems the mark of something deeply
+ingrained in the personality of the shaver, being especially
+noticeable in men who speculate.
+
+Soames, in his capacity of executor, received the guests, for
+Timothy still kept his bed; he would get up after the funeral;
+and Aunts Juley and Hester would not be coming down till all was
+over, when it was understood there would be lunch for anyone who
+cared to come back.  The next to arrive was Roger, still limping
+from the gout, and encircled by three of his sons--young Roger,
+Eustace, and Thomas.  George, the remaining son, arrived almost
+immediately afterwards in a hansom, and paused in the hall to ask
+Soames how he found undertaking pay.
+
+They disliked each other.
+
+Then came two Haymans--Giles and Jesse perfectly silent, and very
+well dressed, with special creases down their evening trousers.
+Then old Jolyon alone.  Next, Nicholas, with a healthy colour in
+his face, and a carefully veiled sprightliness in every movement
+of his head and body.  One of his sons followed him, meek and
+subdued.  Swithin Forsyte, and Bosinney arrived at the same
+moment,--and stood--bowing precedence to each other,--but on the
+door opening they tried to enter together; they renewed their
+apologies in the hall, and, Swithin, settling his stock, which
+had become disarranged in the struggle, very slowly mounted the
+stairs.  The other Hayman; two married sons of Nicholas, together
+with Tweetyman, Spender, and Warry, the husbands of married
+Forsyte and Hayman daughters.  The company was then complete,
+twenty-one in all, not a male member of the family being absent
+but Timothy and young Jolyon.
+
+Entering the scarlet and green drawing-room, whose apparel made
+so vivid a setting for their unaccustomed costumes, each tried
+nervously to find a seat, desirous of hiding the emphatic
+blackness of his trousers.  There seemed a sort of indecency in
+that blackness and in the colour of their gloves--a sort of
+exaggeration of the feelings; and many cast shocked looks of
+secret envy at 'the Buccaneer,' who had no gloves, and was
+wearing grey trousers.  A subdued hum of conversation rose, no
+one speaking of the departed, but each asking after the other, as
+though thereby casting an indirect libation to this event, which
+they had come to honour.
+
+And presently James said:
+
+"Well, I think we ought to be starting."
+
+They went downstairs, and, two and two, as they had been told off
+in strict precedence, mounted the carriages.
+
+The hearse started at a foot's pace; the carriages moved slowly
+after.  In the first went old Jolyon with Nicholas; in the
+second, the twins, Swithin and James; in the third, Roger and
+young Roger; Soames, young Nicholas, George, and Bosinney
+followed in the fourth.  Each of the other carriages, eight in
+all, held three or four of the family; behind them came the
+doctor's brougham; then, at a decent interval, cabs containing
+family clerks and servants; and at the very end, one containing
+nobody at all, but bringing the total cortege up to the number of
+thirteen.
+
+So long as the procession kept to the highway of the Bayswater
+Road, it retained the foot's-pace, but, turning into less
+important thorough-fares, it soon broke into a trot, and so
+proceeded, with intervals of walking in the more fashionable
+streets, until it arrived.  In the first carriage old Jolyon and
+Nicholas were talking of their wills.  In the second the twins,
+after a single attempt, had lapsed into complete silence; both
+were rather deaf, and the exertion of making themselves heard was
+too great.  Only once James broke this silence:
+
+"I shall have to be looking about for some ground somewhere.
+What arrangements have you made, Swithin?"
+
+And Swithin, fixing him with a dreadful stare, answered:
+
+"Don't talk to me about such things!"
+
+In the third carriage a disjointed conversation was carried on in
+the intervals of looking out to see how far they had got, George
+remarking, "Well, it was really time that the poor old lady
+went."  He didn't believe in people living beyond seventy, Young
+Nicholas replied mildly that the rule didn't seem to apply to the
+Forsytes.  George said he himself intended to commit suicide at
+sixty.  Young Nicholas, smiling and stroking A long chin, didn't
+think his father would like that theory; he had made a lot of
+money since he was sixty.  Well, seventy was the outside limit;
+it was then time, George said, for them to go and leave their
+money to their children.  Soames, hitherto silent, here joined
+in; he had not forgotten the remark about the 'undertaking,' and,
+lifting his eyelids almost imperceptibly, said it was all very
+well for people who never made money to talk.  He himself
+intended to live as long as he could.  This was a hit at George,
+who was notoriously hard up.  Bosinney muttered abstractedly
+"Hear, hear!" and, George yawning, the conversation dropped.
+
+Upon arriving, the coffin was borne into the chapel, and, two by
+two, the mourners filed in behind it.  This guard of men, all
+attached to the dead by the bond of kinship, was an impressive
+and singular sight in the great city of London, with its
+overwhelming diversity of life, its innumerable vocations,
+pleasures, duties, its terrible hardness, its terrible call to
+individualism.
+
+The family had gathered to triumph over all this, to give a show
+of tenacious unity, to illustrate gloriously that law of property
+underlying the growth of their tree, by which it had thriven and
+spread, trunk and branches, the sap flowing through all, the full
+growth reached at the appointed time.  The spirit of the old
+woman lying in her last sleep had called them to this
+demonstration.  It was her final appeal to that unity which had
+been their strength--it was her final triumph that she had died
+while the tree was yet whole.
+
+She was spared the watching of the branches jut out beyond the
+point of balance.  She could not look into the hearts of her
+followers.  The same law that had worked in her, bringing her up
+from a tall, straight-backed slip of a girl to, a woman strong
+and grown, from a woman grown to a woman old, angular, feeble,
+almost witchlike, with individuality all sharpened and sharpened,
+as all rounding from the world's contact fell off from her--that
+same law would work, was: working, in the family she had watched
+like a mother.
+
+She had seen it young, and growing, she had, seen it strong and
+grown, and before her old eyes had time or strength to see any
+more, she died.  She would have tried, and who knows but she
+might have kept it young and strong, with her old fingers, her
+trembling kisses--a little longer; alas! not even Aunt Ann could
+fight with Nature.
+
+'Pride comes before a fall!' In accordance with this, the
+greatest of Nature's ironies, the Forsyte family had gathered for
+a last proud pageant before they fell.  Their faces to right and
+left, in single lines, were turned for the most part impassively
+toward the ground, guardians of their thoughts; but here and
+there, one looking upward, with a line between his brows,
+searched to see some sight on the chapel walls too much for, him,
+to be listening to something that appalled.  And the, responses,
+low-muttered, in voices through which rose the same tone, the
+same unseizable family ring, sounded weird, as though murmured in
+hurried duplication by a single person.
+
+The service in the chapel over, the mourners filed up again to
+guard the body to the tomb.  The vault stood open, and, round it,
+men in black were waiting.
+
+From that high and sacred field, where thousands of the upper
+middle class lay in their last sleep, the eyes of the Forsytes
+travelled down across the flocks of graves.  There--spreading to
+the distance, lay London, with no sun over it, mourning the loss
+of its daughter, mourning with this family, so dear, the loss of
+her who was mother and guardian.  A hundred thousand spires and
+houses, blurred in the great grey web of property, lay there like
+prostrate worshippers before the grave of this, the oldest
+Forsyte of them all.
+
+A few words, a sprinkle of earth, the thrusting of the coffin
+home, and Aunt Ann had passed to her last rest.
+
+Round the vault, trustees of that passing, the five brothers
+stood, with white heads bowed; they would see that Ann was
+comfortable where she was.  going.  Her little property must stay
+behind, but otherwise, all that could be should be done....
+
+Then, severally, each stood aside, and putting on his hat, turned
+back to inspect the new inscription on the marble of the family
+vault:
+
+
+SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF ANN FORSYTE,
+THE DAUGHTER OF THE ABOVE JOLYON
+AND ANN FORSYTE, WHO DEPARTED
+THIS LIFE THE 27TH DAY OF SEPTEMBER,
+1886, AGED EIGHTY-SEVEN YEARS AND FOUR DAYS
+
+
+Soon perhaps, someone else would be wanting an inscription.  It
+was strange and intolerable, for they had not thought somehow,
+that Forsytes could die.  And one and all they had a longing to
+get away from this painfulness, this ceremony which had reminded
+them of things they could not bear to think about--to get away
+quickly and go about their business and forget.
+
+It was cold, too; the wind, like some slow, disintegrating force,
+blowing up the hill over the graves, struck them with its chilly
+breath; they began to split into groups, and as quickly as
+possible to fill the waiting carriages.
+
+Swithin said he should go back to lunch at Timothy's, and he
+offered to take anybody with him in his brougham.  It was
+considered a doubtful privilege to drive with Swithin in his
+brougham, which was not a large one; nobody accepted, and he went
+off alone.  James and Roger followed immediately after; they also
+would drop in to lunch.  The others gradually melted away, Old
+Jolyon taking three nephews to fill up his carriage; he had a
+want of those young faces.
+
+Soames, who had to arrange some details in the cemetery office,
+walked away with Bosinney.  He had much to talk over with him,
+and, having finished his business, they strolled to Hampstead,
+lunched together at the Spaniard's Inn, and spent a long time in
+going into practical details connected with the building of the
+house; they then proceeded to the tram-line, and came as far as
+the Marble Arch, where Bosinney went off to Stanhope Gate to see
+June.
+
+Soames felt in excellent spirits when he arrived home, and
+confided to Irene at dinner that he had had a good talk with
+Bosinney, who really seemed a sensible fellow; they had had a
+capital walk too, which had done his liver good--he had been
+short of exercise for a long time--and altogether a very
+satisfactory day.  If only it hadn't been for poor Aunt Ann, he
+would have taken her to the theatre; as it was, they must make
+the best of an evening at home.
+
+"The Buccaneer asked after you more than once," he said
+suddenly.  And moved by some inexplicable desire to assert his
+proprietorship, he rose from his chair and planted a kiss on
+his wife's shoulder.
+
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+PROGRESS OF THE HOUSE
+
+
+The winter had been an open one.  Things in the trade were slack;
+and as Soames had reflected before making up his mind, it had
+been a good time for building.  The shell of the house at Robin
+Hill was thus completed by the end of April.
+
+Now that there was something to be seen for his money, he had
+been coming down once,  twice, even three times a week, and would
+mouse about among the debris for hours, careful never to soil his
+clothes, moving silently through the unfinished brickwork of
+doorways, or circling round the columns in the central court.
+
+And he would stand before them for minutes' together, as though
+peering into the real quality of their substance
+
+On April 30 he had an appointment with Bosinney to go over the
+accounts, and five minutes before the proper time he entered the
+tent which the architect had pitched for himself close to the old
+oak tree.
+
+The Accounts were already prepared on a folding table, and  with
+a nod Soames sat down to study them.  It was some time before he
+raised his head.
+
+"I can't make them out," he said at last; "they come to nearly
+seven hundred more than they ought"
+
+After a glance at Bosinney's face he went on quickly:
+
+"If you only make a firm stand against these builder chaps you'll
+get them down.  They stick you with everything if you don't look
+sharp....  Take ten per cent. off all round.  I shan't mind it's
+coming out a hundred or so over the mark!"
+
+Bosinney shook his head:
+
+I've taken off every farthing I can!
+
+Soames pushed back the table with a movement of anger, which sent
+the account sheets fluttering to the ground.
+
+"Then all I can say is," he flustered out, "you've made a pretty
+mess of it!"
+
+"I've told you a dozen times," Bosinney answered sharply, "that
+there'd be extras.  I've pointed them out to you over and over
+again!"
+
+"I know that," growled Soames: "I shouldn't have objected to a ten
+pound note here and there.  How was I to know that by 'extras'
+you meant seven hundred pounds?"
+
+The qualities of both men had contributed to this notinconsider-
+able discrepancy.  On the one hand, the architect's devotion
+to his idea, to the image of a house which he had created and
+believed in--had made him nervous of being stopped, or forced
+to the use of makeshifts; on the other, Soames' not less true
+and wholehearted devotion to the very best article that could  be
+obtained for the money, had rendered him averse to believing that
+things worth thirteen shillings could not be bought with twelve.
+
+I wish I'd never undertaken your house," said Bosinney suddenly.
+"You come down here worrying me out of my life.  You want double
+the value for your money anybody else would, and now that you've
+got a house that for its size is not to be beaten in the county,
+you don't want to pay for it.  If you're anxious to be off your
+bargain, I daresay I can find the balance above the estimates
+myself, but I'm d----d if I do another stroke of work for you!
+
+Soames regained his composure.  Knowing that Bosinney had no
+capital, he regarded this as a wild suggestion.  He saw, too,
+that he would be kept indefinitely out of this house on which he
+had set his heart, and just at the crucial point when the
+architect's personal care made all the difference.  In the
+meantime there was Irene to be thought of!  She had been very
+queer lately.  He really believed it was only because she had
+taken to Bosinney that she tolerated the idea of the house at
+all.  It would not do to make an open breach with her.
+
+"You needn't get into a rage," he said.  "If I'm willing to put
+up with it, I suppose you needn't cry out.  All I meant was that
+when you tell me a thing is going to cost so much, I like to--
+well, in fact, I--like to know where I am."
+
+"Look here!" said Bosinney, and Soames was both annoyed and
+surprised by the shrewdness of his glance.  "You've got my
+services dirt cheap.  For the kind of work I've put into this
+house, and the amount of time I've given to it, you'd have had to
+pay Littlemaster or some other fool four times as much.  What you
+want, in fact, is a first-rate man for a fourth-rate fee, and
+that's exactly what you've got!"
+
+Soames saw that he really meant what he said, and, angry though
+he was, the consequences of a row rose before him too vividly.
+He saw his house unfinished, his wife rebellious, himself a
+laughingstock.
+
+"Let's go over it," he said sulkily, "and see how the money's
+gone."
+
+"Very well," assented Bosinney.  "But we'll hurry up, if you
+don't mind.  I have to get back in time to take June to the
+theatre."
+
+Soames cast a stealthy look at him, and said: "Coming to our
+place, I suppose to meet her?" He was always coming to their
+place!
+
+There had been rain the night before-a spring rain, and the earth
+smelt of sap and wild grasses.  The warm, soft breeze swung the
+leaves and the golden buds of the old oak tree, and in the
+sunshine the blackbirds were whistling their hearts out.
+
+It was such a spring day as breathes into a man an ineffable
+yearning, a painful sweetness, a longing that makes him stand
+motionless, looking at the leaves or grass, and fling out his
+arms to embrace he knows not what.  The earth gave forth a
+fainting warmth, stealing up through the chilly garment in which
+winter had wrapped her.  It was her long caress of invitation, to
+draw men down to lie within her arms, to roll their bodies on
+her, and put their lips to her breast.
+
+On just such a day as this Soames had got from Irene the promise
+he had asked her for so often.  Seated on the fallen trunk of a
+tree, he had promised for the twentieth time that if their
+marriage were not a success, she should be as free as if she had
+never married him!
+
+"Do you swear it?" she had said.  A few days back she had
+reminded him of that oath.  He had answered: "Nonsense!  I
+couldn't have sworn any such thing!"  By some awkward fatality he
+remembered it now.  What queer things men would swear for the
+sake of women!  He would have sworn it at any time to gain her!
+He would swear it now, if thereby he could touch her--but nobody
+could touch her, she was cold-hearted!
+
+And memories crowded on him with the fresh, sweet savour of the
+spring wind-memories of his courtship.
+
+In the spring of the year 1881 he was visiting his old school-
+fellow and client, George Liversedge, of Branksome, who, with
+the view of developing his pine-woods in the neighbourhood of
+Bournemouth, had placed the formation of the company necessary
+to the scheme in Soames's hands.  Mrs. Liversedge, with a sense
+of the fitness of things, had given a musical tea in his honour.
+Later in the course of this function, which Soames, no musician,
+had regarded as an unmitigated bore, his eye had been caught by
+the face of a girl dressed in mourning, standing by herself.  The
+lines of her tall, as yet rather thin figure, showed through the
+wispy, clinging stuff of her black dress, her black-gloved hands
+were crossed in front of her, her lips slightly parted, and her
+large, dark eyes wandered from face to face.  Her hair, done low
+on her neck, seemed to gleam above her black collar like coils of
+shining metal.  And as Soames stood looking at her, the sensation
+that most men have felt at one time or another went stealing
+through him--a peculiar satisfaction of the senses, a peculiar
+certainty, which novelists and old ladies call love at first
+sight.  Still stealthily watching her, he at once made his way to
+his hostess, and stood doggedly waiting for the music to cease.
+
+"Who is that girl with yellow hair and dark eyes?" he asked.
+
+"That--oh!  Irene Heron.  Her father, Professor Heron, died this
+year.  She lives with her stepmother.  She's a nice girl, a
+pretty girl, but no money!"
+
+"Introduce me, please," said Soames.
+
+It was very little that he found to say, nor did he find her
+responsive to that little.  But he went away with the resolution
+to see her again.  He effected his object by chance, meeting her
+on the pier with her stepmother, who had the habit of walking
+there from twelve to one of a forenoon.  Soames made this lady's
+acquaintance with alacrity, nor was it long before he perceived
+in her the ally he was looking for.  His keen scent for the
+commercial side of family life soon told him that Irene cost her
+stepmother more than the fifty pounds a year she brought her; it
+also told him that Mrs. Heron, a woman yet in the prime of life,
+desired to be married again.  The strange ripening beauty of her
+stepdaughter stood in the way of this desirable consummation.
+And Soames, in his stealthy tenacity, laid his plans.
+
+He left Bournemouth without having given, himself away, but in a
+month's time came back, and this time he spoke, not to the girl,
+but to her stepmother.  He had made up his mind, he said; he
+would wait any time.  And he had long to wait, watching Irene
+bloom, the lines of her young figure softening, the stronger
+blood deepening the gleam of her eyes, and warming her face to a
+creamy glow; and at each visit he proposed to her, and when that
+visit was at an end, took her refusal away with him, back to
+London, sore at heart, but steadfast and silent as the grave.  He
+tried to come at the secret springs of her resistance; only once
+had he a gleam of light.  It was at one of those assembly dances,
+which afford the only outlet to the passions of the population of
+seaside watering-places.  He was sitting with her in an
+embrasure, his senses tingling with the contact of the waltz.
+She had looked at him over her, slowly waving fan; and he had
+lost his head.  Seizing that moving wrist, he pressed his lips to
+the flesh of her arm.  And she had shuddered--to this day he had
+not forgotten that shudder--nor the look so passionately averse
+she had given him.
+
+A year after that she had yielded.  What had made her yield he
+could never make out; and from Mrs. Heron, a woman of some
+diplomatic talent, he learnt nothing.  Once after they were
+married he asked her, "What made you refuse me so often?"  She had
+answered by a strange silence.  An enigma to him from the day
+that he first saw her, she was an enigma to him still....
+
+Bosinney was waiting for him at the door; and on his rugged,
+good-looking, face was a queer, yearning, yet happy look, as
+though he too saw a promise of bliss in the spring sky, sniffed a
+coming happiness in the spring air.  Soames looked at him waiting
+there.  What was the matter with the fellow that he looked so
+happy?  What was he waiting for with that smile on his lips and
+in his eyes?  Soames could not see that for which Bosinney was
+waiting as he stood there drinking in the flower-scented wind.
+And once more he felt baffled in the presence of this man whom by
+habit he despised.  He hastened on to the house.
+
+"The only colour for those tiles," he heard Bosinney say,--"is
+ruby with a grey tint in the stuff, to give a transparent effect.
+I should like Irene's opinion.  I'm ordering the purple leather
+curtains for the doorway of this court; and if you distemper the
+drawing-room ivory cream over paper, you'll get an illusive look.
+You want to aim all through the decorations at what I call
+charm."
+
+Soames said: "You mean that my wife has charm!"
+
+Bosinney evaded the question.
+
+"You should have a clump of iris plants in the centre of that
+court."
+
+Soames smiled superciliously.
+
+"I'll look into Beech's some time," he said, "and see what's
+appropriate!"
+
+They, found little else to say to each other, but on the way to
+the Station Soames asked:
+
+"I suppose you find Irene very artistic."
+
+"Yes." The abrupt answer was as distinct a snub as saying: "If
+you want to discuss her you can do it with someone else!"
+
+And the slow, sulky anger Soames had felt all the afternoon
+burned the brighter within him.
+
+Neither spoke again till they were close to the Station, then
+Soames asked:
+
+"When do you expect to have finished?"
+
+"By the end of June, if you really wish me to decorate as well."
+
+Soames nodded.  "But you quite understand," he said, "that the
+house is costing me a lot beyond what I contemplated.  I may as
+well tell you that I should have thrown it up, only I'm not in
+the habit of giving up what I've set my mind on."
+
+Bosinney made no reply.  And Soames gave him askance a look of
+dogged dislike--for in spite of his fastidious air and that
+supercilious, dandified taciturnity, Soames, with his set lips
+and squared chin, was not unlike a bulldog....
+
+When, at seven o'clock that evening, June arrived at 62,
+Montpellier Square, the maid Bilson told her that Mr. Bosinney
+was in the drawing-room; the mistress--she said--was dressing,
+and would be down in a minute.  She would tell her that Miss June
+was here.
+
+June stopped her at once.
+
+"All right, Bilson," she said, "I'll just go in.  You, needn't
+hurry Mrs. Soames."
+
+She took off her cloak, and Bilson, with an understanding look,
+did not even open the drawing-room door for her, but ran
+downstairs.
+
+June paused for a moment to look at herself in the, little
+old-fashioned silver mirror above the oaken rug chest--a slim,
+imperious young figure, with a small resolute face, in a white
+frock, cut moon-shaped at the base of a neck too slender for her
+crown of twisted red-gold hair.
+
+She opened the drawing-room door softly, meaning to take him by
+surprise.  The room was filled with a sweet hot scent of
+flowering azaleas.
+
+She took a long breath of the perfume, and heard Bosinney's
+voice, not in the room, but quite close, saying.
+
+"Ah!  there were such heaps of things I wanted to talk about, and
+now we shan't have time!"
+
+Irene's voice answered: "Why not at dinner?"
+
+"How can one talk...."
+
+June's first thought was to go away, but instead she crossed to
+the long window opening on the little court.  It was from there
+that the scent of the azaleas came, and, standing with their
+backs to her, their faces buried in the goldenpink blossoms,
+stood her lover and Irene.
+
+Silent but unashamed, with flaming cheeks and angry eyes, the
+girl watched.
+
+"Come on Sunday by yourself--We can go over the house together."
+
+June saw Irene look up at him through her screen of blossoms.  It
+was not the look of a coquette, but--far worse to the watching
+girl--of a woman fearful lest that look should say too much.
+
+"I've promised to go for a drive with Uncle...."
+
+"The big one!  Make him bring you; it's only ten miles--the very
+thing for his horses."
+
+"Poor old Uncle Swithin!"
+
+A wave of the azalea scent drifted into June's face; she felt
+sick and dizzy.
+
+"Do!  ah!  do!"
+
+"But why?"
+
+"I must see you there--I thought you'd like to help me...."
+
+The answer seemed to the girl to come softly with a tremble from
+amongst the blossoms: "So I do!"
+
+And she stepped into the open space of the window.
+
+"How stuffy it is here!" she said; "I can't bear this scent!"
+
+Her eyes, so angry and direct, swept both their faces.
+
+"Were you talking about the house?  I haven't seen it yet, you
+know--shall we all go on Sunday?"'
+
+From Irene's face the colour had flown.
+
+"I am going for a drive that day with Uncle Swithin," she
+answered.
+
+"Uncle Swithin!  What does he matter?  You can throw him over!"
+
+"I am not in the habit of throwing people over!"
+
+There was a sound of footsteps and June saw Soames standing just
+behind her.
+
+"Well! if you are all ready," said Irene, looking from one to
+the other with a strange smile, "dinner is too!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+JUNE'S  TREAT
+
+
+Dinner began in silence; the women facing one another, and the
+men.
+
+In silence the soup, was finished--excellent, if a little thick;
+and fish was brought.  In silence it was handed.
+
+Bosinney ventured: "It's the first spring day."
+
+Irene echoed softly: Yes--the first spring day.
+
+"Spring!" said June: "there isn't a breath of air!" No one
+replied.
+
+The fish was taken away, a fine fresh sole from Dover.  And
+Bilson brought champagne, a bottle swathed around the neck with
+white....
+
+Soames said: "You'll find it dry."
+
+Cutlets were handed, each pink-frilled about the legs.  They were
+refused by June, and silence fell.
+
+Soames said: "You'd better take a cutlet, June; there's nothing
+coming."
+
+But June again refused, so they were borne away.  And then Irene
+asked: "Phil, have you heard my blackbird?"
+
+Bosinney answered: "Rather--he's got a hunting-song.  As I came
+round I heard him in the Square."
+
+"He's such a darling!"
+
+"Salad, sir?" Spring chicken was removed.
+
+But Soames was speaking: "The asparagus is very poor.  Bosinney,
+glass of sherry with your sweet?  June, you're drinking nothing!"
+
+June said: "You know I never do.  Wine's such horrid stuff!"
+
+An apple charlotte came upon a silver dish, And smilingly Irene
+said: "The azaleas are so wonderful this year!"
+
+To this Bosinney murmured: "Wonderful! The scent's
+extraordinary!"
+
+June said: "How can you like the scent?  Sugar, please, Bilson."
+
+Sugar was handed her, and Soames remarked: "This charlottes
+good!"
+
+The charlotte was removed.  Long silence followed.  Irene,
+beckoning, said: "Take out the azalea, Bilson.  Miss June can't
+bear the scent."
+
+"No; let it stay," said June.
+
+Olives from France, with Russian caviare, were placed on little
+plates.  And Soames remarked: "Why can't we have the Spanish?"
+But no one answered.
+
+The olives were removed.  Lifting her tumbler June demanded:
+"Give me some water, please."  Water was given her.  A silver tray
+was brought, with German plums.  There was a lengthy pause.  In
+perfect harmony all were eating them.
+
+Bosinney counted up the stones: "This year--next year--some time."
+
+Irene finished softly: "Never! There was such a glorious sunset.
+The sky's all ruby still--so beautiful!"
+
+He answered: "Underneath the dark."
+
+Their eyes had met, and June cried scornfully: "A London sunset!"
+
+Egyptian cigarettes were handed in a silver box.  Soames, taking
+one, remarked: "What time's your play begin?"
+
+No one replied, and Turkish coffee followed in enamelled cups.
+
+Irene, smiling quietly, said: "If only...."
+
+"Only what?" said June.
+
+"If only it could always be the spring!"
+
+Brandy was handed; it was pale and old.
+
+Soames said: "Bosinney, better take some brandy."
+
+Bosinney took a glass; they all arose.
+
+"You want a cab?" asked Soames.
+
+June answered: "No! My cloaks Please, Bilson."  Her cloak was
+brought.
+
+Irene, from the window, murmured: "Such a lovely night!  The
+stars are coming out!"
+
+Soames added: "Well, I hope you'll both enjoy yourselves."
+
+From the door June answered: "Thanks.  Come, Phil."
+
+Bosinney cried: "I'm coming."
+
+Soames smiled a sneering smile, and said: "I wish you luck!"
+
+And at the door Irene watched them go.
+
+Bosinney called: "Good night!"
+
+"Good night!" she answered softly....
+
+June made her lover take her on the top of a 'bus, saying she
+wanted air, and there sat silent, with her face to the breeze.
+
+The driver turned once or twice, with the intention of venturing
+a remark, but thought better of it.  They were a lively couple!
+The spring had got into his blood, too; he felt the need for
+letting steam escape, and clucked his tongue, flourishing his
+whip, wheeling his horses, and even they, poor things, had
+smelled the spring, and for a brief half-hour spurned the
+pavement with happy hoofs.
+
+The whole town was alive; the boughs, curled upward with their
+decking of young leaves, awaited some gift the breeze could
+bring.  New-lighted lamps were gaining mastery, and the faces of
+the crowd showed pale under that glare, while on high the great
+white clouds slid swiftly, softly, over the purple sky.
+
+Men in, evening dress had thrown back overcoats, stepping
+jauntily up the steps of Clubs; working folk loitered; and women-
+-those women who at that time of night are solitary--solitary and
+moving eastward in a stream--swung slowly along, with expectation
+in their gait, dreaming of good wine and a good supper, or--for
+an unwonted minute, of kisses given for love.
+
+Those countless figures, going their ways under the lamps and the
+moving-sky, had one and all received some restless blessing from
+the stir of spring.  And one and all, like those clubmen with
+their opened coats, had shed something of caste, and creed, and
+custom, and by the cock of their hats, the pace of their walk,
+their laughter, or their silence, revealed their common kinship
+under the passionate heavens.
+
+Bosinney and June entered the theatre in silence, and mounted to
+their seats in the upper boxes.  The piece had just begun, and
+the half-darkened house, with its rows of creatures peering all
+one way, resembled a great garden of flowers turning their faces
+to the sun.
+
+June had never before been in the upper boxes.  From the age of
+fifteen she had habitually accompanied her grandfather to the
+stalls, and not common stalls, but the best seats in the house,
+towards the centre of the third row, booked by old Jolyon, at
+Grogan and Boyne's, on his way home from the City, long before
+the day; carried in his overcoat pocket, together with his
+cigarcase and his old kid gloves, and handed to June to keep till
+the appointed night.  And in those stalls--an erect old figure
+with a serene white head, a little figure, strenuous and eager,
+with a red-gold head--they would sit through every kind of play,
+and on the way home old Jolyon would say of the principal actor:
+"Oh, he's a poor stick!  You should have seen little Bobson!"
+
+She had looked forward to this evening with keen delight; it was
+stolen, chaperone-less, undreamed of at Stanhope Gate, where she
+was supposed to be at Soames'.  She had expected reward for her
+subterfuge, planned for her lover's sake; she had expected it to
+break up the thick, chilly cloud, and make the relations between
+them which of late had been so puzzling, so tormenting--sunny and
+simple again as they had been before the winter.  She had come
+with the intention of saying something definite; and she looked
+at the stage with a furrow between her brows, seeing nothing, her
+hands squeezed together in her lap.  A swarm of jealous
+suspicions stung and stung her.
+
+If Bosinney was conscious of her trouble he made no sign.
+
+The curtain dropped.  The first act had come to an end.
+
+"It's awfully hot here!" said the girl; "I should like to go
+out."
+
+She was very white, and she knew--for with her nerves thus
+sharpened she saw everything--that he was both uneasy and
+compunctious.
+
+At the back of the theatre an open balcony hung over the street;
+she took possession of this, and stood leaning there without a
+word, waiting for him to begin.
+
+At last she could bear it no longer.
+
+"I want to say something to you, Phil," she said.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+The defensive tone of his voice brought the colour flying to her
+cheek, the words flying to her lips: "You don't give me a chance
+to be nice to you; you haven't for ages now!"
+
+Bosinney stared down at the street.  He made no answer....
+
+June cried passionately: "You know I want to do everything for
+you--that I want to be everything to you...."
+
+A hum rose from the--street, and, piercing it with a sharp
+'ping,' the bell sounded for the raising of the curtain, June did
+not stir.  A desperate struggle was going on within her.  Should
+she put everything to the proof?  Should she challenge directly
+that influence, that attraction which was driving him away from
+her?  It was her nature to challenge, and she said: "Phil, take
+me to see the house on Sunday!"
+
+With a smile quivering and breaking on her lips, and trying, how
+hard, not to show that she was watching, she searched his face,
+saw it waver and hesitate, saw a troubled line come between his
+brows, the blood rush into his face.  He answered: "Not Sunday,
+dear; some other day!"
+
+"Why not Sunday?  I shouldn't be in the way on Sunday."
+
+He made an evident effort, and said: I have an engagement."
+
+"You are going to take...."
+
+His eyes grew angry; he shrugged his shoulders, and answered: "An
+engagement that will prevent my taking you to see the house!"
+
+June bit her lip till the blood came, and walked back to her seat
+without another word, but she could not help the tears of rage
+rolling down her face.  The house had been mercifully darkened
+for a crisis, and no one could see her trouble.
+
+Yet in this world of Forsytes let no man think himself immune
+from observation.
+
+In the third row behind, Euphemia, Nicholas's youngest daughter,
+with her married-sister, Mrs. Tweetyman, were watching.
+
+They reported at Timothy's, how they had seen June and her fiance
+at the theatre.
+
+"In the stalls?"  "No, not in the...."  "Oh! in the dress
+circle, of course.  That seemed to be quite fashionable nowadays
+with young people!"
+
+Well--not exactly.  In the....  Anyway, that engagement wouldn't
+last long.  They had never seen anyone look so thunder and
+lightningy as that little June!  With tears of enjoyment in their
+eyes, they related how she had kicked a man's hat as she returned
+to her seat in the middle of an act, and how the man had looked.
+Euphemia had a noted, silent laugh, terminating most disappoint-
+ingly in squeaks; and when Mrs. Small, holding up her hands, said:
+"My dear!  Kicked a ha-at?" she let out such anumber of these that
+she had to be recovered with smelling-salts.  As she went away
+she said to Mrs. Tweetyman:
+
+"Kicked a--ha-at!  Oh!  I shall die."
+
+For 'that little June' this evening, that was to have been 'her
+treat,' was the most miserable she had ever spent.  God knows she
+tried to stifle her pride, her suspicion, her jealousy!
+
+She parted from Bosinney at old Jolyon's door without breaking
+down; the feeling that her lover must be conquered was strong
+enough to sustain her till his retiring footsteps brought home
+the true extent of her wretchedness.
+
+The noiseless 'Sankey' let her in.  She would have slipped up to
+her own room, but old Jolyon, who had heard her entrance, was in
+the dining-room doorway.
+
+"Come in and have your milk," he said.  "It's been kept hot for
+you.  You're very late.  Where have you been?"
+
+June stood at the fireplace, with a foot on the fender and an arm
+on the mantelpiece, as her grandfather had done when he came in
+that night of the opera.  She was too near a breakdown, to care
+what she told him.
+
+"We dined at Soames's."
+
+"H'm!  the man of property!  His wife there and Bosinney?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Old Jolyon's glance was fixed on her with the penetrating gaze
+from which it was difficult to hide; but she was not looking at
+him, and when she turned her face, he dropped his scrutiny at
+once.  He had seen enough, and too much.  He bent down to lift
+the cup of milk for her from the hearth, and, turning away,
+grumbled: "You oughtn't to stay out so late; it makes you fit for
+nothing."
+
+He was invisible now behind his paper, which he turned with a
+vicious crackle; but when June came up to kiss him, he said:
+"Good-night, my darling," in a tone so tremulous and unexpected,
+that it was all the girl could do to get out of the room without
+breaking into the fit of sobbing which lasted her well on into
+the night.
+
+When the door was closed, old Jolyon dropped his paper, and
+stared long and anxiously in front of him.
+
+'The beggar!' he thought.  'I always knew she'd have trouble with
+him!'
+
+Uneasy doubts and suspicions, the more poignant that he felt
+himself powerless to check or control the march of events, came
+crowding upon him.
+
+Was the fellow going to jilt her?  He longed to go and say to
+him: "Look here, you sir!  Are you going to jilt my grand-
+daughter?"  But how could he?  Knowing little or nothing, he
+was yet certain, with his unerring astuteness, that there was
+something going on.  He suspected Bosinney of being too much at
+Montpellier Square.
+
+'This fellow,' he thought, 'may not be a scamp; his face is not a
+bad one, but he's a queer fish.  I don't know what to make of
+him.  I shall never know what to make of him!  They tell me he
+works like a nigger, but I see no good coming of it.  He's
+unpractical, he has no method.  When he comes here, he sits as
+glum as a monkey.  If I ask him what wine he'll have, he says:
+"Thanks, any wine." If I offer him a cigar, he smokes it as if it
+were a twopenny German thing.  I never see him looking at June as
+he ought to look at her; and yet, he's not after her money.  If
+she were to make a sign, he'd be off his bargain to-morrow.  But
+she won't--not she!  She'll stick to him!  She's as obstinate as
+fate--Sh'ell never let go!'
+
+Sighing deeply, he turned the paper; in its columns, perchance he
+might find consolation.
+
+And upstairs in her room June sat at her open window, where the
+spring wind came, after its revel across the Park, to cool her
+hot cheeks and burn her heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+DRIVE WITH SWITHIN
+
+
+Two lines of a certain song in a certain famous old school's
+songbook run as follows:
+
+'How the buttons on his blue frock shone, tra-la-la!
+How he carolled and he sang, like a bird!....'
+
+Swithin did not exactly carol and sing like a bird, but he felt
+almost like endeavouring to hum a tune, as he stepped out of Hyde
+Park  Mansions, and contemplated his horses drawn up before the
+door.
+
+The afternoon was as balmy as a day in June, and to complete the
+simile of the old song, he had put on a blue frock-coat,
+dispensing with an overcoat, after sending Adolf down three times
+to make sure that there was not the least suspicion of east in
+the wind; and the frock-coat was buttoned so tightly around his
+personable form, that, if the buttons did not shine, they might
+pardonably have done so.  Majestic on the pavement he fitted on a
+pair of dog-skin gloves; with his large bell-shaped top hat, and
+his great stature and bulk he looked too primeval for a Forsyte.
+His thick white hair, on which Adolf had bestowed a touch of
+pomatum, exhaled the fragrance of opoponax and cigars--the
+celebrated Swithin brand, for which he paid one hundred and,
+forty shillings the hundred, and of which old Jolyon had unkindly
+said, he wouldn't smoke them as a gift; they wanted the stomach
+of a horse!
+
+"Adolf!"
+
+"Sare!"
+
+"The new plaid rug!"
+
+He would never teach that fellow to look smart; and Mrs. Soames
+he felt sure, had an eye!
+
+"The phaeton hood down; I am going--to--drive--a--lady!"
+
+A pretty woman would want to show off her frock; and well--he was
+going to drive a lady!  It was like a new beginning to the good
+old days.
+
+Ages since he had driven a woman!  The last time, if he
+remembered, it had been Juley; the poor old soul had been as
+nervous as a cat the whole time, and so put him out of patience
+that, as he dropped her in the Bayswater Road, he had said: "Well
+I'm d---d if I ever drive you again!"  And he never had, not he!
+
+Going up to his horses' heads, he examined their bits; not that
+he knew anything about bits--he didn't pay his coachman sixty
+pounds a  year to do his work for him, that had never been his
+principle.  Indeed, his reputation as a horsey man rested mainly
+on the fact that once, on Derby Day, he had been welshed by some
+thimble-riggers.  But someone at the Club, after seeing him drive
+his greys up to the door--he always drove grey horses, you got
+more style for the money, some thought--had called him 'Four-
+in-hand Forsyte.' The name having reached his ears through that
+fellow Nicholas Treffry, old Jolyon's dead partner, the great
+driving man notorious for more carriage accidents than any man in
+the kingdom--Swithin had ever after conceived it right to act up
+to it.  The name had taken his fancy, not because he had ever
+driven four-in-hand, or was ever likely to, but because of
+something distinguished in the sound.  Four-in-hand Forsyte!  Not
+bad!  Born too soon, Swithin had missed his vocation.  Coming
+upon London twenty years later, he could not have failed to have
+become a stockbroker, but at the time when he was obliged to
+select, this great profession had not as yet became the chief
+glory of the upper-middle class.  He had literally been forced
+into land agency.
+
+Once in the driving seat, with the reins handed to him, and
+blinking over his pale old cheeks in the full sunlight, he took a
+slow look round--Adolf was already up behind; the cockaded groom
+at the horses' heads stood ready to let go; everything was
+prepared for the signal, and Swithin gave it.  The equipage
+dashed forward, and before you could say Jack Robinson, with a
+rattle and flourish drew up at Soames' door.
+
+Irene came out at once, and stepped in--he afterward described it
+at Timothy's--"as light as--er--Taglioni, no fuss about it, no
+wanting this or wanting that;" and above all, Swithin dwelt on
+this, staring at Mrs. Septimus in a way that disconcerted her a
+good deal, "no silly nervousness!"  To Aunt Hester he portrayed
+Irene's hat.  "Not one of your great flopping things, sprawling
+about, and catching the dust, that women are so fond of nowadays,
+but a neat little--"he made a circular motion of his hand, "white
+veil--capital taste."
+
+"What was it made of?" inquired Aunt Hester, who manifested a
+languid but permanent excitement at any mention of dress.
+
+"Made of?" returned Swithin; "now how should I know?"
+
+He sank into silence so profound that Aunt Hester began to be
+afraid he had fallen into a trance.  She did not try to rouse him
+herself, it not being her custom.
+
+'I wish somebody would come,' she thought; 'I don't like the look
+of him!'
+
+But suddenly Swithin returned to life.  "Made of" he wheezed out
+slowly, "what should it be made of?"
+
+They had not gone four miles before Swithin received the
+impression that Irene liked driving with him.  Her face was so
+soft behind that white veil, and her dark eyes shone so in the
+spring light, and whenever he spoke she raised them to him and
+smiled.
+
+On Saturday morning Soames had found her at her writing-table
+with a note written to Swithin, putting him off.  Why did she
+want to put him off? he asked.  She might put her own people off
+when she liked, he would not have her putting off his people!
+
+She had looked at him intently, had torn up the note, and said:
+"Very well!"
+
+And then she began writing another.  He took a casual glance
+presently, and saw that it was addressed to Bosinney.
+
+"What are you writing to him about?" he asked.
+
+Irene, looking at him again with that intent look, said quietly:
+"Something he wanted me to do for him!"
+
+"Humph!" said Soames,--"Commissions!"
+
+"You'll have your work cut out if you begin that sort of thing!"
+He said no more.
+
+Swithin opened his eyes at the mention of Robin Hill; it was a
+long way for his horses, and he always dined at half-past seven,
+before the rush at the Club began; the new chef took more trouble
+with an early dinner--a lazy rascal!
+
+He would like to have a look at the house, however.  A house
+appealed to any Forsyte, and especially to one who had been an
+auctioneer.  After all he said the distance was nothing.  When he
+was a younger man he had had rooms at Richmond for many years,
+kept his carriage and pair there, and drove them up and down to
+business every day of his life.
+
+Four-in-hand Forsyte they called him!  His T-cart, his horses had
+been known from Hyde Park Corner to the Star and Garter.  The
+Duke of Z....  wanted to get hold of them, would have given him
+double the money, but he had kept them; know a good thing when
+you have it, eh?  A look of solemn pride came portentously on his
+shaven square old face, he rolled his head in his stand-up
+collar, like a turkey-cock preening himself.
+
+She was really--a charming woman!  He enlarged upon her frock
+afterwards to Aunt Juley, who held up her hands at his way of
+putting it.
+
+Fitted her like a skin--tight as a drum; that was how he liked
+'em, all of a piece, none of your daverdy, scarecrow women!  He
+gazed at Mrs. Septimus Small, who took after James--long and
+thin.
+
+"There's style about her," he went on, "fit for a king!  And
+she's so quiet with it too!"
+
+"She seems to have made quite a conquest of you, any way,"
+drawled Aunt Hester from her corner.
+
+Swithin heard extremely well when anybody attacked him.
+
+"What's that?" he said.  "I know a--pretty--woman when I see one,
+and all I can say is, I don't see the young man about that's fit
+for her; but perhaps--you--do, come, perhaps--you-do!"
+
+"Oh?" murmured Aunt Hester, "ask Juley!"
+
+Long before they reached Robin Hill, however, the unaccustomed
+airing had made him terribly sleepy; he drove with his eyes
+closed, a life-time of deportment alone keeping his tall and
+bulky form from falling askew.
+
+Bosinney, who was watching, came out to meet them, and all three
+entered the house together; Swithin in front making play with a
+stout gold-mounted Malacca cane, put into his hand by Adolf, for
+his knees were feeling the effects of their long stay in the same
+position.  He had assumed his fur coat, to guard against the
+draughts of the unfinished house.
+
+The staircase--he said--was handsome! the baronial style!  They
+would want some statuary about!  He came to a standstill between
+the columns of the doorway into the inner court, and held out his
+cane inquiringly.
+
+What was this to be--this vestibule, or whatever they called it?
+But gazing at the skylight, inspiration came to him.
+
+"Ah! the billiard-room!"
+
+When told it was to be a tiled court with plants in the centre,
+he turned to Irene:
+
+"Waste this on plants?  You take my advice and have a billiard
+table here!"
+
+Irene smiled.  She had lifted her veil, banding it like a nun's
+coif across her forehead, and the smile of her dark eyes below
+this seemed to Swithin more charming than ever.  He nodded.  She
+would take his advice he saw.
+
+He had little to say of the drawing or dining-rooms, which he
+described as 'spacious"; but fell into such raptures as he
+permitted to a man of his dignity, in the wine-cellar, to which
+he descended by stone steps, Bosinney going first with a light.
+
+"You'll have room here," he said, "for six or seven hundred.
+dozen--a very pooty little cellar!"
+
+Bosinney having expressed the wish to show them the house from
+the copse below, Swithin came to a stop.
+
+"There's a fine view from here," he remarked; "you haven't such a
+thing as a chair?"
+
+A chair was brought him from Bosinney's tent.
+
+"You go down," he said blandly; "you two!  I'll sit here and look
+at the view."
+
+He sat down by the oak tree, in the sun; square and upright, with
+one hand stretched out, resting on the nob of his cane, the other
+planted on his knee; his fur coat thrown open, his hat, roofing
+with its flat top the pale square of his face; his stare, very
+blank, fixed on the landscape.
+
+He nodded to them as they went, off down through the fields.  He
+was, indeed, not sorry to be left thus for a quiet moment of
+reflection.  The air was balmy, not too much heat in the sun; the
+prospect a fine one, a remarka....  His head fell a little to one
+side; he jerked it up and thought: Odd!  He--ah!  They were
+waving to him from the bottom!  He put up his hand, and moved it
+more than once.  They were active--the prospect was remar....
+His head fell to the left, he jerked it up at once; it fell to
+the right.  It remained there; he was asleep.
+
+And asleep, a sentinel on the--top of the rise, he  appeared to
+rule over this prospect--remarkable--like some image blocked out
+by the special artist, of primeval Forsytes in pagan days, to
+record the domination of mind over matter!
+
+And all the unnumbered generations of his yeoman ancestors, wont
+of a Sunday to stand akimbo surveying their little plots of land,
+their grey unmoving eyes hiding their instinct with its hidden
+roots of violence, their instinct for possession to the exclusion
+of all the world--all these unnumbered generations seemed to sit
+there with him on the top of the rise.
+
+But from him, thus slumbering, his jealous Forsyte spirit
+travelled far, into God-knows-what jungle of fancies; with those
+two young people, to see what they were doing down there in the
+copse--in the copse where the spring was running riot with the
+scent of sap and bursting buds, the song of birds innumerable, a
+carpet of bluebells and sweet growing things, and the sun caught
+like gold in the tops of the trees; to see what they were doing,
+walking along there so close together on the path that was too
+narrow; walking along there so close that they were always
+touching; to watch Irene's eyes, like dark thieves, stealing the
+heart out of the spring.  And a great unseen chaperon, his spirit
+was there, stopping with them to look at the little furry corpse
+of a mole, not dead an hour, with his mushroom--and silver coat
+untouched by the rain or dew; watching over Irene's bent head,
+and the soft look of her pitying eyes; and over that young man's
+head, gazing at her so hard, so strangely.  Walking on with them,
+too, across the open space where a wood-cutter had been at work,
+where the bluebells were trampled down, and a trunk had swayed
+and staggered down from its gashed stump.  Climbing it with them,
+over, and on to the very edge of the copse, whence there
+stretched an undiscovered country, from far away in which came
+the sounds, 'Cuckoo-cuckoo!'
+
+Silent, standing with them there, and uneasy at their silence!
+Very queer, very strange!
+
+Then back again, as though guilty, through the wood--back to the
+cutting, still silent, amongst the songs of birds that never
+ceased, and the wild scent--hum! what was it--like that herb
+they put in--back to the log across the path....
+
+And then unseen, uneasy, flapping above them, trying to make
+noises, his Forsyte spirit watched her balanced on the log, her
+pretty figure swaying, smiling down at that young man gazing up
+with such strange, shining eyes, slipping now--a--ah! falling,
+o--oh!  sliding--down his breast; her soft, warm body clutched,
+her head bent back from his lips; his kiss; her recoil; his cry:
+"You must know--I love you!"  Must know--indeed, a pretty...?
+Love!  Hah!
+
+Swithin awoke; virtue had gone out of him.  He had a taste in his
+mouth.  Where was he?
+
+Damme!  He had been asleep!
+
+He had dreamed something about a new soup, with a taste of mint
+in it.
+
+Those young people--where had they got to?  His left leg had pins
+and needles.
+
+"Adolf!"  The rascal was not there; the rascal was asleep
+somewhere.
+
+He stood up, tall, square, bulky in his fur, looking anxiously
+down over the fields, and presently he saw them coming.
+
+Irene was in front; that young fellow--what had they nicknamed
+him--'The Buccaneer?' looked precious hangdog there behind her;
+had got a flea in his ear, he shouldn't wonder.  Serve him right,
+taking her down all that way to look at the house!  The proper
+place to look at a house from was the lawn.
+
+They saw him.  He extended his arm, and moved it spasmodically to
+encourage them.  But they had stopped.  What were they standing
+there for, talking--talking?  They came on again.  She had been,
+giving him a rub, he had not the least doubt of it, and no
+wonder, over a house like that--a great ugly thing, not the sort
+of house be was accustomed to.
+
+He looked intently at their faces, with his pale, immovable
+stare.  That young man looked very queer!
+
+"You'll never make anything of this!" he said tartly, pointing at
+the mansion;--"too newfangled!"
+
+Bosinney gazed at him as though he had not heard; and Swithin
+afterwards described him to, Aunt Hester as "an extravagant sort
+of fellow very odd way of looking at you--a bumpy beggar!"
+
+What gave rise to this sudden piece of psychology he did not
+state; possibly Bosinney's, prominent forehead and cheekbones and
+chin, or something hungry in his face, which quarrelled with
+Swithin's conception of the calm satiety that should characterize
+the perfect gentleman.
+
+He brightened up at the mention of tea.  He had a contempt for
+tea--his brother Jolyon had been in tea; made a lot of money by
+it--but he was so thirsty, and had such a taste in his mouth,
+that he was prepared to drink anything.  He longed to inform
+Irene of the taste in his mouth--she was so sympathetic--but it
+would not be a, distinguished thing to do; he rolled his tongue
+round, and faintly smacked it against his palate.
+
+In a far corner of the tent Adolf was bending his cat-like
+moustaches over a kettle.  He left it at once to draw the cork of
+a pint-bottle of champagne.  Swithin smiled, and, nodding at
+Bosinney, said: "Why, you're quite a Monte Cristo!"  This
+celebrated novel--one of the half-dozen he had read--had produced
+an extraordinary impression on his mind.
+
+Taking his glass from the table, he held it away from him to
+scrutinize the colour; thirsty as he was, it was not likely that
+he was going to drink trash!  Then, placing it to his lips, he
+took a sip.
+
+"A very nice wine," he said at last, passing it before his nose;
+"not the equal of my Heidsieck!"
+
+It was at this moment that the idea came to him which he
+afterwards imparted at Timothy's in this nutshell: "I shouldn't
+wonder a bit if that architect chap were sweet upon Mrs. Soames!"
+
+And from this moment his pale, round eyes never ceased to bulge
+with the interest of his discovery.
+
+"The fellow," he said to Mrs. Septimus, "follows her about with
+his eyes like a dog--the bumpy beggar!  I don't wonder at it--
+she's a very charming woman, and, I should say, the pink of
+discretion!"  A vague consciousness of, perfume caging about
+Irene, like that from a flower with half-closed petals and a
+passionate heart, moved him to the creation of this image.  "But
+I wasn't sure of it," he said, "till I saw him pick up her
+handkerchief."
+
+Mrs. Small's eyes boiled with excitement.
+
+"And did he give it her back?" she asked.
+
+"Give it back?" said Swithin: "I saw him slobber on it when he
+thought I wasn't looking!"
+
+Mrs. Small gasped--too interested to speak.
+
+"But she gave him no encouragement," went on Swithin; he stopped,
+and stared for a minute or two in the way that alarmed Aunt
+Hester so--he had suddenly recollected that, as they were
+starting back in the-phaeton, she had given Bosinney her hand a
+second time, and let it stay there too....  He had touched his
+horses smartly with the whip, anxious to get her all to himself.
+But she had looked back, and she had not answered his first
+question; neither had he been able to see her face--she had kept
+it hanging down.
+
+There is somewhere a picture, which Swithin has not seen, of a
+man sitting on a rock, and by him, immersed in the still, green
+water, a sea-nymph lying on her back, with her hand on her naked
+breast.  She has a half-smile on her face--a smile of hopeless
+surrender and of secret joy.
+
+Seated by Swithin's side, Irene may have been smiling like that.
+
+When, warmed by champagne, he had her all to himself, he
+unbosomed himself of his wrongs; of his smothered resentment
+against the new chef at the club; his worry over the house in
+Wigmore Street, where the rascally tenant had gone bankrupt
+through helping his brother-in-law as if charity did not begin at
+home; of his deafness, too, and that pain he sometimes got in his
+right side.  She listened, her eyes swimming under their lids.
+He thought she was thinking deeply of his troubles, and pitied
+himself terribly.  Yet in his fur coat, with frogs across the
+breast, his top hat aslant, driving this beautiful woman, he had
+never felt more distinguished.
+
+A coster, however, taking his girl for a Sunday airing, seemed to
+have the same impression about himself.  This person had flogged
+his donkey into a gallop alongside, and sat, upright as a
+waxwork, in his shallopy chariot, his chin settled pompously on a
+red handkerchief, like Swithin's on his full cravat; while his
+girl, with the ends of a fly-blown boa floating out behind, aped
+a woman of fashion.  Her swain moved a stick with a ragged bit of
+string dangling from the end, reproducing with strange fidelity
+the circular flourish of Swithin's whip, and rolled his head at
+his lady with a leer that had a weird likeness to Swithin's
+primeval stare.
+
+Though for a time unconscious of the lowly ruffian's presence,
+Swithin presently took it into his head that he was being guyed.
+He laid his whip-lash across the mares flank.  The two chariots,
+however, by some unfortunate fatality continued abreast.
+Swithin's yellow, puffy face grew red; he raised his whip to lash
+the costermonger, but was saved from so far forgetting his
+dignity by a special intervention of Providence.  A carriage
+driving out through a gate forced phaeton and donkey-cart into
+proximity; the wheels grated, the lighter vehicle skidded, and
+was overturned.
+
+Swithin did not look round.  On no account would he have pulled
+up to help the ruffian.  Serve him right if he had broken his
+neck!
+
+But he could not if he would.  The greys had taken alarm.  The
+phaeton swung from side to side, and people raised frightened
+faces as they went dashing past.  Swithin's great arms, stretched
+at full length, tugged at the reins.  His cheeks were puffed, his
+lips compressed, his swollen face was of a dull, angry red.
+
+Irene had her hand on the rail, and at every lurch she gripped it
+tightly.  Swithin heard her ask:
+
+"Are we going to have an accident, Uncle Swithin?"
+
+He gasped out between his pants: "It's nothing; a--little fresh!"
+
+"I've never been in an accident."
+
+"Don't you move!"  He took a look at--her.  She was smiling,
+perfectly calm.  "Sit still," he repeated.  "Never fear, I'll get
+you home!"
+
+And in the midst of all his terrible efforts, he was surprised to
+hear her answer in a voice not like her own:
+
+"I don't care if I never get home!"
+
+The carriage giving a terrific lurch, Swithin's exclamation was
+jerked back into his throat.  The horses, winded by the rise of a
+hill, now steadied to a trot, and finally stopped of their own
+accord.
+
+"When"--Swithin described it at Timothy's--"I pulled 'em up,
+there she was as cool as myself.  God bless my soul! she behaved
+as if she didn't care whether she broke her neck or not!  What
+was it she said: 'I don't care if I never get home?"  Leaning over
+the handle of his cane, he wheezed out, to Mrs. Small's terror:
+"And I'm not altogether surprised, with a finickin' feller like
+young Soames for a husband!"
+
+It did not occur to him to wonder what Bosinney had done after
+they had left him there alone; whether he had gone wandering
+about like the dog to which Swithin had compared him; wandering
+down to that copse where the spring was still in riot, the cuckoo
+still calling from afar; gone down there with her handkerchief
+pressed to lips, its fragrance mingling with the scent of mint
+and thyme.  Gone down there with such a wild, exquisite pain in
+his heart that he could have cried out among the trees.  Or what,
+indeed, the fellow had done.  In fact, till he came to Timothy's,
+Swithin had forgotten all about him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+JAMES GOES TO SEE FOR HIMSELF
+
+
+Those ignorant of Forsyte 'Change would not, perhaps, foresee all
+the stir made by Irene's visit to the house.
+
+After Swithin had related at Timothy's the full story of his
+memorable drive, the same, with the least suspicion of curiosity,
+the merest touch of malice, and a real desire to do good, was
+passed on to June.
+
+"And what a dreadful thing to say, my dear!" ended Aunt Juley;
+"that about not going home.  What did she mean?"
+
+It was a strange recital for the girl.  She heard it flushing
+painfully, and, suddenly, with a curt handshake, took her
+departure.
+
+"Almost rude!" Mrs. Small said to Aunt Hester, when June was
+gone.
+
+The proper construction was put on her reception of the news.
+She was upset.  Something was therefore very wrong.  Odd!  She
+and Irene had been such friends!
+
+It all tallied too well with whispers and hints that had been
+going about for some time past.  Recollections of Euphemia's
+account of the visit to the theatre--Mr. Bosinney always at
+Soames's?  Oh, indeed!  Yes, of course, he would be about the
+house!  Nothing open.  Only upon the greatest, the most important
+provocation was it necessary to say anything open on Forsyte
+'Change.  This machine was too nicely adjusted; a hint, the
+merest trifling expression of regret or doubt, sufficed to set
+the family soul so sympathetic--vibrating.  No one desired that
+harm should come of these vibrations--far from it; they were set
+in motion with the best intentions, with the feeling, that each
+member of the family had a stake in the family soul.
+
+And much kindness lay at the bottom of the gossip; it would
+frequently result in visits of condolence being made, in
+accordance with the customs of Society, thereby conferring a real
+benefit upon the sufferers, and affording consolation to the
+sound, who felt pleasantly that someone at all events was
+suffering from that from which they themselves were not
+suffering.  In fact, it was simply a desire to keep things
+well-aired, the desire which animates the Public Press, that
+brought James, for instance, into communication with Mrs.
+Septimus, Mrs. Septimus, with the little Nicholases, the little
+Nicholases with who-knows-whom, and so on.  That great class to
+which they had risen, and now belonged, demanded a certain
+candour, a still more certain reticence.  This combination
+guaranteed their membership.
+
+Many of the younger Forsytes felt, very naturally, and would
+openly declare, that they did not want their affairs pried into;
+but so powerful was the invisible, magnetic current of family
+gossip, that for the life of them they could not help knowing all
+about everything.  It was felt to be hopeless.
+
+One of them (young Roger) had made an heroic attempt to free the
+rising generation, by speaking of Timothy as an 'old cat.' The
+effort had justly recoiled upon himself; the words, coming round
+in the most delicate way to Aunt Juley's ears, were repeated by
+her in a shocked voice to Mrs. Roger, whence they returned again
+to young Roger.
+
+And, after all, it was only the wrong-doers who suffered; as, for
+instance, George, when he lost all that money playing billiards;
+or young Roger himself, when he was so dreadfully near to
+marrying the girl to whom, it was whispered, he was already
+married by the laws of Nature; or again Irene, who was thought,
+rather than said, to be in danger.
+
+All this was not only pleasant but salutary.  And it made so many
+hours go lightly at Timothy's in the Bayswater Road; so many
+hours that must otherwise have been sterile and heavy to those
+three who lived there; and Timothy's was but one of hundreds of
+such homes in this City of London--the homes of neutral persons
+of the secure classes, who are out of the battle themselves, and
+must find their reason for existing, in the battles of others.
+
+But for the sweetness of family gossip, it must indeed have been
+lonely there.  Rumours and tales, reports, surmises--were they
+not the children of the house, as dear and precious as the
+prattling babes the brother and sisters had missed in their own
+journey?  To talk about them, was as near as they could get to
+the possession of all those children and grandchildren, after
+whom their soft hearts yearned.  For though it is doubtful
+whether Timothy's heart yearned, it is indubitable that at the
+arrival of each fresh Forsyte child he was quite upset.
+
+Useless for young Roger to say, "Old cat!" for Euphemia to hold up
+her hands and cry: "Oh! those three!" and break into her silent
+laugh with the squeak at the end.  Useless, and not too kind.
+
+The situation which at this stage might seem, and especially to
+Forsyte eyes, strange--not to  say 'impossible'--was, in view of
+certain facts, not so strange after all.  Some things had been
+lost sight of.  And first, in the security bred of many harmless
+marriages, it had been forgotten that Love is no hot-house
+flower, but a wild plant, born of  a wet night, born of an hour
+of sunshine; sprung  from wild seed, blown along the road by a
+wild wind.  A wild plant that, when it blooms by chance within
+the hedge of our gardens, we call a flower; and when it blooms
+outside we call a  weed; but, flower or weed, whose scent and
+colour  are always, wild!  And further--the facts and figures of
+their own lives being against the perception of this truth--it
+was not generally recognised by Forsytes that, where, this wild
+plant springs, men and women  are but moths around the pale,
+flame-like  blossom.
+
+It was long since young Jolyon's escapade--there was danger of a
+tradition again arising that people in their position never cross
+the hedge to pluck that flower; that one could reckon on having
+love, like measles, once in due season, and getting over it
+comfortably for all time--as with measles, on a soothing mixture
+of butter and honey--in the arms of wedlock.
+
+Of all those whom this strange rumour about Bosinney and Mrs.
+Soames reached, James was the most affected.  He had long
+forgotten how he had hovered, lanky and pale, in side whiskers of
+chestnut hue, round Emily, in the days of his own courtship.  He
+had long forgotten the small house in the purlieus of Mayfair,
+where he had spent the early days of his married life, or rather,
+he had long forgotten the early days, not the small house,--a
+Forsyte never forgot a house--he had afterwards sold it at a
+clear profit of four hundred pounds.
+
+He had long, forgotten those days, with their hopes and fears and
+doubts about the prudence of the match (for Emily, though pretty,
+had nothing, and he himself at that time was making a bare
+thousand a year), and that strange, irresistible attraction which
+had drawn him on, till he felt he must die if he could not marry
+the girl with the fair hair, looped so neatly back, the fair arms
+emerging from a skin-tight bodice, the fair form decorously
+shielded by a cage of really stupendous circumference.
+
+James had passed through the fire, but he had passed also through
+the river of years which washes out the fire; he had experienced
+the saddest experience of all--forgetfulness of what it was like
+to be in love.
+
+Forgotten!  Forgotten so long, that he had forgotten even that he
+had forgotten.
+
+And now this rumour had come upon him, this rumour about his
+son's wife; very vague, a shadow dodging among the palpable,
+straightforward appearances of things, unreal, unintelligible as
+a ghost, but carrying with it, like a ghost, inexplicable terror.
+
+He tried to bring it home to his mind, but it was no more use
+than trying to apply to himself one of those tragedies he read of
+daily in his evening paper.  He simply could not.  There could be
+nothing in it.  It was all their nonsense.  She didn't get on
+with Soames as well as she might, but she was a good little
+thing--a good little thing!
+
+Like the not inconsiderable majority of men, James relished a
+nice little bit of scandal, and would say, in a matter-of-fact
+tone, licking his lips, "Yes, yes--she and young Dyson; they tell
+me they're living at Monte Carlo!"
+
+But the significance of an affair of this sort--of its past, its
+present, or its future--had never struck him.  What it meant,
+what torture and raptures had gone to its construction, what
+slow, overmastering fate had lurked within the facts, very naked,
+sometimes sordid, but generally spicy, presented to his gaze.  He
+was not in the habit of blaming, praising, drawing deductions, or
+generalizing at all about such things; he simply listened rather
+greedily, and repeated what he was told, finding considerable
+benefit from the practice, as from the consumption of a sherry
+and bitters before a meal.
+
+Now, however, that such a thing--or rather the rumour, the breath
+of it--had come near him personally, he felt as in a fog, which
+filled his mouth full of a bad, thick flavour, and made it
+difficult to draw breath.
+
+A scandal!  A possible scandal!
+
+To repeat this word to himself thus was the only way in which he
+could focus or make it thinkable.  He had forgotten the
+sensations necessary for understanding the progress, fate, or
+meaning of any such business; he simply could no longer grasp the
+possibilities of people running any risk for the sake of passion.
+
+Amongst all those persons of his acquaintance, who went into the
+City day after day and did their business there, whatever it was,
+and in their leisure moments bought shares, and houses, and ate
+dinners, and played games, as he was told, it would have seemed
+to him ridiculous to suppose that there were any who would run
+risks for the sake of anything so recondite, so figurative, as
+passion.
+
+Passion!  He seemed, indeed, to have heard of it, and rules such
+as 'A young man and a young woman ought never to be trusted
+together' were fixed in his mind as the parallels of latitude are
+fixed on a map (for all Forsytes, when it comes to 'bed-rock'
+matters of fact, have quite a fine taste in realism); but as to
+anything else--well, he could only appreciate it at all through
+the catch-word 'scandal.'
+
+Ah! but there was no truth in it--could not be.  He was not
+afraid; she was really a good little thing.  But there it was
+when you got a thing like that into your mind.  And James was of
+a nervous temperament--one of those men whom things will not
+leave alone, who suffer tortures from anticipation and
+indecision.  For fear of letting something slip that he might
+otherwise secure, he was physically unable to make up his mind
+until absolutely certain that, by not making it up, he would
+suffer loss.
+
+In life, however, there were many occasions when the business of
+making up his mind did not even rest with himself, and this was
+one of them.
+
+What could he do?  Talk it over with Soames?  That would only
+make matters worse.  And, after all, there was nothing in it, he
+felt sure.
+
+It was all that house.  He had mistrusted the idea from the
+first.  What did Soames want to go into the country for?  And, if
+he must go spending a lot of money building himself a house, why
+not have a first-rate man, instead of this young Bosinney, whom
+nobody knew anything about?  He had told them, how it would be.
+And he had heard that the house was costing Soames a pretty penny
+beyond what he had reckoned on spending.
+
+This fact, more than any other, brought home to James the real
+danger of the situation.  It was always like this with these
+'artistic' chaps; a sensible man should have nothing to say to
+them.  He had warned Irene, too.  And see what had come of it!
+
+And it suddenly sprang into James's mind that he ought to go and
+see for himself.  In the midst of that fog of uneasiness in which
+his mind was enveloped the notion that he could go and look at
+the house afforded him inexplicable satisfaction.  It may have
+been simply the decision to do something--more possibly the fact
+that he was going to look at a house--that gave him relief.
+He felt that in staring at an edifice of bricks and mortar, of
+wood and stone, built by the suspected man himself, he would be
+looking into the heart of that rumour about Irene.
+
+Without saying a word, therefore, to anyone, he took a hansom to
+the station and proceeded by train to Robin Hill; thence--there
+being no 'flies,' in accordance with the custom of the
+neighbourhood--he found himself obliged to walk.
+
+He started slowly up the hill, his angular knees and high
+shoulders bent complainingly, his eyes fixed on his feet, yet,
+neat for all that, in his high hat and his frock-coat, on which
+was the speckless gloss imparted by perfect superintendence.
+Emily saw to that; that is, she did not, of course, see to it--
+people of good position not seeing to each other's buttons, and
+Emily was of good position--but she saw that the butler saw to
+it.
+
+He had to ask his way three times; on each occasion he repeated
+the directions given him, got the man to repeat them, then
+repeated them a second time, for he was naturally of a talkative
+disposition, and one could not be too careful in a new
+neighbourhood.
+
+He kept assuring them that it was a new house he was looking for;
+it was only, however, when he was shown the roof through the
+trees that he could feel really satisfied that he had not been
+directed entirely wrong.
+
+A heavy sky seemed to cover the world with the grey whiteness of
+a whitewashed ceiling.  There was no freshness or fragrance in
+the air.  On such a day even British workmen scarcely cared to do
+more then they were obliged, and moved about their business
+without the drone of talk which whiles away the pangs of labour.
+
+Through spaces of the unfinished house, shirt-sleeved figures
+worked slowly, and sounds arose--spasmodic knockings, the
+scraping of metal, the sawing of wood, with the rumble of
+wheelbarrows along boards; now and again the foreman's dog,
+tethered by a string to an oaken beam, whimpered feebly, with a
+sound like the singing of a kettle.
+
+The fresh-fitted window-panes, daubed each with a white patch in
+the centre, stared out at James like the eyes of a blind dog.
+
+And the building chorus went on, strident and mirthless under the
+grey-white sky.  But the thrushes, hunting amongst the fresh-
+turned earth for worms, were silent quite.
+
+James picked his way among the heaps of gravel--the drive was
+being laid--till he came opposite the porch.  Here he stopped and
+raised his eyes.  There was but little to see from this point of
+view, and that little he took in at once; but he stayed in this
+position many minutes, and who shall know of what he thought.
+
+His china-blue eyes under white eyebrows that jutted out in
+little horns, never stirred; the long upper lip of his wide
+mouth, between the fine white whiskers, twitched once or twice;
+it was easy to see from that anxious rapt expression, whence
+Soames derived the handicapped look which sometimes came upon his
+face.  James might have been saying to himself: 'I don't know--
+life's a tough job.'
+
+In this position Bosinney surprised him.
+
+James brought his eyes down from whatever bird's-nest they had
+been looking for in the sky to Bosinney's face, on which was a
+kind of humorous scorn.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Forsyte?  Come down to see for yourself?"
+
+It was exactly what James, as we know, had come for, and he was
+made correspondingly uneasy.  He held out his hand, however,
+saying:
+
+"How are you?" without looking at Bosinney.
+
+The latter made way for him with an ironical smile.
+
+James scented something suspicious in this courtesy.  "I should
+like to walk round the outside first," he said, "and see what
+you've been doing!"
+
+A flagged terrace of rounded stones with a list of two or three
+inches to port had been laid round the south-east and south-west
+sides of the house, and ran with a bevelled edge into mould,
+which was in preparation for being turfed; along this terrace
+James led the way.
+
+"Now what did this cost?" he asked, when he saw the terrace
+extending round the corner.
+
+"What should you think?" inquired Bosinney.
+
+"How should I know?" replied James somewhat nonplussed; "two or
+three hundred, I dare say!"
+
+"The exact sum!"
+
+James gave him a sharp look, but the architect appeared
+unconscious, and he put the answer down to mishearing.
+
+On arriving at the garden entrance, he stopped to look at the
+view.
+
+"That ought to come down," he said, pointing to the oak-tree.
+
+"You think so?  You think that with the tree there you don't get
+enough view for your money."
+
+Again James eyed him suspiciously--this young man had a peculiar
+way of putting things: "Well!" he said, with a perplexed,
+nervous, emphasis, "I don't see what you want with a tree."
+
+"It shall come down to-morrow," said Bosinney.
+
+James was alarmed.  "Oh," he said, "don't go saying I said it was
+to come down!  I know nothing about it!"
+
+"No?"
+
+James went on in a fluster: "Why, what should I know about it?
+It's nothing to do with me!  You do it on your own
+responsibility."
+
+"You'll allow me to mention your name?"
+
+James grew more and more alarmed: "I don't know what you want
+mentioning my name for," he muttered; "you'd better leave the
+tree alone.  It's not your tree!"
+
+He took out a silk handkerchief and wiped his brow.  They entered
+the house.  Like Swithin, James was impressed by the inner
+court-yard.
+
+You must have spent a douce of a lot of money here," he said,
+after staring at the columns and gallery for some time.  "Now,
+what did it cost to put up those columns?"
+
+"I can't tell you off-hand," thoughtfully answered Bosinney, "but
+I know it was a deuce of a lot!"
+
+"I should think so," said James.  "I should...."  He caught the
+architect's eye, and broke off.  And now, whenever he came to
+anything of which he desired to know the cost, he stifled that
+curiosity.
+
+Bosinney appeared determined that he should see everything, and
+had not James been of too 'noticing=a nature, he would
+certainly have found himself going round the house a second time.
+He seemed so anxious to be asked questions, too, that James felt
+he must be on his guard.  He began to suffer from his exertions,
+for, though wiry enough for a man of his long build, he was
+seventy-five years old.
+
+He grew discouraged; he seemed no nearer to anything, had not
+obtained from his inspection any of the knowledge he had vaguely
+hoped for.  He had merely increased his dislike and mistrust of
+this young man, who had tired him out with his politeness, and in
+whose manner he now certainly detected mockery.
+
+The fellow was sharper than he had thought, and better-looking
+than he had hoped.  He had a--a 'don't care' appearance that
+James, to whom risk was the most intolerable thing in life, did
+not appreciate; a peculiar smile, too, coming when least
+expected; and very queer eyes.  He reminded James, as he said
+afterwards, of a hungry cat.  This was as near as he could get,
+in conversation with Emily, to a description of the peculiar
+exasperation, velvetiness, and mockery, of which Bosinney's
+manner had been composed.
+
+At last, having seen all that was to be seen, he came out again
+at the door where he had gone in; and now, feeling that he was
+wasting time and strength and money, all for nothing, he took the
+courage of a Forsyte in both hands, and, looking sharply at
+Bosinney, said:
+
+"I dare say you see a good deal of my daughter-in-law; now, what
+does she think of the house?  But she hasn't seen it, I suppose?"
+
+This he said, knowing all about Irene's visit not, of course,
+that there was anything in the visit, except that extraordinary
+remark she had made about 'not caring to get home'--and the story
+of how June had taken the news!
+
+He had determined, by this way of putting the question, to give
+Bosinney a chance, as he said to himself.
+
+The latter was long in answering, but kept his eyes with
+uncomfortable steadiness on James.
+
+"She has seen the house, but I can't tell you what she thinks of,
+it."
+
+Nervous and baffled, James was constitutionally prevented from
+letting the matter drop.
+
+"Oh!" he said, "she has seen it?  Soames brought her down, I
+suppose?"
+
+Bosinney smilingly replied: "Oh, no!"
+
+"What, did she come down alone?"
+
+"Oh, no!"
+
+"Then--who brought her?"
+
+"I really don't know whether I ought to tell you who brought
+her."
+
+To James, who knew that it was Swithin, this answer appeared
+incomprehensible.
+
+"Why!" he stammered, "you know that...." but he stopped, suddenly
+perceiving his danger.
+
+"Well," he said, "if you don't want to tell me I suppose you
+won't!  Nobody tells me anything."
+
+Somewhat to his surprise Bosinney asked him a question.
+
+"By the by," he said, "could you tell me if there are likely to
+be any more of you coming down?  I should like to be on the
+spot!"
+
+"Any more?" said James bewildered, "who should there be more?  I
+don't know of any more.  Good-bye?"
+
+Looking at the ground he held out his hand, crossed the palm of
+it with Bosinney's, and taking his umbrella just above the silk,
+walked away along the terrace.
+
+Before he turned the corner he glanced back, and saw Bosinney
+following him slowly--'slinking along the wall' as he put it to
+himself, 'like a great cat.' He paid no attention when the young
+fellow raised his hat.
+
+Outside the drive, and out of sight, he slackened his pace still
+more.  Very slowly, more bent than when he came, lean, hungry,
+and disheartened, he made his way back to the station.
+
+The Buccaneer, watching him go so sadly home, felt sorry perhaps
+for his behaviour to the old man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+SOAMES AND BOSINNEY CORRESPOND
+
+
+James said nothing to his son of this visit to the house; but,
+having occasion to go to Timothy's on morning on a matter
+connected with a drainage scheme which was being forced by the
+sanitary authorities on his, brother, he mentioned it there.
+
+It was not, he said, a bad house.  He could see that a good deal
+could be made of it.  The fellow was clever in his way, though
+what it was going to cost Soames before it was done with he
+didn't know.
+
+Euphemia Forsyte, who happened to be in the room--she had come
+round to borrow the Rev. Mr. Scoles' last novel, 'Passion and
+Paregoric', which was having such a vogue--chimed in.
+
+"I saw Irene yesterday at the Stores; she and Mr. Bosinney were
+having a nice little chat in the Groceries."
+
+It was thus, simply, that she recorded a scene which had really
+made a deep and complicated impression on her.  She had been
+hurrying to the silk department of the Church and Commercial
+Stores--that Institution than which, with its admirable system,
+admitting only guaranteed persons on a basis of payment before
+delivery, no emporium can be more highly recommended to Forsytes-
+-to match a piece of prunella silk for her mother, who was
+waiting in the carriage outside.
+
+Passing through the Groceries her eye was unpleasantly attracted
+by the back view of a very beautiful, figure.  It was so
+charmingly proportioned, so balanced, and so well clothed, that
+Euphemia's instinctive propriety was at once alarmed; such
+figures, she knew, by intuition rather than experience, were
+rarely connected with virtue--certainly never in her mind, for
+her own back was somewhat difficult to fit.
+
+Her suspicions were fortunately confirmed.  A young man coming
+from the Drugs had snatched off his hat, and was accosting the
+lady with the unknown back.
+
+It was then that she saw with whom she had to deal; the lady was
+undoubtedly Mrs. Soames, the young man Mr. Bosinney.  Concealing
+herself rapidly over the purchase of a box of Tunisian dates, for
+she was impatient of awkwardly meeting people with parcels in her
+hands, and at the busy time of the morning, she was quite
+unintentionally an interested observer of their little interview.
+
+Mrs. Soames, usually somewhat pale, had a delightful colour in
+her cheeks; and Mr. Bosinney's manner was strange, though
+attractive (she thought him rather a distinguished-looking man,
+and Georges name for him, 'The Buccaneer--about which there was
+something romantic--quite charming).  He seemed to be pleading.
+Indeed, they talked so earnestly--or, rather, he talked so
+earnestly, for Mrs. Soames did not say much--that they caused,
+inconsiderately, an eddy in the traffic.  One nice old General,
+going towards Cigars, was obliged to step quite out of the way,
+and chancing to look up and see Mrs. Soames' face, he actually
+took off his hat, the old fool!  So like a man!
+
+But it was Mrs. Soames' eyes that worried Euphemia.  She never
+once looked at Mr. Bosinney until he moved on, and then she
+looked after him.  And, oh, that look!
+
+On that look Euphemia had spent much anxious thought.  It is not
+too much to say that it had hurt her with its dark, lingering
+softness, for all the world as though the woman wanted to
+drag him back, and unsay something she had been saying.
+
+Ah, well, she had had no time to go deeply into the matter just
+then, with that prunella silk on her hands; but she was 'very
+intriguee--very!  She had just nodded to Mrs. Soames, to show her
+that she had seen; and, as she confided, in talking it over
+afterwards, to her chum Francie (Roger's daughter), "Didn't she
+look caught out just? ...."
+
+James, most averse at the first blush to accepting any news
+confirmatory of his own poignant suspicions, took her up at once.
+
+"Oh" he said, "they'd be after wall-papers no doubt."
+
+Euphemia smiled.  "In the Groceries?" she said softly; and,
+taking 'Passion and Paregoric' from the table, added: "And so
+you'll lend me this, dear Auntie?  Good-bye!" and went away.
+
+James left almost immediately after; he was late as it was.
+
+When he reached the office of Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte, he
+found Soames, sitting in his revolving, chair, drawing up a
+defence.  The latter greeted his father with a curt good-morning,
+and, taking an envelope from his pocket, said:
+
+"It may interest you to look through this."
+
+James read as follows:
+
+
+309D, SLOANE STREET,
+May 15.
+
+'DEAR FORSYTE,
+
+'The construction of your house being now completed, my duties as
+architect have come to an end.  If I am to go on with the
+business of decoration, which at your request I undertook, I
+should like you to clearly understand that I must have a free
+hand.
+
+'You never come down without suggesting something that goes
+counter to my scheme.  I have here three letters from you, each
+of which recommends an article I should never dream of putting
+in.  I had your father here yesterday afternoon, who made further
+valuable suggestions.
+
+'Please make up your mind, therefore, whether you want me to
+decorate for you, or to retire which on the whole I should prefer
+to do.
+
+'But understand that, if I decorate, I decorate alone, without
+interference of any sort.
+
+If I do the thing, I will do it thoroughly, but I must have a
+free hand.
+
+'Yours truly,
+
+'PHILIP BOSINNEY.'
+
+
+The exact and immediate cause of this letter cannot, of course,
+be told, though it is not improbable that Bosinney may have been
+moved by some sudden revolt against his position towards Soames--
+that eternal position of Art towards Property--which is so
+admirably summed up, on the back of the most indispensable of
+modern appliances, in a sentence comparable to the very finest in
+Tacitus:
+
+
+THOS.  T.  SORROW, Inventor.
+BERT M.  PADLAND, Proprietor.
+
+
+"What are you going to say to him?" James asked.
+
+Soames did not even turn his head.  "I haven't made up my mind,"
+he said, and went on with his defence.
+
+A client of his, having put some buildings on a piece of ground
+that did not belong to him, had been suddenly and most irritat-
+ingly warned to take them off again.  After carefully going into
+the facts, however, Soames had seen his way to advise that his
+client had what was known as a title by possession, and that,
+though undoubtedly the ground did not belong to him, he was
+entitled to keep it, and had better do so; and he was now
+following up this advice by taking steps to--as the sailors say--
+'make it so.'
+
+He had a distinct reputation for sound advice; people saying of
+him: "Go to young Forsyte--a long-headed fellow!" and he prized
+this reputation highly.
+
+His natural taciturnity was in his favour; nothing could be more
+calculated to give people, especially people with property
+(Soames had no other clients), the impression that he was a safe
+man.  And he was safe.  Tradition, habit, education, inherited
+aptitude, native caution, all joined to form a solid professional
+honesty, superior to temptation--from the very fact that it was
+built on an innate avoidance of risk.  How could he fall, when
+his soul abhorred circumstances which render a fall possible--a
+man cannot fall off the floor!
+
+And those countless Forsytes, who, in the course of innumerable
+transactions concerned with property of all sorts (from wives to
+water  rights), had occasion for the services of a safe man,
+found it both reposeful and profitable to confide in Soames.
+That slight superciliousness of his, combined with an air of
+mousing amongst precedents, was in his favour too--a man would
+not be supercilious unless he knew!
+
+He was really at the head of the business, for though James still
+came nearly every day to, see for himself, he did little now but
+sit in his chair, twist his legs, slightly confuse things already
+decided, and presently go away again, and the other partner,
+Bustard, was a poor thing, who did a great deal of work, but
+whose opinion was never taken.
+
+So Soames went steadily on with his defence.  Yet it would be
+idle to say that his mind was at ease.  He was suffering from a
+sense of impending  trouble, that had haunted him for some time
+past.  He tried to think it physical--a condition of his liver--
+but knew that it was not.
+
+He looked at his watch.  In a quarter of an hour he was due at
+the General Meeting of the New Colliery Company--one of Uncle
+Jolyon's concerns; he should see Uncle Jolyon there, and say
+something to him about Bosinney--he had not made up his mind
+what, but something--in any case he should not answer this letter
+until he had seen Uncle Jolyon.  He got up and methodically put
+away the draft of his defence.  Going into a dark little
+cupboard, he turned up the light, washed his hands with a piece
+of brown Windsor soap, and dried them on a roller towel.  Then he
+brushed his hair, paying strict attention to the parting, turned
+down the light, took his hat, and saying he would be back at
+half-past two, stepped into the Poultry.
+
+It was not far to the Offices of the New Colliery Company in
+Ironmonger Lane, where, and not at the Cannon Street Hotel, in
+accordance with the more ambitious practice of other companies,
+the General Meeting was always held.  Old Jolyon had from the
+first set his face against the Press.  What business--he said--
+had the Public with his concerns!
+
+Soames arrived on the stroke of time, and took his seat alongside
+the Board, who, in a row, each Director behind his own ink-pot,
+faced their Shareholders.
+
+In the centre of this row old Jolyon, conspicuous in his black,
+tightly-buttoned frock-coat and his white moustaches, was leaning
+back with finger tips crossed on a copy of the Directors' report
+and accounts.
+
+On his right hand, always a little larger than life, sat the
+Secretary, 'Down-by-the-starn' Hemmings; an all-too-sad sadness
+beaming in his fine eyes; his iron-grey beard, in mourning like
+the rest of him, giving the feeling of an all-too-black tie
+behind it.
+
+The occasion indeed was a melancholy one, only six weeks having
+elapsed since that telegram had come from Scorrier, the mining
+expert, on a private mission to the Mines, informing them that
+Pippin, their Superintendent, had committed suicide in
+endeavouring, after his extraordinary two years' silence, to
+write a letter to his Board.  That letter was on the table now;
+it would be read to the Shareholders, who would of course be put
+into possession of all the facts.
+
+Hemmings had often said to Soames, standing with his coat-tails
+divided before the fireplace:
+
+"What our Shareholders don't know about our affairs isn't worth
+knowing.  You may take that from me, Mr. Soames."
+
+On one occasion, old Jolyon being present, Soames recollected a
+little unpleasantness.  His uncle had looked up sharply and said:
+"Don't talk nonsense, Hemmings!  You mean that what they do know
+isn't worth knowing!" Old Jolyon detested humbug.
+
+Hemmings, angry-eyed, and wearing a smile like that of a trained
+poodle, had replied in an outburst of artificial applause: "Come,
+now, that's good, sir--that's very good.  Your uncle will have
+his joke!"
+
+The next time he had seen Soames: he had taken the opportunity of
+saying to him: "The chairman's getting very old!--I can't get him
+to understand things; and he's so wilful--but what can you
+expect, with a chin like his?"
+
+Soames had nodded.
+
+Everyone knew that Uncle Jolyon's chin was a caution.  He was
+looking worried to-day, in spite of his General Meeting look; he
+(Soames) should certainly speak to him about Bosinney.
+
+Beyond old Jolyon on the left was little Mr. Booker, and he, too,
+wore his General Meeting look, as though searching for some
+particularly tender shareholder.  And next him was the deaf
+director, with a frown; and beyond the deaf director, again, was
+old Mr. Bleedham, very bland, and having an air of conscious
+virtue--as well he might, knowing that the brown-paper parcel he
+always brought to the Board-room was concealed behind his hat
+(one of that old-fashioned class, of flat-brimmed top-hats which
+go with very large bow ties, clean-shaven lips, fresh cheeks, and
+neat little, white whiskers).
+
+Soames always attended the General Meeting; it was considered
+better that he should do so, in case 'anything should arise!' He
+glanced round with his close, supercilious air at the walls of
+the room, where hung plans of the mine and harbour, together with
+a large photograph of a shaft leading to a working which had
+proved quite remarkably unprofitable.  This photograph--a witness
+to the eternal irony underlying commercial enterprise till
+retained its position on the--wall, an effigy of the directors'
+pet, but dead, lamb.
+
+And now old Jolyon rose, to present the report and accounts.
+
+Veiling under a Jove-like serenity that perpetual antagonism
+deep-seated in the bosom of a director towards his shareholders,
+he faced them calmly.  Soames faced them too.  He knew most of
+them by sight.  There was old Scrubsole, a tar man, who always
+came, as Hemmings would say, 'to make himself nasty,' a
+cantankerous-looking old fellow with a red face, a jowl, and an
+enormous low-crowned hat reposing on his knee.  And the Rev. Mr.
+Boms, who always proposed a vote of thanks to the chairman, in
+which he invariably expressed the hope that the Board would not
+forget to elevate their employees, using the word with a double
+e, as being more vigorous and Anglo-Saxon (he had the strong
+Imperialistic tendencies of his cloth).  It was his salutary
+custom to buttonhole a director afterwards, and ask him whether
+he thought the coming year would be good or bad; and, according
+to the trend of the answer, to buy or sell three shares within
+the ensuing fortnight.
+
+And there was that military man, Major O'Bally, who could not
+help speaking, if only to second the re-election of the auditor,
+and who sometimes caused serious consternation by taking toasts--
+proposals rather--out of the hands of persons who had been
+flattered with little slips of paper, entrusting the said
+proposals to their care.
+
+These made up the lot, together with four or five strong, silent
+shareholders, with whom Soames could sympathize--men of business,
+who liked to keep an eye on their affairs for themselves, without
+being fussy--good, solid men, who came to the City every day and
+went back in the evening to good, solid wives.
+
+Good, solid wives!  There was something in that thought which
+roused the nameless uneasiness in Soames again.
+
+What should he say to his uncle?  What answer should he make to
+this letter?
+
+.  .  .  .  "If any shareholder has any question to put, I shall
+be glad to answer it." A soft thump.  Old Jolyon had let the
+report and accounts fall, and stood twisting his tortoise-shell
+glasses between thumb and forefinger.
+
+The ghost of a smile appeared on Soames' face.  They had better
+hurry up with their questions!  He well knew his uncle's method
+(the ideal one) of at once saying: "I propose, then, that the
+report and accounts be adopted!"  Never let them get their wind--
+shareholders were notoriously wasteful of time!
+
+A tall, white-bearded man, with a gaunt, dissatisfied face,
+arose:
+
+"I believe I am in order, Mr. Chairman, in raising a question on
+this figure of  L5000 in the accounts.  'To the widow and
+family"' (he looked sourly round), "'of our late superintendent,'
+who so--er--ill-advisedly (I say--ill-advisedly) committed
+suicide, at a time when his services were of the utmost value to
+this Company.  You have stated that the agreement which he has so
+unfortunately cut short with his own hand was for a period of
+five years, of which one only had expired--I--"
+
+Old Jolyon made a gesture of impatience.
+
+"I believe I am in order, Mr. Chairman--I ask whether this amount
+paid, or proposed to be paid, by the Board to the er--deceased--
+is for services which might have been rendered to the Company--
+had he not committed suicide?"
+
+"It is in recognition of past services, which we all know--you as
+well as any of us--to have been of vital value."
+
+"Then, sir, all I have to say is, that the services being past,
+the amount is too much."
+
+The shareholder sat down.
+
+Old Jolyon waited a second and said: "I now propose that the
+report and--"
+
+The shareholder rose again: "May I ask if the Board realizes
+that it is not their money which--I don't hesitate to say that if
+it were their money...."
+
+A second shareholder, with a round, dogged face, whom Soames
+recognised as the late superintendent's brother-in-law, got up
+and said warmly: "In my opinion, sir, the sum is not enough!"
+
+The Rev. Mr. Boms now rose to his feet.  "If I may venture to
+express myself," he said, "I should say that the fact of the--er-
+-deceased having committed suicide should weigh very heavily--
+very heavily with our worthy chairman.  I have no doubt it has
+weighed with him, for--I say this for myself and I think for
+everyone present (hear, hear)--he enjoys our confidence in a high
+degree.  We all desire, I should hope, to be charitable.  But I
+feel sure" (he-looked severely at the late superintendent's
+brother-in-law) "that he will in some way, by some written
+expression, or better perhaps by reducing the amount, record our
+grave disapproval that so promising and valuable a life should
+have been thus impiously removed from a sphere where both its own
+interests and--if I may say so--our interests so imperatively
+demanded its continuance.  We should not--nay, we may not--
+countenance so grave a dereliction of all duty, both human and
+divine."
+
+The reverend gentleman resumed his seat.  The late super-
+intendent's brother-in-law again rose: "What I have said I
+stick to," he said; "the amount is not enough!"
+
+The first shareholder struck in: "I challenge the legality of the
+payment.  In my opinion this payment is not legal.  The Company's
+solicitor is present; I believe I am in order in asking him the
+question."
+
+All eyes were now turned upon Soames.  Something had arisen!
+
+He stood up, close-lipped and cold; his nerves inwardly
+fluttered, his attention tweaked away at last from contemplation
+of that cloud looming on the horizon of his mind.
+
+"The point," he said in a low, thin voice, "is by no means clear.
+As there is no possibility of future consideration being
+received, it is doubtful whether the payment is strictly legal.
+If it is desired, the opinion of the court could be taken."
+
+The superintendent's brother-in-law frowned, and said in a
+meaning tone: "We have no doubt the opinion of the court could be
+taken.  May I ask the name of the gentleman who has given us that
+striking piece of information?  Mr. Soames Forsyte?  Indeed!"  He
+looked from Soames to old Jolyon in a pointed manner.
+
+A flush coloured Soames' pale cheeks, but his superciliousness
+did not waver.  Old Jolyon fixed his eyes on the speaker.
+
+"If," he said, "the late superintendents brother-in-law has
+nothing more to say, I propose that the report and accounts...."
+
+At this moment, however, there rose one of those five silent,
+stolid shareholders, who had excited Soames' sympathy.  He said:
+
+"I deprecate the proposal altogether.  We are expected to give
+charity to this man's wife and children, who, you tell us, were
+dependent on him.  They may have been; I do not care whether they
+were or not.  I object to the whole thing on principle.  It is
+high time a stand was made against this sentimental human-
+itarianism.  The country is eaten up with it.  I object to
+my money being paid to these people of whom I know nothing, who
+have done nothing to earn it.  I object in toto; it is not
+business.  I now move that the report and accounts be put back,
+and amended by striking out the grant altogether."
+
+Old Jolyon had remained standing while the strong, silent man was
+speaking.  The speech awoke an echo in all hearts, voicing, as it
+did, the worship of strong men, the movement against generosity,
+which had at that time already commenced among the saner members
+of the community.
+
+The words 'it is not business' had moved even the Board;
+privately everyone felt that indeed it was not.  But they knew
+also the chairman's domineering temper and tenacity.  He, too, at
+heart must feel that it was not business; but he was committed to
+his own proposition.  Would he go back upon it?  It was thought
+to be unlikely.
+
+All waited with interest.  Old Jolyon held up his hand;
+dark-rimmed glasses depending between his finger and thumb
+quivered slightly with a suggestion of menace.
+
+He addressed the strong, silent shareholder.
+
+"Knowing, as you do, the efforts of our late superintendent upon
+the occasion of the explosion at the mines, do you seriously wish
+me to put that amendment, sir?"
+
+"I do."
+
+Old Jolyon put the amendment.
+
+"Does anyone second this?" he asked, looking calmly round.
+
+And it was then that Soames, looking at his uncle, felt the power
+of will that was in that old man.  No one stirred.  Looking
+straight into the eyes of the strong, silent shareholder, old
+Jolyon said:
+
+"I now move, 'That the report and accounts for the year 1886 be
+received and adopted.' You second that?  Those in favour signify
+the same in the usual way.  Contrary--no.  Carried.  The next
+business, gentlemen...."
+
+Soames smiled.  Certainly Uncle Jolyon had a way with him!
+
+But now his attention relapsed upon Bosinney.
+
+Odd how that fellow haunted his thoughts, even in business hours.
+
+Irene's visit to the house--but there was nothing in that, except
+that she might have told him; but then, again, she never did tell
+him anything.  She was more silent, more touchy, every day.  He
+wished to God the house were finished, and they were in it, away
+from London.  Town did not suit her; her nerves were not strong
+enough.  That nonsense of the separate room had cropped up again!
+
+The meeting was breaking up now.  Underneath the photograph of
+the lost shaft Hemmings was buttonholed by the Rev. Mr. Boms.
+Little Mr. Booker, his bristling eyebrows wreathed in angry
+smiles, was having a parting turn-up with old Scrubsole.  The two
+hated each other like poison.  There was some matter of a
+tar-contract between them, little Mr. Booker having secured it
+from the Board for a nephew of his, over old Scrubsole's head.
+Soames had heard that from Hemmings, who liked a gossip, more
+especially about his directors, except, indeed, old Jolyon, of
+whom he was afraid.
+
+Soames awaited his opportunity.  The last shareholder was
+vanishing through the door, when he approached his uncle, who was
+putting on his hat.
+
+"Can I speak to you for a minute, Uncle Jolyon?"
+
+It is uncertain what Soames expected to get out of this
+interview.
+
+Apart from that somewhat mysterious awe in which Forsytes: in
+general held old Jolyon, due to his philosophic twist, or
+perhaps--as Hemmings would doubtless have said--to his chin,
+there was, and always had been, a subtle antagonism between the
+younger man and the old.  It had lurked under their dry manner of
+greeting, under their non-committal allusions to each other, and
+arose perhaps from old Jolyon's perception of the quiet tenacity
+('obstinacy,' he rather naturally called it) of the young man, of
+a secret doubt whether he could get his own way with him.
+
+Both these Forsytes, wide asunder as the poles in many respects,
+possessed in their different ways--to a greater degree than the
+rest of the family--that essential quality of tenacious and
+prudent insight into 'affairs,' which is the highwater mark of
+their great class.  Either of them, with a little luck and
+opportunity, was equal to a lofty career; either of them would
+have made a good financier, a great contractor, a statesman,
+though old Jolyon, in certain of his moods when under the
+influence of a cigar or of Nature--would have been capable of,
+not perhaps despising, but certainly of questioning, his own high
+position, while Soames, who never smoked cigars, would not.
+
+Then, too, in old Jolyon's mind there was always the secret ache,
+that the son of James--of James, whom he had always thought such
+a poor thing, should be pursuing the paths of success, while his
+own son...!
+
+And last, not least--for he was no more outside the radiation of
+family gossip than any other Forsyte he had now heard the
+sinister, indefinite, but none the less disturbing rumour about
+Bosinney, and his pride was wounded to the quick.
+
+Characteristically, his irritation turned not against Irene but
+against Soames.  The idea that his nephew's wife (why couldn't
+the fellow take better care of her--Oh!  quaint injustice!  as
+though Soames could possibly take more care!)--should be drawing
+to herself June's lover, was intolerably humiliating.  And seeing
+the danger, he did not, like James, hide it away in sheer
+nervousness, but owned with the dispassion of his broader
+outlook, that it was not unlikely; there was something very
+attractive about Irene!
+
+He had a presentiment on the subject, of Soames' communication as
+they left the Board Room together, and went out into the noise
+and hurry of Cheapside.  They walked together a good minute
+without speaking, Soames with his mousing, mincing step, and old
+Jolyon upright and using his umbrella languidly as a
+walking-stick.
+
+They turned presently into comparative quiet, for old Jolyon's
+way to a second Board led him in the direction of Moorage Street.
+
+Then Soames, without lifting his eyes, began: "I've had this
+letter from Bosinney.  You see what he says; I thought I'd let
+you know.  I've spent a lot more than I intended on this house,
+and I want the position to be clear."
+
+Old Jolyon ran his eyes unwillingly over the letter: "What he
+says is clear enough," he said.
+
+"He talks about 'a free hand,"' replied Soames.
+
+Old Jolyon looked at him.  The long-suppressed irritation and
+antagonism towards this young fellow, whose affairs were
+beginning to intrude upon his own, burst from him.
+
+"Well, if you don't trust him, why do you employ him?"
+
+Soames stole a sideway look: "It's much too late to go into
+that," he said, "I only want it to be quite understood that if I
+give him a free hand, he doesn't let me in.  I thought if you
+were to speak to him, it would carry more weight!"
+
+"No," said old Jolyon abruptly; "I'll have nothing to do with
+it!"
+
+The words of both uncle and nephew gave the impression of
+unspoken meanings, far more important, behind.  And the look they
+interchanged was like a revelation of this consciousness.
+
+"Well," said Soames; "I thought, for June's sake, I'd tell you,
+that's all; I thought You'd better know I shan't stand any
+nonsense!"
+
+"What is that to me?" old Jolyon took him up.
+
+"Oh! I don't know," said Soames, and flurried by that sharp look
+he was unable to say more.  "Don't say I didn't tell you," he
+added sulkily, recovering his composure.
+
+"Tell me!" said old Jolyon; "I don't know what you mean.  You
+come worrying me about a thing like this.  I don't want to hear
+about your affairs; you must manage them yourself!"
+
+"Very well," said Soames immovably, "I will!"
+
+"Good-morning, then," said old Jolyon, and they parted.
+
+Soames retraced his steps, and going into a celebrated eating-
+house, asked for a plate of smoked salmon and a glass of
+Chablis; he seldom ate much in the middle of the day, and
+generally ate standing, finding the position beneficial to his
+liver, which was very sound, but to which he desired to put down
+all his troubles.
+
+When he had finished he went slowly back to his office, with bent
+head, taking no notice of the swarming thousands on the
+pavements, who in their turn took no notice of him.
+
+The evening post carried the following reply to Bosinney:
+
+
+'FORSYTE, BUSTARD AND FORSYTE,
+'Commissioners for Oaths,
+'92001, BRANCH LANE, POULTRY, E.C.,
+
+'May 17, 1887.
+
+'DEAR BOSINNEY,
+
+'I have, received your letter, the terms of which not a little
+surprise me.  I was under the impression that you had, and have
+had all along, a "free hand"; for I do not recollect that any
+suggestions I have been so unfortunate as to make, have met with
+your approval.  In giving you, in accordance with your request,
+this "free hand," I wish you to clearly understand that the total
+cost of the house as handed over to me completely decorated,
+inclusive of your fee (as arranged between us), must not exceed
+twelve thousand pounds--L12,000.  This gives you an ample margin,
+and, as you know, is far more than I originally contemplated.
+
+'I am,
+'Yours truly,
+
+ 'SOAMES FORSYTE.'
+
+
+On the following day he received a note from Bosinney:
+
+
+'PHILIP BAYNES BOSINNEY,
+'Architect,
+'309D, SLOANE STREET, S.W.,
+'May 18.
+
+'DEAR FORSYTE,
+
+'If you think that in such a delicate matter as decoration I can
+bind myself to the exact pound, I am afraid you are mistaken.  I
+can see that you are tired of the arrangement, and of me, and I
+had better, therefore, resign.
+
+'Yours faithfully,
+
+'PHILIP BAYNES BOSINNEY.'
+
+
+Soames pondered long and painfully over his answer, and late at
+night in the dining-room, when Irene had gone to bed, he composed
+the following:
+
+
+'62, MONTPELLIER SQUARE, S.W.,
+'May 19, 1887.
+
+'DEAR BOSINNEY,
+
+'I think that in both our interests it would be extremely
+undesirable that matters should be so left at this stage.  I did
+not mean to say that if you should exceed the sum named in my
+letter to you by ten or twenty or even fifty pounds, there would
+be any difficulty between us.  This being so, I should like you
+to reconsider your answer.  You have a "free hand" in the terms
+of this correspondence, and I hope you will see your way to
+completing the decorations, in the matter of which I know it is
+difficult to be absolutely exact.
+
+'Yours truly,
+
+'SOAMES FORSYTE.'
+
+
+Bosinney's answer, which came in the course of the next day, was:
+
+
+'May 20.
+
+'DEAR FORSYTE,
+
+'Very well.
+
+'PH.  BOSINNEY.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+OLD JOLYON AT THE ZOO
+
+
+Old Jolyon disposed of his second Meeting--an ordinary Board--
+summarily.  He was so dictatorial that his fellow directors were
+left in cabal over the increasing domineeringness of old Forsyte,
+which they were far from intending to stand much longer, they
+said.
+
+He went out by Undergound to Portland Road Station, whence he
+took a cab and drove to the Zoo.
+
+He had an assignation there, one of those assignations that had
+lately been growing more frequent, to which his increasing
+uneasiness about June and the 'change in her,' as he expressed
+it, was driving him.
+
+She buried herself away, and was growing thin; if he spoke to her
+he got no answer, or had his head snapped off, or she looked as
+if she would burst into tears.  She was as changed as she could
+be, all through this Bosinney.  As for telling him about
+anything, not a bit of it!
+
+And he would sit for long spells brooding, his paper unread
+before him, a cigar extinct between his lips.  She had been such
+a companion to him ever since she was three years old!  And he
+loved her so!
+
+Forces regardless of family or class or custom were beating down
+his guard; impending events over which he had no control threw
+their shadows on his head.  The irritation of one accustomed to
+have his way was, roused against he knew not what.
+
+Chafing at the slowness of his cab, he reached the Zoo door; but,
+with his sunny instinct for seizing the good of each moment, he
+forgot his vexation as he walked towards the tryst.
+
+From the stone terrace above the bear-pit his son and his two
+grandchildren came hastening down when they saw old Jolyon
+coming, and led him away towards the lion-house.  They supported
+him on either side, holding one to each of his hands,--whilst
+Jolly, perverse like his father, carried his grandfather's
+umbrella in such a way as to catch people's legs with the crutch
+of the handle.
+
+Young Jolyon followed.
+
+It was as good as a play to see his father with the children, but
+such a play as brings smiles with tears behind.  An old man and
+two small children walking together can be seen at any hour of
+the day; but the sight of old Jolyon, with Jolly and Holly seemed
+to young Jolyon a special peep-show of the things that lie at the
+bottom of our hearts.  The complete surrender of that erect old
+figure to those little figures on either hand was too poignantly
+tender, and, being a man of an habitual reflex action, young
+Jolyon swore softly under his breath.  The show affected him in a
+way unbecoming to a Forsyte, who is nothing if not undemonstrative.
+
+Thus they reached the lion-house.
+
+There had been a morning fete at the Botanical Gardens, and a
+large number of Forsy...'--that is, of well-dressed people who
+kept carriages had brought them on to the Zoo, so as to have
+more, if possible, for their money, before going back to Rutland
+Gate or Bryanston Square.
+
+"Let's go on to the Zoo," they had said to each other; "it'll be
+great fun!"  It was a shilling day; and there would not be all
+those horrid common people.
+
+In front of the long line of cages they were collected in rows,
+watching the tawny, ravenous beasts behind the bars await their
+only pleasure of the four-and-twenty hours.  The hungrier the
+beast, the greater the fascination.  But whether because the
+spectators envied his appetite, or, more humanely, because it
+was so soon to be satisfied, young Jolyon could not tell.
+Remarks kept falling on his ears: "That's a nasty-looking brute,
+that tiger!"  "Oh, what a love!  Look at his little mouth!"
+"Yes, he's rather nice!  Don't go too near, mother."
+
+And frequently, with little pats, one or another would clap their
+hands to their pockets behind and look round, as though expecting
+young Jolyon or some disinterested-looking person to relieve them
+of the contents.
+
+A well-fed man in a white waistcoat said slowly through his
+teeth: "It's all greed; they can't be hungry.  Why, they take no
+exercise."  At these words a tiger snatched a piece of bleeding
+liver, and the fat man laughed.  His wife, in a Paris model frock
+and gold nose-nippers, reproved him: "How can you laugh, Harry?
+Such a horrid sight!"
+
+Young Jolyon frowned.
+
+The circumstances of his life, though he had ceased to take a too
+personal view of them, had left him subject to an intermittent
+contempt; and the class to which he had belonged--the carriage
+class--especially excited his sarcasm.
+
+To shut up a lion or tiger in confinement was surely a horrible
+barbarity.  But no cultivated person would admit this.
+
+The idea of its being barbarous to confine wild animals had
+probably never even occurred to his father for instance; he
+belonged to the old school, who considered it at once humanizing
+and educational to confine baboons and panthers, holding the
+view, no doubt, that in course of time they might induce these
+creatures not so unreasonably to die of misery and heart-
+sickness.  against the bars of their cages, and put the society
+to the expense of getting others!  In his eyes, as in the eyes
+of all Forsytes, the pleasure of seeing these beautiful
+creatures in a state of captivity far outweighed the
+inconvenience of imprisonment to beasts whom God had so
+improvidently placed in a state of freedom!  It was for the
+animals good, removing them at once from the countless dangers
+of open air and exercise, and enabling them to exercise their
+functions in the guaranteed seclusion of a private compartment!
+Indeed, it was doubtful what wild animals were made for but to be
+shut up in cages!
+
+But as young Jolyon had in his constitution the elements of
+impartiality, he reflected that to stigmatize as barbarity that
+which was merely lack of imagination must be wrong; for none who
+held these views had been placed in a similar position to the
+animals they caged, and could not, therefore, be expected to
+enter into their sensations.   It was not until they were leaving
+the gardens--Jolly and Holly in a state of blissful delirium--
+that old Jolyon found an opportunity of speaking to his son on
+the matter next his heart.  "I don't know what to make of it," he
+said; "if she's to go on as she's going on now, I can't tell
+what's  to come.  I wanted her to see the doctor, but she  won't.
+She's not a bit like me.  She's your mother  all over.  Obstinate
+as a mule!  If she doesn't want  to do a thing, she won't, and
+there's an end of it!"
+
+Young Jolyon smiled; his eyes had wandered  to his father's chin.
+'A pair of you,' he thought,  but he said nothing.
+
+"And then," went on old Jolyon, "there's this  Bosinney.  I
+should like to punch the fellow's head, but I can't, I suppose,
+though--I don't see  why you shouldn't," he added doubtfully.
+
+"What has he done?  Far better that it should come to an end, if
+they don't hit it off!"
+
+Old Jolyon looked at his son.  Now they had actually come to
+discuss a subject connected with the relations between the sexes
+he felt distrustful.  Jo would be sure to hold some loose view or
+other.
+
+"Well, I don't know what you think," he said; "I dare say your
+sympathy's with him--shouldn't be surprised; but I think he's
+behaving precious badly, and if he comes my way I shall tell him
+so."  He dropped the subject.
+
+It was impossible to discuss with his son the true nature and
+meaning of Bosinney's defection.  Had not his son done the very
+same thing (worse, if possible) fifteen years ago?  There seemed
+no end to the consequences of that piece of folly.
+
+Young Jolyon also was silent; he had quickly penetrated his
+father's thought, for, dethroned from the high seat of an obvious
+and uncomplicated view of things, he had become both perceptive
+and subtle.
+
+The attitude he had adopted towards sexual matters fifteen years
+before, however, was too different from his father's.  There was
+no bridging the gulf.
+
+He said coolly: "I suppose he's fallen in love with some other
+woman?"
+
+Old Jolyon gave him a dubious look: "I can't tell," he said;
+"they say so!"
+
+"Then, it's probably true," remarked young Jolyon unexpectedly;
+"and I suppose they've told you who she is?"
+
+"Yes," said old Jolyon, "Soames's wife!"
+
+Young Jolyon did not whistle: The circumstances of his own life
+had rendered him incapable of whistling on such a subject, but he
+looked at his father, while the ghost of a smile hovered over his
+face.
+
+If old Jolyon saw, he took no notice.
+
+"She and June were bosom friends!" he muttered.
+
+"Poor little June!" said young Jolyon softly.  He thought of his
+daughter still as a babe of three.
+
+Old Jolyon came to a sudden halt.
+
+"I don't believe a word of it," he said, "it's some old woman's
+tale.  Get me a cab, Jo, I'm tired to death!"
+
+They stood at a corner to see if an empty cab would come along,
+while carriage after carriage drove past, bearing Forsytes of all
+descriptions from the Zoo.  The harness, the liveries, the gloss
+on the horses' coats, shone and glittered in the May sunlight,
+and each equipage, landau, sociable, barouche, Victoria, or
+brougham, seemed to roll out proudly from its wheels:
+
+
+'I and my horses and my men you know,'
+Indeed the whole turn-out have cost a pot.
+But we were worth it every penny.  Look
+At Master and at Missis now, the dawgs!
+Ease with security--ah!  that's the ticket!
+
+
+And such, as everyone knows, is fit accompaniment for a
+perambulating Forsyte.
+
+Amongst these carriages was a barouche coming at a greater pace
+than the others, drawn by a pair of bright bay horses.  It swung
+on its high springs, and the four people who filled it seemed
+rocked as in a cradle.
+
+This chariot attracted young Jolyon's attention; and suddenly, on
+the back seat, he recognised his Uncle James, unmistakable in
+spite of the increased whiteness of his whiskers; opposite, their
+backs defended by sunshades, Rachel Forsyte and her elder but
+married sister, Winifred Dartie, in irreproachable toilettes, had
+posed their heads haughtily, like two of the birds they had been
+seeing at the Zoo; while by James' side reclined Dartie, in a
+brand-new frock-coat buttoned tight and square, with a large
+expanse of carefully shot linen protruding below each wristband.
+
+An extra, if subdued, sparkle, an added touch of the best gloss
+or varnish characterized this vehicle, and seemed to distinguish
+it from all the others, as though by some happy extravagance--
+like that which marks out the real 'work of art' from the
+ordinary 'picture'--it were designated as the typical car, the
+very throne of Forsytedom.
+
+Old Jolyon did not see them pass; he was petting poor Holly who
+was tired, but those in the carriage had taken in the little
+group; the ladies' heads tilted suddenly, there was a spasmodic
+screening movement of parasols; James' face protruded naively,
+like the head of a long bird, his mouth slowly opening.  The
+shield-like rounds of the parasols grew smaller and smaller, and
+vanished.
+
+Young Jolyon saw that he had been recognised, even by Winifred,
+who could not have been more than fifteen when he had forfeited
+the right to be considered a Forsyte.
+
+There was not much change in them!  He remembered the exact look
+of their turn-out all that time ago: Horses, men, carriage--all
+different now, no doubt--but of the precise stamp of fifteen
+years before; the same neat display, the same nicely calculated
+arrogance ease with security!  The swing exact, the pose of the
+sunshades exact, exact the spirit of the whole thing.
+
+And in the sunlight, defended by the haughty shields of parasols,
+carriage after carriage went by.
+
+"Uncle James has just passed, with his female folk," said young
+Jolyon.
+
+His father looked black.  "Did your uncle see us?  Yes?  Hmph!
+What's he want, coming down into these parts?"
+
+An empty cab drove up at this moment, and old Jolyon stopped it.
+
+"I shall see you again before long, my boy!" he said.  "Don't you
+go paying any attention to what I've been saying about young
+Bosinney--I don't believe a word of it!"
+
+Kissing the children, who tried to detain him, he stepped in and
+was borne away.
+
+Young Jolyon, who had taken Holly up in his arms, stood
+motionless at the corner, looking after the cab.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+AFTERNOON AT TIMOTHY'S
+
+
+If old Jolyon, as he got into his cab, had said: 'I won't believe
+a word of it!' he would more truthfully have expressed his
+sentiments.
+
+The notion that James and his womankind had seen him in the
+company of his son had awakened in him not only the impatience he
+always felt when crossed, but that secret hostility natural
+between brothers, the roots of which--little nursery rivalries--
+sometimes toughen and deepen as life goes on, and, all hidden,
+support a plant capable of producing in season the bitterest
+fruits.
+
+Hitherto there had been between these six brothers no more
+unfriendly feeling than that caused by the secret and natural
+doubt that the others might be richer than themselves; a feeling
+increased to the pitch of curiosity by the approach of death--
+that end of all handicaps--and the great 'closeness' of their man
+of business, who, with some sagacity, would profess to Nicholas
+ignorance of James' income, to James ignorance of old Jolyon's,
+to Jolyon ignorance of Roger's, to Roger ignorance of Swithin's,
+while to Swithin he would say most irritatingly that Nicholas
+must be a rich man.  Timothy alone was exempt, being in
+gilt-edged securities.
+
+But now, between two of them at least, had arisen a very
+different sense of injury.  From the moment when James had the
+impertinence to pry into his affairs--as he put it--old Jolyon no
+longer chose to credit this story about Bosinney.  His grand-
+daughter slighted through a member of 'that fellow's' family!
+He made up his mind that Bosinney was maligned.  There must be
+some other reason for his defection.
+
+June had flown out at him, or something; she was as touchy as she
+could be!
+
+He would, however, let Timothy have a bit of his mind, and see if
+he would go on dropping hints!  And he would not let the grass
+grow under his feet either, he would go there at once, and take
+very good care that he didn't have to go again on the same
+errand.
+
+He saw James' carriage blocking the pavement in front of 'The
+Bower.' So they had got there before him--cackling about having
+seen him, he dared say!  And further on, Swithin's greys were
+turning their noses towards the noses of James' bays, as though
+in conclave over the family, while their coachmen were in
+conclave above.
+
+Old Jolyon, depositing his hat on the chair in the narrow hall,
+where that hat of Bosinney's had so long ago been mistaken for a
+cat, passed his thin hand grimly over his face with its great
+drooping white moustaches, as though to remove all traces of
+expression, and made his way upstairs.
+
+He found the front drawing-room full.  It was full enough at the
+best of times--without visitors--without any one in it--for
+Timothy and his sisters, following the tradition of their
+generation, considered that a room was not quite 'nice' unless it
+was 'properly' furnished.  It held, therefore, eleven chairs, a
+sofa, three tables, two cabinets, innumerable knicknacks, and
+part of a large grand piano.  And now, occupied by Mrs. Small,
+Aunt Hester, by Swithin, James, Rachel, Winifred, Euphemia, who
+had come in again to return 'Passion and Paregoric' which she had
+read at lunch, and her chum Frances, Roger's daughter (the
+musical Forsyte, the one who composed songs), there was only one
+chair left unoccupied, except, of course, the two that nobody
+ever sat on--and the only standing room was occupied by the cat,
+on whom old Jolyon promptly stepped.
+
+In these days it was by no means unusual for Timothy to have so
+many visitors.  The family had always, one and all, had a real
+respect for Aunt Ann, and now that she was gone, they were coming
+far more frequently to The Bower, and staying longer.
+
+Swithin had been the first to arrive, and seated torpid in a red
+satin chair with a gilt back, he gave every appearance of lasting
+the others out.  And symbolizing Bosinney's name 'the big one,'
+with his great stature and bulk, his thick white hair, his puffy
+immovable shaven face, he looked more primeval than ever in the
+highly upholstered room.
+
+His conversation, as usual of late, had turned at once upon
+Irene, and he had lost no time in giving Aunts Juley and Hester
+his opinion with regard to this rumour he heard was going about.
+No--as he said--she might want a bit of flirtation--a pretty
+woman must have her fling; but more than that he did not believe.
+Nothing open; she had too much good sense, too much proper
+appreciation of what was due to her position, and to the family!
+No sc...,  he was going to say 'scandal' but the very idea was so
+preposterous that he waved his hand as though to say--'but let
+that pass!'
+
+Granted that Swithin took a bachelor's view of the situation--
+still what indeed was not due to that family in which so many had
+done so well for themselves, had attained a certain position?  If
+he had heard in dark, pessimistic moments the words 'yeomen' and
+'very small beer' used in connection with his origin, did he
+believe them?
+
+No!  he cherished, hugging it pathetically to his bosom, the
+secret theory that there was something distinguished somewhere in
+his ancestry.
+
+"Must be," he once said to young Jolyon, before the latter went
+to the bad.  "Look at us, we've got on!  There must be good blood
+in us somewhere."
+
+He had been fond of young Jolyon: the boy had been in a good set
+at College, had, known that old ruffian Sir Charles Fiste's
+sons--a pretty rascal one of them had turned out, too; and there
+was style about him--it was a thousand pities he had run off with
+that half-foreign governess!  If he must go off like that why
+couldn't he have chosen someone who would have done them credit!
+And what was he now?--an underwriter at Lloyd's; they said he
+even painted pictures--pictures!  Damme! he might have ended as
+Sir Jolyon Forsyte, Bart., with a seat in Parliament, and a place
+in the country!
+
+It was Swithin who, following the impulse which sooner or later
+urges thereto some member of every great family, went to the
+Heralds' Office, where they assured him that he was undoubtedly
+of the same family as the well-known Forsites with an 'i,' whose
+arms were 'three dexter buckles on a sable ground gules,' hoping
+no doubt to get him to take them up.
+
+Swithin, however, did not do this, but having ascertained that
+the crest was a 'pheasant proper,' and the motto 'For Forsite,'
+he had the pheasant proper placed upon his carriage and the
+buttons of his coachman, and both crest and motto on his
+writing-paper.  The arms he hugged to himself, partly because,
+not having paid for them, he thought it would look ostentatious
+to put them on his carriage, and he hated ostentation, and partly
+because he, like any practical man all over the country, had a
+secret dislike and contempt for things he could not understand he
+found it hard, as anyone might, to swallow 'three dexter buckles
+on a sable ground gules.'
+
+He never forgot, however, their having told him that if he paid
+for them he would be entitled to use them, and it strengthened
+his conviction that he was a gentleman.  Imperceptibly the rest
+of the family absorbed the 'pheasant proper,' and some, more
+serious than others, adopted the motto; old Jolyon, however,
+refused to use the latter, saying that it was humbug meaning
+nothing, so far as he could see.
+
+Among the older generation it was perhaps known at bottom from
+what great historical event they derived their crest; and if
+pressed on the subject, sooner than tell a lie--they did not like
+telling lies, having an impression that only Frenchmen and
+Russians told them--they would confess hurriedly that Swithin had
+got hold of it somehow.
+
+Among the younger generation the matter was wrapped in a
+discretion proper.  They did not want to hurt the feelings of
+their elders, nor to feel ridiculous themselves; they simply used
+the crest....
+
+"No," said Swithin, "he had had an opportunity of seeing for
+himself, and what he should say was, that there was nothing in
+her manner to that young Buccaneer or Bosinney or whatever his
+name was, different from her manner to himself; in fact, he
+should rather say...." But here the entrance of Frances
+and Euphemia put an unfortunate stop to the conversation, for
+this was not a subject which could be discussed before young
+people.
+
+And though Swithin was somewhat upset at being stopped like this
+on the point of saying something important, he soon recovered his
+affability.  He was rather fond of Frances--Francie, as she was
+called in the family.  She was so smart, and they told him she
+made a pretty little pot of pin-money by her songs; he called it
+very clever of her.
+
+He rather prided himself indeed on a liberal attitude towards
+women, not seeing any reason why they shouldn't paint pictures,
+or write tunes, or books even, for the matter of that, especially
+if they could turn a useful penny by it; not at all--kept them
+out of mischief.  It was not as if they were men!
+
+'Little Francie,' as she was usually called with good-natured
+contempt, was an important personage, if only as a standing
+illustration of the attitude of Forsytes towards the Arts.  She
+was not really 'little,' but rather tall, with dark hair for a
+Forsyte, which, together with a grey eye, gave her what was
+called 'a Celtic appearance.' She wrote songs with titles like
+'Breathing Sighs,' or 'Kiss me, Mother, ere I die,' with a
+refrain like an anthem:
+
+
+'Kiss me, Mother, ere I die;
+Kiss me-kiss me, Mother, ah!
+Kiss, ah!  kiss me e-ere I-
+Kiss me, Mother, ere I d-d-die!'
+
+
+She wrote the words to them herself, and other poems.  In lighter
+moments she wrote waltzes, one of which, the 'Kensington Coil,'
+was almost national to Kensington, having a sweet dip in it.
+
+It was very original.  Then there were her 'Songs for Little
+People,' at once educational and witty, especially 'Gran'ma's
+Porgie,' and that ditty, almost prophetically imbued with the
+coming Imperial spirit, entitled 'Black him in his little eye.'
+
+Any publisher would take these, and reviews like 'High Living,'
+and the 'Ladies' Genteel Guide' went into raptures over: 'Another
+of Miss Francie Forsyte's spirited ditties, sparkling and
+pathetic.  We ourselves were moved to tears and laughter.  Miss
+Forsyte should go far.'
+
+With the true instinct of her breed, Francie had made a point of
+knowing the right people--people who would write about her, and
+talk about her, and people in Society, too--keeping a mental
+register of just where to exert her fascinations, and an eye on
+that steady scale of rising prices, which in her mind's eye
+represented the future.  In this way she caused herself to be
+universally respected.
+
+Once, at a time when her emotions were whipped by an attachment--
+for the tenor of Roger's life, with its whole-hearted collection
+of house property, had induced in his only daughter a tendency
+towards passion--she turned to great and sincere work, choosing
+the sonata form, for the violin.  This was the only one of her
+productions that troubled the Forsytes.  They felt at once that
+it would not sell.
+
+Roger, who liked having a clever daughter well enough, and often
+alluded to the amount of pocket-money she made for herself, was
+upset by this violin sonata.
+
+"Rubbish like that!" he called it.  Francie had borrowed young
+Flageoletti from Euphemia, to play it in the drawing-room at
+Prince's Gardens.
+
+As a matter of fact Roger was right.  It was rubbish, but--
+annoying! the sort of rubbish that wouldn't sell.  As every
+Forsyte knows, rubbish that sells is not rubbish at all--far from
+it.
+
+And yet, in spite of the sound common sense which fixed the worth
+of art at what it would fetch, some of the Forsytes--Aunt
+Hester, for instance, who had always been musical--could not help
+regretting that Francie's music was not 'classical'; the same
+with her poems.  But then, as Aunt Hester said, they didn't see
+any poetry nowadays, all the poems were 'little light things.'
+
+There was nobody who could write a poem like 'Paradise Lost,' or
+'Childe Harold'; either of which made you feel that you really
+had read something.  Still, it was nice for Francie to have
+something to occupy her; while other girls were spending money
+shopping she was making it!
+
+And both Aunt Hester and Aunt Juley were always ready to listen
+to the latest story of how Francie had got her price increased.
+
+They listened now, together with Swithin, who sat pretending not
+to, for these young people talked so fast and mumbled so, he
+never could catch what they said.
+
+"And I can't think," said Mrs. Septimus, "how you do it.  I
+should never have the audacity!"
+
+Francie smiled lightly.  "I'd much rather deal with a man than a
+woman.  Women are so sharp!"
+
+"My dear," cried Mrs. Small, "I'm sure we're not."
+
+Euphemia went off into her silent laugh, and, ending with the
+squeak, said, as though being strangled: "Oh, you'll kill me some
+day, auntie."
+
+Swithin saw no necessity to laugh; he detested people laughing
+when he himself perceived no joke.  Indeed, he detested Euphemia
+altogether, to whom he always alluded as 'Nick's daughter, what's
+she called--the pale one?'  He had just missed being her god-
+father--indeed, would have been, had he not taken a firm stand
+against her outlandish name.  He hated becoming a godfather.
+Swithin then said to Francie with dignity: "It's a fine day--
+er--for the time of year." But Euphemia, who knew perfectly well
+that he had refused to be her godfather, turned to Aunt Hester,
+and began telling her how she had seen Irene--Mrs. Soames--at the
+Church and Commercial Stores.
+
+"And Soames was with her?" said Aunt Hester, to whom Mrs. Small
+had as yet had no opportunity of relating the incident.
+
+"Soames with her?  Of course not!"
+
+"But was she all alone in London?"
+
+"Oh, no; there was Mr. Bosinney with her.  She was perfectly
+dressed."
+
+But Swithin, hearing the name Irene, looked severely at Euphemia,
+who, it is true, never did look well in a dress, whatever she may
+have done on other occasions, and said:
+
+"Dressed like a lady, I've no doubt.  It's a pleasure to see
+her."
+
+At this moment James and his daughters were announced.  Dartie,
+feeling badly in want of a drink, had pleaded an appointment with
+his dentist, and, being put down at the Marble Arch, had got into
+a hansom, and was already seated in the window of his club in
+Piccadilly.
+
+His wife, he told his cronies, had wanted to take him to pay some
+calls.  It was not in his line--not exactly.  Haw!
+
+Hailing the waiter, he sent him out to the hall to see what had
+won the 4.30 race.  He was dog-tired, he said, and that was a
+fact; had been drivin' about with his wife to 'shows' all the
+afternoon.  Had put his foot down at last.  A fellow must live
+his own life.
+
+At this moment, glancing out of the bay window--for he loved this
+seat whence he could see everybody pass--his eye unfortunately,
+or perhaps fortunately, chanced to light on the figure of Soames,
+who was mousing across the road from the Green Park-side, with
+the evident intention of coming in, for he, too, belonged to 'The
+Iseeum.'
+
+Dartie sprang to his feet; grasping his glass, he muttered
+something about 'that 4.30 race,' and swiftly withdrew to the
+card-room, where Soames never came.  Here, in complete isolation
+and a dim light, he lived his own life till half past seven, by
+which hour he knew Soames must certainly have left the club.
+
+It would not do, as he kept repeating to himself whenever he felt
+the impulse to join the gossips in the bay-window getting too
+strong for him--it absolutely would not do, with finances as low
+as his, and the 'old man' (James) rusty ever since that business
+over the oil shares, which was no fault of his, to risk a row
+with Winifred.
+
+If Soames were to see him in the club it would be sure to come
+round to her that he wasn't at the dentist's at all.  He never
+knew a family where things 'came round' so.  Uneasily, amongst
+the green baize card-tables, a frown on his olive coloured face,
+his check trousers crossed, and patent-leather boots shining
+through the gloom, he sat biting his forefinger, and wondering
+where the deuce he was to get the money if Erotic failed to win
+the Lancashire Cup.
+
+His thoughts turned gloomily to the Forsytes.  What a set they
+were!  There was no getting anything out of them--at least, it
+was a matter of extreme difficulty.  They were so d---d
+particular about money matters; not a sportsman amongst the lot,
+unless it were George.  That fellow Soames, for instance, would
+have a ft if you tried to borrow a tenner from him, or, if he
+didn't have a fit, he looked at you with his cursed supercilious
+smile, as if you were a lost soul because you were in want of
+money.
+
+And that wife of his (Dartie's mouth watered involuntarily), he
+had tried to be on good terms with her, as one naturally would
+with any pretty sister-in-law, but he would be cursed if the (he
+mentally used a coarse word)--would have anything to say to him--
+she looked at him, indeed, as if he were dirt--and yet she could
+go far enough, he wouldn't mind betting.  He knew women; they
+weren't made with soft eyes and figures like that for nothing, as
+that fellow Soames would jolly soon find out, if there were
+anything in what he had heard about this Buccaneer Johnny.
+
+Rising from his chair, Dartie took a turn across the room, ending
+in front of the looking-glass over the marble chimney-piece; and
+there he stood for a long time contemplating in the glass the
+reflection of his face.  It had that look, peculiar to some men,
+of having been steeped in linseed oil, with its waxed dark
+moustaches and the little distinguished commencements of side
+whiskers; and concernedly he felt the promise of a pimple on the
+side of his slightly curved and fattish nose.
+
+In the meantime old Jolyon had found the remaining chair in
+Timothy's commodious drawing-room.  His advent had obviously put
+a stop to the conversation, decided awkwardness having set in.
+Aunt Juley, with her well-known kindheartedness, hastened to set
+people at their ease again.
+
+"Yes, Jolyon," she said, "we were just saying that you haven't
+been here for a long time; but we mustn't be surprised.  You're
+busy, of course?  James was just saying what a busy time of
+year...."
+
+"Was he?" said old Jolyon, looking hard at James.  "It wouldn't
+be half so busy if everybody minded their own business."
+
+James, brooding in a small chair from which his knees ran uphill,
+shifted his feet uneasily, and put one of them down on the cat,
+which had unwisely taken refuge from old Jolyon beside him.
+
+"Here, you've got a cat here," he said in an injured voice,
+withdrawing his foot nervously as he felt it squeezing into the
+soft, furry body.
+
+"Several," said old Jolyon, looking at one face and another; "I
+trod on one just now."
+
+A silence followed.
+
+Then Mrs. Small, twisting her fingers and gazing round with
+'pathetic calm, asked: "And how is dear June?"
+
+A twinkle of humour shot through the sternness of old Jolyon's
+eyes.  Extraordinary old woman, Juley!  No one quite like her for
+saying the wrong thing!
+
+"Bad!" he said; "London don't agree with her--too many people
+about, too much clatter and chatter by half."  He laid emphasis on
+the words, and again looked James in the face.
+
+Nobody spoke.
+
+A feeling of its being too dangerous to take a step in any
+direction, or hazard any remark, had fallen on them all.
+Something of the sense of the impending, that comes over the
+spectator of a Greek tragedy, had entered that upholstered room,
+filled with those white-haired, frockcoated old men, and
+fashionably attired women, who were all of the same blood,
+between all of whom existed an unseizable resemblance.
+
+Not that they were conscious of it--the visits of such fateful,
+bitter spirits are only felt.
+
+Then Swithin rose.  He would not sit there, feeling like that--he
+was not to be put down by anyone!  And, manoeuvring round the
+room with added pomp, he shook hands with each separately.
+
+"You tell Timothy from me," he said, "that he coddles himself too
+much!"  Then, turning to Francie, whom he considered 'smart,' he
+added: "You come with me for a drive one of these days."  But this
+conjured up the vision of that other eventful drive which had
+been so much talked about, and he stood quite still for a second,
+with glassy eyes, as though waiting to catch up with the
+significance of what he himself had said; then, suddenly
+recollecting that he didn't care a damn, he turned to old Jolyon:
+"Well, good-bye, Jolyon!  You shouldn't go about without an
+overcoat; you'll be getting sciatica or something!"  And, kicking
+the cat slightly with the pointed tip of his patent leather boot,
+he took his huge form away.
+
+When he had gone everyone looked secretly at the others, to see
+how they had taken the mention of the word 'drive'--the word
+which had become famous, and acquired an overwhelming importance,
+as the only official--so to speak--news in connection with the
+vague and sinister rumour clinging to the family tongue.
+
+Euphemia, yielding to an impulse, said with a short laugh: "I'm
+glad Uncle Swithin doesn't ask me to go for drives."
+
+Mrs. Small, to reassure her and smooth over any little
+awkwardness the subject might have, replied: "My dear, he likes
+to take somebody well dressed, who will do him a little credit.
+I shall never forget the drive he took me.  It was an
+experience!"  And her chubby round old face was spread for a
+moment with a strange contentment; then broke into pouts, and
+tears came into her eyes.  She was thinking of that long ago
+driving tour she had once taken with Septimus Small.
+
+James, who had relapsed into his nervous brooding in the little
+chair, suddenly roused himself: "He's a funny fellow, Swithin,"
+he said, but in a half-hearted way.
+
+Old Jolyon's silence, his stern eyes, held them all in a kind of
+paralysis.  He was disconcerted himself by the effect of his own
+words--an effect which seemed to deepen the importance of the
+very rumour he had come to scotch; but he was still angry.
+
+He had not done with them yet--No, no--he would give them another
+rub or two
+
+He did not wish to rub his nieces, he had no quarrel with them--a
+young and presentable female always appealed to old Jolyon's
+clemency--but that fellow James, and, in a less degree perhaps,
+those others, deserved all they would get.  And he, too, asked
+for Timothy.
+
+As though feeling that some danger threatened her younger
+brother, Aunt Juley suddenly offered him tea: "There it is," she
+said, "all cold and nasty, waiting for you in the back drawing
+room, but Smither shall make you some fresh."
+
+Old Jolyon rose: "Thank you," he said, looking straight at James,
+"but I've no time for tea, and--scandal, and the rest of it!
+It's time I was at home.  Good-bye, Julia; good-bye, Hester;
+good-bye, Winifred."
+
+Without more ceremonious adieux, he marched out.
+
+Once again in his cab, his anger evaporated, for so it ever was
+with his wrath--when he had rapped out, it was gone.  Sadness
+came over his spirit.  He had stopped their mouths, maybe, but at
+what a cost!  At the cost of certain knowledge that the rumour he
+had been resolved not to believe was true.  June was abandoned,
+and for the wife of that fellow's son!  He felt it was true, and
+hardened himself to treat it as if it were not; but the pain he
+hid beneath this resolution began slowly, surely, to vent itself
+in a blind resentment against James and his son.
+
+The six women and one man left behind in the little drawing-room
+began talking as easily as might be after such an occurrence, for
+though each one of them knew for a fact that he or she never
+talked scandal, each one of them also knew that the other six
+did; all were therefore angry and at a loss.  James only was
+silent, disturbed, to the bottom of his soul.
+
+Presently Francie said: "Do you know, I think Uncle Jolyon is
+terribly changed this last year.  What do you think, Aunt
+Hester?"
+
+Aunt Hester made a little movement of recoil: "Oh, ask your Aunt
+Julia!" she said; "I know nothing about it."
+
+No one else was afraid of assenting, and James muttered gloomily
+at the floor: "He's not half the man he was."
+
+"I've noticed it a long time," went on Francie; "he's aged
+tremendously."
+
+Aunt Juley shook her head; her face seemed suddenly to have
+become one immense pout.
+
+"Poor dear Jolyon," she said, "somebody ought to see to it for
+him!"
+
+There was again silence; then, as though in terror of being left
+solitarily behind, all five visitors rose simultaneously, and
+took their departure.
+
+Mrs. Small, Aunt Hester, and their cat were left once more alone,
+the sound of a door closing in the distance announced the
+approach of Timothy.
+
+That evening, when Aunt Hester had just got off to sleep in the
+back bedroom that used to be Aunt Juley's before Aunt Juley took
+Aunt Ann's, her door was opened, and Mrs. Small, in a pink
+night-cap, a candle in her hand, entered: "Hester!" she said.
+"Hester!"
+
+Aunt Hester faintly rustled the sheet.
+
+"Hester," repeated Aunt Juley, to make quite sure that she had
+awakened her, "I am quite troubled about poor dear Jolyon.
+What," Aunt Juley dwelt on the word, "do you think ought to be
+done?"
+
+Aunt Hester again rustled the sheet, her voice was heard faintly
+pleading: "Done?  How should I know?"
+
+Aunt Juley turned away satisfied, and closing the door with extra
+gentleness so as not to disturb dear Hester, let it slip through
+her fingers and fall to with a 'crack.'
+
+Back in her own room, she stood at the window gazing at the moon
+over the trees in the Park, through a chink in the muslin
+curtains, close drawn lest anyone should see.  And there, with
+her face all round and pouting in its pink cap, and her eyes wet,
+she thought of 'dear Jolyon,' so old and so lonely, and how she
+could be of some use to him; and how he would come to love her,
+as she had never been loved since--since poor Septimus went away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+DANCE AT ROGER'S
+
+
+Roger's house in Prince's Gardens was brilliantly alight.  Large
+numbers of wax candles had been collected and placed in cut-glass
+chandeliers, and the parquet floor of the long, double
+drawing-room reflected these constellations.  An appearance of
+real spaciousness had been secured by moving out all the
+furniture on to the upper landings, and enclosing the room with
+those strange appendages of civilization known as 'rout' seats.
+In a remote corner, embowered in palms, was a cottage piano, with
+a copy of the 'Kensington Coil' open on the music-stand.
+
+Roger had objected to a band.  He didn't see in the least what
+they wanted with a band; he wouldn't go to the expense, and there
+was an end of it.  Francie (her mother, whom Roger had long since
+reduced to chronic dyspepsia, went to bed on such occasions), had
+been obliged to content herself with supplementing the piano by a
+young man who played the cornet, and she so arranged with palms
+that anyone who did not look into the heart of things might
+imagine there were several musicians secreted there.  She made up
+her mind to tell them to play loud--there was a lot of music in a
+cornet, if the man would only put his soul into it.
+
+In the more cultivated American tongue, she was 'through' at
+last--through that tortuous labyrinth of make-shifts, which must
+be traversed before fashionable display can be combined with the
+sound economy of a Forsyte.  Thin but brilliant, in her
+maize-coloured frock with much tulle about the shoulders, she
+went from place to place, fitting on her gloves, and casting her
+eye over it all.
+
+To the hired butler (for Roger only kept maids) she spoke about
+the wine.  Did he quite understand that Mr. Forsyte wished a
+dozen bottles of the champagne from Whiteley's to be put out?
+But if that were finished (she did not suppose it would be, most
+of the ladies would drink water, no doubt), but if it were, there
+was the champagne cup, and he must do the best he could with
+that.
+
+She hated having to say this sort of thing to a butler, it was so
+infra dig.; but what could you do with father?  Roger, indeed,
+after making himself consistently disagreeable about the dance,
+would come down presently, with his fresh colour and bumpy
+forehead, as though he had been its promoter; and he would smile,
+and probably take the prettiest woman in to supper; and at two
+o'clock, just as they were getting into the swing, he would go up
+secretly to the musicians and tell them to play 'God Save the
+Queen,' and go away.
+
+Francie devoutly hoped he might soon get tired, and slip off to
+bed.
+
+The three or four devoted girl friends who were staying in the
+house for this dance, had partaken with her, in a small,
+abandoned room upstairs, of tea and cold chicken-legs, hurriedly
+served; the men had been sent out to dine at Eustace's Club, it
+being felt that they must be fed up.
+
+Punctually on the stroke of nine arrived Mrs. Small alone.  She
+made elaborate apologies for the absence of Timothy, omitting all
+mention of Aunt Hester, who, at the last minute, had said she
+could not be bothered.  Francie received her effusively, and
+placed her on a rout seat, where she left her, pouting and
+solitary in lavender-coloured satin--the first time she had worn
+colour since Aunt Ann's death.
+
+The devoted maiden friends came now from their rooms, each by
+magic arrangement in a differently coloured frock, but all with
+the same liberal allowance of tulle on the shoulders and at the
+bosom--for they were, by some fatality, lean to a girl.  They
+were all taken up to Mrs. Small.  None stayed with her more than
+a few seconds, but clustering together talked and twisted their
+programmes, looking secretly at the door for the first appearance
+of a man.
+
+Then arrived in a group a number of Nicholases, always punctual--
+the fashion up Ladbroke Grove way; and close behind them Eustace
+and his men, gloomy and smelling rather of smoke.
+
+Three or four of Francie's lovers now appeared, one after the
+other; she had made each promise to come early.  They were all
+clean-shaven and sprightly, with that peculiar kind of young-man
+sprightliness which had recently invaded Kensington; they did not
+seem to mind each other's presence in the least, and wore their
+ties bunching out at the ends, white waistcoats, and socks with
+clocks.  All had handkerchiefs concealed in their cuffs.  They
+moved buoyantly, each armoured in professional gaiety, as though
+he had come to do great deeds.  Their faces when they danced, far
+from wearing the traditional solemn look of the dancing, English-
+man, were irresponsible, charming, suave; they bounded, twirling
+their partners at great pace, without pedantic attentionto the
+rhythm of the music.
+
+At other dancers they looked with a kind of airy scorn--they, the
+light brigade, the heroes of a hundred Kensington 'hops'--from
+whom alone could the right manner and smile and step be hoped.
+
+After this the stream came fast; chaperones silting up along the
+wall facing the entrance, the volatile element swelling the eddy
+in the larger room.
+
+Men were scarce, and wallflowers wore their peculiar, pathetic
+expression, a patient, sourish smile which seemed to say: "Oh,
+no! don't mistake me, I know you are not coming up to me.  I can
+hardly expect that!"  And Francie would plead with one of her
+lovers, or with some callow youth: "Now, to please me, do let me
+introduce you to Miss Pink; such a nice girl, really!" and she
+would bring him up, and say: "Miss Pink--Mr. Gathercole.  Can you
+spare him a dance?"  Then Miss Pink, smiling her forced smile,
+colouring a little, answered: "Oh! I think so!" and screening
+her empty card, wrote on it the name of Gathercole, spelling it
+passionately in the district that he proposed, about the second
+extra.
+
+But when the youth had murmured that it was hot, and passed, she
+relapsed into her attitude of hopeless expectation, into her
+patient, sourish smile.
+
+Mothers, slowly fanning their faces, watched their daughters, and
+in their eyes could be read all the story of those daughters'
+fortunes.  As for themselves, to sit hour after hour, dead tired,
+silent, or talking spasmodically--what did it matter, so long as
+the girls were having a good time!  But to see them neglected and
+passed by!  Ah! they smiled, but their eyes stabbed like the
+eyes of an offended swan; they longed to pluck young, Gathercole
+by the slack of his dandified breeches, and drag him to their
+daughters--the jackanapes!
+
+And all the cruelties and hardness of life, its pathos and
+unequal chances, its conceit, self-forgetfulness, and patience,
+were presented on the battle-field of this Kensington ball-room.
+
+Here and there, too, lovers--not lovers like Francie's, a
+peculiar breed, but simply lovers--trembling, blushing, silent,
+sought each other by flying glances, sought to meet and touch in
+the mazes of the dance, and now and again dancing together,
+struck some beholder by the light in their eyes.
+
+Not a second before ten o'clock came the Jameses--Emily, Rachel,
+Winifred (Dartie had been left behind, having on a former
+occasion drunk too much of Roger's champagne), and Cicely, the
+youngest, making her debut; behind them, following in a hansom
+from the paternal mansion where they had dined, Soames and Irene.
+
+All these ladies had shoulder-straps and no tulle--thus showing
+at once, by a bolder exposure of flesh, that they came from the
+more fashionable side of the Park.
+
+Soames, sidling back from the contact of the dancers, took up a
+position against the wall.  Guarding himself with his pale smile,
+he stood watching.  Waltz after waltz began and ended, couple
+after couple brushed by with smiling lips, laughter, and snatches
+of talk; or with set lips, and eyes searching the throng; or
+again, with silent, parted lips, and eyes on each other.  And the
+scent of festivity, the odour of flowers, and hair, of essences
+that women love, rose suffocatingly in the heat of the summer
+night.
+
+Silent, with something of scorn in his smile, Soames seemed to
+notice nothing; but now and again his eyes, finding that which
+they sought, would fix themselves on a point in the shifting
+throng, and the smile die off his lips.
+
+He danced with no one.  Some fellows danced with their wives; his
+sense of 'form' had never permitted him to dance with Irene since
+their marriage, and the God of the Forsytes alone can tell
+whether this was a relief to him or not.
+
+She passed, dancing with other men, her dress, iris-coloured,
+floating away from her feet.  She danced well; he was tired of
+hearing women say with an acid smile: "How beautifully your wife
+dances, Mr. Forsyte--it's quite a pleasure to watch her!"  Tired
+of answering them with his sidelong glance: "You think so?"
+
+A young couple close by flirted a fan by turns, making an
+unpleasant draught.  Francie and one of her lovers stood near.
+They were talking of love.
+
+He heard Roger's voice behind, giving an order about supper to a
+servant.  Everything was very second-class!  He wished that he
+had not come!  He had asked Irene whether she wanted him; she had
+answered with that maddening smile of hers "Oh, no!"
+
+Why had he come?  For the last quarter of an hour he had not even
+seen her.  Here was George advancing with his Quilpish face; it
+was too late to get out of his way.
+
+"Have you seen 'The Buccaneer'?" said this licensed wag; "he's on
+the warpath--hair cut and everything!"
+
+Soames said he had not, and crossing the room, half-empty in an
+interval of the dance, he went out on the balcony, and looked
+down into the street.
+
+A carriage had driven up with late arrivals, and round the door
+hung some of those patient watchers of the London streets who
+spring up to the call of light or music; their faces, pale and
+upturned above their black and rusty figures, had an air of
+stolid watching that annoyed Soames.  Why were they allowed to
+hang about; why didn't the bobby move them on?
+
+But the policeman took no notice of them; his feet were planted
+apart on the strip of crimson carpet stretched across the
+pavement; his face, under the helmet, wore the same stolid,
+watching look as theirs.
+
+Across the road, through the railings, Soames could see the
+branches of trees shining, faintly stirring in the breeze, by the
+gleam of the street lamps; beyond, again, the upper lights of the
+houses on the other side, so many eyes looking down on the quiet
+blackness of the garden; and over all, the sky, that wonderful
+London sky, dusted with the innumerable reflection of countless
+lamps; a dome woven over between its stars with the refraction of
+human needs and human fancies--immense mirror of pomp and misery
+that night after night stretches its kindly mocking over miles of
+houses and gardens, mansions and squalor, over Forsytes,
+policemen, and patient watchers in the streets.
+
+Soames turned away, and, hidden in the recess, gazed into the
+lighted room.  It was cooler out there.  He saw the new arrivals,
+June and her grandfather, enter.  What had made them so late?
+They stood by the doorway.  They looked fagged.  Fancy Uncle
+Jolyon turning out at this time of night!  Why hadn't June come
+to Irene, as she usually did, and it occurred to him suddenly
+that he had seen nothing of June for a long time now.
+
+Watching her face with idle malice, he saw it change, grow so
+pale that he thought she would drop, then flame out crimson.
+Turning to see at what she was looking, he saw his wife on
+Bosinney's arm, coming from the conservatory at the end of the
+room.  Her eyes were raised to his, as though answering some
+question he had asked, and he was gazing at her intently.
+
+Soames looked again at June.  Her hand rested on old Jolyon's
+arm; she seemed to be making a request.  He saw a surprised look
+on his uncle's face; they turned and passed through the door out
+of his sight.
+
+The music began again--a waltz--and, still as a statue in the
+recess of the window, his face unmoved, but no smile on his lips,
+Soames waited.  Presently, within a yard of the dark balcony, his
+wife and Bosinney passed.  He caught the perfume of the gardenias
+that she wore, saw the rise and fall of her bosom, the languor in
+her eyes, her parted lips, and a look on her face that he did not
+know.  To the slow, swinging measure they danced by, and it
+seemed to him that they clung to each other; he saw her raise her
+eyes, soft and dark, to Bosinney's, and drop them again.
+
+Very white, he turned back to the balcony, and leaning on it,
+gazed down on the Square; the figures were still there looking up
+at the light with dull persistency, the policeman's face, too,
+upturned, and staring, but he saw nothing of them.  Below, a
+carriage drew up, two figures got in, and drove away....
+
+That evening June and old Jolyon sat down to dinner at the usual
+hour.  The girl was in her customary high-necked frock, old
+Jolyon had not dressed.
+
+At breakfast she had spoken of the dance at Uncle Roger's, she
+wanted to go; she had been stupid enough, she said, not to think
+of asking anyone to take her.  It was too late now.
+
+Old Jolyon lifted his keen eyes.  June was used to go to dances
+with Irene as a matter of course!  And deliberately fixing his
+gaze on her, he asked: "Why don't you get Irene?"
+
+No!  June did not want to ask Irene; she would only go if--if her
+grandfather wouldn't mind just for once for a little time!
+
+At her look, so eager and so worn, old Jolyon had grumblingly
+consented.  He did not know what she wanted, he said, with going
+to a dance like this, a poor affair, he would wager; and she no
+more fit for it than a cat!  What she wanted was sea air, and
+after his general meeting of the Globular Gold Concessions he was
+ready to take her.  She didn't want to go away?  Ah! she would
+knock herself up!  Stealing a mournful look at her, he went on
+with his breakfast.
+
+June went out early, and wandered restlessly about in the heat.
+Her little light figure that lately had moved so languidly about
+its business, was all on fire.  She bought herself some flowers.
+She wanted--she meant to look her best.  He would be there!  She
+knew well enough that he had a card.  She would show him that she
+did not care.  But deep down in her heart she resolved that
+evening to win him back.  She came in flushed, and talked
+brightly all lunch; old Jolyon was there, and he was deceived.
+
+In the afternoon she was overtaken by a desperate fit of sobbing.
+She strangled the noise against the pillows of her bed, but when
+at last it ceased she saw in the glass a swollen face with
+reddened eyes, and violet circles round them.  She stayed in the
+darkened room till dinner time.
+
+All through that silent meal the struggle went on within her.
+
+She looked so shadowy and exhausted that old Jolyon told 'Sankey'
+to countermand the carriage, he would not have her going out....
+She was to go to bed!  She made no resistance.  She went up to
+her room, and sat in the dark.  At ten o'clock she rang for her
+maid.
+
+"Bring some hot water, and go down and tell Mr. Forsyte that I
+feel perfectly rested.  Say that if he's too tired I can go to
+the dance by myself."
+
+The maid looked askance, and June turned on her imperiously.
+"Go," she said, "bring the hot water at once!"
+
+Her ball-dress still lay on the sofa, and with a sort of fierce
+care she arrayed herself, took the flowers in her hand, and went
+down, her small face carried high under its burden of hair.  She
+could hear old Jolyon in his room as she passed.
+
+Bewildered and vexed, he was dressing.  It was past ten, they
+would not get there till eleven; the girl was mad.  But he dared
+not cross her the expression of her face at dinner haunted him.
+
+With great ebony brushes he smoothed his hair till it shone like
+silver under the light; then he, too, came out on the gloomy
+staircase.
+
+June met him below, and, without a word, they went to the
+carriage.
+
+When, after that drive which seemed to last for ever, she entered
+Roger's drawing-room, she disguised under a mask of resolution a
+very torment of nervousness and emotion.  The feeling of shame at
+what might be called 'running after him' was smothered by the
+dread that he might not be there, that she might not see him
+after all, and by that dogged resolve--somehow, she did not know
+how--to win him back.
+
+The sight of the ballroom, with its gleaming floor, gave her a
+feeling of joy, of triumph, for she loved dancing, and when
+dancing she floated, so light was she, like a strenuous, eager
+little spirit.  He would surely ask her to dance, and if he
+danced with her it would all be as it was before.  She looked
+about her eagerly.
+
+The sight of Bosinney coming with Irene from the conservatory,
+with that strange look of utter absorption on his face, struck
+her too suddenly.  They had not seen--no one should see--her
+distress, not even her grandfather.
+
+She put her hand on Jolyon's arm, and said very low:
+
+"I must go home, Gran; I feel ill."
+
+He hurried her away, grumbling to himself that he had known how
+it would be.
+
+To her he said nothing; only when they were once more in the
+carriage, which by some fortunate chance had lingered near the
+door, he asked her: "What is it, my darling?"
+
+Feeling her whole slender body shaken by sobs, he was terribly
+alarmed.  She must have Blank to-morrow.  He would insist upon
+it.  He could not have her like this....  There, there!
+
+June mastered her sobs, and squeezing his hand feverishly, she
+lay back in her corner, her face muffled in a shawl.
+
+He could only see her eyes, fixed and staring in the dark, but he
+did not cease to stroke her hand with his thin fingers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+EVENING AT RICHMOND
+
+
+Other eyes besides the eyes of June and of Soames had seen 'those
+two' (as Euphemia had already begun to call them) coming from the
+conservatory; other eyes had noticed the look on Bosinney's face.
+
+There are moments when Nature reveals the passion hidden beneath
+the careless calm of her ordinary moods--violent spring flashing
+white on almond-blossom through the purple clouds; a snowy,
+moonlit peak, with its single star, soaring up to the passionate
+blue; or against the flames of sunset, an old yew-tree standing
+dark guardian of some fiery secret.
+
+There are moments, too, when in a picture-gallery, a work, noted
+by the casual spectator as '......Titian--remarkably fine,'
+breaks through the defences of some Forsyte better lunched
+perhaps than his fellows, and holds him spellbound in a kind of
+ecstasy.  There are things, he feels--there are things here
+which--well, which are things.  Something unreasoning,
+unreasonable, is upon him; when he tries to define it with the
+precision of a practical man, it eludes him, slips away, as the
+glow of the wine he has drunk is slipping away, leaving him
+cross, and conscious of his liver.  He feels that he has been
+extravagant, prodigal of something; virtue has gone out of him.
+He did not desire this glimpse of what lay under the three stars
+of his catalogue.  God forbid that he should know anything about
+the forces of Nature!  God forbid that he should admit for a
+moment that there are such things!  Once admit that, and where
+was he?  One paid a shilling for entrance, and another for the
+programme.
+
+The look which June had seen, which other Forsytes had seen, was
+like the sudden flashing of a candle through a hole in some
+imaginary canvas, behind which it was being moved--the sudden
+flaming-out of a vague, erratic glow, shadowy and enticing.  It
+brought home to onlookers the consciousness that dangerous forces
+were at work.  For a moment they noticed it with pleasure, with
+interest, then felt they must not notice it at all.
+
+It supplied, however, the reason of June's coming so late and
+disappearing again without dancing, without even shaking hands
+with her lover.  She was ill, it was said, and no wonder.
+
+But here they looked at each other guiltily.  They had no desire
+to spread scandal, no desire to be ill-natured.  Who would have?
+And to outsiders no word was breathed, unwritten law keeping them
+silent.
+
+Then came the news that June had gone to the seaside with old
+Jolyon.
+
+He had carried her off to Broadstairs, for which place there was
+just then a feeling, Yarmouth having lost caste, in spite of
+Nicholas, and no Forsyte going to the sea without intending to
+have an air for his money such as would render him bilious in a
+week.  That fatally aristocratic tendency of the first Forsyte to
+drink Madeira had left his descendants undoubtedly accessible.
+
+So June went to the sea.  The family awaited developments; there
+was nothing else to do.
+
+But how far--how far had 'those two' gone?  How far were they
+going to go?  Could they really be going at all?  Nothing could
+surely come of it, for neither of them had any money.  At the
+most a flirtation, ending, as all such attachments should, at the
+proper time.
+
+Soames' sister, Winifred Dartie, who had imbibed with the breezes
+of Mayfair--she lived in Green Street--more fashionable
+principles in regard to matrimonial behaviour than were current,
+for instance, in Ladbroke Grove, laughed at the idea of there
+being anything in it.  The 'little thing'--Irene was taller than
+herself, and it was real testimony to the solid worth of a
+Forsyte that she should always thus be a 'little thing'--the
+little thing was bored.  Why shouldn't she amuse herself?  Soames
+was rather tiring; and as to Mr. Bosinney--only that buffoon
+George would have called him the Buccaneer--she maintained that
+he was very chic.
+
+This dictum--that Bosinney was chic--caused quit a sensation.  It
+failed to convince.  That he was 'good-looking in a way' they
+were prepared to admit, but that anyone could call a man with his
+pronounced cheekbones, curious eyes, arid soft felt hats chic was
+only another instance of Winifred's extravagant way of running
+after something new.
+
+It was that famous summer when extravagance was fashionable, when
+the very earth was extravagant, chestnut-trees spread with
+blossom, and flowers drenched in perfume, as they had never been
+before; when roses blew in every garden; and for the swarming
+stars the nights had hardly space; when every day and all day
+long the sun, in full armour, swung his brazen shield above the
+Park, and people did strange things, lunching and dining in the
+open air.  Unprecedented was the tale of cabs and carriages that
+streamed across the bridges of the shining river, bearing the
+upper-middle class in thousands to the green glories of Bushey,
+Richmond, Kew, and Hampton Court.  Almost every family with any
+pretensions to be of the carriage-class paid one visit that year
+to the horse-chestnuts at Bushey, or took one drive amongst the
+Spanish chestnuts of Richmond Park.  Bowling smoothly, if
+dustily, along, in a cloud of their own creation, they would
+stare fashionably at the antlered heads which the great slow deer
+raised out of a forest of bracken that promised to autumn lovers
+such cover as was never seen before.  And now and again, as the
+amorous perfume of chestnut flowers and of fern was drifted too
+near, one would say to the other: "My dear!  What a peculiar
+scent!"
+
+And the lime-flowers that year were of rare prime, near
+honey-coloured.  At the corners of London squares they gave out,
+as the sun went down, a perfume sweeter than the honey bees had
+taken--a perfume that stirred a yearning unnamable in the hearts
+of Forsytes and their peers, taking the cool after dinner in the
+precincts of those gardens to which they alone had keys.
+
+And that yearning made them linger amidst the dim shapes of
+flower-beds in the failing daylight, made them turn, and turn,
+and turn again, as though lovers were waiting for them--waiting
+for the last light to die away under the shadow of the branches.
+
+Some vague sympathy evoked by the scent of the limes, some
+sisterly desire to see for herself, some idea of demonstrating
+the soundness of her dictum that there was 'nothing in it'; or
+merely the craving to drive down to Richmond, irresistible that
+summer, moved the mother of the little Darties (of little
+Publius, of Imogen, Maud, and Benedict) to write the following
+note to her sister-in-law:
+
+
+'DEAR IRENE,
+'June 30.
+
+'I hear that Soames is going to Henley tomorrow for the night.  I
+thought it would be great fun if we made up a little party and
+drove down to, Richmond.  Will you ask Mr. Bosinney, and I will
+get young Flippard.
+
+'Emily (they called their mother Emily--it was so chic) will lend
+us the carriage.  I will call for you and your young man at seven
+o'clock.
+
+'Your affectionate sister,
+
+'WINIFRED DARTIE.
+
+'Montague believes the dinner at the Crown and Sceptre to be
+quite eatable.'
+
+
+Montague was Dartie's second and better known name--his first
+being Moses; for he was nothing if not a man of the world.
+
+Her plan met with more opposition from Providence than so
+benevolent a scheme deserved.  In the first place young Flippard
+wrote:
+
+
+'DEAR Mrs. DARTIE,
+
+'Awfully sorry.  Engaged two deep.
+
+'Yours,
+
+'AUGUSTUS FLIPPARD.'
+
+
+It was late to send into the byeways and hedges to remedy this
+misfortune.  With the promptitude and conduct of a mother,
+Winifred fell back on her husband.  She had, indeed, the decided
+but tolerant temperament that goes with a good deal of profile,
+fair hair, and greenish eyes.  She was seldom or never at a loss;
+or if at a loss, was always able to convert it into a gain.
+
+Dartie, too, was in good feather.  Erotic had failed to win the
+Lancashire Cup.  Indeed, that celebrated animal, owned as he was
+by a pillar of the turf, who had secretly laid many thousands
+against him, had not even started.  The forty-eight hours that
+followed his scratching were among the darkest in Dartie's life.
+
+Visions of James haunted him day and night.  Black thoughts about
+Soames mingled with the faintest hopes.  On the Friday night he
+got drunk, so greatly was he affected.  But on Saturday morning
+the true Stock Exchange instinct triumphed within him.  Owing
+some hundreds, which by no possibility could he pay, he went into
+town and put them all on Concertina for the Saltown Borough
+Handicap.
+
+As he said to Major Scrotton, with whom he lunched at the Iseeum:
+"That little Jew boy, Nathans, had given him the tip.  He didn't
+care a cursh.  He wash in--a mucker.  If it didn't come up--well
+then, damme, the old man would have to pay!"
+
+A bottle of Pol Roger to his own cheek had given him a new
+contempt for James.
+
+It came up.  Concertina was squeezed home by her neck--a terrible
+squeak!  But, as Dartie said: There was nothing like pluck!
+
+He was by no means averse to the expedition to Richmond.  He
+would 'stand' it himself!  He cherished an admiration for Irene,
+and wished to be on more playful terms with her.
+
+At half-past five the Park Lane footman came round to say: Mrs.
+Forsyte was very sorry, but one of the horses was coughing!
+
+Undaunted by this further blow, Winifred at once despatched
+little Publius (now aged seven) with the nursery governess to
+Montpellier Square.
+
+They would go down in hansoms and meet at the Crown and Sceptre
+at 7.45.
+
+Dartie, on being told, was pleased enough.  It was better than
+going down with your back to the horses!  He had no objection to
+driving down with Irene.  He supposed they would pick up the
+others at Montpellier Square, and swop hansoms there?
+
+Informed that the meet was at the Crown and Sceptre, and that he
+would have to drive with his wife, he turned sulky, and said it
+was d---d slow!
+
+At seven o'clock they started, Dartie offering to bet the driver
+half-a-crown he didn't do it in the three-quarters of an hour.
+
+Twice only did husband and wife exchange remarks on the way.
+
+Dartie said: "It'll put Master Soames's nose out of joint to hear
+his wife's been drivin' in a hansom with Master Bosinney!"
+
+Winifred replied: "Don't talk such nonsense, Monty!"
+
+"Nonsense!" repeated Dartie.  "You don't know women, my fine
+lady!"
+
+On the other occasion he merely asked: "How am I looking?  A bit
+puffy about the gills?  That fizz old George is so fond of is a
+windy wine!"
+
+He had been lunching with George Forsyte at the Haversnake.
+
+Bosinney and Irene had arrived before them.  They were standing
+in one of the long French windows overlooking the river.
+
+Windows that summer were open all day long, and all night too,
+and day and night the scents of flowers and trees came in, the
+hot scent of parching grass, and the cool scent of the heavy
+dews.
+
+To the eye of the observant Dartie his two guests did not appear
+to be making much running, standing there close together, without
+a word.  Bosinney was a hungry-looking creature--not much go
+about him
+
+He left them to Winifred, however, and busied himself to order
+the dinner.
+
+A Forsyte will require good, if not delicate feeding, but a
+Dartie will tax the resources of a Crown and Sceptre.  Living as
+he does, from hand to mouth, nothing is too good for him to eat;
+and he will eat it.  His drink, too, will need to be carefully
+provided; there is much drink in this country 'not good enough'
+for a Dartie; he will have the best.  Paying for things
+vicariously, there is no reason why he should stint himself.  To
+stint yourself is the mark of a fool, not of a Dartie.
+
+The best of everything!  No sounder principle on which a man can
+base his life, whose father-in-law has a very considerable
+income, and a partiality for his grandchildren.
+
+With his not unable eye Dartie had spotted this weakness in James
+the very first year after little Publius's arrival (an error); he
+had profited by his perspicacity.  Four little Darties were now a
+sort of perpetual insurance.
+
+The feature of the feast was unquestionably the red mullet.  This
+delectable fish, brought from a considerable distance in a state
+of almost perfect preservation, was first fried, then boned, then
+served in ice, with Madeira punch in place of sauce, according to
+a recipe known to a few men of the world.
+
+Nothing else calls for remark except the payment of the bill by
+Dartie.
+
+He had made himself extremely agreeable throughout the meal; his
+bold, admiring stare seldom abandoning Irene's face and figure.
+As he was obliged to confess to himself, he got no change out of
+her--she was cool enough, as cool as her shoulders looked under
+their veil of creamy lace.  He expected to have caught her out in
+some little game with Bosinney; but not a bit of it, she kept up
+her end remarkably well.  As for that architect chap, he was as
+glum as a bear with a sore head--Winifred could barely get a word
+out of him; he ate nothing, but he certainly took his liquor, and
+his face kept getting whiter, and his eyes looked queer.
+
+It was all very amusing.
+
+For Dartie himself was in capital form, and talked freely, with a
+certain poignancy, being no fool.  He told two or three stories
+verging on the improper, a concession to the company, for his
+stories were not used to verging.  He proposed Irene's health in
+a mock speech.  Nobody drank it, and Winifred said: "Don't be
+such a clown, Monty!"
+
+At her suggestion they went after dinner to the public terrace
+overlooking the river.
+
+"I should like to see the common people making love," she said,
+"it's such fun!"
+
+There were numbers of them walking in the cool, after the day's
+heat, and the air was alive with the sound of voices, coarse and
+loud, or soft as though murmuring secrets.
+
+It was not long before Winifred's better sense--she was the only
+Forsyte present--secured them an empty bench.  They sat down in a
+row.  A heavy tree spread a thick canopy above their heads, and
+the haze darkened slowly over the river.
+
+Dartie sat at the end, next to him Irene, then Bosinney, then
+Winifred.  There was hardly room for four, and the man of the
+world could feel Irene's arm crushed against his own; he knew
+that she could not withdraw it without seeming rude, and this
+amused him; he devised every now and again a movement that would
+bring her closer still.  He thought: 'That Buccaneer Johnny
+shan't have it all to himself!  It's a pretty tight fit,
+certainly!'
+
+From far down below on the dark river came drifting the tinkle of
+a mandoline, and voices singing the old round:
+
+'A boat, a boat, unto the ferry,
+For we'll go over and be merry;
+And laugh, and quaff, and drink brown sherry!'
+
+And suddenly the moon appeared, young and tender, floating up on
+her back from behind a tree; and as though she had breathed, the
+air was cooler, but down that cooler air came always the warm
+odour of the limes.
+
+Over his cigar Dartie peered round at Bosinney, who was sitting
+with his arms crossed, staring straight in front of him, and on
+his face the look of a man being tortured.
+
+And Dartie shot a glance at the face between, so veiled by the
+overhanging shadow that it was but like a darker piece of the
+darkness shaped and breathed on; soft, mysterious, enticing.
+
+A hush had fallen on the noisy terrace, as if all the strollers
+were thinking secrets too precious to be spoken.
+
+And Dartie thought: 'Women!'
+
+The glow died above the river, the singing ceased; the young moon
+hid behind a tree, and all was dark.  He pressed himself against
+Irene.
+
+He was not alarmed at the shuddering that ran through the limbs
+he touched, or at the troubled, scornful look of her eyes.  He
+felt her trying to draw herself away, and smiled.
+
+It must be confessed that the man of the world had drunk quite as
+much as was good for him.
+
+With thick lips parted under his well-curled moustaches, and his
+bold eyes aslant upon her, he had the malicious look of a satyr.
+
+Along the pathway of sky between the hedges of the tree tops the
+stars clustered forth; like mortals beneath, they seemed to shift
+and swarm and whisper.  Then on the terrace the buzz broke out
+once more, and Dartie thought: 'Ah!  he's a poor, hungry-looking
+devil, that Bosinney!'and again he pressed himself against Irene.
+
+The movement deserved a better success.  She rose, and they all
+followed her.
+
+The man of the world was more than ever determined to see what
+she was made of.  Along the terrace he kept close at her elbow.
+He had within him much good wine.  There was the long drive home,
+the long drive and the warm dark and the pleasant closeness of
+the hansom cab--with its insulation from the world devised by
+some great and good man.  That hungry architect chap might drive
+with his wife--he wished him joy of her!  And, conscious that his
+voice was not too steady, he was careful not to speak; but a
+smile had become fixed on his thick lips.
+
+They strolled along toward the cabs awaiting them at the farther
+end.  His plan had the merit of all great plans, an almost brutal
+simplicity he would merely keep at her elbow till she got in, and
+get in quickly after her.
+
+But when Irene reached the cab she did not get in; she slipped,
+instead, to the horse's head.  Dartie was not at the moment
+sufficiently master of his legs to follow.  She stood stroking
+the horse's nose, and, to his annoyance, Bosinney was at her side
+first.  She turned and spoke to him rapidly, in a low voice; the
+words 'That man' reached Dartie.  He stood stubbornly by the cab
+step, waiting for her to come back.  He knew a trick worth two of
+that!
+
+Here, in the lamp-light, his figure (no more than medium height),
+well squared in its white evening waistcoat, his light overcoat
+flung over his arm, a pink flower in his button-hole, and on his
+dark face that look of confident, good-humoured insolence, he was
+at his best--a thorough man of the world.
+
+Winifred was already in her cab.  Dartie reflected that Bosinney
+would have a poorish time in that cab if he didn't look sharp!
+Suddenly he received a push which nearly overturned him in the
+road.  Bosinney's voice hissed in his ear: "I am taking Irene
+back; do you understand?"  He saw a face white with passion, and
+eyes that glared at him like a wild cat's.
+
+"Eh?" he stammered.  "What? Not a bit.  You take my wife!"
+
+"Get away!" hissed Bosinney--"or I'll throw you into the road!"
+
+Dartie recoiled; he saw as plainly as possible that the fellow
+meant it.  In the space he made Irene had slipped by, her dress
+brushed his legs.  Bosinney stepped in after her.
+
+"Go on!" he heard the Buccaneer cry.  The cabman flicked his
+horse.  It sprang forward.
+
+Dartie stood for a moment dumbfounded; then, dashing at the cab
+where his wife sat, he scrambled in.
+
+"Drive on!" he shouted to the driver, "and don't you lose sight
+of that fellow in front!"
+
+Seated by his wife's side, he burst into imprecations.  Calming
+himself at last with a supreme effort, he added: "A pretty mess
+you've made of it, to let the Buccaneer drive home with her; why
+on earth couldn't you keep hold of him?  He's mad with love; any
+fool can see that!"
+
+He drowned Winifred's rejoinder with fresh calls to the Almighty;
+nor was it until they reached Barnes that he ceased a Jeremiad,
+in the course of which he had abused her, her father, her
+brother, Irene, Bosinney, the name of Forsyte, his own children,
+and cursed the day when he had ever married.
+
+Winifred, a woman of strong character, let him have his say, at
+the end of which he lapsed into sulky silence.  His angry eyes
+never deserted the back of that cab, which, like a lost chance,
+haunted the darkness in front of him.
+
+Fortunately he could not hear Bosinney's passionate pleading--
+that pleading which the man of the world's conduct had let loose
+like a flood; he could not see Irene shivering, as though some
+garment had been torn from her, nor her eyes, black and mournful,
+like the eyes of a beaten child.  He could not hear Bosinney
+entreating, entreating, always entreating; could not hear her
+sudden, soft weeping, nor see that poor, hungry-looking devil,
+awed and trembling, humbly touching her hand.
+
+In Montpellier Square their cabman, following his instructions to
+the letter, faithfully drew up behind the cab in front.  The
+Darties saw Bosinney spring out, and Irene follow, and hasten up
+the steps with bent head.  She evidently had her key in her hand,
+for she disappeared at once.  It was impossible to tell whether
+she had turned to speak to Bosinney.
+
+The latter came walking past their cab; both husband and wife had
+an admirable view of his face in the light of a street lamp.  It
+was working with violent emotion.
+
+"Good-night, Mr. Bosinney!" called Winifred.
+
+Bosinney started, clawed off his hat, and hurried on.  He had
+obviously forgotten their existence.
+
+"There!" said Dartie, "did you see the beast's face?  What did I
+say?  Fine games!"  He improved the occasion.
+
+There had so clearly been a crisis in the cab that Winifred was
+unable to defend her theory.
+
+She said: "I shall say nothing about it.  I don't see any use in
+making a fuss!"
+
+With that view Dartie at once concurred; looking upon James as a
+private preserve, he disapproved of his being disturbed by the
+troubles of others.
+
+"Quite right," he said; "let Soames look after himself.  He's
+jolly well able to!"
+
+Thus speaking, the Darties entered their habitat in Green Street,
+the rent of which was paid by James, and sought a well-earned
+rest.  The hour was midnight, and no Forsytes remained abroad in
+the streets to spy out Bosinney's wanderings; to see him return
+and stand against the rails of the Square garden, back from the
+glow of the street lamp; to see him stand there in the shadow of
+trees, watching the house where in the dark was hidden she whom
+he would have given the world to see for a single minute--she who
+was now to him the breath of the lime-trees, the meaning of the
+light and the darkness, the very beating of his own heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+DIAGNOSIS OF A FORSYTE
+
+
+It is in the nature of a Forsyte to be ignorant that he is a
+Forsyte; but young Jolyon was well aware of being one.  He had
+not known it till after the decisive step which had made him an
+outcast; since then the knowledge had been with him continually.
+He felt it throughout his alliance, throughout all his dealings
+with his second wife, who was emphatically not a Forsyte.
+
+He knew that if he had not possessed in great measure the eye for
+what he wanted, the tenacity to hold on to it, the sense of the
+folly of wasting that for which he had given so big a price--in
+other words, the 'sense of property' he could never have retained
+her (perhaps never would have desired to retain her) with him
+through all the financial troubles, slights, and misconstructions
+of those fifteen years; never have induced her to marry him on
+the death of his first wife; never have lived it all through, and
+come up, as it were, thin, but smiling.
+
+He was one of those men who, seated cross-legged like miniature
+Chinese idols in the cages of their own hearts, are ever smiling
+at themselves a doubting smile.  Not that this smile, so intimate
+and eternal, interfered with his actions, which, like his chin
+and his temperament, were quite a peculiar blend of softness and
+determination.
+
+He was conscious, too, of being a Forsyte in his work, that
+painting of water-colours to which he devoted so much energy,
+always with an eye on himself, as though he could not take so
+unpractical a pursuit quite seriously, and always with a certain
+queer uneasiness that he did not make more money at it.
+
+It was, then, this consciousness of what it meant to be a
+Forsyte, that made him receive the following letter from old
+Jolyon, with a mixture of sympathy and disgust:
+
+
+'SHELDRAKE HOUSE,
+     'BROADSTAIRS,
+
+'July 1.
+'MY DEAR JO,'
+
+(The Dad's handwriting had altered very little in the thirty odd
+years that he remembered it.)
+
+'We have been here now a fortnight, and have had good weather on
+the whole.  The air is bracing, but my liver is out of order, and
+I shall be glad enough to get back to town.  I cannot say much
+for June, her health and spirits are very indifferent, and I
+don't see what is to come of it.  She says nothing, but it is
+clear that she is harping on this engagement, which is an
+engagement and no engagement, and--goodness knows what.  I have
+grave doubts whether she ought to be allowed to return to London
+in the present state of affairs, but she is so self-willed that
+she might take it into her head to come up at any moment.  The
+fact is someone ought to speak to Bosinney and ascertain what he
+means.  I'm afraid of this myself, for I should certainly rap him
+over the knuckles, but I thought that you, knowing him at the
+Club, might put in a word, and get to ascertain what the fellow
+is about.  You will of course in no way commit June.  I shall be
+glad to hear from you in the course of a few days whether you
+have succeeded in gaining any information.  The situation is very
+distressing to me, I worry about it at night.
+
+With my love to Jolly and Holly.
+'I am,
+     'Your affect.  father,
+
+'JOLYON FORSYTE.'
+
+
+Young Jolyon pondered this letter so long and seriously that his
+wife noticed his preoccupation, and asked him what was the
+matter.  He replied: "Nothing."
+
+It was a fixed principle with him never to allude to June.  She
+might take alarm, he did not know what she might think; he
+hastened, therefore, to banish from his manner all traces of
+absorption, but in this he was about as successful as his father
+would have been, for he had inherited all old Jolyon's
+transparency in matters of domestic finesse; and young Mrs.
+Jolyon, busying herself over the affairs of the house, went about
+with tightened lips, stealing at him unfathomable looks.
+
+He started for the Club in the afternoon with the letter in his
+pocket, and without having made up his mind.
+
+To sound a man as to 'his intentions' was peculiarly unpleasant
+to him; nor did his own anomalous position diminish this
+unpleasantness.  It was so like his family, so like all the
+people they knew and mixed with, to enforce what they called
+their rights over a man, to bring  him up to the mark; so like
+them to carry their business principles into their private
+relations.
+
+And how that phrase in the letter--'You will, of course, in no
+way commit June'--gave the whole thing away.
+
+Yet the letter, with the personal grievance, the concern for
+June, the 'rap over the knuckles,' was all so natural.  No wonder
+his father wanted to know what Bosinney meant, no wonder he was
+angry.
+
+It was difficult to refuse!  But why give the thing to him to do?
+That was surely quite unbecoming; but so long as a Forsyte got
+what he was after, he was not too particular about the means,
+provided appearances were saved.
+
+How should he set about it, or how refuse?  Both seemed impossible.
+So, young Jolyon!
+
+He arrived at the Club at three o'clock, and the first person he
+saw was Bosinney himself, seated in a corner, staring out of the
+window.
+
+Young Jolyon sat down not far off, and began nervously to
+reconsider his position.  He looked covertly at Bosinney sitting
+there unconscious.  He did not know him very well, and studied
+him attentively for perhaps the first time; an unusual looking
+man, unlike in dress, face, and manner to most of the other
+members of the Club--young Jolyon himself, however different he
+had become in mood and temper, had always retained the neat
+reticence of Forsyte appearance.  He alone among Forsytes was
+ignorant of Bosinney's nickname.  The man was unusual, not
+eccentric, but unusual; he looked worn, too, haggard, hollow in
+the cheeks beneath those broad, high cheekbones, though without
+any appearance of ill-health, for he was strongly built, with
+curly hair that seemed to show all the vitality of a fine
+constitution.
+
+Something in his face and attitude touched young Jolyon.  He knew
+what suffering was like, and this man looked as if he were
+suffering.
+
+He got up and touched his arm.
+
+Bosinney started, but exhibited no sign of embarrassment on
+seeing who it was.
+
+Young Jolyon sat down.
+
+"I haven't seen you for a long time," he said.  "How are you
+getting on with  my cousin's house?"
+
+"It'll be finished in about a week."
+
+"I congratulate you!"
+
+"Thanks--I don't know that it's much of a subject for
+congratulation."
+
+"No?" queried young Jolyon; "I should have thought you'd be glad
+to get a long job like that off your hands; but I suppose you
+feel it much as I do when I part with a picture--a sort of
+child?"
+
+He looked kindly at Bosinney.
+
+"Yes," said the latter more cordially, "it goes out from you and
+there's an end of it.  I didn't know you painted."
+
+"Only water-colours; I can't say I believe in my work."
+
+"Don't believe in it?  There--how can you do it?  Work's no use
+unless you believe in it!"
+
+"Good," said young Jolyon; "it's exactly what I've always said.
+By-the-bye, have you noticed that whenever one says 'Good,' one
+always adds 'it's exactly what I've always said'!  But if you ask
+me how I do it, I answer, because I'm a Forsyte."
+
+"A Forsyte!  I never thought of you as one!"
+
+"A Forsyte," replied young Jolyon, "is not an uncommon animal.
+There are hundreds among the members of this Club.  Hundreds out
+there in the streets; you meet them wherever you go!"
+
+"And how do you tell them, may I ask?" said Bosinney.
+
+"By their sense of property.  A Forsyte takes a practical--one
+might say a commonsense--view of things, and a practical view of
+things is based fundamentally on a sense of property.  A Forsyte,
+you will notice, never gives himself away."
+
+"Joking?"
+
+Young Jolyon's eye twinkled.
+
+"Not much.  As a Forsyte myself, I have no business to talk.  But
+I'm a kind of thoroughbred mongrel; now, there's no mistaking
+you: You're as different from me as I am from my Uncle James, who
+is the perfect specimen of a Forsyte.  His sense of property is
+extreme, while you have practically none.  Without me in between,
+you would seem like a different species.  I'm the missing link.
+We are, of course, all of us the slaves of property, and I admit
+that it's a question of degree, but what I call a 'Forsyte' is a
+man who is decidedly more than less a slave of property.  He
+knows a good thing, he knows a safe thing, and his grip on
+property--it doesn't matter whether it be wives, houses, money,
+or reputation--is his hall-mark."
+
+"Ah!" murmured Bosinney.  "You should patent the word."
+
+"I should like," said young Jolyon, "to lecture on it:
+
+"Properties and quality of a Forsyte: This little animal,
+disturbed by the ridicule of his own sort, is unaffected in his
+motions by the laughter of strange creatures (you or I).
+Hereditarily disposed to myopia, he recognises only the persons
+of his own species, amongst which he passes an existence of
+competitive tranquillity."
+
+"You talk of them," said Bosinney, "as if they were half
+England."
+
+"They are," repeated young Jolyon, "half England, and the better
+half, too, the safe half, the three per cent. Half, the half
+that counts.  It's their wealth and security that makes
+everything possible; makes your art possible, makes literature,
+science, even religion, possible.  Without Forsytes, who believe
+in none of these things, and habitats but turn them all to use,
+where should we be?  My dear sir, the Forsytes are the middlemen,
+the commercials, the pillars of society, the cornerstones of
+convention; everything that is admirable!"
+
+"I don't know whether I catch your drift," said Bosinney, "but I
+fancy there are plenty of Forsytes, as you call them, in my
+profession."
+
+"Certainly," replied young Jolyon.  "The great majority of
+architects, painters, or writers have no principles, like any
+other Forsytes.  Art, literature, religion, survive by virtue of
+the few cranks who really believe in such things, and the many
+Forsytes who make a commercial use of them.  At a low estimate,
+three-fourths of our Royal Academicians are Forsytes, seven-
+eighths of our novelists, a large proportion of the press.
+Of science I can't speak; they are magnificently represented in
+religion; in the House of Commons perhaps more numerous than
+anywhere; the aristocracy speaks for itself.  But I'm not
+laughing.  It is dangerous to go against the majority and what a
+majority!"  He fixed his eyes on Bosinney: "It's dangerous to let
+anything carry you away--a house, a picture, a--woman!"
+
+They looked at each other.--And, as though he had done that which
+no Forsyte did--given himself away, young Jolyon drew into his
+shell.  Bosinney broke the silence.
+
+"Why do you take your own people as the type?" said he.
+
+"My people," replied young Jolyon, "are not very extreme, and
+they have their own private peculiarities, like every other
+family, but they possess in a remarkable degree those two
+qualities which are the real tests of a Forsyte--the power of
+never being able to give yourself up to anything soul and body,
+and the 'sense of property'."
+
+Bosinney smiled: "How about the big one, for instance?"
+
+"Do you mean Swithin?" asked young Jolyon.  "Ah! in Swithin
+there's something primeval still.  The town and middle-class
+life haven't digested him yet.  All the old centuries of farmwork
+and brute force have settled in him, and there they've stuck, for
+all he's so distinguished."
+
+Bosinney seemed to ponder.  "Well, you've hit your cousin Soames
+off to the life," he said suddenly.  "He'll never blow his brains
+out."
+
+Young Jolyon shot at him a penetrating glance.
+
+"No," he said; "he won't.  That's why he's to be reckoned with.
+Look out for their grip!  It's easy to laugh, but don't mistake
+me.  It doesn't do to despise a Forsyte; it doesn't do to
+disregard them!"
+
+"Yet you've done it yourself!"
+
+Young Jolyon acknowledged the hit by losing his smile.
+
+"You forget," he said with a queer pride, "I can hold on, too--
+I'm a Forsyte myself.  We're all in the path of great forces.
+The man who leaves the shelter of the wall--well--you know what I
+mean.  I don't," he ended very low, as though uttering a threat,
+"recommend every man to-go-my-way.  It depends."
+
+The colour rushed into Bosinney's face, but soon receded, leaving
+it sallow-brown as before.  He gave a short laugh, that left his
+lips fixed in a queer, fierce smile; his eyes mocked young
+Jolyon.
+
+"Thanks," he said.  "It's deuced kind of you.  But you're not the
+only chaps that can hold on."  He rose.
+
+Young Jolyon looked after him as he walked away, and, resting his
+head on his hand, sighed.
+
+In the drowsy, almost empty room the only sounds were the rustle
+of newspapers, the scraping of matches being struck.  He stayed a
+long time without moving, living over again those days when he,
+too, had sat long hours watching the clock, waiting for the
+minutes to pass--long hours full of the torments of uncertainty,
+and of a fierce, sweet aching; and the slow, delicious agony of
+that season came back to him with its old poignancy.  The sight
+of Bosinney, with his haggard face, and his restless eyes always
+wandering to the clock, had roused in him a pity, with which was
+mingled strange, irresistible envy.
+
+He knew the signs so well.  Whither was he going--to what sort of
+fate?  What kind of woman was it who was drawing him to her by
+that magnetic force which no consideration of honour, no
+principle, no interest could withstand; from which the only
+escape was flight.
+
+Flight!  But why should Bosinney fly?  A man fled when he was in
+danger of destroying hearth and home, when there were children,
+when he felt himself trampling down ideals, breaking something.
+But here, so he had heard, it was all broken to his hand.
+
+He himself had not fled, nor would he fly if it were all to come
+over again.  Yet he had gone further than Bosinney, had broken up
+his own unhappy home, not someone else's: And the old saying came
+back to him: 'A man's fate lies in his own heart.'
+
+In his own heart!  The proof of the pudding was in the eating--
+Bosinney had still to eat his pudding.
+
+His thoughts passed to the woman, the woman whom he did not know,
+but the outline of whose story he had heard.
+
+An unhappy marriage!  No ill-treatment--only that indefinable
+malaise, that terrible blight which killed all sweetness under
+Heaven; and so from day to day, from night to night, from week to
+week, from year to year, till death should end it
+
+But young Jolyon, the bitterness of whose own feelings time had
+assuaged, saw Soames' side of the question too.  Whence should a
+man like his cousin, saturated with all the prejudices and
+beliefs of his class, draw the insight or inspiration necessary
+to break up this life?  It was a question of imagination, of
+projecting himself into the future beyond the unpleasant gossip,
+sneers, and tattle that followed on such separations, beyond the
+passing pangs that the lack of the sight of her would cause,
+beyond the grave disapproval of the worthy.  But few men, and
+especially few men of Soames' class, had imagination enough for
+that.  A deal of mortals in this world, and not enough
+imagination to go round!  And sweet Heaven, what a difference
+between theory and practice; many a man, perhaps even Soames,
+held chivalrous views on such matters, who when the shoe pinched
+found a distinguishing factor that made of himself an exception.
+
+Then, too, he distrusted his judgment.  He had been through the
+experience himself, had tasted too the dregs the bitterness of an
+unhappy marriage, and how could he take the wide and dispassionate
+view of those who had never been within sound of the battle?
+His evidence was too first-hand--like the evidence on military
+matters of a soldier who has been through much active service,
+against that of civilians who have not suffered the disadvantage
+of seeing things too close.  Most people would consider such a
+marriage as that of Soames and Irene quite fairly successful;
+he had money, she had beauty; it was a case for compromise.
+There was no reason why they should not jog along, even if they
+hated each other.  It would not matter if they went their own
+ways a little so long as the decencies were observed--the
+sanctity of the marriage tie, of the common home, respected.
+Half the marriages of the upper classes were conducted on these
+lines: Do not offend the susceptibilities of Society; do not
+offend the susceptibilities of the Church.  To avoid offending
+these is worth the sacrifice of any private feelings.  The
+advantages of the stable home are visible, tangible, so many
+pieces of property; there is no risk in the statu quo.  To break
+up a home is at the best a dangerous experiment, and selfish into
+the bargain.
+
+This was the case for the defence, and young Jolyon sighed.
+
+'The core of it all,' he thought, 'is property, but there are
+many people who would not like it put that way.  To them it is
+"the sanctity of the marriage tie"; but the sanctity of the
+marriage tie is dependent on the sanctity of the family, and the
+sanctity of the family is dependent on the sanctity of property.
+And yet I imagine all these people are followers of One who never
+owned anything.  It is curious!'
+
+And again young Jolyon sighed.
+
+'Am I going on my way home to ask any poor devils I meet to share
+my dinner, which will then be too little for myself, or, at all
+events, for my wife, who is necessary to my health and happiness?
+It may be that after all Soames does well to exercise his rights
+and support by his practice the sacred principle of property
+which benefits us all, with the exception of those who suffer by
+the process.'
+
+And so he left his chair, threaded his way through the maze of
+seats, took his hat, and languidly up the hot streets crowded
+with carriages, reeking with dusty odours, wended his way home.
+
+Before reaching Wistaria Avenue he removed old Jolyon's letter
+from his pocket, and tearing it carefully into tiny pieces,
+scattered them in the dust of the road.
+
+He let himself in with his key, and called his wife's name.  But
+she had gone out, taking Jolly and Holly, and the house was
+empty; alone in the garden the dog Balthasar lay in the shade
+snapping at flies.
+
+Young Jolyon took his seat there, too, under the pear-tree that
+bore no fruit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+BOSINNEY ON PAROLE
+
+
+The day after the evening at Richmond Soames returned from Henley
+by a morning train.  Not constitutionally interested in
+amphibious sports, his visit had been one of business rather than
+pleasure, a client of some importance having asked him down.
+
+He went straight to the City, but finding things slack, he left
+at three o'clock, glad of this chance to get home quietly.  Irene
+did not expect him.  Not that he had any desire to spy on her
+actions, but there was no harm in thus unexpectedly surveying the
+scene.
+
+After changing to Park clothes he went into the drawing-room.
+She was sitting idly in the corner of the sofa, her favourite
+seat; and there were circles under her eyes, as though she had
+not slept.
+
+He asked: "How is it you're in?  Are you expecting somebody?"
+
+"Yes that is, not particularly."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Mr. Bosinney said he might come."
+
+"Bosinney.  He ought to be at work."
+
+To this she made no answer.
+
+"Well," said Soames, "I want you to come out to the Stores with
+me, and after that we'll go to the Park."
+
+"I don't want to go out; I have a headache."
+
+Soames replied: "If ever I want you to do anything, you've always
+got a headache.  It'll do you good to come and sit under the
+trees."
+
+She did not answer.
+
+Soames was silent for some minutes; at last he said: "I don't
+know what your idea of a wife's duty is.  I never have known!"
+
+He had not expected her to reply, but she did.
+
+"I have tried to do what you want; it's not my fault that I
+haven't been able to put my heart into it."
+
+"Whose fault is it, then?" He watched her askance.
+
+"Before we were married you promised to let me go if our marriage
+was not a success.  Is it a success?"
+
+Soames frowned.
+
+"Success," he stammered--"it would be a success if you behaved
+yourself properly!"
+
+"I have tried," said Irene.  "Will you let me go?"
+
+Soames turned away.  Secretly alarmed, he took refuge in bluster.
+
+"Let you go?  You don't know what you're talking about.  Let you
+go?  How can I let you go?  We're married, aren't we?  Then, what
+are you talking about?  For God's sake, don't let's have any of
+this sort of nonsense!  Get your hat on, and come and sit in the
+Park."
+
+"Then, you won't let me go?"
+
+He felt her eyes resting on him with a strange, touching look.
+
+"Let you go!" he said; "and what on earth would you do with
+yourself if I did?  You've got no money!"
+
+"I could manage somehow."
+
+He took a swift turn up and down the room; then came and stood
+before her.
+
+"Understand," he said, "once and for all, I won't have you say
+this sort of thing.  Go and get your hat on!"
+
+She did not move.
+
+"I suppose," said Soames, "you don't want to miss Bosinney if he
+comes!"
+
+Irene got up slowly and left the room.  She came down with her
+hat on.
+
+They went out.
+
+In the Park, the motley hour of mid-afternoon, when foreigners
+and other pathetic folk drive, thinking themselves to be in
+fashion, had passed; the right, the proper, hour had come, was
+nearly gone, before Soames and Irene seated themselves under the
+Achilles statue.
+
+It was some time since he had enjoyed her company in the Park.
+That was one of the past delights of the first two seasons of his
+married life, when to feel himself the possessor of this gracious
+creature before all London had been his greatest, though secret,
+pride.  How many afternoons had he not sat beside her, extremely
+neat, with light grey gloves and faint, supercilious smile,
+nodding to acquaintances, and now and again removing his hat.
+
+His light grey gloves were still on his hands, and on his lips
+his smile sardonic, but where the feeling in his heart?
+
+The seats were emptying fast, but still he kept her there, silent
+and pale, as though to work out a secret punishment.  Once or
+twice he made some comment, and she bent her head, or answered
+"Yes" with a tired smile.
+
+Along the rails a man was walking so fast that people stared
+after him when he passed.
+
+"Look at that ass!" said Soames; "he must be mad to walk like
+that in this heat!"
+
+He turned; Irene had made a rapid movement.
+
+"Hallo!" he said: "it's our friend the Buccaneer!"
+
+And he sat still, with his sneering smile, conscious that Irene
+was sitting still, and smiling too.
+
+"Will she bow to him?" he thought.
+
+But she made no sign.
+
+Bosinney reached the end of the rails, and came walking back
+amongst the chairs, quartering his ground like a pointer.  When
+he saw them he stopped dead, and raised his hat.
+
+The smile never left Soames' face; he also took off his hat.
+
+Bosinney came up, looking exhausted, like a man after hard
+physical exercise; the sweat stood in drops on his brow, and
+Soames' smile seemed to say: "You've had a trying time, my friend
+......What are you doing in the Park?" he asked.  "We thought
+you despised such frivolity!"
+
+Bosinney did not seem to hear; he made his answer to Irene: "I've
+been round to your place; I hoped I should find you in."
+
+Somebody tapped Soames on the back, and spoke to him; and in the
+exchange of those platitudes over his shoulder, he missed her
+answer, and took a resolution.
+
+"We're just going in," he said to Bosinney; "you'd better come
+back to dinner with us." Into that invitation he put a strange
+bravado, a stranger pathos: "You, can't deceive me," his look and
+voice seemed saying, "but see--I trust you--I'm not afraid of
+you!"
+
+They started back to Montpellier Square together, Irene between
+them.  In the crowded streets Soames went on in front.  He did
+not listen to their conversation; the strange resolution of
+trustfulness he had taken seemed to animate even his secret
+conduct.  Like a gambler, he said to himself: 'It's a card I dare
+not throw away--I must play it for what it's worth.  I have not
+too many chances.'
+
+He dressed slowly, heard her leave her room and go downstairs,
+and, for full five minutes after, dawdled about in his dressing-
+room.  Then he went down, purposely shutting the door loudly to
+show that he was coming.  He found them standing by the hearth,
+perhaps talking, perhaps not; he could not say.
+
+He played his part out in the farce, the long evening through--
+his manner to his guest more friendly than it had ever been
+before; and when at last Bosinney went, he said: "You must come
+again soon; Irene likes to have you to talk about the house!"
+Again his voice had the strange bravado and the stranger pathos;
+but his hand was cold as ice.
+
+Loyal to his resolution, he turned away from their parting,
+turned away from his wife as she stood under the hanging lamp to
+say good-night--away from the sight of her golden head shining so
+under the light, of her smiling mournful lips; away from the
+sight of Bosinney's eyes looking at her, so like a dog's looking
+at its master.
+
+And he went to bed with the certainty that Bosinney was in love
+with his wife.
+
+The summer night was hot, so hot and still that through every
+opened window came in but hotter air.  For long hours he lay
+listening to her breathing.
+
+She could sleep, but he must lie awake.  And, lying awake, he
+hardened himself to play the part of the serene and trusting
+husband.
+
+In the small hours he slipped out of bed, and passing into his
+dressing-room, leaned by the open window.
+
+He could hardly breathe.
+
+A night four years ago came back to him--the night but one before
+his marriage; as hot and stifling as this.
+
+He remembered how he had lain in a long cane chair in the window
+of his sitting-room off Victoria Street.  Down below in a side
+street a man had banged at a door, a woman had cried out; he
+remembered, as though it were now, the sound of the scuffle, the
+slam of the door, the dead silence that followed.  And then the
+early water-cart, cleansing the reek of the streets, had
+approached through the strange-seeming, useless lamp-light; he
+seemed to hear again its rumble, nearer and nearer, till it
+passed and slowly died away.
+
+He leaned far out of the dressing-room window over the little
+court below, and saw the first light spread.  The outlines of
+dark walls and roofs were blurred for a moment, then came out
+sharper than before.
+
+He remembered how that other night he had watched the lamps
+paling all the length of Victoria Street; how he had hurried on
+his clothes and gone down into the street, down past houses and
+squares, to the street where she was staying, and there had stood
+and looked at the front of the little house, as still and grey as
+the face of a dead man.
+
+And suddenly it shot through his mind; like a sick man's fancy:
+What's he doing?--that fellow who haunts me, who was here this
+evening, who's in love with my wife--prowling out there, perhaps,
+looking for her as I know he was looking for her this afternoon;
+watching my house now, for all I can tell!
+
+He stole across the landing to the front of the house, stealthily
+drew aside a blind, and raised a window.
+
+The grey light clung about the trees of the square, as though
+Night, like a great downy moth, had brushed them with her wings.
+The lamps were still alight, all pale, but not a soul stirred--no
+living thing in sight
+
+Yet suddenly, very faint, far off in the deathly stillness, he
+heard a cry writhing, like the voice of some wandering soul
+barred out of heaven, and crying for its happiness.  There it was
+again--again!  Soames shut the window, shuddering.
+
+Then he thought: 'Ah!  it's only the peacocks, across the water.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+JUNE PAYS SOME CALLS
+
+
+
+Jolyon stood in the narrow hall at Broadstairs, inhaling that
+odour of oilcloth and herrings which permeates all respectable
+seaside lodging-houses.  On a chair--a shiny leather chair,
+displaying its horsehair through a hole in the top left-hand
+corner--stood a black despatch case.  This he was filling with
+papers, with the Times, and a bottle of Eau-de Cologne.  He had
+meetings that day of the 'Globular Gold Concessions' and the 'New
+Colliery Company, Limited,' to which he was going up, for he
+never missed a Board; to 'miss a Board' would be one more piece
+of evidence that he was growing old, and this his jealous Forsyte
+spirit could not bear.
+
+His eyes, as he filled that black despatch case, looked as if at
+any moment they might blaze up with anger.  So gleams the eye of
+a schoolboy, baited by a ring of his companions; but he controls
+himself, deterred by the fearful odds against him.  And old
+Jolyon controlled himself, keeping down, with his masterful
+restraint now slowly wearing out, the irritation fostered in him
+by the conditions of his life.
+
+He had received from his son an unpractical letter, in which by
+rambling generalities the boy seemed trying to get out of
+answering a plain question.  'I've seen Bosinney,' he said; 'he
+is not a criminal.  The more I see of people the more I am
+convinced that they are never good or bad--merely comic, or
+pathetic.  You probably don't agree with me!'
+
+Old Jolyon did not; he considered it cynical to so express
+oneself; he had not yet reached that point of old age when even
+Forsytes, bereft of those illusions and principles which they
+have cherished carefully for practical purposes but never
+believed in, bereft of all corporeal enjoyment, stricken to the
+very heart by having nothing left to hope for--break through the
+barriers of reserve and say things they would never have believed
+themselves capable of saying.
+
+Perhaps he did not believe in 'goodness' and 'badness' any more
+than his son; but as he would have said: He didn't know--couldn't
+tell; there might be something in it; and why, by an unnecessary
+expression of disbelief, deprive yourself of possible advantage?
+
+Accustomed to spend his holidays among the mountains, though
+(like a true Forsyte) he had never attempted anything too
+adventurous or too foolhardy, he had been passionately fond of
+them.  And when the wonderful view (mentioned in Baedeker--
+'fatiguing but repaying')--was disclosed to him after the effort
+of the climb, he had doubtless felt the existence of some great,
+dignified principle crowning the chaotic strivings, the petty
+precipices, and ironic little dark chasms of life.  This was as
+near to religion, perhaps, as his practical spirit had ever gone.
+
+But it was many years since he had been to the mountains.  He had
+taken June there two seasons running, after his wife died, and
+had realized bitterly that his walking days were over.
+
+To that old mountain--given confidence in a supreme order of
+things he had long been a stranger.
+
+He knew himself to be old, yet he felt young; and this troubled
+him.  It troubled and puzzled him, too, to think that he, who had
+always been so careful, should be father and grandfather to such
+as seemed born to disaster.  He had nothing to say against Jo--
+who could say anything against the boy, an amiable chap?--but his
+position was deplorable, and this business of June's nearly as
+bad.  It seemed like a fatality, and a fatality was one of those
+things no man of his character could either understand or put up
+with.
+
+In writing to his son he did not really hope that anything would
+come of it.  Since the ball at Roger's he had seen too clearly
+how the land lay--he could put two and two together quicker than
+most men--and, with the example of his own son before his eyes,
+knew better than any Forsyte of them all that the pale flame
+singes men's wings whether they will or no.
+
+In the days before June's engagement, when she and Mrs. Soames
+were always together, he had seen enough of Irene to feel the
+spell she cast over men.  She was not a flirt, not even a
+coquette--words dear to the heart of his generation, which loved
+to define things by a good, broad, inadequate word--but she was
+dangerous.  He could not say why.  Tell him of a quality innate
+in some women--a seductive power beyond their own control!  He
+would but answer: 'Humbug!'  She was dangerous, and there was an
+end of it.  He wanted to close his eyes to that affair.  If it
+was, it was; be did not want to hear any more about it--he only
+wanted to save June's position and her peace of mind.  He still
+hoped she might once more become a comfort to himself.
+
+And so he had written.  He got little enough out of the answer.
+As to what young Jolyon had made of the interview, there was
+practically only the queer sentence: 'I gather that he's in the
+stream.' The stream!  What stream?  What was this new-fangled way
+of talking?
+
+He sighed, and folded the last of the papers under the flap of
+the bag; he knew well enough what was meant.
+
+June came out of the dining-room, and helped him on with his
+summer coat.  From her costume, and the expression of her little
+resolute face, he saw at once what was coming.
+
+"I'm going with you," she said.
+
+"Nonsense, my dear; I go straight into the City.  I can't have
+you racketting about!"
+
+"I must see old Mrs. Smeech."
+
+"Oh, your precious 'lame ducks!" grumbled out old Jolyon.  He
+did not believe her excuse, but ceased his opposition.  There was
+no doing anything with that pertinacity of hers.
+
+At Victoria he put her into the carriage which had been ordered
+for himself--a characteristic action, for he had no petty
+selfishnesses.
+
+"Now, don't you go tiring yourself, my darling," he said, and
+took a cab on into the city.
+
+June went first to a back-street in Paddington, where Mrs.
+Smeech, her 'lame duck,' lived--an aged person, connected with
+the charring interest; but after half an hour spent in hearing
+her habitually lamentable recital, and dragooning her into
+temporary comfort, she went on to Stanhope Gate.  The great house
+was closed and dark.
+
+She had decided to learn something at all costs.  It was better
+to face the worst, and have it over.  And this was her plan: To
+go first to Phil's aunt, Mrs. Baynes, and, failing information
+there, to Irene herself.  She had no clear notion of what she
+would gain by these visits.
+
+At three o'clock she was in Lowndes Square.  With a woman's
+instinct when trouble is to be faced, she had put on her best
+frock, and went to the battle with a glance as courageous as old
+Jolyon's itself.  Her tremors had passed into eagerness.
+
+Mrs. Baynes, Bosinney's aunt (Louisa was her name), was in her
+kitchen when June was announced, organizing the cook, for she was
+an excellent housewife, and, as Baynes always said, there was 'a
+lot in a good dinner.'  He did his best work after dinner.  It was
+Baynes who built that remarkably fine row of tall crimson houses
+in Kensington which compete with so many others for the title of
+'the ugliest in London.'
+
+On hearing June's name, she went hurriedly to her bedroom, and,
+taking two large bracelets from a red morocco case in a locked
+drawer, put them on her white wrists--for she possessed in a
+remarkable degree that 'sense of property,' which, as we know, is
+the touchstone of Forsyteism, and the foundation of good
+morality.
+
+Her figure, of medium height and broad build, with a tendency to
+embonpoint, was reflected by the mirror of her whitewood
+wardrobe, in a gown made under her own organization, of one of
+those half-tints, reminiscent of the distempered walls of
+corridors in large hotels.  She raised her hands to her hair,
+which she wore a la Princesse de Galles, and touched it here and
+there, settling it more firmly on her head, and her eyes were
+full of an unconscious realism, as though she were looking in the
+face one of life's sordid facts, and making the best of it.  In
+youth her cheeks had been of cream and roses, but they were
+mottled now by middle-age, and again that hard, ugly directness
+came into her eyes as she dabbed a powder-puff across her
+forehead.  Putting the puff down, she stood quite still before
+the glass, arranging a smile over her high, important nose, her,
+chin, (never large, and now growing smaller with the increase of
+her neck), her thin-lipped, down-drooping mouth.  Quickly, not to
+lose the effect, she grasped her skirts strongly in both hands,
+and went downstairs.
+
+She had been hoping for this visit for some time past.  Whispers
+had reached her that things were not all right between her nephew
+and his fiancee.  Neither of them had been near her for weeks.
+She had asked Phil to dinner many times; his invariable answer
+had been 'Too busy.'
+
+Her instinct was alarmed, and the instinct in such matters of
+this excellent woman was keen.  She ought to have been a Forsyte;
+in young Jolyon's sense of the word, she certainly had that
+privilege, and merits description as such.
+
+She had married off her three daughters in a way that people said
+was beyond their deserts, for they had the professional plainness
+only to be found, as a rule, among the female kind of the more
+legal callings.  Her name was upon the committees of numberless
+charities connected with the Church-dances, theatricals, or
+bazaars--and she never lent her name unless sure beforehand that
+everything had been thoroughly organized.
+
+She believed, as she often said, in putting things on a commercial
+basis; the proper function of the Church, of charity, indeed,
+of everything, was to strengthen the fabric of 'Society.'
+Individual action, therefore, she considered immoral.
+Organization was the only thing, for by organization alone could
+you feel sure that you were getting a return for your money.
+Organization--and again, organization!  And there is no doubt
+that she was what old Jolyon called her--"a 'dab' at that"--he
+went further, he called her "a humbug."
+
+The enterprises to which she lent her name were organized so
+admirably that by the time the takings were handed over, they
+were indeed skim milk divested of all cream of human kindness.
+But as she often justly remarked, sentiment was to be deprecated.
+She was, in fact, a little academic.
+
+This great and good woman, so highly thought of in ecclesiastical
+circles, was one of the principal priestesses in the temple of
+Forsyteism, keeping alive day and night a sacred flame to the God
+of Property, whose altar is inscribed with those inspiring words:
+'Nothing for nothing, and really remarkably little for sixpence.'
+
+When she entered a room it was felt that something substantial
+had come in, which was probably the reason of her popularity as a
+patroness.  People liked something substantial when they had paid
+money for it; and they would look at her--surrounded by her staff
+in charity ballrooms, with her high nose and her broad, square
+figure, attired in an uniform covered with sequins--as though she
+were a general.
+
+The only thing against her was that she had not a double name.
+She was a power in upper middle-class society, with its hundred
+sets and circles, all intersecting on the common battlefield of
+charity functions, and on that battlefield brushing skirts so
+pleasantly with the skirts of Society with the capital 'S.' She
+was a power in society with the smaller 's,' that larger, more
+significant, and more powerful body, where the commercially
+Christian institutions, maxims, and 'principle,' which Mrs.
+Baynes embodied, were real life-blood, circulating freely, real
+business currency, not merely the sterilized imitation that
+flowed in the veins of smaller Society with the larger 'S.'
+People who knew her felt her to be sound--a sound woman, who
+never gave herself away, nor anything else, if she could possibly
+help it.
+
+She had been on the worst sort of terms with Bosinney's father,
+who had not infrequently made her the object of an unpardonable
+ridicule.  She alluded to him now that he was gone as her 'poor,
+dear, irreverend brother.'
+
+She greeted June with the careful effusion of which she was a
+mistress, a little afraid of her as far as a woman of her
+eminence in the commercial and Christian world could be afraid--
+for so slight a girl June had a great dignity, the fearlessness
+of her eyes gave her that.  And Mrs. Baynes, too, shrewdly
+recognized that behind the uncompromising frankness of June's
+manner there was much of the Forsyte.  If the girl had been
+merely frank and courageous, Mrs. Baynes would have thought her
+'cranky,' and despised her; if she had been merely a Forsyte,
+like Francie--let us say--she would have patronized her from
+sheer weight of metal; but June, small though she was--Mrs.
+Baynes habitually admired quantity--gave her an uneasy feeling;
+and she placed her in a chair opposite the light.
+
+There was another reason for her respect which Mrs. Baynes, too
+good a churchwoman to be worldly, would have been the last to
+admit--she often heard her husband describe old Jolyon as
+extremely well off, and was biassed towards his granddaughter for
+the soundest of all reasons.  To-day she felt the emotion with
+which we read a novel describing a hero and an inheritance,
+nervously anxious lest, by some frightful lapse of the novelist,
+the young man should be left without it at the end.
+
+Her manner was warm; she had never seen so clearly before how
+distinguished and desirable a girl this was.  She asked after old
+Jolyon's health.  A wonderful man for his age; so upright, and
+young looking, and how old was he?  Eighty-one!  She would never
+have thought it!  They were at the sea!  Very nice for them; she
+supposed June heard from Phil every day?  Her light grey eyes
+became more prominent as she asked this question; but the girl
+met the glance without flinching.
+
+"No," she said, "he never writes!"
+
+Mrs. Baynes's eyes dropped; they had no intention of doing so,
+but they did.  They recovered immediately.
+
+"Of course not.  That's Phil all over--he was always like that!"
+
+"Was he?" said June.
+
+The brevity of the answer caused Mrs. Baynes's bright smile a
+moment's hesitation; she disguised it by a quick movement, and
+spreading her skirts afresh, said: "Why, my dear--he's quite the
+most harum-scarum person; one never pays the slightest attention
+to what he does!"
+
+The conviction came suddenly to June that she was wasting her
+time; even were she to put a question point-blank, she would
+never get anything out of this woman.
+
+'Do you see him?' she asked, her face crimsoning.
+
+The perspiration broke out on Mrs. Baynes' forehead beneath the
+powder.
+
+"Oh, yes!  I don't remember when he was here last--indeed, we
+haven't seen much of him lately.  He's so busy with your cousin's
+house; I'm told it'll be finished directly.  We must organize a
+little dinner to celebrate the event; do come and stay the night
+with us!"
+
+"Thank you," said June.  Again she thought: 'I'm only wasting my
+time.  This woman will tell me nothing.'
+
+She got up to go.  A change came over Mrs. Baynes.  She rose too;
+her lips twitched, she fidgeted her hands.  Something was
+evidently very wrong, and she did not dare to ask this girl, who
+stood there, a slim, straight little figure, with her decided
+face, her set jaw, and resentful eyes.  She was not accustomed to
+be afraid of asking question's--all organization was based on
+the asking of questions!
+
+But the issue was so grave that her nerve, normally strong, was
+fairly shaken; only that morning her husband had said: "Old Mr.
+Forsyte must be worth well over a hundred thousand pounds!"
+
+And this girl stood there, holding out her hand--holding out her
+hand!
+
+The chance might be slipping away--she couldn't tell--the chance
+of keeping her in the family, and yet she dared not speak.
+
+Her eyes followed June to the door.
+
+It closed.
+
+Then with an exclamation Mrs. Baynes ran forward, wobbling her
+bulky frame from side to side, and opened it again.
+
+Too late!  She heard the front door click, and stood still, an
+expression of real anger and mortification on her face.
+
+June went along the Square with her bird-like quickness.  She
+detested that woman now whom in happier days she had been
+accustomed to think so kind.  Was she always to be put off thus,
+and forced to undergo this torturing suspense?
+
+She would go to Phil himself, and ask him what he meant.  She had
+the right to know.  She hurried on down Sloane Street till she
+came to Bosinney's number.  Passing the swing-door at the bottom,
+she ran up the stairs, her heart thumping painfully.
+
+At the top of the third flight she paused for breath, and holding
+on to the bannisters, stood listening.  No sound came from above.
+
+With a very white face she mounted the last flight.  She saw the
+door, with his name on the plate.  And the resolution that had
+brought her so far evaporated.
+
+The full meaning of her conduct came to her.  She felt hot all
+over; the palms of her hands were moist beneath the thin silk
+covering of her gloves.
+
+She drew back to the stairs, but did not descend.  Leaning
+against the rail she tried to get rid of a feeling of being
+choked; and she gazed at the door with a sort of dreadful
+courage.  No! she refused to go down.  Did it matter what people
+thought of her?  They would never know!  No one would help her if
+she did not help herself!  She would go through with it.
+
+Forcing herself, therefore, to leave the support of the wall, she
+rang the bell.  The door did not open, and all her shame and fear
+suddenly abandoned her; she rang again and again, as though in
+spite of its emptiness she could drag some response out of that
+closed room, some recompense for the shame and fear that visit
+had cost her.  It did not open; she left off ringing, and,
+sitting down at the top of the stairs, buried her face in her
+hands.
+
+Presently she stole down, out into the air.  She felt as though
+she had passed through a bad illness, and had no desire now but
+to get home as quickly as she could.  The people she met seemed
+to know where she had been, what she had been doing; and
+suddenly--over on the opposite side, going towards his rooms from
+the direction of Montpellier Square--she saw Bosinney himself.
+
+She made a movement to cross into the traffic.  Their eyes met,
+and he raised his hat.  An omnibus passed, obscuring her view;
+then, from the edge of the pavement, through a gap in the
+traffic, she saw him walking on.
+
+And June stood motionless, looking after him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+PERFECTION OF THE HOUSE
+
+
+'One mockturtle, clear; one oxtail; two glasses of port.'
+
+In the upper room at French's, where a Forsyte could still get
+heavy English food, James and his son were sitting down to lunch.
+
+Of all eating-places James liked best to come here; there was
+something unpretentious, well-flavoured, and filling about it,
+and though he had been to a certain extent corrupted by the
+necessity for being fashionable, and the trend of habits keeping
+pace with an income that would increase, he still hankered in
+quiet City moments after the tasty fleshpots of his earlier days.
+Here you were served by hairy English waiters in aprons; there
+was sawdust on the floor, and three round gilt looking-glasses
+hung just above the line of sight.  They had only recently done
+away with the cubicles, too, in which you could have your chop,
+prime chump, with a floury-potato, without seeing your
+neighbours, like a gentleman.
+
+He tucked the top corner of his napkin behind the third button of
+his waistcoat, a practice he had been obliged to abandon years
+ago in the West End.  He felt that he should relish his soup--the
+entire morning had been given to winding up the estate of an old
+friend.
+
+After filling his mouth with household bread, stale, he at once
+began: "How are you going down to Robin Hill?  You going to take
+Irene?  You'd better take her.  I should think there'll be a lot
+that'll want seeing to."
+
+Without looking up, Soames answered: "She won't go."
+
+"Won't go?  What's the meaning of that?  She's going to live in
+the house, isn't she?"
+
+Soames made no reply.
+
+"I don't know what's coming to women nowadays," mumbled James; "I
+never used to have any trouble with them.  She's had too much
+liberty.  She's spoiled...."
+
+Soames lifted his eyes: "I won't have anything said against her,"
+he said unexpectedly.
+
+The silence was only broken now by the supping of James's soup.
+
+The waiter brought the two glasses of port, but Soames stopped
+him.
+
+"That's not the way to serve port," he said; "take them away, and
+bring the bottle."
+
+Rousing himself from his reverie over the soup, James took one of
+his rapid shifting surveys of surrounding facts.
+
+"Your mother's in bed," he said; "you can have the carriage to
+take you down.  I should think Irene'd like the drive.  This
+young Bosinney'll be there, I suppose, to show you over"
+
+Soames nodded.
+
+"I should like to go and see for myself what sort of a job he's
+made finishing off," pursued James.  "I'll just drive round and
+pick you both up."
+
+"I am going down by train," replied Soames.  "If you like to
+drive round and see, Irene might go with you, I can't tell."
+
+He signed to the waiter to bring the bill, which James paid.
+
+They parted at St. Paul's, Soames branching off to the station,
+James taking his omnibus westwards.
+
+He had secured the corner seat next the conductor, where his long
+legs made it difficult for anyone to get in, and at all who
+passed him he looked resentfully, as if they had no business to
+be using up his air.
+
+He intended to take an opportunity this afternoon of speaking to
+Irene.  A word in time saved nine; and now that she was going to
+live in the country there was a chance for her to turn over a new
+leaf!  He could see that Soames wouldn't stand very much more of
+her goings on!
+
+It did not occur to him to define what he meant by her 'goings
+on'; the expression was wide, vague, and suited to a Forsyte.
+And James had more than his common share of courage after lunch.
+
+On reaching home, he ordered out the barouche, with special
+instructions that the groom was to go too.  He wished to be kind
+to her, and to give her every chance.
+
+When the door of No.62 was opened he could distinctly hear her
+singing, and said so at once, to prevent any chance of being
+denied entrance.
+
+Yes, Mrs. Soames was in, but the maid did not know if she was
+seeing people.
+
+James, moving with the rapidity that ever astonished the
+observers of his long figure and absorbed expression, went
+forthwith into the drawing-room without permitting this to be
+ascertained.  He found Irene seated at the piano with her hands
+arrested on the keys, evidently listening to the voices in the
+hall.  She greeted him without smiling.
+
+"Your mother-in-law's in bed," he began, hoping at once to enlist
+her sympathy.  "I've got the carriage here.  Now, be a good girl,
+and put on your hat and come with me for a drive.  It'll do you
+good!"
+
+Irene looked at him as though about to refuse, but, seeming to
+change her mind, went upstairs, and came down again with her hat
+on.
+
+"Where are you going to take me?" she asked.
+
+"We'll just go down to Robin Hill," said James, spluttering out
+his words very quick; "the horses want exercise, and I should
+like to see what they've been doing down there."
+
+Irene hung back, but again changed her mind, and went out to the
+carriage, James brooding over her closely, to make quite sure.
+
+It was not before he had got her more than half way that he
+began: "Soames is very fond of you--he won't have anything said
+against you; why don't you show him more affection?"
+
+Irene flushed, and said in a low voice: "I can't show what I
+haven't got."
+
+James looked at her sharply; he felt that now he had her in his
+own carriage, with his own horses and servants, he was really in
+command of the situation.  She could not put him off; nor would
+she make a scene in public.
+
+"I can't think what you're about," he said.  "He's a very good
+husband!"
+
+Irene's answer was so low as to be almost inaudible among the
+sounds of traffic.  He caught the words: "You are not married to
+him!"
+
+"What's that got to do with it?  He's given you everything you
+want.  He's always ready to take you anywhere, and now he's built
+you this house in the country.  It's not as if you had anything
+of your own."
+
+"No."
+
+Again James looked at her; he could not make out the expression
+on her face.  She looked almost as if she were going to cry, and
+yet....
+
+"I'm sure," he muttered hastily, "we've all tried to be kind to
+you."
+
+Irene's lips quivered; to his dismay James saw a tear steal down
+her cheek.  He felt a choke rise in his own throat.
+
+"We're all fond of you," he said, "if you'd only"--he was going
+to say, "behave yourself," but changed it to--"if you'd only be
+more of a wife to him."
+
+Irene did not answer, and James, too, ceased speaking.  There was
+something in her silence which disconcerted him; it was not the
+silence of obstinacy, rather that of acquiescence in all that he
+could find to say.  And yet he felt as if he had not had the last
+word.  He could not understand this.
+
+He was unable, however, to long keep silence.
+
+"I suppose that young Bosinney," he said, "will be getting
+married to June now?"
+
+Irene's face changed.  "I don't know," she said; "you should ask
+her."
+
+"Does she write to you?" No.
+
+"How's that?" said James.  "I thought you and she were such great
+friends."
+
+Irene turned on him.  "Again," she said, "you should ask her!"
+
+"Well," flustered James, frightened by her look, "it's very odd
+that I can't get a plain answer to a plain question, but there it
+is."
+
+He sat ruminating over his rebuff, and burst out at last:
+
+"Well, I've warned you.  You won't look ahead.  Soames he doesn't
+say much, but I can see he won't stand a great deal more of this
+sort of thing.  You'll have nobody but yourself to blame, and,
+what's more, you'll get no sympathy from anybody."
+
+Irene bent her head with a little smiling bow.  "I am very much
+obliged to you."
+
+James did not know what on earth to answer.
+
+The bright hot morning had changed slowly to a grey, oppressive
+afternoon; a heavy bank of clouds, with the yellow tinge of
+coming thunder, had risen in the south, and was creeping up.
+
+The branches of the trees dropped motionless across the road
+without the smallest stir of foliage.  A faint odour of glue from
+the heated horses clung in the thick air; the coachman and groom,
+rigid and unbending, exchanged stealthy murmurs on the box,
+without ever turning their heads.
+
+To James' great relief they reached the house at last; the
+silence and impenetrability of this woman by his side, whom he
+had always thought so soft and mild, alarmed him.
+
+The carriage put them down at the door, and they entered.
+
+The hall was cool, and so still that it was like passing into a
+tomb; a shudder ran down James's spine.  He quickly lifted the
+heavy leather curtains between the columns into the inner court.
+
+He could not restrain an exclamation of approval.
+
+The decoration was really in excellent taste.  The dull ruby
+tiles that extended from the foot of the walls to the verge of a
+circular clump of tall iris plants, surrounding in turn a sunken
+basin of white marble filled with water, were obviously of the
+best quality.  He admired extremely the purple leather curtains
+drawn along one entire side, framing a huge white-tiled stove.
+The central partitions of the skylight had been slid back, and
+the warm air from outside penetrated into the very heart of the
+house.
+
+He stood, his hands behind him, his head bent back on his high,
+narrow shoulders, spying the tracery on the columns and the
+pattern of the frieze which ran round the, ivory-coloured walls
+under the gallery.  Evidently, no pains had been spared.  It was
+quite the house of a gentleman.  He went up to the curtains, and,
+having discovered how they were worked, drew them asunder and
+disclosed the picture-gallery, ending in a great window taking up
+the whole end of the room.  It had a black oak floor, and its
+walls, again, were of ivory white.  He went on throwing open
+doors, and peeping in.  Everything was in apple-pie order, ready
+for immediate occupation.
+
+He turned round at last to speak to Irene, and saw her standing
+over in the garden entrance, with her husband and Bosinney.
+
+Though not remarkable for sensibility, James felt at once that
+something was wrong.  He went up to them, and, vaguely alarmed,
+ignorant of the nature of the trouble, made an attempt to smooth
+things over.
+
+"How are you, Mr. Bosinney?" he said, holding out his hand.
+"You've been spending money pretty freely down here, I should
+say!"
+
+Soames turned his back, and walked away.
+
+James looked from Bosinney's frowning face to Irene, and, in his
+agitation, spoke his thoughts aloud: "Well, I can't tell what's
+the matter.  Nobody tells me anything!"  And, making off after his
+son, he heard Bosinney's short laugh, and his "Well, thank God!
+You look so...."  Most unfortunately he lost the rest.
+
+What had happened?  He glanced back.  Irene was very close to the
+architect, and her face not like the face he knew of her.  He
+hastened up to his son.
+
+Soames was pacing the picture-gallery.
+
+"What's the matter?" said James.  "What's all this?"
+
+Soames looked at him with his supercilious calm unbroken, but
+James knew well enough that he was violently angry.
+
+"Our friend," he said, "has exceeded his instructions again,
+that's all.  So much the worse for him this time."
+
+He turned round and walked back towards the door.  James followed
+hurriedly, edging himself in front.  He saw Irene take her finger
+from before her lips, heard her say something in her ordinary
+voice, and began to speak before he reached them.
+
+"There's a storm coming on.  We'd better get home.  We can't take
+you, I suppose, Mr. Bosinney?  No, I suppose not.  Then,
+good-bye!"  He held out his hand.  Bosinney did not take it, but,
+turning with a laugh, said:
+
+"Good-bye, Mr. Forsyte.  Don't get caught in the storm!" and
+walked away.
+
+"Well," began James, "I don't know...."
+
+But the 'sight of Irene's face stopped him.  Taking hold of his
+daughter-in-law by the elbow, he escorted her towards the
+carriage.  He felt certain, quite certain, they had been making
+some appointment or other....
+
+Nothing in this world is more sure to upset a Forsyte than the
+discovery that something on which he has stipulated to spend a
+certain sum has cost more.  And this is reasonable, for upon the
+accuracy of his estimates the whole policy of his life is
+ordered.  If he cannot rely on definite values of property, his
+compass is amiss; he is adrift upon bitter waters without a helm.
+
+After writing to Bosinney in the terms that have already been
+chronicled, Soames had dismissed the cost of the house from his
+mind.  He believed that he had made the matter of the final cost
+so very plain that the possibility of its being again exceeded
+had really never entered his head.  On hearing from Bosinney that
+his limit of twelve thousand pounds would be exceeded by some-
+thing like four hundred, he had grown white with anger.  His
+original estimate of the cost of the house completed had been ten
+thousand pounds, and he had often blamed himself severely for
+allowing himself to be led into repeated excesses.  Over this
+last expenditure, however, Bosinney had put himself completely in
+the wrong.  How on earth a fellow could make such an ass of
+himself Soames could not conceive; but he had done so, and all
+the rancour and hidden jealousy that had been burning against him
+for so long was now focussed in rage at this crowning piece of
+extravagance.  The attitude of the confident and friendly husband
+was gone.  To preserve property--his wife--he had assumed it, to
+preserve property of another kind he lost it now.
+
+"Ah!" he had said to Bosinney when he could speak, "and I suppose
+you're perfectly contented with yourself.  But I may as well tell
+you that you've altogether mistaken your man!"
+
+What he meant by those words he did not quite know at the time,
+but after dinner he looked up the correspondence between himself
+and Bosinney to make quite sure.  There could be no two opinions
+about it--the fellow had made himself liable for that extra four
+hundred, or, at all events, for three hundred and fifty of it,
+and he would have to make it good.
+
+He was looking at his wife's face when he came to this conclusion.
+Seated in her usual seat on the sofa, she was altering the lace
+on a collar.  She had not once spoken to him all the evening.
+
+He went up to the mantelpiece, and contemplating his face in the
+mirror said: "Your friend the Buccaneer has made a fool of
+himself; he will have to pay for it!"
+
+She looked at him scornfully, and answered: "I don't know what
+you are talking about!"
+
+"You soon will.  A mere trifle, quite beneath your contempt--four
+hundred pounds."
+
+"Do you mean that you are going to make him pay that towards this
+hateful, house?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"And you know he's got nothing?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then you are meaner than I thought you."
+
+Soames turned from the mirror, and unconsciously taking a china
+cup from the mantelpiece, clasped his hands around it as though
+praying.  He saw her bosom rise and fall, her eyes darkening with
+anger, and taking no notice of the taunt, he asked quietly:
+
+"Are you carrying on a flirtation with Bosinney?"
+
+"No, I am not!"
+
+Her eyes met his, and he looked away.  He neither believed nor
+disbelieved her, but he knew that he had made a mistake in
+asking; he never had known, never would know, what she was
+thinking.  The sight of her inscrutable face, the thought of all
+the hundreds of evenings he had seen her sitting there like that
+soft and passive, but unreadable, unknown, enraged him beyond
+measure.
+
+"I believe you are made of stone," he said, clenching his fingers
+so hard that he broke the fragile cup.  The pieces fell into the
+grate.  And Irene smiled.
+
+"You seem to forget," she said, "that cup is not!"
+
+Soames gripped her arm.  "A good beating," he said, "is the only
+thing that would bring you to your senses," but turning on his
+heel, he left the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+SOAMES SITS ON THE STAIRS
+
+
+Soames went upstairs that night that he had gone too far.  He was
+prepared to offer excuses for his words.
+
+He turned out the gas still burning in the passage outside their
+room.  Pausing, with his hand on the knob of the door, he tried
+to shape his apology, for he had no intention of letting her see
+that he was nervous.
+
+But the door did not open, nor when he pulled it and turned the
+handle firmly.  She must have locked it for some reason, and
+forgotten.
+
+Entering his dressing-room, where the gas was also light and
+burning low, he went quickly to the other door.  That too was
+locked.  Then he noticed that the camp bed which he occasionally
+used was prepared, and his sleeping-suit laid out upon it.  He
+put his hand up to his forehead, and brought it away wet.  It
+dawned on him that he was barred out.
+
+He went back to the door, and rattling the handle stealthily,
+called: "Unlock the door, do you hear?  Unlock the door!"
+
+There was a faint rustling, but no answer.
+
+"Do you hear?  Let me in at once--I insist on being let in!"
+
+He could catch the sound of her breathing close to the door, like
+the breathing of a creature threatened by danger.
+
+There was something terrifying in this inexorable silence, in the
+impossibility of getting at her.  He went back to the other door,
+and putting his whole weight against it, tried to burst it open.
+The door was a new one--he had had them renewed himself, in
+readiness for their coming in after the honeymoon.  In a rage he
+lifted his foot to kick in the panel; the thought of the servants
+restrained him, and he felt suddenly that he was beaten.
+
+Flinging himself down in the dressing-room, he took up a book.
+
+But instead of the print he seemed to see his wife--with her
+yellow hair flowing over her bare shoulders, and her great dark
+eyes--standing like an animal at bay.  And the whole meaning of
+her act of revolt came to him.  She meant it to be for good.
+
+He could not sit still, and went to the door again.  He could
+still hear her, and he called: "Irene!  Irene!"
+
+He did not mean to make his voice pathetic.
+
+In ominous answer, the faint sounds ceased.  He stood with
+clenched hands, thinking.
+
+Presently he stole round on tiptoe, and running suddenly at the
+other door, made a supreme effort to break it open.  It creaked,
+but did not yield.  He sat down on the stairs and buried his face
+in his hands.
+
+For a long time he sat there in the dark, the moon through the
+skylight above laying a pale smear which lengthened slowly
+towards him down the stairway.  He tried to be philosophical.
+
+Since she had locked her doors she had no further claim as a
+wife, and he would console himself with other women.
+
+It was but a spectral journey he made among such delights--he had
+no appetite for these exploits.  He had never had much, and he
+had lost the habit.  He felt that he could never recover it.  His
+hunger could only be appeased by his wife, inexorable and
+frightened, behind these shut doors.  No other woman could help
+him.
+
+This conviction came to him with terrible force out there in the
+dark.
+
+His philosophy left him; and surly anger took its place.  Her
+conduct was immoral, inexcusable, worthy of any punishment within
+his power.  He desired no one but her, and she refused him!
+
+She must really hate him, then!  He had never believed it yet.
+He did not believe it now.  It seemed to him incredible.  He felt
+as though he had lost for ever his power of judgment.  If she, so
+soft and yielding as he had always judged her, could take this
+decided step--what could not happen?
+
+Then he asked himself again if she were carrying on an intrigue
+with Bosinney.  He did not believe that she was; he could not
+afford to believe such a reason for her conduct--the thought was
+not to be faced.
+
+It would be unbearable to contemplate the necessity of making his
+marital relations public property.  Short of the most convincing
+proofs he must still refuse to believe, for he did not wish to
+punish himself.  And all the time at heart--he did believe.
+
+The moonlight cast a greyish tinge over his figure, hunched
+against the staircase wall.
+
+Bosinney was in love with her!  He hated the fellow, and would
+not spare him now.  He could and would refuse to pay a penny
+piece over twelve thousand and fifty pounds--the extreme limit
+fixed in the correspondence; or rather he would pay, he would pay
+and sue him for damages.  He would go to Jobling and Boulter and
+put the matter in their hands.  He would ruin the impecunious
+beggar!  And suddenly--though what connection between the
+thoughts?--he reflected that Irene had no money either.  They
+were both beggars.  This gave him a strange satisfaction.
+
+The silence was broken by a faint creaking through the wall.  She
+was going to bed at last.  Ah! Joy and pleasant dreams!  If she
+threw the door open wide he would not go in now!
+
+But his lips, that were twisted in a bitter smile, twitched; he
+covered his eyes with his hands....
+
+It was late the following afternoon when Soames stood in the
+dining-room window gazing gloomily into the Square.
+
+The sunlight still showered on the plane-trees, and in the breeze
+their gay broad leaves shone and swung in rhyme to a barrel organ
+at the corner.  It was playing a waltz, an old waltz that was out
+of fashion, with a fateful rhythm in the notes; and it went on
+and on, though nothing indeed but leaves danced to the tune.
+
+The woman did not look too gay, for she was tired; and from the
+tall houses no one threw her down coppers.  She moved the organ
+on, and three doors off began again.
+
+It was the waltz they had played at Roger's when Irene had danced
+with Bosinney; and the perfume of the gardenias she had worn came
+back to Soames, drifted by the malicious music, as it had been
+drifted to him then, when she passed, her hair glistening, her
+eyes so soft, drawing Bosinney on and on down an endless
+ballroom.
+
+The organ woman plied her handle slowly; she had been grinding
+her tune all day-grinding it in Sloane Street hard by, grinding
+it perhaps to Bosinney himself.
+
+Soames turned, took a cigarette from the carven box, and walked
+back to the window.  The tune had mesmerized him, and there came
+into his view Irene, her sunshade furled, hastening homewards
+down the Square, in a soft, rose-coloured blouse with drooping
+sleeves, that he did not know.  She stopped before the organ,
+took out her purse, and gave the woman money.
+
+Soames shrank back and stood where he could see into the hall.
+
+She came in with her latch-key, put down her sunshade, and stood
+looking at herself in the glass.  Her cheeks were flushed as if
+the sun had burned them; her lips were parted in a smile.  She
+stretched her arms out as though to embrace herself, with a laugh
+that for all the world was like a sob.
+
+Soames stepped forward.
+
+"Very-pretty!" he said.
+
+But as though shot she spun round, and would have passed him up
+the stairs.  He barred the way.
+
+"Why such a hurry?" he said, and his eyes fastened on a curl of
+hair fallen loose across her ear....
+
+He hardly recognised her.  She seemed on fire, so deep and rich
+the colour of her cheeks, her eyes, her lips, and of the unusual
+blouse she wore.
+
+She put up her hand and smoothed back the curl.  She was
+breathing fast and deep, as though she had been running, and with
+every breath perfume seemed to come from her hair, and from her
+body, like perfume from an opening flower.
+
+"I don't like that blouse," he said slowly, "it's a soft,
+shapeless thing!"
+
+He lifted his finger towards her breast, but she dashed his hand
+aside.
+
+"Don't touch me!" she cried.
+
+He caught her wrist; she wrenched it away.
+
+"And where may you have been?" he asked.
+
+"In heaven--out of this house!"  With those words she fled
+upstairs.
+
+Outside--in thanksgiving--at the very door, the organ-grinder was
+playing the waltz.
+
+And Soames stood motionless.  What prevented him from following
+her?
+
+Was it that, with the eyes of faith, he saw Bosinney looking down
+from that high window in Sloane Street, straining his eyes for
+yet another glimpse of Irene's vanished figure, cooling his
+flushed face, dreaming of the moment when she flung herself on
+his breast--the scent of her still in the air around, and the
+sound of her laugh that was like a sob?
+
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Mrs. MAcANDER'S EVIDENCE
+
+
+Many  people, no doubt, including the editor of the 'Ultra
+Vivisectionist,' then in the bloom of its first youth, would say
+that Soames was less than a man not to have removed the locks
+from his wife's doors, and, after beating her soundly, resumed
+wedded happiness.
+
+Brutality is not so deplorably diluted by humaneness as it used
+to be, yet a sentimental segment of the population may still be
+relieved to learn that he did none of these things.  For active
+brutality, is not popular with Forsytes; they are too
+circumspect, and, on the whole, too softhearted.  And in Soames
+there was some common pride, not sufficient to make him do a
+really generous action, but enough to prevent his indulging in an
+extremely mean one, except, perhaps, in very hot blood.  Above
+all this true Forsyte refused to feel himself ridiculous.  Short
+of actually beating his wife, he perceived nothing to be done; he
+therefore accepted the situation without another word.
+
+Throughout the summer and autumn he continued to go to the
+office, to sort his pictures, and ask his friends to dinner.
+
+He did not leave town; Irene refused to go away.  The house at
+Robin Hill, finished though it was, remained empty and ownerless.
+Soames had brought a suit against the Buccaneer, in which he
+claimed from him the sum of three hundred and fifty pounds.
+
+A firm of solicitors, Messrs.  Freak and Able, had put in a
+defence on Bosinney's behalf.  Admitting the facts, they raised a
+point on the correspondence which, divested of legal phraseology,
+amounted to this: To speak of 'a free hand in the terms of this
+correspondence' is an Irish bull.
+
+By a chance, fortuitous but not improbable in the close borough
+of legal circles, a good deal of information came to Soames' ear
+anent this line of policy, the working partner in his firm,
+Bustard, happening to sit next at dinner at Walmisley's, the
+Taxing Master, to young Chankery, of the Common Law Bar.
+
+The necessity for talking what is known as 'shop,' which comes on
+all lawyers with the removal of the ladies, caused Chankery, a
+young and promising advocate, to propound an impersonal conundrum
+to his neighbour, whose name he did not know, for, seated as he
+permanently was in the background, Bustard had practically no
+name.
+
+He had, said Chankery, a case coming on with a 'very nice point.'
+He then explained, preserving every professional discretion, the
+riddle in Soames' case.  Everyone, he said, to whom he had
+spoken, thought it a nice point.  The issue was small
+unfortunately, 'though d----d serious for his client he
+believed'--Walmisley's champagne was bad but plentiful.  A Judge
+would make short work of it, he was afraid.  He intended to make
+a big effort--the point was a nice one.  What did his neighbour
+say?
+
+Bustard, a model of secrecy, said nothing.  He related the
+incident to Soames however with some malice, for this quiet man
+was capable of human feeling, ending with his own opinion that
+the point was 'a very nice one.'
+
+In accordance with his resolve, our Forsyte had put his interests
+into the hands of Jobling and Boulter.  From the moment of doing
+so he regretted that he had not acted for himself.  On receiving
+a copy of Bosinney's defence he went over to their offices.
+
+Boulter, who had the matter in hand, Jobling having died some
+years before, told him that in his opinion it was rather a nice
+point; he would like counsel's opinion on it.
+
+Soames told him to go to a good man, and they went to Waterbuck,
+Q.C., marking him ten and one, who kept the papers six weeks and
+then wrote as follows
+
+'In my opinion the true interpretation of this correspondence
+depends very much on the intention of the parties, and will turn
+upon the evidence given at the trial.  I am of opinion that an
+attempt should be made to secure from the architect an admission
+that he understood he was not to spend at the outside more than
+twelve thousand and fifty pounds.  With regard to the expression,
+"a free hand in the terms of this correspondence," to which my
+attention is directed, the point is a nice one; but I am of
+opinion that upon the whole the ruling in "Boileau v. The
+Blasted Cement Co., Ltd.," will apply.'
+
+Upon this opinion they acted, administering interrogatories, but
+to their annoyance Messrs.  Freak and Able answered these in so
+masterly a fashion that nothing whatever was admitted and that
+without prejudice.
+
+It was on October 1 that Soames read Waterbuck's opinion, in the
+dining-room before dinner.
+
+It made him nervous; not so much because of the case of 'Boileau
+v. The Blasted Cement Co., Ltd.,' as that the point had lately
+begun to seem to him, too, a nice one; there was about it just
+that pleasant flavour of subtlety so attractive to the best legal
+appetites.  To have his own impression confirmed by Waterbuck,
+Q.C., would have disturbed any man.
+
+He sat thinking it over, and staring at the empty grate, for
+though autumn had come, the weather kept as gloriously fine that
+jubilee year as if it were still high August.  It was not
+pleasant to be disturbed; he desired too passionately to set his
+foot on Bosinney's neck.
+
+Though he had not seen the architect since the last afternoon at
+Robin Hill, he was never free from the sense of his presence--
+never free from the memory of his worn face with its high cheek
+bones and enthusiastic eyes.  It would riot be too much to say
+that he had never got rid of the feeling of that night when he
+heard the peacock's cry at dawn--the feeling that Bosinney
+haunted the house.  And every man's shape that he saw in the dark
+evenings walking past, seemed that of him whom George had so
+appropriately named the Buccaneer.
+
+Irene still met him, he was certain; where, or how, he neither
+knew, nor asked; deterred by a vague and secret dread of too much
+knowledge.  It all seemed subterranean nowadays.
+
+Sometimes when he questioned his wife as to where she had been,
+which he still made a point of doing, as every Forsyte should,
+she looked very strange.  Her self-possession was wonderful, but
+there were moments when, behind the mask of her face, inscrutable
+as it had always been to him, lurked an expression he had never
+been used to see there.
+
+She had taken to lunching out too; when he asked Bilson if her
+mistress had been in to lunch, as often as not she would answer:
+"No, sir."
+
+He strongly disapproved of her gadding about by herself, and told
+her so.  But she took no notice.  There was something that
+angered, amazed, yet almost amused, him about the calm way in
+which she disregarded his wishes.  It was really as if she were
+hugging to herself the thought of a triumph over him.
+
+He rose from the perusal of Waterbuck, Q.C.'s opinion, and, going
+upstairs, entered her room, for she did not lock her doors till
+bed-time--she had the decency, he found, to save the feelings of
+the servants.  She was brushing her hair, and turned to him with
+strange fierceness.
+
+"What do you want?" she said.  "Please leave my room!"
+
+He answered: "I want to know how long this state of things
+between us is to last?  I have put up with it long enough."
+
+"Will you please leave my room?"
+
+"Will you treat me as your husband?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then, I shall take steps to make you."
+
+"Do!"
+
+He stared, amazed at the calmness of her answer.  Her lips were
+compressed in a thin line; her hair lay in fluffy masses on her
+bare shoulders, in all its strange golden contrast to her dark
+eyes--those eyes alive with the emotions of fear, hate, contempt,
+and odd, haunting triumph.
+
+"Now, please, will you leave my room?" He turned round, and went
+sulkily out.
+
+He knew very well that he had no intention of taking steps, and
+he saw that she knew too--knew that he was afraid to.
+
+It was a habit with him to tell her the doings of his day: how
+such and such clients had called; how he had arranged a mortgage
+for Parkes; how that long-standing suit of Fryer v. Forsyte was
+getting on, which, arising in the preternaturally careful
+disposition of his property by his great uncle Nicholas, who had
+tied it up so that no one could get at it at all, seemed likely
+to remain a source of income for several solicitors till the Day
+of Judgment.
+
+And how he had called in at Jobson's, and seen a Boucher sold,
+which he had just missed buying of Talleyrand and Sons in Pall
+Mall.
+
+He had an admiration for Boucher, Watteau, and all that school.
+It was a habit with him to tell her all these matters, and he
+continued to do it even now, talking for long spells at dinner,
+as though by the volubility of words he could conceal from
+himself the ache in his heart.
+
+Often, if they were alone, he made an attempt to kiss her when
+she said good-night.  He may have had some vague notion that some
+night she would let him; or perhaps only the feeling that a
+husband ought to kiss his wife.  Even if she hated him, he at all
+events ought not to put himself in the wrong by neglecting this
+ancient rite.
+
+And why did she hate him?  Even now he could not altogether
+believe it.  It was strange to be hated!--the emotion was too
+extreme; yet he hated Bosinney, that Buccaneer, that prowling
+vagabond, that night-wanderer.  For in his thoughts Soames always
+saw him lying in wait--wandering.  Ah, but he must be in very low
+water!  Young Burkitt, the architect, had seen him coming out of
+a third-rate restaurant, looking terribly down in the mouth!
+
+During all the hours he lay awake, thinking over the situation,
+which seemed to have no end--unless she should suddenly come to
+her senses--never once did the thought of separating from his
+wife seriously enter his head....
+
+And the Forsytes!  What part did they play in this stage of
+Soames' subterranean tragedy?
+
+Truth to say, little or none, for they were at the sea.
+
+From hotels, hydropathics, or lodging-houses, they were bathing
+daily; laying in a stock of ozone to last them through the
+winter.
+
+Each section, in the vineyard of its own choosing, grew and
+culled and pressed and bottled the grapes of a pet sea-air.
+
+The end of September began to witness their several returns.
+
+In rude health and small omnibuses, with considerable colour in
+their cheeks, they arrived daily from the various termini.  The
+following morning saw them back at their vocations.
+
+On the next Sunday Timothy's was thronged from lunch till dinner.
+
+Amongst other gossip, too numerous and interesting to relate,
+Mrs. Septimus Small mentioned that Soames and Irene had not been
+away.
+
+It remained for a comparative outsider to supply the next
+evidence of interest.
+
+It chanced that one afternoon late in September, Mrs. MacAnder,
+Winifred Dartie's greatest friend, taking a constitutional, with
+young Augustus Flippard, on her bicycle in Richmond Park, passed
+Irene and Bosinney walking from the bracken towards the Sheen
+Gate.
+
+Perhaps the poor little woman was thirsty, for she had ridden
+long on a hard, dry road, and, as all London knows, to ride a
+bicycle and talk to young Flippard will try the toughest
+constitution; or perhaps the sight of the cool bracken grove,
+whence 'those two' were coming down, excited her envy.  The cool
+bracken grove on the top of the hill, with the oak boughs for
+roof, where the pigeons were raising an endless wedding hymn, and
+the autumn, humming, whispered to the ears of lovers in the fern,
+while the deer stole by.  The bracken grove of irretrievable
+delights, of golden minutes in the long marriage of heaven and
+earth!  The bracken grove, sacred to stags, to strange tree-stump
+fauns leaping around the silver whiteness of a birch-tree nymph
+at summer dusk
+
+This lady knew all the Forsytes, and having been at June's 'at
+home,' was not at a loss to see with whom she had to deal.  Her
+own marriage, poor thing, had not been successful, but having
+had the good sense and ability to force her husband into
+pronounced error, she herself had passed through the necessary
+divorce proceedings without incurring censure.
+
+She was therefore a judge of all that sort of thing, and lived in
+one of those large buildings, where in small sets of apartments,
+are gathered incredible quantities of Forsytes, whose chief
+recreation out of business hours is the discussion of each
+other's affairs.
+
+Poor little woman, perhaps she was thirsty, certainly she was
+bored, for Flippard was a wit.  To see 'those two' in so unlikely
+a spot was quite a merciful 'pick-me-up.'
+
+At the MacAnder, like all London, Time pauses.
+
+This small but remarkable woman merits attention; her all-seeing
+eye and shrewd tongue were inscrutably the means of furthering
+the ends of Providence.
+
+With an air of being in at the death, she had an almost
+distressing power of taking care of herself.  She had done more,
+perhaps, in her way than any woman about town to destroy the
+sense of chivalry which still clogs the wheel of civilization.
+So smart she was, and spoken of endearingly as 'the little
+MacAnder!'
+
+Dressing tightly and well, she belonged to a Woman's Club, but
+was by no means the neurotic and dismal type of member who was
+always thinking of her rights.  She took her rights unconsciously,
+they came natural to her, and she knew exactly how to make the
+most of them without exciting anything but admiration amongst
+that great class to whom she was affiliated, not precisely
+perhaps by manner, but by birth, breeding, and the true, the
+secret gauge, a sense of property.
+
+The daughter of a Bedfordshire solicitor, by the daughter of a
+clergyman, she had never, through all the painful experience of
+being married to a very mild painter with a cranky love of
+Nature, who had deserted her for an actress, lost touch with the
+requirements, beliefs, and inner feeling of Society; and, on
+attaining her liberty, she placed herself without effort in the
+very van of Forsyteism.
+
+Always in good spirits, and 'full of information,' she was
+universally welcomed.  She excited neither surprise nor
+disapprobation when encountered on the Rhine or at Zermatt,
+either alone, or travelling with a lady and two gentlemen; it was
+felt that she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself;
+and the hearts of all Forsytes warmed to that wonderful instinct,
+which enabled her to enjoy everything without giving anything
+away.  It was generally felt that to such women as Mrs. MacAnder
+should we look for the perpetuation and increase of our best type
+of woman.  She had never had any children.
+
+If there was one thing more than another that she could not stand
+it was one of those soft women with what men called 'charm' about
+them, and for Mrs. Soames she always had an especial dislike.
+
+Obscurely, no doubt, she felt that if charm were once admitted as
+the criterion, smartness and capability must go to the wall; and
+she hated--with a hatred the deeper that at times this so-called
+charm seemed to disturb all calculations--the subtle seductiveness
+which she could not altogether overlook in Irene.
+
+She said, however, that she could see nothing in the woman--there
+was no 'go' about her--she would never be able to stand up for
+herself--anyone could take advantage of her, that was plain--she
+could not see in fact what men found to admire!
+
+She was not really ill-natured, but, in maintaining her position
+after the trying circumstances of her married life, she had found
+it so necessary to be 'full of information,' that the idea of
+holding her tongue about 'those two' in the Park never occurred
+to her.
+
+And it so happened that she was dining that very evening at
+Timothy's, where she went sometimes to 'cheer the old things up,'
+as she was wont to put it.  The same people were always asked to
+meet her: Winifred Dartie and her husband; Francie, because she
+belonged to the artistic circles, for Mrs. MacAnder was known to
+contribute articles on dress to 'The Ladies Kingdom Come'; and
+for her to flirt with, provided they could be obtained, two of
+the Hayman boys, who, though they never said anything, were
+believed to be fast and thoroughly intimate with all that was
+latest in smart Society.
+
+At twenty-five minutes past seven she turned out the electric
+light in her little hall, and wrapped in her opera cloak with the
+chinchilla collar, came out into the corridor, pausing a moment
+to make sure she had her latch-key.  These little self-contained
+flats were convenient; to be sure, she had no light and no air,
+but she could shut it up whenever she liked and go away.  There
+was no bother with servants, and she never felt tied as she used
+to when poor, dear Fred was always about, in his mooney way.  She
+retained no rancour against poor, dear Fred, he was such a fool;
+but the thought of that actress drew from her, even now, a
+little, bitter, derisive smile.
+
+Firmly snapping the door to, she crossed the corridor, with its
+gloomy, yellow-ochre walls, and its infinite vista of brown,
+numbered doors.  The lift was going down; and wrapped to the ears
+in the high cloak, with every one of her auburn hairs in its
+place, she waited motionless for it to stop at her floor.  The
+iron gates clanked open; she entered.  There were already three
+occupants, a man in a great white waistcoat, with a large, smooth
+face like a baby's, and two old ladies in black, with mittened
+hands.
+
+Mrs. MacAnder smiled at them; she knew everybody; and all these
+three, who had been admirably silent before, began to talk at
+once.  This was Mrs. MacAnder's successful secret.  She provoked
+conversation.
+
+Throughout a descent of five stories the conversation continued,
+the lift boy standing with his back turned, his cynical face
+protruding through the bars.
+
+At the bottom they separated, the man in the white waistcoat
+sentimentally to the billiard room, the old ladies to dine and
+say to each other: "A dear little woman!"  "Such a rattle!" and
+Mrs. MacAnder to her cab.
+
+When Mrs. MacAnder dined at Timothy's, the conversation (although
+Timothy himself could never be induced to be present) took that
+wider, man-of-the-world tone current among Forsytes at large, and
+this, no doubt, was what put her at a premium there.
+
+Mrs. Small and Aunt Hester found it an exhilarating change.  "If
+only," they said, "Timothy would meet her!"  It was felt that she
+would do him good.  She could tell you, for instance, the latest
+story of Sir Charles Fiste's son at Monte Carlo; who was the real
+heroine of Tynemouth Eddy's fashionable novel that everyone was
+holding up their hands over, and what they were doing in Paris
+about wearing bloomers.  She was so sensible, too, knowing all
+about that vexed question, whether to send young Nicholas' eldest
+into the navy as his mother wished, or make him an accountant as
+his father thought would be safer.  She strongly deprecated the
+navy.  If you were not exceptionally brilliant or exceptionally
+well connected, they passed you over so disgracefully, and what
+was it after all to look forward to, even if you became an
+admiral--a pittance!  An accountant had many more chances, but
+let him be put with a good firm, where there was no risk at
+starting!
+
+Sometimes she would give them a tip on the Stock Exchange; not
+that Mrs. Small or Aunt Hester ever took it.  They had indeed no
+money to invest; but it seemed to bring them into such exciting
+touch with the realities of life.  It was an event.  They would
+ask Timothy, they said.  But they never did, knowing in advance
+that it would upset him.  Surreptitiously, however, for weeks
+after they would look in that paper, which they took with respect
+on account of its really fashionable proclivities, to see whether
+'Bright's Rubies' or 'The Woollen Mackintosh Company' were up or
+down.  Sometimes they could not find the name of the company at
+all; and they would wait until James or Roger or even Swithin
+came in, and ask them in voices trembling with curiosity how that
+'Bolivia Lime and Speltrate was doing--they could not find it in
+the paper.
+
+And Roger would answer: "What do you want to know for?  Some
+trash!  You'll go burning your fingers--investing your money in
+lime, and things you know nothing about!  Who told you?" and
+ascertaining what they had been told, he would go away, and,
+making inquiries in the City, would perhaps invest some of his
+own money in the concern.
+
+It was about the middle of dinner, just in fact as the saddle of
+mutton had been brought in by Smither, that Mrs. MacAnder,
+looking airily round, said: "Oh! and whom do you think I passed
+to-day in Richmond Park?  You'll never guess--Mrs. Soames and--
+Mr. Bosinney.  They must have been down to look at the house!"
+
+Winifred Dartie coughed, and no one said a word.  It was the
+piece of evidence they had all unconsciously been waiting for.
+
+To do Mrs. MacAnder justice, she had been to Switzerland and the
+Italian lakes with a party of three, and had not heard of Soames'
+rupture with his architect.  She could not tell, therefore, the
+profound impression her words would make.
+
+Upright and a little flushed, she moved her small, shrewd eyes
+from face to face, trying to gauge the effect of her words.  On
+either side of her a Hayman boy, his lean, taciturn, hungry face
+turned towards his plate, ate his mutton steadily.
+
+These two, Giles and Jesse, were so alike and so inseparable that
+they were known as the Dromios.  They never talked, and seemed
+always completely occupied in doing nothing.  It was popularly
+supposed that they were cramming for an important examination.
+They walked without hats for long hours in the Gardens attached
+to their house, books in their hands, a fox-terrier at their
+heels, never saying a word, and smoking all the time.  Every
+morning, about fifty yards apart, they trotted down Campden Hill
+on two lean hacks, with legs as long as their own, and every
+morning about an hour later, still fifty yards apart, they
+cantered up again.  Every evening, wherever they had dined, they
+might be observed about half-past ten, leaning over the
+balustrade of the Alhambra promenade.
+
+They were never seen otherwise than together; in this way passing
+their lives, apparently perfectly content.
+
+Inspired by some dumb stirring within them of the feelings of
+gentlemen, they turned at this painful moment to Mrs. MacAnder,
+and said in precisely the same voice: "Have you seen the...?"
+
+Such was her surprise at being thus addressed that she put down
+her fork; and Smither, who was passing, promptly removed her
+plate.  Mrs. MacAnder, however, with presence of mind, said
+instantly: "I must have a little more of that nice mutton."
+
+But afterwards in the drawing--room she sat down by Mrs. Small,
+determined to get to the bottom of the matter.  And she began:
+
+"What a charming woman, Mrs. Soames; such a sympathetic
+temperament!  Soames is a really lucky man!"
+
+Her anxiety for information had not made sufficient allowance for
+that inner Forsyte skin which refuses to share its troubles with
+outsiders.
+
+Mrs. Septimus Small, drawing herself up with a creak and rustle
+of her whole person, said, shivering in her dignity:
+
+"My dear, it is a subject we do not talk about!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+NIGHT IN THE PARK
+
+
+Although with her infallible instinct Mrs. Small had said the
+very thing to make her guest 'more intriguee than ever,' it is
+difficult to see how else she could truthfully have spoken.
+
+It was not a subject which the Forsytes could talk about even
+among themselves--to use the word Soames had invented to
+characterize to himself the situation, it was 'subterranean.'
+
+Yet, within a week of Mrs. MacAnder's encounter in Richmond Park,
+to all of them--save Timothy, from whom it was carefully kept--to
+James on his domestic beat from the Poultry to Park Lane, to
+George the wild one, on his daily adventure from the bow window
+at the Haversnake to the billiard room at the 'Red Pottle,' was
+it known that 'those two' had gone to extremes.
+
+George (it was he who invented many of those striking expressions
+still current in fashionable circles) voiced the sentiment more
+accurately than any one when he said to his brother Eustace that
+'the Buccaneer' was 'going it'; he expected Soames was about 'fed
+up.'
+
+It was felt that he must be, and yet, what could be done?  He
+ought perhaps to take steps; but to take steps would be
+deplorable.
+
+Without an open scandal which they could not see their way to
+recommending, it was difficult to see what steps could be taken.
+In this impasse, the only thing was to say nothing to Soames, and
+nothing to each other; in fact, to pass it over.
+
+By displaying towards Irene a dignified coldness, some impression
+might be made upon her; but she was seldom now to be seen, and
+there seemed a slight difficulty in seeking her out on purpose to
+show her coldness.  Sometimes in the privacy of his bedroom James
+would reveal to Emily the real suffering that his son's
+misfortune caused him.
+
+"I can't tell," he would say; "it worries me out of my life.
+There'll be a scandal, and that'll do him no good.  I shan't say
+anything to him.  There might be nothing in it.  What do you
+think?  She's very artistic, they tell me.  What?  Oh, you're a
+'regular Juley!  Well, I don't know; I expect the worst.  This is
+what comes of having no children.  I knew how it would be from
+the first.  They never told me they didn't mean to have any
+children--nobody tells me anything!"
+
+On his knees by the side of the bed, his eyes open and fixed with
+worry, he would breathe into the counterpane.  Clad in his
+nightshirt, his neck poked forward, his back rounded, he
+resembled some long white bird.
+
+"Our Father-," he repeated, turning over and over again the
+thought of this possible scandal.
+
+Like old Jolyon, he, too, at the bottom of his heart set the
+blame of the tragedy down to family interference.  What business
+had that lot--he began to think of the Stanhope Gate branch,
+including young Jolyon and his daughter, as 'that lot'--to
+introduce a person like this Bosinney into the family?  (He had
+heard George's soubriquet, 'The Buccaneer,' but he could make
+nothing of that--the young man was an architect.)
+
+He began to feel that his brother Jolyon, to whom he had always
+looked up and on whose opinion he had relied, was not quite what
+he had expected.
+
+Not having his eldest brother's force of character, he was more
+sad than angry.  His great comfort was to go to Winifred's, and
+take the little Darties in his carriage over to Kensington
+Gardens, and there, by the Round Pond, he could often be seen
+walking with his eyes fixed anxiously on little Publius Dartie's
+sailing-boat, which he had himself freighted with a penny, as
+though convinced that it would never again come to shore; while
+little Publius--who, James delighted to say, was not a bit like
+his father skipping along under his lee, would try to get him to
+bet another that it never would, having found that it always did.
+And James would make the bet; he always paid--sometimes as many
+as three or four pennies in the afternoon, for the game seemed
+never to pall on little Publius--and always in paying he said:
+"Now, that's for your money-box.  Why, you're getting quite a
+rich man!"  The thought of his little grandson's growing wealth
+was a real pleasure to him.  But little Publius knew a
+sweet-shop, and a trick worth two of that.
+
+And they would walk home across the Park, James' figure, with
+high shoulders and absorbed and worried face, exercising its
+tall, lean protectorship, pathetically unregarded, over the
+robust child-figures of Imogen and little Publius.
+
+But those Gardens and that Park were not sacred to James.
+Forsytes and tramps, children and lovers, rested and wandered day
+after day, night after night, seeking one and all some freedom
+from labour, from the reek and turmoil of the streets.
+
+The leaves browned slowly, lingering with the sun and summer-like
+warmth of the nights.
+
+On Saturday, October 5, the sky that had been blue all day
+deepened after sunset to the bloom of purple grapes.  There was
+no moon, and a clear dark, like some velvety garment, was wrapped
+around the trees, whose thinned branches, resembling plumes,
+stirred not in the still, warm air.  All London had poured into
+the Park, draining the cup of summer to its dregs.
+
+Couple after couple, from every gate, they streamed along the
+paths and over the burnt grass, and one after another, silently
+out of the lighted spaces, stole into the shelter of the feathery
+trees, where, blotted against some trunk, or under the shadow of
+shrubs, they were lost to all but themselves in the heart of the
+soft darkness.
+
+To fresh-comers along the paths, these forerunners formed but
+part of that passionate dusk, whence only a strange murmur, like
+the confused beating of hearts, came forth.  But when that murmur
+reached each couple in the lamp-light their voices wavered, and
+ceased; their arms enlaced, their eyes began seeking, searching,
+probing the blackness.  Suddenly, as though drawn by invisible
+hands, they, too, stepped over the railing, and, silent as
+shadows, were gone from the light.
+
+The stillness, enclosed in the far, inexorable roar of the town,
+was alive with the myriad passions, hopes, and loves of
+multitudes of struggling human atoms; for in spite of the
+disapproval of that great body of Forsytes, the Municipal
+Council--to whom Love had long been considered, next to the
+Sewage Question, the gravest danger to the community--a process
+was going on that night in the Park, and in a hundred other
+parks, without which the thousand factories, churches, shops,
+taxes, and drains, of which they were custodians, were as
+arteries without blood, a man without a heart.
+
+The instincts of self-forgetfulness, of passion, and of love,
+hiding under the trees, away from the trustees of their
+remorseless enemy, the 'sense of property,' were holding a
+stealthy revel, and Soames, returning from Bayswater for he had
+been alone to dine at Timothy's walking home along the water,
+with his mind upon that coming lawsuit, had the blood driven from
+his heart by a low laugh and the sound of kisses.  He thought of
+writing to the Times the next morning, to draw the attention of
+the Editor to the condition of our parks.  He did not, however,
+for he had a horror of seeing his name in print.
+
+But starved as he was, the whispered sounds in the stillness, the
+half-seen forms in the dark, acted on him like some morbid
+stimulant.  He left the path along the water and stole under the
+trees, along the deep shadow of little plantations, where the
+boughs of chestnut trees hung their great leaves low, and there
+was blacker refuge, shaping his course in circles which had for
+their object a stealthy inspection of chairs side by side,
+against tree-trunks, of enlaced lovers, who stirred at his
+approach.
+
+Now he stood still on the rise overlooking the Serpentine, where,
+in full lamp-light, black against the silver water, sat a couple
+who never moved, the woman's face buried on the man's neck--a
+single form, like a carved emblem of passion, silent and
+unashamed.
+
+And, stung by the sight, Soames hurried on deeper into the shadow
+of the trees.
+
+In this search, who knows what he thought and what he sought?
+Bread for hunger--light in darkness?  Who knows what he expected
+to find--impersonal knowledge of the human heart--the end of his
+private subterranean tragedy--for, again, who knew, but that each
+dark couple, unnamed, unnameable, might not be he and she?
+
+But it could not be such knowledge as this that he was seeking--
+the wife of Soames Forsyte sitting in the Park like a common
+wench!  Such thoughts were inconceivable; and from tree to tree,
+with his noiseless step, he passed.
+
+Once he was sworn at; once the whisper, "If only it could always
+be like this!" sent the blood flying again from his heart, and he
+waited there, patient and dogged, for the two to move.  But it
+was only a poor thin slip of a shop-girl in her draggled blouse
+who passed him, clinging to her lover's arm.
+
+A hundred other lovers too whispered that hope in the stillness
+of the trees, a hundred other lovers clung to each other.
+
+But shaking himself with sudden disgust, Soames returned to the
+path, and left that seeking for he knew not what.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+MEETING AT THE BOTANICAL
+
+
+Young Jolyon, whose circumstances were not those of a Forsyte,
+found at times a difficulty in sparing the money needful for
+those country jaunts and researches into Nature, without having
+prosecuted which no watercolour artist ever puts brush to paper.
+
+He was frequently, in fact, obliged to take his colour-box into
+the Botanical Gardens, and there, on his stool, in the shade of a
+monkey-puzzler or in the lee of some India-rubber plant, he would
+spend long hours sketching.
+
+An Art critic who had recently been looking at his work had
+delivered himself as follows
+
+"In a way your drawings are very good; tone and colour, in some
+of them certainly quite a feeling for Nature.  But, you see,
+they're so scattered; you'll never get the public to look at
+them.  Now, if you'd taken a definite subject, such as 'London by
+Night,' or 'The Crystal Palace in the Spring,' and made a regular
+series, the public would have known at once what they were
+looking at.  I can't lay too much stress upon that.  All the men
+who are making great names in Art, like Crum Stone or Bleeder,
+are making them by avoiding the unexpected; by specializing and
+putting their works all in the same pigeon-hole, so that the
+public know pat once where to go.  And this stands to reason, for
+if a man's a collector he doesn't want people to smell at the
+canvas to find out whom his pictures are by; he wants them to be
+able to say at once, 'A capital Forsyte!'  It is all the more
+important for you to be careful to choose a subject that they can
+lay hold of on the spot, since there's no very marked originality
+in your style."
+
+Young Jolyon, standing by the little piano, where a bowl of dried
+rose leaves, the only produce of the garden, was deposited on a
+bit of faded damask, listened with his dim smile.
+
+Turning to his wife, who was looking at the speaker with an angry
+expression on her thin face, he said:
+
+"You see, dear?"
+
+"I do not," she answered in her staccato voice, that still had a
+little foreign accent; "your style has originality."
+
+The critic looked at her, smiled' deferentially, and said no
+more.  Like everyone else, he knew their history.
+
+The words bore good fruit with young Jolyon; they were contrary
+to all that he believed in, to all that he theoretically held
+good in his Art, but some strange, deep instinct moved him
+against his will to turn them to profit.
+
+He discovered therefore one morning that an idea had come to him
+for making a series of watercolour drawings of London.  How the
+idea had arisen he could not tell; and it was not till the
+following year, when he had completed and sold them at a very
+fair price, that in one of his impersonal moods, he found himself
+able to recollect the Art critic, and to discover in his own
+achievement another proof that he was a Forsyte.
+
+He decided to commence with the Botanical Gardens, where he had
+already made so many studies, and chose the little artificial
+pond, sprinkled now with an autumn shower of red and yellow
+leaves, for though the gardeners longed to sweep them off, they
+could not reach them with their brooms.  The rest of the gardens
+they swept bare enough, removing every morning Nature's rain of
+leaves; piling them in heaps, whence from slow fires rose the
+sweet, acrid smoke that, like the cuckoo's note for spring, the
+scent of lime trees for the summer, is the true emblem of the
+fall.  The gardeners' tidy souls could not abide the gold and
+green and russet pattern on the grass.  The gravel paths must lie
+unstained, ordered, methodical, without knowledge of the
+realities of life, nor of that slow and beautiful decay which
+flings crowns underfoot to star the earth with fallen glories,
+whence, as the cycle rolls, will leap again wild spring.
+
+Thus each leaf that fell was marked from the moment when it
+fluttered a good-bye and dropped, slow turning, from its twig.
+
+But on that little pond the leaves floated in peace, and praised
+Heaven with their hues, the sunlight haunting over them.
+
+And so young Jolyon found them.
+
+Coming there one morning in the middle of October, he was
+disconcerted to find a bench about twenty paces from his stand
+occupied, for he had a proper horror of anyone seeing him at
+work.
+
+A lady in a velvet jacket was sitting there, with her eyes fixed
+on the ground.  A flowering laurel, however, stood between, and,
+taking shelter behind this, young Jolyon prepared his easel.
+
+His preparations were leisurely; he caught, as every true artist
+should, at anything that might delay for a moment the effort of
+his work, and he found himself looking furtively at this unknown
+dame.
+
+Like his father before him, he had an eye for a face.  This face
+was charming!
+
+He saw a rounded chin nestling in a cream ruffle, a delicate face
+with large dark eyes and soft lips.  A black 'picture' hat
+concealed the hair; her figure was lightly poised against the
+back of the bench, her knees were crossed; the tip of a
+patent-leather shoe emerged beneath her skirt.  There was
+something, indeed, inexpressibly dainty about the person of this
+lady, but young Jolyon's attention was chiefly riveted by the
+look on her face, which reminded him of his wife.  It was as
+though its owner had come into contact with forces too strong for
+her.  It troubled him, arousing vague feelings of attraction and
+chivalry.  Who was she?  And what doing there, alone?
+
+Two young gentlemen of that peculiar breed, at once forward and
+shy, found in the Regent's Park, came by on their way to lawn
+tennis, and he noted with disapproval their furtive stares of
+admiration.  A loitering gardener halted to do something
+unnecessary to a clump of pampas grass; he, too, wanted an excuse
+for peeping.  A gentleman, old, and, by his hat, a professor of
+horticulture, passed three times to scrutinize her long and
+stealthily, a queer expression about his lips.
+
+With all these men young Jolyon felt the same vague irritation.
+She looked at none of them, yet was he certain that every man who
+passed would look at her like that.
+
+Her face was not the face of a sorceress, who in every look holds
+out to men the offer of pleasure; it had none of the 'devil's
+beauty' so highly prized among the first Forsytes of the land;
+neither was it of that type, no less adorable, associated with
+the box of chocolate; it was not of the spiritually passionate,
+or passionately spiritual order, peculiar to house-decoration and
+modern poetry; nor did it seem to promise to the playwright
+material for the production of the interesting and neurasthenic
+figure, who commits suicide in the last act.
+
+In shape and colouring, in its soft persuasive passivity, its
+sensuous purity, this woman's face reminded him of Titian's
+'Heavenly Love,' a reproduction of which hung over the sideboard
+in his dining-room.  And her attraction seemed to be in this soft
+passivity, in the feeling she gave that to pressure she must
+yield.
+
+For what or whom was she waiting, in the silence, with the trees
+dropping here and there a leaf, and the thrushes strutting close
+on grass, touched with the sparkle of the autumn rime?  Then her
+charming face grew eager, and, glancing round, with almost a
+lover's jealousy, young Jolyon saw Bosinney striding across the
+grass.
+
+Curiously he watched the meeting, the look in their eyes, the
+long clasp of their hands.  They sat down close together, linked
+for all their outward discretion.  He heard the rapid murmur of
+their talk; but what they said he could not catch.
+
+He had rowed in the galley himself!  He knew the long hours of
+waiting and the lean minutes of a half-public meeting; the
+tortures of suspense that haunt the unhallowed lover.
+
+It required, however, but a glance at their two faces to see that
+this was none of those affairs of a season that distract men and
+women about town; none of those sudden appetites that wake up
+ravening, and are surfeited and asleep again in six weeks.  This
+was the real thing!  This was what had happened to himself!  Out
+of this anything might come!
+
+Bosinney was pleading, and she so quiet, so soft, yet immovable
+in her passivity, sat looking over the grass.
+
+Was he the man to carry her off, that tender, passive being, who
+would never stir a step for herself?  Who had given him all
+herself, and would die for him, but perhaps would never run away
+with him!
+
+It seemed to young Jolyon that he could hear her saying: "But,
+darling, it would ruin you!"  For he himself had experienced to
+the full the gnawing fear at the bottom of each woman's heart
+that she is a drag on the man she loves.
+
+And he peeped at them no more; but their soft, rapid talk came to
+his ears, with the stuttering song of some bird who seemed trying
+to remember the notes of spring: Joy--tragedy?  Which--which?
+
+And gradually their talk ceased; long silence followed.
+
+'And where does Soames come in?' young Jolyon thought.  'People
+think she is concerned about the sin of deceiving her husband!
+Little they know of women!  She's eating, after starvation--
+taking her revenge!  And Heaven help her--for he'll take his.'
+
+He heard the swish of silk, and, spying round the laurel, saw
+them walking away, their hands stealthily joined....
+
+At the end of July old Jolyon had taken his grand-daughter to the
+mountains; and on that visit (the last they ever paid) June
+recovered to a great extent her health and spirits.  In the
+hotels, filled with British Forsytes--for old Jolyon could not
+bear a 'set of Germans,' as he called all foreigners--she was
+looked upon with respect--the only grand-daughter of that fine-
+looking, and evidently wealthy, old Mr. Forsyte.  She did not mix
+freely with people--to mix freely with people was not June's
+habit--but she formed some friendships, and notably one in the
+Rhone Valley, with a French girl who was dying of consumption.
+
+Determining at once that her friend should not die, she forgot,
+in the institution of a campaign against Death, much of her own
+trouble.
+
+Old Jolyon watched the new intimacy with relief and disapproval;
+for this additional proof that her life was to be passed amongst
+'lame ducks' worried him.  Would she never make a friendship or
+take an interest in something that would be of real benefit to
+her?
+
+'Taking up with a parcel of foreigners,' he called it.  He often,
+however, brought home  grapes or roses, and presented them to
+'Mam'zelle' with an ingratiating twinkle.
+
+Towards the end of September, in spite of June's disapproval,
+Mademoiselle Vigor breathed her last in the little hotel at St.
+Luc, to which they had moved her; and June took her defeat so
+deeply to heart that old Jolyon carried her away to Paris.  Here,
+in contemplation of the 'Venus de Milo' and the 'Madeleine,' she
+shook off her depression, and when, towards the middle of
+October, they returned to town, her grandfather believed that he
+had effected a cure.
+
+No sooner, however, had they established themselves in Stanhope
+Gate than he perceived to his dismay a return of her old absorbed
+and brooding manner.  She would sit, staring in front of her, her
+chin on her hand, like a little Norse spirit, grim and intent,
+while all around in the electric light, then just installed,
+shone the great, drawing-room brocaded up to the frieze, full of
+furniture from Baple and Pullbred's.  And in the huge gilt mirror
+were reflected those Dresden china groups of young men in tight
+knee breeches, at the feet of full-bosomed ladies nursing on
+their laps pet lambs, which old Jolyon had bought when he was a
+bachelor and thought so highly of in these days of degenerate
+taste.  He was a man of most open mind, who, more than any
+Forsyte of them all, had moved with the times, but he could never
+forget that he had bought these groups at Jobson's, and given a
+lot of money for them.  He often said to June, with a sort of
+disillusioned contempt:
+
+"You don't care about them!  They're not the gimcrack things you
+and your friends like, but they cost me seventy pounds!"  He was
+not a man who allowed his taste to be warped when he knew for
+solid reasons that it was sound.
+
+One of the first things that June did on getting home was to go
+round to Timothy's.  She persuaded herself that it was her duty
+to call there, and cheer him with an account of all her travels;
+but in reality she went because she knew of no other place where,
+by some random speech, or roundabout question, she could glean
+news of Bosinney.
+
+They received her most cordially: And how was her dear grand-
+father?  He had not been to see them since May.  Her Uncle
+Timothy was very poorly, he had had a lot of trouble with the
+chimney-sweep in his bedroom; the stupid man had let the soot
+down the chimney!  It had quite upset her uncle.
+
+June sat there a long time, dreading, yet passionately hoping,
+that they would speak of Bosinney.
+
+But paralyzed by unaccountable discretion, Mrs. Septimus Small
+let fall no word, neither did she question June about him.  In
+desperation the girl asked at last whether Soames and Irene were
+in town--she had not yet been to see anyone.
+
+It was Aunt Hester who replied: Oh, yes, they were in town, they
+had not been away at all.  There was some little difficulty about
+the house, she believed.  June had heard, no doubt!  She had
+better ask her Aunt Juley!
+
+June turned to Mrs. Small, who sat upright in her chair, her
+hands clasped, her face covered with innumerable pouts.  In
+answer to the girl's look she maintained a strange silence, and
+when she spoke it was to ask June whether she had worn night-
+socks up in those high hotels where it must be so cold of a
+night.
+
+June answered that she had not, she hated the stuffy things; and
+rose to leave.
+
+Mrs. Small's infallibly chosen silence was far more ominous to
+her than anything that could have been said.
+
+Before half an hour was over she had dragged the truth from Mrs.
+Baynes in Lowndes Square, that Soames was bringing an action
+against Bosinney over the decoration of the house.
+
+Instead of disturbing her, the news had a strangely calming
+effect; as though she saw in the prospect of this struggle new
+hope for herself.  She learnt that the case was expected to come
+on in about a month, and there seemed little or no prospect of
+Bosinney's success.
+
+"And whatever he'll do I can't think," said Mrs. Baynes; "it's
+very dreadful for him, you know--he's got no money--he's very
+hard up.  And we can't help him, I'm sure.  I'm told the
+money-lenders won't lend if you have no security, and he has
+none--none at all."
+
+Her embonpoint had increased of late; she was in the full swing
+of autumn organization, her writing-table literally strewn with
+the menus of charity functions.  She looked meaningly at June,
+with her round eyes of parrot-grey.
+
+The sudden flush that rose on the girl's intent young face--she
+must have seen spring up before her a great hope--the sudden
+sweetness of her smile, often came back to Lady Baynes in after
+years (Baynes was knighted when he built that public Museum of
+Art which has given so much employment to officials, and so
+little pleasure to those working classes for whom it was
+designed).
+
+The memory of that change, vivid and touching, like the breaking
+open of a flower, or the first sun after long winter, the memory,
+too, of all that came after, often intruded itself, unaccountably,
+inopportunely on Lady Baynes, when her mind was set upon the most
+important things.
+
+This was the very afternoon of the day that young Jolyon
+witnessed the meeting in the Botanical Gardens, and on this day,
+too, old Jolyon paid a visit to his solicitors, Forsyte, Bustard,
+and Forsyte, in the Poultry.  Soames was not in, he had gone down
+to Somerset House; Bustard was buried up to the hilt in papers
+and that inaccessible apartment, where he was judiciously placed,
+in order that he might do as much work as possible; but James was
+in the front office, biting a finger, and lugubriously turning
+over the pleadings in Forsyte v. Bosinney.
+
+This sound lawyer had only a sort of luxurious dread of the 'nice
+point,' enough to set up a pleasurable feeling of fuss; for his
+good practical sense told him that if he himself were on the
+Bench he would not pay much attention to it.  But he was afraid
+that this Bosinney would go bankrupt and Soames would have to
+find the money after all, and costs into the bargain.  And behind
+this tangible dread there was always that intangible trouble,
+lurking in the background, intricate, dim, scandalous, like a bad
+dream, and of which this action was but an outward and visible
+sign.
+
+He raised his head as old Jolyon came in, and muttered: "How are
+you, Jolyon?  Haven't seen you for an age.  You've been to
+Switzerland, they tell me.  This young Bosinney, he's got himself
+into a mess.  I knew how it would be!"  He held out the papers,
+regarding his elder brother with nervous gloom.
+
+Old Jolyon read them in silence, and while he read them James
+looked at the floor, biting his fingers the while.
+
+Old Jolyon pitched them down at last, and they fell with a thump
+amongst a mass of affidavits in 're Buncombe, deceased,' one of
+the many branches of that parent and profitable tree, 'Fryer v.
+Forsyte.'
+
+"I don't know what Soames is about," he said, "to make a fuss
+over a few hundred pounds.  I thought he was a man of property."
+
+James'long upper lip twitched angrily; he could not bear his son
+to be attacked in such a spot.
+
+"It's not the money "he began, but meeting his brother's glance,
+direct, shrewd, judicial, he stopped.
+
+There was a silence.
+
+"I've come in for my Will," said old Jolyon at last, tugging at
+his moustache.
+
+James' curiosity was roused at once.  Perhaps nothing in this
+life was more stimulating to him than a Will; it was the supreme
+deal with property, the final inventory of a man's belongings,
+the last word on what he was worth.  He sounded the bell.
+
+"Bring in Mr. Jolyon's Will," he said to an anxious, dark-haired
+clerk.
+
+"You going to make some alterations?" And through his mind there
+flashed the thought: 'Now, am I worth as much as he?'
+
+Old Jolyon put the Will in his breast pocket, and James twisted
+his long legs regretfully.
+
+"You've made some nice purchases lately, they tell me," he said.
+
+"I don't know where you get your information from," answered old
+Jolyon sharply.  "When's this action coming on?  Next month?  I
+can't tell what you've got in your minds.  You must manage your
+own affairs; but if you take my advice, you'll settle it out of
+Court.  Good-bye!"  With a cold handshake he was gone.
+
+James, his fixed grey-blue eye corkscrewing round some secret
+anxious image, began again to bite his finger.
+
+Old Jolyon took his Will to the offices of the New Colliery
+Company, and sat down in the empty Board Room to read it through.
+He answered 'Down-by-the-starn' Hemmings so tartly when the
+latter, seeing his Chairman seated there, entered with the new
+Superintendent's first report, that the Secretary withdrew with
+regretful dignity; and sending for the transfer clerk, blew him
+up till the poor youth knew not where to look.
+
+It was not--by George--as he (Down-by-the-starn) would have him
+know, for a whippersnapper of a young fellow like him, to come
+down to that office, and think that he was God Almighty.  He
+(Down-by-the-starn) had been head of that office for more years
+than a boy like him could count, and if he thought that when he
+had finished all his work, he could sit there doing nothing, he
+did not know him, Hemmings (Down-by-the-starn), and so forth.
+
+On the other side of the green baize door old Jolyon sat at the
+long, mahogany-and-leather board table, his thick, loose-jointed,
+tortoiseshell eye-glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, his
+gold pencil moving down the clauses of his Will.
+
+It was a simple affair, for there were none of those vexatious
+little legacies and donations to charities, which fritter away a
+man's possessions, and damage the majestic effect of that little
+paragraph in the morning papers accorded to Forsytes who die with
+a hundred thousand pounds.
+
+A simple affair.  Just a bequest to his son of twenty thousand,
+and 'as to the residue of my property of whatsoever kind whether
+realty or personalty, or partaking of the nature of either--upon
+trust to pay the proceeds rents annual produce dividends or
+interest thereof and thereon to my said grand-daughter June
+Forsyte or her assigns during her life to be for her sole use and
+benefit and without, etc... and from and after her death or
+decease upon trust to convey assign transfer or make over the
+said last-mentioned lands hereditaments premises trust moneys
+stocks funds investments and securities or such as shall then
+stand for and represent the same unto such person or persons
+whether one or more for such intents purposes and uses and
+generally in such manner way and form in all respects as the said
+June Forsyte notwithstanding coverture shall by her last Will and
+Testament or any writing or writings in the nature of a Will
+testament or testamentary disposition to be by her duly made
+signed and published direct appoint or make over give and dispose
+of the same And in default etc....  Provided always...' and so on,
+in seven folios of brief and simple phraseology.
+
+The Will had been drawn by James in his palmy days.  He had
+foreseen almost every contingency.
+
+Old Jolyon sat a long time reading this Will; at last he took
+half a sheet of paper from the rack, and made a prolonged pencil
+note; then buttoning up the Will, he caused a cab to be called
+and drove to the offices of Paramor and Herring, in Lincoln's Inn
+Fields.  Jack Herring was dead, but his nephew was still in the
+firm, and old Jolyon was closeted with him for half an hour.
+
+He had kept the hansom, and on coming out, gave the driver the
+address--3, Wistaria Avenue.
+
+He felt a strange, slow satisfaction, as though he had scored a
+victory over James and the man of property.  They should not poke
+their noses into his affairs any more; he had just cancelled
+their trusteeships of his Will; he would take the whole of his
+business out of their hands, and put it into the hands of young
+Herring, and he would move the business of his Companies too.  If
+that young Soames were such a man of property, he would never
+miss a thousand a year or so; and under his great white moustache
+old Jolyon grimly smiled.  He felt that what he was doing was in
+the nature of retributive justice, richly deserved.
+
+Slowly, surely, with the secret inner process that works the
+destruction of an old tree, the poison of the wounds to his
+happiness, his will, his pride, had corroded the comely edifice
+of his philosophy.  Life had worn him down on one side, till,
+like that family of which he was the head, he had lost balance.
+
+To him, borne northwards towards his son's house, the thought of
+the new disposition of property, which he had just set in motion,
+appeared vaguely in the light of a stroke of punishment, levelled
+at that family and that Society, of which James and his son
+seemed to him the representatives.  He had made a restitution to
+young Jolyon, and restitution to young Jolyon satisfied his
+secret craving for revenge-revenge against Time, sorrow, and
+interference, against all that incalculable sum of disapproval
+that had been bestowed by the world for fifteen years on his only
+son.  It presented itself as the one possible way of asserting
+once more the domination of his will; of forcing James, and
+Soames, and the family, and all those hidden masses of Forsytes--
+a great stream rolling against the single dam of his obstinacy--
+to recognise once and for all that be would be master.  It was
+sweet to think that at last he was going to make the boy a richer
+man by far than that son of James, that 'man of property.' And it
+was sweet to give to Jo, for he loved his son.
+
+Neither young Jolyon nor his wife were in (young Jolyon indeed
+was not back from the Botanical), but the little maid told him
+that she expected the master at any moment:
+
+"He's always at 'ome to tea, sir, to play with the children."
+
+Old Jolyon said he would wait; and sat down patiently enough in
+the faded, shabby drawing room, where, now that the summer
+chintzes were removed, the old chairs and sofas revealed all
+their threadbare deficiencies.  He longed to send for the
+children; to have them there beside him, their supple bodies
+against his knees; to hear Jolly's: "Hallo, Gran!" and see his
+rush; and feel Holly's soft little hand stealing up against his
+cheek.  But he would not.  There was solemnity in what he had
+come to do, and until it was over he would not play.  He amused
+himself by thinking how with two strokes of his pen he was going
+to restore the look of caste so conspicuously absent from
+everything in that little house; how he could fill these rooms,
+or others in some larger mansion, with triumphs of art from Baple
+and Pullbred's; how he could send little Jolly to Harrow and
+Oxford (he no longer had faith in Eton and Cambridge, for his son
+had been there); how he could procure little Holly the best
+musical instruction, the child had a remarkable aptitude.
+
+As these visions crowded before him, causing emotion to swell his
+heart, he rose, and stood at the window, looking down into the
+little walled strip of garden, where the pear-tree, bare of
+leaves before its time, stood with gaunt branches in the
+slow-gathering mist of the autumn afternoon.  The dog Balthasar,
+his tail curled tightly over a piebald, furry back, was walking
+at the farther end, sniffing at the plants, and at intervals
+placing his leg for support against the wall.
+
+And old Jolyon mused.
+
+What pleasure was there left but to give?  It was pleasant to
+give, when you could find one who would be thankful for what you
+gave--one of your own flesh and blood!  There was no such
+satisfaction to be had out of giving to those who did not belong
+to you, to those who had no claim on you!  Such giving as that
+was a betrayal of the individualistic convictions and actions of
+his life, of all his enterprise, his labour, and his moderation,
+of the great and proud fact that, like tens of thousands of
+Forsytes before him, tens of thousands in the present, tens of
+thousands in the future, he had always made his own, and held his
+own, in the world.
+
+And, while he stood there looking down on the smut-covered
+foliage of the laurels, the blackstained grass-plot, the progress
+of the dog Balthasar, all the suffering of the fifteen years
+during which he had been baulked of legitimate enjoyment mingled
+its gall with the sweetness of the approaching moment.
+
+Young Jolyon came at last, pleased with his work, and fresh from
+long hours in the open air.  On hearing that his father was in
+the drawing room, he inquired hurriedly whether Mrs. Forsyte was
+at home, and being informed that she was not, heaved a sigh of
+relief.  Then putting his painting materials carefully in the
+little coat-closet out of sight, he went in.
+
+With characteristic decision old Jolyon came at once to the
+point.  "I've been altering my arrangements, Jo," he said.  "You
+can cut your coat a bit longer in the future--I'm settling a
+thousand a year on you at once.  June will have fifty thousand at
+my death; and you the rest.  That dog of yours is spoiling the
+garden.  I shouldn't keep a dog, if I were you!"
+
+The dog Balthasar, seated in the centre of the lawn, was
+examining his tail.
+
+Young Jolyon looked at the animal, but saw him dimly, for his
+eyes were misty.
+
+"Yours won't come short of a hundred thousand, my boy," said old
+Jolyon; "I thought you'd better know.  I haven't much longer to
+live at my age.  I shan't allude to it again.  How's your wife?
+And--give her my love."
+
+Young Jolyon put his hand on his father's shoulder, and, as
+neither spoke, the episode closed.
+
+Having seen his father into a hansom, young Jolyon came back to
+the drawing-room and stood, where old Jolyon had stood, looking
+down on the little garden.  He tried to realize all that this
+meant to him, and, Forsyte that he was, vistas of property were
+opened out in his brain; the years of half rations through which
+he had passed had not sapped his natural instincts.  In extremely
+practical form, he thought of travel, of his wife's costume, the
+children's education, a pony for Jolly, a thousand things; but in
+the midst of all he thought, too, of Bosinney and his mistress,
+and the broken song of the thrush.  Joy--tragedy!  Which?  Which?
+
+The old past--the poignant, suffering, passionate, wonderful
+past, that no money could buy, that nothing could restore in all
+its burning sweetness--had come back before him.
+
+When his wife came in he went straight up to her and took her in
+his arms; and for a long time he stood without speaking, his eyes
+closed, pressing her to him, while she looked at him with a
+wondering, adoring, doubting look in her eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+VOYAGE INTO THE INFERNO
+
+
+The morning after a certain night on which Soames at last
+asserted his rights and acted like a man, he breakfasted alone.
+
+He breakfasted by gaslight, the fog of late November wrapping the
+town as in some monstrous blanket till the trees of the Square
+even were barely visible from the diningroom window.
+
+He ate steadily, but at times a sensation as though he could not
+swallow attacked him.  Had he been right to yield to his
+overmastering hunger of the night before, and break down the
+resistance which he had suffered now too long from this woman who
+was his lawful and solemnly constituted helpmate?
+
+He was strangely haunted by the recollection of her face, from
+before which, to soothe her, he had tried to pull her hands--of
+her terrible smothered sobbing, the like of which he had never
+heard, and still seemed to hear; and he was still haunted by the
+odd, intolerable feeling of remorse and shame he had felt, as he
+stood looking at her by the flame of the single candle, before
+silently slinking away.
+
+And somehow, now that he had acted like this, he was surprised at
+himself.
+
+Two nights before, at Winifred Dartie's, he had taken Mrs.
+MacAnder into dinner.  She had said to him, looking in his face
+with her sharp, greenish eyes: "And so your wife is a great
+friend of that Mr. Bosinney's?"
+
+Not deigning to ask what she meant, he had brooded over her
+words.
+
+They had roused in him a fierce jealousy, which, with the
+peculiar perversion of this instinct, had turned to fiercer
+desire.
+
+Without the incentive of Mrs. MacAnder's words he might never
+have done what he had done.  Without their incentive and the
+accident of finding his wife's door for once unlocked, which had
+enabled him to steal upon her asleep.
+
+Slumber had removed his doubts, but the morning brought them
+again.  One thought comforted him: No one would know--it was not
+the sort of thing that she would speak about.
+
+And, indeed, when the vehicle of his daily business life, which
+needed so imperatively the grease of clear and practical thought,
+started rolling once more with the reading of his letters, those
+nightmare-like doubts began to assume less extravagant importance
+at the back of his mind.  The incident was really not of great
+moment; women made a fuss about it in books; but in the cool
+judgment of right-thinking men, of men of the world, of such as
+he recollected often received praise in the Divorce Court, he had
+but done his best to sustain the sanctity of marriage, to prevent
+her from abandoning her duty, possibly, if she were still seeing
+Bosinney, from....
+
+No, he did not regret it.
+
+Now that the first step towards reconciliation had been taken,
+the rest would be comparatively--comparatively....
+
+He, rose and walked to the window.  His nerve had been shaken.
+The sound of smothered sobbing was in his ears again.  He could
+not get rid of it.
+
+He put on his fur coat, and went out into the fog; having to go
+into the City, he took the underground railway from Sloane Square
+station.
+
+In his corner of the first-class compartment filled with City men
+the smothered sobbing still haunted him, so he opened the Times
+with the rich crackle that drowns all lesser sounds, and,
+barricaded behind it, set himself steadily to con the news.
+
+He read that a Recorder had charged a grand jury on the previous
+day with a more than usually long list of offences.  He read of
+three murders, five manslaughters, seven arsons, and as many as
+eleven rapes--a surprisingly high number--in addition to many
+less conspicuous crimes, to be tried during a coming Sessions;
+and from one piece of news he went on to another, keeping the
+paper well before his face.
+
+And still, inseparable from his reading, was the memory of
+Irene's tear-stained face, and the sounds from her broken heart.
+
+The day was a busy one, including, in addition to the ordinary
+affairs of his practice, a visit to his brokers, Messrs. Grin
+and Grinning, to give them instructions to sell his shares in the
+New Colliery Co., Ltd., whose business he suspected, rather than
+knew, was stagnating (this enterprise afterwards slowly declined,
+and was ultimately sold for a song to an American syndicate); and
+a long conference at Waterbuck, Q.C.'s chambers, attended by
+Boulter, by Fiske, the junior counsel, and Waterbuck, Q.C.,
+himself.
+
+The case of Forsyte v. Bosinney was expected to be reached on
+the morrow, before Mr. Justice Bentham.
+
+Mr. Justice Bentham, a man of common-sense rather than too great
+legal knowledge, was considered to be about the best man they
+could have to try the action.  He was a 'strong' Judge.
+
+Waterbuck, Q.C., in pleasing conjunction with an almost rude
+neglect of Boulter and Fiske paid to Soames a good deal of
+attention, by instinct or the sounder evidence of rumour, feeling
+him to be a man of property.
+
+He held with remarkable consistency to the opinion he had already
+expressed in writing, that the issue would depend to a great
+extent on the evidence given at the trial, and in a few well
+directed remarks he advised Soames not to be too careful in
+giving that evidence.  "A little bluffness, Mr. Forsyte," he said,
+"a little bluffness," and after he had spoken he laughed firmly,
+closed his lips tight, and scratched his head just below where he
+had pushed his wig back, for all the world like the gentleman-
+farmer for whom he loved to be taken.  He was considered perhaps
+the leading man in breach of promise cases.
+
+Soames used the underground again in going home.
+
+The fog was worse than ever at Sloane Square station.  Through
+the still, thick blur, men groped in and out; women, very few,
+grasped their reticules to their bosoms and handkerchiefs to
+their mouths; crowned with the weird excrescence of the driver,
+haloed by a vague glow of lamp-light that seemed to drown in
+vapour before it reached the pavement, cabs loomed dimshaped ever
+and again, and discharged citizens, bolting like rabbits to their
+burrows.
+
+And these shadowy figures, wrapped each in his own little shroud
+of fog, took no notice of each other.  In the great warren, each
+rabbit for himself, especially those clothed in the more
+expensive fur, who, afraid of carriages on foggy days, are driven
+underground.
+
+One figure, however, not far from Soames, waited at the station
+door.
+
+Some buccaneer or lover, of whom each Forsyte thought: 'Poor
+devil! looks as if he were having a bad time!'  Their kind hearts
+beat a stroke faster for that poor, waiting, anxious lover in the
+fog; but they hurried by, well knowing that they had neither time
+nor money to spare for any suffering but their own.
+
+Only a policeman, patrolling slowly and at intervals, took an
+interest in that waiting figure, the brim of whose slouch hat
+half hid a face reddened by the cold, all thin, and haggard, over
+which a hand stole now and again to smooth away anxiety, or renew
+the resolution that kept him waiting there.  But the waiting
+lover (if lover he were) was used to policemen's scrutiny, or too
+absorbed in his anxiety, for he never flinched.  A hardened case,
+accustomed to long trysts, to anxiety, and fog, and cold, if only
+his mistress came at last.  Foolish lover!  Fogs last until the
+spring; there is also snow and rain, no comfort anywhere; gnawing
+fear if you bring her out, gnawing fear if you bid her stay at
+home!
+
+"Serve him right; he should arrange his affairs better!"
+
+So any respectable Forsyte.  Yet, if that sounder citizen could
+have listened at the waiting lover's heart, out there in the fog
+and the cold, he would have said again: "Yes, poor devil he's
+having a bad time!"
+
+Soames got into his cab, and, with the glass down, crept along
+Sloane Street, and so along the Brompton Road, and home.  He
+reached his house at five.
+
+His wife was not in.  She had gone out a quarter of an hour
+before.  Out at such a time of night, into this terrible fog!
+What was the meaning of that?
+
+He sat by the dining-room fire, with the door open, disturbed to
+the soul, trying to read the evening paper.  A book was no good--
+in daily papers alone was any narcotic to such worry as his.
+From the customary events recorded in the journal he drew some
+comfort.  'Suicide of an actress'--'Grave indisposition of a
+Statesman' (that chronic sufferer)--'Divorce of an army officer'
+--'Fire in a colliery'--he read them all.  They helped him a
+little--prescribed by the greatest of all doctors, our natural
+taste.
+
+It was nearly seven when he heard her come in.
+
+The incident of the night before had long lost its importance
+under stress of anxiety at her strange sortie into the fog.  But
+now that Irene was home, the memory of her broken-hearted sobbing
+came back to him, and he felt nervous at the thought of facing
+her.
+
+She was already on the stairs; her grey fur coat hung to her
+knees, its high collar almost hid her face, she wore a thick
+veil.
+
+She neither turned to look at him nor spoke.  No ghost or
+stranger could have passed more silently.
+
+Bilson came to lay dinner, and told him that Mrs. Forsyte was not
+coming down; she was having the soup in her room.
+
+For once Soames did not 'change'; it was, perhaps, the first time
+in his life that he had sat down to dinner with soiled cuffs,
+and, not even noticing them, he brooded long over his wine.  He
+sent Bilson to light a fire in his picture-room, and presently
+went up there himself.
+
+Turning on the gas, he heaved a deep sigh, as though amongst
+these treasures, the backs of which confronted him in stacks,
+around the little room, he had found at length his peace of mind.
+He went straight up to the greatest treasure of them all, an
+undoubted Turner, and, carrying it to the easel, turned its face
+to the light.  There had been a movement in Turners, but he had
+not been able to make up his mind to part with it.  He stood for
+a long time, his pale, clean-shaven face poked forward above his
+stand-up collar, looking at the picture as though he were adding
+it up; a wistful expression came into his eyes; he found,
+perhaps, that it came to too little.  He took it down from the
+easel to put it back against the wall; but, in crossing the room,
+stopped, for he seemed to hear sobbing.
+
+It was nothing--only the sort of thing that had been bothering
+him in the morning.  And soon after, putting the high guard
+before the blazing fire, he stole downstairs.
+
+Fresh for the morrow!  was his thought.  It was long before he
+went to sleep....
+
+It is now to George Forsyte that the mind must turn for light on
+the events of that fog-engulfed afternoon.
+
+The wittiest and most sportsmanlike of the Forsytes had passed
+the day reading a novel in the paternal mansion at Princes'
+Gardens.  Since a recent crisis in his financial affairs he had
+been kept on parole by Roger, and compelled to reside 'at home.'
+
+Towards five o'clock he went out, and took train at South
+Kensington Station (for everyone to-day went Underground).  His
+intention was to dine, and pass the evening playing billiards at
+the Red Pottle--that unique hostel, neither club, hotel, nor good
+gilt restaurant.
+
+He got out at Charing Cross, choosing it in preference to his
+more usual St.  James's Park, that he might reach Jermyn Street
+by better lighted ways.
+
+On the platform his eyes--for in combination with a composed and
+fashionable appearance, George had sharp eyes, and was always on
+the look-out for fillips to his sardonic humour--his eyes were
+attracted by a man, who, leaping from a first-class compartment,
+staggered rather than walked towards the exit.
+
+'So ho, my bird!' said George to himself; 'why, it's "the
+Buccaneer!"' and he put his big figure on the trail.  Nothing
+afforded him greater amusement than a drunken man.
+
+Bosinney, who wore a slouch hat, stopped in front of him, spun
+around, and rushed back towards the carriage he had just left.
+He was too late.  A porter caught him by the coat; the train was
+already moving on.
+
+George's practised glance caught sight of the face of a lady clad
+in a grey fur coat at the carriage window.  It was Mrs. Soames--
+and George felt that this was interesting!
+
+And now he followed Bosinney more closely than ever--up the
+stairs, past the ticket collector into the street.  In that
+progress, however, his feelings underwent a change; no longer
+merely curious and amused, he felt sorry for the poor fellow he
+was shadowing.  'The Buccaneer' was not drunk, but seemed to be
+acting under the stress of violent emotion; he was talking to
+himself, and all that George could catch were the words "Oh,
+God!"  Nor did he appear to know what he was doing, or where
+going; but stared, hesitated, moved like a man out of his mind;
+and from being merely a joker in search of amusement, George felt
+that he must see the poor chap through.
+
+He had 'taken the knock'--'taken the knock!'  And he wondered what
+on earth Mrs. Soames had been saying, what on earth she had been
+telling him in the railway carriage.  She had looked bad enough
+herself!  It made George sorry to think of her travelling on with
+her trouble all alone.
+
+He followed close behind Bosinney's elbow--tall, burly figure,
+saying nothing, dodging warily--and shadowed him out into the
+fog.
+
+There was something here beyond a jest!  He kept his head
+admirably, in spite of some excitement, for in addition to
+compassion, the instincts of the chase were roused within him.
+
+Bosinney walked right out into the thoroughfare--a vast muffled
+blackness, where a man could not see six paces before him; where,
+all around, voices or whistles mocked the sense of direction; and
+sudden shapes came rolling slow upon them; and now and then a
+light showed like a dim island in an infinite dark sea.
+
+And fast into this perilous gulf of night walked Bosinney, and
+fast after him walked George.  If the fellow meant to put his
+'twopenny' under a 'bus, he would stop it if he could!  Across
+the street and back the hunted creature strode, not groping as
+other men were groping in that gloom, but driven forward as
+though the faithful George behind wielded a knout; and this chase
+after a haunted man began to have for George the strangest
+fascination.
+
+But it was now that the affair developed in a way which ever
+afterwards caused it to remain green in his mind.  Brought to a
+stand-still in the fog, he heard words which threw a sudden light
+on these proceedings.  What Mrs. Soames had said to Bosinney in
+the train was now no longer dark.  George understood from those
+mutterings that Soames had exercised his rights over an estranged
+and unwilling wife in the greatest--the supreme act of property.
+
+His fancy wandered in the fields of this situation; it impressed
+him; he guessed something of the anguish, the sexual confusion
+and horror in Bosinney's heart.  And he thought: 'Yes, it's a bit
+thick!  I don't wonder the poor fellow is halfcracked!'
+
+He had run his quarry to earth on a bench under one of the lions
+in Trafalgar Square, a monster sphynx astray like themselves in
+that gulf of darkness.  Here, rigid and silent, sat Bosinney, and
+George, in whose patience was a touch of strange brotherliness,
+took his stand behind.  He was not lacking in a certain delicacy-
+-a sense of form--that did not permit him to intrude upon this
+tragedy, and he waited, quiet as the lion above, his fur collar
+hitched above his ears concealing the fleshy redness of his
+cheeks, concealing all but his eyes with their sardonic,
+compassionate stare.  And men kept passing back from business on
+the way to their clubs--men whose figures shrouded in cocoons of
+fog came into view like spectres, and like spectres vanished.
+Then even in his compassion George's Quilpish humour broke forth
+in a sudden longing to pluck these spectres by the sleeve, and
+say:
+
+"Hi, you Johnnies!  You don't often see a show like this!  Here's
+a poor devil whose mistress has just been telling him a pretty
+little story of her husband; walk up, walk up!  He's taken the
+knock, you see."
+
+In fancy he saw them gaping round the tortured lover; and grinned
+as he thought of some respectable, newly-married spectre enabled
+by the state of his own affections to catch an inkling of what
+was going on within Bosinney; he fancied he could see his mouth
+getting wider and wider, and the fog going down and down.  For in
+George was all that contempt of the of the married middle-class--
+peculiar to the wild and sportsmanlike spirits in its ranks.
+
+But he began to be bored.  Waiting was not what he had bargained
+for.
+
+'After all,' he thought, 'the poor chap will get over it; not the
+first time such a thing has happened in this little city!' But
+now his quarry again began muttering words of violent hate and
+anger.  And following a sudden impulse George touched him on the
+shoulder.
+
+Bosinney spun round.
+
+"Who are you?  What do you want?"
+
+George could have stood it well enough in the light of the gas
+lamps, in the light of that everyday world of which he was so
+hardy a connoisseur; but in this fog, where all was gloomy and
+unreal, where nothing had that matter-of-fact value associated by
+Forsytes with earth, he was a victim to strange qualms, and as he
+tried to stare back into the eyes of this maniac, he thought:
+
+'If I see a bobby, I'll hand him over; he's not fit to be at
+large.'
+
+But waiting for no answer, Bosinney strode off into the fog, and
+George followed, keeping perhaps a little further off, yet more
+than ever set on tracking him down.
+
+'He can't go on long like this,' he thought.  'It's God's own
+miracle he's not been run over already.' He brooded no more on
+policemen, a sportsman's sacred fire alive again within him.
+
+Into a denser gloom than ever Bosinney held on at a furious pace;
+but his pursuer perceived more method in his madness--he was
+clearly making his way westwards.
+
+'He's really going for Soames!' thought George.  The idea was
+attractive.  It would be a sporting end to such a chase.  He had
+always disliked his cousin.
+
+The shaft of a passing cab brushed against his shoulder and made
+him leap aside.  He did not intend to be killed for the Buccaneer,
+or anyone.  Yet, with hereditary tenacity, he stuck to the trail
+through vapour that blotted out everything but the shadow of the
+hunted man and the dim moon of the nearest lamp.
+
+Then suddenly, with the instinct of a town-stroller, George knew
+himself to be in Piccadilly.  Here he could find his way blindfold;
+and freed from the strain of geographical uncertainty, his mind
+returned to Bosinney's trouble.
+
+Down the long avenue of his man-about-town experience, bursting,
+as it were, through a smirch of doubtful amours, there stalked to
+him a memory of his youth.  A memory, poignant still, that brought
+the scent of hay, the gleam of moonlight, a summer magic, into
+the reek and blackness of this London fog--the memory of a night
+when in the darkest shadow of a lawn he had overheard from a
+woman's lips that he was not her sole possessor.  And for a moment
+George walked no longer in black Piccadilly, but lay again, with
+hell in his heart, and his face to the sweet-smelling, dewy grass,
+in the long shadow of poplars that hid the moon.
+
+A longing seized him to throw his arm round the Buccaneer, and
+say, "Come, old boy.  Time cures all.  Let's go and drink it off!"
+
+But a voice yelled at him, and he started back.  A cab rolled out
+of blackness, and into blackness disappeared.  And suddenly
+George perceived that he had lost Bosinney.  He ran forward and
+back, felt his heart clutched by a sickening fear, the dark fear
+which lives in the wings of the fog.  Perspiration started out on
+his brow.  He stood quite still, listening with all his might.
+
+"And then," as he confided to Dartie the same evening in the
+course of a game of billiards at the Red Pottle, "I lost him."
+
+Dartie twirled complacently at his dark moustache.  He had just
+put together a neat break of twenty-three,--failing at a 'Jenny.'
+"And who was she?" he asked.
+
+George looked slowly at the 'man of the world's' fattish, sallow
+face, and a little grim smile lurked about the curves of his
+cheeks and his heavy-lidded eyes.
+
+'No, no, my fine fellow,' he thought, 'I'm not going to tell
+you.' For though he mixed with Dartie a good deal, he thought him
+a bit of a cad.
+
+"Oh, some little love-lady or other," he said, and chalked his
+cue.
+
+"A love-lady!" exclaimed Dartie--he used a more figurative
+expression.  "I made sure it was our friend Soa...."
+
+"Did you?" said George curtly.  "Then damme you've made an
+error."
+
+He missed his shot.  He was careful not to allude to the subject
+again till, towards eleven o'clock, having, in his poetic
+phraseology, 'looked upon the drink when it was yellow,' he drew
+aside the blind, and gazed out into the street.  The murky
+blackness of the fog was but faintly broken by the lamps of the
+'Red Pottle,' and no shape of mortal man or thing was in sight.
+
+"I can't help thinking of that poor Buccaneer," he said.  "He may
+be wandering out there now in that fog.  If he's not a corpse,"
+he added with strange dejection.
+
+"Corpse!" said Dartie, in whom the recollection of his defeat at
+Richmond flared up.  "He's all right.  Ten to one if he wasn't
+tight!"
+
+George turned on him, looking really formidable, with a sort of
+savage gloom on his big face.
+
+"Dry up!" he said.  "Don't I tell you he's 'taken the knock!"'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE TRIAL
+
+
+In the morning of his case, which was second in the list, Soames
+was again obliged to start without seeing Irene, and it was just
+as well, for he had not as yet made up his mind what attitude to
+adopt towards her.
+
+He had been requested to be in court by half-past ten, to provide
+against the event of the first action (a breach of promise)
+collapsing, which however it did not, both sides showing a
+courage that afforded Waterbuck, Q.C., an opportunity for
+improving his already great reputation in this class of case.  He
+was opposed by Ram, the other celebrated breach of promise man.
+It was a battle of giants.
+
+The court delivered judgment just before the luncheon interval.
+The jury left the box for good, and Soames went out to get
+something to eat.  He met James standing at the little luncheon-
+bar, like a pelican in the wilderness of the galleries, bent over
+a sandwich with a glass of sherry before him.  The spacious
+emptiness of the great central hall, over which father and son
+brooded as they stood together, was marred now and then for a
+fleeting moment by barristers in wig and gown hurriedly bolting
+across, by an occasional old lady or rusty-coated man, looking up
+in a frightened way, and by two persons, bolder than their
+generation, seated in an embrasure arguing.  The sound of their
+voices arose, together with a scent as of neglected wells, which,
+mingling with the odour of the galleries, combined to form the
+savour, like nothing but the emanation of a refined cheese, so
+indissolubly connected with the administration of British
+Justice.
+
+It was not long before James addressed his son.
+
+"When's your case coming on?  I suppose it'll be on directly.  I
+shouldn't wonder if this Bosinney'd say anything; I should think
+he'd have to.  He'll go bankrupt if it goes against him." He took
+a large bite at his sandwich and a mouthful of sherry.  "Your
+mother," he said, "wants you and Irene to come and dine
+to-night."
+
+A chill smile played round Soames' lips; he looked back at his
+father.  Anyone who had seen the look, cold and furtive, thus
+interchanged, might have been pardoned for not appreciating the
+real understanding between them.  James finished his sherry at a
+draught.
+
+"How much?" he asked.
+
+On returning to the court Soames took at once his rightful seat
+on the front bench beside his solicitor.  He ascertained where
+his father was seated with a glance so sidelong as to commit
+nobody.
+
+James, sitting back with his hands clasped over the handle of his
+umbrella, was brooding on the end of the bench immediately behind
+counsel, whence he could get away at once when the case was over.
+He considered Bosinney's conduct in every way outrageous, but he
+did not wish to run up against him, feeling that the meeting
+would be awkward.
+
+Next to the Divorce Court, this court was, perhaps, the favourite
+emporium of justice, libel, breach of promise, and other
+commercial actions being frequently decided there.  Quite a
+sprinkling of persons unconnected with the law occupied the back
+benches, and the hat of a woman or two could be seen in the
+gallery.
+
+The two rows of seats immediately in front of James were
+gradually filled by barristers in wigs, who sat down to make
+pencil notes, chat, and attend to their teeth; but his interest
+was soon diverted from these lesser lights of justice by the
+entrance of Waterbuck, Q.C., with the wings of his silk gown
+rustling, and his red, capable face supported by two short, brown
+whiskers.  The famous Q.C. looked, as James freely admitted, the
+very picture of a man who could heckle a witness.
+
+For all his experience, it so happened that he had never seen
+Waterbuck, Q.C., before, and, like many Forsytes in the lower
+branch of the profession, he had an extreme admiration for a good
+cross-examiner.  The long, lugubrious folds in his cheeks relaxed
+somewhat after seeing him, especially as he now perceived that
+Soames alone was represented by silk.
+
+Waterbuck, Q.C., had barely screwed round on his elbow to chat
+with his Junior before Mr. Justice Bentham himself appeared--a
+thin, rather hen-like man, with a little stoop, clean-shaven
+under his snowy wig.  Like all the rest of the court, Waterbuck
+rose, and remained on his feet until the judge was seated.  James
+rose but slightly; he was already comfortable, and had no opinion
+of Bentham, having sat next but one to him at dinner twice at the
+Bumley Tomms'.  Bumley Tomm was rather a poor thing, though he
+had been so successful.  James himself had given him his first
+brief.  He was excited, too, for he had just found out that
+Bosinney was not in court.
+
+'Now, what's he mean by that?' he kept on thinking.
+
+The case having been called on, Waterbuck, Q.C., pushing back his
+papers, hitched his gown on his shoulder, and, with a
+semi-circular look around him, like a man who is going to bat,
+arose and addressed the Court.
+
+The facts, he said, were not in dispute, and all that his
+Lordship would be asked was to interpret the correspondence which
+had taken place between his client and the defendant, an
+architect, with reference to the decoration of a house.  He
+would, however, submit that this correspondence could only mean
+one very plain thing.  After briefly reciting the history of the
+house at Robin Hill, which he described as a mansion, and the
+actual facts of expenditure, he went on as follows:
+
+"My client, Mr. Soames Forsyte, is a gentleman, a man of
+property, who would be the last to dispute any legitimate claim
+that might be made against him, but he has met with such
+treatment from his architect in the matter of this house, over
+which he has, as your lordship has heard, already spent some
+twelve--some twelve thousand pounds, a sum considerably in
+advance of the amount he had originally contemplated, that as a
+matter of principle--and this I cannot too strongly emphasize--as
+a matter of principle, and in the interests of others, he has
+felt himself compelled to bring this action.  The point put
+forward in defence by the architect I will suggest to your
+lordship is not worthy of a moment's serious consideration."  He
+then read the correspondence.
+
+His client, "a man of recognised position," was prepared to go
+into the box, and to swear that he never did authorize, that it
+was never in his mind to authorize, the expenditure of any money
+beyond the extreme limit of twelve thousand and fifty pounds,
+which he had clearly fixed; and not further to waste the time of
+the court, he would at once call Mr. Forsyte.
+
+Soames then went into the box.  His whole appearance was striking
+in its composure.  His face, just supercilious enough, pale and
+clean-shaven, with a little line between the eyes, and compressed
+lips; his dress in unostentatious order, one hand neatly gloved,
+the other bare.  He answered the questions put to him in a
+somewhat low, but distinct voice.  His evidence under cross-
+examination savoured of taciturnity.
+
+Had he not used the expression, "a free hand"?  No.
+
+"Come, come!"
+
+The expression he had used was 'a free hand in the terms of this
+correspondence.'
+
+"Would you tell the Court that that was English?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"What do you say it means?"
+
+"What it says!"
+
+"Are you prepared to deny that it is a contradiction in terms?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You are not an Irishman?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Are you a well-educated man?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And yet you persist in that statement?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Throughout this and much more cross-examination, which turned
+again and again around the 'nice point,' James sat with his hand
+behind his ear, his eyes fixed upon his son.
+
+He was proud of him!  He could not but feel that in similar
+circumstances he himself would have been tempted to enlarge his
+replies, but his instinct told him that this taciturnity was the
+very thing.  He sighed with relief, however, when Soames, slowly
+turning, and without any change of expression, descended from the
+box.
+
+When it came to the turn of Bosinney's Counsel to address the
+Judge, James redoubled his attention, and he searched the Court
+again and again to see if Bosinney were not somewhere concealed.
+
+Young Chankery began nervously; he was placed by Bosinney's
+absence in an awkward position.  He therefore did his best to
+turn that absence to account.
+
+He could not but fear--he said--that his client had met with an
+accident.  He had fully expected him there to give evidence; they
+had sent round that morning both to Mr. Bosinney's office and to
+his rooms (though he knew they were one and the same, he thought
+it was as well not to say so), but it was not known where he was,
+and this he considered to be ominous, knowing how anxious Mr.
+Bosinney had been to give his evidence.  He had not, however,
+been instructed to apply for an adjournment, and in default of
+such instruction he conceived it his duty to go on.  The plea on
+which he somewhat confidently relied, and which his client, had
+he not unfortunately been prevented in some way from attending,
+would have supported by his evidence, was that such an expression
+as a 'free hand' could not be limited, fettered, and rendered
+unmeaning, by any verbiage which might follow it.  He would go
+further and say that the correspondence showed that whatever he
+might have said in his evidence, Mr. Forsyte had in fact never
+contemplated repudiating liability on any of the work ordered or
+executed by his architect.  The defendant had certainly never
+contemplated such a contingency, or, as was demonstrated by his
+letters, he would never have proceeded with the work--a work of
+extreme delicacy, carried out with great care and efficiency, to
+meet and satisfy the fastidious taste of a connoisseur, a rich
+man, a man of property.  He felt strongly on this point, and
+feeling strongly he used, perhaps, rather strong words when he
+said that this action was of a most unjustifiable, unexpected,
+indeed--unprecedented character.  If his Lordship had had the
+opportunity that he himself had made it his duty to take, to go
+over this very fine house and see the great delicacy and beauty
+of the decorations executed by his client--an artist in his most
+honourable profession--he felt convinced that not for one moment
+would his Lordship tolerate this, he would use no stronger word
+than, daring attempt to evade legitimate responsibility.
+
+Taking the text of Soames' letters, he lightly touched on
+'Boileau v. The Blasted Cement Company, Limited.'  "It is
+doubtful," he said, "what that authority has decided; in any case
+I would submit that it is just as much in my favour as in my
+friend's."  He then argued the 'nice point' closely.  With all
+due deference he submitted that Mr. Forsyte's expression
+nullified itself.  His client not being a rich man, the matter
+was a serious one for him; he was a very talented architect,
+whose professional reputation was undoubtedly somewhat at stake.
+He concluded with a perhaps too personal appeal to the Judge, as
+a lover of the arts, to show himself the protector of artists,
+from what was occasionally--he said occasionally--the too iron
+hand of capital.  "What," he said, "will be the position of the
+artistic professions, if men of property like this Mr. Forsyte
+refuse, and are allowed to refuse, to carry out the obligations
+of the commissions which they have given."  He would now call
+his client, in case he should at the last moment have found
+himself able to be present.
+
+The name Philip Baynes Bosinney was called three times by the
+Ushers, and the sound of the calling echoed with strange
+melancholy throughout the Court and Galleries.
+
+The crying of this name, to which no answer was returned, had
+upon James a curious effect: it was like calling for your lost
+dog about the streets.  And the creepy feeling that it gave him,
+of a man missing, grated on his sense of comfort and security-on
+his cosiness.  Though he could not have said why, it made him
+feel uneasy.
+
+He looked now at the clock--a quarter to three!  It would be all
+over in a quarter of an hour.  Where could the young fellow be?
+
+It was only when Mr. Justice Bentham delivered judgment that he
+got over the turn he had received.
+
+Behind the wooden erection, by which he was fenced from more
+ordinary mortals, the learned Judge leaned forward.  The electric
+light, just turned on above his head, fell on his face, and
+mellowed it to an orange hue beneath the snowy crown of his wig;
+the amplitude of his robes grew before the eye; his whole figure,
+facing the comparative dusk of the Court, radiated like some
+majestic and sacred body.  He cleared his throat, took a sip of
+water, broke the nib of a quill against the desk, and, folding
+his bony hands before him, began.
+
+To James he suddenly loomed much larger than he had ever thought
+Bentham would loom.  It was the majesty of the law; and a person
+endowed with a nature far less matter-of-fact than that of James
+might have been excused for failing to pierce this halo, and
+disinter therefrom the somewhat ordinary Forsyte, who walked and
+talked in every-day life under the name of Sir Walter Bentham.
+
+He delivered judgment in the following words:
+
+"The facts in this case are not in dispute.  On May 15 last the
+defendant wrote to the plaintiff, requesting to be allowed to
+withdraw from his professional position in regard to the
+decoration of the plaintiff's house, unless he were given 'a free
+hand.'  The plaintiff, on May 17, wrote back as follows: 'In
+giving you, in accordance with your request, this free hand, I
+wish you to clearly understand that the total cost of the house
+as handed over to me completely decorated, inclusive of your fee
+(as arranged between us) must not exceed twelve thousand pounds.'
+To this letter the defendant replied on May 18: 'If you think
+that in such a delicate matter as decoration I can bind myself to
+the exact pound, I am afraid you are mistaken.'  On May 19 the
+plaintiff wrote as follows: 'I did not mean to say that if you
+should exceed the sum named in my letter to you by ten or twenty
+or even fifty pounds there would be any difficulty between us.
+You have a free hand in the terms of this correspondence, and I
+hope you will see your way to completing the decorations.'  On
+May 20 the defendant replied thus shortly: 'Very well.'
+
+"In completing these decorations, the defendant incurred
+liabilities and expenses which brought the total cost of this
+house up to the sum of twelve thousand four hundred pounds, all
+of which expenditure has been defrayed by the plaintiff.  This
+action has been brought by the plaintiff to recover from the
+defendant the sum of three hundred and fifty pounds expended by
+him in excess of a sum of twelve thousand and fifty pounds,
+alleged by the plaintiff to have been fixed by this
+correspondence as the maximum sum that the defendant had
+authority to expend.
+
+"The question for me to decide is whether or no the defendant is
+liable to refund to the plaintiff this sum.  In my judgment he is
+so liable.
+
+"What in effect the plaintiff has said is this 'I give you a free
+hand to complete these decorations, provided that you keep within
+a total cost to me of twelve thousand pounds.  If you exceed that
+sum by as much as fifty pounds, I will not hold you responsible;
+beyond that point you are no agent of mine, and I shall repudiate
+liability.' It is not quite clear to me whether, had the
+plaintiff in fact repudiated liability under his agent's
+contracts, he would, under all the circumstances, have been
+successful in so doing; but he has not adopted this course.  He
+has accepted liability, and fallen back upon his rights against
+the defendant under the terms of the latter's engagement.
+
+"In my judgment the plaintiff is entitled to recover this sum
+from the defendant.
+
+"It has been sought, on behalf of the defendant, to show that no
+limit of expenditure was fixed or intended to be fixed by this
+correspondence.  If this were so, I can find no reason for the
+plaintiff's importation into the correspondence of the figures of
+twelve thousand pounds and subsequently of fifty pounds.  The
+defendant's contention would render these figures meaningless.
+It is manifest to me that by his letter of May 20 he assented to
+a very clear proposition, by the terms of which he must be held
+to be bound.
+
+"For these reasons there will be judgment for the plaintiff for
+the amount claimed with costs."
+
+James sighed, and stooping, picked up his umbrella which had
+fallen with a rattle at the words 'importation into this
+correspondence.'
+
+Untangling his legs, he rapidly left the Court; without waiting
+for his son, he snapped up a hansom cab (it was a clear, grey
+afternoon) and drove straight to Timothy's where he found
+Swithin; and to him, Mrs. Septimus Small, and Aunt Hester, he
+recounted the whole proceedings, eating two muffins not
+altogether in the intervals of speech.
+
+"Soames did very well," he ended; "he's got his head screwed on
+the right way.  This won't please Jolyon.  It's a bad business
+for that young Bosinney; he'll go bankrupt, I shouldn't wonder,"
+and then after a long pause, during which he had stared
+disquietly into the fire, he added
+
+"He wasn't there--now why?"
+
+There was a sound of footsteps.  The figure of a thick-set man,
+with the ruddy brown face of robust health, was seen in the back
+drawing-room.  The forefinger of his upraised hand was outlined
+against the black of his frock coat.  He spoke in a grudging
+voice.
+
+"Well, James," he said, "I can't--I can't stop," and turning
+round, he walked out.
+
+It was Timothy.
+
+James rose from his chair.  "There!" he said, "there!  I knew
+there was something wro...."  He checked himself, and was silent,
+staring before him, as though he had seen a portent.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+SOAMES BREAKS THE NEWS
+
+
+In leaving the Court Soames did not go straight home.  He felt
+disinclined for the City, and drawn by need for sympathy in his
+triumph, he, too, made his way, but slowly and on foot, to
+Timothy's in the Bayswater Road.
+
+His father had just left; Mrs. Small and Aunt Hester, in
+possession of the whole story, greeted him warmly.  They were
+sure he was hungry after all that evidence.  Smither should toast
+him some more muffins, his dear father had eaten them all.  He
+must put his legs up on the sofa; and he must have a glass of
+prune brandy too.  It was so strengthening.
+
+Swithin was still present, having lingered later than his wont,
+for he felt in want of exercise.  On hearing this suggestion, he
+'pished.' A pretty pass young men were coming to!  His own liver
+was out of order, and he could not bear the thought of anyone
+else drinking prune brandy.
+
+He went away almost immediately, saying to Soames: "And how's
+your wife?  You tell her from me that if she's dull, and likes to
+come and dine with me quietly, I'll give her such a bottle of
+champagne as she doesn't get every day."  Staring down from his
+height on Soames he contracted his thick, puffy, yellow hand as
+though squeezing within it all this small fry, and throwing out
+his chest he waddled slowly away.
+
+Mrs. Small and Aunt Hester were left horrified.  Swithin was so
+droll!
+
+They themselves were longing to ask Soames how Irene would take
+the result, yet knew that they must not; he would perhaps say
+something of his own accord, to throw some light on this, the
+present burning question in their lives, the question that from
+necessity of silence tortured them almost beyond bearing; for
+even Timothy had now been told, and the effect on his health was
+little short of alarming.  And what, too, would June do?  This,
+also, was a most exciting, if dangerous speculation!
+
+They had never forgotten old Jolyon's visit, since when he had
+not once been to see them; they had never forgotten the feeling
+it gave all who were present, that the family was no longer what
+it had been--that the family was breaking up.
+
+But Soames gave them no help, sitting with his knees crossed,
+talking of the Barbizon school of painters, whom he had just
+discovered.  These were the coming men, he said; he should not
+wonder if a lot of money were made over them; he had his eye on
+two pictures by a man called Corot, charming things; if he could
+get them at a reasonable price he was going to buy them--they
+would, he thought, fetch a big price some day.
+
+Interested as they could not but be, neither Mrs. Septimus Small
+nor Aunt Hester could entirely acquiesce in being thus put off.
+
+It was interesting--most interesting--and then Soames was so
+clever that they were sure he would do something with those
+pictures if anybody could; but what was his plan now that he had
+won his case; was he going to leave London at once, and live in
+the country, or what was he going to do?
+
+Soames answered that he did not know, he thought they should be
+moving soon.  He rose and kissed his aunts.
+
+No sooner had Aunt Juley received this emblem of departure than a
+change came over her, as though she were being visited by
+dreadful courage; every little roll of flesh on her face seemed
+trying to escape from an invisible, confining mask.
+
+She rose to the full extent of her more than medium height, and
+said: "It has been on my mind a long time, dear, and if nobody
+else will tell you, I have made up my mind that...."
+
+Aunt Hester interrupted her: "Mind, Julia, you do it...." she
+gasped--"on your own responsibility!"
+
+Mrs. Small went on as though she had not heard: "I think you
+ought to know, dear, that Mrs. MacAnder saw Irene walking in
+Richmond Park with Mr. Bosinney."
+
+Aunt Hester, who had also risen, sank back in her chair, and
+turned her face away.  Really Juley was too--she should not do
+such things when she--Aunt Hester, was in the room; and,
+breathless with anticipation, she waited for what Soames would
+answer.
+
+He had flushed the peculiar flush which always centred between
+his eyes; lifting his hand, and, as it were, selecting a finger,
+he bit a nail delicately; then, drawling it out between set lips,
+he said: "Mrs. MacAnder is a cat!"
+
+Without waiting for any reply, he left the room.
+
+When he went into Timothy's he had made up his mind what course
+to pursue on getting home.  He would go up to Irene and say:
+
+"Well, I've won my case, and there's an end of it!  I don't want
+to be hard on Bosinney; I'll see if we can't come to some
+arrangement; he shan't be pressed.  And now let's turn over a
+new leaf!  We'll let the house, and get out of these fogs.  We'll
+go down to Robin Hill at once.  I--I never meant to be rough with
+you!  Let's shake hands--and--"  Perhaps she would let him kiss
+her, and forget!
+
+When he came out of Timothy's his intentions were no longer so
+simple.  The smouldering jealousy and suspicion of months blazed
+up within him.  He would put an end to that sort of thing once
+and for all; he would not have her drag his name in the dirt!  If
+she could not or would not love him, as was her duty and his
+right--she should not play him tricks with anyone else!  He would
+tax her with it; threaten to divorce her!  That would make her
+behave; she would never face that.  But--but--what if she did?
+He was staggered; this had not occurred to him.
+
+What if she did?  What if she made him a confession?  How would
+he stand then?  He would have to bring a divorce!
+
+A divorce!  Thus close, the word was paralyzing, so utterly at
+variance with all the principles that had hitherto guided his
+life.  Its lack of compromise appalled him; he felt--like the
+captain of a ship, going to the side of his vessel, and, with his
+own hands throwing over the most precious of his bales.  This
+jettisoning of his property with his own hand seemed uncanny to
+Soames.  It would injure him in his profession: He would have to
+get rid of the house at Robin Hill, on which he had spent so much
+money, so much anticipation--and at a sacrifice.  And she!  She
+would no longer belong to him, not even in name!  She would pass
+out of his life, and he--he should never see her again!
+
+He traversed in the cab the length of a street without getting
+beyond the thought that he should never see her again!
+
+But perhaps there was nothing to confess, even now very likely
+there was nothing to confess.  Was it wise to push things so far?
+Was it wise to put himself into a position where he might have to
+eat his words?  The result of this case would ruin Bosinney; a
+ruined man was desperate, but--what could he do?  He might go
+abroad, ruined men always went abroad.  What could they do--if
+indeed it was 'they'--without money?  It would be better to wait
+and see how things turned out.  If necessary, he could have her
+watched.  The agony of his jealousy (for all the world like the
+crisis of an aching tooth) came on again; and he almost cried
+out.  But he must decide, fix on some course of action before he
+got home.  When the cab drew up at the door, he had decided
+nothing.
+
+He entered, pale, his hands moist with perspiration, dreading to
+meet her, burning to meet her, ignorant of what he was to say or
+do.
+
+The maid Bilson was in the hall, and in answer to his question:
+"Where is your mistress?" told him that Mrs. Forsyte had left the
+house about noon, taking with her a trunk and bag.
+
+Snatching the sleeve of his fur coat away from her grasp, he
+confronted her:
+
+"What?" he exclaimed; "what's that you said?" Suddenly
+recollecting that he must not betray emotion, he added: "What
+message did she leave?" and noticed with secret terror the
+startled look of the maid's eyes.
+
+"Mrs. Forsyte left no message, sir."
+
+"No message; very well, thank you, that will do.  I shall be
+dining out."
+
+The maid went downstairs, leaving him still in his fur coat, idly
+turning over the visiting cards in the porcelain bowl that stood
+on the carved oak rug chest in the hall.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Bareham Culcher.
+Mrs. Septimus Small.
+Mrs. Baynes.
+Mr. Solomon Thornworthy.
+Lady Bellis.
+Miss Hermione Bellis.
+Miss Winifred Bellis.
+Miss Ella Bellis.
+
+Who the devil were all these people?  He seemed to have forgotten
+all familiar things.  The words 'no message--a trunk, and a bag,'
+played a hide-and-seek in his brain.  It was incredible that she
+had left no message, and, still in his fur coat, he ran upstairs
+two steps at a time, as a young married man when he comes home
+will run up to his wife's room.
+
+Everything was dainty, fresh, sweet-smelling; everything in
+perfect order.  On the great bed with its lilac silk quilt, was
+the bag she had made and embroidered with her own hands to hold
+her sleeping things; her slippers ready at the foot; the sheets
+even turned over at the head as though expecting her.
+
+On the table stood the silver-mounted brushes and bottles from
+her dressing bag, his own present.  There must, then, be some
+mistake.  What bag had she taken?  He went to the bell to summon
+Bilson, but remembered in time that he must assume knowledge of
+where Irene had gone, take it all as a matter of course, and
+grope out the meaning for himself.
+
+He locked the doors, and tried to think, but felt his brain going
+round; and suddenly tears forced themselves into his eyes.
+
+Hurriedly pulling off his coat, he looked at himself in the
+mirror.
+
+He was too pale, a greyish tinge all over his face; he poured out
+water, and began feverishly washing.
+
+Her silver-mounted brushes smelt faintly of the perfumed lotion
+she used for her hair; and at this scent the burning sickness of
+his jealousy seized him again.
+
+Struggling into his fur, he ran downstairs and out into the
+street.
+
+He had not lost all command of himself, however, and as he went
+down Sloane Street he framed a story for use, in case he should
+not find her at Bosinney's.  But if he should?  His power of
+decision again failed; he reached the house without knowing what
+he should do if he did find her there.
+
+It was after office hours, and the street door was closed; the
+woman who opened it could not say whether Mr. Bosinney were in or
+no; she had not seen him that day, not for two or three days; she
+did not attend to him now, nobody attended to him, he....
+
+Soames interrupted her, he would go up and see for himself.  He
+went up with a dogged, white face.
+
+The top floor was unlighted, the door closed, no one answered his
+ringing, he could hear no sound.  He was obliged to descend,
+shivering under his fur, a chill at his heart.  Hailing a cab, he
+told the man to drive to Park Lane.
+
+On the way he tried to recollect when he had last given her a
+cheque; she could not have more than three or four pounds, but
+there were her jewels; and with exquisite torture he remembered
+how much money she could raise on these; enough to take them
+abroad; enough for them to live on for months!  He tried to
+calculate; the cab stopped, and he got out with the calculation
+unmade.
+
+The butler asked whether Mrs. Soames was in the cab, the master
+had told him they were both expected to dinner.
+
+Soames answered: "No.  Mrs. Forsyte has a cold."
+
+The butler was sorry.
+
+Soames thought he was looking at him inquisitively, and
+remembering that he was not in dress clothes, asked: "Anybody
+here to dinner, Warmson?"
+
+"Nobody but Mr. and Mrs. Dartie, sir."
+
+Again it seemed to Soames that the butler was looking curiously
+at him.  His composure gave way.
+
+"What are you looking at?" he said.  "What's the matter with me,
+eh?"
+
+The butler blushed, hung up the fur coat, murmured something that
+sounded like: "Nothing, sir, I'm sure, sir," and stealthily
+withdrew.
+
+Soames walked upstairs.  Passing the drawing-room without a look,
+he went straight up to his mother's and father's bedroom.
+
+James, standing sideways, the concave lines of his tall, lean
+figure displayed to advantage in shirt-sleeves and evening
+waistcoat, his head bent, the end of his white tie peeping askew
+from underneath one white Dundreary whisker, his eyes peering
+with intense concentration, his lips pouting, was hooking the top
+hooks of his wife's bodice.  Soames stopped; he felt half-choked,
+whether because he had come upstairs too fast, or for some other
+reason.  He--he himself had never--never been asked to....
+
+He heard his father's voice, as though there were a pin in his
+mouth, saying: "Who's that?  Who's there?  What d'you want?" His
+mother's: "Here, Felice, come and hook this; your master'll never
+get done."
+
+He put his hand up to his throat, and said hoarsely:
+
+"It's I--Soames!"
+
+He noticed gratefully the affectionate surprise in Emily's:
+"Well, my dear boy?" and James', as he dropped the hook: "What,
+Soames!  What's brought you up?  Aren't you well?"
+
+He answered mechanically: "I'm all right," and looked at them,
+and it seemed impossible to bring out his news.
+
+James, quick to take alarm, began: "You don't look well.  I
+expect you've taken a chill--it's liver, I shouldn't wonder.
+Your mother'll give you...."
+
+But Emily broke in quietly: "Have you brought Irene?"
+
+Soames shook his head.
+
+"No," he stammered, "she--she's left me!"
+
+Emily deserted the mirror before which she was standing.  Her
+tall, full figure lost its majesty and became very human as she
+came running over to Soames.
+
+"My dear boy!  My dear boy!"
+
+She put her lips to his forehead, and stroked his hand.
+
+James, too, had turned full towards his son; his face looked
+older.
+
+"Left you?" he said.  "What d'you mean--left you?  You never told
+me she was going to leave you."
+
+Soames answered surlily: "How could I tell?  What's to be done?"
+
+James began walking up and down; he looked strange and stork-like
+without a coat.  "What's to be done!" he muttered.  "How should I
+know what's to be done?  What's the good of asking me?  Nobody
+tells me anything, and then they come and ask me what's to be
+done; and I should like to know how I'm to tell them!  Here's
+your mother, there she stands; she doesn't say anything.  What I
+should say you've got to do is to follow her.."
+
+Soames smiled; his peculiar, supercilious smile had never before
+looked pitiable.
+
+"I don't know where she's gone," he said.
+
+"Don't know where she's gone!" said James.  "How d'you mean,
+don't know where she's gone?  Where d'you suppose she's gone?
+She's gone after that young Bosinney, that's where she's gone.  I
+knew how it would be."
+
+Soames, in the long silence that followed, felt his mother
+pressing his hand.  And all that passed seemed to pass as though
+his own power of thinking or doing had gone to sleep.
+
+His father's face, dusky red, twitching as if he were going to
+cry, and words breaking out that seemed rent from him by some
+spasm in his soul.
+
+"There'll be a scandal; I always said so."  Then, no one saying
+anything: "And there you stand, you and your mother!"
+
+And Emily's voice, calm, rather contemptuous: "Come, now, James!
+Soames will do all that he can."
+
+And James, staring at the floor, a little brokenly: "Well, I
+can't help you; I'm getting old.  Don't you be in too great a
+hurry, my boy."
+
+And his mother's voice again: "Soames will do all he can to get
+her back.  We won't talk of it.  It'll all come right, I dare
+say."
+
+And James: "Well, I can't see how it can come right.  And if she
+hasn't gone off with that young Bosinney, my advice to you is not
+to listen to her, but to follow her and get her back."
+
+Once more Soames felt his mother stroking his hand, in token of
+her approval, and as though repeating some form of sacred oath,
+he muttered between his teeth: "I will!"
+
+All three went down to the drawing-room together.  There, were
+gathered the three girls and Dartie; had Irene been present, the
+family circle would have been complete.
+
+James sank into his armchair, and except for a word of cold
+greeting to Dartie, whom he both despised and dreaded, as a man
+likely to be always in want of money, he said nothing till dinner
+was announced.  Soames, too, was silent; Emily alone, a woman of
+cool courage, maintained a conversation with Winifred on trivial
+subjects.  She was never more composed in her manner and
+conversation than that evening.
+
+A decision having been come to not to speak of Irene's flight, no
+view was expressed by any other member of the family as to the
+right course to be pursued; there can be little doubt, from the
+general tone adopted in relation to events as they afterwards
+turned out, that James's advice: "Don't you listen to her,
+follow-her and get her back!" would, with here and there an
+exception, have been regarded as sound, not only in Park Lane,
+but amongst the Nicholases, the Rogers, and at Timothy's.  Just
+as it would surely have been endorsed by that wider body of
+Forsytes all over London, who were merely excluded from judgment
+by ignorance of the story.
+
+In spite then of Emily's efforts, the dinner was served by
+Warmson and the footman almost in silence.  Dartie was sulky, and
+drank all he could get; the girls seldom talked to each other at
+any time.  James asked once where June was, and what she was
+doing with herself in these days.  No one could tell him.  He
+sank back into gloom.  Only when Winifred recounted how little
+Publius had given his bad penny to a beggar, did he brighten up.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "that's a clever little chap.  I don't know
+what'll become of him, if he goes on like this.  An intelligent
+little chap, I call him!" But it was only a flash.
+
+The courses succeeded one another solemnly, under the electric
+light, which glared down onto the table, but barely reached the
+principal ornament of the walls, a so-called 'Sea Piece by
+Turner,' almost entirely composed of cordage and drowning men.
+
+Champagne was handed, and then a bottle of James' prehistoric
+port, but as by the chill hand of some skeleton.
+
+At ten o'clock Soames left; twice in reply to questions, he had
+said that Irene was not well; he felt he could no longer trust
+himself.  His mother kissed him with her large soft kiss, and he
+pressed her hand, a flush of warmth in his cheeks.  He walked
+away in the cold wind, which whistled desolately round the
+corners of the streets, under a sky of clear steel-blue, alive
+with stars; he noticed neither their frosty greeting, nor the
+crackle of the curled-up plane-leaves, nor the night-women
+hurrying in their shabby furs, nor the pinched faces of vagabonds
+at street corners.  Winter was come!  But Soames hastened home,
+oblivious; his hands trembled as he took the late letters from
+the gilt wire cage into which they had been thrust through the
+slit in the door.'
+
+None from Irene!
+
+He went into the dining-room; the fire was bright there, his
+chair drawn up to it, slippers ready, spirit case, and carven
+cigarette box on the table; but after staring at it all for a
+minute or two, he turned out the light and went upstairs.
+There was a fire too in his dressing-room, but her room was
+dark and cold.  It was into this room that Soames went.
+
+He made a great illumination with candles, and for a long time
+continued pacing up and down between the bed and the door.  He
+could not get used to the thought that she had really left him,
+and as though still searching for some message, some reason, some
+reading of all the mystery of his married life, he began opening
+every recess and drawer.
+
+There were her dresses; he had always liked, indeed insisted,
+that she should be well-dressed--she had taken very few; two or
+three at most, and drawer after drawer; full of linen and silk
+things, was untouched.
+
+Perhaps after all it was only a freak, and she had gone to the
+seaside for a few days' change.  If only that were so, and she
+were really coming back, he would never again do as he had done
+that fatal night before last, never again run that risk--though
+it was her duty, her duty as a wife; though she did belong to
+him--he would never again run that risk; she was evidently not
+quite right in her head!
+
+He stooped over the drawer where she kept her jewels; it was not
+locked, and came open as he pulled; the jewel box had the key in
+it.  This surprised him until he remembered that it was sure to
+be empty.  He opened it.
+
+It was far from empty.  Divided, in little green velvet
+compartments, were all the things he had given her, even her
+watch, and stuck into the recess that contained--the watch was a
+three-cornered note addressed 'Soames Forsyte,' in Irene's
+handwriting:
+
+'I think I have taken nothing that you or your people have given
+me.'  And that was all.
+
+He looked at the clasps and bracelets of diamonds and pearls, at
+the little flat gold watch with a great diamond set in sapphires,
+at the chains and rings, each in its nest, and the tears rushed
+up in his eyes and dropped upon them.
+
+Nothing that she could have done, nothing that she had done,
+brought home to him like this the inner significance of her act.
+For the moment, perhaps, he understood nearly all there was to
+understand--understood that she loathed him, that she had loathed
+him for years, that for all intents and purposes they were like
+people living in different worlds, that there was no hope for
+him, never had been; even, that she had suffered--that she was to
+be pitied.
+
+In that moment of emotion he betrayed the Forsyte in him--forgot
+himself, his interests, his property--was capable of almost
+anything; was lifted into the pure ether of the selfless and
+unpractical.
+
+Such moments pass quickly.
+
+And as though with the tears he had purged himself of weakness,
+he got up, locked the box, and slowly, almost trembling, carried
+it with him into the other room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+JUNE'S VICTORY
+
+
+June had waited for her chance, scanning the duller columns of
+the journals, morning and evening with an assiduity which at
+first puzzled old Jolyon; and when her chance came, she took it
+with all the promptitude and resolute tenacity of her character.
+
+She will always remember best in her life that morning when at
+last she saw amongst the reliable Cause List of the Times
+newspaper, under the heading of Court XIII, Mr. Justice Bentham,
+the case of Forsyte v. Bosinney.
+
+Like a gambler who stakes his last piece of money, she had
+prepared to hazard her all upon this throw; it was not her nature
+to contemplate defeat.  How, unless with the instinct of a woman
+in love, she knew that Bosinney's discomfiture in this action was
+assured, cannot be told--on this assumption, however, she laid
+her plans, as upon a certainty.
+
+Half past eleven found her at watch in the gallery of Court
+XIII., and there she remained till the case of Forsyte v.
+Bosinney was over.  Bosinney's absence did not disquiet her; she
+had felt instinctively that he would not defend himself.  At the
+end of the judgment she hastened down, and took a cab to his
+rooms.
+
+She passed the open street-door and the offices on the three
+lower floors without attracting notice; not till she reached the
+top did her difficulties begin.
+
+Her ring was not answered; she had now to make up her mind
+whether she would go down and ask the caretaker in the basement
+to let her in to await Mr. Bosinney's return, or remain patiently
+outside the door, trusting that no one would, come up.  She
+decided on the latter course.
+
+A quarter of an hour had passed in freezing vigil on the landing,
+before it occurred to her that Bosinney had been used to leave
+the key of his rooms under the door-mat.  She looked and found it
+there.  For some minutes she could not decide to make use of it;
+at last she let herself in and left the door open that anyone who
+came might see she was there on business.
+
+This was not the same June who had paid the trembling visit five
+months ago; those months of suffering and restraint had made her
+less sensitive; she had dwelt on this visit so long, with such
+minuteness, that its terrors were discounted beforehand.  She was
+not there to fail this time, for if she failed no one could help
+her.
+
+Like some mother beast on the watch over her young, her little
+quick figure never stood still in that room, but wandered from
+wall to wall, from window to door, fingering now one thing, now
+another.  There was dust everywhere, the room could not have been
+cleaned for weeks, and June, quick to catch at anything that
+should buoy up her hope, saw in it a sign that he had been
+obliged, for economy's sake, to give up his servant.
+
+She looked into the bedroom; the bed was roughly made, as though
+by the hand of man.  Listening intently, she darted in, and
+peered into his cupboards.  A few shirts and collars, a pair of
+muddy boots--the room was bare even of garments.
+
+She stole back to the sitting-room, and now she noticed the
+absence of all the little things he had set store by.  The clock
+that had been his mother's, the field-glasses that had hung over
+the sofa; two really valuable old prints of Harrow, where his
+father had been at school, and last, not least, the piece of
+Japanese pottery she herself had given him.  All were gone; and
+in spite of the rage roused within her championing soul at the
+thought that the world should treat him thus, their disappearance
+augured happily for the success of her plan.
+
+It was while looking at the spot where the piece of Japanese
+pottery had stood that she felt a strange certainty of being
+watched, and, turning, saw Irene in the open doorway.
+
+The two stood gazing at each other for a minute in silence; then
+June walked forward and held out her hand.  Irene did not take
+it.
+
+When her hand was refused, June put it behind her.  Her eyes grew
+steady with anger; she waited for Irene to speak; and thus
+waiting, took in, with who-knows-what rage of jealousy,
+suspicion, and curiosity, every detail of her friend's face and
+dress and figure.
+
+Irene was clothed in her long grey fur; the travelling cap on her
+head left a wave of gold hair visible above her forehead.  The
+soft fullness of the coat made her face as small as a child's.
+
+Unlike June's cheeks, her cheeks had no colour in them, but were
+ivory white and pinched as if with cold.  Dark circles lay round
+her eyes.  In one hand she held a bunch of violets.
+
+She looked back at June, no smile on her lips; and with those
+great dark eyes fastened on her, the girl, for all her startled
+anger, felt something of the old spell.
+
+She spoke first, after all.
+
+"What have you come for?"  But the feeling that she herself was
+being asked the same question, made her add: "This horrible case.
+I came to tell him--he has lost it."
+
+Irene did not speak, her eyes never moved from June's face, and
+the girl cried:
+
+"Don't stand there as if you were made of stone!"
+
+Irene laughed: "I wish to God I were!"
+
+But June turned away: "Stop!" she cried, "don't tell me!  I don't
+want to hear!  I don't want to hear what you've come for.  I
+don't want to hear!" And like some uneasy spirit, she began
+swiftly walking to and fro.  Suddenly she broke out:
+
+"I was here first.  We can't both stay here together!"
+
+On Irene's face a smile wandered up, and died out like a flicker
+of firelight.  She did not move.  And then it was that June
+perceived under the softness arid immobility of this figure
+something desperate and resolved; something not to be turned
+away, something dangerous.  She tore off her hat, and, putting
+both hands to her brow, pressed back the bronze mass of her hair.
+
+"You have no right here!" she cried defiantly.
+
+Irene answered: "I have no right anywhere!
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I have left Soames.  You always wanted me to!"
+
+June put her hands over her ears.
+
+"Don't!  I don't want to hear anything--I don't want to know
+anything.  It's impossible to fight with you!  What makes you
+stand like that?  Why don't you go?"
+
+Irene's lips moved; she seemed to be saying: "Where should I go?"
+
+June turned to the window.  She could see the face of a clock
+down in the street.  It was nearly four.  At any moment he might
+come!  She looked back across her shoulder, and her face was
+distorted with anger.
+
+But Irene had not moved; in her gloved hands she ceaselessly
+turned and twisted the little bunch of violets.
+
+The tears of rage and disappointment rolled down June's cheeks.
+
+"How could you come?" she said.  "You have been a false friend to
+me!"
+
+Again Irene laughed.  June saw that she had played a wrong card,
+and broke down.
+
+"Why have you come?" she sobbed.  "You've ruined my life, and now
+you want to ruin his!"
+
+Irene's mouth quivered; her eyes met June's with a look so
+mournful that the girl cried out in the midst of her sobbing,
+"No, no!"
+
+But Irene's head bent till it touched her breast.  She turned,
+and went quickly out, hiding her lips with the little bunch of
+violets.
+
+June ran to the door.  She heard the footsteps going down and
+down.  She called out: "Come back, Irene!  Come back!"
+
+The footsteps died away....
+
+Bewildered and torn, the girl stood at the top of the stairs.
+Why had Irene gone, leaving her mistress of the field?  What did
+it mean?  Had she really given him up to her?  Or had she...?
+And she was the prey of a gnawing uncertainty....  Bosinney did
+not come....
+
+About six o'clock that afternoon old Jolyon returned from
+Wistaria Avenue, where now almost every day he spent some hours,
+and asked if his grand-daughter were upstairs.  On being told
+that she had just come in, he sent up to her room to request her
+to come down and speak to him.
+
+He had made up his mind to tell her that he was reconciled with
+her father.  In future bygones must be bygones.  He would no
+longer live alone, or practically alone, in this great house; he
+was going to give it up, and take one in the country for his son,
+where they could all go and live together.  If June did not like
+this, she could have an allowance and live by herself.  It
+wouldn't make much difference to her, for it was a long time
+since she had shown him any affection.
+
+But when June came down, her face was pinched and piteous; there
+was a strained, pathetic look in her eyes.  She snuggled up in
+her old attitude on the arm of his chair, and what he said
+compared but poorly with the clear, authoritative, injured
+statement he had thought out with much care.  His heart felt
+sore, as the great heart of a mother-bird feels sore when its
+youngling flies and bruises its wing.  His words halted, as
+though he were apologizing for having at last deviated from the
+path of virtue, and succumbed, in defiance of sounder principles,
+to his more natural instincts.
+
+He seemed nervous lest, in thus announcing his intentions, he
+should be setting his granddaughter a bad example; and now that
+he came to the point, his way of putting the suggestion that, if
+she didn't like it, she could live by herself and lump it, was
+delicate in the extreme.'
+
+"And if, by any chance, my darling," he said, "you found you
+didn't get on--with them, why, I could make that all right.  You
+could have what you liked.  We could find a little flat in London
+where you could set up, and I could be running to continually.
+But the children," he added, "are dear little things!"
+
+Then, in the midst of this grave, rather transparent, explanation
+of changed policy, his eyes twinkled.  "This'll astonish
+Timothy's weak nerves.  That precious young thing will have
+something to say about this, or I'm a Dutchman!"
+
+June had not yet spoken.  Perched thus on the arm of his chair,
+with her head above him, her face was invisible.  But presently
+he felt her warm cheek against his own, and knew that, at all
+events, there was nothing very alarming in her attitude towards
+his news.  He began to take courage.
+
+"You'll like your father," he said--"an amiable chap.  Never was
+much push about him, but easy to get on with.  You'll find him
+artistic and all that."
+
+And old Jolyon bethought him of the dozen or so water-colour
+drawings all carefully locked up in his bedroom; for now that his
+son was going to become a man of property he did not think them
+quite such poor things as heretofore.
+
+"As to your--your stepmother," he said, using the word with some
+little difficulty, "I call her a refined woman--a bit of a Mrs.
+Gummidge, I shouldn't wonder--but very fond of Jo.  And the
+children," he repeated--indeed, this sentence ran like music
+through all his solemn self-justification--"are sweet little
+things!"
+
+If June had known, those words but reincarnated that tender love
+for little children, for the young and weak, which in the past
+had made him desert his son for her tiny self, and now, as the
+cycle rolled, was taking him from her.
+
+But he began to get alarmed at her silence, and asked
+impatiently: "Well, what do you say?"
+
+June slid down to his knee, and she in her turn began her tale.
+She thought it would all go splendidly; she did not see any
+difficulty, and she did not care a bit what people thought.
+
+Old Jolyon wriggled.  H'm! then people would think!  He had
+thought that after all these years perhaps they wouldn't!  Well,
+he couldn't help it!  Nevertheless, he could not approve of his
+granddaughter's way of putting it--she ought to mind what people
+thought!
+
+Yet he said nothing.  His feelings were too mixed, too
+inconsistent for expression.
+
+No--went on June he did not care; what business was it of theirs?
+There was only one thing--and with her cheek pressing against his
+knee, old Jolyon knew at once that this something was no trifle:
+As he was going to buy a house in the country, would he not--to
+please her--buy that splendid house of Soames' at Robin Hill?  It
+was finished, it was perfectly beautiful, and no one would live
+in it now.  They would all be so happy there.
+
+Old Jolyon was on the alert at once.  Wasn't the 'man of
+property' going to live in his new house, then?  He never alluded
+to Soames now but under this title.
+
+"No"--June said--"he was not; she knew that he was not!"
+
+How did she know?
+
+She could not tell him, but she knew.  She knew nearly for
+certain!  It was most unlikely; circumstances had changed!
+Irene's words still rang in her head: "I have left Soames.
+Where should I go?"
+
+But she kept silence about that.
+
+If her grandfather would only buy it and settle that wretched
+claim that ought never to have been made on Phil!  It would be
+the very best thing for everybody, and everything--everything
+might come straight
+
+And June put her lips to his forehead, and pressed them close.
+
+But old Jolyon freed himself from her caress, his face wore the
+judicial look which came upon it when he dealt with affairs.  He
+asked: What did she mean?  There was something behind all this--
+had she been seeing Bosinney?
+
+June answered: "No; but I have been to his rooms."
+
+"Been to his rooms?  Who took you there?"
+
+June faced him steadily.  "I went alone.  He has lost that case.
+I don't care whether it was right or wrong.  I want to help him;
+and I will!"
+
+Old Jolyon asked again: "Have you seen him?" His glance seemed to
+pierce right through the girl's eyes into her soul.
+
+Again June answered: "No; he was not there.  I waited, but he did
+not come."
+
+Old Jolyon made a movement of relief.  She had risen and looked
+down at him; so slight, and light, and young, but so fixed, and
+so determined; and disturbed, vexed, as he was, he could not
+frown away that fixed look.  The feeling of being beaten, of the
+reins having slipped, of being old and tired, mastered him.
+
+"Ah!" he said at last, "you'll get yourself into a mess one of
+these days, I can see.  You want your own way in everything."
+
+Visited by one of his strange bursts of philosophy, he added:
+"Like that you were born; and like that you'll stay until you
+die!"
+
+And he, who in his dealings with men of business, with Boards,
+with Forsytes of all descriptions, with such as were not
+Forsytes, had always had his own way, looked at his indomitable
+grandchild sadly--for he felt in her that quality which above all
+others he unconsciously admired.
+
+"Do you know what they say is going on?" he said slowly.
+
+June crimsoned.
+
+"Yes--no!  I know--and I don't know--I don't care!" and she
+stamped her foot.
+
+"I believe," said old Jolyon, dropping his eyes, "that you'd have
+him if he were dead!"
+
+There was a long silence before he spoke again.
+
+"But as to buying this house--you don't know what you're talking
+about!"
+
+June said that she did.  She knew that he could get it if he
+wanted.  He would only have to give what it cost.
+
+"What it cost!  You know nothing about it.  I won't go to Soames-
+--I'll have nothing more to do with that young man."
+
+"But you needn't; you can go to Uncle James.  If you can't buy
+the house, will you pay his lawsuit claim?  I know he is terribly
+hard up--I've seen it.  You can stop it out of my money!"
+
+A twinkle came into old Jolyon's eyes.
+
+"Stop it out of your money!  A pretty way.  And what will you do,
+pray, without your money?"
+
+But secretly, the idea of wresting the house from James and his
+son had begun to take hold of him.  He had heard on Forsyte
+'Change much comment, much rather doubtful praise of this house.
+It was 'too artistic,' but a fine place.  To take from the 'man
+of property' that on which he had set his heart, would be a
+crowning triumph over James, practical proof that he was going to
+make a man of property of Jo, to put him back in his proper
+position, and there to keep him secure.  Justice once for all on
+those who had chosen to regard his son as a poor, penniless
+outcast.
+
+He would see, he would see!  It might be out of the question; he
+was not going to pay a fancy price, but if it could be done, why,
+perhaps he would do it!
+
+And still more secretly he knew that he could not refuse her.
+
+But he did not commit himself.  He would think it over--he said
+to June.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+BOSINNEY'S DEPARTURE
+
+
+Old Jolyon  was not given to hasty decisions; it is probable that
+he would have continued to think over the purchase of the house
+at Robin Hill, had not June's face told him that he would have no
+peace until he acted.
+
+At breakfast next morning she asked him what time she should
+order the carriage.
+
+"Carriage!" he said, with some appearance of innocence; "what
+for?  I'm not going out!"
+
+She answered: "If you don't go early, you won't catch Uncle James
+before he goes into the City."
+
+"James! what about your Uncle James?"
+
+"The house," she replied, in such a voice that he no longer
+pretended ignorance.
+
+"I've not made up my mind," he said.
+
+"You must!  You must!  Oh! Gran--think of me!"
+
+Old Jolyon grumbled out: "Think of you--I'm always thinking of
+you, but you don't think of yourself; you don't think what you're
+letting yourself in for.  Well, order the carriage at ten!"
+
+At a quarter past he was placing his umbrella in the stand at
+Park Lane--he did not choose to relinquish his hat and coat;
+telling Warmson that he wanted to see his master, he went,
+without being announced, into the study, and sat down.
+
+James was still in the dining-room talking to Soames, who had
+come round again before breakfast.  On hearing who his visitor
+was, he muttered nervously: "Now, what's be want, I wonder?"
+
+He then got up.
+
+"Well," he said to Soames, "don't you go doing anything in a
+hurry.  The first thing is to find out where she is--I should go
+to Stainer's about it; they're the best men, if they can't find
+her, nobody can." And suddenly moved to strange softness, he
+muttered to himself, "Poor little thing, I can't tell what she
+was thinking about!" and went out blowing his nose.
+
+Old Jolyon did not rise on seeing his brother, but held out his
+hand, and exchanged with him the clasp of a Forsyte.
+
+James took another chair by the table, and leaned his head on his
+hand.
+
+"Well," he said, "how are you?  We don't see much of you
+nowadays!"
+
+Old Jolyon paid no attention to the remark.
+
+"How's Emily?" he asked; and waiting for no reply, went on
+"I've come to see you about this affair of young Bosinney's.  I'm
+told that new house of his is a white elephant."
+
+"I don't know anything about a white elephant," said James, "I
+know he's lost his case, and I should say he'll go bankrupt."
+
+Old Jolyon was not slow to seize the opportunity this gave him.
+
+"I shouldn't wonder a bit!" he agreed; "and if he goes bankrupt,
+the 'man of property'--that is, Soames'll be out of pocket.  Now,
+what I was thinking was this: If he's not going to live there...."
+
+Seeing both surprise and suspicion in James' eye, he quickly went
+on: "I don't want to know anything; I suppose Irene's put her
+foot down--it's not material to me.  But I'm thinking of a house
+in the country myself, not too far from London, and if it suited
+me I don't say that I mightn't look at it, at a price."
+
+James listened to this statement with a strange mixture of doubt,
+suspicion, and relief, merging into a dread of something behind,
+and tinged with the remains of his old undoubted reliance upon
+his elder brother's good faith and judgment.  There was anxiety,
+too, as to what old Jolyon could have heard and how he had heard
+it; and a sort of hopefulness arising from the thought that if
+June's connection with Bosinney were completely at an end, her
+grandfather would hardly seem anxious to help the young fellow.
+Altogether he was puzzled; as he did not like either to show
+this, or to commit himself in any way, he said:
+
+"They tell me you're altering your Will in favour of your son."
+
+He had not been told this; he had merely added the fact of having
+seen old Jolyon with his son and grandchildren to the fact that
+he had taken his Will away from Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte.
+The shot went home.
+
+"Who told you that?" asked old Jolyon.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," said James; "I can't remember names--I
+know somebody told me Soames spent a lot of money on this house;
+he's not likely to part with it except at a good price."
+
+"Well," said old Jolyon, "if, he thinks I'm going to pay a fancy
+price, he's mistaken.  I've not got the money to throw away that
+he seems to have.  Let him try and sell it at a forced sale, and
+see what he'll get.  It's not every man's house, I hear!"
+
+James, who was secretly also of this opinion, answered: "It's a
+gentleman's house.  Soames is here now if you'd like to see him."
+
+"No," said old Jolyon, "I haven't got as far as that; and I'm not
+likely to, I can see that very well if I'm met in this manner!"
+
+James was a little cowed; when it came to the actual figures of a
+commercial transaction he was sure of himself, for then he was
+dealing with facts, not with men; but preliminary negotiations
+such as these made him nervous--he never knew quite how far he
+could go.
+
+"Well," he said, "I know nothing about it.  Soames, he tells me
+nothing; I should think he'd entertain it--it's a question of
+price."
+
+"Oh!" said old Jolyon, "don't let him make a favour of it!" He
+placed his hat on his head in dudgeon.
+
+The door was opened and Soames came in.
+
+"There's a policeman out here," he said with his half smile, "for
+Uncle Jolyon."
+
+Old Jolyon looked at him angrily, and James said: "A policeman?
+I don't know anything about a policeman.  But I suppose you know
+something about him," he added to old Jolyon with a look of
+suspicion: "I suppose you'd better see him!"
+
+In the hall an Inspector of Police stood stolidly regarding with
+heavy-lidded pale-blue eyes the fine old English furniture picked
+up by James at the famous Mavrojano sale in Portman Square.
+"You'll find my brother in there," said James.
+
+The Inspector raised his fingers respectfully to his peaked cap,
+and entered the study.
+
+James saw him go in with a strange sensation.
+
+"Well," he said to Soames, "I suppose we must wait and see what
+he wants.  Your uncle's been here about the house!"
+
+He returned with Soames into the dining-room, but could not rest.
+
+"Now what does he want?" he murmured again.
+
+"Who?" replied Soames: "the Inspector?  They sent him round from
+Stanhope Gate, that's all I know.  That 'nonconformist' of Uncle
+Jolyon's has been pilfering, I shouldn't wonder!"
+
+But in spite of his calmness, he too was ill at ease.
+
+At the end of ten minutes old Jolyon came in.  He walked up to
+the table, and stood there perfectly silent pulling at his long
+white moustaches.  James gazed up at him with opening mouth; he
+had never seen his brother look like this.
+
+Old Jolyon raised his hand, and said slowly:
+
+"Young Bosinney has been run over in the fog and killed."
+
+Then standing above his brother and his nephew, and looking down
+at him with his deep eyes:
+
+"There's--some--talk--of--suicide," he said.
+
+James' jaw dropped.  "Suicide!  What should he do that for?"
+
+Old Jolyon answered sternly: "God knows, if you and your son
+don't!"
+
+But James did not reply.
+
+For all men of great age, even for all Forsytes, life has had
+bitter experiences.  The passer-by, who sees them wrapped in
+cloaks of custom, wealth, and comfort, would never suspect that
+such black shadows had fallen on their roads.  To every man of
+great age--to Sir Walter Bentham himself--the idea of suicide has
+once at least been present in the ante-room of his soul; on the
+threshold, waiting to enter, held out from the inmost chamber by
+some chance reality, some vague fear, some painful hope.  To
+Forsytes that final renunciation of property is hard.  Oh! it is
+hard!  Seldom--perhaps never--can they achieve, it; and yet, how
+near have they not sometimes been!
+
+So even with James!  Then in the medley of his thoughts, he broke
+out: "Why I saw it in the paper yesterday: 'Run over in the fog!'
+They didn't know his name!" He turned from one face to the other
+in his confusion of soul; but instinctively all the time he was
+rejecting that rumour of suicide.  He dared not entertain this
+thought, so against his interest, against the interest of his
+son, of every Forsyte.  He strove against it; and as his nature
+ever unconsciously rejected that which it could not with safety
+accept, so gradually he overcame this fear.  It was an accident!
+It must have been!
+
+Old Jolyon broke in on his reverie.
+
+"Death was instantaneous.  He lay all day yesterday at the
+hospital.  There was nothing to tell them who he was.  I am going
+there now; you and your son had better come too."
+
+No one opposing this command he led the way from the room.
+
+The day was still and clear and bright, and driving over to Park
+Lane from Stanhope Gate, old Jolyon had had the carriage open.
+Sitting back on the padded cushions, finishing his cigar, he had
+noticed with pleasure the keen crispness of the air, the bustle
+of the cabs and people; the strange, almost Parisian, alacrity
+that the first fine day will bring into London streets after a
+spell of fog or rain.  And he had felt so happy; he had not felt
+like it for months.  His confession to June was off his mind; he
+had the prospect of his son's, above all, of his grandchildren's
+company in the future--(he had appointed to meet young Jolyon at
+the Hotch Potch that very manning to--discuss it again); and
+there was the pleasurable excitement of a coming encounter, a
+coming victory, over James and the 'man of property' in the
+matter of the house.
+
+He had the carriage closed now; he had no heart to look on
+gaiety; nor was it right that Forsytes should be seen driving
+with an Inspector of Police.
+
+In that carriage the Inspector spoke again of the death:
+
+"It was not so very thick--Just there.  The driver says the
+gentleman must have had time to see what he was about, he seemed
+to walk right into it.  It appears that he was very hard up, we
+found several pawn tickets at his rooms, his account at the bank
+is overdrawn, and there's this case in to-day's papers;" his cold
+blue eyes travelled from one to another of the three Forsytes in
+the carriage.
+
+Old Jolyon watching from his corner saw his brother's face
+change, and the brooding, worried, look deepen on it.  At the
+Inspector's words, indeed, all James' doubts and fears revived.
+Hard-up--pawn-tickets--an overdrawn account!  These words that
+had all his life been a far-off nightmare to him, seemed to make
+uncannily real that suspicion of suicide which must on no account
+be entertained.  He sought his son's eye; but lynx-eyed,
+taciturn, immovable, Soames gave no answering look.  And to old
+Jolyon watching, divining the league of mutual defence between
+them, there came an overmastering desire to have his own son at
+his side, as though this visit to the dead man's body was a
+battle in which otherwise he must single-handed meet those two.
+And the thought of how to keep June's name out of the business
+kept whirring in his brain.  James had his son to support him!
+Why should he not send for Jo?
+
+Taking out his card-case, he pencilled the following message:
+
+'Come round at once.  I've sent the carriage for you.'
+
+On getting out he gave this card to his coachman, telling him to
+drive--as fast as possible to the Hotch Potch Club, and if Mr.
+Jolyon Forsyte were there to give him the card and bring him at
+once.  If not there yet, he was to wait till he came.
+
+He followed the others slowly up the steps, leaning on his
+umbrella, and stood a moment to get his breath.  The Inspector
+said: "This is the mortuary, sir.  But take your time."
+
+In the bare, white-walled room, empty of all but a streak of
+sunshine smeared along the dustless floor, lay a form covered by
+a sheet.  With a huge steady hand the Inspector took the hem and
+turned it back.  A sightless face gazed up at them, and on either
+side of that sightless defiant face the three Forsytes gazed
+down; in each one of them the secret emotions, fears, and pity of
+his own nature rose and fell like the rising, falling waves of
+life, whose wish those white walls barred out now for ever from
+Bosinney.  And in each one of them the trend of his nature, the
+odd essential spring, which moved him in fashions minutely,
+unalterably different from those of every other human being,
+forced him to a different attitude of thought.  Far from the
+others, yet inscrutably close, each stood thus, alone with death,
+silent, his eyes lowered.
+
+The Inspector asked softly:
+
+"You identify the gentleman, sir?"
+
+Old Jolyon raised his head and nodded.  He looked at his brother
+opposite, at that long lean figure brooding over the dead man,
+with face dusky red, and strained grey eyes; and at the figure of
+Soames white and still by his father's side.  And all that he had
+felt against those two was gone like smoke in the long white
+presence of Death.  Whence comes it, how comes it--Death?  Sudden
+reverse of all that goes before; blind setting forth on a path
+that leads to where?  Dark quenching of the fire!  The heavy,
+brutal crushing--out that all men must go through, keeping their
+eyes clear and brave unto the end!  Small and of no import,
+insects though they are!  And across old Jolyon's face there
+flitted a gleam, for Soames, murmuring to the Inspector, crept
+noiselessly away.
+
+Then suddenly James raised his eyes.  There was a queer appeal in
+that suspicious troubled look: "I know I'm no match for you," it
+seemed to say.  And, hunting for handkerchief he wiped his brow;
+then, bending sorrowful and lank over the dead man, he too turned
+and hurried out.
+
+Old Jolyon stood, still as death, his eyes fixed on the body.
+Who shall tell of what he was thinking?  Of himself, when his
+hair was brown like the hair of that young fellow dead before
+him?  Of himself, with his battle just beginning, the long, long
+battle he had loved; the battle that was over for this young man
+almost before it had begun?  Of his grand-daughter, with her
+broken hopes?  Of that other woman?  Of the strangeness, and the
+pity of it?  And the irony, inscrutable, and bitter of that end?
+Justice!  There was no justice for men, for they were ever in the
+dark!
+
+Or perhaps in his philosophy he thought: Better to be out of, it
+all!  Better to have done with it, like this poor youth....
+
+Some one touched him on the arm.
+
+A tear started up and wetted his eyelash.  "Well," he said, "I'm
+no good here.  I'd better be going.  You'll come to me as soon as
+you can, Jo," and with his head bowed he went away.
+
+It was young Jolyon's turn to take his stand beside the dead man,
+round whose fallen body he seemed to see all the Forsytes
+breathless, and prostrated.  The stroke had fallen too swiftly.
+
+The forces underlying every tragedy--forces that take no denial,
+working through cross currents to their ironical end, had met and
+fused with a thunder-clap, flung out the victim, and flattened to
+the ground all those that stood around.
+
+Or so at all events young Jolyon seemed to see them, lying around
+Bosinney's body.
+
+He asked the Inspector to tell him what had happened, and the
+latter, like a man who does not every day get such a chance,
+again detailed such facts as were known.
+
+"There's more here, sir, however," he said, "than meets the eye.
+I don't believe in suicide, nor in pure accident, myself.  It's
+more likely I think that he was suffering under great stress
+of mind, and took no notice of things about him.  Perhaps you can
+throw some light on these."
+
+He took from his pocket a little packet and laid it on the table.
+Carefully undoing it, he revealed a lady's handkerchief, pinned
+through the folds with a pin of discoloured Venetian gold, the
+stone of which had fallen from the socket.  A scent of dried
+violets rose to young Jolyon's nostrils.
+
+"Found in his breast pocket," said the Inspector; "the name has
+been cut away!"
+
+Young Jolyon with difficulty answered: "I'm afraid I cannot help
+you!"  But vividly there rose before him the face he had seen
+light up, so tremulous and glad, at Bosinney's coming!  Of her he
+thought more than of his own daughter, more than of them all--of
+her with the dark, soft glance, the delicate passive face,
+waiting for the dead man, waiting even at that moment, perhaps,
+still and patient in the sunlight.
+
+He walked sorrowfully away from the hospital towards his father's
+house, reflecting that this death would break up the Forsyte
+family.  The stroke had indeed slipped past their defences into
+the very wood of their tree.  They might flourish to all
+appearance as before, preserving a brave show before the eyes of
+London, but the trunk was dead, withered by the same flash that
+had stricken down Bosinney.  And now the saplings would take its
+place, each one a new custodian of the sense of property.
+
+Good forest of Forsytes! thought young Jolyon--soundest timber
+of our land!
+
+Concerning the cause of this death--his family would doubtless
+reject with vigour the suspicion of suicide, which was so
+compromising!  They would take it as an accident, a stroke of
+fate.  In their hearts they would even feel it an intervention of
+Providence, a retribution--had not Bosinney endangered their two
+most priceless possessions, the pocket and the hearth?  And they
+would talk of 'that unfortunate accident of young Bosinney's,'
+but perhaps they would not talk--silence might be better!
+
+As for himself, he regarded the bus-driver's account of the
+accident as of very little value.  For no one so madly in love
+committed suicide for want of money; nor was Bosinney the sort of
+fellow to set much store by a financial crisis.  And so he too
+rejected this theory of suicide, the dead man's face rose too
+clearly before him.  Gone in the heyday of his summer--and to
+believe thus that an accident had cut Bosinney off in the full
+sweep of his passion was more than ever pitiful to young Jolyon.
+
+Then came a vision of Soames' home as it now was, and must be
+hereafter.  The streak of lightning had flashed its clear uncanny
+gleam on bare bones with grinning spaces between, the disguising
+flesh was gone....
+
+In the dining-room at Stanhope Gate old Jolyon was sitting alone
+when his son came in.  He looked very wan in his great armchair.
+And his eyes travelling round the walls with their pictures of
+still life, and the masterpiece 'Dutch fishing-boats at Sunset'
+seemed as though passing their gaze over his life with its hopes,
+its gains, its achievements.
+
+"Ah! Jo!" he said, "is that you?  I've told poor little June.
+But that's not all of it.  Are you going to Soames'?  She's
+brought it on herself, I suppose; but somehow I can't bear to
+think of her, shut up there--and all alone." And holding up his
+thin, veined hand, he clenched it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+IRENE'S RETURN
+
+
+After leaving James and old Jolyon in the mortuary of the
+hospital, Soames hurried aimlessly along the streets.
+
+The tragic event of Bosinney's death altered the complexion of
+everything.  There was no longer the same feeling that to lose a
+minute would be fatal, nor would he now risk communicating the
+fact of his wife's flight to anyone till the inquest was over.
+
+That morning he had risen early, before the postman came, had
+taken the first-post letters from the box himself, and, though
+there had been none from Irene, he had made an opportunity of
+telling Bilson that her mistress was at the sea; he would
+probably, he said, be going down himself from Saturday to Monday.
+This had given him time to breathe, time to leave no stone
+unturned to find her.
+
+But now, cut off from taking steps by Bosinney's death--that
+strange death, to think of which was like putting a hot iron to
+his heart, like lifting a great weight from it--he did not know
+how to pass his day; and he wandered here and there through the
+streets, looking at every face he met, devoured by a hundred
+anxieties.
+
+And as he wandered, he thought of him who had finished his
+wandering, his prowling, and would never haunt his house again.
+
+Already in the afternoon he passed posters announcing the
+identity of the dead man, and bought the papers to see what they
+said.  He would stop their mouths if he could, and he went into
+the City, and was closeted with Boulter for a long time.
+
+On his way home, passing the steps of Jobson's about half past
+four, he met George Forsyte, who held out an evening paper to
+Soames, saying:
+
+"Here! Have you seen this about the poor Buccaneer?"
+
+Soames answered stonily: "Yes."
+
+George stared at him.  He had never liked Soames; he now held him
+responsible for Bosinney's death.  Soames had done for him--done
+for him by that act of property that had sent the Buccaneer to
+run amok that fatal afternoon.
+
+'The poor fellow,' he was thinking, 'was so cracked with
+jealousy, so cracked for his vengeance, that he heard nothing of
+the omnibus in that infernal fog.'
+
+Soames had done for him!  And this judgment was in George's eyes.
+
+"They talk of suicide here," he said at last.  "That cat won't
+jump."
+
+Soames shook his head.  "An accident," he muttered.
+
+Clenching his fist on the paper, George crammed it into his
+pocket.  He could not resist a parting shot.
+
+"H'mm!  All flourishing at home?  Any little Soameses yet?"
+
+With a face as white as the steps of Jobson's, and a lip raised
+as if snarling, Soames brushed past him and was gone....
+
+On reaching home, and entering the little lighted hall with his
+latchkey, the first thing that caught his eye was his wife's
+gold-mounted umbrella lying on the rug chest.  Flinging off his
+fur coat, he hurried to the drawing-room.
+
+The curtains were drawn for the night, a bright fire of
+cedar-logs burned in the grate, and by its light he saw Irene
+sitting in her usual corner on the sofa.  He shut the door
+softly, and went towards her.  She did not move, and did not seem
+to see him.
+
+"So you've come back?" he said.  "Why are you sitting here in the
+dark?"
+
+Then he caught sight of her face, so white and motionless that it
+seemed as though the blood must have stopped flowing in her
+veins; and her eyes, that looked enormous, like the great, wide,
+startled brown eyes of an owl.
+
+Huddled in her grey fur against the sofa cushions, she had a
+strange resemblance to a captive owl, bunched fir its soft
+feathers against the wires of a cage.  The supple erectness of
+her figure was gone, as though she had been broken by cruel
+exercise; as though there were no longer any reason for being
+beautiful, and supple, and erect.
+
+"So you've come back," he repeated.
+
+She never looked up, and never spoke, the firelight playing over
+her motionless figure.
+
+Suddenly she tried to rise, but he prevented her; it was then
+that he understood.
+
+She had come back like an animal wounded to death, not knowing
+where to turn, not knowing what she was doing.  The sight of her
+figure, huddled in the fur, was enough.
+
+He knew then for certain that Bosinney had been her lover; knew
+that she had seen the report of his death--perhaps, like himself,
+had bought a paper at the draughty corner of a street, and read
+it.
+
+She had come back then of her own accord, to the cage she had
+pined to be free of--and taking in all the tremendous
+significance of this, he longed to cry: "Take your hated body,
+that I love, out of my house!  Take away that pitiful white face,
+so cruel and soft--before I crush it.  Get out of my sight; never
+let me see you again!"
+
+And, at those unspoken words, he seemed to see her rise and move
+away, like a woman in a terrible dream, from which she was
+fighting to awake--rise and go out into the dark and cold, without
+a thought of him, without so much as the knowledge of his
+presence.
+
+Then he cried, contradicting what he had not yet spoken, "No;
+stay there!" And turning away from her, he sat down in his
+accustomed chair on the other side of the hearth.
+
+They sat in silence.
+
+And Soames thought: 'Why is all this?  Why should I suffer so?
+What have I done?  It is not my fault!'
+
+Again he looked at her, huddled like a bird that is shot and
+dying, whose poor breast you see panting as the air is taken from
+it, whose poor eyes look at you who have shot it, with a slow,
+soft, unseeing look, taking farewell of all that is good--of the
+sun, and the air, and its mate.
+
+So they sat, by the firelight, in the silence, one on each side
+of the hearth.
+
+And the fume of the burning cedar logs, that he loved so well,
+seemed to grip Soames by the throat till he could bear it no
+longer.  And going out into the hall he flung the door wide, to
+gulp down the cold air that came in; then without hat or overcoat
+went out into the Square.
+
+Along the garden rails a half-starved cat came rubbing her way
+towards him, and Soames thought: 'Suffering!  when will it cease,
+my suffering?'
+
+At a front door across the way was a man of his acquaintance
+named Rutter, scraping his boots, with an air of 'I am master
+here.' And Soames walked on.
+
+From far in the clear air the bells of the church where he and
+Irene had been married were pealing in 'practice' for the advent
+of Christ, the chimes ringing out above the sound of traffic.  He
+felt a craving for strong drink, to lull him to indifference, or
+rouse him to fury.  If only he could burst out of himself, out of
+this web that for the first time in his life he felt around him.
+If only he could surrender to the thought: 'Divorce her--turn her
+out!  She has forgotten you.  Forget her!'
+
+If only he could surrender to the thought: 'Let her go--she has
+suffered enough!'
+
+If only he could surrender to the desire: 'Make a slave of her--
+she is in your power!'
+
+If only even he could surrender to the sudden vision: 'What does
+it all matter?'  Forget himself for a minute, forget that it
+mattered what he did, forget that whatever he did he must
+sacrifice something.
+
+If only he could act on an impulse!
+
+He could forget nothing; surrender to no thought, vision, or
+desire; it was all too serious; too close around him, an
+unbreakable cage.
+
+On the far side of the Square newspaper boys were calling their
+evening wares, and the ghoulish cries mingled and jangled with
+the sound of those church bells.
+
+Soames covered his ears.  The thought flashed across him that but
+for a chance, he himself, and not Bosinney, might be lying dead,
+and she, instead of crouching there like a shot bird with those
+dying eyes....
+
+Something soft touched his legs, the cat was rubbing herself
+against them.  And a sob that shook him from head to foot burst
+from Soames' chest.  Then all was still again in the dark, where
+the houses seemed to stare at him, each with a master and
+mistress of its own, and a secret story of happiness or sorrow.
+
+And suddenly he saw that his own door was open, and black against
+the light from the hall a man standing with his back turned.
+Something slid too in his breast, and he stole up close behind.
+
+He could see his own fur coat flung across the carved oak chair;
+the Persian rugs; the silver bowls, the rows of porcelain plates
+arranged along the walls, and this unknown man who was standing
+there.
+
+And sharply he asked: "What is it you want, sir?"
+
+The visitor turned.  It was young Jolyon.
+
+"The door was open," he said.  "Might I see your wife for a
+minute, I have a message for her?"
+
+Soames gave him a strange, sidelong stare.
+
+"My wife can see no one," he muttered doggedly.
+
+Young Jolyon answered gently: "I shouldn't keep her a minute."
+
+Soames brushed by him and barred the way.
+
+"She can see no one," he said again.
+
+Young Jolyon's glance shot past him into the hall, and Soames
+turned.  There in the drawing-room doorway stood Irene, her eyes
+were wild and eager, her lips were parted, her hands out-
+stretched.  In the sight of both men that light vanished from
+her face; her hands dropped to her sides; she stood like stone.
+
+Soames spun round, and met his visitor's eyes, and at the look he
+saw in them, a sound like a snarl escaped him.  He drew his lips
+back in the ghost of a smile.
+
+"This is my house," he said; "I manage my own affairs.  I've told
+you once--I tell you again; we are not at home."
+
+And in young Jolyon's face he slammed the door.
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext Man of Property, by John Galsworthy
+
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+Project Gutenberg EBook of Man of Property, by John Galsworthy
+#4 in our series by John Galsworthy
+#1 in our series of The Forsyte Saga
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+Title: Man of Property, by John Galsworthy
+
+Author: John Galsworthy
+
+Release Date: March, 2001 [Etext #2559]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[Most recently updated: April 6, 2003]
+
+Edition: 12
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAN OF PROPERT, GALSWORTHY ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger  [widger@cecomet.net]
+Extensive proofing for this edition was done by Fredrik Hausmann
+
+
+
+
+[The spelling conforms to the original: "s's" instead of our "z's";
+and "c's" where we would have "s's"; and "...our" as in colour
+and flavour; many interesting double consonants; etc.]
+
+
+
+
+
+FORSYTE SAGA 
+
+I. THE MAN OF PROPERTY
+
+By John Galsworthy
+
+
+
+VOLUME I
+
+
+
+TO MY WIFE:
+
+     I DEDICATE THE FORSYTE SAGA IN ITS ENTIRETY,
+     BELIEVING IT TO BE OF ALL MY WORKS THE LEAST
+     UNWORTHY OF ONE WITHOUT WHOSE ENCOURAGEMENT,
+     SYMPATHY AND CRITICISM I COULD NEVER HAVE
+     BECOME EVEN SUCH A WRITER AS I AM.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE:
+
+"The Forsyte Saga" was the title originally destined for that
+part of it which is called "The Man of Property"; and to adopt it
+for the collected chronicles of the Forsyte family has indulged
+the Forsytean tenacity that is in all of us.  The word Saga might
+be objected to on the ground that it connotes the heroic and that
+there is little heroism in these pages.  But it is used with a
+suitable irony; and, after all, this long tale, though it may
+deal with folk in frock coats, furbelows, and a gilt-edged
+period, is not devoid of the essential beat of conflict.
+Discounting for the gigantic stature and blood-thirstiness of old
+days, as they have come down to us in fairy-tale and legend, the
+folk of the old Sagas were Forsytes, assuredly, in their
+possessive instincts, and as little proof against the inroads of
+beauty and passion as Swithin, Soames, or even Young Jolyon.  And
+if heroic figures, in days that never were, seem to startle out
+from their surroundings in fashion unbecoming to a Forsyte of the
+Victorian era, we may be sure that tribal instinct was even then
+the prime force, and that "family" and the sense of home and
+property counted as they do to this day, for all the recent
+efforts to "talk them out."
+
+So many people have written and claimed that their families were
+the originals of the Forsytes that one has been almost encouraged
+to believe in the typicality of an imagined species.  Manners
+change and modes evolve, and "Timothy's on the Bayswater Road"
+becomes a nest of the unbelievable in all except essentials; we
+shall not look upon its like again, nor perhaps on such a one as
+James or Old Jolyon.  And yet the figures of Insurance Societies
+and the utterances of Judges reassure us daily that our earthly
+paradise is still a rich preserve, where the wild raiders, Beauty
+and Passion, come stealing in, filching security from beneath our
+noses.  As surely as a dog will bark at a brass band, so will the
+essential Soames in human nature ever rise up uneasily against
+the dissolution which hovers round the folds of ownership.
+
+"Let the dead Past bury its dead" would be a better saying if the
+Past ever died.  The persistence of the Past is one of those
+tragi-comic blessings which each new age denies, coming cocksure
+on to the stage to mouth its claim to a perfect novelty.
+
+But no Age is so new as that!  Human Nature, under its changing
+pretensions and clothes, is and ever will be very much of a
+Forsyte, and might, after all, be a much worse animal.
+
+Looking back on the Victorian era, whose ripeness, decline, and
+'fall-of' is in some sort pictured in "The Forsyte Saga," we see
+now that we have but jumped out of a frying-pan into a fire.  It
+would be difficult to substantiate a claim that the case of
+England was better in 1913 than it was in 1886, when the Forsytes
+assembled at Old Jolyon's to celebrate the engagement of June to
+Philip Bosinney.  And in 1920, when again the clan gathered to
+bless the marriage of Fleur with Michael Mont, the state of
+England is as surely too molten and bankrupt as in the eighties
+it was too congealed and low-percented.  If these chronicles had
+
+been a really scientific study of transition one would have dwelt
+probably on such factors as the invention of bicycle, motor-car,
+and flying-machine; the arrival of a cheap Press; the decline of
+country life and increase of the towns; the birth of the Cinema.
+Men are, in fact, quite unable to control their own inventions;
+they at best develop adaptability to the new conditions those
+inventions create.
+
+But this long tale is no scientific study of a period; it is
+rather an intimate incarnation of the disturbance that Beauty
+effects in the lives of men.
+
+The figure of Irene, never, as the reader may possibly have
+observed, present, except through the senses of other characters,
+is a concretion of disturbing Beauty impinging on a possessive
+world.
+
+One has noticed that readers, as they wade on through the salt
+waters of the Saga, are inclined more and more to pity Soames,
+and to think that in doing so they are in revolt against the mood
+of his creator.  Far from it!  He, too, pities Soames, the
+tragedy of whose life is the very simple, uncontrollable tragedy
+of being unlovable, without quite a thick enough skin to be
+thoroughly unconscious of the fact.  Not even Fleur loves Soames
+as he feels he ought to be loved.  But in pitying Soames, readers
+incline, perhaps, to animus against Irene: After all, they think,
+he wasn't a bad fellow, it wasn't his fault; she ought to have
+forgiven him, and so on!
+
+And, taking sides, they lose perception of the simple truth,
+which underlies the whole story, that where sex attraction is
+utterly and definitely lacking in one partner to a union, no
+amount of pity, or reason, or duty, or what not, can overcome a
+repulsion implicit in Nature.  Whether it ought to, or no, is
+beside the point; because in fact it never does.  And where Irene
+seems hard and cruel, as in the Bois de Boulogne, or the Goupenor
+Gallery, she is but wisely realistic--knowing that the least
+concession is the inch which precedes the impossible, the
+repulsive ell.
+
+A criticism one might pass on the last phase of the Saga is the
+complaint that Irene and Jolyon those rebels against property--
+claim spiritual property in their son Jon.  But it would be
+hypercriticism, as the tale is told.  No father and mother could
+have let the boy marry Fleur without knowledge of the facts; and
+the facts determine Jon, not the persuasion of his parents.
+Moreover, Jolyon's persuasion is not on his own account, but on
+Irene's, and Irene's persuasion becomes a reiterated: "Don't
+think of me, think of yourself!" That Jon, knowing the facts, can
+realise his mother's feelings, will hardly with justice be held
+proof that she is, after all, a Forsyte.
+
+But though the impingement of Beauty and the claims of Freedom on
+a possessive world are the main prepossessions of the Forsyte
+Saga, it cannot be absolved from the charge of embalming the
+upper-middle class.  As the old Egyptians placed around their
+mummies the necessaries of a future existence, so I have
+endeavoured to lay beside the, figures of Aunts Ann and Juley and
+Hester, of Timothy and Swithin, of Old Jolyon and James, and of
+their sons, that which shall guarantee them a little life here-
+after, a little balm in the hurried Gilead of a dissolving
+"Progress."
+
+If the upper-middle class, with other classes, is destined to
+"move on" into amorphism, here, pickled in these pages, it lies
+under glass for strollers in the wide and ill-arranged museum of
+Letters.  Here it rests, preserved in its own juice: The Sense
+of Property.
+
+1922.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN OF PROPERTY
+
+by JOHN GALSWORTHY
+
+
+
+
+"........  You will answer
+The slaves are ours ....."
+-Merchant of Venice.
+
+
+
+
+TO EDWARD GARNETT
+
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+'AT HOME' AT OLD JOLYON'S
+
+
+Those privileged to be present at a family festival of the
+Forsytes have seen that charming and instructive sight--an upper
+middle-class family in full plumage.  But whosoever of these
+favoured persons has possessed the gift of psychological analysis
+(a talent without monetary value and properly ignored by the
+Forsytes), has witnessed a spectacle, not only delightful in
+itself, but illustrative of an obscure human problem.  In plainer
+words, he has gleaned from a gathering of this family--no branch
+of which had a liking for the other, between no three members of
+whom existed anything worthy of the name of sympathy--evidence of
+that mysterious concrete tenacity which renders a family so
+formidable a unit of society, so clear a reproduction of society
+in miniature.  He has been admitted to a vision of the dim roads
+of social progress, has understood something of patriarchal life,
+of the swarmings of savage hordes, of the rise and fall of
+nations.  He is like one who, having watched a tree grow from its
+planting--a paragon of tenacity, insulation, and success, amidst
+the deaths of a hundred other plants less fibrous, sappy, and
+persistent--one day will see it flourishing with bland, full
+foliage, in an almost repugnant prosperity, at the summit of its
+efflorescence.
+
+On June 15, eighteen eighty-six, about four of the afternoon, the
+observer who chanced to be present at the house of old Jolyon
+Forsyte in Stanhope Gate, might have seen the highest
+efflorescence of the Forsytes.
+
+This was the occasion of an 'at home' to celebrate the engagement
+of Miss June Forsyte, old Jolyon's granddaughter, to Mr. Philip
+Bosinney.  In the bravery of light gloves, buff waistcoats,
+feathers and frocks, the family were present, even Aunt Ann, who
+now but seldom left the comer of her brother Timothy's green
+drawing-room, where, under the aegis of a plume of dyed pampas
+grass in a light blue vase, she sat all day reading and knitting,
+surrounded by the effigies of three generations of Forsytes.
+Even Aunt Ann was there; her inflexible back, and the dignity of
+her calm old face personifying the rigid possessiveness of the
+family idea.
+
+When a Forsyte was engaged, married, or born, the Forsytes were
+present; when a Forsyte died--but no Forsyte had as yet died;
+they did not die; death being contrary to their principles, they
+took precautions against it, the instinctive precautions of
+highly vitalized persons who resent encroachments on their
+property.
+
+About the Forsytes mingling that day with the crowd of other
+guests, there was a more than ordinarily groomed look, an alert,
+inquisitive assurance, a brilliant respectability, as though they
+were attired in defiance of something.  The habitual sniff on the
+face of Soames Forsyte had spread through their ranks; they were
+on their guard.
+
+The subconscious offensiveness of their attitude has constituted
+old Jolyon's 'home' the psychological moment of the family
+history, made it the prelude of their drama.
+
+The Forsytes were resentful of something, not individually, but
+as a family; this resentment expressed itself in an added
+perfection of raiment, an exuberance of family cordiality, an
+exaggeration of family importance, and--the sniff.  Danger--so
+indispensable in bringing out the fundamental quality of any
+society, group, or individual--was what the Forsytes scented; the
+premonition of danger put a burnish on their armour.  For the
+first time, as a family, they appeared to have an instinct of
+being in contact, with some strange and unsafe thing.
+
+Over against the piano a man of bulk and stature was wearing two
+waistcoats on his wide chest, two waistcoats and a ruby pin,
+instead of the single satin waistcoat and diamond pin of more
+usual occasions, and his shaven, square, old face, the colour of
+pale leather, with pale eyes, had its most dignified look, above
+his satin stock.  This was Swithin Forsyte.  Close to the window,
+where he could get more than his fair share of fresh air, the
+other twin, James--the fat and the lean of it, old Jolyon called
+these brothers--like the bulky Swithin, over six feet in height,
+but very lean, as though destined from his birth to strike a
+balance and maintain an average, brooded over the scene with his
+permanent stoop; his grey eyes had an air of fixed absorption in
+some secret worry, broken at intervals by a rapid, shifting
+scrutiny of surrounding facts; his cheeks, thinned by two
+parallel folds, and a long, clean-shaven upper lip, were framed
+within Dundreary whiskers.  In his hands he turned and turned a
+piece of china.  Not far off, listening to a lady in brown, his
+only son Soames, pale and well-shaved, dark-haired, rather bald,
+had poked his chin up sideways, carrying his nose with that
+aforesaid appearance of 'sniff,' as though despising an egg which
+he knew he could not digest.  Behind him his cousin, the tall
+George, son of the fifth Forsyte, Roger, had a Quilpish look on
+his fleshy face, pondering one of his sardonic jests.  Something
+inherent to the occasion had affected them all.
+
+Seated in a row close to one another were three  ladies--Aunts
+Ann, Hester (the two Forsyte maids), and Juley (short for Julia),
+who not in first youth had so far forgotten herself as to marry
+Septimus Small, a man of poor constitution.  She had survived him
+for many years.  With her elder and younger sister she lived now
+in the house of Timothy, her sixth and youngest brother, on the
+Bayswater Road.  Each of these ladies held fans in their hands,
+and each with some touch of colour, some emphatic feather or
+brooch, testified to the solemnity of the opportunity.
+
+In the centre of the room, under the chandelier, as became a
+host, stood the head of the family, old Jolyon himself.  Eighty
+years of age, with his fine, white hair, his dome-like forehead,
+his little, dark grey eyes, and an immense white moustache, which
+drooped and spread below the level of his strong jaw, he had a
+patriarchal look, and in spite of lean cheeks and hollows at his
+temples, seemed master of perennial youth.  He held himself
+extremely upright, and his shrewd, steady  eyes had lost none of
+their clear shining.  Thus  he gave an impression of superiority
+to the  doubts and dislikes of smaller men.  Having had  his own
+way for innumerable years, he had  earned a prescriptive right to
+it.  It would never have occurred to old Jolyon that it was
+necessary to wear a look of doubt or of defiance.
+
+Between him and the four other brothers who were present, James,
+Swithin, Nicholas, and Roger, there was much difference, much
+similarity.  In turn, each of these four brothers was very
+different from the other, yet they, too, were alike.
+
+Through the varying features and expression of those five faces
+could be marked a certain steadfastness of chin, underlying
+surface distinctions, marking a racial stamp, too prehistoric to
+trace, too remote and permanent to discuss--the  very hall-mark
+and guarantee of the family fortunes.
+
+Among the younger generation, in the tall, bull-like George, in
+pallid strenuous Archibald, in young Nicholas with his sweet and
+tentative obstinacy, in the grave and foppishly determined
+Eustace, there was this same stamp--less meaningful perhaps, but
+unmistakable--a sign of something ineradicable in the family
+soul. At one time or another during the afternoon, all these
+faces, so dissimilar and so alike, had worn an expression of
+distrust, the object of which was undoubtedly the man whose
+acquaintance they were thus assembled to make.  Philip Bosinney
+was known to be a young man without fortune, but Forsyte girls
+had become engaged to such before, and had actually married them.
+It was not altogether for this reason, therefore, that the minds
+of the Forsytes misgave them.  They could not have explained the
+origin of a misgiving obscured by the mist of family gossip.  A
+story was undoubtedly told that he had paid his duty call to
+Aunts Ann, Juley, and Hester, in a soft grey hat--a soft grey
+hat, not even a new one--a dusty thing with a shapeless crown.
+"So, extraordinary, my dear--so odd," Aunt Hester, passing
+through the little, dark hall (she was rather short-sighted), had
+tried to 'shoo' it off a chair, taking it for a strange,
+disreputable cat--Tommy had such disgraceful friends!  She was
+disturbed when it did not move.
+
+Like an artist for ever seeking to discover the significant
+trifle which embodies the whole character of a scene, or place,
+or person, so those unconscious artists--the Forsytes had
+fastened by intuition on this hat; it was their significant
+trifle, the detail in which was embedded the meaning of the whole
+matter; for each had asked himself: "Come, now, should I have
+paid that visit in that hat?" and each had answered "No!" and
+some, with more imagination than others, had added: "It would
+never have come into my head!"
+
+George, on hearing the story, grinned.  The hat had obviously
+been worn as a practical joke!  He himself was a connoisseur of
+such. "Very haughty!" he said, "the wild Buccaneer."
+
+And this mot, the 'Buccaneer,' was bandied from mouth to mouth,
+till it became the favourite mode of alluding to Bosinney.
+
+Her aunts reproached June afterwards about the hat.
+
+"We don't think you ought to let him, dear!" they had said.
+
+June had answered in her imperious brisk way, like the little
+embodiment of will she was:  "Oh! what does it matter?  Phil
+never knows what he's got on!"
+
+No one had credited an answer so outrageous.  A man not to know
+what he had on?  No, no!  What indeed was this young man, who, in
+becoming engaged to June, old Jolyon's acknowledged heiress, had
+done so well for himself?  He was an architect, not in itself a
+sufficient reason for wearing such a hat.  None of the Forsytes
+happened to be architects, but one of them knew two architects
+who would never have worn such a hat upon a call of ceremony in
+the London season.
+
+Dangerous--ah, dangerous!  June, of course, had not seen this,
+but, though not yet nineteen, she was notorious.  Had she not
+said to Mrs. Soames--who was always so beautifully dressed--that
+feathers were vulgar?  Mrs. Soames had actually given up wearing
+feathers, so dreadfully downright was dear June!
+
+These misgivings, this disapproval, and perfectly genuine
+distrust, did not prevent the Forsytes from gathering to old
+Jolyon's invitation.  An 'At Home' at Stanhope Gate was a great
+rarity; none had been held for twelve years, not indeed, since
+old Mrs. Jolyon had died.
+
+Never had there been so full an assembly, for, mysteriously
+united in spite of all their differences, they had taken arms
+against a common peril.  Like cattle when a dog comes into the
+field, they stood head to head and shoulder to shoulder, prepared
+to run upon and trample the invader to death.  They had come,
+too, no doubt, to get some notion of what sort of presents they
+would ultimately be expected to give; for though the question of
+wedding gifts was usually graduated in this way: 'What are you
+givin'?  Nicholas is givin' spoons!'--so very much depended on the
+bridegroom.  If he were sleek, well-brushed, prosperous-looking,
+it was more necessary to give him nice things; he would expect
+them.  In the end each gave exactly what was right and proper, by
+a species of family adjustment arrived at as prices are arrived
+at on the Stock Exchange--the exact niceties being regulated at
+Timothy's commodious, red-brick residence in Bayswater,
+overlooking the Park, where dwelt Aunts Ann, Juley, and Hester.
+
+The uneasiness of the Forsyte family has been justified by the
+simple mention of the hat.  How impossible and wrong would it
+have been for any family, with the regard for appearances which
+should ever characterize the great upper middle-class, to feel
+otherwise than uneasy!
+
+The author of the uneasiness stood talking to June by the further
+door; his curly hair had a rumpled appearance, as though he found
+what was going on around him unusual.  He had an air, too, of
+having a joke all to himself.  George, speaking aside to his
+brother, Eustace, said:
+
+"Looks as if he might make a bolt of it--the dashing Buccaneer!"
+
+This 'very singular-looking man,' as Mrs. Small afterwards called
+him, was of medium height and strong build, with a pale, brown
+face, a dust-coloured moustache, very prominent cheek-bones, and
+hollow checks.  His forehead sloped back towards the crown of his
+head, and bulged out in bumps over the eyes, like foreheads seen
+in the Lion-house at the Zoo.  He had sherry-coloured eyes,
+disconcertingly inattentive at times.  Old Jolyon's coachman,
+after driving June and Bosinney to the theatre, had remarked to
+the butler:
+
+"I dunno what to make of 'im.  Looks to me for all the world like
+an 'alf-tame leopard." And every now and then a Forsyte would
+come up, sidle round, and take a look at him.
+
+June stood in front, fending off this idle curiosity--a little
+bit of a thing, as somebody once said, 'all hair and spirit,'
+with fearless blue eyes, a firm jaw, and a bright colour, whose
+face and body seemed too slender for her crown of red-gold hair.
+
+A tall woman, with a beautiful figure, which some member of the
+family had once compared to a heathen goddess, stood looking at
+these two with a shadowy smile.
+
+Her hands, gloved in French grey, were crossed one over the
+other, her grave, charming face held to one side, and the eyes of
+all men near were fastened on it.  Her figure swayed, so balanced
+that the very air seemed to set it moving.  There was warmth, but
+little colour, in her cheeks; her large, dark eyes were soft.
+
+But it was at her lips--asking a question, giving an answer, with
+that shadowy smile--that men looked; they were sensitive lips,
+sensuous and sweet, and through them seemed to come warmth and
+perfume like the warmth and perfume of a flower.
+
+The engaged couple thus scrutinized were unconscious of this
+passive goddess.  It was Bosinney who first noticed her, and
+asked her name.
+
+June took her lover up to the woman with the beautiful figure.
+
+"Irene is my greatest chum," she said: "Please be good friends,
+you two!"
+
+At the little lady's command they all three smiled; and while
+they were smiling, Soames Forsyte, silently appearing from behind
+the woman with the beautiful figure, who was his wife, said:
+
+"Ah!  introduce me too!"
+
+He was seldom, indeed, far from Irene's side at public functions,
+and even when separated by the exigencies of social intercourse,
+could be seen following her about with his eyes, in which were
+strange expressions of watchfulness and longing.
+
+At the window his father, James, was still scrutinizing the marks
+on the piece of china.
+
+"I wonder at Jolyon's allowing this engagement," he said to Aunt
+Ann.  "They tell me there's no chance of their getting married
+for years.  This young Bosinney" (he made the word a dactyl in
+opposition to general usage of a short o) "has got nothing.  When
+Winifred married Dartie, I made him bring every penny into
+settlement--lucky thing, too--they'd ha' had nothing by this
+time!"
+
+Aunt Ann looked up from her velvet chair.  Grey curls banded her
+forehead, curls that, unchanged for decades, had extinguished in
+the family all sense of time.  She made no reply, for she rarely
+spoke, husbanding her aged voice; but to James, uneasy of
+conscience, her look was as good as an answer.
+
+"Well," he said, "I couldn't help Irene's having no money.
+Soames was in such a hurry; he got quite thin dancing attendance
+on her."
+
+Putting the bowl pettishly down on the piano, he let his eyes
+wander to the group by the door.
+
+"It's my opinion," he said unexpectedly, "that it's just as well
+as it is."
+
+Aunt Ann did not ask him to explain this strange utterance.  She
+knew what he was thinking.  If Irene had no money she would not
+be so foolish as to do anything wrong; for they said--they said--
+she had been asking for a separate room; but, of course, Soames
+had not....
+
+James interrupted her reverie:
+
+"But where," he asked, "was Timothy?  Hadn't he come with them?"
+
+Through Aunt Ann's compressed lips a tender smile forced its way:
+
+"No, he didn't think it wise, with so much of this diphtheria
+about; and he so liable to take things."
+
+James answered:
+
+"Well, HE takes good care of himself.  I can't afford to take the
+care of myself that he does."
+
+Nor was it easy to say which, of admiration, envy, or contempt,
+was dominant in that remark.
+
+Timothy, indeed, was seldom seen.  The baby of the family, a
+publisher by profession, he had some years before, when business
+was at full tide, scented out the stagnation which, indeed, had
+not yet come, but which ultimately, as all agreed, was bound to
+set in, and, selling his share in a firm engaged mainly in the
+production of religious books, had invested the quite conspicuous
+proceeds in three per cent. consols.  By this act he had at once
+assumed an isolated position, no other Forsyte being content with
+less than four per cent.  for his money; and this isolation had
+slowly and surely undermined a spirit perhaps better than
+commonly endowed with caution.  He had become almost a myth--a
+kind of incarnation of security haunting the background of the
+Forsyte universe.  He had never committed the imprudence of
+marrying, or encumbering himself in any way with children.
+
+James resumed, tapping the piece of china:
+
+"This isn't real old Worcester.  I s'pose Jolyon's told you
+something about the young man.  From all I can learn, he's got no
+business, no income, and no connection worth speaking of; but
+then, I know nothing--nobody tells me anything."
+
+Aunt Ann shook her head.  Over her square-chinned, aquiline old
+face a trembling passed; the spidery fingers of her hands pressed
+against each other and interlaced, as though she were subtly
+recharging her will.
+
+The eldest by some years of all the Forsytes, she held a peculiar
+position amongst them.  Opportunists and egotists one and all--
+though not, indeed, more so than their neighbours--they quailed
+before her incorruptible figure, and, when opportunities were too
+strong, what could they do but avoid her!
+
+Twisting his long, thin legs, James went on:
+
+"Jolyon, he will have his own way.  He's got no children"--and
+stopped, recollecting the continued existence of old Jolyon's
+son, young Jolyon, June's father, who had made such a mess of it,
+and done for himself by deserting his wife and child and running
+away with that foreign governess.  "Well," he resumed hastily,
+"if he likes to do these things, I s'pose he can afford to.  Now,
+what's he going to give her?  I s'pose he'll give her a thousand
+a year; he's got nobody else to leave his money to."
+
+He stretched out his hand to meet that of a dapper, clean-shaven
+man, with hardly a hair on his head, a long, broken nose, full
+lips, and cold grey eyes under rectangular brows.
+
+"Well, Nick," he muttered, "how are you?"
+
+Nicholas Forsyte, with his bird-like rapidity and the look of a
+preternaturally sage schoolboy (he had made a large fortune,
+quite legitimately, out of the companies of which he was a
+director), placed within that cold palm the tips of his still
+colder fingers and hastily withdrew them.
+
+"I'm bad," he said, pouting--"been bad all the week; don't sleep
+at night.  The doctor can't tell why.  He's a clever fellow, or I
+shouldn't have him, but I get nothing out of him but bills."
+
+"Doctors!" said James, coming down sharp on his words: "I've had
+all the doctors in London for one or another of us.  There's no
+satisfaction to be got out of them; they'll tell you anything.
+There's Swithin, now.  What good have they done him?  There he
+is; he's bigger than ever; he's enormous; they can't get his
+weight down.  Look at him!"
+
+Swithin Forsyte, tall, square, and broad, with a chest like a
+pouter pigeon's in its plumage of bright waistcoats, came
+strutting towards them.
+
+"Er--how are you?" he said in his dandified way, aspirating the
+'h' strongly (this difficult letter was almost absolutely safe in
+his keeping)--"how are you?"
+
+Each brother wore an air of aggravation as he looked at the other
+two, knowing by experience that they would try to eclipse his
+ailments.
+
+"We were just saying," said James, "that you don't get any
+thinner."
+
+Swithin protruded his pale round eyes with the effort of hearing.
+
+"Thinner?  I'm in good case," he said, leaning a little forward,
+"not one of your thread-papers like you!"
+
+But, afraid of losing the expansion of his chest, he leaned back
+again into a state of immobility, for he prized nothing so highly
+as a distinguished appearance.
+
+Aunt Ann turned her old eyes from one to the other.  Indulgent
+and severe was her look.  In turn the three brothers looked at
+Ann.  She was getting shaky.  Wonderful woman!  Eighty-six if a
+day; might live another ten years, and had never been strong.
+Swithin and James, the twins, were only seventy-five, Nicholas a
+mere baby of seventy or so.  All were strong, and the inference
+was comforting. Of all forms of property their respective healths
+naturally concerned them most.
+
+"I'm very well in myself," proceeded James, "but my nerves are
+out of order.  The least thing worries me to death.  I shall have
+to go to Bath."
+
+"Bath!" said Nicholas.  "I've tried Harrogate.  That's no good.
+What I want is sea air.  There's nothing like Yarmouth.  Now,
+when I go there I sleep...."
+
+"My liver's very bad," interrupted Swithin slowly.  "Dreadful
+pain here;" and he placed his hand on his right side.
+
+"Want of exercise," muttered James, his eyes on the china.  He
+quickly added: "I get a pain there, too."
+
+Swithin reddened, a resemblance to a turkey-cock coming upon his
+old face.
+
+"Exercise!" he said.  "I take plenty: I never use the lift at the
+Club."
+
+"I didn't know," James hurried out.  "I know nothing about
+anybody; nobody tells me anything...."
+
+Swithin fixed him with a stare:
+
+"What do you do for a pain there?"
+
+James brightened.
+
+"I take a compound...."
+
+"How are you, uncle?"
+
+June stood before him, her resolute small face raised from her
+little height to his great height, and her hand outheld.
+
+The brightness faded from James's visage.
+
+"How are you?" he said, brooding over her.  "So you're going to
+Wales to-morrow to visit your young man's aunts?  You'll have a
+lot of rain there.  This isn't real old Worcester."  He tapped the
+bowl.  "Now, that set I gave your mother when she married was the
+genuine thing."
+
+June shook hands one by one with her three great-uncles, and
+turned to Aunt Ann.  A very sweet look had come into the old
+lady's face, she kissed the girl's check with trembling fervour.
+
+"Well, my dear," she said, "and so you're going for a whole
+month!"
+
+The girl passed on, and Aunt Ann looked after her slim little
+figure.  The old lady's round, steel grey eyes, over which a film
+like a bird's was beginning to come, followed her wistfully
+amongst the bustling crowd, for people were beginning to
+say good-bye; and her finger-tips, pressing and pressing against
+each other, were busy again with the recharging of her will
+against that inevitable ultimate departure of her own.
+
+'Yes,' she thought, 'everybody's been most kind; quite a lot of
+people come to congratulate her.  She ought to be very happy.'
+Amongst the throng of people by the door, the well-dressed throng
+drawn from the families of lawyers and doctors, from the Stock
+Exchange, and all the innumerable avocations of the upper-middle
+class--there were only some twenty percent of Forsytes; but to
+Aunt Ann they seemed all Forsytes--and certainly there was not
+much difference--she saw only her own flesh and blood.  It was
+her world, this family, and she knew no other, had never perhaps
+known any other.  All their little secrets, illnesses,
+engagements, and marriages, how they were getting on, and whether
+they were making money--all this was her property, her delight,
+her life; beyond this only a vague, shadowy mist of facts and
+persons of no real significance.  This it was that she would have
+to lay down when it came to her turn  to die; this which gave to
+her that importance, that secret self-importance, without which
+none of us can bear to live; and to this she clung wistfully,
+with a greed that grew each day!  If life were slipping away from
+her, this she would retain to the end.
+
+She thought of June's father, young Jolyon, who had run away with
+that foreign girl.  And what a sad blow to his father and to them
+all.  Such a promising young fellow!  A sad blow, though there
+had been no public scandal, most fortunately, Jo's wife seeking
+for no divorce!  A long time ago!  And when June's mother died,
+six years ago, Jo had married that woman, and they had two
+children now, so she had heard.  Still, he had forfeited his
+right to be there, had cheated her of the complete fulfilment of
+her family pride, deprived her of the rightful pleasure of seeing
+and kissing him of whom she had been so proud, such a promising
+young fellow!  The thought rankled with the bitterness of a
+long-inflicted injury in her tenacious old heart.  A little water
+stood in her eyes.  With a handkerchief of the finest lawn she
+wiped them stealthily.
+
+"Well, Aunt Ann?" said a voice behind.
+
+Soames Forsyte, flat-shouldered, clean-shaven, flat-cheeked,
+flat-waisted, yet with something round and secret about his whole
+appearance, looked downwards and aslant at Aunt Ann, as though
+trying to see through the side of his own nose.
+
+"And what do you think of the engagement?" he asked.
+
+Aunt Ann's eyes rested on him proudly; of all the nephews since
+young Jolyon's departure from the family nest, he was now her
+favourite, for she recognised in him a sure trustee of the family
+soul that must so soon slip beyond her keeping.
+
+"Very nice for the young man," she said; "and he's a good-looking
+young fellow; but I doubt if he's quite the right lover for dear
+June."
+
+Soames touched the edge of a gold-lacquered lustre.
+
+"She'll tame him," he said, stealthily wetting his finger and
+rubbing it on the knobby bulbs.  "That's genuine old lacquer; you
+can't get it nowadays.  It'd do well in a sale at Jobson's." He
+spoke with relish, as though he felt that he was cheering up his
+old aunt.  It was seldom he was so confidential.  "I wouldn't
+mind having it myself," he added; "you can always get your price
+for old lacquer."
+
+"You're so clever with all those things," said Aunt Ann.  "And
+how is dear Irene?"
+
+Soames's smile died.
+
+"Pretty well," he said.  "Complains she can't sleep; she sleeps a
+great deal better than I do," and he looked at his wife, who was
+talking to Bosinney by the door.
+
+Aunt Ann sighed.
+
+"Perhaps," she said, "it will be just as well for her not to see
+so much of June.  She's such a decided character, dear June!"
+
+Soames flushed; his flushes passed rapidly over his flat cheeks
+and centered between his eyes, where they remained, the stamp of
+disturbing thoughts.
+
+"I don't know what she sees in that little flibbertigibbet," he
+burst out, but noticing that they were no longer alone, he turned
+and again began examining the lustre.
+
+"They tell me Jolyon's bought another house," said his father's
+voice close by; "he must have a lot of money--he must have more
+money than he knows what to do with!  Montpellier Square, they
+say; close to Soames!  They never told me, Irene never tells me
+anything!"
+
+"Capital position, not two minutes from me," said the voice of
+Swithin, "and from my rooms I can drive to the Club in eight."
+
+The position of their houses was of vital importance to the
+Forsytes, nor was this remarkable, since the whole spirit of
+their success was embodied therein.
+
+Their father, of farming stock, had come from Dorsetshire near
+the beginning of the century.
+
+'Superior Dosset Forsyte, as he was called by his intimates, had
+been a stonemason by trade, and risen to the position of a
+master-builder.
+
+Towards the end of his life he moved to London, where, building
+on until he died, he was buried at Highgate.  He left over thirty
+thousand pounds between his ten children.  Old Jolyon alluded to
+him, if at all, as 'A hard, thick sort of man; not much
+refinement about him.' The second generation of Forsytes felt
+indeed that he was not greatly to their credit.  The only
+aristocratic trait they could find in his character was a habit
+of drinking Madeira.
+
+Aunt Hester, an authority on family history, described him thus:
+"I don't recollect that he ever did anything; at least, not in my
+time.  He was  er--an owner of houses, my dear.  His hair about
+your Uncle Swithin's colour; rather a square build.  Tall?  No--
+not very tall" (he had been five feet five, with a mottled
+face); "a fresh-coloured man.  I remember he used to drink
+Madeira; but ask your Aunt Ann.  What was his father?  He--er--
+had to do with the land down in Dorsetshire, by the sea."
+
+James once went down to see for himself what sort of place this
+was that they had come from.  He found two old farms, with a cart
+track rutted into the pink earth, leading down to a mill by the
+beach; a little grey church with a buttressed outer wall, and a
+smaller and greyer chapel.  The stream which worked the mill came
+bubbling down in a dozen rivulets, and pigs were hunting round
+that estuary.  A haze hovered over the prospect.  Down this
+hollow, with their feet deep in the mud and their faces towards
+the sea, it appeared that the primeval Forsytes had been content
+to walk Sunday after Sunday for hundreds of years.
+
+Whether or no James had cherished hopes of an inheritance, or of
+something rather distinguished to be found down there, he came
+back to town in a poor way, and went about with a pathetic
+attempt at making the best of a bad job.
+
+"There's very little to be had out of that," he said; "regular
+country little place, old as the hills...."
+
+Its age was felt to be a comfort.  Old Jolyon, in whom a
+desperate honesty welled up at times, would allude to his
+ancestors as: "Yeomen--I suppose very small beer."  Yet he would
+repeat the word 'yeomen' as if it afforded him consolation.
+
+They had all done so well for themselves, these Forsytes, that
+they were all what is called 'of a certain position.' They had
+shares in all sorts of things, not as yet--with the exception of
+Timothy--in consols, for they had no dread in life like that of
+3 per cent. for their money.  They collected pictures, too, and
+were supporters of such charitable  institutions as might be
+beneficial to their sick domestics.  From their father, the
+builder, they inherited a talent for bricks and mortar.
+Originally, perhaps, members of some primitive sect, they were
+now in the natural course of things members of the Church of
+England, and caused their wives and children to attend with some
+regularity the more fashionable churches of the Metropolis.  To
+have doubted their Christianity would have caused them both pain
+and surprise.  Some of them paid for pews, thus expressing in the
+most practical form their sympathy with the teachings of Christ.
+
+Their residences, placed at stated intervals round the park,
+watched like sentinels, lest the fair heart of this London, where
+their desires were fixed, should slip from their clutches, and
+leave them lower in their own estimations.
+
+There was old Jolyon in Stanhope Place; the Jameses in Park Lane;
+Swithin in the lonely glory of orange and blue chambers in Hyde
+Park Mansions--he had never married, not he--the Soamses in their
+nest off Knightsbridge; the Rogers in Prince's Gardens (Roger was
+that remarkable Forsyte who had conceived and carried out the
+notion of bringing up his four sons to a new profession.
+"Collect house property, nothing like it," he would say;
+"I never did anything else").
+
+The Haymans again--Mrs. Hayman was the one married Forsyte
+sister--in a house high up on Campden Hill, shaped like a
+giraffe, and so tall that it gave the observer a crick in the
+neck; the Nicholases in Ladbroke Grove, a spacious abode and a
+great bargain; and last, but not least, Timothy's on the
+Bayswater Road, where Ann, and Juley, and Hester, lived under his
+protection.
+
+But all this time James was musing, and now he inquired of his
+host and brother what he had given for that house in Montpellier
+Square.  He himself had had his eye on a house there for the last
+two years, but they wanted such a price.
+
+Old Jolyon recounted the details of his purchase.
+
+"Twenty-two years to run?" repeated James; "The very house I was
+after--you've given too much for it!"
+
+Old Jolyon frowned.
+
+"It's not that I want it," said James hastily; it wouldn't suit
+my purpose at that price.  Soames knows the house, well--he'll
+tell you it's too dear--his opinion's worth having."
+
+"I don't," said old Jolyon, "care a fig for his opinion."
+
+"Well," murmured James, "you will have your own way--it's a good
+opinion.  Good-bye!  We're going to drive down to Hurlingham.
+They tell me June's going to Wales.  You'll be lonely tomorrow.
+What'll you do with yourself?  You'd better come and dine with
+us!"
+
+Old Jolyon refused.  He went down to the front door and saw them
+into their barouche, and twinkled at them, having already
+forgotten his spleen--Mrs. James facing the horses, tall and
+majestic with auburn hair; on her left, Irene--the two husbands,
+father and son, sitting forward, as though they expected
+something, opposite their wives.  Bobbing and bounding upon the
+spring cushions, silent, swaying to each motion of their chariot,
+old Jolyon watched them drive away under the sunlight.
+
+During the drive the silence was broken by Mrs. James.
+
+"Did you ever see such a collection of rumty-too people?"
+
+Soames, glancing at her beneath his eyelids, nodded, and he saw
+Irene steal at him one of her unfathomable looks.  It is likely
+enough that each branch of the Forsyte family made that remark as
+they drove away from old Jolyon's 'At Home!'
+
+Amongst the last of the departing guests the fourth and fifth
+brothers, Nicholas and Roger, walked away together, directing
+their steps alongside Hyde Park towards the Praed Street Station
+of the Underground.  Like all other Forsytes of a certain age
+they kept carriages of their own, and never took cabs if by any
+means they could avoid it.
+
+The day was bright, the trees of the Park in the full beauty of
+mid-June foliage; the brothers did not seem to notice phenomena,
+which contributed, nevertheless, to the jauntiness of promenade
+and conversation.
+
+"Yes," said Roger, "she's a good-lookin' woman, that wife of
+Soames's.  I'm told they don't get on."
+
+This brother had a high forehead, and the freshest colour of any
+of the Forsytes; his light grey eyes measured the street frontage
+of the houses by the way, and now and then he would level his,
+umbrella and take a 'lunar,' as he expressed it, of the varying
+heights.
+
+"She'd no money," replied Nicholas.
+
+He himself had married a good deal of money, of which, it being
+then the golden age before the Married Women's Property Act, he
+had mercifully been enabled to make a successful use.
+
+"What was her father?"
+
+"Heron was his name, a Professor, so they tell me."
+
+Roger shook his head.
+
+"There's no money in that," he said.
+
+"They say her mother's father was cement."
+
+Roger's face brightened.
+
+"But he went bankrupt," went on Nicholas.
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Roger, "Soames will have trouble with her; you
+mark my words, he'll have trouble--she's got a foreign look."
+
+Nicholas licked his lips.
+
+"She's a pretty woman," and he waved aside a crossing-sweeper.
+
+"How did he get hold of her?" asked Roger presently.  "She must
+cost him a pretty penny in dress!"
+
+"Ann tells me," replied Nicholas," he was half-cracked about her.
+She refused him five times.  James, he's nervous about it, I can
+see."
+
+"Ah!" said Roger again; "I'm sorry for James; he had trouble with
+Dartie."  His pleasant colour was heightened by exercise, he swung
+his umbrella to the level of his eye more frequently than ever.
+Nicholas's face also wore a pleasant look.
+
+"Too pale for me," he said, "but her figures capital!"
+
+Roger made no reply.
+
+"I call her distinguished-looking," he said at last--it was the
+highest praise in the Forsyte vocabulary.  "That young Bosinney
+will never do any good for himself.  They say at Burkitt's he's
+one of these artistic chaps--got an idea of improving English
+architecture; there's no money in that!  I should like to hear
+what Timothy would say to it."
+
+They entered the station.
+
+"What class are you going?  I go second."
+
+"No second for me," said Nicholas;--"you never know what you may
+catch."
+
+He took a first-class ticket to Notting Hill Gate; Roger a second
+to South Kensington.  The train coming in a minute later, the two
+brothers parted and entered their respective compartments.  Each
+felt aggrieved that the other had not modified his habits to
+secure his society a little longer; but as Roger voiced it in his
+thoughts:
+'Always a stubborn beggar, Nick!'
+
+And as Nicholas expressed it to himself:
+
+'Cantankerous chap Roger--always was!'
+
+There was little sentimentality about the Forsytes.  In that
+great London, which they had conquered and become merged in, what
+time had they to be sentimental?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+OLD JOLYON GOES TO THE OPERA
+
+
+At five o'clock the following day old Jolyon sat alone, a cigar
+between his lips, and on a table by his side a cup of tea.  He
+was tired, and  before he had finished his cigar he fell asleep.
+A fly settled on his hair, his breathing sounded heavy in the
+drowsy silence, his upper lip under the white moustache puffed in
+and out.  From between the fingers of his veined and wrinkled
+hand the cigar, dropping on the empty hearth, burned itself out.
+
+The gloomy little study, with windows of stained glass to
+exclude the view, was full of dark green velvet and
+heavily-carved mahogany--a suite of which old Jolyon was wont to
+say: 'Shouldn't wonder if it made a big price some day!'
+
+It was pleasant to think that in the after life he could get more
+for things than he had given.
+
+In the rich brown atmosphere peculiar to back rooms in the
+mansion of a Forsyte, the Rembrandtesque effect of his great
+head, with its white hair, against the cushion of his high-backed
+seat, was spoiled by the moustache, which imparted a somewhat
+military look to his face.  An old clock that had been with him
+since before his marriage forty years ago kept with its ticking a
+jealous record of the seconds slipping away forever from its old
+master.
+
+He had never cared for this room, hardly going into it from one
+year's end to another, except to take cigars from the Japanese
+cabinet in the corner, and the room now had its revenge.
+
+His temples, curving like thatches over the hollows beneath, his
+cheek-bones and chin, all were sharpened in his sleep, and there
+had come upon his face the confession that he was an old man.
+
+He woke.  June had gone!  James had said he would be lonely.
+James had always been a poor thing.  He recollected with
+satisfaction that he had bought that house over James's head.
+
+Serve him right for sticking at the price; the only thing the
+fellow thought of was money.  Had he given too much, though?  It
+wanted a lot of doing to--He dared say he would want all his
+money before he had done with this affair of June's.  He ought
+never to have allowed the engagement.  She had met this Bosinney
+at the house of Baynes, Baynes and Bildeboy, the architects.  He
+believed that Baynes, whom he knew--a bit of an old woman--was
+the young man's uncle by marriage.  After that she'd been always
+running after him; and when she took a thing into her head there
+was no stopping her.  She was continually taking up with 'lame
+ducks' of one sort or another.  This fellow had no money, but she
+must needs become engaged to him--a harumscarum, unpractical
+chap, who would get himself into no end of difficulties.
+
+She had come to him one day in her slap-dash way and told him;
+and, as if it were any consolation, she had added:
+
+"He's so splendid; he's often lived on cocoa for a week!"
+
+"And he wants you to live on cocoa too?"
+
+"Oh no; he is getting into the swim now."
+
+Old Jolyon had taken his cigar from under his white moustaches,
+stained by coffee at the edge, and looked at her, that little
+slip of a thing who had got such a grip of his heart.  He knew
+more about 'swims' than his granddaughter.  But she, having
+clasped her hands on his knees, rubbed her chin against him,
+making a sound like a purring cat.  And, knocking the ash off his
+cigar, he had exploded in nervous desperation:
+
+"You're all alike: you won't be satisfied till you've got what
+you want.  If you must come to grief, you must; I wash my hands
+of it."
+
+So, he had washed his hands of it, making the condition that they
+should not marry until Bosinney had at least four hundred a year.
+
+"I shan't be able to give you very much," he had said, a formula
+to which June was not unaccustomed."  Perhaps this What's-his-
+name will provide the cocoa."
+
+He had hardly seen anything of her since it began.  A bad
+business!  He had no notion of giving her a lot of money to
+enable a fellow he knew nothing about to live on in idleness.
+He had seen that sort of thing before; no good ever came of it.
+Worst of all, he had no hope of shaking her resolution; she was
+as obstinate as a mule, always had been from a child.  He didn't
+see where it was to end.  They must cut their coat according to
+their cloth.  He would not give way till he saw young Bosinney
+with an income of his own.  That June would have trouble with the
+fellow was as plain as a pikestaff; he had no more idea of money
+than a cow.  As to this rushing down to Wales to visit the young
+man's aunts, he fully expected they were old cats.
+
+And, motionless, old Jolyon stared at the wall; but for his open
+eyes, he might have been asleep....  The idea of supposing that
+young cub Soames could give him advice!  He had always been a
+cub, with his nose in the air!  He would be setting up as a man
+of property next, with a place in the country!  A man of
+property!  H'mph! Like his father, he was always nosing out
+bargains, a cold-blooded young beggar!
+
+He rose, and, going to the cabinet, began methodically stocking
+his cigar-case from a bundle fresh in.  They were not bad at the
+price, but you couldn't get a good cigar, nowadays, nothing to
+hold a candle to those old Superfinos of Hanson and Bridger's.
+That was a cigar!
+
+The thought, like some stealing perfume, carried him back to
+those wonderful nights at Richmond when after dinner he sat
+smoking on the terrace of the Crown and Sceptre with Nicholas
+Treffry and Traquair and Jack Herring and Anthony Thornworthy.
+How good his cigars were then!  Poor old Nick!--dead, and Jack
+Herring--dead, and Traquair--dead of that wife of his, and
+Thornworthy--awfully shaky (no wonder, with his appetite).
+
+Of all the company of those days he himself alone seemed left,
+except Swithin, of course, and he so outrageously big there was
+no doing anything with him.
+
+Difficult to believe it was so long ago; he felt young still!  Of
+all his thoughts, as he stood there counting his cigars, this was
+the most poignant, the most bitter.  With his white head and his
+loneliness he had remained young and green at heart.  And those
+Sunday afternoons on Hampstead Heath, when young Jolyon and he
+went for a stretch along the Spaniard's Road to Highgate, to
+Child's Hill, and back over the Heath again to dine at Jack
+Straw's Castle--how delicious his cigars were then!  And such
+weather!  There was no weather now.
+
+When June was a toddler of five, and every other Sunday he took
+her to the Zoo, away from the society of those two good women,
+her mother and her grandmother, and at the top of the bear den
+baited his umbrella with buns for her favourite bears, how sweet
+his cigars were then!
+
+Cigars!  He had not even succeeded in out-living his palate--the
+famous palate that in the fifties men swore by, and speaking of
+him, said: "Forsyte's the best palate in London!" The palate that
+in a sense had made his fortune--the fortune of the celebrated
+tea men, Forsyte and Treffry, whose tea, like no other man's tea,
+had a romantic aroma, the charm of a quite singular genuineness.
+About the house of Forsyte and Treffry in the City had clung an
+air of enterprise and mystery, of special dealings in special
+ships, at special ports, with special Orientals.
+
+He had worked at that business!  Men did work in those days!
+these young pups hardly knew the meaning of the word.  He had
+gone into every detail, known everything that went on, sometimes
+sat up all night over it.  And he had always chosen his agents
+himself, prided himself on it.  His eye for men, he used to say,
+had been the secret of his success, and the exercise of this
+masterful power of selection had been the only part of it all
+that he had really liked.  Not a career for a man of his ability.
+Even now, when the business had been turned into a Limited
+Liability Company, and was declining (he had got out of his
+shares long ago), he felt a sharp chagrin in thinking of that
+time.  How much better he might have done!  He would have
+succeeded splendidly at the Bar!  He had even thought of standing
+for Parliament.  How often had not Nicholas Treffry said to him:
+
+"You could do anything, Jo, if you weren't so d-damned careful of
+yourself!" Dear old Nick!  Such a good fellow, but a racketty
+chap!  The notorious Treffry!  He had never taken any care of
+himself.  So he was dead.  Old Jolyon counted his cigars with a
+steady hand, and it came into his mind to wonder if perhaps he
+had been too careful of himself.
+
+He put the cigar-case in the breast of his coat, buttoned it in,
+and walked up the long flights to his bedroom, leaning on one
+foot and the other, and helping himself by the bannister.  The
+house was too big.  After June was married, if she ever did marry
+this fellow, as he supposed she would, he would let it and go
+into rooms.  What was the use of keeping half a dozen servants
+eating their heads off?
+
+The butler came to the ring of his bell--a large man with a
+beard, a soft tread, and a peculiar capacity for silence.  Old
+Jolyon told him to put his dress clothes out; he was going to
+dine at the Club.
+
+How long had the carriage been back from taking Miss June to the
+station?  Since two?  Then let him come round at half-past six!
+
+The Club which old Jolyon entered on the stroke of seven was one
+of those political institutions of the upper middle class which
+have seen better days.  In spite of being talked about, perhaps
+in consequence of being talked about, it betrayed a disappointing
+vitality.  People had grown tired of saying that the 'Disunion'
+was on its last legs.  Old Jolyon would say it, too, yet
+disregarded the fact in a manner truly irritating to
+well-constituted Clubmen.
+
+"Why do you keep your name on?" Swithin often asked him with
+profound vexation.  "Why don't you join the 'Polyglot'?  You can't
+get a wine like our Heidsieck under twenty shillin' a bottle
+anywhere in London;" and, dropping his voice, he added: "There's
+only five hundred dozen left.  I drink it every night of my
+life."
+
+"I'll think of it," old Jolyon would answer; but when he did think
+of it there was always the question of fifty guineas entrance
+fee, and it would take him four or five years to get in.  He
+continued to think of it.
+
+He was too old to be a Liberal, had long ceased to believe in the
+political doctrines of his Club, had even been known to allude to
+them as 'wretched stuff,' and it afforded him pleasure to
+continue a member in the teeth of principles so opposed to his
+own.  He had always had a contempt for the place, having joined
+it many years ago when they refused to have him at the 'Hotch
+Potch' owing to his being 'in trade.'  As if he were not as good
+as any of them!  He naturally despised the Club that did take
+him.  The members were a poor lot, many of them in the City--
+stockbrokers, solicitors, auctioneers--what not!  Like most men
+of strong character but not too much originality, old Jolyon set
+small store by the class to which he belonged.  Faithfully he
+followed their customs, social and otherwise, and secretly he
+thought them 'a common lot.'
+
+Years and philosophy, of which he had his share, had dimmed the
+recollection of his defeat at the 'Hotch Potch'; and now in his
+thoughts it was enshrined as the Queen of Clubs.  He would have
+been a member all these years himself, but, owing to the slipshod
+way his proposer, Jack Herring, had gone to work, they had not
+known what they were doing in keeping him out.  Why! they had
+taken his son Jo at once, and he believed the boy was still a
+member; he had received a letter dated from there eight years
+ago.
+
+He had not been near the 'Disunion' for months, and the house had
+undergone the piebald decoration which people bestow on old
+houses and old ships when anxious to sell them.
+
+'Beastly colour, the smoking-room!' he thought.  'The dining-room
+is good!'
+
+Its gloomy chocolate, picked out with light green, took his
+fancy.
+
+He ordered dinner, and sat down in the very corner, at the very
+table perhaps! (things did not progress much at the 'Disunion,'
+a Club of almost Radical principles) at which he and young Jolyon
+used to sit twenty-five years ago, when he was taking the latter
+to Drury Lane, during his holidays.
+
+The boy had loved the theatre, and old Jolyon recalled how he
+used to sit opposite, concealing his excitement under a careful
+but transparent nonchalance.
+
+He ordered himself, too, the very dinner the boy had always
+chosen-soup, whitebait, cutlets, and a tart.  Ah! if he were
+only opposite now!
+
+The two had not met for fourteen years.  And not for the first
+time during those fourteen years old Jolyon wondered whether he
+had been a little to blame in the matter of his son.  An
+unfortunate love-affair with that precious flirt Danae Thorn-
+worthy (now Danae Pellew), Anthony Thornworthy's daughter, had
+thrown him on the rebound into the arms of June's mother.  He
+ought perhaps to have put a spoke in the wheel of their marriage;
+they were too young; but after that experience of Jo's
+susceptibility he had been only too anxious to see him married.
+And in four years the crash had come!  To have approved his son's
+conduct in that crash was, of course, impossible; reason and
+training--that combination of potent factors which stood for his
+principles--told him of this impossibility, and his heart cried
+out.  The grim remorselessness of that business had no pity for
+hearts.  There was June, the atom with flaming hair, who had
+climbed all over him, twined and twisted herself about him--about
+his heart that was made to be the plaything and beloved resort of
+tiny, helpless things.  With characteristic insight he saw he
+must part with one or with the other; no half-measures could
+serve in such a situation.  In that lay its tragedy.  And the
+tiny, helpless thing prevailed.  He would not run with the hare
+and hunt with the hounds, and so to his son he said good-bye.
+
+That good-bye had lasted until now.
+
+He had proposed to continue a reduced allowance to young Jolyon,
+but this had been refused, and perhaps that refusal had hurt him
+more than anything, for with it had gone the last outlet of his
+penned-in affection; and there had come such tangible and solid
+proof of rupture as only a transaction in property, a bestowal or
+refusal of such, could supply.
+
+His dinner tasted flat.  His pint of champagne was dry and bitter
+stuff, not like the Veuve Clicquots of old days.
+
+Over his cup of coffee, he bethought him that he would go to the
+opera.  In the Times, therefore--he had a distrust of other
+papers--he read the announcement for the evening.  It was
+'Fidelio.'
+
+Mercifully not one of those new-fangled German pantomimes by that
+fellow Wagner.
+
+Putting on his ancient opera hat, which, with its brim flattened
+by use, and huge capacity, looked like an emblem of greater days,
+and, pulling out an old pair of very thin lavender kid gloves
+smelling strongly of Russia leather, from habitual proximity to
+the  cigar-case in the pocket of his overcoat, he stepped into a
+hansom.
+
+The cab rattled gaily along the streets, and old Jolyon was
+struck by their unwonted animation.
+
+'The hotels must be doing a tremendous business,' he thought.  A
+few years ago there had been none of these big hotels.  He made
+a satisfactory reflection on some property he had in the
+neighbourhood.  It must be going up in value by leaps and bounds!
+What traffic!
+
+But from that he began indulging in one of those strange
+impersonal speculations, so uncharacteristic of a Forsyte,
+wherein lay, in part, the secret of his supremacy amongst them.
+What atoms men were, and what a lot of them!  And what would
+become of them all?
+
+He stumbled as he got out of the cab, gave the man his exact
+fare, walked up to the ticket office to take his stall, and stood
+there with his purse in his hand--he always carried his money in
+a purse, never having approved of that habit of carrying it
+loosely in the pockets, as so many young men did nowadays.  The
+official leaned out, like an old dog from a kennel.
+
+"Why," he said in a surprised voice, "it's Mr. Jolyon Forsyte!
+So it is!  Haven't seen you, sir, for years.  Dear me!  Times
+aren't what they were.  Why! you and your brother, and that
+auctioneer--Mr. Traquair, and Mr. Nicholas Treffry--you used to
+have six or seven stalls here regular every season.  And how are
+you, sir?  We don't get younger!"
+
+The colour in old Jolyon's eyes deepened; he paid his guinea.
+They had not forgotten him.  He marched in, to the sounds of the
+overture, like an old war-horse to battle.
+
+Folding his opera hat, he sat down, drew out his lavender gloves
+in the old way, and took up his glasses for a long look round the
+house.  Dropping them at last on his folded hat, he fixed his
+eyes on the curtain.  More poignantly than ever he felt that it
+was all over and done with him.  Where were all the women, the
+pretty women, the house used to be so full of?  Where was that
+old feeling in the heart as he waited for one of those great
+singers?  Where that sensation of the intoxication of life and
+of his own power to enjoy it all?
+
+The greatest opera-goer of his day!  There was no opera now!
+That fellow Wagner had ruined everything; no melody left, nor any
+voices to sing it.  Ah! the wonderful singers!  Gone!  He sat
+watching the old scenes acted, a numb feeling at his heart.
+
+From the curl of silver over his ear to the pose of his foot in
+its elastic-sided patent boot, there was nothing clumsy or weak
+about old Jolyon.  He was as upright--very nearly--as in those
+old times when he came every night; his sight was as good--almost
+as good.  But what a feeling of weariness and disillusion!
+
+He had been in the habit all his life of enjoying things, even
+imperfect things--and there had been many imperfect things--he
+had enjoyed them all with moderation, so as to keep himself
+young.  But now he was deserted by his power of enjoyment, by his
+philosophy, and left with this dreadful feeling that it was all
+done with.  Not even the Prisoners' Chorus, nor Florian's Song,
+had the power to dispel the gloom of his loneliness.
+
+If Jo were only with him!  The boy must be forty by now.  He had
+wasted fourteen years out of the life of his only son.  And Jo
+was no longer a social pariah.  He was married.  Old Jolyon had
+been unable to refrain from marking his appreciation of the
+action by enclosing his son a cheque for L500.  The cheque had
+been returned in a letter from the 'Hotch Potch,' couched in
+these words.
+
+
+'MY DEAREST FATHER,
+
+'Your generous gift was welcome as a sign that you might think
+worse of me.  I return it, but should you think fit to invest it
+for the benefit of the little chap (we call him Jolly), who bears
+our Christian and, by courtesy, our surname, I shall be very
+glad.
+
+'I hope with all my heart that your health is as good as ever.
+
+'Your loving son,
+
+ 'Jo.'
+
+
+The letter was like the boy.  He had always been an amiable chap.
+Old Jolyon had sent this reply:
+
+
+'MY DEAR JO,
+
+'The sum (L500) stands in my books for the benefit of your boy,
+under the name of Jolyon Forsyte, and will be duly-credited with
+interest at 5 per cent.  I hope that you are doing well.  My
+health remains good at present.
+
+'With love, I am,
+'Your affectionate Father,
+
+'JOLYON FORSYTE.'
+
+
+And every year on the 1st of January he had added a hundred and
+the interest.  The sum was mounting up--next New Year's Day it
+would be fifteen hundred and odd pounds!  And it is difficult to
+say how much satisfaction he had got out of that yearly
+transaction.  But the correspondence had ended.
+
+In spite of his love for his son, in spite of an instinct, partly
+constitutional, partly the result, as in thousands of his class,
+of the continual handling and watching of affairs, prompting him
+to judge conduct by results rather than by principle, there was
+at the bottom of his heart a sort of uneasiness.  His son ought,
+under the circumstances, to have gone to the dogs; that law was
+laid down in all the novels, sermons, and plays he had ever read,
+heard, or witnessed.
+
+After receiving the cheque back there seemed to him to be
+something wrong somewhere.  Why had his son not gone to the
+dogs?  But, then, who could tell?
+
+He had heard, of course--in fact, he had made it his business
+to find out--that Jo lived in St.  John's Wood, that he had a
+little house in Wistaria Avenue with a garden, and took his wife
+about with him into society--a queer sort of society, no doubt--
+and that they had two children--the little chap they called Jolly
+(considering the circumstances the name struck him as cynical,
+and old Jolyon both feared and disliked cynicism), and a girl
+called Holly, born since the marriage.  Who could tell what his
+son's circumstances really were?  He had capitalized the income
+he had inherited from his mother's father and joined Lloyd's as
+an underwriter; he painted pictures, too--water-colours.  Old
+Jolyon knew this, for he had surreptitiously bought them from
+time to time, after chancing to see his son's name signed at the
+bottom of a representation of the river Thames in a dealer's
+window.  He thought them bad, and did not hang them because of
+the signature; he kept them locked up in a drawer.
+
+In the great opera-house a terrible yearning came on him to see
+his son.  He remembered the days when he had been wont to slide
+him, in a brown holland suit, to and fro under the arch of his
+legs; the times when he ran beside the boy's pony, teaching him
+to ride; the day he first took him to school.  He had been a
+loving, lovable little chap!  After he went to Eton he had
+acquired, perhaps, a little too much of that desirable manner
+which old Jolyon knew was only to be obtained at such places and
+at great expense; but he had always been companionable.  Always a
+companion, even after Cambridge--a little far off, perhaps, owing
+to the advantages he had received.  Old Jolyon's feeling towards
+our public schools and 'Varsities never wavered, and he retained
+touchingly his attitude of admiration and mistrust towards a
+system appropriate to the highest in the land, of which he had
+not himself  been privileged to partake....  Now that June had
+gone and left, or as good as left him, it would have been a
+comfort to see his son again.  Guilty of this treason to his
+family, his principles, his class, old Jolyon fixed his eyes on
+the singer.  A poor thing--a wretched poor thing!  And the
+Florian a perfect stick!
+
+It was over.  They were easily pleased nowadays!
+
+In the crowded street he snapped up a cab under the very nose of
+a stout and much younger gentleman, who had already assumed it to
+be his own.  His route lay through Pall Mall, and at the corner,
+instead of going through the Green Park, the cabman turned to
+drive up St.  James's Street.  Old Jolyon put his hand through
+the trap (he could not bear being taken out of his way); in
+turning, however, he found himself opposite the 'Hotch Potch, '
+and the yearning that had been secretly with him the whole
+evening prevailed.  He called to the driver to stop.  He would go
+in and ask if Jo still belonged there.
+
+He went in.  The hall looked exactly as it did when he used to
+dine there with Jack Herring, and they had the best cook in
+London; and he looked round with the shrewd, straight glance that
+had caused him all his life to be better served than most men.
+
+"Mr. Jolyon Forsyte still a member here?"
+
+"Yes, sir; in the Club now, sir.  What name?"
+
+Old Jolyon was taken aback.
+
+"His father," he said.
+
+And having spoken, he took his stand, back to the fireplace.
+
+Young Jolyon, on the point of leaving the Club, had put on his
+hat, and was in the act of crossing the hall, as the porter met
+him.  He was no longer young, with hair going grey, and face--a
+narrower replica of his father's, with the same large drooping
+moustache--decidedly worn.  He turned pale.  This meeting was
+terrible after all those years, for nothing in the world was so
+terrible as a scene.  They met and crossed hands without a word.
+Then, with a quaver in his voice, the father said:
+
+"How are you, my boy?"
+
+The son answered:
+
+"How are you, Dad?"
+
+Old Jolyon's hand trembled in its thin lavender glove.
+
+"If you're going my way," he said, "I can give you a lift."
+
+And as though in the habit of taking each other home every night
+they went out and stepped into the cab.
+
+To old Jolyon it seemed that his son had grown.  'More of a man
+altogether,' was his comment.  Over the natural amiability of
+that son's face had come a rather sardonic mask, as though he had
+found in the circumstances of his life the necessity for armour.
+The features were certainly those of a Forsyte, but the expression
+was more the introspective look of a student or philosopher.
+He had no doubt been obliged to look into himself a good deal in
+the course of those fifteen years.
+
+To young Jolyon the first sight of his father was undoubtedly a
+shock--he looked so worn and old.  But in the cab he seemed
+hardly to have changed, still having the calm look so well
+remembered, still being upright and keen-eyed.
+
+"You look well, Dad."
+
+"Middling," old Jolyon answered.
+
+He was the prey of an anxiety that he found he must put into
+words.  Having got his son back like this, he felt he must know
+what was his financial position.
+
+"Jo," he said, "I should like to hear what sort of water you're
+in.  I suppose you're in debt?"
+
+He put it this way that his son might find it easier to confess.
+
+Young Jolyon answered in his ironical voice:
+
+"No!  I'm not in debt!"
+
+Old Jolyon saw that he was angry, and touched his hand.  He had
+run a risk.  It was worth it, however, and Jo had never been
+sulky with him.  They drove on, without speaking again, to
+Stanhope Gate.  Old Jolyon invited him in, but young Jolyon shook
+his head.
+
+"June's not here," said his father hastily: "went of to-day on a
+visit.  I suppose you know that she's engaged to be married?"
+
+"Already?" murmured young Jolyon'.
+
+Old Jolyon stepped out, and, in paying the cab fare, for the
+first time in his life gave the driver a sovereign in mistake for
+a shilling.
+
+Placing the coin in his mouth, the cabman whipped his horse
+secretly on the underneath and hurried away.
+
+Old Jolyon turned the key softly in the lock, pushed open the
+door, and beckoned.  His son saw him gravely hanging up his coat,
+with an expression on his face like that of a boy who intends to
+steal cherries.
+
+The door of the dining-room was open, the gas turned low; a
+spirit-urn hissed on a tea-tray, and close to it a cynical
+looking cat had fallen asleep on the dining-table.  Old Jolyon
+'shoo'd' her off at once.  The incident was a relief to his
+feelings; he rattled his opera hat behind the animal.
+
+"She's got fleas," he said, following her out of the room.
+Through the door in the hall leading to the basement he called
+"Hssst!" several times, as though assisting the cat's departure,
+till by some strange coincidence the butler appeared below.
+
+"You can go to bed, Parfitt," said old Jolyon.  "I will lock up
+and put out."
+
+When he again entered the dining-room the cat unfortunately
+preceded him, with her tail in the air, proclaiming that she had
+seen through this manouevre for suppressing the butler from the
+first....
+
+A fatality had dogged old Jolyon's domestic stratagems all his
+life.
+
+Young Jolyon could not help smiling.  He was very well versed in
+irony, and everything that evening seemed to him ironical.  The
+episode of the cat; the announcement of his own daughter's
+engagement.  So he had no more part or parcel in her than he had
+in the Puss!  And the poetical justice of this appealed to him.
+
+"What is June like now?" he asked.
+
+"She's a little thing," returned old Jolyon; they say she's like
+me, but that's their folly.  She's more like your mother--the
+same eyes and hair."
+
+"Ah!  and she is pretty?"
+
+Old Jolyon was too much of a Forsyte to praise anything freely;
+especially anything for which he had a genuine admiration.
+
+"Not bad looking--a regular Forsyte chin.  It'll be lonely here
+when she's gone, Jo."
+
+The look on his face again gave young Jolyon the shock he had
+felt on first seeing his father.
+
+"What will you do with yourself, Dad?  I suppose she's wrapped up
+in him?"
+
+"Do with myself?" repeated old Jolyon with an angry break in his
+voice.  "It'll be miserable work living here alone.  I don't know
+how it's to end.  I wish to goodness...."  He checked himself, and
+added: "The question is, what had I better do with this house?"
+
+Young Jolyon looked round the room.  It was peculiarly vast and
+dreary, decorated with the enormous pictures of still life that
+he remembered as a boy--sleeping dogs with their noses resting on
+bunches of carrots, together with onions and grapes lying side by
+side in mild surprise.  The house was a white elephant, but he
+could not conceive of his father living in a smaller place; and
+all the more did it all seem ironical.
+
+In his great chair with the book-rest sat old Jolyon, the
+figurehead of his family and class and creed, with his white head
+and dome-like forehead, the representative of moderation, and
+order, and love of property.  As lonely an old man as there was
+in London.
+
+There he sat in the gloomy comfort of the room, a puppet in the
+power of great forces that cared nothing for family or class or
+creed, but moved, machine-like, with dread processes to
+inscrutable ends.  This was how it struck young Jolyon, who had
+the impersonal eye.
+
+The poor old Dad!  So this was the end, the purpose to which he
+had lived with such magnificent moderation!  To be lonely, and
+grow older and older, yearning for a soul to speak to!
+
+In his turn old Jolyon looked back at his son.  He wanted to talk
+about many things that he had been unable to talk about all these
+years.  It had been impossible to seriously confide in June his
+conviction that property in the Soho quarter would go up in
+value; his uneasiness about that tremendous silence of Pippin,
+the superintendent of the New Colliery Company, of which he had
+so long been chairman; his disgust at the steady fall in American
+Golgothas, or even to discuss how, by some sort of settlement, he
+could best avoid the payment of those death duties which would
+follow his decease.  Under the influence, however, of a cup of
+tea, which he seemed to stir indefinitely, he began to speak at
+last.  A new vista of life was thus opened up, a promised land of
+talk, where he could find a harbour against the waves of
+anticipation and regret; where he could soothe his soul with the
+opium of devising how to round off his property and make eternal
+the only part of him that was to remain alive.
+
+Young Jolyon was a good listener; it was his great quality.  He
+kept his eyes fixed on his father's face, putting a question now
+and then.
+
+The clock struck one before old Jolyon had finished, and at the
+sound of its striking his principles came back.  He took out his
+watch with a look of surprise:
+
+"I must go to bed, Jo," he said.
+
+Young Jolyon rose and held out his hand to help his father up.
+The old face looked worn and hollow again; the eyes were steadily
+averted.
+
+"Good-bye, my boy; take care of yourself."
+
+A moment passed, and young Jolyon, turning on his, heel, marched
+out at the door.  He could hardly see; his smile quavered.  Never
+in all the fifteen years since he had first found out that life
+was no simple business, had he found it so singularly
+complicated.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+DINNER AT SWITHIN'S
+
+
+In Swithin's orange and light-blue dining-room, facing the Park,
+the round table was laid for twelve.
+
+A cut-glass chandelier filled with lighted candles hung like a
+giant stalactite above its centre, radiating over large
+gilt-framed mirrors, slabs of marble on the tops of side-tables,
+and heavy gold chairs with crewel worked seats.  Everything
+betokened that love of beauty so deeply implanted in each family
+which has had its own way to make into Society, out of the more
+vulgar heart of Nature.  Swithin had indeed an impatience of
+simplicity, a love of ormolu, which had always stamped him
+amongst his associates as a man of great, if somewhat luxurious
+taste; and out of the knowledge that no one could possibly enter
+his rooms without perceiving him to be a man of wealth, he had
+derived a solid and prolonged happiness such as perhaps no other
+circumstance in life had afforded him.
+
+Since his retirement from land agency, a profession deplorable in
+his estimation, especially as to its auctioneering department, he
+had abandoned himself to naturally aristocratic tastes.
+
+The perfect luxury of his latter days had embedded him like a fly
+in sugar; and his mind, where very little took place from morning
+till night, was the junction of two curiously opposite emotions,
+a lingering and sturdy satisfaction that he had made his own way
+and his own fortune, and a sense that a man of his distinction
+should never have been allowed to soil his mind with work.
+
+He stood at the sideboard in a white waistcoat with large gold
+and onyx buttons, watching his valet screw the necks of three
+champagne bottles deeper into ice-pails.  Between the points of
+his stand-up collar, which--though it hurt him to move--he would
+on no account have had altered, the pale flesh of his under chin
+remained immovable.  His eyes roved from bottle to bottle.  He
+was debating, and he argued like this: Jolyon drinks a glass,
+perhaps two, he's so careful of himself.  James, he can't take
+his wine nowadays.  Nicholas--Fanny and he would swill water he
+shouldn't wonder!  Soames didn't count; these young nephews--
+Soames was thirty-one--couldn't drink!  But Bosinney?
+
+Encountering in the name of this stranger something outside the
+range of his philosophy, Swithin paused.  A misgiving arose
+within him!  It was impossible to tell!  June was only a girl, in
+love too!  Emily (Mrs. James) liked a good glass of champagne.
+It was too dry for Juley, poor old soul, she had no palate.  As
+to Hatty Chessman!  The thought of this old friend caused a cloud
+of thought to obscure the perfect glassiness of his eyes: He
+shouldn't wonder if she drank half a bottle!
+
+But in thinking of his remaining guest, an expression like that
+of a cat who is just going to purr stole over his old face: Mrs.
+Soames!  She mightn't take much, but she would appreciate what
+she drank; it was a pleasure to give her good wine!  A pretty
+woman--and sympathetic to him!
+
+The thought of her was like champagne itself!  A pleasure to give
+a good wine to a young woman who looked so well, who knew how to
+dress, with charming manners, quite distinguished--a pleasure to
+entertain her.  Between the points of his collar he gave his head
+the first small, painful oscillation of the evening.
+
+"Adolf!" he said.  "Put in another bottle."
+
+He himself might drink a good deal, for, thanks to that
+prescription of Blight's, he found himself extremely well, and he
+had been careful to take no lunch.  He had not felt so well for
+weeks.  Puffing out his lower lip, he gave his last instructions:
+
+"Adolf, the least touch of the West India when you come to the
+ham."
+
+Passing into the anteroom, he sat down on the edge of a chair,
+with his knees apart; and his tall, bulky form was wrapped at
+once in an expectant, strange, primeval immobility.  He was ready
+to rise at a moment's notice.  He had not given a dinner-party
+for months.  This dinner in honour of June's engagement had
+seemed a bore at first (among Forsytes the custom of solemnizing
+engagements by feasts was religiously observed), but the labours
+of sending invitations and ordering the repast over, he felt
+pleasantly stimulated.
+
+And thus sitting, a watch in his hand, fat, and smooth, and
+golden, like a flattened globe of butter, he thought of nothing.
+
+A long man, with side whiskers, who had once been in Swithin's
+service, but was now a greengrocer, entered and proclaimed:
+
+"Mrs. Chessman, Mrs. Septimus Small!"
+
+Two ladies advanced.  The one in front, habited entirely in red,
+had large, settled patches of the same colour in her cheeks, and
+a hard, dashing eye.  She walked at Swithin, holding out a hand
+cased in a long, primrose-coloured glove:
+
+"Well!  Swithin," she said, "I haven't seen you for ages.  How are
+you?  Why, my dear boy, how stout you're getting!"
+
+The fixity of Swithin's eye alone betrayed emotion.  A dumb and
+grumbling anger swelled his bosom.  It was vulgar to be stout, to
+talk of being stout; he had a chest, nothing more.  Turning to
+his sister, he grasped her hand, and said in a tone of command:
+
+"Well, Juley."
+
+Mrs. Septimus Small was the tallest of the four sisters; her
+good, round old face had gone a little sour; an innumerable pout
+clung all over it, as if it had been encased in an iron wire mask
+up to that evening, which, being suddenly removed, left little
+rolls of mutinous flesh all over her countenance.  Even her eyes
+were pouting.  It was thus that she recorded her permanent
+resentment at the loss of Septimus Small.
+
+She had quite a reputation for saying the wrong thing, and,
+tenacious like all her breed, she would hold to it when she had
+said it, and add to it another wrong thing, and so on.  With the
+decease of her husband the family tenacity, the family
+matter-of-factness, had gone sterile within her.  A great talker,
+when allowed, she would converse without the faintest animation
+for hours together, relating, with epic monotony, the innumerable
+occasions on which Fortune had misused her; nor did she ever
+perceive that her hearers sympathized with Fortune, for her
+heart was kind.
+
+Having sat, poor soul, long by the bedside of Small (a man of
+poor constitution), she had acquired, the habit, and there were
+countless subsequent occasions when she had sat immense periods
+of time to amuse sick people, children, and other helpless
+persons, and she could never divest herself of the feeling that
+the world was the most ungrateful place anybody could live in.
+Sunday after Sunday she sat at the feet of that extremely witty
+preacher, the Rev. Thomas Scoles, who exercised a great
+influence  over her; but she succeeded in convincing everybody
+that even this was a misfortune.  She had passed into a proverb
+in the family, and when anybody was observed to be peculiarly
+distressing, he was known as a regular 'Juley.' The habit of her
+mind would have killed anybody but a Forsyte at forty; but she
+was seventy-two, and had never looked better.  And one felt that
+there were capacities for enjoyment about her which might yet
+come out.  She owned three canaries, the cat Tommy, and half a
+parrot--in common with her sister Hester;--and these poor
+creatures (kept carefully out of Timothy's way--he was nervous
+about animals), unlike human beings, recognising that she could
+not help being blighted, attached themselves to her passionately.
+
+She was sombrely magnificent this evening in black bombazine,
+with a mauve front cut in a shy triangle, and crowned with a
+black velvet ribbon round the base of her thin throat; black and
+mauve for evening wear was esteemed very chaste by nearly every
+Forsyte.
+
+Pouting at Swithin, she said:
+
+"Ann has been asking for you.  You haven't been near us for an
+age!"
+
+Swithin put his thumbs within the armholes of his waistcoat, and
+replied:
+
+"Ann's getting very shaky; she ought to have a doctor!"
+
+"Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Forsyte!"
+
+Nicholas Forsyte, cocking his rectangular eyebrows, wore a smile.
+He had succeeded during the day in bringing to fruition a scheme
+for the employment of a tribe from Upper India in the gold-mines
+of Ceylon.  A pet plan, carried at last in the teeth of great
+difficulties--he was justly pleased.  It would double the output
+of his mines, and, as he had often forcibly argued, all
+experience tended to show that a man must die; and whether he
+died of a miserable old age in his own country, or prematurely of
+damp in the bottom of a foreign mine, was surely of little
+consequence, provided that by a change in his mode of life he
+benefited the British Empire.
+
+His ability was undoubted.  Raising his broken nose towards his
+listener, he would add:
+
+"For want of a few hundred of these fellows we haven't paid a
+dividend for years, and look at the price of the shares.  I can't
+get ten shillings for them."
+
+He had been at Yarmouth, too, and had come back feeling that he
+had added at least ten years to his own life.  He grasped
+Swithin's hand, exclaiming in a jocular voice:
+
+"Well, so here we are again!"
+
+Mrs. Nicholas, an effete woman, smiled a smile of frightened
+jollity behind his back.
+
+"Mr. and Mrs. James Forsyte!  Mr. and Mrs. Soames Forsyte!"
+
+Swithin drew his heels together, his deportment ever admirable.
+
+"Well, James, well Emily!  How are you, Soames?  How do you do?"
+
+His hand enclosed Irene's, and his eyes swelled.  She was a
+pretty woman--a little too pale, but her figure, her eyes, her
+teeth!  Too good for that chap Soames!
+
+The gods had given Irene dark brown eyes and golden hair, that
+strange combination, provocative of men's glances, which is said
+to be the mark of a weak character.  And the full, soft pallor of
+her neck and shoulders, above a gold-coloured frock, gave to her
+personality an alluring strangeness.
+
+Soames stood behind, his eyes fastened on his wife's neck.  The
+hands of Swithin's watch, which he still held open in his hand,
+had left eight behind; it was half an hour beyond his
+dinner-time--he had had no lunch--and a strange primeval
+impatience surged up within him.
+
+"It's not like Jolyon to be late!" he said to Irene, with
+uncontrollable vexation.  "I suppose it'll be June keeping him!"
+
+"People in love are always late," she answered.
+
+Swithin stared at her; a dusky orange dyed his cheeks.
+
+"They've no business to be.  Some fashionable nonsense!"
+
+And behind this outburst the inarticulate violence of primitive
+generations seemed to mutter and grumble.
+
+"Tell me what you think of my new star, Uncle Swithin," said
+Irene softly.
+
+Among the lace in the bosom of her dress was shining a
+five-pointed star, made of eleven diamonds.  Swithin looked at
+the star.  He had a pretty taste in stones; no question could
+have been more sympathetically devised to distract his attention.
+
+"Who gave you that?" he asked.
+
+"Soames."
+
+There was no change in her face, but Swithin's pale eyes bulged
+as though he might suddenly have been afflicted with insight.
+
+"I dare say you're dull at home," he said.  "Any day you like to
+come and dine with me, I'll give you as good a bottle of wine as
+you'll get in London."
+
+"Miss June Forsyte--Mr. Jolyon Forsyte!...  Mr. Boswainey!..."
+
+Swithin moved his arm, and said in a rumbling voice:
+
+"Dinner, now--dinner!"
+
+He took in Irene, on the ground that he had not entertained her
+since she was a bride.  June was the portion of Bosinney, who was
+placed between Irene and his fiancee.  On the other side of June
+was James with Mrs. Nicholas, then old Jolyon with Mrs. James,
+Nicholas with Hatty Chessman, Soames with Mrs. Small, completing,
+the circle to Swithin again.
+
+Family dinners of the Forsytes observe certain traditions.  There
+are, for instance, no hors d'oeuvre.  The reason for this is
+unknown.  Theory among the younger members traces it to the
+disgraceful price of oysters; it is more probably due to a desire
+to come to the point, to a good practical sense deciding at once
+that hors d'oeuvre are but poor things.  The Jameses alone,
+unable to withstand a custom almost universal in Park Lane, are
+now and then unfaithful.
+
+A silent, almost morose, inattention to each other succeeds to
+the subsidence into their seats, lasting till well into the first
+entree, but interspersed with remarks such as, "Tom's bad again;
+I can't tell what's the matter with him!"  "I suppose Ann doesn't
+come down in the mornings?"--"What's the name of your doctor,
+Fanny?"  "Stubbs?"  "He's a quack!"--"Winifred?  She's got too many
+children.  Four, isn't it?  She's as thin as a lath!"--"What
+d'you give for this sherry, Swithin?  Too dry for me!"
+
+With the second glass of champagne, a kind of hum makes itself
+heard, which, when divested of casual accessories and resolved
+into its primal element, is found to be James telling a story,
+and this goes on for a long time, encroaching sometimes even upon
+what must universally be recognised as the crowning point of a
+Forsyte feast--'the saddle of mutton.'
+
+No Forsyte has given a dinner without providing a saddle of
+mutton.  There is something in its succulent solidity which makes
+it suitable to people 'of a certain position.'  It is nourishing
+and tasty; the sort of thing a man remembers eating.  It has a
+past and a future, like a deposit paid into a bank; and it is
+something that can be argued about.
+
+Each branch of the family tenaciously held to a particular
+locality--old Jolyon swearing by Dartmoor, James by Welsh,
+Swithin by Southdown, Nicholas maintaining that people might
+sneer, but there was nothing like New Zealand!  As for Roger, the
+'original' of the brothers, he had been obliged to invent a
+locality of his own, and with an ingenuity worthy of a man who
+had devised a new profession for his sons, he had discovered a
+shop where they sold German; on being remonstrated with, he had
+proved his point by producing a butcher's bill, which showed that
+he paid more than any of the others.  It was on this occasion
+that old Jolyon, turning to June, had said in one of his bursts
+of philosophy:
+
+"You may depend upon it, they're a cranky lot, the Forsytes--and
+you'll find it out, as you grow older!"
+
+Timothy alone held apart, for though he ate saddle of mutton
+heartily, he was, he said, afraid of it.
+
+To anyone interested psychologically in Forsytes, this great
+saddle-of-mutton trait is of prime importance; not only does it
+illustrate their tenacity, both collectively and as individuals,
+but it marks them as belonging in fibre and instincts to that
+great class which believes in nourishment and flavour, and yields
+to no sentimental craving for beauty.
+
+Younger members of the family indeed would have done without a
+joint altogether, preferring guinea-fowl, or lobster salad--
+something which appealed to the imagination, and had less
+nourishment--but these were females; or, if not, had been
+corrupted by their wives, or by mothers, who having been forced
+to eat saddle of mutton throughout their married lives, had
+passed a secret hostility towards it into the fibre of their
+sons.
+
+The great saddle-of-mutton controversy at an end, a Tewkesbury
+ham commenced, together with the least touch of West Indian--
+Swithin was so long over this course that he caused a block in
+the progress of the dinner.  To devote himself to it with better
+heart, he paused in his conversation.
+
+From his seat by Mrs. Septimus Small Soames was watching.  He had
+a reason of his own connected with a pet building scheme, for
+observing Bosinney.  The architect might do for his purpose; he
+looked clever, as he sat leaning back in his chair, moodily
+making little ramparts with bread-crumbs.  Soames noted his dress
+clothes to be well cut, but too small, as though made many years
+ago.
+
+He saw him turn to Irene and say something and her face sparkle
+as he often saw it sparkle at other people--never at himself.  He
+tried to catch what they were saying, but Aunt Juley was
+speaking.
+
+Hadn't that always seemed very extraordinary to Soames?  Only
+last Sunday dear Mr. Scole, had been so witty in his sermon, so
+sarcastic, "For what," he had said, "shall it profit a man if he
+gain his own soul, but lose all his property?"  That, he had
+said, was the motto of the middle-class; now, what had he meant
+by that?  Of course, it might be what middle-class people
+believed--she didn't know; what did Soames think?
+
+He answered abstractedly: "How should I know?  Scoles is a
+humbug, though, isn't he?"  For Bosinney was looking round the
+table, as if pointing out the peculiarities of the guests, and
+Soames wondered what he was saying.  By her smile Irene was
+evidently agreeing with his remarks.  She seemed always to agree
+with other people.
+
+Her eyes were turned on himself; Soames dropped his glance at
+once.  The smile had died off her lips.
+
+A humbug?  But what did Soames mean?  If Mr. Scoles was a humbug,
+a clergyman--then anybody might be--it was frightful!
+
+"Well, and so they are!" said Soames.
+
+During Aunt Juley's momentary and horrified silence he caught
+some words of Irene's that sounded like: 'Abandon hope, all ye
+who enter here!'
+
+But Swithin had finished his ham.
+
+"Where do you go for your mushrooms?" he was saying to Irene in a
+voice like a courtier's; "you ought to go to Smileybob's--he'll
+give 'em you fresh.  These little men, they won't take the
+trouble!"
+
+Irene turned to answer him, and Soames saw Bosinney watching her
+and smiling to himself.  A curious smile the fellow had.  A
+half-simple arrangement, like a child who smiles when he is
+pleased.  As for George's nickname--'The Buccaneer'--he did not
+think much of that.  And, seeing Bosinney turn to June, Soames
+smiled too, but sardonically--he did not like June, who was not
+looking too pleased.
+
+This was not surprising, for she had just held the following
+conversation with James:
+
+"I stayed on the river on my way home, Uncle James, and saw a
+beautiful site for a house."
+
+James, a slow and thorough eater, stopped the process of
+mastication.
+
+"Eh?" he said.  "Now, where was that?"
+
+"Close to Pangbourne."
+
+James placed a piece of ham in his mouth, and June waited.
+
+"I suppose you wouldn't know whether the land about there was
+freehold?" he asked at last.  "You wouldn't know anything about
+the price of land about there?"
+
+"Yes," said June; "I made inquiries." Her little resolute face
+under its copper crown was suspiciously eager and aglow.
+
+James regarded her with the air of an inquisitor.
+
+"What?  You're not thinking of buying land!" he ejaculated,
+dropping his fork.
+
+June was greatly encouraged by his interest.  It had long been
+her pet plan that her uncles should benefit themselves and
+Bosinney by building country-houses.
+
+"Of course not," she said.  "I thought it would be such a
+splendid place for--you or--someone to build a country-house!"
+
+James looked at her sideways, and placed a second piece of ham in
+his mouth....
+
+"Land ought to be very dear about there," he said.
+
+What June had taken for personal interest was only the impersonal
+excitement of every Forsyte who hears of something eligible in
+danger of passing into other hands.  But she refused to see the
+disappearance of her chance, and continued to press her point.
+
+"You ought to go into the country, Uncle James.  I wish I had a
+lot of money, I wouldn't live another day in London."
+
+James was stirred to the depths of his long thin figure; he had
+no idea his niece held such downright views.
+
+"Why don't you go into the country?" repeated June; "it would do
+you a lot of good."
+
+"Why?" began James in a fluster.  "Buying land--what good d'you
+suppose I can do buying land, building houses?--I couldn't get
+four per cent. for my money!"
+
+"What does that matter?  You'd get fresh air."
+
+"Fresh air!" exclaimed James; "what should I do with fresh air,"
+
+"I should have thought anybody liked to have fresh air," said
+June scornfully.
+
+James wiped his napkin all over his mouth.
+
+"You don't know the value of money," he said, avoiding her eye.
+
+"No! and I hope I never shall!" and, biting her lip with
+inexpressible mortification, poor June was silent.
+
+Why were her own relations so rich, and Phil never knew where the
+money was coming from for to-morrow's tobacco.  Why couldn't they
+do something for him?  But they were so selfish.  Why couldn't
+they build country-houses?  She had all that naive dogmatism
+which is so pathetic, and sometimes achieves such great results.
+Bosinney, to whom she turned in her discomfiture, was talking to
+Irene, and a chill fell on June's spirit.  Her eyes grew steady
+with  anger, like old Jolyon's when his will was crossed.
+
+James, too, was much disturbed.  He felt as though someone had
+threatened his right to invest his money at five per cent.
+Jolyon had spoiled her.  None of his girls would have said such a
+thing.  James had always been exceedingly liberal to his
+children, and the consciousness of this made him feel it all the
+more deeply.  He trifled moodily with his strawberries, then,
+deluging them with cream, he ate them quickly; they, at all
+events, should not escape him.
+
+No wonder he was upset.  Engaged for fifty-four years (he had
+been admitted a solicitor on the earliest day sanctioned by the
+law) in arranging mortgages, preserving investments at a dead
+level of high and safe interest, conducting negotiations on the
+principle of securing the utmost possible out of other people
+compatible with safety to his clients and himself, in
+calculations as to the exact pecuniary possibilities of all the
+relations of life, he had come at last to think purely in terms
+of money.  Money was now his light, his medium for seeing, that
+without which he was really unable to see, really not cognisant
+of phenomena; and to have this thing, "I hope I shall never know
+the value of money!" said to his face, saddened and exasperated
+him.  He knew it to be nonsense, or it would have frightened him.
+What was the world coming to!  Suddenly recollecting the story of
+young Jolyon, however, he felt a little comforted, for what could
+you expect with a father like that!  This turned his thoughts
+into a channel still less pleasant.  What was all this talk about
+Soames and Irene?
+
+As in all self-respecting families, an emporium had been
+established where family secrets were bartered, and family stock
+priced.  It was known on Forsyte 'Change that Irene regretted her
+marriage.  Her regret was disapproved of.  She ought to have
+known her own mind; no dependable woman made these mistakes.
+
+James reflected sourly that they had a nice house (rather small)
+in an excellent position, no children, and no money troubles.
+Soames was reserved about his affairs, but he must be getting a
+very warm man.  He had a capital income from the business--for
+Soames, like his father, was a member of that well-known firm of
+solicitors, Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte--and had always been very
+careful.  He had done quite unusually well with some mortgages he
+had taken up, too--a little timely foreclosure--most lucky hits!
+
+There was no reason why Irene should not be happy, yet they said
+she'd been asking for a separate room.  He knew where that ended.
+It wasn't as if Soames drank.
+
+James looked at his daughter-in-law.  That unseen glance of his
+was cold and dubious.  Appeal and fear were in it, and a sense of
+personal grievance.  Why should he be worried like this?  It was
+very likely all nonsense; women were funny things!  They
+exaggerated so, you didn't know what to believe; and then, nobody
+told him anything, he had to find out everything for himself.
+Again he looked furtively at Irene, and across from her to
+Soames.  The latter, listening to Aunt Juley, was looking up,
+under his brows in the direction of Bosinney.
+
+'He's fond of her, I know,' thought James.  'Look at the way he's
+always giving her things.'
+
+And the extraordinary unreasonableness of her disaffection struck
+him with increased force.
+
+It was a pity, too, she was a taking little thing, and he, James,
+would be really quite fond of her if she'd only let him.  She had
+taken up lately with June; that was doing her no good, that was
+certainly doing her no good.  She was getting to have opinions of
+her own.  He didn't know what she wanted with anything of the
+sort.  She'd a good home, and everything she could wish for.  He
+felt that her friends ought to be chosen for her.  To go on like
+this was dangerous.
+
+June, indeed, with her habit of championing the unfortunate, had
+dragged from Irene a confession, and, in return, had preached the
+necessity of facing the evil, by separation, if need be.  But in
+the face of these exhortations, Irene had kept a brooding silence,
+as though she found terrible the thought of this struggle carried
+through in cold blood.  He would never give her up, she had said
+to June.
+
+"Who cares?" June cried; "let him do what he likes--you've only
+to stick to it!"  And she had not scrupled to say something of
+this sort at Timothy's; James, when he heard of it, had felt a
+natural indignation and horror.
+
+What if Irene were to take it into her head to--he could hardly
+frame the thought--to leave Soames?  But he felt this thought so
+unbearable that he at once put it away; the shady visions it
+conjured up, the sound of family tongues buzzing in his ears, the
+horror of the conspicuous happening so close to him, to one of
+his own children!  Luckily, she had no money--a beggarly fifty
+pound a year!  And he thought of the deceased Heron, who had had
+nothing to leave her, with contempt.  Brooding over his glass,
+his long legs twisted under the table, he quite omitted to rise
+when the ladies left the room.  He would have to speak to Soames-
+-would have to put him on his guard; they could not go on like
+this, now that such a contingency had occurred to him.  And he
+noticed with sour disfavour that June had left her wine-glasses
+full of wine.
+
+'That little, thing's at the bottom of it all,' he mused;
+'Irene'd never have thought of it herself.'  James was a man of
+imagination.
+
+The voice of Swithin roused him from his reverie.
+
+"I gave four hundred pounds for it," he was saying.  "Of course
+it's a regular work of art."
+
+"Four hundred!  H'm! that's a lot of money!" chimed in Nicholas.
+
+The object alluded to was an elaborate group of statuary in
+Italian marble, which, placed upon a lofty stand (also of
+marble), diffused an atmosphere of culture throughout the room.
+The subsidiary figures, of which there were six, female, nude,
+and of highly ornate workmanship, were all pointing towards the
+central figure, also nude, and female, who was pointing at
+herself; and all this gave the observer a very pleasant sense of
+her extreme value.  Aunt Juley, nearly opposite, had had the
+greatest difficulty in not looking at it all the evening.
+
+Old Jolyon spoke; it was he who had started the discussion.
+
+"Four hundred fiddlesticks!  Don't tell me you gave four hundred
+for that?"
+
+Between the points of his collar Swithin's chin made the second
+painful oscillatory movement of the evening.
+
+"Four-hundred-pounds, of English money; not a farthing less.  I
+don't regret it.  It's not common English--it's genuine modern
+Italian!"
+
+Soames raised the corner of his lip in a smile, and looked across
+at Bosinney.  The architect was grinning behind the fumes of his
+cigarette.  Now, indeed, he looked more like a buccaneer.
+
+"There's a lot of work about it," remarked James hastily, who was
+really moved by the size of the group.  "It'd sell well at
+Jobson's."
+
+"The poor foreign dey-vil that made it," went on Swithin," asked
+me five hundred--I gave him four.  It's worth eight.  Looked
+half-starved, poor dey-vil!
+
+"Ah!" chimed in Nicholas suddenly, "poor, seedy-lookin' chaps,
+these artists; it's a wonder to me how they live.  Now, there's
+young Flageoletti, that Fanny and the girls are always hav'in'
+in, to play the fiddle; if he makes a hundred a year it's as much
+as ever he does!"
+
+James shook his head.  "Ah!" he said, "I don't know how they
+live!"
+
+Old Jolyon had risen, and, cigar in mouth, went to inspect the
+group at close quarters.
+
+"Wouldn't have given two for it!" he pronounced at last.
+
+Soames saw his father and Nicholas glance at each other
+anxiously; and, on the other side of Swithin, Bosinney, still
+shrouded in smoke.
+
+'I wonder what he thinks of it?' thought Soames, who knew well
+enough that this group was hopelessly vieux jeu; hopelessly of
+the last generation.  There was no longer any sale at Jobson's
+for such works of art.
+
+Swithin's answer came at last.  "You never knew anything about a
+statue.  You've got your pictures, and that's all!"
+
+Old Jolyon walked back to his seat, puffing his cigar.  It was
+not likely that he was going to be drawn into an argument with an
+obstinate beggar like Swithin, pig-headed as a mule, who had
+never known a statue from a---straw hat.
+
+"Stucco!" was all he said.
+
+It had long been physically impossible for Swithin to start; his
+fist came down on the table.
+
+"Stucco!  I should like to see anything you've got in your house
+half as good!"
+
+And behind his speech seemed to sound again that rumbling
+violence of primitive generations.
+
+It was James who saved the situation.
+
+"Now, what do you say, Mr. Bosinney?  You're an architect; you
+ought to know all about statues and things!"
+
+Every eye was turned upon Bosinney; all waited with a strange,
+suspicious look for his answer.
+
+And Soames, speaking for the first time, asked:
+
+"Yes, Bosinney, what do you say?"
+
+Bosinney replied coolly:
+
+"The work is a remarkable one."
+
+His words were addressed to Swithin, his eyes smiled slyly at old
+Jolyon; only Soames remained unsatisfied.
+
+"Remarkable for what?"
+
+"For its naivete"
+
+The answer was followed by an impressive silence; Swithin alone
+was not sure whether a compliment was intended.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+PROJECTION OF THE HOUSE
+
+
+Soames Forsyte walked out of his green-painted front door three
+days after the dinner at Swithin's, and looking back from across
+the Square, confirmed his impression that the house wanted
+painting.
+
+He had left his wife sitting on the sofa in the drawing-room, her
+hands crossed in her lap, manifestly waiting for him to go out.
+This was not unusual.  It happened, in fact, every day.
+
+He could not understand what she found wrong with him.  It was
+not as if he drank!  Did he run into debt, or gamble, or swear;
+was he violent; were his friends rackety; did he stay out at
+night?  On the contrary.
+
+The profound, subdued aversion which he felt in his wife was a
+mystery to him, and a source of the most terrible irritation.
+That she had made a mistake, and did not love him, had tried to
+love him and could not love him, was obviously no reason.
+
+He that could imagine so outlandish a cause for his wife's not
+getting on with him was certainly no Forsyte.
+
+Soames was forced, therefore, to set the blame entirely down to
+his wife.  He had never met a woman so capable of inspiring
+affection.  They could not go anywhere without his seeing how all
+the men were attracted by her; their looks, manners, voices,
+betrayed it; her behaviour under this attention had been beyond
+reproach.  That she was one of those women--not too common in the
+Anglo-Saxon race--born to be loved and to love, who when not
+loving are not living, had certainly never even occurred to him.
+Her power of attraction, he regarded as part of her value as his
+property; but it made him, indeed, suspect that she could give as
+well as receive; and she gave him nothing!  'Then why did she
+marry me?'  was his continual thought.  He had, forgotten his
+courtship; that year and a half when he had besieged and lain in
+wait for her, devising schemes for her entertainment, giving her
+presents, proposing to her periodically, and keeping her other
+admirers away with his perpetual presence.  He had forgotten the
+day when, adroitly taking advantage of an acute phase of her
+dislike to her home surroundings, he crowned his labours with
+success.  If he remembered anything, it was the dainty
+capriciousness with which the gold-haired, dark-eyed girl had
+treated him.  He certainly did not remember the look on her face-
+-strange, passive, appealing--when suddenly one day she had
+yielded, and said that she would marry him.
+
+It had been one of those real devoted wooings which books and
+people praise, when the lover is at length rewarded for hammering
+the iron till it is malleable, and all must be happy ever after
+as the wedding bells.
+
+Soames walked eastwards, mousing doggedly along on the shady
+side.
+
+The house wanted doing, up, unless he decided to move into the
+country, and build.
+
+For the hundredth time that month he turned over this problem.
+There was no use in rushing into things!  He was very comfortably
+off, with an increasing income getting on for three thousand a
+year; but his invested capital was not perhaps so large as his
+father believed--James had a tendency to expect that his children
+should be better off than they were.  'I can manage eight
+thousand easily enough,' he thought, 'without calling in either
+
+Robertson's or Nicholl's.'
+
+He had stopped to look in at a picture shop, for Soames was an
+'amateur' of pictures, and had a little-room in No.  62,
+Montpellier Square, full of canvases, stacked against the wall,
+which he had no room to hang.  He brought them home with him on
+his way back from the City, generally after dark, and would enter
+this room on Sunday afternoons, to spend hours turning the
+pictures to the light, examining the marks on their backs, and
+occasionally making notes.
+
+They were nearly all landscapes with figures in the foreground, a
+sign of some mysterious revolt against London, its tall houses,
+its interminable streets, where his life and the lives of his
+breed and class were passed.  Every now and then he would take
+one or two pictures away with him in a cab, and stop at Jobson's
+on his way into the City.
+
+He rarely showed them to anyone; Irene, whose opinion he secretly
+respected and perhaps for that reason never solicited, had only
+been into the room on rare occasions, in discharge of some wifely
+duty.  She was not asked to look at the pictures, and she never
+did.  To Soames this was another grievance.  He hated that pride
+of hers, and secretly dreaded it.
+
+In the plate-glass window of the picture shop his image stood and
+looked at him.
+
+His sleek hair under the brim of the tall hat had a sheen like
+the hat itself; his cheeks, pale and flat, the line of his
+clean-shaven lips, his firm chin with its greyish shaven tinge,
+and the buttoned strictness of his black cut-away coat, conveyed
+an appearance of reserve and secrecy, of imperturbable, enforced
+composure; but his eyes, cold,--grey, strained--looking, with a
+line in the brow between them, examined him wistfully, as if they
+knew of a secret weakness.
+
+He noted the subjects of the pictures, the names of the painters,
+made a calculation of their values, but without the satisfaction
+he usually derived from this inward appraisement, and walked on.
+
+No. 62 would do well enough for another year, if he decided to
+build!  The times were good for building, money had not been so
+dear for years; and the site he had seen at Robin Hill, when he
+had gone down there in the spring to inspect the Nicholl
+mortgage--what could be better!  Within twelve miles of Hyde Park
+Corner, the value of the land certain to go up, would always
+fetch more than he gave for it; so that a house, if built in
+really good style, was a first-class investment.
+
+The notion of being the one member of his family with a country
+house weighed but little with him; for to a true Forsyte,
+sentiment, even the sentiment of social position, was a luxury
+only to be indulged in after his appetite for more material
+pleasure had been satisfied.
+
+To get Irene out of London, away from opportunities of going
+about and seeing people, away from her friends and those who put
+ideas into her head!  That was the thing!  She was too thick with
+June!  June disliked him.  He returned the sentiment.  They were
+of the same blood.
+
+It would be everything to get Irene out of town.  The house would
+please her she would enjoy messing about with the decoration, she
+was very artistic!
+
+The house must be in good style, something that would always be
+certain to command a price, something unique, like that last
+house of Parkes, which had a tower; but Parkes had himself said
+that his architect was ruinous.  You never knew where you were
+with those fellows; if they had a name they ran you into no end
+of expense and were conceited into the bargain.
+
+And a common architect was no good--the memory of Parkes' tower
+precluded the employment of a common architect:
+
+This was why he had thought of Bosinney.  Since the dinner at
+Swithin's he had made enquiries, the result of which had been
+meagre, but encouraging: "One of the new school."
+
+"Clever?"
+
+"As clever as you like--a bit--a bit up in the air!"
+
+He had not been able to discover what houses Bosinney had built,
+nor what his charges were.  The impression he gathered was that
+he would be able to make his own terms.  The more he reflected on
+the idea, the more he liked it.  It would be keeping the thing in
+the family, with Forsytes almost an instinct; and he would be
+able to get 'favoured-nation,' if not nominal terms--only fair,
+considering the chance to Bosinney of displaying his talents, for
+this house  must be no common edifice.
+
+Soames reflected complacently on the work it would be sure to
+bring the young man; for, like every Forsyte, he could be a
+thorough optimist when there was anything to be had out of it.
+
+Bosinney's office was in Sloane Street, close at, hand, so that
+he would be able to keep his eye continually on the plans.
+
+Again, Irene would not be to likely to object to leave London if
+her greatest friend's lover were given the job.  June's marriage
+might depend on it.  Irene could not decently stand in the way of
+June's marriage; she would never do that, he knew her too well.
+And June would be pleased; of this he saw the advantage.
+
+Bosinney looked clever, but he had also--and--it was one of his
+great attractions--an air as if he did not quite know on which
+side his bread were buttered; he should be easy to deal with in
+money matters.  Soames made this reflection in no defrauding
+spirit; it was the natural attitude of his mind--of the mind of
+any good business man--of all those thousands of good business
+men through whom he was threading his way up Ludgate Hill.
+
+Thus he fulfilled the inscrutable laws of his great class--of
+human nature itself--when he reflected, with a sense of comfort,
+that Bosinney would be easy to deal with in money matters.
+
+While he elbowed his way on, his eyes, which he usually kept
+fixed on the ground before his feet, were attracted upwards by
+the dome of St.  Paul's.  It had a peculiar fascination for him,
+that old dome, and not once, but twice or three times a week,
+would he halt in his daily pilgrimage to enter beneath and stop
+in the side aisles for five or ten minutes, scrutinizing the
+names and epitaphs on the monuments.  The attraction for him of
+this great church was inexplicable, unless it enabled him to
+concentrate his thoughts on the business of the day.  If any
+affair of particular moment, or demanding peculiar acuteness, was
+weighing on his mind, he invariably went in, to wander with
+mouse-like attention from epitaph to epitaph.  Then retiring in
+the same noiseless way, he would hold steadily on up Cheapside, a
+thought more of dogged purpose in his gait, as though he had seen
+something which he had made up his mind to buy.
+
+He went in this morning, but, instead of stealing from monument
+to monument, turned his eyes upwards to the columns and spacings
+of the walls, and remained motionless.
+
+His uplifted face, with the awed and wistful look which faces
+take on themselves in church, was whitened to a chalky hue in the
+vast building.  His gloved hands were clasped in front over the
+handle of his umbrella.  He lifted them.  Some sacred inspiration
+perhaps had come to him.
+
+'Yes,' he thought, 'I must have room to hang my pictures.
+
+That evening, on his return from the City, he called at
+Bosinney's office.  He found the architect in his shirt-sleeves,
+smoking a pipe, and ruling off lines on a plan.  Soames refused a
+drink, and came at once to the point.
+
+"If you've nothing better to do on Sunday, come down with me to
+Robin Hill, and give me your opinion on a building site."
+
+"Are you going to build?"
+
+"Perhaps," said Soames; "but don't speak of it.  I just want your
+opinion."
+
+"Quite so," said the architect.
+
+Soames peered about the room.
+
+"You're rather high up here," he remarked.
+
+Any information he could gather about the nature and scope of
+Bosinney's business would be all to the good.
+
+"It does well enough for me so far," answered the architect.
+"You're accustomed to the swells."
+
+He knocked out his pipe, but replaced it empty between his teeth;
+it assisted him perhaps to carry on the conversation.  Soames
+noted a hollow in each cheek, made as it were by suction.
+
+"What do you pay for an office like this?" said he.
+
+"Fifty too much," replied Bosinney.
+
+This answer impressed Soames favourably.
+
+"I suppose it is dear," he said.  "I'll call for you--on Sunday
+about eleven."
+
+The following Sunday therefore he called for Bosinney in a
+hansom, and drove him to the station.  On arriving at Robin Hill,
+they found no cab, and started to walk the mile and a half to the
+site.
+
+It was the 1st of August--a perfect day, with a burning sun and
+cloudless sky--and in the straight, narrow road leading up the
+hill their feet kicked up a yellow dust.
+
+"Gravel soil," remarked Soames, and sideways he glanced at the
+coat Bosinney wore.  Into the side-pockets of this coat were
+thrust bundles of papers, and under one arm was carried a queer-
+looking stick.  Soames noted these and other peculiarities.
+
+No one but a clever man, or, indeed, a buccaneer, would have
+taken such liberties with his appearance; and though these
+eccentricities were revolting to Soames, he derived a certain
+satisfaction from them, as evidence of qualities by which he must
+inevitably profit.  If the fellow could build houses, what did
+his clothes matter?
+
+"I told you," he said, "that I want this house to be a surprise,
+so don't say anything about it.  I never talk of my affairs until
+they're carried through."
+
+Bosinney nodded.
+
+"Let women into your plans," pursued Soames, "and you never know
+where it'll end."
+
+"Ah!" Said Bosinney, "women are the devil!"
+
+This feeling had long been at the--bottom of Soames's heart; he
+had never, however, put it into words.
+
+"Oh!" he Muttered, "so you're beginning to...."  He stopped, but
+added, with an uncontrollable burst of spite: "June's got a
+temper of her own--always had."
+
+"A temper's not a bad thing in an angel."
+
+Soames had never called Irene an angel.  He could not so have
+violated his best instincts, letting other people into the secret
+of her value, and giving himself away.  He made no reply.
+
+They had struck into a half-made road across a warren.  A
+cart-track led at right-angles to a gravel pit, beyond which the
+chimneys of a cottage rose amongst a clump of trees at the border
+of a thick wood.  Tussocks of feathery grass covered the rough
+surface of the ground, and out of these the larks soared into the
+hate of sunshine.  On the far horizon, over a countless
+succession of fields and hedges, rose a line of downs.
+
+Soames led till they had crossed to the far side, and there he
+stopped.  It was the chosen site; but now that he was about to
+divulge the spot to another he had become uneasy.
+
+"The agent lives in that cottage," he said; "he'll give us some
+lunch--we'd better have lunch before we go into this matter."
+
+He again took the lead to the cottage, where the agent, a tall
+man named Oliver, with a heavy face and grizzled beard, welcomed
+them.  During lunch, which Soames hardly touched, he kept looking
+at Bosinney, and once or twice passed his silk handkerchief
+stealthily over his forehead.  The meal came to an end at last,
+and Bosinney rose.
+
+"I dare say you've got business to talk over," he said; "I'll
+just go and nose about a bit." Without waiting for a reply he
+strolled out.
+
+Soames was solicitor to this estate, and he spent nearly an hour
+in the agent's company, looking at ground-plans and discussing
+the Nicholl and other mortgages; it was as it were by an
+afterthought that he brought up the question of the building
+site.
+
+"Your people," he said, "ought to come down in their price to me,
+considering that I shall be the first to build."
+
+Oliver shook his head.
+
+The site you've fixed on, Sir, he said, "is the cheapest we've
+got.  Sites at the top of the slope are dearer by a good bit."
+
+"Mind," said Soames," I've not decided; it's quite possible I
+shan't build at all.  The ground rent's very high."
+
+"Well, Mr. Forsyte, I shall be sorry if you go off, and I think
+you'll make a mistake, Sir.  There's not a bit of land near
+London with such a view as this, nor one that's cheaper, all
+things considered; we've only to advertise, to get a mob of
+people after it."
+
+They looked at each other.  Their faces said very plainly: 'I
+respect you as a man of business;  and you can't expect me to
+believe a word you say.'
+
+Well, repeated Soames, "I haven't made up my mind; the thing will
+very likely go off!"  With these words, taking up his umbrella,
+he put his chilly hand into the agent's, withdrew it without the
+faintest pressure, and went out into the sun.
+
+He walked slowly back towards the site in deep thought.  His
+instinct told him that what the agent had said was true.  A cheap
+site.  And the beauty of it was, that he knew the agent did not
+really think it cheap; so that his own intuitive knowledge was a
+victory over the agent's.
+
+'Cheap or not, I mean to have it,'  he thought.
+
+The larks sprang up in front of his feet, the air was full of
+butterflies, a sweet fragrance rose from the wild grasses.  The
+sappy scent of the bracken stole forth from the wood, where,
+hidden in the depths, pigeons were cooing, and from afar on the
+warm breeze, came the rhythmic chiming of church bells.
+
+Soames walked with his eyes on the ground, his lips opening and
+closing as though in anticipation of a delicious morsel.  But
+when he arrived at the site, Bosinney was nowhere to be seen.
+After waiting some little time, he crossed the warren in the
+direction of the slope.  He would have shouted, but dreaded the
+sound of his voice.
+
+The warren was as lonely as a prairie, its silence only broken by
+the rustle of rabbits bolting to their holes, and the song of the
+larks.
+
+Soames, the pioneer-leader of the great Forsyte army advancing to
+the civilization of this wilderness, felt his spirit daunted by
+the loneliness, by the invisible singing, and the hot, sweet air.
+He had begun to retrace his steps when he at last caught sight of
+Bosinney.
+
+The architect was sprawling under a large oak tree, whose trunk,
+with a huge spread of bough and foliage, ragged with age, stood
+on the verge of the rise.
+
+Soames had to touch him on the shoulder before he looked up.
+
+"Hallo!  Forsyte," he said, "I've found the very place for your
+house!  Look here!"
+
+Soames stood and looked, then he said, coldly:
+
+"You may be very clever, but this site will cost me half as much
+again."
+
+"Hang the cost, man.  Look at the view!"
+
+Almost from their feet stretched ripe corn, dipping to a small
+dark copse beyond.  A plain of fields and hedges spread to the
+distant grey-bluedowns.  In a silver streak to the right could be
+seen the line of the river.
+
+The sky was so blue, and the sun so bright, that an eternal
+summer seemed to reign over this prospect.  Thistledown floated
+round them, enraptured by the serenity, of the ether.  The heat
+danced over the corn, and, pervading all, was a soft, insensible
+hum, like the murmur of bright minutes holding revel between
+earth and heaven.
+
+Soames looked.  In spite of himself, something swelled in his
+breast.  To live here in sight of all this, to be able to point
+it out to his friends, to talk of it, to possess it!  His cheeks
+flushed.  The warmth, the radiance, the glow, were sinking into
+his senses as, four years before, Irene's beauty had sunk into
+his senses and made him long for her.  He stole a glance at
+Bosinney, whose eyes, the eyes of the coachman's 'half-tame
+leopard,' seemed running wild over the landscape.  The sunlight
+had caught the promontories of the fellow's face, the bumpy
+cheekbones, the point of his chin, the vertical ridges above his
+brow; and Soames watched this rugged, enthusiastic, careless face
+with an unpleasant feeling.
+
+A long, soft ripple of wind flowed over the corn, and brought a
+puff of warm air into their faces.
+
+"I could build you a teaser here," said Bosinney, breaking the
+silence at last.
+
+"I dare say," replied Soames, drily.  "You haven't got to pay for
+it."
+
+"For about eight thousand I could build you a palace."
+
+Soames had become very pale--a struggle was going on within him.
+He dropped his eyes, and said stubbornly:
+
+"I can't afford it."
+
+And slowly, with his mousing walk, he led the way back to the
+first site.
+
+They spent some time there going into particulars of the
+projected house, and then Soames returned to the agent's cottage.
+
+He came out in about half an hour, and, joining Bosinney,
+started for the station.
+
+"Well," he said, hardly opening his lips, "I've taken that site
+of yours, after all."
+
+And again he was silent, confusedly debating how it was that this
+fellow, whom by habit he despised, should have overborne his own
+decision.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A FORSYTE MENAGE
+
+
+Like the enlightened thousands of his class and generation in
+this great city of London, who no longer believe in red velvet
+chairs, and know that groups of modern Italian marble are 'vieux
+jeu,' Soames Forsyte inhabited a house which did what it could.
+It owned a copper door knocker of individual design, windows
+which had been altered to open outwards, hanging flower boxes
+filled with fuchsias, and at the back (a great feature) a little
+court tiled with jade-green tiles, and surrounded by pink
+hydrangeas in peacock-blue tubs.  Here, under a parchment-
+coloured Japanese sunshade covering the whole end, inhabitants
+or visitors could be screened from the eyes of the curious
+while they drank tea and examined at their leisure the latest
+of Soames's little silver boxes.
+
+The inner decoration favoured the First Empire and William
+Morris.  For its size, the house was commodious; there were
+countless nooks resembling birds' nests, and little things made
+of silver were deposited like eggs.
+
+In this general perfection two kinds of fastidiousness were at
+war.  There lived here a mistress who would have dwelt daintily
+on a desert island; a master whose daintiness was, as it were, an
+investment, cultivated by the owner for his advancement, in
+accordance with the laws of competition.  This competitive
+daintiness had caused Soames in his Marlborough days to be the
+first boy into white waistcoats in summer, and corduroy
+waistcoats in winter, had prevented him from ever appearing in
+public with his tie climbing up his collar, and induced him to
+dust his patent leather boots before a great multitude assembled
+on Speech Day to hear him recite Moliere.
+
+Skin-like immaculateness had grown over Soames, as over many
+Londoners; impossible to conceive of him with a hair out of
+place, a tie deviating one-eighth of an inch from the
+perpendicular, a collar unglossed!  He would not have gone
+without a bath for worlds--it was the fashion to take baths; and
+how bitter was his scorn of people who omitted them!
+
+But Irene could be imagined, like some nymph, bathing in wayside
+streams, for the joy of the freshness and of seeing her own fair
+body.
+
+In this conflict throughout the house the woman had gone to the
+wall.  As in the struggle between Saxon and Celt still going on
+within the nation, the more impressionable and receptive
+temperament had had forced on it a conventional superstructure.
+
+Thus the house had acquired a close resemblance to hundreds of
+other houses with the same high aspirations, having become: 'That
+very charming little house of the Soames Forsytes, quite
+individual, my dear--really elegant.'
+
+For Soames Forsyte--read James Peabody, Thomas Atkins, or
+Emmanuel Spagnoletti, the name in fact of any upper-middle class
+Englishman in London with any pretensions to taste; and though
+the decoration be different, the phrase is just.
+
+On the evening of August 8, a week after the expedition to Robin
+Hill, in the dining-room of this house--'quite individual, my
+dear--really elegant'--Soames and Irene were seated at dinner.  A
+hot dinner on Sundays was a little distinguishing elegance common
+to this house and many others.  Early in married life Soames had
+laid down the rule: 'The servants must give us hot dinner on
+Sundays--they've nothing to do but play the concertina.'
+
+The custom had produced no revolution.  For--to Soames a rather
+deplorable sign--servants were devoted to Irene, who, in defiance
+of all safe tradition, appeared to recognise their right to a
+share in the weaknesses of human nature.
+
+The happy pair were seated, not opposite each other, but
+rectangularly, at the handsome rosewood table; they dined without
+a cloth--a distinguishing elegance--and so far had not spoken a
+word.
+
+Soames liked to talk during dinner about business, or what he had
+been buying, and so long as he talked Irene's silence did not
+distress him.  This evening he had found it impossible to talk.
+The decision to build had been weighing on his mind all the week,
+and he had made up his mind to tell her.
+
+His nervousness about this disclosure irritated him profoundly;
+she had no business to make him feel like that--a wife and a
+husband being one person.  She had not looked at him once since
+they sat down; and he wondered what on earth she had been
+thinking about all the time.  It was hard, when a man worked as
+he did, making money for her--yes, and with an ache in his heart-
+-that she should sit there, looking--looking as if she saw the
+walls of the room closing in.  It was enough to make a man get up
+and leave the table.
+
+The light from the rose-shaded lamp fell on her neck and arms--
+Soames liked her to dine in a low dress, it gave him an
+inexpressible feeling of superiority to the majority of his
+acquaintance, whose wives were contented with their best high
+frocks or with tea-gowns, when they dined at home.  Under that
+rosy light her amber-coloured hair and fair skin made strange
+contrast with her dark brown eyes.
+
+Could a man own anything prettier than this dining-table with its
+deep tints, the starry, soft-petalled roses, the ruby-coloured
+glass, and quaint silver furnishing; could a man own anything
+prettier than the woman who sat at it?  Gratitude was no virtue
+among Forsytes, who, competitive, and full of common-sense, had
+no occasion for it; and Soames only experienced a sense of
+exasperation amounting to pain, that he did not own her as it was
+his right to own her, that he could not, as by stretching out
+his hand to that rose, pluck her and sniff the very secrets of
+her heart.
+
+Out of his other property, out of all the things he had
+collected, his silver, his pictures, his houses, his investments,
+he got a secret and intimate feeling; out of her he got none.
+
+In this house of his there was writing on every wall.  His
+business-like temperament protested against a mysterious warning
+that she was not made for him.  He had married this woman,
+conquered her, made her his own, and it seemed to him contrary to
+the most fundamental of all laws, the law of possession, that he
+could do no more than own her body--if indeed he could do that,
+which he was beginning to doubt.  If any one had asked him if he
+wanted to own her soul, the question would have seemed to him
+both ridiculous and sentimental.  But he did so want, and the
+writing said he never would.
+
+She was ever silent, passive, gracefully averse; as though
+terrified lest by word, motion, or sign she might lead him to
+believe that she was fond of him; and he asked himself: Must I
+always go on like this?
+
+Like most novel readers of his generation (and Soames was a great
+novel reader), literature coloured his view of life; and he had
+imbibed the belief that it was only a question of time.
+
+In the end the husband always gained the affection of his wife.
+Even in those cases--a class of book he was not very fond of--
+which ended in tragedy, the wife always died with poignant
+regrets on her lips, or if it were the husband who died--
+unpleasant thought--threw herself on his body in an agony of
+remorse.
+
+He often took Irene to the theatre, instinctively choosing the
+modern Society Plays with the modern Society conjugal problem, so
+fortunately different from any conjugal problem in real life.  He
+found that they too always ended in the same way, even when there
+was a lover in the case.  While he was watching the play Soames
+often sympathized with the lover; but before he reached home
+again, driving with Irene in a hansom, he saw that this would not
+do, and he was glad the play had ended as it had.  There was one
+class of husband that had just then come into fashion, the
+strong, rather rough, but extremely sound man, who was peculiarly
+successful at the end of the play; with this person Soames was
+really not in sympathy, and had it not been for his own position,
+would have expressed his disgust with the fellow.  But he was so
+conscious of how vital to himself was the necessity for being a
+successful, even a 'strong,' husband, that be never spoke of a
+distaste born perhaps by the perverse processes of Nature out of
+a secret fund of brutality in himself.
+
+But Irene's silence this evening was exceptional.  He had never
+before seen such an expression on her face.  And since it is
+always the unusual which alarms, Soames was alarmed.  He ate his
+savoury, and hurried the maid as she swept off the crumbs with
+the silver sweeper.  When she had left the room, he filled his.
+glass with wine and said:
+
+"Anybody been here this afternoon?"
+
+"June."
+
+"What did she want?"  It was an axiom with the Forsytes that
+people did not go anywhere unless they wanted something.  "Came
+to talk about her lover, I suppose?"
+
+Irene made no reply.
+
+"It looks to me," continued Soames, "as if she were sweeter on him
+than he is on her.  She's always following him about."
+
+Irene's eyes made him feel uncomfortable.
+
+"You've no business to say such a thing!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Why not?  Anybody can see it."
+
+"They cannot.  And if they could, it's disgraceful to say so."
+
+Soames's composure gave way.
+
+"You're a pretty wife!" he said.  But secretly he wondered at the
+heat of her reply; it was unlike her.  "You're cracked about
+June!  I can tell you one thing: now that she has the Buccaneer
+in tow, she doesn't care twopence about you, and, you'll find it
+out.  But you won't see so much of her in future; we're going to
+live in the country."
+
+He had been glad to get his news out under cover of this burst of
+irritation.  He had expected a cry of dismay; the silence with
+which his pronouncement was received alarmed him.
+
+"You don't seem interested," he was obliged to add.
+
+"I knew it already."
+
+He looked at her sharply.
+
+"Who told you?"
+
+"June."
+
+"How did she know?"
+
+Irene did not answer.  Baffled and uncomfortable, he said:
+
+"It's a fine thing for Bosinney, it'll be the making of him.  I
+suppose she's told you all about it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+There was another pause, and then Soames said:
+
+"I suppose you don't want to, go?"
+
+Irene made no reply.
+
+"Well, I can't tell what you want.  You never seem contented
+here."
+
+"Have my wishes anything to do with it?"
+
+She took the vase of roses and left the room.  Soames remained
+seated.  Was it for this that he had signed that contract?  Was
+it for this that he was going to spend some ten thousand pounds?
+Bosinney's phrase came back to him: "Women are the devil!"
+
+But presently he grew calmer.  It might have, been worse.  She
+might have flared up.  He had expected something more than this.
+It was lucky, after all, that June had broken the ice for him.
+She must have wormed it out of Bosinney; he might have known she
+would.
+
+He lighted his cigarette.  After all, Irene had not made a scene!
+She would come round--that was the best of her; she was cold, but
+not sulky.  And, puffing the cigarette smoke at a lady-bird on
+the shining table, he plunged into a reverie about the house.  It
+was no good worrying; he would go and make it up presently.  She
+would be sitting out there in the dark, under the Japanese
+sunshade, knitting.  A beautiful, warm night....
+
+In truth, June had come in that afternoon with shining eyes, and
+the words: "Soames is a brick!  It's splendid for Phil--the very
+thing for him!"
+
+Irene's face remaining dark and puzzled, she went on:
+
+"Your new house at Robin Hill, of course.  What?  Don't you
+know?"
+
+Irene did not know.
+
+"Oh! then, I suppose I oughtn't to have told you!"  Looking
+impatiently at her friend, she cried: "You look as if you didn't
+care.  Don't you see, it's what I've' been praying for--the very
+chance he's been wanting all this time.  Now you'll see what he
+can do;" and thereupon she poured out the whole story.
+
+Since her own engagement she had not seemed much interested in
+her friend's position; the hours she spent with Irene were given
+to confidences of her own; and at times, for all her affectionate
+pity, it was impossible to keep out of her smile a trace of
+compassionate contempt for the woman who had made such a mistake
+in her life--such a vast, ridiculous mistake.
+
+"He's to have all the decorations as well--a free hand.  It's
+perfect--" June broke into laughter, her little figure quivered
+gleefully; she raised her hand, and struck a blow at a muslin
+curtain.  "Do you, know I even asked Uncle James...." But, with a
+sudden dislike to mentioning that incident, she stopped; and
+presently, finding her friend so unresponsive, went away.  She
+looked back from the pavement, and Irene was still standing in
+the doorway.  In response to her farewell wave, Irene put her
+hand to her brow, and, turning slowly, shut the door....
+
+Soames went to the drawing-room presently, and peered at her
+through the window.
+
+Out in the shadow of the Japanese sunshade she was sitting very
+still, the lace on her white shoulders stirring with the soft
+rise and fall of her bosom.
+
+But about this silent creature sitting there so motionless, in
+the dark, there seemed a warmth, a hidden fervour of feeling, as
+if the whole of her being had been stirred, and some change were
+taking place in its very depths.
+
+He stole back to the dining-room unnoticed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+JAMES AT LARGE
+
+
+It was not long before Soames's determination to build went the
+round of the family, and created the flutter that any decision
+connected with property should make among Forsytes.
+
+It was not his fault, for he had been determined that no one
+should know.  June, in the fulness of her heart, had told Mrs.
+Small, giving her leave only to tell Aunt Ann--she thought it
+would cheer her, the poor old sweet! for Aunt Ann had kept her
+room now for many days.
+
+Mrs. Small told Aunt Ann at once, who, smiling as she lay back on
+her pillows, said in her distinct, trembling old voice:
+
+"It's very nice for dear June; but I hope they will be careful--
+it's rather dangerous!"
+
+When she was left alone again, a frown, like a cloud presaging a
+rainy morrow, crossed her face.
+
+While she was lying there so many days the process of recharging
+her will went on all the time; it spread to her face, too, and
+tightening movements were always in action at the corners of her
+lips.
+
+The maid Smither, who had been in her service since girlhood, and
+was spoken of as "Smither--a good girl--but so slow!"--the maid
+Smither performed every morning with extreme punctiliousness the
+crowning ceremony of that ancient toilet.  Taking from the
+recesses of their pure white band-box those flat, grey curls,
+the insignia of personal dignity, she placed them securely in her
+mistress's hands, and turned her back.
+
+And every day Aunts Juley and Hester were required to come and
+report on Timothy; what news there was of Nicholas; whether dear
+June had succeeded in getting Jolyon to shorten the engagement,
+now that Mr. Bosinney was building Soames a house; whether young
+Roger's wife was really--expecting; how the operation on Archie
+had succeeded; and what Swithin had done about that empty house
+in Wigmore Street, where the tenant had lost all his money and
+treated him so badly; above all, about Soames; was Irene still--
+still asking for a separate room?  And every morning Smither was
+told: "I shall be coming down this afternoon, Smither, about two
+o'clock.  I shall want your arm, after all these days in bed!"
+
+After telling Aunt Ann, Mrs. Small had spoken of the house in the
+strictest confidence to Mrs. Nicholas, who in her turn had asked
+Winifred Dartie for confirmation, supposing, of course, that,
+being Soames's sister, she would know all about it.  Through her
+it had in due course come round to the ears of James. He had been
+a good deal agitated.
+
+"Nobody," he said, "told him anything." And, rather than go
+direct to Soames himself, of whose taciturnity he was afraid, he
+took his umbrella and went round to Timothy's.
+
+He found Mrs. Septimus and Hester (who had been told--she was so
+safe, she found it tiring to talk) ready, and indeed eager, to
+discuss the news.  It was very good of dear Soames, they thought,
+to employ Mr. Bosinney, but rather risky.  What had George named
+him? 'The Buccaneer' How droll!  But George was always droll!
+However, it would be all in the family they supposed they must
+really look upon Mr. Bosinney as belonging to the family, though
+it seemed strange.
+
+James here broke in:
+
+"Nobody knows anything about him.  I don't see what Soames wants
+with a young man like that.  I shouldn't be surprised if Irene
+had put her oar in.  I shall speak to...."
+
+"Soames," interposed Aunt Juley, "told Mr. Bosinney that he
+didn't wish it mentioned.  He wouldn't like it to be talked
+about, I'm sure, and if Timothy knew he would be very vexed,
+I...."
+
+James put his hand behind his ear:
+
+"What?" he said.  "I'm getting very deaf.  I suppose I don't hear
+people.  Emily's got a bad toe.  We shan't be able to start for
+Wales till the end of the month.  There' s always something!"
+And, having got what he wanted, he took his hat and went away.
+
+It was a fine afternoon, and he walked across the Park towards
+Soames's, where he intended to dine, for Emily's toe kept her in
+bed, and Rachel and Cicely were on a visit to the country.  He
+took the slanting path from the Bayswater side of the Row to the
+Knightsbridge Gate, across a pasture of short, burnt grass,
+dotted with blackened sheep, strewn with seated couples and
+strange waifs; lying prone on their faces, like corpses on a
+field over which the wave of battle has rolled.
+
+He walked rapidly, his head bent, looking neither to right nor,
+left.  The appearance of this park, the centre of his own
+battle-field, where he had all his life been fighting, excited no
+thought or speculation in his mind.  These corpses flung down,
+there, from out the press and turmoil of the struggle, these
+pairs of lovers sitting cheek by jowl for an hour of idle Elysium
+snatched from the monotony of their treadmill, awakened no
+fancies in his mind; he had outlived that kind of imagination;
+his nose, like the nose of a sheep, was fastened to the pastures
+on which he browsed.
+
+One of his tenants had lately shown a disposition to be
+behind-hand in his rent, and it had become a grave question
+whether he had not better turn him out at once, and so run the
+risk of not re-letting before Christmas.  Swithin had just been
+let in very badly, but it had served him right--he had held on
+too long.
+
+He pondered this as he walked steadily, holding his umbrella
+carefully by the wood, just below the crook of the handle, so as
+to keep the ferule off the ground, and not fray the silk in the
+middle.  And, with his thin, high shoulders stooped, his long
+legs moving with swift mechanical precision, this passage through
+the Park, where the sun shone with a clear flame on so much
+idleness--on so many human evidences of the remorseless battle of
+Property, raging beyond its ring--was like the flight of some
+land bird across the sea.
+
+He felt a--touch on the arm as he came out at Albert Gate.
+
+It was Soames, who, crossing from the shady side of Piccadilly,
+where he had been walking home from the office, had suddenly
+appeared alongside.
+
+"Your mother's in bed," said James; "I was, just coming to you,
+but I suppose I shall be in the way."
+
+The outward relations between James and his son were marked by a
+lack of sentiment peculiarly Forsytean, but for all that the two
+were by no means unattached.  Perhaps they regarded one another
+as an investment; certainly they were solicitous of each other's
+welfare, glad of each other's company.  They had never exchanged
+two words upon the more intimate problems of life, or revealed in
+each other's presence the existence of any deep feeling.
+
+Something beyond the power of word-analysis bound them together,
+something hidden deep in the fibre of nations and families--for
+blood, they say, is thicker than water--and neither of them was a
+cold-blooded man.  Indeed, in James love of his children was now
+the prime motive of his existence.  To have creatures who were
+parts of himself, to whom he might transmit the money he saved,
+was at the root of his saving; and, at seventy-five, what was
+left that could give him pleasure, but--saving?  The kernel of
+life was in this saving for his children.
+
+Than James Forsyte, notwithstanding all his 'Jonah-isms,' there
+was no saner man (if the leading symptom of sanity, as we are
+told, is self-preservation, though without doubt Timothy went too
+far) in all this London, of which he owned so much, and loved
+with such a dumb love, as the centre of his opportunities.  He
+had the marvellous instinctive sanity of the middle class.  In
+him--more than in Jolyon, with his masterful will and his moments
+of tenderness and philosophy--more than in Swithin, the martyr to
+crankiness--Nicholas, the sufferer from ability--and Roger, the
+victim of enterprise--beat the true pulse of compromise; of all
+the brothers he was least remarkable in mind and person, and for
+that reason more likely to live for ever.
+
+To James, more than to any of the others, was "the family"
+significant and dear.  There had always been something primitive
+and cosy in his attitude towards life; he loved the family
+hearth, he loved gossip, and he loved grumbling.  All his
+decisions were formed of a cream which he skimmed off the family
+mind; and, through that family, off the minds of thousands of
+other families of similar fibre.  Year after year, week after
+week, he went to Timothy's, and in his brother's front
+drawing-room--his legs twisted, his long white whiskers framing
+his clean-shaven mouth--would sit watching the family pot simmer,
+the cream rising to the top; and he would go away sheltered,
+refreshed, comforted, with an indefinable sense of comfort.
+
+Beneath the adamant of his self-preserving instinct there was
+much real softness in James; a visit to Timothy's was like an
+hour spent in the lap of a mother; and the deep craving he
+himself had for the protection of the family wing reacted in turn
+on his feelings towards his own children; it was a nightmare to
+him to think of them exposed to the treatment of the world, in
+money, health, or reputation.  When his old friend John Street's
+son volunteered for special service, he shook his head
+querulously, and wondered what John Street was about to allow it;
+and when young Street was assagaied, he took it so much to heart
+that he made a point of calling everywhere with the special
+object of saying: He knew how it would be--he'd no patience with
+them!
+
+When his son-in-law Dartie had that financial crisis, due to
+speculation in Oil Shares, James made himself ill worrying over
+it; the knell of all prosperity seemed to have sounded.  It took
+him three months and a visit to Baden-Baden to get better; there
+was something terrible in the idea that but for his, James's,
+money, Dartie's name might have appeared in the Bankruptcy List.
+
+Composed of a physiological mixture so sound that if he had an
+earache he thought he was dying, he regarded the occasional
+ailments of his wife and children as in the nature of personal
+grievances, special interventions of Providence for the purpose
+of destroying his peace of mind; but he did not believe at all in
+the ailments of people outside his own immediate family,
+affirming them in every case to be due to neglected liver.
+
+His universal comment was: "What can they expect?  I have it
+myself, if I'm not careful!"
+
+When he went to Soames's that evening he felt that life was hard
+on him: There was Emily with a bad toe, and Rachel gadding about
+in the country; he got no sympathy from anybody; and Ann, she was
+ill--he did not believe she would last through the summer; he had
+called there three times now without her being able to see him!
+And this idea of Soames's, building a house, that would have to
+be looked into.  As to the trouble with Irene, he didn't know
+what was to come of that--anything might come of it!
+
+He entered 62, Montpellier Square with the fullest intentions of
+being miserable.  It was already half-past seven, and Irene,
+dressed for dinner, was seated in the drawing-room.  She was
+wearing her gold-coloured frock--for, having been displayed at a
+dinner-party, a soiree, and a dance, it was now to be worn at
+home--and she had adorned the bosom with a cascade of lace, on
+which James's eyes riveted themselves at once.
+
+"Where do you get your things?" he said in an aggravated voice.
+"I never see Rachel and Cicely looking half so well.  That
+rose-point, now--that's not real!"
+
+Irene came close, to prove to him that he was in error.
+
+And, in spite of himself, James felt the influence of her
+deference, of the faint seductive perfume exhaling from her.  No
+self-respecting Forsyte surrendered at a blow; so he merely said:
+He didn't know--he expected she was spending a pretty penny on
+dress.
+
+The gong sounded, and, putting her white arm within his, Irene
+took him into the dining-room.  She seated him in Soames's usual
+place, round the corner on her left.  The light fell softly
+there, so that he would not be worried by the gradual dying of
+the day; and she began to talk to him about himself.
+
+Presently, over James came a change, like the mellowing that
+steals upon a fruit in the, sun; a  sense of being caressed, and
+praised, and petted, and all without the bestowal of a single
+caress or word of praise.  He felt that what he was eating was
+agreeing with him; he could not get that feeling at home; he did
+not know when he had enjoyed a glass of champagne so much, and,
+on inquiring the brand and price, was surprised to find that it
+was one of which he had a large stock himself, but could never
+drink; he instantly formed the resolution to let his wine
+merchant know that he had been swindled.
+
+Looking up from his food, he remarked:
+
+"You've a lot of nice things about the place.  Now, what did you
+give for that sugar-sifter?  Shouldn't wonder if it was worth
+money!"
+
+He was particularly pleased with the appearance of a picture, on
+the wall opposite, which he himself had given them:
+
+"I'd no idea it was so good!" he said.
+
+They rose to go into the drawing-room, and James followed Irene
+closely.
+
+"That's what I call a capital little dinner," he murmured,
+breathing pleasantly down on her shoulder; "nothing heavy--and
+not too Frenchified.  But I can't get it at home.  I pay my cook
+sixty pounds a year, but she can't give me a dinner like that!"
+
+He had as yet made no allusion to the building of the house, nor
+did he when Soames, pleading the excuse of business, betook
+himself to the room at the top, where he kept his pictures.
+
+James was left alone with his daughter-in-law.  The glow of the
+wine, and of an excellent liqueur, was still within him.  He felt
+quite warm towards her.  She was really a taking little thing;
+she listened to you, and seemed to understand what you were
+saying; and, while talking, he kept examining her figure, from
+her bronze-coloured shoes to the waved gold of her hair.  She was
+leaning back in an Empire chair, her shoulders poised against the
+top--her body, flexibly straight and unsupported from the hips,
+swaying when she moved, as though giving to the arms of a lover.
+Her lips were smiling, her eyes half-closed.
+
+It may have been a recognition of danger in the very charm of her
+attitude, or a twang of digestion, that caused a sudden dumbness
+to fall on James.  He did not remember ever having been quite
+alone with Irene before.  And, as he looked at her, an odd
+feeling crept over him, as though he had come across something
+strange and foreign.
+
+Now what was she thinking about--sitting back like that?
+
+Thus when he spoke it was in a sharper voice, as if he had been
+awakened from a pleasant dream.
+
+"What d'you do with yourself all day?" he said.  "You never come
+round to Park Lane!"
+
+She seemed to be making very lame excuses, and James did not look
+at her.  He did not want to believe that she was really avoiding
+them--it would mean too much.
+
+"I expect the fact is, you haven't time," he said; "You're always
+about with June.  I expect you're useful to her with her young
+man, chaperoning, and one thing and another.  They tell me she's
+never at home now; your Uncle Jolyon he doesn't like it, I fancy,
+being left so much alone as he is.  They tell me she's always
+hanging about for this young Bosinney; I suppose he comes here
+every day.  Now, what do you think of him?  D'you think he knows
+his own mind?  He seems to me a poor thing.  I should say the
+grey mare was the better horse!"
+
+The colour deepened in Irene's face; and James watched her
+suspiciously.
+
+"Perhaps you don't quite understand Mr. Bosinney," she said.
+
+"Don't understand him!" James hummed out: "Why not?--you can see
+he's one of these artistic chaps.  They say he's clever--they all
+think they're clever.  You know more about him than I do," he
+added; and again his suspicious glance rested on her.
+
+"He is designing a house for Soames," she said softly, evidently
+trying to smooth things over.
+
+"That brings me to what I was going to say," continued James; "I
+don't know what Soames wants with a young man like that; why
+doesn't he go to a first-rate man?"
+
+"Perhaps Mr. Bosinney is first-rate!"
+
+James rose, and took a turn with bent head.
+
+"That's it'," he said, "you young people, you all stick together;
+you all think you know best!"
+
+Halting his tall, lank figure before her, he raised a finger, and
+levelled it at her bosom, as though bringing an indictment
+against her beauty:
+
+"All I can say is, these artistic people, or whatever they call
+themselves, they're as unreliable as they can be; and my advice
+to you is, don't you have too much to do with him!"
+
+Irene smiled; and in the curve of her lips was a strange
+provocation.  She seemed to have lost her deference.  Her breast
+rose and fell as though with secret anger; she drew her hands
+inwards from their rest on the arms of her chair until the tips
+of her fingers met, and her dark eyes looked unfathomably at
+James.
+
+The latter gloomily scrutinized the floor.
+
+"I tell you my opinion," he said, "it's a pity you haven't got a
+child to think about, and occupy you!"
+
+A brooding look came instantly on Irene's face, and even James
+became conscious of the rigidity that took possession of her
+whole figure beneath the softness of its silk and lace clothing.
+
+He was frightened by the effect he had produced, and like most
+men with but little courage, he sought at once to justify himself
+by bullying.
+
+"You don't seem to care about going about.  Why don't you drive
+down to Hurlingham with us?  And go to the theatre now and then.
+At your time of life you ought to take an interest in things.
+You're a young woman!"
+
+The brooding look darkened on her face; he grew nervous.
+
+"Well, I know nothing about it," he said; "nobody tells me
+anything.  Soames ought to be able to take care of himself.  If
+he can't take care of himself he mustn't look to me--that's all."
+
+Biting the corner of his forefinger he stole a cold, sharp look
+at his daughter-in-law.
+
+He encountered her eyes fixed on his own, so dark and deep, that
+he stopped, and broke into a gentle perspiration.
+
+"Well, I must be going," he said after a short pause, and a
+minute later rose, with a slight appearance of surprise, as
+though he had expected to be asked to stop.  Giving his hand to
+Irene, he allowed himself to be conducted to the door, and let
+out into the street.  He would not have a cab, he would walk,
+Irene was to say good-night to Soames for him, and if she wanted
+a little gaiety, well, he would drive her down to Richmond any
+day.
+
+He walked home, and going upstairs, woke Emily out of the first
+sleep she had had for four and twenty hours, to tell her that it
+was his impression things were in a bad way at Soames's; on this
+theme he descanted for half an hour, until at last, saying that
+he would not sleep a wink, he turned on his side and instantly
+began to snore.
+
+In Montpellier Square Soames, who had come from the picture room,
+stood invisible at the top of the stairs, watching Irene sort the
+letters brought by the last post.  She turned back into the
+drawing-room; but in a minute came out, and stood as if
+listening.  Then she came stealing up the stairs, with a kitten
+in her arms.  He could see her face bent over the little beast,
+which was purring against her neck.  Why couldn't she look at him
+like that?
+
+Suddenly she saw him, and her face changed.
+
+"Any letters for me?" he said.
+
+"Three."
+
+He stood aside, and without another word she passed on into the
+bedroom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+OLD JOLYON'S PECCADILLO
+
+
+Old Jolyon came out of Lord's cricket ground that same afternoon
+with the intention of going home.  He had not reached Hamilton
+Terrace before he changed his mind, and hailing a cab, gave the
+driver an address in Wistaria Avenue.  He had taken a resolution.
+
+June had hardly been at home at all that week; she had given him
+nothing of her company for a long time past, not, in fact, since
+she had become engaged to Bosinney.  He never asked her for her
+company.  It was not his habit to ask people for things!  She had
+just that one idea now--Bosinney and his affairs--and she left
+him stranded in his great house, with a parcel of servants, and
+not a soul to speak to from morning to night.  His Club was
+closed for cleaning; his Boards in recess; there was nothing,
+therefore, to take him into the City.  June had wanted him to go
+away; she would not go herself, because Bosinney was in London.
+
+But where was he to go by himself?  He could not go abroad alone;
+the sea upset his liver; he hated hotels.  Roger went to a
+hydropathic--he was not going to begin that at his time of life,
+those new-fangled places we're all humbug!
+
+With such formulas he clothed to himself the desolation of his
+spirit; the lines down his face deepening, his eyes day by day
+looking forth with the melancholy which sat so strangely on a
+face wont to be strong and serene.
+
+And so that afternoon he took this journey through St.  John's
+Wood, in the golden-light that sprinkled the rounded green bushes
+of the acacia's before the little houses, in the summer sunshine
+that seemed holding a revel over the little gardens; and he
+looked about him with interest; for this was a district which no
+Forsyte entered without open disapproval and secret curiosity.
+
+His cab stopped in front of a small house of that peculiar buff
+colour which implies a long immunity from paint.  It had an outer
+gate, and a rustic approach.
+
+He stepped out, his bearing extremely composed; his massive head,
+with its drooping moustache and wings of white hair, very
+upright, under an excessively large top hat; his glance firm, a
+little angry.  He had been driven into this!
+
+"Mrs. Jolyon Forsyte at home?"
+
+"Oh, yes sir!--what name shall I say, if you please, sir?"
+
+Old Jolyon could not help twinkling at the little maid as he gave
+his name.  She seemed to him such a funny little toad!
+
+And he followed her through the dark hall, into a small double,
+drawing-room, where the furniture was covered in chintz, and the
+little maid placed him in a chair.
+
+"They're all in the garden, sir; if you'll kindly take a seat,
+I'll tell them."
+
+Old Jolyon sat down in the chintz-covered chair, and looked
+around him.  The whole place seemed to him, as he would have
+expressed it, pokey; there was a certain--he could not tell
+exactly what--air of shabbiness, or rather of making two ends
+meet, about everything.  As far as he could see, not a single
+piece of furniture was worth a five-pound note.  The walls,
+distempered rather a long time ago, were decorated with
+water-colour sketches; across the ceiling meandered a long crack.
+
+These little houses were all old, second-rate concerns; he should
+hope the rent was under a hundred a year; it hurt him more than
+he could have said, to think of a Forsyte--his own son living in
+such a place.
+
+The little maid came back.  Would he please to go down into the
+garden?
+
+Old Jolyon marched out through the French windows.  In descending
+the steps he noticed that they wanted painting.
+
+Young Jolyon, his wife, his two children, and his dog Balthasar,
+were all out there under a pear-tree.
+
+This walk towards them was the most courageous act of old
+Jolyon's life; but no muscle of his face moved, no nervous
+gesture betrayed him.  He kept his deep-set eyes steadily on the
+enemy.
+
+In those two minutes he demonstrated to perfection all that
+unconscious soundness, balance, and vitality of fibre that made,
+of him and so many others of his class the core of the nation.
+In the unostentatious conduct of their own affairs, to the
+neglect of everything else, they typified the essential
+individualism, born in the Briton from the natural isolation of
+his country's life.
+
+The dog Balthasar sniffed round the edges of his trousers; this
+friendly and cynical mongrel--offspring of a liaison between a
+Russian poodle and a fox-terrier--had a nose for the unusual.
+
+The strange greetings over, old Jolyon seated himself in a wicker
+chair, and his two grandchildren, one on each side of his knees,
+looked at him silently, never having seen so old a man.
+
+They were unlike, as though recognising the difference set
+between them by the circumstances of their births.  Jolly, the
+child of sin, pudgy-faced, with his tow-coloured hair brushed off
+his forehead, and a dimple in his chin, had an air of stubborn
+amiability, and the eyes of a Forsyte; little Holly, the child of
+wedlock, was a dark-skinned, solemn soul, with her mother's, grey
+and wistful eyes.
+
+The dog Balthasar, having walked round the three small flower-
+beds, to show his extreme contempt for things at large, had also
+taken a seat in front of old Jolyon, and, oscillating a tail
+curled by Nature tightly over his back, was staring up with
+eyes that did not blink.
+
+Even in the garden, that sense of things being pokey haunted old
+Jolyon; the wicker chair creaked under his weight; the
+garden-beds looked 'daverdy'; on the far side, under the smut-
+stained wall, cats had made a path.
+
+While he and his grandchildren thus regarded each other with the
+peculiar scrutiny, curious yet trustful, that passes between the
+very young and the very old, young Jolyon watched his wife.
+
+The colour had deepened in her thin, oval face, with its straight
+brows, and large, grey eyes.  Her hair, brushed in fine, high
+curves back from her forehead, was going grey, like his own, and
+this greyness made the sudden vivid colour in her cheeks
+painfully pathetic.
+
+The look on her face, such as he had never seen there before,
+such as she had always hidden from him, was full of secret
+resentments, and longings, and fears.  Her eyes, under their
+twitching brows, stared painfully.  And she was silent.
+
+Jolly alone sustained the conversation; he had many possessions,
+and was anxious that his unknown friend with extremely large
+moustaches, and hands all covered with blue veins, who sat with
+legs crossed like his own father (a habit he was himself trying
+to acquire), should know it; but being a Forsyte, though not yet
+quite eight years old, he made no mention of the thing at the
+moment dearest to his heart--a camp of soldiers in a shop-window,
+which his father had promised to buy.  No doubt it seemed to him
+too precious; a tempting of Providence to mention it yet.
+
+And the sunlight played through the leaves on that little party
+of the three generations grouped tranquilly under the pear-tree,
+which had long borne no fruit.
+
+Old Jolyon's furrowed face was reddening patchily, as old men's
+faces redden in the sun.  He took one of Jolly's hands in his
+own; the boy climbed on to his knee; and little Holly, mesmerized
+by this sight, crept up to them; the sound of the dog Balthasar's
+scratching arose rhythmically.
+
+Suddenly young Mrs. Jolyon got up and hurried indoors.  A minute
+later her husband muttered an excuse, and followed.  Old Jolyon
+was left alone with his grandchildren.
+
+And Nature with her quaint irony began working in him one of her
+strange revolutions, following her cyclic laws into the depths of
+his heart.  And that tenderness for little children, that passion
+for the beginnings of life which had once made him forsake his
+son and follow June, now worked in him to forsake June and follow
+these littler things.  Youth, like a flame, burned ever in his
+breast, and to youth he turned, to the round little limbs, so
+reckless, that wanted care, to the small round faces so
+unreasonably solemn or bright, to the treble tongues,  and the
+shrill, chuckling laughter, to the insistent tugging hands, and
+the feel of small bodies against his legs, to all that was young
+and young, and once more young.  And his eyes grew soft, his
+voice, and thin-veined hands soft, and soft his heart within him.
+And to those small creatures he became at once a place of
+pleasure, a place where they were secure, and could talk and
+laugh and play; till, like sunshine, there radiated from old
+Jolyon's wicker chair the perfect gaiety of three hearts.
+
+But with young Jolyon following to his wife's room it was
+different.
+
+He found her seated on a chair before her dressing-glass, with
+her hands before her face.
+
+Her shoulders were shaking with sobs.  This passion of hers for
+suffering was mysterious to him.  He had been through a hundred
+of these moods; how he had survived them he never knew, for he
+could never believe they were moods, and that the last hour of
+his partnership had not struck.
+
+In the night she would be sure to throw her arms round his
+neck and say: "Oh! Jo, how I make you suffer!" as she had done a
+hundred times before.
+
+He reached out his hand, and, unseen, slipped his razor-case into
+his pocket.  'I cannot stay here,' he thought, 'I must go down!'
+Without a word he left the room, and went back to the lawn.
+
+Old Jolyon had little Holly on his knee; she had taken possession
+of his watch; Jolly, very red in the face, was trying to show
+that he could stand on his head.  The dog Balthasar, as close as
+he might be to the tea-table, had fixed his eyes on the cake.
+
+Young Jolyon felt a malicious desire to cut their enjoyment
+short.
+
+What business had his father to come and upset his wife like
+this?  It was a shock, after all these years!  He ought to have
+known; he ought to have given them warning; but when did a
+Forsyte ever imagine that his conduct could upset anybody!  And
+in his thoughts he did old Jolyon wrong.
+
+He spoke sharply to the children, and told them to go in to their
+tea.  Greatly surprised, for they had never heard their father
+speak sharply before, they went off, hand in hand, little Holly
+looking back over her shoulder.
+
+Young Jolyon poured out the tea.
+
+"My wife's not the thing today," he said, but he knew well enough
+that his father had penetrated the cause of that sudden
+withdrawal, and almost hated the old man for sitting there so
+calmly.
+
+"You've got a nice little house here," said old Jolyon with a
+shrewd look; "I suppose you've taken a lease of it!"
+
+Young Jolyon nodded.
+
+"I don't like the neighbourhood," said old Jolyon; "a ramshackle
+lot."
+
+Young Jolyon replied: "Yes, we're a ramshackle lot."'
+
+The silence was now only broken by the sound of the dog
+Balthasar's scratching.
+
+Old Jolyon said simply: "I suppose I oughtn't to have come here,
+Jo; but I get so lonely!"
+
+At these words young Jolyon got up and put his hand on his
+father's shoulder.
+
+In the next house someone was playing over and over again: 'La
+Donna  mobile' on an untuned piano; and the little garden had
+fallen into shade, the sun now only reached the wall at the end,
+whereon basked a crouching cat, her yellow eyes turned sleepily
+down on the dog Balthasar.  There was a drowsy hum of very
+distant traffic; the creepered trellis round the garden shut out
+everything but sky, and house, and pear-tree, with its top
+branches still gilded by the sun.
+
+For some time they sat there, talking but little.  Then old
+Jolyon rose to go, and not a word was said about his coming
+again.
+
+He walked away very sadly.  What a poor miserable place; and he
+thought of the great, empty house in Stanhope Gate, fit residence
+for a Forsyte, with its huge billiard-room and drawing-room that
+no one entered from one week's end to another.
+
+That woman, whose face he had rather liked, was too thin-skinned
+by half; she gave Jo a bad time he knew!  And those sweet
+children!  Ah! what a piece of awful folly!
+
+He walked towards the Edgware Road, between rows of little
+houses, all suggesting to him (erroneously no doubt, but the
+prejudices of a Forsyte are sacred) shady histories of some sort
+or kind.
+
+Society, forsooth, the chattering hags and jackanapes--had set
+themselves up to pass judgment on his flesh and blood!  A parcel
+of old women!  He stumped his umbrella on the ground, as though
+to drive it into the heart of that unfortunate body, which had
+dared to ostracize his son and his son's son, in whom he could
+have lived again!
+
+He stumped his umbrella fiercely; yet he himself had followed
+Society's behaviour for fifteen years--had only today been false
+to it!
+
+He thought of June, and her dead mother, and the whole story,
+with all his old bitterness.  A wretched business!
+
+He was a long time reaching Stanhope Gate, for, with native
+perversity, being extremely tired, he walked the whole way.
+
+After washing his hands in the lavatory downstairs, he went to
+the dining-room to wait for dinner, the only room he used when
+June was out--it was less lonely so.  The evening paper had not
+yet come; he had finished the Times, there was therefore nothing
+to do.
+
+The room faced the backwater of traffic, and was very silent.  He
+disliked dogs, but a dog even would have been company.  His gaze,
+travelling round the walls, rested on a picture entitled: 'Group
+of Dutch fishing boats at sunset'; the chef d'oeuvre of his
+collection.  It gave him no pleasure.  He closed his eyes.  He
+was lonely!  He oughtn't to complain, he knew, but he couldn't
+help it: He was a poor thing--had always been a poor thing--no
+pluck!  Such was his thought.
+
+The butler came to lay the table for dinner, and seeing his
+master apparently asleep, exercised extreme caution in his
+movements.  This bearded man also wore a moustache, which had
+given rise to grave doubts in the minds of many members--of the
+family--, especially those who, like Soames, had been to public
+schools, and were accustomed to niceness in such matters.  Could
+he really be considered a butler?  Playful spirits alluded to him
+as: 'Uncle Jolyon's Nonconformist'; George, the acknowledged wag,
+had named him: 'Sankey.'
+
+He moved to and fro between the great polished sideboard and the
+great polished table inimitably sleek and soft.
+
+Old Jolyon watched him, feigning sleep.  The fellow was a sneak--
+he had always thought so--who cared about nothing but rattling
+through his work, and getting out to his betting or his woman or
+goodness knew what!  A slug!  Fat too! And didn't care a pin
+about his master!
+
+But then against his will, came one of those moments of
+philosophy which made old Jolyon different from other Forsytes:
+
+After all why should the man care?  He wasn't paid to care, and
+why expect it?  In this world people couldn't look for affection
+unless they paid for it.  It might be different in the next--he
+didn't know--couldn't tell!  And again he shut his eyes.
+
+Relentless and stealthy, the butler pursued his labours, taking
+things from the various compartments of the sideboard.  His back
+seemed always turned to old Jolyon; thus, he robbed his
+operations of the unseemliness of being carried on in his
+master's presence; now and then he furtively breathed on the
+silver, and wiped it with a piece of chamois leather.  He
+appeared to pore over the quantities of wine in the decanters,
+which he carried carefully and rather high, letting his heard
+droop over them protectingly.  When he had finished, he stood for
+over a minute watching his master, and in his greenish eyes there
+was a look of contempt:
+
+After all, this master of his was an old buffer, who hadn't much
+left in him!
+
+Soft as a tom-cat, he crossed the room to press the bell.  His
+orders were 'dinner at seven.' What if his master were asleep; he
+would soon have him out of that; there was the night to sleep in!
+He had himself to think of, for he was due at his Club at
+half-past eight!
+
+In answer to the ring, appeared a page boy with a silver soup
+tureen.  The butler took it from his hands and placed it on the.
+table, then, standing by the open door, as though about to usher
+company into the room, he said in a solemn voice:
+
+"Dinner is on the table, sir!"
+
+Slowly old Jolyon got up out of his chair, and sat down at the
+table to eat his dinner.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+PLANS OF THE HOUSE
+
+
+Forsytes, as is generally admitted, have shells, like that
+extremely useful little animal which is made into Turkish
+delight, in other words, they are never seen, or if seen would
+not be recognised, without habitats, composed of circumstance,
+property, acquaintances, and wives, which seem to move along with
+them in their passage through a world composed of thousands of
+other Forsytes with their habitats.  Without a habitat a Forsyte
+is inconceivable--he would be like a novel without a plot, which
+is well-known to be an anomaly.
+
+To Forsyte eyes Bosinney appeared to have no habitat, he seemed
+one of those rare and unfortunate men who go through life
+surrounded by circumstance, property, acquaintances, and wives
+that do not belong to them.
+
+His rooms in Sloane Street, on the top floor, outside which, on a
+plate, was his name, 'Philip Baynes Bosinney, Architect,' were
+not those of a Forsyte.--He had no sitting-room apart from his
+office, but a large recess had been screened off to conceal the
+necessaries of life--a couch, an easy chair, his pipes, spirit
+case, novels and slippers.  The business part of the room had the
+usual furniture; an open cupboard with pigeon-holes, a round oak
+table, a folding wash-stand, some hard chairs, a standing desk of
+large dimensions covered with drawings and designs.  June had
+twice been to tea there under the chaperonage of his aunt.
+
+He was believed to have a bedroom at the back.
+
+As far as the family had been able to ascertain his income, it
+consisted of two consulting appointments at twenty pounds a year,
+together with an odd fee once in a way, and--more worthy item--a
+private annuity under his father's will of one hundred and fifty
+pounds a year.
+
+What had transpired concerning that father was not so reassuring.
+It appeared that he had been a Lincolnshire country doctor of
+Cornish extraction, striking appearance, and Byronic tendencies--
+a well-known figure, in fact, in his county.  Bosinney's uncle by
+marriage, Baynes, of Baynes and Bildeboy, a Forsyte in instincts
+if not in name, had but little that was worthy to relate of his
+brother-in-law.
+
+"An odd fellow!' he would say: 'always spoke of his three eldest
+boys as 'good creatures, but so dull'; they're all doing
+capitally in the Indian Civil!  Philip was the only one he liked.
+I've heard him talk in the queerest way; he once said to me: 'My
+dear fellow, never let your poor wife know what you're thinking
+of!  But I didn't follow his advice; not I!  An eccentric man!
+He would say to Phil: 'Whether you live like a gentleman or not,
+my boy, be sure you die like one!  and he had himself embalmed in
+a frock coat suit, with a satin cravat and a diamond pin.  Oh,
+quite an original, I can assure you!"
+
+Of Bosinney himself Baynes would speak warmly, with a certain
+compassion: "He's got a streak of his father's Byronism.  Why,
+look at the way he threw up his chances when he left my office;
+going off like that for six months with a knapsack, and all for
+what?--to study foreign architecture--foreign!  What could he
+expect?  And there he is--a clever young fellow--doesn't make his
+hundred a year!  Now this engagement is the best thing that could
+have happened--keep him steady; he's one of those that go to bed
+all day and stay up all night, simply because they've no method;
+but no vice about him--not an ounce of vice.  Old Forsyte's a
+rich man!"
+
+Mr. Baynes made himself extremely pleasant to June, who
+frequently visited his house in Lowndes Square at this period.
+
+"This house of your cousin's--what a capital man of business--is
+the very thing for Philip," he would say to her; "you mustn't
+expect to see too much of him just now, my dear young lady.  The
+good cause--the good cause!  The young man must make his way.
+When I was his age I was at work day and night.  My dear wife
+used to say to me, 'Bobby, don't work too hard, think of your
+health'; but I never spared myself!"
+
+June had complained that her lover found no time to come to
+Stanhope Gate.
+
+The first time he came again they had not been together a quarter
+of an hour before, by one of those coincidences of which she was
+a mistress, Mrs. Septimus Small arrived.  Thereon Bosinney rose
+and hid himself, according to previous arrangement, in the little
+study, to wait for her departure.
+
+"My dear," said Aunt Juley, "how thin he is!  I've often noticed
+it with engaged people; but you mustn't let it get worse.
+There's Barlow's extract of veal; it did your Uncle Swithin a lot
+of good."
+
+June, her little figure erect before the hearth, her small face
+quivering grimly, for she regarded her aunt's untimely visit in
+the light of a personal injury, replied with scorn:
+
+"It's because he's busy; people who can do anything worth doing
+are never fat!"
+
+Aunt Juley pouted; she herself had always been thin, but the only
+pleasure she derived from the fact was the opportunity of longing
+to be stouter.
+
+"I don't think," she said mournfully, "that you ought to let them
+call him 'The Buccaneer'; people might think it odd, now that
+he's going to build a house for Soames.  I do hope he will be
+careful; it's so important for him.  Soames has such good taste!"
+
+"Taste!" cried June, flaring up at once; "wouldn't give that for
+his taste, or any of the family's!"
+
+Mrs. Small was taken aback.
+
+"Your Uncle Swithin," she said, "always had beautiful taste!  And
+Soames's little house is lovely; you don't mean to say you don't
+think so!"
+
+"H'mph!" said June, "that's only because Irene's there!"
+
+Aunt Juley tried to say something pleasant:
+
+"And how will dear Irene like living in the country?"
+
+June gazed at her intently, with a look in her eyes as if her
+conscience had suddenly leaped up into them; it passed; and an
+even more intent look took its place, as if she had stared that
+conscience out of countenance.  She replied imperiously:
+
+"Of course she'll like it; why shouldn't she?"
+
+Mrs. Small grew nervous.
+
+"I didn't know," she said; "I thought she mightn't like to leave
+her friends.  Your Uncle James says she doesn't take enough
+interest in life.  We think--I mean Timothy thinks--she ought to
+go out more.  I expect you'll miss her very much!"
+
+June clasped her hands behind her neck.
+
+"I do wish," she cried, "Uncle Timothy wouldn't talk about what
+doesn't concern him!"
+
+Aunt Juley rose to the full height of her tall figure.
+
+"He never talks about what doesn't concern him," she said.
+
+June was instantly compunctious; she ran to her aunt and kissed
+her.
+
+"I'm very sorry, auntie; but I wish they'd let Irene alone."
+
+Aunt Juley, unable to think of anything further on the subject
+that would be suitable, was silent; she prepared for departure,
+hooking her black silk cape across her chest, and, taking up her
+green reticule:
+
+"And how is your dear grandfather?" she asked in the hall, "I
+expect he's very lonely now that all your time is taken up with
+Mr. Bosinney."
+
+She bent and kissed her niece hungrily, and with little, mincing
+steps passed away.
+
+The tears sprang up in June's eyes; running into the little
+study, where Bosinney was sitting at the table drawing birds on
+the back of an envelope, she sank down by his side and cried:
+
+"Oh, Phil! it's all so horrid!"  Her heart was as warm as the
+colour of her hair.
+
+On the following Sunday morning, while Soames was shaving, a
+message was brought him to the effect that Mr. Bosinney was
+below, and would be glad to see him.  Opening the door into his
+wife's room, he said:
+
+"Bosinney's downstairs.  Just go and entertain him while I finish
+shaving.  I'll be down in a minute.  It's about the plans, I
+expect."
+
+Irene looked at him, without reply, put the finishing touch to
+her dress and went downstairs.  He could not make her out about
+this house.  She had said nothing against it, and, as far as
+Bosinney was concerned, seemed friendly enough.
+
+From the window of his dressing-room he could see them talking
+together in the little court below.  He hurried on with his
+shaving, cutting his chin twice.  He heard them laugh, and
+thought to himself: "Well, they get on all right, anyway!"
+
+As he expected, Bosinney had come round to fetch him to look at
+the plans.
+
+He took his hat and went over.
+
+The plans were spread on the oak table in the architect's room;
+and pale, imperturbable, inquiring, Soames bent over them for a
+long time without speaking.
+
+He said at last in a puzzled voice:
+
+"It's an odd sort of house!"
+
+A rectangular house of two stories was designed in a quadrangle
+round a covered-in court.  This court, encircled by a gallery on
+the upper floor, was roofed with a glass roof, supported by eight
+columns running up from the ground.
+
+It was indeed, to Forsyte eyes, an odd house.
+
+"There's a lot of room cut to waste," pursued Soames.
+
+Bosinney began to walk about, and Soames did not like the
+expression on his face.
+
+"The principle of this house," said the architect, "was that you
+should have room to breathe--like a gentleman!"
+
+Soames extended his finger and thumb, as if measuring the extent
+of the distinction he should acquire; and replied:
+
+"Oh! yes; I see."
+
+The peculiar look came into Bosinney's face which marked all his
+enthusiasms.
+
+"I've tried to plan you a house here with some self-respect of
+its own.  If  you don't like it, you'd better say so.  It's
+certainly the last thing to be considered--who wants self-respect
+in a house, when you can squeeze in an extra lavatory?"  He put
+his finger suddenly down on the left division of the centre
+oblong: "You can swing a cat here.  This is for your pictures,
+divided from this court by curtains; draw them back and you'll
+have a space of fifty-one by twenty-three six.  This double-faced
+stove in the centre, here, looks one way towards the court, one
+way towards the picture room; this end wall is all window; You've
+a southeast light from that, a north light from the court.  The
+rest of your pictures you can hang round the gallery upstairs, or
+in the other rooms."  "In architecture," he went on--and though
+looking at Soames he did not seem to see him, which gave Soames
+an unpleasant feeling--"as in life, you'll get no self-respect
+without regularity.  Fellows tell you that's old fashioned.  It
+appears to be peculiar any way; it never occurs to us to embody
+the main principle of life in our buildings; we load our houses
+with decoration, gimcracks, corners, anything to distract the
+eye.  On the contrary the eye should rest; get your effects with
+a few strong lines.  The whole thing is regularity there's no
+self-respect without it."
+
+Soames, the unconscious ironist, fixed his gaze on Bosinney's
+tie, which was far from being in the perpendicular; he was
+unshaven too, and his dress not remarkable for order.
+Architecture appeared to have exhausted his regularity.
+
+"Won't it look like a barrack?" he inquired.
+
+He did not at once receive a reply.
+
+"I can see what it is," said Bosinney, "you want one of Little-
+master's houses--one of the pretty and commodious sort, where the
+servants will live in garrets, and the front door be sunk so that
+you may come up again.  By all means try Littlemaster, you'll
+find him a capital fellow, I've known him all my life!"
+
+Soames was alarmed.  He had really been struck by the plans, and
+the concealment of his satisfaction had been merely instinctive.
+It was difficult for him to pay a compliment.  He despised people
+who were lavish with their praises.
+
+He found himself now in the embarrassing position of one who must
+pay a compliment or run the risk of losing a good thing.
+Bosinney was just the fellow who might tear up the plans and
+refuse to act for him; a kind of grown-up child!
+
+This grown-up childishness, to which he felt so superior,
+exercised a peculiar and almost mesmeric effect on Soames, for he
+had never felt anything like it in himself.
+
+"Well," he stammered at last, "it's--it's, certainly original."
+
+He had such a private distrust and even dislike of the word
+'original' that he felt he had not really given himself away by
+this remark.
+
+Bosinney seemed pleased.  It was the sort of thing that would
+please a fellow like that!  And his success encouraged Soames.
+
+"It's--a big place," he said.
+
+"Space, air, light," he heard Bosinney murmur, "you can't live
+like a gentleman in one of Littlemaster's--he builds for
+manufacturers."
+
+Soames made a deprecating movement; he had been identified with a
+gentleman; not for a good deal of money now would he be classed
+with manufacturers.  But his innate distrust of general
+principles revived.  What the deuce was the good of talking about
+regularity and self-respect?  It looked to him as if the house
+would be cold.
+
+"Irene can't stand the cold!" he said.
+
+"Ah!" said Bosinney sarcastically.  "Your wife?  She doesn't like
+the cold?  I'll see to that; she shan't be cold.  Look here!" he
+pointed, to four marks at regular intervals on the walls of the
+court.  "I've given you hot-water pipes in aluminium casings; you
+can get them with very good designs."
+
+Soames looked suspiciously at these marks.
+
+"It's all very well, all this," he said, "but what's it going to
+cost?"
+
+The architect took a sheet of paper from his pocket:
+
+"The house, of course, should be built entirely of stone, but, as
+I thought you wouldn't stand that, I've compromised for a facing.
+It ought to have a copper roof, but I've made it green slate.  As
+it is, including metal work, it'll cost you eight thousand five
+hundred."
+
+"Eight thousand five hundred?" said Soames.  "Why, I gave you an
+outside limit of eight!"
+
+"Can't be done for a penny less," replied Bosinney coolly.
+
+"You must take it or leave it!"
+
+It was the only way, probably, that such a proposition could have
+been made to Soames.  He was nonplussed.  Conscience told him to
+throw the whole thing up.  But the design was good, and he knew
+it--there was completeness about it, and dignity; the servants'
+apartments were excellent too.  He would gain credit by living in
+a house like that--with such individual features, yet perfectly.
+well-arranged.
+
+He continued poring over the plans, while Bosinney went into his
+bedroom to shave and dress.
+
+The two walked back to Montpellier Square in silence, Soames
+watching him out of the corner of his eye.
+
+The Buccaneer was rather a good-looking fellow--so he thought--
+when he was properly got up.
+
+Irene was bending over her flowers when the two men came in.
+
+She spoke of sending across the Park to fetch June.
+
+"No, no," said Soames, "we've still got business to talk over!"
+
+At lunch he was almost cordial, and kept pressing Bosinney to
+eat.  He was pleased to see the architect in such high spirits,
+and left him to spend the afternoon with Irene, while he stole
+off to his pictures, after his Sunday habit.  At tea-time he came
+down to the drawing-room, and found them talking, as he expressed
+it, nineteen to the dozen.
+
+Unobserved in the doorway, he congratulated himself that things
+were taking the right turn.  It was lucky she and Bosinney got
+on; she seemed to be falling into line with the idea of the new
+house.
+
+Quiet meditation among his pictures had decided him to spring the
+five hundred if necessary; but he hoped that the afternoon might
+have softened Bosinney's estimates.  It was so purely a matter
+which Bosinney could remedy if he liked; there must be a dozen
+ways in which he could cheapen the production of a house without
+spoiling the effect.
+
+He awaited, therefore, his opportunity till Irene was handing the
+architect his first cup of tea.  A chink of sunshine through the
+lace of the blinds warmed her cheek, shone in the gold of her
+hair, and in her soft eyes.  Possibly the same gleam deepened
+Bosinney's colour, gave the rather startled look to his face.
+
+Soames hated sunshine, and he at once got up, to draw the blind.
+Then he took his own cup of tea from his wife, and said, more
+coldly than he had intended:
+
+"Can't you see your way to do it for eight thousand after all?
+There must be a lot of little things you could alter."
+
+Bosinney drank off his tea at a gulp, put down his cup, and
+answered:
+
+"Not one!"
+
+Soames saw that his suggestion had touched some unintelligible
+point of personal vanity.
+
+"Well," he agreed, with sulky resignation; "you must have it your
+own way, I suppose."
+
+A few minutes later Bosinney rose to go, and Soames rose too, to
+see him off the premises.  The architect seemed in absurdly high
+spirits.  After watching him walk away at a swinging pace, Soames
+returned moodily to the drawing-room, where Irene was putting
+away the music, and, moved by an uncontrollable spasm of
+curiosity, he asked:
+
+"Well, what do you think of 'The Buccaneer'?"
+
+He looked at the carpet while waiting for her answer, and he had
+to wait some time.
+
+"I don't know," she said at last.
+
+"Do you think he's good-looking?"
+
+Irene smiled.  And it seemed to Soames that she was mocking him.
+
+"Yes," she answered; "very."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+DEATH OF AUNT ANN
+
+
+There came a morning at the end of September when Aunt Ann was
+unable to take from Smither's hands the insignia of personal
+dignity.  After one look at the old face, the doctor, hurriedly
+sent for, announced that Miss Forsyte had passed away in her
+sleep.
+
+Aunts Juley and Hester were overwhelmed by the shock.  They had
+never imagined such an ending.  Indeed, it is doubtful whether
+they had ever realized that an ending was bound to come.
+Secretly they felt it unreasonable of Ann to have left them like
+this without a word, without even a struggle.  It was unlike her.
+
+Perhaps what really affected them so profoundly was the thought
+that a Forsyte should have let go her grasp on life.  If one,
+then why not all!
+
+It was a full hour before they could make up their minds to tell
+Timothy.  If only it could be kept from him!  If only it could be
+broken to him by degrees!
+
+And long they stood outside his door whispering together.  And
+when it was over they whispered together again.
+
+He would feel it more, they were afraid, as time went on.  Still,
+he had taken it better than could have been expected.  He would
+keep his bed, of course!
+
+They separated, crying quietly.
+
+Aunt Juley stayed in her room, prostrated by the blow.  Her face,
+discoloured by tears, was divided into compartments by the little
+ridges of pouting flesh which had swollen with emotion.  It was
+impossible to conceive of life without Ann, who had lived with
+her for seventy-three years, broken only by the short interregnum
+of her married life, which seemed now so unreal.  At fixed
+intervals she went to her drawer, and took from beneath the
+lavender bags a fresh pocket-handkerchief.  Her warm heart could
+not bear the thought that Ann was lying there so cold.
+
+Aunt Hester, the silent, the patient, that backwater of the
+family energy, sat in the drawing-room, where the blinds were
+drawn; and she, too, had wept at first, but quietly, without
+visible effect.  Her guiding principle, the conservation of
+energy, did not abandon her in sorrow.  She sat, slim,
+motionless, studying the grate, her hands idle in the lap of her
+black silk dress.  They would want to rouse her into doing
+something, no doubt.  As if there were any good in that!  Doing
+something would not bring back Ann!  Why worry her?
+
+Five o'clock brought three of the brothers, Jolyon and James and
+Swithin; Nicholas was at Yarmouth, and Roger had a bad attack of
+gout.  Mrs. Hayman had been by herself earlier in the day, and,
+after seeing Ann, had gone away, leaving a message for Timothy--
+which was kept from him--that she ought to have been told sooner.
+In fact, there was a feeling amongst them all that they ought to
+have been told sooner, as though they had missed something; and
+James said:
+
+"I knew how it'd be; I told you she wouldn't last through the
+summer."
+
+Aunt Hester made no reply; it was nearly October, but what was
+the good of arguing; some people were never satisfied.
+
+She sent up to tell her sister that the brothers were there.
+Mrs. Small came down at once.  She had bathed her face, which was
+still swollen, and though she looked severely at Swithin's
+trousers, for they were of light blue--he had come straight from
+the club, where the news had reached him--she wore a more cheerful
+expression than usual, the instinct for doing the wrong thing
+being even now too strong for her.
+
+Presently all five went up to look at the body.  Under the pure
+white sheet a quilted counter-pane had been placed, for now, more
+than ever, Aunt Ann had need of warmth; and, the pillows removed,
+her spine and head rested flat, with the semblance of their
+life-long inflexibility; the coif banding the top of her brow was
+drawn on either side to the level of the ears, and between it and
+the sheet her face, almost as white, was turned with closed eyes
+to the faces of her brothers and sisters.  In its extraordinary
+peace the face was stronger than ever, nearly all bone now under
+the scarce-wrinkled parchment of skin--square jaw and chin,
+cheekbones, forehead with hollow temples, chiselled nose--the
+fortress of an unconquerable spirit that had yielded to death,
+and in its upward sightlessness seemed trying to regain that
+spirit, to regain the guardianship it had just laid down.
+
+Swithin took but one look at the face, and left the room; the
+sight, he said afterwards, made him very queer.  He went
+downstairs shaking the whole house, and, seizing his hat,
+clambered into his brougham, without giving any directions to the
+coachman.  He was driven home, and all the evening sat in his
+chair without moving.
+
+He could take nothing for dinner but a partridge, with an
+imperial pint of champagne....
+
+Old Jolyon stood at the bottom of the bed, his hands folded in
+front of him.  He alone of those in the room remembered the death
+of his mother, and though he looked at Ann, it was of that he was
+thinking.  Ann was an old woman, but death had come to her at
+last--death came to all!  His face did not move, his gaze seemed
+travelling from very far.
+
+Aunt Hester stood beside him.  She did not cry now, tears were
+exhausted--her nature refused to permit a further escape of
+force; she twisted her hands, looking not at Ann, but from side
+to side, seeking some way of escaping the effort of realization.
+
+Of all the brothers and sisters James manifested the most
+emotion.  Tears rolled down the parallel furrows of his thin
+face; where he should go now to tell his troubles he did not
+know; Juley was no good, Hester worse than useless!  He felt
+Ann's death more than he had ever thought he should; this would
+upset him for weeks!
+
+Presently Aunt Hester stole out, and Aunt Juley began moving
+about, doing 'what was necessary,' so that twice she knocked
+against something.  Old Jolyon, roused from his reverie, that
+reverie of the long, long past, looked sternly at her, and went
+away.  James alone was left by the bedside; glancing stealthily
+round, to see that he was not observed, he twisted his long body
+down, placed a kiss on the dead forehead, then he, too, hastily
+left the room.  Encountering Smither in the hall, he began to ask
+her about the funeral, and, finding that she knew nothing,
+complained bitterly that, if they didn't take care, everything
+would go wrong.  She had better send for Mr. Soames--he knew all
+about that sort of thing; her master was very much upset, he
+supposed--he would want looking after; as for her mistresses,
+they were no good--they had no gumption!  They would be ill too,
+he shouldn't wonder.  She had better send for the doctor; it was
+best to take things in time.  He didn't think his sister Ann had
+had the best opinion; if she'd had Blank she would have been
+alive now.  Smither might send to Park Lane any time she wanted
+advice.  Of course, his carriage was at their service for the
+funeral.  He supposed she hadn't such a thing as a glass of
+claret and a biscuit--he had had no lunch!
+
+The days before the funeral passed quietly.  It had long been
+known, of course, that Aunt Ann had left her little property to
+Timothy.  There was, therefore, no reason for the slightest
+agitation.  Soames, who was sole executor, took charge of all
+arrangements, and in due course sent out the following invitation
+to every male member of the family:
+
+
+To...........
+
+Your presence is requested at the funeral of Miss Ann Forsyte, in
+Highgate Cemetery, at noon of Oct. 1st.  Carriages will meet at
+"The Bower," Bayswater Road, at 10.45.  No flowers by request.
+
+'R.S.V.P.'
+
+
+The morning came, cold, with a high, grey, London sky, and at
+half-past ten the first carriage, that of James, drove up.  It
+contained James and his son-in-law Dartie, a fine man, with a
+square chest, buttoned very tightly into a frock coat, and a
+sallow, fattish face adorned with dark, well-curled moustaches,
+and that incorrigible commencement of whisker which, eluding the
+strictest attempts at shaving, seems the mark of something deeply
+ingrained in the personality of the shaver, being especially
+noticeable in men who speculate.
+
+Soames, in his capacity of executor, received the guests, for
+Timothy still kept his bed; he would get up after the funeral;
+and Aunts Juley and Hester would not be coming down till all was
+over, when it was understood there would be lunch for anyone who
+cared to come back.  The next to arrive was Roger, still limping
+from the gout, and encircled by three of his sons--young Roger,
+Eustace, and Thomas.  George, the remaining son, arrived almost
+immediately afterwards in a hansom, and paused in the hall to ask
+Soames how he found undertaking pay.
+
+They disliked each other.
+
+Then came two Haymans--Giles and Jesse perfectly silent, and very
+well dressed, with special creases down their evening trousers.
+Then old Jolyon alone.  Next, Nicholas, with a healthy colour in
+his face, and a carefully veiled sprightliness in every movement
+of his head and body.  One of his sons followed him, meek and
+subdued.  Swithin Forsyte, and Bosinney arrived at the same
+moment,--and stood--bowing precedence to each other,--but on the
+door opening they tried to enter together; they renewed their
+apologies in the hall, and, Swithin, settling his stock, which
+had become disarranged in the struggle, very slowly mounted the
+stairs.  The other Hayman; two married sons of Nicholas, together
+with Tweetyman, Spender, and Warry, the husbands of married
+Forsyte and Hayman daughters.  The company was then complete,
+twenty-one in all, not a male member of the family being absent
+but Timothy and young Jolyon.
+
+Entering the scarlet and green drawing-room, whose apparel made
+so vivid a setting for their unaccustomed costumes, each tried
+nervously to find a seat, desirous of hiding the emphatic
+blackness of his trousers.  There seemed a sort of indecency in
+that blackness and in the colour of their gloves--a sort of
+exaggeration of the feelings; and many cast shocked looks of
+secret envy at 'the Buccaneer,' who had no gloves, and was
+wearing grey trousers.  A subdued hum of conversation rose, no
+one speaking of the departed, but each asking after the other, as
+though thereby casting an indirect libation to this event, which
+they had come to honour.
+
+And presently James said:
+
+"Well, I think we ought to be starting."
+
+They went downstairs, and, two and two, as they had been told off
+in strict precedence, mounted the carriages.
+
+The hearse started at a foot's pace; the carriages moved slowly
+after.  In the first went old Jolyon with Nicholas; in the
+second, the twins, Swithin and James; in the third, Roger and
+young Roger; Soames, young Nicholas, George, and Bosinney
+followed in the fourth.  Each of the other carriages, eight in
+all, held three or four of the family; behind them came the
+doctor's brougham; then, at a decent interval, cabs containing
+family clerks and servants; and at the very end, one containing
+nobody at all, but bringing the total cortege up to the number of
+thirteen.
+
+So long as the procession kept to the highway of the Bayswater
+Road, it retained the foot's-pace, but, turning into less
+important thorough-fares, it soon broke into a trot, and so
+proceeded, with intervals of walking in the more fashionable
+streets, until it arrived.  In the first carriage old Jolyon and
+Nicholas were talking of their wills.  In the second the twins,
+after a single attempt, had lapsed into complete silence; both
+were rather deaf, and the exertion of making themselves heard was
+too great.  Only once James broke this silence:
+
+"I shall have to be looking about for some ground somewhere.
+What arrangements have you made, Swithin?"
+
+And Swithin, fixing him with a dreadful stare, answered:
+
+"Don't talk to me about such things!"
+
+In the third carriage a disjointed conversation was carried on in
+the intervals of looking out to see how far they had got, George
+remarking, "Well, it was really time that the poor old lady
+went."  He didn't believe in people living beyond seventy, Young
+Nicholas replied mildly that the rule didn't seem to apply to the
+Forsytes.  George said he himself intended to commit suicide at
+sixty.  Young Nicholas, smiling and stroking a long chin, didn't
+think his father would like that theory; he had made a lot of
+money since he was sixty.  Well, seventy was the outside limit;
+it was then time, George said, for them to go and leave their
+money to their children.  Soames, hitherto silent, here joined
+in; he had not forgotten the remark about the 'undertaking,' and,
+lifting his eyelids almost imperceptibly, said it was all very
+well for people who never made money to talk.  He himself
+intended to live as long as he could.  This was a hit at George,
+who was notoriously hard up.  Bosinney muttered abstractedly
+"Hear, hear!" and, George yawning, the conversation dropped.
+
+Upon arriving, the coffin was borne into the chapel, and, two by
+two, the mourners filed in behind it.  This guard of men, all
+attached to the dead by the bond of kinship, was an impressive
+and singular sight in the great city of London, with its
+overwhelming diversity of life, its innumerable vocations,
+pleasures, duties, its terrible hardness, its terrible call to
+individualism.
+
+The family had gathered to triumph over all this, to give a show
+of tenacious unity, to illustrate gloriously that law of property
+underlying the growth of their tree, by which it had thriven and
+spread, trunk and branches, the sap flowing through all, the full
+growth reached at the appointed time.  The spirit of the old
+woman lying in her last sleep had called them to this
+demonstration.  It was her final appeal to that unity which had
+been their strength--it was her final triumph that she had died
+while the tree was yet whole.
+
+She was spared the watching of the branches jut out beyond the
+point of balance.  She could not look into the hearts of her
+followers.  The same law that had worked in her, bringing her up
+from a tall, straight-backed slip of a girl to a woman strong
+and grown, from a woman grown to a woman old, angular, feeble,
+almost witchlike, with individuality all sharpened and sharpened,
+as all rounding from the world's contact fell off from her--that
+same law would work, was working, in the family she had watched
+like a mother.
+
+She had seen it young, and growing, she had seen it strong and
+grown, and before her old eyes had time or strength to see any
+more, she died.  She would have tried, and who knows but she
+might have kept it young and strong, with her old fingers, her
+trembling kisses--a little longer; alas! not even Aunt Ann could
+fight with Nature.
+
+'Pride comes before a fall!' In accordance with this, the
+greatest of Nature's ironies, the Forsyte family had gathered for
+a last proud pageant before they fell.  Their faces to right and
+left, in single lines, were turned for the most part impassively
+toward the ground, guardians of their thoughts; but here and
+there, one looking upward, with a line between his brows,
+searched to see some sight on the chapel walls too much for him,
+to be listening to something that appalled.  And the responses,
+low-muttered, in voices through which rose the same tone, the
+same unseizable family ring, sounded weird, as though murmured in
+hurried duplication by a single person.
+
+The service in the chapel over, the mourners filed up again to
+guard the body to the tomb.  The vault stood open, and, round it,
+men in black were waiting.
+
+From that high and sacred field, where thousands of the upper
+middle class lay in their last sleep, the eyes of the Forsytes
+travelled down across the flocks of graves.  There--spreading to
+the distance, lay London, with no sun over it, mourning the loss
+of its daughter, mourning with this family, so dear, the loss of
+her who was mother and guardian.  A hundred thousand spires and
+houses, blurred in the great grey web of property, lay there like
+prostrate worshippers before the grave of this, the oldest
+Forsyte of them all.
+
+A few words, a sprinkle of earth, the thrusting of the coffin
+home, and Aunt Ann had passed to her last rest.
+
+Round the vault, trustees of that passing, the five brothers
+stood, with white heads bowed; they would see that Ann was
+comfortable where she was going.  Her little property must stay
+behind, but otherwise, all that could be should be done....
+
+Then severally, each stood aside, and putting on his hat, turned
+back to inspect the new inscription on the marble of the family
+vault:
+
+
+SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF ANN FORSYTE,
+THE DAUGHTER OF THE ABOVE JOLYON
+AND ANN FORSYTE, WHO DEPARTED
+THIS LIFE THE 27TH DAY OF SEPTEMBER,
+1886, AGED EIGHTY-SEVEN YEARS AND FOUR DAYS
+
+
+Soon perhaps, someone else would be wanting an inscription.  It
+was strange and intolerable, for they had not thought somehow,
+that Forsytes could die.  And one and all they had a longing to
+get away from this painfulness, this ceremony which had reminded
+them of things they could not bear to think about--to get away
+quickly and go about their business and forget.
+
+It was cold, too; the wind, like some slow, disintegrating force,
+blowing up the hill over the graves, struck them with its chilly
+breath; they began to split into groups, and as quickly as
+possible to fill the waiting carriages.
+
+Swithin said he should go back to lunch at Timothy's, and he
+offered to take anybody with him in his brougham.  It was
+considered a doubtful privilege to drive with Swithin in his
+brougham, which was not a large one; nobody accepted, and he went
+off alone.  James and Roger followed immediately after; they also
+would drop in to lunch.  The others gradually melted away, Old
+Jolyon taking three nephews to fill up his carriage; he had a
+want of those young faces.
+
+Soames, who had to arrange some details in the cemetery office,
+walked away with Bosinney.  He had much to talk over with him,
+and, having finished his business, they strolled to Hampstead,
+lunched together at the Spaniard's Inn, and spent a long time in
+going into practical details connected with the building of the
+house; they then proceeded to the tram-line, and came as far as
+the Marble Arch, where Bosinney went off to Stanhope Gate to see
+June.
+
+Soames felt in excellent spirits when he arrived home, and
+confided to Irene at dinner that he had had a good talk with
+Bosinney, who really seemed a sensible fellow; they had had a
+capital walk too, which had done his liver good--he had been
+short of exercise for a long time--and altogether a very
+satisfactory day.  If only it hadn't been for poor Aunt Ann, he
+would have taken her to the theatre; as it was, they must make
+the best of an evening at home.
+
+"The Buccaneer asked after you more than once," he said
+suddenly.  And moved by some inexplicable desire to assert his
+proprietorship, he rose from his chair and planted a kiss on
+his wife's shoulder.
+
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+PROGRESS OF THE HOUSE
+
+
+The winter had been an open one.  Things in the trade were slack;
+and as Soames had reflected before making up his mind, it had
+been a good time for building.  The shell of the house at Robin
+Hill was thus completed by the end of April.
+
+Now that there was something to be seen for his money, he had
+been coming down once,  twice, even three times a week, and would
+mouse about among the debris for hours, careful never to soil his
+clothes, moving silently through the unfinished brickwork of
+doorways, or circling round the columns in the central court.
+
+And he would stand before them for minutes' together, as though
+peering into the real quality of their substance
+
+On April 30 he had an appointment with Bosinney to go over the
+accounts, and five minutes before the proper time he entered the
+tent which the architect had pitched for himself close to the old
+oak tree.
+
+The accounts were already prepared on a folding table, and  with
+a nod Soames sat down to study them.  It was some time before he
+raised his head.
+
+"I can't make them out," he said at last; "they come to nearly
+seven hundred more than they ought"
+
+After a glance at Bosinney's face he went on quickly:
+
+"If you only make a firm stand against these builder chaps you'll
+get them down.  They stick you with everything if you don't look
+sharp....  Take ten per cent. off all round.  I shan't mind it's
+coming out a hundred or so over the mark!"
+
+Bosinney shook his head:
+
+"I've taken off every farthing I can!"
+
+Soames pushed back the table with a movement of anger, which sent
+the account sheets fluttering to the ground.
+
+"Then all I can say is," he flustered out, "you've made a pretty
+mess of it!"
+
+"I've told you a dozen times," Bosinney answered sharply, "that
+there'd be extras.  I've pointed them out to you over and over
+again!"
+
+"I know that," growled Soames: "I shouldn't have objected to a ten
+pound note here and there.  How was I to know that by 'extras'
+you meant seven hundred pounds?"
+
+The qualities of both men had contributed to this not-
+inconsiderable discrepancy.  On the one hand, the architect's
+devotion to his idea, to the image of a house which he had created
+and believed in--had made him nervous of being stopped, or forced
+to the use of makeshifts; on the other, Soames' not less true and
+wholehearted devotion to the very best article that could  be
+obtained for the money, had rendered him averse to believing that
+things worth thirteen shillings could not be bought with twelve.
+
+I wish I'd never undertaken your house," said Bosinney suddenly.
+"You come down here worrying me out of my life.  You want double
+the value for your money anybody else would, and now that you've
+got a house that for its size is not to be beaten in the county,
+you don't want to pay for it.  If you're anxious to be off your
+bargain, I daresay I can find the balance above the estimates
+myself, but I'm d----d if I do another stroke of work for you!"
+
+Soames regained his composure.  Knowing that Bosinney had no
+capital, he regarded this as a wild suggestion.  He saw, too,
+that he would be kept indefinitely out of this house on which he
+had set his heart, and just at the crucial point when the
+architect's personal care made all the difference.  In the
+meantime there was Irene to be thought of!  She had been very
+queer lately.  He really believed it was only because she had
+taken to Bosinney that she tolerated the idea of the house at
+all.  It would not do to make an open breach with her.
+
+"You needn't get into a rage," he said.  "If I'm willing to put
+up with it, I suppose you needn't cry out.  All I meant was that
+when you tell me a thing is going to cost so much, I like to--
+well, in fact, I--like to know where I am."
+
+"Look here!" said Bosinney, and Soames was both annoyed and
+surprised by the shrewdness of his glance.  "You've got my
+services dirt cheap.  For the kind of work I've put into this
+house, and the amount of time I've given to it, you'd have had to
+pay Littlemaster or some other fool four times as much.  What you
+want, in fact, is a first-rate man for a fourth-rate fee, and
+that's exactly what you've got!"
+
+Soames saw that he really meant what he said, and, angry though
+he was, the consequences of a row rose before him too vividly.
+He saw his house unfinished, his wife rebellious, himself a
+laughingstock.
+
+"Let's go over it," he said sulkily, "and see how the money's
+gone."
+
+"Very well," assented Bosinney.  "But we'll hurry up, if you
+don't mind.  I have to get back in time to take June to the
+theatre."
+
+Soames cast a stealthy look at him, and said: "Coming to our
+place, I suppose to meet her?" He was always coming to their
+place!
+
+There had been rain the night before-a spring rain, and the earth
+smelt of sap and wild grasses.  The warm, soft breeze swung the
+leaves and the golden buds of the old oak tree, and in the
+sunshine the blackbirds were whistling their hearts out.
+
+It was such a spring day as breathes into a man an ineffable
+yearning, a painful sweetness, a longing that makes him stand
+motionless, looking at the leaves or grass, and fling out his
+arms to embrace he knows not what.  The earth gave forth a
+fainting warmth, stealing up through the chilly garment in which
+winter had wrapped her.  It was her long caress of invitation, to
+draw men down to lie within her arms, to roll their bodies on
+her, and put their lips to her breast.
+
+On just such a day as this Soames had got from Irene the promise
+he had asked her for so often.  Seated on the fallen trunk of a
+tree, he had promised for the twentieth time that if their
+marriage were not a success, she should be as free as if she had
+never married him!
+
+"Do you swear it?" she had said.  A few days back she had
+reminded him of that oath.  He had answered: "Nonsense!  I
+couldn't have sworn any such thing!"  By some awkward fatality he
+remembered it now.  What queer things men would swear for the
+sake of women!  He would have sworn it at any time to gain her!
+He would swear it now, if thereby he could touch her--but nobody
+could touch her, she was cold-hearted!
+
+And memories crowded on him with the fresh, sweet savour of the
+spring wind-memories of his courtship.
+
+In the spring of the year 1881 he was visiting his old school-
+fellow and client, George Liversedge, of Branksome, who, with
+the view of developing his pine-woods in the neighbourhood of
+Bournemouth, had placed the formation of the company necessary
+to the scheme in Soames's hands.  Mrs. Liversedge, with a sense
+of the fitness of things, had given a musical tea in his honour.
+Later in the course of this function, which Soames, no musician,
+had regarded as an unmitigated bore, his eye had been caught by
+the face of a girl dressed in mourning, standing by herself.  The
+lines of her tall, as yet rather thin figure, showed through the
+wispy, clinging stuff of her black dress, her black-gloved hands
+were crossed in front of her, her lips slightly parted, and her
+large, dark eyes wandered from face to face.  Her hair, done low
+on her neck, seemed to gleam above her black collar like coils of
+shining metal.  And as Soames stood looking at her, the sensation
+that most men have felt at one time or another went stealing
+through him--a peculiar satisfaction of the senses, a peculiar
+certainty, which novelists and old ladies call love at first
+sight.  Still stealthily watching her, he at once made his way to
+his hostess, and stood doggedly waiting for the music to cease.
+
+"Who is that girl with yellow hair and dark eyes?" he asked.
+
+"That--oh!  Irene Heron.  Her father, Professor Heron, died this
+year.  She lives with her stepmother.  She's a nice girl, a
+pretty girl, but no money!"
+
+"Introduce me, please," said Soames.
+
+It was very little that he found to say, nor did he find her
+responsive to that little.  But he went away with the resolution
+to see her again.  He effected his object by chance, meeting her
+on the pier with her stepmother, who had the habit of walking
+there from twelve to one of a forenoon.  Soames made this lady's
+acquaintance with alacrity, nor was it long before he perceived
+in her the ally he was looking for.  His keen scent for the
+commercial side of family life soon told him that Irene cost her
+stepmother more than the fifty pounds a year she brought her; it
+also told him that Mrs. Heron, a woman yet in the prime of life,
+desired to be married again.  The strange ripening beauty of her
+stepdaughter stood in the way of this desirable consummation.
+And Soames, in his stealthy tenacity, laid his plans.
+
+He left Bournemouth without having given himself away, but in a
+month's time came back, and this time he spoke, not to the girl,
+but to her stepmother.  He had made up his mind, he said; he
+would wait any time.  And he had long to wait, watching Irene
+bloom, the lines of her young figure softening, the stronger
+blood deepening the gleam of her eyes, and warming her face to a
+creamy glow; and at each visit he proposed to her, and when that
+visit was at an end, took her refusal away with him, back to
+London, sore at heart, but steadfast and silent as the grave.  He
+tried to come at the secret springs of her resistance; only once
+had he a gleam of light.  It was at one of those assembly dances,
+which afford the only outlet to the passions of the population of
+seaside watering-places.  He was sitting with her in an
+embrasure, his senses tingling with the contact of the waltz.
+She had looked at him over her, slowly waving fan; and he had
+lost his head.  Seizing that moving wrist, he pressed his lips to
+the flesh of her arm.  And she had shuddered--to this day he had
+not forgotten that shudder--nor the look so passionately averse
+she had given him.
+
+A year after that she had yielded.  What had made her yield he
+could never make out; and from Mrs. Heron, a woman of some
+diplomatic talent, he learnt nothing.  Once after they were
+married he asked her, "What made you refuse me so often?"  She had
+answered by a strange silence.  An enigma to him from the day
+that he first saw her, she was an enigma to him still....
+
+Bosinney was waiting for him at the door; and on his rugged,
+good-looking, face was a queer, yearning, yet happy look, as
+though he too saw a promise of bliss in the spring sky, sniffed a
+coming happiness in the spring air.  Soames looked at him waiting
+there.  What was the matter with the fellow that he looked so
+happy?  What was he waiting for with that smile on his lips and
+in his eyes?  Soames could not see that for which Bosinney was
+waiting as he stood there drinking in the flower-scented wind.
+And once more he felt baffled in the presence of this man whom by
+habit he despised.  He hastened on to the house.
+
+"The only colour for those tiles," he heard Bosinney say,--"is
+ruby with a grey tint in the stuff, to give a transparent effect.
+I should like Irene's opinion.  I'm ordering the purple leather
+curtains for the doorway of this court; and if you distemper the
+drawing-room ivory cream over paper, you'll get an illusive look.
+You want to aim all through the decorations at what I call
+charm."
+
+Soames said: "You mean that my wife has charm!"
+
+Bosinney evaded the question.
+
+"You should have a clump of iris plants in the centre of that
+court."
+
+Soames smiled superciliously.
+
+"I'll look into Beech's some time," he said, "and see what's
+appropriate!"
+
+They found little else to say to each other, but on the way to
+the Station Soames asked:
+
+"I suppose you find Irene very artistic."
+
+"Yes." The abrupt answer was as distinct a snub as saying: "If
+you want to discuss her you can do it with someone else!"
+
+And the slow, sulky anger Soames had felt all the afternoon
+burned the brighter within him.
+
+Neither spoke again till they were close to the Station, then
+Soames asked:
+
+"When do you expect to have finished?"
+
+"By the end of June, if you really wish me to decorate as well."
+
+Soames nodded.  "But you quite understand," he said, "that the
+house is costing me a lot beyond what I contemplated.  I may as
+well tell you that I should have thrown it up, only I'm not in
+the habit of giving up what I've set my mind on."
+
+Bosinney made no reply.  And Soames gave him askance a look of
+dogged dislike--for in spite of his fastidious air and that
+supercilious, dandified taciturnity, Soames, with his set lips
+and squared chin, was not unlike a bulldog....
+
+When, at seven o'clock that evening, June arrived at 62,
+Montpellier Square, the maid Bilson told her that Mr. Bosinney
+was in the drawing-room; the mistress--she said--was dressing,
+and would be down in a minute.  She would tell her that Miss June
+was here.
+
+June stopped her at once.
+
+"All right, Bilson," she said, "I'll just go in.  You, needn't
+hurry Mrs. Soames."
+
+She took off her cloak, and Bilson, with an understanding look,
+did not even open the drawing-room door for her, but ran
+downstairs.
+
+June paused for a moment to look at herself in the little
+old-fashioned silver mirror above the oaken rug chest--a slim,
+imperious young figure, with a small resolute face, in a white
+frock, cut moon-shaped at the base of a neck too slender for her
+crown of twisted red-gold hair.
+
+She opened the drawing-room door softly, meaning to take him by
+surprise.  The room was filled with a sweet hot scent of
+flowering azaleas.
+
+She took a long breath of the perfume, and heard Bosinney's
+voice, not in the room, but quite close, saying.
+
+"Ah!  there were such heaps of things I wanted to talk about, and
+now we shan't have time!"
+
+Irene's voice answered: "Why not at dinner?"
+
+"How can one talk...."
+
+June's first thought was to go away, but instead she crossed to
+the long window opening on the little court.  It was from there
+that the scent of the azaleas came, and, standing with their
+backs to her, their faces buried in the golden-pink blossoms,
+stood her lover and Irene.
+
+Silent but unashamed, with flaming cheeks and angry eyes, the
+girl watched.
+
+"Come on Sunday by yourself--We can go over the house together."
+
+June saw Irene look up at him through her screen of blossoms.  It
+was not the look of a coquette, but--far worse to the watching
+girl--of a woman fearful lest that look should say too much.
+
+"I've promised to go for a drive with Uncle...."
+
+"The big one!  Make him bring you; it's only ten miles--the very
+thing for his horses."
+
+"Poor old Uncle Swithin!"
+
+A wave of the azalea scent drifted into June's face; she felt
+sick and dizzy.
+
+"Do!  ah!  do!"
+
+"But why?"
+
+"I must see you there--I thought you'd like to help me...."
+
+The answer seemed to the girl to come softly with a tremble from
+amongst the blossoms: "So I do!"
+
+And she stepped into the open space of the window.
+
+"How stuffy it is here!" she said; "I can't bear this scent!"
+
+Her eyes, so angry and direct, swept both their faces.
+
+"Were you talking about the house?  I haven't seen it yet, you
+know--shall we all go on Sunday?"'
+
+From Irene's face the colour had flown.
+
+"I am going for a drive that day with Uncle Swithin," she
+answered.
+
+"Uncle Swithin!  What does he matter?  You can throw him over!"
+
+"I am not in the habit of throwing people over!"
+
+There was a sound of footsteps and June saw Soames standing just
+behind her.
+
+"Well! if you are all ready," said Irene, looking from one to
+the other with a strange smile, "dinner is too!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+JUNE'S  TREAT
+
+
+Dinner began in silence; the women facing one another, and the
+men.
+
+In silence the soup was finished--excellent, if a little thick;
+and fish was brought.  In silence it was handed.
+
+Bosinney ventured: "It's the first spring day."
+
+Irene echoed softly: "Yes--the first spring day."
+
+"Spring!" said June: "there isn't a breath of air!" No one
+replied.
+
+The fish was taken away, a fine fresh sole from Dover.  And
+Bilson brought champagne, a bottle swathed around the neck with
+white....
+
+Soames said: "You'll find it dry."
+
+Cutlets were handed, each pink-frilled about the legs.  They were
+refused by June, and silence fell.
+
+Soames said: "You'd better take a cutlet, June; there's nothing
+coming."
+
+But June again refused, so they were borne away.  And then Irene
+asked: "Phil, have you heard my blackbird?"
+
+Bosinney answered: "Rather--he's got a hunting-song.  As I came
+round I heard him in the Square."
+
+"He's such a darling!"
+
+"Salad, sir?" Spring chicken was removed.
+
+But Soames was speaking: "The asparagus is very poor.  Bosinney,
+glass of sherry with your sweet?  June, you're drinking nothing!"
+
+June said: "You know I never do.  Wine's such horrid stuff!"
+
+An apple charlotte came upon a silver dish, and smilingly Irene
+said: "The azaleas are so wonderful this year!"
+
+To this Bosinney murmured: "Wonderful! The scent's
+extraordinary!"
+
+June said: "How can you like the scent?  Sugar, please, Bilson."
+
+Sugar was handed her, and Soames remarked: "This charlottes
+good!"
+
+The charlotte was removed.  Long silence followed.  Irene,
+beckoning, said: "Take out the azalea, Bilson.  Miss June can't
+bear the scent."
+
+"No; let it stay," said June.
+
+Olives from France, with Russian caviare, were placed on little
+plates.  And Soames remarked: "Why can't we have the Spanish?"
+But no one answered.
+
+The olives were removed.  Lifting her tumbler June demanded:
+"Give me some water, please."  Water was given her.  A silver tray
+was brought, with German plums.  There was a lengthy pause.  In
+perfect harmony all were eating them.
+
+Bosinney counted up the stones: "This year--next year--some time."
+
+Irene finished softly: "Never! There was such a glorious sunset.
+The sky's all ruby still--so beautiful!"
+
+He answered: "Underneath the dark."
+
+Their eyes had met, and June cried scornfully: "A London sunset!"
+
+Egyptian cigarettes were handed in a silver box.  Soames, taking
+one, remarked: "What time's your play begin?"
+
+No one replied, and Turkish coffee followed in enamelled cups.
+
+Irene, smiling quietly, said: "If only...."
+
+"Only what?" said June.
+
+"If only it could always be the spring!"
+
+Brandy was handed; it was pale and old.
+
+Soames said: "Bosinney, better take some brandy."
+
+Bosinney took a glass; they all arose.
+
+"You want a cab?" asked Soames.
+
+June answered: "No! My cloaks please, Bilson."  Her cloak was
+brought.
+
+Irene, from the window, murmured: "Such a lovely night!  The
+stars are coming out!"
+
+Soames added: "Well, I hope you'll both enjoy yourselves."
+
+From the door June answered: "Thanks.  Come, Phil."
+
+Bosinney cried: "I'm coming."
+
+Soames smiled a sneering smile, and said: "I wish you luck!"
+
+And at the door Irene watched them go.
+
+Bosinney called: "Good night!"
+
+"Good night!" she answered softly....
+
+June made her lover take her on the top of a 'bus, saying she
+wanted air, and there sat silent, with her face to the breeze.
+
+The driver turned once or twice, with the intention of venturing
+a remark, but thought better of it.  They were a lively couple!
+The spring had got into his blood, too; he felt the need for
+letting steam escape, and clucked his tongue, flourishing his
+whip, wheeling his horses, and even they, poor things, had
+smelled the spring, and for a brief half-hour spurned the
+pavement with happy hoofs.
+
+The whole town was alive; the boughs, curled upward with their
+decking of young leaves, awaited some gift the breeze could
+bring.  New-lighted lamps were gaining mastery, and the faces of
+the crowd showed pale under that glare, while on high the great
+white clouds slid swiftly, softly, over the purple sky.
+
+Men in, evening dress had thrown back overcoats, stepping
+jauntily up the steps of Clubs; working folk loitered; and women-
+-those women who at that time of night are solitary--solitary and
+moving eastward in a stream--swung slowly along, with expectation
+in their gait, dreaming of good wine and a good supper, or--for
+an unwonted minute, of kisses given for love.
+
+Those countless figures, going their ways under the lamps and the
+moving-sky, had one and all received some restless blessing from
+the stir of spring.  And one and all, like those clubmen with
+their opened coats, had shed something of caste, and creed, and
+custom, and by the cock of their hats, the pace of their walk,
+their laughter, or their silence, revealed their common kinship
+under the passionate heavens.
+
+Bosinney and June entered the theatre in silence, and mounted to
+their seats in the upper boxes.  The piece had just begun, and
+the half-darkened house, with its rows of creatures peering all
+one way, resembled a great garden of flowers turning their faces
+to the sun.
+
+June had never before been in the upper boxes.  From the age of
+fifteen she had habitually accompanied her grandfather to the
+stalls, and not common stalls, but the best seats in the house,
+towards the centre of the third row, booked by old Jolyon, at
+Grogan and Boyne's, on his way home from the City, long before
+the day; carried in his overcoat pocket, together with his
+cigar-case and his old kid gloves, and handed to June to keep till
+the appointed night.  And in those stalls--an erect old figure
+with a serene white head, a little figure, strenuous and eager,
+with a red-gold head--they would sit through every kind of play,
+and on the way home old Jolyon would say of the principal actor:
+"Oh, he's a poor stick!  You should have seen little Bobson!"
+
+She had looked forward to this evening with keen delight; it was
+stolen, chaperone-less, undreamed of at Stanhope Gate, where she
+was supposed to be at Soames'.  She had expected reward for her
+subterfuge, planned for her lover's sake; she had expected it to
+break up the thick, chilly cloud, and make the relations between
+them which of late had been so puzzling, so tormenting--sunny and
+simple again as they had been before the winter.  She had come
+with the intention of saying something definite; and she looked
+at the stage with a furrow between her brows, seeing nothing, her
+hands squeezed together in her lap.  A swarm of jealous
+suspicions stung and stung her.
+
+If Bosinney was conscious of her trouble he made no sign.
+
+The curtain dropped.  The first act had come to an end.
+
+"It's awfully hot here!" said the girl; "I should like to go
+out."
+
+She was very white, and she knew--for with her nerves thus
+sharpened she saw everything--that he was both uneasy and
+compunctious.
+
+At the back of the theatre an open balcony hung over the street;
+she took possession of this, and stood leaning there without a
+word, waiting for him to begin.
+
+At last she could bear it no longer.
+
+"I want to say something to you, Phil," she said.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+The defensive tone of his voice brought the colour flying to her
+cheek, the words flying to her lips: "You don't give me a chance
+to be nice to you; you haven't for ages now!"
+
+Bosinney stared down at the street.  He made no answer....
+
+June cried passionately: "You know I want to do everything for
+you--that I want to be everything to you...."
+
+A hum rose from the street, and, piercing it with a sharp
+'ping,' the bell sounded for the raising of the curtain. June did
+not stir.  A desperate struggle was going on within her.  Should
+she put everything to the proof?  Should she challenge directly
+that influence, that attraction which was driving him away from
+her?  It was her nature to challenge, and she said: "Phil, take
+me to see the house on Sunday!"
+
+With a smile quivering and breaking on her lips, and trying, how
+hard, not to show that she was watching, she searched his face,
+saw it waver and hesitate, saw a troubled line come between his
+brows, the blood rush into his face.  He answered: "Not Sunday,
+dear; some other day!"
+
+"Why not Sunday?  I shouldn't be in the way on Sunday."
+
+He made an evident effort, and said: "I have an engagement."
+
+"You are going to take...."
+
+His eyes grew angry; he shrugged his shoulders, and answered: "An
+engagement that will prevent my taking you to see the house!"
+
+June bit her lip till the blood came, and walked back to her seat
+without another word, but she could not help the tears of rage
+rolling down her face.  The house had been mercifully darkened
+for a crisis, and no one could see her trouble.
+
+Yet in this world of Forsytes let no man think himself immune
+from observation.
+
+In the third row behind, Euphemia, Nicholas's youngest daughter,
+with her married-sister, Mrs. Tweetyman, were watching.
+
+They reported at Timothy's, how they had seen June and her fiance
+at the theatre.
+
+"In the stalls?"  "No, not in the...."  "Oh! in the dress
+circle, of course.  That seemed to be quite fashionable nowadays
+with young people!"
+
+Well--not exactly.  In the....  Anyway, that engagement wouldn't
+last long.  They had never seen anyone look so thunder and
+lightningy as that little June!  With tears of enjoyment in their
+eyes, they related how she had kicked a man's hat as she returned
+to her seat in the middle of an act, and how the man had looked.
+Euphemia had a noted, silent laugh, terminating most disappoint-
+ingly in squeaks; and when Mrs. Small, holding up her hands, said:
+"My dear!  Kicked a ha-at?" she let out such a number of these that
+she had to be recovered with smelling-salts.  As she went away
+she said to Mrs. Tweetyman:
+
+"Kicked a--ha-at!  Oh! I shall die."
+
+For 'that little June' this evening, that was to have been 'her
+treat,' was the most miserable she had ever spent.  God knows she
+tried to stifle her pride, her suspicion, her jealousy!
+
+She parted from Bosinney at old Jolyon's door without breaking
+down; the feeling that her lover must be conquered was strong
+enough to sustain her till his retiring footsteps brought home
+the true extent of her wretchedness.
+
+The noiseless 'Sankey' let her in.  She would have slipped up to
+her own room, but old Jolyon, who had heard her entrance, was in
+the dining-room doorway.
+
+"Come in and have your milk," he said.  "It's been kept hot for
+you.  You're very late.  Where have you been?"
+
+June stood at the fireplace, with a foot on the fender and an arm
+on the mantelpiece, as her grandfather had done when he came in
+that night of the opera.  She was too near a breakdown to care
+what she told him.
+
+"We dined at Soames's."
+
+"H'm!  the man of property!  His wife there and Bosinney?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Old Jolyon's glance was fixed on her with the penetrating gaze
+from which it was difficult to hide; but she was not looking at
+him, and when she turned her face, he dropped his scrutiny at
+once.  He had seen enough, and too much.  He bent down to lift
+the cup of milk for her from the hearth, and, turning away,
+grumbled: "You oughtn't to stay out so late; it makes you fit for
+nothing."
+
+He was invisible now behind his paper, which he turned with a
+vicious crackle; but when June came up to kiss him, he said:
+"Good-night, my darling," in a tone so tremulous and unexpected,
+that it was all the girl could do to get out of the room without
+breaking into the fit of sobbing which lasted her well on into
+the night.
+
+When the door was closed, old Jolyon dropped his paper, and
+stared long and anxiously in front of him.
+
+'The beggar!' he thought.  'I always knew she'd have trouble with
+him!'
+
+Uneasy doubts and suspicions, the more poignant that he felt
+himself powerless to check or control the march of events, came
+crowding upon him.
+
+Was the fellow going to jilt her?  He longed to go and say to
+him: "Look here, you sir!  Are you going to jilt my grand-
+daughter?"  But how could he?  Knowing little or nothing, he
+was yet certain, with his unerring astuteness, that there was
+something going on.  He suspected Bosinney of being too much at
+Montpellier Square.
+
+'This fellow,' he thought, 'may not be a scamp; his face is not a
+bad one, but he's a queer fish.  I don't know what to make of
+him.  I shall never know what to make of him!  They tell me he
+works like a nigger, but I see no good coming of it.  He's
+unpractical, he has no method.  When he comes here, he sits as
+glum as a monkey.  If I ask him what wine he'll have, he says:
+"Thanks, any wine." If I offer him a cigar, he smokes it as if it
+were a twopenny German thing.  I never see him looking at June as
+he ought to look at her; and yet, he's not after her money.  If
+she were to make a sign, he'd be off his bargain to-morrow.  But
+she won't--not she!  She'll stick to him!  She's as obstinate as
+fate--She'll never let go!'
+
+Sighing deeply, he turned the paper; in its columns, perchance he
+might find consolation.
+
+And upstairs in her room June sat at her open window, where the
+spring wind came, after its revel across the Park, to cool her
+hot cheeks and burn her heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+DRIVE WITH SWITHIN
+
+
+Two lines of a certain song in a certain famous old school's
+songbook run as follows:
+
+'How the buttons on his blue frock shone, tra-la-la!
+How he carolled and he sang, like a bird!....'
+
+Swithin did not exactly carol and sing like a bird, but he felt
+almost like endeavouring to hum a tune, as he stepped out of Hyde
+Park  Mansions, and contemplated his horses drawn up before the
+door.
+
+The afternoon was as balmy as a day in June, and to complete the
+simile of the old song, he had put on a blue frock-coat,
+dispensing with an overcoat, after sending Adolf down three times
+to make sure that there was not the least suspicion of east in
+the wind; and the frock-coat was buttoned so tightly around his
+personable form, that, if the buttons did not shine, they might
+pardonably have done so.  Majestic on the pavement he fitted on a
+pair of dog-skin gloves; with his large bell-shaped top hat, and
+his great stature and bulk he looked too primeval for a Forsyte.
+His thick white hair, on which Adolf had bestowed a touch of
+pomatum, exhaled the fragrance of opoponax and cigars--the
+celebrated Swithin brand, for which he paid one hundred and
+forty shillings the hundred, and of which old Jolyon had unkindly
+said, he wouldn't smoke them as a gift; they wanted the stomach
+of a horse!
+
+"Adolf!"
+
+"Sare!"
+
+"The new plaid rug!"
+
+He would never teach that fellow to look smart; and Mrs. Soames
+he felt sure, had an eye!
+
+"The phaeton hood down; I am going--to--drive--a--lady!"
+
+A pretty woman would want to show off her frock; and well--he was
+going to drive a lady!  It was like a new beginning to the good
+old days.
+
+Ages since he had driven a woman!  The last time, if he
+remembered, it had been Juley; the poor old soul had been as
+nervous as a cat the whole time, and so put him out of patience
+that, as he dropped her in the Bayswater Road, he had said: "Well
+I'm d---d if I ever drive you again!"  And he never had, not he!
+
+Going up to his horses' heads, he examined their bits; not that
+he knew anything about bits--he didn't pay his coachman sixty
+pounds a  year to do his work for him, that had never been his
+principle.  Indeed, his reputation as a horsey man rested mainly
+on the fact that once, on Derby Day, he had been welshed by some
+thimble-riggers.  But someone at the Club, after seeing him drive
+his greys up to the door--he always drove grey horses, you got
+more style for the money, some thought--had called him 'Four-
+in-hand Forsyte.' The name having reached his ears through that
+fellow Nicholas Treffry, old Jolyon's dead partner, the great
+driving man notorious for more carriage accidents than any man in
+the kingdom--Swithin had ever after conceived it right to act up
+to it.  The name had taken his fancy, not because he had ever
+driven four-in-hand, or was ever likely to, but because of
+something distinguished in the sound.  Four-in-hand Forsyte!  Not
+bad!  Born too soon, Swithin had missed his vocation.  Coming
+upon London twenty years later, he could not have failed to have
+become a stockbroker, but at the time when he was obliged to
+select, this great profession had not as yet became the chief
+glory of the upper-middle class.  He had literally been forced
+into land agency.
+
+Once in the driving seat, with the reins handed to him, and
+blinking over his pale old cheeks in the full sunlight, he took a
+slow look round--Adolf was already up behind; the cockaded groom
+at the horses' heads stood ready to let go; everything was
+prepared for the signal, and Swithin gave it.  The equipage
+dashed forward, and before you could say Jack Robinson, with a
+rattle and flourish drew up at Soames' door.
+
+Irene came out at once, and stepped in--he afterward described it
+at Timothy's--"as light as--er--Taglioni, no fuss about it, no
+wanting this or wanting that;" and above all, Swithin dwelt on
+this, staring at Mrs. Septimus in a way that disconcerted her a
+good deal, "no silly nervousness!"  To Aunt Hester he portrayed
+Irene's hat.  "Not one of your great flopping things, sprawling
+about, and catching the dust, that women are so fond of nowadays,
+but a neat little--" he made a circular motion of his hand, "white
+veil--capital taste."
+
+"What was it made of?" inquired Aunt Hester, who manifested a
+languid but permanent excitement at any mention of dress.
+
+"Made of?" returned Swithin; "now how should I know?"
+
+He sank into silence so profound that Aunt Hester began to be
+afraid he had fallen into a trance.  She did not try to rouse him
+herself, it not being her custom.
+
+'I wish somebody would come,' she thought; 'I don't like the look
+of him!'
+
+But suddenly Swithin returned to life.  "Made of" he wheezed out
+slowly, "what should it be made of?"
+
+They had not gone four miles before Swithin received the
+impression that Irene liked driving with him.  Her face was so
+soft behind that white veil, and her dark eyes shone so in the
+spring light, and whenever he spoke she raised them to him and
+smiled.
+
+On Saturday morning Soames had found her at her writing-table
+with a note written to Swithin, putting him off.  Why did she
+want to put him off? he asked.  She might put her own people off
+when she liked, he would not have her putting off his people!
+
+She had looked at him intently, had torn up the note, and said:
+"Very well!"
+
+And then she began writing another.  He took a casual glance
+presently, and saw that it was addressed to Bosinney.
+
+"What are you writing to him about?" he asked.
+
+Irene, looking at him again with that intent look, said quietly:
+"Something he wanted me to do for him!"
+
+"Humph!" said Soames,--"Commissions!"
+
+"You'll have your work cut out if you begin that sort of thing!"
+He said no more.
+
+Swithin opened his eyes at the mention of Robin Hill; it was a
+long way for his horses, and he always dined at half-past seven,
+before the rush at the Club began; the new chef took more trouble
+with an early dinner--a lazy rascal!
+
+He would like to have a look at the house, however.  A house
+appealed to any Forsyte, and especially to one who had been an
+auctioneer.  After all he said the distance was nothing.  When he
+was a younger man he had had rooms at Richmond for many years,
+kept his carriage and pair there, and drove them up and down to
+business every day of his life.
+
+Four-in-hand Forsyte they called him!  His T-cart, his horses had
+been known from Hyde Park Corner to the Star and Garter.  The
+Duke of Z....  wanted to get hold of them, would have given him
+double the money, but he had kept them; know a good thing when
+you have it, eh?  A look of solemn pride came portentously on his
+shaven square old face, he rolled his head in his stand-up
+collar, like a turkey-cock preening himself.
+
+She was really--a charming woman!  He enlarged upon her frock
+afterwards to Aunt Juley, who held up her hands at his way of
+putting it.
+
+Fitted her like a skin--tight as a drum; that was how he liked
+'em, all of a piece, none of your daverdy, scarecrow women!  He
+gazed at Mrs. Septimus Small, who took after James--long and
+thin.
+
+"There's style about her," he went on, "fit for a king!  And
+she's so quiet with it too!"
+
+"She seems to have made quite a conquest of you, any way,"
+drawled Aunt Hester from her corner.
+
+Swithin heard extremely well when anybody attacked him.
+
+"What's that?" he said.  "I know a--pretty--woman when I see one,
+and all I can say is, I don't see the young man about that's fit
+for her; but perhaps--you--do, come, perhaps--you-do!"
+
+"Oh?" murmured Aunt Hester, "ask Juley!"
+
+Long before they reached Robin Hill, however, the unaccustomed
+airing had made him terribly sleepy; he drove with his eyes
+closed, a life-time of deportment alone keeping his tall and
+bulky form from falling askew.
+
+Bosinney, who was watching, came out to meet them, and all three
+entered the house together; Swithin in front making play with a
+stout gold-mounted Malacca cane, put into his hand by Adolf, for
+his knees were feeling the effects of their long stay in the same
+position.  He had assumed his fur coat, to guard against the
+draughts of the unfinished house.
+
+The staircase--he said--was handsome! the baronial style!  They
+would want some statuary about!  He came to a standstill between
+the columns of the doorway into the inner court, and held out his
+cane inquiringly.
+
+What was this to be--this vestibule, or whatever they called it?
+But gazing at the skylight, inspiration came to him.
+
+"Ah! the billiard-room!"
+
+When told it was to be a tiled court with plants in the centre,
+he turned to Irene:
+
+"Waste this on plants?  You take my advice and have a billiard
+table here!"
+
+Irene smiled.  She had lifted her veil, banding it like a nun's
+coif across her forehead, and the smile of her dark eyes below
+this seemed to Swithin more charming than ever.  He nodded.  She
+would take his advice he saw.
+
+He had little to say of the drawing or dining-rooms, which he
+described as 'spacious"; but fell into such raptures as he
+permitted to a man of his dignity, in the wine-cellar, to which
+he descended by stone steps, Bosinney going first with a light.
+
+"You'll have room here," he said, "for six or seven hundred
+dozen--a very pooty little cellar!"
+
+Bosinney having expressed the wish to show them the house from
+the copse below, Swithin came to a stop.
+
+"There's a fine view from here," he remarked; "you haven't such a
+thing as a chair?"
+
+A chair was brought him from Bosinney's tent.
+
+"You go down," he said blandly; "you two!  I'll sit here and look
+at the view."
+
+He sat down by the oak tree, in the sun; square and upright, with
+one hand stretched out, resting on the nob of his cane, the other
+planted on his knee; his fur coat thrown open, his hat, roofing
+with its flat top the pale square of his face; his stare, very
+blank, fixed on the landscape.
+
+He nodded to them as they went off down through the fields.  He
+was, indeed, not sorry to be left thus for a quiet moment of
+reflection.  The air was balmy, not too much heat in the sun; the
+prospect a fine one, a remarka....  His head fell a little to one
+side; he jerked it up and thought: Odd!  He--ah!  They were
+waving to him from the bottom!  He put up his hand, and moved it
+more than once.  They were active--the prospect was remar....
+His head fell to the left, he jerked it up at once; it fell to
+the right.  It remained there; he was asleep.
+
+And asleep, a sentinel on the--top of the rise, he  appeared to
+rule over this prospect--remarkable--like some image blocked out
+by the special artist, of primeval Forsytes in pagan days, to
+record the domination of mind over matter!
+
+And all the unnumbered generations of his yeoman ancestors, wont
+of a Sunday to stand akimbo surveying their little plots of land,
+their grey unmoving eyes hiding their instinct with its hidden
+roots of violence, their instinct for possession to the exclusion
+of all the world--all these unnumbered generations seemed to sit
+there with him on the top of the rise.
+
+But from him, thus slumbering, his jealous Forsyte spirit
+travelled far, into God-knows-what jungle of fancies; with those
+two young people, to see what they were doing down there in the
+copse--in the copse where the spring was running riot with the
+scent of sap and bursting buds, the song of birds innumerable, a
+carpet of bluebells and sweet growing things, and the sun caught
+like gold in the tops of the trees; to see what they were doing,
+walking along there so close together on the path that was too
+narrow; walking along there so close that they were always
+touching; to watch Irene's eyes, like dark thieves, stealing the
+heart out of the spring.  And a great unseen chaperon, his spirit
+was there, stopping with them to look at the little furry corpse
+of a mole, not dead an hour, with his mushroom-and-silver coat
+untouched by the rain or dew; watching over Irene's bent head,
+and the soft look of her pitying eyes; and over that young man's
+head, gazing at her so hard, so strangely.  Walking on with them,
+too, across the open space where a wood-cutter had been at work,
+where the bluebells were trampled down, and a trunk had swayed
+and staggered down from its gashed stump.  Climbing it with them,
+over, and on to the very edge of the copse, whence there
+stretched an undiscovered country, from far away in which came
+the sounds, 'Cuckoo-cuckoo!'
+
+Silent, standing with them there, and uneasy at their silence!
+Very queer, very strange!
+
+Then back again, as though guilty, through the wood--back to the
+cutting, still silent, amongst the songs of birds that never
+ceased, and the wild scent--hum! what was it--like that herb
+they put in--back to the log across the path....
+
+And then unseen, uneasy, flapping above them, trying to make
+noises, his Forsyte spirit watched her balanced on the log, her
+pretty figure swaying, smiling down at that young man gazing up
+with such strange, shining eyes, slipping now--a--ah! falling,
+o--oh!  sliding--down his breast; her soft, warm body clutched,
+her head bent back from his lips; his kiss; her recoil; his cry:
+"You must know--I love you!"  Must know--indeed, a pretty...?
+Love!  Hah!
+
+Swithin awoke; virtue had gone out of him.  He had a taste in his
+mouth.  Where was he?
+
+Damme!  He had been asleep!
+
+He had dreamed something about a new soup, with a taste of mint
+in it.
+
+Those young people--where had they got to?  His left leg had pins
+and needles.
+
+"Adolf!"  The rascal was not there; the rascal was asleep
+somewhere.
+
+He stood up, tall, square, bulky in his fur, looking anxiously
+down over the fields, and presently he saw them coming.
+
+Irene was in front; that young fellow--what had they nicknamed
+him--'The Buccaneer?' looked precious hangdog there behind her;
+had got a flea in his ear, he shouldn't wonder.  Serve him right,
+taking her down all that way to look at the house!  The proper
+place to look at a house from was the lawn.
+
+They saw him.  He extended his arm, and moved it spasmodically to
+encourage them.  But they had stopped.  What were they standing
+there for, talking--talking?  They came on again.  She had been,
+giving him a rub, he had not the least doubt of it, and no
+wonder, over a house like that--a great ugly thing, not the sort
+of house he was accustomed to.
+
+He looked intently at their faces, with his pale, immovable
+stare.  That young man looked very queer!
+
+"You'll never make anything of this!" he said tartly, pointing at
+the mansion;--"too newfangled!"
+
+Bosinney gazed at him as though he had not heard; and Swithin
+afterwards described him to Aunt Hester as "an extravagant sort
+of fellow very odd way of looking at you--a bumpy beggar!"
+
+What gave rise to this sudden piece of psychology he did not
+state; possibly Bosinney's, prominent forehead and cheekbones and
+chin, or something hungry in his face, which quarrelled with
+Swithin's conception of the calm satiety that should characterize
+the perfect gentleman.
+
+He brightened up at the mention of tea.  He had a contempt for
+tea--his brother Jolyon had been in tea; made a lot of money by
+it--but he was so thirsty, and had such a taste in his mouth,
+that he was prepared to drink anything.  He longed to inform
+Irene of the taste in his mouth--she was so sympathetic--but it
+would not be a distinguished thing to do; he rolled his tongue
+round, and faintly smacked it against his palate.
+
+In a far corner of the tent Adolf was bending his cat-like
+moustaches over a kettle.  He left it at once to draw the cork of
+a pint-bottle of champagne.  Swithin smiled, and, nodding at
+Bosinney, said: "Why, you're quite a Monte Cristo!"  This
+celebrated novel--one of the half-dozen he had read--had produced
+an extraordinary impression on his mind.
+
+Taking his glass from the table, he held it away from him to
+scrutinize the colour; thirsty as he was, it was not likely that
+he was going to drink trash!  Then, placing it to his lips, he
+took a sip.
+
+"A very nice wine," he said at last, passing it before his nose;
+"not the equal of my Heidsieck!"
+
+It was at this moment that the idea came to him which he
+afterwards imparted at Timothy's in this nutshell: "I shouldn't
+wonder a bit if that architect chap were sweet upon Mrs. Soames!"
+
+And from this moment his pale, round eyes never ceased to bulge
+with the interest of his discovery.
+
+"The fellow," he said to Mrs. Septimus, "follows her about with
+his eyes like a dog--the bumpy beggar!  I don't wonder at it--
+she's a very charming woman, and, I should say, the pink of
+discretion!"  A vague consciousness of perfume caging about
+Irene, like that from a flower with half-closed petals and a
+passionate heart, moved him to the creation of this image.  "But
+I wasn't sure of it," he said, "till I saw him pick up her
+handkerchief."
+
+Mrs. Small's eyes boiled with excitement.
+
+"And did he give it her back?" she asked.
+
+"Give it back?" said Swithin: "I saw him slobber on it when he
+thought I wasn't looking!"
+
+Mrs. Small gasped--too interested to speak.
+
+"But she gave him no encouragement," went on Swithin; he stopped,
+and stared for a minute or two in the way that alarmed Aunt
+Hester so--he had suddenly recollected that, as they were
+starting back in the phaeton, she had given Bosinney her hand a
+second time, and let it stay there too....  He had touched his
+horses smartly with the whip, anxious to get her all to himself.
+But she had looked back, and she had not answered his first
+question; neither had he been able to see her face--she had kept
+it hanging down.
+
+There is somewhere a picture, which Swithin has not seen, of a
+man sitting on a rock, and by him, immersed in the still, green
+water, a sea-nymph lying on her back, with her hand on her naked
+breast.  She has a half-smile on her face--a smile of hopeless
+surrender and of secret joy.
+
+Seated by Swithin's side, Irene may have been smiling like that.
+
+When, warmed by champagne, he had her all to himself, he
+unbosomed himself of his wrongs; of his smothered resentment
+against the new chef at the club; his worry over the house in
+Wigmore Street, where the rascally tenant had gone bankrupt
+through helping his brother-in-law as if charity did not begin at
+home; of his deafness, too, and that pain he sometimes got in his
+right side.  She listened, her eyes swimming under their lids.
+He thought she was thinking deeply of his troubles, and pitied
+himself terribly.  Yet in his fur coat, with frogs across the
+breast, his top hat aslant, driving this beautiful woman, he had
+never felt more distinguished.
+
+A coster, however, taking his girl for a Sunday airing, seemed to
+have the same impression about himself.  This person had flogged
+his donkey into a gallop alongside, and sat, upright as a
+waxwork, in his shallopy chariot, his chin settled pompously on a
+red handkerchief, like Swithin's on his full cravat; while his
+girl, with the ends of a fly-blown boa floating out behind, aped
+a woman of fashion.  Her swain moved a stick with a ragged bit of
+string dangling from the end, reproducing with strange fidelity
+the circular flourish of Swithin's whip, and rolled his head at
+his lady with a leer that had a weird likeness to Swithin's
+primeval stare.
+
+Though for a time unconscious of the lowly ruffian's presence,
+Swithin presently took it into his head that he was being guyed.
+He laid his whip-lash across the mares flank.  The two chariots,
+however, by some unfortunate fatality continued abreast.
+Swithin's yellow, puffy face grew red; he raised his whip to lash
+the costermonger, but was saved from so far forgetting his
+dignity by a special intervention of Providence.  A carriage
+driving out through a gate forced phaeton and donkey-cart into
+proximity; the wheels grated, the lighter vehicle skidded, and
+was overturned.
+
+Swithin did not look round.  On no account would he have pulled
+up to help the ruffian.  Serve him right if he had broken his
+neck!
+
+But he could not if he would.  The greys had taken alarm.  The
+phaeton swung from side to side, and people raised frightened
+faces as they went dashing past.  Swithin's great arms, stretched
+at full length, tugged at the reins.  His cheeks were puffed, his
+lips compressed, his swollen face was of a dull, angry red.
+
+Irene had her hand on the rail, and at every lurch she gripped it
+tightly.  Swithin heard her ask:
+
+"Are we going to have an accident, Uncle Swithin?"
+
+He gasped out between his pants: "It's nothing; a--little fresh!"
+
+"I've never been in an accident."
+
+"Don't you move!"  He took a look at her.  She was smiling,
+perfectly calm.  "Sit still," he repeated.  "Never fear, I'll get
+you home!"
+
+And in the midst of all his terrible efforts, he was surprised to
+hear her answer in a voice not like her own:
+
+"I don't care if I never get home!"
+
+The carriage giving a terrific lurch, Swithin's exclamation was
+jerked back into his throat.  The horses, winded by the rise of a
+hill, now steadied to a trot, and finally stopped of their own
+accord.
+
+"When"--Swithin described it at Timothy's--"I pulled 'em up,
+there she was as cool as myself.  God bless my soul! she behaved
+as if she didn't care whether she broke her neck or not!  What
+was it she said: 'I don't care if I never get home?"  Leaning over
+the handle of his cane, he wheezed out, to Mrs. Small's terror:
+"And I'm not altogether surprised, with a finickin' feller like
+young Soames for a husband!"
+
+It did not occur to him to wonder what Bosinney had done after
+they had left him there alone; whether he had gone wandering
+about like the dog to which Swithin had compared him; wandering
+down to that copse where the spring was still in riot, the cuckoo
+still calling from afar; gone down there with her handkerchief
+pressed to lips, its fragrance mingling with the scent of mint
+and thyme.  Gone down there with such a wild, exquisite pain in
+his heart that he could have cried out among the trees.  Or what,
+indeed, the fellow had done.  In fact, till he came to Timothy's,
+Swithin had forgotten all about him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+JAMES GOES TO SEE FOR HIMSELF
+
+
+Those ignorant of Forsyte 'Change would not, perhaps, foresee all
+the stir made by Irene's visit to the house.
+
+After Swithin had related at Timothy's the full story of his
+memorable drive, the same, with the least suspicion of curiosity,
+the merest touch of malice, and a real desire to do good, was
+passed on to June.
+
+"And what a dreadful thing to say, my dear!" ended Aunt Juley;
+"that about not going home.  What did she mean?"
+
+It was a strange recital for the girl.  She heard it flushing
+painfully, and, suddenly, with a curt handshake, took her
+departure.
+
+"Almost rude!" Mrs. Small said to Aunt Hester, when June was
+gone.
+
+The proper construction was put on her reception of the news.
+She was upset.  Something was therefore very wrong.  Odd!  She
+and Irene had been such friends!
+
+It all tallied too well with whispers and hints that had been
+going about for some time past.  Recollections of Euphemia's
+account of the visit to the theatre--Mr. Bosinney always at
+Soames's?  Oh, indeed!  Yes, of course, he would be about the
+house!  Nothing open.  Only upon the greatest, the most important
+provocation was it necessary to say anything open on Forsyte
+'Change.  This machine was too nicely adjusted; a hint, the
+merest trifling expression of regret or doubt, sufficed to set
+the family soul so sympathetic--vibrating.  No one desired that
+harm should come of these vibrations--far from it; they were set
+in motion with the best intentions, with the feeling, that each
+member of the family had a stake in the family soul.
+
+And much kindness lay at the bottom of the gossip; it would
+frequently result in visits of condolence being made, in
+accordance with the customs of Society, thereby conferring a real
+benefit upon the sufferers, and affording consolation to the
+sound, who felt pleasantly that someone at all events was
+suffering from that from which they themselves were not
+suffering.  In fact, it was simply a desire to keep things
+well-aired, the desire which animates the Public Press, that
+brought James, for instance, into communication with Mrs.
+Septimus, Mrs. Septimus, with the little Nicholases, the little
+Nicholases with who-knows-whom, and so on.  That great class to
+which they had risen, and now belonged, demanded a certain
+candour, a still more certain reticence.  This combination
+guaranteed their membership.
+
+Many of the younger Forsytes felt, very naturally, and would
+openly declare, that they did not want their affairs pried into;
+but so powerful was the invisible, magnetic current of family
+gossip, that for the life of them they could not help knowing all
+about everything.  It was felt to be hopeless.
+
+One of them (young Roger) had made an heroic attempt to free the
+rising generation, by speaking of Timothy as an 'old cat.' The
+effort had justly recoiled upon himself; the words, coming round
+in the most delicate way to Aunt Juley's ears, were repeated by
+her in a shocked voice to Mrs. Roger, whence they returned again
+to young Roger.
+
+And, after all, it was only the wrong-doers who suffered; as, for
+instance, George, when he lost all that money playing billiards;
+or young Roger himself, when he was so dreadfully near to
+marrying the girl to whom, it was whispered, he was already
+married by the laws of Nature; or again Irene, who was thought,
+rather than said, to be in danger.
+
+All this was not only pleasant but salutary.  And it made so many
+hours go lightly at Timothy's in the Bayswater Road; so many
+hours that must otherwise have been sterile and heavy to those
+three who lived there; and Timothy's was but one of hundreds of
+such homes in this City of London--the homes of neutral persons
+of the secure classes, who are out of the battle themselves, and
+must find their reason for existing, in the battles of others.
+
+But for the sweetness of family gossip, it must indeed have been
+lonely there.  Rumours and tales, reports, surmises--were they
+not the children of the house, as dear and precious as the
+prattling babes the brother and sisters had missed in their own
+journey?  To talk about them was as near as they could get to
+the possession of all those children and grandchildren, after
+whom their soft hearts yearned.  For though it is doubtful
+whether Timothy's heart yearned, it is indubitable that at the
+arrival of each fresh Forsyte child he was quite upset.
+
+Useless for young Roger to say, "Old cat!" for Euphemia to hold up
+her hands and cry: "Oh! those three!" and break into her silent
+laugh with the squeak at the end.  Useless, and not too kind.
+
+The situation which at this stage might seem, and especially to
+Forsyte eyes, strange--not to  say 'impossible'--was, in view of
+certain facts, not so strange after all.  Some things had been
+lost sight of.  And first, in the security bred of many harmless
+marriages, it had been forgotten that Love is no hot-house
+flower, but a wild plant, born of  a wet night, born of an hour
+of sunshine; sprung  from wild seed, blown along the road by a
+wild wind.  A wild plant that, when it blooms by chance within
+the hedge of our gardens, we call a flower; and when it blooms
+outside we call a  weed; but, flower or weed, whose scent and
+colour  are always, wild!  And further--the facts and figures of
+their own lives being against the perception of this truth--it
+was not generally recognised by Forsytes that, where, this wild
+plant springs, men and women  are but moths around the pale,
+flame-like  blossom.
+
+It was long since young Jolyon's escapade--there was danger of a
+tradition again arising that people in their position never cross
+the hedge to pluck that flower; that one could reckon on having
+love, like measles, once in due season, and getting over it
+comfortably for all time--as with measles, on a soothing mixture
+of butter and honey--in the arms of wedlock.
+
+Of all those whom this strange rumour about Bosinney and Mrs.
+Soames reached, James was the most affected.  He had long
+forgotten how he had hovered, lanky and pale, in side whiskers of
+chestnut hue, round Emily, in the days of his own courtship.  He
+had long forgotten the small house in the purlieus of Mayfair,
+where he had spent the early days of his married life, or rather,
+he had long forgotten the early days, not the small house,--a
+Forsyte never forgot a house--he had afterwards sold it at a
+clear profit of four hundred pounds.
+
+He had long forgotten those days, with their hopes and fears and
+doubts about the prudence of the match (for Emily, though pretty,
+had nothing, and he himself at that time was making a bare
+thousand a year), and that strange, irresistible attraction which
+had drawn him on, till he felt he must die if he could not marry
+the girl with the fair hair, looped so neatly back, the fair arms
+emerging from a skin-tight bodice, the fair form decorously
+shielded by a cage of really stupendous circumference.
+
+James had passed through the fire, but he had passed also through
+the river of years which washes out the fire; he had experienced
+the saddest experience of all--forgetfulness of what it was like
+to be in love.
+
+Forgotten!  Forgotten so long, that he had forgotten even that he
+had forgotten.
+
+And now this rumour had come upon him, this rumour about his
+son's wife; very vague, a shadow dodging among the palpable,
+straightforward appearances of things, unreal, unintelligible as
+a ghost, but carrying with it, like a ghost, inexplicable terror.
+
+He tried to bring it home to his mind, but it was no more use
+than trying to apply to himself one of those tragedies he read of
+daily in his evening paper.  He simply could not.  There could be
+nothing in it.  It was all their nonsense.  She didn't get on
+with Soames as well as she might, but she was a good little
+thing--a good little thing!
+
+Like the not inconsiderable majority of men, James relished a
+nice little bit of scandal, and would say, in a matter-of-fact
+tone, licking his lips, "Yes, yes--she and young Dyson; they tell
+me they're living at Monte Carlo!"
+
+But the significance of an affair of this sort--of its past, its
+present, or its future--had never struck him.  What it meant,
+what torture and raptures had gone to its construction, what
+slow, overmastering fate had lurked within the facts, very naked,
+sometimes sordid, but generally spicy, presented to his gaze.  He
+was not in the habit of blaming, praising, drawing deductions, or
+generalizing at all about such things; he simply listened rather
+greedily, and repeated what he was told, finding considerable
+benefit from the practice, as from the consumption of a sherry
+and bitters before a meal.
+
+Now, however, that such a thing--or rather the rumour, the breath
+of it--had come near him personally, he felt as in a fog, which
+filled his mouth full of a bad, thick flavour, and made it
+difficult to draw breath.
+
+A scandal!  A possible scandal!
+
+To repeat this word to himself thus was the only way in which he
+could focus or make it thinkable.  He had forgotten the
+sensations necessary for understanding the progress, fate, or
+meaning of any such business; he simply could no longer grasp the
+possibilities of people running any risk for the sake of passion.
+
+Amongst all those persons of his acquaintance, who went into the
+City day after day and did their business there, whatever it was,
+and in their leisure moments bought shares, and houses, and ate
+dinners, and played games, as he was told, it would have seemed
+to him ridiculous to suppose that there were any who would run
+risks for the sake of anything so recondite, so figurative, as
+passion.
+
+Passion!  He seemed, indeed, to have heard of it, and rules such
+as 'A young man and a young woman ought never to be trusted
+together' were fixed in his mind as the parallels of latitude are
+fixed on a map (for all Forsytes, when it comes to 'bed-rock'
+matters of fact, have quite a fine taste in realism); but as to
+anything else--well, he could only appreciate it at all through
+the catch-word 'scandal.'
+
+Ah! but there was no truth in it--could not be.  He was not
+afraid; she was really a good little thing.  But there it was
+when you got a thing like that into your mind.  And James was of
+a nervous temperament--one of those men whom things will not
+leave alone, who suffer tortures from anticipation and
+indecision.  For fear of letting something slip that he might
+otherwise secure, he was physically unable to make up his mind
+until absolutely certain that, by not making it up, he would
+suffer loss.
+
+In life, however, there were many occasions when the business of
+making up his mind did not even rest with himself, and this was
+one of them.
+
+What could he do?  Talk it over with Soames?  That would only
+make matters worse.  And, after all, there was nothing in it, he
+felt sure.
+
+It was all that house.  He had mistrusted the idea from the
+first.  What did Soames want to go into the country for?  And, if
+he must go spending a lot of money building himself a house, why
+not have a first-rate man, instead of this young Bosinney, whom
+nobody knew anything about?  He had told them how it would be.
+And he had heard that the house was costing Soames a pretty penny
+beyond what he had reckoned on spending.
+
+This fact, more than any other, brought home to James the real
+danger of the situation.  It was always like this with these
+'artistic' chaps; a sensible man should have nothing to say to
+them.  He had warned Irene, too.  And see what had come of it!
+
+And it suddenly sprang into James's mind that he ought to go and
+see for himself.  In the midst of that fog of uneasiness in which
+his mind was enveloped the notion that he could go and look at
+the house afforded him inexplicable satisfaction.  It may have
+been simply the decision to do something--more possibly the fact
+that he was going to look at a house--that gave him relief.
+He felt that in staring at an edifice of bricks and mortar, of
+wood and stone, built by the suspected man himself, he would be
+looking into the heart of that rumour about Irene.
+
+Without saying a word, therefore, to anyone, he took a hansom to
+the station and proceeded by train to Robin Hill; thence--there
+being no 'flies,' in accordance with the custom of the
+neighbourhood--he found himself obliged to walk.
+
+He started slowly up the hill, his angular knees and high
+shoulders bent complainingly, his eyes fixed on his feet, yet,
+neat for all that, in his high hat and his frock-coat, on which
+was the speckless gloss imparted by perfect superintendence.
+Emily saw to that; that is, she did not, of course, see to it--
+people of good position not seeing to each other's buttons, and
+Emily was of good position--but she saw that the butler saw to
+it.
+
+He had to ask his way three times; on each occasion he repeated
+the directions given him, got the man to repeat them, then
+repeated them a second time, for he was naturally of a talkative
+disposition, and one could not be too careful in a new
+neighbourhood.
+
+He kept assuring them that it was a new house he was looking for;
+it was only, however, when he was shown the roof through the
+trees that he could feel really satisfied that he had not been
+directed entirely wrong.
+
+A heavy sky seemed to cover the world with the grey whiteness of
+a whitewashed ceiling.  There was no freshness or fragrance in
+the air.  On such a day even British workmen scarcely cared to do
+more then they were obliged, and moved about their business
+without the drone of talk which whiles away the pangs of labour.
+
+Through spaces of the unfinished house, shirt-sleeved figures
+worked slowly, and sounds arose--spasmodic knockings, the
+scraping of metal, the sawing of wood, with the rumble of
+wheelbarrows along boards; now and again the foreman's dog,
+tethered by a string to an oaken beam, whimpered feebly, with a
+sound like the singing of a kettle.
+
+The fresh-fitted window-panes, daubed each with a white patch in
+the centre, stared out at James like the eyes of a blind dog.
+
+And the building chorus went on, strident and mirthless under the
+grey-white sky.  But the thrushes, hunting amongst the fresh-
+turned earth for worms, were silent quite.
+
+James picked his way among the heaps of gravel--the drive was
+being laid--till he came opposite the porch.  Here he stopped and
+raised his eyes.  There was but little to see from this point of
+view, and that little he took in at once; but he stayed in this
+position many minutes, and who shall know of what he thought.
+
+His china-blue eyes under white eyebrows that jutted out in
+little horns, never stirred; the long upper lip of his wide
+mouth, between the fine white whiskers, twitched once or twice;
+it was easy to see from that anxious rapt expression, whence
+Soames derived the handicapped look which sometimes came upon his
+face.  James might have been saying to himself: 'I don't know--
+life's a tough job.'
+
+In this position Bosinney surprised him.
+
+James brought his eyes down from whatever bird's-nest they had
+been looking for in the sky to Bosinney's face, on which was a
+kind of humorous scorn.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Forsyte?  Come down to see for yourself?"
+
+It was exactly what James, as we know, had come for, and he was
+made correspondingly uneasy.  He held out his hand, however,
+saying:
+
+"How are you?" without looking at Bosinney.
+
+The latter made way for him with an ironical smile.
+
+James scented something suspicious in this courtesy.  "I should
+like to walk round the outside first," he said, "and see what
+you've been doing!"
+
+A flagged terrace of rounded stones with a list of two or three
+inches to port had been laid round the south-east and south-west
+sides of the house, and ran with a bevelled edge into mould,
+which was in preparation for being turfed; along this terrace
+James led the way.
+
+"Now what did this cost?" he asked, when he saw the terrace
+extending round the corner.
+
+"What should you think?" inquired Bosinney.
+
+"How should I know?" replied James somewhat nonplussed; "two or
+three hundred, I dare say!"
+
+"The exact sum!"
+
+James gave him a sharp look, but the architect appeared
+unconscious, and he put the answer down to mishearing.
+
+On arriving at the garden entrance, he stopped to look at the
+view.
+
+"That ought to come down," he said, pointing to the oak-tree.
+
+"You think so?  You think that with the tree there you don't get
+enough view for your money."
+
+Again James eyed him suspiciously--this young man had a peculiar
+way of putting things: "Well!" he said, with a perplexed,
+nervous, emphasis, "I don't see what you want with a tree."
+
+"It shall come down to-morrow," said Bosinney.
+
+James was alarmed.  "Oh," he said, "don't go saying I said it was
+to come down!  I know nothing about it!"
+
+"No?"
+
+James went on in a fluster: "Why, what should I know about it?
+It's nothing to do with me!  You do it on your own
+responsibility."
+
+"You'll allow me to mention your name?"
+
+James grew more and more alarmed: "I don't know what you want
+mentioning my name for," he muttered; "you'd better leave the
+tree alone.  It's not your tree!"
+
+He took out a silk handkerchief and wiped his brow.  They entered
+the house.  Like Swithin, James was impressed by the inner
+court-yard.
+
+You must have spent a douce of a lot of money here," he said,
+after staring at the columns and gallery for some time.  "Now,
+what did it cost to put up those columns?"
+
+"I can't tell you off-hand," thoughtfully answered Bosinney, "but
+I know it was a deuce of a lot!"
+
+"I should think so," said James.  "I should...."  He caught the
+architect's eye, and broke off.  And now, whenever he came to
+anything of which he desired to know the cost, he stifled that
+curiosity.
+
+Bosinney appeared determined that he should see everything, and
+had not James been of too 'noticing' a nature, he would
+certainly have found himself going round the house a second time.
+He seemed so anxious to be asked questions, too, that James felt
+he must be on his guard.  He began to suffer from his exertions,
+for, though wiry enough for a man of his long build, he was
+seventy-five years old.
+
+He grew discouraged; he seemed no nearer to anything, had not
+obtained from his inspection any of the knowledge he had vaguely
+hoped for.  He had merely increased his dislike and mistrust of
+this young man, who had tired him out with his politeness, and in
+whose manner he now certainly detected mockery.
+
+The fellow was sharper than he had thought, and better-looking
+than he had hoped.  He had a--a 'don't care' appearance that
+James, to whom risk was the most intolerable thing in life, did
+not appreciate; a peculiar smile, too, coming when least
+expected; and very queer eyes.  He reminded James, as he said
+afterwards, of a hungry cat.  This was as near as he could get,
+in conversation with Emily, to a description of the peculiar
+exasperation, velvetiness, and mockery, of which Bosinney's
+manner had been composed.
+
+At last, having seen all that was to be seen, he came out again
+at the door where he had gone in; and now, feeling that he was
+wasting time and strength and money, all for nothing, he took the
+courage of a Forsyte in both hands, and, looking sharply at
+Bosinney, said:
+
+"I dare say you see a good deal of my daughter-in-law; now, what
+does she think of the house?  But she hasn't seen it, I suppose?"
+
+This he said, knowing all about Irene's visit not, of course,
+that there was anything in the visit, except that extraordinary
+remark she had made about 'not caring to get home'--and the story
+of how June had taken the news!
+
+He had determined, by this way of putting the question, to give
+Bosinney a chance, as he said to himself.
+
+The latter was long in answering, but kept his eyes with
+uncomfortable steadiness on James.
+
+"She has seen the house, but I can't tell you what she thinks of
+it."
+
+Nervous and baffled, James was constitutionally prevented from
+letting the matter drop.
+
+"Oh!" he said, "she has seen it?  Soames brought her down, I
+suppose?"
+
+Bosinney smilingly replied: "Oh, no!"
+
+"What, did she come down alone?"
+
+"Oh, no!"
+
+"Then--who brought her?"
+
+"I really don't know whether I ought to tell you who brought
+her."
+
+To James, who knew that it was Swithin, this answer appeared
+incomprehensible.
+
+"Why!" he stammered, "you know that...." but he stopped, suddenly
+perceiving his danger.
+
+"Well," he said, "if you don't want to tell me I suppose you
+won't!  Nobody tells me anything."
+
+Somewhat to his surprise Bosinney asked him a question.
+
+"By the by," he said, "could you tell me if there are likely to
+be any more of you coming down?  I should like to be on the
+spot!"
+
+"Any more?" said James bewildered, "who should there be more?  I
+don't know of any more.  Good-bye?"
+
+Looking at the ground he held out his hand, crossed the palm of
+it with Bosinney's, and taking his umbrella just above the silk,
+walked away along the terrace.
+
+Before he turned the corner he glanced back, and saw Bosinney
+following him slowly--'slinking along the wall' as he put it to
+himself, 'like a great cat.' He paid no attention when the young
+fellow raised his hat.
+
+Outside the drive, and out of sight, he slackened his pace still
+more.  Very slowly, more bent than when he came, lean, hungry,
+and disheartened, he made his way back to the station.
+
+The Buccaneer, watching him go so sadly home, felt sorry perhaps
+for his behaviour to the old man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+SOAMES AND BOSINNEY CORRESPOND
+
+
+James said nothing to his son of this visit to the house; but,
+having occasion to go to Timothy's on morning on a matter
+connected with a drainage scheme which was being forced by the
+sanitary authorities on his brother, he mentioned it there.
+
+It was not, he said, a bad house.  He could see that a good deal
+could be made of it.  The fellow was clever in his way, though
+what it was going to cost Soames before it was done with he
+didn't know.
+
+Euphemia Forsyte, who happened to be in the room--she had come
+round to borrow the Rev. Mr. Scoles' last novel, 'Passion and
+Paregoric', which was having such a vogue--chimed in.
+
+"I saw Irene yesterday at the Stores; she and Mr. Bosinney were
+having a nice little chat in the Groceries."
+
+It was thus, simply, that she recorded a scene which had really
+made a deep and complicated impression on her.  She had been
+hurrying to the silk department of the Church and Commercial
+Stores--that Institution than which, with its admirable system,
+admitting only guaranteed persons on a basis of payment before
+delivery, no emporium can be more highly recommended to Forsytes-
+-to match a piece of prunella silk for her mother, who was
+waiting in the carriage outside.
+
+Passing through the Groceries her eye was unpleasantly attracted
+by the back view of a very beautiful figure.  It was so
+charmingly proportioned, so balanced, and so well clothed, that
+Euphemia's instinctive propriety was at once alarmed; such
+figures, she knew, by intuition rather than experience, were
+rarely connected with virtue--certainly never in her mind, for
+her own back was somewhat difficult to fit.
+
+Her suspicions were fortunately confirmed.  A young man coming
+from the Drugs had snatched off his hat, and was accosting the
+lady with the unknown back.
+
+It was then that she saw with whom she had to deal; the lady was
+undoubtedly Mrs. Soames, the young man Mr. Bosinney.  Concealing
+herself rapidly over the purchase of a box of Tunisian dates, for
+she was impatient of awkwardly meeting people with parcels in her
+hands, and at the busy time of the morning, she was quite
+unintentionally an interested observer of their little interview.
+
+Mrs. Soames, usually somewhat pale, had a delightful colour in
+her cheeks; and Mr. Bosinney's manner was strange, though
+attractive (she thought him rather a distinguished-looking man,
+and George's name for him, 'The Buccaneer'--about which there was
+something romantic--quite charming).  He seemed to be pleading.
+Indeed, they talked so earnestly--or, rather, he talked so
+earnestly, for Mrs. Soames did not say much--that they caused,
+inconsiderately, an eddy in the traffic.  One nice old General,
+going towards Cigars, was obliged to step quite out of the way,
+and chancing to look up and see Mrs. Soames' face, he actually
+took off his hat, the old fool!  So like a man!
+
+But it was Mrs. Soames' eyes that worried Euphemia.  She never
+once looked at Mr. Bosinney until he moved on, and then she
+looked after him.  And, oh, that look!
+
+On that look Euphemia had spent much anxious thought.  It is not
+too much to say that it had hurt her with its dark, lingering
+softness, for all the world as though the woman wanted to
+drag him back, and unsay something she had been saying.
+
+Ah, well, she had had no time to go deeply into the matter just
+then, with that prunella silk on her hands; but she was 'very
+intriguee'--very!  She had just nodded to Mrs. Soames, to show her
+that she had seen; and, as she confided, in talking it over
+afterwards, to her chum Francie (Roger's daughter), "Didn't she
+look caught out just? ...."
+
+James, most averse at the first blush to accepting any news
+confirmatory of his own poignant suspicions, took her up at once.
+
+"Oh" he said, "they'd be after wall-papers no doubt."
+
+Euphemia smiled.  "In the Groceries?" she said softly; and,
+taking 'Passion and Paregoric' from the table, added: "And so
+you'll lend me this, dear Auntie?  Good-bye!" and went away.
+
+James left almost immediately after; he was late as it was.
+
+When he reached the office of Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte, he
+found Soames, sitting in his revolving, chair, drawing up a
+defence.  The latter greeted his father with a curt good-morning,
+and, taking an envelope from his pocket, said:
+
+"It may interest you to look through this."
+
+James read as follows:
+
+
+309D, SLOANE STREET,
+May 15.
+
+'DEAR FORSYTE,
+
+'The construction of your house being now completed, my duties as
+architect have come to an end.  If I am to go on with the
+business of decoration, which at your request I undertook, I
+should like you to clearly understand that I must have a free
+hand.
+
+'You never come down without suggesting something that goes
+counter to my scheme.  I have here three letters from you, each
+of which recommends an article I should never dream of putting
+in.  I had your father here yesterday afternoon, who made further
+valuable suggestions.
+
+'Please make up your mind, therefore, whether you want me to
+decorate for you, or to retire which on the whole I should prefer
+to do.
+
+'But understand that, if I decorate, I decorate alone, without
+interference of any sort.
+
+If I do the thing, I will do it thoroughly, but I must have a
+free hand.
+
+'Yours truly,
+
+'PHILIP BOSINNEY.'
+
+
+The exact and immediate cause of this letter cannot, of course,
+be told, though it is not improbable that Bosinney may have been
+moved by some sudden revolt against his position towards Soames--
+that eternal position of Art towards Property--which is so
+admirably summed up, on the back of the most indispensable of
+modern appliances, in a sentence comparable to the very finest in
+Tacitus:
+
+
+THOS.  T.  SORROW, Inventor.
+BERT M.  PADLAND, Proprietor.
+
+
+"What are you going to say to him?" James asked.
+
+Soames did not even turn his head.  "I haven't made up my mind,"
+he said, and went on with his defence.
+
+A client of his, having put some buildings on a piece of ground
+that did not belong to him, had been suddenly and most
+irritatingly warned to take them off again.  After carefully going
+into the facts, however, Soames had seen his way to advise that
+his client had what was known as a title by possession, and that,
+though undoubtedly the ground did not belong to him, he was
+entitled to keep it, and had better do so; and he was now
+following up this advice by taking steps to--as the sailors say--
+'make it so.'
+
+He had a distinct reputation for sound advice; people saying of
+him: "Go to young Forsyte--a long-headed fellow!" and he prized
+this reputation highly.
+
+His natural taciturnity was in his favour; nothing could be more
+calculated to give people, especially people with property
+(Soames had no other clients), the impression that he was a safe
+man.  And he was safe.  Tradition, habit, education, inherited
+aptitude, native caution, all joined to form a solid professional
+honesty, superior to temptation--from the very fact that it was
+built on an innate avoidance of risk.  How could he fall, when
+his soul abhorred circumstances which render a fall possible--a
+man cannot fall off the floor!
+
+And those countless Forsytes, who, in the course of innumerable
+transactions concerned with property of all sorts (from wives to
+water  rights), had occasion for the services of a safe man,
+found it both reposeful and profitable to confide in Soames.
+That slight superciliousness of his, combined with an air of
+mousing amongst precedents, was in his favour too--a man would
+not be supercilious unless he knew!
+
+He was really at the head of the business, for though James still
+came nearly every day to, see for himself, he did little now but
+sit in his chair, twist his legs, slightly confuse things already
+decided, and presently go away again, and the other partner,
+Bustard, was a poor thing, who did a great deal of work, but
+whose opinion was never taken.
+
+So Soames went steadily on with his defence.  Yet it would be
+idle to say that his mind was at ease.  He was suffering from a
+sense of impending  trouble, that had haunted him for some time
+past.  He tried to think it physical--a condition of his liver--
+but knew that it was not.
+
+He looked at his watch.  In a quarter of an hour he was due at
+the General Meeting of the New Colliery Company--one of Uncle
+Jolyon's concerns; he should see Uncle Jolyon there, and say
+something to him about Bosinney--he had not made up his mind
+what, but something--in any case he should not answer this letter
+until he had seen Uncle Jolyon.  He got up and methodically put
+away the draft of his defence.  Going into a dark little
+cupboard, he turned up the light, washed his hands with a piece
+of brown Windsor soap, and dried them on a roller towel.  Then he
+brushed his hair, paying strict attention to the parting, turned
+down the light, took his hat, and saying he would be back at
+half-past two, stepped into the Poultry.
+
+It was not far to the Offices of the New Colliery Company in
+Ironmonger Lane, where, and not at the Cannon Street Hotel, in
+accordance with the more ambitious practice of other companies,
+the General Meeting was always held.  Old Jolyon had from the
+first set his face against the Press.  What business--he said--
+had the Public with his concerns!
+
+Soames arrived on the stroke of time, and took his seat alongside
+the Board, who, in a row, each Director behind his own ink-pot,
+faced their Shareholders.
+
+In the centre of this row old Jolyon, conspicuous in his black,
+tightly-buttoned frock-coat and his white moustaches, was leaning
+back with finger tips crossed on a copy of the Directors' report
+and accounts.
+
+On his right hand, always a little larger than life, sat the
+Secretary, 'Down-by-the-starn' Hemmings; an all-too-sad sadness
+beaming in his fine eyes; his iron-grey beard, in mourning like
+the rest of him, giving the feeling of an all-too-black tie
+behind it.
+
+The occasion indeed was a melancholy one, only six weeks having
+elapsed since that telegram had come from Scorrier, the mining
+expert, on a private mission to the Mines, informing them that
+Pippin, their Superintendent, had committed suicide in
+endeavouring, after his extraordinary two years' silence, to
+write a letter to his Board.  That letter was on the table now;
+it would be read to the Shareholders, who would of course be put
+into possession of all the facts.
+
+Hemmings had often said to Soames, standing with his coat-tails
+divided before the fireplace:
+
+"What our Shareholders don't know about our affairs isn't worth
+knowing.  You may take that from me, Mr. Soames."
+
+On one occasion, old Jolyon being present, Soames recollected a
+little unpleasantness.  His uncle had looked up sharply and said:
+"Don't talk nonsense, Hemmings!  You mean that what they do know
+isn't worth knowing!" Old Jolyon detested humbug.
+
+Hemmings, angry-eyed, and wearing a smile like that of a trained
+poodle, had replied in an outburst of artificial applause: "Come,
+now, that's good, sir--that's very good.  Your uncle will have
+his joke!"
+
+The next time he had seen Soames he had taken the opportunity of
+saying to him: "The chairman's getting very old!--I can't get him
+to understand things; and he's so wilful--but what can you
+expect, with a chin like his?"
+
+Soames had nodded.
+
+Everyone knew that Uncle Jolyon's chin was a caution.  He was
+looking worried to-day, in spite of his General Meeting look; he
+(Soames) should certainly speak to him about Bosinney.
+
+Beyond old Jolyon on the left was little Mr. Booker, and he, too,
+wore his General Meeting look, as though searching for some
+particularly tender shareholder.  And next him was the deaf
+director, with a frown; and beyond the deaf director, again, was
+old Mr. Bleedham, very bland, and having an air of conscious
+virtue--as well he might, knowing that the brown-paper parcel he
+always brought to the Board-room was concealed behind his hat
+(one of that old-fashioned class, of flat-brimmed top-hats which
+go with very large bow ties, clean-shaven lips, fresh cheeks, and
+neat little, white whiskers).
+
+Soames always attended the General Meeting; it was considered
+better that he should do so, in case 'anything should arise!' He
+glanced round with his close, supercilious air at the walls of
+the room, where hung plans of the mine and harbour, together with
+a large photograph of a shaft leading to a working which had
+proved quite remarkably unprofitable.  This photograph--a witness
+to the eternal irony underlying commercial enterprise till
+retained its position on the--wall, an effigy of the directors'
+pet, but dead, lamb.
+
+And now old Jolyon rose, to present the report and accounts.
+
+Veiling under a Jove-like serenity that perpetual antagonism
+deep-seated in the bosom of a director towards his shareholders,
+he faced them calmly.  Soames faced them too.  He knew most of
+them by sight.  There was old Scrubsole, a tar man, who always
+came, as Hemmings would say, 'to make himself nasty,' a
+cantankerous-looking old fellow with a red face, a jowl, and an
+enormous low-crowned hat reposing on his knee.  And the Rev. Mr.
+Boms, who always proposed a vote of thanks to the chairman, in
+which he invariably expressed the hope that the Board would not
+forget to elevate their employees, using the word with a double
+e, as being more vigorous and Anglo-Saxon (he had the strong
+Imperialistic tendencies of his cloth).  It was his salutary
+custom to buttonhole a director afterwards, and ask him whether
+he thought the coming year would be good or bad; and, according
+to the trend of the answer, to buy or sell three shares within
+the ensuing fortnight.
+
+And there was that military man, Major O'Bally, who could not
+help speaking, if only to second the re-election of the auditor,
+and who sometimes caused serious consternation by taking toasts--
+proposals rather--out of the hands of persons who had been
+flattered with little slips of paper, entrusting the said
+proposals to their care.
+
+These made up the lot, together with four or five strong, silent
+shareholders, with whom Soames could sympathize--men of business,
+who liked to keep an eye on their affairs for themselves, without
+being fussy--good, solid men, who came to the City every day and
+went back in the evening to good, solid wives.
+
+Good, solid wives!  There was something in that thought which
+roused the nameless uneasiness in Soames again.
+
+What should he say to his uncle?  What answer should he make to
+this letter?
+
+.  .  .  .  "If any shareholder has any question to put, I shall
+be glad to answer it." A soft thump.  Old Jolyon had let the
+report and accounts fall, and stood twisting his tortoise-shell
+glasses between thumb and forefinger.
+
+The ghost of a smile appeared on Soames' face.  They had better
+hurry up with their questions!  He well knew his uncle's method
+(the ideal one) of at once saying: "I propose, then, that the
+report and accounts be adopted!"  Never let them get their wind--
+shareholders were notoriously wasteful of time!
+
+A tall, white-bearded man, with a gaunt, dissatisfied face,
+arose:
+
+"I believe I am in order, Mr. Chairman, in raising a question on
+this figure of  L5000 in the accounts.  'To the widow and
+family"' (he looked sourly round), "'of our late superintendent,'
+who so--er--ill-advisedly (I say--ill-advisedly) committed
+suicide, at a time when his services were of the utmost value to
+this Company.  You have stated that the agreement which he has so
+unfortunately cut short with his own hand was for a period of
+five years, of which one only had expired--I--"
+
+Old Jolyon made a gesture of impatience.
+
+"I believe I am in order, Mr. Chairman--I ask whether this amount
+paid, or proposed to be paid, by the Board to the er--deceased--
+is for services which might have been rendered to the Company--
+had he not committed suicide?"
+
+"It is in recognition of past services, which we all know--you as
+well as any of us--to have been of vital value."
+
+"Then, sir, all I have to say is that the services being past,
+the amount is too much."
+
+The shareholder sat down.
+
+Old Jolyon waited a second and said: "I now propose that the
+report and--"
+
+The shareholder rose again: "May I ask if the Board realizes
+that it is not their money which--I don't hesitate to say that if
+it were their money...."
+
+A second shareholder, with a round, dogged face, whom Soames
+recognised as the late superintendent's brother-in-law, got up
+and said warmly: "In my opinion, sir, the sum is not enough!"
+
+The Rev. Mr. Boms now rose to his feet.  "If I may venture to
+express myself," he said, "I should say that the fact of the--er-
+-deceased having committed suicide should weigh very heavily--
+very heavily with our worthy chairman.  I have no doubt it has
+weighed with him, for--I say this for myself and I think for
+everyone present (hear, hear)--he enjoys our confidence in a high
+degree.  We all desire, I should hope, to be charitable.  But I
+feel sure" (he-looked severely at the late superintendent's
+brother-in-law) "that he will in some way, by some written
+expression, or better perhaps by reducing the amount, record our
+grave disapproval that so promising and valuable a life should
+have been thus impiously removed from a sphere where both its own
+interests and--if I may say so--our interests so imperatively
+demanded its continuance.  We should not--nay, we may not--
+countenance so grave a dereliction of all duty, both human and
+divine."
+
+The reverend gentleman resumed his seat.  The late super-
+intendent's brother-in-law again rose: "What I have said I
+stick to," he said; "the amount is not enough!"
+
+The first shareholder struck in: "I challenge the legality of the
+payment.  In my opinion this payment is not legal.  The Company's
+solicitor is present; I believe I am in order in asking him the
+question."
+
+All eyes were now turned upon Soames.  Something had arisen!
+
+He stood up, close-lipped and cold; his nerves inwardly
+fluttered, his attention tweaked away at last from contemplation
+of that cloud looming on the horizon of his mind.
+
+"The point," he said in a low, thin voice, "is by no means clear.
+As there is no possibility of future consideration being
+received, it is doubtful whether the payment is strictly legal.
+If it is desired, the opinion of the court could be taken."
+
+The superintendent's brother-in-law frowned, and said in a
+meaning tone: "We have no doubt the opinion of the court could be
+taken.  May I ask the name of the gentleman who has given us that
+striking piece of information?  Mr. Soames Forsyte?  Indeed!"  He
+looked from Soames to old Jolyon in a pointed manner.
+
+A flush coloured Soames' pale cheeks, but his superciliousness
+did not waver.  Old Jolyon fixed his eyes on the speaker.
+
+"If," he said, "the late superintendents brother-in-law has
+nothing more to say, I propose that the report and accounts...."
+
+At this moment, however, there rose one of those five silent,
+stolid shareholders, who had excited Soames' sympathy.  He said:
+
+"I deprecate the proposal altogether.  We are expected to give
+charity to this man's wife and children, who, you tell us, were
+dependent on him.  They may have been; I do not care whether they
+were or not.  I object to the whole thing on principle.  It is
+high time a stand was made against this sentimental human-
+itarianism.  The country is eaten up with it.  I object to
+my money being paid to these people of whom I know nothing, who
+have done nothing to earn it.  I object in toto; it is not
+business.  I now move that the report and accounts be put back,
+and amended by striking out the grant altogether."
+
+Old Jolyon had remained standing while the strong, silent man was
+speaking.  The speech awoke an echo in all hearts, voicing, as it
+did, the worship of strong men, the movement against generosity,
+which had at that time already commenced among the saner members
+of the community.
+
+The words 'it is not business' had moved even the Board;
+privately everyone felt that indeed it was not.  But they knew
+also the chairman's domineering temper and tenacity.  He, too, at
+heart must feel that it was not business; but he was committed to
+his own proposition.  Would he go back upon it?  It was thought
+to be unlikely.
+
+All waited with interest.  Old Jolyon held up his hand;
+dark-rimmed glasses depending between his finger and thumb
+quivered slightly with a suggestion of menace.
+
+He addressed the strong, silent shareholder.
+
+"Knowing, as you do, the efforts of our late superintendent upon
+the occasion of the explosion at the mines, do you seriously wish
+me to put that amendment, sir?"
+
+"I do."
+
+Old Jolyon put the amendment.
+
+"Does anyone second this?" he asked, looking calmly round.
+
+And it was then that Soames, looking at his uncle, felt the power
+of will that was in that old man.  No one stirred.  Looking
+straight into the eyes of the strong, silent shareholder, old
+Jolyon said:
+
+"I now move, 'That the report and accounts for the year 1886 be
+received and adopted.' You second that?  Those in favour signify
+the same in the usual way.  Contrary--no.  Carried.  The next
+business, gentlemen...."
+
+Soames smiled.  Certainly Uncle Jolyon had a way with him!
+
+But now his attention relapsed upon Bosinney.
+
+Odd how that fellow haunted his thoughts, even in business hours.
+
+Irene's visit to the house--but there was nothing in that, except
+that she might have told him; but then, again, she never did tell
+him anything.  She was more silent, more touchy, every day.  He
+wished to God the house were finished, and they were in it, away
+from London.  Town did not suit her; her nerves were not strong
+enough.  That nonsense of the separate room had cropped up again!
+
+The meeting was breaking up now.  Underneath the photograph of
+the lost shaft Hemmings was buttonholed by the Rev. Mr. Boms.
+Little Mr. Booker, his bristling eyebrows wreathed in angry
+smiles, was having a parting turn-up with old Scrubsole.  The two
+hated each other like poison.  There was some matter of a
+tar-contract between them, little Mr. Booker having secured it
+from the Board for a nephew of his, over old Scrubsole's head.
+Soames had heard that from Hemmings, who liked a gossip, more
+especially about his directors, except, indeed, old Jolyon, of
+whom he was afraid.
+
+Soames awaited his opportunity.  The last shareholder was
+vanishing through the door, when he approached his uncle, who was
+putting on his hat.
+
+"Can I speak to you for a minute, Uncle Jolyon?"
+
+It is uncertain what Soames expected to get out of this
+interview.
+
+Apart from that somewhat mysterious awe in which Forsytes in
+general held old Jolyon, due to his philosophic twist, or
+perhaps--as Hemmings would doubtless have said--to his chin,
+there was, and always had been, a subtle antagonism between the
+younger man and the old.  It had lurked under their dry manner of
+greeting, under their non-committal allusions to each other, and
+arose perhaps from old Jolyon's perception of the quiet tenacity
+('obstinacy,' he rather naturally called it) of the young man, of
+a secret doubt whether he could get his own way with him.
+
+Both these Forsytes, wide asunder as the poles in many respects,
+possessed in their different ways--to a greater degree than the
+rest of the family--that essential quality of tenacious and
+prudent insight into 'affairs,' which is the highwater mark of
+their great class.  Either of them, with a little luck and
+opportunity, was equal to a lofty career; either of them would
+have made a good financier, a great contractor, a statesman,
+though old Jolyon, in certain of his moods when under the
+influence of a cigar or of Nature--would have been capable of,
+not perhaps despising, but certainly of questioning, his own high
+position, while Soames, who never smoked cigars, would not.
+
+Then, too, in old Jolyon's mind there was always the secret ache,
+that the son of James--of James, whom he had always thought such
+a poor thing, should be pursuing the paths of success, while his
+own son...!
+
+And last, not least--for he was no more outside the radiation of
+family gossip than any other Forsyte--he had now heard the
+sinister, indefinite, but none the less disturbing rumour about
+Bosinney, and his pride was wounded to the quick.
+
+Characteristically, his irritation turned not against Irene but
+against Soames.  The idea that his nephew's wife (why couldn't
+the fellow take better care of her--Oh!  quaint injustice!  as
+though Soames could possibly take more care!)--should be drawing
+to herself June's lover, was intolerably humiliating.  And seeing
+the danger, he did not, like James, hide it away in sheer
+nervousness, but owned with the dispassion of his broader
+outlook, that it was not unlikely; there was something very
+attractive about Irene!
+
+He had a presentiment on the subject of Soames' communication as
+they left the Board Room together, and went out into the noise
+and hurry of Cheapside.  They walked together a good minute
+without speaking, Soames with his mousing, mincing step, and old
+Jolyon upright and using his umbrella languidly as a
+walking-stick.
+
+They turned presently into comparative quiet, for old Jolyon's
+way to a second Board led him in the direction of Moorage Street.
+
+Then Soames, without lifting his eyes, began: "I've had this
+letter from Bosinney.  You see what he says; I thought I'd let
+you know.  I've spent a lot more than I intended on this house,
+and I want the position to be clear."
+
+Old Jolyon ran his eyes unwillingly over the letter: "What he
+says is clear enough," he said.
+
+"He talks about 'a free hand,'" replied Soames.
+
+Old Jolyon looked at him.  The long-suppressed irritation and
+antagonism towards this young fellow, whose affairs were
+beginning to intrude upon his own, burst from him.
+
+"Well, if you don't trust him, why do you employ him?"
+
+Soames stole a sideway look: "It's much too late to go into
+that," he said, "I only want it to be quite understood that if I
+give him a free hand, he doesn't let me in.  I thought if you
+were to speak to him, it would carry more weight!"
+
+"No," said old Jolyon abruptly; "I'll have nothing to do with
+it!"
+
+The words of both uncle and nephew gave the impression of
+unspoken meanings, far more important, behind.  And the look they
+interchanged was like a revelation of this consciousness.
+
+"Well," said Soames; "I thought, for June's sake, I'd tell you,
+that's all; I thought you'd better know I shan't stand any
+nonsense!"
+
+"What is that to me?" old Jolyon took him up.
+
+"Oh! I don't know," said Soames, and flurried by that sharp look
+he was unable to say more.  "Don't say I didn't tell you," he
+added sulkily, recovering his composure.
+
+"Tell me!" said old Jolyon; "I don't know what you mean.  You
+come worrying me about a thing like this.  I don't want to hear
+about your affairs; you must manage them yourself!"
+
+"Very well," said Soames immovably, "I will!"
+
+"Good-morning, then," said old Jolyon, and they parted.
+
+Soames retraced his steps, and going into a celebrated eating-
+house, asked for a plate of smoked salmon and a glass of
+Chablis; he seldom ate much in the middle of the day, and
+generally ate standing, finding the position beneficial to his
+liver, which was very sound, but to which he desired to put down
+all his troubles.
+
+When he had finished he went slowly back to his office, with bent
+head, taking no notice of the swarming thousands on the
+pavements, who in their turn took no notice of him.
+
+The evening post carried the following reply to Bosinney:
+
+
+'FORSYTE, BUSTARD AND FORSYTE,
+'Commissioners for Oaths,
+'92001, BRANCH LANE, POULTRY, E.C.,
+
+'May 17, 1887.
+
+'DEAR BOSINNEY,
+
+'I have, received your letter, the terms of which not a little
+surprise me.  I was under the impression that you had, and have
+had all along, a "free hand"; for I do not recollect that any
+suggestions I have been so unfortunate as to make have met with
+your approval.  In giving you, in accordance with your request,
+this "free hand," I wish you to clearly understand that the total
+cost of the house as handed over to me completely decorated,
+inclusive of your fee (as arranged between us), must not exceed
+twelve thousand pounds--L12,000.  This gives you an ample margin,
+and, as you know, is far more than I originally contemplated.
+
+'I am,
+'Yours truly,
+
+ 'SOAMES FORSYTE.'
+
+
+On the following day he received a note from Bosinney:
+
+
+'PHILIP BAYNES BOSINNEY,
+'Architect,
+'309D, SLOANE STREET, S.W.,
+'May 18.
+
+'DEAR FORSYTE,
+
+'If you think that in such a delicate matter as decoration I can
+bind myself to the exact pound, I am afraid you are mistaken.  I
+can see that you are tired of the arrangement, and of me, and I
+had better, therefore, resign.
+
+'Yours faithfully,
+
+'PHILIP BAYNES BOSINNEY.'
+
+
+Soames pondered long and painfully over his answer, and late at
+night in the dining-room, when Irene had gone to bed, he composed
+the following:
+
+
+'62, MONTPELLIER SQUARE, S.W.,
+'May 19, 1887.
+
+'DEAR BOSINNEY,
+
+'I think that in both our interests it would be extremely
+undesirable that matters should be so left at this stage.  I did
+not mean to say that if you should exceed the sum named in my
+letter to you by ten or twenty or even fifty pounds, there would
+be any difficulty between us.  This being so, I should like you
+to reconsider your answer.  You have a "free hand" in the terms
+of this correspondence, and I hope you will see your way to
+completing the decorations, in the matter of which I know it is
+difficult to be absolutely exact.
+
+'Yours truly,
+
+'SOAMES FORSYTE.'
+
+
+Bosinney's answer, which came in the course of the next day, was:
+
+
+'May 20.
+
+'DEAR FORSYTE,
+
+'Very well.
+
+'PH.  BOSINNEY.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+OLD JOLYON AT THE ZOO
+
+
+Old Jolyon disposed of his second Meeting--an ordinary Board--
+summarily.  He was so dictatorial that his fellow directors were
+left in cabal over the increasing domineeringness of old Forsyte,
+which they were far from intending to stand much longer, they
+said.
+
+He went out by Undergound to Portland Road Station, whence he
+took a cab and drove to the Zoo.
+
+He had an assignation there, one of those assignations that had
+lately been growing more frequent, to which his increasing
+uneasiness about June and the 'change in her,' as he expressed
+it, was driving him.
+
+She buried herself away, and was growing thin; if he spoke to her
+he got no answer, or had his head snapped off, or she looked as
+if she would burst into tears.  She was as changed as she could
+be, all through this Bosinney.  As for telling him about
+anything, not a bit of it!
+
+And he would sit for long spells brooding, his paper unread
+before him, a cigar extinct between his lips.  She had been such
+a companion to him ever since she was three years old!  And he
+loved her so!
+
+Forces regardless of family or class or custom were beating down
+his guard; impending events over which he had no control threw
+their shadows on his head.  The irritation of one accustomed to
+have his way was roused against he knew not what.
+
+Chafing at the slowness of his cab, he reached the Zoo door; but,
+with his sunny instinct for seizing the good of each moment, he
+forgot his vexation as he walked towards the tryst.
+
+From the stone terrace above the bear-pit his son and his two
+grandchildren came hastening down when they saw old Jolyon
+coming, and led him away towards the lion-house.  They supported
+him on either side, holding one to each of his hands,--whilst
+Jolly, perverse like his father, carried his grandfather's
+umbrella in such a way as to catch people's legs with the crutch
+of the handle.
+
+Young Jolyon followed.
+
+It was as good as a play to see his father with the children, but
+such a play as brings smiles with tears behind.  An old man and
+two small children walking together can be seen at any hour of
+the day; but the sight of old Jolyon, with Jolly and Holly seemed
+to young Jolyon a special peep-show of the things that lie at the
+bottom of our hearts.  The complete surrender of that erect old
+figure to those little figures on either hand was too poignantly
+tender, and, being a man of an habitual reflex action, young
+Jolyon swore softly under his breath.  The show affected him in a
+way unbecoming to a Forsyte, who is nothing if not undemonstrative.
+
+Thus they reached the lion-house.
+
+There had been a morning fete at the Botanical Gardens, and a
+large number of Forsy...'--that is, of well-dressed people who
+kept carriages had brought them on to the Zoo, so as to have
+more, if possible, for their money, before going back to Rutland
+Gate or Bryanston Square.
+
+"Let's go on to the Zoo," they had said to each other; "it'll be
+great fun!"  It was a shilling day; and there would not be all
+those horrid common people.
+
+In front of the long line of cages they were collected in rows,
+watching the tawny, ravenous beasts behind the bars await their
+only pleasure of the four-and-twenty hours.  The hungrier the
+beast, the greater the fascination.  But whether because the
+spectators envied his appetite, or, more humanely, because it
+was so soon to be satisfied, young Jolyon could not tell.
+Remarks kept falling on his ears: "That's a nasty-looking brute,
+that tiger!"  "Oh, what a love!  Look at his little mouth!"
+"Yes, he's rather nice!  Don't go too near, mother."
+
+And frequently, with little pats, one or another would clap their
+hands to their pockets behind and look round, as though expecting
+young Jolyon or some disinterested-looking person to relieve them
+of the contents.
+
+A well-fed man in a white waistcoat said slowly through his
+teeth: "It's all greed; they can't be hungry.  Why, they take no
+exercise."  At these words a tiger snatched a piece of bleeding
+liver, and the fat man laughed.  His wife, in a Paris model frock
+and gold nose-nippers, reproved him: "How can you laugh, Harry?
+Such a horrid sight!"
+
+Young Jolyon frowned.
+
+The circumstances of his life, though he had ceased to take a too
+personal view of them, had left him subject to an intermittent
+contempt; and the class to which he had belonged--the carriage
+class--especially excited his sarcasm.
+
+To shut up a lion or tiger in confinement was surely a horrible
+barbarity.  But no cultivated person would admit this.
+
+The idea of its being barbarous to confine wild animals had
+probably never even occurred to his father for instance; he
+belonged to the old school, who considered it at once humanizing
+and educational to confine baboons and panthers, holding the
+view, no doubt, that in course of time they might induce these
+creatures not so unreasonably to die of misery and heart-
+sickness against the bars of their cages, and put the society
+to the expense of getting others!  In his eyes, as in the eyes
+of all Forsytes, the pleasure of seeing these beautiful
+creatures in a state of captivity far outweighed the
+inconvenience of imprisonment to beasts whom God had so
+improvidently placed in a state of freedom!  It was for the
+animals good, removing them at once from the countless dangers
+of open air and exercise, and enabling them to exercise their
+functions in the guaranteed seclusion of a private compartment!
+Indeed, it was doubtful what wild animals were made for but to be
+shut up in cages!
+
+But as young Jolyon had in his constitution the elements of
+impartiality, he reflected that to stigmatize as barbarity that
+which was merely lack of imagination must be wrong; for none who
+held these views had been placed in a similar position to the
+animals they caged, and could not, therefore, be expected to
+enter into their sensations.   It was not until they were leaving
+the gardens--Jolly and Holly in a state of blissful delirium--
+that old Jolyon found an opportunity of speaking to his son on
+the matter next his heart.  "I don't know what to make of it," he
+said; "if she's to go on as she's going on now, I can't tell
+what's  to come.  I wanted her to see the doctor, but she  won't.
+She's not a bit like me.  She's your mother  all over.  Obstinate
+as a mule!  If she doesn't want  to do a thing, she won't, and
+there's an end of it!"
+
+Young Jolyon smiled; his eyes had wandered  to his father's chin.
+'A pair of you,' he thought,  but he said nothing.
+
+"And then," went on old Jolyon, "there's this  Bosinney.  I
+should like to punch the fellow's head, but I can't, I suppose,
+though--I don't see  why you shouldn't," he added doubtfully.
+
+"What has he done?  Far better that it should come to an end, if
+they don't hit it off!"
+
+Old Jolyon looked at his son.  Now they had actually come to
+discuss a subject connected with the relations between the sexes
+he felt distrustful.  Jo would be sure to hold some loose view or
+other.
+
+"Well, I don't know what you think," he said; "I dare say your
+sympathy's with him--shouldn't be surprised; but I think he's
+behaving precious badly, and if he comes my way I shall tell him
+so."  He dropped the subject.
+
+It was impossible to discuss with his son the true nature and
+meaning of Bosinney's defection.  Had not his son done the very
+same thing (worse, if possible) fifteen years ago?  There seemed
+no end to the consequences of that piece of folly.
+
+Young Jolyon also was silent; he had quickly penetrated his
+father's thought, for, dethroned from the high seat of an obvious
+and uncomplicated view of things, he had become both perceptive
+and subtle.
+
+The attitude he had adopted towards sexual matters fifteen years
+before, however, was too different from his father's.  There was
+no bridging the gulf.
+
+He said coolly: "I suppose he's fallen in love with some other
+woman?"
+
+Old Jolyon gave him a dubious look: "I can't tell," he said;
+"they say so!"
+
+"Then, it's probably true," remarked young Jolyon unexpectedly;
+"and I suppose they've told you who she is?"
+
+"Yes," said old Jolyon, "Soames's wife!"
+
+Young Jolyon did not whistle: The circumstances of his own life
+had rendered him incapable of whistling on such a subject, but he
+looked at his father, while the ghost of a smile hovered over his
+face.
+
+If old Jolyon saw, he took no notice.
+
+"She and June were bosom friends!" he muttered.
+
+"Poor little June!" said young Jolyon softly.  He thought of his
+daughter still as a babe of three.
+
+Old Jolyon came to a sudden halt.
+
+"I don't believe a word of it," he said, "it's some old woman's
+tale.  Get me a cab, Jo, I'm tired to death!"
+
+They stood at a corner to see if an empty cab would come along,
+while carriage after carriage drove past, bearing Forsytes of all
+descriptions from the Zoo.  The harness, the liveries, the gloss
+on the horses' coats, shone and glittered in the May sunlight,
+and each equipage, landau, sociable, barouche, Victoria, or
+brougham, seemed to roll out proudly from its wheels:
+
+
+'I and my horses and my men you know,'
+Indeed the whole turn-out have cost a pot.
+But we were worth it every penny.  Look
+At Master and at Missis now, the dawgs!
+Ease with security--ah!  that's the ticket!
+
+
+And such, as everyone knows, is fit accompaniment for a
+perambulating Forsyte.
+
+Amongst these carriages was a barouche coming at a greater pace
+than the others, drawn by a pair of bright bay horses.  It swung
+on its high springs, and the four people who filled it seemed
+rocked as in a cradle.
+
+This chariot attracted young Jolyon's attention; and suddenly, on
+the back seat, he recognised his Uncle James, unmistakable in
+spite of the increased whiteness of his whiskers; opposite, their
+backs defended by sunshades, Rachel Forsyte and her elder but
+married sister, Winifred Dartie, in irreproachable toilettes, had
+posed their heads haughtily, like two of the birds they had been
+seeing at the Zoo; while by James' side reclined Dartie, in a
+brand-new frock-coat buttoned tight and square, with a large
+expanse of carefully shot linen protruding below each wristband.
+
+An extra, if subdued, sparkle, an added touch of the best gloss
+or varnish characterized this vehicle, and seemed to distinguish
+it from all the others, as though by some happy extravagance--
+like that which marks out the real 'work of art' from the
+ordinary 'picture'--it were designated as the typical car, the
+very throne of Forsytedom.
+
+Old Jolyon did not see them pass; he was petting poor Holly who
+was tired, but those in the carriage had taken in the little
+group; the ladies' heads tilted suddenly, there was a spasmodic
+screening movement of parasols; James' face protruded naively,
+like the head of a long bird, his mouth slowly opening.  The
+shield-like rounds of the parasols grew smaller and smaller, and
+vanished.
+
+Young Jolyon saw that he had been recognised, even by Winifred,
+who could not have been more than fifteen when he had forfeited
+the right to be considered a Forsyte.
+
+There was not much change in them!  He remembered the exact look
+of their turn-out all that time ago: Horses, men, carriage--all
+different now, no doubt--but of the precise stamp of fifteen
+years before; the same neat display, the same nicely calculated
+arrogance ease with security!  The swing exact, the pose of the
+sunshades exact, exact the spirit of the whole thing.
+
+And in the sunlight, defended by the haughty shields of parasols,
+carriage after carriage went by.
+
+"Uncle James has just passed, with his female folk," said young
+Jolyon.
+
+His father looked black.  "Did your uncle see us?  Yes?  Hmph!
+What's he want, coming down into these parts?"
+
+An empty cab drove up at this moment, and old Jolyon stopped it.
+
+"I shall see you again before long, my boy!" he said.  "Don't you
+go paying any attention to what I've been saying about young
+Bosinney--I don't believe a word of it!"
+
+Kissing the children, who tried to detain him, he stepped in and
+was borne away.
+
+Young Jolyon, who had taken Holly up in his arms, stood
+motionless at the corner, looking after the cab.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+AFTERNOON AT TIMOTHY'S
+
+
+If old Jolyon, as he got into his cab, had said: 'I won't believe
+a word of it!' he would more truthfully have expressed his
+sentiments.
+
+The notion that James and his womankind had seen him in the
+company of his son had awakened in him not only the impatience he
+always felt when crossed, but that secret hostility natural
+between brothers, the roots of which--little nursery rivalries--
+sometimes toughen and deepen as life goes on, and, all hidden,
+support a plant capable of producing in season the bitterest
+fruits.
+
+Hitherto there had been between these six brothers no more
+unfriendly feeling than that caused by the secret and natural
+doubt that the others might be richer than themselves; a feeling
+increased to the pitch of curiosity by the approach of death--
+that end of all handicaps--and the great 'closeness' of their man
+of business, who, with some sagacity, would profess to Nicholas
+ignorance of James' income, to James ignorance of old Jolyon's,
+to Jolyon ignorance of Roger's, to Roger ignorance of Swithin's,
+while to Swithin he would say most irritatingly that Nicholas
+must be a rich man.  Timothy alone was exempt, being in
+gilt-edged securities.
+
+But now, between two of them at least, had arisen a very
+different sense of injury.  From the moment when James had the
+impertinence to pry into his affairs--as he put it--old Jolyon no
+longer chose to credit this story about Bosinney.  His grand-
+daughter slighted through a member of 'that fellow's' family!
+He made up his mind that Bosinney was maligned.  There must be
+some other reason for his defection.
+
+June had flown out at him, or something; she was as touchy as she
+could be!
+
+He would, however, let Timothy have a bit of his mind, and see if
+he would go on dropping hints!  And he would not let the grass
+grow under his feet either, he would go there at once, and take
+very good care that he didn't have to go again on the same
+errand.
+
+He saw James' carriage blocking the pavement in front of 'The
+Bower.' So they had got there before him--cackling about having
+seen him, he dared say!  And further on, Swithin's greys were
+turning their noses towards the noses of James' bays, as though
+in conclave over the family, while their coachmen were in
+conclave above.
+
+Old Jolyon, depositing his hat on the chair in the narrow hall,
+where that hat of Bosinney's had so long ago been mistaken for a
+cat, passed his thin hand grimly over his face with its great
+drooping white moustaches, as though to remove all traces of
+expression, and made his way upstairs.
+
+He found the front drawing-room full.  It was full enough at the
+best of times--without visitors--without any one in it--for
+Timothy and his sisters, following the tradition of their
+generation, considered that a room was not quite 'nice' unless it
+was 'properly' furnished.  It held, therefore, eleven chairs, a
+sofa, three tables, two cabinets, innumerable knicknacks, and
+part of a large grand piano.  And now, occupied by Mrs. Small,
+Aunt Hester, by Swithin, James, Rachel, Winifred, Euphemia, who
+had come in again to return 'Passion and Paregoric' which she had
+read at lunch, and her chum Frances, Roger's daughter (the
+musical Forsyte, the one who composed songs), there was only one
+chair left unoccupied, except, of course, the two that nobody
+ever sat on--and the only standing room was occupied by the cat,
+on whom old Jolyon promptly stepped.
+
+In these days it was by no means unusual for Timothy to have so
+many visitors.  The family had always, one and all, had a real
+respect for Aunt Ann, and now that she was gone, they were coming
+far more frequently to The Bower, and staying longer.
+
+Swithin had been the first to arrive, and seated torpid in a red
+satin chair with a gilt back, he gave every appearance of lasting
+the others out.  And symbolizing Bosinney's name 'the big one,'
+with his great stature and bulk, his thick white hair, his puffy
+immovable shaven face, he looked more primeval than ever in the
+highly upholstered room.
+
+His conversation, as usual of late, had turned at once upon
+Irene, and he had lost no time in giving Aunts Juley and Hester
+his opinion with regard to this rumour he heard was going about.
+No--as he said--she might want a bit of flirtation--a pretty
+woman must have her fling; but more than that he did not believe.
+Nothing open; she had too much good sense, too much proper
+appreciation of what was due to her position, and to the family!
+No sc...,  he was going to say 'scandal' but the very idea was so
+preposterous that he waved his hand as though to say--'but let
+that pass!'
+
+Granted that Swithin took a bachelor's view of the situation--
+still what indeed was not due to that family in which so many had
+done so well for themselves, had attained a certain position?  If
+he had heard in dark, pessimistic moments the words 'yeomen' and
+'very small beer' used in connection with his origin, did he
+believe them?
+
+No! he cherished, hugging it pathetically to his bosom the
+secret theory that there was something distinguished somewhere in
+his ancestry.
+
+"Must be," he once said to young Jolyon, before the latter went
+to the bad.  "Look at us, we've got on!  There must be good blood
+in us somewhere."
+
+He had been fond of young Jolyon: the boy had been in a good set
+at College, had known that old ruffian Sir Charles Fiste's
+sons--a pretty rascal one of them had turned out, too; and there
+was style about him--it was a thousand pities he had run off with
+that half-foreign governess!  If he must go off like that why
+couldn't he have chosen someone who would have done them credit!
+And what was he now?--an underwriter at Lloyd's; they said he
+even painted pictures--pictures!  Damme! he might have ended as
+Sir Jolyon Forsyte, Bart., with a seat in Parliament, and a place
+in the country!
+
+It was Swithin who, following the impulse which sooner or later
+urges thereto some member of every great family, went to the
+Heralds' Office, where they assured him that he was undoubtedly
+of the same family as the well-known Forsites with an 'i,' whose
+arms were 'three dexter buckles on a sable ground gules,' hoping
+no doubt to get him to take them up.
+
+Swithin, however, did not do this, but having ascertained that
+the crest was a 'pheasant proper,' and the motto 'For Forsite,'
+he had the pheasant proper placed upon his carriage and the
+buttons of his coachman, and both crest and motto on his
+writing-paper.  The arms he hugged to himself, partly because,
+not having paid for them, he thought it would look ostentatious
+to put them on his carriage, and he hated ostentation, and partly
+because he, like any practical man all over the country, had a
+secret dislike and contempt for things he could not understand he
+found it hard, as anyone might, to swallow 'three dexter buckles
+on a sable ground gules.'
+
+He never forgot, however, their having told him that if he paid
+for them he would be entitled to use them, and it strengthened
+his conviction that he was a gentleman.  Imperceptibly the rest
+of the family absorbed the 'pheasant proper,' and some, more
+serious than others, adopted the motto; old Jolyon, however,
+refused to use the latter, saying that it was humbug meaning
+nothing, so far as he could see.
+
+Among the older generation it was perhaps known at bottom from
+what great historical event they derived their crest; and if
+pressed on the subject, sooner than tell a lie--they did not like
+telling lies, having an impression that only Frenchmen and
+Russians told them--they would confess hurriedly that Swithin had
+got hold of it somehow.
+
+Among the younger generation the matter was wrapped in a
+discretion proper.  They did not want to hurt the feelings of
+their elders, nor to feel ridiculous themselves; they simply used
+the crest....
+
+"No," said Swithin, "he had had an opportunity of seeing for
+himself, and what he should say was, that there was nothing in
+her manner to that young Buccaneer or Bosinney or whatever his
+name was, different from her manner to himself; in fact, he
+should rather say...." But here the entrance of Frances
+and Euphemia put an unfortunate stop to the conversation, for
+this was not a subject which could be discussed before young
+people.
+
+And though Swithin was somewhat upset at being stopped like this
+on the point of saying something important, he soon recovered his
+affability.  He was rather fond of Frances--Francie, as she was
+called in the family.  She was so smart, and they told him she
+made a pretty little pot of pin-money by her songs; he called it
+very clever of her.
+
+He rather prided himself indeed on a liberal attitude towards
+women, not seeing any reason why they shouldn't paint pictures,
+or write tunes, or books even, for the matter of that, especially
+if they could turn a useful penny by it; not at all--kept them
+out of mischief.  It was not as if they were men!
+
+'Little Francie,' as she was usually called with good-natured
+contempt, was an important personage, if only as a standing
+illustration of the attitude of Forsytes towards the Arts.  She
+was not really 'little,' but rather tall, with dark hair for a
+Forsyte, which, together with a grey eye, gave her what was
+called 'a Celtic appearance.' She wrote songs with titles like
+'Breathing Sighs,' or 'Kiss me, Mother, ere I die,' with a
+refrain like an anthem:
+
+
+'Kiss me, Mother, ere I die;
+Kiss me-kiss me, Mother, ah!
+Kiss, ah!  kiss me e-ere I-
+Kiss me, Mother, ere I d-d-die!'
+
+
+She wrote the words to them herself, and other poems.  In lighter
+moments she wrote waltzes, one of which, the 'Kensington Coil,'
+was almost national to Kensington, having a sweet dip in it.
+
+It was very original.  Then there were her 'Songs for Little
+People,' at once educational and witty, especially 'Gran'ma's
+Porgie,' and that ditty, almost prophetically imbued with the
+coming Imperial spirit, entitled 'Black Him In His Little Eye.'
+
+Any publisher would take these, and reviews like 'High Living,'
+and the 'Ladies' Genteel Guide' went into raptures over: 'Another
+of Miss Francie Forsyte's spirited ditties, sparkling and
+pathetic.  We ourselves were moved to tears and laughter.  Miss
+Forsyte should go far.'
+
+With the true instinct of her breed, Francie had made a point of
+knowing the right people--people who would write about her, and
+talk about her, and people in Society, too--keeping a mental
+register of just where to exert her fascinations, and an eye on
+that steady scale of rising prices, which in her mind's eye
+represented the future.  In this way she caused herself to be
+universally respected.
+
+Once, at a time when her emotions were whipped by an attachment--
+for the tenor of Roger's life, with its whole-hearted collection
+of house property, had induced in his only daughter a tendency
+towards passion--she turned to great and sincere work, choosing
+the sonata form, for the violin.  This was the only one of her
+productions that troubled the Forsytes.  They felt at once that
+it would not sell.
+
+Roger, who liked having a clever daughter well enough, and often
+alluded to the amount of pocket-money she made for herself, was
+upset by this violin sonata.
+
+"Rubbish like that!" he called it.  Francie had borrowed young
+Flageoletti from Euphemia, to play it in the drawing-room at
+Prince's Gardens.
+
+As a matter of fact Roger was right.  It was rubbish, but--
+annoying! the sort of rubbish that wouldn't sell.  As every
+Forsyte knows, rubbish that sells is not rubbish at all--far from
+it.
+
+And yet, in spite of the sound common sense which fixed the worth
+of art at what it would fetch, some of the Forsytes--Aunt
+Hester, for instance, who had always been musical--could not help
+regretting that Francie's music was not 'classical'; the same
+with her poems.  But then, as Aunt Hester said, they didn't see
+any poetry nowadays, all the poems were 'little light things.'
+
+There was nobody who could write a poem like 'Paradise Lost,' or
+'Childe Harold'; either of which made you feel that you really
+had read something.  Still, it was nice for Francie to have
+something to occupy her; while other girls were spending money
+shopping she was making it!
+
+And both Aunt Hester and Aunt Juley were always ready to listen
+to the latest story of how Francie had got her price increased.
+
+They listened now, together with Swithin, who sat pretending not
+to, for these young people talked so fast and mumbled so, he
+never could catch what they said.
+
+"And I can't think," said Mrs. Septimus, "how you do it.  I
+should never have the audacity!"
+
+Francie smiled lightly.  "I'd much rather deal with a man than a
+woman.  Women are so sharp!"
+
+"My dear," cried Mrs. Small, "I'm sure we're not."
+
+Euphemia went off into her silent laugh, and, ending with the
+squeak, said, as though being strangled: "Oh, you'll kill me some
+day, auntie."
+
+Swithin saw no necessity to laugh; he detested people laughing
+when he himself perceived no joke.  Indeed, he detested Euphemia
+altogether, to whom he always alluded as 'Nick's daughter, what's
+she called--the pale one?'  He had just missed being her god-
+father--indeed, would have been, had he not taken a firm stand
+against her outlandish name.  He hated becoming a godfather.
+Swithin then said to Francie with dignity: "It's a fine day--
+er--for the time of year." But Euphemia, who knew perfectly well
+that he had refused to be her godfather, turned to Aunt Hester,
+and began telling her how she had seen Irene--Mrs. Soames--at the
+Church and Commercial Stores.
+
+"And Soames was with her?" said Aunt Hester, to whom Mrs. Small
+had as yet had no opportunity of relating the incident.
+
+"Soames with her?  Of course not!"
+
+"But was she all alone in London?"
+
+"Oh, no; there was Mr. Bosinney with her.  She was perfectly
+dressed."
+
+But Swithin, hearing the name Irene, looked severely at Euphemia,
+who, it is true, never did look well in a dress, whatever she may
+have done on other occasions, and said:
+
+"Dressed like a lady, I've no doubt.  It's a pleasure to see
+her."
+
+At this moment James and his daughters were announced.  Dartie,
+feeling badly in want of a drink, had pleaded an appointment with
+his dentist, and, being put down at the Marble Arch, had got into
+a hansom, and was already seated in the window of his club in
+Piccadilly.
+
+His wife, he told his cronies, had wanted to take him to pay some
+calls.  It was not in his line--not exactly.  Haw!
+
+Hailing the waiter, he sent him out to the hall to see what had
+won the 4.30 race.  He was dog-tired, he said, and that was a
+fact; had been drivin' about with his wife to 'shows' all the
+afternoon.  Had put his foot down at last.  A fellow must live
+his own life.
+
+At this moment, glancing out of the bay window--for he loved this
+seat whence he could see everybody pass--his eye unfortunately,
+or perhaps fortunately, chanced to light on the figure of Soames,
+who was mousing across the road from the Green Park-side, with
+the evident intention of coming in, for he, too, belonged to 'The
+Iseeum.'
+
+Dartie sprang to his feet; grasping his glass, he muttered
+something about 'that 4.30 race,' and swiftly withdrew to the
+card-room, where Soames never came.  Here, in complete isolation
+and a dim light, he lived his own life till half past seven, by
+which hour he knew Soames must certainly have left the club.
+
+It would not do, as he kept repeating to himself whenever he felt
+the impulse to join the gossips in the bay-window getting too
+strong for him--it absolutely would not do, with finances as low
+as his, and the 'old man' (James) rusty ever since that business
+over the oil shares, which was no fault of his, to risk a row
+with Winifred.
+
+If Soames were to see him in the club it would be sure to come
+round to her that he wasn't at the dentist's at all.  He never
+knew a family where things 'came round' so.  Uneasily, amongst
+the green baize card-tables, a frown on his olive coloured face,
+his check trousers crossed, and patent-leather boots shining
+through the gloom, he sat biting his forefinger, and wondering
+where the deuce he was to get the money if Erotic failed to win
+the Lancashire Cup.
+
+His thoughts turned gloomily to the Forsytes.  What a set they
+were!  There was no getting anything out of them--at least, it
+was a matter of extreme difficulty.  They were so d---d
+particular about money matters; not a sportsman amongst the lot,
+unless it were George.  That fellow Soames, for instance, would
+have a ft if you tried to borrow a tenner from him, or, if he
+didn't have a fit, he looked at you with his cursed supercilious
+smile, as if you were a lost soul because you were in want of
+money.
+
+And that wife of his (Dartie's mouth watered involuntarily), he
+had tried to be on good terms with her, as one naturally would
+with any pretty sister-in-law, but he would be cursed if the (he
+mentally used a coarse word)--would have anything to say to him--
+she looked at him, indeed, as if he were dirt--and yet she could
+go far enough, he wouldn't mind betting.  He knew women; they
+weren't made with soft eyes and figures like that for nothing, as
+that fellow Soames would jolly soon find out, if there were
+anything in what he had heard about this Buccaneer Johnny.
+
+Rising from his chair, Dartie took a turn across the room, ending
+in front of the looking-glass over the marble chimney-piece; and
+there he stood for a long time contemplating in the glass the
+reflection of his face.  It had that look, peculiar to some men,
+of having been steeped in linseed oil, with its waxed dark
+moustaches and the little distinguished commencements of side
+whiskers; and concernedly he felt the promise of a pimple on the
+side of his slightly curved and fattish nose.
+
+In the meantime old Jolyon had found the remaining chair in
+Timothy's commodious drawing-room.  His advent had obviously put
+a stop to the conversation, decided awkwardness having set in.
+Aunt Juley, with her well-known kindheartedness, hastened to set
+people at their ease again.
+
+"Yes, Jolyon," she said, "we were just saying that you haven't
+been here for a long time; but we mustn't be surprised.  You're
+busy, of course?  James was just saying what a busy time of
+year...."
+
+"Was he?" said old Jolyon, looking hard at James.  "It wouldn't
+be half so busy if everybody minded their own business."
+
+James, brooding in a small chair from which his knees ran uphill,
+shifted his feet uneasily, and put one of them down on the cat,
+which had unwisely taken refuge from old Jolyon beside him.
+
+"Here, you've got a cat here," he said in an injured voice,
+withdrawing his foot nervously as he felt it squeezing into the
+soft, furry body.
+
+"Several," said old Jolyon, looking at one face and another; "I
+trod on one just now."
+
+A silence followed.
+
+Then Mrs. Small, twisting her fingers and gazing round with
+'pathetic calm', asked: "And how is dear June?"
+
+A twinkle of humour shot through the sternness of old Jolyon's
+eyes.  Extraordinary old woman, Juley!  No one quite like her for
+saying the wrong thing!
+
+"Bad!" he said; "London don't agree with her--too many people
+about, too much clatter and chatter by half."  He laid emphasis on
+the words, and again looked James in the face.
+
+Nobody spoke.
+
+A feeling of its being too dangerous to take a step in any
+direction, or hazard any remark, had fallen on them all.
+Something of the sense of the impending, that comes over the
+spectator of a Greek tragedy, had entered that upholstered room,
+filled with those white-haired, frock-coated old men, and
+fashionably attired women, who were all of the same blood,
+between all of whom existed an unseizable resemblance.
+
+Not that they were conscious of it--the visits of such fateful,
+bitter spirits are only felt.
+
+Then Swithin rose.  He would not sit there, feeling like that--he
+was not to be put down by anyone!  And, manoeuvring round the
+room with added pomp, he shook hands with each separately.
+
+"You tell Timothy from me," he said, "that he coddles himself too
+much!"  Then, turning to Francie, whom he considered 'smart,' he
+added: "You come with me for a drive one of these days."  But this
+conjured up the vision of that other eventful drive which had
+been so much talked about, and he stood quite still for a second,
+with glassy eyes, as though waiting to catch up with the
+significance of what he himself had said; then, suddenly
+recollecting that he didn't care a damn, he turned to old Jolyon:
+"Well, good-bye, Jolyon!  You shouldn't go about without an
+overcoat; you'll be getting sciatica or something!"  And, kicking
+the cat slightly with the pointed tip of his patent leather boot,
+he took his huge form away.
+
+When he had gone everyone looked secretly at the others, to see
+how they had taken the mention of the word 'drive'--the word
+which had become famous, and acquired an overwhelming importance,
+as the only official--so to speak--news in connection with the
+vague and sinister rumour clinging to the family tongue.
+
+Euphemia, yielding to an impulse, said with a short laugh: "I'm
+glad Uncle Swithin doesn't ask me to go for drives."
+
+Mrs. Small, to reassure her and smooth over any little
+awkwardness the subject might have, replied: "My dear, he likes
+to take somebody well dressed, who will do him a little credit.
+I shall never forget the drive he took me.  It was an
+experience!"  And her chubby round old face was spread for a
+moment with a strange contentment; then broke into pouts, and
+tears came into her eyes.  She was thinking of that long ago
+driving tour she had once taken with Septimus Small.
+
+James, who had relapsed into his nervous brooding in the little
+chair, suddenly roused himself: "He's a funny fellow, Swithin,"
+he said, but in a half-hearted way.
+
+Old Jolyon's silence, his stern eyes, held them all in a kind of
+paralysis.  He was disconcerted himself by the effect of his own
+words--an effect which seemed to deepen the importance of the
+very rumour he had come to scotch; but he was still angry.
+
+He had not done with them yet--No, no--he would give them another
+rub or two.
+
+He did not wish to rub his nieces, he had no quarrel with them--a
+young and presentable female always appealed to old Jolyon's
+clemency--but that fellow James, and, in a less degree perhaps,
+those others, deserved all they would get.  And he, too, asked
+for Timothy.
+
+As though feeling that some danger threatened her younger
+brother, Aunt Juley suddenly offered him tea: "There it is," she
+said, "all cold and nasty, waiting for you in the back drawing
+room, but Smither shall make you some fresh."
+
+Old Jolyon rose: "Thank you," he said, looking straight at James,
+"but I've no time for tea, and--scandal, and the rest of it!
+It's time I was at home.  Good-bye, Julia; good-bye, Hester;
+good-bye, Winifred."
+
+Without more ceremonious adieux, he marched out.
+
+Once again in his cab, his anger evaporated, for so it ever was
+with his wrath--when he had rapped out, it was gone.  Sadness
+came over his spirit.  He had stopped their mouths, maybe, but at
+what a cost!  At the cost of certain knowledge that the rumour he
+had been resolved not to believe was true.  June was abandoned,
+and for the wife of that fellow's son!  He felt it was true, and
+hardened himself to treat it as if it were not; but the pain he
+hid beneath this resolution began slowly, surely, to vent itself
+in a blind resentment against James and his son.
+
+The six women and one man left behind in the little drawing-room
+began talking as easily as might be after such an occurrence, for
+though each one of them knew for a fact that he or she never
+talked scandal, each one of them also knew that the other six
+did; all were therefore angry and at a loss.  James only was
+silent, disturbed, to the bottom of his soul.
+
+Presently Francie said: "Do you know, I think Uncle Jolyon is
+terribly changed this last year.  What do you think, Aunt
+Hester?"
+
+Aunt Hester made a little movement of recoil: "Oh, ask your Aunt
+Julia!" she said; "I know nothing about it."
+
+No one else was afraid of assenting, and James muttered gloomily
+at the floor: "He's not half the man he was."
+
+"I've noticed it a long time," went on Francie; "he's aged
+tremendously."
+
+Aunt Juley shook her head; her face seemed suddenly to have
+become one immense pout.
+
+"Poor dear Jolyon," she said, "somebody ought to see to it for
+him!"
+
+There was again silence; then, as though in terror of being left
+solitarily behind, all five visitors rose simultaneously, and
+took their departure.
+
+Mrs. Small, Aunt Hester, and their cat were left once more alone,
+the sound of a door closing in the distance announced the
+approach of Timothy.
+
+That evening, when Aunt Hester had just got off to sleep in the
+back bedroom that used to be Aunt Juley's before Aunt Juley took
+Aunt Ann's, her door was opened, and Mrs. Small, in a pink
+night-cap, a candle in her hand, entered: "Hester!" she said.
+"Hester!"
+
+Aunt Hester faintly rustled the sheet.
+
+"Hester," repeated Aunt Juley, to make quite sure that she had
+awakened her, "I am quite troubled about poor dear Jolyon.
+What," Aunt Juley dwelt on the word, "do you think ought to be
+done?"
+
+Aunt Hester again rustled the sheet, her voice was heard faintly
+pleading: "Done?  How should I know?"
+
+Aunt Juley turned away satisfied, and closing the door with extra
+gentleness so as not to disturb dear Hester, let it slip through
+her fingers and fall to with a 'crack.'
+
+Back in her own room, she stood at the window gazing at the moon
+over the trees in the Park, through a chink in the muslin
+curtains, close drawn lest anyone should see.  And there, with
+her face all round and pouting in its pink cap, and her eyes wet,
+she thought of 'dear Jolyon,' so old and so lonely, and how she
+could be of some use to him; and how he would come to love her,
+as she had never been loved since--since poor Septimus went away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+DANCE AT ROGER'S
+
+
+Roger's house in Prince's Gardens was brilliantly alight.  Large
+numbers of wax candles had been collected and placed in cut-glass
+chandeliers, and the parquet floor of the long, double
+drawing-room reflected these constellations.  An appearance of
+real spaciousness had been secured by moving out all the
+furniture on to the upper landings, and enclosing the room with
+those strange appendages of civilization known as 'rout' seats.
+In a remote corner, embowered in palms, was a cottage piano, with
+a copy of the 'Kensington Coil' open on the music-stand.
+
+Roger had objected to a band.  He didn't see in the least what
+they wanted with a band; he wouldn't go to the expense, and there
+was an end of it.  Francie (her mother, whom Roger had long since
+reduced to chronic dyspepsia, went to bed on such occasions), had
+been obliged to content herself with supplementing the piano by a
+young man who played the cornet, and she so arranged with palms
+that anyone who did not look into the heart of things might
+imagine there were several musicians secreted there.  She made up
+her mind to tell them to play loud--there was a lot of music in a
+cornet, if the man would only put his soul into it.
+
+In the more cultivated American tongue, she was 'through' at
+last--through that tortuous labyrinth of make-shifts, which must
+be traversed before fashionable display can be combined with the
+sound economy of a Forsyte.  Thin but brilliant, in her
+maize-coloured frock with much tulle about the shoulders, she
+went from place to place, fitting on her gloves, and casting her
+eye over it all.
+
+To the hired butler (for Roger only kept maids) she spoke about
+the wine.  Did he quite understand that Mr. Forsyte wished a
+dozen bottles of the champagne from Whiteley's to be put out?
+But if that were finished (she did not suppose it would be, most
+of the ladies would drink water, no doubt), but if it were, there
+was the champagne cup, and he must do the best he could with
+that.
+
+She hated having to say this sort of thing to a butler, it was so
+infra dig.; but what could you do with father?  Roger, indeed,
+after making himself consistently disagreeable about the dance,
+would come down presently, with his fresh colour and bumpy
+forehead, as though he had been its promoter; and he would smile,
+and probably take the prettiest woman in to supper; and at two
+o'clock, just as they were getting into the swing, he would go up
+secretly to the musicians and tell them to play 'God Save the
+Queen,' and go away.
+
+Francie devoutly hoped he might soon get tired, and slip off to
+bed.
+
+The three or four devoted girl friends who were staying in the
+house for this dance had partaken with her, in a small,
+abandoned room upstairs, of tea and cold chicken-legs, hurriedly
+served; the men had been sent out to dine at Eustace's Club, it
+being felt that they must be fed up.
+
+Punctually on the stroke of nine arrived Mrs. Small alone.  She
+made elaborate apologies for the absence of Timothy, omitting all
+mention of Aunt Hester, who, at the last minute, had said she
+could not be bothered.  Francie received her effusively, and
+placed her on a rout seat, where she left her, pouting and
+solitary in lavender-coloured satin--the first time she had worn
+colour since Aunt Ann's death.
+
+The devoted maiden friends came now from their rooms, each by
+magic arrangement in a differently coloured frock, but all with
+the same liberal allowance of tulle on the shoulders and at the
+bosom--for they were, by some fatality, lean to a girl.  They
+were all taken up to Mrs. Small.  None stayed with her more than
+a few seconds, but clustering together talked and twisted their
+programmes, looking secretly at the door for the first appearance
+of a man.
+
+Then arrived in a group a number of Nicholases, always punctual--
+the fashion up Ladbroke Grove way; and close behind them Eustace
+and his men, gloomy and smelling rather of smoke.
+
+Three or four of Francie's lovers now appeared, one after the
+other; she had made each promise to come early.  They were all
+clean-shaven and sprightly, with that peculiar kind of young-man
+sprightliness which had recently invaded Kensington; they did not
+seem to mind each other's presence in the least, and wore their
+ties bunching out at the ends, white waistcoats, and socks with
+clocks.  All had handkerchiefs concealed in their cuffs.  They
+moved buoyantly, each armoured in professional gaiety, as though
+he had come to do great deeds.  Their faces when they danced, far
+from wearing the traditional solemn look of the dancing English-
+man, were irresponsible, charming, suave; they bounded, twirling
+their partners at great pace, without pedantic attention to the
+rhythm of the music.
+
+At other dancers they looked with a kind of airy scorn--they, the
+light brigade, the heroes of a hundred Kensington 'hops'--from
+whom alone could the right manner and smile and step be hoped.
+
+After this the stream came fast; chaperones silting up along the
+wall facing the entrance, the volatile element swelling the eddy
+in the larger room.
+
+Men were scarce, and wallflowers wore their peculiar, pathetic
+expression, a patient, sourish smile which seemed to say: "Oh,
+no! don't mistake me, I know you are not coming up to me.  I can
+hardly expect that!"  And Francie would plead with one of her
+lovers, or with some callow youth: "Now, to please me, do let me
+introduce you to Miss Pink; such a nice girl, really!" and she
+would bring him up, and say: "Miss Pink--Mr. Gathercole.  Can you
+spare him a dance?"  Then Miss Pink, smiling her forced smile,
+colouring a little, answered: "Oh! I think so!" and screening
+her empty card, wrote on it the name of Gathercole, spelling it
+passionately in the district that he proposed, about the second
+extra.
+
+But when the youth had murmured that it was hot, and passed, she
+relapsed into her attitude of hopeless expectation, into her
+patient, sourish smile.
+
+Mothers, slowly fanning their faces, watched their daughters, and
+in their eyes could be read all the story of those daughters'
+fortunes.  As for themselves, to sit hour after hour, dead tired,
+silent, or talking spasmodically--what did it matter, so long as
+the girls were having a good time!  But to see them neglected and
+passed by!  Ah! they smiled, but their eyes stabbed like the
+eyes of an offended swan; they longed to pluck young Gathercole
+by the slack of his dandified breeches, and drag him to their
+daughters--the jackanapes!
+
+And all the cruelties and hardness of life, its pathos and
+unequal chances, its conceit, self-forgetfulness, and patience,
+were presented on the battle-field of this Kensington ball-room.
+
+Here and there, too, lovers--not lovers like Francie's, a
+peculiar breed, but simply lovers--trembling, blushing, silent,
+sought each other by flying glances, sought to meet and touch in
+the mazes of the dance, and now and again dancing together,
+struck some beholder by the light in their eyes.
+
+Not a second before ten o'clock came the Jameses--Emily, Rachel,
+Winifred (Dartie had been left behind, having on a former
+occasion drunk too much of Roger's champagne), and Cicely, the
+youngest, making her debut; behind them, following in a hansom
+from the paternal mansion where they had dined, Soames and Irene.
+
+All these ladies had shoulder-straps and no tulle--thus showing
+at once, by a bolder exposure of flesh, that they came from the
+more fashionable side of the Park.
+
+Soames, sidling back from the contact of the dancers, took up a
+position against the wall.  Guarding himself with his pale smile,
+he stood watching.  Waltz after waltz began and ended, couple
+after couple brushed by with smiling lips, laughter, and snatches
+of talk; or with set lips, and eyes searching the throng; or
+again, with silent, parted lips, and eyes on each other.  And the
+scent of festivity, the odour of flowers, and hair, of essences
+that women love, rose suffocatingly in the heat of the summer
+night.
+
+Silent, with something of scorn in his smile, Soames seemed to
+notice nothing; but now and again his eyes, finding that which
+they sought, would fix themselves on a point in the shifting
+throng, and the smile die off his lips.
+
+He danced with no one.  Some fellows danced with their wives; his
+sense of 'form' had never permitted him to dance with Irene since
+their marriage, and the God of the Forsytes alone can tell
+whether this was a relief to him or not.
+
+She passed, dancing with other men, her dress, iris-coloured,
+floating away from her feet.  She danced well; he was tired of
+hearing women say with an acid smile: "How beautifully your wife
+dances, Mr. Forsyte--it's quite a pleasure to watch her!"  Tired
+of answering them with his sidelong glance: "You think so?"
+
+A young couple close by flirted a fan by turns, making an
+unpleasant draught.  Francie and one of her lovers stood near.
+They were talking of love.
+
+He heard Roger's voice behind, giving an order about supper to a
+servant.  Everything was very second-class!  He wished that he
+had not come!  He had asked Irene whether she wanted him; she had
+answered with that maddening smile of hers "Oh, no!"
+
+Why had he come?  For the last quarter of an hour he had not even
+seen her.  Here was George advancing with his Quilpish face; it
+was too late to get out of his way.
+
+"Have you seen 'The Buccaneer'?" said this licensed wag; "he's on
+the warpath--hair cut and everything!"
+
+Soames said he had not, and crossing the room, half-empty in an
+interval of the dance, he went out on the balcony, and looked
+down into the street.
+
+A carriage had driven up with late arrivals, and round the door
+hung some of those patient watchers of the London streets who
+spring up to the call of light or music; their faces, pale and
+upturned above their black and rusty figures, had an air of
+stolid watching that annoyed Soames.  Why were they allowed to
+hang about; why didn't the bobby move them on?
+
+But the policeman took no notice of them; his feet were planted
+apart on the strip of crimson carpet stretched across the
+pavement; his face, under the helmet, wore the same stolid,
+watching look as theirs.
+
+Across the road, through the railings, Soames could see the
+branches of trees shining, faintly stirring in the breeze, by the
+gleam of the street lamps; beyond, again, the upper lights of the
+houses on the other side, so many eyes looking down on the quiet
+blackness of the garden; and over all, the sky, that wonderful
+London sky, dusted with the innumerable reflection of countless
+lamps; a dome woven over between its stars with the refraction of
+human needs and human fancies--immense mirror of pomp and misery
+that night after night stretches its kindly mocking over miles of
+houses and gardens, mansions and squalor, over Forsytes,
+policemen, and patient watchers in the streets.
+
+Soames turned away, and, hidden in the recess, gazed into the
+lighted room.  It was cooler out there.  He saw the new arrivals,
+June and her grandfather, enter.  What had made them so late?
+They stood by the doorway.  They looked fagged.  Fancy Uncle
+Jolyon turning out at this time of night!  Why hadn't June come
+to Irene, as she usually did, and it occurred to him suddenly
+that he had seen nothing of June for a long time now.
+
+Watching her face with idle malice, he saw it change, grow so
+pale that he thought she would drop, then flame out crimson.
+Turning to see at what she was looking, he saw his wife on
+Bosinney's arm, coming from the conservatory at the end of the
+room.  Her eyes were raised to his, as though answering some
+question he had asked, and he was gazing at her intently.
+
+Soames looked again at June.  Her hand rested on old Jolyon's
+arm; she seemed to be making a request.  He saw a surprised look
+on his uncle's face; they turned and passed through the door out
+of his sight.
+
+The music began again--a waltz--and, still as a statue in the
+recess of the window, his face unmoved, but no smile on his lips,
+Soames waited.  Presently, within a yard of the dark balcony, his
+wife and Bosinney passed.  He caught the perfume of the gardenias
+that she wore, saw the rise and fall of her bosom, the languor in
+her eyes, her parted lips, and a look on her face that he did not
+know.  To the slow, swinging measure they danced by, and it
+seemed to him that they clung to each other; he saw her raise her
+eyes, soft and dark, to Bosinney's, and drop them again.
+
+Very white, he turned back to the balcony, and leaning on it,
+gazed down on the Square; the figures were still there looking up
+at the light with dull persistency, the policeman's face, too,
+upturned, and staring, but he saw nothing of them.  Below, a
+carriage drew up, two figures got in, and drove away....
+
+That evening June and old Jolyon sat down to dinner at the usual
+hour.  The girl was in her customary high-necked frock, old
+Jolyon had not dressed.
+
+At breakfast she had spoken of the dance at Uncle Roger's, she
+wanted to go; she had been stupid enough, she said, not to think
+of asking anyone to take her.  It was too late now.
+
+Old Jolyon lifted his keen eyes.  June was used to go to dances
+with Irene as a matter of course! and deliberately fixing his
+gaze on her, he asked: "Why don't you get Irene?"
+
+No!  June did not want to ask Irene; she would only go if--if her
+grandfather wouldn't mind just for once for a little time!
+
+At her look, so eager and so worn, old Jolyon had grumblingly
+consented.  He did not know what she wanted, he said, with going
+to a dance like this, a poor affair, he would wager; and she no
+more fit for it than a cat!  What she wanted was sea air, and
+after his general meeting of the Globular Gold Concessions he was
+ready to take her.  She didn't want to go away?  Ah! she would
+knock herself up!  Stealing a mournful look at her, he went on
+with his breakfast.
+
+June went out early, and wandered restlessly about in the heat.
+Her little light figure that lately had moved so languidly about
+its business, was all on fire.  She bought herself some flowers.
+She wanted--she meant to look her best.  He would be there!  She
+knew well enough that he had a card.  She would show him that she
+did not care.  But deep down in her heart she resolved that
+evening to win him back.  She came in flushed, and talked
+brightly all lunch; old Jolyon was there, and he was deceived.
+
+In the afternoon she was overtaken by a desperate fit of sobbing.
+She strangled the noise against the pillows of her bed, but when
+at last it ceased she saw in the glass a swollen face with
+reddened eyes, and violet circles round them.  She stayed in the
+darkened room till dinner time.
+
+All through that silent meal the struggle went on within her.
+
+She looked so shadowy and exhausted that old Jolyon told 'Sankey'
+to countermand the carriage, he would not have her going out....
+She was to go to bed!  She made no resistance.  She went up to
+her room, and sat in the dark.  At ten o'clock she rang for her
+maid.
+
+"Bring some hot water, and go down and tell Mr. Forsyte that I
+feel perfectly rested.  Say that if he's too tired I can go to
+the dance by myself."
+
+The maid looked askance, and June turned on her imperiously.
+"Go," she said, "bring the hot water at once!"
+
+Her ball-dress still lay on the sofa, and with a sort of fierce
+care she arrayed herself, took the flowers in her hand, and went
+down, her small face carried high under its burden of hair.  She
+could hear old Jolyon in his room as she passed.
+
+Bewildered and vexed, he was dressing.  It was past ten, they
+would not get there till eleven; the girl was mad.  But he dared
+not cross her--the expression of her face at dinner haunted him.
+
+With great ebony brushes he smoothed his hair till it shone like
+silver under the light; then he, too, came out on the gloomy
+staircase.
+
+June met him below, and, without a word, they went to the
+carriage.
+
+When, after that drive which seemed to last for ever, she entered
+Roger's drawing-room, she disguised under a mask of resolution a
+very torment of nervousness and emotion.  The feeling of shame at
+what might be called 'running after him' was smothered by the
+dread that he might not be there, that she might not see him
+after all, and by that dogged resolve--somehow, she did not know
+how--to win him back.
+
+The sight of the ballroom, with its gleaming floor, gave her a
+feeling of joy, of triumph, for she loved dancing, and when
+dancing she floated, so light was she, like a strenuous, eager
+little spirit.  He would surely ask her to dance, and if he
+danced with her it would all be as it was before.  She looked
+about her eagerly.
+
+The sight of Bosinney coming with Irene from the conservatory,
+with that strange look of utter absorption on his face, struck
+her too suddenly.  They had not seen--no one should see--her
+distress, not even her grandfather.
+
+She put her hand on Jolyon's arm, and said very low:
+
+"I must go home, Gran; I feel ill."
+
+He hurried her away, grumbling to himself that he had known how
+it would be.
+
+To her he said nothing; only when they were once more in the
+carriage, which by some fortunate chance had lingered near the
+door, he asked her: "What is it, my darling?"
+
+Feeling her whole slender body shaken by sobs, he was terribly
+alarmed.  She must have Blank to-morrow.  He would insist upon
+it.  He could not have her like this....  There, there!
+
+June mastered her sobs, and squeezing his hand feverishly, she
+lay back in her corner, her face muffled in a shawl.
+
+He could only see her eyes, fixed and staring in the dark, but he
+did not cease to stroke her hand with his thin fingers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+EVENING AT RICHMOND
+
+
+Other eyes besides the eyes of June and of Soames had seen 'those
+two' (as Euphemia had already begun to call them) coming from the
+conservatory; other eyes had noticed the look on Bosinney's face.
+
+There are moments when Nature reveals the passion hidden beneath
+the careless calm of her ordinary moods--violent spring flashing
+white on almond-blossom through the purple clouds; a snowy,
+moonlit peak, with its single star, soaring up to the passionate
+blue; or against the flames of sunset, an old yew-tree standing
+dark guardian of some fiery secret.
+
+There are moments, too, when in a picture-gallery, a work, noted
+by the casual spectator as '......Titian--remarkably fine,'
+breaks through the defences of some Forsyte better lunched
+perhaps than his fellows, and holds him spellbound in a kind of
+ecstasy.  There are things, he feels--there are things here
+which--well, which are things.  Something unreasoning,
+unreasonable, is upon him; when he tries to define it with the
+precision of a practical man, it eludes him, slips away, as the
+glow of the wine he has drunk is slipping away, leaving him
+cross, and conscious of his liver.  He feels that he has been
+extravagant, prodigal of something; virtue has gone out of him.
+He did not desire this glimpse of what lay under the three stars
+of his catalogue.  God forbid that he should know anything about
+the forces of Nature!  God forbid that he should admit for a
+moment that there are such things!  Once admit that, and where
+was he?  One paid a shilling for entrance, and another for the
+programme.
+
+The look which June had seen, which other Forsytes had seen, was
+like the sudden flashing of a candle through a hole in some
+imaginary canvas, behind which it was being moved--the sudden
+flaming-out of a vague, erratic glow, shadowy and enticing.  It
+brought home to onlookers the consciousness that dangerous forces
+were at work.  For a moment they noticed it with pleasure, with
+interest, then felt they must not notice it at all.
+
+It supplied, however, the reason of June's coming so late and
+disappearing again without dancing, without even shaking hands
+with her lover.  She was ill, it was said, and no wonder.
+
+But here they looked at each other guiltily.  They had no desire
+to spread scandal, no desire to be ill-natured.  Who would have?
+And to outsiders no word was breathed, unwritten law keeping them
+silent.
+
+Then came the news that June had gone to the seaside with old
+Jolyon.
+
+He had carried her off to Broadstairs, for which place there was
+just then a feeling, Yarmouth having lost caste, in spite of
+Nicholas, and no Forsyte going to the sea without intending to
+have an air for his money such as would render him bilious in a
+week.  That fatally aristocratic tendency of the first Forsyte to
+drink Madeira had left his descendants undoubtedly accessible.
+
+So June went to the sea.  The family awaited developments; there
+was nothing else to do.
+
+But how far--how far had 'those two' gone?  How far were they
+going to go?  Could they really be going at all?  Nothing could
+surely come of it, for neither of them had any money.  At the
+most a flirtation, ending, as all such attachments should, at the
+proper time.
+
+Soames' sister, Winifred Dartie, who had imbibed with the breezes
+of Mayfair--she lived in Green Street--more fashionable
+principles in regard to matrimonial behaviour than were current,
+for instance, in Ladbroke Grove, laughed at the idea of there
+being anything in it.  The 'little thing'--Irene was taller than
+herself, and it was real testimony to the solid worth of a
+Forsyte that she should always thus be a 'little thing'--the
+little thing was bored.  Why shouldn't she amuse herself?  Soames
+was rather tiring; and as to Mr. Bosinney--only that buffoon
+George would have called him the Buccaneer--she maintained that
+he was very chic.
+
+This dictum--that Bosinney was chic--caused quit a sensation.  It
+failed to convince.  That he was 'good-looking in a way' they
+were prepared to admit, but that anyone could call a man with his
+pronounced cheekbones, curious eyes, arid soft felt hats chic was
+only another instance of Winifred's extravagant way of running
+after something new.
+
+It was that famous summer when extravagance was fashionable, when
+the very earth was extravagant, chestnut-trees spread with
+blossom, and flowers drenched in perfume, as they had never been
+before; when roses blew in every garden; and for the swarming
+stars the nights had hardly space; when every day and all day
+long the sun, in full armour, swung his brazen shield above the
+Park, and people did strange things, lunching and dining in the
+open air.  Unprecedented was the tale of cabs and carriages that
+streamed across the bridges of the shining river, bearing the
+upper-middle class in thousands to the green glories of Bushey,
+Richmond, Kew, and Hampton Court.  Almost every family with any
+pretensions to be of the carriage-class paid one visit that year
+to the horse-chestnuts at Bushey, or took one drive amongst the
+Spanish chestnuts of Richmond Park.  Bowling smoothly, if
+dustily, along, in a cloud of their own creation, they would
+stare fashionably at the antlered heads which the great slow deer
+raised out of a forest of bracken that promised to autumn lovers
+such cover as was never seen before.  And now and again, as the
+amorous perfume of chestnut flowers and of fern was drifted too
+near, one would say to the other: "My dear!  What a peculiar
+scent!"
+
+And the lime-flowers that year were of rare prime, near
+honey-coloured.  At the corners of London squares they gave out,
+as the sun went down, a perfume sweeter than the honey bees had
+taken--a perfume that stirred a yearning unnamable in the hearts
+of Forsytes and their peers, taking the cool after dinner in the
+precincts of those gardens to which they alone had keys.
+
+And that yearning made them linger amidst the dim shapes of
+flower-beds in the failing daylight, made them turn, and turn,
+and turn again, as though lovers were waiting for them--waiting
+for the last light to die away under the shadow of the branches.
+
+Some vague sympathy evoked by the scent of the limes, some
+sisterly desire to see for herself, some idea of demonstrating
+the soundness of her dictum that there was 'nothing in it'; or
+merely the craving to drive down to Richmond, irresistible that
+summer, moved the mother of the little Darties (of little
+Publius, of Imogen, Maud, and Benedict) to write the following
+note to her sister-in-law:
+
+
+'DEAR IRENE,
+'June 30.
+
+'I hear that Soames is going to Henley tomorrow for the night.  I
+thought it would be great fun if we made up a little party and
+drove down to, Richmond.  Will you ask Mr. Bosinney, and I will
+get young Flippard.
+
+'Emily (they called their mother Emily--it was so chic) will lend
+us the carriage.  I will call for you and your young man at seven
+o'clock.
+
+'Your affectionate sister,
+
+'WINIFRED DARTIE.
+
+'Montague believes the dinner at the Crown and Sceptre to be
+quite eatable.'
+
+
+Montague was Dartie's second and better known name--his first
+being Moses; for he was nothing if not a man of the world.
+
+Her plan met with more opposition from Providence than so
+benevolent a scheme deserved.  In the first place young Flippard
+wrote:
+
+
+'DEAR Mrs. DARTIE,
+
+'Awfully sorry.  Engaged two deep.
+
+'Yours,
+
+'AUGUSTUS FLIPPARD.'
+
+
+It was late to send into the by-ways and hedges to remedy this
+misfortune.  With the promptitude and conduct of a mother,
+Winifred fell back on her husband.  She had, indeed, the decided
+but tolerant temperament that goes with a good deal of profile,
+fair hair, and greenish eyes.  She was seldom or never at a loss;
+or if at a loss, was always able to convert it into a gain.
+
+Dartie, too, was in good feather.  Erotic had failed to win the
+Lancashire Cup.  Indeed, that celebrated animal, owned as he was
+by a pillar of the turf, who had secretly laid many thousands
+against him, had not even started.  The forty-eight hours that
+followed his scratching were among the darkest in Dartie's life.
+
+Visions of James haunted him day and night.  Black thoughts about
+Soames mingled with the faintest hopes.  On the Friday night he
+got drunk, so greatly was he affected.  But on Saturday morning
+the true Stock Exchange instinct triumphed within him.  Owing
+some hundreds, which by no possibility could he pay, he went into
+town and put them all on Concertina for the Saltown Borough
+Handicap.
+
+As he said to Major Scrotton, with whom he lunched at the Iseeum:
+"That little Jew boy, Nathans, had given him the tip.  He didn't
+care a cursh.  He wash in--a mucker.  If it didn't come up--well
+then, damme, the old man would have to pay!"
+
+A bottle of Pol Roger to his own cheek had given him a new
+contempt for James.
+
+It came up.  Concertina was squeezed home by her neck--a terrible
+squeak!  But, as Dartie said: There was nothing like pluck!
+
+He was by no means averse to the expedition to Richmond.  He
+would 'stand' it himself!  He cherished an admiration for Irene,
+and wished to be on more playful terms with her.
+
+At half-past five the Park Lane footman came round to say: Mrs.
+Forsyte was very sorry, but one of the horses was coughing!
+
+Undaunted by this further blow, Winifred at once despatched
+little Publius (now aged seven) with the nursery governess to
+Montpellier Square.
+
+They would go down in hansoms and meet at the Crown and Sceptre
+at 7.45.
+
+Dartie, on being told, was pleased enough.  It was better than
+going down with your back to the horses!  He had no objection to
+driving down with Irene.  He supposed they would pick up the
+others at Montpellier Square, and swop hansoms there?
+
+Informed that the meet was at the Crown and Sceptre, and that he
+would have to drive with his wife, he turned sulky, and said it
+was d---d slow!
+
+At seven o'clock they started, Dartie offering to bet the driver
+half-a-crown he didn't do it in the three-quarters of an hour.
+
+Twice only did husband and wife exchange remarks on the way.
+
+Dartie said: "It'll put Master Soames's nose out of joint to hear
+his wife's been drivin' in a hansom with Master Bosinney!"
+
+Winifred replied: "Don't talk such nonsense, Monty!"
+
+"Nonsense!" repeated Dartie.  "You don't know women, my fine
+lady!"
+
+On the other occasion he merely asked: "How am I looking?  A bit
+puffy about the gills?  That fizz old George is so fond of is a
+windy wine!"
+
+He had been lunching with George Forsyte at the Haversnake.
+
+Bosinney and Irene had arrived before them.  They were standing
+in one of the long French windows overlooking the river.
+
+Windows that summer were open all day long, and all night too,
+and day and night the scents of flowers and trees came in, the
+hot scent of parching grass, and the cool scent of the heavy
+dews.
+
+To the eye of the observant Dartie his two guests did not appear
+to be making much running, standing there close together, without
+a word.  Bosinney was a hungry-looking creature--not much go
+about him
+
+He left them to Winifred, however, and busied himself to order
+the dinner.
+
+A Forsyte will require good, if not delicate feeding, but a
+Dartie will tax the resources of a Crown and Sceptre.  Living as
+he does, from hand to mouth, nothing is too good for him to eat;
+and he will eat it.  His drink, too, will need to be carefully
+provided; there is much drink in this country 'not good enough'
+for a Dartie; he will have the best.  Paying for things
+vicariously, there is no reason why he should stint himself.  To
+stint yourself is the mark of a fool, not of a Dartie.
+
+The best of everything!  No sounder principle on which a man can
+base his life, whose father-in-law has a very considerable
+income, and a partiality for his grandchildren.
+
+With his not unable eye Dartie had spotted this weakness in James
+the very first year after little Publius's arrival (an error); he
+had profited by his perspicacity.  Four little Darties were now a
+sort of perpetual insurance.
+
+The feature of the feast was unquestionably the red mullet.  This
+delectable fish, brought from a considerable distance in a state
+of almost perfect preservation, was first fried, then boned, then
+served in ice, with Madeira punch in place of sauce, according to
+a recipe known to a few men of the world.
+
+Nothing else calls for remark except the payment of the bill by
+Dartie.
+
+He had made himself extremely agreeable throughout the meal; his
+bold, admiring stare seldom abandoning Irene's face and figure.
+As he was obliged to confess to himself, he got no change out of
+her--she was cool enough, as cool as her shoulders looked under
+their veil of creamy lace.  He expected to have caught her out in
+some little game with Bosinney; but not a bit of it, she kept up
+her end remarkably well.  As for that architect chap, he was as
+glum as a bear with a sore head--Winifred could barely get a word
+out of him; he ate nothing, but he certainly took his liquor, and
+his face kept getting whiter, and his eyes looked queer.
+
+It was all very amusing.
+
+For Dartie himself was in capital form, and talked freely, with a
+certain poignancy, being no fool.  He told two or three stories
+verging on the improper, a concession to the company, for his
+stories were not used to verging.  He proposed Irene's health in
+a mock speech.  Nobody drank it, and Winifred said: "Don't be
+such a clown, Monty!"
+
+At her suggestion they went after dinner to the public terrace
+overlooking the river.
+
+"I should like to see the common people making love," she said,
+"it's such fun!"
+
+There were numbers of them walking in the cool, after the day's
+heat, and the air was alive with the sound of voices, coarse and
+loud, or soft as though murmuring secrets.
+
+It was not long before Winifred's better sense--she was the only
+Forsyte present--secured them an empty bench.  They sat down in a
+row.  A heavy tree spread a thick canopy above their heads, and
+the haze darkened slowly over the river.
+
+Dartie sat at the end, next to him Irene, then Bosinney, then
+Winifred.  There was hardly room for four, and the man of the
+world could feel Irene's arm crushed against his own; he knew
+that she could not withdraw it without seeming rude, and this
+amused him; he devised every now and again a movement that would
+bring her closer still.  He thought: 'That Buccaneer Johnny
+shan't have it all to himself!  It's a pretty tight fit,
+certainly!'
+
+From far down below on the dark river came drifting the tinkle of
+a mandoline, and voices singing the old round:
+
+'A boat, a boat, unto the ferry,
+For we'll go over and be merry;
+And laugh, and quaff, and drink brown sherry!'
+
+And suddenly the moon appeared, young and tender, floating up on
+her back from behind a tree; and as though she had breathed, the
+air was cooler, but down that cooler air came always the warm
+odour of the limes.
+
+Over his cigar Dartie peered round at Bosinney, who was sitting
+with his arms crossed, staring straight in front of him, and on
+his face the look of a man being tortured.
+
+And Dartie shot a glance at the face between, so veiled by the
+overhanging shadow that it was but like a darker piece of the
+darkness shaped and breathed on; soft, mysterious, enticing.
+
+A hush had fallen on the noisy terrace, as if all the strollers
+were thinking secrets too precious to be spoken.
+
+And Dartie thought: 'Women!'
+
+The glow died above the river, the singing ceased; the young moon
+hid behind a tree, and all was dark.  He pressed himself against
+Irene.
+
+He was not alarmed at the shuddering that ran through the limbs
+he touched, or at the troubled, scornful look of her eyes.  He
+felt her trying to draw herself away, and smiled.
+
+It must be confessed that the man of the world had drunk quite as
+much as was good for him.
+
+With thick lips parted under his well-curled moustaches, and his
+bold eyes aslant upon her, he had the malicious look of a satyr.
+
+Along the pathway of sky between the hedges of the tree tops the
+stars clustered forth; like mortals beneath, they seemed to shift
+and swarm and whisper.  Then on the terrace the buzz broke out
+once more, and Dartie thought: 'Ah! he's a poor, hungry-looking
+devil, that Bosinney!' and again he pressed himself against Irene.
+
+The movement deserved a better success.  She rose, and they all
+followed her.
+
+The man of the world was more than ever determined to see what
+she was made of.  Along the terrace he kept close at her elbow.
+He had within him much good wine.  There was the long drive home,
+the long drive and the warm dark and the pleasant closeness of
+the hansom cab--with its insulation from the world devised by
+some great and good man.  That hungry architect chap might drive
+with his wife--he wished him joy of her!  And, conscious that his
+voice was not too steady, he was careful not to speak; but a
+smile had become fixed on his thick lips.
+
+They strolled along toward the cabs awaiting them at the farther
+end.  His plan had the merit of all great plans, an almost brutal
+simplicity he would merely keep at her elbow till she got in, and
+get in quickly after her.
+
+But when Irene reached the cab she did not get in; she slipped,
+instead, to the horse's head.  Dartie was not at the moment
+sufficiently master of his legs to follow.  She stood stroking
+the horse's nose, and, to his annoyance, Bosinney was at her side
+first.  She turned and spoke to him rapidly, in a low voice; the
+words 'That man' reached Dartie.  He stood stubbornly by the cab
+step, waiting for her to come back.  He knew a trick worth two of
+that!
+
+Here, in the lamp-light, his figure (no more than medium height),
+well squared in its white evening waistcoat, his light overcoat
+flung over his arm, a pink flower in his button-hole, and on his
+dark face that look of confident, good-humoured insolence, he was
+at his best--a thorough man of the world.
+
+Winifred was already in her cab.  Dartie reflected that Bosinney
+would have a poorish time in that cab if he didn't look sharp!
+Suddenly he received a push which nearly overturned him in the
+road.  Bosinney's voice hissed in his ear: "I am taking Irene
+back; do you understand?"  He saw a face white with passion, and
+eyes that glared at him like a wild cat's.
+
+"Eh?" he stammered.  "What? Not a bit.  You take my wife!"
+
+"Get away!" hissed Bosinney--"or I'll throw you into the road!"
+
+Dartie recoiled; he saw as plainly as possible that the fellow
+meant it.  In the space he made Irene had slipped by, her dress
+brushed his legs.  Bosinney stepped in after her.
+
+"Go on!" he heard the Buccaneer cry.  The cabman flicked his
+horse.  It sprang forward.
+
+Dartie stood for a moment dumbfounded; then, dashing at the cab
+where his wife sat, he scrambled in.
+
+"Drive on!" he shouted to the driver, "and don't you lose sight
+of that fellow in front!"
+
+Seated by his wife's side, he burst into imprecations.  Calming
+himself at last with a supreme effort, he added: "A pretty mess
+you've made of it, to let the Buccaneer drive home with her; why
+on earth couldn't you keep hold of him?  He's mad with love; any
+fool can see that!"
+
+He drowned Winifred's rejoinder with fresh calls to the Almighty;
+nor was it until they reached Barnes that he ceased a Jeremiad,
+in the course of which he had abused her, her father, her
+brother, Irene, Bosinney, the name of Forsyte, his own children,
+and cursed the day when he had ever married.
+
+Winifred, a woman of strong character, let him have his say, at
+the end of which he lapsed into sulky silence.  His angry eyes
+never deserted the back of that cab, which, like a lost chance,
+haunted the darkness in front of him.
+
+Fortunately he could not hear Bosinney's passionate pleading--
+that pleading which the man of the world's conduct had let loose
+like a flood; he could not see Irene shivering, as though some
+garment had been torn from her, nor her eyes, black and mournful,
+like the eyes of a beaten child.  He could not hear Bosinney
+entreating, entreating, always entreating; could not hear her
+sudden, soft weeping, nor see that poor, hungry-looking devil,
+awed and trembling, humbly touching her hand.
+
+In Montpellier Square their cabman, following his instructions to
+the letter, faithfully drew up behind the cab in front.  The
+Darties saw Bosinney spring out, and Irene follow, and hasten up
+the steps with bent head.  She evidently had her key in her hand,
+for she disappeared at once.  It was impossible to tell whether
+she had turned to speak to Bosinney.
+
+The latter came walking past their cab; both husband and wife had
+an admirable view of his face in the light of a street lamp.  It
+was working with violent emotion.
+
+"Good-night, Mr. Bosinney!" called Winifred.
+
+Bosinney started, clawed off his hat, and hurried on.  He had
+obviously forgotten their existence.
+
+"There!" said Dartie, "did you see the beast's face?  What did I
+say?  Fine games!"  He improved the occasion.
+
+There had so clearly been a crisis in the cab that Winifred was
+unable to defend her theory.
+
+She said: "I shall say nothing about it.  I don't see any use in
+making a fuss!"
+
+With that view Dartie at once concurred; looking upon James as a
+private preserve, he disapproved of his being disturbed by the
+troubles of others.
+
+"Quite right," he said; "let Soames look after himself.  He's
+jolly well able to!"
+
+Thus speaking, the Darties entered their habitat in Green Street,
+the rent of which was paid by James, and sought a well-earned
+rest.  The hour was midnight, and no Forsytes remained abroad in
+the streets to spy out Bosinney's wanderings; to see him return
+and stand against the rails of the Square garden, back from the
+glow of the street lamp; to see him stand there in the shadow of
+trees, watching the house where in the dark was hidden she whom
+he would have given the world to see for a single minute--she who
+was now to him the breath of the lime-trees, the meaning of the
+light and the darkness, the very beating of his own heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+DIAGNOSIS OF A FORSYTE
+
+
+It is in the nature of a Forsyte to be ignorant that he is a
+Forsyte; but young Jolyon was well aware of being one.  He had
+not known it till after the decisive step which had made him an
+outcast; since then the knowledge had been with him continually.
+He felt it throughout his alliance, throughout all his dealings
+with his second wife, who was emphatically not a Forsyte.
+
+He knew that if he had not possessed in great measure the eye for
+what he wanted, the tenacity to hold on to it, the sense of the
+folly of wasting that for which he had given so big a price--in
+other words, the 'sense of property' he could never have retained
+her (perhaps never would have desired to retain her) with him
+through all the financial troubles, slights, and misconstructions
+of those fifteen years; never have induced her to marry him on
+the death of his first wife; never have lived it all through, and
+come up, as it were, thin, but smiling.
+
+He was one of those men who, seated cross-legged like miniature
+Chinese idols in the cages of their own hearts, are ever smiling
+at themselves a doubting smile.  Not that this smile, so intimate
+and eternal, interfered with his actions, which, like his chin
+and his temperament, were quite a peculiar blend of softness and
+determination.
+
+He was conscious, too, of being a Forsyte in his work, that
+painting of water-colours to which he devoted so much energy,
+always with an eye on himself, as though he could not take so
+unpractical a pursuit quite seriously, and always with a certain
+queer uneasiness that he did not make more money at it.
+
+It was, then, this consciousness of what it meant to be a
+Forsyte, that made him receive the following letter from old
+Jolyon, with a mixture of sympathy and disgust:
+
+
+'SHELDRAKE HOUSE,
+     'BROADSTAIRS,
+
+'July 1.
+'MY DEAR JO,'
+
+(The Dad's handwriting had altered very little in the thirty odd
+years that he remembered it.)
+
+'We have been here now a fortnight, and have had good weather on
+the whole.  The air is bracing, but my liver is out of order, and
+I shall be glad enough to get back to town.  I cannot say much
+for June, her health and spirits are very indifferent, and I
+don't see what is to come of it.  She says nothing, but it is
+clear that she is harping on this engagement, which is an
+engagement and no engagement, and--goodness knows what.  I have
+grave doubts whether she ought to be allowed to return to London
+in the present state of affairs, but she is so self-willed that
+she might take it into her head to come up at any moment.  The
+fact is someone ought to speak to Bosinney and ascertain what he
+means.  I'm afraid of this myself, for I should certainly rap him
+over the knuckles, but I thought that you, knowing him at the
+Club, might put in a word, and get to ascertain what the fellow
+is about.  You will of course in no way commit June.  I shall be
+glad to hear from you in the course of a few days whether you
+have succeeded in gaining any information.  The situation is very
+distressing to me, I worry about it at night.
+
+With my love to Jolly and Holly.
+'I am,
+     'Your affect.  father,
+
+'JOLYON FORSYTE.'
+
+
+Young Jolyon pondered this letter so long and seriously that his
+wife noticed his preoccupation, and asked him what was the
+matter.  He replied: "Nothing."
+
+It was a fixed principle with him never to allude to June.  She
+might take alarm, he did not know what she might think; he
+hastened, therefore, to banish from his manner all traces of
+absorption, but in this he was about as successful as his father
+would have been, for he had inherited all old Jolyon's
+transparency in matters of domestic finesse; and young Mrs.
+Jolyon, busying herself over the affairs of the house, went about
+with tightened lips, stealing at him unfathomable looks.
+
+He started for the Club in the afternoon with the letter in his
+pocket, and without having made up his mind.
+
+To sound a man as to 'his intentions' was peculiarly unpleasant
+to him; nor did his own anomalous position diminish this
+unpleasantness.  It was so like his family, so like all the
+people they knew and mixed with, to enforce what they called
+their rights over a man, to bring  him up to the mark; so like
+them to carry their business principles into their private
+relations.
+
+And how that phrase in the letter--'You will, of course, in no
+way commit June'--gave the whole thing away.
+
+Yet the letter, with the personal grievance, the concern for
+June, the 'rap over the knuckles,' was all so natural.  No wonder
+his father wanted to know what Bosinney meant, no wonder he was
+angry.
+
+It was difficult to refuse!  But why give the thing to him to do?
+That was surely quite unbecoming; but so long as a Forsyte got
+what he was after, he was not too particular about the means,
+provided appearances were saved.
+
+How should he set about it, or how refuse?  Both seemed impossible.
+So, young Jolyon!
+
+He arrived at the Club at three o'clock, and the first person he
+saw was Bosinney himself, seated in a corner, staring out of the
+window.
+
+Young Jolyon sat down not far off, and began nervously to
+reconsider his position.  He looked covertly at Bosinney sitting
+there unconscious.  He did not know him very well, and studied
+him attentively for perhaps the first time; an unusual looking
+man, unlike in dress, face, and manner to most of the other
+members of the Club--young Jolyon himself, however different he
+had become in mood and temper, had always retained the neat
+reticence of Forsyte appearance.  He alone among Forsytes was
+ignorant of Bosinney's nickname.  The man was unusual, not
+eccentric, but unusual; he looked worn, too, haggard, hollow in
+the cheeks beneath those broad, high cheekbones, though without
+any appearance of ill-health, for he was strongly built, with
+curly hair that seemed to show all the vitality of a fine
+constitution.
+
+Something in his face and attitude touched young Jolyon.  He knew
+what suffering was like, and this man looked as if he were
+suffering.
+
+He got up and touched his arm.
+
+Bosinney started, but exhibited no sign of embarrassment on
+seeing who it was.
+
+Young Jolyon sat down.
+
+"I haven't seen you for a long time," he said.  "How are you
+getting on with  my cousin's house?"
+
+"It'll be finished in about a week."
+
+"I congratulate you!"
+
+"Thanks--I don't know that it's much of a subject for
+congratulation."
+
+"No?" queried young Jolyon; "I should have thought you'd be glad
+to get a long job like that off your hands; but I suppose you
+feel it much as I do when I part with a picture--a sort of
+child?"
+
+He looked kindly at Bosinney.
+
+"Yes," said the latter more cordially, "it goes out from you and
+there's an end of it.  I didn't know you painted."
+
+"Only water-colours; I can't say I believe in my work."
+
+"Don't believe in it?  There--how can you do it?  Work's no use
+unless you believe in it!"
+
+"Good," said young Jolyon; "it's exactly what I've always said.
+By-the-bye, have you noticed that whenever one says 'Good,' one
+always adds 'it's exactly what I've always said'!  But if you ask
+me how I do it, I answer, because I'm a Forsyte."
+
+"A Forsyte!  I never thought of you as one!"
+
+"A Forsyte," replied young Jolyon, "is not an uncommon animal.
+There are hundreds among the members of this Club.  Hundreds out
+there in the streets; you meet them wherever you go!"
+
+"And how do you tell them, may I ask?" said Bosinney.
+
+"By their sense of property.  A Forsyte takes a practical--one
+might say a commonsense--view of things, and a practical view of
+things is based fundamentally on a sense of property.  A Forsyte,
+you will notice, never gives himself away."
+
+"Joking?"
+
+Young Jolyon's eye twinkled.
+
+"Not much.  As a Forsyte myself, I have no business to talk.  But
+I'm a kind of thoroughbred mongrel; now, there's no mistaking
+you: You're as different from me as I am from my Uncle James, who
+is the perfect specimen of a Forsyte.  His sense of property is
+extreme, while you have practically none.  Without me in between,
+you would seem like a different species.  I'm the missing link.
+We are, of course, all of us the slaves of property, and I admit
+that it's a question of degree, but what I call a 'Forsyte' is a
+man who is decidedly more than less a slave of property.  He
+knows a good thing, he knows a safe thing, and his grip on
+property--it doesn't matter whether it be wives, houses, money,
+or reputation--is his hall-mark."
+
+"Ah!" murmured Bosinney.  "You should patent the word."
+
+"I should like," said young Jolyon, "to lecture on it:
+
+"Properties and quality of a Forsyte: This little animal,
+disturbed by the ridicule of his own sort, is unaffected in his
+motions by the laughter of strange creatures (you or I).
+Hereditarily disposed to myopia, he recognises only the persons
+of his own species, amongst which he passes an existence of
+competitive tranquillity."
+
+"You talk of them," said Bosinney, "as if they were half
+England."
+
+"They are," repeated young Jolyon, "half England, and the better
+half, too, the safe half, the three per cent. half, the half
+that counts.  It's their wealth and security that makes
+everything possible; makes your art possible, makes literature,
+science, even religion, possible.  Without Forsytes, who believe
+in none of these things, and habitats but turn them all to use,
+where should we be?  My dear sir, the Forsytes are the middlemen,
+the commercials, the pillars of society, the cornerstones of
+convention; everything that is admirable!"
+
+"I don't know whether I catch your drift," said Bosinney, "but I
+fancy there are plenty of Forsytes, as you call them, in my
+profession."
+
+"Certainly," replied young Jolyon.  "The great majority of
+architects, painters, or writers have no principles, like any
+other Forsytes.  Art, literature, religion, survive by virtue of
+the few cranks who really believe in such things, and the many
+Forsytes who make a commercial use of them.  At a low estimate,
+three-fourths of our Royal Academicians are Forsytes, seven-
+eighths of our novelists, a large proportion of the press.
+Of science I can't speak; they are magnificently represented in
+religion; in the House of Commons perhaps more numerous than
+anywhere; the aristocracy speaks for itself.  But I'm not
+laughing.  It is dangerous to go against the majority and what a
+majority!"  He fixed his eyes on Bosinney: "It's dangerous to let
+anything carry you away--a house, a picture, a--woman!"
+
+They looked at each other.--And, as though he had done that which
+no Forsyte did--given himself away, young Jolyon drew into his
+shell.  Bosinney broke the silence.
+
+"Why do you take your own people as the type?" said he.
+
+"My people," replied young Jolyon, "are not very extreme, and
+they have their own private peculiarities, like every other
+family, but they possess in a remarkable degree those two
+qualities which are the real tests of a Forsyte--the power of
+never being able to give yourself up to anything soul and body,
+and the 'sense of property'."
+
+Bosinney smiled: "How about the big one, for instance?"
+
+"Do you mean Swithin?" asked young Jolyon.  "Ah! in Swithin
+there's something primeval still.  The town and middle-class
+life haven't digested him yet.  All the old centuries of farm work
+and brute force have settled in him, and there they've stuck, for
+all he's so distinguished."
+
+Bosinney seemed to ponder.  "Well, you've hit your cousin Soames
+off to the life," he said suddenly.  "He'll never blow his brains
+out."
+
+Young Jolyon shot at him a penetrating glance.
+
+"No," he said; "he won't.  That's why he's to be reckoned with.
+Look out for their grip!  It's easy to laugh, but don't mistake
+me.  It doesn't do to despise a Forsyte; it doesn't do to
+disregard them!"
+
+"Yet you've done it yourself!"
+
+Young Jolyon acknowledged the hit by losing his smile.
+
+"You forget," he said with a queer pride, "I can hold on, too--
+I'm a Forsyte myself.  We're all in the path of great forces.
+The man who leaves the shelter of the wall--well--you know what I
+mean.  I don't," he ended very low, as though uttering a threat,
+"recommend every man to-go-my-way.  It depends."
+
+The colour rushed into Bosinney's face, but soon receded, leaving
+it sallow-brown as before.  He gave a short laugh, that left his
+lips fixed in a queer, fierce smile; his eyes mocked young
+Jolyon.
+
+"Thanks," he said.  "It's deuced kind of you.  But you're not the
+only chaps that can hold on."  He rose.
+
+Young Jolyon looked after him as he walked away, and, resting his
+head on his hand, sighed.
+
+In the drowsy, almost empty room the only sounds were the rustle
+of newspapers, the scraping of matches being struck.  He stayed a
+long time without moving, living over again those days when he,
+too, had sat long hours watching the clock, waiting for the
+minutes to pass--long hours full of the torments of uncertainty,
+and of a fierce, sweet aching; and the slow, delicious agony of
+that season came back to him with its old poignancy.  The sight
+of Bosinney, with his haggard face, and his restless eyes always
+wandering to the clock, had roused in him a pity, with which was
+mingled strange, irresistible envy.
+
+He knew the signs so well.  Whither was he going--to what sort of
+fate?  What kind of woman was it who was drawing him to her by
+that magnetic force which no consideration of honour, no
+principle, no interest could withstand; from which the only
+escape was flight.
+
+Flight!  But why should Bosinney fly?  A man fled when he was in
+danger of destroying hearth and home, when there were children,
+when he felt himself trampling down ideals, breaking something.
+But here, so he had heard, it was all broken to his hand.
+
+He himself had not fled, nor would he fly if it were all to come
+over again.  Yet he had gone further than Bosinney, had broken up
+his own unhappy home, not someone else's: And the old saying came
+back to him: 'A man's fate lies in his own heart.'
+
+In his own heart!  The proof of the pudding was in the eating--
+Bosinney had still to eat his pudding.
+
+His thoughts passed to the woman, the woman whom he did not know,
+but the outline of whose story he had heard.
+
+An unhappy marriage!  No ill-treatment--only that indefinable
+malaise, that terrible blight which killed all sweetness under
+Heaven; and so from day to day, from night to night, from week to
+week, from year to year, till death should end it.
+
+But young Jolyon, the bitterness of whose own feelings time had
+assuaged, saw Soames' side of the question too.  Whence should a
+man like his cousin, saturated with all the prejudices and
+beliefs of his class, draw the insight or inspiration necessary
+to break up this life?  It was a question of imagination, of
+projecting himself into the future beyond the unpleasant gossip,
+sneers, and tattle that followed on such separations, beyond the
+passing pangs that the lack of the sight of her would cause,
+beyond the grave disapproval of the worthy.  But few men, and
+especially few men of Soames' class, had imagination enough for
+that.  A deal of mortals in this world, and not enough
+imagination to go round!  And sweet Heaven, what a difference
+between theory and practice; many a man, perhaps even Soames,
+held chivalrous views on such matters, who when the shoe pinched
+found a distinguishing factor that made of himself an exception.
+
+Then, too, he distrusted his judgment.  He had been through the
+experience himself, had tasted too the dregs the bitterness of an
+unhappy marriage, and how could he take the wide and dispassionate
+view of those who had never been within sound of the battle?
+His evidence was too first-hand--like the evidence on military
+matters of a soldier who has been through much active service,
+against that of civilians who have not suffered the disadvantage
+of seeing things too close.  Most people would consider such a
+marriage as that of Soames and Irene quite fairly successful;
+he had money, she had beauty; it was a case for compromise.
+There was no reason why they should not jog along, even if they
+hated each other.  It would not matter if they went their own
+ways a little so long as the decencies were observed--the
+sanctity of the marriage tie, of the common home, respected.
+Half the marriages of the upper classes were conducted on these
+lines: Do not offend the susceptibilities of Society; do not
+offend the susceptibilities of the Church.  To avoid offending
+these is worth the sacrifice of any private feelings.  The
+advantages of the stable home are visible, tangible, so many
+pieces of property; there is no risk in the statu quo.  To break
+up a home is at the best a dangerous experiment, and selfish into
+the bargain.
+
+This was the case for the defence, and young Jolyon sighed.
+
+'The core of it all,' he thought, 'is property, but there are
+many people who would not like it put that way.  To them it is
+"the sanctity of the marriage tie"; but the sanctity of the
+marriage tie is dependent on the sanctity of the family, and the
+sanctity of the family is dependent on the sanctity of property.
+And yet I imagine all these people are followers of One who never
+owned anything.  It is curious!
+
+And again young Jolyon sighed.
+
+'Am I going on my way home to ask any poor devils I meet to share
+my dinner, which will then be too little for myself, or, at all
+events, for my wife, who is necessary to my health and happiness?
+It may be that after all Soames does well to exercise his rights
+and support by his practice the sacred principle of property
+which benefits us all, with the exception of those who suffer by
+the process.'
+
+And so he left his chair, threaded his way through the maze of
+seats, took his hat, and languidly up the hot streets crowded
+with carriages, reeking with dusty odours, wended his way home.
+
+Before reaching Wistaria Avenue he removed old Jolyon's letter
+from his pocket, and tearing it carefully into tiny pieces,
+scattered them in the dust of the road.
+
+He let himself in with his key, and called his wife's name.  But
+she had gone out, taking Jolly and Holly, and the house was
+empty; alone in the garden the dog Balthasar lay in the shade
+snapping at flies.
+
+Young Jolyon took his seat there, too, under the pear-tree that
+bore no fruit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+BOSINNEY ON PAROLE
+
+
+The day after the evening at Richmond Soames returned from Henley
+by a morning train.  Not constitutionally interested in
+amphibious sports, his visit had been one of business rather than
+pleasure, a client of some importance having asked him down.
+
+He went straight to the City, but finding things slack, he left
+at three o'clock, glad of this chance to get home quietly.  Irene
+did not expect him.  Not that he had any desire to spy on her
+actions, but there was no harm in thus unexpectedly surveying the
+scene.
+
+After changing to Park clothes he went into the drawing-room.
+She was sitting idly in the corner of the sofa, her favourite
+seat; and there were circles under her eyes, as though she had
+not slept.
+
+He asked: "How is it you're in?  Are you expecting somebody?"
+
+"Yes that is, not particularly."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Mr. Bosinney said he might come."
+
+"Bosinney.  He ought to be at work."
+
+To this she made no answer.
+
+"Well," said Soames, "I want you to come out to the Stores with
+me, and after that we'll go to the Park."
+
+"I don't want to go out; I have a headache."
+
+Soames replied: "If ever I want you to do anything, you've always
+got a headache.  It'll do you good to come and sit under the
+trees."
+
+She did not answer.
+
+Soames was silent for some minutes; at last he said: "I don't
+know what your idea of a wife's duty is.  I never have known!"
+
+He had not expected her to reply, but she did.
+
+"I have tried to do what you want; it's not my fault that I
+haven't been able to put my heart into it."
+
+"Whose fault is it, then?" He watched her askance.
+
+"Before we were married you promised to let me go if our marriage
+was not a success.  Is it a success?"
+
+Soames frowned.
+
+"Success," he stammered--"it would be a success if you behaved
+yourself properly!"
+
+"I have tried," said Irene.  "Will you let me go?"
+
+Soames turned away.  Secretly alarmed, he took refuge in bluster.
+
+"Let you go?  You don't know what you're talking about.  Let you
+go?  How can I let you go?  We're married, aren't we?  Then, what
+are you talking about?  For God's sake, don't let's have any of
+this sort of nonsense!  Get your hat on, and come and sit in the
+Park."
+
+"Then, you won't let me go?"
+
+He felt her eyes resting on him with a strange, touching look.
+
+"Let you go!" he said; "and what on earth would you do with
+yourself if I did?  You've got no money!"
+
+"I could manage somehow."
+
+He took a swift turn up and down the room; then came and stood
+before her.
+
+"Understand," he said, "once and for all, I won't have you say
+this sort of thing.  Go and get your hat on!"
+
+She did not move.
+
+"I suppose," said Soames, "you don't want to miss Bosinney if he
+comes!"
+
+Irene got up slowly and left the room.  She came down with her
+hat on.
+
+They went out.
+
+In the Park, the motley hour of mid-afternoon, when foreigners
+and other pathetic folk drive, thinking themselves to be in
+fashion, had passed; the right, the proper, hour had come, was
+nearly gone, before Soames and Irene seated themselves under the
+Achilles statue.
+
+It was some time since he had enjoyed her company in the Park.
+That was one of the past delights of the first two seasons of his
+married life, when to feel himself the possessor of this gracious
+creature before all London had been his greatest, though secret,
+pride.  How many afternoons had he not sat beside her, extremely
+neat, with light grey gloves and faint, supercilious smile,
+nodding to acquaintances, and now and again removing his hat.
+
+His light grey gloves were still on his hands, and on his lips
+his smile sardonic, but where the feeling in his heart?
+
+The seats were emptying fast, but still he kept her there, silent
+and pale, as though to work out a secret punishment.  Once or
+twice he made some comment, and she bent her head, or answered
+"Yes" with a tired smile.
+
+Along the rails a man was walking so fast that people stared
+after him when he passed.
+
+"Look at that ass!" said Soames; "he must be mad to walk like
+that in this heat!"
+
+He turned; Irene had made a rapid movement.
+
+"Hallo!" he said: "it's our friend the Buccaneer!"
+
+And he sat still, with his sneering smile, conscious that Irene
+was sitting still, and smiling too.
+
+"Will she bow to him?" he thought.
+
+But she made no sign.
+
+Bosinney reached the end of the rails, and came walking back
+amongst the chairs, quartering his ground like a pointer.  When
+he saw them he stopped dead, and raised his hat.
+
+The smile never left Soames' face; he also took off his hat.
+
+Bosinney came up, looking exhausted, like a man after hard
+physical exercise; the sweat stood in drops on his brow, and
+Soames' smile seemed to say: "You've had a trying time, my friend
+......What are you doing in the Park?" he asked.  "We thought
+you despised such frivolity!"
+
+Bosinney did not seem to hear; he made his answer to Irene: "I've
+been round to your place; I hoped I should find you in."
+
+Somebody tapped Soames on the back, and spoke to him; and in the
+exchange of those platitudes over his shoulder, he missed her
+answer, and took a resolution.
+
+"We're just going in," he said to Bosinney; "you'd better come
+back to dinner with us." Into that invitation he put a strange
+bravado, a stranger pathos: "You, can't deceive me," his look and
+voice seemed saying, "but see--I trust you--I'm not afraid of
+you!"
+
+They started back to Montpellier Square together, Irene between
+them.  In the crowded streets Soames went on in front.  He did
+not listen to their conversation; the strange resolution of
+trustfulness he had taken seemed to animate even his secret
+conduct.  Like a gambler, he said to himself: 'It's a card I dare
+not throw away--I must play it for what it's worth.  I have not
+too many chances.'
+
+He dressed slowly, heard her leave her room and go downstairs,
+and, for full five minutes after, dawdled about in his dressing-
+room.  Then he went down, purposely shutting the door loudly to
+show that he was coming.  He found them standing by the hearth,
+perhaps talking, perhaps not; he could not say.
+
+He played his part out in the farce, the long evening through--
+his manner to his guest more friendly than it had ever been
+before; and when at last Bosinney went, he said: "You must come
+again soon; Irene likes to have you to talk about the house!"
+Again his voice had the strange bravado and the stranger pathos;
+but his hand was cold as ice.
+
+Loyal to his resolution, he turned away from their parting,
+turned away from his wife as she stood under the hanging lamp to
+say good-night--away from the sight of her golden head shining so
+under the light, of her smiling mournful lips; away from the
+sight of Bosinney's eyes looking at her, so like a dog's looking
+at its master.
+
+And he went to bed with the certainty that Bosinney was in love
+with his wife.
+
+The summer night was hot, so hot and still that through every
+opened window came in but hotter air.  For long hours he lay
+listening to her breathing.
+
+She could sleep, but he must lie awake.  And, lying awake, he
+hardened himself to play the part of the serene and trusting
+husband.
+
+In the small hours he slipped out of bed, and passing into his
+dressing-room, leaned by the open window.
+
+He could hardly breathe.
+
+A night four years ago came back to him--the night but one before
+his marriage; as hot and stifling as this.
+
+He remembered how he had lain in a long cane chair in the window
+of his sitting-room off Victoria Street.  Down below in a side
+street a man had banged at a door, a woman had cried out; he
+remembered, as though it were now, the sound of the scuffle, the
+slam of the door, the dead silence that followed.  And then the
+early water-cart, cleansing the reek of the streets, had
+approached through the strange-seeming, useless lamp-light; he
+seemed to hear again its rumble, nearer and nearer, till it
+passed and slowly died away.
+
+He leaned far out of the dressing-room window over the little
+court below, and saw the first light spread.  The outlines of
+dark walls and roofs were blurred for a moment, then came out
+sharper than before.
+
+He remembered how that other night he had watched the lamps
+paling all the length of Victoria Street; how he had hurried on
+his clothes and gone down into the street, down past houses and
+squares, to the street where she was staying, and there had stood
+and looked at the front of the little house, as still and grey as
+the face of a dead man.
+
+And suddenly it shot through his mind; like a sick man's fancy:
+What's he doing?--that fellow who haunts me, who was here this
+evening, who's in love with my wife--prowling out there, perhaps,
+looking for her as I know he was looking for her this afternoon;
+watching my house now, for all I can tell!
+
+He stole across the landing to the front of the house, stealthily
+drew aside a blind, and raised a window.
+
+The grey light clung about the trees of the square, as though
+Night, like a great downy moth, had brushed them with her wings.
+The lamps were still alight, all pale, but not a soul stirred--no
+living thing in sight
+
+Yet suddenly, very faint, far off in the deathly stillness, he
+heard a cry writhing, like the voice of some wandering soul
+barred out of heaven, and crying for its happiness.  There it was
+again--again!  Soames shut the window, shuddering.
+
+Then he thought: 'Ah!  it's only the peacocks, across the water.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+JUNE PAYS SOME CALLS
+
+
+
+Jolyon stood in the narrow hall at Broadstairs, inhaling that
+odour of oilcloth and herrings which permeates all respectable
+seaside lodging-houses.  On a chair--a shiny leather chair,
+displaying its horsehair through a hole in the top left-hand
+corner--stood a black despatch case.  This he was filling with
+papers, with the Times, and a bottle of Eau-de Cologne.  He had
+meetings that day of the 'Globular Gold Concessions' and the 'New
+Colliery Company, Limited,' to which he was going up, for he
+never missed a Board; to 'miss a Board' would be one more piece
+of evidence that he was growing old, and this his jealous Forsyte
+spirit could not bear.
+
+His eyes, as he filled that black despatch case, looked as if at
+any moment they might blaze up with anger.  So gleams the eye of
+a schoolboy, baited by a ring of his companions; but he controls
+himself, deterred by the fearful odds against him.  And old
+Jolyon controlled himself, keeping down, with his masterful
+restraint now slowly wearing out, the irritation fostered in him
+by the conditions of his life.
+
+He had received from his son an unpractical letter, in which by
+rambling generalities the boy seemed trying to get out of
+answering a plain question.  'I've seen Bosinney,' he said; 'he
+is not a criminal.  The more I see of people the more I am
+convinced that they are never good or bad--merely comic, or
+pathetic.  You probably don't agree with me!'
+
+Old Jolyon did not; he considered it cynical to so express
+oneself; he had not yet reached that point of old age when even
+Forsytes, bereft of those illusions and principles which they
+have cherished carefully for practical purposes but never
+believed in, bereft of all corporeal enjoyment, stricken to the
+very heart by having nothing left to hope for--break through the
+barriers of reserve and say things they would never have believed
+themselves capable of saying.
+
+Perhaps he did not believe in 'goodness' and 'badness' any more
+than his son; but as he would have said: He didn't know--couldn't
+tell; there might be something in it; and why, by an unnecessary
+expression of disbelief, deprive yourself of possible advantage?
+
+Accustomed to spend his holidays among the mountains, though
+(like a true Forsyte) he had never attempted anything too
+adventurous or too foolhardy, he had been passionately fond of
+them.  And when the wonderful view (mentioned in Baedeker--
+'fatiguing but repaying')--was disclosed to him after the effort
+of the climb, he had doubtless felt the existence of some great,
+dignified principle crowning the chaotic strivings, the petty
+precipices, and ironic little dark chasms of life.  This was as
+near to religion, perhaps, as his practical spirit had ever gone.
+
+But it was many years since he had been to the mountains.  He had
+taken June there two seasons running, after his wife died, and
+had realized bitterly that his walking days were over.
+
+To that old mountain--given confidence in a supreme order of
+things he had long been a stranger.
+
+He knew himself to be old, yet he felt young; and this troubled
+him.  It troubled and puzzled him, too, to think that he, who had
+always been so careful, should be father and grandfather to such
+as seemed born to disaster.  He had nothing to say against Jo--
+who could say anything against the boy, an amiable chap?--but his
+position was deplorable, and this business of June's nearly as
+bad.  It seemed like a fatality, and a fatality was one of those
+things no man of his character could either understand or put up
+with.
+
+In writing to his son he did not really hope that anything would
+come of it.  Since the ball at Roger's he had seen too clearly
+how the land lay--he could put two and two together quicker than
+most men--and, with the example of his own son before his eyes,
+knew better than any Forsyte of them all that the pale flame
+singes men's wings whether they will or no.
+
+In the days before June's engagement, when she and Mrs. Soames
+were always together, he had seen enough of Irene to feel the
+spell she cast over men.  She was not a flirt, not even a
+coquette--words dear to the heart of his generation, which loved
+to define things by a good, broad, inadequate word--but she was
+dangerous.  He could not say why.  Tell him of a quality innate
+in some women--a seductive power beyond their own control!  He
+would but answer: 'Humbug!'  She was dangerous, and there was an
+end of it.  He wanted to close his eyes to that affair.  If it
+was, it was; he did not want to hear any more about it--he only
+wanted to save June's position and her peace of mind.  He still
+hoped she might once more become a comfort to himself.
+
+And so he had written.  He got little enough out of the answer.
+As to what young Jolyon had made of the interview, there was
+practically only the queer sentence: 'I gather that he's in the
+stream.' The stream!  What stream?  What was this new-fangled way
+of talking?
+
+He sighed, and folded the last of the papers under the flap of
+the bag; he knew well enough what was meant.
+
+June came out of the dining-room, and helped him on with his
+summer coat.  From her costume, and the expression of her little
+resolute face, he saw at once what was coming.
+
+"I'm going with you," she said.
+
+"Nonsense, my dear; I go straight into the City.  I can't have
+you racketting about!"
+
+"I must see old Mrs. Smeech."
+
+"Oh, your precious 'lame ducks!" grumbled out old Jolyon.  He
+did not believe her excuse, but ceased his opposition.  There was
+no doing anything with that pertinacity of hers.
+
+At Victoria he put her into the carriage which had been ordered
+for himself--a characteristic action, for he had no petty
+selfishnesses.
+
+"Now, don't you go tiring yourself, my darling," he said, and
+took a cab on into the city.
+
+June went first to a back-street in Paddington, where Mrs.
+Smeech, her 'lame duck,' lived--an aged person, connected with
+the charring interest; but after half an hour spent in hearing
+her habitually lamentable recital, and dragooning her into
+temporary comfort, she went on to Stanhope Gate.  The great house
+was closed and dark.
+
+She had decided to learn something at all costs.  It was better
+to face the worst, and have it over.  And this was her plan: To
+go first to Phil's aunt, Mrs. Baynes, and, failing information
+there, to Irene herself.  She had no clear notion of what she
+would gain by these visits.
+
+At three o'clock she was in Lowndes Square.  With a woman's
+instinct when trouble is to be faced, she had put on her best
+frock, and went to the battle with a glance as courageous as old
+Jolyon's itself.  Her tremors had passed into eagerness.
+
+Mrs. Baynes, Bosinney's aunt (Louisa was her name), was in her
+kitchen when June was announced, organizing the cook, for she was
+an excellent housewife, and, as Baynes always said, there was 'a
+lot in a good dinner.'  He did his best work after dinner.  It was
+Baynes who built that remarkably fine row of tall crimson houses
+in Kensington which compete with so many others for the title of
+'the ugliest in London.'
+
+On hearing June's name, she went hurriedly to her bedroom, and,
+taking two large bracelets from a red morocco case in a locked
+drawer, put them on her white wrists--for she possessed in a
+remarkable degree that 'sense of property,' which, as we know, is
+the touchstone of Forsyteism, and the foundation of good
+morality.
+
+Her figure, of medium height and broad build, with a tendency to
+embonpoint, was reflected by the mirror of her whitewood
+wardrobe, in a gown made under her own organization, of one of
+those half-tints, reminiscent of the distempered walls of
+corridors in large hotels.  She raised her hands to her hair,
+which she wore a la Princesse de Galles, and touched it here and
+there, settling it more firmly on her head, and her eyes were
+full of an unconscious realism, as though she were looking in the
+face one of life's sordid facts, and making the best of it.  In
+youth her cheeks had been of cream and roses, but they were
+mottled now by middle-age, and again that hard, ugly directness
+came into her eyes as she dabbed a powder-puff across her
+forehead.  Putting the puff down, she stood quite still before
+the glass, arranging a smile over her high, important nose, her,
+chin, (never large, and now growing smaller with the increase of
+her neck), her thin-lipped, down-drooping mouth.  Quickly, not to
+lose the effect, she grasped her skirts strongly in both hands,
+and went downstairs.
+
+She had been hoping for this visit for some time past.  Whispers
+had reached her that things were not all right between her nephew
+and his fiancee.  Neither of them had been near her for weeks.
+She had asked Phil to dinner many times; his invariable answer
+had been 'Too busy.'
+
+Her instinct was alarmed, and the instinct in such matters of
+this excellent woman was keen.  She ought to have been a Forsyte;
+in young Jolyon's sense of the word, she certainly had that
+privilege, and merits description as such.
+
+She had married off her three daughters in a way that people said
+was beyond their deserts, for they had the professional plainness
+only to be found, as a rule, among the female kind of the more
+legal callings.  Her name was upon the committees of numberless
+charities connected with the Church-dances, theatricals, or
+bazaars--and she never lent her name unless sure beforehand that
+everything had been thoroughly organized.
+
+She believed, as she often said, in putting things on a commercial
+basis; the proper function of the Church, of charity, indeed,
+of everything, was to strengthen the fabric of 'Society.'
+Individual action, therefore, she considered immoral.
+Organization was the only thing, for by organization alone could
+you feel sure that you were getting a return for your money.
+Organization--and again, organization!  And there is no doubt
+that she was what old Jolyon called her--"a 'dab' at that"--he
+went further, he called her "a humbug."
+
+The enterprises to which she lent her name were organized so
+admirably that by the time the takings were handed over, they
+were indeed skim milk divested of all cream of human kindness.
+But as she often justly remarked, sentiment was to be deprecated.
+She was, in fact, a little academic.
+
+This great and good woman, so highly thought of in ecclesiastical
+circles, was one of the principal priestesses in the temple of
+Forsyteism, keeping alive day and night a sacred flame to the God
+of Property, whose altar is inscribed with those inspiring words:
+'Nothing for nothing, and really remarkably little for sixpence.'
+
+When she entered a room it was felt that something substantial
+had come in, which was probably the reason of her popularity as a
+patroness.  People liked something substantial when they had paid
+money for it; and they would look at her--surrounded by her staff
+in charity ballrooms, with her high nose and her broad, square
+figure, attired in an uniform covered with sequins--as though she
+were a general.
+
+The only thing against her was that she had not a double name.
+She was a power in upper middle-class society, with its hundred
+sets and circles, all intersecting on the common battlefield of
+charity functions, and on that battlefield brushing skirts so
+pleasantly with the skirts of Society with the capital 'S.' She
+was a power in society with the smaller 's,' that larger, more
+significant, and more powerful body, where the commercially
+Christian institutions, maxims, and 'principle,' which Mrs.
+Baynes embodied, were real life-blood, circulating freely, real
+business currency, not merely the sterilized imitation that
+flowed in the veins of smaller Society with the larger 'S.'
+People who knew her felt her to be sound--a sound woman, who
+never gave herself away, nor anything else, if she could possibly
+help it.
+
+She had been on the worst sort of terms with Bosinney's father,
+who had not infrequently made her the object of an unpardonable
+ridicule.  She alluded to him now that he was gone as her 'poor,
+dear, irreverend brother.'
+
+She greeted June with the careful effusion of which she was a
+mistress, a little afraid of her as far as a woman of her
+eminence in the commercial and Christian world could be afraid--
+for so slight a girl June had a great dignity, the fearlessness
+of her eyes gave her that.  And Mrs. Baynes, too, shrewdly
+recognized that behind the uncompromising frankness of June's
+manner there was much of the Forsyte.  If the girl had been
+merely frank and courageous, Mrs. Baynes would have thought her
+'cranky,' and despised her; if she had been merely a Forsyte,
+like Francie--let us say--she would have patronized her from
+sheer weight of metal; but June, small though she was--Mrs.
+Baynes habitually admired quantity--gave her an uneasy feeling;
+and she placed her in a chair opposite the light.
+
+There was another reason for her respect which Mrs. Baynes, too
+good a churchwoman to be worldly, would have been the last to
+admit--she often heard her husband describe old Jolyon as
+extremely well off, and was biassed towards his granddaughter for
+the soundest of all reasons.  To-day she felt the emotion with
+which we read a novel describing a hero and an inheritance,
+nervously anxious lest, by some frightful lapse of the novelist,
+the young man should be left without it at the end.
+
+Her manner was warm; she had never seen so clearly before how
+distinguished and desirable a girl this was.  She asked after old
+Jolyon's health.  A wonderful man for his age; so upright, and
+young looking, and how old was he?  Eighty-one!  She would never
+have thought it!  They were at the sea!  Very nice for them; she
+supposed June heard from Phil every day?  Her light grey eyes
+became more prominent as she asked this question; but the girl
+met the glance without flinching.
+
+"No," she said, "he never writes!"
+
+Mrs. Baynes's eyes dropped; they had no intention of doing so,
+but they did.  They recovered immediately.
+
+"Of course not.  That's Phil all over--he was always like that!"
+
+"Was he?" said June.
+
+The brevity of the answer caused Mrs. Baynes's bright smile a
+moment's hesitation; she disguised it by a quick movement, and
+spreading her skirts afresh, said: "Why, my dear--he's quite the
+most harum-scarum person; one never pays the slightest attention
+to what he does!"
+
+The conviction came suddenly to June that she was wasting her
+time; even were she to put a question point-blank, she would
+never get anything out of this woman.
+
+'Do you see him?' she asked, her face crimsoning.
+
+The perspiration broke out on Mrs. Baynes' forehead beneath the
+powder.
+
+"Oh, yes!  I don't remember when he was here last--indeed, we
+haven't seen much of him lately.  He's so busy with your cousin's
+house; I'm told it'll be finished directly.  We must organize a
+little dinner to celebrate the event; do come and stay the night
+with us!"
+
+"Thank you," said June.  Again she thought: 'I'm only wasting my
+time.  This woman will tell me nothing.'
+
+She got up to go.  A change came over Mrs. Baynes.  She rose too;
+her lips twitched, she fidgeted her hands.  Something was
+evidently very wrong, and she did not dare to ask this girl, who
+stood there, a slim, straight little figure, with her decided
+face, her set jaw, and resentful eyes.  She was not accustomed to
+be afraid of asking question's--all organization was based on
+the asking of questions!
+
+But the issue was so grave that her nerve, normally strong, was
+fairly shaken; only that morning her husband had said: "Old Mr.
+Forsyte must be worth well over a hundred thousand pounds!"
+
+And this girl stood there, holding out her hand--holding out her
+hand!
+
+The chance might be slipping away--she couldn't tell--the chance
+of keeping her in the family, and yet she dared not speak.
+
+Her eyes followed June to the door.
+
+It closed.
+
+Then with an exclamation Mrs. Baynes ran forward, wobbling her
+bulky frame from side to side, and opened it again.
+
+Too late!  She heard the front door click, and stood still, an
+expression of real anger and mortification on her face.
+
+June went along the Square with her bird-like quickness.  She
+detested that woman now whom in happier days she had been
+accustomed to think so kind.  Was she always to be put off thus,
+and forced to undergo this torturing suspense?
+
+She would go to Phil himself, and ask him what he meant.  She had
+the right to know.  She hurried on down Sloane Street till she
+came to Bosinney's number.  Passing the swing-door at the bottom,
+she ran up the stairs, her heart thumping painfully.
+
+At the top of the third flight she paused for breath, and holding
+on to the bannisters, stood listening.  No sound came from above.
+
+With a very white face she mounted the last flight.  She saw the
+door, with his name on the plate.  And the resolution that had
+brought her so far evaporated.
+
+The full meaning of her conduct came to her.  She felt hot all
+over; the palms of her hands were moist beneath the thin silk
+covering of her gloves.
+
+She drew back to the stairs, but did not descend.  Leaning
+against the rail she tried to get rid of a feeling of being
+choked; and she gazed at the door with a sort of dreadful
+courage.  No! she refused to go down.  Did it matter what people
+thought of her?  They would never know!  No one would help her if
+she did not help herself!  She would go through with it.
+
+Forcing herself, therefore, to leave the support of the wall, she
+rang the bell.  The door did not open, and all her shame and fear
+suddenly abandoned her; she rang again and again, as though in
+spite of its emptiness she could drag some response out of that
+closed room, some recompense for the shame and fear that visit
+had cost her.  It did not open; she left off ringing, and,
+sitting down at the top of the stairs, buried her face in her
+hands.
+
+Presently she stole down, out into the air.  She felt as though
+she had passed through a bad illness, and had no desire now but
+to get home as quickly as she could.  The people she met seemed
+to know where she had been, what she had been doing; and
+suddenly--over on the opposite side, going towards his rooms from
+the direction of Montpellier Square--she saw Bosinney himself.
+
+She made a movement to cross into the traffic.  Their eyes met,
+and he raised his hat.  An omnibus passed, obscuring her view;
+then, from the edge of the pavement, through a gap in the
+traffic, she saw him walking on.
+
+And June stood motionless, looking after him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+PERFECTION OF THE HOUSE
+
+
+'One mockturtle, clear; one oxtail; two glasses of port.'
+
+In the upper room at French's, where a Forsyte could still get
+heavy English food, James and his son were sitting down to lunch.
+
+Of all eating-places James liked best to come here; there was
+something unpretentious, well-flavoured, and filling about it,
+and though he had been to a certain extent corrupted by the
+necessity for being fashionable, and the trend of habits keeping
+pace with an income that would increase, he still hankered in
+quiet City moments after the tasty fleshpots of his earlier days.
+Here you were served by hairy English waiters in aprons; there
+was sawdust on the floor, and three round gilt looking-glasses
+hung just above the line of sight.  They had only recently done
+away with the cubicles, too, in which you could have your chop,
+prime chump, with a floury-potato, without seeing your
+neighbours, like a gentleman.
+
+He tucked the top corner of his napkin behind the third button of
+his waistcoat, a practice he had been obliged to abandon years
+ago in the West End.  He felt that he should relish his soup--the
+entire morning had been given to winding up the estate of an old
+friend.
+
+After filling his mouth with household bread, stale, he at once
+began: "How are you going down to Robin Hill?  You going to take
+Irene?  You'd better take her.  I should think there'll be a lot
+that'll want seeing to."
+
+Without looking up, Soames answered: "She won't go."
+
+"Won't go?  What's the meaning of that?  She's going to live in
+the house, isn't she?"
+
+Soames made no reply.
+
+"I don't know what's coming to women nowadays," mumbled James; "I
+never used to have any trouble with them.  She's had too much
+liberty.  She's spoiled...."
+
+Soames lifted his eyes: "I won't have anything said against her,"
+he said unexpectedly.
+
+The silence was only broken now by the supping of James's soup.
+
+The waiter brought the two glasses of port, but Soames stopped
+him.
+
+"That's not the way to serve port," he said; "take them away, and
+bring the bottle."
+
+Rousing himself from his reverie over the soup, James took one of
+his rapid shifting surveys of surrounding facts.
+
+"Your mother's in bed," he said; "you can have the carriage to
+take you down.  I should think Irene'd like the drive.  This
+young Bosinney'll be there, I suppose, to show you over"
+
+Soames nodded.
+
+"I should like to go and see for myself what sort of a job he's
+made finishing off," pursued James.  "I'll just drive round and
+pick you both up."
+
+"I am going down by train," replied Soames.  "If you like to
+drive round and see, Irene might go with you, I can't tell."
+
+He signed to the waiter to bring the bill, which James paid.
+
+They parted at St. Paul's, Soames branching off to the station,
+James taking his omnibus westwards.
+
+He had secured the corner seat next the conductor, where his long
+legs made it difficult for anyone to get in, and at all who
+passed him he looked resentfully, as if they had no business to
+be using up his air.
+
+He intended to take an opportunity this afternoon of speaking to
+Irene.  A word in time saved nine; and now that she was going to
+live in the country there was a chance for her to turn over a new
+leaf!  He could see that Soames wouldn't stand very much more of
+her goings on!
+
+It did not occur to him to define what he meant by her 'goings
+on'; the expression was wide, vague, and suited to a Forsyte.
+And James had more than his common share of courage after lunch.
+
+On reaching home, he ordered out the barouche, with special
+instructions that the groom was to go too.  He wished to be kind
+to her, and to give her every chance.
+
+When the door of No.62 was opened he could distinctly hear her
+singing, and said so at once, to prevent any chance of being
+denied entrance.
+
+Yes, Mrs. Soames was in, but the maid did not know if she was
+seeing people.
+
+James, moving with the rapidity that ever astonished the
+observers of his long figure and absorbed expression, went
+forthwith into the drawing-room without permitting this to be
+ascertained.  He found Irene seated at the piano with her hands
+arrested on the keys, evidently listening to the voices in the
+hall.  She greeted him without smiling.
+
+"Your mother-in-law's in bed," he began, hoping at once to enlist
+her sympathy.  "I've got the carriage here.  Now, be a good girl,
+and put on your hat and come with me for a drive.  It'll do you
+good!"
+
+Irene looked at him as though about to refuse, but, seeming to
+change her mind, went upstairs, and came down again with her hat
+on.
+
+"Where are you going to take me?" she asked.
+
+"We'll just go down to Robin Hill," said James, spluttering out
+his words very quick; "the horses want exercise, and I should
+like to see what they've been doing down there."
+
+Irene hung back, but again changed her mind, and went out to the
+carriage, James brooding over her closely, to make quite sure.
+
+It was not before he had got her more than half way that he
+began: "Soames is very fond of you--he won't have anything said
+against you; why don't you show him more affection?"
+
+Irene flushed, and said in a low voice: "I can't show what I
+haven't got."
+
+James looked at her sharply; he felt that now he had her in his
+own carriage, with his own horses and servants, he was really in
+command of the situation.  She could not put him off; nor would
+she make a scene in public.
+
+"I can't think what you're about," he said.  "He's a very good
+husband!"
+
+Irene's answer was so low as to be almost inaudible among the
+sounds of traffic.  He caught the words: "You are not married to
+him!"
+
+"What's that got to do with it?  He's given you everything you
+want.  He's always ready to take you anywhere, and now he's built
+you this house in the country.  It's not as if you had anything
+of your own."
+
+"No."
+
+Again James looked at her; he could not make out the expression
+on her face.  She looked almost as if she were going to cry, and
+yet....
+
+"I'm sure," he muttered hastily, "we've all tried to be kind to
+you."
+
+Irene's lips quivered; to his dismay James saw a tear steal down
+her cheek.  He felt a choke rise in his own throat.
+
+"We're all fond of you," he said, "if you'd only"--he was going
+to say, "behave yourself," but changed it to--"if you'd only be
+more of a wife to him."
+
+Irene did not answer, and James, too, ceased speaking.  There was
+something in her silence which disconcerted him; it was not the
+silence of obstinacy, rather that of acquiescence in all that he
+could find to say.  And yet he felt as if he had not had the last
+word.  He could not understand this.
+
+He was unable, however, to long keep silence.
+
+"I suppose that young Bosinney," he said, "will be getting
+married to June now?"
+
+Irene's face changed.  "I don't know," she said; "you should ask
+her."
+
+"Does she write to you?" No.
+
+"How's that?" said James.  "I thought you and she were such great
+friends."
+
+Irene turned on him.  "Again," she said, "you should ask her!"
+
+"Well," flustered James, frightened by her look, "it's very odd
+that I can't get a plain answer to a plain question, but there it
+is."
+
+He sat ruminating over his rebuff, and burst out at last:
+
+"Well, I've warned you.  You won't look ahead.  Soames he doesn't
+say much, but I can see he won't stand a great deal more of this
+sort of thing.  You'll have nobody but yourself to blame, and,
+what's more, you'll get no sympathy from anybody."
+
+Irene bent her head with a little smiling bow.  "I am very much
+obliged to you."
+
+James did not know what on earth to answer.
+
+The bright hot morning had changed slowly to a grey, oppressive
+afternoon; a heavy bank of clouds, with the yellow tinge of
+coming thunder, had risen in the south, and was creeping up.
+
+The branches of the trees dropped motionless across the road
+without the smallest stir of foliage.  A faint odour of glue from
+the heated horses clung in the thick air; the coachman and groom,
+rigid and unbending, exchanged stealthy murmurs on the box,
+without ever turning their heads.
+
+To James' great relief they reached the house at last; the
+silence and impenetrability of this woman by his side, whom he
+had always thought so soft and mild, alarmed him.
+
+The carriage put them down at the door, and they entered.
+
+The hall was cool, and so still that it was like passing into a
+tomb; a shudder ran down James's spine.  He quickly lifted the
+heavy leather curtains between the columns into the inner court.
+
+He could not restrain an exclamation of approval.
+
+The decoration was really in excellent taste.  The dull ruby
+tiles that extended from the foot of the walls to the verge of a
+circular clump of tall iris plants, surrounding in turn a sunken
+basin of white marble filled with water, were obviously of the
+best quality.  He admired extremely the purple leather curtains
+drawn along one entire side, framing a huge white-tiled stove.
+The central partitions of the skylight had been slid back, and
+the warm air from outside penetrated into the very heart of the
+house.
+
+He stood, his hands behind him, his head bent back on his high,
+narrow shoulders, spying the tracery on the columns and the
+pattern of the frieze which ran round the ivory-coloured walls
+under the gallery.  Evidently, no pains had been spared.  It was
+quite the house of a gentleman.  He went up to the curtains, and,
+having discovered how they were worked, drew them asunder and
+disclosed the picture-gallery, ending in a great window taking up
+the whole end of the room.  It had a black oak floor, and its
+walls, again, were of ivory white.  He went on throwing open
+doors, and peeping in.  Everything was in apple-pie order, ready
+for immediate occupation.
+
+He turned round at last to speak to Irene, and saw her standing
+over in the garden entrance, with her husband and Bosinney.
+
+Though not remarkable for sensibility, James felt at once that
+something was wrong.  He went up to them, and, vaguely alarmed,
+ignorant of the nature of the trouble, made an attempt to smooth
+things over.
+
+"How are you, Mr. Bosinney?" he said, holding out his hand.
+"You've been spending money pretty freely down here, I should
+say!"
+
+Soames turned his back, and walked away.
+
+James looked from Bosinney's frowning face to Irene, and, in his
+agitation, spoke his thoughts aloud: "Well, I can't tell what's
+the matter.  Nobody tells me anything!"  And, making off after his
+son, he heard Bosinney's short laugh, and his "Well, thank God!
+You look so...."  Most unfortunately he lost the rest.
+
+What had happened?  He glanced back.  Irene was very close to the
+architect, and her face not like the face he knew of her.  He
+hastened up to his son.
+
+Soames was pacing the picture-gallery.
+
+"What's the matter?" said James.  "What's all this?"
+
+Soames looked at him with his supercilious calm unbroken, but
+James knew well enough that he was violently angry.
+
+"Our friend," he said, "has exceeded his instructions again,
+that's all.  So much the worse for him this time."
+
+He turned round and walked back towards the door.  James followed
+hurriedly, edging himself in front.  He saw Irene take her finger
+from before her lips, heard her say something in her ordinary
+voice, and began to speak before he reached them.
+
+"There's a storm coming on.  We'd better get home.  We can't take
+you, I suppose, Mr. Bosinney?  No, I suppose not.  Then,
+good-bye!"  He held out his hand.  Bosinney did not take it, but,
+turning with a laugh, said:
+
+"Good-bye, Mr. Forsyte.  Don't get caught in the storm!" and
+walked away.
+
+"Well," began James, "I don't know...."
+
+But the 'sight of Irene's face stopped him.  Taking hold of his
+daughter-in-law by the elbow, he escorted her towards the
+carriage.  He felt certain, quite certain, they had been making
+some appointment or other....
+
+Nothing in this world is more sure to upset a Forsyte than the
+discovery that something on which he has stipulated to spend a
+certain sum has cost more.  And this is reasonable, for upon the
+accuracy of his estimates the whole policy of his life is
+ordered.  If he cannot rely on definite values of property, his
+compass is amiss; he is adrift upon bitter waters without a helm.
+
+After writing to Bosinney in the terms that have already been
+chronicled, Soames had dismissed the cost of the house from his
+mind.  He believed that he had made the matter of the final cost
+so very plain that the possibility of its being again exceeded
+had really never entered his head.  On hearing from Bosinney that
+his limit of twelve thousand pounds would be exceeded by some-
+thing like four hundred, he had grown white with anger.  His
+original estimate of the cost of the house completed had been ten
+thousand pounds, and he had often blamed himself severely for
+allowing himself to be led into repeated excesses.  Over this
+last expenditure, however, Bosinney had put himself completely in
+the wrong.  How on earth a fellow could make such an ass of
+himself Soames could not conceive; but he had done so, and all
+the rancour and hidden jealousy that had been burning against him
+for so long was now focussed in rage at this crowning piece of
+extravagance.  The attitude of the confident and friendly husband
+was gone.  To preserve property--his wife--he had assumed it, to
+preserve property of another kind he lost it now.
+
+"Ah!" he had said to Bosinney when he could speak, "and I suppose
+you're perfectly contented with yourself.  But I may as well tell
+you that you've altogether mistaken your man!"
+
+What he meant by those words he did not quite know at the time,
+but after dinner he looked up the correspondence between himself
+and Bosinney to make quite sure.  There could be no two opinions
+about it--the fellow had made himself liable for that extra four
+hundred, or, at all events, for three hundred and fifty of it,
+and he would have to make it good.
+
+He was looking at his wife's face when he came to this conclusion.
+Seated in her usual seat on the sofa, she was altering the lace
+on a collar.  She had not once spoken to him all the evening.
+
+He went up to the mantelpiece, and contemplating his face in the
+mirror said: "Your friend the Buccaneer has made a fool of
+himself; he will have to pay for it!"
+
+She looked at him scornfully, and answered: "I don't know what
+you are talking about!"
+
+"You soon will.  A mere trifle, quite beneath your contempt--four
+hundred pounds."
+
+"Do you mean that you are going to make him pay that towards this
+hateful, house?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"And you know he's got nothing?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then you are meaner than I thought you."
+
+Soames turned from the mirror, and unconsciously taking a china
+cup from the mantelpiece, clasped his hands around it as though
+praying.  He saw her bosom rise and fall, her eyes darkening with
+anger, and taking no notice of the taunt, he asked quietly:
+
+"Are you carrying on a flirtation with Bosinney?"
+
+"No, I am not!"
+
+Her eyes met his, and he looked away.  He neither believed nor
+disbelieved her, but he knew that he had made a mistake in
+asking; he never had known, never would know, what she was
+thinking.  The sight of her inscrutable face, the thought of all
+the hundreds of evenings he had seen her sitting there like that
+soft and passive, but unreadable, unknown, enraged him beyond
+measure.
+
+"I believe you are made of stone," he said, clenching his fingers
+so hard that he broke the fragile cup.  The pieces fell into the
+grate.  And Irene smiled.
+
+"You seem to forget," she said, "that cup is not!"
+
+Soames gripped her arm.  "A good beating," he said, "is the only
+thing that would bring you to your senses," but turning on his
+heel, he left the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+SOAMES SITS ON THE STAIRS
+
+
+Soames went upstairs that night that he had gone too far.  He was
+prepared to offer excuses for his words.
+
+He turned out the gas still burning in the passage outside their
+room.  Pausing, with his hand on the knob of the door, he tried
+to shape his apology, for he had no intention of letting her see
+that he was nervous.
+
+But the door did not open, nor when he pulled it and turned the
+handle firmly.  She must have locked it for some reason, and
+forgotten.
+
+Entering his dressing-room where the gas was also light and
+burning low, he went quickly to the other door.  That too was
+locked.  Then he noticed that the camp bed which he occasionally
+used was prepared, and his sleeping-suit laid out upon it.  He
+put his hand up to his forehead, and brought it away wet.  It
+dawned on him that he was barred out.
+
+He went back to the door, and rattling the handle stealthily,
+called: "Unlock the door, do you hear?  Unlock the door!"
+
+There was a faint rustling, but no answer.
+
+"Do you hear?  Let me in at once--I insist on being let in!"
+
+He could catch the sound of her breathing close to the door, like
+the breathing of a creature threatened by danger.
+
+There was something terrifying in this inexorable silence, in the
+impossibility of getting at her.  He went back to the other door,
+and putting his whole weight against it, tried to burst it open.
+The door was a new one--he had had them renewed himself, in
+readiness for their coming in after the honeymoon.  In a rage he
+lifted his foot to kick in the panel; the thought of the servants
+restrained him, and he felt suddenly that he was beaten.
+
+Flinging himself down in the dressing-room, he took up a book.
+
+But instead of the print he seemed to see his wife--with her
+yellow hair flowing over her bare shoulders, and her great dark
+eyes--standing like an animal at bay.  And the whole meaning of
+her act of revolt came to him.  She meant it to be for good.
+
+He could not sit still, and went to the door again.  He could
+still hear her, and he called: "Irene!  Irene!"
+
+He did not mean to make his voice pathetic.
+
+In ominous answer, the faint sounds ceased.  He stood with
+clenched hands, thinking.
+
+Presently he stole round on tiptoe, and running suddenly at the
+other door, made a supreme effort to break it open.  It creaked,
+but did not yield.  He sat down on the stairs and buried his face
+in his hands.
+
+For a long time he sat there in the dark, the moon through the
+skylight above laying a pale smear which lengthened slowly
+towards him down the stairway.  He tried to be philosophical.
+
+Since she had locked her doors she had no further claim as a
+wife, and he would console himself with other women.
+
+It was but a spectral journey he made among such delights--he had
+no appetite for these exploits.  He had never had much, and he
+had lost the habit.  He felt that he could never recover it.  His
+hunger could only be appeased by his wife, inexorable and
+frightened, behind these shut doors.  No other woman could help
+him.
+
+This conviction came to him with terrible force out there in the
+dark.
+
+His philosophy left him; and surly anger took its place.  Her
+conduct was immoral, inexcusable, worthy of any punishment within
+his power.  He desired no one but her, and she refused him!
+
+She must really hate him, then!  He had never believed it yet.
+He did not believe it now.  It seemed to him incredible.  He felt
+as though he had lost for ever his power of judgment.  If she, so
+soft and yielding as he had always judged her, could take this
+decided step--what could not happen?
+
+Then he asked himself again if she were carrying on an intrigue
+with Bosinney.  He did not believe that she was; he could not
+afford to believe such a reason for her conduct--the thought was
+not to be faced.
+
+It would be unbearable to contemplate the necessity of making his
+marital relations public property.  Short of the most convincing
+proofs he must still refuse to believe, for he did not wish to
+punish himself.  And all the time at heart--he did believe.
+
+The moonlight cast a greyish tinge over his figure, hunched
+against the staircase wall.
+
+Bosinney was in love with her!  He hated the fellow, and would
+not spare him now.  He could and would refuse to pay a penny
+piece over twelve thousand and fifty pounds--the extreme limit
+fixed in the correspondence; or rather he would pay, he would pay
+and sue him for damages.  He would go to Jobling and Boulter and
+put the matter in their hands.  He would ruin the impecunious
+beggar!  And suddenly--though what connection between the
+thoughts?--he reflected that Irene had no money either.  They
+were both beggars.  This gave him a strange satisfaction.
+
+The silence was broken by a faint creaking through the wall.  She
+was going to bed at last.  Ah! Joy and pleasant dreams!  If she
+threw the door open wide he would not go in now!
+
+But his lips, that were twisted in a bitter smile, twitched; he
+covered his eyes with his hands....
+
+It was late the following afternoon when Soames stood in the
+dining-room window gazing gloomily into the Square.
+
+The sunlight still showered on the plane-trees, and in the breeze
+their gay broad leaves shone and swung in rhyme to a barrel organ
+at the corner.  It was playing a waltz, an old waltz that was out
+of fashion, with a fateful rhythm in the notes; and it went on
+and on, though nothing indeed but leaves danced to the tune.
+
+The woman did not look too gay, for she was tired; and from the
+tall houses no one threw her down coppers.  She moved the organ
+on, and three doors off began again.
+
+It was the waltz they had played at Roger's when Irene had danced
+with Bosinney; and the perfume of the gardenias she had worn came
+back to Soames, drifted by the malicious music, as it had been
+drifted to him then, when she passed, her hair glistening, her
+eyes so soft, drawing Bosinney on and on down an endless
+ballroom.
+
+The organ woman plied her handle slowly; she had been grinding
+her tune all day-grinding it in Sloane Street hard by, grinding
+it perhaps to Bosinney himself.
+
+Soames turned, took a cigarette from the carven box, and walked
+back to the window.  The tune had mesmerized him, and there came
+into his view Irene, her sunshade furled, hastening homewards
+down the Square, in a soft, rose-coloured blouse with drooping
+sleeves, that he did not know.  She stopped before the organ,
+took out her purse, and gave the woman money.
+
+Soames shrank back and stood where he could see into the hall.
+
+She came in with her latch-key, put down her sunshade, and stood
+looking at herself in the glass.  Her cheeks were flushed as if
+the sun had burned them; her lips were parted in a smile.  She
+stretched her arms out as though to embrace herself, with a laugh
+that for all the world was like a sob.
+
+Soames stepped forward.
+
+"Very-pretty!" he said.
+
+But as though shot she spun round, and would have passed him up
+the stairs.  He barred the way.
+
+"Why such a hurry?" he said, and his eyes fastened on a curl of
+hair fallen loose across her ear....
+
+He hardly recognised her.  She seemed on fire, so deep and rich
+the colour of her cheeks, her eyes, her lips, and of the unusual
+blouse she wore.
+
+She put up her hand and smoothed back the curl.  She was
+breathing fast and deep, as though she had been running, and with
+every breath perfume seemed to come from her hair, and from her
+body, like perfume from an opening flower.
+
+"I don't like that blouse," he said slowly, "it's a soft,
+shapeless thing!"
+
+He lifted his finger towards her breast, but she dashed his hand
+aside.
+
+"Don't touch me!" she cried.
+
+He caught her wrist; she wrenched it away.
+
+"And where may you have been?" he asked.
+
+"In heaven--out of this house!"  With those words she fled
+upstairs.
+
+Outside--in thanksgiving--at the very door, the organ-grinder was
+playing the waltz.
+
+And Soames stood motionless.  What prevented him from following
+her?
+
+Was it that, with the eyes of faith, he saw Bosinney looking down
+from that high window in Sloane Street, straining his eyes for
+yet another glimpse of Irene's vanished figure, cooling his
+flushed face, dreaming of the moment when she flung herself on
+his breast--the scent of her still in the air around, and the
+sound of her laugh that was like a sob?
+
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Mrs. MAcANDER'S EVIDENCE
+
+
+Many  people, no doubt, including the editor of the 'Ultra
+Vivisectionist,' then in the bloom of its first youth, would say
+that Soames was less than a man not to have removed the locks
+from his wife's doors, and, after beating her soundly, resumed
+wedded happiness.
+
+Brutality is not so deplorably diluted by humaneness as it used
+to be, yet a sentimental segment of the population may still be
+relieved to learn that he did none of these things.  For active
+brutality is not popular with Forsytes; they are too
+circumspect, and, on the whole, too softhearted.  And in Soames
+there was some common pride, not sufficient to make him do a
+really generous action, but enough to prevent his indulging in an
+extremely mean one, except, perhaps, in very hot blood.  Above
+all this a true Forsyte refused to feel himself ridiculous.  Short
+of actually beating his wife, he perceived nothing to be done; he
+therefore accepted the situation without another word.
+
+Throughout the summer and autumn he continued to go to the
+office, to sort his pictures, and ask his friends to dinner.
+
+He did not leave town; Irene refused to go away.  The house at
+Robin Hill, finished though it was, remained empty and ownerless.
+Soames had brought a suit against the Buccaneer, in which he
+claimed from him the sum of three hundred and fifty pounds.
+
+A firm of solicitors, Messrs.  Freak and Able, had put in a
+defence on Bosinney's behalf.  Admitting the facts, they raised a
+point on the correspondence which, divested of legal phraseology,
+amounted to this: To speak of 'a free hand in the terms of this
+correspondence' is an Irish bull.
+
+By a chance, fortuitous but not improbable in the close borough
+of legal circles, a good deal of information came to Soames' ear
+anent this line of policy, the working partner in his firm,
+Bustard, happening to sit next at dinner at Walmisley's, the
+Taxing Master, to young Chankery, of the Common Law Bar.
+
+The necessity for talking what is known as 'shop,' which comes on
+all lawyers with the removal of the ladies, caused Chankery, a
+young and promising advocate, to propound an impersonal conundrum
+to his neighbour, whose name he did not know, for, seated as he
+permanently was in the background, Bustard had practically no
+name.
+
+He had, said Chankery, a case coming on with a 'very nice point.'
+He then explained, preserving every professional discretion, the
+riddle in Soames' case.  Everyone, he said, to whom he had
+spoken, thought it a nice point.  The issue was small
+unfortunately, 'though d----d serious for his client he
+believed'--Walmisley's champagne was bad but plentiful.  A Judge
+would make short work of it, he was afraid.  He intended to make
+a big effort--the point was a nice one.  What did his neighbour
+say?
+
+Bustard, a model of secrecy, said nothing.  He related the
+incident to Soames however with some malice, for this quiet man
+was capable of human feeling, ending with his own opinion that
+the point was 'a very nice one.'
+
+In accordance with his resolve, our Forsyte had put his interests
+into the hands of Jobling and Boulter.  From the moment of doing
+so he regretted that he had not acted for himself.  On receiving
+a copy of Bosinney's defence he went over to their offices.
+
+Boulter, who had the matter in hand, Jobling having died some
+years before, told him that in his opinion it was rather a nice
+point; he would like counsel's opinion on it.
+
+Soames told him to go to a good man, and they went to Waterbuck,
+Q.C., marking him ten and one, who kept the papers six weeks and
+then wrote as follows
+
+'In my opinion the true interpretation of this correspondence
+depends very much on the intention of the parties, and will turn
+upon the evidence given at the trial.  I am of opinion that an
+attempt should be made to secure from the architect an admission
+that he understood he was not to spend at the outside more than
+twelve thousand and fifty pounds.  With regard to the expression,
+"a free hand in the terms of this correspondence," to which my
+attention is directed, the point is a nice one; but I am of
+opinion that upon the whole the ruling in "Boileau v. The
+Blasted Cement Co., Ltd.," will apply.'
+
+Upon this opinion they acted, administering interrogatories, but
+to their annoyance Messrs.  Freak and Able answered these in so
+masterly a fashion that nothing whatever was admitted and that
+without prejudice.
+
+It was on October 1 that Soames read Waterbuck's opinion, in the
+dining-room before dinner.
+
+It made him nervous; not so much because of the case of 'Boileau
+v. The Blasted Cement Co., Ltd.,' as that the point had lately
+begun to seem to him, too, a nice one; there was about it just
+that pleasant flavour of subtlety so attractive to the best legal
+appetites.  To have his own impression confirmed by Waterbuck,
+Q.C., would have disturbed any man.
+
+He sat thinking it over, and staring at the empty grate, for
+though autumn had come, the weather kept as gloriously fine that
+jubilee year as if it were still high August.  It was not
+pleasant to be disturbed; he desired too passionately to set his
+foot on Bosinney's neck.
+
+Though he had not seen the architect since the last afternoon at
+Robin Hill, he was never free from the sense of his presence--
+never free from the memory of his worn face with its high cheek
+bones and enthusiastic eyes.  It would not be too much to say
+that he had never got rid of the feeling of that night when he
+heard the peacock's cry at dawn--the feeling that Bosinney
+haunted the house.  And every man's shape that he saw in the dark
+evenings walking past, seemed that of him whom George had so
+appropriately named the Buccaneer.
+
+Irene still met him, he was certain; where, or how, he neither
+knew, nor asked; deterred by a vague and secret dread of too much
+knowledge.  It all seemed subterranean nowadays.
+
+Sometimes when he questioned his wife as to where she had been,
+which he still made a point of doing, as every Forsyte should,
+she looked very strange.  Her self-possession was wonderful, but
+there were moments when, behind the mask of her face, inscrutable
+as it had always been to him, lurked an expression he had never
+been used to see there.
+
+She had taken to lunching out too; when he asked Bilson if her
+mistress had been in to lunch, as often as not she would answer:
+"No, sir."
+
+He strongly disapproved of her gadding about by herself, and told
+her so.  But she took no notice.  There was something that
+angered, amazed, yet almost amused him about the calm way in
+which she disregarded his wishes.  It was really as if she were
+hugging to herself the thought of a triumph over him.
+
+He rose from the perusal of Waterbuck, Q.C.'s opinion, and, going
+upstairs, entered her room, for she did not lock her doors till
+bed-time--she had the decency, he found, to save the feelings of
+the servants.  She was brushing her hair, and turned to him with
+strange fierceness.
+
+"What do you want?" she said.  "Please leave my room!"
+
+He answered: "I want to know how long this state of things
+between us is to last?  I have put up with it long enough."
+
+"Will you please leave my room?"
+
+"Will you treat me as your husband?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then, I shall take steps to make you."
+
+"Do!"
+
+He stared, amazed at the calmness of her answer.  Her lips were
+compressed in a thin line; her hair lay in fluffy masses on her
+bare shoulders, in all its strange golden contrast to her dark
+eyes--those eyes alive with the emotions of fear, hate, contempt,
+and odd, haunting triumph.
+
+"Now, please, will you leave my room?" He turned round, and went
+sulkily out.
+
+He knew very well that he had no intention of taking steps, and
+he saw that she knew too--knew that he was afraid to.
+
+It was a habit with him to tell her the doings of his day: how
+such and such clients had called; how he had arranged a mortgage
+for Parkes; how that long-standing suit of Fryer v. Forsyte was
+getting on, which, arising in the preternaturally careful
+disposition of his property by his great uncle Nicholas, who had
+tied it up so that no one could get at it at all, seemed likely
+to remain a source of income for several solicitors till the Day
+of Judgment.
+
+And how he had called in at Jobson's, and seen a Boucher sold,
+which he had just missed buying of Talleyrand and Sons in Pall
+Mall.
+
+He had an admiration for Boucher, Watteau, and all that school.
+It was a habit with him to tell her all these matters, and he
+continued to do it even now, talking for long spells at dinner,
+as though by the volubility of words he could conceal from
+himself the ache in his heart.
+
+Often, if they were alone, he made an attempt to kiss her when
+she said good-night.  He may have had some vague notion that some
+night she would let him; or perhaps only the feeling that a
+husband ought to kiss his wife.  Even if she hated him, he at all
+events ought not to put himself in the wrong by neglecting this
+ancient rite.
+
+And why did she hate him?  Even now he could not altogether
+believe it.  It was strange to be hated!--the emotion was too
+extreme; yet he hated Bosinney, that Buccaneer, that prowling
+vagabond, that night-wanderer.  For in his thoughts Soames always
+saw him lying in wait--wandering.  Ah, but he must be in very low
+water!  Young Burkitt, the architect, had seen him coming out of
+a third-rate restaurant, looking terribly down in the mouth!
+
+During all the hours he lay awake, thinking over the situation,
+which seemed to have no end--unless she should suddenly come to
+her senses--never once did the thought of separating from his
+wife seriously enter his head....
+
+And the Forsytes!  What part did they play in this stage of
+Soames' subterranean tragedy?
+
+Truth to say, little or none, for they were at the sea.
+
+From hotels, hydropathics, or lodging-houses, they were bathing
+daily; laying in a stock of ozone to last them through the
+winter.
+
+Each section, in the vineyard of its own choosing, grew and
+culled and pressed and bottled the grapes of a pet sea-air.
+
+The end of September began to witness their several returns.
+
+In rude health and small omnibuses, with considerable colour in
+their cheeks, they arrived daily from the various termini.  The
+following morning saw them back at their vocations.
+
+On the next Sunday Timothy's was thronged from lunch till dinner.
+
+Amongst other gossip, too numerous and interesting to relate,
+Mrs. Septimus Small mentioned that Soames and Irene had not been
+away.
+
+It remained for a comparative outsider to supply the next
+evidence of interest.
+
+It chanced that one afternoon late in September, Mrs. MacAnder,
+Winifred Dartie's greatest friend, taking a constitutional, with
+young Augustus Flippard, on her bicycle in Richmond Park, passed
+Irene and Bosinney walking from the bracken towards the Sheen
+Gate.
+
+Perhaps the poor little woman was thirsty, for she had ridden
+long on a hard, dry road, and, as all London knows, to ride a
+bicycle and talk to young Flippard will try the toughest
+constitution; or perhaps the sight of the cool bracken grove,
+whence 'those two' were coming down, excited her envy.  The cool
+bracken grove on the top of the hill, with the oak boughs for
+roof, where the pigeons were raising an endless wedding hymn, and
+the autumn, humming, whispered to the ears of lovers in the fern,
+while the deer stole by.  The bracken grove of irretrievable
+delights, of golden minutes in the long marriage of heaven and
+earth!  The bracken grove, sacred to stags, to strange tree-stump
+fauns leaping around the silver whiteness of a birch-tree nymph
+at summer dusk
+
+This lady knew all the Forsytes, and having been at June's 'at
+home,' was not at a loss to see with whom she had to deal.  Her
+own marriage, poor thing, had not been successful, but having
+had the good sense and ability to force her husband into
+pronounced error, she herself had passed through the necessary
+divorce proceedings without incurring censure.
+
+She was therefore a judge of all that sort of thing, and lived in
+one of those large buildings, where in small sets of apartments,
+are gathered incredible quantities of Forsytes, whose chief
+recreation out of business hours is the discussion of each
+other's affairs.
+
+Poor little woman, perhaps she was thirsty, certainly she was
+bored, for Flippard was a wit.  To see 'those two' in so unlikely
+a spot was quite a merciful 'pick-me-up.'
+
+At the MacAnder, like all London, Time pauses.
+
+This small but remarkable woman merits attention; her all-seeing
+eye and shrewd tongue were inscrutably the means of furthering
+the ends of Providence.
+
+With an air of being in at the death, she had an almost
+distressing power of taking care of herself.  She had done more,
+perhaps, in her way than any woman about town to destroy the
+sense of chivalry which still clogs the wheel of civilization.
+So smart she was, and spoken of endearingly as 'the little
+MacAnder!'
+
+Dressing tightly and well, she belonged to a Woman's Club, but
+was by no means the neurotic and dismal type of member who was
+always thinking of her rights.  She took her rights unconsciously,
+they came natural to her, and she knew exactly how to make the
+most of them without exciting anything but admiration amongst
+that great class to whom she was affiliated, not precisely
+perhaps by manner, but by birth, breeding, and the true, the
+secret gauge, a sense of property.
+
+The daughter of a Bedfordshire solicitor, by the daughter of a
+clergyman, she had never, through all the painful experience of
+being married to a very mild painter with a cranky love of
+Nature, who had deserted her for an actress, lost touch with the
+requirements, beliefs, and inner feeling of Society; and, on
+attaining her liberty, she placed herself without effort in the
+very van of Forsyteism.
+
+Always in good spirits, and 'full of information,' she was
+universally welcomed.  She excited neither surprise nor
+disapprobation when encountered on the Rhine or at Zermatt,
+either alone, or travelling with a lady and two gentlemen; it was
+felt that she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself;
+and the hearts of all Forsytes warmed to that wonderful instinct,
+which enabled her to enjoy everything without giving anything
+away.  It was generally felt that to such women as Mrs. MacAnder
+should we look for the perpetuation and increase of our best type
+of woman.  She had never had any children.
+
+If there was one thing more than another that she could not stand
+it was one of those soft women with what men called 'charm' about
+them, and for Mrs. Soames she always had an especial dislike.
+
+Obscurely, no doubt, she felt that if charm were once admitted as
+the criterion, smartness and capability must go to the wall; and
+she hated--with a hatred the deeper that at times this so-called
+charm seemed to disturb all calculations--the subtle seductiveness
+which she could not altogether overlook in Irene.
+
+She said, however, that she could see nothing in the woman--there
+was no 'go' about her--she would never be able to stand up for
+herself--anyone could take advantage of her, that was plain--she
+could not see in fact what men found to admire!
+
+She was not really ill-natured, but, in maintaining her position
+after the trying circumstances of her married life, she had found
+it so necessary to be 'full of information,' that the idea of
+holding her tongue about 'those two' in the Park never occurred
+to her.
+
+And it so happened that she was dining that very evening at
+Timothy's, where she went sometimes to 'cheer the old things up,'
+as she was wont to put it.  The same people were always asked to
+meet her: Winifred Dartie and her husband; Francie, because she
+belonged to the artistic circles, for Mrs. MacAnder was known to
+contribute articles on dress to 'The Ladies Kingdom Come'; and
+for her to flirt with, provided they could be obtained, two of
+the Hayman boys, who, though they never said anything, were
+believed to be fast and thoroughly intimate with all that was
+latest in smart Society.
+
+At twenty-five minutes past seven she turned out the electric
+light in her little hall, and wrapped in her opera cloak with the
+chinchilla collar, came out into the corridor, pausing a moment
+to make sure she had her latch-key.  These little self-contained
+flats were convenient; to be sure, she had no light and no air,
+but she could shut it up whenever she liked and go away.  There
+was no bother with servants, and she never felt tied as she used
+to when poor, dear Fred was always about, in his mooney way.  She
+retained no rancour against poor, dear Fred, he was such a fool;
+but the thought of that actress drew from her, even now, a
+little, bitter, derisive smile.
+
+Firmly snapping the door to, she crossed the corridor, with its
+gloomy, yellow-ochre walls, and its infinite vista of brown,
+numbered doors.  The lift was going down; and wrapped to the ears
+in the high cloak, with every one of her auburn hairs in its
+place, she waited motionless for it to stop at her floor.  The
+iron gates clanked open; she entered.  There were already three
+occupants, a man in a great white waistcoat, with a large, smooth
+face like a baby's, and two old ladies in black, with mittened
+hands.
+
+Mrs. MacAnder smiled at them; she knew everybody; and all these
+three, who had been admirably silent before, began to talk at
+once.  This was Mrs. MacAnder's successful secret.  She provoked
+conversation.
+
+Throughout a descent of five stories the conversation continued,
+the lift boy standing with his back turned, his cynical face
+protruding through the bars.
+
+At the bottom they separated, the man in the white waistcoat
+sentimentally to the billiard room, the old ladies to dine and
+say to each other: "A dear little woman!"  "Such a rattle!" and
+Mrs. MacAnder to her cab.
+
+When Mrs. MacAnder dined at Timothy's, the conversation (although
+Timothy himself could never be induced to be present) took that
+wider, man-of-the-world tone current among Forsytes at large, and
+this, no doubt, was what put her at a premium there.
+
+Mrs. Small and Aunt Hester found it an exhilarating change.  "If
+only," they said, "Timothy would meet her!"  It was felt that she
+would do him good.  She could tell you, for instance, the latest
+story of Sir Charles Fiste's son at Monte Carlo; who was the real
+heroine of Tynemouth Eddy's fashionable novel that everyone was
+holding up their hands over, and what they were doing in Paris
+about wearing bloomers.  She was so sensible, too, knowing all
+about that vexed question, whether to send young Nicholas' eldest
+into the navy as his mother wished, or make him an accountant as
+his father thought would be safer.  She strongly deprecated the
+navy.  If you were not exceptionally brilliant or exceptionally
+well connected, they passed you over so disgracefully, and what
+was it after all to look forward to, even if you became an
+admiral--a pittance!  An accountant had many more chances, but
+let him be put with a good firm, where there was no risk at
+starting!
+
+Sometimes she would give them a tip on the Stock Exchange; not
+that Mrs. Small or Aunt Hester ever took it.  They had indeed no
+money to invest; but it seemed to bring them into such exciting
+touch with the realities of life.  It was an event.  They would
+ask Timothy, they said.  But they never did, knowing in advance
+that it would upset him.  Surreptitiously, however, for weeks
+after they would look in that paper, which they took with respect
+on account of its really fashionable proclivities, to see whether
+'Bright's Rubies' or 'The Woollen Mackintosh Company' were up or
+down.  Sometimes they could not find the name of the company at
+all; and they would wait until James or Roger or even Swithin
+came in, and ask them in voices trembling with curiosity how that
+'Bolivia Lime and Speltrate' was doing--they could not find it in
+the paper.
+
+And Roger would answer: "What do you want to know for?  Some
+trash!  You'll go burning your fingers--investing your money in
+lime, and things you know nothing about!  Who told you?" and
+ascertaining what they had been told, he would go away, and,
+making inquiries in the City, would perhaps invest some of his
+own money in the concern.
+
+It was about the middle of dinner, just in fact as the saddle of
+mutton had been brought in by Smither, that Mrs. MacAnder,
+looking airily round, said: "Oh! and whom do you think I passed
+to-day in Richmond Park?  You'll never guess--Mrs. Soames and--
+Mr. Bosinney.  They must have been down to look at the house!"
+
+Winifred Dartie coughed, and no one said a word.  It was the
+piece of evidence they had all unconsciously been waiting for.
+
+To do Mrs. MacAnder justice, she had been to Switzerland and the
+Italian lakes with a party of three, and had not heard of Soames'
+rupture with his architect.  She could not tell, therefore, the
+profound impression her words would make.
+
+Upright and a little flushed, she moved her small, shrewd eyes
+from face to face, trying to gauge the effect of her words.  On
+either side of her a Hayman boy, his lean, taciturn, hungry face
+turned towards his plate, ate his mutton steadily.
+
+These two, Giles and Jesse, were so alike and so inseparable that
+they were known as the Dromios.  They never talked, and seemed
+always completely occupied in doing nothing.  It was popularly
+supposed that they were cramming for an important examination.
+They walked without hats for long hours in the Gardens attached
+to their house, books in their hands, a fox-terrier at their
+heels, never saying a word, and smoking all the time.  Every
+morning, about fifty yards apart, they trotted down Campden Hill
+on two lean hacks, with legs as long as their own, and every
+morning about an hour later, still fifty yards apart, they
+cantered up again.  Every evening, wherever they had dined, they
+might be observed about half-past ten, leaning over the
+balustrade of the Alhambra promenade.
+
+They were never seen otherwise than together; in this way passing
+their lives, apparently perfectly content.
+
+Inspired by some dumb stirring within them of the feelings of
+gentlemen, they turned at this painful moment to Mrs. MacAnder,
+and said in precisely the same voice: "Have you seen the...?"
+
+Such was her surprise at being thus addressed that she put down
+her fork; and Smither, who was passing, promptly removed her
+plate.  Mrs. MacAnder, however, with presence of mind, said
+instantly: "I must have a little more of that nice mutton."
+
+But afterwards in the drawing--room she sat down by Mrs. Small,
+determined to get to the bottom of the matter.  And she began:
+
+"What a charming woman, Mrs. Soames; such a sympathetic
+temperament!  Soames is a really lucky man!"
+
+Her anxiety for information had not made sufficient allowance for
+that inner Forsyte skin which refuses to share its troubles with
+outsiders.
+
+Mrs. Septimus Small, drawing herself up with a creak and rustle
+of her whole person, said, shivering in her dignity:
+
+"My dear, it is a subject we do not talk about!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+NIGHT IN THE PARK
+
+
+Although with her infallible instinct Mrs. Small had said the
+very thing to make her guest 'more intriguee than ever,' it is
+difficult to see how else she could truthfully have spoken.
+
+It was not a subject which the Forsytes could talk about even
+among themselves--to use the word Soames had invented to
+characterize to himself the situation, it was 'subterranean.'
+
+Yet, within a week of Mrs. MacAnder's encounter in Richmond Park,
+to all of them--save Timothy, from whom it was carefully kept--to
+James on his domestic beat from the Poultry to Park Lane, to
+George the wild one, on his daily adventure from the bow window
+at the Haversnake to the billiard room at the 'Red Pottle,' was
+it known that 'those two' had gone to extremes.
+
+George (it was he who invented many of those striking expressions
+still current in fashionable circles) voiced the sentiment more
+accurately than any one when he said to his brother Eustace that
+'the Buccaneer' was 'going it'; he expected Soames was about 'fed
+up.'
+
+It was felt that he must be, and yet, what could be done?  He
+ought perhaps to take steps; but to take steps would be
+deplorable.
+
+Without an open scandal which they could not see their way to
+recommending, it was difficult to see what steps could be taken.
+In this impasse, the only thing was to say nothing to Soames, and
+nothing to each other; in fact, to pass it over.
+
+By displaying towards Irene a dignified coldness, some impression
+might be made upon her; but she was seldom now to be seen, and
+there seemed a slight difficulty in seeking her out on purpose to
+show her coldness.  Sometimes in the privacy of his bedroom James
+would reveal to Emily the real suffering that his son's
+misfortune caused him.
+
+"I can't tell," he would say; "it worries me out of my life.
+There'll be a scandal, and that'll do him no good.  I shan't say
+anything to him.  There might be nothing in it.  What do you
+think?  She's very artistic, they tell me.  What?  Oh, you're a
+'regular Juley!  Well, I don't know; I expect the worst.  This is
+what comes of having no children.  I knew how it would be from
+the first.  They never told me they didn't mean to have any
+children--nobody tells me anything!"
+
+On his knees by the side of the bed, his eyes open and fixed with
+worry, he would breathe into the counterpane.  Clad in his
+nightshirt, his neck poked forward, his back rounded, he
+resembled some long white bird.
+
+"Our Father-," he repeated, turning over and over again the
+thought of this possible scandal.
+
+Like old Jolyon, he, too, at the bottom of his heart set the
+blame of the tragedy down to family interference.  What business
+had that lot--he began to think of the Stanhope Gate branch,
+including young Jolyon and his daughter, as 'that lot'--to
+introduce a person like this Bosinney into the family?  (He had
+heard George's soubriquet, 'The Buccaneer,' but he could make
+nothing of that--the young man was an architect.)
+
+He began to feel that his brother Jolyon, to whom he had always
+looked up and on whose opinion he had relied, was not quite what
+he had expected.
+
+Not having his eldest brother's force of character, he was more
+sad than angry.  His great comfort was to go to Winifred's, and
+take the little Darties in his carriage over to Kensington
+Gardens, and there, by the Round Pond, he could often be seen
+walking with his eyes fixed anxiously on little Publius Dartie's
+sailing-boat, which he had himself freighted with a penny, as
+though convinced that it would never again come to shore; while
+little Publius--who, James delighted to say, was not a bit like
+his father skipping along under his lee, would try to get him to
+bet another that it never would, having found that it always did.
+And James would make the bet; he always paid--sometimes as many
+as three or four pennies in the afternoon, for the game seemed
+never to pall on little Publius--and always in paying he said:
+"Now, that's for your money-box.  Why, you're getting quite a
+rich man!"  The thought of his little grandson's growing wealth
+was a real pleasure to him.  But little Publius knew a
+sweet-shop, and a trick worth two of that.
+
+And they would walk home across the Park, James' figure, with
+high shoulders and absorbed and worried face, exercising its
+tall, lean protectorship, pathetically unregarded, over the
+robust child-figures of Imogen and little Publius.
+
+But those Gardens and that Park were not sacred to James.
+Forsytes and tramps, children and lovers, rested and wandered day
+after day, night after night, seeking one and all some freedom
+from labour, from the reek and turmoil of the streets.
+
+The leaves browned slowly, lingering with the sun and summer-like
+warmth of the nights.
+
+On Saturday, October 5, the sky that had been blue all day
+deepened after sunset to the bloom of purple grapes.  There was
+no moon, and a clear dark, like some velvety garment, was wrapped
+around the trees, whose thinned branches, resembling plumes,
+stirred not in the still, warm air.  All London had poured into
+the Park, draining the cup of summer to its dregs.
+
+Couple after couple, from every gate, they streamed along the
+paths and over the burnt grass, and one after another, silently
+out of the lighted spaces, stole into the shelter of the feathery
+trees, where, blotted against some trunk, or under the shadow of
+shrubs, they were lost to all but themselves in the heart of the
+soft darkness.
+
+To fresh-comers along the paths, these forerunners formed but
+part of that passionate dusk, whence only a strange murmur, like
+the confused beating of hearts, came forth.  But when that murmur
+reached each couple in the lamp-light their voices wavered, and
+ceased; their arms enlaced, their eyes began seeking, searching,
+probing the blackness.  Suddenly, as though drawn by invisible
+hands, they, too, stepped over the railing, and, silent as
+shadows, were gone from the light.
+
+The stillness, enclosed in the far, inexorable roar of the town,
+was alive with the myriad passions, hopes, and loves of
+multitudes of struggling human atoms; for in spite of the
+disapproval of that great body of Forsytes, the Municipal
+Council--to whom Love had long been considered, next to the
+Sewage Question, the gravest danger to the community--a process
+was going on that night in the Park, and in a hundred other
+parks, without which the thousand factories, churches, shops,
+taxes, and drains, of which they were custodians, were as
+arteries without blood, a man without a heart.
+
+The instincts of self-forgetfulness, of passion, and of love,
+hiding under the trees, away from the trustees of their
+remorseless enemy, the 'sense of property,' were holding a
+stealthy revel, and Soames, returning from Bayswater for he had
+been alone to dine at Timothy's walking home along the water,
+with his mind upon that coming lawsuit, had the blood driven from
+his heart by a low laugh and the sound of kisses.  He thought of
+writing to the Times the next morning, to draw the attention of
+the Editor to the condition of our parks.  He did not, however,
+for he had a horror of seeing his name in print.
+
+But starved as he was, the whispered sounds in the stillness, the
+half-seen forms in the dark, acted on him like some morbid
+stimulant.  He left the path along the water and stole under the
+trees, along the deep shadow of little plantations, where the
+boughs of chestnut trees hung their great leaves low, and there
+was blacker refuge, shaping his course in circles which had for
+their object a stealthy inspection of chairs side by side,
+against tree-trunks, of enlaced lovers, who stirred at his
+approach.
+
+Now he stood still on the rise overlooking the Serpentine, where,
+in full lamp-light, black against the silver water, sat a couple
+who never moved, the woman's face buried on the man's neck--a
+single form, like a carved emblem of passion, silent and
+unashamed.
+
+And, stung by the sight, Soames hurried on deeper into the shadow
+of the trees.
+
+In this search, who knows what he thought and what he sought?
+Bread for hunger--light in darkness?  Who knows what he expected
+to find--impersonal knowledge of the human heart--the end of his
+private subterranean tragedy--for, again, who knew, but that each
+dark couple, unnamed, unnameable, might not be he and she?
+
+But it could not be such knowledge as this that he was seeking--
+the wife of Soames Forsyte sitting in the Park like a common
+wench!  Such thoughts were inconceivable; and from tree to tree,
+with his noiseless step, he passed.
+
+Once he was sworn at; once the whisper, "If only it could always
+be like this!" sent the blood flying again from his heart, and he
+waited there, patient and dogged, for the two to move.  But it
+was only a poor thin slip of a shop-girl in her draggled blouse
+who passed him, clinging to her lover's arm.
+
+A hundred other lovers too whispered that hope in the stillness
+of the trees, a hundred other lovers clung to each other.
+
+But shaking himself with sudden disgust, Soames returned to the
+path, and left that seeking for he knew not what.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+MEETING AT THE BOTANICAL
+
+
+Young Jolyon, whose circumstances were not those of a Forsyte,
+found at times a difficulty in sparing the money needful for
+those country jaunts and researches into Nature, without having
+prosecuted which no watercolour artist ever puts brush to paper.
+
+He was frequently, in fact, obliged to take his colour-box into
+the Botanical Gardens, and there, on his stool, in the shade of a
+monkey-puzzler or in the lee of some India-rubber plant, he would
+spend long hours sketching.
+
+An Art critic who had recently been looking at his work had
+delivered himself as follows
+
+"In a way your drawings are very good; tone and colour, in some
+of them certainly quite a feeling for Nature.  But, you see,
+they're so scattered; you'll never get the public to look at
+them.  Now, if you'd taken a definite subject, such as 'London by
+Night,' or 'The Crystal Palace in the Spring,' and made a regular
+series, the public would have known at once what they were
+looking at.  I can't lay too much stress upon that.  All the men
+who are making great names in Art, like Crum Stone or Bleeder,
+are making them by avoiding the unexpected; by specializing and
+putting their works all in the same pigeon-hole, so that the
+public know pat once where to go.  And this stands to reason, for
+if a man's a collector he doesn't want people to smell at the
+canvas to find out whom his pictures are by; he wants them to be
+able to say at once, 'A capital Forsyte!'  It is all the more
+important for you to be careful to choose a subject that they can
+lay hold of on the spot, since there's no very marked originality
+in your style."
+
+Young Jolyon, standing by the little piano, where a bowl of dried
+rose leaves, the only produce of the garden, was deposited on a
+bit of faded damask, listened with his dim smile.
+
+Turning to his wife, who was looking at the speaker with an angry
+expression on her thin face, he said:
+
+"You see, dear?"
+
+"I do not," she answered in her staccato voice, that still had a
+little foreign accent; "your style has originality."
+
+The critic looked at her, smiled' deferentially, and said no
+more.  Like everyone else, he knew their history.
+
+The words bore good fruit with young Jolyon; they were contrary
+to all that he believed in, to all that he theoretically held
+good in his Art, but some strange, deep instinct moved him
+against his will to turn them to profit.
+
+He discovered therefore one morning that an idea had come to him
+for making a series of watercolour drawings of London.  How the
+idea had arisen he could not tell; and it was not till the
+following year, when he had completed and sold them at a very
+fair price, that in one of his impersonal moods, he found himself
+able to recollect the Art critic, and to discover in his own
+achievement another proof that he was a Forsyte.
+
+He decided to commence with the Botanical Gardens, where he had
+already made so many studies, and chose the little artificial
+pond, sprinkled now with an autumn shower of red and yellow
+leaves, for though the gardeners longed to sweep them off, they
+could not reach them with their brooms.  The rest of the gardens
+they swept bare enough, removing every morning Nature's rain of
+leaves; piling them in heaps, whence from slow fires rose the
+sweet, acrid smoke that, like the cuckoo's note for spring, the
+scent of lime trees for the summer, is the true emblem of the
+fall.  The gardeners' tidy souls could not abide the gold and
+green and russet pattern on the grass.  The gravel paths must lie
+unstained, ordered, methodical, without knowledge of the
+realities of life, nor of that slow and beautiful decay which
+flings crowns underfoot to star the earth with fallen glories,
+whence, as the cycle rolls, will leap again wild spring.
+
+Thus each leaf that fell was marked from the moment when it
+fluttered a good-bye and dropped, slow turning, from its twig.
+
+But on that little pond the leaves floated in peace, and praised
+Heaven with their hues, the sunlight haunting over them.
+
+And so young Jolyon found them.
+
+Coming there one morning in the middle of October, he was
+disconcerted to find a bench about twenty paces from his stand
+occupied, for he had a proper horror of anyone seeing him at
+work.
+
+A lady in a velvet jacket was sitting there, with her eyes fixed
+on the ground.  A flowering laurel, however, stood between, and,
+taking shelter behind this, young Jolyon prepared his easel.
+
+His preparations were leisurely; he caught, as every true artist
+should, at anything that might delay for a moment the effort of
+his work, and he found himself looking furtively at this unknown
+dame.
+
+Like his father before him, he had an eye for a face.  This face
+was charming!
+
+He saw a rounded chin nestling in a cream ruffle, a delicate face
+with large dark eyes and soft lips.  A black 'picture' hat
+concealed the hair; her figure was lightly poised against the
+back of the bench, her knees were crossed; the tip of a
+patent-leather shoe emerged beneath her skirt.  There was
+something, indeed, inexpressibly dainty about the person of this
+lady, but young Jolyon's attention was chiefly riveted by the
+look on her face, which reminded him of his wife.  It was as
+though its owner had come into contact with forces too strong for
+her.  It troubled him, arousing vague feelings of attraction and
+chivalry.  Who was she?  And what doing there, alone?
+
+Two young gentlemen of that peculiar breed, at once forward and
+shy, found in the Regent's Park, came by on their way to lawn
+tennis, and he noted with disapproval their furtive stares of
+admiration.  A loitering gardener halted to do something
+unnecessary to a clump of pampas grass; he, too, wanted an excuse
+for peeping.  A gentleman, old, and, by his hat, a professor of
+horticulture, passed three times to scrutinize her long and
+stealthily, a queer expression about his lips.
+
+With all these men young Jolyon felt the same vague irritation.
+She looked at none of them, yet was he certain that every man who
+passed would look at her like that.
+
+Her face was not the face of a sorceress, who in every look holds
+out to men the offer of pleasure; it had none of the 'devil's
+beauty' so highly prized among the first Forsytes of the land;
+neither was it of that type, no less adorable, associated with
+the box of chocolate; it was not of the spiritually passionate,
+or passionately spiritual order, peculiar to house-decoration and
+modern poetry; nor did it seem to promise to the playwright
+material for the production of the interesting and neurasthenic
+figure, who commits suicide in the last act.
+
+In shape and colouring, in its soft persuasive passivity, its
+sensuous purity, this woman's face reminded him of Titian's
+'Heavenly Love,' a reproduction of which hung over the sideboard
+in his dining-room.  And her attraction seemed to be in this soft
+passivity, in the feeling she gave that to pressure she must
+yield.
+
+For what or whom was she waiting, in the silence, with the trees
+dropping here and there a leaf, and the thrushes strutting close
+on grass, touched with the sparkle of the autumn rime?  Then her
+charming face grew eager, and, glancing round, with almost a
+lover's jealousy, young Jolyon saw Bosinney striding across the
+grass.
+
+Curiously he watched the meeting, the look in their eyes, the
+long clasp of their hands.  They sat down close together, linked
+for all their outward discretion.  He heard the rapid murmur of
+their talk; but what they said he could not catch.
+
+He had rowed in the galley himself!  He knew the long hours of
+waiting and the lean minutes of a half-public meeting; the
+tortures of suspense that haunt the unhallowed lover.
+
+It required, however, but a glance at their two faces to see that
+this was none of those affairs of a season that distract men and
+women about town; none of those sudden appetites that wake up
+ravening, and are surfeited and asleep again in six weeks.  This
+was the real thing!  This was what had happened to himself!  Out
+of this anything might come!
+
+Bosinney was pleading, and she so quiet, so soft, yet immovable
+in her passivity, sat looking over the grass.
+
+Was he the man to carry her off, that tender, passive being, who
+would never stir a step for herself?  Who had given him all
+herself, and would die for him, but perhaps would never run away
+with him!
+
+It seemed to young Jolyon that he could hear her saying: "But,
+darling, it would ruin you!"  For he himself had experienced to
+the full the gnawing fear at the bottom of each woman's heart
+that she is a drag on the man she loves.
+
+And he peeped at them no more; but their soft, rapid talk came to
+his ears, with the stuttering song of some bird who seemed trying
+to remember the notes of spring: Joy--tragedy?  Which--which?
+
+And gradually their talk ceased; long silence followed.
+
+'And where does Soames come in?' young Jolyon thought.  'People
+think she is concerned about the sin of deceiving her husband!
+Little they know of women!  She's eating, after starvation--
+taking her revenge!  And Heaven help her--for he'll take his.'
+
+He heard the swish of silk, and, spying round the laurel, saw
+them walking away, their hands stealthily joined....
+
+At the end of July old Jolyon had taken his grand-daughter to the
+mountains; and on that visit (the last they ever paid) June
+recovered to a great extent her health and spirits.  In the
+hotels, filled with British Forsytes--for old Jolyon could not
+bear a 'set of Germans,' as he called all foreigners--she was
+looked upon with respect--the only grand-daughter of that fine-
+looking, and evidently wealthy, old Mr. Forsyte.  She did not mix
+freely with people--to mix freely with people was not June's
+habit--but she formed some friendships, and notably one in the
+Rhone Valley, with a French girl who was dying of consumption.
+
+Determining at once that her friend should not die, she forgot,
+in the institution of a campaign against Death, much of her own
+trouble.
+
+Old Jolyon watched the new intimacy with relief and disapproval;
+for this additional proof that her life was to be passed amongst
+'lame ducks' worried him.  Would she never make a friendship or
+take an interest in something that would be of real benefit to
+her?
+
+'Taking up with a parcel of foreigners,' he called it.  He often,
+however, brought home  grapes or roses, and presented them to
+'Mam'zelle' with an ingratiating twinkle.
+
+Towards the end of September, in spite of June's disapproval,
+Mademoiselle Vigor breathed her last in the little hotel at St.
+Luc, to which they had moved her; and June took her defeat so
+deeply to heart that old Jolyon carried her away to Paris.  Here,
+in contemplation of the 'Venus de Milo' and the 'Madeleine,' she
+shook off her depression, and when, towards the middle of
+October, they returned to town, her grandfather believed that he
+had effected a cure.
+
+No sooner, however, had they established themselves in Stanhope
+Gate than he perceived to his dismay a return of her old absorbed
+and brooding manner.  She would sit, staring in front of her, her
+chin on her hand, like a little Norse spirit, grim and intent,
+while all around in the electric light, then just installed,
+shone the great, drawing-room brocaded up to the frieze, full of
+furniture from Baple and Pullbred's.  And in the huge gilt mirror
+were reflected those Dresden china groups of young men in tight
+knee breeches, at the feet of full-bosomed ladies nursing on
+their laps pet lambs, which old Jolyon had bought when he was a
+bachelor and thought so highly of in these days of degenerate
+taste.  He was a man of most open mind, who, more than any
+Forsyte of them all, had moved with the times, but he could never
+forget that he had bought these groups at Jobson's, and given a
+lot of money for them.  He often said to June, with a sort of
+disillusioned contempt:
+
+"You don't care about them!  They're not the gimcrack things you
+and your friends like, but they cost me seventy pounds!"  He was
+not a man who allowed his taste to be warped when he knew for
+solid reasons that it was sound.
+
+One of the first things that June did on getting home was to go
+round to Timothy's.  She persuaded herself that it was her duty
+to call there, and cheer him with an account of all her travels;
+but in reality she went because she knew of no other place where,
+by some random speech, or roundabout question, she could glean
+news of Bosinney.
+
+They received her most cordially: And how was her dear grand-
+father?  He had not been to see them since May.  Her Uncle
+Timothy was very poorly, he had had a lot of trouble with the
+chimney-sweep in his bedroom; the stupid man had let the soot
+down the chimney!  It had quite upset her uncle.
+
+June sat there a long time, dreading, yet passionately hoping,
+that they would speak of Bosinney.
+
+But paralyzed by unaccountable discretion, Mrs. Septimus Small
+let fall no word, neither did she question June about him.  In
+desperation the girl asked at last whether Soames and Irene were
+in town--she had not yet been to see anyone.
+
+It was Aunt Hester who replied: Oh, yes, they were in town, they
+had not been away at all.  There was some little difficulty about
+the house, she believed.  June had heard, no doubt!  She had
+better ask her Aunt Juley!
+
+June turned to Mrs. Small, who sat upright in her chair, her
+hands clasped, her face covered with innumerable pouts.  In
+answer to the girl's look she maintained a strange silence, and
+when she spoke it was to ask June whether she had worn night-
+socks up in those high hotels where it must be so cold of a
+night.
+
+June answered that she had not, she hated the stuffy things; and
+rose to leave.
+
+Mrs. Small's infallibly chosen silence was far more ominous to
+her than anything that could have been said.
+
+Before half an hour was over she had dragged the truth from Mrs.
+Baynes in Lowndes Square, that Soames was bringing an action
+against Bosinney over the decoration of the house.
+
+Instead of disturbing her, the news had a strangely calming
+effect; as though she saw in the prospect of this struggle new
+hope for herself.  She learnt that the case was expected to come
+on in about a month, and there seemed little or no prospect of
+Bosinney's success.
+
+"And whatever he'll do I can't think," said Mrs. Baynes; "it's
+very dreadful for him, you know--he's got no money--he's very
+hard up.  And we can't help him, I'm sure.  I'm told the
+money-lenders won't lend if you have no security, and he has
+none--none at all."
+
+Her embonpoint had increased of late; she was in the full swing
+of autumn organization, her writing-table literally strewn with
+the menus of charity functions.  She looked meaningly at June,
+with her round eyes of parrot-grey.
+
+The sudden flush that rose on the girl's intent young face--she
+must have seen spring up before her a great hope--the sudden
+sweetness of her smile, often came back to Lady Baynes in after
+years (Baynes was knighted when he built that public Museum of
+Art which has given so much employment to officials, and so
+little pleasure to those working classes for whom it was
+designed).
+
+The memory of that change, vivid and touching, like the breaking
+open of a flower, or the first sun after long winter, the memory,
+too, of all that came after, often intruded itself, unaccountably,
+inopportunely on Lady Baynes, when her mind was set upon the most
+important things.
+
+This was the very afternoon of the day that young Jolyon
+witnessed the meeting in the Botanical Gardens, and on this day,
+too, old Jolyon paid a visit to his solicitors, Forsyte, Bustard,
+and Forsyte, in the Poultry.  Soames was not in, he had gone down
+to Somerset House; Bustard was buried up to the hilt in papers
+and that inaccessible apartment, where he was judiciously placed,
+in order that he might do as much work as possible; but James was
+in the front office, biting a finger, and lugubriously turning
+over the pleadings in Forsyte v. Bosinney.
+
+This sound lawyer had only a sort of luxurious dread of the 'nice
+point,' enough to set up a pleasurable feeling of fuss; for his
+good practical sense told him that if he himself were on the
+Bench he would not pay much attention to it.  But he was afraid
+that this Bosinney would go bankrupt and Soames would have to
+find the money after all, and costs into the bargain.  And behind
+this tangible dread there was always that intangible trouble,
+lurking in the background, intricate, dim, scandalous, like a bad
+dream, and of which this action was but an outward and visible
+sign.
+
+He raised his head as old Jolyon came in, and muttered: "How are
+you, Jolyon?  Haven't seen you for an age.  You've been to
+Switzerland, they tell me.  This young Bosinney, he's got himself
+into a mess.  I knew how it would be!"  He held out the papers,
+regarding his elder brother with nervous gloom.
+
+Old Jolyon read them in silence, and while he read them James
+looked at the floor, biting his fingers the while.
+
+Old Jolyon pitched them down at last, and they fell with a thump
+amongst a mass of affidavits in 're Buncombe, deceased,' one of
+the many branches of that parent and profitable tree, 'Fryer v.
+Forsyte.'
+
+"I don't know what Soames is about," he said, "to make a fuss
+over a few hundred pounds.  I thought he was a man of property."
+
+James'long upper lip twitched angrily; he could not bear his son
+to be attacked in such a spot.
+
+"It's not the money "he began, but meeting his brother's glance,
+direct, shrewd, judicial, he stopped.
+
+There was a silence.
+
+"I've come in for my Will," said old Jolyon at last, tugging at
+his moustache.
+
+James' curiosity was roused at once.  Perhaps nothing in this
+life was more stimulating to him than a Will; it was the supreme
+deal with property, the final inventory of a man's belongings,
+the last word on what he was worth.  He sounded the bell.
+
+"Bring in Mr. Jolyon's Will," he said to an anxious, dark-haired
+clerk.
+
+"You going to make some alterations?" And through his mind there
+flashed the thought: 'Now, am I worth as much as he?'
+
+Old Jolyon put the Will in his breast pocket, and James twisted
+his long legs regretfully.
+
+"You've made some nice purchases lately, they tell me," he said.
+
+"I don't know where you get your information from," answered old
+Jolyon sharply.  "When's this action coming on?  Next month?  I
+can't tell what you've got in your minds.  You must manage your
+own affairs; but if you take my advice, you'll settle it out of
+Court.  Good-bye!"  With a cold handshake he was gone.
+
+James, his fixed grey-blue eye corkscrewing round some secret
+anxious image, began again to bite his finger.
+
+Old Jolyon took his Will to the offices of the New Colliery
+Company, and sat down in the empty Board Room to read it through.
+He answered 'Down-by-the-starn' Hemmings so tartly when the
+latter, seeing his Chairman seated there, entered with the new
+Superintendent's first report, that the Secretary withdrew with
+regretful dignity; and sending for the transfer clerk, blew him
+up till the poor youth knew not where to look.
+
+It was not--by George--as he (Down-by-the-starn) would have him
+know, for a whippersnapper of a young fellow like him, to come
+down to that office, and think that he was God Almighty.  He
+(Down-by-the-starn) had been head of that office for more years
+than a boy like him could count, and if he thought that when he
+had finished all his work, he could sit there doing nothing, he
+did not know him, Hemmings (Down-by-the-starn), and so forth.
+
+On the other side of the green baize door old Jolyon sat at the
+long, mahogany-and-leather board table, his thick, loose-jointed,
+tortoiseshell eye-glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, his
+gold pencil moving down the clauses of his Will.
+
+It was a simple affair, for there were none of those vexatious
+little legacies and donations to charities, which fritter away a
+man's possessions, and damage the majestic effect of that little
+paragraph in the morning papers accorded to Forsytes who die with
+a hundred thousand pounds.
+
+A simple affair.  Just a bequest to his son of twenty thousand,
+and 'as to the residue of my property of whatsoever kind whether
+realty or personalty, or partaking of the nature of either--upon
+trust to pay the proceeds rents annual produce dividends or
+interest thereof and thereon to my said grand-daughter June
+Forsyte or her assigns during her life to be for her sole use and
+benefit and without, etc... and from and after her death or
+decease upon trust to convey assign transfer or make over the
+said last-mentioned lands hereditaments premises trust moneys
+stocks funds investments and securities or such as shall then
+stand for and represent the same unto such person or persons
+whether one or more for such intents purposes and uses and
+generally in such manner way and form in all respects as the said
+June Forsyte notwithstanding coverture shall by her last Will and
+Testament or any writing or writings in the nature of a Will
+testament or testamentary disposition to be by her duly made
+signed and published direct appoint or make over give and dispose
+of the same And in default etc....  Provided always...' and so on,
+in seven folios of brief and simple phraseology.
+
+The Will had been drawn by James in his palmy days.  He had
+foreseen almost every contingency.
+
+Old Jolyon sat a long time reading this Will; at last he took
+half a sheet of paper from the rack, and made a prolonged pencil
+note; then buttoning up the Will, he caused a cab to be called
+and drove to the offices of Paramor and Herring, in Lincoln's Inn
+Fields.  Jack Herring was dead, but his nephew was still in the
+firm, and old Jolyon was closeted with him for half an hour.
+
+He had kept the hansom, and on coming out, gave the driver the
+address--3, Wistaria Avenue.
+
+He felt a strange, slow satisfaction, as though he had scored a
+victory over James and the man of property.  They should not poke
+their noses into his affairs any more; he had just cancelled
+their trusteeships of his Will; he would take the whole of his
+business out of their hands, and put it into the hands of young
+Herring, and he would move the business of his Companies too.  If
+that young Soames were such a man of property, he would never
+miss a thousand a year or so; and under his great white moustache
+old Jolyon grimly smiled.  He felt that what he was doing was in
+the nature of retributive justice, richly deserved.
+
+Slowly, surely, with the secret inner process that works the
+destruction of an old tree, the poison of the wounds to his
+happiness, his will, his pride, had corroded the comely edifice
+of his philosophy.  Life had worn him down on one side, till,
+like that family of which he was the head, he had lost balance.
+
+To him, borne northwards towards his son's house, the thought of
+the new disposition of property, which he had just set in motion,
+appeared vaguely in the light of a stroke of punishment, levelled
+at that family and that Society, of which James and his son
+seemed to him the representatives.  He had made a restitution to
+young Jolyon, and restitution to young Jolyon satisfied his
+secret craving for revenge-revenge against Time, sorrow, and
+interference, against all that incalculable sum of disapproval
+that had been bestowed by the world for fifteen years on his only
+son.  It presented itself as the one possible way of asserting
+once more the domination of his will; of forcing James, and
+Soames, and the family, and all those hidden masses of Forsytes--
+a great stream rolling against the single dam of his obstinacy--
+to recognise once and for all that be would be master.  It was
+sweet to think that at last he was going to make the boy a richer
+man by far than that son of James, that 'man of property.' And it
+was sweet to give to Jo, for he loved his son.
+
+Neither young Jolyon nor his wife were in (young Jolyon indeed
+was not back from the Botanical), but the little maid told him
+that she expected the master at any moment:
+
+"He's always at 'ome to tea, sir, to play with the children."
+
+Old Jolyon said he would wait; and sat down patiently enough in
+the faded, shabby drawing room, where, now that the summer
+chintzes were removed, the old chairs and sofas revealed all
+their threadbare deficiencies.  He longed to send for the
+children; to have them there beside him, their supple bodies
+against his knees; to hear Jolly's: "Hallo, Gran!" and see his
+rush; and feel Holly's soft little hand stealing up against his
+cheek.  But he would not.  There was solemnity in what he had
+come to do, and until it was over he would not play.  He amused
+himself by thinking how with two strokes of his pen he was going
+to restore the look of caste so conspicuously absent from
+everything in that little house; how he could fill these rooms,
+or others in some larger mansion, with triumphs of art from Baple
+and Pullbred's; how he could send little Jolly to Harrow and
+Oxford (he no longer had faith in Eton and Cambridge, for his son
+had been there); how he could procure little Holly the best
+musical instruction, the child had a remarkable aptitude.
+
+As these visions crowded before him, causing emotion to swell his
+heart, he rose, and stood at the window, looking down into the
+little walled strip of garden, where the pear-tree, bare of
+leaves before its time, stood with gaunt branches in the
+slow-gathering mist of the autumn afternoon.  The dog Balthasar,
+his tail curled tightly over a piebald, furry back, was walking
+at the farther end, sniffing at the plants, and at intervals
+placing his leg for support against the wall.
+
+And old Jolyon mused.
+
+What pleasure was there left but to give?  It was pleasant to
+give, when you could find one who would be thankful for what you
+gave--one of your own flesh and blood!  There was no such
+satisfaction to be had out of giving to those who did not belong
+to you, to those who had no claim on you!  Such giving as that
+was a betrayal of the individualistic convictions and actions of
+his life, of all his enterprise, his labour, and his moderation,
+of the great and proud fact that, like tens of thousands of
+Forsytes before him, tens of thousands in the present, tens of
+thousands in the future, he had always made his own, and held his
+own, in the world.
+
+And, while he stood there looking down on the smut-covered
+foliage of the laurels, the black-stained grass-plot, the progress
+of the dog Balthasar, all the suffering of the fifteen years
+during which he had been baulked of legitimate enjoyment mingled
+its gall with the sweetness of the approaching moment.
+
+Young Jolyon came at last, pleased with his work, and fresh from
+long hours in the open air.  On hearing that his father was in
+the drawing room, he inquired hurriedly whether Mrs. Forsyte was
+at home, and being informed that she was not, heaved a sigh of
+relief.  Then putting his painting materials carefully in the
+little coat-closet out of sight, he went in.
+
+With characteristic decision old Jolyon came at once to the
+point.  "I've been altering my arrangements, Jo," he said.  "You
+can cut your coat a bit longer in the future--I'm settling a
+thousand a year on you at once.  June will have fifty thousand at
+my death; and you the rest.  That dog of yours is spoiling the
+garden.  I shouldn't keep a dog, if I were you!"
+
+The dog Balthasar, seated in the centre of the lawn, was
+examining his tail.
+
+Young Jolyon looked at the animal, but saw him dimly, for his
+eyes were misty.
+
+"Yours won't come short of a hundred thousand, my boy," said old
+Jolyon; "I thought you'd better know.  I haven't much longer to
+live at my age.  I shan't allude to it again.  How's your wife?
+And--give her my love."
+
+Young Jolyon put his hand on his father's shoulder, and, as
+neither spoke, the episode closed.
+
+Having seen his father into a hansom, young Jolyon came back to
+the drawing-room and stood, where old Jolyon had stood, looking
+down on the little garden.  He tried to realize all that this
+meant to him, and, Forsyte that he was, vistas of property were
+opened out in his brain; the years of half rations through which
+he had passed had not sapped his natural instincts.  In extremely
+practical form, he thought of travel, of his wife's costume, the
+children's education, a pony for Jolly, a thousand things; but in
+the midst of all he thought, too, of Bosinney and his mistress,
+and the broken song of the thrush.  Joy--tragedy!  Which?  Which?
+
+The old past--the poignant, suffering, passionate, wonderful
+past, that no money could buy, that nothing could restore in all
+its burning sweetness--had come back before him.
+
+When his wife came in he went straight up to her and took her in
+his arms; and for a long time he stood without speaking, his eyes
+closed, pressing her to him, while she looked at him with a
+wondering, adoring, doubting look in her eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+VOYAGE INTO THE INFERNO
+
+
+The morning after a certain night on which Soames at last
+asserted his rights and acted like a man, he breakfasted alone.
+
+He breakfasted by gaslight, the fog of late November wrapping the
+town as in some monstrous blanket till the trees of the Square
+even were barely visible from the dining-room window.
+
+He ate steadily, but at times a sensation as though he could not
+swallow attacked him.  Had he been right to yield to his
+overmastering hunger of the night before, and break down the
+resistance which he had suffered now too long from this woman who
+was his lawful and solemnly constituted helpmate?
+
+He was strangely haunted by the recollection of her face, from
+before which, to soothe her, he had tried to pull her hands--of
+her terrible smothered sobbing, the like of which he had never
+heard, and still seemed to hear; and he was still haunted by the
+odd, intolerable feeling of remorse and shame he had felt, as he
+stood looking at her by the flame of the single candle, before
+silently slinking away.
+
+And somehow, now that he had acted like this, he was surprised at
+himself.
+
+Two nights before, at Winifred Dartie's, he had taken Mrs.
+MacAnder into dinner.  She had said to him, looking in his face
+with her sharp, greenish eyes: "And so your wife is a great
+friend of that Mr. Bosinney's?"
+
+Not deigning to ask what she meant, he had brooded over her
+words.
+
+They had roused in him a fierce jealousy, which, with the
+peculiar perversion of this instinct, had turned to fiercer
+desire.
+
+Without the incentive of Mrs. MacAnder's words he might never
+have done what he had done.  Without their incentive and the
+accident of finding his wife's door for once unlocked, which had
+enabled him to steal upon her asleep.
+
+Slumber had removed his doubts, but the morning brought them
+again.  One thought comforted him: No one would know--it was not
+the sort of thing that she would speak about.
+
+And, indeed, when the vehicle of his daily business life, which
+needed so imperatively the grease of clear and practical thought,
+started rolling once more with the reading of his letters, those
+nightmare-like doubts began to assume less extravagant importance
+at the back of his mind.  The incident was really not of great
+moment; women made a fuss about it in books; but in the cool
+judgment of right-thinking men, of men of the world, of such as
+he recollected often received praise in the Divorce Court, he had
+but done his best to sustain the sanctity of marriage, to prevent
+her from abandoning her duty, possibly, if she were still seeing
+Bosinney, from....
+
+No, he did not regret it.
+
+Now that the first step towards reconciliation had been taken,
+the rest would be comparatively--comparatively....
+
+He, rose and walked to the window.  His nerve had been shaken.
+The sound of smothered sobbing was in his ears again.  He could
+not get rid of it.
+
+He put on his fur coat, and went out into the fog; having to go
+into the City, he took the underground railway from Sloane Square
+station.
+
+In his corner of the first-class compartment filled with City men
+the smothered sobbing still haunted him, so he opened the Times
+with the rich crackle that drowns all lesser sounds, and,
+barricaded behind it, set himself steadily to con the news.
+
+He read that a Recorder had charged a grand jury on the previous
+day with a more than usually long list of offences.  He read of
+three murders, five manslaughters, seven arsons, and as many as
+eleven rapes--a surprisingly high number--in addition to many
+less conspicuous crimes, to be tried during a coming Sessions;
+and from one piece of news he went on to another, keeping the
+paper well before his face.
+
+And still, inseparable from his reading, was the memory of
+Irene's tear-stained face, and the sounds from her broken heart.
+
+The day was a busy one, including, in addition to the ordinary
+affairs of his practice, a visit to his brokers, Messrs. Grin
+and Grinning, to give them instructions to sell his shares in the
+New Colliery Co., Ltd., whose business he suspected, rather than
+knew, was stagnating (this enterprise afterwards slowly declined,
+and was ultimately sold for a song to an American syndicate); and
+a long conference at Waterbuck, Q.C.'s chambers, attended by
+Boulter, by Fiske, the junior counsel, and Waterbuck, Q.C.,
+himself.
+
+The case of Forsyte v. Bosinney was expected to be reached on
+the morrow, before Mr. Justice Bentham.
+
+Mr. Justice Bentham, a man of common-sense rather than too great
+legal knowledge, was considered to be about the best man they
+could have to try the action.  He was a 'strong' Judge.
+
+Waterbuck, Q.C., in pleasing conjunction with an almost rude
+neglect of Boulter and Fiske paid to Soames a good deal of
+attention, by instinct or the sounder evidence of rumour, feeling
+him to be a man of property.
+
+He held with remarkable consistency to the opinion he had already
+expressed in writing, that the issue would depend to a great
+extent on the evidence given at the trial, and in a few well
+directed remarks he advised Soames not to be too careful in
+giving that evidence.  "A little bluffness, Mr. Forsyte," he said,
+"a little bluffness," and after he had spoken he laughed firmly,
+closed his lips tight, and scratched his head just below where he
+had pushed his wig back, for all the world like the gentleman-
+farmer for whom he loved to be taken.  He was considered perhaps
+the leading man in breach of promise cases.
+
+Soames used the underground again in going home.
+
+The fog was worse than ever at Sloane Square station.  Through
+the still, thick blur, men groped in and out; women, very few,
+grasped their reticules to their bosoms and handkerchiefs to
+their mouths; crowned with the weird excrescence of the driver,
+haloed by a vague glow of lamp-light that seemed to drown in
+vapour before it reached the pavement, cabs loomed dim-shaped ever
+and again, and discharged citizens, bolting like rabbits to their
+burrows.
+
+And these shadowy figures, wrapped each in his own little shroud
+of fog, took no notice of each other.  In the great warren, each
+rabbit for himself, especially those clothed in the more
+expensive fur, who, afraid of carriages on foggy days, are driven
+underground.
+
+One figure, however, not far from Soames, waited at the station
+door.
+
+Some buccaneer or lover, of whom each Forsyte thought: 'Poor
+devil! looks as if he were having a bad time!'  Their kind hearts
+beat a stroke faster for that poor, waiting, anxious lover in the
+fog; but they hurried by, well knowing that they had neither time
+nor money to spare for any suffering but their own.
+
+Only a policeman, patrolling slowly and at intervals, took an
+interest in that waiting figure, the brim of whose slouch hat
+half hid a face reddened by the cold, all thin, and haggard, over
+which a hand stole now and again to smooth away anxiety, or renew
+the resolution that kept him waiting there.  But the waiting
+lover (if lover he were) was used to policemen's scrutiny, or too
+absorbed in his anxiety, for he never flinched.  A hardened case,
+accustomed to long trysts, to anxiety, and fog, and cold, if only
+his mistress came at last.  Foolish lover!  Fogs last until the
+spring; there is also snow and rain, no comfort anywhere; gnawing
+fear if you bring her out, gnawing fear if you bid her stay at
+home!
+
+"Serve him right; he should arrange his affairs better!"
+
+So any respectable Forsyte.  Yet, if that sounder citizen could
+have listened at the waiting lover's heart, out there in the fog
+and the cold, he would have said again: "Yes, poor devil he's
+having a bad time!"
+
+Soames got into his cab, and, with the glass down, crept along
+Sloane Street, and so along the Brompton Road, and home.  He
+reached his house at five.
+
+His wife was not in.  She had gone out a quarter of an hour
+before.  Out at such a time of night, into this terrible fog!
+What was the meaning of that?
+
+He sat by the dining-room fire, with the door open, disturbed to
+the soul, trying to read the evening paper.  A book was no good--
+in daily papers alone was any narcotic to such worry as his.
+From the customary events recorded in the journal he drew some
+comfort.  'Suicide of an actress'--'Grave indisposition of a
+Statesman' (that chronic sufferer)--'Divorce of an army officer'
+--'Fire in a colliery'--he read them all.  They helped him a
+little--prescribed by the greatest of all doctors, our natural
+taste.
+
+It was nearly seven when he heard her come in.
+
+The incident of the night before had long lost its importance
+under stress of anxiety at her strange sortie into the fog.  But
+now that Irene was home, the memory of her broken-hearted sobbing
+came back to him, and he felt nervous at the thought of facing
+her.
+
+She was already on the stairs; her grey fur coat hung to her
+knees, its high collar almost hid her face, she wore a thick
+veil.
+
+She neither turned to look at him nor spoke.  No ghost or
+stranger could have passed more silently.
+
+Bilson came to lay dinner, and told him that Mrs. Forsyte was not
+coming down; she was having the soup in her room.
+
+For once Soames did not 'change'; it was, perhaps, the first time
+in his life that he had sat down to dinner with soiled cuffs,
+and, not even noticing them, he brooded long over his wine.  He
+sent Bilson to light a fire in his picture-room, and presently
+went up there himself.
+
+Turning on the gas, he heaved a deep sigh, as though amongst
+these treasures, the backs of which confronted him in stacks,
+around the little room, he had found at length his peace of mind.
+He went straight up to the greatest treasure of them all, an
+undoubted Turner, and, carrying it to the easel, turned its face
+to the light.  There had been a movement in Turners, but he had
+not been able to make up his mind to part with it.  He stood for
+a long time, his pale, clean-shaven face poked forward above his
+stand-up collar, looking at the picture as though he were adding
+it up; a wistful expression came into his eyes; he found,
+perhaps, that it came to too little.  He took it down from the
+easel to put it back against the wall; but, in crossing the room,
+stopped, for he seemed to hear sobbing.
+
+It was nothing--only the sort of thing that had been bothering
+him in the morning.  And soon after, putting the high guard
+before the blazing fire, he stole downstairs.
+
+Fresh for the morrow!  was his thought.  It was long before he
+went to sleep....
+
+It is now to George Forsyte that the mind must turn for light on
+the events of that fog-engulfed afternoon.
+
+The wittiest and most sportsmanlike of the Forsytes had passed
+the day reading a novel in the paternal mansion at Princes'
+Gardens.  Since a recent crisis in his financial affairs he had
+been kept on parole by Roger, and compelled to reside 'at home.'
+
+Towards five o'clock he went out, and took train at South
+Kensington Station (for everyone to-day went Underground).  His
+intention was to dine, and pass the evening playing billiards at
+the Red Pottle--that unique hostel, neither club, hotel, nor good
+gilt restaurant.
+
+He got out at Charing Cross, choosing it in preference to his
+more usual St.  James's Park, that he might reach Jermyn Street
+by better lighted ways.
+
+On the platform his eyes--for in combination with a composed and
+fashionable appearance, George had sharp eyes, and was always on
+the look-out for fillips to his sardonic humour--his eyes were
+attracted by a man, who, leaping from a first-class compartment,
+staggered rather than walked towards the exit.
+
+'So ho, my bird!' said George to himself; 'why, it's "the
+Buccaneer!"' and he put his big figure on the trail.  Nothing
+afforded him greater amusement than a drunken man.
+
+Bosinney, who wore a slouch hat, stopped in front of him, spun
+around, and rushed back towards the carriage he had just left.
+He was too late.  A porter caught him by the coat; the train was
+already moving on.
+
+George's practised glance caught sight of the face of a lady clad
+in a grey fur coat at the carriage window.  It was Mrs. Soames--
+and George felt that this was interesting!
+
+And now he followed Bosinney more closely than ever--up the
+stairs, past the ticket collector into the street.  In that
+progress, however, his feelings underwent a change; no longer
+merely curious and amused, he felt sorry for the poor fellow he
+was shadowing.  'The Buccaneer' was not drunk, but seemed to be
+acting under the stress of violent emotion; he was talking to
+himself, and all that George could catch were the words "Oh,
+God!"  Nor did he appear to know what he was doing, or where
+going; but stared, hesitated, moved like a man out of his mind;
+and from being merely a joker in search of amusement, George felt
+that he must see the poor chap through.
+
+He had 'taken the knock'--'taken the knock!'  And he wondered what
+on earth Mrs. Soames had been saying, what on earth she had been
+telling him in the railway carriage.  She had looked bad enough
+herself!  It made George sorry to think of her travelling on with
+her trouble all alone.
+
+He followed close behind Bosinney's elbow--tall, burly figure,
+saying nothing, dodging warily--and shadowed him out into the
+fog.
+
+There was something here beyond a jest!  He kept his head
+admirably, in spite of some excitement, for in addition to
+compassion, the instincts of the chase were roused within him.
+
+Bosinney walked right out into the thoroughfare--a vast muffled
+blackness, where a man could not see six paces before him; where,
+all around, voices or whistles mocked the sense of direction; and
+sudden shapes came rolling slow upon them; and now and then a
+light showed like a dim island in an infinite dark sea.
+
+And fast into this perilous gulf of night walked Bosinney, and
+fast after him walked George.  If the fellow meant to put his
+'twopenny' under a 'bus, he would stop it if he could!  Across
+the street and back the hunted creature strode, not groping as
+other men were groping in that gloom, but driven forward as
+though the faithful George behind wielded a knout; and this chase
+after a haunted man began to have for George the strangest
+fascination.
+
+But it was now that the affair developed in a way which ever
+afterwards caused it to remain green in his mind.  Brought to a
+stand-still in the fog, he heard words which threw a sudden light
+on these proceedings.  What Mrs. Soames had said to Bosinney in
+the train was now no longer dark.  George understood from those
+mutterings that Soames had exercised his rights over an estranged
+and unwilling wife in the greatest--the supreme act of property.
+
+His fancy wandered in the fields of this situation; it impressed
+him; he guessed something of the anguish, the sexual confusion
+and horror in Bosinney's heart.  And he thought: 'Yes, it's a bit
+thick!  I don't wonder the poor fellow is half-cracked!'
+
+He had run his quarry to earth on a bench under one of the lions
+in Trafalgar Square, a monster sphynx astray like themselves in
+that gulf of darkness.  Here, rigid and silent, sat Bosinney, and
+George, in whose patience was a touch of strange brotherliness,
+took his stand behind.  He was not lacking in a certain delicacy-
+-a sense of form--that did not permit him to intrude upon this
+tragedy, and he waited, quiet as the lion above, his fur collar
+hitched above his ears concealing the fleshy redness of his
+cheeks, concealing all but his eyes with their sardonic,
+compassionate stare.  And men kept passing back from business on
+the way to their clubs--men whose figures shrouded in cocoons of
+fog came into view like spectres, and like spectres vanished.
+Then even in his compassion George's Quilpish humour broke forth
+in a sudden longing to pluck these spectres by the sleeve, and
+say:
+
+"Hi, you Johnnies!  You don't often see a show like this!  Here's
+a poor devil whose mistress has just been telling him a pretty
+little story of her husband; walk up, walk up!  He's taken the
+knock, you see."
+
+In fancy he saw them gaping round the tortured lover; and grinned
+as he thought of some respectable, newly-married spectre enabled
+by the state of his own affections to catch an inkling of what
+was going on within Bosinney; he fancied he could see his mouth
+getting wider and wider, and the fog going down and down.  For in
+George was all that contempt of the of the married middle-class--
+peculiar to the wild and sportsmanlike spirits in its ranks.
+
+But he began to be bored.  Waiting was not what he had bargained
+for.
+
+'After all,' he thought, 'the poor chap will get over it; not the
+first time such a thing has happened in this little city!' But
+now his quarry again began muttering words of violent hate and
+anger.  And following a sudden impulse George touched him on the
+shoulder.
+
+Bosinney spun round.
+
+"Who are you?  What do you want?"
+
+George could have stood it well enough in the light of the gas
+lamps, in the light of that everyday world of which he was so
+hardy a connoisseur; but in this fog, where all was gloomy and
+unreal, where nothing had that matter-of-fact value associated by
+Forsytes with earth, he was a victim to strange qualms, and as he
+tried to stare back into the eyes of this maniac, he thought:
+
+'If I see a bobby, I'll hand him over; he's not fit to be at
+large.'
+
+But waiting for no answer, Bosinney strode off into the fog, and
+George followed, keeping perhaps a little further off, yet more
+than ever set on tracking him down.
+
+'He can't go on long like this,' he thought.  'It's God's own
+miracle he's not been run over already.' He brooded no more on
+policemen, a sportsman's sacred fire alive again within him.
+
+Into a denser gloom than ever Bosinney held on at a furious pace;
+but his pursuer perceived more method in his madness--he was
+clearly making his way westwards.
+
+'He's really going for Soames!' thought George.  The idea was
+attractive.  It would be a sporting end to such a chase.  He had
+always disliked his cousin.
+
+The shaft of a passing cab brushed against his shoulder and made
+him leap aside.  He did not intend to be killed for the Buccaneer,
+or anyone.  Yet, with hereditary tenacity, he stuck to the trail
+through vapour that blotted out everything but the shadow of the
+hunted man and the dim moon of the nearest lamp.
+
+Then suddenly, with the instinct of a town-stroller, George knew
+himself to be in Piccadilly.  Here he could find his way blindfold;
+and freed from the strain of geographical uncertainty, his mind
+returned to Bosinney's trouble.
+
+Down the long avenue of his man-about-town experience, bursting,
+as it were, through a smirch of doubtful amours, there stalked to
+him a memory of his youth.  A memory, poignant still, that brought
+the scent of hay, the gleam of moonlight, a summer magic, into
+the reek and blackness of this London fog--the memory of a night
+when in the darkest shadow of a lawn he had overheard from a
+woman's lips that he was not her sole possessor.  And for a moment
+George walked no longer in black Piccadilly, but lay again, with
+hell in his heart, and his face to the sweet-smelling, dewy grass,
+in the long shadow of poplars that hid the moon.
+
+A longing seized him to throw his arm round the Buccaneer, and
+say, "Come, old boy.  Time cures all.  Let's go and drink it off!"
+
+But a voice yelled at him, and he started back.  A cab rolled out
+of blackness, and into blackness disappeared.  And suddenly
+George perceived that he had lost Bosinney.  He ran forward and
+back, felt his heart clutched by a sickening fear, the dark fear
+which lives in the wings of the fog.  Perspiration started out on
+his brow.  He stood quite still, listening with all his might.
+
+"And then," as he confided to Dartie the same evening in the
+course of a game of billiards at the Red Pottle, "I lost him."
+
+Dartie twirled complacently at his dark moustache.  He had just
+put together a neat break of twenty-three,--failing at a 'Jenny.'
+"And who was she?" he asked.
+
+George looked slowly at the 'man of the world's' fattish, sallow
+face, and a little grim smile lurked about the curves of his
+cheeks and his heavy-lidded eyes.
+
+'No, no, my fine fellow,' he thought, 'I'm not going to tell
+you.' For though he mixed with Dartie a good deal, he thought him
+a bit of a cad.
+
+"Oh, some little love-lady or other," he said, and chalked his
+cue.
+
+"A love-lady!" exclaimed Dartie--he used a more figurative
+expression.  "I made sure it was our friend Soa...."
+
+"Did you?" said George curtly.  "Then damme you've made an
+error."
+
+He missed his shot.  He was careful not to allude to the subject
+again till, towards eleven o'clock, having, in his poetic
+phraseology, 'looked upon the drink when it was yellow,' he drew
+aside the blind, and gazed out into the street.  The murky
+blackness of the fog was but faintly broken by the lamps of the
+'Red Pottle,' and no shape of mortal man or thing was in sight.
+
+"I can't help thinking of that poor Buccaneer," he said.  "He may
+be wandering out there now in that fog.  If he's not a corpse,"
+he added with strange dejection.
+
+"Corpse!" said Dartie, in whom the recollection of his defeat at
+Richmond flared up.  "He's all right.  Ten to one if he wasn't
+tight!"
+
+George turned on him, looking really formidable, with a sort of
+savage gloom on his big face.
+
+"Dry up!" he said.  "Don't I tell you he's 'taken the knock!"'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE TRIAL
+
+
+In the morning of his case, which was second in the list, Soames
+was again obliged to start without seeing Irene, and it was just
+as well, for he had not as yet made up his mind what attitude to
+adopt towards her.
+
+He had been requested to be in court by half-past ten, to provide
+against the event of the first action (a breach of promise)
+collapsing, which however it did not, both sides showing a
+courage that afforded Waterbuck, Q.C., an opportunity for
+improving his already great reputation in this class of case.  He
+was opposed by Ram, the other celebrated breach of promise man.
+It was a battle of giants.
+
+The court delivered judgment just before the luncheon interval.
+The jury left the box for good, and Soames went out to get
+something to eat.  He met James standing at the little luncheon-
+bar, like a pelican in the wilderness of the galleries, bent over
+a sandwich with a glass of sherry before him.  The spacious
+emptiness of the great central hall, over which father and son
+brooded as they stood together, was marred now and then for a
+fleeting moment by barristers in wig and gown hurriedly bolting
+across, by an occasional old lady or rusty-coated man, looking up
+in a frightened way, and by two persons, bolder than their
+generation, seated in an embrasure arguing.  The sound of their
+voices arose, together with a scent as of neglected wells, which,
+mingling with the odour of the galleries, combined to form the
+savour, like nothing but the emanation of a refined cheese, so
+indissolubly connected with the administration of British
+Justice.
+
+It was not long before James addressed his son.
+
+"When's your case coming on?  I suppose it'll be on directly.  I
+shouldn't wonder if this Bosinney'd say anything; I should think
+he'd have to.  He'll go bankrupt if it goes against him." He took
+a large bite at his sandwich and a mouthful of sherry.  "Your
+mother," he said, "wants you and Irene to come and dine
+to-night."
+
+A chill smile played round Soames' lips; he looked back at his
+father.  Anyone who had seen the look, cold and furtive, thus
+interchanged, might have been pardoned for not appreciating the
+real understanding between them.  James finished his sherry at a
+draught.
+
+"How much?" he asked.
+
+On returning to the court Soames took at once his rightful seat
+on the front bench beside his solicitor.  He ascertained where
+his father was seated with a glance so sidelong as to commit
+nobody.
+
+James, sitting back with his hands clasped over the handle of his
+umbrella, was brooding on the end of the bench immediately behind
+counsel, whence he could get away at once when the case was over.
+He considered Bosinney's conduct in every way outrageous, but he
+did not wish to run up against him, feeling that the meeting
+would be awkward.
+
+Next to the Divorce Court, this court was, perhaps, the favourite
+emporium of justice, libel, breach of promise, and other
+commercial actions being frequently decided there.  Quite a
+sprinkling of persons unconnected with the law occupied the back
+benches, and the hat of a woman or two could be seen in the
+gallery.
+
+The two rows of seats immediately in front of James were
+gradually filled by barristers in wigs, who sat down to make
+pencil notes, chat, and attend to their teeth; but his interest
+was soon diverted from these lesser lights of justice by the
+entrance of Waterbuck, Q.C., with the wings of his silk gown
+rustling, and his red, capable face supported by two short, brown
+whiskers.  The famous Q.C. looked, as James freely admitted, the
+very picture of a man who could heckle a witness.
+
+For all his experience, it so happened that he had never seen
+Waterbuck, Q.C., before, and, like many Forsytes in the lower
+branch of the profession, he had an extreme admiration for a good
+cross-examiner.  The long, lugubrious folds in his cheeks relaxed
+somewhat after seeing him, especially as he now perceived that
+Soames alone was represented by silk.
+
+Waterbuck, Q.C., had barely screwed round on his elbow to chat
+with his Junior before Mr. Justice Bentham himself appeared--a
+thin, rather hen-like man, with a little stoop, clean-shaven
+under his snowy wig.  Like all the rest of the court, Waterbuck
+rose, and remained on his feet until the judge was seated.  James
+rose but slightly; he was already comfortable, and had no opinion
+of Bentham, having sat next but one to him at dinner twice at the
+Bumley Tomms'.  Bumley Tomm was rather a poor thing, though he
+had been so successful.  James himself had given him his first
+brief.  He was excited, too, for he had just found out that
+Bosinney was not in court.
+
+'Now, what's he mean by that?' he kept on thinking.
+
+The case having been called on, Waterbuck, Q.C., pushing back his
+papers, hitched his gown on his shoulder, and, with a
+semi-circular look around him, like a man who is going to bat,
+arose and addressed the Court.
+
+The facts, he said, were not in dispute, and all that his
+Lordship would be asked was to interpret the correspondence which
+had taken place between his client and the defendant, an
+architect, with reference to the decoration of a house.  He
+would, however, submit that this correspondence could only mean
+one very plain thing.  After briefly reciting the history of the
+house at Robin Hill, which he described as a mansion, and the
+actual facts of expenditure, he went on as follows:
+
+"My client, Mr. Soames Forsyte, is a gentleman, a man of
+property, who would be the last to dispute any legitimate claim
+that might be made against him, but he has met with such
+treatment from his architect in the matter of this house, over
+which he has, as your lordship has heard, already spent some
+twelve--some twelve thousand pounds, a sum considerably in
+advance of the amount he had originally contemplated, that as a
+matter of principle--and this I cannot too strongly emphasize--as
+a matter of principle, and in the interests of others, he has
+felt himself compelled to bring this action.  The point put
+forward in defence by the architect I will suggest to your
+lordship is not worthy of a moment's serious consideration."  He
+then read the correspondence.
+
+His client, "a man of recognised position," was prepared to go
+into the box, and to swear that he never did authorize, that it
+was never in his mind to authorize, the expenditure of any money
+beyond the extreme limit of twelve thousand and fifty pounds,
+which he had clearly fixed; and not further to waste the time of
+the court, he would at once call Mr. Forsyte.
+
+Soames then went into the box.  His whole appearance was striking
+in its composure.  His face, just supercilious enough, pale and
+clean-shaven, with a little line between the eyes, and compressed
+lips; his dress in unostentatious order, one hand neatly gloved,
+the other bare.  He answered the questions put to him in a
+somewhat low, but distinct voice.  His evidence under cross-
+examination savoured of taciturnity.
+
+Had he not used the expression, "a free hand"?  No.
+
+"Come, come!"
+
+The expression he had used was 'a free hand in the terms of this
+correspondence.'
+
+"Would you tell the Court that that was English?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"What do you say it means?"
+
+"What it says!"
+
+"Are you prepared to deny that it is a contradiction in terms?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You are not an Irishman?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Are you a well-educated man?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And yet you persist in that statement?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Throughout this and much more cross-examination, which turned
+again and again around the 'nice point,' James sat with his hand
+behind his ear, his eyes fixed upon his son.
+
+He was proud of him!  He could not but feel that in similar
+circumstances he himself would have been tempted to enlarge his
+replies, but his instinct told him that this taciturnity was the
+very thing.  He sighed with relief, however, when Soames, slowly
+turning, and without any change of expression, descended from the
+box.
+
+When it came to the turn of Bosinney's Counsel to address the
+Judge, James redoubled his attention, and he searched the Court
+again and again to see if Bosinney were not somewhere concealed.
+
+Young Chankery began nervously; he was placed by Bosinney's
+absence in an awkward position.  He therefore did his best to
+turn that absence to account.
+
+He could not but fear--he said--that his client had met with an
+accident.  He had fully expected him there to give evidence; they
+had sent round that morning both to Mr. Bosinney's office and to
+his rooms (though he knew they were one and the same, he thought
+it was as well not to say so), but it was not known where he was,
+and this he considered to be ominous, knowing how anxious Mr.
+Bosinney had been to give his evidence.  He had not, however,
+been instructed to apply for an adjournment, and in default of
+such instruction he conceived it his duty to go on.  The plea on
+which he somewhat confidently relied, and which his client, had
+he not unfortunately been prevented in some way from attending,
+would have supported by his evidence, was that such an expression
+as a 'free hand' could not be limited, fettered, and rendered
+unmeaning, by any verbiage which might follow it.  He would go
+further and say that the correspondence showed that whatever he
+might have said in his evidence, Mr. Forsyte had in fact never
+contemplated repudiating liability on any of the work ordered or
+executed by his architect.  The defendant had certainly never
+contemplated such a contingency, or, as was demonstrated by his
+letters, he would never have proceeded with the work--a work of
+extreme delicacy, carried out with great care and efficiency, to
+meet and satisfy the fastidious taste of a connoisseur, a rich
+man, a man of property.  He felt strongly on this point, and
+feeling strongly he used, perhaps, rather strong words when he
+said that this action was of a most unjustifiable, unexpected,
+indeed--unprecedented character.  If his Lordship had had the
+opportunity that he himself had made it his duty to take, to go
+over this very fine house and see the great delicacy and beauty
+of the decorations executed by his client--an artist in his most
+honourable profession--he felt convinced that not for one moment
+would his Lordship tolerate this, he would use no stronger word
+than daring attempt to evade legitimate responsibility.
+
+Taking the text of Soames' letters, he lightly touched on
+'Boileau v. The Blasted Cement Company, Limited.'  "It is
+doubtful," he said, "what that authority has decided; in any case
+I would submit that it is just as much in my favour as in my
+friend's."  He then argued the 'nice point' closely.  With all
+due deference he submitted that Mr. Forsyte's expression
+nullified itself.  His client not being a rich man, the matter
+was a serious one for him; he was a very talented architect,
+whose professional reputation was undoubtedly somewhat at stake.
+He concluded with a perhaps too personal appeal to the Judge, as
+a lover of the arts, to show himself the protector of artists,
+from what was occasionally--he said occasionally--the too iron
+hand of capital.  "What," he said, "will be the position of the
+artistic professions, if men of property like this Mr. Forsyte
+refuse, and are allowed to refuse, to carry out the obligations
+of the commissions which they have given."  He would now call
+his client, in case he should at the last moment have found
+himself able to be present.
+
+The name Philip Baynes Bosinney was called three times by the
+Ushers, and the sound of the calling echoed with strange
+melancholy throughout the Court and Galleries.
+
+The crying of this name, to which no answer was returned, had
+upon James a curious effect: it was like calling for your lost
+dog about the streets.  And the creepy feeling that it gave him,
+of a man missing, grated on his sense of comfort and security-on
+his cosiness.  Though he could not have said why, it made him
+feel uneasy.
+
+He looked now at the clock--a quarter to three!  It would be all
+over in a quarter of an hour.  Where could the young fellow be?
+
+It was only when Mr. Justice Bentham delivered judgment that he
+got over the turn he had received.
+
+Behind the wooden erection, by which he was fenced from more
+ordinary mortals, the learned Judge leaned forward.  The electric
+light, just turned on above his head, fell on his face, and
+mellowed it to an orange hue beneath the snowy crown of his wig;
+the amplitude of his robes grew before the eye; his whole figure,
+facing the comparative dusk of the Court, radiated like some
+majestic and sacred body.  He cleared his throat, took a sip of
+water, broke the nib of a quill against the desk, and, folding
+his bony hands before him, began.
+
+To James he suddenly loomed much larger than he had ever thought
+Bentham would loom.  It was the majesty of the law; and a person
+endowed with a nature far less matter-of-fact than that of James
+might have been excused for failing to pierce this halo, and
+disinter therefrom the somewhat ordinary Forsyte, who walked and
+talked in every-day life under the name of Sir Walter Bentham.
+
+He delivered judgment in the following words:
+
+"The facts in this case are not in dispute.  On May 15 last the
+defendant wrote to the plaintiff, requesting to be allowed to
+withdraw from his professional position in regard to the
+decoration of the plaintiff's house, unless he were given 'a free
+hand.'  The plaintiff, on May 17, wrote back as follows: 'In
+giving you, in accordance with your request, this free hand, I
+wish you to clearly understand that the total cost of the house
+as handed over to me completely decorated, inclusive of your fee
+(as arranged between us) must not exceed twelve thousand pounds.'
+To this letter the defendant replied on May 18: 'If you think
+that in such a delicate matter as decoration I can bind myself to
+the exact pound, I am afraid you are mistaken.'  On May 19 the
+plaintiff wrote as follows: 'I did not mean to say that if you
+should exceed the sum named in my letter to you by ten or twenty
+or even fifty pounds there would be any difficulty between us.
+You have a free hand in the terms of this correspondence, and I
+hope you will see your way to completing the decorations.'  On
+May 20 the defendant replied thus shortly: 'Very well.'
+
+"In completing these decorations, the defendant incurred
+liabilities and expenses which brought the total cost of this
+house up to the sum of twelve thousand four hundred pounds, all
+of which expenditure has been defrayed by the plaintiff.  This
+action has been brought by the plaintiff to recover from the
+defendant the sum of three hundred and fifty pounds expended by
+him in excess of a sum of twelve thousand and fifty pounds,
+alleged by the plaintiff to have been fixed by this
+correspondence as the maximum sum that the defendant had
+authority to expend.
+
+"The question for me to decide is whether or no the defendant is
+liable to refund to the plaintiff this sum.  In my judgment he is
+so liable.
+
+"What in effect the plaintiff has said is this 'I give you a free
+hand to complete these decorations, provided that you keep within
+a total cost to me of twelve thousand pounds.  If you exceed that
+sum by as much as fifty pounds, I will not hold you responsible;
+beyond that point you are no agent of mine, and I shall repudiate
+liability.' It is not quite clear to me whether, had the
+plaintiff in fact repudiated liability under his agent's
+contracts, he would, under all the circumstances, have been
+successful in so doing; but he has not adopted this course.  He
+has accepted liability, and fallen back upon his rights against
+the defendant under the terms of the latter's engagement.
+
+"In my judgment the plaintiff is entitled to recover this sum
+from the defendant.
+
+"It has been sought, on behalf of the defendant, to show that no
+limit of expenditure was fixed or intended to be fixed by this
+correspondence.  If this were so, I can find no reason for the
+plaintiff's importation into the correspondence of the figures of
+twelve thousand pounds and subsequently of fifty pounds.  The
+defendant's contention would render these figures meaningless.
+It is manifest to me that by his letter of May 20 he assented to
+a very clear proposition, by the terms of which he must be held
+to be bound.
+
+"For these reasons there will be judgment for the plaintiff for
+the amount claimed with costs."
+
+James sighed, and stooping, picked up his umbrella which had
+fallen with a rattle at the words 'importation into this
+correspondence.'
+
+Untangling his legs, he rapidly left the Court; without waiting
+for his son, he snapped up a hansom cab (it was a clear, grey
+afternoon) and drove straight to Timothy's where he found
+Swithin; and to him, Mrs. Septimus Small, and Aunt Hester, he
+recounted the whole proceedings, eating two muffins not
+altogether in the intervals of speech.
+
+"Soames did very well," he ended; "he's got his head screwed on
+the right way.  This won't please Jolyon.  It's a bad business
+for that young Bosinney; he'll go bankrupt, I shouldn't wonder,"
+and then after a long pause, during which he had stared
+disquietly into the fire, he added
+
+"He wasn't there--now why?"
+
+There was a sound of footsteps.  The figure of a thick-set man,
+with the ruddy brown face of robust health, was seen in the back
+drawing-room.  The forefinger of his upraised hand was outlined
+against the black of his frock coat.  He spoke in a grudging
+voice.
+
+"Well, James," he said, "I can't--I can't stop," and turning
+round, he walked out.
+
+It was Timothy.
+
+James rose from his chair.  "There!" he said, "there!  I knew
+there was something wro...."  He checked himself, and was silent,
+staring before him, as though he had seen a portent.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+SOAMES BREAKS THE NEWS
+
+
+In leaving the Court Soames did not go straight home.  He felt
+disinclined for the City, and drawn by need for sympathy in his
+triumph, he, too, made his way, but slowly and on foot, to
+Timothy's in the Bayswater Road.
+
+His father had just left; Mrs. Small and Aunt Hester, in
+possession of the whole story, greeted him warmly.  They were
+sure he was hungry after all that evidence.  Smither should toast
+him some more muffins, his dear father had eaten them all.  He
+must put his legs up on the sofa; and he must have a glass of
+prune brandy too.  It was so strengthening.
+
+Swithin was still present, having lingered later than his wont,
+for he felt in want of exercise.  On hearing this suggestion, he
+'pished.' A pretty pass young men were coming to!  His own liver
+was out of order, and he could not bear the thought of anyone
+else drinking prune brandy.
+
+He went away almost immediately, saying to Soames: "And how's
+your wife?  You tell her from me that if she's dull, and likes to
+come and dine with me quietly, I'll give her such a bottle of
+champagne as she doesn't get every day."  Staring down from his
+height on Soames he contracted his thick, puffy, yellow hand as
+though squeezing within it all this small fry, and throwing out
+his chest he waddled slowly away.
+
+Mrs. Small and Aunt Hester were left horrified.  Swithin was so
+droll!
+
+They themselves were longing to ask Soames how Irene would take
+the result, yet knew that they must not; he would perhaps say
+something of his own accord, to throw some light on this, the
+present burning question in their lives, the question that from
+necessity of silence tortured them almost beyond bearing; for
+even Timothy had now been told, and the effect on his health was
+little short of alarming.  And what, too, would June do?  This,
+also, was a most exciting, if dangerous speculation!
+
+They had never forgotten old Jolyon's visit, since when he had
+not once been to see them; they had never forgotten the feeling
+it gave all who were present, that the family was no longer what
+it had been--that the family was breaking up.
+
+But Soames gave them no help, sitting with his knees crossed,
+talking of the Barbizon school of painters, whom he had just
+discovered.  These were the coming men, he said; he should not
+wonder if a lot of money were made over them; he had his eye on
+two pictures by a man called Corot, charming things; if he could
+get them at a reasonable price he was going to buy them--they
+would, he thought, fetch a big price some day.
+
+Interested as they could not but be, neither Mrs. Septimus Small
+nor Aunt Hester could entirely acquiesce in being thus put off.
+
+It was interesting--most interesting--and then Soames was so
+clever that they were sure he would do something with those
+pictures if anybody could; but what was his plan now that he had
+won his case; was he going to leave London at once, and live in
+the country, or what was he going to do?
+
+Soames answered that he did not know, he thought they should be
+moving soon.  He rose and kissed his aunts.
+
+No sooner had Aunt Juley received this emblem of departure than a
+change came over her, as though she were being visited by
+dreadful courage; every little roll of flesh on her face seemed
+trying to escape from an invisible, confining mask.
+
+She rose to the full extent of her more than medium height, and
+said: "It has been on my mind a long time, dear, and if nobody
+else will tell you, I have made up my mind that...."
+
+Aunt Hester interrupted her: "Mind, Julia, you do it...." she
+gasped--"on your own responsibility!"
+
+Mrs. Small went on as though she had not heard: "I think you
+ought to know, dear, that Mrs. MacAnder saw Irene walking in
+Richmond Park with Mr. Bosinney."
+
+Aunt Hester, who had also risen, sank back in her chair, and
+turned her face away.  Really Juley was too--she should not do
+such things when she--Aunt Hester, was in the room; and,
+breathless with anticipation, she waited for what Soames would
+answer.
+
+He had flushed the peculiar flush which always centred between
+his eyes; lifting his hand, and, as it were, selecting a finger,
+he bit a nail delicately; then, drawling it out between set lips,
+he said: "Mrs. MacAnder is a cat!"
+
+Without waiting for any reply, he left the room.
+
+When he went into Timothy's he had made up his mind what course
+to pursue on getting home.  He would go up to Irene and say:
+
+"Well, I've won my case, and there's an end of it!  I don't want
+to be hard on Bosinney; I'll see if we can't come to some
+arrangement; he shan't be pressed.  And now let's turn over a
+new leaf!  We'll let the house, and get out of these fogs.  We'll
+go down to Robin Hill at once.  I--I never meant to be rough with
+you!  Let's shake hands--and--"  Perhaps she would let him kiss
+her, and forget!
+
+When he came out of Timothy's his intentions were no longer so
+simple.  The smouldering jealousy and suspicion of months blazed
+up within him.  He would put an end to that sort of thing once
+and for all; he would not have her drag his name in the dirt!  If
+she could not or would not love him, as was her duty and his
+right--she should not play him tricks with anyone else!  He would
+tax her with it; threaten to divorce her!  That would make her
+behave; she would never face that.  But--but--what if she did?
+He was staggered; this had not occurred to him.
+
+What if she did?  What if she made him a confession?  How would
+he stand then?  He would have to bring a divorce!
+
+A divorce!  Thus close, the word was paralyzing, so utterly at
+variance with all the principles that had hitherto guided his
+life.  Its lack of compromise appalled him; he felt--like the
+captain of a ship, going to the side of his vessel, and, with his
+own hands throwing over the most precious of his bales.  This
+jettisoning of his property with his own hand seemed uncanny to
+Soames.  It would injure him in his profession: He would have to
+get rid of the house at Robin Hill, on which he had spent so much
+money, so much anticipation--and at a sacrifice.  And she!  She
+would no longer belong to him, not even in name!  She would pass
+out of his life, and he--he should never see her again!
+
+He traversed in the cab the length of a street without getting
+beyond the thought that he should never see her again!
+
+But perhaps there was nothing to confess, even now very likely
+there was nothing to confess.  Was it wise to push things so far?
+Was it wise to put himself into a position where he might have to
+eat his words?  The result of this case would ruin Bosinney; a
+ruined man was desperate, but--what could he do?  He might go
+abroad, ruined men always went abroad.  What could they do--if
+indeed it was 'they'--without money?  It would be better to wait
+and see how things turned out.  If necessary, he could have her
+watched.  The agony of his jealousy (for all the world like the
+crisis of an aching tooth) came on again; and he almost cried
+out.  But he must decide, fix on some course of action before he
+got home.  When the cab drew up at the door, he had decided
+nothing.
+
+He entered, pale, his hands moist with perspiration, dreading to
+meet her, burning to meet her, ignorant of what he was to say or
+do.
+
+The maid Bilson was in the hall, and in answer to his question:
+"Where is your mistress?" told him that Mrs. Forsyte had left the
+house about noon, taking with her a trunk and bag.
+
+Snatching the sleeve of his fur coat away from her grasp, he
+confronted her:
+
+"What?" he exclaimed; "what's that you said?" Suddenly
+recollecting that he must not betray emotion, he added: "What
+message did she leave?" and noticed with secret terror the
+startled look of the maid's eyes.
+
+"Mrs. Forsyte left no message, sir."
+
+"No message; very well, thank you, that will do.  I shall be
+dining out."
+
+The maid went downstairs, leaving him still in his fur coat, idly
+turning over the visiting cards in the porcelain bowl that stood
+on the carved oak rug chest in the hall.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Bareham Culcher.
+Mrs. Septimus Small.
+Mrs. Baynes.
+Mr. Solomon Thornworthy.
+Lady Bellis.
+Miss Hermione Bellis.
+Miss Winifred Bellis.
+Miss Ella Bellis.
+
+Who the devil were all these people?  He seemed to have forgotten
+all familiar things.  The words 'no message--a trunk, and a bag,'
+played a hide-and-seek in his brain.  It was incredible that she
+had left no message, and, still in his fur coat, he ran upstairs
+two steps at a time, as a young married man when he comes home
+will run up to his wife's room.
+
+Everything was dainty, fresh, sweet-smelling; everything in
+perfect order.  On the great bed with its lilac silk quilt, was
+the bag she had made and embroidered with her own hands to hold
+her sleeping things; her slippers ready at the foot; the sheets
+even turned over at the head as though expecting her.
+
+On the table stood the silver-mounted brushes and bottles from
+her dressing bag, his own present.  There must, then, be some
+mistake.  What bag had she taken?  He went to the bell to summon
+Bilson, but remembered in time that he must assume knowledge of
+where Irene had gone, take it all as a matter of course, and
+grope out the meaning for himself.
+
+He locked the doors, and tried to think, but felt his brain going
+round; and suddenly tears forced themselves into his eyes.
+
+Hurriedly pulling off his coat, he looked at himself in the
+mirror.
+
+He was too pale, a greyish tinge all over his face; he poured out
+water, and began feverishly washing.
+
+Her silver-mounted brushes smelt faintly of the perfumed lotion
+she used for her hair; and at this scent the burning sickness of
+his jealousy seized him again.
+
+Struggling into his fur, he ran downstairs and out into the
+street.
+
+He had not lost all command of himself, however, and as he went
+down Sloane Street he framed a story for use, in case he should
+not find her at Bosinney's.  But if he should?  His power of
+decision again failed; he reached the house without knowing what
+he should do if he did find her there.
+
+It was after office hours, and the street door was closed; the
+woman who opened it could not say whether Mr. Bosinney were in or
+no; she had not seen him that day, not for two or three days; she
+did not attend to him now, nobody attended to him, he....
+
+Soames interrupted her, he would go up and see for himself.  He
+went up with a dogged, white face.
+
+The top floor was unlighted, the door closed, no one answered his
+ringing, he could hear no sound.  He was obliged to descend,
+shivering under his fur, a chill at his heart.  Hailing a cab, he
+told the man to drive to Park Lane.
+
+On the way he tried to recollect when he had last given her a
+cheque; she could not have more than three or four pounds, but
+there were her jewels; and with exquisite torture he remembered
+how much money she could raise on these; enough to take them
+abroad; enough for them to live on for months!  He tried to
+calculate; the cab stopped, and he got out with the calculation
+unmade.
+
+The butler asked whether Mrs. Soames was in the cab, the master
+had told him they were both expected to dinner.
+
+Soames answered: "No.  Mrs. Forsyte has a cold."
+
+The butler was sorry.
+
+Soames thought he was looking at him inquisitively, and
+remembering that he was not in dress clothes, asked: "Anybody
+here to dinner, Warmson?"
+
+"Nobody but Mr. and Mrs. Dartie, sir."
+
+Again it seemed to Soames that the butler was looking curiously
+at him.  His composure gave way.
+
+"What are you looking at?" he said.  "What's the matter with me,
+eh?"
+
+The butler blushed, hung up the fur coat, murmured something that
+sounded like: "Nothing, sir, I'm sure, sir," and stealthily
+withdrew.
+
+Soames walked upstairs.  Passing the drawing-room without a look,
+he went straight up to his mother's and father's bedroom.
+
+James, standing sideways, the concave lines of his tall, lean
+figure displayed to advantage in shirt-sleeves and evening
+waistcoat, his head bent, the end of his white tie peeping askew
+from underneath one white Dundreary whisker, his eyes peering
+with intense concentration, his lips pouting, was hooking the top
+hooks of his wife's bodice.  Soames stopped; he felt half-choked,
+whether because he had come upstairs too fast, or for some other
+reason.  He--he himself had never--never been asked to....
+
+He heard his father's voice, as though there were a pin in his
+mouth, saying: "Who's that?  Who's there?  What d'you want?" His
+mother's: "Here, Felice, come and hook this; your master'll never
+get done."
+
+He put his hand up to his throat, and said hoarsely:
+
+"It's I--Soames!"
+
+He noticed gratefully the affectionate surprise in Emily's:
+"Well, my dear boy?" and James', as he dropped the hook: "What,
+Soames!  What's brought you up?  Aren't you well?"
+
+He answered mechanically: "I'm all right," and looked at them,
+and it seemed impossible to bring out his news.
+
+James, quick to take alarm, began: "You don't look well.  I
+expect you've taken a chill--it's liver, I shouldn't wonder.
+Your mother'll give you...."
+
+But Emily broke in quietly: "Have you brought Irene?"
+
+Soames shook his head.
+
+"No," he stammered, "she--she's left me!"
+
+Emily deserted the mirror before which she was standing.  Her
+tall, full figure lost its majesty and became very human as she
+came running over to Soames.
+
+"My dear boy!  My dear boy!"
+
+She put her lips to his forehead, and stroked his hand.
+
+James, too, had turned full towards his son; his face looked
+older.
+
+"Left you?" he said.  "What d'you mean--left you?  You never told
+me she was going to leave you."
+
+Soames answered surlily: "How could I tell?  What's to be done?"
+
+James began walking up and down; he looked strange and stork-like
+without a coat.  "What's to be done!" he muttered.  "How should I
+know what's to be done?  What's the good of asking me?  Nobody
+tells me anything, and then they come and ask me what's to be
+done; and I should like to know how I'm to tell them!  Here's
+your mother, there she stands; she doesn't say anything.  What I
+should say you've got to do is to follow her.."
+
+Soames smiled; his peculiar, supercilious smile had never before
+looked pitiable.
+
+"I don't know where she's gone," he said.
+
+"Don't know where she's gone!" said James.  "How d'you mean,
+don't know where she's gone?  Where d'you suppose she's gone?
+She's gone after that young Bosinney, that's where she's gone.  I
+knew how it would be."
+
+Soames, in the long silence that followed, felt his mother
+pressing his hand.  And all that passed seemed to pass as though
+his own power of thinking or doing had gone to sleep.
+
+His father's face, dusky red, twitching as if he were going to
+cry, and words breaking out that seemed rent from him by some
+spasm in his soul.
+
+"There'll be a scandal; I always said so."  Then, no one saying
+anything: "And there you stand, you and your mother!"
+
+And Emily's voice, calm, rather contemptuous: "Come, now, James!
+Soames will do all that he can."
+
+And James, staring at the floor, a little brokenly: "Well, I
+can't help you; I'm getting old.  Don't you be in too great a
+hurry, my boy."
+
+And his mother's voice again: "Soames will do all he can to get
+her back.  We won't talk of it.  It'll all come right, I dare
+say."
+
+And James: "Well, I can't see how it can come right.  And if she
+hasn't gone off with that young Bosinney, my advice to you is not
+to listen to her, but to follow her and get her back."
+
+Once more Soames felt his mother stroking his hand, in token of
+her approval, and as though repeating some form of sacred oath,
+he muttered between his teeth: "I will!"
+
+All three went down to the drawing-room together.  There, were
+gathered the three girls and Dartie; had Irene been present, the
+family circle would have been complete.
+
+James sank into his armchair, and except for a word of cold
+greeting to Dartie, whom he both despised and dreaded, as a man
+likely to be always in want of money, he said nothing till dinner
+was announced.  Soames, too, was silent; Emily alone, a woman of
+cool courage, maintained a conversation with Winifred on trivial
+subjects.  She was never more composed in her manner and
+conversation than that evening.
+
+A decision having been come to not to speak of Irene's flight, no
+view was expressed by any other member of the family as to the
+right course to be pursued; there can be little doubt, from the
+general tone adopted in relation to events as they afterwards
+turned out, that James's advice: "Don't you listen to her,
+follow-her and get her back!" would, with here and there an
+exception, have been regarded as sound, not only in Park Lane,
+but amongst the Nicholases, the Rogers, and at Timothy's.  Just
+as it would surely have been endorsed by that wider body of
+Forsytes all over London, who were merely excluded from judgment
+by ignorance of the story.
+
+In spite then of Emily's efforts, the dinner was served by
+Warmson and the footman almost in silence.  Dartie was sulky, and
+drank all he could get; the girls seldom talked to each other at
+any time.  James asked once where June was, and what she was
+doing with herself in these days.  No one could tell him.  He
+sank back into gloom.  Only when Winifred recounted how little
+Publius had given his bad penny to a beggar, did he brighten up.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "that's a clever little chap.  I don't know
+what'll become of him, if he goes on like this.  An intelligent
+little chap, I call him!" But it was only a flash.
+
+The courses succeeded one another solemnly, under the electric
+light, which glared down onto the table, but barely reached the
+principal ornament of the walls, a so-called 'Sea Piece by
+Turner,' almost entirely composed of cordage and drowning men.
+
+Champagne was handed, and then a bottle of James' prehistoric
+port, but as by the chill hand of some skeleton.
+
+At ten o'clock Soames left; twice in reply to questions, he had
+said that Irene was not well; he felt he could no longer trust
+himself.  His mother kissed him with her large soft kiss, and he
+pressed her hand, a flush of warmth in his cheeks.  He walked
+away in the cold wind, which whistled desolately round the
+corners of the streets, under a sky of clear steel-blue, alive
+with stars; he noticed neither their frosty greeting, nor the
+crackle of the curled-up plane-leaves, nor the night-women
+hurrying in their shabby furs, nor the pinched faces of vagabonds
+at street corners.  Winter was come!  But Soames hastened home,
+oblivious; his hands trembled as he took the late letters from
+the gilt wire cage into which they had been thrust through the
+slit in the door.'
+
+None from Irene!
+
+He went into the dining-room; the fire was bright there, his
+chair drawn up to it, slippers ready, spirit case, and carven
+cigarette box on the table; but after staring at it all for a
+minute or two, he turned out the light and went upstairs.
+There was a fire too in his dressing-room, but her room was
+dark and cold.  It was into this room that Soames went.
+
+He made a great illumination with candles, and for a long time
+continued pacing up and down between the bed and the door.  He
+could not get used to the thought that she had really left him,
+and as though still searching for some message, some reason, some
+reading of all the mystery of his married life, he began opening
+every recess and drawer.
+
+There were her dresses; he had always liked, indeed insisted,
+that she should be well-dressed--she had taken very few; two or
+three at most, and drawer after drawer; full of linen and silk
+things, was untouched.
+
+Perhaps after all it was only a freak, and she had gone to the
+seaside for a few days' change.  If only that were so, and she
+were really coming back, he would never again do as he had done
+that fatal night before last, never again run that risk--though
+it was her duty, her duty as a wife; though she did belong to
+him--he would never again run that risk; she was evidently not
+quite right in her head!
+
+He stooped over the drawer where she kept her jewels; it was not
+locked, and came open as he pulled; the jewel box had the key in
+it.  This surprised him until he remembered that it was sure to
+be empty.  He opened it.
+
+It was far from empty.  Divided, in little green velvet
+compartments, were all the things he had given her, even her
+watch, and stuck into the recess that contained--the watch was a
+three-cornered note addressed 'Soames Forsyte,' in Irene's
+handwriting:
+
+'I think I have taken nothing that you or your people have given
+me.'  And that was all.
+
+He looked at the clasps and bracelets of diamonds and pearls, at
+the little flat gold watch with a great diamond set in sapphires,
+at the chains and rings, each in its nest, and the tears rushed
+up in his eyes and dropped upon them.
+
+Nothing that she could have done, nothing that she had done,
+brought home to him like this the inner significance of her act.
+For the moment, perhaps, he understood nearly all there was to
+understand--understood that she loathed him, that she had loathed
+him for years, that for all intents and purposes they were like
+people living in different worlds, that there was no hope for
+him, never had been; even, that she had suffered--that she was to
+be pitied.
+
+In that moment of emotion he betrayed the Forsyte in him--forgot
+himself, his interests, his property--was capable of almost
+anything; was lifted into the pure ether of the selfless and
+unpractical.
+
+Such moments pass quickly.
+
+And as though with the tears he had purged himself of weakness,
+he got up, locked the box, and slowly, almost trembling, carried
+it with him into the other room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+JUNE'S VICTORY
+
+
+June had waited for her chance, scanning the duller columns of
+the journals, morning and evening with an assiduity which at
+first puzzled old Jolyon; and when her chance came, she took it
+with all the promptitude and resolute tenacity of her character.
+
+She will always remember best in her life that morning when at
+last she saw amongst the reliable Cause List of the Times
+newspaper, under the heading of Court XIII, Mr. Justice Bentham,
+the case of Forsyte v. Bosinney.
+
+Like a gambler who stakes his last piece of money, she had
+prepared to hazard her all upon this throw; it was not her nature
+to contemplate defeat.  How, unless with the instinct of a woman
+in love, she knew that Bosinney's discomfiture in this action was
+assured, cannot be told--on this assumption, however, she laid
+her plans, as upon a certainty.
+
+Half past eleven found her at watch in the gallery of Court
+XIII., and there she remained till the case of Forsyte v.
+Bosinney was over.  Bosinney's absence did not disquiet her; she
+had felt instinctively that he would not defend himself.  At the
+end of the judgment she hastened down, and took a cab to his
+rooms.
+
+She passed the open street-door and the offices on the three
+lower floors without attracting notice; not till she reached the
+top did her difficulties begin.
+
+Her ring was not answered; she had now to make up her mind
+whether she would go down and ask the caretaker in the basement
+to let her in to await Mr. Bosinney's return, or remain patiently
+outside the door, trusting that no one would, come up.  She
+decided on the latter course.
+
+A quarter of an hour had passed in freezing vigil on the landing,
+before it occurred to her that Bosinney had been used to leave
+the key of his rooms under the door-mat.  She looked and found it
+there.  For some minutes she could not decide to make use of it;
+at last she let herself in and left the door open that anyone who
+came might see she was there on business.
+
+This was not the same June who had paid the trembling visit five
+months ago; those months of suffering and restraint had made her
+less sensitive; she had dwelt on this visit so long, with such
+minuteness, that its terrors were discounted beforehand.  She was
+not there to fail this time, for if she failed no one could help
+her.
+
+Like some mother beast on the watch over her young, her little
+quick figure never stood still in that room, but wandered from
+wall to wall, from window to door, fingering now one thing, now
+another.  There was dust everywhere, the room could not have been
+cleaned for weeks, and June, quick to catch at anything that
+should buoy up her hope, saw in it a sign that he had been
+obliged, for economy's sake, to give up his servant.
+
+She looked into the bedroom; the bed was roughly made, as though
+by the hand of man.  Listening intently, she darted in, and
+peered into his cupboards.  A few shirts and collars, a pair of
+muddy boots--the room was bare even of garments.
+
+She stole back to the sitting-room, and now she noticed the
+absence of all the little things he had set store by.  The clock
+that had been his mother's, the field-glasses that had hung over
+the sofa; two really valuable old prints of Harrow, where his
+father had been at school, and last, not least, the piece of
+Japanese pottery she herself had given him.  All were gone; and
+in spite of the rage roused within her championing soul at the
+thought that the world should treat him thus, their disappearance
+augured happily for the success of her plan.
+
+It was while looking at the spot where the piece of Japanese
+pottery had stood that she felt a strange certainty of being
+watched, and, turning, saw Irene in the open doorway.
+
+The two stood gazing at each other for a minute in silence; then
+June walked forward and held out her hand.  Irene did not take
+it.
+
+When her hand was refused, June put it behind her.  Her eyes grew
+steady with anger; she waited for Irene to speak; and thus
+waiting, took in, with who-knows-what rage of jealousy,
+suspicion, and curiosity, every detail of her friend's face and
+dress and figure.
+
+Irene was clothed in her long grey fur; the travelling cap on her
+head left a wave of gold hair visible above her forehead.  The
+soft fullness of the coat made her face as small as a child's.
+
+Unlike June's cheeks, her cheeks had no colour in them, but were
+ivory white and pinched as if with cold.  Dark circles lay round
+her eyes.  In one hand she held a bunch of violets.
+
+She looked back at June, no smile on her lips; and with those
+great dark eyes fastened on her, the girl, for all her startled
+anger, felt something of the old spell.
+
+She spoke first, after all.
+
+"What have you come for?"  But the feeling that she herself was
+being asked the same question, made her add: "This horrible case.
+I came to tell him--he has lost it."
+
+Irene did not speak, her eyes never moved from June's face, and
+the girl cried:
+
+"Don't stand there as if you were made of stone!"
+
+Irene laughed: "I wish to God I were!"
+
+But June turned away: "Stop!" she cried, "don't tell me!  I don't
+want to hear!  I don't want to hear what you've come for.  I
+don't want to hear!" And like some uneasy spirit, she began
+swiftly walking to and fro.  Suddenly she broke out:
+
+"I was here first.  We can't both stay here together!"
+
+On Irene's face a smile wandered up, and died out like a flicker
+of firelight.  She did not move.  And then it was that June
+perceived under the softness arid immobility of this figure
+something desperate and resolved; something not to be turned
+away, something dangerous.  She tore off her hat, and, putting
+both hands to her brow, pressed back the bronze mass of her hair.
+
+"You have no right here!" she cried defiantly.
+
+Irene answered: "I have no right anywhere!
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I have left Soames.  You always wanted me to!"
+
+June put her hands over her ears.
+
+"Don't!  I don't want to hear anything--I don't want to know
+anything.  It's impossible to fight with you!  What makes you
+stand like that?  Why don't you go?"
+
+Irene's lips moved; she seemed to be saying: "Where should I go?"
+
+June turned to the window.  She could see the face of a clock
+down in the street.  It was nearly four.  At any moment he might
+come!  She looked back across her shoulder, and her face was
+distorted with anger.
+
+But Irene had not moved; in her gloved hands she ceaselessly
+turned and twisted the little bunch of violets.
+
+The tears of rage and disappointment rolled down June's cheeks.
+
+"How could you come?" she said.  "You have been a false friend to
+me!"
+
+Again Irene laughed.  June saw that she had played a wrong card,
+and broke down.
+
+"Why have you come?" she sobbed.  "You've ruined my life, and now
+you want to ruin his!"
+
+Irene's mouth quivered; her eyes met June's with a look so
+mournful that the girl cried out in the midst of her sobbing,
+"No, no!"
+
+But Irene's head bent till it touched her breast.  She turned,
+and went quickly out, hiding her lips with the little bunch of
+violets.
+
+June ran to the door.  She heard the footsteps going down and
+down.  She called out: "Come back, Irene!  Come back!"
+
+The footsteps died away....
+
+Bewildered and torn, the girl stood at the top of the stairs.
+Why had Irene gone, leaving her mistress of the field?  What did
+it mean?  Had she really given him up to her?  Or had she...?
+And she was the prey of a gnawing uncertainty....  Bosinney did
+not come....
+
+About six o'clock that afternoon old Jolyon returned from
+Wistaria Avenue, where now almost every day he spent some hours,
+and asked if his grand-daughter were upstairs.  On being told
+that she had just come in, he sent up to her room to request her
+to come down and speak to him.
+
+He had made up his mind to tell her that he was reconciled with
+her father.  In future bygones must be bygones.  He would no
+longer live alone, or practically alone, in this great house; he
+was going to give it up, and take one in the country for his son,
+where they could all go and live together.  If June did not like
+this, she could have an allowance and live by herself.  It
+wouldn't make much difference to her, for it was a long time
+since she had shown him any affection.
+
+But when June came down, her face was pinched and piteous; there
+was a strained, pathetic look in her eyes.  She snuggled up in
+her old attitude on the arm of his chair, and what he said
+compared but poorly with the clear, authoritative, injured
+statement he had thought out with much care.  His heart felt
+sore, as the great heart of a mother-bird feels sore when its
+youngling flies and bruises its wing.  His words halted, as
+though he were apologizing for having at last deviated from the
+path of virtue, and succumbed, in defiance of sounder principles,
+to his more natural instincts.
+
+He seemed nervous lest, in thus announcing his intentions, he
+should be setting his granddaughter a bad example; and now that
+he came to the point, his way of putting the suggestion that, if
+she didn't like it, she could live by herself and lump it, was
+delicate in the extreme.'
+
+"And if, by any chance, my darling," he said, "you found you
+didn't get on--with them, why, I could make that all right.  You
+could have what you liked.  We could find a little flat in London
+where you could set up, and I could be running to continually.
+But the children," he added, "are dear little things!"
+
+Then, in the midst of this grave, rather transparent, explanation
+of changed policy, his eyes twinkled.  "This'll astonish
+Timothy's weak nerves.  That precious young thing will have
+something to say about this, or I'm a Dutchman!"
+
+June had not yet spoken.  Perched thus on the arm of his chair,
+with her head above him, her face was invisible.  But presently
+he felt her warm cheek against his own, and knew that, at all
+events, there was nothing very alarming in her attitude towards
+his news.  He began to take courage.
+
+"You'll like your father," he said--"an amiable chap.  Never was
+much push about him, but easy to get on with.  You'll find him
+artistic and all that."
+
+And old Jolyon bethought him of the dozen or so water-colour
+drawings all carefully locked up in his bedroom; for now that his
+son was going to become a man of property he did not think them
+quite such poor things as heretofore.
+
+"As to your--your stepmother," he said, using the word with some
+little difficulty, "I call her a refined woman--a bit of a Mrs.
+Gummidge, I shouldn't wonder--but very fond of Jo.  And the
+children," he repeated--indeed, this sentence ran like music
+through all his solemn self-justification--"are sweet little
+things!"
+
+If June had known, those words but reincarnated that tender love
+for little children, for the young and weak, which in the past
+had made him desert his son for her tiny self, and now, as the
+cycle rolled, was taking him from her.
+
+But he began to get alarmed at her silence, and asked
+impatiently: "Well, what do you say?"
+
+June slid down to his knee, and she in her turn began her tale.
+She thought it would all go splendidly; she did not see any
+difficulty, and she did not care a bit what people thought.
+
+Old Jolyon wriggled.  H'm! then people would think!  He had
+thought that after all these years perhaps they wouldn't!  Well,
+he couldn't help it!  Nevertheless, he could not approve of his
+granddaughter's way of putting it--she ought to mind what people
+thought!
+
+Yet he said nothing.  His feelings were too mixed, too
+inconsistent for expression.
+
+No--went on June he did not care; what business was it of theirs?
+There was only one thing--and with her cheek pressing against his
+knee, old Jolyon knew at once that this something was no trifle:
+As he was going to buy a house in the country, would he not--to
+please her--buy that splendid house of Soames' at Robin Hill?  It
+was finished, it was perfectly beautiful, and no one would live
+in it now.  They would all be so happy there.
+
+Old Jolyon was on the alert at once.  Wasn't the 'man of
+property' going to live in his new house, then?  He never alluded
+to Soames now but under this title.
+
+"No"--June said--"he was not; she knew that he was not!"
+
+How did she know?
+
+She could not tell him, but she knew.  She knew nearly for
+certain!  It was most unlikely; circumstances had changed!
+Irene's words still rang in her head: "I have left Soames.
+Where should I go?"
+
+But she kept silence about that.
+
+If her grandfather would only buy it and settle that wretched
+claim that ought never to have been made on Phil!  It would be
+the very best thing for everybody, and everything--everything
+might come straight
+
+And June put her lips to his forehead, and pressed them close.
+
+But old Jolyon freed himself from her caress, his face wore the
+judicial look which came upon it when he dealt with affairs.  He
+asked: What did she mean?  There was something behind all this--
+had she been seeing Bosinney?
+
+June answered: "No; but I have been to his rooms."
+
+"Been to his rooms?  Who took you there?"
+
+June faced him steadily.  "I went alone.  He has lost that case.
+I don't care whether it was right or wrong.  I want to help him;
+and I will!"
+
+Old Jolyon asked again: "Have you seen him?" His glance seemed to
+pierce right through the girl's eyes into her soul.
+
+Again June answered: "No; he was not there.  I waited, but he did
+not come."
+
+Old Jolyon made a movement of relief.  She had risen and looked
+down at him; so slight, and light, and young, but so fixed, and
+so determined; and disturbed, vexed, as he was, he could not
+frown away that fixed look.  The feeling of being beaten, of the
+reins having slipped, of being old and tired, mastered him.
+
+"Ah!" he said at last, "you'll get yourself into a mess one of
+these days, I can see.  You want your own way in everything."
+
+Visited by one of his strange bursts of philosophy, he added:
+"Like that you were born; and like that you'll stay until you
+die!"
+
+And he, who in his dealings with men of business, with Boards,
+with Forsytes of all descriptions, with such as were not
+Forsytes, had always had his own way, looked at his indomitable
+grandchild sadly--for he felt in her that quality which above all
+others he unconsciously admired.
+
+"Do you know what they say is going on?" he said slowly.
+
+June crimsoned.
+
+"Yes--no!  I know--and I don't know--I don't care!" and she
+stamped her foot.
+
+"I believe," said old Jolyon, dropping his eyes, "that you'd have
+him if he were dead!"
+
+There was a long silence before he spoke again.
+
+"But as to buying this house--you don't know what you're talking
+about!"
+
+June said that she did.  She knew that he could get it if he
+wanted.  He would only have to give what it cost.
+
+"What it cost!  You know nothing about it.  I won't go to Soames-
+--I'll have nothing more to do with that young man."
+
+"But you needn't; you can go to Uncle James.  If you can't buy
+the house, will you pay his lawsuit claim?  I know he is terribly
+hard up--I've seen it.  You can stop it out of my money!"
+
+A twinkle came into old Jolyon's eyes.
+
+"Stop it out of your money!  A pretty way.  And what will you do,
+pray, without your money?"
+
+But secretly, the idea of wresting the house from James and his
+son had begun to take hold of him.  He had heard on Forsyte
+'Change much comment, much rather doubtful praise of this house.
+It was 'too artistic,' but a fine place.  To take from the 'man
+of property' that on which he had set his heart, would be a
+crowning triumph over James, practical proof that he was going to
+make a man of property of Jo, to put him back in his proper
+position, and there to keep him secure.  Justice once for all on
+those who had chosen to regard his son as a poor, penniless
+outcast.
+
+He would see, he would see!  It might be out of the question; he
+was not going to pay a fancy price, but if it could be done, why,
+perhaps he would do it!
+
+And still more secretly he knew that he could not refuse her.
+
+But he did not commit himself.  He would think it over--he said
+to June.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+BOSINNEY'S DEPARTURE
+
+
+Old Jolyon  was not given to hasty decisions; it is probable that
+he would have continued to think over the purchase of the house
+at Robin Hill, had not June's face told him that he would have no
+peace until he acted.
+
+At breakfast next morning she asked him what time she should
+order the carriage.
+
+"Carriage!" he said, with some appearance of innocence; "what
+for?  I'm not going out!"
+
+She answered: "If you don't go early, you won't catch Uncle James
+before he goes into the City."
+
+"James! what about your Uncle James?"
+
+"The house," she replied, in such a voice that he no longer
+pretended ignorance.
+
+"I've not made up my mind," he said.
+
+"You must!  You must!  Oh! Gran--think of me!"
+
+Old Jolyon grumbled out: "Think of you--I'm always thinking of
+you, but you don't think of yourself; you don't think what you're
+letting yourself in for.  Well, order the carriage at ten!"
+
+At a quarter past he was placing his umbrella in the stand at
+Park Lane--he did not choose to relinquish his hat and coat;
+telling Warmson that he wanted to see his master, he went,
+without being announced, into the study, and sat down.
+
+James was still in the dining-room talking to Soames, who had
+come round again before breakfast.  On hearing who his visitor
+was, he muttered nervously: "Now, what's be want, I wonder?"
+
+He then got up.
+
+"Well," he said to Soames, "don't you go doing anything in a
+hurry.  The first thing is to find out where she is--I should go
+to Stainer's about it; they're the best men, if they can't find
+her, nobody can." And suddenly moved to strange softness, he
+muttered to himself, "Poor little thing, I can't tell what she
+was thinking about!" and went out blowing his nose.
+
+Old Jolyon did not rise on seeing his brother, but held out his
+hand, and exchanged with him the clasp of a Forsyte.
+
+James took another chair by the table, and leaned his head on his
+hand.
+
+"Well," he said, "how are you?  We don't see much of you
+nowadays!"
+
+Old Jolyon paid no attention to the remark.
+
+"How's Emily?" he asked; and waiting for no reply, went on
+"I've come to see you about this affair of young Bosinney's.  I'm
+told that new house of his is a white elephant."
+
+"I don't know anything about a white elephant," said James, "I
+know he's lost his case, and I should say he'll go bankrupt."
+
+Old Jolyon was not slow to seize the opportunity this gave him.
+
+"I shouldn't wonder a bit!" he agreed; "and if he goes bankrupt,
+the 'man of property'--that is, Soames'll be out of pocket.  Now,
+what I was thinking was this: If he's not going to live there...."
+
+Seeing both surprise and suspicion in James' eye, he quickly went
+on: "I don't want to know anything; I suppose Irene's put her
+foot down--it's not material to me.  But I'm thinking of a house
+in the country myself, not too far from London, and if it suited
+me I don't say that I mightn't look at it, at a price."
+
+James listened to this statement with a strange mixture of doubt,
+suspicion, and relief, merging into a dread of something behind,
+and tinged with the remains of his old undoubted reliance upon
+his elder brother's good faith and judgment.  There was anxiety,
+too, as to what old Jolyon could have heard and how he had heard
+it; and a sort of hopefulness arising from the thought that if
+June's connection with Bosinney were completely at an end, her
+grandfather would hardly seem anxious to help the young fellow.
+Altogether he was puzzled; as he did not like either to show
+this, or to commit himself in any way, he said:
+
+"They tell me you're altering your Will in favour of your son."
+
+He had not been told this; he had merely added the fact of having
+seen old Jolyon with his son and grandchildren to the fact that
+he had taken his Will away from Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte.
+The shot went home.
+
+"Who told you that?" asked old Jolyon.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," said James; "I can't remember names--I
+know somebody told me Soames spent a lot of money on this house;
+he's not likely to part with it except at a good price."
+
+"Well," said old Jolyon, "if, he thinks I'm going to pay a fancy
+price, he's mistaken.  I've not got the money to throw away that
+he seems to have.  Let him try and sell it at a forced sale, and
+see what he'll get.  It's not every man's house, I hear!"
+
+James, who was secretly also of this opinion, answered: "It's a
+gentleman's house.  Soames is here now if you'd like to see him."
+
+"No," said old Jolyon, "I haven't got as far as that; and I'm not
+likely to, I can see that very well if I'm met in this manner!"
+
+James was a little cowed; when it came to the actual figures of a
+commercial transaction he was sure of himself, for then he was
+dealing with facts, not with men; but preliminary negotiations
+such as these made him nervous--he never knew quite how far he
+could go.
+
+"Well," he said, "I know nothing about it.  Soames, he tells me
+nothing; I should think he'd entertain it--it's a question of
+price."
+
+"Oh!" said old Jolyon, "don't let him make a favour of it!" He
+placed his hat on his head in dudgeon.
+
+The door was opened and Soames came in.
+
+"There's a policeman out here," he said with his half smile, "for
+Uncle Jolyon."
+
+Old Jolyon looked at him angrily, and James said: "A policeman?
+I don't know anything about a policeman.  But I suppose you know
+something about him," he added to old Jolyon with a look of
+suspicion: "I suppose you'd better see him!"
+
+In the hall an Inspector of Police stood stolidly regarding with
+heavy-lidded pale-blue eyes the fine old English furniture picked
+up by James at the famous Mavrojano sale in Portman Square.
+"You'll find my brother in there," said James.
+
+The Inspector raised his fingers respectfully to his peaked cap,
+and entered the study.
+
+James saw him go in with a strange sensation.
+
+"Well," he said to Soames, "I suppose we must wait and see what
+he wants.  Your uncle's been here about the house!"
+
+He returned with Soames into the dining-room, but could not rest.
+
+"Now what does he want?" he murmured again.
+
+"Who?" replied Soames: "the Inspector?  They sent him round from
+Stanhope Gate, that's all I know.  That 'nonconformist' of Uncle
+Jolyon's has been pilfering, I shouldn't wonder!"
+
+But in spite of his calmness, he too was ill at ease.
+
+At the end of ten minutes old Jolyon came in.  He walked up to
+the table, and stood there perfectly silent pulling at his long
+white moustaches.  James gazed up at him with opening mouth; he
+had never seen his brother look like this.
+
+Old Jolyon raised his hand, and said slowly:
+
+"Young Bosinney has been run over in the fog and killed."
+
+Then standing above his brother and his nephew, and looking down
+at him with his deep eyes:
+
+"There's--some--talk--of--suicide," he said.
+
+James' jaw dropped.  "Suicide!  What should he do that for?"
+
+Old Jolyon answered sternly: "God knows, if you and your son
+don't!"
+
+But James did not reply.
+
+For all men of great age, even for all Forsytes, life has had
+bitter experiences.  The passer-by, who sees them wrapped in
+cloaks of custom, wealth, and comfort, would never suspect that
+such black shadows had fallen on their roads.  To every man of
+great age--to Sir Walter Bentham himself--the idea of suicide has
+once at least been present in the ante-room of his soul; on the
+threshold, waiting to enter, held out from the inmost chamber by
+some chance reality, some vague fear, some painful hope.  To
+Forsytes that final renunciation of property is hard.  Oh! it is
+hard!  Seldom--perhaps never--can they achieve, it; and yet, how
+near have they not sometimes been!
+
+So even with James!  Then in the medley of his thoughts, he broke
+out: "Why I saw it in the paper yesterday: 'Run over in the fog!'
+They didn't know his name!" He turned from one face to the other
+in his confusion of soul; but instinctively all the time he was
+rejecting that rumour of suicide.  He dared not entertain this
+thought, so against his interest, against the interest of his
+son, of every Forsyte.  He strove against it; and as his nature
+ever unconsciously rejected that which it could not with safety
+accept, so gradually he overcame this fear.  It was an accident!
+It must have been!
+
+Old Jolyon broke in on his reverie.
+
+"Death was instantaneous.  He lay all day yesterday at the
+hospital.  There was nothing to tell them who he was.  I am going
+there now; you and your son had better come too."
+
+No one opposing this command he led the way from the room.
+
+The day was still and clear and bright, and driving over to Park
+Lane from Stanhope Gate, old Jolyon had had the carriage open.
+Sitting back on the padded cushions, finishing his cigar, he had
+noticed with pleasure the keen crispness of the air, the bustle
+of the cabs and people; the strange, almost Parisian, alacrity
+that the first fine day will bring into London streets after a
+spell of fog or rain.  And he had felt so happy; he had not felt
+like it for months.  His confession to June was off his mind; he
+had the prospect of his son's, above all, of his grandchildren's
+company in the future--(he had appointed to meet young Jolyon at
+the Hotch Potch that very manning to--discuss it again); and
+there was the pleasurable excitement of a coming encounter, a
+coming victory, over James and the 'man of property' in the
+matter of the house.
+
+He had the carriage closed now; he had no heart to look on
+gaiety; nor was it right that Forsytes should be seen driving
+with an Inspector of Police.
+
+In that carriage the Inspector spoke again of the death:
+
+"It was not so very thick--Just there.  The driver says the
+gentleman must have had time to see what he was about, he seemed
+to walk right into it.  It appears that he was very hard up, we
+found several pawn tickets at his rooms, his account at the bank
+is overdrawn, and there's this case in to-day's papers;" his cold
+blue eyes travelled from one to another of the three Forsytes in
+the carriage.
+
+Old Jolyon watching from his corner saw his brother's face
+change, and the brooding, worried, look deepen on it.  At the
+Inspector's words, indeed, all James' doubts and fears revived.
+Hard-up--pawn-tickets--an overdrawn account!  These words that
+had all his life been a far-off nightmare to him, seemed to make
+uncannily real that suspicion of suicide which must on no account
+be entertained.  He sought his son's eye; but lynx-eyed,
+taciturn, immovable, Soames gave no answering look.  And to old
+Jolyon watching, divining the league of mutual defence between
+them, there came an overmastering desire to have his own son at
+his side, as though this visit to the dead man's body was a
+battle in which otherwise he must single-handed meet those two.
+And the thought of how to keep June's name out of the business
+kept whirring in his brain.  James had his son to support him!
+Why should he not send for Jo?
+
+Taking out his card-case, he pencilled the following message:
+
+'Come round at once.  I've sent the carriage for you.'
+
+On getting out he gave this card to his coachman, telling him to
+drive--as fast as possible to the Hotch Potch Club, and if Mr.
+Jolyon Forsyte were there to give him the card and bring him at
+once.  If not there yet, he was to wait till he came.
+
+He followed the others slowly up the steps, leaning on his
+umbrella, and stood a moment to get his breath.  The Inspector
+said: "This is the mortuary, sir.  But take your time."
+
+In the bare, white-walled room, empty of all but a streak of
+sunshine smeared along the dustless floor, lay a form covered by
+a sheet.  With a huge steady hand the Inspector took the hem and
+turned it back.  A sightless face gazed up at them, and on either
+side of that sightless defiant face the three Forsytes gazed
+down; in each one of them the secret emotions, fears, and pity of
+his own nature rose and fell like the rising, falling waves of
+life, whose wish those white walls barred out now for ever from
+Bosinney.  And in each one of them the trend of his nature, the
+odd essential spring, which moved him in fashions minutely,
+unalterably different from those of every other human being,
+forced him to a different attitude of thought.  Far from the
+others, yet inscrutably close, each stood thus, alone with death,
+silent, his eyes lowered.
+
+The Inspector asked softly:
+
+"You identify the gentleman, sir?"
+
+Old Jolyon raised his head and nodded.  He looked at his brother
+opposite, at that long lean figure brooding over the dead man,
+with face dusky red, and strained grey eyes; and at the figure of
+Soames white and still by his father's side.  And all that he had
+felt against those two was gone like smoke in the long white
+presence of Death.  Whence comes it, how comes it--Death?  Sudden
+reverse of all that goes before; blind setting forth on a path
+that leads to where?  Dark quenching of the fire!  The heavy,
+brutal crushing--out that all men must go through, keeping their
+eyes clear and brave unto the end!  Small and of no import,
+insects though they are!  And across old Jolyon's face there
+flitted a gleam, for Soames, murmuring to the Inspector, crept
+noiselessly away.
+
+Then suddenly James raised his eyes.  There was a queer appeal in
+that suspicious troubled look: "I know I'm no match for you," it
+seemed to say.  And, hunting for handkerchief he wiped his brow;
+then, bending sorrowful and lank over the dead man, he too turned
+and hurried out.
+
+Old Jolyon stood, still as death, his eyes fixed on the body.
+Who shall tell of what he was thinking?  Of himself, when his
+hair was brown like the hair of that young fellow dead before
+him?  Of himself, with his battle just beginning, the long, long
+battle he had loved; the battle that was over for this young man
+almost before it had begun?  Of his grand-daughter, with her
+broken hopes?  Of that other woman?  Of the strangeness, and the
+pity of it?  And the irony, inscrutable, and bitter of that end?
+Justice!  There was no justice for men, for they were ever in the
+dark!
+
+Or perhaps in his philosophy he thought: Better to be out of, it
+all!  Better to have done with it, like this poor youth....
+
+Some one touched him on the arm.
+
+A tear started up and wetted his eyelash.  "Well," he said, "I'm
+no good here.  I'd better be going.  You'll come to me as soon as
+you can, Jo," and with his head bowed he went away.
+
+It was young Jolyon's turn to take his stand beside the dead man,
+round whose fallen body he seemed to see all the Forsytes
+breathless, and prostrated.  The stroke had fallen too swiftly.
+
+The forces underlying every tragedy--forces that take no denial,
+working through cross currents to their ironical end, had met and
+fused with a thunder-clap, flung out the victim, and flattened to
+the ground all those that stood around.
+
+Or so at all events young Jolyon seemed to see them, lying around
+Bosinney's body.
+
+He asked the Inspector to tell him what had happened, and the
+latter, like a man who does not every day get such a chance,
+again detailed such facts as were known.
+
+"There's more here, sir, however," he said, "than meets the eye.
+I don't believe in suicide, nor in pure accident, myself.  It's
+more likely I think that he was suffering under great stress
+of mind, and took no notice of things about him.  Perhaps you can
+throw some light on these."
+
+He took from his pocket a little packet and laid it on the table.
+Carefully undoing it, he revealed a lady's handkerchief, pinned
+through the folds with a pin of discoloured Venetian gold, the
+stone of which had fallen from the socket.  A scent of dried
+violets rose to young Jolyon's nostrils.
+
+"Found in his breast pocket," said the Inspector; "the name has
+been cut away!"
+
+Young Jolyon with difficulty answered: "I'm afraid I cannot help
+you!"  But vividly there rose before him the face he had seen
+light up, so tremulous and glad, at Bosinney's coming!  Of her he
+thought more than of his own daughter, more than of them all--of
+her with the dark, soft glance, the delicate passive face,
+waiting for the dead man, waiting even at that moment, perhaps,
+still and patient in the sunlight.
+
+He walked sorrowfully away from the hospital towards his father's
+house, reflecting that this death would break up the Forsyte
+family.  The stroke had indeed slipped past their defences into
+the very wood of their tree.  They might flourish to all
+appearance as before, preserving a brave show before the eyes of
+London, but the trunk was dead, withered by the same flash that
+had stricken down Bosinney.  And now the saplings would take its
+place, each one a new custodian of the sense of property.
+
+Good forest of Forsytes! thought young Jolyon--soundest timber
+of our land!
+
+Concerning the cause of this death--his family would doubtless
+reject with vigour the suspicion of suicide, which was so
+compromising!  They would take it as an accident, a stroke of
+fate.  In their hearts they would even feel it an intervention of
+Providence, a retribution--had not Bosinney endangered their two
+most priceless possessions, the pocket and the hearth?  And they
+would talk of 'that unfortunate accident of young Bosinney's,'
+but perhaps they would not talk--silence might be better!
+
+As for himself, he regarded the bus-driver's account of the
+accident as of very little value.  For no one so madly in love
+committed suicide for want of money; nor was Bosinney the sort of
+fellow to set much store by a financial crisis.  And so he too
+rejected this theory of suicide, the dead man's face rose too
+clearly before him.  Gone in the heyday of his summer--and to
+believe thus that an accident had cut Bosinney off in the full
+sweep of his passion was more than ever pitiful to young Jolyon.
+
+Then came a vision of Soames' home as it now was, and must be
+hereafter.  The streak of lightning had flashed its clear uncanny
+gleam on bare bones with grinning spaces between, the disguising
+flesh was gone....
+
+In the dining-room at Stanhope Gate old Jolyon was sitting alone
+when his son came in.  He looked very wan in his great armchair.
+And his eyes travelling round the walls with their pictures of
+still life, and the masterpiece 'Dutch fishing-boats at Sunset'
+seemed as though passing their gaze over his life with its hopes,
+its gains, its achievements.
+
+"Ah! Jo!" he said, "is that you?  I've told poor little June.
+But that's not all of it.  Are you going to Soames'?  She's
+brought it on herself, I suppose; but somehow I can't bear to
+think of her, shut up there--and all alone." And holding up his
+thin, veined hand, he clenched it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+IRENE'S RETURN
+
+
+After leaving James and old Jolyon in the mortuary of the
+hospital, Soames hurried aimlessly along the streets.
+
+The tragic event of Bosinney's death altered the complexion of
+everything.  There was no longer the same feeling that to lose a
+minute would be fatal, nor would he now risk communicating the
+fact of his wife's flight to anyone till the inquest was over.
+
+That morning he had risen early, before the postman came, had
+taken the first-post letters from the box himself, and, though
+there had been none from Irene, he had made an opportunity of
+telling Bilson that her mistress was at the sea; he would
+probably, he said, be going down himself from Saturday to Monday.
+This had given him time to breathe, time to leave no stone
+unturned to find her.
+
+But now, cut off from taking steps by Bosinney's death--that
+strange death, to think of which was like putting a hot iron to
+his heart, like lifting a great weight from it--he did not know
+how to pass his day; and he wandered here and there through the
+streets, looking at every face he met, devoured by a hundred
+anxieties.
+
+And as he wandered, he thought of him who had finished his
+wandering, his prowling, and would never haunt his house again.
+
+Already in the afternoon he passed posters announcing the
+identity of the dead man, and bought the papers to see what they
+said.  He would stop their mouths if he could, and he went into
+the City, and was closeted with Boulter for a long time.
+
+On his way home, passing the steps of Jobson's about half past
+four, he met George Forsyte, who held out an evening paper to
+Soames, saying:
+
+"Here! Have you seen this about the poor Buccaneer?"
+
+Soames answered stonily: "Yes."
+
+George stared at him.  He had never liked Soames; he now held him
+responsible for Bosinney's death.  Soames had done for him--done
+for him by that act of property that had sent the Buccaneer to
+run amok that fatal afternoon.
+
+'The poor fellow,' he was thinking, 'was so cracked with
+jealousy, so cracked for his vengeance, that he heard nothing of
+the omnibus in that infernal fog.'
+
+Soames had done for him!  And this judgment was in George's eyes.
+
+"They talk of suicide here," he said at last.  "That cat won't
+jump."
+
+Soames shook his head.  "An accident," he muttered.
+
+Clenching his fist on the paper, George crammed it into his
+pocket.  He could not resist a parting shot.
+
+"H'mm!  All flourishing at home?  Any little Soameses yet?"
+
+With a face as white as the steps of Jobson's, and a lip raised
+as if snarling, Soames brushed past him and was gone....
+
+On reaching home, and entering the little lighted hall with his
+latchkey, the first thing that caught his eye was his wife's
+gold-mounted umbrella lying on the rug chest.  Flinging off his
+fur coat, he hurried to the drawing-room.
+
+The curtains were drawn for the night, a bright fire of
+cedar-logs burned in the grate, and by its light he saw Irene
+sitting in her usual corner on the sofa.  He shut the door
+softly, and went towards her.  She did not move, and did not seem
+to see him.
+
+"So you've come back?" he said.  "Why are you sitting here in the
+dark?"
+
+Then he caught sight of her face, so white and motionless that it
+seemed as though the blood must have stopped flowing in her
+veins; and her eyes, that looked enormous, like the great, wide,
+startled brown eyes of an owl.
+
+Huddled in her grey fur against the sofa cushions, she had a
+strange resemblance to a captive owl, bunched fir its soft
+feathers against the wires of a cage.  The supple erectness of
+her figure was gone, as though she had been broken by cruel
+exercise; as though there were no longer any reason for being
+beautiful, and supple, and erect.
+
+"So you've come back," he repeated.
+
+She never looked up, and never spoke, the firelight playing over
+her motionless figure.
+
+Suddenly she tried to rise, but he prevented her; it was then
+that he understood.
+
+She had come back like an animal wounded to death, not knowing
+where to turn, not knowing what she was doing.  The sight of her
+figure, huddled in the fur, was enough.
+
+He knew then for certain that Bosinney had been her lover; knew
+that she had seen the report of his death--perhaps, like himself,
+had bought a paper at the draughty corner of a street, and read
+it.
+
+She had come back then of her own accord, to the cage she had
+pined to be free of--and taking in all the tremendous
+significance of this, he longed to cry: "Take your hated body,
+that I love, out of my house!  Take away that pitiful white face,
+so cruel and soft--before I crush it.  Get out of my sight; never
+let me see you again!"
+
+And, at those unspoken words, he seemed to see her rise and move
+away, like a woman in a terrible dream, from which she was
+fighting to awake--rise and go out into the dark and cold, without
+a thought of him, without so much as the knowledge of his
+presence.
+
+Then he cried, contradicting what he had not yet spoken, "No;
+stay there!" And turning away from her, he sat down in his
+accustomed chair on the other side of the hearth.
+
+They sat in silence.
+
+And Soames thought: 'Why is all this?  Why should I suffer so?
+What have I done?  It is not my fault!'
+
+Again he looked at her, huddled like a bird that is shot and
+dying, whose poor breast you see panting as the air is taken from
+it, whose poor eyes look at you who have shot it, with a slow,
+soft, unseeing look, taking farewell of all that is good--of the
+sun, and the air, and its mate.
+
+So they sat, by the firelight, in the silence, one on each side
+of the hearth.
+
+And the fume of the burning cedar logs, that he loved so well,
+seemed to grip Soames by the throat till he could bear it no
+longer.  And going out into the hall he flung the door wide, to
+gulp down the cold air that came in; then without hat or overcoat
+went out into the Square.
+
+Along the garden rails a half-starved cat came rubbing her way
+towards him, and Soames thought: 'Suffering!  when will it cease,
+my suffering?'
+
+At a front door across the way was a man of his acquaintance
+named Rutter, scraping his boots, with an air of 'I am master
+here.' And Soames walked on.
+
+From far in the clear air the bells of the church where he and
+Irene had been married were pealing in 'practice' for the advent
+of Christ, the chimes ringing out above the sound of traffic.  He
+felt a craving for strong drink, to lull him to indifference, or
+rouse him to fury.  If only he could burst out of himself, out of
+this web that for the first time in his life he felt around him.
+If only he could surrender to the thought: 'Divorce her--turn her
+out!  She has forgotten you.  Forget her!'
+
+If only he could surrender to the thought: 'Let her go--she has
+suffered enough!'
+
+If only he could surrender to the desire: 'Make a slave of her--
+she is in your power!'
+
+If only even he could surrender to the sudden vision: 'What does
+it all matter?'  Forget himself for a minute, forget that it
+mattered what he did, forget that whatever he did he must
+sacrifice something.
+
+If only he could act on an impulse!
+
+He could forget nothing; surrender to no thought, vision, or
+desire; it was all too serious; too close around him, an
+unbreakable cage.
+
+On the far side of the Square newspaper boys were calling their
+evening wares, and the ghoulish cries mingled and jangled with
+the sound of those church bells.
+
+Soames covered his ears.  The thought flashed across him that but
+for a chance, he himself, and not Bosinney, might be lying dead,
+and she, instead of crouching there like a shot bird with those
+dying eyes....
+
+Something soft touched his legs, the cat was rubbing herself
+against them.  And a sob that shook him from head to foot burst
+from Soames' chest.  Then all was still again in the dark, where
+the houses seemed to stare at him, each with a master and
+mistress of its own, and a secret story of happiness or sorrow.
+
+And suddenly he saw that his own door was open, and black against
+the light from the hall a man standing with his back turned.
+Something slid too in his breast, and he stole up close behind.
+
+He could see his own fur coat flung across the carved oak chair;
+the Persian rugs; the silver bowls, the rows of porcelain plates
+arranged along the walls, and this unknown man who was standing
+there.
+
+And sharply he asked: "What is it you want, sir?"
+
+The visitor turned.  It was young Jolyon.
+
+"The door was open," he said.  "Might I see your wife for a
+minute, I have a message for her?"
+
+Soames gave him a strange, sidelong stare.
+
+"My wife can see no one," he muttered doggedly.
+
+Young Jolyon answered gently: "I shouldn't keep her a minute."
+
+Soames brushed by him and barred the way.
+
+"She can see no one," he said again.
+
+Young Jolyon's glance shot past him into the hall, and Soames
+turned.  There in the drawing-room doorway stood Irene, her eyes
+were wild and eager, her lips were parted, her hands out-
+stretched.  In the sight of both men that light vanished from
+her face; her hands dropped to her sides; she stood like stone.
+
+Soames spun round, and met his visitor's eyes, and at the look he
+saw in them, a sound like a snarl escaped him.  He drew his lips
+back in the ghost of a smile.
+
+"This is my house," he said; "I manage my own affairs.  I've told
+you once--I tell you again; we are not at home."
+
+And in young Jolyon's face he slammed the door.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAN OF PROPERTY, GALSWORTHY ***
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